#And compulsively searching things and doing things. And I pick my skin. I HAVE problems | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

assumingminds19 · 4 years ago

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anastasia's mate

“Anyone can play, right?”

Kara felt like she was going to bounce out of her own skin, finally daring to do this, sitting on her chair and whispering to the white-bearded man next to her. Eagerness vibrated against her ribs alongside her heart. She’d asked the same man she’d seen the dark-haired woman playing the most, watching from far away. But her eyes were on the woman herself, standing back as the row of old men set their boards.

“Of course, moy dorogoy,” he answered through a thick Russian accent, his hands shaking over his pawns. “But be warned, poteryannaya printsessa is playing all quickly today.”

“What-“

Before she could finish, the woman was suddenly in front of her, Kara’s breath and question caught in her throat at finally being so close. But she didn’t even look at Kara, only at her bright, shiny and unused board for a second, before making her move and rotating back down to the end of the line.

Even though she was playing seven of them at once, Kara could barely keep up, losing first, embarrassment twisting in her gut. The rest fell in quick succession, and before she knew it, the men were packing up. The woman had vanished, leaving Kara wondering what’d just happened.

“That’s it?” She asked. “But I-“

“Don’t be upset,” the Russian replied. “She always wins.”

Kara blinked, looking back to her board and the pattern of her loss.

“Does she ever speak?”

“Da,” he laughed. “Sometimes.”

xxx

The next time they played, it was just the two of them. Kara hadn’t been expecting to play her at all. For the past month, the woman had switched only between the Russian and another man with a thick scarf. But today, before Kara had even finished setting up her board, the woman landed in the chair in front of her, waiting silently. Kara’s mouth gaped, her eyes darted towards her new Russian friend, panicked. The man’s lips twitched, and he nodded in encouragement before returning to his own game.

Kara hesitated, waiting for some cue from the other woman, but she was still just watching Kara quietly. Kara rushed to set up the pieces, feeling obligated to give the woman white as thanks for choosing her.

It was the longest game Kara had ever played, all of fifteen minutes. The woman’s moves slow and deliberate enough for her to clue in that she was giving Kara a game without pressure. An unachievable goal, Kara barely able to focus on the pieces, distracted by the lavender smell her nose caught on the wind, wondering if it was the woman’s perfume.

Still, once she’d lost, Kara frowned at the board, trying to understand.

“You shouldn’t have castled.”

It was a lovely voice, smooth, husky and crisp all at once. Wrapped around the consonants and tilting them up in a distinctly un-American way. Kara had trouble believing it was directed at her.

“I’m sorry?”

She winced at the way her voice squeaked, but the woman didn’t seem to notice, just kept watching her with vibrant green eyes.

“In your game.”

Kara’s foggy brain tried to catch up. She looked back at the board, trying to see what the woman was telling her.

“I needed to get the rook out.”

The woman didn’t wait, fingers reaching and darting over the pieces, resetting the play.

“You lost your advantage,” she answered, moving the carved wood. “I played pawn takes pawn, you couldn’t take back. Your problem was your queen knight.”

Kara blinked, still not seeing it. At her non-answer, the other woman let out a soft sigh and stood.

“Think it out.”

She breezed away with the chill wind before Kara could reply, leaving her frustrated and mournful watching her go.

A deep laugh sounded. Kara looked to the old Russian, finished now and shaking the hand of his opponent.

“You are like sobaka chasing its tail.”

Kara scowled, annoyed and began to pack up her own pieces.

“What is with her?” She grumbled.

“Fascinated?” He teased standing, board under his arm. “You’re not the first, even though you are the first she’s shown how they lost.”

Kara scowled, feeling the butt of a joke she had no part of.

“She’s good, so what?”

The man’s bushy eyebrows reached his hairline.

“She’s three times international champion before she was sixteen, devushka,” he answered, making her feel thick for not knowing. “She beat Petrovick in Paris before she was a grandmaster. You’ve been playing with Bog shakhmat, my dear. The Lost Princess, God of Chess. Don’t wonder how you lose, just be glad she picked you.”

xxxxx

Lena Luthor was her real name. From there, Kara spent half a day googling everything she could about her. Chess champion, a child prodigy, winning more competitive games before she was fourteen then most played in their career. Article after article calling her the greatest chess player to ever live. All until her final match at sixteen, the first loss of her career, when she seemed to vanish from the chess scene and the earth. Except she hadn’t. She was here, in National City, playing in the park with old men and Kara.

Kara’s cursor hovered over the video of an old interview, Lena’s young face so sombre and severe for a child of twelve.

“It was the board I noticed first. It’s an entire world of just sixty-four squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it. I can dominate it. And it’s predictable, so if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame.”

“And what do you do for fun?”

“I stay awake as long as I can, reading my books, learning the Sicilian Defence. There are fifty-seven pages about it in the book I’m reading, with one hundred and seventy lines stemming from P to QB4. I’ll memorise them and play through them in my mind.”

“There’s more to life than chess, you know.”

“Is there?”

Kara absorbed the words, her curiosity ferocious before she closed her laptop screen and picked up the second-hand, dog eared book on chess openings she had bought, settling back on her couch to reread it again.

xxxxx

The third time they played, Kara was the one to choose Lena, marching right up and sitting across from her before Lena had the chance to choose anyone else. It sent a mutter through the crowd of old men, but Lena took it in her stride, a ghost of a smile on her lips and didn’t say a word as Kara set up the board, this time choosing white.

Kara made her first move deliberately, watching Lena’s face as she did, daring her with it. Lena’s eyes raked the board, then Kara’s face in turn, sparkling before she made her answering move.

It was long and complicated, and Kara spent more time hung up on moves that should have been simple when Lena countered with something that sent her in a whole new direction. By the time the game had stretched into an hour, none of the men were playing anymore. Instead, they gathered in a small crowd around them, watching quietly as their match ebbed and flowed.

Once, Kara was convinced she was going to lose, seeing Lena’s path to victory in three more moves when suddenly, Lena did something completely unexpected. Sacrificing her queen and leaving her king exposed. At first, Kara thought she had missed something herself, wondering if she had tripped into a mistake. But the more she looked, the worse it all became for Lena. It caught Kara off-guard. It would be a brutal play. It would be the kind of thing Lena did to other people, and for a minute Kara wondered if she should do it at all. But something was pushing her in the back of her mind—an urge for this to be more than a pastime. More then a compulsion or an addiction, and Kara wondered when this had become less about knowing Lena and more about knowing herself. It was a demand, an obsession—a thirst for something more.

Kara made the play, her fingers unable to let go of her piece as she watched, recalculated and watched again before she let it go. Kara saw it in Lena’s eyes then, a softness. An acceptance. And then, Lena was holding out her hand for Kara to take, her king in her palm.

“It’s your game,” she whispered. “Take it.”

Kara did, her skin tingling where their hands touched, a part of her was too dumbfounded to realise that the roaring in her ears was the sound of applause from the crowd around them. Lena dropped their joined hands with a smile and melted back through the group. Kara tried to follow as the men held her back, offering their congratulations. In an undoubtedly rude move, she ignored and pushed past them, head twisting around, scanning the people in the park, finally spotting Lena’s back as she walked away.

Kara ran after her, calling out.

“Hey, wait!”

Lena stopped, turned around, an eyebrow arched when Kara slid to a stop in front of her. Without the barrier of chess between them, Kara found herself at a loss for words, caught in Lena’s green eyes.

“I… uhhh… hello.”

It was all she could dumbly manage.

“Hello.”

There was a long pause, too long beyond comfortable, before the only thought Kara could think spilled from her lips.

“Did you let me win?”

“No.”

Kara hesitated, the insecurity mixed with the flush of victory banished at Lena’s quick answer. Somehow knowing without knowing that Lena wasn’t a person who’d lie.

“But you did before,” Kara continued instead, pressing, searching for something to hold onto. “Your game… when you were sixteen.”

Lena looked out and away from her for a beat.

“Yes,” she answered quietly, looking back.

Kara’s mouth worked silently, tasting the answer on her tongue.

“Why?”

Lena took another pause before she replied.

“When winning takes everything, what are you left with?”

Kara shouldn’t know what she meant. How could she possibly? But part of her felt it in her bones anyway.

“Chess isn’t always competitive though,” Kara whispered. “It can also be-“

“Beautiful.”

The bare branches of the park dusted light through their snow-covered boughs. They haloed them perfectly, Kara thought, capturing this moment, frozen eternal.

“Why did I win?” She needed to know, not fully understanding herself. “You’ve been playing all your life, I’ve only been playing for three months.”

Lena didn’t seem to think her question stupid, or ridiculous, or any of the things Kara feared it was. She just stepped forward, an inch, but enough to make a point, her eyes darkening to a deeper green.

“Because I was only playing chess, darling,” the final word rippled down Kara’s spine. “You spent three months learning to play chess with me. You’re very good. Raw, unpredictable… when you’re not overthinking. You made a marvellous recovery today.”

Kara knew. She’d almost opened herself up to check in five moves. But the fact that Lena knew that Kara knew and fixed it made her preen, a blush filling her cheeks.

“Thank you. I… I’ve been watching you, for a while on my lunch break,” she admitted. “You were always here, the only colour in a sea of silver.”

“You were fascinated by it.”

“Not it,” Kara quickened. “You.”

Lena’s head tilted, and not for the first time, Kara hungered to know what exactly was going on under that pale and beautiful mask.

“What’s your name?” Lena asked, voice soft, welcoming and unexpected.

“Kara. Kara Danvers.”

“Would you like to go out to dinner?”

“Like a date?” Kara blinked, wondering if she’d misheard.

“Yes,” Lena smiled.

“Ye.. yeah!” Kara stumbled, unable to reign in her enthusiasm. “Umm, tonight?”

“I have a standing engagement.” Before Kara could feel disappointed, Lena countered. “Tomorrow?”

Kara nodded, head bobbing like she was on the dashboard of a car.

“Ok.”

One second. Then two.

“Your number?”

“Oh, yeah…” Kara blushed again. “Here, I’ll um… put it into your… yep.”

She typed it dutifully into Lena’s outstretched phone, sending herself a text to make sure, before handing it back.

“Tomorrow then,” Lena answered, phone safely back in her pocket. “Kara Danvers.”

She leaned forward, brushing her warm lips against Kara’s cheek, her hand giving Kara’s arm a small squeeze through the fabric of her winter coat. Then she was floating away once more, Kara staring after her.

“Wow.”

That night Kara dreamt of rooks and castles and lost princesses, found again.

#supercorp #supercorp fic #kara danvers #lena luthor #chess #the queen's gambit inspired #supergirl

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storypromptsforfun · 6 years ago

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Writing a Character with Dermatillomania

Dermatillomania is one of those ‘unknown’ mental illnesses that is a lot more common than most would guess. However, people who suffer from it (myself included) don’t really see any characters with it.

(Anime villains scratching their skin to look ��crazy’ excepted)

So, here’s a few tips on portraying this realistically if you choose to go this path with a character. Keep in mind that if you choose for your villain to have this, that it’s not just an ‘unnatural scary thing.’

How will it look? Depends on where your character scratches, they could have scars or scabs covering their arms, legs, back, or face. If they’ve had it for years, it’s likely they’ll have spots on their arms that are much lighter than the rest of their skin. These are scars from years of scabbing and scratching.

Now, they’re pretty self-conscious about this. It’s an awkward conversation with people about it because most people assume it’s about self-harm or mental instability.

In fact, dermatillomania isn’t any of these things! It’s a type of compulsion that your character can’t stop. It doesn’t affect them mentally in any ‘scary’ ways. They’re just a person with a compulsion.

To continue the previous point, dermatillomania is often comorbid with anxiety disorders, sensory processing disorders, and OCD.

(It’s basically a stim that went wrong)

Onto the less pretty side effects: first off, your character will have scabbing. They’ll probably wear long sleeves or pants to try to cover up scars and scabs. If they pick at their fingers, it’s much harder to hide.

They might wear gloves to try to stop themselves from searching

Searching is when you run your fingers over your skin to ‘find something wrong.’ Once you do (like a small bump or scab), a compulsion develops. The mental thought process basically jumps to “this is wrong, if I scratch at it I’ll Fix It”

There’s pain involved while the person is in an episode, but most likely they won’t feel it while the fact. Afterwards, it’ll hurt pretty bad.

Bloodstained clothes are pretty normal. So is blood on hands, fingers, etc.

Your character might spend anywhere from ten minutes to hours a day absentmindedly picking at their skin. This is not ideal.

Your character will have a really freaking great immune system. All those open wounds really helps toughen them up.

Either that, or they’ll have had so many infections they can’t count.

It’s not fun.

What unique things can a character with dermatillomania do?

They’ll be great at stopping bleeding. Give them practically anything and they can stop it from bleeding. They’ve had to do it many times over.

They’re great at noticing little physical things that are wrong with themself and others. First ones to call out a tracking device they find (because it’s been driving them crazy not to just rip it off)

They’ll be great at ignoring compulsions from the Dark Side. They have enough to deal with every day that physical compulsions from a magical antagonist won’t faze them.

They’ll have a lot of compassion to people with scarring, burns, or other skin injuries that won’t go away. They know how it feels to always be the different one. They’ll listen.

Very creative people, they are. I currently wear socks to sleep, have a bathrobe covering my mirror, and have learned to shower in the dark (just to combat my compulsions). If they’re faced with an unsolvable problem, they’ll keep coming up with possible solutions.

#writing #story #novel #story prompts #writing prompts #prompts #prompt #story prompt #writing prompt #writing guide #dermatillomania

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girls-scenarios · 7 years ago

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To Feel Human (Part 1)

Idol: Irene (Red Velvet)

Prompt: Could you make android au with Irene and fem!reader? The reader created Irene and wanted Irene to learn about human feelings. Although, sometimes Irene feels like she’s a burden to the reader and leaves temporary. At the end, she comes back they love each other ❤️

Writer: Admin Lee

A/N: Ok this is gonna be a pretty long one, which is why I separated it! I already have most of the second part finished, I’m just working on the ending. Anyways, I took some liberties with this one, but I hope you like it! This one has been super enjoyable for me to write, and I was very inspired by one of my favorite fics: Zeitgeist by leeyoobin on AO3!

Part 2

It started as just an off-the-wall idea, in the living room of one of your friend’s house, Yeonjung’s, to be specific. Along with the rest of your closely knit group, including Yoojung, Yuha, Eunwoo, and Jihyo, you had talked of AI’s, their advancement, etcetera. This was shortly after college, when you had finally earned your Bachelor’s degree in Bioengineering, and a Master’s in mechanical engineering. With an adoration for movies like Ghost in the Shell, and an affinity for problem solving, this was able to motivate you enough to begin a new project: making the first android for personal use. Unfortunately, you weren’t the first with the idea and skills needed to create true artificial life. However, so far the androids on the market have been widely restricted, kept only to be used by large-scale companies with supervision, the military, and other government operations. So, you felt the compulsion to take the risk of creating one more suited for use by the average person. And after a few days of thinking it through on your own, you ended up pitching the idea to Jihyo over lunch.

“You want to...What?”

“Well, I didn’t think it’d be a bad idea, you know? Someone to keep the average person company, help around the house, take care of pets... Stuff like that.” You explained, trying your best to sound reasonable about the idea.

“That sounds great and all, but what about the parts? And the facility we’d have to use to build it in? Half of the things we would need would most likely be illegal for regular people to get..”

You paused, thinking for a moment. “How about Eunwoo’s girlfriend, Kyulkyung? She has some corporate connection, I’m sure.. She’s not an heiress for nothing.”

“I- Ok, we could ask, but it’d probably be a stretch, even for her,” Jihyo replied, always the realistic one. “And I’m assuming you won’t be able to do this alone, so I’m texting the rest of the group, just to see if they’re interested.”

A week or so later, Kyulkyung was able to text you, voicing her enthusiasm for the project, as well as her ability to obtain what your group needed. She was more than happy to help, and coupled with Eunwoo’s impatience, they were able to discreetly transfer some packages of parts and tech to a borderline-abandoned company warehouse near the small town you lived in.

Everything was now sitting in boxes in the now less-empty warehouse. With the help of your friends you took the time to meticulously go through and somewhat organize the amalgamation of parts you had received. There was also a rather large one that you had yet to open. Weird, because Kyulkyung had never really said anything about a package that big. Nonetheless, your curiosity got the best of you and you opened it up.

A discarded android was what you found. Telltale light on its temple blank, lifeless. You had never been this close to one, really, and found it fascinating that something could look so human. You turned in Jihyo’s general direction and got her attention.

“Hey, Jihyo!” You called, and she turned away from what she was doing, walking over to where you stood. “I didn’t know this would be a repair-job, did you?”

“Oh, yeah. When Kyulkyung suggested the idea of fixing up a deactivated droid, she said it’d be easier on all of us. No one would really look into it if something irreparable were to go missing, so she just took this,” She gestured at the inactive android. “and said it’d be more efficient to just fix it up. A lot more inconspicuous for the company, too. Sorry, maybe I should’ve mentioned it.”

“No, it’s fine! You’re right about it seeming easier, I was just surprised,” You explained, eyes still locked onto the body in front of you. “Since we only have to fix it up,we should finish a lot faster, don’t you think?” You could see her nod out of the corner of your eye, and she walked off to resume her work.

Taking note of it’s features, you saw it was a female model, not too hard to tell. Its skin looked soft and pale, and this surprised you, but made sense after thinking about it. Maybe the people that worked with them often wanted to feel more at ease, so the appearance was made to look lifelike. It’s hair was relatively long, and dark in color. You knelt down in front of the container, reaching out to touch the body lying in front of you, but stopped yourself mid-reach, now realizing the gashes and dents in the model (most likely one of the reasons why it was in the scrap pile). Deciding it was a better decision to take care of everything else before dealing with the android, you shut the box gently and went to ask your friends what they needed help with.

The week had finally ended, and you and your friends worked day and night to get the warehouse up to par. There was a platform set up with wires and tubes to hold the android while it was being worked on and programmed, a couple of shelves stocked with spare parts in the corner, some computers and generators, and the android itself - still in the dark, hard plastic container it had arrived in. Not ready to unpack it quite yet, your group took the weekend to relax and prepare for the hard work to come.

Upon meeting again Monday evening, a matter needed to be taken care of before you all could begin: would the android stay here in the warehouse, or would one of you take it home with you once it was completed? Lottery was as good a method as any, and you all put your names in a small box that Yoojung had picked up. After a bit of shuffling the names within the box, Yuha grabbed a slip of paper. She then read aloud:

“(Y/N).”

Looking up from paper, she smiled and jokingly commented, “Have fun getting the robot used to that beast of yours.”

You laughed, imagining how your dog - a Newfoundland named Walter - would act around someone new in the house.

With that now taken care of, you began work once again. This time, finally ready to start working on the android. Eunwoo opened up the box attempted to pick up the body inside.

“Damn, this thing is heavy.. Yoojung, could you bring a rolling cart or something?”

“Sure,” She replied with a chuckle, then within a minute, brought back something the android could be moved more easily on. “Here you go.”

They both managed to get the droid on the cart, and in half an hour, hooked up all the wires from the android to the computers nearby. Then came the more difficult part: repairing the android itself. Not an impossible task, however, it was quite daunting. From what was on the container it arrived in, the model seemed to be a CX100, which didn’t necessarily matter to you outside of which parts were correct. So after finding the model type, you worked on getting familiar with the software Kyulkyung sent with the rest of the tech, hoping to figure it out in enough time to get a diagnostics test run soon. It was getting later in the day though, and your friends had obligations outside of this, so they were gradually saying their goodbyes until it was just you. However, you didn’t mind this, and understood they had lives of their own. Unlike you, who had a flexible schedule working from home (you wrote articles and edited for a science-related magazine). This was one of the few exciting things happening in your life right now, and you didn’t want to waste the time you had.

4 hours had passed since you were left alone. You were still messing around with the computers and getting a handle on the general anatomy of the android in front of you and were now feeling comfortable enough to begin tinkering with the programs necessary to work on the robot. Getting the diagnostics software package up and running, you look at the data now popping up on the screen in a list based on importance of the issue. There were several biocomponents that you found were damaged, as well as a critically low amount of Thirium 310 (a type of liquid that circulates energy and electronic info throughout the android). The software showed which of the synthetic organs were damaged in a 3D model of the robot, so it was a lot easier for you to search the boxes and containers for the parts that it required. You left them out to be cleaned, along with a sticky note listing what they were and how to properly clean them, as you had read over the procedures in a document that had also accompanied the software. It would make more sense to do it tomorrow anyways (when you weren’t running on two Red Bulls). Not exactly known for being a night owl, the work was going starting to go a little slower, even with the help of energy drinks. So you decided on calling it a night for now, figuring that you had accomplished enough for one evening.

The next two weeks went by surprisingly fast, and there was an impressive amount of productiveness despite everyone’s schedules getting busier as the year was drawing to a close. It was nearly the end of September, and as the temperatures dropped, your spirits certainly didn’t. The android was nearly in full repair, with the parts being cleaned and replaced, Thirium replenished, gashes and dents mended. You all felt more than accomplished at your progress, considering that all was left was putting some final touches on the programming. Collectively, you had all decided that an android with a capability to be gentle, courteous, reliable, and helpful would be one of the best options for a robot with the intent of personal use. Therefore, the appropriate behavioral abilities were added into the matrix. However, with parts of the company’s system still being there, you discovered the android had already been embedded with a neural net - thus giving it a way of thinking, of being, similar to humans.

Now, for the moment you had all worked so hard for. With the programming complete, the android was ready to be activated. The small group that had put an insane amount time into this project was now all gathered around the small platform where the android was kept while being repaired. Kyulkyung had taken a day off to join the ensemble, just as excited to see the finished product in action.

“So, it’s really going to act like a normal person?” She spoke up, inspecting the multiple tabs still on the computer screens that surrounded the platform.

“I mean, that’s what we’re hoping for, for the most part. I think what we were working towards was an ability to act like someone you’d see every day - or a friend even.” Yuha explained, typing some things into the computer before shutting down a few tabs. “Those were just some diagrams of what needed to be fixed.” She stated, turning back to face the group in the rolling chair she was lounging in.

“Are we ready to start it up, then?” Yeonjung inquired. “I want to see how it acts when it wakes up!”

“Yeah, I think so. Eunwoo, would you do the honors?” Jihyo asked, gesturing to the button on the laptop that would start the android up.

“Sure can!” She exclaimed with a thumbs up, jumping over to the monitor. “Everyone ready?”

You all nodded your heads, eager to get the android running. The anticipation was killing you for sure because you knew it would be staying with you tonight. Eunwoo pressed the key, causing the computers to whirr with activity. The temple light on the android lit up a bright blue, and its eyes opened.

“I am model CX100, how can I help you?”

You spent the next hour or so going over all the basics: making sure the programming was compatible with its neural net functions, checking to see that the body was moving correctly, and testing things like vision and other sense modifications that you had improved upon. The android complied with every request you made of it without a hitch, and soon, you were finished. By this time it was already dark, but the group couldn’t help but be enamored with the artificial intelligence. They spent at least an extra hour asking it a plethora of questions, to which the robot answered all of them to the best of its ability. However, before it was time to take it home for the night, you held a quick meeting.

“(Y/N) just be careful, okay? Try to keep its presence on the down-low, we don’t need anyone getting suspicious, especially since it’d be Kyulkyung’s job - and potentially our careers as well - on the line.” Jihyo stated seriously. You understood, of course, getting caught would only end badly for you all. So you nodded, promising to keep it out of sight as much as possible.

With that out of the way though, everyone soon broke off from the ensemble to head home, leaving the android in your hands.

“Ok, CX100, we’re going to go to my house where you’ll stay for the time being. I have an extra room where you can stay, so that won’t be an issue.. And maybe tomorrow we can get you some more clothes.” You explain, now aware that the only thing it was wearing was a hospital gown. Functional for setting up, yes, but maybe not for everyday wearing. Figuring it’d fit in some spare clothes lying around at home, you didn’t think it would be much of an issue for the ride there.

“Thank you.” Short and to the point.

Maybe you’d just need to warm up to it.

You arrived at your house without a hitch and opened the door for CX100. The two of you then walk up the small pathway to the large wooden door of your two-story abode. Maybe you didn’t need all the space, but you got it for a deal, and though it was a little rustic, you enjoyed the tranquil atmosphere it had.

“Wait here a second, I have a dog.” You stated, not wanting the android to become too surprised at your rather large pet. “He’s a Newfoundland, so he’s kind of big, but he’s really sweet so don’t worry too much.”

You then opened the door, inviting the android in first before following soon after, closing the door behind you.

“Walter!” You called.

Within a few seconds, your Newfoundland was bounding down the stairs, and jumping right into your arms. He covered your face in kisses before looking up at the new house guest. Walter slowly stepped over to where CX100 was, sniffing and wagging his tail as he got closer. The android seemed to dislike him, a sour expression on its face as it backed up into your coat rack near the door. Sensing the robot’s discomfort, you called your dog back over to you before telling him to go lay on the couch in the living room adjacent to the entry. He understood and trotted away.

“He’s a bit much, I know.. But I’m guessing dogs aren’t your favorite now, huh?”

“I can’t say they are. He’s very large and… eccentric. Though I will become accustomed to his presence, as I assume he is your pet.” It answered monotonously.

You nodded and beckoned CX100 to follow you to its room, one of the spares you had in the house. It was the closest to yours, so you’d be able to easily check up on it overnight if needed.

“Feel free to move some things around, change it if you want. It’s your room now, so please make yourself at home,” You mentioned softly. “I’ll be downstairs for a minute to feed Walter, if you need anything, let me know.” And with that, you left the android to get settled.

The night carried on as usual, save for the addition of your guest. The droid acclimated quickly, and you watched it find its way around the house like it had been living there forever. Its modified features were definitely making themselves known now: the photographic memory, use of its senses, etcetera. This was promising news, and you would definitely have to keep your colleagues posted.

Once it finally came time to go to sleep, you contemplated asking CX100 to spend the night in your room, if for nothing more than to keep an eye on it for its first night outside of the makeshift lab. You came to the conclusion that, yes, it would probably be a good idea to keep an eye on it overnight just to make sure its sleep sequence went smoothly. Although it doesn’t need as much sleep as a human does, you concluded that the android would need more time tonight to process the day’s activities.

Walking to its room, you knocked once before opening the door. CX100 was sitting quietly on the bed, seemingly staring off into space. You cleared your throat to get its attention, which snapped the android out of its thoughts; this prompted it to look up at you.

“Would you mind if you stayed in my room? It’d just be tonight, I wanted to keep an eye on you to make sure everything is running normally.”

“Yes, it will not be a problem,” The android answered. “Would you like me to relocate myself now?”

“Sure, thank you.” You were completely ready for bed so, you followed the android out into the hall, turning off the few lights that were still on as you went.

Soon, you were able to watch as the android went into its dormant state with Walter cuddled up next to you as the blue light on its temple went from a constant glow to a dim flash of color about every 10 seconds.

You now felt relaxed knowing that everything had gone smoothly for the night, and that there had been no problem whatsoever with CX100, albeit its slightly reserved personality. This wasn’t really a problem per se, however, the delay in showing the emotion you hoped it was capable of would most likely take some time.

Upon waking up in the morning, you noticed two things; One: CX100 wasn’t in your room any longer, and two: Walter wasn’t there either. You promptly got up and went downstairs, only to find your dog lazily napping on the floor underneath the kitchen table, and CX100 cooking breakfast.

It noticed your presence, and looked at you from over its shoulder. “Walter has been fed, I assumed two cups of food was adequate for a dog of his size,” It stated, looking back down at the bacon that was sizzling away in the pan on the stove. “and I’m in the process of preparing breakfast, is that alright?”

“Y-yeah, definitely. Thank you.” You replied, rubbing the sleep from your eyes. It was still relatively early, 7:26 to be exact. Going to the fridge, you grabbed some juice, along with a cup from the cabinet nearby, and went to sit down at the kitchen table. After a few minutes, you spoke up.

“Don’t you think getting called CX100 all the time is boring?”

“I have not. It is the name of my model, should I not address myself as such?” It inquired, setting the now cooked bacon on a plate, along with some eggs and a biscuit.

“That’s true, it is. I just thought, maybe for something a little less suspicious in case we were to go out of the house, would an actual name be nice?”

“If you think it is a choice that would benefit me, then please do.”

“Do you want to decide? On both whether you want one or not, and what your name would be?” You questioned, genuinely out of curiosity, but also partly for the purpose of testing its mental abilities.

The android seemingly went into deep thought for a moment and looked down at the wooden floor. It hadn’t necessarily had to make a decision of its own before now, but now given the chance, it hesitated. It was built to be more human, had the capabilities to suggest, decide, request - the list goes on. The LED flashed yellow, just for a moment, before assuming its normal, blue glow.

“Irene.” The android stated, now making eye contact with you. “I would like to be called Irene.”

#red velvet #irene bae #irene #bae joohyun #red velvet scenario #irene scenarios #girl group scenarios #girl group scenario #kpop scenario #girl groups #kpop girl groups

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tomasorban · 6 years ago

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THE ZODIAC: SCORPIO THE SCORPION

Date of Rulership: 23rd October-21st November; Polarity: Negative, female; Quality: Fixed; Ruling planet: Mars/Pluto; Element: Water; Body part: Reproductive organs; Colour: Deep red; Gemstone: Opal; Metal:Steel or iron.

Attempting to make sense out of the eighth sign of the zodiac can sometimes mimic the insurmountable task of trying to answer a cosmological question as to why the universe came into being. If we could equate Scorpio with a physical object, it would be an iceberg. Why, you ask? Well everyone finds it difficult to relax and be uninhibited around an iceberg, especially when you’re on a ship and there’s simply no way of telling what lies beneath the surface of the water, how big it is, and if it will steadfast melt or simply tear a slit into your vessel and sink you. What you see or what you think you see isn’t always what you get, and that tenet is truer of Scorpio than it is for any other sign.

In equating the iceberg with the archetype of Scorpio, the part resting above the water would be the desolate, unapproachable, and cryptic exterior that doesn’t quite lend itself to close investigation for fear of judgement and ridicule, and the larger part beneath the water is the smouldering chamber of power-packed emotions and unconscious images that are left to proliferate there unchecked and are rarely, if ever, vented. Just as the iceberg severs itself from a main body and floats into territories foreign to its own nature, so too does Scorpio show the side of itself that is frequently incompatible with social rituals and codes, alienating it from the joys and benefits of social intercourse. Moreover, ice is a solid, concrete form of water and Scorpio’s watery but fixed nature indicates that it is a sign that can quickly become fixated with things. Scalding is usually associated with heat, though conditions of severe cold such as those facilitated by ice can generate analogous effects. Hence just as heat and cold can scald the skin so too can Scorpio’s behavioural extremes, brooding intensity, and fiery emotional outbursts leave people with psychic burns and scars that won’t easily be forgotten or forgiven. Scorpio, then, is the iceberg that drifts through the cosmic ocean, a block of ice that remains acutely aware of its own temporal existence, vulnerability, and composition while at the same time emanating a snow-white radioactive plume around it that alerts others to proceed with caution, or better still, stay away altogether.

The soul of a Scorpio man or woman is extremely delicate, soft, and pliable. Think of it in terms of a piece of twenty-four carat gold that can easily be bent, twisted, broken in half, amalgamated with other metals, and fashioned into material things that do not accurately express the spiritual worth of ‘gold’. Being the intuitive and proud gem that it is, Scorpio knows this and inherently feels that it’s only viable recourse is to raise gargantuan walls and set cunning traps in the immediate vicinity around itself as to thwart any foreign invasion which seeks to dismantle its bubbling motivations and innermost desires. The type and nature of defences employed by the Scorpion to ensure this never comes to pass varies from person to person, however one that exists in the arsenal of all is a belligerent, angry, and red-coloured force field that will not allow another cheap laughs at its own expense. In the mind of a Scorpio, any deliberate attempt to humiliate, threated, scold, or tease, vilify and slander either itself or a fellow conscious projection of the universe violates the most vital of moral codes and deserves shameless retaliation.

As we have thus far discerned, Scorpio possesses an innate sensitivity that renders it receptive to even the slightest changes in external temperatures and environment. Thus it seems only natural that the sign might become unnecessarily fixated on trying to control and manipulate everything around it for the sake of lessening its anxieties and maintaining harmony of its inner empire in the manner that a chess player strategically positions pawns, knights, bishops, and rooks to defend an inner sanctuary epitomized by the royal couple. Like the latter, souls incarnating under the stars of Scorpio enjoy playing games in which they can draw like-minded others into their private little worlds, identify their psychic dowry and talents as well as the positive and negative elementary characteristics of their personality, and henceforward advise them on what course of action and karmic life choices they should make. Scorpio enjoys proposing unsolicited makeovers that they believe will emphasize another’s finest characteristics, inside and out, and can be quite intrusive in prying for information that it perceives to be of utmost importance to the wellbeing of its significant other, its loved ones, and itself. Being the control freak that it is, Scorpios are aversed to and become apprehensive around obstinate and autonomous persons that will steer clear of Scorpionic manipulation, especially when the individual concerned is their own partner. Like its close cousin Cancer, Scorpio doesn’t like to be confronted about the way in which it operates or the manner in which it chooses to live its life and will often go to any length to protect its emotional security and hold onto the few momentous others that comprise its cryptic and often unintelligible chess game.

“One thing you’ll really like about me,” says Scorpio, “is the fact that I’m very understanding. I understand the conflict of interests between the outer and inner landscape that can cause one to feel like a social misfit, a reject, a loser, or simply undesired and unwanted. I don’t judge people who are different from the conforming majority; on the contrary, I embrace and honour them. I’m also really good at fixing things. I simply love to pick at something until it’s either fixed or it vanishes from the face of the earth. I’m also intensely self-aware. I’m aware of gestures, subtle energies, actions, and implications that often move in the opposite direction to that of the spoken word and might have their own story to tell. Really, I haven’t got a problem in diving down into the abyssal depths of the human soul, perusing an inner darkness that contains the carnal impulses, compulsions, instincts, and latent desires within you, and then re-emerging into the conscious light to reveal how your outer landscape will inevitably undergo a metamorphosis for the worse if you don’t confront it.

Life is about experiencing this world, but it is also about learning how to die and resurrect throughout the course of one’s lifetime in order to expand the psychic and spiritual fields of our collective consciousness. Alchemically speaking, we might say it involves a threefold cycle: necrosis, the corruption of death; leucosis, rebirth through intuition; and iosis, the conciliation of conscious and unconscious elements that leads to the much desired ruby-red state of illumination. We must all come to terms with the insecurities, hostilities, and boiling obstructions within the depths of our being that set this cycle into motion, as well as find a way of reconciling these qualities with our conscious personalities in order to attain closure. Why, you ask? Well in my search for the truth I have acquired a hunch that there are other dimensions of existence beyond our physical one, and so the plight of each human being should be to purge oneself of murky, carnal qualities that go far in inhibiting the attainment of illumination, inner purity, freedom and most importantly, unalloyed love. I, for one, come into the world karmically prepared for the emotional tribulations life will inevitably throw at me, and I know of no other sign that experiences such cheerful bliss, soaring through the boundless skies like a carefree eagle, when these obstacles are finally overcome.

Like every animal on this planet, I enjoy having sex and will often engage it purely to release tension and other psychic steam that has been collecting in the confines of my subconscious for weeks if not months. Hence, anyone lucky enough to tango with me will share in the providential gift of a mind-blowing and positively uplifting experience. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ll use sex as a method of exploitation, but one should never take me for easy, and I’m not particularly interested in dispassionate and no-strings-attached casual sex. For me, sex is extremely sacred and must involve love and intimacy between two people who care for one another otherwise the act becomes pointless and futile.”

There are two symbols associated with the zodiacal sign of Scorpio. The animal totem that represents the first of these really does correspond to the distribution of stars in the sign’s constellation, and it appears that all ancient cultures from the Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Indians to the Egyptians, Hellenes, and Romans were in unanimous agreement about this. The most significant stellar body in this vivid star group was Antares, a bright eye otherwise known as the Heart of the Scorpion and inextricably linked with the war god Mars. In ancient Egyptian cosmogony, Scorpio was ascribed prominence as the constellation of Seth, the primordial god of destruction, irruption, anger and chaos. In a book by archaeoastronomer Jane Sellers entitled The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, astronomy, archaeological evidence, and mythography come together to reveal that the eighty-year battle between the gods Horus and Seth had a precessional basis, the question being which constellation of the equinoxes, Scorpius (Seth) or Taurus (Horus), would gain the ascendency after Orion (Osiris) had been obliterated from the night skies of the northern hemisphere. Given the fervent preoccupation of our ancient ancestors with celestial events, the Predynastic Egyptians would have envisioned a harmonious balance in the annual circuit of the sun when Taurus (Horus) marked the spring equinox and Scorpio (Seth) marked the autumnal equinox. This was something of a Golden Age, a locus classicus when the v-shaped bovine head of Taurus manifested by the Hyades rose heliacally over the eastern horizon at the vernal point just before sunrise and the arachnid-like form of fiery Scorpio reappeared there exactly six months afterward to herald the autumnal equinox. According to Sellers, this Golden Age would have occurred between c. 6900-4867bce before the relentless yet subtle effect of the precessional cycle knocked it all out of allignment.

The second, an astrological shorthand for the zodiacal sign utilized by astrologers in the creation of astrological charts, looks like the small letter “m” save for the fact that the third leg terminates with an upturned arrow. Many astrologers and symbologists have attempted to anatomically define the contemporary sigil, though it appears that none of the suggestions are wholly convincing. Hypotheses linking the modern shorthand symbol to the male reproductive organs, a severed scorpion tail, the tail of the Christian devil, the tail of a mythical dragon, and a coiled serpent have all been proposed. This particular symbol has undergone many changes through time. In Egypt, four demotic tablets were uncovered that recorded days and months in which the five visible planets entered the zodiacal signs over a twenty-eight year period. These revealed that the shorthand symbol used in ancient Egypt was a snake. Alternatively, medieval treatises show an actual scorpion.

In the northern hemisphere Scorpio appears at a time when the formative forces of Mother Nature are at their weakest, but it is also a time of turbulent change when fermentation has commenced and the scales are about to tip towards the proliferation of life energy. Evolving around the rudimentary myth relating the passions of the beneficent Osiris, ancient Egyptian belief ascertained that the latter suffered death and descent into the netherworld beneath the stars of the vigilant Scorpion. In Peri Isidos kai Osiridos, we learn that Osiris’s penis was the only body part that wasn’t found his wife, the mourning Isis, who solved the enigma of how she might conceive a son posthumously by equipping him with one hewn from a piece of wood. The myth’s preoccupation with the reproductive organs, sexuality, and resurrection fits in well with Scorpio as a spiritual archetype intensely preoccupied with the cosmic cycle of death, transformation, and rebirth.

The Scorpion exudes an energy which works in indirect and often cryptic ways. Consequentially, this sign is one of the most misunderstood in the zodiac and will more often than not encounter hostile adversities and reactions from those that cannot comprehend the benevolent intent indigenous to the Scorpion’s nature. Having said that souls incarnating under this sign possess a psychic dowry that enables them to handle and cope with such situations, for one can be sure that the universe will never impose a blueprint onto something or someone unless it is sure that that something or someone can survive experiences and consequences that might be simulated as a result. When looking at the zodiacal image and the symbols as a whole, one intuitively feels that the poisonous stinger and sharp arrow imply sharp qualities and sentiments that cut like glass such as adroitness, cleverness, and smooth-tongued straightforwardness. They also recalls the Stygian depths of Scorpio’s psyche, a raw, windswept, and multifarious breeding ground of passion, charm, astuteness, creativity, intensity, and both sexual and romantic love. These fiery traits can be attributed to the immanence of Plutonian energy in the sign, a prominent planetary position formerly held by Mars.

#zodiac #astrology #psychology #astropsychology #consciousness

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thewinedarksea · 7 years ago

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wip tag game

i was tagged by @x-i-a-t, thank you! for gtdp (and under a cut bc this is long af):

1. describe the plot in one sentence.

a con artist shows up at court and through sheer pettiness gets reluctantly dragged into helping the crown princess break a fae curse.

2. pick one sight, smell, sound, feel, and taste to describe the aesthetic of your novel.

sight: moonlight spilling across the ground

smell: roses, just shy of rotting

sound: violin music

feel: silk against skin

taste: sugar

3. which 3+ songs would make up a playlist for the novel?

between two points - the glitch mob

eyes on fire - blue foundation

song of the caged bird - lindsey stirling

the walk - imogen heap

bang bang - bell

black mambo - glass animals

(okay i’ll stop now)

4. what’s the time period and location in which the novel takes place.

lol um. ive yet to dig into time periods, but i pulled loose inspiration from france for yteria?

5. is this a standalone or a part in a series?

standalone.

6. are there any former titles you’ve considered but discarded?

gtdp is the current end all be all of titles

7. what’s the first line of your novel?

Branches snapped like bones beneath the horses’ hooves.

8. what’s a line of dialogue you’re particularly proud of?

“Key.” When Liel didn’t immediately produce it her eyes narrowed, annoyance sparking in their depths. “I will search you if you force me.”

“That doesn’t sound much like a threat at all,” Liel quipped brightly.

9. which line from the novel most represents it as a whole?

(not the novel, exactly, but have some for the main characters)

liel:

“I was working.”

“You were flirting.”

One shoulder raised in a slight shrug, necklaces clinking softly together at the movement. “That’s rather the same thing, Your Highness.”

celine:

“I have it under control.”

10. who are your character faceclaims?

the only person i have a fc for is liel, which is cenit nadir (here and here are good examples)

things that remind me of celine: the face in the second picture, and this hair.

11. sort your characters into harry potter houses!

celine: slytherin

liel: slytherin (possibly gryffindor)

rahesh: hufflepuff

emory: slytherin

lisandra: ravenclaw

the fae queen: slytherin

12. which character’s name do you like the most?

liel! i’ve had her name floating around for ages before i found a character it really fit

13. describe each character’s daily outfit.

(doing the mains bc this will get long otherwise)

celine: long dress, typically pale (light blue/white/silver/pink) or dark red if she’s dancing. she has a tendency to wear light jewelry throughout the day such as rings or bracelets, but she wears A Lot more during the night dances. always there are heels. always.

liel: there’s not really one? she changes so much for cons. if she’s traveling probably a dark colored tunic/leggings/boots that she can move fast in and that blend in well enough that she wouldn’t be noticed. in the book she’s wearing much finer clothes, including a truly ungodly amount of jewelry (she could make a shawl from all the necklaces she’s wearing, to say nothing of the bracelets), and she adds more as she steals things/tries to annoy celine.

14. do any characters have distinctive birthmarks/scars?

emory and liel probably have a handful of minor scars between them, but otherwise not that i currently know (the princesses may end up with a shared birthmark to show they’re cursed, but i have yet to decide if i want to go that route so for now)

15. which character most fits a character trope?

liel’s the con artist with a silver tongue and a poorly-defended heart. celine’s the ice queen.

16. which character is the best writer? worst?

l i e l. she has a way with words; she's definitely composed poems for her targets before. emory is probably the worst, just bc he’s much more straightforward and to the point.

17. which character is the best liar? worst?

again, liel, aka the girl who lies for a living (she’s also allergic to the truth and lies compulsively so). rahesh is probably the worst, bc he’s very honest and open with his feelings, but ngl the whole cast exists pretty much on a ‘good’ to ‘spectacular’ liar scale.

18. which character swears the most? least?

liel and emory swear the most. lisandra swears the least.

19. which character has the best handwriting? worst?

celine has the best handwriting. mmm liel’s might be naturally the worst, but she also tends to mix up her handwriting by circling through ones that she particularly likes so finding examples might be hard.

20. which character is most like you? least like you?

celine has my aversion to, like, sharing my problems/getting help for my problems/recognizing that i have emotions and should probs deal with them at some point. she also loves her sisters.

liel is also extremely similar to me for many reasons that i refuse to elaborate on.

least like me.....emory? he’s very ends justify the means, tends to fixate on his goals and refuses to deviate, and doesn’t have a lot of time for distractions/fun while he’s working.

21. which character would you most like to be?

liel. clever, pretty, living her best life seducing people and making off with their valuables (and making out with them, in general).

tagging @kclenhartnovels, @hechiceria, @haphazardlyparked, @rrrawrf-writes, @oqualo

#tag games #my ocs #gtdp

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marshmallow-phd · 7 years ago

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Favorite Little Place

Genre: Fluff

Pairing: Mark x Reader

You must have been one insane sight to see. With final exams before graduation, you didn’t really care. In fact, you’d spent most of your college life not caring about your appearance when you were studying, but this look had to take the cake. Your wild hair was pulled back into a ponytail and in the back of your mind you were still contemplating if your cropped hoodie went with your high-wasted shorts. You’d just grabbed whichever jacket your hand had landed on first to shield yourself from the windy day. The rubber of your converse were digging into your thighs, leaving indentions in your exposed skin that would probably last all day long.

The coffee shop that you’d planted yourself in was one of those small, out-of-the-way places that allowed outside food since they only sold drinks and a few pastries that wouldn’t keep your mind off your stomach no matter how many you ate. The old barista behind the bar didn’t care that you’d brought in an arm’s full of street food that now covered half of the corner table you’d taken over. Books and study guides that were frying every brain cell you had left covered what little room there was left.

Buried deep within texts of eighteenth century history Europe – or maybe it was a summary of how certain words meanings changed since the eighteenth century, at this point you weren’t too sure – you barely registered the dinging of the bell as a new customer entered the practically empty shop.

Though the weather was getting warmer, the wind was still going strong and the sudden rush of air ruffled your textbooks and sent several loose papers fluttering to the ground. Suppressing a groan because you knew it wasn’t exactly the newcomer’s fault, you slid out of your chair, bending down to your knees to start picking up them up.

The light reflecting off the floor suddenly dimmed just a bit and you looked up to see the person who’d caused your papers to fly was now helping you gather them together. You smiled a bit, trying not to let it grow too big at his rare act of kindness. While trying not to stare an awful amount, you took in the stranger.

Most of his face was covered by a black face mask, just letting you glimpse at his soft, sparkling brown eyes. A matching baseball cap adorned his head, exposing just a few side pieces and the back of his chestnut brown hair. The sweatshirt he wore was so oversized that he practically had paws instead of hands, but you could still see that his fingers were attractive and long. You were kind of sad when all the papers were gathered up and the two of you stood up.

“Thanks,” you mumbled shyly, taking his small pile. He simply nodded and then left you alone as he headed to the counter.

Sitting back down, you played with the end of your ponytail. You tried to get back to studying, but it was almost impossible as the stranger had decided to sit at one of the small round tables right in your line of sight as he waited for his drink. Knowing food to be the perfect distraction, you put down your pen and put all your focus on the delicious sustenance in front of you. The smell was no longer mouth-watering and some bites were a bit colder than others, but it still put a smile on your face.

“Americano!” the barista called out.

The stranger stood up and you almost laughed at the fact that the sweatshirt came to just above the cutouts on his knees of the black skinny jeans he wore, though he wasn’t short by any means. And that’s when you realized you didn’t want him to be “the stranger” anymore.

He was cute and polite, helping you when he didn’t necessarily have to. It was things like that that left an impression on you, much more than looks ever did. The only problem was your confidence. Why, oh why, did this have to be the time that you didn’t care about the clothes you wore when you got dressed?

You mentally slapped yourself. Why did it matter? There was no guarantee that he was single, interested, or even into you anyway. But still, you wanted to leave some sort of impression. So, you practiced saying have a nice day about five or six times. Unfortunately, just as you had gotten the courage to say it out loud, he walked out the door, his drink in hand.

Pouting your lips, you grabbed your headphones out of your bag and slapped them on, hoping to drown out the disappointment.

A few seconds into your favorite song, the door chimed again. This time you were ready, slamming your hands down to keep any papers from flying.

Why can’t everyone just choose a different shop? You whined.

Or you could just move to a different spot, your inner sarcasm threw back.

That was true, but you were too stubborn and lazy to actually go through with that. So, you’d just have to put up with the wind.

A finger tapped at the edge of your table and you looked up, nearly choking on air at finding the owner of said hand. It was the stranger, smiling down at you without his mask on. It was a smile so bright and cheerful that it was practically blinding, showing of a top row of shining too-perfect teeth. It was almost compulsive the way you grinned back. He gestured to his ear, indicating that he wanted to talk to you without the headphones.

You removed them, letting them fall around your neck as your heart pounded at the unknown situation you were now in. Did he really come back to talk to you? It seemed more like a scene from some romantic comedy than a possible scenario currently happening to you.

“Um, hi?” you greeted quietly.

“Hi,” he said back, his eyes drifting down to the floor bashfully. It was almost too cute, you had to bite back a tiny squeal. “I’m sorry about your papers. None of them are ruined, are they?”

You shook your head. “No, they’re fine. Just some dumb study guides anyway. Did you need something?” Stupid, stupid, stupid! Why did you phrase it like that?

His smile faltered a bit, the sunshine dimming, and you scrambled to save the situation.

“I mean, do you want to sit down?” You started shuffling your things, piling up the food to create some sort room for him.

He shook his head. “I can’t actually. I’ve got to go before they send a search party out for me. I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Mark.” He held out his hand.

You took it without hesitation, “I’m (y/n).”

There was an awkward silence as the handshake was dropped. You chewed on the inside of your cheek, desperately searching for something to say. Your ability to talk to strangers was always a lotto system: sometimes you were able to talk their ears off and others, like now, you were just lost.

“So, do you come here often?” he asked unexpectedly.

“Oh, um,” you looked around involuntarily as if you’d forgotten where exactly it was that you were. “Yeah, I do. It’s one of my favorite places.” It was true. The quiet atmosphere and lack of other people present made it a much more enjoyable place than other establishments, like the Starbucks down the street.

“Cool,” he laughed. “Uh, could I… maybe… buy you a coffee here? This Saturday, maybe?”

You beamed, ecstatic at the turn of events. “I’d love that. When do you want to meet?”

“How about nine? Uh, p.m. that is.” Your eyebrows knit together, confused at such a late time for coffee. Your expression made him laugh and you decided that he could ask for coffee at three in the morning on a Tuesday and you would be there, just to hear that wondrous sound again. “I’ve got kind of a crazy schedule.”

You waved it off. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be here.” Ripping a corner out of the notebook in front of you, you quickly wrote down your number and handed it to him. “Here. Just in case your hectic schedule causes any changes.”

He chuckled, pocketing the slip of paper. “It was nice meeting you, (y/n). I can’t wait to see you on Saturday.” A song started playing from his pocket and he pulled out his phone, rolling his eyes at the caller ID. “Yeah, Jackson? I know, I know. I’m on my way back.” He waved goodbye and headed towards the door, still talking to whoever Jackson was.

Any studying completely forgotten, you continued to stare at the entrance of the coffee shop, even though he’d long disappeared into the streets.

It was funny how things seemed to fall into place in the most random ways. One minute, you’re panicking about finals and the next you’re setting up a date. There wasn’t a single thing you knew about the stranger beyond his sparkling eyes and addictive laugh. But there was one thing you were sure of and that was that you were never so thankful for coffee and the wind that brought the boy named Mark to your favorite little place.

#got7 #got7 scenarios #mark tuan #Im jaebum #Jackson wang #park jinyoung #choi youngjae #bambam #kim yugyeom #mark x reader

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saintsnsinnersbdb · 4 years ago

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Deal with the Devil: The End of the Beginning (Part 6)

Written by @Lassiter_SASBDB.

https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srinhn

It was a normal, blue-collar suburban neighborhood, filled with 1950’s ranch homes and split-levels. Mature trees lined streets that were probably filled with kids on bikes and dog-walkers during warm weather months, although now they were barren except for a couple of people shoveling snow off the sidewalks and a few toddlers playing in the white stuff with a stay-at-home parent in their respective yards. Shortly the Catholic K-12 down the street would let out and younger kids would trudge their way home while teens tentatively navigated the slick streets in 200,000+ mile Subaru’s and Nissans that had been purchased not by their parents but by working summer and after-school jobs and saving their money to do it themselves. Yeah, this was that kind of human neighborhood. So why was Devina here?

Short answer is hiding out. After I’d rousted her from that obnoxious ode to regentrification in yuppieville she’d gone deep. So deep I’d thought for a while she’d left Caldwell. But I knew I couldn’t be that lucky, so I’d kept looking. The easiest way to find her was to focus on missing persons. Not the bodies, although there would be plenty of those, but she was smart and careful. She wasn’t going to leave any of those where I might put together a pattern. But I’d been looking for the wrong /kind/ of missing persons.

Devina’s preferred prey was male and not too sober. A horny, drunk man was a sitting duck. She’d take females, too. Had all too often, but her bait for them tended to be emotional support or some such shit. She “bonded” with them when they were at low points. So I’d been looking for singles. People who had gone missing from bars or been depressed and just ghosted. I’d been over hundreds of missing persons reports…yeah, computer hacking isn’t my bag, but when you can go invisible and look over a cop’s shoulder for an afternoon it’s a piece of cake to get the right passwords. Then it’s just a little late night B&E into the police station and an empty office. But I’d looked for months and hadn’t found anything I couldn’t track down. And yes, some of them had been dead, but a few inquiries “up top” had let me know the souls had made it where they were supposed to. Obviously not Devina’s victims, as taking the souls was the whole point for the bitch. So I’d finally backed off that angle, taking a wait-until it-smacks-me-in-the-face approach.

For a while I’d turned my attention to the problems of the Brotherhood and the race. That whole deity-in-training thing was turning out to be a full time job. I kind of liked it. Who knew I had it in me? But while “tending my flock” I’d stumbled across something that sent me in a new direction.

Now,I’m not big into the whole “organized religion” thing, even for the race, but I tried to keep tapped into this one particular Catholic church. Most of the brothers aren’t big on prayers to the Virgin Scribe unless shit is going down hard, but Butch was a regular, so long as he could do it in a Catholic church like his human mother had taught him and this was his one of choice. I wasn’t 100% sure prayers not directed to the VS would get to me through the whole ethereal call-forwarding system the Creator had put in effect, so sometimes I went to hear Butch’s in person. I know, I know, I could have just tapped into his head when he was in the manse or the pit, but it seemed like an invasion of privacy to do it in his personal space. A church was basically public, so it felt more acceptable to go invisible and sit in the pew behind him while I listened in. I didn’t wanna neglect him. And it was a beautiful place. The serenity there was on par with my place in the forest so sometimes during the day, after my morning deity duty, I’d go back to the church and hang around and kinda veg in it while the Brotherhood slept. Or whatever. With all the shellans these days you never knew. Or, given the volume level, sometimes you did, but you didn’t /wanna/ know, feel me? So some days I decided to be missing during the fireworks and this place was calming. Ellen and Maury only relieve the stress of being a deity so much, you know? And if I followed the priests back to the rectory, well, hey, the nun who cooked for them made killer snickerdoodles. I kept trying to snitch the recipe for #Fritz but she did it all from her head and man, I am SO not going to pick a nun’s brain.*shudders at the implications* It was while I was looking over her shoulder as she baked that I overheard the three priests that lived there talking.

They’d lost a family from their parish that week. I mean literally LOST them. Dad, mom, and four kids, ages 4 through 9. Just vanished. The kids all went to the parish school and when none of them showed up four days running and the voicemails to the parents weren’t being returned one of the priests had gone to check on them. All he had found was an empty house. He’d called the police and filed a missing persons report to start a preliminary investigation but essentially both mom and dad had called into work one morning and said they were taking a week off, and since it’s not illegal to take vacation time, the cops had done nothing. But it was odd that the school hadn’t been contacted at all. So I did a little digging of my own and what do you know...a pattern.

Six families from different parishes in Caldwell had disappeared in the last four months. Thirty-seven souls in all. All the families had been Catholic. All the families had young children, one just a few months old. And the mother in all the families had attended a stay-at-home mom support group that met every Thursday night in the gymnasium of St. Phillip Neri’s Church and Catholic School. The same one that was just down the street. And the group was open to people from all parishes in the archdiocese, which explained why the missing families were from all over the city.

It hadn’t been hard from there. I’d stationed myself outside the gym two Thursday nights ago and waited and lo and behold, who should walk out, but Devina, bundled up in a puffy white coat that made her look like the Pillsbury Doughboy and fake giggling with a human female. It was “soooo tough to relax when the kids couldn’t get out much because of the cold” she said and then she said her condo on the beach in Florida was “sooooo relaxing” and such a help. And then she offered her nonexistent condo to the frustrated mom and her family for a stress-free vacay. And bingo, bango, done, I knew how she was luring the families in.

She’d left the woman in the parking lot as others came out, getting into a predictably boring, yet originally expensive, used Volvo, thereby confirming her image as a middle-class mom who could afford a few luxuries and putt-putted to the last house on a street that dead-ended at a dense woods with a “no trespassing” sign on the the fence that separated it from neighborhood. That gave me a good idea what she was doing with the bodies.

I’d done my recon in the past two weeks. While she hadn’t brought any new victims home, she did have a routine she invariably followed. In the mornings she made a public appearance with a pair of toddler-sized gollums she glamoured into looking like rosy-faced children. Playing in the front yard, a walk with a stroller in the park, going to the grocery store… it was always carefully planned to give her maximum exposure to her victim group without allowing them to get too involved in interacting with the “kids”. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon she put the golems in carseats and left the house at 1:58 PM. I’d followed her those days and found Devina had a standing 2:30 appointment with a therapist. Good to know somebody else knew what a neurotic bitch she was. She’d deactivated the gollums and left them in the car in a parking garage while she had her appointment, magicking the rear window tint to opacity so no one noticed them there. Afterwards she indulged her inner compulsive shopper for an hour or two and then headed back home.

And now, on /this/ Thursday I was standing across the street from her modest hideout waiting for her to leave. Like clockwork, at 1:58 the garage door rose and the Volvo backed out of the driveway. I had stayed invisible while I waited for her to leave -- even though I’d taken the precaution of tucking my long black and blonde streaked hair down inside my coat with a black watch cap shoved over my head and added shades and a black scarf to obstruct most of my face, I’d decided discretion was the better part of valor here. While it was obviously a friendly neighborhood, 6’7” of unknown muscle encased in black leather standing on a dead end street would make anyone take notice and I did/not/want to be noticed. And I was glad I had. Devina must have sensed something off. She stopped the car after she’d backed onto the street and looked up and down it. She’d paused as her gaze fell on where I was standing and squinted. I simply stood there watching. If she saw me and we did this the hard way, it was no skin off my nose. I’d just thought it would be simpler if I searched for the souls and released them myself before deciding what to do about her this time. Finally, she’d given up and driven down the street to turn onto the main drag. As the last wisp of frozen exhaust from her car disappeared, I turned my attention to her house.

It was a tidy little brick ranch. No gargoyles or garishly macabre door knockers this time. The front lawn was fenced but otherwise unadorned. The curtains were drawn on the large picture window as well as the jalousies that were probably the bedrooms’ windows to the world. Down lower, hopper windows told me there was a basement. All in all, even if the basement is finished, there’s probably only 1400 square feet absolute max. A huge comedown for her. Devina liked luxury and lots of it. This probably was very nearly Hell for her. *smirking as I fold my arms across my chest.*

Getting inside wasn’t a problem. Although Devina knew how to keep me out she was just arrogant enough to assume this was enough of a change to keep me from finding her and maintaining warding requires power that she doesn’t have an abundance of right now. Thirty-seven souls weren’t going to be enough to keep it powered up and maintain the glamour that kept people from seeing the evil hellbitch she really was. But she could have put in ADT and that was going to take some finesse. I didn’t want her coming back before I was ready for her. As I dematerialized just inside the front door I took a moment and looked around. To the left, just behind where the door would hide it if I’d opened it was a control box with a steady green light. It was either set to trigger when the door opened or had motion sensors connected to it. Either way was no big deal. While it might have caught an unwary human, all I had to do was demat from room to room and stand still while I scoped them out.

As I stood in the doorway looked through the small living room it was apparent that Devina was maintaining her cover well. There was nothing here to indicate she wasn’t what she seemed. A photo of her in a wedding dress with a man in a tux graced the foyer wall surrounded by pictures of the “kids”. On the table beneath it lay a scrapbook, conveniently open to an obituary for National Guard Captain Alan Veckman, KIA in Afghanistan. A wife and two kids were listed as the only survivors. That explained why she hadn’t gollumed up a spouse for her image. She’d just tracked this guy down, photoshopped herself into their wedding picture, and probably taken the wife and kids as her first victims this time around. Instant sympathetic widow.

The house had had some modernization done on the inside. Instead of closed off main rooms the dining room walls had been knocked down to open it up to both living room and kitchen, forming the more-currently-popular “great room''. From here I could see all the public spaces were clean. No macabre art work on the walls, no horrific but trendy sculpture. Just a few framed prints on the walls and the typical kid’s finger paintings on the fridge. I popped into the kids bedroom and the hall bath, doing a quick check, but finding nothing then moved on to the master. It had been remodeled too, probably taking out the third bedroom to enlarge it and add the spa-like ensuite. This space, small by Devina’s norms, still felt more like her. Where the great room had been “Leave It To Beaver” tidy, this place was an overpacked disaster. Her shopping addiction was apparent in the overstuffed closet and bags of clothing laying on the floor. Jewelry strung haphazardly across the dresser and the unmade bed completed the total mess. The bathroom had every known brand of cosmetic, perfume and skin treatment known to man represented, and that was just a waste of money, given she relied on magick to maintain her outwardly pretty face and body. Lots of scented bath crap around the tub, too. Keeping the stench of evil down must require some heavy maintenance. But still nothing that hinted at her new well of souls.

Only one place left to check. The basement. I’d spied the door to it in the kitchen. If any door was going to be wired to alert her, it would be that one, but if it was her gateway to hell, ADT wasn’t going to be her alert system. Dematting to the kitchen, I look at the door and open my senses. There was nothing alive in that basement but there sure was a lot of pain coming from it. I dematerialize to the otherside of the door and flick on the stairwell light. The smell hits me immediately. The odor of death is distinctive. The odor of death by torture even more so. Blood, feces, spilled intestines, vomit….and the residual agony...I had to stop on the steps and take a deep breath to steel myself. I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, been on battlefields. But I never get used to this.

Jaw set grimly, I focus on the details of my surroundings to get me down the stairs. The walls are painted yellow concrete blocks, the ceiling exposed floor joists. The floor at the bottom of the stairs is smooth concrete. My eyes follow the slope of the concrete to the center drain, beginning to take in the blood and viscera still laying on the floor. She must have magicked the whole damned place to keep the smell down here. Nausea rises in my throat, but I force it down as my gaze rises to the table over the center drain. It’s a steel autopsy table, the kind sits on a pedestal and raises and lowers for the user's convenience. It has a sink attached to it and channels that run down the sides to let blood and body fluids drain away . But unlike standard autopsy tables this one also has straps attached. Ones for wrists, ankles and forehead as well as thicker ones that run over the chest and thighs. I guess Devina wanted options. Staked to the wall behind it is the mutilated body of a female. Early 30’s, blonde, fair skinned where the corpse wasn’t ripped open or stained with red. Before moving towards it, I flip another switch that lights the corners of the basement. I take in the empty cell in the corner. Makes sense. If she’s taking families she can’t work on them all at once and holding them immobile takes power she doesn’t have. And on the concrete wall that runs behind the staircase I see it. Instead of a well she’s created a wall this time. Faces frozen in agony are embedded along it. Male, female...children…

”Creator,” it’s a scream in my head “she did this to CHILDREN!” I can feel His pain, but the whisper enters my head “She has a part to play. She must live.”

I choke back an agonized cry and move towards the woman staked to the wall. Gently I close her already clouded eyes, murmuring “I’m sorry. I was too late for you and your family. But I’ll set you free.” I know she’s not in there anymore. She’s on that god damned wall. The body is just the alarm system. Devina will know if it’s moved. Well, I’ll get to that.

Moving to the wall, I let my wings become visible. The basement ceiling is too low for me to spread them fully, but I can feel the souls’ pain and terror. Going full angel will help calm them, I hope. The white light I normally suppress to a dim glow that can be at least partially explained by the light catching all my piercings is fully released to become a white light so brilliant it would burn the retina’s of a mortal.

“𒂼𒅈𒄄.” Release, in ancient Summarian, the language taught to humans by the angels. “Ama-ar-gi. Release,” I repeat it again and again as the souls gradually disengage from the wall and come to stand before me. Fathers, mothers...little ones, all confused and fearful. But even as they shimmer into existence, the rheapers come. I knew they would. As I serve the Creator, they serve Death. I help mortal souls find their way in life. They help souls move on and find their way once their mortal bodies can no longer serve them. And, like me, they’ve seen it all, but also like me, this sickens them. After the initial shock of pity passes, compassion settles on their faces as they begin to take the souls. Somehow they know which souls belong together and they take them as families.

After the last has gone, one rheaper remains. She’s small and dark-haired, her 5’3” frame barely reaching chest high on me, but she comes towards me, pounding her finger into my chest and hissing,

“They weren’t supposed to die yet! Take. Care. Of. This. Or we will.”

“I can’t. The Creator says she has to live. For at least a little longer.”

“Good thing we don’t answer to Him, then isn’t it? My boss doesn’t like waste of the life spark and this is incredible waste,” she shoots back at me. As I look at her, not a little shocked, she shrugs “What, you didn’t know? Everything dies. Even at the Creator’s level, there’s balance. Balance for Life is Death. Two sides of the same coin. So,” putting her hands on her hips and squaring off with me,” handle this before we do.”

“The demon has a part to play. I don’t like it, but I’m forbidden to kill her.” My frustration must be showing in my face, because she softens a little bit.

“Then get creative with it. Because the rheaper way won’t be creative. Just final.”

She disappears in front of me, a fine black mist swirling into nothing. ‘Get creative,’ she’d said. Biting my lip, an idea I really don’t like hits me, but one of the Creator’s early lessons pushes back on my initial rejection. ‘Being a deity often consists of doing things you don’t like.’ Yeah, this qualifies. With a sigh, I go to the body staked on the other wall and gently remove it, laying it on the autopsy table. The sudden drop in power when the souls were freed would have been enough to alert Davina there was trouble. At this point moving the female’s body was just respect for the dead. But I wouldn’t face the bitch over it.

As I go back up the stairs, I open the door to the kitchen and cross to take a seat at the table just as I hear the garage door go up. As she bursts through the door from the garage, she shrieks,

“YOU! What have you DONE?!!!!”

“Hello to you, too. Long time no see.” Everything in me wants to slam a lightning bolt through that glamored body just to see it twitch, but that’s not the plan. “You knew I’d still be looking for you. Did you really think hiding out in this hovel would be enough camouflage? You have a very distinct signature.”

“Those souls were MINE! They came to me freely. You had no RIGHT!” The last comes out as an angry wail and ok, I’m done with diplomacy. Rising from my chair I slam my hand thunderously on the table.

“I have EVERY right. You broke the rules. You took innocents…children. Babes in arms. You’re only allowed ones that have the ability to make their own choices.”

She glares at me, then crosses her arms and simpers, “The parents made their choices for them. Children have such power, You know, the more innocent the soul, the greater the energy. I’m short on that, thanks to you, so kids were a quick way to restore it. And the pain of the parents as they watched their brats die...it was sooo delicious. That kind of pain is almost as powerful as the kids' souls. So I’m stronger now than I was the last time we faced off. Whatcha’ going to do about it?”

Motherfucking bitch….Oh, so not getting away with that. Holding a hand out, I release a bolt of electricity that knocks her back against the refrigerator and spears through her body to pin her to it.

“What am I going to do about it?” I repeat. “I can do a lot of /very/ painful things to you Devina that won’t result in your --immediate-- death. You’ll just wish it did. I’m not that naive angel boy you once knew and betrayed. Deity-level upgrades come with deity-level thinking. And you aren’t strong enough to break free even from that,” nodding at the electric bindings holding her to the fridge, “Now are you? So I have a lot of pain in store for you. Maybe I”ll use your own autopsy table. But,” materializing a silver handled angel’s dagger, the blade flashing blue fire, “I think I’ll bring my own tools.”

The thing is, while I really would like to end Devina, torture isn’t my thing. It makes me wanna throw up. But ‘get creative’ the rheaper had said, so creative I was being. Devina doesn’t know what the kind of changes the Creator made with me when he agreed to bring me up to a deity, might have done to my psyche. In her fallen, psychotic brain the Creator is a cold, distant daddy figure capable of enjoying causing His children pain and she’s getting back at Him by embracing the dark side. So I can see the doubt growing in those dark eyes. She’s asking herself if I’m still the same egocentric, soft, gullible angel-boy toy she used and killed centuries ago or am I growing up in Daddy’s image? Have I turned into a being that is detached enough to use pain for my own ends? Thing is, I hope I am becoming more like the Creator. Because He’s nothing like what she thinks He is and nothing like who I used to be either. He’s just….more. But the doubt is good for my plan.

The energy trapping her against the refrigerator is doing its job. Not only is it keeping her immobilized, it’s sapping her strength enough that her true appearance is flickering through. Time to move to the next step. Calmly, I take the tip of my dagger and clean a nail with it before pointing it at her.

“You’re losing your mojo babe. Your face is showing. I don’t think all those creams and cosmetics are helpful for decayed, oozing skin.”

“OH!....Lassiter, please, don’t do this to me. To us. Remember what we were…”

Oh, I remember all right. In my nightmares. But this tact plays. I heave a sigh and look at her sadly, as though remembering something bittersweet.

“We did have some good times didn’t we. You were something special back then. We had something special.” Oh gag me, this is more likely to make me puke than torturing her. But she seizes on it.

“We did, yes, we did. Let me go, Lassiter and we can again. I never stopped loving you, I just got caught up in it all. It’s so dog-eat-dog on the dark side!”

Christ, how do I not kill her when she spews shit like this? But be creative. Creative. Think of it as an acting job. Ok… Sadly, I shake my head.

“Too much water has passed under that bridge for me to cross it again Devina. But…” pausing for effect, “for old times sake, maybe we could come to an agreement. Something that lets me not have to kill you.” Right now. Not have to kill you right now…. She makes a major effort to hold the glamour and pours a combination of pleading sensuality into her eyes that should have won her an Oscar.

“Oh, baby,” I cringe inwardly as she calls me ‘baby’, “I’m so sorry. But,” And there it is, the self-interest speaking…. “What kind of agreement did you have in mind?”

Bingo. Gotcha hooked. “If I let you go, you have to promise not to go after innocents. You have to leave them alone. And that includes their parents. And,people who are kind of lost, too. You can’t use that emo bonding thing with them to lure them in anymore.”

“But, but…,” she makes a pout, “what does that leave me with? I have to have /some/ leeway or I’ll die.”

And this is the part that irks me most. It goes against everything in me. But she’ll fuck it up, probably sooner that later and I won’t have to keep my end.

“Go back to trolling for your prey in bars. If they choose you, really choose you, you can keep them. You’ll have to work harder for it. A quick fuck in the backseat of the car isn’t going to be enough to get their souls. But if you can get them obsessed with you? You can keep them.”

“It will take me forever to restore myself that way!” It comes out as a wail but she’s almost there.

“It will take time,” I agree. “But meanwhile you won’t be stuck in suburbia living in a 1400 sq ft. dump. You can indulge yourself in the highlife again and I won’t hunt you. Think of it. A luxury loft, being able to wear Prada and Coach without blowing your image…think of the time it takes you to build back up as doing penance in the demonic equivalent of Club Fed. Payment for the innocents you took. All the perks, just a few restrictions. It’s the best I can offer you.”

“Fine,” she spits out, and I have to struggle to keep the uniquely male satisfaction of knowing that whenever a female says ‘fine’ it’s absolutely not fine but that she has no other options, off my face. “But you’re going to have to let me out of this restraint.” And then she coos “We’ll seal it with a kiss.”

Oh, hells no to that. “I’d rather we seal it with this.” Holding up my hand I materialize a contract containing everything we’ve talked about. And some very special wording. “You’ll sign it in your blood.” Laying the document on the counter, I release the energy restraints and grab her arm. Using the dagger I slice her arm as she howls in both pain and outrage, but not fast enough to do anything about it.

“Here. Use this. It’s appropriate.” My wings materialize and I bend one forward towards my hand. Managing to pluck a silvery secondary feather, I dip the tip in the blood running down her arm and hand it to her. “The magick in my feathers will make it doubly binding. Break the agreement and I’ll know. Immediately.”

If looks could kill, she’d be frying an angel right now. And with her, at full power, looks could. But she doesn’t have the juice right now and we both know it. She scrawls her name on the document and thrusts it at me, but drops the hand holding my feather. “Here. Take it.”

“Uh,uh uh...not so fast. I’ll take that feather back too.” Can’t let her keep it. No telling what kind of evil she’d use it to conjure up on me. Taking both feather and contract back, I step back from her and add, “You should have read the contract. In addition to specifying how you can attract souls it also specifies only /human/ souls.”

Dropping all pretense of cordiality now, I narrow my eyes at her. “I know you were imprisoned and I know how you were freed and by whom. Stick with taking the human souls agreed upon in the way we agreed upon and we don’t have a problem.” Until she breaks the contract. Then all bets are off. But one thing at a time.

“I’m going to make you pay for this Lassiter!” She yells as she grabs for the contract.

“Oh, please, bitch,” dematerializing contract and feather back to my room at the manse, “stop with the evil super-villain talk. It’s really cliche and Darkseid did it better.”

Walking to the door, I jerk it open, setting off the alarm system she’d neglected to turn off when she came in. As the earsplitting siren split the neighborhood quiet, I added...

“Oh, and if you want to avoid the police, I’d be vacating this place PDQ. I’ll be phoning in a dead body in the basement as soon as I’m out the door. Laters, babe.”

The resounding crash of what had to be the blender off the countertop hitting the door makes me chuckle as I dial 911.

“911? Yeah, I want to report a dead body….”

#DealWithTheDevil #TheEndOfTheBeginning #PartSix #TBC #SaintsNSinners #BDB #SASBDB

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loveinthebones · 7 years ago

Text

Let Them Think What They Want

Prompt: 2. Things you said through your teeth

Rating: T

Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Friends to Lovers, Alpha! Phil and Alpha! Dan

These are you WARNINGS: Slight scuffle between Dan and Phil, mentions of blood

-Let Them Think What They Want-

There are certain…expected…qualities that Phil lacked from an outsider’s perspective and it never failed to set Dan’s teeth on edge when others’ made assumptions about where the boy with the startling eyes fell without a second thought.

His quiet, thoughtful countenance let him fade into the background, if he wasn’t careful.

Dan was trying to encourage Phil to speak more. He knew from experience that his flatmate’s soothing northern twang would turn heads without him even trying but Phil merely giggled in response, lips stained from the shaved ice they had been sharing, and laid his head on his shoulder, radiating heat and unspoken adoration.

“Let them think what they want, Dan.”

Aside from being a small tree, Phil wasn’t a physically commanding presence.

Dan didn’t mean to draw attention to himself as much as he did, but he had always been a bit more impulsive, a bit freer in letting that mysterious pull drench his words. His power of persuasion was less of a suggestion and more of a demand…and it had caused problems when their business partnership had started to solidify.

He remembers the startled eyes of the Beta secretary who had frowned deeply at the compulsion to loosen her posture, despite her will to maintain her strict professionalism after he had jokingly told her, “You can relax. We don’t bite.”

“Stop that,” Phil scolded, swatting his shoulder, as he came to stand behind Dan. He offered his hand to her with a charming, apologetic smile. “I apologize. He hasn’t gotten the hang of his vocal training, just yet.”

It was lie and they both knew it.

Dan used to have trouble controlling his Alpha voice when he was overwhelmed and back then, he had been a terrified nineteen-year-old about to sit in his first official business meeting with his friend and the creator he was working to establish a brand with in the possible future.

Her eyes had drifted across his form with a surprised gaze. It wasn’t often that an Alpha struggled with vocal training but it was speculated that those who did would be the ideal candidates for leadership positions, even when pitted against other Alphas.

“My apologies.” She replied instantly and courteously as she grasped Phil’s hand. “How do you deal with it? He certainly is a strong one.”

Dan’s own hand flexed at the sudden spike of annoyance flooding his system.

Does she not realize…?

Phil only smiled back politely and answered, “Exposure, I suppose. Should we get going?”

Phil reached for his jumping fingers to give them a reassuring squeeze while the Beta hesitated for a split second.

When Dan growled at her reluctance, Phil dropped his hold to fall in place beside his friend as they started to make their way down the corridor, following the Beta who was chattering about the recording spaces, sound equipment, and green screens that would be available to them after the meeting, if they were interested.

His fingertips scraped at the small of Dan’s back as they walked and if she noticed anything- she didn’t say a word.

Dan couldn’t help but wonder if she picked up on the fact that she had folded easily to Phil’s influence.

“You worry too much, Danny.” Phil told him as he clicked away at the controller determinedly. His eyes were glued to the screen where his character was shooting rainbows and jumping hastily to escape the water hot on his heels. “Let it go.”

“I just…why do people assume?” Dan sighed, helplessly searching for the words to explain why it bothered him so much. “Seriously. It’s idiotic and irritating.“ Dan ran his fingers through his fringe, flicking the tickling strands out of his eyes peevishly. "You are just as much of an Al—”

“Shit!” Phil whined, lifting his controller up with angrily shaking hands, and a warning growl ripped from Dan’s throat before he could call it back.

Phil clamped his teeth on the unmoving plastic, an answering rumble vibrating his chest.

There’s something laying heavy and hot in his chest and it urges Dan to stand so he does, drifting to Phil unthinkingly.

His hand rests on locks dyed in the blackest black that can be bought in a bottle and the spell is broken when Phil’s breath fans across his wrist.

“Ah—” Dan squeaked, jerking his hand away as if he had been burned. “Sor—”

Phil chucked the controller at him with a laugh that flashed just a bit too much bite. “Piss off.”

“What is it like living with a Beta?” Dan read and he pressed a hand to his temple with a wry laugh. “Well, HowellattheMoon, you see Phil is—”

“Daniel.”

His name was muffled but it seemed to carry an uncanny echo that had the hairs at the back of his neck standing at attention.

Dan’s lower jaw moved subtly as Phil continued from his place behind his closed bedroom door: “Let it go.”

“You want to go, mate?” There’s a playful lilt to the vowels of his sentence but it’s distorted because Dan is speaking through the barrier of his clenched teeth and his blood is rushing through his ears violently but he remains sitting in his butt chair, leaning on his elbow with a strained smile and glowing eyes.

It isn’t the first time he has used his Alpha voice during a livestream but it’s the first time that it’s laced with something…dark.

The chat is going crazy but Dan’s senses are fixed on the gentle protest of his door’s hinges and the man who has let himself in to his room.

Phil’s fingers open and close at his side as he huffs, a single brow arched in a silent challenge.

“Bring it on.”

So much for the challenge being silent.

“I will murder you,” Dan retorted, flicking his gaze to Phil pointedly. The other shoves his shoulders back at the action, meeting his scrutiny unblinkingly.

There’s that something again—hot, distracting, undiluted but Dan manages to keep himself in check by sheer willpower. “Want to come say hi?”

It’s less of a question and more of a demand and Phil’s tricolored eyes flash as he rolls his shoulders stiffly before he saunters over to kneel beside Dan.

He grins at the chat and chirps out a happy, friendly and infuriatingly relaxed, “Hey guys!”

The air crackles between them.

There’s teeth digging relentlessly into that spot on his neck and Dan raked his blunt nails down the warm skin under his fingertips, distantly worried that he might have drawn blood.

Phil hissed against his sore neck. “You’re the one who wanted to do this, love.” He reminded Dan, flesh still trapped between painful points.

“I know,” Dan panted, digging little angry half-moons where his hands have come to rest just under Phil’s scapulas. “I just—”

“Alphas’ don’t normally have their bonding gland stimulated.” Soft lips pressed against his bruised and tender skin, followed by the slimy scrape of a playful tongue, and Dan snorted as he canted his head backwards so the column of his neck stayed exposed, despite the little voice screeching in his head that he was being reckless and in danger.

“I know,” Dan repeated his earlier statement, bumping his chin against the top of Phil’s head. “I still have that bruise on my hip.”

“I warned you,” Phil giggled, nuzzling into the juncture of his shoulder, before he raised himself up to press his forehead against Dan’s. “I am stronger than I look.”

The pads of Dan’s fingers ghosted along the pretty purple starburst on Phil’s own bonding gland, admiring the indentations he left behind.

Phil growled but it was more of a gentle, loving purr than a warning snarl.

“People have forgotten that in the olden days,” Phil’s lip is split from their tussle, cheeks rosy, and he winces as he talks.“Alphas used to take Alphas for mates.”

Dan’s chest heaved harshly as he cups his throbbing nose, grimacing. “I doubt it’s healthy to take an elbow to the face.” He commented dryly, catching the sparse droplets of blood in his palm. “I’m just saying.”

“We got carried away,” Phil shrugged nonchalantly. “It happens. Aggression hormones, adrenaline, and all that.” He wiped at his bottom lip with his sleeve, smearing crimson along the fabric carelessly as he chuckled. “Though I didn’t expect you to slap me-”

“It was an accident!” Dan protested, panting and exhausted after their brief struggle. He didn’t want to admit that Phil’s scent was pleasantly scrambling his thoughts…and that their little squabble hadn’t helped…. the now familiar heat sizzling and scorching the walls of his veins. “I really didn’t mean to. Sorry.”

“It’s all good,” Phil hummed, lips quirked in one corner in a lopsided, forgiving smile. “It happens.”

"You say that…” Dan muttered, licking his lips, as his heart thudded against his ribs. He shook his head to clear away the fog covering his mind. “…Did Alphas really take other Alphas as mates?”

“Oh, yeah.” Phil laughed with a suggestive eyeroll and Dan’s tongue suddenly decided it wanted to stay glued to the roof of his mouth.

“Why?” The single word escaped before his internal filter could catch it and Dan uncovered the lower portion of his face, eyes cautiously curious.

“Because the two partners had to be evenly matched.“ Phil answered softly, combing his fringe back into a messy quiff. "Though, I do believe that you can choose your mate, regardless of where you or they fall.” Phil stood, dusting off his trackies, before offering to his left hand to Dan. “Are we good?”

“We’re good, Philly.” Dan kept his eyes on their bland carpet as he accepted Phil’s help. “Would you?”

Phil pulled him to his feet and they were so close that Dan could see the individual flecks of gold and green in the electric blue depths of Phil’s irises.

“Would I, what?”

“Date an Alpha.” Dan whispered, still holding onto Phil.

The air buzzing along his skin dotted his arm with goosebumps as Phil squeezed his fingers gently.

“I would.”

“Mine,” Dan murmured, caressing the mark reverently. “People will know you’re mine.”

Phil dipped his head and the tip of his nose tickled Dan’s skin as he made his way down. “And you are mine.“

"Even if people assume I’m the sole Alpha?” Dan teased and his breath stuttered as Phil bit that spot again, mewling in pain.

Phil kissed away the sting before baring his teeth at Dan, showcasing the jagged ends and slight unevenness.

“Let them think what they want, but make no mistake I can take you on, Danny boy.”

#phan #phanfiction #alpha/beta/omega dynamics #kat's writing #ambrose's writing #friends to lovers #Things You Said prompts

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sopherfly · 8 years ago

Text

Made for the Drift (Chapter 2)

((Winteriron Pacific Rim AU))

Summary: It doesn't take our boys long to realize that keeping things professional isn't going to work. Bucky and Tony get called into combat, and then they finally get some alone time.

A/N: This chapter contains smut. If that’s not your thing, skip past the scene immediately after Bucky says ‘yes.’ Many thanks to @folklejend for beta reading this chapter.

Bucky can’t sleep.

It’s a problem he’s never had before. The Asset knows how to shut everything down, and while Bucky's a light sleeper - the smallest noise and he's immediately alert - he’s always been able to sleep. At least, until now.

It's almost midnight. Bucky's room isn’t big enough to pace, not really, but he does it anyway, back and forth and back and forth until he’s worried he’ll wear a hole in the floor.

It’s nothing, he tells himself. Just a drift hangover. It'll be gone soon. Drift hangovers always go away; they just take time. The thought isn't comforting at all. Knowing the empty feeling will end doesn't make it ache any less. It feels like knowing you’ve forgotten something important but not being able to remember what. It's like a lost limb that still hurts even though it’s gone.

“Fuck.”

Bucky rubs his face with his hands. He can do this. He can. He can force himself to sleep, and when he wakes up, he’ll feel normal again. The buzzing in his head will disappear. All he needs is a reset.

Of course, he’ll never get to sleep if he can’t stop pacing. Bucky huffs in frustration. The pacing isn't really optional. He has to keep moving, or the terrifying emptiness might consume him. He's going to be up all night, walking the length of the room over and over. Back and forth. Back and forth. He has no idea how long it's been when a knock on his door shocks him out of the trance.

Well. Whoever it is, they'd better not expect much. Bucky's not quite up for company. At least, no company but Tony's, and Tony has already gone to sleep. Finally breaking his back and forth pattern, Bucky heads to the door.

“Hi, gorgeous.”

Bucky’s heart jumps against his ribcage at the sound of Tony’s voice. Not asleep, then. Very much awake, standing in his doorway.

“I, uh - I couldn’t sleep. And I was wondering if maybe you couldn't either.”

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, Bucky thinks. He can send Tony away and leave them both to handle their restlessness alone, or he can invite Tony inside and risk ruining everything if he can't keep himself in line. This from the man who prides himself on discipline. Something about Tony makes everything Bucky knows about himself unravel.

“Haven’t even sat down,” Bucky says finally. He can't help but drink Tony in, his eyes catching on that little wrinkle between Tony’s brows. Still there. Bucky wants so badly to reach out and make it vanish. “D’you wanna come in?”

There it is. Too late to take it back.

“Sure.” Tony smiles a little lop-sidedly before stepping inside.

(Read the rest of the chapter below, or check it out on ao3.)

“Your room is smaller than mine.” Tony offers Bucky a look of apology. “Sorry. Sometimes I don’t have a filter.”

“S’okay,” Bucky says, closing the door behind them. “You’re a genius inventor. Figures your room would be bigger.”

“Don’t forget ‘irresponsible playboy.’ And Jaeger pilot, thanks to you.”

There isn't much to look at, but Tony seems intrigued anyway, glancing around the room with curious eyes. Tony crosses to Bucky's desk and picks up the first book on the pile, flipping it open. “An Illustrated History of Jaegers. This a first edition?”

“Yeah. Steve got it for me.”

“Nice of him. First editions take ages to find.” Tony flips another few pages, humming to himself, and Bucky doesn’t miss the way those lips purse in fascination. “These are really beautiful.”

Bucky nods in agreement. The book is full of tech specs, but it's the art that Bucky loves. Sketches, paintings, beautiful photos, all of Jaegers. It seems like it captivates Tony just as much. Bucky sits down on the side of his bed, watching, his eyes trained on Tony’s hands as he flips the pages one by one.

“I’ve been staring at the ceiling for an hour trying to find a way to describe what this feels like,” Tony starts, not looking away from the page. “This thing. My reaction to the drift, I guess. It’s - I don’t know - it’s like I could keep reaching and reaching and never find what I’m looking for, but whatever it is, I need it. Does that make any sense?”

It makes all the sense in the world. Bucky nods. “That’s how I feel, too.”

Tony sets the book down slowly, then turns to meet Bucky's eyes. “Is there a way to make it better?”

“Only one thing that's ever worked for me.”

“And what is that?”

“Contact.”

Tony breathes out, and that line between his brows grows more pronounced. “Is that… Would you want to - ha. Why is this so hard to say?”

“Isn’t exactly a normal thing to ask.” Bucky pats the edge of the bed. “C’mere.”

Bucky scoots up onto the mattress, leaving room for Tony to sit back against him. Tony searches his eyes, unsure, then follows Bucky onto the bed, sitting just far enough away that they aren’t actually touching. Bucky shifts forward, and finally their bodies connect. Tony’s back presses into Bucky’s chest. Bucky’s legs are on either side of Tony’s. Bucky’s arms slide around to Tony’s waist, one hand resting on Tony’s abdomen, the other on his chest.

“This okay?”

“Yeah,” Tony says, his voice soft. “Yeah, that - that helps a lot.”

“Good.” Bucky lets his chin rest on Tony’s shoulder, and Tony sighs, his body relaxing.

Hell. Tony is so warm and pliant. He fits perfectly in Bucky's arms, snug and safe, like he's always belonged there. This is the only way they work. Together. Bucky can't help it; with Tony up against him, it's so easy to imagine a world where they're never apart. Of course, that's ridiculous. Unrealistic. But the more hours that pass, the more their connection solidifies in Bucky's mind. Two halves of a whole. For the first time since the simulation, Bucky doesn't feel empty at all.

“Why is it like this?” Tony shifts closer, and Bucky swallows down the satisfied noise that tries to rise in his throat. “I know the drift is powerful, but I’ve never heard of anyone having this kind of reaction before.”

“Dunno.” Bucky closes his eyes, the smell of Tony’s shampoo licking his nostrils. That might actually kill him, but there's no way he's letting go, not when he's finally found his balance. “Strong connection, I guess. Does different things to different people.”

Silence engulfs them, and then he feels Tony's weight sag against him. Bucky smiles. Tony is asleep on him, and damn if that doesn't make him like Tony more. Must've been tired. Come to think of it, Bucky's tired, too.

Bucky doesn't remember falling asleep; but when he wakes, he's lying in his bed, and Tony is wrapped up in his arms.

Shit.

They’re still dressed, Bucky in his pajamas and Tony in his sweats, and as much of a relief as that is, Bucky still wishes for several more layers of fabric between them. He can feel the heat of Tony’s body under his palms. His nose is buried in Tony’s hair, and Tony smells so good, that scent tugging at something primal in Bucky’s back-brain. There’s an uncontrollable part of him that wants fewer layers instead of more, because wouldn’t it be incredible just to feel skin on skin, to touch and kiss and-

Stop it.

Tony shifts just slightly in his sleep, and Bucky suppresses a groan. Having Tony this close is intoxicating. Overwhelming. More than a little arousing. Bucky tries to pull his arms away, but Tony doesn't budge.

“Tony,” Bucky says in Tony's ear. Tony moves, and Bucky manages to slide his arms out from around Tony, sitting up. “Tony,” Bucky says again, louder this time.

Tony stirs, rolling onto his back and blinking slowly awake. “Hey, Buckaroo.” That rough voice sends a shiver up Bucky’s spine.

“Hey.” It’s all Bucky can get out at first. His body is practically screaming at him, the compulsion to keep touching almost too powerful to tolerate. He takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “We fell asleep.”

Tony looks around and sits up. “Oh. Shit.” He drags a hand through his hair, and Bucky loves that, loves the way it makes a few strands stand on end. “I - were we sleeping together? I mean, not sleeping together, but - you know what I mean.”

“Yeah.”

Tony frowns, covering his mouth briefly with his hand. “I think I liked it.”

“Tony.” He can’t say things like that, not when Bucky’s working so hard to pretend that he didn’t like it and doesn’t want to do it again.

“I’m serious. I haven’t slept that well in - I don’t know if I’ve ever slept that well.” Tony stretches his arms above his head, then ruffles his hair a second time. That's just too much, too adorable and sexy. Bucky forces himself to look away.

“Hey. What’s the matter?”

Tony asks it like it’s not a big deal, like they haven’t just woken up accidentally tangled up in each other.

“Nothin’,” Bucky says, hating how unconvincing it sounds. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“You’re not.” Tony scoots closer, and for some incomprehensible reason, he rests a hand on Bucky’s cheek. Bucky reaches up a second too late to stop him, grabbing Tony’s wrist only after Tony’s hand touches his skin.

“Tony.” Bucky holds Tony’s gaze for a tense moment, but Tony doesn’t let go. He strokes Bucky’s cheekbone with his thumb, and Bucky clenches his jaw. Slowly, Tony’s other hand comes up and tucks a strand of Bucky’s hair behind his ear. That whisper of sensation undoes all of Bucky’s tension like a quick-release knot, the whole structure of the thing collapsing with a single pull. His shoulders go slack; his jaw relaxes, lips parting softly.

“Serious question,” Tony murmurs, searching Bucky’s face. “Does being drift partners mean we can’t be anything else?”

“I don’t know.”

Tony’s expression changes, and Bucky can tell he’s about to argue with him. Bucky heads him off.

“Tony, we ain’t known each other more than a couple days.”

“So what? There are people I’ve known for years that I still can’t stand.” Tony runs his thumb along Bucky’s cheek again, and Bucky sighs, leaning ever so slightly into the touch. “That doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to me.”

That’s because it isn’t. Bucky has seen inside Tony’s head. He knows Tony’s mind, knows what he hates, what he loves, what he wants more than anything else in the world. Bucky and Tony aren’t strangers, not really. Argument invalid.

“You sure it’s not just the drift? You sure I’m what you want?” It sounds so stupid to Bucky’s ears, so vulnerable, but he has to ask it, has to know that it’s a choice and not just something Tony has fallen into.

Tony shakes his head. “I’ve been interested in you since the first time we met. And we’re so compatible. It can’t just be a coincidence. It has to mean something.”

Bucky doesn’t disagree. But there’s still a part of him - maybe a part that HYDRA put there - that questions whether or not something like this can be anything but bad. “This doesn’t scare you?”

“Honestly? It’s terrifying. But so was the first time I stepped into a Jaeger, and that turned out to be pretty incredible, right?”

“Right.” Bucky stares, heart pounding, skin on fire where Tony is still touching him. He breathes in as if to speak, then stops himself, because suddenly he can’t remember the words. All he knows is what he feels. He wants, and he hopes, and he yearns, his whole body charged with it.

Brown eyes flash with impatience. Tony’s fingers slide to the back of Bucky’s neck, thumbs tight against Bucky’s jaw, and then Tony pulls him down, sealing their mouths together in a kiss.

Fucking hell.

That’s what a kiss is supposed to feel like; not perfunctory or forced, but necessary, like the world will stop if Bucky pulls away. Tony’s lips are soft and insistent, that edge of impatience just barely there. Tony’s tongue traces the seam of Bucky's mouth, and Bucky opens to him, groaning at that hot, slick slide. Damn, but Tony tastes good.

Tony crawls up onto Bucky’s lap and straddles his hips, tangling his hands in Bucky’s hair. Shit. Tony’s body plastered to Bucky’s makes it difficult to breathe, and damn near impossible to think. All Bucky can do is press tighter and kiss harder. His hands slide up under Tony’s shirt, finally touching skin, the heat impossible, the contact sending sparks through his fingers. Tony’s hips arch forward, and Bucky moans into Tony’s mouth, his hands suddenly grasping and needy-

From the corner of the room, the alarm bell shrieks, shocking them apart.

Tony pulls away first, breathing hard, his hands not moving from where they've landed on Bucky’s shoulders. Even with the bright blue strobe light flashing, it takes Bucky several seconds to process what that alarm actually means, because his lap is still full of Tony, and if only they could just keep kissing.

“Shit,” Bucky huffs, moving his hands slowly down Tony’s back, lingering on Tony’s skin before drawing away. “That alarm for us?”

Tony looks like he really doesn't want to answer. He bites his lip, letting out a frustrated breath. “Yep. That's for us.”

It takes another minute for Tony to move from Bucky’s lap. Bucky mourns the loss of contact, but somehow resists the urge to pull Tony back onto the bed.

“I should go grab my tech gear,” Tony says, hovering near the door. “I’ll, uh. I’ll meet you there?”

“Alright.”

Tony hesitates, then turns and leaves. Bucky drops his head into his hands.

Called into combat. Of course.

Bucky trundles into the bathroom and turns on the sink, splashing cold water onto his face. Get a grip, Barnes. Focus. He rifles through his dresser until he finds his clean tech gear. He doesn’t need more than thirty seconds to change - twenty of those are spent adjusting the fabric, making sure it’s seated right on his arms and legs - and then he slips on his socks and his boots, marching quickly out the door.

He beats Tony to the control room, the lights already on as he steps inside. A tired-looking Bruce Banner sits at the control booth, and an agitated Nick Fury drums his fingers on the table near the windows. Natasha stands off to the side. Footsteps behind him - Steve files in along with his new partner, Sam Wilson. Clint Barton trails behind.

Bucky knows Barton, even though they've never officially met. He’s had his picture in the papers, always alongside Natasha’s. Best sharpshooter in the Jaeger program. Originally based in South America. Partnered off early. Five kills, with limited Jaeger damage. Bucky assumes that sling he's wearing is a leftover from his last fight.

Wilson is still mostly a mystery. His previous experience comes from the Military, that much is easy enough to guess just by the way he walks. Bucky can't help but make snap judgments; it's just part of his programming. And his snap judgment on Wilson is that he's under-qualified.

Still. If Steve has agreed to be his partner, maybe there's more to him. Maybe there's something else that makes him an asset to the team. Fury always has his reasons for choosing people. Bucky just hopes they're good ones.

Tony finally walks through the door, bright-eyed and sharp. His beard is perfectly trimmed, his hair freshly-washed - how had he had time to shower? - and styled. There’s no evidence at all that fifteen minutes before, he’d had Bucky’s tongue down his throat. Bucky wonders if he looks as composed by comparison.

Tony crosses the room to stand next to Bucky, and Bucky tries hard not to let the smell of that shampoo distract him.

“Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep,” Fury starts, his voice reverberating off of the tile floor. “We have a situation that needs your immediate attention.” He inclines his head toward Bruce, who pulls up the holo-screen.

“Half an hour ago, we got a signature in the breach. Seemed normal. The Maximoff twins were next in rotation, so we deployed Igor.”

“But it's a category four.” All eyes land on Tony. “What? Don't look at me like that, of course I checked before I came up here. Not like I didn’t predict it anyway, if you all would listen to me for once.”

“Stark, now is not the time-”

“He's right,” Bruce interrupts. “It's our first category four. This thing is - well. It’s a monster.”

Bruce pulls up the Kaiju’s specs. Head and shoulders taller than the last Kaiju. Heavier, too, with a skull shaped like a hammerhead shark. It looks mean. Mean and enormous.

“Igor isn't big enough to take that on alone,” Natasha says.

"I agree." Fury stops, clasping his hands together behind his back. “I’m low on personnel, and Barton is still recovering.”

“I’m fine,” Clint growls.

“You’re injured. And Rogers and Wilson are untested. I won’t put you in a machine when I don’t even know it’s going to stick.” Fury’s single eye swivels to stare them down. “That leaves us with Stark and Barnes.”

Bucky’s muscles tense, adrenaline filtering quickly into his veins. That’s the Asset, or as much of him as still exists. Always ready for a fight. Bucky glances over at Tony.

“What do you think?”

There's hardly any point in asking. They both want this. They're both ready.

Tony grins. “I think we should go kick some Kaiju ass.”

Fury sends them straight to the changing room to get suited up. Everything is automated now; Bucky steps in front of the mirror and mechanical arms appear out of nowhere, putting the armor together around him in less than a minute. It’s brand new, similar to the old design, but never been worn. Most people say that's better. No use in carrying the bad luck of old armor with you.

Bucky stares at his reflection, moving his arms, then his legs, testing the range of motion. It's perfect. Protective and sturdy, but still flexible. It doesn't look half bad, either, almost sparkling as it catches the light. Nothing like the plastic shit from the simulator.

“Wow.” Tony appears behind him, dressed in the same chrome-colored armor. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen the pictures, I knew it was going to look good on you, but… Wow.”

Bucky meets Tony’s eyes in the mirror. He's not sure he deserves that kind of praise. He doesn't look good so much as lethal. Armor always reminds him of the Asset. And even though he's killing for the right reasons, underneath it all, Bucky's still a killing machine.

Tony, though - Tony looks like a knight ready to slay a dragon. He ought to be on a poster the way he wears that armor, his jawline and cheekbones even more pronounced, his dark eyes alive and dangerous.

“Do you not like it?” Tony asks.

Bucky shakes his head. “It's better on you.”

Tony steps forward, circling around Bucky, scrutinizing him from every angle. “Huh. You really think so? Because this is the most badass thing I've ever seen.”

“It ain't all that.”

Tony's face grows serious. “I respectfully disagree.” He moves directly in front of Bucky, and something stirs in Bucky's veins at the stubborn set of Tony's jaw. “It suits you.”

Bucky wants to argue, but he's distracted by the unexpected press of Tony's lips on his. It doesn't last longer than a few seconds, but it's enough to make him forget all of his protests. “What was that for?”

“Luck,” Tony says easily. “That's what they do in the movies, right?”

“Right.”

Bucky's lips are still tingling as he follows Tony up the spiral staircase, helmet clutched in one hand as they make their way to the Jaeger’s head.

It’s been over a year since Bucky has actually set foot inside a Jaeger.

It's bigger than he remembers. Cavernous. He cranes his neck, looking up with what he's sure are admiring eyes. Heartbreaker isn't Howler; but damn if she isn't beautiful. She has her own aura. She has a presence, one that hangs from the walls and the ceiling. She's powerful and agile. She wants so badly to succeed.

Perfect. She's perfect.

Planting his feet in the boot clips, Bucky can't help but feel nervous. Technically, he and Tony are compatible. They've drifted. But there are still so many unknowns. Things change when you’re inside a real Jaeger. The connection is stronger. The feedback is louder. The drift is deep and fathomless, darker than the ocean, the current fast and dangerous. When it works - when two pilots connect, perfectly in sync - it’s the most incredible feeling in the world. He shouldn't worry. With their connection, the chances of it not working are slim to none.

The way this dome is built, Jaegers have to be transported in pieces. The head drops from far above and connects with the body, and part of a pilot’s job is riding all the way down. Bucky and Tony are just waiting, and once they're set, it's a free fall.

Natasha checks the cords behind them, making sure the armor and the Jaeger are fully joined before tapping their helmets in turn. The mechanical door groans shut behind her as she leaves.

“You ready?” Tony asks.

“Yeah.” Bucky's more than ready. He needs this. His body aches for it. Finally back inside a Jaeger… It’s all he's ever wanted. “You?”

“Born ready.”

They're silent through the initiation sequence, and Bucky watches the panels light up one by one. His legs tremble in anticipation when he hears the hatch open, giant metal pieces creaking aside to give them a clear path straight down.

It's a long way. There are over a thousand feet between the hatch and the body of the Jaeger. Bucky braces himself as the bottom drops out from underneath them. Five seconds of weightlessness. Seven. Ten. Gravity kicks in, and there’s a jolt when they land, the head rotating around just once before Bucky hears the thunk of the locking mechanism securing them in place.

“Pilot-to-pilot protocol engaged. Initiating neural handshake.”

Bucky only gets a split second to think before the switch flips. Memories flash in front of him like slides on a stereoscope, moving faster and faster until everything’s a blur of color and noise. The entire world rushes past in the blink of an eye - and then, suddenly, Tony’s mind is anchored to his, and the drift opens up and swallows them whole.

“Neural link established. Connection successful.”

Bucky hears the words thunder in his ears, the echo strange and far away. The machine whispers inside his body. The arc-reactor thrums, energy warming him from his core all the way out to his heels and his fingertips. The simulator can't compare. There's heft and power underneath him, underneath them. There’s nothing else like it, nothing in the world.

Bucky looks over at Tony, and Tony blinds him with a dazzling, cheeky smile. God. Tony was made for this. Even inside that suit, he looks like this is exactly where he's meant to be. He fits.

“You look good,” Bucky finds himself saying.

“So do you.”

Threads of attraction and desire tug at him from inside the drift. He meets Tony's eyes, and Tony doesn't back down.

You look really good.

“Doors opening,” Bruce says over the comms. The massive doors in front of them start to part, water rushing in around the Jaeger’s feet as Bucky and Tony run through the calibration. Left hemisphere. Right hemisphere. “Okay, Heartbreaker. That ocean is all yours.”

Being inside a Jaeger is incredible. Bucky’s suddenly tall enough to walk across the ocean, powerful enough to fight the biggest threat to humanity. That invincible feeling can be dangerous, especially for new pilots; they get too wrapped up in the strength of the machine, forgetting that Kaijus are just as big and just as dangerous. But Bucky and Tony have fought Kaijus before. They know the risks. They don’t have any illusions about how badly this kind of fight can end. And somehow they still want it more than anything.

“Igor,” Bruce says over the comms, “you have Heartbreaker inbound.”

Bucky and Tony spot the arc-reactor at the same time, glowing blue against the dark ocean and the sky. The Kaiju is still invisible from this distance, but with the enormous stride of a Jaeger, it won’t take them long to reach Igor’s position.

“Good of you to join us,” Pietro says, his voice sounding taxed.

“Sorry,” Tony replies, and Bucky sees him calculating the distance to the Kaiju as he speaks. “Took us a while to get dressed.”

“He’s dodging all our punches,” Wanda growls. “We’re holding our own, but we can’t bring him down ourselves.”

Good thing Fury sent us out, Tony thinks. They’re closing in, just fifteen paces from the fight. The Kaiju spots them ten steps out.

Shit.

The Kaiju isn’t just big. It’s fast. It comes barreling at them full speed, and Heartbreaker just barely blocks the hit.

“Repulsors,” Tony says, and Heartbreaker’s left hand comes up, blasting the Kaiju back. It squeals, a terrible, high-pitched sound, then rounds on them again. This time they’re more prepared. Heartbreaker’s fist lands squarely on the Kaiju’s jaw, the impact rattling through its body. It makes that horrible sound again, then ducks down, plowing its head into Heartbreaker’s stomach. The Kaiju knocks the wind out of them, pushing Heartbreaker backward along the ocean floor. Shit. They can’t win with this thing using its size against them. Bucky brings Heartbreaker's right arm down, elbow slamming into the Kaiju’s head, and that forces the Kaiju back long enough for them to break free.

Suddenly Igor is in range, grabbing onto the Kaiju’s tail. The Kaiju turns on them, gigantic claws swiping at Igor’s chest. Bucky knows how much that hurts. A pilot feels any damage done to a Jaeger; it’s unlike any other pain, made worse for the fact that you’re connected to the Jaeger through the drift. The Kaiju’s claws rend the metal, but thankfully the arc-reactor stays intact. Igor fires repulsor blasts in quick succession, like a machine gun, hammering the Kaiju hard. Bucky watches, waiting for the smoke to clear.

The Kaiju’s scaly skin is barely burned.

Repulsors aren’t going to work, Bucky thinks, concerned for the first time that they might not win this fight. They’re not doin’ any damage.

You’re right. They’ll overheat before they even come close. Tony growls in frustration. This thing’s too big. We can’t just beat it dead, not even with two Jaegers.

Bucky closes his eyes for an instant, trying to think. He’s supposed to be the expert on Jaegers. Maybe not as much of an expert as Tony, but he knows enough, and in the fight, Bucky’s the more clear-headed of the two of them. Does he know anything that can help them? Igor is older, third generation; but that still means she’s equipped with modern weapons systems. Repulsors, rockets, cannons. Nothing so medieval as a spear or a sword. But Heartbreaker is old. First generation, rebuilt but fairly well preserved. Old enough to have her original set of weapons.

“Does Heartbreaker still have a sword?” Bucky asks aloud.

Tony perks up, raising his eyebrows. “Yeah. She does.”

“Let's use it.”

Tony grins. I love the way you think.

The sword emerges from the left arm, metal pieces slotting into place. It’s not quite as long as Heartbreaker’s arm, probably to make it easier to wield, but it’ll definitely do the job.

“Hey, Igor,” Tony barks into the comms. “Can you give us an opening, here?”

“With pleasure,” Wanda says.

The Kaiju is still circling, looking at Heartbreaker like she’s something to eat. It’s almost as if the monster has forgotten all about Igor. Good. That gives them the advantage. Igor swings up from behind, metal arms sliding underneath the Kaiju’s arms and gripping hard, hauling it upward. The Kaiju twists its neck back. It struggles, but Igor holds fast, and that’s exactly the opening they need.

Bucky and Tony draw the sword back and strike.

The blade cuts into the Kaiju’s neck, brutal and precise. The metal goes straight through. It cleaves scale and flesh and bone, opening the Kaiju’s enormous neck, driving through its skull and splitting it down the middle.

The Kaiju drops, and the ocean drags it down.

Holy shit. Tony’s eyes are wide, and Bucky watches those lips curve into a smile. That was fucking incredible.

Bucky’s not quite sure what happens next. The drift explodes, and Bucky can’t make sense of it all, but there’s satisfaction and adrenaline and pride and so much more that it carries Bucky away.

“Confirmed kill. Heartbreaker, Igor, come back to the dome.”

Bruce’s voice is a faraway echo in Bucky’s ears, nothing compared to the roar of sound and color coming from the drift. It overwhelms him, and Bucky tries and fails to focus, his mind pulled in too many directions. Somehow, Tony’s still sharp, and he responds for them, his voice resonating through the drift, setting Bucky on fire.

“Copy that.”

The debrief takes no time at all. Bucky can't quite pay attention, still too high on the drift and the fight to comprehend much of anything. He can't track the conversation, except that he hears Tony say something about Kaijus learning Jaeger fight patterns, and then he gets distracted by the flush on Tony’s cheeks and the deep red of his lips.

When they're finished, Bucky follows Tony to the changing room, thankful that he doesn't have to remove this armor himself. Even so, it somehow takes Bucky longer to change; he struggles with his civilian clothes, the fatigue pants refusing to fit over his feet, the sweater catching on his hair before he can tug it over his head. Finally, he's presentable, and he opens the curtain, finding Tony waiting for him.

Tony is dressed in worn jeans and a hoodie that's a little too big. Bucky's first impulse is to use those oversized pockets to drag Tony closer, and damn if the drift doesn't shoot his impulse control straight to hell. He slips his hands into the pockets and tugs, pulling Tony toward him.

Tony rests his hands on Bucky's forearms, looking up at him with dark eyes. “That was one hell of a fight, gorgeous. We make a good team.”

“Yeah. We do.”

Tony tilts his chin up, and Bucky can’t force himself not to see it as an invitation. He leans down before he can stop himself, bringing their lips together, and Tony lets out a small noise. Damn. Bucky’s never felt anything like this. Tony’s lips fit against his like they’re made for it, silky and soft, the connection electric. It’s perfect, and Tony is so good at it; his tongue steals inside Bucky’s mouth, and Bucky starts to lose coherent thought, his blood racing south.

“Hmm.” Tony bites down on Bucky’s lower lip, making Bucky groan. “You taste really good.”

“So do you.” Bucky moves his hands to Tony's waist and kisses him again, gradually walking them backward until Tony is up against the wall. Bucky braces his weight on either side of Tony, palms against the concrete, then leans forward to let their hips slot together.

“Oh.” Tony arches up into the contact and tries to pull Bucky closer, hand on the back of Bucky’s neck.

Bucky gives in, letting their lips meet, rocking his hips gently into Tony’s. Even with all that fabric between them, Bucky can still feel Tony’s hard length against him, and that small amount of friction is incredible.

Too soon Tony pulls away. “Come back to my room with me.”

There’s no doubt in Bucky’s mind exactly what that invitation means. He drops a soft kiss at the corner of Tony’s mouth.

“Okay.”

Tony's right. His room is bigger than Bucky's. He has space enough for a queen bed, and there are shelves upon shelves lining the walls, showing off little robots and pieces of tech. It looks like an in-between place, like Tony probably doesn't spend much time here.

“Do you want some coffee or anything?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Too much adrenaline today. Don’t think my heart could take it.”

Tony smiles sheepishly. “Yeah, I’m way too wired for coffee. I just wanted to offer because - well, honestly, because I’m nervous as hell and I didn’t know what else to say.” Tony bites his lip, looking suddenly more serious. “I don’t want to jump into this too fast… Except that I really, really do. It’s-”

“Conflicting?”

“Yeah.” Tony takes a tentative step closer. “Is this how it’s gonna be? Are we already an old married couple finishing each other’s sentences?”

“That’s sort of how the drift works.”

There it is again, that frown line between Tony’s brows. Bucky reaches out, tracing it with his thumb, finally erasing the tension with a gentle touch. Tony’s eyes flutter closed.

“Been wantin’ to do that for ages.” Bucky lets his fingers trail down the side of Tony’s face, then slides them into the hair at the nape of Tony’s neck, drawing him forward. This kiss is soft, gentle, sweet enough that Tony sighs against Bucky’s lips.

Bucky could do this for hours. Every time he kisses Tony, it’s something different, a new exploration of the same territory. It makes his nerves sing, his toes and his fingertips lighting up with sensation, his cock growing hard with the barest hint of Tony’s tongue in his mouth. Tony is intoxicating, overwhelming. Bucky’s been high on him since that first kiss.

There’s such a fine line between sweet and hot, and they cross it without meaning to, Tony’s hands tangling in Bucky’s hair, Bucky reaching around to palm Tony’s ass. That brings their hips flush together, and Bucky’s sure Tony can feel how much Bucky wants him, how ready Bucky is. Tony pulls away, hands sliding down to Bucky’s shoulders, fingers gripping gently at Bucky’s sweater.

“Come to bed with me?” Tony asks, less sure than he’d been when he’d invited Bucky to his room.

The breath leaves Bucky’s body, and he nods. “Yes.”

It's not hard for Bucky to track what Tony's thinking as he steps back, unlacing his boots. Clothes are a hindrance. Better to start without any.

That doesn't make Bucky any less nervous as he works on his own boots, leaving them in a pile with his socks next to the door. He blinks when Tony dims the lights, and then Bucky stops, mesmerized, as Tony peels off his shirt and drops it to the floor.

Damn, but Tony is beautiful.

Bucky's gaze wanders over the planes of Tony's chest. That scar is striking, captivating Bucky's attention. The center looks like a brand that hasn't quite kept its shape. Thin white lines extend out in every direction, crisscrossing each other until they fade and disappear.

Bucky looks up, meeting Tony's eyes. “Can I touch it?”

Tony’s voice is barely a whisper. “Yeah.”

Bucky steps up close, metal palm coming up to rest on the white knot of skin, and Tony’s eyes flutter closed. “Does it hurt?”

“No.”

Before he knows quite what he’s doing, Bucky leans down and replaces his hand with his mouth, dropping slow, soft kisses on Tony's chest. He grazes the damaged skin with his teeth, then soothes it with his tongue, feeling Tony’s body shudder.

“Ah. Okay, I really need us both to be wearing a lot less.”

Bucky can’t help but imagine what that looks like. He wants to see more, wants his hands on as much of Tony as Tony will let him have.

“Come on, gorgeous,” Tony says, eager hands finding the waistband of Bucky’s fatigue pants, making quick work of the fastenings and sliding them to the floor. That’s enough to make Bucky move again, and he reaches back, grabbing at the collar of his sweater and pulling it over his head. This time, when Bucky looks up, Tony is naked, and the sweater slips from Bucky’s fingers, because damn if that isn’t an incredible sight.

“Off,” Tony insists. Bucky smiles at Tony’s impatience, his lips parting when Tony relieves him of his boxers in a single fluid motion.

“Oh.”

Tony steps even closer, their cocks bumping together, and that’s a sensation Bucky hasn’t felt in a long time. Bucky moans, almost entirely soundless, but Tony doesn’t seem to notice, his eyes darting over Bucky’s metal shoulder.

“Does it hurt?” Tony asks, looking up into Bucky’s face.

“No.”

Tony’s hand moves tentatively, his thumb touching one of the many scars on Bucky’s side. The angry marks sweep toward Bucky’s shoulder, and Tony follows this scar all the way to the place where flesh and metal meet. “Wow.”

Bucky breathes in, then sighs, shaky on the exhale.

Tony pauses. “That okay?”

“Yeah.” Bucky swallows, turning his head to watch Tony’s hand. “Feels good.”

“I’m gonna need another name for you. Gorgeous doesn’t do you justice.”

“You’re sorta biased.” Bucky manages to say it without his voice breaking. “Tech turns you on.”

“I promise, it’s not just the tech.” Tony tilts his chin up and seeks out Bucky’s lips, leading him into a languid kiss that starts out too soft and ends with Tony hooking one leg around Bucky's waist. Bucky's hands slide down to Tony's ass, and it's almost too easy for him to lift Tony up, letting Tony wrap both legs around him as he leads them back toward the bed.

Bucky draws the moment out forever. He lays Tony out on the mattress, Tony’s head the last thing to drop back onto the sheets, metal hand still cradling Tony’s neck. Bucky pulls back, letting Tony shift further up toward the pillows, and then Bucky’s eyes take him in, admiring the way that lithe body looks spread out underneath him.

Damn. Everything about Tony is beautiful. His legs. His hips. His cock. Feeling a sudden need to touch and taste, Bucky leans down, nuzzling at Tony's navel. He travels lower, lips finding Tony's hip, then his inner thigh. Tony shifts, whimpering, and Bucky gives in, leaving long, soft kisses along Tony's cock, then licking a stripe from base to tip.

“Oh shit. You're gonna make me come like a teenager if you do that,” Tony gasps.

Bucky lifts his head, moving further up Tony's body to kiss along his jaw. “Lube?” he asks softly.

“Bedside table drawer.”

Bucky grabs the lube, then shifts his attention to Tony’s neck, nibbling at his pulse-point, sucking at the sensitive skin.

“Do you - um. God damn it, that's distracting.” Tony laughs nervously. “Sorry. I'm sorry, I don't-”

“D’you want this the other way around?” Bucky asks, suddenly worried he's made the wrong assumption.

“No,” Tony says, emphatic enough that Bucky pulls back to look at him. “No, it's not that. I really want you to top. It's just… It's been a long time.”

“Been a long time for me too.”

Tony surprises him, tucking a strand of hair behind Bucky’s ear, the gesture almost tender. Bucky holds Tony’s gaze, and something passes between them, but Bucky isn’t sure what. He only knows that the look in Tony’s eyes makes it hard to breathe.

Bucky drops the bottle beside them on the bed, and then his hand is between Tony's legs, one finger circling Tony's hole, gently breaching his entrance.

Tony arches, eyes closed, mouth open. “Mmh,” Tony groans, looking goddamn near perfect with his hair falling into his face.

Bucky gives him a minute to adjust, then eases a second finger past that tight ring of muscle. He waits for Tony to relax, the tension slowly leaving Tony's face, then moves both fingers in tandem, gently scissoring him open. Tony’s breath catches, and then brown eyes open, heavy-lidded.

“Okay?” Bucky asks.

“God, yes.”

Bucky slips a third finger inside, feeling Tony tighten around him, watching the rapid rise and fall of Tony’s chest.

There's a needy edge to Tony's voice when he speaks again. “Ahh. Gorgeous, that's so good.”

Bucky moves his fingers in and out, spreading and stretching, watching Tony’s expressions shift. Hell. That’s enough to make him come right there. He's not sure how much longer he can-

“Okay, okay, that's good. I'm good.”

Bucky draws his fingers out of Tony slowly, groaning, clinging to the remains of his shredded self-control. Fuck, he's so hard, he's worried he’ll go off like a shot after two seconds inside that tight heat. What comes after this? Arousal clouds his mind, but his body remembers, reaching back into that drawer. Condom. Right. And more lube. He just barely manages both, his fingers fumbling and unsteady.

“Bucky. You okay?”

Bucky’s eyes flick up, and he nods, not sure how to explain that he’s rapidly losing his capacity to think. He sets the lube aside, metal hand steady even when his flesh hand trembles, then lines himself up, swallowing hard when his cock presses up against Tony’s entrance.

“Oh, fuck,” Tony whispers, lifting his hips and spreading his legs wider as Bucky leans over him.

Tony’s fingers curl into Bucky's hair, and Bucky braces his hands against the mattress, bunching up the sheets as he pushes slowly inside. Tony exhales beneath him, then takes in a shaky breath; Bucky feels him struggling to relax before giving up and arching greedily, forcing Bucky in too hard and too fast until his hips are flush with Tony’s ass.

“Fuck,” Bucky wheezes.

His whole body is tense, taut as a bowstring; his thighs quiver, biceps flexing hard as he gathers more fabric into his hands, half worried he’s going to tug the sheets all the way off the bed. He drops his forehead onto Tony’s, breathing out slowly through his nose.

“Need a minute,” he says, because damn it, Tony is so tight and so perfect, he almost can’t take it.

Tony whines, hands tugging lightly at the roots of Bucky’s hair. After another deep breath, Bucky’s body starts to settle. He pulls halfway out and presses in again, and Tony gasps. “More. Please.”

Bucky nods, powerless to argue. He sets up a slow rhythm, and Tony breathes out on a small, soft noise with every roll of Bucky’s hips until his impatience gets the better of him.

“Gorgeous, I need - I need you to go faster.”

“Okay.” Bucky holds Tony’s gaze and thrusts hard and fast, burying himself even deeper. Tony cries out, and Bucky takes hold of his jaw, his touch gentle, not letting Tony look away. “Like that?”

“Yes. Yes, please - oh fuck.”

Bucky draws back and snaps his hips forward, and this time Tony screws his eyes shut, a keening noise pulled from his throat. There are tears in Tony’s eyes when they open, and one hand moves to grip Bucky’s metal shoulder, the other still tangled in his hair.

“Do that again.”

Bucky takes Tony’s hand and pins it down to the bed, metal fingers closed loosely around his wrist. “Ask nicely,” Bucky whispers, watching Tony’s eyes grow wide and dark.

“Please,” Tony begs. “Please please please, do that again. Just like that. Please.”

Bucky laces metal fingers with Tony’s, still holding his hand against the mattress, and then he’s driving into Tony like his life depends on it, the punishing rhythm dragging him quickly toward the edge. Sweat beads on his brow, pleasure radiating outward from the pit of his stomach and crawling up his spine.

Damn it. He's already too close. He should slow down, he should-

“Don't you dare stop,” Tony says hoarsely.

“Tony. I can't-”

“I know. I know. I can't either. Just - ah - please don't stop.”

“Okay,” Bucky agrees, his voice an octave too low. He thrusts again, changing his angle just slightly, and Tony all but howls.

Bucky can't help himself, not when Tony makes sounds like that. The pressure builds, and it barely takes four more strokes, hard and deep, before Bucky's trembling with the effort of holding back. “Tony.”

“Fuck. Oh fuck, Bucky, I'm so close.”

“Me too.” It's all Bucky can manage, his hands gripping hard, his rhythm starting to falter.

“Oh my god,” Tony gasps, tilting his head back. “Bucky. Please. I need-”

Bucky wraps his metal hand around Tony’s cock, and Tony cries out, arching into the touch.

That's it - that's all Tony needs, and suddenly he's coming in spurts, nails raking over Bucky's shoulders, Bucky's name tumbling from his lips over and over and over until it's too much. The blissed-out look on Tony's face, the sound of his own name echoing in his ears - fuck.

Bucky makes a desperate noise low in his throat, because he's so close and damn if Tony isn't the most fucking beautiful thing he's ever seen. The heat around him grows impossibly tight, and Bucky chokes on a moan, thrusting just once before he comes undone, his world reduced to one man and one word as everything explodes.

His orgasm shudders through him, each spasm wringing a cry from his throat until he’s hoarse. Bucky empties himself into Tony, his muscles shaking, lips parted, eyes shut.

It takes Bucky a long time to catch his breath. He rests his forehead against Tony’s, opening his eyes. “You okay?” Bucky asks.

“Yeah. You?”

Bucky nods.

Tony leans up and kisses him, threading his fingers through Bucky's hair. “You can lie on me, you know. I promise you're not too heavy.”

Bucky lifts his head, stretching into Tony’s touch. “How about we switch, instead?” Bucky shifts, pulling out slowly, trying to be as gentle as he can. He ties the condom off and tosses it into the small wastebasket, then rolls over onto his back. Bucky smiles as Tony curls into him, Tony’s head resting on his chest, covering some of his scars.

“You smell good,” Bucky murmurs, nuzzling Tony’s hair.

Tony presses closer. “Hmm. Glad you think so.” Tony kisses Bucky’s chest, and one hand comes to rest on Bucky’s abdomen, calloused fingers tracing absent circles over Bucky’s skin. “I don’t want to say something and ruin it, but… This is sort of perfect.”

“Doesn’t ruin it,” Bucky says.

“Thank god.”

Bucky gets the impression that Tony’s thankful for more than not ruining the moment. There’s so much profound relief in that statement, but Bucky doesn’t want to read too much into it, doesn’t want to let himself get carried away. He closes his eyes, comforted by the steady rise and fall of Tony’s chest against his side.

Tony’s right. This is sort of perfect.

#winteriron #pacific rim au #winteriron au #tony x bucky #fic #sopherfly writes

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macgyvermedical · 8 years ago

Note

Hello, I came across your awesome blog just now, specifically the post where you broke down the path to getting your BSN through semesters. I'm a senior in high school and am going to begin my path towards getting my BSN as well. It looks very difficult, even for me an honors/AP science lover. Was it super difficult for you? How do I know if this is the right path for me? And do you have any tips? Sorry to ambush you with questions, I understand if you are too busy to answer. Thank you!!!

As someone who was also an honors/AP student in high school, I’d say the relative difficulty (between regular/AP and the typical college major/nursing) is pretty similar. You’re going to be in school with a lot of people who are taking significantly less rigorous classes than you and who may not understand the level of commitment and work your degree requires.

That being said, if you’re interested in it, go for it! It’s tough but its worth it, especially since nursing is such a versatile field and you can do a lot with it (I will say, though, that if you even think you want to do some level of bedside nursing, do that first- that’s where you learn how to be a nurse for real (nursing school basically just makes you really good at being a nursing student).

You’re also going to have a guaranteed job three months before you even take the NCLEX. I walked in to a recruiting table at a job fair at my current hospital, said I was about to get a BSN, and the recruiter immediately took me upstairs and introduced me to my new boss. Like, I did all of five minutes of job searching and got a job in my 1st choice hospital system by just showing up and saying hi. What other field can say that’s even a possibility these days?

Also, if you ever want to go on to do anything else, you’ve been through nursing school. After that, how hard could any other graduate school or degree possibly be?

I would say it was pretty difficult for me, though. Somewhat because I did have a couple of extenuating circumstances going through nursing school. My sophomore and junior years I was in counseling dealing with compulsive lying, social anxiety, and skin picking issues that had really started impacting my life, working as a resident assistant (officially 28 hrs/wk but since it was a live-in position, that was basically all the time I was in the hall in addition to duty nights, event and program planning, and meetings with residents and my RHD), and was transitioning from female to male and all the appointments, counseling, additional stress, and eventually surgery that went along with that.

If its not the right path for you, don’t worry- you won’t make it. There’s an element of passion and love for the work that is crucial to actually making it through nursing school. Its going to be hard, but if you have a desire to do it, its absolutely possible.

Think about your interests- you already like science, and in nursing school you’ll learn to meld that in to a very practical, hands-on career. It sounds cliche, but you’ll have to like people, and like helping people in a very direct way, and be okay with blood and poop and vomit and snot and literally everything else that comes with that. Your tolerance for those last things does improve over time.

If you find it isn’t for you, though, bail early- don’t wait to fail out or get so far in you can’t switch without significant extra college time. Nursing classes pretty much only count for nursing, so for catch up purposes, meet with an advisor if you start to have doubts early on.

Tips:

Lots of people puke and faint in nursing school- that doesn’t mean you’re not cut out for it, just that you need more exposure to poop and blood.

Get a job as a nursing assistant. One of the hardest parts of nursing is time management, and while you learn it on a day-to-day scale in nursing school, no one is ever born with the minute-by-minute micro planning/prioritizing skill that comes with having 10-30 people who need you to do 50-60 different tasks all at the same time. Plus, your first clinical counts as training for that job in most places. So yay!

Actually listen to the class where they talk about tips for surviving on little sleep and high stress. It will help you later.

Speaking of sleep- be really diligent about taking any sleep you can get. It is possible to go your entire nursing school career and never pull an all-nighter. If you feel you’re too tired to continue studying/writing effectively, go to sleep, get up early, and start again. You’ll get a lot more done in a lot less time if you’re awake to do it.

Don’t hide your mistakes. You’re going to make them, and admitting those mistakes and asking for help helps you learn and it helps keep patients safe. And you’ll feel a lot better about the situation afterwards.

If you have the opportunity to take electives/get a minor (and you want one), do it! Find an educational path independent from nursing that makes you happy and interested. You’ll need the break, trust me.

This seems kind of silly, but one of the emotional hurdles of nursing school is thinking you’re to blame for things going wrong with your clinical patient(s). Don’t take things like negative assessment findings personally. They’re in the hospital for you to find those problems. That’s not something you did. Just report those findings to the nurse and pay attention to what they do in response- that’s the best way to learn.

[Patreon] [Fiverr]

#nurblr #nursing school #nursing

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rockerrick-555p · 8 years ago

Text

Imapasse

{I finally got the strength to pull the hardest scene I’ve ever written. Rocker leaving the lair and the Time Apart starting.. god the feels here kill me, can’t read it without crying. This beautiful ship! Under a cut for length }

Collar pulled tightly around his neck, a furious rock star stormed away from the random meeting with an alternative. He grit his teeth and had his fists bunched in his pockets. If he didn’t find something to do with all this aggression soon he was going to combust, he was sure of it. He’d been angry before, hurt before, but never like this. I’m not going to take him away.. “Psh” he scoffed out loud to Sigma’s words circling in his head as he stopped to light a cigarette “you can’t take what’s already been taken.”

He studied the glowing end of the cylinder as he stood under a street light trying to decided where to go. He couldn’t stand to be in the lair, or even his penthouse these days, he’d been avoiding those places as much as he’d been avoiding a brooding truth in his mind. It’s why he’d just stumbled upon Sigma to begin with. He felt like he’d been aimlessly wandering the multi-verse for days. His attention shifted from the end of the cigarette to his trembling hand and he placed the butt in his mouth to better look at his palm, massaging his opposite thumb into it. He was malnourished, but he wasn’t shaking from low blood sugar, he was shaking with fury and the anticipation of being on the brink of doing something drastic, unexpected and devastating.

Rocker closed his fist, clamping it tight so his nails dug into his skin before setting his resolve. It was now or never. Dropping the cigarette he shot open a void and stepped through into the lair instantly hating how it already no longer felt like home. He wandered the familiar corridors until he found the old man and pushed his way into the lab “Rick?” He started, thankful he voice wasn’t shaking as much as the rest of him “We need to talk.”

==============================================================

Evil Rick was sat at his work station a cup of black coffee clutched in his hands, a half-lit cigarette hanging from his lips. He’d been drinking too much recently and while he normally managed to live quite amicably with his alcoholism, over the past couple of weeks it had been too much for too long and it was time to detox, not completely of course, but even to cut down a little would do him some good. He wasn’t a young man anymore and constantly drinking and smoking for days on end had made his chest heavy and his nerves frayed.

His desk was littered with an arrangement of overfilled ashtrays and weapons schematics, but he hadn’t touched the drawings for hours, he couldn’t work, he lacked the concentration and the lab, the largest room in the base, somehow felt too big, empty even, inhospitable and sterile. He’d never felt this way about his home before and he badly wanted the feeling to pass. He’d barely seen Rick over the past few days and gradually he was becoming convinced that things were far worse than he’d originally suspected. His encounter with Sigma had proved it, his old ex had twisted out of the woodwork to profess his love and Rick had not reacted at all; the lack of reaction told him everything he needed and yet didn’t want to know.

Hearing Rick’s voice he looked up at set eyes on the kid, immediately observing the state he was in, he didn’t look like he’d been eating properly, the old man could tell, Christ, the kid looked like a damn ghost of himself.

“Then talk.” He replied setting down his mug of coffee and relighting his cigarette. He had no idea what was coming, but already he felt like it wasn’t going to be good and was mentally preparing himself for the worst.

==============================================================

Goddamit this was why he’d been avoiding this. Just the sight of the old man tired and worn, the sound of his gruff voice, made Rocker want to run to him, put his head in his lap and ignore everything else. He closed his eyes to shut out some of the unwelcome feelings. He had to stop thinking that way, stop feeling these things. He’d chosen a path and he needed to stay on it.

Clearing his throat he took a deep breath, he’d came here to get this out right? Why then now could he not find the words to say it. “This.. “ he started, opening his eyes again to look at Evil Rick, his heart breaking. Was this going to be the last time they spoke to each other? “This isn’t working. You being with me and .. and .. him.” He couldn’t say Bill’s name, the four letters had become taboo for him, the demon, whether intentional or not, being the reason his life had unraveled. His hands bunched back up into fists the more he thought about it. “You’re asking me to do something that goes against my nature, goes against every single fucking thing I have worked and suffered for since you first claimed me. You’re asking me to be someone I’m not.”

==============================================================

As he watched the kid take a deep, self-centring breath he instantly knew Rick was working himself up to something, the tension in the room was utterly palpable. It had taken only that one tense breath to immediately put him on high alert and in response he rose out of his chair to lean against his workbench, taking a moment to grind out his cigarette before he turned his full attention back towards the boy.

This isn’t working.

The words were so final and in truth he hadn’t prepared himself for them. He knew Rick was having trouble with this, of course he did, but he hadn’t expected him to come out with something that sounded so fatalistic. He stood dumbfounded for a moment, unsure how to react, putting all his efforts into keeping down the walls that were desperate to erect and protect him from any pain. His need to blame the boy flared inside him, a wholly protective measure, but he couldn’t allow himself to project it onto Rick in order to spare himself. This was his own damn mess, he was responsible for it all.

“I’m not asking you to be…” He paused and pinched the bridge of his nose as his stomach curdled with fast onset nausea. He couldn’t give Rick what he wanted and that was what he was going to be forced to tell him, but he didn’t want to say the words.

“Is it that difficult for you to share some small part of me, can’t you just…don’t we…don’t I mean enough to you for you to even try?”

The minute the words left his mouth he realized he wasn’t off to a good start and all attempts not to put the ball directly back into the boy’s court had failed. But his pockets were empty he had nothing to offer here, no concession to make, no direction to turn, he’d made his decision, he wouldn’t be without Bill again.

==============================================================

“TRY!?” He snapped, angry quickly flooding his system. “After everything RICK! I have defended my claim over you for what feels like forever, cut down dozens for just looking at you the wrong way and suddenly I’m supposed to try and stop?! What’s the fucking point anyway? What the hell do you need me for when you’ve got him and forty fucking years together? Eh? Try! Why don’t you fucking try.. ” This was pointless. The old man had made his choice, he was never going to pick Rocker over Bill. Why would he.

“SMALL!” Fucks sake, he’d seen their texts, in a few short weeks Bill had already told the old man he loved him more than Rocker had in a year. Small his fucking ass. “It’s entirely the other way around.” What he had with Rick was small in comparison to what Rick had with Bill, it always would be. He was fuming at this point “Ask yourself the same question Rick and you’ll have your answer. You would NEVER be able to share some small part of me. Better to push me away and make me leave, so you can be rid of me once and for all and not be plagued with the guilt because I left you, just like everyone else. Evil Rick can do no wrong, no. Everything is always everyone else’s fucking problem, everyone else’s fault.” He fumbled through his pockets, angrily searching for his cigarettes before stopping to point back at the old man venomously.

“And don’t you fucking dare insinuate that I don’t love you completely, that every shred of my being exists to love you, you.. you peice of shit. Throwing everything we’ve built together away on a goddamned cock driven whim. You mean everything to me, no one is a devoted to you as I am, without you I will be nothing. But I refuse to share the spotlight with anyone.”

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He stood in silence are he bore witness to the angry tirade pouring out of the boy, a fierce diatribe of accusations, disappointments and betrayals, all of it Evil Rick’s fault, some true, some wildly unrepresentative.

“It’s not the other way around, I….” The boy cut in and he became quiet once more, determined to allow him this, determined to allow Rick to say his piece. The use of the word ‘spotlight’ nearly forced from him an angry tirade of his own, but he pushed the compulsion down, reminding himself that Rick would always view things in such narrow terms, even if he encouraged him not to.

“You’re right.” He admitted with a culpable sigh. “I would never have accepted this from you.” It was something they both knew, what was the point in denying it. “But I am not trying to push you away and this was not some cock driven whim, Rick, this was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever been forced to make.” He held the boy’s furious gaze with an expression of apology, despite the fact one hadn’t been uttered.

“I love you more than you’ll ever understand…” He paused and took in a slow heavy breath as his eyes lowered to hide from the boy’s condemning glare, he felt like the floor was tilting underneath his feet. “I know what you want Rick but I can’t, don’t you see, I can’t give it to you.”

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“Bull fucking shit !” He stormed several steps forward ready to smack the old man “I was down the goddamned hall when it happened Rick. The two of you just snapped your fingers and made this all happen because you missed the taste of each other. You didn’t sit down and weigh the options and make some tough decisions! It just happened like that..” he snapped in Rick’s face “And it is on a whim because you’re throwing away something solid and true for something broken and eventually, because it’s going to happen, eventually when you and Bill fucking blow apart again this time ! This time you’re going to be all by your miserable fucking self.” He prodded Rick in the chest as he said it.

He turned away, breathing deep through his nose trying to push back his desire to strangle Evil Rick. Hearing him say he loved him pulled at his heart and hurt, it hurt so fucking bad. “Right.” He turned back to the old man “You can give Bill what he wants, but not me. See? You’ve made your fucking choice.” He glared at Rick before a burst of panic erupted inside him. Fuckin Christ was this really happening ?! He threw his arms out, pleading to the ceiling. “Even now! RIght here, in the face of my walking out you’re not doing anything to fucking keep me here!!”

He dropped his arms and looked helpless and defeated standing alone in the bright white lab across from the man he loved more than anything in existence, more than his own life having no idea how to live with this or live without him. He was completely at an impasse. “You know what I want? I want you to act like you fucking care. Like you give a damn that you’re about to lose me forever. That you’re not completely and 100 percent Bills and there’s anything in there all all that still loves me. Do anything to convince me it’s worth it, that it’s even fucking possible.”

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The kid’s level of aggression was rising and in response Evil Rick started to feel himself growing equally furious, a cold rage spreading over him, one that could not be quelled by the knowledge he was the one in the wrong. The interaction had all the quality of attack and that was how he was starting to react to it. Rick was continuing to make it sound like this decision had been easy for him, like Bill had snapped his fucking fingers and he’d come running like a reclaimed fucking lapdog. It was fucking insulting, did the kid really value what they had so little that he imagined the old man could ever just throw it all away on a fucking whim? Was his love really that easy and superficial to dismiss?

As Rick stepped forward to prod him in the chest and tell him he was going to end up on his own, he closed his eyes, forced to breathe deeply before he lost all semblance of calm. This kid…that’s what he fucking was, a kid, he had no idea what it felt like to spend the majority of your life, decades believing that was exactly what was going to fucking happen. The idea of living and dying, miserable, bitter and alone wasn’t something that phased him, sure he’d been on and off with Bill for decades but the majority of his life he’d spent single and alone. He’d never been married and he’d never lived with anyone for any significant period of time with the exception of Morty, another person who had sought fit to abandon him. Didn’t they all in the end.

“I can give Bill what he wants because he’s willing to accept I want to be with you, live with you, stay married to fucking you!” It was only when he heard the echo of his own voice that he realized he was shouting. “What you want, me without him, I can’t…I can’t give that to you, that…that is the fucking difference Rick.”

Hearing the boy protest that he was not even trying to keep him from leaving was the straw that broke the camels back, the accusation hurt more than any of the others and broke him.

“Of course I fucking care, look, look at the fucking state of me, how dare….how can you possibly think I don’t fucking care? What…what the fuck is it you expect me to do huh? Hug you and tell you it’s going to be alright? Threaten to kill you if you leave me. Knock you out and chain you up….tell you I can’t live without you, beg you not to go?” He rubbed his hands down his face releasing a loud groan as a stark desperation took hold. “What will that change Rick, what will any of it change….” He stretched out his arm to point directly at Rick, his burgeoning distress written all over his face. “You, you’re the one giving up on us, not me, that, that’s what this is all about, if you can’t have me to yourself you don’t want me at all!”

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“Well any of those would be a fucking start!” He stormed over to the cabinet and yanked out a fresh carton of cigarettes giving up on trying to find any in his pockets. He tore at the package sending smaller packs everywhere and eventually, finally getting one of the damned cylinders to his mouth. He inhaled deeply, exhaling the smoke through his nose. “For christ sake Rick..” He started, his tone much softer the nicotine pushing back the more violent anger “I thought I was yours. I thought there was no lengths you would go through to keep me.” He put his hands up silencing the old man before he retorted “And enough I get it, you’re not leaving Bill. You can stop shoving it in my fucking face that what you have with bill is unbreakable. I fucking get it.”

He sighed and leaned his head back looking at the ceiling “It would change the empty feeling in my chest telling me you only want Bill. It would make me feel like you weren’t just packing my bags and helping me leave so he can come take my place.” He righted his head and looked back at Rick “It would remind me that I even have a place for you to shove me back into it.” He dragged on the cigarette again “That’s the whole point Rick. You’re not trying to change anything about how I feel. You’re just letting me feel it, letting me fester.” As usual the old man had worked his way in and cracked his resolve. He wasn’t giving up on them, that’s not what this was. This was acceptance, acceptance that he no longer belonged. Rick didn’t want him as he was, he wanted a compromised version that could accept sharing, something he’d never done in his life. “Of course I fucking want you! Jesus Christ that’s what I’ve been saying all this time. I fucking want you! I want us ! I want shit to feel as it did! But I don’t feel like you’re mine anymore Rick! Or that I’m yours..” he added in an undertone.

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“I’m not shoving my relationship with Bill in your face kid, I never have.” He sighed with frustration and watched the boy smoke his cigarette before deciding he needed one of his own. Rick had gone to great lengths to get his own packet, clearly reluctant to take one from the old man’s pack. He was fully aware Rick had taken to smoking cloves again since the incident with Bill, it was as if Rick couldn’t bear to be reminded of both him and his brand. It was such a small and insignificant thing really but right now, in this moment, it didn’t feel small at all.

“That empty feeling in your chest Rick, yes, I put it there, but you’re the one that has chosen to interpret it to mean I am replacing you.” He took a long drag on his cigarette as his mood and his outlook started to dull with his growing sense of defeat. “I have done nothing Rick, said nothing to remotely suggest that.” His words were said sharp and clear, stripped of emotion and embedded in logic; he was trying to distance himself from a situation that he could feel was about to crush him.

“How can I change what you feel? You, you’re the one feeling it, you’re the one that fucking waltzed in here and announced that you were leaving me and then demanded, fucking demanded that I convince you to stay.” There was a bitter cadence to his voice which suggested he was already beginning to resent Rick for it. “If you tell me exactly what you want me to do, and exactly what you expect me to say and then I just fucking do it, how, how does that solve anything huh? Fuck sake you-you wouldn’t believe me anyway, would you?”

He steadied himself again his workbench as he listened to Rick talk about how he wanted things to go back to the way they were. “How can shit feel as it did, if shit has changed Rick, huh?” He crossed the floor to approach the boy, clearly once more becoming incapable of favouring logic over emotion.

“I know exactly what it feels like to yearn for something to be what it once was, to grieve for a return to a state of affairs that can never be again and all it does Rick, all it does is fucking destroy you. Things, things aren’t the fucking same, things have changed.” Rubbing his hand across his forehead with a frustrated huff he ground out his cigarette under his shoe. He felt a compulsion to touch the kid’s shoulder but the distance between them felt too great and so he stayed where he was, unable to move back or forward. “You will always be mine, even if you leave that will always be the truth.” He raised his head to capture the boy’s gaze, his inner torment painfully visible in his old eyes.. “But I can’t make you believe I am yours Rick, you have to feel it and if you don’t feel it, well….” The sentence hung in the air as if undeserving of an ending. “…then you have a decision to make, don’t you kid?”

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“Psh” he scoffed. He knew he was dwelling on it, it was him that kept bringing this shit up. If he could stop then the old man wouldn’t have to keep telling him how goddamned special Bill is. He sighed again, trying to hold onto Rick’s words from a moment ago, I love you more than you’ll ever understand.. why had it changed to a fatherly love? He felt like Rick was directing all his passion to Bill and Rocker was getting reminders of lessons and directions to continue working on taking the old man’s place. A sensation that was amplified by the fact that the old man was blatantly refusing to even touch him.

He held his tongue and listened to Rick, shit had changed, he was right. So was this to be what their relationship would be now? Cold glances and so much distance? He was a physical person, he thrived off contact, small touches and tiny grazings meaning the world to him. It was why he always portaled into the lab just for a kiss or to briefly rub the old man’s shoulders while he was working. He needed it to feel connected to Rick, and this.. this expansive emptiness that just kept getting wider and wider wasn’t helping anything.

The smallest amount of hope filled his eyes as Rick crossed the room, daring to allow himself to believe the old man was about to pull him to him, only for him to stop short. Not even an arm’s distance away, fuck that ached. He sucked back the pain and looked away from the emotion he saw mirrored in the old man’s eyes, trying to keep him composure and hold back the tears threatening to break through. Why wouldn’t Rick just reach for him? There was only one thing in the multi-verse he needed right now, here in this moment, and Evil Rick seemed incapable of giving it to him.

He reached up and rubbed at his collar when Rick mentioned him always belonging to the older man. That was entirely true. No matter what happened in his life, he would never belong to anyone else. He knew that down to his core, his heart was Rick’s and RIck’s alone forever. Why couldn’t he shake this feeling that the old man didn’t want it? Wasn’t he standing here telling him the exact opposite? He groaned loudly in frustration bringing his palms up to roughly rub into his eye sockets “How can you be mine and Bills!? How am I supposed to continue to call you mine and defend you as such knowing you’re also his? Damnit! It’s like I have to start saying he’s ours, FUCK!” He dropped his hands exasperatingly.

“Decision? What decision? You think I have a choice?!” He dragged on his cigarette again “Rick you meticulously reprogramed me since we met, twisting me to your malevolent design which I eagerly accepted, you said it yourself This draw to you, this allegiance, this need is deeply embedded, it will never leave me and because of that I’ll never leave you. I told you I’d never abandon you Rick and I meant it.. I just ..” he sighed again, feeling stuck in a nightmarish rut, doomed to endlessly go around in circles “I just want to fix it..”

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“I don’t fucking know okay!” The words, his confession was shouted, bellowed aggressively loud, its desperate resonance filling every available inch of the tense space still left between them. “I know how I can belong to….how to make this fucking work, I didn’t, I didn’t fucking plan this, I didn’t…I didn’t want this, not…not like this!” The kid had been right about one thing, although he hadn’t fallen back into Bill on a mere whim, he hadn’t paused to think things through or really consider how the decision might impact on Rick in the longer term. He had wanted what he had wanted and with an undeniable bloody-mindedness he had taken it and in doing so he had made a decision for the consequences to be damned, consequences he was now facing and that was exactly how he felt; dammed.

With a renewed urgency he began to pace the floor in ever tightening circles, eager to burn off some of the excess energy he could feel flaring through his system; he felt pushed into a corner and prodded for answers he didn’t have and when cornered he always reacted spectacularly badly. He was explicitly aware he could not afford to do so now and that constraint only served to make him feel even more trapped in this situation, a situation of his own creation.

“Of course you have a fucking choice!” Fraught hands flew up to grip at his own blue tufts of hair, pulling at it with frustration, he couldn’t stand to believe Rick would only stay with him because he’d been manipulated into it, like he was some kind of object of purposeful design; a possession. Sigma’s words came back to haunt him and as soon as he re-lived the utterance of that poignant accusation he scooped up his empty glass and threw it against a nearby wall, just to watch it shatter and listen to it break, just to have a moment where he didn’t have to hear Rick voice his disappointment with him.

“I can’t….you’re confusing me, I can’t….” Within the blink of an eye the gravity of the situation had come crashing down on top of him and he had no idea how to burrow his way out from under its pressuring force. Struggling to contain himself he collapsed down into his seat, his head in his hands, eyes peeking through shaking fingers, sight settled straight down at the floor.

When he finally spoke his voice was quiet, pained and hoarse. “I don’t know how to fix it.”

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As Rick yelled, Rocker felt like he’d been slapped in the face, his own thoughts getting stuck on the old man’s incredible admission that he didn’t know. Evil Rick always had all the answers and for him to say he didn’t know left the musician stunned to say the least. He flinched when the glass hit the wall, stomach plummeting when he realized he wished it had been thrown at his head. At least aggression would be something, Rick wasn’t taking anything out on him, wasn’t twisting his words around to suit his own interests and alleviate himself of guilt. Rick was accepting everything head on, such a thing was unprecedented in their relationship. His silver tongued favourite wasn’t manipulating him into staying, Rocker could hardly wrap his head around it and he realized quite suddenly that’s what he’d come here for. Twisted facts and distorted truths, to have his own thoughts turned inside out and tossed back at him until he was placated and once again tricked past seeing the situation as what it was.

With his own confusion was mirrored in Rick’s exasperation it became obvious they weren’t getting anywhere. They were both running around in circles with this and neither of them could find the solution. Rocker couldn’t live with this, he couldn’t live without Rick. What was he to do? There was only one thing he knew, one thing he could hold onto as absolute. “My heart beats for you Rick..” he said softly “nothing will ever change that simple fact.” He sighed again, it was the only irrefutable truth he had left. Pulling out another chair he plopped into it, emotional turmoil from this run around weighing on his malnourished body.

He stared up at the familiar ceiling, tracing the support beams with his eyes as he’d done countless times, memories of seeing this room for the first time coming back to him. Of sitting at the old man’s feel while he worked, pestering him for attention. Being nearly beaten to death for stepping out of line, violently claiming the old man as his and topping him for the first time. It was as if they’d been building up to a future together that no longer fit. Slowly they’d ticked everyone away from each other, tightening their grip on each other’s hearts dwindling themselves down to being the only ones in each other’s eyes, in each other’s hearts. He’d saw it being just the two of them for the rest of Rick’s life and that’s what he resented losing. Their dark twisted fairy-tale had run off course, they needed to write a new story.

“It doesn’t work Rick, because I’m still trying to live our old life. Trying not to let go of what we’ve built together.” He started hesitantly “I’m stubborn and I don’t want to let go of having had all of you, I.. I don’t know how.” He took a deep breath as his mind continued to try to put words together. “I don’t think we can fix it..” he thought briefly about the passing thoughts he’d been having about wanting sex from someone else, strictly as a way to pass the nights alone when Rick was off with Bill and how Rick would never stand for it. How he didn’t want the old man to stand for it and what a contradiction it was. Another of the many issues they both knew were in front of them but had no idea how to handle.

“The relationship we’ve built isn’t capable of supporting these new definitions.. we have to make a new one..” His face showed that he didn’t know where his mind was going with this “we have to .. like … start over?” He foroughed his brow, that sounded insane and impossible. How could they start over when they were married and loved each other so much. Had such a long and complex history together. One he wouldn’t give up for anything. “Fuck, I don’t know. That doesn’t make any sense.” He suddenly understood why couples went to counseling, it’d be nice to have some help here, someone to guide them through this. The image produced a small snort of a laugh. “Imagine explaining this situation to a therapist? We’d be taken away in straight jackets.”

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My heart beats for you Rick.

It was a warm statement and no doubt came from a good place, a place of loyalty most probably but as it met with Evil Rick’s mind it became poisoned, transformed into doubt and yet another accusation of culpability that he aimed straight at himself. The words held within them the unwieldy weight of that responsibility; did Rick’s heart beat only for him because he loved him, because the kid wanted it to be the case, or did it beat solely for him because he had stripped everything else from the boy and isolated him from all others. Did it beat only for him because all this time he’d deceived Rick into believing he could honestly somehow say the same? An unintended deception, but still a deception none-the-less. He listened in silence, eyes still drawn down to the stark white of the floor as Rick spoke once more about his inability to accept the fact he was still in love with Bill.

I don’t think we can fix it.

Some part of him, the most fatalistic part, had been waiting on the arrival of those words, unsure which one of them would dare to utter them first. Despite this, he still hadn’t felt anywhere near prepared to hear them voiced verbally and their truth struck like a dagger at his heart, piercing, cruel and cold.

New definitions…he knew exactly what that meant, the term loosely referred to the interest Rick had expressed about sleeping with other people, an interest that the old man had immediately felt compelled to violently quash because he was, in this matter, like so many countless others, a disgusting fucking hypocrite.

As the kid continued to speak, Evil Rick’s expression grew more and more confused; starting over…a fresh start? What the fuck did that even mean? How was that even possible? At first he thought perhaps the boy was referring to some kind of cognitive wipe but Rick knew that after what had happened with Sigma the old man would never dare do that again.

The kid’s quip about a therapist was met with a complete non reaction, the old man quite incapable of finding the smallest semblance of humour in anything right now. Rick’s words were settling within him, binding both logic and emotion until they rendered themselves completely infallible; deep down he knew the kid was right, something had to change, but what? Christ it wasn’t just one of them that needed to change, they both did. He’d driven this marriage off a fucking bridge and into a river and hadn’t even noticed they were both drowning.

There appeared to his mind to be only one viable answer to that question and it was one he was loathe to accept, one that he knew would utterly destroy him. He felt frantic and sick as the thought took hold, as all those ugly little variables settled into a discernible pattern which guided him towards a wholly unwelcomed but undeniably valid conclusion.

“You’re right.” He stated as he took a deep breath and worked to settle down the voice now screaming inside him, warning him not to say the next sentence.

“We need to spend some time apart.”

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The air was sucked from his lungs and his crumbling heart shattered instantly, making his gut wrench and his blood go cold. He sat there in utter disbelief over what he’d just heard. After all this time? All his mistakes, everything they’d worked through he was being sent away. Exactly what Rick had always told him he’d never do, not to him, not to his devoted kid. The kid he couldn’t live without, who he loved more than anything. His eyes swelled and he didn’t give a damn about stopping them. What did it matter now? What did anything matter in the face of this. Evil Rick’s choice was now complete, he was being cast out of the kingdom.

“I..” he couldn’t speak, he just shook his head, wishing with all his might he hadn’t just heard what he did. Over and over he shook as his head back and forth, closing his eyes as the tears silently ran down his cheeks. He wrapped his arms around himself and tried to shut it out. “No Rick..” it was barely a whisper, panic exploding as his mind started flooding him with what that meant, what time without his Evil Rick meant. “no Rick.. no.. no.. I’m sorry ..please .. I .. no.. no..” he opened his tear filled eyes and gave the old man a desperate pleading glance but unable to say anything else, he just bit his lip and shook his head.

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He could hear the shock in the boy’s voice and in truth it took everything he had to force himself to look up from the floor and meet with Rick’s devastated gaze, watching as the boy shook his head his disbelief and disappointment. He observed in horror as he witnessed hot tears track down the boy’s flushed face and in that moment, the moment that he watched the bottom fall out of Rick’s entire world, he felt, for the first time in a long time, like the monster he’d tried to convince himself he wasn’t.

He stood up as the boy began to plead with him, determined to force himself to face this, to face the effects of what he imagined the boy could only perceive as a fresh form of betrayal. For the first time since he had met the kid he could feel the years between them, feel the fact that he had lived so long and yet Rick so little; Rocker had never look so young.

As the boy began to plead with him he pulled Rick up and into his arms, holding him tightly and rocking him ever so slightly his hand moving to clasp the back of Rick’s head. “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” His voice was calm, comforting almost but behind it lurked an untouchable coldness, one that reflected the fact he was slowly starting to seal up his heart. “Some things have to be broken in order to be fixed Rick and this is one of those things.”

In truth, holding Rick close like this only made it hurt more but he didn’t have the cruelty necessary to push the kid away, it was a cruelty Rick had curbed, love tempered all in time it seemed.

Although he appeared calm and controlled there was a rising tide of panic that was beginning to swell inside of him, waves of doubt that crashed against each other disturbing his entire equilibrium. Despite the fact he felt certain this was the logical conclusion that followed the boys suggestion, he couldn’t help but fear that on some level he was punishing himself, depriving himself of Rick as some form a penance for the damage he’d caused to both of them. But he couldn’t allow for them to continue like this, trapped in a vacuum with limited air, hurting each other over and over and over again. This was not rejection, it was protection.

“In time you’ll come to realize that I did this for both of us, but most of all, for you.”

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Of course now he comes to him. Now he’s being pulled up into those arms he’d needed to desperately moments ago. When he was being hugged goodbye. Desperately he wrapped his arms around the old man, his favourite, his beloved, his husband, holding on for dear life before he was taken away, before he was cast out into the emptiness that was life alone. How could Rick be doing this to him, to them? He felt like such a stupid kid, to have ever believed he could have held onto this man, this incredible man forever.

Rick was right, it was broken, that’s where this had all started, with Rocker foolishly bringing that up. But he didn’t see how breaking it further was supposed to fix things. Fuck! Why hadn’t he just gone and gotten drunk again in another dingy bar? Why did he ever come here and start this damned conversation? Talk about throwing everything away on a whim. His stupid mouth had finally gotten him in his greatest mess. He buried his face in Rick’s chest, tears running onto the black fabric as he desperately tried to capture the old man’s scent, terrified he’d never smell it again.

“What does that mean Rick?” His voice was barely audible and muffled by the old man’s shirt “Time apart..” he lifted his face and looked up at his favourite “I..I..” he swallowed hard “I have to leave? For how long?” He was helpless to stop his voice from shaking, he’d been tearing himself apart over the pain of spending a few nights a month away from the old man and now he was going to be sleeping alone every day? He couldn’t process it. He didn’t know what to say to Rick’s statement about understanding it in time. He didn’t want to be on his own, he wanted them to figure it out together. “I.. I don’t want to go Rick, this is my home.. you, you’re my home. What am I supposed to do without you?”

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It was Rick who had walked into the lab and announced it wasn’t working, Rick who had threatened to walk out on him and now that the kid was faced with the reality of them being separated, he could see it was hitting the boy much harder than he’d anticipated. It made him wonder whether the kid had been serious about it at all, had it been an idle threat, emotional blackmail or simply Rick’s only way of expressing how desperate he was feeling? In the end it didn’t matter, Rick had convinced him that this was the only course of action, that they needed a fresh start and as the stronger of the two he felt it was his responsibility to stand firm, despite the abject misery the mere thought of it was already causing him.

“A separation.” He confirmed, huffing out a tense, shaky breath, pulling the boy away from him to clasp him by the shoulders and get a good look at him. “For as long as it takes.” It was breaking his heart to watch Rick crumble like this, he’d expected it to hit the boy hard but he thought this was, in a way, what they both wanted, no, not wanted needed. Something had to change, they simply could not continue like this, why, why couldn’t the boy see that? It was only going to take the kid sleeping with someone else and they were going to find themselves once again standing at this fated precipice deciding whether to jump or be pushed. Evil Rick had always been better at pushing than jumping.

“Rick.” His tone was a little harsher, as if his sharp utterance of the word was some veiled attempt to snap the boy to his senses. Age and trauma had taught Evil Rick to bottle and bury his feelings deep down within him the minute he felt them begin to overwhelm him, but the boy it seemed did not have that same instinct. It was just as well really, bottling everything up inevitably meant that when the bottle was full it cracked and everything leaked out twice as toxic and utterly baneful, poisoning everything it touched.

He pinched the bridge of his nose as the boy looked to him for direction, this was exactly the problem wasn’t it? Rick had grown so used to seeking his approval and guidance that without it he seemed lost, it was clear to him the kid needed to rediscover his sense of self. “That is for you to determine.” He confirmed in as soft a tone as he could muster. “This home is broken, we are broken…” He reached his hand up to stoke a calloused thumb across the boy’s hot wet cheek. “You said we need a fresh start Rick, we need to see each other with new eyes, rediscover each other, we can’t do that with you living here.”

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As long as it takes.. Nice and ambiguous. He set his jaw, hate and anger starting to flood him once again, that this was happening, that Rick had built him up so much just to toss him out. He bunched up his face as the betrayal set in, turning his stomach and ripping him apart. He pulled out of Rick’s grip, he wasn’t going to grovel, he wouldn’t beg. If the old man wanted him to leave, then so be it. “Fine.” He growled, more venomous than he intended and he stormed from the room.

He made his way down the halls, these stupid stone halls he’d foolishly not given enough attention to, coming to his lab, the stupid rusty old lab the old man had given him for his pets. The stupid spiders Rick hated so much. He gathered up Anthea and tucked her into his pocked, woke Medusa and beckoned her to follow him. Tears streaming down his face now to the point he could hardly see he went to his den, but found he wanted nothing there. It was all useless possessions and could be forgotten. He picked up his bass, the stupid bass he’d stayed up an entire night turning into a portal gun to come and find his favourite for the first time and lowered it over his shoulders.

Sobbing wasn’t his style, but man was the pain in his chest asking for it. He needed to scream and yell and expel all this anguish from his body. But he wouldn’t. He harbored it in, he wanted to choke on it and rot as he walked into their bedroom and stopped in the doorway. The agony was too much, he couldn’t step into the room he’d first told RIck he’d loved him in, where they’d slept in each other’s arms. A whimper and a fresh torrent of tears and he turned away from the stupid room with it’s massive stupid bed.

Roughly wiping the tears from his eyes, he held his head as high as he could manage as he walked back into the lab, back over to that stupid miserable old man that was the entire reason for his stupid existence, the only real purpose he’d ever had. He wanted to reach for him, hold him once more, kiss him once more, but if he did he’d never let go and Rick was right, he had to go. Taking a shaky breath his bloodshot eyes drifted from his favourite to look around the room, the stupidly pristinely perfect white room he’d first found his Evil Self in, been claimed and claimed in, this stupid room that held the story of their life. Their miserably perfect stupid life.

Blue eyes magnified by the tears landed back on Evil Rick again and he pulled out his portal gun, already having set it for the penthouse. He kept his gaze locked on the man he loved, the only person he would ever love as he shot open a void. “This isn’t goodbye Rick..” his voice was pain filled but somehow strong and confident “I will never give up on you, never give up on us..” he swallowed hard “I love you old man, I always will.” With a small smile of hope, hope that he was right, hope that Rick was right, hope that fate would place them back in each other’s arms, he turned from the old man and stepped through the void.

==============================================================

The change in the boy was almost immediate, a strange flicker in his expression which instantly turned Rick’s hopeless hurt straight into caustic, seething looking anger. As the boy pushed harshly out of his grasp, Evil Rick stepped back, allowing him the space, unsure how the kid was about to react.

When Rick spat the word ‘fine’ at him and marched off he was left standing in the centre of the lab, left standing in the ruins of his life, ruins of his own making. He almost wished Rick had left him just so didn’t have to bear the burden of knowing he had done this to himself in the hope it was what they needed. Jesus Christ, what if he was wrong, what if he was wrong about everything, all of it? The kid had looked at him like he hated him, eyes cold and sharp, stabbing daggers with their stare. He’d never looked at him like that before and it chilled his very soul.

He looked down at his hands and watched them shiver and shake as the compulsion to chase after Rick and beg him to stay swelled up inside him and made his chest ache, his entire body practically convulsing with the effort required to stay grounded to the same spot and not give in to that desperate, dire temptation.

Bowing his head he sucked in a shallow gasp of air as his gaze settled on the one stained floor tile in the centre of the lab. It was a blemish he’d specifically spared from his rigorous sterilisation routine because the stain was a reminder of the day Rick had found the lair, of the day they’d playfully fought each other and he’d branded the boy. They’d cut each other to pieces that day and where their blood had mingled and pooled across the floor, he had left that one marker so he could enjoy the memory whenever he looked at it. Staring at it now only filled him with a deep and darkening despair and in that moment he realised just how joyless he’d rendered almost every aspect of his life. Slipping his hand under his shirt he traced his calloused fingertips across the interlocking RR’s carved into his chest and felt a compulsion to fall to his knees and shout the air out of his lungs until he lost his voice. But he wouldn’t allow it, couldn’t allow it, instead he worked to shut off every avenue of sentiment, to feel nothing, to be nothing.

When Rick returned the old man was still standing there in the centre of the room, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to do anything but stare at the boy, fists bunched, poisoned with guilt and tainted with failure, consumed by the ache of the impending loss that he knew was about to cripple him. When Rick finally began to speak he realised how terrified he was to hear what the kid might say, but the words were not what he expected, they were hopeful and that at least was something.

He wanted to respond, to return the sentiment, but he was frightened that if he opened his mouth to talk he would break down and plead with Rick to stay and what was the point if they were only going to continue making each other miserable. It was like feeling two entirely contradictory things at once, both with equal intensity and that fierce dichotomy rendered him absolutely incapable of doing anything.

Instead he met Rick’s eyes, his eyes wide and frantic, unable to hide his disbelief that this was actually happening. He nodded at the kid, the only response his body would allow to try and communicate that he shared the sentiment.

As he watched Rick step through the portal and witnessed it close behind him, he could still hear the kid’s voice in his head telling him that he loved him, telling him that he would always love him. It was at that moment, he felt something crack inside him, a savage haemorrhage of pain that was so overwhelming it stole his breath and finally sent him down to his knees and for the first time in over a decade, Evil Rick cried.

#evil-curtains [the black in my heart]#impasse [time apart]#{ahhh feels}#{my heart omg ahhhhhhh}#{it feels good to read this again though}

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scriptshrink · 8 years ago

Text

Critique of a Certain Cracked Article - The Bad

Oh boy. So we’ve seen the myths about mental illness that Cracked got right, and the ones that were partially correct but mostly wrong. Now we’ve reached the ones that legitimately reduced the Shrink to incoherent screaming.

Lock and load, Shrinky-dinks. I’m taking no prisoners.

[Gif: The Winter Soldier loads a grenade into an attachment on his assault rifle while murderstrutting.]

[Cracked image: The charming psychopath is everywhere // Pictures of Negan, Walter White, Dexter, and Loki // They won’t stay charming for long. So many TV and movie villains are portrayed as charming ladies’ men. Even Walter White’s sex life improves after he starts cooking meth. There’s Negan, The Joker, Dexter, Patrick Bateman, Billy Loomis. The truth is, antisocial personality disorder causes a laundry list of symptoms that make a person impossible to be in a relationship with. // source is from the mayo clinic]

...Why is Loki up there? I am confused.

Anyways, people with antisocial personality disorder are very good at manipulating people. They can be very fucking charming, and very fucking good at it.

And I hate the phrase “laundry list”. Guess what? You don’t have to have ALL THOSE SYMPTOMS LISTED to get diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.

You just need three. Let’s pull three from the list of criteria, shall we?

They lie, manipulate and con others for their own personal gain.

They’re impulsive and don’t plan ahead.

They are consistently irresponsible, don’t fulfill things expected of them, and / or can’t hold down a steady job.

I mean, that certainly describes an asshole, but “a person impossible to be in a relationship with”? Hardly.

[Cracked image - Adrian Monk suffers from OCD. // picture of Adrian Monk hiding behind his turtleneck // Actually, no, he really doesn’t. It’s easier to remember what Monk is not afraid of than what he is. He lists germs, needles, milk, death, snakes, mushrooms, heights, crowds, elevators, public speaking, and airplanes, to name a few. The thing is, that’s not obsessive-compulsive disorder. Those are phobic disorders, which are not related to OCD at all. Actual OCD involves a crippling dependence on repetition and rituals.// source is chicago tribune]

OKAY. First off. A fear of public speaking IS NOT A PHOBIA. It is a part of Social Anxiety Disorder (Performance Only).

Also, OCD does not fucking REQUIRE compulsions. YOU CAN HAVE ONLY OBSESSIONS AND STILL HAVE OCD. (See my demystifying post here!)

AND GUESS WHAT? ADRIAN MONK HAS COMPULSIONS.

Performing a ritual because of a fear (such as excessive cleaning / handwashing due to a fear of germs) is a COMPULSION.

Look at literally the first time you see Monk IN THE FUCKING OPENING CREDITS OF THE SHOW.

[Gif - Adrian Monk is walking down a street, and touches a parking meter without looking at it.]

You’d think, because he’s so germophobic, that he would avoid touching those things. NOPE. He has a compulsion to TOUCH ALL THE POLES that he passes when he’s walking.

Sure, he has phobias. BUT HE HAS OCD TOO.

One last note.

Those are phobic disorders, which are not related to OCD at all.

Hmm. Yes, that’s correct. Phobias are anxiety disorders, and OCD has its own category. I’m not sure why this is sticking out to me so much. But I’m sure it’ll be important later.

[Cracked picture - In Fight Club, the narrator has a split personality. // image of the narrator and Tyler Durden // That’s not how multiple personalities work. Those with disassociative identity disorder don’t just wake up and realize they’ve been living as another person. They don’t always know about the other personalities, and don’t black out and live as another person. Amnesia and fugue states do happen, but what you see in movies is writers combining them to suit their narrative.// Source is from mayo clinic.]

[Gif of Hades nearly being literally consumed with fiery rage, but calming himself down saying “Okay, fine, fine. I’m cool. I’m fine.]

It’s “dissociative”, not “disassociative”. We’ve had this talk in the last part, Cracked. Do a single goddamn google search so you know how to spell the goddamn names of things.

This part of the takedown comes courtesy of Maxx, one of @dinosaursindisarray’s alters:

DID isn't personalities, multiple or split or anything. That’s not just outdated terminology, it's also an incorrect description, because the alters aren't personalities at all, they're functionally other people.

“Those with DID don't just wake up and realize they've been living as another person.”

k, well, sometimes, they do.

Like, the person might not realize it as it goes on, but then something triggers an 'aha' moment (for some people) that make the symptoms more overt and noticeable, either to the person experiencing them or other people.

There could be a trigger that suddenly floods the person with enough memories to realize what's going on - memories of trauma, or bleedthrough from other alters, memories of that alter being out, etc, and then the person has enough to do research and be like 'something is /wrong/'

[For us], it was like, one day after a lot of stressful shit built up over a couple of weeks, I came out instead of Month and because I was tired and cranky. Her friends noticed and asked about it, I told the truth, and after she came back, her friends were like 'so this thing happened, what the fuck' and Month's blackouts and dissociation started making more sense and she was able to contact a professional to be like 'what the fuck is going on'.

The initial realization did happen sort of at once, which isn't entirely uncommon, especially with psych knowledge more readily available to people. (that can lead to people mistaking shit and thinking they have DID when they don't, cause misinfo, but it's still easier for people who do have it to figure out what the fuck is up and seek help than it was before).

“They always know about the other personalities"

The entire point of DID and OSDD is to keep shit hidden. Keep trauma memories hidden from the everyday life of the kid so they can function and not fucking die. Keep symptoms away from others around the kid so that they aren't abused worse. So this shit is supposed to be kept separate, and if you always know about what's going on, then it’s not happening.

"and don't black out and live as another person"

Yeah. Some people do. Like, full memory blackouts while another alter is out might not happen all the time or with every alter, but it can totally happen with DID. Not OSDD as much, I think, but still.

There are certain alters that Month has NO memory overlap from. Others that she only gets one or two things, others she remembers most of it like watching a movie, others that she remembers it like she was there but really out of it, etc. It's not necessary for every alter every time to be DID, but if there's any amnesia and blackouts between alters (and with trauma memories) then it's DID criteria.

"Amnesia and fugue states do happen"

Yeah, amnesia is that blackout thing you just said didn't happen. Might not be a full blackout but like, amnesia. not remembering. sometimes that means blackouts.

And fugue states are dissociative, but that's a separate thing from DID. Can it happen to someone with DID? Yeah. Does someone have to have DID for it to happen? Nah.

Writers do combine and add shit and dramatize the fuck out of the wrong things (see: m. night) to suit their needs rather than maintaining fact, but yeah. everything else is p much wrong

Thanks again to Maxx from @dinosaursindisarray for taking over for that one. That gave me a nice little respite! Now let’s take a look at the last one, surely it can’t be THAT bad...

[Cracked image - In Black Swan, Nina suffers from a host of conditions. // image of Nina // Real people don’t have them all at once. The film gave Nina the ballerina a cocktail of disorders, including anorexia, bulimia, cutting, and obsessive compulsive disorder, then had her descend into psychosis. The problem is that they’re incompatible conditions. People with psychosis lose touch with reality. Those with anxiety disorders like OCD and anorexia are too in touch with reality. // source is abc news]

[Gif of the only thing that can adequately convey my rage: Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever created, exploding and forming a gigantic mushroom cloud]

Okay okay okAY OKAY OKAY.

The only way I can get through this is to go from minor things to major ones.

You are right about one single thing here, Cracked. You can’t be diagnosed with anorexia and bulimia at the same time. Congratulations. If someone has symptoms of both disorders, it’s either Anorexia with the Binge Eating / Purging subtype, or OSFED (other specified feeding/eating disorder, formally known as EDNOS - eating disorder not otherwise specified).

Okay. Next up. Unless you’re counting when Nina stabs herself with the glass shard at the very end of the movie, Nina never cuts herself. She scratches herself. But I’ll give you the smallest amount of the smoking ashes left of my benefit of the doubt and say you meant “self-mutilation” here, not cutting.

Those with anxiety disorders like OCD and anorexia

OCD AND ANOREXIA ARE NOT ANXIETY DISORDERS.

Besides, you just fucking said with the Monk one that phobias are completely unrelated to OCD!! PHOBIAS ARE AN ANXIETY DISORDER!!! AT THE VERY LEAST KEEP YOUR FUCKING BULLSHIT LIES CONSISTENT!!!!!!!

On that note, where the fuck did you get OCD from in the first place??? There’s only two things I can think of that even vaguely qualify.

Nina’s compulsive scratching. But guess what??? THAT’S NOT OCD. THAT’S EXCORIATION (AKA SKIN PICKING) DISORDER.

Nina’s compulsive exercising. HELLO WHY YES THIS IS A SYMPTOM OF ANOREXIA.

People with psychosis lose touch with reality. Those with anxiety disorders like OCD and anorexia are too in touch with reality.

yhghgtfrrghyujuhnukjfgdcghgtfyughyhhjnyh

Sorry about that. I repeatedly smashed my head into the keyboard.

But oh my fucking god.

THE WHOLE GODDAMN PROBLEM WITH OCD AND ANOREXIA IS THAT THEY’RE NOT CONNECTED TO REALITY.

One of the fucking specifiers for OCD is WITH ABSENT INSIGHT OR DELUSIONAL BELIEFS, which means the person in question fully believes that their illogical obsessions are true, you fuckwads!

[[Shrink’s edit - a “specifier” is a possible subcategory of a mental illness. The DSM-5 also two other possible specifiers for OCD: “With good to fair insight”, meaning the individual recognizes that their disordered beliefs are definitely or probably not true; and “With poor insight”, where the individual thinks their disordered beliefs are probably true. It is a grading of severity, not a requirement.]]

Let’s look at a some fucking case studies here. Go ahead. Read them. I’ll wait.

Tell me, Cracked. Do these sound like people who are MORE IN TOUCH with reality?! Will a person really be transported into a mirror dimension if they turn on a light switch??? If they touch something, will their ‘power’ be stolen unless they touch it again multiple times??

Also, is someone with severe anorexia who still thinks they aren’t thin enough even as they’re FUCKING STARVING THEMSELVES TO ACTUAL, LITERAL DEATH “too in touch with reality,” Cracked???

[[Another edit: most people with OCD and anorexia are not at this extreme. But it is far more accurate to say that these disorders involve losing some touch with reality than saying that they are ‘too in touch’ with reality. Seriously though, what the fuck does “too in touch” with reality even mean???]]

Oh, and it’s not like there have been studies that don’t just say that eating disorders and psychosis can co-occur, but that they might be FUCKING LINKED TO EACH OTHER!!!

And now, my esteemed Shrinky-dinks, we come to the most horrendous part of this absolutely atrocious dumpster fire of an article.

Real people don’t have them all at once.

ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME?!?!?!?!?

Guess what, fuckfaces?

COMORBIDITY IS EXTREMELY COMMON.

Let’s look at this one study of almost 2,500 women with severe eating disorders. Guess what they fucking found?

97% had more than one fucking mental illness.

Ninety fucking seven percent.

[Image: “I made a chart since Cracked writers apparently can’t fucking read.” // a pie chart with a very small portion labeled Only ED, and the overwhelming majority labeled More than one mental disorder.]

Schizophrenia and eating disorders may not be a super common combination, BUT IT FUCKING EXISTS.

PEOPLE CAN FUCKING HAVE MORE THAN ONE MENTAL ILLNESS!!

BUT I GUESS IT DOESN’T MATTER TO YOU SINCE THEY’RE SO CRAZY THEY’RE NOT REAL PEOPLE, YOU ABLEIST FUCKING SACKS OF FUCKING SHIT.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH

[Gif - The Hulk fucking annihilating Loki by repeatedly smashing him into the ground, which is what I wish I could be doing to the writers.]

Concluding Thoughts

If I seem calmer at this point, it’s because I wrote it before the rest of this article. I have no doubt future Shrink will still be screaming into the void long after the queue finally gets to this post.

Let’s take a look at how Cracked introduced this article.

It's a losing fight, going up against the myths pop culture perpetuates. But, dammit, someone has to do it.

That someone is obviously not you. Your writers are willfully ignorant and unable to do even a simple google search of the names of the things they’re writing about to make sure they got the spelling right.

You have failed to do the fucking most basic research possible.

A monkey in a library could do a better job than you, as there’s an actual chance that in randomly throwing pieces of its own shit, a book might be knocked off a shelf and the monkey might fucking glance in its direction.

Because left unchecked, people go around spewing every dumb thing they learn from clickbait articles movies and shows that are really just using mental illnesses to advance a plot and make a buck from pageviews, instead of teach us anything useful.

You made a few typos. I fixed them for you.

So, dig in, because it's time drop a knowledge bomb on your ass.

How fucking dare you.

You are not “dropping a knowledge bomb” on us. This article is nothing more than a fucking whoopie cushion. We sit down, all excited to see myths about mental illness being exploded, but are instead given a bunch of hot air that sounds like people’s ass cheeks flapping together.

Fuck you, @cracked.

I hope your pageviews tank. I hope you have to take on so many advertisers that your readers can’t even see your content anymore. I hope no one ever submits to your ‘contests’ again, forcing you to have a staff member make up all the entries for you. I hope your heads get so stuck up your own asses that you don’t even notice that your website has been spreading malware to your readers like the cancerous bullshit your content truly is.

Oh. Wait.

Like my torment and suffering? Support me on Patreon.

#cracked #cracked takedown #shrink gets mad #misconceptions #myths about mental illness #debunking myths #lock and load #black swan #fight club #ableism #dinosaursindisarray #this is not psychological or medical advice #this is writing advice #best of scriptshrink

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sleepymarmot · 8 years ago

Text

DS9 season 3 liveblog & notes

[Season index: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 PS]

The Search 1

Um... so what about that treaty about no cloaking on Federation starships, that was such a big deal in The Pegasus?

What's going on with Jadzia's hair...

"We're going to take our only warship into the territory of people who think of us as intruders to convince them we represent no threat" Logic???? What kind of plan is this?

Loaned? Ah, ok.

"When did I start thinking of this Cardassian monstrosity as home?"

If this is "one of the finest collections of ancient African art you'll ever see", what is it doing in their luggage instead of a museum? This is almost as bad as Picard and that priceless artifact in The Chase...

"Maybe it is. Maybe I'm your friend, and maybe I want you to see that you are still needed here no matter what some idiot Starfleet admiral might think." ;_;

Why dim the lights when you cloak? Just to give a visual shorthand to the viewers?

Wow Odo... I don't understand why everyone is so hard on Quark in this episode -- Sisko bullies him, Bashir insults him for no reason, now Odo is yelling at him with more aggression than he's ever shown in two seasons...

Seriously?! Cloaked ships leave a trace, and nobody in all decades of conflict ever noticed that?! I mean, even if somehow only the Romulans know, that means they can detect cloaked Klingon ships, which would mean they could as well have been uncloaked -- that'd be a massive retcon that doesn't work with anything we've seen before.

I still don't understand how replicators can produce foul tasting food... They make exact copies on a molecular level...

Poor Bashir -- it's as if Sisko picked his best friends to leave behind on purpose...

another literal redshirt dead

Class M planet with no star? What?

Why do these changelings all look like Odo -- imperfect imitations of humanoids? I thought Odo's appearance was the result of trying to fit in Bajoran society + lack of skill to make face more detailed. These changelings live by themselves so they can pick any shape they like, and I'd expect them to have more control over details, so just repeating Odo's design looks like a lazy shorthand to indicate they're the same species -- as if their liquid state weren't enough. They even have the same hairstyle -- which he copied from a Bajoran! If the writers are trying to say "they're just copying Odo" then they should all be played by the same actor.

The Search 2

Oh come on, Kira, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a lot of questions in this situation!!!

Me: well this story is pretty bad so far, I don't have any expectations for it anymore Screen: Andrew Robinson as Garak Me: interest instantly restored

(I'm certain every person liveblogging this show made or reblogged a post in this vein...)

Alright, Sisko's plotline is definitely some kind of hallucination

Or is it? I thought it was all too good to be true, but maybe the Dominion is just tricking them

Wait, that subcommander is alive and on DS9?

Okay, I didn't like that "Starfleet security officer" and now he's more suspicious. Maybe he's a part of the Dominion. Maybe the changelings are a part of the Dominion. Maybe all these people acting strangely are changelings in disguise. Maybe everything is a conspiracy. I dunno, this entire episode feels incredibly fake.

"It seems our leaders have simply gone insane" Garak stop reinforcing my impression that you and Sisko are somehow the only real people in this story... Well Dax and Bashir also seem to be alright, but they're a bit too passive.

Oh, Garak didn't look behind himself and got shot, guess he's not real either

FUCKING FINALLY

This is so unsurprising that I can't tell if the writing is to obvious or if I've seen this spoiler before and half-forgot. Probably both.

And they just let them all go. Sure. I wonder how they managed to gain so much power, if they're prone to dumb decisions like this..

What a shitty story. Jfc. The only amusing part was that according to the main characters, the Starfleet admirals are stupid and untrustworthy (what a surprise...), and Garak is smart enough to not only take action when needed, but seem to almost realize the world around him is wrong (but he still somehow fails a spot check in a firefight...). Bashir clearly wants him to join the team and run around having adventures (not a surprise either...). It's funny that the character who comes closest to becoming self-aware is actually one of the simulated ones.

The fakeness of the plot is obvious enough to make me unable to take it seriously, but not clear or fun enough to just relax and enjoy the ride. I don't hate simulations on principle, but I need them to be good simulations. The Federation is too stupid -- it might have worked with some new admiral, since they're often assholes, but we know Nechayev and she was obviously OOC. The editing is pretty telling: there are weird timeskips (worst offender: Sisko gets into a fight and then without a change of pace others come to break him out from the brig), plus I don't think there were establishing outside shots of DS9. And anyway, the very first scene with Sisko where he's in a shuttle even though at the end of the previous episode he was about to be captured, and then Dax and O'Brien show up and we've never seen them escape is a dead giveaway that everything about this group of characters from here on is somehow wrong. And that's 8 minutes into the episode. I thought "Well, maybe it's an editing experiment, and it'll be a how-we-got-here flashback episode" but nope. What a waste of time.

Lmao I just read this in a comment to a review of this episode: "When I first saw the The Search, Pt II I found it unusual that Bashir is in a shuttlecraft with someone and for the first time manages not to annoy his travelling companion. And then the ending reveals why – it was all a dream!" That's right! I actually thought that too! :D

I can say one good thing about this episode: Odo's love of order has always had dark undertones, and I like that it's explored and discussed here as a racial trait which made his brethren into a galactic evil force.

But otherwise I'm not very impressed with his storyline? In the first part his anger and compulsive homing instinct look offputting instead of sympathetic. At one point he makes an expression that is probably supposed to be soft and makes the viewers go "aww", but ends up just looking forced and creepy. And the tender moment with Kira at the end just didn't work for me.

The House of Quark

OUCH

I was pretty scared for Quark, since he's not a big fan of violence, nice to see he's taking this so well

A new pretty outfit for Quark! A beautiful Klingon woman!

Another beautiful Klingon with a great grey mane. Yes, my commentary is very deep today.

I just continue to be amazed by Quark's luck with the ladies. Cultural exchange with a Vulcan in the previous season, now with a Klingon.

Aw, O'Brien actually wants Bashir's opinion now. And Bashir gives good relationship advice to a married man -- compare to their conversation in Armageddon Game!

Doesn't this solve their problem? If Kozak died dishonorably, that means D'Ghor gets nothing. Which is what should have happened in the first place. So now that D'Ghor challenged Quark, Quark's inability to fight will be shown to everybody (as if it weren't obvious enough...), so D'Ghor's lie will be exposed. And then he'd not only have no right of ineritance, but presumably also become a criminal for lying to the coucil.

Quark is awesome

What a good episode. Quark acts cool and noble! Klingon vs Ferengi value clash & working together! A-story and B-story work together well because despite no direct connection, they're both uplifting and thematically linked!

Equilibrium

Oh, of course when Jadzia gets screentime, it's for her to act OOC

Aw, a J&J friendship scene

Time for the annual comment on how much Bashir grew up! I've already talked about his scene in the previous episode, and now there's this lovely, purely platonic scene with Jadzia

How can these Federation weirdos sleep without blankets?

This was okay. But can we have a Jadzia episode not about her almost dying? So far this season is disappointing -- only one good episode out of four.

Second Skin

O k a y. You got me, I really didn't expect this

This is the kind of episode I watch this show for

How do you disguise someone as a member of species for years? I can understand cosmetic surgery like in Face of the Enemy, but to change their entire body so it would show as target species during any medical examination... This concerns the episode Tribunal, too. How are agents so deep undercover supposed to work? She spent all these years helping the Resistance. How does that benefit Cardassia? 10 years ago they wouldn't have known the Federation would become involved and their sleeper agent would work with them

Niiiiice

"Just something I overheard while I was hemming someone's trousers" lmao his excuses are getting more and more ridiculous

Cardassian!Kira *is* more attractive than the real Kira

the real Garak demonstrates how much his reflexes are quicker than his simulation's :D

Honestly, by this point I'm just curious for how many seasons can the writers stretch the mystery surrounding Garak. :D They're having too much fun giving out pieces of the puzzle one by one.

The Abandoned

This beautiful woman with a really impressive chest is Jake's gf? Wow!

Why are they just taking away the wreckage instead of buying it from Quark?

Sisko holding the baby and Jadzia and Julian watching him with smiles on their faces :'))

oh my god Odo used his old bucked as a cache-pot for Kira's plant... :O

wait, weren't the Jem'Hadar much more reptilian?

"It's amazing how some people would judge you based on nothing more than your job" haha

If this boy has so much aggression, why is it only expressed as need for physical combat, and not angry verbal outbursts etc? Another genetically engineered quality -- he needs to be a brutal soldier that doesn't talk back?

I find it curious that this episode answers the question "Is it okay for a 20 year old to date a 16 year old?" with such a definite yes. That's pretty questionable territory, and it's unclear why exactly Sisko changed his mind: his opinion about the girl's job or Jake's interests doesn't negate the age difference.

I like that the show takes Odo's backstory as a lab specimen so seriously. I used to expect exploration of this theme with Data, since he must have spent a lot of time in some Federation research centers before entering the Academy.

Civil Defense

Garak AND Dukat? I like this episode already.

Why are they not asking Garak for help? I know they'd prefer other options, but is kind of an emergency! I know they'll have to, eventually, since he's in the opening titles.

"I never knew how much this man's voice annoyed me" :D I'd actually be curious to hear the announcement in full, personally!

This is such a good excuse for a Disaster-like episode?? Perfect synergy between the setting and the needs of the plot

haha of course Odo and Quark are trapped together

"The only place in the galaxy that still recognizes my access code is a Bajoran space station" So what about that code in Second Skin?

bwahaha it just gets worse and worse

I think this is a good episode to show new viewers who want a taste of the show before starting to watch it properly from the beginning: it gives a good idea of the setting and involves all major characters to some degree, but so far it has very few continuity references

"What? That you'd spend your final hours in jail?"

"Tell me, Doctor, what is it exactly about this situation that's making you smile?" "You, Garak." oh my god...

holy shit this station is something else...

Dukat shows up in person! It's strange they didn't even discuss the possibility of calling him earlier. Of course, he immediately turned this into a hostage situation, so...

Oh my god he's making himself tea in the middle of this... amazing

"If you had been on the station when I designed this programme, I would have made an exception in your case."

HAHAHAHAHA

When Odo and Quark walk out, why are so many people just chilling on the Promenade?! They were about to die seconds ago!

What a beautiful episode :D Probably not as suited for beginners as I initially thought, thanks to Garak&Dukat. But I really appreciate the dark comedy side of it

Meridian

I think I've seen this episode in TNG... maybe multiple times... Jadzia is even worse suited for this role than Deanna.

welp this was really bad on literally every possible level. i could complain for a long time but i'd rather save my breath

the only good thing about this episode: it's so irrelevant you can easily skip it.

Defiant

I think she needs sleep, not a night out in the bar

THAT VOICE

I think I'm spoiled about this one...

Second Chances did such a good job not villainizing Tom and then this episode comes and ruins it

ah yes tell all your military secrets to the Cardassians, including cloaked ship detection...

why the random kiss

aaand Riker spends possibly the rest of his life in a Cardassian camp? great. just great. why did someone hate him so much they deemed this necessary? they managed to make me so salty about this I didn't even care about the Cardassian stuff, that's an achievement. Will gets to continue his career and marry his imzadi while Tom, who already spent 8 years marooned alone and didn't even get a promotion afterwards, now rots in prison forever. "You always had the better hand," indeed.

it's hilarious how quickly Dukat can make Sisko sympathise with him just by mentioning fatherhood. worked even better than the last time. if he got half a brain he's doing it on purpose.

I hope Riker at least got to spend some time with Ro while they were both in the Maquis. now that's something I'd like to see

Fascination

"I'm a poor substitute for your wife" "I could have told you that 60 games ago"

do we really need the Odo/Kira/Bareil love triangle?

"I usually make it a point to drop by Quark's three or four times a day at random intervals, just to let him know that I'm thinking about him"

"Jadzia, of course. I've never understood how the two of you could be such good friends. [...] It's just that she gets to spend so much more time with you than I do." "Jadzia and I have been doing this for the past two years." ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

oh O'Briens, pls don't fight over nothing :(

so where is Bashir during all this? because I'm pretty sure he and Garak are not immune to this romance confusion nonsense, and that sounds like a much more intriguing story than what I'm watching

ah, he's with Kira, well at least this one's mutual and not sexual harassment

I understand Odo, but why is Sisko unaffected too?

A question that concerns not only to this episode: why is Kira always the object of everyone's attraction? She's dating Bareil (which I completely forgot about; when she mentioned having a boyfriend in the previous episode I was very confused), Odo has a crush on her, in this episode Jake and Bashir do too, an episode before Riker kisses her, an episode before some creep wants a blow-up doll of her, an episode before Dukat leers at her...

Well... I guess this was less gross than The Naked Now.

Past Tense

I like how Dax adjusts to this time period instantly. was she already born by then?

"Some of these people are mentally ill." *braces myself for some horrible comment* "...They need proper medical treatment." oh thank god

Jadzia looks absolutely gorgeous

surely it's not a coincidence that the only white character among the time-travellers ends up with a millionaire, while the others are locked up in the sanctuary

Sisko and Bashir's discussions are very heavy handed, it's like watching some old moralizing play

I like how Jadzia retrieved her combadge by telling the truth

there was nothing particularly wrong with this story, and it was well-made, but for some reason it didn’t really impress me

Life Support

so. Winn was behind the sabotage, right?

this is like "Ethics" in reverse

haha they want Terok Nor back

"She talks a lot for a female" Nog you used to be better than that...

"Listen to me. I don't care about your negotiations, and I don't care about your treaty. All I care about is my patient, and at the moment he needs more medical care and less politics. Now, you can either leave here willingly or I'll call security and have you thrown out."

now it's more like "The Host". (I can't stop comparing everything to TNG haha)

don't try to make this into a "grey morality" situation. Nog is objectively in the wrong here, the human culture is objectively better than the Ferengi culture in this respect. TNG intentionally wrote Ferengi values to be abhorrent, and DS9 didn't change them but somehow tries to justify them and it just. doesn't. work. Just admit you wrote yourself into a corner, and either retcon the Ferengi to be more tolerable, or set aside your "all cultures are valid" agenda for a minute and admit some things are just bad. this glorification of moral relativism is DS9's version of TNG's worst misapplications of the Prime Directive

wow, are they actually going to kill him off?

"Positronic implants"?! Um. UM. They have working positronic brain now? Since when? Last time I heard, nobody managed to make stable ones since Dr. Soong... Or are implants easier to make than a full brain? Anyway, the possibility of a mixed organic-positronic brain has never even been discussed before, this is kind of a big deal. Dammit, just putting some human skin on Data was something only the Borg managed to do! This sounds 1000 times more complex!

"Major" ah, so that's how they break up, he’s incapable of romance now

ahh, his voice, head movemens and facial expressions are just like Data's

uggh the Jake-Nog storyline went as I expected

wow I didn't expect the treaty to actually get signed!

"I won't remove the last shred of humanity Bareil has left" rude... and that's from the man who befriended Data... I'm disappointed

oh btw if he just casually talks about the possibility of fully replacing Bareil's brain, that means it is possible to create stable positronic brains at will now! this is enormous! Data doesn’t have to be the only one of his kind anymore! Lal can be rebuilt! oh wait, let me guess, this will never be addressed again ever.

Welp. You know, right before I started this episode, I was mentally complaining about Bareil, like "kill him off already". Whoops! I feel bad now. This episode didn't go as I expected, and was more important than I expected too, which is good.

Jake and Nog's storyline and the positronic stuff -- less good. Honestly, the more I think about these two points, the angrier I become and the less I like this episode.

I thought that A and B plots were annoyingly unrelated, but actually... I think they share the theme of "peace above all", on a very different scale. Because the Bajoran-Cardassian treaty doesn't sound very fair to me either. "There's even the possibility that the Cardassians will issue a formal apology"?! Is that really enough? "Even the possibility"? Meanwhile, people like Dukat not only walk free but remain at their high posts. Cardassia|Nog was the offending side, Bajor|Jake did nothing wrong, and yet rather than declare that and demand justice and apologies, the latter can only hope to achive mutual tolerance -- even that is hard enough. Well, let's just hope the show isn't going to try and justify the occupation, like it did with Nog's misogyny...

btw, since we're talking about international politics and status quo: what about the Dominion threat? everyone was really scared for a couple of episodes, and then things went back to normal. we went to the Gamma Quadrant once for no reason (nothing about the plot required that!). the Defiant, a unique warship sent here for defend DS9 and the wormhole against Dominion attacks, is regularly used as a shuttle/runabout for random trips. way to disperse all sense of danger, change and excitement.

I certainly like Bashir in this episode more than I liked Crusher in Ethics (or in The Host, lol). He can get pretty intense when it comes to saving his patient's life. Not "fly to Cardassia to face a former head of secret service" intense, but still.

It's nice to see Winn humanized a bit. The writers have spent a lot of time making Dukat likeable, she deserves the same treatment. I'm so used to mistrusting her, I spent the entire episode being confused whether she actually wants the treaty to succeed or is plotting to make it fail for some reason, whether she wants Bareil alive or dead. But I guess I was supposed to take everything she was saying at face value for once?

I don't know what the hell is this season doing with these Ferengi B-plots that, I guess, are supposed to be humorous (???) but are wildly offensive instead. Are we supposed to just calmly accept Quark and Nog's extreme misogyny? It was played for drama pretty well in Rules of Acquisition; this is a noticeable step back.

Heart of Stone

I love Sisko and Bashir's casual conversation about a male ensign's pregnancy! Sure, he's an alien, but it's still progress for this show.

Odo and Kira's storyline is so cliched... I don't even make an effort to listen to their technobabble

As viewers we all know Kira will be saved somehow at the last minute, but in her and Odo's place I'd already start discussing a mercy kill. Phaser blast from a friend >>> asphyxiation

"I'm in love with you too" ???????????????????? YOUR BOYFRIEND LITERALLY DIED IN THE PREVIOUS EPISODE

Sisko, he's just a kid. I know you're testing him, but there's no need to go that far.

Okay, I'm going to sound like a broken record, but: what about misogyny? The previous episode made a point of showing that Nog upholds Ferengi values regarding women. And that's completely incompatible with Starfleet. Isn't anyone going to mention that?

heh... there was a thought at the back of my mind that a changeling might be involved

aww, good, stand up to Quark, you two! :)

Well, most of this episode is very boring, contrived and derivative, but it does give Odo some character development (even if it includes the dreaded romance, ugh) and has a good excuse for this plot device at the end.

Destiny

"I also had Chief O'Brien reprogram the replicators to provide Cardassian food" Um, why wouldn't it already be on the menu? I assumed the replicators weren't replaced by Federation ones, and in season 2 Keiko gave a Cardassian dish to Rugal. I went back to check, and she literally said "I found some Cardassian recipes in the memory bank of our food replicator"!

It makes sense that the Bajorans don't want the Cardassians in their Temple

let me guess, there'll be an unexpected third Cardassian and suddenly the prophecy will sound much more believable

"Now those are about the two friendliest vipers I've ever met" Hey, maybe don't make jokes like this immediately after someone walks out of the door...

Told you so

Damn, the third "viper" seems to actually deserve that name! Will she be the "bad" one, or, in subversion, the only trustworthy one?

"Men just don't seem to have a head for this sort of thing. That's why women dominate the sciences." ah yes hello reverse sexism trope

Cardassians flirt by bickering? Never heard that before... I thought this was more like Klingons.

Okay, they played it straight with Dejar

That's lovely! But "vipers will return to their nest in the sky" doesn't make sense -- how did the comet fragments return to their nest?

The Prophets don't "want" anything! They just can tell you the future because they don't exist in linear time!

Well, this was a lovely episode, if not the most engaging. But the subplot with O'Brien and the scientist was completely unnecessary.

Prophet Motive

Was! This! Necessary?! I don't need to see sex on screen! And yes that includes oo-mox!

Aw Bashir

I can't believe we're getting a story where Bashir is the one who suffers because his friends won't shut up. Karma is real...

nice job breaking it, Quark

The story is pretty shallow by itself, but makes me ask some interesting questions. Would it be ok to nonconsensually transform a bad person into a good one? Especially a person in a position of power? I know I'd be tempted to do this to some politicians... But even if we assume the ends justify the means, who would define good or bad? Sadly, this episode doesn't take these issues seriously.

After 2.5 season of Bajoran religion, it's actually nice to meet the "Prophets" in person again in all their creepy, clueless glory.

Visionary

Time to torture poor Miles with more unreality!

why are both sides being so dumb? just say "Odo was separated from the rest of his people as a baby, grew up with no knowledge of them, and only met them 1.5 times"?

"I'm always diplomatic" *cut* "THAT WAS THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING I'VE EVER HEARD AND I RESENT THE IMPLICATION!"

my first thought: the transporter genuis who beamed in the device was O'Brien

this one doesn't make sense... the sleeping Miles should know about the disaster and the radiation device too...

As usual with time travel episodes, it's very fun to watch, but the mechanics break down at the end and spoil the impression. I like that, as in Civil Defense, every time you solve a problem it gets worse.

It's only season 3, and "O'Brien suffers" as a type of episode is already getting old.

Distant Voices

There's a Cardassian writer named Shoggoth? :D

"Still the man of mystery?" "Oh, you wouldn't have me any other way"

Melting Odo is a genuinely disturbing sight...

"There's hope for you yet, Doctor"

Very predictable story, but it has some character development and lovely scenes with Garak.

Through the Looking Glass

when Mirror!Garak looks in indignation at Sisko kissing Kira: honestly same

Mirror universe Terok Nor is less riot-proof than our universe's was...

Episode: boring and pointless as I feared

Mirror Kira: somehow even worse than the last time, at least watching her hit on herself was mildly entertaining

Mirror Garak: still a giant waste of Andrew Robinson -- seriously, he appears rarely enough, and for the third time in this season he's not playing his real character

Sleeping with alternate versions of friends/subordinates: incredibly gross

Well at least Bashir and Dax looked really hot with these haircuts lol

Improbable Cause / The Die is Cast

Ahh, so many of my favourite things. Odo investigates! Garak confronts his past and justifies his reputation for once! International conflict! Dominion is dangerous again!

The cliffhanger where Garak joins Tain is the most thrilling thing that happened on the show recently! But I'd be severely disappointed if he didn't do that.

The torture scene is very impressive, but there are some things I don't understand about it:

What, "They're still my people and I want to go home" is the big secret that's worth all that torture? Seriously? Anyone could have told you that. How is this information new or relevant?!

Nevertheless, "he never broke" is a lie, right? Odo did break and confess, even if I think his revelation was completely useless. Don't the intelligence agencies of the two biggest police states in the galaxy have security cameras in their interrogation chambers?!

I could understand if Odo forgave Garak eventually, but not so soon and easily! He tortures you horribly, then you never even mention it and invite him to hang out only several hours after! Sorry, what?!

It's becoming a trend to start Garak-centric episodes with something bad happening to him. :D Oh shit, Garak's hand got bitten! Oh shit, Garak has a migraine! Oh shit, Garak's shop blew up!

Explorers

Come on, O'Brien, is this really more ridiculous than building ships in bottles? :D You of all people should understand!

"For a moment there I thought that you had been put in charge of the Cardassian Ministry for the Refutation of Bajoran Fairy Tales"

Miles, just say the word! :D

Fireworks in space! :D I don't know what I love more -- the beautiful and uplifting moment itself, or Cardassians going "Shit :))) We gotta be really nice today :))))) Congratulations :)))))))"

After the epic intense two-parter -- 45 minutes of pure fluff :D It has so many things that are specific to DS9: Sisko and Jake's family bond, Bajoran culture and Cardassians being jerks about it, Sisko and Dukat's passive-aggressive skyping, Bashir and O'Brien's slowly developing friendship -- all leading to the celebration of the “boldly go where no one has gone before” spirit, and everything, for once, ends well.

Family Business

"If I were Curzon, I'd have stolen her from you by now" *facepalm* let's just pretend this stupid heteronormative line doesn't exist

this house looks like a Hobbit hole

Quark and Rom's mom is awesome. get rekt you misogynists!

omg Miles & Julian, how old are you? :D

Rom is so nice in this episode

I like Kasidy

Ishka is 10 times more awesome than it seemed

Rom really rocks in this episode

aaaand the ship sails :D

I wish Ishka could make a public statement, and Quark would

Good episode: interesting family dynamics, amazing Ferengi feminist, cute new ship

Quark and women is a fascinating topic. He's a traditionalist when it comes to Ferengi women, but in daily life among other species usually manages to come off no worse than any 20th century misogynist, and finds strong and outspoken women attractive rather than repulsive. Apparently it boils can be traced back to mommy issues: Quark isn't just a "good Ferengi", he's being reactionary towards Ishka, but at the same time she clearly is a positive influence on him, even if he won’t admit it. Too bad in this episode he refused to take even one step forward as he did in "Rules of Acquisition"...

Shakaar

Shit, things are really going downhill on Bajor... separation of church and state, what's that?

"We spent so many years fighting the Cardassians. We spent so much time hoping and praying for a Bajor that was free. Now that we won, how can people just hand their freedom over to someone like Winn?" "It has been my observation that one of the prices of giving people freedom of choice is that sometimes they make the wrong choice."

Why can't those reclamators be replicated?

"I wasn't aware that our relationship needed solidifying"

Great episode! (If I set aside the question of replication... Seriously, what's the law here? The Bajorans on DS9 can use the replimat, but Bajor can't ask the Federation to replicate some farm equipment? I don't think it would be physically impossible, surely it's not made of something like dilithium or latinum.) Winn hasn't reminded me of our sad reality so much since her first appearance. The B-plot was completely irrelevant, but I always enjoy seeing this sort of thing.

Facets

Quark... are you trying to convince the station commander's 16 year old son to write porn for you? seriously?

Ah yes, people closest to Jadzia, aka all of the main characters... and a dabo girl who appeared once for 45 seconds

don't do this... especially in front of all of ur friends...

Dax has a multi-Doctor episode! :D

CurzOdo and Quark's reaction to him are beautiful :D But how can he drink?

Poor Jadzia :(

Go Rom! Quark is too much of an asshole this season...

This is messed up...

Typical man: he's attracted to a woman, so he takes out his frustration and her and nearly ruins her life

How do Trill memories work? Why is this ritual needed when all memories are already in Dax's head? Are some of them in a .zip and need to be decompressed to be appreciated fully? How did Jadzia not know of Curzon's crush? Is it possible to hide some of your memories from the next host(s) on purpose? You know what, nevermind. Rene Auberjonois (whose name I had to copy-paste, I must admit...) clearly had fun with this episode, and so did I.

The Adversary

yes finally! :)

When they introduced the word "changeling" I was like "that's dumb, that's not what the word means" but now I understand. tbh I love them as enemy -- this story is so beautifully paranoid

why are they all assuming there's only one changeling on board

Well, they certainly know how to end the season on a dramatic line...

This season, my honeymoon phase of "oh my god, serialized Trek" finally ended, and I started thinking about whether or not I like these serialized stories. So I felt compelled to write longer notes after each episode, and don’t have any general remarks this time.

#star trek #ds9 #blah blah blah

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eldritchsurveys · 5 years ago

Text

723.

How fast can you say the alphabet? >> I mean, quite fast, I guess.

What are you allergic to? >> I’m not allergic to anything.

If your life were a commercial, what would your commercial jingle say? >> I would not want my life to be trivialised like that.

How many serious relationships have you had? >> Hm.

If you could read one person's mind, who would it be? >> I wouldn’t want to read anyone’s mind. That’s their space, the one place that is inalienably private. I don’t belong in it.

If someone dared you, what dare would you be afraid to attempt? >> ---

How do you like your eggs? >> It depends on the dish.

What's your most expensive piece of clothing? >> My suit, because it was bespoke.

What was your last big achievement? >> I don’t remember the last time I achieved anything, let alone something big. Except, like... video game milestones.

What famous person's memoire would you like to read? >> I had a phase of reading rockstar bios and autobios for a while in my twenties. There are very few people I am interested in enough to read a whole book about, though. And it’s mostly still musicians. Like, I’d read Nick Cave’s memoir if he wrote one.

Have you ever had a "false alarm" moment, what was it about? >> I can’t think of one off the top of my head, but probably.

Do you know how to ride a bike? >> Yeah.

If you could breed two species together what new animal would you create? >> I would rather not, tbh.

Rename a boot camp based on your current fitness level. >> ---

What 5 world leaders would you make sit down in a room to discuss issues? >> I wouldn’t do that. I have no faith in the ability of world leaders to work together like that.

If you were in the hospital who are the two people you'd want by your side? >> Er, there’s only one person I can imagine hanging around while I’m in hospital.

When was the last time you cried and what made you cry? >> Oh, god, it was because of this thing that happened Inworld last night. Oof.

If you could ever take a street sign, what sign do you want? >> I don’t want to take any street signs.

What is your favorite ride at any amusement park? >> ---

Have you ever raised money for chariety? >> Nope.

How do you feel about growing older? >> I don’t really think about it too much except in fleeting feelings of either excitement or anxiety. Mostly I’m interested in what will happen, but also I’m afraid I’ll not live long enough (or become too infirm to enjoy it or something).

What wild animal scares you? >> None as a rule, because I don’t really encounter wild animals often enough to have cultivated a fear of any. But if I was in the situation where like, I was camping and saw a bear or something, yeah, I’d be afraid then.

Do you think actors and athletes are overpaid? >> Sure.

Have you ever been alienated, if so for what? >> I don’t know if anyone has ever intended to alienate me. I know that I feel alienated very often, but that feeling is not necessarily indicative of a thing that’s actually happening.

Have you ever not returned something you borrowed and if so what was it? >> Yeah, library books.

When you pack your lunch, what's your favorite packed lunch? >> ---

What was the one most important thing you learned from your parents? >> Hrm.

How fast can you run? >> Fast enough, I guess. I was always better with sprinting than endurance running.

Have you done something you worry could come back to haunt you, what? >> I mean, I don’t really worry about that, but that’s always a possibility, I guess?

What is your most favorite feature of your favorite electronic device? >> I don’t have a favourite electronic device, I love all of them equally.

If you had to build a small ark, what 7 animals would you save? >> *baffled blink*

What is your favorite Christmas or holiday tradition? >> My favourite tradition is going to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra. When we can afford it, of course.

What novel would you love to be transported into to live out your days? >> I don’t really read the kind of novels that I’d want to inhabit, lmao.

What is your favorite hiding place? >> ---

What is something your parents love that you actually love too? >> ---

Have anyone ever said "I love you" and you couldn't say it back. >> Well, yes, but not because I didn’t return the sentiment, but because I have an enormous mental block against saying stuff like that.

Have you ever ridden a camel? >> Nope.

What's been the hardest loss you've had to take? >> They were all hard, fuck off.

What emotion is your least favorite and the one you are not in touch with? >> Er... well, I’m not in touch with most of my emotions, which is why I have to do so much work on emotional regulation and self-soothing. My least favourites are anger and anxiety because my physiological responses to them are off the charts.

Do you think facial moles or freckles are cute? >> Not... particularly? I don’t really think about them, is what I’m saying.

Would you ever pick up a hitchhiker? >> I don’t drive, so this will never be an issue.

What was your funniest computer or phone wallpaper? >> I don’t have any funny wallpapers.

If you're searching for a relationship, where is your go place to look? >> Inworld.

When and where are you happiest? >> I don’t know, man.

What was your favorite age, so far? >> ---

What is your favorite part of the day? >> Any quiet part of the day.

What book have you read multiple times? >> Anthem is one.

Do you keep a budget? >> No, my income is so low and expenses so few that I can keep it all in my mind with no problem.

Have you ever test driven a car you knew you weren't going to buy? >> ---

What should we take measure of that we currently don't? >> Er, who is “we”, first of all...

Pretend you're doing an interview, what's the first question? >> What???

What do you have a hard time visualizing? >> I don’t know. Visualisation is something I think comes pretty naturally to me.

What makes you feel uncomfortable in group settings? >> The “group” part.

Who is your favorite crooner? >> Hmm. Nat King Cole, maybe.

What was your worst date ever? >> Every time I went out with Tommy and he left the date early to go cop drugs. Or was high or drunk during the date and nodded off at the table or behaved erratically. Or... well, you get the picture.

Have you ever gotten in a bidding war on Ebay, if so for what item? >> Nope.

If you had to pick one food to eat everyday for life, what would it be? >> No. I don’t want to be malnourished.

Are you supportive of your friends even if you don't agree with them? >> I’m supportive of my friends’ right to live their lives as they see fit, without being judged by me or anyone else. The only time I’d speak up is if I am concerned for their well-being especially if it’s something I’ve had past experience with, but at this point I’m so tired of having my genuine concern brushed off as if the fact that I care is unimportant that I might not even bother in the future.

Have you ever used the opposite sex restroom in an emergency? >> Not for that reason, no.

What did you think was stupid until you tried it? >> I can’t think of anything.

What subject do you and your parents never see eye to eye on? >> ---

What gets better with age? >> Staying at home, lmao.

What do you most dislike about your appearance? >> I don’t want to think about this right now.

Where do you see yourself in 1 year's time? >> I’m imaginative but my imagination doesn’t work that way at all.

How scared of the dark are you? >> I’m not.

What is your favorite type of seafood? >> Good question. I don’t think I have a favourite type. I’m just always down for seafood.

What triggers your inner shopaholic? >> I don’t have one of those...

What is the rudest thing a person can do to another person in your opinion? >> I don’t have an opinion about that.

What public figure do you disagree with the most? >> ---

Do you think you could ever be a firefighter, why/why not? >> No. I have too many sensory issues and shit. Just thinking about being stuffed in one of those firefighter suits makes me want to claw my skin off. Also, those fucking alarms! Fuck no.

What is/was your favorite bedtime story? >> ---

What was the last thing to make you feel happy? >> I hugged a plushie.

What is your opinion on rats as pets? >> I think rats are great! If you have a rat and you take good care of it, you’re awesome.

What is something you're afraid to try? >> Vulnerability.

What cartoon character best describes you? >> I don’t know.

What keeps you interested in your goals or dreams? >> ---

What is your favorite actress beginning with the letter J? >> Er... I don’t think I have one.

What song makes you dance uncontrollably? >> Uncontrollable dancing sounds uncomfortable and a bit dodgy. Am I being possessed??? Anyway, Big Freedia songs always make me want to dance, because that’s literally what their music is made for.

If you wanted to live off the radar where would you live? >> I wouldn’t want to live off the radar. I definitely understand the appeal, but I have too many needs that require me to be connected to society in at least a perfunctory fashion.

Do you like nachos, if so what topping is a MUST have? >> They’re all right sometimes. I don’t know what my must-have topping would be.

Do you have any subscriptions? >> Well, yeah, to streaming services and stuff.

Which is better, Mario or Sonic? >> I don’t have an opinion.

Who is the most creative person you know? >> ---

Besides a pickle, what is your favorite thing pickled? >> I don’t know if I’ve had any pickled thing that wasn’t a pickle. I’d like to try some.

What did you do for your 21st birthday? If not, 21 what are your plans? >> I don’t remember. It’s extremely likely that I didn’t do anything at all.

Are you OCD about anything? >> I don’t have obsessive-compulsive disorder, so by default the answer is “no”.

Are you a role model for anyone in your life? >> I assume not.

What song do you hate the most? >> ---

How do you feel about thrift shops or flea markets? >> I think there’s something thrilling about the idea that you’ll find the most amazing clothing item or knickknack or whatever for a steep discount, which is what makes thrifting an Activity(tm) rather than just some routine shopping. But personally, I find thrift stores kind of stressful because there’s always so much stuff. And none of it is ever in any order that I can navigate, and the store is always either intimidatingly large or claustrophobically small, and it's just A Lot. (Also, I don’t enjoy shopping in the first place, and thrifting is kind of like Advanced Shopping...)

What makes you feel rested and refreshed? >> Chilling out in my room doing whatever. I guess. Or being Inworld, more likely.

Do you think you need to slow down and enjoy life more? >> I think I’m pretty slow by nature, but I also spend a lot of time in my own head because of Trauma Brain, and I wish it wasn’t like that. I feel like I miss out on a lot because I’m always busy managing myself.

In what way are you too hard on yourself? >> In what way am I not??

Can you impersonate anyone famous? >> No.

If you could go back in time to change one think what would it be? >> I wouldn’t do this. I’m firmly against it.

Can you honestly say you're enjoying your life right now? >> No, I cannot honestly say that. What I can honestly say is that I’m doing my best.

What is your favorite salty snack? >> All my favourite snacks are salty, so.

What conundrum have you ever faced? >> Er... this question.

What is your favorite restaurant? >> Maybe Long Road Distillery. I don’t really have a favourite restaurant, but they make some damn good everything over there.

Have you ever been in a play for school? >> It was during the summer, like a “summer arts program” or whatever, but yeah.

#surveys #survey #random survey

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