#this was fucking. nuts. like i came back in and relayed it all to my coworkers and all of them were like ‘what the fuck. what the fuck’

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

i’ll probably post about it tomorrow and if you want the story feel free to send an ask and i’ll answer it when i wake up but for now. please do not keep wild animals. even if you’re ‘nursing them back to health’ before giving them to a rehabber bc you can’t keep them ad a pet. please. i’m so tired

[thoughtsineedtoletout]

The Tortured Poets Department

Track 4 - Down Bad

The premise of this track is the narrator reminiscing about a time she was abducted by aliens and went on an expedition discovering a world beyond what she knew, feeling as if she was chosen for this extraordinary life, but was then abruptly sent back to where she came from.

The narrator uses this as a metaphor for someone showing her love in a way she's never experienced before, but then they just precipitously dropped her back at square one, leaving her with all these newfound experiences and perspectives. Now she's down bad, cryin' at the gym. I think it also depicts how they were from different worlds and he couldn't assimilate into hers, so he left.

Down bad is a colloquialism for being in a state of mind where you are desperate for something you strongly desire, usually unrequited feelings of infatuation or attraction. Often resulting in the loss of all rational thinking.

The narrator is so enmeshed in this feeling that she is crying and behaving like a petulant teenager, saying fuck it, if I can't have him and I might just die, it would make no difference. These hyperbolic and fatalistic emotions are very much the representation of when your feelings are heightened and you cannot be reasoned with.

Starin' at the sky, come back and pick me up // Fuck it if I can't have us // I might just not get up, I might stay // Down bad

She is trying to impel him to return by cursing at the sky and willing him to come back and take her back with him.

The second verse has the narrator asking did you take all my old clothes // just to leave me here, naked and alone. This suggests that she was left in a vulnerable state and all her comforts taken from her, along with her old perspectives of the world. She goes on to say he left her in her same old town that seems hollow now, indicating and reiterating how her worldview has changed now and without him, everything feels meaningless.

They'll say I'm nuts if I talk about // the existence of you

I think this is the narrator relaying that people didn't approve of him and she can't talk about him because they would think she was crazy to still be so infatuated by this person that didn't belong in her world.

She then goes on to say she'll build a fort on some planet // where they can all understand it. She wants people to understand she is in love and that they do belong together and she is willing to find a place in this world where someone will understand them being together.

The bridge goes on to say that she loved the experience with him and she's so upset that it's over, she can't even actually bring herself to say that it is; the lyric cuts off before it the word 'over' is said. She is distressed and exclaims how dare you think it's romantic // leaving me safe and stranded.

This tells us that the person she was with felt like she would be better off and safer without him. This makes her mad because it isn't romantic, it takes away her agency and ability to make decisions on her own terms. He just makes the decision for her and it is unfair to not even discuss it, he just unexpectedly drops her off where she started.

I suspect the position Taylor was in before this encounter was during a heartbreak she thought she had healed from, before this person came and love bombed her with promises of a new and sparkling life, only to have him suddenly desert her, returning her to the place of heartbreak she thought she had healed from.

She says in the outro that this experience made her feel like she lost her twin. I believe this is in reference to a 'twin flame'. She considers this person her twin flame; this is a new-age ideology of spirituality.

It describes a twin flame as having an inner pull towards another person, feeling as if you have met before and have always known one another, the passion between these people is incredibly intense. However, given this level of intensity, it is common for the relationship to break down as it is difficult to manage the fervor that comes with it.

Twin flames are destined to have fiery, passionate relationships that cannot be a lifelong event, rather they enter your life for a period and impact your life in a way that veers you onto the life path you are intended for.

Back to list of analyses.

[my-own-bisaching-life]

2/28/24

today was a spectacular flop. a fail of most epic proportions.

first and second were both normal. mr. keogh is his usual jolly self and terris is a nut ball. i dont feel bad when i clean up early to go smoke in the green room bathroom in his class. an odd part of me feels like he would commend me for it.

something that was of note was when i was sitting next to juan and he sort of yelled " damn move " because i was sitting right next to him. and i was like jeez. and hugh said something like woah man. it makes me feel nice when hugh interjects. he's the voice i don't have. and juan started giggling which of course i cant help but fall prey to. and i was giggling too and he apologized which was kind.

where it starts to get bad is the pr shoot. i was already feeling crazy bc i was a little high but my sitzzy died so that fucking sucked. and i was feeling so weird about how i looked in my costume. but still i truged on. it was all okay. it was fine.

gioia kept seing people up during fourth to change little things. which of course is what we always do, i know that, but its stuff that would've been nice if we could plan a little farther in advance. and then came 4:00. when we were all to be inspected to see what was going to be changed.

and they look and they look and they look. and they mutter and murmur in the house, shrouded in darkness and the distance between us provided them an level of privacy.

" We need a new shirt for gavin. And the pants don't look right. " i knew at this point i was defiantly making a face. scoffing a little likely, likely under my breath. where are we going to find a shirt, what pants do we even have?! i said loud enough to where they could probably hear me.

" And a'xela needs shoes. " what shoes?! i said again loud enough as in started to storm towards the costume room. thats when it happened.

" Malia. Come talk to us down here " and she waved me to the house. i made my way through the line instinctivly uttering and " oh no " under my breath as i styarted into the lights, making my was to the stairs. i looked past kyra and lily, i couldn't bare to face them.

" Why are you frudtrated? "

" im just overwhelemed and it feel like this always happens where we don't have enough time-"

" Exactly. This always happens and we always make it work. "

" but this time we really don't. have any other options, so when you say put him in a different shirt i don't know what to do. because there is no other shirt. "

" Well do you want someone else to do it? "

" no! no. i can. "

and i don't remember what exactly happened next. i made my way back onto the stage, my demeanor similar to that of a kicked dog, retreating with my tail between my legs. the loud click of my character shoes being one of the only noises in the quiet theatre.

" come with me gavin. " " me?- " " yes you. "

i scrunched my eyes and bit back tears, i let my feelings out in harsh stomps feeling my shoes bend under the pressure. i clacked my way up the steep stairs of the costume loft. " the stomper " juan said as i came up the final few steps. i b-lined to the rack and gave gavin the new outfit to try on. " dude im so upset " and i relayed to him all that had happened as i pinched the bridge of my nose and pinched back tears.

and he said nice words. and held me. and rubbed my back. and said my name. and above all that. he offered to come downstairs with me. and on top of that. stayed by my side to help me figure out what to do.

after a little while of me making my way back and forth and back and forth jake finally made his way backstage to help. and he was pulling things and there was lots of up and down the stiars and holding up and cutting and replacing.

at one point he described wanting a short sleeve button up shirt, but all we could find were ones that were huge. and then he pulls this, one could call it awful, pink shirt with yellow details. it was loud and bright and out color pallet is muted cools especially blue.

" its the right shape but . . " he trailed off. i mean he just didn't want to say what he were all thinking, my god that shirts ugly!

" why not? " i look at him. he looks back.

" should we try it? " he says with a his classic jake smile.

" i think we should " and since gioia chewed me out it was the first time i smiled. and felt a tinge of happiness.

and it worked perfectly. and looked awesome. and at some point i called it the best thing we've ever done. he said to me " sometimes you just need your partners to say yes, and i needed you to say yes " and later on he made a joke about it being, " malia and jakes best costume ever " and oh how i smiled. oh how i, dare i say, swooned? if hearing people refer to me and juan as a unit, imagine how i felt when jake made us a unit. oh that does something to me.

and before that, when he still hadn't come up to the loft, he gave me a high five and said how he didn't get the chance to tell me at the beginning but that this was an amazing starting point. and it felt nice to hear him say that.

i get the feeling that he was being extra kind to me because of my public scolding. but hey. whatever works.

and a different moment of being. so. soft. when juan asked me to try on his pants. the classic grey ones, now a dyed black that nearly looks purple. but they were his, and so notoriously his . and they smelled like him. and it was so. sweetie pie. and silly. and jessie saying he copied me with the pants. oh how i giggle.

oh how we laugh about it. oh how we joke, the same line thats been repeted to more then one person, " he showed me the pants, i just bought them first "

its so sweet having history with someone. being intertwined with someone. like earlier still trying to figure out the gavin situation,

" can he wear your sweater? "

" its hers " he says throwing a finger in my direction.

i wonder what jake thought about it. in a really weird and sort of freak twisted way. i cannot believe his excuse on build day to not finishing whatever he was doing was that he was looking for me. how sweet that boy is. or when i was helping juliet and he made his way over to the edge of the stage and started to speak. and before he could even say anything juilet syas " no you can't have her shes mine! " and oh how silly it made me!

he hadn't said a word, and she knew he was there for me! oh how wonderful it is to be attached to people. oh how lovely it is to be a pair.

[nothisis-ridiculous]

Take Me Home Now: Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve: In Your Head, In Your Head, They are Dyin'

Set after the events of ME3.

A rewrite. Ao3.

FemShepxKaidan

Geez, open my big fucking mouth much? Oh Jane, could you go to the Citadel? But why shouldn't you? You said you had spent time there; you're the one person who knows how to get around. She half-assedly kicked at the locker at the foot of her cot, besides, Rogers is too green. We need someone with experience leading the team. It would be best if you kept busy; civilian life doesn't agree with you.

They couldn't order her around.

Jane craned her head, taking in the entirety of the beam that would catapult her into the Citadel. A frown was the sole betrayal of her panicked nervous system, she would never be ready to go back there. But this was not the time for fear, not when Biotic's Division looked to her guidance. At least she could hide the apprehension- they looked like they could piss themselves at any moment. Jane knew the beam wouldn't lead to death but they were not so confident. It seemed insane, she got it.

Roy and Helen talked amongst the students, leaving Jane some time to collect herself. The last time she had approached the beam the entirety of Hammer had died to get her here, it seemed too easy now that it was a simple jaunt down a hill.

"You sure this thing won't vaporize us?" Roger's question interrupted her solitude.

"I'm not saying it's going to be pleasant, or you'll like what we're going to find-" distress crossed the 2nd lieutenant's face, this was the wrong approach, "if Anderson's team could make it to activate the Crucible, I think we will be fine. Besides, think of the bragging rights- being the one to restore communications with the Citadel, and eventually with the rest of the galaxy. It's not a small thing."

"But I'm not leading the operation," Rogers's hadn't taken the forced deference to the Recruit well.

"Believe me, kid, you'll be glad for all the calls you didn't have to make." She had refused to lead on principle, even after several others had tried to guilt her for refusing the mission. Jane wouldn't have stepped up if not for a series of harsh conversations from Mr. Alenko, most of them implying he would take the mantle if she would not, "get the team into place, we leave in two."

Roy and Helen naturally separated from the group, not away from the mass of students but toward her. Roy led a step ahead and Helen fixing her with the usual judgmental stare from behind her husband.

"I'll be fine," the woman snapped the M-77 into a ready form, "it should be easy."

"Be careful."

How many times had she heard that? To boot, in the same somber tone. The last time, so physically close to where they stood now. It was an odd irony that his father stood closer to the beam than Kaidan had managed to get.

"Thank you," regret was a hell of a thing, so unprompted she grasped his hand unflinching under that whiskey-hued gaze. For a blip of a moment, she looked forward to coming back. Hope returned in a microdose.

The students lined up as ordered, each reaction as individual as the person who stood before the blue light while they wouldn't argue with the mission: it didn't mean they had to trust it. Jane would question flinging herself blindly into the beam, she had at a couple of points. On Illos, she at least had the Mako to give her the illusion of safety, here for the second time only experience made her undaunted besides the emotional toll.

"Alright, the mission is simple. Meet with Bailey or whoever is left in charge. After that, we worry about setting up the long-range commlink," it was better to put this off as a simple run, when things got complicated, they would deal with it then, "on arrival, where exactly we'll end up is a mystery. This functions much like a Mass Relay, so small groups and make sure your ass is out of the way."

Jane nodded to Rogers and the female that stood beside him, "anyone else want to go first?"

She didn't wait for a reaction before sauntering brazenly into the beam.

The Spectre had thought she was used to running into the unexpected. She had made a career of dealing with the strange, but awe of circumstance truly never went away. This time it was far more physical than expected. Pulling herself over the lip and onto the metal path, water violently expelling from her nose and mouth. If she were a little more with it, she would have pulled a gun on the Keeper scuttling by- but she was a little more focused on breathing. The next concern was the two in line behind her; one was lucky and ended up straddled over the railing the next erupted from the water much in the way she had.

Once it was clear all was fine, Jane rolled onto her back. Dark laughter barking from her diaphragm. It was a far cry from the body-lined hallways and corridors she had dreamed up, the relay monument looked down on her. God, she felt nauseous. Her sides didn't stop seizing until all breath left her body, eyes stinging with tears. Rolling to all fours, then finally upright the world swirled into sudden clarity.

This was the Presidium. Behind her, the partially broken statue that honored the krogan. A white spire jutting into the sky, a brave blue flower standing tall, heat speckled metal walkways, and the white-walled building. Her fingers raked through a tangle of wet hair, shook out her pistol, pulled Rogers from the railing, and tightly squeezed her fist until the twang of her muscles bid for release. The relay fired again, splashing followed, and the approach of footsteps came from her right side. The tepid water running down her face made pinpointing smells impossible, but she could sure taste the strange flavor of the unfiltered liquid.

"Holy shit."

"See, you should have never doubted me."

The Lieutenant did not find it quite so humourous.

"Lighten up, Kid," she remarked blithely, turning her attention to the squad that corralled them into the center of the walkway, "it's nice to see C-Sec arrive promptly."

The turian officer scoffed but lowered his weapon, "Bailey will want to see you."

"Good, we're looking for him."

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

"How is it always you?" Bailey hardly looked up at her, "but I've got to admit, nobody else is crazy enough to walk through a beam on foot."

The man was one of the few who could recognize her immediately, even with grown-out and natural hair. He had seen the scarring left behind after the Lazarus Project before they had faded for the first time. It took only a little imagination to see past the more extensive facial scars.

"The first or second time?"

Bailey's head craned up, concern crossing his face, "Com-"

Jane waved a hand, "please, Bailey, that person is gone. Let her die with her crew."

The concern grew behind the glow of his omnitool "if anyone ever asks, you waved your Spectre status in my face. But I don't think you are here to catch up."

"No, I am not."

The team back on Earth had tried to reconnect with the Citadel, but all attempts to reach them had failed. So a mission to the station became necessary. Bailey attempted to skirt the subject, but life on the Citadel was not easy. Slowly some peace was restored but at a snail's pace. Whatever jammed the comms slowed any hope of a unified force on the station. It also explained their failure to find a tech expert who might fix the issue and perhaps the lack of a Spectre or someone of a higher rank to authorize it—security measures as usual were great until they hindered progress.

"I'll need you before you try and disappear again," Bailey warned, swirling the scotch in his lowball glass. He figured this was special occasion enough, even if the hero returned as little more than a ghost.

"I'll consider it my retirement party," she mused, finishing off the bitter liquid, "seems easy compared to a Reaper invasion."

"Nothing with you is ever simple."

"Hell, this could all be a dream... for both of us." It felt a little cold for a dream, but it was all surreal. For now, she put it off as walking old hallways and the memories of the companions that haunted the place.

"The scotch must be hitting you hard."

"I haven't hit the hard stuff since-" the statement crossed into territory painful for both of them, "but I say there is no time like the present. Must be driving my squad nuts waiting."

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

"Shepard before-"

Jane flinched, and Bailey retracted for a moment. Equal parts confusion and frustration with the jumpy woman. Perhaps it was time, untold horrors of war, or the alcohol that made her weird, if not mentioning the other multitude of reasons the Spectre seemed off her game. She went by a different name to the men she led, and it was becoming apparent the problem was far out of his wheelhouse.

"I have to give it to you plain, we found Anderson's body in here. It looked like he was shot."

"I know."

She had shot him after all. For a long time, she had tried reasoning that it was not her fault; after all, the Illusive Man had made her do it. Those strange cybernetic eyes had stared at her in her dreams, one of the thousands of voices taunting her. Those blue eyes had found her again as she walked the hallways to the Council Chambers.

"He must have activated the Crucible before he died, it's funny because we all assumed you had done it."

Jane hadn't activated the Crucible. That was true. Maybe Mary had; it was all a little foggy.

"We gave him the best funeral we could, I can take you there later if you like," Bailey offered, trying to rouse her with a touch.

Jane shook her head, "another time, this is enough."

Too much.

Bailey nodded, falling behind a few paces so she could absorb the room. Mentally, she remarked on little other than it had become a bit overgrown in disuse and that she liked it better without the constant trickle of running water.

"Nothing unusual up here, Ma'am," buzzed the comm.

"Roger, roger."

"It wasn't funny, even when the Major did it."

Fine, "hold position, I want eyes on anything that could go wrong. I'll place the shunt."

Jane moved slowly across the catwalk, the face staring at her accusingly grew clearer as she approached. The simple frame wreathed in upkept foilage, plants, and candles of all sorts making up an altar. She tried to move through littered petals and papers with reverence, but some wound up disturbed fluttering into the pit below. Jane crouched to cradle the picture gently, "Admiral."

Her blue eyes scanned upwards, resting on the bloody handprint covering the virtual interface sensor.

The total weight of another being crashed onto her, attempting to wrestle her from the catwalk. Even after weeks without combat, Jane dislodged the man with ease throwing him over the unprotected edge. The unnatural steel blue eyes, shocked with bright blue patterns, brimming with fury. Quickly as they had entered her vision, the figure went still and dark.

Coldly, empty, she returned the broken frame to its spot. Her complete attention turning to the console that lit up at her presence. The only break from her attention was the dramatic slam of her fists on the sides of the railing behind the console- it wasn't working.

Before she could release her temper upon the undeserving railing again, a keeper nudged her aside. Compiling the necessary commands with ease, the sudden noise of a system erupting in a blastwave. As quickly as the creature arrived, it scuttled back away. Leaving Jane to complete her task.

Bailey looked over the ledge, approaching the woman slowly once he was satisfied.

"Commander Bailey, you should have access to all Citadel systems," her bright blue eyes turned to him with a terrifying hollowness, "don't make me regret it."

"You- but, he," Bailey swallowed, running a hand over his cropped hair, "it's never simple with you."

He grabbed her arm before she slipped by him, "take this."

"I should go."

"Don't worry, you weren't here," he called after the stumbling figure.

Jane didn't recall stumbling back through the relay, or for that matter, picking her way back to the mall. Or the time she had left, or if she had bothered to warn anyone in the meantime. Reality was a persnickety thing at the moment, failing to anchor her securely to the present.

It was dark, the mechs hadn't stopped her, and not even her body was warning her of exhaustion. It was all instinct.

The room she stole into, that was not so much a call of instinct but of desperation. Her world grew colder, and it was beginning to tumble at a speed that she could barely withstand.

"Rahna."

Nothing.

"Rahna."

"Jane?"

[alarawriting]

52 Project #25: Where The Winds Of Limbo Roar

... it is a point of pride to me that I never reuse a title, not even between fanfic and original fic. The title of this almost certainly should be “Veteran of the Psychic Wars”, except I already titled an X-Men AU fanfic that, so I pulled the title from another part of the lyrics.

Story derived from a prompt from @writing-prompt-s. I’m not putting a link on a story as long as Tumblr search is so broken that it excludes posts with links, so check the reblog to my main blog @alarajrogers for the full credits.

***

When their guard patrol passed the building where the psychics sat or laid on their mats, deep in their meditations, Soffrees snorted. “Look at that,” he said, pointing a thumb behind him at the windows of the battery. “We go out on the front lines and risk our lives. They sit in an air-conditioned room, or they nap in it, and they get served their food without even getting up to go get it… and they get paid three times what we do. What the fuck, man?”

“I know, right?” Baslicos chuckled grimly. “Be born with telepathy! Get the whole world handed to you on a platter! Join the army, get pampered like it’s a resort for rich old ladies!”

“What do they even do that’s worth that kind of money?” Soffrees shook his head. “They tell us ‘they defend us from psychic attack.’ Well, you know, I wear this chain—” he took out his charm chain, with his tags and all the charms on it, and waved it a bit – “to protect us from attacks from pink hippoceroses! And see, it works great, because when was the last time you were attacked by a pink hippoceros? Now gimme more money!”

“I knew a guy in basic training, always used to claim he was under psychic attack. Turned out he was just nuts, man.” Baslicos turned the corner – and ran straight into a tall, heavily-muscled man in a top brass uniform. She backed up. “Oh, sorry, sir—” and then her eyes went wide, as if registering who he was. “General Marcus! Sir! I apologize for running into you, sir!”

Marcus waved a hand. “At ease, private, no need to fall all over yourself apologizing. Just watch where you’re going next time.”

“Sir,” Soffrees said, almost reverently. “Can I tell you what an honor it is to meet you, sir? I went into the army because of the stories I heard about you!”

Marcus was a 60-something man with a shock of white hair that apparently rank and age allowed him to get away with not combing into regulation haircut or shaving; it was wild and bushy on his head. There was a small black bird sitting on his shoulder. Stories had it that he had been in combat since he was a young child; that he was immune to psychics; that he’d single-handedly captured the commander of the Ferlan army and forced them to surrender, twenty years ago… and many other stories that made him legendary. “I agree, sir!” Baslicos said. “It’s an honor! You’re a great hero!”

“You kids,” Marcus said, shaking his head. “You focus on the wrong things.” He gestured over at the psychic battery. “I heard what you two were saying about the psychics. You talk about what a great hero I am because I’ve been out on the front lines my whole life, but you don’t even think of who supports you, who lets you go out and serve without poking your own eyeballs out of your head.”

“Sir, I’ve never met anyone who’s been attacked by psychics,” Soffrees said.

“Sure you have. Right now. Me.”

“You? Uh… wasn’t that a long time ago, sir?”

“It sure was,” Marcus agreed. “Because for the past twenty-five years or so I haven’t served in an army that didn’t have a psychic battery, and because I’ve trained my own abilities so even when I’m outside battery range, and inside the range for an enemy battery, they can’t get through. But that’s me. Just two years ago at Fire Heights, we lost five soldiers to a psychic attack when an enemy missile took out our battery. You never heard about that?”

“I was in Basic at the time, sir,” Soffrees admitted.

“I, uh, hadn’t signed up yet. Sir.” Baslicos looked down for a moment as if she was ashamed of not having served for even as long as Soffrees.

“Well.” He motioned the two guards over to the grass on the side of the building. “You’re relieved for a bit. Sit your asses down and get educated.” He turned to the bird. “Find Lieutenant Kallimik and tell her to assign two guards out here for the next hour or so to cover for these two – what are your names?”

“Private Soffrees, sir!”

“Private Baslicos!”

“Right. To cover for Soffrees and Baslicos, because I’ve got them.”

“Two guards. Cover for Soffrees and Baslicos. Asshole,” the bird said.

Marcus sighed. “Not asshole. Can we just forget I ever called Kallimik that?”

“Birds don’t forget. Asshole.”

“Not asshole. If I hear you relayed ‘asshole’ you don’t get any bacon tonight, you hear me?”

“I’m Falli. I love bacon. No asshole.”

“So what are you telling Kallimik?”

“Two guards. Cover for Soffrees and Baslicos. Not asshole.”

“Just go deliver the message,” Marcus said wearily, and Falli flew off. “Messenger corvids. ‘It’s better than sending an encrypted message on a bird’s leg!’ ‘You can train a corvid to carry the message to the right person and not deliver it to anyone else!’ ‘Corvids recognize faces and telepaths can’t read them!’ I miss the days when we sent columbines. Those birds weren’t smartasses.”

“Sir, columbines can’t talk. How did you send messages?” Baslicos asked.

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “What do they teach you kids? We’d tie coded messages on paper to their legs, or give them tiny backpacks to wear. I know, corvids can be given more destinations, they’re smarter, and if they’re shot down, the enemy can’t get the message off of them. But columbines make pretty coos, not wiseass comments about an offhand remark you unwisely made about a subordinate one time.” He sat down on the grass, next to a patch of dirt left from too many people taking shortcuts, and patted the ground. “Come sit, privates.”

Somewhat awkwardly, the two soldiers sat down. “What are we doing, sir?” Soffrees asked.

“Getting yourself an education. You think the psychics aren’t important? Aren’t worth protecting, because they’re not doing anything as serious as what you guys on the front line do? I’m going to tell you about the psychic attack I survived, that no one who was with me did.”

The two soldiers arranged themselves in respectful positions. Their opinions were their opinions, but both of them practically hero-worshiped General Marcus, and if he had something to say to them, they’d listen raptly.

***

“It was during the War for Independence. We’d been moving in from two directions to secure the Gap – I know you soldiers know where the Gap is, right?” In the dirt, with a short pencil he’d had in a pocket, he drew a squiggle for a mountain range, a gap of a few inches, and then a second squiggle. “We were here and here—” He drew X’s in front of the two mountain ranges – “and then they came pouring through the Gap before we could get there.” Extra scribbles to demonstrate the enemy, as a funnel with the narrow bit through the Gap and the wide part between the two X’s.

“Now we had the numbers, between our two groups, that we could have crushed the Monarchists, if we moved fast enough that we could prevent them from getting reinforcements through the Gap. But they had far too many soldiers for either of our groups to defeat them on our own. We had to coordinate the attack. Problem, of course, was the large mass of enemy soldiers between us.

“We sent out several messenger birds. Columbines, in those days. I don’t know how many. A lot. None of them came back. Back then, we had a lot fewer telepaths and they weren’t as well trained. We couldn’t get a message through by psychic, either. If we were to have any hope, a team of people was going to have to cross through enemy territory, deliver the message, and then back, with confirmation.

“Captain Noori picked me and three other soldiers as her crack team to get the message through. Their names were Anders, Caprikin, and Starros. That doesn’t mean anything to you, I know. You look at me as a hero, because I’ve survived. I fought the Willel when they conquered my homeland. I fought for the Demos here in Danza. I fought in every war we’ve had since, and I lived. So I’m a hero. And Noori, Anders, Caprikin and Starros are forgotten. They shouldn’t be. They were bigger heroes than me; they gave their lives to the cause. They were people, like all of you, not numbers.

“Anders and Caprikin fought the Willel with me. I was eleven when Anders and I started doing occasional sabotage, but we didn’t get really effective as guerrillas until Caprikin joined us. He was short – so short, and so baby-faced, he looked eight when he was thirteen, and he looked like a Willel, and he could speak their language without an accent. He’d find a soldier alone, or two soldiers, near an alleyway where we could hide, and he’d pretend to be a Willel boy who’d lost his mother. Sometimes it didn’t work. Willel soldiers could be brutal. One time one of them struck him with the butt of his rifle, in the face. It wasn’t safe or easy work by any means. But when he succeeded at it, when he distracted them and they got involved in trying to help him, we’d come out of the alley with our knives and the guns we’d stolen off the bodies of the last Willel soldiers we’d done this to, and that was that.”

He chuckled, remembering. “The wild thing was that he looked like this innocent lost lamb, but Caprikin was the funniest, most foul-mouthed son of a bitch you would ever have served with. He always had a wiseass comment for any situation. Me, I have no sense of humor, so I don’t even remember any of his jokes… it was years and years ago, but it upsets me. Why didn’t I write this stuff down when I had the chance? Why did I trust to memory?... You soldiers need to write things down. Take pictures. The people you’re fighting beside right now, they’re going to be a part of your life until you die, even if they died forty years ago. Even if you don’t like them. You’re all going through hell together; that forms a bond you’ll never forget, but you’ll forget the details. You’ll forget their faces, you’ll forget the jokes they told…” His voice drifted to a stop as his gaze went far away.

“Sir?” Baslicos prompted.

Marcus’ eyes came back into focus. “…oh, here’s something I remember about Caprikin, but it isn’t a joke. We signed up to fight the Monarchists, all three of us together, and the sergeant doing the recruiting said Caprikin couldn’t join. He was too small, too weak. He’d get killed. So he put on one of our travel knapsacks – even heavier than yours, we had literally everything we still owned in them. Must have been 50, 60 pounds. And he politely asked the sergeant if he could demonstrate his skills, and asked the sergeant to come at him. The sergeant was a big bruiser of a man; he laughed, but he did it… and Caprikin used his momentum to lay him out flat on his back. Sergeant didn’t say a single word against him signing up, after that.

“Anders was a lot more serious than Caprikin. Very quiet fellow, very restrained. He was a low psychic, though, and when we figured out what he could do, when we were eleven, that was when we started risking ourselves to fight the Willel. That, and they’d just killed his father. He could send out a… targeted wave of ‘don’t notice anything.’ You know the fellows with the low psychic ability ‘don’t notice me?’ Where they can walk right past you and unless you’re blocking psi, you don’t even see them? Anders was a little more powerful than that. He could make it so everyone around him, in a donut-shaped range where we at the center wouldn’t be affected, would just… stop noticing anything unusual. We two, and we three when Caprikin joined us, could just run past a few guards, covered in blood and carrying weapons, and they wouldn’t even look up.

“By the time he was an adult, Anders had a lot more control over his field, so he was generally sent out on scouting parties. He used it on leave and on the rare occasions when we weren’t in an army to go exploring. Bird watching. Used to draw them. When he started as a kid he had some talent but by the time he was a man he was amazing. You’d have thought those birds would fly off the page. He drew other things, too, things from nature, always. He refused to draw pictures of any of us. Said he wasn’t good enough. I wish he had.

“Starros… she was such a strange one. Some people called her “the Robot” because she hardly ever showed emotions in her tone of voice. More or less everything was a harsh monotone, unless she was really happy or excited, and then it was a bubbly high-pitched monotone. She had an amazing poker face – her face just never changed, no matter what her hand was – but I learned her tells. She’d drum her fingers on her knees, under the table, and when she was anxious, she’d drum faster. Starros wasn’t interested in romance, or sex – didn’t even much like hugging, and she’d just stand around looking confused and embarrassed if you said something like ‘You’re a damn good friend.’ She didn’t get any of that. But she’d kill or die for her friends. If there were five rations and four people and Starros and they were her friends or comrades, she’d tell them to take the last ration and divide it out. She’d drop whatever she was doing to help you. Didn’t know how to say ‘I love you’ or ‘I like you’ or even ‘You’re my friend’, but she’d drive the getaway car through the flames of hell and crash the gates of the Demon Emperor’s palace to get you out, and cover you while you were running for the car.

“Anders and Caprikin and I spent our childhood fighting; she spent hers studying weaponry. Reading about it. Reading about war. She was obsessed with it. I don’t normally think book learning is ever a match for experience, but in her case… I guess it depends on the book, and how many of them you read, and how close you read them. Every weapon any of us used, she knew how to clean it, how to take it apart if it was a thing you could take apart, how to use it and more importantly when to use it. Any weapon the enemy used against us, too, and she knew all their strengths and weaknesses. Funny thing was, for all she knew about guns, she couldn’t shoot one worth a damn. Couldn’t aim it. I never saw her hit the broad side of a barn. But give her something she could hit the enemy with – a cudgel, a knife, a sword, even a morningstar – and she was amazing. You couldn’t stop her.

“We were – well, I’m not going to say we were the best of the best. I don’t know that. But I can say we were some of the best, and that’s why Captain Noori picked us to accompany her.

“Noori, now. She could shoot. She was an amazing sharpshooter – could take the tuft of feathers off the head of a flying cardinal. She fought in the resistance against the Willel, too; she was in a re-education camp at one point, when she was a child. They tried to strip her of her religion, her language, her culture, and what they got was a lifelong enemy. She got her start shooting messenger birds with her slingshot as they crossed over her city, taking them down with rocks. I think she was doing that when she was nine. Even younger than I got my start.

“In combat she was incredible. She’d stay absolutely in control, all the time. Starros might have seemed like a robot out of combat, but in combat she’d scream, she’d shriek and howl and groan just like most of us do. Whereas I never heard Noori make a sound she hadn’t decided to, not in a fight, not until the end. You couldn’t hear her move, either. In darkness, she turned invisible – you couldn’t see her with her dark skin and her dark uniform, and she didn’t make a sound when she walked. We joked she’d been a cat in a past life.

“Out of combat, though… she could be tough, as a leader, but back then there were a lot of female soldiers who thought they’d impress the rest of us by being tough all the time, never show any emotion but anger, and Noori was never one of those. She was always as kind as she could possibly be to civilians, and if she saw a kid in trouble, she’d help – with us watching her back, of course, because Anders and Caprikin and I all remembered how we’d used that against the Willel. She cried when the battles were over and we counted up the dead; she’d walk among them and say their names and whisper prayers for every one of them, with tears running down her face. One time, one of the privates was upset because he couldn’t write his mother a letter; turned out it was because he’d never learned to read or write. She’d come to the barracks at night and work with him, taking an hour or two every night to teach him.

“We’d have willingly followed Noori to hell. Which is what we ended up doing.”

He lost himself for a bit then, but caught his thread back before either of the soldiers had a chance to try to prompt him. “We were going to cross the Gap along the mountain range line, where the Monarchist presence was as narrow as it got, but of course their presence was thicker there than elsewhere, so we ended up having to spend a day moving around the edge of the territory they held to get to a place that was favorable for us to cross through.” With the pencil, he drew the movements he and his squad had made, against the rough map he’d already drawn in the dirt. “And then the second day, it rained. Well, of course, when you’re trying to sneak across enemy territory, rain’s usually to your advantage, so we made good progress, until the wind whipped up and it was just one step short of a hurricane. We had to dig ourselves a bunker and take shelter in it until the wind died down.

“What we didn’t know was that this was going to smash up one of the Monarchist barracks to the north of us, so they’d called in help from their people south of us. Of course, that meant we ended up running into the Monarchists marching north. We saw some combat, then. The point to sending a tiny group of five soldiers across enemy territory is to make it more likely that they don’t get caught, obviously, because five people can’t fight off an entire army. If it wasn’t for Anders’ ability and the fact that there are a lot of natural caves in that area, we’d never have made it. We had to hide out in a cave. The Monarchists searched for us for five days. We ran out of rations, had to drink from a muddy spring in the cave. By the time they were finally gone, we were… not in good shape.

“So we were less careful, on the rest of our journey. We had to steal food, since we were out of rations, and we weren’t covering our tracks as well as we’d been. Anders was overpsyched, couldn’t hide us anymore without terrible migraines, and he was tough and loyal, he’d have tried, but Noori wouldn’t inflict that on him. She decided that our best strategy was speed. And that meant we couldn’t pussyfoot around trying to sneak around a sentry or two; we just needed to kill them and keep moving.

“By the time we got across the Monarchist territory and back into Demo-held lands, the entire Monarchist army on this side of the Gap knew about us.

“We knew it was going to be hard, getting back across the Gap. We knew we’d made it hard for ourselves by racing across the territory, killing every Monarchist we ran into. But our window was closing; messenger birds from our spies and sympathizers said that there was no more than two weeks before Monarchist reinforcements spilled into the Gap. It was a four-day trip across the Gap if you didn’t have to take a day to detour around enemy territory and you didn’t have to hide in a bunker for a day and a cave in five more. Our comrades over here couldn’t give us more than a week to get the message across. And we’d have no way to get the message back here that we had, or hadn’t, gotten the message to our people.

“The message was that our partners on this side of the Gap were going to move in a week. And they were taking a leap of faith, because if we didn’t get the message through to our side in time, if our side didn’t mobilize and join them in a pincer movement to crush the Monarchists, these Demos would be crushed themselves, and we’d be next. No matter what it took, we had to get the message across in a week.

“Of course we knew better than to send people with secret information in their brains; we knew the enemy had telepaths. I’m sure you all know about me – it’s hardly a well-kept secret nowadays that I’m a blocker. They hypnotized the others, our psychics putting blocks in their head so they wouldn’t be able to remember what the message was until we got back to our side. I was the only one who remembered – but they all knew I knew it, so when I told them how much time we had to get the message through, they knew it was important.

“We had five days.  Five days, to make a trip that took us eleven on the way in.

“They sent us with Elias, a combat psychic. Now, I see that look on your face. You’re wondering, if there’s such a thing as a combat psychic, how come our telepaths in the battery don’t go out into the field? Why don’t we have combat psychics?”

Soffrees said, “Uh, I wasn’t going to interrupt you to ask, sir, but… yeah, why don’t we have combat psychics? Sir.”

“The answer is, we do, but you haven’t met any yet, because the telepaths in the battery are so much more powerful than a combat psychic could ever be. Combat psychics have to worry about being hungry, having to pee, watching where they’re walking, not getting killed by enemy fire… put it this way, can you read a book while you’re walking? Through enemy territory? When you might be sniped at any moment, and there’s trees all around you could walk into? Trust me. Psychics are a lot more effective when they’re free to meditate in silence and use all of their mind on their power. We don’t need combat psychics right here because the battery right over there—” he pointed back at the building with the psychics in it—“puts up a wall of psychic defense with such a large radius, none of you have yet been deployed out of it.

“But we needed Elias, because the moment we crossed an invisible line, a short distance into the territory they’d claimed, he reported that the Monarchist psychics were after us.

“Anders did everything he could do. Elias did what he could do; I didn’t know him well, but he was a good man. Noori, Caprikin, Starros and me did our best to protect them both so they could devote more of their brainpower to shielding us.

“The Monarchists had destroyed forests and farms, turning a lot of the countryside into wasteland where you could see straight to the horizon, but they couldn’t do anything about the fact that technically, the Gap is still part of the mountains, just a part that sank low enough that now there are hills and crags and rocks set into the earth, all over the terrain, instead of mountains. We made as much use of terrain cover as we could. Did our best to avoid getting caught by anyone, because we knew the moment we killed a sentry to silence him, their psychics would be on us. Elias and Anders were protecting us by making it so the psychics couldn’t tell exactly where we were, but the enemy had battery telepaths; there was no way Elias and Anders could stand up to an attack by high psychics in a battery.

“We were a day from the border, a day away from home, crossing through some very rocky territory, when they found Elias.

“I don’t know what he saw. He screamed, and wouldn’t stop, to the point where we had to gag him to keep him from summoning the enemy from all around. Anders tried to surround him with his field, but it was no good – the high psychics in the enemy battery had locked onto him already. We had to abandon him, to try to outrun their ability to triangulate on us next. Never saw him again, not even as a name on the rosters from prisoner exchange when we finally beat the Monarchists, so… I’m pretty sure he died there.

“We ran. We tried to find a vehicle – a car, a carriage, maybe a horse – that we could steal and make better time, but we couldn’t find anything before they found us. For a few hours the others saw hallucinations – it was Starros who confessed to it first, saying she kept seeing her mother and older brother calling her, and then everyone but me mentioned they were seeing them too. They didn’t all admit to who or what they saw. We knew this was bad – hallucinations meant they were catching us in the edge of their effect, and that meant they were focusing in – but what could we do? Anders tried, for all the good it did us, but all that happened was for half an hour he didn’t see any visions. He was far, far too overpsyched by then to fight them off in any meaningful way.

“On a grassy plateau surrounded by sheer rock on one side and a relatively small drop on the other, they zeroed in on us, and attacked, full force. The others all started screaming, and dropped to the ground, all of us but me.

“Noori was crying for her parents – she seemed to be remembering how she was taken away from them and thrown in a re-education camp – but then she started shrieking, ‘No! No!’ She got up, backed away, and ran – straight into the stone wall. And then she just kept getting up and running into the stone wall, over and over. I tried to pull her away, to stop her – she was smashing up her face, there was blood and contusions all over her head – but when I grabbed her and bodily dragged her, she fought me like I was one of the monsters she was seeing, and then she broke free of me – after breaking my nose and two fingers – and slammed into the wall again.

“Starros thought the ground had become glass. Very, very fragile glass. She kept screaming at all of us to get to safety before it broke, it was going to break. I think she saw her family members, and maybe friends of hers, fall through the glass. There couldn’t have been anything good underneath it. She was sobbing, begging us to get to safety before the glass broke, crying because she couldn’t save us. She thought her weight would surely break the glass if she went out on it to try to rescue us.

“Caprikin thought he was covered in – something. I don’t know. Spiders? Snakes? He thought they were all over his skin and pouring out of every orifice, and he stripped naked and started ripping at his skin with his nails, trying to get whatever it was off him. Then he started screaming about how they were burrowing into his skin, they were inside him, and he started throwing himself at the ground, over and over… and I couldn’t stop him, either.

“And Anders just calmly put his own eyes out with his thumbs, pulled out his tongue and bit it off, grabbed a long, thin wire brush we used to keep the equipment clean and shoved it into one ear as far as he could push it, and then farther. I don’t know if he actually managed to pierce his brain with it, but he fell over unconscious after that.

“But I’m a blocker. I wasn’t touched. I can’t project. I couldn’t make a field around my friends like Anders could. But they couldn’t touch me.

“Almost.”

He sighed deeply. “I hated that, you know. Sometimes you think the weirdest things in combat. I saw my friends writhing and screaming and going mad all around me, and if I could have saved them, I’d have been grateful for my blocking ability. But I couldn’t. So all I could do was watch them suffer, under an attack that left me be, and… part of me wished I wasn’t a blocker. That if we were going to die, we would all die together. Stupid, I know. And the duty ahead of me wouldn’t allow me to die with them if I could help it, under any circumstances.

“I had to leave them. I was alone, with no support, with four friends that were dying of madness, and I couldn’t save them, I couldn’t even help them. I figured I could maybe knock them unconscious and hopefully they’d be better when they woke up, but if I did that, I couldn’t keep moving with them. If I left them behind, they’d be captured or killed. If I stayed with them, I’d be captured or killed. And I was the only one with the message, the vital message that would drive the Monarchists out of the Gap if I got it through, and would result in both groups of Demos being massacred if I failed.

“I didn’t have the strength to put them out of their misery. Emotional strength, not physical. I had a gun, I could have done it, but I couldn’t make myself end my friends’ lives. I rationalized, telling myself, maybe they’d be captured, maybe we could ransom them back with a prisoner exchange. Telling myself I didn’t need to kill them, because even if they were taken captive, the secret was buried in their brains deep enough that the enemy psychics wouldn’t be able to get it out. Like that was the only consideration. Like I wasn’t dooming them to dying horribly of their madness, or being executed by the Monarchists.

“I knocked Caprikin out, and Noori. Anders was already out, and Starros hadn’t done herself any physical damage, so I didn’t need to knock her out, and I wanted to leave her with maybe the ability to defend herself? Maybe, if the psychics let up, she could… do something?

“I was lying to myself, of course. The psychics wouldn’t let up. They’d peel her brain, looking for the secret, since the other three were unconscious. Wouldn’t find it – our psychics were good, they knew how to bury an encoded secret properly – but that wouldn’t stop them from trying. And if a squadron of Monarchists found them, she wouldn’t be able to fight back – she wouldn’t even be able to leave the tiny bit of land she was squatting on, the only safe place she thought existed.

“I left my friends behind, and I ran, because so many more of my friends would die if I didn’t.

“I mentioned that I was almost immune to psychics. I’m not a blocker in a battery, though, with a whole team of projecting blockers with me. I was just me; they had a battery. So they managed to break enough of my walls loose that they made me hallucinate, like they’d made the others hallucinate before. I saw my friends, dripping with blood, asking me why I left them behind, saying they despised me for abandoning them. My family, during the occupation, and the things the Willel might have done to them after they disappeared and I never saw them again. I could see the real world, faintly, behind the hallucinations, so when enemy soldiers turned up, I was able to fight them. But the psychics made me see them as something else. I’d blow a man’s head off, and he was Caprikin, back when we were boys. I’d stab a woman who was trying to stab me, and she’d be Noori.

“I’ve been fighting in wars all my life. I’ve seen so many dead. Lost so many friends, lost my family – I’m used to grief and horror. I walk with it every day, I see it in my dreams. So they couldn’t break me. They tortured me the entire way back to our camp, and a few times I was almost killed because I was too distracted by illusions to fight back, but they couldn’t stop me, no matter how much psychic force they turned on me. The only reason they didn’t hit me with overwhelming real-world force was that I was blocking them too hard – they didn’t know where I was the way they’d known where my friends were. They could reach the edges of my mind, but they couldn’t get in deep enough to know where to send soldiers after me.

“I got back through the border and I got the message through and you know how the Battle of the Gap went. But I didn’t fight in it. As soon as I got the message through, I broke. They weren’t still attacking me, but they’d poured so much poison into my mind, now it was attacking itself. All the guilt I felt at leaving my friends behind, all the guilt I’d always felt at being the only member of my family to survive, and the thought that maybe they were taken because the Willel knew about my resistance activities, and went to my house to get me, and took my family instead because I wasn’t there… I heard my family denouncing me, telling me I’d gotten them killed. I still saw Noori and Anders and Caprikin and Starros. Sometimes even Elias. Other friends I’d lost over the course of the wars I’d fought. I was 27 years old and I’d been fighting since I was 11. I’d lost a lot of friends in that time.

“It didn’t stop until the battle was over, until they were able to get me in front of a high psychic on our side who was able to bury most of the damage. Not remove, not eliminate, not cure… bury. I still see those things, sometimes, as nightmares mostly, or when everything’s quiet and I’m trying to sleep. I’m in my 60’s now. It’s pretty clear to me that I’ll see those visions until I’m dead. I’m used to them now but they still horrify me.”

The two soldiers’ eyes were wide. “Sir, I… I’m sorry,” Baslicos whispered.

“We didn’t know,” Soffrees said.

“Of course you don’t. If you take a medicine for your headache, and it’s so good you never get a headache, sooner or later you might get to thinking, wow, I don’t have a problem with headaches anymore, why do I have to keep taking this drug? That’s human nature.” He stood up and brushed off his pants. “They should have taught you in Basic, and I’m going to have to see about our training programs for new recruits. They need to make it clear what the psychics do. Because those men and women in there? They find spies, and bombers with ‘you don’t see me’ powers. They root out enemy secrets. They’re an early warning system, they know when enemy forces are approaching. And they protect you, every day, from horrors that could melt your mind. Because that’s what psychics do, in a combat battery. They find the enemy and they drive them insane. Ours, theirs, all the psychics do that And all of them protect their people from the enemy psychics who are trying to do the same thing.”

“I thought that was supposed to be a war crime,” Baslicos said tentatively. “Driving the enemy insane?”

“It’s not. They debated it, but in the end, it’s not. Because you can’t tell the difference between a man that the psychics peeled for information and a man they just deliberately drove mad – both are going to act the same level of fucked-up, and none of the world’s nations want to give up the advantage being able to use psychics to read prisoners for information would give them.” He shook his head. “You ask me… it should be a war crime. Our psychics should be defending us, not doing that and trying to break the enemy at the same time. But, it wasn’t my call, and that’s how war goes.”

He lifted his head backward, gesturing at the battery. “Those poor bastards in there, they burn out. One slip-up and an enemy psychic might get into them, rip their minds apart. And even if that never happens… they do their tour and then they’re haunted for the rest of their lives, because they committed atrocities, and they know it, and they felt it from inside the minds of the people they were doing it to. Or, even if they didn’t… they felt it when it happened to our soldiers, the people they’re protecting. You think they’re being pampered? Just because someone’s taking care of their bodies? They’re shitting in diapers and they can’t even feel it. Someone feeds them mush, like they were infants, and they can’t feel it. They’re on the front lines, with their minds, the whole time they’re in there.”

“We didn’t know,” Soffrees repeated.

“You do now, private. So make sure you tell everyone else you know, if it comes up. You defend those people with your life. Because if it wasn’t for them… there are worse things than death, and I’m telling you, these are the people who will save you from those things.”

He motioned their relief over. “You guys can go back to whatever you were doing; I’m releasing Soffrees and Baslicos back to their watch. Tell Lieutenant Kallimik I want my bird back.”

“Sir, your bird called Lieutenant Kallimik an asshole,” one of the two guards said.

“Goddamnit it.” Marcus facepalmed. “I told that bird. Yeah, okay, tell Kallimik I’ll see her in person to get my bird back before she eats it, and you can tell Falli I said no bacon tonight. Not one little bit.”

“We’ll let the Lieutenant know, sir,” the other guard said, and the two of them marched off, as Soffrees and Baslicos resumed their patrol, and the General went wherever he’d originally been going.

[the-final-sif]

Also, I know it doesn't even really make any sense, possibly, but how do you feel about the headcanon that Katsuki's good at singing? It's kinda more a guilty pleasure headcanon, as far as I can tell, considering there's not much of a base like there would be with Jirou, but. Y'know. For those singers out there wantin' to project, I guess. And I just wanted your thoughts on it, so...?

!!!!

Okay, so this exact thing came up in the discord a little while ago, and it’s a headcanon based 100% around the fact that I love the song Fire on Fire and I think it’s a great todobaku song.

So! Katsuki, Izuku and Shouto are all interning together with Endeavor and Hawks is hanging around because he does that. They were on a mission that was supposed to be easy, but turned out to be a trap. The villains lured Shouto off and hit him with something akin to the trigger drug, basically it makes his quirk/him go nuts and super ramps up his power levels.

That causes him to create a giant fire and ice storm, with his quirk lashing out at anyone that tries to get close, and with his range constantly increasing. A bunch of other heroes + a lot of their classmates are called in to help evacuate people and try to help but nothing seems to be working.

Izuku reverts to his default Quirk Nerd state and discovers that there’s a weird conditional to the drug Shouto’s under, the person trapped in it can still kinda hear people outside and previous heroes facing the villain have had success with song in particular breaking the person out of the quirk’s effect. A suitable soothing/emotional song can lull the raging emotions of the effected person and draw them out of the panicked state long enough for them to regain control of themselves.

Since he figures it’s worth a shot tries to sing, but he’s quiet and awkward about it and also he can’t sing, so it doesn’t work at all. Several of his classmates are nearby and they quickly debate on what the issue is and make an incorrect assumption based on too many movies that it has to be ‘true love’s song’. The collected students all agree that the best person for the job is obviously Momo because they’re dumb and think Momo has a crush on Shouto (she doesn’t, she’s a lesbian), and so they’re trying to track Momo down on the battle field while the Shouto’s fire and ice is raging around them, and things keep getting in their way, and it’s to the point where people might die.

But then Katsuki finds Momo, and Izuku radios over to Katsuki trying to relay that they need Momo to sing a love song to beat the quirk. Only, the radio is cutting out, so all Katsuki hears is that someone needs to sing a love song to free Shouto, and that’s really fucking weird, but what the hell, he’s willing to try anything at this point since people’s lives are at stake.

Throwing aside any sense of embarrassment, Katsuki just grabs his phone and goes for the first instrumental that he has that’s a love song and which is somewhat fitting, Fire on Fire.

And then he sings and by god, can he sing. Katsuki has an amazing singing voice when he’s trying, like, it’s partially the music classes he took when he was young, partially just his voice being naturally good, and partially because when he was younger he loved to sing along with the birds when he was hiking (something he still does when he’s alone). He isn’t quiet about it either, this boy has some fucking projection and he commits to this with 110% intensity, just like everything else he does

Unlike Izuku, the effect is immediate, with Shouto’s fire/ice storm near stilling. Katsuki walks forward while singing, and as the song goes on, it’s clearly extremely effective. The fire/ice basically abandons it’s ‘battle’ with everyone else to follow Katsuki’s voice and clears a path for him to reach Shouto, shrinking/calming as he gets closer.

Now, obviously, both Endeavor and Hawks + some other pro-heroes are around, and none them have even 1 clue what the fuck is going on.

1 minute they’re struggling for their lives, the next minute, Katsuki, known hell child, is singing amazingly with an oddly calm expression on his face, walking slowly towards the center of the fire/ice storm and taming the raging quirk effects as he goes. But like?? It’s working??

Towards the end of the song, Katsuki reaches the center, the fire and ice pulling back into Shouto’s body. He was suspended by the ice/fire at like 20 ft up, so when the drug’s effect’s subside, he falls and Katsuki catches him at the end of the song, singing the last lyrics and letting the music fade as Shouto blinks awake to see the last of it.

Shouto is exhausted and he has 0 (zero) idea what the hell is going on, because he wakes up to Katsuki holding him and crooning out a gorgeous love song. Later on, he’ll actually be able to remember more of the song and Katsuki’s progress towards him, reaching out to help him, but in the moment that’s all he sees.

His left side catches on fire as his entire face goes red and Katsuki drops him (quite literally like he was burned).

Thankfully, neither of them are hurt, but Katsuki is just super done with everything so he rounds on Izuku and his group and yells at the lot of them for not saying that that was an option sooner because they could’ve resolved this ages ago. Totally back to being an Angry Hell Child. Everyone else is just stunned and trying to figure out if what they saw actually just happened or it was a collective hallucination.

Shouto is still smoldering on the ground, wide eyed and in some state of shock. Hawks is the first one to react and swoops over to grab him and get him to medical. He’s trying to be good about the situation, but he can’t help but ask Shouto if he and Katsuki are a thing, Shouto says they’re not.Hawks pauses for several long seconds and then asks Shouto if he wishes they were. Shouto looks him dead in the eye and says,

“I have never in my life considered my sexuality, romantic options, or that Katsuki would play any part in those considerations until 3 minutes ago, and yet somehow, I think the answer to that question might be yes.“

He passes out a few minutes afterwards, but when he wakes up he’s in a hospital and there’s a replay of the attack on TV and he gets to watch the whole song from an outside perspective and just how pretty and romantic Katsuki looked, fire and ice swirling around him possessively as he walks forward without a trace of hesitation or fear, also, fuck, Katsuki is good at singing and Shouto can’t get over how good he sounds particularly with the knowledge that Katsuki is singing for him.

His classmates visit him in the hospital as he’s waiting for the okay to leave, and everyone kinda awkwardly dodges around the obvious elephant in the room, until someone finally cracks and asks "Hey do you think if I went and ”“accidentally”“ got myself hit by the quirk Katsuki would-” and Shouto gets really growly/jealous with them even though they were definitely 100% joking maybe kinda.

Katsuki also gets interviewed by the media after this, they obviously ask if he and Shouto are a couple and Katsuki says they absolutely aren’t and explains it was just a dumb requirement to undo the quirk effect (and that he was “the only one of these fuckers that could sing worth a damn”). The reporter understands and then tries to make a joke about how awkward it must’ve been for Katsuki to sing a love song to a male classmate. Katsuki shuts that right the hell down and outs himself as gay with no fucks given, totally stunning the interviewer and throwing the media into a secondary frenzy.

Katsuki really doesn’t care though, and he’s so confident and firm about it that it ends up with everyone just kinda,,,,, moves on because there’s nothing else to be done. So then things go back to kinda normal, except Shotuo is a pining mess towards Katsuki, and Katsuki is completely oblivious to Shouto being a pining mess for him.

[a-warm-whisper]

I've been researching PPD because of my mom and im finding it so hard to do the things they are telling me. Don't fight them, accept their feelings, don't tell them they're wrong, listen to why they are upset. Im trying, im trying, im trying. A lot of the info says there is not much you can do until they seek help, but she has always refused. Lately she has been saying "well im better now" and its actually getting so much worse! She blames the last time she had an episode on her going through menopause but I don't think that was purely the case. Her last episode lasted years and this time is almost worse.

The last time she thought that my dad (who she has been divorced from since I was 5) was watching her and listening to her all the time. She used to cover the tvs in sheets so they couldn't record her, thought there was a listening device in the car so we could never talk about anything remotely serious without her "shhhhhushing" me, unless we were outside then we could whisper. She would tell me my friends weren't actually friends, our family didn't care about us, and EVERYONE we ran into she would think somehow knew my dad and was relaying information back to him somehow. She'd get FURIOUS, SCREAM AND THREATEN ME if I accidently let something slip to a random stranger that she didnt want my dad finding out. It got so bad she started shopping two towns over so no one would know her and that worked for a while until she started thinking that even those people knew my dad. She couldn't keep any friends because eventually they would either think she's nuts or she would misinterpret something they said into something awful and explode on the person about it eventually causing them to never want to talk to her again. And she'd never apologize even after I could convince her she had been wrong. She REFUSES to ever admit she's wrong with anything, not just related to her theories. I remember how she would wake me up in the middle of the night threatening to take me to jail or a boarding school if she found out i was telling my dad bad things about her. She tried so hard to convince me that my dad was some horrible creature that tormented her practically to death and it made me feel weird. I never believed her. Eventuslly she stopped saying anything about it and it seemed like she got better, but I wonder if she possibly still thinks he is out to destroy her?

This time is a little different. A little more controlled but its getting worse and worse. Now she is in love with the man on the radio....this one guy, who does the town news and talk show every morning except Sunday. Shes never fucking met him. Never once. Not even out and about (its a very small town i live in) and yet, she's MADLY in love with this man, who she knows nothing about. She thinks he knows who she is though. She did talk to him once on the phone. She called the station and asked him something about gardening to which he told her the answer and that was that, but now she thinks they have some secret thing going and that she loves him. But she also hates everyone else at the radio station because she believes they don't like her and believe she is somehow "using him" for money. So EVERY SINGLE SONG OR COMMENT OR WORD OF THE DAY OR ANYTHING SAID is directed at her. She is constantly telling me "oh Mike played this one song for me, he keeps playing songs about lost love" or if someone else plays a song that is about sadness or something its directed at her. Its hard to explain so here are some texts:

"You are probably asleep but I can't sleep because of the learn a word that Mike had this morning. It was reputation. Then Helen song was Man Eater. I am not a man eater all my husbands married me for MY money!!!! 2 husbands hit or strangled me or both! I kept the houses spotless. Did their laundry etc and now I have a REPUTATION!!!!!!!! I didn't have the men I dated but because I wouldn't & told them NO they spread awful stuff about me! Never done drugs do to my profession. My nursing came first always!!! Was always a hard worker. Some nights I never sat down! BUT I HAVE THE BAD REPUTATION!!!!!!! The thing these people have not even met me. Until you know someone you should not judge them!!!!!!! Haven't dated for 22 years because I was waiting on someone that was decent I had a lot in common with & was respected. Oh well I guess there just aren't any like that anymore!!!!!!

Yes I went thru a bad spell but that was because I was going thru the change of life thing. Which I hope yours goes more smoothly than mine did! Now there is medicine for what I went thru. This is how I feel If they treat me nice I treat them nice.

My own relatives will not even talk to me because Jody & Bill have said awful stuff about me! If they were in TBE same situation( no car) I would tell them to go ahead & cut down some trees and get a vehicle but they thing I'm a user. When Bill was without a job he borrowed thousands of dollars from his mom. Things are just not true what people are saying about me!!!!!!!"

These are from last night, she sends me things like this a couple times a week now. And she deletes them immediately after sending them because she doesn't understand that the whole world can't read our texts. I have no idea how to handle it. Everything she thinks is wrong. So wrong and I can't force her to see the truth.

I'm lost. And it just gets worse and she puts it all on me and expects me to figure everything out for her. She keeps asking me questions of what I really think, so I tell her what I think and she gets upset, screams and cries about how horrible I am for not believing her and then thats that. Im so lost. Its too much and I have no idea how to handle it. I wish I could ask a doctor how to help her more but I don't know how to do that. Im just tired tired tired. She keeps draining me.

Now she has had to go to the doctor a lot recently too because they found cancer in her stool sample and she isnhaving a hard time with this and I feel bad for her I truly do but I also don't know how to help her because she keeps not believing the doctors are telling her the truth. She keeps misinterpreting the nurses body language and thinks they are out to actually kill her EVEN THO THEY DONT KNOW HER. and I have to say, if I was a nurse I'd hate my mom too. She used to be a nurse, when I was young that was her job, but she quit after thinking people were trying to get her fired and she never worked as one again. BUT NOW, when she does go to the doctor she just HAS to make sure that EVERYONE KNOWS that she used to be a nurse so don't try to pull one over on her. She probably passes them off so badly because she walks in the place with an attitude because she thinks she was the best nurse ever to exist ever. So she has to tell everyone "did you know im a nurse, just retired" (which is a lie) and then when they don't acknowledge her she gets furious and thinks they are out to get her. She doesn't believe the things they say are wrong or not wrong with her, because she knows better.

I'm just, exhausted. And my boyfriend doesn't understand the depth of the situation. He just thinks I should stop talking to her but SHES ALL ALONE. she has no friends, no family, just me. She's ran everyone else away. She doesn't even have her own vehicle right now so I'm her only source to the outside world. How would she even get groceries if I didn't talk to her? But she is so demanding and draining and utterly depresses me to no end.

I don't know what to do anymore. I just needed to dump all this somewhere.

[creative-robot]

This is my request for more work stories!

Oh absolutely! 

For a little clarification, I’m a Host in the Restaurant part but the big main part of the building is the attached bakery/retail area up front so theres like, 5 different kitchens alone, I’ll refer to them by how I know them which is the Mixing kitchen, the Restaurant kitchen, and the other three that do baking stuff as the Baking Kitchens

This is in no special order at all just the order I remembered them

As a Host you would think I’d be on par with the servers but the truth is If the Manager isn't right there I'm pretty much in charge of the restaurant and do my best with what I have, which means I have to move. fast.

I just learned earlier this week that the entire packaging department can't remember my name so they just call me ‘The Speed Demon’ and honestly how dope is that I get complimented/shocked reactions to my speed every shift I don't know man I'm just gay and have shit to do

We once had a really confused drunk dude come in on Saint Patricks Day who seemed completely baffled by the idea of a restaurant so since it was hella dead and I was bored as all hell I entertained his drunk questions for like 45 minutes explaining how a restaurant works and what we make till he said bye and wandered out looking mildly bewildered still

We also had a drunk dude come in on a random dead Saturday (which was weird and I think it was while the GOT finale was airing, we have no TVs so I was. dying. from boredom), this was not a fun drunk and we had to call the cops on him for being creepy and after he was kicked out he walked around the parking lot and kept jumping to himself before circling the building a few times and leaving once the cop showed up. Cleaning the bathroom was disgusting after he left lemme tell ya

The dish manager and the kitchen manager are ALWAYS at odds with each other no matter who the dish manager is that month (Staff rotates real quick back there) and there's always shittalk being thrown across the hallway between them and occasionally a bottle, I once scolded both of them to stop acting like children cause a bottle smashed and it was loud and close enough to make my hearing go out for like three minutes and when they both just brushed me off I went straight to the owner and now it's pretty rare for glass, at least, to get thrown

Theres a stairway that leads to the upstairs offices and everyone just knows that they're either cursed or haunted, we don't talk about it but only the managers go up there and I've only been up them once and it was incredibly gut-churning so I haven't ever tried again

Life tip: Always be nice to your HR folks, they can help you

One of the baking kitchens kept stealing everyone else brooms and one day a server had just had ENOUGH and stormed back there to tell them what for. I didn't get to see what happened but I'm told the poor dudes back there were pale by the time she was done and now we have a cool new broom and dustpan that's labeled for the Restaurant and no more broom thefts for a while

Kids just like my aura or something cause everytime there's a kid in the restaurant they flag me down to chat a little and sometimes kids walk past an entire bakery of employees to ask me for help instead of them, I always pause to help them before adults or give them a little time to chat even when we’re busy and all the servers goodnaturedly tease me about it

What happens in the break room stays in the break room and anything said after someones clocked out won't be repeated, it's hilarious to watch the bakers calmly walk in, clock out, scan for someone in management, and then explode with frustration to whoever's in there. please be nice to cake bakers and decorators specifically they have to put up with SO MUCH SHIT BEHIND THE SCENES

Sometimes there’ll be free stuff in the Break Room ala extras, unsolds, or fucked up treats that are fine but they don't look sellable. This is rare for the front of house restaurant staff to get their hands on since we don't get lunch or proper breaks so retail always relays when there's goodies and we’re all enemies for a good five minutes as we grab stuff and shove it in our lockers before returning to normal but everyone goes feral for the breakfast sandwiches 

I’m unofficially Head Host so I know most of the regulars and they know not to pull shit on me and several of them take enjoyment watching me deflect non-regulars bs and often butt in when they won't give up to tell them to shove it since I just won't break or give in

The retail folks regularly use their lunch breaks to go scream in the big freezers and this is just expected and accepted

The Bakers also regularly go scream in the oven rooms, this is also just A Thing no one questions  

Theres only a little waiting room area between me and the bar so yes, I have been hit with wine corks before when they go flying and the newest bartender is already at three hits but honestly, I don't really care so whenever it happens I just say a random number of points and toss the cork in my trash

Someday I hope to catch it all cool and suave and that's prolly not gonna happen anytime soon but god I want to SO BAD

I once had a woman walk in with an entire soccer team and I had to be like ‘Lady we don't even have enough tables for all of you normally much less right at noon are you nuts’ and she refused to believe me or sit outside so when I quoted her an hour and a half she was PISSED and asked for my manager (who had been hiding behind the bar cause good lord do we get Karens a lot) who came over and explained that there was no way we could seat them and to have a good day and she went RED and stormed out with the team trailing behind her looking embarrassed. She attempted this three more times that week I'm not even joking 

White haired old ladies are constantly amazed and curious about us young’uns styles and while the servers get most of the enthusiastic questions about their gauges and tattoos and hairstyles I have had a few ask me what was even happening with my hair bc they loved it but ‘it's so different!’ (I have an all around undercut with only hair on top that goes down to my chin so I braid it up for work, it's baffling I guess lol) they genuinely love hearing about it and I’ve given a few of them tips for their kid's hair and style names, I just love it and had to mention it

Some of this is just me rambling lol but yeah my work is wack

[ajoy3fanfics]

Missing PT XIII

‘You need to let him go’

That’s what Sango had told her; If she had been honest with any of her other friends, she was sure that would have been their advice too. What on Earth was she doing, hanging around an ex, the very one who shattered her heart and didn’t think twice? When he left her, he didn’t call, didn’t try to rectify his wrongs. He moved on, never looking back at the damage.

But then there he was, showing up at her doorstep, begging for a moment of her time. Just when she thought she could move on from him, he came bursting into her life, shining his attention on her and making her feel starved without it.

She shouldn’t feel that way! They were over! O-V-E-R. She had to keep reminding herself of that; He was sick, his love was sick, and all of it was just temporary.

It became a mantra; ‘he doesn’t love me, he doesn’t love me, he doesn’t love me’. Somehow, Kagome thought that if she kept repeating it, it would make it feel less real. Yet no matter how many times she mulled it over in her head, it was hard to turn away from the man she loved.

Loves?

Loved.

Her phoned vibrated and she thanked God for the distraction. Any more time spent thinking on the hanyou would lead her down a rabbit hole she didn’t dare to follow.

‘Up for a movie?’ Koga, of course. Kind and sweeter than she deserved.

She should reply quickly; it wasn’t good to leave him on read. She didn’t feel much like going out, or seeing even him for that matter. Before, she looked forward to their dates, to getting out of the house and spending time with him. Their last meeting left a heavyweight in the pit of her stomach that took days to shake. Not that he had done anything wrong- the complete opposite, really. He wanted more, wanted her and she didn’t exactly know how she felt. They were not exclusive, although she knew the wolf demon was not seeing anyone else; it put a pressure on her she wasn’t sure she was ready for. No, she and Koga were just casually dating, or at least that’s what they had agreed to; So why did it feel so much like cheating every time she thought of Inuyasha?

When she was with him, she felt like she was sneaking behind Koga’s back, and when she was with Inuyasha…

All her thoughts were on him. He was always present, her mind never cast off in a million directions. Her attention was always on him, on the way he looked, the sound of his laugh, how good he smelled or the way one corner of his mouth turned up more than the other when he smiled.

It wasn’t good to be like this, to let these feelings fester. How long was she going to let the hanyou control her? She should focus on Koga, focus on her future. She should ask Inuyasha if he ever went to his doctor's appointment.

Damn it!

She should choose Koga, chose a new path, someone who wouldn’t take her feelings for granted and run off when their relationship became rocky. Koga wasn’t like that; but then again, she didn’t think Inuyasha was either.

It was so out of character, so strange how it happened. It was as if his personality did a complete 180. Sure, his temper could be short at times, but he was never cruel. How could someone go from such a loving man to someone who turned their back so easily? By the end of their relationship, she felt like she didn’t recognize him anymore.

She was shocked to learn he was calling for her at the hospital; The desperation in his voice, the way he clung to her… she had never seen him afraid. If he lost his memory, he was working off his feelings from back then. He must have loved her, must have truly cared at some point. How could it all have gone so wrong?

It didn’t matter.

And yet it did, and it was driving her nuts!

She couldn’t just continue on like this, stuck in limbo, waiting for Inuyasha to fall out of love with her, waiting for some closure that would probably not happen.

Kagome knew what she needed to do.

She had made up her mind.

~.~

The phone buzzed, immediately catching his attention, making him put down his pencil and halt his work on the clients blue print; it seemed that no matter what he was doing, he was never too busy to respond to her texts. She did that a lot now- texting him. When they first started talking it was minimal communication; awkward and brief, only relaying the basic message that needed to be sent.  Now, she was opening up, talking about her day, her frustrations, the good parts and boring. It reminded Inuyasha of how they were, before; He dared enough to take it as a good sign.

Especially when she texted late at night. That itself was something that had him fantasizing in a million different ways. Was she lonely? Did she miss him? If she thought of him in the early hours, it must mean that she was alone and Koga wasn’t warming her bed, and that was fucking brilliant.

It drove him crazy to know that that damn wolf was still sniffing around her; He had found out that they weren’t official, but they were dating, and that alone was enough to make him rip Miroku’s couch to shreds, which, by the way, was getting fucking old. He needed to find a place and soon, but apartment hunting took so much damn time.

‘You’re going to the doctors today, right?’

Boring. He wished she would talk about anything else- what she had for lunch, the color of her panties, when he could see her next. Really, anything else; But no, his ex-fiancé was in full-on nag mode. He knew that when she was like this, there was little that could stop her.

‘Not today. Too busy. I’ll go on Friday.’ He responded, rolling his eyes as he tossed the phone on his desk. Miroku, his mom, hell, even Sesshomaru had been on him about going to get a check-up; he had meant to, but he just kept missing the appointments. How could he get to the doctors when there was so much work to do? It buzzed again, and even though he knew it would be grating, he was still thrilled to receive something, anything, from her.

‘You better to go, Inuyahsa. I mean it!’

She was concerned, that had to be a good sign, right? Kagome was worried enough about his well-being enough to argue with him about it. That had to be good, right?

‘Yeah, yeah. Thanks mom.’ He sent back, biting on the corner of his lip. He knew that it would get under her skin, but he said it anyway.

‘You better. Don’t make me get your mother involved.’

Ouch, a real fucking threat. She’d do it too, if history was any indication. Not that Kagome called his mom over petty arguments, no she wasn’t that type. His mom just fucking loved Kagome, a lot, and they always seemed to team up and back him into a corner when they were on the same page.

‘You should. She misses you.’ He sent it on impulse and regretted it immediately; he tried to keep it light, did his best to stay in the friend zone and not bring up their relationship. Yes, it was the giant elephant in the room, but he was a coward and he’d rather dance around the issue and be with her than to confront it head on. There would always be time for that some other day.

‘Yeah, I miss her too.’

He didn’t know what to say next, how to move the conversation along from there. Should he change the subject? What the hell could he talk about? His mind was racing as he panicked, his claws tapping on his wooden desk as he searched for an answer, Kagome supplying one before he could.

‘Are you busy tonight? Can we meet up?’

It felt like a mistake and an opportunity all at once.

‘Of course.’

What else could he say?

~.~

The ride back to her apartment seemed too short, at least in Inuyasha’s opinion. They had gone out for coffee, she walking and he driving to meet her. While they sat sipping it suddenly began to pour, the rain heavy on the concrete sidewalk, and Inuyasha was more than thrilled to give Kagome a lift home. It was nice to have her in the passenger seat again, to have her by his side.

He pulled up, parking in his old spot, the feeling more nostalgic than he would have thought. A simple gesture, but one that threw him back, took for granted back then. As he cut the engine, he turned to look at her, his breath-stopping, all thoughts lost.

The air felt heavy, hot. She was looking at him half-lidded and if he didn’t know better, he would have thought she wanted him. He had seen that look on her often enough, fuck it was ingrained in his mind, but she hadn’t looked at him that way, been so close to her like this in a long time, and fuck if it didn’t make him nervous. He felt like a bumbling idiot, too afraid and jittery to make a move. “L-let me grab my jacket.” He stuttered. “I-I can walk you to the door.” Kagome bit her lip and nodded and Inuyasha just about died.

Shutting his door behind him with a loud bang, he whipped around to Kagome’s door, holding his jacket high overhead to protect her from the rain. She stepped out, squeaked a bit from the weather and the two of them ran to the front steps of her apartment, the small awning making them huddle in together as they said their goodbyes.

“I should go.” He said, silver hair damp with rain, sticking against his forehead. Kagome smiled, reaching up to push away the stray locks, tucking one behind his ear, the hanyou doing his best to control his blush. Her hand rested on his cheek, cupping it tenderly as she searched his amber eyes, looking for hesitation, looking for recognition, for truth or love- she wasn’t sure anymore.

“Kagome,” he breathed out, covering her petite hand with his own. “I-“

She cut him off, unwilling to let him finish lest she lose her nerve. The kiss was slow and tentative at first, an underlying hunger they were too afraid to indulge in. When they broke away, quickly, much too quickly, Inuyasha knew he was panting and he didn’t care; Kagome’s hands had traveled down, grasping his muscular arms like they were her lifeline. Had her eyes looked this blue before? Had her lips been so full, so plump? Her scent so spicy and alluring? Everything about her in this moment set his senses in overdrive, leaving him feeling both drugged and charged for more.

“Don’t go.” She pleaded, her tone hinting that she was worried. As if he could turn away.

“Are you sure?” He asked, the words sounding foreign to his own ears. This had to be a dream. And to his utter surprise, she nodded, clutching him harder, her eyes never leaving his.

She didn’t have to ask him twice.  

~.~

A/N: Hey guys! I am super happy about getting to this point, and even more excited for the next chapter! Thanks for sticking with the story and reading! I hope everyone had a great holiday and has a happy new year!

[the--blackdahlia]

Shot in the Dark (Tommy x Nikki)

Title: Shot in the Dark

Prompt: Hospital

Summary: Vince left Tommy during guy’s night, so Tommy decided to walk home.

Warning: Shooting, blood, language

For @classicrockbingo​

“Vince and I are going out for guys night,” Tommy told Nikki as he made him his omelet. “We haven’t been hanging out as much we used to and I thought it could be fun.”

“Oh, yeah, that sounds fun,” Nikki smiled and kissed his cheek. “Thanks for breakfast. You’re cooking is amazing.”

“You can thank my mom for that,” Tommy smiled happily at Nikki. “I think we’re gonna go out to someplace on the strip. Not 100 percent yet.”

“Just don’t come back with your dick smelling like a burrito,” Nikki teased.

“Hey! That was your idea! I just went along with it,” Tommy shook his head. Nikki just gave him a smile before eating the food Tommy had made him.

They went about their day as normal, heading out to band practice where they met up with Vince and Mick. They played around for awhile, before Tommy and Vince decided to just ride together over to the strip.

“I’ll be home late,” Tommy told Nikki before giving him a kiss. “Don’t wait up too late.”

“You know me and my insomnia. I’ll probably be awake well after you come home,” Nikki smiled. “Love you babe.”

“Love you too,” Tommy kissed him again.

“Okay you two, that’s enough of that,” Vince laughed. “Let’s go. The beers not gonna drink itself!” Tommy smiled and kissed Nikki one more time before heading out with Vince, leaving Nikki and Mick to head back to their homes.

****

“Dude, check her out,” Tommy told Vince as they ate chicken wings and drank beer. A girl at the bar had been checking out the frontman all night, and Vince knew it.

“I know right? She’s pretty smokin’,” Vince smirked. “Might have to take her home.”

“Yeah? And leave me stranded here?” Tommy laughed.

“I’ll give you money for a cab?” Vince suggested. Tommy waved him off.

“I’m just teasing you man. Go nuts. Or, should I so, go nut?” He winked at Vince. Vince flipped him off before heading over to the girl. A few minutes later, Vince was leaving, giving Tommy a thumbs up.

It was close to midnight by then, and Tommy settled his tab and left the bar. He hadn’t drank that much, and the air was nice, so he decided to just walk. He looked up at the dark sky. The lights from LA made it hard to see any stars, but it made him think back to a night when him and Nikki went on a moonlight hike, how much fun it had been just the two of them, no one else.

“Hey man, you got some cash?” A guy asked him. By the twitch in the man’s movements, Tommy could tell that he was coming from off of whatever he was using.

“No, sorry,” Tommy went to walk past. He saw a glint in the street light as the man grabbed his arm and pointed a gun at him.

“I meant to say, give me your cash,” The man growled.

“I don’t have any,” Tommy told him, pulling his arm which caused the man to stumble. When he stumbled, he hit the trigger, causing the gun to off and the bullet to hit right in Tommy’s abdomen.

“Shit!” The guy yelled. “Oh fuck!” Tommy’s hands went to the wound and he pressed against it, blood coating his fingers. He stumbled back against the wall and slid down. The guy looked at the gun in his hand. “Help! He’s been shot!” He yelled. “Sorry.” He ran off, leaving Tommy sitting against the wall. Thankfully, someone heard the call and came over to find Tommy covered in his own blood, trying to hold it in.

“Holy shit, isn’t that Tommy Lee?” A girl asked as her boyfriend called 911.

“Fuck, I think it is,” The guy replied and relayed the information to the operator. Tommy tried to stay awake, to talk to the girl like she was begging him to, but soon, unconsciousness overtook him and he drifted off.

****

Nikki woke up the next morning to sun coming through the window. He honestly wasn’t sure when he had actually fallen asleep. All he knew was that he had actually slept, which is something that didn’t happen often, and Tommy’s side of the bed was empty. He slowly came to his senses and got out of bed, stretching and letting all his joints pop. He went about his morning ritual before heading down the stairs to the kitchen. The dogs were there, fast asleep, but there was no Tommy to be seen.

But, Nikki wouldn’t put it past Vince and Tommy to be too shitfaced to drive home, so they decided to sleep in the car. They had done it before, and Nikki was sure that was what happened this time.

“I’ll give him a bit before I go hunt down his hungover ass,” Nikki told the dogs when they realized Nikki was awake and came running. There was a little something in the back of his mind though, that kept saying just go look for him.

But an hour had gone by and Nikki hadn’t heard from neither Tommy nor Vince, and that little something in the back of his mind was growing, starting to bring out his worry.

“Okay, I’m going,” Nikki decided, slipping on his skeleton shoes and grabbing his keys. He headed over to the strip and looked around, trying to spot Vince’s car. He figured they had probably went to eat at the Rainbow, since that was their favorite place to eat at anyway. He made his way over and saw cop cars and a roped off scene.

“What’s going on?” Nikki asked one of the waitresses who was standing there, watching.

“There was a shooting early  this morning,” She told him. “Cops came and got our security footage and all that.”

“Do you know who was involved?” Nikki asked.

“No. I haven’t been here very long. I do the brunch shift,”She explained. Nikki looked over to see Vince’s car pulling up and a long legged girl getting out of the passenger seat. Nikki made his way over to the flashy sports car. Vince got out.

“Nikki? What are you doing here?” Vince asked. He waved at the girl he had just dropped off as she got in her car and drove away.

“Tommy didn’t come home last night. I thought you two binged too hard and he was sleeping it off in your car,” Nikki told him. “But that sure as hell wasn’t him.”

“I left him here last night to take her home,” Vince told him. “He told me he’d get a cab or something.”

“Wait, so when you left, this hadn’t happened?” Nikki asked him, motioning to the crime scene behind them.

“No. What is it?” Vince asked.

“There was a shooting…” Nikki and Vince looked at each other before Nikki was scrambling for his cell phone, not even thinking of trying to call Tommy. But Tommy’s phone went straight to voicemail. So, he dialed the next number he could think of.

“Athena? It’s Nikki, have you heard from Tommy?” He leaned against Vince’s car.

“Um, actually, no, but I know where he is,” Athena told him. “I’m at Cedar-Sinai. Nikki, you need to get here.”

“Oh my god, Athena, was he…” Nikki started.

“I don’t want to talk about it over the phone,” The younger woman told him. “Please just come here. Go to emergency room entrance. I’ll meet you out there.”

“I’ll be there in a few,” Nikki told him. “I’m on my way.” He hung up the phone and looked over at Vince.

“Nikki?” Vince asked.

“You left him alone, and Athena’s at the hospital with him,” Nikki growled before marching off to his car, leaving Vince standing there, alone on the Sunset Strip.

****

Nikki never thought he was going to find a parking spot. He almost considered just paying to the valet at this point, but a big SUV pulled out and Nikki was able to take the spot before he was jogging up to the door. Tommy always teased him about jogging.

‘It keeps you healthy, but at what cost?’

He made his way through the emergency room doors and was immediately greeted by Athena, who nodded to a nurse who let them through a set of double doors to another waiting room.

“Athena, what’s going on?” Nikki asked, noticing her blotchy face and red eyes.

“Tommy, he...he was shot,” Athena whispered, almost like if she kept it quiet, it wouldn’t be real. “I talked to the police just a bit ago. The looks of it, he was shot during a mugging by some tweaker.” Athena started to cry again and Nikki pulled her to him, letting her cry into his chest.

“I-it’s going to be okay,” Nikki told her as he hugged her. “Tommy’s going to be okay, right?”

“Y-yeah,” Athena pulled back and wiped her eyes. “Why was he out on the strip alone last night?”

“He wasn’t,” Nikki told him. “Or, at least, he wasn’t supposed to be. Him and Vince were supposed to be having a guys night.”

“Let me guess, Vince found a hot chick?” Athena asked as they took seats finally.

“Hot to him maybe,” Nikki sighed. “I thought I was first on his in case of emergency list.”

“You are, but they tried you and you didn’t answer,” Athena told him. Nikki pulled out his phone and looked.

Sure enough, he had missed calls from a California number that he assumed was probably the hospital. He groaned and held his head in his hands. If he had heard his phone, or bothered to check it before now, he could’ve been here much sooner. Not that it would do any good, because it was just a waiting game now.

****

“The bullet missed all major arteries,” The doctor told Nikki and Athena much later. “It did slightly nick his spleen, and we are going to watch that closely. He is currently resting in the ICU, and will probably be out for a few days.”

“Is there a risk for infection?” Nikki asked. He wanted to know everything, so he knew how to take care of Tommy when he could finally go home.

“With any kind of injury, there is always a risk of infection,” The doctor told him. “But if you follow all the procedures that we’ll give come discharge, infection won’t even get near him.”

“When can we see him?” Athena asked this time.

“You both can see him right now, because we only allow two visitors at a time, and only one of you can stay overnight with him,” The doctor explained. They both nodded and followed him to the ICU, where Tommy was in a small room by himself. “There will be a lot of tubes and sensors and such. Be careful if you touch him, okay?”

“We will. Thank you for saving him,” Nikki told the doctor, who smiled and nodded before leaving. Athena and Nikki headed into Tommy’s small room and took in the sight in front of them.

Tommy, laying there on the bed with his eyes closed. He normally had color to his skin, but right now, he was the palest that Nikki had ever seen him, and that was including the time they got food poisoning from eating questionable food from a gas station somewhere out east. He had a blood transfusion, and monitors and suddenly Nikki found himself with large tears falling down his face and Athena leading him over to a chair to sit down.

“Oh my god,” Nikki whispered. Athena rubbed his back as she looked over at her big brother. It was hard for her to see Tommy like this, but it had to be even worse on Nikki. He loved Tommy, it was obvious, even if neither Nikki nor Tommy had been able to see it at first. They had been through so much, and honestly, at this point, Athena saw them more as husbands and less like boyfriends.

“He’s going to be okay,” Athena assured him. Nikki just nodded and looked up at Tommy.

Nikki thought time was moving slow, but before he knew it, Athena was getting ready to leave, promising to be back the next morning and to let Vince and Mick know what was going on.

“That asshole doesn’t care,” Nikki growled. “He left him to be in this position.”

“Nikki, he didn’t know that there was a junkie out there with a gun,” Athena told him. “If he did, he wouldn’t have left Tommy there by himself.”

“I don’t care,” Nikki turned his attention back to Tommy, who hadn’t moved an inch since they came in.

“Okay, well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” She quietly left the room, leaving Nikki sitting right by Tommy’s bed. There was a small TV in the room, but Nikki didn’t feel like turning it on right now.

“I should’ve called you when you didn’t come home,” Nikki whispered. “I should’ve been looking for you. Fuck, Tommy, I’m so sorry.” He let his eyes scan across Tommy’s face, hoping for any sign of movement, but not seeing any. “Please don’t leave me. We’ve been through so much already. And I don’t know if I can handle losing you.” He held one of Tommy’s hands in his and started the waiting game.

****

Athena came back the next day with food for Nikki. He took it and ate, knowing that if he didn’t, his stomach would not let him forget it. They made small talk, but soon, there was a nurse standing at the door.

“Mr. Sixx?” She said softly. Nikki looked up at her. “There’s a gentleman out in the waiting room that says he’s a friend of yours and Mr. Lee’s. He said his name is Mick?” Nikki looked at Tommy.

“Go on,” Athena told him. “I’ll come get you if anything changes.” Nikki sighed and headed out to the waiting room, where Mick was sitting in a chair, waiting.

“These things are not good on my back,” Mick joked when he saw Nikki. “Damn, you don’t look like you’ve slept.”

“I haven’t,” Nikki sighed. “Afraid of what happens if I do go asleep.”

“How bad is it?” 

���I, uh, I don’t really know…” Nikki admitted, sitting by Mick. “The doctor said that he’s going to be fine, but he hasn’t woke up…” He ran a hand down his face. “This is all Vince’s fault.”

“What? How?” Mick asked.

“He left Tommy on their guys night. He drove him and left him. So Tommy decided to walk instead of getting a cab and he got shot,” Nikki shook his head. “It’s all his fault.”

“Did Vince know that Tommy was going to get shot?” Mick asked. “Because no matter how much they get pissed at each other, I know that Vince would never want to see anything like this happen to the kid. We’re all on good terms for the first time in, like, ten years, and I don’t think Vince would do anything to ruin that.”

“I guess,” Nikki sighed. “I just don’t understand why he left him.”

“Vince and Tommy share a brain cell sometimes. They don’t think things through,” Mick explained. “And if it was over a girl, Vince has two brains and only enough blood to power one at a time.” Nikki laughed a little.

“That’s the most accurate description I’ve heard,” Nikki smiled. “I needed that.”

“Vince wanted to come see you, but I guess his assumption was correct that he thought you were pretty pissed at him. So I told him I’d give him updates and let him know when Tommy was awake and all that shit.”

“Tell him to just give me a day or two, or maybe he should wait until Tommy wakes up. He can only have two visitors at a time anyway…”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Mick stood up and groaned. “I’ll see you later Sixx. Call if anything changes.”

“I will,” Nikki stood up and hugged the guitarist before heading back to Tommy’s room.

****

On day three, Nikki was forced to shower. The male nurses took pity on him and let him use their locker room so he didn’t have to go home. Athena had brought him clothes that she had grabbed from a store not too far away from the hospital. She was the designated errand runner, and she was fine with it. It gave her something to do, because she honestly couldn’t stand there and watch Tommy sleep for a minute longer.

“They found the guy who shot him,” Athena told Nikki when he got out of the shower. “Picked him up for dealing and he admitted to the whole thing before they even could compare his picture to the one on the camera.”

“Good. Fucker.” Nikki spat.

“Heroin,” She told him. “That’s what he was dealing.”

“It’s an evil drug. Trust me, I know,” Nikki turned his attention back to Tommy, using any amount of energy he could to will Tommy awake.

****

Nikki had nightmares when he slept. Dreams that Tommy didn’t survive and he left Nikki behind. So he didn’t want to sleep, but after so many hours awake, he had to.

Except for the last time he fell asleep, he was awoken by Tommy’s hand twitching in his. Nikki’s eyes snapped open and he watched as Tommy’s eyes fluttered open for the first time in days. He knew that he wouldn’t stay awake long, but fuck, he was waking up.

“Come back to me baby,” Nikki ran his fingers through Tommy’s hair. Tommy’s eyes finally opened and he gave Nikki a small smile before falling back asleep.

And honestly, that was good enough for Nikki.

****

It was a couple days later Tommy was moved from the ICU and could have more visitors. Of course, Mick was there, but Vince stayed out in the hallway, not sure if he should come in or not. The whole time Tommy had been in the hospital, Vince had been kicking himself. It was bad enough with Razzle, but if he had caused Tommy’s death…

“Get that blond fucker in here,” Tommy said with a bit of a laugh. He was staying awake longer each day, and Nikki was so damn happy for that. Mick dragged Vince in. “Hey Vinnie.”

“Uh, hey,” Vince waved a little. “Glad to see you’re okay…”

“I got the good shit,” Tommy smiled. “Of course I’m okay.”

“And as annoying as ever,” Mick teased, making Tommy stick his tongue out at the guitarist. Tommy looked over at Vince, who was still standing in the corner.

“Hey Nik, could you and Mick go grab us some drinks from the cafeteria?” Tommy asked, looking over at the bassist. Nikki looked towards Vince and nodded.

“Come on MIck, I could use the extra hands,” Nikki stood and lead the guitarist out of the room, leaving Vince and Tommy alone.

“Tommy, I’m sorry,” Vince said after a couple seconds of silence. “I…”

“Vince, stop,” Tommy told him. “You didn’t know it was going to happen, I didn’t know it was going to happen.”

“It was supposed to be our guys night. I shouldn’t have left you,” Vince took a seat by Tommy’s bed. “I just...I wish I could go back in time and stop myself from leaving. Then we wouldn’t even be here right now.”

“Vince, please stop blaming yourself,” Tommy told him. “I’m alive. Isn’t that the important thing?”

“Yeah,” Vince nodded. “I’m still sorry.”

“You buy me some wings to make up for it, okay?” Tommy smiled. Mick and Nikki came back a moment later with the drinks to find Vince and Tommy arguing about some sports scores.

“Well, I see you two are back on good terms,” Nikki teased.

“Weren’t ever on bad terms,” Tommy smirked at his boyfriend.

“I think the 90’s would say something different,” Mick shook his head with a laugh. The band hung out in Tommy’s room until Vince and Mick finally made their exit, leaving Nikki and Tommy there together.

“Hey babe,” Tommy whispered after a little bit. Nikki looked over at him.

“Yeah?”

“I’m not leaving you, I hope you know that.”

Nikki smiled softly and picked up Tommy’s hand, kissing the back of it.

“I won’t let you anyway,” He told him, to which Tommy just laughed, before settling in for some rest.

With Nikki right there, watching out over him.

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[bittysvalentines]

Secret Admirers are for Chumps

From: @secretgeniusshittyknight

To: @wlwboomboom

“Oh, those are fancy. Tiger lilies?” Holster asked, popping his head into Ransom’s cubicle.

“Yeah. They’re my-”

“Favorite,” they said in unison.

“Jinx,” Holster said with a wink. “Who are they from?”

Ransom looked at the small card tucked into the bouquet of flowers. “It doesn’t say. Just says, ‘You are a wonderful person whose smile brightens my day.’ Nothing else.”

Holster reached over and tousled Ransom’s hair, not that it did anything; the tightly coiled curls were cropped too close to his scalp. “Sounds like someone has a secret admirer. That’s cute.”

Ransom shrugged. “If you say so. I hope they don’t like expect me to just date them because they sent me gifts.”

A flash of an indecipherable emotion washed across Holster’s face, but it vanished in an instant. And without another word, Holster left Ransom’s cubicle and went back to work.

For the rest of the day, Ransom tried to put the flowers out of his mind. Yet, his thoughts kept drifting back to his mysterious admirer.

***

“These are fucking fantastic. Oh my God, Holtz. You have to try one!” Ransom didn’t give Holster a chance to object before he snatched a truffle from the box and held it to Holster’s mouth. And if his fingers happened to brush Holster’s lips, well whoops. “Best damn chocolates I’ve ever had.”

Holster mumbled in appreciation, his mouth full of confection. “Mmhmm.” After a beat of silence wherein both of them finished chewing, he spoke, “Do these have a card too?”

Ransom nodded, handing the card over. This time, instead of a small note, there was a crudely drawn handmade card with a slice of pizza on it.

“‘You have a pizza my heart.’ That’s adorable.”

“Check the inside. There’s more.”

Holster read, “You deserve the world, but no one in the world deserves you, not even me. You are one of a kind.’ Well, that’s...something.”

Ransom rubbed the back of his neck. “Whoever they are, they have good taste and seem to know me well.”

Nodding as though deep in thought, Holster chuckled, “You think it’s someone at the office? What if it’s Agnes on the fifth floor?”

Ransom gave him a playful smack in the arm. “Agnes is like my grandmother. Calls me the grandson she never had. Not only do I doubt she thinks of me that way, but I pray she doesn’t.”

***

“Okay,” Ransom said, dropping a box on the kitchen table when he got home. It hit with a thud and made Holster, Shitty, and Lardo look over at him from what looked to be an intense game of Mario Kart. “This is getting ridiculous. First, it was flowers, then chocolates, then a six-pack of that limited edition porter from All Ahead Full. You know the one…”

“Iceberg?” Shitty said.

“No the other one.”

“Ah, Hard to Port,” Lardo chimed in.

“Yes, That’s the one. And let me tell you, it’s fucking amazing. Please, do yourselves a favor and try one.”

Holster stretched his arms high above his head with a yawn, making his shirt ride up. Ransom absolutely did not stare. Nope. He didn’t even glance in that direction. “But wasn’t it like fifty dollars a six pack? I remember we asked about it when they announced it.”

“I know right? These gifts are getting extravagant. It’s almost like they’re trying to buy my affection.”

Holster sank down into the cushions of the couch. “Maybe they wanted to get you nice things? But you’re right, probably trying to buy your love.”

Was that a hint of bitterness? Ransom was about to ask, but he noticed the television out of the corner of his eye just in time to see Holster’s race rank drop from first to seventh as a blue turtle shell crashed into him. Lardo...was ruthless when it came to Mario Kart. “It’s been a week and a half. Flowers, chocolates, movie tickets, beer, and so on. I have no idea who this is, but it’s getting to be a bit much.”

“Yeah,” Holster mumbled, then cackled as he got retribution on Lardo’s blue shell by rocketing across the finish line just ahead of her. “Ha! That’s what I call karma!”

“Incidentally, what’s in the box?” Shitty popped the cap of one of the aforementioned bottles of porter.

“Oh, it’s...a Bruins t-shirt. A Bobby Orr shirt. In the correct size mind you. I didn’t think people at work listened when I talked about hockey. Hey Holtzy,” he said without looking as he pulled the shirt out of the box, “can you remember who it was I was telling about my favorite team? Was it Mark or was it Daphne?”

“Uh yeah, I think Holster went to take a piss or...something.” Shitty stroked his mustache, looking suspiciously like a supervillain when he did so.

***

To his surprise, the next day’s gift from his secret admirer was far less extravagant than he was suspecting, just lunch from Jimmy John’s. His usual order. It was starting to look more and more like Daphne from two rows of cubicles over was his secret admirer. She’d joined a bunch of them on a lunch outing more than once. Unfortunately, there was no card this time.

As annoyed as he was that someone in his office had this much of a crush on him that they would spend so much money on gifts for him, he was also quite curious, a fact which he mentioned to Holster, Shitty, and Lardo over dinner that night. “I think it could be Daphne. I should talk to her tomorrow.”

“I think,” Holster said with an entirely too full mouth, “that is a terrible idea.”

“Why? I know I talked about hockey with her, she would know what I ordered on my sandwich. She’s gone to happy hour at All Ahead Full, so...like she would know these things I like. I’m going to ask her.”

Holster didn’t elaborate on why he thought it was a bad idea to simply ask Daphne upfront if she was his secret admirer. Perhaps after Ransom had relayed all his evidence, Holster agreed with him. However, he remained strangely quiet for the rest of the night.

***

“Well, as it turns out… Daphne is a lesbian. She thought it was adorable though that I was convinced- Wait, where’s Holster?”

Lardo gestured to the bathroom, “Shower.”

“I thought we were supposed to have a movie night.” Ransom rubbed his forehead. “No, wait. That was tomorrow.”

“So,” she said, looking over at him, “what’d’ya get today?”

He shook the Mason jar of pistachios at her, pink and red glitter flaking off and falling to the ground as he did so. “Whoever they are is apparently, and I am quoting verbatim, ‘Nuts about me’. I don’t particularly care for pistachios, but it’s a cute idea. I guess.”

“Ransom,” Lardo walked over and put her hand on his shoulder, “you were uncomfortable when they were fancier gifts of things you liked, and you are annoyed when it’s homemade gifts of things you don’t like. That…”

“Sounds spoiled. I know. It’s more that I just want to know who it is. It’s unnerving… starting to feel like a stalker. That’s all.”

She hummed in contemplation. “You want to know what I think?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I think… you already know who it is.”

“I knew it! It is Mark. So how do I tell the guy I am not interested in him? He’s...I don’t know...utterly boring. Nice, but boring and should have told me all this to my face. Dunno, it’s becoming kind of creepy if you ask me.”

Lardo rolled her eyes, “Real insightful there, bro. Is it creepy, or are you just annoyed that they’re not coming from the person you really want to send you gifts?”

“Wait-” he called to her retreating back. “What was that supposed to mean?”

***

Three more days of increasingly simple gifts before Ransom came into work to find only a pink envelope decorated in that same pink and red glitter as the jar of pistachios, the homemade snowglobe, and pizza card on his desk. Inside was a machine printed note that said, ‘ Sorry. I’ll stop. Didn’t mean to freak you out. I tried to tell you in person, but I chickened out… again like the coward I am.’ There was badly drawn chicken with a sad face at the bottom of the note, but no name.

Huh, well how about that?

Ransom got up from his desk to go relay the latest events in this secret admirer saga to Holster, only to find his desk empty, computer off.

“Looking for Holster? He was here for about five minutes. Looked miserable. Boss sent him home sick.”

What? Holster wasn’t sick. He’d seen the guy just this morning just before he walked into the bathroom. He looked fine, and even if he was sick, why hadn’t he said anything to Ransom? They usually played nurse for each other when under the weather.

Baffled, Ransom sat down at his desk and tried to work, but for the better part of the day, his mind was elsewhere.

***

When he walked through the door that afternoon, after feigning illness (and why shouldn’t he? If his roommate got sent home ill, it stood to reason that he might also have caught the same bug. A total lie of course, but a believable one), he found himself met with total silence. Perhaps Holster was sleeping, as well he should be, but Ransom knocked on his door just to check on him.

“Hey, Holtzy...can I get you anything?”

“No.”

“Are you sure. They said you looked like you felt terrible. Least let me come in and give you the cursory check.”

“No. It’s fine.”

“Which one of us took a crapton of biology classes?”

Inside Holster’s room, he heard rustling, but eventually, Holster came and opened the door. The first thing Ransom noticed were his red-rimmed eyes and puffy face. He’d been crying. That or he had the worst case of stuffy-cold-watery-eyes face (trademark pending) that Ransom had ever seen. He was about to ask what the matter had been when his eyes caught sight of a bag, the contents of which were spilling onto the floor as though it had been haphazardly stuffed under Holster’s desk.

This, in and of itself, wouldn’t be too noticeable, but the bag of pistachios, a package of glass jars, scraps of construction paper...and a container of Valentine’s Day themed glitter which had opened and poured out onto the carpet caught his attention. Caught it, and kept it.

Pieces of the puzzle all slotted into place. Lardo had been right; he was upset because someone had been giving him all those gifts and it bothered him...because they hadn’t been from Holster.

Or so he thought.

Holster followed his line of sight, and a panicked squeak the likes Ransom wouldn’t even have thought possible from him escaped his throat. Ransom turned to look at him, noticing all the color had drained from his face.

Holster swallowed hard, eyes wide as though he was staring into the headlights of an oncoming car. Ransom swore he could see all the thoughts racing around in his head.

“I-” he began, but stopped, turned, and flopped down on his bed face first, burying his face in his pillow. What followed next, on any other day, Ransom would say was just Holster being overdramatic, but today… Holster screamed, the pillow muffling most of the noise. Then, he groaned, “Just get it over with, Rans.”

Get what- Oh. “Well, you could have gone about it in a less...weird way.”

Holster rolled over onto his back, covering his face with an arm. “I thought people found the idea of a Secret Admirer romantic. Clearly, I was mistaken.”

“Was this all a joke?” Ransom had to be sure before he said anything else.

Holster peeked out from under his arm. “What? Why would you think that?” With a long suffering sigh, he said, “First, I was just going to get you flowers. Then waltz over and say, ‘Surprise! Those are from me.’ But I panicked, and then, well you know” he gesticulated wildly with the arm not covering his face.

“It snowballed?”

“Yes. Exactly. So I tried to up the stakes. Nicer gifts each day, but you didn’t seem to like that. So, I went homemade. And well, then I overheard you talking to Lardo. So I gave up. Just if you would kindly put me out of my misery before leaving my room, that would be just grand,” he groaned.

Ransom pondered the thought. Holster was a large guy with larger emotions, who had the tendency to go over the top with most things. Why would declarations of romantic feelings be any different? And it was not as though Ransom didn’t think of Holster that way. In fact, it was the opposite. He adored him but had written off those feelings as purely platonic (most of the time. He was only human. So sue him) because Holster hadn’t shown any interest.

This was a case of differing preferences. Ransom preferred subtlety and Holster...did ostentatious work here? Yes, ostentatious. Had Ransom at any time grabbed a megaphone and shouted, ‘I think you’re great! I’d really like to kiss you...among other things!’, or had Holster just left a custom crossword puzzle on Ransom’s desk which spelled out, ‘You and I work great together. Date me?’ then they wouldn’t be in this mess.

So, he walked around to the other side of the bed, lying down on his back beside him. Then, he pried Holster’s arm away from his face and kissed his hand. “The beer was a nice touch. I thought they’d sold out of that one.”

Holster stared at him, flabbergasted. “I- you- what?”

Ransom rolled over and kissed Holster’s cheek. “Don’t hurt yourself there, Holtzy.”

“So...wait! This is a mutual feeling?” he shouted.

“Ding, ding, ding. Now he gets it.”

Holster burst out in ecstatic laughter. “You have got to be kidding me! But I um, sort of waited in line from like six am day of release. They sold out two people behind me.”

“Worth it,” Ransom said, lacing their fingers together.

“So um...I had a gift I decided not to give you and figured I would just see if you wanted to go with me...instead of you know…”

“Going with the mystery secret admirer?”

“Bingo. I have a pair of second row tickets for tomorrow’s game against the Aeros.”

Ransom reached over and tugged at him until Holster rolled on top of him. He kissed him on the nose. “I would love to.”

“Then it’s a date.”

“It certainly is.”

[supercasey]

RvB Warrior Cats AU

I have no excuse for how long this took to post (other than moving houses and getting caught in a blizzard this morning). I know I made a post with this concept several months ago, but I’ve since then rewritten quite a bit of it and added more story ideas, so... go nuts I guess. Putting this under a readmore to spare the rest of my followers.

Blood Gulch Clan / Blood Clan / Gulch Clan Leader: SpiteStar (Church) Last Leader: FlowerStar (Flowers/Florida) Deputy: CrimsonFur (Sarge) Last Deputy: SpiteEyes (Church) Medicine Cat: FixCoat (Doc) Clan Members: TuckTail (Tucker) HeavyHeart (Caboose) CinderStalk (Tex) SpeckleBelly (Simmons) SnailFoot (Grif) RabbitWind (Donut) PoppyFox (Sister) TuckFrost (Junior) Freelancer Clan / Mother Clan Leader: JaggedStar / Leo (The Director) Last Leader: ShadowStar (Allison) Deputy: EchoBurr / Aiden (The Counselor) Last Deputy: JaggedWhisker (The Director) Medicine Cat: None (kinda FlowerCreek???) Clan Members: ThunderSpot (Washington) TinyWhisper (Connecticut) QuickStalk (Carolina) LostEye / Tawnypaw (York) ((He hates his name)) HollowJaw / Quietpaw (Maine) ((Also hates his name)) WindStone (North Dakota) WildStorm (South Dakota) OwlFur (Wyoming) FlowerCreek (Florida) The AI Clan / Alpha Clan Leader: ThistleStar (Sigma) Last Leader: None Deputy: PigeonFeather (Gamma/Gary) Last Deputy: ThistleMask (Sigma) Medicine Cat: MousePatch (Theta) Clan Members: WitShimmer (Epsilon) LizardStrike (Omega/O'Malley) SwiftDapple (Delta) SongLeaf (Eta) SmokeLeaf (Iota) Chorus Clan Leader: BraveStar (Kimball) Last Leader: Shystar (Doyle) Deputy: BadgerHeart (Andersmith) Last Deputy: BraveFlame (Kimball) Medicine Cat: GreyBird (Dr. Grey) Clan Members: CherryPelt (Volleyball) DoeFlight (Jensen) PounceTail (Palomo) BitterFang (Bitters) MinnowLeap (Matthews)

Unaffiliated Cats / Rouges WeaselTuft / Felix (Felix) LocustMist / Locus (Locus) Vic (Vic)

[BASIC BGC PLOT] ((AKA if I write a fic this is gonna be the beginning))

Starts out with Tucktail going on a patrol with Heavyheart, who he ditches in favor of hunting on his own (and maybe to search for any available mates because he's unabashedly horny at all times no matter the AU), only to run into a kittypet named David. They hit it off right away, but unfortunately David's twoleg shows up and nabs him before he can run away. Tucktail relays this to Spitestar, who initially dismiss it as nothing to be concerned about, but Cinderstalk is curious. She corners Tucktail later on and asks more questions, until she discovers that Tucktail unintentionally found Thunderspot, a warrior from her old clan. Cinderstalk then goes into detail with Tucktail about her last "clan", although it was more like a group of rogues. It apparently all fell apart after a few warriors went rouge (no pun intended) and started an internal war that took several cat's lives. Thundersport had been unaccounted for most of the battle, but was hit by a monster on the thunderpath and was taken away by twolegs. After hearing all of this, Tucktail goes back to the twoleg place to help David escape, bringing Spitestar and Heavyheart with him for backup. They manage to save David, and the four of them return to camp to officially welcome him to Blood Gulch Clan (David has a bit of a panic attack when he sees Cinderstalk but he'll be okay).

[THINGS THAT HAPPEN/INFORMATION]

FAMILY SHIT (FOR THE BGC)

- Jaggedstar and Shadowstar are the parents of Quickstalk and Spitestar (Spitekit goes missing as a kit and ends up getting taken in by a rogue). Later on they also have Thunderspot (although they didn't raise Thunderkit, as Shadowstar died not long after birthing him, and Jaggedstar refused to interact with the orphaned kitten). - Flowercreek is Tucktail's father. He’s trans, and arrived at Blood Gulch Clan pregnant and injured from the PFL fight. It’s implied that Owlfur is the other parent. - Crimsonfur is Snailfoot, Poppyfox, Rabbitfoot, Windstone, and Wildstorm’s father (Snailfoot and Poppyfox made up one litter, the others made up the second one). After Windkit, Wildkit, and Rabbitkit were born, Crimsonfur took Rabbitkit back to his clan, as he was the runt of the litter, and raised him himself. - ((Also, both litters are from separate mother's and were born around the same time. Snailfoot and Poppyfox’s mother died giving birth, while Windstone, Wildstorm, and Rabbitfoot’s mother was not affiliated with Crimsonfur’s clan and had no interest in joining it, leading to her eventually agreeing to give up her undesired runt to Crimsonfur to make him go away while she kept the other kits to herself; Crimsonfur laments the fact that he didn't take all of his kits home, but what's done is done)). - The AI aren't related (save for Songleaf and Smokeleaf) but they refer to themselves as brothers and sisters. They act like a fucking cult and it’s Creepy. - Tucktail is trans fIGHT ME. - Flowercreek is also trans and so proud of his fucking son. - Tucktail has had exactly one litter; only one kit was born and that kit grew up to be Tuckfrost. Tucktail loves his son so much, it's ridiculous.

PROJECT FREELANCER ORIGINS LORE

- Long ago, a newly apprenticed Shadowpaw was patrolling her clan’s border by herself, when she came across a young kittypet named Leo. The two play-fought for a little while, but Shadowpaw had to go home, so she promised to come visit him again soon. - This escalated to Leo and Shadowpaw meeting every day, until Shadowpaw convinced Leo to come join her clan. Upon returning home, however, Shadowpaw was scolded by her leader and clanmates for befriending a kittypet, and was given a rather harsh ultimatum; either kill/chase away Leo, or never return. - Stubbornly, Shadowpaw chose Leo over her clan, and together, the twosome left the clan’s territory. - It was incredibly hard at first, as Leo struggled to learn how to hunt and Shadowpaw was still a young apprentice, but the two soon found an abandoned cabin on the edge of the forest. At first, they avoided going inside, but during a storm they grew desperate and took shelter inside. - Finding the cabin truly abandoned, it became their new home. Soon enough, other cats came to live with them, one of which was even Leo’s old housemate; Aiden. - They all soon went to the Moon Stone, and were given warrior names by Starclan. Shadowpaw became Shadowclaw, Leo became Jaggedwhisker, and Aiden became Echoburr (there were other cats but they’re unnamed NPCs so fuck ‘em). - Seeing as they had Starclan’s approval, it soon became clear that they needed to form a fully fledged clan and elect a leader. There was much debate, in which Echoburr insisted that Jaggedwhisker become leader, but Jaggedwhisker denied the offer, deciding that Shadowclaw would be a much better leader. - Again, they went to the Moon Stone, and Shadowclaw was gifted her nine lives, and formally renamed Shadowstar, dubbing her the leader of Motherclan. - Together, Shadowstar, Jaggedwhisker, and Echoburr kept the peace. It’s debatable whether or not they were all each other’s mates (they were), but nonetheless they soon produced their first litter (with Jaggedwhisker sitting in as leader while Shadowstar had her litter). - The first litter was Quickkit and a stillborn. Shadowstar was really broken up about losing a kit, but she still adored her daughter (she also lost a life during the birth). - Soon after, Shadowstar got right back into being leader, even taking Quickkit with her everywhere she went as she went about her clan duties. - By the time Quickkit became Quickpaw, Shadowstar had lost a lot of lives. She’s very headstrong and rebellious, so she ended up leading her clan into a lot of unnecessary fights, leading her to lose several lives. As one last ‘hoorah’, Shadowstar became pregnant a second time, and soon gave birth to Thunderkit and Spitekit. She died during the birth, barely given enough to name Thunderkit before she passed. - Jaggedwhisker ended up naming Spitekit, but in the same breath ordered the kit to be taken into the forest and killed by Echoburr. Feeling sorry for the poor thing, Echoburr took the kit out of the cabin and into the forest, where he quickly ran into a rogue. The rogue commented that Spitekit was adorable, to which Echoburr offered to give him to her. Not passing up the chance, the rogue accepted and adopted Spitekit. - This was the first of several corrupt decisions that Jaggedwhisker- now Jaggedstar- would make. After burying Shadowstar, he gave Thunderkit to one of the queens in his clan, ordering her to never tell the kit who his true parents were. - Quickpaw grew up knowing Thunderkit was her little brother, but was unable to tell him due to her father forbidding it (she never even knew about Spitekit). Still, she became very closely bonded to him, and regardless of her father’s orders, treated him as her younger brother. - Not long after Shadowstar’s death, a young black shecat appeared on Motherclan’s doorstep. At first, the clan cats warned her to run away, as Jaggedstar seemed unhinged, but upon meeting the young cat, Jaggedstar allowed her to join, naming her Cinderpaw. - Quickpaw and Cinderpaw were best friends as apprentices, as both were very similar personality wise. However, Jaggedstar’s clear favoritism for Cinderpaw became more and more blatantly obvious, causing a rift between the two cats. - As if to rub dirt in the wound, at their shared warrior ceremony, Quickpaw and Cinderpaw were named Quickstalk and Cinderstalk. When questioned by his daughter as to why they were given the same name, Jaggedstar claimed it was to “inspire you two to be better”. This led to even more tension between the girls. - ((I’m not gonna get too into Jaggedstar and Cinderstalk’s relationship because it’s… very creepy. He even apprenticed her and had her sleep in his nest some nights because he loved her and Cinderstalk was too intimidated to tell him no)).

PROJECT FREELANCER FIGHT LORE

- After the Freelancer Fight, a lot of things happened: Flowercreek joined Blood Gulch Clan and became Leader soon after, but lost most of his lives quickly as a result of being inexperienced in fighting/hunting due to once being the Freelancer's makeshift medicine cat (he was also considered to be too docile of a leader, leading many to believe his death was staged, although nothing has been proven). - Thunderspot and Tinywhisper were both hit by cars on the Thunderpath and taken to an animal shelter, and while Tinywhisper didn't survive the crash, Thunderspot did, and he was soon adopted by a twoleg and moved to coincidentally live near the forest where Blood Gulch Clan resides. - Quickstalk was thought to have been killed by Hollowjaw, but she secretly escaped and began wandering. Who knows? Maybe we'll see more of her in the future… ;3c - As apprentices, both Losteye and Hollowjaw (at the time named Tawnypaw and Quietpaw) were injured while out hunting, causing them to be renamed after their new injuries/scars. Everyone in the clan was against it, but Jaggedstar was determined to make sure that the two toms never forgot their mistakes. - Losteye, Owlfur, and Cinderstalk all ran into each other after the Freelancer Fight and got into a brawl, ending in Losteye dying while Cinderstalk chased Owlfur into Blood Gulch territory, where he was finished off by the rest of the clan (Tucktail was the one who killed him and had no idea he was his other father). - Windstone and Wildstorm traveled together for a long time, but during a fight with Hollowjaw and the AI Clan, Wildstorm left Windstone to die and attempted to live on her own, but eventually ended up in Blood Gulch territory and got herself killed by a vengeful Thunderspot, who believed her to be responsible for her brother's death. - The whole internal fight in the Freelancer clan is revealed to have been caused by Thistlestar all along, who wanted to seek out power by destroying other clans and taking the strongest warriors left alive. However, he’s later killed in an all-out war between the Blood Gulch Clan and the AI Clan, where he’s struck down and killed by Spitestar (who unfortunately also dies in the fight soon after killing Thistlestar). - Tinywhisper's death was 100% not an accident; she found out what was happening in the clan and had every intention of telling her clanmates. Unfortunately for her, the fight had already begun while she and Thunderspot were out hunting, resulting in them returning from their hunt in the middle of the fight. Before they could help, however, an unknown cat (Witshimmer) took the opportunity to shove both unsuspecting cats onto the thunderpath, just in time for a truck to hit both felines, killing Tinywhisper instantly while Thunderspot was left horrifically scarred by the incident (both physically and mentally. He has panic attacks if he hears a car horn and can't go near the Thunder Path without panicking).

RANDOM LORE

- Tucktail and Thunderspot eventually become mates, but it takes awhile because Tucktail isn't sure how he feels and Thunderspot is afraid to form bonds with other cats (also Tucktail doesn't want to ever be pregnant again and he's worried Thunderspot might want kits. This leads to them talking and agreeing to not have kits together, and just adopt instead if the opportunity comes up (Poppyfox offers to birth them some kits and they may or may not accept her offer)). Then again, they’d probably be fine not having kits. - During the Blood Gulch VS AI fight, Spitestar is killed, leaving the leadership position empty. There's a debate over who should become leader, as Crimsonfur is very old to become leader and was only meant to be Deputy until someone else stepped up to the task (namely Cinderstalk or Tucktail), but no one did (seeing as Cinderstalk is dead at this point, she’s out of the running). They offer it to Thunderspot, but he's very much against the idea. ((I actually can't decide who should be leader. I like the idea of Thunderstar or Tuckstar, but I dunno. Maybe just go with Crimsonstar??? Fuck))

CHORUS CLAN LORE

- Chorus Clan is a motherfucking Mess. It was formed by a bunch of rouge's that couldn't agree on a leader, leading to a full on war. The survivor's agreed to a truce, and the oldest survivor- Shyshiver- became the leader, dubbing the most capable warrior- Braveflame- as his deputy. - Seeing as Literally No One had any idea what to do (Shystar never even got his nine lives) the leader made a tough decision and agreed to house two rogues in the clan. In exchange, the rogues would train apprentices and help them get started. - This led to betrayal, as the rouges assassinated Shystar in the night. No one knew it was them at first, and Braveflame became Bravestar. - Bravestar immediately began trying to investigate into the death of her old leader, leading her to get help from Blood Gulch's clan cats, who offered to assist after being rescued. - (I'm thinking the BGC deals with some kind of disaster, like twolegs invading their territory, requiring them to leave. The few that managed to outrun the twolegs settle in Chorus Clan for awhile. This also takes place directly after the AI fight, meaning Spitestar is dead and there's no new leader yet). - Tucktail, Heavyheart, Specklebelly, and Snailfoot agree to apprentice Badgerpaw (Badgerheart), Doepaw (Doeflight), Cherrypaw (Cherrypelt), Pouncepaw (Pouncetail), Bitterpaw (Bitterfang), and Minnowpaw (Minnowleap). They’re also the ones to suggest their warrior names, as Bravestar thought it appropriate that they help. - Tucktail and Pouncepaw do NOT get along, at least on Tucktail's end. Tucktail is constantly reminded of his own terrible behavior as an apprentice, and he hates how clingy Pouncepaw is. It doesn't help that he feels responsible for two other apprentices dying (the kids who died in season 12). - Specklebelly is scared shitless of his apprentices, as they're both girls and he's nervous around them (his mother was rather abusive and he's low-key scared of shecats because of it). They're both patient though and Doepaw even starts seeing Specklebelly almost as her father. - Snailfoot is kind of neglectful with his apprentices’ training, having them just practice stalking and hunting instead of actually teaching them to fight. This actually ends up working out, as Bitterpaw and Minnowpaw both end up being excellent hunters and teach the others how to set up a proper ambush. - Heavyheart is… trying??? He's never been trusted to apprentice a cat before (neither has anyone else but whatever) and he keeps unintentionally seeing Badgerpaw as being his “new Spitestar”, which makes things semi awkward. This eventually gets resolved, with Badgerpaw sitting and talking Heavyheart through his grief. - Specklebelly and Snailfoot low-key see their apprentices as “the kits they never got to have together”. This even leads to Bitterfang and Doeflight jokingly (and sometimes honestly) referring to each other as “bro” and “sis”. - Bitterfang and Minnowleap are from the same litter. Their mother died when they were kits, and Bitterfang became very protective of Minnowleap, as he was very fragile as a kit. - Doeflight and Cherrypelt are also related, being sisters from the same litter. As kits, their father abandoned the clan, taking their other littermate (a tom) with him. The sisters are incredibly close, although they're very different personality wise. - Despite more or less losing both of his brothers on the same day, Pouncepaw acts laid back and unaffected. This leads to Tucktail sitting with him and getting the kid to open up about his grief, also leading Tucktail and Pouncepaw to mature. - Throughout all of this, the BGC keeps trying to discuss who should be leader. Seeing as Crimsonfur, Thunderspot, and Rabbitwind are missing (taken by twolegs), it's unclear who should be leader, as Crimsonfur was deputy (but he's old) and Thunderspot was the most experienced. - ((BTW, Poppyfox and Tuckfrost have both gone off on their own at this point. Poppyfox goes between wanting to be a kittypet to escape the warrior lifestyle and living as a rogue. Tuckfrost has been chosen as a “prophecy cat” and has been on a quest concerning his destiny, although he longs to return home and reunite with his father.)) - Everyone is of the opinion that Tucktail should become leader (Specklebelly argues that it should be Crimsonfur until Snailfoot convinces him to give up), but Tucktail refuses to, as he believes Thunderspot is the only sane choice. - After much deliberation (and a lot of bullshit) Tucktail finally agrees to go get his nine lives. - Accompanied by Fixcoat and his Chorus Clan apprentice (a way too excited Graypaw), Tucktail visits the Moon Pool and gets his nine lives from Starclan. - While he gets to see Spitestar (they have a tearful reunion), Tucktail can't find Thunderspot anywhere (he was scared that he had died during the twoleg attack). While he's relieved that Thunderspot isn't dead, he's now afraid that he'll never see him again, at least until Thunderspot passes away and joins Starclan. - Right after getting his nine lives and becoming Tuckstar, the new leader is given a prophecy by a puny cat he doesn’t recognize (Tinywhisper), who tells him “When the traitors are revealed and the river runs red with blood, only then will lightning strike, and the lost will return to where it all started”.

((I don’t have much else and for that I’m sorry, but I’ve become invested in this AU. Feel free to hit me up with ideas/questions, and I’ll do my best to respond!))

[write-havoc]

The Glasswing Butterfly Part 17

Summary: Chuck has never thought of herself as anything special. Just an average beta living her life next door to a womanizing alpha named Negan. But her life, and Negan’s too, are turned upside down when Chuck suddenly presents as omega.

This is a non-zombie AU featuring A/B/O dynamics.

Fandom: The Walking Dead AU

Pairing: Negan/Original Female Character

Status: Ongoing

Contains: swearing, smut

Intended for readers 18+ of age only

Masterlist in my bio

“Fuck. Oh fuuuucckk,” Negan groans as his knot swells to completion once again inside Chuck. He can already feel his head clearing, signaling that this cycle of his rut and her heat is coming to an end.

“Mmm,” Chuck hums as she comes down from her own high.

“You good, baby girl?” he whispers into her ear as he wraps his arms around her, pulling her back into his chest.

“I’m good,” she answers dreamily, placing her arms over his wrapped around her.

“You know, I kinda like all the pillows,” he jokes. “Makes shit cozier. Like we’re fucking in a cocoon.”

She giggles. “Now that my heat is just about over, I think we can get rid of them. After your knot goes down, anyway.”

He snuggles more into her back. “We can keep them ‘til tomorrow,” he says with a smirk.

 A few days later, Negan walks into the nearest pharmacy to pick up his prescription of omega condoms, since they are almost completely out after Chuck’s heat. It’s such a hassle having to call his doctor so they can call the pharmacy so Negan can wait in line just so he can sleep with Chuck without her getting pregnant, but it’s necessary. Annoying, but necessary since Chuck can’t take any birth control.

Of course the place is busy when he gets there, so he stands in line patiently waiting until he can get to the counter. It’s a smaller pharmacy than the one back in Charlottesville, so there’s only a few people working there, which is why the line is so long. After a while, he finally gets to the front.

“Prescription for Negan,” he says to the girl behind the counter.

She pauses, giving him an anxious look before she mutters, “Just a moment.” The girl quickly walks away to disappear into the back. After a few minutes, an older man in a lab coat comes forward, obviously the pharmacist and not just a technician like the younger woman from earlier.

“Mr. Negan,” the man starts, “I’m sorry, but I can’t fill your prescription.”

“Why not?” Negan spits back.

“I am morally opposed to providing it to you.”

“ Morally opposed ? What the fuck does that mean?”

The man lets out a huff. “It is my right not to provide drugs that go against my moral and religious beliefs.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You have a whole fuckin’ aisle of condoms and lube just over there that anyone can pick up! Or is it just so betas can pick that shit up?”

The pharmacist is starting to look very nervous, but he holds his ground. “I suggest you come back tomorrow. The pharmacist on duty then will probably fill your prescription.”

Negan, fully pissed off now, points his finger right in the man’s face. “This is bullshit and you know it. Classist fuck.” He stomps through the people gawking at the display of what just happened and exits the store.

As soon as Chuck sees Negan come in from where she’s walking down the stairs, she knows something is wrong. “What happened?” she asks as she continues her descent to follow him into the kitchen.

He opens the refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of water before turning around to answer her. “The pharmacist wouldn’t give me my prescription,” he relays with anger in his tone. “Small town fuckin’ pharmacy,” he mutters.

“What? They can do that?”

“Yeah.” He takes a gulp of water. “‘Religious beliefs’,” he says with quotey fingers. “It’s perfectly fine for doctors and shit to discriminate against us because of a few words in the goddamn bible saying that nothing should come in the way of alphas impregnating omegas.” He takes another angry drink. “Fuckin’ discriminating assholes,” he mutters.

“So we have to find another pharmacy?”

He lets out a huff as he leans back on the counter. “I don’t want to have to fuckin’ drive into DC every time we need a goddamn prescription.” He sets the bottle down and scratches at his cheek. “I’ll go back tomorrow and see if the other pharmacist will do it. If they won’t, then I guess I’ll have to brave fuckin’ DC traffic.”

“Alright.” She goes over to him and gives him a hug. “I’m sorry this is such a hassle.”

He kisses the top of her head. “It’s not your fault. It’s that old ass beta’s fault for being a hateful dick. I can’t believe it’s fuckin’ legal to do that shit still.”

 The next day, Negan heads back to the pharmacy. He waits in line, just like he did yesterday, and when he gets to the counter, he sees the same young woman from yesterday handing out the prescriptions. Once she sees Negan, her eyebrows raise almost like she’s scared.

“Negan,” he says to her without prompt.

“Uh. Yes, sir.” She hurries to the back and comes back with a white bag in her hands. “There you go,” she says quietly, afraid of how the alpha in front of her will react.

“It’s alright, sweetheart,” he tries to soothe her. “I know you’re just doing your job. It’s not your fault that pharmacist is living in the fuckin’ olden days.”

She gives him a nervous smile. “Thanks.”

After she rings him out, he asks, “So what days does the douchebag pharmacist work so I know to stay away?”

“Uh.” She clears her throat. “I can’t tell you that,” she answers meekly. “It’s company policy.”

He lets out a huff and picks up the bag from the counter. “Of course it is.”

“H-Have a nice day.”

He just gives her a nod and walks out.

 Negan has been working on his bike for a few hours when his phone rings. After the short conversation with an old acquaintance, he makes his way back inside. He’s just about ready to call out for Chuck when he hears music coming from upstairs. He follows the melody to their bedroom to see Chuck practicing her violin.

“Sounds beautiful,” Negan comments from the doorway.

Chuck stops playing to look up at him. “I’m not that good yet. But I’m getting better.” She moves to put the instrument back in it’s case. “I’m glad my mom gave it to me. It’s pretty fun to play.”

Negan takes a few steps into the room. “So... you remember when I told you I was gonna take you to a baseball game?”

She scrunches up her face as she tries to remember. “Not really.”

“Well I did tell you that and now I’m gonna be in possession of two tickets to see my Yankees play in DC. This guy I know came into them and isn’t a fuckin’ fan, so he’s gonna give ‘em to me.”

“Oh,” she replies, trying to sound excited. “That’s nice.”

He just chuckles at her unenthusiastic reaction. “Come on! Baseball is the national pastime!”

“No, I know. I just... don’t watch baseball.” She shrugs a shoulder. “But I’ll go to this game with you.”

“Don’t sound so happy about it,” he jokes sarcastically.

She giggles. “I’m happy... to spend time with you.”

Pulling her into him for a kiss, he chuckles at how hard she’s trying to hide her indifference to his favorite sport.

 Just under a week later, Chuck and Negan (decked out in all his Yankees gear) are sat in Nationals Park in DC waiting for the game to start.

“How are you a Yankees fan?” Chuck asks. “You’ve always lived in Virginia, right?”

“Yeah.” He lets out a sad chuckle. “My dad was born in Boston. Always made me watch the fuckin’ Red Sox. Since my fuckin’ father was an asshole, I decided to root for the Yankees despite him.” When she just looks at him confused, he realizes he has to explain. “The Yankees and the Red Sox are rivals. Have been for decades. It’s like the biggest fuckin’ sports rivalry in history.”

She gives him a little shrug.

“Curse of the Bambino?” he tries, thinking she has to have at least heard of that.

“I don’t know what that is,” she admits.

“Shit,” he groans, but she just laughs.

“My family was never a sports family. We’re band nerds.”

Negan shakes his head, playing up his fake disappointment. “You’re breaking my heart girl. You’ve heard of Babe Ruth, right?”

“Yeah. I know who he is.”

“That’s something, at least.”

As the game gets underway, Chuck tries her best to pay attention to the action on the field. She soon finds that it’s much more entertaining just to watch Negan as he’s watching the game.

*crack* The ball sails through the air as the Nationals batter starts to run to first base.

“Ah, shit! They could get three fuckin’ runs! No!” Negan jumps up from his seat as his eyes follow the ball. “Catch it! Fuckin’ catch it!”

When the ball lands safely in one of the Yankee’s gloves, Negan lets out a cry of relief. But he goes absolutely nuts when the player throws the ball to the guy on third base, which calls one runner out. When the ball is thrown home, the umpire calls another runner from the Nationals out as he slides in.

“Triple play!” Negan screams as he throws his hands up in the air. “Holy shit!”

Chuck can’t help but giggle at how excited he is. It makes him look like a little kid, which is so cute to her.

“Did you fuckin’ see that?!” He turns back to Chuck to see her reaction. “That was fuckin’ amazing. A triple play!”

Chuck nods, though she’s still giggling. “Is that good?”

“Is that good?!” He sits back down, his breathing still rapid from the excitement. “It’s fuckin’ rare and awesome as fuck! I can’t believe I was here for that!”

“I didn’t really see it,” she admits. “I was watching you.”

“What?” He scrunches up his face in confusion. “Why the fuck would you be watching me?”

“Because I like to see you so excited.”

That gets him to let out a chuckle. “I guess I can accept that.” He wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her forward to kiss her.

Once the game is over (Yankees won), Chuck and Negan exit the stadium to make their way home. Despite the horrible gridlock that comes with all the spectators leaving at the same time, Negan is still practically vibrating with enthusiasm.

“That was such a good fuckin’ game,” he comments. “Don’t you think?”

“Yeah. I had fun.”

“Did you?” He flicks his gaze over to her. “Or are you just fuckin’ saying that?”

“I did have fun. I had fun because you had fun.”

He shakes his head with a smile on his face. “I’m not making you a fuckin’ fan of baseball anytime soon, am I?”

She shrugs. “Maybe...”

Her attempt at being diplomatic doesn’t fool Negan, but he’s not offended. “I guess we’re just gonna have to continue to disagree on the entertainment value of organized sports.”

She giggles. “That’s probably for the best.”

A few days later, Diane comes for a visit. Since Negan had gotten called in to work, Chuck and her mother have the house to themselves.

“Work’s going well?” Diane asks her daughter as they both sit on the couch, mugs of coffee in their hands.

“Yeah,” Chuck answers. “It’s really good.”

“And Negan?”

Chuck giggles. “He’s good, too.” She brings her mug up to take a sip of her sweet coffee.

“Have you started to talk about the wedding?”

Chuck lets out a little cough into her cup. “Wedding?”

“Well yeah. You know, to your fiancé ?” Diane replies sarcastically.

“We, uh.” Chuck clears her throat. “We haven’t really talked about it.”

“Charlotte Josephine,” her mother chides. “You’ve been engaged for months now.”

“I know. But we’re already mates. And living together. A wedding is just a ceremony, really.”

“A ceremony your mother wants to see!”

Chuck laughs at her dramatics. “We’ll have a wedding at some point, Mom. But I don’t want a big thing. Just a little get together. I mean,” Chuck looks around, “we could do it here. We have a nice back yard.”

“Negan might want it done in a church.”

Chuck gives her a look. “Is that your way of saying that you want it in a church?”

“No,” Diane tries, though Chuck is right. “You haven’t asked Negan, have you?”

“He’s not exactly religious, Mom. Neither am I.”

“There are some gorgeous churches around here-“

“You’ve already been planning the wedding, haven’t you?” Chuck asks, talking over her mother.

Diane doesn’t see the point in hiding it anymore. “Of course I have! You’re my only child. When you were a little girl, I always pictured you meeting a nice boy in college, renting a crappy apartment together, getting engaged, and having a big wedding with everyone’s families. Then you’d get a house, kids, the whole nine yards. But...”

“I wasn’t normal.” Chuck finishes the sentence sadly.

“No. I wasn’t going to say that.”

“But I wasn’t normal. I was an omega, but... not really.”

“I always thought there was someone out there for you,” Diane reassures her daughter. “I was right. Sort of,” she tacks on with a laugh. “I never thought he’d be an alpha and you’d be an omega and the whole claiming stuff. So it’s a little different than I’d imagined,” she chuckles a bit. “But I’m so happy that you’ve found love with Negan.” Chuck feels her cheeks going red at that, but Diane just continues. “And I wanna celebrate that with a wedding!”

Chuck laughs. “Alright. Me and Negan will start to talk about it,” she assures her.

“Yes!” Diane calls out.

“I said start to talk,” Chuck stresses. “Don’t get too excited just yet.”

Meanwhile, Negan is sitting in on a math class all day at the high school. The teacher hadn’t left any specific instructions, so Negan is just treating it as a study hall. It’s not exactly exciting, but he’s getting to know the kids a little more.

The last period of the day happens to be a class that Carl Grimes is in. As soon as Negan sees him, he lets out a laugh.

“It’s about time I get one of your classes,” he calls out as Carl takes his seat along with his friends that came in with him.

“Hey, Negan,” the teenager greets.

When Negan sees that the class is mostly empty after the bell rings, he lets out a huff. “Where the fuck is everyone else?” he asks no one in particular.

“They all skipped to get home early,” Carl answers.

“Fuckin’ assholes.” Negan can’t say he blames them, since he wasn’t going to have them do anything anyway, but he’s not exactly okay with students skipping classes. “I guess it’s just us, then,” he mutters. “If you got homework or some shit to do, work on it. It’s not like we have anything else to fuckin’ do.”

“Can we get hall passes out?” one of Carl’s friends asks.

“Where?”

The friend looks to Carl for him to take over, since he’s friendlier with Negan. “There a storage room beside the gym with old equipment. We just hang out in there sometimes,” Carl explains.

Negan lets out a huff. “I’m not gonna let you guys go there unsupervised to play grabass or what-the-fuck-ever. Who the fuck do you think I am?”

The other kids look embarrassed, but not Carl. “We mostly just play ping pong or fuck around with the tennis rackets.”

“First of all, language,” he starts. “Your balls haven’t been descended long enough for you to earn the right to say ‘fuck’. And secondly, there’s a fuckin’ ping pong table?”

“Yeah,” Carl answers. “It’s old. They never pull it out for anything.”

One of the girls pipes up. “My mom said they had a table tennis club in the nineties. I think it’s from that time.”

Negan suddenly stands, his mind made up. “Alright. We’re headed to this fuckin’ place. Lead the way.”

Carl and the five other kids take Negan to the room they were talking about. It’s tucked away behind the stage and it’s obviously the graveyard for old sports equipment and sets/props for the drama club. Near the center of the room sits a well worn ping pong table with balls and paddles sitting on top of it.

“Shit yeah!” Negan walks over to the table and picks out the least broken paddle. “Who’s first?”

The kids look around at each other, a bit confused.

“This is a fuckin’ tournament,” Negan provides. “Someone step up!”

“What do we get if we win?” one of the students asks.

“A hundred bucks if any of you fuckers can beat me,” Negan replies with all the confidence in the world.

“I’m in,” one of the boys says as he picks up another paddle.

The table is cleared and the game gets underway. Of course, Negan wipes the floor with the kid. Easily. The boy doesn’t get a single point before Negan gets to eleven. Carl tries next and has his ass handed to him as well. The two girls in the group go next, though they’re no match for Negan. As the last of the boys fail as well, Negan lets out a laugh.

“I still fuckin’ got it!” he says with a twirl of his paddle.

Carl lets out a scoff. “You failed to mention that you’re really good at this. It’s not exactly fair.”

“It’s not like I’m taking your money, kid. Besides, this was much more fun than sitting on our asses in that classroom.”

Despite the kids having lost their games, they do agree that it was better than having a study hall.

“You should start up the table tennis club again, Mr. Negan,” one of the girls comments.

He doesn’t correct the girl to just call him ‘Negan’, but instead, gives her statement a thought. “Would anyone join?” he asks to the group. “I know you kids only care about your fuckin’ snapchats or what-the-fuck-ever.”

Carl shrugs a little. “I’d join.”

His two friends nod, too. Then, the girls.

“I could use another extra curricular,” one of the girls says.

A slow smile spreads across Negan’s face. He would love the chance to coach an actual sport here. Their baseball coach, unfortunately, has no plans of quitting any time soon, so that was never an option. But this? Even if it’s not an official competitive sport at the school, it would still be fun for Negan.

“You know what?” Negan starts. “I’m gonna talk to Principal Delaney. See if I can’t get this shit started. If I get a sign up sheet posted, you guys spread it around. Tell everyone how fuckin’ fun this shit is.”

As soon as the dismissal bell rings, Negan heads off to find Jo Delaney. He finds her in the hallway heading to her office and quickly tells her his intentions.

“Ping pong?” she questions.

“Yeah. Table tennis. It’s a fuckin’ sport.”

She chuckles. “I know it is. But why ping pong?”

Negan shrugs. “Apparently, this school used to have a table tennis club. Besides, it gives me a chance to actually coach something. And it gives some of these kids an opportunity to join something. You know, for their college applications and shit.”

Jo thinks it over. “You’re probably not going to get any money for this,” she comments.

“I’ll raise some,” Negan responds.

“I don’t have a problem with it, I suppose. Just make sure you get permission slips from all the kids that are interested.” She looks at him skeptically. “ If there are any interested.”

“You doubt me, but I’m gonna make it work,” he says with a smirk, then turns to walk away. “Just you see.”

Before Negan leaves for the day, he makes sure to pin up some sign up sheets to various bulletin boards around the school, hoping that there would be some interest in his little club so he can prove Jo wrong. Just to make sure that happens, he sends off a text to Rick, asking him to have Carl talk to all his friends about signing up.

When Negan gets home, Chuck can see the smile on his face.

“Good day?” she asks as she walks over to greet him.

“I’m starting up a table tennis club,” he explains casually.

She raises her eyebrows. “Table tennis club? Is that a thing?”

“It is now.” He plops himself down on the couch and pulls his phone out. “You mind if I buy a ping pong table and set it up in the garage?” he asks as he already searches for one on amazon.

“No.” She giggles as she sits down beside him. “This club is going to meet in our garage?”

“Yeah. I figured no one else would give us any fuckin’ space. Doubt they’ll let us use the gym.” He looks up from his phone at her. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” she answers with a smile. “That’s fine.”

He goes back to his phone, finalizing his order before looking back up to Chuck’s smiling face. “What?”

She shrugs. “Nothing.”

“What?” he asks again.

“I like seeing you excited about your students. It’s cute.”

“I’m not cute.”

“You’re cute,” she insists.

He suddenly pulls her into his lap and buries his nose into her neck, taking a deep breath and letting out a groan. As he starts to harden underneath Chuck, he whispers in her ear, “That feel cute to you?”

She laughs. “You know what, it actually does.”

He flips them around, pinning her underneath him. “I’ll show you cute,” he growls.

She knows he’s just playing around, so she continues with the joke. “You’re so adorable!” As he kisses her neck, she giggles. “Like a little kitten.” Once his kisses turn more passionate, her giggles turn to moans automatically.

“That’s what I fuckin’ thought,” he says with a chuckle.

[fantasiesxwritten]

Mile High Club

“Sunny, come on, baby. You’re not still mad about this morning, are you?” Brian pushed the issue for the second time since we boarded the private jet and that was less than 15 minutes ago. Sighing quietly as I uncrossed my arms to cross them the opposite way. “No, Brian. I told you already, I’m over it.” Lying was beginning to become second nature to me; as were the denial of my sexual advances by Brian. 

“I know what you said, but your body language is speaking loud as hell right now.” He leaned in, speaking in a tone so low to ensure that our conversation was heard by no one else. Other than ourselves, there was one other passenger on the company’s private jet with us. Brian’s boss, Michelle. We were all en route to Houston, where their company was to attend an annual convention that was held there and it was mandatory that they showed on behalf of the brand. Brian asked me to tag along, promising that we would get to spend quality time together, something that we had been lacking as of late. I failed to understand the thought behind that when he was going for business; but I figured what the hell, I could always make use of myself in the malls while they tended to business. “Like you know shit about my body or it’s language these days,” I scoffed at Brian, a little too loud and now had Michelle’s full attention. I glanced over partially to spot her looking our way, with a slight smirk on her face, begging to spread its way across. “Sunny, not now, please? My boss is across the way.” His lowered tone continued, a bit more strained now as he did so through the clench of his teeth. “Whatever, Brian. That’s your ass not dropping it. I’ve been moved on from it.” I exasperated through another sigh as a stewardess approached our seating area now. “Can I get any of you something to drink?” She asked pleasantly and right on time. “Scotch!” I perked up and chimed in at the same as Michelle. Both of us ordering the same strong and feeling numbing liquor. Laughing as we peered over across the aisle at each other. “What she said.” Michelle shot at the stewardess while she waited to hear what Brian wanted. “Rum and coke.” Brian relayed to her with a smile. “Coming right up!” She said as she prepared our separate drinks right in front of us with her cart. Ice shuffling around in cups as smooth liquor was poured ice cubes, melting some of them instantly. My throat couldn’t have been more prepared for the biting taste and the ease that would follow once it became acquainted with the taste again. I would need more than one to make it through this flight with Brian, especially if we were to remain a couple afterwards. The flight hadn’t even taken off yet and already I was wishing I had of stayed at home. Yes, more liquor please. Keep them coming, I thought to myself. The stewardess handed us each our ordered drinks as I quickly brought my glass to my lips and without a breath, chugged it down. Brian and Michelle watched me in amazement as did the stewardess before she joked out a frail, “Another?” Bringing the glass down from my lips as I finally took in an oxygen filled breath, “Yes!” I exclaimed. Michelle chuckled to herself as Brian sipped from his own drink before he started to lecture me. “Sunny, chill out. There will plenty of time for this. Remember, this is for my job.” “Ha. Yes, your job, Brian. Not mine. Remember?” I sarcastically replied as I switched glasses with the stewardess and held on tightly to my fresh one. Brian shook his head and set his sights out the window at the nothingness outside. Word from our pilot had just come in that we were preparing for lift off as Brian continued sipping from his drink and paying me no mind. Fine by me. I was praying silently for sleep to find him and soon. Downing my second drink since we boarded and sitting it in the designated cup holder beside me, I turned to look in Michelle’s direction to find that she was already watching me. I shot her a half smile and she returned it with a wink as her tongue cascaded over her top lip in a slow and seductive tease. Either I was already buzzing or my boyfriends boss was making a pass at me. In my refusal to believe the latter, I waved our stewardess back over and asked her for a quick refill on what I’d been drinking. Brian scoffed under his breath and downed the rest of his drink, tossing his head back against his headrest and closing his eyes. “Wake me when we land.” He said in such a demanding and nasty tone, I completely chose to ignore him. The jet suddenly began to move signaling that we were now taking off as I relaxed further into my seat, breathing in and out slowly. This to me was the worst part about flying, it made my anxiety levels rise from a smooth 2 to a high 10. I concentrated on my breathing until we were in air and flying with ease; looking over to Brian who was slowly but surely drifting off into a slumber. “Dick.” I murmured under my breath. I was starting to feel my buzz and it was only adding onto the clear sexual frustration I was feeling. If only we were alone on this jet, like other times we had flown our own, I could masturbate and at least get a nut off so that I didn’t feel so damn deprived, but that would become a thought to vanish seeing as how his boss was seated across the way from us. “You alright over there, Sunny?” Michelle asked, catching me totally off guard as I was deep in my own nasty thoughts. Chuckling out of slight embarrassment that she might have caught on to what I was thinking, I turned my head in her direction. “Oh yeah, peachy fucking keen.” “That’s what I like to hear.” She joked back with me, now nodding toward Brian who was beginning to snore lightly. “Yeah, he’s out like a light.” I replied, shrugging my shoulders. “More fun for us though, right?” “You have no idea.” Michelle said as a smirk graced her lips, and she beckoned me to join her with a single finger. I hesitated before removing myself from my seating, as I got up and quietly made my way across the aisle and over to seat myself next to her. Plopping down in the empty seat, I crossed my legs and tucked my hands awkwardly between them. “Soooo…” I said, trailing off in hopes of her picking up where I left off. Providing an explanation for her wanting me to come over. “So, tell me Sunny,” she began as she sipped from her drink before sitting it right back down, “are you satisfied?” My head cocked back slightly as I looked at her strangely, I wasn’t following what she meant by that vague question. “Come again.” “And again and again. But first, I want to know if you’re satisfied. Does he,” she said as she nodded her head to the side in Brian’s direction, “make you happy sexually?” I caught myself before I let my mouth fly open; this was the first I’m knowing of Michelle even taking an interest in me. It didn’t make me uncomfortable, there was a side to me that Brian knew of when we first met, but he asked that I keep it buried away as long as I was with him. I believed it was due to his own insecurities which oddly I didn’t understand because most men would find two women going at it to be the hottest thing since the sun on a midsummers day. But like a good girlfriend, I suppressed those feelings and now Michelle was bringing them back full force and within a matter of minutes– damned sexual frustration. “I mean, of course he does. But there’s always that want of something more, something I have been denied since being with him..” I found myself spilling secrets I’d told no one else, yet here I am divulging this information to my boyfriends boss. “Hmm,” she hummed lightly as her hand casually found its way between my thighs, prying them open and making my own hands fall away to make room for hers. Once she was comfortably between them, she slid her hand down further; her fingers brushing over my bare pussy. “Dress? And no panties? You came prepared. I ought to drop to my knees right now and make you wet, just to clean it all up.” My body got tense and tingly at her admittance to what she wanted to do to me. I was horny as fuck as it was and the fact that I knew she was serious, even with my boyfriend on board; was only turning me on more. I was game and her face in between my thighs sounded like Heaven to me. “Mmm,” I moaned lightly, “I’ll take you up on that offer. When and where?” I asked a little too quickly. Michelle raised an eyebrow at me, letting her fingers tickle over my lips, teasing me and threatening to go past them to find my clit. I wanted to do this right though, out of ear shot and eye shot of Brian, whose snores seemed to be getting louder. “Quite hasty, aren’t we? Good. I like that.” Her lips curled up into a smile as she removed her hand as fast as she’d placed it there, grabbing my hand and pulling me up from the seat as she stood. She pulled my hand and led me off to the back of the jet that was sectioned off from the front by a curtain. Once we were back there and curtains closed behind us, Michelle pushed me up against one of the leather seats outside of the aisle, trailing her hand to my neck; gripping it tightly as her other hand slipped underneath my dress, lifting it up just enough. With two fingers, she caressed over my outer lips, moving downward as she thrust those same fingers inside of me abruptly. I groaned out quietly upon feeling them slide inside of me. “Ahhhh, shit!” “Shhhh. We wouldn’t want to wake Brian, now would we?” She questioned, looking me directly in my eyes as her grip grew tighter around my neck while her fingers pushed deeper inside of me. I shook my head just a little, leaning it back and wanting to moan out louder, while her fingers curved up into me gradually moving faster with each thrust. With her thumb, she circled over my clit slowly, bringing her face into mine and pressing her lips firmly against mine to suffocate my moans from escaping. My lips moving against hers hungrily, until my tongue probed beyond her lips to taste her tongue; sucking it into my mouth with ferocity. I allowed myself to moan into our kiss as my moan made her drive her fingers inside of me harder. “Fuuuuck!” I growled against her lips, sucking her tongue even harder now; grinding myself against her fingers. Michelle pulled away slightly, staring into my face with the ultimate lust written across her own. “You’re so fucking wet, Sunny… I wanna fuck the shit out of you.” Her words only made me wetter, as I was so sexually frustrated, I didn’t even care at this point if Brian heard or not. I wanted her to bring me to the brink of an orgasm and let it spill over onto her fingers that were inside my tight pussy. She pulled her fingers out quickly, leaving me wanting more, much much more. Pulling me up by my neck from the seat, she moved me from the outside of it to toss me down onto it. Moving to situate herself between my legs, she began unbuttoning the jacket to her suit, shrugging out of it and letting it fall to the floor. Joining her jacket on the floor now, she sat on her knees between my spread legs. She used her hands to spread them further apart, dipping her head down to let her tongue lick up and down my lips before penetrating through them to find my clit. Her warm and wet tongue pressed flatly against it as she drug it from top to bottom, sliding inside of me to taste me for herself. “Mmmm…” she moaned out quietly, letting her tongue dip in and out of me perfectly, keeping it straight and flat. I gasped as the tip of her tongue curved up and ran over my g-spot, once she got that reaction out of me, she kept it up. It was a struggle to contain the moans that wanted so badly to be freed in the worst way from my lips. She looked up at me as her tongue found solace inside of me, watching my facial expressions change due to her. “Mmm, yesssss. Like that, just like that.” I encouraged, my hips rolling slowly against her mouth. She used her hands to spread my legs even further, lifting them at the same time; moving her mouth quickly against me; her tongue only seeming to go deeper and find new spots inside that I didn’t even know I had. She ran a hand up from my thigh and over my stomach until it stopped at my mouth; covering it to shield my uncontrollable moans. Biting one of her fingers that sprawled across my mouth, she groaned out in pain as she continued to bring me pleasure. Trailing her tongue out of me, she let it slide up my pussy to swirl around my clit again, closing her mouth around it as she sucked. Her entire mouth was closed around it, her tongue flicking against it fast, and then sucking on it again. The alternating between the two motions had me arching my back and pointing my toes out, while I helped hold my own legs open. Michelle used this as an advantage to make use of her other hand now– sliding two fingers roughly inside of my wet opening. Quickly they moved in and out of me, sounds of how wet I was being heard now as she groaned into my pussy. “Mmmmm!” I muffled into her hand loudly, bucking hard against her face and fingers. I rolled my hips counter clockwise, loving the way her fingers moved inside of me as she began to twist them around while pushing deeper into me. I closed my eyes tightly, letting the sensations her tongue brought on against my clit completely encompass me, wanting to ride her face so badly. “Open your eyes!” Michelle demanded just above a whisper as she pulled her mouth away from my clit, long enough to say that. My eyes shot open quickly as I looked down between my legs to watch her in action. Watching her fingers work my pussy was doing more for me than imaginable; I was on the verge of a long overdue orgasm and she could feel it. I could feel it. My pussy gripped at her fingers, making it harder for her to pull out of me as fast as she was, but she went against the grain regardless. My walls throbbed over her, as her tongue continued to circle my clit and flick against it roughly. “YESSSSS! Oh my fucking God! Yesssss! Fuck me!” I screamed out, some of it slipping past the cracks her fingers formed over my mouth. I rocked my pussy against her harder, tossing my head backwards and making her have to slam her hand against my mouth again. She forced her fingers in and out of me continuously, twisting them around and around as she did. “FUUUUUUCK!” I shouted, following it with endless moans as I came all over her two fingers, her tongue not giving up just yet and making me cum harder. Michelle grinned up at me, pecking my swollen clit lightly before pulling her mouth away. She continued to stroke inside of me with her fingers, glancing down at how wet they were every time she pulled them out. “Mmm, you see that?” she asked as she pulled her fingers out slowly and held them up for me to see. They were soaked down to her knuckles from me. “You wanna taste?” She removed her hand from my mouth as my chest heaved up and down quickly, my breathing still off. “Yes…” I slightly moaned. She ran her fingers over my lips slowly, leaving traces of my juices there before pushing past my lips and into my mouth, me sucking her fingers clean. Michelle moaned as she watched, biting her lip afterwards. “I want your ass in my face and your pussy in my mouth… again.” She said suddenly, making my eyes widen slightly at her brass words. “Again?” I asked, gulping quietly. “Again.” She repeated seductively. “Get up and turn around, putting that ass in my face.” Michelle backed up enough for me to do so, as I stood from the seat and turned around; grabbing my dress and pulling it up further to let it sit right up under my breasts. On my knees in the seat, I poked my ass out before her as I gripped the headrest to the seat tightly. Michelle stuck her tongue out and let it drag from my clit to my ass, her tongue slippery against me. “Ooooooh, shit!” I groaned, biting into the leather seat, leaving my teeth imprint there. She spread my cheeks, licking between them and then running her tongue down from my crack to dip repeatedly inside of my pussy before cascading down to my clit. She buried her face there, sucking on it softly, letting her tongue slide up and down it while tickling the tip. Moaning as she did this, she brought her hand up and slid one finger inside of my dripping pussy, before inserting another and then yet another. “Yesssssss!” I hissed out low, pushing back into her, forcing her fingers into me deeper. “Deeper, Michelle.” I begged her. “No, not yet.” She teased with her words as well as her fingers as she pulled them back out some, letting the three of them enter in and out of me with tempting ease. It was driving me crazy, how slowly she was entering me, how perfectly the three of them fit inside of me. Her tongue was doing damage against my clit, circling it ever so lightly, tickling my clit and sending chills up and back down my spine. “Yes! I need it! Fuck me… please.” I whined, moaning out for her. I wanted her so deep inside of me, feeling her fingers twisting around inside. “Shhhh.” she said against my clit, the breath that released with it, tingling me to my core. “Ahhh, shiiiit.” I relaxed some, my back still arched as I began rolling my hips again, pushing my pussy further into her face. I began to bounce along with it, as she now penetrated me deeper and deeper each time. With her tongue, she began to spell things out against my clit, some letters sending me damn near over the edge. Her fingers twisted quickly inside of me, pulling out and leaving me panting before slamming back inside of me. Twice, I had almost came for her from the teasing she was doing, but I loved it. “Fuck my face.” Michelle said as she pulled her lips away from my clit. Removing her fingers as well, she replaced them with her tongue and the minute I felt it enter me from behind, I threw my ass back on her. Michelle smacked my ass hard, causing it to jiggle over her face, before grabbing my cheeks roughly in her hands and squeezing. “AHH! Fuck yes! I wanna cum, I wanna cum..” I moaned loudly, no longer giving a single fuck if anyone on board heard, Brian included. “Oh my.. GOD!” I screamed out, fucking her tongue harder. Michelle slapped her hand down against my ass again, the sensation sending me into a crazy orgasm. Rolling my hips violently, I pulled her tongue in and out of me, slamming back down against her face hard as I came. “I’M CUMMING! Fuuuuck! Swallow meeeee! UGH!” I moaned out repeatedly, thrusting my pussy down onto her tongue over and over again, as she curved it upward while I did that. Her tongue slid over my spot, only sending me into another orgasm while my current one still went on. I gripped the seat tighter in my hands, looking over my shoulder as I could barely see her face that was buried between my legs. “Mmmm!” Michelle moaned, swallowing me and pushing her tongue in and out of me wildly, squeezing my cheeks harder. “Oh God, oh Godddddd!” I whined out loudly, screaming as another orgasm took over me. My face pressed against the seat as I became paralyzed from my orgasm, rolling my hips lightly now; biting into the seat to suppress my screams that still flowed out. “Fuck, Michelle…” I moaned, falling into the seat now, my breathing irregular and fast. “Tell me about it.” She said quietly as she pulled back from me, kissing each one of my ass cheeks. I glanced back at her from over my shoulder as she wore a devious grin. Pulling myself up by holding onto the seat, I stepped carefully over the armrest to the middle of the aisle, fixing my dress down around me now. “What have you done to me?” I asked through a half chuckle, still partially breathless. “The question is what have you done to me? Giving me something I can’t have on the regular..” she said as her voice gave way to disappointment. “Who says?” I asked seriously. “Oh?” She said as she stood up from her knees, grabbing her jacket up with her. “Seal it with a kiss.” Pulling me in close to her, she collapsed her lips against mine, kissing my bottom lip as I sucked on her full top lip. We both pulled away from the kiss gradually and at the same time, smirking at one another. “You’re bad for me.” “You’re good for me.” She countered as she raised an eyebrow. I giggled, pulling her by her hand, leading us now back out to the front, as we both took our original seats as if nothing happened. Sitting down next to Brian, I found that he was still sound asleep, as I relaxed back into mine; sighing of relief. Looking across the way at Michelle who shot me a wink, making my pussy throb for her touch again. I eventually fell into a brief sleep, until I was woken up by Brian shaking my shoulder lightly and letting me know that we had landed. Michelle had taken off before us as I groggily tried to wake up. Brian laughed at me as he helped me up, gathering our items from above our seats and holding it in his two hands. “How did you sleep?” I asked through a yawn. “Good. I would ask you the same, but I already know the answer to that question.” Brian stated so matter of factly. Instantly my face turned beat red, as I looked over at him. “What do you mean?” I asked, as my eyebrows met together in the middle, trying to play out confusion. He pushed against my back, signaling for me to exit the jet now, as he leaned into my ear on our way out. “Let’s just say, I heard everything.” I stopped dead in my tracks, apprehensive on what to say next. “Everything?” was all I managed to get out. “Everything. And next time, I want in.” Brian stated with a smirk, as he ushered me down the stairs. When we approached Michelle, my heart was beating loudly in my chest, I was surprised she couldn’t hear it. How would I tell her that her wish would be granted sooner than we both had imagined, only it wouldn’t be a twosome the next time.

Author | Kierra Posted | September 2012

[mentalbreakout]

stef watches endgame

one year ago i watched Infinity War and screamed about it, now i shall scream about endgame

screaming under the cut bc, spoilers

SO

OK

the show opens

IN THE WORST WAY BC CLINT LOSES HIS FAMILY

WHAT THE FUCK 

from happy family picnic to fucking tragedy in 6.5 

THEN we have Tony, and i’m so glad he got rescued and that he and Nebula managed to form some kind of relationship playing paper football and sharing food and yeah it was great

but oh god tony u poor broken man 

THEN THEY GO FIND THANOS AND HE DESTROYED THE STONES??? WHAT THE FUCK ok i did not expect that wtf i was like SHIT WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN

scott getting out bc of a rat is the true example of a million and one chance it’s fucking hilarious but also so glad Cassie didn’t get snapped and they were able to reunite

ok so

TIME TRAVEL???????? DID NOT SEE THAT COMING AT ALL am i an idiot or did marvel rly keep it down low idk but WEW

tony’s family. god bless. morgan u are an angel. 10/10 cutie patootie

thor being a fat fratboy was weird but also excellent comic relief 

the whole time travelling thing was nuts but it was also really cool because like, massive nostalgia moment u feel? like going back to New York and the very first Avengers movie, back to the Dark World era, seeing all these characters that we never thought we’d see again - like, it was funny, and painful, but also just so good

Hail Hydra?? America’s ass?? Eat a salad?? iconic 

DID NOT SEE THE WHOLE NEBULA SWAPEROO HAPPENING so good one marvel u should have heard me screaming like nani the fuckery 

ok but CLINT AND NATASHA FUCKING HELL from the moment i realised they were going to get the soul stone i knew it would end badly and i desperately hoped they would find a way to game the system and both come back but oh you are a hero and a queen, Natasha Romanoff goddamn it

i love the platonic love in that scene, between Clint and Nat - i remember being ??? in Ultron bc I shipped them, but in the end I’m also really glad that they were given this beautiful friendship 

THEN OK 

back to present day

snap everyone is back

BUT NOW THANOS FROM THE PAST IS HERE AND HE’S GONNA KILL EVERYONE BC HE SEES THAT KILLING HALF ISN’T GONNA WORK so

cue giant spaceship cue madness cue fighting and me being TERRIFIED 

but also amazing badassery like CAP AND MJOLNIR?? all the way from the intro to Ultron my dudes holy shit did not see it coming was absolutely ecstatic to see it

and that incredible, amazing Avengers Assemble scene - thank you, MCU, for giving me such an incredibly epic scene, with everyone back and ready to fight, forces of good against the forces of evil, truly, truly, it was amazing, and it was fucking amazing

peter and tony reuniting? bless my soul

captain marvel obliterating the spaceship, hell yes

scarlet witch going after thanos??? hell to the yes

the avengers playing run-relay with the gauntlet??? yes

that epic scene where captain marvel gets the gauntlet and all the women come to help her make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands? i have been looking forward to that scene for YEARS it is iconic hashtag yas hashtag QUEENS

captain marvel being thanos’ superior in combat? YES

but, god, the ending - truly, they were able to find that one happy ending, and dear God, i cried 

rest in peace, tony stark. you’re a true hero.

i’m also so glad Cap was able to go back and live the life he should have had - coming home from war to his best girl, marrying her, and them living happily together as they should have <3

all in all, everyone’s at peace, and i’m so grateful

it was truly amazing, this movie - i feel a genuine sense of joy and closure, after following MCU on-and-off for the last 10+ years, and i think, ultimately, this was a satisfying, happy ending. 

Iron-Man came out in 2008 when I was twelve, and now, in 2019, I’m twenty-three and I’ve grown up along with the Avengers and their adventures - it’s truly been joyful, and i’m grateful. 

[queen-scribbles]

Complete Confidence

for @pillarspromptsweekly 82: March Forth. Had some fun with Keya and various associated OCs. Some of whom I now love entirely too much for them not existing before I wrote this.

Things were usually quiet at Caed Nua when the Watcher was gone. Sure, there would be the occasional attempt by bandits thinking they were weaker with their Lady gone. (They quickly found out otherwise) Or oozes and trolls would emerge from below, or a petitioner would take issue with seeing Watcher Illani’s representative rather than the woman in charge herself. (Especially when they learned her representative was an orlan.) 

Keya was well-accustomed to dealing with all of it. And she didn’t mind a little excitement, but she was also perfectly happy when things stayed calm. Boring to use her friend and employer’s word. This occasion--the longest Tavi had ever gone on one of her Dyrford trips--appeared to be following the pattern. One irate delegate who didn’t wish to deal with a “cat fucker”(she had to stop Ioan from punching the man in the jaw as he escorted him out), but otherwise things were humming along like normal.

Until one of the guards returned from patrol with reports of drake activity and xaurips tracks near the soutern edge of Caed Nua’s territory

“How sure are you, Caitha?” Keya asked, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. Tavi was going to be in Dyrford another three weeks, at least. If there was really a drake--especially one with a cult following it--in their territory, it couldn’t wait for her return. They’d need to deal with it now, before they attacked the fortress.

Caitha shrugged apologetically, smoothing a lock of nut brown hair back toward her bun. “I saw the xaurip tracks and, uh, drake leavings m’self, boss.”

“Damn,” Keya said with a sigh. She looped one of her narrow braids around her index finger and tugged it hard, forcibly resisting the urge  to chew on it as she thought. “How fresh?”

“A week old at most.” Caitha shifting uneasily. “It looked like a lot of xaurips,”

Well, that fucking clinched it. Keya let go of the braid to instead massage her temples. Illani owes me big time for dealing with this shit. “D’you think, before you go off duty, you could show a couple of the scouts--maybe Gjyra and Caed--where you saw it? On a map, I mean. See if they can track it, find either the drake’s roost or the xaurips’ camp. Better we take the fight there than let it decide to come here.”

Caitha nodded. “Sure thing. They in the barracks?”

“Dining hall, last I saw ‘em,” Keya replied, nodding her gratitude.  “Dismissed.”

Caitha thumped a fist to her chest and inclined her head slightly--”Boss”--before heading that direction. 

Keya waited until she was gone to drag one hand down her face and let her shoulders slump. She’d never hoped for one of the keep’s soldiers to be mistaken about something before, but fighting a drake would not be fun.

She would much rather things stay boring.

~~<>~~

Unfortunately, that was not to be.

Gjyra and Caed dutifully set off for the location Caitha marked. They returned, muddy and just a little bruised, almost a week later and corroborated Caitha’s report; there was a drake with a substantial xaurip clan worshiping it not quite two days out from Caed Nua. 

Keya gave herself all of five seconds to process and mentally grouse before reminding herself At least it’s only one, and heading for the barracks. She needed a team big enough to safely deal with the problem without leaving Caed Nua vulnerable while they were gone. Given what Gjyra had reported about the xaurip numbers(big enough clan for three high priests), things could get ugly real fast if they were under-prepared.

Ten seemed safe. For a single drake and a xaurip clan, ten was probably enough to handle them without risking the fortress’ safety. Caitha and Ioan both promptly volunteered as soon as she made her plans known.

“You know this won’t be easy, I hope,” Keya felt obligated to point out. Caitha nodded and Ioan smirked.

“Why d’you think I wanna come?” he shot back. “This is a threat you’ll actually let me hit.”

Keya rolled her eyes and sighed in fond exasperation. “One disgruntled bastard does not equal a threat. Didn’t want you causin’ a diplomatic incident with a fuckin’ lord over an insult I’ve all but gone numb to. Though your loyalty is noted and deeply appreciated. Try not to let it get you killed, huh?”

“Do m’best, but I can’t promise anything,” Ioan winked. 

“Bastard,” Keya grumbled, but couldn’t resist a smile. “Go get ready.”

“Yes, boss.” He saluted and darted for the barracks.

Caitha shook her head as she followed. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t forget anything important. Like his head. Or common sense.”

Keya laughed. “Thanks. Second of those might be a losin’ battle. His type ain’t big on common sense.”

Caitha stopped and raised an eyebrow. “His type? Do you mean elves or barbarians?”

Keya snorted. “Given who our real boss is and what she’s like, I’m tempted to say elves. But I was referrin’ to barbarians.”

“On that I’ll agree with you. Still, I’ll do my best.” Caitha resumed course for the barracks, and Keya headed for her quarters to gather her gear and check her armor.

~~<>~~

It took into the following day for them to be ready, but there were still plenty of daylight hours for them to get underway and make some good progress. And so, mid-morning, Keya led her small army(all volunteers; this was a dangerous task) forth from Caed Nua in hopes of dealing with this drake as quickly as possible so they could get home. 

They were a handful to wrangle; Ioan was not the only hothead with dreams of killing a dragon who volunteered. The bickering was largely tolerable, but she did have to issue some scoldings when things edged toward too heated. The weather was fair, however--typical of Early Summer, and they made good time down the road.

“How well organized did the xaurips seem?” Keya asked Caed and Gjyra as they walked.

“They’re xaurips, boss,” Caed said with a shrug. “This lot didn’t seem any more intelligent or stupid than average. There were a lot of them, though.” He scratched behind one ear. “Gjyra told you about-”

“The multiple priests, yes,” Keya nodded. “That’s what has me worried, they don’t usually share well. They’re pretty clannish and territorial, so for these three to merge and share one drake as their deity is unusual.” She chewed on the end of a braid in thought. “Did it seem like one of the priests was more important? Bigger headdress, more bone necklaces, or whatever? Like that clan maybe overpowered and absorbed the others?”

Caed shook his head. “They seemed pretty equal to me. One big happy family.”

Keya snorted at his wry tone. “Great. This will just be so much fun.”

“Some of ‘em definitely think so,” Caed commented with a laugh. “I think I heard Ioan and Ambili debating whether to hang the skull in the barracks or in the dining hall.”

She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t really blame them for their excitement. “Bold of them to assume they get a say. The Watcher’s the one who gets to pick, it bein’ her damn keep an’ all. She might take a suggestion from whoever kills it, but it’s her call in the end if she even wants it displayed.”

“Try telling them that.”

“Oh, I will. They don’t scare me. I need to address everyone tonight when we make camp anyway.” Keya skirted a mud puddle and almost ran into the lanky scout. ”I’ll just be real clear about what’s happening to the drake once it’s blazin’ dead.”

~~<>~~

There was some grumbling, as expected, when Keya relayed the reminder that night. But they all knew two things: she was correct, and the Watcher was generally laid back and open-minded when it came to Caed Nua’s decoration. So whoever killed the drake had a decent shot at the skull hanging where they wanted.

Following Caed and Gjyra’s guidance and Keya’s leadership, they made it within an hour’s march of the drake’s lair by the time they needed to camp again. Keya took the first watch along with Ioan, and was sorely tempted to murder him within the first hour, as his impatience and eagerness made him far too restless to sit still. 

“You keep fidgetin’ like that an’ I’ll use you as xaurip bait tomorrow,” she finally warned.

“Sorry. This is prob’ly the closest I’ll ever get to fightin’ a full dragon, and I guess I’m already excited about it.” He didn’t sound more than half-apologetic.

Oh, so many ways to respond to that. Keya doodled in the dirt with the toe of her boot as she picked one. “Longtime dream of yours, I take it?”

Ioan scoffed quietly. “Goin’ on eighty years.”

Keya snorted at the deadpan reminder of how long his race lived. He’d been dreaming of slaying dragons more than twice as long as she’d been alive. “Oh, is that all?”

He laughed, a little too loud, and caught himself when a sleepy oath issued from a nearby tent. “We could wait a few decades, let this beast mature into a full dragon, would that do?”

“It’s going to be a hard enough fight as a drake,” Keya groaned. “Let’s not. Especially since this one has a not-so-little cult. I’ve fought a drake before, with Tavi. Lemme tell ya, Ioan, they don’t go down easy.”

Ioan grinned, teeth flashing in the firelight. “Good thing we don’t either, ay?”

She admired his confidence, untested as it may have been. “I sure hope so.”

“C’mon, with you leadin’ us”--he nudged her with his elbow--”thing doesn’t have an ember’s chance in the White March.”

“Thanks.” Keya sighed, absently pinching the bridge of her nose. “Hope that’s enough. Sometimes numbers trump leadership, and there’s apparently a lot of xaurips.”

“Course it will be. We’ve got you and you’ve got me,” Ioan said playfully, spreading his hands in a mock-aggrandizing gesture.

Keya shot him a flat look. “We can slay them with your ego, is that what you’re saying?”

“Confidence, boss, not ego,” he corrected. “Complete and utter confidence.”

“Whatever lets you sleep at night,” she chuckled, and they lapsed into silence for the rest of their watch. Still, his encouragement and confidence warmed her.

~~<>~~

That warmth lingered all the way through the night and the next morning’s journey to the drake cave. Given the difficulty she’d had in the beginning getting some of the soldiers to take orders from an orlan, their willingness to follow her now was gratifying. (Though, to his credit, whatever flaws he had, Ioan had never been a problem in that regard) It dimmed slightly as they found actual xaurip tracks to follow, and she had a visual for how many Caed and Gjyra had meant by ‘a lot’.

As they stood outside the cave, she issued her final instructions. “Alright, Garet, Ambili, keep the drake’s attention while the rest of us take care of the xaurips. Then we’ll help you finish it off.” She saw the protest rising in Ioan’s eyes and spoke before he could. “You’re better use fightin’ crowds and you know it. Kill ‘em fast and you can have at the drake.”

He did know it, but Keya was sure Ambili’s smirk was still hard to ignore. “Yes, boss.”

She reached up and clapped a hand to his arm high as she could reach.  “Just thin the numbers some and you can switch focus.” She waited until he nodded to continue. “Caitha, Caed, you’re support. Keep back, bolster those who need it, but don’t get reckless. Everyone else, fight smart as well as hard.”

All of them nodded understanding, and in they went.

~~<>~~

It was a grueling fight. Keya hadn’t expected otherwise, of course, but anticipation and experience were two different animals. And grueling felt like a good word for a fight that claimed two of her men and injured damn near everyone else to some degree.

By the time she got the killing blow on the drake, it felt like vengeance for the lost as much as duty to protect Caed Nua’s territory. Still, for their odds, they’d come out rather well and she knew it. Especially since Caitha and Caed--the other two with healer’s expertise--escaped relatively unscathed, thank the gods. She didn’t have to do all the patching up by herself--

“Ow!” Ioan flinched and Keya pulled herself back to the task at hand with a self-recriminating wince.

“Sorry,” she said, loosening the bandages she’d pulled too tight.

“I know you like to joke about me havin’ a big head, boss, but I don’t think that’s the way to fix it,” he said dryly. He shot her a lopsided grin, the bandages over his left eye preventing its full spread.

Keya rolled her eyes. “At least you still have your sense of humor. Hylea forbid you lose that.”

She felt the shiver as he repressed a snort. “Gods, don’t make me laugh right now.”

“Sorry.” Keya glanced over toward where Caed was stitching a long gash down Ambili’s arm, and then back at Ioan. With him seated and her standing, they were roughly eye to eye, so she could meet his gaze as she added, “also sorry for stealin’ your dream.”

“What, ‘cause you vaulted off my shoulder to kill the damn thing?” Ioan asked, amused. “Why would you need to apologize for that? It was blazin’ badass.  ‘Sides, I still got to fight a drake, and this”--he lightly tapped the bandages--”is gonna make one Hel of a scar. That’s memento enough for me.” He rubbed at a bruise on his forearm. “An’ speaking of mementos, whatcha plannin’ to do with the drake skull?”

Keya smirked. “Keep in in my room so you bastards don’t fight over it. At least for now. Maybe when Tavi gets back I’ll talk to her about hangin’ it somewhere more visible.” She tied off the bandages and stepped back to survey her work, shooting Ioan a wink as she did. “You can come look at it whenever y’ want, though.”

“In your room? People really will talk, boss,” he deadpanned.

“Eh, let ‘em.” She wiped healing salve and blood off her hands with a rag, frowned at the clinging remnants in her fur. She’d have to scrub hard later.  “They’ve been talkin’ since the first time you were unruffled by havin’ an orlan in charge.  ‘Less it bothers you,” she amended.

“Nah.” Ioan shook his head and winked at her with his good eye. “Okay, gods, that was weird. But we know the truth.”

“True.” She gave him one last look to ensure he wasn’t bleeding through and the bandages looked secure. “There. You’ll live to fight another another day.”

“What a relief. I knew I was in good hands.”

Keya rolled her eyes at the teasing praise  “Get your shit together. You an’ Ambili were the last ones who needed to be patched up, and looks like Caed’s almost done with her.”

Ioan saluted off his good side with a playful ”Yes, boss,” and pushed to his feet.

Keya waited until he’d walked off to clean up the healer’s paraphernalia and start packing her things. It was going to be a long walk back to Caed Nua, made longer by injury, hauling the drake skull, and her own regret at the lives lost. She’d had men under her die before, once, and it never got any easier. Their losses keep this from feeling like a victory, but at least they’d succeeded at their goal and the drake was no longer a threat.

It took the entire journey home to convince herself that was a tolerable trade, despite Caitha’s reassurances and Ioan’s darkly-humored attempts to lift her spirits. If this was excitement, Keya reiterated to herself, she would definitely rather things had stayed boring. But at least she had good people around, who she was confident could help her through.

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

So in writing this I learned that Keya is not ‘M’lady’ or ‘Captain’ or anything else when she’s in charge. She’s just ‘Boss’, as both a title and a nickname. I feel like this has roots in her Deadfire/Explorer background; maybe she worked for someone who went by ‘Boss’, but she’s still being vague on those details.

Ioan(Ewan) and Caitha are her right hand people, just like she is for Tavi. They were the only one who never seemed to have any issue listening to an orlan, so she trusts them the most and they’re friends as well as underlings. So they banter, and she and Ioan trash-talk each other on occasion(Caitha’s more reserved, but she’s gotten some good verbal jabs in a coupe times).