#this is a case of ideas piling on top of each other until i am completely squashed by them

[randomwriteronline]

(inspired by this post by @byz-was-here)

So maybe he had been a little too brash.

Not the first time Gresh had gotten that yelled at him, though Vastus was usually physically present instead of just in his head.

The point being, his attempt at sneaking into the terrifyingly enormous robot trying to punch the life out of the rickety body Mata Nui was struggling to pilot had been a success, and after what had felt like hours climbing as fast as he could up a relatively narrow tunnel he had at last emerged onto what had appeared to be some kind of island swarmed with bipedal metallic lizards of sorts brandishing spears.

Only one problem left on his plan's path now: he had no idea what the next step of said plan was.

One of the lizards opened its yellow skull into slices, hissing horrendously at him with what seemed like either a weirdly thick tongue or one of those slugs that tasted like rusted copper that they ate in Tajun, and pointed the end of its weapon at him as it crackled menacingly with an immense charge.

The young Glatorian panicked.

Before he could think of responding in any other way he joined his blades and thrusted them forward as hard as he could: a typhoon arose from them in the matter of a second, sweeping within itself the army of armored lizards. They struggled and writhed within the winds in a desperate attempt at freeing themselves from its pull, but could do nothing as their heads were yanked open and the slugs (they had to be slugs, because if those had been tongues it would have been so, so much worse) were almost all torn apart by the centripetal force, those spared from the gruesome fate ending up launched towards the impossibly high sky-like ceiling.

Gresh struggled to undo the destructive phenomenon before he fully lost control of it. As he heaved after at last dividing his weapons, he jolted upright again when a strange sound suddenly stopped not too far away from him. Nobody was around him anymore, and yet the noise was close, so close - almost...

He jerked his head upwards.

The slugs and the lizards had been weird, by all means - they had been what he might have expected from Kiina's idea of life on other planets: properly alien, properly other, properly just comprehensible enough to remind him of vague things that made no sense when presented in that shape and function.

Yet this, for all the ways it should have looked somewhat familiar, might have been the strangest being he'd ever seen in his life.

The humanoid figure clad in silver and red, floating above him thanks to rockets that seemed welded into its shoulders, looked back at him with glowing eyes that clearly mirrored his opinion.

"Now what in Mata Nui's name are you meant to be?" it sputtered at him without meaning to.

Its voice was almost too normal for its mechanical appearance - it still rumbled with melodies only possibly sung by machinery in-between the whistling breaths leaving and entering its frame like steam from a locomotive, but based on the being's looks hearing it pronounce such clear words instead of hisses, clunks, and revving growls was nonetheless quite destabilizing. It carried a weirdly androgynous quality within its deep pitch that made it impossible to understand if whoever had made it could have been envisioning it as female or otherwise, not helped by the martial image its armor projected without really giving its body a distinctively gendered shape. It was armed - the spinning blades it wielded seemed to be fused into one hand, what appeared to be a mini-sized cannon held into the other, and neither resembled any weapon the young Glatorian had ever seen - yet it appeared much more concerned with assessing the situation than attacking.

Gresh, busy as he was having several moments all at once, took in that pile of information and promptly forgot to think about it.

"I KNOW HIM!" he instead shouted way too loudly, pointing a blade at it without really reflecting on how that might have looked. "I KNOW HIM, HE'S A FRIEND!"

The being stumbled back a little in a defensive pose: "Mata Nui?" it asked, incredulous: "You are a friend to the Great Spirit?"

"YES, I KNOW HIM, HE GAVE ME THE WIND THING!" the young Glatorian continued to yell, now smacking together his weapons to better explain what his not particularly stellar choices in lexicon were struggling to convey by themselves before he pointed back at where he'd come from: "HE'S OUTSIDE FIGHTING THE ROBOT AND ALL! I NEED TO HELP HIM!"

"Fighting the what?"

"THE ROBOT! THE HUGE - THE BIG ROBOT, THE BIG ONE, THIS ONE, IT'S HUGE - I NEED TO FIND THE HEAD AND MAYBE KILL IT, HIM, THEM? MAYBE? MAYBE? POSSIBLY? I NEED TO HELP AND IT'S A BIG ROBOT AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO BUT I SHOULD PROBABLY GET TO THE HEAD OF THE ROBOT, THIS ONE, THE ROBOT - THIS ONE, THE HEAD, I NEED TO GET TO THE HEAD!"

He was not making any sense, but in his defense he was probably high on adrenaline.

The floating being gawked at him briefly. In a smooth motion it landed closer to him, looking him up and down with its brilliant pink eyes as it tried to make heads or tails of him without succeeding; Gresh charged at it to try explaining better and distractedly noticed there was flesh within the mechanical limbs.

"HE'S OUTSIDE," he continued just as loud - making the poor thing recoil as it did its best to keep him a little further away before he fried its audio receptors, "HE'S OUTSIDE AND THE PROBLEM IS IN HERE BECAUSE THERE'S A GUY IN THE BRAIN - HIS BROTHER I THINK? - AND IF I GET TO THE BRAIN MAYBE I CAN STAB HIM? MAYBE? PROBABLY? MAYBE? MA--"

"I can hear you," the being grimaced, stern tone imposing some peace and quiet onto the young warrior. "What is your name?"

"GRESH."

"Please quiet down."

"EVERYBODY I KNOW IS CURRENTLY AT THE MERCY OF TWO HUGE ROBOTS RIGHT NOW AND I NEED TO GET TO THE BRAIN OF THIS ONE TO--"

The hand was not as rough as he would have imagined - what with being made of metal and all - and the way it clumsily clamped around his mouth to very quickly and very kindly shut him up reminded him so much of Tarix that his furiously anxious body relaxed all at once, leaving him to look wide eyed into the dark sockets of a crimson helmet housing a pair of miniature yellow stars.

"You were sent by the Great Spirit himself?" the being asked. Despite currently being seconds away from squeezing its cheeks in that annoying way that older siblings tend to do, its tone was quiet with the sort of reverence reserved for gods.

Gresh pulled its palm from his mouth without encountering opposition: "I don't think he knows I'm here," he confessed, "But he's struggling out there, and I want to help him."

His interlocutor mulled over his words thoughtfully.

Its shining eyes took in the young Glatorian's entire frame, the slight change in them muttering its doubts without needing any words - but what could be a creature so strange, made of skin and clad in metal and bone, with a voice laid naked against the absence of its innate mechanical song, holding within such frail hands of flesh and fake phalanxes the same power as a missing brother of Air, talking of things beyond the universe itself, of a battle none knew their god was waging at that very moment, if not a desperate lending hand Mata Nui sent to guide his people in a victory against his cunning usurper?

When at last it looked back into Gresh's beaded pupils, it had taken its decision.

"The enemy is in the brain," it repeated.

The Lebori nodded feverishly: "The head! I think - he should be, right? It's the most important part, all the thoughts and nerves come from it, if you shut down the brain then the whole thing falls down and fails, right?"

A flash of understanding passed through the being's unmoving features: "Metru Nui!" it exclaimed as if remembering something.

"Yes! I think! Probably. If it's in the head then probably."

"We're a long way from there, but we could..." it ran a few quick calculations, producing a sound much like fat sizzling on a slab of lava-heated rock: "How long can Mata Nui last in his condition?"

"From what I've figured out of him I think he'll try to hold on until he's pummelled into scrap."

"Then we should try to be quicker than that."

Without much more preamble the being grabbed Gresh like a sack of flour, hefted him up in the air (he noticed only then how significantly shorter compared to it he was), secured his arms around its neck and shoulders with a practiced ease as the rockets of its armor shifted in a seamless manner to accomodate his passenger and provide the added firepower needed for carrying two people through the air, and got ready for take off as the poor kid scrambled to wrap around it before getting blasted off.

"Huh," it noted with genuine surprise, briefly forgetting their situation: "You're lighter than a Matoran. Are you missing any parts?"

"I'm eating plenty!" Gresh bit back.

A second later he was flying on the back of a mechanical creature with muscle peeking through the gaps of its armor, and the adrenaline washed away his coherent thoughts again.

-

Teridax felt miserable.

He supposed having an entire forty-thousand-feet tall body worth of various cells and microbes and the such viciously, actively and purposefully fighting against his consciousness would have had that sort of effect on just about anyone.

The gigantic robot piloted by a false god trying with all of its dwindling might to kick his jaw in also wasn't helping.

The second problem, however, could be dealt with by punching it into a sobbing heap of mangled rusted limbs begging for mercy with enough determination and brute force; the first one could not.

It required concentration - a very valuable asset currently being used to counter Mata Nui in his ugly runt of a spare frame he'd found in the first trash can of this horrid planet, thus distracting him from unleashing a strong enough counterattack across his organism to stop the squirming little pests from rebelling against him.

So yes, he was cross enough already.

And now he was getting a migraine.

He wondered briefly if fighting someone his own size (or, well... almost his own size, he nearly chuckled out loud to himself as he took a moment to bask once more of the not insignificant height difference between them) wasn't a waste of time. After all, Mata Nui had mentioned something about the safety of those insignificant beasts hurriedly scuttling away from their scuffle: certainly he would have been quite distraught if a careless swipe of his colossal hand caused a couple thousand casualties - maybe enough to be easily toppled and overpowered as he despaired over the loss of so many useless ants...

He raised his palm in the direction of their bothersome scampering, doing his best to place at least some of his power into it as his headache slowly worsened to a nearly unbearable degree.

How much of an increase in gravity would have been needed to flatten them all at once?

They were so small... Maybe just...

"JUNGLE SQUIRREL!" a voice that was not his screamed in his head.

What?

What the fuck?

What was that?

A strong wind arose, but not across Bara Magna.

In the span of a moment Teridax found himself ripped away from the middle of a titanic fight back in his blasted gaseous form as it was slammed and spread into a fog against one of the walls of the Core Processor. Disoriented, bleary, furious beyond belief, he came to his senses just in time to see rushing amongst the machinery Tahu, Takanuva, and - and a short, green, Toa-like, weirdly organic thing that sprinted directly into the control panel of the Great Spirit Robot which had once housed the synthetic soul of Mata Nui.

-

As incomprehensibly terrifying as a pair of colossi duking it out in the middle of the desert was, their size and loudness at the very least allowed much smaller beings to see and hear everything they were doing so that they could make an attempt to move as far away from their hellish battle as possible.

It hadn't been a pretty spectacle so far (few fights like these were), but it had given them more time to move out of harm's way than they would have expected. The escape was going incredibly smoothly, too, which was never how these sorts of things tended to go: neither Zesk nor Vorox had dared coming anywhere near the commotion, which had managed to scare off Bone Hunters and Skrall as well - even as easy a prey as the Agori were at the moment, scattering half directionless into an unclear part of the desert, they were not worth the risk of accidentally getting stepped on by who knows how many tonnes of metal.

The biggest causes of concern other than avoiding collateral damage were thus reduced to two: making sure everybody was accounted for as they left, and whether or not Mata Nui was winning.

Ackar, to the dismay of his blood pressure, was having serious trouble juggling his attention between them.

Tarix yanked him back to attention by his prosthetic arm, causing the Tapyri to hiss in pain: "What's the point of asking me questions if you don't listen to my answer?!"

"I'm sorry," he growled back, "A friend of mine is fighting for his life right now, Great Beings forbid I'm a little worried for him!"

"So are we!"

"I don't see you trying to dodge the fists of a giant robot right now!"

"Because I'm trying to get the slow walkers out of its space so they won't have to dodge its colossal debris!"

"As entertaining as your yelling is, I think we have bigger slugs to fry," Gelu interrupted them in a flat tone. Head caught in the crook of the Koniri's elbow, Berix squirmed and pushed as he desperately tried to regain the sweet taste of freedom only to get squeezed a little tighter. "Somebody tried to go back to the crux of the struggle."

The other two Glatorian abandoned all tension between them to give the young Gaquri a suffering disappointed look, filled with the kind of tiredness that only an adopted father and the kindly man who puts out carved pumpkins for the mangy were-possum creature that skitters around the edges of his property to feed off of every now and then could muster; coherently, Berix replied with an inarticulate mumbling whine too low in volume and high in pitch to be intelligible that was meant to be an apology.

He was very lucky Kiina was not present, or she would have screamed his scales off.

Evidently he wasn't that lucky, because Kiina materialized on her chariot seconds later with Vastus in tow.

"Most of the oldest, youngest and motion-impared are already being moved on vehicles to a safer cave system a few Lebori knew," she informed the small group urgently as the other dismounted from the back of her ride with a worried look on his face.

Getting no answer, she searched their faces for an inkling of what they were thinking and landed squarely on her younger brother's: the immediate rage that took over her features made him scramble harder to evade Gelu's grip and her inevitable wrath all at once, eventually ending up falling right on his ass in the sand when the Koniri let go without warning.

"YOU." Kiina thundered while he scuttled away behind the other Glatorian: "WHAT IN PLUDE DID YOU DO NOW?!"

"Nothing!" he shrieked back, clinging to the white armored leg even as it tried to shake him off. "Gresh and I thought we could have helped if we got in maybe, you know, since it's a machine and so I could have messed up its wiring or something like that so it could have fallen over and the height advantage could have--"

"Wait - wait, Gresh?" Tarix paled. He turned to his wife: "He was with you, right? With you two, further down?"

Vastus replied with an equally terrified face: "I thought he was down here with you," he replied softly as horror built into his voice, "He insisted in covering our backs, he promised he wouldn't have done anything stupid..."

Ackar sunk his fingers into his eyelids with a groan, Kiina following suit in a nearly identical fashion.

The kids needed a hobby.

Any hobby.

Just as long as it kept them away from pulling shit like this.

If they got him back in one piece, they were going to beat his ass.

An ear-piercing sound that was far too close to a pained lament shook them out of their collective mixture of fear, worry and well-deserved rage, rattling the sky alongside with them.

"Fuckin' Quartz Peaks!" Gelu exclaimed.

His eyes were fixed on the gargantuan figure stumbling back into the dunes on suddenly unsteady legs, leaning forward as it clutched its head in anguish and curled upon itself to stave off the pain clearly rippling through it - shoulders so low that they were almost at the same height as the prototype robot's, which instead stood tall despite the strain placed upon it.

Had Mata Nui dealt a decisive blow as they weren't looking?

But the collision should have caused something akin to a sonic boom, and the mechanical body's stance was just as surprised at the change in its opponent's demeanor as the spectators of their fight...

Then suddenly, the Great Spirit Robot spoke as it had done before.

"My head hurts," it said, with a strangled voice that was not the one that had taunted its adversary so mercilessly until now.

The fraction of a second passed.

A green bolt shot through the golden sand in the fight's direction.

Berix tried to follow, but Tarix latched onto him like a lifeline.

"GRESH!" Vastus shouted as he ran as hard as he could, and Ackar realized his heart was beating far too loud in his ears.

He turned to the other Glatorian, skin pasty and spent like that of a dead body: "Tarix, Gelu, you keep everybody going, as far as you can," he ordered. For a second he was struck by a gross sense of familiarity that almost cut off his breath; some part of him grabbed the resurfacing memories of the Core War and beat them back into the hole he'd buried them until he could almost feel the blood on his knuckles. "Get to those caves, make sure nobody is left behind, keep them all in place until you're certain the coast is clear. Berix, don't move from either of them. Kiina, you're with me, I can't run that fast. Are we good?"

All four nodded, and the chariot's engine revved urgently as he jumped upon its rickety frame.

"You'll better get my nephew back, Tapyri," his once enemy hollered before they could speed off into the desert, with a tone closer to a plea than a threat or a joke.

"Who do you take me for, Gaquri?" Ackar shouted right back: "He's my nephew too!"

Tarix watched him and Kiina drive off as fast as the vehicle allowed; only when they caught up with his wife, still shouting for the young Glatorian as though he could hear that feeble cry from that far away, and scooped the veteran Lebori up with them, did he turn away and rush to take care of the last few stragglers.

-

The prototype creaked pitifully as its enormous hands found the massive elbows of the Great Spirit Robot and struggled to sustain them alongside with everything else that was already putting a strain on its faulty frame.

"Gresh?" Mata Nui whispered, searching for his former body's eyes. "My friend, is that you?"

Through the massive fingers peeked at last a large, glowing iris: upon its dark orange color, so similar to red, laid a whitish beaded line - an attempt at replicating the peculiar shape of a Lebori's pupil on a surface not meant to have any.

"This is too tall," the Great Spirit Robot groaned quietly in a still boyish voice, optics hiding away again before the sense of vertigo became too much.

A tremor overtook its massive frame, threatening to destabilize the prototype robot alongside with it; Mata Nui held onto him a little steadier as he tried desperately to figure out how in the name of the lonely endless vastness of the known and unknown universe the young Glatorian had managed to get himself inside the control panel of the Core Processor of all places.

Even ignoring the fact that he should have gone for the Manual Override Computer instead of putting himself through the immense strain of piloting such a colossal body (although in his defense he may have not known how to operate it or how to recognize it or where to find it - hazy memories of it reminded him that the Great Beings really had placed it horrendously, goodness gracious, so perhaps he had a little too much faith in how effectively Gresh could have located it in the first place), knowing that a physical body was currently governing the Great Spirit Robot was absolutely baffling.

Was this possibility planned? Had anybody considered that one day a bodied being could have needed to take the helm? Were there proper safety measures in place for such a happenstance? Did anybody even stop to consider if it was possible? Did a few dozen thousands years old kid just physically brute force his way into a contraption designed to house immaterial beings and make it work? And hold on, how on Aqua Magna had he shoved Teridax out of it? And actually, now that he thought about it, how in the name of himself had he entered the Robot and gotten all the way to the Core Processor apparently completely on his own?

"How did you do this?" he only asked in the end.

"I went in - in the robot, and there was - we went in the brain, in the, the brain, and we - I threw - Bota Magna sanctissima mentula libera me a malo my body hurts so bad--"

He leaned forward into Mata Nui's embrace, enormous body moaning in pain as long fevers crawled over him.

It must have been an internal infection - it must have meant that those within, the inhabitants he had so carelessly allowed to rot in their own bloodshed, had been fighting back against Teridax.

Had he not been preoccupied with being puzzled out of his wits and helping his friend not succumb to the fever of a lifetime, the former Great Spirit could have been overwhelmed by pride for about an hour, cried himself into unconsciousness for a couple more, spent another pair feeling really bad about them putting so much effort into it when he had ignored them for so long, and experienced a sudden spike in the need to beat the tar out of his fated brother's mask harder than he already had been for a few good minutes.

Fortunately, his mind was fully focused on a variety of other things.

Trying his best to pull Gresh into his arms so that he could better offer him support, he steeled his groaning rusted body and spoke to distract him from the pain: "You are in the Core Processor right now?"

"I - I think, so, yes, I think- I think-"

"You removed Teridax from the controls?"

"I threw - with, with the winds, I yanked him out, 'cause he's - weird, he's weird smoke and all - my legs, my legs--"

"You are not alone with him, are you? Is there someone else in the Core Processor?"

"There- yes, there's Ta, Tahu and Tahu- Taka-Takanuuu, va, Takanuva? Tahu and T-Takanuva, they're - they helped, me, get here, and, and - they're here, they're here too, they'll - I'm in, in safe hands - aren't I?"

Mata Nui's grip around him was wonderfully comforting, and for a moment he felt as though his anguish was a little more bearable: "Safe hands indeed," he heard him speak, voice laden with a wondrous pride that set him at ease: "They are as brave and reckless as you are - and I'm certain they will be able to do the impossible and stave off Teridax, just as you did."

The praise cooled the violent temperature in the young Glatorian's momentary gargantuan body, and as he held onto the otherworlder he at last found the strength to overcome the nausea and pull himself up: despite the terrible aches lighting its every inch on fire, the Great Spirit Robot stood tall once more.

An idea struck Mata Nui as he looked at its orange eyes.

His destiny had been meant to be shared by two bodies and minds of equal strength - but he was stuck in a frame too weak, and the mental strain the task would have put on Gresh risked being too much for him to sustain; and yet, if he had already gotten half of the work done in this rickety thing, and if he continued to maintain his efforts steady as his duty demanded of him, the much larger robot would have expended much less energy, keeping the Glatorian's frail mind and frame safe...

"Gresh," he murmured softly: "How are you feeling?"

"Nauseous," his friend replied truthfully, "But I can - I can manage, I can - it's, not as bad as the- the Skrall in Tajun. I can manage, I can help. I want to help. I want to help."

"I am afraid what I could ask of you might be beyond what you should allow for your safety's sake."

To see such a massive creature of metal tremble fiercely as it did its best to bear its anguish was a frightening spectacle, terrible, unnatural; but Gresh held that heavy body tall and straightened its back as best as he could, and his voice was as steady as they came: "I'll bet I've handled worse."

"Worse than pulling two moons into a planet?"

No answer.

"The robot is equipped to do so without having to physically grasp the satellites."

Gresh wheezed - either in relief, or because something in the Voya Nui area had just exploded hard enough to give him a chance to experience appendicitis again: "Ah," his voice rattled out of him, "Alright. Yes, I can do that, that's feasible."

-

For a striking, minuscule second, it felt a little like a deja-vù.

Nothing was the same - not the location, overflowing with unrecognizable machinery; not the fight, much wilder and cruel in its coreography than a slightly more dangerous game of kohlii than usual; not the spectators, who weren't exactly spectating as Tahu was desperately trying to keep his Hau's shields functional around the three of them while not going blind and Gresh was kneeling completely unresponsive if not catatonic in the sunken spot he had jumped into; not even his opponent, nor himself, although they were still virtually the same beings.

But for a striking, minuscule second, it felt like nothing had changed at all from that confrontation beneath Kini Nui.

Teridax lunged at him with its disgustingly rotten green cloud of a body open like a gaping maw seeking to devour the Toa of Light whole; the gaseous particles scattered briefly as Takanuva swung his spear through them, the arch drawn by the weapon's trajectory producing a blade of light.

The Makuta recomposed himself behind his back in a matter of seconds, spreading to cover the entire wall with his essence. There were no eyes in that clutter of loosely held together atoms, but the Toa could feel them stab right through his armor.

He'd almost been less frightening when he'd had a body.

"I HAVE GROWN TIRED OF YOU!" Teridax's voice boomed through the cramped space, bouncing off of the surrounding machinery with the harshness of a sledgehammer: "THE TIME FOR GAMES IS OVER, LITTLE TOA! I HAVE WELL EXHAUSTED WHATEVER PATIENCE I ONCE MAY HAVE HAD FOR DEALING WITH YOU MISERABLE VERMINS!"

"Sounds like a you problem," Takanuva mumbled in reply through gritted teeth.

The wall of shadow toppled towards him with a long, shrieking whistle, like a faraway bomb on the way to the ground: Tahu had two seconds to shield his eyes before his younger brother's body burst with a blinding flare that would have no doubt brought a weaker being to their knees, but only repelled Teridax back into the corners of the room, divided but not broken, ready to slither back into a plume of horrid olive smoke.

How long was this going to go on for? Keeping his Hau active was slowly starting to wear him down, and in the time Takanuva had been struggling against the Makuta it seemed that absolutely nothing had changed from their predicament.

He would have loved to leap to his aid, but his feet were already singing and nearly melting the metal floor from the stress: if he wanted to get them all safely out of here, fighting wasn't an option.

A strange sound, like a strangled whimpered grunt, prompted him to try his luck and open his eyes again.

Gresh was shaking.

As he still kneeled deadeyed and unresponsive within the pod sunken into the ground, his entire body had suddenly started shivering harshly, spasming as though he was being electrocuted - but nothing appeared to be coming from the walls to provoke such a reaction.

Tahu hurriedly lowered himself towards the strange being while Takanuva continued fending off Teridax: "Gresh!" he called out, reaching for him: "What's wrong?"

His hands found themselves stopped in their tracks by an invisible force just above the being. He tried again, pushing as hard as he could in an attempt to make it through the thick air to no avail as his muscles strained but found no gain all the same. Was this what was affecting the green armored creature? Or had it been like this from the moment he'd jumped in? Then it should have protected Teridax when he'd been swirling within it too, but he'd been blown out of it... Could elemental attacks bypass this invisible barrier?

While the Toa thought furiously how to get him out of there without hurting him, Gresh slowly pulled his head back to look out of his shallow prison with small, jolting motions; he began raising his arms upwards at the same agonizing pace, straining for the open exit just above him.

The struggle tore a strangled whine out of his throat. Takanuva staggered at the sound, and the distraction nearly allowed Teridax to rush through his chest and tear his heartlight away with him - only sending the Toa of Light careening back when the gaseous mass instead collided with the shield Tahu reinforced just in time, saving him from shapeless jaws aching to tear him apart.

"FOOLISH INSECTS!" the Makuta snarled as vicious as a Rahi Nui, "YOU CANNOT STOP ME! YOU CANNOT CHANGE MY DESTINY!"

"It was never your destiny!" Takanuva growled right back: the shadows in the room shifted according to his desire, rendering Teridax heavy enough for him to be hit in full by a blade of light too quick for him to avoid. "You usurped Mata Nui and acted like it was always meant to be!"

Pained hisses turned into a harsh laugh: "DON'T PRETEND YOU CAN UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENS AROUND YOU, LITTLE TOA," Teridax mocked him, twisting into a tornado that threatened to rip the whole room to shreds. "THERE ARE THINGS THAT WILL LAY BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION FOREVER - AND ONCE THAT THING YOU'VE BROUGHT ALONG WITH YOU COLLAPSES FROM A STRUGGLE IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO FACE, NOTHING WILL KEEP ME FROM TAKING MY RIGHTFUL PLACE AS THE EMBODIMENT OF THIS UNIVERSE AGAIN!"

The young Toa could have said something quippy, or sarcastic, a good line to at least go down with the satisfaction of a glorious comeback; as he was not planning on dying, Takanuva just roared and blasted the brightest light bomb he'd ever made in his face.

Unaware of the immense luminescence above him, Gresh's fingers finally clawed at the edges of the control panel.

Tahu snaked his own hand under the thin fleshy phalanxes as soon as the explosion of light dimmed, elated to discover the force field waning enough in that area to let him actually interact with the other being and immediately trying to leverage him up - although it was easier said than done, considering how little he had to work with.

Maybe it was a stupid move, after Teridax had so blatantly claimed that Gresh was the only thing standing between him and complete control over the universe, but he had his reasons: for one, it certainly wouldn't have been the first time he'd pulled this sort of thing, so whatever reserves he might have had about the situation had likely already been obliterated into fine mist; secondly, he was not going to let a sapient being die between convulsions like this, especially not an emissary and friend of the Great Spirit; and finally, if that ancient talking cloud that was the Makuta thought he or Takanuva wouldn't have jumped in the Control Panel to take over from the poor organic thing even at the cost of sacrificing themselves to keep his gaseous ass from doing any more damage to the entire known world, he was sorely mistaken.

Gresh shook harder in his grasp, but did not budge an inch.

The Toa of Fire willed himself coolheaded as he gritted his teeth: "Come on, come on, don't give up on me..."

A blast of light turned his vision spotty for a few moments, Takanuva's pained groan reaching him only moments later. The shield must have gotten weaker - he turned his focus back on his Hau in full, but the flare of its power flowing once again around his younger brother filled his limbs with molten lead as exhaustion settled into him and suddenly pulling Gresh out felt akin to getting his arms ripped off.

Had using the Vahi been this excruciating, or was he just easily fatigued when forced to balance his attention between two things? Gali would have never had this kind of problem.

Then again, she would not have had a Mask of Shielding either; so he would grit his teeth and bear it, and succeed even if it killed him.

Maybe it was this desperate burst of bravado, maybe it was Takanuva scattering Teridax across the corners of the room again before the Makuta could even get close to him, maybe it was Mata Nui, wherever he was, managing to perceive their thoughts and lending them a blessing of his own: but at last, somehow, inhaling in a horrendously loud gasp, Gresh clutched Tahu's hands tight and tore through the forces keeping him down as he lurched upright on his feet, nearly slamming right in the metallic chest while struggling still against his yet to be quelled tremors.

Before the Toa of Fire could say anything the organic creature was feverishly crawling out of the sunken trap, pushing him to the floor alongside himself and cawing with a panicked voice: "Down! Down!"

Takanuva turned to check on them. His opponent wasted no time ramming into the force shield around him, nearly slamming him into the opposite wall had Tahu not almost dislocated his arm to catch him in time and pull him under himself to protect him.

"I HAVE TOLD YOU, LITTLE TOA!" Teridax howled victoriously as he spread his form to completely sorround the now three overwhelmed beings curled on the pavement, powerless to stop him: "YOUR IDIOTIC RESISTANCE IS MEANINGLESS! YOU CANNOT CHANGE MY DESTINY!"

He dove back into the control panel with a horrifying laugh, filling its every crevice, at last returning to the so very maddeningly empowering feeling of a gigantic body once more regained, subjugated, under his utter control.

Before he even had access to his eyes again he could recognize the fever of rebellion burning through his limbs, the rusted hands holding fast onto his chestplate, the sound of straining machinery now on its last sputtering forces: at last his immense irises burned bright with a vermillion hue, facing the crude prototype features of his brother's furrowed momentary face in the battle he had been so rudely interrupted from finishing.

But just as he was about to taunt him, Mata Nui pushed with all his strength, and his sluggish reflexes did not let him react in time.

-

Vastus screamed.

He screamed until he felt his chest shrivel and implode.

Ackar wrapped his prosthetic arm around his back, pressing him against the chariot with all his might because he knew full well that if he had let go the Lebori would have let himself fall off into the sand, but looked just as pale as the dead while they both watched the Great Spirit Robot slump forward into the smaller titan's hold.

"He's fine!" Kiina barked while she struggled to regain control of the chariot after swerving too hard, covered in cold sweat and gripping the wheel so hard the scales of her knuckles were creaking. "He's fine! Mata Nui wouldn't just--!"

"He must have gotten him out before that," the Tapyri agreed much more softly, "He wouldn't have let him come to harm."

Vastus heard them both only faintly. His eyes were stuck on the enormous body with a hole in the back of its head that just moments ago had been speaking with his nephew's voice.

"Your friend better pray to the Great Beings Gresh hasn't come to harm," he hissed, feathers raised and bristling with furious premature grief, pupils constricted so tight it hurt, as he watched the rusted colossus lay its enormous bretheren to the ground slowly, carefully: "Because no fucking robot the size of a mountain will keep me from dismantling him with my bare hands if it's the last thing I do in my miserable life."

-

Takanuva blinked. Then he blinked again two more times, just to make sure his eyes were open, as the red shield faded away.

He flexed his fingers in the dark, trying his luck against the shadows sorrounding the three of them to create a little mote of light... Which formed instantaneously, without encountering any trouble or opposition whatsoever.

A good sign. Puzzling, but pretty good.

He turned his head to look around, feeling Tahu's protective hold around him weaken to allow him to properly take in the room and search for... For what? He wasn't really sure. He felt a little dizzy.

Little seemed to have changed in the wake of Teridax returning in control and the subsequent earth-rending rattle that had overtaken the whole chamber for a terrifying second. The walls were still standing, and with them all their machinery as well; everything was however eerily dark and silent, the hushed buzzes now absent, the faint gleams that all together had made up the room's lightsource snuffed out. Even the small chasm the Makuta had disappeared into was unusually quiet and dim.

"Are you both alright?" his brother asked, still so concerned that he hadn't had the time to catch his breath.

"Yeah," Takanuva replied distractedly: "Yeah, I'm fine. Gresh?"

Faceplanted on the floor and making no movement whatsoever, the organic being responded with a grunt that could have been considered affirmative. Tahu carefully lifted his head to check on him a little better while his younger sibling continued to look around, convinced something was off: beaded pupils struggled to peek through heavy eyelids fighting to stay open.

The Toa of Fire turned the poor thing face up, hoping he could be a bit more comfortable: "You look like you got in a fight with a Rahi Nui," he grimaced.

Gresh's mouth twitched spasmodically for a moment or two: "Drippin'," he mumbled back at him.

"What?"

"Sumfin's drippin'," he slurred again, and craned his neck in mild discomfort as he whined: "Oh, tha's so annoyin'..."

"Where do you hear dripping of all things?" Takanuva argued.

"Wha'y' mean, can'y' hear i'? 's loud 's all Plude..."

"In all fairness Takanuva is not known for being too keen in that sense," Tahu said, completely ignoring the pointed look the Toa of Light immediately shot him, "But I can't hear anything either."

"D'y' go' ears full of w'rms? 's blowin' my head op'n, 's righ' 'here!..." the young being bemoaned as he struggled to raise his weak unstable hand to point somewhere right next to them - in fact, bringing their attention back to the shallow chamber that had housed him mere seconds ago.

The small mote of light illuminated what appeared to be a slowly growing puddle of sickly greenish liquid slowly expanding across the metal floor, half caught in the depressions left by Tahu's smoldering feet where they had nearly melted the pavement. A drop landed into it at that moment with a sad little splash: both Toa followed its path in reverse to find its source up, up, on the ceiling...

... Until their gazes sat on a wide wet stain splattered across metallic panels, likely the product of a gas condensed far too high, of a color concerningly similar to antidermis.

Just to be safe, they slowly crawled away from the puddle.

You could never trust Teridax to consistently stay dead, after all.

They picked themselves up in a sudden hurry to leave. When Gresh remained unmoving on the floor, only twitching and groaning at the stray droplets that sometimes fell, Takanuva eyed him with a little bit of worry: "Are you ok? Do you need help?"

"Gimme a sec'nd," the other replied through gritted teeth.

He shifted his feet enough to pull his knees up, only to have them fall to the side rather bonelessly moments later; he opted for turning around so he could be on all fours, achieving getting on his stomach only when the Toa of Fire gave him a hand as though he were a turtle laying on its shell, and while he did manage to push his torso off the ground with his arms his head very stubbornly refused to raise, blocking him in a very stupid pose. The larger beings very kindly elected to slip their hands under his armpits to lift him despite his mumbled insistences that he could do it himself: the second he was put on his feet his legs decided to crumble like a melting cheesecake, and before he knew it he was cooped up nice and safe in Takanuva's surprisingly big arms as his golden sphere was replaced by a warmer ball of fire, courtesy of Tahu.

"Wow, you're light," the younger Toa noted.

"Right?" his brother agreed. "He weighs less than you did."

"Wait, really?"

"Well, y're re'lly whi'e," Gresh grumbled, offended. His head was lolling back towards the ground in a way that clearly strained his neck, but no matter how hard he tried he could not lift it. He gargled defeatedly: "M'helme's 'oo heavy..."

"Ah - hold on," he heard as he was jostled a little while the other two began walking out of the room and into the tunnel that would once again lead them into the open air.

A kind if clumsy hand carefully went to sustain his nape, lifting his head along with the heavy armor sitting upon it. It took a couple trials, but the helmet did come off eventually: the poor thing's olive green face poofed to almost twice its size as he groaned in relief, and Takanuva watched with awe by the warm light of his brother's flames as the thin feathers adhered back against the skull to reveal features surprisingly flat instead of concave - thin nostrils above a thin mouth adorned with thin ivory teeth, and lashes like a moth's antennas hanging for dear life on tired eyelids, and small ears covered in reddish plumes twitching slightly, and patches of greyish tawny skin between gaps in the down dotted with scars.

The Toa of Light stared, fascinated. Gresh stared right back, so dazed that he barely realized he was conscious.

Takanuva leaned down to his face and told him plainly: "You look even weirder up close."

The other curled up his nose: "An' how d'y'look under tha' mask?"

"Like this, of course," the Toa replied as he briefly lifted the Avohkii.

Gresh huffed a little frightened "Hoo!" and poofed his feathers out right away with eyes blown wide open, thoroughly spooked: "Oh, y'p'ple're ghas'ly."

Takanuva would have objected more vocally if a known voice hadn't rung out at that moment, calling for him and Tahu.

The Toa of Fire enlarged the sphere of flames in his hand while sprinting forward, responding to the cries in tone: soon enough natural light was streaming into the tunnel, allowing the three beings inside it to clearly see Nuparu and Hewkii clambering as fast as their amphibious feet allowed towards them.

"How are things up there?" Tahu asked them immediately as soon as they stopped mere bio before him to catch their breaths: "Is everybody safe? Teridax should be neutralized for now, but we felt some kind of--"

"Sky's broken," Nuparu interrupted him.

The older Toa blinked, shook his head, and sputtered: "What?"

"There's a HUGE HOLE in it!" Hewkii continued whilst flailing his arms wildly in his Earth brother's stead, as he was noticeably more athletic and not currently in the process of being forced to reshape his lungs into something that could actually hold oxygen again: "It was on top of us and then it SHIFTED and went to the horizon and the sea just - pshwoooosh, just fell out of it, all of it - ok, maybe not all of it, but there's- it's- there are Rahi CHOKING on AIR because the sea is just, THAT little, there's THAT little sea in the sea right now, because it- because it FELL OUT. OF THE HOLE IN THE SKY. AND - and there is, there's stuff outside of the hole! There's a sky! A second sky!"

"A what?"

"It looks like the sky on Mata Nui and Voya Nui but maybe I'm imagining things because I'm still reeling, but then there's - sand! There's SAND, there's MOUNTAINS, there's--"

"Hold on," Takanuva piped up, looking as flabbergasted as his older brother, "Hold on, the hole - how, how did that happen?"

"WE JUST DON'T KNOW!!"

"Something might've," Nuparu interjected again, taking a big breath before he could go on: "Scraped it off. Some water - real water, not protodermis - fell onto us when the hole appeared, so a portion of it could have been knocked off or crushed or-"

Gresh chose that moment to give exactly two singular squeaky laughs. He sounded like he was having the most baller time of his life.

"Smack'im with a big rock," he gargled, "Now tha's a classic."

All eyes turned to him.

For a very long second, no words came to anybody.

Then Nuparu said, with the voice of a genuinely intrigued Archivist unfortunately dragging along a rich tapestry of concerning implications: "What is that?"

"We're not archiving him," Takanuva shot him down instantly.

"Yes, but what is he?"

"His name is Gresh and he's in no condition to answer right now."

"Why is that?"

"He's barely keeping awake!"

"So?"

"Not the time for this!" Tahu interrupted them exasperated, launching himself forward to get out and figure out what in Karzhani was happening out there, because while there's a big hole in the sky was a perfectly comprehensible string of words with a meaning behind it there was no way he had processed even just a single one of them in a way that made sense.

-

She would have been much more relieved to see her older Fire brother emerge from the barely still standing buildings relatively unscathed from whatever challenge he'd just gone through (she had actually only vaguely heard of him needing to go under the colosseum alongside Takanuva without knowing what exactly they were meant to do there, but she considered her guess to be a very educated one because quite frankly there was always a challenge of some sort wherever a Toa had to go) had she not currently been wrestling with a skull-splitting migraine caused by the incessant shouting coming from Pridak's now beached fleet as their ships were left at the mercy of Ehlek's enormous water-dwelling Rahi, which were contorting madly in a desperate attempt to get back under what little ocean was left for them to breathe in.

The panicking army was very lucky Gali had been her example for how a Toa should behave, because had she been more closely exposed to, say, Nokama Hordika instead, they would have all been washed out of the enormous hole in the horizon by now.

That little piece of tangible cosmic horror was also certainly not helping her current state of mind.

Back fins outstretched to slow her descent, Hahli glided down from her observation point to land right into her brother's arms, slamming her whole weight on his chest hard enough to make him stagger. The impact tore a loud 'oof' out of him, but he managed to hug her upright without either of them toppling over in the end.

"Glad to see you," she sighed.

Tahu placed her down on her feet, looking her over for injuries: "Are you alright?"

"No," Hahli groaned. Her brain pulsed painfully as if to underline her statement, and she grimaced. "But I'll live. What about you? And Takanuva? Is he alright? What did you two--"

"Teridax has been disabled for now," he just told her, very cautiously wording himself in order not to jinx it.

He then turned towards the enormous hole in reality - bathed not in an impenetrable darkness but in sunlight, looking back at him with the sight of an enormous desert which seemed in some parts to be slowly receding under a quiet wave of something - and stood quiet before it for a moment.

At last he raised an exhausted arm to point at the whole incomprehensible debacle and asked: "What in the Makuta is going on with that?"

His little sister made a pained sound, like the saddest Hapaka howl: "Wouldn't we all like to know..."

"Alright, let's go for simpler questions first," Tahu conceded for the sake of their mental health. "How's the city, is the damage widespread? Any casualties? Everybody accounted for? The Hagah, Gali, Kongu, Jaller, where are they? Are they alright?"

"Pouks, Iruini and Gali are helping the Turaga look after the wounded, but they've already said that things look to be much less worse than they could be, thankfully," she replied: "Kualus, Gaaki, Norik, Kongu and I are keeping watch on the shores to keep any more of the Barraki's forces from trying their luck against us, and some of the Matoran are cleaning wrecks and disassembling the Rahkshi and Exo-Toa since they stopped attacking - Nuparu was helping too but he and Hewkii went to warn you, right? And a piece of-" (she gestured upwards, loosely indicating the spot where the hole in the sky had been, too tired to refer to it out loud) "-Fell in the Ko-Metru area, so Jaller and Bomonga went to see how bad the damage is and what they can do about it."

Her brother nodded, relieved: "Good work, all of you," he reassured her with a few good pats on her back.

Hahli allowed the gentle pressure to push her towards him, laying her head on his shoulder to let herself enjoy the respite lent by his warm hold around her.

"I'm so tired," she wheezed.

Tahu nuzzled her forehead sympathetically: "We're gonna take a break eventually," he sighed. "Sooner that later, hopefully. Possibly."

They whined in tandem at the thought.

That sweet prospect of rest seemed farther and farther each day.

A holler in their direction snapped them out of their momentary miserable exhaustion: Takanuva was rushing over to them (Nuparu's thin form disappearing back towards the city behind him, likely to continue cleaning up the streets with Hewkii), arms tight around his chest and a look of pure relief at the sight of his sister and former fellow chronicler.

He was glad to lean into her hug, talking far too quickly for her to register any of his words properly; he stopped only when she squeezed him tight, tearing a strange pained grunt out of him.

"Right, sorry, forgot you were there," he mumbled apologetically. Hahli gave him a weird look, about to ask what he meant by that, but his attention had already shifted, magnetized by the hole in the horizon with its puzzling world beyond it: he tilted his head down towards his own chest just a little without ever tearing his eyes from the strange panorama, and whispered: "Is that were you come from?"

A small movement and another mumble - "May'e," said with a slurring tone typical of someone who's just woken up and is still squinting at the light, "Bi' 'oo green, I fink," - brought her eyes lower down from his silver mask.

She blinked once, twice, thrice. The strange olive green being laid limply in Takanuva's arms, looking on the verge of passing out with a sonorous snore right there and then.

How had she not noticed something like that?

Were her senses dimming?

She had no time to be relieved about being proven wrong moments later, when a long shadow creeped in through the sky's chasm.

The strangest kind of silence erupted from Metru Nui and its surroundings - the quiet of held back screams, of barely contained terror being muzzled tight before it had the chance to bark at the threat much larger than itself with its tail between its legs, desperate to intimidate what intimidated it.

It was enormous: it fell slowy, outside, away from the universe, but the impact rattled the entire world nonetheless. Patches of brownish red (was it rust?) clung to the colossal segments across what seemed like a shoulder, a neck, the beginning of a head. A long, wheezing exhale abandoned the titan, its size turning it into a terrifying sound, and the whole frame hissed in agony as it grew impossibly taught while its metallic components grinded against one another with bloodcurdling shrieks.

It was a short, impossibly quick moment.

A second, really, nothing more.

It felt incorrect - like looking through the water without a Kaukau to shield your eyes, everything around you fuzzy and indistinct.

But for a second, for just one single second, it was...

Hahli stopped breathing.

"Matoro?"

And then the second passed, and the body stopped its whistling lament and laid limp, and the fleeting sensation was gone.

"Fuck," the being in Takanuva's baffled hold murmured, quiet voice devoid of any underlying mechanical song deafening in the silence: "Tha's concernin'."

-

The ground was covered in something, some watery thing, that turned the slowly less and less sandy terrain into a sopping marsh. Vastus speeded through it with surprising agility for someone with his age and a chunk of lower spine missing, although by the standards of a Lebori who'd lived his entire early life in a swampy grove as he was his form was severely lacking - a hundred millenia without any possibility to practice will do that to you.

Ackar was shouting for him above the chariot's waning engine, trying to tell him to wait as he dismounted from the vehicle only to find himself stuck between going after him to make sure he didn't do anything rash and following Kiina to make sure she didn't do anything rash.

Vastus barely heard him anyways. He was still screaming for Gresh.

Idiot rookie that he was - couldn't he have stayed put for once? Stuck close to Tarix as he said he would? Not thrown himself into yet another stupid plan? Now he was starting to sound like Gelu - useless heroics and all that. But Gelu had a point sometimes.

Maybe they should have never indulged him. Maybe they should have never played along with his prattlings about being fully grown when he couldn't even drink yet without melting his liver into goo. Maybe they should have never gotten attached. Maybe they should have never allowed him to become a Glatorian and just left him to tend to the Thornax bushes in Tesara.

Great Beings, his heart was going to collapse.

The robot's colossal head had been laid so that the gaping wound on its nape would almost touch the ground. Liquid still sputtered out of the skull's jagged edges in rivulets: it was silvery in color, like the material making up the gargantuan body it dripped out of, and pooled in a wide shallow pond just underneath the wreckage.

The overwhelming grey hue covering the whole scene did not make the spectacle of a split open skull less gruesome.

It did, however, make it much easier to spot the bright red head of a humanoid figure as it flew right over the cranial cliffs - and with it, the familiar green shape held tight against its front.

Vastus barely registered the movement of his own limbs. In a second he was standing ankle deep in the silvery pond, Venom Talon in hand ready to strike, eyes trained onto the startled creature floating a few feet in the air while holding Gresh tighter in its grip; the young Glatorian's orange eyes opened blearily, heavy, tired, and his arm dangled in his direction in a manner that could have been a purposeful greeting or simply an unintentional motion.

"PUT HIM DOWN!" the Lebori barked furiously.

Either frightened or not understanding him, the being strengthened its metal grasp.

"PUT HIM DOWN BEFORE I PLUCK YOU OUT OF THE SKY, YOU-!"

"Ai aun'ie," his nephew spoke at that moment, craning his neck out of the crook of his captor's shoulder. His head lolled to the side without any strength, helmet nowhere in sight: his feathers were flat, relaxed, but looked spent as though he was fighting through an illness, and his pupils struggled to adapt to the light or focus on anything even as he turned to his captor with a noticeable struggle, mumbling something barely coherent.

Worry overtook Vastus's mind completely: "I SAID PUT HIM DOWN!" he screamed, teeth bared, thin plumage vibrating, arm pulled back as he aimed straight for the crimson helm-

He found his whole body seized tight in an iron grip.

Ackar wrestled him still as carefully as he could, doing his best to keep him from hurling the Talon while not pulling any moves that could have caused the Lebori's back prosthesis to painfully malfuction or become misaligned: "For the love of Certavus, calm down!" he hissed as he almost lifted his fellow Glatorian off the ground, "If he drops from that height he'll break in half!"

"HE'LL HAVE A HEAP OF SCRAP METAL TO LAND ON IN A MOMENT!" the Lebori snarled back.

"And how's that supposed to cushion him?"

He would have bitten into his friends's prosthetic hand hard enough to dent it if his overly keen senses hadn't picked up the heavy splash of something landing less than gracefully into the pond just a few feet before them.

The being raised a hand in either a defense or a peace offering when Vastus whipped his head around to glare at it, gently pushing Gresh's head to lay on its shoulder. The boy blinked, clearly tired out of his mind as he was adjusted in the metal arms to be a little more snug, and mumbled in his aunt's direction another incomprehensible string of words with a little loopy smile.

If that damned chunk of metal didn't let go of him immediately he was going to--

"He's alright," the thing said.

It had a noisy voice, melodious in the cacophonic manner a heavy factory machine might be. Vastus shook his head briefly with a hiss, feeling the sound slither into his ears like a worm.

"He's alright," it repeated softly. "He's not hurt."

"So you can understand when I talk?" the Lebori growled: "Or is it just what you want to hear?"

"Don't aggravate it," Ackar hissed.

Vastus elbowed him as best as he could, syllables leaving his mouth with a dangerous whistling tone: "I told you to put my nephew down. Immediately."

"He cannot stand right now," the thing replied.

"You said he was fine!"

"He's not hurt. He's just exhausted."

"He's fain, aun'ie," Gresh managed to slur loud enough all of a sudden; with immense effort he raised an arm and managed to bonelessly slap his hand across his captor's face/helmet. "He's a fren' - 's name's 'ahu 'n's go' rrrocke's 'n' a big shiel' 'n' fire 'n' s'uff..."

The way the Tapyri's weight shifted away from Vastus's back cued him on the fact that something, for him, had clicked: "You're a Toa, aren't you?" he asked suddenly.

Topaz eyes fixed on him.

"That's what you are, right?" Ackar insisted as he pulled the other Glatorian upright with himself: "A Toa."

"What in Plude is a 'Toa'?" the Lebori snapped quietly.

"One of Mata Nui's. One of his people. He said something about you once, I remember that, compared our swordsmanship - a good warrior, aren't you?"

'ahu (if that was the being's name) nodded slowly.

Ackar breathed a sigh of relief.

"He's good," he reassured Vastus under his breath. He'd almost completely let go of him, keeping a vice grip only on the Venom Talon to stop him from making any brash maneuvers. "He's alright. Gresh is in good hands."

"Doesn't mean I trust them to hold him," Vastus hissed. His breaths were still heavy, still irregular with worry.

His friend nodded, understanding completely, and raised a peaceful hand in the air: "We're on the same side," he told the strange creature: "We're friends of Mata Nui. Gresh went into that robot, right? Mata Nui's old body?"

The strange being froze for only a second, looking absolutely taken aback, as though he hadn't known he'd been residing into a titanic mechanical humunculus until now: "Yes," he replied finally, a little stunted while he tried to focus back on the question at hand: "Yes, he - I helped him reach the... Brain."

"And he moved the whole thing from there?"

"Yes, I... I think so, yes. We've kept him safe, but it's tired him out."

"Alright. Alright, thank you - thank you so much," and his voice cracked a little bit, "For looking out for him, and keeping him safe, thank you. Vastus can take it from here, he'll take care of him."

'ahu shifted his glowing gaze onto the Lebori, then down to Gresh as if asking for his permission, or maybe his opinion.

(Vastus would begrudgingly admit that threatening to skewer the poor thing out of the air with a scythe had not been the friendliest or most trustworthy way he could have presented himself, but fuck you, that was his nephew and he'd been trained by Bara Magna to expect things to generally want to kill you in some manner sooner or later.)

The young Glatorian mumbled something barely intelligible - some kind of reassurance, accompanied by another boneless swat of his hand on the back of the red helm that was probably meant to be a comforting pat to cement his words.

It took only half a step forward, holding him a little further: before anybody else present could blink Gresh had been taken from the metal arms and was resting his head in the crux of his aunt's neck, the liquid at their feet splashing as the older Lebori rushed away with him, towards the chariot, as fast as he could.

"You complete idiot," he hissed the whole way long, "You total and utter dumbass, you stupid damn kid, what in Plude was your plan? You promised you wouldn't have pulled anything, anything! How old do you think you are? Do I have to start watching you like a toddler who can't be trusted to be left alone now? I thought you were all grown! Responsible! Had some sense knocked into you after the first few missing phalanxes!"

"Wen' well," was all he had to say for himself.

"Pro Certavi amore - as soon as you're all better I'll round up every Glatorian available and we'll all kick your ass into next year."

"Wen' well!..."

He didn't react when his head collided the slightest bit with the vehicle's frame while he was sat in it. Vastus checked his eyes feverishly and found them still focused: he wasn't in shock, which was a relief. He preened the spot that had been hit, thin teeth filing through the feathers as both an apology and a nervous urge to do anything that could make him feel better.

A detail struck him: "Where's your helmet?"

Gresh blinked: "Oh, fuck," he mumbled absentmindedly, "Forgo't'ge' it back from 'akanu'a..."

"And what's that?"

"He's a fren'... 's re'ly whi'e 'n' brigh'... 'n'all..."

His eyelids were so heavy, his body so tired. A nap wouldn't have hurt, especially while his aunt preened him... It had been so long, hadn't it? The last time he'd gotten fussed over like this, when had it been? Maybe he would have remembered better after a short rest. That sounded like a good idea.

He felt Vastus's nails scratch his nape in an annoying manner: "Don't fall asleep," he was telling him with barely concealed panic, "Don't fall asleep, stay with me."

Gresh barely managed to squirm a little: "Am fain," he mumbled with a hissing yawn, "Jus' a bi' tir'd..."

"Look," the older Lebori insisted, pointing to the flourishing mountains, to the savanna slowly coming crawling to life, taking a bit of the planet back from the sprawling dunes: "Look, plants are coming back, the plants from before the Shattering - remember we taught you some of them? We showed you, with drawings and everything else? Do you see any you recognize?"

"Am tir'd, aun'ie..."

"Just try - look out and tell me which ones you recognize. There, that one, I know you know it, which one is it? Do you remember that?"

In some way, he must have realized he was worried he wouldn't wake up again if he fell asleep; so he turned his exhausted gaze to the receding desertification, focusing as hard as he could to some kind of bush in the distance the other Glatorian was directing his attention towards, fighting to stay awake so that his aunt would not have to worry after being forced to endure such a scare.

"Gitalis?"

A soft, nervous chuckle: "Way off the mark."

"Am tir'd!..."

"Come on, try again, I know you remember it."

"Hm... 's... 's a iunpre?"

"Correct, good kid." Vastus nuzzled the side of his head and kept searching for any bleeding wounds. "And what's that next to it?"

-

The optic gave in with a few swift stomps, shattering into large chunks of glassy material that were broken into smaller pieces when Kiina landed on them from above, in a manner that would have easily gotten her feet punctured and mashed into bloody clumps had she not been wearing armor.

Her graceless entrance ended up denting some of the machinery in the robot's head - not that she gave a damn about it, as it didn't look like it was ever going to be good for anything other than harvesting scrap (Berix was going to have a field day with this thing), and most importantly she was a woman too focused on her mission to think of trivial things like the integrity of a shitty gundam's internal parts.

She looked around the control room frantically, desperate to spot that tell-tale golden yellow color somewhere, anywhere in-between the rust and the dissipating vapors.

"Mata Nui!" she called out, "Mata Nui! Where are you?"

A suffering groan had her whip her head around fast enough to almost sprain her neck: fallen on the back of the robot's head, half slipped under a machine threatening to topple over it and only held back by a net of hastily grown vines, laid a dusty mask, its features carved out of a humanoid figure standing with arms outstretched.

She hurled herself towards it, grabbing it and pulling it away from the precarious spot in an instant before it ended up damaged. No body laid behind it - but the otherworlder couldn't possibly be far from it, could he?...

The mask shook in her grasp with an anguished sound horrendously close to Mata Nui's voice.

"You're here!" she cried out. Her moment of elation fell immediately: "Fuck, you're in here," and she flicked her finger at the side of the artefact with increasing panic, "How do I get you out of this thing?"

"Don't hit it," her friend struggled to wheeze, "It's dangerous-!"

A flashing memory of Click turning into a shield had her drop the item onto her lap as though it were scalding; she picked it right back up in an instant, completely ignoring her friend's pleading warnings - she wasn't undergoing any painful metamorphosis at the moment anyways, right? - in order to focus on a solution.

This would have been much easier if she could have thought clearly.

Which she was struggling to do.

Due to the panic.

Mata Nui needed a body, she mumbled to herself, a body, a body - where could she have found a body? The robot was not an option, and she could not see anything she could have used to successfully assemble a frame to the best of her not particularly experienced abilities; she could have worn the mask herself, maybe, but aside from not being keen on the idea of having her limbs taken over by anybody else she had the nagging feeling it would have only worsened the other's worries between the prospect of mind controlling a friend and possibly mutating her.

A second after her thoughts returned to the item's transformative abilities, the solution to the nearly unsolvable riddle jumped to the forefront of her mind.

Sand.

She needed to leave this rickety thing. Now.

Kiina looked up: the broken optic was far too high up compared to where she was, with no option to use any of the toppled machinery to reach up to it properly, and the only things she would have been able to grab onto in order to leverage herself out were unstable pieces of broken glass. Not getting out the way she came in, alright, got it. Plan two set itself into motion as she sprang back up on her feet and ran through the only exit, a hole in the upturned pavement.

If where she had entered was the head of the robot, then the tunnel she was hurrying through must have been its neck, which was usually much easier to break through than it was to do through a skull, so the situation was improving already.

There must have been a grate or a ventilation shaft somewhere, right? Something easy to punch one's way through, looking outside? She wrecked her brain to find memories of something that would have had a similar layout and equipment to the inside of the robot, a building made solely with mechanical work in mind, but what she came up with was awfully muddled and helped roughly as much as a hearty spoonful of Thornax stew would have, which is to say not in the slightest.

Frustrated with herself as she was, she barely realized the floor beneath her left leg disappeared until her teeth nearly bit off her tongue as her jaw collided with the metal walls.

She looked back to find that, in her unconscious stomping caused by the antsiness overtaking her, she had serendipitously hit a weak plate which had collapsed into the much more crowded and much more damaged space between the interior and exterior shells of the gargantuan machine: from where she had collected herself to get her limb out of the hole, she could see parse slivers of natural light streaming in from what might have been punctures through the hull.

So Kiina did the sensible thing to do while holding a dangerous incomprehensible alien artefact currently housing her weakened friend's consciousness: she hurtled her way into the opening with the grace of a cannon ball, smashing into the weakest portion of the metal by pure chance and crashing out of the giant ominid subsequently almost dislocating an arm.

She groaned.

A pained wheeze dragged her attention back to her hands, and with great terror she found them empty.

The mask glowed faintly only a little away from her, barely out of her reach: sand was pooling under it, pushing it upward in the vague shape of a head emerging from beneath the earth at a terribly slow pace, as though it was not so much forming a body from scratch but tearing one through the solid surface with a great deal of struggle.

Digits of dimmed gold pulled an entire hand out along with them all the way up to the wrist; the Gaquri grabbed the palm hastily, to yank the rest of the arm out, but the frail limb instead fragmented and shattered in her grip.

A choked sob accompanied the sand slipping through her fingers. She hissed.

"Sorry," her voice slithered out of her mouth in a whisper while she adjusted herself closer to the artificial face still whining in pain. Her hands laid under the nape, sustaining it: "Alright, let's take it slow, take it slow - there you go, easy does it..."

She wondered if it had been such an anguish the first time, too. As she moved to hold the back of a newly formed arm, watching as a knee arose from the dirt with a strained gasp and feeling the way the unstable skin gained a tentative solidity much weaker than the carapace had been against her scales, she wondered if to grow a body all on your own (to be born, all on one's own?) was as traumatic an experience as it looked.

Finally her friend dragged a long gasp through his mouth as he shook in her loose embrace, and his eyes shined in their sockets.

The Gaquri carefully sat him up as he breathed harshly: "There you are - easy now, easy! You just made this, relax. Plude, you're wheezing like a waterboarded Skopio... How are you feeling?"

"Never," Mata Nui coughed instead, "Never touch the- the mask - it was dangerous- you could have--"

"But I didn't." she cut him off sternly. "How are you?"

His head lolled to the side: "Gresh?" he asked.

"He's got Vastus and Ackar looking for him, how are you?"

"Why... Why are you here? You were - were supposed to--"

"We heard Gresh. How-"

"--To be safe - away, from--"

"Everybody else is fine! Now quit avoiding the question and answer me, how are you?"

Mata Nui folded on himself for a second, prompting Kiina to hold onto his shoulders in the very real fear that he would shatter into a trillion particles in case he barely gazed the ground. She felt him lean pliantly into her hold as she pulled him back with all the caution in the world until the back of his neck was laying on her arm: his frantic inhales slowed down across a few dozen seconds or so, timing themselves on the much louder ones the Glatorian was training him to follow.

At last he seemed fairly stable. His body had a mostly clear shape, completely divided from the normal sand beneath it, and the erratic rising-falling rhythm of his chest had calmed down.

His head turned to face the prototype robot; Kiina turned with him.

Such an elaborate load of junk it was, even to a less experienced eye like her own. And yet it had been home for one hundred thousand years, although dismantled and rusted, and it had done what the Great Beings had judged it unfit for: under Mata Nui's control, it had undone the Shattering.

Maybe Berix had a point, scavenging for trash in the hopes to make something worthwhile out of it.

A rueful sigh distracted her from her musings: "I am... Afraid..." Mata Nui mumbled quietly, apologetic, "I cannot - be true, to the promise I've... I've made, in exchange for your help."

Kiina blinked.

"Huh?"

"The robot," he explained, "The Great..."

"The other one?"

"Yes... It was - I am afraid it was the only means through which - with, which - I could have accompanied you, on other planets. As I had promised you... When you..."

Oh!

Oh.

She had completely forgotten about that.

Her tongue clicked loudly against her teeth as she slipped an arm under her friend's and started helping him back on his feet: "Well, I can't say I'm not disappointed," she started, though her tone was humorous enough to tear a breathy chuckle from the other. "Because I will not lie, I am. Just a bit. But I guess I'll take a pal not being dead, and everybody being fine. And a more livable planet too, I guess. I could start touring this one before expanding my horizons, that sounds good."

"That is - a wondrous idea, my friend," the otherworlder convened. He leaned heavily on her as she sustained him while they walked, though he was so light that she was all but unhindered by him.

She smiled sharply at him with a small nudge: "You're welcome to come along, you know. I bet you'd like to."

A soft laugh: "I would... Thank you..."

"And you can start telling me about the worlds you've visited! So I'll be prepared from when we actually get there. Which will be right after you've gotten some shuteye."

He groaned, almost pained: "Please, no more of that..."

"Oh no, you're gonna get as much sleep as we can stuff into you," the Gaquri threatened: "And I mean real, actual, deep sleep for once, not that half-resting-half-awake meditation thing you do. Great Beings know you need it."

"It is not - necessary..."

"Don't give me that! You can barely stand as you are!"

"I do not--" Mata Nui's argument was interrupted by a sudden creak in his knee, which caused Kiina to stop in her tracks and hold him a little tighter before he toppled over. Her pointed glare dared him to speak further on the matter - which incredibly, after a moment to catch his breath, he did: "Is there a chance that I might... Be able to bribe you?"

She gave an incredulous laugh: "Bribing me? You?" she howled, and her exaggerated reaction tore a giggle from the fallen god. "Did Metus rub a scale off on you after he slithered away or is it just the Skrall mentality getting to you?"

"You are right, it was awfully uncouth."

"Well, don't just take that back, I'm curious now! I wanna know what your offering was!"

Her friend leaned a hand on the prototype's head to catch his breath, winded as he was from their steady if limping gait back to the chariot. They were still a long way from it, but considering his fatigued state they were all in all making good progress.

"A universe," he replied at last. "To visit."

"To visit?" she repeated. He nodded. Oh, he was going delirious then. "Like it's nearby? As in, just around the corner?"

Mata Nui smiled: his eyes curled into tired half moons, offering her their soft, gentle glow so alike the one the former Bota and Aqua Magna had bathed her cold nights of stargazing in for the worst part of her life, wishing she could be anywhere that wasn't that damned ocean of sand.

He pushed through his exhaustion to make a few more steps with her, just enough for the head of the Great Spirit Robot to come into view, and pointed to it - past the jagged edges, somewhere far, far inside of it.

"The Matoran's - my own," he murmured.

Kiina stared at the enormous hole in the metallic skull.

For a long time, she said nothing.

Only looking, listening distantly to the faint sounds rising from it (were they shouts, were those words she could hear? Strange accents speaking familiar dialects?), wondering if a body could really be large enough to hold an entire piece of cosmos.

Finding she really, really wanted to know.

A whisper joined her musings, sheepish, almost embarrassed: "It is a small one, perhaps... But a universe nonetheless."

She hummed thoughtfully: "I'll think about it," she conceded in the end, only making a half hearted attempt at hiding her cautious excitement. "After you've taken a nap."

The other groaned.

It made her snort.

Her name reached them with a holler.

Ackar had always had a quirk of running with his head pushed as far down and forward as his body physically allowed it to go, which tended to make him look like he was charging directly into the first person he saw to headbutt his way through their ribcage like a sandray so horribly hungry it forgot it had teeth.

He was mildly aware of this unfortunate resemblance due to several people outside of the arena letting him know by either looking very scared as he approached or screaming at him to slow down with genuine terror in their voices; so he wasn't really offended when the Gaquri automatically threw her free arm in front of herself and Mata Nui as though she was protecting the both of them from some particularly vicious beast.

"WOAH there!" she shrieked like she was trying to calm down a frightened Sand Stalker, "He's frailer than glass right now, you're gonna shatter him into a million pieces!"

She kept a good eye on him as his gait stuttered and slowed in an attempt to regain control of his legs, ready to whisk Mata Nui to safety before the foolish thing ran up to meet the Tapyri head on and got bodied into a heap of sand, but the veteran Glatorian managed to grasp his friend's hand gently enough to press it to his forehead (an expression of fondness common in his tribe that he'd often given Kiina, too) without breaking a single cell off of it.

"So good to see you," he breathed. A wry smile stretched across his face as the other squeezed his palm back: "How are you?"

"Absolutely exhausted and denying it as hard as he can," the Gaquri answered before Mata Nui could try to lie about it: "He's really bad at hiding it, too."

A quiet groan: "That is not true."

"You needed two whole breaths to say that."

"My friend, please..."

Unluckily for him, Ackar betrayed his hope to avoid being sentenced to sleep as he slipped an arm under his shoulder to sustain him as well: "I'm afraid I'll have to agree with Kiina on this one," he murmured, patting his chest comfortingly. "Let's get you somewhere nice and quiet before you collapse on us."

The fallen god craned his neck with a whimper, but could not fight either of them as they dragged him along despite his lack of collaboration - whether on purpose or not, it was hard to tell.

"Where's Vastus?" Kiina asked.

"Back at the chariot, probably - taking care of Gresh."

"Gresh," their friend perked up with worry: "Is he...?"

"Ever more tired than you, but otherwise unscathed," the Tapyri was quick to reassure them.

Hearing that, the Gaquri squinted her eyes angrily, scales almost turning cobalt from a mixture of emotions she was very unsure she could properly put a name to: "I'm gonna kick his ass," she settled for hissing between gritted teeth.

A tremor under her palm distracted her: Mata Nui had started shaking in their grasp, head almost abandoned to itself as it hung low, a terribly quiet litany falling out of his mouth in an inconsolably guilty cadence - I shouldn't have asked, I shouldn't have asked that of him, I shouldn't have, I shouldn't, I shouldn't have asked, I shouldn't have asked, I shouldn't have asked...

Both his friends had to tighten their hold him before his spiraling led him to the ground. His shoulders were starting to shed themselves into sand, and Kiina felt with horror her hand sink into his chest when she tried to push him upright.

Ackar leaned a little closer, doing his best to speak soothingly: "Easy, easy - he's alright, I told you, he'll be fine."

"He's a tough kid!" his fellow Glatorian added, "He can handle it!"

She turned to her friend so he could emphasize her statement only to see him glance away, as though he'd just gotten an idea. She followed his gaze, and...

The thing was looking in her direction, but not at her.

It seemed shocked.

She was surprised she could even tell, what with the lack of pupils and eyebrows and a general face, but the whole of its appearance came off as oddly expressive.

It stood frozen in place a few meters from them, similar to a prey animal when a predator passes close by it.

Perfectly still.

Like a robot.

"Don't you wanna see who brought him over?" she heard Ackar say a little louder: "I think that could be a pleasant surprise for you."

Kiina shifted her eyes back on him like he was insane.

But he wasn't talking to her, of course; and he wasn't checking for her reaction, of course.

She followed the trajectory of his eyes until she found Mata Nui's: they stared ahead, into glowing yellow irises, appearing to gain a brightness of their own the longer they looked.

"Oh."

-

It hit him.

He had no idea if they'd ever imagined him.

He certainly couldn't remember if he had, at the very least when it came to distinctive, clear examples. On the island, despite having a guideline with the stone Vakama used in his tales, the most he'd ever managed to conjure was a bright floating Hau which could have been transparent or golden or red; in Karda Nui, even with the newfound knowledge of the Makuta species, he had many times in his musings given him an appearance similar to Teridax - to his first mangled, chaotic form, befitting of an impossibly vast being uncaring for those beneath him; and if he dug into the memories he liked the least, into the days of his first birth, of his first life, amidst the frustration and tension, the most he could find was the thought of a vaguely humanoid shape, large and splendent and undefined, towering above everything.

He'd never asked his siblings or the Matoran or the Turaga if they had their own vision on how the Great Spirit looked. He reasoned they must have; inexplicably, though, no being had ever made a single comment on the matter, and nobody seemed to have ever mentioned such a strangeness before him.

So it was surreal - to stand before Mata Nui.

(He had no idea why or how he knew. He just did. It was an absolute certainty buried somewhere within him, like the tip of an arrow lodged into a lung. He could have recognized the Great Spirit in any shape it would have taken, be it familiar or not. He did not know why. He just knew.)

The Great Spirit was looking back at him.

He was...

He was a small thing.

A creature like any other, roughly as tall as him, in a battered armor dim with dust, having to be held aloft by two other beings before his legs gave out from under him.

His mere presence seemed to cut off his ability to breathe.

Mata Nui smiled radiantly.

"Tahu," he called.

He had a soft, sweet voice.

Tahu stiffened.

What was he supposed to do? There had to be something, some kind of code of conduct for these cases - for standing before your god. Was there a formula, a specific sentence he was supposed to pronounce? A pledge, a plea, a promise? Was he supposed to kneel, to lay at his feet, to lower his gaze, was he supposed to meet him head on with a Toa salute? Was he supposed to move at all?

He did nothing as the Great Spirit struggled to approach.

He stood, glancing desperately at Ackar and at the other being (China, or Kena, he recalled the older warrior shouting as soon as he'd caught a glimpse of a body coming into view - the watery blue of the armor reminded him of his sisters, but he couldn't be sure) as if to ask them for help. Neither answered; he wondered if they knew what to do themselves, or if they even understood who exactly they were helping walk towards him.

Would they even know that? They came from beyond the universe. They likely had no idea that the terribly frail thing in their hands was divine in nature.

Were they the Great Beings?

Anxiety constricted him. He almost wanted to cry.

Mata Nui reached out to him. Then he stopped, retracting his hand not in disgust but with a strange fear; he looked the Toa in the eyes with a strange sheepish air about him as his fingers twitched, almost too shy to ask what was on his mind.

Finally, very carefully, he placed his fingertips against the chin of Tahu's mask, as if to cradle it.

They were pleasantly warm. And dusty. Like slowly cooling ash.

He smiled wider.

A quiet sound left him all of a sudden, and his limbs started trembling harshly as his armor began falling apart into a thousand particles; without thinking, the Toa grasped his wrists tightly and sent a wave of blistering heat through the whole body for barely the fraction of a second, so quick that Ackar and his friend barely had time to hiss at the sudden surge of temperature. He felt the arms in his palms creak: they'd been crystallized into glass.

Before he could choke in horror at his impulsivity, his hands were being held between near transparent fingers.

"Thank you," Mata Nui breathed with something akin to a chuckle - was that embarrassment in his voice? He replied to Tahu's wide eyes with a look of pure apologetic fondness: "Oh... Oh, forgive me, I did not mean to frighten you. I just... I am so very excited to meet you!"

His gentle grip tightened around the Toa's palms.

Something thrummed across his body, a quick steady beat. Tahu felt it reverberate through him.

He was definitely supposed to do something. Should he have kneeled? Maybe he should have kneeled, and laid his head low, and stopped looking so directly at the incarnation of their universe. But the Great Spirit was holding his gaze and smiling and readjusting his grip on protodermis hands and he could not move an inch no matter how hard he tried, mind drawing up blanks, at once awed to be faced with such reverence from a god and baffled by the knowledge that said god was so impossibly frail that a mere emotion could tear him asunder like that.

He realized he was staring in silence again.

He should have done something.

Anything.

What was he supposed to do?

"You were not made like this, were you?" Mata Nui asked. It was not a reprimand or an insult, only an inquiry born of genuine curiosity. He sounded like he was sleeptalking, in a way.

Tahu shook his head, and gentle eyes tilted a little.

"No, I imagined," the god continued almost to himself; he squeezed his palms again. "I have seen you like this, once, I believe... Somewhere deep in the bog of a dream... I remember you barely, before that - forgive me... It has been so long... You have changed!... Such a wonderful thing!..."

Was it?

The Toa struggled to think. The crystalline touch intimidated him into silence much like too high praises can embarrass a child quiet.

"How are you?" his god asked. "How are your siblings? The Matoran? I did not think... I assumed it would have been tough enough to not let... Metru Nui..."

"We're," Tahu choked. His throat whirred, clacked, struggled against itself and spat out stunted words: "Safe. We are. All of us."

Mata Nui breathed a heavy sigh of relief; it made something physically click into place in the Toa's body, and he felt like his mechanisms were working smoothly all at once again.

He lowered his head immediately, shifting his gaze down to the fingers wrapped around him.

The glass was so soft around his hands.

His god's voice passed through him like a dream - vaguely, in a haze, he realized he'd leaned closer, apprehension once more thrumming through his frame: "My chosen... Are they...? I could not... I barely know... They came to be..."

His chosen? Tahu snapped out of his torpor: "The Turaga are safe," he answered just as hushedly, ashamed to have been distracted.

Mata Nui's tired eyes regained fervor for a second.

"Turaga," he repeated.

A wheezed laugh left him, elated beyond words - Turaga!, it seemed to exclaim. The poor souls he had picked so hastily, with such little time and such a hard task ahead of them, Turaga! He raised Tahu's hands to what might have been his mouth as if to kiss it, holding back just moments before it could touch his mask - moments before the Toa could melt the ground beneath his feet from the surprise as his heartlight flashed madly.

He smiled wonderfully, reaching out to cup the adaptive Hau's cheek in his palm: "You bring me such splendid news!"

Breathing was hard again.

Not because he couldn't do it. He could breathe! He could breathe very well. Perhaps too much. Far too much. So much that his lungs were starting to hurt.

Ackar seemed to notice that. He met his eyes long enough to read his incomprehensible swirl of emotions, and though amused by the childish panic in them he blessedly pulled the Great Spirit a little back as gently as he could with his other friend's help.

"Give the boy some room," he murmured: "He's gonna get a heart attack at this rate."

But Mata Nui kept his hand on Tahu's mask, and refused to let go of his palms.

That blinding glimmer had already dropped from his eyes, and he looked exhausted, somehow even more so than he already had; he leaned forward, reaching for the Toa still despite the small distance between them.

"I am sorry," he spoke. His fingers curled around the red protodermis. "I am sorry - I should have... I am sorry," he repeated. He sounded weak, and quiet, and honest. "I am sorry... If I had been... If I had not... You have endured for me so much - if I had paid close attention... If I had not been so careless," he creaked. A long crack split open the god's arm with a horrid sound. "You would not have suffered... You would not... I am sorry - I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry..."

His knee buckled under his weight, cracked, and shattered his leg across the ground.

Ackar and Kena scrambled to hold him aloft, words of concern muddling together: a gentle yank nearly ripped half his chest off, and the arm holding onto the Toa's mask turned opaque as hairline cracks burst from within it before it too began falling apart.

Almost numbly, Tahu realized the other crystalline hand was still clutched around his own in a tender grip, the rest of its limb laying broken in the sand.

He felt himself kneel on the ground with hands outstretched on what remained of the crumbling body: if heated up enough the glass would have melted again, filling in the cracks by itself, wouldn't it? He would have been able to fix it all, to put him back together in the span of seconds, minutes, maybe. He would have managed to fix him.

But what if he just destabilized him more? Maybe instead of breaking he would have started melting. Maybe the hot temperature would have triggered the vitrification of the sand beneath him too, and he would have fused with it and become indistinguishable from the rest of it, worsening his condition as he could no longer be separated from it.

Or maybe it simply wouldn't have done anything. He had already started falling apart Tahu had done anything, and his accidental fix had now grown obsolete. Maybe it was just too much. Maybe he just couldn't hold onto himself.

"I am sorry," Mata Nui whispered. Somehow, his quiet voice cancelled out all other sounds. Somehow, his remaining hand was still holding onto the adaptive Hau. "I am sorry - none of this should have... If I had been... More attentive... None of this should have happened... I am sorry, I am sorry..."

Tahu looked up to his face again.

The peculiar pattern of the Ignika met his eyes.

He had not even recognized it. He had not even registered that what he had been staring at was the Mask of Life. He had known so deeply that the being before him was Mata Nui that, in the petrifying surprise that had taken over him, the artefact on the god's face had looked no different than a common powerless Kanohi.

Couldn't it fix him, then? Couldn't it mutate him? If it could build itself a body it could certainly make one for him too, couldn't it? Why wasn't it working? It had plenty of material to choose from - why wasn't it doing anything?

Mata Nui's eyes were flickering.

He stared directly at Tahu as though it was the only thing keeping him together.

"I am sorry," he begged. "I am sorry, for everything, everything - I am sorry... You should not have... I should not have allowed... Such terrible things... To befall you... Any of you... I should not have... If I had been... I should have been... I am sorry... I am sorry - I am sorry... I am sorry... I am sorry... I am sorry... I am sorry..."

Tahu stared back.

This was a god.

A being for whom countless had lost their lives.

Begging, broken and brittle, with a voice barely above a breath and a trembling hand on his cheek, for the forgiveness of his own universe.

Ackar's voice broke through the haze around him: "You need to rest."

Mata Nui twisted his neck harshly: a long crack slithered around it, and the Toa rushed to grab it before it tore away from the torso already on the brink of shattering.

"No!" his deity sobbed. He could feel the clear throat quake with each phoneme under his protodermis digits, broken edges ringing as they scratched against one another: if he were to press even just slightly more forcefully, he would reduce it to a heap of minuscule fragments. "No, no, please, no, no--"

Kiina grasped the Ignika gently in her hands, allowing the straining pieces of anatomy to fall in favor of protecting the one thing actually containing the delirious entity: "It's for your own good!" she argued back at him, but her voice was soft, desperate, trying her best to pull a friend back from the hole he was sinking into as he kept squirming. "Pushing yourself like this is going to kill you - listen to us, damn it!"

The glass chest creaked as it spasmed erratically in the pantomime of frantic breathing (so set he was on living, on being real and present) and an agonizing whimper left the divine wreckage.

The eyes fixed on Tahu's were blue, flickering terribly.

He felt the fingers crack against the cheek of his Hau as they curled around it.

"I am sorry," his god cried so quietly, "I am sorry, I am sorry - no more, no more, no more sleep, please, no more, no more... I am sorry, I am sorry - Tahu... Tahu... I am sorry... Please..."

A hand of protodermis grasped what little was left of a body and laid it down on the sand, carefully, gently, so it would not break. Its twin wrapped around the crystalline palm as it struggled to keep from fracturing and held it - as gently as it had been held by it.

The Toa breathed.

His lungs filled slowly trough the gaps in his armor.

Then, just as slowly, they deflated.

He kept breathing, hands enveloping what little remained of his god's own fragile one.

Mata Nui heaved, and heaved, and slowed down, until his labored inhales matched his protector's own, until the light of his eyes drooped and struggled to glimmer in resignation.

Tahu spoke as quietly as he could, his entire being turning the words into a hushed mechanical symphony: "We can wait still."

"I am sorry," Mata Nui insisted.

"We can wait still," his guard repeated.

"I am sorry... I am sorry..."

"We can wait still. Until you are safe."

"I promise... I promise... I am sorry..."

"We can wait. Rest now."

"I want to see you... I promise..."

"Until you are safe. Rest now."

"I promise... I promise..."

"Rest now."

"I promise..."

"Rest."

Mata Nui shook again.

Then he calmed.

His hand curled around Tahu's and shattered gently over his fingers.

"Alright," he conceded at last, reassured.

His head crumbled in his friends' gentle hands, his empty sockets lost their waning glow, and lulled by the warrior who was fated to awake him he allowed his endlessly fatigued spirit to slip into sleep once more.

-

His entire body hurt.

Not as badly as when he first woke up, but it still hurt.

It was like every single muscle had decided to file a complaint against his brain and set his nerves on fire in an attempt to get the message relayed much more quickly.

He turned on his side with a hiss to try and keep sleeping it off, but he was fully awake by now.

"Oh," he heard - he wasn't sure he could tell voices apart in this state, but that sounded like Gelu. "Sand mite's awake. Watch him a moment, won't you? I've got to get someone."

Some kind of machine made a rockus near the leg of the bed.

A quiet cacophony of noises caused an uncomfortable shiver to wreck through him. Ah, damn it - he shook his head harshly once or twice, gritting his teeth as his neck immediately flared up: deciding he didn't want to be stuck in a losing battle, he grumbled and blearily opened an eye.

The little thing with glowing lime lights in the sockets of its metal green face jumped a bit and retreated away from him at that.

It seemed to be standing on a stool.

He stared at it for a moment.

"Hi," he said hoarsely.

The little thing blinked once or twice with a clicking sound: "Hi!" came at last the reply, face unchanged: "My name's Tamaru."

Oh, he knew that kind of noisy, industrial-sounding, confusingly androginous voice. This must have been... A baby Toa. Or a Toa kid. Or something of that sort.

"Gresh," he introduced himself.

Tamaru nodded, looked him over, fidgeted, and then asked with no shortage of curious embarrassment: "Wayby, what are you?"

"Lebori," he answered. He managed to point back at... Him? Her? Them? It? Xe? Ti? He didn't know how to approach the subject with a mostly metallic alien, so he was going to go with 'ti' for now. All Agori kids were 'ti' at that height. "Toa?"

The being laughed with a tinny sound: "No, no! I'm too bugsmall to be a Toahero. I'm a Matoran. How are you wellfeeling?"

"Bad," he replied honestly.

"Oh. Eversorry."

"I mean," Gresh shrugged: "Could be worse. But not good."

Ti hummed deep in thought, as though ruminating on his words: "Makes sense," ti decided in the end, "You've been sleeping for two days. You must have been bonetired."

"Huh."

Two whole days, asleep.

Yeah, made sense. He'd been absolutely exhausted.

How must Mata Nui be holding up then, he wondered?

He hoped he was fine.

The Matoran turned tir attention to his face again, leaning closer but not daring to graze him: "Are those feathers?"

"Hm-hm."

"Can I handtouch?"

Sure, why not? Kids from other tribes used to ask to do that all the time, this wasn't any different. He gave ti a very weak ok gesture and submitted himself to the inevitable poking and prodding.

That turned out to have been a very good idea, as Tamaru was not only much more gentle and cautious while combing through his thin plumage than any brash Gaquri or Tapyri or Koniri brat he'd ever met, doing tir best not to pull any plumes or feathers out, but also, despite being the farthest thing from a Lebori, exercised a level of so highly specific care towards it that would have probably won ti an honorary place in his tribe.

He leaned his head into lir touch and bristled his feathers comfortably, driving a giggle out of ti.

The Matoran cooed at him, and he cooed back without thinking.

Great Beings, he missed being preened by his aunt.

"You're good," he mumbled.

"Heh heh! I turntame Gukko birds," Tamaru explained proudly, pushing tir chest out a bit. "I have lots of experience."

He could tell.

Wait, birds?

They had birds? In Mata Nui's old body?

His train of thought was interrupted when the Matoran hastily pulled tir hand away as if caught doing something ti shouldn't; before he could protest a new weight settled on the foot bed, and a scaled hand snuck under him to pull him up a little, just enough so that the Gaquri could see his face.

Tarix looked him over in complete silence, checking him up and down at least twice. Finally he pulled him into his arms and squeezed him gently as he pressed his nose into the reddish feathers denoting his young age sticking out of his head.

Gresh did not fight it. He snuggled into his uncle's hold despite the long scales scratching at him, sighing in relief.

Lebori teeth were good at cleaning plumage in a way that no other tribe could vaunt - namely by being thinner than what was usual for Agori, catching loose feathers painlessly without getting them stuck in place and having to pluck them out with their hands afterwards. By contrast, for example, Gaquri teeth were just a little too large the closer the crown was to the gums and retained much more humidity around them, causing the soft barbs to grossly stick to the enamel and the shaft to lodge itself between them, allowing for a generally less than pleasant experience.

Tarix had lost the will to give a damn about how disgusting it sometimes felt during his and Vastus's courting, and so he did his best to preen his nephew for a minute or two, just to reassure him of his presence, to offer him comfort after what had no doubt been a harrowing ordeal. The kid's weight against him melted the worries that had plagued him for the past two days into slush.

He pulled away at last once he found himself satisfied with his work. He cupped the young Glatorian's face in his hands with a sigh, and told him: "We're gonna kick your ass."

Gresh groaned: "Oh, come on!"

"Don't give me that, you little bastard," his uncle hushed him with the fondest tone he'd ever used as he nuzzled his cheek again: "You scared the ever-living crap out of us, we didn't have a single pair of clean pants between five Glatorian for a day and a half."

He felt the rookie squirm and wriggle to get out of his hug: "But it worked! And I'm fine!"

"Passing out stone cold on your aunt is called 'being fine', now?"

"So what! I've woken up now!"

"I can hear that," Tarix grinned. He smacked a kiss on the kid's forehead, getting a little 'blegh' back. "And now that we're all relieved we'll wait until you're all better, and then we'll kick your ass."

The Lebori shook his feathers at him at maximum pique, hissing to scare him off with no success whatsoever.

Tamaru snorted.

He stuck his tongue out at ti too.

Then something large and blue slid into the room like a fury, so fast that its inertia sent it right against the wall with a loud BANG that spooked the Matoran off tir stool with a tremendous clatter.

"YOU!!"

Tarix curled around Gresh to better help him hide.

Kiina circumvented the issue this posed by crawling on her fellow Gaquri's back like some sort of gargoyle, reaching over his protective stance, grabbing the back of the camisole the rookie was wearing, and frantically starting to pull it back and forth as though it were her victim of choice's shoulders.

"I'M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS!" she yelled: "ARE YOU STUPID?! ARE YOU POSSESSED?! DID A SPIKED WORM HIDE AWAY IN YOUR BRAIN?! YOU COULD HAVE GOTTEN SQUASHED TO BITS! AND YOU BROUGHT MY LITTLE BROTHER ALONG TOO!"

"It was Berix's idea," the Lebori tried to rebuke.

"No it wasn't," his traitorous uncle replied.

"NO IT FUCKING WASN'T!!"

-

Hahli looked upon the silent giant and waited.

What for?

She laid her head in her palms, not knowing how to answer herself.

The protodermis was cooling beneath her. She let her legs dangle for the jagged edge of the Great Spirit Robot's broken skull, swaying with the wind coming down the mountain as evening crept closer with its orange hues in a manner similar to how it used to do on Mata Nui; Metru Nui looked so small, so far below, but she could not focus on it at the moment.

Her saddened gaze remained fixed on the unmoving prototype, studying its features in silence.

It wasn't as frightening as its larger brethren. The Great Spirit Robot had a face that looked right out of a nightmare: it was long and rough, with long lines digging deep all the way down to its chin, stuck in a barely open-mouthed grimace which gave the impression that a rumbling voice was meant to come out of it at any moment, delivering righteous fury and reprimands and orders.

The prototype's skull was stouter, almost oval or round in shape. It had eyes and cheeks - or what appeared to be cheeks or cheek guards, at least - and nothing else. A long segmented line ran across the height of its face; flat crests emerged from the top of its head.

The sum of its pieces ended up resembling a Kanohi much more closely than an Agori visage.

She looked at its broken optic, at its rusted fingers.

Waiting for a light to shine through the gaping darkness within the shell, for the joints between the phalanxes to twitch and scratch at the ground under them as it grumbled to life.

Waiting for it to speak to her with a soft, booming, deep voice.

To turn its head and call out to her.

To say, Hahli?

Is that you?

"Hahli!"

She turned. Takanuva's mask peeked from the edge of the robot's head as he held tight onto the protodermis, evidently having been scaling his way up to her; Kopeke, sitting tight on his shoulders, waved at her in his stead.

His sister laughed, hurrying over and grabbing his hands to help him up: "Hey there! What is this, a Chroniclers' reunion?"

"It could be," her Light brother grinned. He sighed in relief as soon as his feet were once again resting on more or less even ground. "We saw you sitting there and thought we'd come up to say hi."

"Is that so? You just happened to be walking around these parts?"

Her friend did not reply, flustered.

The wrecks rested far away from the camps promising to one day become New Atero, much too far for the pair to just casually come across them while struck by the desire for an evening stroll.

No, it couldn't be a coincidence: they had a specific reason to be here. Just like her.

Hahli huffed playfully and helped Kopeke down from her brother's shoulders: "Alright, come on," she gestured back towards the edge of the enormous wound, inviting them both to sit down with her as she returned to her spot. "Spill it. What are you two investigating?"

The Matoran settled next to her in no time, used enough to vertiginous heights to remain completely unbothered before the void beneath their feet; Takanuva stalled a little more, fidgeting with his hands for a moment: "It's nothing," he shrugged in the end as he very deliberately took his seat as well.

"It's not nothing." Kopeke rebuked.

"Yes it is."

"It's not."

"It's..." the argument died in the Toa's throat. He took a deep breath; Hahli watched him turn to the rusting robot with a forlorn look that perfectly replicated her own emotions. "It's something Tahu said."

She followed his gaze.

The prototype still had not moved.

Maybe it would now that there were three of them.

Or maybe not.

Who knew.

"About Mata Nui?" she asked softly.

He nodded.

"What was it?"

"He said that... Well, he told me that when he saw him, you know, he just looked like any other being. Like a Glatorian. The kind you'd forget after catching a glimpse of them in a crowd. But at the same time there was just this..." he clenched his hands close to his heartlight, almost as if to grasp it within them: "This feeling - this certainty, that what he was looking at was the real Great Spirit, and he couldn't have mistaken him for anybody else even if he'd tried. Like there was something deep in his soul telling him."

Hahli did not reply.

"I think... I think I felt that too." Takanuva continued. His eyes were fixed on the prototype. "When I looked at it, on Metru Nui."

Her fins twitched lightly.

A mellow wind passed through, gently leading the sand to crash against the limbs of protodermis like waves of a calm sea, further dulling the darkened rust that covered the dead colossi laying side by side as it stuck upon it, wearing them down impercetibly.

She heard Takanuva adjust his seat.

"Nobody else did. I mean, nobody really looked at it except for us and some Matoran - aside from the Barraki armies, but- you get what I meant. But I think the Nuva might... I think they'd all feel that."

Then he grew silent again.

His sister did not add onto his hypothesis, and kept quiet.

She was still looking at the robot.

Still waiting for it to turn its head towards them.

Still waiting for it to call out to them with a familiar voice.

Kopeke's silence was comforting. It drowned out their own uncomfortable quiet naturally, in a manner hard to explain: but knowing he sat next to them, hands on his lap, looking out to the sprawling landscape before them, just listening, brought them respite from their too loud thoughts.

Takanuva turned towards her, prompting her to face him.

"Did you feel that, too?"

She gripped the jagged skull under her and did not answer.

He waited.

His voice came out of him awfully small: "You said something," he whispered, sounding embarrassed: "When you saw the robot. But I didn't hear it well because you said it very quietly and I was sort of too distracted to pay attention."

Hahli sucked in a breath to speak.

She couldn't.

She turned her eyes down, to the city slowly being abandoned below them, and swung her legs harder to desperately try and find something, anything, that could have worked as a response.

What was she supposed to say? That she thought she was going crazy? That nothing had happened? That she didn't know?

That she'd seen a ghost?

The barbarian hurried deeper in her seaweed hut, crawling hastily into her bed and hiding her Kaukau under her arms, wanting to forget everything again, to wake up and find that nothing had changed, that she was still just a flaxmaker who never spoke and seldom left her village, who did her duty diligently and went to sleep not knowing there were friends outside of her gate waiting to die.

Kopeke sat next to her. He did not touch her. His silence laid a soothing hand on her burning brain.

"Do you know when - when a part of your head is muddled?" she asked. Getting each word though the knot strangling her throat was a painful struggle. "When it's... When it's all murky, and confused, and swirling too slowly and bubbling, and you can't understand what's happening in it?"

Her brother nodded.

She passed her hands over her Faxon: "It was just a second," (she sounded guilty, and she had no idea why) "Just a second - just a moment, so quick I'm not even sure I understood anything I was thinking... And it was so hazy, and unclear, and unfocused, and I - I don't know why, I'm not sure but it felt like--"

Something in her neck swerved from the strain: an unfortunate gear shrieked as it tried to turn where it shouldn't, interrupting her with a short-lived mechanical cough. Two hands of different sizes were quick to pat her back to dislodge the misbehaving piece back into its rightful place.

With a final harsh exhale, Hahli spat out: "--For a moment, it felt like Matoro."

Her arms shook as though she'd puked her soul into the void.

The robot remained still.

Unmoving, unchanging.

Rusted and broken and dead.

What good was staring at it?

It was never going to be him.

Nothing was ever going to be him.

No one was ever going to be him.

She'd been here for hours yesterday, and that feeling hadn't repeated.

She'd been here for hours today, and that feeling hadn't repeated.

She couldn't stop hoping that maybe, if she looked at it long enough, it would feel like him again.

"Do you think he's him?" Takanuva asked with a breath.

Hahli faced him.

It was like looking in a mirror.

"Mata Nui," he repeated. "Do you think he's him?"

Did she?

It would have been nice. It would have been relieving. To know that this whole time, they'd been fighting for a friend. For someone they loved. For someone who loved them. It would have been nice, because then they would have everything back. They would have their paradise back: their island home, their friends, their family. As if nothing had ever changed. As if nothing had ever happened. It would have been nice, because none of them would have died then.

But what about before that? When the Great Spirit refused to look at them? When it neglected and endangered them? Could that have been him? And if it hadn't been him, then who had died with him? Who had he usurped and doomed to fade into non-existence in much the same way as Teridax had usurped Mata Nui? Who had they been fighting for before the Mask of Life chose its vessel?

"I don't know," Hahli replied. "I just don't know."

Her brother leaned his head on her shoulder.

His weight anchored her to reality, dissipating her swirling thoughts.

Kopeke looked, silent, at the massive robotic body.

Krahka came to his mind.

He had seen her - he had traveled with her, with Tahu and Johmak and Onua, and Lariska and Guardian. She had looked exactly like he'd expected, so like nothing he could have thought of at all: but he'd still recognized the sharp grin that spread too wide, the voice that was neither a hiss nor a growl nor a chirp and yet resembled all those sounds, the frighteningly clever eyes that Vakama's narrations had described in such vivid unspoken detail.

She had been every bit the legendary Rahi lurking within the Metru Nui archives, so cunning and terrible that even the Rahkshi fleed from her.

And yet, while he'd looked at her wreck chaos upon Daxia's surface with Onua, something incredible had happened.

No matter what beast she turned into, she looked just like a Toa.

Something about her, about her shifting anatomy, her erratic fighting style, her voice heckling back at Onua when he shouted above the rockus at her, her strange glee - she had seemed like a wild mixture of the Turaga's selves, as though a little bit of each had gotten stuck in her shapeless form and molded alongside her ever changing body, made hers, until she was an equal of what they had once been.

Until she was, indisputably, one of them.

He remembered how Turaga Onewa had sat next to Vakama as he'd recounted their first proper battle against the Horde. He had claimed he was staying to make sure the firespitter told the tale right, but had kept completely quiet the whole story through.

He had caught how he'd clenched his hand during the last struggle between the Tahtorak and the Zivon, his eyes shut tight, as though he were bracing himself for a devastating blow - and how he'd let his fingers rest, dejected, resigned, when the shapeshifter disappeared into darkness.

Maybe she is a Rahi who discovered a little Toa inside.

Kopeke mulled over Pouks' words.

He wondered if Mata Nui liked Rahi.

If he found them intruguing in a manner very different from the detached scientific approach of Onu-Metru archivists.

If he would have talked to tamed ones when they clamored at him, or even repeated their own chatterings back at them to try and communicate with them more accurately.

He wondered if Mata Nui had a good singing voice.

If he would have been shy about it, or instead enjoyed bellowing out hymns and songs to his heartlight's content.

If he would have had such a powerful control over it that he could go from humming a lullabye to declaring a dirge to grinning along a festive chant in mere seconds.

He sighed.

His little body reclined against the cool protodermis as he scuttled closer to his once fellow Chroniclers. Night had fallen: clusters of stars crawled across the dark sky like an infinity of beetles.

His quiet thoughts enveloped the Toa.

He felt them lay down with him, a little calmer, a little more at peace.

In another hour or so a small group of worried Matoran, Turaga and Toa would finally catch a glimpse of Takanuva's glow and start screaming at them to come down, chastising them for disappearing like that without giving them any notice as soon as the three of them were in manhandling reach.

But until then they laid with the empty robot, paying it no mind, breathing in asynchrony under a universe vaster than they could have ever imagined.

It would have been nice.

If Mata Nui had a little bit of Matoro in him.

[theogm-art]

Im going around asking my favorite mech artists "how to get better at drawing mechs", so now i'm coming to you! What is your approach to drawing mechs, what was your path into learning how to draw em? And how could someone get better at drawing mechs? Thank you for your time and attention

Hello ! ^^

For me, I started drawing mechs 4 years ago. I was just starting to draw again after my big depression era (like 4-5 years without drawing anything after artschool) =w= I kinda had to start from scratch. So, to help me, I started drawabox.com .

I did the first lesson, pulling lines and drawing straight, which helped me a lot gaining confidence in my hand. I ended up drawing 250 boxes . It took me something like a month and a half, doing 10 boxes in day, not everyday, but most of the week.

This was important, especially with mechas, because it teaches you to draw in 3d, to give volume to your shape, and because most mechanical stuff is pretty much boxes piled on top of each others, it's pretty geometric.

At that point, I was already dusting myself of the rust in my drawing muscles, but what really finished it is doing the March of Robots 2020.

I did like 25 mechs in almost as many days, until I started getting comms. And since then, I haven't stopped. ^^

(also a year later, I got a dm from Tom/Abaddon and got hired to do mechs for LancerRPG x)

Of course, between all that, I did sketches, studies. I tried doing 100 hands but didn't finish it. etc

But for mecha, specifically, I think one of the first things you have to understand is that it is a language of symbols, that is different from organic forms. This obvious difference between mechs and humans, one could say, is that humans are soft volumes and mechs are hard surfaces. But , not only is that not necessary the case (you can draw a mech soft and circular), but it is more about filling in with symbols, shortcuts that bring to mind the idea of the mechanical.

I am not an engineer. Most artists that do mechas and robots and vehicles and hard surface are not engineer and/or do not have that knowledge. (some do but my point is it's not required). Which means that, as an artist you have to fake it by learning those symbols, that bring the IDEA of a mechanical form. This is about using the brain of the spectator/viewer, their knowledge of what mecha looks like, so that you can meet halfway.

You learn those forms by studying. There is no shortcut here. You have to practice, not only your hand, but also your eye, in looking at your favorite piece of mecha media, and replicate them until you can pull them from your brain without reference. (always use refs tho, you don't have use 100% of your brain all the time.)

I am a very DETAIL-oriented artist. It's one of the thing people compliment me on and/or hire me for. It's far from being the only approach in mecha (plenty of great artists doing great concept arts of mecha with few details) . The more details, the clearer you'll have to be, and the more time you'll have to spend on the art. Especially lineart for me. BUT details help a lot convey those symbols and forms and shapes that immediately call MECHA in the brain of the viewer.

Another thing about mecha, is that since it is NOT organic, there is 1) lots of repetition of shapes and symbols, which you are 100% allowed to copy-paste (i do that all the time) , that makes you gain a lot of time.

and 2) SYMMETRY (it's not always the case, you can have an asymmetric design which can be far more interesting) because it's a robot or a mecha or whatever, designed therefore by human hand in-context. Symmetry makes it harder for me, personally, drawing a 3/4 angles or in perspective etc, symmetry is tough. Symmetry of shapes from one shoulder to another, symmetry of details etc. That's probably one of the harder part when you work in 2D. Cause you have to understand perspective and foreshortening and all that.

But yeah, because it's inorganic, hard surface requires a better understanding of perspective, because straight lines are easier to read therefore the viewer will have an easier time at clocking wonky mistakes.

I could go on, about design and function, and aesthetic. but i'll stop there. This is basically how i started plus some other stuff. The rest you'll pick up along the way.

Thank you for asking ! =w=b

[aalissy]

Living Together

Andddd here’s the second and final chapter for tonight. Lemme know your thoughts! We’ve only got one day left of Adrienette April tho omggg. Where does the time go?

AO3

Adrien beamed with pride and joy as boxes were unloaded into his apartment. The same apartment that he’d now be sharing with Marinette.

They had been dating for years, and finally, they decided it was time to move in together. Of course, his father had a few choice words to say about the decision but Adrien was an adult now. It was his choice. And he’d choose Marinette. 

Every. Time.  

Their apartment was located directly in the heart of Paris. They were still quite close to her parents’ bakery, a mere 15 minutes away if they needed to be there. They couldn't be any happier.

Walking inside, Adrien grinned as he saw Marinette. Her back was turned to him, fingers tapping the countertop with a dull thud. She seemed to be deep in thought.

Coming up behind her, he wrapped his arms around her waist, “Guess who?”

“Mmm,” Marinette hummed, the smile clear in her voice. “Would that be my wonderful, sweet boyfriend who I love so much? The same one who’s going to be living with me now?”

“Do you know anyone else who’s moving into your apartment today?” Adrien laughed, squeezing her waist.

“No,” she said, turning her head to look at him. Her blue eyes twinkled playfully. “And, if you weren’t him then you’d probably be a burglar. In which case I’d have to kick your butt.”

She really would too. Even with all his years as Chat Noir, Marinette was deceptively strong. Adrien was certain that she would be able to kick until he was bruised and bloodied.

“Alright,” he said, putting his hands up and taking a step back. “You got me. It is your wonderful, sweet boyfriend who loves you so much.” 

“Not as much as I love you,” Marinette responded before stepping up on her tip-toes and planting a quick peck on his lips. “I think everything’s mostly moved in.”

Adrien looked around and saw that most of their belongings were in their new apartment. There were boxes piled on top of each other on the floor, filled with books, clothes, and kitchen supplies. Absolutely everything they needed to start their new life together.

“I can’t believe we’re finally doing this,” Adrien said, looking around the apartment with a smile on his face. “It’s been a long time coming. I’ve wanted to move in with you since the day I first realized I loved you.”

Marinette flushed, giving him her own shy grin. “Me too.”

Fondness shone on his face as he gazed down at her. The idea of a much younger Marinette imagining their life and future together made him so deliriously happy. He had never even imagined that he could be this happy.

Slowly, her grin grew. “I’m so excited to live with you. It’s going to be so much fun.”

Adrien wrapped his arms around her again and hugged her tightly. “I’m excited too, Marinette. I can’t wait to wake up next to you every morning and come home to you every night.”

She leaned her head against his chest and sighed contentedly. “Me too, Adrien. Me too.”

They spent the rest of the day unpacking and setting up their new home. Adrien assembled their new bed while Marinette organized their kitchen. They worked together, laughing and joking as they went. The two of them took turns playing songs, singing, and dancing around their apartment as they finished for the day.

As the sun began to set, they collapsed onto the couch, exhausted but happy. Adrien put his arm around Marinette and pulled her close.

“This is perfect,” he said, looking around at their new apartment. “I can’t believe how lucky I am to have you, Marinette.”

She smiled and leaned into him. “I’m the lucky one, Adrien. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, watching the sunset over the Parisian rooftops. Adrien felt completely blissful, more in love with Marinette than he ever had before.

The next few weeks were a blur of unpacking, decorating, and settling in. He and Marinette learned what it was like to live together. He learned that Marinette needed a cup of coffee to wake up in the morning. She was grumpy, sleepy, and unwilling to speak until she had caffeine. But it just made him love her all the more. 

Marinette had learned that Adrien was a morning person. He was bouncy and eager to start the day when the sun rose up. What made him secretly pleased, though, was that sometimes his cheerfulness in the early morning hour would cause her to smile. Those were the best mornings.

They found their routine, and they loved it. They would wake up together, have breakfast, and then go their separate ways for the day. Both of them working on different things. Marinette was an extremely successful fashion designer now, showing him the wonderful designs that she was making whenever she could. 

In the evenings, when they had both finished work, they would cook dinner together and talk about their days. Then, after dinner, they would watch movies or play video games, sometimes even falling asleep in each other’s arms.

Adrien loved every moment of their life together. He loved waking up next to Marinette, seeing her sleepy smile as she cuddled up to him. He loved cooking with her, making her laugh as they tried new recipes together. He loved falling asleep next to her, feeling her warm breath on his neck.

It was so much more wonderful than living in the mansion had ever been. Now, he got to spend time with the person that he loved the most.

But he knew that he wanted more. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with Marinette, to wake up next to her every morning, and to fall asleep next to her every night. Had known this ever since they were kids.

One evening, as they were curled up on the couch, Adrien turned to Marinette and took her hand.

“Marinette,” he said, his voice serious. “I love you more than anything in this world. You make me the happiest man alive, and I can’t imagine my life without you.”

She grinned, squeezing his hand back. “I feel the exact same way, Adrien.”

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you. If you’ll let me,” Adrien said, looking into her eyes. “Will you marry me?”

Marinette gasped, tears filling her eyes. “Yes, Adrien. Yes, I will marry you.”

They kissed, her hands coming up to cup his cheeks gently. It was one of the sweetest kisses that he had ever had. Made even better by the fact that it was no longer his girlfriend that he was kissing. It was his fiancée.

When they finally pulled back, he slowly and carefully slipped the ring onto her finger. Marinette gasped, lifting it up to lovingly stare at the diamond. 

“Adrien, it’s beautiful. I love it so much,” she said through tears of happiness.

Taking the hand that currently had the ring on it, he intertwined their fingers, squeezing it gently. Once again, he leaned in, connecting their lips together in another joyful kiss. This was officially the best day of Adrien’s life.

[freddiefredfive]

A Part of Your World

Chapter 3: Worlds Collide

Don’t forget to give this sorry love on AO3!

Before the break of dawn, Triton prepared himself for the long journey to the shore. He wasn’t sure how long he would be gone, so he visited every single one of his daughters before he left. Since it was still quite early, many girls were asleep, but Triton didn’t want to disturb them. Instead, he would sit by their side, gently cradle each of them in their arms and kiss them goodbye. He spent at least a few minutes with each girl, admiring their unique qualities, fragments of all his wife was. Tears welled up in his eyes as he thought of the moment each of his girls was born. Each birth brought Triton a new level of his happiness... all thanks to his wife. As he went through the large bedroom where all the girls slept, he sang a lullaby he used to sing to them when they were smaller through his sniffles.

(https://youtu.be/TKpJjdKcjeo)

“Oh, darlings, I see each smile, I am undone.

My girls, look at my girls!

Pride is not the word I'm looking for.

There is so much more inside me now

Oh, loves, you outshine the morning sun… My girls.

I see each smile, I fall apart… and I thought I was so smart…”

The sun was just coming up as Triton took his place at the front of his calvary. Bradford, already set up on his small chariot with just one giant seahorse, quietly watched Triton set up on his chariot. His was much larger and was led by four giant seahorses. Bradford lifted his eyes to see the sun already shining in the water, and he rolled his eyes in annoyance.

“I thought we were leaving at dawn...” Bradford said quietly.

“My apologies, brother,” Triton sighed, “I had to bid my girls farwell... just in case.”

“Brother, we have a whole fleet behind us. I’m confident that we will be fine.”

“You train these mermen like we were getting ready for war,” Triton sighed, “We are a peaceful race.”

“If we stay prepared, we never have to become prepared,” Bradford stated, “We have no idea what other disasters these… humans are capable of.”

“Even so,” Triton replied, “we can use our findings from this excursion to create a peaceful, isolated existence away from them.”

“Brother, I fear your means of peace will leave our kingdom in ruins at the hands of—“

Bradford was suddenly interrupted by his top lieutenant.

“The fleet is ready, King Triton,” the lieutenant said.

“Thank you,” Triton smiled. “Let’s continue this conversation later, Bradford.”

Bradford said nothing but grumbled as he readjusted his grip on the reins. This wasn’t the first time his brother cut him off, yet he would not hold back his brother’s potential demise any longer. As much as he genuinely didn’t want to see Antalntis on its knees, seeing the oh-so-perfect Triton realize the flaws in his peaceful nature would be overpoweringly rewarding to Bradford.

As soon as Triton signaled to leave, the army performed their routine salute, “Long reign King Triton! Long reign Atlantis!” With a whip of his reigns, Triton leads the entire party out of Atlantis and into the beyond of the sea. The gates were empty, and Triton wanted it that way to not make the town fear for Triton’s safety. He also didn't want to show off this last-minute expedition with yet another celebration that would only waste time. After a few hours of traveling, one of the soldiers noticed a pile of plastic bottles and cans that were floating down to the ocean floor. Once he alerted the top lieutenant, who then alerted Bradford and Triton. The entire company stopped at Triton’s command to examine the items. Triton got out of the chariot to look at an old can with a picture of a person in a strange white outfit. The top of the can had been opened, but Triton did not realize how sharp the edges were until he touched it. With a quick yelp of pain, Triton quickly held his injured finger to his lips to conceal the blood seeping from the small cut. However, some traces of red escaped into the air and caught the attention of Sebastian and Bradford.

“Are you alright?” Sebastian asked as he frantically bandaged Triton’s finger.

“Yes, Sebastian,” Triton signed, “I have no idea what these humans could possibly use these things for.”

“Looks more like garbage to me,” Bradford scoffed.

Triton looked up to see more of these cans and other objects floating down from above, and his brows knitted together in a mixture of anger and curiosity. As he quickly returned to his chariot, his mind began to race with all the horrible things that could have happened to his Ariel if she had chosen to travel this far after finding the dinglehopper. If he had let his youngest girl come into contact with humans without protection, he would never forgive himself. Triton knew that if he made it out alive, he would assign a guard to each daughter for constant supervision. Anxiety involving events of both the past and the unforeseeable future blurred Triston’s reality. Time began to speed up as he led the army toward the floating objects. Soon, Triton saw the ocean floor gradually rise at an incline, which made his chest feel tight and his heart rate increase. He signaled the entire group to slow their pace and told everyone to slow down, warning them that they were approaching the human world. Eventually, Triton ordered them to stop when he could see the main spot in the water where these strange objects were seemingly being dumped into. He turned back to his army and concluded that risking his life was better than risking the lives of the soldiers who had so much more life ahead of them.

“Bradford, please hold this,” Triton requested as he gave his brother his golden crown, “I’m going to see this for myself.”

“Triton, no!” Sebastian begged, “W-what if the humans see you?!”

"I promise I'll hide in plain sight," Triton responded, attempting to comfort his friend.

“We came all this way to protect you and the kingdom!” Bradford yelled, “Utilize the power you have!”

“You’re right, brother,” Triton replied, “I am the reason we are all here. It wouldn’t be fair to put the army at risk unless I am sure we are in danger.”

Sebastian tried to argue again, but Bradford cut him off by saying, "Fine...! Have it your way, your highness!”

“I’m sorry, brother,” Triton sighed, “I hope we can come to an understanding when I return.”

As he began to swim away, he called out, “If I am not back when the sun begins to set, send for me...!”

After a few moments of following the trail of unknown objects, Triton heard strange clanking sounds coming from the source. With cautious movements, he hid behind a rock that pierced the watery veil between his world and the human world and slowly lifted his head above the water. Despite having gills on the side of his neck to help him breathe underwater, he was able to breathe above the surface for a reasonable amount of time.

As soon as Triton lifted his head from the water, he was appalled to see a giant monstrous looking machine that was pouring mountains of these objects into the ocean. Triton perceived each object that fell from this contraption as a weapon that could kill or severely injure each citizen of Antlantis, including his family and companions. His face grew red in unbridled rage the moment he saw a human sitting at the front of this machine.

“Those monsters!” He thought to himself, “Bradford was right… they are discarding their waste into OUR home without the slightest bit of consideration!”

Triton tried to approach the machine while still being hidden by the giant rocks but by the time he got dangerously close to the shore, the machine began to leave. Feeling like he failed the expedition, Triton angrily slapped his hand against the water.

“Dammit! These humans will pay for…!” he began to rant but quickly trailed off as he lifted his eyes to see another human in the distance wearing an obscure round object around her eyes.

Triton could tell it was a female human but his eyes could not rip themselves away from how beautiful she looked. The human’s shape had graceful curves that effortlessly followed each of her movements. Her brown hair had strands of gold that looked like she had been kissed by pure sunlight and her green eyes twinkled as she danced around in a giddy fit. Triton was confused on why she looked so happy but he became hypnotized by the way her plump lips curved upwards to reveal a large smile that sent a sucker punch to his chest. She was simply… perfect.

Initially, Triton feared that she was rejoicing at the machine but he was shocked to see the human stop to notice something in a small ditch. He then watched her pull out the garbage from the ditch and rescue about a dozen baby sea turtles. One by one, The human cradled each turtle with a gentle hand and brought it to the shore, ensuring that it made it to the ocean safely. She even defended them against seagulls that tried to feast upon them, clearly unafraid to risk her own life to protect others. At that moment, Triton’s heart began to melt. Never before had he seen a human with such compassion towards the creatures of his world. For 15 years, Triton never thought he could see the day where humans and merpeople coexisted in harmony. One look at this stunningly gorgeous and selfless human, he could see a brighter future… for both Antlantis and himself.

Triton felt conflicted. After years of mourning his wife, he felt scared to pursue love again for fear of having it suddenly ripped away from him. Yet there he was, quickly falling in love with a human at first sight. He felt sick to his stomach for a moment, comparing himself to an unfaithful lover. He didn’t want to throw his wife’s memory away so easily but he couldn’t help this feeling that made him feel like a shy youngling again. He also wondered how his children would react if he chose to pursue this potential blended relationship. How would his people react? Would he be haunted by the spirit of his wife?

His mind raced with so many disheartening questions that came to a sudden halt when he saw the human being pulled into the water. Triton gasped as he heard the human scream out for help. Her head quickly fell under the water. He followed her under the water and saw that she tried to swim back to the surface but lost consciousness. Devastation overwhelmed Triton as he watched the human’s limp body began to sink into the ocean and he instinctively swam up to retrieve the human. He grabbed the round object she wore on her face in one hand and caught her body in his strong forearms before returning her to the surface.

Triton laid her out on the beach, stopping for a minute to take in her beauty up close, but quickly began to panic when he realized that she was not breathing.

“Wake up! Please, you must wake up!” Triton cried as he gently tried to shake her awake.

The human said nothing and continued to lie on the beach lifelessly. Triton scanned the human’s body for gills but quickly remembered from his schooling that humans solely breathed air from their lungs. Merpeople had them too to breathe air on land but they were not as strong as their gills were. He figured that if he breathed air into her, it would help her breathe again. Without much thought, Triton desperately pressed his lips against the human’s, forcing as much air into her as his lungs could hold.

After a solid minute of trying to revive her, the human was still silent and Triton felt a wave of overwhelming sadness hit him like a tidal wave.

“No, NO, NO! This can’t happen to such a sweet creature like you,” Triton said as he choked on his tears, “Humans like you are vital to your race’s salvation. I have so many questions! I must see more of the compassion you are capable of!”

His tears fell on the human’s cheek as he thought of her loving hands touching his skin and scales…. Feeling her lips on his made him desire for her smile. In Triton’s mind, this couldn’t simply end before it even began.

“I… I need to see more of you…” Triton tearfully pleaded as he cradled her body in his arms before singing:

(https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxm7IFd_52HgOdG6HTLF9KeKSs6Jv6qbHN)

“What would I give to live where you are?

What would I pay to stay here beside you?

What would I do to see you smiling at me?

Where would we walk, where would we run… If we could stay all day in the sun?

Just you and me, and I could be… Part of your world…”

All Cordelia could see after she hit the water was darkness. While she could somewhat see and hear what was happening, her limp body continued to drag her further down into the sea. Everything to her was cold and dark. Suddenly, she felt hands hold her and help her return to the surface. Eventually, Cordelia heard a deep voice talking to her but she couldn’t make out what it was saying. She wanted to open her eyes and respond but was still too weak to barely breathe. Then, Cordelia felt soft lips on hers, pushing air inside her. The newly blown air in her lungs and the slight tickle of a beard awoke her senses well enough for Cordelia to open her eyes to see the shadow of a man singing to her.

(Artwork by @gmache)

Without her glasses, she could barely make out the man’s features but she could make out that he had a luscious set of hair on his head and around his face, along with an aquiline nose. Despite being half dead, Cordelia knew this man was handsome. The man’s singing and soft kiss on her forehead strangely soothed her in a way she never felt before. However, the tranquil moment was interrupted by a violent fit of coughing that erupted from her lungs.

Cordelia quickly sat up to cough up the water from her lungs. She used her hands to scan the ground for her glasses. When she found her glasses and put them on, she looked around to see no one else on the beach but her. Needless to say, Cordelia was scared out of her mind. The singing she heard and the touches she felt seemed real to her. Did what she experienced actually happened or just a figment of her imagination?

Once she regained control of her breathing, Cordelia got up to retrieve her phone from the sand. She quickly went through her photos and was delighted to see that the video she took of Ruben’s trucks was still on it.

“Oh my God, it’s still here!” She gasped and jumped around in another fit of excitement, “Oookay, whoever saved me… whether you’re real or not— THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME LIVE TO SEE THIS DAY!!”

Being too scared to actually interact with her, Triton watched Cordelia get up and run away in the distance. Seeing her smile and dance again brought Triton immense amounts of happiness. However, just watching her was not enough… he needed to be with her somehow. Tritan raised his eyes to the heavens and pleaded out for a sign of approval from his late wife to pursue the human.

He sang out again:

“Try to forgive, teach me to live, give me the strength to try!

No more memories... No more silent tears... No more gazing across the wasted years.

Help me say...”

Suddenly, Triton felt a beam of sunlight hit his face as the clouds cleared. Its bright glow surrounded him like a comforting hug, like the ones his wife would give. Triton’s heart began to swell as he took this moment as his sign to let go of the past and honor her memory by creating a happier future today.

“Thank you, Athena…” Tritan smiled tearfully.

He rubbed the tears from his eyes as he felt ambition fire at the pit of his stomach. In a moment of volte-face, Tritan sang out loud:

“I’m ready to know what the people know

Ask 'em my questions and get some answers

Is this a love that will always, what's the word? BURN!

I don't know when, I don't know how… But I know something's starting right now.

Watch and you'll see!

Someday I'll be… part of your world…!”

To be continued!

[buzzdixonwriter]

Writing Report July 21, 2023

Yowza!  It’s been almost a year since my last formal writing report!

Not that I haven’t written on the topic of writing, just that I haven’t posted an official here-is-where-I-am report since then.

Since September 16, 2022 I have completed another book length manuscript, got started on another novel, have begun the editing process on two completed first drafts, posted an average of two blog posts a week, launched Cheeky as a Kindle Vella serial, plus have run amok on various social media sites.

Not to mention gardening (there I’ve posted more reports), family affairs, and other mundane things that occupy our time.

I’ve decided to give up submitting short stories to magazines and online sites.  The rise of AI makes wading through the slush piles even harder, and on top of that I’m already an established pro in my 70th year.

Let some newcomers who need the exposure get those slots.

You’ll probably see a few of my short stories on this blog in coming months, not to mention the factoids (a.k.a. flash fiction) I post every Tuesday.

The new novel I’m working on…well, I like playing it close to the vest until I’m ready to go public, so I won’t say much about it except it’s another social satire along the lines of Cheeky (only a bit edgier, if I say so myself).

I’m over 12,000 words into it as of this writing, having started on July 1.

We’ve discussed how to plot longer works before.  Sometimes -- say for mysteries or time travel stories -- you need to work your plot out in great detail before getting started.

Other times it’s enough to know the main characters, the setting, and the general arc of the story.  Once I had a beginning / middle / end for my story written down (about 600+ words), I started putting pen to paper -- er, keyboard to pixel.

The first thing that happened was three of my main characters promptly introduced me to their families, people I vaguely knew must exist for my story, but about whom I had no clear ideas.

In many cases, they were surprises -- I had no idea two of my characters have older brothers, or the details about the protagonist’s stepmom that will figure heavily in the dénouement of the book.

And as I kept writing, the cast of characters opened up.  One of the older brothers has a girlfriend who will figure quite promptly into the story -- she and the female antagonist have already met and recognized each other for what they truly are.

My location/s also work into the story.  Originally I saw most of the story taking place at one location, but once I understood the family dynamics of the female antagonist, I realized the action I planned for her house needed to occur elsewhere.

Well, sunnuvagun, there is a place where logically she and the protagonist can be, and even better, a room full of props that will help tell the story.

Every time I sit down to write more of this story, new and better ideas present themselves.

The lesson here is stay loose, I guess.

You never know where your ideas might take you.

   © Buzz Dixon

[achaotichuman]

Oooooh thank you for tagging me @mathiwrites!!! I'm tagging @shi-daisy, @praetorqueenreyna, @sonics-atelier

@nocasdatsgay, @bookishfeylin, @yaralulu, @samhatch

@foxcort, @unanswered-stars, @arson-09, @readychilledwine

@hieragalbatorixdottir, @kateprincessofbluewhales

The story you're proudest of

A Court of Song and Desolation- My first multichapter fic, that I was *way* to ambitious with, but I am very proud of how far its come. Originally it was just meant to be an angsty little oneshot of Tamcien, and now it has mutated into one of my greatest creations.

A Witch A Warrior And A Reckoning- A headcanon gone wrong (or right) I started posting headcanons about what I think Tamlin's daughter would be like, and eventually it turned into a whole fic idea complete with a sapphic love story, dark plot twists, and a reckoning for the whole of the Night Court.

Your story that's gotten the most love online:

How Nesta Archeron Learned To Trap A Beast- Listen, I love this story so much, but I cannot for the life of me understand why this got so much attention, maybe cause its Nesta and she deserves all the love. In any case, this fic has recently reached over 200 kudos and I am so grateful for it. I am so glad I was able to bring some joy to everyone who read it!

Tease a current WIP or idea you're working on:

When am I not working on a project? This is an excerpt from the next chapter of A Witch A Warrior And A Reckoning, from Eden's (Tamlin's son) POV

The door slammed open, “There’s a serial killer on the loose.” Eden’s hand hovered his pen over the white sheet of papers strewn out in front of him. Staring down at the scrawled letters, they had started making less and less sense as rage took hold of him.  A long while ago, when his anger started to get the better of him, his father had sat him at a desk, handed him a pen and paper, and told him to write.  And so he did.  He wrote and wrote and wrote.  Until the blooms of anger shrivelled up, decaying as he slowly lost whatever tirade he was going on about in the notes. Then he took them out to the forests, and set them alight. Allowing them to turn to dust along with his hot temper.  “What a wonderful way to open a conversation, Diane.” Eden snapped, still staring down at his papers. “The people are calling him the Harvester, my lord.” She said, panic rising in her voice. Eden glanced over his shoulder to see a bead of sweat falling from her temple. Dripping down her neck and underneath her high neck emerald dress. A lock of dark brown hair fell from the carefully weaved braid around her head.  “Creative,” He commented thoughtlessly. Picking up each note carefully. Organising them page by page in a pile. Arranging them on the edge of his desk.  “I have the reports here,” She said, “May… may I enter?” “I suppose.” Eden rubbed his temples, a headache beginning to form. He breathed slowly through his nose.  The hasty clicking of her heels, and the swishing of her skirts as she walked up behind him. Gently placing a pile of papers before him. Eden whisked the first paper up. Eyes quickly skimming the information.  “He takes their organs?”  She nodded, “One kill at a time. Every victim is found with their skull smashed to bits, usually a bloodied rock is found within the mess…” She started to breathe quickly. He flicked his eyes up to see her looking down, smoothing over her skirts as she tried to find words to describe the horrific crimes.  “All of them…” She closed her eyes, “All are found with their stomachs slit open. Every organ and some bones missing.” “I suppose that’s why they call them the Harvester.” Eden mused. 

Your top 3 fandoms:

I am hyperfixating on ACOTAR at the moment, which makes it impossible for me to write for any other fandom.

Your top 3 ships:

Tamlin/Lucien Vanserra

Tamlin/Nesta Archeron

Tamlin/Nyx Archeron

Rec someone else's fic:

Ooooooohhhh, gotta be @shi-daisy's A Court of Threads and Daises, the first multichapter Tamcien fic I read, that managed to suck me right into the fandom and down the tamcien pipline. It is beautifully written, I love it with all my heart.

Wildflowers by @mathiwrites, *see above* is utterly amazing. It has beautiful description, amazing world-building and characters. And I just love baby Tam so so much.

Everyone I tag above also have amazing fics, go check them out, you will not be disappointed!!

Fluff or Angst

Angst. I love writing angst, I love reading it. It is my favorite thing ever.

Oneshots or longfics

I prefer reading oneshots, but you will never catch me being able to not fall prey to turning oneshots into long fics.

Canon compliance or canon divergence

Canon divergence most of the time. I have the memory of the dumbest goldfish with dementia, I cannot remember enough information to make something canon compliant.

AO3 or FF.net

AO3, I don't think I've ever been on FF.net.

Tag game for fanfiction authors!

Thank you so much for the tag @angelosearch! I'm going to tag @goforth-ladymidnight @praetorqueenreyna @achaotichuman @yaralulu @goldheartedchaoticdisaster @thedickgraysons @chunkypossum and whoever wants to join pls! I'm really bad at remembering who are all the writers!

TELL US

The story you're proudest of

I have two fics that I'm especially proud of!

Wildflowers, which is my ACOTAR prequel. It's my first fanfiction written and posted online, and the first story I wrote start to finish. I tried my best to give depth to the world and the side characters. I do think some people are turned off by the main characters/ship, but it's so much more than that. It's also spawned so many side stories which is so exciting!

Regrets, which is my first SUPERBAT that I ever posted. I think it's a really good reflection of my style which balances emotion, humour and intimacy. I'm so happy my first attempt at writing my OTP turned out SO WELL.

Your story that's gotten the most love online:

The answers are the same as above, but for different reasons.

Wildflowers has gotten a lot of praise for multiple elements in the story, and I feel like those who read it all found different parts to enjoy. It's one of those stories that are really fun to talk about, and there's so many little nods here and there. It makes me happy to see that readers are noticing them. Wildflowers also has original additions (like family members of the main characters) that everyone loves as much as I do!

Regrets has the most kudos, but like mentioned above, it's a classic ship and a good balance of fluff and angst elements! I had so much fun writing it, and I think that came through in the piece.

Tease a current WIP or idea you're working on:

I've been wanting to tease NEEDLE & KING (wip title, subject to change), which is the prequel/side story for Rhysand's parents.

It was supposed to be a shorter, contained story about their romance, but now it's become a lore exercise, an exploration of cultural displacement in fantasy, starts off as a female-focused cast, etc.

Chapter 1 Flying

At the end of the world, Lilith thinks of nothing. No home to yearn for, no family to miss her—at least, not for long—and no future to look forward to.  She stands on the edge of a mountain’s peak, one of two Wolf’s Fangs, and feels. The world comes into her through the howls of the wind and the bite of the cold against her barely covered arms. Clouds stand between her and the bottom, if she could even see that far on a clear day. Her life, until now, has been a series of instances that have happened to her rather than experience. The absence of her father, the death of her mother, the fear that looms above her—she is at the mercy of everything around her. Here, the ice demands her wakefulness. Here, the skies challenge her. Here, every breath is earned. The height of the mountain is the only time she feels alive, so what is that feeling when she steps off its edge and careens downwards. Down, down, down, she goes with a whistle—a force against gravity. At the bottom, reality will come crashing down, but she can solve that problem quite easily. Just… fall. Her black wings strain against the fall, and she grits her teeth. It’s not in her nature to fall; she will never accept her fate. Lilith wages war against nature itself, demanding her muscles to yield to her will. A loud flapping noise signals her success, the membranes of her wings cradling the air itself to take her in an arc, a low swoop and then up again. She glides through the clouds, occasionally drawing her dark wings to herself and allowing herself to plummet before catching herself again. Lilith had taught herself to fly. It was the only thing she can control in her small, small life. Her flights have no destination, and they are timeless. She flies for as long as she can. She pushes as far as she can go because she never knows when it will be her last time.

Like any draft, this may be subject to change. The first scene I usually write for any draft is the one that 'sets' the tone of the story.

Fun fact - Lilith is a name/character that pops up in all my stories either as some weird writing signature/nod, or as a main character. She's a hyperfixation that started with Diablo and never left, but she's become her own phenomenon for me and my writing.

Your top 3 fandoms: that I write in... ACOTAR & DC Comics. I currently don't have time to write in a third one, woops.

Your top 3 ships: If it's what I've written for, then the answers are Tamlin x Rhysand, Bruce x Clark and Orm x Clark. If it's what I enjoy personally, then it's all of the above + many, many crackships.

Rec someone else's fic: Without a doubt, the people I've tagged above have amazing fics. I haven't had a chance to read their works in their entirety, but I've participated in challenges with them, creeped on their works, and they are SO GOOD! Please go check them out! Their fics are on my to-read, but part of my writing process is to just write without reading, so once I'm done my current fic, I will be going through each work to add comments and properly devote the love and attention they deserve.

Pick one!

Fluff or Angst - I cannot NOT write angst, but I believe that both (one into the other) create incomparable emotional depth.

Oneshots or longfics - I prefer reading oneshots, but I cannot stick to one chapter for the life of me.

Canon compliance or canon divergence - I have the worst memory, I couldn't be canon compliant if I wanted to...

AO3 or FF.net

[kazewhara]

valentine's day special!

# — pairing: albedo x gn!reader

# — characters: gender neutral reader, albedo, various mondstadt characters

# — summary: the three times you bump into albedo, and the one time he bumps into you.

# — warnings: brief description of making out

# — tags: 3+1, fluff galore, mutual pining, getting together, first (desperate) kisses/making out, zuzu's totally compensating for his lack of a valentine

# — notes: happy valentine's day! you're a filthy simp and i've caught you on candid camera! 📸 (i say as though i didn't just write something about making out with albedo.) the last part is based on something that the 🧃 anon brought up in my asks a while back! also, i am so so sorry this is so long... can i get a wc, please? 🧍🏾 anyways, as always, reblogs and reactions/thoughts are greatly appreciated, and i hope you enjoy!

wanna join the tag list?

✧ — 🌼 — ✧

Ⅰ.

if you have to hear someone call your name one more time, you think you're going to explode.

all day, you've been running back and forth completing noelle's duties in her stead since she called in sick. you're not helpstaff like she is, but you're the only one who stepped up to cover for her -- a fact that you didn't learn until after your responsibilities had already piled up.

you have no idea how noelle does it all; not only does she clean each and every room from top to bottom, but she organizes files, helps certain knights with patrols, and clears out any lingering threats all in the span of a few hours. you're not incapable of doing those things, but you'd be lying if you said it wasn't exhausting.

in your defense, noelle was a special case; her job may seem mundane on the surface, but there was truly no one on teyvat quite like her. so you tried your best to fill her shoes.

although, you think as you stumble down the hallway with a large stack of books, maybe you should have just nursed her back to health yourself.

you can barely see over the books in piled in your hands, so you've resorted to using your instincts to help you avoid any obstacles and people. earlier, you narrowly avoided running into kaeya, who offered to help more than once. you turned him down each time, determined to complete the task you already started. he sent you off with a sigh, saying something about how you and noelle were too stubborn for your own goods. you ignored him and kept on your way.

after five more painful minutes, you finally make it to the entrance of the library and shuffle to the side to bump the door open with your hip. just as you nudge it though, the door swings open from the other side, and you jerk backwards in shock. "oh, no, no, no--!" you exclaim as you lose your grip on the books. everything you'd worked so hard to keep steady goes crashing to the floor around you and the person who opened the door.

you exhale sharply through your nose to keep yourself from swearing out loud. "i'm so sorry," you apologize on instinct as you bend down to start collecting the books. "i wasn't looking where i was going."

"no, forgive me," the person you bumped into apologizes smoothly, "i should have paid closer attention to my surroundings." before you can turn this into a battle of apologies, they bend down and begin picking up the books alongside you with a gloved hand. your eyes follow the person's arm up to their face, and you're finally able to see that before you is none other than the chief alchemist himself, down on one knee as he quietly helps you pick up your mess.

you barely manage to catch your groan of embarrassment in time. it comes out as high-pitched sound of pure distress and only succeeds in making albedo turn his focus to you instead of the scattered books. as if this day couldn't get any worse. of course you had to bump into him of all people. you, much like a number of other knights, have harbored a crush on albedo for quite some time now; what are the odds that you would (literally) run into him when you probably look worse than you have in years?

"are you alright?" albedo questions. bright teal eyes regard you with so much concern, you suddenly feel your stomach twist into the tightest knot imaginable. "did a book land on you? should i call a healer?"

"no!" you hurriedly reply. you've never wanted to curl into a ball so badly in your life. in an effort to spare yourself more humiliation, you hastily stack the rest of the books before albedo can grab any more. "i-i mean," you stammer as you resume your balancing act from earlier, "no, thank you. i'm really sorry again; i'll be more careful." you start into the library again but stumble yet again, but thanks to albedo's quick reflexes, nothing falls. you grimace. "i'm sorry, i--"

albedo rearranges some of the books in his own arms and calls your name so softly, you click your jaw shut. "you seem like you've been working hard enough today. you've done very well; allow me to help."

that wasn't a question. you flounder and miss your chance to stop him; albedo turns on his heel and heads into the library without another word, leaving you in the doorway with a light pile of books and an even lighter heart.

and as you watch him set the books down on a table near lisa, all that comes to mind is how you wouldn't mind hearing your name being called a million times over.

Ⅱ.

on the outside, hilichurls in dragonspine don't seem very different from the ones in mondstadt or windrise, but as you barely manage to dodge a cryo-infused arrow aimed for your shoulder, you understand that these things are a different breed entirely.

you've been in dragonspine for a day and a half at jean's behest to give albedo some company. she's worried that the lack of social interaction and actual sunlight will start to take its toll on him, so she sent you to provide one of the two things he was lacking. obviously, you asked questions, namely why she was sending you in particular since sucrose and timaeus were better suited for this job in every possible way. they were albedo's trusted students; they could provide company and assistance, both of which he likely needed.

not that you couldn't do that, of course. you're more than capable of following any instructions albedo may give you, it's just that... well, if he speaks to you, you'll stop functioning. ever since the day in front of the library, you've been avoiding him due to the sheer amount of awkwardness you felt knowing that he'd seen you so disheveled. fortunately for you (or unfortunately, since you couldn't watch him from afar anymore), he left for dragonspine a few days afterwards, allowing you some peace of mind.

that peace of mind was incredibly short-lived. you're now on dragonspine battling a few hilichurl shooters while trying not to disturb one insanely large hilichurl that you've never seen before. if jean hadn't told you to come here, you'd probably be with amber in sunny windrise, walking along a dirt road and keeping an eye out for any trouble. that sounds infinitely better than this.

the shooter hilichurls have impeccable aim, you have to admit as you charge the one that shot at you previously and cut it down with your pyro-infused sword. with that one gone, there's two left, not counting the monstrous hilichurl which you have yet to identify. you ready yourself to dodge the next wave of arrows by stepping backwards, but you immediately collide with something strangely firm. last you checked, there was nothing behind you, so what..?

a hand clamps down on your shoulder, and before you can process what's happening, you're pulled out of the way of the arrows and pressed further into the firm thing -- person? -- that you'd bumped into a second ago. you get your bearings and wrench yourself out of the person's hold to scold them but you're met with a familiar set of bright teal eyes.

it's albedo. your heart stops momentarily, making you cough.

"i heard the commotion on my way down the mountain," he explains quickly. you notice that he's already got his sword in hand, his grip on it as tight as ever. "i didn't think i would find you here. i'm glad you're unharmed." something akin to concern flickers across his face when you gape at him. "am i wrong? are you hurt?"

"uh," you reply intelligently. how are you supposed to talk to him in a situation like this? in a split second decision, you forego answering him and refocus yourself on the matter at hand. the hilichurl shooters have finished reloading and are taking aim at you two again. without a moment's hesitation, you close the distance between you and one of the shooters and drive your blade through its upper body. it did manage to loose an arrow that grazes your side, but you take it down as quickly and as quietly as you can.

the dying shriek of the last shooter gets your attention and you whip your head to the side to see albedo flipping his sword over in his hand as the hilichurl disappears. before you can thank him, albedo shakes his head sharply and looks over at the slumbering beast not too far away. thankfully, the commotion hadn't woken it up, but there was no telling if it wouldn't just wake on a whim. you two slink away safely and you follow albedo to his campsite, where you finally sigh with relief.

"thank you so much for your help," you breathe. your vision starts to swim, but you press the heel of your palm against your forehead and blink it back. albedo gestures to a chair that you're fairly sure wasn't there when you arrived, but you sit in it anyway. "i'm sorry you had to get involved, though."

albedo shakes his head and bends behind his desk to retrieve something. "there's no need to thank me, and even less need to apologize. especially not when you're hurt." he calls from his place. he rises and walks around the desk to kneel by your side. there's a first aid kit on the ground beside him; he must have seen your injury. you were trying to figure out if you should hide it or not, but as expected of the chief alchemist, he noticed it already. you don't put up a fight as albedo works away at your bleeding side, your mind too fuzzy to really focus on the fact that you can feel his warm fingers brushing against your skin.

"if you don't mind me asking," albedo speaks after a long silence, "why are you here? correct me if i'm wrong, but your duties never require you to be here."

you frown and blink rapidly to sort out your thoughts. does that mean he's been paying attention to you? no, you tell yourself, he's probably got every knight's schedules memorized. absent as he may be at times, he is an authority figure. "jean wanted me to..." you trail off. suddenly, you're all too aware of how ridiculous this is. if albedo wasn't mad before, he certainly would be when he hears your reason for being here.

albedo tilts his head to the side as he finishes tending to your wound. "yes? what did she ask of you?" you glance down at him briefly to see him peering back at you rather curiously. you bite the inside of your cheek to keep yourself from getting lost in his eyes.

"she, uh... was worried about you. i was sent to do a wellness check." you admit. shame starts to burn your cheeks. "i'm glad that you're okay, but you ended up taking care of me and wasting your time."

albedo hums in understanding and returns the first aid materials to their place. "i see." is all he says. you open your mouth to spew more apologies, but albedo beats you to it. "she seldom worries about me, but i suppose it's a given, seeing as how i've been away for quite some time." he looks up at you from behind his desk and you swear you see a hint of a smile growing on his face. his expression softens subtly, but you think it's just your imagination (or the pain).

"yeah..." you murmur. you look down and brush your fingers over your injury, which is covered by your top. albedo is surprisingly good at this. you dimly wonder how many times he's had to treat something like this in order for him to be so skilled.

"i'm glad she sent you."

albedo's words give you pause. you silently gasp as your heart stops and restarts with the shock. surely he didn't just say what you think he said, right? did he say he was glad jean sent you as a person, or you specifically? what did he mean?

you try to force yourself to look at him and ask what he means, but your entire body has gone rigid; you're frozen in place, your eyes now fixed on your body. after a few silent seconds pass, you manage to choke out a hum in response, but that's all you can do. you press your lips together and will your heart to relax. perhaps you're just delirious from the pain, or perhaps you heard him correctly; either way, the corners of your mouth twitch upwards.

"and i'm glad you're okay." you finally respond.

(and perhaps it's for the better that you didn't look up, else you'd have seen albedo smiling at his desk with a hint of a blush blooming on his face.)

Ⅲ.

"oh, you're finally here," albedo greets you. he steps aside for you to enter his lab. "please, come in."

today, you're replacing sucrose as albedo's assistant while she and timaeus venture to liyue harbor in search of some research samples. you have no idea why she asked you in particular, but you certainly weren't complaining; the time you spend with albedo is often well spent, even if you might embarrass yourself here and there. not one to turn down an opportunity, you find yourself entering albedo's lab.

it's a little more organized than you expected it to be. you're awed by the way everything on the shelves at the back of the room seems to be color-coded and, if you squint, alphabetized. the tables are covered in all sorts of alchemical substances and gadgets, but there's a strange order in it all, one that makes you raise your brows.

"i take it this is your first time in here?" albedo's voice is colored with amusement. he walks past you and pushes some things around to make room for your work for the day. "you seem shocked."

not even two minutes in and you're already making a fool out of yourself. you clear your throat and walk over to his side. "i'm sorry, i just..." you avoid eye contact by looking closer at some liquid in a vial in front of you. "what with sucrose being... well, sucrose, and you being you, i expected something a little different." it's not until after you finish your sentence that you realize how blunt and borderline disrespectful you just sounded. you were honest, but celestia knows how offended albedo must be. "i-i mean--"

to your surprise, albedo actually chuckles. it's so quiet that you would have missed it if you hadn't seen the slight shake to his shoulders. "i understand." he sets up some equipment and hands you a pair of gloves that look rather familiar. "you're going to need gloves for what we're going to do today, but i'm afraid these are all i had."

they're his gloves, you realize. they're shorter than the ones he's currently wearing -- they stop at your wrists while the ones he has on travel further up his arms -- but the design is exactly the same. if this was happening a few months prior, you'd have frozen in place, but you've been around albedo so often lately that you've come to proper terms with your feelings. you take the gloves and slip them on your hands. they're a perfect fit.

really, you think as albedo starts to give you instructions, the amount of time you've been spending with him is actually a bit questionable. albedo hasn't left for dragonspine in upwards of a month, which is very out of character for him. he's been holed up in his lab, sure, but being able to see his face every other day is a little bizarre. you used to berate yourself for falling in love with a man you could only see once in a blue moon, but now, you're elated whenever he greets you in passing or when he asks if you want to spend time with him and klee. but you're not one to question blessings whenever they happen to you -- albedo is here, and you're the lucky soul who gets to bask in his presence.

speaking of which, he's standing behind you. technically, he's a little bit to your side, but with the way he leans forward over your shoulder to point out what you're doing wrong, you can almost feel his front pressing against your back. he smells faintly of formaldehyde, but there's the unmistakable scent of cecilias clinging to him as always. it's stifling, just how much you feel about albedo. you sigh and follow through on his corrections.

"you've got it." albedo praises you gently. you're so glad he can't see the giddy grin that threatens to split your face in two. "can you do me a favor and retrieve a book from the shelves back there, please? i'll take care of this in the meantime."

you nod and head to the shelves you were admiring when you first came in. they're just as organized as you thought they were, save for a few misplaced here and there. you take to scanning the little library for a few seconds before it suddenly dawns on you that albedo hadn't told you what you were supposed to get. or maybe he had, but you were too lost in your own world to really notice.

either way, you step back to ask him what you're supposed to get, but you collide with something solid that definitely wasn't there before. it startles you and makes you jump, and you whirl around to see albedo directly behind you, his bright teal eyes widening slightly. "i'm sorry," he says hurriedly. "i'd just realized that i didn't tell you what to look for. i was going to get it myself."

"i didn't hear you coming," you all but wheeze, placing your gloved hand over your racing heart. you know that you couldn't have run into anyone other than albedo, but you weren't exactly thinking just now. you've long since noticed that you're thoughtless when it comes to him. you laugh breathlessly. "were you trying to sneak up on me or something?"

albedo must not catch your joke, because he shakes his head, his expression not shifting. "if i was, i think you would know."

you don't think you want to unpack how vaguely menacing that sounds.

"what book were you trying to get?" you ask.

rather than answer you with words, albedo leans forward and over you, crowding you against the bookcase as he does so. you instinctively reach a hand up to press against his chest in an attempt to maintain some space between you two. at this distance, you can properly smell the cecilias that cling to his clothing. it's dizzying; you fight the urge to push him away. thankfully, he finds what he's looking for rather quickly, but when he returns to his initial position, you're sure your face is on fire.

"did you find what you were looking for?" you force yourself to speak in hopes that you'd be able to regain your composure. it doesn't take very long for you to reboot these days, but albedo doesn't respond immediately, and it sends you for a loop.

you turn your eyes to him to see that he's already looking at you. he seems to be deep in thought as he does so, and you almost look away. almost. "albedo?" you call his name softly. it's not unlike him to get lost in his own head, but he's looking straight at you. at least, you think he is; his eyes are on your face, but they don't seem to be focused on your eyes. "you still with me?"

"yes," albedo answers smoothly. "at least, i think so."

"you think?"

albedo takes your wrist in his hand and moves it away from his chest. "under normal circumstances, someone would have pushed me away by now." he doesn't let go of your wrist despite your very obvious flinch at his words. "but you didn't. even now, you're still here, not bothering to slip away from me." he lowers his voice and something flickers across his face; is it bashfulness? "how am i supposed to take this?"

how is he supposed to take this? what about you?! you're the one pressed against the shelves, not him!

admittedly, part of the reason you haven't moved is because you love being in close proximity with him, but who wouldn't like being chest to chest with their crush? the main reason you haven't moved is because you were trying your damnedest to appear normal. apparently, you were taking too long, because now he's onto you, looking at you with annoyingly dreamy eyes of his, and you don't know what to do.

flustered, you try to wriggle yourself out of his hold, but he doesn't let go. "it's just that you shocked me, is all." you hear yourself saying the words, but something tells you that that was the wrong thing to say. for some reason, you feel the urge to just confess here and now, but nervousness (and rationality) keep you from doing so. "i'll move, i'm sorry."

albedo shakes his head. "i wasn't telling you that so you could move." he says. he has the gall to take a step forward and crowd your space, making it so that your back is properly pressed against the shelves. "it was more of an observation. would you mind if i considered this our next experiment?"

you feel like a trapped animal. you're almost literally caught between a rock and a hard place here, and albedo's lowered tone isn't making it easy for you to process any of this. if anything, this reminds you of a scene you read in a book once and the very thought of it makes your blood run cold. in a moment's association, you can't stop yourself from asking:

"albedo, are you going to kiss me?"

it's a straightforward question and albedo gives you a straightforward answer. he finally lets go of your wrist and tucks his fingers beneath your chin. "may i?"

and like that, the dam you've been building over the past few months breaks. "please," you breathe almost desperately.

albedo obliges and kisses you hesitantly. it's a gentle peck on his part, and it upsets you more than anything has in the past couple of months. he doesn't get very far -- you take hold of his coat and huff.

"albedo, kiss me. please." your voice is small and foreign to your own ears; you're at the end of your own rope, forced there by albedo's hesitancy. you've waited so long for this moment and you want it to last, however long that will be.

fortunately for you, albedo doesn't question it. he leans back in and kisses you with a quiet, content sigh. your breath stutters when his tongue brushes your bottom lip, again with a hesitancy that drives you wild. it's as though albedo was asking you if you felt the same with his mouth alone. you're more than happy to answer him in kind, tilting your head and allowing him to deepen the kiss.

it takes a minute before either of you decide to pull away. when you finally do, you drop your head onto albedo's shoulder and he lets his hands fall to your waist. there's a surprisingly comfortable silence as you catch your breath. it's a miracle that your thoughts are as clear as they are. you feel light -- lighter than you have in months; your heart is beating strong and steady and your head is free of doubt. maybe that's why, when you think yourself stable enough to speak, you ask:

"and how am i supposed to take this?"

an honest to god snort leaves albedo, and a chuckle bubbles out of you at the sound. "if you're asking if i have feelings for you," he murmurs, "the answer is yes."

you hum, content. there's a calm that washes over you at his confession. you couldn't have possibly guessed that your feelings were mutual, not when you were as panicky as you were. but you're glad that this is how things turned out -- though 'glad' might be a bit of an understatement.

the two of you still have work to do, but neither of you move. you sigh and feel your shoulders droop. you lean back to look him in the eyes properly andfor a second, you regret it; though his expression appears as level as always, there's an affectionate glow on his face that says otherwise. archons, he's so cute. "albedo, why did sucrose ask me to help you today? wasn't there anyone else to help you?" you ask on a whim.

to your amazement, albedo's cheeks become dusted with a light pink. "ah." he glances to the side for a split second in a novel display of embarrassment. "that would be because i asked her to."

you gape at him. a thought occurs to you, but you restrain it before you can jump to conclusions. "why me, though?" albedo's cheeks darken just a touch more, and you immediately pounce on your assumptions. it nearly makes you choke. "did you... already like me?"

albedo doesn't answer you outright, but his answer is revealed in the way his eyes dart to the side once more. you must be staring really hard at him, because he sighs. "please stop looking at me like that." he shuts his eyes for a brief moment and meets your eyes when he opens them. "yes, i did. though i'm afraid 'like' may not be the right word to describe my feelings for you."

so not only were your feelings mutual, but the depth of said feelings were as well. this entire time, you were loving albedo and being loved by him simultaneously, and here he was, admitting that with the prettiest pink coloring his cheeks. you were never alone in this despite your efforts to make yourself think so. three months spent liking him from afar, and three months spent loving him up close. you don't know what to say.

"then don't say anything." albedo murmurs. you don't even get to process the fact that you'd spoken your thoughts aloud before albedo's lips slot over yours once more.

dimly, as you raise a hand to cup albedo's jaw, you make a mental note to thank sucrose for relaying his message to you.

Ⅳ. (or, the one time he bumps into you.)

there's a holiday in teyvat that people affectionately refer to as 'valentine's day'.

according to albedo's observations, it's most typically celebrated by lovers. customarily, they give each other a type of candy called chocolate and bouquets of freshly picked flowers, but every once in a while, some will do perform grander gestures like proposals or hire bards to serenade one another.

at first, he thought it to be asinine. lovers have every single day of the calendar year to prove their love to each other -- dedicating a whole day to this seemed pointless. assuming that you thought the same, albedo was ready to treat the day like he would any other. but then, he overheard a conversation between you and timaeus.

"a perfume for ying'er?" your voice is like a magnet for albedo's attention, forcing him to shift his focus from his experiment to you.

though today is technically your day off, you decided to stick around to keep albedo company. he typically doesn't much enjoy people who stick around for the sole purpose of sticking around, but as just about every knight knows, you are very, very special. albedo tunes in to your conversation but doesn't halt in his progress; he doesn't want to lose his place, nor does he want to get involved with a topic he knows nothing about.

eavesdropping. shameful as it is, he's eavesdropping. he grimaces internally.

timaeus chuckles nervously. "yeah, it's, uh... i feel like i didn't get to properly thank her for her help with the smoldersleet potion, so what better way to thank her than with a perfume, right?"

albedo hears you hum. are you impressed by timaeus' decision? "that's a good idea!" you say, confirming albedo's thoughts. "i think she'd love it. do you have a scent in mind for her?"

there's a painfully long silence before you speak again. "you don't know how to make perfume, do you?"

"i don't know how to make perfume, no." timaeus confirms at the same time.

you break into infectious giggles, ones that cause the corners of albedo's mouth to twitch upwards as he transfers a cerulean substance into another beaker. he's really only half-listening, but he'll admit that it is rather funny how timaeus is planning to do start something he'd be incapable of finishing. it isn't the first time he's done this, and it certainly wasn't going to be the last. albedo's warned him against this type of rash behavior more than once, but much like klee who often ignores his words in good faith, timaeus hasn't heeded a single warning.

"anyways, what about you?" timaeus clears his throat to get you to stop laughing at him. "are you doing anything for valentine's day?"

his question immediately silences you and, for a split second, albedo feels eyes on the back of his head. "i don't think i am, no." your voice is considerably quieter than it was before -- were you hoping that he wouldn't hear you? albedo feels the slightest twinge of guilt; he can easily stop paying attention now, especially since this topic really doesn't interest him all that much, but something your tone keeps him hooked. "it'd be a little weird, though," you continue, "i've never done anything for valentine's before."

there's some soft clinking. timaeus must be getting back to work. "oh, well, maybe this year something special will happen?"

you huff a laugh and again, albedo feels your eyes on his back. as bad as he wants to, he doesn't stop working.

"yeah," you all but sigh. "maybe."

and that's why albedo spent two days combing through the library archives for more on valentine's day traditions last week.

it's not like you were pressuring him into understanding more about this day of love. the only time he'd ever heard you talk about it was when you spoke with timaeus that day in the lab. but as brief as that conversation was, albedo felt as though you were hinting at something.

there was always the idea that maybe you were talking just to talk; after all, you never did say anything about valentine's day after that, nor did you ask him for his thoughts on it. it was almost like you didn't care about it, and for some reason, that didn't sit well with him. so, albedo got to thinking, and after four days of agonizing over what to get you, he's finally done it; your gift rests in a small, cream-colored frame box decorated with a blush pink silk ribbon. he thinks it's perfect.

unfortunately, when valentine's day comes around, he can't find you.

albedo spends just about the whole day searching high and low for you -- he asks lisa, who tells him to ask kaeya, who laughs and directs him to jean, who simply admits that she hasn't seen you all day. by the time he gets to jean, however, he's already exhausted his motivation to give you your gift. albedo has been out of his depth for quite some time, now; he often retreats to dragonspine when he's in need of some solitude, but he's been in the city for you and you alone for upwards of three weeks, now. you told him to go whenever he wanted, but he couldn't bring himself to.

albedo lets his feet carry him to starsnatch cliff just before sunset. it's not dragonspine, but it'll do. up here, it's nothing but him and the cecelias that blow in the breeze; it's where he goes when he's in the city for long periods of time. when he arrives though, he finds that he's not alone. towards the cliff edge is you, sitting amongst the flowers. a gentle breeze blows in and albedo feels his breath go with it.

there you are.

"you're here." albedo speaks after a stunned silence. he would have brought his sketchbook with him to capture the moment, but since he was under the impression that he'd be spending the whole day with you, he left it in his lab.

you jump at the sound of his voice and twist around to face him. your eyes are comically wide and there seems to be a curse ready to fly past your lips, but you visibly relax when you see that it's just albedo. you groan, and albedo has to press his lips together to keep from laughing. "can you please make some more noise when you walk?" you twist back around and sigh heavily. "why do you keep sneaking up on me?"

your lover pads over and carefully seats himself at your side, resting the box with your present on his lap. he takes one of your hands in his own and notices that in your other arm, you're cradling a small bouquet of cecilias that have been tied together by a baby blue silk string. he knows for a fact that he didn't give those to you. there's a sharp sting in albedo's chest when he remembers that on valentine's day, people will gift things to those they admire or wish to court. it's not surprising that you'd have an admirer (or even a few), but to see you still holding a gift from them at the end of the day makes his gift to you feel like a weight in his lap.

"i was looking for you all day," he says quietly. you squeeze his hand and he looks back at you. you're smiling at him, but there's an obvious apology in it. forget the present -- he belatedly realizes just how much he missed you today. "is this where you were?"

your eyes drift to the side and your smile becomes strained by what albedo can only assume is awkwardness. "uh... something like that, yes." you fix your hand in his so that you can rub circles into the back of his hand. "it's valentine's day, so i did a bit of running around after my duties."

so you did care about the holiday? if that's the case, you haven't seem to notice the box in his lap yet. did you think he wasn't going to get you anything? "jean said she hadn't seen you all day, so i somewhat figured that you were dispatched elsewhere."

"that's... i told her to say that." you confess. "i had a feeling you'd ask since i had to stay away from you to make everything a surprise."

well, color albedo suprised. "'everything' ?" he echoes.

you nod with a shaky hum and let go of his hand to push the bouquet towards him. for a second you looked about ready to evacuate yourself with embarrassment, but albedo must have quite the look on his face, because you burst into giggles. "don't look so shocked!" you say breathlessly. "i did my best to get the best ones for you."

albedo gingerly takes the flowers from you. cecelias don't have the strongest scent, but when put together like this, he can smell them with every inhale. it coats his insides in something smooth and intoxicates him, and the smile on your face only makes it worse. "you took all day for this?" he asks as a bit of an afterthought.

"of course not!"

"what?"

"you think i'd take all day to pick a few flowers for you?" you tease. "well, it did take some convincing on my part because i had to ask jean to let klee come up here with me."

"you... picked these with klee?" albedo's thoughts have never stalled so badly in all his years of existence.

your smile softens. "i did." you point to a little red envelope that albedo hadn't noticed before nestled between the petals. he pulls it out and opens it find a card created by klee. while he reads it, you keep talking. "she was a little too excited to get you a gift, so of course, that landed her back in solitary for the day, but i bought her some chocolate and promised to take her back up here for an outing some day."

"i see..." albedo's in complete shock. you always manage to take his breath away, don't you? for months, you've been the cause of his every irregularity, and it seems that there's no stopping you. he starts to try and thank you, but you shake your head. "hm?"

"this," you begin as you reach into your pocket, "is... kind of self-indulgent, but it involves you, i promise." you pull out a small jewelry box and open it to reveal a star-shaped pendant on a thin golden chain. beside it is another pendant on a chain that's shaped like the solar isotomas he often makes, but if albedo isn't mistaken, that star looks an awful lot like--

he reaches up with his free hand to rest his fingers on his neck. "did you--"

you beat him to the punch. "i wasn't sure if you'd like this one, honestly. i know how you feel about your mark. but..." you reach back and clasp the necklace with the star around your own neck. it rests prettily on your sternum and glints in the pale orange rays of light from the sun as it sets. "i wanted to match. i mean... if that's okay with you."

wow.

when albedo did his research, he'd done it with you in mind -- the plan was to give you gifts today, not the other way around. and yet here he sits, completely awestruck by you and the way you keep shyly glancing away from him to look at the sun setting on the horizon. it's not like him to be speechless to this degree, but what is he supposed to say? the flowers were one thing, and honestly, he would have been satisfied with just that, but your necklace?albedo openly told you one day that he sees that star on his neck as an imperfection -- as a scar of sorts. so for you to have something like this made in his image -- for you to want to share in his imperfection so wholly...

"happy valentine's day, albedo." your voice is quiet, demure as you hand him the box with the remaining necklace in it. "i love you."

and oh, how he loves you too.

albedo takes a deep breath and tries his best to come up with the proper words to say. "i'm... if i'm being honest, i'm not sure how to give you my gift anymore." he blinks a few times, hoping that would somehow clear his head. "i feel mine is rather inadequate in comparison."

"you got me something?" your eyebrows shoot to your hairline. you must not have been expecting him to celebrate with you. but that also means you haven't noticed the box on his lap the entire time. you do now, though -- your eyes widen a bit when you register what it is. "you really didn't have to, i--"

"i wanted to." albedo cuts you off.

you frown a little bit. "but i know how you feel about this kind of thing..."

a valid concern, he thinks. "in light of recent events, i've given it some more thought." a cheeky response, but it gives him the perfect opportunity to rest the box on your lap. you give him a wary look but open it anyways, and albedo can't help but smile at your reaction.

inside the box atop a velvet cushion is a silver bracelet. it looks a bit plain at first glance, but it was made with you in mind; albedo can tell that you realize that there's more to this bracelet right away. you lift the jewelry out of the box and rest it in your palm, your mouth slightly ajar. "it's... ley line branches?" you ask. albedo nods and reaches over to help put it on you. "how did you..?"

"i've been experimenting with ley line branches for quite some time," he explains, "and i've finally found a use for them outside the lab."

"what do you mean--? oh." your question is answered when little silver flowers begin to bloom around your wrist. the buds open and spread with a flourish, and he can hear your breath catch. "albedo, this is... you didn't have to..."

"it will bloom whenever you want it to." albedo's ears start to burn beneath his hair. the bracelet will bloom under very specific circumstances; it seemed reasonable at the time of creation, but suddenly, saying it out loud seems less than ideal. "specifically, whenever i'm thinking of you." you ask him how that's possible and he slowly pulls off the glove on his right hand to reveal a similar bracelet on his own wrist. "mine will do the same when you think of me."

you bite the inside of your cheek as a sheepish smile slowly blossoms on your face. "it'll never stop blooming then." you joke.

"and neither will yours." albedo replies seriously. you choke and he chuckles. he leans forward and takes your face in his hand, brushing his thumb over your cheek. you lean into his touch, and for the hundredth time that evening, albedo feels a burst of warmth surge through him. as often as it happens with you, he'll never tire of it. "i didn't say it earlier," he murmurs and presses a kiss to the corner of your mouth, "but i love you, my star."

you pull him in for a proper kiss and peck his lips two more times for good measure before replying. "i love you more."

albedo exhales a laugh through his nose. "and i love you most."

✦ i know the ending is a bit rushed, but that's probably because holy FUCK i haven't written this much in so long!! holy fucking shit, i finished one of my drafts!! AND PUT IT UP ON A HOLIDAY? THAT'S CRAAZY

✦ anyways, happy valentine's day, you guys. i really really hope you enjoyed this!

[rafescoke]

All I Ask ; Rafe Cameron (Part 2)

masterlist

#Part 2

#Part 1

Pairing: Rafe Cameron x reader

Summary: Reader finds herself in the arms of her best friend’s brother after finding her boyfriend cheating on her

Warnings: Swearing, cheating, hella angst, JJ being an extreme asshole

A/N: you guys are truly amazing. thank you so much for the countless amount of love & support for my last works, i love you! 

p.s, my request box is always open! go ahead and drop any ideas bae

“Hey,” he said softly. “You’re okay?”

(Y/N) emitted a laugh, her eyes focusing on the road, but her mind was somewhere else. She cleared her throat, “Um, I don’t think so.”

“Want to talk about it?” he said, and she noticed the grogginess behind his voice. She felt bad now, knowing that she had woken him up, but she was desperate for someone.

She couldn’t go to the pogues; her only friends, not when they knew. They knew all along about Kie and JJ but they didn’t try to talk to her. She thought about Pope, how he had looked so nervous around her since a month ago and how she had thought of it as nothing more than anxiety for his new upcoming scholarship application.

(Y/N) groaned, tightening her fingers around the steering wheel. Why had she been so naive? Why couldn’t she realize the signs sooner?

“Are you okay?” Rafe asked, suddenly jolting up from his bed when he realized how quiet she has gotten. Ever since they got close 4 years ago, there was never a long silence between them as (Y/N) always has a random topic to discuss about. He would tell her that he doesn’t care, but he truly likes the new information she’ll give him.

Like how the word ‘who’ is the oldest English word in the world. 

“Like, the owl?” he asked, scrunching his face. (Y/N) rolled her eyes, licking the slowly melting ice cream, and Rafe had a sudden thought of stealing her snack.

“No. God, you’re stupid. It’s who.”

“Yeah, the owl,” he grunted, thinking hard. (Y/N) looked at him with her bored eyes again, and Rafe took a quick glance at the dripping ice cream.

“No, Rafe, that’s woo. I’m talking about who.”

“You should write it.”

Rafe watched as she used her pointer to write the word ‘who’ on the table using her ice cream. Rafe laughed, finally understanding the joke, and he smiled wider when she returned a grin.

“No,” her voice croaked, and she could feel her tears slowly rolling down her red cheeks. God, she felt stupid. Why would she cry over stupid stuff like this? She had told Rafe before that she couldn’t understand why Bella Swan was too sad over Edward’s flight, saying how Bella had Jacob all along to help her get over him. Rafe rolled his eyes at this statement, muttering something along the words of ‘this is a movie’, ‘Edward is hotter’, and ‘Jacob look like that cashier guy at the hardware store’.

But she understood everything clearly now because she too, felt like staying in her room for the rest of her life. 

“What happened? Do you need me to pick you up?” Rafe asked again, finally standing up from his bed and walking towards his bedside table to retrieve his car keys. He rubbed his eyes, still so tired, but he wanted to make sure she was safe.

“It’s alright, Rafe, you don’t have to pick me up, it’s just, um-” she took a deep breath, “Can I come over?”

Rafe stopped in his tracks, not sure if he had heard her right. He waited for a few seconds, “Huh?”

“Can I come over?” (Y/N) bit her lips, making a turn towards the road heading to Figure 8 from the Cut. The road was deserted, and she looked at the dashboard to check on the time.

2.43 a.m.

“Yeah, sure, um, when are you coming? I just have to wait for you, so you know the new passcode of the backdoor.”

“You guys changed it already?” she asked, and she was surprised to find a smile creeping onto her face. “When was the last time I came over? 2 months ago?”

“9,” Rafe muttered, “But it’s okay. I’ll wait for you, okay?”

“Okay,” she released a breath, “Thank you, Rafe.”

“Yeah,” was all he said before ending the line.

Maybe she did missed him. 

When she arrived before the white building of the Camerons’ household, she could see a figure sitting on the front porch, bending over something that (Y/N) assumed to be a phone.

Rafe was mindlessly playing Candy Crush, just starting on his third level when he heard a car door being shut. He jumped to his feet, ready to greet the girl, but stopped in his tracks when he saw the state of her.

She was still in her party clothes, her (H/C) hair in a messy ponytail and her makeup all smudged. He tried to think of a joke, wanting to lighten up the mood, but his deed was interrupted when she finally had him in a tight hug.

“Whoa,” Rafe exclaimed, putting his arms around her waist. He let her stayed in that position for a few more seconds, liking the warmth, and finally parted after he cleared his throat.

“What’s wrong?”

“I, um-” she sighed, not looking into his eyes. “I got cheated on.”

Rafe was glued to his spot as he watched her wiped her tears with her sleeve, looking down to her glittery blue slippers. He couldn’t remember the amount of times he had prayed for his (Y/N) and JJ to call it off, but he didn’t hope for any kind of cheating to occur.

“I’m so sorry,” Rafe said, pulling her into a hug again. He rested his chin against the top of her head, letting the scent of strawberry wafted into his nostrils. (Y/N) cried against his chest, her face all scrunched up, and when she pulled away for the second time, she noticed the tear stains on his shirt.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” she rushed, trying to remove the stain using her fingers even though she knew it was impossible. She was too tired to think logically; she felt like laying in bed and watching Love Island until the day she dies.

“You’re still stupid, even when you’re all fucked up,” Rafe sighed, but he watched her from the corners of his eyes in case his words had struck her, but she looked like she understood the joke. She smiled weakly, pulling on the hem of her dress that had rode up down.

“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up,” he said, pulling her by her wrist as he guided her through the backdoor to his room. He showed her the new passcode proudly, mouthing how it was his birthday date this time, and (Y/N) had emitted a small laugh.

Screw maybe, she did missed him.

“And still a mess,” she sighed, plopping onto Rafe’s blue bedsheet as she took a look around the room. The painting of a random boat in the middle of an ocean was still askewed, and his trash can were piling up. She made a face, pointing at the cause of disturbance.

“You have to clean that.”

“Sorry I couldn’t let you stay in our five stars suite, ma’am,” he said, finding an old t-shirt in his cupboard. “You know, since you barged in this hotel at this time, all there’s left is the 3 stars suite.”

“You’re calling this a 3 stars suite?” she laughed, tilting her head to one side. “Rafe, this room can’t even be rated.”

“Whatever,” he pulled out a yellow t-shirt, putting it aside before looking for a new pair of boxers. “Is your room still pink with that weird strawberry pound cake smell?”

“Yeah,” she laughed, crossing her legs. She was glad there were no crumbs on the bed, or else she would rather sleep in her car. “And that smell’s great. My sensory organs are blocked by all the dust you’re collecting in here.”

Rafe grinned, liking how she was back to her old self, and handed her the pair of boxers and the yellow t-shirt. (Y/N) muttered a quick thanks, her feet lightly padding against the carpeted floor towards his bathroom. She closed the door, leaning against the sink, watching her reflection in the mirror.

She did look miserable, and her eyes were all red and puffy. She always hate how puffy her eyes would get after a nice session of crying, having to endure the pain of soothing it down again. 

She shook her head, not wanting to spend anymore time thinking about JJ or Kie or the pogues who had betrayed her, and tried to reach for the zip of her dress. After a few good tries she sighed, relaxing her cramped arms. The familiar yet uneasy pain coursed through her veins, and without wanting to abuse herself anymore, she turned the doorknob.

“Rafe? Can you help me?”

“Huh? Yeah,” he came to the door, closing his eyes before he halted right in front of the object. “Are you naked?”

“No, can’t seem to be, too. Can you help me unzip?”

Rafe opened his eyes, feeling his heartbeat quickening, and with trembling hands, slowly unzipped her dress and stopping directly at the curve of her bottoms, silently admiring the view. 

He cleared his throat, shaking his head at the childish behaviour he just found himself in. “Yeah, done.”

“Thanks, Rafe,” she smiled, and turned to close the door again. Rafe listened to her breathing in the bathroom for a few more seconds, knowing how hard she was trying to ignore the aching feeling eating off of her. He wished he could take her pain away an make it his, knowing that at least he’ll have an excuse to snort more coke to ‘forget the pain’. 

When she got out of the bathroom, Rafe had to stop himself from drooling over her in his shirt and boxers. She always look good, but she had never looked better in nothing but his yellow shirt and his boxers. 

Rafe closed the light, remembering how she hates sleeping with any form of light either it’s tiny or big, and settled himself on the sofa. He wanted to give her space, not wanting to rush anything, knowing how tired she must felt from all the things she had to endure today.

“Rafe, we’re not 10. You can sleep on the same bed as I am,” she sighed, turning to face the other side. Rafe stood up, thanking the gods above, and settled for his new room.

“We never sleep in the same bed before,” he said, pulling the covers to shield himself from the cold. (Y/N) snorted at this statement, still not looking at him or even turning to face him.

The closest thing they have done to sleep right next to each other was in the car during a road trip, and when they woke up, they were both throwing disgusted faces and pretending to vomit.

“Stop it, you guys look stupid,” Sarah groaned, giving them a quick look over her shoulder. Rafe pulled his middle finger from under the blanket he was sharing with (Y/N), causing her to snort and struggling to hide her laugh.

. . .

“So yeah, that’s how you hit it.”

“You’re bluffing,” (Y/N) rolled her eyes, taking over the club and watching the small hole in the distance, squinting her eyes. She took a step back, licked her teeth, and gave Topper the club back.

“See? I told you I’m right!” he exclaimed happily, clasping his hands together. He returned to the game, focusing on his goal, and hit the golf ball.

“That’s fine, I guess,” (Y/N) announced when he came back to the resting area, “For beginners.”

Rafe snorted, downing his mineral water before handing Topper the same bottle. Topper grunted at him, muttering how it’s unhygienic, but he took a full swing of it anyways, being so thirsty after sitting under the sun for hours long.

“We’re glad you’re back with us, (Y/N),” Topper smiled, removing his cap and fanning himself with the clothing. He opened his mouth to say something, but when he looked at Rafe’s expression, he quickly shut his mouth.

He wanted to ask her if she ever missed their old clique when she was with the pogues, but Rafe knew better. It had been 3 weeks since the incidence, and she had been doing so well in coping with the situation. They had been inseparable ever since, always attached to the hips everywhere they go; he couldn’t let one tiny mistake slip that can cause her another breakdown.

“Hey,” Kelce jogged to them, smiling apologetically at Rafe and Topper before placing a quick kiss on (Y/N) ‘s cheeks. (Y/N) smiled, knowing how sweet and gentle Kelce is, almost glad he still does the same thing to her even after they had not been hanging out for a year.

“You’re not dressed for the occasion,” Topper rolled his eyes, “And late. We’re already packing up, man.”

“I know, but I’m wondering if you guys would like to listen to Cage The Elephant this evening by the beach,” he explained, still heaving from his previous activity. He had drove straight from his home to the country club after getting 4 tickets to the show, excited to show his friends what he had gotten for her.

(Y/N) snorted, throwing her arms into the air. “Fuck off, Kelce. There’s no way they’re coming down to Obx.”

Kelce sighed, taking out his phone before showing her the proof in his photos. (Y/N) grinned, trying to contain herself, and looked at Rafe who seemed to be smiling as well.

“Thanks, Kelce,” she laughed, pulling him into a hug. They made her happy, and all the negative thoughts she had about them during her brief friendship with the pogues suddenly evaporating into the air. She squealed, jumping wildly, and she swore she has never felt this happy before.

Just them four. Like the old times.

Four hours later, (Y/N) took a step back when they arrived at the beach, the memory of what happened three weeks ago suddenly rewinding in her head. Rafe noticed how quiet she had been, and pulled her aside while Topper and Kelce went to check on the stage.

“Are you okay?”

(Y/N) bit her lips, nodding. She ran her fingers over the penguin charm Rafe had gotten her a week prior, saying how it resembles him when he sees her. (Y/N) rolled her eyes at him during that surprising moment, touched yet confused at the story behind the penguin charm.

“Okay. Do you need a drink?” he asked again, staring into her eyes. She shook her head, wetting her lips and putting on her usual smile. Rafe grinned at her, muttering how she’s doing so good, all while guiding her towards their two other friends.

“(Y/N)?”

(Y/N) turned to look at the source, not thinking much. She almost fell to the ground when she saw the person responsible, but Rafe still had his arms around her. He turned to check on her again, but followed her gaze when he noticed she was staring at the opposite direction.

“What the fuck?” Rafe yelled, pushing JJ’s chest with so much anger that he toppled over to John B. Sarah yelped, pulling Kie to her side, watching as her brother walked towards them furiously. 

“Chill, man, I just want to talk to her,” he said, taking a deep breath. He noticed the crowd starting to notice them, and his eyes landed on a certain girl who was held up by Topper and Kelce, both asking if she was okay.

“Fuck off, pogue,” Rafe said, his eyes stern as he stared over JJ and his group of friends. “You have nothing to say to her.”

As he turned to return to his friends, his chest heaving from the near-fight he almost encounter with JJ, he bended to (Y/N)’s height to check on her state. Her eyes were glassy, her face red.

“So you’re fucking them all now like a whore?” JJ shouted, loud enough for everyone else around them to gasp, and some already had their phones out. (Y/N) was shocked at this statement, frozen on her feet, not knowing what on earth would make JJ say that to her.

He was never mean to her, even when they had a fight. He yelled at her sometimes, sure, but she had been the one yelling first. He never called her anything of that sort, not even during sex, where she had given him her full consent.

“You’re crazy,” she muttered, her lips trembling. “Go to hell.”

“No, no, because it has always been easy for you, right? You broke up with me, got on with Rafe, leave your own friends and come back to the country clubs?” he laughed, and she flinched at his words. If JJ had meant the pogues as her friends, then he was totally wrong.

“Fuck off, pogue,” Topper stepped out, and before he could finish his sentence, JJ landed a full punch on his face, causing him to fall onto the ground with a thud.

(Y/N) screamed, getting to his side as Rafe returned JJ’s gesture. Topper laid on the ground with his nose starting to bleed, causing (Y/N) to panic while she rummaged through Rafe’s backpack he had left on the ground for clean tissues.

Topper groaned, keep wanting to get up, but (Y/N) held him in place, not letting her friend go and hurt himself more just for her. She cried while she tried to wipe the blood, hearing the fight behind her.

“Fuck you! You stupid pogue! You should be in jail like your dad!”

Something cracked in JJ as he yelled something back in pure anger. He punched, kicked, slapped and hit Rafe who was already on the ground, spitting blood.

“JJ! That’s enough,” Pope pulled him back, trying to contain the wild animal as he thrashed to escape. He yelled more curses at Rafe while Pope tried his best to pull him away, obviously not done with hitting the boy laying on the ground.

(Y/N) cried, running towards Rafe’s side, cupping his face and looking into his swollen eyes. She groaned when Rafe’s laugh filled the air, not believing how he was still joking in a state like this.

“I’m okay,” he said, his breath ragged. “Don’t cry. I’m okay.”

Rafe stood up slowly and looked at the direction of the still thrasing JJ, hearing his muffled shouts with his arms around (Y/N) ‘s waist. He held her close as she sobbed into his shoulder, still trembling.

“Let’s go home?” he asked, and (Y/N) didn’t need to be told twice to follow him into his car. As disappointed as she was that she didn’t get the chance to see her favourite band, she wanted to take care of Rafe, who had been there since the day she found out about Kie and JJ.

The clock struck 12 in the morning and the grandfather clock in the living room chimed as Rafe groaned, feeling a certain girl with trembling hands and tired eyes gently wiping a cotton pad across his cut. 

“Fuck! I said slowly,” he grunted, closing his eyes to decrease the pain. (Y/N) bit her lips, trying to concentrate all the while trying to contain her laugh. He hissed again when she dabbed on his cut, this time with his fingers gripping tightly around her wrist.

“I said slowly.”

“I’m doing it slow, asshole,” she smiled, and felt him softened when she finally threw the last cotton pad. She pulled the covers to his chin, fixing the front part of hair before going to the bathroom to wash her hands. When she came back, she found him still awake with his eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling.

“I really need you to sleep,” she sighed, “To heal your pretty face.”

Rafe grinned and though (Y/N) tried her hardest not to smile back, she couldn’t deny the warm feeling settling in the pits of her stomach. 

“You think I’m pretty?”

There was no use denying it anymore.

“Yeah,” she shrugged, getting into the space beside him. “Even when you are all fucked up.”

(Y/N) could sense his smile even when she didn’t look at him, knowing how soft he usually end up being when she compliments him. She turned to look at him.

“Are you serious about not wanting a girlfriend?”

Rafe turned to look at her, his eyebrows raised. His insides exclaimed happily, liking the way his words had struck her. He meant what he said, but that statement didn’t apply to (Y/N). 

“Why?”

“Just asking,” she shrugged, and made a move to touch his cut. He hissed, feeling a sharp pain soaring in him, but she looked so peaceful trying to figure out his wound.

“You can kiss them to make them feel better,” he grinned, and watched as she groaned, trying to hide her face against the pillow. Rafe laughed, and turned the lamp beside him off, knowing that he shouldn’t push it and leave her be.

Just as he was about to drift into a peaceful sleep, he felt her soft lips against his, to which it was quick and gentle before she pulled away, giggling.

“4 years.”

“Huh?” (Y/N) questioned, still smiling from the kiss she just initiated a few seconds ago. She couldn’t contain herself; he looked so peaceful, so sweet, and so handsome. She didn’t know why she hadn’t kissed him sooner.

“I waited for that since 4 years ago.”

“Now you’re just pushing it, Rafe.”

Rafe grinned against the darkness, and felt his heart soaring. “Can we kiss again?”

“Tomorrow,” she stated, and Rafe laughed.

Tomorrrow. The next day. Next week. 

He didn’t care - as long as he will finally have her by his side. 

-

add yourself to the taglist!

@kayleea122 @joselyn001 @okayshoto @onceuponateenagetrash @dyingsleeping @im19yearsold @iwannabeapogue @meaganjm @rafesobxs @clearbolts @flossy2929 @drewstarkeyluver @lovelyxtom @unfortunatekiwitrash @Mellifluouszayn @noonesafe726 @hhishho @christianaevans @jemimah-b99 @hvrcruxes @scottybitch @asimpwriter @opierdalacz @anaisaxsalva @dangerdolns @starxqt @obxlovelys @wildflowerliv @classygirlything21 @amaya124 @made212 @topshaggerwillne @gabiatthedisco @adriee16 @eggirl @ms187 @tommy-tommo @thatshithurted8 @milkywqze @raeslibrary @24-martie @kookypogue @cooper8224 @darklingbrekksov

[phykios]

Five Times Percy Jackson Cheated At School (And One Time Someone Cheated Him) [read on ao3]

thank you as always to @darkmagyk for inspo and beta-ing 💙💙💙 and thank you to @arosnowflake for the homer idea!

1)

Percy squints at the paper prompt again, tilting his head, as if the new angle will extract some hidden information. It doesn’t change. The font is the special dyslexia-friendly one used by most departments at NRU, so he isn’t misreading it, either.

Your final will be an 8-10pp (TNR, 12pt, double-spaced) research paper expanding on one of the topics discussed in our class so far, or an alternate idea of your choosing, to be submitted in writing by May 7 with footnotes and bibliography. By 10am on the Wednesday before the Thursday class you will submit online a 750-word essay (word count does not include footnotes) on the research thread you have pursued that week (no written assignments due Week 6 or Week 12). 

Percy might hate college.

“Your neck bothering you again?” Annabeth asks, coming up behind him, her hands already on his shoulders. She’s sweaty, dressed in workout clothes, having just come back in from a jog. 

“My neck is fine,” he says. “Just preemptively freaking out over my Roman history final.”

He tilts his head back over the top of his chair, staring into the upside down, prettily frowning face of his girlfriend, and it does nothing to improve his mood.

“How bad is it?”

“Eight to ten pages,” Percy says, “not including footnotes.”

“Ouch.”

“And,” he grimaces, “it’s a topic of our choosing.”

Her mouth twists in sympathy. “Sucks.”

“Yep.”

“Anything I can do to help?” She squeezes his shoulders lightly, an open invitation. 

He shakes his head, stretching his arms back to grab her waist. “Promise not to break up with me when you catch me crying at 4AM over it.”

“Promise.” And she seals it with a kiss, bending down to reach him. “Dad wants to know if you’re free on the 16th.” 

“The 16th?” He wracks his brain. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t conflict with sailing, or Greek Club, or the monthly intra-pantheon relations council meeting that Chiron and Clarisse both guilted him into joining. “Pretty sure. Why?”

“Dinner--Charlotte’s out of town that weekend.”

“Sounds good.”

“Great, I’ll let him know. Now,” and she grins, “are you going to stare at that computer all day, or do you want to come and take a shower with me?”

Percy slams the computer shut. 

He doesn’t think about his paper topic for a while after that.

***

To his great dismay, Percy gets to her dad’s house first on the 16th. Drama in writing group 🙄 she texts him as he gets to the door, be there asap.

Great. Alone in the house with his girlfriend’s dad. Taking a deep breath, he knocks on the door. 

Not a minute later, Dr. Chase opens it. Last time they went to visit, Percy and Annabeth had ended up waiting outside for almost a quarter of an hour. “Oh, Percy,” he says, fumbling his flight helmet off his head. “Goodness, I thought I’d lost track of time again. Come in, come in.”

“Thanks,” Percy says, stepping inside and shedding his jacket. “Annabeth’s running late, but she said she’d be here soon.”

He frowns, looking so much like Annabeth that it throws Percy for several loops. “Well, that’s alright,” he says. “I’m sure we can entertain ourselves well enough until she gets here.”

“Yeah,” Percy chuckles, uneasy.

Several seconds pass. 

“Oh!” starts Dr. Chase. “Right, yes. Come in. Would you like something to drink?”

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t get much better.

A few minutes of staggered conversation later, it becomes eminently clear why they need Annabeth between them. It’s not the awkward small talk that doesn’t go anywhere (“How’s school going for you?” “It’s okay.” “Good, that’s good to hear.��) or the fact that Dr. Chase doesn’t really grasp how to relate to younger kids (“Have you heard of this website called ‘Vine’?”), but more that it’s just painfully obvious that the two of them don’t really know where they stand with each other. 

Now, he knows that Frederick Chase doesn’t hate him. Objectively, he’s aware of the fact that, if it weren’t for him, Annabeth never would have reconnected with her father in the first place, and he kind of owes him for that. Also, Percy knows that he’s a pretty chill guy--a little scatterbrained, but chill. 

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to make a good impression, though. Or that Dr. Chase thinks that Percy is smart enough for his daughter. Because, like, Percy isn’t smart enough for Annabeth--that much is obvious. Dr. Chase was courted by Athena. Percy barely made it out of high school calculus.

“Would you…” Dr. Chase hedges, plucking off his glasses and giving them a quick wipe with his shirtsleeve. “Would you like to see some of my current research?”

“Uh… sure. I’d love to.” 

At the very least, hopefully Dr. Chase will talk enough for the both of them, eating up time until Annabeth gets here.

A new spring in his step, Dr. Chase leads Percy to his study, where he’s got a setup worthy of Cabin Six: on his desk is a massive map of the Mediterranean, littered with miniatures of tanks, planes, and ships. Ringing the room are wall-hangings, depicting different types of planes, half of their structure in x-rays like people in an anatomy textbook, sandwiching the giant viking sword which hangs directly behind his chair. Every inch of floor space is occupied with a pile of books, some serving as additional desk space for mugs, notepads, spare toy soldiers, and, in one case, what looks like the leftovers of a handful of celestial bronze spearheads, melted down into shiny, useless nuggets. 

“You know I primarily study aviation,” Dr. Chase is saying, tidying up as he walks around the room, “but my colleagues and I are collaborating on an interdisciplinary re-evaluation of the entire North African theatre in World War II. It’s fascinating stuff; until very recently, they used to call it the ‘war without hate,’ given the lack of partisan roundups and, ah, ethnic clashes that you see in Europe--absolute garbage, of course. As if there weren’t civilians caught up in the fighting, too!” He chuckles, pleased at his own joke. Percy forces a laugh out of himself. “Anyway, with my prior experience studying the invasion of Sicily, I was brought on to assist in piecing the timeline together, working backwards from 1943.”

“Cool,” says Percy, filling the natural gap of conversation.

“Extremely! Operation Husky was a terrific endeavor of airborne, amphibious, and land-based combat.”

Percy nods. Amphibious? “Uh-huh.”

“Though, I must admit, I am having a little trouble retracing some of the ships.” Peering over his map, he leans down, fiddling with one of the ships. “You see this one here? The Palmer?”

Stepping up to the desk, Percy crouches down so the little toy ship is at eye level.

“Well, based on official records, the Palmer was supposed to have arrived at the rendezvous point at the same time as all the other ships, but ended up delayed by two days, and I can’t… quite…” He moves the ship again, frowning. “Figure out… why…” 

“Where were they sailing through?” Percy asks. 

Dr. Chase points to the map. “From Alexandria to Malta.” 

“They probably just hit a bad couple of currents,” Percy says, standing up. 

Tilting his head, Dr. Chase peers at him. “How do you mean?”

“If you’re going through the Cretan Passage, you’re going to hit all kinds of West-East currents which will push you backwards.” Snatching up a pencil from a nearby book stack, Percy lightly sketches on top of the map, tracing along the North African coast. “There are tons of overlapping currents in this area that push boats around in circles, especially around Sicily. That’s one of the reasons why so many historians figure that Homer was referring to the Strait of Messina when Odysseus goes through Scylla and Charybdis, here.” And he circles the strait, with a confident flourish.

When he pulls back, Dr. Chase is staring at him.

Percy blinks. “Um… sorry I drew on your map.”

“You--I have been trying to figure that out for weeks.”

He coughs, shrugging his shoulders. “Sorry.”

But Dr. Chase just laughs. “You can make it up to me by helping me with these next.” Clearing crumbs off of southern France, he bends over, pencil in hand. “So, say you were trying to get from Marseilles to Tunis…” 

Forty-five minutes later, still embroiled in battle recreations of the Mediterranean theatre, they don’t hear Annabeth letting herself in with her key, not even registering her presence until Dr. Chase, grasping for a notebook, spots her leaning against the doorway. “Don’t stop on my account.”

“Oh, Annabeth, dear! I’m sorry,” says Dr. Chase, going over to give her a hug. “We didn’t hear you come in.”

“I can see that,” she says. “What are you guys doing?”

“Percy here has been assisting me with naval movements,” he says, proudly.

Lacing her fingers with his, Annabeth steps over to Percy, studying their battle map. “Really?”

“Oh yes, he’s been phenomenally helpful.”

She kisses his cheek, pleased. “Look at you, Mr. ‘Phenomenally Helpful.’”

“It was pretty fun,” he admits, warm all over.

“I’d bet. Although, I guess this means we should probably order in for dinner…?”

Rubbing at the back of his neck, Dr. Chase smiles. “Yes, I suppose we should. Does pizza sound all right to you two?”

“Let me take care of it,” she says, slipping from Percy’s side. “You guys looked like you were in the middle of something. Extra olives, dad?”

“Don’t forget--”

“And anchovies, Percy, I know.” She rolls her eyes, taking out her phone.

Rather than the three of them move into the kitchen, Annabeth ends up bringing the pizza in with her, because of course she has opinions she’d like to share about the Allies’ naval movements. 

“You know, Percy,” says Dr. Chase, “I must say, you have a real knack for this kind of thing. Have you thought about what you might major in yet?”

Ah, the million drachmae question. “Not yet,” he says, fiddling with a pencil. “I figured I’d get through my gen eds first and then see which one I hated the least.” 

“I think you should consider majoring in history.”

Percy’s head snaps up. “History?”

“Specifically maritime history, I suppose. Your predisposition to sailing and ocean currents would be a huge asset to your research.”

“But--wouldn’t history have, like, a metric ton of required reading? I’m not really sure that’s my area.” He has a daughter with dyslexia and ADHD; surely he’d understand Percy’s hesitation.

But he just shakes his head. “Graduate programs these days are very favorable towards interdisciplinary methodology, I sincerely doubt you’d have to barricade yourself in the library. And recently there’s been a significant push to make the field more accessible to students with disabilities, including things like digitization, screen reading for people with vision impairments, and even restructuring programs all together so that students no longer have to memorize the Encyclopedia Britannica in order to pass their general exams.”

“That’s really nice of you to say, Dr. Chase,” Percy says, “But history class isn’t like talking over naval movements with you.” He thought back to the paper that had lowkey been haunting his dreams. “Like, in my classical history survey, I can’t just… talk about currents and battle plans. I have to come up with a topic on my own, and then write about that.” 

“Surely something involving Roman naval movements would be well within your skill set. You have a second sense about these things,” he chuckles, “clearly.”

Percy glances towards Annabeth, hoping she’ll back him up, but she looks thoughtful. Considering. Like she’s actually thinking about her dad’s proposal. “I can’t just choose something in naval history.”

“Why not?”

“Because… it's too easy?” 

If it was anything like his afternoon with Dr. Chase, it might even be fun. And school isn’t supposed to be fun. 

He repeats that thought to Annabeth as they drive home. “School isn’t supposed to be fun.” 

“No,” Annabeth agrees, “but I don’t know… I like my intro art history class way better than anything we ever did in high school because I actually care about it. Maybe if you write about stuff you’re good at, like my dad suggested, you’ll like it more.” 

The idea follows him all the way to bed, where he’s still mulling it over at 2 in the morning. Before he can chicken out, he grabs his phone, shooting off a quick email to his professor with his potential paper topic, then rolls over, eventually falling asleep.

By morning, he has a response. 

Sounds good! Looking forward to it.

***

With shaking hands, Percy calls his mom. “Yes?” 

“Hey mom.”

“Percy?” He hears her perk up, almost visualizing her sitting up in her chair. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

Mom instincts. They can always tell when something is different. His heart throbs in his chest. “Nothing’s wrong,” he says, smiling stretching across his face. “It’s just--I got my paper back.” 

Percy had ended up writing his paper about the Roman navy movements in the Battle of the Aegates in 241 BC. It was probably the most fun he’s ever had on a school assignment, or at least the most fun he’d ever had writing a paper. 

“And?” She sounds expectant, hopeful. His mom has always had such faith in him, even with thirteen years of schooling to prove her otherwise. 

He looks back at his email, just to make sure he’s reading it right. “I got an A.”

She gasps. He can hear the scrape of the chair as she stands up. “Percy, that’s wonderful!” 

“Thank you.”

“An A!”

He smiles into his fist, inordinately pleased. “Thank you.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I am so happy for you!”

“Thanks, mom.”

“I’m so proud of you, Percy.” Her voice is soft now, like twilights on the beach with blue marshmallows. “I know how hard you’ve worked for this. You should be very proud, too.”

“I am.” And he is, weirdly enough. “I just can’t believe it.”

“I can.” His mom must be grinning, her eyes sparkling. “I always knew you could do it.”

“Sally?” He hears in the background, muffled. “Is that Percy?”

“Paul, Percy got an A on his Roman history paper!”

A second voice crowds its way in, equally excited. “An A? That’s great, kiddo! Congratulations.”

Why can’t he stop smiling? “Thanks.”

“I bet that feels pretty good, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“Well, it is very well-deserved,” says Paul. “That was some great work you did. I could tell how passionate you were about your topic just from your first sentence.”

“Thank you.” Maybe he should be worried about all this praise going to his head, but damn, is it nice. “Listen, I have to go get started on dinner, but I just wanted to give you a call.”

“Of course,” says his mom. “I want to hear from you more, okay? Tell me more good news! Like when are you and Annabeth going to--”

“I’m working on it, okay?” says Percy, smiling even more broadly. “I’ll keep you posted, promise.”

She laughs, tinny and happy. “You’d better. Congratulations again, sweetheart.”

“Thanks mom. Love you.”

“Love you, too.” 

And he hangs up, puts his phone down on the table, tilts his head back, and sighs, full, happy, a release. 

Maybe college won’t be so bad after all. 

2)

“You don’t have to do this,” Frank says, hushed. “All you have to do is walk away.”

Five Greek Fire bombs, cloudy yellow, are lined up on the table in front of him, neatly laid out in front of five twenties. From the side, Frank stares him down, surrounded by an army of morbidly curious Romans. Someone turned off the music and turned on the lights a while ago, stopping the party in its tracks, every eye on Percy and his opponent. Figures, his first college party all year and he causes a scene. 

Percy grips the edge of the table. “He insulted the Mets,” he says for the millionth time. “I can’t let that shit stand.”

Frank sighs. “Annabeth?” he asks, hoping to stop this nonsense.

Turning to his side, Percy sees his girlfriend, two drinks in, her cheeks lightly flushed, but solid as she stands beside him, supporting him. Her eyes are hard, fierce, the warrior gaze of Athena all but leaping out of her. “Do it,” she says. 

William, the sour-faced Roman legacy of Juventus, scowls. “A hundred bucks on the table. Sixty seconds. No throwing them back up.”

“Deal.”

“Frank,” Annabeth calls. “Start the clock.”

He sighs. “You guys are idiots.”

“Frank!”

“Okay, okay.” He holds out his phone, thumb primed, hovering over the screen. “On your marks, in three… two… one…” 

He hits zero, and Percy grabs a shot glass. Squeezing his eyes shut, he brings it to his lips, and throws it back.

It’s… not what he expected.

The tequila is awful--no getting around that. Even to Percy’s untrained taste buds, having really only ever had some of Gabe’s sour beer (under duress) and some of the Demeter cabin’s strawberry wine (on his eighteenth birthday, a celebration for actually getting to graduate high school), he can tell it’s cheap, rank, unrefined shit, like he’s drinking straight toilet cleaner. But the garum, the weird Roman condiment that the shot is mixed with, the one that Percy had never heard of before, it’s… it almost tastes like the fish sauce that comes with the pork and rice noodles from the Vietnamese place down the corner of his mom’s apartment, only less… fishy? Yeah. Less fishy.

It’s a weird taste. It’s not bad, by any means, it just--straight up, it just tastes like saltwater. Like the sea. 

And, well. Percy can handle the sea.

He looks at William, and grins. “You are so fucked.”

The assembled Romans cheer, spectators at a gladiator show, as Percy knocks back the rest of the Greek Fire bombs, one after another, clearing them all in under thirty seconds. Annabeth swipes up the cash, shrieking as she throws her arms around Percy. William wanders off, red-faced and glaring, as whoever turned the music off before flips it back on, the night, and the party, saved.

Silly Percy. He should have known what was coming next.

Thirty minutes later, he is well and truly wasted.

“You’re, like, really pretty,” he shouts at Annabeth over the loud music.

She snorts, grinning at him. “Thanks.”

“Seriously,” he slurs, tipping forward on his feet. “You could be a model.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Remember when we were fourteen,” he yells, bracing himself against the wall, “and you got kidnapped by that monster?” Slightly soberer but still a little flushed, she bites her lip, nodding. “Well, I followed the rescue party--I told you that, that I snuck out of camp to follow the rescue party? Right?” 

“You did.”

He takes a sip of water, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth. Feels goofy as fuck. “We got hijacked by Aphrodite halfway through, and when I saw her, I thought--I thought, ‘Holy shit, she looks a little like Annabeth.’”

Her brows shoot up, smile pulling at her lips. “Really?”

He nods. “Totally! But you’re way, way p--” 

Still smiling, she silences him with a kiss, the lingering taste of hard cider on her tongue. “I appreciate it,” she murmurs, grinning, “but you probably shouldn’t say that out loud.”

“Gross.”

From out of nowhere, like he always does, the weasley little shit, Nico di Angelo is suddenly in their space, looking surly and emo as ever, red solo cup in his left hand. “Nico!” Percy crows, grabbing for him and missing. “How’s my favorite cousin?!”

Ducking his wildly swinging limbs, Nico grimaces in the way that Percy has to come to recognize as his attempt at a smile. “Better’n you,” he says, a little wobbly. “What’s up with him?” he directs towards Annabeth.

“Greek Fire bombs. Five.”

“You’re a psychopath.”

“What!” Percy pouts. “He insulted the Mets.”

“Aren’t you s’posed to be, like…” Nico snaps his fingers, words momentarily escaping him. “A--representation… person? For the Greeks?”

Percy waves his hand, hitting the wall. “Fuck that. The Greeks can handle themselves. The Mets are sacred!”

“Are you with anyone?” Annabeth asks, momentarily taking up Percy’s usual role of concerned parent friend while he is drunk off his ass. Theoi, he loves this girl so much. 

Nico shakes his head. “No, but Will and I are staying with--”

A thought suddenly blooms in Percy’s tequila-soaked brain. “Nico!” He shouts.

“What?” he hisses, glaring.

Percy pushes himself off of the wall, outstretched arms managing to box Nico in, falling on his shoulders and trapping him. He’s still a short, skinny little shit, the fuck, when are his Big Three genes going to kick in? “I need to talk to you about the thing.”

“The what?”

“The thing! The--the,” then he leans in, scream-whispering over the pounding bassline. “The thing.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“You know, it’s…” Percy licks his lips, language escaping him for a hot second. “Round. Metal. Jewelry thing.”

A beat, then Nico’s eyes widen. “Oh, that thing.”

“Yes, that thing!” Pulling back, he pulls Nico towards him, slinging an arm over his shoulders in a half-headlock. Annabeth watches, bemused, lips pursed as she tries not to smile. “I need to borrow Nico for a sec,” he says, words spilling out of him. “Back soon. Later. Soon.”

Her eyes crinkle, grey sparkling. She’s so fucking pretty. “Drink your water.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Then together, like some three-legged beast, the two boys lurch away deeper into the party, Nico leading them towards the kitchen. “Where’re you taking me?” Percy slurs. “‘M I being kidnapped again?”

“If I’m helping you plan out this stupid proposal,” he grumbles, pouring himself more vodka, “then I need to be less sober.”

***

Some mistakes may have been made.

“Where’s Annabeth?” Percy mumbles, looking back towards the house. The party is still raging, someone’s muffled Spotify playlist making a real racket, the greatest hits of ABBA still bouncing around his skull.

“Simp.” Nico, swaying a little, tries to stand up from his kneeling position, only to fall heavily back down on his knees. “She’s right where you left her.”

Discussing Percy's proposal plan had led to more drinking. More drinking had led to the two of them discussing their shared preference for blondes. (“Malcolm is pretty cute,” Nico admitted, flushing, and Percy almost screamed, “Isn’t he?! Sometimes I think about Annabeth with short hair looking like Malcolm and I almost start crying because she’d be so cute!”) Which then led to even more drinking. Which then led to general bitching about their lives, about Percy's hard-ass classics professor Dr. Bauer who he actually really liked but just pushed him so hard and expected so much of him, and Nico's half-brother Zagreus who was causing some family drama by picking fights with Hades all the time and also hooking up with both Thanatos AND the fury Megaera, which, ew, which then led to Percy inhaling his drink, nearly choking to death on unspecified college punch, Nico laughing at him all the while, as he had the most incredible idea.

"Nico!" He shouted, crushing the red solo cup. "Can you resurrect Homer for me?"

Nico gaped, staring. "What."

"Seriously! I need to ask him something for my paper."

"Percy." Nico gazed at him, all the power of the Ghost King boring into his soul, deep and haunting. Percy stifled a burp. "You're a fucking genius."

Which is how they found themselves around a shallow hole they had dug in the backyard, a large bottle of Pepsi originally intended as a mixer pilfered from the kitchen along with two slices of pepperoni pizza dumped on the grass beside them.

"Maybe we shouldn't do this," he says, uneasy even through his drunken haze.

"It was your idea!"

"I don't have good ideas."

“Fuck you, I’m doing it.” With all the force of a tiny, angry kitten, he snatches up the Pepsi bottle, wrestling with the twist cap for a good ten seconds. “I wanna give that bitch a piece of my mind for making me cry in school.”

Percy looks at him sideways. “Hector killing Patroclus got you, too?”

He snorts. “Fuck no. Achilles didn’t pay his dues to the dead.”

“Seriously?”

The cap pops off, and Nico tips the bottle over, dumping flat, lukewarm soda into the shallow hole. “It’s the ultimate dishonor!”

Freak. Percy would die for the kid.

“Let the dead taste again,” Nico mutters. “Let them rise and take this offering. Let them remember.”

“You’re so weird.”

“Says the guy who’s related to both horses and water.”

“I’m not related to water, I just control it.” 

The dirt turns black, dead soil mixed with sticky sugar water. Nico drops in the pizza, and begins to chant, that same ancient Greek that Percy heard in a dream once, talking of death and memories and returning from the grave or whatever. It’s still creepy as shit. 

Despite the warm California night, the air thickens with chilly fog. Silence, impenetrable, surrounds them, blocking out the noises of the party. From the earth, blueish, vaguely person-shaped figures begin to form, like thunderous clouds before a storm. “Which one is Homer?” he asks, hushed.

“Shh!” Nico hisses. 

Like little wells of gravity, the fog begins to coalesce. On one of them, Percy can almost make out, like, fingers. “Um, Mr. Homer? Sir?”

The figure doesn’t say anything. It lowers its mouth, drinking the soda out of the dirt. When it raises its head, Percy can see it more clearly, curly hair and milky white eyes and a straight nose. It--he?--seems a little more solid than your average run-of-the-mill ghost.

Nico frowns, eyes closed, concentrating. “What’s your name?” he mumbles. 

That mouth opens, soundlessly, jaw working on nothing.

“Speak.”

It--there’s a sound, like hissing, only it’s not coming from the mouth, Percy thinks. It sounds like it’s coming from the earth. “Nico?” he asks. “You good?”

The ghost opens its mouth again, moaning, raising its hands. Weakly, unsteadily, it stumbles forward on feeble legs, tripping over the shallow hole in the dirt.

“Nico?” he asks again, a little more forcefully. “What’s going on, dude?”

Nico blinks, slowly, mouth hanging open a little. “Uh.”

The… thing… raises itself up on its hands? He guesses, and knees, crawling its way over towards them.

Now, Percy may be drunk off his ass, but he has seen enough movies to know exactly what the fuck is up.

Moving with a speed he didn’t quite think was possible right about now, he grabs Nico’s wrist, and pulls him up, dragging him along as he lurches towards the house. “Percy…” Nico moans, stumbling over a rock. “I think I fucked up.”

“You think?” Percy wrenches the door open, tossing Nico inside, before following in after, throwing himself against the door. 

Nico groans, throwing his arms over his face. “Dio santo, my head.”

“Forget your head,” he says, “did we just raise a Homer zombie?!”

Panting, Nico stares up at him, sprawled on the floor of the house. “Oops.”

Percy thunks his head against the door. He does not have nearly enough mental capacity to deal with this right now.

But, he thinks ruefully, at least it’s just one. Even drunk, he’s pretty sure he can handle one zombie.

Nico’s eyes widen. 

Percy stares. “What.”

“I didn’t stop the ritual.”

His stomach goes cold.

Turning around slowly, he pulls aside the little curtain on the window. “What?” Nico asks. “What do you see?”

Percy can’t speak, mouth dry.

Slithering up behind, Nico peers over his shoulder. “That’s… not great.”

“Nico,” Percy says, eyeing the horde which slowly shambles closer, half-decayed bodies in togas bumping into each other, almost identical to the drunk college students inside, as the song changes, once again, to ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight).’ “Please go get Frank and Annabeth.”

The following Monday, an announcement is sent out to the entire campus: Per new department guidelines, students may not utilize the ambassador of Pluto to interview the dead for academic purposes.

3)

Percy attempts to flatten his hair. He readjusts his shirt. He almost wipes his sweaty palms on his pants, before he realizes what he’s doing, and clenches them instead, nails digging into his palms. He turns to Annabeth. “Do I look okay?”

“Ooh, ‘Mapping Funerary Monuments in the Periphery of Imperial Rome.’”

“Annabeth.”

She looks up from her brochure. “Relax, seaweed brain, you look fine. You look better than most people here.”

“That’s because I bring down the average age of presenters by about thirty years,” he hisses, eyes darting about at the milling mass of attendees, all packed into the hotel ballroom. 

Dr. Bauer had alternately convinced/pressured/guilttripped him into attending this year’s annual conference for the Society of Classical Studies to talk about the research he’d been doing with her. This year, the conference was held in San Francisco, so at the very least Percy didn’t have to spend five hours stressing about his poster presentation while simultaneously up in the air. But now that he’s here, in the ballroom, surrounded by strangers who know way more about this subject than he does, who are actually smart and probably never nearly flunked out of school or got kicked out or--

“Hey.” Annabeth takes his hand. “I know that look. You deserve to be here just as much as any of them.”

“Do I? I feel like any moment someone is going to come over and throw me out for trespassing.” He vaguely recalls something similar happening to him as a kid after he had ducked into the lobby of a semi-nice hotel to dodge what he had thought, at the time, was just a weird stalker, but had later realized had only had one eye. In any case, the hotel security guard had practically picked him up by the scruff of his neck, tossing him back out into the street. 

“That’s just your imposter syndrome talking,” she reassures him. “No one is going to throw you out.”

He sure as shit hopes so. It would be a shame to have done all this work for nothing. 

Glancing back at his poster, Percy can’t help but feel… good. Accomplished. Proud. About a school assignment, of all things. 

His poster traces the development of the prow from the Greek penteconter, to the Roman liburna, and finally to the Byzantine dromon, looking at artistic depictions in history. Percy had picked the topic himself, spending hours in the library reading, writing, and hand-drawing cross-sections of the ships on the poster board when the images he had gotten from the Cambridge University library had been too small. It had been grueling, frustrating work, but fun, too. And not nearly as much reading as he had feared.

Dr. Chase proofread it for him. Dr. Bauer signed off on it. And Annabeth had taken one look at it, smiled, then kissed his cheek.

That was the best compliment he had gotten.

Though now he’s kind of torn between showing it off and hiding it away before one of these attendees figures out that he doesn’t belong.

He rocks back and forth and his feet, pursing his lips, randomly clicking his tongue. Annabeth nudges him. “Your ADHD is showing.”

That’s when, finally, one of the attendees steps up to his poster. He certainly has the look of a professor, in a black cable knit sweater with grey, curly hair and a receding hairline, thin, rimless glasses perched on his nose. He squints at Percy’s poster, rubbing his chin with one hand. “Interesting,” he murmurs, in a thick German accent. “Very interesting. This is yours?”

“Um.” He glances at Annabeth, who is frowning at the brochure, silently sounding out words that she can’t read. “Yep. All mine.”

“Very interesting.” He leans in closer, tilting his head. “So you agree with Pryor and Jeffreys about the skeleton-first construction, then?”

Percy blinks. Pryor and Jeffreys had written The Age of the Dromon, arguing that the ram, which had been a key feature of Roman liburnians, had gone away in ancient ship construction because of developments in how they built the hull. Right. “Yes,” he says. “The skeleton-first construction is a lot stronger than the, um,” shit, what was the name for this, Leo had only told him about a million times--oh! “Mortise-and-tenon!” He nearly shrieks. “The mortise-and-tenon method. It, um, it wears out a lot more quickly than the frame, so… yeah.” He clears his throat.

He nods. “Very interesting.” 

Percy stares. Can this guy say anything else? 

“This is very well done, young man.”

Oh. “Thank you,” he says. 

“Who are you working with?” 

“Um, June Bauer?” He winces at the accidental question. 

He frowns. “I’m not familiar with her work. Where does she teach?” 

What a loaded question. “Uh… New Rome University.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s--she used to teach at Northwestern, if that helps. Um, retired,” Percy says.

The frown stays, but at least he doesn’t ask any more questions. “Hmm. Well, this is excellent research, nonetheless. I look forward to reading your dissertation.” Then, distracted by something else, he wanders off, chin still attached to his hand. 

“Who was that?” Annabeth asks. 

Percy shrugs. “Beats me. Also, what’s a dissertation?”

“It’s like a senior thesis, but, like, five hundred pages long.”

Five hundred?! “Fuck me.” 

“Maybe later,” Annabeth smirks. “It looks like you’ve got company.”

Sure enough, a smallish group of four people are approaching, led by Dr. Chase, making a beeline straight for them. “Here we are,” Dr. Chase says, gesturing. “This is the project I was telling you about. Percy, would you mind going over your poster for us?”

“No problem, Dr. C,” says Percy, smiling his least-grimace-y smile. 

As one, the adults all turn to look at him, faces politely blank, expectant.

Percy swallows. “So,” he begins, “um, this research is about the development of ship construction in the Roman empire…”

He trips up on some of the words, and at one point, he sees Dr. Chase squint in the way that usually means that Percy is speaking too fast, but all in all, he doesn’t totally fall flat on his face. His audience looks engaged, nodding along as Percy moves from point to point, and no one accuses him of being a giant fraud, which is pretty nice. 

At one point, Percy turns to the poster to indicate a specific point on his ship diagrams. When he turns back, his audience has suddenly multiplied, four people turning into a whole goddamn crowd. Each person gives him their undivided attention almost unblinking.

His mouth goes dry. “Um…” 

Dr. Chase, bless him, saves his ass once again. “Would mind starting again from the beginning, Percy?” he asks, a little bemused himself at the amount of people that had suddenly appeared. 

Silence stretches on for a moment, the muffled noise of the rest of the conference like a dull roar in his ear. 

Annabeth, behind him, coughs. 

“S-sure. No problem.” 

Swallowing, he closes his eyes, breathing in through his nose. Why, oh why did he let Dr. Bauer talk him into doing this again?

He pictures the tides of Long Island Sound, gentle and rocking, unhurried and unbothered, tries to match his breathing to them. When he opens his eyes, unfortunately, the crowd hasn’t disappeared. Everyone is still staring at him. 

But Annabeth stands next to her dad, flashing him a big smile and two huge thumbs up.

Percy relaxes. He’s got this.

“Okay,” he says. “So, about the middle of the first millennium CE, ship construction went through a couple of major developments…”

This time goes much, much more smoothly. He’s not sure what it is--though it’s probably Annabeth, her face fixed in a gentle smile as she watches him speak. Gods, what did he do in a past life to deserve someone as amazing as his girlfriend? 

That’s the only reason he can do this. Hell, that’s the only reason he even thought to do this. If he didn’t have Annabeth there, encouraging him, cheering him on, he never would have had the confidence to put himself out there like this. She’s there to pick him up when he doubts himself, there to listen when he can’t explain himself, there to give him feedback when he needs to practice. 

She makes him feel so strong. She makes him feel like he can take on the world--or at the very least, that he can impress a handful of academics.

And they certainly seem impressed with his talk so far. 

“Excuse me,” says a nasally, pinched looking older British guy, face lined as though he lived his life in a state of perpetual squinting. “I find your conclusions to be suspect--wouldn’t the frame method be more susceptible to breaking than the mortise-and-tenon?”

Well, most of them, anyway.

Percy shakes his head. “You’d think, but no. If you look at the study by Steffy, you’ll see that the three-finned ram from the Athlit wreck was designed specifically to break the mortise-and-tenon hull by causing the planks to flex, so that they’d dislodge the joinerys right next to them. A blow like that can cause the wood to split right down the middle.” A blow like that had sunk Sherman Yang’s ship when they tested it out on the lake at camp last summer, the naiads practically hurling him out of the water so quickly Percy didn’t even have to dive in to save him.

“How were you able to do these strength tests?” asks another listener, an older woman with a thick Hungarian accent.

“Hands-on battle simulations,” Percy replies, easily. “We took our models and tested them in as accurate a simulation as we could make.”

“And how big were these models?” 

Percy holds his hands apart, a vague, entirely inaccurate estimate. “About thirty meters, give or take.”

Her eyes widen. “How on earth did you get your hands on such a large ship?”

Percy freezes. “Uh.”

Oh, shit.

He had forgotten--most people didn’t have dads who could summon shipwrecks from the bottom of the sea, dropping them off at Camp Half-Blood with nothing but a sand dollar and one or two exhausted, pissed off hippocampi who had had to drag them all the way there.

“Um,” he stammers, licking his lips, thinking fast--c’mon, Percy, think! “I…” He swallows, panicking. “I… b… built one.”

In the corner of his eye, Annabeth facepalms.

Simultaneously, every mouth in the crowd drops--in shock, outrage, and even excitement. “You built one?!” the woman yelps. 

Oops. “I had help,” Percy says, quickly. 

Annabeth adds a second hand to her facepalm.

“Where?” The first man asks, his bushy brows flying above the rim of his glasses.

“At my… summer camp…” 

Dr. Chase sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I mean,” Percy chuckles, shrugging his shoulders, trying not to sweat too obviously, “it was either that or lanyards, am I right?”

Dr. Chase, thank Athena, raises his hand, ready to step in. “What Percy means to say, I believe,” he says, attempting to draw their attention, “is that--”

“That’s amazing!” says another woman, probably a grad student attendee based on the fact that she’s wearing jeans. “Do you have pictures?”

Oh this is not good. “Um, not--not on me, but--”

“I do.” Annabeth takes out her phone, holding it up to the person next to her.

Percy blinks. “You do?” He doesn’t remember her taking any pictures.

She shoots him a look, two parts exasperated and one part “shut up and let me handle this,” with just a dash of fondness in the mix. Pointedly, she looks at him, eyebrows raised, indicating that he should continue.

Oh. She’s using Mist. And he needs to keep their attention on him so that they buy it. “Right,” he says, clearing his throat. “Any more questions?” 

His audience placated for now, passing around Annabeth’s phone, he manages to finish up his presentation. After fielding a few more questions, people start to peel off, distracted by other posters and presenters in the ballroom. When everyone has finally wandered away, Dr. Chase comes up and pats Percy’s shoulder awkwardly. “Nice work,” he says, and he seems like he means it. “A little touch-and-go there for a while, hm?”

“A little.”

He chuckles. “Still, you should be proud. I don’t know how many undergraduates would be able to handle that kind of pressure.”

“I mean,” Percy says, shrugging a shoulder, “it’s about on par with leading an army. Maybe a little less.” Honestly, maybe even a little more stressful. If a monster had decided to attack the convention center and interrupt his presentation, he probably would have been relieved.

He’d been worried for a moment that he’d undone all those years of work in making Annabeth’s dad like him. And that he’d be charged with some sort of academic fraud, for the whole “I have a boat” thing without proof. Thank the gods for Annabeth, as always.

She’s looking at him now through narrowed eyes. She at least can’t be surprised--that was far from the dumbest thing she’s ever seen him do. At least his “I spent most of my time at magic greek mythology summer camp” covers are normally better than hers. As someone who spent his formative years in the real world, he’s usually pretty good at keeping the demigod thing under wraps. 

“Come on,” she says, grabbing his hand. She pulls him off, through the dispersing crowd, lacing their fingers together, sweet and intimate, out of the hall and then down another one, and through a smaller corridor. Bringing them up to a little door, with a shake of her wrist, she pulls out her Estruscan keyring bracelet. About several of the keys have found themselves used in various misadventures, vanishing once their purpose is fulfilled, but her favorite key is still there. And, just like a clever child of Hermes, it can pick just about any lock. 

Inside is just an empty room, a little staging area surrounded by tiered desks going up, no more or less remarkable than any of the other conference rooms they’d visited before. 

“What--?” His question is cut off by Annabeth’s mouth on his. 

Surprising, but definitely not unwelcome.

It's a while before they separate again. “You’re so good at this,” she tells him, unbuttoning his shirt.

He runs his hands along the lines of her flanks. “I’ve had a lot of practice,” he grins. He’d practice kissing her all day long if he could. 

She smiles, shaking her head. “No, not this,” though she does lean in for another kiss, pulling at his lower lip with her teeth. “I know you’re good at this.” They break away, Percy pulling her shirt over her head, Annabeth shucking off his. “But history. Presenting.” She runs a finger over his chest, kissing his cheek, headed towards the sensitive spot on his jaw. “Gods, you’re so smart.” 

Something about the praise vibrates through his chest. She doesn’t sound surprised, or anything, just--turned on.

“You had all those crusty academics eating out of your hand. Just, so impressed by you, knowing you know way more than they do about naval history. When you were explaining the--” Her compliment is cut off with a moan, as he leans down and starts sucking on her throat. Her blouse has a high neck, so he feels no guilt for using his teeth.  

“Watching you today, gods.” Her breath is labored as his fingers play at the waistline of her skirt. “And then thinking of you defending your dissertation.” He bites at her jugular, and she lets out a long, deep moan. 

“I don’t know what that means.” Do academics fight each other? Like, with weapons? He’s pretty sure he can take most of the people he met today. 

“It means you get to show off how smart you are,” Annabeth says, grasping his shoulders, pulling him in for another kiss. “I was born the day my dad defended his. Gods, it's going to be amazing to watch you go.” She yanks his belt out of his pants, tossing it to the floor. 

They miss the panel on recent translation efforts. But Percy can’t say he minds one bit. 

And when Annabeth presents him with a positive pregnancy test two months later, Percy definitely knows he made the right decision. 

4) 

He almost doesn’t realize he’s having a dream-vision at first.

It has been literal years since he’s had a demigod dream. Hell, it’s been a long while since he’s had a dream, period--being a new dad to a one-and-a-half-year-old saps too much of his energy to even think about dreaming. Once Junie is put to bed, when he’s out, he is fucking out, and he does not have the brainpower to spare to manifest any messed up subconscious fears.

Which is why when he blinks open his eyes, taking in the too-bright colors of the Parthenon and the gleaming shine of the bronze statues which are somehow all looking at him--also, you know, how the Parthenon is complete, standing as it did thousands of years ago, and not crumbled into ruins--he knows, immediately, he is being contacted by a god.

And only one god in particular would bring him to Athens.

Without even checking, he heaves himself up off the ground, folding into a kneel. “My lady Athena,” he says, “can I ask for what quest you’ve brought me here?”

“Impertinent as ever, Percy Jackson,” rumbles the goddess, but Percy doesn’t think he can sense any ill will towards him. He hopes, anyway. “Perhaps I have summoned you here for a social visit.”

“Perhaps,” he says, choosing his next words as carefully as possible. “But I assume you have too much to worry about to randomly check up on your daughter’s boyfriend.”

He lifts his head, catching her expression--stoic as always, but maybe with just the barest hint of a smile. “You assume correctly. You have become, contrary to my initial expectations, very wise in the time that I have known you.”

“Thank you.” He knows better than to do anything but accept the compliment for what it is.

“I have observed your work as a scholar in recent years, and I must say that I am surprised, yet pleased, that you have chosen to pursue such a path. I had not thought you to be suited for a world of old men and dusty papers.”

He grits his teeth. Don’t rise to the bait, don’t rise to the bait, don’t rise to the bait--

“I understand, as well, that though you and my daughter have,” and here her careful composition cracks, just the slightest, the tiny lift of her lips falling, “made a child together.”

Percy swallows. He figured, you know, in the abstract, that Athena would know about Junie, but hearing her say it out loud is… well, he’s just glad that Dr. Chase has always liked him. “Yes, my lady.”

“It is customary in your time to marry prior to childbirth, is it not?”

“It is.” Oh, fuck, is she going to smite him for that? “I--that is to say, we, Annabeth and I, we, um, we definitely want to get married, but, Annabeth kind of…” 

He trails off. He can’t tell Athena, goddess of war, that his daughter pissed off the queen of heaven! And if he does, he definitely can’t imply that it was because she was being too stubborn!

“I know well of my daughter’s history with my father’s wife,” Athena says, smoothly. “I come to you now with an offer of peace.”

Percy straightens his back. Peace?

Raising one graceful arm, Athena turns, indicating the structure behind her. “Look upon my temple,” she intones. The white marble shines even more powerfully against the blue and red paint, intricate scenes and figures ringing the top of the columns. “In the time of Pericles, it was built to commemorate the victory of Hellas over the armies of Xerxes the Great. It was to be the shining beacon of our world, a triumph of our power and influence over the race of men.”

The race of men might have had something to say about that, he thinks to himself.

“But it was not to be,” Athena says, mournfully. “As our influence waned, so too did our temple, until its might was all but forgotten.” 

Before his eyes, the paint fades away, ceilings and columns collapsing, the destruction of the Parthenon playing out in front of him. 

“Some two hundred years ago,” she says, her voice taking on a darker, more dangerous tone, “a grave insult was paid to the ruins of my ancient sanctuary.” Like curtains falling on a stage, darkness swallowed up the structure, swift and impenetrable. “Many treasures were taken from my temple, stolen, by foolish, greedy men, spirited away far to the north, where they have languished in unworthy hands.”

He narrows his eyes. She can’t possibly be talking about--

Athena turns back to him, her eyes blazing, somehow twice as tall. “Retrieve my treasures,” she commands, war personified, “return the prizes of Athens to their rightful place, and I shall give you my support against my father’s wife.”

“You…” Percy leans back on his haunches, staring dumbfounded up at the goddess. “You don’t happen to mean the Parthenon Marbles, do you?”

“Yes.”

“The ones in the British Museum.”

“The same,” she says, imperious as ever.

Fantastic. “Welp,” Percy says, slapping his thighs, scrambling up. “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll have to decline. Nice seeing you, by the way. I’ll tell Annabeth you stopped by.”

Her sharp gazes pierces him, full of fury. “You dare to refuse my support?”

He snorts. “When it means trying to get the UK to give the marbles back, absolutely. Do you know how stubborn they are about this?”

Lightning flashes behind her, nearly blinding him. “You will regret this,” Athena says, dark and foreboding. “You may have your father’s goodwill, but the queen of Olympus is clever and cunning, her displeasure swift and merciless.”

But Percy still shakes his head. “When Annabeth and I get married,” and it’s definitely a ‘when,’ it’s just a matter of when precisely, like after Junie can sleep through the night maybe, “I’d rather take my chances with Hera than try and untangle that particular can of olives.”

A growl, and a snap of her fingers, and Athena disappears.

With a start, Percy wakes up. Junie had gotten her chubby little hands around his nose, and had decided to pull.

“Ow, ow, Junie, hey,” he squawks, attempting to dislodge her grip from his face. “Hey, I’m awake, it’s okay.”

She laughs, illegally adorable, her grey eyes sparkling, squeezing harder. 

“Okay, okay,” he laughs along with her. “You got my nose, you win.”

As if she were waiting for him to admit defeat, she lets go, clapping her pudgy toddler hands together. 

“That’s right,” he picks her up, raising her above his head. “Barely sixteen months old and you already know how to take me down, don’t you? Just like your mommy.”

She smiles, waving her little fists.

Gods he loves this little monster.

Junie really is the best parts of both of them. She’s got her daddy’s hair but her mommy’s brain, quick and sharp and painfully adorable. She’s already learning to read Greek, Annabeth sitting her in her lap and sounding out vowels together, Annabeth taking her finger and tracing it over the letter shapes. This kid absorbs information like a sponge, which Percy can only assume is the natural conclusion of taking a son of Poseidon and a daughter of Athena and mixing their DNA together. 

Thinking about his dream, he frowns. “What do you think, Junie,” he asks his toddler. “Should I take her up on her offer?”

The baby says nothing.

“I mean,” he tilts his head, “Greece has been trying to get the marbles back for two hundred years. UNESCO has top lawyers on this. What does Athena think I can do?”

Junie blinks at him.

“On the other hand, I do really love your mom,” he admits, “and I really want to marry her. You’d like that, right? To have your parents be married?”

There’s no way she can understand what he’s saying, but she moves her head like she’s nodding. Or maybe she does understand. She is Annabeth’s daughter after all. 

Percy sighs. Dammit.

Time for a new project, he guesses.

***

Several months, a college graduation, and one relocation to Boston later, Percy growls, hurling his pencil at the wall. Mother fucker. Fuck the British Museum, fuck his tiny laptop screen, and fuck the Italian prick who decided to have the least ADHD-friendly handwriting of all time. 

Why the hell is he doing this again? Like, seriously. Why in all of Hades is he, an inexperienced, snot-nosed, first year master’s student deciding to tackle the return of the fucking Parthenon marbles of all things. Like, what is wrong with him? 

Roughly scrubbing his fingers through his hair, Percy stands up. He has to go for a walk, clear his head, or he might actually explode. 

Then he catches a glimpse of the photo pinned to the fridge.

Percy’s mom had taken it, a candid of Percy and Annabeth and Junie on a sunny day in Central Park. There, in perfect 1080p, Junie is laughing, at what he can’t even remember, her pudgy fists yanking on Percy’s hair, while her mother and the love of his life does nothing to extricate Percy from her grip, her face screwed up so hard she had tears in her eyes. 

Percy had talked a lot of shit to the goddess of war’s face, but truth be told… Hera still terrifies him a little. Which, he assumes, was her goal all along, but it would be nice to marry Annabeth without fear of something going terribly wrong--or, gods forbid, something happening to Junie. That simply was not a risk he was willing to take. Percy is content to spend the rest of his days as Annabeth’s life-partner and roommate, if it means that the queen of the heavens won’t have a reason to take out her issues on his children.

Even if the engagement ring in the back of the pantry is gathering dust. 

Sunlight, wan but warm, falls in from the window, landing perfectly on his pile of open books. “I know, I know,” he growls, speaking to the air, rubbing his face so it doesn’t get stuck in a permanent glare. “I just--I just need a few minutes, okay? Let me go down the block and get a coffee or something. Two minutes, Lady Athena.”

The light fades. Percy takes that as an acquiescence, angrily scribbling a note. He’s not sure when Annabeth and Junie will be back, but even angry as he is, he doesn’t want to worry them.

Snatching up his jacket, he slams the door shut, stomping out of his apartment building and down the streets of Boston. He must be accidentally doing his wolf stare, because people are practically flinging themselves out of his path as he hurtles down the sidewalk. Literally--some girl is walking her husky, and the poor dog actually whimpers, cowering as Percy rounds the corner. 

Coming to a stop, Percy slaps his hands over his face, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath. 

He might be in over his head a little.

Sighing, he looks to his right. He’s standing outside of a Starbucks. 

Percy doesn’t drink coffee, Annabeth does. And he knows exactly how much of a coffee snob his girlfriend is. Starbucks? Overpriced, overrated, over-sweetened garbage.

He pushes the door open, sliding up to the counter. “I’ll take a… iced mocha, I guess,” he says. “Large.”

“No problem,” chirps the barista. “I’ll have that out for you in a minute.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles.

One thing Starbucks does have going for it, though, are really good napkins for doodling.

Slumping down in his uncomfortable metal chair, elbows resting on the hard, faux-wood table, Percy takes out his pen, and doodles aimlessly on the brown napkins. No, not that pen. Just because it can write doesn’t mean that Percy wants to risk slicing his face open every time he has a stray idea. Completely out of the blue, Annabeth had gotten him a nice set of pens, and ever since then, Percy always keeps one on him. Now, if he could just remember to use the little notebook she had gotten him, too.

Percy is not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. He doesn’t have an image in mind, just lets his pen move, drawing endless chains of triangles and stars, nebulous shapes which form themselves into Greek letters. After he catches himself writing γλαυκῶπις for the eighth time in a row, he sighs, dropping his pen, and picks up the cup, taking a sip.

Yuck. At least the chocolate outweighs the coffee taste a little.

Gods, and their cups are always, like, drenched from condensation--not that Percy can feel it, but there’s practically a whole other drink on the outside of the plastic, dripping all over Percy’s pile of doodle napkins. That must be why they give out so many.

Grumbling, he mops up the mess, ink smudged into a blue-brown slurry.

He stops. 

He squints at one of his doodles. 

Not that anyone else could tell, but Percy had apparently been trying to recreate the signature of Ottoman sultan Selim III, the guy who had supposedly authorized the Earl of Elgin to take the Parthenon Marbles. Percy had been staring at copies of his signature all damn day, trying to tell if it had been forged or copied, but classical Arabic was just so far beyond anything he could even begin to wrap his head around. It was gorgeous work, but even looking at it made Percy’s eyes swim.

This particular doodle is not his best attempt. It looks nothing like the signature. It’s smudged, blotchy, but in a way that’s… weirdly familiar. 

Snatching the napkin up, Percy bolts from the Starbucks, leaving his mocha behind.

Taking the steps of his apartment building two at a time, he bursts into his kitchen. His set up is exactly how he left it, books spread out all over the table, laptop shut and laid askew, the dry, half-eaten remains of his morning muffin on a plate on top of his encyclopedia of illuminated manuscripts--except for one book, the one on Ottoman history of the nineteenth century. It’s been opened, its pages facing the door, in the exact opposite direction of all the other books. 

“Hello?” he calls into the apartment. “Anyone home?”

No response. 

Percy approaches the table. 

From the pages, Selim III stares at him, his portrait rendered in black and white, sitting just above a figure of his signature, his tughra. 

Percy picks up the book, squinting. 

The signature is crisp, clean, a work of art all by itself. 

He looks at his napkin drawing. Blurry and smudged.

Opening his laptop, he pulls up the scans of the documents in the British museum, zooms in on the letter’s seal.

Blurry and smudged.

Percy stares. 

It… can’t be that simple, can it?

In a daze, he fires an email off to his new grad advisor. Hopefully he won’t mind Percy sticking his nose in where he doesn’t belong. Hey Dr. T--was looking at the Parthenon marbles docs in the BM (don’t ask) and I noticed this weird smudge on the tughra. Lazy scribe, maybe?

And he closes his computer.

Later that night, while he puts Junie to bed, he gets a response. not sure. sent it to a colleague for a closer look. 

He can’t even be bothered to really think about it though, not with Junie looking up at him with Annabeth’s eyes, and asking for another book. “Alright, kiddo,” he acquiesces, settling in beside her. All her story books are in ancient Greek, and at age two, she’s starting to recognize the letters. “Which one are you thinking?” 

“Daw-fins, daddy,” she says, smiling.

“Dolphins, eh? Getting Mr. D on your side early, I see. As smart as mommy.” He leans down and kisses her forehead before he starts to read her the story of the sailors and their sudden dolphin madness. 

***

“Huh,” Percy says to himself a few weeks later, as he and Annabeth are chilling on the couch, watching some Netflix.

His advisor has forwarded him an article from the BBC (New evidence suggests Elgin documents to be forgeries) with an accompanying note: Amazing catch! 

“What is it?” Annabeth asks, nudging him with her elbow--a feat, since she also has an armful of a squirmy Junie to deal with.

“Update in the Parthenon marbles thing.”

That gets her attention. Anything Parthenon-related does. “Really?”

He shows her his phone.

Her eyes go wide as saucers. “Damn.”

“Yep.” He doesn’t realize he’s smiling until he feels his lips pulling at the sides of his mouth. 

“My mom is probably your biggest fan right now.”

He starts. “What did you say?”

Turning back to the TV, she still manages to cast him a weird look. “I said, my mom will probably love you for this.”

A beat, then Percy practically somersaults over the couch, darting into the kitchen. Wrenching open the pantry door, he shoves his hand behind their collection of flours, fingers grasping for--

“If you’re looking for any more sacrificial cookies,” Annabeth calls after him, “we burned them all when Junie got a cold.”

“Remind me to make some more,” says Percy, pulling out his prize. It’s a little dusty, streaks of flour clinging to the blue velvet. “I have a feeling we’ll need them.”

“Oh yeah?” She chuckles. “What, did Olympus put in a special order?” 

Percy slides back down next to her, ring hidden in his closed fist. “Can I have the baby for a sec?”

Eyes fixed to the screen, Annabeth passes her over. Junie’s hands automatically reach for his nose, ready to grab, but Percy places the ring in her grasp instead, kissing her forehead. “Hey, babe?” he asks Annabeth, handing her back. “I think our daughter has something for you.”

Annabeth takes her without a second glance. 

Then she does take a second glance.

Ring closed in her pudgy toddler fist, Junie holds it out to her.

Annabeth gapes. 

“So,” Percy says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder, “quick confession: I wasn’t just working on the marbles for fun.”

Annabeth just stares. Junie babbles.

“Your mom told me that if I helped get the marbles back, she’d back us against Hera if we ever got married. So…” He trails off, waiting for her response. As close as he is, he can see the tears start to well up in her eyes--a good sign. “Shall we?” he prompts.

“Oh thank all the gods.” Annabeth is crying, because she's Annabeth. And because she's Annabeth, she also wastes no time in transferring Junie to her other side, and holding out her hand so Percy can slide the ring on her finger. “I was so worried I'd have to have Chase on my Masters’ diploma, too.”

5)

Percy is making sauce when his phone lights up. He hits speaker. “Hey.”

“Hey man,” comes the tinny voice of Magnus. “Sorry I missed your call earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Percy says, “I figured you were dying or something.”

Magnus’ eye roll is almost palpable. “Very funny. What’s up?”

Bringing the spoon to his lips, he blows on it, taking a taste, before reaching for the salt. Needs way more. “Do you happen to have any Varangian guards in Hotel Valhalla?”

“Varangian guards? Uh, maybe. Probably. Why?”

“I’m doing a thing on the attempted reconquest of Sicily,” he says, lowering the heat a little to a simmer, “and I’m having some trouble piecing together the Battle of Montemaggiore. Know anyone who was in it?” 

Magnus hums. “I’ll ask around. Anyone in particular you’re looking for?”

Rifling through their little spice cabinet, he makes a mental note to get a new thing of hot sauce, tipping the rest of it into the pot. “If you have anyone who fought under Harald Hardrada, that would be great.”

“Hardrada? I’m pretty sure he lives on the fifth floor.”

Percy nearly drops the bottle. “No shit?”

“Big dude, long mustache, writes poetry?”

“Yes!” He picks up the phone, grinning from ear to ear. “Do you think I could come up and talk to him sometime?”

“Sure, but I thought you were doing something on Homer’s identity?”

He groans. “Backburnered for now until she stops driving me crazy.” No matter how many times Percy tells her, he can’t just drop the “Homer was actually an Egyptian woman” bomb without some serious evidence backing that up. And forgery is not one of his strong suits. Hence the need for a different topic for the time being.

“Has everyone ever told you your life is weird?”

“No, why do you ask?”

His phone suddenly vibrates, shocking him so badly he nearly drops it into the saucepan. Almost home, texts the love of his life, a shot of serotonin directly into his bloodstream. V hungry

“Sorry, Magnus, but I gotta run. Thanks for your help.”

“No problem. Say hi to my cousin for me.”

“Can do.”

“And make sure you pick a date soon! Sam needs to know so she can schedule her flight home.”

“Soon as I can.” You know, when his brain isn’t melting from grading undergrad papers. And making sure Annabeth and Junie are fed. And that Annabeth doesn’t lose herself in graduate school. And finding Junie a new preschool after she destroyed a classroom last month because of a monster. His toddler is a badass. But he’s a little worried she’s gonna follow Mommy and Daddy’s example as far as school goes. 

Sometimes, he thinks that their wedding just won’t ever happen. With Athena on board, he figured it would happen sooner or later, but time just… keeps getting away from them. Which isn’t the end of the world. A lifetime at Annabeth’s side is all he really needs, Mrs. Jackson or no. But he’s seen the silver fabric she weaved for her wedding dress. It would be a shame for all that hard work to go to waste.

And, yeah, he wants to see his little Junie dancing down the aisle flinging seaweed before her mother. He wants his mom to cry a little and he wants all his friends to be there to celebrate with them. Is that so much to ask? 

Speaking of his two favorite girls--”We’re home!” Annabeth calls from the hallway. “Junie, go say hi to daddy!”

Her bare feet slapping against the floor, his daughter comes toddling in, making a beeline for him. “Hey, kiddo,” Percy says, scooping her up. “How’s my best girl?”

“She’s just fine, thanks,” Annabeth says, setting her work bag down on the table. “Tell me I don’t have to wait for dinner--Margie kept me for the entirety of my lunch break, and I am starving.” 

“Just gotta make a salad and we should be good to go.” But he makes no move to finish chopping vegetables, entirely too enraptured with the way Junie smiles when Percy sticks his tongue out at her. “Let me guess,” he says. “Does my best girl want some olives?”

“Peas,” Junie says. 

“Oh, you want peas instead?”

She giggles, waving her arms. “Elaia, daddy!”

“Fine,” and he kisses her nose. “Extra olives for you.”

“Chip off the old block,” Annabeth says.

Handing her back to her mother, Percy sighs. “When am I going to get a kid who likes anchovies?”

“I’m doing my best here, okay?”

***

Hardrada is… not what he expected.

“Reputation isn’t that bad.” Hardrada is saying. “The production isn’t what it should be, but lots of her lyrics are still on point.” 

“The production ruins it,” Percy insists. “And as a follow up to 1989? It's just bad.” 

“And what about Lover?”

“What about Lover?”

“You can’t argue with the genius of that one.”

“It is terribly inconsistent,” Percy shoots back. “Yeah, ‘The Archer’ and ‘Daylight’ and ‘Miss Americana’ are sublime, but ‘ME!’? Come on!”

“Are you one of those people who thinks she peaked at Red?”

“Red is a bop from start to finish,” Percy fires back. “But she definitely peaked at folklore.”

“Thinking she peaked at folklore is just pedestrian when ‘tis the damn season’ exists!” Hardrada yells, drawing his axe, which is then promptly flung over Percy’s head. 

As the only mortal in a room full of armed, excitable, undead Taylor Swift stans, Percy beats a hasty exit, Magnus and Jason covering him as he flees, because they’re just so thoughtful like that. Percy’s pretty sure he saw Magnus take an arrow to the knee, going down in a heap, before he shuts the door to the hotel, finding himself in a Forever 21. 

Looking over his notes later as he gets back to his apartment in the North End, he frowns. They had spent… approximately twenty minutes talking about Sicily before getting solidly off track. Who knew an eleventh century viking would have such intense feelings about pop music? 

And now he’s singing “seven” to himself as he unlocks the apartment door, because it's a good song, and because it made him think of Annabeth. And he always wants to think of Annabeth. 

“Hey, babe,” he calls into the apartment, toeing off his shoes. “I’m back!”

He gets no response.

Percy looks up, confused. “Annabeth?”

“In the bathroom,” he hears, faintly. 

“Everything okay?”

“Yep! Totally fine!” she says, unconvincingly. 

“Alright,” he calls back. “Let me know if you need something.”

Moving Junie’s toys out of the way, he drops down onto the couch, grabbing his laptop. Hopefully he can make some sort of sense of the… notes… that he got from Hardrada. Though he’s probably going to have to trek out to Beacon Hill again, which, while not really out of his way, does mean he has to hike a bit from the Park Street station through the Commons, which makes him super sweaty and out of breath. It’s just embarrassing, walking into a hotel full of the greatest warriors of Valhalla, and Percy can barely handle a hill. 

However, he’s not so out of practice that he can’t sense Annabeth coming up behind him. “You good?”

“What do you think about getting married by the end of the month?”

“Sure,” he says, pecking at his computer. Damn autocorrect ruining all the Norse names. He keeps forgetting to download the right language package he needs. “But I thought you wanted to wait until after you turned in your portfolio?”

“Well… I might not be able to fit in my dress if we wait much longer.”

That gets his attention.

Percy turns around, slowly. Annabeth is grinning, holding a thin little piece of plastic with a circle on the end. She wiggles it. 

“Is that…?”

“Yep.”

“Oh.”

Her smile falls. “Are you mad?”

“What? No!” Percy slides his computer off his lap, twisting around to face her, up on his knees. “No, no, not at all. I’m not mad.” She slings her arms around his neck, pregnancy test warm against his skin. “I just…” 

Eyes warm, she looks into his, unafraid. “What is it?”

“It’s…” It’s silly, is what it is. But this is Annabeth. If he can’t tell her, who can he tell? “I just feel bad that I’ve gotten you pregnant twice before getting married.”

“Well, at least I’m not nineteen this time,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “But maybe we wouldn’t have this problem if you weren’t such a horndog.”

Percy snorts. “Me? What about you, Annabeth ‘3 AM anal before my first lecture’ Chase.”

“Jackson,” she corrects.

“Huh?”

“It’s Annabeth ‘3 AM anal before your first lecture’ Jackson.”

Grinning, he presses his mouth to hers. After all this time, she still smells like lemons, her lips soft and warm. “Not yet it’s not.”

“Then let’s make it happen.”

And, well, Percy can’t think of a better plan.

+1

Jamie hisses. “Fuuuuuck,” she whispers, the sound dropping like a stone in the dead lecture hall. “Goddamn shit fuck ass.”

And the worst part is, she’d actually spent a lot of time preparing for her Latin midterm. She’d made flashcards, she’d drilled noun endings, she’d even slept with the textbook under her pillow for fuck’s sake. 

Typical--the moment she sits down to take the test, it all goes out the window. 

“Legistne carmen longum de Troiano,” she reads under her breath, as though saying it out loud will unlock some hidden secrets of the cosmos. 

Nope. Nothing. The multiple choices remain as inscrutable as ever.

“Psst.” 

Jamie looks up. 

There’s a four year old staring at her. 

“Hi,” Jamie says. 

“Hi,” says the four year old. Junie, her name is, she thinks. 

Mr. Jackson, Jamie’s Latin TA, will bring his kids to class with him sometimes--his wife works full time, and Jamie guesses that they can’t afford a babysitter. She’s a cute kid, quiet, usually sitting in the corner of the lecture hall, drawing or even knitting, sometimes with her little sister playing with toy ships next to her. 

Now, she’s still staring at her. “What’s up?” Jamie asks.

“Bello,” says Junie.

Jamie blinks. “Sorry?”

“Legistne carmen longum de bello Troiano.” 

She squints down at her test sheet, attempting to visualize her flash cards. That’s… “Bello” is the right answer.

The fuck? The fucking four year old can speak Latin? “Thanks,” she whispers. 

Junie beams at her.

Darting her eyes to the front of the lecture hall, Jamie spies her professor, Buck, completely conked out at his desk, his chest rising and falling with his snores. Percy is nowhere to be seen, his laptop open at his chair. “What’s the next one?” Jamie turns her paper so that Junie can see better.

“Pluto Proserpinam infelicem cepit,” she announces, perfectly accented.

Jamie points to the one after that.

“Rex qui pontem fecit erat Ancus Martius.”

“Awesome.” 

The door to the lecture hall opens. Jamie whips around in her seat, startled, and sees her TA, walking down the steps. From the corner of her eye, Junie disappears, booking it to her dad, who scoops her up without missing a beat. “Hey kiddo,” he murmurs, smiling crookedly. “Were you bothering my students?” Then he glances at Jamie. “Sorry about that--hope she wasn’t too annoying.”

But Jamie shakes her head. “It’s fine.” Dammit. 

Still smiling, Percy makes his way back down to his seat. Junie grins at her over his shoulder, her arms wrapped tightly around her dad’s neck.

At the beginning of the semester, Professor Buck had droned on and on about Mr. Jackson, about how he was one of the best up-and-coming classics scholars in the world, how he could have had his pick of PhD programs, and how NYU was lucky to have him. He got first pick of assistantships this semester, apparently, but had volunteered to teach Latin 1001, and they should all be grateful, because he had done some beautiful new translation of Virgil for his Master’s thesis, and they were all going to learn a lot from him. 

Turning back to her exam, Jamie snorts. Of course a guy like that would have a kid who could speak perfect Latin. 

She really should have just stuck with German instead. 

[elizabethchristenia]

‘Mask’

I just finished my entry for the 2021 Foundations Revealed costume competition and got it entered a few hours before the deadline. Whew. It’s been... a long week.

I came across a poem, ‘Mask’ by Beth Bachmann and had the sudden idea... “Hey, that costume competition was for a literature character this year, wasn’t it? I wonder when that ends...” 11 days. It ended in 11 days. And with the business still shut down and me in isolation, I decided... why not? What else am I REALLY going to DO with the next 11 days anyhow? Could a mask count as a character? Here’s to hoping it does!

I made a mask from the pattern by @mctreeleth and also a jacket pieced from the giant pile of cabbage left after making over a thousand face masks while in quarantine. 

I started by pulling a pattern off my husband’s old patched 4XLT work shirt that has become my favorite house coat during the pandemic, so I had a fairly simple pattern to make out of the fabric I was going to piece. 

My original plan was to have an ombre effect on the jacket, light at the shoulders to dark at the hem. When I started laying out the pieces, it ended up also having a rainbowy effect from reds on the left to blues and purples on the right. It took about two days to sort and cut all the pieces of fabric from the mask scraps - the largest is 4″x 5″, and I drew the line at the smallest being 2″x 2″. When I wasn’t sure in what order to put the brighter colors in terms of going from light to dark, I pulled out my phone and used it as a tool to look at them in greyscale mode, and went with what order they looked like they should go when the color wasn’t involved.

I pieced each panel over top of the pattern piece it was going to be on, and added a little extra for wiggle room, then thread traced each piece onto the panel, stay-stitched just under 1/4″ from the edge, and cut. I bagged out the bottom hem as I flat-lined each piece to stash fabric that had been too loosely woven for masks, but was perfect for lining fabric. I then joined everything together with french seams and boom - quilted patchwork jacket.

Making the mask took longer than I expected. Based on the amount of Bridgerton and Fate: The Winx Saga that played in the background while I was working, it took about 14 hours from start to finish.

Printing the mask pattern onto interfacing was brilliant - although trying the DIY scotch tape/interfacing trick didn’t go so well. The time it took me to unjam the printer isn’t part of the 14 hours. I did manage to print it onto a 8-1/2 x 11 commercial poplin meant for printing your own photos onto fabric to put into craft projects - then I added Heat ‘N’ Bond onto the backs before cutting out the pieces. That went wonderfully and made the mask pretty sturdy once it was finished.

For the most part, I followed the instructions that were with the pattern - but I did end up making a few changes: 

I didn’t bother to top-stitch the bottom center seam. There’s no way to go all the way to the tip of the beak by machine, and nobody’s going to be looking at the bottom of the mask much anyhow. I just pressed the seam open very well on a sleeve board.

I didn’t add a fabric face strap - instead, I put two eyelets at the top and bottom of piece #10 after I was done and ran a lanyard through them with a cord lock, which worked very well.

On the round eye pieces, I edge stitched a line on the inside after flipping the lining around to the back side to keep everything smooth and in place.

Rather than folding the edge of the large circle down and pinning a ton of tiny pleats in place, I ran a line of small gathering stitches around the edge of the larger piece and used it like a drawstring to pull the large circle to the back side of the eye pieces and hold it in place. I ironed it well, and ran the gathering strings through the eyehole to the inside of the mask. I didn’t cut them off until after I had the eye pieces stitched down onto the mask. (I wish I’d taken a picture of this step, because it’s a lot quicker than the pinning - alas, it was 2 am and I didn’t think to.)

I didn’t slip stitch the eye pieces down onto the front of the mask. I pinned them in place, with pins situated kind of like spokes on a wheel. I edge stitched the eye pieces onto the mask by machine, walking the machine over each pin by hand. (Note - I was using an industrial sewing machine that handles thick fabric just fine and has a much heavier foot pressure than most home machines, so that probably helped this turn out well.)

If I were making this again, I would attach the bias for the eye holes from the front and fold it around to the back instead of the other way around - just for an aesthetic factor. It was a lot easier to make the final line on the bias look clean - which, sadly, will never be seen inside the eyepiece. The line around the bias inside the mask is the one part of mine that looks a bit messy.

Over-sized round “John Lennon” Sunglasses worked perfectly for lenses on this. After a while, they do fog up - I’m betting that wipes meant to keep the inside of goggles from fogging up will probably fix this.

I paired the jacket and mask with my pre-quarantine garb skirts and leather hat (shaped much like the quintessential illustration of a plague doctor), a shirt from my closet, and a cotton duck corset I had already finished as an experiment in color (Each external faux bone casing is in a different color radiating around half of the corset.) and also as an experiment in edge shaping - I made the corset extra-long, and then hand drew scallops around the bottom of the corset - not quite deep enough to count as tabs. I wanted to see if the bones were enough to keep these down and flat on the corset, or were they long enough they would flip up when worn? (Spoiler: They actually sit flat - yeay!)

Also learned on this project - when your husband is taking the photographs, and he is much taller than you, every picture that isn’t of your back will end up being a boob shot. XD

[babymetaldoll]

Passive aggressive (Spencer Reid/Reader)

Requested: Yes!

Warnings: Cursing, a little angst, a lot of fluff. Spencer being an asshole.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!Reader

Category: A little angst with a fluffy ending.

Summary: Spencer and his girlfriend don't know if they will survive their first fight.

Word count: 3.5 K

A/N: Hello my favorite people!! how are you doing? hope you are all safe!  here's a little "angsty" request. I had to pick between Gubler and Spencer, but I think Spencer suits better for this request. Hope you like it!

Masterlist

─────•~❉᯽❉~•─────

When (Y/N) fell in love with Spencer Reid, she couldn't think of anything wrong about him. Sure, she knew the man had flaws, but honestly, none of those actually bothered her. Not his rambling, not his lack of social cues. Neither his previous trauma nor how he kept moving his hands as he spoke, and how it gradually increased when the subject was about something he loved.

She liked all those things about him.

Spencer ignored all the flaws people pointed out about (Y/N), 'cos he was in love with her. He didn't care that she had a hard time sharing her feelings and that he had to basically profile her to get to know what was, in fact, going on with her. He didn't care that she was a little bossy from time to time, 'cos he loved making her happy.

All those things he could deal with, 'cos he loved everything about her.

But people don't warn you when you are dating for a long while. All those little things that don't matter can turn into a bunch of flaws that start driving you nuts. And after eight-month dating, their perfect honeymoon was over. Spencer Reid and his girlfriend were about to get into their first official fight.

No one prepared them for it.

- "Spencer? Can you help me, please?"- (Y/N) was in his room, folding bed sheets and towels.

- "In a minute!"- Spencer replied and didn't take his eyes from the book he was reading.

- "You said that twenty minutes ago"- (Y/N) frowned and dropped the clean sheets on their bed- "Please, Spencer. I'm tired, and I wanna go to bed. I'd finish folding the clean clothes if you helped me."

- "In a minute."- Spencer repeated and didn't even pay much attention to his girlfriend's annoyed tone of voice until it was too late. She was standing right next to her in the living room.

- "Spencer! Please! Fucking help me now!"- he raised both eyebrows and stared back at her, her cheeks red in anger and her hands clenched into fists.

- "Why are you talking to me like that? I haven't raised my voice to you."

- "'Cos I'm fucking tired, and you've been relaxing here for over an hour, while I do everything in the house, and you don't cooperate!"

- "Excuse me?"- Spencer stood up and took a look around- "Who cooked dinner?"

- "You did! and did you do the dishes? And cleaned the kitchen afterward? 'cos as far as I remember seeing it, it's still a mess!"

- "I'm gonna do it in a minute!"

- "No, you won't! You always do this! You make a big mess, pretend you'll clean it in a minute, and then you just leave it there until I do it!"- Spencer frowned and looked at (Y/N)'s angry face.

- "No, I don't! If anything! I am the one cleaning all the messes you leave around here all the time!"

- "What?!"- (Y/N) shriek, feeling almost insulted- "Which messes are you talking about?"

- "Top of my mind, all the hair you left in the shower! It was fucking disgusting!"

- "What?!"

- "If maybe you used all the freaking bobby pins you keep leaving everywhere, maybe the shower drain wouldn't get blocked!"

- "I didn't block the drain!"

- "And by the way, I told you I was going to help you with laundry. You didn't wait for me to it with you."

- "If I wait for you to help me, I'll run out of clean clothe, and I'll have nothing to wear tomorrow for work."

- "You do have a lot of clean clothing at your apartment! Maybe if you spent some time there, you'd see it. But you are always here!"

(Y/N)'s heart dropped. Since they had started dating eight months ago, they had spent most of their time in Spencer's apartment. She never overanalyzed it. They just did. (Y/N) loved Spencer's apartment 'cos it felt like home, and he always made her feel welcome.

Clearly, Spencer didn't feel the same. Not anymore, at least.

- "Sorry for intruding on your space, Spencer. I just thought you liked having me here!"- (Y/N) whispered with anger, trying not to cry, as she gathered all her things and put on her shoes.

- "I love having you here, but it's my house, and I don't appreciate you bossing me around, telling me what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, all the fucking time!"

Spencer kind of yelled, still mad, and not seeing the painful look in his girlfriend's eyes.

- "Well, enjoy your space. I won't tell you what to do anymore!"- and after those words, (Y/N) stormed out of the apartment, and Spencer sighed, staring at the empty space around him.

How did things get so out of hand? He had no idea. He didn't mean to hurt her, but the truth was that she was smothering him with all the nagging about the housework she kept doing. He didn't want her to do all the chores alone. He just had his own way of doing things, and he hated the fact she was imposing hers.

Could it have been said in a better way?

Yes. But Spencer didn't see that at that minute. He didn't realize how much he had hurt her. Why? Spencer didn't mean wrong, but he had no idea how hurtful his words could be when he was angry. And that night, Spencer was beyond angry.

Now, what's worse than having your first awful fight with your boyfriend? Having your first fight with your boyfriend, seeing him the day after at work, and having to act like everything is ok, 'cos you gave Hotch, your unit chief, your word your relationship wasn't going to get in the way of your work.

Bullshit! Of course, it was going to get in the way. Hotch knew it, (Y/N) Knew it, Spencer knew it. But the three of them pretended they had no idea what was going to happen.

Hotch thought Spencer and (Y/N) were going to be a mature young couple, 'cos he could see how much they loved each other. They had been in love with each other for so long before actually doing something about their feelings. Hotch thought they were never going to have any kind of trouble or argument.

He was so wrong it hurt.

The following morning, (Y/N) walked into the bullpen holding a black cup of coffee and headed straight to her desk. She waved at Emily and JJ and sighed, relieved, when she noticed Spencer was in the kitchenette with Morgan. That gave her the chance to casually ignore him and wait a little before dealing with him.

The truth was, (Y/N) was scared after their fight. She had known Spencer for over seven years, and she knew he had been honest about everything he had told her the night before. Everything. Sure, he yelled and hurt her. He didn't sugar-coat anything when he was mad. But he wasn't lying, and that was scary.

(Y/N) also knew Spencer was very passive-aggressive when he was upset. That was why she knew she had to be the bigger person and avoid him as much as possible while they were at work. Because, whatever she could say about the subject, or related, was going to trigger Spencer.

She remembered when Spencer got mad at JJ when he found out Emily wasn't dead. Spencer was hurtful when he was angry, and you don't want to be the target of his anger.

Spencer reached his desk and noticed his girlfriend was sitting all alone, practically hiding underneath a pile of files. His heart ached, staring at her for a second, fighting back the impulse of walking over and kissing her.

How long since he had kissed her? 14 hours, 17 minutes, 22 seconds. And counting.

But no. Spencer wanted to make a point, and he was still mad. He didn't want to cave in and lose that argument. Yes, it was their first fight, but he wanted to make a point. He didn't want her to boss him around in his own place and change his schedules. He had his own way of doing things. Like Paula Anka and Sinatra said: I did it my way.

Spencer had no idea, but his silence was slowly breaking (Y/N)'s heart more and more. She looked at him for a second, but he paid her no attention. Maybe it was better that way, she thought. She could focus on all the work she had to do.

But no. Of course, it didn't help.

When Penelope walked over and announced they had a case, half the team had already realized there was something wrong with their love bird. Spencer hadn't walked over (Y/N) with her favorite pastry soon after her arrival. She hadn't kissed him good morning. He hadn't spent half of the time staring at her from his desk. If anything, they had been ignoring each other most of the day.

Emily, JJ, and Derek looked at each other when (Y/N) stood up and walked alone to the conference room. Spencer didn't follow, didn't hold her hand. Didn't even look at her. He just gathered his things, put them in his satchel, and waited for a few minutes before standing up, just to make sure he wasn't alone in the room with (Y/N).

It was crystal clear: things were not going right.

Spencer ignored (Y/N) during the briefing at the jet, and he was relieved Hotch had paired him with Emily. (Y/N) focused on the case, and she was also glad she didn't have to see Reid during part of the day. She had to go to the last murder scene with Derek. It was sad and disturbing, but directing her attention to the case gave her a break and even some peace of mind.

- "What happened between you and pretty Ricky?"- Morgan was driving the SUV, and (Y/N) kept her eyes glued to the window.

- "We had a little argue"- she whispered- "Thank you for making me realize we are not subtle."

- "You are not glued to each other. That's weird. I haven't seen you two apart since you joined the BAU."- Derek chuckled and looked at (Y/N). Her arms were crossed on her chest, and her eyes were teary.

- "Wait, pretty girl. It was just a silly argument, right?"- Derek didn't even consider the couple could break up. Ever. For Derek, his best friend and his girlfriend were it for each other.

- "I don't know. I know I have to give Spencer a little space to cool off, but the more I think about it, the worst it feels."

- "But, (Y/N). He loves you. You can't let that go."- she cut him a short smile and nodded.

- "I love him too. Sometimes you wonder if that's enough, though. Maybe it was better for us when we were platonic."

- "You can't be serious"- Morgan frowned, and (Y/N) just shrugged- "Spencer is crazy for you. No matter what he said, he loves you."

Morgan was right. Spencer loved (Y/N) more than he loved himself. But he wasn't ready to let that one argument go just yet. Besides, the doctor focused on work that week. That case occupied 99% of his mind during the next couple of days.

(Y/N) knew that's how he usually worked. And the frustration that the case caused them, plus the anger he still felt after their fight, didn't make a good person out of Spencer. If anything, he was looking for a reason to start an argument with pretty much everyone, especially with (Y/N).

- "We have to consider this unsub is not acting on a fantasy. He is looking for revenge, and he is escalating quickly."- Hotch said, going over the files again.

- "But if the murderer spends time with them in their houses and kills them with something they own, something that actually means something for them, I think we might be looking for a woman. This is too personal, and at the same time, it feels domestic"- (Y/N) analyzed, staring at the latest murderer's scene pictures.

- "Perhaps the Freds didn't help her fold the clean sheets."- Spencer whispered and shook his head. (Y/N) held her breath and stood up. She had to move away from Spencer to avoid answering that kind of comment.

Unlucky for her, Spencer wasn't close to being done. And for the rest of the night, he whispered hurtful comments and kept breaking her heart over and over again. (Y/N) knew Spencer was mad, but she didn't imagine how much. Maybe she had pushed him too hard. What if that was it? If that fight meant the end for them? She was actually scared to ask.

After catching the murderer and solving the case, (Y/N) sat on her own on the jet back home, hugging her legs on her seat. Emily looked at her from behind her book and decided her friend needed some love. She poured a cup of earl grey and walked to her with a warm smile.

- "You are my hero, Emily Prentiss."- (Y/N) whispered and held her cup.

- "Well, it comes with the job. I can read it all over your face: you need tea, a warm bath, and fix things with Reid."

(Y/N) closed her eyes and sighed. Spencer was at the other side of the jet, asleep. Or well, pretending to be asleep just to avoid talking to her. She knew it, and it didn't make her feel better at all.

- "I don't know what happened, Em. But I think this might be it" Prentiss wide opened her eyes at those words and held (Y/N)'s hand right away.

- "No way. He is crazy for you."

- "Yeah, it's funny 'cos Morgan said the same a few days ago. But after this week, I think I actually drive him crazy in a sick bad smothering way. I really think I fucked things up"- (Y/N) was fighting the tears back and looked over the window to avoid human contact, though Emily still held her hand.

- "(Y/N), you have to talk to him. He loves you. He is not good with social cues and facing people. You know that."

- "Yeah, I know. But I thought it was going to be different with me. It's me, it's him. This was supposed to work easily. I guess I was wrong".

- "Nothing worth doing comes easy, (Y/N)"- Prentiss whispered and squeezed her friend's hand- "Don't give up on Spence."

(Y/N) didn't want to give up. But she was scared Spencer had already decided. It looked that way after his cold and mean attitude those days. When the jet landed, she tried to walk to him and talk, but he avoided her and just left.

(Y/N) walked to her car and sat behind the steering wheel. Finally, alone after a rough couple of days, she burst into tears. She was scared and frustrated, and most of all, anxious to know what was going to happen. That was a terrible mix of feelings.

She knew that she didn't want to push Spencer to continue a relationship that might make him miserable. That's why, after taking a few minutes to calm herself down, she texted him.

- "I'm sorry things got till this point. I didn't mean to make you feel so bad. I understand if you want to break up. I'll pick up my things tomorrow."

Spencer felt his cellphone hum as he walked into his apartment, holding a box of tandoori chicken. He thought for a second it might be Hotch with another case, and sighed annoyed just at the thought of missing the chance to relax on his own again.

But when he read it, it was actually worse.

He left the food on the table and read the text over and over again.

What had he done? Why did (Y/N) think he wanted to break up with her? That wasn't his plan at all. He just wanted to prove a point. Not end with their relationship.

Did he push things too far?

Did he act like an asshole?

Did he ruin everything?

Spencer stared at his apartment, and his heart ached. He didn't care if (Y/N) changed everything around. He just wanted her there, with him. Always. He could do laundry whenever she wanted to. He could fold sheets whenever she asked him to. He could be as domestic as she wanted him to be if that meant that she would stay with him.

(Y/N) drove back home. She thought about getting something for dinner, but honestly, all she wanted was to get into her bed and try to sleep. Spencer didn't reply to her text, which somehow surprised her. A part of her was waiting for him to tell her he didn't want to break up. But that silence was the confirmation she didn't want to have: it was over.

The young agent did her best to remain calm as she drove back home. She didn't want to cry. She could listen to Spencer's voice at the back of her head giving her some statistics about people crushing their cars when they drove under emotional distress.

(Y/N) made it to her building, parked the car, and literally dragged herself upstairs. She was about to reach her apartment when she saw him. Spencer Reid, waiting for her, sitting on the floor, his back resting against her door. She froze for a few seconds, looking at him, confused. He stared back at her and held his breath. Her eyes were puffy and red, her face was pale, and yet, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever set eyes on.

- "(Y/N), I'm so sorry."- Spencer whispered and stood up. He walked to her and held her hands. She didn't follow, so she stayed in silence. Spencer lifted her hands until they reached his face and caressed himself with them carefully for a few seconds, tears falling from his eyes.

- "I'm so sorry, I was an asshole."- he murmured and kissed her hands over and over again as he sobbed.

- "Spencer..."- she whispered and stared at him confused- "I'm sorry."

- "No, I am. I was mean to you, and you didn't deserve it. You have to know how much I love you. How deeply in love I am with you. I love spending all my time with you. I don't want you to live twelve and a half blocks away from my apartment. I want you there all the time. Or I can be here all the time. I just... don't want to lose you."

- "I don't wanna lose you either"- (Y/N) managed to say- "I'm sorry I was so bossy and that I invaded your space."

- "No, I'm sorry I was an asshole and so passive-aggressive with you. I love you. I promise I will never act like that again"- Spencer hugged her and hid his face on the crook of her neck. (Y/N) hugged him too and breathed in his smell, feeling at home right away.

- "I missed you so much"- Spencer held her face with both hands and kissed her sweetly, rubbing his lips against her with such love and tenderness, (Y/N) felt her heart skipping a beat.

- "I missed you more"- she sighed into the kiss and held him closer.

- "I swear, I'm never going to hurt you again, buttercup."

- "I'm not going to nag you again. I don't care if you don't fold sheets, chipmunk"- (Y/N) smiled and rested her forehead against his for a moment.

- "You are doomed, (Y/N), 'cos I'm gonna do whatever you ask me to do from now on."- Spencer leaned in and kissed her again, feeling her smiling against his lips.

- "I just want you to be happy with me, Spencer"- she murmured- "I never want to make you feel like I'm invading your space or being bossy."

- "Then move in with me"- he said and smiled like a mad man- "I don't want it to be my apartment anymore. I want it to be ours. Let's find a place for the both of us, so we can make it our home."

(Y/N) stared into Spencer's eyes, and all she could read was his excitement and adoration. So she giggled and nodded.

- "Yes! I wanna have a home with you!"- she answered and nearly started jumping- "Come on, let's go inside so we can start looking for a new apartment. Or a house!"- her excitement was contagious, and it made SPencer chuckle.

- "Or we can have make-up sex first,"- he suggested, and (Y/N) dropped the keys she was holding. "Did you know when we argue, post-powerful hormones are released? The rush of adrenaline, noradrenaline, and testosterone triggers a state of extreme arousal. The perception of threat combined with the influence of the hormones on our brains is what takes us from seething with anger to seething with desire..."

- "I love it when you talk dirty to me, Spencer Walter Reid"- (Y/N) opened the door, and the couple rushed in. They hated to argue, but at least something god had come out of it.

------

Spencer Taglist

@calm-and-doctor @all-tings-diego

[alltooreid]

Call It What You Want

Everyone around them is trying to discover the true nature of Y/N and Spencer’s relationship. Little do they know Y/N is trying to figure out the exact same thing. 

A/N: Sorry this took a lot longer than I wanted it to.... Mental health is hard but here it is!! I hope you guys love it :)) Additionally I added a lil garvez to this... but for it to work with the timeline we’re all just gonna pretend Lisa doesn’t exist... ok great!

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader (with a little splash of implied Garvez content for my personal joy)

Requested?: Yes!! :)) “can you do a one shot based off call it what you want??”

Type: Fluffiest Fluff

Word Count: 3K

Content Warnings: None! 

“My baby's fly like a jet stream High above the whole scene Loves me like I'm brand new So call it what you want, yeah, call it what you want to”

The team was sure something was going on between Y/N and Spencer, they just weren’t sure how to prove it.

Every sign pointed to the two dating, but the pair hadn’t said anything about it. Maybe they were trying to keep it a secret, but at the same time they didn’t appear to be being very secretive about it.

So ever since Penelope saw Y/N giving Spencer a ride home a week ago, she has been determined to uncover the truth, and hopefully the truth was her two best friends were in the world’s cutest, most perfect relationship.

She was using her technical brilliance to gather data when she was caught by none other than Luke Alvez.

“What are you doing in here?”

“This is my job Luke, I have to be in here,” she rolled her eyes.

“Well, I know that! I mean what are you doing right now, we don’t have a case.” he smirked “Are you committing any cyber crimes? You know you could get in a lot of trouble for those, the FBI won’t help you. You should let me help.”

She smiled, “You do know I got my job here from committing cyber crimes right? I don’t think I would need your help. Besides, I’m working on a personal project.” After some thought she decided Luke might actually be helpful “I’m trying to find out if Spencer and Y/N are dating.”

“I swear I saw them leaving together yesterday, that seems like pretty good evidence! I could be very helpful to you.”

“I’m way ahead of you, but I guess you can help,” she pulled up a new tab, quickly constructing a timeline while Luke pulled a chair next to her. “So our favorite pair’s relationship would, based on my intense experimentation and surveying, begin here,” she traced a circle around the start of the timeline with her cursor, “on that night we went out after the case and then wouldn’t stop talking to each other.”

Luke and Penelope discussed all the things they saw that led them to believe that Y/N and Spencer were more than just friends, from how keen Y/N was to listen to anything that came out of Spencer’s mouth no matter how difficult to follow, to Spencer’s willingness to touch her. After about 15 minutes however they were interrupted by none other than Y/N herself. Penelope quickly switched tabs, so that it now appeared she was just showing Luke a funny kitten video.

“Hey guys! What are you doing in here?” “Oh you know, just wasting time. . . What’s up?” said Luke.

“I was just checking to see if you wanted to go to lunch! If you have any opinions as to where that would be great too because no one out there can make a decision . . .”

“Of course I want lunch! I’ll be out there in just a sec,” Penelope smiled and started closing her work done as soon as Y/N left, almost forgetting Luke’s presence.

“Um, Penelope?”

“What is it Luke?”

“Do you think you’d ever do anything like what Y/N and Spencer are doing?” he asked.

“Like what? Keep a secret? You know I’m terrible at that stuff.”

“No, no I mean like . . .” he took a deep breath, “You know, like dating a coworker?”

“What does that have to do with anything? Now hurry up and come to lunch, we can keep working afterwards,” she replied.

Luke awkwardly smiled, and they both left.

Little did Luke and Penelope know that as they debated and pieced together aspects of Y/N and Spencer’s relationship, trying to uncover if they were dating, Y/N was doing the exact same thing.

Her and Spencer had been on three dates, each more boyfriend and girlfriend than the last. They got coffee one day, then went to a movie, then a nice restaurant for dinner. Tonight Spencer wanted to keep it a surprise, but that just made her even more confused.

Sometimes her and Spencer would sit next to each other at the round table, and now when they did that he would reach over, not to hold her hand, but just to link their pinkies together.

She didn’t know what that meant.

Sometimes Y/N would go on a tangent and realize she had been talking for almost an hour about nothing in particular, and when she realized Spencer was the only one still listening would apologize for wasting his time. To which he would reply, “Why would I be upset about spending time with you?” She didn’t know what that meant.

And one time, on her and Spencer’s first “date” they were about to part their separate directions, and Y/N had no idea what to do with her body or her hands, Spencer wrapped her into a hug, and she swore she felt his lips brushing against the top of her head.

She really didn’t know what that meant.

Which is why she continued to let Penelope and Luke have their fun trying to decipher her and Spencer’s social cues. She knew as soon as she was about to enter to ask about lunch, Penelope was not exactly quiet and Luke wasn’t any better, but she let them believe they were being sneaky.

Besides, maybe if they found the answer they could let her know.

When the team returned from lunch she couldn’t help but continue to contemplate this issue further, Spencer hadn’t really said anything to her at lunch. Were they still just friends? Were they dating but not telling anyone? Were they going to tell anyone?

“Y/N! Are you excited to hang out tonight?” Spencer asked.

Hang out. So it definitely was not a date. . .

“Of course! Right after work right? Your place?”

“Yep! It’s a date,” he smiled and walked away, leaving Y/N in a state of confused panic. What was this? For someone so logical and scientific, Y/N wished that Spencer Reid would just tell her the kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, and genus of their relationship.

Maybe then she could stop dissecting it to try and figure it out.

　♡　　♡　　♡　　♡　　♡　

As Y/N stood outside Spencer’s apartment building, she struggled to muster up courage to go inside. It’s not that she was nervous to hang out with Spencer, it was just Y/N knew she needed to have the “what are we” talk with him for her own personal sanity. And she just wasn’t sure yet what his answer would be.

She had made her way into the building and gotten to Spencer’s floor when she ran into the man of the hour himself.

“Oh there you are! I was about to come down and get you,” he said.

Y/N glanced at her phone, “I’m sorry, am I late?”

“No, no, no. You’re perfect, I just got excited.”

That confused Y/N even more, she couldn’t decide if that leaned more towards friend or date territory. However all of her anxieties were forgotten for a moment as soon as she entered Spencer’s apartment.

Almost all the lights were off, except for several strings of lights shaped like stars, strung in different directions across the room. In the corner were several folded up blankets and sheets, and pillows were spread out across the room.

“Do you like it?”

“I love it, although if I’m being honest I don’t really know what it is . . .”

“13 months ago we were on a case, the one were the unsub was killing couples when they went out camping so that no one would look for them for days, and you said that you used to go camping all the time but you didn’t think you could go anymore. So I bought stuff so we could go camping together, right here.”

Y/N was left almost speechless, “I- I don’t even know what to say, Spencer this is incredible.”

He beamed, instantly satisfied with that answer. “I tried to find a tent, but all of the stores I went to said I should order one online . . . I figured it would be more fun to build a fort instead.”

Spencer brought over the supplies he had bought and gathered, various sheets and comforters, pillows, his leather couch cushions, sleeping bags, a large collection of clothes pins, and some more lights. Except Spencer left a single bag in the pile, the only one from a craft store.

“Do you want me to grab that one?” Y/N asked.

“Oh um, no don’t worry about that one. I saw something stupid on that site JJ and Garcia really like while I was passing JJ’s desk. . .  Pinterest? Yes that’s it. And I tried to make it but even though I memorized the instructions I couldn’t get it to work. . . I kind of just gave up and threw everything in there.”

“Can I try it?”

He nodded, and Y/N got up and glanced into the bag, in it was a push light, warm toned tissue paper and a couple empty paper towel rolls, all stuck together, but also somehow falling apart. Y/N couldn’t help but smile, “Were you trying to build me a campfire Dr. Reid?”

“Well you said that your family used to have this big bonfire every year, and that it used to be one of your favorite traditions until you couldn’t handle going anymore, so I thought I could make one that would be a little safer for you. Turns out that you actually need four PHDs to be good at crafts though.”                    

“Spencer this whole date is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me . . . Thank you.”

“Of course, I really want you to enjoy yourself when you're around me Y/N.”

“Spencer, I’ve never not enjoyed myself when I’m around you, and you were with me when I got shot. You’re my favorite person, you do know that right?”

He blushed, “You’re my favorite person too Y/N.”

So the two lovers built a blanket fort, draping sheets over string lights and shoving the inside full of pillows and blankets, giggling the entire time. Y/N taught Spencer the simplicity of DIY projects, and how sometimes the directions needed to be adjusted slightly based on personal preferences and ability. Soon the pair were cuddled up together on the ground, no other space to be except for right next to each other, as the rest of the fort was covered by snacks, pillows, their homemade campfire, and Spencer’s vinyl record player.

“Did you do this on purpose? Making me be so close to you?”

“No, I would never, it’s not my fault this area is so small . . . “

“Mhm, although I’m sure a genius like you could figure out how to make an adult sized fort, I’m very glad you didn’t,” she said, giggling and squishing herself closer to him. They smiled and kissed each other, before Spencer spoke.

“You make me so, unbelievably, happy. I never thought I could feel like this until we met Y/N.”

Y/N smiled even bigger, “Spencer I really, really like you,” she paused, it was now or never, “but um, what do you want to call this, like what we’re doing.”

“Well what do you want this to be? Because I want you to be my girlfriend.”

She smiled, “I want you to be my boyfriend.”

“Well then that’s what we’ll be,” he said, kissing her on the forehead.

“Well you do know the team, particularly Penelope and Luke have the exact same question.”

“Well I think more than Luke wondering if we’re dating, I think he’s just wondering if Penelope will date him. . . So I say let them have their fun for a little while, before we tell everyone.”

She smiled, “Perfect. They’re profilers, they’ll figure it out eventually.”

“Well, I think we should watch a movie. . .  Although I mostly enjoy my cinema in Russian, tonight is about you and I don’t want to give you a headache. What’s your favorite?”

“You’re going to laugh at me.”

“I promise I will not laugh at you darling.”

“High School Musical 3.”

　♡　　♡　　♡　　♡　　♡　

So Y/N spent the rest of that night explaining the plot of the first two High School Musical movies, then explaining why the third one was the clear winner, and then finally showing Spencer the third one off of her phone, where she had it saved to her cloud for emergencies.

And although singing and dancing adults pretending to be teenagers was not exactly Spencer’s favorite genre, he loved how happy the series as a whole made Y/N. So he latched onto it, and learned as much as he could about it.

One particular scene however, in one of the earlier films, seemed to make Y/N extra excited, as she spent the longest amount of time talking about it. So Spencer decided he knew exactly what to do to prove to her he was in this relationship for the long haul.

Spencer could tell she was anxious before their date, and it didn’t take him long to guess that it was because she didn’t know how serious everything was to him. Yet, he didn’t want to be too obvious that he wanted her to be his, because if he had assessed wrong he would make a complete fool out of himself.

But when she asked him, she seemed so nervous, so small, he knew he had made a mistake in waiting, and now he wanted to make it up to her.

So as she was walking in the next day he caught her. “Y/N!”

“Hi Spencer! What’s up?”

“I have a present for you. . .” he said, handing her a small box wrapped in shiny gold paper.

“For me? Why?”

“Oh you know, just because. . .”

As Y/N unwrapped the box, Spencer got more and more nervous… What if she hated it? What if she thought it was stupid or too soon or didn’t get it or-

“Oh my god Spencer I-”

“You know what it’s stupid, I don’t even know why I got it for you. I can return it and find you something you’ll actually like-”

“I love it Spencer, it’s perfect. Will you put it on me?”

Spencer hooked the chain around his new girlfriend’s neck, the small “S” pendant shining in the light.

“It’s like Gabriella’s. . . I love it. I can’t believe you would care to remember something like that…”

“Of course I would remember that. I have an eidetic memory. Did you know that although the original purpose and origin of initial jewelry was largely unknown, they date back to the 14th century?”

“No, I just mean… It’s very thoughtful Spencer.”

He smiled, “Well I’m sorry to kill the mood, but I really have to go to the bathroom. I drank 3 cups of coffee this morning and I was standing here waiting for you for 18 minutes and 4 seconds before you came in.”

She laughed, and then hugged him, “Well don’t just stand here! Go!”

Spencer ran off, leaving Y/N to walk into the bullpen alone. As Y/N was making her way to her desk, she was stopped by none other than Penelope Garcia and Luke Alvez, Penelope up front, Luke standing a foot or so behind her, ready to back her up.

“Y/N! We know your secret, you and Spencer are secretly dating. . . We figured it out this morning. You can’t hide from us anymore,” Penelope said, Luke nodding behind her.

“Well yeah we’re dating, but it’s not a secret.”

“What? Excuse me? You haven’t told anyone!”

“Yeah but we haven’t really made any effort to hide it? We told everyone about the time we went to the movies?”

“Yeah but- Um, we just thought we were being sneaky. . .” Penelope said.

“You might wanna get a little better at that guys, the Bat Cave is not soundproof.”

“Dang it, I really need to work on that…” Penelope said. “Well Luke Alvez, I suppose our quest has been conquered.”

“See! We were right, I told you I’m great help,” Luke said.

“Oh don’t get it too twisted, this was almost all me.”

After a moment of playful banter, Y/N stopped them “So when are you two going to start “secretly” dating huh?”

“Uh hmph, I don’t know what you talking about. I would never,” Penelope said.

At that moment, Spencer returned from the bathroom, and came up upon Y/N hugging her from behind and leaning to rest his head on her shoulder. “What are we talking about?”

Penelope threw her head back in defeat, “Nothing, 187, we were just talking. . .”

“Don’t you think Luke and Penelope would make the cutest couple Spencer?” Y/N smirked.

“You know what? Yeah I do!” Spencer played along, “Have you guys ever thought about that?

Luke was beaming behind Penelope, while she looked like she was trying to hide her enthusiasm. “No actually I haven’t,” she said.

“Well you definitely should,” Y/N said, giggling as her and Spencer walked to his desk.

“Hey, wait come back here! What does your necklace have on it?” Penelope asked, half running after them, Luke closely behind her.

“Whatever you want Penelope, whatever you want.”

“I want to wear his initial On a chain round my neck, chain round my neck Not because he owns me But 'cause he really knows me”

Thank you so much for reading!! Please reblog and let me know what you think :)))

holly’s tiny taglist: @reidingmelodies @hercleverboy @rigatonireid @muffin-cup​ @takeyourleap-of-faith @wheelsup​ @s1utformgg​ @averyhotchner​ @widow-cevans​ @rotinireid​

please let me know if you would like to be added or removed :))

[hogwartsfirebolt]

Desvelo (or: The Case of Subject A1534: Harry James Potter)

Draco turned on the recorder as soon as he walked into the lab. Two of his colleagues stood by the main table, fastening the unconscious subject’s limbs, and a third one handed him his notes, which he took without looking up as he unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves.

There was a hum of magic around the body, keeping it safe, keeping it still. He forced himself not to think too hard about who it belonged to.

“What’s the status?” he asked the room at large, approaching the table.

“Alive, under a magically induced coma to prevent strain to the core. We haven’t identified the curse,” replied Zeller, holding her hands over the subject’s head to hold the charm. Draco nodded at her, turned his face towards the recorder and spoke clearly.

“This is Draco Malfoy, code DM17008512, head of the Dark Arts BioStudies division, reporting from Level 9, on the 25th of June, 2008.” He walked around the exam table, lowered Zeller’s charms and replaced them with his own, finding the subject’s vitals with his magical awareness. “Subject A1534, Harry James Potter, is alive, kept under a magical coma. Slight bradycardia, as expected, blood pressure of 110/60, core unstable at 250 joules and climbing by the second.”

The manic energy of Harry’s magic zinged his forearms, crazed, looking for an outlet. Draco felt it around his fingers, underneath his nails. He clenched his teeth.

“This is Rose Zeller,” she picked up as he fell silent, “code RZ19003276, member of the Dark Arts BioStudies division, reporting from Level 9 on the 25th of June, 2008. Subject Harry James Potter arrived unconscious in the emergency department of St Mungo’s Hospital in the early hours of the 24th of June, 2008, and was referred to the Dark Arts Biostudies division that very morning, after the medics failed to identify the curse responsible for his condition.”

Draco knew all that, and yet it made his hackles rise once again to remember what the medics had said, the call he’d received the previous day, informing him of his new subject. He looked at Harry’s prone form now, the easy rise and fall of his chest as the coma imitated sleep, the peaceful drop of his eyelids, and had to will himself not to think as he ran his hands down the tan neck, the long clavicles. This was just a subject, he told himself. Nothing was different. He cleared his throat, “Curse entry identified over second rib, at midclavicular line on the right side. Trifocal, seeming to suggest a curse of the Imperial family. No exit mark apparent upon inspection.”

He took his hands off the body, clasping them together so he could pretend they weren’t shaking, and retracted his magic, pulling it free of the magnet of Harry’s. It was quiet, only the static hum of the spells keeping Harry unconscious broke the silence of the insular room. His soft breaths. The occasional brush of Zeller’s pen against paper. Draco tried not to stare, and couldn’t. There was so much brown naked skin on display, so much history, that no matter how hard he attempted to root himself to the present, he found himself falling into memories of that body, of those hands, of years of watching. Years of wanting.

“No exit mark apparent upon inspection,” he repeated. Made up his mind. “Impossible to reach further conclusions until the subject is woken up. Zeller, Nott, rennervate him. I shall stabilize his core.”

It was a testament to how far he’d come that neither of them thought to argue. They moved, one of them standing at each of Harry’s sides, and Draco stayed near his head, reaching towards his core with his magic, coaxing it into stillness, easing it from the entropy the curse had unleashed.

“Rennervate,” Zeller and Nott whispered in unison.

Harry’s core cells shook against Draco’s hold, fought the intrusion for a moment, but he held on, and soon enough Harry’s eyes popped open, frantic, his body immediately battling the restraints, thrashing, attempting to free his arms and legs, to flee. But still Draco held on, and at last, when Harry looked up and their eyes met, he stopped struggling, as sudden as a bucket of water dousing a fire.

“Potter,” Draco muttered through clenched teeth, as he reined in Harry’s core cells. “You need to tell us what they hit you with.”

He felt Zeller’s magic join his own, take some of the brunt of Harry’s magic, lift a bit of weight off his shoulders. His breaths came more easily.

“W-what?” Harry asked, still confused, still looking at Draco, only at Draco.

“You’re in the Department of Mysteries,” Draco said, “you were attacked. Do you remember what they hit you with?”

“I don’t— what? Department of— Do I know you?”

“Boss, his core is nearing 300 joules,” Nott said. “We need to put him down again.”

But Draco barely heard him. “You don’t remember me?”

Harry blinked, confused, tried to stand up, shook his wrists against his restraints when he found he couldn’t. “No. I was hit?”

“Yes, with a curse. Did you have the chance to hear what it was?” Zeller asked when Draco, stunned into silence, didn’t continue the interrogation.

“A curse? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Harry said. “Did you kidnap me? I — what’s happening?”

“Boss, core at 325”

“You’re the boss?” Harry asked Draco, looking right into his eyes once again. “I thought… you feel familiar but I don’t really—?”

“Boss, 350.”

“Mr Potter,” Rose said, “We really need you to...”

“Potter?” Harry asked.

Draco felt faint.

“360”

“Am I—?” Harry didn’t look away from Draco, his eyes pleading.

“380”

“Put him down,” Draco said.

Nott did.

The silence that followed ringed in Draco’s ears. They were all quiet, stunned into it. Harry lay unconscious on the table once again. Draco could still hear his pained confusion.

“Subject appears to suffer from severe amnesia,” he said at last. “Recording over.”

-

They’d kissed once.

It could almost have been passed off as an accident, brief and light as it was.

To Draco, it counted.

It had been four years before, the night Harry graduated from the Auror Academy. Him and the other 24 graduates had piled up into a bar and made a big deal of it, gotten drunk out of their minds. Draco’s presence had been a mere coincidence, his getting drunk a very conscious decision once he’d seen the boisterous, red-coated lot.

His memories were confusing, the images blurring into each other as the night progressed in increasingly drunker increments, but he remembered stumbling into the bathroom and finding Harry there, broad shoulders free of his coat, with Ron weeping into his arm and saying, “I just love you so much, you’re my best friend I love you sooo—“ and Harry patting his shoulder and saying, “I know, I know, I love you too.” He remembered, somehow, ending up at their table. Doing shots with them. A confusing few minutes on the dance floor. He remembered standing outside the bar in the rain and then, right there, the kiss. He couldn’t remember what had led up to it, but the fact of it had sobered him up immediately, and he remembered it, crystal clear, himself leaning against the wall, wet from the rain, and Harry, a long line of heat along his side, their lips pressed together. He remembered pushing for more, and then Harry pulling back. Harry saying, “Oh god.”

Then, the night dissolved in his mind and the next thing he remembered was waking up the following morning, hungover.

He’d not seen Harry for weeks after that, and when they’d finally met again at an interdepartmental meeting, Harry had given him a mere nod, eyes sliding right past him. As if nothing had happened. Perhaps, to him, it hadn’t. But to Draco, it counted.

-

“What’s the plan now, boss?” Nott asked him, droplets of sweat high on his brow from maintaining the charm keeping Harry down.

Draco took a deep breath. “We got some information. Find all references to amnesia linked to a curse of the Imperial class on the records.”

“On it.” Zeller said.

Harry lay unconscious once again, incongruous in the calmness of his induced sleep. A tamed lion. Draco reached forward, removed his glasses, folded the temples carefully. Then, he ran his knuckles along the dark, freckled cheekbones.

“I’m going to talk to The Professor,” he said. His colleagues hummed their assent.

The Professor’s office stood right at the end of Level 9, a door you might not see if it didn’t feel like being seen, in a corridor that, at times, didn’t exist at all. Fitting for the head of the department of mysteries.

The door opened for him before he knocked, which told him he was expected. When he walked inside, Hermione Granger stood beside her desk, two books in her hands.

“Professor,” Draco said. “You heard the recording.”

“Yes,” she replied, fingers quick on the pages of one of the books she held. “I want nothing more than to go see him myself, but I have to meet the minister right now. I did find these, I hope they help,” she handed Draco the books, one of them open to a specific page. Her level, browned eyed gaze was harsh on him. “The only reason I’m not storming your lab is that I know you’re capable. Take care of him.”

“I will.”

She nodded. “Do whatever it takes to bring him back.” He would.

Back in his lab, Draco sat on top of his desk and paged through the books Hermione had given him. The first one, the one she had handed him open, was on mind magic.

The dissolution of memories following an attack with dark magic, the title read at the top of the page.

A clear marker of mind magic is its lightness. Schuester and Neels classify the magical particles that travel through neurons as a follow-up to their natural action potential into two large groups: permalight and everblue. The permalight particles possess an immutable quality that ensures their stability, whereas everblue particles, in charge of the pathways pertaining to memory, when disturbed by specific dark curses (especially those dealing with the proceedings of the magical center in the medulla oblongata) become overactive, releasing an increased amount of energy that forces the magical core into a state of overcompensation. Cases with magical cores that reach up to 500 joules have been documented, and the main consequence is a loss of the overactive everblue particles and the resultant dissolution of memories.

“Found it,” Draco said, marking the page down and putting the book aside before reaching for the second one. “Nott, give me a rundown of the state of his everblue particles.”

“Got it,” Nott replied. After a couple seconds, he added, surprised, “the everblue particles are… going haywire, just frantic, it’s hard to say. They’re definitely more active than they should be.”

“Attempt to stabilize, give me a second,” Draco opened the second book. It was a Mind Potions manual. He paged through it, looking, looking, until he found what he was looking for. “McKinney, get me a silver cauldron.”

“There’s an antidote?” Zeller asked.

Draco nodded. “It will take a few hours to brew, but if I’m right, he should be out of here by tomorrow morning.”

“Baseline?” McKinney asked.

“Memory potion. Get me one as well, I’ll modify as needed.”

In a second, they were all working again. Draco went to the supply closet and picked out the ingredients carefully, one finger over the page that held the instructions. If he did it right, Harry would be back the next day. That was all that mattered. That was all he cared about.

“You need help?” McKinney asked him when he took the cauldron from her. He didn’t, not really, but one look at Harry lying on the exam table and at the clock on the wall had him nodding.

He would bring him back, and he would do it as soon as possible.

“Yes. Chop the staghorn.” He got the fire going, crushed the neem leaves, squeezed the valerian root. Together, he and McKinney completed the ingredient list, and Draco added them to the cauldron one by one, paying attention to the scent of the fumes, the color of the smoke. Once he had a royal blue potion, he turned the fire down.

“It needs to simmer for two hours. After that, I’ll need your help to wake him up and make him drink it.”

Mckinney cringed. Draco nodded, sympathetic. He wasn’t keen on forcing Harry, either.

“Will he have his memories back, boss?”

“The important ones, right away. He should remember the rest in the next few days.”

“Everything he remembered before?”

Draco nodded. “If I did it right, yes.” He was looking at the clock, at the slow tick of the thin hand marking the seconds. “You should all go grab lunch, I will need you sharp. I can guard the subject.”

They all recognized it as the order it was and, after taking off their aprons and offering to bring him coffee once they returned, they left him alone. The room was eerily silent in their wake. Draco brought a stool next to the exam table and sat there, right beside Harry. His hand, wide and open, lay next to his body. Draco swallowed, brought his hand up and ran the tips of his fingers down Harry’s palm.

Would he remember, Draco wondered.

He supposed it didn’t really matter.

-

When he’d mentioned the graduation party, over a year after it happened, Harry had simply stared at him blankly.

“You were there?” And then, sheepish, “Oh, man, I was so drunk I don’t remember a single thing. I’m sorry, did I do something embarrassing? Do you have embarrassing stories about me?”

Draco laughed it off, relayed the story of a weepy Ron in the bathroom of the bar, and Harry laughed along.

They’d become friends by then, were already past the tentative first drinks, well into the stage of inside jokes, of shared meals. And now Draco knew that Harry didn’t remember.

For a while, he willed himself to forget. Once he realized it was impossible, he resigned himself to living with his one-sided crush. Harry’s friendship was already so much more than he could’ve ever hoped for, his hyper-distilled attention heady enough as it was. It was enough.

-

“Ready?” Draco asked, holding the vial between his fingers. Zeller, Nott and McKinney stood at Harry’s sides. He waited for their nod before giving the order, “Now.”

“Rennervate.”

Once again, Harry woke up fighting, struggling with his binds before even becoming fully conscious. This time, though, Draco was right there, a hand to Harry’s sweaty nape, the short hair at the back of his head.

“Hey, it’s okay. Harry, wake up.”

Harry did, his eyes overtaken by his pupils for a couple seconds before adjusting to the bright lights of the lab. He looked at Draco, right at him as he had before, just as confused. “What’s happening?”

“You lost your memories,” Draco whispered, disarmed by the absolute trust in Harry’s eyes. “We can help you, but you have to drink this. Will you?”

He showed him the vial. Harry eyed it, swallowed. “Yeah, okay.”

Draco breathed out, relieved. “Here, I’ll help you.” He tipped Harry’s head back, brought the vial close to his lips. “It tastes good, I promise. I made it specially for you.”

Harry nodded, didn’t look away from him for a second as he swallowed, and soon enough, the vial was empty.

The potion acted immediately. The monitors beeped as Harry’s pulse skyrocketed, his breath quickening, but his core began to regain stability, the number climbing down from 400. His hand shot forward, clung to Draco’s arm, and Draco let him, watched him ride the waves of memories.

At last, Harry’s eyes fell closed, a faint sheen of sweat covering his forehead. The monitors showed his core at 80 joules.

“What’s your name?” Draco asked softly, gently.

“Harry James Potter,” Harry whispered, eyes still closed. He brought a hand up, covered his eyelids.

“Do you know what they hit you with?”

“Desvelo”

Unveiling.

Draco nodded at Zeller. She nodded back, took off her apron and walked out of the lab, to investigate previous uses of the curse on their records. Draco turned back to Harry.

“Do you know who I am?”

Harry stayed still for a moment, then nodded, a slight jerk of his chin. He didn’t say anything.

“How are you feeling, Harry?”

“My head really hurts.”

Draco moved his sweaty hair away from his forehead, still gentle, still speaking low. “Do you want a painkiller?”

Harry nodded.

“Nott, bring me ibuprofen, 650 milligrams,” he didn’t turn to see if Nott had listened, instead ran his fingers through Harry’s hair once again. “Anything else?”

He saw Harry’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “Yes. Back when— On the day of my graduation I—“

“Oh god, no,” Draco said quickly, hands stilling in Harry’s hair. “You don’t have to say anything. Please, just… you need to rest.”

“I do. But… we’ll talk about it later?”

Draco took a deep breath. “Yes. We’ll talk about it later.”

“Good.”

This is my gift to the amazing, lovely @onbeinganangel for the Wheel of Drarry Mini Exchange. Mari, you are the absolute loveliest and just, omg, give all of us on the server so much every single day, with your time and encouragement. It was a joy to get to write for you. I really hope you like it!! Infinite thanks to @moonstruckwytch for betaing this for me ❤️

[fairyoftbz]

lavande | l. hyunjae

🥡 pairing: crush!hyunjae x fem!reader 🥡 wc: 3.2k 🥡 genre: fluff, university au, slice of life 🥡 tw: none? i think? 🥡 synopsis: as you are talking to Chanhee, your crush appears in the lecture room, leaving you with a hammering heart. 🥡 a/n: it's already Monday again, so posting time!! i wrote this because i kinda miss uni without covid, I had such a good time back in 2019 😩 feedback is always appreciated!! <33 🥡 requested: yes, thank you! i hope it's good enough!!

╰☆☆☆☆╮

“Have you done the readings we were supposed to?” Chanhee whispered in your ear as you turned on your computer, the screen remaining black made you frown as you quickly glanced at your friend, hand deep in your backpack to find your charger.

“Wait, let me guess. With the abandoned puppy eyes you're giving me, you want me to summarise what this was about, am I right?"

“Please Y/N, I didn't have time this week, it has been so hectic! I promise I'll buy you a coffee," you waved your hand in front of your face to let him know that he didn't need to, and you leaned your arm under the table to look for a plug while summarising what you had understood to your friend.

He listened intently until his eyes looked over your head, a smirk forming on his mouth. You frowned for a split second but continued your explanation, noticing that the smile didn't want to leave Chanhee's face. You deeply sighed, trying to make your friend pay attention, but it was to no avail. He was busy looking at something else.

“Are you listening to me, or am I talking to my computer?” you asked, and your friend returned your attention to you, his puppy look made you shake your head and roll your eyes. He looked behind you one last time, and you turned around in frustration, your breath getting stuck in your throat as you discovered what was amusing Chanhee so much.

You did a double-take when you noticed the man standing at the entrance, your pulse quickening as your hands became sweaty and hot. Every student around you, including Chanhee holding your arm to hear the rest of your explanation, disappeared from your field of view. You only had eyes for the one who stole your heart without realising it.

Hyunjae pushed the lecture door open and held it out for the group following him, politely nodding at the blushing girl that thanked him. He pursed his lips and scanned the auditorium, trying to find a familiar face to sit next to. The air was stuffy and odorous, the young man cursing the caretakers for not ventilate it more often as he was almost sweating because of his outfit. His white turtleneck and pants, as well as the lavender sweater, were thick enough for him to be warm to walk from his apartment since it was still quite chilly in the morning, but he felt like he was wearing winter clothes in the middle of a heatwave when he entered this room.

“Wow,” you murmured under your breath and looked down on your phone, trying to hide your attraction for him from your friends around you, your right hand holding your head up, hiding your eyes at the same time. You heard Chanhee mockingly exhale through his nose as he noticed you munching on your bottom lip, a habit of yours he had caught a glimpse of you doing when you were stressed or embarrassed. In this current case, you were both.

Tugging on the collar of his white turtleneck, Hyunjae sighed in annoyance as he walked down the first few steps. Cursing himself for arriving so late, he sighed as the only remaining seats were in the first few rows, where he had almost 99% of the chance of getting chosen by the professor to answer a question. He dropped his bag from his shoulder onto the table as he looked at the rows again, his eyes immediately discerning the funny stickers at the back of your computer.

“It won’t hurt anyone if I just check where he is,” you thought, but it was probably the worst idea you’ve ever had because your eyes met his dark, chocolate ones, his eyebrows lifting in relief when he recognised other familiar faces in your row.

“Y/N, you’re drooling, be careful,” your friend Chanhee whispered in your ear, teasing as you looked away from Hyunjae and wiped your mouth as quickly as possible, warmth flooding your veins as you keep your finger pressed on the power button of your computer. Your best friend laughed at your antics, but you turned a blind eye to him and mentally cursed yourself for not being as wary as you thought you were.

“Idiot, how could you be discreet if you made direct eye contact with him?” You shook your head at this thought and took a deep breath, inwardly praying that he would sit far from you as you mindlessly scrolled down through your notes.

“Hyunjae, over here!” Sunwoo stood up and raised his deep voice over all the hubbub of the auditorium, pointing at the empty spot between you and Chanhee. It was reserved for Eric who was running late, but you noticed the vacant seat next to Sunwoo and whined. You swore that the rest of the row was packed when you arrived, but it looked like a spot magically freed itself when Hyunjae appeared. It was as if your friends had planned this behind your back.

“Can I sit here?” A gentle, deep voice said, and you looked up. Much to your dismay, it was Hyunjae. “Uh, s-sure,” you stumbled on your sentence as if it were your first time speaking, closing your eyes and inner face palmed yourself at the mess you had just become in a matter of seconds.

You gathered your belongings and held them against your chest as you stood up and sat next to Chanhee, giving your crush your now empty spot. Placing your bag on the floor, you turned your head to the right and stared at your friends, only to find them laughing and bickering together. Changmin was imitating your bashful answer, and Sunwoo’s smug grin painted on his face as he cheekily winked at you, everything confirming your doubts that this situation was one of their playful plans. You sighed in exasperation and typed the title of your notes on a new document as if the entire situation weren’t bothering you.

“Thanks,” Hyunjae said as he sat down, and your heart skipped a beat when you heard his gorgeous voice that caused the hairs on your arms to stand up. His smile made him ten times more attractive, and your heart seemed to struggle to cope with his beauty.

You tried your best to ignore your crush’s presence on your left as you typed down your notes at high speed, but it was harder than you thought. He was close, too close for you to function properly and pay attention to the lecture, his presence and cologne distracting you. There were times where you could feel his gaze on you when you were typing or taking a sip of water, your hands immediately tensing and jolting under the pressure of his aura.

As the lecture finally finished, you quickly packed up your stuff and zipped your backpack before putting it on your shoulders. You didn’t even bother saying goodbye to your friends as you stood in your seat and jumped on the table of the higher row behind you to escape your group. Kevin tried to hail you by calling your name, but you were quick to pace towards the exit and vanish into the mass of the crowd.

You almost reached the library, your safe area where you always sought comfort and peace when a hand gently caught your wrist, your eyes immediately drawn to the familiar lavender knitted sleeve. You breathed heavily at the warmth of the slender hand, and you turned around to face none other than your crush.

“Gosh, you were walking so fast,” he chuckled as he finally got you, his hold still wrapped around your wrist blasting electricity through your veins. The contact felt pleasant, yet it felt so wrong to be this close to him. “I wanted to ask you something before the lecture ended, but you disappeared,” Hyunjae smiled as his cheeks became the prettiest shade of pink you had ever seen. You shyly smiled, muttering a soft apology, and you frowned, not letting him time to say another word.

He opened his mouth to say something when you drew him behind one of the colossal pillars holding up the second floor as you saw Chanhee’s bleached hair peeking out from an opened auditorium door, spying on you two. Hyunjae looked confused but let you drag him anyway.

“Sorry, what were you saying?” You tried to look unbothered, but your fidgeting hands betrayed you, making your crush smile. “Hum yeah, I was wondering if you wanted to have lunch with me today?” he asked, looking straight into your eyes, a big, bashful smile decorating his face. "I know a good café not too far from college, so I was wondering if-” “S-sure, why not?” you blurted out, and you heard muffled laughs coming from behind Hyunjae.

You both peeked out and noticed your friends piled up on top of each other, trying to listen to the conversation you were having with your crush. You sighed and shook your head in annoyance, tired of the lack of privacy your love life was experiencing every day because of them, Eric laughing even louder for getting caught eavesdropping like that.

A hand landed on your shoulder, and you felt a breath near your ear, making your heart skip a few beats in a row.

“Let’s go before they follow us, okay?” you glanced at Hyunjae, and he looked at you with something in his eyes that made your chest tighten, making the process of breathing troublesome. He grinned at your state and innocently grabbed your clammy hand as you two sped off towards the exit and ran past your friends into the mob.

As you slowed down in the streets, trying to look as civil as possible, you readjusted your backpack strap and caught your breath while laughing, Hyunjae smiling as brightly as you did. He found your laugh so pretty and light-hearted, he felt internally lucky to be part of the reason for it. You went down to the end of the street, still walking close to him, and he paused in front of a takeaway place. Holding the door for you, you shyly thanked him and entered the restaurant, the smell of Chinese food making your stomach grumble in hunger.

“Choose whatever you want, it’s on me,” you turned around and immediately backed up a bit, startled by the proximity of you two. Hyunjae only smiled, and you turned your attention back to the food. “Really?” you asked, and he snickered at your shocked state, nodding with a soft smile on his face. "Gosh, I am so hungry,” you muttered under your breath as your eyes roamed on the menu above your heads, heavily breathing as you were still trying to catch your breath back from the sprint you had just run to escape from your foolish friends.

Relief rushed through your veins when he took the reins and ordered for the two of you, your mouth uttering thank-yous like a mantra, only to have your crush waving it off.

“Y/N, it’s okay, don’t worry about it!” he said, and you stopped to look at him, Hyunjae beaming at you while grabbing the paper bag with your steamy food at the bottom. You quickly seized some napkins and disposable utensils and walked back to Hyunjae, who was already outside, waiting for you. “So, where are we going now?” he said, and you shrugged, looking around you, not knowing anything only outside from the library. “I know a good place, it’s not far from here,” you vaguely pointed to your right, and Hyunjae immediately started walking. “Let’s go before the food gets cold!” he exclaimed and let you take the lead.

It was a small park hidden a few streets away from your university, meeting other students since there was another park inside the campus. Bowing down to pat the grass a few meters away from the artificial pond, you sat down as it was dry, but Hyunjae handed you the food and took out his folded waterproof jacket from his bag. Placing it on the ground, he gestured you to come and sit with him.

“Here, come sit with me, you’ll be more comfortable,” he said, and you obeyed, your knees touching as you set the paper bag down next to you and handed him his food and drink. Your proximity didn’t leave you indifferent, but you tried your best to hide it as much as possible.

Hyunjae noticed your little change of behaviour and found you adorable when you looked away at each of his compliments. Your arms were now touching since his jacket underneath you wasn’t a picnic tablecloth, and you were slowly getting used to his body warmth surrounding you.

As the lunch break went by, you talked about your respective majors, and you joked about the shared lecture of this morning, getting closer and closer to each other. He was kind-hearted and became more comfortable when you were alone, gently nudging you in the elbow when you were about to lift your chopsticks to your mouth, the noodles falling back into your bowl. Wiping your mouth with a napkin, you were quick to nudge him back and laugh, still careful not to stain any of his clothes.

“You… look really nice today. I like those colours on you,” you complimented him, and he smiled at your hesitant voice, taking a sip of soda before answering. “Thank you Y/N, I appreciate it,” you nodded and started chewing on your bottom lip, eyes divagating towards the pond surrounded by plants and flowers. “You look really pretty as well,” he whispered in your ear, and you froze at his words, your heart skipping a beat as he had seized the opportunity of you letting your guard down as you were paying attention to the pond. You offered him a soft smile and took a sip of your drink as well to try and calm your racing heart.

He kept playing with it since he was having fun by making you embarrassed and shy with his compliments and proximity. Hyunjae knew that it was working despite your never-ending tries of hiding it, and he felt proud to have this effect on you. Although it was hard for him to see you chew on your lip like that, he had to force himself not to cup your face and tell you to stop, because he was really tempted to do so. However, when you started scratching your lip with your fingers, that’s when he grabbed your pitiless hand and held it in his.

“Hey, don’t do that,” he said and grabbed a napkin to dab the blood coming out of the little cuts on your bottom lip you had caused out of nervosity.

You guiltily avoided his eyes and searched for your lip balm in your bag before quickly applying some. The temptation of starting again was real when your hand was still cradled in his, your crush not giving a single sign of him being ready to let go of it. Alternatively, he rubbed his thumb over your knuckles as you both observed the pond and the people chilling around you.

Much to your dismay, your little romantic moment was interrupted by the church clock striking thirteen times, announcing 1 PM. You both didn’t pay attention at first, but it was when you couldn’t see a single student around you that you realised something.

“Oh god, Statistics! We have statistics in less than fifteen minutes,” you hurriedly said as you jumped on your feet, placing all your trash in the paper bag. “Oh shit!” Hyunjae imitated you and grabbed the bag from you, jogging to the trash can on the other side of the pond while you grabbed your belongings and quickly folded his jacket. He thanked you, and you left in a rush, under the confused eyes of your neighbours.

Even if it wasn’t too far from your college, you still jumped in the bus that was about to drive off from the stop right outside the park, the doors closing right behind Hyunjae. You sighed in relief as you both made it, and you tightly grabbed the metallic bar as the bus sped uphill.

“I’m glad this bus was here, I don’t think I could’ve walked back up there after our lunch,” you smiled at his words, his hand holding the bar above your heads, his lavender sweater going high enough for you to see his black Gucci belt keeping his turtleneck tucked in his pants. “I don’t know who had this marvellous idea of building the university on top of a hill,” you sarcastically mumbled and pressed the button next to your head as the screen announced the stop.

Hyunjae was the first to jump off the vehicle, grabbing your hand as you were quick to imitate him, the mass of students behind you forcing you out. Your crush followed you like a lost puppy through the different staircases and corridors, your great sense of orientation leading you quickly to the auditorium you were almost late to. You were out of breath when you finally arrived there, right before the clock struck 1:15 PM.

Surprisingly, the rows were practically empty, but you instantly spotted your friends in the middle, some of them still eating while the others were laughing or reading together. Hyunjae grabbed your hand for the nth time today, slowly getting used to this new feeling, and you dragged him towards them, but he resisted.

You looked at him, his eyes scanned the auditorium just like he did this morning and looked back at you with a smile before gesturing over a good spot, a bit higher and further away from your friends. Changmin, with his eagle eye, was quick to notice Hyunjae's lavender sweater and warned your friends, all turning around to observe you and your crush sitting together. Chanhee gasped as he quickly saw you holding hands, gossiping about it to his hyungs. Juyeon just shrugged, unbothered by the situation as he cracked his fingers and neck, getting ready to type.

You noticed your friends smirking at you and hid your head behind your computer screen, Eric leaning back in the vacant seats just enough for him to appear in the corner of your eye, his mouth transforming into a pout to mimic a kiss. You rolled your eyes and groaned, offering him a disapproving look, your antics sending him in a fit of giggles.

Hyunjae smiled at you before looking at your friends, who cooed and loudly gagged when he grabbed your hand and lifted it for them to see. You didn’t know what to do with yourself, embarrassment taking over your body as your friends cheered, drawing attention towards you and your crush, the latter replacing your linked hands on his lap, under the table.

“Why would you do that?” you dared to ask, and you shouldn’t have, your voice breaking mid-sentence made your crush giggle. “Let them be, they’re just happy that their best friend is getting out of their comfort zone. Plus, you look cute when you are flustered,” he said, and the professor started talking, preventing you from answering him.

He just sat there with a satisfied smile on your face, while you were trying not to pass out here and there with your heart beating this fast.

[forsworned]

[♥] collegeau! to date or not to date {rengoku kyoujurou x reader}

Genre: Comedy, Slight Fluff, Slight Sensual Themes

Categories: F/M

Relationships: Renguko Kyoujorou/Reader

Word count: 2,791

a/n: continuation of unintentionally roomates which you can find here ,,requests are open

➽────────────── ────────────── ──────────── ❥ 

It had been some weeks since she had gotten used to Kyoujurou being her roommate. So far neither of them had walked in on each other naked--yet. He was pretty tidy and would call her out in a teasingly kind of way that she'd sleep with her mouth wide open which made her pretty insecure, but he insisted it was "very cute." Which didn't make it any better. He could concur that it probably wasn't a good idea to show her the picture he had taken of her (he actually would look at it when he was having a bad day or he just wanted a good laugh; he also nearly made it his homescreen but decided that was maybe a little too far).

Mid-terms would be coming up soon and Kyoujurou wanted to do something fun before all the stress would settle in from piles of homework assignments and study guides. He suggested that the both of them should go to the amusement park and [name] was more than delighted to go, but there was a small issue with this. She didn't know if it was a date or just them simply hanging out. He just brought it up so casually when they had just finished a round of Super Smash Bros. and [name] was trying her hardest not to be a flustered mess about it.

"Just ask him." Shinobu's usual singsong voice was now monotonous. She had had enough of [name]'s shit to say the least. Always inquiring about Kyoujurou since Shinobu and him had been in the same graduating high school class and friend group. Not to mention mid terms were coming up and pre-med was no joke.

[Name] visibly sulked at her friend's tone. She didn't like being a nuisance to Shinobu, even though it wasn't hard to irate her nerves, but this time she seriously needed help and Shinobu was being nothing less than unpleasant.

"Shinobuuuu," [Name] whined. "This is a big deal for me. Please give me advice and I won't bring it up ever again."

The ravenette's eyes darted to the [h/c] pleading gaze, and it was enough to make to [name] squeak. Shinobu let out a sigh before speaking.

"Fine," [name]'s expression brightened, but Shinobu's finger pressing into her forehead made it falter a little. "but you don't need to stop talking about him. Just do it a lot less. I need to focus on exams."

[Name] cheered in triumph and fist pumped into the air, which in turn made Shinobu laugh. She wanted to be there for [name] in anyway she could, just within some restrictions and limitations. Shinobu's face suddenly went gravely serious.

"So here's the game plan."

.❀。• *₊°。 ❀°

[Name] took a deep breath before looking at her reflection. Her outfit was subtle yet cute. A simple blue top and beige skort to prevent panty reveals yet still have the illusion of wearing a skirt. Hair was pinned and pulled back abover her neckline since the sun would be beating down and she wanted to take every precaution to avoid any excessive sweating. Make up was light to circumvent it from melting off her face. Yes, [name] was over meticulous because she was resolute in this hang out/date to be absolutely perfect. And if Kyoujurou had decided to reject her than at least she'd look hot getting her heartbroken.

He had already left over an hour ago since he had to tutor a student in history at the tutoring center. A work study job that he picked up to help cover his tuition and endlessly spoke about when he got back to his dorm when you two were winding down from your day.

[Name] spritzed her best perfume to all her pulse points to extend the life of her scent as it hit her body. She threw it in her bag along with her make up just in case she needed to freshen up. One last look in the mirror and she was finally off to her date, er, hang-out thingy.

The autumn air was irregularly warm and humid. Well, not irregular for Okinawa at least. It was a sub tropical climate which meant mild winters and the moist summers were what [name] favored most about it here.

As she walked out of the dormitory and into the student parking lot, she was nearly blinded by the blond tresses sitting on the bench. Like quite, literally blinded. The sun was bouncing off his fiery hair more than usual and it was causing [name] to squint at him when she approached him. For some reason (she had an exact reason being that she looked super hot), [name] felt bold, and advanced toward Kyoujurou with hands concealing his vision. He visibly tensed and she couldn't help but feel a smile tug at her lips.

"Guess who."

His body now relaxing at the sound of her voice and she felt the apples of cheeks rise into a grin against the palm of her hands. "[name], you're finally here!"

She released her hands as he got up to face her and his jaw went a little aslack as he oggled at her profile. [Name] was stunning, indeed. His adam's apple bobbed up and down as he dryily swallowed. His hair that was now pulled back in a high ponytail let his bangs frame his face beautifully, swayed in the small gust momentarily. She could've sworn that he was blushing at her, but then again it was quite hot...

"You look--um, quite sharp!" He stammered. Kyoujurou mentally socked himself in the face. Sharp? That was the best he could come up with?

[Name]'s expression was now in a state of bemusement before she laughed melodically. To him it was a beautiful melody that he always tried to sway out of her with corny jokes and memes. "Well, thank you Kyoujurou. You look quite sharp, too!"

[Name] wanted to die. She looked sharp? Sharp?! No, she looked Hot! With a capital freaking "H".

Nonetheless, [name] shook it off. She was determined to make this flawless even if it was off to a rocky start. Thankfully the ride to the amusement car was starting to make up for it. The both of them jammed to the playlist they had put together earlier and discussed which rides they were excited about most.

"$50?!"

"You really don't read things thoroughly do you, [name]."

[Name] ignored his attempt at poking fun at her. It was always like this whenever she freakishly exclaimed about information that was news to her, but had been there for well however long the inital post had been there for and Kyoujurou had always made it a point to call her out for it.

"Well, I can't make you pay for it." She deadpanned. And she absolutely meant it. Kind of. Not really. It would mean that it would technically be a date, right? Right? A guy paying always meant that it was a date. [Name] mentally nodded at herself reassuring herself.

"Well, that's too bad." He inserted his card into the chip reader and thanked the attendant while grabbing his receipt.

[Name] bit back a smile as they walked side by side into the park. "Well, I'm going to pay you back."

He looked at her with an uncharacterstically sultry gaze. "No, you are not."

His voice demanding, dropped an octave and it sent a shiver up her spine. [Name] would be lying to herself if she said that it didn't make the her stomach knot up. Kyoujurou pulled out his phone pointed it towards her, trying to get a good angle and lighting.

"Now, give me a smile!" He beamed in his usual cheery tone. [Name] smiled posing her usual peace sign as he clicked away at his phone. Had she just imagined that?

The day seemed to slip past them as they took pictures with their phones and disposal camera they bought at the one of the stands for a whooping $25. Which was a total rip off, but then again bottled water was $5. The pair were laughing as they looked through the pictures they had taken throughout their trip.

"Oh, no. You are not keeping this one." She reached over to tap the trash can on his phone screen to get rid of the terrible photo that was her inhaling funnel cake. But before she could, Kyoujurou moved his screen away from her as he chuckled at [name] getting flustered. There was no way he'd let her get away with such a cute picture.

"I am definitely going to be framing this as soon as we get back." And that made [name]'s face inflame in embarrassment and shock. She was definitely, not going to let him do that.

"You delete that, right. Now!" She tried her best to extend her arms in every which way Kyoujurou was flexing his arms out but to avail. [Name] knew she wasn't going to get her hands on his phone, but she kept leaning over in an attempt to get an advantage on his long arms. That was until she clambered into his lap, face first into his crotch.

Kyoujurou froze and his breath hitched as he lowered his arm down and let unholy thoughts pass through his head but he quickly shook them off. "A-are you alright, [name]?"

Nope, now [name] was definitely going to die. She slowly rose out of his lap and plopped back into her seat, trying her best not to make the situation even more awkward. She shot him a smile in a strive to shake off the graceless action of diving face first into the crotch of her crush.

"I'm all good." She took a deep breath before looking up at the darkening sky. Kyoujurou couldn't tell what she was thinking, but it looked almost as if she was unfazed which he was very thankful for.

"Let's go on the ferris wheel before we leave!" That snapped him out of his thoughts. A grin now making its way back onto his face and a sound of approval emitted from his lips. "Let's do it!"

.❀。• *₊°。 ❀°

[Name] snickered to herself as they entered the ferris wheel seating after letting several people ahead of them. It was all going according to plan, well, not the face planting into Kyoujurou’s lap. That was definitely not in the plan she and Shinobu had concocted.

“So, here the game plan.” Shinobu stated matter-o-factly. Her name were in a crouched position as if in a very important football team meeting. “You’re gonna look hot. Like I’m talking Jennifer’s Body hot. And then—“

”But i don’t have clothes like that.”

“Shut up. We’ll go shopping. And your make up has got to be perfect like I’m talking no melting off your face looking like the Corpse Bride. Oh, and you’re drowning yourself in sexy perfume every thirty minutes.”

”But I—“

”Speak out of line one more time and I’ll kick your ass.”

“Fine.”

“Back to what I was saying. You’re gonna take loads of pics start it off friendly and lighthearted and then bam! You get him on that ferris wheel and get your flirt on. End the night off with a kiss at the top of the ferris wheel.”

Shinobu was extremely gifted in giving pep talks and revving them up. Which was probably why she was captain of the cheer team at their university.

[Name] felt like she was a crazy high. She could practically run four miles nonstop with the attitude she had in that moment.

Shinobu and her high fived, one leg kicked up in to the air with the most triumphant looks on their faces. “We got this!”

She shook her head as if to shake away the thought.

”You, ok?”

She smiled at the slightly dampened Kyoujorou who’s cheek were tinted pink from the heat. Beads of sweat has slid down his temples, but that only seemed to add to his sex appeal.

”More than ok. I love ferris wheels. They’re so romantic.”

Those words left her lips and turned in a smile that was as sweet as candy. Kyoujurou’s heart leapt in his chest as he eyed her intently.

”You could say that.”

He done fucked up again. Kyoujurou wanted to kick his own ass at this point. Why was he so terrible at flirting? It made him look like he didn’t pick up any social cues at all. Which wasn’t entirely untrue. There were many times where Tengen would point out that a girl was being extremely flirtatious with him but it would simply go over his head. He would usually reject the notion claiming they were just being nice which in turn would lead to Tengen face palming. And he thought he was doing such a good job at the start.

The silence was deafening as they reached the top of the ride and it suddenly came to a jerking stop. The view was wondrous. The sun kissed at their faces and grazed the tops of trees and the peaks of roller coaster rides. Brightly colored lights flashed simultaneously down below, but [Name]’s  stomach felt like it was caving in the longer she stared. Very romantic, indeed.

Her face must’ve looked a little green because Kyoujurou’s expression turned into a worried one. “You sure you’re okay, [name]? Have some water.”

She grabbed the bottle he handed to her and instead of water falling like she usually did, she pressed her lips against the same place his had been. Kyoujurou’s eyes widened in surprise as she absentmindedly guzzled his drink down and gave it back to him. His hands turning into fists as he flexed as hard he could to keep the warmth that was rising away from that region.

“Thanks.” She gasped. [Name] wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as she leaned back against the seat. So much for her game plan. She sighed to herself as she collected her thoughts. What difference would it make if she just told him right now.

”Kyoujurou.” The name left her lips so effortlessly. He loved the way she said his name. He would think about it mostly in the shower, but more innocently before he went to sleep.

He raised his eyebrows fully attentive now. She turned to face him as she leaned forward. A different look on her face. Soft and flustered. “I like you, a lot.”

His body stiffened for a moment and a cool breeze swooped past their longing gazes. The sudden realization had dawned upon him that those words weren’t just make believe. She had really uttered them into existence. He hadn’t noticed how close her lips were to his until he felt her minty breath fan against his nose. He didn’t pull away.

[Name] closed the distance between their lips and Kyoujurou instinctively leaned in more as soon as they made contact. His hand cupped her cheek to deepen the kiss and she sighed in delight. A smile now etched on her face had now infected him and he pulled away to look at her. He caressed her cheek as she giggled and he gazed her puzzled.

”Did I do something wrong?” If he kissed her wrong he definitely wanted to know. One thing about Kyoujurou was that he was always open to constructive criticism. She shook her head. The content look on her face still evident.

”Not at all.” She leaned in once more. “I just didn’t expect you to be so frigid.”

She giggled again at his surprised, yet embarrassed mien. However, [name] stopped giggling when she saw the determined look on his face.

”Well, I can do better.” He suddenly captured her lips and she instantly melted at his hot touch. His hand loosely on her waist and she moaned a bit as their kisses turn into feverish open mouthed ones. His lips detached from hers as he felt the the ride coming back down. [Name] felt like her whole body was in flames and there Kyoujurou was sitting there as cool as a cucumber.

The ride shifted the shuttle as the two got up and his hands slipped in hers as he lead them out. She couldn’t believe  the stunt he just pulled. Her fingers on her lips still feeling the ghost of his. He laughed heartily at her reddened face and that captured her attention.

”Don’t worry. We can continue that when we get back.”

[Name] was speechless, but somehow was even more flushed than before. Kyoujurou chuckled at her again as he pulled her in for a side hug as they headed back to his car. The smug look never left his face.

[lunar-wandering]

“this house is a frickin’ nightmare”

so i. decided to write something for the ‘Sitcom’ AU, which is basically just the concept that post-canon, everyone lives in the same house.... its Fun.

Word Count: 2.7k

Read on Ao3

-

"Monkey King, get down from the fridge."

"No."

This exchange is what drew MK's attention to the fact that something was happening in the kitchen.

In MK's opinion, it was far too early for something to be happening in the kitchen.

"Wukong, I swear, if you don't get down from there-"

"What- you gonna stab me? Pigsy, you know full well that method is ineffective."

"What is going on?" MK asked, entering the kitchen and, well, seeing exactly what he had expected; Wukong crouched on top of the fridge, staring down at Pigsy, who was glaring up at him.

Still though. Just because he'd expected to see it didn't explain why it was happening.

"Oh hey, kid." Wukong said, taking notice of him. "Everything's fine, you can go back to your room, breakfast will be ready soon."

"It would be done already if you hadn't burned it." Pigsy said, gesturing to the charred remains of what supposedly had been breakfast. "Seriously, can't you follow simple instructions?? Now we've gotta start all over."

"It's not my fault I'm a visual learner." Wukong said, his tail swinging back and forth.

"It was three steps-"

"What's going on?"

MK barely kept himself from startling at the new voice behind him, turning around to see a very tired looking Red Son.

"Breakfast burned." MK said, catching Red Son up on the situation. Red Son hummed in contemplation, walking into the kitchen, picking up a piece of the unrecognizable charred food, and, ignoring the other's growing horror, he ate it.

"...Tastes fine to me." He said, going so far as to grab and nibble on another piece as he turned and left, presumably heading back to his room. The remaining three watched him go in shocked silence.

"....This house is a frickin' nightmare." Wukong deadpanned. Pigsy nodded in agreement.

"Aptly put. Now get off of the fridge."

"No."

MK decided to go back to bed.

-

It was commonly known, within the household, that somehow, Tang and Wukong continuously managed to get out of doing their fair share of the chores. No one was quite sure how they did it, as the two of them kept coming up with new methods every day.

Today's method was..... interesting, to say the least.

Somehow, someway, they had managed to remove their names from the Chore Roulette Wheel, without leaving any trace that their names had ever even been there. Which was, in fact, rather impressive, considering that the roulette wheel was literally a giant wooden roulette wheel, built by Sandy, and there were no empty spaces were their names used to be, they were just. Gone.

To be honest, MK would've never noticed if Mei hadn't pointed it out.

Now, there was a house-wide search for the two chore-shirkers.

"Found 'em yet?" MK yelled down the stairs into the basement. A few seconds passed, then a unanimous call of "No!" came. MK sighed. If the Spider-gang couldn't find Tang and Wukong down there, then they probably weren't there. (.....Probably. Wukong did have a lot of tricks up his sleeves, and MK didn't put it pass his mentor to use them for something like this.)

That checked off the majority of the house.... which only left-

An enraged scream (courtesy of Mei) from upstairs confirmed what MK had concluded.

They were on the roof.

MK rushed to the stairs, running up them-

Only to pause as he heard a yelp, and a flash of gold fell past the window, followed by a loud thud. MK leaned on the windowsill to look outside, just in time to see Tang fall past it. Wukong, a few branches and grass in his fur from his rough landing, summoned his cloud to catch Tang, before zooming away.

As MK would later find out, in the haste to escape Mei's wrath, Tang had actually pushed Wukong off the roof. Wukong, in return, had unceremoniously dropped Tang on the ground the first chance he got.

Both of their names were back on the roulette wheel by the next morning.

....They still managed to get out of doing their chores though.

-

"Oh, hey Macaque." MK mumbled, tiredly rubbing his eyes, and Macaque, mid-way through stealing a snack out of the fridge, froze like a deer in the headlights.

"Uh.....hey, bud." He said, slowly closing the fridge door, glancing at MK, who was obviously very tired, then looking at the clock on the wall.

2:43 AM. Okay, he could work with this.

"What are you doing up so late?" Macaque asked, leaning casually against the fridge in an attempt to hide his nervousness. If MK had been more awake, he would've noticed and called him out on it, but as it was....

"Just woke up.... wanted to get a snack." MK said, and Macaque quickly opened a nearby cupboard.

"Here, have this." He said, putting a cookie in MK's hands, before grabbing him by the shoulders, turning him around, and gently shoving him back towards his room. "Now go back to bed."

"G'night, Macaque." MK said, nibbling on his cookie.

"Goodnight, MK." Macaque sighed, waiting until he heard MK's bedroom door click closed again before melting back into the shadows.

The next morning, MK thought he had dreamt the whole thing. After all, Macaque had vehemently denied the invitation to live in the house with everyone else, surely if he had changed his mind and started to live with them, someone would've noticed.

....Right?

-

"Monkey King?"

"Yeah?"

"Why do you always sleep on the roof?" Red Son asked, "I mean, you do have a room after all, why don't you use it?"

"I just like watching the stars." Wukong said, reclining on his cloud. Suddenly, Mei and MK also appeared beside Red Son, with their arms crossed, looking unimpressed.

"You told me that beds were uncomfortable." Mei said.

"And you told me that you liked the breeze." MK added. Wukong's tail bristled a little, but he still didn't look over at them.

"Well, I mean, all of those are true." Wukong said, "Figured I would just... switch my answers up from time to time, keep things entertaining you know?"

"That doesn't explain why you slept out there in the pouring rain." Mei said, "In fact, the only time we've seen you sleep inside is when we have blanket fort night."

"...The rain was nice?" Wukong said, sounding uncertain. The trio narrowed their eyes.

"Is there something wrong with your room?" Red Son asked, and Wukong flinched.

"No." He said, finally sitting up and looking at them. "Really, my room's perfectly fine, I don't know where you're getting the idea that something's wrong-"

"You're doing that nervous smile again." MK said, and Wukong slammed a hand over his mouth in an attempt to hide what the trio had already seen.

There was a moment of silence, and in that moment, each member of the traffic light trio came to a shared conclusion.

No matter the cost, they would get into Wukong's room.

Almost as though they had actually planned it, the trio took off towards the staircase, ignoring Wukong's yells for them to stop. Hurriedly, Wukong summoned two clones, then rushed after the trio.

Red on got caught on the stairs, the clone grabbing hold of the edge of his coat and dragging him down. It wouldn't be able to hold him for long of course, his fire could quickly burn the clone away, but it would still manage to slow him down.

Mei was captured in the hallway, the clone pushing off the wall to tackle her, accidentally knocking her right into Yin and Jin's room, pining her to the ground as the twins yelped in shock.

...Which just left MK.

Having trained with the Monkey King, MK found himself easily dodging Wukong's attempts to catch him. Slightly out of breath, he skidded to a stop in front of Wukong's door, turned the knob, and opened it.

"I don't really see what the problem is, the room looks fine to me-" MK said, stepping into the room.

"Kid, wait-" Wukong started to say, but it was too late.

MK tripped, tumbling into the room, dispelling the illusion Wukong had carefully crafted and placed over it.

Wukong's room was a mess, to put things lightly. There was stuff everywhere- books, clothes, antiques, food, you named it, it was probably there. It was to the point where there was no place to sleep, the bed being covered in stuff. Which, well, that explained the whole 'sleeping on the roof' thing, but still.

Wukong nervously shifted from foot to foot in the doorway. Red Son and Mei, who had succeeded in freeing themselves, as well as Yin and Jin, who had gotten curious from all the commotion, stared over Wukong's shoulders, taking in the state of the room.

MK sat there for a moment, looking at the mess (and sure, MK's room was messy too, but this-), before slowly turning around to look at his mentor, a serious expression on his face.

"Wukong." MK said, and Wukong stiffened, his nervous smile growing wider at the sound of MK saying his name instead of his title.

"...Yeah?" Wukong said, chuckling nervously as MK's look darkened.

"...I'm getting Sandy."

"Wait, no no no-"

The rest of the day was spent cleaning up Wukong's room, sorting through the piles upon piles of stuff.

Wukong, in a bout of spite, still slept on the roof anyways.

-

Yin and Jin stared in shock at the scene in front of them.

Everyone in the house knew that Wukong and Tang adamantly avoided doing their share of the chores. (The roof-pushing incident was still fresh in everyone's minds, after all).

So that's why seeing Wukong doing the laundry was very out of place.

"...What are you two staring at?" Wukong asked, snapping the twins out of their shocked reverie.

"It's just....weird to see you doing the laundry, that's all." Yin said, and that-

Well, surprisingly enough, that made Wukong actually pause.

"It is?" He asked, slowly setting the laundry basket down on the ground, subtly nudging it under a nearby table so that it was now out of view.

"Well, I mean, with how you and Mr. Tang utilize every method possible to avoid doing the chores, we never thought we'd actually see you doing one." Jin said.

"...I see." Wukong said, quietly. "Well, in that case. You two saw nothing."

"Wha-"

Not giving them a chance to respond, Wukong flashed a peace sign, then vanished, leaving the twins to sputter in disbelief.

(Later, Macaque returned to the laundry room to pick up the clothes he'd left behind.)

-

Syntax paused as he stared at the sight before him.

"...What is this?" He ased, drawing the attention of the occupants in the living room.

"A braid train!" MK replied, and honestly, that's what it was. MK sat on the floor, braiding Bai He's hair, Bai He braiding Red Son's, who was braiding Mei's hair. Mei pulled one hand out of Spider Queen's hair to give Syntax a little wave before returning to braiding the queen's hair. Spider Queen gently weaved Huntsman's hair into a braid that looked above professional level. Huntsman was twisted at an odd angle in order to put some braids in Sandy's beard. And Sandy carefully created some tiny braids in Wukong's fur."

"I....see." Syntax said, holding up his phone and taking a quick picture before any of the braid train participants could notice.

"Do you wanna join?" MK asked, "You can either braid my hair or get yours braided by Monkey King. Your choice."

Syntax took a moment to think about it.

He ended up braiding MK's hair.

-

There was someone in the shower.

Now, usually, this wouldn't be such a mind-boggling thing, but-

All of the house's occupants stared at the bathroom door in trepidation.

"You sure Wukong didn't just accidentally leave the shower on again?" Princess Iron Fan asked, prompting some indignant sputtering from Wukong, who was sitting on Demon Bull King's shoulder. MK shook his head in the negative.

"No, I'm sure I heard someone moving in there." He said, crossing his arms.

"Why don't you or Monkey King just use your true sight and get this whole mystery over with?" Jin asked.

"Yeah, we've already been waiting for like, 20 minutes." Yin said.

"They're in the shower." MK said, "I'm not just gonna invade their privacy like that, regardless of who they are."

The shower turned off, and everyone turned to stare at the door again, in silence. There was some rustling around, and then the door opened.

Macaque. It was Macaque. Who, upon realizing that literally the entire household was standing in front of him, froze.

And then immediately tried to turn and run.

"Oh no you don't." Wukong said, jumping off of Demon Bull King's shoulder, and outright tackling the other monkey to the ground. "What are you doing here?"

"Uh, I live here?" Macaque said, sitting up and shoving Wukong off of him.

"You turned down the invitation to come and live with us though...." Wukong said, slowly standing back up. ".....How long have you been here?"

"Two weeks."

"Two weeks?!" Everyone went into various states of shock.

"How could we not have noticed you?" MK asked.

"You- you did notice me though." Macaque said, "Like, we had a whole conversation in the kitchen at around 3 AM."

"You think I remember what happens at 3 am?!" MK said, holding his head in his hands, and Red Son comfortingly patted him on the back.

"What happens at 3 AM stays at 3 AM." Red Son said, sounding like he was saying some ancient wisdom despite the actual sentence being utter nonsense. Yin and Jin snapped their fingers as a look of realization appeared on their faces. 

"That's why we saw Wukong doing the laundry the other day." Yin said, "It was Macaque in disguise!"

"....Yeah, I figured you'd notice if I didn't do some chores, just to clean up after myself." Macaque sighed, and Pigsy turned to glare at Wukong and Tang.

"See? Even the ex-villain does more chores than you two." He said, and Wukong and Tang purposefully looked away, whistling innocently.

"Wait." Mei said, "If you've been here for two weeks, and we haven't seen you use any of the bedrooms... then where have you been sleeping?"

As it turned out, Macaque had been spending his nights in the storage closet, curled up in the darkest corner of the room with nothing other than a blanket and a small pillow. The others, of course, deemed this as unacceptable, and pretty much near shoved him into one of the leftover bed rooms.

...Which he didn't even end up using that night, as it ended up being a night where everyone ended up falling asleep in the living room, blankets and pillows strewn about everywhere.

The next morning, Macaque wasn't there when the others woke up, and there was a brief moment of panic over the monkey's whereabouts-

And then said monkey walked back into the room, using the shadows to help him carry some trays with breakfast on it.

He paused when he registered that everyone was staring at him.

"....What?" He asked, "I woke up first, that means I had breakfast duty, right?"

"I mean.....yeah." MK said, graciously accepting his plate of food. "But, to be honest. I kinda expected you to burn it like Monkey King did."

"Hey, I did that on purpose. For Red Son." Wukong said, "Cause, y'know. He likes charred food. Apparently."

"You did not do that on purpose and we all know it." Pigsy said, "You were just as unaware of Red Son's dietary habits as the rest of us."

"...I literally just woke up and I'm kinda feeling attacked." Red Son mumbled, sitting up. "Should I feel like I'm being attacked?"

"No, you're fine, we're just calling out Wukong again." Spider Queen whispered to him, and Red Son hummed before rolling back over, clearly intending on getting a few more minutes of rest despite the argument starting to occur in the room. Macaque, for his part, remained standing frozen, with MK standing beside him, nibbling at the food on his plate.

"....Should I be concerned about this?" Macaque asked, staring at the fight taking place. MK shrugged.

"Nah." He said, "This is just the same shit as always."