#this is a really niche idea that was rattling around in my head for a while

[svndaysaweek]

You Don’t Even Know My Name, Do You? — {Feat. Minji}

3.1k words

A/N: Hi! It’s me, back in 6 months! I had the idea for this one since last summer, but never really made it a fic. But now I post it…! It’s a rushed fic, no editing, I’m sorry for any grammatical errors or typos. Thank you @praeluxius for help and advice in making the conversation better and more natural! Thanks for 1.6k followers and most importantly 1k notes for ‘Niche’!!! Enjoy reading this and luv you all…!

******

Subways late at night are dangerous, and you can’t deny it’s because of you. Drunken bodies swaying along the rail, left and right, back and forth, grasping up on their wasted balance not to embarrass themselves by falling on the floor. Less than an hour left from waving away the day, you can tell where others in the train came from—bars, karaokes, or anywhere with entertainment and alcohol. Returning home after having some fun to wrap up the day and live the following day. Victims of society, some say, but that’s what all people are. We work, get paid. Victims don’t get to enjoy themselves, do they? But to be honest, you’re not the one to care for them, the victims, when you’re one of the victimizers.

You’re standing next to the door, the best position to scan the people in and out, empirically certified by yourself. There are quite a few people in the car—only a few seats available and half of the people chose to spare the seats empty. You’re holding onto a steel bar and slightly leaning your weight on it, eyeing thoroughly for your prey. But there’s no one yet to suit your taste, no one looking good and wealthy.

The mechanical female voice informs the next stop and a few dozens of seconds later the train halts for another group of people to be added to your menu.

“Alright, alright! I’m not that stupid to let someone just, like, snatch my purse away, huh?”

You hear a girl talking to her phone, laughing like she just heard the dumbest advice ever. A crop top for her defined belly to be open, relatively baggy jeans hinting the sculpted curve of her hips and full-blown outlines of legs. Within a second that girl has made everyone in the car latch their eyes on her doing nothing.

“What the fuck? I didn’t drink that much tonight I swear, and fuck, even an alcoholic won’t forget his own name,”

The girl, however, certainly looks drunk, sounds drunk, and acts drunk. Her eyes barely stay open, her tongue hardly makes her words clear. You can even smell how much she poured down her throat. It’s becoming more and more fit for your ideal condition.

Her talk goes on for a few more minutes then she puts her phone in her handbag and looks into the dark, mirror-like window. Her blinks become lazier and slower by the second, alcohol weighing her eyelids, but she does her best to stay up. She looks around to shake off the fatigue and meets your eyes, which have been on her since the moment she walked in. Three seconds is enough to make her look away in shyness, but it isn’t enough for her to examine you as her eyes lock with yours again.

She lets her eyes travel down your body to your toes slowly through(in) the window, alcohol erasing the fact that the subway is public. You pretend to neglect as she keeps eyeing you, head to toe several times, and the next stop the stumbly girl is forced to stand next to you by the crowd gushing in. Unavoidable contacts add leads to your eyes awkwardly meeting, which draws out mirrored smiles from each.

“Sorr-oh!”

A slight rattle of the train almost tackles her down but your arms are there to hold her from meeting the floor. 

"Careful, you almost hit your head, could have ended up like our friend over there." You nod and gesture at old man asleep at the other end of the carriage

"He looks peaceful though."

"You think you can stand up by yourself now?"

"Of Course! I'm not even that drunk."

"The last time my friend said that, he ended up face down in a bush." As soon as you’re done talking she stumbles again to her embarrassment. And of course you keep her standing.

"So you didn't catch him?"

"He's not as cute as you." She laughs and blushes, palm on her mouth and the tone a bit too high for a laughter in a subway. 

“Where do you live?” Change of topic, and you’re surprised that it’s her asking you, not the other way around as it used to be.

“Two stops before the terminus.” She checks where the train currently is, and stares at the map for a few dozen seconds as if her brain is still soaked with drinks, before looking back at you and pointing to the map.

“I’m getting off two stops later,” She blushes again, this time there’s even an awkward smile on her face. As if trying to say something shameful.

“And…” Her fidgety fingers dig into the arm of your shirt and her eyes are fixed on your shoes to never climb up. “And?” You repeat her, grin on your face because of her being so bashful and how overt her real intention is.

“And my name’s Minji by the way. Kim Minji.” It's trickery. A decoy. You almost burst into laughter but keep it down to a debonair ‘mhmm’ instead, hoping to bail Minji out of her own struggle to let the real words out.

And her phone rings. “No, not yet. Only two stops left. No, I don’t sound slurry at all, thanks. Oh my god, Hanni. I said I’m not that drunk! Yeah, I met a guy and maybe he’s taking me to my place-oh my god.” A brief moment of soberness washes through her body but her face is even rosier than ever. Over her phone you hear a woman shouting ‘hey’s and her name, but soon Minji hangs up. The train halts, and she just rushes between the crowd to get off out of shame but you catch her arm.

“Hey, it’s the wrong station.” She can’t look at your smirking face even facing you, face still red and fumbles the hem of her top. “Sorry for that… That was a total mistake.”

“It’s okay,” Minji raises her head, looks at you. “You’re drunk like hell, and you were going to say that anyways.” She's left speechless for a moment, then she opens her mouth to say something but frowns ignorantly.

“Why are you laughing? I was so embarrassed!” She's overtly trying to act cute and it's so working on you. With drunken red cheeks, slurry, lethargic pronunciation and on top of everything, her mesmerizing face. Even your most prior purpose is being threatened to melt by her exhilarating cuteness. 

“It’s nothing.” But your lips just can’t hide your smile, and there is more than one reason; Minji’s being so clingy, which is what usually happens when alcohol infiltrates people’s brains, and it is an aid for you as always. And when the announcement informs you of the next stop, her babyish grumbles are gone and shyness permeates again.

“So… Are you going to take me to my place…?” You hold out our arms and guide the groggy girl out of the train. “After you.” Minji can’t subdue the chuckles from the dizzy liquor, how sensible you are, at least in her opinion, and the fact that you two are going to stay the night together in her place. 

On the other hand, for you the reasons are somewhat different; it’s because tonight you made it, will see some pennies in your pocket and will be able to keep your stomach filled for a few more days. And she’s completely blind for that, giggling so innocently like what she’d do with her lover.

It must be her first time flirting with a guy. She can’t just follow anybody she likes. It’s dangerous. She can’t just trust anybody because he’s amiable. There could be a vice in his mind, transgressions at the tips of his fingers. Somebody should warn her about this, you think. How paradoxical. Maybe you won’t be doing this for long. But that’s something to worry about later.

All these thoughts pass through your mind in less than a second, and when you look back at her you see the green, innocent girl fluttered with excitement. “Lead the way please.” And she does.

******

“This is my place, it might be a little bit messy but-“ Minji opens the door and you close. “It’s okay. No one cares.” She sounds like the soberness has returned, but when you catch her ridiculously stumbling changing her shoes into slippers, ask if she’s okay, and she answers back that she’s alright, you just find yourself tentative about what’s in your mind.

“Are we going to kiss?” You know it’s a tipsy whim. You know she might not know what she’s doing. But it’s her asking you, not the opposite, she has no one to blame but herself, and you also know that she won’t. So you give it a go.

Her lips feel soft. You kiss her lips in a gingerly manner, eyes closed to focus all your senses to your lips. It feels like forever, but it’s obviously provisional so you do your best to find the perfect angle of your head, the right position of your hands, and the exact moment for your tongue to engage. A brief detach and then smoothly latch onto again, and a several times more, and in no time you two are completely submerged in the sensation, in the atmosphere and the feeling.

You open her lips with your tongue, and the key works so well you don’t even have to put any more effort to meet hers; she’s been waiting for it. When you taste her mouth, the alcoholic air hits your gustation and the olfactory sense—Jesus, how many glasses did she empty?—and you swallow it down to your body. Her tongue jockeys in your mouth, on your palate, around your tongue, everywhere it can reach. She’s so needy that when you try to withdraw for some air her arms lock you up and pull you in for a longer liplock.

But that doesn’t last long, before Minji herself pulls back to breathe.

“Minji,” Gasping, you call her name. She doesn’t respond. She takes your hand and drags you to her bedroom. It’s tidied up well unlike what she warned you about, but you don’t have any time to be infatuated with how neat her bedroom is, when her hasty tongue knocks on your lips to open up.

She really can’t hold it back as she redoubles the whirl inside your mouth. At this point you’re a bit shocked at how aggressive she has become—or, she might’ve been like this from the very start—but god, what a joy to reciprocate. But this desire is not a genital one, rather more like a sheer indulgence of the feeling itself as if it’s her first time.

“Minji, no one’s chasing you. You don’t have to rush.” Hands on her shoulders you say, in an assuring tone, to the panting girl in front of you. Regardless she dives in yet again, this time her hands dragging her jeans down, totally ignoring what you said. She doesn’t feel sorry, but neither do you when you can in fact enjoy what’s going to unfold.

You find it kinda cute to see that talkative girl in the subway all silent and busy with her hands with heavy breaths. It’s as if you have unbound her from the straitjacket—or the alcohol did—and her actual self inside was in need of some rabid lovemaking. No denial that she’s getting what she wants.

It’s hammy but a pleasure to watch. Her hands move to your top and hastily take it off of you, a sigh when it blocks the kiss. You’re overwhelmed as you take your pants yourself but Minji pulls it down to your ankles. Stepping out of them you push her onto her bed and crawl up to be parallel with her, eyes to eyes. When your erect cock brushes on her tummy she squints her eyes with a flinch. Her nerves are so worked up, whether it be from the intoxication she’s been in for hours or the anticipation. Or both.

“Minji, are you alright?” Her face is so red, her breaths are shallow and her teeth keep on biting her own fist. She just nods, eyes still filled with unrest; in fact you can’t tell if it’s concern or anticipation, but either way it’s your job to relax her. 

And putting her hand off of her mouth and replacing it with your lips is what you come up with as a solution. As if you want to absorb the turmoil out of her. When your tongues meet and intertwine her hands climb up to the back of your head and pull you deeper into the trance. Time passes like that. Minji’s so lost in the sensation, and when you lightly put your hand on her breasts she moans into your mouth. The size is just unblemished for you to leisurely fondle, so you keep doing that until she detaches from the kiss, asks you to take her top off with a coo.

“You look so beautiful. Just relax, Minji.” She bites on your under lip when your hand softly squeezes her breast and plays with her nipple. The pain is an approval you’d gratefully take.

You slide down to her neck, collarbone, chest, stomach and finally to her crotch, peppering everywhere on your way with pecks and licks and making it glisten. And oh, her pussy lips are already glistening—dripping, soaking wet—with her own water, nectar so dense with desire. You glimpse at her and she nods desperately, underside of her lips bitten hard, as if when you latch your tongue on her sex it’ll bleed. 

And when you do she yelps, sharp yet gutty, with her back involuntarily arching upward. “Ah, please…!” Is what follows her scream when you flick your tongue on her sensitive nub. You cherish her response and repeat it, eyeing her facial expressions and enjoying every furrow of her brows, every grasp on your hair and every squish of her thighs on your ears. It doesn’t take a while to reach the point where she loses control of herself. Where she loses her mind and cums with a scream. Your skull gets crushed between Minji’s fleshy thighs and your tongue drowns in her juices gushing into your mouth. It’s too saccharine, too flashy, beyond what you expected from her. 

“You’re so good at that… I’ve never squirted like that before.” Minji looks spent. Chest heaving up and down quickly, eyes almost teary and her tongue barely pronouncing correctly. You climb up again and lock lips with her, letting her taste her own liquid.

“Nngh…” You coat your cock with her prevailing girlcum, scrub it on her entrance a few times and slowly, slowly enter her first with only the head. That summons the clingy girl into her again as her arms lock around your neck and she screams into your shoulder. It’s enrapturing to feel the head of your cock slowly discover deeper parts of her, to hear her material moans permeating into your bones.

“God, you feel amazing!” Is what she says when you are halfway inside her. You withdraw a little bit, and put in even more, to make your entire cock disappear inside her. Her arms almost choke you when she hugs you tighter and shouts ‘yes’s and ‘oh my god’s right next to your ear.

“Minji, I’m going to move. I’m going to fuck you.” You groan. It’s finally the time to unleash everything in you, all too stacked up from the agonizing foreplays. “Yes, fuck me. Make me cum please-oh my god it feels so good!” You’re not going slow at all. The smacking sound is music to your ears, and her moans melt your brain. So you go brainless. Hitting the right spot and making her cry every time. It's soft no more, and Minji finds it crazy. Her arms can't settle down but intermittently darts about on the bed.

“Minji, fuck…” You doubt that she can hear you in the room full of her orgasmic yelps and moans. “Fuck, I love it! So deep inside me, don't stop…!” Her legs flutter, eyes roll back and fingers dig into your arms helplessly when she cums on your cock hard. “God, I can't… I can't-” The girl shyly asking for a kiss is now gone, beautifully degraded to a girl enjoying, loving and getting overtaken by the pleasure teeming into her. 

Overstimulated, Minji wriggles as if the sensations are throttling her. A few minutes you were caring about her more than you, but now your priorities are reset; you’re reminded of your purpose here, it's not for her sake, it's for you. And regardless of her condition you just push in, harder and deeper than each thrust, to the finish line. Her torso is turned red and at some point she's looking into your eyes, those subtle muscles beckoning for you to go for it, to cum.

“Minji, I'm cumming…! Fuck!” You splatter your seed all over her tummy and tits. The icing on the cake, an eye candy you're never going to be tired looking at.

“It was… Incredible.” Minji has a satisfied smile on her face. “Good to know you enjoyed it.” You nestle on the bed next to her, rearranging the wet strands of her hair out of her face.

******

Minji is asleep. Like nothing happened a few minutes ago. Like you're not in the bed with her. That's not an unexpected thing for you. You dress up, wipe your cum off her body. She's so pretty when sleeping, you think to yourself.

But right after that you take her purse; there are a few bucks and a credit card. And in the dressing table you find some fancy jewelry boxes.

It's bad, immoral. It's what you do for a living. Can't say you feel proud but not much of a guilt in your mind either. Maybe a little though. But only for this time. You actually liked Minji. Not that much, but you felt something different. Maybe you two can run into each other someday. And maybe you're hoping that happens, even though you know it won't help you in any ways. You can't explain it but there's something in your mind about what happened tonight. 

But you carry on, find a pen and a post-it, write something down and stick it on her empty purse on the nightstand.

‘You don't even know my name, do you?’

******

[writefightandflightclub]

Santi +/x AuDHD!reader headcanons

(could be platonic or romantic - but written as not co-habiting)

Author’s note: maybe this is too niche, idk, but sometimes I like to think about the blorbos and how they’d interact with an AuDHD reader (because that’s me, so for obvious reasons). I headcanon that Santi is particularly compatible with a neurodivergent reader, maybe because I’m being self-indulgent… but also because why on earth would he not be? So here are a few poorly written / cobbled together thoughts which have been rattling around in my brain.

PLEASE NOTE: These are written in as general a way as I could manage (which may make it slightly less fulfilling, sorry, as it’s therefore lost specificity) but please note: since everyone who is AuDHD is so completely and vastly different, I couldn’t possibly have made this “fit” everyone’s experiences. Sorry if there are things you don’t relate to, but I tried to include a few more common experiences in there so hopefully there’s at least something.

Also! If you have any hcs of your own (for any Oscar/Pedro characters) PLEASE share them because I want more ND!reader content out there! 😀🧡 (Will also consider ND!reader requests if you have them, provided I think I can do it justice!)

Warnings: brief mention of panic attacks / anxiety (Santi). Geared towards ways that Santi helps reader out - that’s where my head was at, so it is what it is. Broadly neuro-affirming, I’m not putting anyone down for any traits ofc, even if they do cause challenges sometimes! Hope that makes sense!

Santi is so organised and tidy. He can make a plan and execute it with great attention to detail (have you seen that storage locker?!). If you struggle to stay organised and keep the house tidy etc., Santiago will have no issue helping you out, whether it’s coming up with a routine, creating a system, or simply doing a quick blitz anytime he’s over at your house. He finds it sorta therapeutic anyway, and you never feel like he’s doing it because he judges you or the condition of your place. It’s just wired into him to find order. Hell, sometimes if you lose something around the place you call him to see if HE can remember where he last saw it, and usually he can. That military routine never really left him, even all those years later, so he’s a great constant for modelling structure!

Santi will FaceTime you to body-double whatever chores you want to complete. For example; you have a Wednesday evening tradition to call each other while you each fold the laundry, or do whatever else you need to get done. You do get things done, and he makes you laugh the whole time too. He sticks to this routine as much as he can, no matter what else he has going on, or which country he is in. He loves this quality time with you, and to him it’s just a bonus that it helps you out.

Running late to meet him? He’s learned to bring a book and a flask of coffee along. He’ll wait, you’re worth it.

Sensitive to noise? Santi can’t relate fully, but he knows what it’s like for some sounds to instil negative effects. (See how this veteran is feeling around the fireworks at 4th July and you’ll get it.) He will respect your need for quiet when you need it. Besides, he’s slowed down a lot since his younger years and more and more enjoys the little things like curling up and reading a book. That said, if you want some stimulation and fancy hitting a dive bar with blasting music, or wanna dance in the kitchen, he can also be convinced. He has the range to accommodate all of your sensory preferences, your routines and your impulsive ideas, and he’ll gladly follow your flow.

He’s a magician at regulating you. This man is observant and can read people like nobody’s business, so he knows when you’re getting overstimulated or overwhelmed - often before anyone else does. When he sees it happen he’s happy to help you calm your nervous system however you need. Whether that’s a soft / firm hug, distracting you by talking to you in his soothing voice, working-out with you, letting you fidget with him - his hands, bracelets, whatever - or borrowing a texture of his, like playing with his soft curls.

Better believe this guy sends you texts throughout the day to check that you’ve eaten / drank water.

If you’re running late to an appointment and he’s free he will 100% drive you.

He loves to cook and always “accidentally” makes extra, so that you always have a stock of tasty “emergency” meals in your freezer for days when you don’t have the energy / functioning to cook.

Don’t wanna make the phone call? Santi will do it for you. Besides, he can charm the socks off of anyone so it’s probably best he deals with it anyway.

Santi is charming but he also has the ability to be straight down the line in his communication, especially with you as he trusts you so much. That means you rarely have to guess what he’s thinking or feeling about any particular thing. He lays it out for you and that’s super helpful. Of course, he can be closed off about his more complex, deeper emotions, but that’s something you seem to bring out of him - at least, in ways that no-one else has managed. You’ve had plenty of deep heart-to-hearts with the man and you know you can count on each other in a pinch, whether you need comfort or to vent about something you have going on.

Santi experiences panic attacks and anxiety and can relate to some of the ways you also struggle. He gets that people’s brains work in different ways and he’s far from judgemental about that. You’ve never once made him feel lesser when he’s been struggling and he will NEVER do that to you either.

Your sense of humour cracks him up no end.

He loves that you can be “blunt” / direct / a little “too honest”. He always knows where he stands with you, and for someone as (secretly) insecure as Santi that’s no small thing.

If you indicate you are burnt-out… he BELIEVES you. No questions asked - except for what you need, of course.

Forgotten something? Santi has started carrying spares. This man is nothing if not prepared, and now that simply extends to you. Whatever day-to-day items you carry (or often lose) he makes a mental note of the item and brand and buys multiple - for his place, his truck, wherever.

This man has social skills galore, so you can lean on him at parties, or in whatever situation if you’re feeling uncomfy or want a “way in” to a conversation. You can even leave him to do all the talking if you like, though of course he will enable you to have the floor if he can see that you want it. On the flip side, if you talk a lot, he is absolutely listening and rapt with whatever you are coming out with.

Don’t always look him in the eye? That’s okay. The man is so beautiful he’s used to people not being able to stare directly at him 😝 Besides, he finds you and your mannerisms completely charming.

He’s deadly, sure, but overall he’s actually quite a calm and not hugely reactive person - especially in a crisis. That can be so helpful in balancing you out on some occasions where you may react in a heightened way, or be emotional or worried / catastrophising about something. Despite his ability to skip town at the drop of a hat - before deciding to stick around - he does have the ability to be pretty steady and stable and sometimes that’s what you need.

He appreciates you and everything you do for him. He helps you out sometimes but you never feel “in his debt”. He is endlessly praising all of your amazing strengths and attributes (amidst some fond teasing ofc) and appreciates all that you are as well as all you do for him, and he couldn’t ask for a better person to have in his corner.

[palossssssand]

If you're interested in more then one, vote for one and shoot a reply for any others! I've been rattling around some ideas and would love to see the ballpark of what people are interested in.

Some notes:

-Fakemon: Definitely Pipeye and Dipsco(with holographic effects!!), would be fun to have sticker sheets of the Gnourly and Trollicious line (cake troll line) or Grambler, Chalciduel, Ulidiiva, Curculixie, and Saturnoct (card suit bug split evo line)

-Slug city: I have icons of each of the characters that would be really cute as little mini stickers! Definitely in the future I'd love to make fullbody stickers of them.

-Splatoon weapons: Sticking my head into a niche here, would definitely be difficult since there's SO many weapons, and every weapon has a dedicated hardcore fan, but it would be fun and also I just want to see more bloblobber merch in the world

-Spyke: Obviously...I want more merch of my favorite guy, I think it'd be really cute to have a matching pin set of his icon + a sea snail. I'm totally open to other characters though BUT I wanted to see specifically if people wanted more Spyke. I actually have a pearlina sticker design that I collaborated with flintjupiter on twitter that I have to list once we decide on a pricing LOL

-More eldritch angels: I have a bunch of sketch ideas sittin' around! Stygiomedusa angel has been extremely popular and I'd love to make more designs along those lines. There's a few upcoming Ultrainfinitepit kickstarter campaigns that I'm keeping some secret ideas for but perhaps more deep sea creatures or bugs. I actually have a full set of sketches for angels based on the solar system, it would be a long project but ideally I would love to have a pin set and a looping pattern to make cool stuff out of!

-Nuclear throne: This game is still so near and dear to my heart, I'd like to do small icon stickers/pins and also make a looping pattern!

-Realistic bugs: Specifically, I want more stickers and designs of fly diversity, as an entomologist I feel like I don't see nearly as many cool flies! There are so many cool ones!

If there are any other themes/ocs/fandoms you'd like to see merch in, feel free to let me know in the comments! I listed these things above because they're things I personally think I'd enjoy working on, but I also never know what people would like. Currently, the only things in my shop are angel pin designs leftover from a collaborated campaign, and I'd like to expand to some more things!

[jacenotjason]

Unfortunately Eddith is one of the OCs I don't have any references for at the moment... I'm gonna have to go scrounging for picrews later bc I have a clear idea of her in my head I just need to get it on something first. Will get back to you on that!

However. Now I just kinda. Wanna ramble about all my OCs sdjnf sjfkn SO! Descriptions time!!! Not including Eddith and Teru since I already mentioned them to you

Margo - my girl, and the one I talk about the most! You. may have heard of her before?? Idk. ANYWAY! She's an incredibly anxious and paranoid cultist that Does Not Want To Be There. Her and Ignacio were childhood friends so she kind of just. Clings to him and fears everyone else kdsjfnsfsd. I haven't worked out the nitty gritty of their relationship yet but they are Fun, I will say that much

Also she got bit by a vampire and while the cult amulet saved her from turning I like exploring the idea that she's not quite human anymore

Blossom - Blossom is. Interesting? I've been thinking of reworking her character actually, originally she was going to be a priest, but then Gregor got introduced, so I tried to retool her to connect to him but it didn't really. Sit right? idk

After watching a friend play AA (and inspired by people headcanoning Richard and Garcia as lawyers) I had the thought of reworking her into an attorney bc that would be a very interesting thing to explore in this town. No matter what her base concept is the same tho, a woman that gives off a haughty exterior but generally cares about the people she tries to help

Rachel - probably the first SM OC I created, right before Blossom. She works at the mall and is a classic "bitch in sheeps clothing" sort of character, acts nice and sweet but is actually super spiteful and petty, and loves gossip. She hates Radford because they were high school sweethearts that had a horrible falling out, and has a rivalry with Streber over the stupidest shit

Blondie - my silly cyptid hobo man!!! I don't talk about him a lot but he's always there. In my head. He's a werewolf that lives in the woods and frequently sneaks into town to steal clothes/food. He barely talks and is missing an eye, and is taller than Jack (to give scale). Speaking of he's wanted by the cops for multiple counts of theft and trespassing

Shugo (name tentative) - Teru's older sister! I have no idea what she major's in but she's in college. She really cares about Teru and tried to help her make friends before she went off. It. Didn't really stick-

Tessa - my most recent OC after Eddith, I actually got her from @/bulldog-geckorahhhhh! She's really into scenecore and collecting niche shit, is best friends with Rachel and is also close with Streber from their high school days! It also uses she/it pronouns :]

Sorry if this is longer than you were expecting, they've been rattling around for a g e s

aaaAAAAAAA

WOAHEIH LOTS OF INFORMATION

I LOVE THEM ALL Tuktuka and Blondie should be friends lmfao. Blondie watches Tuktuka get adopted by Patty like "D:< bro."

SORRY random thought aNYWAYS

THESE ARE SO FUN. I LOVE THESE. I LOVE RACHEL LMAO. The idea of an oc hating Radford makes me giggle and i dont know why. hes so silly how can you hate him. hey she should meet op radford *i get shot in the head*

I'm pretty sure you talked about Margo to me! She was the OC you talked about when I was developing Vito right? think so!!

THESE ARE SO COOL!! I'd be happy to make you some refs or anything if you want!!

[mischas]

really niche but post-mischa on chd there’s this one clip from the L.A that’s been rattling around my head. it’s that scene with summer & the meta valley!versions of adam & rachel in the car, and she says “wait - you two are dating? don’t you think that’s a bad idea, what if things don’t work out and you guys break up. wouldn’t that be bad for the show?” and obviously that’s a more obvious dig at rachel/adam but that just makes me very sad for mischa, because it’s clearly a hit towards ben/mischa as well. instead of her feelings from that relationship being seen and understood, she was punished for “making things bad for the show.” not sure if this was coherent but

Okay so much about The LA is suspicious to me now. I now realize it's a dig at them both and that's just... wild. JS knew exactly what he was doing. The timeline of when that episode was written and then filmed is also hazy on the M/B timeline. The script was submitted a bit after Mischa's birthday and filmed not terribly long after that and I suspect there was an initial breakup with some bad boundaries in the weeks after. So... suspicious to say the least.

Anyway, I think that reference is this meta kind of warning to both couples about how things can shift negatively and Mischa really experiences this when she comes back for s2 and finds the vibes rancid. Mischa has said she had problems with the writing when she came back to set and there's enough subtext in the book and in old press that she was pissed the s1 dynamics were being torpedoed. I also think she knows/knew a lot about how A/R dealt with their own kind of pressure and how the show marketed them specifically.

[starrystevie]

i touched on this idea in my most recent fic but i can't stop thinking about robin, steve, eddie and nancy as the main four from the wizard of oz.

robin dressed up as the scarecrow. she has long limbs that cause her to trip over herself, all clumsy and fluid movements. she said it herself that she didn't learn how to walk at the same time as all the other babies. it was easy to convince her to dress as the scarecrow for that alone but then came the lingering fear of being seen as the one without a brain. robin was smart, she knew she was, good grades and witty comebacks and niche interests. yet as the years went on and they fought monsters, things were suddenly going bump in the night like they did when she was a scared little kid and she couldn't get her brain to stop or slow down or even just think the way it used to. this creeping anxiety that filled every minute of every day had her once smart brain turning on her, convincing her that she was wrong or she was seeing things or that all the different ways the world could fall apart were real. her brain became her enemy, her weakness.

then there was steve. big, strong, powerful steve with the swing of an athlete to wield an ax in protection of his friends. it was obvious for him to dress up as the tin man and he did it willingly knowing he'd get a fake ax that he'd get to swing around. he felt oh so confident with something in his hands but then his thoughts kicked in. the tin man, a lumberjack turned to metal for his lack of a heart. steve, who had been told that his love was bullshit, he was bullshit. steve, who learned over time that just by being his parents didn't automatically mean love. steve, who yearned for connections, for love, but was it really that? did he want to love or did he just want to be loved? he had heard time and time again that he was a king and that people fawned over him but he could only hear that for so long before it didn't mean anything substantial. did he want a heart? did he want the ability to love? or was not having that thumping thing in his chest the only keeping him from getting hurt?

the most obvious of all was eddie as the lion, craving courage. a big preening presence with a booming voice and a great head of hair who could bark as loud they come but had yet to figure out how to bite. the boy who tucked his tail between his legs before he ran, always running, always scared. he could show off with the best of them and boast how in his little fantasy world with dragons and wizards that he was the top of the food chain. but when it came to the real world where girls float on his ceiling and jocks hunt him like game and his own desires are wrong, he can't be anything other than scared. hell, he almost died in an alternate dimension after trying to make the hero play and couldn't find the guts to tell his savior that what he thought was adoration and appreciation was quickly turning to something more. eddie wanted, he needed, to find it in himself to learn how to stand his ground with the best of them but how could he do that when the world felt safer under running shoes?

and nancy, wonderful and beautiful nancy in a blue and white gingham dress with curled pigtails and ruby red slippers was dorothy. the girl in the center of it all. on the outside, her life was the epitome perfection, loving family and friends, smart as a whip, big dreams with the passion to get there. but then the monsters came. she learned how to fight, how to bear her teeth and shoot a gun and stand firmly with her feet planted in the ground. in reality, all she wanted to do was fly. nancy wanted to pack up and soar wherever the wind would take her, to find new places and big cities that matched her dreams and showed her things she would never see in a small town in indiana. she wanted to run and feel free and live up to all the idea rattling around in her brain. but then the monsters came, yet again, and all she craved was home. this unattainable thing that was just out of reach. a home of years before she knew how to load a gun, before she knew what rotting flesh smelled like, before she knew that she was small. nancy yearned for a life far away and mourned for that life every second that her home, her real home, was swept from under her feet. how could there be no place like home when home was cracked and burning?

[thepatchworkreview]

Curtain Call: Onorthochrasaei at the Colonial Cafe - 12/22/23

Like a death rattle, these guys SHOOK me. You have to understand it was this tiny kid just HOWLING into the mic fucking relentlessly. Mixed in were sampled vocal elements that said strange things and added to the complete fucking absurdity of the set. This is not to mention the drummer??? Blast beats to the attack of the vocals and backing tracks. Holy SHIT. The intentional tempo changes—unwavering screaming that highlighted the drumming—it really felt like art. It was dirty, and nasty, and fucking ruled. Just to give everyone some cool context for the band's name, (Glossaria.net {citation}), states that the word Onorthochrasaei refers to the mother of four Gnostic demons—all of which are elements of the psyche—and that Onorthochrasaei is matter, illimitable, and that the other four demons feed from her. Pretty cool shit. Seems to stem from second-century Jewish/Christian spirituality with an emphasis on self-spiritualism and polytheism.

I think this is an important tidbit to add because a lot of the samples played at intervals during Onortho's set seem to pull from—or at least are inspired by—excerpts from Gnostic literature (eg. "who is euen now at the Dore. Blessed are those, whose portion is not with the wicked"). Paired with the violence of the drums and the brutally stirring vocals, the meaning presents itself not in the juxtaposition, but more in the adjacentness of their symbolism. Screaming at the wickedness, rejecting it in the most violent way possible. It's like a battle cry; declaring that you will not be tread on or crossed, you are dangerous to those who don't wish you or others well. SIMILARLY, you cry and scream for those who have been lost. Of course, this is only one example, and only what I glean from it. In sum, Onortho's work captures a feeling of protection of self—a feeling of raw, savior-type empathy through strength and self-awareness, while also conjuring a massive eldritch energy that really completes, as far as motifs go, the big, scary sound that is the main pillar of the genre.

The music—as a genre—really took me out of my comfort zone. (I think that's a really important thing to both say and acknowledge as you continue to immerse yourself in more of these unfamiliar genres.) At some point, it stopped being screaming and blast beats and started contorting into a meditative yet highly aware piece of art. Every time you'd get lost in the screaming, it would stop, a clip of sound would play, and then it would start again— constantly immersing you in the performance, then yanking you back to realize that you are in fact watching a show. In this way, it was very reminiscent of the Talking Heads' "big suit era." Commercially, I find this genre of band does not always find a lot of mainstream success, however this is not to say that the genre is worthless. I think in an already unique topic and subgenre, they're really finding their niche, and are only continuing to get more creative as it goes. I cannot wait to see what narratives pop up in their next bodies of work.

In an interview I had with both the vocalist and drummer (Grim and Kevin, respectively), they divulged that Kevin had begun as a solo act around June or July of 2023, and had picked up Grim sometime about three months prior to the show on the twenty-second. The band together has played less than ten shows.

Grim rated their performance a solid 9/10, stating it was a good day for their vocal cords, and that their strength and tolerance were increasing.

Kevin was a bit more critical of his own performance, saying he messed up a couple times and may have rushed a little, ultimately ranking it a 7/10.

I say, for having played less than 10 shows, you get a pass. I couldn't notice anything. PLUS! My editor/secretary/tempo expert said, and I quote "You have no idea how fucking hard it is what he just did. Frankly there's nothing I'm complaining about. I've been playing drums for seven years and I cannot do what he just did".

Onorthochrasaei fucking rocked. They took us all to a place we weren't expecting, and I think shocked us so much that we didn't know what to do except stand around like idiots. At least- for me, that's how it went, there was A LOT of moshing during the set—

I can't wait to catch up with these guys again after they've played more shows and had more time to develop their act. They're already a massive powerhouse, and at full upside, I can't imagine how impressive their set is gonna be.

You can find Grim @Cosmetic.plague_

and Kevin on their main band page @Athletes.mouth!

[kellylor]

Ok, so, here's a lot of thoughts about queer identity have been rattling around in my head for the past..18 months or so.

My big work project last year involved, among other things, helping design a form for collecting demographic information from the public, to be submitted to my employer, a US government agency. We want to collect race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation information in order to be able to look for patterns of discrimination in certain financial transactions. There's a lot of poorly-designed government forms out there, and part of my role in the project was making sure the layout and instructions for the form were clear. There was a whole working group that made recommendations for language and format on the gender and sexual orientation questions, and the label we ended up with for sexual orientation was "LGBTQIA+". Which is fine, I guess, and very government form-y. It mostly did fine in the usability testing that I ran (though a distinct subgroup of older participants who spoke English as a second language didn't know what it meant until I listed out the words).

But while we were working on the layout of the form, I had a whole series of conversations with the other designer on the project about the impossibility of truly representing someone's identity as a series of discrete checkboxes on a form. Especially because things like racial and ethnic groups are fucking conceptual messes made up based on bad ideas, there are no truly good ways to neatly capture that as data. The sex and gender identity situation is less, uh, fully fictional, but still complex and messy precisely because they ARE rooted in real biology and real lived experience. Because biology actually dgaf about anyone's neat conceptual boxes, bodies will still exist the way they exist and people are gonna feel and behave the way they feel and behave, with a huge range of variation and exceptions to rules.

You have to just pick something as flexible as you can make it, try to be as consistent as possible about it, and know the limitations inherent in the data. For our purposes it's mostly not a big problem to not capture a full, nuanced picture of a specific individual, because the goal of the data is to be able to identify broad statistical trends. And ultimately what we want to learn from the form is "are you at risk of discrimination based on your identity?" and try to give people options that they recognize well enough to self-report. But also, because it is government data, there is a lot of pressure to be granular, to offer extremely precise subcategories. And sometimes that can be a really important goal, because we've seen things like the way lumping "Asian-American and Pacific Islander" into one category fails to show how, for example, people of Indian descent in the US have significantly different experiences than Cambodians or Pacific Islanders. But it's also impossible to do in a truly accurate way that will give everyone good options for self-identification. There are just so many niche experiences and only so much room on a printed page. Also so many unanswerable questions like, Are Brazilians Hispanic? Fuck if I know! The way racists treat people from Latin America is both shitty and ideologically incoherent, I don't know how to put that on a form.

So there's always a lot of tension between the weird messy reality that exists, and the urge to turn it all into clean, oversimplified categorical boxes. And LGBTQIA+, and any other variation of the alphabet soup, always strikes me as a term fundamentally starting from a position of atomized categorical boxes, straining under the weight of reality. The first time I ever heard an "official" term, suitable for use on something like a government form, that was not just "gay", it was "LGBT", and I encountered it in the context of trying to raise the profile of trans people, because just sticking them under the umbrella of "gay" sure elides a lot of differences between cis and trans experiences. But then you know, there keep being more specific identities that get pointed out, and that have to be added, because like, you have to put everyone in the right little subgroup in order to decide whether they count or not. I mean, the number of times I have seen the notes on a post talking about some iteration of LGBTQetc as an umbrella term turn into arguments about what some of the specific letters mean is...the same as the number of posts I've read talking about the terms. People who are ostensibly on the same side of trying to support a community, however you want to label it, still cannot get over arguing about the damn label. Because the alphabet soup is at its core a disaggregated approach masquerading as a flexible umbrella term, and you can't get way from that tension!

Queer, though. Queer is deliberately not trying to sublabel everyone. You don't need to fit into anyone else's defined boxes. Again, there is a time and place for understanding and discussing the differences in experiences among different people, but for me, in terms of community, the place I want to start from is building solidarity. And we all have an extremely important thing in common: we are the enemies of heteronormativity. The people most invested in perpetuating heteronormativity fully regard us all as their enemies, regardless of whichever slot they've decided to put us into! I have questioned a lot, over the years, as an ace woman who has only ever dated men, whether I get to "count" as queer, but that has bothered me less over time as a) I have come to understand queer identity as being as much about political solidarity as about my personal characteristics and b) I have learned that asking "am I queer enough to count?" is an extremely queer-ass experience. For myself at least, asking, "Does my experience conform to heteronormative expectations?" Is much easier to answer (definitely not, to extent I have experienced ace-related backlash or oppression in my own life it's all originated in de-legitimizing queer sex broadly, or in pressure to make conventional romantic life choices), and much more clarifying than reading a bunch of arguments about whether the A in LGBTQIA stands for "ally" or "asexual".

So, that's why I have tried to be more definite in thinking of myself as queer, and why I specifically prefer "queer" as a label. And also why trans rights absolutely do not threaten my rights as a cis woman, celebrating kinky sex is not acephobic, and kink belongs at pride.

[nightingaelic]

Publick Horoscopes

Editor’s Note: Well, Diamond City, thanks to that popular letter in last week’s edition, I guess we’re doing astrological predictions now. I have no experience in this, so I’ve brought in Eustace Hawthorne, respected woman-about-town, to type up some horoscopes that are totally celestially accurate, or so I’ve been told. Without further ado, here are the horoscopes for March 6-March 13, 2289. Sincerely, Piper Wright. 

ARIES (March 21- April 20) A lot of work is headed your way, so don’t be afraid to invest your caps in a promising new venture. On the other hand, if you are planning to hire someone to finish that project you’ve been putting off, keep an eye out for swindlers. Don’t stretch yourself too thin this month, kick back a bit at the local watering hole and enjoy some Bobrov’s Best. 

TAURUS (April 21-May 20) Some happy surprises are on their way to you through your usual social circle, which is about to take over your everyday life. Leave yourself open to new hobbies, like sewing or leatherwork or casual scavenging. Stop putting off learning how to use your new mode of protection, you’re going to need it soon. 

GEMINI (May 21-June 20) Mars moves into your sign this week, where it will remain until the end of the month. Its presence means extra energy and self-confidence, but the arrival of an old acquaintance could spell change for you and your family. Stock up on preserved goods so you don’t have to cook every night this week, Diamond City Surplus is having a sale on Cram. 

CANCER (June 21-July 22) Don’t squash your own freedom to support someone else’s desires, no wastelander is worth more than what they’re giving you. Be mindful of what might be going on behind the scenes in others’ lives this month. You never know who just lost a relative to a mirelurk attack, and you never know who might be willing to lend the help you need to fix your own problems. 

LEO (July 23-August 22) Put the past behind you and move on to better things this month. Pay no attention to those who aren’t open with their thoughts and ideas. Put some caps away to combat over-spending due to a false sense of security. Check in with your friends across the Commonwealth and make sure they’re doing okay. 

VIRGO (August 23-September 22)     Prepare yourself for the realization of your long-term goals this year. If you need help with security or getting crops going, reach out to the local factions offering their services. Someone will be willing to support you, so focus on taking care of the details involved. Be optimistic: Even rad storm clouds have silver linings. 

LIBRA (September 23-October 22) Accept that you may not know the whole truth of things regarding that situation you recently encountered. Guard against being too generous with what you have to offer right now, until true intentions are revealed. Maybe see if you can get yourself a mutt to keep an eye on your home, kids and brahmin herd. 

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21)   You have a new friendship on the horizon, which can bridge relationships with a group you haven’t had much contact with. Any prickly situations of late may settle down but there could be a more subtle sense of unknown factors for a few weeks. Keep your secrets close until you can be sure you haven’t thrown your lot in with some potential raiders. 

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21) All your hard work and slaving away that began this year is about to pay off with others recognizing, even appreciating your efforts. Don’t hold back this week when it comes to putting your ideas forward or pursuing discussion over any matters you would like to get sorted. There’s a Diamond City Council meeting on Saturday, just see Geneva about the agenda. 

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19) Consider the invitations you receive this week with care. Focus on the details or work that needs to be done for those obligations that require preparation. If you’ve been eating too many Fancy Lads snack cakes and putting off lifting weights, get a better routine in place now.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18) You will be brimming with ideas when it comes to yourself or anything you would like to do with your life. Try out new learning opportunities, maybe night classes at the Diamond City schoolhouse or a seminar at the Science! Center. Don’t spend caps impulsively this week.

PISCES (February 19-March 20) You might feel more settled and relaxed this week if you seek alternative ideas for that problem you’re facing. Minor details that could help are readily available, perhaps through a conversation with our local synthetic private eye. The energy and enthusiasm to start putting a solid foundation in place will begin to emerge. 

[indianamoonshine]

two to tango | javier x reader

*please note that i have no idea who created this gif. please let me know who did so i can give them credit.

summary: you’re pregnant and javier is the father. unfortunately, the two of you also haven’t spoken to one another in over a month. he’s starting to notice how easily startled you’ve become and how pissed you’ve been getting around the office. maybe it’s time to finally tell him.

contains: pregnancy. fluff. mentions of open relationships and an age-gap. (reader is well over eighteen.) your relationship is a bit wack but the two of you mean well.

author’s note: i’m barely getting by in quarantine, so here’s a really crappy one-shot. my first javier fic!

you felt him watching you.

the way you stumbled more frequently but was more apt to catch yourself less you actually did. the way your hands shook as you wrote down information called in through a hiss of static and how the noise pissed you off more than usual. it was the way you made sure not to walk too close to his desk, how your hands passed him folders marked with “confidential” as though he were infected with something.

javier was fuckin’ clueless though.

how he didn’t see earlier was beyond you. it’d been a month and a half since the last time you’d slept together. it’d been a month since the argument between the two of you ended things abruptly. javier and his informants and you and your jealously.

not to say you were wrong to be jealous. because you weren’t. you weren’t wrong to be angry when javier had to bail on you to collect some intel by whatever means necessary. and, granted, you had given him permission to do whatever it was to take out that escobar fuck. but certainly he had to have seen through that “cool girl” demeanor.

maybe it was because you were younger than him. javier didn’t play games - it wasn’t his niche. and usually it wasn’t yours; that is, of course, until the game reared its ugly face. you called him out on his bullshit only to cast the line; to get a rise out of him just to see how much he really cared. and when he didn’t take the bait (or didn’t understand what the fuck you were trying to get at) you grew restless at his lack of passion. this is the game that fucks up many relationships and it certainly fucked up yours.

but not until javier fucked you. a lot. every night really because the two of you lived down the hall from one another. then when your jealously and his nonchalance finally came to a head, the game stood on its platform and bit into its shiny gold medal. one comment led to another and soon enough you found yourself slamming the door in his face, unable to breath, and giving him the cold shoulder for thirty whole days.

but that thirty whole days was up a week ago.

it’s almost quitting time. well, for you anyway. you had a set schedule. you didn’t go out on the field or get your fingers dirty like steve or javier did. no. you sat in a square protected by bulletproof glass, phone to your chin, and breaking pencils by the dozens while you doodled mindlessly. the clock on the far wall ticks lazily, your kneecaps bobbing anxiously with the beat. you want so desperately to go home, to get out of this sauna of an embassy and drink...shit. well, to drink water, you suppose.

you let out a slight groan.

there’s a knock on your cubicle which rattles the glass a little. it’s always startled you, but considering the circumstances the sound the glass makes is enough to make you jump in your seat just slightly.

you place a hand on your chest, eyes tearing away from the clock, and find javier with his hands on his hips. he watches you with frown on his face, though the mustache hides most of it.

ah, fuck. it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. you were supposed to approach him. he wasn’t supposed to feel obligated to ask why you were more fidgety or anxious than usual; why you were now staring him down with a grimace on your face, eyes dropped with fatigue, and heart skipping a little.

well, shit. maybe javier peña was more observant of your behavior than you thought.

he says your name softly and raps his finger on the window again so you’d open it. you find yourself doing just that but not without sighing in defeat. the whiff of his cologne immediately intrudes your space, making your head dizzy with...all sorts of feelings, really. javier didn’t wear that much cologne. must be another lovely effect of pregnancy, you suppose.

he leans forward to say, “we need to talk.”

he’s being tactical - clever - in the way he speaks in such a hushed tone, eyes scanning the room to watch people leave their desks. it’s five now. lights are being flickered off, goodbyes being said. javier raises a hand at a few cadets who wish him a good night.

and then finally the room is empty. steve’s not even here - he’s on the field today - boots on the ground and whatnot. but javier was here.

and he was staring right at you.

his voice rumbles loudly from his mouth. “what’s going on with you?”

god dammit. you clench around nothing, palms sweating, and wishing he’d just fucking leave. especially with the way he smells. especially with the way his voice is heady with testosterone and authority.

“nothing,” you lie. it’s a bad show of dishonesty. you’ve never been that great at fibbing anyway, but this has to be one of the least convincing displays you’ve ever attempted.

javier isn’t persuaded by the way you choke on your own words. and with all the sweat gathering against your chest, who would be?

“i’m worried about you,” he murmurs. “you’ve been acting...strange.”

he seems genuinely concerned which both pisses you off and excites you at the same time. on one hand, he’d been watching you. making sure you were okay. healthy. safe. on the other hand, he had the audacity to fret himself over your demeanor when he’d been ignoring you.

in his defense, you’d been the one to kick him out.

you swallow a lump in your throat. acid, mostly, and then pride. “okay,” you finally squeak. “let’s talk.”

javier watches you cautiously, taking stock of your color and expressive eyes which probably looked a bit dilated at the moment. finally he says, “fine. over drinks?”

drinks. shit.

--

“your place or mine?” he’d asked after.

you told him ‘mine’ in a pathetic manner as he drove you. this area of medellín didn’t have a lot to offer as far as views go, but there was enough to keep your mind occupied as you passed. food carts that wafted delicious smells. children playing games. lovers quarreling. and then finally you arrive at the apartment complex where everything felt a little more beige and lonely - where culture was almost sucked from the grasp of the american embassy.

but javier was here now, and as much as you wanted to hit yourself for thinking so, the night felt a bit brighter when he opened the door for you. you thank him as the two of you enter the building and then wait in silence as you fumble with your keys.

javier takes a deep breath and makes himself at home. he’s been here hundreds of times. he even has his own sock drawer; one you hadn’t cleaned out yet (you told yourself you were too busy but you know...). he shucks off his boots and places them in the corner because he knows that’s where you like them, and when he sheds his jacket he lays it on the back of the couch just like you do.

you beeline for the fridge, desperate to busy your hands. there’s not much in here drink-wise save for some water bottles and some of his leftover beer. there is a bottle of red wine, chilled and tempting, but you ignore it with a frown and fetch javier’s choice of poison.

he sits on the couch, elbows at his knees, and staring blankly at the floor beneath him. when you enter the room he blinks up at you and accepts your offering with a small “thank you”.

“water, huh?” he notices as you uncap the bottle, brow furrowing a little. he knew how much you loved wine after a long day, and he definitely knew there was some in that fridge.

you nod a little too quickly for your liking. “yeah,” you say, taking a swig. “is that alright with you?”

javier grins at your snark. maybe it was bubbling up old feelings in him. you try to pretend like that doesn’t make you...well, feel something other than frustration. you wanted to be mad at him. you did.

there’s a silence between the two of you. it’s heavy. stifling. not awkward, but tense. tense enough that javier starts first with a great sigh.

“i miss you,” he says abruptly. he’s fingering with the lip of his bottle - can barely look you in the eyes when he says it...as though he’s ashamed of it or something.

“i know i shouldn’t because...” he sets the beer on your coffee table and folds his hands together. “because i was the one that fucked it up.”

you want to correct him but he’s not entirely wrong. while you played a hand in this as well, it takes two to tango and it certainly did take two to tango in this situation.

“i...” you start, but fall short. you weren’t keen on admitting you were wrong. you hated admitting you were wrong. always have. “i’m to blame too. i lied to you.”

javier perks a brow, lips pursing for a moment before asking, “lied?”

you shrug and nod at once, a little skeptical of your show of honesty. you hope it didn’t look too forced or shallow. pathetic. typical of you to overthink things...to make it about you.

“i wasn’t okay with you sleeping with other women,” you admit. and it feels so fucking good to say it aloud to the one person who matters.

javier sets his jaw and nods at his feet. “i shouldn’t have done it.”

that part was true.

“still, i should’ve told you straight out. i just felt like you didn’t...” you groan, pinching the bridge of your nose, a wave of nausea washing over you rather suddenly. “i just felt like you didn’t care enough about me to stop. and i was being a child for pushing you to admit it. or trying to push you to admit it. i don’t know...”

you shake your head, stunned by your own stupidity. when saying it out loud to an actual person and not your shampoo bottles it doesn’t make any sense. how manipulative can someone be?

“i should’ve just been honest with you and i’m sorry i wasn’t...” is all you can say. that was the simplicity of it.

javier shifts beside you on the couch. you don’t look up at him - you’re way too ashamed. he sets a hand on your thigh and you can’t help but shudder vibrantly at his touch.

“i knew you weren’t okay with the...” he considers his next words carefully. “informants. and, to be honest, i wanted you to break first.”

you glance up at him through your lashes. “why?”

he chuckles softly all of a sudden. “you know i’m not an open book. but you...” he pauses and takes your hand that’s limp in your lap. “you’re more stubborn than i am.”

he presses a delicate kiss to it, mustache tickling the tender flesh. “please come back to me.”

he...wants you back.

tears swell in your eyes before you can even acknowledge their existence. they’d come on so suddenly - without warning.

damn these hormones.

you use your free hand to wipe a lone tear away, noting how a wrinkle of concern puckers his brow when you do.

“i have to tell you something first.”

he scoots closer, eyes narrowed, but mouth soft in dismay. he massages the space between your forefinger and thumb which, strangely enough, alleviates some of the leftover nausea in your gut.

might as well spit it out.

“i’m pregnant, javi.”

you’ve imagined this scenario hundreds - and i mean hundreds- of times since seeing those pink lines on that piece of plastic. you imagine he’d shut down, sort of like a fax machine when it overheats, and walk out the door. maybe he’d throw his hands above his head, pace around the room, and spout off ways of how it couldn’t be possible despite the fact that you rarely used protection.

how it happened, you couldn’t be sure. the technicalities of it, at least. you’d been on birth control but maybe you’d missed a dose. maybe you were just really fuckin’ fertile and javier was really fuckin’ fecund. but either way it happened and there was nothing to do but say it did - indeed - happen.

and just as you think he’s had a stroke...that you should either call for an ambulance or at the very least steve, javier cracks...a grin.

not a joke. he doesn’t crack a joke. he cracks a smile. it starts off subtle until it doesn’t; until his teeth and all are showing. he laughs, but in good humor too. not snickering - but laughing.

you can’t help but jolt back from his touch with dubious reserve. “are you...laughing?”

javier’s smile falls into a pleasant smirk and then he’s holding your face between two calloused palms. palms that are familiar and warm, that have touched every inch and frailty of your body. the ones that helped make life within you.

and before he even says it, you know it’s okay. that it’s all gonna be okay.

“is that why you’ve been so goddamned jumpy lately?” he beams, thumb rubbing a small and gentle circle against your cheek.

you stare at him incredulously before you begin to giggle well. it was only a matter of time, especially by the look of sheer delight in his eyes. you were stunned by his bliss of it all.

you nod in his embrace. “yeah,” you admit meekly. but you’re smiling now too.

javier presses his forehead against yours, breathing in your scent with a great inhale. “i knew there was something going on.” he brings his nose to the crook of your neck and takes in another deep breath. “you smell different.”

you roll your eyes in jest. “bullshit.”

“i’m serious,” he says, perfect nose gliding along your skin. “i’m positive that’s a thing.”

your hands grip his cheeks, stubble itching your skin when you do. he looks luminous- maybe even more than you.

“so...” you caress the top of his eyebrow, thumb brushing over it ever so slightly. he always loved it when you did that. “are we okay with this?”

javier leans into you, eyes trained on your lips. “of course we’re okay with it,” he confirms softly. “we’re more than okay with it.”

[vegalocity]

10/18 spicynoodles plis

Prompt meme || @deborahsworld

10.A Shy Kiss/18. Holding Hands

Hell yeah time for fluff

--

Okay... first date....Going pretty well so far. The Movie was okay—MK wasn't very big on horror movies even ones as old as this one was, but Red Son was really excited when he saw it was being played for a ‘foreign movies’ night at the movie theater and what, could have have argued against such enthusiasm?—if a bit slow going and atmospheric.

Though after the heroes found the monster frozen and seemingly dead in the abandoned Norwegian outpost, all twisted and malformed, he really hoped his appetite wouldn't be killed by the end of this with even worse when the monsters started actually moving.

And then the monsters actually started moving.

The dog turning into a monster and killing the other dogs hurt the animal lover inside him, and he felt a bit of his latent arachnophobia begin to rear its head when the hairy legs sprouted from its back, and then the actual form the monster, halfway through killing the remaining trapped dogs had sent a chill up his spine and then-

“See how they were able to make the monster look goopy? It's not really very goopy except during the close up shots, because it's an animatronic so it had to be dry most of the time, they got the shine effect by piling liquid latex ontop of the finished paintjob until it started drying while it trailed off of the frame. And that right there? When it took the hurt dog? That was actually filmed in reverse, having the tentacles start out around the dog puppet and then rapidly pull away so when they reversed it it looked like they actually moved and had torque behind the action.”

“Really?”

“Yeah it's really fascinating how they went about effects before computer graphics were refined, everything had to be practical so even if it doesn't look the best, it doesn't hit that uncanny valley that bad CGI makes because even if it doesn't look real it looks real enough.”

It didn't feel quite as disturbing with that rattling around in his head, focusing on how much work must have been done to make the monster move as realistically as possible, how many times they'd practiced and trained in a controlled sound stage and adapting it to the set...

They weren't the only ones in the theater, but it was a mostly empty showing, as was usually the case with foreign films as old as this one. So it wasn't like they were disturbing anyone with Red Son leaning over to whisper interesting details MK would have never even thought to look up to make the overall experience less scary. Red Son seemed aware that he wasn't the biggest horror fan, and was trying to soften the blows the more intense moments would bring by talking through them and bringing back  the reality that it was just a movie they were watching.

“I was alive in this era and I can state with general expertise that computers were certainly not that advanced yet. Computer AI wasn't past that of your average graphing calculator until at least the mid 1990's.”

“They got that sound effect by putting a microphone in a tin trash can and recording the sound of a racecar zooming by and put it in a reverb chamber until it sounded completely unrecognizable”

“Blair is already a Thing at this point, you remember when he was dissecting the Norwegian base's monster? He was using a pencil eraser to point out that era in its chest and then he'd touched the eraser to his lip! And since it started by probably just a small contingent of shed cells it probably took him longer to assimilate than the others.”

“This is actually really cool! The stunt double for Copper that they got for the scene actually was a double amputee! They made fake hands for him out of latex, filled them with fake blood, and styled the chest jaw like a bear trap for that disgusting pulling shot.”

Though... That one didn't work as well... When the long tendril shot from the Thing's stomach and sprouted slider legs and a second head, the extending neck hissing and glaring down at the heroes, he felt his gut turn, even as the heroes took the flamethrower to the monster.

The monster's first head ripped from its body and grew spider legs. And Oh GOD that was disgusting, without thinking he reached for the edge of the armrest to grip as the heroes had to play cat and mouse with a severed, spider head. He'd missed, and his hand clapped down atop of Red Son's and squeezed.

Red Son jolted beside him and MK saw him turn in his direction in his periphery.

“You know if this is freaking you out too much we can leave.”

“No! No, it's okay. You like this movie! You wouldn't know so much about it if you didn't like it!” Besides, he shouldn't be getting so spooked about some kinda gross kinda spidery horror movie from the 1980s, what kind of hero got freaked out at a little practical effects?

He couldn't see Red Son's face very well with only the light of the movie itself to see by, but he made a strange sort of humming noise and slipped his hand out of MK's, moving his arm to put the arm rest up and then slide his hand back into his own.

“Here, that should be more comfortable then.”

And it was. Red Son's factoids and chatter alongside the movie were doing well at cutting the edge off of it again, and it was aided by not just their connected hands, but now by his physical closeness as well.

“I've heard the director had this stylistic rule about after the Things start invading, the idea is that if a character has light reflecting off their eyes they're human, if not they're a Thing.”

“Most people think Palmers was the shadow the dog assimilated back earlier but I think it was Norris, Palmers didn't get turned into a thing until after they go and talk to Blair again I don't think.”

“Actually...I don't think I like that translation very much. Like yeah it's more polite and Gary's a gentleman, but 'I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter tied to this fucking couch' emphasizes the stress of the situation better.”

And then came the time of the final confrontation, MK braced himself, squeezed Red Son's hand in his own. It was indeed gross, and frightful, and the puppetry alone was REALLY good. All those moving parts and there's no way that THAT was an animatronic so it HAD to be a puppet. And wow that was a REALLY good explosion.

...huh...Apparently he could do it too.

The movie ended with what MK felt like was a tentatively optimistic note. The remaining two heroes sharing a drink as the research facility and the monsters it housed burned around them. And you maybe get the feeling the two of them won't survive the cold, but they stopped the monsters and that’s what matters.

Though MK was right to worry over the movie killing his apatite because by the time the lights went up and the credits rolled he found he wasn't very hungry. Which felt ridiculous since he was always in need of quick carbs for Monkie Kid things. But Red Son had lost his own apatite as well apparently and the two of them could do nothing but laugh a bit awkwardly at their date being derailed by a movie being a bit too gross.

So MK pulled him into a nearby park and they went for a walk instead of the restaurant they'd planned for.

“Most people think that Childs is a Thing and I'm tempted to agree, He doesn't have the eye shine but neither does MacReady and we know he's not a Thing, but MacReady's breath is steaming and Childs' doesn't until the very end there, and MacReady wasn't drinking, those were Molotov Cocktails, that was gasoline and Childs just downed it without a thought to taste or smell.”

“So you think the Thing won at the end?”

“I don't know, but they do have one flamethrower left and Childs whether he's a Thing or not just drank gasoline. So MacReady as a person is probably as good as dead.”

“I Dunno, I like the idea that he wasn't a Thing in the end, gives it something not dissimilar to a happy ending, but like, it's not like they hadn't been wrong about who was a Thing before. The dog handler wasn't a Thing but he got shot anyway.”

“That's very true.”

It was about there that MK realized he'd yet to let go of Red Son's hand.

Well... he hadn't pulled away... MK squeezed Red Son's hand in his own, and Red Son—on a tangent about how in the time before CGI they'd made the stylistic title card with use of a fishtank, garbage bag, flash paper and a lot of smoke—squeezed him back.

A few hours and a plate or two of street vendor food when either of their appetites returned later and Red Son had insisted on walking him home. He was staying in a penthouse that his family technically owned but he was the only one who actually knew about it, and he wanted to be a gentleman before he headed back there.

“Well,  I hope you enjoyed yourself a bit. I feel as though I should apologize for choosing such a niche film, mother always said I was the only one who cared about foreign horror movies and just because I find movie effects fascinating especially in a time before technology was as advanced as it is now doesn't mean I should subject others to my incessant yammering.”

he didn't really think Red Son could pull off shy, but he'd folded his arms tightly and was very pointedly NOT looking at him now. And Sure, this felt like a big step, but that playfully self deprecating tone wasn’t gonna fly here. He moved slowly, giving Red Son time to pull away if desired. Placing one hand on Red Son's shoulder, the other on the side of his face to turn his head. He had to get on his tiptoes to make it to his level, but he leaned in-

It was nice. Soft, and Red Son of course ran hotter than an average person so it was warm too. He pulled away just as he felt Red Son start to press back against him. When MK opened his eyes, he noticed Red Son's were still closed for a moment longer before fluttering open.

“I like your incessant yammering.” He had such a cute blush. “it means you're passionate about something.” 

“You... wanna come in? Monkey King gave me this new tea blend I've been meaning to try out.”

--

Prompt meme (I’ll stop when y’all stop sending stuff)

[justthehiddleswrites]

Follow My Lead |Tom Hiddleston x OFC |Chapter 2 | He sipped the wine, avoiding the elephant called his bare ass, in the room

A/N: This will update every Thursday.  There are 13 chapters.  There are all sorts of kinds of D/s relationships.  This is the one I choose to write this time.

Series Masterlist Here

Pairing: Tom Hiddleston x OFC (Vivian Swann)

Summary: Tom and Vivian have both been unlucky in love, searching for something outside of the bounds of a typical relationship.  When the two of them connect via a dating app, Tom is introduced to the idea of being submissive to Vivian.  Which is the one thing he never knew he needed.  Under the firm hand of Vivian, Tom learns what it means to submit and Vivian learns what it means to be in a loving dominant relationship.  But not everyone seems to understand what they have and the best intentions can destroy the strongest relationship.

This Chapter:  Tom and Vivian take the first steps in this relationship, including a first date and a first kiss.  And Tom discovers Vivian is not like any other person he has dated before.  Can he step up to the task?

Warnings for story: Dominant/submissive relationship (sub!Tom), lots of smut including but not limited to: vaginal sex, oral sex (male and female receiving), edging, denial, teasing, use of restraints, spanking, multiple orgasm, anal play, use of toys.

Taglists are open!  Please let me know if you wish to be added!  Thank you for reading!

-

Vivian returned to read her book while Tom waited in line for coffee. She didn’t look over her shoulder, but she could tell Tom was sneaking glances at her. He soon returned with two espressos. Vivian preferred a sweeter coffee, but the chocolate chip scone more than made up for it. She replaced the book back into her tote while Tom nervously sipped.

Vivian stared at him as she broke apart the scone with her fingers, popping bites into her mouth. She offered him half of which he accepted with a smile.

“Ask the question, Thomas.” she stated, leaning back in her chair.

Tom chuckled as he folded his hands in his lap. “Am I that transparent?”

“No, that predictable. It’s always the first question.” She finished up the espresso. “Go on, ask it.”

Tom sighed, his face a bundle of nerves. “So how does it work?”

Vivian smirked. “Depends.” Tom’s eyebrows raised and the two of them burst in laughter.

“I deserved that.” Tom laughed.

“Not entirely. But it’s the truth. Every relationship, vanilla or not, is different. But nothing happens without consent.”

“Good to know.” he finished up his coffee and half a scone.

Vivian narrowed her eyes, sizing Tom up with fresh eyes. “You know, if you are looking for kinky sex, there are professionals who can whip your ass and make you lick their boots.”

Tom coughed as he choked on the last of the scone. “Forward, as always. I am well aware of the niche services out there. I am not looking for a one time thing or anything casual. I want a committed relationship. I apologize if I wasn’t clear.”

“No, you were. But I run into a lot of men who say they want a relationship, but what they really want is to play 24/7 and a woman to fulfill all of their dark fantasies. It was never about me. Just a kink dispenser.”

Tom nodded. “I can only imagine the hurt and anger you must have felt.”

It touched Vivian at how empathetic Tom was. Something definitely missing from previous subs.

“What does your work schedule look like?” She changed the subject.

“I’m between projects right now. A few meetings and events here or there, but for the next three months I am mostly reading scripts and hanging around the house.

“Would you like some extra reading?”

Tom smirked. “I’ve already read Anna Karenina.”

“Not exactly. Can I have your phone number, please?”

Tom rattled off the number. Vivian typed on her phone, glancing at Tom a few times before hitting send. His phone dinged, and he fished it out of his pocket, reading her message.

“You want me to read these books?” He quirked an eyebrow. The titles of some books listed piqued his interest. Tom read a bit about this after his last failed relationship, but Vivian had more experience in this arena.

“Yes, please. And then write a 500 word email on what you are looking to get out of this relationship.” She gathered her belongings. “Think of it as homework.” She smiled at him.

Tom scrambled to his feet. “What happens next?”

“We date. We go out to dinner. To the movies. We flirt. Figure out if we like each other. If we are compatible.”

“And if we are?”

“We set up a trial period. We discuss expectations. Now if you excuse me, I have a hair appointment. It has been very nice to meet you properly.”

Tom held open the door and followed her out to the sidewalk. “Dinner tonight? You pick the place.”

She tilted her head at him and smiled, reaching up to pat his cheek. “How about tomorrow? I’m thinking Italian. 7 p.m. Text me the name and address please.”

Tom nodded. “I look forward to it.”

They parted ways with a hug and Tom kissing her cheek. Once she rounded the corner, Tom pulled a ball cap out and searched for a nearby bookstore.

-

There were many who would consider a blowout a luxury, but to Vivian it was a necessity. Her thick, irregularly wavy locks were a nightmare to tame on the best of days. Her standing Saturday appointment was something she never cancelled unless she was out of town or too sick to get out of bed. As the stylist pulled and tugged at her hair, coaxing it into big loopy curls like you see in all the magazines, Vivian replayed the conversation with Tom in the coffee shop.

First, she chastised herself for not recognizing him the first night in the bar. Second, she wondered if this was too good to be true. A bona fide movie star. Not that his status mattered in the long run, but Tom was looking for a lifestyle relationship. The little goblin in the back of her brain screamed, “HE JUST WANTS KINKY SEX!!!” But then she reminded herself not once did Tom mention sex.

While she stood at the counter paying, her phone buzzed. It was Tom. Such an eager beaver.

Hit the lottery at the local bookstore.

Attached was a photo of all the books she told him to read with Tom’s head poking in, a huge boyish grin on his face along with a thumbs up. She couldn’t help but laugh.

Good job. Aren’t you eager?

She turned the camera on and took a quick selfie. How’s my hair look?

Tom responded within 5 minutes. Divine. I made reservations for Il Sugo tomorrow at 7.

She danced a bit in place. One of her favorites. And the fact Tom wasted no time complying with her request pleased her to no end.

I know the place. Thank you for doing that right away.

Tom beamed at the praise, his cheeks heating and blushing as he made his way home to read his “homework” from Vivian.

My pleasure. Is there anything else before tomorrow?

Vivian licked her lips as she contemplated his question.

Wear the suit from Bloomsbury.

She trotted back towards her apartment when a dress in one of the clothing stores caught her eyes. Navy with a faux wrap detail and a deep vee neckline. The dress would highlight her assets and she had the perfect Louboutins to go along with it. Not to mention it would match Tom’s suit. She tried on the dress, loved and plunked down her credit card to pay.

-

Tom was ready 30 minutes before he even needed to leave the house. Unheard for him. While he made a point to be on time, no early, for all his professional obligations; his personal life didn’t always get the same attention.

He tugged on his cuffs and adjusted the gold cufflinks before smoothing down his jacket lapels. This suit, the one Vivian asked him to wear, was among his favorite, with the dark blue color and a thin white line running both horizontally and vertically. It cut close to his lean frame, and the blue suited his features. His phone beeped.

Nervous?

Tom frowned at Benedict’s message. He regretted letting his friend know about his date.

No. He lied. Tom wasn’t ready to reveal the true nature of this relationship yet.

Turn on that signature Hiddles charm and she will be putty in your hands.

Tom sweated. He hoped it would be more like him being putty in Vivian’s.

Right, mate. Got to go, Don’t want to be late.

Tom grabbed his keys and headed out the door, missing Benedict’s last message.

Make sure to tell me everything tomorrow.

-

Vivian completed the same ritual she did every time before a date. After soaking in a bath, with an oil in her signature scent, she toweled off. She applied an eye look that was sultry but not too heavy. A glossy lip and dark lashes completed the look. She slipped on her new dress and her shoes. The mesh details were reminiscent of lingerie. Her diamond swan necklace and a small clutch and she hustled out the door.

-

When Vivian walked up to Il Sugo, she found Tom pacing the storefront. His face broke out into a grin when he saw her approaching. He grabbed Vivian’s hand and kissed her cheek.

“I wanted to wait for you before going inside.”

“Thank you.” Vivian kissed his cheek too, the first kissing him anywhere. His cologne was woodsy and heady.

“That dress is divine.” he complimented, holding his arm for Vivian to spin. “The shoes though, how tall are you in those things?”

“I’m 5’10”, these are about four-inch heels, so 6’ 2”.”

“Perfect.” Tom murmured. He opened the door for her.

The restaurant was warm and cozy. And the food divine as always. Vivian ordered the seafood risotto and Tom the Bolognese. As they waited for their entrees, Vivian folded her hands on top of the table.

“So tell me about your work.”

Tom sipped his water. “So I just finished up a play at the Old Vic and I have about three months before I am due in Atlanta for my new project with Marvel. After that, a series for Netflix filming in London. Have you seen any of my work?”

Vivian’s cheek heated before regaining her composure. “I have.”

Tom smiled at her. “Well, you called me the God of Mischief so at least one MCU film and based on your hushed tone, I am guessing The Night Manager?” He tucked his head to stare Vivian directly in the eye.

“Yes.” she did her best not to blush.

“I’m quite proud of that work. Was nominated for an Emmy, won a Golden Globe. Quite proud of all my work.” He sipped the wine, avoiding the elephant called his bare ass, in the room.

“What is like at the Golden Globes?” she asked.

“Long.” he laughed. “But at least they feed you.”

Vivian giggled too. “Are you always this charming?”

“No.” he deadpanned. “Normally, I’m more charming. You put me quite off balance, Ms. Swann.” She liked how her name sounded when he said it. “From the first meeting. How do you manage that?”

“Practice, confidence, and a good pair of heels.” She kicked her foot out.

“Perhaps I need to invest in some new shoes.” Tom teased, the thought of him in high heels flashed through Vivian’s brain for a moment. She smiled to herself.

“I think yours are just fine.” She kicked the bottom on his oxfords with the toe of her heel before dragging it up his leg mid-calf. Tom choked on his water. “So I know what your job plans are, but what is work like?”

“Rewarding but exhausting.” he commented. “What being a globally renowned corporate barrister? It must be draining.”

Vivian’s eyes sparkled. “You Googled me.”

“Guilty.”

She held her sip of wine against her tongue. “It’s exhilarating. A total adrenaline rush. The stakes are high and I call the shots.” Vivian beamed as she talked about it.

“Don’t you ever want to not be the one calling the shots. Do you ever want someone say ‘do this’ and not have to think about it?”

“No. Do you?”

“Absolutely. I prefer my personal life to be as few decisions as possible. Wear the same clothes all the time. Jog the same route. Eat the same food.”

“And what if it was someone telling you what to do?”

“Honestly, it would be a relief.”

“Even if it were a woman.”

“Even if it were a woman.” Tom parroted, as the server placed the food on the tables. Tom waited until Vivian took a bit before eating. That’s just good manners.

“How is the risotto?”

“Delicious as always, your Bolognese?”

“Delicious, but mine’s better.”

Vivian raised a manicured eyebrow at him. “You cook?”

“When the need arises.”

“Do you clean too? I’m looking for a new maid.” She chuckled, half joking.

“Not as well as I should. Bachelor life has made me somewhat lazy in that regard. My mother would be ashamed.”

“I’m sure we can fix that.” She finished up her food and set her fork down. “What is your mother like?”

Tom wiped his mouth as he ate the last few bites of food. “Kind, hardworking, independent. I doubt I would be where I am today without her. Now my sisters…”

“I have one younger sister. You?”

“One older and one younger. And they are brutal. Talk about the Night Manager. The text messages they would send me. I am never living that down. Ever.”

“Sounds like my kind of girls.”

The server dropped by the table. “Dessert?’

Tom looked at Vivian expectantly.

“Would like to split something, Tom? Your choice of dessert.”

His eyes lit up, and he ordered whatever chocolate dessert was on the menu. Lava cake, flourless cake, some cake. Vivian didn’t care, but she enjoyed seeing Tom happy. The server returned with the dessert and two spoons. She took a small bite as Tom devoured his half and leaped onto the rest of hers. He insisted on paying the bill which Vivian agreed to only on the condition she paid next time.

The day had been unseasonably warm for June, and Vivian didn’t wear a jacket. And now the night air nipped at her bare shoulders. Tom slipped his suit jacket over her, the residual warmth of his body clung to the lining. She grabbed the lapels and pulled it tighter around her.

“Walk me home, please?” she asked rather than demand.

Tom smiled at her. “How else am I getting my jacket back?”

They walked the several blocks to Vivian’s flat in silence, her gripping onto his jacket for dear life. Tom shoved his hands into his pants pockets, doing his best impression of a man not cold. When they arrived at the lobby entrance, Vivian slid the jacket off her shoulders and handed it back to Tom.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

His hands twiddled in front of him. An awkward gesture Vivian found endearing. Just as Tom leaned in for a hug, she grabbed his shirt front and pulled him into a kiss. Tom’s feet scrambled for purchase against the sidewalk as Vivian yanked him forward. Her lips soft against his and he melted to her. His hands fidgeted in the air, not doing what to do with them until landing on cupping her face, catching tendrils of her hair in his fingers.

Tom couldn’t catch a breath as Vivian pressed against him. Her perfume made his brain go fuzzy, or was that the kissing? Tom didn’t know or care. He just wanted to keep kissing her forever. When Vivian pulled away, Tom leaned forward, desperate for contact. She flattened her hand against his chest to hold him in place.

“Goodnight, Tom.” She pecked his lips and backed away before he could pull her into an embrace.

He sighed as his chest heaved. “Can I call you tomorrow? After work?”

She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “I work late.”

“I don’t go to bed early. Please text me when you get home. Whatever the hour. I want to hear your voice.” He pushed her hair back.

“Call me at 11?”

“I’m setting an alarm.” He whipped his phone for dramatic effect. Vivian playfully pushed him away as she headed to the door.

“Goodnight, Thomas. And don’t forget your homework.”

“I haven’t!” he called after her.

Tom floated his way back down the street and to the restaurant to fetch his car and head home. The ride home was a blur, and he stripped down to his boxers, tossing the clothes onto the floor, before slipping between his sheets and drifting off to bed.

Vivian washed off her makeup and did her skincare routine before changing into pajamas and placing her clothes in the hamper. She sighed as she thought of Tom. His soft lips and eager hands. Vivian was eager to take the relationship to the next step, but all too aware that rushing things with someone new like Tom could turn disastrous. She grabbed her book from the nightstand and read a chapter before going to bed.

[songfell-ut]

Chapter 3, still a-comin’

Cirumstances, am I right, folks?

If you didn’t make it through Chapter 2 or this is all 100% new, welp, this is a continuation of this comic by @lostmypotatoes, after which Frisk has gotten him to be her witchly apprentice, but now he’s trying to flake on her. ACTION

Sans was getting soft in his old age, or maybe from proximity to someone as aggressively good-hearted as the High Priestess, because he found he didn't want to demolish the entire wall. For one thing, without his magic, it'd be too much effort. More importantly, though, Frisk's rooms were many, many stories above the ground, and falling masonry could kill or injure someone below who hadn't earned it. Most important of all: Frisk would probably end up trying to help dig them out and put herself in danger.

He also figured that he had time to do things neatly and cost her less in repairs. Everything had been loosened by that first colossal blow, but he had to give it a few more whacks before he could start pulling it apart, making a pile of glass shards, wood paneling, bricks and stones in front of her office. Luckily, whoever had constructed the outside wall hadn't done a great job, or else it would've taken him all night. A carefully judged body-slam was enough to weaken the remaining support structures; a few kicks and a yank created a space big enough for the giant skeleton to squeeze through, and then he could see the barrier itself.

Panting, Sans took a moment to survey his handiwork. It sucked to exert himself like that, but he figured that sometimes in life, you just had to punch things until they broke.

Unfortunately, he didn't have that option with the barrier. The old stories came back to him as he stared at the golden latticework hovering outside the ruined wall. How was he going to get through without touching it directly or throwing something big enough to hurt someone below?

His eyes fell on the worktable and the vials of stuff he'd made this afternoon. Four hadn't been infused yet. Sans grabbed one, pulled off the cork and, with a speck of magic, willed the liquid to boil, burn, dissolve anything it touched. It promptly began to fizzle and hiss in his hand, and he had to fling it away like an idiot before it started eating through his metacarpals.

He did one thing right in throwing it at the barrier, which instantly melted and let the chilly night air wash over him. Outside, moonlight shadowed the bricks of a nearby wall that stretched almost all the way to the ground, ending in the roof of a building only a couple stories high. He could hop out, grab onto the brick edifice, climb down safely and be gone before Frisk even got back up here, never mind moving the statue and getting the doors open. From there, it'd only be a matter of time before his magic regenerated and he could take a shortcut home.

Poor Frisk. She'd tried. Hell, she'd survived his murder attempts and taught him a few things, and he'd never forget her.

Anyway, she was better off losing track of him and finding a smaller, tamer monster to work with. What was she even getting from him being here, besides a hell of a lot of trouble?

The question was supposed to be rhetorical, but as if in reply, he thought of Frisk standing at the worktable with her arm up those ridiculously oversized trousers, grinning and saying, "The pleasure of your company," looking up at him like...well, like he was her friend, not an inferior or a dangerous monster or a giant pain in the ass, pun absolutely intended. Of course, it wasn't as if she had many other friends, but he couldn't tell himself that she was just using a captive freak to keep her company; he already knew her too well for that.

This, right here. This was why he needed to leave now. The skeleton took a few steps back, gauging the distance to—

Whhhsh went something in his mental ear. He jerked around to see Frisk standing half in his shadow, half in the moonlight, with her veil in her hand and absolute murder in her eye. "Sans." It was a whisper, lost in the wind.

Shit fuck shit shit shiiiiiiit fuckity fuck SHIT rang in his head as the satchel hit the floor. "Frisk?" he whispered.

Frisk beckoned him closer with one finger. Unbelieving, he knelt, and she punched him so hard that he almost felt it. "Here is what's going happen," she said as he touched his jaw. "I assume you've blocked the doors, so you will go and unblock them, and I'll tell the guard that you were—we'll say you were fighting off an assassin, and everyone will be impressed when they see how much damage you did trying to kill him before he escaped. Won't they?"

Sans nodded helplessly. "How...how'd you...?"

"How did I get here?" She tossed the veil aside, letting it drift to the floor. "Let me tell you a story, Sans. Once upon a time – yesterday morning – I had a long talk with Dr. Serif. He said you probably didn't intend to stay for a whole month, and I needed to be on my guard, just in case you decided to pull a stunt like this. I didn't want to believe him, but I followed his advice, and lo and behold, less than a week later, I caught my lying, backstabbing apprentice trying to break his word because he was apparently too bored with me to waste time learning crucial information for the survival of his entire race! The end!"

Frisk had to pause for breath. The boss monster took great exception to that last accusation, and he doubted that was actually the end of the story, but he was afraid to interrupt. "Do you see this?" she continued. Sans flinched as the tiny woman ripped off her brooch and brandished it at him. "Dr. Serif brought it yesterday afternoon. It seems he'd taken some of your magic while you were unconscious, and not only did he refuse to return it to you, he said I couldn't be here every hour of the day, and I needed to have this if you ever tried to break loose. He infused it with enough of your power to teleport myself one time." Another deep breath. "Do you have any idea how angry I am that he was right, and I was right to listen? And do you know how sick to my stomach I feel right now?!" Frisk threw the brooch to the floor, where it shattered. The last bit of magic quietly evaporated, and she pressed the back of her hand to her lips, eyes unfocusing. "And...how do you stand—"

There it was. He couldn't believe it had taken this long to catch up with her—the first time he'd tried using a shortcut, it left him feeling like his head had been screwed on backwards.

The skeleton glanced at the open, crumbling wall, then at Frisk, who was leaning heavily on the worktable, eyes closed. Then...

The priestess squeaked as Sans swept her up into the crook of his arm and headed to the bathroom. "Put me down!" she croaked, thumping his clavicle.

"Yes, m'lady," he said, opening the door, poking the light on and placing her at the very back of the room. "Go for it."

Once she was settled and could puke in relative peace, Sans went to the double doors leading into the hall, replaced the statue in its niche, and headed back to the workroom. Her office door was blocked by the many chunks of wall piled in front of it, and moving them again would take effort, so the skeleton ignored it for now. He picked up the satchel and set it on the worktable, wondering if the wind was too cold for her and how, exactly, he was going to pay for this, in every sense of the word. After one more look outside, Sans made himself tiptoe back to the bathroom and ask, "You done?"

There was a pause, the sound of water running, and a much longer pause before she opened the door and stared up at him. "What are you still doing here?" she demanded.

Sans blinked at her, mostly for effect. "'Zat a trick question? I'm makin' sure you're okay. That magic can knock you on your ass the first couple times ya try it."

Her face tightened, a hard, bitter expression that probably shouldn't have surprised him. "You don't say." She turned her head to cough, resting her forehead on the tile wall. "Congratulations to you, Sans. I'm here, but I'm in no condition to do anything. Your plan worked after all." She pushed herself upright.  "Good night."

Shit. "Uh...Frisk—"

The priestess walked right by to open the double doors. He heard her exclaim something about the guard not being there, and mutter that she'd deal with it in the morning. She barred the doors shut, which he hadn't even noticed was an option, and wobbled past him into her dressing room, evading his halfhearted attempt to steady her.

Hangers rattled. There was an occasional sniffle. When Frisk came out in a long crushed-velvet robe, she actually looked offended to see him. "Don't you have somewhere to be? I said good night, Sans."

Wasn't she going to at least try to stop him? Sure, she was sick and exhausted, but where was her determination? ...Was she so upset that she was determined to cut her losses and let him go?

That really seemed to be it. Well, Sans should have been elated, but he mostly just felt insulted. Besides, he couldn't leave until they got a few things straight, or else he'd spend the rest of his life trying not to think about it. The boss monster wracked his brain for a witty yet conciliatory opener, but what came out was "You're not boring."

A blast of wind howled through the room, flipping the lighter books open and ruffling the weighed-down stacks of paper. Frisk remained stock-still as her short, wavy hair fluttered across her face. "I beg your pardon," she said, colder than the autumn air.

"Okay, yeah, I admit it. I was gonna ditch ya," he said desperately. "But it wasn't 'cause I don't like you or I don' care about helping the other monsters. I—you remember all you heard about Papyrus, right?" Her expression softened a little as she nodded. "I had a dream about him last night that I'm pretty sure was real. Me bein' gone and him not knowin' I'm okay is killing him, Frisk. I can't..."

She stayed silent as Sans pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. It had been so long since he'd told someone the entire truth that he felt completely exposed. It was scary as hell, but he owed it to her and to Pap. "Ya gotta understand," he mumbled. "My brother's all I got left, and I'm all he's got. You've been nothin' but fair to me, and it's not yer fault there's no real way t'contact 'im. I just...I can't go a whole month without lettin' him know I'll be home soon, and I can't dream at him with yer barrier up." He sat down with his legs crossed, staring at the floor. "I spend too much damn time away as it is. He never knows for sure if I'm comin' back."

Frisk swallowed. "Why didn't you tell me sooner how important this was to you? And what do you mean, 'dream at him'?"

"I didn't bother 'cause you might'a thought I was lying to make you feel sorry fer me. I know I wouldn't trust me." The skeleton jerked his head at the ruined wall. "What I mean is, I can talk to Pap while we're both dreamin', but you wouldn't be there to hear what we were saying. I could tell him all sorts of crap, like how strong the High Priestess is and how much safer it'd be for us monsters if she was dead."

The priestess was silent again. Sans risked a glance in time to see her reach up to sweep her hair behind her ear, only to yelp in pain. Sure enough, as she raised her hand to inspect it, the outside knuckle was red and swollen. "Augh! How did I not notice this?" Frisk tried to move it and had to stifle another exclamation. "Wonderful. If it hurts this much, I must have broken it." She made an incoherent noise and started toward the rack of finished potions on the worktable.

Sans dimly recalled that humans didn't feel as much pain when they were scared or excited, and that it could catch up to them pretty fast. It also occurred to him that it was a bad idea for a small human to hit a thick-headed skeleton with her bare hand. "What are you doin'?" he wanted to know. "You can heal that up in a jiffy."

"I can't heal myself," she said brusquely. "I'm not very adept at healing to begin with, and I can't make it work on me at all."

That couldn't be right. "Ya mean to tell me you're good enough to hold me off and keep me penned in for days with no magic, but—"

"Leave me alone."

Her voice was so quiet and furious that he stopped dead. But as she picked a vial and started to pull the cork out with her teeth, Sans got up and held his own hand out. "Lemme see."

With as much dignity as she could muster, Frisk closed her mouth and handed him the vial. He put it back impatiently and beckoned again. "Not that, dummy. Yer hand."

The priestess gave him a long, eloquent look. When he didn't move, she placed her broken hand in his huge one, wincing as his thumb closed lightly over her wrist. It was hard to remember how to turn his magic green, but she'd been right about intentions: it helped to think about how badly he wanted it to work, not only to help her, but to prove that he was capable of fixing things as well as destroying them.

Sure enough, within seconds, his palm began to glow as if he held a handful of emeralds. When Sans could bring himself to let her go, she flexed it easily. "You've gotten some magic back already," she observed. Frisk smiled at him for a moment, and he couldn't not smile back. "You know," she said, anger rapidly resurfacing, "you're not only a lying reprobate, you are a huge idiot." She rapped her knuckles on his palm. "I've always had a barrier guarding the bedroom from any external magic. If that was the only thing keeping you from reaching Papyrus, you should have asked me to remove it."

Sans sat down again. "But—"

"As for the possibility of giving him illicit information, I will ask you this only once." Frisk moved closer, looking him square in the sockets. "Do you intend to tell the other monsters, at any point, that your race would be better off with me dead?"

He didn't even have to think about it before he answered, "Not anymore. You're pretty damn useful as you are, speakin' up on our behalf to the other humans. I don't see anyone pressuring you into screwin' us over."

A brief smile. "I'm glad to hear it. For my part, I don't mind letting you talk to your brother as long as you take me with you. I'd love to say hello—I've heard so much about him that it'll be like meeting an old friend." She stifled a yawn. "If you start tattling on me in some fashion, I can always pull the barrier back up."

"...You want me to...bring you...in my dream?" Blink. Blink. "But how—what're you gonna—"

"One thing at a time, Sans. First, we're going to bed."

"We're what now?"

"If you're not leaving yet, then we're going to bed, now. This mess can wait till morning." With a nod at her blocked office door, Frisk motioned for him to follow her into the bedroom. "Come along. There's nowhere else for me to sleep, and I'm freezing."

And so it was that Sans found himself lying rigid on the huge feather mattress, the priestess curled up like a cat in the armchair. He had no idea why he was so nervous; he couldn't even muster a semi-joke about her joining him in bed. "I've heard of this spell before," said Frisk, who seemed unperturbed by their proximity. "It's not very complicated. You've just healed me, and I've recently used some of your magic, so we have enough of a connection that I should be able to find you once we're asleep. ...The key word being sleep, Sans. You have to relax. I'm not going to eat you, no matter how short-sighted and dishonorable you've been."

"You're not gonna let that go, are ya?" he mumbled.

"You have no idea. We haven't even talked about repairing the wall yet." Her voice warmed again. "For now, though, don't worry about it. We need to find Papyrus and set you both at ease."

Now Sans felt nervous and extremely weird again. He turned onto his side so she couldn't see him changing color.  "'Kay. I...yeah. Thanks."

"Of course," she said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world to do a favor for someone who had completely betrayed her trust, and turned off the witchlight. He felt her raise another barrier at the bedroom door, one solid enough to stop an army, and a thinner barrier disappeared from behind the headboard. "There," she said in the darkness. "We'll see how well this works. Go to sleep, Sans."

That seemed unlikely, but he'd forgotten who he was dealing with. When about ten minutes had passed and the orange light of his eyes was still going strong, something wonderful started creeping up on him, a soothing vibration that spread through every bone in his body before he even knew what he was hearing. It was Frisk humming, of course, and of course it worked; Sans was more than content to let the sound and her presence lull him to sleep.

~

He jerked upright as something hit his skull, reflexively swatting the air and yelling, "Piss off!"

The lights were back on. In fact, it was full daylight, or what passed for it. Sans rubbed his eye sockets, turning this way and that. He was still in bed, but the bed stood alone in the middle of an open, snowy field. Kid monsters were racing back and forth under gaily decorated trees, throwing snowballs at each other and catching him in the crossfire.

The skeleton brushed himself off, reasoning that the Underground could be a weird place, but it wasn't quite random-snow-bed weird. This must be a dream, then. Damn it...

Oh, well. At least it was a nice one, and it felt pretty real—his good dreams tended to be fuzzy, while every single one of his nightmares was incredibly vivid.

Footsteps crunched on the snow behind him. "Well, hello there. That was simple," said Frisk, looking around them as he got up. She was in her plush robe and bare feet, but seemed at ease. "So this is Snowdin. Which house is yours?"

"BROTHER?"

Sans froze as a familiar shape emerged from a nearby fog of ice crystals. "Papyrus?" he whispered.

"I KNEW IIIIIT—OOF!" Papyrus had run to give his brother a bear hug and fell straight through him, as if Sans was also made of fog. "WHAT IS THIS, SANS? HAVE YOU BECOME TOO LAZY TO STAY SOLID?" he accused him from the ground.

"It's a dream, bro. This happens every damn time," the boss monster said wearily. "Just keep it together and listen, okay? I'm here t'let you know—"

"WAIT. A HUMAN? IS THAT...KRIS?" Papyrus was staring up at Frisk, his face somehow creased in puzzlement. "IS IT REALLY YOU? I THOUGHT YOU'D BE...KRIS-ER, NYEH."

Sans snorted. "Not every human is Kris, Pap. Don't be racist."

"Hello," Frisk said, offering a bright smile and a hand up. "My name is Frisk. It's wonderful to meet you, Papyrus."

"YES, IT IS. NYEH-HEH-HEH! YOU ARE CLEARLY VERY WISE AND ATTRACTIVE, HUMAN!" Papyrus brushed the snow from his fake armor, throwing his red scarf back over his shoulder in so dramatic a fashion that he didn't notice Frisk grinning, though Sans sure did. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY GREAT AND ATTRACTIVE DREAM?" he added.

Still smiling, Frisk watched the pack of young monsters run by. The monsters didn't seem to notice them, though the bed was still there and her purple robe stood out like a dark beacon against the snow. "Your brother wanted to see you, and I decided to come along," she explained. "Sans was captured by humans about a week ago when he was out looking for food, but please don't worry about—"

"CAPTURED?!" Papyrus clapped both hands to his skull. "THIS IS TERRIBLE! PLEASE DE-CAPTURE HIM IMMEDIATELY, HUMAN, OR ELSE I...I...!"

"Pap! Take it easy. She's okay. 'Fact, she's the reason I ain't dead or enslaved right now." Sans plucked at his shirt. "See, she even got me some new duds. You can finally stop bitching about what I'm wearin'."

Papyrus stopped flailing long enough to examine Sans' shirt. "NYEH! I SEE NO HOLES OR QUESTIONABLE STAINS. WHAT SORCERY IS THIS?"

Sans smirked, letting his brother poke at him in vain. "I told ya, bro, I just got it. You don't hafta rip me apart like this."

Frisk rocked back and forth on her heels. "So," she said over Papyrus' exasperated groaning, "I gather you knew a boy named Kris from the last human delegation. Is that right?"

"YES, IT IS RIGHT! KRIS WAS OUR DEAR FRIEND," Papyrus said as Sans grimaced and turned away. "WE WENT FOR WALKS AND HAD SLEEPOVERS, AND MADE HAND PUPPETS THAT ALSO HAD SLEEPOVERS. IT WAS LIKE HAVING A CUTE LITTLE PET THAT CLEANED UP AFTER ITSELF. WE'VE ALL MISSED HIM VERY MUCH, NYEHHH."

"Yeah, he left with the other humans," Sans muttered. "Can we please move on now?"

"Yes, of course. I'm going to borrow your brother for a few more weeks," Frisk told Papyrus. The latter was glaring at his brother's new shirt again, as if daring it to make a false move. "I have a plan to start making peace between monsters and humans," she continued, "but I need a monster's help to do it. Can you get along without Sans until I send him back to the Underground?"

"HMMMM." Papyrus straightened, one hand on his chin. "YOU WON'T HURT HIM?" he asked, sounding almost timid.

"Absolutely not, Papyrus," she said firmly. "He'll be back safe and sound."

Papyrus nodded, evidently impressed by her sincerity. "I AM IMPRESSED BY YOUR SINCERITY, HUMAN. IF THIS DREAM IS NOT MY MAGNIFICENT IMAGINATION PLAYING TRICKS ON ME AGAIN, THEN I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, SHALL SPARE MY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING BROTHER FOR A LITTLE WHILE LONGER. NYEH-HEH-HEH!" Without warning, the skeleton grabbed at Sans' wrist bones. "HUMAN! I WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO MY BROTHER IN SECRET FOR A MOMENT, IF YOU WILL PLEASE EXCUSE US. IT WILL BE SECRET!"

"Of course," said Frisk. "I'll be right here. Just make sure it's not too secret, please."

Sans covered his face with his hand as Papyrus marched toward the fog bank, still holding his brother's imaginary wrist. "Ya can't touch me, remember?" Sans called after him.

"...I KNEW THAT. CONGRATULATIONS, BROTHER! YOU HAVE PASSED THIS TEST! NYEH. ...HEH." Papyrus waited for Sans to join him, and they walked towards the river. "ARE YOU SURE THAT'S NOT KRIS?" the younger skeleton asked doubtfully.

Sans laughed, jerking his thumb in Frisk's direction. "Does that human look like a sixteen-ish-year-old boy?"

"HMM. NO, IT LOOKS LIKE A HUMAN. BUT! IT SEEMS DELIGHTFUL! THE GREAT PAPYRUS THINKS YOU SHOULD BRING IT BACK HERE WITH YOU. IT'S BEEN TOO LONG SINCE WE HAD A HUMAN TO PILLOW-FIGHT WITH, NYEH-HEH-HEH."

"That's probably not a great idea," Sans remarked.

"NYEH-HEH! WHY NOT?"

"I could spend literally the rest of the night tellin' you all the reasons why not, but the biggest one is that she's the High Priestess, Pap. The other humans would definitely notice if she was gone."

"HIGH PRIESTESS?" Papyrus cocked his head in perplexity. "WHY WOULD A DELIGHTFUL HUMAN BE A HIGH PRIESTESS? DON'T THEY CREATE BARRIERS?"

"It's complicated, bro. Look, I've gotta go soon. Is there anything else you wanna say?"

His younger brother paused, and sighed, shoulders slumping. "SANS. WERE YOU REALLY JUST LOOKING FOR FOOD? WHEN YOU GOT CAUGHT, I MEAN."

The bigger skeleton tried to kick a chunk of ice into the water, his foot passing right through it. "I wasn't slaughtering humans, if that's what you're askin'. I was mostly tryin' to track down monsters who've been sold off recently. But I did want to see how the humans' harvest turned out, an' it looks like it was pretty good this year."

Papyrus nodded, still troubled. "ALL RIGHT, BROTHER. I UNDERSTAND. PLEASE, JUST...TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. NYEH."

"You too, Pap." Sans felt a familiar stab of trepidation and backed away. "Shit, I've got a nightmare coming. I'll see ya soon, okay? Don't tell anyone about Frisk!"

He had to turn and run before Papyrus could answer. Frisk was sitting on the bed in the snow field, ducking snowballs. She turned and started to say, "I hope you weren't telling on m—"

"No more dream! End it now!" he panted.

The priestess didn't waste time asking stupid questions. As the nightmare nipped at Sans' heel, Frisk made a quick swiping gesture, and just like that, he was back in bed, in the bedroom, staring at the sun-washed ceiling.

The skeleton sighed in relief. He rested his forearm across his eyes. Between the radius and ulna, he could see the flickering shadows of birds flying past the open windows. "Thanks, kiddo," he said, "an' thanks for lettin' me talk to him. I really appreciate it." Sans scratched the top of his skull, rolling over to face Frisk. "So, how'd you like Papyrus? He's a cool guy, huh?"

Frisk didn't answer, because she wasn't there. A strange human child sat in the armchair, perched on the edge of the seat, holding a kitchen knife. It stared at him with red-shining eyes, teeth bared in a horrible grin.

If Sans had had more than a shred of magic left, he would have pulled all his blasters at once and obliterated half the building. As it was, he jerked back, nearly choking in terror. The child wasn't moving, but menace radiated off it like heat from a furnace, eyes boring into him as its grin widened. Sans looked around wildly for an escape. The windows were too small, but maybe he could—

A sharp whistle split the air. The barrier snapped on, and the child vanished.

Sans was sitting upright in bed again, in the dark, awake, panting as though he'd run a mile in a few seconds. "Sans, I am so sorry!" The light snapped on. Frisk stood at his bedside, wide-eyed, clutching the neck of her robe. "I didn't think I was going to have that nightmare again before we woke up! I thought it'd be fine, I—" She took a step onto the bed, leaning over to grab his humerus. "Sans? Sans! Please say something!"

He shook her off, and she stumbled backwards, falling into the armchair. "What the fuck was that?" he rasped.

Frisk sat up and pulled her robe tighter around her shoulders. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I should have warned you. It's the reason I have that barrier up in the first place." She swallowed hard. "It shouldn't happen again."

"It better not," Sans snarled. "What the hell was that thing, anyway?"

"I don't know." She looked so miserable that Sans wanted to smack himself, but he was too unnerved to lie and tell her that it was okay; he was shaking so hard that he could almost hear his bones rattle.

For a solid minute, the only other sound in the room was the wind blowing outside the shuttered windows. "I hope you had a good talk with Papyrus," Frisk said presently with a decent attempt at calmness, placing her palm on the bedroom door to dissolve the thick barrier. "I can see why everyone likes him so much. It's good to know he hasn't changed."

The skeleton grunted, hoping she was smart enough not to ask him any questions about him changing. "Yeah. Thanks for fixin' that up for us. Sorry I pushed you just now."

"It's fine. It was an accident." Frisk fiddled with the key in its lock. "You know, Sans, I'd like you to help repair the damage you caused, but...if you still want to leave, I won't stop you. I wasn't thinking of how much it was to ask, staying an entire month."

Sans stared at her. She wouldn't turn around. Finally, he said, "What the crap, lady? You already let me talk to Pap. That was the whole reason I tried to bust out of here. Why wouldn't I stick around 'n make it up to you? Ya really think I'm that bad?"

There came a soft knock at the door, startling them both. "Your Eminence?" It was a male voice, deep and pleasant. "Are you awake, my lady? Please forgive my intrusion, but His Holiness urgently requests your presence."

Daylight was showing through the closed shutters. "Yes, of course. I'll be there in a moment," said Frisk, running her fingers through her hair, eye twitching as she found a tangle.

Sans watched her, and watched her move to unlock the door, feeling a different sort of unease. "Wait a sec," he rumbled. "Frisk, wait. Didn't you bar the big doors last night? How'd he get—"

The man knocked again. "Just a moment," Frisk repeated, turning the key. She glanced behind her. "What, Sans?"

The door banged open. Before she could blink, a stranger in tattered clothes rushed in, his arm raised to strike.

The boss monster was already moving. The man lunged, and there was a sound of steel hitting bone; the priestess found herself staring at the tip of a knife, inches from her face, jutting from between massive skeletal fingers. "Sans!" cried Frisk, twisting around to look at him.

Red clouded Sans' vision, but one clear spot remained: with his free hand, he reached out, corralled Frisk and gently maneuvered her behind him, fingers forming a protective cage. The other hand flexed briefly, then backhanded the intruder so hard that the man rolled clear out of the bedroom, hitting the worktable with a crack and a thump.

The skeleton clamped his teeth on the dagger's hilt and pried the blade out from between his knuckles, jerking his head to fling it to the other side of the bedroom. There was technically nothing to pierce where the knife had been lodged, but it still stung. He glanced down to be sure Frisk was unscathed, then edged forward into the workroom.

To his great irritation, the man wasn't dead; he was not only conscious, but pulling himself up on the table. "Who the fuck are you?" demanded Sans. Only the vague awareness that Frisk was watching kept him from grabbing the guy and pinching his head off.

The stranger wiped the corner of his mouth on his sleeve, squinting against Sans' literal glare. He was gaunt and generally gross-looking, but had moved fast enough and aimed the knife with enough skill to peg him as a professional killer. "What's a big-ass talkin' skeleton doing here? They said you got sold off already!" The assassin laughed shakily. "So it was you bashin' that wall down! What the hell'd you even do that for? It took me all goddamn night to get out!"

Sans glanced at the office door, which was ajar. Several pieces of broken masonry had been moved out of the way by shoving the door repeatedly from the inside. The guy must have snuck into the office after Frisk left, while Sans was in the bedroom but before he blocked the entrance, and gotten trapped in his hiding place by all the debris piled against it.

It would have been kind of funny, except that if Sans really had left, Frisk would be dead now.

The young woman was leaning on Sans' femur, peering around his outspread fingers. He could feel her trembling, which only intensified his urge to kill something. "I know you," she said. "You spoke to me after a service last week. You said I...I..."

"Had a positively angelic voice?" The man leered at her, showing several broken teeth. "S'truth. But I needed to be sure 'xactly who you were. The last High Priestess used body doubles sometimes." He looked her up and down. "Gotta say, I like yours a lot better."

She shuddered. Sans leaned down, not taking his now-flaming eyes from the assassin. "You need this piece of crap alive, Frisk, or can I take 'im apart now?"

"Frisk?" The man cackled, slapping the worktable with a dirty palm. "That's your real name, lady? That's gotta be the dumbest—"

And just like that, he launched himself at Frisk, closing the distance and ducking between Sans' legs like a snake. He whipped another knife out from his belt and would have sliced her neck open if Sans hadn't been ready to nudge her out of the way, grabbing the assassin on the backswing and slamming him against the open door.

Before Frisk could react, Sans turned his head to the opposite wall and said, "Holy crap, what's that?" As she whirled around, Sans plucked the knife out of the man's hand and gave him one squeeze, very quick and very hard. "Whoops, my bad. Nothin' there," he said to cover the sound of ribs breaking.

The priestess started to turn back. "Stay where you are," Sans ordered, pulling the assassin out of her line of sight, stepping into the workroom and closing the door behind him. "Oh, no you don't," he said loudly, as if chasing the man down. "Nooo, stop! We just want to talk to...oh, no!"

The assassin didn't seem to appreciate the theatrics, especially because Sans was carrying him straight to the broken wall. Ignoring the man's feeble protests, the skeleton drew his arm back and murmured, "Now think about what you've done, pal," before tossing him out into the open air.

His only concern was that the bastard would make a lot of noise on the way down, but it seemed he'd knocked the wind out of him, ha. By the time Frisk peeked out of the bedroom, the assassin was long gone.

Sans shook his head and turned from the opening. "Nope. Sorry, I couldn't catch him before he told us who sent him." He wished he had his jacket; his hands had nowhere to go. "You all right, Frisk?"

The priestess gulped and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "No, I'm not." She slid down, back to the wall, and wrapped her arms around her knees.

She didn't seem be physically hurt, so for the moment, he said, "'Kay," and stared at the slightly open office door. "Son of a bitch. I'm gonna tear that guard a new one. D'you think he knew you were sleepin' in there, or was it just a convenient...place to...crap."

Frisk's shoulders had hunched and her face gone pale. Sans ground his teeth, cursing his stupidity. "Well, it's over. He won't bother you again," he reassured her, coming to kneel beside her. "At least that cover story 'bout the assassin ain't a lie now. Right?"

She didn't look reassured at all. With the threat of bodily harm removed, Sans was out of his element again, with no clue how to help her. Should he frame this as an inconvenient but probably solvable problem that she'd always known might come up? No, that would be dumb. She already had enough problems. She didn't need to worry about more shitheads getting in here to hurt her. As long as she was an important and politically vocal person, it wasn't like she could do much to...

Wait. That was it: Sans had the idea. "Actually, ya know what?" He waited for her to shake her head. "You were sayin' this weird stuff about me leaving once I'd seen Pap. Before we talk about that, I gotta ask, what's the going rate for a bodyguard around here? A good one, not just some moron following you around tryin' to look scary."

She bit her lip, a habit Sans had noticed and been distracted by several times already. "Um...it depends. A skilled full-time personal guard? Anywhere from fifty to a hundred dinar—"

"Oh, nice. I can probably—"

"—an hour. I only sleep a few hours a night, so..." Frisk gave him the ghost of a smile. "If you're offering your services, Sans, I'd be glad to accept. Would a salary of one thousand per diem be acceptable?"

Now he really was at a loss for words. "A thousand a friggin' day?" he repeated blankly.

Frisk nodded. Her shock seemed to be fading as she thought aloud: "You could pay for your clothes in one day, and I can negotiate the repairs down to about ten days' worth. After that, well, wheat is about five dinar a bushel." Despite herself, she sniffled again. "You could buy a lot of wheat, or beans, or...or wedding cakes, or literally anything else you want to take Underground with you."

He was patting himself on the back when, without warning, Frisk's smile faded. "I'm sorry I didn't listen to you before I unlocked the door." Sniff. "Thank you for staying with me." Sniff. "And thank you for saving my life."

Shit shit was as far as Sans got before he lost even that bit of coherence. His senses were already heightened by the unexpected danger, his SOUL still feeling a little queasy at how close she'd come to dying right in front of him; to cap it off with Frisk looking up at him like this with big eyes, messy hair, and her robe falling off her shoulder was more than he could handle. She never looked bad, but right now, damn.

Sans didn't realize he was reaching for her until his fingertip brushed her cheek, toying with a wavy lock of hair. "Don't mention it," he said gruffly. "'s the least I can do."

Frisk pulled away, face flushing, but only in momentary surprise. He devoutly hoped that she'd get up and go get dressed, or maybe pack her things, buy a fast horse and leave the kingdom forever, but that damnable woman didn't know any better than to smile and take his hand, or at least rest her hand in the space between two of his fingers. "Just so long as you keep in mind that you're still my apprentice," she said with mock sternness. "Do you promise?"

Fffffffff

Neither of them understood what happened next. Sans felt something welling up that made him want to grab her and...he didn't know what would happen next, but he wanted it so badly that he backed away in sudden alarm. All he knew was that this feeling – this energy – had to go somewhere, and if he directed it at her, he could accidentally mash her into paste. The only thing he could think of was to whip around, look for something else to latch onto, and focus his attention on the pile of stones, etc. by the office.

His magic was barely available, or so he would have said a minute ago. Fueled by the whatever-it-was, though, and with the barrier gone from one of the walls, Sans didn't even have to think about it: Frisk jumped back as the heap of debris by her office began to glow red, rising into the air and flying into the broken wall. To their mutual astonishment, the outside bricks and internal structures zipped back into place first, followed by more bricks, mortar, stone, wood, and finally the glass and lead of the windows. When the dust settled, the entire facade had been imperfectly but almost entirely restored, the floor sagging under the windows.

Sans stared at his hand, still breathing heavily. "Huh," he said by way of explanation.

"Indeed." Frisk absently ran her fingers through her hair again, working out a tangle as she examined the wall. "Did I know you could do that?"

"I didn't know I could do that." Now that the unfamiliar energy was gone, Sans found he wanted to sit down. He sat down next to her, comfortably but not dangerously close. "Welp, I need a break from life," he said, which got a laugh out of her. He snorted. "Break. I actually didn't mean that one."

Frisk gave a long, long sigh. "We'll knock down your fee to three or four days of repairs," she said gravely.

Sans couldn't help grinning. "I always knew there was mortar life than money."

She kept a straight face until he added, "Makin' it pretty again is gonna be a pane in the glass," whereupon she broke out in hysterical, snorting laughter, which cracked him up in turn and guaranteed a minutes-long feedback loop.

As nice as this all was, Sans was a little concerned when he got under control and she kept going, and going, and ended up nearly gasping for breath. "You okay, kid?" he asked. "Ya need some water?"

"Oh, Lord," she wheezed. Frisk wiped her eyes on her already-damp sleeve. "Sans, you're killing me."

Silence. Frisk thought about it, and promptly buried her head as far between her knees as she could get it. "I didn't do that on purpose," she said, muffled and sheepish.

Sans shifted his weight. He wasn't ready to admit to himself how badly the whole attack had scared him, much less to her. Just to check, he considered escaping again – maybe once she was letting him walk around with her outside and his magic was naturally restored – and now, less than twelve hours after doing his damndest at it, he couldn't believe how much he hated the idea. No problem, really; he could chalk it up to her letting him connect with Papyrus and needing to make it up to her. Also, holy shit, one thousand dinar every day for the next twenty-five days? That was as solid a set of reasons as he'd ever come up with.

"Well," he finally said. "Guess you'd better get yer scary witch dress on and go tell everyone about this whole mess." He snapped his fingers, making an odd click, as something occurred to him. That's right—I got both those knives off him. Maybe someone can take a look at 'em and figure out who he was, where they were from."

Frisk raised her head, staring into space. "No," she said, as if to herself. The boss monster looked askance, and she smiled in a small, nasty way he hadn't seen before. "We won't say anything." The smile grew. "I'll go about my day as if nothing happened, except I'll be accompanied everywhere by a ten-foot skeleton. Whoever set him after me will have no idea what happened, and it'll drive them absolutely mad. We can see if anyone incriminates themselves, but...ohh, I'm going to enjoy this."

"It's a neat idea, but the garbage threw itself out already, remember?" Sans indicated the repaired wall. "Someone's bound to notice 'im."

The young woman did a remarkable impression of shock and distress, eyes wide and mouth hanging open before she murmured, "That poor man jumped from such a height? What a hideous tragedy. Peace be upon his soul and those of his loved ones."

"Daaaamn" was all Sans could say. He might have killed the guy and covered it up, but he couldn't look that cute telling a bare-ass lie! Also... "Ain't you a priestess? Isn't that a little...?"

Frisk scowled. Despite her bedhead and furry robe, she was the very image of sternness and, yes, determination. "I was taught that it is my duty to aid the weak and be an instrument of justice against people who, for example, want to stab me in my own bedroom when I've done nothing to harm them. It's no sin to protect yourself."

The skeleton shrugged, holding his hands out. "Okay, that's enough. I think I love ya. Where do I sign up to kill people for you?"

The priestess laughed. "I bet you say that to every girl you try to escape from. And, please, don't kill anyone." She glanced at the clock, and her amusement melted into panic. "Dirt! I have matins in twenty minutes!" She sprang to her feet and made a beeline for her dressing room. "Can you please find my veil for me?" she called before she shut the door.

Sans also got up, muttering, "'Dirt'? Seriously?" as he retrieved the veil from where it had blown onto the table. As an afterthought, he returned to the bedroom and picked up the assassin's daggers. He studied them, saying out loud, "I think I'm screwed, is what I am," then placed them on the nightstand.

He heard Frisk emerge from her dressing room and went to meet her as she asked, "Sans, do you have my—"

He handed the veil over. "Thank you, sir." She threw the veil over her head and adjusted the headdress over it. "May I assume that you haven't been to many religious services?"

"Er..."

"Well, we have an oral contract, effective immediately, and I am going to church, so you are going to church." She inclined her head, moving toward the double doors. "Follow me."

And, of course, he did.

[blazehedgehog]

i bet you could do a kickass video on sonic xtreme

I dunno.

I talk big about Sonic X-treme, but the truth of the matter is I kind of stopped paying attention to a lot of it after a while.

For those who don’t know, here’s the whole story:

Around 2000 or 2001, I was deep in to, like, The Secrets of Sonic Team and other websites that covered lost beta elements in Sonic games. This was right after the big Sonic 2 Beta discovery, and the Sonic community was working overtime documenting all kinds of discoveries and lost stuff from every Sonic game ever made up to that point...

...except Sonic X-treme. That information was fragmented and spread across the internet and nobody really seemed to care. I saw a niche I could fill, so I started up a website and combed the web looking for every scan, screenshot and video I could find. I collected all of it at a modest website that was something like sonicxtreme.tk or sonicxtreme.cjb.net or whatever. One of those free domain URLs.

And once I’d collected everything that could be found on Sonic X-treme... that was, uh, it. It’s not like there was anything more that I could do. Once I had all the magazine articles and screenshots of the game, I had reached a dead end on what that website could accomplish. I had completed the known snapshot of what was Sonic X-treme. And so it sat for like, a year. Maybe longer. Just gathering dust.

By now, people at in the community were making efforts to contact the English-speaking members of Sonic 2′s development team. People like Craig Stitt, Brenda Ross, so on and so forth. The Sega Technical Institute folks. And it dawned on me: the entire development staff for Sonic X-treme was American, weren’t they? With Sonic 2, they were stuck talking to artists who were trapped in the tunnel vision of only working on small, specific parts of the game. Brenda Ross could only speak about the couple levels she worked on, y’know? They couldn’t interview the larger members of Sonic Team directly -- they were celebrities, which made them hard to contact, and on top of that there was a language barrier. There were a lot of hurdles to cross, and many of them were borderline impossible.

But with Sonic X-treme, everything was way more accessible and local. So I started skimming the magazine scans I had. Ultra Gameplayers had run a monthly feature called “White Glove Diaries” about the development of the game, speaking to people who were working on it, and it was the best source of information for the game at the time. Within moments, I had a name: Mike Wallis, the game’s producer. Inside of maybe thirty minutes and some skillful Google searching later, I had an email address. It really was that easy.

I tried to be as polite and respectful as I could; I asked him if he was the same Mike Wallis that worked on Sonic X-treme and wondered if he would be willing to answer any questions.

The first thing he wrote back to me was “How did you find me?” along with confirmation that yes, he was that Mike Wallis.

The second thing he wrote back to me was “Would you be willing to speak over the phone?”

And I panicked. This guy was, at least to me, a pretty big deal. I was still deep in my pit of despair, so the idea of interviewing this guy rattled me. I couldn’t do it. I posted on on the Sonic hacking community forum, relaying my inability to go through with this thing. Here I was on the cusp of a big breakthrough and I was acting like a deer in the headlights. Leaped before I looked and got exactly what I wanted, at the cost of now feeling deeply over my head. I was in no way mentally prepared for this.

Somebody on the forum stepped forward and said he’d do the interview for me. His username was Pachuka, and he was gaining notoriety in the Sonic hacking community. Pachuka seemed confident and knew his way around the important terminology, so I figured sure, he can do it. We talked over IRC, ran through some questions we wanted to ask, set the whole thing up for the appointed phone call. We were a team.

The call happened and Pachuka recorded the whole thing. Said he’d release the MP3 on his new website, The Sonic-Cult.

I was incredibly nervous even just listening to the MP3 of the phone call. They’d have to mention me, right? Acknowledge my existence? Talk about how I set the call up? It was hard not to feel incredibly self-conscious.

The call opened with Mike Wallis referring to my website. And Pachuka... had no idea what he was talking about. He never mentioned me by name, and barely even acknowledged that he knew me. Heck, Mike Wallis seemed to know more about me than Pachuka did, and I’m the one who set the whole thing up for him.

Looking back in retrospect, I probably didn’t do that much. From getting the idea, to finding his email address and sending the email, contacting Mike Wallis took what was likely less than an hour’s work, and I was mainly following the example of others in the Sonic community. But in the moment, it felt like I had done a lot. This was as much my discovery as it was anyone else’s. I was the only person who cared enough to set this up. I ran a whole website about this stuff -- the only website for it on the entire internet. And yet, Pachuka couldn’t even remember my username. I felt worthless.

From then on, the community treated this as Pachuka’s discovery. It was his interview. He made the discovery. His star rose, and I remained a nobody. No one cared about my site. Sonic-Cult is where you went if you wanted to learn the real deal about Sonic X-treme.

With Mike Wallis on the line, Pachuka started contacting more people from Sonic X-treme’s development. Soon, that lead him to Chris Senn, and the floodgates were blown wide open. Chris Senn was the key to everything.

I was never a part of any of those conversations. Not even once. The whole community took off without me and I was left in the dust. The handful of screenshots and magazine scans I had collected now looked absolutely pitiful.

I paid attention to the information that came out, of course. I was still interested in the game, and I mirrored what I could on my site. But on the inside, it was hard not to feel hurt. I never looked at it with quite the fervor I once had. It wasn’t mine anymore. I let myself get scooped and the door was slammed in my face without so much as a “thank you.”

After that, the magic and mystery of Sonic X-treme wore off pretty quickly for me. As more and more and more concept drawings and videos and music files and sprites and everything else burst out of Chris Senn, my interest began to wane. It stopped being special.

Petty? On some level, maybe. But for a brief window of time, Sonic X-treme research felt like my baby. I was the guy you talked to about that. Why bother keeping up appearances when somebody else was getting patted on the back and now one of the game’s developers was practically uploading the entire design document to the internet? They apparently didn’t want me involved, so I took a hike.

Don’t get me wrong: it was my fault. I handed this to Pachuka on a silver platter, and he ran away with it. It was a decision that haunted me for years. Made me start realizing I needed to be more confident and less shy.

I am in no rush to relive that mistake.

So when it comes to Sonic 3, I could recite a lot of that from memory. When it comes to Sonic X-treme, I remember the details of the Mike Wallis interview and some basics that came from Chris Senn, but a lot of the finer details of that weren’t really committed to memory, because I didn’t pay super close attention to all of it. And where would you even go to fill in those blanks? Last I checked, The Senntient website isn’t what it used to be.

So, again... I dunno.

[evalinkatrineberg]

Bourbon?

A/N: A side RP done with @arin-schreave at some point after the first date.

I hadn’t gone down to the kitchen with the intention of snagging alcohol. Originally, I had grabbed my backpack, heading down to the kitchen intending to grab some snacks, in case I was up late again tonight, reading or studying. Seeing the bottle of tequila on the counter had changed my plans, though. It had been a long time since I had just relaxed, unwound myself, and the thought of having a few drinks to loosen up a bit was too tempting for me to ignore.

I wanted options though, and they had to have more alcohol in this kitchen than just a bottle of tequila. So, I began my search. There were only so many cabinets and cupboard in here. One of them had to contain other types of alcohol.

I had almost run out of cabinets when I found it. I was about to give up, expecting to find cleaning supplies or something similar when I opened the cabinet above the oven. Aha, jackpot! Standing on my toes, I sorted through the bottles, making a note of each label before settling on a lonely bottle of bourbon that had been sitting in the back corner. It had been over a year since I had last had bourbon, when Randall and I had stolen some of our father’s for Randall’s birthday, and it sounded appealing in the moment. After carefully placing it in my bag, alongside the bottle of tequila and some glasses, I made my way over to the fridge, grabbing two limes. Just in case I ended up deciding on the tequila. I wanted to keep my options open.

My phone vibrated in my hand. More messages from my family group chat, going back and forth about what they had thought about today’s Report. I had stopped reading their commentary on the Selection some time ago now. It was frustrating to hear my parents rehash events I had already experienced, but with more incorrect details. Yet, I knew they loved to hear from me. I should send them a short message, at least.

I sighed, my finger hovering over the send button as I re-read my message for the eighteenth time. It didn’t feel like enough - it wasn’t enough. Talking to my family now felt strange, like they were in a different world. I missed them, though. I didn’t talk to them enough recently. I’d been too caught up in my own problems with Arin, and my worries about the Selection that I had completely neglected to ask them how they were doing.

Arin. He was a category of problems in and of himself. I couldn’t figure out what to do about him, and his personality shifts, and his apathy towards everything going on as a whole. I couldn’t figure out why I was still even here! Rumor had it that more girls had been eliminated after the dates, and yet, despite our trainwreck of a date, here I was, walking through the hallways of his home with a backpack full of alcohol. It was so nonsensical that it made my brain hurt, but at the same time, I was deeply grateful he hadn’t sent me home. Not just because I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with the fallout of me leaving to come here, and everything I had missed back there, but also because as much as I hated to admit it, I quite liked the Arin I had seen towards the end of our date. I had been a mess, and he had been an absolute dick leading up to that point, sure, but that last glimpse I’d gotten of who he was had been a look into the kind of person I’d like to get to know better, and the only way I could do that was if I was here.

My phone buzzed in my hand then, commanding my attention. “Mind your manners, Evalin,” my mother had written. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at that a bit. As if I wasn’t trying to keep up with the etiquette required here at mealtimes! I read my siblings’ replies as they came in, smiling at the way they teased me and each other. They didn’t seem to feel the same separation from me that I felt from them. That was good, at least, for them.

The next thing I knew, my face was against somebody's chest, and my phone had slipped out of my hands, coming to a stop on the floor a few feet in front of me. Smooth, Evalin. I should’ve been watching where I was going.

I jerked backwards. “Oh, sorry,” I began, looking up at who it was. Speak of the devil. Of course I would run into Arin, of all people, right now. I let my face go blank as I greeted him, ready to be berated for not paying attention to where I was walking. This day already wasn’t going my way, for the most part, so the chances of the universe gracing me with the presence of Nice Arin seemed slim to none. “Hello, Your Highness.”

He let out a hmph noise, blinking in surprise as I addressed him. There was a flicker of recognition in his eyes before he bent over, scooping my phone off the floor and holding it out towards me. “You dropped this.” Anything I had seen before he spoke had flittered out, leaving his eyes distant, like he was seeing me, but not really. He was here, but his mind was not. That did not bode well for the rest of this interaction.

I knew the feeling, though. I blinked once, looking at my phone in his hand. “Oh, right.” I swiped it out of his hand as quickly as I could, doing my best to make sure our hands weren’t in contact any longer than they had to be. This was already awkward enough without either of us trying. We didn’t need to make it worse.

I wiped the phone screen once on my pant leg before slipping my backpack off one shoulder, sliding my phone into one the mesh side pockets before I put the packback back on, the bottles inside clinking conspicuously the whole time. I supposed I’d have to add, “potential alcoholic,” to the list of assumptions Arin had probably made about me by this point. With a smidgen of apprehension, I cleared my throat. “Thank you.”

He frowned, his eyes darting to my backpack for a brief moment before he nodded. “You’re welcome,” he replied, pausing for a moment as he shoved his hands back into his pockets. “Evalin.”

Oh? I raised an eyebrow at him, a small smile playing at the corners of my lips. “Wow, you do remember by name.” During my reflections about our date, I had come to the conclusion that whatever he had been looking at on his phone while he had been waiting for me to arrive had to be a little briefing on my name, and where our date was. Maybe I had been wrong, though, after all. I let out a little laugh. “Color me surprised!”

I looked him over again, noting how distracted he looked. Surely, the prank Idalia and I had pulled wasn’t the cause for all of this. He must have been having a rough day too, then. I fidgeted with the strap of my backpack, debating if it was worth it to even try and talk to him. My mother still wanted me to apologize to him for being rude during our date, after all, and, while I wasn’t too keen on that idea, I was of the thought that talking things out might give me some form of clarity. It was worth a shot. “So, what brings you around here tonight?”

Besides the fact that he lives here?

He turned his head back in the direction he had come from, blinking a few times before turning back to me. “I guess I was just heading back to my office.”

“Ah.” I nodded, biting the inside of my cheek a little. Of course, it made sense. He must have a lot of work to do. There was no harm in trying, though, right? I gave him a little half smile. “I suppose you’re too busy to join me for some bourbon, then?”

He didn’t strike me as a tequila guy.

“Bourbon?” he asked with a frown. “Were you just going to drink alone?”

When he put it like that, it seemed so much worse. I frowned, looking down at where the tile of the hallway floor met the wall. “Yeah, I guess I was.”

A look of surprise flashed across his face, but he nodded regardless, taking a deep breath. “Any chance I might be the reason?”

Well, that hadn’t been what I expected him to say at all. I winced a bit, then frantically tried to compose myself again. He wasn’t the only reason, just one of many contributing factors to my current stress levels.

“Well, not directly?” Even I wasn’t convinced by my own performance. I shook my head. “I would love to drink not-alone, but if you’re busy…” I let myself trail off, unsure of what

I was even doing. Had I really just invited him to drink with me? My brain must have decided that it was closed after normal business hours. There was no other explanation for what was coming out of my mouth right now.

He tossed one last look over his shoulder, then turned to me and nodded. “Sure, the hell not?”

“Okay!” I smiled, not knowing what else to do. This was rather unexpected, especially given the way he kept looking over his shoulder, as if he was expecting someone to come after him. “Your office still, or someplace more adventurous?”

I decided to change my initial assessment. My brain had not closed after normal business hours. Instead, the less intelligent aspects of myself had taken the Evalin that actually made smart decisions, and had locked her in a cage, leaving her to cringe and rattle the bars of her cell as she watched me ask Arin to take me someplace “more adventurous.”

Arin just shook his head. “Not my office,” he insisted emphatically.

I couldn’t help but wonder what was wrong with his office, but I chose not to ask questions, and simply nodded once. “Any thoughts? You know your way around way better than I do.” I know maybe five rooms, and you are not coming to my bedroom.

He motioned over to an alcover a little ways down the hall. “How about there?”

I eyed it for a moment, sizing it up as a multitude of scenarios of how the night could go ran through my mind. The alcove itself didn’t seem threatening, just a little niche with two benches, and it was in a fairly public place, which could be either good or bad, depending on how the rest of the night went. I didn’t have many other options, though. “Thank works,” I relented, a small smile on my face as I made my way over to the alcove.

He trailed behind me, settling in to one of the benches once we reached the alcove. I decided to sit on the other bench, slinging off my backpack and placing it between the two of us. As I unzipped it, I flashed him a grin I usually reserved for one of my siblings before we banded together to make something go our way. The realization of what I was doing didn’t sit well with me. Was I insinuating that Arin was like a brother to me? He couldn’t be further from it, I was sure of at least that much. Arin Schreave confused and frustrated me like nobody else, and it seemed like a good part of why that was was because I had never met anybody quite like him before.

I didn’t know whether or not to be grateful that that was the case.

I kept my grin in place as I pulled out the bottle of bourbon, along with the glasses I had snagged while I was in the kitchen as well. I’d be sure to return them the next day - probably even before breakfast, knowing how early I tended to wake up - and to clean them as well, but I had needed to borrow them for the night. I poured some bourbon in each glass, placing the bottle down beside me before handing one of the glassing to him, holding the other glass up in the air towards him. “Cheers.”

He took his glass and clinked it against mine, taking a long drink before pulling the glass away from his mouth and staring at me for a moment. So we were doing this again, then?

I finished taking a sip, narrowing my eyes slightly at him. “You’re giving me that look again, you know?”

“What look?” His eye darted back to the glass in his hand. Did he seriously not know? I had asked him about  it multiple times on the latter portion of our car ride home from our date. Maybe he had forgotten that. Lord only knows I’d tried to forget that car ride as well.

“The same one you gave me on the car ride home.” I took another sip, wishing I could somehow force myself not to flush with embarrassment as the memory of that date came to mind. “What does it mean?”

“Well, I’m not sure what that look would be,” he answered, reclining against the wall.

“It’s this one,” I replied, attempting to mimic it. What was I doing? I had to look absolutely ridiculous right now. I sighed. A verbal explanation would probably serve me better. “It’s like, instead of resting bitch face, you have pensive bitch face, but with a hint of genuine curiosity.” The moment the words left my mouth, I wished I could take them back. I was pretty sure I had just called Arin Schreave a bitch. I wasn’t nearly drunk enough for this yet.

A small frown formed on his face. “Why are you so concerned about the way I look at you?” He took a big sip of his drink at that. Ah, so he wasn’t expecting to like my answer, then. Interesting.

I shrugged. “Well, nobody’s ever looked at me like that before.” I stared into my own drink, contemplating the likelihood of quantum theory applying at this very moment. It would have been a perfect time for me to just phase through the wall and away from whatever was happening here. Why was I so bad at just having a normal conversation with him? I took another sip.

He shrugged in reply, raising his eyebrows. “Maybe it’s just my face.”

I looked back up at him, narrowing my eyes before shaking my head. “No, you have other expressions. This is just the one I haven’t been able to figure out.” I smirked a bit, adding, “Though, it's not exactly like you’ve been forthcoming.”

It was the truth. He might only be the prince of Illea, but he was the king of deflection. Yet, I still felt a pang of guilt as he took another big drink, followed by a deep breath. “Yeah, well, I’m working on it.”

Well, now I was the asshole. I felt my face turning a burning red, my smirk falling as I averted my gaze. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pressure you, or anything. I…” I just wanted to know if you didn’t want to share anything about yourself with me, specifically. I wanted to know why you do this. I wanted to know if that rough first date was just a fluke. “I didn’t think before speaking.” I took a big sip of bourbon, pulling my knees into my chest and the mumbling, “I’m working on that.” I hoped we were both telling the truth right now, at least.

He frowned. “You apologize a lot.”

“Sorr -” I cut myself off, realizing the stupid mistake I was about to make. Laughing wryly, I corrected myself. “Habit, I guess.”

He raised his eyebrows at me, but said nothing, opting to just take another drink instead.

“We all have bad habits,” I continued, attempting to salvage what little conversation we had going. I gestured with my empty hand as I talked. “It’s like you said before -” I took another sip, relishing in the slight sensation of warmth it left me with “-working on it.”

He simply nodded, taking another sip as well. “So…” he began, immediately trailing off, his eyes focused on some distant point beyond my head, and likely beyond this conversation, it seemed to me. I continued sipping, my eyes taking in our surroundings as I waited for him to continue. It took a while, but eventually, he said, “I’m sorry, by the way.”

I blinked at him, my focus jolting back to him. This was backwards. I drained the remainder of my drink, placing my now empty glass at my side. “About the date?” I shook my head. “Really, don’t worry about it. I’ve, um, been meaning to find you, to thank you for helping with the nosebleed situation.” And for not making me walk home, or complaining if I got any blood on your seats. I felt myself begin to blush again. I only hoped he’d brush it off, blaming it on the effects of alcohol.

He shook his head again, holding up his hand. “No, don’t. I was rude, and you didn’t deserve what happened.”

“I…” Was this happening? I was glad I didn’t have to be the one to suck up my pride and apologize first, but I had been preparing to do so, certain that he would never be the one to apologize first. If this was the kind of magic bourbon worked, I’d have to drink it more often. I poured myself another glass. “I mean, it’s not like you were responsible for everything that happened. It takes two to tango, and all that.” I waved my hand through the air, hoping he’d take the hint and drop the topic. We’d both made mistakes, yes, but it was becoming clearer to me that it was for the better if we both just move on.

He shook his head, downing the rest of his glass. “What happened had nothing to do with you.”

Really, because it kind of feels like it had a lot to do with me, and what you think of me, and why we’re both here.

“Okay.” I passed him the bottle of bourbon, nodding slowly. “I, uh…” Intelligent thought seemed like a fantastical concept at this point in time. “Thank you?” I shook my head, taking another sip. Well, I supposed this was a good a time as any to let him know that I was trying to see where he was coming from, and that I hoped he’d do the same for me. “Can I be honest for a moment?”

He took the bottle from my hand, pouring himself a decent sized glass before glancing back up at me. “Sure,” he answered, handing the bottle back to me.

I placed it down on the bench, positioning it so that it was as equidistant between us a possible. With a deep breath, I began attempting to explain myself. “I really don’t blame you for what happened. I was also in a kind of a funk, I guess you could say. I…” I paused, not wanting to repeat what had happened when I told him he could talk to me on our date, or when I had teased him about not being forthcoming earlier this evening. How to get my point across, when I was terrible with words? “I know what it’s like to be hurt by someone you’re very close to, and what it’s like to have your world turned upside down. So…” I may not have had an engagement broken off, but I had lost my dream job, possibly ruined any chance I may have had of every getting a job I would enjoy, and had found out that two of the people I trusted the most might be rebel sympathizers. It wasn’t as if I could tell him any of that, though, or if it would even be relatable if I could. I shook my head, exhaling heavily. “God, this isn’t coming out right. Forget it.”

He hesitated, his voice soft when he spoke again. “Evalin…”

I shook my head, forcing a smile. It had been a mistake to even try to reason with him. “Forget I brought it up. My bad. I shouldn’t have.” I took a small sip, clearing my throat when I finished. God, what was I thinking?

He opened his mouth slightly, as if he was going to say something, but he shook his head instead, taking another drink before averting his gaze.

I turned back to him again, intent on at least trying to make this right. “Anyway, point is, we both made mistakes on that date, but honestly? It wasn’t the worst date I’ve ever been on.” I laughed a little. I had to find a way to change the topic, and quickly. “And there’s no changing the past now, so we might as well look to the future, right?”

“Evalin,” he said again, looking down at his glass.

I hated the way I kind of wanted to listen to him say my name all day. I hesitated. “Yes?”

He took a deep breath. “We kissed.” The words came out of his mouth in a jumbled rush. Such a simple sentence, and yet, there was so much more to it than just those two words.

I blinked. He didn’t mean us, did he? Sure, our date was bad, but I didn’t think it was traumatic enough for me to have blocked out an entire portion of time during which we apparently kissed. No, clearly I wasn’t in the “we,” then. So who was? One of the other Selected? Based on what I had heard, it seemed unlikely. So Felicity, then. That made sense. Of course they had kissed - they had been engaged. I would hope that Arin had the good sense to kiss her before she had become his fiance.

That actually didn’t make sense, though, I realized. We all knew they had to have kissed at some point. He wouldn’t have said it like it was some kind of dark secret. Unless he meant that he and Felicity had kissed recently. Within the past month, even. I felt my eyes go wide as the realization hit me, my mouth forming into a little, “o” shape. I couldn’t speak. I had no words.

I pursed my lips, trying to remember that Arin, too, was a human who made big mistakes, just like everyone else. Snapping at him, or storming out, would get us nowhere.

“Well, thank you for being honest about that.” I took a big drink, eyeing the bottle out of the corner of my eye. The thought that I might need to down the rest of the bottle to make it through the remainder of this conversation, however long it may be, briefly crossed my mind.

He nodded, taking a big drink as well. At this point, it was evident we were both trying to figure out what the hell to say, and what the hell we had already said. I doubted he’d make the first move, though.

“So,” I began, taking another big sip, “what are you going to do about it? I mean, there’s no excusing it, but how you proceed impacts a lot of people.” I could name sixteen in particular.

“What am I supposed to do?” He gave me a small shrug, looking at me expectantly.

I fought the urge to shudder. Did he expect me to tell him that it was fine? It wasn’t. It was so far from fine, my mind was reeling, working in overdrive to process his words, my emotions, and what the fuck I was supposed to say in response all at once. It wasn’t like I was his therapist, though I was starting to wonder if I should recommend he look into one.

I raised an eyebrow at him, placing my glass down and crossing my arms. “I don’t know. You tell me.” His problem, his solution. It only seemed fair.

He narrowed his eyes as he looked at me. “There’s not much I can do, is there?”

How the hell am I supposed to know? I’ve never even had a real boyfriend before. I shrugged. “That depends on what the kiss meant to you, I suppose. What’s done is done, and there’s no undoing it.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “We can only look to the future, right?”

“And if it meant something?” He took another drink, his eyes never leaving mine.

I held his gaze. “Then why are we here?”

He shrugged. “Because maybe I don’t know what’s good for me.”

I hummed thoughtfully, nodding slightly. That much was crystal-clear. “Sounds like something you should figure out.” I couldn’t understand how or why I managed to keep my voice so light.

He nodded his agreement. “But what do you think about it?”

Why do you want my opinion on this so badly?

I paused, biting my lip. “I think you need to figure out if there’s someone else you actually want to kiss, or if this is all some kind of penance for you.”

He frowned, as if he was considering the concept for the very first time. “Maybe I do,” he said with a nod.

I added both therapist and crisis counselor to my mental list of jobs I should never have. Even with that in mind, I just shrugged, responding, “That’s something only you can decide.”

“I guess I’ll have to think about it.” He set his glass down beside him and leaned forward a little bit.

I could feel my shoulders tensing, and the hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise. We were close enough that I could almost smell his breath. Every other time I had been this close to someone like this, it had ended in kissing. Was he about to kiss me? After he had just admitted to kissing Felicity, too, and that the kiss might have meant something to him as well. What the hell was he thinking?

And why did I kind of hope he tried to kiss me?

I leaned forward a small bit as well, nodding as I agreed, “Mmhm.”

He reached back to pick up his glass, taking another sip and musing, “I’m impressed you found the bourbon. We keep it hidden pretty well.”

Ah, well, that explained why it was in the cabinet above the oven in the kitchen, at least. It made sense if they were trying to hide it, though. Very few people had probably ever thought to look there.

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Not hidden well enough, apparently.”

“Well,” he replied with a shrug, “fortunately, that’s not my problem.”

I laughed a little at that, responding without even think about it. “Glad to hear at least one thing around here isn’t.”

Now it was his turn to raise an eyebrow at me. “You’ve been hearing things?”

Well, when he put it like that, I supposed I sounded insane. Yet here he was, with me, and a bottle of bourbon. I flashed him a grin. “Hard not to when you’re all anybody talks about, for the most part.”

He took another big drinking, mumbling, “Wonderful,” under his breath. His eyes narrowed.

Well, I had said the wrong thing once again. No surprise there. I reached back for my own drink, taking a sip before putting it back down. I repositioned myself so that my knees were no longer curled into my chest, allowing me to lean forward a little further. “Some of it is.”

“I doubt that very much.”

I would too, if I were him. I wondered how many girls he had wooed with his charm here. My bet was very few. Regardless, my smile grew a fraction of an inch, as I said, “I guess it depends on your definition of wonderful.” The stories the other girls told of their dates, at least, were wonderfully entertaining.

“Well, in this case I can tell you it's most definitely not wonderful.” Any air of amusement he had possessed before was gone now. At least that meant we weren’t going to kiss, I supposed. That’d save me from at least one ethical dilemma tonight.

“Why don’t you work on making amends, then?” I frowned. “You have it in you.” I had seen as much earlier.

“I’ll consider it,” he stated, finishing off his glass. Ah, so one-word, terse, Asshole Arin was back then.

I raised an eyebrow, finishing my own glass and then narrowing my eyes at him, setting the glass down. “Well, that’s a start.”

He cast a longing gaze at the bottle of bourbon before shifting his focus back to me. My eyes met his as I held his stare. I wished I could read minds. It would make all of this so much easier.

“Evalin.” His voice was softer now, little more than a whisper. “What do you want from me?”

“I…” I narrowed my eyes at him slightly. Was this a trap, or a test, of some sort? “What do you mean?”

“What is it you want?” He furrowed his brows slightly.

“I…” I shook my head. I hadn’t really thought about it. I supposed in theory I could take the easy way out - tell him I just wanted money to fund my research, and we could both go our merry ways - but that wasn’t the truth, and I was pretty sure we both knew that. My voice was barely more than a whisper when I tried to answer again. “I would like to get to know you. I -” I swallowed “- I guess I’d like for you to give me a chance, but if that’s not possible right now, or yet, I understand.” I bit my lip, knowing full well I had said too much. Maybe I should’ve just drank alone, after all. I certainly would have gotten myself into less trouble.

He leaned back, bowing out a breath as he ran his fingers through his hair. Fuck, I hadn’t meant to stress him out. I kept myself completely still, awaiting his response.

“And what if I’m not ready?”

I met his eyes again, resting my head on her hands. I knew he wasn’t ready. He wouldn’t have brought up the kiss - hell, he wouldn’t have kissed Felicity - if he was ready to move on. It was good to hear that at least he knew that, too. “Then I can wait. I’m here, unless you send me back to Carolina.” I bit the inside of my cheek, hating the selfish part of me that wanted to beg him not to send me home.

“And everyone else?”

“I don’t know what they want, but we all deserve the same opportunity, Arin.” I thought of all the girls I had met the past month - Indie, Idalia, Clemence, Reggie, Itzel - and smiled. Whether or not any of them realized it, they had all taught me a lot, and I would cherish the time we had gotten to share here. “They really are a great group. The choice is obviously yours, so I guess the question really is, what do you want, Arin?” I was half tempted to pour myself another glass, if for no other reason than just to take a big sip right now.

“A time machine.” His tone was frank as his eyes watch my every movement.

I simply nodded in understanding, my facial expression remaining more or less the same. “Wouldn’t we all,” I sighed a little breathlessly. I would have loved to go back in time, and convince myself not to go see Proctor in the lab the day before I left to come here.

Then again, maybe I wouldn’t be who I was or where I was now if I had not gone to see her.

He narrowed his eyes, and I made the split second decision to take another chance, offering him a sympathetic smile. “I’ve learned, though, that focusing on what you can’t change never gets you anywhere worth being.” I grimaced a bit, adding, “That came out more blunt than I intended.”

“You don’t think I could change this and end it all now?” He gave me a curious look.

I considered it for a moment, inclining my head slightly. “I suppose you could, but the fact is, you haven’t. So, either you can’t end it, for reasons outside of yourself, or some part of you doesn’t want to.” I hoped I was at least somewhat correct, or else I’d be gone for sure. I didn’t want to let him see me sweat it, though, so I shrugged. “I’d warrant a guess that you know the answer to that, too.”

“And if I want to just end it?” He gave me the same look he had given me on that car ride home. “I just do what? Pick one of you at random and call it a day?”

I held my hands up in front of my shoulders in mock surrender. “Personally? I don’t think that would be the best way to end it, especially since you don’t really know any of us yet. It’d make you look pretty hasty, and it doesn’t sound like a recipe for happiness.” I let out a little sigh, giving him a pointed look before adding, “But, ultimately, I suppose it is your call.”

“Well, it seems to me there are no winners here.” He tilted his head a little.

I was beginning to grow tired of this game. “Maybe not yet,” I started, narrowing my eyes at him, “but there could be.”

Initially, he grimaced, but it faded as he started to nod. Perhaps he was growing bored of talking in circles as well. “Maybe.”

I noticed then that it was beginning to get later than I’d liked. Where had the time gone? I sat up straighter, stretching my arms in the air before then looking at him, placing my hands back in her lap and offering him a small smile. “Well, thank you for keeping me company tonight. It was actually pretty nice.” I let out a little laugh, grabbing the bourbon and the cups and placing them back in my backpack.

He looked at me with a quizzical expression, but then said, “Sure .” Nodding once, he stood up.

I followed suit, zipping up my backpack and putting it back on. Angling my head upwards, I gave him one last smile. “Goodnight, Arin.”

“Goodnight,” he echoed, shoving his hands back into his pockets before turning and walking back towards the hall. Once we reached the hallway, I booked it in the opposite direction. I knew exactly where I needed to go, and what I needed to do.

It appeared I owed somebody an apology, for ever doubting her.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Aliens “Your Planet”

Some of you guys wanted to learn a little more about Krill and his planet. It was a difficult subject to write about, and I think I missed a lot, but this might as well be a start.

As always questions, comments critiques, ideas, messages, and prompts are all welcome. I try to write the stuff that is most requested, so if you want  something written its best to request it :)

Descent into atmosphere was as smooth as ever, the atmosphere parted around them under the light of the constant sun-stream. The transport ship rattled maybe once or twice upon entry passing through the rare pockets of cloud that dotted an otherwise open sky. Krill sat buckled into his seat next to Captain Vir, who sat next to a large duffle bag reading a magazine.

All around the transport ship, eyes stared at the strange pair, wary of the towering human. This wouldn’t be the first time humans ventured onto his planet, in fact this would be the captain’s second time, but this would be the first time any outsider would be experiencing an extended stay. Shore leave had come sooner than expected, ad with human colonies cropping up further and further away from earth, it became only fair to let those members of the crew home for a holiday.

Since captain Vir had nowhere to stay, Krill had offered to show the man his planet in more detail. The man seemed pleased and had readily agreed to the idea. The captain had at first wondered if Krill wanted to go back after they had treated him so poorly the last time. Krill honestly did not understand the question, despite their treatment, they were still his species, and he had a duty to return, to be connected, and besides, next to the captain, he wouldn’t seem half so intimidating.

They exited the shuttle near the location of Krill’s hatching, he could see the distant incubation building from atop the landing pad. He ushered the captain follow him quickly, the man got distracted very easily, and he was notoriously hard to rein in. As they went they paused crowds and drew staring. Krill made his way up to the receiving window allowing them to run identification on him.

“Krill, will you be returning to your duties I the surgical suite during your stay.” Vrul asked.

“Yes, of course.”

The Vrul craned his neck upwards at Vir, “And will your friend be staying as well?

Krill nodded.

“Where would he like to apply his services?”

Krill looked up at Vir, and Vir looked down at Krill a confused expression on his human face. Krill wondered for a long moment about that. He knew the man was a pilot, but from what he understood about the human ideas of flying, no one would really appreciate his skill, “Um…. Demolition….. He’s very good at that.

The Vrul gave a curt gesture and sent them off.

Vir looked down, “What was that about?”

Krill looked up at him, “The nature of our species is communal, as long as we are here, we work together for the common good; everyone has their strengths and their abilities, and must apply them for the common good. While I am here I must provide my services, and as a guest you must too.”

Vir tapped a finger on his chin, “Sounds like communist propaganda but ok.”

“What?”

“What?” the human waved him off, “Never mind, I can destroy things, that’s cool.”

“I thought you might think that.” Krill muttered

They walked down the ramp and onto the city street krill pointing out things as they passed by, “That is the seat of the populous council, every seventh cycle we are expected to meet there to make decisions for the city, all of us, it’s mandatory.”

“You have mandatory democracy?”

“Yes? You may not like it, but our system of government is far more effective than yours.”

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of my freedom.” The man grinned at Krill who just shook his head.

“Over there are the incubation chambers, ever year after mating season, all the eggs are housed there.”

The man paused, “Uh, Krill, I know that this is us a weird question to ask but….. I don’t think I ever asked if you were you know…. Male or female….. I suppose I probably should have.”

Krill waved it off, “My species doesn’t find those things as important as humans, mostly because we don’t have genders in your sense of the word. Under certain circumstances any member of my species can lay or fertilize an egg. However laying an egg takes much more time, so my work doesn’t allow for it.”

“Wow…. That’s…. that’s really weird…. So you don’t have…. Families?” The human seemed rather uncomfortable at that thought

“Traditionally we never did, but upon meeting other species we were introduced with new ways of doing things. Some of our number choose to raise their own offspring and many choose the traditional method. Either way children tend to be raised by the community.

“How many…. Children do you have?”

Krill gave a small shrug, “I don’t know, could be a hundred could be none, I’m not sure. Thousands of eggs are laid and thousands of them are fertilized, but it take the perfect conditions to hatch and even more perfect conditions to keep the young from dying. We lose hundreds every season, and that’s why many of us choose to do things the traditional way. It’s less painful if you don’t know which one was yours. However, after that you can petition to keep one of the grubs and raise them to maturity, generally everyone who has a job that allows for it must participate. Since my job is so demanding, I have never been asked, and have never asked.”

They stepped off the ramp into the street the human staring at him in wonder and confusion, “So I don’t get it, do you or do you not have families.”

“Depends on your definition. If you are talking about like your family, than you have to understand that my species does whatever makes sense and is logical for the survival of the species. Other species in the galaxy have families like yours, so it is logical to conclude that there is some benefit to doing it that way, so SOME of us follow that line. Others raise children by themselves with the help of the community, and sometimes you pare off with someone you like. Personally, I was raised by two such Vrul, and, as for you definition, I have a few other siblings.”

“So…. With all of that being said, does that mean you…. You could potentially have kids with any of these people.” He motioned around to the passing Vrul and their staring eyes.

Krill laughed heartily like the idea was absurd drawing a few eyes as they moved on, “No, no. As you know our species needs the perfect incubation to grow and thrive, however, there are subperfect incubation that allows for someone to be born, but allows some…. Deficits, most of these tend to be cognitive. Some are no more than children, others cannot understand abstract concepts and so on. Luckily for me, I remain a member of the class with four functioning cortical zones which makes me a member of a higher class. Due to the genetic likelihood of cortical malformation, they generally encourage members of my class to produce offspring together.”

Vir seemed to shuffle uncomfortably, “That seems kind of messed up, that seems like discrimination against the disabled, don’t you think.”

Krill shook his head, “to the contrary, each level is as important to society as the others. None can function without the duties performed by the others, however you need abstract concepts to build rocket ships. Though, unlike humans they are not treated less, and have the same pull in our council as anyone should.”

They passed by another set of staring eyes. Vir scratched the top of his head, “Wow, I never knew that about you guys…. Kind of makes me sound like a jerk doesn’t it?”

He paused, “Speaking of things that will make me sound like a jerk, is there anything I should avoid doing while I’m here.”

Krill snorted, “Probably avoid being human.”

The man snorted and nudged him playfully to the side, “You know what I mean, anything particularly rude or offensive I should avoid doing.”

Krill gave a sigh, “Captain, by virtue of being you, you are bound to scare someone absolutely sh*tless, but if they use logic like all of us do, than they will know that you can hardly help it. For me, on the other hand, it is quite rude to act against anything that is not species specified. The more human mannerisms that I pick up, the more I am forced to regulate my behavior.”

Captain Vir went silent just then, he felt bad for Krill, he didn’t mean to make him something that he wasn’t supposed to be, but what was he supposed to do? He took it as his only real option to watch and learn about this new planet. He had been here before, but now he was more fully able to drink the whole thing in. The sky was a soft pastel orange fading towards pink near the horizon. The ground around was awash strange white stone that glittered with crystal. Distantly he could hear the sound of rushing water, watching as a strange blue grey plant waved languidly from the distance. The distant mountains were a faded purple color.

In the sky two moons glittered.

It was a shocking and strange new world unlike earth in many ways. Compared to earth it was particularly vanilla for a habitable planet. Its weather conditions were downright affable 459 days out of its 461 day solar year. The creatures there were almost as affable as the weather. Due to the climate the idea of competition so rife on a planet like earth was almost nonexistent here. For every ecological niche there tended to be one primary filler of that category, or several who performed different variations of the same thing, never crossing paths.

As for the Vrul, they were also very affable. They had no definable religion as far as Vir could tell other than science and logic. Their society revolved about being a good citizen of the community. Everyone had their job and their place, and everyone was expected to contribute, anyone who could not follow those rules was quickly ostracized.

The buildings were made from the same crystalline stone that lined the streets, though they separated themselves form their surroundings with delicate architecture. The buildings didn’t tend to reach to high towards the sky usually one or two floors. As far as he could tell, transit consisted mainly of floating or walking, anything out of the city was completely public transit.

They didn’t have any form of currency mostly subsisting upon the idea that the most logical way to live involved everyone contributing equally to the societal good. It was a society that humans had been striving for, and failing for, for thousands of years always corrupted by greed. Communal ideations broke down in favor of greed, and the only way to survive in this world was by way of capitalistic ventures.

But there was an undertone to all of this, an ostracism towards the different, and the unknown or the unorthodox. It was subtle, but poignant. Krill may not have seen it, but he was a definite example. Perhaps that’s why Vir was here, because it made Krill stand out less in comparison. But it wasn’t just his human-ness that set him apart, there was something different, something that had already been there, something that had made him leave his planet to become a trauma surgeon and make the illogical decision to join a human ship.

It seemed interesting, that a curiosity, so common in humans, could be so rare in other species.

On this perfect planet, with its logical structure, communal goals, and perfect weather, they were missing something quite profound, love, companionship, joy?

Because you can only find light in the dark, so you can only see joy compared to pain.

Krill was different, Vir didn’t know how to put it into words, but Krill was surprisingly human in his inhumanity, and that made him special.