#technically this is last months drab

[eraserbread]

Wife giving husband nanami a handjob and edging him until he cant take it anymore…. what who said that??????

pushing your husband, nanami, till he's right on the edge ✧

→ f!reader, edging/teasing, begging, nsfw

you can't see anything. kento's got you pressed to the shower wall, trapping you to the dampness with one hand planted to the side of your head. it's fairly late, and he's so tense that he could snap with one wrong move.

you're not making it better. in fact, kento would say you're making it worse.

hand wrapped around the girth of his cock, you're whispering in his ear, thumb tracing across the angry, red tip. "you're so hard, love... just from my hand?"

he grunts, open palm turning into a fist as he bucks into your touch. he leans forward, head falling onto your shoulder -- overcome and barely able to stand after twenty minutes on this same, cruel carousel. he doesn't even know what you're doing, or how you're doing it, but he's so close yet so far.

he needs to fuck you - that's what it is. kento is spoiled. "have to... inside of you..."

"just a little longer."

if you could see his face, you'd almost feel bad. his features squeeze up like he's in pain -- full body, scalding pain. he needs release.

he breathes out something adjacent to a growl, bucking up into your hand in short, easy thrusts. you wish you could peek between your bodies and see the way his cock jumps and cries for you. he's so pretty down there -- so sensual and perfectly kept that you can't help but worship the thought of it.

you press your hips into his so he can feel your heat, fingers concentrating at the mouthwatering vein on his underside. he's so sensitive there, here -- everywhere. it's like his skin is on fire. his moans actually break into cries.

"please! don't d-do this..."

"do what? i'm getting you off, kento. you didn't have to ask."

"i can't! can't... finish like this, you're not giving me a chance." his tone is wrecked, so high up in his throat in a drawl you haven't heard since he came inside of you for the first time. now, it's the millionth time of this, and if you knew he'd crack from a bit of edging sooner, you'd have turned him out years ago.

"my baby..." you whisper, kissing over the shell of his dripping ear. your free hand winds over his strong back, clawing over the tense muscles, core shaking and needy for him. "mm, I love you like this."

"yeah?" he finds it in himself to respond, taking that minute distraction for your tugs to slow before taking you by the shoulder, pushing you face-first against the humid stone. as soon as your hand falls from his aching length, his hand takes over, pinching at the base to keep himself sane. "I love you like this."

and the second he parts your thighs and slips his cock inside of your eager hole -- his hand is tightening on your waist, breath hot and heavy in his lungs, he finishes immediately, singing your name in the back of his throat.

and that feeling of being flooded from the inside out hits you like a semi-truck, making your knees give at the sudden intrusion and rush of pleasure.

twenty minutes of edging? no problem -- kento will always catch you when you slip.

[little-miss-dilf-lover]

FAVOURITISM. [PART ONE]

tangerine x fem!reader

wc. 1956 summary. tangerine was put out of work following the events of an accident. as a result, he created his own business, applying all of his knowledge. you work as a secretary cross technical assistant for him and working very closely to the big bad boss catches the eyes of your peers. one day he notices a change in your workwear — proving to you, he’s been paying a lot more attention than you originally thought. boss x secretary. disclaimer. the images at the bottom are just a reference of what I picture the reader wearing. they are not a reflection of how I write or see yn (colour and body type) it’s merely a way to show you what I envisioned

MY 2 YEAR ANNIVERSARY! it’s only right that I write for tan seeing as it all started with him xx also a big big loving thank you to @pretty-little-mind33 for the idea and brainstorming with me. literally would not have done this without her <33

SERIES MASTERLIST

⎯ ☆ ⎯

It wasn’t often that you’d find yourself not looking forward to work — feeling anxious to get in. Your love for what you do always seeming to overshadow any discomfort.

For the last several months, you’ve been working as a technical assistant cross secretary for your boss, Tangerine. No one knew of his real name, and you were starting to think that’s the way it’ll always be. 

Last night after your shift, you were brought to HR for an unexpected meeting, being called up on a dress code violation. Multiple complaints made around the office about your bright tights and flowy shirts, being told that it was ‘unfit for work’ and a ‘distraction.’ You knew you weren’t exactly well liked around the office — the sneers and scowls made your way making that evident. But never did you think they would go so far out of their way to complain about you. 

Their dislike for you felt territorial — judgy eyes always seeming to follow you as you attend to the needs and wants of your boss. The attention you gain from the broody, grumpy man in charge, simply asks and tasks you agreed to in your job description. The repetitive calls for your name only ever consisting of tea requests or computer help. It left you feeling confused and isolated, constantly wondering why they hated you so much. You were only ever doing your job. Doing what was asked of you. 

So, as you sit in your car before the start of the workday, you use your spare few moments to collect yourself, preparing for those same judgemental stares. You look down at your legs briefly, noticing the lack of colour — your usual patterned tights now being replaced with grey, drab trousers. All of your vibrancy and exuberancy —personality— stolen when told to make this change. 

You exhale, giving yourself one last second of sanity before you’re getting out of the car, juggling your bags and cups of coffee in hand. Stepping into the building and into the elevator with a small crowd, you become invisible, blending in with everyone — becoming what you’ve always dreaded: a lifeless office zombie, sharing the same apathetic, dull expression with all those around you. 

You reach your floor and exit with the few remaining others in the lift. You deviate from your colleagues and head for your bosses office at the back, giving his door a couple of knocks. 

“Yeah?” he calls out, and you slowly push the door open.

His usual rigged, intimidating gaze softens as his eyes fall on you through the gap, his attention landing on you over the top of his computer.

“You’re late,” he says, the words a reprimand for most, but for you they were more of an observation — a casual, flyaway statement. 

“I know, I’m sorry. Traffic was a nightmare,” you apologise as you step into his office, avoiding his eyes like you were ashamed. 

You look down to the coffees in hand and pass him the one without the lipstick mark, extending an arm as you move to stand beside his desk.

“Don’t worry about it. It happens,” he reassures. And as he takes the cup from your hold, he glances down, noticing the lack of your familiar flamboyance. “What’re you wearing?”

You look down confused, brows pulling together as if to show you didn’t understand his question.

“The trousers,” he looks up at you, gaze almost harsh. “Why're you wearing them?” 

He has never seen you wear trousers.

“Thought I’d shake things up,” you shrug with your lie, not wanting him to know the real reason.

You didn’t want to give your peers more reason to hate you by tattling to the boss — complaining about them being mean to you, so you decided against it, keeping him from the truth. Though it’s far harder than you anticipated, his eyes ever so demanding as he remains fixed on you above. 

“So no smiley face is also part of you shaking things up?” he questions, showing you the blank cup — your usual sharpie smileys nowhere to be seen. 

You wince slightly, embarrassed by the whole ordeal. You weren’t sure if the embarrassment was from the fact he noticed or that you forgot. But humiliation was felt either way.

“It’ll save us the ballache if you tell me why,” he takes a sip of his drink and places it aside, giving you his full attention. “I can call a staff meeting, but I reckon they’ll get suspicious after seeing us talk,” he playfully blackmails, offering you a faint smile to show you his bribe holds no such malice.

You turn and look out through the window of his office, picking up on dozens of sets of eyes glued to you through the gap of his blinds. All of which briskly turn away upon the glance of Tangerine, his eyeline following yours — scaring your peers back into work.

“What’d they do?” he asks, redirecting your focus back to him.

“I just got a complaint, that’s all,” you shrug, trying to minimise it as much as possible.

“Why?” he asks bluntly, neck craning to keep your eyes on him.

“They don’t like the way I dress apparently,” you laugh faintly, the noise sounding far more hurt than you intended. “I mean I get it,” you deflect, trying not to slip into a habit of seeking him for assurance when people in the office turn against you. “I get what they mean.”

He’s quiet as he looks over you, head shaking disapprovingly as he mumbles something incoherent. He inhales deeply and then coughs to clear his throat, sounding like he was preparing for something. 

“I gotta meet with some people, but I’ll see what I can do,” he says as he stands, reaching for his briefcase. “Don’t let these miserable lot get to you,” he smiles weakly as he collects his coffee cup, heading towards the door until he stops, and turns around to face you. “They hate that I don’t hate you, that’s all.” 

Your eyes follow after him as he leaves his office, leaving you standing there alone to process his words. You’ve never really picked up on the hinted favouritism like your colleagues have — never seeming to notice the allowances and kindness your peers aren’t granted with. But you were only ever doing as told, why would that warrant any special treatment? 

And with that thought in mind, you head towards your desk just outside of his office, setting your things on your neatly, organised table. Placing your hot drink in his designated spot besides your computer, you log on — attending to emails and to things on your extensive to do list.

A few hours pass you by.

You’re interrupted from all work when you feel the presence of someone standing behind you, your boss now back from his meeting with a pile of papers in hand.

“Need you to sort these out for me,” he says as places the stack beside your hand. “Please,” he adds, trying to keep up with the habit he’s trying to enforce by showing his appreciation. But only to you.

You look down to the pile, noticing a gap in between the blank, plain papers. You look up at him briefly, like you were asking permission and then your eyes fall back onto the stack. And as you go to lift the upper chunk of papers, Tangerine is moving from you and into his office, a new bag —a shopping bag— held within the hand of his briefcase. You take little to no notice and turn your attention back to the pile, a square paper bag hiding within the fake forms. The perfect cloak of disguise. 

You didn’t need to look inside to know what it was, the warm circle giving it away immediately. It was a cookie. You swivel in your chair to look into his office, his eyes already on you through the gap in his blinds. The gap you’re now starting to believe holds another purpose. You smile at him sweetly, mouthing thanks before resuming with your work — wanting to get it all done before the end of the day.

And as five pm soon rolls around and as everyone begins logging off and packing up for home, you turn to look back at Tangerine, a pained expression on his face as he rolls his shoulder. His old injury you know very little about seeming to give him grief.  

The floor begins to clear and you collect your things, walking those few steps until you’re in front of your boss's door. You give it a light tap and enter when welcomed.

“You off?” he asks, turning his attention to you in his doorframe. 

“Yep,” you smile, lingering for a moment. “Thank you for the cookie, by the way.”

“It’s alright,” he gently smiles, head bowing almost bashfully. “Hang on and I’ll walk you out. Don’t want you out in the dark by yourself.”

“You don’t have to do that,” you deflect, not wanting to be a bother. “Really it’s okay, my car is only outside.”

He shakes his head at you as he gives his desk a quick tidy, packing things up for the night. Tangerine stands and collects his belongings, picking up his coat from the rack and small bag from the side before he’s heading to you, guiding you along. 

You each walk towards the open elevators and head in, standing side by side —close— within the confined space. 

He twists inwards to face you. “I uh,” he starts, extending the shopping bag from earlier to you. “I picked something up for you.”

Your brows tug in the middle, looking up at him like you were questioning the reasoning why. You take it from his hand and look inside. 

“No,” you whisper, sheer disbelief in your voice as you pull out the gift. “These are beautiful! Where did you even find them?” you question, looking over the tights, marvelling at the pattern. 

He keeps his head cast downwards, looking between his feet as he smiles, appreciating your appreciation. “It’s a secret.”

The elevator dings, cutting your time short and you both look at each other, the glance brief. He holds his arm out, gesturing for you to step off first,  and you do. You linger, waiting for him to join so you could walk besides one another. 

The walk towards your car is slow, as if both of you are trying to savour the short journey, hang on to it. Small chuckles and shy, stolen glances being the only form of communication during your minute long walk.

You reach into your bag and pull out your keys to unlock your car, the dozen chains and charms jingling and clattering with the movement of your hand. 

Tangerine reaches for your door, pulling the handle to open it for you — nodding you inside. You smile at him sweetly as you get in, placing your bags on the passenger seat. 

“You get home safe, alright?” he says, grinning softly.

“I will,” you look down coyly, smile faint.

He nods once. “Good.”

“See you monday?” 

“Mhm-hm,” he hums, expression gentle as he goes to close your door. “Have a good weekend,” he says before shutting you inside.

You exhale shakily within the quiet sanctuary of your car, the lack of noise allowing your mind to run rampant with repeats from the last few minutes. You glance down to your gift, trying to process it all until your eyes land on the tag — his name, his real name squiggled on the note.

The favouritism you’ve struggled to notice becomes as clear as day. Every interaction from the past now being thought of differently as you look back on it all. 

⎯ ☆ ⎯

in my mind she’s very penelope garcia/ louisa clark/ jessica day/ phoebe buffay coded (more so in dress sense) she’s cute and i love her

[ PART TWO ]

[hbyrde36]

Speak Now

For @firefly-party HAPPY BIRTHDAY BESTIE! 🥳

Steddie | M | WC: 6150 | AO3

TW: Use of homophobic slur, emotionally abusive relationship (not Steddie)

Eddie couldn’t believe he’d let it get this far. 

In just under 24 hours Chrissy would be saying I do to the biggest asshole on the planet, and he was almost out of time to intervene. 

All throughout the wedding planning phase, from venue tours and cake tastings to florist visits—appointments to which Eddie himself had accompanied the bride-to-be in place of her scumbag fiancé—he’d wracked his brain for some way to convince her to see the truth.

Jason was the worst. His boyish good looks and wholesome charm belied a rotten interior. Like many evildoers he hid in plain sight, committing his heinous acts in private and doing everything in his power to keep it covered up, camouflaging his emotional abuse with passive aggressive comments and intermittent love-bombing.

And to top it all off? 

The bastard was cheating on her. 

Unfortunately, Eddie had no tangible proof of this villainous treachery. Not for lack of trying, but that bleach-blonde sleazeball was as slippery as a snake. So, instead of trying to convince Chrissy of what he’d overheard last month when he’d showed up at her and Jason’s apartment unannounced and caught the little on fucker on FaceTime, having a very much not innocent chat with another woman, tonight Eddie set out to open her eyes to all the ways her fiancé was entirely wrong for her, and pray she called this insanity off.

“Come on, slowpoke!” Chrissy teased from up ahead, sticking her tongue out at him before dashing across the road to the next block.

Eddie huffed and puffed, his former smoker’s lungs not helping in his struggle to keep up with his gym-rat best friend who did things like yoga and pilates for fun. Seriously, who in their right mind considers exercise an enjoyable hobby?

“Keep your panties on, wench,” he grumbled, lumbering along behind her. “I told you we should have called an Uber!”

She spun in place, giving him the full effect of her eye roll as she continued to outpace him walking backwards.

Show off.

“You act like you’re the one wearing four inch heels.” She said, continuing to goad him.

“Well maybe I would be, Christine, if you hadn’t made us take the bus and then walk six blocks!”

He’d offered to pay for their ride. Hell, he’d planned on covering everything tonight. This was technically her bachelorette party after all, and now that his record shop was finally pulling a profit he could afford it and then some, but not only had she insisted on going dutch, she apparently felt that reliving the nostalgia of their broke-ass early 20’s, when they relied on public transportation and their own feet to get around, would be a fun way to celebrate.

It was just the two of them tonight. Eddie knew it wasn’t quite what Chrissy had envisioned, not that she’d ever admit it aloud, but in the four years and some change she and Jason had been together, the guy had managed to estrange her from just about every one of her friends except for him.

“Don’t be a baby, we’re almost there.”

Sure enough, by the time he’d caught up enough to walk side by side with her, they were coming up to the drab exterior of some new bar with a kitschy clever one word name that Eddie had already forgotten.

The front was all gray brick and dark tinted glass, the sign above it unlit and still under construction, but Chrissy assured him the place was open, and if this was where she wanted to be tonight, then who was Eddie to judge. 

As unassuming and frankly boring as the outside was, the inside of the place was the complete opposite. Eddie pushed in the door and was immediately assaulted by sight and sound. Unseen speakers played Good Luck, Babe at a volume that was just barely on the right side of too loud, jarring at first but not so blaring that you couldn’t hear yourself speak. Colorblocked walls in all the shades of the rainbow laid the backdrop for a long, bright pink lacquered bar that sat against the back wall, leaving a wide open space in the middle that was clearly meant to be a dance floor, and a small stage down the opposite end. 

Just inside the entrance he was greeted by the disinterested smile of a woman with a messy bob, her face clean of makeup, posted up on a stool as if she were a bouncer. Eddie supposed she must be stronger than she looked. The woman didn’t stay disinterested for long, as soon as Chrissy stepped up next to him, the bouncer’s eyes went wide, giving her an obvious once-over.

Eddie didn’t think much of it, until the woman waved them in and he got a better look at the bar’s clientele. It was slow for a bar in the city on a Friday night, which made it all the easier to notice amongst the sparse crowd the pair of masc lesbians shooting the shit down one end of the bar, a gaggle of twinks on the other, and sitting in the corner happily sipping on her drink alone was a middle aged drag queen all done up in a tall Dolly Parton style blonde wig and sequined sheriff’s uniform, complete with high heeled boots that she had propped up on the stool across from her.

Eddie stopped in his tracks, his hand shooting out to grab Chrissy’s arm when she moved to go around him, pulling her close so he wouldn’t have to yell. “Chris… is this a gay bar?”

“Yeah!” She said, grinning wide and bright, her high, tight ponytail bobbing as she nodded her head.

A deep frown pulled at his lips before he could stop it. It wasn’t that he minded, obviously, but it was more than a little unexpected for sure.

Her smile fell as she watched his face. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy.” 

“I'm not not happy, but this isn’t about me. It’s your last night as a free woman. Wouldn’t you rather go somewhere fancy? Consider your options? Let your eyes wander a little—”

She cut him a hard look, jaw tightening dangerously.

He raised his hands in surrender, and tried to laugh it off as if he hadn’t been one thousand percent serious. “Just for fun! Y’know, get hit on one last time before the cuffs get snapped on for good?”

Not that she couldn't be hit on in a place like this, as evidenced by the bounder checking her out so blatantly, but to his knowledge his bestie had always been so very unfortunately straight.

He really didn’t understand straight people, it just wasn’t natural.

“Eddie!” She admonished, whapping him with her handbag.

“What?!”

“Nothing,” she sighed, shaking her head. “Look, Jason doesn’t like me going out to bars without him, I figured this way he’s less likely to be mad.”

Eddie grit his teeth, fighting to bite his tongue at first, but considering the theme of the night was: Mission Runaway Bride, he figured he might as well take advantage of the opening and start right now. 

He threw an arm over her shoulder in hopes of softening the blow, and resumed their trek to the cotton candy colored bar and a vacant pair of its matching stools. “Cause that’s a totally normal and healthy thing to have to do to make sure your future husband doesn’t fly into a jealous rage.”

“He’s just sensitive,” she said, defensive as always. “Besides, gay bars have much better eye-candy.”

As if it had been scripted and choreographed, the very second the words left her lips, the swinging doors behind the bar burst open, revealing the single most perfect specimen of a man Eddie had ever laid eyes on. Muscular arms flexed and bulged under the weight of the box he was carrying, straining the fabric of his black t-shirt, stretched tight across an ample chest. His face would have been right at home on any Greek statue, lightly tanned and adorned with beauty marks, crowned with artfully tousled hair that fell over a pair of stunning hazel eyes framed with long thick lashes.

The man turned his back, set the heavy box down, and started unpacking bottles of booze. Eddie's throat ran dry as he watched the guy repeatedly bend down, his plump ass on perfect display in his well-fitting jeans for a moment before he straightened up again, the hem of his cut off t-shirt lifting to reveal a tempting strip of bare skin as he placed each bottle up on the shelf. 

Eddie licked his lips involuntarily at the indecent sight. “Can’t argue that,” he conceded, his eyes never leaving the one-man show as he let Chrissy go so they could take their seats. The guy was probably just a bar back who would disappear through the door he came in any second now never to be seen again, Eddie thought sadly. 

But it was just as well, Eddie didn’t exactly have the attention span to be able to complete his mission while being distracted all night by a pretty-boy with a nice ass.

Except, he didn’t walk away. Pretty-boy kicked the empty box aside when he was done, running a hand through his hair as he turned and headed straight for them. His shirt, which Eddie could now see had the name Steve embroidered on it over his left pec in hot pink thread, raised again, this time offering a perfect view of the most titillating happy trail.

“Sorry about that, we’re still getting some things stocked up,” Steve—the bartender, apparently—said, his eyes flicking up and down what he could see of Eddie over the bar. “What can I make for ya?” 

Oh fuck.

Was it Eddie’s imagination or did Steve just… check him out?

“Margarita, please, with salt,” Chrissy answered straightaway.

Eddie felt his lips pull into a wide grin as he held Steve’s gaze, a smile that he knew would show off his dimples to full effect. “Whatever you have on tap works for me, sweetheart.”

As he knew they would, or hoped anyway, Steve's eyes lingered on Eddie’s mouth for an extra long beat. He was pleased with himself for all of 3 seconds before Chrissy made a loud sound of disgust to his left. 

“Ugh, beer, Eddie?” She looked down her nose at him, frowning. “That’s so boring.”

This bitch.

“Fine, fine.” Eddie flipped her off before turning his eyes back up at Steve, keeping them wide and coy as he asked, “what is the least boring drink you can make for me, Stevie?”

He was probably laying it on a little thick by cooing the guy’s name like that and batting his eyelashes, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Once they got their drinks though, that was it, he’d hunker down and get to work on saving Chrissy’s future.

Steve bit his lip, shooting Eddie an honest to god wink as he answered. “Easy choice, that would be a hurricane shot.”

“Sounds great.” Eddie wasn’t usually one for shots, but he’d take whatever Steve was offering as long as he kept looking at him like that.

“Don’t you want to know what it is first?” Steve narrowed his eyes, leaning hard against the bar, a little quirk to his perfectly arched brow.

“No need,” Eddie said quickly. “I love surprises.”

With an awkward yet strangely adorable two-finger salute, Steve stepped away, presumably to make their drinks, and when Eddie finally managed to pull his gaze away from the man’s exquisite backside, he found himself face-to-face with a small neon pink dick and balls hovering an inch away from his nose.

“Jesus Christ.” He reared back, snatching what turned out to be a novelty straw out of Chrissy’s hand. Fucking thing had veins and everything. 

Looking far too pleased with herself, Chrissy reached back into her bag and pulled her own electric blue penis straw out, twirling it between her fingers. 

“Seriously, Chris?”

“Why do you hate fun?” She asked, sticking out her bottom lip as far as it would go.

“You know that doesn’t work on meee,” he sang, waving the pink straw around like a magic wand, and booping her on the nose with it.

“What’s the problem, Munson, too big for you to handle?”

Partially for the bit, and partially because his ego refused to let him be underestimated, even if it was obviously a joke, Eddie locked eyes with her and with the most serious of expressions, began to lave his tongue back and forth over the itty bitty cockhead.

Chrissy kept an irritatingly straight face as she watched, unblinking, and it rapidly became a test of wills to see who would break first. 

Eddie upped his game, swirling his tongue over the little hole in the top, before pushing the entire thing past the seam of his lips, bobbing up and down the very short length of the vascular plastic appendage.

A loud snort, immediately followed by hysterical laughter rang out next to Eddie’s head, causing him to have the startling realization that they were, in fact, still in public. He froze with the dick-straw nestled between his lips, flicking his eyes cautiously to the side and confirmed that—yep!—that was hot bartender Steve alright, standing there, cackling as he set Chrissy’s drink down in front of her, after seeing god-only-knew how much of that entire display. 

Eddie spit the incriminating piece of evidence out, letting the straw fall to the bar, where it bounced—twice.

At least Steve looked mildly impressed, on top of amused.

“I’m getting married tomorrow,” Chrissy explained, leaning in towards Steve to whisper-shout conspiratorially. “And Eddie here is my maid of honor.”

“Eddie,” Steve repeated with a mischievous grin, his warm honey gaze swinging Eddie’s way again. “Is she making you wear some godawful dress with puffy sleeves?”

“I wish,” Eddie grumbled, remembering the way his dark features and tattoos had popped against the baby pink chiffon gown. He’d only tried it on to make Chrissy laugh during a disastrous trip to David’s Bridal with her horrible mother, but he would have worn it in a heartbeat. That gown and pair of shit kickers? He’d have had every closeted Carver man on their knees at the reception. 

“Just a regular boring black suit for me I'm afraid, wouldn’t want to offend the groom’s delicate sensibilities.”

“You did look really pretty,” Chrissy said, taking a careful sip from her martini.

Preening, Eddie reached for his own drink, glancing at Steve to see the man giving him another lingering look, as though he were trying to imagine him in a fancy dress and liked what he saw, only to realize there was no glass in front of him.

“Forgetting something?” Eddie asked, arching his brow.

Steve gave a little shake of his head. “Just wanted to make sure you were ready.”

“I was born ready, big boy,” Eddie said, leaning back in his seat and spreading his legs a little.

“Eugh, gag me,” Chrissy groaned. “That was awful.”

“It wasn’t meant for you,” Eddie hissed.

“It was pretty bad,” Steve agreed, but looked charmed regardless. 

It figured on the one night he had a mission that didn’t involve picking someone up to take home, Eddie would find not only the hottest man on earth, but a man who seemed to appreciate his admittedly unique appeal.

Steve did set a tall shot glass down on the bar then, but placed it to the side and much too far out of reach to be meant for Eddie, or so he thought. The next thing he knew Steve was leaping up on top of the bar, making the move look effortless, before crouching down so low he was practically level with Eddie’s face.

Eddie swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly as dry as the Sahara. He had no idea what was the fuck was happening right now, but Steve’s jeans were so tight they left almost nothing to the imagination, the outline of his dick was like—right there. Honestly, Eddie wasn’t even sure how the man was holding a squat without splitting the fabric.

Still balanced on the balls of his feet, Steve raised both eyebrows, asking silent permission for whatever it was he was about to do.

Eddie could only nod, the ability to form words nothing more than a distant memory.

What came next happened so fast, and yet felt like slow motion at the same time. From one blink to the next Steve’s huge hand was tucked under Eddie's chin, grabbing him firmly by the jaw, squeezing gently until he got the hint to open his mouth.

“Good boy,” Steve murmured low, holding Eddie tight as he picked up the shot with his free hand, poured the drink between his own lips, and leaned in even closer, spitting it right into Eddie’s waiting mouth.

The fiery liquid quickly filled him. Thankfully Eddie’s instincts kicked in and he swallowed reflexively, the liquor warming his throat all the way down to pool in his stomach, adding to the blaze that had been ignited in his groin the second Steve had grabbed his face.

And that wasn’t all.

Before he could even begin to recover, Eddie was suddenly doused in the face with a cup full of cold water, and was mid-gasp when he felt the sharp sting of a palm slapping his cheek.

A small crowd had formed around them without Eddie’s notice, and as the sound of the slap reverberated in his head, they erupted into cheers and wolf whistles.

Startled, and very aware of the sudden raging boner he was sporting, Eddie blinked the water out of his eyes, taking in the sight of Chrissy with her hand over her mouth, absolutely losing her shit, and Steve, still hovering over him with a guilty smile and pink cheeks.

“Bathroom,” he managed to mumble out as he slipped from his stool and took off towards a doorway he prayed housed the bar’s facilities.

It did. Eddie stumbled into the blessedly empty bathroom and rushed to the sink, leaning on it heavily as he groaned, palming himself through his jeans.

He only got a second of peace before the door swung open behind him.

“I’m sorry, I—”

Eddie whirled at the voice, water droplets flying off his dripping hair to hit the wall.

It was Steve, both a relief and a fact that made Eddie's heart race, walking towards him, wearing a nervous smile and holding a white hand towel. Eddie held himself still as Steve approached, feeling frozen in place while the man gently, almost tenderly, dried him off.

“I tried to tell you,” Steve whispered. “Maybe I should have tried harder.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Eddie said, breathlessly, finally finding his voice again “I think that was the best drink I’ve ever—”

He was cut off mid sentence by Steve’s mouth crashing into his. It had to be the single hottest way he’d ever been interrupted, and you know what? 

Words were overrated anyway.

Eddie moaned into the kiss, his hands finding their way to Steve’s waist and that slutty cropped hem, sneaking under the fabric to caress the bare skin beneath. He tilted his head, opening up for the tongue he could feel teasing the edge of his lips, and couldn’t stop another desperate sound from clawing its way up his throat.

Thank god Chrissy hadn’t followed him in there too, she’d never let him hear the end of this.

Oh, goddamnit.

Thinking of her instantly sent Eddie hurtling back to reality, forcing him to fight against his very nature as a man to pull himself away from Steve’s luscious mouth.

“Wait-wait, I-I can’t,” he panted.

“Shit,” Steve cursed, hands raised and mouth set in disappointed frown. “Sorry, I should have known. A catch like you, of course you have a boyfriend.”

Eddie’s mouth fell open of its own accord.

He did alright as far as hook-ups went but—

A catch? 

Him?

He shook his head, disbelief briefly robbing him of his ability to speak yet again, something Steve seemed to have a talent for.

“Oh,” Steve chirped, rubbing nervously at the back of his neck. “Um… girlfriend?”

“I’m not opposed,” Eddie managed, the proud bisexual in him feeling the need to clarify. “But no, no girlfriend either.”

“So, what is it then?” Steve asked, a small grin returning to his lips, looking equal parts hopeful and confused. “Am I not your type?”

Eddie heaved a sigh, pushing off the wall to pace the short length of the tile floor. “It’s Chrissy, my friend out there? This guy she’s supposed to marry tomorrow, he’s… well, he’s a fucking monster, is what he is. Tonight is my last chance to save her from a fate worse than death! And as much as I'd like to get to know you better in this remarkably spotless bathroom for a bar—”

Steve snorted from the sidelines where he’d been watching Eddie’s rant, head tilted like an amused puppy. “Thanks, cleaned it myself.”

“So you see?” Eddie went on, throwing his hands up in defeat. “I just can’t afford that kind of distraction right now.”

“Right, okay,” Steve bobbed his head in a nod as if he understood, but his mouth twisted into a smirk. “Are you always this dramatic?”

“Who’s side are you on?!” Eddie squawked.

With another soft laugh, the kind that made the corners of his eyes crinkle, Steve joined him in the middle of the floor, cupping his face and gazing at him with a look that was far too fond for a pair of strangers who’s just met. 

Even if they had already swapped spit in various and lovely ways. 

Somehow though, when Steve touched him, they didn’t feel much like strangers at all. 

“Definitely yours, gorgeous,” Steve said, leaning in to press a chaste kiss to his cheek. “What can I do to help?” 

The plan was simple.

Under the guise of chatting about their own failed romantic pasts, Steve and Eddie would casually mention as many deal breakers as possible that might apply to Chrissy and Jason. Eddie had more than enough inside information to help lead them in the right direction and Steve seemed strangely familiar with toxic relationships. 

After a quick huddle Eddie returned to his bar stool at Chrissy’s side, arriving just in time to see her typing furiously and frowning at her phone, an all too familiar sight, and he knew without having to peek at her screen exactly who was texting her. 

Chrissy placed the phone face down on the bar when she noticed he was back, her smile returning in full force like everything was still sunsets and rainbows. She was getting far too good at that these days. If he hadn’t seen the quick switch, he'd have no idea that anything was wrong.

“There you are,” she said, taking her almost empty drink in hand. “Did you fall in?”

“Har har,” Eddie shot her a dull look. At the same moment, Steve reappeared through the service door behind the bar and headed their way.

Chrissy’s eyes narrowed, taking one look between the two of them before leaning in to whisper in Eddie’s ear. “Or should I say, did you fall to your knees in there?”

Oh god did he wish.

“I wasn’t gone that long. Even someone with my skills needs time to work his magic!” He hissed, straightening as Steve drew closer. “He was helping me dry my hair, that’s all.”

She hummed suspiciously, but let it go.

“Another round for you two?” Steve asked.

“Sure!” Chrissy said.

Eddie held up his hand before either of them could even ask. “Just the beer this time, please. I don’t care how boring it is.”

In reality he would love to consume all of his alcohol by way of Steve’s mouth for the foreseeable future, but alas, there was work to be done. A full pint glass was slid in front of him seconds later, without commentary, though he did get another wink from Steve that warmed him down to his toes. He reached for it, and shouldn’t have been as surprised as he was when Chrissy aimed and fired, landing that damn pink penis straw right in his glass.

“Come on,” Eddie whined. “No one drinks beer through a straw.” He took a sip from the side of the glass to illustrate his point, and got a dick to the nose for his trouble. 

Steve let out an obviously fake cough to hide his laugh.

“I don’t know how you drink that stuff anyway, it’s disgusting,” she said, grimacing.

“You know,” Steve began, doing that thing bartenders do where they polish up glasses that are already clean. “Speaking of disgusting drinks, I once broke up with a guy because he kept buying orange juice with pulp in it.”

Oookay.

Well, it wasn’t the smoothest transition ever, but with a little tequila running through her system Chrissy didn’t seem to notice, only letting out a little giggle as she shouted, “What?!”

“Maybe it’s silly, but in my defense, he knew I hated it. Then he’d get mad because he’d bought it just for me, and I—wasn’t being grateful enough.” The last Steve said with honest to god air quotes, and Eddie fell a little in love on the spot.

“Aww,” Chrissy leaned over the bar to pat Steve’s arm. “That’s not silly at all! You deserve whatever type of juice you prefer, and a partner who listens to you.”

Eddie wanted to scream. If only she’d hold the same standard for herself that she wished for a relative stranger, this whole thing could have been avoided!

Instead he took a long swig of his beer, holding the pink penis safely away from his face this time, and casually slid into the conversation. “Kinda reminds me of that time Jason got you a strawberry shortcake for your birthday.”

Chrissy scoffed, crossing her arms defensively. “You’re never gonna let that go are you?”

Eddie shrugged, trying to stay calm as his heart beat out of his chest. He hadn’t meant to hit a nerve so early on. 

“Well, that’s not the same thing at all,” she muttered, turning to Steve like she felt the need to defend Jason’s honor. “He felt so bad about it. Eddie didn’t see how upset he was after everyone left.”

“I bet,” Eddie shot under his breath. Fucking guy could have killed her. He had no doubt that Jason had freaked out after they all left, probably faked crying even and made it all about himself and how bad he felt. 

“Don’t like strawberries?” Steve asked, innocently hitting the nail right on its head.

“No, um,” Chrissy faltered, chewing on her bottom lip. “I’m allergic.” 

“There it is,” Eddie said, unable to help himself.

“At least Jason remembered my birthday,” she shot back with venom. “What was that one’s name again, Eddie?”

Eddie buried his head in his hands. He hadn’t really stopped to consider the painful consequences of a stroll down his own memory lane, cluttered with the ghosts of his terrible exes past, being part of the agenda.

“Billy,” he grumbled out between his fingers. “He was a piece of work.”

“Please tell me you broke up with him for that,” Steve said.

“Nope!” Chrissy announced gleefully. “Stayed with him for another six months.”

Eddie wanted to kick her.

He raised embarrassed eyes, feeling pathetic as he met Steve’s sad gaze. Steve’s hands twitched like he wanted to reach out, but someone started to flag him down from the other end of the bar and he was forced to step away.

“That was a low blow, Chris,” Eddie said after a beat, draining the last of the beer from his glass as he watched Steve work.

“You started it,” she said, elbowing him in the ribs for good measure, which was fair.. “Besides, what’s the problem? Now Steve totally feels bad for you!”

“Are you trying to land me a pity fuck?”

She shrugged, swirling the tip of her finger around the rim of her glass. “I dunno, I think if we played our cards right we could land you a pity wedding date for tomorrow.”

Eddie took a long blink, half lost in a fantasy world where he got to see Steve all dolled up and wearing a suit just for him, half disappointed to realize he hadn’t made so much as a dent in her delulu armor yet.

The clock was ticking, and he was starting to wonder if this whole plan was stupid. Maybe it was time to just lay it all out in plain english, black and white, and hope for the best.

“It’s funny that you brought up Billy. He’s the only guy I ever dated that Jason got along with. I wonder why that is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chrissy asked, her tone sharp.

“Birds of a feather and all that.” Eddie knew there were probably a hundred better ways to go about this, but at the end of the day there was no path through this that wasn’t going to hurt.

Chrissy let her head fall back, letting out a long suffering sigh. “Look, I know you think he’s an asshole, but—”

“I don’t think, I know,” Eddie plowed ahead, cutting her off. “He treats you like shit, honey. The strawberry thing was bad enough but it’s like he can never be wrong about anything! I’ve never heard him apologize to you, not once! He’s manipulative, controlling, has something to say about everything you wear, what you eat, how much time you spend with me—”

Not halfway through his speech she was out of her seat, trying to walk away.

But Eddie wasn’t having it. He slid out of his stool to follow her, still talking the whole time. “Whether you want to admit it or not, he has isolated you from all of your friends, and I think if your mother wasn’t exactly like him, he’d have cut you off from your parents too! He won’t let you get a dog, he forgot your last two anniversaries—”

“Eddie, stop!” She shouted suddenly, whirling on her heel to face him. “You two have been at each other’s throats for years and I'm sick of it! I’m tired of being caught in the middle. It’s like you’re trying to make me choose between you and it’s not fair!”

“—And he cheated on you!”

“What did you say?” She reared back as if he’d struck her, and it broke Eddie’s heart. 

He felt more than saw when Steve came up behind him, a warmth at his back and soft words asking him if he was alright, telling him to stay calm, but how could he?

“I saw it, Chris, with my own two eyes,” Eddie said, pleading with her to just believe him. 

“I-I don’t…” she stuttered out. “Why are you pushing this? Don’t you want me to be happy?”

“Of course I do!” Eddie took her face in his hands, his heart aching terribly. “Babe, of course I want you to be happy, but I know you’re not happy with him. I don’t understand why you’d do this to yourself. Why do you stay with him?”

“Because he loves me, Eddie!” She cried. She grabbed at his wrists but didn’t pull his hands away. If anything she was holding on for dear life, and leaning into his touch. “Who else would put up with me?”

Put up with her?

Oh, Jason was officially a dead man.

Eddie was about to say just that, and tell Chrissy that the right person would count themselves lucky to have her, that it was her who was settling for less than she deserved, not Jason, but a loud scuffle at the main entrance drew their attention.

Speak of the devil.

“There she is,” Jason said, sauntering over with the casual air of a nighttime stroll, as if he hadn’t just weaseled his way into the bar by force. The bouncer followed, face red and full of rage, but Jason’s two sidekicks, Andy and Patrick, remained by the door with one eye on Jason and the other on the exit.

Cowards.

Steve seemed to have put two and two together, and in the most swoon-worthy move imaginable, stepped out in front of Eddie and Chrissy like the world’s sexiest guard dog.

“What are you doing with my bride-to-be?” Jason asked with squinted eyes as he stepped up to Steve, puffing out his chest like that would somehow make up for the three inches of height difference between them. 

Steve raised his hands, palms out. “Hey man, no one here is looking for any trouble. Truth be told, I'm a little more interested in the maid of honor.”

“What are you doing here, Carver? Don’t you have your own party to be at?” Eddie spat, moving to Steve’s side with Chrissy hanging off his back. As much of a turn on as this was, he didn’t need Steve to defend him from this prick.

“I just wanted to see how my girl was doing, that’s all. Is that a crime?” Jason growled.

That would have usually been Chrissy’s cue to speak up, to start making excuses for Jason’s behavior and go with him to calm him down, but this time she stayed quiet, arms shaking where they clung to Eddie.

“You mean stalking?” Eddie scoffed. “Yeah, actually. That is a crime.”

Jason lunged till he was practically nose-to-nose with Eddie, spitting as he shouted, “it’s not stalking if she’s mine, freak.”

“That’s enough!” The female bouncer announced, swiftly latching on to one of Jason’s arms and locking it behind his back.

“Don’t touch me, dyke,” Jason bellowed, trying and failing to shake himself loose from her grasp.

Eddie didn’t even flinch but Chrissy let out a shocked gasp. It certainly wasn’t the first time Jason had used a slur, but maybe it was the first time she’d really let herself hear it.

The woman, for her part, simply laughed, muttering “I am what I am,” putting more and more pressure on Jason’s arm until he cried out in pain and started to drag him away. 

“Wait!” Chrissy yelled, finally darting out from behind Eddie.

“Baby?” Jason called out.

The bouncer paused, to Eddie’s dismay, but didn’t let go of Jason’s arm, letting her Chrissy get as close as she dared.

For a terrifying moment Eddie thought he’d lost her, that she was going to stay with Jason like she always had, but then she wound up, pulled her fist back, and punched him square in the face with a satisfying crack.

Eddie had never been more proud.

“Just to be clear,” she said, as they all watched blood begin to trickle out of Jason’s nose. “The wedding is off.”

“You little bitch, I—” Jason’s voice broke off in a wordless scream as the bouncer wrenched his other arm behind his back and frog marched him to the door.

Eddie quickly rushed to Chrissy’s side and scooped her up in his arms.

“That felt good,” she mumbled into his chest as she melted into the hug.

“You okay?” Eddie whispered into her hair, rocking her back and forth.

After a few she pulled back to look at him, eyes wet but a fierce smile on her lips. “Yeah, I will be.”

They stayed at the bar until last call, learning over many rounds of free drinks sent with condolences from other patrons, that Steve was not only the bartender, but that he owned the place along with his best friend Robin, who just so happened to be the bouncer who’d helped save the day.

The four of them chatted all night, and when closing time came Steve and Robin accompanied Eddie and Chrissy back to Eddie’s apartment to keep her company, and cheer her up after what had to be one of the toughest nights of her life.

To no one’s surprise, Eddie and Steve wasted no time getting together, sneaking off in the wee hours of the morning to Eddie’s bedroom once the girls had passed out on the couch, fucking until the sun came up. 

They made things official halfway through brunch that very afternoon.

It took six months for Chrissy to come out as bisexual and three more for her to admit she had a crush on Robin specifically. All understandable given the big break up. But exactly one year to the day, in the same bar where the foursome had met and saved Chrissy from making a terrible mistake, she pulled Robin out to the middle of the dance floor and kissed her square on the mouth in front of all of their new friends.

Thanks to the lovely @penny00dreadful and @pearynice for all the beta work and cheerleading as usual!

Permanent taglist (open): @penny00dreadful @pearynice @hitlikehammers @sidekick-hero @firefly-party

@bookworm0690 @wonderland-girl143-blog  @goodolefashionedloverboi @themagicalari @awkwardgravity1

@rocknrollsalad @eternal-sunflowers @cringe-culture-is-dead-99

[malachiwardyt]

Hello again, podcast side of Tumblr.

Entities Explained has officially come to a close with the final episode explaining the End. If you didn't know, Entities Explained has been a series where I, over the course of the last year and change, have explained each of the Fears from hit horror anthology podcast The Magnus Archives. This is the longest episode of the series, but I think it's totally worth watching.

Also, this video contains a major announcement: I am currently working on a MASSIVE video explaining The Magnus Archives in as much detail as I possibly can. Hopefully, it'll be a great refresher course before Protocol, and trying to get it done in a month won't absolutely destroy me.

For the art, I decided to draw the moment from Oliver Banks' statement in MAG 121: Far Away where he and the rest of the crew on a research vessel are destroyed by falling satellite pieces. I wanted the whole piece to be very dark and to have this slightly dusty feel to it, which I think I succeeded at.

I went back and forth a lot on what to dress Banks in, but, in the end (pun intended), I went with something a bit more casual, since he is mostly just hanging around a shipping vessel. If I ever drew him as The Coroner, I'd probably go with something more formal (full black suit with a wilted red flower on the lapel?), but this felt fitting. I also wanted to give him a rain coat because, hey, I imagine it gets pretty rainy out there.

Unfortunately, Banks' design doesn't get to shine through too much in this piece, since his back is to the audience but, for one, I think that's sort of fitting for his themes, and, two, it makes the composition, at least in my mind, a bit more interesting.

The falling satellite was something I experimented around with a lot. Using reference pictures of real satellites, I tried to get something that felt small, but also like it could do some serious damage. The motion blur was a late addition, but I can't say I don't like it.

The moon was always going to be an important part of this piece, but it was during the sketching phase that I realised I could make it into a bit of a stylised skull, which is just a subtle enough detail to be fun. The angular clouds were originally meant to cut through it, but I settled on it being in full view instead, which I think looks much better.

Finally, there's the veins themselves. I actually went with less of them than I originally planned because I think it felt less repetitive, but I'm really happy with the way they turned out. My one addition was adding a pop of colour to this very drab and grey piece (which could, now that I think about it, be seen as a parallel to the desaturated people in Banks' dreams) in the form of the red flowing through the veins. This is technically only described as happening when Banks saw Gertrude Robinson in his dreams, but I figured, if there was another time for it, it was in the moment that he was truly in the grasp of Terminus. I also, honestly, just think it looks better.

That wraps up Entities Explained, so I hope y'all have enjoyed this series while it lasted. I'm not going to stop Magnus content, as I have plenty of ideas already and I'm sure Protocol will only bring more, but I am interested to see where my content goes from here. If you've read this far, thank you so much for listening to my ramblings and, if you celebrate, enjoy your holidays. Good night, Tumblr people!

[tobias-nf]

2024 recap and 2025 plans.

Another year has passed so I'm here once again with a sitrep on my deskspace. Beyond the one large project, moving my PC to the FormD T1 and the custom loop that accompanied it there weren't a lot of changes. Though two smaller things were replaced that didn't warrant their own posts so I'll go over those before laying out the plans for the future projects I'm planning.

One of those smaller things was my Sennheiser IE300 falling apart. Starting sometime this spring the two halves on one of the shells got gradually looser and even separated occasionally when I removed it from my ear. This was fine for a while but back in June (somewhat unsurprisingly) the stress on the wires from the shell coming apart was finally too much and one of them snapped off. In retrospect I wonder if cleaning them with isopropanol caused this, the two halves were only glued together from the looks of it and applying the alcohol at least once a week might've removed the adhesive over time.

By pure coincidence Chris Person of Aftermath (who is someone I have a lot of trust in when it comes to basically any tech) published an article on IEMs the day after mine broke so I didn't have to do much digging to find a suitable replacement [link]. Luckily the IEM market these days is incredibly competitive and what I ended up with was a pair of Truthear ZERO:REDs for €59.98, which is about half the price of what I paid for the IE300. I'm not really an audiophile so I can't get all technical on them but from a purely personal preference point of view I flat-out enjoy the sound of the ZERO:RED over the Sennheiser ones by a good margin. The only complaint I have about the new IEMs is that it took a while to get a decent fit with the included ear tips. The medium-sized ones were the only ones that worked on my ears but only just barely, being so big that the IEMs would occasionally even pop out on their own as I couldn't insert them deep enough (the small-sized ear tips on the other hand were the polar opposite, way too small to get a good fit so they'd also fall out). Fortunately the medium-sized ones seemed to have adjusted in shape from daily use over the course of a few months to the point where they now have a very comfortable and secure fit (the failsafe option if this didn't happen would have been to look into aftermarket ear tips). The vivid red faceplate on the new IEMs is also a nice change compared to the drab look of the IE300, so overall the Truthear ZERO:RED were a really great purchase and I'm hoping that they'll last for a good while.

The other small change was swapping out my Xbox Design Lab controller for a DualSense. No grand reason behind this change, I just got curious about how Sony's offering compared to the Microsoft one in terms of ergonomics. The overall build quality and button feel of both controllers is basically the same, either one seems decent and there's nothing that really makes one stand out from the other. Though one thing to keep in mind when using the DualSense on PC is that the haptic feedback only works when wired, in my case this wasn't an issue at all as I only use it seated at my desk and the USB-C cable gets wrapped around the monitor arm when not in use so there's no extra clutter created. In the end the symmetric stick layout on the DualSense felt more comfortable to me and the Design Lab controller went on to find a new home through eBay like any other still functional hardware that I retire.

So what is planned next? Well, since it's about time for the annual coolant change of the custom loop I'll use that as an opportunity to make a few adjustments to it, specifically to the EXT. Back when I was originally making the plans for this whole T1 build I was expecting Noctua's next generation of 140mm fans to have been released but the release date kept being pushed back, but now after almost a decade of development they're finally available. I ended up getting a full set of 8 of them for a push-pull setup, cable management is going to be even more tricky with this many but I'll be able to squeeze out the best performance and noise levels from the radiator this way. The EK X560M radiator is also going to be replaced with a Hardware Labs one that should be able to make full use of these high-end fans. All the new parts for this project have arrived already and the plan is to assemble everything over the end of the year holidays.

The other, much bigger project that I'm currently planning is about changing my HOTAS setup. At the moment I'm using an all VKB setup with a Gunfighter Mk.III stick base that's paired with their aluminum MCG Ultimate grip via a 200mm extension, all attached to the desk with a UCM-L mount and below it are T-Rudder Mk.IV rudder pedals with the older cylindrical-shaped pedal design. The throttle is a GNX THQ, it's a bit of an odd choice compared to the other sim hardware and was only meant as a cheap stopgap solution initially as VKB's more advanced throttle, the STECS had not yet been released back when I got the other parts (though I never got around to switching to it even though it's been available for well over a year by now). Oh and also as a sidenote I fly in VR with a Valve Index, that's why the stick and pedals are not in front of the monitor.

The DCS Mi-24P is currently the only aircraft I fly so having a setup where your hands are on the throttle/collective while flying at basically all times is the ideal, the GNX THQ being placed on the desk where I have to reach so far forward to access the throttle levers is pretty much the opposite of that. Improving the ergonomics of my simpit is one goal but there's also the somewhat recent development of force feedback flight sim hardware making a comeback, RedKite made a great video on how FFB works in DCS in its most basic implementation and why even just that can be a game changer for certain types of aircraft (it's also a neat example of how flight sticks on real aircraft behave and how they differ from the typical spring-centered joysticks made for flight sims) [link]. One thing to note about most of these newer FFB stick bases is that they don't seem very suited for use with desk mounts as they're pretty large and heavy, not to mention all the extra force created by the motors in them. This had me looking into those aluminum profiles that are commonly used for racing sim rigs, though I'm not planning on building something all that complex with a dedicated seat and all but instead just a stand for the stick, pedals and throttle to mount onto that can be used with my desk chair. I'm pretty sure on what stick base and rudders to get but still undecided on the grip and throttle so this project is currently still in the early planning phase.

Getting a proper, actually ergonomic HOTAS setup will also be the last big project for my deskspace (at least in the foreseeable future), with it complete I'll have everything I want out of my little hobby corner covered. Now this won't mean that there'll be nothing to work on after, it'll just be more incremental upgrades like the aforementioned changes to the EXT and more importantly I also want to start getting a little more creative. What I mean by the latter is that up till now I've mostly just assembled stuff but I haven't really created something proper, something more in the direction of DIY so that'll be the big goal moving forward. Well this basically wraps everything up, 2025 is shaping up to be another fun year for deskspace projects and I'm excited to share them on here in due time!

(≧◡≦)

[therealslimshakespeare]

https://www.tumblr.com/precious-little-scoundrel/759852750835269632/httpswwwtumblrcomprecious-little-scoundrel75?source=share

Oh I'll ask, because WHAT DO YOU MEAN Marina? And does the situation evolve as they are going through it? And does it change from the doctor's tactics to the SS tactics. Because I feel like awhile back you might have said in response to an ask that Gale was putting himself between Lu and the SS so I got the opinion he's just taking whatever abuse/punishment they dole out in that scenario. But I also get the teeniest impression that the doctor situation is more complicated and that both Gale and Jack might be forced in a way to act against each other but it's probably worse for the commanding officer in that scenario because the guilt would be intense??? Let me know if I am way off, I am begging for your thoughts

Aaaaaah hello ok ok!! Hehe.

Screamed at another anon about some reasoning behind this here if you’d like to see it.

But yes you’re really tracking. Common tactic with the SS was to use allies against each other to erode respect, trust and the chain of command. Requiring officers (most or Soviet or resistance fighters) to abuse or hurt subordinates, etc, and sometimes in the resistance, for instance, both men or women might agree, to make it technically a belligerent consent between those two. Doesn’t take away the real and horrific coercion compelling them.

But also yes, you nailed it again. The doctor is mostly a creepy medical dude before the SS, but between Brady being Ida’s brother, Gale’s protectiveness for smith, etc, they become the perfect people to point out to the newly come SS as both lynch pins and targets.

Although (SPOILERS) they will technically be forced to act against each other, Gale and Brady are lock step agreed to take it, and they are unified and as loving and respectful in the between as possible. As suits their character. But they do disintegrate in many ways and you can imagine how after liberation they were a muddled mess of guilt and shame to sort out. Just as the Nazis fucks intended 😭😭

Tiny little sneak peak since you’re so curious:

He kept saying -Brady, Jack, the kid kept saying- with every thump and jerk, kept saying in an assuring mumble “It doesn’t hurt sir.” -like that made anything better at all.

Jack said it again when they both stumbled down the hut’s outdoor steps, both of them squinting into the beaming glare of the setting sun, the last hours of their day already used up unpleasantly. Jack was rolling his sleeves down, he was muttering “doesn’t hurt at all” as he hid quarter sized bruises along his forearms beneath drab olive, fastidiously fastening the buttons at his wrists. His hair looked close to black it was so drenched from sweat.

“Brady.” Gale insisted on a halt before the kid rushed right back to the combine. It didn’t feel right to have this chat on what was practically the quack’s front porch, but then, where better? “Look at me, stop a minute and- Jack.”

Brady never had been anything less than excellent at eye contact, poker face too. Except when he was mad. He wasn’t mad now, not that Cleven could tell, Cleven wondered how many months of this it took for the anger to fade into whatever this brusque apathy was.

“Major?”

Gale itched at the bridge of his nose, his own sweat drying there. “This hasn’t got a damn thing to do with your pain tolerance.” he reminded, “Or that -that fuckin’ little hammer.” They both allowed a moment of disgust to pass between them before he went on, hands on his hips and all the old bearing he could summon, “Brady, he’s goin’ for our minds, you know that. Better than me. This hasn't got shit to do with pain and I need to know-“ Gale sniffed, rough and angry, rather like a bull himself, eyes frustrated and wild like Johnny had never really seen them, “Jack, I need to know what else. Because, he’s not gonna stop here. S’not gonna be just little hammers till we get out. He’s gonna want more and more and there’s not shit we can do besides-“

When he failed to submit to the reality of it all verbally, Johnny muttered it for him- “Besides give it. So they don’t have to. Any of them.”

“Yeah.” Gale’s jaw kept ticking but his maddened eyes were sagging with fatigue, “I’m gonna try with the Commandant. But…”

Brady scoffed, nothing against Cleven it was only he’d been thinking of Fritz, of how even some of the guards weren’t free of the fucking lab coat. “That could backfire.” he observed, because he’d thought about it, he knew Ida had weighed it, he’d decided against it every time.

Cleven just shook his head. He was likely going to try. And that was kind of him, very like him to try to do it. And probably useless all the same

[back-and-totheleft]

Three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone has gone back to his roots for Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador and the Movie Game. Just published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the book is a personal reminiscence, the coming of age of a great filmmaker. Stone describes in detail everything from his experience in Vietnam, liberal drug use upon his return that once almost got him tried on drug smuggling charges, finding and losing love, and scratching his way from being a part-time cab driver to an Oscar winner for his Midnight Express script in just 18 months.

Chasing the Light is a gracefully written memoir with plenty of dish about the formation of a great career. Bottom line: Sure, talent helps, and Stone had it both as writer (Midnight Express, Scarface) and director. But the real keys are an iron will to succeed and a willingness to steamroll or find ways around those in the way. Stone regarded films like Salvador and Platoon as life-and-death propositions, risking much to create edgy pictures reflective of the pent-up rage he honed in the jungle patrols of Vietnam and channeled into storytelling. Here, Stone revisits those days, and much more.

DEADLINE: Why the urge to write your own coming-of-age-as-a-filmmaker story? Who is the audience you are aiming for?

OLIVER STONE: I wrote a self-confessional novel when I was 19, which was published in 1997 as A Child’s Night Dream, so I’ve always had the writing bug in me. I consider myself a writer and a director. Sometimes I co-wrote, and sometimes I directed things I didn’t write, but there’s a side of me that’s my mother, another that’s my father. My father’s side is the writer’s side. My mother’s side is the director’s side. So, let’s say there’s an urge in me to write, and hopefully this is not my last book. But this is my first real attempt at confessional type of literature since that book I wrote at 19 years old.

And then, over the years, people have asked me many questions, as I’ve been to different colleges, universities all over the world. How I got started, how I wrote my first scripts — how do you do things in the film business? I wanted to write some conclusions that I’ve come to. There is, at times, a teaching element in this book. I remember stopping to explain what a sound mix means to Platoon and how it’s very important not to do a certain kind of mix, and it’s very important to learn how to say no to experts, expert technical people. Because they’ll tell you do it this way, and you have to learn how to say no, and sometimes that’s very difficult. So, there are a lot of lessons in the book.

DEADLINE: It is always refreshing to see that even a filmmaker with three Oscars on his mantel started with little, and you capture your desperation in recounting films like Salvador, where you bluffed your way to the finish, doing crazy explosion scenes with nervous actors, keeping the completion bond company at bay and finding money in dribs and drabs…

STONE: Sometimes it’s as simple as, “Just get it done. We’re struggling here, this is the end of the line, we have to shoot this at any cost, and we have to get it right.” Sometimes it was not the most subtle direction. … I felt like, in Platoon, that the script was written, it was there. I wasn’t a director yet, but I was learning to be a director, and how to direct actors and such. It was about getting it done for a price, a low-budget price. You’re old enough to remember, to have a sense of how low those budgets were for both Salvador and Platoon.

DEADLINE: Shoestring, for sure.

STONE: Salvador was half [the budget] of Platoon, so you can imagine how insane a proposition it was. I use it as a lesson to teach that if you want to make a movie, sometimes you can will it. You can just will it into being because you want it so bad. I mean, how crazy were we, [co-writer] Richard Boyle and I, to go down to [El] Salvador to lobby a corrupt government with a right-wing military into giving us their military equipment to make a film halfway about them crushing the guerrillas? And then the plan was to go to Mexico and do the other side of the story. That’s insane, but you see, out of that willingness, out of that desire to get it made at any cost, sell my mother … well, probably not that, but mortgage my house. I had a new baby. I was 39 years old, and I had two failures as a director. It wasn’t easy, you know, to put it all on the line, and I was willing to. Thank God, my ass got saved by John Daly, who I give credit to for both films, Salvador and Platoon.

Also, part of the reason you write a confessional type of book like this is that you really want to come to terms with yourself and, what is the meaning of my life? So I decided to end this in 1986 because, in a sense, that was the first part of my life — achieving a dream at any cost. I had an approval issue with my father, of course, like a lot of people do, and unfortunately, he didn’t see it. He didn’t live to see it, but it was, as I say at the end of the book — at Chapter 10, right before the Oscar, the closeout of the book — I say I’ve reached a place where I’ve come to terms with what Vietnam was for me and what it did to our country. But I say there’s a bigger story here, and it’s a story that we were responsible for the bombing and the murder of some 3 million civilians, and that is a much larger issue than the story of my platoon.

DEADLINE: There is an enormity to that discussion that certainly goes beyond a personal recollection…

STONE: And there’s that paragraph where I write that I was scared of these thoughts, scared of where it would take me. You have a sense of where I’m going to go in time, where I’m going to end up, like, being much more critical of the political structure than I was then, but these were baby steps. This was that first inkling. Politically, I moved from my father’s conservative world, you know, the Wall Street, Eisenhower-type. Gradually. Vietnam didn’t change me overnight, like it did Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July.

DEADLINE: You had a better perspective than most, being in a platoon, in firefights and getting injured in battle…

STONE: It took me years, and you know I was exposed to the Jane Fondas of the world, but it was going back to Salvador, going back to the Central America, seeing Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica and Guatemala, seeing the American military presence there and the spooks in the CIA that convinced me that this was a repeat of what I’d seen in Saigon as a teacher in 1965. So this is what motivated me.

DEADLINE: You taught in Saigon before you enlisted. I will never forget seeing Platoon for the first time. I worked for New York Newsday, had to stay over because of a snowstorm and my Transit Authority supervisor father stayed with me and we went to the movie. We couldn’t talk for a while afterwards, and I recall feeling sick when your alter ego Chris tells his platoon mates that he wasn’t drafted, he actually volunteered for this nightmare. When you were stuck in the mud and the rain, an elusive enemy all around you, what was your lowest moment? Did you regret having put yourself in harm’s way?

STONE: You said lowest moment? No, I didn’t [regret it]. I was 19. Like many adolescents, suicide was certainly in my mind. I’d failed. I’d written a book with my last hope to justify myself in this East Coast competitive world. I wasn’t making it at Yale. My father was pissed at me. Tuition had gone up in smoke. [That book] was a chance to say, “Well, I do have something to offer,” and it was this book. When it was rejected, although it was considered seriously, it devastated me.

Frankly, I thought I’d overstepped, I’d become too narcissistic. I was writing about myself, pretentiously. I really thought I needed to see what the world was really, really, really like. I’d seen enough of it in Vietnam [while teaching], because the war was starting up then. But I didn’t see the real jungle. So I said, “I’m not going to shoot myself, I’m not going to put a bullet in my head, no. But I am going to take this risk, and I’m going to go out there and see what happens, and if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.” I did have that fatalism about it, you know? Also, I was a good Christian at that point, too, in the sense it was up to God. I don’t know that I could say that now, but [back then it was] roll the dice.

DEADLINE: So regret did not haunt your every step, when you saw the lack of a cohesive plan, and carnage all around you…

STONE: No. No. I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t bitch at all. On the contrary, I volunteered an extra three months. I put 15 months in because I wanted to be out of the Army so much. My problem with the Army, and I wrote it in Chapter 3 pretty clearly is that, I hated the rules, the regulations. I hated the Man, the authority figure, the bullying, the constant bullying which is all over the Army, and that’s why I wanted to get out of it. That’s why I related to the Black soldiers the best, because they had the same attitude. They didn’t believe in the war. They thought it was bullshit. So when I see them, I make a point of that connection, because it kept me … and if you saw Platoon, you know that that was the music, the grass, this was very important to [Chris]. And then the prison experience after the war, right away, on top of it, drives home this … split in America that you saw in the young people in the ’60s. You see it again now. I mean there’s a big split, the same split.

DEADLINE: You mean your incarceration after you got back and tried to find your footing and got caught with weed on a return trip from Mexico, facing federal smuggling charges and a five- to 20-year sentence? Besides real experience that grounded your writing on Salvador and Platoon, what did your war experience give you? From your description, the locations and shooting of those two films with challenging actors sounded as miserable as your description of Vietnam warfare. Both seemed pretty awful.

STONE: Yeah. Salvador was the most chaotic film I ever made, next to maybe Seizure, my first film, no question, but Salvador was a classic, and I don’t think people would believe some of the stuff we did. You know, we set out with very little money to make 93 speaking parts of civil war, assassinations, death squads, everything, the works, a war, a battle. It’s a big deal, and we did it with just … wishes. I wrote somewhere about what the jungle did to me. … I’m just looking for it. …going to film school was a different experience, this is Page 63, because now I had a new acquired savagery from seeing it for real in Vietnam, an instinct I learned, and I knew in my gut that this savagery was necessary to see, to feel, to hear, everything, above all, the six inches in front of my face. My senses were now joined with this new thing, this 16-millimeter camera, Bolex, Arriflex, whatever you could get from the school equipment store, which would become my ears and eyes to record everything around me.

My eyes had grown omnipresent and nervous in the jungle. They’d become 360, ears attuned to the slightest shift in sound … and then it goes on to talk about you use those senses in the jungle, that that’s what I learned, to fucking think and feel and be and react and use the space around you. And of course, I had the cerebral side from my education, my upbringing, but it was too cerebral. I couldn’t function. If I was cerebral, I wouldn’t have survived. In fact, I got my ass kicked for the first few weeks in the jungle. I was the newbie, like Charlie Sheen in the picture, and you see it, and the idea in Platoon was that the boy, Charlie, goes to the dark side too. He becomes a killer. And he takes away from the war part of Elias, who existed, and a part from Barnes. Somebody told me they didn’t think that those sergeants ever existed, but I make clear in the book that they existed. But in different units, and I brought them together in my imagination.

DEADLINE: You tell a story about how a Filipino production manager on Salvador moved rigging which you told him not to do, and it took two hours to put it back. You wrote that you kicked him in the butt, and then he came back and hit you with a bag that supposedly had a gun in it, and you were told there was a rumor that someone was going to put a contract on your life. How frightened are you in these moments?

STONE: Well, frankly, I’d been through a lot on Salvador. I mean after Salvador, we were used to anything happening. Mexico is rough, too. I mean there was a lot of shit with Jimmy Woods … there were contracts out on Jimmy, I think. You had to take it with a grain of salt. Hey, I was almost killed, actually, on Seizure, on my first film, which I didn’t much talk about. But the special effects man came after me with a machete. When you’re struggling, it’s part of the deal. I was tough, at the end, I mean that we toughened up in the jungle. It was hard. Every day mattered. We couldn’t lose an hour, and this jerkoff was… every day, the fire trucks were late. He had excuses and blah, blah, blah, and I just, I wanted… I’m the only guy who pays when we’re late. In other words, if we don’t get the day in on a low-budget film, you got to cut from script. And the script was sacred to me. I was fighting for my script, so any attack on the time on the film was an attack on the script, and that was the most important thing. You can see that I would go crazy. Sometimes, we didn’t even have 50 percent of the crew working. It was that hard.

DEADLINE: Hey Oliver, what happened with the guy trying to kill you with the machete?

STONE: Oh, on Seizure? He never found me. I knew he was looking for me. He was drunk, and I was…and they got me out of the house because they didn’t want to have a confrontation. He was insane. He was fired. There was a whole story behind it, too, but…

DEADLINE: You describe in detail the complexities of working in rough locations with Jim Belushi and Jimmy Woods on Salvador. On Platoon, what did you need to do to coax Charlie Sheen to be the best version of Chris and Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger to turn in those intense performances?

STONE: I think it was there in the script…and in the book I write that I don’t think I made that huge a contribution as a director because I was learning the ropes. It was more about getting the shots, setting up the whole thing. It was in the script, what Charlie was. Yeah, there were a couple of talks [with Charlie] and I’d outline it, and then I had Dale Dye, who was doing a lot of the technical work, and he had a very good memory of all the details. He was a real lifer, a Marine, and they were getting all the equipment down and figuring out how to walk in the jungle, how do you operate? For me, to get reality, it was enough just that they never slept, so I pushed them hard on the sleeping part and we tried to keep them up. We broke all the f*cking SAG rules, as you can imagine. There’s no 12-hour turnaround when you’re working like that. God, and we lost a few actors at one point. I talk about that [in the book]. I wanted to get them just physically worn down. But they loved it. I mean, they got into it. They were actors. They loved being military. They never had had that experience in their lives, and here was the real thing, or as close to the real thing as they could get. Berenger, Dafoe … were leaders, but there was an eclectic cast from all over the country. They all helped each other. It was wonderful to see. So it was not really like what films would become for me later, with rehearsals and this and that where you build the concept of the movie. It was already there, in the writing. It was in me and Dale. If you take a look in our faces, we knew what was going on. We knew how it would look, how it should look.

DEADLINE: You’ve said a key to making it is not being willing to compromise your vision. You discuss the conflict over whether to have Chris kill Barnes after that crazy firefight, this after he knows that Barnes killed Elias. You write: “Should Chris Taylor not kill Barnes? Walk away? Leave his miserable soul in hell? In movies the hero is never supposed to stoop to the level of the villain – never. It’s a rule instilled in theatrical dramaturgy and, more viscerally, in movie blood. And yet, in the screenplay, I left myself both choices. And when it came time to shoot the film and edit it a decade later, I did what the brutality in me demanded. I killed him. I killed the bastard because I wanted to.” You said it shocked the audience, that some who thought they were watching your personal story called for you to be prosecuted as a war criminal. Oliver, what do you think would have happened to Platoon had you chosen the other path and not had Chris kill Barnes?

STONE: Oh, I think it would’ve been accepted as a movie, but for me, it wouldn’t have been the same thing. It wouldn’t have been as brutal. You see, the movie had to be brutal on an essential level, and you know, I can’t say … it was never a huge issue. No one questioned it, but I did because it was a hypothetical situation: What would I have done? If the platoon had descended to that brutality, which I believe it would’ve under the extreme conditions it was under, it would’ve happened. And by the way, it started to happen a lot more. There’s a lot of fraggings, much more than the Pentagon ever, ever admitted to. I you go into the history of it, they’ll admit to some several hundred fraggings, but it was far more than that, you know? You know what fraggings are, right?

DEADLINE: Killing your commanding officer?

STONE: Yeah. A lot. A lot of that was going on. At one point, the Pentagon issued a report. It was about ’71, I believe, saying that the war in Vietnam had to be terminated, ended or brought to a close because the American troops were on the edge of mutiny, like the French troops were in World War I. It’s a document that you can find in the Pentagon, which means the troops in the field were not cooperating with their officers as much as they used to. They had turned against the war. They thought it was useless because they knew that Lyndon Johnson had quit, and [Richard] Nixon was making all kinds of noise about peace with honor. There was no reason to die in Vietnam. So it got very difficult after ’69. I wasn’t there. I left in ’68. But I was seeing the beginnings of it. After Martin Luther King got shot, there was a lot of dissension.

DEADLINE: You write that you contemplated continuing Chris’ story after Platoon with another movie.

STONE: Oh yeah.

DEADLINE: What were you thinking happened to that young man after he returned, injured in that nightmarish battle?

STONE: As I said in the book, I called it Second Life, and I had written something similar to it, but it was too Sam Peckinpah with too much violence. It would have to have been a different kind of movie. I felt my life in New York was not the usual life of a draftee. When I met Ron Kovic to write Born on the Fourth of July in ’77, I found somebody … now, I hadn’t done Platoon yet, so I had written Born back in ’77. But when I met him, I said, “This guy is more what I think I’m looking for. This is the return home. This is as stark as it can get.” I went with his return, and that kind of vitiated the need to do my return.

DEADLINE: You discuss studying film at NYU on the GI Bill, where Martin Scorsese was what sounds like this hippie professor. You describe making this short 16mm mostly b&w film with no dialogue, Last Year in Vietnam, that contrasted a soldier’s time in the jungle with the New York streets in the winter. You showed it to the class, which was silent at the end. Except for Scorsese, who jumped the discussion by saying, ‘Well, this is a filmmaker.’ You describe it as your coming out, the first affirmation you got, your diploma. Very touching. I wonder how you felt when you watched his film Taxi Driver, which dealt so effectively with a former soldier trying to figure out where to place his rage…

STONE: Oh, Taxi Driver was brilliant. Paul Schrader wrote the script and Marty did a great job. It had nothing to do with me. I wore a green jacket like that, but the guy in their movie was … I don’t know if he’d been a vet. No, I don’t think he’d been a vet. He had not been a vet. He was wearing a veteran’s jacket or pretended to be, but I don’t think he was.

DEADLINE: I thought he was.

STONE: His behavior was psychotic from the get-go. I think it was a wonderful movie, but and some of the details of the taxi are absolutely correct, but it’s just a coincidence because I didn’t start driving until ’70 … yeah, I started driving in ’70, ’71. It was Marty’s first big, big, big movie, and it was a classic. As to what he was like in class, very dynamic, but he wasn’t the Marty that has become this legend in Hollywood. It’s more like he was just a guy on the make, you know? He was great with his energy and his devotion. I compared it to Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest in the sense that he treated movies as sacred, and at the same time, he would talk about them with enormous enthusiasm. But he knew, I think … we all … I knew, at least, that he knew that most of us would not succeed in this. We were dilettantes, masturbating. It wasn’t going to work out for most of us.

DEADLINE: Your experiences writing Midnight Express are fascinating, from getting high and giving an unfocused Golden Globes victory speech that director Alan Parker told you would cost you the Oscar, to winning the Oscar. You write about being upset with the film’s subject, Billy Hayes, who later criticized the movie, saying he did in fact have Turkish friends and that he had smuggled hash into Turkey numerous times. You felt betrayed by how his story changed after the movie came out.

STONE: Well, I heard about it for the first time that he smuggled four times, out of Turkey in 2017 when the documentary came out. So that was almost 30 years after? He comes out and he says, you know, blithely, like, and proudly … you know I’m a drug warrior, it was my fourth time. Well, if I had known that, it would’ve changed the whole nature of the movie. For me, and for Peter Guber and Parker, he was this kid that was innocent. I mean not innocent, but he was naïve, and we could understand that he’d been really … he screwed up, like I went to prison for the same thing, right? And I was not a smuggler. But I was shocked, and so I played off of my own experience, as well as that I felt like I related to Billy.

But it turns out … and he never mentioned this, it was like a scheme and he’d done it before. So when I read that, and plus all the criticism the film had taken … some of the critics hated the movie from the get-go and always did. They still mentioned it because it was a very controversial movie, and it still has a lot of heat, tension to it. You can still see that movie and still be sitting there at the edge of your seat.

DEADLINE: Agreed.

STONE: So some of these critics just hated it because it was vulgar, very popular, and they used Billy’s allegations against the movie. And so Billy was being real smug and saying, you know, “I tried to tell these guys the real story, but they didn’t … they wanted to make a movie,” and blah, blah, blah. It’s all crap. He didn’t mind at all. He vetted the script. He was there. I think Alan Parker threw him off the set. I don’t know. I wasn’t invited, as you know. But when things went well, I think Billy was seen as a promoter even then.

DEADLINE: You wrote a bunch of other memorable scripts, including Conan the Barbarian. I’m imagining that collision of testosterone between you and John Milius and Arnold, can you describe that chemical mix? There must be a good story in there somewhere.

STONE: I wish there were, but unfortunately, you see, after Dino [De Laurentiis] took the project from Ed Pressman, he never came through. He said he would respect our script and all that, but it was just a joke. No, John didn’t even consult. I mean, yeah, I saw him a few times, but I had no say. It wasn’t anything like a collaboration, and Arnold was new to the movies. He was very happy with John, and except for that experience I write about, going and taking him to the beach, I never really had much to do with the movie.

DEADLINE: I’m sure that seeing your words taken in ways you can’t control would be tough, but did you have any idea Arnold would shortly become one of the biggest global stars, Austrian accent and all?

STONE: Well, as I said in the book, I wouldn’t underestimate him because he’s pretty shrewd. You knew he wasn’t going to be Al Pacino, but he was going to be governor of California.

DEADLINE: How surprised are you that people still quote lines from Scarface, with a big remake in the works? Why does that movie, which Brian De Palma directed from your script with Al Pacino as Tony Montana, have such staying power?

STONE: I’ve been hearing for 30 years another movie was going to happen. Are they really making it?

DEADLINE: They say they are.

STONE: Son of Scarface? I don’t know. That’s ridiculous. No, Scarface was just, it had street cred. That’s real and I knew it at the time because I saw it on Broadway, and I could see the crowds were stirred up by it, mostly Black, mostly Latino and New York Puerto Rican and Black, and the white drug crowd, they were reacting. But it was hated by and it was dismissed by most of the critics. It was just like a Midnight Express kind of movie, you know, vulgar.

So, for me, it was, as I said, it was a disappointment because of my fight with [producer Martin] Bregman. Marty and I split, and he was my mentor in many ways, and it was important because I had a script with him. So my hopes went down the drain, and that really, that hurt, and also I got cut off. I mean, they were pissed at me for giving Al my notes, and they never forgave me, Marty and Brian [De Palma] both. So, you know, for me, it was a tough time. I didn’t enjoy it at all, and the script was not admired at that time except … because most of the people in the industry were not street people. So I considered it, in the end, an inside-the-park home run because it really did work, and people loved it in its crazy way, and it’s gotten me a lot of free drinks and a lot of … I got into Salvador’s right-wing party with it, and I used it … many times, it came in handy.

DEADLINE: After your Vietnam experience, and Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, I was surprised to read that at one point Don Simpson offered you the job writing Top Gun. You write about how movies like Patton glorified war, and killing. How would your version have differed from the gung-ho one that we saw on the screen and which has a sequel coming when theaters reopen?

STONE: Top Gun? I saw it again, recently. I think it’s enjoyable as a beautifully made film by Tony Scott. I mean he certainly had a style about him and a class, the music, you know, the big guns, the whole macho thing. But ultimately, if you pay attention to the movie, it’s a very dangerous message because it basically encourages the concept of war, the concept of competing against Russian pilots and beating them and teasing them in the air and doing all those things that are crazy. This is serious business, and Americans always treat war like a bit of a fantasy, like a video game. That’s what I think is most dangerous about it, and it’s been most dangerous about the films we’ve made since 2001. The whole patriotism thing of the Patriot Act. I mean, it’s just gone crazy. There’s no sense of reality in these TV things or movie things that I’ve seen. I have not seen any back to reality.

DEADLINE: You made two really interesting movies about presidents Richard Nixon and George W Bush. Is the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency movie a gold mine?

STONE: Oh, it could be except he’s changing the script every day. He can outperform any movie. It’d be crazy to make a movie [now]. He’s quite a performer, you know, he reminds me of King Lear. He’s quite mad, in a way. He’s, you know, “Which daughter loves me more?” You know he wants to be loved so much, and he’s so tyrannical. I don’t know if he realizes some of the things he says, but it’s so dopey.

DEADLINE: Trump puts out this tough-guy vibe, he doesn’t have to wear a mask because he’s so tough, and yet people bring up his many deferments from Vietnam due to bone spurs, right?

STONE: Yeah.

DEADLINE: Since we look back on Vietnam historically as a wrong war, is it fair to second-guess or hold it against those who found a way out of going?

STONE: Well, there is a certain rot in my generation. Trump is part of it. He’s another one who didn’t go, but look who else didn’t go, Mr. Bush. Well, he was one of the worst who … he lied. He basically, you remember that whole Dan Rather story. A lot of it was true. Bush, I’m talking about Junior, the young one. He was the worst president we’ve ever had, far worse than Trump. He, too, skipped the draft and pretended, all that stuff. He had a deferment in the National Guard, Air National Guard, and he never showed up. It’s disgusting. But so did Clinton. So did that whole generation. I don’t know why. I mean, it just seems like none of them … yeah, they apparently hated the war. They apparently saw through it, but why, why, why do they, when they get into power, do they make war, create these tensions and situations that lead to these disastrous outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why? It’s like you’re not even being true to yourself. If you’re going to defer, if you’re going to skip a war, have at least a moral cause to do it and live up to it. So, I don’t respect either … none of them for that.

DEADLINE: You write a lot about Michael Cimino being a seminal figure in your early career. You worked with him on Year of the Dragon. An underlying theme of your book is about the number of times you got knocked down and got back up. He made one of the great American movies in The Deer Hunter, but it felt like he never recovered from Heaven’s Gate. Why was he not able to get back up?

STONE: I think my analysis of him in the book is that he’s a mystery man, and you know there seems to be … that there was an unknown factor with Michael, and I think I tried to give that impression. He was very much into himself, unto himself. He kept it in. Heaven’s Gate, I think you’re right, was the big fall in his life, and I don’t think he ever came to grips with why. What was wrong with the film? I think he always thought it was not fair. So, he had a grudge, to some degree. What I wrote about him was, he’s the one who resurrected Platoon when I had given up on it, and he said it’s going to come back, and I’m glad he said that, And he also said he’d be my producer, and he didn’t come through on that when the project fell through a second time with Dino De Laurentiis. That was heartbreaking because we came close, very heartbreaking when the MGM said no to Dino and all that stuff, oh, what a dirty story, and then I had to sue to get it back. Oh God. I’m very lucky to have made that movie. Nobody thought that movie would do anything. Neither did I, frankly. Neither did I. I lost hope in it. In fact, when John Daly asked me, in an incredible moment in time when he said, “Oliver, which one do you want to do first, you know, Salvador or Platoon?” He asked me Salvador or Platoon? I didn’t hesitate. I said Salvador because I felt if I said Platoon, it would somehow be cursed again and fall apart. You know that’s true.

DEADLINE: Well, in reading your book, you describe that Platoon moment of Oscar triumph as an ugly duckling transforming into a swan.

STONE: Yeah, there’s something to that. It really did last through a lot of rejection. I mean, it’s embarrassing. It felt like it was a piece of toilet paper going around.

DEADLINE: To put a point on Cimino’s inability to bounce back the way you did with numerous setbacks, is it most important for a filmmaker to have unshakable confidence?

STONE: Well, he had it. He had a lot of confidence. Even later in time, back in the ’90s, when I got to be a director, I tried to help him. … Mario Kassar gave us some money to make his movie about the horse, The White Stallion. I think it was $14 million, but he just … he was too difficult to deal with. He was arrogant, and I don’t know that he ever gave it up. He never could eat humble pie or didn’t seem to.

DEADLINE: I read your New York Times interview where you spoke about the difficulties of the business right now as it tries to rebound from COVID. You were quoted as lamenting all the restrictions, but I’ve covered them closely and they seem necessary because insurance is almost impossible to get and if your principal actor falls ill, you’re shut down for weeks. What’s your feeling right now about production restarting and the prospect of you making a movie in a world that seems to have changed so dramatically?

STONE: Yeah, it doesn’t look like it’s in the cards. Frankly, Mike, I don’t follow the Hollywood issue as much anymore, so I’m not really up to date on what they’re doing and not doing. It’s a very difficult … it’s impossible to make … I mean you saw the films we made, early, we were working without nets. That’s the way I worked. I blew the explosives on Platoon. I blew so many explosives. I mean, they’d never let me get close to that now. There would be so many different advisers, so much medical staff. I don’t think we would’ve been able to afford it. That’s all I can say. It’s just moved into another era, and of course with CGI, it’s become even more artificial.

DEADLINE: What is your feeling about this influx of streamers as an alternative to moviegoing?

STONE: Like everybody else, I’ll watch them, I’m a good audience for that. I have a big screen at home. I watch them, and I still would’ve enjoyed going to a movie theater because I like to be with people, especially for comedies or big epics, big films with big themes. I’d rather be in a theater with people, for sure.

DEADLINE: I remember writing a few years ago, about you coming very close on Pinkville, which would have been a return to Vietnam for you, focusing on the My Lai Massacre.

STONE: Yeah.

DEADLINE: Whether it’s that or something else, are there any dream projects that you’re determined to make?

STONE: Right now, no. I finished a book, and I’ve got these two documentaries on my hands. The hunger is not there, not yet. Maybe it’ll come back. It was so difficult to make Snowden. Totally difficult to get that one done. It’s just exhausting, but we’ll see. You know I’m young in spirit. We’ll see.

-Mike Fleming, "Oliver Stone On His Coming-Of-Age Memoir ‘Chasing The Light,’ The Challenge In Making A President Trump Movie & Times He Nearly Got Killed Making His Early Films," Deadline, Jul 28 2020

[taeescript]

29 + 1 (Part Two)

𝔰𝔶𝔫𝔬𝔭𝔰𝔦𝔰: In which Seokjin is the Devil from The Devil Wears Prada, Taehyung is your work Jesus and Jimin is your handsome successful brother.

𝔭𝔞𝔦𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰: seokjin x reader (squint harder than before for taehyung x reader) 

𝔤𝔢𝔫𝔯𝔢: slice of life; ceo!seokjin; a dash of enemies to lovers au 

𝔴𝔠: 7.6k

𝔴𝔞𝔯𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰: language; a plethora of drunk people, maybe a sext, and a ton of lying (possible implication of impending smut?!) 

𝔞/𝔫: this part came out longer than i thought it would be but *shrugs* feedback and thoughts always welcomed. enjoy (:  𝔡𝔦𝔰𝔠𝔩𝔞𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔯: DailyHive is real; this is not associated with it 

part one || part three 

The bright pop music that is blaring from the speakers does little to slow your animated talking. Bodies are packed into the small local bar, and students on summer break fill booths and form a snake of impatient, drunk (and horny) people. A slow trickle of the brazen has started to fill the dance floor as the evening morphs into the night.

  You whip your hair into a ponytail and dab at the sweat that is beading your forehead. You definitely should have worn that sleeveless top rather than this thicker t-shirt dress.

  “So, is he like your sugar daddy or something?” Taehyung asks, “Also drink.”

  Friday nights were usually spent at home, snuggled under the blankets in your pjs binging another rewatch of Friends. After work today, you could no longer hold onto your secret and invited Taehyung out for drinks. His girlfriend, Fei, was supposed to join but had been held back for overtime.

  You tip the shot back with no chase.

  “You’re a monster,” he comments as he bites into his lemon piece.

  The two of you had made a bet at the beginning of the evening: you each chose a pop song and each time it played, the nominee had to take a shot. That was your fourth of the night, and to say there was a bit of a buzz is an understatement.

  “It’s all throat technique, Tae,” you say with a bit of a slur, “Hit the back and swallow. No innuendo intended. Also, why the hell haven’t you had any to drink?”

  “You picked ‘Peaches’ for fuck’s sake.”

  “I told you I don’t listen to pop music. It was the first one playing.”

  “And shouldn’t that have told you something? Justin Bieber of all people?”

  “Shut up. It’s your song.” You nod at the pink-faced barista for another round. She slaps your order in front of the two of you without so much a glance.

You don’t even know what song is playing, but you feel quite satisfied watching Taehyung make a face as he downs it in one go.

  He clears his throat after the liquor has burned its way down to his stomach. “Back to my question: is he your sugar daddy?”

  You bark out a laugh. Was he? Perhaps the fact that he paid for fancy meals at lunch? Those have been his one o’clock meetings for the past two months.

  “I don’t know. I’d rather he buy me a car or pay my rent if anything. A casual 1k a week wouldn’t be so bad either. We just sit in his office and eat in secret, Tae. He’s ‘training me in the art of culinary cuisine’. I think it’s just so I don’t embarrass him by stuffing a shrimp cocktail up my nose.”

  “You do know – ”

“Yes, I know. And I would never. It’s a metaphor. It’s just that the position ‘intern’ is quite loosely defined at DailyHive, don’t you think?”

  Taehyung rinses his mouth with water before speaking. “So let me get this right. Mr. Kim calls you into his office, says he’s going to take you as his guest to the biggest tech event of the year, treats you to lunches and doesn’t ask for anything in return? No secret midnight meetups or shady business deals…”

  You shake your head.

  “Damn,” Taehyung says, resting his arm on the bar table, “Forget sugar daddy. He’s just daddy.”

  Sticking your tongue out, you gag visibly at his comment. “Do not ever call him that again, Tae; ev-er.”

  He laughs and watches you pensively. After a moment’s thought, he says, “Nobody has ever called me Tae.”

  “What do they call you then?” you reply, wrinkling your brows together. A cute brunette across the room catches your eyes and for the briefest of seconds, you wonder what a one-night-stand would feel like.

  He shrugs. “Just Taehyung.”

  The brunette waves in your direction. You are about to return his wave when an equally cute brunette runs up to him. He promptly kisses her before swivelling her around to join his group of friends.

  “Sorry. Do you want me to stop? I just assumed since we were out of the office…”

Oh Fate, how cruel you are. Life of twenty cats and solidarity, here you come. Maybe dogs. You feel like you could be more of a dog person.

  “No,” he stops you, “You can call me Tae. Whatever you want.”

  You turn your attention back on the also cute brunette in front of you. In all honestly, despite his youthful god-like countenance, he looks slightly out of place at this college bar with you in his upstanding business attire and dorkishly adorable thick-framed glasses.

  “Sure. How about Tee-Tee? Or Hyungie? The TaeMan?” You wiggle your brows with the suggestion.

  “God help me.”

  The two of you clink your shot glasses together even though neither of your songs are being played.

  His Apple watch lights up to indicate an incoming message. He relays the text to you, “Fei’s done work. She’s on her way now.” You can’t help but notice a shift in his previously excited demeanor.

  You nudge him with your elbow. “Aren’t you excited? She’ll need a glass of wine or two to destress after work. I might be projecting onto you for this part, but you’re buzzed. So after we get her to unwind I’m sure the overwhelming power of pheromones will get you lucky tonight.” You wink at him to emphasize your point.  

“She’s not a big drinker. She’s probably just going to come and ask to leave in five minutes. Bars like this aren’t really her thing either,” he states. He then unbuckles his watch and tucks it away into the pocket of his pants. Undoing the cuffs of his shirt, he rolls up the sleeves and continues to regard you solemnly. “Okay, next round is one me. Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to switch songs?”

  You notice how nice, long, and slender his fingers are. Plus the thing of girls liking when men have visible veins on their forearm? That had never really caught your attention until now.

  “She’s a bit of a bitch,” you say and immediately regret, “Shit, sorry. That just slipped out. Alcohol.”

  He offers you his water to drink.

  “I mean, she’s a little…uptight at times? But people can be completely different in and out of work. I can only imagine how stressful it is in her position. Working overtime until 9pm on a Saturday night seriously sucks,” you say to try and mend your wrongdoing.

  “Fei in the office is basically Fei at home,” he says softly, “It’s always work with her.”

  “We support career-driven women, yeah?” A smile is offered from you to him.

  He finally lets out a small one and nods. Out of the blue, he reaches over and covers your hand with his. Staring intently into your eyes, he says, “I know she makes you do her reports and occupies your time to do her coffee runs as well. You can say no to her. She may be my girlfriend, but you’re technically my intern, and I will stand on your side no matter what.”

  “Um, okay. Thanks, Tae,” you say. His sincerity has caught you off guard.

  At that moment, the sound of clicking heels pierce its way into your eardrums through the noise of the even busier bar. Taehyung quickly retracts his hand.

  Fei arrives, not a hair out of place in her tightly pulled bun. Her lips are painted a striking red against the paleness of her skin, and her manicured nails dig into the forearm of Taehyung when she reaches them. Even though she is wearing an otherwise drab office business suit, the curvature of her body draws quite a few glances from the younger men in the crowd.

  “It’s like a zoo here,” she sneers, turning away from a sacrificial lamb who had been bold enough step out of his circle of friends to greet her with a sleezy “hey”.

  “Hi, Fei. Busy night?” you greet her first.

  She gives you a tight-lipped smile. “Yes. I don’t know why you weren’t there. Isn’t it the intern’s job to complete reports?”

  Again, a loosely defined use of “intern” at DailyHive.

  You return her smile with a crisp one of your own.

  She turns away from you and regards Taehyung, who looks as if he had been the sacrificial lamb instead. “Teddybear, let’s go home. You know this type of place isn’t my vibe. I’m getting a headache already.”

  You raise an eyebrow at his pet name.

  He turns a little bit pinker, if that is possible under the current alcohol-induced glow of his cheeks, and says, “Um, sure. Y/N, are you going to be okay getting home?”

  Waving him off, you show him your phone. “30% left. I’ve got pepper spray in my bag and enough booze in me to not run from a fight. I’ll call an Uber home soon, don’t worry.”

  Fei has already begun to fight her way through the squirming, dancing bodies. Taehyung glances quickly at her and turns back to you once last time. “Text me that you’re home safe.”

  “Will do, boss,” you smile at him warmly.

  He lingers for just a moment more before running after his impatiently waiting girlfriend.

  You turn back to the bar and order another beer for yourself. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is perhaps the biggest perk of being single.

...

On the opposite side of town, sinking deeply into a soft lounge chair is Seokjin enjoying a rare evening out with his best friend. He has swapped his usual attire for a more relaxed fit of a white oversized crewneck and techwear bottoms. A heavy, exorbitant fur-lined long leather coat hangs on the coat rack beside the door to their private VVIP room. He swirls his glass of Chateau Lafite before sipping delicately.

  Outside, only a handful of patrons sit quietly engrossed in their own conversations. It is a relatively empty night at the high-end lounge. A lady sings sultrily on stage with the smooth background of a saxophone as accompaniment.

  Junho has poured himself another glass while he is talking to Seokjin. Seokjin had since slightly tuned out his friend’s rather elongated rendition of another celebrity sighting to occupy his mind with another individual.

  “Earth to Jin? When did you get so lightweight since I’ve been gone?” Junho waves a hand in front of Seokjin’s nose.

  Seokjin blinks to refocus.

  “The mansion I bought last year or the one I bought last month?” he reiterates. Sensing that Seokjin truly had no idea what the topic at hand had been, he tries again.

  “Where should I do my birthday party this year, man? I thought the mansion from last year since it’s closer to the city, but I feel like it’s been reused too many times. It’s not completely furnished yet, but the property I got last month is significantly bigger and I can probably host more people.”

  “The new place then,” Seokjin answers half-heartedly.

  Junho grumbles something intelligible.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” Junho sighs, “Tell me what’s new with you. How’s that little project of yours going? I still can’t believe you won’t let me know who you’re planning to take to the Gala.”

  Seokjin had refused to release even the slightest detail about you to Junho. Letting him know that Seokjin had agreed to one of his plans would be enough to inflate Junho’s ego for at least a little while.

  “It’s been going...”

  Junho waits for more of Seokjin’s answer, but his friend’s attention has been turned to a received text.

  10:17pm “Safe and sound, Teddy Bear.”

  10:17pm “Or should I say Taeddybear? 🥴”

10:18pm “That last beer done me rael godo.”

  10:18pm “Real good**”

  Seokjin raises a brow at the unknown number. He responds back.

  10:18pm “Who is this? I think you’ve got the wrong number.”

  Junho crosses his legs and sits back with a sigh. He presses the button to request for an attendant.

  10:19pm “You know who… Anyways, I just wanted to say thank you for saying you’ve got my back. It’s definitely appreciated.”

  The response doesn’t do much except to further pique Seokjin’s curiosity.

  “Sorry,” he says, sliding his phone back into his pocket, “Rogue text I think.”

  Junho shrugs. “Is that right? Seems to have caught your attention.” There is now a manner of indifference to his voice.

  “It’s going well, by the way – answering your question. I mean, all things considered. It’s not like I have to teach her how not to stuff a cocktail shrimp up your nose.”

  His friend snorts. “I’d be concerned and against this person if it’s who you’re planning to bring.”

  Seokjin’s phone buzzes again.

  10:21pm “Pray for me when I wake up with the worst hangover of my life. I’m going to bed now.”

  A moment of silence.

  10:21pm “I hope I didn’t piss off Fei tonight for stealing you for the evening.”

  10:22pm “Okay I’ll shut up now. Please don’t tell me you’re reading this. You should be getting some 😼💦.”

  The emoji makes Seokjin choke, liquid sputtering from his lips.

  Junho cusses. He angrily dabs at the speckle of red wine that has landed on his pearly white top.

  10:23pm Download attached image. “Just in case, here’s a little something to get the night started 😉”

  “What the hell man?” Junho gets up and makes his way to the bathroom. Luckily, the previously called attendant had arrived in time to escort him.

Seokjin barely notices that he is alone in room as he taps the download button. It isn’t until he has returned home and is looking at the picture one last time before bed that he realizes who his mysterious texter is.

  The employee nametag clipped to the collar of your workday shirt hanging on the arm of a chair can only be found when zoomed in past your painted toes and naked feet.

... 

You cannot hide your nervousness when you arrive at your “lunch meeting” the following Monday morning. All weekend, you had cursed yourself for not better checking who the recipient of your texts were before pressing send. Never had you thought that in your drunken stupor you would mix up “The Devil” in your contact list with “Taehyung Kim.” Curse you and your lack of friends beginning with the letter “T”.

  You balk before, a hand poised in perfect position for a knock. Maybe he didn’t download it? And even if he did, it was just a troll feet pic. You had made sure that it was as pg-13 as possible before you had sent it.

  “Hi,” you greet sheepishly when he has given you the go to enter.

  In a smart plain blue button-up and round frames that are almost certainly for the aesthetics, the CEO of the company and your boss sizes you up and down.

  “I know we’ve gotten to know each other better these past few weeks. But you’d think it’s still common courtesy to at least make eye contact,” he says. You look at him wide eyed without a word.

  He rolls his eyes but does not gesture to your usual seat. In fact, you don’t spy a take-out container in sight. He instead stands up and picks up his phone, walking to the door. He notices you have yet to move.

  “Let’s get moving. You’ve only got a 45 minute lunch.”

  You scramble to match his speed and catch Taehyung’s eye as you grab your jacket at your desk. Taehyung’s gaze follows you as you hurry to leave in pursuit of Seokjin’s coattail.

... 

The restaurant is a popular vegan establishment with a plethora of greenery crawling up its high ceilings and a window-framed overview of the city’s skyline. Waiters and waitresses who may just as well be walking New York Fashion Week serve you brunch mimosas on a golden plate; they attentively wait to the side in case you ever run out of water.

  Common topics are rare between the two of you. Initially, you respectfully kept quiet and only answered questions when asked, but you have never been one for awkward silence. Yes, it’s awkward only if you make it awkward; there is just no denying the hanging suspense that curls your toes each time. Recently, you have started with simple inquiries regarding the company, who they might meet at the Gala and everyday mundane topics.

  “You’re probably wondering why we’re out of the office,” Seokjin says. He continues shortly after taking a bite of his meal and ignores the look of your surprise at his initiation of a conversation. “My office has been getting stuffy with the warmer weather so I thought it’d be nice to get some fresh air. How’s the food?”

You nod, making small sounds of contentment as you chew on the Avocado Lime Tartare. Mmm… tart-y.

  He takes a deep breath in, stalling the incoming conversation. “It’s my friend’s birthday this next weekend.”

  “Oh,” you say, “Happy early birthday to him.”

  “He’s my best friend.”

  “Well… An extra happy early birthday to him.”

  A sigh. “Are you free next weekend?”

  Your chewing comes to a halt and you blink once at his question. Next weekend is the weekend before the Silver Gala. It is also the sole weekend before your birthday the following Friday after the Gala. You had hoped to spend it with Taehyung and maybe even Jimin who had promised to be in town on a long overdue vacation despite your chastising to visit your parents first.

  He senses your trepidation. Quickly, he explains himself, 

“He’s having a birthday party Saturday night. He has a place about an hour north of here. I can have somebody pick you up if that’s more convenient. I don’t have a birthday present for him and thought it’d be nice for you to meet him.”

  “You’re giving him me for a present?” you ask, incredulously.

  He bites his tongue. He never anticipated how awkward this conversation could go.

  “You’re going as my plus one. He really wants to meet you; in fact, he insisted that you be there. He’ll be at the gala too. I have something else planned for his birthday present,” he adds hastily, “Besides, you’re less than qualified as a present.”

  Musing silently to yourself, you wonder if in any situation should a human be qualified as a present. Despite that, you hate yourself as you agree on the spot.

  The rest of the lunch passes by quickly in dull silence. As Seokjin pays for the meal on the company card (and hands you the receipt for reimbursement), you note that there has been no comment made on any strange photos texted to him over the weekend.

  Perhaps being nonchalantly implied as a human birthday gift to a stranger is your karma for sending weird texts to your boss.

  Seokjin stays inside the car as he drops you off at the office after lunch, already preparing for his next business meeting. You nod your goodbye and step onto the pavement through the courteously held open door of the limousine.

“Y/N, try a soft pink. Fuchsia is not your colour,” he tells you as the door is closed.  

He then leaves you standing in front of the large office doors, staring at your chipped, week-old purple toenails.

... 

“I’m not exactly expecting a package in the mail or a dress laid out on the hotel bed – ”

“You guys are staying at a hotel?” Taehyung says over the phone.

  You are standing in your bedroom, an hour before when Seokjin is supposed to pick you up as an offering to his best friend. There are two dresses laid out on your Hello Kitty bed covers: a simple black dress you had worn once when you were a little bit more in shape and your prom dress.

  “No, I’m at home. But I mean, let me play into this movie metaphor.”

  “You suck at metaphors.”

  You have your phone propped up on some pillows so that you can see Taehyung as you debate your fashion decision. He is in a relaxed white tee, hair messily framing his face after a shower and a bowl of popcorn in his hands. You watch as a droplet of water runs down his face from his still-wet hair. He nonchalantly licks it off from the side of his mouth.

  “As I was saying, it wouldn’t hurt to get me something. He made it seem like it was a big deal. Like doesn’t the male lead usually surprise the female lead with a big bouquet of flowers and this over-the-top expensive dress which she wears and makes the male lead fall head over heels in love with her?”

  He chews silently on a kernel then probes, “You want Mr. Kim to fall in love with you?”

  “No,” you hastily correct, “It’s a metaphor. I think you’re the one who sucks at metaphors.”

  There is a beep on your phone to indicate you have another incoming call.

  “Tae, I’m going to have to call you back. My brother’s calling me,” you tell him. The black dress; your old prom dress is way too early 2000s. Black never hurts.

  “Okay. Have fun tonight. Pretend that it’s your birthday party. And then I’ll meet you for brunch tomorrow, my treat? You can tell me all about it,” he says. “Also the black. You look cute in that one.”

  “My party if I was 30, rich and successful. Oh wait, I’ll have one thing in common soon; that’s a start. Thanks though. I’ll call you tomorrow morning once I get up,” you say, then switch the call over to your brother. You had missed the flush of his cheeks as you busily swipe your phone.

Sticking the prom dress back into your closet, you rummage around the meager display of shoeboxes for a pair of high heels.

  “Hey, Jimin,” you greet over the phone.

  “Jesus, I do not need to be accosted by my half-naked sister,” he yells over the phone.

  You turn rapidly, seeing that you had accidentally continued a video call from when you had hung up on Taehyung. You throw a pillow over the camera in your haste to cover yourself up.

  “I was going to ask why you’re dressed like that but on second thought, I think I’ll leave your sexual exploits as your own secret.”

  Despite how disturbed you feel about this comment, his cheerful voice makes you smile.

  “So little sis, the weekend before the big three-oh!”

  “Please stop reminding me.”

  “Where do you want to meet tonight? I just got off the plane, but I can be ready to meet in about an hour. I booked a hotel close to the airport.”

  Shit. You forgot to tell Jimin. These heels will have to do.

  “Um… I, uh…”

  “What?”

  You clear your throat and begin to undress in front of the mirror. You have a sudden conscious thought that the dusty treadmill in your living room seems to be staring daggers at your back. 

  “I’ve got plans tonight.”

  “Plans? I wasn’t even aware you had friends here.”

  “Ouch, Jimin. But yes, I have friends. In fact, I am meeting a friend for brunch tomorrow if you want to join. I’m sure he’ll be okay with it.”

  “He?” Jimin repeats, “Should I put on my big brother boxing gloves? Give him a good talking to in case he’s interested in my baby sister?” Pause. “Was that who you were calling before?”  

You bite your answer back, not feeling the need to go down that rabbit hole.

  “He’s just a friend; A co-worker really,” you say, “He’s also unavailable. And before you suggest anything, his goalkeeper is technically one of my bosses so I do not want to try and shoot past her thank you very much.”

  Jimin laughs. “I wasn’t going to suggest anything. Well if you’re busy tonight, tomorrow morning works for me. Give me a call. I’ll spend the night in watching some good ol’ Netflix and enjoy this vacation time.”

  “Sorry again,” you apologize.

  “Go out and have fun,” he says, “You deserve it.”

  The two of you finish off the call with the usual goodbyes. You have forty-five minutes to dress the part of a sparkly birthday surprise for the co-founder of the company you work for. Throwing on your favourite throwback music, you get to work.

  Once satisfied, you snap a picture and sending it to Taehyung making special care that you have picked the right individual this time.

... 

The mansion is bigger than you could have ever imagined, and the amount of people present are…

  “You’re telling me I can do whatever I want tonight,” you ask Seokjin in the car.

  There is no denying that Seokjin knows how to dress for an event. In a velvety black and white suit, contrasted by his blonde hair which he has elected to temporarily dye for the evening, he looks very much the posh CEO magazines brand him out to be. You are glad you elected for the simple black dress as standing beside this Renaissance statue in a floral pastel yellow dress would be like planting dandelions in Kanye’s sculpture garden (if he ever wanted one).

  “The majority of people won’t recognize you after tonight. They’ll also be too drunk to even register anything you tell them,” Seokjin says.

  He cannot believe that you chose a simple black dress. Did you really not own anything remotely feminine besides the most generic clubbing outfit? Even if you had wanted to make an appearance as a hooker, at least make it an expensive-looking one. Maybe he should have bought you that Versace dress he spotted in the window the other day. Instead…

  “Take this. Your earrings are too gaudy for this event.”

  You touch the sparkly black cats you have put into your ears. Their eyes are made of crystal, and you thought it looked quite fetching in the light. Opening up the box, you see a dainty elegant pair of teardrop earrings that may or may not be of real diamonds.

  “Only Junho will know who you really are and then you can enjoy the rest of your night. I don’t want you to feel like you’re being held here against your will.”

  Putting them on, you note that even this simple change in attire has elevated the entirety of your presence. You felt as luxurious as this gift.

  “Thanks, Seokjin,” you try the first name basis he had insisted upon for this evening, “Not going to lie, I had imagined that maybe you’d send me a dress in the mail or something, but this is still very nice.”

  He snorts and rolls his eyes. “Like in the movies? Please, I run a start-up company. I’m not a millionaire and I don’t think you would appreciate my handouts.”

  You don’t respond, making your second note of the night on the Prada label on the cuff of his suit. “To clarify, I don’t introduce myself as your plus-one tonight.”

  “No. I don’t want you associated with me,” he curtly states. He watches as your smirk twitches and he hits himself mentally in the head again. “It’s to protect you. There are bound to be tons of paparazzi tonight at a party as big as this. I don’t want you to find yourself in the tabloids tomorrow morning. Just be smart.”

  The car pulls to a stop after inching its way up to the front door. People mill about outside in extravagant brands, holding glasses of champagne. The man of the hour is somewhere inside the building, charming his way into new business deals as well as making new friends.

  “Stay close to me. You can leave after we meet Junho. It is his birthday after all,” Seokjin offers a hand as you step out of the car.

  You take it, looping yourself into him so that your hand rests on his forearm. You are only 13 days younger than Junho, and yet this striking contrast in lifestyle hits you like a landslide while the two of you walk up the stairs and into the mansion.

  Inside, it is dim with disco lights flashing to the beat of amped party music. Upon entrance, the two of you are offered glasses of liquor (you take a swirling iridescent drink) to which you are then ushered to where the birthday boy lounges.

  Junho has an even more youthful face than Seokjin does. Where Seokjin’s features exude class and charm, Junho appears mischievous and looks to have stepped out of every girl’s bad boy dream.

  You stop Seokjin with a tug and make him look at you. “Tell me: do I look like a passable birthday offering?”

  Seokjin rolls his eyes and pulls you along with him.

  “Jin!” Junho hollers loudly across the room when spotting his oldest friend. There is a doll-like female magnetized to his side. “This is Clara, my date for the evening.”

  Seokjin shakes her hand and greets them. The female cannot seem to pry her eyes away from this handsome new stranger. He introduces himself chivalrously to her as Junho sides up to you and grips your hands in his. His breath smells strongly of mixed drinks, and you know that in about fifteen minutes the entire night will be a blur for him.

  “You must be Y/N!” he says excitedly, “Jin didn’t tell me that you were coming! What a surprise!”

  “I am,” you greet back with a large smile. “Although I’m also surprised. Seokjin told me that you had insisted I came.”

  Seokjin grits his teeth, annoyed at Junho. Would he ever learn when to keep his big mouth closed?

Laughing loudly, Junho grabs two drinks just as a waiter passes by and hands them to you. “Insist might be a strong word,” he says, drilling another hole unknowingly, “I honestly thought I’d have to play part-time wingman tonight. But I’m glad he’s got someone by his side.” He jabs you a little too hard in the ribs. “Next week’s gala is going to be fun! Okay, now there’s only one rule tonight: there are no rules!”

  The four of you clink your glasses together, while you do your best to hide an embarrassed smile on behalf of the birthday boy.

  “You bet I’m going around as your trophy wife tonight,” you whisper in Seokjin’s ear when Junho looks away.

  He whirls around to look at you, the tip of both your noses impossibly close together. He can taste the acidity of the wine when you breath out with a wicked smile. He barely has time to stop you as you peel yourself away to mingle with the crowds.

  Seokjin is about to follow you but Junho pulls him away, flamboyantly introducing his handsome best friend to a group of international models. He turns on his brightest smile, but his heart thunders in his chest at you calling yourself his wife.

... 

You twirl around in your dress, nobody noticing the small splash of champagne on the front of it in the quickly changing lights.

  “He bought this for me last week. Says it reminds him of the first night we met. Our eyes met across the waters in Tuscany where he was on a business trip. I’ll let you on a little secret, but I was his mistress for a little while.”

  Seokjin cannot make out the words you are saying to a small but growing group of people around you. He stands across from Junho, but looks over the latter’s shoulders to watch as you do another spin.

  “A little while, Charlotte? Are you still his mistress?” an older lady with an exuberant amount of jewels hanging off her body whispers with a keen interest in your expertly spun story.

  Charlotte Dior Laurent, an identity you are pretty sure is an amalgamation of French brands from the top of your mind. You continue to personify this character however.

“Don’t worry. He’s left her since. I know I know, my friends all say the same. ‘He’s already been divorced three times. How can you be sure he won’t leave you?’”

  At this point, you are in way over your head at having told this story to at least two other groups and a multitude of other renditions to whomever you have met tonight. But there is something powerful about liquid courage as it courses through your body.

  The lady lays a hand on your arm. “I don’t want your heart to break. You are still young.”

  Looking up between the heads of your audience, you catch Seokjin’s eyes. They are fiery and it sends a strange sensation up your toes to your abdomen. You give a titillating wave at him in which he does not return.

“He says I’m special and different. How can you say no to that?” you exclaim with exasperation, fully committing to the poor damsel just oh-so in love.

  There is a look of genuine concern on the lady’s face at your statement.

  Before you can dig yourself a deeper hole, you place your empty glass on the table and excuse yourself. You do not know if it’s the drinking on a relatively empty stomach or if the room is really much warmer due to the multitude of bodies, but you head out to the balcony.

  On your way out, you notice that the clock reads twenty minutes past midnight. This gives you a shock at how fast time has passed. Perhaps you should go find Seokjin if you are to get a decent amount of sleep before meeting with Taehyung and Jimin tomorrow. Speaking of Taehyung…

  You pull out your phone and see that there are two unread messages. The first is from Jimin, confirming that he is indeed invited to brunch tomorrow morning. The second is a response from Taehyung.

  11:09pm “Wow. You have me a little lost for words. I had imagined you’d look nice in the dress but… You really are beautiful.”

  Smiling, you type in your response.

  12:21am “Thanks, Tae. You’re up late.” You take a picture of the earrings Seokjin had gifted you and attach it to the message. “What do you think of these?”

Barely have you returned your phone into your bag when it buzzes again. This time you receive an attached image. Taehyung seems to be sitting in front of a monitor, as his face glows with a blue light and contorted into a pensive furrow of his brows.

  12:21am “A little different from your usual style. Are they new? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear those.”

  12:21am “Fei’s out with some friends tonight. She likes when I wait for her to come back before I sleep. To make sure she’s safe, I guess.”

  12:22am “Pooey. I should’ve brought you as my plus-one 😩. Also, Seokjin bought them for me for tonight. He says my other earrings are too gaudy.”

  12:24am “First name basis 🙃”

  12:25am “How is your night going? Having fun?”

  You are about give Taehyung a call for a detailed recounting of tonight’s escapades when someone speaks out from within the shadows.

  “A penny for your thoughts?” He walks into the moonlight. You flush, meeting the eyes of this particularly dashing gentleman, the phonecall immediately forgotten.

  Oh, Alcohol, you make even the smartest of people do dumb shit. And right now, your effects are even worse on this idiot.

  Your mouth hangs slightly open as you watch him puff out smoke from his cigar and offer it to you. He brushes up beside you, his fingers trailing up your hand which grips the balcony. You cannot seem to break away from his gaze.

  “Lung cancer has an increasing incidence rate particularly for females due to smoking. Are you sure you want to be condoning this type of behaviour?” Seokjin interjects himself between you and your Tuxedo Mask, pushing the outstretched cigar back towards its owner.

  There is a small stare down amongst the two men before the latter quietly exits the stage. Your eyes continue to linger on him even as he walks towards another female alone in the night enjoying the outdoor breeze.

  “You’ve just ruined by chance. I could have seduced then blackmailed him with the story of his illegitimate child to play Black Widow,” you whine.

  Seokjin takes the glass that had somehow magically appeared in your hand during the short walk from inside to outside on the balcony.

  “How many have you had since we came?” he asks.

  You sigh wistfully, still in your dangerous daydream. “I don’t know. I’ve lost count.” You turn your attention back to him eventually. “What are you doing here? Did you see me with him and get all jealous, hubby?” you tease.

  He scoffs, drinking from your glass and pulling a face. Once again, there is that twist and jump within his chest, but he attributes it to whatever nasty concoction he had just ingested. He pours its contents over the railing and into whatever shrubbery lies below. “You seriously went with being my trophy wife?”

  You shrug. “Of sorts. You’d better be right about people being too drunk slash not caring about me enough after tonight to remember the things I’ve said. ‘Cuz you’ve been divorced three times, had me along with another as your mistress, I think you’ve sired a few illegitimate children and all in all, a Games of Throne life. Damn, maybe I made you a little too badass.”

  “You’re having water for the rest of the night,” he says.

  You glare at him, contemplating on making a remark about his equally flushed face but decide against it. Instead, you lean onto the balcony and give a cat stretch. A large sigh escapes from you.

  Wordlessly, he shakes off his jacket and places it around your shoulder all the while averting his gaze on the unblemished skin of your upper thighs that had been exposed from your previous movement.

  Your blood feels like liquid fire coursing through your veins. Feeling overheated even in the evening breeze, you give him back his jacket. You note his reluctance to meet you even as you throw what could be a thousand dollar jacket in the air to him. “So what’s it like to live like this every day?” you say in wonder. You feel said breeze return and lean over the balcony to catch its chill.

  “Like what?” he asks. The warm summer night’s breeze blows through, settling his hair in a childish tousle.

  “Like rich,” you say. You sigh again. “Believe it or not, I’m the same age as your birthday boy best friend.

  And everything feels absolutely unreal right now. If I hadn’t agreed to come here tonight with you, I’d probably be at another dingy bar knocking back shots with my brother and friend.”

  “Are you a secret alcoholic?”

  You glare at him. “No,” you state matter-of-factly. “As I was trying to share, this type of lifestyle is something I could ever only imagine. I’m not ungrateful about spending time with them, but at the end of the night I’d go home, sweaty, drunk and gross, and then simply pass out. My bank account might be a couple hundred bucks lighter. Come Monday I’ll be working my ass off just to earn back what I had spent. Then cue the repeating cycle.”

  Resting your chin on your palm, your other hand sweeps your hair back behind your ear.

  “It’s amazing the difference a few life choices can have.”

  Seokjin remains silent beside you. Truthfully, he is at a loss of words. The moonlight plays across your face and caresses your nose down to your lips. You are arching your back once again to pull away the soreness that comes with wearing high heel the entire night. It is just a simple black dress but on you it made you look –

  “Well, you’re Mrs. Kim tonight,” he starts.

  “Charlotte Dior Laurent,” you correct him.

  He raises an eyebrow. “Okay… Ms. Charlotte Dior Laurent. Tonight you get to live like the rich, as you’ve put it. As a rich person, what would you like to do?”

  You ponder his question a few moments for the answer. “Hmm…I think I’d like to play golf. It’s a rich person’s sport. I want to play it on a private golf course, wearing cute golfing outfits and talk about million-dollar deals with a client without a care in the world. I want to order sangria by the gallon.”

  He laughs out loud. It takes a while for him to be able to speak again, but when he does you feel as if the night has been illuminated a few degrees brighter. “I personally don’t have a private golf course, but Junho does here in his backyard if you’re up for it. I can’t promise cute golfing outfits so you’ll have to do with your wine stained dress. And if you’re really up for it I can pretend to make business deals with you, that’s my job anyways.”

  You grin, taking the hand he has offered you. “Call.” The two of you shake upon his suggestion.

As he is leads you by the hand towards the dim gates of said golf course, you tug at him gently. “There’s something missing…” you say.

  He shakes his head and pulls you back in towards the party room. 

“I’ll see what they have at the bar.”

... 

As the hands of the clock continue to spin past another hour, the summer night takes a chilly turn. Seokjin has lent you his jacket but even that cannot stop your fingers from becoming numb. Your hands shake even as they tightly hold the golf club. Seokjin watches you in silence as you prepare to hit the golf ball, a beer in one hand and a few opened bottles littered on the grass beside him. The club hits the ball with a resounding “cling” but does little in propelling it a few centimeters.

  “This one doesn’t count,” you announce, “It’s too dark to see anything here.”

  Seokjin takes a swig as you readjust your position. You sway in the wind and the last tendrils of your hair come undone in its half up half down hairdo. Your hair now whips wildly around your face when another gust blows through.

  “Shit!” you exclaim, missing the ball again. “Why is golfing so hard?!”

  You throw your club down and trudge to Seokjin. The six pack the two of you had been sharing has officially been depleted. Seokjin offers you his half empty bottle. This time, you are the one watching as he goes to your spot and effortlessly swings his target into the darkness.

  He smirks from the spot.

  You grumble. “You’ve had years of practice. Not fair.”

  “You’ve got to do better than that, Mrs. Johnson,” he says, teasing you.

  Your grumble becomes more audible. You place the now empty bottle on the ground and cross your arms against your chest. Since telling him of your other American alias from tonight, he has not ceased to remind you of your strange choice of name.

  “Just so you know, Mrs. Johnson can afford both an affair and the consequential prenup,” you huff.

  “It’s still a stupid last name.”

  “It’s an American multinational corporation with an income in the billions, okay?”

  “Keep telling yourself that if it makes you sleep better at night. Now come on, I’ve got one last ball. Take a swing.”

  Groaning, you shuffle over. You wish you had not suggested golf. You had never been good at sports anyways – bad hand-eye coordination.

  He stands beside you this time, scrutinizing your every movement with hawk-like eyes. “No, not like that,” he says, “Have a wider stance and bend your knees. Better centre of gravity gives you a better swing. Also hold it with a neutral grip.”

  You readjust your positioning following his instructions.

  “Index finger down the center. Good. And three knuckles on each hand. No, that’s two. Okay your hands are just weird now. Three. I said three.”

  “Stop standing there and show me then, Mr. Know-It-All,” you say, your patience in this makeshift lesson also coming to an end.

  He walks closer to you, reaching out for the golf club. He retracts his hands in seeing that you have yet to let go. “You got to – ”

“You can touch me. I did tell you that Mrs. Johnson can afford an affair and prenup. Besides, I’m not going to be able to learn anything if I can’t even see you in this dark.”

  He comes behind you and puts a foot between yours to guide your stance. Wrapping his arms around you, he fixes the placement of your hands to grip the shaft of the club in the way he had previously instructed.

  Perhaps it is the mixture of wine, champagne and beer offered tonight, but being enveloped in the warmth of this embrace intoxicates you. The tingles that are sent down from his soft breathing on the base of your neck, make you shake like a leaf in the wind.

He inhales the sweet undertones of your perfume. The tendrils of your hair brush against his collarbone, sending a sensual kiss onto his skin. Unconsciously, he draws you closer to him, shielding you from another gust.

“Now you just want to swing,” he says, the words a mixture of a whisper and guttural grunt. His chest rumbles with it, passing the vibration through to your back.

  You remain as still as a statue and lean ever so slightly back into him until your entire backside is pressed upon him.

  You can’t stop yourself as you ask him, “Do you want to have sex with me?”

...

[drabsyo]

Drabs, I know that you usually draw Fleur with slightly darker blonde hair than Narcissa. Was it a choice so that it’s easier to distinguish them from each other or was your Fleur maybe slightly influenced by the actress from the movie who had darker hair?

In the books Fleur didn’t seem to have much description other than having long silvery hair (waist length?) and having this glow around her. So like with Narcissa, what works have influenced your design of Fleur?

It’s fascinating sometimes to read the artist’s perspective and your previous reply to the anon about Narcissa has been very interesting.

Thank you!!! 🥺

I was actually pretty embarrassed over how enthusiastic I got over the whole hair thing, but I'm glad it made some sense at least 😂 And now that I've been given even more reason to talk about it... (Let's face it, I shouldn't even be allowed on this website to begin with, ya'll have been way too nice to me.)

Only click on keep reading if you want to read Some Nonsense.

I did consider Fleur's actress when I thought about her hair color. Though I pictured it to be something of a mix between movie Fleur and Elsa’s (from Frozen) hair. But the way I drew Fleur's hair, the way it falls across her shoulders, that was more of... well, I imagined Fleur to have effortlessly perfect hair, like she doesn't seem to need to style it so much because it's already whimsical as it is, what with her being part-Veela. There were a lot of fanfictions that helped me to sort of see a better image of Fleur in my head so really, I owe it to all the talented writers out there!

It's also the same with Narcissa's case. Though I decided to give her paler hair, compared to Fleur's, because I wanted to emphasize that air of vulnerability Narcissa has—this image she conjures, like she's this fragile thing made of glass, which typically in fanfiction is what Narcissa uses so that Voldemort would overlook her a lot, hence why she wasn't given any "missions" or "tasks" while Voldemort was in Malfoy Manor. Slytherin preservation. This "fragile" image was something Narcissa capitalized on and maintained perfectly, but in post-war Cissamione fanfictions, she no longer has to put on that façade—she starts living for herself, but the quiet sadness about her never really goes away.

I really did struggle at first, I had to find a way where I could draw them without confusing people and myself.

So, again, I sifted through a lot of canon and non canon material about these two characters which funnily enough made me see some kind of parallel going on between them. I know. Fleur Delacour and Narcissa Black. Parallels?! It's nuts. But again, this is only within Fleurmione and Cissamione fanfiction, and it really helped me to draw them better. (At least in a way that made them distinguishable from one other at first glance, I’d like to think.)

These 'hair scenes' are mostly the bits where Hermione "first" sees Fleur. Hermione is entranced, a little curious, sometimes she feels indifferent, but the general theme is Hermione immediately finds Fleur beautiful—which probably explains why Hermione in fanfiction sometimes thinks Narcissa could be part-Veela like Fleur. And as you can imagine, that's where my struggle began.

You'll see what I mean in a minute. And just like last time, remember that this part comes with spoilers.

🔹 In Fighting is our form of Flirting by InsomniacAndBi in Chapter 2 Hermione sees Fleur for the first time. This is the first Fleurmione fanfiction I've ever read, and also the first time I've encountered Fleur's character. Tall, bright blonde hair, won the genetic lottery, aristocratic features, face held in a scowl, floats into the room with effortless poise, immediately starts demanding things out of people... Sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it. Like some other blonde we know.

"Non!" A voice from the doorway said. "This is not what was agreed."

For a moment, Hermione thought about ignoring it but turned to glance over there if only to quell her curiosity. A girl stepped into the room and Hermione's phone call was forgotten in a moment. She knew that it wasn't nice to stare but Hermione couldn't help but do it because, in all honesty, this was the prettiest girl she had ever seen. She was definitely taller than Hermione was, with bright blonde hair and...clearly she had won the genetic lottery.

Her skin practically glowed and it looked so smooth and soft. It made Hermione wonder if she used those fancy beautification charms or had a very lengthy skincare routine. Or maybe, just maybe, this is what being rich did to people's faces. There was no doubt in Hermione's mind that this girl was rich - like extremely rich, like even rich people thought she was rich. That kind of rich. That was the type of rich that this girl was.

Also, only super rich people curled up their lip like this girl was doing.

She breezed into the room like she was floating and Hermione hastily ended her phone call and promised to call back later.

"This is not what was agreed," The girl said again and Hermione felt incredibly small sitting in front of her. Not to mention, the girl's clothes screamed 'I'm rich and I know it' and Hermione's screamed 'I'm so out of place that I might as well be a bull in a China shop'.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Hermione managed to get out when it became apparent that the girl was waiting for her response.

"You are English." The girl looked shock for a moment at Hermione's accent before shaking her head angrily. "This is not what was agreed."

🔹 In Oath of Silver by i_shall_wear_midnight immediately in the first chapter, when Witcher Hermione first meets Fleur, it's something Hermione quickly notices. Vivid sapphire eyes. Silvery blonde hair that shimmered in the torchlight. And once again, right off the bat, Fleur is pushy. She wants things done her way. It’s just so cute how she doesn’t even let the fact that Hermione is a Witcher, an extremely dangerous outcast in society, get in the way of that.

(I'm sorry for this but I just have to gush about Oath of Silver. Hermione as a witcher is just so fitting for her character; she possesses that natural eye for detail that remarkable witchers have, witchers like Geralt and Vesimir (a skill that gets even more honed through the Witcher Trials). Hermione even has Geralt's dry sense of humor, a bit rough around the edges, brilliant, snippy without really meaning to (because she asks a lot of questions and would rather get to the point), but has a good heart.)

The witcher figured that would be the end of her human interactions for the evening, but only a few minutes later, the stunning newcomer from before appeared before her. Upon closer inspection, Hermione couldn’t imagine she wouldn’t be conspicuous in any group of people she happened to find herself immersed in. The woman was looking back at her with vivid sapphire eyes, and silvery blonde hair that shimmered even in torchlight. Her attire was travel-ready, but elegant.

��Bonsoir. You are a witcher, oui? Or perhaps a ‘witcheress’ is more accurate? I am not familiar with all the terms…” She watched the beautiful stranger patiently while she fumbled through Hermione’s professional title. As if the distinctive, amber colored cat-eyes hadn’t given her away, the brunette mused wryly. Eventually, the blonde gave up and sat herself down at Hermione’s table, her medallion twitching faintly as the stranger got settled. Hermione filed that away for later. Her new dinner buddy seemed to be oblivious to the curious and concerned looks now being thrown her way at boldly taking a seat at a mutant’s table.

“I came from Ellander,” she began in a non sequitur. “The temple, and spoke to the priestess Nenneke, who told me about you.” Hermione continued eating her second serving of stew and waited for her to get to the point. “I would like to hire you as an escort as I travel back to Toussaint.” The witcher finally put her spoon down.

“Sounds like you ought to be asking some mercenaries to be your bodyguards,” she responded, eyeing the bow the woman was carrying on her pack meaningfully.

“A pair seems doable, and I’d prefer you.”

“I’m not a bodyguard.”

“Yes, technically, I am aware,” she replied, beginning to show signs of impatience.

“Then why are you soliciting a monster-slayer?”

🔹 Witnessed here in Time and Blood by whistle.the.silver is probably the most interesting one because it uses the concept of Veela hair as a wand core brilliantly. Again, this comes with huge 🛑spoilers🛑. Read the italicized words at your own risk. I can't add the entire clip here, as the topic of Fleur's hair is littered throughout several other chapters. But this story shows us a Fleur who is willing to do anything in order to protect Hermione during the course of the war.

My memory is a bit foggy, I haven't read this story in months, but here's what I remember:

This takes place during the time of Shell Cottage, where Fleur is married to Bill and takes care of Hermione. Fleur didn't expect to fall in love with the young brunette and, as the Golden Trio's time in Shell Cottage comes to an end, she worries over Hermione's safety. Fleur, using magic only known to the Veela tribes, does her best to offer Hermione protection in any way that she can--even going as far as to study what Lily Potter did so Harry could live. At one point, Fleur cuts her own hair with a length now roughly above her shoulders to give Hermione a new wand. But this isn't the only bridge Fleur is willing to cross to make sure Hermione survives the incoming battle. Fleur's grandmother, Ron, and even Bill himself, is a little sceptic over the propriety of Fleur's actions, but Fleur is determined to do whatever it takes to make sure Hermione makes it out of the war safe and alive.

So that was a lot to wade through, I know.

But if you've skipped all those parts for the sake of missing spoilers then let me go ahead and explain why the parallel between Fleur and Narcissa are there. Sure, it's plain to see that they have similar physical characteristics, but they're also similar in other ways.

In Witnessed here in Time and Blood, Fleur is willing to do whatever it takes to protect Hermione during the war: sacrifice the secrets of the Veela, make Hermione a wand, make her marriage and friendship with Bill suffer, be scrutinized by her Veela tribe, etc. And didn't Narcissa do the exact same thing during the war to make sure Draco made it out alive? They both chose to 'betray' everyone else for the sake of this one person. Not to mention, in Extinction by rubikanon Narcissa even makes Hermione a wand. (I’m telling you, there are so many parallels between these two ships and I can probably list more but I'd rather not make this post longer.)

Here, I’m just going to go ahead and say it—it’s almost like Fleur and Narcissa in fanfiction have the same love language.

A glaringly obvious difference between them is their upbringing, and we could argue that this why Fleur tends to be more open with her emotions while Narcissa tends to be more carefully guarded with hers. And I don't know if writers realize these parallels but as someone who's a huge fan of both characters and as someone who makes the occasional fanart of them, it's a pretty difficult detail to ignore. This crazy conspiracy all started because I had to find a way to make both characters look distinct from one another... It's just so interesting that writers from two different ships unknowingly make these parallels with two completely separate characters who are often at the opposite ends of the seesaw.

But again, let's take a look at Extinction by rubikanon. (I know. Extinction?! AGAIN?! Always.)

Spoiler warning!

🔹 Extinction by rubikanon has a marvelous take on this, as it turns out Fleur and Narcissa are actually good friends, and if I remember correctly, occasionally exchange letters (I’m unsure about this bit, I might have read it in a different story). They just get along remarkably well; I imagine they both share a kind of mutual respect for each other, a quiet understanding for the way the other woman carries herself: poised, meticulous, they pride themselves in their work, they both know how to handle an Ocean Of Secrets™, they're both accustomed to being under the spotlight of the public eye, and they’re both dedicated to their loved ones. Needless to say, Fleur and Narcissa are both giddy over the prospect of being with someone they love and adore, and end up meticulously planning numerous (I think it was hinted) double dates (Fleur with Bill, and Narcissa with Hermione) with the same kind of endearing enthusiasm that leave Hermione and Bill with no choice but to agree to the whims of their respective lovers.

(Scene seen in Chapter 23: Build Up Your Defense 2 of 2)

Narcissa and (Hermione) I were sitting together on one of the couches when Bill and Fleur arrived later. They showered Teddy with kisses on his little cheeks. He'd gotten past his clingy phase and adored us all, struggling to walk around the room by bracing himself on everyone's knees.

Suddenly Narcissa reached up and grabbed onto someone's wrist behind her head. "Don't even think about it," she said.

"That's just scary. How did you know I was there?" George stood up from behind the couch, a toy spider dangling from his hand. Teddy shrieked with laughter.

"She has eyes in the back of her head," Draco said.

"Mothers," George grumbled, sitting down close to Angelina. "Dump her, Hermione. I need you to date someone more prankable."

Fleur looked in surprise at the two of us on the couch. "Oh, la vache! How did I not know zees? You are lovers?"

"We're dating," I said mildly, though we really were lovers. In every sense. I glanced at Narcissa and bit my lip as heat spread through me. My imagination started planning a middle-of-the-night rendezvous.

"No wonder she (Narcissa) was so adamant about healing that curse," Bill said thoughtfully.

"Adorable! Simply adorable!" Fleur exclaimed, sitting down on Narcissa's other side. "We must go out for a double date next week, all four of us. We'll dine at L'Escargot!"

Narcissa's eyes lit up.

"Oh, no," I said.

"You won't have to eat snails," Narcissa said. "Please, mon amour?"

"French doesn't work on me."

"Please?" She kissed my cheek again and again. "Please? Please?"

Laughing now, I pulled her in for a kiss on the lips and said, "Yes, alright. But only because I have fond memories of trying new foods with you."

"As do I," she agreed.

Then we realized everyone was staring. Narcissa cleared her throat and straightened up, blushing. Draco made a face. Ginny looked a little more favorable. Harry held in laughter, and Andromeda hid her camera.

"Adorable!" Fleur declared again.

🔹 Also, I just have to add Sugar and Spice by waltzlikeits1698 because Chapter 4: Happy Birthday, Harry is absolutely hysterical. During Harry's birthday party, Hermione sulks in a corner because Fleur has apparently been avoiding her. Ginny decides to do something barking mad, something Hermione typically falls for.

“Ooh, someone’s grouchy,” Ginny teased, retracting her arm and facing Hermione fully. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” Hermione insisted, although even she could hear the pout in her voice.

“Sure seems like it,” she snarked, summoning two shots and offering one to Hermione with a waggle of her eyebrows. Hermione pulled a face and Ginny shrugged before downing both, one after the other. (...) “You know, I spotted a tall, blonde drink of water hanging around the stairs.”

“What!?” Hermione exclaimed, whirling around and leaning out of the room to look at the staircase. Sure enough, standing at the bottom and resting a slender hand on the bannister was a tall, blonde witch who made Hermione’s heart stop with her mere presence. She had started forward before she knew it, her heart taking up an even quicker beat as she crossed the few steps and reached out a hand to clasp her elbow. The woman turned, that beautiful blonde hair catching the candlelight as it moved in one long sheet.

Hermione retracted her hand in horror, her eyes widening. “Mrs Malfoy!?”

Narcissa Malfoy raised an eyebrow at the witch who had practically accosted her. “Miss Granger. Can I help?”

What was she even doing here?

“Uh,” Hermione said dumbly, “sorry, I just… need the loo. Can I-?”

She gestured lamely to the staircase. Both women stared at the perfectly reasonable gap that Hermione could easily pass through. The moment stretched on.

Slowly, Narcissa returned her inscrutable gaze to Hermione, who squirmed uncomfortably in response. She then took a small step to the side and gestured for Hermione to pass. She did so and, as she turned the corner of the staircase, sent a deadly glare at Ginny, who was practically pissing herself with laughter.

(...)

Fleur had arrived. Hermione couldn’t explain exactly how she could tell, considering she had been in the duplicated bathroom for the last ten minutes after humiliating herself in front of Narcissa, but she knew it like she knew that it was levi-O-sa.

(...) (Hermione) She tried to avoid eye contact with Narcissa on the way back down and was thoroughly unsuccessful: the witch had physically reached out and laid her own hand over Hermione’s on the bannister, forcing her to stop and look up. Then, with an intention behind her eyes that Hermione had neither the brain capacity nor the energy to delve into, she said “It’s Ms Black now.”

Then she had released Hermione’s hand and turned back to her conversation with Andromeda and two wizards Hermione didn’t recognise.

Come to think of it, there were a lot of people Hermione didn’t recognise.

Anyway, long story short, this is the result of reading both Fleurmione and Cissamione—

But RIGHT. At the end of the day, again, these are just some crazy little things I picked up on and I may or may not be right, no one has to agree with me, everyone can disagree with me. Actually, yes feel free to disagree with me. I need to get out of this damn site and you know, touch grass.

Okay. Well. I'm gonna stop here now. So. Bye. But thank you anon for this lovely ask!! I’m really touched that you wanted to know what inspired the way I drew Fleur 🥺💕💖 But still. So sorry for this massive word vomit!! 😂

[searchingwardrobes]

She Dreams in Color: 4/6

 For those of you who hoped after the last chapter that you had seen the last of Neal, well . . . sorry? The angst has only just begun. Thanks again to @shireness-says​ for organizing the @cshistfic​ event and to @aerica13​ for being my beta!

Trigger warning: this chapter discusses a wife feeling forced to have sex. It���s not rape technically, but more like dubious consent.  Just wanted everyone to be aware.

Summary: Emma’s life is drab and colorless, and not just because of the Dust Bowl that has stripped the land bare. Married to a man she does not love and never has, Emma lives for Tuesdays. That’s when the iceman brings cool relief from the unrelenting heat and fire to her unsatisfied longings. Perhaps they won’t go unsatisfied for long …

*Yes, this fic depicts infidelity. I am in no way making light of people who cheat on their spouses - it’s just a story, ya’ll.*

Rating: M

Length: 6 chapters, complete

Updated each Thursday 

Chapter One | Two | Three

Also on Ao3

Tagging the usuals: @snowbellewells @whimsicallyenchantedrose @kmomof4 @xhookswenchx @let-it-raines @bethacaciakay @tiganasummertree @shireness-says @stahlop @scientificapricot @spartanguard @welllpthisishappening @resident-of-storybrooke @thislassishooked @ilovemesomekillianjones @kday426 @ekr032-blog-blog @lfh1226-linda @ultraluckycatnd @nikkiemms @optomisticgirl @profdanglaisstuff @ohmakemeahercules @carpedzem @branlovestowrite @superchocovian @hollyethecurious @vvbooklady1256 @winterbaby89 @delirious-latenight-laughs @jennjenn615 @snidgetsafan @itsfabianadocarmo @lassluna @distant-rose @courtorderedcake @winterbythesea @thestateofardadreaming @killian-whump @thisonesatellite @batana54 @it-meant-something @xsajx @therooksshiningknight @gingerchangeling​

Chapter Four: Pretends to Sleep as He Looks Her Over

After the high from making love with Killian, reality sank down upon Emma. Why hadn’t she stopped to clarify her situation? First of all, there was Neal. When he’d said he’d just find some other woman, what had he meant? Was he leaving her? Just defiantly proclaiming that he would cheat if he wanted to? If their marriage was over, what would Emma do? Where would she go?

Then there was Killian. He hadn’t said anything about having feelings for her. He’d simply offered to pleasure her in ways her husband never had. After months and months of flirting and sexual tension, they had given into it. That didn’t necessarily make Emma anything special to him, however. For all she knew, he offered such “extra services” to many other lonely housewives. 

Emma went through her chores on the farm in a sort of daze. Half the time, she was paralyzed with an odd mixture of confusion and panic about her future. The other half, she remembered the ecstasy of Killian’s touch and she completely forgot what the hell she was supposed to be doing. 

She ate lunch alone, and then dinner too. She got ready for bed, and Neal still wasn’t home. She didn’t even know how to feel about his absence. He was gone so much anyway, Even the ambiguity of his return was familiar. 

Yet return he did. Emma didn’t hear the door open and close because of the fan whirring beside the bed. She heard creaking on the stairs, and then there he was, standing sheepishly in the bedroom doorway. Emma didn’t even put down the book she was reading as she looked at him. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. It even sounded genuine.

Emma gnawed at the inside of her cheek. Relief warred with disappointment. Relief that she still had a roof over her head. Disappointment that she would still be sharing a bed with this man. 

“I forgive you,” she finally said. She hoped he didn’t expect her to apologize, too. That, she would never do.

Neal’s shoulders sagged in relief, and he gave her that boyish smile that she had begun to find more and more ridiculous. He fairly jumped into bed beside her, not even removing his shoes. She tried not to shudder as he ran a hand over her shoulder. 

“I didn’t go find some other woman, just so you know.”

Emma pretended to concentrate on her book. He wriggled closer. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. She knew that look. 

“Want to make up?”

She stared at her book again. “I thought we just did.” 

He chuckled, and dread sank into the pit of her stomach. She could brace herself, wait for it to be over, like she always had before. Somehow, though, it felt different now. Now that she knew what it should be.

“Alright then, I’ll let you read.”

She hoped he didn’t notice her breath of relief as he stood and began discarding his clothes. He slid between the sheets, and she gripped her book tighter. 

“Goodnight,” he told her. 

“Goodnight.”

************************************************************

Maybe Killian Jones was a foolish man. A fool who had bared his soul in life-shattering intimacy with a woman who wasn’t even free for him to claim. Or, then again, maybe she was free. That matter had not been clearly discussed. 

Their lack of conversation the previous day was precisely why Killian was making his way to the Gold farm after his last delivery was complete. He couldn’t let Emma think she was nothing more than a conquest. 

Since he wasn’t there to deliver ice, Killian climbed the front porch steps and knocked on the front door like a proper caller. He’d also changed out of his work clothes and into his brown wool suit. He was hot as Hades in it, but it was the only proper suit he had left. His suede fedora was also atop his head, fashionably askew. He straightened his dark paisley tie nervously before giving the door a quick rap.

When Emma opened the door, her expression went through an almost comical array of emotions. He enjoyed the bright look of appreciation that first lit her eyes - he hadn’t been this dapper even on their picnic. She blinked, confusion filled her face, and then was rapidly replaced with a mixture of panic and anger. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” she hissed. “It isn’t Tuesday!”

He recoiled slightly, blinking himself in surprise. Suddenly, he realized what was causing that bright red to flood her cheeks. 

“You mean . . . he’s staying?”

Emma grabbed him by the arm and yanked him inside. The brief hope that she would throw her arms around his neck and kiss him was swiftly doused by her next words. 

“Yes. The reasons I had for marrying him in the first place haven’t changed. I need a roof over my head and food on the table.”

Killian narrowed his eyes. “Not like he’s been fulfilling his part of the bargain there, love.”

Emma shook her head. “In a perfect world, I’d toss his stuff in the yard, but life’s far from perfect.”

“Swan,” he told her, drawing closer and grasping her gently by the elbow, “you deserve so much more than this.”

She shook her head. “You make me feel . . . you have no idea how deeply you make me feel, make me come alive, but I have to face reality. Not to mention the fallout if everyone in town knew what we’ve done. Your business would suffer.”

“Can we stop talking about money for five seconds?”

She backed away from him, shielding herself with her arms. He thought, not for the first time, how out of character that blue flowered house dress looked on her. The sleeves were slightly ruffled, and the neckline was high. The fabric wrapped around her torso, large wooden buttons decorating the left side. It was the dress of a farmer’s wife, and it didn’t suit her at all.

“Thank you for comforting me, yesterday,” Emma told him softly. 

“Comforting you? Bloody hell, woman, you think that’s all it was?”

She rubbed at her upper arms and looked away from him. “Well, I was just thinking . . . I’m not the only lonely housewife on your route. Lots of men are off getting work where they can find it. Sending money home. So I understand if -”

He cut her off the only way he knew how - with his lips on hers. He practically pounced on her and backed her up against the nearest wall, cradling her head to soften the contact. Emma melted against him, a soft sigh bubbling from her throat, and he smiled against her lips. He pulled back, thumbing her wet, swollen lips. 

“Only you, Emma. It wasn’t just a one time thing. And, by the way, I’m not comforting you.”

She was genuinely surprised by his words. “You’re not?” He shook his head, and she swallowed thickly. “Then what are you doing?”

“Don’t you know, Emma? I love you.”

She didn’t answer him. She just stood there looking at him with an awed expression, then a single tear tracked down her cheek. Slowly she leaned forward and brushed her lips lightly across his. She pressed herself against him, steadying herself by grasping his biceps, and deepened the kiss, though it remained tender. When they broke apart, Killian stayed close, his breath mingling with hers as he spoke. 

“I can’t stay, can I?”

She shook her head, then dropped her forehead to his chest. “Neal had some deliveries to make, but he said he’d be back by supper.”

Killian’s brow furrowed. “Deliveries?”

Emma shrugged. “Some job he got while he was gone. He was really vague about it. It’s probably best I don’t know.”

Killian cupped her face in his hands. “He just better be careful. For your sake.”

She grinned defiantly up at him. “I can take care of myself.”

He knew. Bloody hell, did he know. It frustrated him, but it was also one of the things he loved most about her. If she felt staying married was how to do that, then he’d support her. 

“Emma,” he told her, as he traced her jaw with his fingertips, “I’ll never ask for more than you can give.”

She wrapped her arms around him tightly and pressed her nose into his neck. “I know,” she breathed against his skin.

***************************************************************

The days blurred together for Emma after that in a hazy cloud of ecstasy. Killian came every Tuesday to deliver the ice, as usual, and her “tips” were now far more than dessert. He came by other times as well, unable to stay away for long. They came up with a system for Emma to warn him if Neal was home. She had a hanging basket of red silk flowers; a hideously ugly and pitiful Valentine’s gift from her husband. “Since nothing real will grow,” he’d told her. Emma only hung the ridiculous thing when her husband was home, so it was the perfect signal to warn Killian to stay away.

Not that Neal was home much; that didn’t change. Neither did his halfhearted apology change the way he treated her. The only thing that changed was the frequency of Killian’s visits which brought color and life to her drab world. They made love everywhere: the kitchen table, against the counter top, in the half-empty barn. They even made love right in the parlor on the Gold family’s antique settee. For Emma, it felt a bit like revenge. 

Killian also took her on outings to what she had come to think of as “their tree.” They had picnics and talked, but they also made love under its barren branches. Especially under that tree, Emma could see the hurt in his eyes when she didn’t return his “I love you.” It wasn’t that she didn’t feel deeply for Killian. It was the words themselves. After all, she and Neal said them to each other, and they meant nothing. It wasn’t even that she doubted that Killian meant them with great passion. She knew he did. But was it lasting? The physical attraction between them was intoxicating, but would a day come when he tired of her? Once she was a young and naive girl who saw her parents as proof that true love was real. However, she wasn’t that girl anymore, and she was wary to open herself up. 

Neal still demanded of her “wifely duties” as he called them. Though it was rare, Emma still felt revulsion every time. However, she feared refusing him. Feared his anger, his mercurial emotions, and also feared he would discover her affair. So to keep the peace, she did what she always had: she closed her eyes and tried not to cry until it was over. Afterwards, she felt so ashamed and dirty, but not for being an adultress. No, she felt shame for being unfaithful to Killian. Felt shame for sharing a bed with a man she did not love while withholding her feelings from a man she felt more and more truly cared about her. 

Thankfully, Neal rarely wanted her anymore, and she’d heard about Tamara, the girl who opened her bar the minute prohibition was repealed. (As if everyone didn’t already know about the speakeasy.) As time went on, Neal wanted Emma less and less, to the point she no longer held her breath when he slid beneath the sheets at night. She was probably the first wife in history thankful for her husband’s mistress.

The only problem with how long it had been between her and Neal was when she realized something her body had been trying to tell her for about two months: she was pregnant. She was pregnant, and according to even the most basic math, it couldn’t be Neal’s. Yet, when she told him, he actually celebrated like a real husband would, whooping and hugging her tight. She never told Killian outright. There simply came the day he rested his hand against the swelling that had begun to show under her dress. 

“Have you had any milk today, Swan? The wee one needs milk, you know.”

And that was it. It was all he said, with a lopsided smile and a hint of sadness in his blue eyes. 

Sadness and lust - were those the only emotions Emma was capable of eliciting from those eyes? She prayed not. One day, she wasn’t sure when, but one day, she would fix that.

****************************************************************

Emma lay in bed naked next to Killian, who was also naked. Her red house dress lay in a heap upon the floor. The fabric had been a birthday gift from all of the Joneses, and Anna and Elsa had taken her shopping for the pattern. Emma had tossed away her old blue floral once she’d finished her new dress that had a corseted waistband, a square neckline, and slightly puffed sleeves. The delicate, white, geometric pattern of the cloth suited Emma much more than the blue flowers. The waistband also allowed the dress to expand to accommodate her ever enlarging belly. 

She’d used the leftover fabric to make a burp cloth and bib for Anna’s baby boy when he arrived. It seemed a pitiful gift, especially since the fabric had originally come from the Joneses in the first place. Anna, however, had hugged the items to her breast and teared up as she thanked Emma profusely. Holding little Rolf in her arms, Emma had wondered about her own little one’s arrival. Would he have Killian’s eyes? Her nose? Would it be obvious to the world who his father was?  

An icy rain lashed against the window panes, but Emma was warm in Killian’s embrace. She rubbed her hands along the dark hair on his arms, relishing the feel of him around her. 

“How is the business going?” she asked.

Ice delivery season had ended months ago, though the heat of an Indian summer had far outlasted the ice supply. Kristoff was already in Canada harvesting ice for next summer, and the Jones brothers were now trying to make it through the winter months delivering coal instead. A warm fall and a thus far mild winter wasn’t helping, however. 

“It’s going fine,” he told her. 

Emma rolled over so she could look up into his face. His smile tried to convince her of his words, yet she saw the worry in the lines around his eyes. She frowned and traced his jaw.

“You’re worried.”

He shook his head, then turned to kiss her palm. “We’ve had lean times in the past. Summer always comes again.”

Emma wriggled closer to him, humming in contentment. “This cold rain could help.”

“Perhaps.”

She could tell he didn’t want to talk business, so she fell silent. He ran a hand over her body, lingering on her abdomen which was growing larger by the day. 

“God, you’re so beautiful.” His voice was husky when he said it, sending a shiver down her spine. 

She bit her lip and searched his face hesitantly. “Truly? You’re not just saying that?”

“Of course not.” His brow furrowed with confusion. 

“Neal says I’m disgusting right now. He can’t even look at me naked.” 

Emma dropped her gaze and stared at the pattern of the sheets. She never thought Neal’s rejection could hurt her, but this felt different. This was revulsion. No woman wanted that reaction, regardless of its source. Killian was quiet for a moment, and fear sliced her heart that he would reject her, too. Yet just as the feeling gripped her, he tipped her face up and slanted his mouth over hers. The kiss was filled with passion and desire, and just in case she missed it, he caressed her body eagerly. His lips and tongue then followed the same path as his hands, until he had drifted down between her legs. Emma writhed as he worked her up, an orgasm washing over her with the talents of his tongue. Then he made his way back up her body, whispering words of awe against her skin before entering her for the second time that morning. She shattered around him, her body alive and vibrating. He made her feel beautiful in every way.  

Still joined with her, he looked deeply into her eyes and spoke huskily. “Leave him, Emma. Be with me.”

With their bodies joined together, and that look in his eyes, she was tempted to give in. Then she really looked down the length of their bodies and saw the swell of her child within her. Truth, cold and sobering, washed over her.

“How can I?” She asked him, voice wavering, begging him to understand. “Especially now! Now that I’m -”

“Don’t you dare say that you’re carrying his child.”

Emma startled, her eyes growing wide. Killian sighed, dropping his face to hers, pressing their foreheads together. Neither of them had directly addressed this particular elephant in the room. He rolled away from her, and they both reached for towels near the bed to clean up. Killian stood and began gathering his clothes. He paused, still naked before her, his belongings clutched to his chest.  

“I may be just a delivery man, but I can do basic math, Emma.”

She rolled away from him. “Don’t ask me to say it, Killian. Please.”

He was quiet for far longer than Emma would have liked. She swung her legs around to sit on the edge of the bed, slipping on her underthings. She tried to reach around her pregnant stomach to grab her dress, but then Killian was in her line of sight. He picked up the dress and handed it to her. She took it wordlessly, then allowed Killian to take her hand and help her to her feet. He pulled her close to his chest, the buttons of his shirt brushing against the fabric of her bra. Her desire for him lately had been insatiable, and she suddenly wanted to wrap her legs around him and try for her fifth orgasm of the day - or would it be her sixth? She had lost count. 

“Emma,” he said, softly, gently.

“Yes?” She tipped her head up to look up at him. In his gaze, she saw sadness. Again. She wouldn’t let it continue. He opened his mouth to speak, but she stopped him with a hand to his lips. “Yes, the baby is yours. And yes, I love you.”

His answer was a passionate kiss that sent them right back to the bed. Emma never did decide on the exact number of orgasms. 

[prurientpuddlejumper]

A New Arrangement [Part 3/9]

<- Part 2 | Part 4 ->

Summary: Office gossip, and learning a few new things about your client that leave you embarrassed 

1,194 words

“He was such a weirdo! You have no idea—I legit thought it was going to be some creepy sex party thing,” you laughed, leaning over the top of Roxy’s cubicle.

The plump woman scrunched her face with flawless purple makeup in disgust. “Oh my god,” she squealed. “Do not go back there. Get Bobby to take it over. Seriously.”

“Seriously,” you groaned, although you in fact meant the opposite. The hell you were going to give up a big client to the office playboy.

Maybe you would have to eventually. Dr. Chilton did not seem to like you very much, and to be fair, you really put your foot in your mouth right off the bat and never actually apologized for it. Come to think of it, you could hardly blame him for being a bit churlish.

Three days later, you had another chance. You vowed to start this meeting off on a better foot.

You’d looked him up this time so you wouldn’t stumble face-first into any pitfalls. One of the first headlines was “Chesapeake Ripper Suspect Cleared of Suspicions After Near-Fatal Shooting in FBI Custody” followed by links to his books about the Ripper and the Red Dragon, articles about his being discovered half-drowned in a fountain after being burned and mutilated, and an older article on Tattlecrime about his being vivisected while conscious by a former patient.

This guy had been through the meat grinder!

You started reading his first novel, Hannibal the Cannibal. His writing was as dry and pretentious as his speaking voice, the tone overly-technical, though as you got into the flow of it you began to see how it had held enough of the layman’s attention to ascend to best-sellerdom. There was a ridiculous humor buried in the stuffy formality of its grammar, like an old British comedy.

The day of the meeting, you greeted him at the door with a less-forced smile, did your best not to stare at his absurd suit-and-mask outfit, and thought you were being very polite. You also wore a sexier outfit, just as a little fuck-you for thinking you were drab.

He was, at least, less prickly.

He invited you in, holding the door open and flinching a little as you passed through, stepping into into his personal bubble. The reaction reminded you not to try to shake his hand, though it felt rude. He was a little more familiar with you—he got your name wrong, but it was so obvious that it was on purpose that your lips turned up into a wry smile. You couldn’t see him smiling back, but you had a feeling he was pleased with himself.

Now that the shock of his appearance had worn off, you found he was a well-articulated gentleman and fairly charming in conversation. He might not be a total crazy person after all. You might, actually, not hate him.

But you had barely booted up your laptop and pulled up documents to review when he tossed you out, leaving you wondering what exactly the hell you had said this time to offend him. Roxy was going to get an earful when you went to get drinks after work.

***

You returned the next week, and the same thing happened. This time, you weren’t going to take it anymore.

“OK, what is going on? Are you not happy with my services?” You slammed the laptop shut. “Do you want someone else assigned to your case?” That last addition came out more fragile than you’d intended. It stung to imagine giving him up to a coworker, but if he hated your guts, then he hated you.

“You are fine,” he said tersely, pressing his fingertips to his porcelain brow.

“Then what? Are you just jerking me around for fun? You enjoy wasting my time?”

He said nothing, but his chin tilted indignantly into the air.

“Well, if you’re going to keep cutting these so short, I’m not going to keep driving all the way out here.”

“I pay for the full hour regardless. That makes your time more valuable, if anything.”

You half laughed as you stuffed your laptop and various papers back into your bag. “I’m sorry, but no. There is paperwork and research I have to do back at the office depending on your decisions that I can’t start because you haven’t made any. If you keep blowing these meetings off then you can find somebody else to help you.”

Brusque? Yes, but you were tired of being disrespected by some rich asshole.

You shot up from the desk, chair legs scraping on the hardwood, and marched out.

Before you could reach the door, Dr. Chilton stood and called after you, a plaintive, almost desperate quality to his voice. “I cannot manage these lengthy sessions. Sitting upright too long makes my head ache, and my grafts sting.”

You froze in the doorway.

“I have only been out of the hospital for a month,” he confessed, begging you not to leave. His tone turned sharp and defensive again. “Given your line of work, one would think you would be more sensitive to the needs of the ailing.”

You turned on your heel, hands flying to your mouth. “I-I’m so sorry… sir. I thought that you—of course I will do anything I can to accommodate your needs!” Your cheeks burned hot. Why did you just assume he was blowing you off and force him to explain a medical condition?! He was right, that was like, rule number one at your job. “I am so getting fired,” you whimpered to yourself.

The cavernous study seemed vast in the distance between you. You tried to divine if he was angry, or forgiving, but the mask betrayed nothing. He just stood, distant and observing.

“Is there anything that would make it easier for you? If you need to lie down while we talk, that’s fine. A lot of clients do. I see people in the hospital all the time.” You closed some of the distance until his foot took a half step back.

His head tipped considering your proposal. He was a proud man, that much you were certain about Frederick Chilton, and the idea of laying down would be admitting how sick he was. He would rather rudely cut an appointment short with no explanation than admit to needing extra support. (It wasn’t entirely your fault for not realizing—he literally masked his pain, which made him hard to read). But he also did not want you to be angry and quit, and so he gestured you to follow him to a supple leather couch set into a reading nook. There was a low coffee table in front of it on which to set your computer, and a few leather chairs that sank you into a reclined position no matter how you tried to sit at attention.

He stretched out on the couch with an embarrassed grumble, and lay there rubbing his temples for a few minutes before turning to you and instructing you to begin.

Much to her disappointment, you didn’t have a word of gossip for Roxy the next day.

[sarkos]

Tagged by @prophet-9

Tag people you want to catch up with/get to know better!

Favourite colour: For clothes, I default to black, but dark grey, olive drab, maroon and purple work, too. (For art, I either go kinda Fritz Scholder or garish neon colors and metallics for my palette)

Last song: I usually get a song stuck in my head (aside from stimming/concentration music, I also do that Hudson Hawk thing of using a song as a timer) and the current one is FSoL's We Have Explosive (Mantronik Plastic Formula #1):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADWPxypmhOY

Last movie: Technically, it would be Godzilla: Final Wars thanks to Comet's Godzilla marathon, but intentionally, it would be a combo of Superdeep and Deep Rising (I usually watch a movie or two after Toonami Saturdays, preferably horror or at least horrific)

Last show: About the only show I watch religiously is Night Gallery, thanks to Comet's Friday/Saturday marathons, but I am a sucker for the Loki, if anyone missed the pictures and gifsets.

Anime-wise, Godzilla Singular Point, which is absolutely my thing (I'm behind on SSSS Dynazenon)

Tea or coffee: tea (Earl Grey, Sassafras or Constant Comment)

What I’m currently working on: Mostly, I'm trying to get back up to speed since getting out of the hospital and a couple months of IV antibiotics, so just being able to concentrate on things is something else right now. As hobbies go, I've got a couple MG Geara Dogas I'm customizing and whittling away at my gunpla backlog.

I'm notoriously bad at responding to these, and worse about passing them along, but if anyone wants to consider themselves tagged, feel free to do so

[bimboficationblues]

So I’ve been running through the FROM Software games over the past month, here’s thoughts:

Dark Souls (Remastered)

The original Dark Souls really agitated me at first because of the one-two punch of the third and fourth bosses on the standard route, but once I broke through that wall I got really into it. I love the interconnected world and the tactically oriented combat; it really captures a great feeling of both adventure and foreignness. 

Thematically I think it’s pretty interesting, even if I’m not sure the narrative is communicated in the best way possible. The player-character is essentially a sacrificial lamb for the powers-that-be (often without even realizing it as the player), and the boss encounters and world-building reveal the ultimate hollowness that stand behind thrones and crowns. Also, the bosses are great! I’ve been keeping track of which ones I’ve enjoyed most throughout the series and the vast majority of my favorites are from DS1; there are some serious low points (most of them in the Demon Ruins), but the high points are incredibly high. It makes me sad that the Remaster didn’t include anything new, like DS2′s Bonfire Ascetics, to allow me to refight Quelaag, Ornstein and Smough, or Artorias the Abysswalker.

The main things that keep me from lavishing DS1 with praise are certain tedious design choices (kindling bonfires, the inability to warp to any bonfire after unlocking warping, the incentives towards turtling up, and the incentives for finding cheap and unexciting ways to defeat bosses) and the truly disappointing last third of the game. The Duke’s Archives is a great level and I have mixed-but-positive feelings on the Tomb of Giants, but the Demon Ruins/Lost Izalith are hideous and full of boring encounters and bad bosses, and the New Londo Ruins is a slogfest from beginning to end (died to the boss? have fun on your way back to it, which requires going down an elevator, up a staircase, across a bridge, past five dragon enemies, through swaths of quick-attacking humanoid enemies that wear black in low lighting, all because there’s no bonfire in the vicinity).

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin

Dark Souls II is not as bad as it’s made out to be and I disagree with the substance of most of the traditional complaints, but it is still pretty underwhelming. The enemy placements can be frustrating but are generally a good change for people already familiar with DS1′s approach to encounter design; the Shrine of Amana is singled out for this, but it’s really not that bad, especially if you summon for it. 

The narrative--a falling into darkness, the cyclical decay and disappearance of states, the direct and observable involvement of Nashandra and the Emerald Herald in the plot--is arguably more interesting than DS1′s, though it takes longer to get off the ground. New quality-of-life changes, like the revised system for weapon durability, are also good. The introduction of new healing items was also helpful, although I disliked having to farm for them sometimes (the inevitable result of a very hard game tying healing items to currency, which is also an issue in Bloodborne). 

“Dudes in armor” bosses are good, and DS2 does have some great dudes in armor (specifically the Fume Knight and the Looking Glass Knight), but the problem with DS2′s bosses (irrespective of whether they’re humanoid or monstrous) is that they are not well-served by the game’s camera direction, the arenas they’re in (which are consistently and observably just big empty circles), and their visual designs (which are generally drab). Ornstein and Smough felt like forces of nature, pale shadows of themselves who nonetheless tower over you and will wreck your shit through sheer inertia; their rough equivalents, the Throne Watcher and Throne Defender, feel like beefy standard enemies. Overall I think most of the bosses are “boring but practical,” which is not really what I wanted.

One thing I consider unforgivable in this game is the ruining of the parry system; not only are the timings very weird and hard to pin down, the changing of riposte attacks from a quick, desperate counterattack to a slow, arduous process of executing a prone enemy is really annoying. I would probably have made a parry-centric character as I did in DS1 and taken the time to learn the new attack timings, if it were not for how unrewarding it feels to riposte in DS2.

Dark Souls III

DS2 also makes changes that carry into DS3, namely the ability to warp at the start of the game between any accessed bonfire, the use of a hub world, and the need to regularly return to the hub for leveling up. These are all bad choices imo. Immediate access to warping is probably a good thing, but it instills a sense of relief at being done with a chore, as opposed to the unique atmosphere of curiosity and dread that DS1 instilled. In DS1 I was always excited and fearful to see what I’d run into next; in the sequels I was often hoping to barrel through to the next bonfire. The hub world also contributes to this lack of curiosity, and having to return to it to level up means you never really feel like an adventurer in a strange and terrifying land because you can--and must--just nip back home if things are getting too rough. DS3 is a little better about this with a slightly lower number of bonfires, but not by much. At the same time, DS3 abandons good ideas from its immediate predecessor such as the ability to refight bosses, lifegems, and the “power-stance” for dual-wielding weapons. 

DS3 also introduces a god-awful mechanic; in DS1, there’s pretty much no real downside to being Hollow, while in DS2, remaining Hollow after repeated deaths will steadily decrease your max HP. DS3 instead puts a hard cap on your max health. (This is framed as losing a 30% HP “bonus” from being “Embered,” rather than a 30% cap, but they achieve the same basic effect, especially since being human is supposed to be the “base” state. If DS2 did this shit, people would be mad about it.) In general I dislike when these games punish players who are having a difficult time with a section or a boss by making the game even harder (which is also why I’m really not a fan of the PvP system).

DS3 also accelerates some of the frustrating things in encounter design from DS2; not only are there many areas with insane swarms of enemies, but those enemies are all often obscenely fast and hit like a truck. The new Silver Knights (who were some of my favorite foes in DS1) are the worst offenders so far; they were slow and methodical but punishing, but now they’re used as a gank-fight.

Finally, DS3′s narrative is mired in nostalgia-bait. While DS2 asked about Gwyn, Lord of Cinder, “who’s that?”, DS3 acts like Anor Londo was the most important kingdom to ever exist, undermining both previous games’ themes. It doesn’t really feel like it’s telling its own story. So even though DS3 is more technically polished than DS2, and I think definitely has a better selection of bosses and levels, I think it’s the inferior product overall.

Bloodborne

Bloodborne is definitely the most moment-to-moment fun alongside DS1 imo, but is less visually interesting so far compared to the hideous muck of Blighttown, the splendorous ocean of Heide’s Tower of Flame and grim industry of the Iron Keep, or the terrifying, frostbitten beauty of the Boreal Valley. But I also don’t own a PS4, so I only got a third of the way done playing on my friend’s. However, the new approach to warping, the streamlining of the weapons system, the emphasis on parrying, the rallying system, and the increased speed and flow of gameplay are all great developments and I’m excited to explore the game more in future when I’m able to.

Demon’s Souls and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Demon’s Souls is next if I can acquire a PS3 copy (or if one of my friends gets a PS5), and while Sekiro strikes me as very different in kind from the rest of these games, it’s still on my to-play list.

[fanfic-scribbles]

Lunch Buddy: Chapter Eighteen

Masterlist

<<Previous Chapter Next Chapter>>

Overall Story Facts:

Fandom: MCU Captain America/Avengers

Story Summary: Steve Rogers makes a friend. A prickly, generally people-averse friend, but they’ll both take what they can get.

Quick Facts: Friendship (/Eventual Romance) – Steve Rogers & Reader (leading to Steve Rogers/Reader) – Female Reader

Story Warnings: Reader-insert that verges on OFC, written in 1st person past tense

Chapter 18: Party Hard

Chapter Summary: Steve is a popular guy, whether he wants to be or not. Seeking shelter around Christmas seems appropriate for the season, at least.

Chapter Warnings: Whether the viewpoint character celebrates Christmas or not is left vague (there is a gift exchange but it’s mostly centered on what Steve would celebrate), general time jumps between days are marked with single tildes (~), and at the end there is a change in viewpoint and a change back, marked ~like so~

Chapter Word Count: 5241

A/N: This chapter was a little delayed because it wasn’t working and when I dug into why I found I had issues with the following sections that were mucking up the place. It felt like working out a real big snarl– frustrating and painful at first, but very satisfying when I got to the end of it. And slightly cathartic when I just ripped out the bit that refused to budge. It was fun. I hope you enjoy.

(Minor note: time is left vague but this all starts just a few days after the last chapter and happens over a couple of weeks, ending just before Christmas. I have sort of a fake calendar I’ve done up so the dates make sense to me but I don’t think they’re necessary to understand the chapter. If I’m wrong let me know and I’ll see if I can fix it so it does make sense.)

   ~

   I was having a perfectly pleasant evening at home. I had comfy clothing, I had drinks, I had my phone, I had activities…and I had activities involving my phone.

Me: How’s the party? Steve: Ugh

Bothering Steve would always, no matter what, be fun.

Me: Serves you right Me: trying to guilt-trip me Steve: My only regret is I didn’t guilt you more Steve: I can’t believe you abandoned me to this Me: And I can’t believe you wanted to subject me to that Steve: >:( Steve: I’m reduced to hiding Steve: From a very drunk woman who wants to lean on me Steve: Among other things Steve: Or so she assures me

I felt a flare of something. It wasn’t anything nice.

Me: Hang on Me: Omw Steve: Is that all it takes?

‘Is that all it takes.’ He was such a fuckhead sometimes; maybe that woman could have him– except, no, actually unacceptable. Any potential partners had to understand ‘no means no’ and when to back the fuck off.

Me: Yup Me: There is only so much arm space for clingy bitches Me: And I take up a lot of room Steve: Hey Steve: You are not a bitch Steve: >:( Me: Don’t you frowny-face me mister Me: I am whatever I want to be Me: Deal with it

I added the sunglasses emoji just because.

Steve: Well Steve: I can’t argue that Steve: But I still don’t like it Me: You don’t have to Me: <3 Steve: I guess that’s fair Me: Seriously though Me: Do you want an excuse to leave? Me: I’ll figure one out Steve: It’s okay Steve: I’m going to be up early tomorrow so I’m going to duck out soon Steve: It just would have been more fun with you here

I rolled my eyes. But I smiled.

Me: Well Me: Don’t stay too late, Cinderella Steve: Hm Steve: Better than the old man jokes I guess Me: I would never Me: …Well I guess I might. Too easy though; I like to make an effort Steve: I appreciate your work ethic

The conversation drifted off in drips and drabs, but that night I dreamed of Steve and glass slippers and in the morning I woke with the feeling that nothing had fit quite right.

~

Steve: Guess where I am

I got up and peeked out the window. No bike, but that didn’t necessarily mean no Steve. However I looked around my apartment and cringed at the mess.

Me: If you’re dropping in you better be bringing snacks Steve: I wish

I frowned at my phone. If he wasn’t coming over then why was he…wait a minute. Wait.

Me: No Steve: Yes Me: It’s Thursday Me: Who has a party on Thursday?! Steve: Pepper assures me it’s not technically a party Steve: It’s a small get-together Me: So it’s a small party Steve: Basically Me: We’re going shopping this weekend Me: We need to find you a spine Steve: YOU try telling Pepper no Me: Hey I never said I had a spine Steve: Be grateful Steve: She really tried to get me to invite you Steve: I danced around it. I knew you wouldn’t want to with work tomorrow Me: Yeah, not happening. Thanks Steve: You’re welcome Me: Seriously though Me: How many parties can those people have in one month? Steve: Please don’t ask Steve: I don’t want to find out Me: I hate to be the one to break it to you Me: But it sounds like you’re going to find out Me: Whether you like it or not

He sent me a sad frowny-face and I immediately imagined him making the same expression. I looked up at my ceiling and wondered why it had to be now that I had the most active imagination I’d had since I was seven.

Me: Well Me: If you need a place to hide out from fancy food and grabby people Me: You know where to come Me: I don’t really do fancy food Steve: What about the grabbing?

‘Buddy, I wish,’ I thought and rolled my eyes. He had no idea. And he never would. Hopefully.

Me: I like to think I’m respectful of personal bubbles Steve: Except when I steal your food Me: Well yeah Me: At that point you’re a thief Me: And punishment must be meted out Steve: Crap Steve: Tony saw me, gotta go Me: Good luck Steve: Gee thanks

I sent him a sweet smiley face, because some things just couldn’t be helped.

~

Karma kicked my ass the very next day when I woke up with such a sudden and severe cold that made me call out of work. I was just barely considering getting out of bed for maybe some soup or a slow crawl directly to the morgue when my phone buzzed.

Steve: I think I hate you Me: I didn’t do it Steve: Another party Me: … Me: … Me: Dude Me: It’s ten am? Steve: It’s tonight Me: I’m sick Me: Come over and I’ll cough on you Steve: I can’t get sick Steve: I never thought I’d be sad about that Steve: Wait Steve: You’re sick?

I rolled my eyes. And winced, because that just hurt my fucking head.

Me: Yeah. Staying home today. Steve: Do you need anything? Steve: Help? Food?

I really wished he could stop being so sweet. It was a real fucking problem sometimes– like now, when I could think of a whole list of things I wanted his help with that was just slightly past the friends barrier. Or maybe friends cuddled and I was just out of the loop? I made a mental note to look into that, when I was slightly less disgusting.

Me: No thanks Me: Got medicine, got soup, got bed Me: Just need to decide if I can keep anything down Steve: Oh :( Me: I’ll be okay Me: Just need some sleep to kick this in the ass

And warm arms wrapped around me, but I kept that to myself. Maybe I’d have a nice dream later.

Steve: You do that Steve: Get plenty of rest Steve: And call if you need anything Steve: I will be incredibly motivated as of 9pm tonight Me: Oof Me: I would offer to be your excuse Me: But I’m hoping a cocktail of cough syrup and pain meds will make that way past my bedtime Steve: Stay safe Me: I will. Worrywart Steve: Yup <3

He was trying to kill me; I knew it. However I was so exhausted I just sent him a quick ‘bye’ and crawled back under the covers to be miserable and whiny on my own. Admittedly, ‘on my own’ left much to be desired these days, but I got through it like I always did.

Except for the container of soup from a local Chinese place that somehow made it to my door that afternoon. That was new addition to my ‘get better’ routine. But very much welcome.

~

Steve: Sigh

I already knew what was coming. Mostly because I was trapped in a similar hell.

Me: At least it’s close enough to an appropriate date Steve: I guess Steve: What are you doing? Me: Work holiday party Me: fml

A couple of women greeted each other nearby in tones that varied up and down but they all stayed pretty equally loud, and I ducked closer to the table, under which I hid my phone.

Steve: I guess it’s true Steve: Misery does love company

I sent him a line of middle fingers

Me: How’s YOUR party? Steve: Zzzzzzzzz

I ducked down further to hide my laughter.

Me: Seriously though Me: How many parties can one guy have? Steve: So many, apparently Steve: Last year wasn’t this bad Steve: He did get mildly offended you haven’t been to a one Me: Ugh Me: Wait, sorry Me: I don’t really mean that Me: I just have no idea how to do damage control with that guy Me: I don’t know what his deal is Steve: It’s okay Steve: Neither do I Steve: And he’s mostly joking Steve: I think Me: Good Me: I’d rather get along peaceably with your other friends Steve: Or be friends with them?

I thought about it.

Me: Gotta be honest Me: You have a lot of friends Me: That sounds like a lot of work Steve: They’re not so bad

I heard my name and glanced up to see my boss was looking around.

Me: Well you have fun with them Me: gtg boss is looking for me Steve: Don’t get in trouble Steve: I’ll see you later? Me: Later

My boss caught sight of me just as I was slipping my phone away and I subjected myself to being politely social for the rest of the night. I had…a lot more sympathy for Steve after that.

Not that I would ever let him know it.

~

Steve: Can I come over? Me: Of course

Not one second later I heard the buzzer for the entry go off. I let him up without even looking, so when he actually showed up at the door I froze like a deer in the headlights.

“Hey,” Steve said, his face a mixture of stormy and exhausted and his body clad in a finely (finely) tailored suit. He gave me a tired smile and held up a grocery bag. “I brought payment in snacks.”

Yes. Yes he did. Wait, no, snacks. Plural and actual. Literal. Right. “Sounds, uh, good,” I said and stepped aside to let him in, and I briefly hit my head on the door before I shut it. I turned just in time to see him sit down on my couch like he could sink into it, legs opened up and head thrown back. He shut his eyes and breathed. I took a second to do the same. But he looked so fed up with everything and that ended up being (sadly, selfishly,) good for my focus.

“What happened?” I asked and went to sit next to him as soon as concern won out.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just tired.”

I could only imagine. I reached out and squeezed his shoulder– but my instinct to leave my hand there propelled me up and over to the kitchen counter where I started unpacking the bag he brought. The first thing I pulled out was an interesting looking bag of something labeled entirely in Cyrillic. The very next thing I saw, hiding behind it I realized, was a box wrapped in paper and ribbons. I couldn’t even give him the benefit of the doubt– my name was written right there. “Steve.”

“Yes?” he asked, overly innocently and turned his bright blue eyes to me like he was some naïve young farm boy who couldn’t possibly understand why I said his name like that.

He was getting better. My bullshit meter was going off so hard it nearly broke and he still almost got to me. Still, I surreptitiously cleared my throat and said, (quite strongly, I thought,) “That is not going to work on me.”

He didn’t back down. His eyes even seemed to get bigger and bluer. “It’s a good time of year to get gifts for your friends, even if for no real reason. Besides, it’s just something I saw that I thought you would like. It’s no big deal.”

“Uh huh.” I liked the way he stretched his arm across the couch, and the way he stole glances at me like I wouldn’t notice. Starting off strong, getting weaker by the moment; I needed to tell Natasha to up his spy training. “Real subtle.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said and grabbed the remote. While he pretended to give a shit about holiday programming I rifled through the rest of the bag, dumped the caramel popcorn into a bowl, and took the bowl and the gift over to the couch where I plopped down as hard as I could in an effort to be as annoying as possible. He didn’t even flinch, just smiled as I put the popcorn in between us on the couch. The gift I set in the center of my coffee table, where it actually looked really nice.

“Aren't you going to open it?” Steve asked, trying to look like he was watching Jimmy Stewart get his Christmas miracle but, again, his eyes kept darting; this time between me and the gift.

“Mm.” I shrugged but inside I was taking my inner impatient five-year-old and turning her into a moustache-twirling villain, with the gift tied to the train tracks. It felt good. “It’s a Christmas gift, right?”

“Not necessarily,” he said.

“Well, I think most single gifts get opened on the 25th, so I’ll wait,” I said, grabbed a handful of popcorn, and settled in to enjoy a bell ringing like I never had before.

“It’s a– a December gift,” Steve insisted.

“Oh,” I said. “Then I have until December 31st to open it.”

“It’s A Wonderful Life” suddenly became the title of my night, maybe even my autobiography, when Steve said my name in the whiniest fucking tone I had ever heard outside of a bad comedy sketch about nasally nerds. I almost dropped the popcorn I held and, when I turned my head to stare at him, he was almost literally beet red.

“Can we pretend that didn’t come out like that?” he asked, looking down like he could stare right through the floor. I had never before seen someone who actually looked like they desperately wanted to be swallowed whole. “As a present to me?”

“Wow,” I said, because it was all I could say. Already the sweet sound of memory was fading, and I tried to hold onto it. “I got you an actual present so no. But wow. Wow. Happy holidays to me. Wow.”

“I’m taking my gift back,” he grumbled and made as if to grab it.

I curled forward to protect it but I moved too fast and accidentally dropped some of my snack, though Steve kept me from cracking my head on the table. “Shit,” I said and hurried to pick up the bits of food. “I just cleaned; if you make me get popcorn bits on my floor I’m making you drag out the vacuum.”

“I don’t think your neighbors would appreciate that right now,” Steve said and wolfed down his own heaping handful of the caramel corn, though he put the bowl on the table.

“My downstairs neighbor has a pre-teen who’s getting into EDM,” I said and pulled the gift into my lap. “Let them suffer as I have suffered.”

“Mm hm,” Steve said, already pretty thoroughly checked out as I turned the box over in my hands.

It wasn’t heavy, but it wasn’t tiny, and it was a fairly standard box so I had no idea what it could be. Maddening. I decided to put us both out of our misery.

“Really?” Steve said as I started picking at the tape on the side. “Are you going to save the paper?”

“Weeeeellllll…” I debated whether or not I should admit my failings, but came out on the side that it would make him smile and I couldn’t find anything wrong with that. Short of an unintentional Three Stooges act there was no way I was topping his whiny self. “I maybe didn’t get a chance to go buy wrapping paper for your gift, sooo…” After a moment I stole a glance, and sure enough, he was smiling.

“You didn’t?” he asked and even let out a little laugh.

“We’re saving the environment,” I said as I started peeling back the paper.

“Sure,” he chuckled. “You, me, and five square feet of wrapping paper.”

“There’s no way there’s that much on here,” I muttered as one corner decided to be a bitch. “How much tape did you use on this thing?”

“I didn’t know we’d be sharing it,” he said, and while he amused himself by harping on the point, I got my wrapping paper off and set it aside.

“–nd you’re not even listening to me, are you?”

“Why would I start now?” The box was plain and, at least for that, I had no compunctions about ripping the tape off. Inside was a lot of paper sitting under a small rectangular box and a shiny black satchel. “Thanks for the great packing materials,” I said as I dug around to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, but it seemed to be just the box and tiny bag.

“Happy to help,” Steve said but he sounded distant. He was staring at the gifts. I took another look at them and my stomach did a flip. The little rectangular box reminded me of–

“Open the box first and then open the bag right after,” Steve said. “It’ll make more sense then.”

When I opened the little box and saw a bracelet I had to hope it was going to make sense. It was…shiny and looked like silver. Chunky but plain. That was a good sign, right? Nice and shiny but plainly platonic. Right? I opened the little satchel and dug out tiny matching metal pieces that were shaped like…oh.

“Wow,” I said and spread the charms on the table around the bracelet still sitting in its pillowed case. “This is…Steve, this is so nice.”

“Oh thank God,” he said and let out a breath that sounded like it was as big as the one still locked in my chest. “I don’t see you wear a lot of jewelry but I saw the charms and it just seemed perfect. The metal’s super hypoallergenic or something– the woman was telling me that it should be fine for anyone with sensitivity to certain metals and I don’t know if you do, but I thought it was better to be safe, and it’s pretty, or I thought so–”

“It’s very pretty,” I said, a smile taking over. What the hell was he so nervous about? Whatever; even his babbling was charming and cute and I tried my best not to think that way because I should have been making fun of him, like a good friend, but I couldn’t rag on him while he was so excited. Or maybe I just couldn’t bring myself to rag on him about this.

“Here,” Steve said, reaching over and taking the bracelet out. Big fingers fumbled with the clasp but he put it on my wrist, and then he went for the charms. He held up the coffee cup. “Obviously,” he said and somehow managed not to fumble that time when he attached it. A cloud, “because you can be pretty gloomy and cranky sometimes,” and when I flipped him off with my other hand he just said, “see?” as he put it on. The book was, “again, pretty obvious.”

Then he put the joystick on and squinted at it for a second before he looked up at me, bright eyes framed by dark lashes, and wet pink lips I couldn’t kiss as someone I deeply cared for leaned into my personal space and gave me jewelry for Christmas. I looked down at the bracelet and focused on being grateful for the sweet, generous gesture this was rather than what I wished it could be. The bracelet itself wasn’t too much. It felt comfortable.

“I asked her if they had anything video game related and she said this was a good one,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced. It took me a moment to remember what he was referring to. Joystick. Right.

“Remind me to take you to an arcade,” I said and held my arm up to the light. The charms were fun but plain and melded easily together from a distance; I could wear this anywhere and have it be appropriate. But I would know what it really was. “This is…so thoughtful. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said warmly. Softly. All of a sudden those repressed feelings surged forward to make my chest ache and for just a moment I thought of a world where he gave me jewelry and it meant something more. But I lived in a world where he gave me a piece of jewelry and looked quietly pleased with himself while I sat and admired it. It didn’t mean anything; it didn’t mean–

Actually, no, that was wrong. It did mean something. It meant Steve was a really good friend who gave me a wonderfully thoughtful gift. I really needed to stop being in my own fucking head so much or I was going to lose everything I already did have.

But I still needed a moment to come back down from the urge to hug him way too tight. “This is so nice, Steve, thank you,” I said and stood quickly, box and wrapping paper in hand. “I can’t lie, yours aren’t as amazing, so get your acting chops up while I’m wrapping them.”

“You know you can just give them to me,” Steve told me as I walked around the other side of the room to avoid any chance of tripping over him.

“Nope!” I said and shut the door to my room. Safe and alone, I breathed– but not too loud, because he might hear me. I grabbed his gifts and shoved them in the box (stuffed them, really) so I couldn’t think too hard and chicken out of giving him something. I messed up at a couple of points with the tape and, rather than ripping the already well-used paper by trying to fix it…I decided to go with it.

One full roll of transparent tape later, I walked back out feeling a little more composed, a little more me. I stood in front of Steve and proudly held out the box.

“It’s very shiny,” he remarked as he took it and looked it over. From the second I sat on the couch I was on the edge of it, eager to see what he would do. Would he try to return the favor by removing all the tape? Would he try scrabbling for an edge? Would he try tearing the paper to ribbons only for the tape to stick all over his hands?

None, apparently– he just pushed his fingers clean through the box right next to the edge and ripped the side right off. “Hey!” I said, because hey, no fair, but he just laughed at me and shook out his gifts onto the couch in between us. I crossed my arms. “You're no fun.”

“No fun at all,” he agreed happily and picked up the beanies. He rubbed one of them between his fingers. “These are very nice.”

“They’re good quality and warm and you look good in beanies,” I said. He put one on haphazardly and I laughed. “Maybe not with tuxes.”

“It does feel nice though; thanks,” he said and sorted through them. “I like the colors too.”

“Yeah, they’re all earthy or whatever,” I said and pointed at the most important gift.

“Unicorn slippers!” he said, seeming actually delighted as he picked them up. He then immediately took off his socks and shoes to put them on. “They fit! They’re soft.”

It was no bracelet, but I couldn’t keep a smile off my face. “I maybe hid some measuring tape near the entryway and ran over to your shoes when you went to the bathroom once.”

“Sneaky,” Steve said and set his shiny loafers aside. “I’m going to have to bring them every time I come over.”

“They’re worth it,” I said and wiggled my own unicorn-clad feet.

Steve picked up the last gift. Or ‘gift.’ “That’s not–” I stopped myself and tried to think of what I wanted to say. I just couldn’t figure out how I could say it that I wouldn’t sound stupid. I gave up on the pretense. “So that’s…just a little thing, that can actually stay here if you want, but it is yours. I know you’re not really into games, but I thought if you were over here maybe you could have your own controller.” As he looked it over, I quietly added, “And maybe I can look into…games with two players. If you’d like to play with me sometimes.”

“I would like that,” he said quickly. “To play with you.” He then turned bright red. “In a game– in a video game.”

I would have made fun of him, but I was choked by embarrassment too. Damn it, I had done so well with keeping my daydreams chaste (mostly, mostly chaste) and that fucker had to do that. I swallowed and tried to think of absolutely anything else while the time ticked on and our mutual embarrassment settled in. Luckily Steve still had the perfect distraction in his hands. “Hey– do you like the design?” I asked, looking from the Captain America shield design to Steve and back and back again.

He rolled his eyes. “Where did you even find it?” he asked and set the package down.

“I don’t know who does your marketing but they deserve a raise because they are putting in work,” I said and sat back, a little apart from him. I could only get so far on the same couch in a small apartment, but it was enough.

“I’ll be sure to pass that along,” he said.

The conversation died and I didn’t know if I should say anything or not, but I felt…mostly comfortable. Despite the slightly-less-but-still-a-little awkward silence. Outside was cold but we were warm inside with fuzzy slippers and snacks and a slate of classic Christmas movies.

“Hey Steve?” I said, looking at the TV.

“Yeah?” he asked and leaned in.

I definitely didn’t turn my head– I was afraid the temptation would be too great. So, I resisted. But I still had plenty to be grateful for. “I’m glad you ditched your dumb party to hang out with me.”

He chuckled and scooted closer. His presence was a wall of warmth that was too comfortable, so much so that I got a core workout just from sitting so rigidly upright. But then he said, “So am I,” and, well…it was worth it.

   ~Later; Avengers Tower~

  “I told you you’d break him,” Maria said, sitting on one arm of the couch.

“Excuse me?” Tony extended his arms, drink sloshing dangerously up the sides of his cup. “I don’t see him here. Where do you think he ran to, hm?”

“We don’t know he went there.” Clint said, a little down the bar from Tony. “He could have run home.”

“No, he’s there,” Natasha said, tapping at her phone. “He’s on her couch, I quote, “eating chips in peace.’”

“Ungrateful,” Tony muttered and continued to do so.

The others ignored him. “So are we going to let Steve handle this on his own terms now?” Bruce asked.

“Bruce,” Natasha said, mock-frowning at him. “It’s like you don’t know us.”

Bruce rolled his eyes, but stretched and groaned. “It’s more like I’m partied out, and this isn’t working.”

“Yet!” Tony said and pointed at Bruce– again, with the hand holding the drink, so his drink sloshed over the side and onto Rhodes, who cursed and grabbed napkins to dry his shirt. “It hasn’t worked yet.”

“Tony,” Pepper said, exasperation lacing her tone. “I think it’s time to let this go. He’s going to refuse to come to any more at this point.”

“Except he has to come to the New Year’s Eve party,” he said, looking at her with eyes as serious as he could make them. He only wavered slightly.

“Oh,” Pepper said. “Yes, he has to come to that one.” She looked thoughtful. “Maybe we can make it a bit smaller.”

“‘Just us’ smaller?” Clint asked.

“Not too small,” Natasha said. “She’ll need a place to hide.”

Thor sat on the couch, with Jane sleeping on one of his shoulders and Darcy sleeping on the other, and he looked curiously around the room. “It is interesting that the Captain would be infatuated with a partner so…” He tried to think of a word, and settled on, “Meek.”

Clint and Natasha snorted in unison. “She’s not meek,” Natasha said. “She just keeps to herself and comes around on her own terms.”

Thor brightened and looked to his sleeping girlfriend. “Like my Jane,” he said and faced forward again, keeping his body very still so as not to disturb the sleeping women. “Perhaps Darcy will help in bringing her forward.”

Bruce cleared his throat. “Before we get too ahead of ourselves, how are we sure Steve isn’t going to skip the next party?”

“He won’t,” Natasha said. “As long as everyone shows up– and they will,” she said, shooting a look at Bruce. He, naturally, withered, and she looked around the room, finally settling on Pepper. “Put her name on the list. I’ll make sure he comes, and I’m certain he will bring his date.”

“The question is: do you think he’ll bring her as a date, or will it become a date?” Maria asked idly.

“Are we betting?” Pepper asked brightly.

As the rest of the group got involved in the debate, Bruce and Phil stared from their positions against the wall. “Poor Steve,” Bruce said. When Phil lifted his glass Bruce clinked his against it, and then they both downed the last of their drinks in unison.

   ~The next day~

  Steve: Please Me: Steve Steve: PLEASE Me: …Are you on your knees or something? Steve: If I was and I took a picture would you come with me? Me: You seriously want me to come along that bad? Me: Why can’t you skip out? Steve: The NYE party is a big one Steve: Or so I have been told Steve: Sam is coming Steve: And I missed Thor at the last party Steve: I will never hear the end of it if I miss him at this one Steve: Please? Me: We forgot to go on that shopping trip for your spine Steve: It won’t do me much good when Natasha removes it Steve: She said I HAVE to go Steve: But Tony and Pepper always have good food Steve: And good alcohol Steve: And he pays the bartenders so well you literally aren’t allowed to tip Steve: Please? Me: … Me: I’m going to have to wear a nice dress Me: And makeup Me: And travel through the city on New Year’s Eve Me: To a big social event Me: This is going to sound weird because Stark’s parties are some hot thing apparently but Me: You are going to owe me so fucking big Steve: I already owe you! Steve: Thank you!

He went on to thank me in a variety of ways that normally would have made me laugh, but I already really regretted saying yes. Steve, all of his friends, me, and booze– I hit my head against my phone for each miserable fucking point. Oh, and people tended to kiss at midnight. Thinking of all the good alcohol made me feel sour, because I wasn’t going to be able to allow myself much of it. Not if I wanted to succeed in keeping my secret crush secret. And even with that pre-new year resolution, I still had a really bad feeling that I wasn’t going to be under wraps for long.

<<Previous Chapter Next Chapter>>

[iphoenixrising]

Ahhhh!!! New here, so ive been reading all of your stories (LOVE MER BATBOYS). Will you ever go back to writing consistently? What made you stop?

Hi babe.  Welcome to the party ;)It’s very ironic peeps liked the MerDick/MerJay/Tim thing because really, I only meant to be like, a one-shot idea-y thing XD  I know nothing about writing fishy thing lol.

But no seriously, I’m honestly not posting as often as I used to or writing so many things as I was a year or two ago. So, partly that is because I started at an IT company that develops applications, which was a HUGE learning curve from the large IT environment I’d been learning and writing about for three years before that. BUT, at that job, I had some time to eek out during the day to write on like fanfic stuff between large projects, so I had more time, you know?

So, this job is just, a really big adjustment. I’ve started to learn to write in code so just, yeah, careers and stuff have something to do with it.

The other part of it is my little kiddo :D  

She’s five, turning six in August, and started kindergarten this year :D :D :D She’s older and learning and growing and just tearing my heart out because she’s such a big girl now and my fucking feelings. So, being Becca’s Mommy is kinda another thing eating up writing time lol.

Last thing, which has been here for about six months, is Cody. Cody is not technically  my nephew, but back in 2013 when I was pregnant, I met his family, worked with his mom, and like became part of their fam with kiddo’s dad and such. Like, we are all super close. In about a year, I decided it was time to move home where the grandparents are and we moved about three or four hours away. 

Shit happened between then and now, like ex-hubby is a thing because he was a cheating ass hat, and after I kicked him to the curve, I had a young infant, a full-time job, and...

my evenings free to write.

Which is when I started talking to people about writing fanfiction myself :D

ANYWAY,

This past November, this kiddo is now 21 and having a hard time in the area, which is a suburb of DC and not a good one. So, he moved down here with me and kiddo, and it’s more of like a little family unit :D

And thus, he takes up my evening most of the time, lol. For his job, he goes out of town a night or two a week sometimes, and those time I get a chance to write a bit if the muse strikes. Sometimes it does and I get like a few followers posts out or some Asks answered.

So...yeah, I hope this gives you a bit of insight? But, really, babe, I’m going to keep trying to post whenever I can and I’m happy with a drab or whatnot, okay? 

[jojotier]

Strings for Prisoners

(Svetlana character study fic ahead)

Prison life at the most brutal institution in Russia was… dull. It was a realization that Svetlana regarded with a great deal of disappointment, using one hand to pin her wildly flying braid up. One would think that life after holding one’s equally boring tax collector of a husband at gunpoint and committing a few counts of grand larceny would land her someplace that didn’t want to make her pluck her eyes out and gently lay them in the drift ice, and yet...

It was the same monotonous routine, day in and day out. They awoke, they ate, they were scolded for things that Svetlana didn’t really care to pay attention to, they worked. They had some free time with frequent warden checks. A guard tried to court her, or maybe it was multiple (she didn’t care about men either) and they offered the same dull prize. She slept.

And now Svetlana had to deal with being slung over the shoulder of a female revolutionary after Svetlana may or may not have murdered several guards. Admittedly, she hadn’t the time to check her work.

Ah, wait. Spotting a few men getting closer, Svetlana snapped back into the present. Svetlana had been so distracted for a moment, scanning the white backdrop of the snow with Akou rising in the snow-sheeted distance, that she’d started thinking about her life story instead. This prison break was actually getting to be a little fun.

So Svetlana had tried to shoot a guard or two. Or five. Would you blame her?

“Is now the time to be doing your hair, kid?” Sofia admonished, but Svetlana could hear that cheeky damn smile in her voice. As if this biddy wasn’t having a grand old time causing mayhem- it seemed like the sort of thing the dame was suited for, strong-arming enemies and goons alike into dancing just the way she wanted. Even a novice to prison life like Svetlana could see how much of an iron grip Sofia had on the place.

“Is now the time to be running your mouth?” Svetlana shot back, raising her stolen pistol with her free hand. Since she’d only been inside of the prison for a few months now, some of the more persistent guards still hadn’t quite gotten the memo about her total lack of fucks for them. It wasn’t as if Svetlana made any effort to appear even passingly interested, but when it came to idiots, even the slightest inclination of tolerance was seen as a victory. On especially persistent guard was the one who took her silence as “tolerance”- as “warming up” to him- which made it far too easy to just grab a gun and aim for the heart.

Sofia had the gall to laugh at that, tossing her head back with a raucous uproar. “Big words, from the brat whose ass I’m saving!”

“And I’m not covering yours, too?” Svetlana took aim at the nearest of the encroaching targets, closing one eye against the stinging winter wind. She couldn’t make out much from this distance, but she thought she saw a facial scar of some kind, covering most of his indistinct face. It was possibly Yakov. Svetlana really hoped it was Yakov. She’d been itching to pop that bastard in the jaw for weeks. Never in her life had she been so singularly annoyed by a man who didn’t want to get into her skirts.

But soon the figure of their pursuer was fading back into the distance, and Svetlana had no choice but to let up on her aim. Bullets were a commodity that came in precious few bursts. If she blew everything all at once, however, would she have any left for the return trip?

There was a moment of silence as the menacing exterior of their drab prison raised in the distance. Nothing met them but the crunch of snow under thin shoes and the errant squeal of a wheel here and there. Honestly, with how fast Sofia could run with those powerful legs of hers, Svetlana had all but forgotten that she was still technically chained up to that wheelbarrow.

Fingers getting cold around the cold metal of the gun, Svetlana casually let it drop from her hand, watching it disappear into the stream of white that suddenly blew past. She didn’t need to see, thankfully- the solid clunk of metal on metal told her it had made it into its intended target.

Sofia, who apparently couldn’t stand to go five minutes without opening that mammoth trap, continued speaking, even as she slowed. “Now then, my poor degenerate, where exactly are you taking me for this little trip?”

“Who said you could slow down?” Svetlana groused quietly, eyebrows furrowing as she looked towards the ground. “Pedal while it's safe.”

“These old bones, that’s who,” Sofia complained, but it wasn’t in any genuine way. How did the crone always seem so carefree? Seemed exhausting as hell, especially at her age. “I’m not as young or spry as I used to be, you know! Those jackasses have been fattening me up all these years by giving me such light work… You can’t blame me for needing a break.” The way that Sofia took that prison work lightly, as if her being able to carry as much as many of the men there was such lazy work, got on Svetlana’s nerves. Not that Svetlana’s nerves weren’t already perpetually being trampled on by the woman and her wicked grin and her damn laugh.

“...” Svetlana oftentimes didn’t feel the need to say anything, but that desire to stay silent in the face of the verbal onslaught of Sofia’s personality would have won over her tongue even if she did want to open her mouth.

Sofia caught her breath quicker than anything else as she stopped, glancing down over the town. “If we stay around here, we’ll be caught. I suggest starting with the directions if you’d like to skip the whipping.”

“...” Svetlana sighed. “Will you at least put me down first?”

Sofia grinned. “Nope!”

~~~

It was at an evergreen tree near the outskirts of the town, down a path that almost always remained untrodden. When Svetlana had lived with her husband, he told her a story on one of the rare nights when he had gone sailing away.

She hadn’t been listening all that intently- she never wanted to, when he was so insistent on leaving her with empty promises to come and take her sailing to new and exotic places. But she caught the gist of it.

When a girl went under that tree, professing their love, that love would come true.

When he teasingly asked her if she had a love to confess, she gave a non-answer, vaguely insinuating that she might confess for him.

It was a lie. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know, though- Alexander was perceptive.

It wasn’t as if she particularly cared either way if his eyes shined with a little bit of hurt.

It was probably relief in any case- she didn’t particularly want a man, and the man she had didn’t want her. That suited her fine.

~~~

Sofia set her down onto the soft snow and Svetlana took a moment to stretch her arms up and out. Who knew that being slung for several hours over someone’s broad shoulder could create such a crick? She was going to throw her damn back out at this rate.

“Alright, here we are,” Sofia announced to no one in particular. Or probably to Svetlana. Svetlana had decided not to pay attention to her glorified taxi service for the afternoon, so she didn’t really care to differentiate. “So now, what’s the plan, then?”

“Quiet.” Svetlana ordered, pulling her bandana off her head and laying it on the icy ground. “Be useful and keep watch.”

Sofia raised her hands up in a mockery of placation, laughter coating her voice as she mockingly said, “Well, that’s just as well then- you’re the boss.”

The corner of Svetlana’s mouth ticked down as she looked over her shoulder to give Sofia a look. The look was hopefully enough to get across that she didn’t much appreciate being patronized. Sofia, looking wholly unaffected, simply lowered herself into the wheelbarrow she had spent the last few hours carting around and made herself comfortable.

Huffing a small breath out her nose, Svetlana knelt down and tilted her head so that her braid was flipped over her shoulder. Starting from the bottom, she began to pull her hair loose, gritting her teeth against the knots that had formed. It was slow and methodical work, slowly untangling her hair, because of all the little things that she had hidden inside of it.

There were strands of straw-yellow hair wrapped around little cogs and gears. There were knots tied to the bits of triggers and scrapped muzzle fragments. Working up the braid yielded larger pieces- a clockwork hammer and a dull screwdriver, a miniature wrench. Lead weights. Paperweights. And as she ran her fingers through her hair and shook it out, the last bits to fall were 7 meticulously counted bullets, harmlessly touching down against the snow.

It would have been too obvious if she carried everything in her dress pockets, shallow as they were. The apron she wore when working at some municipal politician’s house was thoroughly searched if she so much as went outside to fetch water.

There were a few girls there who had almost blown her cover by getting a little too handsy, begging to just play with her hair, but a couple of others had managed to fend them off.

(Donka was a shrewd older woman who didn’t take kindly to younger staff horseplaying, so Svetlana had expected to be able to use her as an excuse- but it had been surprising when Milica had distracted the girls the second time, begging for her own hair to be done instead. The girl was at least a decade younger than Svetlana, so it was surprising to see she was actually rather capable when reading the room.)

From her seat, Sofia whistled lowly, eyebrows shooting up. “Well, looks like someone’s got a teensy little hoarding habit.”

Svetlana decided not to answer that obvious provocation and instead focused on trying to find the trowel she managed to hook to one of her stockings. In the dead of winter, the ground was hard, but it wasn’t as if she had much choice in the manner. She couldn’t very well tie everything up in a neat bow and stash it in a few tree branches.

It might have seemed counterintuitive, she thought as she stabbed the hard ground a few times to make an indent, to bury her little stash here, but it was the safest place. The superstitious teenagers looking for love treated this tree as holy ground, never to be consecrated. The older people in town tended to go about their business and hide their secrets in a thousand and one other myriads of places, while the elderly tended not to take the difficult road to make it here. Thus far, no one had found it.

After making a sizable indent in the soil, she reached beside herself and struck a match. The flame flickered slightly before bursting into full force, providing a small fire that licked at the tips of her fingers. The burn brought her back to the present moment. Gritting her teeth slightly against it, she held it up to the metal end of the trowel and waited.

Sofia clicked her tongue loudly and started up yet again. “Whatever your plan is, it must be going off well- there’s not a damn thing for me to do here!”

“Mm.” Svetlana hummed noncommittally.

“You’re the young’in here,” Sofia said encouragingly, leaning forward. That wheelbarrow could not have been comfortable, and yet Sofia sat in it as if it was made of the finest silks, legs crossed daintily as she rested her elbows against her knees. “There must be something else I can do for you here.”

“Not at all.” Svetlana bluntly said, flicking the match into the snow. With the trowel sufficiently heated up, she stabbed it into the indent in the soil and slowly started to dig.

“Do you even know what to do with all those little… gadgets?” Sofia pressed.

“Of course I do.” Svetlana half-lied. She mostly knew how they worked- back home when she was especially bored, her father found her little odd jobs to work around the lighthouse. Sometimes it meant sliding into places he couldn’t reach, and other times it meant correcting little inaccuracies in the clockwork he liked to build.

“You know, my little lovely,” Her elderly father had told her once, smiling as she bent over a mainspring and the metal ribbon torsion spring that was wound a little too tight, “if you had been born a little sooner, I could have sent you to Saint Petersburg with this- they had a marvelous little school…”

Never mind the fact that Svetlana could have never attended, even if that school- nothing but a little no-name workshop, really, and not a full-fledged school- were still around. When she didn’t say anything all he said was, “I’m just glad that we have you here now, in any case.”

Svetlana stabbed the tool a little harder into the ground on the next dig, knuckles curled white around it.

“- and you should have seen him with his little toys,” Sofia was saying. Looks like Svetlana had instinctively tuned her out. Whoops.

Svetlana said pleasantly, “Interesting. You can go now.”

For once, that actually seemed to catch Sofia off guard. The look Svetlana received was taken aback and then, incredibly bemused. “You’ll need a way back, isn’t that right?”

“No. I’ve decided to go now.” Svetlana said, hearing a little thunk where the trowel hit wood. Jackpot.

“With so little?” Sofia said, and damn her, she was teasing.

“It’s not little at all.” Svetlana said, mildly peeved. She dug a little harder and faster than necessary and, finally, she was able to unearth a little chest.

There wasn’t much room inside, but Svetlana knew that it was the quality of the goods that mattered, rather than the sheer amount. It had been imparted to her by her mother, teaching her the mundane aspects of keeping kitchen and house; it had been imparted by her father, testing everything for working order; and it had been taught to her by her merchant husband, showing off all sorts of little trinkets he’d gotten in exchange for nothing at all.

Her guns were still there, almost as pearly and new as the day she stole them from her husband’s competitor.

Sofia finally got up from her seat, stretching out like a cat and glancing over Svetlana’s shoulder. The amusement in her voice had quieted somewhat. “And what do you expect to do with this?”

“Easy.” Svetlana said, loading the intact one with the bullets she’d pilfered. “I’m getting off this island.”

“That answers literally nothing.” Sofia said.

“It answers everything.” Svetlana insisted.

“Okay then, answer me this.” Sofia pressed, the smile slowly slipping off of her face. “How are you going to get off the island. Do you have men stationed somewhere nearby? A point you know you can stow away on?”

“I’ll find somewhere.” Svetlana said vaguely. She had mapped out plenty of routes with Alexander beforehand, and he told her all the best ships to hide in- so surely, if she could just find one of the vessels he’d pointed out to her, it’d be easy sailing. “It’ll be easy, with this.”

“With a gun and nothing else?” Sofia remained unconvinced.

“No, two guns and all these little bits I found,” Svetlana said with absolute certainty.

“And what do you think you’ll get for all those ‘little bits’ exactly.”

Svetlana opened her mouth to answer, glanced at the little pile of cogs and gears to fix her other pistol with, and closed her mouth. Lips pursing, she deflected from the question entirely. “That’s not important.”

“Of course it’s important- where the hell are you getting funds?” Sofia demanded, “Who’s going to be convinced of the sincerity of a lone girl with a couple of guns, exactly? A lone girl who’s already been convicted of robbery once, mind you. Will you be prepared to take an entire crew on if you stowaway? If you steal a boat, do you even know how to use it? Where-”

The questions just kept piling up, each one more biting than the last. Every single question needled at Svetlana’s carefully constructed plan, with no room for any sensible answers such as, “I’ll make it work,” to get in edgewise. It was absolutely maddening.

“Well, since you’re so knowledgeable,” Svetlana holstered her gun against her hip and slammed the lid on the chest down, cutting Sofia’s tirade short, “why haven’t you left then, hm?”

“I haven’t made all my preparations yet,” was all Sofia said, but before she could continue her lecture, Svetlana cut in again.

“Oh, bullshit,” Svetlana said curtly, head snapping back to glare at the woman hovering over her shoulder. “You think I haven’t realized how everyone treats you in that prison? Even the guards don’t like to whip you! You could have gotten out at any time- what kind of fool do you take me for?”

Sofia’s eyes narrowed at her, smile gone from her face. Finally. “A reckless little fool who hasn’t thought anything over except for the barest inkling. That’s the sort of fool you’re making yourself.”

“Of course I’ve thought it over. I’ve thought it enough .” Svetlana finally stood, hoisting the chest under one arm. “If you want to stay paralyzed planning everything down to the second, I won’t stop you. Do as you please, Sofia Golden Hand.”

“... That’s all well and good for you, then, if you can somehow miraculously pull this off without getting yourself killed.” Sofia said, looming over Svetlana’s head with a fierce look in her eye and, damnably, a little grin to her gnarled lips. Curse this damn woman- and, more importantly, curse her ability to piss Svetlana off. “You won’t make it five steps.”

“Is that a threat?” Svetlana asked, eyes narrowing in turn.

“Nah- I don’t have time to waste on petty nonsense like that. Actions over words- it’ll do you good to remember that.” Sofia said, as carefree as ever before. “It’s just me giving a little friendly advice.”

“Tch.” Svetlana huffed, turning on her heel and starting to walk. Friendly advice, her ass- all Sofia seemed to like is getting under people’s skins. She didn’t have time to waste on

Svetlana didn’t walk three steps before a bullet grazed her ear.

The shot stunned her into paralysis, muscles locking with the sharp pain that erupted in the left side of her head and hand raised partway to her holster before stopping, equally as frozen. For a few long, agonizing moments- or minutes, hours even- the world slowed and narrowed down, the blood rushing through her ears acting as the only thing keeping things from being as silent as the snow.

Underneath the thrum of her heart pounding in her eardrums, Svetlana heard Sofia give an annoyed grunt and another gunshot. This time, no bullet grazed by Svetlana; only a shadow hovering protectively at her back.

Slowly turning her head, out of the corner of her eye, Svetlana caught Sofia’s stare. The grin was still on her face, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She stared down at Svetlana with an intense stare that bore into her bones. If she’d been religious, Svetlana might have mistaken the fire in that stare as hot enough to burn God.

“Hey kid,” Sofia said in a hushed whisper, “now’s a good time to stop dreaming.”

“Sofia Golden Hand!” A male voice barked out authoritatively. The red slowly leaking through the shoulder of Sofia’s dress told the whole story. “Svetlana Zima! You’re coming back with me.”

Svetlana’s mouth opened slightly, but any questions- did you know this was going to happen? why did you let them follow? why did You follow?- dried as a lump in her throat. Tilting her face down, Sofia whispered, “Keep shaking like that and play along- you can still get out of this.”

Suddenly, Sofia’s uninjured arm was thrown around Svetlana’s neck, pulling her suddenly into her side as Sofia turned on her heel. Her box fell from her hands and was kicked out of the way by the force of Sofia’s kick, and with her face smushed underneath Sofia’s armpit, she couldn’t see where it’d been kicked off to behind them. Svetlana felt the cold muzzle of a gun press against the underside of her chin. With a taunt in her words, Sofia called back, “How much do you really want to do any more of that, guard Baranov?”

Yakov- and of course the guard that just so happened to catch up with them had to be fucking Yakov, of all the dozens of guards in Akou- balked for a mere half a second, icy blue eyes widening just a fraction before he remembered himself and took steady aim. “Why, of course- how kind of you to give me the option when you’re at such a disadvantage yourself. Resorting to using that girl as a shield… that’s far lower than what I would have expected of you.”

“Oho, is it now?” Sofia got out through gritted teeth and an insincere grin, taking a shuffling step back. Yakov tensed, muzzle aimed towards Sofia’s head- and Svetlana could see his finger twitching against the trigger. “And what’s stopping me from taking my new protege and running?”

Yakov’s brow furrowed in response, eyes narrowing into pinpricks. There was an angry twist to his mouth as he spat, “Protege… As if I’d allow you to get that far! Every moment you spend monologuing, that’s another moment we stall for reinforcements. No innocents will be taken.”

Innocent? Svetlana wondered with some offense. She had, in fact, robbed some people. It was kind of insulting to be put in this damsel situation when she was the one who landed herself in prison in the first place.

“As if I’d spend time monologuing just to prolong anything,” Sofia said, continuing to monologue to prolong everything. “The second you try anything, I’ll be blowing this girl’s brains out. Even if I lose out on one protege, there are a thousand and one others who I have the allegiance of, right on this island.”

“Telling me this as if I don’t already know it?” Yakov countered, a sweltering grin coming onto his own face. Now that the talking had started, the adrenaline in Svetlana’s veins- the feeling of the gun muzzle against her, the warmth of being pressed against Sofia’s body, the pain in her ear- was all swirling together and coming down to a fine point in the tips of each of her fingers. She knew that Yakov loved to talk (by God. Did she know. And she wasn’t exactly happy about knowing) and she had a feeling Sofia was a similar way.

Her nerves jittered under her skin. She wanted this to be over already. She wanted to either be running to the other side of the island or taken in chains. Anticipation was going to kill her.

So without a second thought, she pulled her pistol and shot Yakov through his left ear.

As the man grit his teeth, springing into action and charging forward, Sofia pulled both of them out the way, hissing to Svetlana, “What the fuck are you doing?!”

“... I hate monologues.” was the only answer Svetlana could come up with.

After all, what else could she have done? Wouldn’t anyone else have done the same?

Despite the fact that they ran immediately after, they were apprehended almost immediately. Svetlana still wasn’t sure where her box had gone- only that, when she looked back, it had disappeared without a trace.

~~~

Three months ago, on the day she was arrested, she held her “husband” at gunpoint and “forced” him into robbery. Except, Alexander wasn’t legally able to marry her, so they weren’t actually married. And Alexander had been the one to come up with the robbery.

She’d read the scene in book, back when she lived in the lighthouse, sitting on the stairwell and letting the lantern light dust across the pages of her book. Once, there was a couple who committed crimes together, and for the husband to save his wife from jail, he made it seem as if she had been an unwilling accomplice the entire time.

(He had also impregnated her, but Svetlana couldn’t very well do that, and it was really a very shitty book anyway.)

But Svetlana had a gun and, even with her fingers trembling, a lot of gumption.

Being on the other end of it and finding it absolutely insufferable, Svetlana thought that she should apologize to Alexander the next time they met. If they ever saw each other again.

The thought left a pang in her heart as she was carted back to Akou, eyes searching the endless vast white. It wasn’t as if she loved Alexander- and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried, again and again, and failed, because no romantic interest could ever really take root- but she cared for him. He’d been kind to her and seemed content to just have her, even if she couldn’t love him.

Svetlana never heard from Alexander again.

~~~

The feeling in her chest persisted, took root and grew as she waited with Sofia in front of the chamber where they were scheduled to be whipped. Inside, one poor sod by the name of Nikivorov was being whipped half to death, after he actually managed to kill three guards on his way out.

Svetlana was no longer feeling too good about her possible body count, and not just because Nikivorov was screaming so loudly that the glass panel in the door was shaking with his cries to God, to mercy, to anyone to help him, please for the love of anything-

“You really were damn frisky with that gun, hm?” Sofia said contemplatively, breaking the atmosphere in the worst possible way. “Didn’t pin you as the trigger happy type.”

Gurgles filtered into the room as Svetlana stared steadfastly down at her open palms resting on her lap. First, Nikivirov was scheduled to be taken to death’s doorstep. Then Sofia would enter with her unflappable attitude, and after the flogger grew tired of her flippant remarks, it would be Svetlana’s turn. There was the flutter of fabric against leg restraints, gentle choking silencing another scream of terror upon utterance.

Sofia continued as if nothing at all was wrong. “Then again, I never pinned Nikki as the masochistic type, but here he’s killing guards to have reason to get his rocks off.”

Svetlana’s head snapped up to look at Sofia in alarm and she gave a laugh so voracious that it nearly covered the wet coughs on the other side of the door. “Hah! Got you to look! The look on your face, little one, is far too much- I may just die before the whipping’s got a chance to do me in!”

The guard sitting across from Sofia looked hopeful, for just the smallest moment. She was still sporting the bullet wound in her shoulder- no doubt, he likely took it as a chance to inflict enough pain to get a rise out of her. Svetlana wanted nothing more than to punch that smug look off of his face for even daring to look in their direction. As if Sofia would ever yield to a scrawny little shitheel like that…

The struggles on the other side of the door stopped. The guard on the other side opened the door and poked his head in, dispassionately saying, “‘ey, boss? I think he’s dead.”

The scrawny jackass- Svetlana probably learned his name, but she didn’t care to remember- sighed. “Again? Jesus, that’s the second one this year.”

Svetlana felt all the blood drain away from her body. At least like that, perhaps, the inability to draw blood would make her punisher lose interest. Or else, it might make him want to lash her more- pull more lacerations out of her back until even a drop of red could be spared, seeping out of her pores, wrung out as near and dear as poison.

“... Least he died doing what he loved, eh?” Sofia tried to joke, but the smile on her lips was strained. When Svetlana didn’t respond, instead of leaving it like the usual, she paused, leaning close to whisper. “Svetlana. I really do need you to speak to me right now.”

Svetlana wet her cracking lips and just murmured, “... Why.”

“Just to make sure.” Sofia didn’t elaborate on what she was making sure of. She just laid a hand in one of Svetlana’s and squeezed, pressing into her. “Hey, don’t be too worried about these guards- since it's your first time, it’ll hurt like hell… but after this, everything comes easy.”

Svetlana didn’t want it to come easier after. She wanted it to be easy right then- because, she should have been strong enough for it not to mean anything, surely. She’d put bullets into people without a thought just earlier that day. Svetlana hadn’t even been weak when in that damsel situation, once the initial shock wore off- because that was surely simply. Shock.

… But who was she kidding, really?

After the body was carelessly handled out of the room, thrown over two shoulders and hitting into several doorframes, Sofia shed her shirt and swaggered into the torture chamber with a pep in her step. Svetlana was left alone in the room outside, hearing the crack of the whip against bare skin and Sofia’s jeering.

The arrogance in her tone had only grown. Svetlana heard a few passing guards comment on how Sofia was being more of a handful than usual.

When Yakov stalked into the room and sat across from her, Svetlana was, for once, almost glad. The left side of his head was still bandaged from the wound, but otherwise, he appeared almost normal- if somewhat more guarded.

“Sorry to surprise you,” He said with a little smile, “but I’ll be taking over your punishment.”

“...” Svetlana didn’t want to deal with him or even grace him with an answer.

“... I figured it was only fair since I go easiest. This is your first time… but you’ve shot a lot of people today, Svetlana.” Yakov continued, lightly frowning as his tone became somewhat more stern. “It was all pretty bad…”

Svetlana glanced down at her hands.

“But, none of them died, even if the blood loss was a bit of a problem.” Yakov continued, a strange sheen to his eyes. “Because you shot each and every one nonfatally. On purpose, I think- am I right?”

Svetlana didn’t answer.

“You don’t need to say anything.” Actions spoke louder than words. Sofia had told her that, and now, she was on the other side of the door, speaking louder than her singular action of laying down and taking that whipping.

For a long time, there was silence.

“I have to say… You remind me of my daughter.” Yakov finally said. Svetlana wished more than anything that the bullet from before had actually ruptured her ear.

This was the bit she hated most about this man. For months, he spoke about nothing but his goddamn daughter- how she was his little radish child and how he was so proud of her and how he was so sad that she was off to be married in just a short year, all the way across the world. Svetlana generally didn’t care about a lot, but she especially didn’t care for this man’s apparent midlife crisis.

“She’s always been a little headstrong, and as she’s grown, she’s become refined and wonderful! In fact… I think you’re about the same age.” The smile that lit up his face burned Svetlana’s eyes. He laughed gently. “Of course, I don’t believe she’s ever had a rebellious phase like this one-”

“It’s a good thing,” Svetlana cut him off coldly, “that I’m not your daughter, then.”

Yakov fell silent at that. When he spoke again, there was no warmth. “Yes. It is.”

After that, Yakov didn’t speak to her.

Svetlana almost wanted to ask why he’d volunteer to whip someone who reminded him of his daughter if he loved her so very much, but there was no need to ask. Whatever comfort he tried to offer was only surface level- it didn’t stop the fact that he was willing to cut her to shreds, likeness to his beloved child or not.

Sofia was done with her whipping soon after.

~~~

When Svetlana was very little- maybe three or four, though this memory was hazy- she had gotten a hold of one of her mother’s cookbooks. It had been the one full of beautiful hand-drawn pictures of delicious food and places all over the country, with the centerpiece being the beautiful capital.

Little Svetlana had taken a look at the pierogi recipe next to an elaborate painting of Saint Petersburg and decided that she was going to cook dinner for once. She wasn’t clear on what the logic was for it, or how she even managed to find half of the ingredients at a level she could actually reach (or if they were even the right ingredients since she didn’t learn how to read until she was about twelve), but she remembered trying to pull a rough clay pot off of the counter.

Like all disasters that are bound to happen with toddlers involved, it shattered right at her feet. The sound had been enough to make her gasp, and she remembered putting her hands to her mouth to cover the sound, in case her mother had heard.

Then, even with the footsteps hurrying, Svetlana had childishly decided that she could still clean and fix it. She immediately cut her palm, almost to the bone, when trying to snatch an especially sharp edge.

Her mother had found her, shaking and shivering while fighting the urge to cry while red dripped from her pudgy hand.

The first words out of her mother’s mouth were, “Are you okay? Does it hurt…?” Not “what have you done,” and not “look what’s been broken-”- just a question as she knelt beside Svetlana and took her bleeding hand in both of hers, wide-eyed fear settled over her face.

Her parents were already older. She made them worry then, and she was making them worried now.

But now, the focus was on the feeling of the leather against her back, beating away at single spots as if each new strike was forcing a shard of pottery into her flesh. It cut deeper and deeper, and Svetlana gave everything into trying nothing to cry out against it.

When she felt the bleed start to seep out, tears pricked at the corner of her eyes.

She did her best not to cry.

~~~

“Alright. We’re done.”

“...”

“I won’t tell anyone you were crying.”

“...”

"I'll just say this... I'm sorry."

~~~

Sofia was the one to tend to Svetlana’s wounds instead of the rough nurse with the contempt for female prisoners that usually did it. Someone’s arm had to have been twisted for that to happen, but Svetlana didn’t really care to dwell on it.

For someone so callous and rough around the edges, Sofia’s large hands were surprisingly gentle and precise. Blood was wiped in clean strokes, replaced with a stinging antiseptic that Svetlana grit her teeth against. It stung, still, and fresh tears threatened to spill over her bottom lashes, but Svetlana swallowed them down. Loathe as she was to admit it, Sofia had been right. It hurt like hell, but afterward, it was easier.

When Sofia finally spoke, it wasn’t to tease or taunt. She just asked, “Was this your first time ever being hit like that?”

Svetlana nodded.

Her parents had never done more than smack her hands. Even on the road, she had been handled delicately by those she came across, and the most she’d gotten were bruises and stubbed toes. Other than the bullet by her ear and the chafing of manacles in the prison, this was her first time being tortured, and it was certainly the first time she’d been hurt this badly.

“You did well for yourself,” Sofia said, reaching for the bandages.

Svetlana choked on a quiet sob.

She wasn’t sure why that was what did her in, in the end. During the course of her beating, only a few stray tears were squeezed out of her eyes. Even during her most turbulent fights with that man, when they’d screamed at each other until they were hoarse and she felt she was never going to find any way to advance forward, she never cried from frustration. Even when she stayed up late on her most homesick nights, nostalgic and nauseous because she was afraid that the further she moved away the more she would forget her parents’ faces, she never wept.

But having Sofia gently press cool gauze into her aching back, smoothing a hand gently over the tender skin, Svetlana was the closest she’d ever been to breaking down. Sofia had such genuine words for her, and then Svetlana turned out to be too weak to deserve them.

Pressing a hand to her mouth to muffle herself, eyes blurring against the onslaught, she tried to keep herself quiet. Tried to ignore the little, bare hints of a whine slipping out and tried to keep from trembling and making Sofia’s job any harder than it must have already been.

“You asked why I stayed earlier, even though I could leave at any time,” Sofia said, and Svetlana bit into the meat of her palm, cutting off a pained gasp when Sofia applied the bandage around an especially sore spot. She still wanted to quiet herself- but, she also wanted to listen, now that Sofia was actually speaking to her. Not in riddles or jests or nagging- but really speaking to her.

“You know the men around me need me- not the wardens and guards, but the prisoners,” Sofia said, pulling and ripping more bandages. Svetlana was facing away, but from the sound of that rip, it was likely being pulled by the woman’s teeth. Even now, she could be a damn animal.

Sofia paused for a moment as if attempting to choose her words carefully. Then she said, “The prisoners here know that they need me, and know that I could leave them at any time- but because I want to, I stay right where they need me. Women like me… there is no happiness in womanhood, for those like me. You still have a chance-”

Svetlana couldn’t help the near-hysterical laugh that bubbled out of her. “Happiness as a woman? What the hell would I need that for?”

“It’s not about if you need it,” Sofia said patiently, voice tinged with something strange and nostalgic that Svetlana couldn’t even begin to place. “It’s about if you want it.”

When Svetlana didn’t say anything, Sofia continued. “If you don’t want it, people act all kinds of ways about it. A lot of men don’t know how to handle a woman like that if they think they can still have power over her.”

“Where…” Svetlana’s voice cracked slightly, and she cleared her throat before starting again, “Where is this going, exactly?”

“It’s going to the easiest answer imaginable,” Sofia said, a smile creeping back into her voice. “I’m here because I want to be by my men’s side, so we can fight on the day we all can escape. I only go where I want to- and I only want to be where I’m needed as myself.”

“... Only what you want, huh…” Svetlana said and, thankfully, it seemed her tears had finally dried. She turned to face Sofia and Sofia, mischief glinting in her eye, took out a handkerchief for Svetlana to take. Wiping away her own tears, Svetlana said, “I don’t know how that’s supposed to be any kind of lesson. I was going to do that anyway.”

“Oh, I know- you’re a brash little shit, I’ll give you that.” Sofia snorted, eyes crinkling at the corners. “All I’m saying is, we’re not so different, you and I…”

“Ew.” Svetlana deadpanned, self consciously covering her chest. “I’d rather that not be the case, thank you.”

“No respect! I swear.” Sofia huffed, but it was with more amusement than anything. Honestly… out of everything that had happened that day, even with her own spectacular failure, Svetlana felt a lot better than she had in a long time.

So before Sofia could get up and start putting things away, Svetlana hazarded a question. “... what are you needed for here?”

Sofia’s eyes twinkled with some pleasant surprise as she leaned forward, looking as youthful as any girl Svetlana had seen working as a servant out in the town. “Now there’s an interesting question- you see, there’s a war going on out there that you don’t even know about…”

Sofia spoke, fire bleeding into her words and passion sparking in her eyes.

Svetlana listened.