#which made more sense after she showed me the article that prompted the question and it was from the New York fucking Post

[zeromorph]

the majority of the cis people in my everyday life these days know at least a handful of trans people either personally or professionally and/or are generally thoughtful people who do their own research, so I’ve gotten pretty used to them having half a clue about gender, which left me largely unprepared to respond to my coworker asking me about Trans Politics TM in the middle of the work day. gave her a deer-in-headlights look for a good ten seconds because like, I don’t actually always mind being someone’s gender liaison, but a) I think I’m the first out trans person you’ve ever known and I don’t think you’re ready for my full-throated opinion on this so I gotta pull together a good gentle 101 real quick and b) it’s one in the afternoon and I’m in the middle of looking over our suture stock, can I maybe get back to you on this one

[spiltscribbles]

Prompt: Pro Athlete Sirius because that my and Remus' kink

~Notes: OMFG VICTOrIA!!!! I FUCKING SCREECHED!!!! lkadfjlaksdgjoiaejfalskdgjioeugisfkldshg Yes tis my kink as well!!! And then I saw this from Nonny and worlds collided and BOOM! I hope you like this my love<3<3 You incredibly talented sugarplum!!! TBH I want to write a thousand more things in this AU XD

.-

FROM THIS LIST  |  Send Me A Prompt!💜 | A REBLOG MEANS THE GALAXY!!💜

.-

When Remus was young— surrounded by the light breeze of the Welsh coast and the harmony of birds chirping in the distance— he would follow his mother to their small garden behind their cottage  at the cusp of twilight as his father cooked their supper, and he’d watch as she laid flat all sorts of newspapers written in French and Arabic and English, watch as she brought her red pen against the ink and marked the articles with underlines and shorthand he wouldn’t understand for years still.

He asked her once, when he was barely eight years old, why she bothered to keep up with so many different publications, why she read the same story penned by countless perspectives when all the facts stayed the same at the end of the day. And he remembers how she had let out a quick, shrill of a laugh, tossing back her golden head while sucking in a puff from the bubbling hookah she had set up besides her— a habit she acquired from her Algerian, refugee parents, and one that became synonymous to those late nights in Remus’s eyes.

“Facts can be wielded to someone’s personal vendettas, Remus John,” she had crooned in that adoring way of hers whenever she spoke to him— honey eyes that were the same color and shape to Remus’s own flashing alight and their matching smiles going crooked in her stunningly beautiful face. 

“Oh.” Remus had replied, still confused as all get out but was perfectly fine with just holding his small vigil, watching her beneath moonlight and the soft glow of their outdoors lamps, as he listened to the shuffling of papers while she commenced this odd quirk. 

It’s a decade and a half later—  as his editor for the Phoenix, a small, but bustling online editorial that plans on dethroning the likes of Politico and Vox in only a matter of years, scans his latest findings on the corrupt boosters linked to MP Avery from Leeds— when Remus thinks he suddenly understands what his mother, with her keen eyes and pixelated air, had meant by facts in how they can be colored differently simply by the words surrounding them. And he wonders if one day soon, one of his bylines will join her little stack of stories, if she’ll be proud of him even if she says as much even now, when he’s a lost twenty-something stumbling through life in the capitol and barely making it as is, between his actual job and the gig he has at the coffee shop nearest his dingy flat he shares with three other blokes.

“Mmm, this is good, Lupin,” Dorcas declares after what feels like an eon, dropping her long, dark legs from where they were lounging leisurely on her desk and scuffs out her cigarette in a pretty, glass ashtray. “Send it over to Flores to look into deeper, maybe it’ll corroborate the info she’s already gotten from her sources.”

Remus feels himself bristle, hopes that it doesn’t show, that his face stays passive as he contends, “I think I should at least help her write the expose, I’m the one who got this bombshell.”

“That’s not how it works, sweets,” Dorcas toots, tossing back her dark head of curls as she rises, perching on the corner of her desk delicately and looking down, straight into his gaze. “I know it’s frustrating, but you’re fresh blood. barely six months here, but Alice has been with us for years. This is her baby, and we’re just here to nurture it.”

“So I’ll have to wait another ten months, at least,  to get the same treatment?” He argues in an admittedly petulant way, making Dorcas laugh endearingly, and Remus is suddenly,  searingly reminded of his age, and how he’s the youngest staffer that this London based news outlet has on hand. 

“C’mon, love, it won’t be that long for someone as sharp as you, just be patient, and don’t try to pull a Zoe Barnes on us, yeah? You’re far too pretty to clean up on the rails of  the tube.” Dorcas tousles a hand into his dark tawny curls, and Remus holds back the roll to his eyes that he feels willing up inside of him as he stands fully.

“Thanks Cas.”

She smiles beatifically, and throws him a wink. “You’re joining Emmy for the report tomorrow on those United footballers and their fundraiser for the hospital, yeah?”

“Bright and early,” Remus replies, still feels a bit miffed that he was chosen to write up the charity function, considering he doesn’t know a lick about football and doesn’t really get on with anyone who does. But Caradoc— their typical sports reporter— is out sick with the flew, so it’s on him. “I’ll have it on your desk early enough so it’ll be published by tea time.”

“Good man,” Dorcas says in thanks, picking up her crowing cellphone before waving him off.

Remus isn’t all that surprised when he strides out of the office only to find Benjy Fenwick sitting against the opposite wall, knees pressed to his chest and quickly scrambling up when he catches sight of Remus. Sometimes it’s impossible to believe that the bespectacled man in front of him is one of the top editors for the Phoenix, that he’s a regular corespondent for places like the BBC or CNN— that his rebukes against the piss poor inquiries waged during PMQs have become more anticipated than the sessions themselves. Remus tends to forget all of that when he sees him like this, messy haired and wearing a graphic T-shirt with some marvel superhero embossed on the front. “Wotcher Remus.”

“Hiya Remus says, smiling softly and rocking back on his heels. “You wanted to talk to the sergeant then?”

“Huh? Oh, no, no. I didn’t want to talk to Dorcas, I just— Erm, I know you were showing her that stuff you got from that intern, Pettigrew, and i know you were chafed about not getting any opportunity here so—“ He trails off, scratching the back of his head and studying a point over Remus’s shoulder, and it’s all too endearing, and Remus is so beyond thankful he’s made such a good friend here.

“No cigar,” he says in answer to the unspoken question, shrugging noncommittally even if he feels like shit over it.

Benjy nods, face contrite in a way that tells Remus he never thought it would’ve went otherwise. “I’m sorry, that’s bollocks.”

“’S whatever,” Remus shrugs off the apology, begins walking down the hall and straightening his report to hand over to Alice. 

“Ah,, erm. We can get a drink, yeah? In commiseration,” Benjy offers, and Remus stilts only for a beat before continuing the twisting trail to where Alice is set up with the more senior members on staff. And he feels only sorta bad about wanting to refuse. He knows that if he says yes, it’ll mean something different to Benjy than it does him, that he’ll probably take it as Remus finally giving into his pestering and deciding to actually go out with him, even if he’s refuted the other four times he’s asked as much. Remus’s simply just too busy trying to get a footing in this city, and trying to figure out where he’s suppose to go from here, and what he’s suppose to do. And yes, Benjy is cute— a complete Seth Cohen archetype. And he’s sweet and smart and funny enough. But Remus is really not in the mood for doing the whole flowers and wine and candle lit dinners shtick, had gotten enough of that while still with his university boyfriend. And yeah, he’s only just turned 24, but he already feels too old and too jaded for that sort of puppy love— even if Benjy’s got a good decade and some change on him.

Probably sensing his hesitation, Benjy is quick to rectify the offer. “I’ll ask Mary, and Fabian too, and a few others. We can make a night of it, just some drinks on a Friday after work.”

Stalling by the last turn to Alice’s desk, Remus looks at him from over his shoulder, and sort of hates himself for being such a soft hearted fuck sometimes. “Yeah Benj, sounds nice. Just let me know on the group chat, yeah?”

Benjy grins, much more genuine than his awkward quirk of the lips from earlier. “Yeah, good call, I’ll let the others know pronto.”

“Aces,” Remus says, tosses him a obligatory thumbs-up before finding an expectant looking Alice who’s tapping her foot impatiently.

Yeah, today is so bloody shit.

.-

Surprisingly, the round of drinks turns to another and then a third and fourth and Remus is currently nursing his fifth mango margarita on Benjy’s tab, and he actually feels lighter than he has since taking the job at Phoenix, feels bright and bubbling and like absolutely nothing could be wrong as long as he’s got this drink in his grasp and he’s sitting with the handful of reporters and photographers from the office that don’t all have sticks up their asses. It’s fun, it’s good. So obviously it couldn’t have lasted.

Mary is currently cackling about her Uber driver from last night who asked her all sorts of well meaning, but incredibly dense questions about her hijab— a freshly poured glass of coke in one hand, while the other is tangled into her girlfriend Emmy’s. And From his left Remus can hear Fabian ribbing Frank on his crush on Alice, while Benjy scoots intermittently closer as they watch Kingsley and Marlene sparring over something to do with a Kardashian or TikTok trend or whatever the fuck else— The guy has resilience, Remus has to give Benjy that.

“Right, who’s buying next?” Marlene asks, abrasive as ever while scrolling through her phone, ostensively finding something to prove her point against the managing editor.

“Reckon it’s my turn,” Benjy crows, standing up smoothly and glancing down at Remus with a nervous sort of half grin.

“Just a water for me, ta. I need to sober up,” Remus tells him, feels proud that he didn’t even slur slightly. Benjy bobs his head understandingly, and Remus turns to ask Marlene about her latest tinder hookup which always is a good laugh, but then he catches on it. On the sound of the pub’s doors flinging open, followed by a raucous crowd of athletic looking guys probably only a bit older than he is, clambering indoors. 

They’re all so very sixth-form, broad grins and slapping each other’s shoulders with jeers, topped off with loud, bark like laughter that makes it obvious to Remus that these wankers think that they’re some sort of group of gods amongst men, roaming around like everyone should fall to their feet and offer everything they have. It makes Remus roll his eyes so far back that it feels like he might’ve sprained them. They just give off this exhausting aura that reminds him of a past boyfriend in tenth year who was on the footie team and who’s favorite activity was either making Remus feel lucky enough to go out with someone so popular, or dragging him around like some sort of bloody trophy.

To put it nicely, Remus sorta hates them on sight. So when he sees one of the tossers— regrettably the brightest of the lot who’s all pearly teeth, and glittering eyes and incredibly impressive shoulders that tape off to a narrow waste in an objectively infuriating matter— swivels up to the barkeep and jostles Benjy on his way, well Remus doesn’t hesitate to dart forwards to tell him off.

“Oi, watch where you’re going, yeah?”

Benjy and the bloke who looks like he might moonlight as a model for Calvin briefs for when he’s not lounging in a yacht off the Tuscany coast, both turn to him at the same time. Benjy looking abashed, and the aforementioned tosser preening like the cat who’s just caught a canary.

“Sorry, love. Didn’t see you there,” he says in a delightfully deep tenner, giving Remus an appreciative once over, and Remus absolutely despises how the action makes him feel both thrilled and irritated. “Trust and believe, I wouldn’t have looked away if I saw you.”

“Not me, arse.” Remus spits back, refuses to pay any credence to how his cheeks have begun to flush. “You bumped into my mate right there, the one with the tray of loggers.”

The tosser darts his almost molten gray eyes over to Benjy for a sparing second before he laser focusses back onto Remus, the most phony expression of contrition all over his face. “Sorry to your friend,” he says the descriptor like a joke that no one else is in on. “Let me buy you a drink in sorry for the one I made slim here spill.”

Remus is officially unimpressed, hopes that his flat tone gets it across. “You’re an arse.”

“You’re mouthy,” he retorts, looks like it’s something he greatly appreciates— delights over even. 

“Ah, ’s fine Remus, really. I’ll just bring these back and get us a new glass.”

“Listen to slim, Remus, he’s got the right idea.” The tosser hurriedly interjects, strutting close enough to him that he makes it so Remus has to tip his head back just slightly so not to drop his gaze. “I’m Black, Sirius Black, just to get the pleasantries out of the way.” His leer tells Remus that the name should probably evoke some response of aw into Remus, but all it does is make him sound so egregiously pretentious that Remus wants to smack his own bloody head against a dry wall and stay in the hole until this ruddy Sirius bloke leaves him the hell alone.

“Good for you,” he says instead of all of that, and spots Sirius’s friends from behind Sirius chuckling and elbowing one another. Evidently this is a line the tosser uses frequently, and Remus is pleased that he might be one of the first who aren’t at all impressed by the grandiose way he introduced himself.

“Hah, you know I’m use to the pretty ones playing hard to get, but I’m really feeling here that you’re not exactly liking my company, love.”

Remus sucks in a frustrated breath through his nose, shouldering past Sirius and taking the tray of drinks from Benjy before storming back to their table where the others have begun openly gawping at the scene— Marlene outright squawking with Fabian just as Remus takes his seat.

“Don’t,” Remus warns them all as he silently says fuck off to the water and instead gargles down one of the loggers. And if he has to steadfastly not turn around for the rest of the night towards where he can feel Sirius’s gaze burning into his back— well then so be it.

.-

The next morning, Remus has to puke twice into the toilet, and gulps down three aspirins just to stave off his bloody hangover from the night before where he decided that getting properly sloshed would prove as a good technique to not end up making out with Sirius in some dark corner— or regrettably the backseat of his car. And if he does still remember flashes of ranting to him about how insufferable preppy, rich boys actually are while Sirius gazed at him endeared— well Remus just decides to purge it out along with the stomach acid. It’s not like he’ll ever see the douche again.

.-

He meets Arthur— one of the accountants who also helps out by taking photos for more low key news stories— outside the hospital where the conference will be taking place with the Manchester United team. There was a scrimmage that they all played with some of the kids in the cancer ward that occurred at around eight in the ruddy morning, but thankfully Remus didn’t have to show up until an hour later when the team presented their big shiny check, to the big, shiny hospital. 

However, Arthur has been here for hours, so he’s beyond chirpy and looks like he’s downed three cups of espresso as he chatters on about his son Percy starting secondary school, and his eldest, Bill, getting an award for his reading prowess, and all the strange craving his wife has been having throughout her pregnancy with the twins they’re expecting any week now. And Remus loves Arthur, he does— one of the sweetest folks he’s ever met— but God, his head is still thrumming from those misguided tequila shots and he really just wants to get his three quotes, and write up the story so he can find refuge back in his sheets.

While Arthur has moved to talking about his wife, Molly’s, plans to open up a daycare in their refurnished garage, Remus scans his eyes over the familiar face of reporters from other outlets who look just as bored as him, and then to the stage where a woman in a sharply pressed suit is ushering for the group of football stars to join her, so that the conference can finally fucking begin. 

And Remus thinks that their faces are sorta familiar, probably from all the publicity they get on the telly— but then he freezes as he stops at one of them with dark brown skin, and thick rimmed spectacles— and he suddenly can hear him chatting about his redheaded girlfriend and drunkenly declaring that she’ll be the mother of his children some day soon. So he completely expects it when his stomach drops as he moves his glance just a bit to the right, being struck by pearly teeth, and glittering eyes and incredibly impressive shoulders that tape off to a narrow waste, made all the more infuriating by the tight kit he’s got on and the blazing number twelve splayed against his chest.

And fuck.

Remus runs through about a dozen scenarios in which he can make a discrete, or not so discrete exit before he notices him, but in tandem to his spiraling thoughts, the wanker actually looks forwards, and like a creepy metal detector, his quick silver gaze pinpoints onto Remus.

They stare at one another for a beat before his smirk goes wolfish, and he runs a hand through his artfully tousled hair in a way that practically screams, fancy meeting you here. And holy fuck he looks so mouth watteringly attractive with that faint film of sweat running down his neck, and how his smile pulls slightly more to the left, and how he’s looking at Remus like he’s his birthday and Christmas presents all rolled into one.

Remus suddenly hates everything— but most of all hates Sirius, and how bloody fit he is.

“Oh, you’re a fan then?” 

Starting, Remus shifts around slightly so that he’s facing Arthur completely. “Pardon?”

“Sirius Black I mean, you’re a fan?” Arthur asks in that abrasively congenial and intensely scrutinizing way that he treats everything. “I mean he’s a great player, but I know you don’t really watch. So I bet it’s all that charity work he does, yeah?”

“Charity work?” Remus echos, feeling like a floundering fish.

“Truly some amazing stuff.” Arthur pontificates, rubbing a hand against his jaw as he tips his head back. “I mean obviously I’m partial to the fundraising for Reporters Without Borders, but of course the things he does with the more impoverished kids is great. And I know Molly likes his very outspoken posts about being anti war and his annual live streams to earn money for refugees in those war torn nations, like the last one he did for Syria?”

“Oh—“ Remus says, feeling like his head is being overrun by a fountain of new information.

“Yes well, you don’t usually see athletes get into the thick of it with political issues, but I reckon he never really minded. I mean the fact he’s the first football star from United to have come out without any fanfare really proved that. Oh, I think they’re starting, I should probably get some photos before Dorcas gives me a tongue lashing.”

And as quick as the flash of his camera’s lends, Arthur is using his considerable height to get to a more advantageous spot towards the front, and leaves Remus in the dust, as if he hasn’t just obliterated his every assumption of Sirius from after that initial meeting.

And unbidden, the words his mother had told him so many years ago, about facts and how they can color a situation just simply based off the person who’s speaking them— flood to the forefront of his mind.

“Fucking hell,” Remus mutters lowly, gets jostled by Greengrass, a hawkish reporter from a rivaling publication who always has on the most wickedly sharp acrylic nails, and perfectly quaffed curls— as she waves around her certification to speak her inquiry.

“My question is for Potter,” she announces when the woman leading the event, McGonagall, points her way. “And I was wondering how early you boys have to rise for training during the season? And how intense the sessions are that Coach Hooch puts you guys through?”

Potter, the one with the redheaded girlfriend that Remus heard so much about last night between his ranting at Sirius, parts his lips, but it’s not his voice that ends up reverberating through the outdoors space. Instead, it’s Sirius, who’s shouldering him with a goading air, obviously expecting his comment to have only ended up in Potter’s ear and not caught by the mike.

“I wonder if Lupin will let me wake up with’m so he can let me get some real training done before practices, eh?”

And just as soon as his words pitter off, the entire crowd drops to a hush— quiet enough so that they could probably hear it if a pen dropped. 

Sirius’s handsome face— strong jawline, and broad but sharp cheekbones, and a long, narrow nose— goes suddenly ashen, and he flashes over to Remus as if he’s terrified that he’ll bite his face off.

God, what an idiot.

With a long suffering sigh, Remus plucks out the microphone from a slack faced Greengrass’s hand. “We can discuss the regimen afterwards, Black. Just meet me by the front doors and let your mate answer the bloody question.”

Everyone around them falls into laughter that’s caught between uncomfortable chuckles and amazingly amused cackling, but the only person Remus is paying any mind is Sirius, and how he seems to have gone absolutely incandescent, nodding electrically before miming the zip of his lips and gesturing for Potter to carry on.

Jesus help him, Remus has no idea what he’s gotten himself into.

.-

~My Wolfstar FIC Masterlist

~Buy Me A Coffee 

[herstarburststories]

illicit love

Pairing: Jensen Ackles x reader

Summary: Jensen loves you, but sometimes love isn’t the right thing.

A/N: Hey, guys! All we needed was a newish fic to say that I was really back, here it is! This one goes for @negans-lucille-tblr 6k challenge. So glad you got to another millestone, honey. It's like I was posting my part for your 5k celebration just yesterday! xD Prompt in bold.

Warnings: age gap, cheating

Jensen Ackles kept squinting through the bricks of his memory in an attempt to recall where it all began. Maybe it was when he drove off the road he had known for years with the dumbfounded desire to take the trails yet traveled, threading his fingers through your hair on the night of September 7th. He could’ve chosen the easy out and say it all started to crumble with the first kiss, but no. The actor, father, and now horrible husband highly doubted that. No, as he unwound the convoluted wires in his mind, it wasn’t the first clandestine meeting that he saw as the beginning, not the first kiss or the primal stolen glances. It wasn’t even the lies or the way he pushed his body against yours in an act of illicit faith.

Like any grand mistake, it was way before that. Just like how the church not-so-gently advised, it all starts with craving something you never thought you would want.

It happened when he landed the job in a new series after leaving a fifteen-year-long rollercoaster, pushing away any real witness to the fact the old show that swallowed part of his soul was over. There was a certain shock of excitement misplaced by the fact he was going to be working with Eric again, and that the show was an abrupt change considering what he had been doing previously. Now, he believed it was his body’s particular way of telling him that — as the savage animals can sense rain or a calamity — this, baby, this is gonna change your life.

JENSEN ACKLES CAST AS SOLDIER BOY!

‘’Since when have you read comics?’’ Jensen arched his messy eyebrows at Dee’s curiosity about the Homelander and Soldier Boy panel making it to the screen. Shaking the comic book in his right hand slightly, he continued: ‘’Especially that kind.’’

‘’Never,’’ Danneel stated plainly, “but I have Google. It was pretty much the first thing that appeared.’’

‘’Well, Eric said that scene won't be on the screen. Besides, the portrayal won't be that Soldier Boy, but the original one who died in the war. ‘Course, he wouldn’t have died there in our show, but it ain’t the panel one.’’ He shrugged, bringing her closer to his side as she snuggled against him. ‘’There’ll be a bunch of Herogasm, which is basically drugs and sex. Just not with Homelander.’’

Danneel nodded at his explanation, humor clinging to her words as she added: ‘’Guess the only man I have to share you with is still Jared.’’

‘’Hey, you knew what you were getting yourself into.’’ Jensen scoffed playfully before kissing her cheek. ‘’Can't wait to start the show.’’

Jensen leaned forward to rest the comic that he had been religiously studying to form a psychological character profile on the dashboard of the Impala. The actor was spending plenty of hours inside his most palpable Supernatural souvenir -- Baby. His safe place. He sure as hell needed one of those, as molding a whole character that has a bunch of source material wasn’t as easy as he pictured. With Dean, he was putting himself and the script in one until it made his imaginary best friend. It was love at the first sight. Soldier Boy, however, was a long story short. Jensen figured he should do both, honor the character created and add his own special ingredients to it. It was a brand new kind of passion that he hadn’t done for a series in the longest time. Still, his glance trailed back to the woman by his side in the backseat.

‘’Let's hope it won't last another decade,” she mocked.

Jensen shook his head with a chuckle, relaxing against the leather seat. Even the mere smell of the Impala was enough to settle his nerves. ‘’Eric has plans for five seasons.’’

Danneel’s features contorted as if having war flashbacks. Sort of. She never imagined Supernatural would make it that far, and now with three kids, signing on for another excessively time-consuming idea for a new show didn’t seem too appealing either. Yet, she would support Jensen in any decision he’d take regarding his job. “Remind me the last time I heard that line before?” 

‘’Come on.’’ He let out a wry huff, poking her side in a playful manner. She couldn't help but laugh, returning the gesture with tickles to start a very light-hearted battle. He seemed happy with the new job, something Danneel truly thought he would have more difficulty with. She’d pushed her weathered worries away with his easy-going laughter for now.

SOLDIER BOY’S LOVE INTEREST?

Eric Kripke threw the gossip magazine on the table, his eyes not straying from his long-time friend’s. He could’ve simply added the digital article to an irate email and be done with it, but he was a simple man with extravagant taste. That had been usual through his whole career, especially regarding the Supernatural aesthetic. Yet, in those mundane situations, Jensen almost found it too much. That wasn’t the case, though. If anything, the plain, yet still overpowering words that his green eyes scanned made his body sweat. He could even hear his organs working from the absolute silence of the blame that covered the room. Kripke’s room had never seemed more like an interrogation chamber than now.

The magazine in question held Jensen and your picture on the cover, his arms wrapped around your torso as he pulled you close. The most sequin smile hung from your lips like happiness was something that could be touched on that sunny day in the private park near the studio. Giant and garish letters made the headline along with the subline: Jensen Ackles wearing his Soldier Boy costume caught sharing a passionate kiss with the new arrival of The Boy’s Team: Y/N Y/L/N, also known on-screen as Cangaceira!

His voice came out as an accusation: ‘’What’s this, Jensen?’’

‘’We were…’’ The director just waved his hand to interrupt.

‘’Don’t try saying you were practicing a scene because I wrote the Soldier Boy and Cangaceira kiss, and it wasn’t here.’’ Acid tainted his words with no space for fake niceties on his set. Jensen remained in the chair, not even daring to make the most subtle move. Eric knew where he was hitting, and Ackles deserved a punch in the jaw. “The sex scene wasn’t here either, but you two added a lot of erotic subtext. Trust me, I know.’’

His shoulders fell in exhaustion. ‘’Eric…’’

‘’You’re lucky we were going to make those two a couple anyway. I can just put the kiss here and save your ass. What if that wasn’t the case, huh?’’ the director continued, more interested in spilling out his anger than listening to dumb excuses. ‘’What about Danneel, Jensen? You have a wife and kids, for God’s sake!’’

The breaking point. Jensen rose to his feet with sudden frustration, a growl leaving his lips as he pushed the chair to the side with uncharacteristic brutality. How could Eric bring up his family like this? And how could Jensen’s heart not bring them up when he kissed you before?  It was all a fucking mess, and he had no choice but to choke down whatever came out of it, even if it was poison and spite.

‘’Fuck, Eric! Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think it doesn’t pull me apart every time I go home and know I’m lying to the people who love me?’’ The vein on his neck popped as he spoke, emotion gushing thicker through his arteries than blood. Woe remerged under his skin as he swallowed dryly, resting his hands on the table and looking down. That wasn’t him. He had done a lot of things that weren't him lately. ‘’I have enough guilt here, pal.’’

Eric just glared down at the man’s outburst, furrowing before asking, ‘’What’s going on, Jay? You don’t just get up and cheat on your wife. That ain’t you.’’

He shook his head. ‘’I don’t know. Y/N’s just…’’

‘’At least 20 years younger than you,” he stated. ‘’Just starting her career and might be getting the homewrecker title if someone finds out.’’

‘’I won’t let that happen.’’

‘’How? You are gonna be more careful or will you cut it out and go back to your wife and three kids?’’ When Ackles didn’t respond, Eric sighed. ‘’Just stop this, Jensen. Let her go.’’

Jensen scoffed humorlessly. ‘’I can’t.’’

Kripke felt like talking to a teenager. He shook his head as he got up. ‘’Do you have any idea what you’re doing here? This could destroy your family, destroy Y/N’s chance to make a name when you already have your own. That’s selfish in all proportions, Jensen!’’

‘’I know, I know.’’

‘’She deserves more than this and —’’

‘’I know.’’

‘’You are gonna mess up everyone’s lives —’’

‘’I know!’’ He slammed the table and winced, turning around with his hands on his head. If only he could stop his thoughts for a second and reorganize his feelings. ‘’Do you think it doesn’t rip my heart out that I can’t love her?’’

‘’Who?’’ The burning question was ready to set everything ablaze. ‘’You can’t love Y/N, or you can’t love your wife anymore, Jensen?’’

He couldn’t love you in public. He couldn’t love Danneel anywhere. Love just escaped through his reaches when you spoke his name like a prayer, and it was time to accept that.

‘’Both.’’

NO CHICK FLICK MOMENTS: SOLDIER BOY AND CANGACEIRA TALK ABOUT WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THEIR RELATIONSHIP

‘’It's amazing to portray with Jensen. I’ve watched Supernatural since I was like twelve, which probably isn't advisable.’’ You chortled, answering the reporter’s question. Your body could barely contain your excitement under your skin, although, why would you want that? You did it. You got the job you had dreamed and worked hard for. To a bonus, you were working with Jensen Ackles! If there was someone that had earned the right to scream to the sky until your face was the color of the red carpet your heels currently stood on, it was you. ‘‘I was even a Samgirl!’’

Jensen faked a gasp next to you, a light spectrum surrounding the interview. ‘’Really? Me too!’’

You pushed his shoulder playfully while he chuckled. ‘’Anyway, I'm very excited to be here and portray a strong latina superhero. The representation’s very important, and to be able not only to cherish it, but to be a part of it doing what I love and inspiring people like me is… mythical.’’

‘’Wow, woman!’’ Ackles pursed his lips, clapping a little before shifting his gaze from you to the reporter. ‘’She likes the big words. I swear, dude. She’ll just come and in like, a casual conversation, say something like gelid or whilst, and then she's gonna say dumbass. Both sound smart as heck.’’

You winked. ''It's the accent. Makes everything sound nice.”’

Jensen nodded but was quick to sprinkle in an incendiary remark to his compliments. ‘’Yeah, I have never seen someone confuse coach and couch before. Go sit on the coach got a lot of wrong ideas.’’

‘’Hey, you sat on the coach!’’

‘’Because I’m a good boy.’’

You rolled your eyes despite the grin on your lips. ‘’Sure, mister hours-to-get-ready.’’

‘’Hey, plenty of face masks are needed to keep this — ’’ He pointed at his face. ‘’at fourteen.’’

‘’All I hear is that you’re old.’’ Your eyebrows knitted together. Jensen licked his lips at the sight. On any other day, he’d pick you up, say I’m gonna show you who’s old, and enjoy where your teasing had gotten you two, but he couldn’t do it now. You’d get what was coming to you after the event, perhaps even under the table if your dress allowed it, or in the bathroom, if you kept going.

The mischievous smirk on your cherry-stained lips proved that you knew what was going through his mind. God, you were his sweet death. Nonetheless, Jensen sighed dramatically and looked at the camera. ‘’This is what I have to deal with every day.’’

The reporter went on, happily surprised about how comfortable you and Jensen seemed together. Usually, new coworkers were timider around each other during interviews, especially when they were a romantic pair. The journalist decided to try getting a little sneak peek of the couple aspects of Soldier Boy and Cangaceira.

‘’It's definitely interesting.’’

‘’But not in the best way.’’ The only thing more messed up than Jensen’s relationship with you was the correlation between your characters. At least you and he had the purity of love, even if it was twisted enough to turn heads and churn stomachs

‘’Certainly not in the best way.’’ You agreed, bringing him back into reality as always. ‘’It's really nice to explore a couple that doesn't consist of two white people getting to it like most main characters of the shows in our current climate. It’s not the kind of relationship you should be rooting for — not because it's interracial or anything, that's pretty much the biggest, if not only, positive aspect about those two — but because they aren’t healthy at all, just as all main relationships in our show. It's not a romance series, and we certainly don't treat our couples like it.’’

‘’Told you she is the beauty and the brains.’’ His cheeks dimpled with joy and pride as he looked at you. Jensen knew how excitedly nervous you were about that interview. He couldn’t wait to tell you how great you were like you were born to sell dreams and magazines. ‘’But yeah, it’s a messed up relationship like any other in The Boys. After all, it's not a respectful, wholesome show. It's about gritty superheroes that ain’t got heroism. Soldier Boy isn't a good guy, and it translates in his relationship too.’’

You nodded in agreement, brushing his arm to keep you sane. ‘’It’ll be an interesting dynamic to see on-screen to our show standards, but it's not an actual picture of how a relationship should be.’’

THE BOYS 100TH EPISODE PARTY!

The glimmer of his green comet eyes caught your undivided attention in the throngs of people. The crowd had gathered for his family, his arm around his wife's waist as you both shared a tender, stolen look. You savored her wine and yearned for the man in her arms.

It was just a small celebration due to COVID’s lasting effects on public events. People from the set and their significants together were in the Ackles house for a couple of drinks, small talk, and a cake with The Boy’s comics printed on it.

‘’Aunt Y/N!’’ JJ tugged your dress, her mix of Danneel and Jensen’s features almost haunting your soul. Almost. You would never despise a kid for that — you didn’t even have the right to. If anything, JJ was the one that would graduate to hating you someday. You didn't have enough youthful stupidity not to know the risks of being in love with a married man. ‘’Auntie!’’

You leaned in the most that you could with the red skirt, glancing at the child. ‘’Yes, honey?’’

‘’That’s my new Barbie! I bought a beach one! She looks like you!’’ the blonde kid said with a childish joy that ached in your heart. You could end up destroying her family’s stability if Jensen went any further, yet there she was; buying dolls that looked like you and so happily babbling about it.

You were a monster. Love opened you up and planted greedy seeds, and now you were a monster growing like a beautiful tree that could never be strong enough to hold a kid as they climbed up. The fact that you could sense Jensen’s eyes on your ass didn’t help one bit.

‘’She does! That’s so cute, JJ.’’

‘’You can be her. I have one who looks like mommy, I’ll be her, ‘kay?’’

Your nausea was replaced by a pageant smile and a nod, and so you spent the night sharing longing stares with the dad and playing dolls with the daughter. It was a role that was never yours.

ILLICIT AFFAIR? JENSEN ACKLES SEEN ON THE BEACH WITH Y/N Y/L/N

‘’I can’t believe you did this to me, to our family,‘’ Danneel screamed exasperatedly as she threw her clothes in a bag and heart on the wall. Jensen just stood there, accepting the deserved fury. ‘’Ten years of my life, Jensen, and you just threw it away for a mistress! I gave up on my job to be a stay at home mom because you didn’t want a babysitter. I supported you in every moment. I loved you!’’

‘’I’m sorry…’’

‘’You don’t get to be sorry,” she howled, glaring at him with the hatred of an overthrown nation. She felt like he got to the podium and forgot to say her name. ‘’You let that woman get in my house, drink my wine, talk to my children…’’

Reflexively, he said, ‘’Our.’’

‘’Shut the fuck up! There’s no ours anymore, no us!’’ Her words had garnered a learned violence, much louder than the sound of the zipper closing her duffel bag. She threw the CC exclusive on the floor, holding onto the handle for dear life. He didn’t deserve to see her breaking, only her anger. ‘’You destroyed our family, you destroyed me!’’

He pleaded, unable to discern if it was for her or the guilt: ‘’Dee.’’

‘’I hope you’re happy. I hope you go to her, get her to sleep on our bed, and be happy for a month.’’ She gulped, pursing her lips. Her glossy eyes coupled with the pink hue of her lipstick brought back a treacherous memory of their wedding day. ‘’And then, I hope she cheats, like you did to me.’’

The next headline didn’t call it love.

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“Is that my shirt?” For a Chenford prompt! Love your writing♥️

Thank you for the prompt anon! I hope this does the prompt justice 😉

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When Lucy Chen woke up that morning it wasn’t to the sound of her alarm, no. It was to the sound of a fist banging on her front door before Jackson West barged into the room.

“Chen! Let’s go, we’re going to be late!” She heard as she startled awake, sitting up.

“Shit!” She yelled throwing back the covers as she stumbled out of the bed, her body wavering as her feet hit the floor.

“What happened?” Jackson asked from the doorway as Lucy began to run around her room.

“I don’t know! I think my phone died last night while I was on the phone with-“ she began telling him as she threw on the first articles of acceptable clothing she could find. “Can I borrow your charger in the car?”

“Sure. But hurry we're going to be late.”

“Thanks roomie!” she yelled as he walked out.

Lucy hurriedly finished getting dressed, throwing on a pair of flats to go with her outfit before grabbing her duffle bag, keys and phone before running out of the apartment. She took the stairs down, two at a time, towards the main floor, swinging the metal door that separates the inside from the outside as she sprinted to Jackson’s waiting car.

“This is not how I wanted to start my Friday!” she huffed to her roommate and friend as she shut the door, buckling quickly as they headed out onto the street.

Jackson held out his right hand, a wrapped breakfast bar laid in his palm. “I grabbed you breakfast.”

Lucy took it, unwrapping and taking a bite as she plugged up her phone. “Thank you.” She said between another bite.

“So, who were you talking to so late last night that caused your phone to die?”

Lucy grimaced. “You caught that huh?”

Jackson nodded. “If you’re not ready to talk about it, that’s ok. But at least tell me you ran a background check on him.”

She snorted. “I did and I promise that his intentions are sound.”

“His intentions?” Jackson questioned, looking over his sunglasses to the girl in the passenger seat. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that it’s kind of serious.” She shrugged. “We’ve been on a few dates. He’s been to mine, I’ve been to his. He even FaceTimed my parents once.”

“He’s met your parents? And just how long has this-“

Jackson began to ask as Lucy’s phone charging in the cup holder began chiming. She picked it up, scrolling through her missed messages.

“Huh. That’s weird.”

“What?”

“I got a message from Grey telling me to plain clothes it today. Wonder what that’s all about.”

“Special assignment maybe? We are P2s now.”

Lucy furrowed her brow as she fired off a text message before she began fixing her hair into a bun. “Maybe, I guess we’ll find out during roll call.”

They made idle conversation going down the road as Lucy fixed her light make-up, Jackson steering the car into the parking lot, parking in their normal spot. “Hey, did you finish that report about the robbery from yesterday?”

Lucy grabbed her things, exiting the car. “Yeah, I need to thank Nolan for the backup. If he didn’t show when he did, I would hate to think what could have happened.”

They enter the department, Lucy telling Jackson about the two men who tried to rob the convenience store granny before they went their separate ways to the locker rooms.

Lucy placed her bag into her locker, grabbing her badge, holstering her gun, and double checking her ankle holster before she pocketed her knife.

“Hey, good catch yesterday with the Gardner Twins. They’re regulars, always in and out of jail but I heard that the old woman held her own?” Nyla congratulated as she adjusted the duty belt she just put on.

Lucy laughed, heading for the door. “Yeah, when I pulled up on scene, she had one held at gun point and the other at cane point which would have been nothing if it wasn’t for the blade sticking out of it.”

“Sounds like that is one grandma not to be messed with.”

“Definitely not, she had brass knuckles and pepper spray in her purse too.” Lucy told Nyla as they entered the meeting room, both taking their respective seats with the others at their tables in the back.

Angela Lopez walked in, sitting down beside Lucy. “Morning.”

“Morning.”

Angela turned around to Nyla, asking a question before she turned back around to the front. “Nice shirt.”

“Than-“ Lucy began saying as she looked down, stopping her words in their tracks. ‘Oh no.’ her mind repeated frantically. In her haste to get dressed she didn’t pay attention to the shirt she put on, sure she knew the olive green color, knew it would match her dark washed jeans but ‘I should have looked in the mirror.’ was really a statement she needed stamped on her forehead.

“Morning.” Tim said as he sat down in the chair next to Nyla. “You get a special assignment or something?” he asked, looking at his former rookie.

Lucy was still amidst her internal conflict. ‘Should I go change? How could I have been so stupid, this is what I get for not laying my clothes out last night.’

“Boot!” Tim said sternly, his voice a tone he hasn’t used on her in a while, pulling her out of her stupor.

“I’m sorry, did you ask something?”

“Yeah, what’s with the plain clothes?”

Lucy shrugged. “Grey told me to dress down.”

“And that means wearing your boyfriend’s shirt?” snorted Angela as she took a sip of her coffee.

Lucy panicked. “Oh this? This isn’t my boyfriend’s, it’s Jackson’s.”

“Jackson was in the Army?” Angela smirked, pointing out the green shirt with black lettering.

“No, it’s Sterling’s. He wore it on that military movie he made a few years ago.”

Angela looked at her incredulously before glancing at Nyla and Tim who was watching the interaction with great intent. “Uh-huh.”

“Alright let’s settle down and get to it…” Sergeant Grey said as he took his place behind the podium.

“What’d I miss?” Jackson asked as he quickly sat down in the other chair opposite of Lucy.

“My funeral.” She mumbled.

Jackson turned slightly “What?”

“Nothing.” She said quickly as Grey glared the two down.

Thirty minutes later Sergeant Grey had given Lucy her assignment, assisting the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives undercover at a local bar that was serving alcohol to minors.

“Hey, wait for me.” Said the voice of her former training officer behind her. She slowed her steps, allowing him to join her. “You want a ride?”

“Sure. You set?”

Tim motioned his head towards the garage bay, “Let’s go.”

Lucy may have been the most under qualified of all the female officers in the department to go undercover, but she had what the ATF was looking for and everyone has to start somewhere. She felt a sense of relief when Sergeant Grey partnered her with Tim for the day, the newly appointed Sergeant providing backup in case things went sideways.

“So, what’s your cover again?” Tim asked. He would be parked nearby, listening in with another ATF field agent as Lucy went on a ‘date’ with one of their agents while two others attempted to get served alcohol.

Lucy read the paper in her hand, the information vague besides the location of the bar and who they would be meeting with outside of the bar.

Tim nodded. “Did you bring another shirt?”

“No, Grey didn’t tell me anything other than to wear plain clothes, which I didn’t see till I had already left my apartment.”

“Isn’t that my shirt?” he asked, smirking.

“Apparently I feel asleep talking to someone on the phone last night and never plugged it up, which caused my phone to die, so my alarm to never went off and Jackson had to wake me up. I was in a bit of a rush this morning getting dressed and thought I was putting on my olive swing top.” She glared.

“I’m not complaining, you look better in it anyways.”

“Yeah, well I’m pretty sure Angela knows it’s yours.”

Tim shrugged “She’s a Detective for a reason. It was cute you know.”

“What was cute?”

“Hearing you snore.”

Lucy opened her mouth “I do not snore!”

“You do.” He laughed. “I can’t believe I never noticed it before last night.”

“I was tired, yesterday was a long day. Besides, it’s probably nothing compared to the logs that you saw at night.”

Tim looked at her before agreeing with what she said. “I’m not going to deny that. But at least my feet don’t feel like blocks of ice.”

“I can’t help that my feet stay cold! I don’t like wearing socks to bed.”

“Lucy, I don’t mind being your personal heater but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to keep an extra blanket or two next to the beds.”

Lucy thought for a moment as she pulled her hair out of its hold, tousling the brown waves. “Fine.”

“Or we could just make it bed, as in singular.” He offered as he parked the shop next to the curb.

“Is that your way of asking me to move in with you?”

“I don’t know, is it? We've been together almost a year, we're both in a good place right now and half of your closet is in my bedroom closet."  He reminded her as he grabbed the handheld radio mounted to the dash.”7-Adam-19 show us out for special assignment.”

“7-Adam-19 10-4.”

“You don’t have to answer now, we can talk about more after shift.” He told her as he stepped out of the car. “You ready?” he asked as Lucy nodded her head, moving towards the small group of people on the sidewalk. “Let’s knock ‘em dead boot. Agent Edwards? Sergeant Tim Bradford this is Officer Lucy Chen, glad we could assist you today.”

[monsoonblooms12]

Detectives By Chance: Chapter 7- Hide & Seek

Summary of the Series: It was supposed to be a usual weekend for the four. Coffee, fun, friends and love. But an unexpected case changed their lives in a way they had never imagined. A mystery - a murder - many secrets… Will Ethan, Pooja, Alexandra and Mark, be able to survive? Or will the circumstances twist and break their lives forever?

A/N: Okay, let me get this straight. This is ALL Action and Miles being evil. The most happening chapter of the series, and my favourite chapter because it brings out that fighter inside Pooja. Also, a lil bittersweet moment because only 2 chapters are left, and then we are done. (And I am using my Wattpad cover for this chapter because A. I like it! and B. It gives me the dark feels that embody this chapter) Anyway, hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I wrote it!💛

If you enjoy the story, please like it, leave a comment or reblog. Your feedback keeps me going💕

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey X f!MC (Dr Pooja Sharma)

Word Count: about 4.3K

Rating: Teen

Triggers: Curse Words, Mentions of blood, murder Gun Violence

Disclaimer: PB owns most of the characters. I only own the OCs and my MC.

Prompt:- @choicesaprilchallenge2021 Day 14: Now or Never

CATCH UP HERE: Previous Chapter I Complete Series

It took all of her self-control as she prevented herself from throwing away her phone and breaking it into a thousand pieces.

Only the thought, the hope of a chance to save her Ethan, to save Mark and Alex, who were like family to her kept her going.

It was A Now or Never Moment for her.

Seconds later, Pooja's phone tinged. The screen lit up. She unlocked it to see the address that glared from her screen towards her. The address that hid all secrets and all proofs. The address which held the love of her life in who knows what condition.

She got into the car, entered the address on GPS and drove as fast as her driving skills allowed. Her mouth turned dry, face pale, beads of sweat on her forehead, her mind whirling through numerous unpleasant thoughts and a lingering doubt,

Will she be able to save them?

After what felt like a lifetime to her, Pooja arrived at her destination. A mid-sized mansion stood tall amid a deserted locality. The place was so muted, that the silence seemed to make voices. The winds gushed, chilling her bones. She stood in front of the black wood door. The silver handle's shine was unsolicited for her eyes. She took a deep breath.

Do this, for them. They are your family.

The thought repeated in her mind like verses of an orison. She let the ire, the woe to flood her soul and with fortitude and balance, she pushed the door.

He had kept it open.

The door clicked in place as she entered the devil's edifice. The interior was tenebrous, the conspiracy of silence etched deep in every wood and every wall.

"You are here"

The sudden sound caused Pooja to quail. The words resounded throughout the mansion, causing goosebumps to rise on her skin. The sweat on her body contrasted with the rigour of the air.

There was no doubt in her mind. Her caller was here.

Miles Danvers was here.

But... She Looked Around. Where is He? She looked around, maybe it was a mirage. She looked everywhere but there was no sign of him.

"Don't try, You won't be able to see me." The ominous voice struck again.

Another chill ran down her spine. The thought of Ethan being unaccompanied in the devil's edifice with the devil himself was unbearable.

Will I be able to do this?

"Awww, Tsk, Tsk, is little blossom scared? Did I give her a heart attack?" Miles spoke mockingly.

That was the last straw. She would never give him the satisfaction of having scared her. With as much courage she could muster she yelled,

"AHHHH! You ruthless, sinister, cruel, heartless, disgusting monster. What the freaking hell do you want? Why the hell are you doing this? You are a goddamn monster, you are a freaking BASTARD."

She stopped for a breath.

"Not only that, you are a coward. You are a goddamn fucking coward. You don't dare to face the consequences of your actions. Hell, you don't even dare to come out and face me. If you had the courage, you wouldn't do what you have done. Now come out, you ruthless bastard. Get the hell out and come and face me." Pooja screamed hysterically.

"What will you get by yelling at me, hmm? Will Mark and Alexandra be out of jail? Or will you find Ramsey? Which one, huh?"

"You're the one who is responsible for all of this. You disg-"

"Do you want to save them?"

She felt as if her heart had stopped. Her mind pondering with hundreds of thoughts, doubts, yet she waited with batted breath for him to continue.

"Le silence signifie le consentement."

"J'accepte" Pooja muttered. Bloody Show Off

"Hmm. Three Clues, Three tips, Three keys. Three is your lucky number, isn't it? So let's put your luck to test and see if your lucky number is lucky enough to save your dear ones" Miles challenged her with a mock that boiled her blood. Seeing her helpless was utter humour for his soul and he was cackling in joy.

She shouted, hurled abuses, banged her fists, but there was no answer, no reply other than "You are running out of time... Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha...."

Her legs were giving out, she felt herself losing her balance, her steadiness. A chance, wasn't that all you needed? She heard her alter ego questioned her.

So good friends, like family, huh? Is this what you do for family, fall and bow to danger without putting up a fight? Is this what you did, when you fought for your mother, give up just like that?

Her sane mind was questioning her. No. She didn't give up then, She will not give up now. Maybe she will never make it out of here, maybe nor will they. But it was better to die fighting for them, than dying without even trying, striving for them.

"Miles", her steady voice, with power and courage, surprised him for a moment, but he wasn't shocked. This was Pooja Sharma after all. One who always stood for the right, even if it would make her lose her dreams.

"I am ready. And I hope you are too."

"Are you sure? This game can take that breath from you."

"Until it does, I will fight. For them"

A part of his mind already knew that she would win. But for his ego, accepting defeat was never an option.

"Fight all you want to. But winning is not an option for you."

"Time shall tell the answer"

"Alright, Two rooms to the left, and your search beginsss."

She ran. The worn-out door refused to give way to her. She pushed, but her strength was not enough. If only you had drunk that milk your mom gave you. Her mind swirled to the thoughts of her mother and she had to give a jerk to come back to the present.

"Seven minutes up already, and you're still stuck at the door. How sad!"

Cursing him under her breath, she upped her power and got ready to give a push just as,

Her fingertips felt a carving on the door. She had been praised for her impeccable sense of touch, but she never knew that it would come in handy in a dire situation one day.

Her mind, her heart, indicated that this was the clue, and she slowly, gently, moved her palm on the door. She got a slight trail of the carving and followed it further a few times. It took her about a minute to comprehend what it was.

A word. TIME. She was looking for something to do with time. But what? The place was so quiet that one would hear the ticking. But she didn't. Although auditory skills were never her strong point after she had a blockage in her left ear and had to go through five doctor visits to clear it, she was sure that there was no analogue clock around her. Her brain cells were running haywire when her shoes rubbed the floor. Sand had been spread around. Consciously.

Because on her trail from the main entrance to the door she was standing in front of right now, she was sure she hadn't felt sand anywhere other than this specific space. This was an indication, It had to be.

Time and Sand, Time and Sand, where do we find time and sand together. Time and sand... Her mind rushed frantically through a dozen options, none fitting the criteria, while Miles smirked at her foolishness.

And then, Oh shit, HOURGLASS! She practically jumped and nearly fell, as she comprehended the answer. With the newfound energy, she pushed the door, and it opened with a BANG! Her hand went to her pocket and she almost shrieked as she felt her phone, about which she had completely forgotten the moment she set her step in here. Taking it out and switching on the flashlight, she trailed into the room. Looking around and tripping on a dozen articles, she finally located the semi-broken hourglass. She held it under the flashlight and the words, upstairs, three rooms right, written in red, came to sight.

She glanced around the room once more, to make sure that there was nothing she was leaving out.

Her eyes stopped their search as her eyes fell on the five drawers of the broken cupboard on which the hourglass was kept. Only one of the drawers was in place, and that made it seem out of place in midst of all the chaos. She pulled at it, Once, Twice, Thrice, before it gave way. A blue file lay inside it. She picked it up, hoping to find some useful information and rushed on to the next step of her search.

On the other side, a corner of Miles's mind was terrified and nagged him to do something before it was too late, and he became the loser of his own game. But he just sat there, not moving an inch, as he watched Pooja running towards her next destination.

The next door, to her surprise, was pretty sturdy and opened easily. No catch this time? Unbelievable. As far as she had come to know Miles Danvers, setting up clues right in front of her eye was a far-fetched possibility.

She double-checked the exterior. Nah, nothing here, she was sure of it. Her silent steps fell on the hardwood floor as she looked around in the room for the clue. Her mind got distracted and worry came flooding back. Will she be able to save them? Was she even going to make out of her alive?

Suddenly, her foot struck something and,

"Twoooo Roooomsss Toooo Theee Rightttt..."

The Echo and her Shriek came almost simultaneously. And with the two sounds, mixed the third one of a cackle, from Miles.

The sudden rush of Adrenaline left her panting.

After a few minutes wasted in overcoming it, she kicked the weird machine once more. The Echo came again, this time clearer than the first one. But since, she didn't trust her ears, or maybe it was just her anger speaking, she kicked it once more.

Two rooms to the right was her next destination. She moved towards the exit, having checked the surroundings already and no clue found.

A few footsteps outside the room later, a thought struck her. She rushed back to the previous room, and using her flashlight, picked up the echo machine and checked it thoroughly.

And right her intuition was! A piece of paper stuck between the lined back. She took it out and unfolded it. It was a code.

M14-6D9

She looked around. There had to be something that opened with the code.

Wow! Such thorough checking! She rolled her eyes, berating her self.

And as she did so, her mind went back to every time Lex had called her the living image of the 🙄 emoji.

A light, sorrowful chuckle escaped her, along with a lone tear.

She let it drop and moved on to complete the mission she had partaken in.

She searched, and Nah, Nothing at all. Pooja doubtfully looked around. Was she missing out on something, or was it just another one of Miles' Red Herrings to mislead her?

Five seconds and temporarily deciding on the second option, she went out to the next room and thought of coming back to this later.

Pooja went to grab the surprisingly well-kept handle, and in a reflex pulled it back. The handle was abnormally hot. It felt out of nowhere. No fire, no nothing, how the hell was the door handle so freaking hot?!

Of Course, she couldn't twist and turn a burning hot doorknob and harm her chances of success. So, she decided on other ways of opening the door. She kicked, pushed, forced it with the tad bit of strength left in her, but the door didn't even budge a single inch.

Her ankle sprained with the forceful kicking, she sat down. Tears rolled down her eyes, but she couldn't decide why.

The pain in her ankle, the fear of failing or a mix of both?

But obviously, No pain greater than letting down those whom you love.

She couldn't comprehend the time she was losing as she sat there, crying silently. She slowly started to rise, but couldn't bother to wipe her tears. Wasn't this what Miles Danvers wanted to see? She let him enjoy his short-lived victory.

Forgetting that the doorknob was hot as hell, she held it, and before she could withdraw her hand, her eyes fell on a cuboidal machine stuck just below the spherical structure.

This time, she did wipe the water from her glassy eyes, to get a better look.

Pooja switched on the flashlight and looked closely at it. So this was the mini devil burning her palm. After a few minutes of scrutinizing the black box closely, her eyes caught a red button on the downside of it. She went on to switch it off, and as soon as she did, the faint, almost inaudible buzz coming from it stopped.

The devil had been silenced.

But she knew that it would take time for the knob to cool down. She searched her jean pockets, and luckily her baby blue handkerchief with a neat P Alekhya has sewn on it was there to save the day.

She folded the kerchief in half and with it tried twisting the knob. A Few failed attempts later, she slowly opened the door.

But as soon as the light fell inside the room, her phone and kerchief, both fell on the floor.

The floor swayed under her feet. In front of her on a one-arm broken couch, lay Ethan.

Her Ethan.

The only light-emitting source of the room now lay covered on the floor, preventing her from taking a better look. And she was shaken to the core by the way events unfolded, layer by layer, that there was nothing to say at all.

Her brain froze, all ideas drowning down the drain, her confidence uprooted by the pain she felt seeing her love like that. A Thousand thoughts spiralling in her mind, but she pushed them aside. Her knee bruised by the fall, her feet wobbled as she tried to get up. Garnering strength on an empty stomach & little sleep was becoming increasingly difficult for her, but she needed to go on.

Giving up was never an option

She got up and decided to look around for a way out of the musty building with Ethan, all while hiding from Miles' eyes. Because he had been keeping an eye on her.

Picking up her phone, she directed the light around the room. Raggedy and Unclean, her fingers clenched around her phone as she felt fury fill in her veins. If she didn't have morals, she would have killed Miles herself at that very instant.

There were no cupboards or drawers anywhere around the room. She strolled around with careful steps and heard dry leaves and glass crunching underneath her foot. Pooja looked at the floor, and seeing its condition, didn't hope to find anything helpful.

That's when her eyes fell on a piece of paper. She picked the dust-coated sheet which had become brown from its originally white colour. She tried opening it up using a single hand but ended up tearing it a bit. Pocketing her phone, she opened the sheet up gently and then took the phone out again. Flashing the light, she slowly went through the contents.

It was a map of the building, and she had never felt as grateful as she did at the moment.

She studied it closely, carefully and located a narrow stairway at the corner of the first floor, i.e. the floor she was on, that would lead her out of the building without having to use the main entrance.

She needed to take E out of here, at any cost. But how in God's name was she going to carry her Dr Giraffe alone, all while making sure Miles didn't have suspicions?

She made his unconscious body sit upright as the couch creaked. This broken shit isn't going to last much longer, she thought to herself. She couldn't take any chances of getting caught. Whatever you have to do, do it quick.

She bent and locked his arms around her neck. Then, she stood up slowly and an Uff! escaped her mouth. Wish I had paid attention to the weight lifting lessons.

Pooja lifted him off the sofa and enclosed his long, really long legs, around her waist. And as she started to walk, she stumbled back and forth, and almost fell, as she gained a stable posture. She slowly got out, making sure her shoes don't prompt the creaky floorboards to begin a musical. She scooted to the farthest edge of the floor and walked quickly to reach the darkest corner.

A walk of a lifetime and approaching the darkness, her eyes struggled to make out the door for the staircase. She trusted her intuition and slowly, very carefully, placed a foot in front of the other, as she made her way down. She worried that E might get hurt, and she would hate herself for the rest of her years if that happened.

The grey light at the end of the staircase was a ray of hope for her. She thanked her past self for parking the car closer to this side of the building as she hurried to place Ethan there. She felt her pockets and found the key faster than her expectation. She opened the passenger seat and placed E down on the floor because as much as she hated it, she couldn't take chances with Miles locating him in the car in case he came for a lookout.

Phew! She was relieved that whether or not she makes it out of the mess she had got tangled in, her love will be safe. Locking him safely in, she rushed back to the mansion.

On her way back, she rushed a bit too much, all while forgetting to switch on her flashlight. She tripped badly on the stairs and fell facedown. When she got up, the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. She felt a blank space in her mouth. She had lost a tooth.

She made her way back and expressed her gratitude to God for letting her make this trip safely. She remembered to shut the door behind as she left and made her quickly to the room where Ethan was held captive. A mistake she had noticed the time she looked at the map was that she had entered the wrong room.

And it was a four-leafed clover for her.

She closed the door of the forbidden room just as her ears pricked up. Tips & Taps of someone's footsteps made her heartbeat rush as she quickly moved to the actual room she was supposed to be searching.

"Hmmm" Miles arrived behind her, hands in pocket. The room in front of her didn't have a door.

"So are you planning to spend the rest of your life chillin' here? That'll be a wonderful plan!" He mocked her and the list of the number of times Poo had wanted to punch him had just become longer.

"What the fuck do you want?" She hissed.

A lopsided grin told her that he was having the best time of his life tormenting her.

"No, I just wanted to check if you will ever make out of here or not."

"And what conclusion did you arrive at?" She mocked curiosity.

"I think- No, scratch that. I am sure, that this" He gestured around him, "is your Final Destination"

His grim laughter filled the place as he went around, checking his surroundings, especially the forbidden room.

Poo had smartly switched on the Make-Hot machine to avoid any suspicions. Seeing, rather, feeling that the door handle was perfectly hot as hell, he returned, and she let out the sigh of utmost relief.

Her heart was filled with gratitude as she thanked God, over and over again, as things turned out in her favour in a place where she had no resource & no help. Although she still felt as if she had been left on the battlefield without preparation or weapons, she used her skills to pave her way safely.

The last room, surprisingly well-kept, lay open before her. Please let me pass this last one, she let out a silent prayer and went in.

Flashlight on, she looked around. This time it was only evidence and no clues and keeping that in mind she carried on her search. A bed lay at the centre of the room. All around were shelves and cupboards which had been kept to mislead her and make her waste her time. A 40% charge in her phone and the clock telling her that she had only 20 minutes left to get out safely, she hurried away.

Quickly opening one drawer and then the other, disappointment flooded her as she failed to locate any file, folder, hell, even a piece of paper.

At last, all drawers, cupboards done and nothing there at all. She felt let down, her heart palpitated. She sat down on the bed and as she placed her hand, heard the very soft scrunch of paper. The stillness of the surroundings was the reason why she could hear it.

She quickened her actions and lifted all the goddamn blankets, to reveal a bunch of paper, half folded, half-torn. She gathered them all. Suddenly she felt something stuck behind one of the sheets. Turning it revealed a USB drive.

Fuck, this was her gold!

She rushed out, picking the papers and the blue file she had collected from the first room. She remembered to check back the second one and the M something code. When she tried to reopen the door, however, she failed. All her trials went in vain. Unlike last time, the door didn't even budge this time.

And then, the entire manor shook as the roar of a bullet echoed all around her. It had been shot just next to her foot, and she stood frozen at her place. She slowly turned around, and saw Miles, with the evil expression on his face appearing to shine in dim light, standing there with a gun.

Slowly, Stuttering, Pooja asked, "What, what, t-the h, hell do you think you are, are doing?"

"I said I will give you the clues, I never said I will let you get away with them. Why would I invite my danger, when putting you to the deathbed would be much, much, easier?" Miles Danvers hissed.

"You want to do a second murder, lose the chance to save your brother forever?"

At the mention of Mark, Miles did fall a little weak, but that passed in a heartbeat.

"Girl, if I really cared about him, I would have never plotted against him in the first place. Bringing you here, was just a ploy, a mask, so that I can finish all four of you and live my life in peace."

He moved forward, one step and the next, as Pooja tried to run. He held her hand with a bone-crushing grip and twisted her hand to her back and held the gun to her cheek. She tried to free herself as she cried out in pain. Her eyes widened as the cold metal touched her skin.

She had really walked into hell at her own will.

Pooja knew her twisting and turning will not be able to help her a bit. So she tried to remember the self-defence techniques she had learnt in her teens and using her foot, kicked him hard in the groin.

He groaned in pain and his attention shifted. Pooja taking the chance, ran swiftly down the stairs, only to slip down the stairs and land on the ground floor. She incurred painful injuries and couldn't move for a good minute.

Even as she mustered the courage to sit up, her body ached in extreme pain. She must've sprained something real bad. Miles was still withering in pain, and she took the chance to get up and slowly move towards the exit.

She dragged her foot and muttered to herself,

Just one more step, just one more.

This rhyme gave her the strength as she almost made it to the door and then

AAH!

Blood splattered on the ground as the bullet pierced through her left hand, and she held the door to support herself. Tears rushed out of her eyes as Pooja screamed in pain.

At least it was her hand and not her mind that had been hurt. Even in pain, she acted smart. Throwing away the files that she held in her right hand outside, she took out the pepper spray that she always had in her pocket and sprayed a good bit of it at the approaching Miles.

It was her black, powdered dynamite, her most powerful weapon.

Coughing, Sneezing, Stumbling, Miles let out cries of help and the gun was very soon forgotten.

Smirking through her tears, Pooja chanted, It's the end Miles, It's the end.

Getting out of there, She shut off the main entrance door on his face and collected all the papers with her non-injured hand. Dragging her foot slowly, she escaped, pride and contentment filled in her heart.

Whatever she did, whatever pain she received, all paled as she bathed in the joy of the possibility of finally being able to rescue her people, her persons.

She did it, for her family...

You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only choice.

PS: I would have killed Miles myself if given the chance😡 Also sorry for this dark, twisty tale after my birthday. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this mess and here's to hoping that you have a wonderful day ahead🧡! Love You!

Tags (Please let me know if you want to be added or removed!): @bbrandy2002 @whimsicallywayward15 @ohramsey @nervoussaladsludgeopera @trrfanaddict @hopelessromanticmonie @ilikemenbutonlyethanramsey @lovablegranny @bellcat2010 @gkittylove99 @kingliam2019 @starrystarrytrouble @3riche @chetachisblog @zoehanji @withbeautyandrage @drariellevalentine @mvalentine @aestheticartsx @angela8754 @schnitzelbutterfingers @ao719 @choicesstan1 @neotericthemis @arnikki-2406 @anotherbeingsworld @maurine07 @sophxwithers @twinkleallnight @choicesaddict5 @gardeningourmet @mysticaurathings @jessiembruno

[dorminchu]

Insult to Injury: Chapter V [preview]

Fandom: James Bond

Characters: Madeleine Swann, Lyutsifer Safin, OCs

Relationships: Safin & Madeleine

Warnings: Blood and semi-graphic violence, moderate language.

Rating: M

Two weeks later, Safin was checking into the Hotel Seevilla under a false name and considering his plan. It was an hour-long walk from the hotel around lake Altaussee to the cabin. The climate here was biting and Gruber, his contact, had gotten a real kick out of his quiet fascination with snow.

He received several odd looks because he was obviously not from around the area, but he let Gruber do most of the talking. Within the same evening he arrived a package was delivered to his room which contained; a vz. 58 in 7.62x39mm rifle with a side-folding stock; a bulletproof vest to be worn beneath his shirt; parka, snowpants and boots; a porcelain mask, intricately painted; and a photograph of Mrs. Blanchard with her husband and daughter. The mask was the only real aberration being heavy and impractical, but Safin knew he couldn’t rely on the hood for complete coverage so there was little to be helped.

At a glance, Mrs. Blanchard was probably in her late thirties at the time the photo was taken. Mr. Blanchard had to be at least fifteen years her senior, but there was a sharpness about the wife's face and in the eyes which belied both her age and a tacit sense of cruelty. The daughter, Madeleine, stood between them, Mr. Blanchard's hand on her shoulder. None of them smiled.

The mission itself was straightforward; He was to walk over to the cabin on the other side of Lake Altaussee, shoot Mrs. Blanchard, and return when it was done.

Just before dawn he woke and geared up.

The weather was clear. The lake had frozen over and gave the impresson of a sprawling pane of glass. He encountered no one else on the trail. The cabin itself was a two-storey, well-kept, with a motorised dory at the dock presumably for summer use. A flight of stairs led to the front door. Safin walked up to it, weapon at the ready, listening. From the other side came two muffled voices, a woman's and adolescent's.

Safin hesitated.

He had not expected the daughter would be home. It would be impractical to stand around and wait for the woman to appear first, but killing her out in the open wasn't optimal. He shot the door open and shouldered his way through without an issue.

The conversation had stopped. There was a hall leading directly further into the house and a set of stairs that led to the second floor. Safin advanced down the hall, poised to fire.

The sound of footsteps reached him first and Mrs. Blanchard came into his view. She set eyes on him, froze, pushing something behind her arm. With her eyes locked on his she began to speak in a calm but brittle tone but Safin could not understand what was being said.

He opened fire. The woman crumpled, torn apart before she hit the ground, spattering the walls. There was a short scream. Safin advanced. The girl stood motionless in the kitchen, unbloodied but frozen as her mother twitched and lost her faculties and the wooden floorboards became slick. Her face was very white, and a slight tremble played on her mouth. But she didn’t go to pieces.

The coat told him she was well looked-after. She was old enough to know better than to linger here. She snapped her head towards him, her tiny face twisted with rage. She raised her arms out in front of her and his attention locked onto the gun in her hands. She pointed it at his face, her teeth bared. Safin took a measured step backwards and lowered his gun and said in a calm voice: "Не стреляйте. Я не причиню тебе вреда."

"Sors d'ici!"

Her aim was slightly off-kilter but still managed to graze his face. Sharp, white-hot pain exploded in his jaw. He swiveled around to face her. In that split-second the girl had shifted in his mind from “civilian” to “threat”. The ensuing horror on her face told him more than words could.

She ducked past him and bolted out the door.

Safin cursed, then went after her. Crisp snow under his boots giving way to ice. He was disoriented by the shift in terrain.

The kid got a little further and then screamed as her footing slipped. She fell back on her ass, still holding the gun. Okay. Perhaps she just got in a lucky hit. She was clearly panicking now. Safin stopped a foot or so from the bank.

“Стоп! Достаточно!”

She yelled something else, but even without the language barrier, Safin could tell it was not kind. This wasn’t going to get them anywhere. He switched to English: “Stop! You understand me?”

The girl’s face twisted. “Go to hell!”

“Listen. I am not going to hurt you.” He showed his empty hands, the rifle at his hip. She did not lower her gun but she was looking at him directly now. Safin extended a hand towards her. “You must come back. Your father will worry about you.”

“How do you know my father?”

“If I tell you, it will put you in more danger.” He took a step. The ice groaned. The girl flinched and raised the gun. Safin snapped: “Don’t be stupid.”

Seconds passed before she finally lowered the gun. Her eyes fixed on his boots or more specifically his stance. Probably could figure he was a novice on ice. She did not take his hand but began to push herself over to him. "Just stand up."

"I'll fall through," she said, as though it were common knowledge. She got to her feet once closer to the bank and kept a healthy distance between them as they made their way back.

By the time they reached the cabin properly the sun was just above the treeline, and Safin was regretting this whole ordeal.

“You didn’t even try to shoot me,” said the girl without prompt. As if they were going to have a conversation. Safin didn’t respond. “Why would you wear that silly mask on the job?”

“What?”

“It didn't protect you. Now you’re bleeding, you won’t have any cover. Can you see anything at all? Did you pick it yourself?”

Safin had never been given such a mundane series of questions by anyone in his life. It was already humiliating enough to have been seen by this girl let alone suffer her attempts at mockery. If a child could see the flaws in the designated equipment then why the hell couldn’t his contact? But his business was not with her, so he worked his throbbing jaw and said nothing.

“And you are a liar. You haven’t answered a single question I have given,” she went on, holding herself with a cold veneer of confidence that bordered on arrogance. “My father is not just some businessman, you know. He will send someone after you and no amount of ransom money will help.”

Safin spat out a mouthful of blood. “You are very confident for a girl who just lost her mother.”

The girl’s eyes flashed as though she'd been struck. “You have no right to—”

Sound of a distant automobile reached them. Safin wrenched the girl by the arm; childlike terror resurfaced behind her eyes.

“Who is coming?” he hissed.

“It's just the postman.”

Safin did not release her. Her face paled. Despite her best efforts she was not her mother and the despair in her voice became evident, barely above a whisper.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“That depends. Did you see me?”

The girl looked confused for a brief moment, but she didn’t betray herself with words.

Safin let her go and began moving along the snowbank towards the opposite side of the cabin. There was suitable cover in the trees.

Notes: The revised chapter 05 happens to features some commissioned art by the one and only @cavalieredispade.

Information regarding Safin's gun was taken from this article.

Translations: Не стреляйте. Я не причиню тебе вреда. = "Do not shoot. I will not hurt you." "Sors d'ici!" = "Get out of here!" Стоп! Достаточно! = "Stop! Enough!"

[mel-at-dusk]

SEX, LIES AND CHEAP COLOGNE: AN ORAL HISTORY OF ABERCROMBIE & FITCH’S SOFTCORE PORN MAG

The story of how an oversexed, strangely intellectual magazine by a polo shirt brand completed the improbable task of changing the course of sexuality in America’s malls, homes and moose-print boxers

Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries was a shrewd businessman, but he didn’t always make the best decisions. Between the blatantly racist T-shirts he signed off on, the child thongs he called “cute” and the series of public statements he made admitting that his brand intentionally excluded anyone who wasn’t “cool” and “good-looking” with “great attitudes and a lot of friends,” it’s no wonder that he spent the majority of his reign at Abercrombie in hot water. (For the uninitiated, Abercrombie made what fashion writer Natasha Stagg calls “sexy versions of the clothes kids already wore to school: T-shirts and jeans, stuff you could toss a football in or throw on the grass if everyone decided to go skinny-dipping.” More importantly, as she writes in her book Sleeveless, it was “for those who were casually peaking in high school.” It, meanwhile, peaked in the 1990s.)

An exception to Jeffries’ questionable CEO-ing would be A&F Quarterly, the glorious, controversial and questionably pornographic “magalog” he created at the height of the brand’s popularity in 1997 in order to connect “youth and sex” to its image. Woven in amongst surprisingly thoughtful interviews with A-list humans like Spike Lee, Bret Easton Ellis, Rudy Guiliani and Lil’ Kim was a cascade of naked photos from photographer Bruce Weber which showed nubile youngs in various states of undress. They were frolicking, they were caressing and they were deep in the throes of experimenting with types of sex that — at the time — had never been portrayed by mainstream brands.

With issue titles such as “XXX,” “The Pleasure Principle” and “Naughty and Nice,” the Quarterly dove headfirst into the risque. During its 25-issue run between 1997 and 2003, it printed interviews with porn star Jenna Jameson, offered sex advice on how to “go down” in public and suggested — on multiple occasions — that its readers dabble in group sex. One issue published an article on how to be a “Web exhibitionist,” another featured a Slovenian philosopher barking orders to “learn sex” at school and big-dick Ron Jeremy even stopped by to talk about performing oral sex on himself and using a cast made from his own penis.

The actual Abercrombie clothing being modeled in the magalog was an afterthought, appearing in Weber’s photos as more of an impediment to nudity than an actual, purchasable item. The whole thing was, as journalist Harris Sockel put it in an Human Parts essay, “20 percent merch, 20 percent talk and 100 percent soft-core aspirational porn.”

None of this would have been vexing had a more adult-oriented brand been the ones hawking it, but Abercrombie & Fitch was — and still is — marketed toward suspiciously toned teenage field hockey players named Brett. Though he might have looked like a man in his big salmon-pink polo, Brett was but a child. Abercrombie was fond of saying its clothing was for college-aged clientele, but we all knew where its real haute runway took place — inside the crowded halls of every middle school in Ohio.

The Quarterly, too, was intended for college kids, and to prove it, Abercrombie shrink-wrapped it in plastic and sold only to those over 18 for $6 a pop. You could buy it as a subscription, of course, but it was more commonly found in-store, nestled alongside A&F’s cargo shorts and “thongs for 10-year-olds,” a questionable placement that prompted concerned parents, conservatives and Christians to accuse Abercrombie of sullying their children’s minds with impure thoughts.

As such, the Quarterly became the subject of a mounting number of boycotts, protests and controversies that some believe were responsible for its eventual demise. By the time circulation peaked at 1.2 million in 2003, it had been denounced by organizations like the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the American Decency Association, Focus on the Family, the National Organization for Women and, of course, the Catholic League.

Yet the outrage against the Quarterly was matched — if not exceeded — by its cult following, who found its frank portrayal of sexuality to be transcendent. Journalists, artists and the teens whose hands it fell into adored the magazine, and its rarity — plus its utter absurdity — makes it a sought-after collector’s item to this day.

At the same time, few people know about the Quarterly and even fewer realize what it meant to the generations of young people discovering themselves and their sexualities through the unlikely lens of branded content. As journalist Emily Lever puts it, “There’s no weirder way to learn about sex than to pick up a magazine by Abercrombie & Fitch — a brand for hot, mean mostly white kids who shoved you into lockers — but, I guess I’ll take it?”

This is the story of how an oversexed and strangely intellectual magazine by a polo shirt brand completed the improbable task of changing the course of sexuality in America’s malls, homes and moose-print boxers.

AND IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS ASS

The first issue A&F Quarterly debuted in June 1997. With 70-ish pages of full-color hard bodies, it was relatively tame compared to later editions, but it quickly became popular when Abercrombie’s nubile clientele realized it was a paper-backed portal into an adult world of sex, nudity and the kind of unbridled sensory hedonism their parents warned them about. As rumors of its legend began to spread, people began to wonder: What the hell is A&F Quarterly, and why is it printing ass for teens?

Emily Lever, journalist and chronicler of the Quarterly’s absurdist philosophical leanings: A&F Quarterly was an in-house magazine put together by Abercrombie & Fitch that published a who’s who of literati to accompany their images of young adult and teen bodies in order to hawk expensive distressed jeans and polo shirts to kids who would shove you inside a locker.

Alissa Quart, author of Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers and director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project: From what I recall, it had a Bruce Weber-y vibe — gorgeous young men and teens unapologetically objectified, a leering retro pin-up element, also sort of like the highly stylized, sexed-up, nostalgic 1980s and 1990s black-and-white Guess ads. Men — boys, really — were photographed without their shirts, elaborately muscled abs, sometimes naked.

Harris Sockel, in his Human Parts essay: [It was] Playboy crossed with Fratmen.com and a bit of Field & Stream. The Quarterly made my hormones do a kick line across my frontal lobe. I wanted to nibble the soy ink for snack until sunrise. To absorb it so deeply I sweat grey drops onto my pillow. To rip a page from that issue and fold it into a paper flower and stick it all the way up my ass until it came out my mouth.

Lever: Yeah, it was hot. But it was also extraordinarily literary. It featured big-time thinkers, writers and philosophers — stuff that was supposedly intended to expand your mind. It was way too high-brow for the average Abercrombie teen, and its existence made almost no sense given what the brand represented.

Savas Abadsidis, editor-in-chief, 1997-2003: There was nothing else like it. We were the first mainstream brand to combine playful, irreverent, intellectual content with sex and youth in this beautiful, high-art magazine format. Was it controversial? Sure. But it made the entire country take notice.

What they didn’t necessarily see, however, was what was going on behind the scenes. Not only were we the first brand to do this kind of advertising, we were also the first big brand to normalize gay culture for a mainstream audience, expose America’s youth to some of the era’s most progressive thinkers and use our platform to address sexuality in a useful, hands-on way. And you wouldn’t necessarily expect that from Abercrombie. That’s what made it so cool.

It all began in 1996. I was 22 and working at a temp job for a prominent New York architect who happened to be friends with Sam Shahid, a big-time creative director for Calvin Klein, Banana Republic and later, Abercrombie & Fitch. He was looking for an assistant. I had taken a deferment to go to law school and was looking for a job for that interim year, so I applied. I got in.

It was a horrible gig at first. Just awful, Devil Wears Prada-type stuff. I left crying many nights. But I had two things going for me. The first was that Abercrombie had a really small office in the West Village. Mike Jeffries, the president and CEO of Abercrombie, used to come in. He wore flip flops, had a desk made out of a surfboard and began each sentence with the word “Dude.”

Mike Jeffries, ex-CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, speaking to Salon in 2006: Dude, I’m not an old fart who wears his jeans up at his shoulders.

Abadsidis: I didn’t know it at the time, but Mike was gay (I wouldn’t find out until much later). I think that was part of the reason why he and Sam — who was also gay — took me under their wing. They actually didn’t realize that I was, too — it’s not like we all sat around a bonfire at Fire Island and talked about how us gay guys were infiltrating Abercrombie — but that dynamic dovetailed nicely with Bruce’s photography for both the brand and the Quarterly, and it certainly set the tone for what was to come. I was grateful to get what amounted to an unofficial apprenticeship from both Mike and Sam, and eventually, they had me doing much more involved tasks than I was hired to do.

One of them was sitting in on important meetings. At the time, Mike was inviting all these different editors from magazines like Interview, Men’s Journal and Rolling Stone to come in and brainstorm ideas for what the Quarterly could be, but their ideas were flat. They felt like ideas coming from 45-year-olds writing for college kids, and I could tell Mike was getting frustrated by how little they seemed to grasp what he wanted.

One day in a meeting, one of the magazine editors threw out an idea. Without even acknowledging him, Mike turned to me. “Savas,” he asked. “What do you think about that?”

My mind raced — I could tell he was testing me. If I flubbed the answer, I’d be done. I briefly considered censoring myself, but then I thought better. What did I have to lose? I was young. Surely, I’d find another summer job. “I don’t think it’s a great idea,” I told him.

Apparently, that was the right answer. Mike practically threw the guy out of the room.

After that, I started to think more about what I’d want to see out of a magazine. I was just out of college as a French comparative literature major at Vassar, and I was super into that sort of 1950s-style Esquire journalism with the dapper closing essay. I was deep into The New Yorker, Interview Magazine, 1990s-era Details, MAD Magazine and 1980s pop star mags like Tiger Beat, too — those were all an influence. I also loved philosophy, social theory and comics. And graphic novels. You know — college stuff. Then it hit me: If the magazine was for people like me, why not get actual college kids — not 50-year-olds — to create our content?

I suspected my ideas were what they were looking for and knew they’d look fresh compared to what other editors were throwing out, so I decided to take a risk. I got up at 2 a.m. and typed out a 20-page proposal for what I thought the Quarterly should be. The next morning, I faxed a copy to Mike. I left another on Sam’s desk.

About a (very anxious) week later, Sam called me into his office and told me to pick up his phone. Mike was on the other line. As I reached for the receiver, he leaned over to me and said, “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

I didn’t even have time to comprehend what that meant before Mike’s voice was in my ear. “Congratulations, kid,” he told me. “You get one shot.”

Shortly thereafter, I was promoted from Sam’s assistant to the completely green, 23-year-old editor-in-chief of the Quarterly. It was a Jerry Maguire moment. I was thrilled and terrified at the same time.

They gave me a month to put together a staff and get the first issue out. Bruce Weber was named as its exclusive photographer — he’d already been shooting ads and campaigns for Abercrombie — and Sam was the creative director. As for me, I knew I’d need an editorial staff, and stat.

HOLY SHIT, THERE ARE NO LIMITS

Abadsidis quickly throws together a team composed of two college buddies, Patrick Carone and Gary Kon, who he describes as “pretty funny and stuff.” Carone became the only straight guy on the editorial side. Kon is Jewish and gay. The three of them vow to stay as true to the idealized college experience as possible with their content — even if it means chasing white whales.

Abadsidis: I can’t remember the exact starting budget, but it was upwards of a few million, probably much larger than most magazines get for their first issue! But our budget was also Bruce’s budget. He was getting advertising money, so we were well taken care of in that regard.

We weren’t really expected to turn a profit, though. That was never the point. Come to think of it, I don’t even think we tracked how much the magazine impacted clothing sales, although from what I can remember, clothing sales bumped up double digits every quarter after we launched (for a while, at least). [This statement is unverified.] But that didn’t matter: Our mission was just to set the brand image and make people aware of us. That was our version of success. We were also our only advertiser for a while, so we could get away with a lot of stuff that other publications couldn’t.

Gary Kon, managing editor, 1997-2003: When Savas offered me the job, I jumped at the opportunity. I’d already interned for Sam, and I’d have to scan hundreds of Bruce Weber images that he shot for Abercrombie as part of the job. And I fell in love with his work. It was the visual connection that seduced me. Weber’s photos were like a new Greek mythology; the men and women depicted in the photos were both idealized and sexualized. As a gay kid, who was pretty comfortable by that time in my own skin, I had no problem recognizing the eroticism in his work.

Abadsidis: Me, Gary and Patrick was definitely something special. I don’t think I’ll ever have an opportunity to create anything like that again. I was a huge comic book fan. If I had to describe it, it’s the closest thing I’ll ever come to Stan Lee’s Marvel comics bullpen. Pretty much everyone I hired was super unique. We weren’t all gay (maybe half of us were) but few of us really adhered to the Abercrombie image.

I think Sean came on in 2001.

Sean T. Collins, managing editor, 2001-2003: I was a little skittish about it at first because Abercrombie & Fitch represented everything I was not. They marketed, almost exclusively, to the lacrosse players that called me names I cannot repeat. It was very preppy, and that was not me at all.

I was alternative, maaan. I was a big fan of Nine Inch Nails. I wore a lot of black. A&F was everything I wasn’t, and in a way, everything that had tormented me as a kid. The irony of me working for them was palpable, but what I learned very quickly was that at the Quarterly, you could do anything that you wanted.

One of my first articles was an interview with Clive Barker, the writer and director of Hellraiser (he also wrote Candyman). Now, if you’ve seen Hellraiser, you can imagine just how far of a departure a sadomasochistic horror film was from Abercrombie & Fitch, but getting him to sign on was easy. He’s gay, and at the time, he was super ripped. I think he appreciated the extravagant gayness of the Weber stuff in particular. He was also a photographer, and his husband was, too. I think he recognized what was going on with the photography.

We had an unlimited expense budget, so I took him out for drinks at the Four Seasons. I talked to him for hours, and then he invited me to go back to his house and hang out and see his art studio. He had three mansions in a row on Sunset in Los Angeles, up in the hills. One for his office, one for his actual domicile and one that was a painting studio. I got to see that. I was just a 23-year-old kid. This was my first job out of college, and I felt like Cameron Crowe from Almost Famous. After that, I was like, “Holy shit, there are no limits.”

Kon: I have to credit Savas with pushing us to work without limitations. We were very lucky. At some point during my tenure, I realized that as long as we worked within our (sizable) budget, we had almost full autonomy. We could plan trips to Hollywood to shoot our favorite actors. We could travel to Thailand to reenact our version of The Beach. We could tag along to London or Rome or wherever Bruce was shooting the catalog. We could stroll into the office at 11 a.m. and work until 11 p.m.

Collins: If I wanted to talk to Bettie Page, the pinup model from the 1950s, they’d be like, “Okay, sure.” If I wanted to feature Underworld, my favorite electronic music band, it was, “Sure, go ahead.” It was total editorial freedom, which was so strange knowing how specific of a person the “Abercrombie type was.” I’ve been writing for two decades now, and I’ve never experienced anything like it since.

Abadsidis: Everyone wanted to be in it, too. At first, it was just indie musicians. But then, in the second issue, we snagged Lil’ Kim. That’s when I knew we’d made it big. She was into it — she loved everything about the Quarterly. A lot of people did. The whole high-brow/low-brow thing was really appealing, and the idea of going to college, reading good books, getting drunk and having sex felt uniquely nostalgic and fresh in the context of America back then. Clinton was getting impeached for getting a blow job. It was just a weird, puritanical time, and the Quarterly gave people a national platform to let their freak flag fly.

We had Rudy Guiliani, early Britney Spears, Paula Abdul. There was the New York issue where we talked about the Harlem Renaissance. Spike Lee — one of my idols — asked me if he could be in it. He’d done advertising, you know? I remember him being like, “Yo, this is the deal. I’ve got to give you mad props. This is the dopest thing out right now, advertising-wise.”

We had big-time philosophers and literary figures, too. They were great. We wanted to mimic the experience of being in college and having your mind expanded, so we got writers like Bret Easton Ellis and Michael Cunningham on board. There was a whole Sex Ed issue plastered with musings from Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, a friend of a professor’s from college. I believe Jonathan Franzen was in there, too.

Jonathan Franzen, award-winning novelist and essayist: I gave hundreds of interviews between 1997 and 2003, almost all of them at the request of various publishers. One of them must have thought it was a good idea to talk to A&F. The fact that I apparently did (I don’t remember it) signifies nothing except that I felt grateful to my publishers.

Collins: We got a lot of weirdos, too. John Edward, the guy who talked to dead people. Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote Fight Club. At the time, it didn’t have the meathead reputation that it does now. It was legitimately looked at as this piece of anti-corporate, anti-capitalist art, the irony of which was just delightful given that we were a capitalist brand trying to sell polo shirts and $90 ripped jeans.

Abadsidis: The only guy who refused an interview was Donald Trump! I have a feeling his 90-year-old secretary had something to do with it. Though we were technically a magalog and did belong to the brand, our stuff was just really visionary. David Keeps, who was the editor of Details at the time, always defended the Quarterly as a real magazine and publicly said that we were doing more innovative stories than most “real” magazines at a time.

ASPIRATIONAL HOMOEROTICS

It’s no secret that the photography and creative direction of Weber and Shahid contained homoerotic undertones. Irreverent, minimal and moody, it was suggestive without being literal, spinning entire storylines into a single frame. At the same time, it was too idealized to be “real.” The queerness that their photos showed was, as Collins puts it, “aspirational,” meaning that like the mostly white, ab-riddled models instructed to sell cargo shorts by taking them off, they didn’t necessarily represent the full reality of what queerness actually was.

Still, the photos that the Quarterly published during its seven-year run did more to normalize and represent queerness and non-monogamy than any other mainstream brand at the time — weird, considering that Abercrombie’s target market was hegemonic suburbanites whose parents bred genetically pure golden retrievers and had cabins in Vail. Without these photos, the Quarterly might have read more as a minor-league Esquire or Ivy League MAD Magazine, but with them, it became one of the least-discussed, most under-appreciated items queer history.

Collins: Our editorial content — which almost functioned as a parody of so-called “Abercrombie people” — was always accompanied by this extremely beautiful photography that was also extremely queer. But it was never explicitly so. It was all this nudge, nudge, wink, wink stuff. I don’t know how you could miss it, though. The homoeroticism was so overt.

Abadsidis: You’d have had to have been blind not to consider the imagery homoerotic (though, it was really in the eye of the beholder). We had the Carlson twins posing on the cover and riding a motorcycle. We had a drag queen named Candis Cayne. There was a lesbian couple kissing at a wedding.

Kon: David Sedaris, Gus Van Sant, Gregg Araki, Avenue Q, Stan Lee, Peaches, Fischerspooner… you could teach a queer theory class with everyone we featured.

Abadsidis: At the same time, we never labeled anything as “gay” or “lesbian” or “queer.” We never came out and said, “Welcome to our gay magazine!” and we never had a meeting where we were like, “Okay, guys, let’s figure out how to make this thing gay.” It was more nonchalant. The imagery implied it without saying it.

Hampton Carney, A&F Quarterly spokesperson, 1999-2003: The message we were sending was clear: “You do you, whatever that is. Have fun!”

Abadsidis: That was a very 1990s thing.

Collins: There was a specific brand of Abercrombie gayness that got shown, though. The word that they always used to describe Abercrombie as a brand was “aspirational.” They didn’t want to make it like an everyday, normal-people brand. They wanted it to be associated with money, glamour and that WASP-y aesthetic. So all the gay raunch of it was presented within the context of what appeared to be a very square, nuclear family: white, wealthy and secure.

At the same time, that was really when same-sex marriage was kicking off as a political issue. I think you can see a commonality in how Abercrombie was essentially making an argument that you could be a normie and also be gay. That was a newish thing at the time (though I’m barely an expert as I’m not gay myself). Still, I can’t help but see a resonance between coming up with this clandestine content that normalized being gay at the same time this big political fight that was brewing.

Maybe being more forward about it would have come across as “too political.”

Abadsidis: Part of me wishes we’d gone a little further with being more outwardly queer, but I don’t think the time was right. Maybe with a braver CEO — no one at the time was brave enough to take on queerness or gay rights as a mainstream brand, including us — and that’s why few people remember the Quarterly as the sort of transcendent queer thing that it was.

Kon: It’s never been credited as such, but the Quarterly is really an item of gay history. I don’t think we were pushing a “gay” or “metrosexual” lifestyle on people as much as we were showing that it already existed, even out in Middle America. Perhaps that’s what made people uncomfortable. We took that thread of counterculture and taboo that ran through the imagery and continued it into the editorial content. We dealt with topics like drinking, drugs, religion, politics and sex. Again, these are issues young people dealt with daily, but were rarely editorialized.

At Vassar, there was a yearly party called The Homo Hop. It was one of the biggest parties of the year and leaned on Vassar’s history as a women’s college. I bring this up because, on the night of my freshman Homo Hop, I was instructed that each student had to do something sexually that they had never done, and one drug that they had never done. It wasn’t that you had to be gay, but you had to experience something that was new and different. I think that translated well into the Quarterly. Yes, there were a bunch of gay guys writing and shooting and drawing images. But we were simply trying to expose Cargo Short Brett to ideas, images, artists, books, writers and directors that he may have never heard of before. Our shared experiences would become his.

Collins: It was culture jamming, really.

Abadsidis: It was also very “college” to be fluid or experimental without labeling it. I think it’s safe to say that college is one of the gayest places there is in life, maybe not sexually, but definitely in terms of having your mind expanded about different types of people.

Carney: I was in a frat. I’d see fraternity brothers streaking across campus together. It was never a big deal. There are a lot more people in the middle of either extreme of sexuality than people talk about. We’re not one and 10 — we’re one through 10, if you will. That kind of stuff has always happened on college campuses, and that’s the kind of mentality we had around sex. We just happened to editorialize it really beautifully.

Collins: There’s a Barbara Kruger print that reminds me of the mood we were trying to capture: It reads: “You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men.” That’s basically what Abercrombie & Fitch was. It was an intricate ritual that allowed sunkissed lacrosse players to metaphorically touch the skin of other men.

Carney: You know what’s funny, though? It was never the gay stuff people had a problem with. It was everything else.

LET THE CONTROVERSIES BEGIN

For almost every moment of its seven-year life, The Quarterly was a controversial publication. Parents, politicians and conservative-types didn’t appreciate its no-holds-barred approach to rampant fucking, and they could not, for the life of them, understand how such an adult magazine was making its way into the hands of their precious teens (who were probably jacking off to dad’s Playboys long before the Quarterly came along, but I digress). There was approximately one year — 1997 — where the amount of people it pissed off stayed below a critical mass, but after a certain somebody published a story that vaguely suggested underage kids drink, it was off to the races.

Abadsidis: We got in our fair share of trouble with Christian groups and concerned parents right off the bat. Let’s take one of the earlier issues — I believe it was Summer of 1998. It was my story. Basically, I suggested that people could do better than beer and that they should “indulge in some creative drinking.” There was one drink I made up called the “Brain Hemorrhage” and a few others you could play a drinking game with. We also included a spinner insert people could cut out.

None of it had anything to do with driving, of course, but the issue was called “On the Road.” It was a sort of beat-focused, Jack Kerouac thing, so some people interpreted that as us promoting drunk driving (though we did nothing of the sort). Also, the kid on the cover was underage. He was 16, if I remember correctly. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) didn’t like that.

Karolyn Nunnallee, vice president of public policy for MADD: We had been really focused on underage drinking and had been instrumental in getting the country’s legal drinking age raised to 21. Then Abercrombie & Fitch comes out with this weird magazine that basically said, “Don’t go back to college drinking the usual beer. We’re going to show you a new way to drink.”

Not only did they have this drinking game, but they had recipes for these mixed drinks for young people to partake in. I was like, “Abercrombie & Fitch? Aren’t they in the clothing business?” What in the world were they doing? I mean, they were a high-end brand, not Walmart. Why would they take their focus off of clothing and put it toward alcohol? Were their clothes not good enough that year or something?

Needless to say, we weren’t happy with them. Curse words were handed out. We sent a letter to them and started a whole media campaign about it. We went on as many news media outlets as we possibly could with the story of how incensed we were.

Abadsidis: I was sure I was going to get fired over that. We had to remove the page with the spinner out of every single issue across the country. We apologized, of course, but it ended up backfiring against the protesters — that incident gave us so much publicity. It put us on the map. It also made us a target for conservative types. They hated us. After MADD, boycotts of Abercrombie started flaring up all over the place. That’s around the time we hired Hampton to do PR.

Carney: It was my job, at the time, to defend the brand. I’d go on talk shows like Entertainment Tonight or Today Show and explain away our latest controversy (there were a lot). It wasn’t hard, actually; each time, I’d give them what was more or less my go-to response: “It’s a beautiful publication intended for college-aged kids.” And that was the truth! It was way ahead of its time and was absolutely meant for people 18 and up.

Though not everyone saw it that way. The sex and nudity really got to people. A lot of them definitely thought we were making porn. That was the constant complaint: We were deliberately putting porn in the hands of young kids.

Lever: The Quarterly featured about the same level of nudity as a European yogurt commercial. Which is to say, a lot. It was a “clothing catalog” with almost no clothing. Of course [American] people thought it was pornographic!

Carney: Okay, sure — there were photos of like, six girls in bed with one guy and more than a few spreads that enthusiastically suggested naked non-monogamy — but it wasn’t porn. It was tasteful. And let me tell you — nothing we had in there was surprising to kids.

Abadsidis: The models ranged from 16 to 20. It was erotic. It was art. I don’t think there’s anything pornographic about the Quarterly unless you think that nudity, in and of itself, is pornographic.

Illinois Lieutenant Governor Corinne Wood did, apparently. In 1999, she called for a boycott of Abercrombie & Fitch because its “Naughty or Nice” holiday issue “contained nudity” and “even an interview with a porn star.” That porn star was none other than Jenna Jameson, who at the time was well on her way to becoming a household name. A so-called “child prodigy” occupied the neighboring page, sparking accusations that the Quarterly somehow intended to connect children to porn.

A cartoon of Mr. and Mrs. Claus experimenting with S&M across from the statement “Sometimes it’s good to be bad” didn’t help, nor did the “sexpert” who offered advice on “sex for three” and told readers that going down on each other in a movie theater was acceptable “just so long as you do not disturb those around you.”

The Illinois Coalition of Sexual Assault joined Wood’s boycott. Later that year, Michigan attorney general (and eventual governor) Jennifer Granholm sent a letter to Abercrombie complaining that the “Naughty or Nice” issue contained sexual material that couldn’t be distributed to minors under state law.

Carney: There were four states that tried to ban us after that. I remember Granholm. She was my arch-nemesis at the time — we really got into it. I respected where she was coming from, of course, but our whole thing was that we weren’t showing anything that wasn’t actually happening on college campuses. And I’d already made it pretty clear to the press that the magazine wasn’t for minors.

Also, it’s not like we were the only magazine talking about or showing sex. You could find all the exact same stuff in Cosmo or Playboy — it’s just that we were a clothing brand, and one whose major customer base just so happened to be teens and young adults. No one expected that from us. Brands weren’t “supposed” to be talking about sex period, let alone to teens and young adults. But we took it upon ourselves to pioneer a more open, honest view of it. That’s the wrinkle that made it so interesting.

We did come to an agreement with Granholm. We decided to wrap the magazine in plastic and make it available for purchase only to those over 18, that way, it’d be even more clear that we weren’t “selling porn to the underage.”

Kon: I believe it was one of the few times the company acquiesced.

Collins: Other than that, don’t remember getting any instruction from Savas, Mike or Sam to tone it down. It was kind of mutually assumed that we weren’t going to apologize for the sexual nature of our content. We knew we had to keep things sexy, as it were — that was our whole thing.

We weren’t deliberately trying to piss off people, but we were trying to push the envelope, and there was definitely an element of deliberate trolling of conservatives and Christian groups. It was a good thing if we pissed them off. It created the controversy that made the brand seem edgy and dangerous, which is what you want if you’re trying to appeal to young people.

Carney: We were also just showing real things that happened at college. And as anyone who’s been to college knows, it’s not just about reading and writing papers. It’s also about sex. Not only that, of course, but we’re sexual beings. We respond to images that are sexual. We were trying to take the stigma away from that and acknowledge that it’s not a bad thing to do.

But no matter how clear we made it, our stance on sex polarized people more and more. I could tell, because almost as soon as I started speaking on behalf of the magazine, strange things started to happen to me. I got stalkers. People left me messages saying I was going to hell and I’d have no afterlife. I got hate mail to my house. One person left a package containing their dirty, stained underwear at the front door of my apartment with a note saying they’d be “coming by later” to “talk to me about it.” I had to call the police on that one.

I was the face of the publication, so I got the vast majority of the harassment. But I didn’t mind. It was my job to take the fall, and I heard and respected every single person’s complaint and talked to them about it. Plus, for every message I got banishing me to hell, I got another from a journalist or a fan begging me to save a copy for them. People collected them. They really loved it, precisely because it was so sexual.

Abadsidis: Mike didn’t flinch about any of this stuff. He wanted to defend it because he could see it was working. We weren’t about to tone anything down (at the time).

Flash-forward to June 2001. The Twin Towers are still standing tall, tips are being frosted and Apple has just unleashed iTunes onto an unsuspecting populace. A&F Quarterly, now in its fourth year, is in hot water once again. Having survived a number of boycotts, lawsuits and controversies since its inception, it’s now in the midst of weathering another minor national conniption over its use of nudity.

Jeannine Stein, describing the Summer 2001 issue in an excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article called “Nudity? A&F Quarterly Has It Covered”: [It’s] explicit in ways that most catalogs and fashion magazines are not, and its use of male nudity is uncommon among general-interest publications. It features 280 pages of young, attractive men and women alone and together, in serious, romantic, sexual and party modes, wearing lots of A&F clothes, some A&F clothes and sometimes no clothes at all. Among the coffee-table book-ish photos by Bruce Weber is a man, covered only by a towel, surrounded by five women; a woman at the beach reclining body-to-body with three men; a back view of a naked man getting into a helicopter (we haven’t quite figured that one out yet); and a few topless females.

There are many naked butts and breasts.

Abadsidis: We also had photos of nude women in a fountain — which were inspired by Katharine Hepburn skinny-dipping at Bryn Mawr College — and a whole set dedicated to the Berkeley student that spent a day naked in class. It was par for the course for us, but even though we’d done the whole shrink-wrap and over-18 thing, people still felt it was too sexual for branded content.

In response, an unexpected alliance formed between cultural conservatives and anti-porn feminists to boycott Abercrombie & Fitch over the Summer 2001 issue of A&F Quarterly. According to Wikipedia, the offending issue included “photographs of naked or near-naked young people frolicking on the beach,” “top-naked young women and rear-naked young men on top of each other” and an “interview with porn star Ron Jeremy, who discussed performing oral sex on himself and using a dildo cast from his own penis.” Once again, Wood was at the helm.

David Crary, journalist, excerpt from a 2001 Associated Press article: Illinois Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood — a Republican who has been sparring with A&F since 1999 — announced the boycott campaign last week in Chicago. She has recruited a diverse mix of supporters more familiar with facing off against each other than with working together.

Wood, writing on her website in 2001: A&F is glamorizing indiscriminate sexual behavior that unsophisticated teenagers are not possibly equipped to weigh against the dangers of date rape, unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease.

Michelle Dewlen, president of the Chicago chapter of the National Organization for Women, speaking at one of Woods’ press conferences in 2001: It’s not a catalog. It’s a soft porn magazine.

Rev. Bob Vanden Bosch, head of Concerned Christian Americans, as quoted by the AP: It’s very important for people to get involved. The exploitation of sex and young people in A&F’s catalog isn’t only atrocious but also a psychological molestation of their teenage customers.

Quart: It was predatory in a few ways, really. One was that it confused the corporate identity of Abercrombie and the advertising with the editorial. It preyed on young consumers not understanding the difference between editorial content and sales content. Back then it led, I saw, to a way that girls were objectifying themselves and commodifying themselves. It ultimately led to boys also objectifying themselves and commodifying themselves — not to the same extent, but far more than they were when I started reporting Branded a little more than two decades ago.

I have the stats on the male body image dysmorphia at the time in Branded (which has only worsened). Then, male body shaming and “manorexia” was on the rise, for the first time on a mass scale. It couldn’t help for the most popular brand at the time to have a dedicated giant glossy magazine filled with pictures of male teenagers with zero body fat half undressed.

Abadsidis: I mean, sure, as much as any advertising does. It wasn’t like we were leading that charge. Any effect on self-image was certainly unintentional, but I do think it did make people want to be athletic. You definitely saw a lot of guys trying to look like that during that period, especially as time went on. If you look at the first few issues, the guys aren’t that built. Ashton Kutcher was actually in the second one — that was his first big break — and they get increasingly more cut from there. That whole era is when men’s body issues started to come out.

Lever: I’d also submit that all this was controversial because it was pre-internet. The internet mainstreamed sexual content in a way that makes A&F or other “scandalous” ad campaigns (like the 2003 Gucci ad with the model’s pubes shaved into the shape of a G) seem quaint, even obsolete. Like, do you remember that Eckhaus Latta ad a few years ago that scandalized people for five minutes because it showed people having real (albeit pixelated) sex? Neither does anyone else.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK TEACHES SEX ED

Always filled with philosophy, social theory and intellectually minded topics that likely soared over the heads of most Abercrombie consumers, the Quarterly outdid itself in the Fall of 2003 with its penultimate issue. A gorgeous romp of summer-spirited abandon accompanied by some delightfully incoherent, Dada-like musings from Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, it connected a “back-to-school” theme with a pretty clear directive to fuck. Yet, the information it presented was actually rather safe and tame, a reality which confused and irritated Quarterly staff. Their content was legit, so why was everyone up in arms?

Abadsidis: The “Sex Ed” issue was the second to last one that we did. It got some of the most criticism, and was supposedly the reason everything was finished. I literally had stuff in there cited straight from the University of Michigan’s freshman student handbook on sexual conduct, and it still pissed people off! Then, of course, there was Žižek.

Lever: Žižek identifies as a radical leftist. He’s very famous for his work on cultural theory and critical theory. He analyzes all kinds of topics in his signature, impenetrable — but also approachable — style. And when I think of him, I think of his very distinctive manner of speaking, that some people have described as being on cocaine constantly. But he’s definitely kind of a cult figure, a favorite of people who consider themselves highbrow, but also fun.

He’s really touted as the greatest anti-capitalist of our time, and yet, here he was, “sexually educating” the mean girls and boys of your high school, in a brand catalog whose entire goal was to ensnare young people for the purpose of selling them distressed jeans.

According to the magazine’s foreword, the editor wrote to Žižek and said this: “Dear Slavoj, enclosed please find the images for our back to school issue. We’ve never had a philosopher write the text for our images before, so write what you like. We’re looking for that Karl Marx meets Groucho Marx thing you do so well. Thanks, Savas.”

Abadsidis: I love Slavoj. He was friends with one of my professors from school. He only had 24 hours to write this, so we actually sent someone to London where he was to drop off the images we wanted him to write text for. They hung out for a day and then flew back with what he’d written.

Lever: It was basically a series of insane, absurdist ramblings pasted over really hot naked people.

Žižek, excerpt from A&F Quarterly’s 2003 Sex Ed issue: Back to school thus means forget the stupid spontaneous pleasures of summer sports, of reading books, watching movies and listening to music. Pull yourself together and learn sex.

Lever: I mean, that’s like the first episode of every teen TV show, where these three nerdy boys start high school and they’re like, “Okay, we’re going to be cool this year guys. We’re going to lose our virginities.” It’s very formulaic. But there’s more.

Žižek: The only successful sexual relationship occurs when the fantasies of the two partners overlap. If the man fantasizes that making love is like riding a bike and the woman wants to be penetrated by a stud, then what truly goes on while they make love is that a horse is riding a bike… with a fantasy like that, who needs a personality?

Lever: The “go learn sex at school” part really struck a nerve with conservatives. But I don’t think it was that transgressive. Fourteen-year-olds are receiving messages to have sex all the time — what did it matter if some Eastern European anti-capitalist was hitting them over the head with it through the pages of a polo shirt advert?

Abadsidis: Fox News got involved, if I remember correctly. That was one of the few times I actually got pissed off about how an issue was being covered. I mean, the information in there was handed out to students by an actual university. Half the issue was quotes from this really influential philosopher. But for some reason, people really took offense to the language of it. That whole year [2003] was just a bad one for us.

THE LAST HORNY CHRISTMAS

For its final trick, the Quarterly released a holiday issue featuring 280 pages of “moose, ice hockey, chivalry, group sex and more.” It had oral sex, group sex, sex in a river, Christmas sex and pretty much every other type of sex you could think of, all which followed an earnest letter from Abadsidis which read: “We don’t want much this year, but in keeping with the spirit, we’d like to ask forgiveness from some of the people we’ve offended over the years. If you’d be so kind, please offer our apologies to the following: the Catholic League, former Lt. Governor Corrine Wood of Illinois, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Stanford University Asian American Association, N.O.W.”

But the issue didn’t really hit. By fall 2003, Abercrombie was involved in a number of lawsuits and protests related to exclusion and discrimination, which left people cold despite the inviting warmth of a crackling, fireside circle jerk (a Weber offering which, I’m told, can be found on page 88 of the final issue).

Cole Kazdin, journalist, writing in a 2003 Slate article called “Have Yourself a Horny Little Christmas”: The challenge for me, when masturbating with my friends to the nubile nudies in the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, is trying not to think about serious things like racial diversity; it tends to kill the mood. But because most of the models in the catalog are white and because a lawsuit has been filed against the clothing retailer for allegedly discriminating against a Black woman who applied for a job at the store, it’s hard for the issue not to rear its nonsexy head. [In 2004, Abercrombie also agreed to pay $40 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of promoting whites over Latino, Black, Asian-American and female applicants.]

Collins: As a brand, Abercrombie did a lot of things that were quite gross. I’m sure you remember when they came out with these T-shirts with these racist stereotype characters on them. You would just see it in the catalog and just be like, “Jesus Christ.” It was awful and stupid and self-defeating, just tone deaf. And we just couldn’t figure out how no one at the company saw the problem with it.

Stagg, excerpt from Sleeveless: Kids in my high school wore shirts that read, “Wok-n-Bowl” and “Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Can Make It White,” accompanied by cross-eyed propaganda-style cartoons. If you weren’t part of the in-crowd (and white), A&F was oppressive. Non-jocks made their own anti-A&F T-shirts, using the brand as a catchall for exclusionary, competitive behavior and old-fashioned bullying.

Carney: That stuff was indefensible, really. Those were the darkest days of my job — listening to calls and reading letters about how offensive those shirts were. Even though the Quarterly was quite separate from the brand and we had no influence over what they did or what clothes they designed, we did still have to print their stuff at the back of the magazine. It was pretty uncomfortable.

Stagg: By 2006, Mike Jeffries’ most controversial public statement on sex appeal was really just saying what we were all thinking: “Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.” Those remarks were followed by lawsuit after lawsuit, mostly involving staffing discrimination. An announcement about the store refusing to carry anything over a size 10 reportedly marked a noticeable decrease in sales.

Abadsidis: There were a lot of underlying problems at the company. The amount of negative press Abercrombie was getting was getting silly. No matter what we did, we’d end up in the news, especially if it was related to the Quarterly. After so many bad news incidents, it just felt done, like its moment had passed. It was bound to crash at some point.

Gina Piccalo, excerpt from the Los Angeles Times: Clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch has pulled its controversial in-store catalogs after outraged parents, conservative Christian groups and child advocates threatened a boycott over material they said was pornographic. However, a company spokesman said the move had nothing to do with the public outcry. The catalogs were pulled to make room near cash registers for a new Abercrombie & Fitch fragrance.

Abadsidis: People like to think that the boycotts and Christian protests had something to do with it, but that wasn’t the case at all. By 2003, Abercrombie’s stock was low — something to do with ordering too much denim. The store was having negative sales for the first time. There was the line in the New York Times, who covered our demise, that Mike was “bored” with it.

Collins: We had no warning. We were all there one day, and the next, we were gone.

Lever: The Quarterly was a relic of a different time. I feel like it could never have been made after 2008 for so many reasons — economic, and cultural and political. It would just never fly. It was made before feminism pervaded everything, at a time where you could be completely flagrant about gross patriarchal shit and still get away with it.

It was kind of like this last gasp of a certain conception of what’s desirable — a very hegemonic coolness exemplified by white Ivy League frat kids who got fucked up the night before their philosophy class. That doesn’t have much currency anymore. Abercrombie kept that image on life support until its last gasp.

Now, 20 years later, what’s cool is not that. What’s cool is to have depression and ADD. The ideal is out. The real is in. And the Quarterly, having always existed in the liminal space between, is neither here nor there.

EPILOGUE

In 2008, Abercrombie resurrected the Quarterly in the U.K. for a limited-run special edition to celebrate the success of its European stores. The original team was reunited — Abadsidis, Shahid and Weber — with the hopes that Britain’s more “open-minded approach to culture and creativity” would provide a welcoming substrate on which to re-grow their original ideas of sexual liberation. The issue, “Return to Paradise,” was “more mature” than its American cousin. It was well-received — aside from the usual protests about sex and nudity — but it wasn’t continued.

Two years later, in 2010, the Quarterly was revived again, this time as a promotional element for Abercrombie’s Back-to-School 2010 marketing campaign, which bore the unfortunate title of “Screen Test.” The lead story Abercrombie put out on its website sounded like a cross between American Idol and a gay porn shot: “The staff of A&F Studios opens up to editorial to explain the steps the division takes to find new, young, hot boys. The cattle-call approach to herd young talent ends with the best of the beefcake earning a screen test that ‘could be the flint to spark the trip to the star.’”

Bruce Weber would be shooting, of course. This would become especially ominous after he was accused of a series of casting-couch style sexual assaults by 15 male models beginning in 2017. According to the accusations, he subjected them to sexually manipulative “breathing exercises” and inappropriate touching, insinuating that he could help their careers if they complied.

Arick Fudali, a lawyer at the Bloom Firm, which represents five of Weber’s alleged victims, declined to confirm or deny whether any of the alleged assaults happened on a Quarterly shoot. If they did, they’re not prosecutable as sexual assaults in New York. Because the states’s statute of limitations on reporting rape is only three years, anything that happened during the Quarterly’s run wouldn’t count toward a sexual assault charge (unless a minor was involved, which Fudali also declined to confirm).

No one I spoke with for this story remembers seeing, hearing or experiencing anything like what the allegations against Weber describe, but some expressed concern over how they might affect the legacy the Quarterly leaves behind. “The accusations are pretty grim,” Collins told me. “You feel for the people who are put in that position. People had power over them. It just makes you think, ‘Was any of this worth it?’ Not really, if people were getting hurt.”

As such, it’s difficult to conclude with definitive sign-off about the Quarterly’s legacy. Either it was a bastion of progressive and transversive sexuality that simultaneously trolled and nourished the very audience it sought to mine, or it was the product of darkness and pain. Either way, Sockel sums it up just right: “The Quarterly was discontinued in 2003, after the American Decency Association boycotted photos of doe-eyed bare-assed jocks in prairies and glens,” he wrote in his recollection. “It was nice while it lasted.”

[willow-salix]

Fluffember prompt: Feathers (vaguely, and with a dash of Rainbow)

Day 13 of Isolation on Tracy Island 2.0

“OK, who threw that pencil at me?” Scott demanded to know. No one owned up. Honestly I didn’t even see where it had come from let alone who threw it. 

“No clue,” I answered.

“I’m gonna find out,” he growled. “I could have been badly hurt!”

I sniggered to myself, for a real life action hero Scott could be so dramatic sometimes, and didn’t bother looking up from the latest copy of ‘Better Gnomes and Gardens: Witches Weekly’ that I was flicking through.

“Seriously, that could have taken my eye out, it’s like a miniature stake,” he continued to grumble.

“Talking of stakes,” I started, trying to distract him so that he didn’t go off on a ranting tangent about the danger of flying pencil projectiles, “there’s been a development with the Highgate Vampire, he’s been spotted again. Seriously, what more can this crazy year throw at us? Don’t answer that,” I warned John before he could even utter a word. I know my boy and I know that he was about to throw out some highly logical statistic or another that would make complete sense but would make me want to cry.

“Highgate Vampire?” Scott asked, distracted as I'd hoped he would be. My evil plan had worked. I turned my magazine to show him the article. “You remember, when we tried out that new ka- pub,” I corrected myself, aware of just how many of his brothers were crowded around. “We walked past the cemetery and I told you all about the legend of the Highgate Vampire.”

Scott looked blank, which is a look I’m used to seeing on him, I gotta be honest, he barely ever listens to me. “You know, I told you the story of how, back in the 1970’s a group of ghost hunters decided to try to find a vampire that supposedly lived there?”

He shook his head. 

“Self appointed bishop vampire hunter dude?” I tried again.

“Oh, yes! I remember him. He’s back?”

"Who?" 

"The Bishop."

"No, he's dead, the vampire."

"The vampire killed him?"

"The Bishop is dead of natural causes, and the vampire has been seen again," John supplied. 

“Yes," I agreed." Apparently so, and they’re blaming him for this virus outbreak.”

Everyone went quiet for a second, not sure what to say to that. John reached out a hand and I passed over the magazine so he could read it for himself. 

“Why do you read this rubbish?” he asked after perusing the rest of its offerings.

“Why wouldn’t I want to know that blue aliens brought Elvis into that lady’s garden?” I asked, genuinely perplexed.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” he told me honestly, handing the magazine back to me.

“Do you remember that time that Virgil thought he was a vampire?” Scott suddenly asked him.

“Oh, God, yes. I hadn’t thought of that in years,” John laughed.

“Wait? He what now? There were vampires involved? Why was I never told about this? This is my one area of expertise and you've been holding out on me?”

“I did not think I was a vampire,” Virgil corrected them. “Our high school math teacher did.”

I tossed the magazine aside, this was far more entertaining than anything I’d find in there.

“Spill,” I demanded.

“It’s really not that interesting a story,” Virgil insisted, trying valiantly to deflect us.

“He was a sophomore, so about fifteen years old,” Scott started, dodging out of the way when Virgil threw a pen at him this time. Scott narrowed his eyes, like he wasn’t sure if that was proof that he had been the perpetrator of the pencil or not. Virgil, for his part, looked innocent. Pen, what pen? I saw no pen? What even is a pen? Isn’t that something you put pigs in?

“And he had to have two of his back teeth out due to overcrowding,” John continued, grabbing me and yanking me onto his lap, using me as a human shield when Virgil lifted his sketch pad threateningly.

“I’m so glad I married such a brave rescuer,” I deadpanned as John continued to hide behind me. "My hero."

“I was driving him back from the dentist and he was still a little out of it from the sedation they had given him,” Scott took up the tale.

“I’m just not a big fan of the dentist, OK?” Virgil defended himself. "They have to sedate me."

“His gums were still bleeding and he’d spat the gauze out within a minute of getting out of there,” John continued, ducking back behind me when Virgil glared at him.

“They’re going to tell it anyway,” I told him, “so why don’t you do it instead?”

Virgil nodded, seeing the wiseness in my words.

“My gums were bleeding but I didn’t know what to do with it all, I didn’t want to swallow it and to be honest, I was still pretty woozy, so I just kinda let the blood collect in my mouth.”

“Aww, that must have sucked, babe, I’m sorry.”

He nodded at me in thanks for my sympathy, something he was NOT getting from his brothers.

“We stopped at some lights and by that point my mouth was getting pretty full-”

“He was drooling like Alan at nap time,” Scott butted in.

“Did you not give him a tissue or something?”

“No, he was evil.”

“I was driving and I don’t carry things like that on me as standard,” Scott argued.

“I’ll pick you up if anything like that happens again,” I promised the big guy. “For girls our cars are like an extension of our house or our handbags, there's tissues, lip balms, snacks, bottles of water, everything.”

“Thank you,” Virgil sniffed, casting Scott a smug look, knowing I was firmly on his side.

“So, how is this vampire related?” I had to ask, I mean, I was sympathetic but I was also nosey as hell.

“I wound down the window as we stopped at the light,” Virgil continued. “And I...well, I was still a bit muddled…”

“He opened his mouth and all this blood came oozing out, it just dribbled everywhere,” Scott  practically yelled, bursting out laughing.

“Why are you laughing, you evil thing?”

“Because,” John piped up from behind the shelter of my person, “the car next to Scott’s was Mrs Beddleman’s. Virgil, recognising her, breaks out into this wide, goofy and completely bloody, smile.”

“She looked absolutely horrified and even though she wasn’t going that direction she turned right to get away from us. She was a very religious lady and she took to wearing a cross to school for the rest of the year until I left her class.”

“And she moved his seat to one beside the window,” Scott howled, doubled over laughing.

I bit my lip, trying very hard not to laugh.

“It’s OK,” Virgil sighed, “you can laugh.”

“I don’t want to,” I told him as seriously as I could. “But I really don’t think I can help it.”

I made the fatal mistake then, I glanced at Scott who was at the point of silently laughing, his body shaking and I cracked.

“It’s not like I’m the only one that had bad anesthesia reactions,” Virgil said slyly and I snapped to attention.

“Are you not?” 

“Nope,” he shook his head, grinning now. “We’ve all had broken bones and hospital stays over the years.”

“Oh, oh, tell me a Scott one!”

“He had an appendectomy when he was twenty. He was taken in for day surgery and when he woke up he was completely coherent,” Virgil started.

“He was?” Knocked out Scott had to be different to sedated Scott, because sedated Scott was hilarious and very snuggly. 

“What can I say, I have a strong constitution,” Scott preened.

“He’s lying,” Virgil continued. “He was talking normally, answering questions and the doctor said he was doing great and could go. He was starving, hadn't eaten since the night before and he insisted that the only thing he would eat was Chinese food, and it had to be a buffet, nothing else would do."

"I mean, he's not wrong, there is nothing like a good Chinese," I agreed. 

"Well, it appeared that he hadn't been as recovered as we thought he was."

"What happened?" 

"I came round from the anesthesia sitting in the restaurant and as far as I knew I'd just gone under in the operating room and I'd woken up with a plate of chicken teriyaki on a stick in front of me."

John sniggered, muffling his laughter against my shoulder.

“I don’t know why you’re laughing,” Scott huffed. “Have you forgotten about when you had your tonsillectomy?” 

“That was not my fault,” John mumbled, clearly regretting his previous amusement.

“Oh gods, what did you do?” I asked him, turning my head to look at him over my shoulder.

“Nothing! I was just talking to the anesthesiologist.”

“The anesthesiologist was new to the hospital so hadn’t met any of us before,” Virgil started.

“Do I take it that you all had frequent user passes? Like buy ten ops and get the eleventh free?” 

“Pretty much,” Scott shrugged, unashamed of just how bad that sounded. “So John’s there, being himself, talking to the surgeon and anesthesiologist about the operation and what they were planning, how long it would take, telling them what they needed to do, that sort of thing-”

“I like to know what to expect,” John defended himself.

“Swot,” Gordon teased, coming in at the tail end of John’s mini rant, Alan trailing along behind him.

“It’s not a bad thing to want to go into a situation with full knowledge of it. Research and a game plan are only sensible. How do you expect to get good at something if you don’t know the mechanics behind it?” He glanced around at his brothers who looked less than convinced. “You know you’ve all been grateful for my expertise more than once.”

“I know I have,” I agreed, ignoring the raised eyebrows that came my way. Let them think dirty things, that was their problem. I received a small kiss to the side of my neck thanks for my support so I’m not going to complain.

“So, what were you guys talking about?” Gordon asked, flopping down on the couch beside Virgil.

“They were sharing with me their tales of woe under the effects of anesthesia and sedation,” I informed him.

“Oh, yes, we’ve all got those,” Gordon agreed. “Which one was John telling?”

“The time when he had his tonsils removed,” Scott helpfully supplied.

“I don’t remember it,” Gordon frowned.

“Neither do I,” Alan added.

“He was talking to the anesthetist, we got that far,” I said.

“He was talking to him as they were asking him to count down from a hundred,” Virgil continued.

“I only remember getting to ninety-one,” John told me.

“We were outside in the relatives room, waiting for him to be taken to recovery,” Scott took up the tale. “We had only been in there about fifteen minutes when the anesthesiologist and a nurse came out looking like they had seen a ghost.”

“Dad stepped up and demanded to know what the problem was and if John was OK,” Virgil said. “It turned out that John had been far more coherent than he remembered and hadn’t stopped counting at ninety-one.”

“He’d gotten to sixty-two but when he reached eighty-nine he’d apparently switched to fluent Japanese, and then started talking about a wakizashi, that and asking them about their day.”

“A what now?” 

“A small, fourteenth century Japanese sword,” John supplied.

“The anesthesiologist was actually Japanese and he had apparently called three of his peers in the ten minutes that John had been under to ask how it was possible that this Caucasian, american teenager was suddenly speaking in fluent Japanese under the influence or anesthesia.”

“It took Dad a good five minutes of solid laughter to finally tell them that they hadn’t broken John or damaged his brain in any way, he was actually fluent already,” Scott laughed.

“Apparently he gave them the biggest scare they had ever had in more than twenty years,” Virgil finished.

“I was obviously being considerate and had thought that it was more polite to talk to him in his own language rather than English,” John sniffed, crossing his arms around my waist. “I don’t see what the big deal was.”

“I’m just impressed that you were speaking it fluently at all,” I said, earning a gentle finger flick as punishment for ever doubting him. “I meant that I can only speak three languages fluently, English, bad English and Sarcasm, so anyone that can do anything else is just amazing to me,” I quickly defended myself.

“Sarcasm is your native tongue,” John mumbled. I ignored him.

“He’s mostly self taught too,” Scott added, showing that, despite how much time they all spend teasing each other, they are always proud of their siblings.

“I used to watch a lot of foreign films and TV shows to pick up the pronunciation and read a lot of graphic novels and translated books to learn how to read and write,” John elaborated. “It’s a very effective way to learn and I apparently have a gift for languages.”

“As well as many other things,” I added to be nice. “Any other stories I need to know?”

“When Gordon was having one of his back surgeries they told him that they had to strap him down and when he asked why they told him it was so he wouldn’t fall off the table and he said ‘It’s OK, five second rule’,” Scott told me.

“‘Cause I'm a snacc,” Gordon added with a grin. “Apparently I also woke up with a violent jolt and when I was asked if I was OK I apologised to the nurse and told her that I thought I was a shark.”

“You also started a joke with the nurse as you went under and finished it the moment you woke up with no prompting,” Virgil laughed.

I clapped enthusiastically for that one and Gordon bowed modestly.

“What about me?” Alan asked, finding the whole thing highly amusing.

“You’ve only been under once but you were hilarious in both the things you said,” John answered. “You apparently woke up screaming ‘Where are my wings?  I want my wings? You stole my feathers you jerk! You were only supposed to take my tonsils!’ and then passed right out again.”

Gordon cracked up laughing, as did everyone else including Alan.

“You then woke up again and asked how long until the anesthetic kicked in, and when the nurse told you it was all done and had actually been two hours you yelled in her face ‘WOAH, DID I JUST TIME TRAVEL?’” John finished.

“That’s so precious,” I cooed, because Alan is adorable in everything he does regardless of what it is.

“We have a lot of stories like that,” Virgil said, “we sometimes have to give pain relief or sedate someone who is freaking out and they do the weirdest stuff.” 

“They do? Is there some kind of hippocratic oath that you guys have to swear or can you tell me some?”

“No oath,”  they assured me. 

“One woman grabbed Virgil’s hand, stuck her fingers up in his sleeve, stroked his arm and said ‘You’d make a great carpet’,” Gordon told me.

“It’s not uncommon for people to feel stressed and unsure of where they are,” Scott continued, “they often wake up screaming or panicking, but we delivered one guy to the hospital who’d had a pretty nasty bang to the head and broken an arm. We were unable to calm him down so we had to sedate him so he wouldn’t do any more damage. He woke up as we were transferring him to the hospital gurney and he hopped off before we could catch him, pulled his pants down with his good arm and started to helicopter right there outside the hospital.”

That broke me, I’m sorry to say. I might proclaim to be far more mature than these idiots and not find fart jokes and the like amusing, but the mental image of this guy, standing there, twirling...I just couldn’t stop.

“One girl asked us if we were single and we didn’t answer and deflected by asking her if she had a boyfriend or girlfriend and she started crying that she just wanted a dog.”

“Remember that young boy who meowed the entire way to the hospital?” 

“And that one lady that was really nervous so we told her to think of something nice and she started singing ‘I wish you a merry Christmas,’ but it was July!”

“And the one that said she wanted us to drop her off at the top of a rainbow so she could slide down it?”

“And the guy that woke up when we landed, looked right at Kayo and said as loudly as he could ‘Look! The love of my life! Don’t leave me, I can change!’”

“And that one guy who knocked out a few teeth and spat out the gauze we packed his mouth with and started freaking out crying ‘was that my liver? Nooo, my liver! I need that! Get back in you!’”

“A woman lost a couple of teeth too and was crying about being ugly. We gave her some pain relief and she was so hazy that, when we handed her over to the doctor and gave him her teeth she started screaming at him... what was it she said, John? You heard it over the comms and were laughing so hard.”

“She yelled, ‘Charlatan! I demand you return my teeth! They are mine and I will choose how they are to be spent!’”

I cracked up at that, mostly the way John told it, which I assume was the same way she had, like a plummy Victorian aristocrat that had just been insulted.

“And that teen who said ‘hey, mister, my ass itches and I’m too high to scratch it.”

“Oh, that’s pure gold,” I laughed, wiping my eyes because I was laughing so hard.

“What about you?” Alan asked me. “Have you ever done anything weird?”

“Only every day of my life.”

“I meant under sedation.”

“Oh, yeah, not really,” I shrugged. “I know that when I had teeth out once, after napping on the couch for a few hours I suddenly sat up and announced that I needed to make Mum a cup of tea. She told me I didn’t need to but I said she was my guest and I had to be polite or she’d leave me alone to die. There was no arguing with me so I got up, went to the kitchen and came back and gave her a mug of cold water with a spoon in it. I apparently said ‘drink up, luv,’ like a really bad impression of Parker and face planted the couch and passed out again. Mum made her own tea after that.”

That got a fair few sniggers and Scott threatening to take away my British card for screwing up tea so badly.

“I have to ask,” I said conspiratorially once everyone had calmed down, “has Kayo ever done anything like this?”

They all looked around, as if scared that she might be listening, then eventually Virgil nodded.

“She came round from her knee surgery after she dislocated it and insisted on trying to get out of bed. The nurse told her she had to stay put as they had just fixed her knee and it needed time to heal. She answered in the most confident, how dare you try to stop me way and informed the nurse that she was a ninja and that they heal three times faster than normal people. The nurse let her try and she dropped face first.”

Honestly, out of all the stories I’ve heard today, that one was the best. It’s nice to know that even the most capable and sometimes terrifying of us isn’t always perfect.

[i-stan-nct-and-satan]

Not Broken Part 10 (Jaehyun Mafia AU)

Not Broken Masterlist 

Jaehyun X Reader

Y/N is a burlesque dancer living in Seoul. Jaehyun is one of the most powerful mafia men in Seoul. How will Y/N survive when Jaehyun suspects that she is involved with a rival gang?

Reasons to read this story: Ten's a cross-dressing madam so..... yeah read it ya freaks.

Trigger warning: mentions of physical abuse, mentions of sexual abuse

“Wow.”  

Taeyong was the first to break the silence once the tape ended.  

Everyone in the room turned their heads to look at their boss. They had been gauging his reactions as they all listened to the tape, but no one dared to make eye contact with him until now.  

His unreadable expression juxtaposed the guilt-ridden faces that filled the room.  

Jaehyun remained silent as he processed the contents revealed in the tape.  

“Damn. We fucked up,” Mark offered, attempting to ease the tension in the room.  

An abrupt fist slammed onto the table, immediately prompting Mark to regret the words that fell past his lips.  

“What did you just say?” Jaehyun dared Mark to repeat himself.  

“Uh. I-I just,” Mark stuttered.  

“You what?”  

“I was just saying that we made a mistake. That’s all.”

“A mistake? You think that I made a mistake?”

“N-no sir, I just meant.”

“What else could you have meant?” Jaehyun challenged, standing up from the table.

“What about the rest of you? Who else thinks that I made a mistake in how I’ve chose to deal with the situation at hand?”

The room was silent as Jaehyun looked around at his men.  

“Don’t think that this changes anything. This tape is just another factor to consider. We’ve dealt with hostages in the past who have come up with more convincing stories than this one. The fact of the matter is that we’ve just heard another story and we don’t know if it’s true or not and even if it is, that still doesn’t mean that we were anything less than professional in how we’ve gone about this mission. I expect you all to remember who we are and why we’re here.”

Jaehyun looked at his second in command whose eyes were currently glued to the floor.

“To find the bastard who killed IU. Don’t let your feelings get in the way of that. Y/N isn’t a woman, she’s a suspect. Remember that.”

<><><><><><><><>

I shut the water off.

“Finished?”  

“Yeah.”

“Here’s a towel.”

I instinctively crossed my arms over my breasts, half expecting Winwin to pull back the curtain completely. I was relieved when instead, Winwin’s hand enter the shower only to hand me a fluffy, oatmeal-colored towel.  

“Thanks,” I mumbled, cursing myself under my breath for having thanked one of my captors.

“When you’re done drying off, wrap yourself **** and then come out,” the raven-haired boy instructed.

I quickly ran the towel over my body before using it to give my hair a quick ruffle with it to keep my hair from dripping all over. I didn’t want to rush, but I didn’t want to risk irritating the man acting as my prison guard, so I wasted no time in wrapping the towel around my frame before stepping out into the spacious bathroom.  

Winwin’s eyes only looked over my body for a brief moment before he walked over to the door. The apparent disinterest in his stare caused me to wonder if he was only looking to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything under my towel. Maybe he really wasn’t interested in women, not that a man’s lack of attraction to me meant that he lacked an attraction to any woman. I wasn’t deluded enough to think that.  

“Are you coming or not?” he asked, obviously annoyed.

Yet again, I had found myself distracted by unimportant thoughts. I followed him out the door and back into the large bedroom.  

“What’s your size?”

“Excuse me?”  

Winwin rolled his eyes as he grabbed my free hand, the one that wasn’t holding my towel in place. He guided me over to a black dresser whose shiny painted coating gave it an obsidian-like appearance. I lost myself in the reflection of the black surface and for a fleeting second, I questioned whether a dresser made of obsidian was really that farfetched of an idea, especially in a house like this.  

Winwin kneeled in front of the dresser and opened the bottom drawer. He took out a few pairs of pants before closing the drawer and opening the one above it. I watched as he continued to open each drawer, take out a few articles of clothing and then close them again. Once his arms were filled with clothing, he stood up and walked over to the neatly made bed. He dropped the clothing onto the bed, ruining its once wrinkle free surface.  

“See what fits.”

I turned to Winwin, now aware of what he had meant before when he asked for my size.  

“I don’t want to change in front of you.”

Winwin rolled his eyes for the hundredth time.

“Then I guess you better check the sizes to see what fits **** you don’t have to do it more than once,” he instructed.

Knowing that he wasn’t going to budge, I walked over to bed and inspected the labels on each article of clothing. I had only meant to look at the sizing, but I couldn’t help but notice the branding that adorned each piece. Dior, Chanel, and Versace littered the bed spread. Lucky for me, the clothes all seemed to be roughly my size with only a few exceptions that were definitely meant for someone much thinner than me. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to choose any of the articles that appeared to be on the more expensive side, so I grabbed the plainest white T shirt I could find and a pair of jeans. I couldn’t help but notice that even the T shirt, which the average person wouldn’t have been able to distinguish from one that came in a Hanes value pack, had a Gucci tag on the inside.  

Rich people, I swear.

I turned away from Winwin and gave my best attempt to put on the shirt and jeans while still hiding my body with the towel. There wasn’t any underwear on the bed to choose from, but I figured that was because Winwin believed that no underwear was better than used underwear, a sentiment I agreed with.  

“Hey Winwin?” I asked as I awkwardly changed into the fresh set of clothing.  

“Hm?”  

“Whose room is this?”

Winwin paused for a few seconds as he organized his thoughts.  

“Lee Ji-eun's.”

I shot Winwin a glance while continuing to change.  

“Oh. Who is that?” I probed further as I pulled the shirt over my head.

“Jaehyun’s sister. The one who was killed by Lucas.”

The towel dropped to my feet.

<><><><><><><><>

“So, what do we do now, sir?” Johnny asked, cautious not to piss his boss off any more than he already was.  

“Right now, we have to check her story out for any inconsistencies. Taeil, recheck the footage from the ball. If there’s anything we missed, we need to find it.”

“Got it,” Taeil obliged, opening his laptop.  

“Johnny, go tell Winwin to take the girl back to the basement,” Jaehyun commanded.

“On it.”  

Johnny turned to leave when the sound of vigorously clacking keys came to a sudden stop.  

“Um, boss?” Taeil gulped, causing both Johnny and Jaehyun to turn towards him.

“You might want to take a look at this,” he continued, rotating the screen so they could see.

“Crap,” Jaehyun muttered, gritting his teeth.  

Taeyong positioned himself beside Jaehyun so that he could see what his friend was referring to.

“Oh no.”

“What? What is it?” Mark asked as he tried to see the screen only for Jaehyun to close it.  

“They know.”  

Everyone’s eyes were on Jaehyun as Taeyong took the lead in updating everyone.  

“That was a message from Wayv. They know Y/N killed Lucas and they know we have her. Not only that, but they’re demanding we give her to them.”

“Wait, so that confirms that Y/N’s story is true, right? That she didn’t have anything to do with IU’s death,” Mark exclaimed excitedly.

Jaehyun sent a glare towards Mark.

“What it means is that we have a rat among us, moron,” Doyoung spat.

“W-what?” Mark faltered.

“That’s right,” Jaehyun began.

“It makes sense that word would spread after the events of the burlesque show. It wouldn’t be that much of a surprise if they figured out the identity of the girl we took or even why we took her, but one thing’s for sure, there was no way that they could have found out about the contents on the tape without someone here leaking it.”

“Jae, you know that no one here would betray us, and besides, there are over ways they could have found out. They could have hacked us,” Taeyong voiced.

“How Taeyong? We used as old-fashioned recording device,” Jaehyun boomed.

“No evidence of hacking our networks either,” Taeil chimed in having reopened his laptop.  

“What about hidden cameras?”  

Taeil lifted his head from the laptop.

“Not a chance there either. I implemented a system that messes with the electromagnetic frequency of certain HighTech transmitting recording devices. That’s why we use older forms of recording devices.”  

Taeyong sat down, looking defeated.  

“Okay, but... who could it even be?”  

A pregnant pause washed over the room as everyone attempted to cease their wandering eyes.

“Fuck!” Jaehyun cursed causing everyone to look at him.  

“Winwin is alone with Y/N right now! That bastard!”

Jaehyun turned to Taeyong.  

“Hurry, we need to find them before-”

“Before what?” Taeyong panted.  

“If Winwin’s the mole, he might be under orders to hand Y/N over to Wayv or to kill her on the spot. We have to find them, now!” he yelled before they both started charging towards the East wing.

Johnny hesitated for a moment before turning to the remaining members at the table.  

“Come on, let’s go.”

Now it was Johnny’s turn to start running towards the East wing with Mark following quickly behind.  

Doyoung got up to follow but was stopped by a sudden hand that tugged at his wrist. Doyoung faced his purple haired partner.  

“What?”

“You don’t think that Winwin’s actually the mole, do you?”

Doyoung’s face softened slightly before looking down at Taeil, who was purposely avoiding his gaze.  

“I don’t know, but it’s not our place to challenge orders.”

Once the blue streaked boy disappeared from their vision, Yuta and Taeil merely stared at the empty doorway.  

“Winwin please,” Taeil prayed softly

<><><><><>

“Are you done changing?” Winwin asked.

“Oh, umm. Yeah,” I commented, having been suddenly caught off guard.  

I bent over to grab the towel that had fallen at my feet.  

Winwin did his best to explain everything to me. He told me that IU was Jaehyun’s sister and that she was killed by Lucas. He explained how Wayv defected from NCT and how they’ve been unable to find him since the incident. Winwin even told me how the necklace I was wearing the night I was kidnapped had belonged to her and that led Jaehyun and the rest of NCT 127 to believes that I had something to do with his sister’s death. I stood there and listened to him without any comments or questions. It was too much to take in all at once.  

“What? Are you surprised?” he questioned, observing your reaction.

“No,” I lied.  

I thought they were interrogating me for Lucas’ death but instead they thought I was responsible for his sister’s death? I almost died because of that mistake. Even if that’s why he acted the way he did, he nearly beat me to death and over a goddamn misunderstanding. I scoffed in bewilderment. Winwin stared at me eyebrows raised.

“I was just noticing how I’m getting better at understanding your accent,” I lied again.  

I was amazed that Winwin’s eyes didn’t fall out of his head due to all the eyerolling he did.  

“Oh wow. What an honor,” he mused sarcastically.

“So...” I began.

“So...?”

I laughed at the amount of courage I was feeling. Especially since it didn’t make much sense in this situation.  

“So, what was she like?”

“IU? Well... She wa-”

Winwin was cut off when the door to the bedroom was slammed open. The interruption was so abrupt and unexpected that I fell back onto the bed. Winwin, however, seemed unaffected by the pink haired man who had suddenly crashed the conversation. Only seconds after Jaehyun entered the room, a certain fiery red head soon followed suit.  

Jaehyun’s gaze met mine and a wave of relief seemed to wash over him, softening his usually stiff features. I, of course, hadn’t noticed this. I was too anxious to decipher the meaning behind his expression since I was still in fear for my life.

His breathing was heavy and uneven making it obvious that he had run here. He stared at Winwin, giving himself a few seconds to catch his breath and assemble his thoughts before approaching the composed man in a less than composed manner.  

“You bastard!” Jaehyun’s hands grabbed Winwin’s shoulders, forcing his narrow frame into the wall.  

Despite their similar heights, Winwin’s body, which looked as though it had been defined through years of hand-to-hand combat, looked almost fragile next to Jaehyun’s more muscular build. Anyone else would have surely felt overcome with alarm and panic if put in Winwin’s position, yet the man himself seemed to be more annoyed than anything.

“Admit it, you worthless piece of shit.”

Johnny and Mark were the next to run through the bedroom door, then Doyoung, but I hadn’t noticed their presence until Taeyong’s hand came into my field of vision. I looked up at him, realizing that he was offering to help me up. I accepted without thinking.  

“Mark over here is going to take you somewhere. Follow everything he says, okay?”  

Despite his intimidating features, his gaze resembled that of a concerned mother. His watery eyes mirrored mine and I couldn’t help but trust that his instructions were in my best interest. I nodded in response before the nearby blonde guided me into the hall.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Winwin’s bitter stare bore holes into the hands that were wrinkling his shirt.

“And what exactly is it I should be admitting?” he challenged, making no effort to remove himself from his boss’s grip.

“Don’t fuck with me, Winwin. Or should I say Sicheng?” Jaehyun spat.

Winwin’s irritation turned into genuine confusion once the name had reached his ears.  

After a short pause, Winwin’s eyes widened in realization only for them to tightly squeeze shut.

“What did Kun do?”  

An oppressive force filled the room and the now somber atmosphere resembled that of a funeral rather than an interrogation.  

Jaehyun removed his hands from Winwin but his unmoving figure informed his curly haired underling that he wasn’t finished with him yet.  

“Wayv knows.” Jaehyun carefully analyzed Winwin’s reactions as he disclosed this new information.

Winwin looked past his boss’ shoulders at the other four men standing in the room with them. Doyoung stared back at him while Johnny and Mark did their best to avoid meeting his gaze. Taeyong simply shook his head at what was happening in front of him.  

“About what? The girl?” he finally responded.  

When Jaehyun gave no hint of confirming nor denying his presumption, he continued to press on.

“And what? You think I’m the one who told them? What evidence do you have of that? None, right?” Winwin scoffed.  

“Well who else would it be?”  

“Winwin is innocent!”  

Everyone’s eyes shot towards the two men who had abruptly entered the bedroom.

“What do you mean?” Jaehyun asked.

“The message from Wayv. It wasn’t traceable.” Yuta explained.

“So? It isn’t uncommon for an enemy message to be untraceable. It’d be sloppy of them if it was.”

“Yes, but this time it’s different,” Taeil began.

“Normally with messages like these, we can at least trace them back to an IP address even though they’re almost always dead ends, but when I traced the origins of this message ...”

“Get to the point, Taeil,” Jaehyun ordered.

“Yes, sir. When I searched for the message’s origin, the IP address the message was sent from matched the IP address of the computer that received it.”

“In other words, it was sent from Taeil’s laptop,” Yuta translated.

“Wait, what does that mean? So, someone had access to Taeil’s computer?” Taeyong asked.

“Well kind of. As you all know, I’ve been the only one who’s had any direct physical contact with my laptop over the last few days,” Taeil explained.

“So, what are you saying?” Jaehyun huffed.

“Someone hacked my laptop without me knowing. I gotta give it to them, I had no idea and right now I don’t have any idea how long they’ve had access or how much control they had, but at this point, it’s highly probable that they’ve accessed control of everything my laptop has control of, including any systems we’ve implemented not to mention it’s microphone and camera.”

“So, they can hear everything Taeil’s laptop could hear,” Yuta summarized.

Jaehyun turned back to Winwin.

“Don’t think this means we’re done here,” He growled.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Winwin smirked at his boss.  

“Taeil? Where’s your laptop right now?” Jaehyun asked the brown-haired man.  

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

“So, how are you?” Mark asked as we walked down the winding hallways.

I stopped and looked at him, the irritation in my face somehow went over his head.  

“So, is that like a not good?”

“Oh no, I’m great. I might have two black eyes but at least I don’t have three,” I spat out before resuming my pace.

Mark sighed.  

“Where are we even going?” I asked, still peeved.

“You know what, I don’t actually know. Taeyong didn’t give me any orders beyond telling me to get you out of there.”

“How did I get myself into this mess?” I muttered under my breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

Mark looked around as we continued down the hall. I could tell there was something on his mind, but I couldn’t bring myself to care what it was.  

“Hey,” He loudly called out even though I was walking right next to him.  

I gave him a quick glance before returning my gaze forward.

“What?” I asked.  

“Are you hungry?”

Before I could even think of an answer, my stomach thought of one for me.  

Mark’s laughter added to my annoyance, but I chose to stay silent.

“I know where we should go.”

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

“Boss, what are we planning to do?” Johnny asked following his colleagues as they journeyed down the East wing’s halls.

“Do you think that we can mislead them by giving them fake information or something?” Yuta half-asked half-suggested.

“Not an option,” Taeil chimed in.

“Exactly. If Wayv has complete access to Taeil’s laptop, then they already know that we’ve found them out. The only thing we can do now is destroy it and initiate the emergency systems.” Jaehyun stopped before looking to Taeil.

“Unless you think you’d be able do anything.”

“Sorry, boss. That’s a no go. They’re already ten steps ahead of me if they managed to hack into my computer system and if they know that we’ve discovered their presence, they’re probably working to get twenty steps ahead as we speak.”

“Then it’s settled,” Jaehyun began as he and his men turned the corner entering the kitchen.

“We’ll incinerate the laptop before we-”  

Jaehyun’s words came to a sudden halt as he found himself staring at Y/N and Mark sitting and eating on the kitchen counter.

“What do you think? I was right, huh?” Mark asked, handing me the packet of gummy candy we were sharing.  

“Hmmm. I don’t know, I kind of like the sour apple ones better than the watermelon.”

“Psh, whatever. More for me I gue- Boss!”  

I turned towards the group of men who had entered the kitchen. When my eyes landed on the man who was responsible for my wrecked state, I froze.

 “What is this?” Jaehyun demanded as he approached us.  

Despite knowing that the question was directed more towards Mark than at the both of us, I still struggled to form anything even close to resembling a coherent thought. I had just watched this man get into it with Winwin without personally feeling the slightest ounce of fear, but now his aggression was being directed towards me and Mark. I hadn’t noticed until Mark started speaking that he must have felt the same way.  

“I umm we-”  

“I instructed Mark to take Y/N to the kitchen to get her some food,” Taeyong winked.

Jaehyun turned back towards the redhead that was standing behind him.  

“Well let’s hope for your sake and theirs that they didn’t say anything of any importance while sitting only one room away from our little problem.”

“Huh? What problem?” Mark inquired more curious than fearful at this point.

Instead of answering, Jaehyun motioned for Doyoung to come closer. After whispering in his ear and pointing towards the living room, Doyoung nodded and left for the nearby room.  

“Taeil and Yuta, go catch Mark up on everything upstairs” Jaehyun ordered.  

“As for you,” Jaehyun rumbled, turning his head towards Winwin.  

“Until we know for sure what’s going on, Johnny will be tasked with staying by your side. Johnny, make sure you keep an eye on him.”

“Um. I can watch him boss,” Yuta volunteered.  

Jaehyun immediately shook his head.

“Johnny will be in charge of watching Winwin and that’s final. I need you to help Taeil explain the situation to Mark in terms that he’ll understand. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Yuta acquiesced.  

Mark hopped off the countertop and offered me up a sympathetic look before heading off with his colleagues.  

It was just us three now. I could hear my heart beating in my chest. It only made me more anxious as I feared that he could hear it too and that he might end my life just to rid himself of the bothersome sound.  

I kept my eyes glued to the floor as to not disrespect the man in front of me. I wasn’t going to risk pissing him off any more than I already had, not while my skin was still splashed with shades of blue and violet.

I could sense his stare and though I was fearful of the consequences that would arise might my eyes meet his, I couldn’t suppress my curiosity for more than a few brief moments and so I surrendered to his gaze. Though I had expected to see a look of rage, what I was met with instead was that of confusion. He looked over my body as though examining an antique he was trying to set a fair price for. It wasn’t the most objectifying look I had received. Far from it, in fact, but I couldn’t help but feel self-conscious under his scrutinizing gaze. I had no idea what was going on. Now that they found out what happened with me and Lucas, NCT 127 had no use for me anymore and Jaehyun was probably thinking of what to do with me. If he was going to kill me, wouldn’t he have done it by now? Perhaps he had something else in store for me. Was this pink haired mob boss contemplating whether I’d be profitable if he were to sell me as a sex slave?  

“Those clothes,” He growled.

I blinked a few times, waiting for him to finish his thought.

“Take them off.”  

“W-what?” I stuttered aghast.

“Boss?” Taeyong quirked, voice riddled with concern.

“I said, take them off. Now.” His voice boomed.  

My already uneven breathing quickly turned into full on hyperventilation. I looked for an exit hoping to find any way out of the mess that I was in, but it was no use. My heart was beating faster than a rabbit whose foot was caught in the teeth of a large predator. Adrenaline filled my veins, yet I was too fearful to use it. I was frozen in place, unable to think, speak, or move even an inch. The familiar sight of black dots began to dull my vision until there was nothing else to be seen.  

“Shit!” Taeyong cursed as he scrambled to my side.  

“What the hell was that?!” He shouted as he checked to make sure the fall didn’t do any serious damage.  

“Those clothes,” Jaehyun muttered bitterly. “They’re IU’s.”  

“So?! Just because you don’t like seeing someone else wear IU’s clothing doesn’t mean you can just order them to strip, Jaehyun! Do you have any idea what she must have been thinking?”

“She’s not just someone else. She’s the girl who’s involved in IU’s death.”

“No, she’s not, Jae. You saw Wayv’s message. Her story was true,” Taeyong stood up from Y/N’s side. He was practically yelling at his boss.

“You don’t know that. She could be working with them!”

Taeyong grabbed Jaehyun by the shoulders.

“Snap out of it, Jae! Stop looking at her like she’s the person who killed your sister and start seeing her for what she is, one of Lucas’ victims, just like your sister. No, actually. Scratch that. You should start thinking of her as the girl who killed the man who killed your sister because that being the case, maybe you should thank her instead of doing whatever the hell it is you think you’re doing!”

Taeyong immediately regret the words as they left his mouth, but it was too late. He braced himself for whatever reaction Jaehyun would have to his verbal lashings, but he wasn’t prepared for his boss’s lack of a reaction.  

Jaehyun scowled at his second in command before looking at the hands that still held onto his shoulders. Taeyong noticed this and immediately released his hold on the mob boss in front of him. Jaeyong continued to stare at Taeyong as he contemplated his words.

“Then what do you suppose we do with her?” He asked through gritted teeth.

Taeyong took a step back and looked down at my unconscious body.  

“She doesn’t know that much about what’s going on so letting her go wouldn’t harm us in any way, but with Wayv after her, she’s not exactly safe anywhere but here.”

Jaehyun’s eyes, which had previously been glued to Taeyong were now gazing at the figure laying on the kitchen floor. After a few moments of silence, Jaehyun sighed.

“Put her in one of the spare bedrooms while we figure this all out,” He decided, hands rubbing at his temples.  

“Yes sir.” Taeyong lifted my body off the ground in a less than graceful sweep.

“And send someone to get her some clothing. I won’t have her wearing any more of IU’s things.”  

“Yes sir.”  

[shes-an-oddbird]

Time or Quake

Daniel tries to determine what are normal behaviors of this time versus what are Daisy's own unique odd habits. 

Dousy Week - Day 6 Prompts - Time & Quake

Daniel Sousa was in fact fazed by everything but to be fair he thought he was handling the transition to the 21st century as well as could be expected. Better even to some extent. It helps greatly that Daisy is more than happy to teach him all about it, especially if it involved laughing at him along the way. At some point, after he begins to recognize habits and behaviors that are considered normal for the time, he starts to notice odd things about Daisy herself. He doesn’t worry over most of them but sometimes he finds himself unable to not ask if it’s a time-thing or a Daisy-thing.

He has to have a cell phone and he has to know how to use it. This Daisy insists upon. In case of an emergency she wants to be able to reach him and wants him to be able to reach her or another member of the team. It will also help him blend in. Teaching him to use it actually hadn’t been that difficult. He likes to think that he picked up on the tech quickly enough. It was the smaller irrelevant things that confused him.

“Apps?”

“They’re mostly time wasters.”

Not his favorite. He didn’t care much for wasting his own time.

Books though? A library’s worth in his phone? Fantastic. He’ll admit he still likes the feel of old paperback books best, but the convenience was unbeatable.

On that same note, he also still preferred talking to people on the phone versus the short exchanges of text messages. The endless abbreviations, the lack of replies, the incessant beeping from group messages. He didn’t mind so much the ones from Daisy. They usually consisted of checking up on him when they were apart, links to articles she thought he might like and reminders. Specifically, those reminders were for him to remind her to show him some movie or book or tv show. Those were his favorite.

But it was at the end of many of her messages that he first noticed something odd and unique to her texts and one day he finally asks her about it.

“Daisy?”

“Hmm?”

“Why is this at the end of so many of your messages?”

“Why is what?” She leans over his shoulder and he points to the odd little colon and parentheses at the end of her most recent message. He hears her try to stifle a laugh and looks up at her. She’s grinning down at him, her shoulders shaking gently.

“What?”

“Okay, here,” she takes the phone and turns it in his hand so that it sideways. He thinks maybe the screen will rotate like it does when she shows him pictures, but it doesn’t. “Do you see it now?”

He does not.

“What am I supposed to be seeing?”

She doesn’t answer just continues to smile at him. He looks back at the screen and then back at her until it hits him. “It looks like a smile.”

“There you go.”

“But why?”

“Because I was smiling when I wrote the message and honestly you’re not ready for emojis.”

“Emojis?”

She taps a button on the screen and up pops hundreds of yellow circles with faces on them. Most of them are smiling but some he supposes looks angry or sad or even confused. “You’re right, I’m not ready.”

He mentally marks the symbol down as a time related oddity, even if its already a dated one.

He notices one day while holding her hand that she has her shirt sleeve tugged down over her palm. He writes it off as her hands being cold and doesn’t think much of it until it until it happens again on a warmer day. Out of curiosity he tugs her hand up to look at it and notices her shirt is actually made with a little hole to slide her thumb through.

“What’s up?” Daisy asks. He does this often, stopping dead in his tracks to inspect something that is new or unusual.

“Why, is this like a fashionable thing?” It must be if they make the shirts that way.

“I wouldn’t say that necessarily, I think it’s just comfortable for some people.”

“People with perpetually cold hands?”

“Maybe, among other reasons,” she looks down at the hand he doesn’t have grasped in his own, “I like how familiar it feels, it reminds me of my gauntlets.”

Well that made a lot of sense. Her gauntlets protected her arms so there was a level of safety and comfort in having her palms covered.

So not just a Daisy thing but with a very Daisy specific reason.

Daniel hears a frustrated shout from the other room and its not the first one. For at least the last half hour it sounded like Daisy was arguing with someone but as best he can tell its only a one-sided conversation. When he hears a loud thump he decides he better check on her. He pokes his head into their room just as she mutters another irritated sentence. “Why are you so useless?”

He knocks on the door frame.

“Hmm?” She answers without moving her eyes off the screen.

“Were you just talking to the computer?”

“Yes.”

“Are you on one of those video calls?”

“What?” Daisy finally looks up at him. “Oh no, I was, it was just being uncooperative.”

It? The computer? “So you yelled at it?”

“Yes.”

“It’s an inanimate object.”

“So?” She asks.

He almost doesn’t ask. “Does it understand you?”

The next thing he knows is a pillow is being hurled in his direction. “Don’t tease me, the damn thing is pissing me off, I’m supposed to have this done for Mack by the end of the day.”

He holds his hands up in defense. “I promise that was a genuine question.”

She sighs heavily and falls back against the remaining pillows on the bed. “No, it does not understand me, god help me if it does, I’ve called it some pretty awful things.”

“I heard.”

She sits up and looks at him as though something has just occurred to her. “Wait, have you never yelled at an inanimate object before?”

“Yelled at? Yes, but I’ve never had a whole conversation with one.”

He marks this one down as a normal behavior of the time and dodges another pillow that comes his way.

He thinks her most unusual habit may be the odd places she sits.

She sits on the floor a lot. Which he doesn’t think is all that odd, it’s just not something he’d voluntarily do himself. But sometimes he returns to their tiny, shared apartment and finds her comfortably situated anywhere but in a chair. She sits on the back of the couch, on the counter in the kitchen, on the stepstool she used to reach things.

When they’re on base she sits on desks or on crates and on the rare occasion he finds her in a chair its almost always sideways or backwards or with her legs and feet pulled up underneath her.

“Do you have something against chairs?” He asks when he finds her sitting on a crate instead of doing inventory on the zephyr.

She looks at him funny. “No, why?”

“You just never seem to use them?” He gestures to the boxes beneath her.

“I didn’t even realize.” She replied honestly. “Maybe its a subconscious rebellion, the nuns tried to instill us with good posture or maybe just habit, I didn’t exactly have proper seating in my van.” She pauses. “Is it weird? Now that you bring it up, I feel kind of like a child.”

“I don’t know if it’s weird,” he laughs and steps up to her, wrapping his arms around her waist as she drapes hers over his shoulders, “you’re the one who’s supposed to be teaching me what’s normal.”

She considers this. “Unclear.” She tells him.

Unclear.

There is one thing that he knows is distinctly Daisy even from the very first time it happens.

She’s been gone for nearly two weeks. Sent with Elena’s team on a mission involving a whole family of inhumans who were being threatened. Definitely their area of expertise. He spent a much quieter week at the academy, assisting Coulson as he prepared to take on a semester of SHIELD history classes. The pair had joined May for lunch when the text messages started coming in.

We’ve landed!!!!

Are you still at the academy?? I’ll meet you there

Where are you both the classrooms are empty

He considers calling her but she’s taken to answering the phone in mocking tones when he does that instead of just writing back to her. Stopped for lunch, we’re on our way back to May’s classroom

:) :) :)

He rolls his eyes and stuffs the phone back in his pocket. They’re only just around the corner from the classroom. May has a lecture in a few minutes and the halls are filled with cadets moving around in a rush to get to where they need to be.

“Finally!” Daisy jumps up from her spot of the floor and starts to sprint towards them, dodging the students who didn’t get out of the way fast enough. She slams into him and they stumble backwards a couple of steps.

“Hey I missed y – “

She cuts him off, dragging his lips down to meet hers. He knows she’s had a long couple of weeks so he tries to pour as much love and comfort into the kiss as possible, pulling her as close to him as he can.

A shudder runs through them and they break apart. Daisy looks up at him wide eyed and cheeks reddening. People have stopped and are staring at them startled and he realizes that it wasn’t a shudder than separated them but a quake.

“I’m sorry, I just really missed you too.”

A Daisy thing. Definitely a Daisy thing.

[butsomeofusarelookingatthestars]

Forgotten: Part 1

During one of the BAU’s most difficult cases, Luke meets a dedicated journalist who is committed to fighting for the underdog. Reluctant to trust the authorities at first, she finds a friend in the compassionate FBI agent. But as they draw closer, the challenges only grow with fear, hostility and a relentless unsub whose attention turns to her…

AN/ I actually did it! Here’s Part 1 which hopefully sets the scene. I’m hoping to update this fortnightly on a Sunday evening. Big plans ahead! I hope you enjoy. Please let me know what you think x

A heavy sigh escaped your lips, your back aching as you leant back in your chair to survey the empty room. The warm glow of your desk lamp was oddly comforting in the dimly lit office. Darkness pressed up against the windows and you could hear the bustling street outside, cars beeping and late-night revellers bristling with delight as they poured into the local bars. 

A part of you wished you were alongside them. 

Ping!

You glanced at your computer screen, your lips curving into a small smile as you scanned the email that had just come through. Another piece of the puzzle. 

Questioning and investigating had always been interests of yours. Even when you were young, your childhood games had consisted of mystery solving. Every school report had highlighted your natural curiosity and ability to challenge authority...or ‘backtalk’ as the teachers had put it. But journalism hadn’t even crossed your mind until your English teacher had encouraged you to take a work experience placement at a local paper.

You hadn’t looked back since. 

The long hours at university, the endless reports and tiresome essays had all been worth it to achieve your goal of becoming a fully fledged journalist at an independent news association. It wasn’t as glamorous as the movies made out. Most days were spent crammed into tiny offices with colleagues, chasing dead-end leads or struggling to piece together articles in time to make deadlines.

Pressure came with the job, but you had increasingly found yourself addicted to the thrill of uncovering secrets, holding the powerful to account and sharing truth with others. If you could make a difference in your own little corner of the world, you had to do it. 

It gave you a purpose.

“Shouldn’t you be out with your friends?” 

You almost jumped in surprise, too caught up in your emails to notice your boss staring at you in amusement from across the office. He gave you a knowing grin. 

“Another late night Y/N? I admire your determination, but you have to take a time out sometimes.” 

“I’m just finishing up a lead.” You explained, gesturing at your computer. “I’ll be done soon.” 

He flashed you a disbelieving look. He really did know you too well. 

“I promise.” You told him, smiling softly as he nodded in agreement. 

RING

You glanced down at your phone, your heart sinking as you recognised the Caller ID. Apparently your boss sensed your change of mood straight away. 

“I bet I know who that will be.” He said, gazing at you sympathetically. “Make sure you call it a night afterwards. You need some time to yourself sometimes Y/N.”

You nodded in agreement, your fingers already itching to take the call. “Will do.” You gave your boss a small smile as he waved goodbye, flashing once last concerned glance behind his shoulder as he disappeared into the elevator.

You took a deep breath before accepting the call. “Hi Anne, how are you doing?”

The familiar guilt began to build up as you heard her strained voice. It never got easier talking to victim’s families. In fact, with each one it got harder to accept that yet another family was experiencing unimaginable pain. 

“I know. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for you.” You spoke softly, pausing for a moment as you heard her begin to cry. “Have you spoken to the support worker I put you in touch with?” 

Luke stifled a yawn, rubbing his eyes furiously in an effort to stay alert. It was late even by his standards, but he desperately wanted to finish writing up his reports for the day. For some reason, despite being a member of the BAU for the past year he still felt the need to impress. 

To go above and beyond had always been part of his job. Besides it was nothing compared to the 75th Ranger Regiment. At least this job didn’t involve warzones. Sometimes he felt himself missing the action of the military, but soon after joining the BAU he had realised how rewarding it was to work closely with his colleagues. 

Hunting down criminals was something that came naturally to him. Protecting others was something he felt like he had to do. 

He let out a sigh as his gaze fell upon his file. The victims’ names appearing to loom out at him. The downside to the job? At times, it did also mean getting too close for comfort with unsubs. Getting inside their heads became increasingly uncomfortable the more he got to know victims and their families.

“I know why I’m here...why are you?”

He jumped at the sound of Emily’s voice, flashing her an amused grin. Trust his Unit Chief to be the only FBI superior complaining about their team working late. 

“I just wanted to finish up before heading home.” He told her, chuckling as she shot him a disbelieving look.

“Well, consider it an order from me to go. Linda Barnes can’t force us all to stay chained to our desks.” She joked, rolling her eyes sarcastically at the mere mention of their troublesome superior. “Besides I’m sure Roxy will be happy to see you!”

Luke let out a bark of laughter. The sound of his mum complaining about him settling down popped into his head. When will you have someone other than Roxy to return home to mi hijo? 

He nodded in agreement. “I’m sure she will.” He replied, holding his hands up in defeat. “Just let me finish this update for one of the families first.” 

Emily’s eyes softened at his words. She gave him an understanding nod. She knew how much it meant. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” 

Luke gave her a small smile of appreciation before he turned his attention back to his work. It was important to him to communicate with families - whether it was an update about court proceedings against unsubs, appeals information or just to check in with them at difficult times. 

It wasn't as if he were addicted to his job. But it could at times be all consuming. After all, it was difficult not to think about the dark nature of the BAU and the suffering of victims. 

Perhaps it had been what had happened to Phil that fuelled his pursuit? He knew what the pain of losing a love one felt like. So, he wanted to do everything in his power to ease the suffering for others.

He understood. It would never be enough.

“I bring spoils of victory!” You sang happily as you entered the newsroom, a box of delicious smelling doughnuts in hand. “I got the best of Maxine’s freshly baked goods.”

Cheers rung out and you laughed softly at the sheer delight on your colleagues faces. It was always appreciated to have a special pick-me-up in the office. The job could feel overwhelming at times and, despite the pressure, you all pulled together and worked closely to help one another.

Showing your affection with sugary goods was always well received. 

“You’re the best Y/N!” Your friend Jennifer exclaimed, grinning widely as she eagerly picked up a doughnut from the box you offered her. “Anything you need help with this week, just give me a shout.”

“Careful, I may take you up on that.” You replied, flashing her a teasing smile. The two of you had always been close friends and, as colleagues, you worked together well. You were there when she needed a push and she was there when things got tough you...which seemed to be happening more recently.  

“Please never move jobs Y/N.” Archie, a fellow journalist who covered local politics, joked as he enthusiastically tucked into his selection. “This office wouldn’t last a minute without you...or the doughnuts.” 

You rolled your eyes playfully before taking a seat at your desk. A contented smile crossed your face as you took in the jubilant atmosphere. It was nice to have days like this.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last. 

Your phone rung out loudly prompting Archie and Jen to flash you nervous glances. But you ignored them, taking a deep breath before answering the call. 

"Y/N Y/L/N speaking...”

“There’s a breaking story.”

It was another early start for the BAU team as they sat around the bullpen. They had all gotten the dreaded message from Emily earlier that they’d received a new case. However, she seemed to have been trapped in meetings with the FBI higher-ups for the past thirty minutes...which meant there was something much bigger at play than a regular case. 

“I’m just saying newbie, if you insist on wearing shirts like that? Expect it to be noted.” 

Luke rolled his eyes holding up his hands in playful surrender. “Ouch! I didn’t realise my fashion taste would be such an offensive to you Garcia.” 

The trendy blonde surveyed him with curiosity, flicking her fluffy pen at his chest teasingly. “You call a grey plaid shirt fashion taste newbie?” 

JJ flashed Luke a sympathetic glance, but still joined in with the rest of the team’s laughter as Luke merely shrugged his shoulders in defeat and chuckled warmly. Even when he was being teased for his lack of interest in clothes, it felt nice to be part of the team. 

Sadly their good news didn’t last as Emily approached them, glancing in concern as her FBI superiors filed out of her office. Linda Barnes flashed them an icy glare before moving towards the exit.

“We have a case. It’s a bad one.”

AN/ There you have it! Spoiler: their paths will cross haha! Sorry for the delay. This was meant to be up on Sunday, but I’m still working full-time so by the time I get to the weekend I’m usually too exhausted to write. Thanks for sticking with me. I know there’s not much going on, but please let me know what you guys think - storyline, characters, length of chapter (I’m agonising over this haha!), whatever you want to share. x

Taglist:

@aimzonicles97​, @reidsstudies​, @exceptionallytiredzombie​, @illegalcerebral, @captaintightpants58​, @abitofeverythinggg​

[ayamari-no-goshi]

Verboten 12 | (T)

ff.net | AO3

Fandom: Danny Phantom (DP)

Summary:   AU. When Danny was five years old, he went missing for 2 weeks. In the years that follow, his family tried to make sense of what happened, only for the truth to be discovered years later.

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, language. Be prepared for some very weird things

Chapter warning: minor character death. Blood

Parings: Danny/Sam

Notes: originally uploaded to Ff.net. Cross-posted to AO3 and tumblr. This fic is very heavily inspired by folklore surrounding mysterious wilderness disappearances

Chapter 12

After he was cleared to return to school, he found the media waiting for him. Somehow, Danny’s parents managed to keep them away from the house. Actually, that wasn’t too surprising as his dad did have a bad habit of accidentally attacking people who paid unplanned visits to the house. The mental image of a particularly annoying reporter with too much perfume covered in the green goop from one of his parents’ inventions was rather pleasing. Following the events at the campgrounds, the school was closed for a week while the police conducted interviews with the staff and school board The information he got from Sam, whose parents were among those interviewed, suggested the police wanted to verify those involved with the school had nothing to do with what happened. However, a rumor circulated that the staff knew about the original missing person investigation prior to the trip, which prompted the school to release a statement where the park and its employees for the tragedy. That didn’t sit well with the general populace, who began regular protests in front of the school.

Once the school re-opened, the reporters began targeting students for interviews they couldn’t get with the school’s staff. Since most of the students were minors, the police got involved to prevent any potential legal issues. However, their presence did not stop the reporters from trying. Each time one of the students involved in the “mass abduction,” as it was being called, returned to the school, the reporters renewed their attempts.

After successful dodging the reporters, Danny made his way to his locker. Unlike the countless times he previously made the trip, this particular time was different. The tension in the air was palpable as the other students stared at him as he passed.

His friends met him at his locker. When he mentioned the stares, Tucker gave an awkward chuckle. “About that, word got out that you were found hours after the rest of us. There are a lot of rumors about what you might or might not have seen and why you weren’t as injured as the A-listers.”

“Speaking of the the A-listers, which ones are back?” Danny questioned as he grabbed his books. Other than the general aftermath, he didn’t know too much regarding what happened to the other abductees.

“All but Star are back. She lost part of her arm, so she’s in physical therapy. I overheard the queen bee saying something about how Star might end up being transferred,” Sam answered as she kept an eye on some of the students staring at them.

He nodded. “That’s more than understandable.” The noticeable tension gave way to what he could only describer as an overwhelming wrongness.

His friends grabbed his arms to stabilize him. “Dude, what’s wrong? Is it related to your… you know?” Tucker’s voice momentarily seemed distant, and it took Danny a great deal of focus to concentrate on it. “Are you sure you should have returned today?”

“It’s okay… it’s just…”

“FENTON!” The sound of Dash’s voice rang through the hallway. Danny had little time to react before the jock suddenly appeared in his line of sight and pinned him to the lockers. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back. You better have an explanation for what happened that day!” Anger radiated off Dash in waves.

“What is your problem?” He still didn’t understand how he became so sensitive to emotions, but they seemed to affect what Frostbite called his core. “If you forgot, you ran off and left us!”

“Are you telling me that you didn’t see that thing? You didn’t see what hurt Star? You better not be lying to me. You’re the one who gave us that weird warning before everything happened!”

“Get off me,” he snapped as he pushed Dash away. “Regarding what happened to you and your friends, I only know what I was told when I was in the hospital. We,” he gestured to his friends as his chest suddenly seemed to freeze, “never saw you guys after you ran off. So, whatever you saw, we certainly didn’t see it.”

“Don’t play dumb with me. Don’t your crackpot parents study this type of stuff?”

Before he could reply, the cold sensation gripped his chest again as the wrongness from earlier returned. The girl who was on the new the other night walked by and momentarily locked eyes with him. His entire body screamed danger, and his core tried activating in defense. It took all of his willpower to squash it down. The girl just gave him a haughty smile and continued on her way.

“Well, aren’t you going to say something?” Dash’s voice brought him back to the situation at hand.

“My parents aren’t crackpots. If you want information from them, go ask them yourself. Good luck at understanding their explanations though. Come on, guys.”

“Are you calling me stupid, Fenton? Cuz if you are…”

“Dash, even I can barely understand some of their theories, and I grew up exposed to that stuff.” That seemed to somewhat diffuse the jock’s anger as he simply growled and sulked away. After nodding in satisfaction, he caught the stunned looks of his friends. “What?”

“Well, at least we know one good thing that happened from our little romp in the woods, you grew a backbone.” Sam’s satisfied smirk caught him off guard. Was she preening? However, her eyes narrowed as her gaze drifted towards where the underclassman disappeared. “But what was that about? You looked like you were going to have a fit when that girl walked by?”

“You noticed that too? I thought I was imaging things,” Tucker added as warning bell rang.

“Remind me to tell you at lunch. I’m not sure if it’s something others should hear.”

….

A few hours later, Danny and his friends found themselves huddled at one of the lunch tables at the far end of the cafeteria. While his friends took a few bites of their meals, he scanned the area to make sure no one was close enough to overhear them. His eyes eventually fell on the girl from earlier.

She seemed normal enough, especially since she was sitting next to Paulina. They wouldn’t have let her anywhere near them if they thought she was odd. However, even though her hair and clothing seemed immaculate, there was something stiff and unnatural in her posture. It was almost as if she was trying too hard to sit normally.

“Alright Danny, spill it.” Tucker’s voice made him jump. Glancing back at his friends, he realized they were both impatiently staring at him. “What happened earlier?”

“Let me ask this first: what do you know about that girl?” He gestured towards where she sat.

“Oh, you mean Maura?” Sam’s voice was full of spite. “She’s been trying to suck up to Paulina over the last two years. Apparently, she managed to get into Queen Bee’s good graces enough to be acknowledged as her unofficial successor. She’s just as mean and shallow as the rest of them. Why?”

“Because, according to the news, she went missing on a local trail around the same time we went missing in the forest. Eww! Tucker!”

Tucker’s apology for sitting out his drink was short as he brought out his PDA. After a few quick taps, he brandished it in front of him. After Sam snatched it from him, she and Danny discovered he brought up the article that matched the new report Danny saw. “Dude, that’s really weird.”

“I’d have to agree.” After Sam glanced at the article, she glanced towards the girl. “They found her in a dazed state but uninjured?”

“What was she even doing other there anyways?”

“With your attempts to hit on most of the girls in the school, I’m surprised you didn’t know.” Sam raised a questioning eyebrow towards Tucker. “She’s a member of the cross country team. From what I’ve overheard, it’s fairly normal for her to train on the trails around the area.”

“Oh, I forgot about that.”

“Do you know anything else about her? What?” Danny hadn’t expected Sam to scowl at him. “Look, I get you don’t like her, but the news said something about how her parents said she felt off to them. And when we made eye contact earlier, it was like my entire being screamed something was very wrong and very dangerous.” He glanced in Maura’s direction again. “Look at the way she’s sitting. Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Danny, did you ever think it was possibly less supernatural?” A sigh escaped Sam when he just raised an eyebrow. “She honestly could have just seen something she shouldn’t have. I mean, it’s not weird for drug dealers, cultists, and other people who don’t want to be seen do their business in the woods.” After glancing back over towards Maura, a deep frown crossed Sam’s face. “It is weird that it happened the same day though.”

“Hmm… maybe. I mean, it did happen the same day. Can we just keep an eye on her, just to be safe?”

“I’m cool with it.” Tucker adjusted his glasses before glancing back at the A-listers.

“Of course you would be.” Sam shook her head in disapproval before turning back to Danny. “I think you’re being paranoid, but I’ll let you know if I see or hear anything weird.”

“I appreciate it.” While he knew his friends were humoring him, Danny couldn’t help but feel somewhat relieved. After a moment, a memory from the morning came to mind. “Hey, did either of you see a lot of police this morning? There were a bunch a few blocks away from my house.”

Instead of immediately replying, Tucker paled as he quickly checked something on his PDA. “Damn it, there was another one.”

“Another what?” Both Sam and Danny echoed as Tucker shoved the PDA into Danny’s hand. A brief glance showed the article was about a recent death in Amity Park.

Before Danny had a chance to read more, Tucker launched into a hushed explanation. “You guys know my mom works for the 911 call center, right? Well, she said something about there being a lot of weird deaths recently.”

“Weird how? Like normal weird, as in ‘person’s weird hobby got them’? Or strange weird as in ‘that’s effed up’?”

“Like ‘that’s effed up’. Sam, you need to stop laying off the true crime shows if you’re make distinctions like that. Anyways,” the techno-geek leaned in as he lowered his voice again, “when my mom asked a police officer friend about it, he stated that they think there might be a serial killer.”

“A what?” Danny felt the blood run from his face. Did Tucker really just say what he thought he did?

“Dude, keep your voice down! But yeah, that’s what they’re thinking because the victims all have something important ‘missing from their person’.”

An uneasy sensation pooled at the bottom of Danny’s stomach. “What exactly is missing?”

A frown crossed Tucker’s face before he responded. “You know, I’m not really sure. Mom doesn’t want to say anything about it. I just chalked it up to the police not wanting to spread information on what they have.”

“But you’d think if it was something as simple as a personal item, they’d could at least specify that,” Sam mentioned. After glancing around to make sure no one was nearby, she continued. “That makes me worried there’s something more sinister going on.”

“You’re the true crime expert. How common is that?”

“It’s extremely common for killers to take souvenirs, but it’s insanely rare for them to… err… take part of a body.” Her voice pitched in discomfort as she spoke.

“And on that note, I think I’ve lost my appetite.”

Sam grabbed his arm as he went to stand. “Come on, Danny. That’s most likely not what’s happening here.”

“With everything else we’ve recently dealt with and learned, that’s not something I want to hear. Do you remember what Frostbite told us? Do you remember what you said Plasmius talked about? I don’t want to get paranoid for no reason.” With that, he gathered his items and walked off.

….

As the week came to a close, Danny noted it almost seemed the entire town was on edge. People on the streets spoke in quiet whispers about what the police were doing. His fellow students tended to go straight home after school instead of hanging out in the normal spots. Even the animals seemed on edge. Several times he caught dogs whimpering if their owners stopped for any reason.

His parents’ research did little to help his unease. Their scanners signaled several times that week. According to his mother, they were detecting electrical abnormalities, but the abnormalities only seemed to last for a few minutes. His parents were concerned about the sudden spike in them and were doing all they could to attempt to find some sort of explanation. People also started calling around the times of the spikes reporting sightings of odd shadows.

To make matters worse, he was having trouble falling asleep. Normally, he’d chalk it up to insomnia, but his body didn’t seem to feel tired in the morning after only three or four hours. It was as if the normal amount of sleep was just not needed. While he wasn’t certain if it was a weird side effect of his ghostly affliction, Sam’s mention of ghosts drawing energy from strong emotions often came to mind. He hoped that wasn’t the case, but he couldn’t outright dismiss it.

Around eleven in the morning on Saturday, he received a text from Tucker. It simply said he had some important information for him and Sam, and that he wanted them to meet up. Sam immediately offered her home as her parents were out of town for the weekend. After sending his reply, Danny got ready and headed out.

Normally, it only took ten to fifteen minutes on his electric scooter to reach Sam’s, but he decided to take a slightly longer route to give himself a little longer to clear his thoughts. Rounding a corner to go through a commonly used alleyway, he came to a screeching stop as a cold chill and the feeling of wrongness overcame his body. Clutching his chest, his breath misted in front of him as he glanced around the alley.

Nothing seemed off, but the feeling refused to go away. Unnerved, he decided he needed to get out of there as quickly as possible. However, when he rounded the corner that would allow him to pass behind some of the buildings he found something he was unable to register what was in front of him.

His mind eventually processed the sound of dripping and an angry hiss, and almost like fog lifting from his eyes, he finally made sense of the scene. Someone was lying on the ground. Blood completely covered his chest and must have come from the large wound in the center of it. Danny was almost certain the man wasn’t breathing.

Something stood almost protectively over the body. It was mostly humanoid, but the sickly gray of its skin and skeletal frame showed it certainly wasn’t human. Black eyes seemed to glow in hatred. Something red and dripping blood rested in its hand.

Danny backed away in fear. He had no idea what the thing was, but he knew it was dangerous. To make matters worse, it knew he was there. Slowly, he decided to back away from it. At first, it seemed like it was fine with his retreat, but after sticking whatever it was holding inside its own chest, it dropped its hands to the grounds and walked forward on its knuckles.

Not knowing what else to do, Danny ran. As soon as he turned his back, the thing bolted after him. He barely made it halfway back through the alley before the thing was on top of him. As it tried to attack, he managed to knock it aside. The thing growled before lunging again. It was too close for him to attempt to escape, so he help up his hands and braced himself.

But no attack ever came. Instead, the thing bounced off of a translucent green wall with a sickening splat. After a few dazed steps and a shake of the head, it hissed while appraised whether or not it could get to him. It hesitantly touched the wall, only to pull back its hand with a yelp of pain. After baring its teeth, it stepped backwards. As it moved, its body jerked, cracked, and popped as it slowly morphed into what appeared to be an old woman.

As it disappeared around the corner, Danny’s knees gave way, and the strange green wall disappeared. He just stared in the direction where the thing disappeared as his mind tried to process exactly what just happened. It wasn’t until his phone buzzed, that he clambered to his feet and ran out of the alley. His fingers shook as he called the police.

....

The police and paramedics arrived in less than ten minutes. As the police examined the scene, the paramedics treated Danny for mild shock. While he sat on the rear step of the ambulance, he watched the police did their job.

Most of the officers wore grim expressions. Some whispered to each other. One of the younger ones had to excuse himself as he felt sick from the sight of the victim. Eventually, one of the older officers approached him for a statement.

Danny tried to be as truthful as possible. He described the creature as a thin and sickly looking person. After some internal debates, he finished by explaining it looked different as it moved away.

“Son, what do you mean?” There was a deep edge in the officer’s voice. “You better not be messing with me.”

“I… I really don’t know. Maybe it… he had one of those creepy realistic masks or something, but I’m telling you, he looked different right before it disappeared.”

The officer frowned as he stared at Danny. “I don’t think you’re lying, but shock sometimes warps what we think we see. Next week we’ll call you to the station to make an official statement.” He sighed before continuing. “We’ve contacted your parents. One of my juniors will take you home. Take it easy for the rest of the weekend, you hear me?”

After another fifteen minutes, Danny found himself in the front seat of a cruiser. Neither Danny nor the officer spoke for the entirety of the ride, and soon, they were in front of Fenton Works. After telling Danny to stay safe, the officer left him to be swept into the arms of his mother.

His mother was understandably scared. The officer who called the house told her there was an incident and that he was okay, but due to the investigation, he was unable to give any details. After letting her have a few tears of relief, he asked if they could go inside. Maddie ushered him into the house.

His father and friends were waiting for him in the living room. Sam rushed over to him to pull him into a hug while his dad and Tucker shared a smirk. His mother excused herself to go get everyone hot chocolate and cookies. Once she returned, Danny told them what happened. Unlike with the officers, the only detail he left out was the green wall.

He knew his friends would ask why he was so open with his parents, but without knowing exactly what he saw, he figured the two paranormal experts would be the best source for information. And, he wasn’t disappointed.

“Sweetie, you know it was probably a person, but your father and I will do some digging,” his mother promised. “You described something that sounds too much like some of the legends in Native American folklore. And with all of the abnormalities we’ve been detecting recently, I don’t want to be foolish enough to rule it out.”

“Don’t worry, Dann-o.” His father’s grin was infectious. “We’ll find those spooks and take care of them for you. To the lab.”

As the behemoth of a man disappeared down the stairs to the lab, his mother just fondly shook her head. “Get some rest. Sam, Tucker, let me take you home. I don’t think your parents would be too happy with me if I didn’t.”

“Thanks Mrs. F. I appreciate it. Can I take some cookies home? My mom loves your snickerdoodles.”

“Sure, let me go get a container for you.”

When she disappeared into the kitchen, Danny leaned forward and whispered. “Thanks for the distraction, Tuck. Guys, one other thing did happen. I… I think one of my abilities activated. I’ll call you guys later with the details. It’s probably the only reason that thing didn’t kill me.”

Before either of his friends could reply, his mother returned to the room carrying a container full of cookies. “Alright you two, let’s get going.”

Once he was left alone in the living room, Danny decided it was the perfect time to get a shower. After everything that happened, it would help him sort through his thoughts. He hoped his parents were right. Maybe it was just a strange looking man, but the wrongness of what he saw and the thing’s transformation told him otherwise.

========================================

Notes: I’m not sure how familiar people will be with it, but Cross Country Running is a type of long distance running, and at least in the US, it’s a Fall sport. However, it’s not on a track or indoors. Runners are usually on fields, trails, the in woods, etc., depending on the area. If you’re in the Allegheny plateau, it’s common to see the trails involve hills and/or some type of wooded area.

The creature is based off of a story (which I still can't find again) was submitted to a YouTuber channel that goes by “Darkness Prevails.” The channel tends to read a lot of accounts submitted to it. And while the stories cannot be verified under most circumstances, all stories are claimed true by the submitters.

The story that heavily inspired it is from a narrator who explained that her dad barred her from seeing a family friend (who she viewed as an uncle) after something that happened after a camping trip. She ended up encountering the family friend a couple years later and was invited to his home. The house was unkempt and stunk, and there seemed to be a strange substance everywhere. The friend and his wife were both acting strangely. After being lured to the kitchen, the friend tried attacking her, and she managed to escape and called the police. She was told her uncle had seemingly up and left a few years prior. After questioning father ended up explaining that when he and his friend were gathering firewood on that trip, they were chased by something that sounded like a pack of coyotes or wolves. The friend fell when they were running back to camp, and the dad lost sight of him. When the dad got back to camp, he tried to get his wife and the friend’s wife to call for help. However, they heard the friend call from the forest, and the friend's wife went to help him. When they returned, they seemed off. They spoke strangely and walked stiffly. Normal tasks seemed to baffle them. The dad didn’t know what happened to his friend and his wife, but he was convinced that what was left was something impersonating them.

Stories like this pop up in folklore, and there are a lot of online stories telling of similar encounters. However, it is difficult to tell what’s a true account and what might be a “Creepypasta.” There is a rather famous folklore entity in First Nation stories in the Southwest US that is sometimes said to wear others skins. The most famous stories are from the Navajo, but other tribes also have them in their folklore. However, there is also a spirit called Kanaima from the Carib tribes that is somewhat similar. Some renditions of Wendigos (traditionally Algonquin) also put them in this category. A Kee-wakw (Abenaki) might also fall into this.

And then I managed to combine the story with some of the information I know about the entity known as a Raven Mocker (from Cherokee lore). It’s another rather unsettling creature, and some accounts have it change shapes.

[writingpaperghost]

There is a Me Who Can Become Strong (Chapter 24)

Chapter 24: Go Together, Embracing Your Ambitions!

It's time to refight some Bugsters, and what's with Masamune's new stand in? He's kinda weird...

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32857183/chapters/85003771

Emu was… feeling better today, at least. He’d been spending a lot more time in bed, since the incident with Gatton. For some reason, he’d been overcome with this terrible feeling, his Game Disease flaring in a way he’d never experienced before. He didn’t understand what was wrong and Masamune seemed unbothered by it in a way that… hurt.

But Emu didn’t say a word, instead curling in on himself in bed, letting out only quiet whimpers and gasps when the pain became too much even for him. He dragged himself out of bed, ever briefly, for water, food, bathroom, rinse and repeat. At some point in the night, he thinks that maybe Graphite would stop by, but he’s often too tired to realize.

After several days, Emu finally felt well enough to get out of bed. He notices his broken Gamer Driver on the table there and for a moment, he feels himself getting sick again, but shakes it off. Around that point, Masamune enters, not an ounce of concern present. He, of course, had more important things to worry about than Emu not feeling well.

“It seems you’re starting to feel better,” He notes, taking in Emu’s appearance. Emu hadn’t seen his reflection – he doesn’t like his reflection – but he knew he probably looked worse than usually. His hair, he could tell, was certainly more messy than normal. He dreaded the thought of trying to brush is out, it was probably all tangled and now he didn’t have Kuroto and Graphite to help him. Well, Graphite could probably help him tonight.

“Y-yeah…” Emu nods, quietly, “But… isn’t it going to be a problem that my Gamer Driver is broken?”

In response, Masamune shakes his head slightly, “Nothing to worry about, Mu,” He gestures towards the broken Driver, “It can be fixed, if necessary, and you have Level X, which is much stronger than your current Gashats.”

Once more, Emu keeps his disdain for Dangerous Zombie to himself, he knows Masamune doesn’t care. He’s also not sure that Masamune knows anything about how the Drivers were made, nor sure that anyone other than Kuroto did. Perhaps someone could fix the Gamer Driver, but he doubted it.

For now, Dangerous Zombie was all he had.

“Regardless,” Masamune continues, “I came down here because there’s something I feel you should know.”

Emu frowned, unsure of what it could be, “There is?”

“As the Chronicle is almost complete, I’ve decided that I’ll be… taking a break from acting as president of Gemn Corp. Instead, Ren Amagasaki will be taking over.” It was a bit surprising, Masamune always liked to be the one in charge of things.

“Are… are you sure about that?” Not that Emu wanted to question Masamune’s choice but… “He’s a bit… Well, you know. Wouldn’t he just cause problems since he’s kinda… uh, skeevy? I guess?”

“He has a way with people,” Masamune assured, “Which will be necessary to ensure the Ministry doesn’t try to stop the game.”

Some part of Emu frowns at that. In theory, shouldn’t the Ministry of Health be trying to help people, especially with a disease. So why were they working behind their back? Shouldn’t they work with the Ministry, certainly the CR and the Riders would understand, especially since the CR was formed jointly between Gemn and the Ministry. Masamune always assured him it had to be this way, but thinking about it now… That didn’t really make sense.

But he couldn’t say that to Masamune, that would only upset him. Emu knows he shouldn’t upset people, especially Masamune. So he keeps his wonders to himself, keeps the thoughts that maybe Masamune isn’t right. Then he buries them away, because if Masamune isn’t right, then what does that mean for Emu?

---

It had been quiet for a while, a longer stretch of little happening. For that, Parad had been grateful, it let him focus on his internship, especially with them coming to the end of his surgical internship. It… almost felt wrong, though, to continue. Perhaps it was just because he was using Emu’s name, knowing now that Emu was still alive. Every time someone at the hospital called him by Emu’s name, he had to resist the urge to flinch. It felt wrong.

Of course, it wasn’t that bad when he was with the CR, they would call him by his actual name and he could… He could not be Emu around them. It was nice, in a way. Yet there was a nagging at him, that with every passing day, Emu seemed to be floating further from him. Not just the farther and farther that it seemed Emu would find himself going but… but also the way that it felt like Emu was distancing himself in general.

But with the comparatively relaxing silence, Parad forced himself to focus on his internship. Emu or not, he had a goal and now… Now it was his goal, not just Emu’s – if Emu even still held such a dream. He’d keep helping his patient’s smile, no matter how hard he had to keep working.

As it were, Saki had just finished a surgery, stitching some internal wounds on a member of a band. Some equipment had fallen on her, causing her to need the surgery. Of course, as soon as their patient was awake, her band mates came to check on her. A glance into the patient room showed that they were already arguing.

It, in a way, reminded him of the Riders, when they’d been trying to defeat Graphite. The way that they could fight together, but not work together, because they each had their own goals. Of course, in this case, the band members seemed to have their own ideas of how to reach the goals, so it was something of an inverse.

Squabbling aside, Parad isn’t too concerned about it, they probably had this disagreement before, by the sounds of it. They could probably handle it and it wasn’t like these were their Game Disease patients – then he’d be more concerned about the possibility of stressing them.

Though, the moment he had thought this, the three began to glitch, prompting him to call Saki over. The two rushes into the room, Saki’s Gamer Driver ready while they both have their Gashat’s in hand. From the three, Gatton, Motors, and Kaiden appear from the three, prompting Saki to stage select them somewhere else.

The two transforms, challenging the three Bugsters. Two on three weren’t good odds, especially since Saki only had access to Level 5. But Parad at least had Level 20, which was something, though he’d feel better if they at least had someone else to fight with them.

Like she was psychic though, or perhaps just good timing, Nico arrived, pulling out the Gashat Gear Dual and transforming to Level 50. The arrival of Nico alone was enough to even the odds significantly, the fact that she was at Level 50 only helped.

“Hey, didn’t we already fight these guys?”

Nico wasn’t wrong, the last Bugster they’d fought was Gatton and they’d certainly fought Kaiden and Motors before – Motors twice before, even. Which did make it odd that they were seeing them again. Though, thinking about the Bugsters that Emu hadn’t collected the data of… Maybe it was simply a matter of stalling for time before they were all collected.

“We have,” Saki answers, “But they’ve infected new hosts, so we must fight again regardless.”

Despite their best efforts, they weren’t able to defeat the three Bugster, instead, Gatton and Kaiden escaped, though Saki and Nico were able to tag team Motors and stop him from fleeing. Returning to the hospital, they quickly moved their original patient, Sora, Motors’ host, to the CR.

Deciding that obviously the source of the three’s stress, at least initially, was their argument, Parad chose to talk with Sora once she awoke. In the meantime, he noticed his phone suggested an article to him, stating that Masamune Dan was on a break from acting as president of Gemn Corp, the role being taken over by Ren Amagasaki. That was… strange, and certainly a bit concerning.

Scrolling further through the article, he finds that Amagasaki had already announced a new game, one that would change how people viewed games and Gemn Corp forever. That was… honestly a bit worrisome. Such grand claims and the new suspicion that they had on Masamune, thanks to Nico’s discovery.

While concerning, though, it was something to worry about later. Saki and Nico were hunting down Kaiden and Gatton, hoping to be able to defeat the two Bugsters, which left Parad here in case Motors appeared again. Not that Parad didn’t think he could handle it. Trying to fight three on two was hard, but one on one was much easier.

---

Unlike Nico, Taiga didn’t have quite such a great mental map of Gemn Corp, but he remembered enough to find where Tsukuru was. In one arm, Taiga carried Kiriya’s laptop, knowing enough about what was inside that it could suit their purpose well. If Kiriya was right, this wouldn’t just counter Dangerous Zombie’s immortality, but also be a great help against Bugsters. Though the actual notes made it hard to tell whether it would really work, or if it was going to be very specific about who used it. Still, it would be better than nothing.

Sitting across from Tsukuru, Taiga sets the laptop on the table, “I’ve found you something to make a Gashat out of.”

---

Now that Sora’s finally awake, Parad can talk to her, hopefully get an idea of what might stress her or her bandmates. According to Sora, their band hadn’t been doing well, but they’d entered a contest Gemn Corp was holding to create a song for their new game. Now that Sora was hurt, though, they wouldn’t be able to compete.

She did mention, though, that the three of them had a dream to one day play at Seito Stadium. Parad was pretty sure that there was his answer, so he imagined that the two Bugsters would probably attack there. Not that he was going to say that to Sora, he didn’t want to stress her out more.

“I’m sure you can all come together and achieve that dream, someday,” Parad smiled, doing his best to assure Sora, “We’ll cure you and your bandmates, then you’ll be able to return to your goals.”

A while later, a curious arrival comes to the CR, a man who Parad recognized from the article he’d read. The stand-in president of Gemn Corp, Ren Amagasaki. Which was really weird and immediately set off alarm bells. That and this general feeling that there was something wrong about him. Parad couldn’t explain it, but he knew that just like Masamune, he didn’t trust Amagasaki.

“Hello,” Parad says, thankfully still in his Emu disguise, “What are you doing here?”

Because even Masamune didn’t arrive at the CR without reason. The question prompted a lengthy explanation about how they were making a new game at Gemn Corp and were holding a contest for the theme – blah blah blah, more or less what Parad had heard from Sora. Except Amagasaki adds on that he’d heard that the singer of one of the groups was here and had wanted to talk to her.

Figuring he was talking about Sora, Parad decided that it probablywouldn’t hurt to let Amagasaki talk with her. So, though still hesitant, he let’s Amagasaki into the patient room, watching him warily.

“Who’s that?” Asuna frowns, watching as Amagasaki introduces himself to Sora.

“Gemn Corp’s new president,” Parad answers, “I don’t like him.”

At that, Asuna frowns, “Why not?”

“I don’t know, he just gives me bad feelings…” Parad doesn’t get a chance to continue, as Amagasaki said something to Sora that stressed her, causing her Game Disease to flare. Parad pulls out his Gashat while rushing over, while Asuna annoyed, shoved Amagasaki out of the room. It’s times like these that Parad wished he had a Gamer Driver.

Though he didn’t have to worry, given Sora stood up, clearly controlled by Motors, and runs out of the room, Parad and Asuna chasing after. To little surprise, Motors brings them to where Saki and Nico are already fighting Kaiden and Gatton respectively. Then, appearing from Sora’s body, is Motors. Emu activates his Gashat, ready to fight.

Between the three of them, each fighting their respective Bugster, they’re able to defeat the three Bugsters this time, curing the band members. It was surprisingly easy, which only made Parad further think that there might be something else going on. Not that Parad knew for certain what. Maybe it had to do with all the quiet that they’d had since they’d first fought Gatton.

No Emu, nothing else. Just three Bugsters and their patients.

The three band members talk, and it sound like they’ve strengthened their resolve to reach their dream. It makes Parad happy, all three of them are smiling. At least, until Sora collapsed. He’s closest to Sora, so he reaches her first.

“Motors making her run like that seems to have torn her stitches…”

Saki is the next to arrive, taking over in checking Sora. Behind them, Nico whips out her phone, calling for an ambulance. To the side, Asuna and Taiga watch – Taiga having arrived at some point, though no one’s quite sure when.

While watching them, Taiga comments, “They make a good team, huh?”

“They do,” Asuna nods.

---

“Emu,” Masamune’s voice quickly gains Emu’s attention, “We’ve almost completed Chronicle.”

Warily, Emu nods, “We… we have,”

“There are only three more Bugsters we must collect the data on,” Masamune continues, “I think the best one to go after would be Para-DX.”

For some reason, the idea of having to kill Para-DX didn’t quite sit right with Emu. But he wouldn’t have a choice, unless he could convince him to come with Emu. Yet, Emu had seen Para-DX’s resolve, that would never work.

At least Emu was stronger than Para-DX, a higher level. He just had to make sure that neither Snipe nor Brave would be there. That would be the hardest part. As much as Emu didn’t want to kill another person… he could at least take solace that Para-DX was a Bugster, he would come back in the game, like all the others.

“Of… of course,” Emu nods, “That makes sense.”

“Good,” In response, Masamune turns away, “I’ll look into how to get the DoReMiFa Beat Bugster, I think Lovelica will work well.”

“And… and Graphite?”

Masamune pauses, “A… complication. It seems Graphite has already been revived.” Emu tries not to tense at that, though he’s not sure why. Perhaps it’s because he fears that Masamune would be upset, particularly because Emu hadn’t told him that Graphite was alive. “It may make retrieving his data more complicated, but he is fond of you, I’m sure it won’t be much trouble. We’ll simply have to find him.”

Hesitantly, Emu says, “Yeah… that is weird…” He fiddles with his sleeve, not quite meeting Masamune’s eyes, “Well, I’m sure he’ll show up…”

“Mu?” It seemed like Masamune had noticed his odd behavior.

“Anyway! I’ll start trying to figure out how to get Para-DX’s data,” Emu chooses to change the topic, hoping that it would distract Masamune. Besides, Para-DX could easily be considered a more pressing matter. “It would be easiest to fight him without Snipe or Brave to interfere, though getting him without one of the other Riders might be tricky. Right now it seems like Snipe has the Gashat Gear Dual, so maybe if I just make sure she isn’t there? I could deal with Level 5 easy enough…”

It seemed his plan to distract Masamune had worked, as Masamune merely nodded, “I’m sure you’ll figure something out, Mu, it’s just a part of the game.”

“Of course! I just need to do something thinking about it.”

[restlessmaknae]

still disastrous

Gu Dasom thought that nothing was more disastrous than going on a holiday with her best friend - Namjoon. She was wrong. Living with him - now best friend turned boyfriend - was way more disastrous.

♦ Characters: boyfriend!Namjoon x girlfriend!OC (Gu Dasom)

♦ Genre: comedy, fluff, slice of life, established relationship (it’s all sfw)

♦ Words: 4.5k

♦ Warning: -

♦ A/N: This is a sequel to my story called Disastrous which is about the first holiday Namjoon and Dasom spend together on their own (and it turns out to be disastrous, needless to say), but the two stories can be read separately, so don’t worry if you haven’t read it! 💖💖💖

Gu Dasom learned to appreciate the differences they shared with Namjoon, and actually, if she thought about it, there was some beauty about having so many unexpected events to happen in her life. Beside Namjoon, she could never get bored.

On the other hand, she always needed to be alert because from one moment to another, something could happen and Namjoon ended up breaking a bone or walking into a door frame or such mishaps. He was so (cutely) clumsy, but it resulted in her always worrying about him because she could never know when the next disaster would take place.

Growing up beside each other and spending enough time together as best friends had taught her a lot about him and about the ways one could handle such situations, but after they had officially become a couple, she had learned even more about him. Not to mention when they had moved together after graduating university and finding jobs for themselves because that had been when things had started going even more off track than usual.

The first little bits about living together came when she realized that they had a very different definition about placing things, and if she put something on the glass table in the living room, it would be somewhere on a shelf in their bedroom. Namjoon kept putting things in different places, and she needed to remind him so many times that the objects had certain places if they wanted to find them in a hurry, and even though it took some time, he actually listened to her, and took her words seriously.

Then, the next one was anything regarding grocery shopping and just running out of basic necessities such as toilet paper and not realizing that those were the last ones they were using, ending up in not only just one uncomfortable situation. Not to mention food and leftovers going bad because they didn’t remember when they had left them in the fridge in the first place or who had actually left it there. Or Namjoon not letting her know when he had used up something and didn’t buy another one instead.

So these were the first obvious difficulties they faced in the first few weeks, then came - of course - the things that neither of them could do or figure out on their own or with the help of articles online such as changing light bulbs. Maybe it wasn’t rocket science, but Namjoon almost fell off the chair while trying to reach the light bulb in question, and she couldn’t get it out of its frame either.

As talkative as she was, when a new neighbour moved in next door and they started chattering about life, the light bulb incident came up, and this was how their handsome brand new neighbour - Kim Seokjin - ended up in their living room, helping with the light bulb because he insisted that he would do so in exchange for the warm welcome (basically just the two of them introducing themselves with a box of cookies, nothing more).

However, there was one person who didn’t appreciate his presence as much as Dasom did so.

“I still don’t get why we couldn’t just call someone else,” Namjoon whispered into her ears as they were watching over Jin getting on the chair.

“Should I remind you that you weren’t willing to call someone else?” Dasom raised an eyebrow challengingly, exchanging a glance with her boyfriend who looked as defeated as one could be in such a situation. “Besides, he offered his help. It would have been rude if we declined him,” she pointed out, not getting why her boyfriend was so worked up. She might have been referring to Jin as the cute neighbour with an even cuter dog, but it was true, and he shouldn’t have been too hung up on it.

“Okay. I’ll show you how to do it, just watch!” Jin prompted them to walk closer to him as he carefully twisted the bulb counter clockwise because he explained that it was the safer way since the socket had a screw fitting. It seemed so easy when he did so, so Dasom asked about little tricks, and he was willing to answer her questions patiently and all with a kind smile.

Her whole face lit up when the new bulb was implemented and when they turned it on, the light indeed filled the room.

“Thank god! We’ll remember how to do it next time, thank you, really!” Dasom explained joyfully as she directed a beaming smile at their neighbour who just shrugged his shoulders, insisting that he didn’t do anything much, just what a good neighbour would do. Besides, he had had similar struggles in the past, so it was all good.

“Thanks, man. We really won’t keep you up any longer,” Namjoon added in a friendly manner, yet she could feel the impatient edge to his words, and even if she wanted to hide her disappointment, she merely gave her boyfriend a slight smack in the chest.

“Oh, you aren’t keeping me up.” Jin dismissed such assumptions, smiling from ear to ear which reassured Dasom that he didn’t detect or didn’t want to detect the jealousy behind her boyfriend’s words.

So she offered him a glass from the jug of tropical lemonade she had made beforehand, and the young man took it gladly, complimenting the taste for its balanced combination of sweet and savory.

“He doesn’t know when to go, I see,” Namjoon mumbled under his nose so that only she could hear it, but she heard it nevertheless, so she lightly stepped on his left foot, giving him a glare and turning back to Jin with a brighter version of her smile.

Their neighbour chuckled to himself, drinking the glass of lemonade gulp by gulp while keeping his eyes on the couple much to Namjoon’s dismay who impatiently tapped on his chin, a habit that he always displayed whenever he was nervous. Dasom had no idea what to do about his jealous boyfriend when he shouldn’t have been jealous in the first place, but it seemed like Jin caught on their little act, and excused himself to go back to his flat after drinking down the whole glass.

As soon as he left, she was quick to turn around and face her boyfriend.

“What was that about? Are you really going to keep on acting like this around Jin?” She furrowed her eyebrows, hands on her hips. She didn’t want to look intimidating, but she really didn’t know why Namjoon had made such a fuss over literally nothing.

“Well, he seems like a better boyfriend than I am, and yeah, I got a bit jealous, you know. He even has a dog!” Namjoon stated a bit ashamedly, but he also seemed a bit dramatic that usually didn’t work on her given his clumsy self, but she couldn’t help but pout hearing his words.

“Yah! You should never think that I would choose anyone over you! You are my boyfriend, and you have your own strengths and weaknesses, but you are Kim Namjoon, and that’s exactly why you are the perfect boyfriend to me!” Dasom confessed straightforwardly, a bit of frustration lacing her words.

Yet, at least her boyfriend seemed to realize that she was indeed being honest, and that she didn’t think that Jin was anything more than a cute neighbour.

“O-okay,” Namjoon stuttered a bit, his cheeks tinted burgundy by the nervousness that was going through him. He was clearly ashamed that he had ever thought about something else, but Dasom merely shook her head with a knowing smile and smacked him in the chest when she passed by him.

Gosh, what a way to see Namjoon jealous! Thank god communication worked well between the two of them.

Usually, household chores were divided up between the two of them, so that either of them could have their own responsibilities and duties, and the workload wouldn’t be unbalanced. That meant cooking for Dasom while washing the dishes for Namjoon (because he was usually a disaster in the kitchen, and she didn’t want him to cut his hands either with a knife or the edge of a mere can because he had already done so, and it hadn’t been a nice sight), cleaning the rooms including the bathroom and the toilet for her while taking out the rubbish, checking the mailbox and taking care of the recycling for Namjoon. Once he had been very eager to take on ironing the clothes, but after burning a hole into one of her favourite blouses, she had been quick to tell him to take up another task instead of ironing.

It was also her who did the washing up, and it had seemed to work just fine until she once asked her boyfriend to take care of laundry instead of her while she would be helping out her mother at her workplace.

Needless to say, when she got home and looked at the pile of clothes, she didn’t expect to see her plain white shirt in a stronger shade of pink.

“Oh my god, Namjoon! Have you washed all of the clothes together?” Dasom shrieked with her mouth slightly agape, her eyes widening the more clothes she looked at. Her grey sweatpants now tinted a bit blue, her black and white socks in yellow, her otherwise orange shirt in a burgundy shade… Everything but the black clothes had seemed to be reborn in whole new colours.

“Well…” Namjoon gulped, looking from one shirt to another, scratching the back of his neck. “You didn’t tell me to separate them, so I’ve thought that I could put them into the laundry machine together,” he reasoned, letting out a nervous laughter seeing her disapproving glance.

Dasom needed a moment to gather her patience, counting up to a few seconds before she was ready to ask him another question. He was right about not telling him beforehand, but it was because she had been sure that it was common sense to wash the lighter and darker colours with two different programmes. Not to mention the fact that they were always separated before doing the laundry, so all he had needed to do was to put the content of one basket into the machine, and then the other. One after another.

“Then why do you think we put our clothes into two different laundry baskets in the first place?” Dasom inquired with a raise of her eyebrows, eyeing the boy for his answer. He was usually a very intelligent and sensible guy, so she had assumed that he would be smart enough to figure it out. Or to ask or look things up on the internet if he hadn’t even seen his mother doing the laundry, not even once.

Namjoon looked back at her with a bit of an ‘oops’ leaving his ever so tender lips, then he let out a nervous chuckle.

“Actually, I have never thought about it. I’ve just thought it was a way to tell how many dark and light coloured clothes we wore during the week,” he admitted semi-guilty and hearing that, she felt like all her frustration was replaced by second-hand embarrassment.

“You really thought so?” Dasom asked back, amusement lacing her voice, and when he nodded, she bursted into laughter, giggling to herself for a solid minute while Namjoon tried to tell her that it wasn’t that funny, he really didn’t think that much of it, but she merely threw a now green-turned-pink shirt at him and continued laughing.

Gosh, what a way to make it seem like she had a whole new wardrobe of clothes!

Namjoon was really bad in the kitchen, and both of them knew that perfectly well. It had always been that way, and even his mother had tried to keep him away from the kitchen for obvious reasons.

However, he still made an attempt to cook for Dasom when their fourth anniversary as a couple arrived and the first one they could share in their new home, so he really wanted to try his best. 

He followed the recipes as much as he could, though expressions like a pinch of salt or ‘add pepper to your liking’ and a handful of veggies confused the hell out of him because weren’t recipes supposed to apply to everyone? Then, why did they say such things? A handful was different for everyone, a pinch could be a bigger portion or a smaller one, so it really did confuse him a lot. Not to mention when he tossed the veggies into the pan, and the recipe called for caramelized ones by the end, but he couldn’t tell the difference between caramelized ones and burnt ones, so he ended up with either too raw or too burnt pieces.

The rice was thankfully edible and his mother’s homemade kimchi could save the day because it had been previously prepared, he only needed to put it into a bowl and present it, but even his attempt at a brownie turned into a stone-hard and dry mass of chocolate and flour, not properly mixed well. Though at least his homemade cocktail turned out to be good, or at least she said so.

“I mean, I really appreciate your efforts, you know,” Dasom spoke up after having a taste from the veggie stir fry, trying to keep her laughter to herself.

“I’ve really tried my best. The recipe said it was supposed to be quick and easy, but I already got stuck peeling the carrots,” Namjoon huffed as he looked at the mess on his plate. Even he had to admit that this wasn’t supposed to look like that. He couldn’t even call it a meal, how could she still put it into her mouth, munching on it still?

“I can see your efforts, really. Besides, it’s not that bad. There are parts that aren’t burnt, and raw veggies are just as good as cooked ones. They are actually said to be healthier than cooked ones,” she blurted out matter-of-factly, hoping that she could soothe her boyfriend’s nerves a bit, but he looked as under the weather as one could be after they had failed a big test or they had been told horrible news.

She pouted, her heart breaking at the sight of his expression, reaching out for his hands, holding it tight and squeezing it once and then twice, waiting for him to look her in the eye. When he did so, she gifted him with a soft smile, one that was genuine and bright, a ray of sunshine lightening up the meadow of hopelessness. He slowly - like the sunflower turning to the sun - reciprocated her smile, feeling her sincerity.

“Look, it’s already big enough of a gift to me that you are in my life. Not to mention the fact that you’ve really tried your best to step out of your comfort zone and do something for our anniversary that you normally wouldn’t do. So please, don’t feel bad! I really, really appreciate that you’ve decided to cook for me, and it’s really not as inedible as you think so,” she reasoned gently, pinching his cheeks with her free hand that wasn’t holding onto his much larger hands that still fitted to hers like a missing puzzle piece.

“What did I do to get a girlfriend like you?” he mused out loud with a much more reassured tone and a light chuckle.

“Well, you’ve been there for me ever since we were 6 years old, and technically, you needed to sprain your right wrist for me to get mad at you, so that you can shut me up with a kiss, and so that I would confess to you,” she responded with a playful glint in her eyes, though thinking back to their first holiday together - just the two of them, still as best friends - was pretty funny. Such a disastrous holiday, but they might not have been here today if it hadn’t been for that disastrous holiday.

“We can say so,” Namjoon agreed nostalgically, and placed a soft kiss on her forehead before turning back to his own plate of food. Well, if Dasom could eat it, he had to do so.

What people can do when it comes to love...

Luckily, both of them were quite healthy, so apart from runny noses or a few worse winter days, there weren’t a lot of times they needed to ask for a sick leave or pack up on medication to cure themselves from something. So when it came to Dasom’s first sickness that was more than a runny nose, Namjoon was all over the place as expected.

It started with her having a horrible night, tossing and turning in bed while having a stomach ache that she thought would signal the beginning of her period. However, that stomach ache didn’t go away in the morning either, and it was accompanied by diarrhea, cold shivers frequently going through her body and a very unpleasant fever later on. Needless to say, she didn’t have an appetite either even though she knew she would need the energy, but she didn’t feel like she could force down anything.

Namjoon was all panicky in the morning, checking her symptoms on the internet, his mind spinning with more and more horrible scenarios, the online articles referring to life-threatening diseases and serious conditions, making him wonder if something more could be behind her being sick.

Even when they were waiting outside of the GP’s ward, Namjoon couldn’t stop biting his lower lip, his legs shaking just as restlessly as his eyes were darting between the different parts of the room as if something could jump on them.

“Namjoon, don’t worry that much! It’s probably nothing serious,” Dasom tried to reassure him with a faint smile, hoping that her voice and words could bring him back to reality. He did look at her, breaking into a somewhat ashamed smile, but the seed of uncertainty had been planted in his jet-black orbs and it hadn’t yet left. It didn’t help either that she wasn’t feeling all too well, but she was far from being on her deathbed, that was for sure.

As empathetic as her boyfriend could be, he really looked like he was the one who was suffering, and he wouldn’t have let her go to the doctor alone either. He just felt like he needed to be there with her, no matter what they say, and even though Dasom had tried to talk him out of it, he wouldn’t budge. Him and his persistence… Just another reason she loved him so much.

“It’s because of all those articles online. I shouldn’t have searched for them in the first place,” he blurted out honestly, his regret evident in his slumped shoulders and hesitant expression.

“They always state the worst online,” Dasom pointed out knowing all too well that she had fallen into this trap a few times before. “The doctor will be able to say something more anyway,” she reasoned gently, exchanging a knowing glance with him. He must have known the same, but his worryful personality got the worst out of him.

Thankfully, there was really nothing serious going on with her, she had just come down with something, but Namjoon took it upon himself to watch over her for the rest of the day, making her the kind of soup the doctor had recommended, buying her some herbal tea that was also stated to help with her condition, making sure she took her medication and sitting by her side, looking at her as if she could break down in any minute.

“Don’t stare at me like that! I’m doing better,” Dasom called him out when they were watching a movie together, her sipping on her herbal tea and Namjoon glancing in her direction instead of focusing on the movie.

When her words reached him, he looked away, ashamed. He really felt like he had been caught even though he didn’t even realize what he was doing. It felt like an instinct to watch out for anything that might signal her condition worsening.

“I’m just worried,” he admitted, scratching his nape out of uneasiness.

“I can see that,” Dasom agreed with a knowing smile, taking another sip from her tea before continuing. “I would give you a kiss to reassure you, but that wouldn’t be ideal right now,” she added, letting out a giggle.

Even though she didn’t intend to make him laugh with such a statement, Namjoon’s shoulders immediately easened, and he let out a wholehearted laughter. It seemed like her remark helped him to let go of his anxiety a bit.

“I’ll take your word for it when you get better,” he warned playfully, but it didn’t really feel like a warning. If anything, it was the best kind of warning.

So she merely shrugged her shoulders, a lopsided smile hiding in the corner of her lips. She turned back to the laptop, Namjoon following her example, and finally, it seemed like he believed her. Though it couldn’t stop him from checking on her every 10 minutes once she drifted off to sleep and to ask her every now and then if she was really okay after she had recovered and went back to work. She had never doubted, but she could always see it for herself time and time again that Namjoon really did care for her and loved her despite everything.

Christmas had always been an interesting time together. Not to say that it hadn’t been fun. It had been just that… Interesting. Beside someone like Namjoon, things had sometimes gotten out of control, not to mention when they were spending this time with friends or family.

Namjoon’s friends were characteristic one by one and his family was lovely, but Dasom also had her best friend - Hyerim - who couldn’t shut up around anyone really, and she liked to have the time to herself to be as much of a storyteller as one could be. It usually meant that the time with her turned out to be an hour-long session of her reminiscing about funny and awkward stories about her high school and childhood days. They had already heard most of them, but it was almost impossible to make her stop while she was so enthusiastically talking about something, so they just let her be.

Of course, each one of their friends were amazing and supportive and understanding in their own ways, but when they got to meet all of them during Christmas and New Year, it seemed like some kind of a comedy skit. Not to mention the gifts they had usually received from them ranging from best boyfriend and best girlfriend mugs from Hyerim to handmade candles from Jungkook and pillows printed with each other’s faces from Taehyung. Their parents had usually gifted them with coupons for concerts or some kind of classes - needless to say, the pottery one hadn’t turned out to be very successful in the end and even though the Lotte World tickets had been used, to save themselves from further inconveniences, they had rather not sat on anything too scary or high or fast, so they had stuck with entertainment opportunities for little kids and live fairytale performances -, but at least they had chosen something that would mean that they could spend more time together.

This year, Christmas started with their brand new neighbour - Jin - coming over with the special festive season meals he had made (and he had made a lot even though he was living on his own) much to Namjoon’s dismay, but it was really kind of the young man to do so, and it was free food, so Namjoon didn’t want to protest either. Not to mention that the more he got to know their new neighbour, the less hostile he seemed, thus they actually got out of this time better than they would have expected.

Then, the time to themselves meant decorating the Christmas tree that looked like something out of a child’s drawing yet again, wrapping gifts that yet again resulted in Namjoon cutting his fingers with the scissors and having glue stuck on his hands, trying to wash it off fervently. Dasom made less fancy but still delicious treats for them and she even prepared the cake with colourful candles, but they almost managed to burn down the Christmas tree with its candles, so it was better to just eat them on their own without having to decorate the dessert even further.

“Gosh, it wouldn’t have been us if we hadn’t had such calamities,” Dasom mused out loud while she was digging into the chocolate sponge cake, smiling in a childish way, thinking back to all those Christmases they had spent together. Not only as a couple but also as best friends back in the days. With braces and questionable fashion choices. With wishes for their first very own laptop or a kpop album by a beloved boy band crush of theirs. With stuffing their mouths with food until they had gotten sick of the meals. With carefree laughter, eye smiles and bittersweet nostalgia.

Namjoon displayed the same kind of smile she did so, his eyes telling hundreds of tales of the past and sparkling with hopes for the future. 

“At least, you can’t say that you are getting bored of me. Something always happens when we are together,” he pointed out with a lopsided grin, making her chuckle. Gosh, she really couldn’t disagree with him!

“If I were cheesy, I would say that I wouldn’t be able to get bored of you…”

“But?” Namjoon raised an expectant eyebrow in question, stopping the fork in his hands halfway between his plate and his mouth. Sometimes he was so innocently oblivious. As if she could ever doubt his love or care or regret the time they had spent together.

This time was no different, and Dasom didn’t have the heart to tease him when he looked at her with such wide puppy eyes.

“Even if I weren’t cheesy, I would say the same,” she admitted as she pinched his cheeks, earning a smile from him that was like the sun rising on the horizon; just as beaming, bright and hopeful.

She hoped that them and those precious smiles and exchanged glances would stay the same no matter how many more mishaps they would share and no matter how disastrous life would be beside the love of her life.

[hanaasbananas]

A Little Love Part Two

Part One, Part Three

AO3

Four years later

“Hello?” There was a knock on the counter above him and Adrien paused at the familiar voice. “Is anyone in? The sign said open so...”

Emerging from where he’d been putting things away behind the counter, Adrien grabbed a cup, beginning the motions of preparing an order. “Hi, what can I get you today?”

“Actually, can I meet Adrien?”

Inwardly, he sighed at the question. Really, it had been a year already, hadn’t the novelty worn off yet? But when he met the girl's gaze, he was surprised to realise that he knew the girl standing across from him. Just as surprising was the way she looked around the place as though she was searching for someone else.

Huh.

“Yeah, one second-” he ducked back below the counter to grab his apron, ignoring her perplexed look until he pulled it over his head, gesturing to the name emblazoned across the front. “Adrien, that’s me.”

“Oh!” she clapped a hand to her mouth “Oh, shit, that’s embarrassing, um, hi, I’m Marinette,” she held out a hand for him to shake. “I’m writing an article on the best up and coming bakeries and cafes in the city and I’d really like it if I could write about your cafe. I’ve heard amazing reviews about this place. Especially about all your cheese desserts.”

Adrien blinked. An article...well it was bound to be better than any of the other things that had been written about him. The documentaries and exposes, and twitter threads ripping into father and Nathalie, even speculating about what Adrien himself might be capable of. But an article about the cafe ...

She was staring at him expectantly and he nodded quickly. “I’d love that!”

“Perfect!” Marinette grinned, turning to go. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning then!”

***

Marinette wasn’t stupid.

She knew exactly why Alya had gotten her to take charge of this project and it wasn’t because you know so much more about pastries than I do!

Please. As if something like lack of knowledge had ever stopped Alya before.

Still, with Hawkmoth defeated for good, and the heroes of Paris gone, the Ladyblog was no longer active and Marinette supposed it couldn’t hurt to help Alya as she experimented with different endeavours.

Getting Alya off her back about her abysmal social life was just a bonus. Not to mention that Adrien’s Cafe was certainly...intriguing.

Former model and son of the disgraced fashion designer Gabriel Agreste- Hawkmoth , returns to Paris after two years and...opens a cafe? The headline wrote itself!

And a successful cafe, at that, Marinette thought to herself as she walked in. The place was already packed full of customers and it was only nine in the morning.

She hadn’t had a chance to properly look around the day before and she scanned the place from where she stood at the entrance, taking in the large bookcase in the back corner, with several plush chairs and a low coffee table; the rustic table booths and dim lighting that lent the place a homely air.

But by far, the most appealing thing about the place stood behind the counter. Looking up at her entrance, Adrien’s green eyes met hers across the crowded room, his face splitting in a wide grin as he weaved his way around tables and customers to greet her.

Which was another reason why she didn’t mind doing this article-the subject was super easy on the eyes. He almost reminded her of another blonde haired, green eyed boy she used to know, but Marinette quickly dispelled that thought, focusing instead on Adrien in front of her.

She was definitely going to enjoy this job.

***

“-a clean break, you know? I just needed to get away from everything here and start fresh somewhere new where nobody really knew me.” Adrien took a sip of his coffee, avoiding Marinette’s gaze as she scribbled down notes.

Somehow, even though Adrien knew Marinette was writing an article about him, he found it easy to open up to her. He glanced down at his hand, at his empty finger, remembering the ring that had once sat there. It had been easy to talk to her before , as well, when he had been Chat Noir.

In the last two weeks, the small crush on Marinette that he’d nursed all those years ago, had returned full force. It didn’t help that she was at the cafe every day, sampling all their wares, taking photos of everything as though every square inch of the place needed to be documented. Most times he struggled to retain his cool, sending over his new hire instead to take her orders and serve them as well. Despite that, he couldn’t help but follow her every movement as he worked, watching for her reactions as she tried his cakes and pastries, and he couldn’t resist at all when she asked him to sit with her.

Soon, maybe when her article was done, he even planned on asking her out on a proper date.

“And then...what made you decide to come back?” Marinette prompted, breaking him from his thoughts and he sighed.

“Don’t get me wrong, it was nice, living in another country, with my aunt and cousin, and even just getting to go to culinary school instead of following the path my father had set out for me by having me do a business degree, but, well…” Adrien shrugged uncomfortably “Paris is home, and I wanted to come back. My father took so much from me, I didn’t want him to take this as well.”

“That’s...wow.” Marinette straightened, sending a winning smile in his direction, seemingly unaware of the way she dazzled him. “Well I, for one, am very glad you came back to the city, because where else would I get all these amazing pastries?”

“Uh, from your parents?” Adrien raised an eyebrow, laughing and throwing his hands up in surrender when she threw her pen at him.

“You know what I meant!”

***

Adrien’s Cafe was shut on the anniversary. 

Of course it would be , Marinette thought to herself crossly. It had been stupid to even come out today.  

Adrien had more of a claim to sadness on this day than she did, and yet, for the first time in four years, Marinette had found herself wanting to spend the day with someone instead of wallowing in her own misery and regret, without even Tikki to keep her company.  

Swallowing her disappointment, she turned away, hiking her back up on her shoulder when she heard Adrien call her name.

“Marinette?” He stood in the open doorway, regarding her with a curious tilt to his head. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh..” she smiled awkwardly “I didn’t realise you were closed today, so I’ll just…” she made to leave “I’ll just go then.” 

“Wait!” Adrien grabbed something from behind the door and stepped out to meet her. “I was gonna go on a supply run,” he said, holding up two large canvas bags, he said “do you wanna come with me?” 

***

On the first anniversary of defeating father, Adrien had gone to visit him. He hadn’t stayed long, had simply pulled out the box that held Plagg’s ring and showed it to him, watching as realisation dawned on father’s face and left before anything could be said. He’d had a train to catch, after all. 

The next two years, while he’d lived with Aunt Amelie and Felix, Adrien simply locked himself in his room for the day. For once, his cousin never had a snarky remark for him. He almost wished that he did. At least that would be normal.

Even the year before, Adrien had hidden himself away, overwhelmed by the memories of being back in Paris, of seeing people celebrate the day. It was the only time he’d seriously considered putting his miraculous back on to see Plagg again instead of simply staring at the ring, turning it over and over in his hands, but never wearing it. 

But this year... this year Adrien had almost forgotten about the date entirely. He’d planned on going shopping anyway, to try and break his habit of locking himself away on the anniversary. His resolve had practically dissolved until he saw Marinette standing just outside the cafe, and suddenly, leaving the house hadn’t felt like such a terrible idea. 

It was meant to be a quick supply run, but the two of them had turned it into a fully fledged day out; driving around the city and even stopping for lunch in the park. 

Adrien might even have called it a date. He was pretty sure that Marinette felt the same way-if the pretty blush that coloured her cheeks whenever he flirted was any indication. 

It was dark when they returned, laden down with heavy bags as Adrien-loathe to let the good day end- let them into the empty cafe,  “What’ll you have then? Tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate? And you’ve gotta have some cake too. On the house!” 

Marinette shook her head, smiling softly at him and his heart skipped a beat in his chest. “You’re spoiling me, Adrien. I don’t need anything.”

“Come on,” he wheedled playfully, “just one slice? and you have to have coffee with it”— sensing her wavering resolve, he rummaged in the bags until he found what he was looking for. “I’ll even use the fresh beans…” he shook the bag enticingly, grinning when Marinette conceded with a groan. 

“Oh, fine . Go on then.” 

“Alright!” Adrien gestured to a table, pulling out a chair for her. “Take a seat, and I’ll be right back out.” 

Adrien hummed cheerfully to himself as he worked, meticulously slicing the banana and walnut cake-it was a new recipe that he wanted Marinette’s opinion on. He smiled to himself, laughing under his breath at his thoughts. 

It was strange how in such a short amount of time, she’d come to mean so much to him. Only a month ago he’d been determined to be a loner, to content himself with running the cafe and that was it. He got all the social interaction he needed from serving customers and what else could he need? 

And yet...Marinette had managed to worm her way into his life so easily he wondered at how strong his defences had been in the first place. 

Setting everything onto a tray, Adrien made his way to Marinette. “So this was the first time I made”— he stopped short, his blood freezing in his veins at the sight of the red…

...the red kwami that squeaked and zipped back into Marinette’s purse at the sight of him. 

“A-adrien!” Marinette exclaimed, her voice unnaturally shrill, though he hardly noticed, eyes trained on where he’d seen the kwami disappear. “That was uh...that was-”

“You’re Ladybug.” It wasn’t a question, simply a statement of fact and she hesitated for a moment before nodding. 

“Yes. I mean...I was. I’m so sorry, I didn’t tell you, but I was worried-” she half rose out of her seat as though to come up to him and he took a step back, setting the tray down heavily on another table.

After all this time…

Marinette’s voice was hesitant. “Adrien?” 

“Get out.” Adrien said, turning his back on her, his mind racing, putting the pieces together, seeing everything in a new light. “Get out.” He repeated “leave. Before I say something that I regret.”

“I-okay.” 

It wasn’t until the door slammed shut behind her that he let himself turn around to watch her retreating back, feeling as he had four years ago.

The emotions washed over him like a tidal wave and Adrien grabbed hold of the table as his legs buckled underneath him, the blood rushing in his ears.

It seemed that this year was just as bad as all the rest.

[treya-barton]

Hello there!! I'm here with a Promptis prompt ❤️ I'd love to see something sweet and fluffy. How about the first time either one of them realizes they are in love with the other?

Sorry this took so long to write!  I had somehow missed the ask at first and then when I noticed it I had other projects going on and then struggled to come up with a good idea.  This idea ended up not being all that fluffy but there are definitely some sweet moments and hopefully you will still enjoy it!

“Hey there, Prince Noctis.”

The words still rang in Noctis’s head.  He lay sprawled on his bed after his first day in high school which had been followed by his typical princely lessons and a training session with Gladio.  Yet, he didn’t feel as tired as he usually did. Instead, while he was physically tired from sparring, he felt more awake and alert than he typically did day to day. And he knew exactly who he could attribute it to.

“I’m Prompto!  Nice to meet you!”

Prompto.  Like Noctis didn’t already know who he was.  As he had immediately called out right afterward. Prompto had been in his class in middle school.  He had always stood out to Noctis because just like him he always seemed like a quiet loner.  He couldn’t remember Prompto hanging out with the other kids in class, and he always seemed to go straight home after school.  The other thing that stood out is unlike the other students in class who either whispered about him behind his back or when they actually approached him it was only to ask questions about being a prince, Prompto always looked like he wanted to speak to him but couldn’t bring himself to.  In retrospect, especially after the experience he had today, Noctis wish he would have.  Or that he had gone out on a limb and approached Prompto instead.  Because unlike all of his other classmates, Prompto seemed to genuinely want to know him – Noctis.  And he had never experienced that before.  

Even with Ignis and Gladio who knew the real him there was always a stopping point.  Ignis was his Chamberlain and Gladio was his Shield so no matter how close they were at certain times there was always that underlying distinction.  But today, even though it was only for a brief moment, he had been able to forget that.  All because Prompto had approached him, slapping him on the back like they were old friends.  Noctis had returned the gesture and somehow knew in that moment things would never be the same.

  “Don’t I know you?”

Prompto flushed as he buried his face in his pillow.  He didn’t know how he had managed to carry on past that embarrassing moment or how he had even found the courage to introduce himself in the first place.  After so many attempts where he had chickened out in middle school, he had surprised himself that morning by finally carrying through with the plan.  After introducing himself, Noctis’s eyes had scanned his body, before recognition had hit and he had bluntly called Prompto out on his half fib.  Half because while they had been classmates, they had only spoken directly one time, the moment where Noctis had told him he was heavy and fully mortified him.

Prompto looked over at his desk drawer that still contained the letter from Lady Lunafreya, the letter that had been his strength to carry through with his plan.  Noctis had always seemed as lonely as he was, even when surrounded by their classmates bombarding him with questions about living in the palace. Even before he had received the letter, with Lady Lunafreya subtly encouraging him to befriend the prince, Prompto had noticed that Noctis seemed to be a kindred spirit.  The prince never seemed to talk to anyone on his own free will and always stayed to himself until getting picked up from school; Prompto remembered finding it sad how the prince could be in the same situation he was.

But now, with an act of courage, he had changed all of that.  Upon getting to know him that day, Prompto realized that Noctis was just as blunt as he had been the first time they spoke, although it was more due to being awkward from his upbringing than due to any malice. He also had the same tastes in videogames that Prompto did and was pretty relaxed which Prompto hadn’t expected. He had just allowed himself to be dragged along by Prompto’s whims the whole day, and he hadn’t seemed to mind the bubbly, nervous energy Prompto had adopted after he had learned to be more friendly and to talk to people.  He wondered if Noctis had been surprised by that change, so different from the person he had been in middle school, but the prince hadn’t mentioned it nor seemed to mind. Prompto looked over at the pictures lined up on his closet door, outlining the changes he had been making since middle school, and he couldn’t help but let out a smile.  His hard work had really paid off.

  Noctis was irritated and he couldn’t quite place his finger on why.  He and Prompto were hanging out at his apartment, Noctis needing to hide away after his engagement with Lunafreya had been publicly announced.  Prompto had come over to keep him company, and usually that was enough to cheer him up but today it only seemed to sour his mood further. Prompto seemed to have noticed and had fallen silent, stealing glances at him while he pretended to be invested in his phone.  “What,” Noctis finally asked.

“Huh?” Prompto asked, eyes darting at him over his phone before quickly looking away as he saw Noctis’s pointed glare.  “I don’t get what you mean, dude.”

“If you want to say something, just say it,” Noctis replied, his normal patience with his best friend completely gone.  He didn’t know why he was so irritated – it wasn’t like it was Prompto’s fault that due to his duty to the Crown he had no say in many of his life’s choices including who he was going to marry.  It’s not that Noctis didn’t like Luna – she was someone he had always relied on for advice and he cared greatly about her.  But something about the treaty just didn’t seem right, and he didn’t like that his father was sending him away when his health was in decline.  Noctis clenched his jaw, then looked back at Prompto and noticed that the blond had his arms crossed over his chest while he was staring down at the ground.  Prompto rarely ever showed this side to himself – he put on a friendly façade even when he was feeling down – so it surprised him to see him openly appearing hurt. Noctis felt some of his patience return along with his guilt.

“Hey, Prom, I’m sorry,” Noctis said, reaching out an placing a hand on Prompto’s shoulder.  “I’m just feeling irritated today.  I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”

Prompto let out a sigh before turning to face him.  “Wanna talk about it?” he finally asked, blue violet eyes boring into his.  Noctis bit his lip.

“What’s there to talk about? Everyone’s ecstatic,” he said.  “Even you…”  Noctis finally cut himself off, blinking in surprise by his bitter words. When he had found out about the engagement, he had told Prompto about it afterward and his best friend had seemed happy for him.  In Prompto’s defense, he had been witness to Noctis’s journal exchange with the oracle and seemed to be convinced Noctis had a crush on her.  That certainly may have been true when Noctis had been a child, but now…  Noctis’s cheeks suddenly flushed with realization, and he let out a groan before covering his face.

“Whoah, Noct, you ok buddy?” Prompto asked.  “Also, even me what?”

“Can we talk about something else,” Noctis asked, suddenly embarrassed.  He understood why he was so annoyed – he was mad that Prompto seemed happy about his engagement to Lunafreya.  It didn’t really matter what the news articles said or even that it was his duty – the only opinion that really mattered was Prompto’s, and Noctis was beginning to realize that maybe he had wanted Prompto to be upset, jealous even.

‘Shit,’ Noctis thought. It wasn’t like even if Prompto was jealous there was anything that could be done, so it made sense for his best friend to show his support and be happy for him.  Noctis glanced out at him from between his fingers as he thought through Prompto’s reaction to the news.  He had seemed happy for him and had immediately started teasing him about his crush, but if Noctis was remembering correctly there had been a tiny, brief moment that had flickered across his face that almost seemed resigned. Pairing that with how Prompto had appeared just a moment ago and maybe, just maybe Prompto wasn’t as excited about the news as he acted.  Noctis’s relief was bittersweet, since he had discovered his feelings for his best friend far too late to do anything about it.  ‘Figures,’ he thought, as Prompto tentatively switched topics to the upcoming event scheduled in king’s knight that would be starting right around the time they started their road trip.

“We should have plenty of time to play in the car!” he said, and Noctis finally felt his mood begin to improve.  That was right, he would have the trip to Altissia with his best friends prior to his whole life changing to look forward to.  It would only be a brief moment, but he would cherish it for the rest of his life.

  Prompto felt thoroughly embarrassed.  Not that it was anything new.  He had asked Noctis to join him so he could secretly snap a photo of Cindy working at the garage in Hammerhead and they had been caught in the act.  Noctis had helped him play it off and had even managed to finagle a picture of the two of them together; it was moments like that which reminded Prompto that hey, Noctis really was king of Insomnia and would do a great job one day.  Once they resolved the current predicament they were in, that is.  “My hero, Noct,” Prompto whispered to himself as he looked at the photo Noctis had taken for him.  It had come out looking really good – Noctis must be paying attention during some of his moments rambling about photography.

Prompto flipped through his camera until he found one of the many selfies he and Noctis had taken together. He stared at it quietly for several long moments before letting out a deep sigh and setting his camera down.  Prompto was in one hell of a dilemma.  On the one hand, Insomnia had fallen and right now – more than ever – Noctis needed him as his best friend.  It was a role Prompto filled willingly – he would always be there for Noctis and knew how much he relied on his support.  But at the same time, deep down, buried in Prompto’s most selfish desires that he would never tell anyone…he couldn’t help but feel just the tiniest bit grateful for his current situation.  Because with the fall of Insomnia, there no longer was a point to Noctis’s engagement to Lunafreya.  The treaty had been a ploy by Niflheim to get Regis to drop his guard and had led to the fall of Insomnia, the death of Noctis’ and Gladio’s fathers, and more than likely the death of Prompto’s own parents who he hadn’t heard from since Insomnia was attacked.

Obviously, Prompto would trade it all back if it meant Insomnia was safe and all the people who had died could be brought back.  He would have definitely preferred watching while his heart broke as his best friend – the person he had fallen in love with at some point in their friendship without being able to remember the exact moment when it had happened – married the person he had looked up to his whole life instead.  Prompto used to think Noctis had feelings for Lady Lunafreya, but little moments like their conversation after the engagement was announced had made him wonder otherwise.  A part of him wanted to know what Noctis would have said after his “Even you” but he had clammed up afterward, and Prompto had helpfully changed the subject to spare his best friend an awkward conversation.

But then things like today would happen where Noctis would support his crush on Cindy, and Prompto would wonder if it was all just wishful thinking.  Cindy was certainly attractive, and Prompto couldn’t help but admire her focus and dedication to her work, but half of his admiration for her had been an act to cover his heartbreak after Noctis’s announced engagement. And even though that was no longer going to happen, it wasn’t like Prompto could suddenly turn it off when it was expected at this point.  Prompto flushed in embarrassment as he thought back to his true intentions that morning.  He had expected to snap the photo and then spend the rest of the morning taking pictures of Noctis, enjoying a quiet morning with his best friend until they had been surprised by Cindy’s interruption.  

‘This isn’t the time to be moping,’ Prompto reminded himself.  They had a mission to save Lucis – that was far more important than Prompto’s conflicted feelings over his best friend and king.  Prompto slapped his cheeks a few times, just as he used to in middle school before his runs, and picked up his camera before heading out from the camp to see what his companions were up to.  They would be leaving soon for the next leg of their trip and he was sure Iggy or Gladio could use some help packing.

  It wasn’t fair.  After all the loss Noctis had experienced on his journey, all the pain he had been through, once he had finally reunited with his friends and once again strengthened their bonds of brotherhood, he had fallen for Ardyn’s trap yet again and had been sucked into the crystal in order to fulfill his destiny as the King of Light.  He had finally been at a place, after everything had happened, after nearly losing the person he cared most about, to be honest with him and bare his feelings to him.  There had been no obstacles left to hold them apart anymore and now the new obstacle was one he could not overcome.  He was destined to die in order to save the world.

As Noctis floated about in the space enclosed in the Crystal, learning about his destiny as his body slowly absorbed the crystal’s power so he would be strong enough to make his last stand, he suddenly wished he could turn back time and do things differently.  He wished he could have been honest to Prompto about his feelings and let him know that he knew Prompto’s crush on Cindy was all for show, that he knew he had been jealous over his engagement but had held his feelings in check for his sake.  Holding back for the sake of the failed engagement, then until he could talk to Lunafreya face to face to let her know his feelings first until her death made it a wasted effort, then feeling hurt and bitter after losing another person he cared about and wasting the opportunity again when he was tricked into pushing Prompto off the train, nearly losing him forever.  What had been the point of it all?  If he had just been honest, they would have been able to spend a few stolen, happy moments together.  It would have been something he would have cherished until the very end.

Once Noctis finally was released from the crystal and made his way back to Hammerhead, reuniting with his friends in a bittersweet moment, he considered using his final moments to confess to his best friend how he had been in love with him, probably from that moment Prompto had first called out his name.  However, he didn’t want to leave Prompto with that burden, not here at the end. Not when he would be leaving him for good this time.  Yet, somehow, just like at that moment in high school all those years ago, Prompto seemed to have the courage he did not have.

“Hey Noct, can I talk to you for a moment?”  Prompto looked like he had something on his mind. This Prompto was more serious than the one Noctis was used to, and not for the first time he wondered what his friends had been through during his 10 year absence.  The dark circles under Prompto’s eyes and the weariness that seemed ingrained in his face, unable to be completely hidden by his warm smile, told him all he needed to know.

“Of course.  What’s up?” Noctis asked.  They moved away to a quiet corner amidst the car parts strewn in the cramped space of the fenced in rest stop; there weren’t very many places where they could truly get a moment to themselves due to how small the safe area was and how many hunters took shelter there between jobs.

Prompto fiddled with one of the pieces of scrap metal for a moment before setting it down.  “This may come as a surprise and honestly it’s probably not the time for me to be saying this but…I figure at this point I’m pretty much out of chances.”  Prompto took a deep breath and then released it.  “I love you, Noct.  Have been in love with you for quite a long time.  I don’t know when it started, but I know I realized it the day you told me you were getting engaged, and I thought my world was crashing down.  This may be selfish of me to do when you don’t have a lot of time left but…”  Before he could finish, Noctis had thrown his arms around him before squeezing tight.

“You are the least selfish person I know,” Noctis assured him. “Shit, Prom.”  Noctis’s voice was trembling, and as Prompto’s shock wore off and he wrapped his arms around Noctis as well, he could feel how the king’s heart was racing where it pressed against his chest.  “I love you too.  I think from the very moment you greeted me like we had been friends forever.  You were the only person who wanted to know me and not the prince or the king or the king of light and for that you will always be precious to me.”

Prompto wrapped one arm around Noctis’s head and gently patted him on the back as he felt his best friend cling to him.  “We should have done this a long time ago, huh?” he asked, and Noctis snorted into his shoulder.

“You think?” he asked, before tilting his head to look at him.  Prompto flashed him an apologetic smile before they leaned forward for what they both assumed was their first – and their last – kiss.

  It really was a gorgeous sunrise.  If Prompto had his camera with him, he would have snapped a picture in order to commemorate the sacrifice the love of his life had made in order to allow it to happen. Instead, he did his best to ingrain it in his memory, taking in the feeling of the warmth on his skin, something he hadn’t felt in ages, the glow of the light as it reflected on the ruins of Insomnia, causing the broken class to glitter in the city like tiny jewels. ‘I wish you could see this,’ Prompto thought, hand clutching the photo Noctis had chosen to take with him to his final moments, that same selfie Prompto had looked back on all those years ago. They had both looked so happy as they had been goofing off together, and now…

The photo had slipped from Noctis’s fingers where he sat sprawled out on what would have been his throne, the citadel a shambled mess from where it had been ransacked during the fall on Insomnia.  After Gladio and Ignis had confirmed the death of their king, Prompto had picked up the photo before stepping outside to mourn.  Gladio and Ignis let him; Gladio had seen what photo Noctis had chosen to take with him and had gauged that something had changed in their relationship. Ignis had guessed just based on the change in inflection in their tone during those final hours together. Suddenly, the early morning quiet was broken by Gladio’s shout.  “Prompto! Hey, Prompto, come and see this!”

Prompto sighed, tearing his eyes away from the sunrise before making his way back to the throne room. “What is it?” he asked, before his eyes fell on the throne.  Noctis was no longer slumped over – in fact he was standing upright while leaning heavily against Ignis.  Ignis, who hardly ever seemed to get flustered, had tears rolling down his face while Gladio was grinning widely at him.  “Noct?” Prompto said, his voice coming out at a whisper.  “Is it really you?”

“I would sure hope so – I feel sore as hell,” Noctis grumbled in response.  “What are you doing standing at the door? And do you know where my photo went?”

Prompto grinned widely; if Noctis was complaining then he really was ok.  “I have it,” he said, before rushing in the room.  “I’ve got you buddy,” he added, moving to Noctis’s other side so he could also help steady him.  If Prompto’s arm around Noctis’s shoulder was a little tight, and if Noctis’s hold on Prompto’s jacket was clinging, no one said anything.  To both of their surprise, Gladio then swooped them all into a group hug, which they gladly joined in on.  They weren’t sure why Noctis had been granted a second chance at life, but they weren’t going to trade it in for the world.

Several days later, it was again early morning.  Noctis woke up to the soft clicking sound that meant Prompto was scrolling through the pictures on his camera.  He slid open one eye and yawned as he turned to face him, smiling at how after only a few days of peace and having Noctis back in his life, Prompto was slowly losing the dark circles under his eyes and regaining some of his old enthusiasm. The weariness was still there, and some of it may always be there, but Noctis would do all he could to lessen it every day.  “What are you looking at?” he asked.

“Some of the old photos of us,” Prompto replied.  “Just reflecting on the past I guess.”  He then lifted up his camera and took a snapshot of Noctis gazing up at him sleepily with his hair sprawled on his pillow.

“No fair,” Noctis grumbled. “I wasn’t ready.”

Prompto let out a chuckle. “Want to take one together?” he asked. Prompto had almost completely stopped taking photos during the 10 years Noctis was gone – there were a few pictures here and there but for the most part that time period was undocumented as people were more focused on survival and holding out for his return.  Thus, seeing him enthusiastically pick up his hobby again warmed Noctis’s heart.  Besides that, it wasn’t like he could ever deny Prompto anything.  Certainly not ever again.

Noctis scooted closer to Prompto, pulling his boyfriend against him so Prompto would be able to get a good close up shot.  Just as Prompto was about to hit the button to take the photo, Noctis turned his head and pressed a kiss to Prompto’s cheek, causing his boyfriend to squawk in surprise.  “Noct!” he whined, and the king chuckled in response.

“This is why you keep getting called a chocobo,” he teased, nuzzling at Prompto’s hair.  Without the hair gel it didn’t look quite as much like chocobo tail feathers, but it was still close enough.

Prompto set down his camera on the side table before pulling Noctis into his arms.  He knew how much he liked to cuddle in the morning; even when their relationship had been platonic Noctis had been clingy in the morning. “You happen to like chocobos,” Prompto replied, and Noctis couldn’t help but let out a snort.  He may like chocobos but it was nothing compared to Prompto’s adoration for them.

“I like you more,” Noctis replied, and Prompto flushed before pulling Noctis even closer to try to hide his face.  Noctis grinned before snuggling closer, appreciating the opportunity.  He had fully given up hope that this day would come, and now that he had Prompto to himself he was going to cherish his time with him every moment he got.  He couldn’t help but feel like it was somehow his father and Lunafreya’s doing, and he wouldn’t let his chance go to waste.  “I love you, Prompto,” Noctis said quietly, and Prompto squeezed his arms around him to show he had heard him.

“I love you too, Noctis,” he replied, voice fond.  Noctis smiled before sliding his eyes closed again, deciding they could stay in bed together just a little bit longer.  Prompto chuckled quietly but didn’t stop him – he always had spoiled Noctis, hadn’t he? Thus, both men stayed thus entwined for most of the morning, reluctant to part and appreciating a quiet morning together.