#this will bomb but I think I'm funny

[araindropshallfall]

Characters who commit crimes in shelving

[peace-hunter]

tfone au where OP is created as the last of the primes but way after them, a sparkling born at what were thought to be the last days of the war against the quintessons, the beginning of a new generation of peace after eons of war. a child meant to be loved and raised knowing nothing of war nor sacrifice.

he's kept mostly out of the spotlight by his siblings, who don't wish to expose him to everyone's optics so young, and want to wait until the war is done and over to properly introduce him to their people.

except of course the primes are betrayed and murdered by sentinel, the war is lost and everyone who knows and cared for the truth is either banished or outright killed in order to suppress it.

and the high guard, the ones the primes trusted the most, the ones that were supposed to protect them, the ones who failed in their most important duty, have to make a choice. to take the last prime, their last hope, with them to the surface, a hostile environment where there's little to no supplies and where they'll be hunted down by both sentinel and the quintessons as the biggest threat to their regimen.

or hide him in plain sight. place him where sentinel won't think to look for him. one more sparkling among many. and hope it will be enough to keep him alive. pray to primus that he'll protect his last child long enough for them to come back for him when it's safer (even if most of them have already lost their faith on him when he allowed the rest of his children to be massacred like that)

they almost lose their resolve when they realize they will have to take the little one's cog away in order to make him blend in with the rest of the newborns (and oh do they burn with murderous intent when they see what sentinel has done to their people but it's not the time yet-) but in the end they decide an impaired little prime is better than a dead one.

and so in the chaos of thirteen dead primes and a sudden energon crisis, a little sparkling who very few mechs really knew about and even fewer had seen completely vanishes. and in the depths of iacon a mech in charge of a new batch of newborns scratches their helm in confusion as they realize they must have miscounted the first time.

optimus prime is quietly erased from any official records by sentinel, written off as dead when they find a sparkling's frame mangled beyond recognition after an attack on the base of those rebels that insist on being a thorn on his side. killing the sparkling hadn't been precisely in his plans, he probably could've found some use for it after all, but he's not particularly upset about it either.

and orion pax grows up with an ache on his spark that tells him he's missing something far more important than a t-cog and dreams of gentle and loving hands, cradling him against the frames of mechs he cannot recall the faces of.

[crows-of-buckets]

Rook: I'm really worried about Davrin and Lucanis, they keep arguing with one another... Its very bad Varric, what if it effects them in battle?

Varric, remembering that one time Fenris broke Ander's nose then took a knife in the back for him in the same night: I'm sure they'll be fine kid. They're barely even arguing if you ask me

[yippee-optimistically]

Funny oj doodles ^_^

this is the evil ii2 song 🔥

And finally.. I offer u ... A measly colored human apple ... Ain't she a cutie !

[chitaquahq]

Dean feeling inferior to Endverse Dean because Endverse Dean founded like 6 different hunter camps and got offered a bunch of territory by a really powerful boss woman with physic powers and therefore got an army.

Just for Dean to then go to Ichabod and charm a powerful boss woman with physic powers to convince an entire trade alliance at the end of the world to give him territory and people to create another hunter base for his army. Under his first year in that world, I must say.

Captain of being oblivious to his own influence AND trying to win competitions against dead versions of himself.

[starryeyeddreamer21]

Headcanon that since they live in a self aware musical Angel will use it to his advantage to fuck with people

He'll start playing music to see what the strangest thing he can get people to sing is

Everyone figures out what he's doing pretty fast but he keeps doing it because Alastor and Lucifer seem to have made it a competition to try and get each other to say the most embarrassing shit and neither of them will back down

The worst song he's gotten them to sing along to is Daisy by Ashnikko

This left multiple people dead, even more people traumatized, and got Angels music privileges restricted (in his defense he really thought this one would stump them)

He does feel kinda bad for Charlie but the horrified looks of Vaggie and Husks faces make everything worth it

(also Cherri and Nifty think it's hilarious)

[dyedviolet]

So imagine you're Ishmael except you're sneaking aboard an unmanned vessel, and then when you're well out to sea the boat starts talking to you and basically says "hey I'm god and I could smite you on a whim." You're understandably scared so you just start reading one of the many novels you packed for the journey, but the the boat that is god starts reading over your shoulder and almost using your brain as a filter to understand human emotion. Boat-god has blorbos now, you're besties, and then you go on to the next leg of the journey and don't see boat-god again for a while. When you do, boat-god has been almost killed to death by the fish people from Portsmoth or wherever Lovecraft said they're from, so you kill the fish people and save boat-god. Boat-god's crew is here this time and when you're done tying up loose ends, and help arrives, you find out that the organization that made boat-god has been shoving a lot of god into a lot of boats and your boat-god might actually be one of the slightly less powerful ones.

That's what Murderbot's friendship with ART has been like

[aeb-art]

cringe is dead or whatever so… here's a super rough comic about geo getting smooched at a new year's eve party o7 (the mall toons of course belong to @8um8le)

happy new year, go kiss a robot xoxo

[mfshipbracket]

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be

love is love.

[feathertailedcentipede]

all my life's a panic trip

a rocket ship to planet schizoid

[hollenka99]

I think it would be very funny if Roger ap Gwilliam was born when Ruby unleashed him. I don't think it's said which year specifically they land in but since Ruby could pay on her phone, I'm going to put it in the past 5 years if it's not 2024.

So you have this man in his early-to-mid 20s, saying shit about wanting nuclear control, and somehow he wins. He probably has much older opponents who are either middle aged like Ruby or older, something that theoretically indicates wisdom and sense, while this fresh faced Welshman acts like a living John Mulaney 'eggs and bottle rockets' sketch.

First Prime Minister to be appointed in his 20s in over 250 years (only other person in our history actually because Pitt the Younger is currently the only 20-something PM) and may even beat that record if he was born in 2023 or 2024. Possibly the last PM too if his plan went ahead.

All because people saw him and said "Sure, let's give this young man his bombs despite the fact he left school only a few years ago."

[jq37]

I believe ppl have been discussing the name thing b/c a) some ppl use it to call her gendered insults (fair enough) and b) Freshman Year revealed Halflings are the colonized indigenous ppl of Solace and then that NEVER GOT ADDRESSED AGAIN (wild), so the question is "is it bad for us to shit on what may be an Ethnic Halfling name," b/c Penny+the Cubbys have very different names but are they products of assimilation, and do Halflings typically name themselves after items like how the Luckstones are named after a lucky rock, etc. That's also why it's hard to tell if she's supposed to be "white girl hates Affirmative Action" or "model minority punching down."

Hmm, OK. Thanks for the info.

Making fun of someone's name in general isn't very nice but neither is grabbing them by the balls and putting a pistol to their heads. Of course, the first thing is a thing that happens way more often irl so it makes sense that people would be more rubbed wrong by it than this crazy pirate activity that is (hopefully) not happening in anyone's day to day life. But because the racial politics of Spyre isn't really something that's emphasized in play, I can't imagine the players are thinking any deeper than dunking on this very intense Keebler Elf sounding name that Brennan invented irl and then gave to a character designed to oppose them. They don't have the cultural context their characters would have. I don't think they'd be dunking on a whimsical sounding name if the setting was Unsleeping City and it was like, a traditional name from a real life culture.

The only times I can think of racial stuff explicitly coming up in the show is the halfling thing you mentioned and the fact that "evil races" are marginalized enough that there's literally a squad of undercover angels staffed by evil races for when they need an easily believable baddy.

Anyway, I guess my point is this very much feels like a situation where there is def a discussion that can be had on the topic but there's not a ton of material in the text to answer the question and, even if there was, it probably wouldn't be a one to one perfect representation of any real world thing anyway (in the same way that Helioism is obviously very based on Christianity and there are problems in the Helioic church that are analogous to irl problems with Christianity but it literally can't be the exact same thing because this is a world where their god explicitly exists with no faith needed to prove it and there is 1000% a hell you can go to for not following the rules and also your god is influenced by the opinions of the followers and there are other gods too and a WHOLE lot of other things that separate Heliosim from Christianity).

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

honestly one of the most bullshit statements i've seen from dumbass people surrounding going about christmas/the holidays while knowing what's happening in palestine is "there's never been a christmas where people weren't dying or suffering somewhere so you shouldn't let it affect your holiday so much :/" like. sure. there's 8 billion people on this planet and it is guaran-fucking-teed that there's going to be a group of people experiencing a crisis during the holidays or some other day that other people are celebrating. no one's saying this is a new thing. but jesus fucking christ there's a difference between "people are suffering somewhere during the holidays :(" and "there's an ongoing fucking genocide being endorsed and funded by your government that you're watching on your phone in real time while you can't even donate aid effectively because of a fucking blockade by a government still crying that they're the victim and being believed about it by your joke of a government. what do you mean you're not feeling the holiday spirit this year"

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

i love defending pete wentz against the mania haters who call him the music industry's mr krabs bc he sucks in other ways.

[mercurydancer]

Burning Matches Pt. 7

Hey, Fellas

_

This chapter starts off with a bit of a flashback into Miles' perspective of a bit of last chapter and in particular that conversation that Jefferson mentions having with his kid and then goes from there, just so you're not confused.

Ps. Nicolas Cage playing a Teenager will never not be funny.

_

            Miles listened to Peter’s voice as he explained who they were and what they needed with awe building up in his chest. He had already been vaguely impressed when Peter began speaking Spanish, but at every word that trickled from his lips, every carefully crafted lie that blended truth with the small barely-perfected idea that Miles had gone with, that bubble of vaguely impressed had turned into amazement. He hoped that it didn’t spread on his face, but one look at the bleeding mess of his friend helped secure the look to concern.

            Then Peter took off the mask. Peter took off the mask. Peter did the one thing that had terrified Miles, that had made him shake and shiver, and finally stare at Spider-Man in the same way he had before he died, with the same belief and trust that he could make it better.

            This time, Peter had managed to do so, in a way that made Miles’ breath catch in his throat. The mixed ball of guilt and horror in his chest was soothed slightly when his mother and father moved to help, but in the end, it was only tugged tighter, driven into his belly at the sight of every other face that was bared. Every other mask that was taken off.

            Miles felt like opening his mouth, like giving voice to the cry building inside of him, the “I am Spider-Man” that was on the tip of his tongue, the confession that Miles couldn’t speak.

            That Miles wouldn’t speak.

            Miles stayed in the background, watching his friends as they quietly watched his mom, as Peni moved to help, and felt that guilt pull tighter. When his mom finally pronounced that Pete was going to be okay, and the others began to relax, Miles had a terrified moment where he thought that his dad would kick them out. Instead he began offering for them to stay. They agreed, and after some discussion on where to put everyone and what to wear once their costumes were removed, they all began piling up in the living room. They helped Miles clean up the floor of his room, Peter revealing a home remedy that he said he used all the time, removing the blood that had pooled there as though it had never been there.

            But it had been, and the citrusy smell of Peter B’s concoction still hovered in his room.

            Miles wanted to join them in a way, he wanted to join his friends so badly, but when his father approached him, he knew that was unlikely to happen. His dad put his arm over his shoulder, twinging sore muscles as he did so (but Miles wouldn’t flinch), while his other took hold of his mom, leading them back into the hallway and away from the cuddle-pile that was forming in the living room, surrounding Pete’s makeshift-bed on the coach. A part of him knew that he didn’t belong there.

            He was a coward.

            His dad sighed, steering him into the room and closing the door behind them gently. His mom had gone to get showered and changed, having refused to take one until the others were taken care of first. The look that his dad was giving him was gentle, a kind of soft concern mixed with caring in a way that Miles didn’t deserve… He was such a bad son. Lying through his teeth, and he knew as his dad sat down on the bed and stared at Miles, that he would have to lie some more.

            “What happened?” his dad asked, voice gentle, seeming to recognize the way that Miles wanted to hide, wanted to run away and never be found. “Miles, it’s a school-night, why…why were you out of school, where were you where they found you? What…just what happened?” There was a line of frustration there underneath the concern, but his dad’s face was so open, and he had been trying so hard, and Miles…

            “Because I couldn’t stop thinking about Uncle Aaron,” Miles croaked out, “I left and I…I went where we used to go. Where we…he helped me throw up a tag, and I just…I just wanted to see it again.” He gave a shuddering gasp, and it was real, because the burning in his throat just wouldn’t stop. “There was this thing, this awful…it was huge. It came out of nowhere and it… Dad…” Miles sniffed. “It almost killed me, but…but that man, the one that got so hurt…he, he dove in front of me. He took the hit, and it…” Miles shook his head, remembering that awful crack, that terrible sound of tearing flesh, and suddenly there were arms wrapped around him. His dad, holding him close and holding him tight. “He flew, and he hit the wall, and they were suddenly all there, and they took it out before it could hurt me, but…I’m so sorry,” Miles gasped out against his dad’s chest, his own arms wrapping around him in turn. “I didn’t know where else to take them, and I…I couldn’t just leave them there, they…they saved me.”

            “No, no,” his dad whispered, hushing him, his lips pressed against the top of his head in a way that Miles hadn’t felt since he was small. It made him feel equal parts better and worse. “No, Miles, I’m just glad…I’m so glad that you’re safe. I’m so glad that they were there. I could have…I could have lost you and I wouldn’t have known… Oh, Miles, don’t apologize for having a good heart.” His dad brushed his thumb under Miles’ eye, catching a tear and meeting Miles’ eyes with a pride that made Miles want to gag. “I’m proud of you for bringing them here. I’m proud of you for helping. It’s that spark of yours.” His face curled into a slight smile before he looked in the general direction of the living room. That smile faded slightly the longer he looked that way, his eyebrows pinching together, and Miles felt a sudden spur of dread.

            “You’re not going to turn them in dad, are you?” Miles asked, and that spur of dread turned into a spike. His dad turned to him with wide eyes, before he immediately shook his head.

            “Hey, hey, no. You don’t have to worry about that. None of them are from…from here, anyway, so there’s no one that I could turn them in to if I wanted to.” His dad dropped to his knees before him when Miles’ expression shifted, alarm creeping into it. “And I don’t want to”, he emphasized, his hands solid weights on Miles’ shoulders. “They saved my boy, Miles. How could I betray that in good conscience? How could I take their lives when they gave me back one of the lives that matters the most to me? No. We’ll keep their secrets. They’ll be safe in this house, I promise. I just…I want to be sure that we’re safe, too, so I…I don’t want you around them yet without me being there. I trust them, I do, I just…” His dad sighed, struggling to express himself, but meeting his eyes anyway, hoping for understanding

            Miles nodded slowly, giving it to him.

            “Okay, thank you, Miles, that…that makes me feel better.” His dad sighed, and hugged him once again, crushing him to his chest in a way that robbed his lungs of air and made his heart warm all at once. “I’m so glad you’re safe,” he whispered once again into his hair, and Miles hugged him back. Finally, his dad pushed him away, and nodded his head towards the bed. “You get some sleep, okay, kiddo?” Miles nodded and moved to grab some pajamas. As he did so his dad gave one last, “I’m proud of you,” before shutting the door behind him.

            Miles didn’t move for a moment, holding himself still, a too-large t-shirt in one hand, and a pair of shorts in the other. For a moment he thought he was going to drown in guilt, when a sudden rapping against his window startled him. Miles looked up and over to the fire-escape, spotting a hand by his window.

            “Miles,” a quiet voice called, far below a regular human’s hearing, but definitely not his. “Miles, are you decent? Can I come in?”

            Peter B… Miles immediately moved to the fire-escape, throwing the window open and allowing the older Spider to crawl through.

            “Hey, thanks, I just…”

            “You took off the mask,” Miles whispered, his voice pinched and his eyes wide. “You…but I…” he couldn’t catch his breath, a mixture of horror and amazement, and guilt, guilt, guilt all clamoring inside of him.

            “Hey, hey, breathe, kiddo,” Peter B said softly, crouching down before him. He took his shoulders in his hands in a way that his father had before him, brown eyes of a distinctly lighter shade staring into his own. “I did. I thought that if we showed them some trust they might repay the favor. I know how hard it is to tell your own family the truth, kid, it’s okay. Really, it’s okay.”

            Miles choked on tears and found himself clinging to the other Spider. Peter B wrapped his arms around him easily, and Miles sniffed into the strange cartoon-covered pajamas that the other was wearing. 

            “Shh,” Peter B hushed gently, rubbing a single hand on his back as the other held him steady. “It’s okay, you’re okay. It’s normal to be scared of this. It’s okay.” The other continued, his voice a quiet litany of words, gentle and even, and slowly Miles calmed.

            Finally, Miles pulled back, rubbing at his face, whispering out a quiet, “Thanks.”

            “It’s no problem, kiddo, really,” Peter B responded, smiling at him gently. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t have any serious injuries before I hunkered down to wait with the others.”

            Miles shook his head almost immediately but paused when he recognized Peter B’s look of skepticism. “Just bruising,” Miles answered, “I don’t think it cracked a bone or anything.”  

            “Miles, are you sure?” Peter B asked, and his voice was so soft Miles smiled at him.

            “You bet,” he responded, wiping his eyes. “I’m alright, thank you for checking on me…but how did you get past my dad?”

            “I wasn’t in the pile when he originally started looking. I’m gonna talk to him a bit, I think. Get some stuff cleared up.” Peter B smiled at him then. “I heard your cover-story, by the way, solid stuff.”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man, you were…well, you were fantastic.” Miles managed, and Peter B grinned.

            “You learn a few things kid, one of them is how to lie. So, trust me when I say that I know exactly how scary it is to tell your family, and any of that guilt you feel? Choke it and kill it, because you don’t have to feel guilty, definitely not for any of our decisions, right?” Peter B’s expression was as serious as it ever got, those eyes staring into his so intently, and finally Miles managed to give a nod. “Okay, good. Now get some sleep, I’ll keep watch, it’ll be okay.”

            Miles swallowed, but felt himself nodding anyway, a gentle sort of calm washing over him. Peter B crawled out the same way he came, going back to the others, and Miles felt that he could relax.

            In hindsight, Miles should have known it wouldn’t last.

            The pounding of his heart was almost louder in his ears than the scuffle that was happening before him, the calls of “Pete!” and the ringing of guilt and shock and…

            “Peter Benjamin Parker!” was suddenly belted out by his mom and Miles froze, eyes wide and body tense for all of two seconds before he realized whose name got called out. The sight of both Peter Benjamin Parkers staring at his mom with horror on their faces – and for Pete, Miles could feel the horror even through the mask - was almost enough to make up for the near heart-attack he had suffered, and Miles almost wanted to laugh. Pete was finally talked off of Peter B, pressing himself against the couch and trying so desperately to get his bearings. It made his heart hurt.

            When his mom asked him to take off his mask and Pete refused, Miles felt his heart lurch. Pete looked so small. When dressed in his trench coat and the vest underneath, it had bulked him up, and made him bigger, but now, pressed up against his couch with his body curled in a defensive position, head down and surprisingly thin shoulders hunched up around his ears… He looked fragile, he looked… Nothing like Pete. Nothing like the man that Miles had come to sort of know.

            Though really, what did he know about him? What did he actually know?

            Pete using a tommy-gun had been a shock. Hell, Pete shooting whatever that thing was had been a shock, but… It was still a Peter Parker under that mask. It was still someone that Miles knew, and someone that he trusted.

            “Hey,” his dad said, his voice that gentle cop-voice that Miles had only heard a couple of times, usually reserved for either the very hurt or the very scared. Miles supposed that Pete counted as both right now, and that kind of hurt. “Look around, you see all of these people? All of these people want you to get better, we all want to make sure you’re okay, and none of us, you hear me? None of us are going to use your identity against you. It’s okay. You can take off that mask. You can trust us.” His dad took a breath, those goggles turning to fix him in their thousand-yard stare, but his dad simply gave him a slight grin, encouragement and gentleness there within the gaze.

            “You’re Peter Parker, right? Well, my name is Jefferson Davis, but any of you can call me Jeff, okay?” He prompted, those goggles still glued to him, attention fixed, even as his dad turned his attention to all of them, an open expression on his face that made Miles feel warm. “This is my wife Rio Morales, she’s the one that’s taking care of you. She’s a nurse, and a damn good one.” His dad indicated his mom as he spoke, and his mom smiled gently and gave a small wave when Pete’s attention turned to her.

            “Call me Rio,” she said, and her voice was just as soft as his dad’s, her attention on everyone as well. Then his dad indicated him.

            “That kid over there, the one you protected? His name’s Miles, I don’t know if you got to meet him formally before…what happened to you, and I know your friend mentioned his name, but…” His dad took a breath, his eyes closing as he fought for composure. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there to protect him. But I want you to know that you don’t have anything to fear from me or my family. None of us are going to use your identity or your face against you. Not after what you all did for us.”

            For a moment Miles thought that Pete would voice his confusion, would try and correct the statement, try and deny it, but he didn’t. Pete just swallowed thickly, starting to uncurl from his protective ball. Encouragingly, his dad spoke one more time,

            “No Peter Parkers, or Porker, or Gwen or Peni have anything to fear from us, alright? You’re safe. All of you are safe with us.”  

            Pete stared at him, taking in his posture, the way he was crouched in front of him, and then that mask turned to Miles. Miles watched as he finally made what he thought was eye-contact and Miles made sure to straighten up, squaring his shoulders. There was a promise in his eyes, and in his heart, beating against his rib-cage. Miles knew his family, and he trusted his dad, and he trusted his mom, and he trusted his friends. He tried to impart all of those feelings towards the man in the mask, whose chest was still bleeding so sluggishly, and finally, finally…

            Ghost-white hands went up to that black mask, starting with the goggles, which were lifted up slowly, and Miles found himself holding his breath along with the rest of the room. The eyes that were revealed to them were strange, the iris a clear gray that was piercing, the pupil constricted to a small black dot, either at the light or…maybe just at the color. His sclera was as white as the rest of him, but the dark veins that were just barely visible and the small gray line of his waterline ending in his tear-duct was strange, even as it made his eyes stand-out. There was dark bruising around them, whether from tiredness or multiple hits, coupled by the start of many tiny little scars dusting his skin. His pupils didn’t seem to focus on any of them, flitting too fast from one face to the other, reminding Miles a bit of shimmering fish in an aquarium. Slowly, those hands that removed the goggles began pulling at the leather and mesh of the mask, peeling it back gingerly from his throat.

            That very familiar chin was revealed to them, but it wasn’t covered in the stubble that Miles had expected. It was marked with a scar, however, a scar that ran up from his chin to just above his lips. Miles stared, watching as slowly but surely a face that he had never quite expected was revealed. In a way, he supposed he had been expecting some of it. Miles had been assuming that it would be scarred, and it was, that scar on Pete’s chin joined by one that went across the bridge of his nose, and a few dusted around his eyes that made Miles nervous seeing them clearly without the shadow of the mask itself, and one long one ran just under his hair-line, but…

            Miles had assumed that Pete would be older, or about the same age as Peter B. The face that was revealed to him looked more like his Peter. In fact, it…it might even look younger, and Miles knew that the shock that he felt was mirrored by the rest of them, particularly in the way that Peter B’s mouth fell open. The mask was finally completely pulled off, revealing a shock of black hair that was alarming mainly in the contrast it presented to that white face, but also in the cut of it.

            Miles had thought that Gwen had looked bad when she had first shaved off part of her hair after Miles’ wound up stuck to her, but… Pete’s hair looked hacked at, choppy in a way that suggested he was doing it himself and possibly blindfolded, but it also appeared like it wasn’t going to be seen. Like it was cut for the simple purpose of staying under his mask and that was it. Like Peter Parker didn’t exist anymore in his world, completely lost to Spider-Man. A gray tongue licked at slightly lighter gray lips nervously, those gray eyes still darting between them all.

            For a moment there was silence. Shocked and mildly horrified silence.

            “How old are you?” Peter B suddenly managed to ask, brown eyes still wide.

            Pete finally locked eyes on him, a black eyebrow crawling its way up his face. “Eighteen,” he said, and Miles felt his own mouth drop, a reaction that was mirrored by everyone around him. As the silence continued, that eyebrow lowered slowly, and his mouth scrunched up slightly, and he dropped his eyes when no one moved, and everyone continued to stare. “Alright, seventeen, you don’t have to act like I’m a grifter,” he grumbled after the silence grew too long, and Miles sat down.

            “I thought you were thirty? Or at least…at least in your later twenties?” Peter B managed, his voice slightly higher in pitch, slightly squeaky, and Miles found himself nodding along with Peni, Ham, and Gwen, his parents looking mildly surprised themselves. “The way you act…the…the way you talk I just?” Peter B threw his hands out towards him. “What?”

            “Thanks,” Pete managed, leaning back with a slight smirk, scarred lips shifting almost grotesquely, “it’s the trauma.”

            Miles choked on his own spit. Between Miles’ own sudden loud coughs as he tried to get his breath back, and the other Spiders’ yells of shock and confusion, it took a moment to realize that Pete was beginning to press back against the couch. Those eyes went back to darting and his legs curled up to his chest tighter, and even as Miles managed to catch his breath the thought that Pete might not be joking echoed in his head.  

            Miles was about to say something, when he almost saw the moment Pete began locking the emotion away.

            Miles didn’t think back to the Spiders’ standing around him, knocking him to the ground, and yelling at him with much fondness. While he knew in his heart, then and now, that it hadn’t been done out of any malice, but rather a deep-seeded worry, it had still been a moment of trauma. Trauma that he had needed in a way, and something that helped prepare him for the onslaught of Kingpin and the rest of them, but still trauma. He still remembered Pete’s voice though,

            “Can you close off your feelings, so you don’t get crippled by the moral ambiguity of your violent actions?”

            That statement pounded through his head, and he had no doubt that that was exactly what the other was doing, though instead of fighting moral ambiguity, he was fighting trauma.

            “Thank you!” Miles’ voice finally called out, his voice loud, cutting through the other Spiders’ and his own parent’s voices sharply, anxiety leaping into his throat when everyone turned to face him. But Miles pushed through, taking a deep breath, “Thank you,” he repeated. “For…for saving me. I…” Pete was staring at him, those gray eyes fixed in his direction, black brows pinched slightly together. “I would have been dead, and…just thank you. I’m sorry you got hurt…”

            Pete continued the quiet staring for a moment longer, before that kind of twisted smile pulled at his lips again. “You go up against a lot of hard boys in this line of work, kid, and that comes with a lot of injuries. This ain’t anythin’ new. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

            “Right, well, in order to make sure you can do it again, do you mind letting me look at your stitches?” His mom asked, moving forward. “I want to redo them and check your head. You seem to be pretty aware, but I want to make sure.”

            Pete turned his attention back to her and after a moment gave a slight shrug. “Alright.”

            “Okay, thank you. I’m going to work on your stitches first, do you mind lying back for me?” His mom asked. Pete hesitated for a moment, before finally began moving into a lying down position. His mom peeled back the bandages and made a few unhappy hisses at the sight before her but seemed pleased there wasn’t as much damage as she had feared. His skin was already starting to heal around the stitches, which was strange to see, but she had a feeling that if they had waited any longer that healing wouldn’t have been able to stick.  

            His dad worked again as an unofficial nurse, handing her things and sanitizing the needle for her, as well as handing her the alcohol needed to clean the wound.

            His mom began pouring alcohol on a few cotton pads to use for sanitizing around the wound, “I wish I could sanitize everything better, and had better equipment…”

            “Better than doin’ it over a sink with whiskey,” Pete replied easily with a slight shrug.

            “Man, I feel that one,” Peter B agreed, scratching at his chest. “Only…with rubbing alcohol. I didn’t realize whiskey was actually that sanitary?"

            “Been usin’ it for years where I’m from,” Pete answered. “Haven’t gotten an infection yet, so I figure it’s worth it.”

            “I wish I’d known about that sooner,” Gwen grumbled. “I couldn’t buy a lot of rubbing alcohol when my dad didn’t know without it looking suspicious, but he had a lot of whiskey. Now I’m able to stock up on everything, but that would have been helpful. I kept seeing it in movies, but I thought it was just a Dollywood thing, you know? I should have looked it up.”

            His mom stopped and stared at Pete, before staring at Peter B, and then finally at Gwen, her eyes wide and almost horrified. “If any of you ever have something like this happen again, you come right to me, okay? If you can hop dimensions to help the new Spider-Man then you absolutely must hop dimensions to deal with your injuries, that is absolutely unacceptable. No puedo creerlo…!”

            “I don’t want to impose…” Pete started, just as Peter B began shaking his head, and Gwen also opened her mouth to reply.

            “No! Absolutamente inaceptable, I will not hear any talk of imposing or otherwise bothering me. You come to me.” She pressed the wet gauze to Pete’s chest as a gesture of both finality as well as insistence. The other Spiders shut up, and fell silent, his eyes closing slightly at the sudden coolness. She began mumbling quietly, wiping away the black blood once again before fixing the stitches.

            Pete didn’t comment or move through the process, even though Miles knew the stitching had to be odd. When she was finally done, she had him put his back to the couch and she sat on it behind him, reaching out and running her hands across his head, frowning down at his hair as she did so. She pulled her hand back suddenly, slight surprise on her face, and Miles blinked at the sight of more blood on her gloved-hand. It blended in with his hair so well he hadn’t even seen it. After careful evaluation from his mom she gave a grateful sigh.

            “It feels like it was just a cut, I can’t find any sign of a crack or movement, and it has clotted well. I think your mask helped prevent it from getting any worse.” She frowned at his hair for a moment before shaking it off, though Miles was still getting over that chop job someone had made of his hair. It looked bad. His mom didn’t press though and moved away from him. Pete relaxed when she wasn’t as close to him, his shoulders rolling slightly. “Alright. I’m going to bring you something to drink, and I want you to drink all of it.” She frowned at him, before leaving for a moment. Miles grinned and sat down, watching Pete stare after her with wide eyes, a tinge of satisfaction in his chest.

            Watching his mother mom someone else was quite entertaining, but also something Miles felt oddly proud of. Pete…didn’t act like he had had much mothering in his life. Miles wondered if Pete had an Aunt May in his world…he wondered if Pete was alone. The thought of that, of being alone in that world with the black and white gloom and fog and those monsters…with no one to help him… To be seventeen in that world and completely on his own. That was just four years older than him. Four years and… Miles snapped out of it at a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and saw Gwen in front of him, her blue eyes worried.

            Miles blinked, before forcing a slight smile on his mouth. Gwen smiled back, her eyes still worried, before butting her head in Pete’s direction, the man still staring up at his mom as though he hadn’t seen anything like her before in his life. Miles inclined his head slightly and she gave a slight nod before her smile turned much brighter.

            “He’s got us,” she mouthed to him, her eyes bright and happy, and Miles found himself grinning back. Pete did have them. He’d be okay. He managed to make eye contact with the other man. Gray eyes blinked at him, slightly overwhelmed, and slightly amused. The expressions were familiar but…muted. Before he had more time to process his mom was finally back.

             “Drink all of this,” his mom pressed, finally pushing a carton of juice and the tablets into his hands. “It helps your body metabolize iron and the tablets are iron supplements, they’ll help with your blood-loss. Judging from the chart you don’t have that much of a difference in terms of biological chemistry, so you still need both vitamin-c and iron.” His mother watched as Pete blinked wide eyes at first the carton and then to the tablets, and then back to her. “Anda, bébelo, Parker!”

             Pete flinched before opening the carton and blinked at the smell. Pete frowned, looking at the carton with narrowed eyes.

            “That’s called orange juice, bud!” Ham called out. “You recognize it?”

             “I don’t know…” he frowned, looking at the carton and then back to his mom. “The whole…?”

             “The whole thing,” his mom confirmed. “Don’t worry about sanitation, and don’t worry about us, I need to go shopping later anyway,” his mom waved off his worry and he finally took a drink. They watched as grey narrowed eyes suddenly opened wider and he looked at the carton again in amazement.

            “Why’s it called orange juice?” he asked.

            “Because the fruit that it’s made of is called an orange,” Peter B responded immediately.

             “Is…is the fruit called an orange because of its color?” Pete pointed at the fruit on the box, holding it up so they could see. “This is an orange…and that’s because it’s orange?”

             “You got it,” Ham gave him a thumbs-up, and then blinked. “I think?”

             “Why is it called an orange?” Peni asked, frowning.

             “I always thought it was called that because of the fruit?” Peter B frowned.

             “Is it because of the color?” Miles asked. “I know that in Spanish it’s naranja…but…that means orange, too?” Miles pulled out his phone and began looking it up as a debate started warring. “Noogle has failed me!” he finally called out.

             “Well what the heck. I don’t know what came first, but for whatever reason, that color and the fruit is known as orange here.”

             “What’s it called where you’re from?” Miles asked, looking to Pete finally, everyone else following his gaze as well.

             “We just call them citrus fruits. They don’t have any particular name…” Pete stared at the carton a little longer. “Oranges.”

             “You don’t know what color…” His dad paused, staring at the black and white man before him, taking in the slow and steady crawl of that black eyebrow over a chalk-white face, before crossing his arms and frowning. “Alright, you know what? That was admittedly a stupid question.”

             Pete’s mouth pulled into that stilted and slightly twisted smile, and Miles had a sudden lurch when he thought that maybe that was his smile. He wasn’t being funny, or teasing, or even taunting, he just…that twisted, and almost ugly thing was his smile. Miles wondered how little opportunity he had to smile and made a vow that he’d do something to change that. He glanced at the others, finding several pairs of eyes meeting his own, a certainty in them, and found himself realizing that he wasn’t the only one who seemed to have made that connection and he likely wasn’t the only one who had made that decision.

             They started chatting amongst themselves as Pete began sipping at the orange juice with a little more fervor. He seemed the most relaxed when their attention wasn’t on him, and Miles was happy to comply with that wish.

             “Did he change back?” Pete asked suddenly, and they blinked.

             “Did who change back?” his dad asked.

             “The Lizard. Did he change back into a human after I shot him?”  

[timey-fandom-stuff]

oh no. I just realized something.

the 'gaming is my life' vs 'gaming is not my life' question in chapter 2 has no correct answer for Kris because. WELL.

gaming is Literally Their Life and they are not particularly enthusiastic about this arrangement. it's a freaking meta question disguised as a joke HOW DID I NEVER NOTICE THIS BEFORE--