#you know the drill if this flops I never posted it

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

Put in the tags your favorite pair or trio of songs to counter the argument that all of Taylor’s music sounds the same.

[ckret2]

who wants a prism break?

So, the Theraprism! The Theraprism sucks, right?

This is like, a good day.

The Theraprism clearly sucks.

Have a one shot of Bill escaping Theraprism with the most desperate escape plan imaginable: reincarnation.

(Warning for, as you might expect, psychiatric hospital abuse.)

####

There are fates worse than death. Like boredom, for instance!

####

Everything was black and numb and silent and cold so so cold but no he could only call it cold if he felt cold and Bill didn't feel coldness there was just the absence of a feeling the absence of heat the absence of light the absence of sound the absence of touch the absence of air.

The absence of everything.

Bill had loved a void once—a micro black hole. Every time they touched it slowly killed him, spaghettified his limbs, drained his energy. His energy was so vast that she never claimed a drop of a drop of a drop of his reserves—but it still hurt like nothing else to be crushed and stretched and ripped and consumed by her event horizon. The pain was wonderful. Being shredded was ecstasy.

This void was the opposite of her. 

He couldn't even feel anything when he tried to scream—without air, he couldn't feel his vocal plates vibrate. He couldn't feel his hands, his face, his eye; he tried to bite himself just to feel something and he couldn't feel his mouth, he tried to rip open his wounds and couldn't find them; why couldn't he see his own light, why couldn't he see his blood, where had he gone, was he gone—

Reality returned like a light bulb being switched on.

The first thing he registered was a shrill sound on the verge of inaudibility; and then the pain in his eye, his sides, his wounds; and then the dull gray light, the hard floor under his knees, the antiseptic stench in the air conditioning.

He stopped screaming. The shrill sound stopped.

"Energetic as always, are we?"

Bill blinked blearily at the Orb of Healing Light hovering before him. He croaked, "I'll regurgitate you."

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that." A glowing translucent clipboard manifested in front of the Orb. "Well, you've gone through this enough times to know the drill! Do you need a moment to recover, or—?"

"No no, I'm fine, I'm fine." Bill slumped forward, trembling hands on the floor, waiting for the vertigo to pass. "I'm fine. Do your thing." He'd rather get the post-Solitary Wellness Void reorientation interview over with.

"Perfect. What's your name?"

"I'm ol' Vinegar Pete."

"No clowning, please."

He sighed loudly. "Bill Cipher."

"Good. Where are you?"

He considered saying hell, but decided he'd used up all the clowning he could risk for one day. He didn't want to go back in. "The Theraprism. Ward 333."

"Very good. When are you?"

"I was gonna ask you," Bill groaned. "How long was I in the hole this time? A million years? Ten million?"

The Orb checked its notes. "Eight minutes."

"Wh—no, no I know that time moves slower out in reality than in the prism. I'm not asking how much time passed in reality, I'm asking how much time passed here."

"Eight minutes," the Orb repeated. "Outside the Theraprism, one third of one second passed."

Bill groaned again and flopped flat on the floor.

"Do you know why you're here?"

"Why are any of us here?" Bill asked the gray linoleum tiles. "Usually because some dumb beast tripped into the booby trap that sets off its reproductive process. How's your species work, you pop outta nebulas, right—?"

"I meant, coming out of the Solitary Wellness Void."

"Oh." Bill tried to remember what his infraction had been this time. "Because I failed to escape."

"Because you tried to escape."

If he'd succeeded, they never could have punished him. "Sure."

"Good, you seem oriented to your surroundings. Let's get you to the nurse and then back to your cell." The nurse? What did he need a nurse for?

He only realized then that he must have succeeded in reopening his wounds in the SWV: the never-quite-healed crack across his exoskeleton was wider, the edges chipped and bent. It hurt. His eye socket hurt too; he tasted blood. With the way his whole body usually ached after leaving the void, he hadn't even noticed.

Through the crack in his exoskeleton, his edges had frayed into fine golden threads. The sight of silvery blood on his hands made him nauseous; he hastily looked away and reminded himself it was only his own. 

####

As Bill wearily followed behind the Orb and two security guards followed behind him, he had to periodically turn to hover sideways to streamline himself. These days he was so weak that he could feel the air resistance pushing back against him when he floated; with his wound reopened, he felt like the air pressure could snap his exoskeleton along the crack and break him in half.

"You're not Emmy," Bill said. "You're, uh..."

"A-AOX4."

"Oxyyy," Bill said weakly. "Heyyy. S'been a while. Usually I get a personal welcome back from the void, why didn't Emmy show? Don't tell me it doesn't see me as a threat anymore!" He'd be offended if it didn't. D-SM5 was the closest thing he had to a nemesis these days. Even if he couldn't beat it, he wanted to think he still irritated the daylights out of it.

"Director SM5 couldn't make it. It's overseeing the preparations for Paingoreous's reincarnation."

"That's today? Good riddance." Paingoreous had started getting sanctimonious the past few hundred group therapy sessions—don't you have any compassion for your victims and it's possible to live a happy life without slaughtering all your enemies first and maybe I should ask for permission before I vivisect my friends' faces—passive, self-defeatist crap like that. Vivisecting your friends and seeing who complained was how you found out who your lame friends were! Now that the wet blanket was leaving, the rest of them could get back to spending their sessions reminiscing about the glory days and trying to set the donuts on fire when the therapist was distracted.

"Yes," A-AOX4 said pointedly, "it is good he gets to leave to go become a productive member of reality. We're all so happy that he's rehabilitated enough to earn a new chance at life." (Bill rolled his eye. A-AOX4 ignored it.) "Wouldn't you like a chance to rejoin reality, Bill?"

More than anything. He'd been in this crystallized brain's perpetual dreamscape for what felt like both a thousand years and a single day—time never passing, an eternal inescapable moment. He'd tried to break out, sneak out, or bargain his way out more times than he could count; sometimes he was locked in the SWV as punishment; and sometimes the staff gently stopped him, confiscated his supplies, and chastised him for the effort—and the reminder that he was as powerless as a child was worse than the void. He'd gone delirious from the boredom, hallucinating screams and burning faces as his mind struggled to stimulate itself (and he'd been medicated for it). He'd so despaired of escaping that he'd looked for a way to burn up the remains of his energy and vanish for good (and he'd been medicated for it). He ached with the need to see the stars again.

But not enough to sell his soul for it. If he took the staff's route—let them break him down, sandblast off his rough edges, erase everything that made him him, and finally physically transform him into some alien creature—then whatever left the Theraprism would no longer be Bill Cipher.

"What, and force you guys to find a new 'unique case'? I wouldn't do that to you! I know how much you love me," Bill said. "Besides, why would I go through all that just so I can reincarnate as a sentient snowflake, or Mi-Go antennae lice, or..."

"A butterfly," A-AOX4 cut in, an edge of impatience creeping into its tone. "Paingoreous has chosen to reincarnate as a butterfly. We all think that's a very productive way to channel his desire to digest his own skin."

"Unless it's one of those blood-drinking butterflies, lame." Bill scoffed. "Wait—hold on, you said butterfly? Like an Earth butterfly?"

They were, of course, not actually speaking an Earth language, but an interdimensional pidgin that borrowed words and grammar from dozens of worlds. When around the Orbs of Healing Light that held half the staff positions, Bill tended to speak a dialect of the pidgin that used flashes of light for 40% of its vocabulary. It was perfectly possible that the word Bill knew as "butterfly" was also used for some alien creature, but—

"Yes, an Earth butterfly. A Vanessa atalanta, to be precise."

Aw, boo. Not even a cool butterfly. "He's reincarnating on Earth?"

"Yes. Many of our patients reincarnate on Earth. As long as you're careful about which region and century you reincarnate into, it's at the top of our recommended list of Goldilocks zones."

There was another phrase that Bill recognized, but this time he was sure his definition was not A-AOX4's definition. "Whaaat do Goldilocks zones have to do with reincarnation."

"You didn't pay attention to the orientation session on our outpatient reincarnation program, did you."

"What! I didn't get an orientation session!" said Bill, who probably didn't remember any such session because he didn't pay attention to it.

"Well—we rank millions of planets and their dimensional parallels based on their potential to help patients reintegrate into reality. We do try to set our patients up for success," A-AOX4 said. "To qualify as a Goldilocks zone, a planet has to meet the Theraprism's rigorous list of criteria: its lifeforms, cultures, laws of physics, and position in interdimensional society must all be conducive to a patient's continued recovery. We want to ensure that our patients' new lives are neither so difficult as to retraumatize them, nor so easy as to let them coast by avoiding continued personal growth, but right in the middle, so that they're emotionally and spiritually challenged without being overwhelmed. The Goldilocks zone: a perfect compromise between two extremes."

"Yeah, sure, sounds great." Bill could feel his eye glazing over in disinterest. Fight it, Cipher.

"Do you miss Earth?"

Bill tilted to glance askance at A-AOX4, and was surprised to see it had turned to focus a spotlight on him. Oh—it thought it had finally found a carrot to dangle in front of him. That was a popular strategy here: they figured out what a patient wanted most, and then used it to coax them into good behavior and "rehabilitation"—better still if they could attach a sense of urgency to it. Don't you want to see your descendants again before the last of them dies out? Don't you want to see your homeworld before its sun swallows it? Don't you want to reconcile with your god before the heat death of your universe?

But Bill had no universe, no homeworld, no family; no lovers or friends or gods that hadn't betrayed him and left him to rot here; and he'd remained smugly steadfast in refusing to give D-SM5 and its minions anything else it could use to get under his chitin. He was proud that he was too broken for even the famed Theraprism to fix him.

A-AOX4 probably thought it had finally found an opening. It might be useful to let it keep thinking that.

"You kidding me? Earth? Pfff! I don't miss that overgrown asteroid one bit!" He waved off the suggestion, and winced when the gesture tugged wrong at his reopened wound. "But hey, you don't study a world for millions of years without finding a few things about it to like. The music's pretty good. And the movies and literature, though if you ask me, they peaked between the first two World Wars. I like trees, evolution did a great job with trees. And humans really went off with the architecture. The pyramids? 10 out of 10. And some of the locals aren't bad, I've got a few exes from Earth."

"Do you? How many exes?"

"Living? Just a hundred forty or fifty," Bill said dismissively. "Earthlings just have those pretty eyes, you know? I'm a sucker for a pretty eye! But outside of that, no, there's nothing on Earth for me."

"I see," A-AOX4 said lightly, and dropped the conversation.

Hook, line, and sinker.

####

The original definition of a "Goldilocks zone" came from astrobiology. The Goldilocks zone was the ring of space around a star in which an orbiting planet could support liquid water and thus water-based life: not too close to the star and too hot, not too far and too cold, but just right. Earth, for instance, orbited Sol in its Goldilocks zone.

It was from this definition that other, more metaphorical definitions of Goldilocks zones emerged. Such as the Theraprism's: a world that was neither too stressful nor too boring for a newly brainwashed—sorry, "cured"—patient. And apparently Earth was in that Goldilocks zone, too.

Which was very interesting to Bill—because in their search for a new home, the Henchmaniacs had come up with their own definition of a Goldilocks zone. For them, it was a dimension close enough to the Nightmare Realm with a thin enough barrier that they could easily punch through it, but not so close and so thin that puncturing the barrier would pop it like a balloon and cause the dimension to immediately prolapse into the Nightmare Realm—which was a problem they'd had before. More than once. They needed a dimension they could easily cut a hole into, but control it, so they could slowly pump the Nightmare Realm's contents in. A barrier neither too vulnerable nor too strong, but just right.

And wouldn't you know it—but Earth happened to be in that Goldilocks zone too. Right next to a point in the dimensional membrane so thin, the Nightmare Realm could almost stretch through and kiss it.

####

Since Bill Cipher was infamously known as the last survivor of a trillion-years-extinct species, and had until recently been capable of instantly repairing himself, there were no medical records on how his anatomy worked. It didn't help that at some point eons ago he'd somehow managed to graft a 3D exoskeleton to his 2D anatomy without breaking his own physics, meaning no one had seen his true body in recorded history. Bill knew how he worked, but refused to offer any hints. So the Theraprism staff had to guess at Bill's medical treatment.

But Bill was still made of energy, and even weakened he could eventually self-repair. So whenever his injury was exacerbated, the nurse tended to just patch up his exoskeleton to keep it stable enough to send him back to his room.

On top of his mysterious anatomy, the staff had no idea how to medicate his physiology. They knew he could be medicated—Bill's personal substance (ab)use experiments were notorious far outside the Nightmare Realm—but they had to treat him like a newly-discovered form of life in figuring out what affected him, how it affected him, and how much it took. He'd been on and off hundreds of drugs as they tried to chemically stabilize a mind for which they had no idea what baseline stability looked like. D-SM5 had told him that between the enormous doses needed to impact his energy-based physiology and the vast variety of drugs he'd been through, Bill's medication regimen was the most expensive in the Theraprism. He took some pride in that.

He had very few things to take pride in anymore. He clung to what meager victories he could.

If Bill got his way, he wouldn't be medicated at all. None of the substances they wanted him on were what he'd call recreational. (Although for a while he had gotten away with not telling the docs that one of his antipsychotics had given him a side-effect of kaleidoscopic hallucinations.) Plus there was the fact that he'd heard rumors that quite a few pharmaceutical execs were good pals with a certain director—not that Bill would name names, of course!—that's his motto, Don't Slander Maliciou5ly!

But when he resisted taking his meds, they could send in the guards to pin him down so a nurse could inject a sedative so strong he wouldn't remember anything that happened for the next few hours to months (hard to tell) until they started tapering it off... and although he'd rather die than admit it, after losing that fight five or six times, even he had to admit to himself it was a lot less scary to just take their rotten drugs. Better to go through his days with his mind dulled and hazy than blacked out altogether.

To retain what little pride he had left, he'd reached a compromise with his jailers.

When the nurse had finished attaching the reinforcing splints around Bill's injury, they grabbed a medication measurement cup, filled it halfway with syrupy eye drops, and double-checked Bill's chart as they dropped thirteen different pills (plus a fourteenth pill for a painkiller) in the cup.

As Bill redressed, he eyed the unappetizing cocktail of antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and things he'd forgotten the purpose of but that probably weren't doing whatever the doctors hoped and definitely weren't doing anything Bill liked. "My straw?"

"Right, right." The nurse handed over one of the wide-diameter disposable white straws they kept on hand for patients who struggled to drink (or, in Bill's case, patients they struggled to get to drink).

Only a tiny fragment of Bill was actually locked up in the Theraprism—like pinching the glowing lure of an anglerfish in a trap while the rest of the fish thrashed outside—and because most of Bill's vast energy was elsewhere, he was nearly powerless. But he still had enough energy to heat up a finger, twist the straw around it, and hold it there until it had melted into a new shape.

The nurse sighed. "Do you have to do that every time? You ruin more straws than you get right."

Imperiously, Bill said, "Leave me to my whimsy." He tugged off the straw when it had cooled down to examine the corkscrew shape he'd made. The wall was a little flattened in one place, but he could pinch it back open. "See? It's perfect!" Cheerfully ignoring the nurse, he stuck the straw in his cup and slurped down his pills like tapioca balls. He tried not to remember what was in them.

A-AOX4 had left Bill with the nurse, but the two mall cops with medical kinks known as Bill's personal guards were still waiting nearby. The nurse's office was next door to the cafeteria—for ease of patients picking up their medications at meal times—in an anteroom that was connected to the rest of the ward by a set of locked double doors. A couple of guards were stationed near those doors at all times, and generally the guards assigned to Bill hung around with them while Bill was in the cafeteria or nurse's office. Bill floated up to them, regarding them with the disinterest of a king ignoring the servants he expected to open doors for him, and continued to ignore them as they escorted him back to his cell, one in front and one behind, while he sipped on his drugged cocktail.

The Dimensional Tyrant Ward was already one of the most heavily-guarded wards in the Theraprism; but to reach the maximum security cells, a patient had to pass several increasingly heavy security checkpoints with increasingly impenetrable security doors. The final door was warded against all magic, unhackable, unbreakable, and so airtight that even without his exoskeleton there was no gap Bill's 2D form could slide through. The doors to each cell—outfitted with tiny one-way mirror portholes, no latches or hinges on the inside—were a little less heavy duty, but packed with just as many failsafes. The Dimensional Tyrant Ward's max security hall had the most advanced security architecture of any psychiatric facility in the multiverse.

Bill had made a trillion year career of trying to break his way through a door nobody wanted him to go through. He could think of seven different ways to get through the doors. Sooner or later he'd find a way out of this place altogether.

A few of the doors had modifications: this one with a metal slab over the porthole to protect passersby from the occupant's petrifying gaze, that one with extra soundproofed padding coating the door. Bill was almost insulted his own door didn't warrant any special modifications.

His favorite door was The Beast's. A comfortingly yellow triangular sign on the door displayed a black symbol of a steak. Red signs above and below read "CAUTION! FEED UNSEASONED MEAT ONLY." "NO SUGAR ALLOWED." The Beast's heavy snuffing was audible through the door; his hot, sickly sweet breath seeped through the slot in the door that had been installed to deliver his food.

Bill's escorts automatically drifted to the far side of the hall to avoid The Beast. Bill, whose first medication was already starting to kick in, zigzagged lazily back and forth across the hall, heedless of how close he came to The Beast's cell.

Bill had never seen this door opened once in all his time incarcerated, and the dust settled on the additional chains and padlocks stretched across the door showed just how long it had been since the last incident. But some of the patients who'd been here longer than Bill still couldn't bring themselves to speak of the last time he'd escaped. Elder eldritch gods shuddered and gibbered nervously at the mention of his name. 

Bill tilted over to try to peer through the food slot at The Beast. A quivering, sickly blue eye stared back at him. Honestly, Bill thought The Beast was adorable.

Outside Bill's door, the guards waited for Bill to finish his medicine, hand over his cup and straw, and open his mouth and lift his eye out of the way so they could check and make sure he'd swallowed them.

And then he was left in his cell.

####

A perfect cube of uniform dull grey tiles supernaturally lit by a uniform dull grey glow, no light source, no shadows; in a max security room in the Maximum Security Wellness Center, patients weren't even trusted around light fixtures. The staff had removed everything Bill had used thus far to commit violence or attempt escape, plus a few more things as punishments for various infractions: journal, paint, pens, books, magazines, puppets (he missed those the most), even the furniture. He'd never earned the privilege of a TV or radio. By now, all he was permitted were black, red, yellow, and blue dry erase markers to draw on his walls—and the red and blue had gone dry; the "Be a TRY-angle!" poster they'd replaced whenever Bill left the room until he gave up and stopped tearing it down; and the clothes on his back. He'd gradually gotten himself banned from every extracurricular and recreational activity the Dimensional Tyrant Ward offered. Whenever he was fresh out of the SWV, when his restrictions were highest, his schedule consisted of mandatory individual therapy, mandatory group therapy, med checks, and the cafeteria.

He spent the vast majority of his time in his cell, sitting curled up alone, day after night after day, barely moving, barely talking, barely eating, waiting for nothing at all.

####

The seamless door swung open and admitted an Orb of Healing Light.

Bill blinked blearily up at the Orb. It was hard to tell how slowly time passed here, but he was sure it couldn't have been more than a couple hours since he'd been returned to his cell: that was when his medications made his mind the foggiest. "Emmyyy. Where ya been? Didn't see you when I came out of the Solitary Dullness Void. Nice of you to, uh..." A second ago he'd had a clever quip about how D-SM5 had clearly dropped by because it missed Bill, but he'd forgotten how to word it.

"Well, I'm here now. I'm flattered you missed me, Mr. Cipher."

Bill blinked heavily. "You turned that around on me," he griped. "Not fair." Ugh, the room was spinning. He flopped on his back.

"A-AOX4 tells me you showed an interest earlier in our outpatient reincarnation program," D-SM5 said. "Since it looks like your schedule is light these days, I thought you might be interested in attending Paingoreous's reincarnation?"

It took him a moment to process the offer. "Really? That's something people can attend?" What was the catch?

"We usually only extend the offer to the departing patient's friends, and—exemplary patients. But... I thought you might benefit from watching the process for yourself. It may encourage you to take a little more interest in your future."

For it to push a possible lead so fast, it really was desperate to find some leverage they could use on Bill. It probably thought of this as a rare opportunity—a patient from Ward 333 wasn't ready for reincarnation every day.

"Wow. I sure am encouraged," Bill said. "You have no idea just how encouraged I am."

####

If an unambitious office building and a utilitarian hospital reluctantly got married out of a vague sense of heteronormative social obligation, had a depressed child, and the fae spirited it away to replace it with an even more depressed changeling child, the child's small intestines would look a lot like the Theraprism's interior hallways: it was windowless, it was labyrinthine, it was beige, and it was grey, and it didn't even care anymore. Monotonous commercial high-traffic carpet alternated with monotonous commercial high-traffic linoleum. The fluorescent lights buzzed just enough to be annoying, but not quite enough that you'd feel justified in snapping and screaming "I've had it!" as you swung a pleather-seated metal chair at the light fixture.

Even though Bill had been languishing in the Theraprism for hours and/or millennia (Bill couldn't tell; he couldn't feel the passage of time), he hardly knew his way around the Dimensional Tyrant Ward, much less the rest of the facility. As D-SM5 led Bill (and six guards) out of Ward 333 and into a lower security zone, he looked for any scant identifiable landmarks and tried to memorize which turns they took by coding the lefts and rights and ups and downs into a mnemonic word. The walk helped wake him from his medication stupor; but his mind never quite felt fully on.

Bill had only briefly glimpsed the Theraprism's reincarnation unit during intake, just one of many rooms he'd been whisked past as he was dragged to Ward 333 screaming and cursing the Axolotl's name. Entering the unit now, it looked like an occult sacrificial altar carved from marble that had been modeled after a 23rd century starship's teleportation platform, contained in a room that looked like a magic planetarium: glowing stars hovered around the dome of the ceiling. Against the back wall in pale pink marble was carved an impossibly long axolotl, swimming in a figure 8 so its vapid smile almost caught the tip of its ribbonlike tail. Bill glowered at it. Backstabber.

He, D-SM5, and the other observers who'd already arrived were in a connected observation room with an enormous, thick window and a sealed door. Next to the window was a large computer console encased in the same marble as the reincarnation altar. That probably controlled the process.

The audience consisted of three aliens who looked a little like Paingoreous might have with his face unpeeled, a few patients and staff Bill recognized, more he didn't, and Jessica with the shining spherical head and the thirteen fingers. Oh boy. If he'd known Jessica would be here he would have tried to polish. Bill straightened his bow tie and smoothed his rumpled orange jumpsuit.

Paingoreous himself was already in the next room, standing on the altar. At the sight of Bill, his exposed facial muscles twitched, as though trying to widen his eyes even though their eyelids were already long gone. "Bill? What are you doing here?"

D-SM5 answered before Bill could blurt out a witty retort. "I invited Mr. Cipher. I thought he would benefit from seeing what he can look forward to once he's improved. I hope you don't mind."

Paingoreous's face immediately smoothed out. "Yes—of course, director, if you say so. I remember how difficult it was in the early days. I'm happy to help my fellow patients in any way I can." Suck up. A dry note entered his voice, "Especially a more troubled patient."

Bill took one of the folding chairs lined up in front of the window and shot back, "I'm about to have one less trouble! Byyye!" (Did Jessica think that was funny? Sometimes she did. He snuck a sideways glance to see if she was laughing. Oh, right—she didn't have a face.)

Paingoreous didn't dignify him with a response. Too good for the likes of Bill, no doubt. Paingoreous wasn't obligated to answer anybody—except the staff, of course.

Bill had never met the real Paingoreous. By the time Bill was committed, the monotony, medication, and mandatory therapy were already well on their way to killing whoever Paing had once been. No way the offensively bland sap leaving now was the same one who'd come in with his face skinned and muscles pinned open.

A technician was already turning on the computer console, running through a whole list of checks as the machine booted up. A hum filled the room as the altar began to softly glow. To all appearances Bill was facing forward, slitted pupil aimed straight at Paingoreous; but his anatomy was built for watching things out of the corner of his eye and his real attention was focused on the reincarnation technician. "So how's reincarnation work in this dump?" Bill asked D-SM5. "I didn't get the orientation."

"Yes you did," D-SM5 said. "I was there."

"Oh yeah? Well, I don't remember seeing you."

D-SM5 sighed. "First, Paingoreous's memories of his current life must be erased, to give him the best fresh start possible and to comply with Earth's soul sanitization regulations."

"Seems like a big waste of time. His head's already empty enough."

One of the Paing-ish aliens a couple seats over shot Bill a dirty look. "That's my son in there."

"Not for much longer, he isn't."

"Be respectful," D-SM5 said warningly.

Bill ignored it. "So once you've scrubbed his brain clean, what then?"

"Then, we reincarnate him. We've already carefully selected his destination and species; except for special circumstances, we generally don't customize the patient's body further, as the program is already set up to divinely design the body most well-suited to the soul about to inhabit it."

"If these bodies are so perfect, why customize them at all?"

"We wouldn't want, say, a recovering pyromaniac to be reborn with pyrokinesis." (Bill felt unfairly targeted.) "Once his species and destination are entered into the program, off he'll go to start his new life as an egg."

"An egg?! Sheesh, wasn't going through childhood once bad enough? I assume his childhood was bad, anyway! Nobody with competent parents ends up like him."

The Paing-ish alien beside Bill bolted out of their seat and lurched aggressively toward Bill. (Ha. Too easy.) The next alien over tugged them back by the arm. Bill was sure he heard a whispered, "Careful, do you know who that..." 

D-SM5 said, "One more crack like that and you're going back to your cell."

"Fiiine. Why can't he skip straight to being a butterfly, though?" What he really wanted to find out was how to skip straight to adulthood.

"For starters, because spontaneous generation has been heavily restricted on Earth since the 15th century, and banned completely outside of special circumstances since the 19th century."

Spontaneous generation. The creation of fully formed life from unliving matter: maggots that emerged from flesh, geese that emerged from barnacles, snakes and crocodiles that wriggled out of the mud of the Nile. He'd always planned to legalize it again when he took over. So if the only reason the Theraprism couldn't do it was because it was banned, then they must have the technology for it, right?

Bill tuned D-SM5 out as it prattled on about the mental health benefits of restarting life and beginner's mind and boring therapeutic psychobabble, and ignored the flashing lights and divine music as Paingoreous's memory, personality, and identity were all wiped clean. He was only interested in what the reincarnation technician was doing. (Although when Bill briefly glanced at Paingoreous, his shape seemed somehow uncertain, as though his molecules had only just walked into the room and promptly forgotten what they'd come in for or who they were supposed to be. Ready to be reshaped into something else.)

The technician opened up the primary reincarnation program, checked a box confirming that the patient's previous incarnation had been erased, and began setting up the specifications for his next incarnation. Choosing the reincarnation world was easy enough: under the drop down menu, the "Goldilocks zone" worlds were sorted first. Earth was sixth on the list. Choosing a dimension was just as easy.

However, choosing the location and time period looked more complicated; rather than searching through a handy list of continents or geological epochs, the technician checked Paingoreous's patient file and typed a couple of long strings of numbers into the blanks for the coordinates and time. They didn't look like any date system or coordinate system Bill was familiar with. How the heck would he work with that?

And selecting the species, to Bill's horror, meant scrolling down a menu ordered by how frequently a species had been selected for reincarnation at this facility. That was insane! The Theraprism always discharged patients as unambitious species where one member was nearly incapable of making a meaningful impact on the local biosphere—anything useful like an octopus or a goat would be buried amongst the literal billions of species that had received zero reincarnations. Couldn't you just start typing the species's name to jump down to—? But no, the Theraprism's keyboard didn't have characters to type human loan words. The technician seemed to be scrolling manually.

That was fine! That was fine. Whatever Bill left as, he wouldn't be it for very long. He wasn't shopping for a makeover; just for an escape pod.

The technician located Vanessa atalanta (147 prior reincarnations) and kept moving, tabbing past a dizzying array of options—sex, size, coloration, visual clarity, caterpillar spine distribution, a whole list of health conditions and mutations the technician skipped—and every box she tabbed past automatically filled in with the word "DEFAULT". How many boxes could be filled in with defaults?

Bill leaned toward D-SM5. "So do you chuck these suckers out anywhere random on the planet or what?"

"Of course not," it said promptly. "What a thought! We take a deep interest in our discharged patients' well-being. We never leave where they spend their next lives at the whim of the computer's randomized decision." 

But they could leave it up to the computer. Still watching sideways as the technician scrolled past an "advanced settings" button without touching it (was that where the spontaneous generation option was hidden?), Bill asked, "Do youalways choose for the patient, or can the patient make requests?"

Dryly, D-SM5 said, "Unless you make some enormous progress, I doubt you'd get clearance to reincarnate anywhere near that town you terrorized, if that's what you're wondering."

"What! Who said I want to visit that crummy valley! All those mountains and trees? Ugh! No, do you know what kind of place I like? The Greater Cairo metropolitan area. Dry! Sandy! Flat!" said Bill, who detested flat landscapes with all his heart. "Covered in pyramids! Sometimes with my face on them! Plus there's the Nile! I love the Nile! I love being in the Nile! I'd spend all my time in the Nile if I could! I've had some loser ex-friends say that living your whole life in the Nile is an unhealthy coping mechanism to avoid addressing problems in your life, but if you ask me they're just jealous of how amazing my life is—"

"Ready for reincarnation," the technician said. "Proceed?"

D-SM5 left its seat, hovering closer to the glass to catch Paingoreous's attention. "Are you ready?"

"Sure," said Paingoreous, who clearly wasn't certain what he was claiming to be ready for.

"Proceed," D-SM5 said. Bill fell silent, paying close attention to how the technician began the reincarnation process.

She clicked a button that said "EXECUTE" (gruesome), clicked through a couple more confirmation screens, and then the faint background hum grew to a rumble and the magical stars glowed brighter. "Ten seconds," she said. "Nine... eight... seven..."

"Hey!" Bill shouted through the glass. "Friendly tip for Earth! Humans love when you fly into their eyeballs! You should do that!"

D-SM5 rounded on Bill, glowing furiously at him. (Maybe it was Bill's imagination, but he thought Jessica looked amused. Worth it.)

The soon-to-be caterpillar formerly known as Paingoreous stared in confusion at Bill. "Okay," he said—and then there was a bright flash of light.

He let out an awful wail of pure soul-rending agony.

When the light faded, he was gone.

The observation room had fallen perfectly silent.

"That's fine," D-SM5 said. "That's—that's normal."

####

Every once in a while, the Theraprism got something right. It was one of the few big government-sponsored "respectable" institutions that didn't make a fuss about how Bill ate. They just let him go to the cafeteria, strip down, unpeel his exoskeleton, and hang out with the photosynthesizers for half an hour or so in the corner under the grow lights. No gasps of horror or screams of outrage—not from the staff anyway; some of the patients took a bit to get used to it when they were new. It was a refreshing change.

On the other hand, even though they were willing to turn a couple lights high enough to melt most mortals' eyeballs when Bill was feeding, he never left feeling truly energized. The grow lights were designed for species with leaves and solar panels; they weren't designed to fuel up a god made of energy. A few bright lightbulbs didn't measure up to raw starlight.

He figured there wasn't any point in complaining. As much as he hated feeling like a gas tank trying to burn a dust mote for fuel, he knew that they knew that long before he even reached 1% of his usual power, he'd be strong enough to vaporize the Theraprism with the snap of a finger.

When he'd had his daily dose of light, he folded shut, redressed, and drifted over to the actual food for dessert. He grabbed a bottle of an allegedly "lemon" nigh-flavorless clear soda—this would do—and hovered toward the exit.

The cafeteria monitor stationed in the door elbowed her way in front of Bill. "Ahem."

"What?"

"You know the rules. No food outside the cafeteria."

"What! This isn't food, it's a soda. Beverages aren't food, everyone knows that." The monitor didn't budge. Bill tried whining. "C'mooon, I got injured in the void today. Look at this!" He gestured demonstratively at his splints. "Look how much pain I'm in!"

The Solitary Wellness Void made this cafeteria monitor uncomfortable. She'd never said so directly, but she tended to turn a blind eye when patients who'd just come out of the SWV were more aggressive than usual or tried to sneak extra desserts. One time when Bill had come out of a week in the SWV, she'd wordlessly slipped him a couple of packets of low-sodium fear sauce, a condiment usually distributed exclusively to the obligate phobophages in the ward. "Besides, it's my birthday! I'm a birthday triangle! You wouldn't deny a birthday triangle a soda, right?"

"Is it really your birthday?"

"Heck if I know. It could be. I don't know it isn't."

She was trying not to smile. "Fine. Just one time. Don't let anyone catch you with it and finish it before you're back in your cell."

"You got it, toots." Bill glided past her.

He slipped from the cafeteria into the nurse's office before his guards could catch sight of his illicit drink. "Hey, bartender! I'm here for my nightcap."

The nurse prepared Bill's evening battery of drugs. He bent his straw into a fun zigzag—honestly it was really more of a sad N shape—slurped down half the eyedrops, and opened his soda to refill his cup.

The nurse looked over at the hiss of the cap opening. "Hey! Hey—"

"It's just soda!" Bill protested. "The cafeteria monitor said it was fine! Besides, what's a little soda gonna do? Nullify all seven of my antipsychotics before I reach my cell?" (Bill had overheard the nurse grumbling to a colleague about the amount of antipsychotics he was on. They thought it was utterly excessive, considering that they'd had no evidence the drugs were doing anything but making him more erratic—which was something, because Bill had seen patients near drooling catatonia from their meds without any of the nurses questioning their current dosage. Conversely, the docs thought Bill's odd biology meant they needed to give him more if they wanted any hope of impacting him.) "Come on. It's not even caffeinated!"

The nurse took the soda bottle to check the ingredient list, then relented. "Fine. I suppose it won't do any harm."

"You're a peach." Bill topped off his cup, poured the rest of the soda over his eye, crushed the bottle, and consumed it too.

"The plastic probably isn't good for you, though."

"I like the way it melts in the back of my throat."

As he drank his medicated soda and got escorted back to his cell, he lazily drifted back and forth in the hall as far as the guards would let him go, dawdling more than usual—he knew they hated it when he dawdled, but they knew he hated spending one second more in his cell than necessary and grudgingly put up with a little lollygagging to keep the peace. But their tolerance ran out in the max security hall as Bill slowed down even further near The Beast's cell. The guard behind Bill pushed him. "Hurry up." 

"Hey!" Bill wobbled off path and stumbled into the wall, spilling some of his drink. "What's your problem!"

"You stopped moving."

"I did not! I'm just taking my time! Enjoying the weather out here."

"Well, take less time."

"Ugh, fine. Didn't realize you had plans I'm keeping you from." Bill rolled his eye and kept moving.

"Hold it!"

Bill froze. He turned around. The guard was pointing at a streak of clear fluid that had spilled from Bill's cup and rolled down the door. His bones frosted over.

"You dropped a pill," the guard said.

Bill's gaze focused on the circular soap-green tablet on the floor. "Are you kidding?! Aren't the other twelve enough?"

"No exceptions, Cipher."

"You don't expect me to eat it off the floor!"

"Do you want to go all the way back to the nurse's office for another?"

Bill groaned in frustration. "Fine!" He snatched it up, wiped it off on the guard's sleeve, and popped it in his mouth. The guard raised a fist; Bill bared his fangs; and after a tense moment, the guard backed down first. The Theraprism had taken nearly every other power from Bill, but it couldn't take his teeth—and though he knew the guards would win any fight, Bill could make it hurt.

They returned him to his room; Bill handed over his cup; they checked to make sure his cup was empty, inspected his mouth, and locked him in.

He hoped they wouldn't notice that half his pills had stuck in the zig-zag bend of the opaque white straw.

He hoped they wouldn't notice The Beast's tongue thrusting through his food slot to lap up the spilled soda that was running down his door and over the bright red "NO SUGAR ALLOWED" sign.

His entire plan hinged on it.

####

Bill was drawing on the wall with his scant art supplies when he felt reality ripple around him, like the wave in a still pool when someone new quietly slides into the water. He looked up from his work. It was happening.

There were several thuds; then a crash; and then the peal of a prison alarm piercing the air. The alarm melted into shrill dolphin-like laughter, and then the frenetic staccato of a hyper speed dance song that threatened to fracture Bill's internal organs. He shuddered as the sound tore at his wound like freezing ice crystals expanding a crack in a boulder.

But he rose into the air and turned to face the door, ready.

Just in time for the door to vanish. The Theraprism melted away like mist in the sunlight—and oh, the sunlight was glorious. The wide open sky pulsed maddening colors so vivid that the faraway rainbows looked monotone in comparison; the land consisted of rolling hills of candy-coated tongues and stomachs and muscles, the paws of enormous buried corpses thrusting up into the sky, the crevasses between burial mounds running with artificially-flavored saliva. It was Bill's kind of place. He wished he had time to hang around.

Before him, orange fur matted with a fine dust of powdery sugar, wild eyes contracted to pinpricks, stood The Beast.

"You did it, you beautiful monster!" Bill shrieked with laughter. "I knew you'd come through!"

The Beast rumbled, "Em deerf evah uoy."

"You're welcome! You can return the favor later! Me, I have somewhere to be." While The Beast was asserting his personal reality on top of the Theraprism's idea of reality, none of the Theraprism's walls or doors existed. Bill wasn't sure exactly how far The Beast's radius of influence extended, except that it was at least far enough to get him out of the maximum security hall—but he had to move now, before the guards rallied to sedate The Beast. Bill slipped a finger into the band of his ankle bracelet and found that under the influence of The Beast's physics, the stiff plastic stretched like a warm rubber band. He tugged it off and tossed it aside. "Seeya, pal!"

But The Beast held up a paw, blocking Bill before he could zip off. "Noob ym tpecca," The Beast said. "Hself ym emusnoc."

"Oooh. Woww." Bill looked at The Beast's candy paw. "Oh, man. Generous offer! You have no idea how tempting it is to take a taste, but I've really gotta get somewhere, and I've gotta be at least sober enough to pull that off..."

"Emusnoc," The Beast insisted. "Hsur ragus eht fo ssendam gnilims citatsce eht ni em nioj. Rehtegot srorroh letsap dna serusaelp kcis hcus wonk lliw ew. Evarg lufituaeb ym ni em htiw tor."

Bill stared again at the paw. The tip of his tongue slipped out beneath his eye to lick hungrily at his waterline. When was the last time he'd been on something that felt good? "Oh, what the heck!" He took The Beast's paw. "I can do this buzzed! How much damage can one little lick do, anyway?"

####

The guard heaved open the maximum security hall's door. The floor was covered in tacky pools of neon candy and removed ankle monitors. "It's just like we feared," the guard shouted into a walkie-talkie, glancing quickly through each cell door's window. "Every single max security patient escaped under The Beast's reality-altering field."

The guard stopped at the sight of neon yellow and orange, peering through the window at the triangle flopped flat on the ground and surrounded by powdery pink sugar.

"Well," the guard said, "all of them except Cipher."

Through the walkie-talkie, D-SM5 tiredly said, "He licked the paw, didn't he."

"Looks like it, boss."

D-SM5 groaned. "All right! Positive thinking! That's the second biggest threat in the ward already accounted for! Silver lining to Mr. Cipher's substance use issues. Assist in securing the others."

####

The good news was that The Beast seemed happy to frolic randomly around the Theraprism rather than head toward the exit, forcing the other escapees to follow along to remain under his reality-altering protection rather than get stranded in small rooms and locked-down halls. The bad news was that his meandering route let him pick up more and more revelers. After an hour, only a third of the max security patients had been re-captured and dragged back to their cells, and twice as many medium security patients had joined the riot. 

A-AOX4 was on hand in the maximum security hall to supervise as the guards brought in super-powered escapees. Most of them came back loopy on either The Beast's toxins or on the sedative that had been injected to keep them calm. A-AOX4 was checking them for awareness of their surroundings—name, where are you, when are you, why are you here—as each one was locked back in their cell.

And each time it passed by Bill's cell, it glanced in, concerned.

Bill had been almost pleasant when he'd come out of the Solitary Wellness Void—maybe after all those sessions in isolation he was finally ready to be more of a team player. And D-SM5 had said that he'd been unusually well-behaved and attentive during the reincarnation. A-AOX4 had hoped their most surly patient was finally opening up. It would be a shame if this incident with The Beast resulted in his new progress backsliding.

Plus, it took a heavy dose of anything to impact Bill at all, much less knock him out cold. He'd already had to go to the nurse earlier today; what if he needed medical attention?

So after locking up the latest subdued prisoner, A-AOX4 said to one of the guards, "Take over monitoring incoming patients. I'm checking on Cipher."

It unlocked the door and hovered into the room. "Cipher?"

No response. He was plastered flat to the floor.

"Bill?" It floated lower to check his condition. 

He was paper.

Paper meticulously colored in with yellow marker and folded into a triangle; scraps of paper colored black, carefully torn into hand and feet shapes, and shoved in the sleeves and pants of his prison uniform.

A-AOX4 lifted up the paper. On the other side was Bill's "Be a TRY-angle!" poster. He'd written across it, "IS THIS TRYING HARD ENOUGH FOR YOU?"

It turned toward the door—and discovered Bill had filled the wall with a drawing of himself making an obscene gesture, with a word bubble that read, "GIVE MY REGARDS TO THE AX! And tell Jessica I said bye xoxo"

It zoomed out into the hallway and grabbed its walkie-talkie. "Director SM5! Cipher's escaped his cell! He left a decoy! He's not with The Beast, we don't know where he is!"

There was a moment of dead air. And then the director growled, "I think I have an idea."

####

Trying to keep his giggles as quiet as possible, Bill looped through the Theraprism's halls, drifting between The Beast's rolling fields of hard candy corpses and the Theraprism's rigid monotone halls. What had he been worried about! Getting hopped up on astralplanar sugar before escaping his cell had been a great idea! It gave him instant shortcuts through half the walls! And he could handle a little buzz like this! He was totally in control of his actions and knew exactly what he—

How long had he been flying the wrong direction? He turned around. Wow was he high, he could barely focus on anything but all the colors. He wondered if The Beast's toxins had any weird interactions with his meds.

He was lucky The Beast had decided to dawdle around the Dimensional Tyrants Ward: here at the far end of the Theraprism, there were no signs of crisis beyond the sealed doors indicating the facility was under lockdown—and once he was outside a high security ward, there were plenty of cracks, gaps, and vents that Bill was thin enough to slide through. He hadn't even seen a guard since he'd left his cell. By the time he reached the reincarnation room, The Beast's landscape was fading out and the sugar crash headache was fading in, but the facility was still on lockdown and no one seemed to be looking for Bill. He slipped beneath the locked door and powered up the console to the reincarnation machine.

He skipped straight to the reincarnation program and checked the box that said, yes, the patient's brain had been washed. He paused when a warning pop-up blocked the screen. The technician hadn't gotten a pop-up. He had to read over the two-sentence warning three times before he understood what he was looking at. The soul sanitization routine hadn't been run recently, was he sure the patient's memory was erased—ugh, yes. He irritably clicked the confirmation and hoped that would be the last of it.

Bill quickly selected Earth and dimension 46'\; he tabbed past the coordinates and date, and they both automatically filled in "DEFAULT." D-SM5 had said the computer would make a "random" decision if you didn't plug in a time and place, but the staff didn't know Earth like Bill did. If he left the time and place up to the whims of fate, then something as weird as a trillion-year-old alien chaos god escaping a criminal insane asylum to spontaneously generate as a fully grown mortal would be sucked straight into the weirdest place and time on Earth. Gravity Falls: August, 2012. Weirdmageddon. He was willing to bet his life on it.

He was betting his life on it.

After that, with any luck, he'd be able to shed his new body like any other puppet and return to his castle in the sky. If for some reason he couldn't get out of it, he'd only need to pull a couple of magic tricks outside a normal mortal's capabilities to catch his past self's attention, find a way to prove his identity—heck, with any luck, they'd be seeing through each other's eyes and that would instantly confirm it—warn his past self about the Pines' treachery, prevent his own death, save Weirdmageddon, restructure the universe in his image, and rule his new party paradise as god-king for all eternity. Easy.

He scrolled down the list of available creatures, looking for something that would be easy to reach the Fearamid and prove his intelligence with—something with vocal cords that could speak eye-bat would be useful, it'd save him a lot of trouble if he could just shout at his sentinels in their own language and startle them into listening—but, to his surprise, the first useful species he found was humans, down amongst the species that had received a single-digit number of reincarnations from the Theraprism. Really, humans? They allowed that?

Over the blaring alarm, a voice made an announcement. He completely tuned it out—and only realized a moment after it ended that he'd heard his own name. They knew he'd escaped.

Bill didn't have time to search for anything better. He selected humanity.

He tabbed past dozens of features he could choose from for his body—default default default default—who cared what the body peed out of, he wasn't keeping the thing long enough to fill its bladder! He clicked open the advanced settings—there, spontaneous generation! He hoped this thing wouldn't drop him on the sidewalk as a baby, but usually when a human suddenly popped into existence, it was an adult sculpted from clay or something, right? He'd be fine! He checked the box for spontaneous generation.

He got another error message. He groaned. He wasn't sober enough for this.

Something about spontaneous generation being banned on Earth after 1859, is he willing to assume the liability if the patient generates after—yeah sure whatever, he clicked yes. Another pop-up prompted him for the digital signature of the person assuming liability. He typed in D-SM5's name.

As soon as he clicked enter, another error message popped up. "What!!"

He flinched at the sound of a muffled pneumatic hiss. Outside, somebody had unlocked the doors to this hallway. The alarm was still blaring; the Theraprism wasn't coming off lockdown. That meant whoever had unlocked the hall was coming for him.

"Focusss." He skimmed the new warning. Something about humans being on a list of species for which spontaneous generation was restricted—what loser had written a law about that! Who cared if a fully-formed, brand-new human popped out of thin air in the middle of town! What about Bill's wants?! He checked another box YES HE'S SURE HE WANTS TO SPONTANEOUSLY GENERATE A HUMAN YOU MONSTER and pounded enter.

Another pop-up. It wanted to know on which god's authority the spontaneous generation had been authorized.

Bill froze. Why did it need to know. Would it check? A machine that could reincarnate a soul was probably also a machine that could shoot off a prayer. Or was Bill supposed to have some kind of divine authorization code? Which gods were even allowed to authorize that kind of thing? He didn't know which stupid legislative body had made this stupid law or what their stupid definition of a god was! Gods weren't even real, they were just stupid, arrogant, stuck-up jerks who were powerful enough to trick people into thinking they were important! Like Bill! What name were they looking for?!

He heard voices in the hallway. He darted over to the door, slid his fingers through the seams around the doorframe to crush the latching mechanism so it couldn't be opened, and darted back. That wouldn't hold them long; he knew from experience that the guards could bust down the doors in these low security wings without much difficulty.

"Bill Cipher!" That was D-SM5. It had come personally? In any other circumstance, he'd be flattered. "Open up immediately!"

"Has that ever worked?" A god, a god, a god... his eye caught on the bas relief at the back of the next room. If there was any god this place would accept orders from... The guards were ramming the door; the bending metal groaned. He typed "THE AXOLOTL" and hit enter.

The button grayed out but the pop-up didn't go away. The screen froze. "What." Bill tried clicking again. The cursor turned into one of those little spinning balls that meant the computer was quietly having a stroke. "No no no no—"

D-SM5 hollered, "You know what the consequences will be if you don't—"

"I'm not listeniiing to yooou!"

"You're only going to hurt yourse—"

Dropping his voice to a demonic boom to drown out the director, Bill recited, "'I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited! People were not—" There was a shriek of tearing metal, and then a bright glow behind Bill as D-SM5 peered through the gap in the door. Bill started talking faster, "'Were not invited they went there they got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island and somehow—'"

The pop-up disappeared. The cursor returned to normal. The box next to spontaneous generation was checked. Bill stared for a split second, then quickly closed out the advanced settings, scrolled to the bottom of the page, and hit "EXECUTE."

Someone blasted the door out of its frame; based on the blinding glow that accompanied the blast, Bill suspected that wasn't one of the guards, but D-SM5 itself. He frantically clicked through the next two confirmations, flung a couple of folding chairs toward D-SM5 and its thugs, and dove beneath the door to the next room. Ten seconds.

"Cancel the reincarnation!" D-SM5 snapped.

A guard ran to the console. (What if they saw where Bill had gone? They could probably guess the planet, but would the computer keep records of his destination, what his new body looked like—) "I don't see a cancel! I don't think—"

"Then get him off the altar!"

Five seconds. Please spawn as an adult and not a baby, please spawn as an adult and not a baby, please— Bill hadn't broken the door between the observation room and the altar; the guards easily unlocked it. "No no no—!"

"Don't let him esc—!"

Three seconds. An impossibly bright light shone down on Bill. He reflexively peeled open his exoskeleton to accept it. LIGHT—oh, he felt even more alive than the time he'd stolen a bottle of stimulants from the nurse station, ground them up, and snorted them off Mrs. Mirrorcube's back. His eye widened, taking in as much free energy as he could—and then he focused his gaze through the window on the console, focusing the infinite light into a laser powerful enough to instantly melt through the window and explode the computer. The guards fell back, trying to shield their tender mortal flesh from the fury of Bill's fire. Enjoy the blisters.

D-SM5 bellowed, "Bill Cipher, you mo—!"

"CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, SUCKA!" He could feel his body ripping apart, cracking open at the wound. It hurt, but not the hurt of dying; it was the euphoric hurt of spaghettification, of being infinitely sucked beyond a beautiful event horizon. Bill's triumphant cackle filled the air—

—and then the room was silent and dark, and Bill was gone.

####

(If you're new here: I posted this as a one shot because I think we could all use a little Bill escaping from Theraprism, yeah? However it's ALSO part of my ongoing Bill-stuck-in-a-human-body fic I'm currently editing for TBOB compatibility. So, if you enjoyed this and want to see where post-reincarnation Bill goes, check out the fic!! And if you DON'T want to read the rest of the fic, I hope you enjoyed the one shot and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

If you do check out the main fic be forewarned it's only 100% TBOB compatible up to chapter 6. After that it is, bizarrely, 98% TBOB compatible, because somehow I accidentally wrote a fic that lines up with the book so well that I'm legit worried people could use TBOB to work out fic spoilers. But I still need to edit the remaining 2%.

If you're NOT new here: hey gang this is the new chapter 6!!! I finished editing this chapter about fifteen minutes before post time so it's not as polished as my usual chapters, but I hope it didn't read that way. Anyway, I look forward to hearing what y'all think!)

[marrekeye]

Suffice to say, Adler caved.

[[A continuation of a shitpost comic I did, linked here :) ]]

You know the drill, go below the cut for my ramble!

OHHH MY GODDD, ITS FINALLY DONE. I stg, this was literally supposed to be a clean black and white drawing similar to the comic, but I got ambitious bro. 😭

This stupid thing took me about six hours. That’s not a lot for some, but it’s a lot for me!! I’ve never fully rendered a piece like this before. Anyways, I’m kinda proud of it actually. The colors look a lot more desaturated on my phone, but I’m hoping it’ll look warmer on y’all’s screens.And before I forget, tysm for the attention on the comic. It means a lot!! <3

Really hoping this post doesn’t flop I put too much time into it help.

Also, I know some people might find this interesting. Here’s the thumbnail I worked off of. I came up with this idea while I was in school and scribbled the damn thing on my phone lmao.

[sitkowski]

sweet surrender (nick folio x oc)

pairing: nick folio x harper (oc)

cw: 18+ MDNI ⚠️ fake dating, kinda crappy parents, vaginal fingering. doing things on a motorcycle that probably aren't realistically possible.

word count: 3.8k

author's note: this one wasn't originally started with the intention of being posted around the birthday boy's day, but here we are. i've seen enough rom-coms and hallmark movies to know anything is possible. title comes from the song by sarah mclachlan 🫶🏻 dividers by @saradika-graphics

⇉ masterpost || taglist signups

Harper’s flip flops smack noisily against the asphalt as she hurries across the parking lot. She’s already seventeen minutes late, and her mother doesn’t like to be kept waiting. The second her hand is on the handle to the restaurant door, her phone pings loudly in her purse for the fourth time since she left work. She didn’t even think of trying to go home and change, knowing that it would only delay the inevitable more.

Inside the quaint little bar and grill, Harper’s mother sits in the back at a small table, disappointment evident on her face as she approaches the table. There were many things that she considered hell, and lunch with her mother was one of them. But she knew if she didn’t go, she’d just keep bugging her until her sister’s wedding. And somewhere between work and arriving at the restaurant, Harper came up with a possibly insane plan.

“Hi mom,” she sinks down in the chair across from her and grabs a menu. “Sorry I’m late. I had to wait for someone to relieve me at the bar—”

“I already ordered you a sweet tea. I know it’s your favorite.”

Harper tries her very best not to seem shocked at that, because she knows there’s probably an ulterior motive behind it. “Um, thanks.”

“Look, I know I’m a broken record here,” her mother begins, and there it is. “But I wish you weren’t coming to this wedding alone. You’re the last of my children without a partner, don’t you feel like the odd person out?”

It takes everything Harper has not to get up and leave right then and there. She tells herself that her mom is only looking out for her, that she just wants her to be happy. But somehow, she’s always equated happiness with finding someone, having a boyfriend. Being the youngest of four, and right now the only single child, she’s heard it all so much over the years, and it’s one of the reasons why she’s kept any relationships she’s had to herself until they got serious. Which, of course, hadn’t happened in a long time.

“I have a date for the wedding.” she blurts out instead. Harper is a liar. She has nothing remotely close to a date, but she sees the way her mother’s eyes light up, and she raises her hand before she can immediately start drilling her with questions about this nonexistent date. “It’s still very new, but he’s nice. And I’ll let you meet him before the wedding, at the final rehearsal. But for now, can we just keep this between us?”

“Oh absolutely, of course!” her mom says. But Harper knows, her mom is a liar too, and the entire family will know before the end of the day. “I’m just happy you found someone, I know you’ve got to be lonely in that house all by yourself.”

Harper opens her mouth to say something else, but the waitress arrives with their drinks and to take their orders. She’s never been so grateful for the distraction. Her mother even changes the subject before their food arrives. But now all Harper can think about is the fact that she has to convince her neighbor to be her plus one to a wedding.

It’s either a coincidence or a twisted act of fate that Harper’s neighbor is outside working on his bike when she pulls into her driveway. She and Nick aren’t exactly close friends; they’re friendly with one another, she grabs any mail that comes while he’s on tour for him and makes sure his three plants don’t die. He asks her about her day if they catch each other outside at the same time, and once they shared a few beers on his porch after she accidentally locked herself out. She baked him cookies.

And now she’s got to ask him this huge favor.

She knows she could get out of this with her mom, admit she lied or say this mystery guy broke up with her. But as she gets out of her car and looks over at Nick in his driveway, wearing a fitted black tank top and his hands stained with grease, she realizes she wants to prove a point. Her shutting the car door seems to grab his attention, and he turns to wave at her. She lifts her hand in return before taking a deep breath and walking across the section of grass that separates their houses.

“Is something wrong with your bike?” she asks by way of greeting.

Nick shakes his head, wiping his hands off on a rag from his back pocket. “Nah, I just like doing everything on it myself. I’ve got the free time right now.”

“No big tours coming up?”

“Not for a few weeks,” he shoves the rag back into his pocket and pushes his hair back out of his face. “It’s hot out, you want a drink?”

“As long as it’s alcoholic, please.”

She follows him up to his porch and he disappears inside. Harper sits in on the porch swing, picking nervously at her chipped nail polish. The worst that can happen is he can say no, that’s what she tells herself. She waits for Nick to come back, holding out a glass to her. Her eyebrows raise because instead of beer, he brings her whiskey.

“You look like you could use it,” he admits, before sitting beside her. The last time they did this, it was just two beers sitting on the porch steps so she could keep an eye out for the locksmith. It’s not lost on her that this is the closest she’s been to him before. “Everything okay?”

“Just…lunch with my mom. My sister’s wedding is coming up and she’s being extra…extra.”

“She’s stressing you out?”

“More like she won’t stop asking me who I’m bringing to the wedding as a plus one,” Harper takes a sip of the whiskey and rubs her forehead. “I kind of…told her I had a date, when I didn't.”

Nick winces sympathetically, “Ouch.”

She nods in agreement before taking a deep breath and looking over at him. “So I have this stupidly huge favor to ask, and I know you’re probably busy with your band even though you said you have a break, or maybe you just wanna be left alone in which case I will finish this drink and go, but do you maybe wanna pretend to be my date to this wedding?”

She knows that she’s babbling, and she sees the way his eyes widen a little at her question. He’s quiet though, for a lot longer than she thought he’d be, and she fully expects him to let her down gently when he speaks.

“Yeah, sure.”

“I totally get it, we don’t even know each other all that well so if you don’t want to I’ll find someone who—”

“Harper, stop!” he laughs a little, reaching over to put a hand on her knee to cut off her second round of anxious speaking. She blinks and looks down at his hand and then back at his face. “I said I would. I’ll be your fake boyfriend.”

She doesn’t mean to let out a little squeak and throw her arms around his neck, but she can’t help it. She lets go quickly, her face on fire. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, but thank you—”

“Hey it’s no problem, she’s obviously driving you a little insane and I don’t mind helping. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’ve got a few weeks off.”

“It’s seriously just two days, the final rehearsal dinner and then the wedding and reception,” she explains and he nods along. “Do you…do you own a suit?”

She doesn’t mean it in an insulting way, but she’s only ever seen him in t-shirts and jeans, and his riding leathers. That was a distracting enough image, and she quickly banishes it from her mind.

Nick doesn’t seem offended. “I can clean up when I need to. Unless you want to traumatize your mother in which case I am fully prepared to take you to this thing on my bike and make myself her worst nightmare. I’m flexible.”

Harper downs the rest of her whiskey, letting it burn all the way down her throat so that the flush that comes across her cheeks can be blamed on something else.

“Just a nice dress shirt will work,” she pauses and thinks about it. “And yeah, maybe your bike.”

She imagines her mother’s face when she shows up to the rehearsal on the back of Nick’s bike. It wouldn’t be so much the motorcycle itself, but Harper on the back of it in a dress. If this is going to be the way that she’s going to get her off of her back about dating, so be it.

“So, if we’re pretending to date, should I have a cover story?” Nick asks.

Harper hadn’t thought about that. Her mom was nosy, she was going to want every little detail of how she and Nick met, how long they’d been together, what their plans for the future would be. Even if it was just two days, she has to have some kind of details besides him having a motorcycle and being in a band. 

I mean,” he seems to be able to tell that she’s struggling with what to say. “We kind of already have our story, don’t we?”

“We do?” she doesn’t let herself get stuck on how that sounds. Our story.

“We’re neighbors who became friends, you came over and had a few beers when you got locked out of your place and it just…took off from there?”

It sounds so easy, and it’s not even a lie. She nods. “Yeah, that works.”

“So when is this thing? That way I’ve got time to get my bike nice and shiny.”

The day of the final rehearsal approaches quickly. Harper spends most of the morning out with her sisters, getting pampered for the day. They ask her questions about her mystery guy, and she gives them vague but believable answers. When Nick agreed to do this for her, he also gave her a little bit of a rundown on himself in case of situations just like this. She almost wondered if he’d had to be a fake boyfriend before.

When she goes home, she puts on the green floral dress she bought for the day, and even though she knows it’s not exactly practical for the back of a motorcycle, she likes how it looks. She’s doing the finishing touches on her makeup when there’s a knock on the front door. Feeling oddly nervous, Harper goes to answer it. 

Nick wasn’t lying when he said he could clean up when he needed to and he took her words to heart; the black dress shirt he’s wearing beneath his leather jacket looks really good on him. They’re kind of just standing there, staring at each other for a few minutes.

“You look gorgeous,” Nick says, and Harper blushes. His eyes drift down, and the corner of his mouth tilts up. “And while those shoes are very pretty, they’re not safe for the bike. Do you have any flats you can wear?”

Harper slips back into the house and grabs a pair from her hall closet, switching them out and putting her heels into a bag to bring with her. When she comes back out, she follows Nick down to his bike. He hands her a helmet, one that isn’t a full face like his.

“Figured you didn’t wanna sweat off your makeup on the ride.” he says, and she thinks he’s teasing her. “Have you ever been on a motorcycle before?”

She’d been on the back of a friend’s bike in high school, but it had been another style and she knew there was a difference between the two. “Nope.”

“Don’t worry, it’s the safest thing you’ll ever have between your legs.”

Harper’s mouth opens and closes again in surprise, before her eyes narrow. “Did you…did you just quote Girls Just Wanna Have Fun to me?”

Smiling proudly, Nick takes the helmet out of her hands, putting it on her. She holds her breath as he buckles it for her, before pulling on a pair of black leather gloves. He grabs his own helmet and puts it on. With his help, she gets on the bike behind him. She’s able to tuck the skirt of her dress enough so it won’t blow when they’re on the open road. This part she knows enough about, and she puts her hands on his sides. Nick reaches down, wrapping his hand around her wrist and pulling until she gets the message, wrapping her arms tightly around his torso. Harper presses her cheek between his shoulder, clenching her fingers in his jacket.

There was nothing more exhilarating than being on the back of Nick’s bike. It’s not that far from their houses to the venue where the final rehearsal and wedding is being held, but she enjoys every minute of the ride. The parking lot is littered with familiar cars, and Nick parks his bike, cutting the engine. It takes Harper a minute to be able to loosen her grip on his jacket, and she can still feel the rumble from beneath her in her thighs. She lets out a shaky breath, undoing the strap of the helmet and taking it off. In front of her, Nick holds out his hand so she can lift herself off of the seat. When her feet touch the ground, her legs are still shaking.

She can see her mom and her sister Reece watching her from the alcove by the entrance, and it’s hard to miss the smirk on Reece’s face and the look of concern on her mother’s. Harper takes off her flats and slips her heels back on before fluffing out her hair. She watches Nick get off the bike, and he takes off his helmet, gloves and jacket. He’s got the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled to his elbows, and it shouldn’t be nearly as distracting as it is.

“Ready to do this?” he asks, holding out his hand to her. 

Harper nods, lacing her fingers through his. He pulls her closer and she swallows hard, unable to avoid the smile that comes to her face. “Yeah.”

Making the introductions almost seems like the easy part. Within minutes of meeting, all of her sisters are enamored with Nick, including the bride to be. Her mother is a different story, but Harper already knew that it would happen like this. She hears the words drummer and motorcycle club and puts on the most believable fake smile she can. But Harper genuinely wants them to like Nick, even if it is pretend. And for the most part, they do.

“And your band…it does well?” her mother asks sometime between the final rehearsal and dinner, and Harper feels the evening going downhill. 

“They’re viral on Tik Tok,” her grandmother says. Nick smiles that wide smile again and her grandmother winks at him. “Leave them alone, dear. They seem very happy together.”

It eases the tension for Harper, just a little. Beside her, Nick puts his hand on her thigh in a comforting gesture, and she relaxes back in the seat.

The rest of the dinner goes okay, until her mother asks to speak to her privately. She leads her off to the hallway of the floor they’re on away from everyone else. Most of the day has been a blur but Nick’s been there with her the whole time, and she’s thought that they were pretty convincing.

“I know what you’re doing,” her mom says, and Harper frowns. “How could you hide something like this from us?”

“Mom, what—”

“The way that boy looks at you, there is no way that this is new. How long have the two of you been together that you couldn’t tell me, or any of us?”

She almost lets out a sigh of relief, but her mom’s words register with her. She thinks that they’ve been together for longer than she’s said, because of the way that Nick looks at her? From what she’s been able to tell, he’s looking at her the same way he has since they met. Sure, he’s touching her a little bit more, but that was all part of the plan. Wasn’t it?

“You just met him today, and you think he looks at me like, what?”

Her mom’s look turns wistful. “Like your dad used to look at me.”

The words are a punch to the gut, and not in an entirely bad way. Her parents were deeply in love once upon a time. But she doesn’t think that she and Nick know each other well enough for that to be true. Still, her mom wouldn’t have dragged her out here and said something like this unless she saw something that Harper apparently didn’t.

“Mom, there’s something—”

“Babe,” Nick appears in the hallway, and it’s obvious that he might have overheard something that was said, because he comes over, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Jolly wants me to stop by before we head home, would it be okay if we headed out now? I know things are wrapping up for the night.”

“You two go on, we’ll see you in the morning.” Harper’s mom says, answering for her.

She hugs Harper and gives Nick a polite smile before walking back into the banquet hall. It’s not until they’re in the elevator that Harper finally asks. “Who’s Jolly?”

Nick doesn’t take her home right away, turning the bike the opposite direction that they came. Harper doesn’t question it, she just burrows against him comfortably and lets him take her wherever he wants. She’d been grateful for the rescue while dealing with her mom, but she wonders what’s going to happen after the wedding tomorrow. She assumes that things will just go back to how they were before, the two of them being neighbors. It’s something, at least.

It’s dusk by the time Nick stops the bike, in a secluded little spot overlooking mountains and trees. Harper’s pretty sure she came to this spot with a boy when she was in high school. Nick drops the kickstand and takes off his helmet, and Harper takes hers off too. But he doesn’t get off the bike, and she stays leaning into him, enjoying the quiet and the view.

“I know you heard what my mom said,” she whispers into his jacket, and she feels him tense a little before he relaxes. “I thought it was all pretend.”

“And if I said that I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to ask you out for months and thought this was going to be the best way to do it?”

Harper sits up and pulls herself off the bike, and it’s just like he knows what she’s planning to do because he slides back on the seat, making room for her. He hauls her into his lap, her thighs spread over his as she sits facing him.

“I like you, Nick Folio,” she murmurs, draping her arms over his shoulders.  “I mean, you’re viral on Tik Tok after all.”

He throws his head back and laughs. “I like your grandma.”

“And what about me?”

“Oh, I really like you,” he says, before wrapping one gloved hand around the side of her neck and kissing her. 

Harper kisses him back, fisting her hands in the sides of his jacket, trying to get him closer. But she’s worried that too much motion is going to overturn the bike. It’s probably a miracle that it’s staying upright anyway. She slides her hands beneath his jacket, pulling at the buttons on his shirt. Her eyes widen at the sight of the tattoo on his chest, and she files that away for another time when she can drag this out and trace it with her tongue.

Nick pulls back, long enough to tug off his gloves and shove them in his jacket pocket before shrugging out of the leather and letting it fall behind him. Keeping his eyes on Harper’s face, his hands slide up beneath the skirt of her dress. Her breath hitches in her chest at the feeling of his hot hands on her inner thighs, skimming upwards until they touch the edge of her panties.

It’s not lost on her that they’re out here in the open where anyone could come by and see them. That doesn’t really matter to her though, not when Nick’s scraping his teeth over the column of her throat and pulling her underwear to the side.

“Is this okay?” he asks, voice low.

Harper nods quickly, reaching down to wrap her hand around his wrist and guide his hand where she wants it. His fingers slide between her folds, thumb teasing over her clit. She moans, head falling back and his free hand tugs at the top of her dress, pulling it and the cup of her bra down so he can get one of her nipples between his teeth.

A sharp cry escapes her when he eases first one, then a second finger inside of her, and when his fingers curl upward, she finds herself trying to lean back into the handlebars behind her. Nick’s fingers tangle in her hair and he pulls her mouth back to his. Harper nibbles on his bottom lip, tongue sliding over his as she grinds down against his hand.

Whimpering, she buries her hands in his hair, yanking at the longer strands. She’s already on edge, and she’d be surprised that Nick’s able to work her up so quickly, but she can’t think about anything else but this. His forehead presses into hers, eyes locked on the space between them, watching his fingers rock in and out of her. He moves them faster, adding in a third, and Harper’s lost beneath the orgasm crashing into her. The cry she lets out echoes in the air around them, bouncing off of the trees.

Nick pulls his fingers out slowly, bringing them up to his mouth to lick them clean. The sight and the aftershocks of her orgasm leave her dizzy. She starts to reach for his belt, but Nick catches her wrist, pulling her hand up and kissing her palm.

“Later, I promise. I kinda wanna get you home and into my bed.”

Harper can’t argue with that. They fix their clothes and she moves back behind him. As she’s putting her helmet back on, a thought occurs to her. “What happened to this being the safest thing I’ll ever have between my legs?”

“Honey, you haven’t seen anything yet.” he murmurs before putting on his helmet and starting the bike.

She grabs onto him, unable to keep the smile off of her face as he points the bike in the direction of home.

⇉ taglist:

@circle-with-me @deathblacksmoke @malice-ov-mercy @baddestomens

@ladyveronikawrites @dominuslunae @collapsedglasshouses @collidewiththesavannah

@thatchickwiththecamera

[alaydabug2]

I don't think I posted this on here yet

If so oh well

(Keefe Pov)

Keefe slammed his door shut and locked it. He flopped onto the bed, grabbing Mrs. Stinkbottom and squeezing her tight.

Him and his dad had gotten into their fourth fight that week. It was only Tuesday. One in the morning. One after school. That wasn't even counting their small skirmishes.

On Monday morning, it was about him staying up all night drawing. After school, it was about him not cleaning his room. That morning, it was him not doing his empathy exercises.

Now, it was about his father saying he was just like his mother.

Keefe was able to handle a lot of his insults. But that hit too hard of a nerve.

Cassius called him useless, a burden, whiny, ungrateful, disrespectful, unworthy of love. He was able to slide off all of those things. He'd heard them millions of times.

But being told he was like his mother? Out off all them, that hurt the worst.

But...wasn't he, though?

He'd betrayed people he cared about. Done awful things.

He had her blood flowing through his vains. She was part of him, whether Keefe liked it or not.

That didn't stop him from finally snapping.

Keefe finally argued back. Tried to defend and stick up for himself. But his father knew exactly what to say to make him submiss.

He said he never wanted a kid in the first place. His mother managed to somehow convince him. He regrets ever letting her. That he never loved his son. He wished Keefe was never born.

The last one was the final nail in the coffin to make him flee to his room. Cassius taunted him along the way.

Keefe had screamed himself hoarse. That didn't stop him from pulling out his imparter.

"Sophie?" he murmured, his throat still raw.

"I'm here," she told him. "What's up?"

He sucked in a trembling breath. "I need you right now. My dad and I had another fight."

Sophie didn't need any more explanation. She simply said, "I'll be right over." And hung up.

Five minutes later, he heard a door slam open. Then, the sound of a lot of yelling. Particularly a female. Then stomping towards his door. But when he heard the knock, it was soft and gentle.

He got up. The comforter still tangled around himself, the green gulon in his hands. Slowly, he opened the door.

Sophie walked into the room. She placed a box on the desk. She quickly locked the door behind her and took his face in her hands.

She brushed the tears away from his eyes. "What happened?"

By the time he was done explaining, he was curled up on the bed, Sophie sitting beside him. She was gently running her hand through his hair, his head propped up on her knee.

As much as he complained about people messing with his hair, he had to admit, it felt good.

The box she had brought turned out to be Edaline's mallowment. After snacking on it and talking to Sophie, he felt a lot better.

But he still didn't want to stay there that night.

"I... think I'm going to ask Elwin and see if I can stay there for a night or two," Keefe thought aloud. "I know I've been there a lot, but I just can't stay here tonight."

Sophie nodded. "I'm sure he'd be ok with it. Do you want me to get your overnight bag?"

"I've got it. I need a couple more things anyway."

He got up and headed to his closet. He pulled out two uniforms and threw them into the overnight bag. He'd had one ready for the past two and a half months in case he ever needed to get away from his father for a break. And he used it a lot.

Most of the time, it was to Splendor Plains. Others, it was Havenfeild and occasionally Everglen.

Sophie handed him the imparter. He thanked her and spoke Elwin's name into the device.

Keefe glittered outside of Splendor Plains. He adjusted his bag on his shoulder and knocked on the door.

Elwin answered and hugged Keefe before bringing him inside. Nothing needed to be explained. He knew the drill. Keefe had gone there so many times in the past few months that he knew the reason.

Elwin just asked if he wanted to watch a movie as he pulled dinner out of the oven. (A/n pretend they have movies for this 😅)

They settled on the couch with the TV on. He wrapped an arm around Keefe. It felt nice. Why couldn't his father just be caring? Was it really that hard?

Elwin probably sensed something was wrong because he asked, "Everything alright?"

Keefe shrugged, taking another bite of food.

He didn't like that awnser, so he said, "You can tell me anything. You know that, right? I'm not gonna get upset."

"We just... really had it out tonight. No big deal."

By the emotions that got flung Keefe's way, Elwin wasn't buying it. But something else was in the mix, too. A combination of worry and concern and sympathy. Something he didn't know how to take in.

Elwin didn't say anything else, though, and they finished their movie and food in silence.

When it started to get late, Keefe got up and started to go to bed. He had Foxfire in the morning, unfortunately. He said goodnight to Elwin, got showered, ready to go to sleep, and into the bed.

By the time he was under the covers, Elwin cracked open the door. "Can I come in?" Keefe nodded. Elwin sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing the blanket a bit. "Are you sure you're ok? I can tell it was a pretty bad fight. Did something else happen than usual?"

"I guess you could say that. Umm... he said I was like my mom. I fought back for the first time, but he...," Keefe trailed off. He curled further into himself. "He said things. He wished I wasn't here. That I wasn't born. Turns out he never wanted a child, but thanks to my mom's 'legacy' stuff, she convinced him. So, here I am. Nothing that comes from them are good. It was inevitable anyhow."

"That's not completely true," Elwin whispered. "You did, and that's enough."

Elwin took his hand, squeezing it. Keefe scooted closer.

To his surprise, Elwin never left. At least not until he was asleep, because he stayed sitting on the bed. Not talking or waiting for any answers, just being there with him.

Yeah, definitely different than just several hours earlier. At some point, Keefe fell asleep.

"You should come over after school," Sophie prompted.

It'd been two weeks since Keefe's major fight with his dad. He'd had to go to Elwin's place three times in the short amount of time. The abuse just kept getting worse. So he had zero hesitation in agreeing.

He walked through the door, trailing behind Sophie. When he saw the living room, he got an uneasy feeling. All of his friends were there. Their parents. Elwin. Livy. Mr. Forkle.

That couldn't be good news.

"Is something going on?" He asked.

Sophie got a mischievous grin on her face. "We have a surprise for you."

"Uh oh. I don't like the sound of that."

"Calm down." She pushed him down to sit on the couch. "It's good."

Edaline snapped her fingers. A box about the size of a donut box appeared on the table in front of him. Everyone gathered around in a semicircle.

He pushed the box away. "This is something to get back at me for all of my pranks over the years, isn't it." He looked at Biana. "Is it glitter?" He looked at Dex. "Will it explode?" Linh. "Shoot water at me?"

"No, but we should do that," Tam suggested.

"I'm not going to trust Bangs Boy," Keefe told them.

"It's fine," Fitz said. "Just open it already."

Keefe eyed them all. "If this is a prank," he warned, "you are all going to regret every single decision in your life that led you to this point."

Everyone just stared expectantly at him. He pulled the box back to him. He slowly raised the lid. He braced himself. Nothing happened. Slightly more than confused, he opened it completely.

Inside, there were three items. He wasn't able to see what the other two were because his gaze fixated on the open scroll.

It read, 'The official and legal adoption of Keefe Sencen by Elwin Heslege has been approved. Keefe will now permanently reside at Splendor Plains. Lord Cassius Sencen has no legal rights over Keefe Sencen.'

Keefe gasped. He looked up at everyone. They had smiles on their faces. "You all knew?" Everyone nodded. Keefe's gaze shifted to Elwin. He stood in the corner of the half circle. He had a soft grin on his face.

Keefe fell back onto the cushions. Incredulous to the paper in front of him, he murmured, "This is a prank. It's not true," with his hands covering his crying face. Weight shifted on the cushion beside him. He turned his head to see Elwin beside him. "You're joking."

Elwin moved the hands away from Keefe's face. "I'm not joking, I swear." He held out his hand, challenging him.

Keefe swiped his hand across Elwin's. He was telling the truth. He accepted Elwin's open arms.

Elwin's hug was crushing, but Keefe didn't care. It was warm and comforting. Everything he wanted during his childhood. Everything he needed. It felt like home. Another sob escaped.

He sniffled as he finally pulled away. Elwin reached for another item from the box. A family crest. A Heslege crest. He unpinned the Foxfire crest from his cape and replaced it with the new one. He made sure it was secured on.

Keefe choked on his words. He reached up and clasped the pin in his hand.

"Your part of the family now," Elwin told him. "Only seemed fitting."

Forever Keefe had wanted to be truly part of his family. It never felt legit. No matter what he did or said, his parents never made him feel part of his own family. He wasn't able to earn his own crest until he was fourteen, and it was a tracker. Now Elwin was just giving him one. No strings attached.

Maybe something wasn't wrong with him, after all.

He had no words. Although he did start crying again once Elwin pulled the last item out of the box. It was a home crystal. He told Keefe it was his.

He hugged Elwin again. "Thank you," he murmured. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

"Of course," Elwin said softly. "I couldn't stand seeing you stay there any longer."

Keefe glanced at Sophie. She has holding into Grady and Edaline's hands like a lifeline. This must've been how it felt for her to finally get adopted by them. Like something finally clicked into its place.

When it was finally time to leave, Elwin let Keefe do the honors with his new home crystal.

Keefe froze when he got to the doorstep. Elwin gestured for him to go inside. "It's like it always was. Just more official now." They hesitantly stepped through the door. "Come on, I want to show you your room."

"My room?" Keefe asked.

"The room you've been staying in is my guest room. This will be your permanent room." They trailed up the stairs to a door they'd never been in before.

Keefe stopped in his tracks. The room was a pale yellow. In one corner was a desk. On the wall beside it was shelves full of art suplies. By a bay window was a few bean bag chairs and a rug. Several stuffed animals were strewn about. Against the wall  in the center of the room was the bed. He couldn't help a chuckled when he saw it had batman bedsheets. He was confused to see that Mrs. Stinkbottom was already on the bed. He turned around.

"Got permission from Magnate Leto for your friends to skip class to help me move your stuff today," Elwin explained.

"Wait... does my dad know?"

He laughed, "He will tomorrow when he gets the scroll. He was at Atlantis when we were there."

His jaw dropped. A smirk spread across his face. "He's going to be ticked."

He looked at the room. Then back to Elwin. He practically tackled him with a hug. His eyes started to well up again

"Don't worry," Elwin murmured. "You never have to go back there again, Keefe. I promise. You're wanted here. You're going to be loved here.

Keefe wanted to deny it. Say it wasn't possible for that to happen. But being an empath, he knew he wasn't lying. It was going to be ok.

More than ok.

He had a parental figure to care for him. For the first time in his life. He was wanted.

[amortentiainmyfirewhiskey]

| and then there were 3 | fluffy-drabble

post-war fred w. x reader

Description: I'd like to order a fem reader x fred weasley scenario. A very cute and funny scenario involving the harry potter next generation (of harry's sons, you know) where fred and reader have triplets who have fred's chaotic personality at school, and they end up getting called in hogwarts because of the pranks. (A thousand apologies if the text is confusing, English is not my native language.

Names for the kids (Sorry if you don't like them lmao): 2 boys 1 girl- [ Fabian, George, and Seren]

w.c: 700+

For: @strqlau

---

It was an early spring morning when an owl tapped on your kitchen window carrying a letter that bared the Hogwarts crest. You merely sighed in resignation, already knowing by the annoyed look on the owl that this was regarding your children and something they did.

You opened the window and took the letter, beckoning the barn owl to come in for a much needed break. He hooted appreciatively and began pecking at the toast that lay on the counter.

It was only ten in the morning, what could they have possibly done in the past hour that you and Fred would have to put your day on hold to go down there.

You opened the letter and your eyes widened with every word, " Fred!" you called up the stairs. Your husband trotted down while trying to fix his eccentric tie, he had planned to go into the shop at 11 but by your tone he knew it would be much later.

" What the hell is it now?"

---

" It seems they all spread out and put some kind of hexed soap in every toilet in the school, and then flushed simultaneously," said Neville as they trudged through halls filled to the brim with suds and bubbles. You grimaced at your soggy pant leg, Fleur complained about her shoes being ruined , Angelina just looked pissed off and annoyed, and Ginny continued to talk about what she was going to do to James once she got her hands on him.

While Bill, Harry, George and Fred were all trying to repress a smile.

Finally you all arrived at McGonagall's office and waited for Neville to say the password. The staircase soon appeared before you all and you were soon met with the guilty faces of your children.

There were seven of them, all fourteen and in their fourth year. Dominique, James, Roxanne, Fred, George, Fabian, and Seren. Fleur pursed her lips and begin chewing Dominique in French. Ginny grilled James about how she had a life and she was tired of coming up here and threatening his life. Angelina had her arms crossed and said she was going to make sure they were running extra drills before and after practice.

You looked at your three and they held their breath, waiting for you to shout or give them some sort of punishment, but it never came.

You opened your mouth to give them a talking to before McGonagall arrived but you couldn't. The laugh you had been fighting since you saw old Filch looking for the ancient Mrs. Norris in the bubbles only to trip over her instead broke free from you. You doubled over laughing and the room came to a halt. Everyone looked at you in bewilderment but you couldn't help it.

Yes it was a mess but it was all in good fun, it made everyone's time at Hogwarts a little more special. These were the stories they would tell their kids. These moments was what you loved about Hogwarts.

" Ok," you gasped, " Sorry, I was thinking about Filch tripping over Mrs. Norris,"

The adults looked at one another, " Oh thank God I'm not the only one who almost fell out then and there, " said Angelina.

That was all it took for the rest of the adults to begin laughing.

The kids looked at each other in awkward relief and fear, they too began laughing. It was a light moment until everyone collected themselves upon hearing the staircase open and McGonagall on her way up.

You wiped your eyes and kissed your children on the tops of their heads, " You're still dead," you said sweetly.

---

You and Fred got home about two hours later and flopped down on your bed, the day pretty much already over with. You looked at one another and giggled at the events of today.

You interlocked your hands with his, " They're your kids," he said.

" Oh shut up!" you laughed, " You're the one who cursed this world with those three, they're bloody exhausting,"

Fred shrugged slightly, " Good thing they have you to keep them somewhat straight," he said before pressing his forehead to yours, " But also give them the mind to have fun and make it fun for others,"

You grinned and moved closer, " I guess you and I are pretty hilarious, it's in our genetic code, " you murmured.

He smiled before pressing a kiss to your lips, " Damn straight, (y/l/n)."

---

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

some (read: a lot of) assorted phoenix & handler headcanons but ones that specifically center around their relationship and also communication 4 some reason. mild cog spoilers as per usual yk the drill

phoenix and their handler initially started off on absolutely terrible terms.

phoenix flip-flopped between a good handful of handlers really early on, all of who became too quickly fed up with their lax and occasionally blatantly disobedient behavior. it was only once they officially classified phoenix as mute that they got assigned to crane

pretty much the only reason they did get assigned to crane is because he was one of the only ones on the team fluent enough in sign language to take on a mute agent. he was not at all excited to take on an ex-convict operative, let alone an insubordinate one. his usual agents had a little class, at least...

as one can imagine, pairing up the already frustrated phoenix (out of their element, probed to communicate in a manner they weren't comfortable with, and already seen as nothing but a future fatality to most of the agency) with the jaded and distant handler (needing to replace one of their older, 'better' late operatives with this pyromanic, disobedient little freak) didn't exactly go over so well at first.

despite the fact that crane could translate and communicate back in sign, he rarely ever did. or at least, phoenix never felt as if anything they signed ever actually got through to him. most of it was brushed aside with a non-committal "yes, well, anyways-". inevitably, phoenix stopped signing entirely, unless communication was absolutely necessary. it was the start of their 'stoic silence' era, as their handler put it.

(they also stopped acting like anything that left their handler's mouth made it to their ears. they wouldn't nod when he spoke or anything, really. their version of the 'silent treatment'.)

the most crane would get was an occasional "psst." into the earpiece when phoenix needed some help with something. the handler didn't really mind that, though. even if phoenix did speak, it would probably be something impertinent anyways.

... but deep dive was where phoenix finally hit their boiling point. their handler's snippy little "i told you so" nearly sent them flying off the handle. and while it certainly didn't help crane's impression of them by any means, it… planted a little seed in his mind all the same

neither of them could consider their relationship a close one until some time after Death Engine. but post deep dive, crane made an effort to… lay off of phoenix a little bit (… and it actually surprised him how quickly that made a difference in their synergy)

as much as phoenix could get on his nerves, he couldn't deny that they were a pretty good agent, for the circumstances. by all accounts they should have been dead twelve times over by now. he gave them little snippets of praise every now and again- no different than the unthinking commentary he'd give any other agent… but phoenix seemed to value it like gold.

(he… didn't really know how to think about that. how quickly his agent took to his praise, as hollow as it felt for him to say it. in some regard, it felt almost sad- the pathetic kind of sad. he wasn't ever gonna say that to his agent's face though)

as their handler started getting a little looser with phoenix, they opened up a bit more in turn. admittedly, that mostly boiled down to nodding when spoken to and obeying when their handler asked them to stop propping their feet on their desk. but it was as good a start as any.

post Death Engine and onward, phoenix got way more 'chatty' as their relationship with their handler developed. they still would "psst". into the earpiece when they need help, but they'd also hum, click, snap, and even whistle on rare occasion. (actually 'translating' those noises is a completely situational affair, mind you. but crane's grown to admire the little language he and his agent have developed over time.)

assorted thoughts that i can't fit up there but that are important to me anyways so. youre still getting them:

the handler is… bad at apologizing. thankfully, he knows this full well, but unfortunately for him, that only makes it harder for him to swallow his pride and actually do it. so when he first apologized to phoenix- right after he pushed the agent to their boiling point, right after deep dive... he did it in sign.

really, his thought process was that it'd be easier to sign the words than to say them… but phoenix took it a little differently. it was the first time he'd signed to them at all (honestly, they were starting to think the Agency was lying to them when they said their handler knew anything about sign).

they didn't really believe crane was all that sorry, mind you. but the act... touched them- and their handler was the last person they ever thought would affect them like that... so instead of outright saying that they didn't believe him, they just shrugged, and signed 'ok'. and the rest of the flight home was in complete silence.

it... was the first time either of them had a proper 'conversation' since they'd met.

to this day, whenever they're occupying the same space and the handler needs to apologize about something, they tend to do it in sign. phoenix chooses to read it as his way of trying to appear more genuine towards the agent specifically (even though they do think he should learn to actually force the words out of his mouth every now and again) ~~~~

hearing crane's little "i couldn't get rid of you if i wanted to! ... and believe me, i don't" just about snapped phoenix right in half. it touched a spot that they didn't even know they had.

in hindsight, they feel really bad for the fact that they couldn't even conjure something to 'say' in response. a warm hum, or a glissando whistle, or something to convey the fact that they reciprocated. but they were too stunned to think about that at the time...

they hope that their handler knows that anyways, though, even without them actually 'saying' it. ~~~~

crane was always fond of cracking the occasional joke or witty comment on the job. usually, phoenix would roll their eyes, or simply snort sarcastically, but nothing ever seemed to tickle them the same way it tickled him.

but then one day, the handler said... something. if he was honest, it slipped off his tongue so mindlessly he doesn't even remember what it was anymore. but phoenix absolutely barked when they heard it. they broke into an absolutely ecstatic cackle- the kind that trails off into giggle fits for up to a minute afterward.

it was the longest stretch of time he'd ever heard his agent's voice... even if it wasn't in the typical sense of them using it to speak.

the rate of his playful commentary increased since that particular day. he's never gotten a reaction quite like that out of phoenix again, but a part of him always hopes he can, bless his heart

[liketheletter-l]

SCOTCH GAMBIT - CHAPTER 1

(Leo doesn’t sleep for a week. Leo gets really good at chess.)

ao3 link!!

NIGHT 1, 2:02am

By the time the digital alarm clock flashes 2am, Leo knows what kind of night it’s going to be.

He actually flopped into bed at 11, which could be described as unthinkably early—at least for Leo. But after his Thespian meeting (wherein Sara Burnett got that look in her eyes like she was going to freaking maul Caleb for the role of VP—that girl’s got capital-i ISSUES) and a quick afternoon study with his Physics group (before he even got there, they unanimously decided Leo’s doing the presentation, UGH, the pitfalls of being so charming and beautiful), Leo had pretty much nothing but homework to do until evening. 

And video games. Lots of video games. Why would he do homework when he could grind out Mario Kart drills until his eyes bleed? Serious question.

Maybe he should pick up another club, though. Just to fill that Sunday 5pm-ish slot. Why not? Leo likes having free time, sure, but he hates being bored. He could take up fencing or something. God, that would be so cool. Or maybe he’ll just text Andre. Or Levi. Or Damien.

A-ny-way. 

Having tossed and turned in bed for the past three hours completely restless, eyes burning, Leo can accept it’s just a No-Sleep kind of night. He can take the L on this one. And he would like the record to reflect that he REALLY DID TRY, Mikey, so no more Dr. Feelings trying to wheedle an admission of ‘poor self-care’ out of him. That’s downright laughable. Poor self-care? Leo’s nighttime routine is twelve steps and that’s JUST for his skin, not even counting hair. 

So, yeah, Leo feels justified in giving up tonight. He’s booooored. 

Extracting his legs from the snarl of sheets and blankets, Leo gets out of bed and immediately trips on his backpack. And then his swim bag. And then all the outfit rejects from this morning, including a pink knit vest and those pants with all the buckles (he keeps wanting to wear them but they tragically don’t look right with any of his outfits—SO FAR, he’s not giving up on them yet.)

“Eugh, who put these here,” Leo jokes under his breath, righting himself super gracefully and Definitely Not banging into the wall hard enough to wake Donnie. Nobody saw anything, so it basically never happened.

The red glow from his LEDs casts all his green clothes black, like little mounds of shadow on his floor. Spooky. (In the way that makes him confront that he really should clean his room.) His bedside lamp chases it away, though, dousing the room in warm light.  

Leo kicks aside a paper plate with crumbs and one of Raph's textbooks (oh that’s where that is, geez, he was tearing apart the house for it on Friday, Leo should really hide it in Donnie’s room) and makes his way to the door. Absentmindedly, he feels up on his head for any wayward curls and tucks them back in his blue silk scarf. 

Their apartment is nice and cozy at night. Mikey used to be real scared of the dark when they were little (well, so was Leo, but even the CIA couldn’t get that outta him) so they put up kiddie nightlights in every outlet down the hallway. And then they just never took them out. When Leo was ten or so, he used to try and hop from one pool of light to the other. Undisputed champion of “nightlight hopscotch” over here, five years running, no paparazzi please!

Oooh, maybe there’s a hopscotch club. Would that be too lame or just lame enough that it circles back around to being cool again? Post-post-ironic?

Leo shuffles down to the ground floor, careful not to slip. Fuzzy socks + hardwood floors = waking everyone up by eating shit down three flights of stairs, nooo thank you, that has happened before and he was not fond of it. Sure, he escaped with just a couple bruises, but his pride still has not recovered.

Holy shit, his thoughts are all over the place. Oof. Yeah, Leo’s really not sleeping tonight. 

It’s one of those times where his mind just keeps spinning and spinning with no end in sight. He calls it Beyblade Brain. Other people probably have different, lamer names for it, but that’s really how it feels; just sort of gears whirring and clicking and thoughts cartwheeling about. Y’know, regular stylez. 

That’s how Leo knows not only is he NOT sleeping tonight, he’s gotta find something to do. Being bored is already the worst thing maybe ever, but bored when he’s Like This is basically freaking torture. Seriously. 

Oh, someone’s awake. 

A slice of cold light from the half-open downstairs door trips up the steps in chunks. Either someone is in fact awake, or Dad forgot to turn the lights off when he went to bed: both equally possible.

Leo doesn’t bother to be quiet when he slips in. Dad sleeps like a rock even during midday naps (jealous? Yes, Leo is jealous, thanks for asking) so smack-dab in the middle of his REM should be no problemo. 

It’s not Dad, though—it’s Donnie, clearly also not in sleep mode, twists up in a messy bun and glasses low on their nose, bundled in the weighted hoodie Raph got them last Christmas. They’re spreading almond butter on a sleeve of saltines one by one.

“Why don’t you ever just take the crackers and the almond butter with you?” Leo asks, in lieu of greeting. “It always takes you, like, a million hours to get all of it on there, and then you’re balancing forty-five saltines face-up on a huge platter instead of—I dunno, a regular-sized snack plate?”

Donnie looks up long enough to roll his eyes as Leo skirts past him to the coffee machine, but otherwise turns his attention back to his task. “You should know better than to suggest I partake in regular snacking, Nardo.”

Fumbling in the cabinets for his fancy Starbucks Veranda blend, Leo scoffs. “I just think there’s a less dramatic way to eat crackers. Myyy bad.” The coffee filters cling to each other stubbornly, even as Leo tries to wriggle a finger in and separate one. He growls in frustration—on GOD, he’s lobbying for a Keurig. Starting TOMORROW. This is fucking ridiculous. This is straight-up clownery.

A purple-gloved hand darts into his vision and swipes the filters. Leo turns to see Donnie pull one off with insulting ease. And again, he’s wearing gloves! How is that fair!

“I’m not thanking you,” Leo says, in an attempt to humble the smug smirk off Don’s face. It doesn’t work. Obviously.

“Fine. You’re not welcome. See if I ever help you with anything again.”

“Uh-huh.” Knowing full well that Donnie loves being needed too much to ever make good on that threat, Leo turns his attention back to his coffee. He dumps some grounds into the filter, about halfway to the top. And then he adds some more. And then a little more, just for good measure. He likes his coffee full of sugar and caffeinated enough to give an elephant heart palpitations.

Oooh, Dad will probably agree to a Keurig if he thinks it’ll discourage Leo from drinking entire pots of coffee in the middle of the night. Of course, it will not, but that’s still an argumentative point in the Keurig’s favor. It would be nice to make just a CUP of coffee instead of having to make a whole POT, Leo will say, as earnestly as he can manage. Hook, line, and sinker. Too easy.

“You’re not sleeping,” Donnie says, not a question but an observation.

Leo flicks the coffeemaker on and spins around, clocking Donnie’s raised eyebrow. “Neither are you, hermano.”

“True, but unlike you, I do intend to go to bed at some point. Likely soon.”

Stretching his arms over his head, Leo leans back against the counter. Faced with Don’s total lack of judgment or well-intentioned but anxiety-slash-guilt-inducing worry, it’s a little easier to admit: “It’s a No-Sleep night.”

Donnie nods, and resumes laying out their crackers on a tray. They must have been in the workshop before getting a snack; they tend to be more sensitive about touching food with their bare hands when they’ve been elbow-deep in circuits for several hours. Hence, the purple latex gloves. 

It was actually Leo who got a pack for him first, back when they were kids (and partially as a joke to be honest), but then Donnie started wearing them all the time. Said they helped with feeling like his hands are too dirty to touch certain things, even after he’s washed them. And with the added benefit of preventing bad texture-issues. Yeah, Leo’s a genius, best brother ever, hold your applause.

Donnie finishes making their snack. Their face relaxes, content. 

So obviously, Leo decides to be a problem. He heaves a big, dramatic sigh, and drapes himself across the kitchen island, whining, “I’m boooooored.”

“Ack— Leo, get off!” Donnie complains, moving the tray to the other counter, rescuing the few stray saltines that have migrated dangerously close to the edge. He turns and fixes Leo with a glare that could melt steel. “Is it your personal mission to find any semblance of peace I create and obliterate it into shrapnel?”

“Literally yes.” Leo flings out an arm, blindly reaching to poke Donnie or tug on his hoodie or something, just to be annoying. 

Donnie smacks his hand. “Go find someone else to bother.”

“It’s the middle of the night!”

“He says, without a hint of self-awareness.”

“Oh, I’m plenty aware.” Leo scoots his back further up the counter, squinting against the fluorescents. He’s gonna do a back walkover off this kitchen island and/or die trying. “I’m aware that I have a shitass ugly stupid sibling who doesn’t appreciate me.”

“That’s one out of four correct.”

“You haaate me, you’re praying on my downfall.” Fully upside-down now, Leo reaches for the ground. He’s totally got this.

“Two for two. Good job.” Ouch, okay. “And I see you gearing up for a back walkover; just know you’re going to break your leg against the fridge. Also, your coffee’s done.”

“Aw, sweet!” Leo loses concentration for half a second, and his hand slips. Before he can brain himself on the hardwood, though, Donnie’s arms are under his shoulders, hauling him upright. His legs slip off the counter and land hard on the floor. Ow fuck that’s going to bruise. “Owwwwww.”

Even though Donnie’s face is upside-down to Leo when he cranes his neck back, the contempt is clear as goddamn day. Probably visible from space. “You’re an idiot,” Don informs him. One of their twists slips loose, dangling down over Leo’s face, and he bats at it like a cat.

“Owww, I’m grev-i-ously injured, Donald.” Leo pouts. “Help me up.”

“It’s grievously.” Without warning, Donnie stands, dropping Leo back down on the cold floor. It knocks the wind out of him. Don steps over his broken, shattered, betrayed body and retrieves their tray of saltines. “And remember, I’m never helping you again. Because you, dear Leonardo, are ungrateful.”

Leo scrambles to his feet, because he wants company way more than he wants to continue this bit. “Wa-wa-wait, hold up.” Adjusting his hair again, Leo worries at his lip. 

Donnie’s stopped in the doorway, looking back at him impassively, but he knows he has about—ehh—five seconds (give or take) to come up with an excuse for them to spend time together. Either that, or resign himself to a night spent losing at Bedwars half a million times. (At least with Donnie on his team, he actually stands a chance.)

“Do you wanna play video games?”

Don’s expression doesn’t change, but he shifts on his feet a bit. “I’m in the middle of something right now.”

“Oh.” Cool, cool. That’s cool. Leo totally gets it. It’s just that if being bored when he gets all spinny is the Worst Thing Ever… being alone probably takes silver. 

All the same, Leo forces himself to smile. Because he’s a good brother and he gets that Donnie has way more important shit to do than, say, lose to Leo in Mario Kart. “Gotcha. Have fun, mellizo.”

A beat of silence. Leo stares at the pictures on the fridge to avoid meeting Donnie’s eyes. 

There’s Miguel winning his most recent gymnastics championship (for about the millionth time), holding up a trophy with a thousand-watt smile. Raph and April before their orchestra concert, both in black suits. Donnie, dangling his gold AcadDec medal over a dozen of the same kind, grinning smugly. One of Leo himself, bowing to accept Best Solo Acting Performance at NY-freaking-TF last year. Oh, that was nice. That was a fantastic day. Some of the people from school were sooo mad because he was only a freshman, but—

“I’m not using the desktop in the Lair.” Donnie’s looking down at his tray when Leo turns. Even though his intonation hasn’t changed, as monotone as ever, Leo can hear the implicit lead-in. And sure enough, “As long as you don’t distract me, I won’t mind if you use it while I’m working.”

Fucking around on the big three-monitor desktop and distracting Donnie while they’re working? Win-win! 

Leo feels his face split into a shark-like grin. “Moi? Distracting?” he chirps, and Donnie’s ensuing eye-roll is so worth the smack upside the head he gets. 

“Don't make me regret this,” Donnie warns, with no real heat. 

“I don’t know why you would say that. I have never done anything wrong in my life,” says Leo solemnly.

NIGHT 1, 3:12am

Leo is losing his goddamn mind.

“I need a different game.”

Bathed in purple and blue light from the LEDs, hunched over with their hot metal tool thingy about four inches from his comically oversized safety goggles, Donnie squints at his circuit board and says, “You keep saying that and yet, you keep losing. Basic statistics indicate that the game is not the problem.”

Leo stares at the GAME OVER screen that’s been flashing since he rage-quit Overwatch five minutes ago. Ow. 

Okay, so. Okay. That. Um. Ouch.

Normally it doesn’t bother him. When things bother Leo, he’s typically really good at shoving down the hurt into a tiny little space that he imagines is like, the bottom left-hand drawer of his heart. And then locking it. And throwing the key into a volcano.

But, um. When he’s lost at, like, four hundred different fucking games in a row in front of Donnie, who’s standing over there making their own custom circuit boards, it kind of. Sort of. Hits a little hard. 

Jeez. He’s being such a baby. It’s not Donnie’s fault that Leo isn’t— 

“You’re just jealous ‘cause you don’t see my vision,” Leo says quickly, stopping that train of thought in its tracks. And then exploding it. “This is actually a gambit I’m doing. This was part of my plan all along.”

“Uh-huh.” Donnie doesn’t even dignify that with an eye-roll. They lean towards their work at almost an entire 90 degree angle (they’re gonna have back problems by age twenty, Leo keeps saying), and make a low, unhappy sound in the back of their throat. Setting down the coil of metal, Donnie snaps at the adjacent table, sound muffled by their gloves. “Hand me that IC.”

“Don, buddy, you gotta use more words than that.”

“Integrated circuit,” Donnie says, impatient. He points to a square thing that looks a little spider-like, with a bunch of thin metal prongs coming off of it. “That.”

“You’re literally closer to it,” Leo complains, even as he’s rolling his chair over. He ferries the weird little gadget an entire six inches from the desk to Donnie’s hand. And then he just sort of… watches.

Don adjusts his goggles and tucks a stray twist behind his ear. He sets the hot tool on a stand and picks up a smaller tool nearby, one that’s black and rectangular. Slotting the gadget Leo handed him into the mouth of the smaller tool, he delicately aligns it with the circuit board and then presses down, the mouth segment retracting in with the pressure like a stamp. 

Abruptly, Leo realizes, he wants to know what that tool is called. 

It’s on the tip of his tongue. What’s that? But when he tries to ask, his mouth won’t make the shape of the words. 

Leo sort of… hears the exchange in his head, how it would go. What’s that? And then Donnie tells him, it’s a [insert-nerd-sounding-thing-here.] And life goes on. Leo’s picked Donnie’s brain about plenty of times before, so it doesn’t make sense, but for some reason…

Well. In his mind’s eye, he sounds like a little kid. Just sort of… hovering. Asking annoying questions and doing nothing with the answers. 

Why is he—? 

Wow. This is. This is really stupid. Is he actually getting a little choked up because he doesn’t know the name of Donnie’s weird stamp tool?

It’s dumb but Leo still just… really wishes he knew what it was called. And the hot tool. And the—the gadget Leo handed Don, dammit, it was… it was something-circuit. How did he already forget?? They said it like four seconds ago. God. Wow.

“Can I help you?” Donnie asks dryly.

Oh shit. Leo’s been staring for an aaawkwardly long time. 

He should really go back to his own desk. He’s got a mug of coffee going cold. 

Instead, Leo puts on a smile that feels a little weak-kneed—he hopes it doesn’t come off that way. “Just enraptured by your nerd shit, ‘Tello. Don’t mind me.”

Donnie searches his face, brows furrowing. “Are you being sarcastic right now?”

That is. That is a great question. 

“Nah,” Leo decides. “I really—this looks, I dunno. It looks cool.” A little heat prickles at his cheeks. He sounds so fucking stupid and he’s so fucking weirdly nervous. This is insane. Literal clownery. 

One of Donnie’s painstakingly maintained eyebrows quirks up in an insulting display of skepticism. “It looks… cool.” They set down their tools and spin fully in their chair to face Leo. “You, Hamato Leonardo, think that me soldering a DIP IC—that’s an integrated circuit of the Dual Inline Package variety, a logic gate, in particular—onto my build to improve my Boolean Logic implementation for a custom asymmetric encryption algorithm, is. Cool.”

Hitting Leo with that many nerd terms in a row is fucking evil. 

But the worst part is that it’s not, right? Donnie isn’t being evil. They aren’t even really trying to show off, at least not right now, not to Leo.

“...Yeah?” Leo manages.

The flat look Donnie levels him is par for the course, but it still needles at the thrashing, tender thing in Leo’s chest right now. “That seems unlikely.”

“Why?” 

It’s out of Leo’s mouth before he can stop it. His voice sort of bends mid-syllable, whiny and vulnerable and Not At All Chill. Cover. Cover cover cover. 

“Like…” Leo swallows, and then forces a corner of his mouth up into a smirk. He can’t quite meet Donnie’s eyes, so instead he looks up at some of the Jupiter Jim posters on the wall. “Y’know. I’m a—a shape enjoyer. Little squares go brrr.” 

Wow, Leon. Reeeally going for the fuckin’ Oscar here.

Donnie says nothing for a second. Two, three, four—

And then abruptly, they yank their goggles down around their neck to better fix Leo with an unreadable stare. A sharp one. One that pierces through several layers of skin. Leo swears he can actually feel it: epidermis, dermis, subcutaneous, all crumple inward like tissue paper. 

“Are you angling for a favor?” 

“What? No!”

“Are you sure?” Donnie leans back in his chair, crossing his ankle over his knee, all narrowed-eyed suspicion. “Because lately you’ve been very vocal in your dislike of quote-unquote ‘nerd stuff.’ So I can’t think of another reason for the total about-face.”

Oh.

Leo guesses he has been ramping up the teasing recently, but he didn’t— he wasn’t trying to—! Augh. 

What Leo tries to say is Don, I really do wanna hear about your work. But it comes out as: “Maybe I’m taking an interest in circuitry. Maybe I’m coming for your brand. You never know, Don-Tron—I gotta keep you on your toes.”

Wow. 

The joke—or whatever the fuck that was—does NOT stick the landing. Five-tenths deduction. 

Donnie raises an eyebrow, half-lidded eyes forming the signature portrait of disbelief and contempt he perfected years ago. “Oh, I’m terrified.” And then he clarifies, “Sarcasm.”

Well. Alright.

Now is the time to brush it off. Now is when Leo rolls back to the desktop and pours himself another cup of coffee, finds another game to lose at; now is when he laughs and waves a hand dismissively. 

But. For some reason.

He can’t let it go.

There’s a complicated sort of tugging in his chest. A two-finger pinch to the tender flesh of his heart, and a rising heat pricking up his neck, his cheeks, the tips of his ears. 

“I mean, I don’t think it’s that ridiculous,” Leo finds himself saying. 

Donnie doesn’t look at him. “That you would take up circuitry?”

“Yeah.”

Thin wisps of smoke curl off the hot tool as Donnie presses the metal to it again, movements precise, practiced, skilled. 

“Well. You’d need to start with electronic fundamentals, and then move onto schematic diagrams, component functionality, PCB design principles, etcetera. Circuitry as a hobby requires a wealth of background knowledge in many fields of science—digital logic, electromagnetics, semiconductor physics—that you aren’t interested in.”

A slightly hysterical laugh bubbles up out of Leo’s throat. “Who—who says I’m not interested in that stuff?”

Donnie looks at Leo like he’s insane. “Um, you?” 

Leo’s mouth snaps shut. Ah. Well. Can’t argue with that.

Just barely, Donnie sighs.

It might not even be a sigh, it’s literally just an exhale, could have just been an oddly sharp breath. All the same, Leo has to avert his eyes. Up. Back up to the poster. Jupiter Jim 28 and ½; Sub-Galactic Cruise. Cinematic masterpiece.

“Nardo, if you really want to take up circuitry, heaven knows I won’t stop you. I mean, it would be nice to compare notes.” Whatever Donnie’s working on makes a little snap, almost inaudible over the skepticism in their tone. Mm. Poster. Cool poster. Wow, this poster sure has a lot of bright colors.

“But based on your last, say, one hundred comments about the areas of study it’s tightly interwoven with, it’s statistically improbable that you’d enjoy it. That’s what I was saying. Academically-based hobbies don’t typically capture your interest the way that phys-ed or arts-based hobbies do.”

Mm.

Donnie’s just stating a true fact, here. There’s a very trackable throughline between all of the things Leo’s gotten passionate about before, and it doesn’t include anything that could be considered, like, generally scholarly or intellectual.

So yes. We’ve established: true fact.

What Leo can’t figure out is… why it feels like an insult.

Leo doesn’t tend to spend his free time on especially cerebral activities, that’s basically old news, so even if he seems to be physiologically interpreting it differently, there is really no reason at all that he should feel so… mm. Hurt. 

Huh.

A sudden, horrible burst of shame wracks through him out of nowhere, like being doused in ice water, and Leo shivers despite himself.

“Nardo?”

The foggy glow of the desktop’s screen loses its halo as Leo blinks away the accumulated glaze in his eyes. He reorients himself: three identical screensavers of some mountain scene, two Jupiter Jim posters above the desk, and Donnie, looking over at him.

Leo clears his throat, tries to untangle the knot in his chest. He pictures it smoothing out to un-creased rope. Not a single mark. Like it hadn’t been there at all.  “What’s up, Dee?"

Squinting uncomfortably, Donnie clears their throat. “Are you alright?”

Despite feeling raw, exposed, peeled back to muscle and sinew, Leo summons a smile out of thin air. (He didn’t win that acting award for nothing, after all.) “Right as rain, Don-Tron. Just having a bit of a… y’know.” He makes a vague gesture with his hand. “Thoughts goin’ all around and around.”

“Ah, Beyblade Brain,” Donnie hums. They reach for some small, cylindrical object, and it’s then that Leo decides to turn away so he doesn’t have to keep looking at things he doesn’t know the name of. 

Leo rolls his chair back to the desk. Mkay. No more hurt feelings. Done. Over. It’s getting annoying. 

No new notifications on his phone. His family’s faces grin up at him from his lockscreen, along with Hello Kitty and sparkle stickers he added in Picsart, plus Meryl Streep photoshopped into the background. Eugh, is it really not even four yet? This night is going by agonizingly slowly. Blowing out a breath, Leo wiggles the desktop mouse—ah, server timed out. Figures. Whateeeever! He’s done with FPS anyway. 

Leo picks up the Sparkle On! mug (Raph’s) and chugs his long-cold coffee, overly-sweet to the point that his teeth throb a little, until only grounds cling to the bottom. A ring from where he spilled a bit down the side is drying tacky on the desk; Leo scoots forward and scratches at it with his thumbnail.

The pot’s maybe a third of the way full of cold gross coffee. That’s, what, two cups? Either he downs it all right now (bad idea, might be funny) or pours it in a jar to put over ice tomorrow morning (good idea, booooring). 

Yeah, is that even a question?

Leo picks up the pot, tilts his head back, and—

Donnie snatches it from him.

“Heyyy, come on!”

“As much as I want to see you get karmically punished for your stupid decisions,” Donnie deadpans, “if you chug this, you’re going to vomit, and then I’m going to vomit. So, do it or don’t, but if you do, I’m going to wake up Raph.”

Hmmmm. Leo does some mental math: Raph, grumpy from being woken up at 4am, plus Leo making Donnie sick, plus Leo making himself sick, plus Leo chugging an entire pot of coffee in the middle of the night…

“Ughhhhhh, you’re such a snitch!” But he stands anyway, grabs for the pot and when Donnie raises an eyebrow he says, “Oh my god, I’m not gonna do it. I’m putting it in the fridge for tomorrow.”

“Get me a juice while you’re up there?” 

Leo rolls his eyes. “Uh, no. Never. Fuck you.” They both know he’s going to.

“Die.”

“You first.”

Donnie kicks him.

“Owww Donnie! I’m telling Raph, you GREV-I-OUSLY injured me—”

“I KNOW YOU KNOW HOW TO SAY IT, LEO!”

NIGHT 1, ???am

Unsurprisingly, Donnie’s head starts dipping around 4:30. They just aren’t built for all-nighters. Unlike Leo, who is clearly the pinnacle of evolution. 

After many threats of bodily harm, Leo finally wrestles Donnie into brushing their teeth, putting their hair up, and taking off their makeup, just in time for them to collapse face-first into bed, snoring like a freight train in the way they SWEAR everyone lies about. (Which, like, come on. Okay, Mr. Records-Everything, suuure, claim every single person who’s ever shared a room with you is full of shit. Leo and April, yeah okay. Mikey, sure. But Dad?? RAPH??)

Anyway.

Leo takes a shower, plays some solitaire, folds about half his laundry (which really goes to show how desperate he is for activity), sews up the torn arm of Raph’s teddy bear that he’s been meaning to get to for a month now, runs on the treadmill, slogs through tomorrow’s homework, and drinks another half-pot of coffee.  

And now he’s cleaning his closet. Leo doesn’t know what time it is, but it’s late (early?) enough that the honking on the streets outside is more frequent, commuters driving into the city pissed off to be at work at the ungodly hour of… whatever. Whichever one it is. It won’t be long before the faint grey wash of cold morning light filters through his window, and Leo will have to actually like, get ready for school, but for now, he’s splayed out on his blue rug surrounded by knick-knacks and clothes he really should give away.

With a sigh, Leo leans forward and drags out YET ANOTHER short sleeved blue button-down. This is the eighth total (and the fourth in that near-identical cornflower color) but—he can’t help it! They’re so versatile! Pop one on over a long-sleeved turtleneck or under a knit vest or a sweater or a denim jacket and BAM; sometimes he threads a bandana through the collar and ties it in a bow—like an ascot kind of thing—and it’s sooo cute— 

But he does have four of them. And they are, legit, the EXACT same color. And Leo’s not sure he can hear the words “rampant consumerism” or “shopping addiction” out of Don’s mouth any more times before some fratricide occurs. 

Into the donation pile it goes. (He’ll only part with two of them, though: the one with the scratchy sewn-in tag and the one with a Kool-Aid stain along the row of buttons. The other six are for safe keeping.)

Considering it’s… whatever time it is, Leo feels pretty okay. His hands are shaking, but if they don’t always do that then it’s a pretty near thing, with all the caffeine he drinks, so y’know. Not super worrying. And he does feel sort of sick. Which is annoying but again, par for the course—like, c’mon; this specific kind of sleepless early-morning nausea is basically an old friend of Leo’s. A kind of shitty friend, sure, but still. 

The next thing Leo pulls out of the closet (lol) is an extremely cloudy gallon Ziploc bag—jeez, this thing must be ancient. Leo turns it over in his hands, plastic crinkling under his fingers, to try and make out the shape of whatever’s inside. Finally, he gives up and opens the slide-zip top:

Chess pieces. 

Oh. Oh wow, these ARE ancient.

Nostalgia floods Leo’s chest with warmth. Man, it’s been forever since he thought about chess. Dad tried to teach them all when they were really little—so little it must have been right after they moved, long enough ago that the memories flicker faintly at the back of Leo’s brain, just a few snatches of sensation:

Running his nail down the wooden ridges that made up the Knight’s mane. The soft plunk of the felt bottoms hitting the board. Dad’s warm hand covering his, showing him in a tactile way—the only way he ever really learns things—how all the pieces moved: Pawns one-space forward, Bishops diagonal, Knights in an L shape (the main reason he remembers Knights being his favorite piece).

Leo reaches forward to sift through jackets and scarves, tossing a couple of unpaired sneakers to the side, until finally he’s able to excavate the accompanying chessboard. 

It’s just like he remembers it. Heavy, sturdy beige-and-brown checkered wood. Leo rests it on his lap, glides his fingertips down the side. 

He sort of remembers the rules, still. 

Remembers how most of the pieces move, at least? He can’t totally recall what the King does, but he could Google it. And, y’know, while he’s there, get a refresher on the rest of the game. And he could play some online, against the computer, only he could follow along with the physical pieces, because feeling them in his hands helps him think. Already, Leo can imagine the gears in his head clicking and whirring as he surveys the board.

Hold up. When did he decide he’s going to learn—or, re-learn—chess?

Leo. Does not know. Really, his brain gets ahead of him sometimes. But he doesn’t even bother tracking the thought process back, because it just… feels right. It makes sense.

It makes him excited, actually. 

To have something to sink his teeth into. Something to focus that fizzy, spinning thing in his brain towards, something he can funnel all this excess energy into. He can get into it, learn all the terms and the fancy moves, get the full scope of it under his grasp until he can win again and again and again.

And it’s going to be awesome. It’s going to be fun.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i've never posted fic on tumblr before so this is a first for me O.O anyway this is set in the universe of @tangledinink's BALLER fic "I'm Sorry, Teenage Mutant What Now?" so i HIGHLY suggest you check that out if you somehow haven't!!! usually after writing a neat 5k in like 5 days i'd be conked out for the forseeable future but somehow this fic is giving me MORE energy ??

[degloved]

aaa fic requests open………… hoffheight love languages……… (but they dont label their relationship bc inner turmoil of being apprentices ;-;)

hello anon!! first of all this was a very delightful prompt. saw rarepairs (regardless if i ship them) are so fun to me !! hoffheight especially, i think they're slept on (by myself also, tbh.) i thought about the best approach to take so as not to make this too long, and initially decided to pick a handful, out of the five, which i thought most would be best suited to them. those being: quality time, physical touch, gift giving. this is very funny, as it still turned out to be excessively long (normally, these are 500 words—somehow i've ended up with 1600 words here.) therefore, i've decided to post it also my ao3 & the link to it, should you wanna bookmark or what have you, can be found at the bottom. i hope you enjoy! thanks for sending in a prompt, once again! p.s. i'm getting around to writing everything everyone's sent in! i just find myself a little more inclined to first jump into the prompts i know i'm gonna do without much trouble. chainshipping, while largely what i'm getting the reqs for, isn't my forte, hence the wait. but i'm trying!

-> READ ON AO3 <-

‼️SAW REQS STILL OPEN‼️

The Apprentices, despite their shared unshakable tendency to slip into petty conflicts with one another on an hourly basis, appeared to work oddly well together; like a well-oiled machine. Left-brain, right-brain, and their brawn; Lawrence's steady hand, Amanda's creativity, Mark's ability to put it all into motion.

If they were a machine, then Adam was surely the cog that didn't quite mesh with all the other moving parts. Perpetually on the fringes of the warehouse, uncertainly hovering about—passing a wrench here and a drill there—until inevitably slinking off with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

He didn't fit, and he wasn't even really sure he wanted to.

Wasn't sure whether he'd fit anywhere else, either.

He'd always moved through the world with a sense of displacement; as if something had plucked him off some distant planet and dumped him here, only to cruelly leave him to his own devices. Because Adam's life was also a fucking joke, whatever higher power lurked out there must've also seen it fit to exacerbate said feeling. If there'd ever been any hope of an eventual breakthrough—any hope he might stop listlessly flopping on dry land and find a suitable body of water to slip into—it'd sure been squandered now. With something of a bitter chuckle, Adam had the thought he might walk the length of the Amigara Fault without ever stumbling upon his own hole, too. (Well, at least that meant he was safe! Safety being, of course, a commodity these days.)

“Adam?”

The sound of his name bouncing off of the warehouse walls broke him out of that depressing little reverie he'd embarked on. Somewhere out of sight, the clanking of metal against metal; the noise was sharp and, by rights, ought to be annoying if not outright grating on the ears. Unfortunately, he'd gotten used to it. Didn't bother him half as much as it really should.

“Yeah?” he called out—though set down the camera he'd been fucking around with (hopelessly fucking broken after he'd knocked it off the table last week), letting his legs carry him to the machine Mark had been working on for the past hour. “Need help?”

“Nah,” the other man shook his head, rogue droplets of sweat flying every which way. “This should be done.”

Mark stood up on slightly shaky feet, dusting himself off. Adam supposed working for Jigsaw was as good exercise as any: his skin glistened beneath the pallid light overhead, face appropriately ruddy. (His own cheeks must've decided to take inspiration from it, flushing in tandem.)

“I was thinkin',” he continued, hands on his hips, “You've been cooped up in this dump too long. Wanna get out of here?”

Yes. Dear god, please.

But, Adam would never go down that easy. Pointedly, he adopted the same stance, accentuating the jut of one hip, and—with a scoff: “Way to treat me like y'all's dog, some fucking... charity case stray. What, we're gonna walk 'round the block so I can sniff about and take a piss? How big of you, Mark, thanks for the enrichment.”

Mark rolled his eyes, hardly the one to fall for the theatrics. (He was no Amanda.) “What's crawled up your ass tonight, then?”

“Nothing!” he huffed, “I'm just saying it how it is. Got the leash ready, then? I'm really itching to pay a visit to that fire hydrant—”

A strong hand fisted itself into the front of his shirt, tugged him up to the very tips of his toes—at which point, he was being shut up in the most cliché-but-effective way possible. Mark, ever the cavalier, let go of him with all the consideration one might let go of a garbage bag. Adam stumbled back, slightly dazed by the kiss and thrown off-balance—figuratively and literally. “Stop pouting and get dressed.”

Adam raised an eyebrow, “Something fancy?”

Mark snorted, “No.”

-

A bowling alley.

A bowling alley.

Adam had a hard time believing it. Out of all places in the world, a bowling alley? (What were they, sweaty seventeen-year-olds making the best out of the spare change left over from lunch that week?)

In the dimly lit space, he leaned against the worn wooden railing, eyes fixed on Mark as the other stood poised at the edge of a polished lane. His face was scrunched up with a frankly disturbing level of focus; two massive hands firmly gripped a ball, fingers knuckle-deep in its holes. With a smooth, practiced motion, Mark swung his arm back and then forward, releasing it with a precise flick of the wrist. The ball glided down the lane and—crash—it sent the pins scattering, every last one of them.

When Mark turned, pride and triumph etched into every little line of his face, Adam... was a little smitten, alright? Watching him trudge over, eclipsing the colorful lights behind him, Adam soon found himself rather crowded against that railing. “Getting a kick out of showing off?” he needled.

“Yes.”

“God, you're sooo...” Adam groaned, head thrown back. Laughing, despite himself. He felt two thick arms encircle him, peel him off the railing, press him up against a plush chest and a soft stomach.

(It was not lost on him, despite the illusion of privacy in this here corner, that they were in public. All but asking to be seen—which was far from their usual gig.)

“Sooo what?” Mark hummed, grinning.

“Shameless.”

“A little.”

“A lot.”

“The right amount,” Mark leaned down, making the most out of the situation by placing a shockingly chaste kiss to the underside of Adam's jaw, the drag of his stubble tickling just enough to chase a giggle out of him. “You like it.”

“That's a bold statement right there,” murmured Adam, letting his arms fall about Mark's shoulders; so broad, his hands didn't meet in the middle. The reminder of this man's sheer proportions, as ever, sent a little thrill through him.

“You gonna deny it?” Another kiss, a little to the left. Adam was impressed for the fact his knees hadn't yet given out. Granted, he did have supports.

“Mm, maybe,” he hummed, letting his eyes fall shut, fingers digging ever so slightly into the fabric of Mark's shirt. “Possibly. Depends.”

Mark hummed against the front of Adam's throat, the sound more so felt than heard in the way it reverberated throughout the column of his neck, thrumming along the underside of Adam's skin. On a whim, he hooked his ankle around one of Mark's legs.

“Y'know, we've still got an hour on this lane...”

“Wow,” Adam intoned dryly, “Truly didn't cheap out on me here. And you've got your priorities straight. Can't believe I'm not being mobbed by your manifold suitors every day of the week. Should probably start hitting the gym, you know, fend them off easier...”

“Lucky you're easy on the eyes,” remarked Mark, tone measured—though there was a warmth in his eyes, “'cause that mouth is doing you no favors.”

Adam cracked a smile, reveling in his turn to be a smug shit.

-

By this point, Adam had developed a strong sense that something wasn't right. Not to say something was wrong per se, but... Well, they'd been driving for upwards of thirty minutes now—and they still weren't home. ('Home' was used, here, very loosely.) He was quite certain it hadn't taken them even half as long to reach their very romantic destination initially. So, what gives?

In any case, Mark's hand was warm where it lay on his thigh. Very rarely did it move, only to switch gears on the odd occasion—and just as quickly, it’d return to its post. They haven't spoken much, but they didn't need to. The silence enveloping them was comfortable and cozy, like a blanket straight out of the dryer on a cold night. An oldies station played very softly, so much so Adam could hardly pick apart the words.

Frankly, he could doze off.

Out of nowhere (and perhaps it was a good thing, as his eyelids had gotten concerningly droopy), Mark spoke up. “There's uh,” he cleared his throat, “something in the back.”

Adam, too tired to needle ('There's uh, something in the back'—are you a caveman?), twisted in the passenger's seat to the best of his ability, pawing at the—true to his word—a box wrapped in brown paper. It sat just out of his reach. Took a few tries to propel it toward himself.

He looked at Mark, an eyebrow quirked.

“Well,” the other's eyes were firmly affixed to the road ahead, perhaps stubbornly so, “Open it.”

“It's for me?”

“Might be, if I don’t change my mind.”

Needing not be told twice, Adam swiftly undid the wrapping, balled it and carelessly tossed it to the floor.

Then stared, mouth agape, at that which was revealed.

A camera.

“How did you—”

“I didn't do anything,” Mark blurted out, tone on the side of defensive for some odd reason, “It was all Amanda. And Lawrence. I just did the wrapping, that's all.”

Adam couldn't tear his eyes away, turning the box this way and that (even though he couldn't really read or see much of anything, dark as it'd gotten.) A well-timed glance in Mark's direction—just as drove beneath a street-light—revealed a deep blush staining his cheeks, seemingly spreading down his neck.

Adam’s lips twitched. His throat tightened. His heart throbbed.

Softly, fondly, he said: “I can tell. It looked like shit.”

(He’d bet all his life savings—granted, there wasn't much there, but it was the thought that counted—that Amanda and Lawrence had less than nothing to do with this.)

“It did, didn't it?” Mark smiled, shoulders sagging. Perhaps with relief.

Adam set his hand atop Mark's, still sat on his thigh. Squeezed.

The silence resumed.

[charmac]

Hello ^-^

I follow you on twitter as well and you are one of my FAVORITE sunny/macdennis accounts EVER.

I read this post of yours :

https://www.tumblr.com/charmac/722295024558243840/okay-i-just-stumbled-across-that-sinned-fic

And I wanted to ask if you like Established MacDennis while reading/writing fics?? I love it when authors write macdennis' relationship from others pov. Like how Charlie sees them as a couple and think they're badass, how frank can't still believe dennis is with mac, how dee is absolutely annoyed by their excessive pda!

I also love when an original male character is interested in one of them before the other appears and then they're like "holy shit they're so in love" or omg mac/dennis is a lucky guy etc.

Sorry for rambling, it's just that I appreciate your opinions!

Thanks! :)

Honestly "I'm not a huge fan of "established" Macdennis is kind of a weird battleground, because for canon I constantly teeter between being fully-convinced they're fucking, have been fucking, for years, and that they've absolutely never hooked up, lmfao. (If you're wondering, we're currently standing at, yeah they're absolutely fucking).

So my idea of (or what I enjoy in terms of) "established Macdennis" is that they're together and no one knows, and that's kinda where I stand for fandom too, in terms of what I enjoy.

Personally to me the idea of Mac and Dennis openly dating and happy being seen in public as a couple is a little unrealistic. Especially on Dennis' side, he's already pretty anti-PDA/having others perceive himself as soft or being able to be locked down (and boyfriend/partner/lover is a label...). Then, letting Mac be on him, call him his boyfriend, etc. gives Mac a little too much freedom. For Mac, I think I go back and forth on the idea. S12-14 Mac would kill to call Dennis his boyfriend, would brag to everyone he knew that he was drilling him, but Post-15? I think maybe he's mellowed to a point where having Dennis to himself, as a secret, on the DL, would be kinda enticing (at least Dennis could convince him as much). There's something thrilling about having a dirty little secret so to say.

So my idea of them 'in canon' if they were officially together would be that each episode they kinda flip-flop being broken up and back together for stupid fucking reasons. I love the idea of all of The Gang hates and enjoys them together for different reasons, at different times. Like Dennis is just being a complete bitch and Dee turns to Mac and is like "Could you tell your boyfriend to be reasonable?" And Mac's like, "Oh, no, Dee we're not together anymore, see I forgot to pick up Dennis' dry cleaning on Saturday and that's a break-up offense, so..." and Dee just angrily huffs and walks away. And then the end of the episode Charlie walks into the back office right in the middle of Mac sucking Dennis off and he just yelps and slams the door like "DEE YOU TOLD ME THEY WERE BROKEN UP!" And then the next episode, once again, you have no idea they're together until Dennis is caught with his hand rubbing up Mac's thigh and Frank's like "No way, none of that shit in the bar!" and Mac grabs Dennis' hand and forces it off and is like "That's fine, Frank, because I'm not talking to Dennis right now anyway." And Dee's just like ???? Mac's called it off this time!? But no one actually wants to know, so they all move past it. I think Charlie would go back and forth between liking them together and broken up just based on how they play into his schemes and ideas in either scenario. (i.e. Mac wanting to get blasted with Charlie after he and Dennis have broken up for the 10th time or Dennis being completely willing to go with Charlie's plans bc Mac is into them and Dennis is staying on Mac's good side that week).

I think in any case, anyone outside of the Gang/recurring characters looking at the two of them would probably be into them because of their looks, see them nasty makeout and go damn, alright, too hot guys found each other, then watch them immediately turn around and try and kill each other for any random reason, and be glad they dodged that bullet... Lol

Sorry for my rambling... ;)

[eregyrn-falls]

Anyone who would like to have these points emphasized to them should look up a couple of books that I read cover to cover and really enjoyed* (for certain definitions of "enjoyed"):

"Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite"

and

"Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon"

Both are by Michael P. Ghiglieri, along with others more specialized in those parks. They are both just basically "here is every single death (and quite a few disappearances) recorded in the park, and a sometimes brief, sometimes longer write-up about the circumstances of each". They're hefty books, but still, in the 100+ years that these parks have existed, it's a finite number, you know? And they're both VERY readable.

I happened to read them both after visiting Yosemite, but before going to the Grand Canyon; so that when I took a trip to the latter, I made sure to drill into my friends' heads "DO NOT EVER leave one person out of your sight", because the main takeaway from those books is, "And they were never seen again, and their body was never found." One of your hiking companions might sit down on a trailside rock to rest for a little bit and tell you to go on, they'll catch up, it's only a half a mile to the end of the trail... do not fall for this. It won't hurt you to sit or stand with them for a while until they're ready to go again.

But mostly the phrase that I made sure stuck in everyone's head was, "Do you have enough water? No, you don't -- here, take some more." Especially in the desert southwest parks (where we went during summer), but this goes for most parks if you're hiking in warm weather.

Because another salient example was that when we arrived at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and were walking into the visitor center, there was a big sign on a stand right beside the door, and it said (to paraphrase), "Are you in good enough shape to run a marathon?" It went on to report that, not that long before, a woman who had run the Boston Marathon was visiting the GC and went for a hike with a friend. Like MANY PEOPLE, they underestimated the distances (especially common in the desert parks, where you can see for a long way and you are bad at estimating how far away some of the things you can see actually are), and underestimated how much water to take with them, and underestimated how warm out it really was. They hiked for too long and didn't drink enough, and started to experience heat exhaustion. The marathon runner went into heat stroke sooner, IIRC. She sat down in the shade, while her friend tried to hike out to find help. The friend did make it out and survived. The marathon runner died.

The point being: even if you are young and very in shape and athletic, you can still make some very unwise decisions when you head out on a hike into the wilderness. Most people who visit the parks are NOT nearly that in shape or athletic, and they are often making bad decisions, too. Bright Angel trail is the most well-known trail from the South Rim of the GC down to the river. It's 7.8 miles down. (Another sign we saw frequently in GC: "Down is Optional; Up is Mandatory".) There is a park ranger who is stationed to hang around the first few hundred feet of the trail, where it finally just goes below the rim, and their sole purpose is to stop tourists who are descending the trail wearing flip-flops and carrying one (1) 12 oz. bottle of water.

Another anecdote: on the same trip, at the end, two of us went to Mesa Verde NP in Colorado. When we arrived, there were signs posted on basically every building door with a photo of an older man, who had gone missing only the week before. Obviously, the signs were to alert people to watch for anything unusual that might help find the guy (who by that point was probably no longer alive; and in fact it would turn out, he definitely wasn't).

This was Dave Stehling, who was 51. He was there with his wife and elderly parents. They all stayed around the visitor center, while he decided to go on a short, paved quarter-mile hike to a look-out. (Mesa Verde mostly consists of the mesa top, and most trails to see the cliff dwellings and other sights drop down into the canyons. The park is a maze of deep canyons and steep drops from the mesa.) He did not take water with him, although the temps were 90-100 F that day. His wife described him as a little directionally challenged sometimes; but he was on a very short and clear path near the visitor center. An extremely easy hike. Witnesses placed him as having diverted onto the longer (2.8 mile) Petroglyph trail; either he took a wrong turn, or he decided he wanted to see the petroglyphs. Even that longer trail should only have taken a hour to walk.

He disappeared. Despite a massive search (made difficult by the terrain), his body was not discovered for 6 more years. He was the subject of theories about paranormal activity by David Paulides (the guy behind Missing411, who is the source of a LOT of conspiracy theories about people going missing/dying in the national parks/public lands and the NPS covering it up; most of his theories involve Bigfoot, and/or portals to other dimensions, sometimes both). And yes, Stehling's disappearance seems to defy logic. How could you go missing on a short trail, where there is a very finite area into which you might have fallen, and not be discovered by a huge search and rescue effort?

But I've read enough about this kind of thing by now to have read statements by people who work in SAR. And one of the take-aways is that until you experience it firsthand, it's hard to appreciate how difficult it actually is to locate a person who is lost in the wilderness. There are multiple stories about volunteers who played the role of the victim in SAR training -- who would just go out and lay down in the woods and be still and quiet, while a search team tries to find them. And they consistently report the searchers walking past them within touching distance, but not seeing them. (Usually, that has to do with underbrush, but it's also just a testament to how much a body can blend in with its surroundings even if you would *think* it would not; even if you'd think the clothes or something would stand out.)

Stehling's body was found a little over 4 miles away from where he'd disappeared. It seems like he had fallen, probably sustained injuries, but tried to hike out of the canyon he'd fallen into by following it downwards. (I'm not sure that an autopsy was ever released, which is why I don't know if he sustained injuries or not; but in a fall like that, it does seem very likely.) He might have been unconscious during the height of the searching, hidden in dense, scrubby vegetation. In June, he would have had to hike further to finally hit running water. But in the temperatures they were getting at that time, he almost certainly succumbed to hyperthermia.

All of this is just to emphasize what's said in the posts above and in the replies or other posts. A lot of tourists visit the national parks, and they think the word "park" means that it's a tame, safe environment. So many people express shock at the idea that the environment and landscape can hurt them, even though the NPS does post warnings all over the place. They don't take the idea of hiking seriously, and often don't have the right supplies or equipment. They don't realize that even the shortest, friendliest-looking trail can have hazards. They think a running stream looks inviting and they'll just dip their feet in to cool off, and don't realize how fast the current is running or how slippery the rocks are. One of the shortest, flattest, best-paved trails in Yosemite (from the ring road to Mirror Lake) has a sign right by the road warning people that there may be mountain lions around, and not to allow children to run ahead, or trail behind.

And yeah: BISON. And bears. Just yesterday I opened my weather.com app on my phone and on the front page is a video story about some tourists who dragged two black bear cubs out of a tree so they could pose with them to take photos. (This was NOT in a national or state park, but is still an example of people being idiots about interacting with wildlife.) The cubs got away quickly, and authorities "decided not to press charges because the cubs were released quickly". (They should have pressed charged, ffs.) These people will likely never appreciate how lucky they were that the mother bear did not show up.

You really don't need Bigfoot to explain weird disappearances, or paradoxical undressing (something that regularly happens as hypothermia sets in). You don't need holes between dimensions to explain how someone wasn't found by SAR, but their body was later discovered in an area that had been searched previously.

All you need to know is that in 2023, across all of the properties in the national park system, there were 325.5 million visits; an increase of 13 million over 2022 alone. The total population of the United States is 333.3 million. I wish we had a way to estimate how many of those millions were unprepared for the wilderness, but who took risks they shouldn't have anyway. I'd be willing to bet that number is pretty high.

You can't have *nearly the population of the U.S.* venturing out into the wilderness and not expect some of them to die or go missing. Honestly, the surprisingly thing is that it's as relatively rare an occurrence as it is -- deaths and disappearances in the parks still make national headlines.

Any conspiracy theory about people going missing in National Parks is automatically silly to me. Like "Why are National Parks such a hotbed of disappearances???" because they're full of idiots. You've got thousands of people who've never pissed outdoors in their life wandering around the woods/desert/mountain with zero experience and zero gear and zero understanding that this place can kill them. You don't see as many disappearances in wild areas because people don't go to them unless they have some background knowledge. Whereas you get tour buses full of old folks and suburban families shuttling people into National Parks 365 days a year. If you took the same amount of buffoons and dropped them in the actual wilderness the disappearances would be significantly higher than at the parks. Use your brain.

[renewingagain]

tuesday 17 december 2024 // 10:37pm

may as well write a tiny something before bed

still feeling a little lacklustre since being back! but i think im still just a little tired

had an awful sleep last night despite taking a melatonin pill so that was urgh, i was up for hours. i havent really experienced insomnia before but it seems to be becoming an issue

i definitely need to continue reframing my thinking when it comes to the position i am in. everything is kinda fine in a way. once again i wish to continue to be grateful

how can i practice gratitude everyday so it becomes something i hold close to me? how can i become the essence of gratitude?

i will continuously remind myself until it is drilled solid in to my head - i am in an incredibly privileged position right now where i can work part time and work on me for the rest of it doing pretty much anything i want to do with my money

not that this will happen, but even if the IT course flopped and i wasted £990 (may have done this once oops!) like i can still use funds to save and do other courses and work things out. Not the most ideal but again, i am privileged to be able to do so and so i must remain hopeful and with my head held high

I must remain hopeful because when i am not then i do nothing and it just gets worse. Its a shit circle when that happens but i can pull myself from that

comparison really is the thief of joy and for example posting the amazing things on social media that people do - you do not see their pitfalls and their downfalls. similarly the same could even apply to me. on the surface ive done this amazing tour with DFC for the worldussy (lol) but they dont fully know how i feel inside. It is great in the moment but now i feel quite rubbish. its not just me though! MANY people are like that. im sure on the surface it looks like i live a wonderful life. And tbh i do! but they wont see the darker side to it all. The same can apply for me seeing and viewing other peoples lifes, and then wrongfully assuming that everything is fine for them

But its so easy to create narratives of people having fun and them living a good life in your head when you only see the good things on bloodeh social media. Never will anyone post their downfalls or depressive periods they face

You are not alone

lets just do my best to continue with what i can do and STAY POSITIVE :)

[automatismoateo]

Rarely talked about aspect of “purity culture” that frustrates me via /r/atheism

Rarely talked about aspect of “purity culture” that frustrates me

(Sorry this is kind of a vent)

As a former Christian woman who was raised in the faith, i believe there’s consequences from that I’ll never truly recover from and there will be things about their classic flip-flop logic here that will always infuriate me.

I don’t really see it talked about that often but there’s something I like to call “the switch”. As little girls we’re taught about how important it is to “stay pure”, and to do this we’re basically traumatized from ages 5-17 about all the horrible things that would happen to us if we interacted with men,how we would lose our worth and never be loved blah blah blah.

I firmly believed this and strictly followed these rules. Never dated,Never held hands, nothing. I was a shining example of a responsible Christian girl.

Then the day after I turned 18 I got the huge slap in the face of “When are you getting married? When will you have kids? You’re not getting any younger.” From the same people who drilled it into my head to avoid men (especially ones my age) my entire life up until this point. I was shocked.

12 years of trauma and they expect me to throw it all away in 5 seconds just because “it’s just ok to do it now. It’s your job. Get over it.”

I’m still suffering from the effects of this to this day. I can’t go on dates without thoughts about how I’ll lose my worth if I date, and how love is “bad” and “sinful”. I’m now somewhat shunned by my lack of dating/future marriage prospects, the same thing that they praised me for most of my life (I’d be shunned a lot more if they knew I was atheist lol). The audacity of these people astound me. I am very much a full fledged atheist now, and I know that purity culture is a sham and insanely harmful. But years of this stuff takes a while to go away I guess

TLDR: I hate the expectation that Christians have for 18 year old girls to suddenly get married, as if they haven’t been traumatized against it their whole life.

Sorry for the long post. Tried to format as best I could, I’m on mobile.

Submitted March 09, 2023 at 04:42PM by Fuzz_Bug (From Reddit https://ift.tt/vmYr3hf)

[kizzer55555]

(This is me, Scrolling through the reblogs of this post to combine the best parts into one story-ish thing at 2 am).

"Bet you i can fly around the whole world in 20 seconds flat"

"Oh.. ive been impaled"

"Did you know i can just take my head off. Whenever?"

"Dude can a guy just enjoy a milkshake! Just once please!"

"FRUITLOOP!"

"Jazz! The hotdogs are revolting! .. again!"

"I live and die for chaos"

"Boo"

" you really need to get a cat vlad"

" im gonna go watch the meteor shower From space"

“Oh why the fuck is the sky green again”

“If you eyeballs don’t stop popping up in my closet and trying to make me ghost king-”

“Wait, no, DaNI nOt ThE FaCE”

“i swear to aragon’s smelly dragon toenails if someone tries to use the nasty burger sauce as an explosive again i will LOSE IT”

“SORRY JAZZ CAN’T STAGE AN INTERVENTION IF I’M DEAD LMAO”

“i can’t believe hiding things in the walls backfired on me.”

“everybody do the flop-”

“FOR THE LAST TIME SKULKER I’M NOT GONNA LET YOU SKIN ME”

“hey remember when my evil future self tried to kill us all?”

“Oh, buddy, if you’re not scared of me, you should be.”

“oop, ‘scuse me, gotta go eldritch terror for a mo’“

“ah fuck i knew i should have made it more difficult to summon me”

“alright who the fuck is john constantine and why does he owe me his soul like twenty times over?”

“ooh, a gecko- shit, fUCK NOT A GECKO NOT A GECKO”

“i need to start charging for rescuing people from liminal spaces.”

“jesus fuck those are big teeth”

"Oh hey Fruitloop I thought you were-"

"No Cujo I can't play right now"

"Oh look. The vultures are back."

"Shit shit shit I thought I fixed that"

I feel that Tim is crazy enough to purposely stop his heart and have it restarted just to chew out his soul mate for all the shit he put him through.

Danny has had the words "please stop dying" since he was a kid. Before the accident it seemed very concerning. But at one point at his start of his Phantom career, he realizes with his friends that his soulmate's probably seen a bunch of phrases in their wrist by now. That's what pushes him to start using puns. To try to calm his soulmate.

During a live interview, Tim winces, and the interviewer immediately realizes what it means and offers condolences. Tim shakes his head.

"Nah, it's fine. They die all the time."

"...Excuse me?"

"They die. Over and over again. Their record is 6.2 seconds between deaths."

"How?"

"I wish I knew."

"What does it say now?"

Tim shows them. The camera zooms in on Tim's soulmark, which says "Testing testing, 1 2 3."

The interview continues, but then Tim winces again and he checks the soulmark. It changes on camera to "Holy shit, that worked. My soulmate is Tim Drake."

Tim's jaw drops, and he quickly covers it. He refuses to let anyone see it until the interview is over and he can look at it again in private.

At the next Rich Person Event™ Lex tries to question Tim about his soulmark because what does it mean if Lex's soulmark changes too?

Lex had never given much thought to his soul mate. Lionel had drilled into Lex from an early age that soul mates where a weakness men of business should not have, that Lex could not have. It was easy to convince himself that Lionel was right whenever he saw his soul mark “Aaah! Bogus!” Whomever uttered that as their final words was obviously not worth Lex’s time.

Lex felt almost relieved when he felt his soul mark burn, at least now he wouldn’t have the weakness of a soul mate for his competitors to try and use against him. Unfortunately for Lex is appeared his soul mate was resuscitated shortly after and his mark changed. Lex found “I refuse to die in a place like this” much more preferable to his previous mark, though he did find it odd that his mark seemed to slowly fade over time, perhaps his soul mate was dying, how tragic, anyway-

Little over two years elapsed before Lex thought of his soul mate again. Once more his mark burned,once more Lex breathed a sigh of relief and once more the mark changed. “I refuse to be weak” was now engraved on Lex’s skin, now much more vibrant than it had been since it first changed.

Lex thought little of it, people where revived from the dead everyday, perhaps his sickly soulmate died during life saving surgery and was brought back, not that Lex cared about his soulmate. But the mark kept burning, kept changing, the words etched on his skin changed nearly everyday, this was not normal.

Lex did his best to ignore his soul marks peculiarities just as he planned on ignoring its existence when he was a child but he couldn’t help but note some of the phrases that decorated his skin.

“Cheese and Crackers!”

“Oh I think you’ll soon find I get everything I want”

“Do we have a deal”

Lex finally got some answers to what was going on with his soulmate the day his mark changed to “Imagine my surprise when I find you, the second ghost hybrid his foolishness created”

Ghost hybrid? What did that mean? And how exactly did you create one? Lex tried to shake these questions out of his head, soulmates always brought trouble and they could betray you in the end. He knew the second he heard his mothers final words and found them written on his father her killer’s skin.

So Lex did what he did best when it came to his soul mate, he ignored them, he knew it would hurt less to never meet his soulmate than to be inevitably betrayed by them.

Lex through all his attention into strengthening LexCrop and convincing the public that Superman could not be trusted. An alien with no connection to earth should not have that kind of power, perhaps if Superman was a human things would be different but if Lex couldn’t count on the loyalty of a soulmate, he was not going to trust the loyalty of a random alien to a planet not his own.

Lex would have kept on ignoring his soulmate until that blasted Drake had to reveal his own soulmate was dying and reviving regularly, that Drake’s soulmates ability to die on command meant they could communicate with each other, that they could find each other.

Lex blamed Drake because his own soulmate had apparently gotten inspired or at least was annoyed into doing this because when Lex looked at his mark the next morning.

“Fine if it will get you to stop bugging me I’ll do it, Hello my name is Vlad Masters and I am your soulmate, happy now?”

No Lex was definitely not happy now.

Submitted Prompts #123

One of those soulmate aus where you have the last words your soulmate says to you written on you.

Each time Danny goes to his Phantom form, he technically dies.

Someone is very confused about why their soulmate would decide to say "I'm going ghost" on their deathbed.

Danny decides to make his identity reveal more dramatic by using his old catchphrase.

[luisprada]

My Writing Portfolio

I’ve written a lot of stuff for a lot of outlets. Here are my favorites; the ones that really show off what I’m capable of. I’ve added some context for a few of them. I’m looking for a full-time writing job. Does your video game need a writer? Hire me! Does your TV series writer’s room need a new writer? Hire me! Want to give me a book deal? Sign me up! Does your website need an editor/writer in a full-time salaried position? Hire me! You can DM me here, or find me on Twitter @Luis_Prada. My email is Luisrafaelprada@gmail.com. 

Cracked - I wrote for Cracked on and off for over 15 years. Eventually, I became a columnist and a member of the columns editorial team. I wrote hundreds of articles and wrote a few video scripts. 

3 Recipes For The Perfect Last Minute Mother's Day Brunch - Don’t let the title mislead you. This was the first time Cracked let me write an article that was pure fiction disguised as a helpful, fact-based recipe article. If you like this, I have a whole podcast that’s basically this article in audio form. Links at the bottom of this post!

10 Very Dumb Questions You Should Answer Right Now - This is part 1 of a survey of the Cracked readership. Part two, below, is where it gets fun. Posting this one for full context.

10 Dumb Questions I Asked You Guys (And Your Dumb Answers) -- And here’s Part 2! Never got to do this survey again for another column but of everything I’ve ever written, it’s one of the ones I’m most proud of.  Amazon Thinks I'm Some Sort Of Serial Killer In Training

This Article Will Explode In 5 Points

The Hoax You Didn't Realize Dominated The 80s - The Cracked article I’m most proud of. 

The Most Weirdly Specific, Lazy Spam Email I Ever Received How I Tried (And Failed) To Stop Snoring With A Didgeridoo Why Don't We Have Flying Cars Yet? Well, Here's The Thing...

4 Spam Emails That Deserve To Be Movies

I Ate At The World's Best Sushi Restaurant

4 Ways I Realize I've Changed (Thanks To The New Zelda Game)

The 6 Most Useless Features Found in Flashlight Apps

5 Creepy Things People Say About Sex When Granted Anonymity

4 Recipes That Came From The Mind Of A Child (Taste Tested)

4 Things That Shock You About Dogs (If You Never Had One)

4 Creepy Unspoken Agreements We All Make With Public Places 4 Terrible Golf Tips For Beginners (By a Beginner)

Drones: The Movie Pixar Doesn't have the Balls to Make - The first time I was ever allowed to break the traditional listicle mold. Still can’t believe they let me do this.

5 Random Questions You Didn't Know You Wanted Answered

5 Newspaper Articles From History You'll Swear I'm Making Up

Taco Bell's Website Is Absolutely Insane (No, Seriously) Papa John’s TikTok Has Intense Divorced Dad Energy

The Mary Sue - I’ve long admired the work going on over at The Mary Sue. I finally got the chance to write for them as a Contributing Writer. Here are a few of my favorites so far.

‘Star Wars Outlaws’ does ‘Skyrim in Space’ better than ‘Starfield’

Sorry, McDonald’s: Your new collector’s cups will never beat the ‘Batman Forever’ mugs

New Cult Hit Horror Game Raises Uncomfortable Questions About Your Gaming Habits

Even the MCU’s Floundering Can’t Touch the Reason Deadpool Always Hits

I Live In Constant Fear That I Would Like Racewalking if I Tried It

Vice - This is my current day job. Topical Writer is my official title. Essentially an old school daily news blogger. Incredibly fun, everyone is fantastic, and I get tons of creative freedom.  

LA House That Broke in Half Is on Sale for $499,999

This Video Game Flopped So Hard Sony Is Refunding Anyone Who Bought It

Heinz Insults All of Italy As It Introduces Carbonara-in-a-Can for Gen Z Eaters

Austrian Doctor Fired After Letting Her 13-Year-Old Daughter Drill a Hole In a Patient’s Head (this one got me on NPR’s Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me!)

Microplastics Are In Your Brain, Testicles, Placenta, Lungs, Soul

People Mostly Use AI for Homework Help and Erotic Fiction

Bunny Ears - The site, which was owned and operated by actor Macaulay Culkin, gave me the chance to do something I’d wanted to do for years: get paid to write the silliest stuff I could imagine. The site was a satire of celebrity lifestyle sites like Goop but started sprinkling in some broader pop-cultural stuff toward the end. 

6 Bathrobes Perfect For Doing Coked-Up Naked Karate

I’ve Been Holding In A Tantric Orgasm For 22 Years. Please Don’t Touch Me

My Secret Ingredient Is Love, Which Has Been Recalled Due To Fecal Contamination

For The Last Time, I’m An Electrician, Not An Energy Healer

3 School Lunches Your Child’s Bully Will Love

We Just Tried Western Medicine, And Holy Shit Is It Effective!

I Traveled The World And Didn’t Learn A Fucking Thing About Myself Lavish Vacation Spots To Visit When You’re On The Run From The Securities and Exchange Commission

I’m An Introvert And I Need Every Person On Earth To Know It These 5 Posh Hotels Have One Thing in Common: You’re Banned from Them

Our Article Ideas Algorithm Says You Should Marinate Chicken In Piss

I Climbed Everest And Still Can’t Maintain An Erection

Funko Pop! Used My Likeness Without My Consent A Good Night’s Sleep Made Me A Much More Efficient Asshole My Restaurant Will Proudly Fuck Up Your Culture’s Signature Dish I’m Trying Really Hard To Not Turn Your Vitamin D Deficiency Into A Dick Joke

I’m Totally Okay Being Trapped Under This Weighted Blanket Reminder: Don’t Fuck Up This Turkey, Because You Can Really Use A Win Right Now

Marvelous Meat: This Plant-Based Burger Not Only Bleeds, It Screams

We Can’t Get Enough Of These 5 Celebrity-Recommended Tax Havens

Grounding: Connecting To The Natural Energies of Your Home By Sticking Metal Rods In Power Outlets

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency 

Click “No” If You’d Like Us To Guilt Trip You For Not Subscribing To Our Newsletter

The Inaudible Podcast Network - My time at Bunny Ears led to the development of a short recurring segment on the official Bunny Ears podcast called “Meditation Minute with Luis Prada”, a parody of guided meditation podcasts and Youtube channels. When Bunny Ears closed down, I was able to keep Meditation Minute. I spun it into my own podcast. The Inaudible Podcast Network is an audio sketch comedy series about four podcasts on a fake podcast network. Those shows are Meditation Minute, Truest Crime (a true crime podcast hosted by two serial killers), The Feed (a food culture podcast), and Three Indistinguishable Guys Talking About Movies (a movie podcast). I’ve completed two seasons so far, totaling 80 episodes, 20 of each podcast. Here are direct links to my favorite episodes so far. But first, here’s a link to the Patreon!

https://www.patreon.com/InaudiblePod

I can use the money! Season two just ended. I’m writing season three now. Anyway, onto the links...

TRAILER/Ep. 1 - Meditation Minute - Midroll Meditation

Ep. 2 - The Feed - Fleeing Flavortown

Ep. 4 - Three Indistinguishable Guys Talking About Movies - Review: The Family Circus Movie

Ep. 5 - Meditation Minute - Building a Happy Place

Ep. 28 - Truest Crime - Where Are They Now?

Ep. 33 - Meditation Minute - Breakout

Ep. 41 - Meditation Minute With Luis Prada - A Meditation for Those In A Rush

Ep. 42 - The Feed - The Indiana Sausage Wars

Ep. 47 - Three Indistinguishable Guys Talking About Movies - I See Myself In Luke Skywalker Despite HisGross Alien Genitals

Ep. 48 - Truest Crime - Riddles For Pestering The Cops

Ep. 58 - The Feed - Apologies To Canned Ham

Ep. 62 - The Feed - The Fight To Save Bees

Ep. 69 - Meditation Minute With Luis Prada - Corrections and Retractions

Ep. 78 - The Feed - Our Fascinating World of High-End Cheeses

Ep. 80 - Truest Crime - Most Truest Crime with Host FBI Agent Antonio Rodriguez

[captainkirkk]

✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

A collection of fics I’ve read (/reread) and thoroughly enjoyed in the past week-ish from all kinds of fandoms and genres.

BNHA

tell all the truth (but tell it slant) by carolinaa                

From: Maybe: Yoarashi Inasa 12:41 WHY is ms joke asking me about you 12:50--Missed call from Maybe: Yoarashi Inasa 12:51--Missed call from Maybe: Yoarashi Inasa 12:52--Missed call from Maybe: Yoarashi Inasa 12:53 PICK UP YOUR PHONE. ARE WE DATING??

Or: Todoroki Shouto covers up his father's abuse with...a different kind of abuse. He's never claimed to be smart.

(BTHB square 3: misunderstanding)

ATLA

blade of silver, forge of blue by MikkiOfTheAnbu  

“Blessed Spirit, we thank you for the gift of this child’s life. We are forever in your debt.” The whole village is kneeling now, even the tiniest toddlers flopped down on their stomachs doing their best approximation of a bow. “Please, won’t you give us a name to call you? We would like to properly express our gratitude.”

Oh.

Well shit.

(Where Zuko saves a little Earth Kingdom girl from drowning, the villagers think he's a Spirit, build him a shrine, and long story short, a fake story about the Blue Spirit who dances with dragons suddenly becomes very real.)

Customer Service Solidarity (sometimes means you have to kidnap the fire lord from his own party) by myrskytuuli

They had spent hours and hours drilling and preparing the servers upon the importance of everything being perfect for the new fire lord. This was fine. Jin was good at her job. She could handle one fire lord.

Expect that wasn't the fire lord. That was FUCKING LEE!

It Takes a Village by dancingstar

Zuko is dropped on the edge of the Earth Kingdom, burned, shorn, and banished. He's found again and again, and built up from ashes.

or, the earth kingdom takes a look at Zuko, asks “is anyone gonna raise that?” and doesn’t wait for an answer

Spider-Man

it's up to you, new york by JBS_Forever  

“Um, what am I –?” Peter starts, but doesn’t need to go on, because it's clear now what he’s meant to be looking at. There’s a live feed of Twitter posts already pulled up, videos and pictures and text flashing by, each one with the hashtag “WeAreSpiderMan” and moving too quick for him to process.

He blinks, confused. “What – what is this?”

Beside him, Happy breathes out a laugh. “That?” he says, and there’s an amused undercurrent in his voice, knowing and fond, “That’s New York.”

- - -

Or: after Spider-Man's identity is revealed, New York City steps up to support one of their own.

Danny Phantom

do not stand at my grave and cry (i am not there, i did not die) by blueh

“I just—” he hiccups down his ghost sense but feels the cool burning sensation crawl up his throat anyways. He has just enough time to throw a hand over his mouth to cover the blue mist, and sends a desperate look at the clock. There’s still five minutes left in class. He stands up anyways. “I have to go.”

“You have to go?” Sam says. Danny hears the accusation in her voice loud and clear. “Again?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t enough, Danny! You keep—you keep leaving us! You’re pushing us away!”

His tongue feels like lead and he knows, even if he wants to, he can’t tell them. He cant. So instead, he doesn’t meet her eyes, takes one step back, and repeats, “I’m sorry.”

Sometimes, it feels like it’s the only word he can say these days.

Or: When Danny goes down to the lab and enters that portal at fourteen years old, he goes down alone. This changes things.

Star Wars: Clone Wars

The Past Remains by otherhawk                

The war drags on leaving trauma and destruction in its wake. After a bereaved Master is accused of harming his padawan, Obi-Wan is sent to talk to her, dredging up memories of his own past.

These Things Happen by writehandman

Obi-wan Kenobi keeps promoting Cody. The promotion gets out of hand, and suddenly the balance of the universe shifts into the palm of a very competent, caffeinated man.

Care What It Cost by MissjuliaMiriam

Five years after Naboo, Obi-Wan becomes aware that things between Anakin and Qui-Gon have become... tense. The obvious solution is to mediate their difficulties if at all possible.

That is not what happens.