#I decide to not use double spacing and to have paragraphs spaced by one empty line. I decide the rules

[obsessivefangirl]

Your honor I know there are writing rules I just think mine are better

[mslanna]

Now and Later

Chapter 12 of Be My Guest now up at AO3

Well, fuck.

After a while Tav decides to explore their new room. It is a lot bigger than the small space that barely fit their bed, desk and wardrobe. As Tav makes their round, their armour plops over the stand. A quick glance into drawers and the desk shows that all their belongings also neatly moved.

Tav runs their fingers over the smooth wood of the table. There is a vase on it with an excessive bouquet of flowers dripping blossoms in its middle. The scent is heavy with lily of the valley and jasmine.

Wine and glasses stand at the ready; they half expect nibbles or candles to materialise as well. Tav is somewhat disappointed, when they don’t.

The paintings on the walls are of deep blue oceans and stormy grey shores. Tav likes them better than the view into the red sky from the window. Over the desk is a small portrait of Raphael. Tav laughs, not just at the vanity. It is the only image they have seen so far that looks like the devil they know.

A rumble behind the bed makes Tav turn just in time to see a slender bookshelf appear next to their armour. It swings out silently, opening into a dimly lit corridor. Tav claps their hands and bounces towards the desired shortcut to the library. The corridor is narrow and full of stairs, but it takes only a heartbeat to reach the other end.

When Tav opens the door they find themself at the back of the library way out of sight of the entrance. The shelf slips back into place quietly and Tav stares at it for a solid minute to make sure they will remember which one it is.

For a moment they hesitate but since Raphael didn't consider staying around, what should they do in their new room alone? A shame, really, but they'd rather be alone in the library. At least, Tav is used to that.

Still Tav can't resist returning very long. They pick up two books and sneak back down into the suite. It lies as before - perfect and empty. Tav sighs and drops the books on the table. They bury their nose in the flowers that smell mind-numbingly strong. Then they leave through the proper door. After all, this is the way they were last seen going.

All doors to the empty throne room are closed now and as much as Tav wonders behind which one their devil is hiding, they do not want to barrel into a gaggle of devils. With many of them occupied they return for a slot with Haarlep who fusses immediately.

"You did not return," they pout. "What if you were dead?"

"Oh, I'm sure Raphael'd let you know." Tav climbs onto the bed and produces a book.

"That he would." The incubus doesn't sound happy about the thought. "Better stay alive and spare me that tantrum."

"Maybe I won't. At least he'd show some emotions then."

"Yes, dear. And you would be too dead to see it. Come," Haarlep takes their hand. "Let's take you mind of this grousing topic."

Tav follows but their mind keeps wandering. Everything since Raphael's return is going awry and they don't know why. Well, almost everything, but one desperation fuck doesn't make up for the rest.

"This is the fifth time you stop reading and the third time you read that paragraph." Haarlep snatches the novel from Tav's lap. "It is even worse than Adoralina Bellheart, human balloon of twenty gallons of blood."

Trying to remember what was currently happening the book, Tav comes up empty. They think the countess of the night stole into the poor protagonists bedroom, fangs bared. It wasn't their fault per se that Tav's mind kept wandering to a different set of rather sharp teeth.

"If the countess keeps throwing back the duvets, at some point the lady in bed will get cold and notice." Haarlep turns the page. "Here. Let me.

The countess opens Yarina's flower of womanhood with slender fingers of smooth marble. The sleeping woman moans in her dreams and her legs spread like double doors. Unable to control her desire, the countess plunges her fingers- hey, are you even listening, mousling? People are trying to have sex here."

Tav blinks slowly, catching only the last words of Haarlep's speech. "That's what the boudoir is for, no?" They ask sheepishly.

"Copper for your thoughts." Haarlep drops the book with a sigh. "And I'm overpaying here."

"I, it's just, you know." Tav tries to shake their head clear. "Why? You told me he only ever has sex with himself."

"And you believed me." Haarlep nods wisely.

Tav narrows their eyes.

"What made you think I wouldn't say anything I could get an advantage out of at some later point? Tav, my dear, I cannot believe you were even more naive when you first visited. How did you hold your own for so long?"

"I'll ask Raphael not to use my shape on you any more," Tav ignores the question. "Not as long as I'm here at least."

"Oh, but I like your shape, mousling," Haarlep sighs happily. "He lets me come so gloriously in it. I will certainly miss that."

"Yes, yes I know!" Tav throws their hands up. "And while I am sorry for your loss, I am also very, very selfish."

"High time, if you ask me. Get uppity in Raphael's face, too. Somewhere I can see it and enjoy the show."

"You're impossible." Tav climbs off the bed and starts pacing, highly aware that they, too, are impossible. They circle at the foot of the bed, not even grasping a single thought from the mess inside their head.

"My, my, you are antsy." Haarlep stops their pacing by putting both hands on Tav’s shoulder. "Whatever could be the problem?"

Tav takes a deep breath and looks up at the incubus. The eyes so similar to Raphael’s and yet so different. For one thing mischief and gloating glows in them always. Tav takes a deep breath. "Raphael is an idiot."

"Oh, my sweet." Haarlep pulls them into a tight embrace. "I know him for longer than you can trace back your lineage. And let me tell you one thing: that won’t change."

One the one hand it's good to know that it isn't solely on them. Looking back, Tav realises they may have overlooked a sign or two about what was going on. On the other hand, Raphael ignored the complete wagon load of signs they threw at him as well. At least they knew where they're at now. Probably.

Maybe Raphael just needs time to set up an ambience sufficiently theatrical for his tastes. Considering his proclivity for the extravagant, it may just be worth the wait. Tav buries their face against Haarlep. Who are they kidding? It will be worth it just for the chance to bang the devil once more.

"There you go." Haarlep pushes them to arm's length. "Much better for my poor nerves. Now go, or you’ll miss your date," Haarlep nudges.

It ‘s strange to think of their meetings with Raphael in that context, but it might just be true. Dating the devil. Tav blushes even though that is a lot more innocent than what already transpired.

It is also, maybe, not happening any longer. Tav waits on the balcony. There is no wine. The books lie untouched. The balcony doesn’t have enough space to pace. Tav tries and stops themself. Time crawls by. And while Tav wants to leave and not look desperate and stupid standing around, they also don’t want to miss their meeting.

Tav looks over the balcony at the Feast Hall below. Maybe if they just pop down and grab some wine. It won’t be as good as the usual fare, but better than nothing. Tav argues with themself. Also, it they leave, they need to signal that they were here and will return.

"I was wondering where you were," a familiar voice rolls over Tav.

"Where I always was." Tav resists the urge to lean back against the towering figure behind them. "I wasn’t informed of a change of plans."

"Oh, so you need a formal invitation?" Raphael lowers his head until his teeth graze Tav’s ear as he speaks.

"No, I-" They close their eyes as the devil’s breath runs down their neck. "Being told about a change in plans would have been nice."

"I thought I made myself clear."

Tav blinks. They twist around between the arms trapping them and find the devil’s face inches from their own. "I’m afraid not." The breath of their words bounce back from Raphael’s skin. "What have I missed?"

Raphael doesn’t answer and for a moment Tav thinks they will die from his hot breath that carries remnants of sour cherries and smoke. Then he leans in as if that is a reply and it is once his lips touch theirs.

Tav’s arms snap around him, a hand burying itself in his hair, the other scrabbling for purchase on his back as they lean upwards into him. For a moment is seems Raphael will just allow this, then his hands pry loose from the banister. And strong arms wrap around their waist, curving their back further into the devil bending over them.

Tav is lifted to their toes and relishes the tension that transports the fire from the kiss through their whole body.

"You missed this?"

"That wasn’t a change of location," Tav gasps.

"I created a whole room just for you. Unless you prefer to continue here…" Raphael cups Tav’s ass with one hand. "I can bend you over the banister until you beg for help to any passer-by below."

"You left as soon as I climbed on the bed," Tav objects. They wrap their legs around Raphael’s waist in case he tries to make good on his threat; the belt pokes painfully into their flesh.

"I could not leave you in an imperfect room."

Tav grips his horns and pulls him down. "I could have lived without that short-cut for a while longer." They emphasise their point with a hungry kiss, losing themself in the taste of hot iron.

"Could have fooled me." His teeth draw a sharp line down Tav’s throat. "The way you used it immediately."

With a groan Tav leans back in his hold, their world honing in on the devil’s teeth that leave deep marks on their shoulder. They grab him by the horns again, forcing him to look them in the face. "Idiot." Tav closes his lips with their own before Raphael can answer.

The devil returns the favour with fervour, running his tongue deep and sucking down on them hard. His hands join the belt’s horned devils in digging into Tav’s rear, their nails no less painful.

But he is close and the rough surface of his horns is warm as they press against him, barely embarrassed about the dampness seeping into their trousers.

When Raphael turns and wipes the table clean with their back before pushing them down Tav gasps. They use their now secure position to fumble his belt open and push it down with their thighs as soon as it loosens so Raphael grinds into them.

"You sure you want to do this now?" Raphael holds their head down by their hair and presses his hard cock between Tav's legs. "Or later? With – decorum?" His other hand gently drifts down Tav's chest until it comes to rest over their stomach, thumb extended downward in promise.

For a moment Tav tries to think. Their breath comes in hard bursts and the feeling f the devil towering up between their legs makes their pussy clench with desire. But under the wild longing they want his hands over every inch of their skin. They want to open that doublet and slowly undress Raphael until he is ready to rip his own clothes to shreds for them to move faster.

Tav reaches up and Raphael leans in, hungry for their answer. But they take their time to bask in the scent of his breath as they slowly arch against him. They kiss a soft line up his jaw until they reach his ear. A nibble on the lobe sit all Tav allows themself hugging the cause of their searing need close.

"Now," they breathe and Raphael buries his teeth in their neck. "And later," Tav adds leaning into the gentle pain seeping into their desire. They graze the devil's ear with their teeth, accepting the low rumble as answer. It is accompanied by a hot, wet trail of hungry kisses up their throat and Raphael's full weight levelling over their body.

He looks down at the human on the table, lips wet and swollen from his kisses, an angry red line of teeth-marks running down their throat and a single red drop growing where he broke the skin. Galaxies fit into Tav's dilated pupils.

Raphael runs a hand down their chest, the flutter of Tav's heart under his palm intoxication. He wants them. Now. But he also wants to peel them out of their layers. Slowly. Adding trails and marks over their sweaty skin while they writhe in his grip. He presses hard into their centre.

He wants Tav to wail with need for him and him alone. He wants them wiped, with every muscle trembling. Aroused. Dripping. Exhausted. And yet wanting. They thrust up against his hard cock, that only wants to feel Tav close around it. Raphael leans back down in to the welcoming mouth. His hands run down Tav's sides and they rise their hips naturally, when his fingers slip under them.

The garments don't go far with their legs still wrapped tightly around his waist but they don't have to. After slipping his finger over her sex and into their entrance, Raphael undoes his own trousers. The manoeuvre is tricky with Tav pressing up against him, their wet folds slickening up the back of his hand and the unholy whine as they drag their clit over him.

He can't quench all noise with his mouth and the broken pieces of his name dropping from Tav's lips escalate his urge. With his cock free, Raphael dips his finger into them again, relishing in the guttural approval and thrashing hips.

One of Tav's hands let go his horns and slips between them, groping rro his cock and moving along its length to the rhythm of his fingers. "Now," Tav breathes into his mouth. "Now and later."

Raphael doesn't need another appeal. He clasps Tav's wrist and pries the wayward hand from his cock and horns, pinning them over their head. The tip of his cock teases Tav's entrance, but their needy whine brooks no delay. And neither does his desire.

"Are you not worried the whole house will hear?" he teases, feeling them yearn against his tip.

"Oh, but I think they will not." Reckless trust shines in Tav's eyes and unthinking Raphael leans back, one hand raised for his dramatic gesture. But with his cock almost in and Tav squirming against it a simple thing has to do. Raphael snaps his fingers as he enters them trapping Tav's ungodly moan in the balcony.

Pulling back, he leans down, ready to drink in the next moan with the taste of Tav's need for him. The human uses the whole reach of their voice when he fills them again and Raphael sucks down every last note.

He thrusts in hard, watching Tav writhes insides clasping at him with feral want. A small roll of his hips drives Tav into agony, pushing up against him, though he is already buried to the base. They want him so much he has to fuck them slow. Levering the whole length of his cock into their waiting body revelling in the wet opening that craves to be gorged with him.

Tav whimpers with each plunge. Their hands struggle against his hold but the devil doesn't relent. They are music to him, sweet confirmation of his desires. Sweat shines in the candle light and Tav's sharp scent rises from between their legs where he pulls it out of their body in glistening threads.

Raphael drops his free hand on Tav's chest, nails following the lines of their scars. The tips of his claws come down with his cock and Tav chokes on both. They body is on fire, yearning for release that the slow movements promise but don't deliver. Stretched between his cocks and hands, they can only arch and their back doesn't bend enough for the greed they have.

"Please," Tav whines as if the word compelled Raphael to speed up or lean down to kiss them again. "Raphael, please."

Moving his free hand over their stomach, the devil thrusts faster. Tav throws their head back, half triumph, half despair.

"Look at me," Raphael orders and Tav lets themself drown in his black-hole eyes. Nothing matters but the accelerating friction and the feeling of utter fulfilment when his cock pushes fully into them. He smiles, all hunger and want, hips moving faster with each stroke.

"Now." His finger slips over their clit and Tav comes, breaking over the added stimulation. They insides clamp around his cock, holding on tight to the continued penetrations. Raphael keeps caressing their sex, pouring out his own climax with furious intensity.

Tav's insides swell and fall apart, releasing all tension in waves of ecstasy. They pull free from his grip only to bring his head down claiming his lips, angling his cock into a new depth. They work into each other, fanning their release into yet another wave, one more crest, another swell of abating passion. Finally Raphael breaks his lips free and rests his head beside Tav's. They lean into the touch, gentle and tender.

Their bodies move in unison, riding out the last remnants of ecstasy and Tav runs their fingers through his hair, places soft kisses on the side of his head. When Raphael props himself up, Tav looses themself in the depth of his eyes. A finger outlines their jaw, leaving a burning line that meanders down their throat.

"And later." Tav pulls themself up to breathe a kiss over his lips and smiles.

Raphael returns the kiss with an intensity that makes Tav wonder if they will even make it to their room. But the devil relents. He stands back, puts Tav's legs down and admires the rewards of his labour. Tav's entrance glistens with cum that starts its slow away down Tav's thigh. Their chest still flutters with irregular breaths and their combined scents reeks up from between their legs.

Unthinking, Raphael runs a hand up Tav's folds. It comes away covered, smells of him and them, an intoxicating mix. He licks along his index finger, the taste burning sweetly in his mouth, before offering his hand to Tav.

When their lips close around his fingers, Raphael, too, wonders if they will make it to their room. His cock twitches in anticipation and later turns into now. With a growl, he gathers the rumpled human in his arms and teleports them into the spacious suite. Wine and flowers are waiting on the table, next to sweet treats and new books.

But when thy sink into the mattress, both know that none of that will matter for the foreseeable future.

[narumi-gens]

Never Felt a Feeling Like This

Narumi Gen x f!Reader

summary: For Narumi, it’s love at first sight. For you, it’s boredom.

warnings: 18+ minors dni, smut, meet-ugly, masturbation (m), hinted femdom, switch!narumi (like literally from one paragraph to the next sometimes), budding degradation kink, but also praise kink, spit kink, inappropriate workplace behavior and relationships, mentioned/implied power imbalance (but in name only), dubiously solicited dick pics, narumi is a simp and I'm embarrassed for him and you should be too, narumi’s imagination gets a real workout in this, no bs4s were harmed in the writing of this fic (takes place pre-bs5 release), do not break electronics without proper safety equipment, excessive emoji use (did you know emojis count as words in the word count??)

notes: the kn8!chaos couple's origin story is finally revealed! I'm just happy I was finally able to use a Beyoncé lyric in a title. she released Renaissance because she wanted the kn8!chaos couple to have music to fuck to.

words: 6.3k

part of the Agents of Chaos series

minors, ageless, and blank blogs do not like, reblog, or comment

As the First Division’s Vice-Captain leads you throughout Ariake Maritime Base on a tour of the facilities, you find your interest hanging on by a thread. 

All Defense Force bases are essentially the same — you have your training grounds and rooms, administration offices, barracks, an Operation Room, and mission preparation spaces. So, you’re torn between yawning loudly and pulling out your phone to see if there’s anything else more worthy of your time, which there surely is. 

The only thing stopping you is that this is your first time meeting Vice-Captain Hasegawa and you have just enough awareness to recognize that doing either would probably lead to a poor reaction from the man. There will be plenty of opportunities to test his patience in the weeks, months, and — hopefully — years to come. 

With great effort, you stifle both urges and continue pretending to look like everything Hasegawa is telling you is not going in one ear and out the other. You wish he would just drop you off in the Operation Room so that you could figure out which station and console you wanted to take over. 

Your mind has begun to wander so much that you almost run into him when he comes to a sudden stop in the middle of the hallway. Although considering he’s still talking and is pointedly facing a pair of double doors, the stop might not have seemed as sudden if you had been paying attention. 

“—wanted to warn you,” he sighs and you realize that you’ve missed everything he’s said before. 

But you quickly catch sight of the plaque next to the door that reads, “Narumi Gen, First Division Captain,” and are easily able to piece together what it was that Hasegawa was warning you about.

“Ah, don’t worry, Hasegawa. I knew what I was getting into!” you grin up at him, completely missing the way his eyebrow raises at how casually you’ve addressed him without his proper title. “Captain Ogata made sure of that when he was trying to convince me to take the Head of Operations opening at the Third Division instead.”

Your assurances don’t seem to provide him with any sort of comfort. If anything, his severe expression only deepens.

“Yes, well. We’re a little ahead of schedule for your introductory meeting with Captain Narumi but he should be in,” he says, deciding to move past the unsurprising revelation that the Fourth Division Captain had tried to steer you clear of the chaos at the top of the First. 

He sharply raps his knuckles on one of the grand, wooden doors to announce your presence and opens them both without waiting for a reply. When you see what lies inside of the office, you understand why. 

Your gaze isn’t sure what it should settle on. The piles of dirty clothes? The overflowing garbage cans? The discarded and empty water bottles, cans of coffee, and energy drinks? The precariously stacked Yamazon boxes lining the walls? The reverently displayed and definitely overpriced action figures?

But your eyes are quickly drawn to the lump inside of the futon laid out in the middle of the office and right in front of the large TV, where a first-person shooter game is playing out on the screen. If you listen carefully, you can just make out the muttering coming from the lump in between the sounds of the game’s gunfire.

You tilt your head to the side as you take in the sight. Even if Ogata hadn’t pulled you aside at every opportunity to caution you away from the First Division, Narumi Gen’s reputation was practically legendary among the ranks of the Defense Force — and only partially for his skill in combating kaiju. 

It wasn’t a lie when you told Hasegawa that you knew what you were getting into when you accepted the position as the First Division’s new Head of Operations. However, the chaotic state of Narumi’s office still manages to take you slightly by surprise. 

Somehow, you remain unaware of the way the corners of your lips are slightly tugging upwards in a hint of a smile.

You’re pulled from your musings by the waves of anger that you feel radiating off of Hasegawa, who you had genuinely forgotten was standing next to you. His arms are crossed over his chest and this close to him, you can see the vein on his forehead pulsing. 

“I apologize for your first impression of Captain Narumi,” he grumbles and you can easily tell that this is a common occurrence for the man. “If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll take care of this.”

But before he can march toward the lump, you cut him off. 

“No need! I can handle this,” you tell him genially as you curiously open the Yamazon box on top of the mountain nearest you. You’re unimpressed by the six-pack of energy drinks inside. You note that it’s the same brand as the empty cans strewn across the office floor as you carelessly push the box off the stack, where it falls to the floor with a dull thud. 

You open the next box and pull out a boxed set of some movie series that you’ve never heard of and which has an obnoxious yellow sticker on the front that says, “LIMITED EDITION!” You pout with disinterest and toss it over your shoulder. 

“Are you sure?” Hasegawa asks just as you get ready to move on to the next Yamazon box and you abandon your search through Narumi’s things. 

“Has anyone ever told you that you worry too much?” you reply, your nose wrinkled slightly in distaste. 

Your admonishment and clear lack of boundaries has a sense of dread creeping up on Hasegawa — one that usually only accompanies a kaiju attack. He’s quick to tamp down any fears that his already-frequent headaches are about to increase, not wanting to tempt whatever higher power might be out there by putting those thoughts into the universe.

The only outward sign of his apprehension is his deepening frown. He responds with a wordless hum. 

Turning away from the Yamazon boxes, you look back to the lump to find that it hasn’t moved once despite the noise and your and Hasegawa’s presence. Glancing at the TV screen, you see that the game is still in progress. 

There’s an obvious solution to this problem. 

The lump is so focused on clearing its virtual mission that it’s easy for you to walk toward the TV, reach behind it, and yank the BS4 plug from the overfilled power strip. The sudden silence from the TV as the console unexpectedly shuts off is met with a screech from the lump, which finally moves to reveal Narumi Gen — captain of the famed First Division and Japan's (supposedly) Strongest Anti-Kaiju Combatant.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” he screams, tossing off the duvet and stumbling to his bare feet. “I was just about to clear the campaign! You just made me lose all of my progress! Who do you think you are?!”

With every shout, he moves closer, his finger pointed at you furiously and his bloodshot eyes practically bulging from his head.

You answer him by grabbing his BS4 from the floor, lifting it over your head, and slamming it back down where it shatters apart. His shriek this time is so loud and shrill that you truly worry for a moment that your ears may begin to bleed. 

“No, no, no, no, no,” he repeats frantically as he collapses to his knees and tries to carefully pick up the hardware now scattered on the floor of his office, his fingers trembling from the trauma of seeing his most precious possession in pieces. 

But he’s too slow for you. You step past him and kneel down beside the BS4’s exposed motherboard. And then, in one smooth motion, you pull a pair of needle-nosed pliers out of the pocket of your lab coat and drive the jaws straight down where it pierces the fragile, green fiberglass. 

You can only describe Narumi’s resulting wail as a widow’s wail for how devastated it sounds. 

When you stand up and look back down at him, you see the shell of a broken man. He’s hunched over on his knees near your feet. The shattered pieces of his BS4 are loosely clutched in his hands. And if you look closely, you can make out the slight shaking of his shoulders. 

“Who are you?” he rasps, his gaze glued to the remains of his beloved console. “How can you be so cruel?”

“I’m the First Division’s new Head of Operations, bitch,” you smirk down at him, your arms crossed over your chest in satisfaction. The revelation seems to catch his attention because his head shoots up to look at you in shock before anger begins to creep in. 

“You? You’re the new Head of Operations?” he seethes, abandoning his BS4’s carcass to slowly stand. His fists are clenched at his sides and the tick in his jaw is visibly noticeable. 

However, you’re already moving on. You close the distance between you so quickly that Narumi’s fury is momentarily forgotten as he instinctively takes a step back only for you to take one forward. 

His stupor grows worse when your hands come up to cup his jaw. Suddenly, all he can focus on is how warm your touch is and how surprisingly pretty you are, your soft features hiding the heartlessness that lurks underneath. 

The reminder shatters his daze and he stumbles backward and away from your caress. He tries to put as much distance between himself and you as he can, only to trip on his futon and wind up sprawled on his back on top of the haphazardly strewn duvet. 

Not wasting an opportunity to get close to him again and without a second’s hesitation, you follow him and plop yourself down to straddle his torso. A flush breaks out across his cheeks and quickly spreads to the tips of his ears that are peeking out through his messy hair. 

The pink grows a deeper red when you sit up, slightly lifting yourself off of him so that you can further lean over him until only a few inches are separating your face from his. The back of his head is already pressed to the futon, leaving him nowhere to go.

His face feels hot under your fingers as you grip his chin firmly enough that he can’t shake you off this time. Although that seems like something you don’t need to worry about as he appears frozen beneath you. You’re vaguely aware of how his own hands slowly and cautiously drop to rest on the tops of your thighs. 

Yet, where Narumi is clearly flustered by the compromising position that you’ve forced him into, the ability to grasp the grossly inappropriate and unprofessional nature of your interaction is beyond you. There’s a purpose to all of this, which makes it incredibly easy for you to ignore the feeling of his fingers nervously twitching through the fabric of your pants. 

With one hand holding his chin, the other comes up to rest the back of your fingers on his cheek and you can feel how doing so makes him somehow even more tense. The wildness in your eyes has something stirring deep inside of him, which is only made worse by how he’s already missing your weight on his stomach.

He suddenly finds himself fighting the overwhelming urge to slide his hands up to your waist and pull you back down to sit on him. It wouldn’t be that hard. You would probably make a small cry of surprise if he did. He can practically hear it ringing in his ears and it goes straight to his cock, which is quickly growing half-hard.

And then it wouldn’t take much more to move you a little further down until you’re placed right on top of the bulge in his sweatpants. He would use his hold on you to grind your ass down while he bucks his hips up. 

His fantasizing takes a different turn when you slowly begin to lean even closer to his face and his wide eyes drop down to your lips. They look so soft and plush. Your tongue peeks out for just a second before disappearing back into your mouth and he wants nothing more than to chase it with his own.

What would your tongue feel like sliding against his? What would it feel like on his fingers? On his cock? 

Your teeth lightly sink into your bottom lip and he’s genuinely surprised that he doesn’t cum on the spot. 

It’s only your grip on his chin that keeps him from lifting his head to close the gap altogether. Thankfully, you seem to be doing so on your own and his eyes flutter shut, his lips parting slightly in anticipation.

But then his left eye is opening back up against his will as your thumb pulls on the skin just under his eyelid while your index finger lifts the area just below his brow. His right eye opens in confusion, trying to understand what’s going on.

He takes in how your gaze is fixed on his left eye, your head tilting back and forth from side to side curiously, and it slowly sinks in that the slightly manic look that you’re wearing has nothing to do with the kiss he was expecting. All of your interest in him seems to be exclusively tied to his scarlet-colored eyes — the eyes crafted from the retina of Kaiju No. 1.

It feels like someone has doused him in cold water at the realization. 

He can feel his dick softening from the disappointment — but only partially. After all, you’re still straddling him and leaning in close enough that he can feel every one of your exhales on his face. 

“So, these are the Future Sight eyes…” you murmur to yourself, switching your attention over to his right eye and giving it the same inspection that the left received. You hum thoughtfully and Narumi scrambles to find something to say, trying to think of anything that has even the slightest chance of impressing you. 

Before he can start to brag about the kaiju with a 7.4 fortitude level that he neutralized with one shot last week, you’re removing your hands from his face entirely and sighing heavily, a pout forming on the lips that he had just been daydreaming about. You lean back and sit up, dropping your weight fully onto his stomach once again.

You absently rest your palms on his chest and he’s struck by the vivid mental image of you doing the exact same thing if you were to ride him. 

The fantasy comes closer to being real when your hands push down for leverage to readjust how you’re seated. Your attempt to find a more comfortable position has you sliding just a little further down his body. His breath catches in his throat when your knees end up on either side of his waist and your ass meets his lap — and the tent in his pants. 

His fingers instinctively grip your thighs tightly as he bites back the deep groan that’s desperately trying to escape his chest. 

He knows you can feel how hard he is. It’s not like it’s something easy to ignore when you’re sitting right on top of it. Yet the only reaction you have is a slight twitch at the corner of your lips that’s so faint anyone else except for him, the captain of the Defense Force’s strongest division, would have missed it. 

And he also notices that it twitched upward. 

For a brief second, he contemplates using his eyes on you. Activating them would allow him to visualize your brain’s signals, indicating your movements before you made them. Maybe then he would have a better idea of what you’re planning to do. It’s probably against some stupid regulation to use the weapons designed to combat kaiju on another member of the Defense Force, but you’re a much more formidable foe.

However, he then feels you shifting slightly as you get ready to move so that his hard cock is no longer poking your ass and he panics. 

His hands dart up to grab your hips and keep you right where you are. Although you don’t cry out in the way that his ears are yearning to hear, your eyes widen just a fraction, betraying your surprise at his action. 

Knowing that his grip is firm enough to keep you from shaking it off, you instead look curiously over your shoulder and down, your back arching as you check if you can see the hardness directly underneath you. It’s the first clear acknowledgment you make of his arousal. 

Anyone else, everyone else, would be frantically trying to explain away the situation — as if there’s a way to explain away an erection that your coworker is sitting on. But Narumi isn’t anyone else and he finds his mind wandering yet again.

All he can focus on is how your arched back pushes your chest forward. Despite the shapeless lab coat that you’re wearing and how it covers the majority of your body, he can still make out the curves of your tits and how they’re perfectly framed by your upper arms on either side.

What would you look like in just your lab coat?

His thumbs twitch where they’re firmly pressed to your hips with the urge to slip them under the hem of your shirt and feel the warmth of your bare skin directly. If he did, he could easily slide them, and your shirt, up. Once he had it high enough, he could then curl one finger into the front of your bra and pull it down until your tits were spilling from its cups. 

And then all he would have to do is lean up and he could capture a nipple between his wet lips. He could then wind his arms around you beneath your lab coat to splay one hand across the arch in your back, pressing you further into his mouth. By this point, your hands would have moved from his chest to his shoulders where they would be fisting the fabric of his shirt.

He can hear your phantom cries of pleasure in his ears again as his dick starts to ache. 

The bubble bursts when you face forward, your back now hunched over rather than arched. You look deeply unimpressed. Narumi is suddenly and viscerally aware of the thin stream of drool that’s slowly trailing from the corner of his lip and down his jaw where it then meets his neck. 

You notice it as well and lift a hand up to casually wipe his spit away with the pad of your thumb. His mouth opens on its own, instinctively wanting you to slip the spit-slicked digit inside. 

Somehow, the action has you looking even further unimpressed. Rather than sticking it past his parted lips, you wipe your finger clean on the front of his shirt. 

When you meet his gaze, the disinterest that he can see in your eyes and in your expression is crippling. Every fantasy that has been playing out in his head over the past few minutes shatters and comes crashing down around him. 

“Hm, I didn’t think the wielder of the oldest numbered weapon would be so boring,” you finally say with a frown.

His open mouth closes before opening again, only to close and then repeat the cycle as he finds himself unable to respond. His reaction doesn’t help his case.

“...b-boring…?” he repeats, seemingly incapable of understanding the meaning of the word. 

You slap away his hands from your hips and he’s so dazed that he lets you. The insult slowly starts to sink in and his growing indignation soon eclipses every last ounce of arousal.

“Boring?” he angrily cries out and you simply roll your eyes as you stand up. This time when you move off of him, he’s too outraged to miss your weight and warmth. 

“Yes. You bore me,” you tell him pointedly, your hands on your hips as you look down at him where he lays on his back between your feet. He gets the sense that this is exactly how you would be looking at a worm that you saw on the sidewalk before trampling it.

“W-well, if I’m so boring why’d you end up with the First anyway?” he retorts with a glare as he finally sits up. “You’re here because you wanted to be in the presence of Japan’s strongest!”

Your features wrinkle in distaste at the sentiment. 

“You wish,” you scoff as you step off of his futon and take a moment to examine your nails. “The First Division’s base is on the bay and the Third’s by a river. The ocean is way nicer. Simple as that.”

He can only gape up at you, speechless once more. 

You made the biggest decision of your career based on the base’s proximity to the ocean rather than the strength and prestige of the division. A life-changing decision, and you made it on something as superficial as preferring the ocean to a river.

There was no rational thinking involved. There were no thoughtful considerations made. Other than consulting Google Maps, there was no careful research done. 

A decision that you would have to live with for years and you made it based on something as trivial as a body of water.

Simple as that.

Narumi’s heart starts to race and his face grows warm. His palms suddenly feel sweaty and he’s hyper-aware of an unfamiliar fluttering in his stomach. A wide grin slowly stretches across his face.

Before you can walk away, he grabs your ankle.

“Wait! What’s your name?” he asks eagerly. You just smirk down at him and shake off his hand with a kick of your leg before walking away and out of his office without a second glance back at him. 

As he watches you leave, he wonders if the irises of his eyes — which usually morph into crosses when being used as the weapon they are — have now taken the shape of hearts.

He’s ready to collapse back into his futon with an infatuated sigh. He still has the tent in his sweatpants to deal with after all and if anything, it’s only gotten harder. 

But before he can, he catches sight of Hasegawa, who’s standing stoically by the doors of his office. He wonders if the man has been there the whole time and if so, why he didn’t put a stop to the chaos that just played out before him as he’s normally quick to do.

He vaguely notes that his Vice-Captain looks like he does whenever they’re en route to a kaiju attack and he’s reviewing the information available to assess the threat as best he can before engaging. Determination then crosses his severe features, as if he’s steeling himself for some upcoming battle.

The man appears about to take his leave, but Narumi recognizes that he can’t let his only other source on your identity just walk away.

“Hasegawa! Hey, Hasegawa!” Narumi cries out as he sits up on his knees. 

“Yes?” he replies stiffly, steeling himself for whatever is coming.

“Is she single?” He hungrily points in the direction you just went, like there’s any doubt about who the “she” in question is. 

Hasegawa’s entire demeanor abruptly turns icy. His arms slowly cross over his chest — usually a sign that a physical assault is imminent.  

“I’ll remind you, Captain, that the Defense Force highly discourages fraternization between enlisted personnel,” he says. Despite the lack of violence that accompanies the warning, it’s the most threatening that Hasegawa has ever sounded when reprimanding Narumi. 

But all Narumi can think about is how hard he still is and the memory of both your disinterest and your body on top of his as you straddled him. 

“Discourages is not forbids,” he smirks with all of the smugness of someone who believes that he’s found the greatest loophole in the history of mankind. 

Hasegawa’s scarred features contort into a grimace at Narumi’s easy disregard for the admonishment that he just received. Deciding that the best course of action would be to conserve his energy for the fight that he can see on the horizon, he drops his arms to his sides and walks away from his captain. 

“Wait! Tell me her name!” Narumi shouts as he desperately begins to crawl after him. 

Hasegawa suppresses the urge to slap a palm to his forehead in exasperation. He looks over his shoulder at the pathetic sight of the man known across the country as Japan’s strongest on his hands and knees, begging for just a crumb of information. 

“If you regularly checked your email as is your responsibility as First Division Captain, you wouldn’t need to ask,” he scolds him and with Narumi sufficiently distracted, Hasegawa is finally able to escape, closing the doors to the office with a loud slam!

Meanwhile, Narumi scrambles back to his futon to dig through it for his phone. When he finally finds it, it slips out of his grasp due to how sweaty his palms are. It takes a few tries but with fingers that are trembling with excitement, he’s able to unlock his phone and pull up his email.

He frowns in annoyance at the sheer volume of unread messages. As he starts to scroll through them, his eyes hurriedly skimming through the subject lines of each one, he soon realizes that this is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Doing a quick search for “Head of Operations” pulls up an unopened thread titled, “[URGENT] Start Date: Head of Operations, First Division.” He finds what he’s looking for when he opens it and sees that the latest email is from you, your name appearing in the “from” line.

He slowly says your name aloud, testing it out. He likes the way it tastes on his tongue.

He wonders if your pussy will taste even better when he gets you to sit on his face. 

As he skims the email thread for any further information he can glean, he notices that your responses to the information on your promotion and new assignment are largely in emojis. You seem to have a particular fondness for the red 100 emoji. 

With a contented sigh, he collapses back into his futon. His phone is clutched tightly to his chest and an adoring smile is painted across his lips. 

Rolling over onto his stomach, he rests his chin on a curled fist and returns to his email. Now that he has your name, he happily kicks his feet back and forth in the air and does another search through his inbox for it. He strikes gold when he finds your personnel file attached to a months-old, unopened email. 

But he doesn’t get far in reading through it because at the top of the file, just beneath your name, is your phone number. As soon as he sees it, he saves it in his contacts under: 🍑🙇‍♂️💕🍆💦.

His fingers fly across the screen as he then drafts a new message to you and quickly hits send.

From: Narumi Gen Hey! Go out with me 🙏

He watches the message thread with unblinking eyes, eagerly waiting for the three little dots that indicate that you’re typing to appear at the bottom. When they finally do, the anticipation of what you’ll say is enough to have him salivating all over again.

From: 🍑🙇‍♂️💕🍆💦 ????

From: 🍑🙇‍♂️💕🍆💦 Who dis

He frowns slightly. He’s your new captain. Shouldn’t you already have his number saved in your phone? Rather than letting it ruin his giddiness, he seizes the opportunity that he missed earlier to brag. 

From: Narumi Gen JAPAN’S STRONGEST 💪

He smugly waits for your reply. It takes longer this time for the three dots to appear and he’s positive that it’s because you’re too in awe to respond right away. 

From: 🍑🙇‍♂️💕🍆💦 Oh.

From: 🍑🙇‍♂️💕🍆💦 😒

From: 🍑🙇‍♂️💕🍆💦 Captain boring 🥱

Each reply is like an arrow to his heart. The yawning emoji in particular feels like you’ve taken a knife to his gut with a pretty smile on your lips. Desperation quickly takes hold.

From: Narumi Gen Plz go out with me 

From: Narumi Gen Pretty plz? 🙏

From: Narumi Gen Ur so hot. Plz go out with me 🙇‍♂️

From: Narumi Gen I’ll do literally anything to go out with u 😫

His responses are sent in a flurry one right after another. If he had the ability to feel shame, he would be embarrassed by how increasingly pathetic he sounds with each sent message.

From: 🍑🙇‍♂️💕🍆💦 Nope 🙅‍♀️

From: 🍑🙇‍♂️💕🍆💦 This pussy is closed to losers

From: 🍑🙇‍♂️💕🍆💦 😝

It’s a good thing that he’s already laying down because the one-two punch of being called a loser while also being told that your pussy is off-limits would have had him keeling over. 

From: 🍑🙇‍♂️💕🍆💦 Enjoy taking care of your little problem on your own 🍆✊💦

From: 🍑🙇‍♂️💕🍆💦 Let me know how it goes 😏

He suddenly feels like you’ve breathed new life into him. Does this mean that you’re imagining him jerking off? 

The thought of you thinking of him with his hand pumping his cock has his head spinning. He rolls over onto his back and drops the hand holding his phone by his side as he stares up at the ceiling of his office in a daze. 

Acting almost on its own, his free hand slides down his stomach to slip under the waist of his sweatpants and then the band of his boxer briefs. He can’t help the hiss that escapes him when he wraps his hand around his cock. It’s easy to pretend that it’s your hand that’s pulling it out of his pants instead of his. 

Would you tell him how boring he is even as your hand slowly begins to move up and down his length? Would you be acting like this is a waste of your time? Maybe you’d be jerking him off with one hand and scrolling through your phone with the other. 

His eyes close to aid the fantasy. 

He can hear your voice in his ears, every word dripping with indifference as you tell him to hurry up and cum already so that you can go do something that actually interests you. You would barely even look at him, only glancing at him every so often to check how close he is to finishing. 

When he spits into his hand to help the glide of his palm, he imagines that it’s your hand and remembers how you didn’t shy away from his saliva when you wiped it off of his chin earlier. His fist speeds up its pace as he imagines what it would have looked like if you had popped your thumb into his mouth for him to suck it clean rather than wiping it off on his shirt. 

Or better yet, if you slipped it into your mouth, only removing it once your thumb was free of his spit. 

What would it look like if you spit directly into his mouth? He’s positive that you would purse your lips right over his open and waiting mouth and let your spit delicately drip straight down into it. You wouldn’t let him swallow until you told him that he was allowed to. And then you would reward him with a condescending pat on his cheek and a chaste kiss to his shining lips.

And what if he spits into your mouth? He would have you on your knees for him, lips parted wide open, and tongue stuck out as you waited patiently to taste his cock. He would grab your chin with fingers as firm as yours were on his earlier and just when you began to rub your thighs together, he would spit into your open mouth before making you swallow. 

Would you whine if he told you that you’re a good girl?

He definitely would if you called him a good boy. 

He would whine right into your pussy if you were to tell him how good he was being with his face buried between your thighs, your legs tossed over his shoulders. The words would be broken up between breathless moans as he lapped at your clit, your fingers pulling on his hair to tug his face closer. And he would then start pumping two of his fingers in and out of your pussy, curling them just right, all so that he could hear you say the words again.  

After seeing how little he impresses you, he would give anything for even a scrap of your praise. But he also wants to make you just as desperate for his. 

He wants you sprawled across the top of his messy desk.

He wants you to make it even messier when you cum on his cock as he pounds into you, his balls hitting your ass with each thrust and your ankles dangling by his ears. He’d have your arousal dripping from your pussy and down the crack of your ass to pool on the wooden surface of his fancy desk. 

He’d then slide two of his fingers through the mess before shoving them into your mouth, wordlessly demanding you suck them clean. 

And you would, wouldn’t you?

Because for all of your standoffishness and your seemingly aloof nature, when it comes down to it, you would want to be good for him. 

You would keep his fingers in your mouth until you were gagging on them when he shoved them in deep enough to reach the back of your throat. And even then, you would keep your lips closed around them until he decides to remove them. 

And when he pumps you full of his cum, you would thank him with hazy eyes and an adoring smile. It would mirror the one on his lips when he drops to his knees and pushes open your thighs to watch his cum slowly drip in thick, white gobs out of your sopping pussy to join the growing pool underneath your ass. 

Each mental image that rapidly plays out on the backs of his eyelids pushes him closer and closer to cumming. He can feel the orgasm building in his spine and in his balls, only for his eyes to spring wide open when he remembers your request to keep him updated. 

His phone is still in his sweaty hand, his fingers clutched around it so tightly that if he wasn’t so used to holding his BS4 controller for long periods of time, then they would be aching. He absently sends a silent thank you to whoever invented Face ID because it means he doesn’t have to fumble with a passcode to unlock his phone and pull up the camera. 

As much as it pains him to do so, he pulls his free hand from his weeping cock to yank his shirt up his torso and shove the hem between his teeth. He moans around the fabric when his hand returns back to his cock, giving it a squeeze as he looks down at it through the screen of his phone, trying to angle the camera just right. 

His hand is itching to pick back up its frantic pace up and down his shaft. But he keeps it still just long enough to take a perfectly-framed picture of his hand wrapped around the base of his dick and pre-cum leaking over his fingers. 

He hurriedly hits send and drops his hand holding his phone back to his side. 

However, his hand has only just started moving again when his phone vibrates in the death grip that he has on it. A pathetic, little whine emerges from the back of his throat when he lifts it up and looks at the screen to find that you’ve already replied. 

His toes curl and his hips buck up off the futon as he eagerly opens your message.

From: 🍑🙇‍♂️💕🍆💦 LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOO

That’s all it takes for him to cum with a groan of your name that’s muffled by the shirt hem still shoved in his mouth. His eyes are squeezed tightly shut as his hips give a few jerks, imagining that he’s spilling his cum onto your face instead of into his still-moving hand. 

When he’s finally capable of opening his eyes, he opens the camera on his phone again. With fingers that are tingling from his orgasm, he takes a second picture — this time of his cum-coated fingers and the streaks of white painted across his stomach.

After hitting send, he continues to look at the screen and preens when the three dots almost immediately appear at the bottom. 

From: 🍑🙇‍♂️💕🍆💦 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

A wistful sigh leaves him as spits his shirt out of his mouth and clutches his phone close to his chest, which is still rising and falling rapidly as he pants for air.

“So, this is what love is like,” he muses aloud, a dreamy smile stretched across his lips and absolutely certain that his racing heart has nothing to do with jerking off or the sticky mess coating his hand and stomach.

[elfwoodfae]

Writing’s On the Wall Harrison Eo Wells x reader.

Chapter 2- Specter.

Author’s note: I am so happy and excited for this new series. I hope sincerely that you all like it and let me know your thoughts, this new series will touch on darker themes up ahead in the future. Also tumblr is being annoying with the paragraphs that’s why they are so far apart.

I made this moodboard. I looked up and searched the photos and edited them. I don’t mind if you use it.

Part 1 (here)

A strange calmness falls over him; he turns around, opening his eyes for the first time in hours. He feels exhausted, having spend the majority of the night observing you. He chastises himself, he shouldn’t have done that, there was no other option, he reminds himself, he is desperate and frustrated. The sudden reminder of your presence this early in the morning angers him, a growl escaping his mouth as he sits up, the white linens of the bed pooling around his hips as he rubs his face with one hand, turning his head and doing a double take at the door, making sure is locked, he knows he locked it last night but the paranoia your presence has brought him makes him second guess himself.

His feet touch the floor first, he stretches his arms over his head, moaning at the relief it offers, his white shirt riding up enough to expose a gleam of milky skin; his hair is a mess of black curls, the expression looking back at him thorough the mirror is annoyed, tired, he splashes water on his face, he needs to wake up. The shadow of a beard is starting to appear on his chin, along his jaw and cheeks, he closes his eyes, rubbing the back of his neck and sighting before gripping the sink in a moment of fury where he wishes he could rip it out of the wall and throw it, shattering it into pieces.

How hard could it be to get rid of you? It wouldn’t be hard at all, it would be done before you could even draw your next breath, it would bring him more pleasure than beating Allen, but the consequences would be devastating, his rational side reminded him, there was not possible way to free himself from the torture of your existence without dooming his. Had Joe not met you things would have been different but he could see as clear as day the picture waiting back for him at the lab. Barry most likely knows about you by now, he knows there will be questions once he gets there, they will be innocent in nature but they will only serve to cement your presence into his mind.

He looks at himself in the mirror, admiring every detail of his clothes before he turns around, spotting his chair exactly where he had left it last night; he walks to it, looking at it so intently as if his gaze alone could burn it, hating the thing he punishes himself with. It’s for a greater good, he remembers. Wheeling into the main area of the house he notices all the lights are still off, he takes solace onto the fact that you are still sleeping, freeing him from your presence even if he knows it will only be for a few hours. He decides to leave, not wanting to take the chance of you deciding to appear and tag along, he doesn’t think of himself capable enough to not pull a Brutus a gut you in the middle of the day. This are also the only quiet moments he will get to think, to work on his suit, he sighs, there is so little time for him to use even when he is always alone.

The room is unfamiliar to your eyes, the bed linens are soft, warm, they smell of fresh cotton and clean clothes, it takes a moment for your memories to return, reminding you where you are. The room is dark, the curtains successfully blocking any sunlight from peaking in, there is no telling the time as you look around trying to get at least a sense of how rested you are. The clock reads sometime after 8, Harrison has more likely left by now and a slight disappointment settles over you, you wanted to see the labs, maybe he will want to take you tomorrow. The bathroom is spacious, glass doors decorating the shower as a black marble vanity rest on the wall, its too big for one person, it feels too luxurious for a guest room. Your mind reminds you of a forgotten fact, Harrison was never a showoff kind of person, he liked his house to feel welcoming and cozy, completely opposite to this place.

Walking out of the room is impossible not to notice the eerie silence that accompanies you, all the lights are off but the sun seems to illuminate the whole place through the skylight. A feeling of anxiety settles in your stomach as your eyes scan the expanse of the room, a corridor shielding doors you haven’t explored yet calls to you, maybe it would be best to wait for him to come back and show you around. You look around once again, scanning the walls and every available surface, your brows furrowing once a detail settles into you that you hadn’t taken into account the previous day; there is not even a single photo of Tess or himself anywhere. Maybe he has them in his room, or perhaps in his office, you think, the anxiety of walking into his space long forgotten, replaced with curiosity.

With fast steps you make it to the first door, its unlocked. The wood doesn’t creak when you open it and you wish it had, any sound would be better than this silence. Peaking your head inside, rows of shelfs of books welcome you, a dark desk sits in the middle, random papers and pieces discarded around it, nothing you would be able to recognize. A leather chair sits behind it and for a moment you wonder what could he need it for? Scanning the surface for any photos, any memories of Tess you could find but is empty, not even a photo of her in any of the walls.

Moving along you walk to the last room, the one on the end of the hall; opening the door, the room is dark, no light peaking into it, the bedsheets are a dark grey, almost black, nothing is out of order, a smell that could only be described as a freshly shaved man and clean clothes hits you, its pleasant, fresh. There is once again no photos to be seen, you should turn around, walk back and continue with your day but curiosity gets the best of you; the walking closet is big, rows of clothes hanging, color coordinated and perfectly ironed. A mirror from floor to ceiling adorning the wall in front of you. Walking closer to his clothes you grab the sleeve of one of his expensive white shirts, wanting to feel the softness of it, you don’t recall ever seeing him wearing one. Out of impulse you bring it to your nose, clothing your eyes as the smell of his cologne hits you, causing a blush to rise up your cheeks; he probable sprays it on himself here, impregnating everything around him.

Abandoning his room you walk into the kitchen, there is so many things about him you wish you knew, things that have probably changed and things that you don’t remember. He seems so distant, so cold, so unavailable to you, it made you wonder why he had allowed you to stay with him, perhaps it was not you, it was your attachment, the last piece of her memory he had, you were like an heirloom, one he refused to throw away, and that realization made you sad.

He didn’t seem happy, he seemed lonely, used to being by himself, making you question if he had any friends, if there was anyone caring for him. The man you remembered was always accompanied, always surrounded by people, always kind, always loving; where had that man disappear? You wondered, remembering how he hadn’t even known who you were once he picked up the phone that night, but what could you expected? You had never reached out, staying like a ghost, gone and hidden from his life.

Sighting you shake your head, forcing these thoughts to abandon you, having had enough of their torment for a day, there are things after all to be do today. Her face attacks your memory, you remember her from the times Tess and Harrison had brought her over, Christina is her name, she was close to Harrison and she had been very close to Tess, urging the obligation of a visit in you the moment you had decided to visit Central City, certain guilt at staying so out of touch to both of them fills you.

Perhaps you should have called her office before hand, you think, she is a busy woman after all, but after a few name drops from her past her assistant informs you that she will see you shortly. The door opens to the conference room she asked you to wait at, her face haven’t changed, a few wrinkles here and there, but the same determine eyes started back at you.

“Y/n” she says your name, surprise lace in her voice, she seems excited to see you. She hugs you, before commenting how much you have changed since she last saw you approximately fifteen years ago.

“I am so glad you could see me, I’m so sorry I never reached out, is just after the death of Tess so many things changed.” You begin, feeling the sting of tears coming to her at the emotion of relieving those memories, at being so close to someone that knew her.

“I’m surprise Harrison didn’t mention that I was visiting, I assumed you both were close friends.” You say nonchalantly, catching in the way her face contract, she seems uncomfortable at the mention of his name.

“Well yes we were.” She says, taking in a breath before continuing.

“You see, after the accident Harrison and I fell out of touch.” She says, seemingly leaving it at that, but curiosity is a powerful feeling, pulling its strings inside of you, forcing you to ask.

“Oh, but don’t you both keep any contact at all?” The question seems innocent, you genuinely want to know. She understands that, concern for you raising in her as she decides to open up more to you.

“I’ll be honest with you y/n, after the accident Harrison changed so much, that loving, caring man disappeared, he became cold, calculating, manipulative. I understand how grieve can change a person, but he, is like he is not even the same person anymore.” She tells you and you get the feeling she is not speaking in a metaphorical way.

You decide to confide her in your worries of him, in your confusion when he didn’t know who you were, when he didn’t even recognize your name. You can see the concern raising in her eyes, at you being alone with a man neither of you know any longer, but you assure her is fine, you will be fine, how bad could he be? He wouldn’t hurt you, this was Harrison you both are talking about, even if neither of you believe it completely.

@twilightlover2007

@austarus

@harrisonwellsisdaddy

@wintersire

@reallystressedhoneybee

@fanfiction-and-fantasies

@saltykidcreation

@dumpeetintofyre

@yetanotherwells

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Something Held | Feeding Habits Update #8

Hi all!

Not me not realizing it’s been 3 months since I posted a Feeding Habits update hahahahahaha. Today let’s chat chapter nine, SOMETHING HELD. This also marks the last chapter in Harrison’s POV so prepare to say goodbye to this icon!  TW: body horror, mental illness, trauma

Just a reminder: This is my original work and plagiarism of any form will not be tolerated.

Scene outline, excerpts & a little reflection on making difficult decisions that my not particularly benefit the book but benefit you as the writer under the cut because this update is GIGANTIC.

General taglist (please ask to be added or removed):

@if-one-of-us-falls, @qatarcookie, @chloeswords, @alicewestwater, @laughtracksonata, @shylawrites, @ev–writes, @jaydewritesfiction, @jennawritesstories @eowynandfaramir, @august-iswriting​, @aetherwrites​

Scene Breakdown

Scene A:

It has been two weeks since Lonan found Harrison at his shared apartment with Suzanna and things are getting strange. Lonan and Suz are getting closer, Harrison is getting more distant and slowly losing it. One morning, Harrison wakes hearing Lonan and Suz’s laughter, and crawls to the kitchen to investigate. When he reaches them, Suz is evening out Lonan’s hacked haircut and they’re both sobbing.

Scene B:

Shortly after this bizarre encounter, Suzanna steps out of the apartment for a breather because her son is sort of terrifying her! So Lonan and Harrison double-team to clean up Lonan’s hair shavings. Harrison begins eating the hair while Lonan stares and they have a conversation about the state of their friendship.

Scene Ba:

This scene is gross and confusing! More hair is ingested. My god.

Scene Bb:

After the above ordeal, both boys rinse off because they’ve been rolling?? around?? in??? hair?? but also?? things don’t stop being a little gross

Scene C:

An air of calm finally settles over the apartment. Lonan brews earl grey tea for him and Harrison to share and Harrison asks if he abandoned Lonan in the final chapter of Moth Work. Lonan doesn’t really answer this question so Harrison continues on his confused, but finally lucid (one-sided) conversation, admitting he understands he burdens his mother, who still has not returned. They circle back to the question of abandonment and Lonan answers Harrison the way he wants to be answered (yes), and this is a moment of freeing, where he feels some sort of responsibility in this irresponsible new life he’s led in NYC. They sort of agree to be friends again.

Scene D:

The boys head into the city to find Suzanna, heading to a bakery near the Hudson River. Lonan drives in his used car, a strange experience since Harrison has not seen him drive in years. Taking the opportunity, he searches through the car and finds a map in the glove compartment. The map is erratically scribbled over and it takes him to moment to realize this is Lonan’s map and the first indication that Lonan, who he has assumed is this stable, perfect person, is not as unscathed as he seems.

The boys pass the waterfront and Lonan nearly crashes the car into an oncoming truck. Harrison regains control of the vehicle tucking them into a side street. Shaken, Lonan apologizes for the mess he’s created both physically from his nosebleed and between Harrison and his mother, which gets Harrison a little antsy because he doesn’t like the suggestion that he’s going to leave. Lonan clarifies, stating he won’t if that’s what Harrison wants.

Scene E:

Later, everyone is back at home and Harrison wakes up to a Lonan-less bed. He gets up to investigate the strange dripping coming from the bathroom and opens the door to find Lonan precariously teetering over a sink filled with water. Harrison, concerned, moves him away and tries to ask why Lonan is presumably going underwater, but doesn’t push. They both stand on opposite sides of the bathroom until the sun rises.

My process:

Honestly, writing this chapter was a huge up and down. The first half of it came much easier to me, but the rest was a literal hellfire to get through. I think I was incredibly fatigued with writing in Harrison’s POV as I’d been writing it since June (I finished this chapter in either December or January). This book has been a pain in the ass to write despite me liking what it is, and I really think it being the only place I’ve physically “gone” since the pandemic makes it even harder to write. I felt claustrophobic in Harrison’s POV since I’ve been writing it for half a year, and in a lil ~breakdown~ my beautiful sister reminded me of something she’d previously told me, “it's not about what works, it's about what you want”.

Let’s chat about this for a sec! I think I was watching a Harmony Nice video on her “hard-to-swallow” self-care, and she basically outline (I’m paraphrasing here) that it’s critical we care for ourselves in ways that might not necessarily be easy to do. Honestly, leaving Harrison’s POV is one of those hard-to-swallow self-care things I literally had to do because my mental health was not happy with me! Y’all know my boys are very close to me, and I’m not picking favourites but Lonan is 2500 times easier for me to write with at the moment. I think Harrison’s situation and how he deals with it is much too similar to mine but in a way that is difficult to place (Lonan and I are unfortunately similar but in a way that is easier for me to understand about myself!). From the beginning of writing his POV I’ve been in Struggleville, but kept pushing through hoping the next chapter would be “the one”. Not to burst my own bubble but there is no such thing in the state of mind I was in! I was pushing myself to find something that doesn’t exist because my brain was really not equipped to do what I needed it to do. I really, really did not want to quit on Harrison’s POV, but I had to, not because I don’t like him (he’s my baby) but because I needed a moment to myself. I felt way too seen in ways I don’t really know how to address in myself, so writing him was horribly frustrating at all times (my fault, not his).

My characters really do live in my head rent-free lol. They live in there! They take up space! They take up energy! They take up concentration, and resources I need for myself! Empathy is so integral to my process, that I give a little part of myself in everything I write. This is a blessing because I really get to dig my heels into the mind of another person, but a curse because I’m not a machine (and sometimes I forget that). It is a lot of emotional energy and labour to give everything you have to fictional people. I don’t think an artist needs to be tortured to create good art (this is not it!) but I never truly practiced this well? In my attempt to be empathetic, I was torturing myself a little bit, not going to lie!

So to combat this, I decided I needed a change. Hence, this chapter is imperfect and probably needs some stuff added to it, and while I’ve only written little of Lonan’s second POV, I’m feeling a lot better! It’s nice to get “outside” in a different place lmao this is so sad (pandemic writing things).

Excerpts:

I wrote the beginning of this in a livestream I hosted on my YouTube channel! There’s also a shoutout here to my dragon tree Lisa <3 miss u boo

Two weeks go by. Lonan sleeps on the couch. Harrison wakes up at dawn—no earlier, no later. Suzanna buys a plant: a Madagascar dragon tree she names Lisa. June grows into the collar. Lonan plays sudoku in the newspaper. Harrison learns to bake focaccia, gluten-free, whole wheat. Suzanna learns to palm read, tells Lonan he’s experienced great betrayal (they stop the reading immediately; Lonan goes back to the newspapers). Harrison begins burning incense at sunrise—frankincense. The dragon tree nearly dies (Lonan saves it). It rains every weekday that contains the letter T. Lonan shifts stacks of soggy newspapers onto the breakfast table, answers crosswords with the help of Suzanna (four across, nine letters, Something held). Harrison burns a baguette. Suzanna buys a hanging basket of pothos. The power goes out for two days and the icebox floods the kitchen tile (Lonan mops it with old newspapers, the ink running like jellyfish). June barks for the first time. Harrison eats a bundle of dried bay leaves. Suzanna waters the plants with rainwater, icewater, wrung into a coffee tin. Harrison leaves the stove on while sautéing shallots (he eats them whole). Lonan wakes up feverish and fills out four newspaper crosswords, then falls asleep on the coffee table. Suzanna moulds panna cotta in coffee mugs and shares the batch with Lonan when they won’t tip out. Lonan teaches her how to propagate the pothos and soon they have twenty empty cans of cuttings poking from the windowsills. They rearrange the furniture, the couch facing the kitchen instead of the TV, the dining table right outside the bathroom, then put it all back the next day. They birdwatch from the tiny window with binoculars and a magnifying glass. They sort coupons. Whittle soaps. Watch Norwegian films without the subtitles. Discuss cliff diving. Make matching anklets (blue beads, elastic string, the plastic clacking how Harrison knows they’re coming). All of this they do as Harrison lies on his bed for two weeks, counting the corners of his ceiling and trying to determine a way to multiply them telepathically.

This is the very next paragraph!

At first he assumes they’re laughing. The sun nearly rising between other high rises, blotting his room with dawn. This is not a surprise. They are probably making pancakes out of buckwheat and discussing the hilarity of whole grains. They are probably laughing at store-bought cherry preserves. Too sour. Their cheeks puckered. But then the laughs get louder, and the sun rises higher and it’s not laughing at all, but gasping.

Here’s Harrison crawling!! is this straight out of the exorcist probably!

Harrison’s instinct is to crawl. As if his smallness against the ground will stop anyone from hearing him, even before he unlocks his door. On hands and knees he shuffles from his bed to his doorframe, edges the door open with his shoulder. On hands and knees he hikes through the hallway, the gasping getting louder, shuffling until he sees them. Lonan sitting on one of the kitchen stools, a grocery bag wound around his throat. Suzanna clacking scissors in two hands so their blades ping in the sun. Her fingers loped around his hair, knuckle-deep, the blades snipping, the gasps growing, them both sobbing, the hair falling, the sun stalking, their bodies rocking. Harrison takes it in from his crawl. Experiences it all on his knees.

So this excerpt seems really you know, normal:

They clean up the hair. Harrison with the dustpan, Lonan with the broom. Harrison still kneels. Lonan still cries. The only thing that has changed since crawling into the kitchen is that Suzanna is taking a walk around the apartment complex. She needs air. Room. If she cries long enough, a cigarette. So Lonan sweeps. Harrison collects. This repeats.

The kitchen smells of nutmeg. Freshly grated from a whole club over espresso, Harrison imagines. He smells this as he tracks Lonan with the dustpan, hovering its open belly for clippings of hair. And Lonan is so compliant, brushes cuttings of himself onto the plastic surface so Harrison can trash it. As Harrison looks on from his knees, Lonan diffuses in sunlight, the window illuminating only his edges. A body so familiar Harrison knows exactly where it flares with light or absorbs it. A body with skin like mulberry silk. A body he could recreate in charcoal with his eyes closed. His archangel translucent and luminescing.

Skip this excerpt if you don’t want to read about Harrison eating hair!! i’m sorry!

Harrison picks a bundle of fallen hair from the dustpan. It’s airy from being recently shampooed, smells faintly of pear, maybe even ginger. This hair, touched by a woman, or a few women, and cut by one, or a few, in different contexts. Eliza’s hands deveining the roots, and then Suzanna’s, trying to fix them. So Harrison eats it. That bundle like a toothpicked cube of cheese. He puts it in his mouth and swallows.

Lonan watches like he’s unconcerned. He watches this feral animal—Harrison must be something feral, starved of something and ravaged by that hunger. Chewing mouthfuls of hair like that will quell of him of what is missing, if there even is anything missing, something unidentifiable in this bland circuit of New York City, this time-loop of sonhood, this fresh start a dousing of flatness. As Harrison eats, he understands he consumes that something like it’s holy communion, reuniting with that something by absorbing it. And still, that hunger moves him, from finishing the dustpan of hair, and closer to Lonan.

“Do you think I’m a bad friend?” Harrison asks, wringing the corner of his lips clean from loose hairs. From this perspective, Harrison on his knees collecting hair, Lonan’s eyes look bluer. Maybe their saturation has nothing to do with the angle, but Harrison feels this is true; his eyes are so crystalline, they are temptingly edible. Like two plump blueberries. Or a matching set of clear glass marbles. Harrison swallows. He repeats, “Do you think I’m a bad friend?”

Lonan swallows, adjusts his grip on the broom. “We’d have to be friends for me to answer that.”

“Aren’t we?”

And here’s the rest of this scene!

“You’re my mother’s friend,” Harrison says. “She trusts you.” He crawls closer to Lonan. “You’ve got secrets. Rituals. Tell me her favourite finger-food and who she wants to marry.”

“I don’t know your mother that well.”

Harrison wraps a handle around Lonan’s ankle. A muscle there jumps like a dolphin breaching the water. He’s memorized this plane of skin, could rebuild it from single grains of sand while blindfolded. He furls his hands across its surface, unfurls.

“You garden with her,” Harrison says. “You share a plate for dessert.”

“She’s kind to me.”

“You cook her breakfast.” Harrison tugs on Lonan’s ankle, knowing it won’t raze him, knowing he’ll come down anyway. “You know the exact temperature she drinks her coffee down to the last digit.”

“I’m trying to be hospitable.”

“You’re trying to be a son.”

Lonan kneels. Crouching so they’re huddled over each other, so it’s nearly impossible to distinguish one body from the other, which one sinks, which one rises.

“My mother’s only got one son to live with,” Harrison says, his voice thin from a clogged throat. He reaches for Lonan’s scalp, scrapes a line down the centre, now an even plane of cropped hair. “And it isn’t me.”

“You’re unstable,” Lonan says, burrowing his face either into a cabinet or Harrison’s shoulder—neither can tell. “You won’t let yourself have friends.”

Farther, toward the tile they go, a pile of hair scattering. “My mother wants me to forgive you by replacing me with you.”

“She’s grieving,” Lonan says.

Harrison loses his hands. He doesn’t know where they disappear to, if he touches skin or tile. “I haven’t died,” he says. Skin or tile. Skin or tile.

Here’s an excerpt from scene C ft. this memoir bit from the time I was shocked that this university I visited had real FANCY teabags:

Lonan brews tea. Earl grey, from a tin. Harrison doesn’t know why he expects it to come from a bag. An individual paper sachet, or if he’s lucky, one of those fancy ones woven from nylon. But it’s from a tin. Two teaspoons into the bottom of a single mug they pass back and forth, wordless at the kitchen table. Strung in the bathroom, Harrison’s t-shirt hang-dries, nearly figure-like, an unfilled phantom. He tugs a throw around his shoulders and stares at his hands. Each crest of cuticle. Each bulb of knuckle. Each maze of fingerprints.

He is material. This is fact. Not just outlines. He’s got skin that goes pinkish when pinched, a pulse that juts from his wrist, two eyes that burn at the scent of lavender, ten fingers. But as he holds his hands up, studying them in the faint moonlight, it is difficult to believe his tangibility. In the city, he has lived as a haze. Fogging over grocery stores, eateries, nondescript. Fresh start has always implied an air of zest, a zing that should have fueled him to plant roots in this restart. But Harrison is rotten, aphid infected, overwatered, underwatered, then not watered at all. He flexes his fingers. He pops the joints. He tries to press his pinkie to the back of his hand. But none of this brings him back to himself. His hands continue feeling like someone else’s. His body invisibly marred in some way he can’t reverse, disconnected in retaliation.

Harrison reflecting on his relationship with his mother:

Suzanna has never left him alone this long, and to her detriment. He imagines her now, living the life she always should’ve lived, the life she lived before he crosscut his way to her most important thing. She’s probably at a salon, having her hair twirled with a round brush, making dinner reservations at some place always too expensive for two (extra points if it has a French name, more if she has to wait a half hour before getting a table). When she talks to her stylist, she doesn’t mention a son, but plans to travel up the west coast, all the way into Canada if she’s feeling adventurous. She’ll buy crime novels she’ll never read at duty-free, reapply a lipstick that cost her a paycheck in the reflection of a hand-dryer. After the salon, she’ll meet a woman at a wine bar, converse about children, and still not mention a son. Suzanna’s singleness will be a celebration.

The boys finally trucing it out <3

When Harrison finally opens his eyes, Lonan is staring at him. His eyes two reels of the Pacific. They cycle in blue. So much of him has changed, and yet he is still the same. Beyond the haircut, Lonan isn’t that much different. He can’t be much different. But as Harrison searches, splaying his palm on the wet table, he knows this is untrue. Lonan is hollower than he was last summer. A little more haunted. They have this in common, then.

“Can we be friends?” Harrison asks. With his pinkie, he finds himself writing against the damp table just as he did Lonan’s scalp not too long ago. Lonan’s gaze follows each loop of each letter, Harrison’s steady left hand.

Lonan is consumed studying what Harrison has written, where each letter connects in near-cursive scrawl. After a moment, he nods, once, twice, and then reverts to staring at the table’s new inscription. On its surface are two words: something held.

The boys in the car like old times <3

Lonan drives. This is strange because Harrison has not seen Lonan drive a car in over a year. Usually, Harrison takes the wheel, but tonight he guides them through the city, in search of Suzanna. His car is clean. This isn’t unexpected. A cherry-coloured hatchback that rattles whenever he makes a left turn. It smells vaguely of cotton air-freshener and the undercurrent of cigarettes.

“You still smoke?” Harrison pokes at the plastic nob for the radio, and it crackles to life. Synth and electric guitar pulse in 4/4 time.

“I bought it used.”

They’ve agreed to get to know one another while they search for Suzanna. Another restart, some attempt at an honest hour. As Lonan changes lanes, Harrison pokes open the car’s glove compartment. A tin of nicotine gum falls on the mat. A hot pink feather pokes from underneath the driver’s manual. Harrison hauls out both, runs the feather along the gum tin, then the back of his hand, and then Lonan’s cheek. When that rouses nothing, he unlocks the tin and removes a slit of gum. Right as he’s about to pop it in his mouth, Lonan says, “I wouldn’t eat that.”

“Why?” Harrison asks. “Did you lace it?”

“Like I said, I bought the car used.”

Harrison puts the gum back, and then the feather. He sticks his hand farther into the glove compartment, feels around until he drags out a map of the state, bilgy and half torn. He unfolds it, careful to avoid the rips, and flattens it against the dashboard. Almost immediately, it wilts against the cold, faded from time in the sun. It’s been marked up. Half with pencil, half with a red ballpoint pen. After a few minutes, Harrison understands the previous owner’s route. Or at least he does at first. Following the red pen arrows, they started at Long Island, then reached Manhattan. Then a much longer arrow takes him from Manhattan to Geneva, and then Buffalo. And then the red pen circles, once, twice, three times, four times, and what is in the centre doesn’t even have a city name. What it does say is HELP, in all-caps, each letter then melting into an illegible scrawl. Harrison sees bits of words: Luke, woe, hands, clay, guard, stray, each wobbly and disappearing into the other, becoming cities of their own, destroying others. He tries to understand the route, but the farther he pours over the map, recircling each line with his finger, the more lost he gets in the ink.

“Is this your map?” Harrison asks. There is no proof that it is. Even the handwriting is all wrong. Ragged. Confused. Desperate. Not like Lonan’s careful, hesitant print.

“Like I said, I bought the car used.”

“But is it your map?” Harrison asks again. Gently, he creases the paper and then slots it back into the glove compartment. Outside, they pass three convenience stores in a row, a flock of couples emerging from a bowling alley, tipsy and cradling leftover deep dish pizzas and mozzarella sticks. They pass two more convenience stores before Lonan finally answers.

“I was confused,” he says.

“This is more than confused,” Harrison says. “It’s disturbed.”

“I’m not disturbed.”

“But something is wrong with you.”

Lonan slows at a crosswalk. A group of teenaged girls whisk by in glitter and lip gloss.

“Yes,” he says.

This is Harrison trying to stop Lonan’s nosebleed after their bizarre swerve which I think is kind of <3 tendy <3

Harrison reaches for him. One hand on the back of his neck, and the other reared toward the red stream. His touch is tactful, so faint his fingerprints wouldn’t even be left behind, but still, the dabbing with his jacket’s hem is enough to redirect the blood’s flow from Lonan’s upper lip to the cuff of leather. The radio is still on, garbled like an unmassing of crepe paper lanterns.

This is the final excerpt for this update that takes us to the very end of the chapter! Harrison has just found Lonan supposedly head-first in the sink and though he asks at first why he is doing that, takes an alternate approach as the chapter closes:

Harrison gets up, his knees popping like gnawed bubble gum. He decides he will handle Lonan at a distance, if he chooses to handle him at all. Like a timid pet owner trying to tame their suddenly-rabid yorkie. Like a friend not trying to tip the full glass. To let its contents film at its surface, but never spill.

Somewhere in the apartment, Suzanna probably listens to them. If Harrison didn’t know her better, he’d imagine her pressed neatly against the door, waiting to hear the shuffle of their bodies or the tang of an argument. Instead, he imagines her at the kitchen table, gripping a glass of water for so long, half of it evaporates.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Harrison says, stepping back until his spine hits the counter’s lip. He curls his fingers under the granite. Looks toward the window, now a faint periwinkle. Lonan heaves. His fingers caging his face, an animal restrained. They stand there until the sun rises.

So that’s it for this gigantic update! I have like four short stories to update you on so I hope to be back soon!

—Rachel

[adarlingwrites]

Dormouse

Summary:

After playing a game with two of The Beach's most dangerous members, the dormouse gets her tail caught by a tiger's paw.

He’ll make a wildcat out of her.

Author’s Notes: A character study for my AiB OC, Minami Yamane. The story takes place months before the main events of the series.

Edit 4/27/2021: I edited the chapter and added a few more paragraphs to highlight how desperate Yamane's living conditions were before the Borderlands. Some of the changes include more scenes of her happily pillaging stores because she never had plenty of groceries before, and changing her apartment into a 1R apartment.

I

everybody's looking for something / some of them want to use you / some of them want to get used by you

Mice and rats are vermin.

They are filthy, scurrying little creatures that will take anything they can lay their little paws on. In an urban city such as Tokyo, they thrive outside the human view, in the dank, dark underbelly of the bustling city.

They have no place in polite society, and neither does the girl running from an accessory shop in the populated streets of Harajuku.

It was just supposed to be a simple swipe. She had been shoplifting for quite a while now, ever since her parents threw her out and cut all her access to their money.

Yes, this little mouse wasn’t always one.

This happened all because she no longer wanted their control on her life anymore.

“You’re going to take Business Administration and take over the family business,” they would always remind her, drilling it into her thick skull since she can remember. But screw that, she’s not about to let them decide what she will be any further.

Now, look where that got her.

Scurrying, panting, and her feet skidding against the sidewalk, she ran into a busy boutique, blending in with the crowd. She almost ran into a baby carriage, muttering a quick apology to the annoyed mother pushing it. Eyes alert, she spotted an open storage closet an employee had left open. Trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, she slipped inside, and shut the door.

Outside, the police are asking around if they had seen a girl with her description. Heart in her throat and pulse rapid, the mouse bit back a curse when the woman with the baby carriage pointed at the storage closet she’s in. Their footsteps approaching, she was bracing herself to slam the doors open once they’re within range.

But the lights flickered, and the officers never came.

Dark, damp, and musty, she’s a rat in a cage. Her only source of light was the faint sunlight that streamed through the glass storefront, seeping into the corners of the door. It was so quiet; too quiet. She swore she can hear her own heartbeat and the sweat rolling off of her skin.

With caution, she slowly opens the door, and the previously populated boutique is deserted. Not a single soul was in sight. Anxiety and bewilderment made her pulse quicken even more.

“Where the hell is everyone,” she mumbles to no one.

Confused, she runs out of the store, to the streets. The city is bustling no more. Everyone vanished.

If this was some kind of sick joke, this little mouse was not having it. She takes out her cell phone from her bag, only to see that it’s dead. Cursing, she runs back to the store to find an outlet, and plugs her flip phone in, to no avail. It’s still dead. She looks around and sees that all the displays are powered down.

Electricity is gone, and so is the water, she found out when she went to the bathroom in plans of dousing herself awake. All utilities had been cut. Taking a moment to compose herself, the mouse left the store once more to walk around. The streets are deserted, cars lining up in the desolate roads. Some of the windows are rolled down, and the mouse reaches in to unlock the door.

Turning the keys, she tried to get it to run, but to no avail. With a baffled look, she looks around in the car. Beside her was a plastic bag, still warm to the touch. A fried chicken sandwich is nestled inside, along with the receipt, a half-eaten bag of fries, and a few packets of ketchup.

She takes that, steps out of the vehicle, and begins eating while making her way back to her apartment, occasionally checking inside cars to see if anyone’s inside.

Everyone is gone, and no one is watching.

Relief replaces the little mouse’s horror upon realizing that among those gone are her landlady. “If she’s gone, I don’t have to pay rent anymore,” she gasps to no one in particular, and a smile slowly spreads on her lips.

“I don’t even have to pay bills anymore. I don’t have to watch out for security guards and cops.” The mouse starts laughing at that point, palming at her forehead. 

“Ha! I can finally do what I want now.” Her laughter was equal parts bitter, and cathartic.

Upon arriving to her apartment, she realizes that the chicken sandwich would probably stave off her hunger for the afternoon. She still had her bike and her delivery bag with her from work, and an idea forms in her head. She doesn’t know what the hell is going on, but if no one is around to watch her… she might as well do the thing she’s best at: take.

She will need to survive while waiting this out, after all.

Riding her way to the nearest convenience store, the mouse stuffed her bag with canned and non-perishable goods, filling it to the brim with groceries she normally couldn’t afford. From behind the counter, she takes several plastic bags and fills it with frozen goods, and dumps that in the front basket of her bike. The food probably needed to be heated up, so she made it a point to check for a butane stove. Luckily for her, there was one in the back, along with a few canisters of fuel.

Giddy, she bikes her way back to her apartment, unloads her haul, and comes back for more.

She targeted the water next, but found it too heavy for the bike. Not willing to leave the goods behind, she grabbed a shopping cart and filled it to her heart’s desire, until it was almost too heavy for her to push. The mouse carted the goods back to her apartment, exhausted, but genuinely relieved for the first time in months.

By the time that the sun is down, the mouse is sitting happily in her apartment, sorting through groceries that would last her weeks, if she’s careful with them. The mini fridge was still cold despite the lack of electricity, so she stuffed the frozen goods inside, the door barely closing due to the amount of content inside. Once littered with cobwebs, her pantry is now full with various dry goods and snacks. Some of them couldn’t even fit in the shelves, so she put them in the bedroom instead, which doubles as her living space, separated by a divider from the kitchen.

A contented grin on her face, she takes a breather and opens one of the snack cakes she took, and a box of coated biscuits.

The mouse finished her snacks blissfully, not one care in the world as she devoured them.

When she was walking back to fetch her bike from the convenience store, a billboard lights up, catching her attention.

She was in for a world of danger.

Two weeks later, the mouse stays in her apartment, her nest in this strange new world, tending a shoulder she bruised days ago. She quietly thanked herself for scouring the pharmacy after her first game.

The last one she participated in was a Three of Diamonds, and she almost didn’t make it out. It was good to see other people, but she had witnessed them die right before her eyes because of a wrong answer, and plain selfishness.

It was a game held in an abandoned variety show set. Get the answer right, you get to live to answer the next. Get it wrong, you have to work with the other contestants to survive a game of hole in the wall... or fall in a pool of acid. Contestants will take turns answering questions, and they weren’t allowed to coach each other.

The contestants were Mugi Nakamura, a high school girl in a swim team, Taro Kobayashi, a salaryman and father of two, and the mouse herself, Minami Yamane, a part-time seamstress in a factory by day, food courier by sundown, and a full-time troublemaker.

It was going so well. Yamane had gotten all of the questions right, and so did Nakamura, but Kobayashi made a mistake. The curtains drew back, and the wall revealed a single, round hole near the bottom. Time was running out.

Eyes haunted, Yamane looked at her reflection in the mirror as she pressed the compress against her shoulder, the dark circles under her eyes deepening, and so did her frown. There are some things she wished she could scour from her memory.

Kobayashi was willing to throw the two girls under the bus, despite Yamane insisting that they can all survive it if they formed a straight line and curled into a deep bow. Disgusted by his selfishness, Yamane shoves the salaryman aside and dives through the circle. She turned around to see if Nakamura followed suit, but the only thing she saw was her body dissolving in the pool.

Their pained, agonized cries filled the room, and Yamane couldn’t tear her eyes away. The last thing she saw before she got a “game clear'' was Nakamura’s faux fingernail floating to the surface before getting eaten away by the acid.

Around her, makeup and trinkets that she couldn’t afford on her salary littered the desk, her small sources of comfort and joy. Empty packages of frozen foods lined neatly up in her trash can, and so did the empty cans and bottles. Yamane was beginning to run low on her supplies. She will have to scavenge farther from home. That wouldn’t be a problem. On days that she isn’t risking her life on a game, she started working out to improve her stamina, and improve her odds of surviving these games. Spade games were the most physically demanding ones.

The little mouse is starting to get used to this life. There are no parents to tell her what to do, and no expectations from society, but in return, she will have to risk her life playing these treacherous games.

After tending to her shoulder, it was time for Yamane’s nightly routine. With make up wipes, she’d wipe off the makeup off of her face. She undoes her twin buns, and brushes her hair down; thankfully, it wasn’t time to wash them yet, and her shoulder hurts. Cleaning herself off with a towel and a little water, Yamane changed into cleaner clothes and went to bed, nestled in pillows and sheets she snatched from a nearby mall’s home section on the way home from the Diamond game.

There were other people loitering about when she made her haul. The initial relief she had upon meeting people in the games were replaced by paranoia after that game with the salaryman. Purging the mental image of their dissolving bodies off of her mind, she pulls the covers over her head and curls into a fetal position.

Her ears perked up when she heard footsteps in the kitchen.

“Shit, did I forget to lock the door?” Yamane thought to herself. 

Listening intently, she approximated the size of the person intruding her home through their footsteps, something she learned to do while living under the scrutiny of her family. They were light.

Like a child’s.

Carefully getting out of bed, Yamane tiptoes her way to the kitchen, and clamps her hand over the intruder’s mouth.

“Don’t make a sound,” she hissed, and she can sense the fear coming from the small body. Yamane spins the intruder around only to see a young girl. Judging from her height and prepubescent looks, she might be in early middle school. “What the hell are you doing in my house?”

“Oneesan, I’m so sorry for trespassing, but please, I’m starving. I saw you walking away from the grocery store with a huge haul a few days ago-”

“Great,” she thought.  People are starting to notice her hauls.

“Out. Get out now.”

“B-but please! I don’t know what else to do. I’m not a thief, but I’m so desperate… I’m so hungry.”

Taking a deep inhale, Yamane eyes the girl. She’s rail-thin, her uniform is soiled, and her hair is a tangled mess. Her lips are dry from the lack of water, and her hair is dull from the lack of proper nutrition. Groaning and rubbing her face, Yamane relents.

“Fine, take what you need and go.”

“Can I please stay with you?”

Yamane scoffs. “What? I don’t have time to look after a kid.”

“I can’t find my parents. I have no friends to talk to. It gets scary at night without all the lights too. Please, let me stay.”

Yamane should be kicking this girl out. Instead, she’s now handing her a pillow over as the kid ate dinner on the floor couch in her room. It was nothing special, but Yamane went through the trouble of preparing something somewhat healthy for the girl, despite her reluctance in letting her stay. Begrudgingly, Yamane tosses her a blanket too.

“This help’s not for free. You’re going to have to make yourself useful if you want to stay with me. And if you try to steal from me, I won’t hesitate to hurt you,” Yamane says, sitting on her mattress right across the couch.

“I promise I’ll be good.”

“What’s your name? How old are you?”

“Fumiko Sato. I’m twelve years old.”

The mouse’s expression softens against her will. Yamane thought someone that young shouldn’t be in a world such as this. Sure, it suited her, but it didn’t suit the preteen sitting on her couch. A girl her age’s problems should be about school, crushes, and which accessories she should wear tomorrow, not a brutal survival game.

“I’m Minami Yamane. Twenty three. How many days do you have left on your visa?”

“Two.”

“Shit”, Yamane thought. “I’ll have to bring her to a game soon.”

“Go to sleep. You’ll help me scavenge tomorrow, then we’ll go to a game.”

“Thank you. I’ll do my best!”

Without uttering another word, Yamane goes to bed, pulling the covers over her head. It’s been a long time since she looked after someone else. Exhaling slowly, her mind wanders back to home.

“I wonder how Mai and Riku are doing”, she thought.

A photograph of her and Mai, her little sister, sits on a desk, with a picture of an infant boy attached to it. Mai would have been nineteen now, and Riku would have been three. Such a huge age difference between the siblings, a result of her father remarrying after her and Mai’s mother died.

Yamane didn’t even visit her funeral.

Not wanting to waste precious minutes she could’ve used to rest on thinking about the life she left behind, Yamane got back in bed and closed her eyes.

The next morning, she woke up to the smell of food.

“Good morning, oneesan,” Sato greeted, setting rice balls and two cups of instant miso soup on the table. Yamane checks out the stove, and the butane is almost out. They’ll have to look for more. Without electricity, it’s a precious commodity, especially if they want to continue having hot meals.

Sato says her grace, and without saying a word, Yamane sits and eats the food prepared for her. The middle schooler was looking at her with expectant eyes as she chewed on her rice ball.

“These are good. Thanks. I hope you rested well. We’re going to the train station to get you a bike, then we’ll go to a grocery store father from here for goods.”

Sato nodded and they spent the rest of the meal in peace. After freshening up and getting dressed, Yamane tosses Sato her thermal bag. “Be alert around strangers and stay close to me.” Yamane instructed her as Sato strapped the bag on. “For now, you’ll be riding on the backseat.”

Nodding, Sato follows her down the apartment complex’s stairs, feeling secure for the first time in days. She gets on the bike, and wraps her arms around Yamane’s waist as they ride to the train station.

Meanwhile, Yamane’s mind wanders back to her little sister. They used to ride like this when she was a little younger, before her parents forced her to go to university for Business Administration. Five years ago, on her eighteenth birthday, she and Mai snuck out of the house to celebrate with her friends. They ate shabu shabu together and Yamane had her first taste of liquor.

They never heard the end of it when they got back, and Yamane got a few bruises from the beating she had to endure, but it was a precious memory.

Yamane and Sato arrived at the train station, and took a bike from the rental booth. This one had a child’s seat at the back, which was decent for groceries too. The bike is Sato’s bike now.

Today’s haul was bountiful. Aside from necessities, Yamane even managed to score some box dye. Her highlights were fading out. Sato also found clothes her size, and a mild, fruity cologne for teenagers, then she placed those in the front basket of her bike, along with some sweets she was previously wasn’t allowed to eat too much of.

After sorting the groceries and having dinner, Yamane and Sato sat in the older girl’s room, where the younger girl helped the older one dye the fading red streaks of hair, just like her friends did.

“Maybe having this kid around isn’t so bad”, Yamane thought to herself. She’ll have an extra pair of eyes to watch her back now. Sato helped her rinse her hair in the bathroom sink and they laughed together.

“Alright. Time for some rest,” Yamane says, running a towel through her hair, sitting on her mattress. “We need to participate in a game tomorrow to extend your visa.”

“Okay. Thanks again for everything, Minami-neesan.”

Secretly, Yamane’s heart leapt from being called older sister again. But she would never admit it. She convinced herself that she’s only using her as a pack mule.

The next night, they arrived at a game venue. An arcade. A laser tag arena, to be precise.

The two of them took phones from the table, and waited for other participants. There was a rowdy group of four boys, all high school age, and judging from their appearances, they must be delinquents. Or perhaps, in this world, they have the freedom to act tough now. Sato stepped a little closer to Yamane, feeling uneasy.

Then, two men arrived.

The group of boys fell into a hush at their arrival. Yamane kept her head straight on, but she was looking at them from the corner of her eyes, her field of vision obscured by her shades. Sato, on the other hand, was trembling beside her.

One of the men was wearing a black patterned shirt, part of his shoulder-length hair tied, and on his face were various piercings. He was toting a gun, and he shoved one of the highschool boys aside, brusquely telling them to get out of his way.

The other was the quiet type. He was taller than the other man, shoulders broad despite his wiry build and bad posture. This one had tattoos on his face, wearing a sleeveless cloak with the hood up, and he carries a katana.

“Where did he find a fucking katana,” Yamane thought to herself. If there’s one thing she couldn’t find on her hauls, it was decent weapons to defend herself with.

Yamane pretends not to notice them, but Sato is staring at the two men outright. The younger girl pulls at Yamane’s sleeve urgently.

“Oneesan, they’re scary.”

“Don’t give them any attention. Focus on the game.”

Sato keeps quiet, fidgeting and sweating. The preteen made the mistake of looking at them again, and she tugs on Yamane’s sleeves once more.

“Oh God, they’re looking at you!” Sato whispers urgently, wrapping an arm around Yamane’s.

Yamane tilts her head, and sees that they are indeed looking at her. The one with piercings is openly leering, his tongue slipping out of his mouth, revealing another piercing. The one with the tattooed face was harder to read. His mouth was slightly open, twitching on one side.

“Let them stare,” she tells the younger girl.

“Just what I needed,” Yamane muttered, a wave of discomfort washing over her. “They look dangerous. I hope they’re not perverts,” she adds, shielding the younger girl, and Sato couldn’t help but take another peek.

“Ew, they do kind of look like perverts, oneesan. Especially that one with the piercings.”

“Then let’s not attract their attention.”

Yamane pulls her jacket’s hood over her head, then she folds her arms and looks away. She knew better than to provoke them.

A third man catches up with the two. Then, Yamane notices it; the tag on their wrists with numbers. The other two had them too. Were they a team?

Yamane had no time to think when the final contestant arrived, a balding middle-aged man. He took the last phone, and the synthetic voice flooded the room.

“Please proceed further into the arena.”

Instead of the usual laser tag equipment, they were met with real firearms, along with some melee weapons. The sight of them made Sato squirm, and Yamane herself was disturbed. There are written instructions to take as many weapons as they desire.

The delinquent boys eagerly reached for the guns, leaving Yamane and Sato with none. The two intimidating men and their third companion didn’t need them, and stayed in their spots, watching the two girls pick a weapon. Sato sheepishly opted for a pocket knife, while Yamane quickly reached for the daggers. They came with leg holsters which she strapped on her thighs.

She can feel the two’s gaze burning her back as she bent over to adjust the straps.

“Great. They are perverts,” she thinks to herself, straightening and looking over her shoulder to give them a chastising look.

The monitor comes to life, and the synthetic voice crackles through the speakers. The participants’ faces were on the screen, where they are divided into two teams. Team A consisted of the four delinquent boys, and the middle-aged man. Team B consisted of Yamane, Sato, and the three men with the bracelets.

“Please sort yourselves accordingly and proceed to your team’s base.”

Yamane didn’t know if she should be relieved or concerned that she got sorted with those two. She stands next to the one with tattoos. Her shades obscured her eyes, which trailed on his arms, observing the ink. A muscle flexes as he unsheaths his katana; he looks like he possesses a wiry strength. Then, he turns to her, slowly, and Sato squirms beside her. Yamane only pulled her shades down slightly and stared back, raising an eyebrow.

The tense moment was shattered by the synthetic voice once more.

“Registration closed. There are currently ten players. Difficulty: Seven of Clubs.”

“Seven? That’s difficult, isn’t it?” Sato asks Yamane, and she hushes her.

“Game: Elimination. Rules: Work with your team to eliminate the opposing team. Clear condition: Team with the most number of members left by the end of the time limit wins. If there are equal numbers of participants from each team, everyone loses. Time limit: thirty minutes.”

“Wait, wait! Elimination? We’re supposed to kill the other team? Minami-neesan this is bad!” Sato exclaims, pulling on Yamane’s sleeve again.

“Calm down, calm down! We just need to survive until the thirty minutes is up,” Yamane hushes her, pulling her closer.

“That’s right little mice, you two better hide,” the man with the pierced face interrupts them. “Don’t get in our way.”

“We have no intentions to,” Yamane replied sharply, before whisking Sato away to look for a hiding spot.

Yamane looks over her shoulder one last time, and the tattooed man gives her one last curious look before walking towards the arena.

“These thirty minutes are going to be hell.”

[faces-in-unexpected-places]

Do You Have the Time? Episode 017: Under Pressure

Synopsis: While Leopold and Leslie work to ease their newfound professional discomfort, Jeremy has the unique opportunity to experience both professional and personal discomfort.

--

[To: loonely.lm@cvu.edu, brilliant.jf@cvu.edu, goodchild.la@cvu.edu, hyde.da@cvu.edu,  moreno.br@cvu.edu, ramone.ag@cvu.edu, mendez.se@cvu.edu, nguyen.ch@cvu.edu, murphy.ma@cvu.edu, lawrence.gl@vcu.edu, solis.dt@cvu.edu, molina.mo@cvu.edu …]

[From: nguyen.xv@cvu.edu] [Received: 9:54 (1 hour ago)] [Subject: CVU Research Symposium]

Hi all,

I’d like to address the rumors that have been circulating in our building for the past few weeks. After a lot of deliberation with my peers in the CVU Board of Research, it has been decided that our yearly conference – which is often hosted here in Curiesville – will be relocated this year. Proposed by B.S. Dexter Hyde and Dr. Blythe Moreno of the CRISPR-Cas-9 molecular biology lab, we will be hosting our research symposium in San Diego California this year at the San Diego Convention Center. This change in venue was made in hopes of generating more interest in us as a research-driven university. The goal is to expand on the population that will attend the conference for better name recognition and to open us up to more potential sources for grant money. To be economically sound, we are combining our conference with the interests of numerous other universities in California that will also be presenting at the symposium. Thus, the symposium will not only last one day as it has in the past.

The symposium will start on Friday, August 17th at 9:00am, and will officially end on Sunday, August 19th at 5:00pm. Presentations will end each day at 5:00pm. We are currently working to have a portion of the Mission Beach reserved in the evenings for the participants to relax, network with one another other, and discuss research in a casual environment along with some fun activities.

As for transportation, there are a few options. Most of you who planned on participating anyway will likely be able to afford your own airline tickets with the grant money that you already have. If you are short, then you may apply for the numerous grants that will become available to the university over the upcoming months. I will send a separate email listing the institutions that are likely to be the most helpful.

Lastly, if the grants do not work out, then your lab may write a proposal that explains your research topic, how it is beneficial, and why it is important for you to present at the symposium. Send these proposals to Dexter Hyde, and he will review them. Calculate your projected expenses for your trip, and the Board of Research will cover up to half of your expected costs if your proposal is sufficient.

In order to participate in the symposium, your lab must email your abstracts to me by June 15th. Your completed papers should be submitted by July 30th along with an appropriate slideshow presentation.

If you plan to participate, then please email your general topic and a list of all the members of your lab that will be involved in the presentation to me by the end of this week at 5:00pm. I will be able to keep track of everything much more efficiently this way, when I start getting everyone’s abstracts and papers down the road.

Expect more emails during the week for more detailed instructions on the upcoming deadlines. I look forward to reading your papers over the subsequent months. Have a good week.

Best Regards,

Xuan “Sophia” Nguyen CVU Board of Research Secretary Center for Advancement in Technology and Science (219)-555-6295

[April 24th, 2018, 10:57]

           Leopold’s eyes frantically jumped through the email from paragraph to paragraph. Down, down, up, down, up again. He took an anxious drag from his cigarette, then crushed the half-used remaining butt beneath his foot. He blew the smoke out, tucked his phone away in his pocket and burst back through the doors to the Center of the Advancement in Technology and Science. Martha waved to him, and he gave a forced smile and nod as he maneuvered through the sea of lab technicians that were scurrying back and forth between their labs, cluttering up the lobby. Normally he’d feel reassured if he wasn’t the only one rushing last minute to finish before the deadline. But he knew how much further behind his lab was compared to everyone else’s. This meant that he needed to accomplish years of research in a couple of months.

[04-24-2018; 11:00_Research_Video_Log_007_Start]

           He plunged through the front double doors to his lab to check in with Jeremy and Leslie who were hard at work on experiment one, still.

           “Sand in place to block excess heat transfer?” Jeremy said.

           “Check,” Leslie replied, “heat resistant gloves?”

           Jeremy’s hands were bare. He rifled through the pockets of his lab coat, pulled out the gloves and donned them.

           “Yeah…” he said hesitantly as he slipped his fingers into place.

           “How’s the piston doing?” Leopold asked.

           Over the last few days, Leopold managed to construct the final piece to their microscale time machine prototype from the parts that Jeremy gathered. It was a singular piston with the crankshaft that allowed it to go up and down secured to a rotating, circular platform on the table. The battery was built into the base of the platform that powered both the spinning and up-and-down motions. It looked like a record player. Very simplistic, but effective. Flip one switch, begin rotating the platform. The piston spins and eventually wraps the cosmic string around it to form a loop. Flip the other switch, the piston pumps up and down, thereby pushing the newly made cosmic loop toward the object intended for time travel.

           “It’s all intact! We’re going to try again right now,” Leslie said.

           Leslie lit the fuse on the thermite reaction. Just like the previous time, brilliant light and sparks erupted from the powders in the ceramic pot. She jumped back and Jeremy strenuously turned the crank to spin the metal pipe just above the fiery pot. The glowing redness of the reaction snaked its way along the pipe towards Jeremy’s hand. Leslie watched cautiously. He gave her a subtle nod to indicate that the gloves were still working. There were popping and clanging sounds in the metal bucket as the ceramic pot blew to bits inside.

           Wearing oven mitts, Leslie pushed the metal bucket out of the way and replaced it with Leopold’s piston-platform. The first switch was flipped, and the platform whirled around almost too fast for comfort. Jeremy clenched his teeth as his arm and hand began to cramp from rotating the crank so vigorously. He let go and jumped back next to Leslie to watch. Their motions were like clockwork from repeating the experiment so many times. The pipe rattled in its ring stand supports as it compacted the string of heat together.

           The redness at the far end of the pipe began to fade in exchange for a bright, golden thread-shaped mass that lazily slid out the other end towards the spinning piston. Leslie’s jaw dropped and Jeremy pointed forcefully at it.

           “There it is!” Jeremy shouted.

           “It’s working!” Leslie joined.

           They eventually had to shield their eyes; the energy made from the reaction was so great and so compact that some of the heat energy had to be converted into light-emitting energy. As more of the thread came out, the heat became more apparent. It felt like standing in front of an industrial oven. The string glared like a shimmering sunset reflecting off a body of water. The end of the thread reached out towards the spinning piston. The concentrated heat and light immediately dissipated upon contact. For a split second, the world went quiet with only a low hum to be heard followed by a resonating bass drop. 

          The room’s lighting promptly shifted from glistening and golden to shadowy and moody as the light scattered to the corners of the room before completely vanishing. Simultaneously, a forceful gust of hot wind burst forth from the pipe in all directions. All of the papers, folders, books, and the pack of orange sticky notes on the meeting table went flying along with Leslie’s half-empty coffee cup. The shear force and surprise knocked her off balance into Jeremy, which knocked him into Leopold standing behind both of them. Jeremy caught and held Leslie just as Leo had done for him. Leopold helped them both back to their feet.

           “That was great!” Jeremy exclaimed, “We have to do it again. Leslie let’s make another pot of reagents,” he said with determination. Jeremy took his first step and the world began to spin around him. He tipped forward, but was caught by the forearm by Leopold whose reflexes kicked in. Feeling dazed himself, Leopold led the two of them to the recently cleared meeting table to sit down.

           “We should wait a minute, Jeremy,” Leslie suggested, sluggishly, “the lab isn’t going anywhere,” she weakly chuckled while holding her head on discomfort.

           “The more progress we make, the more unexpected things we’ll find. We’ve got to be careful from here on out, boy,” Leopold said with a smirk.

           “We need to be focused from here on out,” he said, “Leslie and I saw this email that Sophia sent out with all the deadlines—”

           “I know, I read it before I came in,” Leo assured, “We do need to be focused. But we can still do that while resting a minute.”

           “We can still talk about it while we rest,” Jeremy suggested.

           Leopold laughed wryly.

           “Why do we think the string dissipated?” he continued, “Is the temperature difference between the piston and the string too small? Since energy flows from hot to cold, maybe the string doesn’t want to flow towards an already hot piston?”

           “I actually don’t think so,” Leslie interjected, lightly smiling at Jeremy’s determination to analyze the experiment, “The strings are very hot and condensed into an extremely small space for the amount of energy it holds. Even if the piston were on fire, the string would still be magnitudes hotter, so the piston would still appear ‘cold’ to the string.”

           Jeremy spotted a pen and notepad on the floor that had been blown off the table. He held up his finger while Leslie was talking and slipped out of his chair to retrieve them.

           “Boy, be careful!” Leopold urged.

           “It’s fine,” he said, limply falling to his knees from the vertigo. He landed near the notepad and pen. Keeping his head still to stop the world from spinning again, Jeremy made himself comfortable on the floor.

           He cleared his throat.

           “I’ll just work from here,” he said and began taking notes on what Leslie had said already.

           “Okay, come on, boy,” Leopold said, raising himself out of his seat and approaching Jeremy, “The only one who actually likes working on the floor is me, so— whoaa-a-a-oh.” he stumbled and cautiously lowered himself to the floor after becoming light-headed, himself. He sighed as he plopped himself down next to Jeremy who looked at Leo with a faintly smug grin.

           “I’m not sure that I see the appeal of working down here, but I can make do with it,” Jeremy poked fun.

           Leopold laughed.

           “We make one little break in our research and suddenly he’s a wise-ass,” he commented to Leslie who pulled her chair over to them, away from the table. Jeremy chuckled and continued writing with part of his tongue sticking out as he concentrated.

           “I think I have an idea of what it is, actually,” Leslie said. The boys looked up to her to continue, “It’s like what we saw in GraviTime, Jeremy, remember?”

           “Mmm, can you be more specific?”

           “When we made the cosmic strings, and we saw them dissipate! What did we do that made them dissipate?”

           “Oh, we stopped spinning them!”

           “Exactly!”

           “So, if we keep spinning the pipe, then it should… ohh… aww, that’s not going to be easy,” he said, realizing that he would have to be the one spinning the pipe.

           “Okay, so, we’ll automate it,” Leopold said, shrugging.

           “Really?” Jeremy said.

           “Of course! If that’s what we need to do, then that’s what we’ll do to begin the next phase of the experiment. We’ll make a jig for the pipe like I did for the piston. It’ll be easy. I just need another motor and a few other parts.”

           “Are we up for a trip to Home Depot?” Leslie asked.

           Jeremy’s phone abrasively rang, scaring him to his feet. He looked at his messages to find another graduate student who TAs the same class as him. He’d just been reminded of the class he taught at noon. There wasn’t much time before then. He sighed in disappointment and gathered his things; the world had finally stopped spinning.

           “I actually have to go TA today and it looks like there might be a problem with the class, so…” he let out a frustrated exhale, “I can’t go today,” he said hesitantly.

           “That’s okay! It’s just a run to the store, anyway. You were here for the important part!” Leslie consoled.

           “We’ll be just fine, boy,” Leopold said with a relaxed grin, “Those students need you, too. Just come back when you’re able. We’ll hold down the fort while you’re gone.”

           Jeremy relaxed with their assurance.

           “Thanks, you guys,” he said softly. “I should be back between 3:30 and 4:00. I’ll see you both then.”

           They said goodbye and carried on their plans as he left the lab. As he wandered through to the exit of the building, he opened up the messages he’d received.

[JEREMY_RANDALL_CONVERSATION_START_11:29]

RD: hey bud i’ve got a student who overslept and missed my 8:00am lab RD: they said they wanna attend a different lab section so they don't get marked absent and yours is the only one that works with their schedule RD: you mind if they sit in? i’ll still grade their assignments B)

JB: Hi, Randall. JB: I’m heading over to campus right now. JB: Unfortunately, all the seats in my class are filled; I can’t let anyone new come in without going over the capacity. Are you sure there’s nobody else who can take them?

RD: yea :/ RD: we could just steal an extra chair from another lab that doesnt need it RD: tbh i don't think the boss would mind too much RD: its the end of the semester, i know he doesnt really keep track of that kinda stuff too much RD: if she misses this class and gets a zero on the last two assignments, shell probably fail the class

JB: Could she get at least a D if she does the assignments?

RD: yea i think

JB: Okay. I guess that’s fine. We’ll find a place for her to work so she can attend. What’s her name? I’ll make a space on my attendance sheet for her.

RD: her name is madison brilliant

JB: It is?

RD: yea RD: why you kno her or somethin? RD: … RD: dude you there? RD: hellooooo

JB: Yes, she’s my younger sister.

RD: omg no way! RD: lmao thats hilarious RD: tbh didn't know your last name so i didn't make the connection lol

JB: Well, now you know. JB: Thanks for the heads up. JB: I’ll get her assignment to you as soon as I can.

RD: shaka B)

[JEREMY_RANDALL_CONVERSATION_END_11:37]

 [April 24th, 2018, 11:49]

           Jeremy approached the classroom in which that taught every week. The remaining few students from the previous class finished leaving just as he walked in. The TA that taught before him had seemingly left already, despite still having students in the class. Didn’t seem to be the most responsible move, in Jeremy’s eyes. He made his way to his desk in the front of the room, facing all of the laboratory tables. There was a large cart in the front of the room containing piles of electronics for circuits like batteries, lightbulbs, resistors, and the like.

           He placed the attendance sheet at the end of his desk and wrote the instructions for the class on the board. Students began filing in, and quietly going through the motions that he had ingrained in them from the beginning of the semester. Come in, sign the attendance sheet, turn in the homework, pick up the graded assignments, and repeat. It was a well-oiled machine, likely out of indifference on the students’ part. And also their tendency to comply with the way Jeremy structured the class at the risk of losing points. But Jeremy liked to think that at least some of them appreciated the system.

           He faintly smiled and greeted each student who approached his desk to sign in. Some responded to him, others didn’t. Some only replied with zombie-like grunts of acknowledgement when he’d asked how they were. An odd one or two students replied audibly with a smile and asked how he was in return. He appreciated those students the most. They also tended to be the ones to turn in their assignments on time and get the most consistently good grades.

           Madison walked in, unassumingly, if a bit drowsy looking. She registered that she was attending Jeremy’s class and perked up on her way over to his desk. Jeremy felt a sinking feeling in his chest. His shoulders felt like they weighed a ton.

           “Well, well, well, look at what the cat dragged in!” she said in her goofiest tone.

           “I walked in of my own volition, Madison; cats are not allowed in the lab.”

           “Oh, that’s right, you don’t understand metaphors, I forgot,” she sighed.

           “Please sign in and turn in your assignments,” Jeremy changed the subject.

           “Oh. Uh, sure. You make your students write their names down?”

           “Yes.”

           “Randall just calls our names,” she said.

           “I prefer it this way,” Jeremy countered.

           Madison reached into her backpack and slapped her assignment down on Jeremy’s desk.

           “Bam! Turned in!”

           “Great. I got an extra chair for you for this class,” he said.

           “Gucci,” she said, “You gonna give your favorite sister an A today?”

           One of Jeremy’s other students walked in and recognized Madison. She squealed when she saw her.

           “Mads! What’re you doing, you in my class now?”

           “Hey girl! Nah, just for the day since I missed my class. Just shootin’ the shit with Jay, the TA who is also my fam!”

           Jeremy rolled his eyes and sighed.

           “Oh my god, no wayyyy! That’s definitely going on my story. Hit me up after class, let’s get lunch!”

           “Okay, good afternoon everybody, we’re going to get started with class, now,” Jeremy announced, walking to the front-center of the room and ushering students to their seats, “Hopefully all of you did the assigned reading because you needed it to complete the assignment you just turned in, and you’ll need it again for the activity today. We’re going to be building electrical circuits today, both series and parallel. If you flip to page 150 in your workbooks, you’ll find the procedure for the activity. I’ve listed a few modifications on the board, so make sure you take note of my changes while you’re working,” he paused to read the room, “Does anybody have any questions?”

           Silence.

           “Okay. Get to work. You can work in pairs or by yourself,” he projected his voice through the room.

           The students began talking and working as soon as he finished. He wondered if the lab would go faster because it was the last of the semester and they likely wanted to be done as soon as possible. He sat himself back down at his desk for only a brief moment before multiple students formed a line at his desk. It always perplexed him that he can ask the class if there are any questions and nobody speaks up, but the minute it’s time to work, suddenly there is a pile of students with questions.

           “Hi,” the first student said.

           “What can I do for you?” Jeremy asked politely.

           “So… I forgot to do the assignment for today, I was wondering if I could work on it in class while we do the lab and turn it in at the end of class?”

           “No, our class time is meant to be spent on the activities we had planned, sorry.”

           “It won’t take that long; I can do both!”

           “The syllabus outlines that assignments have to be turned in at the beginning of class. I can’t accept it if it’s late,” he explained.

           “So, there’s nothing I can do?” the student asked anxiously.

           “No, there isn’t,” Jeremy said bluntly.

           “Okay. Well, thanks anyway,” they said and returned to their seat.

           The next student froze a moment and began walking back, as well.

           “I had the same question as them,” the student said.

           “Okay,” Jeremy nodded.

           The third and final person was Madison. Her hands were locked together by her fingers and she meekly drew closer to Jeremy.

           “Hey, friendo, sooo… I forgot my workbook,” she said quickly, “What’s the, uh, the dealio? What should I do if I can’t do the activity?”

           Jeremy took a deep, stressed out, breath and thought about it.

           “Umm… why don’t you just partner up with someone who has their book. Just write down the answers on some loose paper. Make sure you number it so Randall will be able to tell which answers go to which questions.”

           “Gotcha. Alright, thanks, bud,” she said and returned to her desk.

[justkpopjokes]

Side Effects Analysis/Theories

Miroh/Yellow Wood || Side Effects [Teaser] [MV] || Double Knot

I’m back with tiny details to help all your theories uwu, more of notes than theories

NOTE: anything with asterisks* means it is mentioned again later in the post (it’s a long post ok)

YELLOW GUI

(basically the overlays/coding)

someone is logging in*, shown with PASS_LOGIN (followed by a long list of letters I’m too lazy to list) on the right side, along with

#00001 (yes, there’s a space)

#00002

#0003

most of the code on the left is refers to these codes+lost of letters, just a program being executed

the left side also has a “TOTAL” that starts at 297 and decreases to 149

the right side has 3 percentages listed that start at 0% and go up to 99% until the first drops back down to 98%

(the first percentage is the first to appear/increase btw)

the screen clears once the 3 listed ones hit 99%*

there’s also a 4th one that goes from 0% to 40% at the bottom right

also this is probably obvious, but the screen flashes yellow whenever smth bad is about to happen**

IT IS REFLECTION. Finally I can stop being so ominous, but the left side gui says “*it is reflection*”!! Right here!! Wth?!?!**

Idk if this is smth significant but I’ve never seen it before in code so

THE BUS STOP (take 2)

the bus station route has 5 stops, ending at the NEW WORLD (03)

the 5 stops seem to be the first 5 letters of the Greek alphabet in lowercase: α β γ δ ε****

y’all can see clearly the signs next to the elevator saying BE PREPARED TO STOP and DETOUR

there’s are two moons: the one on the left is the colour of the sky and is fading, whereas the one on the right is tinted pink/red/purple and has a clear silhouette***

LICENCE PLATES

the plate of the City Jungle bus (w/their signature lion logo) has AD2540*** skip to the end to see my revelation :)

skz’s truck thing has B2Y1017 and a tiger symbol on the driver’s side door

I didn’t come up w/this but 1017 is probably a reference to October 2017, when Hellevator was posted

****if so, then the B2Y could be referencing the Greek letters here, or maybe “Back to You”? maybe that’s how they’re confirming that they’ll go back to the hell elevator or bujakyong i guess lol

connecting to smth I mentioned in my first analysis: the tiger in a Korean legend wasn’t able to persevere and become human, whereas the bear was. Maybe it’s symbolism they couldn’t go on w/o ditching the truck at the end?

RANDOM ROAD TRIP STUFF

(anything that happens while they’re on the truck)

Chan spots smth red in the ground?? (flowers?) but thas real sketchy bc the slowly emptying gas tank is shown right after the screen turns red

this is the only instance of the screen going just red during this mv

Hyunjin gets a solo shot after

Hyunjin’s vs Felix

Felix stands up on the truck and Hyunjin tries to get him to sit down, only to be brushed off by Felix

when Chan did this, Hyunjin didn’t do anything, only get that solo shot

Hyunjin vs Seungmin

I won’t go deep into this bc other people have better theories, but if Hyunjin was worried abt them being watched, then it makes sense that he’d try to stop Felix from making them obvious or getting hurt (which then they’d need to find someone to help him)

the papers on the ground they step on say: new road/elevator, road closed/_min_ _ation_

also Peach pointed out that the older members go to Hyunjin, and the younger ones go to Seungmin owo

when the gui percents reach 99%, they break the gate blocking their way

***as I said before, the screen turns yellow before smth (really) bad happens, but not before the truck tire gets pierced?? (again, maybe they were supposed to ditch the truck???)

the city in the sky

obviously, the city in the sky is the City Jungle, and being in the sky (cloud 9-esque maybe??) keeps them away from the mostly-abandoned Yellow Wood floor

the lightning probably shows the true face of the City Jungle (go figure)

they all run away from search lights? So they were found again, but also how did they end up back here????

THEORIES: the bible, the login, and Reflection

NOTE: the only theory that’s possibly accurate is reflection lol so you can skip down

If you read my previous 2 analyses/note posts, you know I’ve been curious about reflections and Bible references. Admittedly, I don’t think the bible stuff will be as prominent (bc it’s religious), but the reflection stuff will probably be focused on.

THE BIBLE

As I said, this stuff likely isn’t accurate, but it would fit really well if they decide to go this route!! It started with the cross earrings/necklaces in previous comebacks (mainly worn by Hyunjin), the fact Hellevator  is HELLevator, and when skz runs together at 3:18 (in Side Effects), they form a cross, with Hyunjin up front.

I’ve also mentioned some bible verses that I found using numbers in the mvs (note that I use the New International Version to quote anything). Most of the ones were mostly irrelevant though. Other people have brought up in another theory that “AD” on the licence plate AD2540 could reference Anno Domini which could mean this was happening in the future, but I double-checked bible verses again.

Book of Matthew, 25:40 = “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

This section is about the King who has separated his “sheep” (those who have done good) to the right and “goats” (those who haven’t done good) to the left. The king says the sheep have done good things for him, but the sheep say they didn’t do those things to him specifically. This verse is referencing that the king knows they have done good to another person, and therefore him.

Obviously, if this were actually what skz were going for, they probably would’ve referenced the actual verse where the king separates his sheep and goats, but regardless, it does bring up the question: where else have we seen left and right, where one is bad?

We’ve seen it a few times: the two roads taken shown side by side when they take the bus or don’t, the two moons, and possibly skz vs the City Jungle.

THE LOGIN

Hyunjin, the “error” (other people’s posts go more in depth), is a focal point in this mv. We’ve also heard about “glitches” Jisung and Felix. So who can disprove that they’re just in a computer? (Jk but listen)

The yellow gui (and other code screens in Miroh) suggest we’re monitoring them. Or maybe the gui is in Hyunjin’s brain?? But I do know the percentages mirror what skz are doing (when they break the gate at 99%) and the screen goes yellow before smth bad happens (which is usually stuff Hyunjin notices).

There also seems to be an error in the code… idk how to explain this well, but the “error” might actually be planned. (I’ll make another post to clarify.)

REFLECTION

I mentioned in my 1st post that the lineup of skz on the rooftops in Miroh and the Yellow Wood teaser were mirrored, except 2 members switched with the 2 right next to them (Jeongin/Minho switched and Jisung/Hyunjin switched—did Hyunjin become the glitch at that point?). This might be a coincidence since it isn’t exact mirroring.

Anyway, there’s definitely some reference to reflection, because of the yellow gui! It might just be a nod to smth but hm. This is where I just dump some ideas

As I said in the Bible paragraphs, there’s references to left/good and right/bad. So reflection could reference:

people you thought were good are actually bad and vice versa (reference to Hyunjin, Jisung, and Felix maybe?)

the choice that’s on the left is good and the right is bad (getting on the bus was a good choice, which technically it was bc they’re sleeping peacefully) or the other way around

The moon on the right is “bad” (discoloured), but maybe actually the better one once reflected

You can also consider our left is their right, but that’s just confusing lol

Honestly, none of these seem right, but the gui is telling someone (likely just us tho) that smth is being reflected, and maybe not in a good way, since we aren’t seeing things the right way, or we’re seeing the bad parallel.

[wideworldofwhump]

What are your favorite whumpy fic paragraph(s) - either from what you’ve written or what you’ve read?  Feel heartily invited to send me an ask!

Here are several of mine:

Psych:

Where There is Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth by dragonnan Warnings: cannibalism, extreme violence, blood and gore

His eyes stayed on the other man while he created another inch of space between them. Every shuffle away made his throat tighten even more. He wanted to run but all he could manage was another step. And then another. The stairs were only a few feet away now. Shawn's heel rolled over something on the floor and he nearly stumbled – his manacles clinking as he lost traction for several seconds. Falling against the wall, he looked first towards his captor. The giant had stepped deeper into the shadows and was now kneeling – still seeming to be oblivious to the stealthy escape. With impending doom avoided again, Shawn glanced down at what had tripped him up. It was long and rounded with a large knob on one end. A bone. There was no need for a degree in forensics to identify it as human.

He pulled his lips down and swallowed before stepping over the bleached white length. Now, instead of watching Tiny, he kept his eyes fixed on his path. There were more bones scattered nearby. Most appeared to be leg bones, though some shorter ones suggested they'd come from arms. Then he spotted what was clearly a skeletonized foot still strung with tendons. He had to swallow several more times as he moved past the remains.

Shawn jerked at the sudden clatter behind him – pivoting his head and squinting while he simultaneously began to pick up his speed. Tiny still wasn't looking his way but he'd stood once more. Something long hung from his right hand. It looked like a... cleaver.

His heels bumped the bottom stair and he fell backward against the concrete before he managed to spin around and scramble upwards – using hands and feet to tear his way to the top – no longer trying to be silent. His manacles continued to interfere as he slipped on the smoothed edges, rapping knees and shins and only keeping himself from a brutal fall out of desperation. His gasps had a voice as he reached the door and slammed into it – the terrified sobs for breath shaking out in a thin scream as he wrenched at the knob... and found it locked.

Sherlock:

The Tiger and the Shark by dragonnan

Warnings: rape, noncon, violence

“Isn't that an irony, then? Having spent so much time on one side of the microscope to suddenly find you've become the smudge on the slide. I wonder what they'll find under magnification?”

Sherlock clenched his jaw – rounding on his brother only to find that Mycroft, too, had vanished.

The knock that followed jolted a lurch through his middle – though he gave no outward sign of startle. “Come in.” Soft spoken and presenting a far more relaxed state than he'd last exhibited with company – he held close to the wall and faced the door – eyeing the space left open alongside the DI – noting John a bit further back and offering a truly miserable act of nonchalance. The eyes that darted – the fists held tight to his sides – the pacing walk all spoke of a man on the edge of blind fury. A comfort or threat, Sherlock hadn't the time to analyze – though he was aware of the empty swell within when the door began to shut him away.

“Don't-!” His hand shook – outstretched towards the polished wood and glass. He blinked at his shaking fingers – trying to recall when he'd lifted his arm. Lestrade, in rare comprehension, left the door open several inches. No surprise when John edged to within a hand's-breadth – meeting the flitting gaze of his friend. Sherlock nodded, once. Without pause, John slipped into the room – only approaching until Sherlock went stiff. Wordless, he sat in one of the chairs instead – never once speaking.

Rather, he allowed Lestrade to launch into a droning monologue – detailing the pursuit of his captors – their vanishing from the grid expected and of non-information. Clearly they'd prepared for a departure that would avoid interference from Scotland Yard. The monotone sharing became background. If questions were asked, they were unheeded. Sherlock studied the tremor in his fingers and only, truly, returned to the room when the only remaining occupants were himself and John.

His friend sat across from him – bundled hands showing white at the knuckle.

“What do you need, Sherlock?” Sincere – soft – attentive. Well wasn't that just like John Watson – a dichotomy from the man who could likewise be furious, hard, and stubborn. And, in many ways, Sherlock needed all of those sides. He wouldn't settle for less.

His reply, just as soft, carried a thread of something he was not yet ready to face – though the reflected pain in John's eyes showed his attempts at redaction were unsuccessful.

“Take me home...”

Iron Man:

Not the Hero Type by dragonnan

If monsters chased him in the dark he could at least see where to place his feet to run away.

Maybe that was why he hadn't been paying attention. Or, maybe he'd been looking for this. He didn't know. He rarely cataloged his reasons for anything. He fired from the hip and most of the time it struck dead center. But when he missed, oh it was a spectacular miss.

And here he was. Unlikely candidate for a crime that went well beyond the trappings of mundane. Pathetic, perhaps. Laughable, certainly. Painful? Yes. Definitely. If his charm hadn't been enough to boot him from the Super Friends this little encounter would more than suffice for a dishonorable discharge. Worse, even, than that, he'd used up most of his bitching allotment to instant replay the previous evening. Maybe now wasn't the best time to compare and contrast the military's finest man of the American cloth with the washed up husk of occasional alcoholic part time ghost in the machine currently bleeding standard issue B positive on the concrete.

Half his age and twice his height, Stuart Little and Tiny Tim were pawing the trinkets they'd collected from his person after that yellow flag moment minutes ago. They'd gone all out on their little urban Robin Hood cliché too. Their mothers and/or parole officers would be so proud. In addition to the tire iron they'd also managed a suitably dark and litter infested alley. All that was missing were the ra... oh, never-mind. One of the cat sized squeakers was just crawling from the dumpster about six feet downstream.

“Where's the cash?”

Tony lolled his leaking skull left-wise; bringing himself up to speed that one of the fine young gentlemen had wandered back to his side of the alley sometime in the last few... hours? Yeah, that was a concussion.

“That's the-green stuff, right?” Slurring. Kinda took the edge off his response but hopefully the all teeth grin helped it along.

Yup, sure did. Helped it right into a fist planted somewhere to the right of his appendix.

“Umph! Mmm... stellar delivery.” He coughed, noting the flavor of freshly diced liver on his palette. “No, really,” he wheezed, pushing slightly more vertical against his wall. “Watch a lot of Lamont Peterson?” He cocked his head. “Nah, you strike me as more of a Butterbean fan...”

Strike – got it in one as the second wallop emptied lungs and sarcasm but had the satisfaction of a yelp and gouged knuckles as his assailant stumbled backward, staring. Not just a glorified pacemaker and dream chaser, it also slices and dices. Though smoothed and polished for that nonabrasive comfort and style, the casing of his arc reactor was still metal. Very hard and very undentable by human knuckles no matter how large they were. Maybe still lacking in verbal comebacks, Tony still managed a wincing wink through his scrambled gasps.

Doctor Strange:

The High Cost of Dying by dragonnan

“Shit! I told you to watch the door, asshole!”

And look at that, he'd been spotted. So much for trying not to raise a fuss. “Uh... hi.” Jaunty tip of the hand – going for that 'oops, I've just stumbled upon a crime scene; don't mind me, I'm just here for a package of Ding-Dongs' vibe.

Shotgun, who'd been rocking foot to foot, jerked a look over his shoulder before hefting his weapon a bit higher – a bit more threateningly – towards the frozen clerk. “Come one, come on, hurry the fuck up!!”

Handgun, darting attention back and forth between the cash register and the newcomer, jerked his chin and wildly panned his gun up and down.

“Nice tie jewelry. Hand it over! Along with any cash you got and that watch! Now!”

Stephen didn't move. “Yeah... sorry. See, I spent most of my cash on a hot dog and the little I have left is going towards either an orange Fanta or a Raspberry Nestea. I haven't completely decided yet but I'd sorta been counting on some time to browse.”

“I don't give a fuck! Empty your pockets or I put a hole through your fucking head!”

Stephen pursed his lips – mulling that over. The clerk had begun to move, now, jerky pecking at the register keys – stalling, possibly – terrified, definitely. Shotgun hunched his shoulders and checked the door again – gun drifting towards the cold case before re-centering as he focused back on target.

Meanwhile, Handgun took three wide steps forward – finger jabbing at the attractive shiny.

“I said give me that fucking gem, Pops!”

“Or you'll blow a hole in my head – sorry, fucking head – as I believe you'd articulated.” Still no move to follow through with those orders, however, and Handgun seemed to be realizing his threat wasn't as imposing as he'd likely hoped it would be. Shotgun, meanwhile, was snatching the meager afternoon take from the open cash drawer – weapon now aimed at a 90 degree angle towards the flickering fluorescent panels above.

Stephen flexed his fingers, palms outward. “Hey, you kids want to see a magic trick?”

Sweeping his arms in an arc, he conjured double shields; taking the moment of stunned shock to knock Handgun's weapon away with the edge of one burning ring – a follow-up swing taking Shotgun out of the fight with a blow to the back of the head – then spinning back towards Handgun-

Explosive force slammed Stephen down to his knees – golden shields fracturing into sparks. Unarmed, Handgun – mind skittering to the irony of that observation – spun and bolted – door jangling at his hard exit. On the floor, at his back, Shotgun groaned but otherwise didn't move.

A freezing drizzle of sweat made a long streak along Stephen's jaw. He couldn't, quite, seem to catch his breath. He was hunched on his hands and knees but couldn't comprehend the action of standing.

He felt a ripple travel from shoulders to waist – the cloth encasing his torso constricting – shivering mild panic through his chest and he fought not to tear the not-a-cardigan from his body – god, he couldn't breathe! Trying to push himself up, he trembled at the stiff ache throbbing through his midsection. His brain analyzed the symptoms even as he struggled to understand why... he was going into shock. His arms folded beneath him; dropping him to his side and he felt the first real bloom of heat in his back. He couldn't reach it with his hands but he could feel another sensation – wet – and understood, suddenly, what had happened... just not

“How... h-ho-how... what...?”

A shaking, terrified voice responded. “I'm sorry – God I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry! I didn-I didn-I didn't m-mean – please, oh my God, don't die – please don't die – oh my God!”

How to Train Your Dragon:

Asgårdsreia by dragonnan

Leaning forward a little, Hiccup dropped Toothless back towards the waves so that the approaching ship's sails could block out most of the brightness.

With a violent jerk, Hiccup hauled Toothless into a tight arc – breaking away from the ships – heart hammering as a flurry of arrows skimmed so close he could feel the tickle of feathered fletching against his cheek.

“Dragon hunters!” Gods, and he'd nearly flown right into them! Not only that; with the sun at their backs, they'd have seen him well before he'd have been able to recognize them. Stupid!

Toothless weaved and rolled as bolos shot towards them – roaring as one wrapped itself around a back leg. “Come on, buddy, we have to get out of here, now!”

Though the bolo wasn't heavy, the swinging weights hanging below them hampered their flight – Toothless shaking his leg to try to free himself as they grasped towards the clouds. More arrows shot towards them as well as several nets and Hiccup leaned hard to the right – forcing Toothless into a barrel rolling plunge to avoid the attacks.

Hiccup grunted as an arrow shot between his left side and inner arm – slicing a groove just above the gauntlet and nearly striking Toothless in the head. The sting of pain shifted into the background as they rocked hard to the right – then left again – swooping through the spaces between projectiles.

A yell shattered over his teeth as something solid smashed against his left leg.

Toothless immediately began to plunge as all control was lost – their flight a nauseating blur of black and red. Hiccup swallowed and sobbed air – his leg refusing to work the pedal. He unlatched the straps keeping him in the saddle – digging his right hand into pommel as his body lifted up from his seat. Left leg slipping loose from the pedal, fighting the forces pushing him back, he strained towards the dented mechanism.

Only a few meters from the waves, he caught hold of it with two fingers, and pulled!

There was a sharp, belly dropping, whoosh of regaining lost height. Hiccup's body slammed back to the saddle – his upper half in a precarious tilt half off the side where he white knuckled the damaged pedal.

“Go, bud!”

Toothless dodged a few more arrows and flattened out – wings extending as he rapidly picked up speed.

Cowboy Bebop:

Play Me Some More of that Old Blues by dragonnan

Tipping his head back, he stared up into the cobalt sky. There were no more answers above than below. If there was a God up there, he apparently found amusement in continuing this tragic comedy. His hands had stopped shaking, and he looked down at his palms. A small patch of skin on the outside edge of both trigger fingers was roughened; the result of firing handguns too many times. He wondered where his weapons were now.

A shadow covered him, and he glanced up. An old woman stood over him, holding out a single woolong note. “Go ahead, you look like you could use it.” He grimaced, then smiled abashedly, taking the bill. He started to thank her, but felt his throat tighten, cutting off speech. It made no difference; she'd already vanished into the crowd.

Sighing, he gathered his feet under himself. The trip up was a lot harder than the trip down had been. He had to lean against the building for several moments, sweating heavily and panting, while he waited for strength to return to him. Eventually, he pushed away from his support, forcing his wasted limbs to carry him onward.

Twenty minutes of struggle found him gasping under the shade of an awning. His thoughts had managed to solidify during his wavering walk, and the sequence of his former life played before him like a scratchy film. There was no sound, for he refused to hear it just now. Instead he saw only the grainy images of people he'd once known, and in a state of drunkenness, would have referred to as friends.

His eyes darkened as their faces were replaced by a flash of liquid light, reflections off a length of steel. The eyes that had always seemed cold, even when they were comrades, now glowed with the red anger of insanity. The voice burst in his head before he could stop it.

“Why don't you just DIE!”

He grasped his head, as if doing so could repress the memory. He'd known it was over then. Hell, he'd known it was over that day, that day he'd first seen her. Maybe there'd still been something of optimism in him; yeah, even that late in the game. Three strikes and you're out, right? Strike one; he meets the woman of his dreams. Strike two; the woman of his dreams happens to be the girlfriend of his best buddy. Strike three; his best buddy finds out. A bad situation for anyone, but a lot worse if the people involved happen to belong to a high profile syndicate. Even so, he'd thought, he'd hoped…

“I'm leaving… I want you to come with me…”

Blood and ashes, all that remained of that dream. His eyes tracked the movements on the street. So far, no one had even noticed him. Well, that hadn't changed from before. He'd had a habit of going unnoticed until he wanted to be seen.

A burning pain in his gut reminded him that the last meal he could remember eating had probably been a plate of sautéed bell peppers. How many lifetimes had passed since then?

He felt in his pocket for the money card, and found the woolong bill instead. Well, shouldn't let that go to waste!

Forty-five minutes later, he leaned on one arm against the side of a wall and retched violently. No solid foods, he'd forgotten that, and his intestines now felt like they were crawling into the back of his throat. But, God, those carnitas had tasted so good! His stomach jumped again and he heaved, nearly collapsing with the sudden wave of exhaustion. Pushing away from the wall, he tripped over a crumpled box and nearly lost his footing. He opened his mouth to curse, but the words were high-pitched and reedy. He clenched his teeth instead.

With his stomach voided he felt weak, and saw that his hands were trembling again. It had been over an hour since he left the… what had that place been anyhow? Shaking his head, and regretting the motion, he sat down on the box that had nearly tripped him up a few moments ago. An unfamiliar sensation was washing through him while he sat on his box. Always, always before he'd had a goal. Granted, that goal had cost him dearly, but it had been something. Since he'd left the syndicate, all he'd wanted was to recapture that moment of perfection he'd found with her. He never wanted to face down his enemies, had never wanted to meet for that final bloody showdown. Yet, it seemed… he shook his head. He never believed in destiny, fate, or any of that `profound' crap. What happened, happened. And now, it seemed, his survival had happened… again.

Supernatural:

The Big Stink by dragonnan

He wasn't sleeping. Typically, he logged a good four hours, which was better than average compared to most of the guys in his trade. But that had been before. And before. And a lot before.

Alcohol; handy shut off valve, it usually gave his bed times a soupy sorta blank. If he had nightmares, they were the old and familiar. But lately... lately it seemed his chosen sleep aid was closer to sugar water. Any spirits the bottle contained seemed to flow right out of the glass and into his brain; all sorts of herpy-derpy haunting going on. Enough times waking up in damp linens with Sam giving him that tetchy constipated Gomer look.

He smacked his lips and flinched at the rotting elk flavor. Dear God, it was actually worse!

“Holy fucking shit.” He moaned before ripping free of the bed and high stepping across Sam's mattress, and Sam, on his way to the bathroom. Forget the brush, he snatched the Crest and creamed his mouth with a third of the tube.

While he was busy moving the thick paste around his teeth, Sam shuffled through the door and made for the toilet.

“Told you to lay off the bourbon last night.”

“Ish nah the ruh-run!” Dean spit the first mouthful as Sam flushed; grimacing at the tube in disgust.

“Dude, what the hell sorta shitpaste is this anyhow?”

Sam snatched the tube away and fished out his toothbrush. “Still got that funny taste?”

“What do you think?” Opening his mouth wide, Dean leaned in close to the mirror; hanging his tongue out while he tried to see the back of his throat.

Sam watched from the corner of his eye as he brushed – raising his eyebrows as Dean pulled his lips up from his teeth. While Sam rinsed and spit, Dean left the bathroom in search of something more astringent than mint.

The aforementioned bourbon bottle was crowded for space on the little table between their beds. Barely an inch left at the bottom, Dean polished it off and then nearly gagged at the corrosive taste explosion. “Oh, hell, no you did not...”

“I didn't what?” Sam wandered from the bathroom towards the half fridge. Nothing in there but yesterday's pizza, so pizza for breakfast it was.

“What did you put in here? This tastes like week old skunk piss!”

“You probably have a cold, Dean. Messes with your tastebuds sometimes. Look, we'll pick up some Sudafed this afternoon and you'll be fine.”

A little too relaxed about the whole thing, if Dean hadn't been there to see it happen he'd swear his brother's soul hadn't made it back into his body. Touchy subject, that one. Not that Dean made a habit of dodging touchy subjects unless it was his touchy subjects. God that sounded dirty.

“Breakfast?”

He turned his head; tasting the fog of foul that turned right along with him. Sam was holding out a slice of cold Meat Lover's with extra bacon. Dean's throat bobbed in warning and he cut to the right without a word.

A second later, the delicate sound of gagging drifted from the open bathroom.

[2022-504chloeharrington]

Final Type Specimen Booklet

Pg 1 (Front Cover)

For my cover page I wanted it to be minimal and showcase the name of the typeface. I played with the weights and placements of each letter to give it this fun and unique play on a blackletter inspired typeface.

Pg 2-3 (Type Designer)

Pg 4-5 (Glyphs+Vowels)

For this page I wanted to included the entire Grenze Character set as it is a typeface with a large range of glyphs. I then decided to display the vowels on page 3 as it relates back to the character set of letters. The unique placement of the vowels display them with a visually appealing aspect as well as merging them into page 2. This also makes the spread flow rather than seen as two seperate pages.+

Pg 6-7 (Date Created+Quote)

This spread has been kept fairly minimal with information and detail. Page 4 displays the year that the Grenze typeface was published. This challenged me with my use of grids and rulers to line everything up perfectly but it was a good skill to practice. The quote on page 5 has the same tints as page 4 which help the spread flow as one page. I also though if i were going to colour one page with a pattern it felt only right to make the next page simplistic.

Pg 8-9 (SDL)

This page showcases how well the Grenze typeface works in other languages. The heavy weight type gives a really strong and empowering feeling when reading it. I also liked the incorporation of glyphs and lines in this spread.

Pg 10-11 (Monogram)

This double page spread shows off the monogram I had created for my type specimen booklet. I centred this slightly to the left as I wanted the right side to have more empty space creating a focal point for the monogram. This also allowed the subheading to have breathing room without being crowded with assets.

Pg 12-13 (Weights/size + Numbers)

I wanted to test my skills in this page with the use of working with many components in a small area. This spread was one of my most enjoyable ones to create as I haven’t got any other spreads similar and the design is something I always see around but never have created one myself.

Pg 14-15 (Weights)

This page was a helpful spread for me to create as it showed me all the weights in one page. So if i was every tossing between what weight of text I should select I would look back at this spread to give me a slight indication.

Pg 16-17 (Alphabet)

I really like how simple this spread is yet how contrasting all the components are. I purposely made all the elements the tints they are to create a focal point for the spread.

Pg 18-19

This was based on displaying different type sizes  with the Black weight. I decided to write the type size as it allows readers to be able to put size into perspective. This would be extremely helpful for other designers if they were curious what size was used incase they were doing a similar project.

Pg 20-21 (Paragraphs)

For this spread, I decided to display what the Grenze font looks like paragraphs with different weights. 

Pg 22-23 (SDL)

This spread was a task that we were to complete in class in our first few weeks of starting this assessment. It was a challenging task for me but it allowed me to further my skills and learn more about the Maori language/culture.

Pg 24-25 (type anatomy)

I wanted this spread to solely just focus on the type anatomy hence the placement of the typography. The subtle typography thats created a pattern in the background brings more detail to the spread without taking anything away from the main focus.

Pg 26-27

I wanted my references page to be fairly minimal as it is next to a striking page. If i was to do a more pattern type reference page it would clash and be difficult to read.

Pg 28 (Back Cover)

For this page I ket it minimal with the one typeface asset centred in the middle. I like how it gradually gets more vivid, creating the focal point of the page.

[ellipsesarefun]

FOR @konaharts​ !!!!! This is my pinch hit for @keitorexchange​ event!!!

Hope you enjoy this??? kinda my first time to do a keitor huhu please go easy on me

  Prince Lotor has one of the most outstanding albums of the year and Keith has yet to buy one. Word around the gossip mongers, though, say that Prince Lotor himself will be arranging his first private concert in the nearest mall right across the music store Keith works at. Additionally, anyone who signs up and wins a private concert ticket also gets a signed copy of P. Lotor's latest album (plus, if anyone's feeling lucky, a selfie with P. Lotor himself). 

And no, he's not that excited like his friends claim he is. He definitely hasn't stared at the sign up page every time he's on break and no he definitely wasn't checking his phone for any notifications. Not at all. 

"You definitely are." Pidge teases him and he flinches at the use of a present tense while stacking a pile of music records at the corner of the store, "Just listening to you rave about him with those adorable sparkling violet eyes of yours for hours on end is already a nuisance." 

Keith shoots his mouth open but Pidge shushes him with her complaint, "I can't even do my homework around you!" His cheeks pooled when he eyes her quirked lips and gleaming eyes. 

"First of all, my eyes don't sparkle." Keith shoot her a bland look as he careful places the last stack of records, "Second of all, I haven't been talking about him-"

"Raving. About it him, Keith." Pidge corrects, Cheschire grin in place, "Raving."

"For that long, Pidge." He continues on as though she hasn't opened her blasted mouth, "Not that long." He crosses his arms over his chest. Pidge's giggles burst into guffaws. 

"Sure," she stutters through her laughter, "Tell yourself that." She pauses and then the same gleaming smile shines back on. "Fan boy." 

He grumbles a sigh and turns back to the list of things he has to do today. Why is he friends with her again? And why is she here again? He rolls his eyes and checks his phone for a small email notification bell and was met with only a lockscreen of P. Lotor's latest album photo. His friend caught the image as well, responding a not-so-subtle sharp arch of an eyebrow and a dry expression.

He knows what's coming and prepares himself for the mockery that'll be thrown his way but jolts to a stop when a Ping! from his mobile phone caught his attention. His eyes swoop down and widen at the email notification. Immediately, he swipes his password, opens his mail and-

Congratulations! 

You've won!

Hey Keith Kogane,

Congratulations, you've won a private concert with the one and only talented Prince Lotor, along with a signed copy of his latest album, 'Vrepit Za!' Selfies and pictures are permitted by the given guidelines (see page 2 on guidelines). You are allowed to bring at the maximum of three guests. Send a message through this number xx-xxx-xxxx for us to let you know when and where to claim your ticket! Have a great day!

 There's a hitch in his breath and a thump in this heart before his head suddenly bursts into squeals for joy as his hands shake at the and the muscles on his cheeks ache for a blinding smile. He was so wrapped up in his own euphoria that he almost forgets that a certain presence is still in this room. Almost. His teeth wrench his lower lip to stop the smile. 

"So who're you bringing with?" Pidge asks from behind and by now he knows that she's playfully batting her eyelashes. Pfft 

He turns around with a curl on his lips and a gleam in his eyes and says, "Who else?" Pidge beams and cracks a grin at him.

"Awesome!" She says as they clasp their palms together, "I'll be there as punctual as possible!" Of course she'll be early. "And I'll call up Lance and Hunk too!" ...And of course Lance is coming. Hunk is tame and he can handle Pidge, but Lance? He'll never hear the end of Lance's teasing. He shakes his head. 

"Anyways," Pidge slings her bag over her shoulder, "I gotta go! Try not to embarrass yourself!" Before he could form a comeback she aims a punch on his shoulder and when he finally does find one (because, come on, it's Lance is the one who should try not to embarrass himself), she's already sauntering of to wherever. Probably something to do with that new robot she, Hunk, and Lance have been scheming and building for the past couple months now.  

When he's finally left alone, he breaks down his barriers and lets a smile fall on his face. He lifts his phone and looks to the email he received. No matter how many times he reads through the paragraph word per word, line per line, he still could not believe his luck.  

He has so much to prepare.

 +++

 He has little to prepare at all. He's only going to bring his wallet, ID's and what not but nothing academic of the sort.  

Still.

It's the fifth time he's checked himself in the mirror and he's not satisfied. Slightly rustled hair, accompanied with a tiny eyeshadow and stoic mien to mask his blazing excitement, along with plain red t-shirt that says "May the 4th be with you" and simple black jeans and sneakers isn't going to cut it. Maybe he needs more gel to flatten his tousled hair? Maybe the shirt's too much (but this is the fifth shirt he's changed)? Or maybe-

 "Stop thinking about it so much." Pidge pesters him from his seat by the desk with a nudge on the shoulder, "Another wardrobe change is going to mess your closet and I'm not going to be the one who's going fix it!" He parts his lips but she shushes him once again This is happening too often. 

"And no need to change your underwear," she pesters him some more as she throws his favorite underwear at his face until all he can see is light-sabers on a blue background, "No one's going to know your little secret."

He daintily takes the underwear off his face and slowly sets it on the table, as though his own blunt nails can rip through the threads, and glowered at her. "Can you not?" He says, fiddling the edge of his shirt and patting his hair. Unmitigated by his annoyance, she smiles.

"I can and I will." She replies, that same gleaming smile on her face, "I'm going down and meet with the others." Pidge stands up and pats him on the shoulder more than once and he falls for the bait, batting her hands away. She's already by the door before he can make a quip and she flashes one last giggle at her overly tense friend. 

"Don't take too long!!' She reminds him and she slips out of the door before he can bang it on her face. Once her footsteps fade, he grunts to himself and checks his phone for the nth time. It's five minutes till six in the evening and the concert won't start until it's seven. Seems like he's got time but every tick of the clock counts and he's losing bit by bit of this safety net. 

He heaves a sigh. It doesn't abate his nervousness but his excite hasn't waned in a moment, instead it multiplied to thousands. He's meeting his favorite artist today. Today. Today.  

"KEITH LET"S GO." Right. Yes. Going. He's finally going. With friends. Oh quiznack. 

"Coming!" He yells from his room as he rummages his things in a small slingbag. He hastily fixes his shoelaces and he gives himself one more look at the mirror before zooming down the stairs and out of his apartment where his friends are grinning like mad and greeting him with a tease and a pat on the back.

 It took fifteen minutes for them to arrive due to a heavy traffic along the highway and limited parking space but he's glad to have sometime to compose himself (and he's also silently grateful for Hunk offering to drive them all there even when he's been poking at him by playing P. Lotor's album on the radio the whole ride here). The four of them decide on a place to eat and settled for a semi-empty restaurant with fair enough food. 

By the time they've packed up to leave, it's already fifteen minutes till seven. Keith restrains himself from brisk walking. Part of him wants to dash out of the mall and find a cab to drive him back but Pidge, of course, somehow notices and grasps his hand and pulls him along, their paces doubled. Lance and Hunk follow on beside him, and Keith has no where to escape. Great.  

They walk past a couple of stores, turned right, and before Keith comprehends, they're all standing in front of the glass doors of a studio, the view obstructed by black paper. Pidge releases him from her hold and she knocks on the glass door. No one had to wait long and then they're all inside, sitting on comfy velvet couch and drinking cool ice teas offered by the staff. They're all facing a mini stage, with the whole set of instruments and the like and a closed door to the right.

 And then suddenly, that door opens and Prince Lotor comes in along with his other friends. Prince Lotor. PRINCE LOTOR. In high ponytail, black turtleneck, ripped jeans, and black boots. Prince Lotor. He feels as though his heart has collided with a brick wall and he stops his mental screaming for a moment of breath. 

"Hello everyone!" The familiar satin and sulky voice he's heard in those albums greets them with a saccharine smile, "Welcome to the private concert! How are you all?" His friends throw a hoot while Keith offers a shy smile. Lotor's beaming yellow eyes flit from face to face until it lands on Keith. His smile stretches to a full grin.

"Who here is Keith?" Lotor asks, keeping his gaze on Keith. He stills his body from fidgeting when his friends blatantly point at him. For some unknown reason, Lotor pulls a charming grin (then again, everything about him is just so charming) and stretches out a hand.

"Hello Keith," He greets him, and he can't refrain his own smile from stretching any wider nor his cheeks from blushing into a rose pink color. Keith replies with a small nod and takes the hand offered to him. He lets himself linger at the calloused feel of Lotor's skin before letting go a few ticks later. Dazed, Keith blinks the moment away while Lotor introduces his friends: Acxa, Ezor, Zethrid, and Narti. Ezor rushes, blazing in pink long fringes and pink-black ensemble, to them with an enthusiastic hug, immediately reintroducing herself ("Nice to meet you all!"). Zethrid follows up with an iron grip handshake while Acxa and Narti politely wave.

The events turn towards everyone greeting everyone with waves, gestures, or even some flirtatious marks (Lance). Lotor initiates the conversation first by asking how their day went (pretty chill, for a Saturday, exams just finished), what they do for a living (they're all students with part-time jobs), and anything mundane. They bond over food, with Hunk sharing his kitchen hacks and Ezor and Zethrid supplying with a combination of their favorite dishes. The conversation drags on to other random topics before Lotor interjects between a debate on a TV series, asking Keith what song would he like to play while flashing another one of those saccharine smiles.

Keith ignores the flame heating his cheeks and suggests, "Your favorite." He swears that Lotor's eyes soften at that. He watches his favorite musician sit on the chair by the mini stage. Lotor places a guitar on his lap and a foot on the guitar footstool as though he's following his muscle memory. There's a pause where Lotor lets his eyelids fall to a close and he breathes for several ticks until his fingers move in tandem.

Keith hasn't seen much of Lotor playing the guitar, not even through past live concerts he's watched through GalraTube. He hasn't heard this song, either, not from the previews in the GalraTube or anywhere else. It's different from any of the songs of the recent album because while they're fast-paced and techno, this one feels like he's on a slow drive accross the sunset with the wind kissing his face. Mesmerized, Keith lingers on the fingers dancing across the fretboard as Lotor's silky voice carries with his right fingers tiptoeing on the strings in a melancholic lullaby.  

The tune spins in his head with memories of his own past, the ones longed buried now dredged up to the surface. He feels like he's floating on an ocean full of emotions he never wanted to revisit. They ripple through his thoughts over and over and then he gasps at his eyes welling up with tears. He blinks once, letting them streak down on his cheeks. By the end of the bridge, he wipes his face, unbeknownst to him that Hunk is doing the same.

This is the side of Lotor's music Keith's never delved into before. It's as though he's touched his heart in an intimate way. He muses if Lotor would ever produce this music live but his train of thought stops when Lotor ends his music with one last strum. There was that same pause again, where the song has ended yet the feelings linger as residue. And then everyone gives a round of applause.

 "That was beautiful." praised Acxa.

 "I just..." Hunk bawled into tears again.

 The others around him clapped and gave their own sentiments. Keith finds his gaze intertwined with Lotor's once again. The corners of his amber eyes crinkled as Lotor wordlessly winks at Keith's direction. Keith gleams another shy smile in return and then he turns away and hovers his glass over to his lips. No one catches them except, well, Pidge. She shoots him a knowing look before returning to her conversation with Zethrid and Narti.

Lotor continues playing for awhile, indulging his own covers of his favorite artists as well as his music from his recent album, Vrepit Za, and music from his past albums. Zethrid and Narti harmonize on some occassions, making silly faces and over-the-top voices. Lance also has his own share of spotlight, only as a means to humor everyone.

 When the last music cover ends, it's already past eight by fifteen minutes and everyone decides to wander around the mall. Zethrid, Acxa and Hunk hop over to the nearest bakery store while Narti, Pidge and Lance saunter off to the hardware store for their robot schema. Keith, on the other hand, is idly eyeing the music sheets in one of his favorite music stores a few minutes away from the studio they left.

 "Looking for something?" He jerks at the charming voice behind him. Lotor's smile invites his own as the music artist walks to stand beside Keith. He tears his dazed look away from Lotor and instead continues roaming the collection of music sheets.

 "Not really." He replies, casting a quick side glance at Lotor for less than a minute and then he's back again idly naming the records in his head, "There are some I don't have in my collection at home but I'm not interested in."

 "If there's something you'd like to try, let me know." Lotor states his offer, flashing him a wink. He saunters past Keith, brushing shoulders as he touch so Keith responds with a quirk of an eyebrow and a small curl on his lips. He follows.

 Keith begins another conversation again, praising Lotor for the first music he performed earlier. Lotor shares his insights and inspirations for the music, saying it's a personal piece for his family and Keith shares his sentiments earlier. Gradually, breaks away from his own aweness about Lotor and they begin to goof about over classical music.

They continue on amidst the slight crowd of people, knowing that it's already two hours before the mall closes, until they settle themselves outside by the park, where the full moon bares witness to them all and only a flicker of a few blinking balls of light can be seen from below. Keith and Lotor flip past the mundanity of their lives as they converse over their lives of then, now and the future. Of friends and embarrassing snippets. Of lovers and lamentations.

Unfortunately, their conversation was cut short by their friends hollering from afar. Soon, the mall would eventually have to close (as well as the park they're staying at) and there would be no place to sit. Keith, however, doesn't mind.

"I had a great time today."

"As do I."

Because at the end of the night, he got something more than the signed copy of P. Lotor's album, and that was a piece of his music still singing in his heart (plus his personal mobile number and a kiss on the cheek). Definitely worth it.

[csigirl3137]

Pairing: Sam x Ofc

Warning: Angst, bad memories, some fluff,

Word Count: 5,356

Authors note:  So, this is my first time posting one of my Spn fics on tumblr and I’m only posting the first chapter just to feel out what people think of it I guess, also because I want to share it. There is more to it than just the one chapter, but I’m just posting the one as an experiment. So, if you read it, lemme know what you think.

AU where Sam and Jessica don’t ever meet, instead he meets the OFC at college and is fascinated with her. Also they’re both hunters but don’t know the other is a hunter until Dean basically spills the beans.

Chapter 1: Angel

Sam walked into the campus library and sat down at an empty table, pulling his laptop and a thermos full of coffee out of his backpack he got set up to work on a research project for his civil defense class. The girl sitting at the table next to his caught his attention for some reason. From what he could see of her, she wasn’t that remarkable. Brown hair pulled up into a bun with a few stray pieces falling out of it. She was wearing jeans, boots, a black tee shirt and a red flannel over it. He didn’t know what it was about her, but he felt an undeniable attraction to her. She was buried in her work and he didn’t want to bother her so he tried to ignore what he was feeling.

Despite burying himself in his research, Sam caught himself glancing over at the girl at regular intervals. He was pretty sure that the caught him doing it once or twice.

“Ah fuck.” He groaned rubbing his hands over his face. “Focus Sam, Focus.” Taking a big swig of his coffee, Sam tried hard to focus again, but his brain wasn’t cooperating. His thoughts just kept going back to the girl. He decided to do a little investigating to see what she was working on and maybe if that’s what was drawing him to her, it wouldn’t hurt to maybe sneak a peek over her shoulder at her computer screen. He did need a book from the shelf by her table anyways.

Standing up he walked at a slower than normal pace behind her to glance over at her computer screen. He realized she was aware of his presence when she stiffened. He glanced quickly at her computer and realized she was researching ghosts of campus. Maybe he could use that as his excuse to sit down and talk to her, as ghosts, were kind of his hobby. He grabbed his book, and tried to work up the nerve to sit down and talk to her. He could fight ghosts and demons but talking to girls was where he stalled up.

He walked back to her table, grabbed the chair next to her and sat down, setting his book on the table as he did so. He could tell that it surprised her. She pulled one of the headphones she had in, out of her ear and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Um… are you lost?” She asked. Sam smiled and laughed.

“Is that how you greet everyone? Or just men?” He wasn’t even sure where that came from but he figured it was okay. She hadn’t punched him yet.

“I greet most people that way.” She replied as she removed a hand from her computer, and Sam watched her slide it to her hip where he noticed the telltale bulge of a knife handle. One on each hip to be exact. It brought up some questions in Sam’s head but then again, she was a college girl, and a very pretty one at that. She had a heart shaped face, chocolate brown hair (which was currently pulled up in a bun on top of her head). Her chocolate brown eyes were visible behind her black glasses. His gaze ventured down to her soft pink pouty mouth that he’d love to kiss.

Wait, where did that thought come from? He wasn’t sure, but maybe it’d been too long since he’d had a girlfriend, or even been with a girl. The girl cleared her throat, jolting him out of his thoughts.

“What do you want?” She asked, her hand resting more firmly on the hilt of her knife. Sam decided to ignore it until he could address it after getting to know her better.

“I couldn’t help but notice as I walked by that you’re researching the…” He made quotation marks with his fingers, “ghosts of campus. Researching the paranormal is kind of my personal hobby.” He held out a hand. “I’m Sam Winchester.”

“I’m Angelique Farmer. Everyone calls me Angel.” She smiled as she removed her hand from the hilt of her knife, obviously feeling more at ease with him, and shook his hand. Sam felt butterflies start up in his stomach as her hand touched his and he swore he felt a spark.

“So, why are you researching campus ghosts?” Sam asked. Angel shrugged.

“You might think this is stupid, but I think my apartment building is haunted. So I was going to try to figure out who was haunting it, maybe to see why they were haunting the building.” She said. Sam was surprised by that. Most people would have just moved out of the building rather than pursuing the whole ghost issue. Apparently angel could read the surprise on his face because she had a reply.

“I’m kind of a ghost buff.” She said in way of explanation. He nodded.

“It’s always nice to meet a fellow ghost buff.” Sam smiled at her, his blue/green eyes meeting her chocolate colored ones. His throat felt tight, so he cleared it. “So, have you, a, have you found any potential candidates?” Angel turned her computer towards him.

“Just one so far. Ivy Rose Maddigan. Apparently she lived in a house there until 1919. That house stood where my apartment building stands now.” Angel highlighted a paragraph to bring it to Sam’s notice. “It says she hung herself in the attic after finding out that her fiancé had been unfaithful during the war.”

“That could be why she’s haunting that place. You know that ghosts usually are bound to one place and if…” He was interrupted by Angel.

“If she died there then she’d be tied to that place and possibly could be a vengeful spirit.” Angel’s eyes lit up and she turned her attention back to the computer screen and Sam saw a brief flash of panic cross her face after she said vengeful spirit. It spiked his curiosity but he wasn’t going to address it at this moment. While she was focused on the computer screen, Sam took that opportunity to look her over more closely. From what he could see of her bare skin, she had a lot of scars. His attention was drawn to 4 particularly vivid scars on her neck. They were 4 scars, evenly spaced, and they looked suspiciously like claw marks.

Sam shook his head. He had to get that out of that hunter mentality. There was no way they were claw marks.

“What’s wrong?” Angel asked raising an eyebrow at him. Sam’s attention snapped back to her.

“Oh nothing. Just had a crick in my neck.” He rubbed his neck.  “So, Angel, would you maybe, like some help with research on this Ivy Rose Maddigan?” Sam asked, not trying to be too forward, but something about this girl intrigued him and he wanted to get to know her better and wanted to spend time with her.

Angel looked at the tall gangly guy next to her. She figured he had to have been at least over six feet tall, he had shaggy brown hair, and his eyes, well, she couldn’t tell if they were green or blue or gray. They seemed to change every time her eyes met his. He was cute, and he seemed genuinely interested in what she’d been working on. He was super cute too. Why he’d been talking to her, or even looking at her, she wasn’t sure, but she was just going to enjoy his attention while it lasted, because it was likely he wouldn’t keep his attention on her for long.

She glanced at her watch. It was 1:45. She had class at 2, and she needed to get going.

“Well, Sam, I’d love to stay and talk to you, but I have class at 2, and I really need to get going.” She closed her laptop and put the lid back on her thermos of coffee, sliding both back into her backpack as she stood up. Sam stood up too, towering over her. Good lord he had to be at least a foot taller than her.

“Well, let me walk you to class and we can talk more about it on the way! Give me just one sec to put this book back on the shelf.” Sam bounded over to the book shelf, replacing the book back in its original spot. Angel couldn’t help but think how much of a giant puppy he looked like. She zipped up her backpack and buttoned up her flannel because it was a bit chilly outside, as Sam closed his laptop and put his thermos of coffee in his backpack. He tossed it on his back and zipped up his coat. Angel shook her head and wondered why in the hell that this cute guy was interested in her and it was making her kind of uncomfortable. Hell, people in general made her uncomfortable.

“Is there anything I can say to deter you?” Angel asked and Sam could tell that she wasn’t exactly comfortable with people, but he was more determined than ever to make her comfortable with him.

“So, what class are you going to?” Sam asked as he slid his hands into his coat pockets, trying to match his long strides with her short ones.

“I’m headed to Criminal Psychology.” She replied as her chocolate colored eyes met his again. Sam felt butterflies start up in his stomach again. Good lord, what was it about this girl that got to him?

“Criminal Psychology?” He asked, his interest in her growing.

“Yeah, I want to become a criminal profiler so I’m double majoring in Criminal Justice and Psychology.” She replied as she pulled a pack of gum out of her pocket and popped a piece in her mouth. “Want a piece?” She asked offering the pack to Sam. The smell of peppermint wafted up to meet Sam’s nose and he happily accepted the offer.

“Thanks,” He said unwrapping the gum and popping it into his mouth.

“Your welcome.” Angel closed the gum and put the pack back in her pocket. “My class is here,” Angel pointed at the building they were walking up too.

“Oh, Ellchester hall, I have some of my prelaw classes here.” Sam stopped walking and turned to face Angel.

“I think a lot of the criminal justice or law related classes are in this building.” She replied as she started walking up to the doors of the building.

“That would make sense.” Sam replied. “So… what time are you done with class?” He asked. Angel raised an eyebrow as he opened the door to the building for her.

“Why do you want to know?” She asked cautiously. Sam sighed, knowing that it was going to take a while to get Angel to trust him as he followed her inside.

“Well, if I’m going to be completely honest Angel… it’s because I’m interested in learning more about you and your fascination with the paranormal. I was going to ask you if you wanted to get something to eat and maybe we could do some more research together on the ghost haunting your building.” Sam smiled gently as they walked down a hall towards the class room at the end of the hall. He felt a sense of triumph when he saw her visibly relax again. Angel shook her head.

“Well… it seems like I won’t be getting rid of you any time soon will I?” She asked. Sam shook his head. “Well, then, what the hell, I don’t have any friends and I guess you gotta trust someone.” She cracked a half smile. “I get done with class at 4.”

“Alright. I will see you at 4.” Sam rocked back on his heels as something unspoken hung in the air between them. Angel seemed to be hesitating in going into the class room.

“See ya.” She glanced at her watch, then stepped into the class room. As the door closed, Sam got the sudden urge to yank it open and grab her out of her seat and kiss her like there was no tomorrow… Where had that come from? Shaking his head, he turned and headed out of the building back towards the library.

 * * * * * * * * * *

 Angel sat down in her usual spot in the back of the room, closest to the door. She was always making sure she was as near as possible to an exit. Most people would call it paranoia, but with the line of work she’d been in for the last 8 years, it was called survival. Pulling her laptop out of her bag, she tried to focus on what Professor Caroline was saying but her mind wandered back to the tall handsome man who had just entered her life. What on earth had possessed her to say she’d meet him later? She didn’t know what it was but she’d felt an instant attraction to him the minute he’d stood up and walked behind her. He seemed like a kind and gentle person, and he seemed genuinely interested in what she’d been researching. A lot of people might have called her crazy. But he seemed to share her fascination with the paranormal. At least that was one thing they had in common. His face drifted back into her mind. Good lord he was handsome. She had never really had a chance to focus on guys when she was hunting and now that she was at college… well… maybe she could?

‘Is it possible?’ She thought. ‘Could I have a normal life? Be a normal college girl with a boyfriend? Have a normal life?’ She wasn’t sure. But maybe Sam Winchester was just the one to help her have that normal life.

‘But what if it’s not possible? What if you get attached to him and he gets hurt? What if one of those things that go bump in the night comes after you? Would you be able to forgive yourself if he got hurt and it was your fault? Could you live with that? The guilt?’ The voice that angel called her “nasty thought voice” resounded in her head. She squished the thoughts down. She was away from the life now. She had packed up most of her hunting stuff. She was a normal girl. She would be a normal girl, and if anything even remotely resembling a supernatural threat to Sam appeared, she’d leave and he’d be safe. That is what she promised herself. She’d made up her mind. She was finally going to give herself a chance to have a normal life and happiness.

Angel half expected Sam to have changed his mind and decide he didn’t want anything to do with her, so she was pleasantly surprised when she walked out of the class at 4 and he was leaning against the hallway wall, waiting for her.

“Wow. You actually showed.” The awe was obvious in her voice. Sam cracked a teasing smile.

“You didn’t think I was going to show?” He asked, pushing himself off the wall to fall into step with her as they walked towards the exit of the building.

“I really didn’t. Most people run screaming the other direction after even just a five minute conversation with me.” Angel pushed the door open and they stepped outside into the brisk fall wind. She shivered, wishing that she’d worn a thicker flannel that day. But she’d been in a hurry and forgot to grab her flannel jacket. Sam noticed her shiver and because he was wearing a long sleeve under a tee, under a flannel, he gently laid his hand on her shoulder, guiding her off the sidewalk out of the way of traffic as he set his backpack on the ground and took his jacket off.

“What are you doing?” Angel asked.

“Here.” Sam held his jacket out to her. She gave him a confused look. “You shivered. You’re cold. Take my jacket. I have more layers on than you and I run hot anyways.” He felt pleasure bubble up in his chest as she took the jacket, and after setting her backpack on the ground with his, put it on. Somehow, even though his jacket was twice the size of her, it just looked right on her.  

“Well…” She zipped up the jacket and looked at him with a twinkle in her eye. “You really are the gentleman.” She grabbed her backpack off the ground and handed him his. “Let’s go. I’m hungry. I want a bacon cheeseburger from the Pub.” She said walking towards the building that housed the campus sports bar and grill (The Pub).

“You remind me of my brother Dean.” Sam chuckled as they started walking. “His favorite foods are bacon cheeseburgers and pie. Not necessarily in that order.”

“He sounds like someone I could get along with.” Angel laughed. Sam slid his hands into his pockets and felt a sense of happiness wash over him. He could tell that something in Angel had relaxed, some wall that she’d had up had come down. He wasn’t sure what it was but she seemed completely comfortable around him now. That was a drastic change. He was quite happy about it.  

“So, how was your class?” Sam asked pulling open the door to their student center.

“Well, I’m sure it was interesting, but I couldn’t focus very much… so I might have to get the notes from someone else. It’s no big deal.” Angel shrugged as she unzipped his jacket, not needing it now that they were inside a warm building. She tried to give it back to him.

“Any specific reason you couldn’t focus?” Sam asked, daring to hope that maybe her answer would be, she couldn’t focus because of him. But it was too soon for that.

“I was more focused on my little ghost problem. It’s something I’m really very curious about. I did a little more research on her. Also, here’s your jacket, thanks.” She handed it back to him but he just shook his head.

“Keep it. You might need it again.” He winked at her as she smiled and folded it over her arm. They walked up to the order counter to place their order. Sam glanced at the menu while Angel ordered.

“I’ll take a Double bacon cheeseburger meal with fries a side of barbeque and a Dr. Pepper.” The girl at the register punched in Angel’s order as she rattled it off and then totaled it up.

“That’ll be ten dollars and fifty cents.” The cashier said. Angel nodded as she reached into her back pocket and pulled out a slim black men’s wallet. She gave the cashier a ten dollar bill and two quarters. She handed them to the cashier in exchange for her receipt and a plastic number.

“I’ll go find a table.” Angel said as Sam stepped up to order his food. He nodded and she walked away.

She stepped away from the counter and looked for an empty table, her every instinct telling her to find a table nearest to the door. But she repressed that and instead chose a booth in the far corner of The Pub, farthest from the door. She took her backpack off as she slid into the booth. She chose the side that was facing the door so she could see everyone, and or everything that came in and out. Sure she was making compromises, but she still couldn’t be too careful. She’d been in the hunting life way too long to let her guard down that easy.  She spotted Sam coming. It wasn’t too hard to pick him out of the crowd as he towered over everyone and everything around him.

“Nice spot.” He commented as he sat down across from her. She nodded and her eyes were drawn back to the door as another person walked in. “Hey, earth to angel.” Sam chuckled, snapping his fingers in front of her face. Angel shook her head.

“Sorry, I zoned out. So, what’d you order?” She asked turning her gaze back to Sam.

“Same thing you did. It sounded good. So, did you find anything else out about Ivy Rose Madigan?” Sam asked. Angel unzipped her backpack and took her laptop out, booting it up.

“Well, while in class I looked up where the Madigan family was buried….” Angel started to say more but realized that she couldn’t really. She didn’t want to tell Sam that it was so she could salt and burn Ivy Rose’s bones, because he’d probably freak out. She tried to cover for herself. “Maybe if I can visit her grave, I can figure out why she’s still around.”

“I did a little bit of research while you were in class.” Sam pulled a notebook out of his backpack and slid it across the table to Angel, then pulled his own laptop out of his backpack. “Apparently there was some speculation that Ivy Rose’s death may have been suicide and that it may have been because there was some speculation that her fiancé had gotten busy with some girls overseas while he was serving, and that may have been why, if her death was suicide, that she hung herself.”

 “Well I took a little trip to the library here in town while you were in class and talked to some people who have a little more information about this. Apparently there was some speculation by Ivy Rose’s family that her death wasn’t a suicide.” Sam said as Angel opened the notebook.

“Number 14 and 15.” Another student, wearing a “Pub” employee set a tray of food down on the table, took their numbers and left.

“FOOD!” Angel sounded like she hadn’t eaten in forever. It made Sam burst out laughing as she dumped some barbecue sauce on her burger and took a huge bite. She raised an eyebrow at his laughing face.

“ut?” She asked, her mouth full of burger, looking perfectly innocent.

“That was kind of a huge bite.” Sam commented.

“I have a big mouth and I’m hungry.” Angel took another bite of her burger. Sam tried not to think about how sexual of a comment that was, and what it made him think about. He shook his head to remove those thoughts and squirted some ketchup on his burger.

“So, why did her family think it might not be suicide?” Angel dipped a fry in barbeque and popped it in her mouth.

“Apparently Ivy Rose and her fiancé had a huge argument the day before she died. Her family thought that he might have killed her, then hung her in the attic.” Sam flipped open the notebook and tapped a paragraph he’d highlighted in yellow highlighter.

“Wow, you’re pretty good at this research thing.” Angel commented, popping another fry in her mouth.

“I’m a pre-law student, I’ve got to be able to research, and also I had a lot of practice growing up.”

   “Oh, Gotcha. What did your parents do?” Angel asked nonchalantly. Sam thought about his answer before he gave it to her.

“My mother was killed when I was a baby. My father was a mechanic and a hunter. It was kind of a family business.  My brother went into the family business but I got out.” Sam replied, as he took a bite of his burger.

“Oh okay. I’m sorry about your mother.” Angel brushed a piece of hair out of her eyes and caught Sam staring at her. “What? Do I have something on my face?” Angel asked as she took a napkin and wiped around her mouth. Sam snapped out his little trance and realized he’d been staring at her. She was just so pretty, he was distracted by it.

 “I was just wondering how you got those scars on your neck.” He covered. He saw a brief flash of panic in her eyes and cross her face as one of her hands rose to her neck to rest on the mostly healed scars. She rubbed them gently while she answered.

 “Oh, yeah, these. I was attacked by a dog a while ago. It’s nothing. I went to the hospital and got all patched up.” The flash of panic that Sam had seen on her face and in her eyes earlier, it was gone. She looked completely at ease about the whole subject. Still, he wondered about the panic he’d seen, hell, maybe he’d imagined it. But there was a lot about this girl that he wondered about. Maybe that was why he was so attracted to her. She intrigued him, and he’d always liked puzzles. He’d had enough experience with people growing up that he knew that she was hiding something from him. He wasn’t going to press the issue for now but eventually it would come up and he’d find out what she was hiding.

Angel rolled up the sleeve of her red flannel to make it easier for her to eat her burger and the tattoo she had on her wrist was revealed. It was a beautifully done portrait of a police officer holding the hand of a young girl with long red hair. There was a date underneath it; the date was 10-13-1995 with the words “always remember” underneath it. Sam immediately wondered what it meant.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” He asked raising his eyes from her wrist to her face. Angel was staring at him. She’d seen him eyeing her tattoo.

“You want to know about my tattoo.” She stated. Sam nodded. She sighed. “It’s in memorium of my father and my sister. They were killed when I was nine.” She took a deep breath and Sam swore he could see the walls she’d had up earlier, 

“Yes I would, but if you don’t want to talk about it, I’m not going to push it.” Sam replied. Angel sighed.

“No, it’s okay. Lots of people ask about it. My father and my sister were murdered on October 13th 1995. My father was a cop and my sister was 14. She was staying the night at a friend’s house and she called my father in a panic because there was some…” She started to say something, but stopped herself as she didn’t want to have to explain the werewolf theory to Sam because he’d think she was crazy. “Because there was someone in the house.” Angel corrected herself. “My sister sounded terrified on the phone so my dad rushed over there. When her friend’s parents came home from the movie they’d been at they found my dad, my sister, and her friend in a pool of blood. Their bodies had been ripped to shreds. Because my dad was a cop, the whole police force worked the case with a vengeance, but they never produced a suspect and the case was deemed unsolvable, so they stopped working it. My dad and my sister never got justice. So, I got this tattoo to remind me that not all cases are solvable. What happened to my family is part of why I’m going into Criminal justice too.” Angel sighed as she finished her story, and pushed her food away from her. She wasn’t hungry anymore.

Sam was silent as Angel finished story and pushed her food away from her.

“Angel… I’m so sorry.” Sam said quietly. He wanted to reach across the table and take her hand. He wasn’t sure how she’d react to that; if she’d pull away or just let him hold her hand, so he just kept his hands in his lap.

“It’s not your fault Sam. Don’t apologize. I still have my mom and my brother. It took my mom a while to get over their deaths but she did, and so did my brother. Ultimately it brought my brother and my mom closer together, but I was very close with my older sister, so it took me longer to get over their deaths. But we’re all fine now.” Angel didn’t mention that she hadn’t spoken to her mom in over a year, and she avoided all contact with her brother. The only way she was paying for school and her apartment was with her job as a bartender in town and the luck that she had a very rich uncle who doted on her, and set up a trust fund for her with a million dollars in it. She rarely used that money if she didn’t have too. She used it to pay for her schooling, but her apartment, groceries, and bills all came from her pay as a bartender.

“How old were you when they died?” Sam asked quietly.

“I was 9. My brother was 18.” Angel replied. “But anyways, yeah, that’s the story of my tattoo. That’s my father, and my sister.” She picked up her burger and took another bite out of it, glancing at her watch as she did. It was close to 5pm.  

“Well, it’s a very nice piece of workmanship.” Sam complimented her. She nodded as she finished her burger and stuffed the last of her fries in her mouth. She closed her laptop and shoved it back into her backpack.

“Thanks. Hey, I don’t mean to eat and run, but I’ve got to work at 5:30 and I don’t want to be late. I’ve got to walk there. My car isn’t exactly up and running right now.” She buttoned her plaid up again.

 “Where do you work?” He asked.

“I’m a bartender at Hanson’s on Main Street. I work until midnight. Here’s your jacket.” She handed it across the table to him but Sam didn’t take it. He just let a grin cross his face.

“Keep the jacket. Hanson’s is almost a mile from here and you might get cold walking there. It’s colder now than it was earlier. Besides…” He pulled a pen out of his jeans and scribbled his phone number on a napkin and handed it to her. “…It’ll give you a reason to have to contact me again.” Angel laughed as she took the napkin, made sure the ink was dry, then folded it up and put it into her flannel pocket.

“Very Smooth Sam.” She said with a grin on her face, shaking her head. He winked at her.

“You better call me soon, or I’m going to come looking for you and that jacket. I know when one of your classes is now, so you won’t be able to run from me.” A smirk was on Sam’s face.

“Is that a threat or a promise?” Angel asked with a twinkle in her eye. She wasn’t usually that bold and immediately wondered where the question had come from.

“It’s both. That’s one of my favorite jackets. So as good as you look in it,” he accented that statement with a wink of his blue eyes. God damn what color were his eyes, she swore they’d just been hazel a few minutes ago and they were green when he introduced himself earlier. Despite being unsure of what color they wanted to be, his eyes still made Angel’s heart skip a beat. “I will be needing it back.” Angel felt her smile get bigger as she thought about having an excuse to spend more time with this guy.

“I’ll make sure I get it back to you then. Now, I do really need to get going. My boss hates it when I’m late. See ya Sam.” Angel zipped up her backpack, threw it onto her back, picked up her tray and walked away, dumping the trash on her tray in the garbage and replacing the tray on the stack as she walked past a trash can towards the doors.

Sam couldn’t help but turn and watch her walk away. He let out a low breath at the hardening in his pants as he focused on the sway of her perfect hips and the wiggle of her ass as she walked.

Angelique Farmer was something else. But for him she seemed perfect and he hoped to god that she’d let down those walls she had up, long enough for him to show her that he really genuinely liked her and wanted to be a part of her life... possibly for good.

[amwritingmeta]

Hello, so I wached the last episode at last and there is something that I foud kinda odd. I don't know if it's because Dean went all 180 on his mood and I was more focused on it but I feel like Cas didn't change at all. Do you think that this is the final post Empty version of him or it might change? Thank you :)

Hello, my lovely Nonny!

Wonderful that you got a chance to watch 13x06 (did you watch 13x07 as well?) - so many good bits in it, I thought! And this is a great question. 

When it comes to Dean doing a 180 in his mood this is, of course, tied in with the grieving period he’s just gone through because of losing Cas. The mood change helps underline in the boldest blackest marker ever that this grief and everything linked to this grief had to do with Cas - not losing Mary, Crowley or all the other people they’ve lost over the seasons somehow compiling to now bring on this period of deep grief - no, it was losing Cas that broke him and drained him of the ability to have faith. Yes? Yes. 

So getting the source of hope and faith back should put a spring in his step. And boy did it! :) 

We haven’t seen Cas mourn or miss Dean because we know, through dialogue with empty!Cas, that Cas is still focused on getting back to Dean (who he loves). What we see Cas go through - instead of being pulled into depression the way Dean is - is actually facing and letting go of depression. He needed a win for Dean and for himself in 12x19, and by confronting empty!Cas and annoying his way to freedom Cas secures that double win, because his freedom means clearing himself of his depression, and his returning to Dean means clearing Dean of his.

But how does Dean greet Cas? Cas hasn’t seen a single moment of Dean’s grief and Dean embraces him and calls him “pal” and it’s all so par for the course that the disappointment and frown-y face on Cas for most of the episode is so understandable. 

He’s very much the S12 version of Cas, right? He knows he loves Dean and he’s becoming more and more sure that Dean will never be able to own up to feeling the same. (because I’m starting to come over to the camp who thinks that Cas must at least have some inkling that the longing he’s felt from Dean is more than just brotherly love) (and Cas knows not to push Dean) (so he’s just waiting for Dean to catch up) (but he’s been waiting a long damn time now)

So all of this said, I hope there will be one final change. See, Dean is changing, right? He’s facing himself, he’s ridding himself of his idealistic view on toxic masculinity by being confronted by versions of it - all of them wearing some sort of mask - over and over again in every single episode so far this season. So Dean is taking steps towards letting go of this ideal and facing himself, freeing himself and finally enabling himself to let go of his need for control, to trust and open himself up to happiness. He’s shedding his performance.

Does Cas have an equivalent? Is Cas performing? These characters are such perfect mirrors of each other and share so many core traits that, in all sensibility, Cas should be. And I believe he is. I’m pro human!Cas all the way and, to me, Cas’ grace has always been the equivalent of Dean’s walls, Dean’s mask, Dean’s way of making sense of the world and of himself. 

The grace is what has given Cas meaning and direction and purpose, his powers are what has made him feel righteous and self-assured because they tied him to Heaven, to his roots and his family, to what makes him him. But his grace blinds out his true identity, makes him feel unsure of his feelings, makes him hesitate and second guess himself, makes him vulnerable to manipulation and has left him wide open to the depression that took hold in S11. Because what is Cas’ biggest fear?

I would say it’s to be completely powerless, unable to help.

(it’s why he made the choice to swallow Theo’s grace in S9)

Does Cas have to shed his grace to be with Dean? Does he have to be human to reach endgame? I would say, narratively, yes. (without meaning to upset anyone!)  

Cas has opened Dean up to change because Dean is in love with Cas, and unless Dean changes, unless he dares to trust that Cas loves him back and they can have a future together, unless Dean loses his need for control (which is the core trait of his toxic masculinity) Dean cannot reach his endgame - self-liberation. And he will not get the reward, which is a long and happy life with the man he loves. 

If these men are such perfect mirrors, it stands to reason that the exact same rules of reaching endgame apply to Cas. Right?

Dean has opened Cas up to change because Cas is in love with Dean and Dean loves Cas for who he is - not what he can do - and unless Cas can understand that his biggest fear is unfounded and he is powerful in himself, unless he can recall his stint as a human not for the failure of getting captured and tortured, but for the BAMF moment when he manipulated Theo into letting him go, unless he can move forward letting go of the fear and daring to be himself, the him he knows, deep down, he was always meant to be (with or without Dean, Dean is just the catalyst for Cas following through on this choice, as Cas is for Dean, because love story), if Cas fails to let go of that flag of Heaven he’s draped himself in, Cas cannot reach his endgame - self-liberation. And he will not get the reward, which is a long and happy life with the man he loves.

So with all this said my short answer to whether I think we’ll get another version of Cas after the Empty is both yes and no. 

No because I think Cas is very much Cas at the moment, especially because he’s more humanised than even in S12. He’s been very emotive with Jack, he’s been smiling more (it makes me meeeelt) and we’ve been given some great insights into how Cas and Dean relate to each other in all those empty spaces in the narrative. 

But I’d also say Yes, because I have a hope we’ll see not just a humanised version of Cas, but actual human!Cas, and human!Cas was sassy and sure of himself (by 9x09) and went for what he wanted, flirting up a storm with Dean and inserting himself into an investigation because, to my mind, he’d decided that’s the life he’d choose for himself and since the choice was his he wasn’t going to let Dean Winchester tell him that it wasn’t his fight anymore, that he should go live his life away from him and from danger. Because Cas would rather die a hundred times than live a whole lifetime away from Dean. Oh yes the romance of it all. :P

So Yes because we need this ^^^ final version and inner balanced Cas, just as we need a final version and inner balanced Dean, for them to have reached their mirrored endgames, which will move them into the reward portion.

But that’s how I read this narrative, my dudes, and I don’t know how they’ll deliver or what they want to give us and not give us or how they’ll build this slow burn towards the end. Hell, we don’t even know the timeline here, no matter how much I feel they’re totally going balls out all over!

And what these boys need first and foremost is honesty and open (goddamn) communication. I do believe it’s on the horizon…

Okay that was a lot of thoughts on that very simple question that could’ve taken a couple of paragraphs to answer, but I hope this clears up why I’d say yes and no. :D

Thanks for asking!!

xx

[revolutionary-pirate]

@silencewontprotectyou  ‘s question for me in a reblog of this post :

“where are the sources that say Hamilton and Laurens shared a cabin at valley forge? I always thought they stayed in the Isaac Potts house with the rest of Washington’s staff?”

The answer is complicated but the short answer is “there aren’t any sources.” I haven’t seen a single sourced mention that they shared a cabin by themselves at Valley Forge in any of the articles that have mentioned it, which are noticeably all quoting/plagiarizing each other, and it does not appear in any scholarly texts. This means that there is no decisive evidence that it’s the case. That being said, let’s consider what we do know about that whole cabin business and the potential possibility that it just might have been the case, just not in the way people want it to be, by breaking it down and seeing what comes out of it. Let’s begin:

“When you add up the number of people on the headquarters staff the little Potts house was too small to have possibly held all of them [aides, secretaries, household staff, servants, officers of the Life Guard, Washington, his wife, other staff members etc]. Where did all these people live and work? The answer is that it is believed that a large, temporary, log structure was built onto the back of the house. This structure was probably used as an office and dining area during the day and provided additional sleeping quarters for the headquarters staff at night. It is also speculated that a number of temporary huts were also built near the house to further accommodate the large headquarters staff. Evidence for the construction of a log building onto the back of the Pott’s house, and other structures nearby, comes from the fact that a soldier named Gideon Savage kept a diary, which mentions that he worked at Washington’s quarters for several days during mid-January 1778. Savage worked as a carpenter before joining the army.” [Lefkowitz pg135]

Since all we can do is speculate, historians have no idea who stayed where and when. The Life Guard traditionally stayed in tents/huts surrounding headquarters, though, so it’s a logical conclusion to make that they continued to do so. Whether or not Caleb Gibbs slept with the Life Guard in a separate officer’s hut or with the staff inside is up for debate. Deborah Potts Hewes and her children stayed at the Pott’s Mansion. We’re pretty sure, at least. So that’s them accounted for. Using the Historic Furnishing Report for Washington’s Headquarters prepared in anticipation of making it into what it is today as my main source of information that about the house and how it was set up [not so reliable in other areas because that wasn’t their focus]… [Here are my photos from Valley Forge if you want a bit of a visual to accompany this: Outside, Work Room, Aide Room x Small room, Garret, Washington’s Office, Washington’s bedroom x] One of the rooms on the first floor was, for sure, Washington’s Office. The other first-floor room doubled as the dining room and a work area for the aides. We know Washington’s room was located on the second floor, but we don’t actually know which room it was in. We also know that Martha Washington had a sitting room/parlor where she entertained guests and was described as being “near the small room.” This describes the room where Valley Forge has currently placed the Aides-de-camp room for display. Their argument is that it’s just not logical that the aides worked, slept, and ate in the room downstairs, setting up and tearing down everything day in and day out until the hut was built in back to serve as the new dining room and as an extra work area. So, they decided that Martha’s parlor was in the Washingtons’ bedroom, where we also know Martha entertained some guests, and that the aides must have slept in the second room, which is… y’know.. whatever if that’s what they want to go with. Now that small room mentioned earlier was definitely used for guests. We know that Charles Lee was situated there once he was exchanged and until he set up shop at Colonel Bradford’s headquarters. Other guests stayed up there, too. So if an aide or two did sleep in that one bed in that room, they were kicked out whenever anyone came to visit. There is also the Garret. We’re pretty sure the servants slept up there and sometimes, potentially, the aides as well when there was no other space to be had. We know Laurens might have stayed up there for a while if the traditional story about him hitting his head is to be be believed as true. My guess is that when a guest came and commandeered the small room, the aide that stayed there maybe got moved to the garret. Or, as the plaque at Valley Forge suggests, a few of the aides were maybe holed up there until the hut in back was built, but then….. where did the servants sleep? It’s a conundrum. If we entertain that the second room upstairs was actually the aide’s room… There were three beds max that could fit in the room that the Valley Forge National Park has decided was theirs instead of a parlor. Their plans suggested that a maximum of three camp beds could fit in that room and still manage to have just enough space for all of their luggage and still be able to maneuver around a little with minimal risk of tripping over everything. So three beds. Sometimes a Fourth in the other room. Now let’s account for how many aides there were. We have Robert Hanson Harrison, Tench Tilghman, James McHenry, Alexander Hamilton, John Laurens, Richard Kidder Meade, and John Fitzgerald. That’s Seven. And we aren’t even discussing all of the other staff members that weren’t aides like Richard Varick, acting muster master general at the time, or Alexander Scammell, Washington’s Adjutant General who worked at headquarters. Or the servants, each aide actually had one servant attending to them at headquarters. Fourteen people or more! Where did they all sleep????  Timothy Pickering, Adjutant before Scammell, mentioned in a December letter that “I might have told you that, since our arrival at this place, which was on the 20th instant, I have been at my own quarters, separate from the General’s Family, at whose quarters they are exceedingly pinched for room” [Lefkowitz 134]. So we know that all of the aides were sleeping in that house when they’d arrived. And that some of the extra staff were situated elsewhere in their own places. Another thing we can do is accommodate for knowing that aides came and went. Alexander Hamilton didn’t arrive until January 20th, John Fitzgerald left to deliver letters to Virginia on February 1st and didn’t return until May 21st, Meade was intermittently out of camp here and there, James McHenry didn’t join until May 15th. That makes things a little bit better on some days. But not great. Now, I know that some of you are thinking ‘Hang on! But there were only three-four beds for them to sleep in and there are roughly seven using them!’ And you would be correct. This is where our problem lies. Chernow states in AH that they “usually slept in one room, often two to a bed,…” but doesn’t source this information and in the same paragraph claims “the aides sometimes wrote and copied one hundred letters per day” [Chernow 91] which is also not the case and…. actually probably impossible. A week maybe, but not a day. That’s not what we’re here for, though. I only recall Lefkowitz mentioning the aides potentially sharing beds once, and that’s at Ford Mansion the winter of 1778-79. At Ford Mansion, they had two bedrooms for themselves. When guests came, the aides of one room were kicked out and made to sleep in the office or to cram in with all the other aides in the other room. Eventually, they were all kicked out of both rooms to make room for guests and made to sleep in the office hut that had been built in back to make room [Lefkowitz 197] - similar to the situation at Valley Forge. This gives us a bit of a hint as to what might have happened that set the precedent for the next winter. Now, back to the evidence that there might have been huts built around Headquarters to accommodate for everyone. The work, as mentioned at the top, was done in mid-January, which was about the time that all of the soldiers had finished their own huts. Which means there is a chance that the staff did sleep crammed in the room that was described as Martha’s parlor until she’d arrived in the first week of February. In anticipation of her arrival, Savage and others might have been called to headquarters to set about constructing something for the aides to move into so that they could then have time to set up the now-empty room to be furnished like a parlor before she arrived. If they did sleep all crammed in that room it would have been two to a bed (and those beds are small and they had to have gotten nice and cozy together to sleep in them two to a bed). OR, as the Valley Forge Furnishing Report was so unable to wrap its head around, four slept in the rooms upstairs, and the rest slept moved all the furniture aside (or crammed around it), set up their camp beds, and slept in the office/dining room. When the hut in the back was built, several things might have come of their situation:  1. The hut became the dining room and the aides moved in every night. 2. The hut became the permanent dining and office space for everyone and the previous office/dining space became the aide’s new cramped room. 3. The hut became the permanent office/dining space and the office space remained an office space with the addition of the aides moving in and sleeping in both of them instead of upstairs every night. 4. More than one hut was built and the office remained an office, the big hut became strictly a dining and office area and another 1+ huts became the aides’ sleeping huts. Problem is, we have no idea which of those it was and we probably never will definitively know. The point is, there might have been huts built around headquarters that the aides might have lived in but they probably did kinda live in one at some point. So yes, Laurens and Hamilton probably shared a cabin at Valley Forge… it was just also probably shared with Meade, Tilghman, Harrison, Fitzgerald, and McHenry. …..I hope that all made sense. TL;DR: they probably didn’t have a cabin to themselves but there probably was a cabin that they might have stayed in together… it was just probably with other people, too.

[journeysintowebcomics]

Lettering in Webcomics - a Reference Post

Imagine you have finished the perfect artwork for the latest update for your webcomic. You feel so proud about it you want to hang it on your wall. You want to post it immediately! You want everyone to see it! But before you can do that, you need to add dialogue between your characters.

And that’s where you get stuck. No matter where you place the speech balloons, you’re covering too much of your drawing. It all looks badly placed. You accidentally make a speech balloon that goes from side to side of the frame. It’s a major disaster! What did just happen and how can you avoid it? Let’s answer those questions now.

The charm about comics and webcomics is that they’re a combination of text and images. It’s true its main strength is the fact the reader can look at the art depicted, but a webcomic is never complete without dialogue or text.

However, filling your webcomic to the brim with text and dialogue is not how webcomics work. It’s rare to find the exception to these rules, such as Homestuck, and even then it’s only because of the difference in format. It’d be tedious to read a webcomic that has paragraph after paragraph crammed in a single frame!

As if all that wasn’t enough, you also have to remember that if you place the text badly, it’ll make the reader overlook the art you worked so hard on or even get confused, cardinal sins in this type of work. If you strive to be a webcomic author, you must understand how to place dialogue and text properly. That’s what this post is here for! Here are some handy tips that will allow your webcomic’s text shine without sacrificing anything in the process!

GREAT! WHERE DO I START?

Not so fast, enthusiastic creator! Lettering isn’t something you add in the end. You need to plan this carefully from the beginning. Webcomics are a visual medium, and that’s a double-edged sword. You can communicate a lot through art, but there’s not much space for dialogue unless you plan carefully from the very start. You can’t clutter the page with line after line after line!

That’s why, before starting to draw the page, you need to be aware how much dialogue you’ll have this time. Write it somewhere, analyze how much space you will need. Keep in mind the text is a piece of a larger picture, so to say. You can’t let it overshadow the rest of the page.

I’M DONE PLANNING.

Congratulations on completing the first step! Now you may start drawing. Whether you sketch on paper or digitally doesn’t matter, what matters is that you sketch. Why? Because this way you can plan where you’ll place the speech balloons. It’d be a shame if at the end your dialogue covered too much of the art, this can be easily prevented if you sketch. While you draw, imagine where you may be placing the speech balloon, and avoid drawing too much inside that small area. You also may adjust the size of the frames, leaving enough space for the speech balloons without having to sacrifice part of the art.

So you got your art done! Well done, now place the speech balloon. There are many speech balloons you may use, depending on what you want to communicate.

These are more like guidelines, the most used meanings for these type of speech balloons. You as the author of the webcomic have the liberty to adjust speech balloons according to your style and needs. You could modify speech balloons to make them fit a character. Color, shape, font, all that are qualities you can change according to situations. You’re the one who has the last word on the matter!

---Guilded Age

To keep your speech balloons orderly, try to accommodate the words in the shape of a square. Avoid long lines, occupy as little space as possible with the speech balloon. Make sure the tails are pointing at the character who is speaking. It doesn’t have to touch the character; all it needs to do is point in the general direction the character is at.

Angelica Maria, the author of Solstoria, mentioned this as her usual technique on how to accommodate text inside a speech bubble:

I try to keep the text in a speech bubble looking like a "Square", so for example

"Oh no, I'm being

held accountable

for my actions!"

The middle line can be extended slightly depending on the shape of the bubble. This is just something I keep in mind, it's not something you have to follow to a T or anything. I just want to make the lettering look somewhat good.

Wait, but how to position the speech balloons? Generally, it’ll be better to position them in a way that’ll guide the reader’s eyes in a natural direction – left to right, in other words. Take this for example:

---Girl Genius

See? The speech balloons are positioned in a way it’d be easy for the reader’s eyes to move towards the right. The dialogue always starts on the top left corner and moves either in an arch towards the bottom right corner or in the top and bottom parts of each frame. It’s not a requirement to set your speech balloons this way, but it’ll certainly make it easier for the reader to read!

To put it in a nutshell: as a rule of thumb, remember to direct the balloons placement in a way that leads from left to right or from top to bottom.

Another thing you have to remember and keep in mind if what font you’ll use for your lettering. What kind of font would be the best for your dialogue? Any font that’s legible at small sizes will be good. Maybe Comic Sans would be your first thought because, just as its name says, it was created for comics, and that is because Comic Sans is meant to be readable at small sizes. That doesn’t mean you have to limit yourself to using Comic Sans. There are many other fonts that could be useful to you!

I recommend you take a look at this website. It has many fonts that can be used in the comic book industry, and most of them would be good for your webcomic, no matter the genre. Some are paid fonts, but there are many fonts that are free to use and can be useful to you.

Here, take a look at some fonts you could use! Compare and decide!

Personally, I like how the Back Issues font and the Kid Kosmic font look!

Generally, it’s recommended you use all-caps in the webcomic, as it’ll be easier to read. Most of the fonts you’ll find for comics often only have capital letters, so most of the time you just will have to type without worrying about activating the all-caps function.

I HAVE THE FONT AND THE IMAGE. NOW WHAT?

Open your sketch or finished image in your software of choice. For the purpose of this post, I’ll suppose you have Photoshop. Most software you can use for these purposes have the same basic functions, so it doesn’t really matter.

Create a new layer above your image. This layer will hold the speech bubble itself – the writing will go in a different layer. Don’t start drawing ellipses or circles yet! Instead, write the text you want to use, and place it where you want it to be, and the size you want it to be. If the text tool didn’t automatically create a layer when you used it, manually make a new layer and place the text there. It’s a good idea to have one layer for each speech bubble, don’t lump all speech bubbles in the same layer.

Once you have the text written, you can make the speech bubbles themselves! The quick option would be to use the ellipsis tool and fill it with white color, but the result will end being rather generic. How about you try to draw the speech balloon by yourself? Use a tablet or, if you don’t have one, use the pen tool. It may take some practice, but this should give your webcomic a more professional look.

You don’t have to make the balloons perfectly round. As long as it’s decently round and doesn’t look like something splattered all over your image, you’ll be okay.

Remember to leave some space around your text, though! Constricting your dialogue into a speech balloon smaller than it is not a good idea.

See?

Also, there’s a technique that could make this easier for you. In Photoshop, there’s a special layer effect called ‘stroke’. If you configure it correctly, everything you draw on that layer will be surrounded by an outline. Make sure to configure it so there’s a black border, of two or three pixels wide, and that it’ll be placed externally. Use a brush with a white color to make the speech bubbles, it’ll immediately be outlined, with no additional effort on your part! If you want to recreate these characteristics in new layers without having to open the window again, all you have to do is duplicate the layer while it’s empty. That’ll give the same characteristics to the copied layers!

Those are the basics of speech balloons.

Dialogue isn’t the only text you may use in a webcomic, though. There’s also expository dialogue, like a monologue, thoughts or notes you’re adding to the page, for one reason or another. What to do, then?

---Between Failures

Usually, these are done in these rectangular boxes. These could be considered similar to speech balloons in many ways, and follow many of the tips and rules speech balloons have. When asked, the author of Between Failures said this:

I've only done this two or three times in the entire run of the comic.  It's not talking because it would make the character look insane if he monologued out loud to himself for a couple of pages.  This is basically just expository narration to set up the premise of the comic in a single page.

How much expository narration is necessary for a webcomic? It’s not like there’s a definite answer to such question or a guideline you need to follow, but it may be worth remembering that webcomics are a visual medium. Sticking to the ‘show, don’t tell’ may be a good choice, since illustrating some of the exposition may help get it across better than text would, with the risk of breaking the pacing a bit. It all depends on the situation, so trust your intuition, ask yourself what you’d like to see!

I UNDERSTAND!

Excellent, I’m glad to hear that.

Oh, right, there’s one thing more you may want to hear about: can you stylize your speech balloons? Give them your own touch? By all means, go ahead! If you feel it’s appropriate for your webcomic and you think it looks good, then experiment all you want. Gauge how the speech balloons look in your webcomic, maybe ask for a few opinions...do everything you can so the end result is something you’re happy with.

It doesn’t have to be anything complicated. Simple measures such as a shadow or a border around your speech balloon can be quite effective to make your webcomic have a distinctive mark to make it stand out from the many, many webcomics available on the Internet.

---Solstoria

I started adding them because I removed the black outline on the bubbles and felt they looked better with a drop shadow and now concrete outline. I also removed the outline of the comic panels of Solstoria in general around that time too! I just did it because I wanted to try something different and I liked how it looked. I know Solstoria isn't highly structured, but I enjoy experimenting with it.

As you can see, speech balloons aren’t something done spontaneously if you want professional results, but the effort will be worth it!

---

I hope everything discussed in this post is of some use to you. Good luck to all your endeavors in the field of webcomics!

[ndrmag]

Contributor Interview with Kristine Langley Mahler

Kristine Langley Mahler lives and writes on the suburban prairie of Nebraska, where she is completing an erasure book on Seventeen‘s advice to teenage girls, a grant-funded project about immigration/inhabitation on native land through the lens of her French-Canadian ancestors, and a graduate degree in creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Quarter After Eight, Sweet, Split Lip, Storm Cellar, the Bitter Southerner, and received the 2016 Rafael Torch Award for Literary Nonfiction from Crab Orchard Review. Visit her at kristinelangleymahler.com.

How did the initial idea for “Club Pines” come together for you? How does the finished work differ from that original conception?

It started as a very ambitious multimedia EXPERIENCE: I had hand-drawn the neighborhood and I was going to have the houses hyperlinked so the reader could click on them to read the segments, but I realized that wow, I might have some coding skills but not enough to pull that project into place. So I scaled it back. Earlier versions of “Club Pines” had the neighborhood map reproduced before each “house,” with the house in question colored in and any previously encountered houses as empty boxes to indicate how they had become "vacant" for me, but again—it was too much. I loved the visualness of that neighborhood because it was such a maze, so winding and so metaphoric, but (and this is where I had to tone back my writer ego), that doesn't matter to the reader. In the essay, the map just looked like a visual distraction, an unnecessary bit of detail—the reader could ascertain from the narrative that Club Pines was a maze to me. They didn't need to see it shoveled in front of their face like LOOK SEE I WAS REALLY CONFUSED SEE HOW CONFUSED?

There were a lot of houses/girls who were in the original essay, but I tried to pare it down to only those girls who tied me to certain aspects of my adolescence. I thought about including boys’ houses, but that’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax. Nearly every house in that neighborhood had meant something to me at one point: I had babysitters who lived there, or I had babysat there myself, or I went trick-or-treating there once and a woman handed out personalized toothbrushes she’d bought at the dollar store so I got RICKY or whatever. Stuff like that. But those are the sort of completionist tendencies that could have snowballed into a whole neighborhood ethnography, and the emphasis, here, was really on those girls. That’s where I felt out of place and in place, even temporarily.

What craft struggles did you encounter while writing this essay? How did you overcome them? What did you learn from the process?

Oh, you know, as a memoirist, it’s always a challenge to be comfortable with my portrayals of other people. I’ve always been very watchful, obsessive about retaining memories and situations so I can analyze them later, but I know it’s presumptuous to ascribe motives to others. These girls were so much more than the summations I present to y’all as paragraphs. So I tried to remain true to the way I knew the girls, at that time, and to make it clear through the way I sketch them that I’m laying my own biases out for judgment. There’s a moral code I don’t think I’ve broken, but I’m also protected from any real-world retribution since I’m only “officially” social-media-connected to one of the girls in “Club Pines.” I’m one of those tracking dogs who finds digital loopholes and can pick up a cold trail: they’re married, they’re mothers, they’re single and childless, they’re living their best Southern life and they’ve left for other regions, other countries. They’re unprotected and they’re on social media lockdown; they’re oversharing and they’re silent as the grave. Just like me, we’re all telling the narrative of our girlhoods the way we need to believe they happened; we’re all revising when we see a perspective we didn’t realize. If they ever came across this piece, I hope they’d know that.

"Club Pines" presents a neighborhood that simultaneously feels ubiquitous and incredibly specific in its details, particularly those concerning toys and media of the time, as well as the denizens and their spaces. In capturing a place that is both unique and typical at once, how were you able to decide what to keep and what to let go?

The essay progresses from age ten through age fourteen, crucial years when we’re all figuring out who we are, trying on friendships, trying out cruelties, jostling for place. I doubled-down on my feelings of displacement as I wasn’t a native North Carolinian, but honestly, the anomie and aloneness in adolescence are pretty universal.

I think I included so many details because they set the reader in the era of the early-to-mid 90s—an important era because it predated the Internet, predated the ability to form an escapism that might have allowed me to retain virtual connections with my old friends from my old town. Instead, I had to grind through adolescence in that neighborhood, which I name, in that city, which I don't (though it's not hard to figure out), where I was a regional newcomer bombarded with all this “knowledge” everyone else seemed to have and I’d never encountered: sweet tea, cotillion, tobacco, smoked and grown everywhere. When writing “Club Pines,” I fixated on the details in the girls’ houses that were NOT regional because those were the details that made me feel like I had an entry way into these Othered spaces: troll dolls, The Beatles, fortune tellers.

Part of what makes "Club Pines" such a phenomenally textured essay is the broad range of feelings it depicts. For instance, there's the bitter levity of  "I sneer at her because I may be a pleb but she is a snob" and, later on, more somber notes such as "when we still called it “playing,” when I still anticipated her calls, when she was still my best friend, when she was still." What advice would you give a writer attempting to establish such a tonal dynamism without things feeling unfocused?

I suppose it's important to remember, particularly in a segmented essay, that each section needs to be treated as its own narrative and needs to be able to stand on its own. To hover above a single moment as if it had to represent all the moments you’ve ever had with that person or space can force you to recognize the range of your emotions. The trick is forcing that range to harden into the meringued truth for one scene: fragile, beaten, but momentarily solid.

The houses are distinct spaces, yet are especially vivid because of the specific atmospheres you conjure. How did you go about capturing these atmospheres so lucidly and in such short spaces?

I had layered, multi-year friendships with some of those girls in “Club Pines,” and with others, complex and painful situations I didn’t even address here. I word-spattered all over early drafts, writing the first things I thought about when I thought about those girls, and as I cleaned up the mess, I kept the scenes that emblematized those girls singularly, for one blurt. More often than not, they were the first things I’d written.

There are a number of details I muted throughout the piece, little signals to myself which hint at outgrowths of moments I don’t describe here, and I think their hinted presence must have allowed me to restrain over-telling and over-showing. For instance, I used the word “nook” in describing the location of my house and Betsy’s final bedroom in her house because they were both places where I was hidden and ignored, and yet they were places of comfort. You don’t get descriptions of the girls’ appearances. They don’t matter, because these girls are Everygirls. These houses are Everyhouses. No matter where you live, adolescence is packing season, leaving season, replacing season, curing season.