#name: Where is my appendix | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

torturedtypewritersdept · 2 months ago

Note

omg baby an idea for dr rafe came up to me at work and i'm shksjcnd!!!! okay hear me out<33 reader is at work waitressing and for the last couple days she had that strange stomachache but she didn't really care about it when it suddenly hits her at work (it turns out to be an appendix) and she ends up in the hospital and when rafe sees her at the ER all the flashbacks comes back to him but he tries his best to stay calm to take care of her and be there for her 🤍

BABE <3 NOT ME WANTING TO GET HOME ALL DAY TO WRITE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!! HOPE YOU ENJOY, MY LOVE!

The ER doors burst open with a gust of hot air and urgent voices.

The emergency department was loud with the usual noise—overhead pages, squeaking gurney wheels, a child crying somewhere in the pediatric hallway—but Rafe barely registered any of it. His shift was rounding the corner of hour fifteen, and his spine was curved with exhaustion, the tendons in his shoulder aching from an earlier reduction. He hadn’t eaten. He hadn’t sat down. And he sure as hell wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

He was halfway through charting when he heard the commotion.

“Twenty-five-year-old female—acute abdominal pain, febrile, suspected ruptured appendix. Transport was delayed due to emesis and instability—possible septic onset.”

Rafe didn’t even look up at first. The words meant something clinical, standard—he'd heard a thousand variations of them over his years. But then a nurse muttered your name.

And the pen slipped from his hand.

His chair scraped violently against the floor as he stood, already moving, already knowing.

You.

Not a patient. Not a stranger.

His wife.

You—who had just started teaching again, your sweet voice now filtering into the corners of your shared home as you led virtual classes from the kitchen table in oversized sweaters and soft joggers, hair pinned up with one of his old surgical caps. You—who had fought through months of agony and immobility after the accident that nearly took your life. You—who now called him baby when you were half-asleep and Rafe when you were afraid.

He caught a glimpse of you on the gurney and it nearly buckled his knees.

You were curled in on yourself, one hand clutching your lower abdomen, the soft blue knit of your teaching sweater soaked with sweat. Your glasses were crooked. There were tears on your cheeks and vomit crusted near your collar. Your laptop bag had been hastily tossed onto the floor beside the EMT, as if you’d collapsed mid-lesson and someone had simply tried to gather your life in one arm before rushing you here.

His stomach dropped.

It was the accident all over again.

That night; The blood in your hair. The way your body seized in his arms, arching as your heart gave out. The weeks spent hovering between here and gone. The breathless nights where he held you through the pain, praying you'd come back. The memory ripped through him like a blade.

And now—this.

You whimpered as they adjusted your IV. The pain was eating you alive.

Rafe forced himself forward, teeth clenched so tightly his jaw ached. He reached your side, brushing the damp hair from your temple, thumb ghosting across your cheek.

“I’m here,” he whispered, voice thick, steadying himself for you even as his knees trembled beneath the weight of it all. “You’re okay, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”

Your eyes fluttered open—barely. But you found him. You always did.

“Hurts,” you whimpered, and Rafe swallowed hard, nodding.

“I know. Appendix ruptured—we’re going to surgery. I’ll be right there the whole time.”

You groaned, curling tighter, your knees drawn toward your chest.

“S-sorry,” you gasped.

That shattered him. Sorry—like you had done something wrong by hurting. Like your body failing was somehow a burden.

“Hey. No,” he said, firmer now, his forehead pressing to yours. “None of that. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get through this.”

He glanced at the monitors. Your vitals were slipping—blood pressure bottoming out, heart rate climbing fast. Sepsis was setting in. Fast.

“She’s crashing!” a nurse called out.

And just like that, it was happening again. Too fast. Too much.

He was on the gurney, straddling your body, the curve of your hip digging into his thigh as he began compressions, his palms pressing down hard into the center of your chest. His wedding ring clinked against your sternum with every thrust. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t.

“Come on, baby. Stay with me. Stay.”

He could barely see. Everything blurred—tears or sweat, he couldn’t tell. All he knew was that this was you, his wife, the woman he loved more than life itself, slipping away beneath his hands.

“Not again, please, don't leave me.” he whispered, his voice ragged, haunted. “Not again. Not today.”

They wheeled the two of you into the OR, your body beneath him, your life cracking open all over again—and Rafe holding it in his blood-stained hands, determined not to lose it.

Not to lose you.

The ICU was quiet in the way grief is quiet—dim lights humming, machines breathing in rhythm where lungs couldn’t. Somewhere down the hall, a monitor beeped in slow intervals. A nurse whispered something behind the glass. But in room 3B, time had slowed to a crawl.

You were lying in the center of it, pale against the white sheets, your body still trembling beneath the weight of what it had survived. A nasal cannula curled into your nose, pushing oxygen through your system one soft stream at a time. Your wedding ring had been taped to your finger by the nurse after surgery, just beneath the IV port, and your sweater—now bloodstained and cut down the center—had been placed in a biohazard bag outside the room.

The surgery had gone well.

The appendix had ruptured. They’d caught it just in time.

But your body… your beautiful, bruised, stubborn body had gone into shock, and it had taken longer than expected to stabilize your heart rate again. The code Rafe called had been the third of his career—and the second on you.

He hadn’t left your bedside since.

Still in his scrubs—now stained and wrinkled, the collar stretched from where he’d yanked at it in the OR—Rafe sat in the chair beside you, hunched over your arm like a man at the altar of something holy. His head was bowed, eyes closed, fingers loosely wrapped around yours. A bag of saline dripped slowly into your arm above him, its quiet rhythm the only metronome in the room.

He hadn’t spoken in hours. He didn’t need to.

Because in the silence, he was remembering—every word you’d said before the pain took over, every look, every apology you’d never needed to make. The memory of your eyes—glassy and searching for him—burned behind his own. The way your body jerked beneath him as he’d done compressions. The way your lips had parted, trying to say something, anything, before your consciousness gave out.

And he’d been afraid. God, he’d been so afraid.

More than the night of the accident. More than the first time you coded. Because this time you had his last name. You were his. And the idea of living without you—again—was something he couldn’t survive a second time.

“Please wake up, honey,” he whispered, forehead pressing gently to your arm. “You’re okay now. You made it through. Just wake up.”

And as if your soul heard him across whatever threshold it had wandered toward—your fingers twitched.

Barely.

A tremble in the space between sleep and wake.

His eyes snapped up. Your lips parted on a dry breath, eyelashes fluttering.

“Hey,” he breathed, rising to hover over you, his hand moving to your cheek, thumb brushing a smudge of iodine from your skin. “Hey, baby. I’m here.”

You blinked at him, slow and heavy, eyes glazed with pain and confusion.

“Rafe?”

“Yeah. I’ve got you.”

Your brow creased slightly. “It hurts.”

“I know.” His voice cracked. “It’s over now. They got everything. You’re gonna be okay.”

You made a small sound, barely audible, and tears immediately welled in his eyes. He pressed a kiss to your temple, hand cradling the side of your head.

“Shh. Don’t talk yet, just rest. You’re in the ICU. They’ve got you on fluids and antibiotics. I’m staying right here.”

“Did I die?”

“No.” He swallowed, his throat burning. “No, baby. You lived. You fought through again. You’re the strongest goddamn woman I’ve ever seen.”

You smiled faintly—just a flicker of it—and he swore the sun broke through the hospital window when you did.

“I didn’t even get to finish teaching,” you rasped.

A broken laugh left his chest. “Your students can wait. I’m the one who needs you now.”

You squeezed his hand, feeble but real. And he held it like a lifeline, like a promise. Because it was.

He wasn't going anywhere. Not tonight. Not ever.

256 notes · View notes

from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras · 6 months ago

Text

OK, the absence of female Rohirrim political leaders and warriors from the Middle Earth historical record…let’s get into it.

There’s a reason this remains a significant point of debate in the fandom, and it’s because the source material is confusing. Clearly, there is/was a role for women in public life in Rohan that is unlike anything we see in the other realms of Men (or hobbits or dwarves!). The concept of shieldmaidens has obviously been in their culture for a long time. Éowyn is one. Someone thought it worth their time to train her to fight, and the people (speaking through the voice of Háma) know her to be “fearless” and trust her to be their leader. The men of Elfhelm’s éored have no problem with her presence among them in Gondor, and though people are shocked to find her injured on the field, no one is scandalized by the very idea that she was there. So there are Rohirrim all over this story who are behaving in ways that suggest female leadership and female martial ability are not inherently surprising or objectionable to them.

And yet…there is not a single named female Rohirrim either before or after Éowyn in any part of the text of LOTR that we know to have wielded any actual political authority or who fought in battle. If those women existed, why/how are they not in the historical record?

The most satisfying answer TO ME is tied up in which historical records we’re looking at. By the framing device of LOTR, the text that we’re reading is ostensibly the story as documented in the Red Book of Westmarch. The appendices, where we find histories and legends of Rohan, were meant to have been written by the hobbits with some contributions by Aragorn, Gimli and others — but NONE OF THE AUTHORS WERE ROHIRRIM. Yes, they surely spoke to Éomer and Éowyn as the sections on the House of Eorl were written, but the sibs didn’t write the text themselves. Outsiders did. So the text does not represent a direct Rohirrim version of Rohan history. THAT version doesn’t exist in writing anywhere, because that’s not how the Rohirrim operate. They preserve their histories and legends through song, poetry and storytelling. Which brings me to this line from Appendix A:

”Many lords and warriors, and many fair and valiant women, are named in the songs of Rohan that still remember the north.” [emphasis added]

That’s confirmation right there that Rohan history as the Rohirrim practice it DOES include “many” women. And if they have songs that remember many women of the north (i.e., their direct ancestors among the Northmen) then surely their more recent songs, poems and stories would also cover the women of more recent times. So the problem is not that the Rohirrim don’t remember women in their (oral) historical record. The book tells us that they do. Maybe the problem is that the men of outside cultures who wrote the book — those who notably came from societies where women had no comparable roles — didn’t choose to include those parts when they created this written historical record. They noted that the Rohirrim name many women in their histories, and then they proceeded to only tell us about some of the men. That’s a skill issue for the authors, not for Rohan.

So in my mind, an average Rohirrim could talk to you about great warrior heroines of the Northmen or the exploits of some of Rohan’s powerful queens and princesses.* That’s not to say that Rohan was drowning in such figures, but they existed and people knew about them. It means there was enough of them and enough awareness of them to create space in their culture to have those views that we see in the main story (i.e., a willingness to accept both a woman as a leader of the people and a woman as a rider in the army when those things were presented to them). It reconciles the strange contradiction between the apparent culture in Rohan and their history as it was given to us as readers. Make of that what you will, but I like it for me!

*And yes, this could presumably explain the omission of Héra from WOTR in the telling of Helm Hammerhand’s story, though that gets complicated by the fact that WOTR contradicts the published Helm story in a few significant ways. (Which, for the record, I am fine with, but it means I view WOTR as more of an AU than a literal extension of the source text!)

#the tricky thing about historical records #is who wrote them and with what inherent biases or other agendas #not suggesting this is the answer for everyone #but i like it for me #women characters #rohirrim #meta #lotr

225 notes · View notes

thedwarrowscholar · 3 months ago

Note

So, I’m writing a fic and I was wondering accent of Khuzdul would Fili and Kili have (I know for definite they would speak classical khuzdul). Do you think they would have an accent from The Blue Mountains? Or would it be one from Erebor? I know they would also speak the dialect of khuzdul from the blue mountains from just living there their whole lives.

Thank you!!!

Well met!

A thoughtful and wonderfully specific question — just the kind I enjoy most. And one that invites us to peer into both the linguistics and lore of Dwarven life. Let’s dig in.

🧭 Where (and When) Were Fíli and Kíli Born?

Both brothers were born after the fall of Erebor and raised in the Blue Mountains (Ered Luin) — far from the halls of their ancestors.

Fíli was born in T.A. 2859

Kíli followed in T.A. 2864

This places their births nearly 90 years after the refugees of Erebor had fled Smaug’s attack. By then, Ereborian speech patterns were still very much present — but largely maintained by older generations. For young Dwarves like Fíli and Kíli, day-to-day speech would have already been shaped far more by the local Blue Mountains Dwarves, among whom they were raised.

🗣️ What Form of Khuzdul Did They Speak?

They would certainly have been taught Sutumkhuzdul ("Stable Dwarvish") — a.k.a Classical Khuzdul — which remained the prestige variety of the Longbeards, used in formal documents, oaths, and instruction. This was especially likely given their royal lineage as sons of Dís, sister to Thorin Oakenshield.

But just like in our world, a noble education doesn’t override regional influence.

Fíli and Kíli would have spoken Classical Khuzdul with a slight Blue Mountains accent — shaped by their surroundings, their peers, and everyday use.

Fíli and Kíli as seen in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit

🏔️ Features of the Blue Mountains Accent (CK-BM)

This refers specifically to the accent of Classical Khuzdul as spoken in the Blue Mountains — not the separate dialect (more on that below).

Key CK-BM accent features include:

Omission of articles in casual speech (influenced by local dialect)

Velar nasal [ŋ] replacing final “n” — e.g. mann (“letter”) = [mɑnəŋ]

Open vowels, such as long “e” being pronounced as [ɛ:] instead of [e:]

So a sentence like "The letter has arrived at my house" (mann nekha zai zaharê) might come out as:

[mɑnəŋ nɛkʰɑ zɑɪ zʌhɑrɛ:] — softened vowels, nasal ending, and omitted article

🧓 What About the Ereborian Accent?

The Ereborian variant of Classical Khuzdul (CK-ERE) had distinct features:

[z] becoming a stressed [s:] in the onset of words

e.g. zanâtdiya (“her hair”) = [s:ɑnɑ:t.dɪjɑ]

Shifting placement of the schwa in consonant clusters

e.g. imnhu (“his name”) = [ɪmnəhʊ] (Ereborian) vs. [ɪmənhʊ] (Standard)

By the time of the Quest of Erebor (T.A. 2941), those speaking this variant were largely elders, and even among them, it may have been fading. Fíli and Kíli, having spent their entire lives in the Blue Mountains, would very likely not have spoken with Ereborian pronunciation natively — though would very likely have been continuously exposed to it through their mother, uncle and other refugees.

As a side note, in The Hobbit, Thorin refers to Fíli as “the youngest,” though Appendix A reveals that Kíli was in fact five years younger. Whether this is a narrative oversight or simply Thorin forgetting in the moment (neither dwarf had reached 85 at the time of the quest), it’s a charming reminder of generational distance.

🏔️ Accent vs. Dialect — Not the Same Thing!

It’s worth pausing here to make an important distinction: Fíli and Kíli would not have spoken the Blue Mountain Dialect (BMK), also known as Khagalkhuzdul.

This dialect is spoken primarily by Firebeards and Broadbeams — the ancient clans native to the Blue Mountains — and it represents the greatest divergence from Classical Khuzdul across all Dwarven speech.

Among its traits:

Complete lack of articles

Distinct verb conjugations in all tenses

e.g. “You walk” is sabsini (CK) vs. ubzûnzu (BMK)

Presence of additional vowels ([ø], [æ]) and unique consonants (“v,” “p,” “zh”)

Use of velar nasal [ŋ] and voiced glottal fricative [ɦ]

Significantly extended vowels in compound words

While Fíli and Kíli would likely have heard this dialect spoken frequently — especially in markets or cross-clan events — it was not their native speech. Their royal education, Longbeard heritage, and cultural context anchored them firmly in Classical Khuzdul, albeit with a slight local accent.

Blue Mountains and Dwarf Hall

🌍 A Shared Tongue, with Subtle Shifts

While regional accents and minor variations exist across Dwarven clans and holds, it’s important to remember that Khuzdul changes very slowly — far more slowly than the tongues of Men or Elves.

Tolkien himself wrote (HoME X – Of Dwarves and Men):

“The change in Khuzdul… was like the weathering of hard rock compared with the melting of snow.”

Even in the late Third Age, all Dwarves could converse with ease in their ancestral tongue — and often adjusted their speech to suit their audience.

Motivations for shifting speech could include:

Formality or ritual

Quoting from written texts

Cross-clan communication

Clarifying a point

Seeking approval or making an impression

As noble heirs, Fíli and Kíli would no doubt have been trained in this linguistic adaptability — likely slipping into more polished, “neutral” Classical Khuzdul in official or diplomatic contexts, while speaking in a softer, (even BM-accented) register at home.

🧱 In Summary:

Fíli and Kíli were born in the Blue Mountains decades after Erebor’s fall

They very likely would have spoken Classical Khuzdul with a Blue Mountains accent

They did were not native Blue Mountain Dialect speakers, which is a separate linguistic tradition

The Ereborian accent was fading and mainly spoken by elder exiles

All Dwarves still understood one another easily in Khuzdul, and speech could be adjusted as needed

As royal sons of Durin’s line, they would have been taught to speak with precision, pride, and adaptability

📜 An Important Note on Source and Speculation

While much of what we’ve discussed above is grounded in Tolkien’s writings, especially in The War of the Jewels, Of Dwarves and Men, and various Appendices, it’s important to acknowledge that the details on dialects and pronunciation — such as those related to Blue Mountain speech — are extrapolations.

They are based on:

Patterns Tolkien established

Real-world linguistic evolution (especially Semitic languages)

Earlier versions of Neo-Khuzdul that had to be consolidated with more recent updates

Cultural distinctions among the Dwarven clans

Descriptive phonology inferred from Khuzdul roots and root clusters

So while this reconstruction is informed and consistent with Tolkien's world, it remains largely speculative — a scholarly guess, if you will, crafted with care, rather than direct canon.

Ever at your service, The Dwarrow Scholar

#neo-khuzdul #fili and kili #khuzdul

98 notes · View notes

inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 1 year ago

Text

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 5: Heads Or Tails, Fairy Tales In My Mind]

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes, RIP Jace.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Are We The Waiting” by Green Day.

Word count: 5.8k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

“I know he has a scalpel in his bag,” Baela says, meaning Aemond. You are sitting with her on the front steps of a two-story house—1970s construction, split foyer, pale blue siding and rust-red bricks—on Trux Street in Plymouth, Ohio. This town was named for the place where the pilgrims stepped off the Mayflower over four hundred years ago, pioneers who crossed through the doorway of an unfathomably changing world to die of disease, cold, accidents, starvation, violence. You wonder if you are so unlike them. “He’s assisted with c-sections before, if it comes to that. And he has needles and surgical thread. But he doesn’t have any way to anesthetize me.”

Luke and Rhaena are on the roof of the silver Chrysler Pacifica parked at the end of the driveway and surveilling the road. Everyone else is inside tearing the house apart as they try to find the keys. You don’t know what to say to Baela. There is no way to console her except by lying, and she’s too smart for that. “How far along are you?”

“I don’t even know.” She laughs like she’s on the verge of losing her mind. You don’t blame her. “The doctors calculate it based on the date of your last period, but mine was all over the place. I had tried a few different birth control pills and had all these side effects, weird spotting and cramping, no sex drive, feeling depressed, so I just figured I’d go all natural for six months and give my body a chance to reset. And we all know how that turned out.” She skims her palms over the globe of her belly, hidden beneath the flowing periwinkle cotton of a maternity dress she found at the Walmart back in Shenandoah. “I’m officially due in four weeks.”

“But it could happen at any time.”

Baela nods miserably. “My mum had me and Rhaena the…you know…the natural way, and it was smooth sailing. But she needed an emergency c-section with my little brother. What happens if that’s how it goes for me? Do you ever think about all the ways people can die now? It’s not just the zombies. I could get murdered, or fall and crack my skull open, or get a cut that turns septic, or rupture my appendix, or get frostbite or heatstroke, or get bitten by a snake. It never ends. We’ll be balancing on the knife’s edge for the rest of our lives.”

You wish you were better with words; you wish you were someone who spoke effortlessly like Rio or Aegon. You reply with the only thing you can think of. “Humans have survived for hundreds of thousands of years, and for the vast majority of that time with no modern medicine. It was dangerous, and it was painful. But there have always been people who made it. We wouldn’t exist otherwise.”

Remarkably, this seems to help. “I know Aemond will do everything he can for me,” Baela says, more steadily now. “He’s always been the most dependable one. So serious, so protective. Daeron was visiting us in Boston when everything shut down, and Aemond wouldn’t let the kid out of his sight for weeks…then Aemond almost died when he lost his eye and Daeron proved he could take care of himself with his compound bow.” Baela unwraps a Twizzler and takes a bite out of it, gazing vacantly at the sky, calm and overcast now that the storm has passed, breezy, mid-80s. She doesn’t even like them, but she’s been eating through a pack of Twizzlers Luke had been carrying in his backpack for Jace, slow mindless chewing like a cow’s. “Aemond feels responsible for you now. And that’s difficult when there’s so little control he actually has over what ends up happening.”

“Baela…I’m so sorry about Jace.”

“Drowning isn’t so bad, I guess. I hope he drowned. I hope he was dead before he washed ashore and they ate him.” Baela turns to you, eyes glazed. “Do you think we should have shot him before we left the river? To make sure he didn’t die in pain? You could have done it if you wanted to. Your aim is good enough.”

“No,” you say, horrified but trying to soften it. “I think that would have been…immoral.”

“I don’t even have a picture of Jace to show the baby, everything was online or on my phone, and now that’s all…gone. Just gone. Like he never even existed. How am I going to explain to my child what Boston was, or law school, or aerospace engineering, or grocery stores or shopping malls or Instagram, or anything else about our lives before this whole fucking disaster? All they’ll ever know is running from monsters, scrounging for shelter and supplies from the ruins of civilization.”

“The world is going to come back, Baela. Maybe not for five or ten years, and maybe looking a lot different than it did before, but humanity will recover. The Black Death wasn’t the end, and neither were the World Wars or the Mongol invasions or the colonization of the Americas, or famines or floods or volcanic eruptions. The zombies won’t end us either.”

“Do you really believe that?”

I want to. “Yeah, I do. We just have to hold on until the tide turns. We can’t give up.”

“In that case, I’ll try not to go completely insane in the immediate future. Thank God Rhaena and Luke are still here. Do you have any siblings?”

You smile vaguely. “Four.”

“Wow,” Baela says. “Do you know where they are now?”

There is an interruption before you have to decide how to answer: a roaring high above in the sky, a remote mechanical growling. You and Baela both look up to see a jet zooming by, just below the steel grey cloud cover and leaving a trail of condensation behind it like a comet’s tail of eons-old cosmic dust. From where he is perched atop the Pacifica, Luke is pointing at the jet to show Rhaena. Aemond, Rio, Aegon, and Daeron come rocketing out of the house to find the source of the noise. After a moment, Helaena moseys onto the front porch as well, tucking flashlights and napkins into her burlap messenger bag. Meanwhile, Aegon is filling his pockets with packs of Marlboro Golds and orange prescription bottles labelled Percocet.

“Is that an airplane?!” Aegon gasps. “People are flying again?! Oh, we are back, baby! We are so back! I’m catching the next flight to SFO, peace out bitches, no more Oregon Trail for me!”

“It’s a jet,” Aemond says flatly. “Not a passenger carrier. Probably military.”

“Doesn’t look like one of ours.” Rio turns to you for confirmation.

“No, I don’t recognize it.”

“Then who the fuck is up there?” Aegon says. “Canada? The U.K.?”

Rio sighs, ruffling Aegon’s already quite disheveled blonde hair. “Who knows, Honey Bun. Maybe it’s China or Russia swinging by to drop nukes on any survivors.”

“Fortunately, nobody’s going to waste a nuclear bomb on freaking Plymouth, Ohio,” Baela says, watching the jet vanish into the west, the droning of its engines replaced by the breeze through the sugar maples and sycamores, the screeching of cicadas and chirps of robins. “No luck finding the keys?”

Aemond frowns as he shakes his head, tapping his chin anxiously. He knows she can’t walk much farther.

“How do none of us know how to hotwire a car?” Aegon demands, exasperated.

Rio replies cheerfully: “Well, Chips and I have been diligently serving this glorious nation since we were eighteen years old, and you’re all clueless rich kids. So…I think that just about sums it up.”

“I need more arrows,” Daeron says, clutching his compound bow. All the ones he had are now speared through zombies along the river where Jace died. When you snuck away from the farm at dawn, Luke used his binoculars to check the shores; they were still swamped with zombies, even more than the night before. They are pack animals; alone, they are aimless and easily confounded, their memories calamitously short. As part of a group—if they were crows they’d be a murder, if they were camels they’d be a caravan—zombies attract and guide each other, moving symbiotically like planets and moons locked in orbit.

“I think you’re going to have to start making them the old fashioned way, kid,” Rio tells Daeron, accompanied by a rough pat of encouragement on the back.

“What, like with sticks?!”

“Yeah. Use a knife to carve one end to make it pointy and you’re good to go.”

“Love it. Very pioneer.” Aegon holds up a Sony Walkman, pink and covered with Disney stickers, Ava spelled out across the top in glittering rhinestones. “At least I found this. Helaena, do we have any more AA batteries?” She fishes around in her bag and hands him a pair.

Baela gapes at him, but she’s smiling. It’s horrible, it’s absurd, it’s something you can’t help but find a macabre humor in. “Aegon, you cannot use that poor eaten kid’s CD player. You know it’s haunted.”

Aegon sings like a jingle from a commercial: “Little Ava died, RIP. Now I get to listen to my CDs.”

“Oh, that is so fucked up!” Rio cackles.

You say, grinning: “Aegon, I’m really going to miss you when we’re all in heaven at the bowling alley made of clouds and you’re downstairs in the fiery version of the afterlife.”

“Don’t feel bad for me, Chipmunk. You’re the one who’s going to die without ever having an orgasm.”

“You don’t need a man for that, Aegon,” Baela says.

“You definitely don’t,” you agree. Aemond glances over at you, intrigued. You stare dauntlessly back. What? You said you weren’t interested. The corners of his lips curl up in a reticent smile; he looks down to try to hide it. He’s touching his chin again. His cheeks flush pink as his mind wanders.

Rio chuckles. “Oh yeah, I remember your little experimenting phase. Lots of trips to the Spencer’s in the Tysons Corner mall when we were stationed at Anacostia.”

You raise your eyebrows, though you’re not annoyed. “I thought you were never going to tell anybody about that.”

“It’s the end of the world, baby. No time to be shy.” Then Rio asks Aemond: “Since we’re here and it’s quiet, you want to go ahead and check every house that has a car with the fuel cap still closed? There are some minivans and SUVs down at the other end of the street. Even a few gallons of gas will take us farther than days on foot.”

Aegon adds, checking his map: “A half tank would get us all the way to Decatur, Indiana.”

“Yeah, let’s do it,” Aemond says. He offers Baela a hand and helps lift her to her feet. “You guys go ahead, I’ll meet you down at the driveway with the black…what is that, a Honda Odyssey? You know the one, the van in front of the yellow house. Don’t go inside until I get there.”

“Yup!” Aegon agrees as he speeds off, racing Daeron to the house. Rio—not one for sprinting—jogs after them with his Remington in hand, ready to bash rotting skulls in at a moment’s notice. Baela toddles down to the Pacifica to tell Luke and Rhaena the plan, her periwinkle dress billowing in the wind; then they climb down to walk with her. Helaena floats across the sidewalk like a ghost, pausing to pick buttercups that grow up between the cracks in the cement.

Aemond has been waiting until the two of you are alone. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, sure.” A few houses down, a female zombie—early-twenties, white bikini top, red Ohio State shorts—staggers across the yard and in her attempt to snag Aegon falls and impales herself on the white picket fence. She is suspended there, clawing and yowling, her blackening intestines and dark clotted blood staining the wood. Aegon takes his time getting into a stance and swings his golf club like he’s at a driving range. He hits her dead-on, caves the front of her face in, takes a few more shots just to be sure.

“I get what’s in Oregon for Rio,” Aemond says. “Sophie, the baby, his parents. But why are you going there?”

“Rio’s my best friend. He might be my only friend who’s still alive. And when we left Saratoga Springs, he made me promise that I wouldn’t let him die alone. So before anything else, I have to make sure he gets to Odessa and finds his family. And then I can figure out what’s next for me. But if it really is safe there, I don’t see why I’d leave. I’ve never wanted to be on my own. Maybe I can end up having a family in Oregon too.”

Aemond rests his elbows on the porch railing. He’s teasing you. “We’re friends, aren’t we? I’m still alive.”

You tease him back. He deserves it. “I’m not sure about you and me.”

“I’d like for us to be friends.”

“Would you?”

“Resoundingly.”

“Maybe I’ll give it a try.”

He considers you. “You know, Kentucky might have been a good place for you to hide out. And it would be a lot closer than Oregon.”

You stand up, throwing on your backpack full of bullets for your Beretta M9s, beef jerky and peanut butter crackers and granola bars, lip balm, bottles of water, Kleenex tissues, Juicy Fruit, miscellaneous treasures from the road, practically worthless trinkets made so impossibly valuable. “We’re done here, right?”

Aemond is disappointed, though not with you. He has committed an error he cannot understand. “Yeah, we’re done.” He walks with you to the yellow house, your sneakers pounding in tandem on the sidewalk, squirrels and rabbits darting through the overgrown lawns, eastern tiger swallowtails swooping between blossoms.

Aegon says when you and Aemond arrive in the driveway, nodding to the once-attractive blonde zombie pawing and licking at the glass of the living room window: “Who wants to take care of Ryan Seacrest?”

“Got it,” Rio replies immediately. He kicks down the front door, macerates the zombie’s skull with the butt of his Remington, then sweeps through the kitchen and dining room searching for any other monsters in need of hasty euthanasia. He doesn’t find any. He drags the corpse outside to lessen the stench of decomposition and opens all the downstairs windows.

“Commence Operation Find The Minivan Keys,” Aegon says as he rummages through drawers and cabinets. Helaena joins him, seeking so delicately she is almost soundless, her large blue eyes flicking from place to place. Luke, Rhaena, and Daeron stay outside to keep watch. Baela collapses into a recliner in one corner of the living room and is dozing within seconds.

“I’ll clear the upstairs,” Aemond volunteers, then asks you: “Watch my blind side?”

You can’t help but smile; it is a generous invitation. It is an honor. You shadow him up the staircase of olive green carpet, through the hallway, into each of the three bedrooms and one full bath. When you are certain it is safe—exploring the back of every closet, under every bed—you and Aemond begin searching for weapons and car keys. The main bedroom is like a forest: blankets pattered with trees and deer, wood furniture, paintings of the Battle of the Wilderness during the Civil War. You investigate every drawer of the nightstand and dresser, then go to leave.

“Wait.” Aemond peeks out into the hallway to make sure no one else is around, then closes the bedroom door. Your eyes track him quizzically, shy skittish optimism, your head tilted, your fingers finding the dresser behind you, cool rust-hued oak, a color like dried blood. You slip off your backpack. Then Aemond comes to you like a returning comet—once in a lifetime, once in an eon—and holds your face in his hands as he kisses you, soft, careful, unhurried, then turning famished, sweltering incurable hunger. You lift yourself up onto the dresser; your thighs have parted, and Aemond is between them, still fully clothed and leaving yours in place too, so innocent, so spotless, and yet in your mind you are imagining what it would feel like to lie beneath him as he opens and fills you, to be so irredeemably close to another person, to watch and listen as he teaches you what to do.

Right here? Right now?

It suddenly strikes you as too soon; you want this but you aren’t ready. Your heart races, you can’t catch your breath. “I am obligated to make you aware that according to your own calculations, I am likely dangerously fertile at the moment.”

Aemond grins as he bites playfully at your lower lip. “Relax. We’re not rounding all the bases this time.”

His voice evaporates your panic, lulls your rushing blood. Your muscles turn to seamless rippling water. Your bones crave the weight of his. “Yeah, totally, good, that’s good. Just making sure.”

“I want to touch you. Can I touch you?”

In reply, you unbutton your denim shorts and pull down the zipper, slowly, very slowly, your gaze linked with his like torn flesh stitched together. He’s close enough to kiss you again, but he doesn’t; he takes your chin gently and turns your face to the side, admiring the curve of your jaw. Then his lips are on your throat and his right hand is skimming down the front of your shirt, over your belly, under your shorts. You gasp—the foreignness of another’s hand here, the disorienting vulnerability—and Aemond stops.

“No, I’m okay,” you assure him, smiling. You kiss him deeply, your fingertips tracing his scar, the work of his careful, gifted hands. Aemond does not flinch away. He presses his face into your palm, offering himself fully, taking shelter in you. And everything other than him—this house, this world, this age, this westward journey, this apocalypse—goes quiet, quiet, quiet, like when you are shooting, like when you are hammering nails under the sun. Aemond makes everything horrifying disappear. It is the greatest sort of magic you can imagine.

“So,” he says. “What did you buy at Spencer’s?”

“Green Day t-shirts.”

“Sure.”

“And some, uh, battery-powered companionship.”

“Hm.” Aemond’s fingers are moving against you; it is increasingly difficult to respond to his questions. “Internal or external? Or both?”

“Oh, definitely…um…I stayed on the outside, mostly. I tried…oh wow, okay…inside a few times, but I didn’t get much out of it. It was mostly just uncomfortable.”

“No problem. We’ll work up to that.”

“Will we?” You hope you don’t sound too desperate. The warm coiling pleasure is swelling, strengthening, begging to be released, loosed like an arrow or fired like a bullet. Aemond’s fingers slip through your wetness, circling and pressing down harder, insistently, masterfully. It feels different than using toys: it is more gradual, less sharp, helplessly overpowering.

“That’s my plan. If you’ll allow it.”

You exhale a threadbare ghost of a whimper against his throat and then reach for his shorts, fumbling blindly for the button and zipper.

“No, don’t do anything,” Aemond murmurs, soft and pleading, almost like a prayer. “Let me take care of you. Please let me feel like I’m doing something right.”

“You’re doing a lot right at the moment.” You’re close now, your breaths quick and panting. You throw your arms around the back of Aemond’s neck and fold into him, feeling the thudding pulse of his carotid artery beneath your fingertips, the softness of his lips and unscarred cheek as he nuzzles the side of your face. It’s so quiet, but there’s no need to fill the silence, no words, no uneasiness. You’ve always wondered what you would have to do to please a man, what premeditated motions and praises you would offer him, niceties, perhaps even lies. But this is effortless. The shimmering golden glow like sunlight is here, and he is the one drawing it out of you, water from a well, blood from a tapped vein. The only sound you make is a shuddering inhale, but Aemond knows immediately. He closes his eyes, relieved, proud, beaming, resting his forehead against yours.

He asks: “Can I try…?”

“Yes, do it, please, I want you to.”

Aemond’s hand shifts between your thighs, moves lower, and there is a sudden jolt of pain like a pinch, like a bite. You wince before you can think to disguise it. Immediately, Aemond retreats, kissing your lips and your cheeks. “It’s okay, it’s okay. You were incredible.”

You reach for his shorts again and unbutton them. “Show me what to do.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t have to. I want to.”

He takes a shaky breath, drags his tongue over the fingers he touched you with, moans so quietly you can barely hear him. He frees himself from his clothes: long and thick, harder than you believed flesh could be. Aemond grasps your hand and places it, demonstrates how to move and how much pressure to apply. Then his own hands drop to grip the edge of the dresser as you stroke him. You nip at his throat, his jaw, the shell of his ear; you coax euphoric sighs from him, feel a high in your bloodstream like something illicit and lethal.

“I’ll be honest,” you say. “I have no idea how that’s ever going to fit inside me.”

Aemond chuckles, distracted. “Women stretch, just like men do. It might take time, but it will happen. And I’ll make sure it’s as good as it can be.”

“I want it to be you, Aemond,” you whisper, and you can feel him throbbing in your hand. “You and no one else. Teach me how to do everything.” Make the world go away.

He gasps as he finishes, a thunderous trembling all over, a gush of white heat that flows over your hand. Curious, you lift it to your mouth. “Don’t—!”

But he’s too late; you lick him from your palm and then recoil at the taste, pungent, bitter, salty.

Aemond laughs hysterically, kissing your mouth and then your forehead. “Oh God, I’m sorry, I should have warned you.”

“I hope I taste better than that.”

“You definitely do.”

You peer up at him, dazed, dreamy. “I really like you, Aemond.”

“You can’t fall in love with me.” It is a taunt; it is a warning.

“If I do, I won’t let you know,” you promise. “You’re on first watch tonight, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“Then I’ll stay up too.”

“Rio already volunteered to do it.”

“Really, I don’t mind.”

“No,” Aemond purrs, brushing your hair back from your face, marveling at you. “I can’t have you sleep deprived. You’re our best shot.”

“I can handle it.”

“You want to be honest with each other, you want to communicate? I like knowing you’re rested. I like knowing you’re safe.”

The door flies open with a bang; Aegon stands in the threshold. “We’ve got three-quarters of a tank of gas!” he announces ecstatically, jangling car keys in the air. Then he registers what he’s looking at. “Come outside when you’re done fucking.” Aegon slams the door shut; you hear his Sperry Bahama sneakers drumming on the staircase.

“I guess we should go,” you say reluctantly, untangling yourself from Aemond and sliding down from the dresser.

“Wait.” He gets a water bottle out of your backpack, soaks a handful of Kleenex tissues, and gives them to you to clean yourself off. When you’re done, he wipes himself down too. “Make sure you always take a piss after any…activities. We don’t have antibiotics if you get a kidney infection.”

“I know, doctor. I’ve read Reddit threads.”

“Not a doctor. Just a lowly intern.”

“You seem like an anatomy expert to me,” you say, then head downstairs.

The black Honda Odyssey is idling as the last of the supplies are loaded, the windows down, Baela adjusting the driver’s seat so she can accommodate her belly. Everyone piles inside and she steers the minivan out of the driveway and onto Trux Street. Aegon pops one of his mixtapes into the CD player. The song that pipes through the speakers is Prayer In C:

“Yeah, you never said a word

You didn’t send me no letter

Don’t think I could forgive you…”

“So,” Baela says casually, grinning at you in the rearview mirror. “How was the sex?”

“Stop,” Aemond begs, his face going red, smiling involuntarily.

You say placidly: “I appreciate your interest, but that’s not what we were doing.”

Rio turns to Aegon. “Do you know what sex looks like or not, dumbass?”

“They were doing something, okay! Those were not virginal activities!”

“See, our world is slowly dying

I’m not wasting no more time

Don’t think I could believe you…”

You rest your head on Aemond’s shoulder and watch the abandoned houses pass by in a blur.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Odyssey arrives in Decatur, Indiana just a few hours before sunset, gas to spare and plenty of time to find a safe place to spend the night. You break into a house on the outskirts of the west side of the city: a rancher with a screened-in porch, beach décor, bowls of seashells on tables and spray-painted aluminum dolphins on the wall. Baela plummets into sleep immediately, sharing the largest bed with Rhaena and Luke. Helaena writes in her spider notebook for a while before curling up on the living room couch, Daeron sprawled on the floor beside her with a couch cushion for a pillow. Aegon is in what was once a child’s bedroom; you have the bedroom of a teenage girl, perhaps spirited away to friends or relatives in some other part of the country, perhaps dead, perhaps lurching around out in the night somewhere, mad and murderous. Everything is purple, the walls, the blankets, the stuffed animals that form a mountain on the other half of the bed.

You are exhausted, but you can’t sleep. Your thoughts won’t stop racing, stop craving. Aemond and Rio are in rocking chairs out on the porch, keeping watch and working their way through the case of Sunny D they found in the kitchen pantry. You go out to join them, then stop at the screen door that separates the linoleum-floored dining room from the porch. They are discussing you. You sit, legs crossed, listening in the dim silvery light, stars and moon and nothing else.

Aemond is saying: “She doesn’t talk much about where she came from.”

Rio chuckles, a low baritone rumble. “She doesn’t talk much in general. But yeah, don’t expect any juicy revelations. That’s not how she does things.”

“Do you know what her life was like before?”

“I know some of it. I don’t know a lot.” Rio pauses; you can envision him shrugging and running his fingers through his dark curly hair, weighing what you would be okay with him sharing. “I know that when I met her, her mother was calling all the time telling her to send money home. And she’d do it, because she felt like she didn’t have a choice. Then she never had cash for drinks or anything, I was always paying her way, and one day I was finally like ‘Chips, how much do you actually have in your account right now?’ because I figured she must be down real low. Jesus Christ, I couldn’t believe it when she showed me the balance, she had like three bucks left until her next paycheck, and of course then her mother would be calling again. She sent tens of thousands of dollars home that disappeared, poof, gone, without a trace.”

Aemond sounds stunned. “What did they spend it on?”

“Who the fuck knows with those people. Lottery tickets and cigs, probably. Trips to Virginia Beach. Benny Hinn Bibles. And when she tried to hit the brakes, her mother and siblings got nasty, calling constantly and telling her how awful she was and that they were going to starve. I convinced her to stop picking up the phone, but it took forever. I think she knew by then she was going to have to cut them off if she didn’t want to end up back there, but she needed somebody to give her permission. That was my job. As far as I know, she hasn’t spoken to anyone from home in years. Hell, Sophie was her AOP.”

“AOP…?”

“Oh, sorry, Arrears of Pay. It’s the person you designate to get all your benefits if you die in the service. I guess she figured that if our base got bombed or our plane went down or something, at least it would end up with my family.”

Aemond is quiet, thirty seconds, a minute, maybe two. “Obviously my circumstances were a lot different. But I understand having to choose between other people’s expectations and yourself.”

“Why are you asking me all this?”

Another pause; silent thoughts under glimmering stars and the shrieks of short-lived summer cicadas. “She takes me out of this world for a while. She makes the guilt and the fear go quiet. I want to know everything about her.”

When Rio speaks, he is gentle, compassionate. “The hard truth is, the details aren’t my business. They aren’t yours either. When people enlist, they’re starting over. It’s a Get Out Of Jail Free card. It gets them away from home, but it also gets them away from whoever they were before.”

“She said something like that once. Back at Fort Indiantown Gap.”

“It’s a polite way of telling you to shut up.” You know from his voice that Rio is smiling. “If she wants to forget her old life, you have to let her. If you care about her, you’ll want her to be able to move on.”

“I care.”

“She likes you,” Rio says. “But you could still fuck it up. She’s good at finding reasons not to trust people.”

“It’s a bad way to live.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I know. I’m the same way.”

There is quiet now, only the sounds of Sunny D being slurped and cicadas screaming through the darkness. You have intruded enough. You stand and walk back down the hallway, then remember something Aegon said outside a Burger King in Pennsylvania. You go to his bedroom, illuminated by a flashlight pointed towards the ceiling, casting long deformed shadows.

Aegon is lying on his back with his head hanging upside down over the side of the bed—dinosaur blankets, bright red and blue pillows—puffing on a cigarette and listening to his new CD player, previously Ava’s, with both earbuds in. Then he spots you. Still upside down, Aegon hits the pause button on his CD player and says: “Hey, Microchip.”

“What did you mean about people pretending to love you?”

He smirks, shrugs, takes a lazy drag off his Marlboro Gold. “Every friend I’ve ever had has used me for money, mansions, yachts. Every girl I’ve ever fucked has wanted something in return. Mother prefers Daeron, Grandfather prefers Helaena, Criston prefers Aemond, and Father prefers his real estate empire and his model ships. Can you imagine loving a miniature replica of the Titanic more than your own children?”

“No,” you say, honestly and with heavy, gore-red pity. “You shouldn’t have to go back to people who make you feel that way. I wouldn’t.”

Aegon takes another drag as he watches you. “Aemond mentioned you’re from Kentucky.”

“I am.”

“But you won’t be returning.”

“No.”

Aegon nods, like you’ve answered an important question. “Aemond talks about you a lot. It’s cute. It doesn’t make me sick like when he was with Alys. Playing her games, breaking himself in half to follow her rules.”

You peer down at your fingernails, short and functional and unglamorous. You don’t want to hear about the older woman who was his lover, his obsession, his cure, his venom. She was poisonous to him, surely, and yet she was experienced where you are uninitiated and unversed, she had a PhD to compare with your high school diploma. Surely in those seven years he shared moments with her that were divine. Surely even a curse is woven from magic.

“Anyway.” Aegon rolls over, props himself up on his elbows, and extinguishes his cigarette in an empty plastic Sunny D bottle. “I have no particular affinity for my old life or the beach house in California, but that’s where Aemond is going. And I have to be where he is. I have to make sure he’s alright, you know?”

Yes, you do know; that’s how you feel about Rio. “What’s it like? That house up on a cliff all by itself?”

Aegon grins, like he’s caught you in a mouthwateringly compromising position. “Why? You thinking about visiting someday?”

“Just wondering.”

He squirms over to one side of the bed to make room for you, popping in an earbud. “Come listen with me.”

“What is it?”

“Just come over here!”

You cross the room and kick off your sneakers, climb onto the bed, lie down and take the other earbud that Aegon offers you. What you hear when you listen is Don McLean’s American Pie. “Oh, this is ancient.”

“It’s a classic. I wish I’d gotten to live through the 70s.”

“We’ll reinvent them when the world starts up again. Disco and lava lamps and shag carpets. We’ll shoot heroin and listen to vinyl records. Jimmy Carter can be president if he’s still alive.”

Aegon snickers, and then he sings along, hushed but surprisingly melodic, solemn, tender. He’s looking at you expectantly, eyebrows raised, nodding, beckoning for you to join him. You adamantly refuse. You don’t sing in front of anybody, not even Rio.

“I met a girl who sang the blues

And I asked her for some happy news

But she just smiled and turned away

I went down to the sacred store

Where I’d heard the music years before

But the man there said the music wouldn’t play…”

Aegon shoves your shoulder. “I could be dead tomorrow. Don’t ignore me.”

Self-consciously, but smiling a little bit, you begin to sing with him, so softly you can barely hear yourself. Aegon is beaming, small even white teeth beneath sparkling eyes, a murky cool blue like storm clouds, like the ocean, waves lapping at the shores of Diego Garcia, the Gulf of Tadjoura off the east coast of Djibouti, Corpus Christi Bay, places you once never knew existed.

“And in the streets, the children screamed

The lovers cried and the poets dreamed

But not a word was spoken

The church bells all were broken

And the three men I admire most

The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost

They caught the last train for the coast

The day the music died.”

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aemond x you #aemond x y/n #aemond #hotd aemond #aemond x reader #aemond targaryen x y/n #aemond targaryen x you #hotd fic #hotd fanfic #house of the dragon #house of the dragon fanfiction

266 notes · View notes

spidermans-l-o-v-e-r · 10 months ago

Text

9-1-1 Masterlist

Oh gee finally a place I can keep these! Thank you to my bestest most amazing friend in the whole world for making these headers for me i literally actually literally could not do it without you

Two of a kind

Buck can’t stop thinking about his coworker, so he does what every guy at 3am does on a 24 hour shift!! He sneaks out to his car to get off. But it turns out, certain coworkers (that might possibly be the love of his life) have the exact same idea!

Fairest of Them All:

The party downstairs rages on as Buck decides to do something about the pretty little thing he’s been staring at all night

Clothing Optional:

I can’t. I can’t keep writing summaries. I’ve done 2

After a stupid work shift, in the stupid heat, Buck just wants to enjoy a sweet little sundae, fortunately it comes with a side of dat ass (I’m not sorry)

That Should Be Me:

Buck has never ever been jealous ever a single damn day in his life

Gamer Girl

Buck thinks you’re so, so pretty. You’d looked even prettier with your thighs around his head

Now You See Me:

✨Mirror sex✨

Sleepy Hollow, 1999

Scream, 1996

The Exorcist, 1973

The Shining, 1990

Grease Lightning

The Polar Express, 2004

All The Rage

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Cootie Catcher

Growing Pains:

Everything is all wonderful and cool and dandy until you nearly die from your appendix!!

(I KNOW. THERE IS. AN AMBULANCE.)

Cry To Me:

Eddie loves when you’re crying during sex, nothing turns him on more… except when those tears are very very real and he’s very very worried

10 Things I Hate About You:

You guys freaking h a t e each other… or do you? Wink wink wink wink enemies to lovers wink

I Spy:

Eddie is the sweetest neighbor in the entire world… who knows where you work

Better Than Revenge:

You and Eddie get locked into a closet at your job after an accident, it also turns out your now EX boyfriend is a cheating asshole! Eddie has absolutely no problem filling in for the revenge role

Front Row:

Why do firehouses have to work f o r e v e r. Eddie needs a freaking shower and to pass out for the next six years on an overnight shift. It turns out someone has the same idea, and possibly another idea on how to left off some steam

Yeti Point:

Eddie finally takes you on that skiing vacation you’ve been begging him for and it’s going great! Until you get snowed in. But that’s okay, Eddie has a secret plan to keep you both warm

Slow and Steady:

Buck helps Eddie into the house, holding him up as you frantically get the bed ready for your injured boyfriend. Turns out, pain killers make Eddie horny!

(Hahahahahaha)

Encanto:

Dad!Eddie x Daughter!reader

Nightmares never get easier no matter how old you get. Especially ones where your father dies

Smoke Dector:

Eddie always has to be the hero, okay not really but it’s hard when you see your boyfriend running into a burning building for the first time

One Puff Or Two:

Take your freaking inhaler Eddie 🔪🔪🔪

Into The Fire:

(PTSD WARNING, PANIC ATTACK WARNING)

You’ve been on edge lately, and Eddie knows there’s something up. One night things come to a head when you have a nightmare about what happened and Eddie wakes up to a very bad situation

Night Changes:

Eddie comforts you after a bad nightmare about him dying over and over in different ways (based off of 5.14)

Busy Bees:

Two words ✨Sex Pollen✨

Soup or Salad?

✨I’ll freaking summarize this later✨

Sink or Swim

I Was Made For Lovin’ You

Halloween, 1978

It, 1990

Die Hard, 1988

The Easter Bunny

For All The Marbles

Adventures In Babysitting

P.S I Love You, 2007

Hitch, 2005

A Rose by any Other Name

This is one of the funniest titles I've ever made up. Buck finds your simple collection of toys and shows them to Eddie... and now they want you to put on a little show for them

Finish Line:

A little game of "whoever cums first loses"

Twice Bitten:

Double Penetration from my kinktober list!

Alexander Hamilton:

Buck can't stop having feelings for Eddie's girlfriend... but what if that's okay?

Captured, With Love

#words by rhys #911 x reader #rhys writes #eddie diaz #911 fox #eddie diaz x reader #911 show #evan buckley #911 abc #strawberries and cream #orange blossoms #buck x eddie #evan buck buckely #evan buckley imagine #evan buckley x reader #buddie x reader #Buck x Eddie #Buck x Eddie x Reader

330 notes · View notes

nostalgebraist · 3 months ago

Text

So, about this new "AI 2027" report...

I have not read the whole thing in detail, but my immediate reaction is kind of like what I said about "Bio Anchors" a while back.

Like Bio Anchors – and like a lot of OpenPhil reports for that matter – the AI 2027 report is mainly a very complex estimation exercise.

It takes a certain way of modeling things as a given, and then does a huge amount of legwork to fill in the many numeric constants in an elaborate model of that kind, with questions like "is this actually a reasonable model?" and "what are the load-bearing assumptions here?" covered as a sort of afterthought.

For instance, the report predicts a type of automated R&D feedback loop often referred to a "software intelligence explosion" or a "software-only singularity." There has been a lot of debate over the plausibility of this idea – see Eth and Davidson here for the "plausible" case, and Erdil and Barnett here for the "implausible" case, which in turn got a response from Davidson here. That's just a sampling of very recent entries in this debate, there's plenty more where that came from.

Notably, I don't think "AI 2027" is attempting to participate in this debate. It contains a brief "Addressing Common Objections" section at the end of the relevant appendix, but it's very clear (among other things, simply from the relative quantity of text spent on one thing versus another) that the "AI 2027" authors are not really trying to change the minds of "software intelligence explosion" skeptics. That's not the point of their work – the point is making all these detailed estimates about what such a thing would involve, if indeed it happens.

And the same holds for the rest of their (many) modeling assumptions. They're not trying to convince you about the model, they're just estimating its parameters.

But, as with Bio Anchors, the load-bearing modeling assumptions get you most of the way to the conclusion. So, despite the name, "AI 2027" isn't really trying to convince you that super-powerful AI is coming within the decade.

If you don't already expect that, you're not going to get much value out of these fiddly estimation details, because (under your view) there are still-unresolved questions – like "is a software intelligence explosion plausible?" – whose answers have dramatically more leverage over your expectations than facts like "one of the parameters in one of the sub-sub-compartments of their model is lognormally distributed with 80% CI 0.3 to 7.5."

---

Maybe this is obvious, I dunno? I've just seen some reactions where people express confusion because the whole picture seems unconvincing and under-motivated to them, and I guess I'm trying to explain what I think is going on.

And I'm also worried – as always with this stuff – that there are some people who will look at all those pages and pages of fancy numbers, and think "wow! this sounds crazy but I can't argue with Serious Expert Research™," and end up getting convinced even though the document isn't really trying to convince them in the first place.

---

Now, if you do buy all the assumptions of the model, then yes, I guess this seems like a valuable exercise. If you are literally Daniel Kokotajlo, and hence believe in all the kind of stuff that Daniel Kokotajlo believes, then it makes sense to do all this legwork to "draw in the fine details" of that high-level view. And yeah, if you think the End Times are probably coming in a few years (but you might be able to do something about that at the margins), then you probably do want to get very precise about exactly how much time you have left, and when it will become too late for this or that avenue for change.

(Note that while I don't agree with him about this stuff, I do respect Kokotajlo a lot! I mean, you gotta hand it to him... not only did he predict what we now call the "Gen AI boom" with eerie accuracy way back in 2021, he was also a whistleblower who refused to sign OpenAI's absurd you-can't-talk-about-the-fact-that-you-can't-talk-about-it non-disparagement agreement, thereby bringing it into public view at last.)

But, in short, this report doesn't really touch on the reasons I disagree with short timelines. It doesn't really engage with my main objections, nor is it trying to do so. If you don't already expect "AI" in "2027" then "AI 2027" is not going to change your view.

#ai tag

80 notes · View notes

sayzie · 6 days ago

Text

“Lowly Silvan” is probably the worst line to come out of The Hobbit trilogy

Now we should all be aware that film!thranduil and book!thranduil* are two vastly different characters.

Where book!thranduil is a kind, generous, frolicking, picnicking, flower wearing elvenking who cautions against war (because he knows the horrors); film!thranduil is cold, uncaring, sarcastic and ‘greedy’ —he even brings an army ready to go to war for those white gems and tells his warriors to kill the dwarves

Lee Pace serves absolute cunt and is fantastic in the role because he looks and sounds as majestic as one would expect an elf lord to be but let’s be honest, film!thranduil is just an all round unpleasant person (PJ makes thranduil the villain to the basically unambiguously good heroes —the dwarves; we all know who we’re supposed to root for in this trilogy)

but the one line that absolutely grinds my gears is when he refers to Tauriel as a “lowly silvan”

Now maybe you like his cunty attitude (“I can wait” is *chef kiss*, I like that one, he can have that one) and can find a way to massage the film version of the character to align more with the book but if any part of the film is ‘not Thranduil’ it is that line.

Canonically, Thranduil (and his father Oropher, who founded the Woodland Realm) had no problem with silvans. In fact they wished to become silvan folk (see below ⬇️)

“Lowly silvan” was a line invented purely so film!thranduil could be painted as elitist and discriminatory not only towards dwarves but his own people as well; which is not like his canon character at all

Thranduil would never say something like this. It is entirely plausible that his wife was silvan, and maybe even his own mother. We don’t have any concrete proof of course but it seems likely.

I just hate this line so much because nothing says I did not consult the texts more than asserting Thranduil of all people would call the silvans lowly in such a condescending manner.

*book as in the unnamed elvenking of the hobbit + the 3-ish mentions of him by name between the unfinished tales appendix and lotr

#thranduil #the hobbit #lord of the rings #film vs book #Tauriel #lowly silvan #woke up the next morning and made some minor style + vocab changes and grammar corrections to this #was reminded that it is actually more than just plausible legolas mother was silvan #because he calls himself silvan #however clan membership runs down the paternal line in lotr #so either the silvans are a little bit matrilineal or Thranduil actually manages to go so native that he’s an honourary silvan #either works honestly

40 notes · View notes

flyingwargle · 1 month ago

Text

tendou week day 7: free day (sickfic)

it's like his body is time gated, slowly unlocking with each passing moment.

first comes the senses – the soft mattress against his back, the thin blankets draped over his body, the thin cotton pajamas doing nothing to protect him from the cold room.

second comes movement – twitching fingers, wriggling toes, gnashing teeth. his head rolls across the pillow, a flat thing from too many heads resting on it. tendou opens his eyes.

and faces an absolute beast of a man.

listen, he knows what he's attracted to - muscles, stoicism, eyes that reflect the soul - and this man has it all. the mysterious man straightens in his seat, dressed in expensive athleisure, eyes softening. "satori." the name glides like melted chocolate. "you're awake."

tendou blinks at him, wonders if the angels sent him to collect his soul. "am i, or am i actually dead?"

"no, you're very much awake. we wouldn't be conversing if you weren't, and your heartbeat is faster than when you were asleep."

ah. so, it is. there's an iv inserted in his vein that he spares a glance at before turning to his keeper. "if i'm alive, then where did you come from?"

the man's brows crinkle slightly. "the washroom. i apologize for stepping out at such a crucial moment-"

"probably to commune with the angels," tendou murmurs. "to tell them you're here to claim my soul."

"i have not claimed it, for we are not married yet, so your soul is free to wander, if you find i am insufficient. however," the man says emphatically, "i hope that isn't the case, since i am quite enamored with you.”

not only is this man hot beyond belief, stoic as a rock, and expressive to a fault, he's also smart. wow.

wait. "we?"

"yes."

"who?"

"you and i."

tendou tilts his head. "do we...know each other?" how the hell did he bag such a unit of a man? did he woo him with chocolate? was it the red hair?

"yes." the man pauses. "i was told the anesthesia might affect your memory. this must be what the doctor meant."

that's too many words in too little space. tendou, the intelligent man he is, says, "uh-huh."

"you've no idea what i mean."

"no. do i have to, when you're here?"

something shifts in the man's eyes, warmth like sun through the clouds. "do you remember what happened?"

he glances at himself. tendou doesn't regularly visit the hospital, so to be tucked in, have an iv in his vein, and dressed in a gown is... "no."

"your appendix burst. at the game."

"we were playing video games?"

"no." the man is infinitely patient. "a volleyball game. you were watching when it happened, and goshiki called the ambulance – he, ah, is our friend. i rushed here as soon as the game ended."

that explains the athleisure, although he could be in his underwear and tendou would thank him. "oh, that's fun. better my appendix than spleen, eh?"

"please do not rupture your spleen. it is irreplaceable."

"i think you're irreplaceable." is that a blush on the man's cheeks? tendou wriggles across the bed, feeling his stitches shift, a dull pain in his gut. that definitely confirms someone sliced him open. “how did a volleyball player end up with a chocolatier? who confessed first?”

“you confessed at the end of high school. it appears you harbored feelings for me.”

“and you didn’t?”

“i did not know such feelings existed until after you left for paris.” the man looks at him, concern laced across his furrowed brow. “you look tired. you should get some rest.”

tendou resists the urge to close his eyes despite the heavy weight pressing upon them. “don’t wanna…if i do, you might not be there…”

“i will. i’ve used the restroom, and my team is informed of my whereabouts. i won’t leave you.”

“you should marry me, then,” tendou mumbles, the world growing blurry around him. “if you’re going to make a promise like that, marry me.”

there is a brief pause, followed by warm fingers wrapping around his. “i should, then.”

he falls asleep. in the fading darkness, he realizes he never asked the man for his name.

when he wakes again, it’s later at night. a reflection of the hospital room is framed by the window, largely covered by his boyfriend, ramrod on the stool, reading a book of some sort. tendou rolls his head to blink at him, voice hoarse when he says, “wakatoshi-kun.”

ushijima snaps to attention, lowering his book, leaning forward. “satori.”

“you’re still here?”

“i said i’ll remain while you rested. you don’t remember?”

tendou blinks once. twice. three times. “uh.”

“you also said if i were to promise to stay while you slept, i should marry you.”

“uh.”

“nor did you recognize me,” ushijima continues. “i assume it was because of the anesthesia’s effect, which seems to have worn off now. do you think you could eat? i’ll call for the nurse–“

he raises a hand to stop him, lowers it back onto the bed. then, very intelligently, he says, “uh.”

ushijima remains patient, a fountain of timelessness when it comes to his boyfriend. tendou wraps his fingers weakly through the thin sheets, quiet when he says, “forget what i said when i was delirious.”

“you didn’t act delirious.”

“i was high. same thing.”

“they aren’t.”

“wakatoshi-kun.” he lets out a sigh. “you know what i mean. the whole thing about marriage was out of my ass. you don’t have to take it seriously.”

his boyfriend is quiet for a moment, expression betraying nothing. “but what if i already did?”

“you- what?”

“i would rather not propose while you’re still unwell. let’s wait until you’ve recovered before we discuss this further.”

tendou stares at him incredulously, but ushijima simply reaches for his hand and brings it to his lips for a chaste kiss. “so, get better, okay?” and who is tendou to not obey?

#haikyuu!!#flyingwargle original #fandom event #tendouweek2025 #ushiten #ushijima wakatoshi #tendou satori #post timeskip #tw: hospital #SORRY IF YOU WERE EXPECTING THE OTHER DRABBLES #i got...distracted #and couldn't think of what to write #but at least i got this one done before i got distracted

29 notes · View notes

raedas · 1 year ago

Text

where in the locked tomb universe are we?

or: a tentative guide to the solar system in the locked tomb and which houses go where :)

[id: a diagram of the solar system, including pluto, with additional white text overlaid over each body. the sun is labeled dominicus, mercury is labeled the sixth, venus is the seventh, earth is the first, mars is the second, jupiter is the third, saturn is the fifth, uranus is the fourth, neptune is the eight, and pluto is the ninth. /end id]

note: i'm pretty sure people have put together similar analyses before, but i wanted to try my own hand at it! and please feel free to share if you disagree with me on anything & your own evidence and thoughts <3

evidence & analysis under the cut!

THE NINTH HOUSE:

okay, this one is pretty much just a freebie. if you didn't know that the ninth house was on pluto, then, uh... sorry! i'm not going to exhaustively go through all the evidence for this one, but some things that stick out are the cold, gideon's awe at how close the first house is to the sun, and the fact that it's the "ninth" to begin with—the house that wasn't really meant to exist, perfectly in line with the planet that isn't really a planet THE FIRST HOUSE:

this one is given to us just as much, if not moreso, than the ninth. with that in mind, i'm just going to do a quick run through of the evidence that the first house is earth: it's very blue and covered in water, there are ruins of civilization, it's "the first", so on and so forth. home, sweet home :)

THE SIXTH HOUSE:

Then he said, "The sun has stabilized. Hope the Sixth House didn't get cooked in the flare." (Harrow the Ninth, 490)

this line is pretty much the entire selling point for the sixth being on mercury, the closest planet to the sun! (until they run away to the other side of the universe, that is)

THE SEVENTH HOUSE:

There were other planets that made their homelands closer to the burning star of Dominicus--the Seventh and Sixth, for instance--but to Gideon they could not imaginably be anything else than 100 percent on fire. (Gideon the Ninth, 67)

the implication here is fairly obvious: the seventh and sixth are on venus and mercury, or vice versa. thankfully, since we have the sixth squared away as mercury, it's pretty obvious that the seventh is located on venus

BONUS MYTHOLOGY FACT: venus is the roman goddess of beauty! (also known by her greek name, aphrodite). "seven for beauty that blossoms and dies", huh?

THE EIGHTH HOUSE:

"I squeal so long and so loud that they hear me from the Eighth." (Gideon the Ninth, 26)

while this line is obvious hyperbole, to me it implies one of two things: either the eighth is the farthest planet from the ninth, or it's right next to them. and since we know that mercury already has its hands full with sixth house, i think it's safe to assume that the eighth is on neptune, the ninth's next door neighbor :)

THE SECOND HOUSE:

"We went through the same shitty questions of what to do. What about the Mars installation, what about the fusion batteries?" (Nona the Ninth, 74)

john helpfully offers this tidbit to us when he's recounting everything that happened leading up to the apocalypse to harrow. i think it says a lot that there was a mars installation even before the apocalypse properly hit, and it makes sense that said installation would eventually become a proper House, with a capital H

BONUS MYTHOLOGY FACT: mars is the roman god of warfare (known in greek as ares)! looks at the second house and how closely they're associated the cohort... yeah, i think that speaks for itself

THE THIRD & FIFTH HOUSES:

"I thought we'd end up on the Third or the Fifth, or a sweet space station, or something." (Gideon the Ninth, 56)

"We are not becoming an appendix of the Third or Fifth Houses," continued the necromancer opposite." (Gideon the Ninth, 58)

okay, here's this bit where things begin to get a bit hairy. repeatedly throughout the books, we're told about how the third and fifth are the two "big" houses. harrow's scared of them and worried they'll make the ninth one of their appendixes, gideon originally thinks the entire lyctoral meeting will be on one of their planets, so on and so forth. with that in mind, it really isn't that much of a stretch to think they'd be situated on the two giants in our solar system: jupiter and saturn. we'll come back in a moment to sort out which is which!

THE FOURTH HOUSE:

aaaand uranus is the only planet left! congrats, fourth!

THE THIRD & FIFTH HOUSES (again):

"Naturally [Isaac] is Pent's protégé. I hear the Fifth takes special pains with the Fourth... hegemonic pains, some may say." (Gideon the Ninth, 170)

from this quote, as well as the whole of jeannemary & isaac's relationship with magnus & abigail, we can surmise that the fourth house is very close to the fifth house (hegemonic though it may be). it's reasonable that that metaphorical proximity is reflecting (or caused by) something else: physical proximity. with that, i think it's fairly safe to assume that the fifth is on saturn, putting the third on jupiter

DOMINICUS:

aaand finally, the center of the solar system itself! i really, really don't think it needs sharing that dominicus is the sun, as long as you accept that the locked tomb takes place in our own solar system. however, i do think the meaning of dominicus is worth sharing. coming from latin, it translates roughly to "lordly", "belonging to god", or "of the master." very subtle, john, very subtle.

#shamsisms #tlt #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #god this post took me like 2 hours to put together. hii #i swear im going to find a typo as soon as i post this but. oh well. im not spending any more time on this post atm #also the page numbers are based on my paperback copies! i think they should be the same in hardcover but im not entirely sure

245 notes · View notes

rumbelleshowdown · 2 months ago

Text

⭐️

Author: redvelvet

Group E: dragon; learning to dance; cheesy

⭐️

In a Flash

Nobody in the wedding party knew whether it had been Emma or Neal who had decided that they all were in need of a ballroom dance lesson, but it didn’t matter. The happy couple had been beyond easy going this far. Nobody protested; nobody had the heart.

Instead, they’d all dutifully come to the tiny dance studio, nestled deep in Chinatown, to spend a prime Saturday evening under the tutelage of one Li Shang.

Like the rest, Belle had been expecting a lesson as laid-back as the soon-to-be-wed couple. Shang was a former dance champion, though—and a serious taskmaster to boot. Once their ninety minutes were up, everyone agreed: they were marginally better dancers now, and they were, to a person, starving.

Consequently, four bridesmaids, three groomsmen, the betrothed and the father of the groom had entered the Silver Dragon restaurant at 8:15 pm, squeezed around a table for eight, then ordered half the menu.

The volume at the table crept up steadily following the second round of Tsingtao. When her second request for the teapot went unheard, Belle resorted to waving wildly while holding her empty cup aloft.

Neal was the first to notice, and he flashed her a sheepish grin as he pushed back his chair.

“I just needed it passed around,” Belle admonished as he refilled her cup. Waving had been rude enough; she hadn’t meant to pull him away from a highly animated discussion with August.

Neal chuckled, then crouched down. “Nah. I was meaning to come over anyway, to thank you. For partnering up with my dad.” He nodded towards Mr. Gold, who had just replaced a mound of fortune cookies with his credit card. Neal’s father had more or less sidestepped the chaotic revelry at their table; while the rest of the group downed beer and their weight in sweet and sour pork, he’d had half a bowl of soup. “I kinda thought we’d pair him with the instructor, but now I’m glad we didn’t.” Belle swapped her teacup for her beer and took a swig. “I’m not saying I’m grateful that Graham’s appendix exploded, but...”

Belle nearly choked on her mouthful. “How’s he doing? Have you heard?”

“Yeah. Better!” Neal crossed his fingers. “In three weeks he’ll be walking you down the aisle with bells on. Anyway, sorry about today. I know my pops can be prickly.”

“Oh,” she shrugged, bringing the bottle back to her lips. Only smooth wool and warm hands came to mind, not cactus spines. “Not at all.”

Belle buried her hands in her pockets and debated waiting for her cab inside. With the wind it was nippier than she’d thought it would be. Her coat wasn’t doing much for her legs, nor were her tights. She had just pulled her phone out to check how long it had been since the driver had called when—

“Miss French?”

“Oh!” Belle whirled around, nearly dropping her phone. “Mr. Gold!”

“I wanted to apologize,” he said, leaning on his cane and staring forward. The breeze teased his hair, right where it curled at his shoulders. “For being far from the partner you deserved today. And for startling you as well, I see.”

“No!” Belle insisted, more emphatically than she might have before two bottles of Tsingtao. “You were a little unsteady maybe, but I was the one with lead in my heels tonight. It’s, uh—” she babbled, “it’s been a while since I, you know, danced. Emma always invites me out, but I don’t think going to the club is quite the same thing.”

“I wonder,” he continued smoothly, as if he wasn’t talking to an idiot with a beer buzz and flushed cheeks, “if you would be willing to join me for a repeat, in the name of not embarrassing myself at my only son’s wedding.”

“In the name of not embarrassing ourselves, I couldn’t possibly decline.”

It was fortunate that the crinkle of tires on gravel announced her cab’s arrival, otherwise she might not have noticed.

“In that case,” he said, opening the door for her, “are you free next week? Same time?”

Belle slid into the back seat. “It’s a date.”

There was a moment of hesitation that made Belle’s stomach flip, but then his lips pulled back just enough to reveal a glint of gold. “It’s a date,” he echoed, then closed the cab’s door.

“I think it’s so brave of you to do this,” Belle said, as they completed the fifth runthrough of their short routine.

“You too,” Mr. Gold said, smirking. “You missed a few steps that time, Miss French. I was paying attention; weren’t you?”

“Ballet lessons were a long time ago,” Belle protested with a laugh.

“Again,” Shang barked, hitting the ‘back’ button on the stereo.

“Are you okay to go again?” Belle whispered. He nodded, extending his hands.

“It’s an old injury.” He led her through the first few steps, more confidently than ever. “Worse some days than others. I’m afraid you have my physiotherapist to thank for all this,” he said, as they came to the first turn, “since instead of dismissing the idea out of hand he insisted that I try.”

“I’m glad he did,” Belle said, returning her hand to his shoulder only to wonder what it felt like... uncovered.

“Hesitation,” Shang called out, rescuing her. “And turn.”

“And, uh, how do you occupy your time, in lieu of ballet?” Mr. Gold asked, once they were safely back in box step.

“Reading, mostly,” Belle replied. Should she add that she wrote a little too, on the side? Maybe during the next dance. “I can’t resist a good sword and sorcery, you know?”

“Progression.”

“I read mostly contracts, I must confess.” Of course. They’d discussed work three dances ago. “It’s been too long since I’ve read for—”

“Dip.”

“—pleasure,” he finished, as he brought her back up.

Belle would have spouted off some recommendations, had she not been at risk of drowning in brown eyes. She needed to concentrate; she was in enough danger of falling in as it was.

“Mr. Gold?”

He paused, hand on his Cadillac, and glanced over. Belle willed her hand, atop her own car, to be still. “I, uh, have some time next week. Do you think another lesson might be a good idea?”

It was just a cocked eyebrow, but it set her completely aflutter.

“It couldn’t hurt,” he said. “Next week, then.”

Belle grinned her entire drive home.

At midnight, the groomsmen (and Emma) disappeared with a handful of cigars. When the opening chords of “Kiss from a Rose” drifted from the speakers, Belle figured she was out of luck.

But with a soft shoulder tap followed by a softer request, suddenly she wasn’t.

He led.

“I couldn’t help but notice that nobody waltzed to “Rasputin”.”

She followed.

“I thought I could get one going during “YMCA”, but it didn't work out.”

“A valiant effort. I expected nothing less.”

Progression.

“But look at us now! It all paid off.”

Turn.

“You’re lovely for humoring me, Miss French.”

“I had a lot of fun, Mr. Gold.” And she had. Her heart was aching for a different reason.

Hesitation.

“Belle, I—”

“Look at you guys! The band’s back together!” Neal sidled up to nudge his dad’s shoulder, and Belle’s stomach stopped doing high kicks. “Hey, you guys are the only ones that haven’t used the photo booth.”

“I didn’t realize it was a requirement.”

“It’s for the guestbook,” Belle clarified. Neal nodded, then whooped and clapped as he noticed Emma slinking back inside. Seal had finished crooning; now Madonna was urging one and all to “strike a pose”, appropriately.

It was late. Emma would be disappointed if she didn't use the photo booth before the rental company reclaimed it. “Thank you so much,” she whispered, sliding her hand down his arm for what was probably the last time.

The instructions were straightforward enough. Press the button, pose, and four flashes later she'd have a whole strip of photos for the guestbook. Mustering a smile shouldn't have been difficult, especially not while holding a cartoon mustache on a stick. Still…

No. She couldn’t look forlorn. This was for Emma.

Right as her fingers brushed the button, the curtain rose.

The high kicks roared back.

“May I join you?”

Belle nodded and made room for him to squeeze in next to her.

Mr. Gold held his chosen prop—a pair of oversized lips—up for her inspection.

“This is so cheesy,” she giggled.

“It is.”

“Ready?” Her fingers hovered over the button.

“Ready.”

Belle brandished her mustache and looked at the camera. It flashed once, twice; then she noticed.

He was looking at her, and his eyes bottomless. Was it just the light?

How about his tongue tracing along his bottom lip, was it responsible for that?

Props forgotten, they sought each other; Belle grasped his shoulders, and he, her chin. Their lips crashed together just as the last flash filled the booth.

#rumbelle showdown #rumbelle fic #round 1 #group e #Author: redvelvet

27 notes · View notes