#when you start questioning where the year went

[russellbee]

MEETCUTESNYC LESTAPPEN VER. (MV1, CL16)

charles leclerc x driver!childhood friend!reader x max verstappen (no team or gender specified) summary. you, max, and charles are approached by the meetcutesnyc instagram account, and this is how it goes. (1k) warnings. should be none!! andi's note!! obviously this is not the oscar fic i was working on but i keep seeing these reels on ig and i got inspired :) — if you don't know what i'm talking about the account is meetcutesnyc & they go up to couples and ask them how they met, etc.

nav+masterlist

meetcutesnyc Sports Rivals

["Excuse me." You, Max, and Charles all look up at the sound of his voice. Max has a blank look on his face, expecting a fan interaction, while you and Charles both look a little spooked. "Are you two a couple?" The person behind the camera gestures to you and Charles.

Max snorts, "All three of us, actually." You roll your eyes as Charles nods. "That's awesome. Would you guys mind telling me the story of how you all met?" Charles visibly lightens up, and he nods eagerly.

"I will tell the story."

The camera cuts, and now you're all standing along the edge of the sidewalk with Charles in the middle. "I met them both in karting when I was seven, but they met when they were younger. They hated each other, and at first, I played the mediator, for a while, actually. But then, Max really started to get on my nerves." Charles laughs a bit, his cheeks turning rosy. "So we," He gestures to you and him, "Became his number one hate group. He was our enemy." Max rolls his eyes at 'enemy' before interjecting.

"I was their enemy because I was better, of course." You and Charles both begin speaking over each other, arguing about your skills. Max just laughs as you both go on. Eventually, Charles calms down enough to continue. "Then, it was 20, uh, 2015. They come up to me and say that they went out on a date with Max-- him of all people! I was outraged. First, he got an F1 seat, then he got my crush, too? Oh, it was horrible. It destroyed me."

You shake your head, an amused smile on your face, "He's being dramatic, he literally asked me out the next day." Charles gasps. "I am telling the story, let me continue."

"So, I learn of this and then I go to Max and tell him about my feelings for them. Then Max just goes 'oh I like you too if you're cool with that'. I was shocked! Who wouldn't be? So, the next day I go up to them and I ask them if they want to go out on a date with me and Max. Obviously, they said yes. And now we are here, many years later."

"What's the secret to ten years together?" Max's face scrunches up in response and he turns toward the two of you. "Has it really been ten years?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Before they can start bickering, you answer the the original question. "We work together so it's really easy to see each other, but when we don't that's a little hard, obviously. But, I think our rivalry keeps things going, even during the off-season, we're arguing or joking about something that happened 13 years ago."

"Racing against each other definitely makes it very interesting. Adds some fun to everything, I think." Max teases, his eyebrows raised. "It's also just nice in the summer; we go on vacation and don't do anything. We just enjoy our time together," Charles adds.

"And what are your names?"

"Charles." "Max." "Y/n."

"Thank you." You wave toward the camera, and the video ends.]

view comments

user charles and y/n being the original max haters...yeah i could've guessed that lol

user the funniest part is they're like his biggest defenders now 😭😭 user the verstappen hater to max defender pipeline is in fact very real, no one can resist his charm ↳ user loser cat dad charm ↳ user user duh ofc user gax rivalry at the end of 2024...where he mentioned how y/n and charles would do anything to defend max...uh huh, yeah cool

user charles being so excited to tell their story 😖 he just knows everyone will eat it up

user and i did. i've watched this video 30 times now and it just keeps getting cuter

user "adds some fun to everything" oh yeah i'm sure it does max 😼

user never forget las vegas 2023...i have those pictures saved to a special pinterest board that i look at every day ↳ user and las vegas 2024...i can't wait for november, las vegas has become their number one race for being insanely hot in public user max always needs to add an innuendo if he's in an interview with either of them 💀

user i was today years old when i learned they've been dating for ten years...i thought this was a recent thing

user you and max apparently 😭 user it's been recent publically, but everyone kinda assumed they've been dating for a while just bc of the way they act

user playing the y/n champagne pour edit on my tv while i watch lestappen interviews on my phone

user #1 y/n edit, good choice user every time i see anything related to any of them, i'm opening my camera roll to watch the edits i've saved

user max looked so offended when the guy didn't realize all three of them were dating 💀 how obvious does he think their relationship is

user literally everyone knew before they announced it lmao ↳ user how do you think they look to an outsider tho? not everyone's an f1 fan ↳ user never forget ted kravitz interviewing y/n pre-silverstone 2022 where they jokingly said they were gonna crash into charles for 'leaking their relationship' and then having to do damage control later when they actually (accidentally) crashed ↳ user user watching those interviews seasons later actually had me crying 😭 literally no one would believe them

user watching this makes me wonder how the grid deals with third-wheeling them all the time, it must get tiring at a certain point

user they seem so fun to be around tho, they're always bickering 🥲 user please tell me you've seen those compilations on yt of clips of the grid being annoyed/rolling their eyes at them whenever they're around 🙏🙏 ↳ user OMG??? i'm about to run to youtube i need to see this

[rafeysvenicebitch]

Bunny⍣ ೋ

summary: Churchbunny!Reader starts writing to Criminal!Rafe through a prison pen pal program meant for the church’s older volunteers… but she chose him instead.

Criminal!Rafe x ChruchBunny!Reader

cw: fluff!!

You were never even supposed to be at that table. But you crossed that line.

It was set up at the chapel foyer after Sunday service, a small quiet program for the “overlooked and mischanced��. He named it letter of Mercy. A pen pal program for the incarcerated. Meant for the kind hearted women, motherly. Women with age softened hands and caring actions. No, not you.

But you’d been observing the table. Most people walked through the door, past the full table. You were about to walk to your car, then you stopped. You stopped behind the folding table like something called you. You ran your fingers along the stack of files before picking up one

Rafe Cameron.

Then a short summary: multiple counts of second-degree murder. Public indecency. Battery. Incarcerated for 20 years.

Somehow, to you that was the one. You snuck the folder with you.

The first letter was cautious, written in black ink on delicate stationary with pink flowers. You didn’t sign your full name but told him everything. How you woke up early to make cinnamon coffee and a breakfast sandwich for your dad, lay flowers on your mothers grave, drive the youth choir to competitions, and the clothes you thrifted and made to your taste. You told him how you felt unheard, missing, like you never connect to anything. And he wrote back.

He stayed himself, not changing. Told you what he did, how he did them. Names. Blood. You read them like it was the holy grail.

You’d never even kissed anyone, never even touched a man talk less of kiss. No never, not like that. You weren’t supposed to, you were meant to wait, wait for the right man. But he triggered something chemical in you. You wanted to learn more.

So you sent him a lock of your beautiful hair. Doused in Carolina Herrera perfume. Then a few weeks later, an old locket with your face in it.

You eventually went to see him, going through a centuries worth of documents. Your dress was modest. Pastel pink. Lace along the collar and white pumps. You had to get the permission to bring Rafe treats, just a few homemade cookies, and a small paperback Bible.

He smiled and inhaled around every single bite he took.

“Didn’t think you were real. Thought it was an investigation tactic from these assholes,” he muttered. “Thought God made you up to tease me.”

You blushed so hard you felt your ears burn. You covered you mouth with your hands bashfully, giggling.

Right after that very moment he started calling you Bunny. His Bunny.

“My Bunny,” he’d scrawl at the top of every letter with his surprisingly good handwriting, “tell me what you’re wearing today, and what kinda birds are outside your window..”

“What lipstick did your wear today?”

“Where do you go when you’re lonely?.”

You answered every question he asked with a million paragraphs, your heart swelling with adoration with each. You never stopped writing.

Each visit blurred your memory of what he’d done, all you could see was a broken man holding your soft hand with his calluses veined one, staring into your eyes with a daydreamy face. You told yourself that it was mission work. That you were softening a sinner.

You never asked him to stop calling you bunny.

Never. Not once.

Tagging Moots: @memoirofasparklemuff1n @rafesbabygirlx @ilovefiction4lmen @strawberries-and-lots-of-kisses @rafeyscumangel @rafeyscumangel-recs

[pazzi5351]

Can’t be friends.

Paige x Azzi

Word count: 1.2k

An: an anon asked for this and I started it yesterday then I had dance then the knicks were playing (they lost💔) and I’m just now finishing it k bye hope ya like! Also I added like no fluff and lowk leaving it on a cliffhanger cs idk what else to add🤧

————————————————————————————

Paige and Azzi had always been, different. Their parents noticed it when they first became friends. Their teammates noticed it when Azzi stepped on UConn’s campus for the first time, and Paige’s mood drastically changed.

The only people who didn’t seem to notice were Paige and Azzi themselves.

They went along with being “just best friends” though, the lines between that and something more had been crossed years before.

They went along with being “just best friends” until the glances between them lasted a beat too long. The hands on backs rested lower. And, the tension between them was so thick, people were starting to see it.

Especially their teammates.

“Ok Paige. What the hell is going on between you and Azzi.” Ice asked Paige, while watching the lobby screen of their fortnight game.

“Yeah,” Kk chimed in. “You guys are like, super, weirdly, close.”

“Bruuh. What are y’all even saying right now?” Paige asked, with an incredulous look on her face.

“We’re asking, friend to friend, if you and Azzi have something going on.” Ice said, matter of factly. “It’s totally chill if y’all do, I mean, we don’t care, we just wanna know.”

Paige slowly put her controller down, and turned to look at her friends. “There’s no way you’re seriously asking me that. Right? Me and Azzi are just friends. Why’s that so hard to believe? Sure, we’re close but, y’all are close too. It’s the same thing.”

Ice and Kk shared a look.

“No. It’s not the same honey. Not at all. I mean sure Ice and I are close but, you and Azzi, y’all are close.” Kk said, putting emphasis on the last word.

“Define ‘close’. Because since Azzi and I are just soo ‘close’, I’m sure you have examples of our ‘closeness’.” Paige said, rather defensively, for a reason she couldn’t name.

“Sure,” Ice nodded. “You open her water bottles, drive her car, when she very clearly has a license; you bring her snacks, text her asking if she ate or if she’s hungry, you bring her food without asking, you always, and I mean always, let her steal your clothes, but when I ask you say no, or you ‘don’t know where it is because last time you saw it Azzi had it.’ What else Kk? That’s all I got.”

“Oh I’ll go on,” Kk responded. “Paige, you literally have carried her out of the bar when she was ‘too tired’ to walk, I’ve watched you make snack bags for her, and for away games, you carry her bags and yours to the bus so she, and I quote from you, ‘doesn’t strain anything holding her bags because they’re heavy.’ There’s a lot more, but you look shocked right now, so I’ll let you sit with that.”

When Ice and Kk finished, Kk was right. Paige was shocked. She never realized how much she did for Azzi. All of it was just second nature to her, like taking care of Azzi was her birthright.

All she could say to her friends was “Oh.”

Ice raised an eyebrow. “That’s it? Just ‘oh’?”

Paige blinked, like she hadn’t even heard the question. “I didn’t—I mean, I just… I don’t know. That’s just how we are.”

Kk crossed her arms, gaze steady. “No, Paige. That’s how you are with her. There’s a difference.”

And maybe Paige should’ve argued, should’ve denied it again. But instead, she sat there, controller long forgotten in her lap, a cold dread settling in her stomach.

Because they were right.

She didn’t sleep that night. Her mind kept playing scenes back like a highlight reel: Azzi asleep on her shoulder during the flight to South Carolina. Azzi curled into her side on the hotel bed, scrolling on her phone while Paige absentmindedly braided her hair. Azzi in her hoodie. Azzi in her car. Azzi everywhere.

And the way her chest clenched whenever Azzi smiled at someone else like she used to only smile at her.

Paige rolled over, staring at the unread text.

Azzi💗: “u up?”

She didn’t reply.

For days after that, Paige pulled back. Not enough for Azzi to call her out, but enough that the gap started to form—small, but noticeable. She stopped waiting outside practice for Azzi. She made excuses to ride with someone else. She laughed at her jokes but didn’t meet her eyes.

And it was killing her.

Because nothing had changed—but everything had.

The final crack came on a Tuesday after team workouts. Everyone else had left. Paige was gathering her stuff when Azzi stepped in front of her, arms crossed, face unreadable.

“You mad at me?” she asked, quiet.

Paige blinked. “What? No. Why would I be mad?”

“You’ve been avoiding me, Paige,” Azzi said, voice firmer now. “You don’t even look at me.”

“I’ve just been tired.”

Azzi scoffed. “Don’t lie to me. You suck at it.”

Paige’s hands tightened around her hoodie. “I’m not avoiding you.”

Azzi’s gaze narrowed. “Then why do I feel like I did something wrong?”

Paige swallowed hard. “You didn’t.”

“Then what is it?” Azzi asked, voice low. “Because if you’re gonna push me away, your best friend, at least tell me why.”

Paige shook her head. “You don’t get it.”

“Make me get it,” Azzi said, scanning Paige’s face for any type of answer. “Because I can’t fix something you won’t tell me.”

Paige scoffed and shook her head. “That’s the thing, Az. You can’t fix it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s me,” Paige said, finally meeting her eyes. “It’s what I feel when I look at you. It’s what I do, for you, without thinking; like carrying your bags, buying your snacks, giving you every part of me like it’s nothing. And it’s not nothing. Not to me.”

Azzi’s lips parted, but she didn’t speak.

Paige’s voice cracked. “I don’t know when it stopped being just friends, but I know I didn’t even notice until it was too late. And now I feel it all the time. All the time, Azzi. And I didn’t want to say it because if I do, everything changes.”

Azzi took a slow step forward. “It doesn’t have to change, P.”

“I’m scared.”

“So am I.”

There was silence.

And then Paige, barely above a whisper, said, “I think I’m in love with you.”

Azzi didn’t move. She just stood there, slightly taken aback, breathing slowly, staring at Paige like she’d waited years to hear those words.

Then, finally, “Good. Because I’m in love with you too.”

They didn’t kiss that night, no. It was two girls, with a long history together, sitting on a bench, still sweaty from practice, hands shaking slightly as they reached for each other. It was quiet. Heavy. Real.

They didn’t tell anyone right away. Not because they were hiding, but because Paige wasn’t ready to say it out loud again.

When the team asked where they’d been—when they snuck away during a night out or vanished from the locker room after practice—Paige would shrug, let Azzi answer. She couldn’t bear the teasing, the jokes. Not yet.

It wasn’t until Ice caught them in the hallway—Azzi standing too close, Paige’s thumb brushing over her knuckles—that someone finally said it.

“You’re together, huh?”

Azzi nodded slowly. Paige froze. Azzi noticed.

Ice smiled, small and sure. “Took you long enough.”

And Paige’s chest loosened, just a little.

[moonlit-imagines]

warnings: blood and thunderbolts spoilers and guns

a/n: should i write hcs for being a thunderbolt and buckys ex

not requested

You chuckled as you saw this one. It’d been years since this place ever crossed your mind. Romania, 2016—the quaint apartment you and Bucky shared when you were both on the run. The place where you fell in love. “Oh, hell.” You rolled your eyes to cover up the fact that this could be yours. CIA broke into your home moments later and in the mayhem of the raid and Captain America coming to your aid, you were shot twice.

You laid on the floor clutching your wounds, fading in and out of consciousness. Lifting your hand for a moment you looked at the dark red blood drenching your hand. Two to the gut, you were going to die—at least, you thought. Bucky was running toward you, but as more bullets came flying he fled the scene. And it all started over again.

“Which one of you is this?” Ava asked, you and Bucky exchanged confused looks. “Well, what was the regret?”

“Leaving y/n to die.” Bucky answered as his past self, still recovering from his time as the Winter Soldier, so cowardly left you there on the floor with no guarantee of your safety.

“Trusting the Winter Soldier.” You revealed after his weakly heartfelt confession. “I could have died, yet I trusted my life in the hands of him.” Bucky rolled his eyes and the two of you began arguing.

“Are we really going to do this ten years later? You’re still alive, aren’t you?” Bucky started to raise his voice.

“I got put in the Raft, asshole! You swore you’d stay by my side and you left me to die and then you let me rot in prison!” You shouted back and the rest of the team stood aside.

“I thought these were traumatic, shameful memories, not ones that piss you and your ex off.” Ava asked, clearly confused.

“They’re definitely masking their grief with anger.” John added and Ava glared over at him. “My wife and I went to one couples counseling session. Didn’t really work out.”

“You might have everyone else fooled, but how much have you really changed?!” You continued spouting off angry comments at one another.

“You would know if you ever returned my calls!” Bucky argued back, which only set you off more. After continued shouting, both of you realized the escape to this room was where you hid your go-bags under the floorboards. A swift punch through the floor opened the next room up. “Before we move on, why didn’t you return my calls?” You sighed at Bucky’s question, something you yourself had been pondering a while.

“Because I was afraid to let you back in.”

taglist: @locke-writes // @captainshazamerica // @summersimmerus // @prettysbliss // @simp-legend // @wild-rose-35 // @nekoannie-chan // @beth-gallagher22 // @sk1bidi-n1k0-e4ts-people // @deanzboyfriend // @mr-mxyzptlk-1940 //

[messenger-of-babel]

Rattled

Summary: The cracks in your relationship all stem from that one night . (Nightwing x batsis!reader)

Word Count: 2.5K

Notes: Here's another one loveliess~! Warning for description of injuries if you're not cool with that, and then just some changing tenses for tiny pieces that I was too brain fried to fix up while editing. First of the sequels to come out (first fic linked below), so I hope you enjoy!

Part 1

RiRi~ xoxo

━━━━━━━━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

You and Dick had always had a sibling relationship that everyone joked was unbeatable.

You had always been the pair known for late nights and laughter, conversations that flowed for hours without a hitch. Everyone could see how the creases smoothed from Dick's forehead when his eyes settled on you, and when he'd playfully wack at the back of your head. He wasn't supposed to have favourites as the older brother, but everyone knew he that if there was a contender you would be up there no questions asked. You knew it too, in the way that you'd ask Dick for permission if Bruce had told you no or asking him first if you knew Bruce was going to deny you outright. Dick knew what you were doing, even if he sighed and shook his head when you asked. Yet he'd still just berate you lightly before giving you permission and instructions not to come crying to him if things went badly. The same man who'd blink owlishly at any other member of the family if they interrogated him on the soft spot he had for you, responding with a 'I'd do it for any of my siblings,' before walking off.

Partners in crime, and you were to be partners in justice.

Now as he sits in his room, eyes trained on the bland ceiling above him, he wished for you to come crying to him more than anything.

When you came back, you came back different.

Even you could feel that, and it wasn't just the throb in your leg or the persistent limp that told you. When you first woke up after the Black Mask incident, it had been in the back of the Batmobile. As you blinked languidly, staring at the roof of the car, your surroundings began to take shape. First had been the burn. The god-awful burn that started in your thigh and shoulder, and made you want to throw up from the intensity that it struck you. When you groaned you could hear worried voices, the sound of Dick yelling something at someone. You could feel the hum of the engine through the leather seats as it worked harder, and the vibrations rattled your skull until you felt the familiar black fog close over you.

The second time that you had woken up, you had been in your bed. The roof of the batmobile had been traded for the canopy of your four poster, and the hard leather traded in for the plush familiarity of your mattress. there was still the persistent stinging in your leg of course, but it had died down some. Pulling back the cotton sheets revealed a tightly wrapped bandage, just a dot of red peeking through. Your arm was stiff as you rolled it, pain squeaking through your joint at the action. The wrapping was the signature of Alfred, the tight yet even tension throughout the bandages speaking to his countless years of wrapping up child soldiers. You winced when you put pressure on your leg, a jolt running up the back of your thigh like a live wire. That wasn't enough to stop you however, merely making you grimace as you shuffled to the door, threading your arms through your fluffy, printed dressing gown.

Your bedroom door creaked open, letting spills of golden light into the darkness of your room. Faint chatter could be heard from down the hall, leading to the foyer. You looked both ways, trying to see who was around before stepping out and closing the door softly behind you. You had only made it about six paces down the left hall, headed for the library to where Jason often visited, before a voice called out to you.

"You should be resting."

Those words were enough to make your shoulders hunch, like a deer caught in headlights. When you turned back around you were met with the cold eyes of your father, jaw set tight, and arms crossed. He was imposing as ever, whether you saw him dressed for patrol that night or if he was simply Bruce Wayne like he was now. You just wrung your hands, looking down to your feet. You couldn't help but feel the scalding in his tone, the disappointment enough to make your eyes water. You didn’t really consider yourself to be a cry-baby, but the tiredness that clung to your brain like a fog, paired with the stare he normally gave your older siblings was enough to make you curl up inside.

You heard his footfalls, and it was like the world was shaking with each heavy step. Bruce crouched in front of you, sleeves rolled to his elbows which he rested on his knees. "Look at me." he commanded, voice a touch softer than it had been before. Reluctantly, you pulled your eyes up to meet his. His eyes were dark but not angry, searching yours silently before flicking around your face. A rough hand came up to the side of your face, reaching for your cheek. His hands were large and rough, but they tucked hair behind your ear so softly you almost didn’t realise he had.

Involuntarily your lip wobbled, closing your eyes as you felt the familiar sting. "I'm sorry." you forced out, throat feeling like sandpaper after waking up so recently. You only had realised how thirsty you were, now that you had used your voice. Bruce sighs and stands up, warms hands coming to rest on your shoulders before softly pulling you in. "It's okay, chickadee." he murmured lowly. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

The use of your childhood nickname made the hot tears beading your eyes finally sink into his shirt. You wrapped your arms around him as your brain flashed with pieces of what had happened last night, each one that zapped through your brain making your leg sting and pulse.

You wrangled your emotions under control, taking a deep breath. even breathing felt like a chore, having to push each breath past the built-up knot in your chest. You parted your lips, wanting to say something to the silent yet steady father before you, but the words caught on your tongue.

He had just come up the stairs, rounding the corner when you saw him. Dark hair damp from an earlier shower, it hung in strings in front of his face. He was in a pair of ragged pyjamas, feet tucked into battered grey slippers. He looked up from his phone, freezing as he catches your eye. The glare from the phone screen highlights the bags under his eyes, heaver and darker than usual. His face was a little more sunken in the cheeks, and a worry line seemed to have taken residence on his forehead.

Not able to stand the building pressure in the small distance between you both, you looked down and away. It was like your gaze was the only thing keeping him a voyeur to the moment between you and your father, and you could see his slippered feet shuffle for a moment, before eventually continuing down the hallway. The tired image of his face lingered in your mind long after Bruce had walked you back to bed and tucked you in, like a persistent itch on the inside of your eyelids.

When you slipped back into sleep, you dreamt of it.

You dreamt of being back in that shipping container, body thrumming with pain and warning signals firing in every corner of your brain. your teeth could feel the texture of the wooden spoon you bit, mouth dry and tongue aching from the texture. Pain boiled through your veins like acid, and the spoon clatters from your mouth. Your mouth is dry, but your cheeks feel as wet and you beg Dick to stop, and you can feel that your leg is sickeningly wet and warm.

While you're tossing lightly in your sleep, Dick is awake down the hall. He couldn't sleep, but not for the usual reasons. For reasons unknown to you, he was staring at the ceiling with his heart in his throat. If he took his eyes off it for too long it warped back into the shipping container roof, his vision blurring like they were covered in tears. He had to keep his eyes trained on the ceiling to make sure he didn’t accidentally slip back there, to prove to himself that he was in fact here in his room, and it wasn’t some trauma response imagining he was. His hand clenched and unclenched in the sheets, repeating to himself over and over that he was safe, you were safe. It was just a nightmare that never seemed to end, but he had gotten you back safely.

If his eyes closed for even a second too long, his ears rang with the sound of your sobbing and the pleading that came from your lips. With a sigh he wipes his face with his hand, blinking languidly as the air puffs out from his lungs. Who was he kidding. Safe? You were hardly safe. You had been bleeding all over your suit, all over that medical chair, all over his hands. That red was still staining the backseat of the Batmobile, and no matter how many times Jason told him he had cleaned it fully, he was convinced he could still see it there faintly.

He wasn't your hero.

Dick knew that much, and it hurt. He hadn't been the one who eventually saved you, that had been Tim. Who had come to him with a kit and the car, who had helped him pinch off the bleed, who had driven as fast as he could to get you back to Alfred and the med bay while all Dick could do was hold you in the back of the car. He was supposed to be unshakeable, your rock and foundation. He had advocated for you to be able to come out with them, promising Bruce, promising himself that he would sooner die than let anything happen to you.

What a lie that was.

Despite his best efforts, when he looked down to his bloodied lap, the sight he saw was not the debut vigilante. It was his little sister back when she was ten, in the gala dress Bruce had bought her. Hair slightly messy from running in the halls and roughhousing with Damian, knees skinned from tripping over near the garden well. It was the little sister that would fling herself into his room whenever she wanted or would come charging at him down the driveway when he came back from a trip to Bludhaven. The little girl who had posters of all of Gotham's vigilantes on her bedroom wall but had a few extra Nightwing ones tacked up on the inside of her wardrobe. That was the one he had failed.

With a crushing pain in his chest he swung himself upwards, tousling his hair with a shake of his head. Alfred should have given you another round of painkillers, which meant that more than likely you were going to be knocked out for a while. He shoved his feet into slippers, sighing as he turned the handle of his bedroom door. This was a bad idea, but he couldn’t stop himself. It's not like he was going to be sleeping much tonight anyways.

The lights of the hallways were dimmed but still bright enough to hurt his eyes, and he solemnly wondered if that was how Bruce felt constantly. Your door wasn’t too far away from his, yet he still hesitated outside. He steeled himself, taking a deep breath and checking to see if anyone was around before he grabbed the handle and pressed it down, your door swinging open silently.

The beeping of the monitors near your bed made his heart pang, and he looked over your sleeping figure. Your eyes were closed, lips parted softly as your chest rose and fell. The sheets were tucked up neatly under your arms, no doubt Alfred's work, while one arm rested in your lap and the other by your head. Your shoulder was padded thickly with gauze pads, strapped tight to your skin. He sat gently on the side, trying to not let his weight dip the bed too much. A hesitant hand brushes across your forehead so he can see your face clearer, a faint smile flickering across his lips. His eyes trail down to the blankets that covered the wound site on your leg, and his brain was filled with images. He wanted so badly to know what it looked like, if it was healing, how much gauze was needed to patch up his mistake.

"I'm sorry." he whispers into the air, gazing down at you. "I'm so so sorry, birdie."

His hands fiddle in his lap as he lets a sigh out. He moves one of his hands stiffly to yours in your lap, gently curling his hand around your fingers. When your digits twitch in your sleep and curl around his back, his eyes burn, and he holds the back of his other hand to his nose to stop a sniffle. "I'm so sorry." he whispers again, throat on fire. "I should have been there sooner. I should have caught you. I should have checked for an explosive, I should have kept my promise." he confesses quietly, the bleeding of his heart spilling past his lips. "I should have been a better brother, birdie. I wish I could take it back."

He swallows thickly, eyes flicking over your face constantly to check for signs of you waking. "I understand if you hate me. Why you don't speak or look at me, and I understand." he tries to smile weakly. "I understand. Bruce was so mad at me, but that's what I deserve. It was all my fault, it truly was." His voice aches as tears finally drip off his nose, a hiccup building in his chest. "But I'll try to make it up to you. I'll earn your trust again, if you'll let me. I promise you; nothing is ever going to happen again."

He wipes his face and stands up, aching as he slips his hand from yours. Your fingers twitch at the loss of the warm contact, and he would give the whole world if he could have the chance to interlace his fingers with yours. Yet he holds himself back, leaning over to give you a featherlight kiss on the forehead, like he used to do years ago when you came to him with nightmares. "I love you, birdie. Forever, I promise." he whispers, stroking your head once gently before he quietly stands up, trying to not jostle the bed. He pads quietly to the door, opening the handle a fraction so that light doesn’t spill into the room, giving him a big enough gap to just slip out. He closes the door, forehead pressing against the wood for a moment before he pushes off and heads back towards his own bed.

Away from the four walls that held you and the sun faded rectangle right above your bed, where a poster clearly used to hang.

[nerdyduckdragon]

DP x DC prompt (except I know a little to no lore either and have all my knowledge from other prompts)

Let's just say Danny left Amity Park (reason of your choosing) and went to Gotham (again reason for your choosing). At first he wanted to live a happy mostly carefree life (as carefree you can get in Gotham), but as rogue attack after rogue attack kept coming towards his way or even in his general direction he realized that holy crap Gotham needs a lot more cleaning up than just with the bats are doing.

So after a long while of not putting on a suit he finally puts back on the suit and goes from zero to hero? But of course he doesn't want to be stuck with the Big b so he mostly keeps his little underground help to himself, using his invisibility (?) and intangibility (?) to stay out of Publics eye but still help out.

That was until the Big b himself was badly injured (I don't know how joker maybe??) it was bad to the point where Danny needed to come and help him. And once b man had his eyes on him then he knew his life just got a whole lot harder. As he was treating Batman, Batmans paranoia started acting up.

Who was this meta? How long have they been in the city and why do they look so young? Those were the only questions circling Batman's head and once he was done being treated he opened his mouth to ask the boys and questions but Danny dipped out.

Batman quickly used the batwalkie talkies and asked Oracle to research a meta or hero that looked at Danny's description. They (?) did so and told Batman and the rest of the bat family who Danny was or at least who phantom was.

After all that came out the kids quickly made it bet on how long it would take to adopt danny or for one of them to start dating him. Sure you look like a young hero but he's been doing this for years and hadn't aged much so he was up for grabs whether it was adoption or dating.

Of course Danny went on extra hidden mode and was like no no no anytime they came close. It got to the point where they we're starting to question what the hell did they do to make him so avoidant of them. I mean they were vigilantes yeah but he was a vigilante too

Yeah that's all I got tune in next time when I do this again except with one more crossover :D

[thisapplepielife]

Written for the @corrodedcoffinfest May Mayhem Bingo event.

What Condition My Condition Was In

Prompt: Riches to Rags | Word Count: 2790 | Rating: T | CW: Traumatic Brain Injury, Alcoholism, Housing Insecurity | POV: Eddie | Relationship(s): Pre-Steddie, Background Ronance | Tags: Struggling After The Events of S4, Future Fic, Middle Aged, Finding Each Other, Hurt/Comfort

The fall happens faster than you'd ever imagine. Once the slide has started, it's nearly impossible to stop it. It just snowballs, and no matter how hard Eddie dug in his heels, down, down, down he went. 

Record deal, gone. 

Label, gone. 

Band, gone.

He eventually landed on his feet, but just barely. All that money they made, and he has nothing left to show for it. Not a goddamn dime. Forty-five years old, with jackshit to his name. Working two jobs just to make ends meet is the only thing preventing him from crawling back to Hawkins, tail between his legs. 

He picks up a little session work, his talent only heard as an anonymous guitar on albums that will go on to sell millions of copies. His name, nowhere attached. It's humbling, but at least he gets to play the guitar from time to time, and is even paid for it.

That's better than flipping burgers, or washing dishes. He's done both, hopping all around town, trying to earn enough money to cover rent and some rot gut whiskey.

Tonight, he steps out of the liquor store, bottle tucked under his arm, and drops his change into the box of the guy that often sleeps in the little alcove, tucked back and hidden.

Eddie has it bad, but others still have it worse. He's never not had a place to go every night. Not yet.

"Thanks," the guy says, and Eddie nods towards him. He's seen him dozens of times, but he's never really seen him, he realizes. Never really looked. Nor has he ever spoken.

Lots of nights he's asleep, or has his head tucked between his knees, hooded sweatshirt pulled over his head, tight. Hands over his ears. Like he's trying to block out the world. Eddie gets that desire, fully.

Tonight, he sees him. Hears him. 

And feels like he's in the vicinity of a ghost.

"Steve?" Eddie questions, even if he's sure he's not right. Certain that this isn't Steve Harrington. Just someone with a similar voice. His mind playing tricks on him. But the brown eyes that look up from under his hood to meet his are familiar, way too familiar. Eddie tilts his chin down, more sure this time, "Steve."

"Maybe," Steve says, and at that, Eddie crouches down in front of him. Sitting his brown paper bagged bottle down, taking Steve's face in his hands. He has a fading black eye, and quite the beard that scratches against Eddie's palms.

Steve looks away.

"It's me. It's Eddie, from home," Eddie says. "We had, uh, a spring break together."

That's a bit of an understatement. 

"Yeah, I'm not an idiot," Steve says, looking back at him, and Eddie laughs, delighted that maybe there's nothing irreparably broken in him. Maybe he's just down on his luck. Eddie knows how that goes, all too well.

They're all a little damaged after what they went through. How could they not be?

"Why are you in Chicago?" Eddie asks. Winter is fast approaching, and camping near the entrance to Joe's Liquor ain't gonna cut it. 

Steve just shakes his head. Eddie's immediately mad. Where's Robin? Where's Henderson? Why is he out here, all by himself?

"C'mon," Eddie says, making a decision that is no decision at all. Standing up, and offering Steve his hands, "Up we go."

If a deranged Steve Harrington decides to kill him while he sleeps tonight, so be it. Steve saved him once, so as far as Eddie sees it, his life is Steve's to do with what he wants, anyway. 

Steve lets himself get pulled to his feet, and then Eddie helps him gather up what little he has. It's not much. Steve pauses, "Where are we going?"

"My place," Eddie answers, "that okay?"

And he's relieved when Steve nods.

Eddie leads him into the bathroom, gives him a spare set of towels. They aren't fancy, but they're clean. He shows him the trick to get the right temperature of hot water, an elaborate song and dance, but Eddie's had to learn to perfect it to not get frozen or scalded.

He puts a new disposable razor on the sink, in case he wants it.

When he hears the shower curtain close, Eddie starts making a mental list of everybody's ass he's gonna chew out. Steve Harrington should have people, lots of people, and that he seemingly doesn't is infuriating. 

Eddie never fell through the cracks. Wayne wouldn't let him. Or Gareth. Jeff. Goodie. They didn't stay together as a band, but he could always crash on any of their couches if he needed to. He'd have a safe place to go, where he's loved.

Why isn't Steve on Robin's couch somewhere?

Steve's hands are shaking when he gets out of the shower, and Eddie slides the bottle across the coffee table. Apparently they both have dealt with the shit they've seen in similar ways. Steve just seems to have it worse right now. Eddie's functioning, but it doesn't seem like Steve is if he wound up like this. All alone. 

He looks better, all cleaned up, fresh from the shower. Clean shaven. Hair still wet, and too long. In Eddie's clothes. Fading yellow bruise under his right eye.

Eddie has a thousand questions, but he's too scared he'll run to ask them. So he stays quiet. And they drink the cheap whiskey together, passing the bottle back and forth, in silence.

Eddie makes up the couch for him, but isn't at all surprised when Steve slides in bed with Eddie in the middle of the night. 

There's no reason to comment on it, he remembers exactly how to do this from that first summer, after. They were close then, and Steve stayed planted in his bed for months while they both recovered. Listening to music, reading magazines. Talking about girls, cars and weed. Boy stuff. Surface level stuff. Nothing that was close to uncorking the bottles they'd shoved the goddamn horrors they experienced in the Upside Down into just to survive.

Tonight, Eddie holds out his arm, and Steve curls in close. 

"I'm fucked up," Steve says, and well, Eddie thinks, who ain't? 

"Well, me too. I ain't gonna judge."

Steve nods against Eddie's neck, and then falls asleep, and stays asleep for twelve hours. Eddie just lays there, even if his whole body hurts. He gets stiff. His hips, mainly. Too much damage from the bats.

But he's unwilling to wake him.

Mainly because he's scared he'll disappear as soon as he does. 

Steve stays, and Eddie takes him to work with him the next Monday. He's not sure Steve knows anything about tire repair, but Gus lets Eddie settle him into his own workstation and show him the ropes.

Eddie quickly notices that Steve flinches every time the air compressor fires up to power the impact wrench, his ear coming down towards his shoulder. Digging in the drawers of his assigned tool chest, Eddie finally comes up with a pair of soundproof earmuffs. They're big, and bulky, but Steve nods when Eddie holds them up, making the offer.

Eddie puts them over his ears, and Steve smiles as he adjusts them, then gives Eddie the thumbs up.

Turns out, Steve can change a tire, and fast. He's not as good with the patching jobs, so Eddie takes all those, and just gives Steve the straight swaps. It works well, and they sit a few feet apart, working during the days.

At night, still in their coveralls, they swing by Joe's and get two bottles and go back to Eddie's apartment, where they drink them on the couch. Watching mindless television. Steve enjoys ballgames, and it doesn't bother Eddie. The background noise of them. It reminds him of home, and Wayne.

Eddie still wants to ask: Where's Robin? Where's Nancy? Where's fucking Henderson?

He doesn't.

They drink, and they go to bed, and Eddie lays awake staring at the ceiling, not understanding how this happened. 

It doesn't take long for Eddie to realize that Steve gets migraines. So, Eddie finds a pair of blackout curtains at the thrift store down the block that are actually pretty fucking amazing. There's one little hole, but it's nothing a little duct tape can't fix. He hangs them up, and his whole room is cast in darkness, even as the sun shines brightly outside. 

Eddie gives him earplugs, a glass of water, and leaves him to rest.

Gus understands the days that Steve can't get out of bed and into work. Gus reminds Eddie of Wayne. No nonsense. But fair. And having your head splitting in two isn't nonsense, and therefore is excused without any commentary whatsoever.

It's a little lonelier without Steve in the garage, but Eddie works like he always does. Patching, changing, then rolling the next one in line inside.

After two days, Steve's back, and his workload and mood lightens.

Overall, Steve seems fine. He has more good days than bad, and that's always been Eddie's own personal benchmark for fine. He's funny, and just Steve. The same Steve that Eddie remembers from that spring break, and that summer that followed. Just older, and with a little more baggage. A little more damage.

But at the core of him, he's Steve Harrington.

And Steve Harrington shouldn't be crashing in Eddie Munson's dingy apartment.

In the end, Eddie can't let it go. He's running down to the corner pizza place, because they decided they needed to actually eat something tonight. They can't drink all their calories all the time. And a pizza sounded good, and cheap. Eddie likes cheap.

But, before he makes it to the pizza place, he makes a pit stop into the outdated phone booth. He hopes it still works. It did the last time he used it, but that's been a while.

Nancy Wheeler is the only one he could find a number for, and it has been burning a hole in his pocket. He presses the receiver to his ear, feeds it quarters, dials the number he hopes is good, and listens to it ring. 

"Wheeler," he says when she picks up, and he can hear her wheels turning, trying to figure out who the fuck this is on the other end. He puts her out of his misery, "It's Eddie Munson."

"Eddie!" she says, and she sounds delighted, honestly. She laughs in his ear, and he likes the sound, but also kind of hates her. She let Steve end up on the streets. Alone. All of them are on his fucking shit list right now.

"Hey. I'm trying to get a hold of Buckley, do you have a good number?" he asks.

The line goes quiet, too quiet. Fuck. Is she dead? Is that what's happened? That would make sense, would explain this—

"Have you found him? Jesus, Eddie. Please tell me you've found him," she pleads. 

Eddie didn't even know they were supposed to be looking for him. 

He scrubs his hand across his eyes, brushing away the tears that are suddenly there. They're looking. They're desperate. He knows they are, he can hear it in her voice, and he nods, pressing his face into the glass of the phone booth. There aren't many of them left, and this one has definitely seen better days.

"Eddie," she says again, dragging him out of his stupor.

"What happened?" he asks.

"Eddie," she says, this time a demand.

"I've got him," he admits, and he hears the second her resolve shatters. 

"You've got him," she whispers. Then she's screaming in his ear, a deafening sound, "Robin! Eddie's got him!"

"Where are you? We're coming!" Robin shouts in the distance, but clear as a bell.

Eddie takes a deep breath. They're not. Not if Steve doesn't want that. 

"Uh, let me ask him first. Okay?" Eddie says, and kind of regrets that he didn't do that first. He was just too curious, too mad. Too scared he'd flee.

Nancy's quiet on the other end, and he hears the scuffle, the quiet argument over who's gonna keep the phone, ending with Nancy saying it's okay, he's okay, Eddie's got him.

Eddie's got him.

"He just stopped checking in one day," Nancy says, as if that explains it all. "We couldn't find him after that. We've looked, Eddie, we've all looked everywhere."

He knows they have. Believes that, and can't believe he ever thought they weren't. He feels guilty.

"He has a job, and a place to stay," Eddie says, "He's okay. Don't worry."

Eddie is sure all they've done is worry. 

"Eddie, please," Robin says, muffled by the background noise, and Eddie hates to tell her no. He does. But he's not betraying Steve. He'll ease into it, feel him out. 

"I gotta go," he says, and hangs the phone up before they can argue. 

Eddie puts the pizza down on the coffee table, and Steve flips open the top of the box. He seems good, has seemed good for a while. As good as they can be, in the condition their conditions are in. He smiles to himself, he hasn't thought of that song in a long time. It makes him think of Wayne and his record collection. He needs to call home soon. Or visit, maybe. Depends on how this whole Steve thing goes.

He's scared Steve's gonna run, disappear. As a runner himself, Eddie's scared Steve will be one, too. He'll give chase, they all will. But he doesn't want to spook Steve. 

"Can I ask about Robin?" Eddie asks gently, pulling the band-aid off, and Steve turns and looks at him. Smiling wide. He hasn't looked that happy about anything since he turned up. It catches Eddie by surprise.

"She's good. She's with Nance. Did you know that?" Steve asks, and takes another big bite from his slice of pizza. Like he's unbothered. Does he not know he's missing?

"Uh, no. Good for them. That's real good. And Henderson?" he questions.

"Also good. Married. Two kids. Doing science-y things," Steve says. "Still a smart little shithead."

And now Eddie's confused.

"That's good. Do they know where you are?" Eddie asks, and Steve pauses, like he's thinking about it.

"Probably not. I haven't checked in with them in a while. I should probably do that."

Eddie wants to scream, 'You think?!'

But he doesn't.

"Jesus Christ, Steve," Eddie says instead, laughing as he tosses his slice back into the box. "I thought you ran away from them."

"What? No, I just — they're all settled. Happy. And I'm, well, this," he says, motioning towards himself. "Brain damaged, and a drunk."

No. He's perfect. He's always been perfect. Flawed, and human, but perfect, and so fucking loved by all of them. Does he not know that?

Eddie startles him, he knows he does, when he cups both of Steve's cheeks in his hands. Just like he did crouched on that sidewalk outside of Joe's. Just like Steve did to him, hovering over his bleeding, bat shredded body in the Upside Down. Promising that everything would be okay.

He was right. Everything will be okay.

Eddie looks in Steve's eyes, telling him the truth, "They're worried to death about you. I didn't know what kind of situation was happening here, but I called them. I called Nancy. They're so worried."

"Oh. Shit," Steve says. "Maybe I've been out of contact longer than I've realized."

Eddie is baffled. But mainly he's relieved. Steve's okay. He found him. What if he didn't find him?

What if he wanders off again?

He can't think about that. 

"C'mon," Eddie says, standing up, and shoving his feet into his shoes without untying the laces. Sweeping a handful of loose change into his palm from the table next to the front door. "Let's go call them."

He knows there's a long road ahead for him, for both of them, but this part is an easy fix. If Steve will stay with him, and fuck, Eddie hopes he'll stay, then maybe they can deal with some of their messed up shit together.

They walk down to the payphone, and Eddie really needs to figure out that whole cell phone thing. He will. For both of them. Get them back on the grid.

Eddie hands the receiver to Steve, feeds the slot quarters, and dials the number, then steps back. 

It must connect, because he can hear Steve say into the receiver, "Hey. It's me. I'm sorry. I guess I got a little sidetracked."

Eddie grips the edge of the phone booth door that's still ajar. Holding his breath. Waiting.

Then, Steve laughs.

And Eddie lets out a ragged breath. Smiling.

Everything will be okay.

And if you want to write your own, or see more entries in this pop-up, check out @corrodedcoffinfest to see other entries for the May Mayhem Bingo Event!

Notes: Title from Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) by The First Edition.

[theskywithin]

⋆☽ LORD OF THE YEAR ☾⋆

Your Yearly Ruling Planet, Explained

If the profection year is the landscape, then the ruling planet, the Lord of the Year, is the weather. It’s the mood that follows you into every room. The god at the gate. The tone beneath the tone. You don’t just live the themes of the house. You live inside the energy of its planetary ruler, whether it’s a flood, a fire, a slow rebuild, or a gentle return. This is the planet holding the pen. Writing the chapter. Setting the pace. Below is a breakdown of each planetary Lord of the Year. Not just what it governs, but what it feels like to live under its watch. The pressure it applies. The truth it demands. The version of you it came to awaken. Read the one that rules your current year. And maybe the ones you’re still carrying from the past. Because some lessons echo longer than the calendar.

☉ Sun Year

The year the mirror cracks and you decide whether to glue the pieces back, or let your real face through. This isn’t about confidence, but confrontation with yourself. With the costume you didn’t know you were wearing until it started to itch. In a Sun year, anything false becomes unbearable. You can’t keep pretending it fits, the job, the relationship, the name they gave you. Your identity becomes a living question, one that doesn’t care if it makes anyone else uncomfortable. You might feel exposed. That’s part of it. The Sun isn’t interested in your image. It wants your essence, the version of you that’s not curated for belonging. So this year asks: Can you live in the light of your own becoming, even if no one claps? Can you let yourself be witnessed even in the moments where your voice shakes? It’s not ego, it’s emergence. And it burns.

☽ Moon Year

The year your body remembers before your mind can explain. Nothing feels solid, and nothing stays still. You reach for routine and find water. You speak and surprise yourself with what falls out. The Moon doesn’t move in straight lines, she pulls from beneath, memory lodged in muscle, grief woven into your tone of voice. This year, everything personal becomes primary. You feel everything. And you can’t logic your way out of it. Your nervous system becomes the map, your triggers, the language. You may want to retreat, not to disappear, but to find where your own heartbeat went missing beneath all that caretaking, all that smiling, all that holding it together. This is the year you stop asking if you’re too sensitive. You are and that’s where your wisdom lives. This isn’t about feelings, it’s about truth. The kind that rises when you stop translating your ache into something more acceptable. The Moon gives no answers, only cycles, only tides, only the slow grace of letting yourself come undone and still belong.

☿ Mercury Year

The year your mind rebels and your voice remembers who it was before it learned to be polite. At first, it might feel like noise. So many thoughts, so many questions, so many selves inside your sentences. But Mercury isn’t chaos, Mercury is disruption. The intelligent kind, the sacred kind, the kind that shows you exactly where your story stopped being yours. This is the year your internal narrator starts getting louder than the one who raised you. You’ll notice how many of your words were chosen to make others comfortable. How many of your silences were strategy. How often you told the truth only when it was safe. Now? Now the truth wants out, raw, unfiltered, maybe even ugly. And with it: curiosity. You’ll start investigating your habits, your reflexes, your contradictions. Not to fix them but to understand where they came from, and who they once protected. You may write. You may speak. You may leave conversations that no longer echo your evolution. This year is about being honest. Let your words tremble. Let your thoughts get messy. Clarity will come, not when you decide what you believe, but when you stop being afraid to find out.

♂ Mars Year

The year your instincts kick the door down and you stop pretending you don’t already know what you want. This is not a subtle year. This is blood-in-the-mouth, heat-under-the-ribcage, say-it-before-you-swallow-it kind of living. You’re no longer content to sit still in rooms that drain you. You feel it in your teeth. The urgency. The pulse. The question: What are you still holding back for? Mars doesn’t give you a plan, he gives you friction, he gives you the moment before the leap and then dares you to jump anyway. This is the year you meet your anger and realize it’s never been about rage, it’s been about refusal to be erased, to keep loving at a discount, to contort yourself into something palatable just to avoid being called difficult. You might cut ties. You might fight back. You might walk away from something you thought you'd never survive without, and feel more alive than you ever did inside it. This isn’t recklessness, this is sacred combustion, this is agency rediscovered in the wreckage of who you had to be to stay safe. And after all that? Peace. But the kind that’s earned, not performed.

♀ Venus Year

The year sweetness becomes subversive and you realize softness was never your weakness, it was your birthright. You were taught that love is something to earn. That beauty is what makes you worthy of being kept. That pleasure must be justified, made productive, shared, tamed. But Venus remembers something older. This is the year you stop performing want and start embodying it. The year you notice where your yeses came from, fear, politeness, hunger, and you take them back, one by one. Venus will not beg, she’ll wait. She’ll withhold nothing except from what insults her. This is the year you feel the grief of how long you’ve settled. How many times you accepted almost, how often you mistook being needed for being loved. And it hurts. But underneath that hurt is a different language, one where softness has claws. Where longing has boundaries, where beauty is not about being seen but about seeing yourself and staying. This year, desire becomes holy. And you stop apologizing for the altar.

♃ Jupiter Year

The year you grow too wide for your old name and the horizon starts calling you by something else. At first, it feels like restlessness. A quiet rebellion against what used to feel “fine.” The shoes still fit, but they don’t feel like yours, the conversations bore you, the spaces shrink, nd the soul, so long contained, starts to rise like steam through the cracks. Jupiter doesn’t expand you gently. It stretches you to the point of rupture, not to break you, but to show you what’s been waiting on the other side of your comfort. This is the year you want meaning, more resonance, more sky. You begin to question the systems that shaped you. The beliefs that felt safe because they were inherited. The truths that kept you small but praised. You may travel, physically, spiritually, internally. But what you’re really seeking is a wider story. One that fits who you’re becoming. And yes, there are risks. Jupiter can swell what isn’t rooted, it can tempt you toward excess, escape, distraction. But the deeper invitation is simple: follow what expands you even if it terrifies you, even if it leaves people behind. You are not a static thing. You are a myth still being written and this year, you start telling it differently.

♄ Saturn Year

The year you run out of scaffolding and realize the shape you were chasing was never yours. This is not the year you get what you want. It’s the year you find out why you wanted it in the first place. And whether that hunger was yours, or inherited. Whether that discipline was devotion, or fear in a pressed shirt. Saturn doesn’t strip you down to punish. It strips you down because it’s time to stop carrying blueprints you never drew. The life you thought you were building? Whose foundation was that? Whose voice told you that sacrifice was sacred, that being seen required earning it, that love was measurable by how much you endured? This year, time stretches like a long hallway, no doors, no applause. Just the echo of your own footsteps, and the quiet sense that something is about to begin, but only if you can first stop pretending it’s already built. Saturn isn’t about becoming stronger, it’s about becoming cleaner. And that’s a much lonelier, more exacting kind of becoming.

♅ Uranus Year

The year the ground splits and instead of running, you realize you’ve been trying to leave your own life quietly for years. Uranus doesn’t knock. He strikes, sudden, unscheduled, and uninterested in your plans. This is not a breakdown, it’s a jailbreak. And somewhere, if you’re honest, you’ve been praying for it. This is the year the script you’ve been following, the one written in fear, family patterns, job titles, politeness, catches fire and you don’t save it. You watch it burn with something that feels dangerously close to relief. It might start with disruption: a departure, a confrontation, a wild decision you can’t explain. But underneath it is a deeper frequency, the sound of your own self-respect coming back online. Uranus doesn’t ask: Are you ready? He asks: What will you do when nothing is holding you anymore but truth? And that truth is this: you outgrew the cage long ago. This year, your soul stops pretending it's okay inside it. Expect rupture. Expect awakening. Expect to shock yourself. And trust it.

♆ Neptune Year

The year the edges blur and the shape of your life begins to soften into something less explainable, but more true. At first, it feels like losing focus, like forgetting what you came here to prove. The ambitions fade, the goals get slippery, the truth stops speaking in sentences and starts arriving in symbols, songs, and sleep. This is not confusion, but the absence of pretending. Neptune doesn’t take your direction away, it takes away the illusion that you ever needed to control the direction to be safe. This year, what you once called clarity starts to feel like confinement and what you once dismissed as fantasy starts whispering to you with ancient familiarity. You may grieve the old structure, you may feel foolish, you may weep for reasons you can’t name and love people you can’t explain. Let it happen. You’re meant to be porous. Neptune wants surrender, the kind where you finally stop explaining your intuition and just follow it. The kind where you stop labeling every ache and let it move through like weather. The kind where you stop clinging to shape and become the ocean.

♇ Pluto Year

The year something ancient wakes up in you and demands you name what you’ve been calling “coping” but has always been grief. Pluto doesn’t knock, or whisper, or wait, he drags you under to strip you of the roles, identities, obsessions, and quiet addictions that helped you survive but now keep you from living. This is the year your mask starts to rot. The charm wears off, the coping breaks, the people-pleasing fractures. You’re left with the raw, unwelcome thing you’ve been carrying: the unmet hunger, the rage beneath the smile, the control disguised as care. And it hurts. Not because you’re falling apart but because you’re falling in. Into yourself, into the power you handed away too many times, into the shadow you’ve tried to outgrow by becoming “better” instead of becoming whole. This isn’t reinvention, it’s exposure. This is the year you realize that the death you feared was actually a doorway. And the monster you kept locked underground was never trying to destroy you, it was trying to return you to the part of you that was never afraid of the dark, only afraid you’d have to walk through it alone. But you won’t. Because what dies this year doesn’t disappear, it becomes you.

Your birth chart isn’t a personality test. It’s a map of memory, instinct, and becoming. My book walks you through it, house by house, sign by sign, with soul, depth, and no shortcuts.

available on Amazon and all digital platforms

[hitlikehammers]

🧋That One Time It Went Soulmate v. Soulmate, Double-or-Nothing Between 🍦Robin and Eddie🎸, Because No One Could Deserve Robin’s Plantonic Soulmate EVER, but Eddie Can (and WILL) Count The Ways That He’ll Fucking ✨TRY✨

☕️OR: 5/5 times Steve/Eddie talk to anyone but each other about their feelings (for each other), +1 (other time they turn around and talk to one another)

Robin’s staring openly at him after he places their order with an extra shake to go—to take home with him for when Steve gets off work.

“You sure that’s what he wants?”

Eddie turns to her slowly.

“He’s my favorite person in the world,” Eddie says simply; “I know what his favorite flavor is.”

In fairness: it does change. He has a baseline that’s good always but, this time of year, the chill in the air? After a shift, especially one without Robin? Here, from this diner, with its stupidly weird-ass menu?

Caramel Waffle. No question.

“Hmm,” Robin hums around her straw as they go to take a seat—he’ll grab Steve’s when they’re done so it’s not melted to fuck before he can get it in a freezer.

“So,” she pops her lips together as he slides in across from her—he was waiting for this tone. She’d been cagey all afternoon. They hang out enough on their own for him to have clocked it when he picked her up: she had a mission. An agenda.

Eddie was pretty sure from the jump that both of those things were just…him.

He just wasn’t sure yet about the why.

“I want you to know that it is not out of a lesser opinion of you, or our friendship, that I am asking you this,” she starts, almost businesslike but he also sees how earnestly she means it; “and honestly I am cautiously optimistic on all fronts, but,” she bites her lip before straightening up a bit and tilting her chin, full-on resolute.

“He’s too important,” she says it, uncompromising. “And cautious optimism is not sufficient.” She nods to herself, takes what looks like a fortifying drink of her milkshake and then forges into…something not wholly unlike battle:

“What are your intentions toward my Platonic Soulmate?”

Eddie’d figured it was Steve; the mission. The agenda.

Even when they hang out on their own, Steve’s too big a part of both of them for him to ever be absent. Not for real.

But, this particular mission? Like…

“We exchanged rings, Birdie,” Eddie says, kinda at a loss; “you were there.”

She was the witness-they-didn’t-technically-need and the best-woman-that-counted-for-everything when they very-not-legally threw a barbecue to pledge for always out loud with the people they loved, when as many of those people as possible could gather and see it and know it—make it feel a fraction as big as it is in Eddie’s chest, for some slice of the world to know it explicitly, out loud.

And see it.

Robin purses her lips and stares him down, unimpressed.

“You know what I mean.”

And…yeah. If he thinks on it, he…probably does.

He doesn’t agree that it’s necessary by any means but: he can agree that Steve is too important for anything to be left to assumptions; to just ‘cautious’ anything.

Steve deserves only whole-hearts. All-in. Absolute certainty for always, when it comes to loving. To keeping and cherishing.

To having and holding.

So what she means is more than the rings. Goes beyond the so-called honeymoon period everyone’s got a comment about, which Eddie refuses to call as such, or acknowledge as anything like that at all, because like…okay, look.

His heart feels easy in his chest, now, in a way it never had before Steve. It felt that way on the worst days of PT, through the worst of the pain. It felt that way sometimes even that first time trudging through hell, without even knowing the man. Eddie hadn’t even realized his heart was all sludged up and calcified until he looked at Steve and it shivered so hard that all of that gunk sloughed off and he was made brand new.

That’s not a honeymoon period. That’s the start of the rest of his whole fucking life, where a certain vibrant level of joy is the baseline. Is their rule.

But, for someone outside Eddie’s chest: he understands. Robin means past that thing she thinks she’s seeing. She means…past Hawkins. Past the Upside Down and all the heartache. Past…forever.

What are his…

“I don’t think I believed people had souls, in like, the sense that people say it?” Eddie starts, because Robin of all people deserves the fullest truth he can offer.

Also—and fuck if he ever admits it out loud—but it’s also because if she’s gonna question his heart, in this, no matter how entitled she is to make sure?

She can damn well be subjected to the full extent of his capacity to wax poetic upon just how overwhelmingly, impossibly, marrow-deep in love he is.

“Definitely not the churchy sense,” he clarifies with a wave of the hand; “I thought they were abstract, just a word for an idea, y’know?”

She knows—she’s told him that she felt something of the same.

Before Steve.

“But he made me believe in them,” Eddie says, and fuck you, maybe his voice is already a little shaky, but he wants her to know how honest he is, how committed he is, how deep his runs—just like how she learned what it was to be Steve’s soulmate, too.

“Because it’s the very real thing that makes me feel alive like I never knew I could feel,” and his left hand reaches up a little awkward to his chest to feel what it is to be alive that big with his own palm, and the sensation of it against the ring on his previously so-long-empty finger there, now the safe-keeper of Steve’s Grandad’s ring, the one he paid some fancy jeweller with his own paycheck—we will use my family’s money, together, he’d told Eddie later, days into what actually was their literal honeymoon; this is from me, like, from my heart to yours and if Eddie’d cried a little about it, naked between rounds in their hotel bed, and if he’d kissed Steve senseless about it a lot at the same time? Damn right he should have—but pressing his hand to his chest with the now-familiar weight and warmth of that ring?

Fuck, but does he feel alive. And as far as his soul goes?

“He is where mine lives.”

It’s Steve. It’s all Steve.

“Or how mine lives. How it came to be,” Eddie still hasn’t puzzled it out entirely, the specifics; isn’t sure if he ever will. “Or both.”

Not that it matters, really. It might be the only puzzle in his whole fucking life that his brain’s willing to let lie not-wholly solved, because again: whatever the details could possibly be, they’d just lead back to a piece or part of a single entity.

The singular love of his life.

“I will kill you if you hurt him,” Robin jolts him back into the now, where he thinks maybe more silence has gathered than he thought, between the last words he did say and now.

She looks at him…not mean, not like daggers: more just really honest. Wide-eyed and more serious than he’s ever watched her be, even when they were almost certainly walking toward their own deaths in battle.

“Please do,” Eddie answers her, automatic. That is, like, not a hard thing to figure out a response to.

“Like, they’ll never find the body,” Robin leans forward over the table, almost knocks her milkshake over and frowns as she slides it aside further out of her way and takes her position again: “I’m serious.”

“Me too,” Eddie says simply before taking a long suck of his milkshake. “If I hurt him, the way you’re talking?” He spreads his arms and gestures wide to himself, all his most vulnerable parts on display because, like:

“Do me the favor. Please.”

He hopes it’d still be easy, splayed with all his squishy vital parts to hit, just bone in the way; hopes all the scar tissue wouldn’t make the job too difficult.

“Why?” Robin asks, a little…not sharp exactly.

Pointed.

But Eddie doesn’t understand why the question of whyeven needs to be asked, especially from her. It’s fucking obvious.

“If I hurt him?” Eddie shrugs, takes a sip again of his shake to keep his throat from getting too thick with any emotions at…entertaining an impossible thing.

“If I did that, I wouldn’t deserve him anymore, even if I didn’t automatically drive him away by default, for the hurting. I’d lose him either way,” and the shake doesn’t even taste right for how wrong those words feel, the bile underneath them, but it’s still mostly making the horrible words…easier.

Given the topic.

Because Eddie doesn’t care really for himself like that—though Steve, outside this unnerving and frankly fucking stomach-churning hypothetical and instead in the blissful beautiful now: Steve would get all frowny at him and scold him like one of his no-longer-little-nuggets for making idiotic choices or saying dumbass things—but Steve isn’t here.

And Eddie means this shit.

“I don’t really know if I’d even want to,” he swallows hard, thankful for the cold of the shake to keep his wits somewhat together; keep him on task to the fucking point: “to be a person, without a soul,” he leans back in the seat and crosses his arms over the squishy bits of him now, because in the now he hasn’t done anything to jeopardize the best thing that’s every fucking happened to him; that ever will.

“Not now that I know what it’s like to live with one, like this.”

And Eddie feels his lips curving at…well. Basically it’s kind of unavoidable, trying to keep a smile off his face when he thinks on Steve:

“Like this. With him.”

Robin matches him, leaning back and crossing her arms, eyeing him oddly.

“It’s not healthy to base your life around whether another person’s in it.”

“Says the platonic soulmate,” Eddie literally snorts, glad he’s not drinking for it—ice cream up the nose fucking sucks; “sounds like those codependency talks your parents were sneaking in took root somewhere, if you’re spouting them back at me.”

Eddie may not have been present for the months post-Starcourt where the Buckleys had struggled with whether Steve was a suitor or a playboy, for how often he and their daughter dogged each other’s steps, but he’s heard the stories. He knows it took them a while to…if not entirely understand it, at least to accept it.

Steve’s been known to watch the game with her dad when Wayne’s not home. Steve plies her mom with baked goods that she used to signal her acceptance of him, her welcome even, after breaking down to ask for recipes.

He gave them to her, or most of them, but won her fully over by promising he’d never be so far away not to make them for her himself.

“I never said I believed it,” Robin grouses, a little defensive; “let alone agreed with it. It was just a statement.”

Eddie expected as much. But he’s not above wanting to poke holes in her flimsy-ass attempt to set him off-balance. To…test him, however she’s trying to.

“But that’s not what I meant.”

He knew that, too. But he’s not absolutely sure what she meant instead.

Despite his myriad suspicions. He does have a formidable knack for imagining potential scenarios.

“I would have answered the same way, so,” Robin huffs; “I didn’t need that ‘why’.”

Eddie bites back a little smirk at her streak of indignation—not the time.

He’s actually getting better at that. Appropriate timing. It helps, appreciating what it means to have so many people he loves.

And then, one person who defines all that love is, all on his own. Every breath he breathes.

“I meant,” Robin finally leans in again, pins him with her stare, with meaning; “why do you love him?”

He doesn’t…expect that. Not from Robin.

But her tone doesn’t question it. Doesn’t question her dearest friend, her closest confidant, her Captial-P soulmate.

She’s…not testing him. But she is weighing him.

And somehow that’s very different.

“Why?” he still can’t help but huff a laugh. “How does anyone not?”

She squares her shoulders, but as formidable as she makes herself, as formidable as she is, her eyes are all heartbreak. But the protective kind.

“A lot of people are stupid,” she spits; “have been so goddamn stupid.”

Eddie knows she doesn’t mean him. It’s not directed his way. He agrees with her, and appreciates that if the time ever comes, he has the best second in command at his side to stand guard for the heart he loves more than his own.

He gets what she means, why she’s asking—why any of this is happening, today.

She’s seen more than him, but not even half, betweenthem, of the people so stupid, so reckless as to trample his beautiful husband’s heart.

Their soulmate’s heart.

And now that he gets it, he has so many ways to ease whatever fears she has, concerns that aren’t about him, but linger because she cares that much.

He can easily give her what she’s looking for.

“I love his smile,” Eddie says with his own, because it’s not about the way it looks, so much as the lights that glow through in him for it. “I love when he hugs me,” he’s so good at it, it makes a man feel safe as much as cherished, protected with strength and cradled with care. He feels Steve’s heartbeat against his sometimes like that, held close enough, pressed tight enough.

“And then when he < I>holds me,” when it’s all of that, but more. Longer. Sustained and Eddie can drown in it. In him.

“He kisses like it’s an Olympic sport where he’s the reigning gold medalist for always,” because sure, Eddie hadn’t had a vast amount of experience but he’d been kissed, even if only dirty and sloppy and never any further, but he’d thought they been at least decent.

Little did he fucking know.

“But then, at the same time he treats it like it’s his favorite pastime.”

Because Steve doesn’t just deal in the breathtaking, world-rewriting approach; he also dives in thorough, devoted down to his cells.

Breathtaking, world-rewriting all in its own unfathomable way.

“His laugh,” and Eddie’s smile grows as his chest feels like it expands, like it always finds a way to do just when Eddie thinks it can’t swell any more, like, for the laws of physics.

He did eventually pass physics, but. They never covered anything to do with love.

And even if they had, it couldn’t have been the kind of love Eddie feels, now.

“The way his brow furrows when he’s confused, or frustrated, like he,” and Eddie sees it, the little crinkles, the soft sparkling behind his eyes as he tries to sort something out behind them, like the fires of his mind at work, and it’s a beautiful thing.

“But mostly so I get to smooth it out,” Eddie admits because: it’s a beautiful thing. And it’s likewise a temptation.

All of Steve is kind of both at the same time, always.

“I love that he lets me take care of him,” and not just for the way it makes him feel proud of being trusted that much, where so few have ever passed the bar for entry into the magic of who Steve is, in his wholeness.

“Not least because taking care if him is one if the best things in the whole world,” because Steve doesn’t hide anything anymore, and he’s so open, so honest with every vulnerable piece, and Eddie feels like he could conquer the world with the might of that confidence, that faith; “like when your heart and your mind and your body all align right and agree, this is what you were made for,” and he believes that. He was built to meet Steve Harrington, and to be bound to every part of him. To be his partner in all things. To love and to honor and to cherish. For all of time.

“I love him for seeing me,” because it works both ways, and the feeling of having Steve is only rivalled in perfect measure by what it feels like to be had and held by Steve in kind: “and letting me see him.”

Always together. It still steals Eddie’s breath almost painful, but too sweet to ever try and tamp it down.

“I love falling asleep on his chest,” Eddie’s eyes close of their own accord, can feel it like that’s where he is, here and now, the bed of curls between those delectable nipples, the softness of his skin. “He runs so warm, like just, like when his heart beats, it’s pumping safety and comfort as a rule and when you’re pressed against him, it just emanates into you,” and that’s it, that’s exactly it.

“I love his heartbeat,” not just because he’d sought it out with desperate need after their last fight with the monsters, when it’d been Steve they almost lost. “Like the sound, when I’m against him,” because now, it’s a lullaby, an embrace, a declaration, every assurance Eddie doesn’t strictly need anymore but never passes up an opportunity to listen to and bask in, every opportunity he gets.

“I love how it feels when,” he starts, pauses when Robin’s face scrunches a little, like she’s bracing for a blow and it clicks, what she’s expecting.

He…wasn’t not going to at least skirt the edges of that part of their relationship. What often comes before he sleeps on Steve’s chest. But.

“Don’t worry, Birdie,” he assures her, dramatically folding his hands over hers with cloying sincerity; “I won’t defile your virgin ears.”

“If I have to listen to the retelling of your sexploits from him,” Robin smacks his hands away with a grimace; “I think once is enough.”

Eddie cackles as Robin groans.

“More than.”

He waves her off as he catches her breath; he won’t make her relive it herself. He’d love to, for his own sake and enjoyment but, he does love Robin. He doesn’t want to orchestrate her torture.

At least not today.

“I love how he eats his breakfast,” how he starts with a rich boy’s manners and ends like a starving man, with bits of egg on his cheek.

“I love how he brushes his teeth,” smearing toothpaste around first then going back to brush in tiny circles all around.

“I love how weirdly and, like, inhumanly quick he does his hair?” It’s record setting, seriously, like how can you get that height and that coif so perfect so fast. “But then how what always makes him almost late is picking the right shoes.”

Robin laughs, then reins herself back; it’s true though. How the clearly color-coded collections of the same fucking tennis shoes befuddle him for choice is hilarious, but so fucking endearing as hell.

“I love how I can tell him that I love him,” because for one, and the least of it all: Eddie never thought he’d find himself in a future where that was even the slightest possibility. But when it’s Steve? When it’s…when it’s this, with Steve?

When Steve lets Eddie love him? And flushes and smiles and melts for it, every goddamn time? Because of Eddie, and the size of Eddie’s love, or however much of it can be conveyed in the dearly limited medium of puny words?

“It’s him, but it’s,” Eddie shakes his head, beaming stupidly he knows, feels it in his cheeks, tugging his scars—he knows, but see, he couldn’t possibly give one single shit about it because his heart is so full, because he gets to love Steve Harrington, and—

“Loving him has been the greatest thing I’ve ever known. It’s not a privilege. It’s not a joy. It’s not a blessing,” Eddie laughs, just once: the limits of language are…offensive, almost. Because no.

It’s none of those things.

“It’s like I said, loving him?”

He waits for Robin to meet his eyes so she sees what the words can’t hold, never could, and while he’s not banking on his gaze carrying the whole of it, he’s more confident it can weave together at least some of the gaps.

“It’s what lives in me now and tells me I’m alive,” and that’s honest, that’s honest to all and every god, and all that surpasses them in the whole of being. “Maybe reminds me there are things to be alive for,” Eddie licks his lips, lets himself feel the way his heartbeat’s ramped up simply because he…he loves.

Because he loves.

“It is meaning, and it is light, and it is purpose and it’s what makes you open your eyes and feel that soft settled gratefulness that you get to do any of it, because he’s next to you,” Eddie’s words come without needing to think, or plan, for all he once scripted speeches on tabletops, or in notebooks to guide a narrative: this is his life. And more importantly: his love. His heart and his soul.

He wouldn’t want a script for any of it.

But more than wanting: he doesn’t have a single fucking need for it.

It is in his cells. He is made of all this, now. Of course it comes out of its own accord.

As blinding and as certain as it damn well should.

“He’s the reason for all of it,” Eddie finally says, voice a little shaky but it’s just because his breath’s a little shaky first, with the vastness of it all. “What would be the point, without it? Without him?”

He doesn’t need an answer, and Robin doesn’t try to give one. But he will ask, just as much without any need of a response:

“If that isn’t the same thing as a soul, then what the fuck is?”

It rings kinda quiet for a few seconds. Then minutes. Robin glances at her now melted remnants of milkshake.

Eddie looks to his own almost-full glass of wholly-unfrozen chocolate malt, and the condensation pooled underneath.

When he looks up, Robin’s eyes are on him. Shining and much less confrontational than they’d been.

“What?” Eddie asks, mostly confused but still a little suspicious. He’s been as flayed-wide as he can be, and is proud to be, and he trusts Robin implicitly but…he was being weighed and measured in order to be judged somehow.

So, he thinks it’s only smart to be at least a little bit cautious.

“Just glad,” she says, and smiles honest, no agenda left now. “You’re one of my favorite people,” and Eddie knew that in theory, at least by implication—still feels very nice to hear it.

“But you’re not my Platonic Soulmate.”

Eddie knew that, too. More than in theory. He respects the fuck out of it.

He appreciates that people beyond Eddie love Steve as fierce as this. Just as he deserves.

“It would have sucked to have had to take you out if you didn’t deserve him.”

Eddie snorts, because he knows she fucking means it. He’s almost honored that she thinks the idea of having to gut him in Steve’s defense would have been paired with any level of remorse.

“Mind you,” Robin goes a little serious again, but not…not like before.

“I don’t know if anyone deserves him,” and she says that more like I don’t think anyone could. Eddie doesn’t disagree.

But he thinks that’s the end of it, and decides he’s not going to let good ice cream go to waste just because it’s more an…extra cold Yoo-hoo slushie.

And how could he even consider letting that go to waste? Who would he even be if he did that, he wouldn’t even recognize himself—

“But you.”

Eddie looks up to meet her gaze with his lips still on the straw, mouth full of creamy chocolate. It’s not his most dignified look.

And she’s…she’s still kind of assessing, but…more like she’s made up her mind, by now. Finished her mission, fulfilled her agenda. Has the weight of him.

Possibly approves, even.

“You’re close enough.”

And goddamn, that is some glowing praise from Robin Buckley.

Especially when it comes to her Platonic Soulmate.

And yeah, maybe Eddie does drink the rest of his Yoo-hoo slushie with a little bit of pride for it.

He knows it tastes sweeter to the last obnoxious half-air-filled sip, either way.

1: Gareth // 2: Mrs. Harrington // 3: Wayne // 4: Chrissy // 5: Robin // +1: ???

🍦💚 📼

✨also on ao3

💫for @penny00dreadful—happiest of happy birthdays, my lovely 🖤

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @allmyfavoritethingsinoneblog @anthrobrat @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @disrespectedgoatman @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @eternal-sunflowers @friendlyneighborhoodgaycousin @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @madigoround @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here

divider credit here, and oddly: me, too 🖤

[fozmeadows]

Hello! I am re-reading the tithenai chronicles and couldn't help but note a particular due is paid to horses in both books, I was wondering if this comes from you having particular experience with them?

Hello! This is a very funny question to me personally, because I once saw a reader argue that, because I've written multiple books in which horses die, I must hate horses in real life, and am therefore Problematic for using fiction to channel my obvious anti-horse sentiments. I really wish I was making this up, but if nothing else, it does serve as a perfect example of how absurd it is to equate depiction with endorsement, because I actually love horses! I learned to ride as a kid, and had weekly lessons for years; I had to stop when I was fifteen, because I didn't have time for it any more, but for ages, I was very much a Horse Kid.

In fact, I'm in a storytelling mood, so here is a Foz The Horse Kid story:

The year I turned fifteen, at the start of tenth grade, I changed to a new school with better academic opportunities. Midway through the year, we all went away to camp, and for the second day's activities, we were meant to spend half of it bike riding on dirt trails, and half on horseback. Now, I did learn to cycle in childhood, but after a particular memorable crash around age eleven, where I hurt myself quite badly (I still have the scar), I'd basically given up on bikes; I was frightened of them, and even now, I can't balance on one unless my feet are able to touch the ground on both sides. So on this day at camp, we were split into two groups: one would do bikes first, then horses; and one who'd do horses first, and then bikes. I was assigned to the former, and it's not an overstatement to say I was terrified.

I made a single, trembling effort to get on the BMX I'd been given, but the seat was too high for my feet to touch the ground, and I promptly fell over. Somehow, I did not burst into tears, which would've compounded the embarrassment of being fifteen and unable to ride a bike, and was instead granted permission to ride along in the supply car behind the cyclists until it was time to switch activities. And so I would've done, if not for the fact that, right before we were due to set off, one of the boys from the other group showed up with a different problem. He was still on his horse, which was being led along by one of the instructors, partly because she'd had to bring the horse anyway, but mostly because he'd had a pronounced allergic reaction to something and his eyes were so swollen that he couldn't have safely walked on foot.

It was, very nearly, a perfect narrative turn of fate. I couldn't cycle; he couldn't ride. Solution: we would switch places and double up on the activities we were capable of performing, so he'd cycle twice and I'd ride twice. It felt like something out of one the Horse Girl Novels I'd read as a tween, but I sure as hell wasn't complaining.

"Can you ride?" the instructor asked me.

I told her I'd ridden for five years, and she was very pleased to hear it, as it meant we could safely canter to catch up with the other group, who'd already gone on ahead, without risk of my falling off. So I mounted up and off we went, chatting the whole time, until we reached the other students. They turned out to be the beginner group - the riders had been split into two parties based on skill level - and the remaining instructor, who was the younger brother of the woman who'd picked me up, was leading an unmounted but saddled grey mare along by the reins.

This felt very significant to teenage me, because I loved grey horses, so naturally, I asked why she was there. The answer was that she'd originally been assigned to a teacher who'd radically overstated his riding ability: she wasn't a beginner level horse, and due to some foolishness or other on his part, most likely yanking too hard on the reins, he'd been bucked off. This has resulted in him walking - or limping, rather - back to the main part of the camp to recover, leaving the mare behind. Which also meant that the instructors were now shorthanded: they'd expected to have a vaguely competent third adult along to help out with the beginners, and instead were on their own. Which meant that, as the only other person in the group with actual riding experience, I ended up being drafted as a helper.

My mission: riding alongside one of the more popular girls in our grade, who was very nearly as nervous about being on a horse as I'd been with the bike, and trying to keep her calm. Having started from a place of anxiety, she'd then watched the teacher get thrown and one of her friends led away looking like an overripe tomato; understandably, she wasn't having a great time. So I talked to her, and because she was scared of the horse, it was easy to joke about how I'd been scared of the bike, which I think made her feel a bit better; I won't say she ended up loving the experience, but she settled down, and nothing else eventful happened for the rest of the ride, which ended when we met back up with the advanced group and the bike riders to switch over.

My original group was now set to ride, and because the instructors were also swapping over, the brother and sister now got to lead the experienced group, while the other pair took the beginners. Which meant that, as I more properly belonged in the experienced group, I got to stay with the same instructors - and because I'd helped them out on the previous ride, I was offered the chance to ride the grey mare who'd proven too much for our teacher. This was, again, an extremely Horse Girl Novel thing to be happening, but there were only so many horses to go around, and as one person had already fallen off the mare after misjudging their skill level, it made sense to offer her first to the one student they felt vaguely sure was competent.

Offer here being the operative word: it was very clear that I could've said no if I wanted, and as she'd thrown her last rider, it would've been understandable if I'd declined. Still, I said yes, and it felt like that won me some extra respect from the instructors, if only because it made their jobs slightly easier. So I mount the grey mare, and it was instantly apparent that she was a fast, responsive horse. Up comes the rest of my group, several of whom are farm kids who actually know what they're doing, and we all set off - and once again, there's no teacher, because they're with the beginner's group.

Now, I've always been an extrovert, and whether due to practice or nature, even as a teen, I was very rarely intimidated by adults. If someone talks to me normally, I'll talk to them normally, and I was, by this point, having a really good time. This meant that, as a result of my cheerfully bantering with the brother instructor, I ended up riding alongside him at the front of the pack rather than back with the others, and when we hit a particularly long stretch of open track, I joked that I bet I could beat him in a race to the next gate.

"You're on," he says, and counts us down - three, two, one - and off we go from a walk to a gallop, leaving his sister to yell exasperatedly after us, "OI, DARREN!", with an implied you bastard at the end of it, because he definitely wasn't meant to be racing, and especially not with a student. But she couldn't chase after us, which means we got away with it, and of course he ended up being faster - he knew the track and his horse in a way that I don't - but I kept up decently, it was all great fun, and by the time the others caught us up, we were waiting at the gate for them, laughing.

The rest of the ride was uneventful by comparison, but pleasantly so. Some of the farm kids joined in the conversation at various points, the scenery was gorgeous, and the grey mare was perfect to ride. By the time we were done, the sister had forgiven her brother for being an idiot, and the two of them were joking that I should come help take the horses back to the stable, although of course I couldn't. But as we dismounted at the corral, and I stopped to give the grey mare a thorough goodbye pat, one of the farm kids, who was also part of the popular group, walked over and calls my name.

"Yeah?" I said, because this kid had never spoken to me before outside of class.

"You were really graceful," he said, and promptly turned and walked away again, before I could really manage to get out a thank you. It was an absurd thing to happen, I thought at the time - almost more implausible than all the other Horse Girl Novel stuff - not least because it wasn't the sort of compliment that teenage boys are typically known for making. It's the kind of thing that sticks with you, thought, which is why I still remember it so vividly some 24 years later. Graceful is not a thing I'd ever been called before and haven't been since - my general vibe is that of several racoons in a trenchcoat - but for one day, I got to live out the Horse Girl Novel Camp Fantasy dream, and it still makes me happy to think about.

All of which is to say: I am really, genuinely fond of horses! Though sadly, I don't think I'm capable of riding any more; I slipped a disc so badly in 2019 that I've taken permanent damage, and my suspicion is that three minutes in the saddle would be enough to put me into spasm. But either way, I can still write about horses - or creatures which serve the same narrative niche, ie: animals you ride and form a bond with - and that's pretty great.

[lostwysteria]

Part 20

Final part to the Nice Arc and the segue into the E-Soul Arc! Lets go!!!! This has been wild so far. Holy crap. Thank you guys, so much. Again, always feel free to ask me questions or just speculation. Today, work is hell. Mock inspection. *Dies like several tbhx characters*

Masterlist

Nice felt his world fall out from under him. He wouldn't make it in time. Nice could vaguely hear screaming. He didn't know that it was his own. 

The robots were all destroyed and Moon had punched Enlighter's lights out.

He rushed forward, hoping against hope that he would make it. 

A surge of blue lightning lit up the buildings. 

E-Soul zipped up a nearby building.

Nice collapsed to the ground. 

E-Soul had caught Lin Ling. 

“Sorry. I’m going to borrow him for a bit. I hope you don't mind? We have some catching up to do and he needs medical attention as soon as possible. See you later!”

Nice was frozen in so many different emotions. “What. The. Fuck.” He said, voice sounding a bit dead.

…

Shang Chao was pacing as he waited for his lover to return with their friend. A doctor was waiting on their floor as well. His heart had stopped when Lin Ling went over the edge of the building. It had only started again when Yang Cheng had caught him. 

The hidden panel slid back in the wall, revealing the stairwell that was mostly used in emergency situations. Yang Cheng entered and quickly laid Lin Ling on the couch. 

The doctor got to work immediately. He was a Trusted doctor and could diagone with just a touch. Thankfully nothing required a hospital visit. The unconscious hero just needed rest, fluids, food, and time to heal from mild torture.

He bandaged up what needed bandages and left soon after. 

…

Lin Ling felt like he had been run over. He groaned in discomfort as he woke up.

“Oh, thank goodness. You're awake." A vaguely familiar voice said. It made a pang of longing go through him.

It took him a few moments to be able to pry his eyes open.

Shang Chao’s smiling face greeted him. “Good morning.”

"Shang Chao? What? Where am I?" Lin Ling asked.

“Minevand A-Cheng’s apartment in Hero Tower. He caught you." 

“Caught me? I think I passed out some time after Nice and-" Lin Ling bolted up and immediately regretted it. “Nice! Wreck! Moon! Are they okay?!” He gasped out, pain stealing his breath away.

“They're fine! Don't worry! Lay back down!" Shang Chao fussed. “A-Cheng and I are more worried about you right now." 

"A-Chao’s right. What in the world has been going on?” Yang Cheng said as he walked over. He was in casual clothes and not his hero costume.

“You just disappeared after saving me that night. After revealing you were a hero the whole time we knew you! It's been four years!" Chao exclaimed.

“My parents died, my phone was busted in the altercation, and I had to transfer to a cheaper college. I hated it! But my life was falling down around me. I refused to drag you three down as well. Then the Threads of my powers connected to you three snapped and I just couldn't get up the nerve to try dnd reach out." Lin Ling told them. "How is Xia Qing, anyway?”

"She's in America on a work vacation in Florida. Miami to be exact. She met a girl there from our neck of the woods. They might start dating.” Yang Cheng let him know.

"That's not the point. Don't distract us!” Chao scolded. "Powers? Theads? Explain please?”

“One of my powers is ugh.” Ling groaned before saying the next part “has been named, by others, Maternal Instinct. I have metaphysical threads connecting people under my care back to me. It gives a general location and state of being. I knew you were in danger immediately even before I saw the guy pointing a gun at you.”

“Under your care?” Cheng asked.

“My powers came from being a super nanny and my homemaking skills. Over time that gained me Trust and my Hero Identity as Homemaker. If I consistently take care of someone and consciously claim them, then they come under my powers. I call those people my wards/charges. You three and my own parents were my only connections like that. For years. Until recently.” Lining sighed. “I was literally your mom-friend.” 

“That actually makes sense now. Why it felt like we lost a parent all of the sudden after you vanished. And why A-Cheng used to slip up and call you mom on accident sometimes. Behind your back.” Shang Chao said as he was looking on his tablet. Homemaker's internal only comprehensive hero profile was on it. All of his current abilities were listed along with explanations of them.

Yang Cheng was blushing from mortification at that revelation.

…

It was an hour later that the two helped Lin Ling back to his own apartment that he shared with Nice and Wreck.

“Are you sure you're alright with them? Nice gives me the creeps, honestly.” Yang Cheng asked. Lin Ling was glad that being a hero brought out Cheng’s confidence.

“I’m more than fine with them. Cone on. Don't be like that.” Ling scolded gently as the two made faces.

…

Nice burst into the apartment and collapsed at Lin Ling's feet. He buried his face into Ling’s knees and started sobbing. Wreck wasn't much better. He buried his own face in his thigh. Moon immediately went to get the massive blanket that Ling had finished. She cuddled into Ling’s side and covered them all up with it. 

Yang Cheng and Shang Chao shared a look and silently left. They would be back later to check in. Even if they didn't like it, the four needed space.

…

Lin Ling ran his fingers through Moon’s tangled hair and muttered nonsense soothing words as he calmed his family down.

“I can't. I just…” Nice wailed before ever so gently grabbing at his hands. “I love you. I'm in love with you.” Nice confessed while looking in Lin Ling’s eyes. The blanket had fallen off of them a bit.

“I am, too.” Wreck covered both of their hands with his larger ones. Moon scooched over to the other end of the couch. 

Lin Ling knew that no words needed to be spoken as he guided Nice up on to the couch and then Wreck. He then took his hands back. 

He cupped Nice’s face in both of them. He looked in to those tear filled sapphire eyes and leaned in. Their lips met in their first kiss. Ling poured all of his love for the man into it. By the end, Nice was dazed and gasping for breath. Ling then did the same for Wreck.

“I am in love with you both, as well.”

[elliespassagerprincess]

Hi love would you mind making a part for professor!ellie where reader is pregnant again OR when their daughter grows up ?

Amazing work btw

Headcannons: professor!ellie williams x reader

masterlist

professor ellie / first time / nsfw headcannons / more headcannons

starting a life together / getting married / having a baby / grading

for more on their first baby click here: aurora bloom / baby number 2 (currently reading)

☆ Aurora’s favorite thing to do is sit on Ellie’s lap during her late-night grading sessions, asking questions like, “Are your students as smart as me?”

☆ She wears glasses just like Ellie now—reader thinks they’re twins.

☆ Aurora mimics Ellie’s mannerisms, like adjusting her glasses when she’s nervous or tilting her head when thinking.

☆ She already knows how to read short paragraphs and corrects people’s grammar—even Ellie’s, which makes her beam with pride.

☆ Aurora's drawings always include three people—Mama, Mommy, and her—but now a fourth baby blob is starting to appear in the corner labeled “Arny.”

☆ When you went into labor, Aurora tried to pack her own bag “to help,” which included crayons, a banana, and Ellie’s old lecture clicker.

☆ Ellie sometimes brings Aurora to campus events. She introduces her proudly with “This is my daughter. She’s smarter than my entire first-year class.”

☆ Aurora makes Ellie bracelets from string and demands she wear them even during lectures. She always does.

☆ Aurora asks science questions constantly. Ellie answers all of them with a whiteboard and diagrams.

☆ You once walked in on Aurora “lecturing” her stuffed animals, using Ellie’s tone exactly.

☆ Ellie writes down Aurora’s quotes in a leather-bound “Aurora Archive” journal.

☆ She refers to Ellie as “the smartest person alive” and you as “the prettiest.”

☆ Aurora’s handwriting practice turned into a full essay on why “Mommy Ellie is too bossy, but I still love her.”

☆ Ellie was obsessively thorough about the IVF process, reading every published study on embryo grading, success rates, and maternal health. She made color-coded charts for each clinic they considered.

☆ The decision to have a second child came after Aurora turned five, when she looked up at them one night and asked, “Why don’t I have a baby brother or sister?”

☆ Ellie wanted a boy this time, not because she loved Aurora any less, but because she was fascinated by how different he might be — still theirs, but uniquely his own.

☆ You carried Arnold, just like with Aurora, and Ellie was even more attentive this time—bringing snacks, checking nutrient levels, monitoring stress like a hawk.

☆ You used the same donor, ensuring Arnold and Aurora were biologically related, and Ellie cried when they found out the embryo had successfully implanted.

☆ Ellie held her breath during every scan, gripping your hand tightly until they saw that tiny heartbeat flicker on the screen.

☆ At home, Ellie converted her study into a nursery months before it was needed, painting it a rich forest green and hanging hand-painted space-themed art on the walls.

☆ She read academic articles aloud to your belly, mumbling about epigenetics and language development, hoping Arnold would be a little genius like his sister.

☆ Aurora would whisper secrets to her unborn brother, telling him what not to do so “Mama doesn’t freak out.”

☆ You and Ellie filmed short video diaries for Arnold, each one ending with Aurora saying, “Hurry up and come out, dummy.”

☆ Your pregnancy with Arnold was harder than Aurora’s — more nausea, more exhaustion — and Ellie handled everything from meals to laundry to carrying you to bed if you fell asleep on the couch.

☆ Ellie barely slept the night you went into labor, pacing in circles around their bedroom and triple-checking the hospital bag every 10 minutes.

☆ When Arnold was born, Ellie was the first to cry, trembling as she cut the umbilical cord and kissed your sweaty forehead, whispering, “You did it. He’s here.”

☆ Arnold was a quiet baby—unlike his fiery older sister—and when the nurse handed him to Ellie, he blinked up at her with wide, moss-green eyes.

☆ Aurora was the first to hold Arnold after them, sitting carefully on the hospital bed, her small arms wrapped awkwardly around her baby brother, declaring, “He smells weird. But he’s cute.”

☆ Ellie took an extended sabbatical from the university, something she never did for herself, but did without hesitation for Arnold and you.

☆ She kept a detailed baby log, recording every feeding, nap, and developmental milestone like it was groundbreaking research. (“He smiled at 4 weeks. Do you know how rare that is?”)

☆ You would often find Ellie in the middle of the night, swaying gently in the rocking chair with Arnold on her chest, whispering about constellations and music theory.

☆ Aurora helped with diaper changes, read bedtime stories to Arnold (whether he was awake or not), and told everyone at school, “I have a brother. He’s gonna be smarter than all of you.”

☆ Ellie constantly takes pictures of the three of you—you nursing, Aurora playing peekaboo, Arnold asleep on Ellie’s chest. She prints them, dates them, and keeps them in a growing archive labeled The Love We Made.

☆ Arnold has Ellie wrapped around his tiny fingers already—she holds him like he’s made of glass.

☆ She was an emotional wreck the day he was born, whispering “You’re here. You’re real,” over and over.

☆ Ellie sobbed in the hospital bathroom, clutching a photo of Aurora and trying to calm her nerves before holding Arnold for the first time.

☆ She made laminated feeding/diapering schedules and color-coded copies for both reader and herself.

☆ Ellie insisted on staying awake every night at first. You had to force her to rest by dragging her to bed.

☆ Her obsession with checking his breathing every 20 minutes has led to installing four different monitors.

☆ Ellie reads academic articles to him during nap time—“gotta start the kid early.”

☆ His nursery is space-themed. Ellie picked every star and constellation herself and even made a mobile from scratch.

☆ She prints out graphs of his growth and annotates them.

☆ You caught Ellie softly kissing Arnold’s forehead while murmuring, “I’ll protect you forever. I promise.”

☆ She calls him “my little theory” because she wants to “test how much love a person can feel before they combust.”

☆ Ellie holds Arnold for hours while writing lectures one-handed, content even if it takes twice as long.

☆ She talks about him constantly at work—“Sorry my email’s late. My son drooled on my laptop.”

☆ Ellie insisted on giving him a middle name that references a philosopher—Arnold Pascal Williams.

☆ She puts little leather-bound books in his crib for aesthetic photos.

☆ Ellie made a password-protected photo archive titled “Arnold Growth Logs.”

☆ She has framed side-by-side ultrasound pictures of Aurora and Arnold on her office wall.

☆ You found Ellie singing lullabies in Hebrew and Latin just for “academic diversity.”

☆ She’s more patient with Arnold than she’s ever been with anyone.

☆ Ellie’s phone is overloaded with baby pics—she has a folder just labeled “Arnsmol.”

☆ She wrote a 10-page email to the pediatrician just asking about sleep regression.

☆ Ellie gets extremely possessive when someone other than you or Aurora holds Arnold.

☆ Her glasses fog up when she gets overwhelmed watching both kids together.

☆ Arnold’s first smile made Ellie go silent for ten minutes, then cry like a waterfall.

☆ She lowkey competes with you over who Arnold calms down with faster.

☆ She stares at you when she’s breastfeeding, completely mesmerized.

☆ Ellie reads textbooks on postpartum care so she can understand everything reader is experiencing.

☆ She canceled her own faculty conference trip because Arnold had a cold.

☆ Ellie redesigned her lecture schedule so she never misses bedtime for either child.

☆ Ellie’s gone full mama bear—she snapped at a stranger who called Arnold “it.”

☆ She started a private blog documenting her “Motherhood and Academia” journey, but only you have the link.

☆ Ellie sometimes forgets to eat if the baby’s crying—but never forgets to feed him.

☆ You teases Ellie about her “unofficial PhD in parenting.” Ellie secretly loves it.

☆ Arnold’s first laugh made Ellie record five videos trying to recreate the sound.

☆ She leaves love notes inside your breast pump bag.

☆ She wants to homeschool both kids—your not fully convinced yet.

☆ Ellie smells Arnold’s head constantly. Says it’s “baby serotonin.”

☆ Ellie cried when Aurora said “Arnold is my best friend forever.”

☆ She’s started humming lullabies even while writing lectures now.

☆ She talks to Arnold about how they’ll build rockets or dissect frogs together someday.

☆ Ellie calls Aurora and Arnold her “entire thesis on love.”

☆ She still panics during diaper changes—even though she’s read three parenting books.

☆ Ellie smells like baby lotion, chalkboard dust, and coffee now.

☆ Her voice softens immediately when either kid cries.

☆ Ellie doodles tiny versions of Aurora and Arnold in her margins during meetings.

☆ Ellie sometimes stares at you and just whispers, “How did I get this lucky?”

☆ She tells Arnold he looks like you, then whispers, “thank god.”

☆ Ellie calls their family of four “the most important study she’ll ever conduct.”

[moon-fics]

I NEED AGNSTY VIGILANTE 🤲🏾

A/n: I love angst. It's my life and soul. I gift you, my first angsty Vigilante fanfic of the year.

Summary: Can you really call this relationship a routine? Or is it insanity?

You don't even have to look anymore, as your hands guide the gauze over his bleeding bicep. You've done this before in multiple ways on almost every part of him. Tonight is the third night in a row where he's been cut during patrol. On a Tuesday night, when most couples are cuddling up or going to bed, you are cleaning his wounds on the couch.

You can't really get mad without having to point the finger at yourself. He told you this would happen before asking you out. He went into great detail on what his life is like. You just didn't want to believe him. Maybe you just didn't want to lose him.

"And then I met up with Chr- I mean Peacemaker!" Adrian says excitedly. He moves his arm slightly and nearly forces you to start over. You're not even listening, and you know you should be. Your wonderful boyfriend is telling you about his day, but you're stuck on how bad yours was.

"That's great." You say in a monotone voice. You hope it's enough to keep him talking so he doesn't get up before you're done.

You finish his arm and rip the bandage with your teeth. You tie it just a bit tighter than usual, and Adrian catches onto it. He might not be the best with cues, but he certainly knows yours.

"Did something happen?" He asks innocently. You don't have the heart to tell him you've been feeling neglected or how you no longer feel the spark. "Do I need to go hit someone? I will go back out and hit them. They'll never see it coming." He presses for answers.

"No, no one needs to be hit," You assure him. He's shirtless on your couch, and you should be all over him. You want to hold him and fall asleep on top of him. Yet, you know he'd ignore the pain in his body. You'd be up all night wondering if you're crushing a bruised rib. "I'm just lost in thought." You finally answer.

He frowns at your response because a part of him knows you're lying. He's not as oblivious as some people assume; he can tell when people are upset or mad.

You place a hand on his shoulder and feel how soft his skin is. There are scars littered across his bare chest, and you can remember dressing most of them. You sigh because that's all you can do right now.

"Ok, well, if I'm all set, we can watch 'Fargo'!" He stands from the couch to grab the remote. You can't explain why you feel your stomach sink at that idea. Another night of watching "Fargo".

"I'm actually going to go to bed," You say. You fake a yawn before crawling off the couch. The stare Adrian gives you is enough to tell you he's not buying it. His lips are slightly parted, and his brows are pressed down. "I'll watch it with you tomorrow night." You suggest with a half-assed smile.

"Are you mad at me?" His question cuts through you. You weren't expecting him to even ask. You aren't sure if you should answer. You open your mouth to deliver a comforting response. To tell him you aren't mad, but he stops you. "Please, don't lie."

"I'm just tired of this," You say while gesturing in the general area. It's a terrible answer, and you cringe at it. "I'm tired of the same routine." You admit.

"I wouldn't really call this a routine. Even if it was, aren't routines good?" He shrugs. His hands fidget together nervously. His weight is leaning onto one leg while the other bends. "I thought everything was ok." He says.

It was ok for a few months. You were happy to be with him and to see his vulnerable side. Now, you aren't so sure you saw the bigger picture. You have him, but you also get him in small moments where he's injured for most of them.

"I just feel like I barely see you, and when I do, you're either bleeding out or running out to see Chris." You try to keep your voice level. Your throat feels tight and sore. It hurts to breathe and to speak because you can feel the tears threatening to form. "I just want to go on a date or to feel like an actual couple."

"I can take you on a date," He perks up. You want to believe him, truly you do. The last time you planned a date, it was cancelled because he got stabbed in the shoulder the night before. The time before that, the date went terribly because he was too busy scouring for potential threats. The only time a date went well was when you both cooked together and stayed in.

"Adrian, you are covered in cuts and bruises. If we go out, someone will notice or you'll be in pain," You point out.

Deep inside you, you can feel a ripping sensation. Like when someone tears up a paper or a letter. It's piece by piece and slow. You stare at Adrian, and it feels like he's the paper. You're ripping him up.

"I just don't know if I can keep doing this. It feels like insanity," Your voice cracks. Hearing it is enough for the tears to flood your eyes. To hear your own heartbreak is by far the worst thing. "I sit and I tend to your wounds and I feel... I feel this nothing." You speak as if air is failing you.

Adrian's eyes don't soften or even change. His jaw clenches as if he's thinking. You don't know if there's anything to say. You just admitted to feeling nothing with him.

"Should I go?" He mumbles while placing his hands on his hips. It's not a question of being mean. He's genuinely asking because he doesn't know what to say. You can't give him an answer from your lips, so you nod. "Should I come back?" He asks while heading to the door. You don't move, and he takes that as a 'maybe'.

"I do love you," His voice is warm as he opens the door. He stands there for a few seconds to take it in. "I loved every night with you."

"I know." You answer with a trembling smile. You can feel hot tears rolling down your cheeks. You'll miss him until he inevitably returns. You'll miss him.

He steps past the door and closes it behind him.

[lastjudgmcnt]

As Diego explained the color-changing process, they ran into the same words-with-three-syllables-or-more problem. But instead of drawing attention to it, Oona simply smiled and nodded. There were only so many times in one conversation she could point out her lack of intelligence before it really started to bum her out—a boundary she both discovered and enforced only as she got older. "Oh wow," she said simply, trying to imbue the word with the fact that she was honestly impressed, but also looking to tiptoe away from scientific talk. "That's really interesting."

No communal wine? Oona shook her head, the tip of her finger tapping a couple of times at the base of the wineglass. "We were a pretty staunch bunch of Welch's enthusiasts," she answered with some humor. She'd long ago broken away from that church, even before the Hallow, and not entirely of her own volition, but there were still a few scattered memories that could bring a smile to her face. Sweet, sticky grape juice was one of them, apparently. At his follow-up question, Oona found herself reaching up to pinch at the crucifix that hung past her collarbones. She felt her muscles tense somewhat, uncertain and definitely not looking forward to where this topic would lead.

"I... am, yes," she answered, though the truth of the matter felt more complicated than those three words. "I find a lot of comfort in it, but I totally understand if that is not your thing." He was a scientist, after all. It wouldn't surprise her. A few scientific types have taken it upon themselves to challenge her over the past decade, as well as plenty of people who were simply grief-stricken. "I am not here to judge or cast aspersions. You're a very intelligent young man." And there she went, sounding like her grandmother. Young man. Diego was probably a few years her senior. "But to answer your next question, yes. I would go back if I could. I mean, I hope to. It's definitely where I'd like for Lydia to spend the rest of her childhood."

Mexico, Florida, Stanford—to Oona, that was an exceptionally interesting life. Even in a world-ending situation, her own stayed relatively sheltered until recently. "Fourteen?" she repeated, thinking back to when she was fourteen herself. She just remembered trudging through Great Expectations in her English class and secretly watching New Girl at her friend Hunter's house. She spent time in front of the mirror in her bedroom rolling up the bottom of her t-shirts to see what wearing a crop top would look like after her parents went to bed; she certainly wasn't attending a highly competitive university. "That must've been an intense transition. I can't imagine. I was still such a kid at 14."

And then he got involved with Eden, presumably. Oona pressed her lips together, reminding herself of her own words: not here to judge or cast aspersions. What was done is done. She cleared her throat quietly. "You know, I came into his building in hopes of finding that fancy red syrup. I don't remember what it's called, but they put it in Shirley Temples." The syrup was probably long past its expiration date, but Oona was willing to hold onto this one silly little delusion for another few minutes. Silly little delusions were sort of all she had some days. "Do you want to help me poke around behind the bar?"

"Yeah no, it's...it's a common misconception." he smiled, hoping those words provided some sort of reassurance. Diego often feared being perceived as odd, or dull, or intimidating. Feared his company might be feeling uncomfortable or, out of place. So when Oona asked him a follow-up question that could well open the floodgates of information, he was very evidently gladdened. It showed, in the way he shifted excitedly in his seat, and the way his smile was less controlled and somewhat uneven. "Okay so uh, colour." now there was a challenge of putting things in a way that did not sound like spewing out a textbook, so he leaned just slightly forward and cleared his throat. "In red wines there are these pigments called the anthocyanins, they're found in grape skin and they give it that original purple-red colour. These pigments as they age, and...well the nature of ageing itself is a contributor, but these pigments they polymerise which uh, forms larger molecules that reflect light differently. The pigments also oxidise, this shifts the colour from purple to...ruby, to garnet and sometimes brick --" he lifts his cup then, a perfect example. "and brown. Brown is a rare find." he reached for the wine cork, placing it upright between his thumb and his index. "Cork, like this one, creates small and controlled oxygen exposure. When done right it leads to this...gradual change in colour and flavour." he let go of the cork then, and with a swift movement of his hand he dismissed the rest of the factors pertaining to phenolic compounds and tannins and changes in white wine. "That's the gist of it really. Storage conditions and grape variety are contributors too but...we don't need to get into all of that."

He may have put her on the spot there, so he nodded encouragingly as she provided feedback. "Rich and sweet. Well, I'm glad we can agree." a laugh followed his words and he did not take the opportunity to dive into particular vanilla notes provided by the oak barrel storage. Instead he welcomed the change of topic and left it at that. "I see." she'd not exposed much, so he'd started putting together bits and pieces on his own. "Your church, no communal wine?" Diego knew Methodists, Baptists and the Seventh-day Adventists replaced the communal wine with grape juice, but exceptions were made across different churches depending entirely on agreed-upon preferences. There was no way of knowing for certain. Besides asking, that is. "Are you a religious person, Oona?" Diego leaned back into his chair, sinking deeper into it's comfort. His fingers lightly tapped the wine glass, which rested effortlessly above the armrest where his hand had settled. Eyes remained on her, as she spoke of the ranch, as her eyes glistened with memory of what must've been 'the most beautiful place this side of heaven'. Unbeknownst to her, there was something about those words which deepened his resolve. A lot depended on this cure, a lot could yet be restored. "Is that where you'd go? If you could? Back to Colorado?" Her questions were delivered with a coat of amusement and he had to laugh. "No, no you did not forget." Another sip of wine graced his lips before he attempted a response. Times like these Diego wished he'd lived a more...interesting life. "Well uh, before my fancy-pants school I was an infant so, Mexico?" eyes narrowed above a smile. For all the many things he could recall, he never could quite remember a time when he wasn't being taught something. From the moment he was sentient enough to truly grasp the world around him, he was already in school. His parents made sure not a single drop of potential was ever wasted. Yet it didn't exactly make for a good story, in the end. "Parents moved to Florida when I was one. I started school at four, moved to Stanford at fourteen then..." Elliot came, and he'd become a part of something he'd never really got a say in. And was stuck in it's vicious and unpredictable unravelling ever since. But again, it did not make for a good story. "I guess here I am. Here we are." part of him was itching to ask, to see what she thought of that -- of him, of Eden, of his contribution to how utterly fucked the world had become. But the other half, was stronger, and it had kept him quiet, reaching for another sip of that wine.

[whowhowhoareyou]

Spotify mini podcast I can't skip because I'm showering: it's been a bad year for Boeing

Me: yeah it has!

Podcast: it started in January when a door panel blew out --

Me: that was in JANUARY??

[itspileofgoodthings]

ALSO I am learning how to teach very introverted students, something my natural skillset as a teacher does not help me with.