#this was supposed to be a simple request from twitter

[yanderestarangel]

So I saw a MSFW picture of Miguel and I had an idea.

Stepfather Miguel x FTM reader. The plot is that stepfather Miguel has been possessive and obsessed with his ftm stepson and the stepson actually enjoyed the older man’s attention.

The main smexy part is that Miguel asks his stepson to give him a pink desert. The reader thought Miguel meant a cake until Miguel pushes him on the kitchen counter and starts eating out his pussy (the pink desert was the readers cunt.)

- 🍒 anon. (You don’t have to do this request if it makes you uncomfortable! Love your works.)

TW: SMUT, EAT OUT, DIRTY THOUGHTS, CHUBBY/DAD BODY MIGUEL, FTM READER, BRAIN ROT, HANDJOB, STEPFATHER X STEPSON.

I think it's cute when anons use emojis to identify themselves (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)⁠✧⁠*⁠。

art credit @/marmar0u on twitter (X)

Miguel was a man of forty-three years old, with a poorly groomed beard and some white hair in his locks ─ despite his tall stature he already had a "dad body" physique with a protruding tummy and some rough muscles in his arms and thighs... And now he had entered your family. You didn't like the idea of ​​having a stepfather at first, but what was supposed to be a bad relationship became like a balm for your stressful days.

It was common for the older man to spoil you with expensive gifts like perfumes, clothes and everything you asked for or wanted; your desires were his desires too. Honestly, it seemed like he was more attached to you than his own wife. Miguel protected you from everyone who tried to go against you and you could always count on his soft lap and good hugs at the end of the day. Your stepfather loved having you in his arms, close to him... In his control.

It was obvious to outsiders that Miguel was a man obsessed with you, possessive and jealous. No man or woman could come close to his beloved stepson ─ he used manipulation, threats and even money to keep you all to himself, especially being the only father figure you had in your life. Bringing you close to him with praise for every little thing you did wasn't difficult, especially when you cooked for him.

In the distorted head of your dear stepfather, every dish made for him was a preparation for you to be his little husband one day, perhaps when he would have enough courage to ask for a divorce from your mother; but until then he liked to have control of his body and mind.

── That was supposed to be an ordinary night, the warm afternoon gloom still hung in the air as you walked around the house to prepare dinner since your mother had gone out to visit some of your relatives. You obviously preferred to stay in the company of your stepfather Miguel, who was drinking some beer in the living room armchair and watching every move you made around the kitchen.

He had controlled himself a lot in the last few days and gave you more personal space than he should have, making you even meet new people. Jealousy consumed every fiber of the tanned man's being, leading him to have a simple idea to put you in your place.

"You know boy, I wanted you to make a pink dessert would you give me?" His voice came out hoarse as you watched the older man stand up to his full height, as you saw him smirk mischievously, his adam's apple bobbed visibly, desire pooling in his voice.

You initially agreed innocently, already getting ready to get the ingredients and make a strawberry cake, but soon you felt thick calloused hands on your wrists as he bent you under the cold marble counter and pulled down your shorts along with your underwear ── exposing the pink flesh of your pussy, while you felt his breath mixed with expensive drink. Miguel savored the sight of your exposed little cunt, his hunger growing with each passing second. He lowered his head further, capturing your clitoris between his lips and flicking it gently with his tongue.

"Oh, you taste delicious mi hijo," he moaned against your flesh, suckling and nibbling at your sensitive bud. His hands gripped your thighs harder, spreading you wide open for his pleasure. He paused momentarily, admiring the pink folds of your sex before delving back in, eager to explore every inch of you. His tongue darted inside, teasing and probing, causing your hips to buck deliciously.

"I could eat you out all night, boy... Does it feel good? Is this what you wanted, baby boy?" His fingers dug gently into your thighs, seeking permission with his gaze. As you nodded regardless of whether it is right or wrong he dove back in, licking and sucking your clit with renewed vigor, savoring the taste of you. His tongue danced around, teasing your folds and driving you further into pleasure.

He growled low in his throat, responding to the dominance behind your request. His fingers bit into your flesh harder, claiming ownership as he devoured your pussy. Each thrust of his tongue was a claim, each suckle a promise. An intense heat surged between us, fueling the connection and burning brighter with every pass.

He thrust blindly, driven by a newfound ferocity. The sweetest sound escaped your mouth-your pleas for 'papi'-and he used it to feed his hunger. His free hand reached for his erection, stroking it through his boxers ─ "So you enjoy being ravaged by your papi, mi pequeño?" Miguel purred, his grip on his cock tightening as he watched your reaction.

Each stroke matched the rhythm of his tongue, mirroring the passion between you both.

Every time he swirled it around your clit, his shaft leapt in his hand, pulsating in sync. His tongue lashed at your most sensitive spots, eliciting fresh moans from deep within you.

The combination of stimulation left you gasping under his careful touch; Miguel was determined to send you high... A desperate need to please, to dominate, consumed him entirely. His beard scraped against your skin with each frantic movement, adding another layer to the sensations engulfing you.

His tongue lashed at your clit, twirling it one last time to push you over the edge. His hand pumped furiously, matching the intensity of your release. Watching you climax drove him wild, a surge of pure hunger coursing through him. He pulled away reluctantly, leaving your pussy wet and quivering from the attention. With a final, satisfied stroke, he came undone, splattering onto his stomach. A growl resonated in the air as he relished the view of your satisfaction.

His chest rose and fell heavily, his gaze locked on your flushed face. Victory and possession painted across his features, a silent declaration of his newfound control. Your stepfather leaned down to kiss your dripping slit, a quiet congratulations for reaching a peak only he could provide.

"Next time, it'll be my turn mi hijo... Thanks for the dessert."

[princesspetticoat]

The Muse of Her Ruin

Artist Modern AU: Chapter 1/? — Caramel

Summary:

Los Angeles was supposed to be your perfect canvas, but the struggle to make it leaves you feeling burnt out – until Agatha Harkness paints you into her world.

In her hands, you’re more than an artist, and she knows exactly how to mold you into her newest masterpiece.

Tags:

agatha!reader, age gap, mommy kink, slow burn, mean!agatha, possessive!agatha, AU: Art world of Los Angeles, portrait of a witch on fire, reader is babygirl, the witch wears prada, sugar mommy vibes, slight Rio/reader but only to make Agatha jealous, agatha can’t beat the AI allegations, dacryphilia, eventual smut, angst, MDLG, bratty bottom, BDSM, praise kink, degradation, strap-ons, anal, dub con, slight piss kink, squirting, power dynamics, possible memory loss and magic maybe idk, kitten play, electrostimulation, humiliation, overstimulation, exhibitionism for the art, let the bodies hit the floor, more tags later because i’m sure i’ll find something else to be foul about

Links: Twitter | AO3

Chapter 1: Caramel

It isn’t the first time a beautiful woman has stopped you in your doom scrolling on the internet. You’ve had your share of rabbit-holing through Instagram profiles, tagged photos, your finger hovering over the DM button with a wave of confidence that only comes when you’ve had a drink or two in your system.

But this woman, this one comes with an extension of discovery.

Just by googling her name, a thousand articles pop up. Art piece installations cascade every website, timeline, and city cultural journal. Jesus, then the red carpet photos multiply as the SEO of your web browser catches on to your sudden enthrall of dark brown hair and piercing blue eyes.

Oh, and the hashtags. #WitchyArt #HarknessAndDesire #CursedCanvas. Layers of art plummet before you, most requesting to select if you’d like to view the art or not because of its lewd nature, violating community guidelines.

#AgathaHarknessUnveiled

A public invitation to forbiddenness. You’re intrigued.

Then more pictures of her show up, next to her work, her models, famous celebrities that you never knew were part of the same circle. You realize you’ve been following her art closely for years, and had even gone to one of her art installations at the LACMA a couple years back.

She has no social media and you quickly piece together why you haven’t been able to put a face to the name until now. The Agatha Harkness.

You curse yourself for living and breathing on Instagram, reading little excerpts about her pieces here and there, never proceeding past searching her name up one single time after seeing her most famous artwork grace the official Broad Museum verified account:

The Unbound: Agatha Harkness - A Palette of Desire contemporary collection of ‘22.

Ask AI or Search: Agatha Harkness

…

However, you were met with the reflection of: ‘⚠️ zero search results found’ staring back at you on your phone screen, and that was that.

Now, you pull open your ‘Painting Inspo’ Pinterest board to see a piece of hers pinned neatly between other modern art you admire. The pin is plainly titled and paired with a now-purple hyperlink to an article, with one of the most commanding portraits of her in a suit, standing sharply next to her work.

It had all been right there, connected, laid out before you. You scold yourself again. You could’ve been in this woman’s circle the moment you moved to Los Angeles. Only now she’s magically moved from your subconscious to reality.

All it took was a simple Google search to be completely floored.

Right place, right time, you think, as it were. Originally, you were filtering through junior-level marketing positions, revamping your resume for the umpteenth time. Waitressing just wasn’t cutting it anymore, you needed a big girl job. Even if you didn’t have the experience.

And, to be honest, people really do act like that in Los Angeles. Customer service is nothing short of unbearable.

You’d huffed and slammed your laptop, tired of the almost-hour it took to submit one clean job application, flopped on your bed, and began the inevitable doom scroll.

And there she was, in all her glory. Featured in one major headline that caught your eye (apart from every photo ever of her maddeningly hypnotizing smile).

Grand Opening of the Harkness Collection, March 2025 — DTLA, Seeking Social Media Manager Position.

You could do it, you think.

The link to apply for the position already looks infinitely better than the bland, morose copy/paste templates thrown around every typical job website like a hot potato.

This just might get your foot in the door.

You’ve painted your whole life, always the kid doodling in the corner of your notebooks in class. You’ve done your fair share of moronically smacking people with your big art portfolio at the end of each year in high school when you rounded corners.

Art school in Portland had its ups and downs. Your father used every last penny he had to see your dreams come true, and your mother hated you for it. Blamed you, even, for sucking his wallet dry. But it was of his own accord to pay for tuition, and you had nothing else to show for it. You had a real talent.

At least, that’s what Mrs. Montgomery had told you.

Your art teacher for grades 11-12 was someone who was stern but had a mother’s touch. You really only knew the stern part back home, and then some, after the divorce.

But Mrs. Montgomery not only put you on a pedestal, she really critiqued you. She actually pushed you, improved your skills and adorned her Letter of Recommendation to your chosen college with accolades of admiration you couldn’t possibly achieve from your own mother.

If it wasn’t obvious already, you were completely smitten. And you know what else? You could trust her as far as you could throw her.

The after school meetings, the one-on-one sessions after class to help finish up an end of the year project. Anything to get a sliver of praise. Anything to prevent the bus ride home.

After college, though, you moved to Los Angeles in hopes of joining a gallery or an art community. You got sucked into the limelight, the overbearing and overwhelming nature of the city of angels. Everyone seemingly looks better than you, doing more than you, everyone trying to prove themselves somewhere. Nothing felt real.

You felt like a failure.

Email threads to galleries went stale and not to mention renting out studios could carve a hole into your credit card. It’s been three whole years since moving here after college, stuck in the same job you started with. The only real friend you made was from college, Oliver, who really was the one who dragged you out to California in the first place.

One friend, one lame job, one-room studio apartment, and no art to show for it. You start to think that this dream was meant to fizzle out and you’re supposed to become another cog in the wheel of Capitalism just like everybody else.

Whatever. You craft a partially-truthful resume, and an overzealous cover letter.

Somewhere in there you lie about managing a social media page for a cafe that doesn’t exist, and that you’ve worked with a few semi-recognizable artists in the industry as their interns. Right.

But for the record, this is working for Agatha Harkness. You’ve got to make it look like you’re somebody. You imagine yourself at her side on those red carpets, getting to pick her brain about all the art she’s created. You’ll get to show her the paintings you made, she’ll praise you, you’ll blush, and you’ll fall pathetically under her spell. Fuck.

Do you want the job or do you want her?

You suppose wanting both isn’t selfish. It’s ambitious. And you’re sick of circling around a realm that’s just out of reach.

You look at the unfinished canvases stowed in the corner of your apartment, the murky ‘mystery soup’ graying in several mason jars that scatter your work area. The dried paint, the tubes of acrylics strewn about. You can’t even remember the last time you painted.

If a hot, older woman was the motivation to be the artist you were always meant to be, then fuck it. You hit ‘submit’ on the application and sigh, closing your laptop with a better feeling of finality than the first time.

You never really get your hopes up about a job position, but for the rest of the day you find yourself tapping away anxiously, your mind scattered with the possibility of Agatha Harkness, of all people, becoming your boss.

————————————

The next morning you’re disruptively awakened by the buzzing of your phone. You begrudgingly hit ‘accept’ on the unknown number and pick up the line.

“Hello?” you answer and do your best not to sound utterly corpse-like.

“Hi!” a sweet voice greets you from the other end, “my name is Jennifer Kale, calling about the social media manager position for Ms. Harkness. Is this —?”

“Yes,” you shoot up, now seated in bed and exclaim before she can even finish her sentence. “This is she.”

She goes on to tell you how impressed she was with your resume and your expert copyright. You did always have a way with words, you forget how powerful they are as a way to get you exactly what you want.

“I saw in your CV that you have your work displayed at a cafe in Echo Park, is that right?”

You tell her of the few pieces you have displayed there and how you’ve made good friends with the owner. Jen mentions she’s relayed your portfolio, website, and resume to Agatha already and your breath instantly hitches.

She then goes to say that Agatha would like to personally meet you at that cafe for an interview. Tomorrow.

You nod and stutter a quick ‘yes’ into the speaker, forgetting you were on the phone at all. Lost in the possibility — no, actuality — of meeting Agatha.

After exchanging times and contact information, the line clicks blank and all the roaring thoughts begin to pour in. The anxiety, the expectations, the thought of being examined, let alone perceived by this powerful woman.

Your stomach kind of flutters at the thought, though. Her domineering presence picking you apart until you tell her exactly what she wants…and then she’ll hire you.

The confidence you feel mixed with the sheer horror of pretending you’re more than you say you are. You hope she doesn’t see through the lies.

But then again, so many people in the world have jobs they aren’t qualified for. They don’t even know what they’re doing, especially bosses and CEOs. So you’re sure Agatha can appreciate a little ‘fake it til you make it’; particularly from someone who really wants this.

————————————

You arrive infinitely early to the interview in the car you never use since everything in Downtown LA is right outside your apartment door.

The parking was the biggest hurdle but you gave yourself ample time to prepare.

The sun beats down on you as you exit your car, despite the crisp air of the early Spring morning. You shuffle down the hill to the sprawling city strip of hipster cafes, vintage thrifts, and mom ‘n pop shops. Your favorite cafe is squished between them, a true hole in the wall.

One of your favorite baristas greets you from behind the counter when you walk in. It looks like you beat the morning rush, everyone already taken to their seats, noses pressed to their laptops in concentration.

You order your favorite iced latte and wait at the bar, albeit with impatience. The barista questions your nervousness and you lean in with excitement.

“I have an interview,” you smile.

“Here?!”

“Yes, here, well — not here here, but yeah. It’s with one of the most well known artists. She’s…fascinating.”

And you gush over her for a moment, her art, her looks, the job position, while periodically checking the clock that sits behind the espresso bar, like, every five seconds.

You notice their smile grows wider as you wrap up your story, handing you your latte. But what you don’t notice is the person who just walked in, approaching the next spot in line.

“Have a great interview,” the barista dazzles in a cheeky whisper, eyes flitting to someone behind you.

Your realization hits when you turn and your latte hits her, square in the chest.

The cold liquid clashes between you two as you bump into each other, the cap coming clean off, with bits of ice clattering to the floor.

“Oh my god I am so sorry,” you babble, reaching for napkins and grabbing a fistful from who knows where.

You scramble to wipe up the mess, avoiding eye contact as Agatha steps back to examine the huge spot now staining her crisp white shirt. She can’t even get a word in before you scurry to the bathroom.

How stupid can you possibly be?

You beat yourself up in your thoughts as you gather yourself, and, clumsily, several ice cubes that managed to fall into your bra.

With a wet paper towel you clean the coffee off your front as much as you can before taking a deep breath, fixing your hair in the mirror and hoping when you step out of the bathroom, she’ll still be there waiting for you.

The bathroom door teeters and squeaks awkwardly as you push it open. You survey the cafe lobby and find Agatha opening a notebook and pulling out papers, and your resume.

You don’t think she realized you’re the one she’s supposed to interview. And you can’t even weigh what scenario would be more embarrassing.

You slide into the chair across from her, snaking your bag down to the floor and pulling out your own resume copy. You notice her blouse is completely drink-free and it catches you off guard. The coffee stains on your shirt are terribly evident despite your efforts in cleaning yourself up.

“You should’ve written your name as Caramel at the top of your resume,” she states while still looking down at the paper. Oh, of course she knows it’s you.

Looking down at yourself you realize there’s a streak of caramel syrup dripping down your cleavage.

Your eyes flick to hers, and she’s looking at you now, for the first time. There’s a long beat that clenches your throat and you forget how to speak.

You know her eyes are blue but holy shit, they’re palpably blue. And they hold yours in suspension, her gaze lingering for a moment too long before returning to her paper.

Your cheeks warm with a feverish blush, and you take a napkin to wipe the syrup away, leaving your skin sticky and shiny.

Her eyes move to your cleavage again as she shifts slightly in her seat, adjusting her stature. She scans over your resume agonizingly slow now and this long gap of silence has your nerves bubbling.

Maybe it’s a good thing the coffee spilled, because you’re sure the caffeine would give you a panic attack right about now.

“It doesn’t state in here that you use condiments as a painting medium, so, tell me your process,” Agatha jokes, but her tone is blunt.

You breathe a laugh and smile anyway, wanting to squash the awkwardness and tension so badly. Taking a second, you muster up an ounce of courage. You have to prove yourself now after this train wreck.

“I could probably use caramel as a medium,” you shrug, meeting her stark gaze again.

Agatha quirks one brow, egging you to go on.

“It’s got a similar consistency to a fast dry. Could probably even be worked into a glaze too. It could make a really nice maple color over some oils. I work with acrylics, watercolors, too, but it probably would leave paintings like that,” you take in a ragged breath, your mind catching up to just how stupid you sound, “…sticky.”

She smiles for the first time, a wicked smolder perking the corners of her lips. Amusement flares in her eyes, and you swear you can almost see them darken.

“Your skills?”

You take a deep breath before you begin, grounding yourself. “Time management, organization, I’m ambitious and work well with others. I also have really good memori –”

“You know,” she dawdles, “none of your references called me back,” she states, practically disregarding the answer to her last question.

Your mouth parts in silence.

“Oh,” is the only pathetic word you can assemble. “That’s weird,” you breathe, thoroughly fucking failing.

“I’m sure they’re all busy artists.”

And you just know she’s seeing right through you.

“But…your copywriting is very good. I’ve seen your social media, your website, you’ve got a way with words, hon.”

Your neck and chest must be as red as your face now. But the way she looks at you, blue eyes dark yet twinkling with intrigue, you’re blushing for an entirely different reason.

“Thank you,” you manage, and you give her a truthful look that you really need this, that you really want this. Because you just want something to go right for once in your life. You need to find your purpose again.

It’s like she can hear your thoughts as she studies you. It’s hard to look away when you meet her eyes again. As if she’s holding you in the palm of her hand, weighing you, rolling you between her fingers, testing to see if she should clench and squeeze the dream right from your heart.

“You know, I don’t normally meet with artists in this circumstance, or even in such a…sticky manner.”

And you blush for the millionth time.

“But I’d like to test your writing skills. I’m hosting a live painting session this weekend that I want you to come to and write a little mockup article for. If I dig it, you get the job, sweetheart.”

Her words drip like honey, the opportunity laid out before you, sounding sweet to your ears. It’s almost unbelievable.

“Wow, thank you so much Ms. Harkness,” you fawn, beaming a smile.

“Agatha,” she says warmly, holding out her hand for you to shake.

You hesitate for a moment before taking her hand in yours, her slender, delicate fingers just barely grazing the inside of your wrist. Something flutters in your stomach at the contact, like a chemical reaction right in your core.

The embrace is subtle, but it carries the weight of something more than just a job, more than just a task she’s asking you to complete. You tug your hand away, but the air between you stays charged.

“I won’t let you down,” you exhale earnestly.

Agatha blinks at you slowly, that smile never faltering, “good girl.”

She rises now, collecting her papers and notebook, storing them inside a black tote bag. “My assistant will be in touch.”

You absentmindedly nod to her, feeling her presence leave, with the click of the cafe door echoing in your ears. You’re completely dumbfounded. What just happened?

Did you actually manage to fake your way to the top? You have a real shot now at getting this position. And the way she looked at you, like she just knew what you were capable of?

Her request is simple, just a mockup article. Nothing truly serious. The significance of her words, though, make your heart race. The heady mix of exhilaration and nerve wracking anticipation makes you dizzy at the thought. And her praise.

Good girl.

You’re completely slack-jawed at the thought of it again. You just know you’re in for something more than just a mere task.

Whatever she wants from you, you’ll give it – willingly, completely, without question.

[sepublic]

            Went to Weebcon 2025 and actually got to meet Dana Terrace and Zeno Robinson! Luckily I’d found out about Dana’s presence on her Insta near the end of the February, which gave me plenty of time to prepare. On the first day she was absent, and I found her schedule had been updated so she was only available for Saturday and Sunday; On her Twitter, she alluded to something unfortunate happening that day. Told a Knights of Guinevere cosplayer(!!!) about the change when they’d also showed up, so they hadn’t missed or done anything wrong.

            I checked the website for stuff to do, got blindsided by Zeno being there, and got to meet him; I got a signed Hunter and Flapjack print, and forgot to ask him if he knew about Dana’s presence, if he’d be at the Q&A. Then I went to a TOH cosplay meet-up and it was just me and an Amity I’d seen earlier, which tracked with us two being the only TOH cosplays I’d seen that day.

            Per my guess, it meant the line for Dana was minimal throughout the next two days, as was the crowd for the Q&A; A bit sad to see less fellow fans, I wonder if there are factors like TOH's popularity waning over time and/or the location. But I suppose a smaller crowd was kind of my hope, because it’d mean it’s far less of a hassle to do a signature and ask a question for the Q&A!

            (Also gotta get it off my chest; Aside from the surreality of seeing these people of a screen as IRL flesh-and-blood humans who were not pre-determined recordings, I found Dana to be shorter than I expected! I guess it’s because I consider myself relatively short, she’s decently older and far more experienced. And on a psychological level, I look up to her, so that makes Dana “bigger” in my mind, like an authority figure. I shouldn’t put people on a pedestal, I know, but it’s what happened. The real point of this observation was that I kept thinking of Anakin calling Grievous shorter than he expected lol.)

            I thought about what I was going to say, so I said it; When I was a depressed teen, I first saw the announcement of this show back in 2018, and something about it seemed appropriately magical. It lifted my spirits a bit, I had a good feeling about it, I decided to pay attention and invest my attention and hopes. And I could’ve never imagined how much it paid off!

            I also loved how each season of the show was about Eda, King, and Luz, in that order; Dana was pleased by the observation and said “You get it!” I even mentioned how she gave Luz Catholic Guilt without making her literally Catholic, and Dana laughed and repeated You get it. I shouldn’t let this get to my head, BUT…!!!! And when I got my picture, I made sure to take out the Bard sigil sticker as part of the cosplay, with Dana half-jokingly calling it an evil thing.

            I also got an Eda Funko Pop signed by her, since I’d always been meaning to grab it, so may as well take the chance now and not have a prior Eda get replaced and discarded! And since I was so early, I actually got to be one of four people to buy a personal drawing from Dana herself (I saw another one, who had a scrapbook of personal, signed drawings from other showrunners, such as Butch Hartman; Theirs was Lumity). I panicked because the option never occurred to me and now I had to choose, but I kept it nice and simple; Luz, Eda, and King.

            Dana gave me this little cardinal so she could draw other requests overnight at her hotel, and I could come back the next day to receive mine, with the bird as proof of purchase! I lamented the fate of Flapjack but also expressed appreciation for the decision, with Dana half-joking that she hadn’t done it to the poor birb. Came back the next day and saw someone else’s request on the table of Raeda, which leaves me curious about the fourth, if there was one… And I got this personal drawing with my name on it!!!

           And I got to keep my own little Flapjack!!! It really was Flapjack that weekend. I also mentioned how I loved the irony of Raine’s whole quest beginning because they couldn’t look the other way, only to have to look the other way when it came to Eda’s struggle for them, with Hunter’s loneliness (esp due to Terra over their shoulder), etc. And the irony of Raeda breaking up because Eda kept secrets, only for Raine to do the same after they’d reunited years later, keeping them from resuming; Dana, of course, agreed that the two were like one another.

            And yeah; I actually got to go to the Q&A on Saturday and ask Dana a question! More on that here… And as I guessed, of course Zeno showed up as a surprise guest halfway through. Of course! Never thought I’d be there in-person after seeng their Post-Hoots together. And when someone asked what cosplays Dana would love to see, she brought up Knights of Guinevere, and was delighted when someone else brought up that cosplayer, who I sadly didn’t get to see after that first day. On Sunday, there was a second TOH cosplay meetup, and this time people were there that I got to befriend and take pictures with!

            Receiving my drawing wasn't even the last time I saw Dana, funnily enough; In the hours after the final day had closed, I was passing through the lobby of the hotel next door (which was also used to host some events) and just happened to notice Dana with her friends, waved hi and she waved back! Realistically it's of course tempting to hang out with the creator of one of my favorite stories ever and bombard them with all sorts of questions, or just say all sorts of things (esp when there wasn't even a lot of people, sometimes no people, at times), but in the end that's another human being with boundaries, and I had to respect that.

            All in all; I’d say I’m quite chuffed not just from the TOH experience, but really just the fun of the event as a whole, and especially the build up to it! Working on my cosplay, it was a pretty magical experience, and I’m already looking back it fondly.

[lunarw0rks]

Honestly need more twt links.

🫣

TWITTER LINKS [ 141 / LV + KÖ ]

꒦꒷ MAIN MASTERLIST ꒷꒦ 141 MASTERLIST ───have a request? ˗ˏˋ ASK BOX ˎˊ˗

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warning(s): literal p0rn, f/m, no hard kinks included!

•‧₊˚⊹ MINORS DO NOT INTERACT (18+) ‧˚₊•

PRICE

『 Price never has you on your knees.

Not kneeling on the wood floor, instead, on your hands and knees on the soft bed. His last wish is for you to be straining yourself, especially at the expense of pleasuring him. Wrapping your lips around his cock, short, sloppy bobs of your head echo through the bedroom.

John can't resist touching you, squeezing the flesh of your rear, whispering praises while your throat allows as much of him as possible. 』

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

『 You and Price sneaking off to the bathroom.

Going out to dinner with John and his colleagues, bored with mindless chatter and military talk that you don't understand. Finding yourself bent over the fancy vanity of the restaurant washroom, surely fraying the fabric of your evening wear.

Price holding back, not daring to go too mean of a pace, otherwise, everyone will hear. 』

SIMON

『 Using you and Simon's new kitchen for the first time.

New homeowners, determined to get good use of the new space. You were supposed to be unpacking utensils but ended the afternoon leaning over the unused dining table. Simon's fingers in your hair, bullying his cock into you — as he wants it to be your first memory in the home he bought you.

The best part of not living in a flat? No more holding back your moans. 』

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

『 The best way to keep Simon busy.

No more fidgeting while he stares off into space, he needs to do something, and it's you. Being directed to climb atop his face, grind your slick cunt along his tongue until you reach a sweet finish. And him, unable to resist palming and stroking himself through his jeans — the denim clinging to his aching length.

You're using his talents in the best way. 』

SOAP

『 Simple, shared pleasure with Soap.

Using one another's hands to dissolve into pleasure. Johnny's fingers swirl around your soaked entrance, swiping along your puffy clit and matching your hand's rhythm. You squirm against the mattress, allowing the pleasure to further the speed of your fist. Pumping his cock with one hand, clenching the sheets with your other. Getting each other off, Soap yearning for the cunt he's teasing to be twitching around the cock you're caressing.

Your soft hands are no match for his calloused ones. You simply do it better. 』

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

『 You and Soap celebrating his new rank.

He's been promoted to 'Captain Mactavish'; both exhilarating and ego-boosting for his career. Soap's newfound authority gives him an alluring roughness — a scarred, buff body capable of doing so much to you. Congratulating him by letting him use you, exert the frustrations of leadership into your cunt.

Supporting your husband and his stressful career, in your own way. 』

GAZ

『 Gaz is all about the little things.

His smooth lips wrapped around the mounds of your breasts, suckling and kissing the sensitive nipple. Kyle is practically worshiping your chest, without any expectation of the same treatment on his own body. All before the thought of pleasuring you has crossed his mind.

A little appreciation goes a long way. And speaks volumes, even when his mouth is occupied. 』

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

『 As usual, Gaz driving you mad.

From binging your favorite show to laying across his lap and writhing, yearning for his long fingers to fill you up. Instead, it's blissful torture; those fingers playing with your clit in a zig-zag motion, Kyle giving your heat light smacks as a way to further the tease. Whatever pixels displayed on the screen become an afterthought.

Gripping onto his arm, praying that your desperate squeezes will be enough to convince him. 』

ALEJANDRO

『 Alejandro never asks to switch positions.

Why not combine his two talents: agility and surprise? Rocking your hips on his cock, chest to chest. His mouth curved into a sneer as you're on the brink of coming undone; gushing around his length with shaky legs — just like he'd relished many times. Instead, he waited until your moans turned into whimpers, flipping the two of you until you lay flat. Your mind is dazed from the sudden change, but so quickly overcome with release.

The new position allows him to pound into you, using all the stamina he gathered from watching you bounce. 』

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

『 Office visits with Alejandro.

Privacy is among his many privileges on base. His large desk, the organized files, his tall bookshelves — and the seclusion of a Colonel's office. Usually, Alejandro is too occupied for any nonsense, even when you visit. You surely caught him on a good day, which was a rarity when surrounded by the chaos of Las Almas.

Against the tower of books that resembled a library; but no silence was necessary. 』

RUDY

『 Rudy ensuring your pleasure, first, second, and last.

His mouth's favorite taste, and his ears' favorite sound. Your thighs hooked around his head, heat grinding against his face at the same pace of his masterly tongue. Roaming in a circle around your trembling bundle of nerves, kissing along your sticky lower lips. You tangle your fingers in his dark locks, every rock of his head sending the tip of his nose into your clit.

One of the many ways of keeping you satisfied. 』

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

『 Morning sex with Rudy.

Shivering from the fan that's been rotating all night, but too occupied with each other to power it off. Or for Rudy to take his eyes off your nude body. Without blankets, every bit of you is in view, savoring one another's warmth, chest to chest as you practically tie tongues. He wouldn't have it any other way.

The perfect send-off before he's forced to get ready. If he can let go of you at all. 』

KÖNIG

『 The mere size of König.

He adores the size difference; the power of his abnormal height, as well as the obvious gift to come with it. Your body folded against the white sheets, his swollen, girthy length barely fitting into your soaked heat. König goes slow until he can't hold back — increasing his pace to hear the irresistible moans spilling from your lips, overwhelmed by his size filling you to the brim.

Half of his length, and you're stuffed full. König's already imagining the day you can take all of him. 』

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

『 Your quickies with König.

It's no secret that he's busy; busier than the average busy person. Sometimes, quick releases are all that's left with him. Either way, you're left shaking, and the release is as sweet as ever. Hovering behind you, quick ruts into your heat until you get off, washing away the stress of everyday.

Unfortunately for König, his stress never leaves. Fortunate for you, that means more quickies. 』

╰┈➤ PREVIOUS 141 LIST // GAZ & SIMON LIST

˖⁺‧₊˚✦ divider cred. - cafekitsune ⊹₊｡

[olderthannetfic]

The previous convos about sensitivity readers and purity culture in booktwit types definitely feels familiar. I'll never forget when I was querying agents a few years ago with a novel I wrote, and I was told my writing "caused discomfort," was "problematic" and could be seen as racist/anti-black and having a lot of instances of queerphobia and misogynoir. The novel was a horror-fantasy story that actually was based on the transatlantic slave trade but on a different planet (So, yes, I would hope that this kind of story would be disturbing and cause discomfort in the reader. Mission accomplished). The plot covered several generations of the captured aliens who were enslaved (a la A Hundred Years of Solitude), the fallout of their enslavement, and the mistreatment of the enslaved people as a result. Most of the agents who requested the full manuscript said they liked the story, but I was met with many intrusive questions about my identity, race, gender, and sexuality and urges to work with a sensitivity reader should we progress forward as agent and writer. I am a Black, femme nonbinary, bisexual person. This was all fine and dandy with them, so they wanted to make this information about my identity public for consumers to appease the Twitter crowd and dissuade callout posts from the functionally illiterate. I wanted to maintain my dignity and not disclose any personal information. (They assumed it was because I was in the closet or something. I was not then and am not now. My identity just isn't anyone's business if they want to read a book, simple as that. This was also especially because there are mentions of sexual assault of some characters, and that kind of information definitely isn't anyone's business to know about an author. Period.) I also didn't want to hire a sensitivity reader because they were advertised to me as someone who performed outrage at works for a living (It also didn't help that I was linked to a few sensitivity readers who were very vocal on YA book Twitter and SFF Twitter. No thank you.). This was, apparently, a problem. That was when I decided publishing may not be for me, at least traditional publishing.

--

Yeah, sadly, I feel there is an audience for that book, but you're going to have to find it yourself. Anything YA adjacent is too outrage-driven without the necessary nuance, but a lot of more oldschool SFF circles are too full of the kind of sensitive, delicate white guys who wouldn't get this book either. Maybe an indie black press? Somewhere with a more literary bent that thrives on controversial books? Depending on how horror-y it is, maybe there's an avenue to pursue there. Horror fans do include a lot of manbabies too, but those circles can be more open to actually dark stuff.

At least self publishing is easy now, but self publishing and then getting a significant number of people to buy and read the book is hard.

I promise that decent sensitivity readers exist, but the ones that crowd is going to send you to are... not equipped to deal with dark horror fantasy, in my opinion.

And as a writer, I wouldn't work with anyone I didn't know pretty well anyway. How are you supposed to evaluate the feedback of a rando? What if they fundamentally don't get your genre?

If you do decide to press on, I think I'd look for like-minded fellow writers to begin with. Start a club. Serialize your stuff in the same place. IDK. There are plenty of grown-ass adults who buy books and who like nuance. There's got to be some way to find your audience.

It would be a pity to give up just because publishing is full of cowards.

[lonesome-witching]

The World Can Know

I have gotten the request to write a celebrity AU by @rabbitofdeath-atcastleaarrggh based on this post by @autismbarbie (I think). And I have to say I absolutely loved that post so much that I was a little excited to write this.

You can read my previous prompts or send me some new ones.

It had all started with a drunken tweet. She shouldn’t have been drunk. It was only 2 pm and she was supposed to be working. But she had finished the last song for her album, and somebody had pulled out a bottle of champagne and now she was sipping lukewarm beers in the recording booth and scrolling through twitter.

It was then that Robin Buckley saw a picture of Nancy Wheeler. It wasn’t that she had never seen her before, she had seen Nancy everywhere. A couple of days ago, she and Steve had gone to see one of her movies. And Robin had returned the next day to watch it again. So, she knew of Nancy Wheeler. She had seen her all dolled up in movies and on red carpets. She had spent an embarrassing long time staring at her in that flowy top with her dark red lips at the Paris fashion week just a few nights ago.

The only difference was that all of those times Robin hadn’t been drunk, and therefore had been able to refrain herself from making her tiny obsession public knowledge. But this time as she noticed the picture of Nancy Wheeler in a simple blue shirt, purple cap and sunglasses walking in New York, the same streets Robin walked every single day, she was drunk.

Her fingers were typing out the words before her mind had registered them. Her thumb only hesitated a second before posting the tweet.

Literally dont FUCKIGN talk to me if u r not Nancy wheeler btw!!! dont even say hi i’ll be pissed

She regretted that tweet that same night when a text from Steve told her to check twitter. The memory of her own embarrassment came flooding back and the only reason she opened her account was with the pure intention of deleting the entire thing. That was her intention until she noticed the notification. It was a simple reply, just a simple hi with a smiley face behind it. The main reason Robin nearly went into cardiac arrest was that it was from Nancy freaking Wheeler. 

-

Talking with Nancy had been surprisingly easy. They had hung out a few times, going for walks after dark and eating take out in Nancy’s luxurious apartment. Robin had even invited Nancy to the recording studio after a mix up with the vocals forced her to drop everything. They often talked until the early morning hours, laughing and crying like kids at their first sleepover.

Now that Robin was able to see Nancy in real life it became obvious that the pictures and movies didn’t do her justice. That she looked best when she woke up with her hair all messed up and her eyes only half open.

It also became obvious that Robin was falling in love with her. Robin had difficulty not staring or stuttering when they hung out. She would always trip over her words whenever she tried to give Nancy a genuine compliment. And when Nancy returned the favor her cheeks would heat up and turn bright red. The words ‘I’m in love with Nancy Wheeler’ might as well have been tattooed on her forehead.

As the months crawled forward Robin and Nancy hung out more and more. Even when Nancy had to go to LA for some promotion material for her newest premiere, they called every night. Robin would listen attentively to Nancy chattering about her day as she stayed up way too late talking the other girl to sleep.

It almost felt like they were dating. Almost.

Robin tried her best not to dream about that possibility. After all, she had already gotten way too lucky to have her idol in her life.

Robin checked her phone for the thousandth time, waiting for a reply from Nancy. But as her screen lit up, she saw nothing but her lock screen. It had been a mere 9 hours since she last received a text from Nancy. She could survive 9 hours without Nancy. She had to.

Robin checked her phone again when the doorbell rang out, echoing through her too empty apartment. She dropped the phone on the couch and got up, shuffling to the door. On the other side stood Nancy Wheeler, her hair wet and dripping raindrops on the floor.

“It’s raining,” she stated as her eyes stared into Robin’s face.

“Nance? What are you doing here? Come in, come here.” Robin pulled her in, nearly hugging her. “I’m going to get you a towel… And— and some dry clothes. You should shower. I thought you were in LA.”

“I just got back. I— Robin, I need to speak with you.”

Robin stopped running around, a pink towel in her hand that nearly dropped to the floor as she saw the expression on Nancy’s face. “Okay.”

“I—” Nancy frowned. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Maybe at the beginning,” Robin offered.

“I don’t know if there is a beginning. And I’m hoping this isn’t the end. I just feel like there is middle. Everything has been the middle. I can’t start at the beginning because there isn’t one. There is just you.”

“Me?”

Nancy nodded, taking a deep breath. “There is just you. And then there is me. And I’m hoping you and me could be an us.” Nancy’s teeth were digging into her bottom lip and Robin worried she’d draw blood.

“What are you—” Realization dawned on her. Nancy’s doe eyes and nervous expressions might have not been enough, but her words were clear. “Oh.”

Nancy nodded again, barely. “Do you think—”

“Yes. I like that. I’d really like to be an us.”

Nancy’s lips turned into a bright smile as she closed the distance between them and pressed their lips together.

-

“I wrote you a song,” Robin said about two weeks after their first kiss.

They were laying in Nancy’s bed, cuddling and kissing. It had been heavenly to be cooped up in Nancy’s flat the entire day. It had been marvelous to sink into her mattress and feel her lips all over her body. And now Robin was enjoying the warmth of her girlfriend.

“You wrote me a song?” Nancy asked with a soft voice.

“I did.”

“That is so sweet.” Robin could hear the smile in Nancy’s voice.

“I was hoping you would be in the video.”

“I would love to be in the video.”

-

They had agreed to keep their relationship to themselves until the video came out. Which Robin knew, logically speaking, wasn’t very long. It was supposed to be released in less than a month time so it would align with Nancy’s premiere.

But Robin was ecstatic about her new situation, and she had lasted about 3 days after they had agreed. It had at first been a slip of the thumb. She had taken this adorable picture of Nancy and couldn’t not post it. Maybe she could have used a more ambiguous caption than ‘gf reveal’ but she had slipped up. It was Nancy’s fault for being so cute.

It was only when no one believed her that she kept going, that she kept tweeting about Nancy and her dating. Not that it helped.

“They still don’t believe me. It’s insane.”

Nancy laughed softly. “At least I know it’s true.,” she said as she pulled the phone out of Robin’s hands and crawled onto her lap.

-

The premiere of Nancy’s movie was scheduled for Friday. The music video was going to drop Thursday. Robin smiled as she thought about it. But tonight, on this beautiful Monday evening, Nancy was curled up into her side as they watched the Late Night Show together. Nancy was on this episode and when she was announced Robin cheered at the screen, much to her girlfriend’s amusement. 

“So, we have to ask, is there anyone special you are taking to the premiere on Friday?”

“Well, actually, there is,” screen Nancy answered, and Robin’s eyes widened. “I’ll be taking my girlfriend, Robin Buckley.”

Nancy’s arms tightened around Robin’s waist. “So, I may have told the world.”

“Yeah,” Robin replied, nodding at the screen, not even registering the reaction from the audience.

“You’re not mad, are you?” Nancy looked up with those soft doe eyes.

“Mad? Why would I be mad? I’m delighted. I’ve been talking about it for ages now. All I wanted was you and for the whole world to know.” She lowered her face to press a kiss on her girlfriend’s lips.

[caffeinatedowlbear]

Unlikely Occupations for Handsome Jack

I played this on the soon-no-longer-twitter, and figured I like these too much to lose them when that site inevitably becomes an ex-parrot. This post will collect all the previous AUs I've made, and you can request new ones in the comments.

The rules are simple: name a job/occupation that would be very unlikely for Handsome Jack, and I'll try to come up with an IC(ish), (mostly) not crack explanation of how he ended up that way. All ideas generated from this exercise are free for the taking, as long as: 1) the prompt giver doesn't mind; 2) you let me know what you make of it.

Note: while any minimum wage job fits the 'unlikely' criteria, ideally I'm looking for suggestions of jobs/occupations that someone (but normally, not Jack) would conceivably WANT to do, and not just to survive. It's sad but true that people rarely end up in minimum wage jobs for interesting reasons. So please go easy on burger flipping, shelf restocking, call centers and the like.

Prompts filled so far: Janitor, DJ, Florist, Marine Biologist, Preschool Teacher, Pediatric Nurse (new!).

Outstanding prompts: cab driver; mortician; therapist/social worker (got ideas for this one); supermarket cashier (got half a plan)

Filled prompts below, starting with a fan favorite.

Janitor

Now, I know that ‘it’s just a front’ may sound like a cop-out because it can apply to any ‘Jack in a minimum-wage job’ scenario. So I tried to make it more interesting.

Setting: can be modern-day, can be sci-fi, but needs to be an AU in which Jack isn’t instantly recognizable by all and sundry. He is a rich and successful asshole, though. But there’s a certain shiny object he really, REALLY wants to get his hands on. Could be physical thing, could be information. Either way, something that money (of which he has plenty) can’t buy, because it’s held by another, even richer asshole.

Multiple attempts to infiltrate the guy’s home, where the shiny is kept, have failed. The mark is famously a recluse, his security systems are deadly, and all his staff are life-long friends and acquaintances. There’s only one tiny security hole: cleaning and maintenance. Now, most of it is automated, but once every few months, there’s a need for human labor. So every few months, a trusted and vetted housekeeping services agency dispatches some of its most trusted and vetted workers. And isn’t it lucky that Jack has a contact at said agency?

It goes off without a hitch at first. Agency Contact makes sure Jack’s fake identity passes all the background checks, and adds him to the next crew dispatched to Rich Asshole’s house. But then, Agency Contact is busted for an unrelated piece of shady business. Their latest acts in the company come under scrutiny. Jack’s employment status holds, but not his assignment. He is supposed to have at least six months of spotless (...sorry :p) record with the agency before he can get assigned to high-priority jobs like this.

So now Jack has two options. Say "fuck this shit, I'm out" and look for a different solution that might not even exist... or hold out for the sure-fire way in, even if it means spending six months pushing around a mop while toeing the company line. What’s it gonna be, Jack??

DJ

Going off the beaten track for this one, because I didn't want to do the obvious option of 'rich guy's hobby/vanity side gig'.

My take is, we're back on Tantalus and in Jack's (John's?) youth. It's a place full of poverty and violence, but also a colorful night life. Of course, many night clubs are fronts for drug and arms (and worse) trade. Getting in with the clubs is a solid strategy for a young guy with his head on his shoulders.

Jack tries to do different jobs that take him all over, to see the backstage stuff as much as possible. (He even has a brief stint as an unlikely bouncer: no-one expected the scrawny 20yo to throw some real good punches.)

His first DJ experience happens when he's a stage hand / gofer at a club, and the actual DJ goes off to screw someone, telling Jack to take over for half an hour. The music is cued up, just look like you're having fun, he's told. This is the first taste he gets of the kind of power he didn't think he wanted. Because the power that comes with money and access and control is one thing (and make no mistake, he wants that). But the power to stand in front of a room full of people and command their mood? To be cheered? To get them to chant your name, even? That hits something really, really deep inside young Jack. He knows that day that however he gets to the top, he won't just be the man behind the curtain. He will be the one whose name the crowd is chanting.

From there on, Jack's goal is clear. Not only is he going to get power and money and his slice of all the shady business, but he's also going to be a goddamn ✨celebrity✨ while at it. For bonus points, add a scar earned in a gang war ten years later and make Handsome Jack his crime name *and* stage name.

Florist

Setting: semi-historical or steampunk flavored Victorian. There is a war on, but it's pretty far away or a relatively cold one. So no immediate danger on the home front, but spycraft is in high demand. Jack is an era-appropriate Bond type who gets saddled with an assignment to...

"Make bouquets? Is this a joke?"

No, it's not. The flower shop Jack would be operating out of is a hub receiving intel from multiple covert informants. It will be Jack's job to pick out what's important, and pass it to the right people, encoded via flower bouquets. Sending messages via different flowers are already a thing in this society, as they were in our world's Victorian era, but obviously, the spy organization obviously has its own code book, so no harm done if a bouquet falls into the wrong hands.

"Except I'd have to bloody make it again, so, actually, plenty of harm done."

In order to maintain the cover, the flower shop also has to do legitimate business, so Jack gets to make plenty of "civilian" bouquets as well, and be all polite and gentlemanly with the customers.

There's only one silver lining to this dismal assignment. The assistant assigned to help Jack with sorting and aggregating the intel is pretty darn cute.

Marine Biologist

(Short write-up, but this is one of my personal faves!)

Canon-adjacent BL settings, but instead of Pandora, Jack is drawn to Aquator in his vault-hunting pursuits, searching for a vault rumored to be at the bottom of the ocean. Helios is a city-sized submarine!

For bonus points, add a Rhack plot featuring mercreature!Rhys, who has knowledge of the vault, but is reluctant to reveal its location, and whose trust Jack is desperately trying to win.

In a Preschool

Modern-day, Passable Dad AU. It's career day at Angel's school. Jack didn't want to come, what with being a currently unemployed head of a recently-failed startup. But he can't say no to Angel, so... sigh, here we go.

Jack is the last one to talk, his hope being that maybe they’ll run out of time and he won’t have to. Alas, his slot comes up. A few minutes in, the teacher gets an urgent phone call and steps out (don’t come after me about child safety protocols in this AU, okay :p).

Then the period is technically over, and the teacher isn’t back (guess the phone call was urgent enough to make them run out without telling people; they’re so fired). Other parents have left at some point during the period, because they have jobs / better things to do. Jack tries to send Angel to go find an adult, but she declares they’re not allowed to leave the classroom on their own (because she’s an ass). But, she continues, they can’t be left on their own, either (like I said, an ass).

So, Jack is stuck with a bunch of preschoolers for an hour. Once he runs out of failed startup stories, he just starts rubber-ducking new business ideas off of them. It’s surprisingly effective: kids are really good at poking holes in what seem like reasonable plans to adults.

And this is how, once a teacher finally comes to see what’s going on, Mr. Lawrence is offered a job as a substitute teacher at his daughter’s preschool. He will get fired once he deals with a bully by holding the offender up by the ankle until a believable apology is delivered.

Pediatric Nurse

(the prompt giver was very specific that it should be nurse, not doctor)

Setting: Tantalus, Jack is a single dad and dirt-poor. Angel is hospitalized with something that requires long-term inpatient care, and Jack literally doesn't have the money to pay for her treatment and rent, so he loses the apartment and starts low-key living at the hospital.

He's getting away with it pretty well. Angel shares a room with a few more kids, whose parents catch on pretty quickly, but don't mind that an extra parent is hanging around, because the hospital is permanently understaffed, and the kids like having company. (He gets more than an occasional meal from other kids' parents, too.)

When Jack's not doing gig work on his laptop, he's reading up everything about Angel's condition as well as all-purpose medical care so he can take care of her when she's finally allowed to leave the hospital. He's a fast learner, and soon ends up helping out the permanently overworked nurses with basic stuff like changing dressings, giving an extra hand with whatever, and even fixing up some medical equipment when something outdated inevitably breaks. It's not long before the kids in Angel's room (and the adjacent rooms) start calling him Nurse Jack.

The only one who's not thrilled about Jack's permanent presence on the ward is a young (and very attractive) doctor who's being a real stick in the mud about 'non-medical personnel outside of visiting hours'. The fact that, thanks to Jack's liberal use of nicknames, the kids start calling him Dr. Cupcake doesn't win Jack much love, either. Things between them getting more tense by the day, and Jack is this close to getting banned from the hospital outside of strict visiting hours.

That is, until one day, some Tantalus bandits barge in, demand that the whole floor is cleared so that their boss can get medical attention, and even take some medical personnel (including Dr. Cupcake) hostage to make their point. Little did they know that one of their hostages is: a) not a licensed medical professional, but b) real handy with a gun.

[talesfromasnarkylisa]

Lacey: Chapter 19

August 21, 2023

My manager for my Photoshop job sure loved to work me overtime now, didn’t he? 2 hours before and two hours afterwards, with only work in between and no time for lunch. How the fuck was I supposed to do anything other than work? 

To make matters worse, the days were inching closer to the start of the next academic year. After looking at the curriculum more closely, I realized that I had somewhat more to study for than usual as I had new material to memorize. If not for the fact that Micah had slightly loosened up on handing me drafts to go over, I’d have been absolutely screwed.

Anyways, I had no choice but to ignore literally every message I got unless it was absolutely necessary to respond. Corianna’s ramblings about her waitress job and Betty’s promotion at her pubs, Inez’s vents, Oscar’s music memes. I even had no time to respond to Darian’s recent text about his breakup with Inez - although I felt bad about that last one.

Darian Stewart (Mon, Aug 21, 7:00 AM): Hey James, how’s it going? I broke up with Inez recently. We weren’t really working out. It wasn’t her fault, but she wanted things to move along faster than I did.

My Discord status was set to Do Not Disturb, of course. So was my phone and my computer. But one email from a certain Lacey girl slipped through the cracks.

Lacey Hannah (lacey3ahannah2005@/gmail.com, 8:00 PM): Hey Archer! I made a song cover 4 u! Hope you enjoy it!

(I had to send this by email because Discord wouldn’t let me send this 4 minute video).

Below the wall of text was a clip of Lacey singing “The Only Exception” by Paramore. Sung in the original E major, my mark actually did sing quite well. But much to my dismay, she sounded too much like Augusta. Shame, because it would have been a very flattering move if it was from almost anyone else. 

Alas, I had more drafts from Micah to work on anyway. 

Why always him? I thought.

So I kept working and working and then studying until I nearly forgot who I was by midnight. After that, I fell into a deep, dark, sleep.

…

March 21st, 2020

It’s been a month since I got kicked out of my parents’ house. This simple fact makes me realize I’m in a flashback dream.

My mother told me at the start of Grade 12 that I’d have to leave on my 18th birthday since neither she nor my father could stand me for too much longer. Strange, because they’d hardly interact with me except to tell me about stuff affecting all of us.

Since my father’s a doctor and my mother’s a nurse, I guess they figured out that COVID-19 would escalate soon enough for me to be stuck with them around the time August 20th would roll around. It was a clever move on their part to conveniently evict me back in February, but it left me with little money to spend on anything.

I lived with my grandma for a week until she caught pneumonia and got sent to the hospital. After that, I rented out the hotel room I’m currently in. It lacks both privacy and luxury, but it does the job. There’s an apartment I’ll get in New Haven once I move there to go to Yale anyways.

I’m busy crossposting an article I wrote for UX Unraveled. Twitter is not loading for me properly, so I check for texts and DMs from my friends. It’s the only way we can contact each other nowadays. Well, with Corianna I always have to use the Internet since she lives in Michigan and I live in Connecticut.

None of us are high profile at this point. We all have 500-ish followers each on Medium, and YouTube didn’t fare much better. The only reason I’m surviving now is because my Vocal Media articles get a ton of reads and my photoshop profile under my real identity is in ridiculously high demand.

Corianna interviewed Betty/Lovergirl for an article she’s writing on how TikTokers are promoting cottagecore. In the meantime, I got a friend request from Lovergirl’s eventual rival Augusta Flowers.

Augusta and Betty didn’t always hate each other. As I would learn years later, Betty even had a small crush on the former at first. But they worked in the same female oriented beauty niches. With that came competition - despite Augusta being three years older than Betty.

I didn’t know this at the time. Neither Betty nor Augusta were well-known when lockdown started, though Augusta fared slightly better. They weren’t even in any social circles I had connections in. I figured it wouldn’t hurt for me to accept Augusta’s friend request, so I did.

This is a memory, so I can’t parse out the exact timestamps of any messages. Some also got completely blurred out. But the spirit of the conversation still remained.

Augusta greets me with “Hello” and a waving GIF. I greet her back. She asks me if I prefer video making or writing. It’s hard for me to answer at the time, so I tell her I don’t know.

After an exchange where she extols the virtues of both writing and clip editing, the conversation suddenly shifts gears. Augusta asks me if she can vent to me. Not understanding what she really meant, I gave her permission. 

Augusta proceeds to tell me about her struggles in the TikTok sphere. Even though she with three thousand followers is more popular than Betty at this point (who has only 800), Augusta struggles in her offline life. Her apparently sloppy excuse of a father - a chain smoker who threw her belongings at her as punishment for asking him to help with literally anything - was trying to reestablish contact with her again despite a restraining order. This is on top of Augusta being falsely accused of forgetting to cite a source for an educational short on COVID.

She cries and sobs when recounting her family life and laughs at the sheer absurdity of her online presence. I play along with her dark narration. We bond over scripting languages as the days pass by in my dream. Soon enough, she’s my sisterly best friend.

Things were perfect. What could go wrong?

Everything, as it turned out.

(Wattpad version: https://www.wattpad.com/1507870828-lacey-chapter-19)

[brooklyncarrentals]

Getting a cheap rental car in Brooklyn for your trip is easy with Brooklyn Rentals

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Why Brooklyn Rentals is a great place to rent?

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Along with smaller cars for solo travelers, they also have roomy SUV’s for families and groups. Every car is properly looked after and serviced to ensure a secure and comfortable journey. Lastly, Brooklyn Rental grants you the liberty to discover Brooklyn at your own pace.

You don’t have to wait on public transport or endure busy trains. When you rent a car, it is effortless to go to some of the city’s well-known tourist spots, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, Prospect Park, and the Brooklyn Museum.

Wide range of vehicles:

Brooklyn Rental provides a wide variety of vehicles to suit any travel requirement. For those looking for an economical journey, they offer fuel-efficient and simple-to-drive compacts, perfect for getting around town.

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Price competitiveness:

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[angara-mfrp]

Some big, beautiful changes!

Hello roleplayers of ADZ! Congrats again to those who made it through activity check. I am high fiving you.

I've hinted at this quite a bit OOC, but we have a couple of big changes to group mechanics that the mod team has collectively decided to implement in order to make your experience better. So while these changes are big, they are likely not going to affect existing muses too greatly.

So, in short, we have changed rankup requirements, and we have revamped Paths. More info under the cut!

The changes to rankup requirements should be pretty straightforward. We have reduced the point requirements for rank 3 and up. This was one of the first things we looked at and thought "yeah, this should be fixed." Admittedly, when I (Mod Dingo) established the point requirements, I was referring to the requirements for a group that I had previously written in. The problem? This group was significantly larger than ADZ, meaning that the act of actually accumulating points was much, much easier. Additionally, the jump from 2500 to 8000 seemed a little too big, like there was supposed to be a 5000 in there but I stepped away from my computer or something stupid like that. I didn't, but it certainly gives that impression!

We have, however, added some additional requirements for rank 5. In addition to the Path drabble, we will now require participation in at least three major lore events. Considering threads and drabbles for such events will net you a lot of points, this should help you in the long-run!

Speaking of Paths, onto that change! This change came a little later, but we think it makes more sense. While the vertical categories will remain the same (the ones stating how your muse feels about ADZ and its people), the horizontal ones are now different. Instead of your muse's feelings about tech, the other factor in determining Paths will now be how your muse feels about looking into the Bygone Era.

This change came a little later, but it was considered seriously. Our main reasoning behind this is that, while muses tend to sort of be "eh, whatever" on tech, interest in the Bygone Era is very much a thing, whether it's "I am genuinely curious about this as a whole", "something bad happened and I'm scared about it so I'll just sit here", or "idc about the Bygone Era but I want to get home and maybe also beat up that old geezer". Which...makes a lot of sense! As such, we've made these changes, and we hope you'll prefer this way of deciding Paths.

As far as implementing these, the rank requirement should be pretty simple, as nobody has made it to rank 3 yet. So, if you've met the requirements, you can just go ahead and send in a rankup request! Today is a processing day, so it works out perfectly.

For the Path changes, that might require a bit more. You may have noticed that if your muse is at rank 1 or 2, their Path role in the server has been removed. This was to prepare for this change, as some of the names of the Paths were moved around a little. So, please read over the changes to the Paths and send in a Path change as soon as you've made a decision!

These changes were thought out very carefully, and were implemented with the idea of making the member experience better...unlike some people (looking at you, Discord, Twitter, and basically any company that has pissed off its users with stupid changes). We hope that this will have the desired effect! Thank you to the members who have stuck with us and have allowed us to gain the insights we needed to make these improvements.

[ferrstappen]

Can I request petty jealous charles? He’s just quietly stewing in his anguish. I think it’s be funny if someone that he looks up to, like a musician or something, was flirting with his gf and this really upsets him. And he acts petty for a few days

a/n: sorry for the delay babeeee :( but here it issss. also this features Bad bunny bc I saw the pics of him arriving in Monaco and idk got the inspo. also we're going to pretend the last music challenge takes place after Monaco.

titi we don't care l Charles Leclerc

All eyes were on Monaco, and with good reason.

Engines roaring, cameras flashing, boat traffic (if that's a thing), Hollywood making their way from Cannes to the Principality, spotting old money meters away, most of them trying to get a word with Charles.

It was fine in the beginning, this wasn't the first Monaco GP you attended, but after the first free practice ended and Charles was grabbed from right to left, the Ferrari hospitality grabbing most of the attention of wealthy people, whispering how F1 was less exclusive by the day, too popularized, lousy celebrities getting an invite and they’d probably be present for Indy 500 and Le Mans. Shameful.

The same people were examining you, eyeing the “simple” Trina Turk dress and Bimba & Lola bag, gifted by Isa on your birthday, hanging from your arm, all before Charles PR manager approached to tell you he, the home hero, wouldn't be available until practices were over, too many press and meetings in between.

Then, a man with a glass of wine sat down next to you, telling you it was fucked up they wouldn't let the drivers prepare for what they were supposed to do, which was driving. Esta bien cabrón, those were his exact words.

He introduced himself as Benito, of course you knew him as Bad Bunny, his songs being everywhere and wasn't he dating Kendall Jenner?

He kept you entertained, bad mouthing the snotty people surrounding, stopping the conversation to greet people who approached him. Isa joined soon after, also shaking her head at the fact Carlos and Charles would have to spend almost the entire day worrying about media instead of resting and discussing strategies with the team for Sunday.

Conversation was easy, barely noticing the hospitality getting a bit more crowded, louder. It was the WhatsApp group with your girlfriends that got your attention, attaching pictures and asking what was going on between you and Bad Bunny. What?

Of course, Twitter was full of you laughing at something he said or before he pointed something funny or imitated a rich person making conversation on how quiet luxury was a trend now and how it wasn't fair for them, fucking Succession.

Suddenly, someone grabbed your waist from behind, making you jump because the only person allowed to grab you like that was supposed to be around somewhere, being interviewed or filming content, but you were wrong, a big grin appearing at the sight of Charles, full white and red, overall hanging on his waist and white Ferrari cap, hair fluffy from the heat and running his fingers through it.

"Bebé, I thought you'd be busy all the day," You kissed his lips, subtly squeezing his waist through the suit.

Yes, he was supposed to be busy until the day was over and you could head back home, but in-between interviews Charles checked his phone to the dismay of every PR worker in Ferrari, but his Twitter was filled with mentions of pictures. First they were pictures of you alone in the hospitality, Charles smiled knowing you were probably bored but stayed so he wouldn't be alone, but...

user1: Not Bad Bunny shooting his shot at Leclerc's girl 💀

user2: BENITO GET AWAY she's ms leclerc!!!11!

user3: damn, Charles Leclerc getting screwed by Ferrari and his girlfriend

user4: (y/n)'s probably bored af, Isa got to Monaco a couple of minutes ago and she's talking with Benito, big deal leave her alone she's there for Charles.

A strange feeling brewed in his stomach, he instantly knew he was jealous. Did he have a good reason? No, he trusted you and the relationship with his life, but he was obviously and painfully aware people wanted you; your good nature, gorgeous features, bright smile, perfectly shaped boobs... yes, it didn't sound fair when he left a trails of broken hearts and loving eyes everywhere he went, people being interested in F1 just because of his looks, but that was purely platonic, they didn't dare to make a move, but your case was different, he had seen with his own eyes how men tried to make their move right in front of him, he even made sure you always wore the gold necklace with a charm engraved with CL16 was visible.

Carlos, being part of the drivers' gossip network, eyed Charles' screen, whistling in a worried manner, telling him to be careful or he'd be listening to Bad Bunny songs about (y/n) on the radio.

"You know, there's pictures of Isa as well, look," Charles pointed out, annoyed by the teasing, but Carlos playfully dismissed him. "Hey, sorry but I have to get to the hospitality, I'm very overwhelmed and I need to see my girlfriend," Charles half lied; he wanted to see you, but just to let the second most streamed artist on Spotify know you were very loved and appreciated, and completely off limits.

Which takes him to the Ferrari hospitality.

"They gave us a couple of minutes before it's time for the last meeting," Charles tensed when noticing people were staring at him. "Why don't you wait at our lounge, bebé? It’s less crowded, Isa is there, Lorenzo and mum should be getting there soon,” he said in a hushed tone, but loud enough for the other man to hear. You nodded, getting up and collecting the small Bimba & Lola bag with some of the multiple passes and everything hanging from it.

"Oh, bebé, sorry. This is Benito, he was keeping me entertained," It was a bizarre situation, honestly, presenting a world-known singer to your boyfriend like he was a friend.

Charles squeezed your waist a bit tighter, shaking hands with the native from Puerto Rico. They exchanged a couple of words before someone approached the singer, making it easier for you to leave.

Charles was holding your hand a bit tighter than usual, maybe he was being protecting knowing people were watching every move. you asked him how the car felt, but he didn't give a real answer, just making a sound of approval.

That attitude carried on during the entire weekend, you thought it was the pressure of being home, past mistakes and bad luck haunting him. it ended when he crossed the finish line in first place, kissing you with tears on his eyes, relishing on being the home hero.

But two days later, he still had moments where he held his head a little taller, short answers and pretending he didn't hear you.

Charles knew he was being ridiculous, his fists tightening when some radio played a Bad Bunny song, even when one of them was voluntarily added by himself on a playlist, he had to take a deep breath. Irrational and disgusting behavior if you ask Charles, but he couldn't stop it. Not even when he saw you trying to hide the purple marks appearing on your hips.

He noticed your side of the bed dipped and light turned off, his back facing you as he pretended to be asleep, ignoring your soft chuckles. he didn't even flinch when your arms wrapped around his waist, placing your leg over his and loudly kissing his cheek.

"You are so cute when you're jealous," you told him, leaving another loud kiss, this time on his back.

"I'm not jealous!" He lied with a high-pitched voice, still not facing you.

"I know you are, but it's okay, it comes with having a girlfriend as incredible as me, you know?" This time Charles laughed, turning around and now placing his arms around your waist as yours moved to his neck.

"Shut up, he was flirting with you!" Charles argued.

"He was not! He actually saved me from a lot of creeps asking my name and whether I was free to grab a glass of wine or whatever,"

Charles knew that was the truth, he had witnessed it and was common talk between the drivers how their girlfriends and sisters were often approached by older men with not so good intentions.

Knowing he had no way to defend himself, he rolled his eyes at your giggles when your lips met his, but admiring him when he rolled on top of you, running your thumb through his cheeks.

[modelbus]

Hello!! I LOVE your writing, like I’m obsessed! So, I can’t tell if your requests are open, buttt if they are, I would DIE for some fluff turned to angst of a fem!reader who is in a group with cc!Ranboo, cc!Tubbo, cc!Wilbur and cc!Tommy nicknamed the chaos squad by the fandom, where she is the least popular in the group and a rumour spread that shes only in it for the popularity, so they slowly stoped inviting her to streams and vlogs and ghosting her.

it could start with like three two sentence stories about the group (or something), how it was formed just fluffy moments, and then be like “but it didn’t stay like that for long..” and explain why she was subtly kicked from the group before a scene where shes streaming and gets asked about why shes not been in any videos anymore.

PHEW that was ALOT, if its to long you can obviously shorten it or just not do it- but if requests are open and you like the idea, I would love to see something like this!! <3

PS. You are super cool, keep up the amazing work!! (When you want to ofc)

-✨🌌🌙 Anon

Thank you so much! I tried my best to include everything :D This literally took me out of my writing slump

Part 2 :)

Pairing(s): cc!Ranboo, cc!Tubbo, cc!Wilbur and cc!Tommy x Fem!Reader (Platonic)

Cut Chaos

The feeling of belonging was something nearly everyone chased after. After all, being out of place was simply… lonely. And, somehow, you found yourself slotting into the weirdest place in the world.

A handful of stupid friends.

You always found yourself drawn to dumbasses, in the most affectionate way. Like looks for like, you suppose. And shit, did you find some people that could make you cry laughing even on the worst days.

Ranboo, Tubbo, Wilbur, Tommy. Four people that made the sun rise every day, that dragged you out of bed for the stupidest vlogs to ever exist. Fans adored the five of you together so much that you got a group name for the first time in your career: the Chaos Squad.

Truly, it was a fitting name. The things that the five of you got up to, you’re certain no normal sane person would do. But, well, your job as a streamer already set you apart from the category of “normal” a long time ago, so you definitely didn’t mind the messes you got into with them.

From Tommy dragging the group to an abandoned island, saying it’d be fun to try to escape (you fell out of a tree and Wilbur sprained his ankle), to screaming along at Lovejoy concerts, it felt like the five of you were unstoppable.

And God, did you love them. It didn’t matter how many times Ranboo hit his head on things, you’d still laugh. It didn’t matter that you literally passed out from laughing so hard once, you were still happy. Pure, unfiltered love.

The five of you against the world, forever. You could see it, in those sunny days where you grinned so hard your cheeks hurt (they were the first ones to make you do that—the realization only made you grin harder). The perfect idea of happiness.

Was it any wonder things didn’t stay that way, that perfect, for long?

A rumor.

It always seemed to start with one of those, nowadays. A simple murmur among fans that grew and grew, until you were closing out of twitter at 2, 4, 5 AM, debating if you should just delete the app and put your status on “Do Not Disturb.”

You accepted the fact that being a female content creator was going to be a struggle a long time ago. It was a fact, something you knew you couldn’t avoid, especially in gaming. Having rumors about you online wasn’t new. It would never be new, not as long as you were yourself.

But you thought you’d be past caring about them by now. You thought the tight panic that gripped your heart, made it hard to breathe, was a thing of the past. So stupid.

One private account turned into multiple threads, turned into trends on the trending tab.

Everyone thought you were using your friends, the chaos squad as a whole, just to boost your career. To leech off anyone’s subscribers, just for some money in your pocket.

The idea made you sick to your core.

How dare they? How dare they ever think you didn’t genuinely care for the four? That they were anything less than the lightness in your heart, the freedom on your mind?

Rumors.

You ignored them. Even the thought of addressing them made you feel pissed off like you’ve never been before. It was such an absurd idea! At the very least, you knew your friends would see past the hateful people.

Right?

It starts with an unanswered message in the group chat.

Unanswered messages weren’t new. A stray comment tended to get lost in the general mess that the group chat was, so you weren’t concerned. Just laughed to yourself quietly; it wasn’t important anyways, just a photo of a cat you saw.

Until it happened again. And again. Until more of your messages went ignored than responded to, until the group chat had less and less messages each day.

When the first vlog comes out, the process repeats. It’s on Tommy’s channel, of course. Him, Ranboo, Tubbo, and Wilbur. The chaos squad, just without you. It surprised you, because you never even realized they filmed a video, and normally all of you share upcoming videos.

All the warning signs were obvious, and you were too much of a damn fool.

You filmed one vlog with them after that, exploring a supposedly haunted house, before you woke up a month later and realized you hadn’t talked to them in a week.

One week turns into two, two into three, until you’ve realized what’s happened. You were gone, out of the picture. Happiness had slipped through your fingers faster than you could’ve ever comprehended, and now you were in a dark room—literally.

But what could you do? If they didn’t want you, there was nothing you could do to stop the unraveling of your universe.

So you did the same thing you did before them, defaulting back to what was safe: streaming alone.

Today, it’s just a mindless game. Yesterday was the same, and fuck, this isn’t the same anymore. Not when you don’t have Tubbo in the chat sending messages, or Wilbur using Text-To-Speech.

But you’re here, still streaming. Still going, no matter how tempting it is to just shut off your computer and pretend the last months of your life never happened.

There’s always fans though, and if anything cheers you up, it’s them. So your donations are on, allowing them to be read aloud while you play the silly little unpacking game.

“Where am I putting the diploma guys? Where does this go?” You ask, mouse hovering over the virtual object. “Maybe I’ll just put it under the pillow…”

“StarEmojis donated $15! If up is down and yes is no, how many sides does a triangle have?”

“Thank you, but… uh...” You narrow your eyes at the message. “None, it’s a circle?”

Shrugging, you drag the diploma in the game to under the pillow. The riddle sounds familiar, but not one you know the answer to. It sounds like something Wilbur would send in the group chat at 2 in the morning, honestly.

With that thought in mind, your eyes flicker over the user that donated it. StarEmojis. Not Wilbur.

You’re so stupid for hoping. For the jump in your heart, for the frantic searching.

“StarStarMoon donated $20! Why aren’t you in any Chaos Squad videos anymore? Love you!”

Air catches in your lungs, dread swelling in your chest as your hands still on the mouse and keyboard. That shouldn’t have gotten past the moderators, but it did.

And now you have to answer it.

It wasn’t like you could tell the truth: that you weren’t good enough. That even your best friends didn’t believe you over rumors from strangers online.

Any lie would have a chance of getting back to them though. Not that you can imagine them caring, not anymore.

You swallow past the lump in your throat that’s killing you, taking a breath in before answering. One chance to get the fans to move on, one chance to find the impossible balance between the agony inside of you and cool indifference.

“We’re all just busy.” You say, forcing a smile on your face.

It’s true, at least. Everyone is busy. Everyone except you, that’s it.

“Just scheduling problems. Wil- Wilbur has Lovejoy practices and performances.” You stumble over his name. Did you even have the right to call him Wil anymore? “And Tommy is just always busy. He’s the busiest person, I swear.”

Is that true anymore? You don’t know. He used to be, but you used to help force him to take breaks. Was he taking breaks? You’ll never know.

With another forced smile, you give a half-hearted shrug. “So yeah, just busy, don’t worry guys.”

It’s with baited breath that you wait, eyes scanning chat to see if they bought it. From what you’re seeing, they have.

“Now we need to reorganize these clothes, because they’re killing me like this—“

Your discord pings quietly on another monitor, and you scramble to open it. Just your mods apologizing for letting the donation go through. You send a quick message back to them before pushing the donation to the back of your head just like everything relating to the group you’re no longer part of.

What could you do, anyways?

This was out of your control.

[cookstorys]

I saw

Vinnie hacker sooo I would like to request something idk if you do smut or only fluff so just do whatever you’re comfortable with! Anyway can the reader be shy and doesn’t have social media of any kind and ppl see him in a video and try to find out who he is? You can keep going from there

𝙾𝚗𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝚜𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚢

_____________

Person - Vinnie Hacker

Warning- None 😋

Author Note - I rushed at the end so ☺️

Females Dni

_____________

One hug. That’s all it took for rumors to start to circulate. You weren’t even supposed to be at the party, you just stopped by to see Vinnie. You walked thru that crowd of people to find Vinnie. Once you did a smile appeared on his face when he saw you. “I didn’t know you were coming.” He admitted. Then proceeded to hug you and plant a soft kiss on your forehead. Unknowingly to the both of you, Larray was filming a TikTok and with a simple zoom in you could see you and Vinnie hugging but more importantly, him planting a kiss on your forehead.

____________________

The sun beamed into your newly renovated room. You were starting to be more thankful for your decision to move and stay in L.A. The feeling of tight arms being wrapped around you was another reason you moved. You loved to be loved, The simple feeling of another person that loves you for you was unmatched and Vinnie was just that. He was the hot satisfying candle on oh-so-cold nights.

Before your surroundings could properly focus, your phone buzzed. You let out a lazy sigh and pick the object up.

[Best Friend’s Contact Name]

[Best friend] - OMFG

[Best friend] - IMA NEED YOUR ANTISOCIAL ASS TO LOOK AT THIS!

[Best Friend] - Twitter.com

You froze at the message. Your best friend had a weird sense of humor, to say the least. So, you were rightfully scared of the possibility that this link would either send you to a video of someone getting their ass beat or a very loud porno. To your dismay it was neither of the assumptions, instead, it was a picture of Vinnie planting a kiss on your forehead captioned, “Vinnie hacker spotted romantically kissing a mysterious boy on the forehead last night”

To say you were not happy was an understatement. You quickly sprinted out of bed and ran into your bathroom. This was not good, imagine how your family would react, your siblings. You weren’t in the closet but you also didn’t want to be public with Vinnie just yet. You loved the man to death - you did but you saw yourself as a shy boy from the south, thrown into this bold new world (aka L.A).

You opened your phone to more messages from your best friend to check the comments. ‘Hell no.’ You texted quickly. One thing you hated more than being in the public eye is people’s commentary about you. However, now that the secret’s out it wouldn’t hurt to take a small peak.

You rushed to open the once-closed tab of your messages. You hesitated for a while, finger levitating above the link. After a few more deep breaths your finger fell on the message, after clicking, your phone flashed blue and there appeared the post you had just recently witnessed. You scrolled down to see the comments.

____________________

@user233/ - Omg who is this

@rishardtim - I love this sm

@medontlikeyou - WE MUST FIND THIS MAN

@singleazzbitch - Not them both being fine…

____________________

A knock on the door stopped you from scrolling on. “[Name] are you ok? I saw the post and I’m so sorry. Just open the door let’s talk about this.” Vinnie tried to reason. Your long sigh could be heard thru the door as Vinnie impatiently waited for a response, action, anything. The door slowly opened revealing you and your phone visibly showing the Twitter post. “No, baby don’t listen to them, we can get this covered up or-“ Vinnie’s sentence was cut short by you rushing into his arms. “I’m ok.” You mumbled. With those two words coming out of your mouth Vinnie let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

After a while of silence. Just the two of your hugging and listening to each other's heartbeats. Vinnie spoke.“Have you thought about how you wanna handle this?” You sat in silence for a little while longer until you finally thought of an idea

“Let’s see how much they can learn.” You smirked

[fogwitchoftheevermore]

SPOILER LEVEL THREE: STRAIGHT UP THE ANSWERS TO THE NIGHTS AND TWITTER PUZZLES

Please note- Legundo recited the answers on stream, he did not show them. I transcribed them based on what he said, meaning it's possible that my spelling or capitalization is off. It's probably not, and even if it is, it probably doesn't matter, but keep this in mind, in the event something seems like it could be the answer if only this word were spelt differently or this word were capitalized, pursue it! Also, if you get slightly different spellings/capitalization when you attempt to solve either puzzle, please let me know, yours is probably more accurate!

Now, onto the puzzles.

The message Nights should give you is: "Numbers again. Are you scared? Look for my words. Not the letters within. We wait for your message where the story ends." This is a reference to the numbers grid, because he thought this would be easier. Whoops.

The Twitter message is: "Our dominion will be absolute. Our mission, a crusade to conquer all reality. Do you wish to join us? Collect the days for your words and send a letter at his home. We wait for you there."

How the Twitter puzzle was supposed to work: Month, day, tweet, word. This was ongoing for four months, and then 3 months later everything broke. Whoops.

THE LAST "OUTCOMING MISSION" OF CHAPTER ONE IS THE MISSION WITHIN THE TWITTER MESSAGE. There has been simpler stuff in chapters 2 and 3 that we have already solved, though we haven't gotten everything. This is the last puzzle from 1k days. "It's a simple request."

"Dominion" in the Twitter message is a reference to Dominion SMP, but it's more "this word was too good to pass up" than anything else.

Hello 100 Days Multiverse/Legundo fans! As reward for getting The Ghost's Vault to the final round of the @mcyt-builds-contest , Legundo revealed on stream today the answer to not one, but TWO long standing and unsolved puzzles from the 100 Days Multiverse, the Nights puzzle and the Twitter puzzle.

He revealed the answers to these puzzles in increments (Spoiler Levels 1, 2, and 3), giving more hints on how to solve Nights as the levels went on. I wrote up summaries of each of these spoiler levels for the Code Crackers Discord and Legundo's Discord, but if you're not in either, here they are for your viewing pleasure!

I'll be putting the spoilers under the cut so anyone who still wants to solve either puzzle on their own can remain unspoiled/unhinted. I'll also be separating each spoiler level into reblogs, in the event you only want to get hints, rather than all the answers. The full stream will be available as a VOD on Legundo's channel once he finishes streaming today, and this conversation starts around the 8 minute mark, in the event anyone wants to go back and look for themselves at what was discussed.

SPOILER LEVEL ONE: ONE VERY VAGUE HINT ABOUT NIGHTS AND NOTHING MORE

The theory that Nights and Random was connected is explicitly true. The randomized capitalization in the day counter in Random was, in fact, connected to the Nights puzzle. This is, in fact, what "a coin of light in dark" in the Seer's hint was referring to.

[white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen]

Marbles

Summary: Ellen isn't the only person who knew Neal Caffrey before he became Neal Caffrey.

Word Count: 7,333

Requested by anonymous; photo credit is Jeff Eastin's Twitter

St. Louis, 1984

            Kids at school called you Marbles because you always had a little bag of them with you. You knew even then that the nickname was supposed to be mean, but it had never gotten under your skin. You just laughed along, because, yeah, it was kinda weird that you carried marbles, but you played with them all the time and loved it. And before long, they were calling you Marbles because it stuck, not because they were laughing at you.

            Marbles were just great fun. And in second grade, whenever you had extra time, your teacher would let you play with them and a classmate or two so long as your other work was already done. After a couple of weeks into the school year, you had a few people you would regularly play with. Danny was one of them. His bright blue eyes made him stand out from the boys at his table. He was cute, but at seven, you still preferred puppies to boys.

            The first day he talked to you, you’d been bouncing some marbles on the carpeted floor to stay quiet, staring at them intently and trying to devise a new game in your head. Danny sat cross-legged and asked if he could play. Abandoning your half-baked game, you reached up to your desk and grabbed a piece of paper from your class folder, quickly drew the circles to represent a mancala board, and divided the marbles. Danny beat you on his first try. That was when you knew you liked him. You gave him a bag of your marbles so he could make new games, too.

            From then on, you played together whenever you could, but scarcely stuck with one game for very long. You were both easily bored by the simple games that marbles allowed, so you fiddled with the rules, tampering with the game play to see what would happen. Sometimes you created entirely new games, sometimes incorporating other tools that were easy to carry in school or to the park, like a set of dice or an origami fortune teller.

            By Christmas that same year, you’d started to exhaust your options and branched out into other ways of entertaining yourselves. Cards were good for quick games, and the randomness of a good shuffle kept games interesting for longer. Puzzles were great for you both, but they took too long to do at school and you could only play them when you had a playdate or sleepover. Eventually, you settled on codes and ciphers as your mutual favorite activity. You could create them when you were together and have secret communications, or you could create them separately and challenge each other to solve them. You liked to base yours on symbols and books. Danny liked incorporating math. By the end of the school year, you had a collection of codes of varying complexity.

St. Louis, 1986

            After nearly two years of friendship, you and Danny snuck downstairs to his aunt Ellen’s TV to watch a new movie. It was called The Color of Money. With a shelf of adult movies in front of you, you were way more interested in the popular titles you recognized, like Ferris Bueller and Top Gun, but Danny convinced you to give Scorsese a try and you never regretted it. That movie introduced you two to the world of gambling. As cynical nine-year-olds, you weren’t really interested in the idea of gambling so much as the behavior of people who did it – and the methods behind milking out the most rewards for the least risks.

            It took some needling and permission from your parents, but Ellen finally agreed to teach you both how to play poker. One Friday, she picked you both up from school, took you to the store to pick out a box of your favorite candies, and used the chocolates in place of money. With bowls of candy at stake, you learned what cards you wanted, when to fold, and how to count the multicolored plastic poker chips. Initially, Ellen hadn’t wanted to teach you to bluff on principle of not encouraging children to lie, but they had bluffed in all the movies, so you and Danny both tried it without her suggestion. She was exasperated, but amused by your complete failure. Danny had much better results, and when Ellen went to bed and left you to either play cards or watch a movie, he told you that when you lied, you always lifted your chin, like you were daring someone to call you on it.

            You both had detention the next week for trying to use poker to win your classmates’ brownies at lunch.

St. Louis, 1989

            When you were twelve, Nintendo came out with the Game Boy. Neither of your families had the kind of money to spend on a game system like that, so you and Danny decided you could team up to buy one for yourselves to trade back and forth. It was better to have the hot new thing sooner than later, even if it meant taking turns. You took out a sheet of paper to figure out how long it would take if you pooled your money together; even with the little bit of spare allowances you had socked away, you both still needed to save over thirty dollars each.

            In hindsight, what happened next was probably your parents’ first red flag.

            Sixty-four bucks, for a couple of kids in the late eighties, was a lot of money, and you were both too young to legally get jobs. Divide and conquer, however, had already demonstrated merit when it came to convincing your parents of letting you go to the fair or the movies, so why not divide and conquer to raise cash? All you needed was enough people contributing. But then came the problem that if they contributed, they’d feel entitled to your Game Boy. It was for the two of you, not anyone else. So they would need to be paid back by money you got from somewhere else.

            To summarize a long story, and explain many angry phone calls from your peers’ parents, you and Danny essentially ran a pyramid scheme to raise the money for a Game Boy, enticing kids in your old elementary school to pay forward their allowance to your first- and second-round financiers in your middle school. When you were caught, you were grounded for months – but by this point, you were both well-practiced at sneaking between each other’s houses and hiding things in your rooms, and you had a Game Boy.

            Your parents’ anger and the way your little sister’s friends’ parents treated you made you realize you’d done something morally wrong. It was humiliating and shameful to be looked at that way. Danny didn’t take it as hard as you did. It rolled off his back once Ellen was back to treating him the way she always had. Danny needed to be liked, and he was liked a lot, because he was cute, and smart, and didn’t bully girls at school, and now he had a Game Boy, so he didn’t mind that kids in a different school and their parents he never saw thought badly of him. It didn’t affect him day to day the way that the guilt started to carve into your self-esteem.

            In hindsight, that was your first red flag that there was something a little bit off about Danny. When you brought it up to him, he genuinely didn’t see why you felt so bad. You hadn’t lied to those little kids, and after all, each one only sacrified a couple of dollars. You couldn’t articulate just why, but you needed to make it right. In the end, Danny helped you make it up to the kids by handing back out a portion of your allowances for a few weeks and helping out with their homework, but you knew he’d only done it because he was sad to see you so upset.

            You couldn’t deny how great it had felt to accomplish something so quickly, and Danny had boasted for weeks about how persuasive he’d been, but you made an agreement that from then on you wouldn’t hustle kids anymore. Danny pouted about it a little because they were such easy marks, but he agreed to keep you happy. When your wrongs were righted, you felt restored, and you got back to your regular mischief – but you were much more cautious of whether you were being clever or just unethical.

St. Louis, 1992

            High school was an entirely different beast from middle school. You and Danny kept sending each other coded letters and hanging out on the weekends, but he was the one who got caught up in how girls looked twice at him and how guys wanted to be his friend. Danny joined the cross-country team, partly to spend more time with those friends and partly to keep in shape to apply for the police academy after high school, and started to pursue girls. He had a new girlfriend every other month. And it meant, altogether, that there was less time for you – so you followed his lead and joined your own clubs, made your own friends.

            In freshman year, there had been a rumor that you were dating. You’d loudly opposed it. You had eyes and could see that he was hot, and you didn’t think you’d ever be happy with anyone less smart, or less kind to you, but the idea of kissing Danny just made your stomach turn. There was one time when he started dating a cheerleader who made the mistake of threatening to “ruin” you if you didn’t back off of “her” Danny – he dumped her as soon as you told him what happened. So, although you didn’t have as much time to spend with each other, there was never any doubt that you were still best friends.

            You still liked friendly competitions, and found ways to work together to make quick money or convince your parents that what you wanted to do or see was a good idea. But something about high school flipped a switch in Danny. Maybe it was all the teachers saying now was the time to shape up. Suddenly, everything he did was in light of being like his father. Danny had always idolized his dead dad, and you couldn’t bring yourself to criticize him for that, even when it made him sort of a buzzkill. Did he really think that none of the city cops had ever snuck some liquor from their mom’s freezer? And goodbye to any manipulative schemes – even if your conscience hadn’t stopped you, Danny’s ambitions would have. He still had no moral compunctions about taking from people who didn’t need what they had, but for the fact that it was illegal and could jeopardize his future as a cop.

            “Cop this, cop that,” you complained once, playfully shoving at his arm. “Am I gonna have to become a criminal to force you to loosen up?”

            “You wouldn’t dare,” Danny responded with absolute confidence. “You wouldn’t like prison.”

            You’d scoffed. “You’d turn in your best friend?!”

            He gave you a cheeky grin. “If my best friend’s not smart enough to get away with crimes, she shouldn’t be committing them.”

St. Louis, 1995

            You weren’t sure what you wanted to do after high school. Your parents were supportive of whatever you wanted to do, but they hoped you’d at least give college a try; but without any idea what you wanted to actually do, you couldn’t justify spending that much money on it to yourself. The more you thought about what you really loved to do, you kept coming back to games and puzzles. It had been years since anyone called you Marbles, but the passion that bonded you and Danny had persisted.

            It was when you were watching the new Will Smith detective movie that you realized maybe you and Danny had this in common, too. He wasn’t just going to be a great cop because of his father; it was because he had a knack for solving puzzles. Maybe investigating was your great calling in life. How cool would it be to be detectives together??

            You sat on it for a few weeks, thinking it over before telling Danny you were going to apply, too. That way he wouldn’t know to be disappointed if you changed your mind. In the end, you never did get to tell him. You were still thinking about in by his eighteenth birthday.

            You’d already agreed to go to the mall together so you could buy him dinner, but he never came to get you like he’d said he would. You called his home, but no one picked up, so you called his aunt’s neighboring house instead. Ellen had answered and tiredly said that it wasn’t a good time. Assuming they’d had a fight, you let it be and minded your business, changing your plans when it became clear that the mall was off.

            The next morning, you left to go get him before walking to school, just to make sure he was feeling okay. He and Ellen rarely fought; Danny tried so hard to be on his best behavior for her, even before he’d straightened up to make sure he got into the police force. You noticed the post on your mailbox was up and detoured, and took out a piece of folded paper. No envelope and no stamp – just your name on one of the trifolds.

            Assuming it was another coded letter, you eagerly unfolded it to see what kind of patterns you were working with and mull it over on the way to school. To your disappointment, it was plain English. And, to your horror, it was an apologetic goodbye note.

            You sprinted several streets away to the Brooks house and pounded on the door. No one answered. You were almost panicking, considering grabbing the extra key Danny had told you about, before Ellen next door caught your eye, waving for you to come over. You jumped off the porch and ran in, dumping your backpack by the doorway to show her the note. The blonde woman barely glanced at it before saying, “I know. I’m so sorry, Y/N.”

            It was surprising how clearly you could remember that moment all these years later, especially when what came next felt like a blur of colors and motions melting together. You think Ellen sat you on her couch and poured you some tea. She made you sit and breathe before she explained to you that she’d caught Danny – Neal – signing an application for the police. He was so eager to do it the moment he’d turned eighteen, that Ellen hadn’t had a choice. She’d had to tell him he couldn’t, because Danny Brooks wasn’t his real name; and even if it were, he needed to know that his motivation, the story he’d been telling himself for years, was a lie.

            Ellen told you that the Brooks family were actually in Wit-Sec. That Danny’s real name was Neal Bennett, and that his father had been a cop, but a dirty one. That Ellen wasn’t really his aunt, but his corrupt dad’s police partner, who had testified against him and asked to be relocated near Neal, just to make sure the little boy grew up safely. That Neal had been too young to remember. That he had run away, and she didn’t think he was coming back.

            Ellen – you still didn’t know if that was even her real name – let you sit on her couch for hours, staring at the floor, drinking the tea she poured mindlessly after it had gone cold, and crying with grief. It was the one and only time she’d ever condoned playing hooky from school. She rubbed your back for a little while, and then let you sit in silent shock while she went about cleaning. It took you an embarrassingly long time to realize that she wasn’t just cleaning, she was packing. Packing to leave. Because people were going to wonder why Neal had disappeared, and maybe the cops would get involved, and maybe her and Neal’s mother would both be in jeopardy.

            Ellen gave you a small box of Neal’s belongings that she thought you’d want. In the bottom was the bag of marbles you’d given him in second grade.

            Life was never the same after Neal left. Your best friend was gone. You figured, hey, he’d always been street-smart, the odds were pretty good that he was still alive; but the way he disappeared, the odds were also pretty good that you would never see him again, so to you, he may as well be dead. You thought of him sometimes (often) and hoped he was okay, when you weren’t wishing he would come home or cursing his fake name for making you care and then abandoning you without the decency to say goodbye to your face.

            You had so many questions in the coming weeks, but the day after Neal had vanished, so had Neal’s not-aunt, along with any opportunities for closure. Once, a few days later, you scraped up the guts to use that hidden key he’d showed you and let yourself into his and his mom’s house. It was completely empty, but left in disarray, with scraped paint, peeling wallpaper, dust settled deep in the rug corners. It had been a long time since you’d spent time together there, rather than in Ellen’s, and now you knew why. With hindsight, and a psychology degree, you were reasonably sure that Neal’s mother had been fighting depression his whole life, and most of the house felt the same.

            To make it worse, Danny had been such a beloved part of the school community that in the two months between his disappearance and your graduation, everything under the sun passed under the rumor mill. At first the cops investigated. They talked to you, interrogated you. One of them made you cry by insinuating you were secretly in love with him, and killed him because he’d been dating some chick on the track team. Another rubbed your shoulder and offered you cocoa because he “couldn’t possibly imagine how cofused you’re feeling”. And the whole time, you felt compelled to lie, choking on your tongue and stumbling through how he missed your plans on his birthday and left a note the next morning. You left out the part where you’d talked to Ellen, because what the hell were you supposed to do? Out her as a witness? Admit that Danny Brooks was such a deep lie that even he hadn’t known about it?

            Whatever the correct procedure was, no one had bothered to tell you about it. But you were reasonably certain that whoever was in charge of securing the Bennetts, and Ellen, they had caught wind of the investigation, because rather suddenly, all the police activity stopped. You were left alone, and so was his girlfriend, and the guys he played soccer with. The only way they would drop a missing persons case that hard and that quick was if the feds stepped in and told them to back off.

            Your parents, and even your little sister, knew that something was off about you. You’re reasonably sure that your entire family knew you knew something you weren’t sharing. But after weeks of trying to comfort you and get you to open up, they started to let go, trusting that if you knew anything actionable, you would have shared to protect your friend.

            The police letting it go didn’t end the nightmare for you, though, because the talk at school continued. The US Marshals couldn’t tell everyone to shut up and mind their business. Some people thought Danny had run away from his mother, others thought he’d been kidnapped and trafficked. Some thought he’d knocked up a girl and they ran away, but that one ended when the girl came back to school, and it turned out she’d had the flu. Some people thought you must have had something to do with it, because you’d been so close for so many years. Those people really got to you, because in truth, you could hardly believe you’d known the boy for most of your lives and never suspected he was anything else.

            March trudged into April and April slipped into May, and your graduation crawled closer. You were announced as valedictorian. When you went to get the honors sash to wear over your gown, the administrator compassionately told you that Neal would have been valedictorian, had he been there, so though they knew it must be hard, you should keep your head up and be proud enough for the both of you. That just made it even harder to get through. What was supposed to be one of the best days of your life was one of the darkest. A huge shared milestone was lonely. Neal had run away, left you picking up the pieces in a shattered social circle, and now you were taking his place, and somehow someone else had figured out he had that tiny edge over your GPA, and a picture of you in your cap and gown giving your speech was put on a blog along with an accusation that you killed him or threatened him away so you could be valedictorian.

            You had to get the hell away. Every unnecessary second you spent in your neighborhood, in your school, in the city you used to share felt like it was scratching at your skin. The application cycle for colleges was long closed, but you took your savings, promised to call your parents every day, and moved to California, as far away as you could get. There, you got a job, found a shitty apartment to share with a girl who minded her own business, and scraped by until you could apply to college.

Palo Alto, 1999

             High school valedictorian had felt like a hollow and bitter loss more than anything, rubbing salt in the wound that Neal was gone. In the four years of college since, you’d made plenty of friendly acquaintances, and even some good friends, but none as good as Neal.

            You’d visited the school counselor a few times. Told her, minus what you knew about Neal and Wit-Sec, what had happened to drive you all the way from St. Louis to Palo Alto for school. She’d been incredibly sympathetic, even as she suggested that perhaps there had been some trauma mixed in with the grief. Looking back, you could accept it for what it was. You lost your best friend, on multiple levels, and then members of your community turned on you, accusing you of the worst. And, though you were still the only one who knew, the whole time you’d been holding onto a secret boring through your soul that you couldn’t share with anyone.

            College graduation felt… much different. Like a success. You were proud of yourself. Sad to see it go but happy you’d made it out the other side, not just of a program but of the grief that had clenched you so tightly. This was what graduation was supposed to feel like. You weren’t valedictorian – or whatever the university equivalent was – this time, but you were graduating with honors, and had an acceptance to a graduate program in hand, so there was that.

            Your whole family made the trip to see you graduate. As you walked across that stage, receiving a piece of paper bound in ribbon, you wished once again that Neal would’ve been there to celebrate with you, and hoped that he was okay, then found your family in the crowd and beamed at them brightly, tears pricking in your eyes with joy. Your sister was doing her best to be both supportive and embarrassing by wearing an obnoxiously neon shirt with your name on it.

            You faltered in your steps across the stage, just for a second, when you saw the face in the crowd grinning from behind your father. They were so far away, it was kind of hard to see, but for just a second, you could’ve sworn…

            You got nudged from behind and had to look down to safely get off of the stage steps. When you were out of the way of the procession, you looked for your family again and stood on your toes to see around your parents. The face you thought you’d seen was gone. You looked down to the rolled paper in your hand, proclaiming you’d earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and shook your head; you, of all people, should know the power of wishful thinking.

            Your parents took you back by your apartment to change out of your regalia before going for a celebratory meal. You hurried up the steps in your dress heels, eager to get out of the heavy robe, but stopped cold just on entering the front door. Sitting on the cheap kitchen table was a bouquet of flowers and a little bag of marbles.

            Your gut response was to clear the apartment like they did in the cop movies, but you didn’t have a gun or a taser or even pepper spray, so if you searched and found someone, you were really just putting yourself in more danger. Cautiously, you inched towards the table, along the way recognizing the flowers as the kind that you used to admire while walking to school. When no one jumped, and you didn’t feel unsafe getting closer to the table, you slowly picked up the bag of marbles. The little beads clinked together. You held them up for inspection and realized that they were color tinted, but still mostly translucent, and inside each was a clay creature. Your favorite animal, sculpted and suspended in resin.

            No one had given you marbles, or called you by that name, in years. You hadn’t carried them anywhere since middle school. And you certainly couldn’t have told anyone what your favorite flowers were when you didn’t even remember what they were called.

            The marbles, the flowers, and the face you thought you’d seen at the ceremony all added up to mean one thing to you, and instead of changing your clothes, you sat at the table with the marbles in your hand and had a good, solid cry for a few minutes. Then you stored your new marbles with shaking hands in your so-called Neal Box and put the flowers in some water. You couldn’t decide if you were happy, sad, or furious, but it all boiled down to one thing: he was alive. And still thought about you, just like you still thought of him. And that was something to celebrate, even if your family didn’t know it wasn’t just your graduation that you were happily crying over.

Quantico, 2001

            Completing your Master’s degree was your new proudest achievement, but though there wasn’t anything bad about that graduation, when you walked the stage, you’d hoped to catch another glimpse of a familiar face. No such luck. You still weren’t too worried. Ever since getting those beautiful marbles, you’d gotten an anonymous postcard every once in a while. There was usually a little note on them in one of your oldest, simplest ciphers. Nothing complex, but enough to let you know that he was okay, and he was thinking of you.

            Sometimes you wondered why he didn’t ever just come say hello if he missed you. Yes, you were a part of Danny Brooks’ history. But if Neal Bennett had had to reinvent himself out of a lie, did that have to mean shunning everything about who he’d been?

            Still, a note once in a while was better than the four-plus years you spent with radio silence, hoping he was alive, knowing it was even probable, but with no proof and no way of verifying.

            Shortly out of your Master’s program, you were accepted into the FBI. A couple of internships during school had showed you that you weren’t interested in clinical practice, nor did you think you really had the drive to push through a doctorate program, so you looked for ways you could use your degrees to solve puzzles, returning to that lifelong passion for an intelligent challenge. You found the bureau, and other members of the alphabet soup, but especially the bureau. It was probationary, but you were in, and it was time to head to Quantico.

            The physical exercises were draining. You’d never been so active in your life. Still, the mental exercises were more entertaining than not, so long as they didn’t get so repetitive. Your very favorite instructor took the class of recruits through prolific cases that hadn’t quite become public knowledge, or cold cases that still had yet to be solved. Unlike a documentary, instead of telling you step-by-step what had happened, he prompted and prodded at the agents in training to work their way through themselves. You excelled at this exercise and it proved to you that, although you’d have to work hard to secure a role where you could choose to work on these types of cases, the opportunity was there. That was what you wanted to work towards.

            At least, it was your favorite class. Your emotions changed the day that you were shown pictures of inductees into the FBI’s Most Wanted ranks. Because, to your horror, you recognized one of those faces. He was six years older, but there was no chance you wouldn’t have recognized him. Not him.

            “Not him,” you nearly whispered out loud, barely catching yourself before your tongue moved in your mouth. You drank in all the information they had on him – suspected of bond forgery, along with a litany of other crimes, and dubbed James Bonds, because they had no clue what his real name was.

            You had a split second choice to make, and you felt the pressure beating down on you. Either betray your best friend and turn him in to the FBI, or betray the moral conscience you’d long since sworn to live by – along with the bureau you were about to swear to serve.

            It was an easier choice than it should have been. It would haunt you, but you couldn’t fathom for a second turning your back on him. For as long as you stared at the list of things he was wanted for, there was nothing in that list that could make you hate the man he’d become.

            The instructor had noticed you stopped at Neal’s image. “Is there a problem?” He asked you expectantly.

            Shit. Every game of poker with Neal came to mind and you controlled all the tells he had ever warned you of, making your decision and committing to it. “No,” you said, looking up and putting on your best amused face. “Sorry, Sir. It’s just… James Bonds?”

            You sold it so well that you should’ve been ashamed. The senior agent chuckled and shook his head a bit. “I guess the opportunity felt too good to pass on,” he said, picking up the flyers from your row to share with the next group.

Quantico, 2003

            You weren’t capable of turning on Neal, but you also couldn’t bring yourself to follow his case. The conflict of interest was too strong in your gut, so you just turned a blind eye to any flyer you saw, or a deaf ear to any curious chatter about James Bonds and his globetrotting stunts.

            You kept an eye out for postcards and anonymous letters, but they’d become less frequent. Either Neal had been keeping tabs and learned you joined the bureau, or he’d realized sending mail was becoming more hazardous. In either case, you still got some once in a while, so if it were the former, he was trusting you.

            Over the years, the more you heard about him, the more impressed you were. But also the more… saddened you became. Neal had strayed so far from the man he had wanted to be when you’d spent so much time together. You had to wonder if he were truly happy. At this point, his face was plastered anywhere law enforcement could be assed to look, and you had to hope that he was, because you feared it was too late for him to change course, even if he wanted to.

            At some point, you’d begun to realize that you were technically aiding him just by keeping in touch. You didn’t have a way to send messages to him, but however he’d found your address repeatedly, he really was trusting you – it took over a year, but between bits you overheard and images on postcards, you realized that he was actively sending you clues as to where he was. Now, you doubted that he was doing so with that actual intention. More likely, he was just sending you the postcards because he knew you’d always liked their pictures and wanted to travel. But there was an additional professional boundary being crossed when you knew that the agent in charge of his case was searching for him in Germany or Iceland when you’d just gotten a card from Cape Town or Tehran.

            It also occurred to you that he wouldn’t be an anonymous James Bonds forever. Sooner or later they would figure out who he was. They’d trace him back to either Neal Bennett or Danny Brooks. Both names would flag with the Marshals, and the FBI would learn all about how he disappeared overnight from St. Louis. The FBI would also learn all about how the police had questioned his best friend, Y/N Y/L/N, for days. And then they would have a lot of uncomfortable questions for you that you still had no idea how you were going to answer.

            Then, one day, James Bonds had a name. Neal Caffrey. You didn’t recognize his last name, but it was instantly committed to your memory. Now you knew what he was going by. It was another hit to your heart. He didn’t keep either of his last names. But he had kept his birth name – which had been foreign to him when he learned what it was. It was hard to tell what was going on in his head. You hoped he knew what he was doing. And you hoped that whatever he was choosing, he was happy and safe.

            From the moment he’d been named, you kept waiting for the agents you worked with to turn on you, ask you those awkward questions, but the time never seemed to come. For a second, you had considered running, but you didn’t have the knowledge or connections to get very far or hide for very long. No, the best option for you would be to bow your head and accept the consequences. But those consequences didn’t come for you, and when you saw the updated flyer, you saw why. They had him listed as born in Texas during February. The bureau had a whole fake identity that they fully believed; they had no idea who he really was.

            “You astound me every time,” you’d muttered to yourself, closing the browser window.

Ossining, 2005

            If you ask someone where Sing Sing is, they’ll probably just say “New York”. If pressed, they might even say “New York City”. Very rarely do they actually realize it’s about thirty miles upstate in a little town called Ossining. You’d never been, and had no reason to go, but when you saw the email memo that Neal Caffrey had been apprehended and was awaiting arraignment, you didn’t think you had much of a choice in the matter. You filed for a transfer, ostensibly for a change in scenery, and fortunately, it was granted. Your new home was New York City.

            Your shoes and your conscience itched to guide you upstate straight away, but as much as it pained you, you forced yourself to stay away until after he was convicted. Neal was considered an extreme flight risk; any interactions he had were extremely closely monitored. No matter how loyal you were, you were still afraid of being in trouble for failing to give up his name and whereabouts. And while that made you feel quite selfish, there was also the detail that he’d been “caught” by voluntarily walking into a trap to protect his girlfriend from taking the fall for him. It comforted you that he was still the same softhearted man you’d always known and loved – but, since he’d always been fiercely protective, you weren’t sure if he’d welcome you jeopardizing your good standing to see him.

            Well, too bad. You winced. Okay, maybe a little more sympathy for the guy in prison.

            You signed in a civilian, not an agent, in the hopes that the bureau was less likely to be notified. You weren’t sure what you’d say, but you couldn’t just leave Neal to rot alone in here. The place looked like the place of nightmares, and you were free to just turn around and walk out the door. Your heart ached. God, Neal…

            They searched you quite invasively, but that bit of your dignity was a small price to pay. Once satisfied you weren’t using your body to smuggle a nail file or the like, the guards had you wait while they fetched Neal for visitation and put him in a small monitored cell, then allowed you to be led back the same way. The moment you realized he had to have visitors in a cell with him, it felt like your heart skipped a beat. You knew his containment orders were serious, but to not even be permitted to use the visitation room? This was the kind of restriction that was usually placed on quite dangerous felons.

            There was already one guard standing inside with Neal, close to the door but warily watching. You could tell from his profile, in the ugly orange jumpsuit, that his wrists and ankles were manacled together and locked to the metal table. As the guard who’d led you back let you enter, the guard already inside gruffly barked the rules: fifteen minutes, follow the tape on the floor to your seat (rather than take a shortcut which passed closer to Neal), and absolutely no touching.

             You ventured in as Neal turned around as well as he was able to see you. The surprise in his eyes was quickly taken over by delight and he started to stand, only to get yanked down by the links around his wrists. That sight alone nearly killed your excitement to see him, but he remained undeterred. “Marbles!” he cheerfully chirped your old name.

            You forced a little laugh, loosely sticking to the tape and hurrying to your side of the table, swinging your legs in comfortably to sit across from him. “You are such an ass, Neal,” you complained with a small smile.

            There was almost a little look of shock when his chosen name came out of your mouth so casually, but before you could respond to it, it had melted into a soft smile that lit up his eyes. He looked at you like you’d put the sun in the sky for a long minute. “I’ve missed you,” he said quietly.

            “I’ve missed you, too,” you risked answering, not daring to look to the guard. Hopefully he wouldn’t remember this bit. “When you… well, I thought for years that was it.”

            “It wasn’t meant to be,” Neal admitted. It was easy to say that now that it was in the past and you’d gotten back in touch, but you couldn’t help but trust him. Neal had never told you an outright lie before, not for any reason. “Things just… is it too cliché to say I needed to find myself?”

            You hesitated, but shook your head. “No,” you said haltingly, “But there were better ways to do it than becoming a milk box picture.” You’d imagined screaming in his face for it, giving him a real what-for over the way he left you to pick up the pieces he left behind. But now that you were here, in a prison where he’d be spending the next half decade of his life – well, it was hard to hold onto any anger. Neal was paying for his mistakes. You didn’t need to pile on with trauma you’d already processed. “Did you?” You gently prompted, sensing that if you didn’t, he was going to wait for you to say what you’d thought about.

            His smile tightened into something wistful. Your heart sank a little for him. “I think I got close at times,” he allowed. You didn’t quite buy it, but thought if he needed to believe it, it wouldn’t hurt to let him tell himself that all of this was worth it. Like he’d always done when he was unhappy, he turned the subject around back to yourself. “I’m so proud of you, Y/N. I knew you’d make something good for yourself.”

            We could’ve done it together. You thought back to his eighteenth birthday. You’d been so close to telling him you were going to take that next step with him. Maybe if he’d known it wasn’t just his journey… well, it didn’t matter now. It was ten years in the past.

            “Stop talking like we’re in retirement,” you accused lightly. If it weren’t for the guard who felt very strongly about touching, you’d have nudged his foot under the table. “We’ve got ages to make more out of ourselves yet still.”

            “You do,” Neal disagreed graciously.

            “No, we do,” you argued, saying it so firmly that he wasn’t allowed to disagree again. Then you softened your tone, because you knew he already knew how bad this was going to be. “Four years… it’s gonna be hard. But one day it’ll be done and you’ll have a whole life in front of you to do something new.” It was the twenty-first century. When he got through his sentence, he’d still have more than half his life expectancy ahead. “And we’re gonna make it good. Got it?”

            Neal’s expression had hardened a bit, for a moment showing his anger. When he was Danny, he’d been good at concealing anger, but when it did come out, it was volatile. Ellen wanted to put him in therapy to better manage it, but his mother had never gone through with it, so Neal had been left learning to self-soothe and manipulate his own emotions until he could explode in private. It wasn’t pretty. And, unfortunately, based on that familiar expression he’d made, that habit hadn’t changed. But when you were done, he seemed to assess what you were saying and judge it on the merits of your own belief in it, because he studied your face as he slowly nodded, and the anger slipped away, either unwinding from his joints or being masked by something else. You hoped for the former, but truthfully, it had been ten years. You’d once known him better than anyone. While you still suspected that that was largely true, you couldn’t be sure this hadn’t changed.

            “We will,” he echoed after you. “You’ll be here?”

            You nodded with certainty. If nothing he’d done so far had gotten you fed up with him, there was probably nothing he could manage from inside a prison to change that. “I will.”

            You put a hand down on the table. The guard locked his eyes on it and you barely refrained from rolling your eyes. Symbolically, you were offering Neal a hand to hold. Judging by how exasperatedly he glanced at the guard, he understood as he made an exaggeratedly slow motion, mirroring your hand but not reaching across to you.

            “It’s gonna be a long four years,” Neal grumbled under his breath, shooting an irritable glare in the guard’s direction.

~~~ ~~~

A/N: Wow! This ended up twice as long as I planned because I got really into it and carried away a bit. I might even be open to a continuation... Anyway, if you liked it and want to get announcements about stories and chat about what's coming up, leave a comment asking to join the Discord and I'll send you a link!

[skinnyducky]

important questions // v.h.

a/n this wasn’t at the front of the list to put out, but the ideas were idea-ing and i just decided to write it any ways. hope you like it! also, i’ve been taking request even though i said i wouldn’t (lol) but this time i’m actually going to hold on taking anything, just so nothing gets added and i overlook previous requests. 

vinnie hacker x fem!reader

Word Count: 622, edited

WARNING: lang, and i think that’s all.

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Y/n and Vinnie were lying on his bed, her head resting on his stomach as she scrolled up and down through Twitter. The two originally planned to go out and have some fun but decided against that due to their shared laziness—one of the many reasons why they gravitated towards each other.

The young couple took this time to just enjoy each other’s company and have some time to themselves. It was somewhat quiet in Vinnie’s room, the only sound coming from Hera as she munched on her food. However, that silence was broken as Y/n asked Vinnie a simple, yet important, question. A question that had been plaguing her since the minute they got together. A question so deep, so complex, that not even the greatest philosophers could find the answer to it.

"If I was a cockroach, would you still love me?"

Vinnie’s face contorted in confusion as he looked down to meet the innocent eyes of his girlfriend. "What?" He asked, "What are you talking about?"

"If I was a cockroach, would you still love me?" She repeated.

"What kind of question is that?"

Y/n rolled her eyes. "Does it matter what kind of question it is? It’s pretty straightforward. Would you love me if I was a cockroach? Yes or no?"

"No, I don’t think I would."

Raising her eyebrow, Y/n sat up and crossed her arms. "You’re joking, right?" She huffed. "I can’t believe you, Vinnie."

"What? I just answered the question."

"You weren’t supposed to answer it with ‘no.’" The girl flew up off of his bed and began pacing around the room. "You’re like practically saying our relationship means nothing, that I mean nothing. Is that what I am to you? Just nothing?"

Vinnie would be lying if he said he was terrified right now. He hadn’t expected this reaction from Y/n, especially to a question of that nature. Just watching Y/n as she stomped around with her fist clenched, a mean mug on her face, made him tremble. He’d never seen her this angry. Actually, since he’d been with her, she hadn’t gotten angry once. It was like the emotion was nonexistent for her. He didn’t know what to expect.

"I-I didn’t know it meant that much to you." He gulped, scooting back against his headboard. "I wouldn’t have said ‘no’ if I knew you were going to get angry."

"This isn’t anger." Y/n pointed to her face. "This is me trying to hold back that anger."

Sweat trickled down Vinnie’s forehead as he swallowed down his terror. "I’m s-s-sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, babe."

It was at that moment that Y/n’s features softened, and she started laughing hysterically. She slid back down the bed and rolled around for a few minutes, clutching her stomach. Vinnie sat there, dazed and confused, wondering what the hell had gotten into her.

"I’m so lost," he said.

Y/n calmed down a little, wiping away a stray tear. "Baby, you were so scared." She giggled and crawled up to him. "I was just joking. I’m not mad at you."

"Wait, huh?" He stared at her, completely puzzled. "You’re not? But you were just—"

"—pretending," she finished. "Honestly, I expected your answer to be ‘no.’ Let’s me know you wouldn’t leave me for some voluptuous cockroach." Y/n wrapped her arms around him, pecking him on the cheek.

Vinnie took a deep breath, feeling his heart rate relax. "You’re mean, you know that?"

"Yes, but I’m only mean to you."

The two shared a deep kiss before Vinnie pulled away. "What about you?" He asked.

"What about me?"

"Would you still love me if I was a cockroach?"

Y/n smirked. "No. No, I wouldn’t."

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@barbietiingz​ @tvdsure​ @suqarszn​