#we had a whole back and forth argument where lots of names were said that i don't recognize irl but clearly knew in the dream

[ratcandy]

there's this recurring place in my dreams that i've never been to irl, but it keeps showing up. the dream itself is never the same - it's a different scenario almost every time - but the location never changes.

it's almost reminiscent of my college's lecture halls, but also not at all at the same time. the buildings are made of dark, rich wood and the inside looks all fancy and regal. but there's also computers everywhere. like everywhere. hundreds of computers and students at each of them.

many of the computers have mirrors above them. i don't know why.

but what matters more is the massive bathroom in the basement. pretty much every dream i have of this place ends with me in that bathroom. it's HUGE, there's about a hundred stalls, and the room echoes if you're in there alone. it's cold and the walls are grey and dull. the stalls feel more like cells than stalls, even clanging as if they were made of metal when slammed closed. it's unbelievably crowded and loud when it's full but it's eerily still and silent when its empty. half the stall doors don't work, and the mirrors are always too fogged to see into.

and whenever i'm in there, i'm uncomfortable. like something horrible is going to happen while i'm in that bathroom. nothing ever does. but since i end up in this place so many times, i think that one day, whatever dream me fears in there will come to fruition, and i don't know if i want to find out what it is

[katnissmellarkkk]

Elllow! Today’s bookcomb consists of Peeta being protective of Katniss. Could have been much more implied moments but here’s some explicit ones 🤗

-

But it’s too late to run. I pull a slimy arrow from the sheath and try to position it on the bowstring but instead of one string I see three and the stench from the stings is so repulsive I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t do it.

I’m helpless as the first hunter crashes through the trees, spear lifted, poised to throw. The shock on Peeta’s face makes no sense to me. I wait for the blow. Instead his arm drops to his side.

“What are you still doing here?” he hisses at me. I stare uncomprehendingly as a trickle of water drips off a sting under his ear. His whole body starts sparkling as if he’s been dipped in dew. “Are you mad?” He’s prodding me with the shaft of the spear now. “Get up! Get up!” I rise, but he’s still pushing at me. What? What is going on? He shoves me away from him hard. “Run!” he screams. “Run!”

-

I trip and fall into a small pit lined with tiny orange bubbles that hum like the tracker jacker nest. Tucking my knees up to my chin, I wait for death.

Sick and disoriented, I’m able to form only one thought: Peeta Mellark just saved my life.

-

I jump as Peeta grips my shoulder from behind. “No,” he says. “You’re not risking your life for me.”

“Who said I was?” I say.

“So, you’re not going?” he asks.

“Of course, I’m not going. Give me some credit.”

-

Anger flushes my face. “All right, I am going, and you can’t stop me!”

“I can follow you. At least partway. I may not make it to the Cornucopia, but if I’m yelling your name, I bet someone can find me. And then I’ll be dead for sure,” he says.

“You won’t get a hundred yards from here on that leg,” I say.

“Then I’ll drag myself,” says Peeta. “You go and I’m going, too.”

-

“We’re going!” says Peeta, shoving the Peacekeeper who’s pressing on me. “We get it, all right? Come on, Katniss.” His arm encircles me and guides me back into the Justice Building.

-

Peeta steps up on a crate against the wall of the sweetshop and offers me a hand while he scans the square. I’m halfway up when he suddenly blocks my way. “Get down. Get out of here!” He’s whispering, but his voice is harsh with insistence.

“What?” I say, trying to force my way back up.

“Go home, Katniss! I’ll be there in a minute, I swear!” he says.

-

“He was poaching. What business is it of hers, anyway?” says the man.

“He’s her cousin.” Peeta’s got my other arm now, but gently. “And she’s my fiancée. So if you want to get to him, expect to go through both of us.”

-

When we’re outside, I turn to Peeta. “You go on back. I want to walk by the Hob.”

“I’ll go with you,” he says.

“No. I’ve dragged you into enough trouble,” I tell him.

“And avoiding a stroll by the Hob . . . that’s going to fix things for me?” He smiles and takes my hand. Together we wind through the streets of the Seam until we reach the burning building.

-

“Peeta’s argument is that since I chose you, I now owe him. Anything he wants. And what he wants is the chance to go in again to protect you,” says Haymitch.

I knew it. In this way, Peeta’s not hard to predict. While I was wallowing around on the floor of that cellar, thinking only of myself, he was here, thinking only of me. Shame isn’t a strong enough word for what I feel.

“You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know,” Haymitch says.

“Yeah, yeah,” I say brusquely. “No question, he’s the superior one in this trio. So, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Haymitch sighs. “Go back in with you maybe, if I can. If my name’s drawn at the reaping, it won’t matter. He’ll just volunteer to take my place.”

-

The reaping takes only a minute. Effie, shining in a wig of metallic gold, lacks her usual verve. She has to claw around the girls’ reaping ball for quite a while to snag the one piece of paper that everyone already knows has my name on it. Then she catches Haymitch’s name. He barely has time to shoot me an unhappy look before Peeta has volunteered to take his place.

-

“And I’m not saying I’m not going to try. To get you home, I mean. But if I’m perfectly honest about it. . .”

“If you’re perfectly honest about it, you think President Snow has probably given them direct orders to make sure we die in the arena anyway,” I say.

“It’s crossed my mind,” says Peeta.

-

I check over my weapons, which I know are in perfect condition, because it makes me seem more in control. “I’ll take the lead,” I announce.

Peeta starts to object but Finnick cuts him off. “No, let her do it.”

-

No one’s thrilled with the idea of me going off alone, but the threat of dehydration hangs over us.

“Don’t worry, I won’t go far,” I promise Peeta.

“I’ll go, too,” he says.

“No, I’m going to do some hunting if I can,” I tell him. I don’t add, “And you can’t come because you’re too loud.” But it’s implied. He would both scare off prey and endanger me with his heavy tread. “I won’t be long.”

-

Nothing. I find nothing. Not so much as a dewdrop. Eventually, because I know Peeta will be worried about me, I head back to the camp, hotter and more frustrated than ever.

-

I know it’s stopped when I feel Peeta’s hands on me, feel myself lifted from the ground and out of the jungle. But I stay eyes squeezed shut, hands over my ears, muscles too rigid to release. Peeta holds me on his lap, speaking soothing words, rocking me gently.

-

While Johanna collects water and my arrows, Beetee fiddles with his wire, and Finnick takes to the water. I need to clean up, too, but I stay in Peeta’s arms, still too shaken to move.

-

This is when Beetee reveals the rest of the plan. Since we move most swiftly through the trees, he wants Johanna and me to take the coil down through the jungle, unwinding the wire as we go. We are to lay it across the twelve o’clock beach and drop the metal spool, with whatever is left, deep into the water, making sure it sinks. Then run for the jungle. If we go now, right now, we should make it to safety.

“I want to go with them as a guard,” Peeta says immediately. After the moment with the pearl, I know he’s less willing than ever to let me out of his sight.

-

I’m so light-headed I’ll black out in a matter of minutes. I’ve got to get away from this tree and —

“Katniss!” I hear his voice though he’s a far distance away. But what is he doing? Peeta must have figured out that everyone is hunting us by now. “Katniss!”

-

Caesar leans in to him a little. “I think it was clear to all of us what your plan was. To sacrifice yourself in the arena so that Katniss Everdeen and your child could survive.”

“That was it. Clear and simple.” Peeta’s fingers trace the upholstered pattern on the arm of the chair.

-

A hush has fallen over the room, and I can feel it spreading across Panem. A nation leaning in toward its screens. Because no one has ever talked about what it’s really like in the arena before.

Peeta goes on. “So you hold on to your wish. And that last night, yes, my wish was to save Katniss.”

-

“When that wire was cut, everything just went insane. I can only remember bits and pieces. Trying to find her. Watching Brutus kill Chaff. Killing Brutus myself. I know she was calling my name. Then the lightning bolt hit the tree, and the force field around the arena . . . blew out.”

“Katniss blew it out, Peeta,” says Caesar. “You’ve seen the footage.”

“She didn’t know what she was doing. None of us could follow Beetee’s plan. You can see her trying to figure out what to do with that wire,” Peeta snaps back.

-

Peeta’s on his feet, leaning in to Caesar’s face, hands locked on the arms of his interviewer’s chair. “Really? And was it part of her plan for Johanna to nearly kill her? For that electric shock to paralyze her? To trigger the bombing?” He’s yelling now. “She didn’t know, Caesar! Neither of us knew anything except that we were trying to keep each other alive!”

Caesar places his hand on Peeta’s chest in a gesture that’s both self-protective and conciliatory. “Okay, Peeta, I believe you.”

-

Gale’s expression darkens. “Peeta might have done a lot of damage tonight. Most of the rebels will dismiss what he said immediately, of course. But there are districts where the resistance is shakier. The cease-fire’s clearly President Snow’s idea. But it seems so reasonable coming out of Peeta’s mouth.”

I’m afraid of Gale’s answer, but I ask anyway. “Why do you think he said it?”

“He might have been tortured. Or persuaded. My guess is he made some kind of deal to protect you. He’d put forth the idea of the cease-fire if Snow let him present you as a confused pregnant girl who had no idea what was going on when she was taken prisoner by the rebels. This way, if the districts lose, there’s still a chance of leniency for you. If you play it right.” I must still look perplexed because Gale delivers the next line very slowly. “Katniss . . . he’s still trying to keep you alive.”

To keep me alive? And then I understand. The Games are still on. We have left the arena, but since Peeta and I weren’t killed, his last wish to preserve my life still stands. His idea is to have me lie low, remain safe and imprisoned, while the war plays out. Then neither side will really have cause to kill me. And Peeta? If the rebels win, it will be disastrous for him. If the Capitol wins, who knows? Maybe we’ll both be allowed to live — if I play it right — to watch the Games go on. . . .

-

Caesar and Peeta have a few empty exchanges before Caesar asks him about rumors that I’m taping propos for the districts.

“They’re using her, obviously,” says Peeta. “To whip up the rebels. I doubt she even really knows what’s going on in the war. What’s at stake.”

-

He asks Peeta if, given tonight’s demonstration, he has any parting thoughts for Katniss Everdeen.

At the mention of my name, Peeta’s face contorts in effort. “Katniss . . . how do you think this will end? What will be left? No one is safe. Not in the Capitol. Not in the districts. And you . . . in Thirteen . . .” He inhales sharply, as if fighting for air; his eyes look insane. “Dead by morning!”

-

“Katniss!” He whips his head toward me but doesn’t seem to notice my bow, the waiting arrow. “Katniss! Get out of here!”

I hesitate. His voice is alarmed, but not insane. “Why? What’s making that sound?”

“I don’t know. Only that it has to kill you,” says Peeta. “Run! Get out! Go!”

-

[jaeminscoffee]

Apologize | L. Hc

Pairing- Lee Haechan x reader

Genre- Initial angst, smut

Word count- 5.54k

Warning(s)- thick skinned oc, ego problems, argument, Hyuck almost hit's Y/n, angry/rough yet slow sex, riding, orgasm control, stern and slight brat tamer!hyuck, overstimulation. Lmk if i missed out any.

Synopsis- Why do you have to apologize when clearly Lee Haechan is to be blamed too?

Awkward. 

That's how you'd coin the atmosphere around you and your boyfriend the past dating weeks.

Guilty.

That's how you'd felt ever since the day you'd decided to act out. For being a hypocrite and for being a pain in the ass. 

Embarrassed. 

That's how you'd felt after realising that you'd lashed out on him for no rational reason. For losing your temper at him hanging out with a female who'd coincidentally been your rival. She loved him, and god knows if she still does. 

Worried. 

You're anxious that your pettiness would drive him away from you to someone better, possibly the said rival and so you're worried. 

But would you want to play the saint's role and go apologize? No. 

You can't, not while knowing what his reaction would be. Knowing Lee Donghyuck, he'd get cocky. He'll do anything and everything in his power to indulge you in embarrassment. Guilt trip you a while later and demand you'd be a good girl from then forth. Why would you want to do that? Come to think of it, he's one to be in fault too. 

Knowing full well that you'd have a distaste towards Lena, Donghyuck should've known better than publicise the fact that he'd openly hung out with his girlfriend's rival. 

He owes you an apology too when you word it that way. 

Haechan's mood can be summarized in three words, confused, frustrated and disappointed. 

You are the only one glowing in his eyes and he made sure you'd know that. And for someone like him being treated with such disrespect, he was fuming. 

It's not that he intentionally went ahead and planned a hangout with Lena, it just so coincidentally happened that one of his groupmate's her boyfriend, so meeting her was inevitable and Haechan was more than ready to explain it to you, in a calm, civil manner. 

But you just won't listen. 

Not to mention the holiday you'd planned all over last week for a road trip with the gang now seems to be the last thing on his mind now when that was the same thing he'd been so hyped up about. 

You just had to spoil it all for him. 

That explains why Haechan's furiously throwing his clothes into the baggage in order to calm down before whatsoever he's about to face while planning out a strategy to talk things out with you before the trip. 

Surely, his ego's too big to apologize that quick but at the same time, he wasn't petty enough to spoil the atmosphere during the trip, the gang didn't deserve that.

And so with one last cloth thrown into his luggage, he seals the zip and grabs his car keys from the side table with a new-found determination to resolve the conflict before the traveling that's going to take place in three hours to four from now. 

Haechan's going to make it right and he'd make sure of it.

You weren't expecting Haechan's visit at the same time you aren't shocked that he's entered your private space with no prior notice, you'd given him the spare keys afterall. 

"Y/n, we need to talk" 

You hear him close behind you but you pay no mind, continuing to walk back and forth from your wardrobe to your bed, where your package lay spread out, folded in a neat manner and ready to be put inside the luggage you'd get along for your vacation later that evening. 

"Y/n, I said we need to talk." Haechan says with a lot more sternness than before, his voice octaves lower than his usual bubbly voice. 

"I think the talking can wait until later, Donghyuck." you reply with a flat tone, calling out his governmental name in order to irk him up.

"No it can't. Speak it out, love. Let's resolve this now" He reached out to hold your forearm to turn you around so that you're facing him, the look of distaste on your face adding up to his rotten mood. 

"What's there to talk about, Hyuck? I'd told you time and time again that i don't like you around her and what do you do? Go hang out with her! Oh to have a boyfriend who actually listens to you" you peel yourself away from him as though his touch disgusts you. 

It didn't. 

It's just the courage that you'd gathered up to make sure you'd ask for forgiveness on call before the trip was all thrown out of the window due to Haechan's surprise visit. With him in front of you right now, you could do nothing but blurt out the words coming up first without censoring it and you were aware of that. 

That Haechan's ready to put up a fight. 

"She just so happened to be in the group, Y/n i told you that a hundred times already" 

"And she just so happened to be the same person who'd been nothing but rude to me because you chose me over her, totally understandable" you reply in sarcasm. 

"What do you expect me to do then? Ask Sungchan not to bring her along?" He replied with the same venomous tone you carried, slowly growing tired of this pointless argument. 

"No, Haechan. I would've appreciated it if you'd come and told me yourself that she was there! I hate that I had to find it out from Jaemin who didn't even know I was kept in the dark from that information! That made me feel like I knew little to nothing about you!"

"You know that's not true, princess.." Haechan answered with a softer tone, feeling guilty at the fact that your voice had grown smaller and smaller with each passing word. 

"I do not know what's true at this point, Hyuck. I don't even know if you love me enough to let me what's going on in your life at this point."

"Don't cross the line, Y/n."

His voice goes back to the sternness it first carried as a warning. Getting mad at him for not informing you things is one but questioning his love was another. That's not a topic up for speaking. 

No one can question his feelings, which is so genuine that if a stranger were to walk past the couple you two make they'd know from the first look that Haechan's head over heels for you. He'd kill anyone for you, that's how much he loves you. 

"I'm crossing the line? Me? Are you sure, Donghyuck? Because from how I remember it, you did it the first time by hanging out with your girlfriend's enemy without her knowing! Do you even know what would've been my possible thought process at that time?" You ask furiously, 

Haechan was dubious to pose out an answer, so he just let you continue your rant. 

"Do you know how i felt when i saw the story you'd put up with her right next to you being all clingy? How I felt when you didn't pick up my calls or reply back to my texts when I tried reaching out for some sort of assurance that whatever you have with her is platonic and that you're still mine? How i felt when Jaemin was going on about how much she'd been laughing at all you were doing and how you'd enjoyed the reaction?" Your voice quivers the more you continue.

"The answer is no. You don't know anything so just, stop trying to spoil this trip for me and let's take a break. We need it." 

"Break?" Haechan inquires with extreme shock evident in his voice.

"Yes, a break. Maybe that'll help you realise who you actually have feelings for." 

"Y/n that is so uncalled for, you're making a mountain out of a molehill! Why are you making such a big deal out of this?" You flinch at the sudden raise in his voice which had your knees buckle due to the loudness, which, for that matter, you'd heard only once before when you were being careless with dangerous kitchen tools. 

"This is a whole load of bullshit, doll. Do you not trust me enough?" Haechan nears you, his voice dropping low due to frustration, hurt, and disbelief. He'd never seen you be this petty before. 

You back away with each of his step forward, "Maybe I don't! Which is why i think i deserve a bre-"

"Come again?" He strides closer, his gaze growing darker, more stern, angry, with each step. In an utter furious state as you for starters, were questioning his feelings. And now had been questioning your trust for him. 

"I said I don't know if I trust you enough now, Haechan! I'm telling you i need a brea-" 

"Enough!" He took one last step and you'd had no space between you and him, with the wall behind you acting as a barrier to block you from escaping. 

The sudden act of force posed to your body by Haechan practically slamming you onto the wall made your back and the back of your head hurt from the impact, and a groan escapes your lips, but all the softness was long gone from Haechan's features as he didn't show any signs of inquiring if you're okay or not. 

No.

He seemed like he would murder you if you'd dare speak up now. You'd successfully pushed his last button. 

"You're being over dramatic, darling. One, don't act as though you've never hung out with the guys I'd specifically asked you not to. Two, yes, i hung out with her and so what? Was it a date? Was I the only one there alongside her? No. It was a group meeting that, for a matter of fact, I'd invited you to join but what did you do? You said you didn't want to tag along." 

"What's gotten into you, doll. You've never reacted this way before" Haechan reaches out to caress your cheeks, which made you flinch at the contrast of his actions, his words and his expression at that point of time. 

"Look at me when I'm talking to you." You don't. Which resulted in him harshly grabbing your chin, tilting it up to see a slight quiver on your lips. 

"And speak up. You seemed to have a lot to question just a moment ago, what happened now?" See, this is exactly what you hated. That one way or the other, he'd have you cornered, feeling small with him clearly making it evident who has the upper hand. 

"Nothing, Haechan. Nothing happened. I did have a lot to question and i still do, don't think i'd get scared of you by you acting all barks and no bites. I still need a fucking break why don't you understa-!" 

The grip he had on your chin tightened, his other hand raised in reflex, hovering in the air as though it's ready to strike you any minute.

"Know your limits, Y/n. This is pointless and if you're still sane enough to be considered the Y/n i started dating then you'd know you're being irrational and it's starting to fuck me up." 

"And? You're going to hit me for that? You think i'm not the Y/n you started dating? You're no less than me, Donghyuck!" You try pushing at his shoulders in order to create space, that only makes Haechan drop his hands from your chin to your hands, pinning it to the walls, hard enough to prevent any movement. 

"I'm not going to hit you, doll. You know that." Haechan sighs.

"Do i? Do I really?" You're practically shaking part from fear, part from anxiousness and part from the fact that you know you're making things harder to settle down. 

"I'm telling you, it was nothing but a harmless hangout and I'm sorry for not letting you know, but..can we just move on? Forget this? This is so pointless." 

"Must be pointless enough for you, Hyuck. Not for me. I mean it when i say i need a fucking break or else I'll make shit even worse. I'm heading over to Jeno's, meet you at the campsite." You jerk yourself away from Haechan's vice grip. Giving him one last look with those broken eyes of yours, you head over to your luggage and grab it, before heading out of the door in a quick movement, preventing Haechan from even blurting out the first syllable of your name. 

When he hears the door slam all the way from the living room, he loses it. 

"Goddammit, why did you decide to act up now of all times."

You're actually happy the group is big enough to take two travel vehicles because you didn't bump into Haechan after that heated argument you had back at the apartment. 

You, Jeno, Jaemin, Mark and Jisung went out in one car while Renjun, Chenle, Shotaro Haechan and Sungchan followed close behind in the second vehicle. 

You'd almost completely forgotten about all that took place with the guys constantly cracking out jokes, lame one considering Jeno, Mark and Jisung's dynamic had been put together to make this really chaotic, pointless yet hilarious conversations. 

"No, dude literally. Sung has a point! Waffles literally are just pancakes with abs-Y/n stop giving me that look" Mark tries justifying. 

"Mark, you're making my head hurt please stop." Jeno lets out a sneer from the driver's seat while Jaemin, who's seated beside you, pats your head in pity. "I go through this all day every day, love. You'll get used to it eventually. If you don't, though, we'll plan a strategy to just lock Mark up in a freezer or something." 

"Seems like a plan to me" you shrug at Jaemin, leaning down to rest your head on his shoulder as your neck had started to cramp from the funny positions you'd craned it in to get into a comfortable position. 

Jaemin welcomed you with a gleeful squeak, pulling you closer by snaking his hands between your body and the seat to wrap it around your waist which only made things more comfortable for you. 

A tiny nap before the actual escapade wouldn't hurt now, would it? 

"Guys! Chenle's on facetime! Say hiiii!" you hear Jisung say in a sing-song voice, but you did nothing to get up to greet the lad, instead snuggling closer to Jaemin when you felt his other hand come up to your head and thread through the tresses. You let out a sound of appreciation which made Jaemin's chest rumble from the chuckle he'd let out. 

"Oh man! I wanted to show Y/n this cool beetle we caught." 

Haechan, already sour from the incidents prior, had been uncharacteristically quiet. When inquired about he'd say "Ah, i didn't sleep at all last night so I'm feeling a little blue". The boys had granted him permission to just recharge and sit back while they made the road trip spicy. 

Obviously, Chenle wanted to show off to his best friend that he could still be the life of the party with or without Jisung's presence and so decided to facetime the guy. 

Curiosity strikes Haechan at the sound of the younger's idea and sits up straight in order to look into Chenle's screen while still making sure he is out of the frame. 

"Y/n's asleep?" Renjun inquires from Chenle's other side, peeping into whatever's being displayed on the screen. The image of you all cuddled up with Jaemin filling it up. 

Haechan could do nothing about it, other than fume silently in anger while the guys coo at your cuteness, "You need to wake her up soon though, we're 5 minutes away from the cabins," Sungchan says from the driver's seat. 

"I'll just carry her out, I'm pretty sure I'll be sent to the depths of tartarus if I woke up this sleeping beauty. " Jaemin hushes with a lopsided grin and Haechan well, seemed like he'd rupture any moment. 

Hypocrite. 

You'd woken up minutes before reaching the destination due to the rocky ride. 

Jeno had decided to derail at the last minute, exclaiming he'd found a shortcut to the place when in all reality, it was a longer route. You weren't complaining though.

The view change definitely helped you calm your wits, almost as though you never were in a bad mood so you'd decided to leave that behind for your city life and just decided to go with the flow of nature from this point forward.

And you'd only silently hoped your boyfriend would've been doing the same.

"You okay, princess?" you snap your head to look at Jaemin who'd broken you out of your trance. "Yeah, why'd you ask?" you reply, smiling at him. 

"You seemed a little lost..?" he states almost as though questioning himself whether they're the right choice of words. "Oh? I guess I'm just in awe of the view, it's ethereal" you look out of the window once again, Jaemin following you suit. 

"You're in awe of the view when you get to see yourself in the mirror everyday? Wow." Jaemin smiles at you with a teasing glint evident on his face. 

"Yo if Haechan would've been here you'd be spitting out your death rights" Jeno voices out with a chuckle. "Nah, Y/n would stop him from murdering me, I've got free will" Jaemin replies, shooting you a wink. 

You smile at their tactics with a shake of your head and just hope to spread this same joy to Haechan, and apologize, and get it over with, just like how he'd wanted. You're thankful to have this time off from him, the boys helping you unknowing of your fight with Haechan.

You're going to make this right. 

Sungchan and team reached first a few minutes away from the campsite near to where the cabins were located, oblivious to the fact that you guys had derailed. 

Haechan hadn't spoken a word ever since he saw his girlfriend all over his best friend, much to Renjun's dismay. 

Renjun didn't bother inquiring though, no matter how enthralled he'd been, he kept quiet to himself because from the looks of Haechan's face, there is a high chance that his neck would be snapped if he tried talking to the lad. 

Haechan still didn't utter a word even while helping unload the trunk as he'd not want to come of as a useless ticking time bomb so he decided to power work and lend an extra hand, also being the first to stomp his way towards the cabin he'd be sharing with you, mindful to not lock it incase you'd arrive. 

Oh now you owe him an apology, alright. 

You'd reached not that long after the first group of guys. 

You were a little disappointed that the pretty motions of the trees flying past you had come to a static. But nevertheless, content at the sight of nature all surrounding you.

You make your way towards the cabin you'd be residing in after the guys constantly insisting that they do not need your help and that you deserve to rest up. 

You open the door without thinking much, a smile of bliss apparent on your face only for it to morph into a petrified look at the sudden moment of you being pulled into the room and the door aggressively being slammed shut. "Ah!" 

"Did you have fun?" You open your eyes to see Haechan, a little too intimidating for you to keep an eye contact, talk to you with a smirk on his face. 

"I asked did you have fun, doll face, i need my answer to that" his other hand comes up to your cheeks, caressing it just like how he'd done this morning, this time, with much more softness that before which had a sick feeling boil up at the pit of your stomach. 

"H-huh?" you question, genuinely confused on what he's talking about. 

"Was it fun having full attention of your boyfriend's best friend? Was it fun throwing yourself completely at him? Hm?" His gaze darkens, scaring you a little, "Haechan what are you on-"

"Save it. Strip." 

Haechan orders while walking away towards the bed after making sure he'd shut the bolt tight to prevent anyone from barging in. 

He seats himself down dead in the middle of the bed, waiting for you to comply with a raise of his eyebrows. "Hyuck, let's talk this-" 

"Talking things out with you had never been an option, love. I need to show you who's in charge here all over again. So, be quick, strip before i do it myself." His voice carried a threatening tone to it, which stopped from rebelling against his words, knowing you'd just be digging your own grave then. 

You slowly reach out to the buttons of your shirt with trembling hands, unbuttoning them one after the other at your own pace which seemed to slow for Haechan. "Faster. Leave the skirt on." 

Haechan puts out his next order, leaning forward to rest his elbows over his knees, his eyes following the moment of your hands which were now tugging your shirt away from your body. 

"Oh, Y/n..You were all over Jaemin, your body flush against his when you'd worn no fucking bra inside the shirt?" oh no.. 

"Drop to your knees."

"Hyuck, listen to-"

"I'd not talk if i were you, darling. Do not fucking speak unless spoken to or you're just going to make things worse for yourself. Drop." He said with a lot more sternness and venom, the tone in his voice almost making it seem like he's disgusted with your entire being. 

Oh how the tables have turned. 

You do as he said and drop to your knees, not caring of the fact of how your knees scrape against the wooden tiles. "Crawl up to me." 

You don't fight it, your entire being wanting to shrink and just disintegrate into dust from all the embarrassment you're being put through which, weirdly, only added to the growing arousal between your legs. 

You slowly crawl up to him, not too slowly, being mindful not to piss him off any further. The uncomfortable feeling on your knees and the stickiness gathering on your panties were given a blind eye as your main goal remained to not tick Haechan off anymore. 

"Good girl.. So you can follow orders when asked to, huh?" you somehow managed to make out that he wasn't really posing the question at you so you decide to stay silent, eyes on his shoes and your hands on your knees. 

If you were to describe the look Haechan carried the exact moment with you kneeled down in front of him, you'd describe it as one that the hunter carries while his prey falls right into his trap. You felt small. 

"Look at me, doll" He leans forward further as you silently look up at him. 

A fond smile makes its way onto Haechan's features at your subtle innocence. He reaches out to grip your chin in a firm yet soft grip, tilting your head further up. "How pretty.." 

His palm engulfs your entire face as you lean into his warmth, forgetting ever so slightly about the grave trouble you'd gotten yourself in. His fingers trail up the side of your face, the thumb soothing your lips. A firm press following right after in a silent order, you comply. 

You open your mouth a little wide for Haechan to slip his digits in, which he does. You raise your gaze higher to look at him before wrapping your lips around his fingers, sucking it as though your life depends on it. 

"It's a pity I have to ruin you so that you'd know just how bad you've been." he growls, pulling you up with a sharp tug of your chin as you lift yourself off the ground and onto Haechan's lap while he crashes his lips on yours. 

You let out a whimper as the rushed kiss you two share, your hands finding home at Haechan's shoulder to keep yourself anchored, only for him to grab both your hands and lock it behind your back with his own. 

The kiss is messy, very sloppy, rushed and anyone crazy enough to be watching it would know who has the upper hand as Haechan lowers his lips to your jaw, scattering red-purple marks all over. His free hand goes up to your hair, brushing the strands out of the way in a very contrasting manber from his roughness at your jaw. 

He makes a makeshift ponytail out of your hair and yanks it back hard enough to expose more of the neck as you let out a sound of pain. "Haechan, slow down p-.. Please" you whine out 

"Don't fucking tell me what to do, love." He bites particularly hard at your soft spot, making you bite down hard on your lips to stop any extremely loud, pornographic sounds from escaping your throat.

Haechan wasn't having any of that bullshit. 

With a swift move, you're under him. Your panties are long thrown somewhere behind your boyfriend, your skirt still in place but lifted up to your torso to expose your glistening flower to him. 

You felt helpless. 

All exposed to him, all worked up from just a short make out, eyes blown out from pleasure and neediness. You must've looked pathetic in his eyes.

"Please.." you beg for nothing in particular, just getting the sudden feeling to be Haechan's good little girl else he would snatch away all your source of pleasure with just a blink of his eyes. 

"Hm? Please what, darling?" His fingers graze over your wetness, letting out a smug 'tsk' as your essence spread all over his fingers. 

"Pl-please!" you choke out and the feeling of his warmness touching you where you needed him the most, slightly embarrassed at how sensitive you'd gotten just from a little manhandling from his end. 

"Go further than just a mere please, Y/n. Or is it that you're already too far gone to say shit that's coherent?" he thumbs at your clit with all the wetness that's collected. 

"Good. I like you just like that. Dumb, needy and an obedient little girl. Will you be nice throughout your punishment and not make it harder for the both of us, love?" 

You moan out in reply when you feel a slender finger of his slip into your hole with ease. "Yes! Yes, I'll be good, just please.." you whine in submission. "Please don't stop.." you become breathless pretty quick. 

"Oh I won't, doll face. Don't worry about that." Haechan states as though he has something planned for you, which is part true. But he also wouldn't dare stop as he watches your expressions morph into a state of bliss. 

"Haechan..!" you jolt when he inserts a second finger, picking up speed, which pulled you dangerously close to your first high. 

"Oh my? Cumming already? I thought you were better than this, babe" He talks as though he isn't just drilling his digits into your wetness. 

The adding of pressure on your clit was the last string to topple you over to the edge, your hips lifting high off the bed, eyes screwed shut as you indulge yourself in pleasure, only for you to choke out a cry when you feel Haechan throw a hand over your hip, pinning to the bed, his head now between your legs, lapping out the last bits of your orgasm. 

"Hyuck, wait! I'm sensitive!" you reach out to place your hand on top of his head, not sure whether you want to pull him closed or tug his head away. 

You feel his lips form a smirk, his free hands moving down to insert digits in you while his tongue worked magic on your clit.

"That's the point, darling. Now stay put or I'll make sure you come more than just twice."

You pull yourself out of your dilemma and tug him closer, hearing him mumble out a "good girl" against your clit. 

There's something so sinful about the squelching sounds of his fingers driving in and out of you, the way he laps at your clit, making sure to slurp all your essence up which had the knot tighten at the bottom of your stomach once again. "Close again?"

"Uh-huh!" you let out in a screechy voice that would've had you cringing if you weren't so far gone into pleasure. You hear a growl from below you, the last anchor being left off the hook. 

"Good, let go for me." 

And you oblige. You twitch in overstimulation as Haechan slurps up your essence all over again, leaving you drained, tired and twitching beneath him. 

Haechan pulls himself up once he's satisfied enough, his chin glistening, a lopsided grin present on his face, "Taste yourself for me" He mutters quickly before clashing his lips onto yours while he keeps himself hoisted with one hand, the other working on removing his jeans. 

He shifts your position again after quickly making a move of discarding his shirt across the room, leaving him to be as bare as you.

Haechan pulls you up, making you sit up as he watches you basically drool over his shaft, his smirk only growing wider with pride. "Hungry for more, babe?"

You nod enthusiastically, not trusting your voice. And you thank the lords as Haechan didn't force you to speak up this time, "Then you have to work for it, darling. Go ahead, ride me." 

You waste no time and get to work, shocking both yourself and the lad at your tireless nature as you pump him a few times before aligning his member along your entrance, you don't plan on going slow as you just sit yourself down, engulfing him completely inside you, earning a satisfied groan from Haechan. 

Haechan brings his hands to rest them upon your hips as you slowly lift yourself up once again, reaching out to hold his shoulder for support before easing down, you feel his thighs twitch underneath you. 

"Oh love, you're amazing" Haechan praises you as you bounce to keep the motion going, picking up the pace to make him feel better as his fingers dig into your sides. 

"Hyuck.."

You soon grow tired though, your legs giving out from tiredness, causing you to slow down, "Hyuck, i can't.. I-i'm tired" you almost let out a sob. 

"Aw my, my poor baby.. Too bad, i can't help you here, love. Work for the pleasure, work to please me, come on, don't disappoint me all over again, doll" 

You let out an actual cry out of desperation, using the last bit of strength you could muster up to keep the action going, gasps and breaths of exasperation leaving you with each bounce. 

The look of complete submission, wanting to please him and determination made Haechan growl as he feels you clenching around his members, making him unintentionally buck his hips up to meet your hips in the middle, earning a yelp from you. 

"Haechan, I'm close..pl-please" you cry out louder with each of yours and Haechan's hip moment, the melanin of his skin covered in sweat, glistening in the dimly lit cabin, his face morphed into that of utter bliss and the sinful sounds he let out makes you grow frantic.

"I can feel it, darling. I can feel it. I'm close too. Let go for me" 

You cum with a loud cry, as your actions seize up completely to help you calm down. You jump when you feel his palm come in contact with your ass, 

"I asked you to cum, baby. Not to stop. Keep moving just a little bit more, I'm almost there" He growls at you, both his hands finding refuge on your ass. 

"I can't, I really can't! Hyuck,-" You cry out real cries, fresh tears falling out, 

"Move." Haechan commands paying no attention to your pleas. After all, this is your punishment. 

You bounce up slowly again, your entire lower body protesting in pain, as you sob, working up the heat beneath once again. 

The sight Haechan got pulled him ridiculously close to his high, your hair disheveled, tears running down your face, sobs leaving your throat as you try your hardest to keep moving. 

Haechan wanted you to come one last time.. 

So the moment he felt himself twitch inside you, he removes one hand from your bottom and brings it to rub your clit in rapid motions. You're sensitivity getting the best of you as you drop down on him completely with a cry loud enough you're pretty sure the others heard you. 

You both end together, with a loud growl escaping Haechans throat as he lazily thrusts up to ride his high out, immediately stomping when he hears your cries and how you've shut your legs tightly close

"It's okay, it's over, baby, you did so well.." he's quick to pull you into a warming embrace, cooing at you, wiping your tears away. 

He doesn't speak up for a while, humming soft tunes to calm you down. 

"Hyuck.. Listen I'm sorry-" you start with a hoarse voice.

"Shh, no. You don't have to apologize for anything, just rest up, hm? I'll wake you up before dinner"

[sourholland]

Ooooh angst “what about us?” “there is no us, there never was.” with tom plssss! Really love ur work 🌸

Last Kiss || Tom Holland

Summary → After a fling you and Tom had started while filming a movie together, he tells you that you two can’t be together anymore. Once you get home, Tom let’s you know that he made a mistake.

AN → This was supposed to come out yesterday, I just got lazy and waited to edit it. I can’t tell if I like how this came out or hate it, either way, I hope you guys like this. Also in honor of the Fearless re-record!!

Pairing(s) → Tom Holland x Fem!Reader

Warnings → Strong Language, Suggestive, Alcohol Use

Prompt(s) → 38

Word Count → 1.9k

The ringing of your phone sounded through your apartment loudly, the sound of the rain pattering loudly against the windows out-looking New York City. You set down the remote, feet padding against the cold hardwood while you looked for your buzzing cellphone.

You didn’t bother glancing at the caller ID, picking it up bringing it to your ear all in one quick motion.

“Hello?” You said, pulling a wine glass down from the cabinet.

“Y/N?” Tom’s voice came through the phone.

Your heart dropped, a breath catching in your throat while you stood in your kitchen. He was across the country, wanting nothing to do with you. He repeated your name through the phone, asking if you were there.

“Yeah, I’m here,” you answered, pouring more wine than you’d originally intended into the glass.

“Isn’t it like one in the morning in England?” You asked, listening to the muffles coming through the speaker.

“Yeah—yeah, it’s late here. I just couldn’t sleep, and I started to think of you. Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have called.”

You sat at one of the barstools, swirling the red contents of the glass around. You wanted to yell at him, or maybe you wanted to tell him how much you loved him. You sat silently for a few moments, bare legs cold from the draft.

“Tom,” you started. “I just don’t get why we have to rehash the past, you know? I came back to New York, just like you told me I should. You’re working on whatever new movie, I’m doing the same. I don’t know—I just think we should leave whatever happened between us alone. You made it very clear that it was me that you didn’t want,” you mumbled, pulling at the sleeves of your sweater.

He audibly sighed, the ruffling of sheets coming through the phone. He was probably in bed, if he wasn’t so far away you’d have asked him if this was a sad attempt at getting you to sleep with him.

“I was fucking stupid, and I’m sorry, Y/N. I’m so fucking sorry, I’ve said that a million times,” his voice was hoarse and tired.

“I’ve already forgiven you, Tom. I just can’t keep doing this—this thing with you.”

You both went quiet for a minute, the only sound being the noise from outside in the bustling streets of the city and the rain. You knew you should hang up, block his number and forget about anything you two ever had. You’d tried a few times, unable to bring yourself to doing it.

“What about us?” He asked lowly, a twinge of hurt in his tired voice.

“There is no us, Tom,” you replied. “I’m not even sure there ever was.”

He didn’t say anything, you wanted to let out the repressed cry and tell him you didn’t mean it. That you were sorry and that you thought about him more than you’d like to admit. Something in you knew if you didn’t do your best to cut it off, you two would continue down the same everlasting cycle.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay.”

The line went silent for a moment, and then your home screen lit up. The call had been ended. You downed the remainder of your wine, ditching the cup and just going for the bottle. You thought about calling him back, about apologizing and booking a plane ticket like some lovesick teenager.

You opened Instagram and began scrolling through your feed of posts, liking and commenting occasionally. You weren’t anywhere near drunk, merely tipsy and heartbroken. Your finger lingered on the button to go live, wondering if you really wanted thousands of people to see you in this state.

You left the kitchen and instead propped your phone against the couch, taking a seat on the white rug of your living room. You wearily pressed the go live button, raising the bottle to your chapped lips once more. You are pathetic, you thought.

“Hey guys!” You smiled at the camera and outpouring of greetings in the comments. Within a few minutes you’d racked in a few thousand viewers. You grabbed the guitar sitting against your wall and strummed the cords lightly while it sat in your lap.

userone: you are so adorable

usertwo: can you please say hi?!!!??

userthree: it’s my birthday y/n!

“I’m sorry I haven’t been very active on social media, guys. It’s been super crazy traveling back and forth from London to New York and then having to leave again in a few weeks. And now I’m sitting on my living room floor with a bottle of wine,” you laughed. A few familiar people popped into the comments of the live, some you’ve worked with and some you’ve yet to meet in person.

florencepugh: y/n!!!

gracieabrams: might just bust out the wine just for u

“Florence, I can’t wait to see you soon!” You smiled, “Gracie, I swear it’s making everything like a hundred times better.”

userfour: i’m in love with her

userfive: y/n saving 2021???!!!

“I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to be singing,” you flushed. You did sing, before getting into acting you’d post a lot on Instagram and TikTok. It’d always been more of a hobby, something you loved to do, but weren’t good enough to pursue.

“I’ve had a little too much to drink,” you added. “So don’t get upset if I’m a little pitchy, guys.”

usersix: if she’s pitchy i’m not sure what i am

userseven: sing taylor swift!!!

“Okay, okay!” You chuckled, scrolling through the hundreds of comments saying to play Taylor Swift. You’d only just been crying to like three of her albums a few hours before.

“How about the chorus—and maybe the bridge too, yeah, that’ll work,” you mumbled to yourself, fiddling with the strings. “Alright, guys, Last Kiss it is. I won’t bore you all with the whole thing, though. I could never do Taylor justice.”

“And I’ll go sit on the floor, wearing your clothes”

Getting involved with him was singlehandedly the most stupid decision you’ve ever made, you thought. Late nights in his flat after long nights on set, ordering in and just talking, you two would talk as if you’d known each other your whole lives. It was something about the way he’d let you wear his clothes, or the way he’d tuck your hair behind your ear while you told him about whatever insignificant thing that had happened that day.

“All that I know,

I don’t know how to be something you miss”

The car ride to the airport was the worst, it was grey and cold outside. There was makeup running down your face, mascara covering your eyes generously. You’d wrapped filming a week earlier, unable to bring yourself to walk away from him.

You couldn’t tell the driver to turn you around, or could you? Tom had already made it clear that you were both in different places in your career. This wasn’t what he wanted. You weren’t what he wanted.

“I never thought we’d have our last kiss”

He had held you just a little tighter, you ran your fingers through his hair for just a second longer. The taste of each other lingering on the both of your lips. Like you knew it would be the last time he’d hold you without knowing.

His stupid smiled, the way he pulled away and ran his thumb over your swollen bottom lip. You were almost wrapped around his finger, absolutely sickened with desire and infatuation for him.

“I never imagined we’d end like this,

Your name, forever the name on my lips”

The day you’d left to come home to New York started with a huge argument between the two of you. He’d basically just told you that you’d both known from the beginning you wouldn’t last together. It wasn’t a matter of how much you cared for one another, but that it was impossible, as he put it.

His eyes glossed over and bloodshot, you a complete and utter mess. Slamming the door behind you as you left was one of the most painful things you’d ever endured. Even more painful, the fact that he never came after you.

“So I’ll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep”

“I can feel you staring at me, love,” he murmured against the pillow.

Your face heated, eyes averting to the stream of light through the sheerness of the curtains. He leaned into you a moment later, his lips soft on your own. He was warm, he was always so warm. You cupped the side of his face gently, pulling him in a bit harder.

“And I feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe”

You dropped your bags, stepping into your apartment after months of being away. It felt quieter than usual, desolate and empty from your being away. It was dark out, the illumination of the bright city lights from your windows.

You glanced down at your phone for a moment, not a missed call, not a text, not even a fucking notification. He’d simply told you to go home, nothing more nothing less.

“I keep up with our old friends just to ask them how you are,

Hope it’s nice where you are”

You’d texted Harrison a few times, regretting it almost immediately after. He was sweet, telling you that Tom would come around eventually and to just be patient. You’d relied on those kind words for some time, eventually deleting them all together.

After Tom’s first text, you’d realized he wasn’t coming around or regretting what he’d said to you. He was lonely, maybe even a bit desperate. For months you had been there to listen to him and hold him, and now you were gone.

You’d fed into it the first few times, sitting on the phone with him for hours at a time. Then you started to feel worse hearing his voice, silent sobs escaping as you’d listen to him ramble. Then your finger would linger over the decline button a little longer than usual when he’d call, until eventually you started to use it.

“And I hope the sun shines and it’s a beautiful day,

And something reminds you,

You wish you had stayed”

Once you started to go out with other guys, Tom’s ‘I miss you’ texts became more infrequent. Paparazzi would snap pictures, and the next morning they’d be plastered all over the internet.

There was no doubt he was seeing you going out with other people, watching article after article about who you were dating surface. Would he be jealous? No, you thought. Tom was probably doing the same thing as you. Hopeless hookups, meaningless blind dates.

“You can plan for a change in the weather and time”

One early morning, you found yourself in a sweatshirt you’d stolen from one of his drawers and forgotten to return. Listening to the morning rush of traffic and hugging yourself, noticing the lingering smell of his cologne.

You wondered if he knew you’d taken it, if he would think you were pathetic wearing it months after you two had broken things off. This only made you clutch yourself a little tighter, closing your eyes and trying to remember.

“But I never planned on you changing your mind”

[fics-n-stuff]

Home

Pairing: Kaz Brekker × Reader

Summary: Y/N and Kaz were once childhood friends, later reunited in the Barrel. After a business dealing went awry, Y/N has been in hiding for almost a year and the time apart has brought up a lot of feelings for Kaz.

Word Count: 4.2k

Warnings: touch aversion, alcohol consumption

A/N: I haven't actually read SoC yet but I have done my research so I really hope I wrote Kaz accurately enough 🤞🏽 Let me know!! I left the reader gender neutral so all parties can enjoy 😁

Update: Pt 2 here!

You stared out of the window, watching the nightlife of the Barrel in full swing below you. It had been almost a year since you had been able to be a part of it all and, even though you had lived in Ketterdam all your life, you felt like an outsider now.

There was a knock on the door and you froze, head tilting to listen out for any threat. After a moment there was another knock, loud and heavy – certainly not the result of somebody’s knuckle hitting the wood. With a sigh, you stood up from the window ledge and crossed the room to the door.

Kaz was waiting on the other side, looking unamused as ever, and you waved him inside quickly and hurriedly shut the door behind him.

“I am one of three people that knock on your door, Y/N.” He said flatly, removing his hat and placing it atop your desk.

“I can’t be too careful, never know when someone might come sniffing around here.” You replied with a shrug. Kaz hummed shortly in acknowledgment before producing a small stack of envelopes from his coat. You snatched them from him eagerly, but careful to ensure that your fingers made no contact with his gloved ones.

“I’m getting tired of being your courier.”

“Well, I’m getting tired of being in hiding.” You huffed, leafing through your letters. “But I’d rather not walk around in a city where I’m actively being hunted.”

“You shouldn’t have gotten caught then.” Your head snapped towards Kaz at that, and you raised your eyebrows challengingly.

“I should slap you for that.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” Kaz’s face remained largely unchanged but you could see the shine of amusement in his eyes.

You had first met Kaz as a child, while visiting family in the village where his family lived. He was a sweet child, and you had struck up a fast friendship in the few months you spent there. You had even written letters back and forth for a couple of years until one time you never got a reply.

When you met again years later, entirely by chance, Kaz was a changed person. Your family’s fortune had taken a steep downturn and you found yourself alone, living in a tiny room in a boarding house in the Barrel, when Kaz came across you pickpocketing outside the Crow Club. He had recognised you, but you hadn’t recognised him at first. Everything about him was so departed from the sweet boy that you had known as a child.

He refused to tell you what had happened to change him in this way. He never gave you a cause for the ruthless person he had become to climb the ranks of the Dregs and earn the name Dirtyhands, never even told you what had brought him to Ketterdam at all other than that his father had died. He never pushed you away though. Kept you at arms length, yes, but he never tried to dissuade you from sticking around.

The longer you knew him the more you realised that he wasn’t as cold as his demeanour portrayed. He was fiercely loyal, you could see it in the way that he was with his Crows, and you were certain that he would do anything to protect those he cared about most. You admired that about him.

“You don’t have to come, you know. You could send Inej with my letters, she already delivers me food.” You said, turning away at the realisation that you had been looking at each other in silence for a few seconds too long. You went to sit down, picking up the envelope from the top of the pile and pulling up the wax seal. Kaz didn’t respond for a long while. You tried to read your letter but found yourself distracted with anticipation of what he would say, if he said anything at all.

“I commend your commitment to your business.” He said finally, and you smiled at the compliment. “Eleven months trapped in this apartment and you’re still keeping up with it all.”

“Being in hiding is no excuse to get lazy. If anything, it gives me more of a reason to keep on top of things. Work keeps me sane and keeps coin in my pocket.”

“And how long do you intend to keep conducting your business through letters and underlings?”

“For as long as I have to, Kaz. You know that.” You answered with a quiet sigh, setting down the letter that you definitely hadn’t been reading and turning your head to face him again. You saw his jaw tense and the grip on his cane tighten, but you didn’t know what it meant. You were worried that somehow you had done or said something to upset him.

You had learned, in the few years since your reunion, that sometimes even the most seemingly innocuous things could put Kaz in a black mood. You had caught on quickly to the way that he avoided touch at all costs, and adapted your behaviour accordingly. He had still never told you why being touched triggered such a strong reaction in him, but he knew that you would always respect that fact.

It didn’t matter to you what traumas Kaz had suffered to create these traits in him, only that you knew how to navigate being in his space without violating his boundaries, because deep down you knew that Kaz was the most important person in your life. He took you in and offered you support when you needed it, given you structure and taught you skills to survive without even necessitating that you use those skills to serve his gang, all because of the friendship that you had shared as children. It didn’t matter how heartless people said the Bastard of the Barrel was, you knew that Kaz cared; perhaps not in the same way that you had come to care for him, but he did care.

“Maybe you should go, I’m sure you have work of your own to do.” You mumbled, your eyes drifting downwards anxiously. “And anyway, I have letters to read.”

“I could protect you.” He blurted. His voice was a little louder than usual, his tone less flat, and your brow furrowed in confusion and curiosity. “We could. The Crows, and the Dregs.”

“I don’t need your protection.”

“But you’d have it.”

You turned fully in your chair, straddling it with one leg either side of the backrest, and leant your forearms on the top of it. There was something in Kaz’s eyes that you’d never seen before and, although you prided yourself on being able to tell how Kaz was feeling and what he might be thinking about, you couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Do you know something that I don’t?” You questioned.

“Of course not.”

“Do you suddenly not trust my ability to keep myself safe?”

“Nothing like that, Y/N.”

“Then what?” You rested your chin on your arms, looking up at him expectantly. He held your gaze, but you could see the cogs turning in his brain as he calculated his next sentence. You were preparing for an argument to start, so you certainly didn’t expect the words that came from him next.

“I’m concerned about how long you’ve been alone here.” He answered. You blinked.

“Concerned?” Your voice cracked a little with your surprise, and Kaz clenched his jaw as he averted his eyes from you.

“I just thought that maybe all this time on your own might have had some affect on you. And I... hold a certain sense of responsibility.” His voice never wavered or faltered, other than the one pause there was no suggestion in his speech that the words held any significance to him, but you could see the tension in his shoulders and the tight grip that he maintained on his cane.

You narrowed your eyes, taking a moment to examine his face and his demeanour. Everything about him was wound tight, like he was making a particularly tricky deal rather than talking to a friend – you hoped that he considered you a friend – and though he was looking in your general direction you noted his avoidance of eye contact.

“If I didn’t know better I’d think you were saying that you miss me, Mr Brekker.” You said, your mouth turning in a small smirk. You saw Kaz’s chest tighten as he silently took in a sharp breath, and you chuckled lightly. “I’m fine, Kaz. Inej visits often enough, and I’m happy to see you when you deliver my letters. I will say though, I miss drinking with your Crows.”

Truthfully, you did feel rather trapped in your tiny apartment. For almost a whole year your entire world had consisted of only three rooms, and even if you didn’t admit it you were going slightly mad. Not being able to leave was frustrating, and living your whole life in one room (because really, who spends that much of their day in the bathroom or kitchen?) made you feel like a caged animal.

He didn’t reply. He also didn’t move. You watched him, standing straight and stiff as ever in the middle of the room, for a few moments. Usually he would have said something or made a move to leave, so you knew that he was deep in thought about something. You slouched further down against the backrest of your chair.

“If you’re planning on sticking around then you should at least sit down.” You sighed. “I have some kvas, or whisky if you’d prefer.” Kaz shook his head no to the drink but made a move towards the window seat. You watched him cross the room and sit down, his grip remaining on his cane as he placed it between his knees. “What’s on your mind, Kaz?”

“It’s not important.”

“That can’t be true.”

“And why is that?” He questioned dully.

“Because you’re still here, with me, staring into space like you’re waiting for the wind to tell you a secret.” He looked at you then, and you could see a conflict swirling behind his eyes. You resisted the urge to furrow your brow in worry. He still didn’t say anything, and that didn’t do anything to ease your concern because Kaz Brekker was not often one to be at a loss for words. “Is something wrong?”

“Yes.” He murmured, his head nodding slightly.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” You asked softly. He looked into your eyes for a few seconds before turning his head away, clearly deciding not to answer. You were almost expecting him to get up and leave the apartment right then, remove himself from the uncomfortable situation like he had been known to do before, but he made no move to stand.

You stood instead, abruptly moving through to the tiny kitchen and pouring a glass of whisky for yourself. You took a long sip as you came back out into the living space, picking up a wooden staff on your way. You kept up your combat training while in hiding, though it wasn’t often that you got an opponent.

“Humour me, will you?” You smiled, spinning the staff in your hand and setting your drink down.

“There’s not much space in here.” Kaz commented.

“Then we’ll be careful. Get up and fight me, coward.” You goaded. He gave you an incredulous look but stood anyway, tossing his cane up and grabbing it at it’s middle as he came towards you. Your grin broadened, and you waited just until the was in your range before you swung at him.

Your staff collided with his cane, moved up just in time to block your attack, and he watched you with challenging amusement. You let him make the next attack, knocking his cane away when he swung it towards you.

You exchanged blows, each of you managing to block all of the other’s attacks but you were starting to corner him. It seemed like you were about to get the upper hand when he swiped his cane towards your middle, making you jump back, and before you could move to swing on him he had pushed the crow’s head handle into your chest, not so hard that it was painful but with enough force to knock you backwards.

You landed on the edge of your bed with a groan, letting the staff drop from your hand in defeat.

“No fair, your cane is basically an extension of your arm.” You grumbled. Kaz let out a short breath, the closest thing to a laugh that anyone could get from him.

“You picked the fight.” He shrugged, lowering his cane and righting it at his hip. “I could have told you that you wouldn’t win it.”

“Mean!” You exclaimed in exaggerated offense, sitting up. When you looked at Kaz his expression was soft, the worry behind his eyes seemingly eased, and you smiled. “I could beat you if it was hand to hand.”

“I don’t doubt that.” He replied, the almost compliment catching you by surprise once again.

It had been a while since you and Kaz had spent any significant amount of time together. He was a busy man, particularly so over the last few months it seemed, so other than his brief drop-ins to deliver your letters you hadn’t seen him. It was nice to have his company again, even if he was a little off.

“Do you remember those drawings of Ketterdam that I used to send you with my letters?” You questioned softly, tucking your knees up to your chest. “I used to walk around the city looking for spots to sketch. I’d spend hours sitting on the street with my pencils trying to get the picture perfect to show you what it was like. I think, now, you probably know the city better than I do.” You smiled wistfully, resting your head on your knees as you looked up at Kaz. You saw his Adam’s apple bob with a swallow.

“You miss it, don’t you?” He asked.

“Of course.”

“You could go out there, stop hiding. You know I would look out for you.”

“I can’t put that burden on you, Kaz.” You chuckled lightly. “Enough people want you dead already, you don’t need to be looking after me while I’m being actively hunted.”

“How long do you plan on staying locked in here then?”

“As long as it takes, we went through this earlier. I have a big deal coming up, with the money from that I’d be able to smooth over some edges and maybe I could come out of hiding in a few months.” You theorised. “I’d still have to watch over my shoulder all the time but it would be an improvement.” Kaz’s jaw tightened again, and he bristled with agitation.

You hugged your knees tighter, doubt and worry overcoming you. Was Kaz not okay with coming to see you here anymore? Was he trying to get you out of hiding to lighten the burden it had put on him, getting your letters delivered to the Crow Club and having to bring them to you? The thought of not being able to rely on his short visits was enough to fill your chest with a mixture of dread and guilt.

“Like I said before, you don’t have to keep coming if that’s the problem.” You added, hiding the dejection in your voice. “Inej can-"

“No.” He interrupted bluntly. You blinked, pressing your lips together in contemplation. Was he upset that Inej was bringing supplies for you? Or worse, had something happened to her? Was that what was bothering him so much tonight?

“Why not?”

“Because I-" He cut himself off. He took a step back as if regaining his balance, his gaze falling to the floor, and you watched him flex his fingers around his cane as he organised his words. “Do you remember how you got sick while you were visiting your family?”

“Kaz.” You murmured tentatively, craning your neck to try and get a better look at his face that was turned away from you. Kaz didn’t like to talk about the past. Even bringing up the letters that you sent each other had been pushing it, but for him to choose to talk about your childhood was something he had never done before. Still now, it looked like the mention of the past was making him nauseous as he moved to sit down in the window once again. Your curiosity was growing by the second.

“You got sick and you could hardly get out of bed for almost a fortnight.” He continued, dismissing your concern. “I went to visit you every day. I picked flowers for you to make you feel better, and your mother baked oatmeal cookies but I refused to have any unless you did because you weren’t eating enough.”

“I remember.” You nodded. “You never let my glass of water get empty. It was sweet. But why does it matter now?”

“I can’t... I can’t stop worrying about you. But unlike when we were kids, I can’t just walk up the street and check on you every day.”

You felt as if all the air had been knocked out of your lungs and for a second you genuinely wondered if you had made that up in your head. Kaz very rarely expressed any emotion – the mask he wore hardly ever slipped – but here he was telling you that he worried about you. For Kaz, that was practically him baring his soul for you to see.

“You don’t have to worry about me.” You said shakily. “I’ve been fine so far, haven’t I?”

“But what if you’re not fine for much longer? As long as you’re holed up here I can’t keep you safe, and I can’t come to check on you because if I come here too often people might notice. Honestly, it’s a miracle that they haven’t already.”

“I didn’t think you believed in miracles.” You mumbled. Kaz glanced up at you, and the vulnerability on his face was unlike anything you’d seen before. It struck you in the heart and made you feel a need to comfort him, to put him at ease. “I can take care of myself, Kaz. I promise."

He was silent for a moment, his gaze downcast once again, then he took a deep breath and spoke.

“I think I’ll take that drink now.”

You watched him for just a second before you got up, crossing over to your desk and picking up the glass of whiskey that you had left there. The glass was half full since you had admittedly poured a little too generously.

You held it out to Kaz, who reached for it without looking. Although you were careful to hold the glass at the very top, his gloved fingers still brushed slightly over yours as he took a hold of it. He immediately stiffened, and you were quick to pull your hand away, taking a step back to give him space. He downed the drink in one, his face scrunching just slightly at the burn it left in his throat as he set the glass down by his feet.

“I just want to be able to watch over you.” He said, his voice barely more than a whisper, and you could practically see how difficult it was for him to verbalise his feelings.

“I think... I understand what you mean, Kaz. But I’m safer staying here than being out there, even with the Dregs protecting me. You have to know that, right?”

Kaz pushed a peice of hair out of his face, his gloved hand smoothing over his head as he let out a long and quiet sigh. Finally, he looked up at you.

“I know.” He answered.

“I appreciate your concern though.” You smiled. “Honestly, I didn’t think you cared about me that much. Or, well, I knew you cared but I just didn’t think... nevermind.”

“You didn’t think what?” Kaz’s question made you pause, anxiety pooling in your chest as you contemplated coming clean about your feelings. You thought about lying, about keeping your secrets to yourself, but Kaz had been so sincere it only felt right to return his honesty. With a deep breath, you worked up the courage to finally tell him the truth.

“I didn’t think that you cared as much as I do.” You replied. The sentence hung in the air for a moment as you moved back to sit in your desk chair, heart pounding in your chest. “I’ve kind of found myself caring a lot, actually. I think it’s only fair, really. I mean, I kind of owe you my life and all so it makes sense that I care. That’s not to say that it’s sensible but it is at least understandable, I guess.”

You bit your lip to stop your rambling, dropping your head so that you didn’t have to look at Kaz. There was a long stretch of silence.

“I care more than I might show.” He spoke softly, much more softly than you think you’d ever heard his voice. When you looked up Kaz was gazing right back at you, your eyes locking and his stare going deep into your soul. He didn’t need to say more, that simple sentence and the look in his eyes were enough to tell you what he was confessing. A smile pulled at your lips.

“Be careful what you admit, Brekker, or I might think that you’re going soft.” You joked, and he shook his head lightly in amusement. You leaned forward with your elbows on your knees, letting go of the anxiety that had been coursing through you.

“I'm serious, Y/N."

“I know. You don’t make a habit of saying things that you don’t mean.” You nodded. You glanced up at the clock on your wall with a sigh. “You really should get going, it’s dangerous for us both for you to stay too long.”

“Yes, I suppose so.” He muttered.

He stood after a moment, his hand flexing over the crow’s head handle of his cane. You reached back to pick his hat up from the desk, and he held a hand out for it, but instead of passing it to him you placed atop your own head. It was too big, and you had to push it back on your head so it didn’t slide over your face.

“You know, I rather like you without the hat.” You smiled.

“Is that so?”

“Yep. I can see your face better this way so I can tell when your emotions manage to break through.” Kaz’s lips quirked upwards a little as he took the hat from your head and put it on his own. You jutted your lip out in an exaggerated pout and he let out a huff that seemed suspiciously close to a laugh.

“Do you have any letters you need me to send out?”

“No, not this time.”

“Alright, then I’ll be on my way.” He gave a quick nod and turned towards the door. He had only taken a couple of steps when you twisted in your chair and called after him .

“Kaz.” He stopped and turned back to you. “I’m doing what I can to get out of this apartment, I promise.”

“That’s not something that you owe me, Y/N. It’s your freedom and your safety. But I await the day that you come waltzing into the Crow Club ready to make Jesper lose all the coin in his pocket.” He replied lightly, making you smile. “And if you need anything then I’m here, all you have to do is ask.”

“Thank you, not just for this but for everything. Everything that you’ve given me since that night outside the Crow Club. I might be dead if it weren’t for you.” You let sentiment out freely, finally feeling able to show your heart to Kaz now that you knew that your affections weren’t one sided. His expression softened, and he seemed to contemplate something deeply, before he took a single step back towards you and held out one gloved hand.

You hesitated, unsure if he was initiating what you were thinking, but he maintained eye contact. He gave a small nod, a mix of permission and encouragement, and you tentatively reached for his outstretched hand.

Kaz took in a deep breath when your hand made contact with his, and you watched him carefully ready to pull your hand away. After a moment he released the breath, wrapping his fingers lightly around yours and running his thumb over your knuckles.

“You’re the closest thing to home that I have.” He croaked. “I didn’t want to lose that.”

“You won’t.” You affirmed. Kaz released your hand, and you found yourself missing the feeling of the leather glove. He took a small step back, trying to hide the shake in his breathing.

“I’ll come back soon, as soon as it’s safe to.”

“Okay.” You smiled. “I’ll see you then.”

Kaz left the apartment without another word between you, he paused before closing the door after himself just to look at you for a moment longer. You watched out of the window to see him leave the building and start off through the street, a broad smile on your face.

[wolfstar-in-color]

July Colorful Column: Remus is a Crip, and We Can Write Him Better.

There is one thing that can get me to close a fic so voraciously I don’t even make sure I’m not closing other essential tabs in the process. It doesn’t matter how much I’m loving the fic, how well written I think it is, or how desperately I want to know how it ends. Once I read this sentence, I am done.

It’s written in a variety of different ways, but it always goes something like this: “You don’t want me,” Remus said, “I am too sick/broken/poor/old/[insert chosen self-demeaning adjective here].”

You’re familiar with the trope. The trope is canonical. And if you’ve been around the wolfstar fandom for longer than a few minutes, you’ve read the trope. Maybe you love the trope! Maybe you’ve written the trope! Maybe you’re about to stop reading this column, because the trope rings true to you and you feel a little attacked!

Now, let’s get one thing out of the way right now: I am not saying the trope is wrong. I am not saying it’s bad. I am not saying we should stop writing it. We all have things we don’t like to see in our chosen fics. Maybe you can’t stand Leather Jacket Motorbike Sirius? Maybe you think Elbow Patch Remus is overdone? Or maybe your pet peeves are based in something a little deeper - maybe you think Poor Latino Remus is an irresponsible depiction, or that PWPs are too reductive? Whatever it is, we all have our things.

Let me tell you about my thing. When I first became very ill several years ago, there were various low points in which I felt I had become inherently unlovable. This is, more or less, a normal reaction. When your body stops doing things it used to be able to do - or starts doing things you were quite alright without, thank you very much - it changes the way you relate to your body. You don’t want to hear my whole disability history, so yada yada yada, most people eventually come to accept their limitations. It’s a very painful existence, one in which you constantly tell yourself your disability has transformed you into a burdensome, unworthy member of society, and if nothing else, it’s not terribly sustainable. Being disabled takes grit! It takes power! It takes a truly absurd amount of medical self-advocacy! Hating yourself? Thinking yourself unworthy of love? No one has time for that. 

Of course, I’m being hyperbolic. Plenty of disabled people struggle with these feelings many years into their disabilities, and never really get over them. But here’s the thing. We experience those stories ALL THE TIME. Remember Rain Man? Or Million Dollar Baby? Or that one with the actress from Game of Thrones and that British actor who seemed like he was going to have a promising career but then didn't? Those are all stories about sad, bitter disabled people and their sad, bitter lives, two out of three of which end in the character completing suicide because they simply couldn’t imagine having to live as a disabled person. (I mean, come on media, I get that we're less likely to enjoy a leisurely Saturday hike, but our parking is SUBLIME.) When was the last time you engaged with media that depicted a happy disabled person? A complex disabled person? A disabled person who has sex? No really, these aren’t hypothetical questions, can you please drop a rec in the notes?? Because I am desperate.

There are lots of problems with this trope, and they’ve been discussed ad nauseam by people with PhDs. I’m not actually interested in talking about how this trope leads to a more prevalent societal idea that disabled people are unworthy of love, or contributes to the kind of political thought processes that keep disabled people purposefully disenfranchised. I’m just a bitch on Tumblr, and I have a bone to pick: the thing I really hate about the trope? It’s boring. I’m bored. You know how, like, halfway through Grey’s Anatomy you realized they were just recycling the same plot points over and over again and there was just no WAY anyone working at a hospital prone to THAT MANY disasters would stay on staff? It's like that. I love a recycled trope as much as the next person (There Was Only One Bed, anyone?). But I need. Something. Else.

Remus is disabled. BOLD claim. WILD speculation. Except, not really. You simply - no matter how you flip it, slice it, puree it, or deconstruct it - cannot tell me Remus Lupin is not disabled. Most of us, by this point, are probably familiar with the way that One Canonical Author intended One Dashing Werewolf to be “a metaphor for those illnesses that carry stigma, like HIV and AIDS” [I’m sorry to link you to an outside source quoting She Who Must Not Be Named, but we’re professionals here]. Which is... a thing. It’s been discussed. And, listen, there’s no denying that this parallel is a problematic interpretation of people who have HIV/AIDS and all such similar “those illnesses” (though I’ll admit that I, too, am perennially apt to turn into a raging beast liable to harm anything that crosses my path, but that’s more linked to the at-least-once-monthly recollection that One Day At A Time got cancelled). Critiques aside, Remus Lupin is a character who - due to a condition that affects him physically, mentally, emotionally, and intellectually - is repeatedly marginalized, oppressed, denied political and social power, and ostracized due to unfounded fear that he is infectious to others. Does that sound familiar?

We’re not going to argue about whether or not “Remus is canonically disabled as fuck” is a fair reading. And the reason we’re not going to argue about whether or not it’s a fair reading is because I haven’t read canon in 10-plus years and you will win the argument. Canon is only marginally relevant here. The icon of this blog is brown, curly haired Remus Lupin kissing his trans boyfriend, Sirius Black. We are obviously not too terribly invested in canon. The wolfstar fandom is now a community with over 25,000 AO3 fics, entire careers launched from drawing or writing or cosplaying this non-canonical pairing. We love to play around here with storylines and universes and races and genders and sexualities and all kinds of things, but most of the time? Remus is still disabled. He’s disabled as a werewolf in canon-compliant works, he’s disabled in the AUs where he was injured or abused or kidnapped or harmed as a child, he’s disabled in the stories that read him as chronically ill or bipolar or traumatized or blind or Deaf. I’d go so far as to say that he is one of very few characters in the Wide Wonderful World of media who is, in as close to his essence as one can be, always disabled. And that means? Don’t shoot the messenger... but we could stand to be a tiny bit more responsible with how we portray him. 

Disabled people are complicated. As much as I’d like to pretend we are always level-headed, confident, and ready to assert our inherent worth, we are still just humans. We have bad days. We doubt our worth. We sometimes go out with guys who complain about our steroid-induced weight gain (it was a long time ago, Tumblr, okay??). But, we also have joy and fun and good days and sex and happiness and families and so many other things. 

Remus is a disabled character, and as such, it’s only fair that he’d have those unworthy moments. But - I propose - Remus is also a crip. What is a crip? A crip - like a queer - is someone who eschews the limited boundaries placed on their bodies, who rejects a hierarchy of oppression in favor of an intersectional analysis of lived experience, who isn’t interested in being the tragic figure responsible for helping people with dominant identities realize how good they have it. Crips interpret their disabilities however they want, rethinking bodies and medicine and pleasure and pain and even time itself. Crips are political, community-minded, and in search of liberation. 

Remus is a character who struggles with his disability, sure. But he’s also a character who leverages his physical condition to attempt to shift communities towards his political leanings, advocates for the rights of those who share his physical condition, and has super hot sex with his wrongfully convicted boyfriend ultimately goes on to build community and family. Having a condition that quite literally cripples you, over which you have no control, and through which you are often read as a social pariah? That’s disability. But using said condition as a means through which to build advocacy and community? Now that’s some crip shit. 

Personally, I love disabled!Remus Lupin. But I love crip!Remus Lupin even more. I’d love to see more of a Remus who owns his disability, who covets what makes him unique, and who never ever again tells a potential romantic partner they are too good for him because of his disability. This trope - unlike There Was Only One Bed! - sometimes actually hurts to read. Where’s Remus who thinks a potential romantic partner isn’t good enough for him? Where’s Remus who insists his partners learn more about his condition in order to treat him properly? Where’s sexy wheelchair user Remus? Where’s Remus who uses his werewolf transformations as an excuse to travel the world? Where’s crip Remus??

We don’t have to put “you don’t want me” Remus entirely to bed. It is but one of many repeated tropes that are - in the words of The Hot Priest from Fleabag - morally a bit dubious. And let’s face it - we don’t always come to fandom for its moral superiority (as much as we sometimes like to think we do). 

This is not a condemnation - it is an invitation. Able-bodied folks are all but an injury, illness, or couple decades away from being disabled. And when you get here, I sincerely hope you don’t waste your time on “you don’t want me”ing back and forth with the people you love. I’m inviting you to come to the crip side now. We have snacks, and without all the “you don’t want me” talk, we get to the juicy parts much faster. 

Colorfully,

Mod Theo

[anonymousfiction211]

Handcuffed together: 15

A/N: The story continues. I had a wedding on friday, so a day later than planned :) Hope you like it. Let me know what you think :)

Moving on? The seconds passed by slowly from the moment Loki left you, again. The seconds turned into minutes, hours, days, weeks and eventually months. The first few days you were angry, waiting for Thor to come back so you could yell at him about Loki. But Thor never came back, at first you were angry about that too. But Natasha reminded you that Thor probably had other duties to perform in Asgard and that you couldn’t hold him accountable for his brother’s actions. True.

When you heard nothing, you became sad and depressed. You had thought that Loki would have checked in, maybe leave a message in time. But nothing. It was like he and your entire relationship had never happened. It started with you only dressing in lounge clothes. You stopped hanging out with the team, and were mostly in your room watching tv. You didn’t spend any time on your other hobby’s. Eventually Steve was forced to put you on a break, meaning you didn’t actively take part in the team or go on missions. It took five long months, but that was the moment you decided you were done. You needed to be yourself again.

‘Morning (Y/N), you are up early today? And even dressed in normal clothing?’ Natasha greeted you surprised.

‘Yeah.. thanks Nat’ you replied a bit grumpily. ‘Look, I’m done being lonely and I want to help again. Do you know where I can find Steve?’

‘Good to see you finally coming to terms with everything. Once you are fully over him, we can go out together and snatch you up a better guy’ she winked at you. ‘I think Steve is in the briefing room’

‘Thanks… maybe in a month or two’ you said. Leaving her to find Steve.

Natasha was right, you found him in the briefing room. You knocked on the door and he told you to enter.

‘Hey, (Y/N)’ he said surprised, clearly not expecting you.

‘Hi’ you said a bit sheepishly. ‘Can we talk for a moment?’

‘Of course, take a seat. You are looking good. How are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Better.. I ehm.. actually, wanted to apologize for my absence and the mood I have been in and –

‘(Y/N), don’t worry. It was all completely understandable’ Steve cut you off.

‘Still..’ you said.

The room was silent for a moment. ‘I’m just glad you are doing better. Plus, we already agreed as a team that if we ever see Loki again, let’s say it’s best if he doesn’t show his face around here anymore’

‘Thanks’ you forced a small giggle. ‘I think it’s time to pick up my life and I wanted to talk about the leave you put me on’ you started.

‘You want to come back?’ Steve asked.

‘Yes, I think it is best to have a certain rhythm and get back in the groove, don’t you think?’

‘As much as I love to have you fully back, it isn’t that easy actually’ Steve hesitatingly started.

‘What do you mean?’ you stomach started to tie itself in knots.

‘You need to be re-evaluated, before you can fully join. I mean, you can help us in the meantime. But not actively participate on missions before you are cleared again’ he started to explain.

‘How much time will it take?’

‘The re-evaluation consists of two steps. The first step is a physical test to see what level you are on now. And after that there is a mentality test, to see if you are in the right mind set to function on missions. If you pass straight away you can join next week. But I have to be honest, you were pretty out of it and missed a lot of training So, I think it will be a month or three. But like I said, there is still plenty you can help us with, without actively join the missions’

‘Oh’ you said a bit disappointed. ‘But can’t we just skip it? I’m fine now, and I really want to be back on the team’

‘(Y/N), that’s not how it works’ Steve sighed.

‘Please? I need this’ you begged.

‘Answer one question for me: if we are in the middle of the battle with Thanos, and suddenly Loki appears. What will you do?’

‘I eh.. I..’ you stammered, to be honest you still didn’t know what you would do.

‘Exactly. As much as we love you, it is important to go through these test. We need to be able to trust each other blindly. And as long as you do not have the right answer immediately to that question, we can’t. I’m sorry’ he said.

‘I understand’ you said softly, trying not to break down. That surely wouldn’t help your case.

‘I’m sorry. If you feel up for it, I will start up the whole process. But if you need more time, then take all the time you need. I’m already super glad that you are doing better’ he said.

‘Thanks Steve, ehm.. start it up. And what can I do in the meantime?’ you asked.

‘I will catch you up’ he said.

Then Steve started to explain what the team had been doing the past months. They had tracked a guy down, named dr. Strange. Apparently he was a bit like Tony. He also possessed an infinity stone, and they told him everything that Loki had told them. Thor would hopefully be back soon, and than they would no more about how Loki was doing and if he knew where Thanos was hiding. In the meantime, dr. Strange had tracked down another stone on a planet by someone called ‘the collector’. Apparently Asgard had given them the reality stone for safe keeping. Dr. Strange had set up a meeting and would try to come back with the stone. The plan was to collect the stones before Thanos and then imprison him with them, so he couldn’t go through with his plan. Kill him if necessary.

‘So, if you could drop of these documents at the sanctuary, that would be really helpful’ Steve said lastly.

‘Am I supposed to be everyone’s assistant until I’m cleared?’ you snapped

‘You’re no-one’s assistant. But this is the only task I can give you at the moment. This and ask for an update on his work, it really would help’

After some back and forth you reluctantly agreed to go to the sanctuary. Before that Steve had called everyone to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and tell them that you are working on joining the team again. To your relief everyone was supportive and seemed glad that you were doing better.

That afternoon you walked to the sanctuary with the documents. Wondering if you would get to meet dr. Strange and what he was really like.

‘And you are?’ he said answering the door you just knocked on.

‘I’m (Y/N) from the Avengers, here to deliver some documents you needed and to ask how your progress is’ you answered politely.

‘Ah, so you are the one sleeping with the enemy’ he joked.

After seeing your not-amused-face he cleared his throat and invited you into the sanctum. He told you about what this place was and who he was. He had actually an appointment with the collector in an hour, just to meet up. He didn’t expect that he would be able to get the stone on the first try.

‘If you really want to help, you could actually tell me about Loki’ he said.

‘I don’t want to talk about it’ you said.

‘Look, I have reason to believe that Loki has already been to the collector. And I know very little about the guy. Maybe you can interpret some of his actions for me?’ he asked.

You sighed heavily. ‘I’m not able to explain every choice he made. But if he has been there you can ask me when you return’ you said bitterly.

‘Or… you could come with?’ dr. Strange proposed.

‘I can’t. I’m not supposed to join missions. I’m on leave with the Avengers and need to be re-evaluated first’ you explained.

‘But I’m not with the Avengers. So, technically I’m hiring you as a free-lancer. So, are you coming with me? Could be helpful?’ he tried to persuade you.

‘I can’t. If the team finds out..’

‘I promise I won’t tell them. If Loki has really been there, aren’t you curious to what he is up to?’ dr. Strange cocked one of his eyebrows.

That argument convinced you. Besides, it was one conversation with some guy you would attend. It really wasn’t a mission, right? What could go wrong?

At the collector Dr. Strange, who said to call him Steven, opened a portal and the two of you went through. The collector was a peculiar being, his assistant also. He and Steven were talking about the stone and Thanos, while you walked behind them besides the assistant. Walking through the collection of the collector you saw some amazing things. It did disturb you that there were living beings held captive here, even after the collector assured you that it was fine. You were drawn back into the conversation when you heard Loki’s name.

‘Yes, he has been here’ the collector answered. ‘What did he ask you? What did he want? When did he leave?’ Steven asked.

‘Ah, a lot. Quite the mischievous guy, but that is to be expected I suppose. Unfortunately for him, someone else already had required my services’ that made everyone stop walking.

‘What do you mean?’ Steve asked.‘Well, to answer you earlier question, he is still here. Now Carina’ the collector said. 

Before you knew what was happening someone grabbed you and you felt a sharp needle in your neck. Steven looked shocked. You wanted to scream but every muscle in your body went limb. Your eyes felt heavy and you vision started to blur. Was the building tilting sidewards? Or were you falling? The last thing you heard was laughter and you saw Steven’s sparkling magic, and then it went black.

Some time later Your head was pounding, and your mouth was dry. Still foggy you tried to open your eyes. There was a familiar voice saying something in the background. One of your hands was immobile. Recounting everything that happened you tried to sit up right and open your eyes. It took a moment for your vision to fully return and your hearing to improve. The first thing you noticed was that one of your hands was cuffed. The cuff was attached to another hand. Looking up, you saw him. ‘Good to see you again, kitten’ Loki smiled. 

Permanent taglist:  @delightfulheartdream​ @the-best-phineas​ @pescadoavocado​ @theestorm​ @theaudacitytowrite​ @justacripple​

Story taglist: @l0nelyasian @mrsdarcyinlovewithbuckybarnes @ragweed98 @thehornytitties @oh-my-gerd @morganmofresh @saiyanstars @rahne85 @charistory @not-your-bitch @kamrynnnnn @kokinu09​

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[ajaviary]

Hi boo! I wanted to take part in your event if that's okay! I'd like the character(s) to be a surprise and I'm also completely open to poly ships, love them, even! I'm Sunny, She/Her. I'm the good student type, very focused on my studies, determined and ambitious, but as soon as I get out of class, I love the unexpected, the unknown, the adventures. As much as I like planning my far ahead future, I really enjoy not knowing what tomorrow will bring, like buying random plane tickets and leaving on my own without a dime in my pocket. I spend most of my time reading, writing, studying, traveling whenever I can. My love languages would be words of affirmation and physical touch. Tell me if you need more info, thank you so much for this event ❤️

MHA Match up - Touya Todoroki/Dabi X Keigo Tamaki x Reader (College AU)

Summary: You’ve been hitting the books a little too hard lately, studying for finals like your life depended on it and maybe it did. Touya was amazingly helpful, being your study buddy throughout the whole ordeal. It helped that he was a year above you, he had already been there and done that with a lot of the Gen Ed courses you were taking. Keigo was far more relaxed about the finals, preferring not to stress over them, but it was easy for him to say, he picked up on things so easily and his photographic memory did him so many favors. It came in handy in other ways too. While Dabi was your study buddy, Keigo was the one taking care of you both, feeding you, making sure you guys did find your way to your bed after you just couldn’t stay up any longer. You wouldn’t have believed that Keigo’s carefree attitude would rub off on either one of you but now that finals are over the three of you were off on a surprise adventure that was all Dabi’s idea.

Word Count: 3282

A/N: Thank you so much for joining my Fall in Love Event! I hope you like how this has played out! I really love the dynamic between them. Thanks again!

|~|

You place your feet on the dashboard, your bare feet wiggling as you’d removed your sandals, this unplanned road trip was just what you needed after the dreaded finals week was officially over! It couldn’t have ended at a better time. You’d been ready to crawl into bed and sleep the moment you returned to your apartment. Those plans were derailed obviously, but you knew something was up as you’d been heading toward the bus stop, you’d left your car because Touya had dropped you off for your last exam that morning before he headed to work. Keigo had been still asleep in your bed when you both had been getting ready. To be fair, that man had the world's worst sleep schedule.

Warm fingers slid into your own, you stopped walking so quickly that Dabi had almost knocked you off your feet, his low growl in your ear as he curled his arm around your middle to keep you on your feet was well worth his irritation as you turned to look up at him. “I thought you were working!” You exclaim not at all bothered by the fact that a few of the college kids leaving have to weave around you both, but you don’t care. Your attention was all for him.

His fingers squeeze your own a little tighter his own way of telling you he’s not happy about the earphones in your ears, it was one of the reasons you hadn’t heard him call your name when you’d left the Science Building. He’d been waiting to catch you, but he’d just missed you having gotten taught up in a conversation with Tomura and Toga, when they had spotted him waiting for you. Getting the petite blonde to stop talking was nearly impossible. Thus he’d cut her off and told him he’d catch them later as he’d seen you leave through the crowd.

Touya was the one always harping on you about being aware of your surroundings. It was a safety thing, he was just trying to protect you. He knew some horrible things happened on College Campuses and he didn’t want any of those to happen to you, it was one of the reasons usually Keigo or himself would meet you outside your late night classes. It also said that he didn’t want to have an argument about them.

“I took a few days off -” He started but was immediately cut off as your hand raised to press your wrist against his forehead, checking to make sure he wasn’t sick. He looked a little flushed along the cheeks as your warm skin pressed against his forehead reminds him of what his mom used to do, when he was little. You’re much more attractive for worrying about him. Not that he doesn’t think he’s mom was cute, he does, but you're one of the ones he wants to spend the rest of his life with, so it’s different. That was another conversation to be had later, but he’d been working a lot of extra hours lately for something special, something you and Keigo weren’t aware of just why he was doing it, but Keigo knew something was up, that golden boy didn’t miss a damn thing and he was pretty sure he was snooping around his room when he’d been out.

“I’m fine,” he told you seriously, the scowl on his lips made you slid up on your tiptoes and plant a kiss on at the edge of his lips, just to hear him give a low growl as he curled his arm around your back and claim your mouth for a proper kiss, swallowing down your laughter and loving the feeling of your fingers in his hair. Yeah this was exactly where he wanted to be.

“Alright, Alright,” You tell him as you break away. “So why the time off?” The two of you had resumed walking as he led you toward his car. “It’s a surprise,” he told her with a grin, watching your face morph into a pout at the fact that he wasn’t going to tell you. Dabi already slid into the driver's seat by the time you stepped off the curb after shooting a hurried text to Keigo asking him if he knew what the surprise was. His only response was a winking emoji face which only caused you to round on the car to the passenger seat with an irritated huff. You hated being out of the loop when the guys planned things without you. It was a great little bonding time for them as they loved to tease you over what you didn’t know. You got them back though in ways that neither would ever forget.

“Don’t pout Princess,” Dabi told you with a smirk as he shot you a glance as he backed out of the parking spot and began to head toward the apartment you all shared. He wouldn’t be the first to admit the relationship the three of you had was a little odd, roommates turned shared lovers was not something that could easily be explained, but you didn’t need any labels, there was no jealousy in your relationship and things were usually open and relaxed, but today was the exception, it had to be as the surprise was for you and he refused to tell you, he was stubborn like that.

You round on him as he stops at a red light, you’d been shooting a flurry of texts back and forth with Keigo, Dabi knew because he could see the way your thumbs were flying from his peripheral. He expected you to start pestering him with questions so when you didn’t, he let his teeth sink into his lower lip, scraping his teeth over his own lip piercing as his fingers tightened on the steering wheel. He didn’t want to fight with you, but the silent treatment was making him antsy. “Baby,” You ask him, as you lean over the console, your hand pressing the rest of your body toward him, this position gives you too much close contact with placing your lips so close to his ear. “Will you please tell me where we’re going?”

Touya shot you a glance with his bright blue eyes slamming to the light as he waited for it to turn green. It would turn green soon, he was sure of it. “Touya,” you ask softly, he can hear the smile in your voice as you know you’re about to get him to crack. His sigh of defeat is music to your ears as you lean back in your seat with a satisfied grin sliding along your lips. “So -” You start, letting the word drag on, as he rubs his free hand along the side of his neck where your breath had fanned over him, you did that on purpose you knew all his weak spots. “Where are we going?” you ask him again, waiting expectantly. There was no way your plan would fail you.

He had just turned into the parking lot of the apartment and pulled into one of the spots as he shut off the car and pulled his keys from the ignition. “Do you really want to know?” he asked you as he clicked the doors to unlock, he cast you a sideways glance, you didn’t catch the smirk that slid along his lips. “Yes!” You can’t help but exclaim as you throw up your hands as if that’s the most obvious answer. “We are going on a road trip,” he kept this voice as uninterested as possible as he got out of the car and closed the door, able to hear your scream of frustration before you had even opened your door. His laughter that you could hear as he walked away, should not have caused you to smile a little, you were supposed to be mad at him!

He wasn’t running from you, but his long strides were taking him further and further away from you. He let his fingers drag through Keigo’s hair as the other had been loading some bags into his SUV. You guys were taking his vehicle because it was going to be far more comfortable to ride in than his two door Mustang. “She’s all yours Hawkeye,” he told him. Keigo curled his fingers into his shirt and hauled his mouth down to his own for a quick kiss, not about to let him disappear that easily. Dabi let his fingers curl along his shoulder before he pushed away from him. “How pissed is she?” Keigo wondered his gaze darting to where you were still sitting in the passenger seat of the car. “Very,” Dabi told him with a chuckle before he disappeared into the apartment to make sure they weren’t forgetting anything and he had some extra things to pack up away from prying eyes.

Keigo watched you for a moment as you slammed the car door shut, only to stare for a moment at your bag on the floorboard and have to open the car door again to get it out, so your attempt at proving your point was lost. He chuckled to himself, his fingers dragging forward through his blonde locks to fix them, as he came over to you, your bag hanging between your fingers. He took your bag and slung it over his shoulder as he curled his arms around you from behind his chin resting on your shoulder as he nuzzled against your neck. “What’s wrong Songbird?” he asked softly, his voice low and soothing, but he already knew, he knew how much you hated not being in the loop.

“Keigo,” you mutter his name, a soft prayer on your lips as you let your body sink against his own, all solid muscle and comfort. “He’s such an asshole,” you grumble and you can feel the Blonde smirk against your neck as he tilts his head, a single golden eye raising to peer up at you. “Tell me something I don’t know,” he tells you with a chuckle, his fingers digging against your sides and he’s tickling you before you can even truly suck in a breath to comment on his obvious bullshit answer. You’re laughter is filling the apartment parking lot and can do nothing more than wiggling against him, attempting to break free, but it’s half hearted as he drags you back against his chest and after a few more moments of torturing you, he’s stopped with the dragging of his fingers into your sides and they instead stroke along your sides in a tender moment of domestic bliss.

“How was your Exam?” he asks gently, enjoying the feeling of you in his arms. He won’t ever admit that he’s been a little left out given all the time Finals have taken up, but he understands; he’s just feeling lonely. Your fingers move to rest atop his much larger ones and you let your thumbs brush over his knuckles and he presses a kiss against your neck as he waits for your answer, his hip shifting to press against Dabi’s Mustang. “I think it went well, but just glad it’s over you know?” you told him and for a moment you let your head fall back against his chest. “Me too,” he can’t help but agree as he shifts your stance; he presses your back against the car as his mouth claims your own, his tongue sliding along your lower lip and your fingers tighten on his forearms as you feel his tongue enter your mouth.

Some time in between the lazy kisses between you two Touya had returned and he stood leaning over the open driver side door of Keigo’s SUV watching the two of you. Some of his friends wondered how his relationship revolved around two people, one of them another guy no less, some wondered how the three of you got along like you did, many wondered if jealousy would have played a role, the answer was no, not really. It might have been if Keigo wasn’t interested in him too. He knew how lucky he was. The love each of you felt for each other was equal, neither stood above the other as it should be. He might have continued to watch the two of you if it wasn’t for the fact, they did need to get on the road. He enjoyed watching the two of you. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t tease you two a little, better him than your damn nosy neighbors. You know the ones who had their opinions ready to pass out, no matter if you asked for it or not. He just didn’t like to share the two of you with anyone.

He whistled, the sound sharp and clear, one of those wolf whistles and Keigo knows it’s him and he’s also one of the more observant, so he’s very aware of the fact that he’s watching them. “Let’s put on a show for him, wadda ya say?” he murmured in your ear. Your low chuckle is the only answer he gets before your arms curl around his neck and press your lips against his own and he hooks his arms easily along your legs and your legs curl around his waist, but your breaking the kiss and resting your cheek on your arm that’s still curled along his neck over his shoulder as your gaze is on Touya’s lingering form.

You stick your tongue out at Dabi, aware by his scowl as his gaze sweeps the apartment lot, that he doesn’t like the fact that you two are being so chummy in public. He’s such a sucker for keeping you both safe, but his protective nature isn’t something that truly bothers either of you. “Do you know where we’re going?” you ask Keigo as he walks with you easily across the lot toward the car. “Not really, but he’s pretty tight-lipped about where, but he told me to take a few days off work about three weeks ago,” he told you honestly. “Wherever we’re going he wanted it to be a surprise,” he flashed Touya a bright grin as he stuck his tongue out at him as he took his time getting to the SUV. “This sort of adventure isn’t usually his thing, I’d wager this is for you,” he admitted to you softly.

Your fingers press against his shoulders as you lean back in his arms, feeling his other hand travel up higher on your back to accommodate your shift of weight without any sign of discomfort. Your men had no issues carrying you at all. He doesn’t miss the way your eyes fill with guilt and regret for getting so angry with him when Dabi had only been wanting to do something nice for you, to surprise you. He loosened his hold on you and you slid to the ground at the front of his vehicle. His fingers travel along your shoulder before he’s disappearing into the back of the car, your bag safely being stowed away. He’s giving you two a moment to clear the air before the trip. That didn’t mean he wasn’t being nosy about it, the blonde was leaning his elbows on the console from the back seat, his shoulders touching the front seats as he watched you move toward their dark haired Prince.

Touya frowned as you moved around the vehicle and ate up the distance toward him. He couldn’t see your face because the wind had blown your hair in front of your face, but he could see the tension in your shoulders, he caught the tremble of your lower lip. He sucked in a breath your name, a soft question on his lips, his blue eyes concerned. You slid your arms around his waist and he curled his arms around you without needing conscious thought. As your cheek presses against his chest, your ear over his heart listening to its rapid cadence. He can feel your fingers curl along the fabric of his shirt across his toned stomach. “I shouldn’t have gotten so mad earlier.” He closes his eyes with a sigh as his arms tighten around you, before he places a soft kiss on your temple. “You know it’s no big deal,” he says gently, hoping to reassure you and when your hold only tightens, he knew he’d have to go another route to get you to see that it wasn’t a big deal. “I love riling you up,” he can’t help but tease with a sexy chuckle, his fingers traveling up and down your back in light scratching motions. “You’re cute when you're angry,” he can’t help but continue, feeling the way your body tenses against his own. As you shove against his chest and his hold only tightens on you as he claims your mouth with his own, his hand cupping your neck as he bends you back as he deepens the kiss and your fingers curl on the fabric of his jacket.

Keigo shifts his body till he’s half way on the console of the car, he’s just as bad as Touya with watching you both. “As hot as this is we should probably hit the road or we’ll never leave the apartment,” he calls out, as Dabi sets you back on your feet, his palm cupping your cheek, his fingers curling along your neck for a moment over your racing pulse. “I’ll give you a hint (Y/N), you’ve been there before and loved it,” Dabi told you before he directed you into the SUV, you were going to go around, but instead he directs you to the drivers side and you scoot over the console Keigo has vacated and slide into the passenger seat, you look down to see your sandals on the floorboard and you smile softly at the gesture as you change out of your shoes and slip on your comfy sandals and expose your painted toes as you lean back against the seat. “I think I’ll let this be a surprise,” you tell them both watching as Touya starts up the car and you lean your seat back a little more your arm stretching up over the head rest and Keigo laces his fingers with yours from the back and you other hand reaches over to across the console and Touya’s fingers curl with your own as he begins the start of your adventurous trip.

[benjaminmoorepaint]

Si César m'avait donné la gloire et la guerre...

aka what does Combeferre's song actually mean, anyway?

In the Hugoverse, Caesar=Napoleon, usually. You'll quickly find that comparison in the Waterloo chapters and during Marius's "discovery" of Napoleon. The reasons for this are pretty obvious if you know these historical figures...both renowned military leaders and conquerors, both powerful emperors, and (most significantly) both instrumental to the downfall of their republics. Napoleon himself admired Caesar and wrote a commentary on his battles while exiled on St. Helena.

Sure, we make fun of Marius a lot on here for it, but his position isn't incomprehensible. Even the most ardent republican couldn't argue against the extent of France's international power and military strength under Napoleon. (And they don't.)

(the extent of the First French Empire and its colonies, from Wikipedia)

“Pardieu!” exclaimed Courfeyrac (“Parbleu” was falling into disuse at this period), “that number 18 is strange and strikes me. It is Bonaparte’s fatal number. Place Louis in front and Brumaire behind, you have the whole destiny of the man, with this significant peculiarity, that the end treads close on the heels of the beginning.”

Enjolras, who had remained mute up to that point, broke the silence and addressed this remark to Courfeyrac:—

“You mean to say, the crime by the expiation.”

Courfeyrac, being clever and witty as always: Louis XVIII, 18 Brumaire (the end of the French Revolution and Napoleon's rise to power) 18 June, 1815: Waterloo; all sum up the rise and fall of Napoleon. "the end treads close on the heels of the beginning" refers to the aptly named Restoration (of the Bourbon monarchy, putting Louis XVIII on the throne) that followed Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.

Enjolras: then the redress for the crime, Napoleon (Waterloo) itself caused a crime (the Restoration).

This remark from Enjolras is of course absolutely heretical to Marius and he goes off on his tangent:

"...to follow in a single man, Hannibal, Cæsar, Charlemagne; to be the people of some one who mingles with your dawns the startling announcement of a battle won [...] to make the French Empire a pendant to the Roman Empire, to be the great nation and to give birth to the grand army, to make its legions fly forth over all the earth [...] to conquer the world twice, by conquest and by dazzling, that is sublime; and what greater thing is there?”

“To be free,” said Combeferre.

Combeferre's response is fairly straightforward: However great the might of Napoleon and the Empire, the liberties of the people were still being suppressed. Among other things, Napoleon censored the press, established conscription, and reinstated slavery. And most importantly (to them) the Republic had been dismantled.

His song is a rewrite of "Si le roi m'avait donné" (listen to the tune here):

If Caesar had given me glory and war

That I must abandon the love of my mother

I would say to great Caesar:

Take back your scepter and chariot

I love my mother more, alas!

I love my mother more.

Enjolras's "my mother is the Republic" thing isn't just him being weird and dramatic about his own personal devotion to the cause--he's very deliberately emphasizing Combeferre's point:

If the Republic is the mother--and it is! where Caesar and Napoleon both rose to power--then Caesar/Napoleon are asking us to give up the Republic (which they did) for the glories of war and conquest.

But our republicans respond with a resounding "uh, no." aka: Marius's whole argument about the greatness of the Empire and military power and conquest? It's not worth it! Not if you have to give up the Republic for it.

And Marius can barely comprehend this because his brain is working on a completely different wavelength where he has not even considered that "greatness" isn't the most important thing.

Is Combeferre being just a tad dramatic about this? Well, yes, but it clearly has an effect on Marius...and also the effect of making him never want to go back to the Musain again. (I really can't blame him either.)

[dmsden]

A History Lesson - Looking back at D&D’s history

Hullo, Gentle Readers. Well, this is the 5th Monday in March, and that means I get to write about anything I want! It’s also my birth month, which means it’s my anniversary of getting into D&D (42 years!), and that has me feeling nostalgic. Coupled with a discussion I had recently with some friends, I thought it would be fun to look back at the various editions of D&D and give you all a bit of history. I’m not going to get into Gygax vs Arneson or any of that. I’m only talking about the published game itself, not its creators or its storied origins.

The original D&D (or OD&D as it’s sometimes called) came in a small box. It had three booklets inside - Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures - along with reference sheets and dice. Each was softcover and roughly the same dimensions as a DVD/BluRay case. The game was pretty rudimentary - for one thing, it assumed you already had a copy of Chainmail, D&D’s direct wargame predecessor. It also recommended you have a game called Outdoor Survival for purposes of traveling through the wilderness. It had only three classes - fighting man, magic-user, and cleric - and nothing about playing other races. It did have the insane charts that 1st edition would ultimately known for, and it was possible to play a pretty fun game of D&D with it, as its popularity would come to show.

The game expanded through similar chapbooks - Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, Gods Demigods & Heroes, Swords & Spells. With the exception of the last one, each brought new facets to the game - new classes like Thief and Monk, new spells, new threats. It was clear the game was going to need an overhaul, and it got one.

I consider this overhaul to yield the real “1st Edition”, as so much of the game didn’t exist in those original games. The game split into a “Basic” game, just called Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

The basic game was a boxed set that included a rulebook, a full adventure module, and dice...or, well, it was supposed to contain dice. The game was so popular and new in those days that demand for dice outstripped production. My copy of D&D came with a coupon for dice when they became available and a sheet of “chits” - laminated numbers meant to be put into cups (we used Dixie Cups with the name of the die written on it), shaken, and a random number pulled out without looking. It was meant to introduce new players to the game, so it was a trimmed down version. Races were human, elf, dwarf, and halfling, and classes were fighter, cleric, magic-user, and thief. The box only included rules for going up to 3rd level, with the intention that players would then graduate into AD&D. This is where I joined, with the old blue cover box set and In Search of the Unknown, before Keep on the Borderlands even existed.

AD&D was the game in its full glory. Along with the races I mention above, we got half-elves, half-orcs, and gnomes. The four basic classes also had sub-classes, like paladin and ranger for the fighter, druid for the cleric, illusionist for the wizard, and assassin for the thief. There were rules for multi-classing, as well as “Dual-classing”, a sort of multi-class variation for humans only, which, when done in the correct combination, could yield the infamous bard...which didn’t actually yield any bard abilities until around level 13 or so.

This edition had 5 different saving throws for things like “Death Magic”, “Petrification & Polymorph”, “Spells”, and so on. It had the infamous Armor Class system that started at 10 and went down, so that having a -3 AC was very good!  It also had specific attack matricies for each class; you would literally look on a table to determine the number you needed to roll on a D20 based on your class, your level, and your opponent’s armor class. It was fun, but it was very complicated.

It also had some, frankly, shitty rules. There was gender disparity in terms of attributes, which my group totally ignored. Because the game designers wanted humans to be a competitive the game, and because non-humans had so many abilities and could multiclass, non-humans were severely limited in the levels they could achieve in most classes. In fact, some classes, such as monk and paladin, were restricted only to humans.

As the years went on, things got a bit muddled. It probably didn’t help that the rules in Basic D&D and AD&D didn’t perfectly line up. In D&D, the worst armor class was a 9. In AD&D, the worst armor class was a 10. All of this led to an overhaul, but not one considered a separate edition. AD&D mostly got new covers and new books, like the Wilderness Survival Guide and Dungeon Survival Guide, Monster Manual 2, and the Manual of the Planes. It got a number of new settings, too. In addition to the default Greyhawk setting, we got the Forgotten Realms setting for the first time, details of which had been appearing in Dragon Magazine for years, thanks to the prolific Ed Greenwood. We also, eventually, got the whole Dragonlance saga, which yielded the setting of Krynn.

In this new version, Basic D&D broke off into its own game system to some degree. Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling started being treated like classes rather than races, with specific abilities at different levels. Higher level characters could be created using progressive boxes - Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortal, each with its own boxed set and supported by Mystara, a completely different setting that got its own updates over the years. It was odd, because D&D essentially was competing for players with AD&D, and I remember arguments with friends over which version was better (I was firmly in the AD&D camp.)

In 1989, when I was in college, they finally brought forth 2nd edition D&D. This streamlined things a little. Armor Class still went down, but now attack rolls boiled into a single number called To Hit Armor Class 0, or THAC0. It made the whole process of figuring out what you needed to roll a bit less cumbersome, but it was still a bit awkward. The classes got a lot of overhaul, including making Bard its own core class. But what I remember best about 2nd edition was the boom in settings. This was the age of settings, and many beloved ones got started, including Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, and Spelljammer.

It was also the age of the “Complete Handbooks”. They brought out splatbooks about every class and race in the game, as well as books expanding several concepts for the DM, such as the Arms & Equipment Guide, the Castle Guide, and the Complete Book of Villains. There were also splatbooks about running D&D in historic periods, such as Ancient Rome, among the ancient Celts, or during the time of the Musketeers. The game got new covers for the rule books again, and a bunch of books about options started coming out. It was a boom time for books, but many people complained there was too much.

Without going too deep, TSR ended up in severe financial troubles. They declared bankruptcy, and there was real fear of the game going away. And then Wizards of the Coast (WotC) stepped in. They helped TSR get back onto its feet, and they helped produce some modules specifically engineered to help DM’s bring an end to their campaign...possibly even their whole campaign world...because something big was coming.

That something big was, of course, 3rd edition D&D. The game got majorly streamlined, and many sacred cows ended up as hamburger. AC finally started going up instead of down. Everything was refined to the “D20″ system we’ve been playing ever since. Races could be any class. There were no level or stat limits for anyone. After years of the game being forced into tight little boxes, it really felt like we could breathe. I had stopped playing D&D, but 3rd edition brought me back into the fold. I often say that 3E was made for the players who’d felt constricted and wanted more flexibility.

The trouble with 3E, and its successor 3.5, is that it was still a dense and difficult game for newcomers to get into. It’s been acknowledged that D&D essentially created many of the systems we see and know in other games - experience points, leveling up, hit points, etc. But trying to break into the experience for the first time was difficult. The look of 3E was gorgeous, but I understood that it must seem awfully daunting to someone who’d never played.

4E and its follow-up, Essentials, was an attempt to course correct that. They tried to make this edition incredibly friendly to new DMs, and, frankly, they succeeded. By creating player classes and monsters and magic-items that were all very plug and play, they did a great job of creating a game that someone who had never DMed before could dive into with no experience or mentor and start a game pretty easily. Encounter design was given a lot of ease, and there were promises of a robust online tool system that would help out with many of the more tedious aspects of playing.

There was also a lot of shake up in terms of choices. Suddenly, new classes and races were proliferating like crazy. We got the dragonborn, the tiefling, and the eladrin right in the core book, but we said good-bye to the gnome and half-orc at first. Suddenly the warlock was the new class everyone wanted to try. We got paragon paths and epic destinies that would really shape a character as time went on. The game went very tactical, as well, which some of us loved. The concept of rituals came into the game. Later books like the Player’s Handbook 2 and 3 gave us back gnomes and half-orcs, and also gave us minotaurs, wilden, shardminds, and githzerai. We got new psionic classes, brand new class concepts like the Runeknight and the Seeker...

But there was a tremendous backlash. People felt that, in making the game so very plug and play, they’d taken a ton of choice away from the players. Without the tools (which were never that robust, frankly), it was almost impossible to navigate the massive panoply of options. And, worse, it was harder and harder to develop encounters without those tools. People complained that the game had gone more tactical in order to sell miniatures and battlemats. Given that I have never played the game without miniatures and battlemats (since I started in the days when D&D was still half-wargame), I found this odd, but I also understand my style of play isn’t everyone’s.

The one argument I will never understand is that it didn’t “feel” like D&D, or it was somehow ONLY a tactical game and not a role-playing game any more. Again, given that the original game didn’t even call itself a role-playing game, this felt odd. Personally, I roleplay no matter what game I’m playing. If I’m playing Monopoly, I’m roleplaying, doing voices, and pretending to be something I’m not. I honestly enjoyed 4E, and I know a lot of folks who did, too. A lot of it may simply come down to style of play. But I also enjoyed all the games that came before, including Pathfinder. To paraphrase the YouTube content creator The Dungeon Bastard, “Does your game have dungeons? Does it have dragons? Great. I wanna play.”

As a sidenote, in the months leading up to 4E’s release, a lot of internet videos were released by WotC emphasizing the nature of change and talking about differences in the rules. They also released some preview books showing the direction they were heading. WotC must have anticipated that people were going to find this edition very different indeed. They also cleverly brought in some very funny folks - Scott Kurtz from PVPOnline and Jerry Holkins & Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade - and got them to play D&D for podcasting purposes. Looking back, this must’ve brought in a lot of listeners who might never have played D&D and given them a reason to try it out.

After its release, WotC clearly noted that missteps had been made, as this edition of the game was losing them players. They began work on what they referred to as D&D Next, and, this time, they did massive amounts of playtesting, some of which I participated in.

I don’t feel like I have to describe 5E to any of you, Dear Readers, as you could go to virtually any store and pick it up. I am a big fan of 5E’s simplicity and elegance, and I suspect this is the edition of D&D we’re going to have for some time to come, especially given its popularity. Given the effect of podcasts like Critical Role (and I might save an article on Critical Role’s importance to D&D until my next Freestyle article), D&D is likely more popular now than it’s ever been, with a much wider and more diverse audience than ever before.

I know I’m painting with broad strokes here, but I hope this was, at least, entertaining, and maybe you learned something, Gentle Readers. Until we next meet, may all your 20s be natural.

[100hearteyes]

Part 2 of Clarke And Lexa Make a Porno, because why the fuck not.

Part 1.

"No. Absolutely not."

Anya's wolfish grin is no good omen. Lexa feels a sense of dread wash over her and tries in vain to assuage her nerves by holding her friend's gaze. Anya wouldn't look this sure if she didn't have some card up her sleeve.

Lexa throws a furtive glance around, checks that her co-workers are still focused on the German porn telenovela. It's only when she's sure that the action on-screen will keep them rooted for a while that she turns back to Anya, trying but failing to meet her eyes.

She overcompensates with another glance around the room and a low hiss. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but am I not too," she licks her lips, gathering the courage, "'vanilla' to do it?"

Anya shrugs like it's a no-brainer; crosses her arms and props her booted feet on Lexa's desk. "That's exactly the point. You're a lesbian Disney princess. Pretty sure if you started singing the whole fucking fauna of Capitola would follow you around."

Lexa levels Anya with a glare and tries to push her feet off the desk, to no avail.

(Seriously, what's it worth being editor if she can't even have her subjects' respect? She wishes this job was less about the headaches and more about the self-indulgent moments of microscopic tyranny.)

The feet might not budge, but Anya will. Lexa is sure of it. She draws herself taller and tucks on her most authoritative scowl. "I won't do it."

Anya plucks an imaginary cigarette from her mouth and throws it away without a care in the world. She reaches behind her and drags forth a heavy wooden box, filled to the brim with—

"My vinyls."

Lexa is in a daze.

She thought she'd lost all her vinyls to time and moving. She mourned each one of them for at least a year, cried many a night away clutching her record player to dear life, lamenting their shared loss.

They had a real connection.

But it turns out her vinyls weren't lost after all, and her tears were for naught. They were safe all along, albeit in different hands, and she'd known nothing of it, like a mother who lets her children wander about without aim nor authority.

How can she ever have kids if she can't even take care of her prized vinyls?

Lexa feels a prick of self-righteous indignation at the betrayal and puffs out her chest. "Why do you have all my vinyls?"

"I think you mean all my vinyls," Anya corrects with a lazy flurry of one hand towards the box.

"You don't even own a record player."

"How the fuck would you know?"

Lexa raises an eyebrow at her friend. "I come over all the time?"

"I could hide it while you're there."

"And then you'd never find it again, because that's what happens every time you try to hide something from me."

Anya shrugs and watches as Lexa picks one of the vinyls and turns it over in her hands, reading the track list on the back with the reverence one would a millennium-old parchment. Then she looks up at Anya with a stern glare.

"Over half of these were stolen from my house."

Anya shrugs again with infuriating nonchalance and Lexa wishes she had a pencil nearby just so she could snap it in two with one hand. Or stab one of Anya's eyes with it.

"Maybe I just rescued them from the actual malefactor," drawls Anya.

"We both know the real culprit sits across from me and has been wearing the same socks for the past three weeks."

Nailed it.

When she looks at her friend, however, all she sees is that same old resting bitch face that never seems to go away.

"Wow, Lexa," Anya deadpans. "Now you've really hurt my feelings."

Sometimes, Lexa wonders if Anya really has a rock where her heart should be. A supernatural, blood-pumping rock, of course, but a rock nonetheless. Or, maybe, Anya is a psychopath. Maybe the blood money theory wasn't so far-fetched after all. That would explain the brazen lack of empathy for everyone else's feelings, most of all Lexa's. What does it say about Lexa that her one true friend is someone who sneezes literally every time Lexa says 'I love you'?

Not that Lexa says it a lot. Only once or twice every few years.

Just enough to have noticed the pattern.

"Are you really trying to blackmail me with vinyls?"

Anya fakes an affronted gasp, laying a hand on her heart. "Would I ever. Think of it as... an incentive."

Lexa really does love Anya, despite her friend's... unique demeanor. Anya helps her come out of her shell — by taking up all the space and forcing her out of her own metaphorical home — and every once in a while she likes to make sure Anya is aware of her gratitude. Sometimes, though, things get really fucking weird.

Lexa would still do anything for her best friend.

"Let's imagine, hypothetically - very hypothetically," she stresses, although Anya's burgeoning smirk tells Lexa she isn't so easily fooled, "that I agreed. What would happen next?"

Anya takes her feet off Lexa's desk and sits up straighter, perhaps aware of the importance of this moment. This, Lexa decides, will determine her answer.

"Well first, I'd have to get you a costar. Then we'd sign some legally binding shit, find a crew, and make the damn movie. Simple as that."

Anya leans forward, looking into her eyes. In Anya's, she sees honesty and a pressing need to reassure. It takes some of the pressure off her shoulders right away.

"Look, Lexa, you can say no. But your name won't be on anything related to the movie and I promise no one in this shitty town will ever find out you did this."

This is why Anya is Lexa's best friend. And it's why Lexa would do anything for her.

Even star in a porno.

"Okay."

Anya's inner smile must be really, really big, because Lexa knows how hard she tries to tamper its outward expression — and still her lips manage to lift into a grotesque grimace. Coming from Anya, it's the equivalent of a blissful grin.

"Okay?"

Lexa nods and closes her eyes, bracing herself for a bone-crushing hug. It never comes. When she opens her eyes, Anya's resting bitch face is back on.

"What, did you want a fucking hug?"

It's a blessing to have her rude friend back, Lexa guesses, because seeing Anya almost smile is fifty shades of unsettling. So she rolls her eyes and rolls with it.

Her next question demands her full focus, lest she makes an even bigger fool of herself than usual.

Lexa breathes in, makes sure all her co-workers are still otherwise entertained, breathes out. Smooths out a non-existent wrinkle in her pants, wets her lips for courage.

"Anyway," she treads with caution, "do you have someone in mind for the other main role?"

It's fitting that Harper McIntyre's hit song One More Betyreyal (one of her less inspired titles, if Lexa may say so) starts playing in that moment, for the look in Anya's eyes speaks of nothing but danger. Lexa wonders how much planning went into this conversation, so Anya could plan all her gut punches in advance.

"Clarke Griffin."

No. No. Anyone but her.

Clarke Griffin is the new recruit, although Lexa hardly understands how there can be someone new considering the station is broke and they’re already overstaffed — and none of them make nearly enough money for how much they laze around all day.

Clarke came from out of town with a fancy degree and was directly hired as an editor. She voices the early afternoon newscasts and Lexa curses the one-hour period during which she's forced to cohabitate with Clarke every day.

Apparently, Clarke had taken a liking to unnerving her, be it by smirking at her every time she catches Lexa staring or by making all sorts of inappropriate comments — to her ear. Lexa hates how much it affects her, but how can she possibly focus on reporting about Lionel "Real Sight" Foster swallowing his own wooden eye or how Jasper Jordan rescued his own private parts from the jaws of two slats of an unassuming park bench if someone keeps doing everything in their power to distract her?

Lexa has a theory (an iron-clad theory, if she may say so herself), and it's that Clarke is trying to get her fired so she can take her shift. It's the best shift of the day. There is no other possible explanation.

"You know what, I take it back. Now you need to convince two people to star in your porno."

"Oh, there's no need." Anya waves her argument away with staggering nonchalance. "Clarke's already said yes."

Wait, what? "But you told me we'd need to get me a costar."

Anya shrugs and Lexa is now seriously considering revisiting her psychopath theory. "I lied."

"You conniving, lying b—"

"Careful," Anya cuts in with a raised eyebrow. "I am under protection of the Capitola Astrologers Union."

"Of which you are president, treasurer, and the only legal member," Lexa reminds her. "And I think any upstanding judge would love to know how exactly every other name on the list has joined said union posthumously."

"I am an astrologer, Lexa. I can communicate with the dead. It's in my job description."

"It scares me that you're not even aware you're describing an entirely different profession."

Lexa sits back, staring at the ceiling (and the chewing gum Murphy glued there a year ago — he could've been an Olympic jumper if he committed to work the way he does to being an asshole), trying to come to terms with a single, harrowing probability: she's going to star in a porno with Clarke Griffin.

"l don't understand why it has to be Clarke."

Anya leans forward, propping her elbows on her knees, expression serious and ready to talk shop. The last time Lexa saw her like this was— actually, Lexa doesn't think she's ever seen Anya like this.

"Look, I've done some market analysis and most girl on girl pairings are a blonde and a brunette." Anya raises both her hands and starts counting off fingers, "Brittana, Petramos, Holstein, Wayhaught, Supercorp, Joanarty, Choni, the inaptly named Shoni, Deanoru, Dana and Alice, Bette and Tina, Catradora, Villaneve, Clexa—"

"What's Clexa?"

"I don't know, some chicks from this fucking terrible CW show."

"Do you like it?"

"Do I like what?"

"Clexa."

"Dude, I don't even know their fucking names!" Anya exclaims, exasperated. As if she's the victim here. "The only Clexa I ship is you and Blondie. Naked. On my porno. Clarke and Lexa. Clexa. Havin' very hot sexa."

"Smart," Lexa deadpans.

"I know."

"Why can't it be Niylah? She's blonde, too."

Anya's smirk is five hundred shades of gross. "I know you'd love to get up close and personal with Niylah's knick-knacks, but no."

Lexa decides to let the comment fly for the sake of her own sanity.

"Why Clarke, though?"

"Because you two have chemistry, you fucking dimwit."

Lexa snorts. Chemistry. Lexa has never heard of something so absurd. She and Clarke have as much chemistry as Harper McIntyre and any semblance of originality.

Which is to say, none at all.

"She makes very inappropriate comments," she argues instead, knowing full well that pressing on the topic of chemistry will only open way for some trademark crass joke from Anya.

"Yeah," her friend agrees, like it's obvious. "Because she knows you love them."

She most certainly does not.

"I most certainly do not."

"You do. Your freakishly tiny ears go red whenever she flirts with you. Your step falters when she makes one of those comments, for fuck's sake," Anya observes, pointing in Lexa's general direction, before leaving forward and laying a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but you, my friend, are a walking lesbian cliché."

Lexa takes Anya's hand off her shoulder. "Can you please stop insulting my tragically conspicuous homosexuality?"

"Oh please," Anya scoffs. "I'm bisexual, I can say whatever I want."

"If my step actually faltered - which they don't - it would be because her comments are annoying, off-putting, unprofessional, inopportune, and... and inappropriate", she finishes lamely.

"And you fucking love them."

"I don't."

Anya leans back on her chair with an evil smirk, propping her feet on the table and crossing them at the ankles. Lexa tries to push them off to no avail.

"Legalities aside, it's very simple. Clarke has already said yes. I just recorded you saying yes."

Lexa sputters, "You what--"

"You're both legally bound now." Anya shrugs. "Look at it this way: it will be very educational. You'll finally learn how to make a girl come, and get paid for it. Sort of."

A beat of silence.

"Anya, are you aware that you say something at least vaguely criminal every five sentences? Something that could actually put you in prison?"

Anya clicks her tongue, sinking farther into her chair, and lowers her sunglasses to her eyes.

"I've got friends everywhere, Lex. Let's just say I've dipped more than my fingers in my fair share of pies, if you catch my drift." A second later, she lowers her sunglasses just enough to reveal her eyes. "That means my tongue. My tongue's been in a lot of pies, too."

Lexa doesn't doubt that for a second.

"What I need to know is," Anya adds, taking off her sunglasses and throwing them across the room, "will you dip your fingers in the porn pie?"

Like this conversation hasn't caused enough trauma for thirty lifetimes.

"If I say no, will you still give me back my vinyls?"

"Absolutely fucking not."

Lexa swallows, clenches her jaw, and thinks of all those lonely nights spent in the couch clutching her record player and sharing cookie dough ice cream with it, longing for long-gone times when she'd dance to the mellow voices of the likes Billy Ocean and Ella Fitzgerald.

"My answer is yes."

[arrivisting]

I’d love author commentary on basically the whole scene at Ekkaia in all my war is done (or any individual part of that scene, if your prefer). Taken together, it’s one of the most beautiful and emotionally complex and heartrending things you’ve written, from the description of the sea itself, to the difficulties of Fingon and Alqualondë, to Gil and the ocean and his ‘mother’, to Fingon and Gil beginning to tackle the thorny subect of Maedhros.

I should admit something about all my war is done: it's the most fugue-like my writing has ever been. I jotted down a few notes on my commute into work - I was deeply underwater with my PhD at the time, three months away from submitting - and then the idea of writing a sequel to scion seized me so profoundly that I sat down in the Starbucks where my bus stops, took out my laptop, and wrote instead of just collecting my coffee and walking down to my office. I wrote 15k. In one day. In about five or six hours. I've never achieved anything like that before or since - I do have good days where I can knock 2-4k out easily, but not 15k. (You might note that the posted part of all my war is done is only 12k, but I wrote all the way up into the next bit with Fingon in Tirion that you've read, up until Turgon at the dinner table). I didn't sit down or plan events; I didn't actually know much about what would happen: but I knew they were going to Ekkaia and they'd have some kind of resolution there. These are my phone-notes, from that morning:

You can see, I think, something of the way an idea hits me. I note down a few snatches of plot, not necessarily in any order, some lines I think people should say at some point, although I might not use them, sketch out some things (Formenos's ruins were going to feature more heavily, but they're waiting for a later story).

(It makes me laugh, the words my phone doesn't accept - Gil-galad, for one - and the ones it automatically capitalises from where I've yelled enthusiastically about elf things at people. I never stop long enough to correct spelling etc when I'm trying to get something down).

I clearly knew from inception that I wanted Fingon's place to be called the hill of waiting, and had tried out the name in Sindarin; because my verbs are not good, I came up with Amon Dartha. It was when I was redrafting that I realised Amon Darthir had existed actually in Dor-lomin(!!!) and the name was even more perfect symbolically than I'd meant it to be! Did I know that, unconsciously? I don't know.

You can see, too, that the Sea of Ekkaia was almost the very first point to hit me, and that I knew it and the scene there would be important, and that I knew that the story was about Fingon finding a way to tell Gil-galad that he had been loved, and wanted, and that meant talking about Maedhros; and that at the end I wanted Gil-galad to be gently, impersonally, firmly clear that he would not, could not, be staying to wait with Fingon.

Okay, DVD commentary proper - I'm sorry, I remember awfully little about writing this, given the fugue state and my thesis and everything, so I'm not sure how useful this will be!

“Oh,” said Gil-galad when they broke out of the woods and began to ride down over the dune-lands to the rocky shore. “Oh!”

The Sea of Ekkaia was beautiful, in its own way, but that way that was like no other place in Arda, in either Aman or Middle Earth.

It was a dark-blue that was almost black, even in the late afternoon, and the shore was less sand than gravel, a strange inconsistent rubble of rock and broken sea-shells that had been dashed to pieces by the constant fury of the waves. Staring out to sea, one did not see the far-away horizon the way one did on the gentler coast of Belegaer: there was no gentle faraway blue haze through which one might, perhaps, on a clear day, imagine that Middle Earth could be glimpsed, or at least the Straight Path.

No: instead along the horizon there was a seam of silver light, and then a great blackness, where the Sea of Ekkaia met the Uttermost West that was not quite the Doors of Night, but was certainly the end of Aman itself. If you stood on the shore watching, the seam would ripple with a pulse of light, sometimes green and sometimes white.

It was so far from anywhere the Eldar of Valinor lived. While they clustered around the Belegaer like moths to flame, this shore seemed instead to repel them. Was it the sight of the world’s end itself? It might be; yet Fingon thought there was more to why this wilderness was so little visited, this howling black sea lashing itself against a grey shore. It was beautiful, but not in the way Elves liked things to be beautiful: it was too raw, too unfinished, too savage.

It was too close to where Mandos kept his Halls, which were not only a thing of spirit but also matter, at least in the way that things in Aman were both. Too close to where Nienna’s tower looked out into the Void and where she wept, and wept, and wept. It was too close to death and to rebirth, to judgment and to pity.

There's a little Dawn Treader, I think, in this idea of the uttermost West. I don't know why I thought the seam of the world should pulse with strange light, but it's an uncanny kind of geography, so near Mandos and Nienna, and I like the sense that this is the end of the world, but not the end of the universe.

A lot of this came together serendipitously. I knew some kind of memorialisation of the river that bore Gil-galad needed to be part of his story; that meant going to the sea; and it's clear from the notes that I had already decided that couldn't mean Alqualonde because of kinslaying reasons and memories. (And that that too would need to be confronted). Therefore: roadtrip to Ekkaia. Therefore, the question: what would Ekkaia be like? We don't really know anything about it - only the good qualities of Belegaer. This was really written by a process of inversion, a way of pulling what we know about Belegaer inside-out, and imagining a place at the world's edge, a place that was empty, a place that was uncannily close to difficult things, to Mandos and Nienna; a place that seemed to repel the Eldar as surely as Belegaer drew them like iron filings.

I was thinking visually about New Zealand, too. I spent my childhood summers on the beaches up north, mostly around Tūtūkākā, which are bright and lovely, with golden or white or tawny sand, with gnarled pohutukawa and blue-green water. Like this:

That's what beach and sea meant to me, and it was a shock the first time I went to one of the black sand beaches where the wind howled and the colours weren't blue, green, gold, but iron, grey, navy, black. I loved it, but it felt so other, so passionate, so strange. That shock and that wild beauty and desolation were things I wanted to get at, though Ekkaia would be far more wild and desolate still.

They left the horses in the thin sea-grass, and their shoes, too, and walked down to the water. “I missed it,” Gil-galad said, and closed his eyes, breathing in the brine. “I missed it badly, all the long years besieging Mordor before I died.”

I think Gil-galad would be very marked by his upbringing first in the Falas and then on Balar; you don't lose that, if you grew up by the sea.

The wind took up his long dark hair and made a banner of it as they walked along the rough crescent of rocky ground where the waves met the shore, and around their bare ankles small stones tumbled back and forth in the lace-edge of the water.

When I was young I used to stand in the water and let the waves bury me up to my ankles, watching the water move in, out, spreading skirts of lace overlapping as new waves came in. I could do it for hours. There's something very liminal about the water's edge, between the solid land and the sea, which is why I put this conversation in it, I think. They're in a liminal space and at a liminal moment. It's the scene the whole story has been inexorably building toward, the point where all Fingon's painful scraping-away of his barriers finally reaches his skin.

“Sometimes in Middle Earth it became very difficult to believe in the Valar,” Gil-galad said, his eyes still closed, “in the blood, and the mud, and the filth. There were so many great and small unfairnesses, day upon day, year upon year.” He opened his eyes and looked towards the Uttermost West where the world ended. “And here it is impossible not to. Look at it!"

This is a little more hopeful than the original version, which I don't have anymore, but went pretty much:

"Sometimes in Middle Earth it was very difficult to believe in the Valar,” Gil-galad said. "In the blood, and the mud, and the filth. There were so many great and small unfairnesses, day upon day, year upon year.”

It was a comment more about Gil-galad's rueful scepticism than wonder - because he fought the Dagorlad before he died, because he spent the last ten years of his life in mud and blood and filth and horror. I work on the First World War - its literary legacy and traces in the decades after, more than its immediate experience or actuality, because there was a ten-year period after 1918 where it was more latent than overt, a traumatic lacuna of silence, a Nachträglichkeit- and I thought in the blood, and the mud, and the filth was a little too on the nose.

I kept it, though, because Tolkien was drawing on his own memories of the trenches with the Dagorlad and the Dead Marshes, with those blurred lines of solid land and mud/bog, the living mixed up with the remains of with the dead, all the themes you see again and again in the war poetry and the officer war-books. (Santanu Das is very good on this, as is Eric Leed). Paul Fussell is a bit old-hat now, but his argument that WWI altered the sensibility of its survivors because of their close, consanguinous co-existence with the dead is something I still find valuable. I think there's a lot of WWI survivor in the way I think of Gil-galad, actually, I'm just realising - not that he survived the Last Alliance. He's detached in a different way from Fingon. Fingon's built himself a thick layer of repression/denial, a kind of callous to protect himself from confronting or thinking about what Maedhros did, and what that means for him and to him; Gil-galad is entirely present, but somewhat detached in some ways, the way people who came back from war could be. Not that Fingon and Finrod aren't also separated from the Amanyar by their time in Beleriand and experience of war and death, but Gil-galad lived there for millennia, and he fought a longer, harder, more total kind of war than they did.

But he's at the Sea of Ekkaia, as west as you can get. So much of Tolkien is about that endless longing glance west, that movement: why is this very westernmost edge so under-explored?

I wanted Gil-galad to be softened by this encounter with the sea, so I went back and let his wonder be as much at the spectacle itself as the sea, like the greater hand at work he had sometimes doubted being visible was something wonderful rather than something to be bitter about. I wanted to position him to be potentially open to, perhaps, the Valar; perhaps, to Fingon. I hope he doesn't come off as closed-minded: I think of him as having a fair mind, and good judgment, but - despite placing him here between the sea and the shore - very clear personal lines between what he thinks is just, and what is not. Certainly, it helps a lot, never having known the Feanorians when they had not fallen.

The seam of the universe pulsed with light, and beyond it was – what?

Unutterable nothingness, something worse than death.

Perhaps Maedhros.

This is an important line for Fingon. He hasn't though the name of his own accord for much of the story, flinching away from it; it's only come in when Finrod and then Gil-galad speak the name. This is the first time he's thought it clearly of his own free will, and this is I think the first signal that he's brought Gil-galad here to be as honest and earnest with him as he can be, however much it hurts, or however much it might drive him away. Because if he isn't, and doesn't, Gil-galad will be driven away anyway, and Fingon wants to be connected with him, the first time he's wanted that kind of bond with anyone since he returned.

(I think of Finrod as someone who just kept turning up, regularly, and forcing Fingon to associate with him; and then bringing Amarie; and then his children; and not taking no for an answer. It bothers Turgon rather terribly that they seem to be friends now, when they were never that close Before: that Fingon pushes him away, but allows Finrod to keep pushing; that Finrod does push. He doesn't know about Gil-galad, of course).

He's brought Gil-galad here to show him if possible that he was wanted, to conjure up lost Ringwil where she might be felt if not found; and to do the same for Maedhros. This is a signal that this journey to the sea is as much about Gil-galad's missing father as his missing mother.

The almost-forgotten tang of salt in the air always mingled with the smell of blood in Fingon’s worst memories, and he was not the only one who remembered. The waves were gentle around Gil-galad’s feet, but they boiled furiously around Fingon’s, delivering small spiteful slaps at his calves.

Spiteful was probably the wrong word here. I don't necessarily mean a dramatic boiling or bubbling; but the water is harsh where it touches him, the kind of slapping roughness you get when the tide is coming in rough.

It took Gil-galad longer to mark the difference, engrossed in the joy of the sea and spectacle as he was, and when he did, his face changed. There was something terribly sad in his eyes when he lifted them from the water to look at Fingon.

It wasn’t why he had brought Gil-galad here; but Fingon didn’t want to imagine the look he would receive if he brushed aside the silent question. “No,” he said. “I am not forgiven.”

“So I see.”

They could probably leave it there.

But Fingon won't, because he's trying. He's really trying to connect after all the time flinching away from it, and he's remembering what Gil-galad said about talking, and what Finrod said about mistakes and silences in their first life.

He said, “You said you loathed the thought of being the son of – a murderer. But my own hands have not been clean since Alqualondë, and death didn’t unstain them. All the time you thought I might be your father, you must have known I was a Kinslayer, too.”

I tried to signal this in their earlier tower conversation with Finrod, and Gil-galad's changing of the topic, but I feel like it's a little abrupt here.

“Yes,” Gil-galad said, and his expression didn’t change. “And when the knights that had served you came to me, they told me that you killed that day in ignorance, that you came upon a battle already being fought; that you took up your sword to save those you loved and didn’t question whether it was just. I heard that from others, too, those who had less reason to bend facts to a flattering pattern; survivors of Gondolin and of Nargothrond. I did ask."

“Ignorance wasn’t an excuse. I died ashamed of it, and I live again with the shame.”

"Good!” said Gil-galad, and there was no forgiveness in his voice, even when Fingon jerked his head up in shock. Instead there was the stern ring of a king used to weighing the ideals of justice against the world as it was, the king who had walked arm in arm with Eonwë the Maia, led his people through many full-fledged wars, and held court and meted justice to them for an Age. “That gives me a far better opinion of you than any of the stories did! I’m glad.”

I remember talking to you about this in the comments, about what it meant that Gil-galad wasn't forgiving him. I think I really meant condone, but I also don't think it's Gil-galad's place to absolve Fingon - he wasn't the one wronged! - and that it's important to me that, because Fingon does truly regret it, he doesn't wish to be absolved, to slide away from it. I don't mean he ought to wallow in it or flog himself with it daily, but I think it would be important to him to shoulder and own that guilt rather than ever allowing himself to put it behind him or have someone else tell him it’s quite all right.

I think this is a moment where I show that they're quite similar, too, because even if Fingon wasn't aware that a bracing, clear assessment was just what he wanted, it was what he needed, rather than people being kind (which he's had a lot of, since he returned; and which hasn't touched that central guilt he's hidden from them, that he loved Maedhros, who had done such terrible things. It's prevented him from accepting kindness made him block people reaching out to him. Gil-galad is not being kind, but just, and still reaching out).

It felt like Fingon had been struggling to take a full lungful of air for a long time, and now something constricting in his chest had loosened, as it hadn’t even after the Valar themselves had judged him. It was only now that he realised that he hadn’t wanted Gil-galad to forgive or absolve him. He had wanted – needed – Gil-galad to be better than him, to withhold forgiveness when it was unmerited; and Gil-galad had. He had become the shining legacy they had all hoped he would be, the thing they had all somehow done right.

The water slapped at his ankles again, in impatient reminder.

This is too brief a transition. I should have fleshed the join out more.

“I think Ulmo would come to you here, if you called. You were a king by the sea in Middle Earth, and you may not remember it, but it was a river who gave you life.”

Gil-galad looked at him as if he’d grown an extra head. “What?”

“I brought you here for a reason,” Fingon said. “Where did they go, the drowned and poisoned rivers of Beleriand? I don’t know; but Ulmo might.”

I've really personified the rivers, but I think it's a clear and easy extrapolation from the Withywindle and the River-daughter in The Fellowship of the Ring that I don't need to justify in order to argue that every river might have had its own attendant Maia-spirit. It does make what happened to the Rivers of Beleriand much worse, though, and I wanted to look at the way a character that was a throwaway mechanism in scion ended up being sickened and dying as horribly as Beleriand did; this story was really about following all those lighter bits in scion home, to the end of the line, and looking at the long-term impacts of something that began more lightly. In this verse, Ringwil was a river, but also a person; and I think of her and Finrod as sharing a strange human-river friendship and overlapping enthusiasms.

He clapped Gil-galad on the shoulder, hoping it said all the things he meant it to say. Affection had been so easy for him once, in the life that had been taken from him by the fiery flails of the Balrogs, but now it came hard, and the sea-smell was in his nose, the terrible memories too close to the surface.

He had surely outstayed Ulmo’s tolerance by now. Fingon left Gil-galad there in the water, and didn’t dare glance back until there was thin sandy soil under his feet again.

Only then did he look once more towards the sea.

Gil-galad was standing in the shallows. His broad shoulders were bunched tight, as if he was readying himself for something very difficult, a confrontation with one of the Valar he had long doubted.

Then he spread his arms out, empty-handed, and tipped his head back, and the light on the horizon grew unbearably bright, whiter than white, more silver than silver; and a face began to move upon the water.

I really like this, honestly. Which I can't/don't say often! The temptation to overwrite this was strong, to show this encounter, to describe the Vala: but I think it's often stronger not to show something numinous, to pull away, to let the mind fill it in.

Again, this is Gil-galad as I imagine him: still somewhat distanced from the Valar by the Dagorlad and the things that happened there (and I think perhaps doubly unhappy in that he lived through the end of an Age once before, and that time, at least, the Valar came: they did not come in the Second, nor send so much as a messenger, and such obscenities as the fall of Ost-in-Edhil and the drowning of Numenor had been allowed to happen, and Men and Elves were left alone to come together and break Sauron's grip). Doubting, but not angry; doubting, but still curious. Open to listening.

a face began to move upon the water is of course a deliberate sideways reference to

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

-

It took a very long time. Fingon could not watch; his eyes dazzled.

Can you tell I was teaching The Duchess of Malfi at this time? Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young. That sense of a light too bright and white to look upon; that sense of guilt; that faint reference to life lost untimely. This wasn't meant to be a direct intertextual reference, but that net of meaning was there, lightly. Again, I wanted to under-write rather than over-write. I know I have a tendency to over-write.

And of course - there's a sense here that Fingon is refusing the kind of close enoucnter with Ulmo he could/might have. There's water in his eyes. From the wind?

-

“Thank you,” Gil-galad said when he rejoined him at last. His eyes were glowing, and he whistled Ceredir to him from where he was tearing ropey roots of sea-grass from the dunes with great relish. “Thank you for bringing me here;” and he didn’t say it the way he’d thanked Fingon for the horse, or the armour, or the sword, or even the lance.

Because this is a real gift, something that means something to both of them, something more honest/painful. Fingon's been trying to connect through gifts but not serious conversation or sharing, like some estranged parents do, throwing money at the problem rather than giving of their time or their selves, and however well-meant, it hasn't worked.

“I didn’t truly do anything."

“You brought me to the Sea. I know – I could see – how difficult it was for you."

"Well,” Fingon said lamely. He cleared his throat. “What did Lord Ulmo say about – oh, I can’t call her your dam! – the Maia who bore you? Did she – was she there?”

The dam pun is Finrod's. Don't blame me.

A little of the light dimmed, but it didn’t quite fade away. “No, she’s gone. Back to the Timeless Halls, he says; but one with him again, Ulmo, at the same time.” Gil-galad made a noise. “I don’t pretend to understand any of it, all the metaphysical nonsense of the Ainur! But he was kind to me, and he told me something of her – that she delighted in the making of me.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “I left the flowers we gathered earlier in the waves for her and the sea didn’t dash them back onto the shore. I’m sure Ulmo broke a few laws of Arda there.”

I like this image of the flowers suspended in the water. I had it clearly in mind from before I began to write.

"You were wanted.”

“I’m beginning to believe it,” Gil-galad said.

“You should,” Fingon said. He took a breath. Talking is how you sort things out; and a long time ago, Fingon had been known for his valour. Gil-galad deserved to know how much he had been wanted, who had called himself a political compromise given birth. The truth of that had stung.

And it was less than the truth. Fingon could still remember the first time he had opened his mind to Maedhros over the leagues between them and let him see Gil’s small face through his own eyes, holding nothing back. He had shown Maedhros the dark long lashes and the squashed baby nose, the milk-blister on the bow of Gil’s upper lip, the way his whole head turned an alarming red when he wailed; shared with Maedhros Gil’s fondness for being tossed in the air, his splashing joy in his bath.

This is is me trying to describe a baby without being too sentimental about it, because Fingon wasn't all, oh look at the toesie-woesies, or my son, my son: his eye was more detached, and you see him in scion thinking of Gil-galad as it.

I've been thinking about why Fingon in no way allowed himself to consciously dote on the baby, why that streak of denial that's so strong in his second life was there in his first light, and really: it would have been dangerous to let himself love him, to see Gil as his son and Maedhros's. He was born at a time of terrible loss, after the Flame, when they all expected they could die themselves. He was moved around Beleriand like a game-piece. Fingon was always going to lose him: he wasn't going to get to raise him, after all, until and unless Morgoth was defeated. Maedhros wasn't going to meet him, until and unless &c. It was easier not to let oneself get attached than it was to confront those hard facts and let oneself be hurt by them. Easier to think of him as a baby Finwean prince, and that only: a political pawn, not a son.

Conversely, Maedhros maintains a physical distance, but not an emotional one. Here's a bit from Maedhros's perspective:

Finrod had told him that. They had written, back and forth, in the long months as Ringwil’s belly swelled, as the child formed, as it began to move and stretch and turn frog-like inside her. They had corresponded constantly during the first months of the child’s life in Nargothrond, and during the first months of his life, Finrod had sent long scrolls detailing every change in Artanaro’s weight, his length, his hair colour, his eye colour, how much milk he’d consumed each day: screeds winging forth to Himring until the child was old enough to survive the secret trip north.

Fingon’s letters had been infuriatingly spare of useful information while the child was fostered at Barad Eithel. Beloved, ineloquent Fingon: Fingon, who had nevertheless shown him the child as no reams of paper could.

Fingon had given him forever the rounded bloom of his full cheeks, and the pursed mouth, sullen in sleep: the feathery, rather cross-looking eyebrows, and the small hands with their deep dimples and smaller fingernails, curled into the edge of Fingon’s furred mantle.

Maedhros had felt the way Fingon hovered between wonder and confusion at what they’d wrought: the way he couldn’t quite manage to think of the child as his own, this thing spun out of air and calculation and freshwater into heavy, solid life. He could have loved him so desperately, Maedhros knew that. He was halfway there, hovering in terror on the edge, afraid of falling. If the baby had stayed in Barad Eithel longer; if Fingon had watched him begin to creep around on fat little knees, to pull himself up on the furniture and to take his first steps – to hear the baby babble turn into words and speech – his heart would have opened to him like a flower, and the child would have become the centre of his universe, the sun in his sky.

Fingon had never known what to do with Idril as an infant, either, but he’d easily become an adored uncle as she grew up. If they’d had more time – if the child had been permitted to stay with Fingon even a month longer before being sent for safety to Cirdan –

Well, they’d never had enough time.

There had been few walls between them then, so he had felt Maedhros’s bright joy, the painful love, in its moment of birth: swelling and swelling like a cloud with rain, as though his heart was growing and his blood was leaking out of him at the same time, transmuting into pure tenderness and iron purpose.

I like this because I think of the Ekkaia scene as a cloudburst, full of emotion that has been swelling and swelling and now released. This is one bit of the breaking-through.

He had never needed to ask whether Maedhros considered Gil-galad a son.

“I don’t want to talk about – him,” Fingon said with difficulty, and the salt breeze stung his face, his eyes. “I know you loathe him, and rightly; and I do, too. I do hate him; or I hate what he did. I do! But you should know – you deserve to – that he wanted you, badly, although he never met you; he never wanted the shadow on him to touch you or to taint you.

And this. You can see here where I spun off into cliffs of fall, which isn't a scion story, but sprung out of this speech. It was already there in those sketchy notes, too, a lot of what Fingon's saying here: this important line about hating Maedhros, or what he did (that movement from clear certainty to trying to separate the deeds from the loved one; to urgent reptition - I do! I mean it, I really do! - which means he doesn't, can't: this is the heart of Fingon's guilt, because he wants to hate Maedhros utterly, but he can't, and he is profoundly in denial about that).

“He always wanted children; I took that from him even before the Oath did, but I gave it back to him with you. I loved you first of all for that, but he loved you for yourself. Because you existed, against all hope and possibility and fate and chance; and because you were ours.”

Gil-galad said nothing. There was still a wildflower tucked behind his ear, but the brilliance had quite left his eyes.

“Well,” Fingon said at last. “I needed to tell you that. You should know that you were never – not only – you were wanted very much."

Beloved ineloquent Fingon, &c.

-

They were some miles from the beach when Gil-galad said, “‘Ours’?”

“Yes."

-

I was trying to let the gaps and breaks talk for me in the text. Under-writing.

The beginning was full of these little breaks, too, because they didn't yet know how to talk to each other; now at the end, that connection, and their conversations, are breaking down again. It's echoing that ride together at the beginning very strongly, but now it's not Gil-galad trying to become acquainted and Fingon giving light, unsatisfying answers. These are the real questions/answers at last, and the whole story has really been about getting to the point of Fingon and Gil-galad in Aman where they actually could have the kind of conversation Gil-galad was trying to have at the start.

-

Some miles further, Fingon said, “Did you ever meet him in Beleriand? After I died. I always wondered.”

“No,” Gil-galad said.

It didn’t seem like he was going to speak again, and Fingon had begun to assimilate that knowledge, that pain – that Maedhros had never seen him, had only ever known him through Fingon’s own eyes – when he added,

“But I saw what he did. Have you ever seen a whole city ruined, and known the ruiners to be Elves? It wasn’t even a city, poor Sirion! It was a refuge, a place for the desperate, as far to the West as they could get, as close to the safety of the Sea. They had so very little. No great stone palaces, no towers, no spires. Little enough fresh food. They were able to grow so little, and they lived on fish, and sea-weed, and what brave hunting parties would bring back; and hope. They lived on hope, and they thought Elwing wore it around her throat, but the Valar didn’t come for them: Maedhros Fëanorion and his brothers did instead, and they burned and killed and ravaged. I’d say they salted the earth, but it was salt already. To fall on any innocent Elven city would be a horror: on poor Sirion it was the greatest cruelty I ever saw, and entirely pointless."

They said nothing more.

I like this, too, actually. You see a little here of why Gil-galad might be healthily sceptical of the Valar - they didn't come for them: Maedhros Feanorion and his brothers did instead - and that very post-war experience of seeing a descrated, destroyed town. Worse when you had seen it when it was whole, when you knew the dead and fled.

Sirion is, I think, the worst thing the Feanorions did. I find it worse than even Doriath or Alqualonde (though they're all awful!). These were desperate survivors, huddled together at the edge of the sea for protection. So many of their leaders had been killed or lost. Idril and Tuor had disappeared; Earendil was away; Maedhros and the others struck while only Elwing was there, and she was so young, and so alone, and so damaged already by what they'd done in Doriath. And now they’d come again. There's something about the revictimisation that gets me. It's awful.

I wanted it to be weight and counter-weight - that soft, painful, remembered moment of Maedhros seeing baby Gil-galad through Fingon's eyes, something Fingon has clearly not deliberately thought about since he was reborn, but dredges up now for Gil-galad, because he should know: and which is echoed in the beginning by Fingon's question to Finrod. But Maedhros is still the person who did the things he did, and I wanted to set that soft moment of truth against his deeds at Sirion, another truth, to point out clearly why Gil-galad would recoil so hard from this offering, this honesty Fingon wants to be able to give him. This is the dichotomy at the heart of the story: reconciling Maedhros and how one felt for him with what he did, and how one feels about that. It is irresolvable, at least for Fingon, at least at the moment I've ended it at for now.

I don't know if this is quite what you wanted, @warrioreowynofrohan, especially because like I said, I wrote this story in a frantic fog, but I hope this in some way suffices!

[sunnysidekit]

Summary: All is fair in love and war. And boxing, too, apparently.

Pairing: Ben ‘Benny’ Miller x F!Reader (no y/n, reader’s boxing nickname is ‘Nyx’)

Warnings: Language, mentions of violence.

Word count: 2.2k

My masterlist

Everyone likes a good mystery. Don’t even try to deny it; whether you like Sherlock Holmes or if you’re more of an Agatha Christie fan, none of us can really escape the allure of a good conundrum every now and again. Some people can stare in the face of their mystery and not recognize it for quite some time, while others can practically smell them from a mile away. Ben Miller is part of, well, both groups.

Personally, he likes mysteries and surprises and such, but his army days have taught him all of those are a bad thing. A mission can collapse after the smallest detail changes, after all. Sometimes those missions are called off; other than the fact that he can’t do his job when that happens, he’s not really bothered by it. But when something catches him and his team by surprise during a mission and they have to get on with it anyway, things tend to… let’s say, not end well for everyone. And that’s gently put, of course.

Which is why when he’s at home between deployments, he likes his simple habits. They provide joy and adrenaline, and boy does he need both to function well. One of those habits is boxing. He likes it because of its simplicity; you punch your opponent, they punch you back, and so on and so forth until one of you stops. He’s good at it, too. Will always says that’s because he practiced a lot on him when they were younger. Ben says he’s the one with the good genes. Their mother was a fighter, too, after all.

The other reason he likes boxing is because your opponents always try to surprise you with a little mystery move. It’s fun for him to figure out how to respond in a split second, and the rush he gets when he does so successfully is almost unparalleled. Today, though, the only real surprise is the sudden appearance of his very own mystery. And, hey, you might know where this one’s going: it appears in the shape of a woman…

Benny whoops when he kicks open the door to his old high school gym’s changing room, but it sounds a bit less enthusiastic than it did after his last match. He knew he should have listened to Will and gone somewhere, anywhere else than back to Red Feather Lakes, but he’s not about to mention it when he can already imagine the smug grin spreading across his brother’s face.

He won, that’s what counts. And it’s not that bad to have done so after what is sure to be America’s easiest boxing match. That just means he’s good at it. The crowd went just as wild as it usually does, even though there were significantly less attendants than two weeks ago. Somehow, none of the arguments he tells himself really convinces him.

“All right!” Catfish says triumphantly from behind him. “Looks like all that training paid off, didn’t it?”

“Yeah…” Benny trails off as his slightly blurry vision comes back into focus. There’s someone sitting on one of the benches, someone he doesn’t know. It’s a woman; her aura tells him she’s all business, but her clothes tell him she also definitely plays. “Who’re you?”

The woman doesn’t respond immediately; only after half a minute of casually typing away on her phone does she look up and meet his eye. “Name’s Val,” she says, her facial expression one he can’t quite place. “And I’m about to ask you something you won’t be able to ignore.”

It’s important to notice that Benny isn’t particularly patient in his post-fight high, something Frankie knows very well. He becomes a bomb of electric energy that, once set off, won’t stop until every single muscle in his body gives out. And he’s about to be set off.

“Val, is it?” Frankie smiles at the woman, swiftly moving his friend to the showers. “Why don’t we talk while he cools down, hm?”

“You’re not the one I want to ask a question,” she says calmly, not taking her eyes off Benny. “You’re a Delta boy, aren’t you? I can see it in the way you fight. It takes regular boxers years to develop such a sensitive, quick response capability.”

“Yeah, and?”

“And that makes me think that oaf out there’s a long way from even thinking of acquiring your skillset. It’s impressive how easily you had him on the mat.”

“Ma’am, if you want an autograph-” Frankie tries, sensing the ticking time-bomb next to him is about to blow, but Val immediately interjects.

“Which is precisely what caught my eye. These men are no challenge for you anymore, but I think I know someone who could be. Should you accept their invitation, that is.”

“Do I know him?” Benny narrows his eyes at her, trying by god to figure out her angle in all of this. She smirks and closes her eyes a few seconds longer than a normal blink would take; touchy subject, maybe? Or perhaps he’s right and he has seen the guy before.

“You might have seen them around, sure. But I doubt you’d remember them.”

“So, what? I say yes and I’ll fight your friend here next week or something?” Benny snatches his towel from his bag and snaps it against the wall in annoyance.

“I’m afraid my friend’s a little more… complex than that, Mr. Miller.”

“Hey, uh, no thanks,” Frankie cuts in, waving his hands as if to dissipate the words in the air. “He doesn’t do illegal fights.”

“He’d have plausible deniability,” Val says with a slight tilt of her head, then turns back to face Benny and hands him a business card. "Anyway, the choice is yours, Mr. Miller, not your friend’s. I don’t need an answer right now. Do take your time to think it over, sleep on it a bit. Once you’re a little more comfortable with the idea, give this number a call. I’ve got a feeling they’d very much like to bruise that pretty face of yours until it looks like a Monet.”

She gets up from the bench and walks out of the changing room without looking back. Benny slips the business card into his jacket pocket, something that catches Frankie’s attention.

“Don’t do it, Ben,” he sighs. “I’m serious. You could get arrested, get your ass thrown in jail. You’ll get kicked out of the army.”

“Stop whining, Fish. I’m not gonna do it anyway.”

Despite explicitly telling Frankie he wouldn’t do it, here he is, standing outside his local gym with his phone in one hand and the curious looking business card in the other. There’s not a lot of info on it, but, hey, what did he expect? That an illegal streetfighter would publish their own name, address and contact info on a bunch of business cards?

There are only two things printed on the grey little card: Nyx, which must be the fighter’s nickname or something, and a phone number. It’s been in his jacket pocket ever since he left his old high school, but it felt like it’s been burning a hole in it the entire time. It’s exactly as Val said it would be. He can’t get her proposition out of his mind, no matter how hard he tries.

She’s right about the competition. They’re no match for him, not the ones here in Red Feather Lakes. And, sure, he could always just sign up for something three towns over, but it wouldn’t matter much. How she found out he’s in the Delta Force is beyond him, though. It’s policy not to broadcast such a position if you want to stay in it. Maybe she has connections in the army…

That’s another thing; his place in the army. It would be gone as soon as he gets caught, and it’s not like he’s got great job prospects waiting for him back home when all he’s done for the past ten years is train to get where he is now. No college degree, no other jobs to list on his resume, no wealthy parents to fall back on… His whole life would go up in smoke.

But it does entice him. He technically does illegal things for his job all the time, and the matches he engages in when he has some down time aren’t really scratching that one particular itch anymore. Let’s face it: one phone call can’t hurt, right? He can still refuse, say no, put his foot down. Maybe even convince this guy to go legit.

He pushes the little green receiver on the screen, then puts his phone to his ear. The dial tone beeps three times before someone picks up. He opens his mouth to say something, but the person on the other side is quicker.

“Ben Miller, I presume?” It’s… a woman. But not Val. “Val told me you’d be giving me a call.”

“And you’re…” he quickly flips over the card just to be sure, “…Nyx, then?”

“Got it in one. I do so hate it when Val forgets to mention my name in the initial interview.”

Benny huffs out a confused laugh. “Interview?”

“You aced it, by the way. Not saying too much is best when talking with my… let’s call her my associate,” the woman says. Her voice is softer than Val’s, and a lot smoother. It sounds like what taking a sip of hot chocolate feels like. “Shall we get on with it and discuss the rules of this little arrangement?”

“I don’t-- rules? I haven’t even given you an answer.”

“Oh, don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ve got any restraint left,” she chuckles. “You want to tell me you called just to say hello to a total stranger?”

“No, but-” Benny splutters, but he doesn’t get to finish his sentence.

“Then your answer, even if you haven’t given it to me yet, is as clear as the Pope’s Holy Water. Now then, the rules. In order to keep you in the warm, sunny, light side of the law, I’ll arrange a time and place. All you have to do is show up.”

He can’t help but grin. She’s clearly on top of this whole cloak and dagger operation, that much he can tell. Who she is, though, he can’t say. Not yet. Maybe he’ll recognize her when he sees her. “What about my gear?”

“Do take it with you, please. I’m not a charity, giving away free gear to any John, Charles or Mary.”

“All right,” he says, clicking his tongue. “Anything else?”

“Val will pick you up and get you back home safely, so don’t worry about the whole transport situation.”

“This doesn’t sound very... safe. I mean, you do realize this sounds a lot like kidnapping, right? Or murder, or something like that?”

The woman laughs. It sounds like the melody to a song he knows but has never heard at the same time. It’s the kind of laugh that makes everyone around laugh as well. “Why would I tell you all this and then still proceed with it if my intent was malicious? You can easily call the cops and have my dear Val arrested for whatever crime you think me capable of, and that wouldn’t be very good for my business.”

“Fair enough.”

“Speaking of Val, she’ll pick you up next Wednesday at nine.”

Benny kicks a piece of gravel onto the street next to him and swallows away the last of his pride and dignity. “All right, I guess I’ll see you then.”

“Good lord, I can’t believe Val forgot to tell you that, too,” she laughs again, then clears her throat and continues a lot more seriously. “I only dance in the dark. Have a good night, Mr. Miller.”

Usually, waiting takes ages, but not this time. For Benny the rest of the week practically flew by him and before he knows it, it’s already Wednesday. He went training with Frankie just like any other week, only this time he accidentally forgot to mention his fight with Nyx. He told himself that the less people know about his, uh, date, the better, but he also knows Frankie would have immediately pulled the plug.

Val arrives at nine o’clock sharp in the front seat of a cab, which is no surprise. The drive that follows doesn’t take very long; he also isn’t blindfolded or anything like they do in the movies. The car stops in front of an old warehouse in the east side of town, and that’s when Val turns around in her seat and very concisely tells him to get his ass out of her cab himself, since she’s not going to hold open the door for him.

Instead of driving off, Val simply pulls the keys from the ignition and tosses them to him, calling it his ‘insurance policy’. Then she waves her hand as if to tell him to hurry up and get inside, which he promptly does.

Well, that whole dancing in the dark reference seems to have been meant literally; as soon as the warehouse door closes behind him, an inky, suffocating darkness envelopes Benny and makes a shiver run up and down his spine. He takes a few tentative steps, holding out his arms and moving them around to make sure he doesn’t hit anything while he walks.

Suddenly, a voice calls out to him from a bit further into the sole, big room this warehouse seems to consist of.

“Good evening, Mr. Miller. Let’s get swinging, shall we?”

A/N: Hey there, you made it to the end! Thanks for reading through the whole thing, I hope you liked it. If you’ve got any suggestions or spotted a mistake or two, don’t hesitate to tell me so that I might fix it. I hope you’ll stick around for round two!

[dreadfutures]

aight let‘s talk ao3 tags again

the very nice tag wrangler I’ll be quoting from has given me permission to share their kind and thorough responses (all bolding/emphasis is mine) without identifying information. and we very nicely go through some of my own tags from my long fic Dead Pasts, Dread Futures. Many, many thanks to this wrangler for explaining so much to me.

Anyway. I present these discussions as a peacable offer of: these are many writers’ concerns, and they are valuable, and worth considering. don’t dismiss concerns about the tag limit off hand, and don’t insist that edge cases don’t matter.

tldr; at the moment, after all this discussion and back and forths and bullying, I still believe that having 75 tags, period, as the limit across ALLCharacters/Relationships/Fandoms/Additional Tags penalizes longfics. Period. If it were even a limit of 100 tags, or broken down by Tag Type, it would be a little more forgiving. For advertising and for content filtering purposes, it only helps writers and fic visibilty to be specific and thorough in tags. A limit like this just so clearly has the potential to negatively affect large fandom/large ensemble/long fics.

It feels like this decision is being very broadly based on a "for the majority" mindset, which has never been what AO3 is about, without actually physically looking at the kinds of fics it will affect. The tag system on AO3 has been able to give fic filtering and reader-judgement a nuance that no other platform has accomplished, and longfics and large ensemble fics still, I think, depend on that as both a courtesy and necessity. I saw the rough math someone did and know that almost all fics currently on AO3 are <25k or something like that, and sure, for the average oneshot, or for even a fic <100k, a tag limit that's very strict across all tag categories probably won't be felt at all. But it's clearly something that people who write certain types of fics, and take them very seriously, will feel. Like I genuinely don't want to have a million tags. I want to tag relevant content that allows potential readers to filter & include & exclude my fic as they so choose, but also, if it does show up in their search, I want to give them the information they want to be able to decide if they want to read my fic or not. I don't want to have to put all my content warnings into a giant summary, or into a giant author's note that grows and grows. The tags have been a very helpful way of accomplishing those. Being able to cut down on parallel/synned tags is great, but it still seems like longfics that deal with multiple fandom entries, large casts, and require content warnings will butt up against that limit very quickly.

tag limit discussions:

- long fic writers adding tags as they go

- writers of franchises with many installments and ensemble casts

- writers with extensive content warnings

- use of tags to clarify a filtered tag

- use of tags to demonstrate how content is handled

off the bat - stop being jerks

look, I know objectively fics don’t need to be tagged at all. I lived in the wild west, too, when “lemon” meant anything from the merest mention of arousal to an explicit vanilla sex scene to all out dead dove craziness. a large part of me still is of the opinion that readers should just read shit, and if they decide they don’t like it, just dip. but that’s not what we’re about here. tagging is a kindness that we voluntarily undertake, and it’s also a form of advertising.

tags are useful for their specificity, for filtering and exclusion purposes

(that’s one of the cruxes of the arguments both pro-shippers and antis make: you can filter things! But you can only filter things if they’re tagged.)

I also understand that a few asshole writers have ruined this for all of us by purposefully adding so many tags it slows down the site and makes pages fail to load and hides other fics because the tags take up 10 pages. i also am frustrated with kinkmemers who just have prompt fill fic dumping grounds that span multiple unrelated fandoms and are impossible to navigate.

...the answer is not to suggest to writers that we put all our content warnings and pairings and etc. in our summaries, or our A/Ns, or to insert a first chapter that is a placeholder summary/tags page/world state. tags are useful for their specificity, for filtering and exclusion purposes.

I also have been dealing with people being murderously angry, and super self-righteous and targeting and mean about my own tags, and tags in general. people who are anti-tag are being giant fucking dicks about it. like get over yourselves and let’s just talk about a website function lol. tags are useful for their specificity, for filtering and exclusion purposes.

THE ANSWER IS NOT TO GET RID OF TAGS.

Alright, so now that we’ve gotten that flippin’ straw argument aside.

The next thing anyone has been doing is going to my page and critiquing my tags. Let’s address redundant tags.

(the wrangler has done this nicely! no ridicule necessary!)

using my fic as an example:

If you tag your fic Female Lavellan/Solas (only), it will show up in the following searches: Inqusitor/Solas, Female Inquisitor/Solas, Lavellan/Solas, Female Lavellan/Solas.  If you tag your fic Inquisitor/Solas (only), it will show up only in the Inquisitor/Solas search and in none of the others.  If you tag with the most specific version, it will show up in the more general versions, but not the other way around. So there's no real reason to tag with the more general tags.

Though I will point out that if you don't use the canonical tag      and tag your character or relationship with a custom name it will      be synned to the nongendered version, because at some point the DA      wranglers decided that they didn't want to make gender      assumptions.  So "Annabelle Lavellan" will be synned to "Lavellan      (Dragon Age)" rather than "Female Lavellan (Dragon Age)", and      someone searching for works with specifically "Female Lavellan"      won't see it.

Response: In the fanfic writers server I'm in, we've talked about how tags work and are supposed to work extensively in the past.  There's just always been a lot of confusion, which I think has been added to when people go and try to double-check for themselves and find instances where this treeing/synning is broken. Someone put out this guide (also here) for AO3 meta text this year, which has been referred to by multiple people in the server, and it says:

What if you wrote a fic for something where there's a movie based on a book, but the movie's really different, and you've used both things that are only in the movie and things that are only in the book? In that case you either tag your fic as both the movie and the book, or see if the fandom has an “all media types” tag and use that instead of the separate tags. If the fandom doesn't have an “all media types” tag yet, you can make one! Just type it in.

“All media types” fandom tags are also useful for cases where there are lots of inter-related series, like Star Wars; there are several tellings of the story in different media but they're interchangeable or overlap significantly, like The Witcher; or the fandom has about a zillion different versions so it's very hard, even impossible, to say which ones your fic does and doesn't fit, like Batman. Use your best judgement as to whether you need to include a more specific fandom tag such as “Batman (Movies 1989-1997)” alongside the “all media types” fandom tag, but try to avoid including very many. The point of the “all media types” tag is to let you leave off the specific tags for every version.

Which I believe is in direct contradiction to guidance to use the most specific tags, so that's definitely one source of confusion. The most recent ao3 meta text guide (https://archiveofourown.org/wrangling_guidelines/2 I think this one) doesn't present itself in a way that makes this clear for writers tagging their own works. The way authors usually go about tagging things (and what's in the FAQ) is to start typing into one of the boxes and look for what populates the drop down, which doesn't lend itself to knowing that there are trees, or knowing what tags are interrelated (it seems like a whole grab bag of tags get suggested, some in-fandom and some outside of fandom, some canon/parent/meta and some children/random freeform, in just about any field you start typing in).

I'm not sure what can really be done about this. Many of us have turned to ao3-comment-of-the-day and their posts about using Tags, and various sources on google, and have clearly come up with a whole load of conflicting advice.

Fundamentally, finding parent/meta tags for a tag as you’re tagging a fic is NOT clear to writers. The fact that a nested and a meta tag can both be suggested one after the other when filling in tags largely contributes to redundant tags.

Writing for Multiple Fandom Entries

Here’s what a tag wrangler had to say about my fandoms:

As with the relationship tree, you can look at the fandom tree  here:      https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Dragon%20Age%20-%20All%20Media%20Types  and see how the fandom tags are related. Going back to your story Rogasha'ghi'lan as an example, it's tagged with Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: The Last Court.  But as I said, you only need to tag with the lowest relevant level(s) on the tree in order for your fic to show up under the higher levels.  So if you tag with      Dragon Age: Inquisition and Dragon Age: The Last Court, it will show up not just under those categories, but also under Dragon Age (Video Games) and Dragon Age - All Media Types.  And of course because you've tagged with the specific, if someone searches under, say, Dragon Age (Video Games), but doesn't want Inquisition or Last Court fic, they can use the exclude filter to show only the earlier games.

(So that's two more tags you can remove with no effect on searchability!)

In my (but not only my) own case, I am indeed writing for Origins, DA2, Inquisition, and Last Court extensively within the same fic, so I should be tagging for all of those, specifically, still. In order to make sure my fic is seen by the correct fans, I need multiple specific tags.

Longfic Tag Bloat (adding tags as you write a fic)

And like many other longfic writers, even if I narrow down my character tags only to those with dedicated character arcs longer than 5 chapters, I still have Loads & Loads of Characters (including Dalish from the Chargers!).

A lot of longfic writers I know add characters, relationships, and content warnings as they go along.

At 170 chapters/580k words, Dead Pasts had a ton of important relationships (for example, like Vivienne & Lavellan), and as a story it's nowhere near done. I found myself planning an arc from 171 onward that would introduce a very important relationship (Felassan & Lavellan). This is how longfics end up with so many, many, many character tags and relationship tags, which is another major criticism people seem to have about "people who abuse tags."

A solution that people propose online is "split your fic." Which is actually what I ended up doing...but the old relationships and fandoms from DPDF still apply to Rogasha'ghi'lan, so Rogasha'ghi'lan will have the same number and more tags than DPDF.

If I hadn't split the fic, I would have just kept adding tags to Dead Pasts...and still had the same problem of continually adding tags. They're not superfluous tags: someone who wants to see a plot that is deeply influenced by Vivienne & Lavellan will find that in my fic; someone who is looking to see a major Felassan & Lavellan friendship grow and drive plot will also find that in my fic.

My fic is long; there are other fics that are longer, or are going to be longer, with casts that are just as large or larger, with many relationships, and that's not even talking about content warnings.

Polycule / Relationship Tags

"Tagging a polycule like Iron Bull/Dorian/Lavellan requires four      tags: Bull/Dorian/Lavellan, Bull/Dorian, Bull/Lavellan,      Lavellan/Dorian"

This assumes that people who like Lavellan/Dorian will want to read Iron Bull/Dorian/Lavellan, which is often not the case.  If your story Is Iron Bull/Dorian/Lavellan, tag it that way!  It doesn't make any sense to me to tag with the pairs as well unless the story would be of interest to people who read for that pair, or unless that pair relationship is a big step in the story (like, if you have established Lavellan/Dorian, and then they bring in Bull, you might tag for both that pair and the trio). I mean, you can tag how you like, there's no requirement that tags correspond to content. But for me, personally, if I search on Dagna/Lace Harding (I am weak for dwarf women!) I do not want to get a Dagna/Lace Harding/Sera fic.

My personal tastes don't include poly fics, but several writers I know who write poly fics are adamant that: tons of readers will not know of the possibility of the poly fic until it shows up in a search result, and the individual relationships often are significant to the fics, especially in fics that are not oneshots. For example, a great number of "fav fics" are stumbled-across! We aren't interested in the Sera/Dagna/Lace polycule ourselves, but someone might not have considered it, found it, and said, "Hey! That's my new favorite." But if polycules are segregated and only searchable by the polycule itself, alas, what's the option for visibility at all if not tagging it as Lace/Dagna in addition?

Additional Tags

Knowing when something is a "character" and when something is "additional"

Knowing that "Warrior Lavellan" (or the [Name] Mahariel) would be more useful in an Additional Tag vs. a Character Tag is also something I'm not sure how we're supposed to know? Like, I'm glad to know it now, but it's definitely not at all obvious without you telling me why it would be more useful in Additional vs in Character. Especially when to me: Warrior Lavellan is a character, and the fact that it populated the Character tag for me says that it's a Character. Because like I said, the guidance has been: start typing, and if it appears in the drop down, use it. Or, for example, my friend has the Well of Sorrows personified as a Character. Like an actual character. Does that have to go under Additional Tags, or as a Character? How do I know?

Additional tags as tone/content indicators

A lot of writers / readers have approached the Additional Tags as a surface-level overview of understanding how an author is approaching many topics concerned in the fic. Like, Vivienne is a character in my fic, but specifically I am Vivienne-positive, which I feel is important to denote because she's important to my fic, and she's a divisive character. Mood/tone/theme indicators like "Pro-Vivienne" or "we are Vivienne-positive in this house" (or like Male-Female Friendship, or "Expansive Lore" vs "Lore - Freeform" which denote different things to me) in tags (which in the comments section on the ao3 blog post get derided as "chatty tags") are still important to me, though they're useless or far less likely to be used for filtering. (I had the thesis of the conflict of my fic: “empathy is the enemy of free will” “but hope is a choice” as “chatty tags,” among some that were more mundane but important: “sera shows up late in fic”)

More seriously, there are fics that have content warning tags for filtering purposes but also clarify those content warnings to give context to readers and allow them to make a decision whether or not the content actually fits their preferences, ie, one that specifies domestic abuse as a tag (which would be in the Additional Tags) for filtering purposes but also specifies "domestic abuse not present in x relationship" (which would also be in the Additional Tags, but is useless for filtering purposes, but is immensely helpful and demonstrably used by readers to decide if they're going to even bother reading the author's note of that fic).

People are also nervous that not being able to thoroughly tag content warnings is going to end up with unhappy readers amid all the purity culture flaming that's going on lately.

Like, personally I err on the side of "suck it up, reader, and just read and find out," for a lot of things (not talking about content warnings, but talking about mood/tone additional tags), but also, given that there is already a venue here to let readers know what they're in for...taking that away sucks.

I hate a giant fic summary as much as people hate 10 pages of tags, but at least one can hide tags in their preferences, and likewise the thought of starting a fic up front with a giant author's note that gets continually updated with content warnings also isn't super appealing. Leading with a giant author's note that lays out: this is my world state and this is my character's spec and this is my character's background so you know how I'm going to approach this and these are all of the content warnings for the fic as a whole, just feels like getting into "My Immortal" territory. There's definitely a balance to be had between the art of writing a summary, what to include in an author's note, and what to include in tags, but this still seems like it's going to be fairly limiting for writers in these large franchises, especially for longfics that span a lot of topics.

It feels like this decision is being very broadly based on a "for the majority" mindset, which has never been what AO3 is about, without actually physically looking at the kinds of fics it will affect. The tag system on AO3 has been able to give fic filtering and reader-judgement a nuance that no other platform has accomplished, and longfics and large ensemble fics still, I think, depend on that as both a courtesy and necessity. I saw the rough math someone did and know that almost all fics currently on AO3 are <25k or something like that, and sure, for the average oneshot, or for even a fic <100k, a tag limit that's very strict across all tag categories probably won't be felt at all. But it's clearly something that people who write certain types of fics, and take them very seriously, will feel.

Like I genuinely don't want to have a million tags. I want to tag relevant content that allows potential readers to filter & include & exclude my fic as they so choose, but also, if it does show up in their search, I want to give them the information they want to be able to decide if they want to read my fic or not. I don't want to have to put all my content warnings into a giant summary, or into a giant author's note that grows and grows. The tags have been a very helpful way of accomplishing those. Being able to cut down on parallel/synned tags is great, but it still seems like longfics that deal with multiple fandom entries, large casts, and require content warnings will butt up against that limit very quickly.

[dailydaydreamings]

Best in the Worst Way, Chapter 10

Okay, I might have taken out some inner rage on this one. It mentions some pretty heavy stuff, like trauma and violence. There’s a big argument about sexuality. This one flips back and forth between the night the reader sleeps with the boys (chapter 5) and their mission. I’m seriously gonna try to lighten things up, pinky swear. Please enjoy ;) —K

The Reader has been having a love affair with two Avengers and gets caught in a sticky situation. She’s suddenly faced with life decisions she’s not prepared for, including who to love, what she wants, and is this all worth it?

1 Year Ago

“What the hell happened last night,” you demanded, pacing back and forth in Steve’s room.

After waking up beside a very naked Steve and Bucky after last nights party, you sprung from bed, starling both boys awake. Bucky was now sitting on the lounge next to Steve bed, his head in his hands. Steve laid against his headboard looking perplexed.

“I’m pretty sure you asked us to have sex with you,” Bucky said, running his hand down his face. He looked like he had the world worst hangover. “I remember thinking, yeah that’s a great idea. But I don’t remember when it turned into a threesome.”

You frowned, “I thought you couldn’t get drunk.”

Steve shook his head, “We were drinking that stuff that Thor brings. I think we drank a lot of it.”

Bucky suddenly lurched forward, looking very green, “This is my first hangover since the 40s’, I might hurl. Don’t bring that stuff up again.”

You closed your eyes, they were useless. “Just to confirm, we had sex? I don’t remember anything after the gala.”

Steve nodded, “Yeah we definitely did...”

You groaned, “For shit’s sake, I’ve wanted to have sex with the two of you for a year and I can’t even remember it! Was it good?”

Bucky turned his head to look at you sideways, “First of all, how are you not hungover? You were pounding them back faster than us without enhancements. Second, YOU wanted to have sex with BOTH of US?”

You purged your lips, poor choice of words, but you would stand behind it. “I have excellent genes, first of all. To your second question, I really didn’t apcare which of you I had sex with last night, as long as it was one of you. I really wasn’t expecting sex with TWO of you!” And honestly, it was relieving to know you had had sex with both of them and you still didn’t have to choose.

Bucky nodded, almost like he respected what you were saying. Like he too had had a couple of nights waking up in a predicament like this. But now that you thought about it, for all of the male Avengers, there were only four you had never had to get their one nightstands to sign non-disclosure: Tony, Bruce, Scott, and Bucky. You’d even had to escort out one of Steve’s flings three months ago. You remembered a particular feeling of joy watching her sign the document, knowing she would never be returning.

But not Bucky, everyone else was having sex or had a reason not to be. There was no way he was a virgin, was there?

“You’re being awfully quiet,” Bucky interrupted your musing, directing his comment at Steve. “Nothing to say?”

Steve was looking both confused and pissed. Totally conflicted as to which emotion should take precedent. You watched his hands twisting in the sheets uncomfortably, “Its just that I’d never...you know...”

You and and Bucky exchanged a quick glance. “No,” you said. “We don’t?”

Steve rolled his eyes, and then whispered, “Never had sex with...” and then he coughed pointedly.

Frowning you asked, “More than one person at a time?”

Steve started to say something when Bucky stood, crossed his arms, and said, “No, he means he’s never had sex with a guy before.”

Steve’s sheepish look downward said enough.

Attempting to resolve some of the tension, you waved a hand, “It’s so not big deal, Steve. I’ve had sex with women. Sometimes it just happens, you know?”

Steve’s eyes snapped up to you, his jaw locking, “I’m not that guy. I’m not gay.”

“You weren’t exactly straight last night either,” Bucky snapped. You looked between the two of them, what happened last night. There was history here too, something you were missing.

You held up your hands defensively, “I never called you gay, Steve. I mean, there was still a woman involved last night, I’m assuming.” You looked at Bucky for clarity, he nodded. “I’m just saying, it’s okay. You don’t need to feel ashamed.”

Steve glared at the two of you, “Yeah, well, it’s never happening again.”

———

Bucky hated to admit it, but going on a mission with Steve was easy.

After the plane ride north, very far north, full of glares and silence, it was like slipping into a glove. No matter how angry they were with each other, they still worked well together. They had to when danger was involved. They were professional, afterall.

Even spare time in the safe house, at first it was cold and awkward, but the very first night, Bucky had a nightmare. He woke screaming to find Steve upstanding over him, shaking him gently. Before Bucky could say anything, Steve climbed into bed beside him, and wrapped an arm around Bucky, like how Bucky needed after a bad nightmare.

And so, things went back to how they used to be, slowly. Bucky made breakfast in the morning and Steve said, “Did you really love Bridgerton or was it just me?”

Bucky smirked, crisping up the bacon, and said, “We watched the whole season in one weekend.”

The thing about this mission, it was boring. There wasn’t a lot of action, just waiting in case it happened on the basis of a really good tip, apparently. Bucky was seriously beginning to think it was a load of crap.

So, during the days they did recon, and when they could, they hung out and caught up at the safe house. At first, it was like old times, pre-relationship. Your name didn’t come up once, they didn’t talk about the babies. Bucky terrified to bring it up and burst whatever bubble they had created.

Then, Bucky was making dinner one night, and Steve walked up behind him and kissed the back of his neck...one thing led to another and they found themselves wrapped in sheets, lazing a couple of hours later. Bucky had an arm over his head, watching the still ceiling fan and he muttered, “What the hell, Steve?”

Steve propped himself up on his elbow to observe Bucky, “What do you mean?”

Bucky glared at him, “You know what I mean. Y/n tells us she’s pregnant. You go awol. You ask her to leave me and get an abortion. You see the babies, you want back into our lives. You spend weeks wooing her and ignoring me. And now what?”

Steve sighed, “I just, I can’t see her being part of my life any more, Buck. She doesn’t want me. And I don’t want to lose you, you’re my best friend and I love you. And I want these babies, and I don’t know, I guess the last couple of days, playing house...I just got thinking, we could raise these kids, together.”

Bucky sat up in bed, quickly at that. Was Steve really asking what Bucky was thinking, for him to leave you and raise the twins without you?

“First of all, that’s never going to fucking happen,” Bucky snapped, reaching for his shirt on the floor. “I’d never leave her and you’d never play the part of the gay guy, I know you. You can’t be who you are.”

Steve rolled his eyes, “And you’d be okay playing the throuple game? You really think people would be okay with that? Captain America and the Winter Soldier in, what did y/n call it? The super secret super soldier threesome?”

Bucky shook his head, reaching for his pants now. “Captain America,” he mused. “How far you’ve come, huh? Rather by the gay guy than a throuple? Do you know how shitty that would make y/n feel? Or how that makes me feel? You only wanted her back so you two could be the good American couple and you could have the babies in peace. Am I right?”

Bucky stood and saw Steve lowering his eyes. “Un-fucking-believable.”

Steve’s eyes snapped up to meet Bucky’s. “The two of you were always preaching to me it was my journey with how I wanted to come out as bi. Or if I wanted to come out. Maybe I don’t want to. It’s not up to you to shame me for my choices.”

Bucky just shook his head, “I’m just disappointed you don’t love us enough to try.”

———

1 Year Ago

The compound had a Starbucks, it was honestly a godsend. You got coffee there most of the time and it was the best place to get someone talking. Which is why, when you got a text from Bucky asking you to talk, you suggested it.

“What did you want to talk about?” You broached, sipping at your chai tea latte.

Bucky looked down at his plain, black coffee. “You’re the only one who knows what happened with Steve...and I just figured you might be the person to talk about...sex with?” He looked up at that, an eyebrow quirked slightly.

Steve had been avoiding the two of you in the week since the gala. It was just awesome, you loved the silent treatment.

To Bucky, you answered, “I’m more than comfortable talking about sex.” And you were probably a little too comfortable, if you were being honest with yourself, but Bucky didn’t need your detailed kill list.

Bucky nodded, “I figured, no offence.” You shrugged it off. “It’s just, I wanted to have sex with you ever since I met you. Honestly, I wanted more than sex, but this is where we are. Sex is not an easy thing for me...ever since, you know..everything.”

You reached across the table and gently took his hand. He cleared his throat, pointedly looking around. “The thing is, I’ve been in love with Steve since we were kids.”

Oh, you thought. That wasn’t what you were expecting him to say at all. You were totally expecting some speak about being a virgin.

“Oh,” was all you managed to say aloud too, apparently. You kicked yourself internally for your awkwardness. “Okay...Bucky, I’m so sorry then.” You suddenly started to remember Steve’s reaction. He was pissed about having sex with another guy when he’d woken up beside them.

Bucky ducked his head, “I wasn’t expecting that kind of reaction from him. I hoped, that maybe, finally, he would...”

You placed a hand on your breaking heart, “He would feel the same,” you finished and Bucky nodded.

You looked down at your own drink, trying to think of the best thing to say. “I don’t know anything about being in love with another girl. I’m attracted to both but I’ve always loved men. I do know what it’s like to love someone so much it hurts, and to desperately want them to see you. I once kissed a guy I loved so much in front of everyone we knew, thinking it was some big romantic gesture, only to find out he had a girlfriend and I was the last to know.”

Bucky cracked a smile at that.

“Love sucks,” you concluded.

Bucky leaned back, running a hand through his hair. “I hate feeling like I’m losing my best friend.”

You nodded, “He’ll come around. Either to accept you as first friend again, or to see things from your point of view.”

Bucky fiddled with his fingers slightly as he said, “Steve’s always been the more proper one. He follows the rules. I think he can accept me, but I can’t see him ever loving me like I love him.”

You reached across the table, one more time to wrap both your hands around his, “How do you know if you don’t talk to him?”

———

“Fuck you, Bucky!” Steve shouted, following Bucky out of the bedroom. “I’m offering you everything you’ve ever wanted.”

Bucky stormed into the kitchen, he wasn’t quite sure where he was going, but it couldn’t involve Steve. He started searching for his cost as he snapped, “What I want has changed. I want her and you, this isn’t an either or situation.”

Steve slammed a hand into the counter, “You just want her because she’s having your baby. Admit it, if I’d offered you this before she got pregnant you would have jumped ship in a heartbeat.”

Bucky paused, sending a death glare at Steve. “What the fuck. I love her, Steve,” he said it almost calmly now. “Baby or not, I love her. She is the best part of my day, my biggest supporter, and takes my breath away every time I see her. I wouldn’t have jumped ship because the terms of our relationship involved three of us, not just you and me. She wasn’t my way to get to you, she as an independent part of this relationship.”

Steve’s face crumpled, as he leaned forward to press his face against the counter. “I don’t know how to do this, Buck. I thought I had everything when I went back to Peggy. I thought this life was over. I didn’t expect everything to just get harder.”

Bucky placed his hands in his hips. “Why do you make it so much harder than it has to be? My god, Steve, you were the skinny kid dying to go to war. You fought Hydra almost singlehandedly. You stood up to Tony Stark for me. And you’re afraid to let the world know you’re in a relationship with a man and a woman.” Steve flinched at those words. “Steve, babe, do you know how much joy you are keeping from yourself by being so afraid?”

Steve looked up, there were tears shinning in his eyes.

But Bucky wasn’t done, “You’re right Steve, this is your journey. If you don’t want to come out, that’s fine. You can be the cool uncle who hangs out all the time, or you can have shared custody and we’ll tell everyone I started sleeping with her later. But we could have a truly amazing life together, if you were just willing to give this thing a try.”

Steve clapped his hand together, a pained look on his face as he said, “Do you know what keeps me up at night, Buck? Any and every single story on the news about people getting beat to death for being gay or trans or different. It keeps me awake, I can see their faces. I can see their pain. Big old Captain America doesn’t have nightmares about Thanos or Ultron, but that. We as a species are so terrible to each other that we kill people because they choose to love.”

Bucky had tears running down his face. Steve’s jaw was clenched so tight he thought it might shatter. Bucky finally said quietly, “I didn’t know that, Steve.”

Steve reached up and aggressively wiped a tear away. “I just want to hide away and be happy together. I know we’re safe at the compound, I know we can defend ourselves. But what if some guy just decided to shoot you or y/n because you’re in some “abnormal” relationship?

Bucky reached for him then, “Babe, we can’t stop any of that from happening. But we can trust that we are well equipped to handle ourselves and take care of y/n and the babies. We can be okay. We can have a happy life, I promise.”

Steve let loose a long sigh and reached for Bucky. Their embrace was short lived, but for a second it was everything they needed. It said more than a thousand words could. It healed.

And then the explosion rocked the house.

———

After what could only be described as the world’s longest day of work, you hobbled towards your bedroom. You were so ready to get out of this stupid work dress and put on some sweats.

In your closet, you stripped down to nothing, and caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. At 18 weeks, with twin super soldiers babies, you looked huge. You remembered when your friends had started getting pregnant, they hadn’t been nearly as big, and you were only going to get bigger.

You flattened your hand against your stomach, bringing it to cradle your bump. “Hello, little ones,” you mused, “you’ll be here soon enough. I guess that means mommy needs to stop waiting for daddy to make up your nursery, huh?”

You looked yourself in the mirror, suddenly feeling rediculous. It wasn’t like you were really expecting an answer, were you? You were getting way too used to silence.

As you were pulling on your seats though, you felt a slight flutter. You paused. You’d felt some movement, but this was definitely a kick.

Shaking in disbelief, you hobbled towards your bed, sitting down on the white bedspread, spreading your hands on either side of your belly.

“Okay, guys, I know you can hear me. Give mommy another kick, please.”

Nothing.

You gave your stomach a poke, “Come on, guys. Just one little kick for your mommy.”

Then you felt a nice, sharp kick by your ribs. Letting go a sharp breath, you smiled, “Nice one. Oh my god, your daddy is going to be so upset he missed this.”

You laughed. Because your babies were kicking, and they were kicking hard. And suddenly your bedroom seemed so much bigger and lonelier. And it wasn’t just Bucky who was missing this, it was also Steve. Who had just as much a right to feel these babies kick.

You wrapped an arm around your middle, solemnly, “When your daddies get home,” you emphasized the plural, “you’re gonna kick up a storm for them, okay? No matter how mad mommy is.”

So you started your nightly routine, you made dinner and watched a show and read your book. You were washing your face when your phone rang. Tony’s name flashed across the top.

You answered it on speaker, “Hey, what’s up?” You reached for your serum and started rubbing it in.

“You’re gonna need to come into the compound, right now.” Tony said from the other end.

You raised an eyebrow. No fucking way. You were going to bed, you were dressed for bed. You had a rough day already, anything else could wait till morning.

“Tony, you have given me scrap about taking it easy and sleeping and nothing working rediculous hours. It is ten o’clock on a Wednesday. I am going to bed.”

“Y/n,” Tony’s voice softened and you paused. “I need you to come in right now.”

You picked up your phone, pressing the FaceTime button. Suddenly you were face to face with a sheepish looking Tony Stark. You took a second to observe his face before saying, “Which one of them is dead?”

Tony let out a long breath and your heart constricted.

No, no, no. This could not be happening. Not on such a good night.

Tony finally said, “They’re not dead. Either of them.”

Suddenly you were on the floor, on a sob bubbling in your throat. Oh, thank god. Nothing else matter, they weren’t dead.

“Y/n, they’re in bad shape though,” Tony’s voice now sounded very, very far away. You tried to focus in on what’s he was saying, but all you could think was, they’re not fucking dead. “Y/n, they’re hurt and being transferred here and they’re asking for you.”

Tags

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[hb-writes]

Ignored Advice

Summary: Part II of the Alphabetical Outcast Series. Sylvie (OC) is the eldest child of Hugo Bridgerton, a cousin raised alongside the infamous Bridgerton brood. Born in-between Daphne and Eloise, Sylvie has made it her mission to delay her season again and again. As her deadline to put a stop to her entering the marriage mart this year approaches, Benedict gives his cousin a little pep talk. 

Characters: Sylvie Bridgerton (OC) & Benedict Bridgerton

Bridgerton Appreciation Week Prompt: Do it, be bold.

Part I - The Firstborns - Sylvie Bridgerton & Anthony Bridgerton

Part II - Ignored Advice - Sylvie Bridgerton & Benedict Bridgerton

--

Benedict caught Sylvie’s approaching palm half a moment before it collided with his shoulder, her attempted slap and the groaning of his name an exaggerated response to his sudden presence in the garden she believed to be occupying all on her own, a rather silly assumption seeing as it was nearly impossible to singly inhabit a single space in Bridgerton House, not with ten children, if you could still refer to them that way, regularly milling about its halls and grounds. Even with several of them being married or having their own quarters, the house never seemed empty or quiet.

Suffice to say, Sylvie shouldn’t have been surprised that someone had come upon her in the middle of her endeavor to forge a dirt patch into the perfect lawn with her incessant pacing. 

“Don’t do that!” she shouted at Benedict’s playful grin, freeing her hand from his grip to swat at him again as her heartbeat slowed. “You’re always sneaking about.”

Despite being a large man and the tallest of the Bridgerton brothers, Benedict was quiet and he moved in ways that weren’t always noticed, blending in as the color green could do among certain shades of blue, or a pink among certain purples. Somewhere along the line, he had taken a certain liking to using his natural stealth to rile his siblings and cousins.

“I have just as much of a right to enjoy my mother’s lovely flowers as you have.” 

Some would argue that Benedict Bridgerton had more of a right to occupy the space, that as second in line to the title, it was nearly his garden, and the cousin whose thoughts he had interrupted had not a single claim on the flora, but Benedict had no interest in his claim. He’d happily settle for being second in line.

“What are you so worked up over this morning?” he asked when his comment received nothing but a return to pacing, the space over which she marched stunted by a few steps due to his presence. 

“Who says I’m worked up?”

Gregory and George and Hyacinth had told him so over his eggs, but Benedict had no plans to tell Sylvie that, and he had no need to seeing as she’d just swatted at him, supplying him with plenty of evidence to support his accusation. Benedict simply raised his eyebrows and gave her a gentle smile, something not quite as smug as a smirk gracing his lips. 

It took only a moment for Sylvie to give in, her shoulders heaving as she took a seat on the bench, hiding her face in her hands while Benedict moved to occupy the space beside her.

“I suppose I’m not so subtle.” 

Benedict snorted at that. Bridgertons weren’t very good with subtleties. They communicated more in grand gestures and loud declarations, even the passive aggressive moments were rambunctious and obvious in nature, with silent treatments emphasized by the blatant actions that accompanied them. 

“I shouted at the little ones over breakfast,” Sylvie offered. “They were being dreadfully vexatious. I couldn’t help myself.”

Benedict nodded. The kids towed a fine line between entertaining and exasperating. It had once been them getting chastised for their boisterous nature at the breakfast table, and some mornings it still was, but more often it was the youngest set with their endless source of energy primarily used for running about and arguing and shouting. He didn’t really fault her for a little outburst. 

“And my deadline is approaching,” she mumbled.

“Deadline?” 

Sylvie rolled her eyes.

“Now Ben, don’t pretend Anthony hasn’t already told you,” she answered, figuring that Anthony had pulled his brother into his office at the earliest opportunity after their last discussion. “I suppose he’s employed you to convince me to give this up and fall in line.”

Sylvie was surprised the whole lot of her elder cousins hadn’t descended upon her to bring her along to Anthony’s way of thinking. She had been expecting conversations with each of them, but the subject hadn’t been raised since she left Anthony’s office nearly two weeks before. 

Benedict leaned back as he set his ankle over his knee. “Well, I must admit you having your season would go a long way in helping my dear mother forget that she has a marriageable son.”

“But?” Sylvie prompted.

“But I understand your plight.” 

Society acted as if a woman’s life didn’t begin until one was married, until one was a wife and a mother, but to Sylvie marriage felt like an end, like the death of some part of her she hadn’t even gotten a proper grasp on yet, a part of her she felt certain was a part she rather liked. She wasn’t ready to let it go.

It didn’t make any difference to see that her married cousins were deeply in love, seemingly changed only for the better by the matches they’d made because Sylvie didn’t trust the odds of that sort of happiness for herself.

Of course, much of the married Ton kept up appearances, seemingly content in their hastily made matches, but Sylvie didn’t trust appearances either. 

Appearances showed a world of people happy, a world of people content with their station and society and their lot in life, but she knew well enough that most people weren’t happy. Most people didn’t receive a true love match. Most people didn’t have a life that showcased the things they truly loved. Most people had lives that showcased the things society expected, the majority of people more engrossed with impressions and opinions of society than anything else. 

The Ton smiled and danced and wed, but beneath all that was a layer of torment. 

Sylvie knew Benedict understood that, knew they had a bit of shared appreciation for that bit of truth because Sylvie knew of his art, had seen the remarkable portraits he’d done of each of them, and though Benedict hadn’t been able to take her complimentary words to heart, hadn’t been ready to really accept praise for his art, Sylvie knew they shared a certain understanding about the world.

Sylvie envied Benedict a bit for knowing what his passion was when she had neither knowledge nor the ability to act on such a thing, and furthermore, she begrudged her cousin just a bit for not acting on it, for keeping his talents and desires hidden, for keeping up the very appearances they knew were expected.

“So, you can speak with—” 

“Anthony? Oh, no. Definitely not,” Benedict said.

“But you—”

“I haven’t convinced Anthony of a single thing in my entire life. I can’t imagine I’ll have any luck where you haven’t.”

“You're his brother.”

“And you’re his favorite cousin.” 

“I believe George is everyone’s favorite.” 

“Well, George is a bit easier to manage, I suppose,” Benedict said, tilting his head back and forth as he considered it, his face scrunched a bit. “A more of a charming demean—”

The heel of Sylvie’s palm made contact with her cousin’s shoulder again, a barking laugh pouring from Benedict’s lips as he nudged her back. 

“You prove the point far more often than you’re aware.”  

“Yes, and that’s all the more reason for me to not enter society. I’m afraid I’m simply not ready, not well-behaved enough.” 

Benedict hummed. “Yes, Anthony did mention you were exploring that angle.”

“I’m not exploring any angles,” she answered. “It’s simply my natural charm, as you’ve just said.” 

“Maybe use some of that charm on my mother, then. Present your case? Prove your point? You know she’s the one who needs the convincing. If she agrees, Anthony has no choice.” 

Sylvie shook her head. “I’m not ready.” 

“To tell mother or to marry?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Both, I suppose.”

Benedict set a hand on her shoulder. “Do it at the weekend, then. Wait until she’s relaxed, away from everything reminding her of the impending season. Present your argument then. You may recall a rather wise Bridgerton once said ‘do it, be bold.’ I believe the same words apply here.” 

Sylvie snorted, unable to prevent herself from smiling at the memory of late summer nights passed on the swings with Benedict and Eloise, cigarettes passed between the three of them and a handful of secrets too. 

“If I recall, you ignored that wise Bridgerton’s perfectly splendid advice because you’re an absolute fool who refuses to see reason.”

Benedict’s eyebrows shot up, but an easy smile held on his face as he shook his head. 

“Ah, yes, and there we have your natural charm on display once again.”