#and how i got a server down message every five minutes and its like its for the best for sod to close...

[microfeelings]

Heya, just wanted to let you know that a reddit user made a program to download your acc data.

Just wanted to let you know

Someone on Reddit made code that will allow you to download and store your account data, vikings, dragons, quests, all of it.

Reddit - Dive into anything

Reddit Post^^

GitHub - hictooth/dragonrescue: SoD account export tool

Github for if you can't access Reddit

School of Dragons Data Export

Google form to have the user do it for you

Oh yeah, thanks for this, but I probably wont do it bc my sod password is shared with some other things (bad i know) and sods page to change password is not working (what a surprise) but best of luck to everyone doing this, hope yall get your dragons to safety 😔❤

[hqbbg]

big and bad.

pairing: matsukawa issei x reader

summary: the woods are a dark place.

genre: fantasy

word count: 1.6K

warnings: i didn’t have this beta’d and this was completed at 5:30am so there might be mistakes but uh, none otherwise that i can think of (but please message me to correct me)

author’s note: heyo! 🤪 I’m back with another HQHQ server collab fic! you can check out the other amazing writers’ works here! i have our dear mattsun for both collabs (and both parts are now posted)!! n e ways as always, I hope you guys enjoy! 💕

part two (18+)

Your legs are shaking and you can feel your knees threatening to give out. The cold air burns your lungs as you continue to run through the dark forest, swatting at branches in your way. You don’t know how long you’ve been running, but you know for a fact that you wish you hadn’t skipped gym class all those years ago in grade school.

After what feels like ages, you finally see a dim light ahead of you through the foliage. As if hit with a sudden burst of energy, you try to push through and feel so close to the end, the light practically within reach. Just as you’re about to get to it, your path is suddenly blocked and you’re shrouded in darkness once again. Halting to a stop, you panic, trying to get a grasp of what just happened.

Suddenly, you no longer feel alone and feel every nerve ending stand on edge. Your heart is pounding in your ears and you do everything in your power to refrain from doubling over to catch your breath. The sound of a branch breaking startles you and you whip around.

“You know, it’s not safe for people to be out alone in the woods at this hour.” You’re unsure of what you’re expecting, but it’s definitely not the silhouette of a tall man standing before you.

You open your mouth to speak, but no sound comes out.

“What shall I do with you?” His voice drawls lazily and in any other situation, you might consider being comforted by it.

While you can’t see him, you hear him move. He seems to be circling you and you do your best to remain facing him, though you’re beginning to feel your head spin.

“What’s the matter, doll?” You can practically hear him smirking. “Cat got your tongue?” You jump when his voice sounds right up against your ear.

Before you can react, you feel hands grab you and open your mouth to scream, only to jolt up from your bed in a cold sweat. Your heart is still pounding in your chest and you’re breathing heavily.

It was only a dream.

Laying back down, you sigh softly to yourself. Just as you’re about to close your eyes to go back to sleep, you hear your alarm go off and groan. Great.

You practically throw the blanket off and toss your legs over the edge of the bed, willing yourself up to begin your day. Glancing out your bedroom window, your eyes warily linger on the trees of the forest below before you force yourself to get washed up.

When your parents had asked for you to drop by for lunch, you were more than willing to accept, never one to turn down free food. However, as you begin your walk down the sidewalk towards the bus stop alongside the thick brush of trees, you feel a chill run down your spine and you want to go back home. Something just simply doesn’t feel right.

Swallowing your paranoia, you quicken your pace until you arrive at the small bus stop. You can’t help but feel as if you’re being watched, but when you look around, there’s hardly anyone around and their attention is fixed elsewhere. You hesitate for a moment before turning to glance towards the thicket of trees behind you and nearly jump when you meet a pair of dark gold eyes looking back at you. When you blink, they’re gone and the bus arrives.

Throughout the whole lunch, you do your best to forget the morning’s events. Your parents notice that something is off, but you brush it off with an excuse of just being tired. It’s true; you’ve been exhausted these past couple weeks with moving into your apartment while still trying to maintain the various responsibilities of life. Maybe that would explain the paranoia and the hallucinations—that’s what that was earlier, right?

As you step off the bus, the air feels colder and the sun is already setting. Where has the day gone? You should’ve left your parents’ home sooner before the sun had begun its descent. The streetlights around you flicker on to illuminate the sidewalk, but you see that your path home is blocked due to road work that’s scheduled to last all night long.

You resist the urge to let out a groan. It looks like the construction extends through the whole main road and the designated detour will take you an extra half hour to walk around. You look warily to your right towards the heavily wooded area that separates you and your building, hesitating momentarily. In all honesty, it would be faster to simply cut through the trees and if you’re quick, you might be able to make it before total nightfall.

Weighing your options, you figure you’re just being extra paranoid because of your dream—or rather, nightmare—and simply inhale deeply before stepping off the concrete towards the brush.

The wind whistles lowly and the setting feels eerily familiar. As you listen to the crunching of leaves and fallen branches under your feet, you’re reminded of the stories your grandmother had told you as a child.

“Beware of the big bad wolf,” she had said, though her sing-song voice hardly instilled the same fear that was snowballing within yourself at the moment.

You feel like you’ve been walking for nearly ten minutes, so you should be near the edge of the forest now. However, with the sun finally set, it’s harder for you to navigate your steps and the gnawing in your chest blooms. You try to maintain a straight path, but you could’ve sworn that you passed the same tree five minutes ago.

Deciding to take a brief break, you pull out your phone to check the time and ideally pull up a map to help you navigate your way out. Unfortunately, you have no signal so your phone is deduced into nothing but a glorified clock.

As you had felt this morning, it seems like you’re being watched, followed. When you glance around, you’re alone. Right as you turn back around to face forward, putting your phone back into your pocket, you let out a scream in surprise when a man is standing before you, golden eyes looking directly at you.

“I wasn’t expecting visitors so soon.”

There’s no mistaking that you know this voice; it sounds exactly like the one from your dream. It’s hard to see him clearly, but you can make out the familiar outline of his tall figure as your eyes steadily adjust. You see him take a step forward, making you instinctively take a step back.

“No need to be afraid, sweetheart. I don’t bite.” The low rumble of his voice sends a shiver down your spine. He takes another step forward into a small area illuminated by moonlight seeping through the blankets of leaves above and you can finally see his face.

He has a lazy and almost bored look donning on his features, the upwards tilt of the right corner of his lips being the only thing indicating his amusement at the fear in your eyes. His eyes seem to rake over you, as if evaluating you.

“Are you going to kill me?” You try to steady your trembling voice, unable to look away from him.

“Kill you?” He muses as he takes another step forward. You take another step back. “What’s the fun in that?”

“Well, if you’re looking for fun, I have an idea or two,” you say, trying to look for a way out.

“Do you now?” The man is now smirking. “Enlighten me.”

“For starters, you keep me alive.” He chuckles but it does nothing to calm your racing heart. “Second, you either tell me who you are and how to get out of here, or just cut the formalities and go straight to telling me how to get out of here.”

He laughs as he takes another step forward, taking you another step back. You feel your eyes widen when your back presses up against a tree you were sure wasn’t there before.

“How cute,” he says as his laughter dies down. “I think you’ll be fun to keep around for a little longer.”

He takes two more steps forward until he’s towering directly over you, propping his elbow against the bark above your head. He leans down to be at eye level with you and you can feel his breath fan over your face. You turn your head slightly, wanting to avoid him in any way you possibly can.

“Issei.”

“Excuse me?” Looking up at him with a frown on your face, you realize just how close he is and feel your cheeks heat at the proximity.

“My name. I think you’ve earned it.”

You’ve hardly done anything, so you’re not sure what that means. Before you can question him further, he cocks his head to the side slightly.

“Tell me, doll. What’s someone like you doing in a place like this?”

“Currently looking for a way out of here,” you answer truthfully. You know better than to trust a stranger, especially given the circumstances you’re in and the alarms are blaring in your head.

“You’re sure you don’t want to stay? I’m pretty convincing and can make it worth your while.” He smirks down lazily at you.

“I highly doubt that and would like to see you try,” you say, trying to swallow the lump in your throat. Perhaps you could’ve worded your sentence differently, a fact emphasized when he leans in dangerously closer to your face so you can feel the ghost of his lips brush yours whenever he speaks.

Your instincts are screaming at you to move, but it’s as if your brain and limbs are disconnected, failing to cooperate.

“Don’t tempt me,” his voice lowers. You hesitantly lift your eyes to meet his and see that they’ve darkened.

Well, that can’t be good.

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day.

Rachel Maclean is Minister For Safeguarding. No, really. Not making this up. Do you know what ‘safeguarding’ is? No, neither do I. This actually sounds like a fun game. Creating cabinet jobs that make no sense. How about Minister For Muckraking? Or Minister For Freethinking? Or Minister For Eyeballing? Not sure what this women guards, whatever it is: I definitely don’t feel safe! She seems to be something to do with jobs or money. Yesterday, this clueless woman said, “People should work more hours or move to a better job to protect themselves from cost of living surge.” Got that? So, if you’re struggling to pay your energy bills or struggling to feed your family, you should work more hours and/or get a better-paying job. See? Simple!

As we now know, the Buffalo shooter was a believer in ‘replacement theory’, the unbelievable and frankly ridiculous notion that white Americans are being ‘replaced’ by immigrants. (Forgetting that white Americans were originally European immigrants.) The best tweet on my Twitter feed yesterday came from someone called Santiago Mayer, and it read, “Why are white people so afraid of becoming a minority? Does America treat minorities poorly or something?”

As far as my Instagram profile goes, I am getting no response from Instagram, my image has disappeared from the account, and I must assume that they have shut down the account. I sincerely hope some rancid low life is not still pestering you with cryptocurrency offers. If I can get Instagram to DELETE my account from its servers, I will create a new account and start all over again. Some people don’t use Facebook and my only way of communicating with them is through the gram!

My favourite Twitter feed Fesshole gave me this last week and it makes you wonder how many women are thinking the same way, “Things with my husband are fine enough but I secretly hope that he splits up with me so that he can have the kids every other weekend and a couple of nights in the week so I can have time to myself again.”

The best message on my Tumblr feed yesterday simply read, “So many people love you. Don’t focus on the people that don’t.” Really resonated with me.

This is not really your normal Facebook status. Most people just use social media to promote what they do. They view you as a ‘punter’ or a ‘customer’. This daily status is merely a “Good Morning!” to my family and to my community. Look at us! Some of us are as different as chalk and cheese but we do share the bond of music. It’s a pretty powerful bond that unites us all. It lets you know who I am. If I talk about Leroy Hutson or Leroy Burgess, you know what I am and where I’ve come from.

Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom of my status. Many people don’t like reading. It’s too much hard work. So, I thank you for giving me five minutes of your day. Have a tremendous and tumultuous Tuesday! I love you all.

[beetleboo]

long post. one i’ve been trying to make for a while now. hell, i wrote this like... third week of may. didn’t post it until now because i didn’t know if I wanted to.

but something i want to lay out, been wanting to lay out for months. dont want to talk to anyone about it, just want to put the info out there for it to be seen.

if you re/blog this i will block you. i may put this on the relevant sideblog at some point.

because 2020 was the worst year on record for me for a number of reasons, and it’s torn me down to the lowest point i’ve been in a long time, and this is just. everything that’s gone down. not a callout post, no one gets named, but these are all the events

partially in relation to my fandom sideblog, because that’s where i had community, and where it’s all just. gone. doesnt exist anymore.

i started up a server, ages ago now. somewhere i curated to be a positive and safe space for things, and for a while, it was that.

around the end of 2019, spilling over to the start of 2020 when it picked up, i found, both on my blog and in discord spaces, in particular the server i ran, that people no longer talked to me. no one would hold a conversation with me past a few basic responses, no one replied to anything i shared, no one engaged when i tried to start discussions. so i pulled back from the main server - S1. thought it was just a lull in activity. stayed that way for weeks, months, and I just muted the server. no one ever cared about anything i had to say. was lucky if anything i posted got even a token emoji react

was in another, smaller server - S2. people i talked to damn near every day, even in voice. played games together - that became... no fun simply because everyone else was so much better/further ahead in the game. i was completely useless, so didn’t server a function in game and never really felt like anyone actively wanted me around, but i still participated in chat.

but again, no one ever responded to anything I posted beyond maybe a token react

couple people discussing something one day. I contributed with Theory A, and quite immediately got that shut down. few minutes later, they rephrased exactly what I said and happily nattered away. so whatever I said wasn’t worth it when it came out of my mouth but if they talked about it, it was all well and valid. so again, between that specific experience and no one interacting with me, nor anything I post. server muted. treatment taught me no one cared about my presence there.

gave admin rights to S1, my server, to someone I trusted. two requests only: dont delete channels and let me know if you want to invite anyone (since I kept it private)

RYE (i’m just assigning random three letter names to people to keep this straight) posted public invites several times. never asked me. one of the two things i asked. brought it up with them that it bothered me, just got vague noncomittal responses. more public invites. eventually, after having the server muted for months, i handed over full control and left. that was almost a full year ago. none of the people have talked to me in that entire year, through discord or here or anything.

except RYE who sent me a message after a couple months like ‘wow i havent heard from you in a while hope you’re doing ok’. i wasn’t. after a bit but still the same day, i said as much. that i wasn’t doing well. they never responded. and i don’t mean like, they didn’t respond that day. i mean i literally never heard from them until months later when they sent me a meme and also didn’t respond to me commenting on that meme.

and this is one side of things. all of the above was the first half of the year. this next bit happened about. march2020? I was in another server - S3. another place that was a good space at the time. was in voice chat with two other people. started talking about one thing. MIN very suddenly said something along the lines of ‘i don’t care about this i’ll come back when you’re done’

this is one of the very few things that can trigger me - i’ve had a lot of people talk down to me if I dare look excited about anything. when they came back, i asked if they could try to just. depart conversations more softly. MIN always said ‘if i do anything hurtful to you just tell me! i dont want to do that kind of thing!’

this was clearly a lie as they exploded on me, telling me they always have to walk on eggshells around me, that I ask so many things from them. before what I asked them that day, I can only recall one other thing i asked (which was not to talk about a person who was abusive towards me, and they were like ‘yea sure np’ about that, over a year prior’)

the whole thing turned into basically me having to shut down the fact that i was hurt by what they did, had to ignore that now and i had to fawn and placate them and the only thing i got out of that was that my feelings were irrelevant, only theirs.

(incidentally, I have had two other people turn on me in similar ways, accusing me of doing shifty/bad/terrible things, and not being willing to tell me what they are when I ask, only saying that ‘i should know what i did’ so that’s also now a Fun New Bit Of Trauma.)

and that entire weeklong event lead me straight to a breakdown. literal genuine breakdown i cannot convey how devastating that entire scenario was without going into far too many details.

so between all of these things happening in less than six months, with three different community spaces folding and collapsing and fading away from me, with many of the friends i thought i had just. moving on to other things and dropping me. people i talked to every day just not bothering with me anymore. they all have gone on to other stuff and no one ever went ‘hey beets wanna see what i’m up to’ or ‘wanna do this thing with me’

a handful of instances of me saying ‘yeah i’m dealing with these fears that have been reinforced lately that people aren’t safe to deal with, even thought part of me knows they’re probably irrational it feels like i have evidence to back it up’ and people immediately take it personally like i’m saying they’re not safe. despite. me outright saying. i know logically it should be irrational. but their reactions just reinforce it so it’s just a loop and tells me, again, never to bring up any of my problems with anyone.

so this all just reinforces that there’s something wrong with me. couple years back i spoke to a friend and how i was frustrated that I seemed to end up in bad spaces and they said ‘well you’re the one thing in common so its probably your fault’ and obviously they’re not my friend anymore but that has affected me so deeply. i can’t do anything without overthinking, whenever anything goes wrong i tear apart everything i’ve done and everything i’ve said or thought and i don’t know why things keep going bad. i try so hard but i’m just. not right.

so it all teaches me that there’s no point in reaching out in trying to talk to people because if i say ‘hey this hurt me’ i get ignored at best or torn down, yelled at, scolded. no point in trying to talk to new people because everyone just walks away at some point. not even a natural drift apart, i can handle that. but just very suddenly, they’re gone, off with better people doing better things.

roundabout, ties back to ‘consumption versus community’ - this is why i’ve been struggling so hard with lack of engagement on my sideblog. lucky to get a dozen notes on anything i make, unless it’s something other people can use (like mods) and even THEN it’s rare to see much activity. and that was FINE because i had people to talk to elsewhere, who would ask questions and we could back and forth and i shared my stuff and they shared those and it didnt matter if my posts only got a dozen notes because i had friends to talk to.

now i get (example) seven notes, six of which are likes and one is a reblog with no commentary. when i have something with a ton of notes, still, minimal commentary, no one talks to me. even on a mod with five hundred notes it just feels like i went ‘hey i made something :)’ and everyone picked it up and walked away with it, no one went ‘hey this is cool i want to talk to the person who made it.’

and it just feels like 95% of the time, i’m just overlooked. 

and it’s worse than it’s ever been in my entire life, and I wonder, what’s the point of any of this anymore.

why bother to make the posts to share when it all just gets passed by. what’s the point in trying to reach out to new people and make friends when i get lashed out at or left behind? the social is gone out of my social media. i had community, and now it’s gone.

so this has all been going on for months and months and months and hey! suffering. and i dont expect it to get any better, don’t expect this post to fix these issues, but i’ve been trying to say something about all of this for fucking months and i think just, laying it all out is all I can do about it. i’m sure i’ve forgotten some things to touch on but as it is, all these events, all of it happening all together. new traumas, old traumas reawoken, reinforced, i’ve been torn to pieces i don’t know how to function, i can’t remember the last time i felt like even half a real person. taught that the safe, positive spaces that meant so much to me don’t actually exist and they’ll all turn on me and be torn away. nowhere is safe anymore, and trying to make it safe is just going to ruin me again.

people aren’t safe, places aren’t safe, been proven to me time and time again so i just. stay away.

no matter how much i try to fight that, it just doesnt work.

anyway tl;dr beets needs therapy probably

[cherrytsukkis]

streaming minecraft with the first years

- word count: 1.4k

- characters: hinata, kageyama, tsukishima, yamaguchi, yachi

- a/n: i made half of this on mobile and half on my laptop so,,, also i got way too immersed in this bc all i do is play minecraft (even tho i suck) anyways, enjoy this mess!! also ty to ppl on the rircus rerver for helping me with minecraft usernames!!

tsukishima made a server for y'all after you bribed him (also some of his viewers begged him to)

kageyama and hinata teamed up and killed tsukishima, not even a minute in

and you were just there like “:o chat yall seeing this shit”

yall spawned in near a birch flower forest biome thingy and you and yachi bolted over there

you asked yachi to be your minecraft gf and she accepted

as soon as she said yes, kageyama and hinata killed tsukki again lmao

you and yachi moved to a different voice call bc hinata kept screaming about how tsukki was after him now

you guys began planning on having a cute little cottage core home together

you go mining while yachi makes a farm + gathers animals

yachi screamed of joy when she found a chicken family

she also screamed when she happened to find a pink sheep

you guys are just talking about random stuff and were just vibing for the rest of the stream

the next time you stream on the server, you see that yams made a cute little spawn place and yams took you on an adventure to go see his home in the snowy mountains

tsukki logged on and you and yams proceeded to go try to find his home despite tsukki tell you to fuck off

for some reason, he starts giving you guys clues on where he’s at

you’re all like “omg friendship 🥰″

but in reality, someone donated like 50 bucks for him to kill you and he’s taking this opportunity to lure you guys

 it turns night really fast and then a group of zombies gang up on you

you end up dying like four times before you baby rage and give up 

you leave the voice chat and go back to being a wee farmer waiting for your lover, yachi, to log on

instead of yachi, you get hinata </3

hinata logs on and he immediately calls you

“hinata-”

“y/n!!! do you wanna go to the nether with me!!”

“no ❤️″

you hang up but then he calls you again

“i’ll give you a two pigs, i know you and yachi are looking for some”

thirty minutes later, hinata has gotten you lost in a soul sand biome

only plus from this trip is that you got a lot of glowstone

you ended up having to call kageyama and ask him to come save you bc yams was mining god knows where and tsukishima would never help you bc he’s a bully <3

kageyama was calling both of you dumbasses in the vc

hinata bc hinata is hinata and you for following hinata blindly

then he got lost somewhere else in the nether <3

and now the three of you were fighting as you ran away from ghasts and skele bois

“it’s the short height for me”

“it’s the abandonment issues for me”

“it’s the need to one up each other in every situation because y’all insecure for me”

this whole time your chats were telling yall to just look at coords so you could find each other but you guys are illiterate </3

yachi finally logged on and joined your call and she saved yall bc she was watching your stream this whole time and was like wtf

the vc was SILENT as yachi led y’all to the nether portal

you muted yourself in shame and starting thanking recent subs and just the chat in general

everyone in chat: ugh we stan a dumb queen 🤩

another time you go on the server, hinata has accidentally started a war against tsukishima and so like every five minutes you would see smth like “tinysun was blown up by moonshima” or “moonshima was shot by tinysun using schlong” (yes hinata is that guy)

speaking of names

yall clown kageyama every five seconds bc he made his ign ‘Setter_soul_x’ (bc his streamer name was taken </3)

he gets pissed off a lot and leaves the server bc everytime you guys start a fight, someone will be like “okay Setter_soul_x”

yachi has “yacchan” meanwhile yams had “yamagucci” and you can can decide whether you have a clapped ign or not

now to just talk about general stuff

i feel like yams and tsukki would be those bitches who make exp farms and shit

like one day you’ll log on and you’ll ask them where they’re at and they’ll be like “oh we’re making an enderman farm in the end” or “we just finished a villager breeder” or some shit like that

yachi would stick to farming and being a cottagecore gay and you would be the one to do most of the mining and shit

sometimes she’d follow you when you go to fight someone or just bother them

hinata made a giant netherrack meatball at spawn and inside of it is just pure hell

everytime someone tries to go in it, they get blown up by a creeper or smth bc its so fucking dark in there bc the dumbass forgot to put some type of light source in there

kageyama’s house is just a cube-shaped hole he mined somewhere and everytime he wants more space he’ll just expand the cube

you and tsukki end up teaming up together at one point and made a railroad to everyone’s homes and to different biomes

when everyone fought the wither, tsukki, yamaguchi, and hinata did most of the work you and kageyama were far away watching like “damn thats crazy” (yachi wasnt streaming at the time and just told you guys she didnt care if you did it without her)

when it was time for the ender dragon, it was a whole different story

tsukishima and yamaguchi were hella prepared and were calmly going around destroying the end crystals while you, hinata and kageyama were just trying to get away from all the angry endermen

yachi was just placing water down and making cobblestone huts y’all could hide under

once tsukki and yams finished destroying the end crystals, you joined them in shooting down the ender dragon

kags and hinata were still fighting endermen 

like all you’d see is “ __ was slained by Enderman” messages as you listened to tsukki and yams talk to each other calmly

yachi said she wasnt fighting no dragon bc fuck that shit

one y’all did kill the dragon, hinata tried to claim the dragon egg and tsukishima yelled at him for like ten minutes bc hinata didnt do shit

and while tsukki fought with hinata and kageyama, you and yachi followed yamaguchi into an end gateway

you found an end city but then you fell outta the world </3 dont ask how, you just did

you decided to log off and that was that

another time you logged on, tsukki invited you to go with him to a woodland mansion bc he got a map

you thought he was being fishy but you went anyways bc content

everything was going well, you guys traveled there together, found a desert temple along the way, you tamed a cat, tsukki talked about conspiracy theories with you

but then you got to the mansion and you lost him

you were like tsukki where tf you’d go and he would tell you a place and you would go and he wasnt there

you were about to cry bc so many mobs were after you and u just boxed yourself into a little dirt hut in the corner and you kept yelling at tsukki in vc

he muted himself bc he was laughing his ass off at your pain heart been broke so many times

he finally came to get you bc apparently he already moved upstairs and just as you calmed down, tsukki betrayed you

you walked in front of him in fear of mobs hitting you from behind but tsukki ended up hitting you with a sword to death </3

you immediately logged off and then cried to your stream about fake friends for like ten minutes while listening to the inside out soundtrack

your chat convinced you to log back on and hesitantly joined the vc again and tsukishima apologized while trying to hold back laughter and told you that he put your stuff in your chest and you were like 🥺🥺🥺

overall the server is very chaotic but kinda nice bc family bonding ❤️ and even tho tsukki is a dick he along, with yams, help you and yachi out sometimes so your cottagecore aesthetic thrived

UNEDITED.

tag list: @kaoyuuuuu​ @macaronnv < it wont let me tag you :((

[omniswords]

la vie en rose [félix graham de vanily/marinette dupain-cheng]

“What in the world are you doing?”

Her arm was still extended. “Giving you an out. Because it’s New Year’s Eve, and we’re lonely-together people, and you want a party, and I want to change my mind.” She looked at him meaningfully, then nodded toward her hand. “So are you going to take it or not?”

Two years pass, and Félix finds himself stuck and bored out of his mind at a New Year's party. Fortunately, he finds someone who can get him out. And give him more than he bargained for.

Félix wasn’t exactly a man of science beyond school necessities, but he was pretty sure—he could hypothesize, even—that mankind was capable of dying of boredom, and he’d be the first to go.

It wasn’t as though he found it difficult to interact with people at gatherings like these. He’d been to enough of these stuffy parties and black-tie galas that he could at least pretend at being a socialite. He knew how to manipulate words and punch up cheap party tricks enough for that special class of adults who looked down their noses at everyone to laugh behind their hands and call him a master magician. And he knew how to feign laughter at comments like those, because he wasn’t a magician, really. He was an illusionist. He just didn’t have the time to play at semantics with these people when the only point was to get on their good sides.

(Even if he wasn’t entirely sure that any of those Rossis had a good side.)

The problem was that events like these were so monotonously dull, whether they were here in France or back in London. He didn’t know how much longer he could deal with the Paris elite telling him how much he’d grown. How talented he was and how excited he must be to inherit his family’s line of work. How he must love the city his aunt once came to call home, and how very tragic it still was to think of her sudden disappearance. Worst of all, how interested he must be in the Agreste’s fashion lines, and—to his chagrin and disdain—how very much he resembled his cousin.

The only relief he got from the last was how, whenever she overheard it, Chloé Bourgeois would fix him with a brief disgusted expression. No matter to him; the feeling was mutual, always had been. And she was the fool besides, for trying so maddeningly hard to possess Adrien in the first place, even after all these years. Even after he tied himself down to that fencing girl. Tsurugi, he thought her name was?

Well. He did it for his mother, after all. She was, and perhaps would always be, the only the reason he managed to endure these things.

But no matter how much he thought of her, no matter how many hugs she gave him, or how much of the car ride back to the hotel she spent thanking him and stroking his hair, he still needed a moment to breathe. That moment found him on one of the balconies of the Grand Paris, the double doors behind him closing off the music and the gossip and leaving him only with the night lights and the strangely temperate winter weather. The city was just as he remembered it, or wanted to: buzzing with life where he couldn’t quite see it, baring its teeth in a smile or bitten-out words. Inviting him to play, or scolding him for all the stiffness in his clothes and his bones and his attitude. But what did Paris know about him? And what did he care to know about it?

And, most baffling of all—why did he want to disappear into it so badly?

Before Félix could humor himself with any more questions or sink his teeth into the night air any further, a figure caught his sight of the corner of his eye. A person, strolling down the street with an irritating bounce in her step. It wasn’t until she came into the streetlight that he recognized her—the dark hair, those curious eyes.

That… that girl from Adrien’s video message. I-Love-You Girl. What was her name again? Marie? Madeleine? How easy it was to forget… He only hoped she’d developed some taste since he’d seen her last.

But what if he…?

Once she was close enough to the balcony, just under the streetlight, he cleared his throat to get her attention. When that didn’t work, he called out, “Hey.” Loud enough that she’d hear him, but not so loud that anyone else would think he was crazy.

I-Love-You Girl stopped, startled, looked around. Was she always so scatterbrained?

“Up here,” he said with an exasperated sigh, leaning over the balcony and digging his chin in his hand so she could get a better look at him. When she had the sense to look, of course.

Finally she did—and as soon as they met eyes, she stared at him sideways. Which… he supposed he deserved, all things considered. At least it was refreshing not to be mistaken for Adrien at first glance. Even though she was, or hopefully had been, so sickeningly invested in him that it was more a dichotomy of Adrien and Not Adrien. “Félix,” she said, by way of greeting, colder than the evening. He didn’t even know she was capable of a tone like that. He didn’t even know she remembered his name. “What do you want?”

“Get me out of here,” Félix said with no hesitation and a backwards glimpse at the gala going on behind him. He could make out a muffled piano rendition of O Holy Night or Auld Lang Syne, one of those two—probably Adrien’s doing—and a chorus of voices at various levels of inebriation. So much for distinction. “You’re my out.”

The girl narrowed her eyes, and she jammed her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “Why should I?”

“Because it’s New Year’s Eve,” he pointed out airily, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And aren’t you supposed to be nice to people on New Year’s Eve? Good will toward men? Any of it ring a bell?”

She was unmoved. “You’re supposed to be nice to people year-round. And Christmas,” she added pointedly, “was six days ago.”

He sighed again. “Then at least do it for Adrien, would you? Aren’t you friends?”

“Right.” She laughed, but not because she was amused; still, he didn’t miss the split second that her face fell and her body tensed. “Adrien, whose phone you hijacked to try and make me think he hated me. I’m so irrevocably convinced.” She took a step forward, as if to leave. “Besides. You aren’t Adrien.”

Not that that seemed to matter anyway, apparently.

And yet he’d never heard such beautiful words. You aren’t Adrien. Damn right he wasn’t. He’d play them over and over if he could.

“Look, I understand,” he blurted out, hoping at least that would stop her. “I shouldn’t have said that. And I hurt your feelings before and never apologized to you for it. I should have. We were just in such a hurry to catch our train back and I never got the chance to meet you in person. Let me… make it up to you now. You know. While fate’s brought us together.” The words tasted tight and bitter in his mouth, like black licorice, but maybe she would believe them. “Tis the season, no?”

She hesitated.

He cocked an eyebrow, inclined his head. He was getting to her. “Besides,” he added. “That Lila girl won’t get off my back about some film deal or other. You must know how annoyingly persistent she can be sometimes. She even puts Bourgeois to shame.”

Félix knew more than his fair share about risk assessment in situations like these, and it seemed as though keeping in touch with Adrien through text, even minimally, paid off. I-Love-You Girl’s expression softened in sympathy—no, empathy—but then she went stiff again, put up the very walls he thought he’d opened up. Oh, he liked this. Finally, someone with a little give.

“Be down in five minutes,” she said, “or you’ll have to find your own way out.”

He grinned, and pushed off the balcony, and slipped back inside.

It wasn’t hard to navigate the hordes of guests, some still singing, some still taking yet another champagne flute from a server with a tray. All he had to do was wait for that Rossi girl to be properly occupied with his mother—which he silently apologized for, and swore to make up to her with a proper Christmas gift—to grab his coat and head downstairs. Even he needed a little air, he said; he wouldn’t be gone long. The only thing that paused him, even briefly, was a conversation he overheard between Adrien and his fencing girl.

“You know, I thought Marinette might show up and help her parents,” he said.

To which the fencing girl replied, “They must have relieved her for the night. Wherever she is, I hope she’s enjoying herself.”

“You mean like we are?” Adrien mumbled, and the two of them laughed, and he took her off to some other corner to chat.

Perfect.

When Félix made it down to the lobby, I-Love-You Girl was still waiting for him, still with her hands in her pockets. Now that he was closer, he could make out the dark pink of her peacoat, the pattern of her sweater dress that peeked out underneath, the wool tights and lace-up boots. At least she had more fashion sense than anyone upstairs, with their sequined gowns and straitlaced satin lapels.

She looked up, and he took a step forward, smiling cordially. “Marinette. So good to see you.”

———

For someone as sweet and mild-mannered as Marinette Dupain-Cheng, she certainly knew her way around Paris’s narrow streets and alleys, all the perfect ways of never getting caught. It almost bordered on suspicion, but Félix was already on thin ice as it was. He resigned himself to the universal truth that it was always the quiet ones who got caught up in affairs like these.

“You know,” he said all the same, “it would be nice to know where you’re taking me.”

“Away from that party,” she said, keeping up a pace so oddly brisk that he might have found it hard to keep up if he weren’t so much taller than she was. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

He laughed, a bit in disbelief. He really was going to enjoy this, wasn’t he? “What were you doing out, anyway? Almost everything is closed this time of night.”

Marinette only gave him another sideways glance—more of a glare—and seemed somehow to walk even faster, taking sharp turns every so often. She must have practice with this.

“Must you move so quickly?” he said. “Any faster and we’ll be running.”

“Do you always talk like this?” she shot back.

“I’d rather it didn’t look like I’m trying to pursue you. Or, you know, like you’re trying to get away from me.” He paused. “Are you trying to get away from me?”

Marinette stopped just at the end of one of these alleyways, so suddenly that he stumbled and almost bumped into her. She didn’t turn around to face him, but she spoke anyway. “Did you mean what you said up there?” she asked.

Félix paused. “I don’t follow.”

She scoffed through her nose, as if to say, that’s a first. “Because if you didn’t mean what you said, and you were just trying to get me to get you out of there, then yes, I am trying to get away from you, and you can handle with getting exactly what you wanted—and finding your way back—all by yourself.” Whatever stiffness still lingered in her body started to fade, just a bit. “But if you meant it… if you really do want to make it up to me, if you really have changed for the better, then…”

Marinette trailed off, and turned her head just so, and the rest of her words hung in the balance. I’ll stay with you.

He wasn’t used to this. People like this. Girls like this. They either avoided him like the plague under the impression that his money made him consider them beneath him, or they fell all over him because they wanted something out of him. But Marinette wasn’t quite either one. She was hesitant, sure. Resistant, even. But there, in the hairline cracks of her resolve, were the pieces of her personality poking out. The vulnerability. The want, the need to be known, really known. All the little things that Adrien might have loved about her, if he had been smart enough to look.

It fascinated him.

“Do you really think I haven’t changed?” he asked. “It’s been two years. A lot can happen in two years.”

Marinette folded her arms tight. “So can nothing at all.”

Félix sighed. “Fine, I’ll concede it. I made a… less-than-stellar first impression. We were fourteen. And I was foolish.”

“You also understand,” she quipped, “that being fourteen isn’t an excuse for anything. And that I have this thing called a gut feeling. And that I almost always trust it.”

“And did your gut feeling tell you to leave me on that balcony?” He stepped back. “Did you, perhaps for the first time in your life, decide to go against it?”

Marinette didn’t say anything.

“If you really want me to leave,” he said after a while, once it was clear that she wasn’t going to say anything, “I’ll leave, and you can be on your merry way to celebrate… however it is someone like you celebrates.” His eyes traced the outline of her, head to foot, and he flexed his hands in his pockets, thumb rubbing against the silver band on his finger. “You seem to have been hurt by many people, many times. Let one of them actually do something about it.”

The tension in the moment that followed was near-tangible, and when Marinette stepped onto the street, into the glow of the next streetlight, Félix was half-convinced she really was going to leave. But then she turned on her heel, the slowest she’d been all evening, and looked him up and down, and she was more than that too-soft, simpering I-Love-You Girl he’d first seen. Her cheeks were rosy, likely from the night wind but perhaps from his own words, and she’d pulled her hair back in a ponytail that actually suited her age, and the swimming glint in her eyes and the way she carried herself told him that he was right. That she had been hurt and that, quite frankly, she didn’t need anyone to do anything about it.

And yet she pulled her hand out, extended it to him. “You have tonight,” she finally said. “Let’s hope your second impression is better than your first.”

Félix raised an eyebrow, and took that next step forward. “I think you’ll find,” he said, grasping her hand, “that I’m very good at meeting others’ expectations.”

He bent to kiss the back of it out of polite habit, and it tensed and slipped out of his grip almost instantly. When he looked up, she was staring at him in shock and… shame? Embarrassment? It was hard to read between her lines.

“Sorry,” she stammered, and looked away. “For a moment you reminded me of… someone else.”

“Well, I suppose we can’t have that.” He managed to save himself with a gallant bow—both hands showing, none of his fingers crossed, nothing in his palms. “Miss Dupain-Cheng, I’m in your charge.”

———

Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so surprised that there was very little still open on New Year’s Eve in Paris. Back home, as he was sure was the case literally everyone where, most festivities and fireworks went on well into the night; in fact, it had sort of been an unofficial family tradition to visit the Natural History Museum, go skating at the ice rink just in front, turn in for some time, return to the streets late at night for some fireworks. He had plenty of pictures from all the years they’d gone before. But that was before his father had passed away, and they hadn’t been back since. Something in his mother’s eyes had changed the first time he asked about the museum, and the sight made his gut twist so unpleasantly that he retracted the question and didn’t dream of ever asking again.

Paris, it seemed, was no different. Sure all the shops and cafés and bakeries were closed for the night and the next day, but there was no shortage of people in the streets and bars and restaurants that were still open. In every building they passed that dared to have its lights on, there were food and drink and excited, almost deafening and certainly drunken chatter.

He swore he’d seen a movie like this, once.

But the whole walk—which was, thank God, actually a walk and no longer practically a run—Marinette was quiet. Occasionally, she checked for phone, sometimes looked it for a couple of minutes at a time. It wasn’t until he pointed out that she still hadn’t told him just where they were going that she shot him a look, phone in hand, and said, “That’s what I’m trying to decide.”

Whatever she could dish out, Félix could give right back. “Have you considered the very novel concept of asking me?”

“Of course. Why hadn’t I thought of that?” Marinette made a show of rolling her eyes as they cut through a nearby park, but at least it seemed playful. “Let me ask the London native what to do on New Year’s Eve in Paris.”

“You know well and good what I meant by that,” he began to say, but stopped short as soon as Marinette did. He squinted at the building in front of him, the dim display cases just inside, the black and gold embellishments, the writing on the windows and front door. Tom and Sabine’s Boulangerie Patisserie, the signs read. Open every day.

Félix looked at her blankly, putting two and two together. “Is this your house?”

“Very perceptive of you,” Marinette said, taking out her keys and fumbling with the lock. And then, as she opened the door and turned on the lights for both of them, “Wait here. No, not outside, it’s cold.”

“You know,” he tried to joke as he stepped in, “I don’t usually go home with a girl on the first date.”

“Have you even been on a first date?”

Félix paused, and for a brilliant moment Marinette glanced back at him, apologetic, as though afraid that she’d actually hurt his feelings. “That is,” he said as he gathered his words, “far beyond the point.”

She gave him one of those up-and-down looks again. “Then should I be honored to be the first?” she asked dryly, slipping behind the counters toward a room in the back.

“That depends.” He leaned forward on the counter, took in the brick backsplash and the empty shelves and cases. “Do you consider this one?”

Marinette’s answer was little more than a scoff as she disappeared behind the door, and within a few minutes returned with two small white paper bags and two paper cups in a tray. If he looked close enough, he could see steam rising through the holes in each of the lids.

“Let’s go,” she said, thrusting the bags into his hands before he—or either of them, really—could do or say anything else. And if he looked close enough again, in the time that she allowed him to add a splash of milk, he could have sworn there was a dusting of light pink on the tops of her cheeks.

In spite of that earlier quip, Marinette was probably right about not entrusting an itinerary to him. He barely knew the first thing about these arrondissements, or why anyone would ever refer to them by only their numbers, and he certainly didn’t know what the bus system was like. But then, he barely knew what any bus system was like. He’d even only been on the tube a couple of times, and he’d been so young then, and his father had been the one to take him…

His father…

His expression must have gone sour as they waited at the bus station, because Marinette sighed and sipped her coffee and said, “I get it. It’s not exactly glamorous. But it’s running, so that’s what we’re going to use.”

“I don’t have a problem with it,” he replied simply, and when the bus pulled in she did him the courtesy of giving him a window seat in the back. Sure, the fact that they were seated backwards made him a bit nauseous at first, and sure, the cushion design was absolutely hideous, but seeing the city like this… all this electric contrasted against the dark, the brightly colored signs… well. It did beat staying at that stuffy hotel and that stuffy party. At least, for a blessed half-hour or so, it was quiet here.

“Still haven’t told me where we’re going,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

“I’m aware.” There was a pause, and under the roar of the bus, Marinette let out a breathless laugh. “You’re just going to have to trust me, huh?”

Félix rested his chin in his hand, smiled grimly into his palm. “How tragic.”

———

“Well, what do you think?”

“It’s…” Félix began, except the only way he knew how to end his sentence was, “empty.”

Well, it wasn’t terribly empty. There were a few people scattered here and there across what Marinette had called the Trocadéro, but not nearly enough to warrant a celebration. Most of them were talking in small clusters or taking pictures together over some festive music booming in the distance, and still more of them were, more frequently, walking away from the plaza and trying to get somewhere else. At least the place was well-lit for a nighttime spot, and the black-and-white pattern on the ground was pleasantly geometric. But Marinette seemed to be getting comfortable here, on a set of nearby steps, and Félix, having nowhere else to go, could do nothing but follow her.

“You know,” he said, “this wasn’t exactly how I expected my year to end. If you understand what I’m getting at.”

“Do I understand?” she replied. Her words were surprisingly soft, and she hugged her knees to her chest, cradling her cup in both hands and staring out at the park below, and the Eiffel Tower just beyond.

Félix took a seat beside her. In spite of how cold and rigid the steps were, he had to admit, the view from where they were sitting was stunning; it gave them an almost-perfect display of whatever light-show the tower had on, and he was sure that if it were daytime, he might spend more than his fair share walking about the park and the fountains in sight. “When you agreed to get me out of the hotel,” he said, “I assumed you were going to take me to some… some… uncouth party, with flashing lights and earsplitting music.” He set aside his own coffee, thankfully still warm, and the paper bags she’d left in his charge. “Isn’t that how people like you end the year?”

Marinette turned to him; if she was offended, it was difficult to tell. “You don’t know very much about people like me, do you? You don’t know me at all.”

“Then why get me out of there in the first place? Was it really because you hold so much disdain for that Rossi girl? Or because you thought I owed you something?”

“Because you needed kindness,” she said sharply, as if she’d be better off never hearing that name again, and as if that should have been just as obvious. “And because it seemed like you thought I did, too. And, if you weren’t aware, people like me think almost everyone deserves kindness. And everyone deserves to have their mind changed.”

Félix stopped, held his breath, took a moment to realize he was even doing it. Almost everyone deserved kindness. Of course he’d heard that before, countless times. From his mother, who took him in her arms and set him on her lap after he’d been teased and rejected one too many times on the playground. From his father, who always made it a point to dig around in his pocket for spare change for any homeless person they might see. Everyone deserved kindness, his father said, because everyone was fighting some kind of battle. Everyone deserved kindness, his mother said, because eventually kindness came around to give you the things you deserve, and—best of all—it came at no cost.

“Well?” Marinette said, resting her chin on her knees. “Was I wrong?”

“No.” He shook his head. It was easier to say when he wasn’t looking at her. When he was looking at the lights instead. “No, you weren’t wrong.”

Out of the corner of his eye, she shrugged, but something in the air about her told him she might be smiling, even if to herself. “I just figured you’d spent so much time around people that you might want to get away from them without getting caught. And I figured you wouldn’t want to do dumb tourist-y stuff like go on the Seine or ride one of those nighttime tour buses.” She nodded toward the tower, then pointed in another direction. “But if a party’s what you want, then there’s one over on the Champ de Mars, and there’s one by the Arc de Triomphe. Just say the word and we’ll get walking.”

Félix chewed his lip, basked in the temperate silence between them, and finally decided to busy himself with poking through the paper bags. Inside were them two croissants—one almond, one chocolate. He looked up from the back, and found Marinette hugging herself even tighter, as though she were trying to make herself even smaller than she already was. “I suppose,” he said, getting comfortable and offering her the bag with the chocolate croissant, “that I could do with knowing you.”

Marinette sighed and scooted a little closer to take it, and Félix counted that as a win. “For what it’s worth,” she added, “You do still owe me, and I wouldn’t wish Lila on anyone. So I guess i’m not totally opposed to you using her as a bargaining chip.”

“She wouldn’t be the first.”

She rolled her eyes. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“So.” Delicately, he tore open his own bag at the crease, making a temporary placemat as he unwrapped the almond croissant. “What was a girl like you doing strolling the streets of Paris so late at night?”

“I’m electing not to take a girl like me as an insult.” Marinette was bouncing one knee far too fast for her own good, and only stopped to tear her pastry into smaller pieces, to lick the chocolate from her thumb. “I was with some friends. A couple of them were holding a party on their houseboat.”

“Hm.” Félix paused to sip his coffee. “Now who’s fancy?”

Marinette snorted. “More like chaotic. Their mom partied harder than any of us. Said you have to end the year with a proper bang.” She paused, smiled faintly as if remembering the scene. “She’s fun. They’re fun.”

“Then… why did you leave?”

As soon as he asked, the air around her seemed to depress itself. Her lashes lowered, and she focused entirely too much on eating, and she went pigeon-toed, sitting there. Eventually, she said, “Low social battery, I guess you could say. And…”

Félix tilted his head, and when he spoke, he didn’t think his voice could ever go so… soft. “And?”

Marinette sighed deeply, finally turned to look at him. “I know I’m risking something by asking you about, you know, human emotion,” she said, just barely joking before she sobered up again. “But do you ever feel like… like you’re in a room full of everyone you know, and you’re still lonely? And suffocating? And you need to get out just to be you, for a little bit?”

By now, he’d finished his food, and he gestured for her to give him her empty bag and cup. “And just why do you think I asked you to get me out of that party?”

She looked taken aback for a moment, scanning him up and down with her eyes, and she was staring at him even as he came back to sit with her again. “So I guess we’re just… lonely together. On New Year’s Eve.”

“I suppose we are.” Félix stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I suppose I can’t say I mind.”

Under the light of the Trocadéro plaza, it looked like, perhaps, Marinette didn’t mind, either. And under that same light, if only for a moment or two, Félix suspended his belief in shallow niceties.

———

“This is the way the year ends,” Félix said, more to the gardens and the tower and the festivities than to Marinette. “Not with a bang, but a whimper.”

“Who said that?” Marinette asked, smiled faintly. “Those words are too pretty to be yours.”

So she could warm up even to someone like him after all. “T.S. Eliot,” he said. “I just changed the words a bit. You should read him sometime.”

He didn’t know how long they’d been sitting out here. Long enough for his hands and the tip of his nose to catch a chill, but not so long that he’d be any kind of missed. Briefly, he wondered how long that would take—if anyone would miss him at all.

He checked his phone. 11:00, and the plaza was entirely empty.

So this really was the way the year ended. Not with choruses and flashing lights and a single glass of champagne form a popped bottle, but with the quiet and the cold and, surprisingly even to himself, a girl to keep him company.

“Can I ask you something strange?” he asked to break the silence.

Marinette looked at him sideways. She was incredibly good at that, it appeared. “You’re on thin ice,” she murmured over the distant music. “But go on.”

He couldn’t believe he was even asking this. “You’re not so—” No, he wouldn’t say it that way. She wasn’t foolish. She’d proved that enough times tonight. Perhaps a bit naïve, and golden-hearted enough to confuse him still, but not foolish. He cleared his throat, tried again. “You don’t still carry those feelings for my cousin, do you? After all this time?”

She raised an eyebrow at him, but not without stiffening just a touch. She was probably hoping it wasn’t noticeable, but she couldn’t have known he had the eyes of an illusionist. The kind that saw everything and unraveled everyone else’s tricks on sight while still hiding his own. “Félix,” she cooed, and this time she really was joking, but the pit of his stomach warmed anyway, and he wished, for just a few seconds, that she might say his name like that again. “I’m flattered, but not interested.”

“Oh, come off it,” he shot back. “That’s hardly why I’m asking.”

“Well,” she said, “To answer your question, that depends. You’re not still a jackass, are you? After all this time?”

He folded his arms. “I’d like to think that sort of characteristic is subjective and employable only when necessary. And I wouldn’t consider this to be one of the times it is.”

Marinette was quiet for a moment, tapping her fingers against her knees in a rhythm he couldn’t quite place. “Not that it’s any of your business,” she said, “but no. Not anymore.”

“I see.” He gave her a faint nod. “Good for you. No point in wasting your time on endeavors bound to go nowhere, is there?”

She didn’t answer, and for a moment he was, to his own surprise, afraid that he’d been the one to hurt her feelings this time. But it seemed that Miss Marinette Dupain-Cheng was nothing if not resilient, and she got to her feet, pacing the plaza just behind him. “Well,” she said, “now it’s my turn to ask you something strange.”

Félix flinched and braced himself, tuned into her every step. “Go on.”

“Why…” Her steps paused, and she brushed back some hair that the wind blew across her face when she turned on her heel. “Why did you do that thing? With Adrien’s phone, I mean. I know it was two years ago, but…”

“That depends.” His legs were starting to get sore, and he stretched them out over the stairs. Had she really been thinking about that all this time? “Which answer would you like to hear?”

Marinette scoffed again, though it was barely audible, and began to pace again. “You got an honest one in there?”

He hummed, the businessman in his blood running warm. “Intending to use it against me somehow?”

“No,” she said simply, another smile lingering somewhere in her voice. “That’s reserved for people like you.”

She wasn’t wrong; in fact, he was sure his mother secretly prided herself on raising him that way. He just had no reason to admit to it. He followed suit, stood and nodded his head, and they began to walk the perimeter of the plaza together. “I suppose you could say I was… jealous. That we had come from such similar circumstances, and yet he was happier for it. That he had friends at all. That in spite of my uncle he opened up and went out into the world, and in spite of my mother I receded and stayed shut in.” Marinette looked at him in a manner he could only describe as incredulous, but he wasn’t fazed. “I didn’t say it was a very good reason. Only that it was one.”

She scuffed her heel against the ground, refused to look at him, and her voice went soft and small. “I didn’t know you lost your mother.”

“My father,” he corrected her. The thought of him ever losing his mother put a twinge in his heart, but he didn’t dare let his expression betray it. “He married into our family, you know. Took my mother’s last name. You could say he was the first to teach me about common folk so I wouldn’t be so out of touch, locked away all the time. Once he passed, I… started failing him.” And then, when Marinette didn’t say anything else, “What? Did you expect something more?”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, paused at the set of stairs once they reached it. “Did you expect that to excuse you?”

“No,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Forgive me for trying to do that human thing they call forging a connection.”

Whatever festivities going on in the park nearby seemed to double, and some admittedly catchy American jazz song began to play, so loud that he could actually make out some of the lyrics. Marinette seemed to perk up at the sound, and she shot him a glance. “You want to forge a connection?” she asked. “You want your chance to prove you’ve changed?”

“That is why I’m here, isn’t it?”

When he looked to Marinette, she was smiling, walking backward toward the center of the plaza, and she held her hand out to him. “Dance with me.”

His brow furrowed. Had she lost her mind? “I beg your pardon?”

“Dance with me,” she said again, more emphatically this time. She was rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet now. “You wouldn’t leave a lady alone on the floor, would you? You still owe me, don’t you?”

Perhaps they weren’t cut from such distant cloths after all. “I thought you said tactics like these were only reserved for people like me.”

“Well,” she said, “maybe I think something like this is employable only when necessary.”

“I don’t dance, you know.”

“Great.” Her smile shifted into a grin worthy even of the Cheshire Cat himself. “Neither do I.”

“Marinette,” he said, shaking his head. She’d definitely lost her mind. “What in the world are you doing?”

Her arm was still extended. “Giving you an out. Because it’s New Year’s Eve, and we’re lonely-together people, and you want a party, and I want to change my mind.” She looked at him meaningfully, then nodded toward her hand. “So are you going to take it or not?”

Félix didn’t exactly consider himself one to hesitate—it was quite possibly the only other thing he and Adrien’s fencing girl had in common. And he’d never really considered Marinette to be the business type. Tonight, for these few long-lasting seconds, he did. He took her hand before he could double back or regret it, and he tugged her all the way to the center of the Trocadéro. It wasn’t until he had both of her hands in his that he really felt how cold they were, and how soft, and how he wouldn’t be opposed to holding them a while longer. “Seems we both could do with some warming up,” he said.

Marinette’s eyes softened in the light, sparkled bright blue. Strange, how it made his stomach turn so. “Lead the way.”

He’d admit the dancing was clumsy at first; nothing like the ballroom lessons he’d been put up to so many times before. At best, they were two fools doing some simple two-step, back and forth, side to side, and she was leading far more where he should have been. But there were no rules here, no witnesses to look like a fool for, nothing to manipulate and no one to trick. And when he held Marinette at arm’s length and twirled her over and over, she wasn’t just tolerating him. She was enjoying him. She was smiling, glowing, and her cheeks were as pink as her peacoat, and whatever dark cloud had imposed itself on her presence was starting to disappear, little by little. And he was doing this human, infinite thing. And he was human, infinite, too.

He saw her as the music was dying, as she stumbled and he caught her. Not Marinette. I-Love-You Girl. Wherever she had gone before, she was back now, and that breathless smile was his to remember. And he’d never delete it.

“Looks like two years did you some good after all.” she said, letting go of his hands. And then, “What? What are you looking at me like that for?”

Félix shook his head. “Nobody misses me,” he said, entirely unshaken, “and my cousin is a complete idiot, and I couldn’t care less.”

———

He did her the courtesy of dancing to two more songs after that, until she was flushed in the face and out of breath, and at ten minutes to the New Year, they took the steps down from the plaza and cut through the gardens. They’d probably be stranded here until well after midnight, with every bar and street party starting to clear out. But Marinette had said the buses would be running until 2:00, and from the way she kept bumping into him even with intermittent apologies, he came to mind the prospect of taking one less and less.

“I have one more thing I wanna ask you,” she said. The further they got into the gardens, the louder the music became, and she tugged him away by the sleeve of his coat, where they could walk and talk more quietly. Where he could measure words and ineffable feeling by the slow click of her boots.

He spared her a look, and only that, despite the twitch in his fingers that told him to brush her hair out of her eyes, despite the tension in his arm that told him to pull her out of the way, just in case. He did neither, and said, “I’m listening.”

“Why did you ask me about Adrien?” For some reason, the question rang out louder than anything else he’d heard that night, but Marinette didn’t stop. He had to wonder if she was even capable of it; she only paused when he did, and even then she was a few paces ahead. “I mean, you probably know about Kagami, so. I’m not so sure why whatever I feel—”

“Forgive me,” he said, unmoving, watching her from a distance. “I merely thought that someone who thinks everyone deserves kindness should deserve some of it returned.”

Marinette opened her mouth. Closed it. Open and closed, again. She tucked back those flyaway hairs he’d been tempted to touch. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Only…” She looked softer in the streetlight, more than she had in the alleyway, more than she had on the bus, even more than she had under the light of the Trocadéro plaza. A part of him wanted to savor it, carry it into the new year; another part of him was mortified to have felt so, and determined to cover it up. He found the middle ground and steeled himself, his hands in his pockets, clenching out the softness of her fingers that still lingered there. “Only that it would be foolish to let that kindness go to waste. Those feelings.” He pressed his lips together, caution bleeding into his stare. “You’ve proven that you’re far too smart for that.”

Perhaps this was, aside from the dancing, aside from that video, the most vulnerable he had ever seen her: standing on the sides of her feet, looking away with a blush that was as demure as it was flattered. Something about her, so still and listening for the countdown, told him that she must have been telling herself this for ages. “That’s how I know you never really knew me,” she joked hollowly. “Just saying things to butter people up, huh.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Félix took one step forward, and then another. “Well,” he said, “if that’s really how you feel, then… I did say I could do with knowing you. I don’t intend to take that back now.” He flicked his gaze up toward her as they stood toe-to-toe, close enough for them to hold each other’s breaths, far enough for him to back off. “What do you say?”

Marinette looked at him like she was expecting him to hold out his hand again. Skeptical. She folded her arms. “Is this some kind of deal?”

“I’d like to think,” he said, “that by now we’ve moved past transactions.”

Before she could respond, a resounding cheer from down the way caught their attention, a chorus of people beginning to count down from sixty. Félix wondered if it must have sounded the same back at the Grand Paris, or if they were simply waiting for the clock to turn over, waiting to applaud the new year by way of greeting.

She turned back to him. “One minute left,” she said, and if he strained his ear it might sound like she was… regretting it. “Well? Did I waste my kindness on you, too?”

“You’re the one with the ‘gut feeling,’” he replied with a shrug and a set of air quotes. “Did you waste the honor of a first date on me, too?”

“This wasn’t a date.” Thirty seconds. She rolled her eyes. “This was a second impression.”

“Not a bad second impression.”

“How would you know?”

“You’re smiling,” he said. “Your eyes are smiling.”

Marinette held her breath, watched him cautiously. She wasn’t quite the girl from the alleyway, wasn’t quite I-Love-You Girl. She hung somewhere in the balance, eyes soft, stance open, even as the hint of an actual smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

He took his hand out of his pocket, let it hover at the small of her back without actually touching her. “Would it be a date if I kissed you?” he asked. He didn’t know why he was breathing the words. He only knew why he was asking. “Or would it just be tradition?”

She snorted. “And waste a New Year’s kiss on you?”

He raised an eyebrow and both hands, took a couple of steps back. “You thought you wasted a lot of things on me. Why would I stop you now?”

Marinette moved forward, reached for him by the front of his coat and tugged him in with a force that made him stumble. “Oh, get over here,” she murmured over the roar of the street party, standing up on her toes and pressing her mouth to his just as the countdown hit one.

Sure, Félix had admitted to never having been on a first date, but he’d never admit that he hadn’t ever been kissed either. He stumbled again, his hand finding purchase at her back—for real this time—and in the sudden deafening quiet of the park his body went stiff and his stomach began to turn. He felt every sharp thing he’d ever seen in her, warm and searing—the biting comments, the limits, every little thing that put him in his place—and he fully expected her to rip herself away from him and ask if he was happy now. Instead, all that edge began to fade, and gradually she went lax under his touch. She stood back on her feet, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him with her, let him find and follow the rhythm of her lips. Let him feel the dancing again. And when she finally moved back, she didn’t stray too far. In fact, she was still holding onto him. Like she was considering giving him another.

“Oh,” she rasped. He couldn’t even tell if her eyes were open or closed. If they were still smiling. If I-Love-You Girl was standing in front of him instead.

He didn’t dare move. “What?”

“You have changed. You’re real.”

He wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean. But before he could say anything, she gingerly tapped his chest, stepped out of his grasp, brushed her fingers against her lips before jamming her hands in her pockets.

“How long before you go back to London?” she asked.

“That depends,” he said, all breathy words again. He could still feel the kiss on him. Kicked himself for wanting to feel it again. “If you wanted to see me again, would it a first date, or a second?”

“Let’s go,” Marinette said with a joking shove and a tug toward the bus station. And as they pushed through the crowds she grabbed his hand, and as they rode the bus back she leaned on his shoulder and watched the city die down with him, and before he made it to the lobby of the Grand Paris she pulled him into the dark for one more kiss goodnight. It was well past midnight, and the kiss was quicker than the last, but he returned it anyway, lonely-together with her for those last few seconds.

“If they don’t chew you out in there,” she said, “meet me at the Trocadéro tomorrow at 11.”

Félix raised a brow. “For what? Another second impression?”

Marinette smiled. There wasn't very much I-Love-You Girl lingering there, but he supposed he liked her better that way. “For a second date.”

[crashdevlin]

Fool For Love 8- Lunch?

Fool For Love Series Masterlist , Fool For Love Story Masterlist

Author’s Note: Get ready for some heavy angst and some angry alpha Dean acting an ass. 

Summary: Sam is determined to soften the blow of what Y/n did to save Dean.

Pairing: Alpha!Dean x Omega!Reader, Alpha!Sam x Omega!Reader, mentions of Beta!OMC x Beta!Reader

Word count: 2243

Story Warnings: A/B/O dynamics, angst, past kidnapping, Dean being a little stalker-y, some awkwardness

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“She just left?” Dean asked, rubbing at his wrists. 

“Why would she stay?” Sam responded, leaning against the dungeon wall with his arms crossed over his chest. “You think just because she saved your life that she’s forgiven you?”

Dean’s jaw clenched. “I didn’t mean to-” He sighed and shook his head. “I wasn’t in control of myself. I saw a rival for my omega and I had to take him out.”

“She wasn’t your omega, Dean. She wasn’t anyone’s omega anymore. She was a beta and she was happy and I begged her to put aside her happiness to save your sorry ass.” Sam rolled his eyes and pushed off from the wall. “She left because she never wanted to come back here in the first place and now she’s stuck with us again because you went feral.” Dean looked away from his brother, guilt burning in his chest. “She’s stuck as an omega again because you couldn’t handle yourself!”

“She was always supposed to be an omega!”

“If she’d stayed omega, she would have died a very long time ago!”

“Well, then it’s a good thing Chuck made her a beta for the last two years, but she’s supposed to be a damn omega and she’s supposed to be ours!” Dean sighed and rubbed his hand down his face. “Shit. I���m...I’m still all full of testosterone and shit. This is my fault and I hate how this...hate how this went.” Sam started to walk out of the dungeon and Dean grabbed his arm. “Where’d she go?” he asked, softly.

“She’s staying in town. It’s not like she can go real far,” Sam snapped, before pulling his arm away and heading for the library. Rowena was sitting in one of the chairs, sipping at a cup of tea. “Thank you.”

“You owe me, Samuel,” she said, setting the cup on a small saucer and pointing a perfectly-manicured finger at him. “And you owe that girl. More’an yew could possibly imagine. She’s given up quite a lot fer you boys an’ if I get even an inkling of her bein’ treated without the respect she’s due fore it, I’ll come fer yew both.” Sam just nodded. Rowena stood and looked up at him, raising a sculpted eyebrow. “She’s a treasure. She’s yer treasure.”

“She is. She always has been. To me, anyway.”

Rowena gave him an appraising look, then nodded. “I gave her my number before she left. I’ll be keepin’ in touch with her.” She grabbed her clutch purse and headed for the spiral staircase out of the bunker. For some reason, Sam felt comfort in the fact that the witch was looking out for his omega.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sam smiled at the little old woman behind the desk. "I'm looking for Jill Burrel. She told me she'd be getting a room here.”

“What’s your name?” she asked, picking up the desk phone.

“Uh, Sam.”

“Yeah, this is Wanda at the front desk," she said into the phone. "I have a Sam here. You want me to send him up? Yeah, okay." Wanda smiled tightly as she set the phone on its hook. "Room 3, upstairs on the left.”

"Thanks," he said politely, shifting the bag he was carrying from one shoulder to the other and heading up the stairs. He knocked lightly on the door with the three stenciled on it and stepped back, not wanting to crowd her. He could smell her inside her room and he took a deep breath through his mouth to stabilize himself before he sighed it out as the doorknob twisted. “Hey,” he greeted when she appeared in the doorway.

“Hey, Sam,” she said, quietly. 

He offered her the duffel bag, setting it at her feet when she didn’t take it from him. “I brought you some of your clothes, um, from Seattle and from the bunker, whichever you feel more comfortable wearing. I, uh, I also got your laptop out of the evidence lockup at the Seattle PD. It was pretty trashed, but the hard drive was good, so I put it in another computer and it booted up. If it gives you trouble, I can work on it some more, but you should be able to get to your pictures and stuff...the important things.”

She gave him a grateful smile as she bent down to pick it up. “Thank you. That was...you didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.” He nodded and tucked his hair behind his ears, stepping backward. “Well, I’ll leave you alone, I just wanted-”

“Is he okay?” she asked as Sam approached the top step.

He turned his head to look back at her. “Yeah. He’s fine.”

“Are you?” she whispered, looking down.

Sam turned and stepped closer to her. “Feel like you’re the one who went through the traumatic experience. Are you okay?”

“I’m not the one who spent the last two years dealing with a broken mating bond.”

Sam sighed. “You don’t have to feel bad about that, Y/n. You were going to die. I was losing you either way.” She nodded sadly and Sam felt an urge to comfort her. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for us, Y/n. You’re...you’re too good for us.”

“Stuck with you now though,” she said, and he could tell it was an attempt at a joke. 

“Yeah. Fortunately for us.” He licked his lips and chewed on the inside of his cheek for a minute before taking a deep breath. “Do you wanna have lunch with me?”

“Lunch?” she asked, looking up into his kaleidoscope eyes.

“Yeah, just you and me. Moe’s Diner?”

“With the hand-battered onion rings?” she asked, remembering their many trips to that diner when she lived at the bunker.

Sam nodded. “Yeah, and they’re doing the malted milkshakes again.”

Y/n smiled. “Okay. Let’s...lunch. I’ll just put this in the room...and get changed. Be right back.”

Sam took another deep breath and sighed it out. A lunch date. They’d jumped straight from her being his brother’s omega to him knotting her. They never had a date. He hadn’t been on a date in years. He was a little nervous, even though she was already his. 

When she opened the door, she was wearing one of the stylish designer dresses he grabbed from her home in Seattle. He’d actually grabbed as much of her stuff as he could fit in the back of the pickup truck and stored it all in an empty room at the bunker, but he wasn’t ready to tell her he’d retrieved so much of her other life. 

“You look great.”

“Thanks. There’s a real nice consignment shop in Seattle. Got half of my stuff there. I couldn’t see buying ‘em full price,” she said, clicking the door shut behind them. Sam led her down the stairs to the car, opening the passenger door for her and ran around to the driver’s side. They were about five minutes into the drive when she sighed happily. “I missed this.”

“What?” Sam asked, looking over at her.

“This. The loud car, the smell of your scent and the leather, the vibration of the engine. I just missed it.” He just smiled in response.

Y/n smiled at the way Sam opened the doors for her, pulled out her chair for her, deferred to her to let her order first when the server approached. “You’re so polite. I almost forgot about that.”

Sam scoffed. “When I wanna be, yeah, but...come on, we both know I’m not always polite,” he said, smirking.

Her face heated up and she looked down at her lap. “Yeah, I know.” She chuckled and looked up to catch his eyes. “Didn’t forget that...how charming you are.”

“Dean says I’m awkward.”

“Dean also says there haven’t been any good rock bands since the 70s, and that’s glam rock and grunge erasure and I don’t stand for it,” she said, smiling bright. “Dean’s wrong sometimes.”

He nodded and licked his lips. “Yeah. But he’s right sometimes, too. He picked you.”

“Biology picked me,” she disputed, picking up her drink and taking a sip. “Did you happen to grab any of my books? I didn’t see any in the bag, but-”

“Uh, yeah, a few. They’re back at the bunker,” he admitted. He grabbed every book that was obviously bought for her enjoyment...a mountain of sci-fi and fantasy, a box of comic books and graphic novels. “I didn’t want to dump all the stuff I grabbed on you. Is there a specific one you’re looking for?”

“My Douglas Adams books. Hitchhiker’s Guide special edition, leather-bound.”

Sam nodded. “I got that one.”

“Oh, good. Can you bring that next time?”

He smiled. “Next time?”

“Yeah. I mean, unless you’re not planning to take me on another date sometime,” she said as the server came up with their food.

“Of course...I’d love to. I just wasn’t sure if you wanted me to plan to take you on another date sometime.” He grimaced at his wording and shook his head. “Dean’s right, I’m awkward.” 

“You’re adorable, Sam,” she said as his phone went off.

Sam pulled his cell out of his pocket and smiled tightly as he saw a message from Dean. ‘She looks wrong in those clothes doesnt look right in a diner booth’. Sam looked around the diner, but didn’t see his brother. He rolled his eyes and tapped out a short response before slipping his phone back into his pocket. "So, there was a 'Help Wanted' sign at the bookstore down the street. I think we could scrounge up a social and a fake name for you. That way you could have your own life and stuff."

She smiled as she took a bite of her salad. “I like that but...If I need permission from my alpha…”

“I’ll give it...after you give the owner an earful about his archaic practices,” Sam said, offering her the plate of onion rings. She bit her bottom lip as she took one off the plate and took a bite. “As good as you remember?”

“Better.” She moaned and nibbled at the breading. “I’ve been eating...healthy food. Mal was all about ‘Healthy body, healthy mind’, between that and...the things I had to avoid to avoid bad memories...I haven’t had an onion ring in years.” She finished the onion and sighed. “I think you would have liked him. He was a pint-sized, beta, Armani-wearing version of you...he was a good guy.”

Sam looked down at his own salad and bit the inside of his lip. “I’m sorry. I should have kept better tabs on Dean. I should-”

“It’s not your fault,” she said, reaching out and taking his hand. “He’s not your responsibility. It’s on him.”

“Not my responsibility? We’ve always been each other’s responsibility." Sam looked at his hand in hers and twisted them to slip his fingers between hers. "He'll make it up to you. He's gonna try."

"Can we not talk about him right now?” She shook her head. “I’d rather just focus on being here with us.”

Sam nodded. “I’m happy to be here with you,” he said with a soft smile.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sam and Y/n walked up the stairs to room 3. She turned at the door and looked up at him. “I had a fun time at lunch,” she admitted, fiddling with the fabric of her dress. “It was nice.”

“Yeah. It was,” he agreed. “I’ll, uh, I’ll come see you in a few days.” He didn’t want to push too far, too fast. Give her some time between interactions. Let her have her space.

“I’ll get a burner and send you the number in an email...since you fixed my computer for me.” She smiled gratefully. “Really, that was such an awesome thing for you to do for me.”

“It was no big deal. I wanted you to have some of your...the life you’ve gotten used to.”

“You’re very sweet, Sam. Thank you for making this easier.” She went to her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his, wrapping her hands around the back of his neck and pulling him down a bit. Her cheeks were warm when she pulled away. “Uh...a-anyway...I’ll email you.”

Sam’s cheeks were pink as he tucked his hair behind his ears and nodded at her. “I’ll be waiting. Bye, Y/n.” He smiled as he walked down the stairs. That was pretty good as far as first dates with your truemate go. He was almost skipping as he walked out of the inn, heading for the Impala. Sam rolled his eyes when he saw Dean sitting behind the wheel. “Shoulda locked the car,” he muttered to himself before opening the passenger door and sitting down. “I told you to go home, Dean.”

“Don’t leave my car unlocked, man,” Dean grumbled, putting his hand out for the keys.

Sam handed the keys over and glared at Dean as he turned the engine over. “Why were you following us? Don’t follow us, dude. It’s not okay.”

The older alpha’s jaw twitched as he pulled away from the inn, driving toward the bunker. “Just can’t lose ‘er again,” he mumbled, not looking at his brother. 

Sam sighed and looked away. He understood what Dean was feeling but he didn’t really feel like Dean deserved to be feeling it. “She’s not going anywhere.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[demauryss]

sail the wildest stretch; 1/6

Summary: Lucas is in a mess. His roommate is his ex-crush. He gets years worth of hairfall if he thinks a minute too long about his philosophy class. His penis-drawing talents are just out of the ordinary. And the cupid assigned to his case is a hair breadth short of committing his murder.

But it’s okay. As long as he has to worry about Eliott Demaury getting to murder him first.

or, cupid8776 has a lucas problem. lucas has an eliott problem. and they are not as unconnected as one might think they are.

enemies to lovers/matchmaking au.

ao3

chapter one: april thunders may blunders 

(next)

Dear Lucallecoeur456,

I’m extremely disheartened to announce that your request filed under letter no 654lgb has been denied. According to my records, it is your tenth letter in the past five months which is getting rejected. Personally, I feel saddened as you’re the only person assigned to me who’s over eighteen and still hasn’t found a match. I’d be able to help you better if you consider the following points while writing to cupidint.com next time:

While forming the letter, please consider typing in a computer before you write it down by hand. Or just consider inscribing neatly. You’re the reason our Server turns into a whimpering mess when it transcribes Coup de Foudre - assuming it’s what you write because frankly, your handwriting is garbage – as Coup de Foutre.

Please refrain from using acronyms in your letter. Writing ‘brb’ every time you deviate from a thought does not make you look good. Especially when the abbreviated form has the same number of syllables as the original word. Even better, just totally refrain from straying from an original thought only to come back to it after five pages. Makes me feel like I’m walking through a maze as I’m reading your letter.

While we’re on the topic of refraining, also stop drawing pictures of dogs when you’re asked for what you’re looking for in a partner. I know they are cute, but they can really not be an ideal partner for you.

Consider saving your satirical remarks for the real life. Our Server isn’t smart enough to detect sarcasm and thinks you are being serious when you describe a trash can in the space specified for explaining your qualities.

If you would ponder over these suggestions then I believe I’ll be able to find you a match and it’ll make both mine and your life a lot easier.

Yours truly,

Cupid8776

(They/Them)

*

The day Yann gets his letter, it’s everywhere on the news. local loner boy, Lucas reads somewhere, having qualities worse than the loner boy from gossip girl has a match. There’s a post circulating on twitter which goes friendly neighbourhood pretty man is officially off the market. And another after reading which makes Lucas wants to wash his eyeballs with hydrochloric acid: hot, tall, model-like being ready to dick down some pink canoes. it’s a trip you’ll never forget!!!

It doesn’t help that Lucas suspects Basile’s fan-account for Timothee Chalamet to be behind half of these posts. Especially the last one. And it also doesn’t help that Yann’s latest letter is currently getting glued to the roof of their bunk bed, right where Lucas would sure be made to stare at it for the rest of his puny life in the lower bunk.

“You’re a fucking prick,” Lucas grits out as he smothers the liquid and ugly look to the back of Yann’s letter. His hands are slimy, and Yann’s fucking face is smiling at him from the small chair he’s perched on. “You don’t even have the fucking decency to do it yourself. Can’t believe I ever thought that I like you. Fucking unbelievable.”

Yann tuts, low and too sure of himself. His face is glowing. His eyes are crinkled. And he desperately needs a punch in one or both of these areas, “You’re being dramatic, you know that?” Yann gets up from the chair, a marker in his hands. If it were up to Lucas he would have used that same object to ruin Yann’s pretty pastel pink blanket. The asshole deserves that and even more. Muttering some more curses, Lucas goes back to the task at hand – pasting the paper in smooth cursive writing courtesy of Cupid5644 on the roof of his bunk bed. Yann looks towards him in the middle of drawing a tally across the four small lines marked on the cupboard above the handle. His face is glowing. He desperately needs a punch or kick to dull that fucking shine. “Besides you signed this up for yourself. So shut the fuck up.”

Lucas groans, resting his head against his pillow, the letter he just pasted staring down at him in all its glory. “This whole thing is ridiculous Yann,” Lucas starts, hands crossed on his chest, “I still believe it’s a world-government scam meant to lure people in for their assassination later. Like, can you believe even Sully from 231-9 has a match. There’s no way you can expect me to believe the System is genuine.”

Lucas looks over to Yann who’s now leaning against the cupboard, scrutinizing Lucas from afar, “Are you sure your reason for not trusting them has got to do with that and not with the fact that in the past three months, each one of your request has been rejected with no guarantee of you ever finding a match?”

“Fuck you, Yann,” Lucas scoffs, turning his back to Yann, his front to the wall. Let Yann believe whatever he wants. It doesn’t affect Lucas, nor does it have any ring of truth to it. Fucking douchebag. Let his match turn out to be some astrology-loving, Harry-Styles-listening, ravenclaw-ass-fanatic. She’ll leave Yann’s Scorpio ass in seconds.

He hears Yann’s footsteps before Lucas feels him crouching behind him, Yann’s finger poking the back of Lucas’s shoulders, “Hey now,” he sounds apologetic, Lucas will give him that, “Life isn’t all about that jazz; your match or partner or whatever. Don’t worry about it. At least you haven’t fallen for their scam yet.”

Lucas laughs as he turns to Yann. His face is glowing. Lucas has changed his mind. The former Yann might deserve a slap in the face with a brick but this Yann deserves all the Kit-Kats Lucas has stashed under his bed. Cupid8776 will have a field day if they found Lucas’s current train of thoughts. Shocking, Lucas can imagine the magnitude of their gasp, Lucallecoeur456 does have a heart after all. Who would have thought.

 Lucas smiles at Yann as he extends his arm for him to take. “C’mon now. Basile will have both of our heads on a plate if we waste another second.” He gets up, stepping into his shoes as Yann walks out of their dorm. Something crunches under his foot – Lucas’s blunder; his newest message from Cupid8776. He had thought maybe Letter No 654lgb – lonely gay boy, for clarification – would finally tire them out. But apparently, that wasn’t the case.

Yann had laughed for ten minutes straight when he had read the letter. “Your cupid is going to commit mass murder one of these days. And I think you’re going to be the first.” Lucas had shook his head at Yann’s analogy; he isn’t that horrible. He sighs as he bunches the paper into a ball and bullseye’s it into the trash can – the one he’d described in his letter. Cupid8776 has a big storm coming next.

*

So here’s the thing in quite simple terms.

The world’s currently under the secret matching agency Cupid International. Before that it used to be SoulsBound, with the tagline where we find your soulmate for you. But then the name changed to Cupid Int. after getting involved in one too many scandals which Lucas remembers vividly; bold headlines on the front page of several newspapers: Soulmate leaves Soulmate for another, better Soulmate #SoulsBoundFails. And Soulmate doesn’t buy eco-friendly products. Puts the planet at risk #FixItSouls. And another, much dangerous and serious than the rest, which still gives Lucas nightmares to this day: Gryffindor finds out Soulmate is a Slytherin. Says even pet stones can tell they’re not compatible #FuckSoulsBound.

These outrages demanded an instant name change, so SoulsBound transformed to Cupid International; with a union of specially trained cupids from all over the world designated to find your potential match anywhere on the planet after you turn eighteen. The changes were justified and a long time coming, Lucas would say, as for him the term soulmate warranted a much deeper, not an ephemeral meaning; which couldn’t be forsaken for anything. But the soulmate that they suggested were anything but that.

And that’s what brings Lucas to the now: the thought that why people hassle so much for getting their letters to Cupid International as soon as they turn eighteen. Why instead of trying the conventional dating method - which has been getting much recognition as of late - they relied on some unknown person’s (or spirit? Who even were Cupids?) judging of whom they’d be compatible with. But then he guesses it has something to do with the fact that the conventional method is for people the Agency has dubbed hopeless – whose matches they still couldn’t find after years of research and rejection. Lucas is halfway turning into one of the people what with his letters of rejection piling up in the trash can.

But that’s not it. The Agency has more success than its scandals, which puts Lucas off. His grandparents met through the former SoulsBound. His neighbors that have been married for over forty years when he started university met through that. Yann’s parents met through that. Everyone he knows has some kind of emotional success story regarding SoulsBound/Cupid Int,.

And then his father had gone against the system and met his mother through the conventional dating method. Look where it had brought them now.

And here’s a thing in even simpler terms.

 Lucas hates Cupid International with a passion which burns his sternum and makes his stomach coil in disgust. And it has nothing to do with the way he has told Yann how he thinks the whole System is a government scam. But it has everything to do with the way how Cupid8776 has denied all forty of Lucas’s letters sent in the past nine months of him being eighteen. It makes his heart boil in his blood when he thinks about how he’s turning nineteen in three months and he still has no fucking chance of ever being matched with someone. Which sucks because out of all the remaining 6,999,999,999 people in the world, there still isn’t someone with same interests as him.

Which is cool. Fine even. Lucas isn’t petty about it. And definitely an ass. No. He’s anything but an ass about it. Because you see. He keeps in contact with Cupid8776 when he’s not writing to them on the specified days of the week. He asks them about their health, their lives. If they have someone special in their life. If they took their dog to a walk. If they’re remembering to stay hydrated.

He makes sure to send in an email every week, even if all he gets in reply is a monotonous Dear Lucallecoeur456, I’d appreciate if you would stop sending me non-work related messages. This email is reserved for work queries only. I’d also appreciate if you would use the time you took in composing this message on your request letter as I’m sure it would be more useful than this. Yours truly, Cupid8776 (They/Them) every single time.

So that’s what he does every time, much to the cupid’s dismay. He spends more time drafting his grocery list than the letter. Spends more effort in drawing stick figures of his enemy than correcting mistakes in the letter. Takes more interest in Cupid8776’s private affairs than his own. And still complain every fucking time why he hasn’t found a match yet.

But like he said, it’s fine. He’s fine.

*

The first damper on Lucas’s already damped mood comes a little after one. When a pretty fucking important experiment is turned in incomplete. The second comes in the shape of a person. And it’s much significant than the other.

Lucas has just crawled out of a brutal microbiology lab, his clothes tattered, voice bruised from screaming at his group members who don’t even know how to work around a fucking microscope. One would disrupt the lens and the other would somehow mess with the resolution. And then Lucas would curse his life and begin the whole fucking experiment just for the thrill of it, really.

So it goes without saying that after seven unholy tries on the experiment, it had been left incomplete as they ran out of time. Unfinished experiments aside, Lucas was fucking exhausted. He could feel the tired in every cell of his body as he walked from the class to the cafe in the campus where he’d agreed to meet the boys. Now not only was he about to drop down any second, he was also fourteen minutes late.

“You’re so early, Lu,” Arthur drawls out, dull, “Couldn’t have come even earlier if tried.”

Lucas shakes his head and plops down loudly on the bar stool in between Arthur and Yann. He dumps all of his stuff on the ground, wincing as the muscles in his neck scream in protest. “I’m sorry,” Lucas sighs, reaching over Arthur to hit Basile on the back of his head who appears to be sleeping with his head resting on the curve formed by his arms which are folded on the counter. He jolts up, eyes wide, as he looks around the café with hand rubbing where Lucas hit him.  “This fucker left me on my own in the lab. It was a nightmare, honestly.”

Arthur smiles his head as Basile pouts, “What was I to do, man? Daphne asked for my help, I couldn’t say no to her!”

Lucas shakes his head, looking over to Yann as he nudges his shoulder. Yann motions towards Basile, “But you don’t have a match, right? Where does Daphne come from in all of this?”

A proud smile takes over Basile’s features. Lucas finds it funny how the words Daphne and match in the same sentence makes the sadness and the sleep to literally dissipate from his face. “I know that, Yann. But to answer your second question, I sent an email to the cupid and he reassured me that I’d find a match in the next attempt so.” Basile shrugs like it’s no biggie, when to Lucas, in definitely is. “I’m hoping it is Daphne.”

“Here’s to fucking hoping,” Lucas’s attempt at muttering is intercepted by Yann, who looks at him weirdly. As if in a question. Lucas shrugs, no biggie. He also finds it funny how Basile’s cupid is replying to his emails reassuring him about the whole fucking ordeal, while Lucas’s cupid can’t be bothered for anything. Lucas gets this: Cupid8776 definitely has something against him.

They place their orders for their beverages: coffee for all of them except Lucas. He goes with cardamom tea. It’s when the café’s beginning to fill up with people getting freed from classes that Arthur speaks up. “But like, you haven’t met the person before right? What if they have the emotional range of a lentil?”

Out of the four of them, Arthur was the one who cared the least for the System, even less than Lucas did. He hasn’t sent a single request to Cupid International, saying he isn’t the one for dating or love. And Lucas respects all his choices. He looks up, affirmation on his tongue. But then his eyes fall over Arthur’s shoulder, in between the barricade of tired students blocking the door. And he thinks, he thinks – holy motherfu-

“Speaking of lentils,” He takes a sip of his tea, meeting the boys’ confused stares, “Here comes one, heads-up.”

And it’s just that – how Lucas spots him and a murky grey takes over his surroundings. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Something weird settles in his stomach as his friends look over to the ill lentil as a smile blooms across his ugly face. Fucking traitors.

“Eliott!” One of them shouts. It’s probably Basile. It’s definitely Basile with the way he’s waving his hands in the air. Lucas would have probably knocked them off of the face of the earth had it not been for Yann seizing him by placing both of his hands over Lucas’s shoulder. Lucas inhales deeply as Eliott walks over to their little settlement of barstools and idiots, a bounce in his step as he plays with the strap of the bag over his shoulder. Lucas looks anywhere but at him as he comes to stand next to Basile as he yells excitedly, “Good to see you here.”

“You too.”

Lucas just about murders Basile with nothing but his mind as Eliott’s shirt comes into his line of vision. And as Lucas looks up - goes against the well-being of his eyes - his eyes take a quick sweep of Eliott’s tall figure. Nothing out of the ordinary. He’s currently smiling warmly at Basile, then at Arthur. It’s when that his eyes fall on Lucas that the previous warmth in them is sucked out of them, like a vacuum, and they harden like stones as Eliott looks at him. And Lucas thinks he’s probably remembering the latest stick figure drawn on a piece of paper which Lucas had hit him with earlier as he was bent over an old, tattered book in the library.

“Have a seat, mate.” It’s Arthur. Double fucking traitor. Lucas should consider getting new friends. (But then, he thinks quite sadly, who would ever befriend him if not for these completely insufferable idiots?)

Lucas watches, stomach in knots and million things on his tongue, as Eliott’s face softens as he turns to Arthur. He smiles, “I have a class soon so I should get going.”

Basile murmurs something about it being a bummer. Arthur tells him that they’ll see him around. Lucas doesn’t know a bummer or what that is but he knows the look Eliott gives Lucas over his shoulder as he leaves – he knows the menace which is coiled in the white of his eyes, the absolute anger and disgust  he’s reserved for Lucas comes pooling out in that instant, and Lucas almost washes away with it. Fucking pretentious asshole.

Lucas swallows his heart beating in his throat as Eliott disappears from his sight. Un-clenches his hands which have formed a fist without his knowledge. He turns on his stool, passes Yann a smile who’s been weirdly quiet during that encounter, watches as Basile’s contemplative face comes into his line of vision. And curses whoever put him in this situation: A Thinking Basile is not a Good Basile.

“Do you know apparently Eliott still hasn’t found a match either? Which is odd, since the guy’s a deity. I mean, just freaking look at him!”

Arthur side-eyes Lucas as he nods his head in agreement. Lucas should seriously consider getting new friends. The ones he currently have differ largely from on certain matters. And it fucking sucks that they know it too. “Yeah,” Arthur is saying, “he’s pretty. And nice too.”

‘Nice’ my fucking ass. Lucas shakes his head, finishes his cold tea in a second, and picks up his bag which he dumped to the floor. It is common knowledge that Eliott Demaury is good-looking. He’s the person everyone in their uni flocks up to. He’s also pretty fucking amazing at everything he does. Which only irks Lucas more. He gets up, adding onto Basile and Arthur’s conversation with a silent Yann in tow.

“I’m gonna head to the bathroom,” he speaks to no one in particular, not really expecting the three people to stop their oh-so-important conversation about Eliott Demaury to pay him any attention. Shaking his head, he runs through a crowd, past a sulking worker, stressed students and mahogany colored back door to an alley o sheltered light and soft breeze.

Lucas breathes in deeply. His bag makes a sound as it plops to the ground. Closing his eyes, he focuses on calming his heart down which is beating so erratically Lucas has trouble keeping his mind on one place. If he could just wrap his hands around that fucker’s ne-

“Fancy seeing you here,” Oh fucking hell. Lucas fires off every curse he could think of in his heart. There is an off feeling in his stomach as he opens his eyes to Eliott’s hooded figure sitting off to his right, a cigarette placed between his lips. Lucas has to look down to place the full expression on his face, and it thrills him a little. (The act of looking down at him, for once. Not the clever smile which is placed on his face.

“Well, how’s your day doing?”

“Oh, it’s you.” Lucas shrugs his shoulders like it isn’t taking a great deal out of him to plaster the absolute fake smile on his face. “I was wondering why suddenly all the clouds turned grey.”

Even though he’s standing five to six feet away, Lucas doesn’t miss the brie fall of Eliott’s smile. But it’s coming into place faster than Lucas has the chance to feel good about the whole ordeal. He watches, against his will, as Eliott takes a long drag of his cigarette, the end of the stick burns brighter in glowing red embers before he blows white puffs of smoke in the air. He’s just so –

Lucas bites down on his lip to prevent the stupid thoughts from slipping out. Eliott watches him with (feigned) interest.

“Ahh there he is,” Eliott straightens his back. Even though he’s sitting on the steps to the side and Lucas is standing, it still – somehow – feels as if Eliott’s looking down on him. “I was wondering where the meanie in you has wandered off to.”

He didn’t just call Lucas a meanie. What the fuck.

Lucas heaves in a sigh. Wills his heart to stop hammering. “You wouldn’t know a thing or two about that, now. Would you?”

Lucas notices the little shake of his head, the light which falls over his face making it look like it’s dropped the sneer which has now become a part of his features whenever he’s around Lucas. And Lucas should revel in the thought of getting Eliott to show his real colours, but it grates on him regardless.

Eliott rubs his thighs over his jeans. Lucas traces the motion with narrowed eyes. And when he speaks, it’s to a completely different wave.

“You know, when someone asks about your day, you reply and then ask the question back. It’s called having a conversation, you know?”

Lucas bites the inside of his cheek, words already spilling out before he has a chance to assess them, “And what part of me actually looks like I would want to have any conversation with you?” Just. Who does he think he is? Pretending to be nice and all that. It doesn’t mean Lucas would forget when yesterday he doused Lucas’s workplace in some sticky as hell material which ruined not only his assignments which he spread on the table but left a permanent damper on his mood.

There’s a tilt to Eliott’s lips, his eyes bright and every bit gauging Lucas with the way they’re trained on him. The structure in his chest gives a painful squeeze.

Lucas doesn’t like it. At all.

“I should have known,” Eliott says with an air of nonchalance that has Lucas’s insides firing up in anger and – “You’re not one to have a conversation with.”

“Glad to have that sorted, then.” Lucas decides for the same tone Eliott chose earlier. He turns on his heels. And with Eliott’s eyes digging holes in his back, he returns through the same door he came out of earlier.

*

So here’s another thing in the simplest of terms. Lucas isn’t fond of many things in his life. He hates the System, his philosophy professor, Sully from 231-9. But what he hates even more than all of these things is the fucking lentil Eliott Dick Demaury.

*

There’s a dull buzzing seeping into his bones as Lucas walks towards consciousness. His limbs are still heavy with sleep, his eyes glued shut as he pats around his pillow for the vibrating device around him. He picks the phone up around a yawn, voice groggy as if he hadn’t used it in years.

Well, he hasn’t used it in hours. So. There’s that.

“Hello?” He croaks out, snuggling his face into the pillow under his head.

“Lucas Lallemant! Why are you still sleeping?”

The voice, filtered through the static, still compels Lucas to bolt upright in the bed, eyes now opened wide as he rubs away the sleep with his hand. “Mama!” He wills his voice to sound as if a trail of drool hadn’t had been drying at the side of his mouth. “You’re still up!”

His mama chuckles a little, as Lucas is left to smile sheepishly. Her voice comes clear now, “I would have called you at crack of dawn and you would still have said the same thing. Besides, don’t you have to go to your shift in half an hour?”

Lucas frowns, and then gets out of the bed. He finds Yann gone, his bed properly made. That’s why Lucas was able to sleep that much, considering Yann has reserved a distinct hatred for Lucas’s sleep.

His limbs are heavy as he changes out of the moth-ridden (not exactly, but its appearance justifies the statement) shirt he slipped into before his nap. “How have you been, Mama?”

“Great,” his mother speaks on the other line. There’s a brightness to her voice which lessens as well as increases the cut of homesickness lodged inside the muscle of his heart. Lucas doesn’t let himself dwell on the sudden sadness which grips him. Instead he focuses on the smile he can hear in his mother’s flowery tone, “I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garden these days. You know the plants Willow got me? They flowered yesterday and they’re so beautiful Lucas!”

Lucas smiles as he picks up his bag lying by the door.

She hums on the other line. “And Dr. Noelle changed my medication. We’ve switched to lighter pills instead of those heavier ones that always made me drowsy and loopy. She said I’m doing better so no need for the heavy dosage.”

There’s something like relief travelling with the air he inhales right to his heart. The sun is bright as Lucas makes his way outside. “That’s good, Mama.”

His mother launches into details about stuff about her new medication like the schedule and the amount of pills she’s required to take each time. Lucas walks out of the campus, listening intently to his mother’s retelling of the shenanigans happening in the various clubs she has joined now that she doesn’t feel so drained anymore. Lucas tells her about his classes and life in return.

 “Oh, yesterday in the cooking club, Nadine switched Hira’s container of salt with baking powder. It was quite fun to watch them two bickering afterwards. And there’s a betting pool going around the club about how much time they’re going to take before they get together.”

Lucas shakes his head, a smile pulling up on his face as he crosses the road, “Mama, you should help them sort out their differences instead of enjoying their fights!”

Lucas can hear her shaking her head. She continues, “We should, but it won’t be fun anymore. Besides, I do like some slow burn if I say so myself.”

“You’re spending too much time on the internet,” Lucas muses, “Next thing I know you’ll tell me that you’re reading fanfictions.”

His statement is met with silence. Suspicious silence. He has a minute to be terrified at the prospect before he’s breaking out in laughter, “What the fuck, Mama!”

“Language, Lucas!” She chides, but there’s a smile in her voice which grips Lucas’s heart. Even though he’s kind of wary about the stuff she must find on the web, Lucas knows she can fend for herself.

“Anyways,” she steers the conversation to another direction. Lucas goes with it. “You’re coming on Saturday, right?”

Lucas nods, “Yeah Mama. I’ll try to make it on Friday if the boys haven’t got something planned already.”

The store comes into view, so Lucas says his goodbye into the phone. “I need to go, Mama,” Lucas swallows down the bile which rises in his throat. He misses her so damn much. “I love you.”

“Love you too, honey.” The lines drops, and Lucas is let to chase away the sudden sadness he feels. For a minute, he stands there outside the store, his heart beating with a pang of homesickness. But then he forces air into his lungs, clears his mind, and goes inside the store.

The store is blissfully silent when Lucas enters through the door. There’s a faint smell of lavender still left from the candle Mika must have burnt earlier. Lucas drops his bag behind the counter before he picks up the various records and CD’s piled on the counter and places them in their racks. He starts making his way to the store room for the stuff which was shipped earlier. Might as well get a head-start if he’s early.

The store’s owned by Mika’s aunt, and Lucas works part-time here. It’s a vintage record store; the business is okay. He had earned a full scholarship in the university, but needed a job for the basic necessities in his life. Mika offered a job – and the wage was enough to pay off his expenditures. It is okay, better even. Except – except for the –

Lucas ends up walking face first into a rock-hard chest. His nose gets squished against a set of solid pectoral muscles, the cartilage singing with pain. There are hands grabbing his forearms; stale cigarettes and citrusy bubblegum taking up a better half of his brain. If it hadn’t been for the way the systems operating his reflexes have trained him to be repelled away as soon as the scent hits his nostrils, Lucas is a hundred percent sure he would have delivered a leg straight into the dick in front of him.

“Hey,” there’s an iciness which Lucas feels even though he’s overtaken by the pain in his nose. Lucas looks up, up; and here he is – the dick in all its ugly glory. Lucas tries not to fall on the spot.

“Lucas Lallemant is early? Am I dying or is it really happening?” Eliott cocks his head to one side, lips tilted up a fraction. Lucas smiles back sarcastically. What if he is late to almost everything in his life? That’s none of Eliott’s fucking business. Forcing the very delicious image of Eliott choking to death in his sleep to a dark corner of his brain, straightens his shoulders to stare at Eliott square in the eyes. He’s sad and he’s tired. So he doesn’t have any energy to deal with Eliott today, “Please crawl to whatever grimy hole you’ve crawled out of this time, Demaury.”

Footsteps follow his as he spots up the cardboard box holding the new records in the store room. Mika told him to stack them once he gets the time. He’s picking it up when the slime-covered asshat opens his mouth, “What are you doing?”

Lucas sighs, “Operating a spacecraft.” He moves towards the box, hearing Eliott’s footsteps falter behind him. “What does it look like?” Lucas picks up the box, but Eliott isn’t up to giving it a rest.

“Actually, leave it there. You’re on dusting duty today.”

The fuckin- “What?” Lucas turns on his feet. His stomach is doing weird somersaults. He crosses his arms across his chest and looks at Eliott, whose eyes are narrowed as if he’s examining Lucas. It’s like he’s plotting Lucas’s murder. And Lucas – he has a flashing thought. That would be the highlight of Eliott’s life, no?

He shakes himself into the present. And then gets the words out with great distaste. “Mika told me to stack them so.” He turns around once again, moving towards the box, only to be stopped by a hand on his shoulder. Lucas shakes it off quickly.

Eliott stands off to one side, his face in its perpetual state of frown around Lucas. “Mika left me in charge,” he says, leaning his wait on the door as he looks down at Lucas. He won’t be intimated. No.

Eliott’s eyes flick to the box Lucas has picked up as he turns around, heart and head set in determination despite the initial bout of anxiety and something else which still sings inside him somewhere. Eliott almost has a foot of height in Lucas, and if that isn’t enough to make Lucas flee to the mountains, there are parallel lines drawn on the skin his forehead. His eyes are green, the one which reminds Lucas of moss gathered on stones settled to the ocean bed. Solid. Firm. Steady. Lucas wants to reach out and slap that look off of his face.  Preferably with a chair. He raises an eyebrow; a challenge.

Something like light flashes on Eliott’s face, giving Lucas a look into an annoyed feature before turning neutral again. Like the plants viewed from the askew perception of water floating above the surface, Eliott’s eyes turn infinitesimally greener. “You’ll dust off all the records in the A to M section. Or if you’d rather I tell Mika about the time you scratched one of his Stevie Wonders vinyl, I’m down with that too.”

There’s no wonder in the way the box previously in Lucas’s hands retains its original place. No. Definitely not him getting intimated by that giant goo of citrusy smelly being with his head too far up his head. Eliott’s face transforms into one of his ugly smirks; the one which is belittling and totally hateful towards Lucas. Lucas just about launches his self upon him.

“If we’ve figured that out,” Eliott straightens his body, his eyes have that weird sparkle that they always gain whenever they see Lucas miserable, which is just about every fuckin time Lucas comes in contact with Eliott. “I also would like if you could hurry up. We don’t have all day today.”

Lucas bunches his hands in fists to his sides as Eliott walks out, all pretentious and glad as he is to have the final word. He blesses Lucas with one final boastful look over his shoulder, the green now as bright as day.

 It’s no biggie, Lucas thinks. He can easily refuse. There must be atleast a thousand records in the A to M section. Well, not a thousand but you get the gist. And Céline has been in Léon for the past week to attend her brother’s wedding. Which means the records wouldn’t have been dusted for years. Not only would Lucas have a stellar day cleaning them, but his terrible allergy would cause him immense pain. But the scratched vinyl and Mika’s wrath after knowing about it would cause him a direct ticket to his grave.

So with heavy steps and an equally heavy heart, Lucas stomps over to the racks holding the worn out records covered with dust. There’s something tingling in stomach. He swallows down the feeling, and pushes Eliott out of his mind. That fucking asshole. No wonder he hasn’t got a match.

He goes towards to the record player he persuaded Mika to get for the store. Eliott had brewed a shit storm when Mika had agreed. His ‘Music would be distracting’ was countered by Lucas’s ‘What kind of a music store would it be if it had no music playing?’ and in the end, Lucas had watched a brooding Eliott triumphantly as Mika brought in his uncle’s record player the next day. And so it beings him a great deal of joy as he places in a record in the player that Mika has given his permission to be played in the store.

The records in front of him glisten with the reason Lucas would be walking out of the store with his eyes on fire and respiratory track on a lock down. Elton John croons in the background as he takes out the sticky notes from his pocket (they come in handy when the situation is like this, okay?), tears off a note. Eliott doesn’t, thankfully, surprisingly, bother him once as he gets to work.

*

It’s to a violet and pink merging together that Lucas looks up to when he makes his way out of the store. Even though his eyes are stinging, and his throat feels like the surface of a cemented wall; all rough and scratchy with cheeks stained with the water his eyes won’t stop producing, Lucas still looks up as a bird takes flight into the setting sun, a silhouette of the fucking time and energy Lucas lost removing years’ worth of dust off of records and cursing the asshole parading the halls with a stick in his ass.

Lucas doesn’t know why Eliott has made it the mission of his life to make Lucas’s life hell. And he also doesn’t know why Eliott’s like warm, soft sunshine when faced with anyone other than Lucas. Hell, if Céline had been the one asked for the task, Eliott would have stepped right up as the fucking gentleman he is to offer to do it himself. And it is funny how once he’d spot Lucas, his face would twist like he’s sucking on a sour lemon or something. Lucas doesn’t get that. He can’t.

With a sigh heaved out of his super congested nose, Lucas starts walking back to his dorm, his bag slung over his shoulder. He had been thankful for Eliott’s absence as he was walking out. It gave him a chance to stick the drawing which he made onto the first page of some deep shit book Lucas knows Eliott keeps in the drawer of the counter. Eliott was nowhere to be found, and Lucas was left with the proof to reinforce his theory. He firmly believes that besides being a fucking dick, Eliott Demaury is also a ghost which keeps appearing out of the blue and then disappears as if it hadn’t been there before. And Lucas is quite okay with that. The role suits Eliott in more ways than one – but it’s also sad Lucas’s won’t be able to get the pleasure of murdering Eliott if he’s already dead.

A rain droplet falls from the darkening sky over Lucas’s head. It lands cold in the center, making Lucas quicken his pace as he rounds the final corner near the dormitory. Yann would already be there, and Lucas can pester him all night to get him some chicken soup.

He makes it to his room just as the rain starts pelting on the ground. Lucas kicks off his shoes as he enters the room. Yann’s hunched over the study table, half asleep from what it appears to him. It’s when a particularly loud sneeze bursts through Lucas that Yann looks up.

“You look like a vampire,” Yann snickers as he looks at him. Lucas doesn’t need to look in the mirror to see what mighty image he’d be painting with red eyes and pink nose and tear-stains on his cheeks. He drops his bag, takes off his wet clothes and jumps into the bed in his boxers. Muffling his face into the pillow he lets out a groans, “I hate that asshole so much.”

“Whom do you not hate?” There’s a smile in Yann’s voice. Lucas chooses to ignore it. He sighs, turning on his back and staring at the abomination he glued to the roof of his bed earlier.

“That’s not the point, Yann,” Lucas exhales, “He knows I have a dust allergy. But still he fucking blackmailed me into dusting the records. It’s like he was getting me back on something.”

“Well, you do keep making those drawing of him,” Yann stops just as Lucas sits up. He scoffs, “Whose side are you on Yann? I can’t believe he’s bewitched you too.”

Yann shakes his head. He looks like he’s regretting every of his decision which brought him here, to this second, with a Lucas with a quarter of his brain working. Fucking Eliott Demaury and his fucking charm. Lucas doesn’t get what’s so special about it.

“-and then I had to walk in the rain,” Lucas continues, sighing into his arm. There’s a light pitter patter which is reaching Lucas’s ears. Lucas would have been able to take in the sandy smell that must be wafting in the air if his nose hadn’t been so congested. It’s Eliott’s fault. All of it. “Fucking pretentious asshole,” Lucas mumbles.

Lucas turns his head. Yann has his contemplative face on, “Don’t take it the bad way Lu, but don’t you think you’re kind of hung up on him?”

Lucas sits up, shocked to his very core. With a gasp he splutters like a fish out of water, “I’m not!”

Lucas doesn’t know where Yann is getting these terrible thoughts. Lucas won’t fall a prey to that. Fuck. Yann doesn’t seem fazed. It’s like he’s done this every other day of his life. What, Lucas doesn’t know. “If you ask me, or Arthur, or Basile, it kind of seems that you are, Lucas. You bring him everywhere, you know? Even if the situation doesn’t call for it, you’ll somehow make it so it has something to do with Eliott. And I think that’s where your fault lies: You give him too much thought.”

And that is…..totally not wrong. Maybe partially, but – Lucas does bring him everywhere with him. And that’s totally on Lucas. It’s maybe the reason he’s so miserable half of the time. He gnaws at his bottom lip, then, as in afterthought, speaks, “Well, then, fuck the rain, I guess?”

Yann’s face lights up as a chuckle passes his lips, “You know what they say Lucas: April showers May flowers.”

Lucas looks at him from the corner of his eyes, “More like April thunders May blunders but whatever floats your boat, I guess.”

And like expected, Yann starts shaking his head, exhaling heavily. The sound makes Lucas grins and he looks up just as Yann clicks his tongue, “You’re a hassle, Lallemant.”

 “What do you mean? I’m a delight to have around.”

Yann clocks his head to the side, eyes narrowed, “Listen, I know atleast one person who would greatly differ with your statement.”

Lucas sighs, plopping his head back on the pillow, “Yann, you and I both know that Eliott hates my guts, so.” He shrugs. It’s common knowledge now. And wasn’t Yann just lecturing him about giving Eliott to-

“I was talking about your cupid, actually,” Yann has a terrible looking thing crawling into the fibers of the cells constituting the skin Lucas so badly wants to punch right now. The corner of his lips hitch up a fraction before he gets up from his chair, slinging his leather jacket over his shoulder. “I’m gonna go out for a smoke,” Yann says, a smile crinkling his eyes, “You sit here and think about him, okay?”

He’s out the door in a second; the pillow Lucas throws at him landing on the ground after harshly colliding with the door.

Fucking assholes.

*

 cupidcollns@cupidint.com

Dear applicants,

Requests for the new sessions have been opened. Kindly take out the prints of your forms from cupidint.com. Please make sure to send in your requests to your designated Cupid before Friday. Any and all requests received after the deadline will be rejected.

Yours truly, Cupids

Lucas stares at the bright flashing and too depressing email displayed on the computer screen. There’s a dull throbbing behind his left eyebrow, his eyes are burning, and Yann still hasn’t returned with the food Lucas messaged him to get for him a few minutes after his departure.

His eyes move from the screen severely damaging his brain to the ugly yellow form Lucas keeps stashed in case of emergencies. His pen rests on top of in a bit slanted. Lucas hates the very sight of this form; apart of tree wasted for nothing. He remembers the many papers like this he sent many times before, and still end with fucking disappointment. What or who is to say this time won’t be the same.

With a dejected sigh he picks up the pen and presses the clicker. Might as well sign up for another disappointment. It is as he starts reading What would you pick to describe yourself as? Please pick one of the choices and is in the process to bang his head against the table cover over the answers that his phone pings with a notification. He unlocks the device, squinting at the light flooding his burning eyes. His stomach coils in on itself.

Eliott D 💩         

céline will be back on friday

so it’s your duty to dust the records till then

also, you draw terribly. thought i should let you know

Lucas stares at the words with a newfound hatred which now boils beneath his skin and rises up like a tide ready to consume all of him. But if that happens Lucas would so something extremely petty and stupid. Eliott won’t let him live, and besides, Lucas is above that. He turns his phone off, and with a bout of energy coming from somewhere inside him, underneath his sternum, he picks up the pen and, because he’s inspired, starts drawing penises everywhere there’s a blank for answers he’s supposed to write. The letter’s going to be rejected anyway; Lucas might as well go down with dignity.

This is it, Lucas thinks, when Cupid8776 finally gives up on him. Ha. Lucas would finally be free of their trap.

(And, because he’s inspired, he also takes a picture of the penis, lines them up with the various shots of the stick figures currently accumulating in his photo library, and sends them all to Eliott D (Poop Emoji). In response to his last message, Lucas provides: i don’t think i’m terrible. i’m getting better at drawing your portrait, see and presses send.)

Lucas folds the letter into an envelope and is on his way to mail it. And when Eliott replies back with a chain of messages including some very gruesome you are fucking annoying and extremely threatening crawl back to the whole YOU have come out of, psychopath somewhere between that, Lucas doesn’t feel any remorse.

Like he said, he’s above that.

[buckymorelikefuckmebarnes]

Fortunate Pt. 10

Masterlist

a/n: its been forever so its totally cool if you hate this now but i have to finish my brain baby. also i lost my tag list so if you want on send me a message...

A few weeks in - A few weeks out

You and Clint had been dating for a few weeks and had spent almost every day of the first week together. But that had cooled down considerably this week. Several days had passed since your last date with Clint. He had texted you a few times but had a potential client from the west coast flying up with their daughter and had been busy with meetings off and on. You and Bucky were falling back into your old routines. He gave you a ride home from the shop on Monday and by Thursday the air around the two of you had completely cleared. You were kicking a bolt across the garage floor as you paced and texted Clint on your phone when Bucky came in carrying lunch. 

“Hey. Head out of the clouds Missy. I have food.” Bucky said with a grin spreading on his face.

He tossed a brown paper sack your way and you snagged it before it could hit the ground. “Oooh burgers and fries?” You said with a knowing look on your face.

“Yeah. And a milkshake you ungrateful gnome.” Bucky pulled the drink from behind his back. “Also, don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what Bunky?”

“Like you are in on some kind of secret.”

“Like the fact that this food is from Danvers, the restaurant your girl works at.”  You winked at him. “Did you get a special discount?”

“I told you a million times already. It’s not like that. Anna Marie is a friend. The date didn’t turn out the way I expected but she’s great either way. So yes I got a discount but no it's not for what you’re thinking.”

You unwrapped the burger and took a bite. “Mhhohmygod.” You moaned around the food as you chewed. “Mthisisofuckunggud.” 

Bucky blew his straw paper into your head. “Don’t talk and chew. It’s disgusting.”

You swallowed and stuck out your tongue . 

Five hours later you were holding on to Bucky as you wove through traffic to your apartment. He was going to drop you off, give you both time to change and then pick you up so you could meet with everyone for Nat and Steve’s engagement dinner. You had invited Clint but he was still entertaining his potential clients and promised to text you through the evening. 

Bucky held the bike's weight as you slipped your leg over the seat. “Thanks Blocky. See you in an hour?”

“Your nicknames are terrible but yes I’ll be back in 60.” He twisted the throttle and wove down the street to his own apartment.

You ran up the steps and unlocked the door. Your apartment was warm and inviting and you could hear the siren call of your bed. It took all of your strength to ignore it and get into the shower. You set a 15 minute alarm so that you wouldn’t lose track of time within the hot water. Your phone buzzed from it’s spot on the window sill next to the shower. You reached out and checked the notification bar.

Hey babe, I think I might land this deal. Got a few things to nail down but yeah. What are you up to?

Oooh… so I'm babe now? I'm getting ready for dinner.

Too soon? Whoops? Bucky giving you a ride? 

Nah BABE youre fine. Yeah Bucks taking me

You wash your body, careful to keep the soap out of your hair and eyes. When you are clean and smelling like your vanilla soap you get out of the shower and start getting ready. You are going to a very fancy restaurant, a place that would require you to dress up but you weren’t about to put on a dress just for it to wrinkle on the back of Bucky’s bike. You opted for a pair of black slacks and a satin navy blue dress shirt that complemented your skin in the best possible way.

You were slipping your heels into your purse as Bucky knocked on your door.

“Just a minute, I’m putting on my boots!” You yell from the couch in the living room.

The door opens and Bucky is standing next to the couch before you get the zipper pulled up on your second boot. He looks… good. You check him out from toes to head. He was in fitted dress pants and a black dress shirt with a dark blue tie. His hair was pulled back into a loose bun at the base of his neck. His Blue eyes sparkled with excitement and his smile was breathtaking. 

“You are the perfect woman, you know that?” He asked as he helped you stand and took in your outfit. “Did you bring your heels with you or are you going to stay in these shit kickers all night?” He pressed, kicking you boot softly with the tip of his.

You patted the purse on your shoulder that was bigger than you normally carried due to the cargo inside. “All packed up and safe right here.”

“Awesome. Lets go.”

You walk in and Steve and Nat are practically sitting on each other's lap, You walk up and make a gagging noise that gets their attention. “You guys are so cute, it makes me sick.”

“Thanks.” Nat replied, scrunching her nose and eyes up as she smiled. Steve popped up to give you and Bucky a hug over the table. Nat followed suit. 

“I’m glad you made it. Where is Clint? I was excited to give him the intentions speech.” Steve said with a gravelly chuckle.

“He’s with a client. Has been most of the week. Apparently it's a huge opportunity for him. If he lands an instructor gig with Mr. Stark he should be able to open his own gym.”

“Wow, sounds exciting.” Sam’s voice startled you as his hand came down on the back of Bucky’s chair.

A cheer of “Sam” came from all around the table as everyone was excited to see he was able to make it. 

“I’m happy for you, man. You got your girl.” He said kissing the top of Natasha’s head but his eyes flitted to Bucky long enough to make you question what he meant by his words. “So… How’s engaged life treating you?” He asked as he shuffled around Steve to the open seat next to Bucky.

“Good man, We’ve been looking at venues and doing all that planning stuff.” Steve replied with a huge grin.

“Which brings me to my first bullet on the wedding checklist.” Nat interjected. She grabs both of your hands and pulls you closer. “Will you be my maid of honor?”

“You let out a little squeal and nodded. “Of course Nat! I’d be honored!” 

“I don't want to put either of you on the spot about the best man thing and make the other one feel like I love them less so you guys can arm wrestle for it or something…” Steve trails off. Bucky’s mouth popped open in shock and Sam let out a little huff. 

“You’re kidding right?” Bucky asks. “We’ve been friends since forever!”

“Yes but only because I knew you’d freak out enough to ease the heart breaks for Sam. Sorry bud. It’s gotta be Buck.” He said turning to Sam. “I’d still be honored if you would be my other groomsman.” 

Sam smiled and hugged Steve. “Duh, man. But that means Buck has to plan your Stag night.” He said, making a face of disgust.

Everyone laughed and the night continued on with smiles and stories from everyone at the table.

By 10 pm you were totally exhausted and ready to hit the hay. Bucky turned to you with a sad smile, “Time to head home, Sugar?” You nod.

“Alright guys, me and little bit here have to get going. Work in the morning.” You give your friends a hug and put cash for you and Bucky’s dinner in the little black book that the server had dropped off.

When you got out to the bike you sat and waited on Bucky to exit the restaurant. 

“You think you’re pretty slick, huh?” Bucky asked, sliding on his jacket and throwing his leg over the bike.

“Huh?” You ask, kind of tired and kind of confused.

“I went to pay the check and it was gone.”

“Oh yeah. Well you got lunch and gave me a ride… I picked up dinner. It’s fair” You replied sliding in behind him and wrapping your arms tight around his waist. You could almost feel him roll his eyes before he turned his torso to look at you. Whatever he had planned to say died on his lips when his eyes met yours. 

“Fine. Lets just say it's payback for drooling on your favorite shirt during movie night.”  

Instead of continuing to argue he just shook his head and turned back to kick the bike to life.

You hopped off of the bike and hugged Bucky tight. “Night Buck. See you in the morning.”

“Night doll.” 

You skipped up to your apartment and promptly fell asleep in all of your clothes.

The next morning you work up to a text from Bucky and two from Clint. Bucky’s was the usual safe message he sent any time he dropped you off, he knows you worry about him but also doesn’t expect a reply. You open Clint’s next. 

Good morning beautiful. 

I have good news call me when you wake up.

His dinner must have gone well but you weren’t sure what the urgency could be about.

You quickly brushed your teeth and washed your face before dialing his number. It only rang twice before he picked up. He was panting and you could hear the sounds of people training in the background. 

“Hey babe. How was dinner?” he said, you could hear the smile in his voice.

“Pretty great. Had a lot of fun. Looks like I get to be Nat’s Maid of Honor which is really exciting.”

“That is amazing! Well, Do you have lunch plans today?” He asked, “I guess I could have just texted you that. “ 

You giggle at him over the line and assure him that you are free for him to pick you up at noon.

When you get to the shop the strong smell of coffee and motor oil hits you and you can't help but think about how much you love your job. Peter pops up from behind his desk. “Morning. There is coffee on the counter and Bucky just ran to grab doughnuts.”

“Thanks Peter. Anything new in today?” 

“Not for a few hours. Mrs. Sledge is due in around 1230 for an oil change and tire rotation.”

“Cool.” You make your way through the reception area and into the garage. The radio was already on and playing classic rock from the speakers as you set yourself up to reorganize you and Bucky’s tool boxes. 

You rolled your chair over to your box first. It wasn’t too messy and you felt a bit of pride in actually being able to keep it halfway decent looking. You wiped off all of your wrenches and put them in order before turning to Bucky’s box. The tall, silver, rolling cabinet was covered in greasy handprints and stickers and you shuddered. You opened the bottom drawer to find little to be upset over. His screwdrivers were all clean and orderly. All the drawers that followed were the same, which was odd. Bucky was very neat at home but his toolbox was usually always some form of disorganized. When you popped open the top drawer you couldn’t help but smile. Pinned to the corner of the lid was a picture of the three of you at prom. You laughed at the three kids playing dress up. 

The bell above the door let out a high pitched ding and you carefully shut his toolbox. 

“Hey Peter. One chocolate glazed sprinkle doughnut. Is she in already?”

“Yes she is.” You say as you lean against the door jam.

“Oh hey. So I got us some breakfast,”he said opening the box in front of you, “I got your favorite.” 

You grab the doughnut and bite off half of it, “Fanks.” You say around the half chewed bread.

“Gross.” Peter said, leaning away a bit. His crush must be wearing off, you thought idley to yourself. 

You start walking back into the shop and Bucky follows, leaving the almost full box on Peter’s desk. “So apparently we don’t have anything planned until after lunch. I was going to clean up the boxes but that’s already done so… what do you want to work on?”

“Let’s do inventory for a bit. I’m sure there is something that needs ordered or replaced.” 

And so you did, actually you worked on inventory between singing off key and showing Peter how to order from your supplier. At around 1130 Bucky leaned back in his stool and yelled to the front desk. He wanted to know if Peter wanted anything for lunch. He kindly declined saying something about lunch with his friends.  Bucky turned and asked you the same thing. It was at that point you realized you had forgotten to tell him that you had plans with Clint. You let him in on the plan and he blew a strand of hair from his face and stood up. 

“Cool. I’ll start Mrs. Sledge’s car without you then.” He looked a little irritated. “Bet I finish it before you get back too. But first, I'm gonna get lunch. Text me if anything comes in.”

You stared after him for a few minutes, totally confused. You finished with the last of the fluids inventory about twenty minutes later and washed up in the shop's bathroom, Bucky wouldn’t be back until you were gone which would leave Peter alone in the shop for half an hour. You hoped nothing would come up in that time.

You quickly ran the brush you kept stashed in your tool box through your hair and threw on a coat of mascara and eyeliner before Clint showed up. 

The bell chimed above the door and you ran to the office area. Clint was standing in the door with a bouquet of bright flowers. 

“Hey babe.” He said kissing your cheek. 

“Hey. Are these for me? They are really pretty.” You reply as he hands you the flowers.

“Yeah. You might want to get them in some water. The yellow ones wilt really fast.”

“Already on it!” Peter called from the supply closet. 

“Thanks Pete!” You yelled over your shoulder.

“So what’s for lunch?” You ask as Clint wraps his arm around your shoulders.

“You’ll see.” He replied with a mischievous smile. 

You were stretched out on a picnic blanket in the shade of a big oak. A sweet smelling fall breeze blew through your hair and Clint tucked a stray strand behind your ear. It was sad and wistful and beautiful.

“So it’s only for a few weeks. A month at most.” Clint had planned a lovely lunch and had listened to you gush about the engagement dinner before he dropped the bomb. He had landed the deal but he had to go to the west coast for the job to work out. Apparently Mr. Stark is adamant about having Clint show his daughter how to use a bow and is willing to pay good money for his services. Still, you were sad to see him leave for any length of time.

“When do you leave?” You asked, not masking the sadness in your voice.

“Monday morning. I have an 8am flight.” Clint kissed the side of your mouth where your lips had curved down into a pout. “It'll be fine. A few weeks and then I’m back here with you and we can see where this new adventure takes us.”

 Clint walks you back to the shop with your hands tangled together. When you get to the door he leans in and leaves a soft kiss on your lips. “I'm gonna be to your place at six Sunday and we are going to go on one hell of a date, okay?” He asks, trying to make you smile before he leaves. You nod quickly and try to hold back any sadness left in your voice

“Sounds great.” He leans in and steals one more kiss before you push through the door of the shop.

Bucky stood up as you made a beeline for the bathroom. “You okay, doll?” he asked through the locked door. 

“Yeah.” You called back, your voice cracking slightly.

“Sounds like you’re upset. Wanna talk about it?”

You wipe your face off and take a long look in the mirror before answering. So what if the first boyfriend you have had in ages is leaving for weeks? You have a job and good friends and he’ll be back before you know it. You open the bathroom door and Bucky stumbles a little. He had obviously been leaning on the wood before you yanked it open. 

“I’m fine, Bucky. Really.” You smile at him and he visibly relaxes. “Did you finish Mrs. Sledge's car yet?” 

Saturday at the shop was, well, a regular Saturday if you were being honest. Bucky had gotten in early so he could leave in time to get to Sam’s for poker night and you had zero plans even though your boyfriend would be headed across the country in less than two days. You hadn’t said anything to your friends yet, focusing mostly on your feelings without outside input. Plus they would all know soon enough, Clint would be sure to tell the guys since he was headed to Sam’s as soon as he got off as well. You moved around the garage aimlessly picking up tools and wiping of counters as you went.

“Hey. You okay? You seem a little out of it.” Peter called from around the reception area’s wall. 

“I’m fine. Ready to get today over with.” You replied with a shrug. You had just finished with the last car on your list and the owner wouldn’t be back for another hour so you were left with some idle time. Idle time was the last thing you wanted though. You were going through your mental checklist of everything you needed to do before you closed up shop when the bell above the door rang and the reception area was filled with young voices. You walked to the door way and saw Peter’s friend, Ned and a new girl with curly brown hair and a fuck off attitude. You looked over at Peter who seemed to have frozen with his fingers glued to the keyboard.

You kicked the wall and he snapped out of his daze. “Hey Ned. Hey Michelle. Wha- What are you doing here?” He asked as he worked to smooth down his hair. 

“I was bored after class and Ned said we should come bother you.” Michelle said, almost sounding sleepy. 

“I did no- OW!” Ned started to talk but Michelle kicked him in the ankle. You tried to cover your laugh with a cough.

“Oh, yeah. This is Michelle,” Peter said turning to you.

“Hey.” You uncrossed your arms long enough to wave before tucking it back against your body. “Well, I’ll let you get back to whatever this is. When is Kevin due back for his car?”

“Um…” Peter pulled up the calendar on his computer, “In about 40 minutes.” 

“Okay. If you can get his paperwork done and your desk ready you can head out early if you want. I don’t mind closing shop.” You said walking back to your work area.

“Everything is on my desk. Thanks for covering for me.” Peter said about ten minutes late while you were checking that all of the bolts were tightened.

“No problem Peter.” You replied without looking up at him. “Hey wait… Just before you go” 

Peter’s sneakers squeaked against the shop floor, “Yeah?”

“Michelle. I can tell you like her. You should definitely make a move before someone snatches her up.”

“Wha- Me and MJ? We’re just friends. Been friends since high school. Tha- That’s all.” Peter stumbled through the excuse and your heart ached a little for him.

“Look kid. She likes you too. Take the chance.” You said with a sad smile.

“Thanks. I think I might. And you know what, The crazy thing is… Mr. Barnes said the same thing to me the other day.” Peter said before he took off for the office.

Nat called you some time into your third glass of whiskey and second episode of some cooking show that hates its contestants to yell at you.

“Why the fuck didn’t you say Clint was leaving?” You had to pull the phone away from your ear as she yelled.

“It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal? He’s the first guy that you’ve gone out with more than once since I’ve met you and he’s leaving. How is that ‘not a big deal’?”

“It’s only for a few weeks, maybe a month. I’ll survive.”

“Me and Wanda are already on our way to your place.”

“Nat. No. Just stay at home. I’ll be okay. I’m getting ready to head to bed anyways.”

“When’s he leaving?”

“Huh?” 

“When is Clint leaving?”

“He’s got a flight out Monday morning. We are going out tomorrow.”

“Fine. Me and Wanda will be over first thing.” She obviously couldn’t tell how irritated you were getting with the whole conversation.

“Why?” You appreciate her concern but you were really fine. You pinched the bridge of your nose.

“Well, one because we are your friends and we care about you and two so we can have a girls day and get you ready for your date.”

“Jesus. We aren’t getting ready for prom, Nat.”

“I know but we want to go out anyway so breakfast, nails, and shopping. Deal?” Wanda Chimed in from the background. You hadn’t realized that you were on speaker phone.

“Fine guys. But I’m really okay.”

“We’ll see you at 11. Love ya” With that Nat hung up on you.

Your friends were really annoying sometimes. You cleaned up your living room table and washed the dishes before crawling in to bed, apparently you had a big day tomorrow.

[jamielea81]

Conversations

Chapter 1 

Description: You accompany your friends on a day trip to Animal Kingdom Theme Park where you meet Scott Evans by chance. This one afternoon leads to a year long friendship with both Chris and Scott over text messages and phone calls. 

Pairing: Chris Evans x Reader

Warning: Cursing

A/N: Welcome to my new series! If you’re new here, thanks for stopping by, if you’re a returning friend, you know right off the bat this will be a slow burn. That’s just how I roll. There will be lots of flirting, cuteness, snark, and some angst. I recommend looking up a ride through of Expedition Everest if you’ve never been on it. A cast member is what Disney calls their employees. I think that’s all you need to know for now. Tag list is open, please send an ask. Likes, comments, and reblogs are wonderful.

“My feet hurt,” you whined, sticking out your bottom lip for added affect. “Go on without me. Just promise me you’ll remember me always.”

“So dramatic. Go sit down, you big baby.” Jana said, giving you a light shove.

The two of you were just outside of Pandora at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park waiting for her husband Brooks to use the restroom. It had already been a long day. You rarely visited the parks during the day anymore unless family or out of state friends were in town. After moving to Florida from the Midwest for college, you decided to stay. The heat was something you never truly got used to, but with so many career opportunities in the Orlando area it was hard to pack up after graduation. Twelve years later and you were still here.

Jana and Brooks had a rare weekday off and begged you to join them at the park. Because of the heat and the crowds, you generally avoided the parks. Unfortunately, their idea of a park day started at park open. Today the park happened to open at eight in the morning. You compromised and told them you’d meet the two of them at nine. There was slight protest from Jana but she was happy you were even going.

Brooks had been your friend for the last seven years. Taking a job at the Orlando Sentinel was unexpected, but it turned out to be quite the dream job. On your first day, you managed to get turned around and ended up on the floor that held mostly sales and advertisement employees. Brooks took pity on you which you took for flirting until his girlfriend called while he was walking you to your cubicle. That girlfriend later became his wife and your best friend, so it worked out for the best.

“You know I’m scared of that ride anyway. It goes backwards for Christ sakes. Backwards,” you muttered again shaking your head.

You’ve only ridden Expedition Everest twice and that was more than enough. Disney has great theming, but even a great attraction can’t make you want to ride it. It’s first flaw is how high the coaster goes up. The second flaw is at one point it goes backwards. And the third and final flaw is the huge drop. Yeah, your stomach did not agree with riding it. The wait time was posted for seventy-five minutes and you had no desire to stand in line that long for something you didn’t want to do.

“Y/N, your ridiculous. It’s a roller coaster. At Disney. Children ride it,” Jana said.

Brooks caught up to the two of you, intertwining his fingers with Jana.

“She doesn’t want to go?” he asked.

“That’s a big nope,” you replied popping the p.

The three you walked across the bridge leaving Pandora and into Discovery Island. Tiffin’s was a nice restaurant on Discovery island, but a little on the expensive side, so you hadn’t dined there. But Tiffin’s had a bar called Nomad Lounge with an outdoor covered patio that you very much had visited. Several times to in fact. With its dark wood floors and ceiling, billowy curtains that were always only partially tied back, large wicker couches with colorful pillows and small intimate tables that lined the patio railing looking out into a sea of trees, it was your favorite spot. Over the last year it had become increasingly popular, but you still loved it and visited it for a drink on every outing to the park.

“You two go ahead and stand in line for over an hour. I’m going to sit my butt here,” you said pointing to the lounge. “Let me know when you’re done and I’ll meet you.”

Brooks rolled his eyes at you, pulling Jana along who kept turning back to give you sad eyes.

When they were out of sight, you walked onto the curved patio looking for an open table. You passed an open couch, but you always felt selfish taking one up for just yourself, so you continued on. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be much else open, being that if was after two and most people had the same idea as you in needing a break. Turning yourself around to head back to that couch you passed near the entry, a couple stood up from a small table. You waited patiently for them to grab their backpacks and bags before quickly sitting down on one of two chairs pushed into the table. You picked up the menu quickly passing the selection of beers. deciding it was more of a cocktail afternoon. A Hightower Rita with its mixture of tequila and watermelon sounded perfect.

You set the menu down on the table, grabbing your phone from your jean shorts pocket, to post a few pictures of the day onto Instagram. When the server had not stopped by to clear the table and take your order, you opened your e-mail. A few sales ads, a forwarded e-mail from your mother. People still send those? And a new assignment. The Jonas Brothers at Amway Center next month. You actually liked a few songs off their new album, so you were pretty excited for this concert.

When the server still hadn’t been by, you let out an annoyed huff. Sure, Jana and Brooks were still in line with a long wait to go, but at this rate you weren’t going to be able to finish said drink by the time they were done.

You stood up and looked around from your spot, not wanting to stray too far from the table and lose it to the vultures circling the patio for a spot of their own. Not seeing a server in sight, you huffed out loud again before plopping yourself back in the chair. At least it was padded so it didn’t hurt with how fast you dropped.

You heard a slight chuckle from the sectional couch that sat against the restaurant’s outer wall in front of you. Choosing to ignore it because the lounge was packed, it was really none of your business what was happening at other tables.

“You’re at Disney, smile,” you heard a man’s voice say.

This time you did look up and sure enough, a man sitting across from you was looking directly at you. He was sitting with two other guys who were in a loud conversation and completely ignoring what was apparently happening.

“I’m sorry?” you asked. You couldn’t help the bitch face you were apparently sporting.

He laughed again. “No, I’m sorry. I just can’t help noticing the huffing and puffing that’s going on,” he said.

You took a breath and tried to relax. “It’s fine. I just hate when people say smile, as if life stops just because you’re in a theme park. I just really need a drink and for whatever reason, the server is on break or quit or whatever.”

He laughed again before standing up. “What do you want?”

“Huh?” you asked a little puzzled as to what this stranger was doing.

“I asked what you would like to drink. I’ll go grab it for you.”

“No. No, no. You don’t have to do that. I’m sure he or she will come back at some point this month,” you said, slouching in your seat.

“Just tell me. I’m going to get one anyway.” He crossed his arms and tapped a foot.

It was your turn to laugh. “A Hightower Rita. And thank you,” you said offering him a small smile.

This was quite the surprise. Generally, strangers weren’t nice for no reason.

A few minutes later he was back, placing the drink in front of you. Reaching into your packet to grab out a ten dollar bill, you heard him clear his throat. You looked up to see he took the seat next to you. His very own Hightower Rita in front of him.

“My treat,” he said, giving you a wink.

“Thank you, really,” you replied. You offered him your hand. “Y/N, by the way.”

“Scott,” he offered, shaking your hand as well. “So, do you normally come to Animal Kingdom in a grumpy mood?”

What a smartass.

“I haven’t been grumpy all day, I’m just tired. And thirsty,” you replied.

You lifted the glass and held it out to Scott. The two of you clinking your glasses together before taking a generous sip.

“I’m not on vacation, I live here. My friends dragged me out of bed to come with them, so it’s been a long day.”

“So, a local huh?”

“Yeah, by way of Minnesota. Came for college and never left.”

He nodded his head in understanding. “And where are these friends of yours?” he asked.

“In line for Expedition Everest.”

“You don’t like roller coasters?”

“I do. Just not that one. I’ve ridden the others several times. Big Thunder Mountain is one of my favorites. I just can’t handle that one.”

“Scott! What are you doing? Leave the poor woman alone,” one of his friends from the table shouted.

“I’m making new friends. Mind ya business,” he replied.

You chuckled at him shaking your head.

“What do you do here, Y/N?” he asked.

“Here in the park?”

“Really?” he deadpans. “What do you do for a living?”

“My apologizes,” you laughed. “I’m a writer. A little bit of everything, but mainly I review entertainment in the greater Orlando area. Theme parks for instance.” You waved your hand around. “Like a new ride opening or a hotel or restaurant. Also concerts and events that come to town. I pretty much can make up my own schedule that way. Every once in awhile I’ll write a piece for me, like a think piece that I’ll send out and if I’m lucky, various magazines and newspapers pick it up. That’s what I prefer to do, but it doesn’t pay the bills as well.”

“That actually sounds like a lot of fun. My family and I love coming to the parks, so it would be cool to be invited to grand openings,” he said.

You nodded your head in agreement.  “What about you?”

“I’m an actor. Nothing exciting,” he says shrugging his shoulders which enlists a laugh from you.

“Obviously,” you tease. “Are they your family?” you ask pointing to the two guys sitting on the sectional. Both have ballcaps on backwards that you almost asked if the bros were his family.

“Yeah, that’s some of them. It’s a big group, they’re around somewhere. I got stuck with the weak links,” he jokes. A small smile tugging on his lips. “I’m having way more fun talking to you.”

Shaking your head at his comments, you take a peek at your phone to check the time. It had only been about a half an hour, so you had plenty of time to relax.

“Let’s do a shot!” he exclaims out of nowhere.

“What?” you ask. But he’s already out of his seat, heading back inside before you even get the word out.

Scott’s relatives give you a look and all you can do is quirk your mouth and shrug your shoulders.

A minute later he’s back sans shots. “They’ll bring them out,” he mutters as he sits back down.

The allusive server appears a few minutes later with a tray of two shot glasses, limes slices, and a salt shaker. She sets the contents on the small table and asks if you need anything else. You ask for a water and she promises she’ll be right back.

Scott picks up his glass and holds it up. “To new friends.”

“To new friends,” you repeat before downing the tequila in one go.

You quickly grab a lime slice and suck on it before grabbing another. You hadn’t done a shot in so long; you feel way out of practice.

The server does return with a couple of glasses of water shortly after you’ve taken the shot. When she asks if we need anything else, Scott starts to order another round of shots but you cut him off.

“One and done, buddy.”

He laughs and tells your server the two of you are set. As odd as this day has been, meeting this new “friend” has been a welcome change.

“Scott! Let’s go do something.” One of the bros calls out. “I already texted Sarah, she’s on her way.”

He waves him off and turns back to you. “Let’s go ride Expedition Everest.”

You look at him like he’s crazy. “No way. I already told you, I don’t ride that coaster.”

“You’ve got liquid courage now and you’ll be riding with me. I promise you’ll have fun.”

Shaking your head, you look back at your phone. “My friends are probably still not on it. The wait time is posted at seventy-five minutes.”

“We got an in,” he says so casually that you have no idea what he’s talking about.

Out of no where, a plaid wearing Disney cast member appears asking the other two guys where’d they like to go.  

“Expedition Everest. Please.” Scott interrupts.

“That works,” the bearded bro says, getting up and flipping his cap around.

“And we’ve got one more joining us, Sarah,” Scott said.

Bearded bro raises his eyebrows and Scott just smiles.

Before you know what the hell you are doing, your walking with Scott, Sarah, and the two bros. Weaving in and out of crowds as she leads. You make it to Expedition Everest and enter through the exit because apparently Sarah can do that. The four of you are ushered into the last two rows to wait for the next train to arrive. Just as it pulls up, Scott moves behind you, getting out of the waiting row.

“I can’t ride in the very back. It makes me sick. Chris, switch with me.”

Chris groans, but comes to stand right behind you.

You’re on the verge of a panic attack as you look over to Scott in the next row.

“Y-you were supposed to be my ride bu-buddy,” you barely manage to get out.

You didn’t want to go on this damn ride anyway and now you weren’t even sitting with your almost friend. Now you’re stuck with a stranger who hadn’t even spoke to you yet.

“You’ll be fine. This is my brother, he’s a good ride buddy. I’ll be right in front of you anyway,” Scott says. He reaches over the barrier to squeeze your hand but it does little to comfort.

The train car pulls up and you’re climbing inside your seat pulling the lap bar up and pushing it into place. You pull on it at least three times to make sure it’s in place.

You look over to Scott’s brother who you know can tell you’re freaking out. He offers you his hand and you shake it.

“Chris,” he says.

“Y/N,” you reply.

He smiles and it suddenly dawns on you who you’re sitting with. Why Sarah escorted your group through the park. Why you were able to enter through the exit and get on the ride almost immediately. Chris is Chris Evans. Actor. Movie star. Whatever you want to call him. You’re pretty sure you follow him on Twitter.

Jesus.

In your line of work, you’ve met plenty of celebrities before. Some at various Disney grand openings, others have been musicians for concerts and albums you have reviewed. But this is different. You take a breath and try to go back to freaking out about the ride rather than about who you are sitting next to.

The coaster takes off, winding around a grass and tree lined path. All too soon you are ascending up “the mountain.” You keep your gaze straight ahead at the back of Scott’s head rest. Every few seconds he looks back and gives you a smile. You’re too frozen to return it, but that doesn’t deter his. It’s honestly a smooth ride and it doesn’t take long to get to the top where the “broken tracks” are. You hear the train switching tracks right before your hurtled backwards down the track into darkness. You can’t help but scream the whole way while you hear Chris laughing next to you. The train comes to a stop again, this time in the dark and you see the shadow of the Yeti against the interior wall. The train starts to move forward and you see the outside light in the distance. You death grip the lap bar and try to reach for the side of your seat with your other hand, but instead you grab Chris’ hand. He gives yours a squeeze back and doesn’t let go.

“I’ve got you,” he says just as you hit the big drop.

Your eyes are plastered closed and all you can do is scream. You don’t dare open them until you start to feel the coaster slow down. You let go of Chris’ hand and hesitantly look over at him. He’s smiling at you with a big cheesy grin.

“I’m sorry about the whole grabbing your hand thing.”

Your face feels like it’s on fire and you’re sure your hair is a mess.

“S’no problem. Really,” he replies.

The two of you climb out of your row and find Sarah waiting for you. She leads the four of you out of the ride, stopping off to the side to see where they would like to go next.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Scott asks.

“Dude, I’m never going on it again. No chance.”

He laughs and throws his arm around you. “Just drink more next time.”

“Not even then.” You shake your head. “Listen, I should probably find my friends. I want to say thanks, but I don’t feel like I should.”

He starts to laugh and it’s pretty contagious that you can’t help but join in.

“It was nice meeting you, Y/N,” Scott said.

“You too.” You give a wave to the three of them. “Enjoy the rest of your vacation,” you call back as you start to walk away.

 You were in the middle of writing an article about for the Sentinel when your phone rang. Generally your phone only rang during business hours and even that was rare. E-mails and text messages were pretty much standard in your day. Seeing that it was Jana that was calling was even stranger. She probably hadn’t actually called you in five years. You mind instantly goes negative thinking something must be wrong. Maybe Brooks was deathly ill or they were in a car wreck.

“Jana?” you answer, trying to keep your voice as even as possible.

“You bitch!”

What the fuck?

“Excuse you,” you reply.

“You fucking met Chris Evans and on top of that, you rode Everest!” Jana shouts.

“Oh yeah, that. Um, how’d you find out about that?”

“It’s on Twitter. I just tagged you in it.”

She did what now?

“Tagged me in what exactly?”

“The ride photo. It’s of you and Chris holding hands on the ride. What’s that all about and why didn’t you tell me?”

You sighed. “It’s a long story. Can I tell you tomorrow over coffee?”

“You better. I’m still mad at you. I thought I was your best friend,” she muttered.

“And you are. I promise I’ll explain tomorrow,” you said.

“Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 It had been three days since your trip to the park where you met the Evans brothers. You were surprised that photo even made it on the internet. You were also surprised Jana even saw it.

You opened your Twitter app and searched Chris Evans. Sure enough, one of the top trending stories was that ride photo. It was a mix of “how is she related?” to “is that his new girlfriend?” You didn’t dare click into any of the tweets because you knew they would be full of negative comments about you. It didn’t help that your face was super scrunched up with your eyes closed. Leave it to your best friend to recognize you.

Within a matter of minutes, your notifications started to go off like crazy. You had gained at least one hundred new followers, but one stuck out the most. Scott Evans. You added him back, remembering how nice he was and the drinks he bought you. You closed the app, not wanting to deal with the notifications any longer. Besides, that article wasn’t going to finish itself.

Right before climbing into bed, you checked your Twitter account and saw that you had another 100 followers and one new direct message. How people quickly figured out it was you in the ride photo, just by Jana tagging you in one post made no sense. You updated your security preferences so that people would have to request to follow you instead being able to do so automatically.

Clicking open the message, you were surprised to see it was from Scott Evans. Sure, he added you, but he was messaging you now?

Scott: “Hey grumpy Disney girl. How’s my drinking buddy?”

Why did it feel like life was about to get a whole lot more interesting? Or is complicated a better word?

Chapter 2

Tag list: @tanelle83​ @pinknerdpanda​ @allaboutthebooz​ @estillion14​ @panicfob​ @patzammit​ @heartislubbingdubbing​ @collinsstanharbour​ @twittytelly​ @thefandomzoneisdangerous​ @linki-locks11​ @mywinterwolf​ @ab-baybay​ @rda1989​ @impalaimages​ @mustangshelby04​ @bellaireland1981​ @carolina-thiell​ @sullyosully @straightforwardly​ @torntaltos​ @denise1605​ @mcuclintasha​ @southerngracela​ @iam-cj @humandasaster​

[marlinspirkhall]

Tomorrow Never Comes, Chapter 05: “Resolution”

CW: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Chapter Word Count: 2,298 words

[Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6]

 “Tell me everything you learned when my memory kept getting wiped,” Jim says.

 “There is not much to tell. Leland and I attempted everything you and I have-” seeing Jim’s face, he pauses. “It was not a waste of time. Failure on the first attempt does not preclude the possibility of success on the second”

 The news that he was murdered multiple times hasn’t sparked any grand realisation as of yet. Mostly, it’s just made him angry, but he tries not to show it. Despite the recent realisation that their dilithium crystals have begun to drain, noticeably- confirming that they will run out, eventually- they sit side by side in a tense silence as the shuttle whizzes through space. Jim taps his fingers on his side of the dashboard, and turns to Spock.

 “Stop here; I want to try something.”

They land on the same planet as their first outing; but on a different beach, with actual sand.

 “For variety’s sake,” Jim says, with a slight smile.

“Variety,” Spock says, dryly, as they approach the shoreline. “I must admit; I thought you brought me here to kill me.”

“You- what?!” Jim wheels on him. “And you just- got in the shuttle?”

Spock tilts his head. “At the time, the reaction did not seem disproportionate.”

“Right.” Jim sits down on the sand, and looks up at him. “And now that you’re about to be- ah- executed?” He squints as he leans back, temporarily blinded by the iridescent sand.

Spock says nothing, and sits on the sand, a short distance from him. A strong breeze picks at strands of his hair, and Jim sighs.

After a moment, the sun begins to descend, and Jim looks up. “This is what I like about space travel. Even the sunset isn’t a fixed phenomenon. Theoretically- if you wanted to- you could manipulate it. Park your spaceship in a different position on the planet’s surface, so you could view it as many times as you liked. It’s not always spontaneous. But, if you’re really lucky, you get to experience this, with someone you-” he stops.

 “What?” Spock asks, quietly.

“Care about,” Jim finishes, softly. He clears his throat. “I mean, how many other people do you think have got to witness this exact view?”

Spock considers for a moment. “The Klingons,” he says, firmly.

 Jim laughs. “Spock, I-”

 A twinkle catches his eye.

The purple sunset dissolves into the vast tapestry of night, and, as the sand twinkles out, the sky itself becomes a glittering canvas. At the last moment, Jim turns to him, as the last embers of sunlight illuminate his hair.

“So, what do you want to do?” Jim whispers. “Do you want to chase the sunset? Have another go?”

Spock rests his head against his shoulder, and almost smiles.

As the days pass- or, don’t pass- they continue their attempts to escape. Sometimes, it looks like they might be getting somewhere- as far as they can while still avoiding Klingon space- but, at some point every morning, no matter how far they go, the clock resets. Heirin pulls them backwards like an elastic band, and they wake up back on the planet.

 “How far did we make it this time?”

 “Five point nine light years further than our last attempt.”

 Jim grits his teeth. “Then we should try going in that direction. Maybe we’re onto something.”

*

For the most part, the Iclixi have remained neutral in the Klingon-Romulan-Federation conflict, and, as a result, not much is known about them. Still, one thing is clear: they don’t like visitors.

“So, that’s why Leland asked me about base ten,” Jim says, breathless, as an asteroid explodes behind them. Escaping death has lost its excitement in some ways, but fleeing missiles- that’s fairly new.

Spock nods stiffly, his eyes locked on the controls, and Jim begins to use his own console to hack into the Iclixian database.

“Base six,” Jim murmurs, as he surveys the structure of the numbers on his console. “If it’s true that that these guys have four arms, then they must only have two digits on each hand.”

Spock runs a hand through his hair. “Jim-”

“I know.” Jim begins entering numbers frantically, and looks up. “What happened the first time you were here-?” The shuttle veers to the left.

Spock’s eyes dart to him, then back to the viewscreen.

“- Right.” Jim types faster. “Well, if I’m right, this should make us blind to their sensors.” And, if he’s wrong, they’ll find themselves back on Heirin.

With no memory of this.

He slams a button down at the same moment Spock pulls the shuttle into a nosedive. Outside the back window, the two missiles continue on a straight path, directly ahead. Jim waits with baited breath, but no more missiles are deployed.

He collapses back in his chair with an exhausted whoop.

They make their way through the rest of the Iclixi system without further disturbance, and Jim’s eyelids begin to droop.

 “How long have we been awake?” He yawns.

 “Twenty seven hours and… thirteen minutes,” Spock replies.

 Jim pats him on the shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t want to sleep first?”

“Negative. Vulcans-”

“Require less sleep than humans, I know.” Jim rises, and curls up at the back of the shuttle, with a tired smile. This time, he thinks, as he drifts off, we might actually make it.

 Jim rolls over, and snuggles into something soft. He feels well-rested.

 Which only means one thing.

 His eyes snap open, and he sits bolt upright. “Spock.”

He rushes to the main bedroom, and throws the door open. The room is much more orderly than it was before. Spock opens his eyes, and sits up suddenly,

“Jim?” He reaches for him, frowning. “I did not fall asleep-”

“I know,” Jim murmurs, “But what happened? What’s the last thing you remember?” He takes hold of Spock’s hands, and kneels on the edge of the bed, checking him over- although, of course; there isn’t a scratch on him.

“I… blinked,” Spock realises.

Jim slumps.

 They can’t take shifts blinking.

*

As they begin to search for alternate routes through Klingon space, Jim finds something which he’d previously overlooked.

 Boreth.

‘There’s a planet in the Klingon empire called ‘Boreth’ which is the only place in the known universe to contain a mineral known as ‘poH qut’. Translated to Standard, it means ‘time crystal’.’ Jim had never heard of them before, but the more he reads, the more familiar it sounds. For the most part, research on them is scarce, but there are isolated reports- mostly anecdotal- of users becoming trapped in time loops, triggered either intentionally or accidentally. In both instances, though, the loop is triggered by the spilling of innocent blood.

Jim cross-references it with any references to poH qut in the Klingon databases, only to come up short: the Klingons abandoned all experiments with time crystals centuries ago, and the ones which remain on Boreth are closely guarded by an order of monks. There is something, though. Rumours that one of the experiments resulted in a time crystal being hidden at the very core of a planet, before

“...But, even if there is a time crystal at the heart of this planet, that doesn’t help us,” Jim muses. “We don’t have the equipment to locate it or dig it up.”

Spock raises an eyebrow, and says nothing.

 Jim claps him on the shoulder. “We’ll find a way out.”

*

 Jim’s desperation only increases as things begin to break around the stronghold. For the moment, it’s mostly small, minor electrical errors- a wire needs reattaching on an upper wall, one of the consoles in the server room stops working, but there are plenty of backups- for now.

 They run into problems whenever something needs replacing. They salvage a couple of items from the basement, but the only replacement bulb they can find for the downstairs bathroom emits a bright, irradiated green. Spock begins to exclusively use the upstairs bathroom, explaining that such unrelenting green is every bit as unpalatable to Vulcan retinas as red would be to humans.

 Seeing as the shuttle has never been blown up before, the possibility limits the risks they can take, and the experiment is understandably one which they are reluctant to proceed with. If the shuttle doesn’t regenerate, they’ll be even more stuck than before, without a means of escape. Just as Lewis McAllister should have been. The report implies that McAllister simply omitted the miraculous tale of how his dead crew and ship were resurrected each morning before his miraculous escape… But, given the state that the shuttle and the stronghold are currently in, he doubts that was the case. He sighs, and goes over the information that they have once again, from day one to now.

 “I suspect,” Spock says, quietly, “The only reason Leland would have needed to learn the hacking procedure himself was if he was planning to kill me.”

 Jim holds his hand out, and, tentatively, Spock takes it.

*

 “Alright, new plan,” Jim says, as he steps out of the forest, his shirt spattered with blood. “We do what we came here to do.”

 Spock blinks at him, possibly confused by the blood stains.

 “I mean: I take the outpost down, then we travel out to meet whoever Section-31 is sending. I mean, what have we got to lose? If we get it wrong, won’t we just wake back up here again?”

 “With no memory of this,” Spock points out.

 Jim sighs. “I’ve thought of that. And- has it ever occurred to you that we

 Spock shakes his head. “The first day I remember, the stronghold was as it was the day before. And, we can tell

 “If we can work out some sort of back-up-plan, a way to send a message to ourselves in case our memories get erased again…” Jim glances at the shuttle, and heads towards the server room.

*

 As they fly through space, Jim turns to Spock with a nervous smile.

 “So. Who’s coming to meet us?”

 A shadow flickers across Spock’s face. “Agent Georgiou.”

 “Georgiou?” Jim frowns. “Phillipa Georgiou? Wasn’t she a Starfleet Captain? I thought she was killed in the battle at the binary stars?”

 Spock’s eyes flash. “She is not who she appears to be,” he says. “Whatever you think; you cannot trust her.” As usual, his expression is unreadable.

 The shuttle bleeps, as an unseen ship hails them. It pulls into view up ahead

 There’s a strange, unfamiliar weapon on the top of the ship, jutting out at the font. It’s twice as long as the hull of the shuttle, and looks as if it’s been compacted down. The front of it is coiled, like some sort of drill-bit. Before Jim can question it further, Spock answers the hail- audio only.

 “Agent Georgiou,” he murmurs.

 “Spock. I almost shot you out of the sky,” the voice purrs. “You’re early. A day early.”

 Spock straightens. “And yet, our mission is complete.”

 “Hm.” There’s a bleep as she, presumably, verifies that claim. “You work fast.”

 Spock exchanges a look with Jim. “Indeed.”

 There’s a pause.

 “Where’s Leland?” Her voice acquires a dangerous edge.

 “He is- on board.”

 “Hm. Unconscious, presumably; otherwise he would have answered me himself.”

 “We had a- trying day,” Spock says, haltingly.

 Jim’s heart hammers in his chest, and he squeezes Spock’s shoulder.

 “Scan us,” Spock says.

 “Oh, I did. There are two life-signs on your ship. One human, one half-Vulcan. I have no guarantee that Leland is one of them.”

 There’s a pause.

 “Unless you turn on your vidscreen, of course.”

 “It was damaged in our escape with The Klingons.”

 “How convenient. I assume Leland was injured, as well?”

 “Yes.”

 There’s a beat.

 “How do I know that the boy isn’t on board with you?”

 “Because we stuck to the plan,” Spock says.

 Jim breathes shallowly, and twists his hands together in his lap.

 Georgiou’s laugh is distorted. “Plans change. Still, I do not intend to deviate from mine. I was only instructed to meet you and Leland.”

 “You were never fond of Leland.”

 “That’s true. In many ways, you’ve done me a favour.”

 “Spock-” Jim whispers, as the computer readout flashes up red.

 “You can do me another favour.”

 “She’s locked on weapons-”

 The proximity alert bleeps. Spock’s hands find the controls the same time Jim’s do, and they slam the ship into a wild dive. A second later, something glances off the side of the ship, and they’re thrown sideways. Spock cries out. Jim crashes head first into the wall, and his vision goes double.

“Spock…” Jim says, as his eyes flutter shut.

*

 The hum of an engine. Jim’s head throbs.

 He sits up with a groan. The shuttle is adrift, and Spock is slouched over the controls, clutching his side and breathing heavily.

“Spock-”

 He crawls over to him, and pulls himself into the seat next to him. He touches Spock’s shoulder, and his eyelids flutter. He groans.

 “Come on, Spock.” He pulls Spock’s hand away, and it’s green with blood. Cursing, he pulls his jacket off, and winds it round his torso, but it soaks through quickly. Jim’s eyes widen.

 If he remembers correctly, Vulcan hearts are further down than humans’.

 Heart pounding, he runs to the back of the shuttle, and tears the medkit open. Though the bandages and the dermal regenerator have long since been depleted, he knows that he’s seen-

 A hypospray. He grabs it. With one last glance back at Spock, he fills it with a cartridge of anaesthetic. Enough to knock himself out, he hopes. He takes a deep breath. He sits down heavily, places it against his neck, and discharges it with a hiss.

[Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6]

[let-me-love-you-loki]

The Christmas that Wasn’t-Ch. 3

A/N: Written with the wonderful, lovely @mox-made-me-do-it​

Chapter 3: Kenny

           “You’re joking,” I said, looking between Leigh and Allie. The latter still looked bright and fiery from yelling at her friend’s ex. Leigh had a faint grin on her face, her moss green eyes sparkling slightly.

           “Not at all,” Allie said looking mischievous. “But none of us are going to be there if we don’t catch the ferry.”

           The server came over and packed up what was left from the girls’ cheese fries. I dug my wallet from my pocket and handed over my card, gesturing around the group to let her know that I was paying for everything. While I waited, I leaned against the bar and watched Leigh and Allie a few feet away, their heads together as they talked.

           “You got that look, Ken,” Adam mused as he piled our luggage together.

           I dragged my gaze from the girls and scrubbed my hand over my jaw. “Which look is that, Hangman?”

           Adam smirked as the server brought my card and the slip. I left a decent tip and scrawled my signature before handing it back to her. “You’re all starry eyed.”

           Leigh glanced over at us, and I thought I’d been punched in the chest. I wanted to smile at her—I tried, I really did—but I couldn’t think straight. “She’s funny.”

           He snorted. “She’s pretty. And staying at the same resort we are. Make a move.”

           The girls picked up their bags and started toward the exit. Adam and I followed a few steps behind, watching them walk arm-in-arm. They meandered their way toward the ferry, blonde and red mixed as they leaned their heads together to whisper and talk. Over the sound of luggage wheels on concrete, I heard the sound of Leigh laughing. It hit my ears like music.

           “Hurry up, boys,” she said over her shoulder. I caught the edge of a grin. “You’re going to have to jump onto the ferry if you don’t hurry.”

           Adam gave a deep rumbling laugh. “We’re right behind ya, ladies. Right behind ya.”

           There was a short line at the ferry and the four of us stood in a cluster, our bags in a circle in front of us. Under the tropical sun, Allie’s hair was a strawberry blonde a few shades lighter than Adam’s. Leigh’s looked like a ruby with fire burning in its heart. She slipped on a pair of sunglasses and tipped her face up toward the sun.

           Allie stood behind her, fingers working quickly to sweep Leigh’s hair up into a braid that fell over her shoulder. I could see strands of auburn and mahogany threading through the ruby in her hair, and I thought I’d never seen anything so beautiful. The sudden urge to run my hands through it slammed into my gut.

           Adam elbowed me hard in the ribs, smirking, brows raised above his shades. “Dude, you’re staring.”

           I blushed. I felt the heat spread over my face as I forced myself to look away. I latched onto the first thing I could. “Look, the line’s moving.”

           The ferry was split level, and we wound our way to the upper deck, where we settled our bags on racks and sat down at a four top table next to the railing. The water was turquoise, undulating against the side of the boat in slow waves. My hair tangled in the breeze, and I pushed my sunglasses up to hold it back.

           “Drinks, ladies?” Adam said, grinning at the girls. “Ken, I assume it’s a Diet Coke for you?”

           I grinned and nodded. “Someone has to stay sober when you’re around,” I teased.

           “Let me help,” Leigh said, smiling across the table at my friend. I felt a stab of jealousy between my ribs. “I know what Als likes.”

           “Well, alright then,” he drawled, getting to his feet and gesturing Leigh to go in front of him. I watched them walk toward the bar set in the center of the deck.

           “Kenny,” Allie prodded, drawing my attention back from our friends. “Hey, I’m really sorry about what happened at the restaurant. I didn’t mean to embarrass you or Leigh back there. That’s the last thing I’d ever do, I swear. It wasn’t the most respectful thing to do when you first meet someone…”

           I waved my hand between us as if it were nothing. “It’s not a big deal. Really. I’m flattered.”

           She grinned like the Cheshire cat and looked over her shoulder for a moment. “Leigh’s ex is… insane and horrible. I’ve never really liked her, so I know exactly what buttons to push to piss that woman off. But Leigh likes you. You’re the first guy she’s shown any interest for in years.”

           My brows shot up and I knew I was making a weird surprised face. “Really?”

           “Seriously. I’ve only known Leigh to look at one other person the way she’s been looking at you. And we’ve been friends ever since.” Allie leaned closer and dropped her voice. “Trust me. Watch her. She telegraphs her tells like a strobe light.”

           I looked back toward the bar. Leigh and Adam were near the front of the line. “Really?” I had completely forgotten every word in three languages except that one.

           “Look at how she keeps her ears covered,” Allie laughed. “I guarantee they’re as red as her hair.”

           Before I could respond, Adam and Leigh appeared back at the table with a set of drinks. I smelled the rum coming from Adam’s drink. Leigh sat something in front of Allie that had a sharp fruity scent.

           “Diet Coke,” Leigh said with a smile, pushing a cup across the table at me. I watched as she sat next to Allie and dropped her head on her friend’s shoulder. I couldn’t help that my eyes were drawn straight to her ear, but it was covered by her hair.

           “What’d you get?” I asked, taking a deep drink of my soda.

           She looked at the table, her fingers wrapped around her cup. “Sex on the beach,” she said, her voice teasing as she looked up, her moss green eyes suddenly going grey. There was a flash of an image in my head—Leigh’s hair slipping through my fingers, my mouth on her neck.

           I spluttered on my drink. Adam thumped me hard in the back. I coughed into my fist, blinking hard. I hoped the rest of them thought some of the soda just went down the wrong pipe. But I had the feeling that Allie knew exactly what just ran through my mind.

           “It always was your favorite,” Allie added, kissing the top of her friend’s head. “Remember spring break during junior year?”

           Leigh laughed and pressed her fingertips to her mouth. The grin that bloomed beneath them made her face go as radiant and pink as an early sunset. “Als! You would bring that up.”

           Allie bumped her friend in the shoulder, and Leigh laughed. She reached up and tucked her hair behind her bright red ear. My brows rose a fraction in surprise. When I looked at Allie, she flicked her eyes to her friend and back at me, an I told you so clear in her expression.

           “Ladies and Gentlemen, we will be docking at the Four Seasons resort in approximately five minutes. If this is your destination, please make your way to the lower deck at this time.” The voice over the loudspeaker repeated the message again in several other languages.

           “That’s us,” Adam said, downing the rest of his drink in one gulp before he stood up. “You ladies head on down. We’ll take care of the bags.”

           Leigh smiled up at him, batting her eyes. When she spoke, it was with a dramatic Southern accent like something out of a movie. “Why, thank you, kind sir. I have never met such a fine gentleman.”

           Allie rolled her eyes and carefully pushed Leigh down the stairs to the lower deck. I helped Adam somehow maneuver both our bags and theirs down the stairs. “Showoff,” I grumbled as I hefted my bag over my back and carried Leigh’s with a little more care.

           “Shut up,” he replied, grinning. “You’ll look all big and strong. Trust me, it’s a thing. Those two will dig it.”

           The girls stood leaning against the railing facing each other. They were holding hands and laughing. Both of them seemed to shine beneath the sunlight, bronze and ruby. Color splashed across Leigh’s cheekbones. I had the distinct impression she was looking at me, even though her eyes were hidden behind her sunglasses.

           We arrived just as the ferry slipped to a stop next to the dock of the resort. There were a group of employees of the resort waiting, helping passengers off the ferry and offloading luggage. Adam wedged himself in front of them, passing over the bags and stepping over the gap onto the dock. He turned and reached back with both hands.

           “Miss Mason…” he drawled.

           Allie grinned at Leigh before taking both of Adam’s hands and hopping onto the deck. I stepped up beside Leigh and took her by the hand. Her skin was soft as her fingers curled around mine.

           “You jump, I jump, Jack?” she said, beaming up at me.

           “On three…”

           Once we rejoined Adam and Allie, the four of us walked up toward the main part of the resort. The air was thick with the scent of flowers and salt water. It was hot, hotter than I was used to living in Canada and Japan. The girls slipped into the building just ahead of us, and suddenly we were hit with a rush of air conditioning.

           Allie stepped up to the counter, pushing her shades up onto her head. “Checking in. Last name is Mason.”

           “Good afternoon, Ms. Mason. We have you booked for six nights in an overwater bungalow at the end of the pier. It seems we have you in a single bed accommodation, but there is also a hammock and a spacious sofa. Will this be acceptable?”

           She beamed at the concierge. “Of course! Everything is perfect. Two keys, please.”

           A moment later, she and Leigh had handed over their ID and gotten their room keys, brochure of all the resort amenities that were somehow prepaid for the entire week, and were gathering up their bags.

           “Very good, Ms. Mason,” he replied. “You’ll be in bungalow fourteen. Jean will show you the way. I hope you enjoy your stay at the Four Seasons Bora Bora.”

           My heart thudded against my ribs so hard I thought they were going to splinter. I had a sudden terror that I’d never see her again. She smiled at us—at me—and reached for Allie’s hand.

           “See you around the resort, boys.”

Tag List

@mox-made-me-do-it​ @not-that-kinda-gurl08​

[sunflwrvolume6]

someone lost, something gained [36]

This is a huge step, a leap forward that she won’t ever be able to take back. And if this all ends disastrously, she will not only lose the only man who’s held her interest in three years but the man who has made her happy through such a horrible time. She meant what she told Antonio. She didn’t think she would ever smile again after Granddad passed, and that thought alone terrifies her.

[ao3 ☆ wattpad part one | part two]

[previous ☆ masterlist]

[get tagged here]

note: not going to lie, this is 4k of pure tooth-rotting fluff. i almost split it into 2 chapters/posts, but here it is in all its glory.

Veda frowns at her reflection, smoothing down the front of her dress. It’s too much, she knows it is, but Hattie had been adamant about this particular outfit. She’d said that if Niall didn’t want to take Veda to bed immediately after seeing her in this dress, then he’s either stupid or just not that into her. Veda crosses her fingers and hopes her cousin is right.

But she still walks out of the bathroom and into Hattie’s room with doubts swirling in her mind. “Are you sure I’m not, like, showing too much?”

“Veeeeee,” groans Hattie as she tosses her book aside. “Look. Yes, your back is exposed, and yes, maybe it’s a deeper neckline than you’re used to. But you don’t look like a two-dollar prostitute, so it’s a win.”

“Well, thank god for small mercies.” Sighing, Veda makes her way back to the mirror, calling over her shoulder, “What should I-?”

“Oh, step aside. Your favourite cousin is here to save the day. Sit,” Hattie orders with a vague gesture toward the tub.

Veda rolls her eyes but obeys while Hattie rummages through the bag Veda brought downstairs with her. Hattie comes up with an eyeliner pencil and bottle of foundation. She warns Veda to stay completely still -”Or I will stab you in the eye and not feel bad at all” - then gets to work. Veda follows every command, tilts her head up and down and side to side. She even manages to somehow control the twitching of her eyelids as her cousin applies mascara.

Finally, Hattie steps away and beams. “Hey, you actually look somewhat presentable.”

“Hey, you’re actually kinda being an ass.”

Hattie yelps when Veda goes to stand. “What do you think we’re doing? We aren’t done!”

“I’m supposed to be meeting him soon,” Veda protests, and Hattie shoves at her shoulders until Veda sits again. “If I’m late, I’m blaming you.”

“Worth it.”

Forty minutes later, Veda is slipping her feet into a pair of nude peep-toe heels, courtesy of her cousin who heard about the date finally happening and went shopping. She sighs and checks her reflection again. Dark red lips, perfect winged liner, curled lashes, and a touch of peach on her cheeks make her look entirely different than her every-day face. The mass of curls pinned on top of her head is definitely a change from her usual bun, and Veda will never waste the time again.

But even she has to admit Hattie’s magic has made her look incredible.

“Be home by Cinderella, or the carriage turns back into a pumpkin.” Hattie drops to sit on the couch and cocks her head. “Better yet, don’t come home at all.”

“Wow, you really think I’d put out on the first date?”

“For Niall? Yes.”

Veda pauses before collapsing into giggles. “Okay, yeah. You’re right. Don’t burn down the house.”

“I’ve been cooking since I was six. I think the house will be standing when you come home in the morning.”

Veda slides her phone into her purse and steps out onto the stoop, pulling the door shut behind her. Someone whistles sharply across the street, and she checks that Nonna isn’t watching before she raises her middle finger at Antonio. He laughs, shaking his head, and tells her to have fun. He really doesn’t need to add the lascivious wink - she hears the innuendo in his voice - but he does anyway.

“I’ll tell Nonna you’re pestering me, Ant.”

“She gets one look at’chu, she’s gonna wonder where you’re goin’ all dolled up. You really want questions right now?”

“I’ll tell her tomorrow,” she giggles as she makes her way down the block to the subway.

The sun edges closer to the horizon, but the heat of the day is nowhere near dissipating. Veda’s heels click against the pavement, joining the cacophony of fellow pedestrians moving to and fro. The restaurant is just ahead.

Her heart beats faster in her chest the closer she gets.

Hattie made sure Veda was out of the house in time, but Veda didn’t make sure she was actually ready for this.

This is a huge step, a leap forward that she won’t ever be able to take back. And if this all ends disastrously, she will not only lose the only man who’s held her interest in three years but the man who has made her happy through such a horrible time. She meant what she told Antonio. She didn’t think she would ever smile again after Granddad passed, and that thought alone terrifies her.

Niall is quite possibly the most wonderful she could ever love like this, and losing him would be just as devastating as losing Granddad.

Love. Far too early for that, Mitchell.

Light streams through the enormous windows, catches on Niall’s dark hair like a halo around his head. He’s staring down at the phone in his hand; his thumb taps at the screen, he pauses, then his thumb taps again. The process repeats five times before Veda’s phone vibrates against her side. She steps out of the foot-traffic, digging through her purse until she comes up with the device.

From: Niall > I’m excited to see you

It is such a simple message, but it brings a smile to Veda’s face until her cheeks hurt. She locks her phone and looks at him. He’s gorgeous. His face falls when he sees she’s read the message but isn’t responding. She swallows down the sudden surge of nerves and eases her way through the evening crowd.

“How many times did you write that message only to delete it again?”

His head snaps up, and his smile falters as his gaze skims over her body. “Fuck, Veda, you look - wow. You’re gorgeous.”

“Oh. Um, thank you. Hattie did all the work. I just played the role of live-action Barbie.” Her face heats up at the way his eyes are still on her. She steps forward to kiss his cheek. “You look amazing, too.”

And he really, really does. The gunmetal grey of his V-neck brings out the blue in his eyes, and his dark jeans only accentuate the muscles they hide. Veda’s mouth grows dry as she stares, fragments of a dream worming its way to the forefront of her mind. She wants to feel beneath her fingertips the stubble along his jaw, the soft strands of his hair between her fingers.

She wants to make him look as turned inside-out as he makes her feel.

Ever a gentleman, he holds the door open and waves her through. She laughs softly.

“This is just so you can stare at my ass, isn’t it?”

“I’m only a man, Ve-Veda,” he chuckles as his hand settles on her lower back, a steady point of warmth that rapidly overtakes her entire body.

Veda will remember nothing of the decor, none of the faces they pass as they follow the host to their table, or the aromas of meals that mingle in the air. All she can focus on is how his hand hasn’t moved. The way his fingers brush against the hem of her dress above the curve of her ass. The rush of her heart as it desperately tries to push oxygen through her veins instead of the desire to lead him to the bathroom.

As much as she loathes the loss of contact, Veda is thankful when they sit. His touch was far too distracting, and it is nearly impossible to be on your best behaviour when all you want to do is feel more of that touch in places unsuitable for public audience. He grins at her from across the table; his eyes hold a knowing gleam, and she wonders if he’s thinking the same thing.

She barely spares a second to check the menu, ultimately deciding on a salad. He frowns slightly, opens his mouth, but she shakes her head. The confusion on his face disappears when she explains she only eats like a pig at home. Being out in the real world means she has to use the manners Granddad worked so hard to teach her. Niall laughs and tells her she’s doing a great job.

“So, I have to admit something. I’ve been wanting to ask you out for, well, too long.”

Veda cocks her head. “Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t want to make you feel like I was pushing myself onto you.”

She can’t help it - she starts giggling. “Sorry, sorry. It’s not funny. I mean, it kinda is? It’s why I don’t text you every day asking you to come over.”

“You should have. DB and I would’ve loved to spend more time with you.”

Ellie’s words echo in her mind, and Veda drops her gaze to stare at the glass of water. She doesn’t want to voice the doubts, but she knows she needs to. She has to know.

“Can I ask why? You wanted to ask me out, I mean. Aren’t you worried that this is just me, like, latching onto the first person who shows me a teeny tiny iota of stability during a life-altering event?”

“Well, I wasn’t before!” He taps his finger against his glass and laughs quietly. When he looks at her again, there’s an earnestness on his face that astounds her. “No, I’m not. Veda, I figured out a long time ago that sometimes, you make a choice and it turns out to be the worst fucking decision of your life. But it’s a lesson learnt, and you move on and try to remember that lesson.”

“But what if it turns out this is just my brain craving affection and comfort after I lost my best friend?”

He smiles softly, reaches for her hand, and she lets him link their fingers together. “Then I can’t be too upset, can I, that I’m the one who got to offer it to you.”

“Nope, nope, nope,” Veda mutters as she blinks rapidly, but the burning remains in her eyes. “I can’t do this. You are too damn perfect. What the Hell.”

The stricken expression on his face is replaced with amused exasperation, and he lifts her hand to press a kiss to the back of it. She bites her lower lip to stop her giggles, even as the server arrives with their meals, and Niall sticks his tongue out at Veda.

The date seems almost…effortless. As if it’s merely one of their hang-outs in a restaurant instead of her house. Even the knowledge that this is changing their relationship isn’t enough to make Veda panic for long. He keeps her laughing with stories of his childhood, and she tells him more about her life with Granddad, even the tale of her throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of the street while he taught Hattie how to ride a bike.

She never wants it to end.

“Where to next?” she asks as he leads her toward the door.

“Well, I figured you weren’t the type of girl who would be content with sitting in the dark for two hours while watching a film that may or may not be awful.”

“You guessed right.” Veda frowns when he hails a taxi, his hand tight around hers. “You’re not gonna tell me, are you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You’re lucky I trust you.”

“I’ll do my best not to fuck that up then.”

Veda stares at him for a moment then shakes away the feeling that he is far better than she deserves. Everything he’s told her has been pleasant, wonderful. Even the strained relationship with his brother pales in comparison to her own familial ties. She doesn’t tell him that, though. It isn’t a competition, and she would hate to ruin the atmosphere of the evening. She would take the win in a landslide, anyway.

Niall helps her from the backseat, his hand solid and strong and not releasing her even after she’s on her feet. His lips brush against her cheek, and Veda ducks her head to hide her smile as they step away from the cab so it can drive off. She squeezes his hand then turns toward their destination. She pauses, blinks at the dark blue building and bright yellow letters.

“IKEA?”

Niall shrugs and shifts his weight. The lot lights wash his eyes an icy blue, but there’s so much warmth there. “Has a date ever done this with you?”

“No, I can say with absolute certainty that this is incredibly unique.” She bites her bottom lip at how uncomfortable he looks, as if he’s afraid he has messed this up. She sighs, touching his cheek with her free hand. “You were right. A movie would have been cliche, and I am so not dressed for anything requiring more than walking. Niall, this is perfect.”

His gaze drops to her lips, but he doesn’t kiss her like she desperately hopes he will. Wants him to. Instead, he smiles and loops his arm with hers. She waits to pout until he’s not looking at her. Why won’t he just kiss her already? He has had ample opportunity, and she’s practically begging for it by this point. After all, it was only a month ago that she kissed him. It’s his turn now.

He suggests a game as they walk through the aisles, pointedly following the arrows on the floor unlike the other people. The rules are simple, he says: Find the most ridiculous items on the shelves to decorate a home with, and whoever has the weirdest collection wins.

“What’s the prize?” she asks even as she adds a tray printed with ugly Santas to her list.

“If I win, I… hm. I get another date with you.”

“And if I win?”

“Another date with me.”

Veda giggles, presses her face into the side of his arm. “So either way, we both win?”

“Exactly.”

She tugs on his arm after a moment, and he follows obediently to the mini-home setup. His face scrunches up once inside, his eyes darting around the small space. Veda understands his distaste for the tiny home - the idea of leaving less of an imprint on the environment is nice, but she needs more room to move.

This, though, seems more like -

“Are you claustrophobic?”

“I am,” he admits with a self-deprecating chuckle. Nervous. Anxious.

“Shit. I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t be. How could you have known?”

She immediately steps out of the display, pulling him with her, and Niall draws in a deep breath once they’re back in the aisle. He squeezes her hand gently. Forgiveness. With an apologetic smile, she gestures for him to lead the way.

The kids’ section instantly catches her attention. Not the bedding or furniture, but the toys. She never really had playthings as a child, since Olivia wasn’t much of a mother, so Veda, without shame, checks out the stock of every store she steps foot into. Granddad started her plush animal collection, and Veda adds to it every chance she gets.

Niall doesn’t judge her for her excitement over the stuffed dogs and teddy bears and penguins. In fact, he even moves away to look in other bins, holding up various creatures for her scrutiny. She falls a little more for him because of it. For once, she feels like she doesn’t have to hide a part of her.

That she can show everything she is, and he won’t think less of her.

“Veda! Oh, my god, come here.”

Veda turns away from the pandas and makes her way through the cramped aisle to his side. Her eyes widen, and she gasps at what he’s found. “Holy hell, they’re amazing! They’re bigger than DB!”

“It’s ridiculous.” He pauses, resting his hand on her back, and she meets his eye. “Want one?”

“No, it’s okay. I don’t need it.”

He frowns as his fingers catch her chin, hold her head still so she can’t look away. “Ve-Veda, I didn’t ask if you needed it. I asked if you wanted it. Yes or no, no thinking allowed.”

And what else can she say except “Yes”?

His smile lights up his entire face, and he lets her go to dig through the bin. She raises a brow when he comes back victorious with a plushie in his hands. He lifts a shoulder jerkily, explains that the ones on the bottom haven’t been touched by gross hands nearly as often as the ones on top.

Veda accepts the reasoning - it’s logical, after all - and reaches for the shark. He takes her purse so she can clutch the stuffed animal to her chest. She knows her grin is too wide, too childlike, but the heat beneath her ribs overwhelms any potential embarrassment.

No guy has ever offered to buy her a stuffed animal, let alone a three-foot shark.

Once he’s paid for the blåhaj, as the tag proclaims, and a new leash for David Barkie, Veda follows Niall back out to the car park. He wraps his arm around her shoulder, kissing her temple, and they walk in silence toward the nearest subway stop. A heady thrumming kicks up in her veins, singing praises of how wonderful the night has been.

How amazing Niall is, even before he’s given her one of the best dates she’ll ever remember.

Her mind suddenly stutters to a halt as they stand together on the subway, scarcely an inch between them though there’s no need. They’re the only ones on within a two-seat radius. She groans as her head drops back. He stares at her with a question in his eyes. Veda sighs and wonders how to explain what she’s thinking. What comes out is:

“This date wasn’t terrible.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” he asks, the words slow and purposeful. Like he doesn’t want to offend her or be offended himself.

“Yes and no.” She exhales sharply and decides to go all-in. “Okay, so you remember how we met because of my friend Ellie’s wedding? Well, I was the maid of honour, and I gave a speech about Chris and Ellie’s first date.”

“I’m guessing it was terrible?”

“The worst. She called me after, and I swear, I almost fell asleep as she told me because it was just… so boring. There was no chemistry! But she went out with him again, and now they’re all gross and in love and married. So I said I wanted a date like that. Something terrible that lead to an amazing love like that.”

Niall nods slowly, and Veda leans into him when the car sways, coming to a stop. “Well, I suppose this could be our second date, because me coming over after your granddad passed was a terrible time for you.”

“Nah, it’s okay,” Veda laughs, the sound watery but bright. “I think I’ll take the perfect first date considering how long it took to finally get to it.”

Niall steps out onto the platform first, reaching back for her hand. His brows are drawn together, a slight downturn to his lips, and Veda wonders what he could be thinking about. What could have made him so serious so quickly? When he strokes his chin, she realises he’s putting her on.

“The perfect first date?”

She rolls her eyes but plays along. “Yep. Almost guaranteed you’ll get a kiss at the end of the night.”

“Anything I can do to make it happen?” he asks, pulling her closer when a group of men walk past. Not even nine-thirty and they’re already drunk. One of them whistles under his breath, his gaze heavy on Veda’s exposed skin, and Niall hurries her along.

“Keep being you, I suppose.”

Nonna stands in her doorway, watches as Niall and Veda approach, but she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even wave. Veda appreciates that, though she would like a bit more privacy as she comes to a stop at the top of her stoop.

Setting the shark down at her feet, Veda stares up at Niall through the glow of the porch light, at the soft curve to his lips and the way his eyes shine. She steps further into his space and thanks the inventor of heels as she kisses Niall’s smile away. His hands settle gently on her hips, warm even through the fabric of her dress, and she wraps her arms around his neck to bring him closer. His heartbeat is rapid against her, or maybe it’s hers that is fluttering so quickly beneath her ribs.

Nearly every single neighbour is peering through their windows when Veda finally pulls back, and she huffs out a quiet laugh. “And here I thought living in a small town would be the only way to get this kinda nosiness.”

“They worry about you,” he whispers, shrugging, and Veda kisses him again. God, she is falling too hard for him, and she doesn’t want to stop.

“Thank you for tonight. I really enjoyed it.”

Niall is the one who kisses her this time. One hand cups her cheek, and she chases the taste of wine and chocolate on his tongue. Heat flares up in her belly as his fingers press firmly into her skin. She wants more than this slice of perfection.

She wants him, any way she can have him.

The invitation is on the tip of her tongue, the plea for him to stay the night, for the night to never end. But then he’s pulling away, putting a sliver of distance between them, and her body goes cold without him. He whispers a goodnight, his lips brushing hers once more, then makes his way down the stairs.

Veda watches him walk away and wishes she’d asked him to stay. Her mind catalogues all the things she’s going to tell Granddad about tonight, about how amazing and unique and unexpected it was, before -

Right.

She can’t tell him anything. Tears burn in her eyes at the reminder. Granddad would have loved Niall, and Niall would have loved Granddad. Granddad will never meet Niall. So Veda does the next best thing: She grabs the stuffed shark off the stoop, carries it inside, and sets off to find Hattie.

[cinnamonweasley]

waiter - sam x reader

(So I am moving my Wattpad one shots onto Tumblr so they’re better organised.)

Y/N is on a terrible date, the only thing keeping her spirits up is the waiter.

Dating apps had never really been your thing, building a relationship based on pictures and a 50 word description just seemed totally unnatural. There was no way of knowing that an individual was the same as their online persona, or even the same person. However, your best friend had convinced you that meeting someone new would be so much easier online, hundreds of potential dates at your fingertips. You knew she had meant well, and wanted you to get back out there after your ex disappeared. This is how you had ended up in the situation you were currently in, sat in an overpriced Italian restaurant staring at your glass of white wine, the distorted lobster tank visible through the alcohol. The date had already got off to a bad start, your phone blowing up with several apology texts to let you know he was running late. Not just five, ten minutes late, but a whole forty minutes. You had been sat alone for half an hour by now, the glass of wine draining as fast as your patience. You sensed someone looking over at you, and out of the corner of your eye you saw one of the waiters looking in your direction. He had a kind face, his hair framing his chiselled jaw perfectly. Even though he was a tall man his eyes were far from intimidating, instead radiating softness that almost seemed to sooth your bubbling anger.

It was forty minutes after your agreed meeting time that your date finally swanned into the restaurant, you clocked him immediately because of his unusual tattoo, one of a large crimson spider on his hand, its web extending up his forearm. His dating profile went into great detail about the meaning behind the tattoo, but you couldn't help but feel strange about seeing it in real life. I guess you just figured that if your date was not who he said he was, it would be over so much quicker. Your phone buzzed, a good luck text from your best friend, you sent her a message that he had arrived then placed it back into your pocket.

"Hi, you must be Roland?" "Yep, and you look real weird with glasses, talk about false advertising."

There was no explanation for his late arrival,  just an unnecessary remark about your glasses, you had a feeling already that you'd made a mistake, and that was confirmed when he sat down and asked what your name was. You blinked at him, unsure if he was trying to be amusing, his scrunched up face proved he had indeed no idea who you were. 'I'm Y/N? We've literally been talking for a few days." Roland leaned back in his chair, looking you up and down, "Guess your profile wasn't that enticing huh, besides I go on so many dates and women can't resist me." He was thankfully interrupted by the waiter from earlier coming over to your table, placing down two menus and asking if he could get you anything. Roland placed his phone on the table checking it for messages before waving the waiter away. At this point you were seriously considering just getting up and leaving, this guy was obviously a massive dick. The only thing stopping you was your hollow stomach, maybe you could just make it through the starter. You couldn't help but cringe at the way Roland had treated your server, not wanting to be associated with that kind of mentality.

The starter of tomato and mozzarella bruschetta had only just touched your lips when Roland confirmed your need to get out of there was imminent, "So, we going back to mine or yours? I would offer my place but my mother hates it when I bring girls back." "I'm going back to mine, and you are going far far away from me." "I like girls who play hard to get, I'll wear you down eventually." Placing your half eaten bruschetta back onto the plate you moved to stand up, but before you could Roland grabbed at your sleeve. "C'mon Y/N don't be a bitch, we both know this we have some crazy sexual tension." Yanking your arm away with such force you sent your cutlery flying across the restaurant floor you huffed and readjusted your top. You couldn't even muster a reply, but that kind of attitude did not deserve one. Other people in the restaurant had stopped eating and were staring bug-eyed at the disturbance, not that it deterred Roland, he just sat there smirking cooly in your direction. All the waiters had also stopped to watch the commotion, the one that served you just minutes ago walked briskly over, "Can I help at all?" You opened your mouth to explain but Roland talked over you, his voice sickly like thick syrup, "More wine that's all a man ever needs, and she's good." The server nodded slowly, awkwardly and walked away, clicking his pen rhythmically.

The glint of the fork you had sent flying earlier was your escape, picking it up you walked briskly to the bar where the waiter was pouring the requested wine. "Sorry, and don't worry about another I don't think I'm staying a second longer." The waiter stopped pouring the wine and looked up, his eyes honey brown and sympathetic, "Sounds like you need this," he gestured to the glass of alcohol, "way more than he does." He took the fork from you, his features becoming increasingly concerned, "Your date is in here almost every night, my boss won't bar him because he spends so much money. Him and a few other regulars are keeping this place afloat." Exhaling slowly you glanced behind you, Roland was currently flexing his arm muscles in the direction of another server. A tinkling laugh made you turn around, "You look like you'd rather be in the lobster tank than go back over there." His laugh was the most comforting sound you had heard all evening, "You're so right, that guy is horrible! I don't know why I thought this would be a good idea, I mean I've heard online dating horror stories but you never think it will happen to you." The waiter laughed softly again, the noise making your heart flutter a little, "How about a drink on the house?" You shook your head,  eyes meeting his, "That's okay thanks, I'm driving so no more alcohol for me."

Your conversation was disturbed by Roland striding up to the bar, slamming his spidered fist down a little too close to your hand, "What's going on here huh? You think you can just steal my date punk? Have you seen my tattoo? Do you know what that shit means? No? Well I'll tell you, it means you are about to feel my knuckles up in your face." Without skipping a beat the waiter calmly told him to leave or be forcefully escorted out. Several other waiters had gathered around the original one at this point, and by their facial expressions it felt like they had done this one too many times. Seeing he was outnumbered Roland slammed his fist on the bar again, downed the glass of wine next to you and stormed out of the restaurant, cursing as he left.

Once the normal chatter of the place resumed you went back to your table, collecting your bag, reminding yourself to delete your dating profile as soon as you got home. The waiter you had been talking to earlier came over, his pen tucked neatly behind his ear, "I'm sorry you had such a bad night, I should've warned you about him." You shrugged, looking sadly at the remains of the bruschetta on your plate, "These things happen, you've by far been the highlight of my night so, thank you." He shot you a beaming smile, a hand quickly brushing through his hair, "I'm Sam by the way, and it was my pleasure." Returning the smile you were about to wish him goodnight when he stopped you, "Um, let me know if I'm out of place but.. Maybe I can help you replace this date with a better one?" He searched your face for an answer, his brows furrowed in anticipation, "That sounds perfect Sam. I would like that."

[allthetribbles]

An Explosive Performance - March 30, 2085

Following the fall of the Pit, security patrols around Seattle are heavily ramped up. With the release of unknown sorcerers, parapsychics, and other creatures, all reports are being investigated - no matter how minor they seem. Alan is given a few extra psych visits due to the reports turned in from the Pit, but... he isn't taken away. There is a lack of personnel and we just can't afford to take someone out of action.

Liv receives a message on the 30th and follows its orders. Rather than following the orders of a secondary note, she brings the retrieved artifact to the Director. Unfortunately he's in a meeting. It takes about half hour before the door is opened and two people walk out - the head of the military and the GIA. The military agent gives Liv a once-over before he walks out.

Liv asks the Director for some of his time, immediately. He says ok and she enters his office and closes the door. This garners a very... surprised look from the Director. Liv quickly takes out the notes and places them on his desk, dissolving into a babble of almost incoherent information. A note meant for the Director came across her desk, with little time to inform and scout the location, she took it upon herself to go in his place. She had concerns that it was a ruse to draw him out and kill him. She places the still-wrapped artifact on his desk.

He offers her a drink, makes a call to Bobby to get him to come down and verify whether what she picked up was the real deal or not. It takes about twenty minutes before Bobby is escorted to the office... with two guards placed outside the door. Liv is still inside. Bobby greets Liv, looks at the artifact and confirms it's real.

Bobby tells Elwood to seal it somewhere because having it here is "bad juju." Elwood will arrange for transport for the artifact out of the office and someplace safe. Liv is dismissed. While the Director is glad that it worked out well, if it happens again find and tell him first.

All in all, it took roughly an hour to an hour and a half before Liv is out of the office. The team looks at Liv curiously, Kory asked what happened - Liv tells her "You don't want to know." Te'ani approaches Liv - "You don't want to know. I was there and even I don't want to know what happened." He gives her space...

Kory gets a call at her desk - a report from dock workers about a creepy old dude and monsters. She asks if we have the authority to check it out - indeed we do! Alan tells everyone that he'll be working without arcane sight. Liv drives to the docks since our favorite pilot is out of commission for the time being.

We meet the worker who reported the incident - Tim Dane. He was loading and saw the ruckus about five or six warehouses down. He got worried and called us. When he got back outside, there wasn't anything there anymore.

Checking out the location - there are a lot of shell casings - A LOT. There is an open door leading in with the definite marks of explosives, weapon fire, and claw marks...

Kory is concerned that maybe the worker didn't give us all of the information and goes back to probe his mind. What the worker saw - A guy that looks like Professor Farnsworth (we identified him as The Ghoul by his description) yelling at a guy with a beard and pointing at the door of a white van. The worker finishes loading up and looks back again to see a monster leaping out of the van. He turns around, hearing noises like car backfire, but faint (which could possibly be gunfire). He returns to the office to hunt for the card with the muffled noise in the back.

The first thing that Te'ani sees entering the warehouse are two dead bodies - one of which is... Isaac Sage. The other is an unknown female with a massive facial scar. Running her face through recognition, it identifies her as Isabella Kachowski - a Russian native presumed dead around seven years ago when the Migou invaded Russian. Te'ani asks Liv to turn on the pips to see what they can find - Liv refuses, stating there are usually security measures against that and if there IS any information it, it would take someone with more expertise than hers to get it out.

Looking around the warehouse, there is a formerly "secret doorway" heading underground. Formerly because it is has been blasted open. Inside they can smell the gunpowder wafting from below. Te'ani leads the way down - it is four stories, but they keep only one story between them.

Downstairs looks like a small warzone and we can see everything - blood splatter, bodies, explosive residues... claw marks. At the end of the stairwell is a doorway approximately six feet wide by eight feet tall. The lights are on and there are bodies everywhere - the closest one is a female that's been burnt alive with a rifle. Most of them have been shot, but others have been dismembered. No monsters - all human, nazzadi or amlati. Most are armed with guns - and there are bullet holes everywhere.

At this point, we decide to call in backup - Kory makes the call to the Director, who has the military and other teams called in. With recent activity, he's not taking any chances.

There is an arena in the middle of the area with cameras pointed inside - it seems to be a blood sport arena, but no way to get into the arena.

There are several doorways/openings leading off of this initial room and the team decides to investigate. The first leads to a corridor with doors every ten feet or so. Looking in, each one opens up to a well-furnished two story apartment. In one of them, there are three bodies - one in bed and two others shot at the door. The second one leads to an armoury, the third a cafeteria.

The fourth door leads to an office. Inside the office is a map of Seattle with a bunch of pins - we all take pictures on our pips. Te'ani attempts to puzzle out what the pins represent while Liv heads to the computer terminal. An attempt to access its information is met with hostile resistance. Liv is hesitant to go in deeper - this wasn't what she was looking for, but the server banks for the security cameras.

The pins seem to correspond with different locations across the city - black pins seem to denote OIS, GIA, and military presence in Seattle. Other colors seem to represent the Dionysus club and locations that we have under surveillance - including the apartment complex where Lt. Gen Kareebi's friend resides.

The last door isn't locked and swings open to reveal an inner set of doors. Looking in reveals....

Books. Lots and LOTS of books. Actual PHYSICAL books. Alan is enamoured. While Alan looks through the books - not touching them! He hears a woman's voice asking, "Who are you?"

He brings the voice to our attention - Liv immediately asks, "Where are you?" We follow the voice behind one of the racks.... to a crumbling and half destroyed statue.

The statue turns around, sees us, and says, "Ah shit, OIS."

We find out the name of the "statue" is Luana Savitski. Alan informs us that she's pretty well known in the occult world for the past 20 years, but hasn't been seen in the last ten. She asks if we're going to help her or shoot her.

Te'ani and Liv look around and see the piles of rubble.... well... it's about like trying to piece together a 10,000 piece puzzle without a picture.

Kory asks how long she's been a statue - and how it happened. Luana replies that she's been this way a pretty long time and is the result of several cumulative magical misshaps. We ask if she knows who the attackers were - she doesn't since she can't move outside of the library.

She doesn't seem to know who The Ghoul is, the attackers appeared human as far as she could tell. When she identifies this place as "The Enclave" - Liv immediately jumps in and asks, "The Tager Enclave?" She seems shocked that Liv knows that word and asks where she heard it. "Tuscon, Arizona. Remember the old guy said he was going to attack the Tager Enclave." Luana literally curses a blue streak - cursing several names including "Beaver, Stone, 8Bit, and several others." Liv tells her Stone is dead.

About this time, we wonder where our backup is - and then it arrives. Liv immediately tells them to not shoot - "This is a high priority witness, do NOT kill." They ask who she's talking about - Luana answers. They're surprised a statute talks.

Te'ani asks her "What exactly is a Tager?" Luana gives him a side-eye at the question, telling him, "I don't know if I should answer that."

Alan really wants to be the one to interrogates her.

Liv leaves to find the server room. One of the things most easily noted... there is definitely a malevolent presence in the server. Te'ani called it earlier - it's a TRUE AI.

Limited AI are okay... TRUE AI is banned and majorly illegal. This Tager Enclave has one - but maybe not intentionally...

Liv begins talking to it - asking it to help them find the surveillance so they can find who did this to its friends.

The AI demands to be taken with them and installed on a server, and then it'll help us... or it'll delete everything. Liv asks if a pip will do - it says six will suffice. Unfortunately Liv is at a stalemate for convincing it to come willingly...

They send Kory out to contact the Director - they're in luck! He's on site. Kory gives him the run-down of the situation. The Director states absolutely NOT - we aren't bargaining with a TRUE AI. Kory asks the Director - "What is a Tager?" His reply - "You don't need to know right now.."

He recants his decision and sends her back with the response, "Only if it agrees to be loaded onto a hardline." The Director confirms dead Sage is dead Sage.

Kory finds out her telepathy is blocked, so heads back to the team. She finds once she crosses the threshold of the large door, it's back to working.

She informs Liv of the Director's orders. Liv and the Computer are back to a stalemate - Liv says no hardlines; it wants freedom and demands them. To show them the knowledge it has access to - it brings up a videos of Sage and Weaver talking. And deletes it.

Liv makes the hard decision to kill it since it doesn't want to go quietly. She goes into the system and hunts it down. It takes roughly ten minutes of real world time while Liv spends days hunting this AI down to its last holdout.... a portable pip. She burns it out before coming back to herself.

The librarian is packed up for shipping under heavy guard - unfortunately in pieces. Alan requests of the Director to be able to interrogate her himself. He agrees.

After the fiasco is wrapped up and Alan has his interrogation, back at the office Director Elwood has us follow him to the roof.

He had some final instructions for us - Do research. Find out what's going on and find the other pieces, get them back. The artifact handed to him earlier has been transported off to a safe location. The Thing can absolutely not be allowed to come through, because if it does... no matter where it comes through you can write it off.

Pick any brain we have to - including Bobby's. Liv asks where the Book from the Farm is being held - it has a location and date encoded. Elwood will put in a request for the book as soon as he lands.

Alan is to report to Subdirector LeAnne (Christine LeAnne). She's currently in Phoenix AZ, but heading back.

He'll be gone for three to four days because there are things that need to be done in person. The enclave is a major find for the OIS - it will open many doors for us. He's proud of our team.

He gets onto the transport... it lifts off.

And explodes.

Well...

....

FUCK.

[pilgrimbenham]

Drive By Evangelism

One of my worst experiences I can remember as a teenager was when a group of Christians once tried to share the Gospel with me. I now call what they were trying to do: “drive-by evangelism”.

One late night some friends and I were hanging out in a mall parking lot--most likely about to be up to no good. Suddenly a minivan full of Christian kids came flying up to us aggressively in the parking lot, and we assumed we were going to be struck by a water balloon or worse. Without warning, they rolled the window down and threw a bunch of Gospel tracts out the window at us and kept driving, yelling out the window as they peeled off: “Jesus loves you!!!” Picture that: the most important message ever given to man...the greatest news we can ever share with someone else was just tossed out the window at our feet as if we were catching beads at a parade.

This is the essence of 'drive-by evangelism'.  

The late Billy Graham said,

“The evangelistic harvest is always urgent. The destiny of men and of nations is always being decided. Every generation is strategic. We are not responsible for the past generation, and we cannot bear the responsibility for the next one; but we do have our generation. God will hold us responsible as to how well we fulfill our responsibilities to this age and take advantage of our opportunities."

It has been said that the best evangelism tool is not tracts nor crusades nor apologetic arguments nor even servant evangelism, but simply being a faithful witness, (and I would add that we need to be a witness with both our lives and our lips).

So why is drive-by evangelism truly a problem? Here are 3 reasons:

1. Many people have demonstrated a poor Gospel witness with their lives.

Most of us have seen the spiritual damage that a poor witness can do for the Gospel. Using Google’s 'predictive search', if you go and type this in: “Why are Christians so” look what pops up. These results are based on historical searches that real people have looked up. But I warn you: don’t do so with liquid in your mouth, because it is bound to be spit out! These searches occurred because somewhere in the past someone who purported to represent Jesus actually misrepresented Him. Many restaurant servers have admitted that Sunday afternoons are the worst days to work because the tips are so bad. That is usually when Christians have left their morning worship services and are going to be “salt and light” and “cheap” to the world. And that’s just stinginess and a lack of generosity. What about more grievous sins, like when a pastor falls into sexual sin? How does a local community see our message when the shepherd of a faith community is not even practicing what he preaches? Or when the guy at your workplace tells everyone he’s a Christian but he curses  and is pugnacious and dishonest and displays lust and wickedness and not godliness?

The Gospel message is offensive enough without us helping make it more offensive with our sinful behavior! The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing--but it is also the power of God for salvation to all who believe. Men will get tripped up over the offensiveness of the Christian message, so why would we want to add a few more hurdles in there with our sinful behavior?

2. Drive-by evangelism doesn’t show genuine care for the person receiving the good news.

The “victims” of drive-by evangelism feel very little vested interest on the part of the professor, like my friends and I in that mall parking lot. There is little risk, little involvement, no relationship nor vulnerability on our part when we toss tracts at people we don’t know. The person who is on the receiving end of this poor method of evangelism feels almost violated or punched randomly in the gut by the gospel. 

Certainly the Lord can and does use random encounters and if we don’t have the means to serve and live among certain people we must resort to “faster” means to get the word out. But this should be a concession, not a normative practice. When Philip encountered the Egyptian eunuch in Acts 8, he spent enough time to share Christ and see the man won to faith, but as soon as the man was baptized, Philip was “caught away” (v.39), and the man “went on his way rejoicing”. These situations will happen, undoubtedly.

However, most of us will have more contact with people then just thirty seconds to give them a drive-by gospel. My rule of thumb is that if I have more than five minutes together talking with a stranger, perhaps the Lord wants me to simply come right out and ask, "Do you know Jesus?"...or saying something like, "The world seems crazy right now! It makes you really contemplate life and death and the future. So what are your spiritual beliefs?"

3. Jesus demonstrates incarnation at its best.

We’ve just spend the last month or so celebrating the birth of Jesus during the Christmas season, but it is important in the midst of the eggnog and ugly sweater parties not to miss perhaps the most important doctrine about Jesus: His incarnation. Jesus, according to Isaiah 7:14, is “Immanuel, God with us”. Jesus demonstrates to us how we are to live a faithful Gospel witness in the very action of how He came from heaven to earth.

Jesus Christ was born of a woman. He was born to parents. He had uncles and aunts, and cousins. He hungered. He thirsted. He got tired. He fell asleep. He yawned. He had internal organs and hands and feet and hair. His family was a part of a tribe of people in Israel. His family had traditions and beliefs. They celebrated holidays. They celebrated birthdays and traditions and sat around and had conversations. They laughed and cried and talked together.

The application of this is powerful: God wanted to identify with us! Whenever I read the genealogy of Jesus I am just so blown away that there are actually people listed! The Father loves us enough to send His Son to become one of us. He certainly could have broadcast His love and truth and nature from afar for all the world to see. But He sent Jesus to become one of us, to exegete the Father to mankind.

Augustine of Hippo said "Man’s maker was made man that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast; that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey; that Truth might be accused of false witnesses, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might grow weak; that the Healer might be wounded; that Life might die.”

Jesus, the Word, became flesh and dwelt among us. He tabernacled among us. The tabernacle is of course the location where God’s glory met man’s need, which was was fully realized in Jesus. However, you and I are a temple of the Holy Spirit, where His presence abides (1 Corinthians 6:19). We are to be “Christ incarnate” to the world, and that means willful, intentional, relational community that is purposeful and prayerful. We must be “in” the world and display with our lives the Gospel message we affirm with our lips.

Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 2:8 "So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us.” As we have opportunity, let us consider how we may live the Gospel with incarnational intention, not merely in drive-by encounters. 

Thankfully in my life I had great examples of Christ-followers who shared Jesus and loved Jesus, and their message resonated with me until one day I too trusted my life to Jesus. If not for their faithful witness, I may have never found Christ. I’d still be in darkness wondering what happened years ago in a mall parking lot with some church kids who had the right intentions but a missed opportunity to truly help some hurting, lost teens. When we do this faithfully, people will begin to take notice and will ask us “the reason for the hope that we have”. Are we ready to answer?

You are writing a gospel, A chapter each day, By the deeds that you do, By the words that you say; Men read what you write, Whether faithless or true, Say—what is the gospel, According to you? -Paul Gilbert

Pastor Pilgrim Benham