#you’d think they’d be doing the same with the movie that they can probably charge a lot more for

[positivelyghastly]

Just saw the post on Ghost’s insta. What the fuck is veeps??? Just give us a DVD or a blu-ray or put it on your youtube channel as like an exclusive or something, not some unheard of streaming service

[ghastlyfilters]

i decided to reread the jurassic park novel AND CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH OF A FUCKIN LITTLE RAT JOHN HAMMOND IS

spare no expense my ass mf

(reminder that we’re not talking about the film, we’re talking about where this all began. and i have different views on both versions of hammond. i don’t particularly mind hammond in the movie though he was still at fault for quite a lot that happened. although he had a difference about him compared to the darkness of john hammond in the original novel.)

1. this man does not give a shit about the animals. no. EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK ONLINE SOME WEBSITE OUT THERE ALWAYS DESCRIBES HIM AS “the greedy businessman” like yeah bro knew he was bound to earn that cash after you made the first official park for fucking dinosaurs (bad idea duh) but man.. what a cheapskate.. if you had the money to make the park look “presentable” you’d think he would pay his workers their fair amount. well.

2. WAS BLACKMAILING NEDRY REALLY THAT NECESSARY?? the man had set up national telephone lines, was quick with what he did, made a name for himself with how good he was, and hammond practically took the piss out of him.

dodgson was his last option in that situation, and yes even though it wasn’t the best of schemes, nedry went ahead with it.

hammond literally sees nedry as this fat slob but in reality, nedry had extreme potential with his job. the majority of hammond’s workers were payed utter peanuts. but seeing as nedry was the one in charge of creating the park’s systems, hell.. he really should have had his fair share.

and again, he was in CONTROL of designing security systems for the first park that contained living, breathing dinosaurs..

THAT’S A BIG DEAL.

but because he knew the lack of effort that was put into giving him his reward for literally doing what he was agreed to be paid for, there was no point in giving a shit anymore. he became sloppy for a reason.

hammond threatened to take this man to court if he didn’t get what he wanted 💀

and at the end of the day, nedry got his karma. but damn even that was brutal for someone such as nedry. to say he deserved that would be incredibly cruel.

but again, michael crichton’s novel showed no mercy for certain characters, which was actually a good touch to the storyline.

i don’t even think the intention for anyone to die when nedry continued out his plan was there? then again you let the dinos run loose.. what did you expect.. and of course he ended up getting himself killed..

novel nedry wasn’t the typical, greedy fat bastard everyone made him out to be. there WAS in fact a reason behind his actions. but if he were a handsome skinny man, the audience would be rooting for him, wouldn’t they? then they’d actually feel sorry. which is a bit shitty.

those like muldoon, arnold and the rest of them probably thought the same about nedry. but that’s because perhaps they unfortunately did not know the actual behaviour that went on between john hammond, ingen, and dennis nedry.

3. hammond in the novel had no filter like this man was cocky asf in front of anyone and everyone. whereas in the movie, you only saw hammond act unfairly to some behind closed doors.

BUT, the man went weeee rolling down the hill like a fucking easter egg, so as muldoon said and although this wasn’t about hammond..

“maybe there’s justice in the world after all.”

[forever-rogue]

Hello Sunshine

A/N: Hello! I’m here with a 7am shower idea that I couldn’t get out of my head. It’s just a little sweet and soft Frankie. Enjoy! As always, feedback and comments are welcome, and if you’d like to be tagged, let me know. xx 💕

*Bold - Frankie ; Italics - Reader

Pairing: Frankie Morales x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 4.8k

Warnings: none

FRANKIE MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST

»»————-　♡　————-««

“Hey! What time did you want to meet up tomorrow for brunch?” you stared at the number you’d typed in and compared it to the one that the man you’d met the evening before had given you. You had been absolutely reluctant to go to the local bar’s speed dating evening before, but your best friend had convinced you to go. She was going to go as well, so you figured if you ended up suffering, she would likely too - solidarity in its finest form. Much to your pleasant surprise however, you ended up having a fun time...the multiple rounds of drinks probably didn’t hurt either. 

Marcus had been your last round for the evening, and he had been kind and charming; easy on the eyes and easy to make conversation with. He asked you questions and you were able to ask him ones back. Definitely a sharp turn from what you were expecting; and by the end of the night he’d offered you his number and asked you to for brunch on Sunday. You’d been...elated; it had been some time since anyone had actually managed to capture your eye.

Before talking yourself out of sending the message, you hit send and put your phone onto your nightstand. You weren’t too nervous in general, but there was something about sending that first message that always caused butterflies to erupt into your stomach. It wasn’t but a few minutes before your phone vibrated to signal a new message. Trying not to get too eager and excited, you reached for it and quickly opened the new text.

Who is this?

Your brow furrowed in confusion at the seemingly hasty denial of acknowledgment. It was no matter, you groaned at yourself, you probably should have included your name in the first place. No big deal, you quickly typed out your name and added, “we met at the bar last night? For the speed dating event?”

Your stomach flipped nervously as you wondered what he would say; hoping it was just a misunderstanding and he would realize exactly who you were. 

I didn’t go to any bars last night. I don’t know who you are.

Oh. Your throat constricted as you reached for the napkin with the phone and compared it again to the number you had texted. There was no way you’d mistaken any of the numbers. Sighing heavily, you slipped out of bed and edged towards your bathroom and tossed the offending object into the can. Things had seemed like they’d gone so well...you’d genuinely liked Marcus and thought the attraction and chemistry was there on both sides. Apparently you’d been made a fool once again. Heat flooded your face in embarrassment as you contemplated whether or not to text again. To hell with it, you decided, you might as well apologize if nothing else.

So sorry. The guy I met must have given me the wrong number. I hope I didn’t ruin your night. Sorry for wasting your time.

After that bit of failure, you decided you might as well get back into bed and watch a show until you fell asleep. You felt beyond embarrassed and just wanted to forget about the whole thing. Needless to say, it surprised you when your phone went off again.

No worries. Sorry if I was rude too. It’s happened to me before with a couple of girls. It  sucks. 

At this point, you found yourself smiling at the sentiment, and decided that one more little text wouldn’t hurt anything. 

Seriously! Why can’t someone just tell you if they’re not interested? It's so much easier. Either way - thanks for understanding and have a good evening. 

You too. Hope things look up soon for you.

His response had been instant almost as if he had been watching you type it all. Whoever this stranger was - and you weren’t even sure if it was a man or woman - they had turned out to be kinder than Marcus. But it didn’t do well to dwell on it; Marcus would get what he deserved and this stranger would get some good things. 

»»————-　♡　————-««

Frankie put his phone on the charging pad he kept next to his bed, turning it on silent before crawling under the covers. Catching a glance of himself in the mirror, he was surprised to see that he had a smile on his face. Not that was perpetually frowning or mad, but usually he wasn’t just smiling for no reason. 

Although he had a feeling he knew the exact reason as to why he was actually happy for once because of...you. The random stranger that texted him and sent a happy shiver up his spine. He wasn’t happy because of your little predicament, knowing the exact feeling of having been duped and given the wrong number several times. But the short conversation had been pleasant enough and he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d hear from you again. 

Doubtful, he reminded himself, it was just a one off type deal and that was that. And yet...that didn’t stop him from quickly grabbing his phone again and saving your name and number as a contact. You know...just in case. 

Francisco Morales had sweet dreams throughout that night. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. 

»»————-　♡　————-««

Frankie practically bounced into work the next morning, a smile on his face and spring in his step. So he seemed so out of normal form that his best friend and coworker, pointed it out to him and everyone. Frankie played it off like it was no big deal; in reality it wasn’t. You were just another stranger out in the world that flung into his orbit for a moment before leaving again. 

But that whole week felt different and somehow the world was a little brighter - filled with sunshine. Even if it wasn’t everlasting, he didn’t mind the feeling it gave him for the moment; the positive energy was nice for a change. 

Little did he know that across the city, you were existing in your own little world, going about your day to day in a similar manner. What a small world it was indeed. You had been incredibly tempted to look up his phone and see if you could find anything out about your mysterious stranger, a name, some sort of profile - anything  - but refrained. What if it was someone you ended up attracted? A beautiful woman or a good looking man that caused you to start all sorts of fantasies? No - you didn’t need all of that. You’d let it go or let whatever happened happen. 

Which likely was nothing. Right? Right. 

»»————-　♡　————-««

Imagine your surprise when you found yourself at home with leftover pizza and a bottle of wine, resigning yourself to a quiet Saturday night when your phone vibrated. Figuring it was probably just one of your friends, or some sort of useless notification, you picked up your phone and found your jaw dropping. This wasn’t seriously happening, was it? 

Hey stranger. Hope this Saturday is better than the last one. 

Maybe they had the wrong number...or something. But no - they acknowledged the fact that last weekend had been shit and called you stranger. This had to be intentional. Setting your phone down for a moment, you grabbed your glass of wine and sipped on it, trying not to let the excitement of a single text get you too excited. They had done what you’d dreamed about all week...why not indulge in it? If nothing else, it might be nice to have someone to text with on occasion. 

Hi stranger. This Saturday involves me, the couch, pizza, and wine. I guess I really can’t complain. Hope yours is a good one too!

As soon as you hit send, you wanted to ban your head against the wall; was it too much? Not enough? Did it even warrant a response? Now you were just overthrowing everything. Shit, fuck, damn. 

But you weren't able to wallow in misery for too long before your phone went off again. Huh.

Sounds pretty good. Can't complain either, just at home with a beer and a movie. Missing the pizza though. Maybe I'll order some.

Definitely recommended! I don't know if this is odd, but you know my name and I don't know yours...do you have a name, stranger?

Not weird at all! Maybe I should have started with that. Francisco - Frankie.

Well Francisco-Frankie, it's nice to meet you. What movie are you watching?

Nice to meet you, no- longer-complete-stranger. Die Hard. A classic.

Oof. I'm afraid it ends here. Hot take - Die Hard is...notthatgood.

It's been a good but short time…how can you not like Die Hard!? What could you be watching that's so much better?

The Office. A modern classic and clearly superior to anything you're picking if you think Die Hard is good.

Fun fact - I've never seen a single episode of the Office. And never plan on it. Tell me, mystery girl, what should I get on my pizza?

I now make it my plan to convince you to watch The Office. Pepperoni, jalapeños, and tomatoes. Regular crust, none of that thin crust bs.

Challenge accepted. An odd combination but I'll give it a try. Results tbd.

Already listening - I'm a fan of it. I'll let you get back to your movie and order your pizza. Have a good night Francisco-Frankie.

You too, mystery girl.

There was an undeniably giant grin on your face as you set your phone back down. Had this actually happened? Surely this was some sort of dream; a random stranger actually striking up a conversation? And seemingly enjoying it? Out of this world.

As you downed your glass and got ready to refill it your phone vibrated once again. This time you didn't even bother to let a moment pass before picking it back up and opening the notification.

Can I text you again sometime?

Yeah...I'd like that.

You just about melted into the couch, happier than you had been in a long time. And all from texts from a man you still hadn't met. Who knew if you would ever meet him? Either way, this Francisco aka Frankie had proven to be a welcome disturbance in your life.

»»————-　♡　————-««

The next couple of weeks passed in the same blissful fashion. You'd go about your day with work and other responsibilities and obligations but you had your pocket companion with you. That's what you nicknamed Frankie anyways. 

What has started as some texting here and there soon turned into conversations throughout the days, slowly becoming more personal and introspective with each passing day. And despite still knowing what he looked like or anything...you thrived in it. You'd wondered if he'd looked you up - he hadn't for the same reasons as you - and that's why you got along so well. 

The two of you had a lot in common but still managed to have your differences. One thing that never failed to make you smile was what had turned into his version of a good morning text.

Hello Sunshine. 

Hi Fly Boy. 

Stay dry today, its supposed to be a pretty bad downpour. Talk later?

Of course. Be safe too.

The small sentiment was enough to send you reeling; it was funny how easily conversation flowed between the two of you. Like in some ways you'd always known each other, but still were finding out things constantly. You weren't sure where it would lead to...if anything but for now you appreciated your new found friend.

»»————-　♡　————-««

I have a work party this weekend and it's formal. Do I go for an lbd or something colorful?

Depends - do you want people to approach or admire from the distance?

From the distance, so I can leave fairly quickly but people still know I was there.

Definitely LBD then.

My hero! Perfect idea!

»»————-　♡　————-««

How do I get out of a camping trip this weekend?

Why would you try and get out of it? You said you loved camping.

I do but...just not feeling it this weekend.

Tell them you're feeling or that your new girlfriend wants to spend the weekend together.

New girlfriend? I wasn't aware I had one…

Its called a white lie Frankie. Use me as an excuse if you have to.

You're the best! A real lifesaver, sunshine.

»»————-　♡　————-««

Okay, here's a tough one. Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate?

All three. But if only one - coffee.

How do you take it?

Black with a little bit of sugar.

That's kind of the vibe I got! But you're wrong - the best answer is coffee in the am, afternoon tea, and then sometimes a hot chocolate for dessert.

Let me guess - salted caramel hot chocolate? 

How did you know?! Alright, Fly Boy, you know me too well already.

Just a hunch, sunshine. Okay - favorite color?

»»————-　♡　————-««

Do you think if I pretend to be dead I can leave work early?

Dramatic! I love it. How about a migraine? Last minute emergency?

Probably better. Migraine it is.

Just a thought. Beers with the guys tonight?

Yup. Girls night?

Yes! Talk tomorrow?

Of course.

»»————-　♡　————-««

Soooo I might have gotten myself into a predicament…

What happened?

Umm, I might have lied and told my friends that I started seeing someone…

Oh no.

Yeah...all because I couldn't admit that that guy had given me the wrong number. How do I explain?!

Maybe just don't say anything and then later say it died down or something? No need to drag it further.

You're right and I am an idiot. 

Nah, it happens to the best of us.

Hmm sure. Anyways, onto important things. Dogs or cats?

»»————-　♡　————-««

If you could only have one type of food for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?

Hmm, that’s a hard one. I’m torn between Mexican (the good stuff of course) and Italian and sushi. You? 

Pizza!

That’s not a type of food, Francisco!

It totally is. There’s different varieties, it can count!

That’s a cheap way to answer the question, but I’ll accept it because you’re cute. 

You think I’m cute? And just how do you know? Do I have a stalker?

Nah, too much effort. Besides, I’m usually busy talking to you. It would be kind of obvious if I was, wouldn’t it? I just have a feeling. 

Very funny, sunshine. I’m positive it’s the other way around. 

You’re the stalker? What am I wearing right now?

You know what I meant!

Of course I did. I’m the smart one in this duo, don’t forget. 

You’re too much. Want to watch a movie tonight? We start at the same time? 

Yes! Anything but Die Hard or other shitty movies along those lines.

You’re killing me here. One day I will convince you to watch it with me.

I look forward to that - but not tonight. Name your top 3 ideas.

»»————-　♡　————-««

Over the weeks, Frankie became an everyday part of your life. The two of you texted back and forth throughout the day as time allowed. It was nice - comforting to have him there despite the fact that he could have been anyone in the world. Well, you knew he was local to you from his area code but otherwise...a mystery.

You wondered if you’d ever encountered him out in the real world before. It was a definite possibility, but you would never know. Not unless you somehow actually ended up meeting him in person. The idea of proposing such a notion hadn’t seemed far off, especially since your days were filled with each other and there were undeniably flirty texts and insinuations. The few times you’d actually gotten the nerve up to just ask him, something always seemed to come and keep you from doing it. Namely - nerves. 

What if you were reading all wrong into this? What if he really wanted nothing more than a friendship? What if texting was the extent of it all? 

Naturally, you’d know your answer if you’d just fucking ask him. But that seemed like a momentous and herculean task and you weren’t sure if you’d ever be up for it. Perhaps things would just...happen one day. Despite getting to know him, he was still just this enigmatic aura. For all you knew you might as well have been fighting a robot. 

When then...one random night, a Wednesday evening when you’d just walked in the door with fresh produce from the downtown farmer’s market, your phone name. Shifting the large bags in your arms, you managed to fish your phone out of your pocket and answer it without looking at who it was. 

“Hello?” you kicked the door shut behind you and shuffled into the kitchen, unceremoniously dumping the bags onto the counters. At first you didn’t hear anything on the other end of the line besides some shuffling, but then eventually you heard a distant voice say something indiscernible. In confusion, you pulled the phone out from between your ear and shoulder and glanced at the contact. The name was enough to have your breath catch in your throat as you realized that your mysterious Frankie on the other end. He’d never called before...perhaps it had been a mistake? Even if it was, you were going to take full advantage of it, “Frankie? Hello? Come on Fly Boy, it’s me. If you can hear me, let me know.”

It was a few more seconds of shuffling and almost static like noise before you were positive you heard a quiet fuck. But then, in a moment that made your heart almost stop, you heard him, loud and clear, “h-hi….sunshine?”

“Hi Frankie,” you repeated as you felt your heart melt and legs turn to jelly, “I’m going to guess this wasn’t an intended call?”

“Umm, shit no,” he admitted with what you could only describe as a nervous laugh, “accidental pocket dial.”

“It’s 2021 and you’re pocket dialing people?” you snorted with laughter as you grabbed your earbuds to sync up the bluetooth so you could talk to him while putting away all of the fresh fruits and veggies you had acquired, “that’s such an old person thing, Frankie! What are you 50?”

“It’s not that weird,” he insisted with an indignant scoff as you giggled, “it can happen easily if you don’t lock your phone when you put it away and yeah...here we are. And for the record I am nowhere near 50! I am only 36.”

“Oof,” you opened the fridge and popped the veggies into the drawer, “I’m afraid that things end here, Grandpa.” 

“Very funny! How old are you then, huh? Oh my God - please don’t tell me I’ve been talking to and flirting with a teenager,” for a moment he sounded genuinely nervous as you almost doubled over in laughter at his panic. The fact that he had admitted to flirting was lost on you in your amusement he was so worried that he didn’t even notice the gaff, “sunshine!”

“I’m almost 30,” you reassured him and he instantly sighed in relief on the other end, “don’t worry. Besides, I told you I met the man I thought I was texting at a bar - at least I would have been 21.” 

“That still would have been weird,” he admitted as you made a small sound of agreement, “this is better.”

“Ha! Thanks for the sentiment,” you  rinsed and crunched on a carrot before hopping onto the counter to get comfortable. You hesitated for a moment, wondering if you should say your next words or not...but you decided to just do it, “this is...nice. I like hearing your voice. Makes you more real.”

“I like it too,” he agreed softly, a tinge of pink rising up in his cheeks, despite the fact that you couldn’t see it, “you sound like I thought.”

“Oh? Like an annoying twelve-year-old boy?” 

“Okay, okay, dramatic much?” he snorted, “just accept the compliment!”

“Fine,” you huffed, being very overdramatic indeed, “what are you up to tonight, Frankie? Want to cook together?”

“I’m yours - free, I mean free,” he corrected himself as you relished in his little mess up, “I’m afraid I’m not much of a cook. I’m a better baker.”

“Ooh, excellent,” you slid off the counter in excitement, “how about this - we’ll make something simple for dinner - I’ll walk you through it step by step, and then you’re in charge of dessert. Deal?”

“Deal,” Frankie felt a rush of excitement surge through him as he stepped into his kitchen and reached for his apron - the same one that Santi always made fun of him for, “what’s on the menu?”

»»————-　♡　————-««

And just like that texts turned into texts and phone calls. There was something so thrilling, like a huge surge of electricity shot down your spine and throughout your body every time you saw his name up pop or heard the sound of his voice. Frankie was...slowly turning into your constant companion and if you were being honest with yourself he was everything you had had ever wanted. 

And oh - how scary it was to be falling for a man you still hadn't met in person. Slowly, surely it would happen. Gods, you wanted it to happen so desperately. But you were painfully shy when it came to the idea of asking him out and little did you know, he was feeling exactly the same way. Frankie wanted nothing more than to finally ask you on a proper date, to spend all those times laughing with you in person. But he just...continually talked himself out of it.

He was just so shy, so nervous and he thought it would be impossible that someone like you would actually go for a guy like him. He was just...fly boy and you were his Sunshine. Frankie had given you the name early on, deciding that it was appropriate because you brought a little bit of sunshine into his life every day. It had almost brought you to tears - not that you'd admit that to anyone - not yet anyway. His nickname was simple - he was a former military pilot and now a part time ‘whenever he got the chance pilot’ - Fly Boy. It was perfect and he adored it as much as you.

And yet neither of you, pining silly fools had been able to make that final move. One day, you both reminded yourself constantly, one day.

And one day turned out to be sooner than either of you expected...

"Mmhmm," you murmured into the phone as you scoured the bookshelves of your local little bookstore. You had a rare afternoon off and to treat yourself to a nice coffee and searching for a new read. You'd fallen out of reading regularly and had made it a point to get back into it, aiming for a book month. Naturally, your friend had called you at that exact time, "of course pizza is always a good choice."

Frankie hummed under his breath as he walked through the aisles looking for the book you had recommended to him. He hadn’t thought much about the woman he saw a few rows over with a coffee in one hand and her phone in the other. He did note, however, that the tone of her voice was sweet - not that he was trying to listen in on her conversation. 

“Yes it is!” you laughed into the phone, trying to keep it down when you noticed the man in your peripheral vision and aimed to keep from disturbing him, “pizza is good for whenever you don't know what to make. And you know the best - pepperoni, jalapenos, and tomatoes. No contest.”

Despite not trying to listen in to your conversation, as soon as he heard you describe pizza, his perked up and immediately his heart started pounding. A nervous rush of energy flowed through him as he tried to get a better look at you without making it obvious. Holy shit - was this actually it? Was he about to meet his Sunshine?

“I even told Frankie,” you insisted with a small smile as you took a sip of your coffee, “he liked it too. Yes...of course I’m still talking to him...I-I really like him. I hope that one day I can meet him. I keep wanting to ask and then I get so nervous and talk myself out of it. He’s just...lovely.”

This definitely couldn’t be a coincidence, right? The particular type of pizza, Frankie, wanting to meet - this had to be you. And the more he listened, despite his initial efforts, he couldn’t help but zone in on you. And now, hearing your voice unfiltered and unaltered through the phone, he knew it was you. He just stopped in his tracks as he watched you, a silly little smile on his face as he realized that somehow the universe had decided to throw him a bone. 

“Mhmm,” you murmured into the phone, “of course. I’ll talk to you later!”

Ending the call, you shoved your phone into your pocket and reached for one of the books that had piqued your interest. Sliding it out and reading over the back, you quickly got lost in your thoughts until you heard a throat clear behind you. Assuming you were in someone’s way, you shuffled to the side without glancing at who it was. But then you heard it - quiet and shy but clear, “Sunshine?”

At the sound of the nickname you’d been given by only one person throughout your entire life, your heart fluttered wildly in your chest as your body froze. Surely..surely this couldn’t be happening…

Turning around, slowly, painfully slowly, you found yourself staring at a face both brand new and immediately familiar. You’d never seen him before, but instantly it was like you knew him, all of him. In some ways you supposed, you did. 

“F-Frankie?” almost getting choked up, your voice was barely above a whisper as the handsome man in front of you slowly nodded. A smile tugged on the corners of his mouth as his whole features lit up with excitement. His brown eyes were soft and crinkled in the corners as his grew grin and a one singular dimple appeared. You weren’t really sure what you had pictured when you’d thought about your mysterious friend, but somehow this was right on the mark. You blinked a few times, trying to hold back your tears of sheer excitement, “you’re real after all!”

And then he laughed. A beautiful, glorious sound that caused a surge of warmth to rush through your entire body. He really was just as lovely as you’d dreamed. 

“Did you really think you were talking to a robot this whole time?” he asked as you flushed with warmth but stuck your tongue at him, “I can’t believe it’s really you. After all these months...finally. I’ve been wanting to ask you for so long but I didn’t think…”

“Me too,” you agreed, “me too. Small world, huh?”

“I was just looking for the book you recommended last night,” he admitted as you practically glowed with excitement. Holding up a finger, you turned around and quickly found the book in question and displayed it for him, “I didn’t think I’d find the book and the woman I’ve been talking to for months.”

“How did you know it was me?” you asked as you walked over to him and he offered up a sheepish grin.

“The pizza.”

“The pizza!” you snorted with laughter, “I should have known. Too obvious.”

“I like to think that everything happens for a reason,” he tried to take the book from your hands but you just shook your head, “what?”

“This is going to be from me to you,” you insisted as a tinge of pink welled up in his cheeks, “a souvenir from the day we met!”

“I’ll treasure it forever,” he promised and you could tell he meant it, “what are you doing tonight? Now?”

“I dunno,” you feigned innocence, “I was planning on going home to cook and talk to this guy I’ve been falling for for months, but that seems a little weird now.” 

“Will you let me take you to dinner -  a date? A real date?” he asked as you beamed at him and nodded. How could you ever say no. 

“Only if you take me to that Italian place you told me about!”

“Whatever you want, Sunshine,” he promised as he reached for your hand and gently laced your fingers together. It felt so easy, so effortless, and you didn’t even have to think about - natural. 

“You,” you couldn’t stop yourself from kissing his cheek, “just you, Frankie.”

“Sweet Sunshine.”

»»————-　♡　————-««

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[wisehoagiekidwobbler]

Forms of Witchcraft

•Dolls and Poppets

Poppets are the English terms for what movies call a ‘voodoo doll’. Voodoo doll is a misnomer, and does nothing for either poppets or Haitian magic.

Poppets can be used for a couple of things – mainly either cursing or healing. This doesn’t always have to be physical curses/cures – poppets can also be used to influence thought patterns.

Dolls can also be used to provide homes for Spirits, or used to create guardians. You can also use a doll as a scapegoat to prevent a curse from latching onto you.

•Shrinemaking

Shrine making is less a way to create a defined outcome, and more a way of pleasing Spirits who you may later want to call upon. It’s kinda like taking your new neighbours a pie, in case you ever need them to watch the house whilst you’re away. The pie is an overture to a friendly relationship, not direct payment for the house sitting. However, if you just blundered into their garden one day and offered them £100 to watch the house, they’d probably tell you to get lost. Randomly calling up Spirits, Saint or Deities can have the same effect. I mean, would you help someone get a job if they just banged on your door and waved some incense at you? Get your local Spirits pies. Find out what scents, and objects, and offerings that they like. Keep the land around you clean, and pick up after other people if you can. Use your vote and your money to protect the land from logging and fracking. Build a dedicated ‘meeting space’ where you call up Spirits, and fill it full of pictures of them or things they like. It pays dividends in the future.

Shrinemaking can also be used to help bless and protect your home and land. By connecting with the other Spirits that are there, you solidify the relationship, and can work together against intruders.

•Bottles and Jars

Witch bottles (or spell jars)  are fun, easy ways to create a variety of effects. As a spell base, they can be effective for:

* money

* love

* friendship

* animal work

* protection

Some people define a witch bottle as strictly the traditional version which is used as a scapegoat, and call other spells involving bottles and jars ‘spell jars’. Some people use the term witch bottle to encompass all magics involving jars.

You can learn about all types of bottle magic in the free course which you can sign up for below!

•Candles

Candle magic is a much more modern form of magic than you’d think – especially if we’re talking coloured candles. Candles were very precious objects in the past! However, it was not an unusual item to have, like a hunk of crystal or fairy doll, which is why they became an item to use for undetected witchcraft – like brooms, and cauldrons.

As candles have got cheaper and cheaper and less needed to be used for lighting, much more forms and types of magic have sprung up around them. With the addition of coloured waxes or painted candles, the sorts of magic you can do with candles has grown exponentially.

Candles are a subset of fire magic and therefore are fantastic for banishing, but they are often the beginners tool of choice. It’s easy to understand why – easy to get hold of, easy to use, and there’s as much fancy ritual needed as you feel inclined to give it.

When you want to expand your knowledge, you can still stick with candles – but investigate the use of oils, herbs and crystals in conjunction with candles.

•Crystals and Rocks

Crystals and rocks are often used as ‘ingredients’ in other spells. They are very easy to add to bottles, pouches, dolls and more. However, you can also use crystals in spell work solely on their own by adding them to your pillow, till, money box, plant pot, etc.

Their use goes much further than this, but that enters the realm of energy healing which is a part of many traditions and is a very dedicated and intensive practice all by itself, and too much to explain here.

Air

You can utilize the powers of air in a lot of ways. It’s usually good for cleansing spells – think sweeping with a ritual broom, burning incense (smoke=air, not fire), ringing bells or playing bowls, singing, using flags and wheels. Air methods tend to return quick results.

Earth

Earth brings slow results, but they tend to be larger. Earth practices include enchanting seeds that will bring you money as they grow, burying offerings in the Earth, making vessels and spells out of clay, or writing spells in the mud.

Fire

Fire can bring things into your life, but is much better used to get rid of them – for beginners, anyway. If there is anything in your life that you wish to get rid of, you can write or draw a representation of it and cast it into the fire to remove it.

Water

Water can take the longest time to bring you what you need. However, think of water pounding against a rock. Drips of water became rivers, became waterfalls. Water can often bring you the biggest results, but it may take a long time.

Water spells can include potions (see below), but can also include ritual baths, leaving offers in water, or giving up bad energy or habits to the ocean.

•Bones

Bones are a contentious subject in witchcraft. Some people will never use them, some people’s practice is not complete without them. You can actually get bones in an ethical manner, by either cleaning up roadkill yourself or paying someone to do it for you, or literally keeping the bones from your dinner!

Some uses for bones are:

* Telling the future (casting bones or lots)

* Housing the Spirit of the animal so you can work with them

* Form parts of wands or ritual jewellery or headresses

* Ingredients in pouches

Tarot, Runes and Ogham

You can use all of these fortune telling tools in spells, too! You can choose one of them that has a characteristic or represents an outcome that you’d like. So if you wanted a new job, you might choose the Ace of Pentacles. Then you could do any one of the following with it:

* Use it to focus a candle spell

* Add it to a pouch or bag spell

* Add it to a jar spell

* Use it in lieu of a sigil

* Make a vision board around it

* Even burn it! (You can get single Tarot cards for this purpose on eBay.)

•Potions and Elixirs

Potion Magic used to be a lot more popular. Whilst elixirs, tisanes and tea blends are still popular for use on yourself, the masses of recipes of potions, philtres and similar recipes have all but died out. That’s because a lot of potion magic is only to be used in desperate circumstances, like love potions and curses. The reason so many old fashioned love potions are beyond creepy and controlling is that woman’s husband was her meal ticket. If he left her, not only would she be blamed, but she would be out of a house, food and her own family probably wouldn’t take her in. She had shamed them all. (Often through no actual fault of her own.) She was literally facing public humiliation, being outcast, perhaps even starving to death – and sometimes her children along with here.

So dousing  a lover or husband’s food with love potion made a lot more sense then, than it does now.

Thankfully, most of us don’t live in those circumstances any more, so a lot of philtre or potion use has died out. However, there are still some amazing things you can make to ingest yourself:

* Tea blends

* Tisanes (herbals teas)

* Bath spells

* Lunar or solar water

* Herbal Oils

Spoken Magic

Spoken Magic can be long and complicated, or very short. It doesn’t have to rhyme (but it can) it doesn’t have to flow like poetry (but it can). You can use spoken incantation to help direct energy when you’re using other methods, but you can also use it on it’s own.

Some examples of spoken magic:

* Affirmations

* Words of power

* Singing

* Ritual Offerings

* Wishes

You can even banish Spirit’s solely through your voice. Shouting ‘Leave!’ with the correct intention can be very powerful.

•Written Magic

Written magic has existed since we could write. Many cultures view writing AS magic. Think about it – 26 (or thereabouts, depends on your alphabet) tiny squiggles can become anything when placed in the right order. Dumbledore was right about the power of words.

Written magic can include:

* Petitions to Spirits

* Magic squares

* Words of power or protection

* Wishes

* Tattoos

* Rune work

Bag and Pouch Magic

There is all kinds of bag magic – from mojo bags, to more modern spell envelopes. The main idea behind bag or pouch magic is that keeping a carefully curated selection of objects together for a certain time period will produce the effects that you want. A lot of bag magic produces indefinite spells  provided they are charged. Such bags usually grant the wearer protection, prosperity, luck or good health. However, there are bag magics wear a specific time limited spell is wanted – invisibility spells, hex breakers and the like.

•Enchantments and Glamours

Enchantment covers a variety of spell types, but theme of the spells are pretty much the same. Enchantment covers a lot of the old folklore kind of witchcraft – hidden worlds, changing age, changing into different animals and so on.

Enchanting something fools the viewer into believing something is there when it is not, or isn’t there when it is, or is something completely different.

Think of the Harry Potter scene where Hermione explains that the ceiling of the Great Hall isn’t a real sky, it’s just enchanted to look that way.

Real enchantment can be done for fun, but they can also be useful pieces of magic. You can enchant jewelry, clothes or makeup to bestow certain personality traits upon you. You can enchant your witchy items to look normal if you’re fearful of discovery. The possibilities are just about endless.

[oitommothetease]

Invisible String (4/?)

Pairing:  Bucky Barnes x Female reader (Modern AU)

Description: James Buchanan Barnes, the owner of the most expensive-looking club in town and your new apartment. He was a dick and you hated him. What could possibly go wrong when you, the new girl in town, start bartending at his club to pursue your dreams?

Word Count: 2.6k words

Warning: 18+ (discussion of assault, nervous breakdown, anxiety attack, just don’t read this whole series if you are a kid)

You woke up to a night of dreamless sleep like you always did, but then the events of the previous night hit you. You wished it was a dream, but one look in the mirror and a bruise running along your cheek was enough to confirm. Not only that, but you remembered asking your boss to stay over, but you didn't expect him to. The blanket on your living room’s couch and the bowl of fruits and a glass of juice situated out for you on the kitchen counter proved that he did stay.

And then the reality sunk in, you have a decision to make. You can either go to the cops or let that guy get away. The latter sounded not so great, but you knew going to the cops isn't going to be great either. You've seen enough detective shows to know that. You've had enough, and you just wanted to forget it. 

What did Mr. Barnes mean when he said you were going to talk about this? Are you supposed to visit him before work? Is he going to come to your place?

You decided to work on your book but ended up not being able to concentrate, so you started watching a show and fell asleep while watching it. Maybe some Chinese take-out could make you feel better. It didn't. Nothing made you feel better. You wished you had some friends in this new town because you didn't want to burden your work friends. 

After a horrible day of trying to cope, when you finally made your way to the club, you noticed the security was increased. Usually, security guards weren't present inside the club, but today it was different. Everyone was so vigilant and you felt a little safer. If you didn't know any better, you'd think Mr. Barnes did it for you, but again he would have done the same thing for any other employee. 

"Boss wants to see you," Pietro told you. You were about to head for Clint's office when the blond twin spoke again and pointed his finger towards the stairs." The boss."

Okay, well maybe playing naïve couldn't avoid this meeting, so you slowly walked upstairs. How bad could this go, it's not like he saw you in your most vulnerable state? Oh, wait, he did. 

You knocked on his office door, wanting to rip the band-aid and get over with it. 

"Hey," you said, faking a smile. "Thanks for getting me home last night and for breakfast today. I didn't even know I had fruits and juice at home because let's be honest, I'm a toast and coffee kinda gal."

Mr. Barnes didn't say anything, he just looked at you as if you were a confusing puzzle that he couldn't solve. He raised a hand towards the seat in front of him and you took it, nervously fiddling with your fingers under the table.

“You do that a lot, you know?” he asked, it wasn't a question, it was merely an observation.

“What?”

“Deflecting a serious issue by using a joke.” Mr. Barnes observed as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“What are you? My therapist?”

He arched an eyebrow, indicating that you were literally doing the thing he pointed out. 

"Yeah, well, it's called having a healthy coping mechanism. You should try getting one, brooding is only gonna help you this far."

 "It's not healthy if you're not dealing with it," Mr. Barnes pointed out. 

You scoffed in incredulity and you felt very, very attacked. 

What is it? Attacking y/n day?, you thought. 

"Anyway, I think I want to press charges," You changed the subject to a more serious conversation to avoid him calling you out on your bullshit. 

"Okay, I understand.” 

“You do?” You asked, bewilderment clearly written all over your face. “I mean, letting an employee go to the cops is not gonna be great for your club's reputation and yours too. And, you know, considering the shady business, you do-” 

"What exactly do you think we do?" He asked.

And that's when it hit you, you didn't know what he did or mob bosses do in general. All your knowledge about it came from movies and Wattpad, both of them are not a great place to gain knowledge.

“What exactly do you do?” you pondered.

 He obviously wasn't expecting you to directly ask him, nobody has directly asked him or even made it known that they are aware of his work. It was kind of like a silent pact that everybody signed for, everybody except you, apparently. 

“Um, you know, I've been working for almost 2 weeks here now, and I haven't seen any drugs around here, so it's obviously not drugs. You don't look like the sex trafficking types-”

 "Jesus, woman!" He exclaimed, offended by your assumptions. 

"Then just tell me what you do."

You expected him to tell you something, but he just kept looking at you with a face void of emotions.

 "Fine, don't tell me," you mumbled, raising your hands dramatically in defeat. 

“So you don't mind me ruining your reputation by going to the cops?” 

“I told you I don't care. Your safety is my utmost priority,” your face might have given away the surprise you felt because he quickly backpedaled. ”I mean, the safety of my employees.”

“The safety of my employees is my utmost priority,” he told you, providing an extra emphasis on the word employees. “Anyway, one of my people would take you to the police station near-"

You cut him off immediately. 

"No, you can't tell anyone else. I don't want everyone hopping on the pity train. I'm already ashamed that you know about it," you pleaded but your voice was firm, telling him that this was not up for a discussion.

At this, his eyes and features softened. Bucky didn't want you to feel guilty or ashamed for somebody else's actions, but clearly, you did. 

"Okay, then I can take you. You just had to explain to the officer last night’s events, and they'll ask you to recognize Rumlow and then we can-"

Mr. Barnes’s voice faded into the background when it finally hit you.

"You know what, I changed my mind. It's too much. I don't want to press charges anymore. I didn't think this through," you backtracked. You did think this through, but now all the factors were adding up in your brain. You'd have to explain the details to a cop who is probably going to be another man and a stranger, and then they'd ask you to identify the guy. You didn't think you had it in you to face him. At least not now. 

He interpreted your thought process and promptly changed the topic. "Okay, we can work with whatever you want, and at least let Peter escort you home after work."

"What? No!” You quickly declined.

“It's for your own safety,” Bucky tried to reason. He wasn't letting you get off this easily.

 “I'm a strong, independent woman and I'm not scared of anything.” 

That was a lie. You were scared of many things like heights, dark, spiders, confrontation and the list goes on and on. 

You remembered all the lectures your mom gave you telling you that women should be scared because men are monsters, and you'd lose your honor if you are reckless and some other patriarchal crap that you didn't pay attention to. But you weren't scared, you were just always careful. You'd always put the keys between your knuckles when you went home alone. In your previous job, you used to laugh it off whenever your coworkers made a sexist joke. You'd ignore the subtle shoulder touch that your previous boss did. You told yourself that this is what it takes to make it. If you were to run away every time someone eyed you in a wrong way, then you'd spend your whole life running. 

Women usually shrug this behavior off as it is what is, but the truth is it shouldn't be like this.

“Please, I insist.” 

“I'm very capable of taking care of myself. Just because one bad incident happened doesn't mean I'll fucking break!” You stated, your voice louder than your regular voice to get across your point.

That was also a lie. You were walking on a thin line and you were ignoring your emotions. You were one outburst away from a breakdown, and you just couldn't bring yourself to feel anything. 

Mr. Barnes tried to call your name, but you were already bolting out of his office. 

You needed a drink. No, fuck that. You needed multiple drinks. It wasn't exactly wise to get drunk during work, but it couldn't get any shittier than this, right?, you thought.

Right?

 Wrong. It could get way shittier than this. Now it was almost midnight, you were kind of tipsy, and you could see two Mr. Stark, your regular customer, in front of you. 

Did he have a twin? Is he and his twin brother one of those identical twins that dress up the same? Because that's what it looked like.

 “Earth to y/n," Mr. Stark said, or was it his twin? It was getting hard to keep track anymore.

 And that's when you noticed. 

“Holy, Shit. You're triplets, Mr. Stark," you announced. 

"Okay, kid, close my tab.”

“Hey, y/n. Are you okay?” Peter asked, noticing the concerned look Mr. Stark gave him before leaving.

“Yes, I'm fine. Absolutely fine.”

***

Turns out you were not fine. You've been pretty much hammered for the past week, and you could barely get a sentence out without giggling or slurring. Your colleagues took notice of your state and whenever someone pointed it out, you'd just shrug it off as a bad day or a bad week. There was no concept of time in your drunk state.

You couldn't concentrate on your book, you could barely look at someone without squinting, and you've been eating takeout and leftovers for the past few days. 

James would have fired if someone working under him was this irresponsible, but he knew your reasons. He knew you clearly weren't coping with the trauma well. Your work ethics were shoved down the trash that even Clint asked why you weren't fired yet.

Bucky didn't want to talk to you, he thought that maybe giving you some space would do you good, but clearly it wasn't working. Usually, the mob boss didn't interfere in the affairs of his employees, it was Clint's job, but when you smashed a bottle on the head of a customer, he had to interject.

“I TOLD THIS FUCKER NO!” you yelled, Peter’s hand around your middle from behind. Another empty beer bottle was in your hand, ready to be smashed across the face of the drunk dude in front of you.

Pietro and Wanda were enjoying the show. Peter, being the peace lover he is, held you back when you smashed a bottle across a drunk customer's face. Even though Peter was younger than you, he was stronger, and he was not only holding you back but also himself. He didn't want to cause a scene and that is why he was mulling comforting words in your ear like, he's not worth it, you're gonna kill this guy.

Damn right I am, you thought.

It was ironic because everyone in that club had killed someone except you.

When Bucky walked into the room, the drunk guy turned towards him and pointed at you. ”You are hiring crazy bitches now? Just called her baby girl and she went psycho!!!”

Bucky didn't understand what was happening. He told the security guards to take that man outside his club and he walked towards you. He firmly yet gently took a hold of your left arm, signaling Peter to let go of you. Without a word, he started walking in the direction of his office, dragging you along with him.

Once near his office, he lightly yanked your hand and shoved you inside, making you stand in front of him.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he inquired, having had enough of your incompetence.

You were seething with rage. "Wrong with me? I told him no, but he didn't listen."

Bucky stepped forward, his anger dissipating into sympathy. " I know, he mumbled, "and I'm so-"

 "No, you don't know!" you yelled, body trembling and tears welling up in your eyes. "I told him no multiple times, I even tried to push him off me, but he just kept coming back."

Bucky's eyes furrowed in confusion. He didn't understand your words, the drunk customer didn't touch you. And that's when he realized, you weren't talking about the drunk customer. He cognized that the drunk guy purely triggered something that you've been suppressing for days now. Bucky was aware that you needed to get it out of your system to cope healthily.

“I told him no, you know? But he just wouldn't listen,” you stated, trying to convince yourself that you didn't lead him on. ”And he was so…. so strong and… and then he hit me and everything just went blur, I couldn't see but... but I could still feel him with me.”

Not realizing that you were not in that place anymore, you wrapped your hand around yourself to seek some sort of protection and comfort, bottom lip quivering, the welled up traitorous tears were streaming down your face and all you could think about was that night. 

“I… I can't get his touch out,” you stammered. ” I shower, multiple times a day, but I still can't get his touch out.”

With that, you broke down completely and shattered on the floor, sobbing ferociously. Your knees ached because of the position you were situated in, but the emotional pain was enough to overshadow the physical one.

For once in his lifetime, Bucky did not know what to do. Cautiously, he made his way towards you and knelt down in front of you. He did not know what to say or do to make you feel better.

You launched your body towards him, snaking your arms around his shoulder to settle on his neck as if he was the only thing grounding you. You lurched onto him like he was your anchor, and maybe he was. It took a minute for Bucky to register your actions, and when he did, he wrapped his arms around your middle and closed the minuscule distance separating you.

He surprised himself with the way one of his hands automatically reached for your hair and whispered words of comfort in your ear. He caught you as you crumpled physically and emotionally. 

”You're going to be okay, doll,” he whispered and kissed your temple with sincerity. ”I will make sure of that.”

The second part was barely audible, it wasn't meant for you, it was a promise he made to himself.

Bucky held you tightly yet gently while you sobbed on his shoulder.

 He didn't know how long he held you, it felt like an eternity to him with the way he could feel the guilt and rage inside him. When you passed out in his arms, he gently placed you on one of the comfortable couches in his office and draped a blanket around you that he had for when he would work late at night.

An office chair might not be the most ideal place to spend the night in, but it didn't matter to Bucky. All that mattered was you.

TAGS: @bananapipedreams​ @akkinda10​  @rivers-rambles21​  @emmabarnes​@goodcleanfunsis​ @valsworldofcreativity​

[troubatrain]

set it up - a. beauvillier

a/n: i started this idk 9000 years ago with three different hockey boys but i’ve never written for tito and this could be 6k words of absolute garbage but i think you guys will like it?? it was inspired when i watching the Netflix movie Set It Up, which I absolutely love because who doesn’t love a romcom. I wanna thank @nazdaddy​ for giving it a quick read like halfway through to hype me up you’re a real one!!

You felt sick.

Your feet hurt, your head was pounding and you were absolutely soaked. It started in the morning, waking up late for and having to sacrifice your morning coffee so your boss wouldn’t kill you. Then there was the workday from hell, skipping lunch to work on a project because your boss’s son had a brain the size of a raisin. By the time five rolled around, a storm had sweeped into New York, soaking the city streets on a day when you didn’t have an umbrella on hand. The subway packed, and by the time you’d gotten back to your apartment you were absolutely exhausted. You were looking forward to a night in, a glass of wine and ordering take out.

Then you were met with the sight of a pink scrunchie, sparkling against your door and stopping you dead in your tracks.

Rose was your best friend, and that was the sole reason why you haven’t murdered her yet. You’d lived with Rose since you were freshman in college, randomly paired up as roommates and you got lucky she turned out to be your friend. In all of those years, she’d been with the same guy who she met approximately four hours after you moved into your dorm. Cam was great, until one day he just wasn’t. Rose still didn’t know what happened, but after grieving the longest relationship she’d ever been in for months, she was finally ready to start dating again. Turns out, dating again, was going to ruin your life.

You furrow your eyebrows, rubbing your hand over your eyes and trying to remember if she mentioned having anyone over. You open your phone, remembering how you turned on do not disturb sometime after she sent you her tenth meme of the day while you were working your ass off.

Having Kyle over for dinner - among other things, can you stay out for a bit?

You lean your head back, letting out a small scream in frustration. You hear a laugh behind you, and you turn around to be met by your neighbor. Anthony Beauvillier was an okay neighbor. He was quiet, usually giving you some sort of heads up that he’d been having a party which was rare. You knew he was gone most of the time because of hockey, but you never cared to ask any questions further than that. One thing you did notice about your neighbor, was just how handsome he looked in a suit on the rare occasion you caught him in the elevator.

“You okay?” Anthony asks, turning his head to the side, “Are you locked out?”

“No,” You sigh, debating whether or not you really needed to drop this on him, “Rose has a friend over, and I missed her text to tell me to stay out.”

“But you’re soaked,” Anthony points out, pointing to the water that was dripping off of you, “Come by me.”

“Oh you don’t have to do that, I’ll just-” You start to decline his invite, but his eyes were kind while they were staring at you, an amused smile on his face.

“C’mon Y/N, I’ll get you some dry clothes,” Anthony smiles, opening up his apartment door and insisting you came in, “And I’m not going to cook all of this for myself.”

Anthony holds up the grocery bags in his hand, soft eyes and a smile to match staring back at you. You nod, taking the invitation inside because it beat sloshing around in your heels, “Thanks Anthony.”

“You can call me Beau if you want,” Anthony shrugs, pointing down the hallway of the apartment that was identical to yours, “My rooms down there take whatever you want.”

Anthony moves around his kitchen, his mind wandering about why he felt compelled to invite her neighbor inside. Really he felt bad, you looked like you were having an awful day and getting sexiled from your own apartment probably would have been enough to break you. Anthony was tired too, his body was sore from a rough practice earlier that day. Not to mention the team was on a five game losing streak and while Anthony knew he could be doing more himself, he knew Mat wasn’t playing up to usual standards either.

Mat was a mess, and it was starting to drive Anthony absolutely crazy. He thought he was in love, a random girl he followed on Instagram who he took out a few times. Mat thought it was something, turns out she thought it was something casual. Now, his usual cocky and charismatic best friend was just a sad shell of himself. Selfishly, Anthony wanted him to get over it because if he did then they’d probably win a few more games and Trotz wouldn’t have them skate until someone threw up.

Then it hit him, the second you walked back into the kitchen with his clothes hanging off your frame while you pulled your hair back an idea came to Anthony’s head. If you wanted peace and quiet, he could give it to you, “Does Rose do this a lot?”

“Lately,” You sigh, sitting at the barstool next to the island, “Her boyfriend broke up with and after she cried for a few months she decided to be single and that’s ruining my life.”

“What if I could help?” Anthony asks, raising his eyebrows at you.

“You don’t need to let me into your place because Rose is-” You go to tell him no - whatever idea he had couldn’t be a fix all solution for your current problem.

“My teammate Mat, he’s single, and honestly sad, but he does have his own place where Rose can spend all her time…” Anthony suggests, dragging out his last words to give you a minute to think.

“What if they don’t even like each other?” You ask, stating what you thought should be the obvious.

“We’ll just set them up on a few dates, I’ll give Mat advice that you give me and it’ll all work out,” Anthony argues back, “We’re in complete control here.”

“But then it’s not real,” You remind him, that if you told Mat exactly how to date Rose it wouldn’t be Mat dating Rose at all.

“Does it matter?” Anthony asks, “You get a quiet apartment and my team gets a few wins, “What's the harm?”

“The harm is our friend's feelings,” You say, your hands in the air while you continued to talk. You were stopped by a ding on your phone, a text from Rose giving you a fair warning that her friend was staying over. You roll your eyes, “You know what - fine.”

“Really? You’re in?”

“Don’t make me regret this.”

***

You didn’t know why Anthony had you meeting him at the coffee shop just a few blocks away from your building, but judging by the all black outfit he was sporting, something told you that it was because he was taking this set up thing too seriously.

“Are we spies now?” You ask, slipping into the chair and crossing your arms, “Because if we are you aren’t doing a very good job.”

“I’m not doing a good job? You’re wearing yellow,” Anthony says, “You could not be any more obvious.”

“Whatever, when’s Mat going to get here?” You ask, grabbing the coffee Anthony had waiting for you.

The plan was simple, Anthony knew that Mat knew who Rose was to some capacity, because Mat had told his friend on more than one occasion about how hot his neighbors were. So, you were both going to force them to actually speak to each other. Anthony suggested just telling them that you were setting them up on a date, but you insisted that if this was going to work they would have to think this happened without the will of the two of you. So you both invited them to the same place, and after you both conveniently miss your plans they would have to run into eachother.

“He should be here soon, I tipped the barista $40 to mix up their coffees and let us watch from their kitchen,” Anthony explains, holding up to his end of the plan, “Which by the way, was way more than I think they would have taken.”

“Oh I’m sure you’ll be okay,” You roll your eyes, reminding him that you were living with Rose to keep your rent down while Anthony could live alone comfortably, “Shit, I see them.”

You both got up, sneaking into the back where the barista who was working just shook her head at the two of you. You peek out, watching the scene unfold in front of you. Anthony wraps his arm around your chest, pulling you back into him, “I swear if you get caught.”

You try to push the thought about how good Anthony smelled, or how nice his arm felt around you while you tried to focus on Rose who just grabbed Mat’s coffee by accident. Mat tells her it’s his, a joke about how familiar she looked following shortly after. Their conversation was brief, and for a minute you thought maybe it wasn’t going to work. Then you saw Mat slip his phone out of his pocket, holding it out for Rose to take.

“Oh my god, it’s working,” You exclaim, Anthony’s hand flying over your mouth immediately. He mumbled something in French, and there was no way you were going to be able to make it out. Anthony’s phone dings, and he pulls it out to show a text from Mat sent promptly after Rose was out of the cafe.

I think I just asked your neighbor out.

Anthony was beaming, pulling his hand off your mouth while you both watched Mat leave the shop, “This date needs to be perfect.”

“It will be as long as you listen to me,” You say, turning around to cross your arms at him, “Because if this is going to work-”

“You almost blew our cover, I’m in charge here,” Anthony scoffs, “You’re like the worst sidekick in the world.”

“You’re the sidekick here.”

“No it’s you, you’re Robin and I’m Batman.”

***

“Here?”

“No.”

“How about this one?”

“God, no she hates seafood.”

You’d been trying to figure out where you were going to set up Mat and Rose’s first date for hours. Every restaurant Anthony mentioned just wasn’t enough, and Mat was dying for some help from his friend. Anthony was frustrated, mostly with you for not just choosing something and calling it a day.

“This is why you’re single, by the way, because these places are just meh,” You argue, pulling his laptop from his hands, “Where’s the romance?”

“I’ll have you know I’m very romantic,” Anthony scoffs, not having any of your shit, “Ask any girl I’ve ever dated.”

“Seems like they’re all gone, wonder why,” You hum, scrolling through the Google search.

“Fine, how about this? He takes her to a show because you said she loves musicals,” Anthony suggests, pulling the laptop from your hands, “After Mat sets up a dinner by his place because he’s got a sick rooftop and if all goes to plan Rose will be there all night.”

You whip your head around to look at the man next to you, a grin on his face because he very well may have nailed it when it came to a first date. It was simple, yet fancy enough to keep Rose interested, “That just might work.”

You kept your mouth closed about why keeping Rose out all night was going to work for you. You had a date with someone you matched with on Hinge who seemed nice enough and the opportunity to take him home at the end of the night didn’t seem like a bad move. You didn’t want to let that information slip to Anthony, and you didn’t know why. You didn’t like him, and you were pretty positive he was only putting up with you because you were both trying to set Mat and Rose up.

“It’s a date then?” Anthony asks, pulling out his phone to give Mat all the details about the date he should be taking his neighbor on. Anthony made it clear to Mat he’d know, despite the fact that before the other night Anthony hadn’t had so much as a conversation with Rose or yourself. However, he had you and you knew Rose better than anyone.

***

You sat across from your date, twirling the glass of wine in your hand while he talked about his family. Ben was nice, and honestly you were enjoying his company. The restaurant was almost perfect, because knowing it made your rejection list for Mat and Rose’s first date location wasn’t something you could shake. Ben had to be oblivious to it, a delighted smile on his face from across you. Your phone rang on the table, and Anthony’s number popped up for the third time that evening. You knew Rose and Mat were well into their date at this point, and you had the night planned so perfectly nothing could possibly go wrong.

“You can take that if you need to,” Ben suggests, a gentle tone to his voice. You nod, feeling a little bad for stepping away from your conversation to answer the call.

“I’m on a date,” You grit out the second you were out of Ben’s earshot, “Someone better be dead Beau.”

“We’re about to be,” Anthony huffs out, “The chef Mat hired canceled and I have all of these ingredients and I know how to cook three things and they aren’t steak.”

“Beau,” You whisper harshly, “Figure. It. Out.”

“Absolutely not, if this tanks you’re coming down with me,” Anthony begs, “Please come to Mat’s and help me.”

So you did. You loved Rose too much to let this blow up in your face because of Anthony’s inability to cook a meal. Ben was understanding, accepting the excuse that you weren’t feeling well and even offering to pay for your cab back home. You declined, because you didn’t have the heart to tell him you had to bail out Anthony.

By the time you finally got to Mat’s, you could hear a string of curses on the other side of the door and the smell of something burning. You walked in and a pan was practically on fire while Anthony turned around frantically.

“Oh my god, move,” You demand, grabbing the pan and turning down the stove, “You really can’t cook anything?”

Anthony was dumbfounded, standing in Mat’s kitchen letting his eyes wander down your bare legs. You looked good and if you weren’t about to chew him out Anthony might have said something. But you were standing in front of him, arms crossed while you waited for him to say something. When he didn’t you sighed, pushing him out of the way and getting to work.

“Make yourself useful and set the damn table,” You demand, pointing a spatula in his direction. This dinner had to be perfect if this was going to work. You relished in the silence, getting to work on the dinner that you were left to save.

“So how was your date?” You hear Anthony’s voice float back into the apartment, and you turn around to give him a dirty look, “Or did I ruin that?”

“You didn’t totally ruin it, Ben was nice,” You shrug, not really wanting to get into it. The thing was, Ben was nice and that seemed to be a rare thing to find. Sure, you could have done without the boring work talk, but it was better than some of the other dates you’d been on lately.

“Hm, just nice?” Anthony stifles a a laugh, closing his mouth immediately when your eyes narrowed at him, “Sorry. I’ll leave probably boring but nice Ben alone.”

“I used to think you were nice, you know?” You snark back, plating the dinner just as Mat slipped in to grab the food.

“Dude you’re a lifesaver,” Mat immediately thanks Anthony and you had to roll your eyes at the sigh, “Wait aren’t you-”

“Rose’s roommate, uh yeah, she cooks all the time so I called her,” Anthony rushes to explain, the idea that Mat would recognize you going right over his head in a panic.

“Well, thanks you guys really saved my ass,” Mat says, grabbing two plates and heading up to the roof where you knew Rose was probably checking her teeth in nervous panic. 

It took forever to clean up the kitchen, Anthony’s sad initial attempt to cook was disastrous. You probably didn’t help, and by the time you were done cooking you had used every pan in Mat’s apartment. You could hear Rose’s voice in the hall and you both looked at each other in a panic. Anthony grabbed your hand, pulling you into the nearest closet to the kitchen.

“Quiet,” Anthony whispers, your mind far too distracted by your head pressed against his chest to care about just how small this closet was. You were trying to steady your own breathing, the closet was small and when Anthony took up most of the space you could feel a bit of anxiety creeping in. You wrap your arms around his waist, your fingers digging into his sides to grab a hold of quite literally anything. Anthony can feel it, how nervous you were so he took a chance and carded his fingers through your hair in an attempt to calm you down just a little bit, “Just wait until they’re in his room and I’ll take us home I promise.”

You nodded against his chest, closing your eyes and just letting Anthony provide you with any comfort he was willing to give. He was a bit snarky and definitely a little too bossy but he was the best you were going to get for the moment. You hear a door click and with Rose’s giggle on the other side you knew you were in the clear.

“So you really went through all of this just for a few wins?” You break the silence in Anthony’s car, looking out the window while he drove you both home.

“I mean, yeah, when Mat plays his best so do the rest of us,” Anthony shrugs, “Don’t tell me I could be playing better, I’ve heard it enough.”

“I wasn’t going to,” You defend, your voice small, “Do you think we could get them away for a night next weekend?”

“Hot date? Boring Ben doesn’t seem like he’d sleep over until the third date,” Anthony jokes, tapping you on the thigh.

“Sort of, I have my boss’s birthday party and I just want him to hate me less,” You admit, plus the office gossip always seemed to revolve around the fact that you never brought a date anywhere.

“I think you’re impossible to hate, trust me I’ve been trying.”

“You’re an ass.”

“Do you want my help or not?”

***

Everything was going wrong, like very wrong. The bigger plan was actually going the way it was supposed to, Rose and Mat were off to an Airbnb in the Hamptons for a night that Anthony just happened to mention to Mat during practice the day after you cooked them that dinner. That, however, was the only thing going well for you. You were dressed up, the black dress you were wearing looked absolutely killer on you. Your leg was poking out of the slit that was appropriate for a work event and the date you were supposed to be on, but your date was nowhere to be seen. Turns out Boring Ben wasn’t boring at all, or he was just a total douche and you never realized. Regardless, you were dateless yet again, and you had to admit it was a bit of an ego killer too. You thought about not going, but after telling a few of your coworkers that not only were you going, you were bringing a date.

You take a deep breath, bracing yourself for the passive aggressive comments from the newlyweds who seemed to litter your office. You had ten wedding invitations last summer from your coworkers alone, and now you had to show up dateless for what felt like the millionth time in your life.

“Woah,” You hear Anthony’s voice as soon as the elevator opened, a low whistle escaping from his lips until he realized you were without your date, “Where’s that Ben dude?”

“He didn’t show if you really need to know,” You complain and Anthony could feel his heart break just a little.

Anthony sighs, taking a look at his watch and then back at you. You looked hurt, despite the smile plastered on your face that he could see right through. He was going to have a night in, maybe even invite over the girl he’d been hooking up with but in his heart he knew what the right thing to do was, “Give me five minutes to change?”

“No Beau you really don’t have to come, I got stood up, it's on me,” You rush out, stopping Anthony dead in his tracks.

“It’s not your fault that dude was an asshole,” Anthony scoffs, “And you look too good to not have a date.”

Anthony didn’t say another word, unlocking the door to his place and coming back out less than five minutes later in a freshly pressed suit, “No tie okay?”

“No tie is fine,” You squeaked out, watching Anthony fix the cuffs of his shirt. Everyone thinks a man putting on a suit is hot right? It wasn’t just that he looked damn good in it, “You can still back out.”

Anthony didn’t back out, in fact, he was a better date than you thought he could be. He was being a good sport, especially when you came to the realization your boss was a huge Islanders fan. He had Anthony by his side all night, no doubt pestering him about the season. You felt awful, and while Anthony had a smile on his face you couldn’t help but feel guilty for putting him in the situation in the first place.

“I met that boyfriend of yours,” Your coworker Stella says, nudging you with her elbow, “He seems like a keeper.”

“Oh he’s-” You went to deny any indication that Anthony was your boyfriend but you knew Stella better than that, and just like she did at everyone Monday morning team meeting, she was interrupting you before you had a chance to finish your sentence.

“And don’t even tell me it’s not serious he couldn’t stop talking about you,” Stella grabs your arm, and you raise your eyebrows and look at Anthony. He catches your eye, sending you a wink while he goes back to listening to whatever your boss was rambling about, “See? So cute.”

The night was going smoothly, and by the time dinner rolled around you were done for the night. One too many glasses of wine had your head resting on Anthony’s shoulder while your boss's wife made a toast. His hand was resting on the exposed skin on your thigh and if you weren’t convinced you were overthinking it - you may have thought Anthony was putting in a little more effort.

“I’m sorry my boss was chewing your ear off,” You whisper, catching Anthony’s attention, “I don’t want you to think I brought you because you’re you and he likes your team.”

“I don’t think that,” Anthony assures you, his lips just inches away from kissing on the forehead, “And he doesn’t hate you, he told me liked you.”

“He likes you, seems like everyone does,” You muse, after having gotten compliments all night about what a joy your boyfriend was you were sure Anthony was a better date than he was an actual companion.

“Better date than Ben?” Anthony asks, and you nod with a grin on your face.

Anthony wasn’t sure what he was doing or why. In the short time since he invited you into his place he only learned how annoying you can be, but he’d be a liar if he didn’t think it was cute. It was cute that you thought Mat and Rose could actually fall in love. It was cute that you never kept quiet when you were both sneaking around because something got you excited. And it was downright adorable to watch you laugh at your boss’s wife who was teasing her husband in her speech. He liked you, and he never thought about it until he saw the heartbroken look on your face when you told him your date stood you up.

“Ready to go home?” Anthony whispers, your eyes were getting heavier from the wine, and he wasn’t sure how much longer you would hold up until you fell asleep on his shoulder. Not that Anthony would have minded at all, he might even have preferred it.

By the time you’d gotten back to your apartment building, you made it clear why you limited yourself on wine at events. Anthony kept refilling your glass before you had a chance to stop him, and now he was practically chasing you down the hall because you insisted on running away for no reason at all.

“For a professional athlete you’re pretty slow,” You poke Anthony in the chest, who was currently fishing through your purse for your set of keys. He finally finds them turning them into the lock and opening the door, “Beauuuu.”

“Yes?” Anthony asks, grabbing your waist while you tripped over your heels.

“Do you think Mat really likes Rose?” You ask, the question wasn’t really for Anthony at all. It was coming from a guilty feeling that had been stewing inside of you for a few days. Rose seemed smitten, and a part of you knew a lot of those dates were just planned by you.

“He does, it’ll all work out,” Anthony assures you, because the frown on your face told him that if he didn’t he was about to have a crying Y/N on his hands and he didn’t want to be the one to make you cry.

“Promise?” You ask, finally slipping off your heels and leaning against the doorframe. You wanted him to stay, use the age old it’s late excuse for a few more hours where he was close to you. His apartment was across the hall, and asking him to stay would be silly. You watched him head out the door, turning around to give you one more look and answer your question.

“Yeah I promise.”

***

This entire thing had gotten out of hand, and Rose and Mat’s relationship was becoming a chore. You had stopped them from killing each other twice in the past week, texting Anthony almost exact directions on how Mat was going to fix whatever stupid he said. Mat didn’t know, or maybe he did and he didn’t care to say anything about how with your help his relationship with Rose would be over before it started. Now, you were hiking across the city for flowers so Mat could apologize to Rose for forgetting her mother’s name as if she didn’t talk about her family constantly. You finally got them to Mat’s wiping a bead of sweat off your forehead when a text came that rocked your world.

I think I love Mat, he literally had these delivered after I got mad at him.

Attached was a picture of the flowers, and a guilty feeling churned in your stomach while you made your way back to your place. You stopped in the hallway, looking at Anthony’s door biting your lip and thinking about what the consequences of this all really was - and it was eating at you.

You were fucked, completely and utterly fucked. It seemed wrong, like everything in your best friend’s love life was a lie you created because it was. So you panicked, and snuck away to Anthony’s without a second thought. You knocked twice, a sleepy hockey player appearing on the other side. 

“Rose is in love with Mat,” You state, pushing Anthony into his own place and walking past him.

“Isn’t that what we wanted?” Anthony asks, watching you pace through his apartment.

“It’s not real, everything Mat knows about Rose is because you told him,” You explain, stopping in the middle of the room, “We planned their dates, we did everything, and when they realize they might not as much in common as they think Rose is going to be heartbroken and-”

“So, you got what you wanted? She’s always over there,” Anthony counters back, not mentioning the hot streak his teammate was on.

“You don’t see anything with this?” You ask, furrowing your eyebrows at the man you thought you knew in front of you, “That your friend is going to be with someone when their relationship is built on a lie.”

“You act like he’s going to marry her,” Anthony groans, not even realizing until after the words left his mouth about how awful that sounded. Your jaw had dropped, your eyes wide while you look at Anthony, “Wait Y/N-”

“I’m telling them the truth,” You say, a stoic robotic tone to your voice. You thought about telling Rose just minutes before you left your place, but you stopped yourself before you ratted out your friend. Now, it seemed like it didn’t matter. Anthony was going to be a selfish asshole regardless of what you did and you weren’t going to let that sham of a relationship continue, “I shouldn’t have listened to your stupid idea to begin with.”

***

You walked out of Anthony’s life after that, and in the week that’s passed since, he was miserable. He didn’t know what you told Rose, but he definitely heard the arguing you were having with her from across the hall. He knew he should have stepped in, but the way you looked at him when you left was the only reason he didn’t. You looked at him with such disdain, like the mere indication that he didn’t care about his own friend’s feelings were the most awful thing he could have done.

Maybe it was, either way the guilt was eating Anthony alive. He called, but you never picked up. He texted you, using some dumb excuse about needing to grab a package outside his door while he on a road trip but an answer never came. Hell, he even tried to email you. The only thing left to do was walk across the hall and knock on your door, if you were even still there.

“Dude you’re doing it again,” Mat says, tossing a chip at his teammate and catching Anthony’s attention, “Just go over there and apologize.”

“Did you apologize to Rose?” Anthony huffs, annoyed with Mat’s attempt at giving him any advice.

“I didn’t have to because this was your fault,” Mat explains, reminding Anthony of exactly what happened after you left his place. You told Rose everything, and after what Anthony heard as a nasty fight - Rose and Mat spilt up once they realize they actually had nothing in common, “And fuck you dude because I still apologized to Rose after that.”

“Fine, I’ll go over,” Anthony budges, stomping out of his own place and across the hall to yours. He knocked twice, hearing some shuffling on the other end. The door finally clicked open, and when Anthony was met with Rose’s face, his shoulders slumped.

“She’s not here,” Rose leans against the doorway, her arms crossed at Anthony, “We’re, uh, taking some time away from each other.”

“This wasn’t Y/N’s fault it was mine,” Anthony rushes to explain, the reality of ruining someone's friendship settling in.

“I know it was,” Rose assures him, because she’d forgiven you just three days after you told her the truth. That wasn’t enough for you to come home, because your own guilt was eating you alive, “She feels too bad, and she doesn’t want to see you.”

That was it, Rose’s words were enough to have reality really settle in. Anthony Beauvillier was a massive asshole, and the reason you weren’t back in your own apartment. He did that. He was going to have to live with that guilt. And he didn’t know how to fix it.

***

It had been a month.

You didn’t know why you knew exactly how many days it’s been since you stomped out of Anthony’s apartment and into your own to tell the truth. But, you did know that exactly thirty days prior that’s just what you did. You told Rose everything, from the stupid plan to your own stupid feelings that seemed to

cloud your judgement. She was upset, and she had every right to be. You knew that she could have kicked you out of the apartment and told you to fuck off, and she did. Three days later, a much calmer Rose was on the phone telling you everything was fine and you could come back home.

You didn’t want to, because you knew Anthony was across the hall living his life just the way he had been before you stepped into it. He was going to go out on dates with girls that weren’t you, and go off on road trips for games he needed to play. He could set Mat up with someone else if he really wanted to, but none of those things would ever involve you again. You packed your stuff, and moved into a new place after couch surfing by a few of your friend’s places.

“You’re depressed,” Rose kicks your leg from the other side of your new couch, a movie night to celebrate your new place was in full effect, “I told you I’m not mad about the Mat thing.”

“I know,” You sigh, staring at the glass of fruity pink wine Rose had brought over, “I just-”

“You miss him,” Rose muses, a knowing look on her face, “It was never about Mat and I, it was always using us as an excuse to see each other.”

“It was about you guys at first,” You defend, staring at the blonde across from you who was looking at you intensely.

“He came and looked for you, after a week,” Rose says, holding onto the tidbit of information she’d been saving for almost a month, “I think he wanted to apologize.”

“Well he didn’t so it doesn’t matter anymore,” You snap back, Rose melting back into the couch to avoid being the next stop on your rage tour. You didn’t want to care about Anthony or his stupid biceps again, but you never stopped thinking about him.

***

Anthony wasn’t doing much better, in fact, he was doing a whole lot worse. He felt like shit, he was playing like shit, and he seemed just like Mat was when he came up with that stupid plan. He tried to throw himself into hockey, push his body where it had never gone before because then he wouldn’t have to think about you. He wouldn’t have to think about how much of a romantic you were or how you helped with even if he didn’t deserve. Most importantly, he wouldn’t have to think about how heartbroken you looked when he told you he didn’t want to come clean because it didn’t matter.

Anthony was doing the same thing he’d been doing all month, stalking your social media profiles in an attempt to see if you were doing okay. He knew you moved, and if he wasn’t on the West Coast maybe he would have stopped you. A text from Mat came in, one that had him rolling his eyes.

My rooftop in twenty it’s an emergency.

***

What Anthony didn’t know was that the same text was sent from Rose’s phone to yours just a few minutes prior. You rushed over Mat’s, absolutely terrified about what you could have been walking into. Except, when you got up to the roof there was nothing. No Mat. No Rose. Just yourself and-

“Fuck,” Anthony whispers, opening the rooftop door to reveal you on the otherside. It was just you, standing there just as confused as he was by the cryptic text from his teammate, “Uh Mat texted me to come?”

A grin threatens to break out on your face, just as the gears were starting to shift in Anthony’s. You were being set up, of course not as well as you would have planned, but it was a set up nonetheless.

“You know what they’re doing right?” You ask, breaking the silence. Anthony just nods, running a hand over his face without saying a word, “I’m going to go-”

“No,” Anthony rushes out, grabbing your arm and intertwining his fingers with yours, “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry? You made me cry for weeks and almost blew up my longest friendship and all you have to say is sorry?” You questioned him, waiting for Anthony to come up with something better than that.

“What do you want me to say? That I didn’t want to stop doing this because I didn’t want to stop hanging out with you?” Anthony exclaims, “Because that’s the truth. I was being a selfish asshole, and I know that I don’t deserve your forgiveness but I feel awful for what I did to you. I was so scared to come and apologize because you have every right to tell me to go fuck myself and never speak to me again. The problem is, I want to talk to you. I want to listen to you talk about why you were a hopeless romantic, and take you home after you drank too much at a work thing. I-”

Anthony couldn’t finish his rant, because you pressed your lips against his before he had the chance. His hands were on your face, pulling you as closely as he could because he needed this kiss to show you that he wanted you. You finally pulled away, breathless while Anthony’s hands snuck down to your waist. His forehead was against yours, your noses bumping together while he whispered his next words.

“We’re not telling Mat this worked.”

“Oh definitely not, no more set ups?”

“Unless it’s me setting up our first date, consider it a promise.”

[another-tmnt-writer]

You Fell From the Sky - Part 2

Leonardo x Reader

Author: Admin Mo

Summary: After falling from the sky and landing literally in the arms of your favorite turtle, it takes some adjustment to live in another reality, but with the help of the leader in blue, you’re getting used to it.

Note: Let it be known that I wrote the first part of this before I knew reality shifting was a thing, but now that I know it is……let me tell you, I am tempted…

Warnings: None?

Word Count: 1.6k

It had been three weeks. Three whole weeks living in the lair. You were over the moon. Honestly, it was spectacular. However, after three weeks without a phone charger (you’d been using it very, very sparingly and had it turned off most of the time) your phone was now at one percent. So, you popped into the lab, where Donnie was at the moment.

“Hey Donnie?” You asked tentatively, standing in the doorway.

“Oh, hey (Y/N)! Can I help you with something?” He asked, his voice friendly. He looked up at you, giving you his full attention from whatever he was working on.

“Um, do you have a phone charger I can use?”

“Of course!” He pulled open a drawer on his desk that was absolutely filled with charging chords of every time, meticulously organized with twist ties. “What kind do you need?”

“iPhone.” You said.

He reached into the drawer and handed you a ten-foot chord. “Here you go.”

“Thank you!” You smiled. “What are you working on, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I don’t mind!” He scooted over to let you see his screen. “I’m working on figuring out how to open an interdimensional portal right now. Sorry it’s taking me so long.”

“Don’t be sorry. This is literally groundbreaking work. You’re a genius, but I definitely didn’t expect you to do it overnight.”

“Well that’s reassuring.” He chuckled. “I’ll keep you posted. Don’t want to keep you here any longer than we have to.”

You knew he was kidding about the last bit, but your heart sank a little when he said it. You liked being at the lair. You liked spending time with the guys. Sure, you wanted to go home at some point, but you wished it didn’t have to come so soon.

“Thank you, Donnie.”

You left the lab to find Leo lingering just outside. He looked concerned, his arms crossed, head tilted, blue, blue eyes focused on you. “You okay?” he asked softly.

You nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

“No reason. You just seemed a little down.” He answered. He stared at you for a moment before remembering, “Oh, April is here. She brought you some more clothes.”

“Awesome. Thank you so much.”

“Don’t mention it.” He shrugged, leading you back out to the living room, where Mikey was ranting about something to April and Casey while Raph listened and shook his head.

You stared at each of them for a long moment, absorbing. Megan Fox and Stephen Amell were standing like twenty feet away from you. It was overwhelming to say the very least. “Holy shit…”

“Hi! You must be (Y/N). I’m April. This is Casey.”

“Hockey puck has got a bit of a chip on his shoulder, but he means well.” Raph elaborated.

“This is so insane.” You laughed, smiling at them. “It’s incredible to meet you. The boys…told you where I’m from, right?”

“Yeah, they did.” April nodded. “That must have been quite the jump.”

“It was. I’m still…getting used to it, I guess.”

“Well, take your time.” She nudged Raph playfully. “They take some getting used to.”

“Hey!” Raph scoffed, nudging her back. “Ya took some getting used to yourself, O’Neil.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much.” Leo said, his eyes sparkling. “I think you’re fitting in just fine.”

You ignored the way your heart raced when he said it, replying with a smirk, “I agree.”

***

It was later that night. You were in the kitchen, baking with Splinter’s permission. He was in his room drinking tea and the boys were out on patrol. That was the other thing. Every time they left, you felt empty. You knew they’d be fine, but there was always a little bit of worry nagging in the back of your brain. What if they…weren’t?

So: stress-baking. The recipe of the evening? Chocolate chip cookies. They were a classic you were sure the boys would like. Your hair was up in a messy bun and you had some tunes playing from your phone. You scooped out the balls of cookie dough, setting them in careful rows on the pan before sticking them into the hot oven.

You baked for a few hours, rotating trays until you had a batch big enough to feed four hungry mutant turtles, their father, and yourself.

You switched off the oven, and right as you did, you heard their voices echoing through the tunnels until finally, they entered the lair.

“Good night?” You asked hopefully.

“Better now, angelcakes.” Mikey winked and then stopped in his tracks when he saw the steaming pile of fresh-baked cookies. His eyes widened and he gasped excitedly. “Are these for us?”

“Yep.”

“Wow, she bakes, too, Leo.” Raph teased, reaching for a cookie in time with Donnie.

“Thanks, (Y/N),” said the turtle in the purple bandana.

“Of course.”

Leo went in for one last, still reeling a bit from Raph’s comment, his cheeks rosier than usual. He said softly, “Thank you for doing this.”

“Thank you for letting me crash here. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without you guys finding me when you did.”

“It’s the least we could do.” Leo insisted.

“Alright, quit yer flirting. Let’s all go watch a movie or something.” Raph insisted, walking out towards the TV. The rest of you followed, and of course when you and Leo went to find seats, the only two that were left were right next to each other.

You settled in, blushing a bit. Raph had a smug smirk on his face.

“What?” You challenged, causing him to chuckle.

“Nothin’.”

As it got later, it also got colder, and you soon found yourself shivering the slightest bit, wishing you’d thought to grab a blanket before the movie started like the rest of the guys had.

“Are you cold?” Leo asked.

Instead of telling him you weren’t like you wanted to, you nodded. Without hesitation, he pulled half of his large blue blanket onto your lap, letting you share his warmth. As if you weren’t blushing enough before, he just had to be a gentleman and fluster you even further.

“T-thanks.” You could have punched yourself for stuttering, but Leo didn’t seem to mind. He still kept a polite distance from you, his leg a good few inches from yours despite the blanket that was draped across you both.

You were quiet for the rest of the movie, and when it was over, Raph went to work out, Donnie retreated into his lab, and Mikey went to his room to scroll through TikToks on his phone. That left you and Leo sitting awkwardly under the large blue knitted blanket you were sure Raph had made. Maybe it had been a Christmas present or something. You weren’t sure.

“Not to give you déjà vu, but I’m sorry about Raph.” Leo chuckled. “I asked him to stop, so of course it only got worse.”

“I really don’t mind.” You told him, meeting his clear blue gaze. “That’s what brothers do, isn’t it?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I guess it is. Do you have any siblings?”

“No, unfortunately. I’m an only child. Grew up with my aunt because my parents couldn’t be bothered to actually parent.”

“Mmm.” Leo hummed, nodding.

“I guess that’s probably why I latched onto the idea of you guys so much as a kid. I liked the idea of a sibling bond like that. Working together as a team. Having a built-in group of friends to hang out with.”

“It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, but we do work well together.” Leo agreed. “When we’re not bickering, that is.”

You were quiet for a moment, mustering up courage before you said, “He’s right, though. Raph, I mean.”

Leo stared at you, his eyes widening in half-realization. “What…how…what do you mean?” His voice cracked when he asked it, his heart pounding.

“Well…Leo, I’ve had a crush on you since I was fifteen years old; I doubt it’s going away anytime soon.”

He looked at you in shock, pretty sure he’d hallucinated what you just said. All he could reply with was a shaky, “On me?”

You laughed. “Yes, Leo. On you. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same. I’m not even supposed to exist here.”

“I do. Feel the same.” He blurted. His statement was quick, but it was firm. Carefully, he took your hand in his large, green, three-fingered one and he was reminded just how different the two of you actually were. He was about to let go, but you squeezed his hand reassuringly. He laughed at himself, slightly embarrassed to be floundering in front of you, but it was out of his control. “I’m sorry, I’m new to this.”

“That’s okay.” You smiled, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear.

“I promise I’ll do my best to make you happy. Just let me know if I’m doing something wrong. I’m learning, after all.” His thumb rubbed the back of your hand. “And I know that…at some point you’re going to have to go back. But…I’m willing to make the most of whatever time we have.”

“Me too.” You nodded. A yawn slipped from your lips. It was getting late. You wouldn’t be surprised if the sun was already up. “I think it’s about time I got to bed.” You told him, standing up and setting the blanket on the couch.

Since you’d been there, the boys had created you a makeshift room of your own in one of the giant pipes in the wall, a little one with your own mattress and some bedding Raph had whipped up for you.

Leo stood up too, towering over you as soon as he did. You stood on your toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” Leo replied, smiling at you like you’d put the moon and stars in the sky with your bare hands. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.” You echoed, walking off towards your pipe, a new kind of warmth swirling around in your chest.

[random-french-girl]

Leah and Rachel for the brotp ask please

Thank you Anon! <3

What in-jokes do they have with each other?

Probably a lot of jokes around mental health, rip. They’ll randomly quote “I’M nOt FuCkInG CrAzY” at each other. Their therapists post-experiment are probably somewhat concerned.

Are they the “I’ll pay this time if you pay next time”-type friends, or the “I’ll pay for my food and you’ll pay for yours”-type friends?

Can be either, but Rachel doesn’t like improvising all that much, so they usually agree in advance re: who’s paying. 

Who’s more prone to pranking, or otherwise messing with, the other?

Leah doesn’t really do pranks. Rachel doesn’t either, except it’s really funny to mess with Leah. Her favorite pranks post-island involve her prosthesis. Somehow, Leah keeps forgetting not to ask Rachel to “give her a hand”, and really, how can Rachel resist.

How do they text/message each other? Proper punctuation and capital letters, egregious overuse of emojis, mostly in meme format…?

Proper punctuation and spelling in general, though they for sure use emojis. 

Do they exchange jokey birthday presents, or deeply thought-out and meaningful presents? Or both?

Leah’s gifts are always very intense and a tad dramatic but very thoughtful - here’s a framed picture of us sitting together at a cafe after we won the trial, here’s a mixtape of songs that remind me of you, here’s an obscure French movie I think you’d really like because of One Specific Scene. Rachel gives Leah a lot of art to decorate her dorm room/apartment, she really gets Leah’s aesthetic, even though she makes fun of it constantly. (”I don’t know why you keep calling me a hipster when half of the decorations on my walls comes from you,” Leah protests, once. “i’m an enabler,” Rachel replies, “it’s different.”)

They go on a road trip together. Who drives, who picks the music, who’s in charge of snacks?

Rachel drives at first, but Leah is a terrible co-pilot (easily distracted, very fidgety, constant chatter that grates on Rachel’s nerves), so halfway through (and after numerous fights involving missed exits) they switch. It’s a much better fit: Leah gets to focus on the task at hand, Rachel gets to give her directions. They actually listen to a podcast together - non-fiction - and get really into it. Rachel picks the snacks - a very healthy selection, but she does get Leah an extravagant Starbucks drink, so Leah doesn’t whine too much. 

What do they think of each other’s family?

They’re fine with each other’s parents, though critical of the way they handled their respective daughters’ mental health crises...  

Do they have any nicknames for each other?

Idiot (affectionate). Asshole (complimentary). Genius (derogatory... or is it?). If Rachel ever calls her “Rilke”, Leah knows she’s in trouble.

Who’d be the first to try and patch things up if they had a fight?

Leah apologizes first usually, she’s trying to be better at handling conflict, and she’s a bit afraid of pushing people away. But Rachel always reassures her that it’s not going to happen, no matter how much they fight. 

One of their phones goes off in the middle of the night. Who’s calling whom, and why?

Leah is having an existential crisis. Or a panic attack. Or both. Rachel is always happy to talk. 

What’s their favourite funny story about something that happened to the two of them?

That one time they physically fought over Jeff’s book... it’s funny now.

Would they do a joint cosplay? If so, who would they dress up as?

Not really their thing. 

Do they have any TV shows that they watch together? Are there any shows they have wildly different opinions on?

Rachel gets Leah into cartoons, and they end up binge-watching ATLA together. A rare instance in which they have the exact same opinions about everything. 

Which one is the “fight me” friend and which one is the one who tries to keep the peace and prevent their friend from punching a total stranger?

It might look like Rachel is the “fight me” friend, but it’s totally Leah. Then again, sometimes they’re BOTH the “fight me” friend, in the sense that they are fighting each other. (It’s mostly for fun, but nobody else in the bar knows this, which is how an unamused Dot and a VERY amused Fatin end up having to bail them out of the station one night.)

One of them comes up with an ill-advised but mostly harmless idea. Does the other one egg them on because they think it’ll be funny, or try and talk them out of it?

A dialogue that happens daily: Leah: I have an idea! Rachel: No. Leah: But I haven’t told you anything about it yet :( Rachel: Did I stutter? 

Who would win if they arm-wrestled?

Rachel, obviously. 

Who’s better at what type of video games, and how competitive are they when they play together?

Also Rachel, though Leah is competitive and surprisingly good at first person shooter games.

One of them ends up in hospital for something serious but not life-threatening. What does the other bring along when they visit in order to cheer them up?

Leah brings her pretty flowers and a very kind, well-written card, and absolutely no food, because she knows it still stresses Rachel out, sometimes, especially in a hospital context. She also brings a deck of cards, and sits on Rachel’s bed so they can play Go Fish, and she lets Rachel win every single time. 

How huggy are they?

They’re a bit shy with hugging at first, but they get progressively more comfortable with it. After the island, they always greet each other with a hug. 

What was the moment when they first realized that they’d become friends?

That night talk on the beach after their expedition up the mountain. Though there are plenty of ups and downs in their friendship afterwards...

[melanielocke]

Lost in the Shadows - Chapter 22

AO3

Taglist: @nott-the-best @foxglove-airmid @alastair-esfandiyar-carstairs1 @justanormaldemon @styxdrawings @ipromiseiwillwrite @a-dream-dirty-and-bruised

@alastair-appreciation-month

Previous Chapter: Chapter 21

Next Chapter: Chapter 23

Songs mentioned or quoted are Atlas, Rise by Metallica and Red Cold River by Breaking Benjamin

‘What about the opening above us?’ Cordelia asked. ‘If the water level rises enough, we can escape. I can cut through the bars with cortana.’

‘Are you sure it’s not just another magic barrier cortana won’t help us with?’

The water reached Cordelia’s neck now, and soon she wouldn’t be able to stand in it. The rising of the water level was becoming faster and faster. There was probably a puzzle down there somewhere, but it was too dark underwater, and quite possibly too late. The only way out was up.

‘No I’m not, but unless you think of anything else, it’s the best we’ve got.’

The water rose higher and Cordelia could no longer reach the floor. She was thankful that Lucie had taken her swimming in the past days and she knew how to keep her head above the water. Alastair was struggling a bit more with the change in level.

‘Make sure to keep your head above the water,’ Cordelia said, clutching cortana with both hands.

‘Genius, Cordelia,’ Alastair bit back. ‘Whatever would I do without your advice? It would never have occurred to me to keep my head above the water.’

Cordelia took his sarcasm as a good sign. Drowning people couldn’t speak. It wasn’t like in the movies where people yelled and waved.

When the water level was high enough to reach the bars, she started hacking at them. Parts of the bars fell beside her into the water. One hit her shoulder. She yelped in pain, but she could still move it. Nothing broken. It would probably bruise, but that was all.

She continued hacking at the bars until she was sure the opening was big enough, and turned cortana back into her necklace so she would have her hands free. The water had stopped rising about a foot beneath the surface. She grabbed what remained of the bars and pulled herself up, climbing out of the hole. When she was out, she extended her hand to Alastair and helped pull him out. Strands of his hair had gotten wet, but he’d gone a pretty good job at keeping his head above the water. The rest of him was soaked to the bone. As was Cordelia, including most of her hair. She was shivering and the air was cold as ever in the land in between. She felt like she would never get warm again. Alastair was shivering too, his arms wrapped around his body.

‘Do you have any idea how to get back to the ruins?’ Cordelia asked.

They were in the middle of the woods.

‘I just need to align directions underground with directions here. Give me a moment.’

Alastair sat down, and closed his eyes, going through his memory to navigate. Cordelia had never considered the use of his ability for navigation, but without it she would never have found her way through the maze.

‘Alright, I’ve got it. We have to go that way.’

Cordelia followed her brother quietly, until he stopped, holding his hand out to stop her from moving forward.

‘Do you hear that?’

Cordelia frowned, tried to focus on her hearing. Nothing. ‘Hear what?’

‘The siren’s song. Grace is here and we don’t have her skin yet. If we come any closer, we’ll be under her spell.’

Focused, Cordelia could make out something that sounded like singing, but it could just as easily be the wind. Alastair’s hearing had always been a bit sharper than hers. Sounds were often much louder when she was in his memory, and he tended to avoid loud noises. Except for his favorite music, which for some reason tended to be very loud.

‘So we have to get the key back to the dungeon with Grace’ skin and avoid hearing the song,’ Cordelia concluded. ‘How do we do that?’

Alastair took his phone out of his pocket. Even with careful use of the flashlight it still had a decent battery, whereas Cordelia’s phone was almost dead. He then took out a pair of unusually clean earbuds, and handed them to her, while at the same thing doing something with his phone, his long fingers carefully moving over the display.

Cordelia stared at the earbuds but didn’t do anything with them.

‘I cleaned them yesterday and haven’t used them since.’

‘I know they’re clean. But I don’t think this is enough to block out Grace’ voice. They’re not exactly noise cancelling headphones.’

Alastair used to have those at home, but they’d broken. Much later Alastair had told her Father had broken them while he was drunk. Cordelia wasn’t sure if it had been on purpose, but she knew it must have hurt. Alastair had an odd attachment to his belongings and was extremely careful with everything he owned, something everyone in the family knew about. Something Father knew. Cordelia wasn’t completely sure if their father broke things on purpose or by accident when he was drunk, but it was never father’s belongings that mysteriously broke.

‘It’s not, but it would be with some music on.’

Cordelia put the buds in her ears and Alastair put on a playlist on his phone. She realized he’d been making a playlist for her, probably with the loudest songs he could think of. Noise filled her ears, and Cordelia thought if she put the volume any louder she’d get hearing damage. How Alastair could listen to this, she had no idea.

She could see Alastair’s lips move, but couldn’t make out what she was saying. She pulled out one earbud.

‘What?’

‘You couldn’t hear me.’

‘No, not over that horrible noise you call music.’

‘Excuse me, that is Atlas Rise by Metallica. It’s a very good song.’

‘It’s just loud drums and guitars,’ Cordelia protested.

‘But it works,’ Alastair said. ‘If you couldn’t hear me, you won’t hear her song. I’ll wait here, I only have one pair of earbuds and if she controls me I’ll probably be a danger to you.’

‘What if the entrance is also flooded?’ Cordelia asked. ‘I mean, I can swim, but I don’t think your phone will survive that.’

‘It won’t,’ Alastair agreed. ‘And if you’re really unlucky you might get yourself electrocuted.’

‘I think that only happens when a charging phone falls into the water,’ Cordelia said. ‘But no amount of rice will be able to resurrect your phone if I take it into the water.’

‘So if you have to go into the water, try to just put down the phone somewhere I can find it later, and be quick about it. I think down there you won’t hear Grace either, we could only hear Thomas when he was shouting into the entrance. And if you end up losing or breaking my phone… Well, it was old anyway.’

It was very unlike Alastair to be alright with her losing or breaking his things, but she guessed he understood this was an emergency.

‘Don’t die, Layla,’ he said. ‘You get that skin.’

Cordelia put the earbuds back in, and she wondered why Alastair liked this so much. She broke into a run, she could see the ruins from here. She could see Tatiana and Grace, walking toward the ruins, and toward Lucie and Thomas. She had to get there first.

She couldn’t hear anything but Alastair’s music, and she had to admit it was working. This probably blocked out Grace better than Taylor Swift did. There’s not a thing I cannot make you do, Grace had said. But her magic didn’t work if Cordelia couldn’t hear her.

Die as you suffer in vain, own all the grief and the pain

Cordelia began to get an idea why Alastair was drawn to music like this, even if she couldn’t understand why he found it so soothing. He usually couldn’t stand loud noises and he used to wear his noise cancelling headphones whenever their mother was using the vacuum cleaner because he found it too loud.

By the time Cordelia reached the ruins, Tatiana and Grace had already reached Lucie and Thomas. There was a woman with them, a woman who greatly resembled Tatiana. Cordelia hid behind a tree, it was better if Tatiana didn’t see her until she could make a run for the skin.

The unfamiliar woman looked at Tatiana, distraught, and said something to her. Cordelia couldn’t hear a thing over Alastair’s music. Tatiana sneered something at the woman. Did they know each other? Cordelia didn’t think they were on good terms. Tatiana turned to Grace and said something to her. Grace rolled her eyes before responding. Tatiana muttered something before turning her attention back to the other woman, who said something that clearly distraught Tatiana.

Cordelia couldn’t hear a thing though. I can’t feel anything at all, this love has led me to the end, was all she heard, mixed with try to find a reason to live. Alastair’s music really was angsty.

The woman appeared gentle, caring even towards Tatiana, but Tatiana accepted none of her kindness, instead yelling something at her.

‘If you did, if you were really a mother, you’d understand I’d do anything for my son.’ She yelled loud enough that Cordelia could make out her words.

Tatiana was distracted, and Cordelia took her chance. She sprinted towards the trap door.

‘Stop her!’ Tatiana yelled, and she saw Thomas and Lucie come for her from the corner of her eye.

Cordelia was faster though. She reached the trap door, and realized the hall was indeed flooded. She removed the earbuds and dropped Alastair’s phone. She would buy him a new one if it broke, she decided. Hopefully she could find the money somewhere. Hopefully it wasn’t broken. She dived into the water, and underneath Grace’s voice was too distorted, too far away. She felt a hand around her ankle, grabbing her. The hand was big and firm, Thomas? Cordelia struggled against the grip, kicking back with her free foot. She hit someone’s chest, several times until the person had no choice but to let go.

Cordelia swum into the deep. She could barely see anything and realized there was no air in here. If she didn’t get to the skin before she was out of breath she was doomed. She would drown in here.

Her lungs began to burn for air, but Cordelia gripped the key tightly, and pushed it into where the door had been. The magic barrier lifted and the key broke just like all the other keys she’d found. It made no sense, but that didn’t matter. She could enter. Cordelia swum through, and grabbed the skin. Now to get back up. She turned around, and desperately swam up. She could see the light, and that’s where she needed to go. She gasped for air as soon as she was up, and now she could finally hear Grace’ singing. It was the most beautiful sound she’d ever heard, certainly more beautiful than Alastair’s music.

Cordelia would do anything for her, but there was nothing Grace asked for right now. Cordelia climbed out of the trap hole, holding the skin in front of her. She would do anything for the siren, and she knew there was nothing Grace wanted more then the skin Cordelia was holding.

‘Grace! I have brought you what you asked for.’

Grace turned to look at her, and noticed the skin. She stopped singing.

‘What are you doing?’ Tatiana yelled.

Grace ran to Cordelia, and took hold of her skin, draping it around her shoulders like a cloak. Here she would be unable to turn into a seal, or at the very least it would be unpractical, but she was in control again.

‘You cannot control me anymore, Tatiana,’ Grace said.

Tatiana looked scared. She hesitated for a moment, but before Grace could do anything to stop her, Tatiana disappeared into a cloud of darkness. When had she learnt such magic? It must have been part of the deal she’d made with the thief of souls.

Lucie and Thomas broke free of the spell, and a few moments later Alastair appeared from behind the trees, still soaked to the bone and teeth clattering.

‘I came as soon as I heard she stopped singing. Is no one hurt?’

‘What happened to you?’ Thomas asked. ‘I saw the place flood, was there another exit?’

‘The key was a trap,’ Alastair said. ‘The room locked us in and then flooded, but there was a barred opening at the top. Cordelia cut through it with cortana so we could get out.’

‘How were you immune to my song?’ Grace asked Cordelia. ‘I kept trying to get you to stop. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you didn’t listen. But I don’t understand how you did it.’

Cordelia grinned. ‘I couldn’t hear you. My brother’s music taste is loud and heavy and I was listening to some music on his phone.’

Alastair looked around and picked up his phone and earbuds from next to the trap door. Cordelia desperately hoped she hadn’t broken anything.

Grace nodded. ‘I presume that is the modern version of putting wax in one’s ears.’

‘You will be returning to the sea, I guess?’ Cordelia asked.

‘As soon as I can. I’m glad to see the witch unlocked some of her potential. And I suspected that strange memory ability would be useful in navigating the puzzles to my skin. The rules of this land say there must be a solution to the puzzle, so Tatiana just made it as complicated as she could in the time she had. Be glad she’s been so busy, or it would have been twice as big.’

‘I think that was plenty,’ Alastair said.

‘But you solved it.’

‘Now that you’re free, can you tell us what Tatiana is up to?’

‘I cannot tell you everything, because I do not know all she is up to. I know her main goal is to resurrect Jesse, I know it cost her much to bring back his ghost and it will cost more to bring him to life. She has been an assassin of sorts for the thief of souls, collecting souls he deems interesting. My help made that a lot easier, she forced me to use my powers to make people kill themselves. I know eventually Thomas will die if she is not stopped, to replace Jesse, but only once he lives.’

‘Is there any way to help both Thomas and Jesse?’ Lucie asked.

‘Not unless you destroy the thief of souls himself,’ Grace said.

‘What is he, exactly?’ Lucie asked.

‘From what I’ve heard, he was once a mortal man who sought eternal life. He found a gateway to another realm where he could live forever and gather power through collecting souls. It’s not where the dead are supposed to go, but he takes them. Once he could draw people in at will, it depends on how strong the seal is. Now he only gets them when he makes deals with humans in exchanges for souls he finds interesting. I think it makes a difference if the soul is offered by someone closely connected to them, because he likes to ask for family members, loved ones. I think that when you offer a soul not related by blood, you have to kill them, but when you offer a soul related by blood, the thief can use the connection to find them himself. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but that’s why he needed Tatiana to be an assassin whereas he killed Jesse himself.

He can give magic away. Magic similar to what Lucie can do, that’s why Tatiana can see Jesse, and why she allowed me to see Jesse, so I could help her watch him. But his magic can also create sickness, cause people to disappear, the kind of thing Tatiana’s father did to his rivals. He doesn’t usually reach into our world without a blood connection, that’s why he can’t just kill at random.’

‘He created my sickness, didn’t he?’ Thomas asked.

‘I think it is not uncommon for those promised to him to develop a sickness,’ Grace said. ‘What happened to you and Jesse is a bit less common, I think, because he waited so long to collect. I think it’s because he suspected Tatiana could become useful to him, and he wanted to see just how far she’d go for him when he was sick. As for you, I think there was much he could learn about your family as well by keeping you sick. It was a good way to weigh which boy would to choose. Which soul would be more valuable, but also whose parents might deal with him. It became obvious Tatiana would go very far for her child with no care for who else got hurt, and so he chose Jesse. Because he knew she would do everything to bring him back.’

‘Just like you thought,’ Thomas said to Alastair.

‘Souls are the price of his game,’ Alastair said and Cordelia could tell he was thinking of something, but couldn’t tell what.

‘But they don’t know about me?’ Lucie asked.

‘Not yet,’ Grace said. ‘But it’s only a matter of time until they find out.’

‘Do you know why the thief of souls collects souls?’ Alastair asked. ‘Do they have a use for him?’

‘I think the more souls he collects, the more powerful he becomes,’ Grace said. ‘I’m not sure why it matters who. Of course, there will always be souls more interesting than others. I think the four or you would be more interesting than a hundred boring average people. And the connection to the people who offer the souls matter too. I think he draws power from bonds of family, or love.’

‘But how much love can there be if you’re willing to sacrifice someone for power,’ Alastair wondered.

Cordelia had to agree, if someone was willing to sacrifice a relative or a spouse for power, they couldn’t love them very much, could they? But perhaps it wasn’t so much about love as it was about the connection. Besides, love lay close to hate, much closer than people thought. Cordelia had learnt that indifference was the real opposite of love.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Grace said. ‘The thief of souls only takes humans. My kind doesn’t have souls. Instead, when we die we turn into sea foam.’

That sounded rather horrifying. Wasn’t that what happened in the original little mermaid?

‘Do all mermaids, or selkies, know about this?’ Cordelia asked. ‘Or did you find out from Tatiana?’

‘We know stories, rumors,’ Grace said. ‘But with Tatiana I realized it was real. Even if she never told me anything, I learnt plenty by being around her.’

‘How long were you with her, exactly?’ Thomas asked.

‘Three years,’ Grace said. ‘She often pretended I was her daughter, and made me do the work the thief of souls asked of her. I haven’t been to the sea in all this time.’

‘And your skin was here for three years?’ Cordelia asked.

‘No, she only did that when she came here,’ Grace said. ‘Before, she kept it with her, but here she suspected you might steal it if you found out what it was. She didn’t realize I could still escape when she hadn’t given me specific instructions.’

‘If the thief of souls can do all these things, why does he not take over our world, kill at random?’ Alastair asked.

‘As I said, he needs a blood connection to operate in our world, and the promises form humans he works with. According to Tatiana, he has been sealed away by a witch a long time ago. But here’s where it gets interesting. Apparently, somewhere in the Victorian era he’d grown so powerful he could leave his realm, kill people without a deal. He had a daughter too at that time. A witch called Theresa Gray. She was the one who sealed him away. I think, considering how old he is, it must have been done before, but I don’t know how or when. The seal will break again, although I have no idea how long that will take.’

Lucie frowned. ‘Theresa Gray, that’s my mother’s name. Well, she usually goes by Tessa.’

Grace stared at Lucie. ‘I heard the thief speak of her. He never expected her betrayal, and couldn’t defeat her or stop her from sealing him. But he could take her memory. Weakened from the battle, she fell asleep in the land in between and only woke up a 130 years later with false memories of her childhood in time she woke up in. He took her power away while she slept, since she was in the land in between he could still do that. He does not believe she is a threat to him anymore, and thinks that with enough interesting or powerful souls, he’ll break free for good.’

‘Meaning this woman would live in the modern age, with no idea who she was?’ Alastair asked. ‘Lucie, it could really be your mother. The timeline adds up. And if she was the thief’s daughter, that would explain your why your power is so connected to his.’

‘Everyone in my mother’s family died,’ Lucie mused, ‘All when my mother was very young. My only family are on the Herondale side. It could be her. And although she doesn’t have the sight, it was very easy for my father to get her to see and believe, something that has always surprised him. But then she would have been the same witch Jessamine knew. Wouldn’t Jessamine have recognized her?’

‘I don’t know, it has been a very long time and Jessamine didn’t know her that well,’ Cordelia said. ‘Could easily be that Jessamine forgot her face.’

‘I could talk to your mother,’ Alastair said. ‘See if I can restore her memory. If she lived a different life than she remembers, the real memories are still there somewhere.’

‘Have you done anything like that before?’ Lucie asked.

‘Not as extreme as an entire life someone forgot,’ Alastair said. ‘But I have restored missing memories, yes. Most of the time, there isn’t much of a point to it though. Not everyone wants to remember.’

Cordelia knew what Alastair was talking about. It was something he’d told her about not long ago, after learning about their father’s alcoholism. He’d tried to restore their father’s memories from when he was too drunk to remember, hoping that if he knew how much he was hurting Alastair, he would stop. Nothing had changed though.

‘What is Tatiana planning next?’ Alastair asked Grace. ‘How much time do we have left?’

‘She didn’t tell me,’ Grace said. ‘She comes here to communicate with him, I think that was her intention today. But she wants you out of the way too. Ultimately, Thomas must die so Jesse can live, but I think she will try to kill all of you when she can, especially when she find out what Lucie can do. The thief lost track of witches, and they’re very uncommon nowadays.’

‘Are all witches his children?’ Lucie asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ Grace said. ‘In his current state, he would be unable to leave his realm and have a child, but he used to be able to. I don’t think he’d try again if he could though, not after his daughter turned on him. But they could be descendants, generations away. I’m not sure how the magic inherits.’

Some of the stones shifted, the ruins became a little more like a castle.

‘I think we need to get out of here,’ Cordelia said.

She was still soaking wet, as was Alastair, and getting colder. She longed for a hot shower and some clean clothes. Lucie opened a separate gateway for Grace, and they walked into the light that brought them back to the forest.

Lucie stared into the distance for a moment. ‘She’s become transparent again. Show yourself, Barbara.’

The woman Cordelia had seen before appeared. Who was she? Another ghost, but somehow Lucie had pulled her back into this world.

‘You’ve taken a soul away from him,’ Grace said. ‘You really are powerful. But he’s going to be very mad.’

‘What else was I supposed to do? I’m not sending her back,’ Lucie said crossly.

‘Fine with me, but you should know what you’re doing,’ Grace said. ‘You’re making a powerful enemy.’

‘He was always my enemy,’ Lucie said determinedly.

Cordelia feared what would happen though. Would the thief of souls realize how powerful Lucie was? Would he come for her, out of fear that Lucie would finish what Tessa had started?

Grace nodded. ‘Alright then. I will be going my own way. I need to return to the sea. Perhaps you can come visit me some day on the Isle of Skye.’

Grace then walked into the woods, and disappeared. Did she intend to walk all the way to the coast? Cordelia wanted to call after her, but she was long gone.

[facets-and-rainbows]

Blue Exorcist 10th anniversary book Q&A session

The 10th anniversary book has a section where Katoh answers 100 questions submitted by fans on Twitter, so here they are translated/paraphrased! May contain manga spoilers up to the recent flashback arc, so be warned.

(Note that I’m playing it very fast and loose here because there are A HUNDRED OF THEM, so not exact wordings, but it should capture the gist. Lemme know if there are any you want elaborated on)

1. Katoh likes the feel of traditional drawing more than digital but is impressed with how far digital has come

2. Meph THOROUGHLY ABUSES spacetime to watch all his shows and ensure that he gets all the merch he wants

3. Did the girls take all of Yukio’s school uniform buttons in middle school? Yes, they did (apparently it’s like A Thing for girls to ask for a button from their crush at middle school graduation, based on some sad movie from the 60s where a guy who got drafted as a kamikaze pilot gave a girl one of his uniform buttons to remember him by)

4. Rin's tail is about a meter long

5. There are tons of servants working at Mephisto's mansion. Belial is in charge of them

6. Katoh borrows from all sorts of neat real locations when making settings

7. Katoh identifies with pretty much all the characters the most! Except Lucifer.

8. Demon designs she's proud of include the impure king and hachirou, pretty much anything that was the main one in an arc

9. Katoh lists a bunch of her favorite musical artists/music she’s listening to recently: King Gnu, Official Hige Dandism, Kenshi Yonezu, BAD HOP, Sakanaction, Keyakizaka 46, Hypnosis Mic, Aimer, B’Z, Queen Bee.

10. Awww the rabbit manga that characters are often reading isn't just Robo to Usakichi, it's an even older one that she drew as a little kid

11. She likes industrial style interior designs

12. Rin and Yukio alternated who got the top bunk growing up, because they couldn't agree on it lol

13. Katoh cares a whole lot about panel layouts and speech bubble positions, might even be her favorite part of the process (it shows!)

4. Katoh does NOT have a mashou, lol

15. Rin has probably been practicing in secret so he can learn to carry stuff with his tail

16. Izumo probably got into shojo manga around 1st grade, her mom had some around the house

17. Specialty dishes: Rin - lots of stuff but especially nabe Yuri - stuff you can throw together quickly Shiro - stuff he learned from Yuri and/or cookbooks, alongside teaching Rin Yukio - Does. Not. Cook.

18. Can't pick a favorite place she's been on research, but there's no place like Japan

19. Kinzou's band isn't currently meeting because demons, but he's probably still thinking of new songs

20. Hardest characters to draw: anyone with detailed flowing hair. Hardest to write for: Lightning and Gedouin. She had to go read books about serial killers specifically for material for Gedouin, lol 

21. Suguro actually gets a dorm room to himself, though allegedly Yukio is technically assigned as his roommate, lol. Didn't end up that way what with Yukio being a teacher and also Rin’s whole...situation

22. Shiemi makes some of her own hair accessories! Cute

23. Katoh doesn't mind if you include stuff with fan letters but check with the editor first

24. Time for making each chapter: Planning/storyboarding: 1-5 days. Sketching: 3-5 days. Drawing/inking: the rest. Just...the rest of the time

25. Neither Suguro nor Izumo have dated before and neither is currently dating. But that's probably just because things were hectic for them! It could happen

26. Yukio breaks 5 or 6 pairs of glasses a year, someone get this kid a strap or something

27. How many spare glasses does Yukio have? Check the fanbook lol it's in there (dang it Katoh)

28. The demon she wants us to pay the most attention to is Lucifer. Because plot.

29. What's under the Order's big meeting table? It's a BOTTOMLESS PIT and if you fall in it you DIE that's what makes it COOL (laughs)

30. What are the job requirements for the angelic legion? Literally just Arthur liking you and inviting you to join

31. She WANTS to do more character profiles but just hasn't gotten to it

32. Rin's tail feels like a cat tail, texture wise

33. The "red Assiah fire" is literally just actual fire nothing special

34. Rin's current hair color is light blue fading to white at the ends

35. Thoughts on Rin's growth: she likes that he stays positive in awful situations and she also thinks it's very main character of him to face the past instead of avoiding it

36. Mephisto didn't purposely surround Rin with stuffed animals when he woke up after going crispy. Mephisto's bed is just Like That

37. Kurikara was based on a cool sword she found in a sword book, but that one was technically just a ceremonial sword. The symbol on it us a Sanskrit letter kaan (sp?) associated with Fudou Myouou

38. Kuro can communicate with normal cats and hangs out with them often

39. Sometimes Shiemi's skirt is extra fancy around the hem what's up with that? Apparently it's an optional accessory that comes with the skirts help I haven't noticed this and don't know any fashion terms in any language

40. When coloring, Katoh always tries to have an overall theme in mind ("emphasis on blue" etc) so it comes together in the end

41. Yes the twins are genetically related to Shiro because of Goro (she says they're like his nephews but I say GENETICALLY at least they'd be indistinguishable from his children)

42. Strongest mom of all the strong moms around here? Yuri! Did you SEE her give birth??

43. Are you careful about your own health Katoh-sensei? Not particularly! Her mom has had to bring her food at work sometimes! Don't do this at home kids

44. At the dating events Shura goes to, does she drink cocktails in moderation? Yeah, she probably downplays her normal drinking habits at these things. But normally she's down for just about any kind of drink

45. Lucifer just really likes oysters okay

46. How many pages of manga does Katoh draw in a day? If she's being good about self-care: three. Maximum number ever: TEN

47. Mephisto is one of those folks who can eat like a garbage compactor and never gain weight. Possibly because his body resists that sort of change the same way it resists aging etc

48. First food Rin cooked: fish burger type patty. Yukio's favorite things Rin cooks: fish simmered in soy sauce, yellowtail with daikon radish. It's fish all the way down

49: Did Rin ever get more monthly allowance from Mephisto? It doubled! He gets TWO 2000 yen bills now (rip) [T/N: That's uh, that's USD $37.26 a month or 33.10 euro]

50. Why isn't Rin more popular with the girls? He gets nervous talking to them, plus he's too oblivious to notice even if he DID have some fans

51. Why change Suguro's hair? She gets bored with keeping everything the same, and she wanted a visual representation that he was getting serious and going into kind of a training arc

52. Things Katoh pays extra attention to when drawing: trying to capture the feel of whatever she's drawing (like "that looks warm and soft" or "I bet that guy stinks" cough Lightning cough)

53: Does Rin take after Yuri more? (He's got her eyes!) Katoh tried to draw Yuri so she looks like both twins. Personality, too - Yukio has her smarts and Rin has her optimism

54: Do you ever wanna be like Mephisto? Well she'd like to be able to get away with just ANYTHING EVER, but no, let's not be like Mephisto

55. Konekomaru not only carries around a cat toy in case he meets any cats, he MAKES cat toys to carry around based on what he thinks the cats would like

56. How'd you come up with Shima? Go read the fan book!

57. Do the kids have Twitter/Instagram accounts? Rin - probably not. Konekomaru might be on some social media. Paku and Izumo are totally on instagram

58. Is there something Rin makes that you wish you could try? All of it! That's the whole idea! He's good at cooking!

59. Will we ever have a (G-rated) reveal of what ALL of Mamushi and her family's tattoos look like? Maybe! She'll think about it

60. Does Arthur have a repertoire of different hairstyles? Not really, he just puts some of it up on the top. Heck he might even have people to do that for him

61. If you wrote a shojo manga what would it be about? She'd have to do a lot of research before even coming up with a story, since there are so many style differences between the genres aside from just the subject

62. The other two of Mephisto's top 3 favorite foods: Cup ramen and....f-fried bubblegum?? Is that a THING???

63. Where do you start when drawing a character? Usually the outline of their face but if it's a complex pose/composition she'll start with whatever's in the foreground (like hands)

64. If Katoh could have a familiar, what demon would she choose? Mephisto. As the all-powerful author, she might actually be able to command him as a familiar!

66. If you swapped Yukio and Rin's relationship around what would change? not much, you'd pretty much have Rin going to the Illuminati and Yukio going to the past

67. Top 3 foods/souvenirs to try in Kyushu? Well she doesn't know what’s good CURRENTLY but when she was there she always used to like burdock tempura udon, hakata torimon (a kind of manju with white bean paste inside), and Chikae style cod roe. today I learned Katoh went to high school in Kyushu

68. Katoh listens to music a lot while she's storyboarding, then when she and the assistants are all drawing and inking they put various videos/movies and stuff on in the background

69. For all his hitting on girls, is Shima actually popular with the ladies at all? He's got enough girls in his life that he probably COULD find a girlfriend if he really wanted, but the double agent thing tends to get in the way. He still wouldn't be as popular as Yukio though (side thought/translator’s note: Shima would be proud of being number 69.)

70. Katoh has the ending planned out in a big-picture way, but there are still a few details here and there that she's fretting over

71. It's cute when the boys put their ties over their shoulders when they're working on something! Where'd that come from? She just figured a tie might get in the way and that seemed like a realistic way to get it out of the way

72. Looks like Yukio is getting some facial hair! What about Rin? They're both about the age for it, but maybe Rin can't grow a beard yet. Maybe a little peach fuzz here and there

73. Katoh's favorite blue exorcist merch? There were some exorcist licenses a while back, and the exorcist pins. Basically it's really cool that these little accessories she drew ACTUALLY EXIST NOW, LIKE YOU CAN HOLD THEM IN YOUR HANDS

74. Okay realtalk how long do we have left, I don't want the series to end yet? We're solidly in the second half by now but it's not, like, ABOUT to end yet

75. Katoh would be a Knight meister, based on what characters she likes to play in games and such

76. How many people in the whole exorcism cram school? More than you think! She doesn't give a number but apparently licensed exorcists also attend classes for new meisters, etc, so there's a wide age range attending

77. How's Arthur feel about, like, studying Taming on the way to becoming Paladin? He's at least mostly accepted that you have to use demons to fight demons effectively

78. Konekomaru started wearing glasses in his first year of middle school, so like 7th grade (more recent than I thought!) He has one spare pair, in contrast to Yukio lol

79. Katoh's current obsessions? Ghost/scary stories! She's even been going to live readings of them recently

80. Media Katoh consumes for inspiration? A wide range of foreign teen drama, horror/suspense, shojo manga, light novels, anime, etc. Special focus on things where two boys are in conflict or there are brothers involved

81. If they weren't exorcists what jobs would they have? Rin - chef. Yukio - doctor. Shiemi - uh, florist?

82. Inspiration for the design of True Cross Town? Katoh and her assistants gathered up a bunch of references, picked out stuff they felt matched the tone, and mashed them all up together

83. Did you use any references etc for the school/exorcist uniforms? She says she probably should have but she just kind of made them up before publication

84. Favorite part of drawing? For color pages, picking out a color scheme. For black and white, drawing in all the little details (though she doesn't always get time to lately)

85. Once again confirms the demon kings' weird hair is a representation of their horns. ADDS THAT PEOPLE WHO CAN'T SEE DEMONS CAN'T SEE THE WEIRD HAIR

86. Now that Yukio's at the Illuminati, where's he gonna get his Jump SQ and spare glasses? Well he probably never planned to stay for long, but hey it's a big ship and they might have an optometrist and/or newsstand there

87. Do you base the demon characters on any references etc? Not really, she just gets a general idea of popular demon designs and then makes up her own in her own style

88. Merchandise Katoh personally wants to have made: stuff that an adult could just use in their day to day life. Also, it's not gonna happen, but if her favorite figure brand made AoEx figures she could die happy

89. If Beelzebub's host body was a beautiful woman, how would Shima react? Would the womanizing win out over the bug phobia? Katoh replies that Shima would probably just faint from being near a girl that pretty, before the bugs even got involved

90. Will the twins ever get to smile and eat dinner together again?? We'll just have to wait and see!

91. What do you check at a "scenario check"? what's a scenario check man I dunno They check for people being out of character or the setting feeling off. They had a lot of these checks for the anime, but they also do them for the drama CD, games, and all that other stuff where multiple authors are involved

92. Why does Shura use baldy as an insult for people who are clearly not bald? She feels like they have some kind of metaphorical, mental kind of "baldness" and she's calling them out on it. Whatever that means

93. After Blue Exorcist ends, what do you want to draw next? She has SO MANY IDEAS, SO MANY

94. Did Katoh make up the Shinto chants that, for example, Izumo used against Gedouin? They're assembled from bits of actual Shinto prayers according to what feels right in the scene

95. Yukio reads the Jump SQ, right, and, just hear me out here, he likes gag manga, right? Does this mean he reads Salaryman Yukio? It's something he would read, but let's say that in the AoEx universe there's just a very similar manga that he finds oddly relatable

96. What do Yukio and Shima do in their free time on the Dominus Liminus? oh my god you guys this ship has so many amenities.  Yukio probably spends time reading in the library, which they totally have. There's also, like, a gym, and a movie theater, and a THEATER theater, all of which are free. Shima probably hangs out at the pool (!) and goes to the movies, and hits on illuminati girls, lol

97. Easiest character to draw? The ones with boring simple hair, lol. Lightning gets an honorable mention for ALSO not having eyes in most shots, but Rin wins--he was specifically designed to be easy for Katoh to draw because that's what you want in your main character

98. How do demons understand gender? They just possess whatever feels like the best match to how they feel in Gehenna, whether that's a man, or a woman, or a rat, or whatever

99. Where do you start when you're coming up with a story? She starts with character design and how the characters relate to each other. Currently she's just continuing an existing story, so she works on splitting up the overall plot into episodes and fleshing it out with scenes and information about characters

100. When do you feel most happy? She honestly feels like she lives a very happy life overall. Mentions noticing a lot of little things, like how nice her cats' heads smell when she cuddles them or taking a nice cold refreshing drink of water. There's happiness in everything. aww.

[a-simple-imagine]

The Smarter Witch

Synopsis: You like to consider Hermione your academic rival but things begin to fall apart between the two of you when Malfoy and friends start asking questions. The reader is in Slytherin sorry.

Pairing: Hermione Granger x fem!reader (can be read as romantic or platonic)

Words: 3.5+

A/N - I’ve been rewatching all the Harry Potter Movies at the cinema recently and I think i like it more now than I ever did before. This is my first HP story so go easy on me, okay? Comments are appreciated and requests are open!!

Warnings - Swearing, excessive use of the word mudblood... i think that’s it. 

"Granger," You call out, shoving your things into your bag as quick as humanly possible before charging after her. The crowd of other students growing the distance between you as you slip between them but not without almost crashing into people a bunch of times along the way. "Granger- wait." You try but she continues to walk away with Potter and Weasley beside her. You eventually manage to push your way through until you're walking in step with the trio. The girl stands in the middle, guarded by her two best friends.

"Hey," You offer them a smile, "Guess who got a perfect?"

"How?" It's instinctive to turn your nose up when it comes to Ronald Weasley. Not because of his social status like Malfoy suggests but you just found him rather... irritating. You completely ignore his question; breaking formation, you get ahead of the group and begin to carefully walk backwards so you can focus on the girl. She looked anywhere but at you, however, she had a smirk on her lips. Small but visible.

"Only because Snape favours you," The brunette proclaimed. This was routine for the two of you as of late. Always making excuses as to why the other came out on top. Only because of this. Only because of that. It was never as simple as just studying and doing well.

"You're just jealous that I'm a genius." You insist, your smile growing as you teased your own brilliance. Her head shakes a little.

"Since when were you, two friends?"

"Nobody said anything about friends Weasley-" You growl, your once happy expression morphing into one of pure distaste as you look at him. Spinning gracefully on your heel, you begin to walk normally again. "Since I'm so much smarter than you, I can help you study if you need it."

"I don't need any help from the likes of you, thank you," The likes of you? Did she mean a Slytherin? Or just someone who was smarter than her? Although you didn't actually believe you were smarter... well, not entirely anyway. Hermione Granger was often proclaimed as the smartest in your grade, didn't matter how hard you worked; you'd never quite be the promising young witch everyone seemed to think she was. Which is why you find yourself constantly competing. If you can prove to her you were smart then maybe everyone would see you as more than just a Malfoy crony.

You slap your hand against your chest just above your heart; stumbling backwards as if she just shot an arrow straight through. "Oh, how you wound me, Miss Granger. Care to share how well you did? One hundred percent?" She wouldn't have done badly at least not by everyone else's standard of bad. "Ninety maybe?" You turn back to them, coming to halt directly in front of the girl. "Merlin's beard Hermione, don't tell me you got less than eighty? That would be a travesty."

"if you don't mind, we're a little busy." She hadn't answered the question and as she walked around you, you expected she wasn't going to. "Come along Harry," she took his hand. "Ronald." And his before marching away. You watch them as they go, a smirk lingering before slipping off in search of your friends.

Come Friday afternoon and you found yourself in the great hall. The busy castle was beginning to calm and few people sat in the tables alongside the two of you. You take a sip of some water as you watch the gears in her head turn, debated her next move. At this point you already knew you would win; you always did. While everything else was more of a competition; Hermione Granger surprisingly wasn't all too hard to beat at Wizard's chess. Your Fridays together we're brilliant times to chat though, you'd often sum up any achievements from the week just to see who's doing better.

"I can't believe you beat me in history of magic again- I spent hours on that stupid essay. I basically lived in the library."

"I can help you study if you like," she offered, her eyes not leaving the board as she ordered her bishop forward. You watch as the chess piece moves along the board.

"You're not funny Granger," you tease, ordering your knight forward to take down her bishop. "Check,"

A paper ball hit the back of your head, drawing your attention away. Pansy stood with a wide grin on display, you ignored her and returned to your game but Hermione was also focused on your friend. "I think she wants your attention."

Another paper ball collides against your head. You sigh loudly before turning and mouthing 'what?'

"We're going down to the black lake? You coming?" She asked. "Or are you too busy with the Gryffindor?"

"just give me a sec." You wave her away, turning back to the other girl. "Have you moved?" She nods a little, her hair bouncing with the movements. You examine the board trying to figure out who she had moved but it didn't really matter. With a final move of your queen, the king was knocked off the board. "I do believe that is checkmate."

"I'm beginning to think you're cheating."

"Me?" You ask, pretending to be offended by the notion. "Never. How little faith you have me in, Granger."

"Slytherins are known for being cunning."

"We're not all cheating monsters, my dear sweet Gryffindor. Some of us actually have a conscience."

"I find that hard to believe," Her lips were curled into a cheeky smile. You'd never quite noticed the way her eyes crinkle when her smile is so big or how teethy it was. It was adorable. 

"I gotta go- same time next week? Maybe I'll even let you win."

"I don't need you to let me win,"

"You sure?" Nothing more than a harmless joke as you stand. "How many times in a row have I won now?"

"Slither away," Hermione smiles as you back away towards Pansy. You had to admit, you did firm Hermione to be intriguing.

Being in the same year, meant you actually saw Hermione rather frequently, however, your actual interactions were limited. Yes, you played Wizard's chess together every Friday but other than that, you basically only had very short conversations. It was like being in two completely different worlds simply because you were put in different houses. This school had a weird obsession with separation by houses. You were a proud Slytherin as were you friends but your ambition to branch out was often looked at as beneath some of the others. It was dinner time and you sat at the Slytherin table but your focus was pulled towards a certain familiar Gryffindor student. She just happened to be sat in your eye line, so you couldn't help but amuse her from afar. With funny faces and playful winks. Her most common reactions were shakes of the head or rolling her eyes but you knew secretly she enjoyed the teasing.

"Are you even listening?" A sharp elbow slams into your side. You bite back a groan as you shove the boy gently.

"The hell Draco,"

"What are you staring at?" There was a particularly bite behind his words but you'd grown used to how aggressive he could come across. He was always trying to be the alpha and frankly, everyone let him be. You simply shrug at his question; grabbing an apple and taking a bite.

"What did you want?"

The grey of his eyes flickers in curiosity as he tries to figure out what had you so distracted. When you look across at Granger, she's chatting to Ginny Weasley about something.

"Sometimes I wonder if the sorting hat got it wrong with you," He muses. "Should have put you in Gryffindor since you're so obsessed with Potter."

"Says the boy who never shuts up about him." You fight back. You couldn't care less about Harry Potter or his chosen one status. You knew Malfoy hated him though; it was a little weird just how much.

"You gravely misunderstand my interest in potter."

"I don't care if you have a crush on him Malfoy," There are a few snickers around the table but he's definitely not laughing.

"Don't be ridiculous." He growled, leaving the table. It was only a joke. You follow after him along with the others.

After dinner, you're lounging in the common room. One leg hooked over the arm of the couch as you read a book all about dragons. Fascinating creatures.

"So are you and the Gryffindor friends?"

"Who?" You question. Not even looking at the blonde as he sits down beside you.

"Granger." He confirms. "Pansy thinks you have a crush or something?"

"Pansy is a liar." The joke isn't as funny when it's against you. Your feelings towards Granger was nobody else's business but your own. You were often left conflicted when it came to her. You roll your eyes, sitting up straight. "I just like proving that I'm better than her."

"You spend a lot of time with her," Goyle adds.

"So?" You finally lower your book. Your brows knitted together in a clear frown as you scan the room. A few people had invited themselves into the conversation. "I spend a lot of time with you but doesn't mean I wanna get into your pants,"

"I don't know why you associate with any of them." This was beginning to feel like a lecture. Why do they even care who you hang out with? You didn't care much for the boys but you liked Hermione. She was kind, funny and really smart. You enjoyed the little time you ultimately spent together but if you admitted that, they would crucify you.

"They'd probably say the same about you lot," you state. Bringing the large book back up to cover your face. "Now if you don't mind, I'm trying to read here,"

"You can tell us if you like her," Pansy contributes. "I mean we all know you have a soft spot for the weak."

"Are you taking pity on her?"

"Maybe she wants to start hanging out with Potter. Can you imagine?"

You grit your teeth, not at all reading the words on the page in front of you. They're just trying to get a rise out of you.

"I can't imagine anything more pathetic," Malfoy chuckles followed by a few of the others. "They're an embarrassment to the wizarding world if you ask me. Parading around like they own the place-"

"We're nothing okay?" You slap your book shut. "Not friends or secret lovers or anything, I would never date someone so.... dirty." The word slipped out before you had a chance to stop. You didn't see her that way; she was much too grand to be considered dirty. And you couldn't care less about pure bloodlines. It didn't make her any less of a fantastic witch. "I'm not joining Potter's Merry band of monkeys, so just drop it okay." Ignoring the snickers and hushed whispers, you march off to bed.

It's the Friday following your little session in the common room. You forgave them all of course; you always did. There was no point in being angry at them over some harmless teasing. You had the chessboard set up and even brought along a pack of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans but she was running late. Normally it was you showing up late; very unusual behaviour from someone known for punctuality. But as time ticked on and you were still left alone, you began to realise she wasn't going to turn up. Packing everything up, you decide it'll be best to search for her; something bad must have happened for her to not show at all.

"Weasley," you shout, jogging up to Harry and Ron who seemed to be missing their third arm. "You seen granger?"

"Why?" Asks the redhead. Harry presents you with a smile.

"None of your business," you spit at Ron. "Have you seen her or not?"

"Last we saw her she said she was heading to the library," Harry answered. You offer a grateful smile but you can't help but wonder why she's decided to head to the library. Was there a test you didn't know about? Was she trying to get the upper hand? Surely she could have just told you that instead of having you wait.

"Thanks, Harry," You skip along to the library but the journey proves pointless when you discover she isn't there either. You would be lying if you said you had searched particularly hard before giving up though. There was always next week. With a defeated sigh, you head back towards the common room. Luck must have been on your side because you spot her on the way back. Perched on a ledge with her head in a book. Typical Hermione Granger.

"I've been looking everywhere for you," you announce as you walk towards her. "I thought we were gonna play wizards chess so I could annihilate you again." The faintest sniffle hit your ears and you froze. Was she... crying? Shit. You don't do well with criers; you never know how to handle situations when people cry. It's always so... awkward. "What's wrong?"

"Go away." Her voice is quiet but echoes through the empty corridor.

"Granger?" You closer to her now, leaning against one of the stone columns.

"I said go away," Her words are harsh; she shoves her face further into the book. Was she trying to hide the fact she had been crying? It was pretty obvious at this point.

"What's up with you?" You wonder, folding your arms over your chest.

"I don't want to talk to you,"

"What did I do?" The confusion is very clear in your voice. You'd hardly even spoken to the girl recently so how could you have possibly upset her.

"You're as bad as the rest of them, now leave me alone," Sharp words as she grabbed her things and stormed off. As bad as the rest of them? What did that even mean? Pushing yourself upright, you follow after her.

"What's gotten into you?"

"Just some filthy mudblood am I?" Venomous words spat at you with the speed of a viper. You stumble back a little; she's never been so angry with you. Tears spill down her rosy cheeks."Malfoy told me what you said- Guess I should have known better considering your so-called friends. You're just as cruel as the rest of them."

"Hermione..." you sigh softly. You couldn't exactly defend your fellow Slytherin friends. "Why do you believe him anyway?"

"So you didn't say it then."

"No, I did," you shrug a little. "Well I said you were dirty, I didn't say... that word."

"Mudblood- Same thing though right? You think you're so much better just because you're of Pure blood."

"I didn't say that, I-"

"Just stay away from me." Her tone has you backing down from the fight. You consider following her as she charges off down the hall but instead, you go back to the dorms.

"You're a right git," you exclaim, storming into the room, grip tight on the book you launch at his head. Platinum blonde hair darts of the way.

"What the hell."

"You told her?" All eyes are on you as you confront him.

"What are you on about?"

"Hermione- you told her I thought she was dirty."

"Your words, not mine." Draco shrugged a little. A huff of a laugh passing his lips which pissed you off even more. 

"I-," you look around, picking up a pillow and tossing it at him. "You are such a pain in the ass."

"Why do you care about that filthy mudblood, you said you don't even like her?"

"I don't even like you and yet we're best friends," You shout, looking at the coffee table you grab a mug and aim at the boy. Draco's hand shoots up in defense.

"Don't you dare throw that at me or I swear-" He fought back. You lower your hand and so does he then you throw it anyway, hearing it break as you collapse on the couch. "You don't need someone like that." He muses as he cautiously approaches the couch.

"We can't all be insufferable snobs Malfoy," you grumble, rather casually considering what just happened. "You mess up everything for no bloody reason"

"Probably shouldn't go around calling her dirty then," He argues. "I didn't make you say that..."

The boy hovers over the back of the couch and you shove him away. "I hate you."

You realise you have to be the one because Malfoy's not about to admit he did anything wrong. And you know at the end of the day it was your fault for saying it in the first place. You retire to your bed, no longer watching to deal with other people.

For the next week or so Hermione avoids you like the plague. You'd obviously see her in some of your classes but when you'd try to speak to her after, she'd rush out before you had a chance to so much as saying hi. If you managed to catch her gaze, she'd stare daggers; if looks could kill you'd be six feet under by now. You'd sometimes find her in the library, it was the one place she could cause a scene but neither could you. When you tried to whisper to her, she'd completely ignore you. You were beginning to miss the limited interaction you hard; Half the fun of studying was ultimately doing better than her in the end.

The girl was alone today, searching the shelves. The library was fairly empty and it was getting late. You take the opportunity to make some paper birds and send them fluttering over to her. One by one until she whispers yells at you to stop. You chuckle. Doing it again. This develops into a habit throughout the next couple of days. You'll send paper birds her way, just to get a reacting out of her. You start writing little messages on them too but you don't think she ever reads them before setting them on fire.

It becomes abundantly clear she's not giving in and therefore one day during breakfast you abandon your table and enter what Malfoy would consider enemy territory. Pushing Neville aside to sit next to Hermione. A bunch of lions look to you like you'd just entered their den without permission; in their defense, you never sit here. Hermione gets up to leave but not before you can grab her wrist.

"Can you please stop ignoring me," she yanks out of your grip, walking away to leave you surrounded by kids you've only ever spoken to in passing. You groan loudly.

"What happened between you two?" Ron asked.

"Do you ever keep out of other people's business Weasley or do you have some obsessive need to weasel your way into everything."

"Just tryna help, jeez."

"If you must know, Malfoy told her that I referred to her as a... y'know."

"Mudblood?" Harry continues for you.

"I called her dirty but I didn't mean it."

"Thought you weren't friends anyway," Ron wore a smirk like he caught you out or something so you just ignore him.

"Now she's ignoring me. I just want her to talk to me."

"Have you apologised?"

"How can I apologise if she won't bloody talk to me, Harry? I thought you were supposed to be smart." You comment, dropping your head against the table. "I've tried writing notes but she burns all of them. I'm running out of ideas, I can only be so charming."

"Can't really help you there," Ron replies.

"All the boys in this school are so bloody useless," you sigh dramatically, slamming your hands on the table to push yourself up. "You’re her best friends and you can't help? Pathetic."

You debate joining the others but you decide against it and leave the great hall. You're not hungry anymore.

"You really should stop sending paper birds," The voice catches you off guard, whipping your wand out before realising it's her.

"I'll stop if you talk to me again," You counter, lowering your wand.

"I'm not ashamed of my parents."

"And you shouldn't be." Your head falls, "I really am sorry for what I said, it was definitely a peer pressure thing and I was stupid." You blurt out. "Malfoy can just be a lot sometimes and I was trying to study so... I don't think you're less than just because your parents are muggles Hermione. Not even a little." You take a deep breath. "I just want my friend back."

She hesitates. "Oh, so we're friends now huh?"

"Only if you want to be," You shrug. There was part of you that wanted to say maybe you like her as more than that but you kept it to yourself; at least for now. "I understand if you don't like... I was really shitty."

"So Friday then?"

"What?"

"Wizards chess? I think I may be able to beat you now, I've been practising."

"Pfft not likely," You tease, your smile growing. "Friday sounds good."

// NEXT

[wendip-week]

Prompt: Time-Travel

Prompt – Time Travel

It was another fine day in Gravity Falls. Squirrels were chasing each other, baby birds were chirping for food, and the local citizens went about their business, blissfully unaware of the rumored-weirdness that surrounded the valley.

In the town’s tourist-trap, the Mystery Shack, two young workers were sitting behind the register, looking bored. One was a short, scrawny pre-teen with shaggy, brown hair covered by a cap featuring a pine-tree. The other was a tall, lanky redheaded girl in flannel and sporting a trapper-hat. They were the best of friends (or partners-in-crime, depending on who you ask); and at that moment, they’d rather have been anywhere else.

“Ugh! Dipper! Why’s your uncle making us sit here? This place is half-dead! We’ve had, what? Sixteen customers all day, and maybe three of them wanted to buy something?” the girl said, laying across the counter.

“Yeah. Well, it’s Stan, Wendy. ‘Any potential sucker is basically a customer, and customers have money, so don’t miss an opportunity to get some!’”

“Nice one. But seriously, dude, I wish we could go on some adventure. Heck, I’ll take anything: scary or cheesy,” the girl said confidently.

“Really?” Dipper replied, looking at her. “You’d stoop to something out of our B-movie collection?”

Wendy paused, clearly giving this some thought. “Well…”

“The Crawling Deer-Demon-Duck is hiding in that condemned-house, Cassandara!” Dipper said in a low-baritone, his face pouting with mock-bravery. “What kind of brave seventeen-year-old slight bad-boy would I be if I didn’t go in there alone to try and stop it?”

Accepting his challenge, Wendy stood up. “Oh, Drewson! You can’t! It’s too dangerous!” she replied, adopting a terrible accent of a Southern-belle. She put the back-end of her hand on her forehead dramatically, while using her other to grab his sleeve. “I won’t let you go into that condemned house where the Deer-Demon-Duck is hiding!”

Dipper gently moved her hand away and faced her more directly. “But you have to let me!”

“Oh, Drewson!!!” Wendy lamented, now looking Dipper in the eyes.

“Cassandara…” Dipper did the same…

The two’s faces came closer and closer…

  Meanwhile, from two different ends of the Shack, a couple of thirteen-year-olds watched with interest. One, a fit-looking, freckle-faced girl with brown hair, stared with wide-eyes; she had her hands over her mouth as she barely suppressed a squeal. It was just too cute and hilarious! The other was a bulky young-man with copper hair. He just rolled his eyes and shook his head, chuckling.

  Wendy and Dipper’s faces were now inches from one another; neither breaking the act. Just as it seemed they were about make contact…

*FLASH!*

“Bwaaaahhh!!!” cried out a voice of pure-chaos.

…A white flash of light and a subsequent familiar-sounding snap caught them off-guard (and momentarily blinded the duo).

“Hey!” Dipper shouted.

“What the heck?!” Wendy replied, blinking to get her sight back.

“You guys! That was adorable!” Mabel, Dipper’s twin who sported braces, a homemade sweater, and thick, long brown cried out.

“Mabel?” said Wendy. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough to hear all that!” the energetic girl told her friend while holding a photo-camera.

“W-We were imitating a scene from one of our movies!” Dipper replied quickly, his face suddenly a deep-red.

“Tomato-Potato! A smooch-scene’s a smooch-scene! Look!” Mabel told them, holding up an instant-photo. Looking closer, it featured Dipper and Wendy, inches apart and puckered up. “And I thought your only chest-hair was scrapbook-material, Dip!”

“Mabel, you better throw that away!” Dipper told his sister, while Wendy just shook her head, a hand covering her eyes.

“Nope! Scrapbook-ortunity!” Mabel opened her scrapbook and, finding a spot that was (relatively) empty, put the photo in. “Boom! Now, I just need some glue! Be right back!”

Mabel ran into the house to look around, leaving her brother and friend alone and little embarrassed.

Dipper looked at his redheaded crush. “Sorry, Wendy. She didn’t need to do that.”

“It’s whatever, dork. I mean, we were kind of cutting it close. That’s what happens when you play chicken.”

“Yeah… I’m gonna destroy it before she gets back,” Dipper said, reaching out for the scrapbook.

“No, don’t!” Wendy replied, putting her hand on his shoulder.

“Wendy, you know she’ll show people. What’ll our friends think? I don’t want you to get embarrassed,” the younger Mystery-Twin said to the redhead.

“Thanks, but if everyone starts laughing, we can just say we’re great actors. After all, I’d pick you over the lead in that cheesy-film any day,” Wendy reassured Dipper, a gentle smile on her face.

Not knowing what to say, the blushing twelve-year-old just awkwardly chuckled.

“Hey!” shouted a gravelly-voice from inside the house. “Can somebody help me with this pimple on my back! I don’t need it bothering me on my next tour!”

Wendy turned to look at her dork, looking a little nonplussed. “…We should probably run before Stan singles us out.”

“To the roof, you think?” Dipper asked.

“Nah, I’m starved. Let’s hit Greasy’s. There’s a great lunch-special if we hurry.”

The nigh-inseparable duo quietly rushed off, leaving the gift-shop completely unattended. With that, the two customers slowly approached the counter, awkwardly looking around.

“Well, that was adorable and weird,” the girl told the boy around her age.

The large boy shrugged. “Definitely right on the latter.” He turned to face the girl. “How has your day been progressing?”

“Uh, fine I guess?” she replied, not used to hearing a greeting in such context. “How about yours?”

“Can’t complain. So… the gift-shop’s abandoned, it looks like,” the boy said, looking around.

“I guess so. Someone could steal something from here and no one would notice.”

“True. Looks like the rumors of this place sparing every expense were true,” the boy said with a chuckle. “Are you planning on stealing something?”

“No! Of course not!” the girl replied with a huff. As the boy looked away, she discreetly took a glance at the scrapbook left behind.

“Well, that’s good. Lots of punk-teens wouldn’t think twice about robbing this place blind,” he told her.

“Fair point,” The girl replied. She reached a small hand out. “I’m May, by the way.”

The other teen answered by clasping it with a meaty-looking hand of his own. “Cool. That’s my sister’s name. I’m Danny.”

For a second, the girl called May’s eyes widened, before narrowing suspiciously. Danny suddenly realized she wasn’t letting go of his hand.

“No, it isn’t,” she replied curtly. “My brother’s Danny!”

As she said that, the other teen frowned before his eyes mirrored the girl. They stared momentarily before pouncing. May attempted to pull “Danny” toward her. Danny, however, was ready. He spun and pulled the hand still clasping his behind the girl’s back. With her momentarily caught off-guard, he pushed her into one of the aisles. He quickly snatched the scrapbook from the counter before racing out the door. May, after stopping herself from hitting a wall, turned to see no scrapbook near the register. She immediately rushed outside to find the boy.

Behind the Mystery Shack, Danny was going rummaging the somewhat sticky-pages of the book he snatched, careful not let anything besides some glitter fall out from between. Finally, his eyes settled on his objective. He was just about to take it when-

“Hey, you!” Danny turned towards an angry-looking May, her fist punching her other palm. “That’s stealing! I don’t know who you are, but I’m not letting you have that!” she shouted.

“Please!” he replied. “As if you weren’t planning on it. I’m smarter than I look, you know!” he accused the girl, who gritted her teeth at his comeback. “And for your information, I’m me! And you’re not you!”

With that, the two of them raced towards each other. This time, however, May slid between the large boy’s legs and got behind him. Before he could react, she grabbed him underneath his shoulders. With him successfully in a headlock, May reached for the book in the redheaded boy’s hand. Realizing what she was trying to do, Danny swung back-and-forth, trying to make May let go of him.

Caught off-guard, the strong girl actually lost her grip on one of his arms for a minute, though she quickly regained it by getting her arm around his neck. However, this wasn’t enough. He reached behind, and this time, he got ahold of May’s shirt, enabling him to throw her off, despite her attempts to hold onto his head. (She even grabbed and stretched his mouth in the process).

She landed with a thud but was quick to get back on her feet. And May was immediately shocked by the sight before her. Next to this guy’s feet was the scrapbook of Mabel, apparently dropped when she made him throw her off. But on the other side of “Danny” laid what looked like a rubber-mask of his face. The head on his body now sported something else: a head that she could only describe as resembling an oversized pistachio, but with red-eyes and sharp teeth.

The creature posing as a human, realizing he was exposed, quickly grabbed his mask and slipped it back on with a growl. Now indiscernible from a human, he wagged what May assumed was a false finger, clearly ticked by that. He charged at her, only for her to roll out of the way. She tried a roundhouse-kick, only for the disguised teen to catch her foot. When May tried to break out, she lost her balance, enabling Danny to catch her from behind the same way she had him.

However, May was ready this time. As this guy grabbed her underneath her shoulders, May somersaulted backwards and caught Danny’s neck with her shoes. With all of her might, she used her legs to throw Danny forward, headfirst! He landed with a loud thud, giving May time to grab the book and escape.

Danny, checking to make sure his mask was straight, raced to catch up to May. He went around the side and rushing in the general direction she ran, saw her carefully moving around a large hole not too far from the Mystery Shack. Taking off a hand-shaped glove, he launched a vine-like appendage and grabbed May’s leg, tripping her and pulling her back. At the same time, she dropped the book near the edge of the long drop. Danny rushed forward and picked it up.

Of course, by this time, May was back on her feet. She charged with all he had and slammed her shoulder into the creature’s costumed-midsection, making him drop the book again. “OW!” They both shouted after May made contact.

Danny rubbed the spot where he got rammed with one hand and pushed her back with his other. He then looked at the pained girl strangely. “That was… You tackle just like May does; only weaker. Who are-? Hey, you okay?”

“Do I look okay?” May was clutching her shoulder, and as the boy could see more plainly, it didn’t look quite right.

“You’re hurt.” Before Danny could say more, the edge of the hole he was standing by gave way. He fell and, because he was still holding onto May, ended up pulling her in, too.

They both fell, screaming all the way down, only realize that they didn’t seem to be getting there anytime soon.

“Wait… I know what this is! We’re in the Bottomless Pit!” May said in realization.

“Oh, yeah! Haven’t seen the inside of this I was five…” Danny thought out loud.

“So you say!” May snapped. “Stop pretending already and tell me what the heck you are! Running into you is like crashing into a tree-trunk! What the heck?!”

Danny paused. “Okay, seeing as you look like you’re hurting, and I’m not, I’m going to call a truce. I’m willing to talk if you are, but I’d rather check your arm first. Is that cool with you?”

“Fine,” May grumbled, seeing no options at the moment. She was at a disadvantage, and if this monster could reach her, she’d be in trouble.

“Alright. Now, stay calm and try not to freak out.” Danny took a hand-shaped glove off and from where it was, slowly extended a vine in May’s direction. It gently went around the teenager’s midriff and pulled her towards him. It was plain to see she was suspicious. “Let me see…” Using his other hand, he poked May’s shoulder.

“Augh!” she grunted.

“Yeah… Looks like you dislocated your shoulder,” Danny assessed with a shudder. “You meatbags and your weird bodies.”

“MEATBAGS?! Look who’s talking!”

“Hey, it is basically what you are. You’re like, mostly water, aren’t you?”

“Well, yeah…” May admitted awkwardly. “But that’s still rude.”

“Right. Sorry,” he apologized sheepishly. “Look, we can’t do anything until we come back up, so we might well as chat and find what the heck is going on here; maybe why you want that scrapbook so much.”

“You took it first,” May replied. “What about you? Also, would you mind letting go of me?”

“Can do.” Danny retracted his vine, allowing May to freefall on her own, then slipped his glove back on over his branch-like hand.

“Okay, so… who the heck are you? I’ve lived in Gravity Falls all of my life; I know that names being alike isn’t some coincidence.” May said.

“Agreed. I’m Danny Pines,” said the strange-teen. “And I’m assuming you’re May Pines.”

“Yeah. May Pines: daughter of Mason and Wendy Pines,” May stated proudly.

“Those are my parents’ names,” Danny replied, an eyebrow raised.

“Weird. My brother’s human, and he doesn’t look much like whatever that costume is you’re wearing. Are you being honest that you’re who you say you are?”

“Yes, I am,” Danny replied, starting to sound annoyed. “Look, I’m a plant-person, okay? So is most of the family, along with the half-the-town where I’m from. We wear disguises to blend in with humans… And what’s wrong with the way I look?”

“Well, for starters, my Danny’s not built like you. He’s muscular, but like the lean-kind. And he’s tall. You kind of have a build like my uncles on Mom’s side of the family. Plus, your face kind of looks like Aunt Mabel’s. He’s got more of one that looks kind of like Grandpa Dan,” May said thoughtfully.

“Huh. Go figure. I never actually wondered if my disguise was accurate… As for my height, I can safely tell you I’m taller than I look. I basically slouch in this costume,” Danny told her. “And my May’s costume doesn’t have you so good, either.”

“Really? Why?” May asked.

“Well, her mask has red-hair and no freckles. And your nose definitely isn’t Mom’s.”

“Oh. I always wondered how I’d look with red hair…” May thought out loud. “Uh, so… why the heck were you trying to take that book?”

“Why do you need it?”

May sighed in resignation. “Look, I’m looking for an anniversary-present for Mom and Dad. I remember Aunt Mabel told me about some cute picture in her scrapbook that went missing. It was that little scene with Mom and Dad from a little earlier. Apparently, it disappeared. It’d be a good gift, and I thought maybe it was me taking it after Blendin Blandin loaned me his Time-Tape that caused it disappear. Now, I’m wondering if it vanishes because you steal it.”

“What a coincidence. I was planning on getting that as an anniversary present for them, too. Well, my version of Mom and Dad.”

“Yeah… How’s that work again? I’m already assuming this is probably one of those Other-Dimension/Universe deals. Or maybe even another timeline,” asked May

“Really? How would that last one work? New timelines always replace old ones, right?” Danny replied.

“I don’t know. I don’t do this for a liv-Oh! We’re coming back up!”

About a minute later, the two thirteen-year-olds found themselves back outside the Bottomless Pit, not a minute gone by since they fell in. Immediately, they stepped away, quick to attend to more important matters. Well, besides the picture in Mabel’s scrapbook, anyway. (Danny quickly picked that up).

“Alright,” Danny said after making sure no one was around. “I’m not an expert, but I’ve been taught the basics of human-skeletons. We’ve gotta fix that arm.”

“Right. Uh, one sec.” May used her good arm to pull a coin-purse out of her pocket. From there, she pulled out a piece of wood with some bite-marks and stuck it in her mouth. “Do your worst.”

Danny put one hand on her forearm; the other on her shoulder. “This is gonna hurt. I’m going to count to five. Got it?” May nodded, and Danny counted. “One… Two… Five.”

A shrill, girly scream echoed through the valley. A scream rivaled only by those who were unfortunate enough to stick an appendage into the infamous “Pain Hole”.

“You okay?” Danny asked, concerned.

“Yeah,” May grunted, rolling her shoulder a couple of times. “This actually happens more often than you think. I’ll be fine in a couple of days.

“Well, I guess that’s one thing you humans have over us,” the boy said, shaking his head. “Your broken limbs don’t have to stay broken. We need to regrow ours. It’s pretty rough.”

“I guess… So, is your time like that lizard-people timeline or something? Dad and Aunt Mabel said something like that happened or was talked about when they were hunting for treasure one time.”

“I don’t remember either of them talking about that,” Danny said, shrugging. “All I know is that my version of Mom and Dad were turned into plants outside of Gravity Falls, and that there was time-travel involved. Come to think of it, I wonder if maybe Time-Wishes have something to do with this.”

May raised an eyebrow. “I don’t follow.”

“They’re paradox-free, but what if they don’t line up with the future. And they can’t be part of a time-loop, either. That’s another paradox. But splitting timelines might make for a good technicality, especially if they lead to the same futures or something.”

“…You read a lot of science-fiction, don’t you?” May deadpanned.

Danny shrugged. “When I’m camping. Yeah.”

“So… you think maybe we come from different branches and that this is a shared-moment in the past?”

“In a nutshell. No pun intended.”

May shrugged. “Anything’s possible. So, how are things in your timeline? Is the Shack still standing?”

“Yeah. Uncle Soos is doing a great job with it.”

“Nice! Does Arctica exist in in that time? Do you like-like her?” May asked in a sly voice.

“N-No! I mean, uh, yes… and no!” Danny replied quickly.

“Oh my gosh! I knew it!” May said, almost squealing. “Everyone knows! Me, our parents, our friends! Aunt Pacifica sure approves! So does-!”

“Wait! Pacifica… She’s alive in your time?” Danny asked, looking a bit shocked.

“Yeah. Is she not…? Oh, man! What happened?” May replied, looking very concerned.

“She just got sick. Last year, I think. That kind of thing’s one drawback to being human, I guess. Still, everyone was there, so I think she was comfortable, at least,” Danny told his sister from what might be an alternate-timeline.

“Shoot…” May thought out loud.

“Sorry to bring the mood down. So, does Chaz still try to keep his distance from you and your cooties?”

“As if! He’s just intimidated by my tackle!”

“Sure… No doubt that’s why he and Drake Jr. tried to discover a vaccine for them,” Danny said with a chuckle. “Dad thinks they might be onto rediscovering the Philosopher’s Stone instead.”

“So, Aunt Mabel married Uncle Drake in your timeline, too?”

“Yep.”

“Great… Two versions of our uncle to pass on his terrible driving skills two different versions of our cousin,” May said in exasperation.

“Don’t forget our siblings…” Danny added.

“Siblings? What siblings?” May asked.

“…You’re kidding, right?”

“No. Seriously, we have them? What are they like?” May said with interest. “Younger? Older?”

“All of the above. Dang. I wish I had my special phone-glove so I could show you pics. Too bad I didn’t want to accidentally leave it.”

“Shoot! Lucky!”

Danny laughed. “Keep telling yourself that.”

May smiled, then looked at her aunt’s scrapbook. “That photo’s still in there.”

Danny rummaged through it and found the page with said photo. The siblings from different timelines both stared, admiring the young versions of their parents doing that corny, mock-romance scene.

“What do you wanna do?” Danny asked her.

“I don’t know… I want it, but you’ve got as much right to snatch it as I do,” May replied. “I wish we both could take it with us.”

“You know, maybe we can,” Danny said after a minute.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Doesn’t the Shack have a magic photocopy-machine in this time?”

“…And Mom and Dad are gone, so we might be able to pull this off!”

//

Meanwhile, Mabel was in her and Dipper’s room in the attic, which had basically been torn apart in a futile-search.

“Come on, Mabel!” The sweater-loving preteen said to herself. “Where’d you put that extra glue?”

//

The Mystery Twins of different timelines slipped through the currently-unguarded gift-shop of the Mystery Shack with ease, only to run into an elderly, bespectacled man in a fez, faded-white tee-shirt, and boxers in the living room, who was sitting on the couch, watching tv. The man turned to face them.

“Hey!” he said gruffly. “No exploring the house unless I’m leading a tour! Back to the gift-shop with you.”

Danny approached him, a hand behind his back. “No. Back to sleep with you.” Danny brought his concealed hand out from behind him, a large flower blooming from his wooden hand. He blew what looked like pollen into the old man’s face. The man was out in an instant, drooling all over himself.

May took the tv remote and flipped through a couple of channels. When she was satisfied, she abandoned the remote and joined Danny, though not before laying a soft kiss on the scary-looking man’s temple.

“Love you, Great-Grunkle Stan,” May whispered. She turned back to rubber-suited variation of her brother. “Let’s go.”

The two kids wandered down the hall towards the back, where they found a beaten, worn-out copy machine with words like “Danger” and other warnings on and around it.

“So… if I remember correctly, Dad said this’ll clone whatever you put into it,” May said. “It’s how Great Grunkle Stan made copies of the Journals that triangle-dude ruined.”

“Right,” Danny replied. “Seems straightforward. I think I’ll make two. This way, we don’t have to steal anything.”

“Sounds good. Let’s just remember not to get either wet.” May stepped out to check the living room.

//

Meanwhile, a heavy-set young man in a cap and a shirt with a big question-mark stepped into the living-room. “Hey, Mr. Pines. I just finished fixing-Oh, cool! You’ve got anime on!”

Soos Ramirez sat down on the couch, his gaze focused entirely on the tv-screen. He didn’t notice the teenage-girl peering around the corner, nor the bright and completely-noticeable flash from down the hall. He also didn’t notice two teens step back into the gift-shop, the boy holding three identical-copies of what looked like Mabel’s scrapbook.

//

In the Mystery Shack’s gift shop, May sat the scrapbook back down on the counter where she and Danny found it.

“Alright! Are we good to go?” May asked Danny.

“I think so. I made whole scrapbooks that we can maybe use for Aunt Mabel sometime. I bet she’d like to see her old pet-project again,” Danny replied.

“Great idea. You know, if it’s not us that steal the photo, I wonder what happens to this one.”

“Beats me. But no time to find out. Someone’s bound to come back any time now.” Danny said, handing one of the copies to May.

“You’re right… Hey, I’m sorry I kind of jumped you when we ran into each other. I thought maybe I violated some time-bureau thing and you were an agent or something,” May replied with sincerity as the two of them walked out of the entrance.

“That’s alright. No harm done. I’m sorry you hurt yourself trying to hurt me,” Danny replied to the girl.

“It’s fine,” May told her… sibling. “You know, it would be cool if we could hang, but with whatever this is, I don’t see how that’s possible any time soon.”

“You’re right,” Danny agreed, almost regretfully. “I don’t know how time-travel works, and I don’t Blendin’s inclined to tell someone who got the drop on him.”

“Huh?!”

“Nothing!”

The two stared at each other, not knowing what else to say. Finally, May broke the ice: “Awkward sibling-hug?”

The Mystery Twins embraced, awkwardly patting each other’s backs before separating.

“So, before we go our separate ways, can I ask you a weird question?” Danny asked sheepishly.

“Sure. What is it?” May responded.

“What’s like having a nose? A real one, I mean…”

//

Meanwhile, Mabel Pines had just come back downstairs. “I can’t believe I forgot I have one in my sweater’s inner pocket. What a silly-Mabel I am!” she said to herself, chuckling.

She stood by her scrapbook on the counter and tried to work the cap to the new glue-bottle off.

At the same time, a customer, who had come into the empty gift-shop just before the girl came down, went to approach Mabel and ask about getting rung up. Unfortunately, there was a snowglobe left on the floor by some child earlier that day. The man suddenly tripped on it and fell forward, only to stop himself by catching a fan. Said fan immediately started blowing on high, blasting Mabel’s hair all over her face and blowing a certain photograph into the yard, where an odd-looking goat caught in his mouth and ate it.

That was a dark day for Mabel Pines… who immediately planned to try to convince Dipper and Wendy to reenact that scene again.

//

The Pines twins from alternate futures faced each other, holding out their respective Time-Tapes (with the tape pulled out appropriately) and holding tightly onto their respective scrapbooks. The two got one last look at each other.

“Bye, Danny,” May said to her secret monster of a brother. “I love you, and I hope Mom and Dad like your gift.”

“Likewise, May,” Danny said, looking a bit sad. I wish you could see the others… I’d have liked to see their reactions meeting you.”

May gave him a soft smile. “Hey, I got to meet you, at least.” Danny smiled in response.

The Mystery Twins let the tape on their devices retract. There was a flash of light, and it was like they had never been there.

[cosplayingwitch]

A Study in Dirt and Stars

September 30 Day Writing Challenge

Prompt: cloud/star gazing

Part one of the five part as-yet-unnamed series. (If you think of a name, let me know in the comments!) Each part will take place a good amount of time apart from each other.

Summary Star Wars AU with fem!reader and Poe Dameron as best friends/roommates (more?) and grad students- reader in archaeology, Poe in history/library science. In this part, the two get stuck when Poe’s old truck breaks down and they have to wait for a tow truck.

Triggers none, unless you have an issue with waiting for tow trucks or dirt/dust. Oh, they do swear too.

Tags: @make-me-imagine

Other tags: light angst, two idiots in love, mutual pining, would this count as angst?

The sound of shovels clanging together startled you out of your focus. You’d been reading up on bioarchaological research methods- something so boring most would fall asleep even thinking about it. You, however, find the whole thing fascinating, enough to dedicate your life to it. That sound was the announcement by your students that the day was done. Normally you’d have let them know this, but in that focus you’d lost track of time.

You shout “Nice work today everyone! Same time tomorrow!” even though you didn’t even notice their actual work. Hey, as long as they didn’t fuck anything up enough that it can’t be fixed, no one would ever know. 

The university held a field school for archaeology students every year, mostly upper level bachelors students and the occasional early masters students. Given your status as almost graduating from the masters program, you were easily chosen by your favorite professor to GA the class. Which meant, per your professor, you’d be the one in charge for day-to-day goings on. But if you succeeded at this, it’d be a great addition to your work experiences. Very helpful for getting a job in this field.

Which leads you to look around, seeing that your slightly early dismissal was taken advantage of by the students- they left the equipment strewn about the site without regard for how long it would take you to clean up after them. They’d be in for definite trouble in the morning, you’d make sure of it.

You heard the sound of truck tires coming down the dirt lane that was the only access point for your site. You look up to see your friend coming to pick you up. With your car in the shop- all that dust was not good for the engine- he was your only choice if you were to get to and from work.

“Hey there, Indiana. Discover the ark of the covenant yet?” shouted Poe from the driver's seat. 

“Not yet. Did you manage to run out of books in the library yet?” you shout back.

It was always like this between you two. You’d been friends since your freshman year when you took intro to anthropology together. For him, it was a gen-ed class; for you, it was the start of your career path. He was a history major, now working on his masters, like you. He had managed to get a job in the university’s library, though he would probably describe it like he had gotten a job at the Smithsonian. But joking between the two of you was more natural than having normal conversations. One year, he decided to get you a hat for your birthday, one that was suspiciously like that worn by the movie archaeologist. From then on, he called you Indiana instead of your name as an inside joke between the two of you.

You wouldn’t ever tell him- but you kind of liked it.

“Can’t leave quite yet, Mr Librarian. The students left this place a mess, and if Professor Solo decides to pop by the site in the morning with it looking like this I’d lose all hope of ever getting a job.”

“So? I can help! As long as these aren’t some kind of state-of-the-art technology shovels.” he teased. You could tell, he just wanted to get home. And even with the both of you working together, this could take a while.

About two hours later, once everything was packed up for the night, Poe went to start the truck so you could get home to your shared apartment (who better to be roommates with than your best friend?). And it wouldn’t start. He tried again, and again. Nothing. I guess even momentary exposure to this dust could mess with an engine, you thought. Or maybe his twenty year old truck had just finally kicked the bucket. You’d teased him about that truck for a while now, always joking about it someday just giving up and leaving him stranded somewhere. 

Of course, you’d always imagine yourself as coming to his rescue, not being stranded with him. 

“I guess you were right about it up and dying someday.” admitted Poe. “So are we walking or what?”

“It is getting dark, but it will take forever to walk back to the university. We could call a tow truck? Sit around waiting until it gets here?” you suggest. “It gets so beautiful out here. Without as much light pollution, the stars really shine bright.”

Poe was never one to turn down an activity that involved astronomy. That was his ‘secret’ hobby. He told you once that his dream when he was a child was to travel among the stars, but with that not accessible to him, the best he could do was study those who made the advancements in astronomy. 

The tow truck would take at least an hour, the lady from the dispatch center told you. It was the bad luck of location and calling on a busy night. You didn’t mind, it was more time to spend with your best friend.

“It’d probably be more comfortable to lay in the back than in the dirt.” suggested Poe. You knew that wasn’t the only reason he suggested it. He also hated getting dirty, so the idea of laying directly in recently disturbed dirt had to be unthinkable to him. (This was another thing you teased him about often.) However, this time he did have a slight point. If anything, it would probably stretch your back out more than the ground could.

With both of you perched on the end of the truck bed, you watched the stars together. Poe pointed out the various constellations. Even though you knew most of them already, you let him continue because you knew how happy it made him. Not much of a sacrifice to keep your best friend/roommate, you thought. You zoned out while he started rattling off facts about famous astronomers. He’d be the one to know all this- astronomy+history would always mean Poe would know about it.

You thought about how nice this was. The two of you laying back, talking, nowhere to be until the morning. You could get used to this.

Every so often, you’d chime in with a fact about the mythology behind the names of the constellation. Poe assumed you knew these from your anthropology classes during your undergrad. Truth was, you’d learned them for him. That way you had something to add to the conversation when he was discussing astronomy, which was frequently.

It was inevitable that the tow truck did eventually show up, and your night of stargazing would end. It never seemed like two hours had gone by with just you and Poe laying there together. And just like that, your evening together was over.

When you eventually get back to your apartment, it’s past midnight and all you want to do is take a shower to get all the dust, dirt, and sweat off of you from that hell of a day you had yesterday. “Maybe I’ll call Professor Solo in the morning, see if he can take over for the day.” You think. After all, shouldn’t he be teaching his own class?

And maybe, if by some miracle your car was ready to be picked up before noon, you could return the favor by driving your boyfriend best friend to work.

You stop yourself in your tracks. God. Did I just think what I thought I did? 

Yeah. After a day like that, your brain had to be at least a little scrambled, right?

At least you didn’t say it out loud. Poe would never stop teasing you about that.

When the two of you got home after midnight, Poe was beyond exhausted. Luckily, he wasn’t scheduled to work until after noon tomorrow. Or, with it being after midnight, would that be today?

Whatever. I just need sleep, Poe thought.

But he couldn’t sleep that night. (Morning? Every time Poe thought about that it made his head hurt.) He was too wrapped up in thinking about the night you just spent stargazing together. Just laying there, talking, sharing space facts and constellation myths.

He just couldn’t get past the relationship the two of you had. No pressure, no one constantly asking when they’d get together already. Just two grad students, hanging out and having a good time together.

Maybe, Poe thought, he could even be glad his car broke down while picking up his girlfriend best friend from work.

Wait, Poe though. Not my girlfriend, my best friend. I’m not ruining our friendship because I had one thought about her that way. Besides, he continued, who knows if she’d even like me that way.

Poe did fall asleep a little while after that, but not before sending in a request to his boss for a sick day. There was no way he’d get enough sleep to go to work tomorrow.

Author Note- I appreciate any comments/likes/reblogs if you would! Also, this is my first fan fiction published on Tumblr, so please be nice (and leave constructive criticism if you have any). I’ll probably also post this to Archive of Our Own at some point, but for now it’s only on Tumblr.

I have to say, I do enjoy writing for my two idiots here. Next chapter/part will be published on 9/10, so come back for that if you like this. And if you really like this, message me to be tagged in the next part.

[detectivejay-chuckles-halstead]

30 Days // Jay Halstead x Reader // Pt 1:6

Description: 30 Drabbles of Jay and Reader’s life together

Words: 2122

Warnings: FLUFF (and a lot of it), NSFW Smut,  Swearing

Pairings: Jay x Reader

A/N: Again, much needed fluff (for 6 parts)! Then back to our regularly scheduled angst. Picture by @infinityxpremades​

1. Holding Hands

Being with Jay was a mixture of sexy and sweet, the man not often having a middle ground. Not that you were complaining, no. Just, some days you got what you weren’t expecting. This was one of them. Jay -- for once -- had a day off. And for once, Voight had given you the same day off. It was a miracle in itself. He hadn’t wanted to stay home, wanted to go out and do something.

“Experience life!” he’d exclaimed when trying to get you to agree. 

As much as you wanted to just stay home with your boyfriend, his adorable smile got you to go with him. Lunch at the pier, walking along Millennium Park. It was the middle of April. Cold enough for a jacket, but not cold enough to be miserable. The two of you walked side by side, your hand in his. It was the small things that made you smile, not needing grand gestures. As long as you had Jay, you were the richest person in the world. 

2. Cuddling Somewhere

Adam had invited the team over for dinner after a tough case, Jay insisting you come along with him. You’d really just wanted to go home, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to relax a bit. At first, it seemed like it took Intelligence a while to warm up to you despite Jay’s insistence that they all liked you. Until one day, Kim pulled you aside. 

“It’s obvious Jay cares about you,” the woman had told you in a hushed tone. “Just...He’s had enough heartbreak for a lifetime. If you’re not in it for the long run, it’s best to just get out now.” 

It was at that moment you understood it wasn’t that the team didn’t like you, it was that the team didn’t want to see Jay get hurt again. You’d learned all about Erin, Hailey. You understood, assuring them that you saw a future with Jay. 

Adam’s place wasn’t the biggest, but it fit the six of you pretty well. Though, you and Jay had been booted to the floor. You weren’t complaining, sitting between his legs, back against his chest as his arms wrapped around you. 

“Why are you two just so...sickeningly cute?” Adam asked, getting a laugh out of you. You’d felt bad that it hadn’t worked out between him and Kim, coming in right after they’d ended things for good. From what Jay had told you, they’d been good together. Until they weren’t. 

“You’ll find someone, someday, Ruze, that will make you just as sweet,” Jay answered as you took a drink from the wine-glass you were holding. Vanessa smiled at you. It was nice to get to relax, even for just a few hours. 

3. Watching a Movie

“What movie do you want to watch?” Jay asked from the living room as you poured the popcorn into a bowl. Beers were already on the coffee table, sprinkling just a little salt on the snack in your hands. 

“I don’t know. You pick,” you insisted, hearing an exasperated huff. When you walked in, he was bent over your DVD collection, staring at the titles. Quietly, you set the popcorn down before walking over and smacking his ass, making him jump.

“Not fair,” he reminded you, glaring at you with a smirk before grabbing a DVD and popping it in the DVD player. The two of you got situated on the couch, feet propped up on the coffee table as you leaned into him. Jay fiddled with the DVD remote before the movie began playing. 

“Really?” you asked, curling further into him as the logo for Saw came across the screen. “Don’t we see enough of this at work?”

“You told me to pick,” he reminded you, keeping his arm around your shoulders as you hid your face in his chest. He knew you didn’t like horror movies. With that knowledge, he probably chose it so that way he could keep you close. 

4. On A Date

“You really didn’t have to do this,” you said again for the thousandth time as he drove into downtown Chicago. He’d told you he was taking you out on a date night, reminding you it had been nearly two months since the last time you’d both been available for one. It was hard since you were both on the same team, and recently it seemed like you were always working a case without a day off. You’d closed a case earlier in the day, nothing coming in before you left for the day. 

“I know, but it’ll be fun. I promise.” He pulled up in front of Roka Akor, letting the valet take the car from there. You hooked your arm through his, leaning into him slightly as the two of you walked in. It wasn’t every day you were able to go to your favorite Japanese restaurant -- especially since it was usually saved for special occasions due to the price. 

“You really didn’t have to do this,” you whispered to him as the host led you to a private table. The two of you sat down, Jay not saying anything. When you looked at him, he had a smile on his face, reaching across the table to hold your hand. You couldn’t ignore his foot brushing against your leg softly either. 

“I know I didn’t, Y/N. But I am allowed to spoil my girlfriend occasionally,” he reminded you. You weren’t the type who expected to be spoiled, but you had to admit it was nice. You hadn’t had time to even look at the menu when both of your phones went off. “One night,” he sighed. “Can we just have one night?”

You pulled out your phone, seeing that Intelligence had managed to get a case. “How about we schedule a weekend off, Jay,” you suggested, seeing his face drop when he looked at his phone.

“Yeah,” he agreed, the two of you leaving. As you waited for the valet, he pulled you to him, lips against yours. You practically melted into him at the contact. “When we get home,” he said in a harsh whisper, kissing along your jaw. “I plan on making up for this.��

“I’ll hold you to it, Halstead,” you agreed, the valet clearing his throat to get your attention. You couldn’t look at the man as a blush formed across your cheeks at getting caught. 

5. Making Out (NSFW)

Molly’s was packed -- more so than usual. Not that you minded. It gave you more of a reason to sit on the same side of the booth as Jay, leaving the other side open for whoever wanted it. Nobody was going to take it, though. You’d both had a few more drinks than usual by that point, having three rounds of shots in as well. Despite all the other people in the bar, it felt like you and Jay were the only ones there. 

He’d hooked his arm around your waist, pulling you close as your hand held onto the back of his neck. Your lips were in a battle for dominance, your free hand resting high on his thigh. He made you feel like a teenager again, making out in the booth on a date. It was fun, exciting, not what you’d usually do. 

“Do you guys want me to book you a motel room across the street?” Hermann asked. Jay pulled away from your lips, though that wasn’t going to stop you as you tasted the exposed skin of his neck. 

“You got a backroom with no cameras?” Jay countered, Hermann looking disgusted as he grabbed the empty glasses off the table. 

“If that means the patrons of my bar don’t have to watch you two act like a couple horny teenagers, then yeah. I do. Through the double doors. Knock yourselves out.” You giggled, getting out of the booth with Jay close behind.

The doors had barely swung shut when he pressed you against the wall, your leg hooking around his waist as your lips met again. You silently thanked God for the fact he’d worn a button-up, fingers working quickly to get his shirt open. As soon as his skin was exposed, you let your hands roam, earning a groan from him. 

“I’m half tempted to just take you right here,” he half-growled when your eyes met. There was no denying the lust on his face, tongue darting out to lick his swollen lips as his eyes scanned your body. His pupils were blown, hiding the natural green of his eyes. 

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” you teased, wanting...no, needing him. “Hermann did say there were no cameras.” His lips were on yours again, walking you to the counter, helping you up as he stood between your legs. 

“Think Voight could get us out of an indecent exposure charge?” he asked as his lips found your neck, laughing at his question. 

“I doubt.” You moaned as he sucked along your collarbone, eyes fluttering shut as you threw your head back to allow him better access. “That Hermann would press charges.”

He pulled back as your hands fumbled with his belt. Maybe you were just a bit more drunk than you’d originally thought, but that didn’t matter. The only thing you could possibly focus on in that moment was Jay, his hands dipping up under your shirt as he explored your skin. You managed to get his belt undone, popping the button on his jeans before his hands were reaching up under your dress. It was at this time, you knew you’d made the best decision when you’d decided to wear a dress. 

He grabbed the waistband of your panties as you lifted your hips slightly, enabling him to slide them down your legs. They fell to your ankles as he ran his hand up the skin of your leg, your dress bunching up around his wrist as his lips found yours again. You pulled him closer, pushing down his jeans and boxers just enough to free him. He took no time to pull you to the edge of the counter, sheathing himself inside you quickly. 

It sent a jolt of pleasure through you as you moaned into his mouth, nails digging into his shoulders. There was no hesitation as he set a fast pace, both of you knowing this wasn’t going to last very long. If you were being honest, you couldn’t remember the last time you and Jay had been intimate. Recently with work, it seemed like all you two were doing was just that...work. 

“Oh, fuck, Y/N,” he groaned as he held onto your hip with bruising strength. You didn’t care, focused on the pleasure. The two of you knew you couldn’t be loud, not wanting to bring suspicion to the back room. As your orgasm swept over you, Jay capturing your lips again, one hand held onto him, the other trying to find purchase on the counter. This action sent a glass jar to the floor, shattering upon impact. It didn’t take long for Kidd to come looking for the source. 

“Oh god!” she exclaimed, Jay barely noticing as you made eye contact. The other woman quickly covered her eyes. “I know Hermann said there were no cameras, but really?” she asked as she hurried out of the room. 

You felt Jay smile, hips faltering in their pace as he reached his peak. You locked your legs around him, keeping him close as the two of you came down from your respective highs.  

“We should probably go back out there,” you told him, hand stroking through his hair, nails gently scratching along his scalp as he let his head rest on your shoulder. “Have another drink, and head home?” 

“Sounds like a good plan,” he agreed, trailing kisses along your shoulder for a few seconds longer before pulling back, getting his pants back up on his hips. You hopped off the counter, leaning down to grab your underwear. With a smirk, you shoved them in Jay’s pocket before sauntering out of the room, Jay on your heels. 

Stella gave you a knowing look, returning her look with a coy smile. The two of you approached the bar, settling in the middle where you’d managed to find a seat. Jay remained standing right beside you, hand on your thigh. 

“Another round of tequila shots,” you announced with a smile. 

“Next time, I’m just getting you two a room across the street,” Hermann replied as he poured the shots. Seemed like either A) he knew what you two were up to or B) Stella told him what she saw. It didn’t matter either way, too high on Jay to really care.

[honey-dewey]

Five Car Pileup

Pairing: Jack ‘Whiskey’ Daniels/Reader

Word Count: 2,162

Warnings: Where to start? Probably medical inaccuracies, amputation, car accident, blood, gore, mentions of needles, mentions of death, Jack gets depressed but not for long, the reader has to cut Jack’s arm off without painkillers, but surprisingly no one dies, and I do promise it has a happy ending. This one’s harsh y’all, proceed with caution.

Permanent Taglist: @phoenixhalliwell @star-wars-hell

Nothing marks a day as ‘bad’ like having a painful 24 hour shift, two patients die in your care, and at the last ten minutes of your shift, a five car pileup where at least one man was severely injured. However, that man is your former boyfriend Jack Daniels, and boy oh boy is he in trouble. 

Short A/N: PLEASE pay attention to the warnings! This story is a doozy! Be careful, drive safely, and stay safe! 

You took a breath, leaning against the ambulance and finally scrubbing your hands down your face. This was why you didn’t wear any heavy makeup during night shifts. Mostly because no one cared, but partially so you could rub your face without worry.

The night had been unnecessarily long. You’d started working almost twenty four hours ago, and the constant work was starting to weigh on your shoulders. Two patients had died today, both while you were in the room with them. One had been an old woman who’d been battling cancer for years now, and the other had been a teenager who’d asked you to hold her hand as she passed. It was horribly taxing, and all you wanted to do was go home and make some tea, maybe curl up on the couch with a sappy movie or something while you slept away the past 24 hours.

A chiming brought your attention back, and you checked your watch, breathing out. Ten minutes until your shift was over. Ten minutes. Ten minutes.

And then your pager went off.

“Shit!” You yelled, grabbing it off your waist and looking at it. Swearing even more, you flagged down a paramedic running to the ambulance you were leaning against. The hospital was understaffed, as always, and they needed you to make a run with the paramedics. Something about a severe car accident, estimated five cars with at least one man badly injured. Groaning loudly, you hopped into the ambulance as it took off, sirens wailing. Of course. Of course you had an emergency within the last ten minutes of your shift.

The wreck wasn’t too far out, which was nice. You’d hate to be in charge of any patient for an hour long ride to the hospital. As the ambulance pulled to a stop, you jumped out, going into work mode. Car wrecks weren’t an uncommon event, and you’d had your fair share of wreck patients. Either they were ridiculously over-exaggerated or horribly under-exaggerated. Either way, this would be bad.

Taking in the wreck, you counted the vehicles. Five, as expected. Two trucks, two cars, and one SUV. The other paramedics began to examine the people standing on the side, a fire truck pulling up along with a handful of cop cars.

“There’s still someone trapped in there!” A woman with three kids by her side said to you as you circled the wreck. “He got my kids out, but he’s stuck and we can’t get him out.”

You nodded to the woman, seeing a wayward boot sticking out between the flipped cab of one of the trucks and the scraped door of a car. “I see him!”

Getting on your stomach, you managed to wiggle into the wreck, army crawling against the glass scattered ground. Calling out to the other paramedics and the firemen, you found the victim.

Scooting so you were parallel to the body, you reached out and managed to flip the head towards you, gasping. Jack Daniels, an old flame of yours. Blood stained the side of his head, and one eye was swollen shut. Every inch of skin that you could see was grimy and scattered with glass shards. He blinked his left eye open, a tiny, wavering grin blossoming as he saw you. “Hello darling. Here to rescue me?”

“Yes Jack,” you said calmly, hearing the firemen begin to move the truck above you. “Where does it hurt?”

Jack winced. “Arm. Right one. I think it’s stuck.”

“Okay,” you said, looking around. There was space to Jack’s left, and you moved out from his right so you could lay on his left. There was nothing separating you now, and you were able to take Jack’s heart rate and blood pressure, all while slowly treating his other, smaller wounds. Finally, you could face it no longer. You had to check the worst of the damage.

“Alright, let me see that arm,” you said, shimmying down so you were close to his arm. It was, as assumed, stuck. The SUV door had broken off and was now laying on Jack’s arm right near the shoulder, the thin strip of metal pressing into his skin not giving you any hope. “Jack.”

“That’s my name.”

“Jack the arm has to go.”

Silence. It was the unfortunate reality. Nothing could save him now. “The other paramedics can get you out, but this arm is too stuck. The SUV door isn’t going anywhere, and if I don’t take it off.”

The unsaid threat hung heavy in the air. Jack took a breath, and you could see his chest rise as he considered his options. “Will it hurt?”

“Like nothing you’ve ever experienced,” you said softly, words getting caught on your unusually tight throat. You’d scooted back up so you and Jack were face to face. The sound of another car being moved, exposing your back, crunched through the air.

Jack turned his face to look at you, swollen eye leaking tears. “Just do it.”

You nodded, taking his trapped hand and kissing it, wanting his last experience with both hands to be, at least, mildly pleasant.

“Let me go see if we have painkillers,” you said slowly, rolling out from the wreck.

Standing to face the paramedics, you explained the situation. They’d have to pull him out as soon as you were done if there was going to be any chance for him to survive. Grabbing a syringe full of the strongest painkillers you could find and a battery powered saw, you took a forced breath and got back under the car.

Jack was waiting, taking deep, slow breaths. “Hey darling.”

“Hey Jack,” you said, wiggling around until you could securely give him the painkillers. “How’s work been?”

“Oh, y’know,” Jack mumbled, wincing as you stuck him. “Same old, same old.”

You nodded. A while into your relationship, Jack had trusted you with the true secret of his job. You had never visited the Statesman secret service building, but the stories were amazing and usually hilarious. “Think they’ll be able to make you a fancy new arm?”

Jack chuckled weakly. “Yeah. All the bells and whistles.” He was quiet for a minute as you tried to still your shaking hands. “Darling?”

“Yeah?”

“When this is all over,” Jack said slowly, so slowly you feared he was losing consciousness. “How about a date? Out to that old restaurant you liked, the one where they had all their herbs and veggies growing out back.”

You smiled, reaching a hand through the shattered SUV window and caressing Jack’s face. “I’d like that Jack. I’d like that a lot. You survive this, and I’ll absolutely go out with you again. I do miss our conversations.”

Jack grinned, his one open eye blinking slowly. “Yeah. Sounds good.”

You moved back down, calling out to the paramedics who no doubt had a grip on Jack’s body and were waiting for you to do your job. “Ready!”

“Ready!” The call back was horrifying, and you positioned the saw above the line where the arm was trapped. From this angle, it would be tricky, but possible.

“Ready,” came Jack’s weak voice, and you shut your eyes tight for a split second before gathering yourself, putting on a brave face and your work emotions, and doing your damn job.

It was agony. Jack screamed, a horribly pained scream that tore at his throat and made you want to cry. He flailed, broken pleas for you to stop bubbling in between the screaming. The other paramedics held his limbs, securing him down so he didn’t screw up your hack job. You hoped the three children couldn’t hear as you kept going, working through skin, muscle, and bone. Jack’s continued screams made your blood run cold as you did your job quickly, finally able to shout “pull!”

Jack disappeared from your view as you collapsed onto the ground. Blood stained you from head to toe, and it took two men to help you to your feet. As you stumbled across the bloodied asphalt, your knees weak, two firemen took you and got you as clean as possible, wrapping you in a shock blanket and reassuring you that everything was okay. The mother with her two kids was gone, blissfully, but a few other spectators had remained, each visibly shaken by what they’d just heard and seen.

The ambulance with Jack in it was already gone by the time you were back in focus. “He’s gonna be okay?” You rasped, leaning against a paramedic you knew well.

Lawrence nodded. “He’ll be fine. C’mon, let’s get you home.”

In the end, you did go home. For almost twelve hours, you slept on the couch, making Lawrence swear to call you if anything happened to Jack. No such call came, so when you stumbled into work the next day, you were unsurprised but overjoyed to find Jack alive and recovering slowly. He was still unconscious, and was mostly being kept alive by machines, but you were ecstatic to see his heartbeat steady on the monitor.

“Hey you,” Lawrence said, coming up behind you. “You did good yesterday.”

“Didn’t feel good,” you said, avoiding looking at the thick white bandages that covered Jack’s hacked at shoulder.

Lawrence sighed. “He’s alive,” he reminded you. “Because of you. The boys and I were talking. None of us would’ve had the courage to crawl into that wreck and cut his arm off at that angle.”

You shrugged. “I’m never doing that again.”

“I bet.”

It took Jack months to recover enough for visitors. He was in your section, meaning you were taking care of him. For almost two months he was silent and mostly unresponsive, only really ever turning his head and shrugging when he had to. The wound healed nicely, and by the end of month three, you deemed him okay for visitors.

His first visitor was a woman in a neat button up. She was holding a white box and you recognized her very faintly.

“You can call me Ginger,” she said when you asked for her name. You nodded, suddenly remembering her. Ginger. One of Jack’s coworkers.

Jack was happy to see Ginger. He didn’t smile, but his posture shifted. Ginger set the box on the bed near his feet. “Daniels. How’s the hospital been treating you?”

“Better than the Statesman med center,” Jack said, and you grinned. That was the man you knew, sass and snark.

Ginger sat in a chair. “Well, you’ll be pleased to know that, while the hatter wasn’t happy to hear you destroyed his favorite hat, he made you a new one.” She opened the box and pulled out a pristine cowboy hat. Gently placing it on Jack’s head, she gave the brim a playful flick. “There’s the cowboy we’re all missing at work.”

Jack sighed, ducking his head down. With a jolt, you realized he was smiling. Jack was smiling again.

Another month passed, during which Jack returned to his former attitude. He attended PT daily, often with you beside him as he swore loudly while trying to maneuver the fake kitchen the physical therapy department had with one hand. When he was finally cleared for discharge, you went to your boss with a request.

“I want to be transferred,” you said. “Just for the time being, until Daniels returns to work. I want to be made his primary carer.”

It took some negotiating, but you walked out of the office with a new job. Jack put his arm around you as he waved to the various nurses and doctors who had saved his life, walking out of the hospital for the first time in months.

Your first stop was Statesman.

Champ was, as expected, sympathetic. Ginger was happy to see Jack back at work, and Tequila made exactly one stump joke before you kneed him in the dick and told him to fuck off.

Ginger also insisted on getting some scans and measurements of his shoulder. You held his left hand while Ginger uncovered the unsightly wound. He hissed at the contact, but Ginger kept her touch nice and light as she worked.

“I can build a prosthetic,” she decided finally. “It’ll function just like your old arm, and we can even build a flesh sleeve so it’ll look the same. I don’t think I can give it pain receptors though.”

Jack shook his head, sliding his shirt back on. “That’s fine. Don’t need anything fancy.”

You smiled, opening the door and taking Jack’s hand as he waved goodbye to Ginger.

“I believe I promised you a date,” Jack said as you two walked away from the Statesman infirmary, still hand in hand.

“I believe you did,” you said, following Jack through the building. “But I’m driving.”

Jack grinned, and you were glad, despite your fears months ago, that you’d been brave enough to step up and take the charge to save Jack’s life. “Well then, what are we waiting for, darling?”

[userpoe]

alright so I've used the tag 'poe dameron and the no good, horrible, awful, terrible bad week' frequently on this blog regarding the events of tfa/tlj but I've never really expanded on this and usually when I see people mention Poe's trauma, it's usually only the fact that he was tortured (valid). So, without further ado, let's take a look into the amount of trauma my poor kid went through in the span of like...a week and a half (if I had to hazard a guess).

Almost dies pulling a ridiculously dangerous stunt to escape the Colossus with Kaz (Resistance)

Finds the remains of an outpost destroyed by the First Order, is the one to find a tooka doll in the wreckage (Resistance) and realizes what happened

Has to watch Lor San Tekka (a man Poe has spent a long time looking for and greatly admires) be brutally murdered. 

Is frozen with the Force and roughed up by some stormtroopers who take the advantage of the fact he couldn’t move 

Is taken captive and has to watch as another outpost full of civilians be slaughtered - unable to do a damn thing about it but cry out “no”

Is taken aboard the Finalizer where he is confronted by the fact that the First Order is more powerful/has more resources than he realized

By my estimate, he’s held there for a couple of days: it’s nighttime when he’s captured and we see Rey go through two days on Jakku in between scenes with Poe. So, I reckon he was tortured for most of the first night/most of the next day. His wounds suggest physical torture (bruising around his head, bunch of cuts on his cheek/nose and a busted lip) and the Poe Dameron Flight Log also states that he was tortured by an interrogation droid who was given orders to use any methods available to get him to talk, including neuroshocks (yay). The droid apparently asked Poe where the map/Luke was 813 times and he never broke.

By the end of the second day is when Kylo comes in. As far as I’m aware, there’s no detailed explanation of what Poe sees when Kylo goes through his head but I think it’s safe to assume from what we saw of Kylo doing the same thing to Del in Battlefront II that Poe likely to relive some of his pre-TFA trauma while Kylo searched for the location of the map.

Poe is actually unconscious by the time Kylo leaves the room.

In the Flight Log and in the Poe comics, it’s revealed that Poe believed he was a) going to be killed, b) thought he’d doomed the Resistance and the Galaxy. 

It’s day #3 that Finn comes to break him out. Poe’s so out of it still that he looks like he’s barely conscious when Finn comes to collect him. Obviously, things don’t go well and they crash.

Mid-crash, Poe ejects Finn out of the TIE Fighter, but is unable to eject himself out because his flight jacket got caught on the mechanism. He’s thrown out of the TIE Fighter (more physical injuries, yay), and stays unconscious for the rest of day 3.

Wakes up that night and wanders by himself for the night and some of the next day before he meets a scavenger who begrudgingly helps him out. Poe makes his way back to D’Qar, where he informs Leia of all the dozen ways he feels like he’s failed the Resistance, her, and the galaxy

(he never tells her who tortured him, though)

The New Republic is then destroyed. This is the government Poe believed in, served for years. It’s incredibly likely that Poe probably lived on one of the planets that was destroyed during his time in the fleet, and even more likely he lost old friends when it was destroyed.

Despite undergoing several days of torture + duress, Poe is sent to Takodana. When everyone returns to D’Qar, we see that it doesn’t appear he’s even visited a medbay at this point: he still has a busted lip and a lot of bruising.

When Starkiller sets its sights on D’Qar, they have to come up with a plan quickly. The Resistance is noted several times in the Poe comics to only have a handful of pilots: hell, there’s only about 400 people to evacuate in TLJ. They are officially the only people standing in between the galaxy and utter tyranny: no pressure or anything.

Since the bombing squadrons are out on a mission, the Resistance has to send twelve fighter pilots to take on a planet.

Only seven out of those twelve make it back alive (that shot of Poe growling mid battle? Yeah that’s after one of his pilots is killed).

Poe then discovers that Finn was gravely injured - Finn, who Poe probably feels a lot of responsibility for, since he’s there because of him, and who Poe already cares for a lot.

Not necessarily trauma related but it makes me emotional thinking about it: he hesitates long enough to make sure Rey is physically okay before taking off after Finn (you can spy Jessika and Snap watching after Finn worriedly in the crowd too!), and we later don’t see him leave Leia’s side: likely, he’s trying to keep an eye on her since he knows she’s grieving. 

The Resistance doesn’t get very long to celebrate, though. Shortly after Rey leaves for Ach-Too, they discover the FO has already recovered enough to launch an attack on D’Qar. 

As the Resistance discusses how to evacuate, Poe offers himself up as bait - knowing full well he could die by doing so. He’s scared, and Leia is too (we see this in TLJ, she’s actively nervous while on the comms with him). We even see him trying to calm himself down before he engages (”happy beeps”) once he has a moment to himself after calming Leia and BB-8 down (”c’mon buddy, we’ve pulled crazier stunts than this”).

Gets to listen to Hux threaten Leia, who Poe has spent the last sixteen years admiring and is one of the most important figures in his life/a surrogate mother figure. Literally, Hux calls Leia “[his] precious princess” 

(maybe if you’d kept your pasty mouth shut you’d still have a dreadnaught, Hux).

It’s worth noting that almost everyone Poe has loved and lost has died in a space battle, including his mother. The entire Resistance, everyone he has left, is currently vulnerable to dying a similar death.

Poe strapped on a pair of experimental boosters to Black One, knowing full well that they could possibly kill him: they’d never been tested before. In fact, the blow back when he does activate them is so bad, he’s almost knocked unconscious in the TLJ novelization.

Rounding back to Starkiller for a second, it’s easy to see why Poe misjudged the Dreadnaught situation: they managed to take down a freaking planet with twelve starfighters and a ground team of five. A dreadnaught should have been nothing in comparison (and his line of thinking is very similar to Lu’lo’s, the man who helped raise him after Shara died, who’s loss catapulted Poe from being cautious into more freely engaging with the First Order).

Instead, he loses....a lot of his pilots. It’s stated in Spark of the Resistance he was friends with Paige, who - you guessed it - he’s on comms with when she dies. They take out the Dreadnaught, so he tries to focus on that instead - but it’s obvious that it’s eating away at him.

He’s then demoted but barely gets time to process that because then the FO finds them. He offers to go “jump in an x-wing and blow something up” but instead arrives in the hanger just in time to see it go up in flames...with a bunch more of his friends (pilots and techs who were already there) dead. To make matters worse, he was on the comms with Tallie when she died. Please give him a break.

Immediately after this, all leadership is killed in an attack. Poe, Kaydel and Finn are watching from a window when Leia pulls herself back to the Raddus: which likely means they were staring in horror before Leia ever came to. He’s the first one to catch Leia when she reaches the airlock, and doesn’t leave her side until he has to, to attend the meeting with the surviving members of the Resistance.

He then has a CrisisTM when he mentally freaks out, wondering if Leia still left him in charge because he knows she’s been trying to mold him into her replacement (although he believes he’s not worthy and is just a soldier/pilot, nothing more). Look at his sigh of relief when Holdo is called instead! He was terrified.

Kind of thrown by her speech, which I reckon reminded him a lot of the officials he dealt with in the New Republic Navy. [smash cut noises] in Poe Dameron #14, after Lu’lo dies, Leia grounds Poe so he has time to process his grief instead of just throwing himself into the next mission because “Everything’s easy for Poe Dameron, right?” I imagine that’s why Poe was immediately at Holdo’s side: looking for something to do, something to distract him from his own regret, grief and fear. However, it doesn’t work, and he’s again reminded of the things he hasn’t time to process: namely, his demotion -- which likely bothers him less than the fact that it reminds him that the last conversation he had with Leia, she was disappointed in him and it was...essentially an argument.

However, when Holdo makes it clear she doesn’t want his help...Poe backs off. He listens to her, and finds something else to do.

Which is keeping an eye on Leia, apparently, since the next scene we see him, he’s in her quarters. I’m guessing he stopped long enough to get dressed after the meeting, and immediately went to go keep an eye on Leia after this.

After Finn and Rose detail the plan to him, he takes a moment to himself to hold Leia’s hand: no doubt trying to gather up the courage to step into a leadership role. This plan is exactly the kind of thing Leia has come up with for Black Squadron, which is probably why he agrees to it. He’s pulled stunts like this before, this should go well, right?

(Spoiler Alert: no one has any luck in this movie so It Does Not Go Well)

BB-8 goes with Finn and Rose, which leaves Poe on the Raddus without any of his usual support system. Black Squadron is on a mission to gather allies, so he officially has no one to talk to or lean on at this time. He’s utterly alone and the cracks start to show.

(TLJ Poe is a Poe very close to losing hope for the first time. He’s desperate and scared)

In the TLJ novelization, Poe helps evacuate the medical frigate before Holdo grounds him from aiding in future evacuations (??? for reasons never explained). Despite his own growing concerns, Poe greets all the newcomers and spends his free time trying to raise spirits around the Raddus. 

After seeing so many of his fellow Resistance members so desperate and without hope, Poe starts to worry everything Leia built is going to be destroyed. He even tells Holdo this, and her response is literally “Captain Dameron. If you’re here to serve a princess, I’ll assign you to bedpan duty.”

which...nice ableism there.

The Day Just Gets Worse and Worse and Poe has absolutely Nothing To Do with no idea how to help, and just a lot of waiting, and he hates that, he hates not being able to actively do something to protect the people he loves so he just gets more and more agitated until he eventually has a meltdown on the bridge.

Despite ALL OF THIS, he doesn’t even want to mutiny. It’s an attempt to buy Finn and Rose a little more time, it’s a last ditch effort, one that he doesn’t Remotely Look Happy About, and was never originally part of the plan.

He then hears Finn and Rose (over the comms, hooray I’m sensing a pattern) be found aboard Snoke’s ship. He realizes they didn’t make it, but doesn’t get time to focus on that because Leia shows up and stuns him.

He wakes up in a panic aboard the ship and (imo, because fellas I’m intimately aware of what one looks like) has a panic attack when he realizes they’ve abandoned ship. At this point, he doesn’t even know there’s a nearby planet to go to (Crait is uncharted), as far as he’s aware, the escape would’ve just been to drift in the weaponless (?) shuttles until they ran out of fuel again. Leia calms him down from it and gently explains the plan to him.

He gets to watch several other shuttles be destroyed, and tries to find out if theirs can go any faster (Leia’s on the ship with him). He then gets to watch Amilyn sacrifice herself and is the first to realize what she’s doing.

I don’t know why it took me so long to realize this but his line “Finn! Rose! You’re not dead! Where’s my droid?” yeah, Poe had no idea they were even alive, he probably thought they were immediately killed or died when Holdo did The Thing.

When they realize they’re trapped, the camera pans up on a worried looking Poe. Just before it cuts away, he’s starting to smile: he’s already prepping for a inspiring speech, despite his own fear. He doesn’t get a chance though, because Finn beats him to it: and then we get the heart eyes shot from Poe, because he realizes he isn’t alone any more (no this isn’t trauma related it just Gets Me In My FinnPoe feelings so)

They begin their run on the battering ram canon. After losing more pilots, Poe orders them to fall back, but Finn disobeys him in a direct parallel to Poe at the start of the film. This move is largely considered a suicide run on Finn’s part...[coughing] maybe the start of the movie was too [coughing]

Poe continues to get everyone to retreat and is the last one back on base. He runs with the medic team to check Finn and Rose, and also bolts to Leia’s side when Luke is fired upon to comfort her.

He panics again when he realizes they can’t get through the only other exit, but luckily they’ve got Rey on the other side.

Shortly after all this, Poe  has some drinks with Finn and Rey on the Falcon. He’s still mulling everything over and admits he wishes they’d all met earlier and wonders if things would’ve gone differently if the three of them met after Takodana (Poe Comics)

After Finn asks Poe what happened after the TIE crashed in TFA, Rey encourages Poe to tell them his story as she thinks it would be a “good distraction” from everything else. Poe hesitates, but goes through and literally retells a very traumatic series of events that’s barely a week old, so they have a distraction from everything. He plays it all off light-heartedly, cracking jokes (even says he went through a “little light torture”). 

It isn’t until Rey mentions that Kylo also tortured her that Poe treats it a little more seriously “he did that to me too!” and holds his drink up for her to cheer with him and calls them “torture buddies” because he’s Poe Dameron and trying to cheer people up is what he does.

Finn even calls out Poe’s insistence that everything will work out several times in the few issues set post TLJ. He can’t believe Poe has so much faith, but honestly? As much as Poe keeps saying everything is gonna work out, I wonder if he’s trying to convince Rey and Finn or himself.

Finn then asks Poe to catch him up on what happened while he was unconscious post Starkiller.

Let me reiterate that Poe literally just retold with some ease being held captive for three days to distract them.

But after he tells Finn he offered himself up as bait, Poe skirts around the rest of the story with a “well you know the rest!” He can’t even bring himself to talk about the Dreadnaught run. Talking about Kylo running through his head is easier for him than that.

He then receives a recording from Jessika retelling the events of what Black Squadron was up to during TLJ. When he starts the video, he almost immediately pauses it and asks Threepio how it ends. Poe admits he doesn’t know what he’ll do if the video ends with Jess going up in a fireball. Luckily, it doesn’t end that way, but he still has to watch the videos with no idea what happened to his closest and oldest friends.

All of this happens in, like, a week at the most. This doesn’t even BEGIN to touch on the trauma Poe goes through in the Poe comics or even Freefall, but if we did want to touch on that, I’d say that a lot of the events in TFA and especially TLJ probably triggered some bad memories for him. Poe Dameron deserves nothing but fluffy things and also a lot of hugs.