#Also according to this chapter it had been 18 months since they’d last talked

[kittykatninja321]

Obsessed with this interaction. The way Bruce lied twice before telling the truth and the way Dick sees through it immediately. The way “I needed to take him in otherwise he’d die” is something Bruce tells himself about Jason but doesn’t really believe

[captainscanadian]

Reputation | Bucky Barnes x Reader (Part 1)

My Masterlist

Summary: Freshman year was all about the failed friendships. Sophomore year was all about the lack of a social life. Junior year was supposed to be about focusing on school, until Bucky Barnes came along.

Word Count: 3245

Pairing: College!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: SMUT (18+), FUCKBOI BUCKY, MINORS FUCK OFF!

A/N: Reputation, as a title, was heavily inspired by Taylor Swift’s iconic album of the same name. This is my entry for @buckysmischief​‘s 1K Writing Challenge. I know I’m a few days late but I started a fic with smut in the first chapter so... it took some time to perfect it. I’d like to thank my boo @baezen​ for being a good beta and for the constant love. Lastly, the reason why this whole fic (and my blog itself) exists in the first place was because I was reading @i-am-a-closet-fanfic-fiend​‘s College AUs and wanted to write one of my own. It’s been 11 months since then and I finally did it. This fic is an unofficial AU of my own fic, Better, but you don’t have to have read it to read this fic. Same characters, but they meet in a completely different time of their lives, under completely different circumstances. Better!Bucky is back, but he’s at NYU now. I DON’T OWN THE GIF & I DON’T DO TAGLISTS.

Whoever made the claim that college was the place where one would meet their lifelong friends was most definitely the biggest moron on this planet. You firmly believed that when you first arrived at NYU two years ago. Leaving your small town just outside of Philadelphia for the Big Apple, you had so many hopes and dreams when you got here. Education was your priority, but you had been so eager to meet new people and try new things just as much. After all, it’s all anyone who knew had told you. College is the place where you would meet your lifelong friends. 

Bullshit. It was all bullshit. 

Freshman year was all about newfound friendships. New kids huddled together in an unfamiliar environment, leaning on each other because being on your own for the first time in your lives was not easy. It was inevitable. It was human nature. A new environment meant the search for a sense of belonging. You had found that for yourself too.

A large group of friends, all ten of you being freshmen, you would claim one of the large round tables in the dining hall after your late afternoon biology lab. You ate, you talked, and you walked back to your dorms together. It became a ritual. But expecting that this kind of ritual would last until the end of your undergrad was a naive judgement to make.

By the end of that year, half of your friends had managed to switch to a different program and found another group of people to hang out with. The ones that remained in your group had managed to join their preferred extra-curricular activities and made more friends who shared the same interests. While you did manage to find the time to volunteer with the UNICEF chapter on campus, you hadn’t managed to make any close friends from that.

Sophomore year was to be the loneliest of years. The one friend you thought you would have for life had managed to ditch you for her sorority sisters – not that you had a problem with that. Your friendship had been hanging on a loose thread for a while before it came to a rather abrupt end. People grew up within the first two years of college, and people who grew up also grew apart from each other. It was inevitable. Margaret Sykes was also a complete fucking moron as she was, but that’s a story for another time.

Now in your junior year, you were starting to get back into the swing of things. After landing an on-campus job as an office assistant, you were hoping to keep yourself busy with your full-time course load. No time for fake friends, or real ones at that. You were finally moving on with your life, leaving behind those who had left you behind for good. After all, college was also supposed to be the best time of your life even without those lifelong friends. You might as well make the most out of the experience and build yourself a career.

It was the weekend before classes were to begin, and you found yourself sitting alone in the dining hall with a slice of pizza that was now getting cold. Having picked up your textbooks from the campus bookstore earlier that day, you decided to grab a bite before you would retreat to your dorm room for the remainder of the night. Perhaps you could get a head start on your readings.

Your lack of a social life seemed to be a blessing when it came to how you had planned ahead for the semester. When you weren’t working or volunteering, you would be studying and sleeping. One thing you had learned the hard way from your years of pulling all nighters – they did not work for you as they did to most people.  Micro-planning might just be the way to survive the next two years.

From the corner of your eyes, you could see a large group of friends sitting at the same table you used to sit at during your freshman year. You could not help but roll your eyes, an exasperated sigh escaped your lips. Naive freshmen, you assumed they were. They’d learn the harsh truth in the next few months.

You took a bite of your pizza slice as you looked out the window that you had been sitting by. The breathtaking view of Washington Square Park reminded you of your first day in New York when you had stepped out of your dorm room to take a stroll. The summery weather of New York City had brought students, tourists and locals alike to the heart of campus. You loved this city and campus for how lively it was – a true multicultural land of opportunity.

New York had become home to you in the last two years, despite the dull memories of lost friendships. Moving to New York had been the right thing to do for your education. NYU really was the place for students to be. You had no concerns about the academics here as you did the social aspects of your life. But you wondered if you really wanted to stay in the city after graduation. You had no reason to stay, no one to hold you down in the Big Apple. Moving back to your parents’ house in Philadelphia was an option for you. Your father had been hoping that you would return home after graduation and take over the family business from him, but you wanted to do more than just blindly follow in your parents’ footsteps.  

Speaking of footsteps, the sound of someone approaching your corner table made you turn back from the window. Your eyes landed on a familiar pair of blue ones, a small smile tugging at the corner of your lips as you recognized the dark haired man who was walking up to you. He donned black skinny jeans and a red Henley, his long brown hair parted down the middle. It was a few inches longer than the last time you had seen him. A part of you had often wondered how hard it must have been to maintain those luscious locks of his. The shine and volume alone put the ladies to shame.

 “James.”

James Barnes, or Bucky as he was referred as by his closest friends, had been your neurobiology tutor during your freshman year. After failing your first quiz on the effects of dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin on the brain, you had approached your professor in desperate need of help. You needed to pass that class in order to complete your degree and failing your first quiz was not a great start to your freshman year. But you had been so determined back then to succeed academically. You still were.

Professor Van Dyne had been gracious enough to assign one of her best upper year students to help you get your grades back up. According to her, James was the teacher’s pet in the biology department and the best person to study with. His photographic memory had allowed him to maintain a consistent 4.0 GPA since his freshman year. As impressive as that sounded, his reputation precedes him. He was known around campus, or at least within the biology students, as the Casanova of New York University.

Rumours across the Greek life circuit on campus – Bucky was the resident fuckboy. It was an untold truth around NYU that he had slept with at least one person in every sorority. According to Margaret, one of the sororities even included having a one-night stand with Bucky as part of their initiation. He was apparently the best night anyone could ever have, and even if he never called any one of his flings back, he would still be found lurking around the next party and leaving with someone else later that night. It was apparently a rite of passage - a rite of passage that you had managed to avoid for as long as you had.

“Hey, doll.” He pulled the chair across from you before sitting down at the table. “Long time, no see...”

You raised your eyebrow at him as you set your pizza slice back down on your plate. Picking up a napkin to wipe your mouth and hands, you shrugged your shoulders at him. “What do you want, James?” You asked him, holding up your hand before he could answer the question. You had known him along enough to know what he was going to say. “I know, it’s been two years since I took my first year neurobiology class. And no, you don’t have to show me how oxytocin affects the human brain.”

“You’re really going to break my heart like that, Y/N?” He asked, feigning hurt with a dramatic sigh as he bought his hand up to his chest.

You rolled your eyes at him, laughing softly before shaking your head. He’ll never learn. “Why are you even here right now? I thought you graduated last year.”  

“Hey, just because I’ve graduated... summa cum laude, by the way, it doesn’t mean that I’m not welcome here.” Bucky remarked with a smirk plastered across his lips. “I have my own reasons for being here. You don’t own this campus, you know?”

You crossed your arms against your chest, still not breaking eye contact with him. There was no way you would fall for his charm. You had not done so in freshman year or sophomore year and you were not planning on doing it now. “Enlighten me.”

“Did Steve not mention that I got into NYU Med?” He asked you, his smirk not leaving his face.

Steve Rogers was Bucky’s best friend since childhood and the former president of the UNICEF chapter on campus. You had volunteered together for a few charity fundraisers over the years, but you were not as close to him as Bucky was. “Why would he have a reason to mention it?” You asked him as you leaned forward in your seat. “I would have placed my bets on you going to Columbia with him, if I’m being honest. You two seemed to be so inseparable. I can’t believe you just ditched him like that and let him take off.” 

It was true. Bucky and Steve were inseparable. After all, they had grown up together since they were young kids. They were always together on campus, having taken a majority of their classes together. It was so rare to see one of them without the other. 

“And did you really think that would impress me so much that I would actually end up sleeping with you?”

“Why?” He asked, almost in a whisper as he leaned forward in his seat. “Is it working?”

As the sun was finally setting over the New York City skyline, you found yourself perched up naked against a penthouse window in Brooklyn. The view from up here was much more breathtaking than the view of Washington Square Park from the dining hall window. But that was not the reason why you were so out of breath now. You were panting for air as you stared at the reflection of the man who stood behind you. After a heated make out session from Greenwich Village to Brooklyn, you wound up undressed in his bedroom that had a view like no other. 

“I can’t believe that actually worked on me... you obnoxious asshole.” Your heart was pounding out of your bare chest as you felt the moisture trickle down your inner thighs, and you tilted your head back.

Bucky had a smug look on his face, one that was filled with just as much lust as it was filled with pure satisfaction. You had finally fallen for his charm, after two years of fighting it. He had seen the way you glanced at him every time he volunteered with you and Steve. He knew that you must have felt attracted towards him, even though you denied it every time he had brought it up.

 He licked his lips as he gently pulled you towards him, turning you around so that he could kiss you on the lips rather roughly. “Playing hard to get doesn't suit you, doll.” His hands grasped your bare ass before his fingers slipped between your folds slick with your arousal. “You want me so badly, don’t you, Y/N? Don’t lie to me now. Your soaking pussy speaks the truth.”

You bit down on your bottom lip as you trembled to find the right words to say, your cheeks growing hot as did the rest of your body. A soft moan slipped out of you as you felt his cold fingers slide right into your entrance, sending shivers up your spine as you forgot how to stand still. You felt defeated by your own desires, having given in to his advances after fighting it for so long. You really thought you could get through your entire undergrad without being yet another one-night stand on James Barnes’ tally. But tonight, your strike was added to the drawing board with the rest of them. 

“Are you going to keep talking or are you going to fuck me like you fucked every fucking sorority sister on campus?” You gasped. “They all say that you’re the best night they’ve ever had, Barnes. I won’t believe it until I have proof.” You asked him as you began to unbutton his Henley.

“Getting desperate, are we? You made me wait a few years for this, doll. I’d have to make you wait a little longer now than a few minutes.” He was such a tease. “I didn’t fuck Margaret Sykes though.” He pointed out, a teasing look on his face as he pulled his fingers out of you and motioned you towards his bed. “You two were close in freshman year, weren’t you? And then last year, you purged your Instagram of any photos of her. I noticed.”

You rolled your eyes at his mention of your former best friend, lying back in his bed as you still tugged on his Henley. He was fully clothed while you were naked and exposed – the power that he had over you now, it was astonishing. But you could not deny how desperate you were for him. After all, your own body had lost that fight against your attraction towards this man. 

“Don’t bring up that bitch when I’m lying naked on your bed, James.” You told him, shaking your head at him. “If I could purge my own brain of any memories of her, I would.”

He chuckled as he sat down at the edge of his bed, his large hands firmly holding your thighs apart. “You act as though Margaret was the Antonio to your Bassanio, Y/N. It’s not like she would have cut out a pound of her flesh for you if you were ever in debt.” His bright eyes glanced down at your soaking core, his tongue peaking through his parted lips at the sight of just how aroused you were. He liked that he had such an effect on your body, knowing that you were attracted to him as he was attracted to you despite having known each other for years now. He pulled at your folds to get a glimpse of your throbbing clit, brushing his thumb over it in a quick teasing manner as he watched for your reaction.  

“I wouldn’t have taken you for a guy who reads Shakespeare.” You told him, giggling softly as you placed your arms above your head. It was a sign of you giving him full control of this ordeal; let him do what he was known to do best. After all, he did have a reputation. “But I think it’s so fucking hot that you do.” 

Another moan as you felt his thumb over your clit; you bit down on your lips not to make any noise. Bucky had warned you that Steve’s bedroom was just down the hall from his and the last thing you wanted was to have an awkward run-in with the blonde haired man who had taught you all about volunteering for charitable organizations for the duration of your undergrad.

“I can recite Hamlet’s soliloquy in its entirety while I fuck you, if you would like me to.” He joked, his fingers now drenched with your wetness as he slipped them through your entrance once again. His thumb rubbing circles on your clit as his eyes watched eagerly for your reaction.

“To fuck or not to fuck... that is the question.” You laughed at your own joke before looking up at him, rather seductively, your left hand pinching your swollen nipples as you began to feel the pain between your thighs relieve with his touch. Moaning once again as he slipped another finger inside of you. “Oh fuck, James... you really want to waste your time reciting Shakespeare with me when you could be putting that mouth to better use? What even happened... to your so called reputation of... being the best night everyone’s ever had?”

Bucky chuckled softly as he continued to finger you for another moment, pulling them out only to remove his Henley. “Desperate.” He pointed out with a wink, unbuttoning his jeans and taking them off as well. “Is that what they’ve all been saying about me now?”

“Are you telling me.... that you’re unaware of your own reputation, James?” You asked him as you sat up against his headboard, feeling the moisture between your legs now seeping through the clear white sheets on his bed as you gasped for air. “Your reputation... precedes you.”

He walked to his nightstand to retrieve a condom, hand slipping below the waistband of his boxers to slowly stroke his cock. A tantalising smirk played on his lips. “Well then, why... don’t we... put an end to it?” He asked you, pulling down his boxers to reveal his half-hard cock.

Your eyes perked up at his length. “Damn...” You gasped. “They really weren’t lying.”

James Barnes raised his eyebrow at you before tossing the condom at you. “Do the honors, doll?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” You giggled, rolling over in bed so that you could reach him. Your hand wrapped around his manhood before stroking him until he was fully erect.

Bucky hissed at the feel of your touch against his length, shaking his head at you. “Desperate.”

Removing the condom from the package, you put it on him before you looked up to meet his lusty eyes. “Are you saying that you’re not desperate for me at all, Barnes?” You asked him before you pulled yourself on all fours, moving your hair out of the way.

“Two years was a long time, doll.” He admitted, his hands caressing your ass before he let himself slip though your entrance. He took his time to position himself, not wanting to hurt you in any way. “Let me know if you feel like I’m going too fast or you need me to stop, okay? I don’t want to hurt you.”

You nodded, eagerly. “Just fuck me already, James!”

“Desperate.”

Whoever made the claim that college was the place where one would meet their lifelong friends was most definitely the biggest moron on this planet. College was the place where one would have the best sex they ever had, and Bucky Barnes really did live up to his reputation that night.

[stevenuniversetanzanite]

Ally x Cordelia x Reader (part 4)

I’m more active on posting on wattpad currently or at least they come out straight after writing.

This is two and a half times longer than the other parts.  I tried to edit it but I don't think that went very well so... Enjoy.

Also, I may have made Cordelia a dick in this, but I'll fix it in a later chapter maybe.

Parts: One, Two, Three, Four, Five (will be added when posted)

Late in the night with nothing but your phone to light the inside of your car, the button for the dome lights in your car jammed from childish use years ago. Your car was due for an upgrade but instead of replacing the heap of junk you poorly maintained it and persuaded the mechanics to pass the heap of metal as safe for driving.

You're phoned buzzed once more.

Your forehead rested on the steering wheel, you pulled yourself to sit upright and glanced at the phone.

Your car was parked a block away from the building. The key in the lock ready to start the car's engine. The phone was nestled amongst the stolen blanket on the passenger's side. The phone confirmed your suspicion about the number of missed text messaged and phone calls, not only from Ally and Cordelia but also varies students warning you that you were in big trouble when you got home.

It would be another seven hours until you got back to the school and you'd have to count in for a pit stop or two to pick up coffee or another caffeine-filled beverage. A part of you was thankful for your long nights back in the hospital (also uni), it was useful for all-nighters.

It could be another seven hours before you'd have to respond back to anyone, there's not much they can do. Cordelia had the other girls to look after and Ally- well she has her son. You had no one- not anymore.

Then again, Cordelia would go hell and back to protect her own and ignoring the fact that you were her girlfriend, were still 'one of her girls'. Nothing like this had happened, at least with someone she cared about.

You sighed. You better make sure she doesn't come searching for you. Of the two, you'd be in hotter water with the blonde. Considering the time, they'd most likely be together.

The phone picked up immediately.

"Hello," you said.

"Y/n, oh thank goodness you're safe," The voice on the other end said.

"Why wouldn't I be," you kidded your voice quivering.

"You're so stupid why would you go without telling us. We told you it was a trap. You could have died."

"I didn't- don't you worry. I'm fine" you said. Should you tell them about your Discovery. Probably. It would cause her to worry more about your recklessness but who cares it's not a targeted attack, but the witches just got caught in the Crossfire. Then again, how are you going to explain away your findings? They didn't know, couldn't know. "It was a dead-end nothing came of it I'll see you when I get back home ok."

You hung up and powered on your 7-hour drive back to New Orleans.

It wasn't until hours after you'd left that the two noticed learned of your absence. They came up with a plan of attack when a student interrupted to inform them of a student's injury. When asked why the girl didn't inform you, they were informed that you left in a rush, muttering something about having business to take care of.

Everyone in the school was now aware of your absence and while Cordelia tried to help the injured student, Ally dialled your mobile.

"No response?" Ally shook her head, her phone still pressed to her ear in case you picked up. She paced around Cordelia's office begging for you to pick up. It was close to midnight but neither of them dared to sleep until they heard from you. The only thing that stopped Cordelia from dashing out was the fact that she was sure she'd have some sort of vision or someone in the school would if something accord. It was the only thought she had that could slightly calm her down even if it weren't true.

"I can't believe she did that. Why- this isn't like her-"

"Yes, it is," Ally cut in. "It's exactly like her."

"She's never done this before-"

"She goes against us all the time" Cordelia was too shocked to listen. "When it comes to the woman's safety when has she ever listened-"

"She never used to do this when she was in school."

"That was like what 15 years ago"

"13" Cordelia corrected.

"My point exactly. Are you the same person you were 13 years ago?"

"No but-"

"But nothing. The moment she left the school you no record of her life. You don't know how she became the person she is today. She had experiences that shaped her into the person she is now. But in the 2 years she's been with us, has she shown any sign of the person she was before."

Cordelia paused and thought about it. To an extent you were, like anyone, you kept the same core soul you had before but the circle of people you surrounded yourself around was different and with that came different reactions and experiences for you. You were no longer the good-natured student; she would go so far to say this is a late rebellious phase. You always cared about others safety over your own but this was a step to far. If you were like this before then she never noticed. You still had some sense to talk to, allow to be helped instead of playing this 'saviour' complex you'd adopted. She wondered where that came from.

The two had seen you in times of need, your recent development of 'sleepwalking' as an example. The two offered to help you figure out where this developed from, but you were apprehensive.

Cordelia was thankful the doors were shut. She crumbled into the nearest seat, covering her face with her hands. "What do we do?"

Ally moved closer to her girlfriend, resting her wait on the armrest, she pulled the blonde closer. She rubs circles on the woman's shoulder with her thumb while staring vacantly at the opposing wall. Before Ally could speak, Cordelia's phone rung. Cordelia lept to answer it.

"Y/n, oh thank goodness you're safe," Cordelia said relieved to hear your voice.

When the phone call was done, Cordelia placed her phone down on the table and leant into Ally's body muttering, "This woman is going to be the death of me."

The two remained in the comfort of each other until Ally suggested that they should head off to bed. They cuddled up with each other, Cordelia rested her head on Ally's chest. Ally ran her hands through Cordelia's hair wondering what the woman was thinking. Cordelia fixated on the roof, occasionally her hand fiddled with the fabric of Ally's nightshirt.

Ally was as stressed, if not more than Cordelia, but hid it from the other woman. Her stress would only make the situation worse. She rushed around, dialling your number trying to find out if you were safe. Now that she knew you were, she had new worries. Why did you make the rash decision of going yourself?

A part of her was shocked that she wasn't the one anxious, in a sense, she caused you to act. If you had never known, you couldn't have gone. Then again, the stress from the incident had prepared her body for the sudden anxiety. Who cares about that now? They both needed a distraction until you returned.

"You've known Y/N for a long time, what was she like when she was younger?" Ally asked.

"Very similar. However, she had less friends." She pulled her gaze from the ceiling to the brunette. "She had this one, they were inseparable, we used to joke that they would end up marrying each other they were so close," She chuckled at the thought. Then she stopped halfway through and thought to herself before continuing. Ally didn't understand why that was until Cordelia spoke again. " I hadn't heard from her in years, they must have fought, I can't explain why Y/n wouldn't speak about her otherwise. I remember bringing her up not long after Y/n came back and she brushed me off. The only other time I brought it up was by text asking if she had any of her recipes that the two used to make. They are the best chefs. You won't guess that with how often Y/n has nearly set the kitchen on fire but their Chocolate Cheesecake was to die for." She began to list all the desserts you'd use to make and all the meals your friend would make.

"They used to host bake-offs and convinced all students to get involved. The kitchen was always a disaster by the end of it. You'd be finding offcuts days after. We had to implement a rule for when the two girls hosted this torment they had to clean up afterwards. To which they made it a rule to tidy as you go."

"Did they judge?" Ally asked.

"No, that's the best part, they managed to convince the teachers to judge," Cordelia smiled as she reminisced. "Most of us would have helped but I know for a fact one of the teachers despised her. Can't remember why. OH, I forgot-"

"What?"

"You remember My Auntie Myrtle?" By name, Ally remembered. She never met her. "One time she came in for a visit during one of the bake-offs and she unintentionally entered the 'war zone' between Y/n and one of the older students and let's just say no one left without being covered in food that day. Y/n came second that day, I think she lost because she started the food fight.

Cordelia went on about stories from your school days until the two fell to sleep.

It was early in the morning when you finally parked outside the school. You hid the blanket in the glove compartment before exiting and locking up your car.

Delphi trust, how could it be Delphi trust. You and your hand through your hair I think is getting Tangled in the locks. more importantly, how did they get those items? you hadn't seen any of them in 18 months if not longer why haunt you with them now.

Before you could pull your keys out the door swung open it was Ally. You pulled up about 7 she should have been at work, yet she stood there front of you in her pyjamas. You couldn't decipher her expression a bit over 7 hours since you last spoke, she had long enough to calm down and talk with Cordelia. Her hand was still clenched around the doorknob and the door closed except The Gap she stood between. Unlike the other woman, you have yet to speak to her.

You slowly approached her, running potential dialogue through your head. What would she say?

You suck your hands into your pockets, your hand's fiddle with the loose ring. You almost forgot you stole it or did they steal it from you? You need to find it a hiding spot. Maybe with its pair.

"Are you trying to save me you ask?"

You can tell she's fighting off the urge to scold you. She went to say something but stopped herself. She shook her head, opened the door wider and said, "She somehow managed to blame me for your idiocy." As if Ally not sharing add inspired you to do the same. The truth was you've had your secrets and wanted to keep them to yourself.

"Well, you're a bad influence," you teased. You always joked to try and lighten the mood but always got scolded for it seriousness the others to talk cramps your style. You are lucky to be alive you knew that you didn't need the others to telling you out your areas you could do that enough on your own.

She smiled sadly as she allowed you access into the school. She knew there was no point in scolding you, you never listen to her advice. You may be younger but you're not a child and like to make it evident every time the two tried the parent you. She had her own child to worry about and Cordelia the girls- even if they are most of them are adults themselves.

"Should I avoid her or get it over with," you asked.

"Best get over with." She remained distant and you made no attempt to get closer. When you turned to leave, Ally called out your name. In acknowledgement, you turned around to face her.

She pulled you into a suffocating hug. "Don't ever do that again."

"Okay."

"You scared the shit out of us."

"I'm sorry."

You knew this is not how she normally reacted, but she's had hours to calm down. Your journey to Cordelia's office lasted an eternity.

You knocked on the door waiting to be let in. The door opens Cordelia looking down at you blank way. She opens the door wider, allowing you to move inside in her office. You shuffle inside and station yourself in the middle of the room. She moved passed a seating area to a desk. You knew you were in for it. She only ever used the desk for formal meetings or for serious occasions when someone's trouble.

She asked you to take a seat. You settled in the armchair across from her desk, the seat wasn't comfortable from lack of use. A part of you was praying for a similar interrogation as Ally's two days prior.

Their rooms air was stiff. The curtain drawn shut blocking the morning light from entering the room. The fluorescent light flickered every now and again causing you more tension. You watched Cordelia organize herself, fighting every urge to snap are you, calling you reckless, stupid and other words you'd need a thesaurus for. You were surprised to she was more concerned one seeing as it's Ally's trouble a mess to begin with. Ally was concerned but hold it back due to the scolding she knew you're going to get from your Supreme.

The woman didn't they speak nor did she let you. A part of you wished you never entered the room. Delaying it and wrapping your head around the situation may have benefited you in the long run. So, you would have told her the truth, revealing your findings. Not that it wasn't too late now but you were into too deep.

The woman stared you down, "Why did you do it Y/n?"

"I don't know."

"That's not a good enough answer."

"Yeah yeah."

"Y/n, I'm being serious."

"I know"

"Then why aren't you listening to me?"

"I am."

"Then why did you do it?"

"I said I don't know."

"You're leaving me no choice-"

"What are you going to do?" Cordelia stood and headed over to one of the bookcases in the room. "Cordelia? What are you going to do?"

"I forbid you from leaving the school grounds-"

"You're grounding me?" you laughed. "You serious?"

"You clearly can't be trusted to left to your own regards." Cordelia scanned the bookcase before pulling out a spellbook. "It's for your own safety."

"Safety? Fuck that, you're trying to take away my freedom. Who do you think you are?!"

"I'M THE FUCKING SUPREME!"

She flipped open the book, searching for the corrected page. She wasn't planning on giving you the choice. If you weren't going to do it willingly, she'd force you to stay. You caught on to her plan and tore the book from her grasp.

"IS THIS YOUR WAY OF SHOWING POWER OVER ME, HUH?" You yelled. "I WON'T LET YOU CONTROL ME AND YOU SURE AS HELL AIN'T TRAPPING ME HERE!"

"Y/N, YOU HAVE NO SAY IN THIS!"

"I HAVE VERY SAY IN THIS. IT'S MY LIFE!" you stumbled back to the door. "You know what? I'm done. I'm done with this-"

"Y/n-" Cordelia grabbed you by your wrist stopping you. She tried to use her powers to find out anything about you or why your acting like this. Anything to justify why you did what you did, but she got nothing. You were blank.

"I'm done with this Cordelia."

The door opened revealing a concerned Ally. You yanked yourself free and exited the room as soon as possible, brushing shoulders with Ally.

"What did you say to her?"

"Make sure she doesn't do anything stupid." Ally did a once over the blonde before leaving her to check on you.

Ally found you on your way back to your car.

"Y/n!" She called out your name. "Y/n!"

"What do you want?"

"Don't talk to me like that, I'm not the one you're mad at."

"Sorry. Can I go now, or are you trying to trap me here too?"

"Is that what she said?"

"Was even planning on cursing me to this place."

You turn around and opened your car door.

"Where are you going?"

"The store," you said before hopping into the driver's side. "And don't you worry, I plan on coming back, my stuffs here." You needed to get out of here before Cordelia could trap you to the place. Ally found your last sentence odd, of course, you'd be back, this was only a fight, right? You hadn't called off things between them.

"I'll talk to her for you. Try and come up with a common ground."

"There is no common ground, Ally. She wants me to be her prisoner."

"It's not like that-"

"Could have fooled me." You slammed the door shut. You had a feeling Cordelia was watching from the window. Her office faced the street.

Ally stormed through the school all the way to Cordelia's office. She flung the door open.

"You threatened to trap her here?!" Ally lashed out, "What on earth possessed you to think that was a smart decision?"

"I told you to look after-"

"You have no right to tell me what to do. I am not a witch, you have no status over me and even if you did, what gives you the right?"

"Ally, she's reckless-"

"So?"

"She could have been killed last night. People are after you Ally and she waltzed into the lion's den."

"That doesn't give you the right to trap her here. She isn't your slave, she's your girlfriend, treat her like it."

"Ally-"

"No, I'm not finished. Now do agree she should be monitored after... what she did. Yes, but don't bound her here."

"You're right."

Ally knew what Cordelia wanted to do was wrong but her sticking up for you wasn't purely selfless. Ally needed your freedom so you could take Oz out places he needed to go. Ally being caught up in this mess couldn't go out without being heckled and her other girlfriend is too busy with her supreme status and upkeeping the coven to chauffeur Ally's son around. She could have gotten one of the girls to do it but that was a worst-case scenario.

Everything had gotten back to normal besides all of you searching for the 'unknown' sender. Cordelia apologized and the two agreed someone had to be with you at all times (except while using the bathroom), it didn't matter who it was as long as it was someone in the school. You had the school hours (when you didn't have to teach) off from being monitored because you were helping Oz with his schoolwork. Oz had been kept at home for the week while the adults thought through what they were going to do to keep him from knowing. You were tasked with keeping him ahead of his studies. You were thankful he was still young making the work easier to relearn and teach.

He questioned why he was being kept from school but wasn't complaining besides the fact that he can't see his friends. He'd been allowed to stay with some of them after Cordelia worked her 'charm' in the form of magic on the parents to ensure they'd not mention anything. She rarely used her power of 'persuasion' very often but after both your and Oz's begging she couldn't refuse. After Ally's reputation was guaranteed to be protected, she had no reason to refuse.

Due to the increased number of hours spent together, you decided to surprise him with the Nintendo switch he wanted. You had no place to store it in your office until you set it up so you hid it behind your mountain of shoe boxes in your shared wardrobe.

Alone in your shared walk-in wardrobe, you knelt, going through the belongings you'd stolen from your search.

Within the last five days you managed to find a spot in time where you could sneak the stolen belonging inside. Now, you stored them in an old shoebox that came with your most commonly worn pair of shoes.

Your mind thought back to the note, Happy Anniversary. How could they know?

You were on edge the whole time, maybe you should have told your girlfriends your findings. Regardless you chose to leave them unaware and in turn, must suffer for your stupidity.

You hadn't noticed the others come into the bedroom nor did they notice your presence in the wardrobe.

"You need to talk to her about it."

"I know you said that last time."

"And you haven't spoken about it since."

"It's really not the time Ally."

"It's never the-"

"More now than ever. You're under threat, Ally, what if they come after us too? They know about Y/n. They may even have footage of her sneaking about because she stupidity went out-" She kept revving on about the whole thing they got caught up in. You had yet to catch on to what they were talking about.

You put the blanket back in the box and tucked the shoebox back into your collection of shoes. Making sure the box covered the gift you got for Ally's son. You crept towards the entrances of the wardrobe.

"It's too late for me Ally. End of discussion." What on earth were they talking about? Too late for her, oh god is she getting replaced? No, it's too soon. "I sent the council to check out the address Y/n gave me, or should I say the real address."

"She gave you the wrong address?"

Cordelia nodded, "it wasn't a simple mistake with the number, the street doesn't exist."

Shit, she figured out it was a fake street. Of course you did, you should have done a better job. You needed to get out of here and figure out your next move before they figured out what else you're hiding. You teleported out of the room dashing down to your office where you're meant to be.

"What are you suggesting? That she's the one behind this?"

"You said it yourself earlier, I don't really know her anymore."

"She's been with us for almost two years-"

"Enough time to study someone and send info back."

"She didn't know about Ivy-"

"Do you know where she was in 2016?"

"No."

"Because she never talks about her past."

"You think she was in Michigan?"

"It's not unlikely."

"She would never-"

"But what if she is- All I'm saying is be careful. No one would dash off that quickly unless they had something to hide."

"What do we do once we find out?"

"Act accordingly."

"If you're wrong, you owe her an apology." Cordelia insisted she wasn't wrong but agreed nevertheless. "Couldn't you just read her mind or something?"

"Use the sight? I generally block off using my power, I have tried it a couple of times on her but she's barricaded her memories."

"When did you use it?"

"Most recently after she returned from 'her trip'." Her trip referred to the five days earlier. "I also tried when she was too stubborn to tell us about her 'episodes'. I thought when she was distressed would lower the wall but it was stronger."

It wasn't until the next day when Cordelia found out the building actually was. She called Ally immediately.

"You're saying she's a witch hunter? But she's a witch."

"I can't explain that myself, but she refused to tell us this when she knew who they were."

"Does she know that that's the company that-"

"My ex worked for? Probably. Hell, she's probably one of his side chicks."

"I doubt that-" You had never mentioned or shown interest in men before. Cordelia would most likely explain that away as you were keeping it away from them which Ally would claim was ridiculous.

"Why are you supporting her?"

"Why aren't you? She's shown nothing up until now that would suggest that she'd associate herself with witch hunters. They probably have dirt on her."

Cordelia rolled her eyes.

"I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt-"

"It's not yours to give. You aren't the only one at threat anymore. Ally my girls are in danger-"

"Including Y/n."

"She's not one of us anymore-"

"We haven't confirmed she's done anything-" Ally tried to reason. "She isn't your ex, stop painting her out to be. At least wait until she gets back to explain herself."

You were out with Oz. You had taken him to the park for psychical activity and to get him out of the school. Mainly it was an excuse for you to get away from school, you found the place to crowded with the constant eyes on you. An escape sounded nice and Oz didn't complain. You may have had to offer him a comic book to seal the deal. He would have gone out anyway but the extra incentive was nice.

Ally ended the phone call leaving Cordelia to her own thoughts.

Cordelia stormed down to your office. If you had anything, you'd hid it in your own space, she thought. She shredded the bookcase, flipping books to see if you hid any secrets within the pages. She flung open draws and flicked through files, but nothing showed up pinning you as the culprit. A couple of students in passing watched her tear down your medical posters and swipe the contents of the contents on your desk to the floor. When she caught them she straightened up her act before saying, "Shouldn't you all be in class?" They scampered off soon after.

She thought about other places you could hide something. What about in plain sight? Her eyes lit up, the bedroom. Nothing in the main section or the ensuite. The last place she had to check was the cupboard. The school would need a good cleaning after she was done searching. She hadn't bothered to tidy as she went, set on you being in the wrong so it wouldn't matter.

She was more careful with the wardrobe as she didn't want to wreak any of her or Ally's more expensive clothing. She pulled out the collection of shoeboxes, finding a hidden red and white box. She pushed the box aside hoping the box would be what she sort instead finding a game console. She rose her brow, why was it hidden away in the closet. Maybe you hid the contents inside the box? The box hadn't been opened yet but she was convinced you'd hidden something inside. There were only the console and its extra contents. There were some games hidden behind it and a little tag addressed to Oz written in your handwriting. You bought the boy a game console? You really spoiled him.

"Maybe I'm wrong," she thought aloud as she put all the contents back where she found it.

She went to place the shoes back in front of the box when she noticed a shoebox that shouldn't have been kept. They were to your casual pair of shoes which you never but back in their box. She always had to tell you to place them somewhere where out of the way so she wouldn't trip on them.

She slowly opened the box, "A blanket?" She removed a small knitted blanket from the box to see two rings and some other trinkets. Why did you have these hidden away? Cordelia held the blanket up, allowing it to unfold. She noticed the lavender stitching in the lower corner of the white blanket. She flipped it over revealing the name on it, "Odelia?" she questioned. She raked her brain around the name, the only thing that came to mind was how similar it was to her own. Maybe it was intentional? She assumed it wasn't your blanket, it was two pristine. Was it meant for someone? A child perhaps? "The child," she muttered. The day you were in Oz's room, you sounded like you were speaking to a child. Was that her? Or was Cordelia getting it wrong? She couldn't get much information off the blanket other than it had been used by a child with the last seven years. She rested the blanket on her lap, hoping another item would give her the clue she needed.

She'd gotten you all wrong, you were hiding something but she no longer thought you worked for the witch hunters. Maybe they threatened you or a loved one? She pulled out the pair of rings.

A vision flashed before her eyes. She got a first-person perspective of someone driving in a car. The person chuckled in response to something she heard on the Bluetooth speaker of her car. You're current car.

"Baby~" The woman whined, "I swear your gonna love it."

"This better not be like your last surprise," a voice from the speaker call said. The voice was distorted due to being on the phone, but it was undeniably you. "I still can't go to that park without reliving it."

"Stop being dramatic." The more Cordelia thought she recognised the other woman's voice too. "I dropped Lia at my sister's place-"

"So, we could have some good old fashion alone time~" you purred.

"You wish," the woman laughed. "When do you get off?"

"5. Just in time to catch up."

"On some sleep maybe, how long was your shift?"

"It wasn't that long-"

"But your-"

"Don't get started on this-" You're what? Why did you cut her off, Cordelia thought.

"You need to find a better job."

"I will just give me some time," you said. "I'm thinking of trying to get a job at Miss Robichaux's. I could teach magic there or something."

"You should." The woman encouraged. "God, I miss that place."

"I know. Maybe you can visit me sometime if I work there."

"I'll probably have to pry you out of there too. Doesn't that, uh~ what's her name, she works there."

"Wow, helpful."

"Shut up, the one you were infatuated with, the one that you only settled for me cuz she was straight-"

"I didn't settle for you-"

"Yes, you did. Don't worry I don't care. But if she does swing our way you better not scamper off."

"I wouldn't-"

"All I'm saying is tell me first, I'm open-"

"For a threesome," you said. "You can't even remember her name."

"I don't need to," she said. "I'll learn it again if I ever met her again."

"Why would you meet her?"

"When I visit you at your new job."

"I haven't even applied yet." The woman turned her car right on an interaction. "So, what's the surprise?" The woman chuckled.

A van ran the red light and was coming straight for her car. She swore and tried to swerve out of the way.

"Amber?"

Her vision faded to black.

"Amber!"

Cordelia gasped. Your friend from high school, Amber. Oh god, no wonder you never talked about her. That can't be all, the car was fine now, you wouldn't keep the car your friend died- wait, Cordelia looked at the rings, you married her. She was your wife. You would have mentioned something like that to her, right?

A knock at the door interrupted her thought process.

"Ms Cordelia?" A girl burst into the bedroom.

Cordelia dropped the belongings and rushed over to the door.

"There's been a crash."

[recentanimenews]

IN-DEPTH: How Did Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Become Japan’s Hottest Domestic Franchise?

  At this point, it’s safe to say that Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is one of the biggest franchises this decade. The manga series sold more than double what One Piece did at its peak in 2020, the Mugen Train anime film has outgrossed Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning Spirited Away to become the king of the Japanese box office, and the franchise is estimated to bring in 270 billion yen to the Japanese economy by itself this year. 

  Looking at all of that, there is no question that Demon Slayer is the hottest domestic property in Japan right now. But how did it get here? Let’s examine how the little manga series from new author Koyoharu Gotouge became a cultural phenomenon in Japan.

  Demon Slayer’s History with Jump

  Before the Demon Slayer anime started, the series was running in Weekly Shonen Jump, one of Japan’s top manga magazines. The series started in Jump on February 15, 2016, and had modest success, with around 3.5 million copies of the manga series printed and sold as of February 2019, just a few months before the anime premiered in April 2019.

  During Jump Festa 2017 — an annual exhibition for series being released by Shueisha in Weekly Shonen Jump and their other manga magazines — the first chapter of Demon Slayer was given out in a sample booklet alongside other new series that had started in 2016, such as THE PROMISED NEVERLAND. Outside that sample booklet though, Demon Slayer barely existed in the mind’s eyes of attendees, with gazes glued to NEVERLAND and BORUTO as the new hot series.

  It wasn’t until Jump Festa 2020 (held in December 2019) that Demon Slayer got some time in the spotlight, with the Aniplex booth doing its best at showing off the series that had become such a hit over the previous summer. 

  Demon Slayer at the Aniplex booth during Jump Festa 2020 (photo: Daryl Harding)

  Even though the collected manga volumes weren’t selling as much as one might expect from the now behemoth of a series, Demon Slayer was slowly gaining traction among fans, but wouldn’t really break out until just before the first episode of the TV anime aired on television in Japan.

  The Outside Influences Brought into Demon Slayer

  When the Demon Slayer TV anime was announced in June 2018, it was revealed that the studio Ufotable would be adapting the series. The Aniplex-affiliated studio is widely praised for their work on the Fate franchise, which has culminated with the Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel] film series. Ufotable-produced works are known to already be event-type series, and with Demon Slayer being their first Weekly Shonen Jump adaptation, it was a series to look forward to on that point alone.

  First Demon Slayer TV anime key visual (source: Anime Eiga)

  Just before the series premiered in April 2019, it was also revealed that popular singer LiSA — who was then mostly known for her work on the Sword Art Online openings, including the wildly popular theme to the Ordinal Scale anime film “Catch the Moment” — would be singing the opening theme for the series, with the first preview of the song at Anime Japan that year. LiSA went on to have a solo concert at the Yokohama Arena on the last days of the Heisei era in April 2019, selling out the 17,000 capacity hall.

  AnimeJapan 2019 Trailer

  Music can be a huge element in propelling the popularity of a series in Japan. Some of the biggest anime over the last decade was supported by their opening and ending themes, which kept the anime in people's minds. Demon Slayer’s opening theme “Gurenge” became such a hit in its own right that it dragged the rest of the series along with it. This formula worked to bring Your Name to the forefront of Japanese pop culture in 2016 — you couldn’t go anywhere in Tokyo without hearing Radwimps. And the double whammy of “Gurenge” and “Homura” (the theme for Demon Slayer: Mugen Train) has helped the series achieve even more success.

  Rounding out the series was the star-studded voice cast who all have their own fan bases. Voicing Tanjiro is Natsuki Hanae, who was best known at the time for Ken Kaneki in Tokyo Ghoul; Zenitsu is voiced by Hiro Shimono, who voices Connie in Attack on Titan, and the boar himself Inosuke is voiced by Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, who voices Kirito in Sword Art Online. Nezuko's voice actor Akari Kito, who largely played side characters up until her casting in Demon Slayer, would become a well-known name and go on to play many more lead roles after the series became popular. 

  On paper, the breadth of talent involved in Demon Slayer far exceeded that of just any TV anime series. The production committee, led by Aniplex, was banking hard on people giving the series a try before the first episode had even aired. And it worked.

  Topping the Film Charts before the First Episode Even Aired

  Demon Slayer: Mugen Train has topped the film charts since it first premiered on October 18, 2020, but it’s not the first time the series has been in theaters. Prior to the TV airing of the first episode on April 6, 2019, the first five episodes were shown in eleven theaters across Japan starting on March 29. The screenings were dubbed “The Bonds Between Brother and Sister” and topped the mini-theater rankings, with over 10,000 people going in just the first three days.

  Ironically the press release from Aniplex announcing that the screenings were being extended in early 2019 said the “excitement for Demon Slayer is at its peak!” If those screenings were anything on the mountain of the popularity of Demon Slayer, they’d be right near the start of the trek.

  “The Bonds Between Brother and Sister” Visual

  Due to the immense popularity, the two-week special screenings were then extended for another week at all eleven cinemas, which were coming in at Number 1 on the mini-theater rankings (for screenings in less than 30) for the two weeks it was originally scheduled for.

  It’s no surprise then that just after these screenings had finished, and during the early broadcast of the anime on TV, that the production committee ordered the Mugen Train arc — which directly follows after the ending of the first season — to be produced as a film, according to industry sources.

  Demon Slayer’s Evolving Popularity Throughout Its Airing

  Hiroyuki Nakano, the editor-in-chief of Weekly Shonen Jump, spoke to Nikkei Entertainment in the March 2020 issue of the magazine on the slow success of the manga series, explaining that “normally the number of sales of a series increases gradually during the broadcast, but the number of copies sold of Demon Slayer exploded when the broadcast ended.” Nakano alluded to streaming services helping the anime series escalate the popularity of the original series by giving people the accessibility of being able to catch up on the show the next day via services like Amazon Prime and Netflix, who streamed the show weekly in Japan.

    Gone are the days where an anime fan would have to record an episode of a late-night anime series because it aired early in the morning. With streaming services on the rise within Japan, that night’s episode of Demon Slayer could be watched the next day on the way to work or school, on the train, or on the toilet.

  “I felt that the way people interacted with anime had changed and that we had entered a new phase,” Nakano explained, discussing how Demon Slayer’s rise in popularity was due to the evolving ways of media consumption.

  This helped the series when the famous Episode 19 aired, blowing away all expectations of what an anime could do in animation. If Demon Slayer wasn’t already part of the modern anime zeitgeist, that one episode — which trended worldwide on Twitter after airing — propelled the series to the forefront by word-of-mouth. Inside Japan, people couldn’t help but talk about the latest episode of the series, treating it like prime-time event television in the same vein as Game of Thrones would have been in the west.

    Demon Slayer’s success has also been well documented since the anime finished airing on September 28, 2019. The manga series has broken all records to become the most-sold series for a year, the Mugen Train sequel film is now the highest-grossing film of all time in Japan, and has given Japan the honor of being the third country to have a film reach US $300 million in a single market during its initial run.

  Why Does Demon Slayer Resonate With Japanese Audiences?

  How Demon Slayer became popular is one thing, but why did this one series, when many others have the same level of talent behind them, become the cultural phenomenon it is today? In December, Oricon released the results of a survey given to Japanese people on how well they know the series, and if so, why did they like it so much.

    An astonishing 97.6 percent of the 3,848 respondents, who ranged from teens to the elderly, said they knew of the series, with 40.5 percent of people saying they knew it well. Of those who knew the series, they described how they liked the world setting and had sympathy for the characters. A male teenager said that he “was fascinated by the story of the main character growing up while struggling with various difficulties,” while a woman in her sixties enjoyed “the storytelling and LiSA's powerful voice.” A woman in her thirties remarked that she “never thought I'd be talking about anime at my age with my 60-something mother.”

  All through the responses, Demon Slayer is bridging the divide between generations, with each generation taking something out of the story that Gotouge has crafted. 

  The top-notch action scenes and relatable characters draw in the younger crowd, while more middle-aged people get a kick out of the family bonds that weave throughout the story, and the aesthetic of the entire series gives older people a sense of nostalgia, also known as “Taisho romance,” but without it being overly melodramatic about the era. Even kids are going to the schoolyard to reproduce the breathing techniques seen in the series. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga joined them when he made a cheeky reference to Demon Slayer’s breathing techniques while speaking to the DIET in November. 

    The accumulation of these points has made Demon Slayer a cultural touchstone, one that could only be born out of Japan. Even if the world wasn’t in the current state it is in, the Shonen Jump series would be just as big in its homeland, if not bigger, with more people going to the theaters and traveling to the areas that influenced the series. 

  Living in Japan at the moment means living in a world surrounded by Demon Slayer. From billboards promoting the film to masks people wear, you can’t go outside (not that people should be!) without having the series in your eyesight. And with how good the series is, and how many people are enjoying it, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba deserves its time in the sun.

  Demon Slayer masks being sold in Harajuku in December 2020 (photo: Daryl Harding)

      Daryl Harding is a Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs a YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram. 

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features.

By: Daryl Harding

[mayquita]

Call Me (27/?) - The Final Countdown

A/N I still can't believe that four years have passed since I started this adventure. But I’m not only celebrating the fourth anniversary but also that with this chapter the story has reached 200k words!!! As always, my apologies for the delay, but to compensate you for the wait I bring you a long chapter. It was supposed to be shorter, but as usual, I got carried away a little. And here’s the result. I prefer not to reveal anything else about the chapter, but there’s a note at the end of the chapter with some explanations.

I’d like to express my gratitude to @saraswans and @onceuponaprincessworld for your advice and perpetual support and @chrissascorner for being my beta,  thanks for helping me edit the whole thing. You three are the best. Thank you also to everyone else for your patience and for your support. 

Summary: Emma loses her phone after a chase, but she finds a phone in a cafe just when she needs it most. Killian forgets his phone in a cafe when he is about to take a flight to Ireland. Killian makes a call to his own number hoping someone answers on the other end of the line. What will happen when Emma is the one answering the call?

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8Chapter 9 Chapter 10Chapter 11 Chapter 12Chapter 13 Chapter14Chapter 15 Chapter 16Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26

FF.net Ao3

//

Chapter 27 - The Final Countdown

I was born to love you With every single beat of my heart Yes, I was born to take care of you Every single day of my life

Saturday, September 30, 2017

Queen's song echoed in the kitchen while Killian prepared dinner, the lyrics and their meaning slipping inside his mind and spreading a warm sensation all over his body. 

A thought crossed his mind as he hummed and wagged his hips to the rhythm of the music, causing a wide smile to bloom on his lips. There was no doubt that Queen has been part of the soundtrack of his life since he was just a child, accompanying him in his childhood, changing and adapting to the experiences he went through over the years.

The band and their songs had been his only companions on his darkest nights, first when Liam had been about to die and then after losing Milah, when he had entered that spiral where he wasn't able to do anything but drown his sorrows in sex and alcohol, get into fights —in an attempt to replace the heartache for the physical pain— and wallow in misery while listening to the saddest and most melancholy songs he could find.

It's a Hard Life, Too Much Love Will Kill You, Save Me, Somebody to Love... He had listened to these songs in a loop, locked in his bedroom, repeating the same routine day after day until Liam had taken the reins, as usual, coming to his rescue and offering him the possibility of a new beginning on the other side of the ocean.

Now, five years later, he kept marveling at how his life had changed and how that was also reflected in his particular life soundtrack. He felt blessed to have found Emma for many reasons, but the fact that they shared musical tastes added an incentive to their relationship.

The change had been subtle at first, but after confessing their feelings two weeks ago, they had begun to replace their old companions with songs full of feelings and positivity. Once again Queen put the background music to a stage of his life, and this time he expected this stage to last as much as possible, something like forever.

His smile widened when the first chords of the next song resonated in the room, causing him to continue humming, shaking his head to the rhythm of the music while cutting the fresh tomatoes that would serve to make sauce for the pasta they'd have for dinner.

I want it all, I want it all, I want it all And I want it now.

He wanted it all with Emma. He wanted to sleep every night with her in his arms and wake up every morning with her at his side. He wanted the whole package, the happily ever after. He wanted and wanted. He was aware that it was still too soon — they would celebrate three months together tomorrow —but after so many years surrounded by darkness he was eager to grab every little bit of happiness within his reach that would keep him in the light. And Emma was pure light, like a beacon that kept him on the right path.

He couldn't be prouder of her. After her meltdown two weeks ago when she fell injured, she had been able to overcome her own fears, to open up to him even more, to be vulnerable and express her feelings. She was more affectionate, her smiles were brighter, the spark of her gaze more intense, causing his love for her to grow more and more if that was even possible.

That subtle change in her had not only been reflected in her behavior towards him, but towards the people around her. Now she was more willing to spend time with her friends, was more communicative with her boss and even took the initiative when organizing plans with their friends' group. 

It was as if after the accident, she had been injected with a renewed energy to the point that it was quite complicated to get her to be on sick leave for more than a couple of days. In the end, she had agreed to stay away from the office for a whole week and do desk work during the following week, but she would start working at full capacity next Monday, now that she seemed fully recovered. 

The memory of her accident caused a chill to run through his spine, especially when he thought she would be exposed to those dangers again. He had no choice but to resign himself, though, and trust her and her abilities. At least she had understood that she now had someone always waiting for her at the end of the day, no matter what happened, so it seemed that she was more willing to stay out of unnecessary risks and return to him every day.

That was precisely what he was waiting, for Emma to come home. She had decided to accompany Belle and Mary Margaret to go shopping since, according to the ladies, they needed to renew their wardrobe with the arrival of autumn. It seemed obvious that she was having a great time since several hours later she hadn't yet returned. He had received a message a while ago, though, informing him that she would arrive in half an hour and that it was better for him to have some dinner ready because she was famished  — Her words.

A soft chuckle escaped his lips when the next song began to sound. Somehow Emma had managed to include the bloody It's My Life on his playlist, alluding that, whether he liked it or not, that song was already part of the soundtrack of their relationship. She was right, of course, he admitted to himself as he shook his head.

He cast a sideways glance at the wall clock as he filled a saucepan with water to boil the pasta. The music and his thoughts had kept him so distracted that if he didn't hurry, Emma would arrive before dinner was ready.

Something caught his attention before he focused his eyes on the food preparation again. His gaze shifted slightly to the calendar near the clock. September 30th. A strange sensation settled in his stomach, his eyebrows knitting together as he tried to figure out why suddenly that date seemed somehow significant.

The realization came so unexpectedly that he felt as if he had been punched in the stomach while all the air left his lungs. Tomorrow would be October 1st, which meant that in just one month he would be flying to Ireland. For five bloody months.

He shouldn't feel so shocked, not considering that his trip to Ireland was something that had been hovering over their heads from the start. Hell, even the origin of their relationship had occurred when he was there.

He even had a continuous reminder in his usual talks with his family through video calls, in many of which Emma was present. Whenever his niece asked him when he would return he responded in the same way. Soon, sweetheart, soon.

The problem was that that soon seemed so far away at first, so, with the excuse that there was still a lot of time to worry about it, they had chosen to ignore it, not to let his possible departure affect their incipient relationship.

The date on the calendar now marked the beginning of the countdown on his inexorable path that would lead him to separate from Emma.

Just when he left the pot full of water on the counter, the player was silent for an instant before the next song began. He almost expected to hear the first chords of The Final Countdown, as a sign that the universe was laughing at him. Although that didn't happen, the next song did nothing to improve his sudden change of mood, rather the opposite.

Spread your wings and fly away Fly away far away Spread your little wings and fly away Fly away far away

Yes, definitely the universe was laughing at him.

A heavy sigh escaped between his lips as he ran a hand through his hair and swallowed hard in an attempt to drag the bitter sensation that threatened to crawl up to his throat. Unable to concentrate on food preparation, he started pacing the kitchen area driven by the growing uneasiness that had taken hold of him.

Fate was definitely cruel, at least to him. It seemed that all the stars had decided to line up tracing a net that would prevent him from fully enjoying his stay in his hometown, no matter what happened.

Before Emma, the bittersweet sensation and the constant pressure on his chest had always accompanied him a sign that, although he was going to visit his family, the ghosts of his past would always be present, stalking him and making sure to remind him of everything he had gotten and in contrast, everything he had lost.

Now, however, even though he had already left behind — or at least was on his way to do it —his old demons, that bittersweet feeling would still be present, since he couldn't wait to reunite with his family, but the feeling of leaving Emma behind was hard to assimilate.

Killian pressed his lips together to avoid groaning in frustration wondering if his heart would ever be at peace, if he would get the full happiness he thought he deserved, because it didn't matter that he was coming back, he was fully aware that during his stay in Ireland his thoughts would be consumed by a single person, Emma Swan.

He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he did not realize at first that a new song began to play. The sounds of the chorus finally reached his ears, bringing him back to reality.

Well, come on and let me know Should I stay or should I go? Should I stay or should I go now? Should I stay or should I go now?

An almost unstoppable impulse to throw the phone against the nearest wall seized him. Instead, he just pressed the stop button, leaving the room silent, the music was no longer appealing to him.

He was being overdramatic, he was aware of it, but he seemed unable to stop the spiral of feelings swirling inside him, while the lyrics of the previous song repeated in his mind in a loop. Should I stay or should I go?

Maybe it was a sign. Maybe he was worrying about nothing. Maybe it was best to stay this year in Boston, in this very flat, with Emma by his side. Why then did he feel that this was not the best solution? The mere idea of not seeing his nephews and his niece caused a twinge in his heart. He hadn't even made the decision yet and he already felt a sense of regret in the pit of his stomach. He not only had responsibilities back in Ireland but he longed to see both his family and his friends there.

He squeezed his eyes closed while rubbing his forehead in an attempt to relieve an incipient headache while wondering how he had come to this situation in an interval of only a few minutes.

He alone was to blame for not having dealt with the subject previously, but there was no point complaining now, He had to make a decision. At least before, he just had to worry about himself, but now that he was in a relationship he should also consider Emma's feelings. If there was something that had become clear after her accident two weeks ago it was that, despite her efforts to be more open, Emma still harbored trust and abandonment issues. His heart clenched at the thought of becoming one more on the list of people who left her behind.

A familiar sound caught his attention, pulling him out of the maelstrom of thoughts that crowded together in his head. The clink of the keys in the lock announced Emma's arrival, as if she had been invoked. Despite his inner turmoil, a soft smile tugged at his lips. She was home, finally. The need to get lost in her, to forget everything for a while, seized him, so he hurried to the front door to welcome her as she deserved — or rather as he needed.

//

Emma still felt strange with the weight of the keys in her hand. Not in a bad way but rather in an unusual sense. This wasn't the first time she had used the spare keys since Killian gave them to her a week ago, but she still had a hard time getting used to the fact that her boyfriend trusted her enough to allow her free access to him, literally. Perhaps the fact that no one had ever had that deference with her had something to do with that strange feeling. 

Details like this made her wonder once in a while if they wouldn't be running too fast. They would be celebrating tomorrow that they had been together for (only) three months and Emma not only had the keys to his apartment — and he had hers —but spent half of her time there — most of her time, actually.

Those thoughts faded quickly, though. She just needed to open that door for a sense of peace to settle in her heart. She would be welcomed by the warmth that emanated from the interior of the apartment, by the aroma coming from the kitchen, and by protective arms that would embrace her, giving the moment of an aura of normalcy, a sense of rightness.

What Emma did not expect was to be received with such intensity the moment she crossed the door. She barely had time to close the door behind her when she was approached by Killian, who wrapped her in his strong arms while pushing her gently against the wooden surface, pressing his body against hers, his lips looking for hers as if he was hungry.

After the initial shock at the unexpected reception, she responded in kind, dropping the keys and the bags she was holding to place her arms around his neck while she returned the kiss with the same fervor.

Emma kept feeling amazed at how her body reacted whenever Killian kissed her. It was as if all her senses stopped working properly, leaving her in a state of daze where everything around her seemed to fade away. Well, that was not entirely true, it wasn't as if her senses stopped working but rather intensified, directing their focus to the sensations that flowed from her body as his lips devoured her.

This occasion was not going to be different of course, but before she fell completely intoxicated and succumbed to the sensations, a glimmer of lucidity crossed her clouded mind. There was something urgent, almost desperate, in the way Killian held her or in the intensity of his kiss. Making a great effort, Emma pushed back a little, her hands cupping his face as she searched his gaze.

"Hey, are you okay?"

His eyes were clearly darkened by lust but Emma also detected a glimpse of something else crossing his gaze. When Killian blinked that subtle shadow disappeared, though. Emma was distracted by his words, her eyes drifting to his lips. "Sure, love. I just missed you." A small smile appeared on his face but she didn't have time to appreciate it since his lips were on hers again.

He lifted her up with barely any effort causing her legs to circle his waist as he held her and began to walk towards his bedroom, his mouth never leaving hers. 

Deep down, she suspected that something was not quite right, that his reaction seemed too intense, caused, rather than by pure desire, by something deeper. Whatever it was, Killian seemed to wake up suddenly, since, when they were halfway, he slowed his advance, loosening his grip until she rested her feet on the floor. He pushed back gently, his eyes searching for hers.

This time she did take her time to inspect his features. His brow was slightly furrowed, his cheeks flushed, his lips swollen from their brief make-out session. The shadow of his gaze reappeared more clearly, but again, Killian's hoarse voice caught her attention. "My apologies, love. I got a little carried away... I'm... sorry." He reached out to scratch behind his ear, as he averted his eyes, the blush of his cheeks becoming more pronounced. "Do you want this right now? Or maybe you prefer to just have dinner?" He asked, his voice dripping with uncertainty as he gestured toward the kitchen area.

Something was definitely not right with Killian. Emma tilted her head and studied him again through her narrowed eyes. The desire was evident, radiating from him in waves that reached her, sending electric shocks all over her body, blood running hot in her veins. She, of course, wanted this but she was also aware that Killian intended to use sex as an excuse to avoid, for a while, whatever it was that was troubling him.

She reached out to brush his cheek gently, pressing a little to force him to look at her. "I want this, believe me, but I also need to know what's wrong, Killian."

"Nothing." His lips curled up in an attempt at a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "It's been a long day without you and I... I just need you." The intensity of his gaze caused a shiver to run through her body. Emma was aware that his words hid a deeper meaning. The glimpse of pleading in his gaze contributed to that belief, causing her heart to tighten in her chest. He was saying without needing to express it out loud that he needed her to forget for a while. She couldn't refuse his request, not when she felt her skin burning, craving his touch and her lips tingling waiting for new kisses. She could do nothing but succumb to desire and hope that when the time came he would trust her enough to confess what was going through his head.

"Take me to bed, Killian." She whispered before fusing her lips with his, letting herself be carried away by the sensations in her attempt to offer Killian what he needed and get what her body craved.

Once in the shelter of his bedroom, they gave free rein to their passion so intensely that there was a moment when Emma felt slightly overwhelmed. She had learned from the experience of recent months that Killian was a generous person in bed, always trying to offer her all the pleasure before getting his own. This time it was no different in that regard, but his actions acquired a somewhat more desperate touch as he explored every inch of her skin reverently, recreating himself in every freckle, every corner as if he wanted to etch them in his memory.

Her old ghosts from the past made their appearance in the form of a sense of panic emerging inside her. His longing gaze did nothing to mitigate her growing unease. What if ... But then he muttered "I love you, Emma," her name sounding like a prayer and causing any worry to leave her body and her thoughts. He loved her and she loved him. Nothing else mattered.

From there she dedicated herself to enjoying one of the best sex sessions shared with Killian. He looked like a man on a mission, determined to extract every drop of pleasure from her body, playing it perfectly as an instrument, and paralyzing any coherent thought, her mind focused only on him and the intensity of her feelings towards him.

Both seemed insatiable that night. They only needed a few minutes to recover and started the second round. This time they made love more slowly sharing soft caresses, loving glances, and searing kisses while their bodies danced in a quiet tune until they reached sweet release.

Killian seemed calmer after their amorous activities. He lay on one side facing her, his fingers tracing delicate patterns up and down her back. His lips drew the first genuine smile of the night while his gaze seemed clearer, more serene, no trace of his previous agitated expression.

Emma was tempted to interrogate him, but she didn't want to risk clouding his mood again. She felt so sated and relieved to see that Killian had managed to relax that she thought it would be better if she left the interrogation for the next day. Even so, she didn't resist addressing him subtly.

"You know I'm here, whenever you feel ready to talk, okay?" She whispered as she gently stroked his hair at the back of his neck.

"Aye Swan. I know." His lips brushed hers for a moment before looking back into her eyes with a significant expression. "Tomorrow. I promise."

"Good." She snuggled against him, feeling a protective arm wrapping her. "I love you." She muttered while resting her head on his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart against her ear.

"I love you, too. More than anything."

The last thought that crossed her mind before succumbing to sleep was that those words hid an even deeper meaning than it seemed. Something told her that she would soon find it out.

//

Sunday, October 1, 2017

The sun had not yet risen when Emma woke up the next morning, finding the room covered by gloom and a warm body behind her. After letting out a yawn, she cracked an eye open to check the time on the bedside clock. Too early.

Emma snuggled into Killian, feeling his strong arm on her waist and his chest against her bare back, not an inch of space between the two bodies. Although she couldn't see his face in that position, his soft breathing indicated that he was still sound asleep.

She felt like she was in a protective cocoon, all around her inviting her to go back to sleep. Just when her eyelids become heavy, her body decided to betray her, bringing her back to the world of consciousness. Both her bladder and her stomach protested due to the excessive hours of inactivity, making it impossible for her to fall asleep again.

In spite of the fact that her mind was still partly cloudy, some flashes of the activities from the previous night began to appear, causing her cheeks to blush. Emma also vaguely remembered that she hadn't been able to eat any food, since they had started their coupling as soon as she arrived home, just as her stomach was reminding her with a very loud rumble.

It was the memory of what happened a few hours earlier that led her to turn around carefully so as not to wake him up, with the intention of observing his features once her sight had become accustomed to the semi-darkness that surrounded them. Her heart fluttered as she checked his serene expression, only a faint wrinkle between his brows as an indication of his previous agitation.

She had no choice but to attend to her physiological needs, but, since it was Sunday, she wouldn't wake Killian. Not yet. After placing a feather kiss on his forehead, she got up and went to the closet, to the section that had already been reserved for her, and grabbed a shirt and panties, then headed to the bathroom with stealthy steps, so as not to wake the sleeping handsome.

Her stomach did a little somersault when her eyes landed on the two toothbrushes resting together on the bathroom shelf. She still had a hard time getting used to seeing her belongings occupying a space in his apartment. In other circumstances, she would have felt a torrent of panic and an urge to run. Too fast, she would have thought. That hadn't happened with Killian, though. In fact, since the first time she was in his apartment, she felt that sense of belonging, that she was in the right place.

That feeling had increased to the point that she was comfortable enough to have her own section in his closet or even she had now taken over one of the bathroom shelves. It was a matter of practicality after all. If she spent several nights a week there, it was logical that she had at least her toothbrush and a comb. And her favorite conditioner. And a bathrobe. Even a dryer. A girl likes to have her allies around, right?

After relieving her bladder, and refreshing herself a little — she had ended up so exhausted after their passionate lovemaking session that she had not been able to bring herself to remove her makeup —she went to the kitchen, her stomach growls getting louder and louder.

As she crossed the living room Emma noticed the various bags scattered on the floor while the memory of Killian's reception yesterday came to her memory, causing her knees to weaken and a warm sensation running through her veins. What an intense night!

Once in the kitchen, she found a similar scenario. There was a pot full of water on the counter, and the ingredients of what appeared to be the beginnings of a tomato sauce forgotten on the cutting board. It was like watching a scene frozen in time, as if someone, Killian in this case, had felt the urge to suddenly stop what he was doing.

Her eyebrows knitted together in confusion, a sense of apprehension settling low in her stomach as she wondered what could have happened. It wasn't like him, someone usually quite tidy, to leave the kitchen in that state. Could he have had one of his panic attacks? At least he had had the good sense to turn off the stove because otherwise, the apartment would have become fire fodder while they created another type of fire in the bedroom.

Emma shook her head to try to get rid of that disturbing feeling. Killian had promised to tell her what had happened, so she had no choice but to wait. After letting out a heavy sigh, she turned on the coffee maker and began to clean the kitchen, continuing with the mess of the living room.

A few minutes later, the delicious smell of freshly brewed coffee reached her nostrils, so after finishing cleaning everything, she went back into the kitchen, prepared a giant mug of coffee and looked for something to eat in the cabinet. Her lips drew a smile of satisfaction when she found the poptarts that Killian kept just for her.

The sunlight was already beginning to seep through the windows, but since it was still early, she needed to find some entertainment while waiting for Killian to wake up. If it wasn't because they were already in October and the temperatures had dropped considerably, she would have been tempted to go up to the rooftop, since it was one of her favorite places. Instead, she grabbed Killian's laptop, the poptarts, and the coffee mug and settled on the couch, ready to do some work.

In recent weeks, she had been feeling more and more involved in Killian's business, especially in the social media section. She could spend hours working on the laptop or with her phone, either managing the website of the business that had improved considerably thanks to her magic — Killian's words — or acting as a kind of community manager running all social media to try to attract more customers, especially now that the peak season was over, but several guided tours and excursions were still available.

Belle had pointed out, on more than one occasion, that Emma worked almost more than herself and that she should be rewarded by being turned into a proper employee with her consequent salary, something Killian agreed with, but she always rejected it. She did not consider what she was doing as a job but as a way to put her knowledge to good use, something that brought her full satisfaction, increasing her self-confidence.

She soon got down to work, losing track of time as usual. Just when she was focused, an unexpected sound coming from the laptop startled her to the point that she almost dropped the device. Liam was calling.

Her eyebrows furrowed while looking at the time on the clock. Wasn't it a bit early for a video call on Sunday? Maybe it was something important. Before answering though, she cleared her throat and straightened her back, placing the laptop on her lap. She didn't mind talking to Liam at all, but she couldn't help her stomach tightening into knots in anticipation before starting a call with Liam, especially if Killian wasn't present. After taking a deep breath, she pressed the answer button while forcing her lips to twist into a smile to mask her nervousness.

The slightly blurred image of Liam appeared immediately on the screen. It was fun, in a way, to watch as his expression transformed several times over the course of just a few seconds. He went from sporting a radiant smile, to changing his expression to one of confusion when he realized that it was she who was answering to finally turn into an expression of regret, probably realizing that it was Sunday, what meant that, obviously, Killian was still sleeping.

"Good morning, lass." The smile returned to his lips, but then his face again showed a worried expression. "I didn't wake you, did I?"

And just like that, all the nerves disappeared and Emma could relax. In these three months, she had been able to learn a lot about the Jones family and she already knew that Liam lived in a state of almost constant concern and had a tendency to overanalyze everything. It was a little exasperating, at first, hence her initial nerves before starting a conversation with him, but deep down she had taken a certain fondness for his behavior. 

"Nope." She answered with a dismissive wave of her hand. "But your brother, you know, he's still navigating in the world of dreams."

He chuckled quietly and rubbed his eyes with one hand, as if he wanted to get rid of the accumulated fatigue, before addressing her again. "It's Sunday, I know. Forgive me, love, I have a lot on my mind lately."

"It's okay, I'd been awake for a while." She offered him a cordial smile before continuing. "How are all of you guys over there? How are the kids?"

"All good, but the beginning of the school year is driving me crazy. September has been a very long month." He certainly looked tired, even though it was barely lunchtime there. "Anyway, now it seems that we have all adapted back to the routine, so I hope everything will flow better from now on. But enough talk about me." He waved his hand in front of the screen, his lips drawing a soft smile. "How are you, lass? Is your shoulder fully recovered?"

"Everything's fine." She raised her arm and rolled her shoulder to prove her point. "I'm returning to work tomorrow at full capacity." Emma suppressed the urge to roll her eyes when Liam's brow frowned slightly, wearing the same expression as his brother when he tried not to show his concern. They were so alike that sometimes it became a bit overwhelming.

From there they held a lively talk on various topics, the kids, her new case or the end of the peak season. Despite those nerves of anticipation that always appeared when she started talking to Liam, a warm sensation seized her whenever they talked, as she felt increasingly comfortable and integrated with the Jones family, as if she was part of them too.

What Emma did not expect was that the conversation would take such an unexpected turn.

"Oh god, I almost forgot the real reason for my call." He hit his forehead with the palm of his hand as he shook his head. "See? These children of mine cause me to lose neurons by leaps and bounds." Emma couldn't help a laugh bubbling in her throat at Liam's overdramatic attitude, something he also shared with his brother. "Anyway... there it goes before I forget it again. Do you know if Killian has already bought the tickets?"

"Tickets? What tickets?" She asked tentatively. She honestly had no idea what he was talking about, but that didn't prevent a strange sensation from settling in the pit of her stomach, causing her body to go suddenly tense. She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer.

"The plane tickets to travel to Ireland, of course." 

Her stomach dropped to her toes while her smile faltered the moment her brain processed Liam's words and their implications. "There's only one month left and if he doesn't hurry the tickets will cost him an arm and a leg. As always."

Her eyes drifted for a moment as she took a deep breath in an attempt to pull herself together. He's leaving. Emma shook away that thought and pressed her lips together forcing a neutral expression before responding. "No, he hasn't bought them yet. I'll tell him later." She managed to reply in a carefree enough tone, or so she expected.

Although Liam continued speaking, Emma felt unable to process what he said, her mind occupied with other concerns. One month left. How had time passed so fast? Emma shouldn't be surprised, though. She knew, even before they started dating, that that was his life, that he spent half the year here in Boston and the other half back in Ireland. She knew that, they were both aware, but they had decided to live their relationship in the present without worrying about what might happen in the future. Also, back in July, November seemed so far away.

"Emma, are you alright?"

Liam's words brought her back to reality. Emma swallowed hard hoping to drag her unease down as she curled her lips up. In no way was she going to put more worries on his shoulders. "Yeah. I got distracted for a moment, thinking there is only one month left and we still have to finish some projects for The Jolly Cruises."

Luckily Liam didn't seem to notice her inner turmoil, as he smiled back at her, his face showing an expression of affection that caused her heart to calm down for a while. "That brother of mine has managed to involve you in his business, hasn't he?" He rolled his eyes, as his smile widened before continuing speaking without waiting for an answer. "You're doing an amazing job, by the way."

His compliment had an immediate effect on her, causing her cheeks to blush, a shy smile pulling at her lips. "Thank you. I was working right now on it while Killian sleeps."

"Oh, sorry for the interruption, lass. I'll let you get back to it, then." The conversation did not end there, though, since suddenly Liam's eyebrows arched and his eyes widened as if he were remembering something. "By the way, when Killian decides to buy his tickets you could take the opportunity to buy yours too."

"Mine?" What was he talking about?

"Well, considering that Killian will spend Christmas here, we assumed that you would come too." A warm sensation began to run through her veins as her heart swelled in her chest when she heard him. Both the expression of affection that appeared on his face and the spark of hope in his gaze only increased that feeling especially when she processed the true meaning of Liam's words.

"Eh..." She trailed off while swallowing hard to try to drag down the lump in her throat. Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times but she was unable to make any sound. It was like she was so busy trying to curb the intense emotion that threatened to overwhelm her that her brain seemed unable to form coherent words.

She had never been invited to Christmas celebrations. Ever. She had practically ignored these holidays by keeping busy or locked in her apartment so as not to witness the happiness of others. She hadn't even considered that possibility when she started dating Killian so she didn't know how to handle so many emotions dancing inside her.

"You have to come, Emma. We will all be here." Emma had been so distracted for a moment that she didn't realize that Elsa had appeared on the screen next to her husband. Her expression was gentle, as always, but her slightly maternal tone, as if he were addressing one of her children, had the desired effect, as Emma managed to get out of her trance. "Christmas at the Jones' house is always special. It has been some time since we brought someone new so I'm sure that with you here it will be even more special."

She was totally doing it. Damn it, she deserved for once a good thing to happen in her life. It seemed such good things had not stopped happening since she had lost her phone. Now that her life seemed to have taken the right path she wasn't willing to lose more opportunities to be happy. And if she had to cross the ocean for the first time in her life to spend Christmas with her boyfriend and his family, nothing and nobody could stop her.

"Okay." She breathed out. "I guess I can use a couple of weeks of vacation since I’ve never taken one." She continued in a more firm tone while the corners of her lips rose slightly drawing a timid smile.

"That's amazing, Emma!" Elsa almost yelled, her voice dripping with excitement. "I can't wait to see you in person and finally hug you."

"Wait for the children to hear the news." Liam added, the wide smile on his face matching his wife's and probably also her own.

They continued talking animatedly for the next few minutes. There was something in common in all the members of this family, no doubt, that was their ability to spread their genuine enthusiasm to others. They got her to forget for a while about the implications of Killian's departure by having her focus instead on her own journey.

Only when she finished the call after saying goodbye and promising them that she would talk to Killian to buy the tickets did she realize that the smile hadn't disappeared from her face since they had begun planning her visit.

Her inner calm did not last long, though. The moment the living room fell silent again, the image of Killian made an appearance, causing her smile to fade and a feeling of unease to wash over her.

He's leaving. He's leaving. He's leaving.

After letting out a deep exhalation she set the laptop on the coffee table and laid back onto the couch, with her head on the arm while she massaged her temples in an attempt to eliminate those thoughts.

He wasn't leaving. He would only travel for a few months and then he would come back to her. She was sure of it, but that didn't stop her selfish side from making an appearance. He could always choose to stay. They both could travel a couple of weeks during Christmas and come home together.

No. That was not an option. She may have lived the last years selfishly, looking only for herself because she had no one to lean on, no one to fight for. That stage of her life had been left behind, though. The love she felt for him was so intense that his happiness had become one of her goals in life, because if he was happy she would be too. And she was fully aware that she didn't have the exclusivity of Killian's happiness. She could not take him away from his other great source in that regard, his beloved family.

The sound of footsteps coming from the hall drew her attention, so Emma raised her head slightly, directing her gaze in that direction. Killian appeared at that moment in her sight, as if he had been invoked.

He was... he was many things, but at that moment she could only think that her boyfriend appeared gorgeous in his sleepy state. Emma sat up a little leaning on her elbows to delight in the glorious image in front of her. His eyes were still partially closed giving him an adorable drowsy expression and his hair was completely disheveled. He was shirtless, of course —she wasn't going to complain at all, his bare torso was certainly a vision.

His lips moved subtly up when his eyes fell on her. "Morning." He mumbled in an almost intelligible tone and then, without giving her time to react, he laid on her, pressing his body against hers and burying his face between her breasts. 

Emma couldn't help smiling while her hand brushed his hair. If there was something she had learned since the very beginning, it was that Killian despised having to get up early on Sundays. Whenever he had to get up early that specific day he ended up dragging an aura of moodiness for the next few hours. Today was still early for his standards.

"If you wanted to continue sleeping you could simply have stayed in bed."

"Nonsense. This mattress is much more comfortable." He muttered without bothering to move his head, his low voice muffled by her own body sending electric waves all over her skin. "Not to mention the pillow, magnificent." He raised his head, his piercing blue eyes fixed on hers and a smirk blooming on his lips. He then returned to his original position while making a satisfying sound as he settled back against her chest.

So he wasn't in a bad mood today, that was good. They continued in that position for a while, he emitting soft moans as she massaged his scalp and she feeling his warm breath on her skin.

There was something special in these little moments, where everything seemed to be calm and they remained in their own bubble of bliss, both together, enjoying each other, with nothing that clouded their happiness. Emma closed her eyes as she tried to etch this scene in her mind. She decided right at that moment that she was going to treasure as many more moments like this as possible, since they would be her companions when Killian was away, as a reminder that what she had experienced wasn't a dream, and also as a promise of future. They would share these experiences together again. 

"Who were you talking to before?" Killian's hoarse voice brought her back to reality.

"It was Liam. The poor guy is still a bit disoriented with the schedule after the start of school." She bit her lower lip, doubting whether it was a good idea to explain the true reason for his call or not. At some point they would have to address the issue. Why not right now? After taking a deep breath, she kept talking. "He wanted to know if you had already bought the plane tickets."

His body tensed above her, while she held her breath waiting for his next reaction. He remained in the same position for a few seconds while her heart pounded so hard that Emma was sure he would be feeling it.

After a moment that became eternal, he let out a heavy exhalation before pulling up and sitting next to her. Without looking at her, he dragged a hand down his face and rubbed at his scruff.

Emma also sat up, crossing her legs in front of her, while carefully watching all of his reactions. "About that..." His voice trailed off as if he was deciding what to say next. He nodded in an almost imperceptible movement that didn't go unnoticed by Emma and then he looked into her eyes, the ghost of a smile adorning his face. "I've been thinking that maybe this year is better if I stay here."

Her eyes widened and her breath hitched as she tried to process the meaning of his words. His gaze remained fixed on hers, those piercing blue eyes capable of reaching her very soul. He was choosing her. He had made a decision. He had chosen her over everything — or rather everyone —else.

"I mean. Maybe I can travel for Christmas, since I wouldn't like to miss the holidays there. Or maybe I can arrange a couple of trips in alternate months. I don't know..." He was rambling, his hand reaching to scratch behind his ear in that characteristic gesture of his, but then, his eyes bore into hers while his features turned into a solemn expression. "I just know that I don't want to be separated from you for five bloody months."

Everything made sense at that moment. She realized what he had gone through the night before, his struggle as he tried to decide what he should do. She also understood how after making love, he seemed much calmer, his expression more serene, as if that inner struggle had ended with a clear winner. He chose her. I love you, too. More than anything.

She felt a lump in her throat, a surge of emotions rising in her chest as the back of her eyes began to sting. She allowed herself a few more seconds to remain in that sensation as if she were floating. Then, she squeezed her eyes to stop the incipient tears as she lightly shook her head in an attempt to not let herself be seized by emotions and to act rationally.

For once in her life, someone had chosen her, regardless of anything or anyone. She already had that, she could already treasure it as something precious. But she couldn't allow him to make that decision, at least not without first expressing what she felt.

"No." The word came out of her mouth before she even had time to process it.

"No?" His voice dripped with confusion as his brows furrowed.

She felt the irresistible urge to touch him, to feel the warmth of his skin under her fingertips, to make that wrinkle between his eyebrows disappear. She did not resist the impulse this time, so without thinking twice, she got up and sat astride him, her hands cupping his face.

"I appreciate your choice. You don't have any idea of what it means to me." The smile that blossomed on his lips almost made her melt into a puddle. She had to blink a few times to break the spell and be able to continue. "But I'm also sure that I won't be the cause of you being separated from your family."

He made an attempt to reply, but she brought her index finger to his lips and tapped them lightly. In response, he pressed a gentle kiss on her finger and remained silent. This was a decisive moment in her life. She was aware that by making this decision, she was ignoring her selfish side, the one who had helped her survive all these years ago. She knew she was taking a leap of faith, but she was also sure that no matter what, Killian would always come to her. After taking a deep breath, she continued talking.

"You should go. Your family loves you, they're looking forward to your return. Your niece asks every day when you're going back home. Besides you also have responsibilities there. We... We will figure out what to do next year, with more time to organize."

Both remained silent for a few seconds, while she watched as endless emotions crossed his gaze, the blue in his eyes more intense than ever. She felt his hands placed on both sides of her waist while caressing her skin under her shirt in a rather distracting movement. It was Killian who broke the silence, his hands never leaving her body.

"Next year... I like how it sounds."

It sounds like a promise. Like a future.

“So…”

He tilted his head and she mirrored him, his Adam’s apple bobbing as his bottom lip caught between his teeth. He then threw back his head and let out a deep sigh before his eyes fell on hers again. The intense flash of his gaze was a clear indication that he had finally made his decision. "Okay... I'll go with one condition."

This time it was she who looked at him in confusion. “What condition?”

"That you travel to spend Christmas with us."

She didn't even have time to explain, since Killian suddenly seemed extremely motivated, any inner struggle forgotten to focus on a new goal. "You can't turn it down, Swan. I'm sure Graham won't deny you a couple of weeks of vacation." The excitement radiating from his body was such that Emma did not dare to try to interrupt him again. "Think of it as a way to fulfill your dreams. You can finally travel to Europe and you can also live, even temporarily, near the sea. It's a perfect plan, love."

"Okay, I accept." She said simply while shrugging her shoulders in a nonchalant gesture. She pressed her lips together to stop the laughter that had begun to bubble in her throat.

"You do? Just like that, without objections?"

"I mean. You could have saved your speech. Very convincing, by the way. The truth is that I had already accepted before."

"Before?"

This time Emma couldn't help bursting out laughing. It was as if Killian was living in a state of permanent confusion since they had begun this conversation.

"What is so funny?" He asked in an amused voice.

"You keep asking with an expression of confusion like that." Emma made an attempt to imitate his expression with her eyebrows furrowed and her eyes narrowed, causing him to chuckle.

The liberating laugh subsided after a few seconds although Emma could still feel his vibrant body under her touch.

"That's because I can't figure you out today, Swan. You keep surprising me." The sound of his velvety voice and the tone full of devotion did something in her insides. "But you never answered my question, love."

"It was your brother." She admitted. "He and Elsa convinced me to travel and I accepted."

"So is it true? Are you going to travel to Ireland?" She watched his expression of disbelief, his eyes flickering quickly between hers, as if he still didn't believe it.

She nodded with a slight movement of her head, while her lips curled in what she hoped was a reassuring smile, her hand gently brushed his cheek.

The expression on his face became one of pure happiness, his sparkling gaze the last thing she saw before he pushed her against him and kissed her hard. 

The last coherent thought that crossed her mind before getting lost in the incredible feeling of being kissed by Killian Jones, was the somewhat startling idea of flying for the first time over the ocean. She better get used to the idea of making the trip, because there would be nothing to stop her from flying to Killian and his family.

The countdown began. But instead of counting the days left for Killian to leave, she decided to focus on the days left to fulfill her dreams. She couldn’t wait to discover Europe, but what she was looking forward to the most was being able to enjoy the Christmas spirit for the first time, something that had been denied to her before but now, thanks to Killian, would finally come true.

//

Before you yell at me, Killian leaving to Ireland was something planned from the beginning, but hey, Emma is going to travel too and I have plans for them there. They will only be separated during one chapter, I promise (maybe I shouldn't, given my tendency to split chapters, but that's my plan anyway)

Thanks for reading :)

@rouhn @couldnthandleit @teamhook @malec4everr@kmomof4 @resident-of-storybrooke @suwya @thisonesatellite @lfh1962 @let-it-raines

[belphegor1982]

How about the first chapter Tommy appears?

[Pick any passage from any fanfic I’ve written, and stick that selection in my ask/fan mail/submission box. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet!]

Thanks a lot!! (Also I answered this kind of ask about a passage from chapter 2, if you want to take a look - it’s all spoiler-free!)

Here’s Thomas Sean Ferguson’s grand introduction, then :D Oh god, it’s kind of awkward, because like with Blake there’s a certain amount of early installment weirdness. Also I go on and oooooooon (sorry about that). But let’s go!

_________

Quite lost in his thoughts this time, [Jonathan] barely registered that he was walking past the Museum (where Evy is, right now, negotiating the Cairo Museum “lending” the Diamond of Ahm Shere to the British government - which kickstarts the plot) before somebody knocked into him, hard enough for both of them to crumple, breathless, on the ground. It took Jonathan thirty seconds to get his lungs in working order again and, instinctively, check his pockets for anything missing.

A lot of this commentary risks being “this used to be [thing] before I tweaked it in the rewrites”, and a lot of it is because I’ve gained some insight in the past twelve years. Jonathan’s first thought being checking his pockets (which - and I made it explicit in the second or third paragraph of the story :D - comes from his being a skilled pickpocket himself and knowing how it works), however, was there from the very beginning.

“So sorry I bumped into you, mate, didn’t mean to,” came the voice of the attacker. Jonathan’s eyes widened at the sound of this voice and he squinted up at its owner.

And cue Tom Ferguson :D He wasn’t my first OC, far from it (that dubious honour would probably belong to the buttload of OCs I created for my Marauder era story which died when Order of the Phoenix came out), but he was the first I got to really explore and develop, and he ended up one of my favourites ever. Em, I answered an ask of yours way back in 2015, “introduce us to two of your OCs” :o) The first was him, the second was Marguerite LeBeau.

“Tommy? Is that you? Tommy Ferguson?”

The diamond is the reason the O’Connell-Carnahan gang goes to Egypt, but without Tommy, there’d be no plot. Hamilton would probably still find a way to “retrieve” the diamond from the museum, only without Evy and her family getting personally involved and then having to go back to the UK saying she failed her mission. and then cue the end of the world about a week and a half from there, but shhh - spoilers!

The fellow shook his head, still looking a bit dazed; then his own eyes, round and brown, (so he’s the opposite of Jon in almost every way, physically speaking. Like I said in the aforementioned OC ask, I designed him as a foil for Jon, fundamentally different in some ways but very similar in others. Physically speaking he’s basically Sean Astin (with some James Corden thrown in) with brown eyes, blond hair, and a Liverpool accent.) went even rounder as he stared at Jonathan. “Jon! What the hell are you doing ‘ere?”

For the longest time Tommy used to call Jonathan by his last name here (and Jon’s earlier line used to be “Ferguson? Is that you? Tommy Ferguson?”). I changed it quite recently. I think I wanted to convey the idea that school friends at the time often called each other by their last names; but since he calls Jonathan “Jon” 100% of the time - and is the only one to do so, which I have Feelings about - I went back to correct it.

“Glad to see you too, old chap,” laughed Jonathan, standing up and dusting himself off before offering a hand at the man on the ground, who accepted it gladly.

Heh. Look, one of the staples of Mummy fanfiction was and still is the old school friend of Evy’s who follows either the siblings (TM time) or the whole family (TMR/post-TMR time) to Egypt and falls in love with Ardeth Bay. I’m not throwing stones here; I’ve read a couple I really liked. There’s the odd Jonathan/OFC romance, too. What I set out to do as a baby writer (I was 21 at the time!) and unsuspecting ace was to write something completely devoid of romance (except the odd Evy/Rick snuggle and, of course, all-encompassing love for each other). And then, as I reread the story for rewrites a decade and a half later, I became more and more convinced that Jonathan and Tommy used to be more than friends, and then when Elizabeth came along the three of them got together as a thruple and very happy for a while. (For some reason I couldn’t work this explicitly into FTaH, though - it felt too much like hinting at this huge story I was never going to write and might have made FTaH much too crowded. So it’s up to the reader to decide, really. Personally, I like both options.) So here’s 37 year old me shipping Jon with a female OC and a male OC, and quite enthusiastically, at that. *chuckles* Wonder what my 21 y-o self would think of it…

He hadn’t seen Thomas Ferguson since some time after the end of the war, what felt like ages ago. They’d made quite a pair at Oxford, the two of them – the scrawny, foppish Southerner with the quiet grin and the sticky fingers, and the broad-shouldered, round-faced Scouser with the laughing eyes and the deceptively innocent face. They’d rowed for the Dark Blues for a bit, got properly pickled on Boat Race Nights, and helped each other out of many a tight spot. Oh, for the halcyon days of youth.

One of the reasons I picked up FTaH again is because the second half of 2019 was very, very British for me. I saw (and read) Good Omens for the first time in early June and my feelings exploded; July was very much about discovering the delights of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster (TV show and books). Halfway through that month I remembered my everlasting fondness for the characters of The Mummy and realised the protagonists and Bertie were the same generation, more or less, and I started imagining a crossover. By the time August rolled in I was fully into TM/TMR again, reading fic and my fingers itching to at least correct some iffy parts of FTaH. This last sentence, about Jon’s and Tom’s Oxford days, would never have come out that way if I hadn’t read Wodehouse.

As soon as Tommy was on his feet he was wringing Jonathan’s hand with all the energy he’d been famous for as a boy. “Sorry, Jon, mate, I was a bit stunned –” After all these years, he still retained some of that accent, too! “– En’t everyday you bump into a pal from Oxford in the middle of Cairo! How’d you get here, for starters?”

…Tommy’s accent. *sighs* I’m not a fan of writing accents phonetically in the first place. When I write Newkirk (Hogan’s Heroes) and his Cockney accent, there isn’t much except the odd “me” for “my” or things like “d’you”. I did have to make it obvious Tommy had an accent, though, if only because later Jonathan is surprised when he tones it down to speak with the curator. (This is something his 18 year old self found incredibly difficult, btw.) @thisstableground oversaw the first chapter and gave me very valuable tips, including “en’t” (// “ain’t), which was super helpful in giving Tommy’s accent its own specificity and meant that I didn’t need him to drop “h”s and “g”s all over the place. (which he does do, but hopefully not in a way that takes you away from the story.)

As for why he’s from Liverpool as opposed to, say, Manchester or the East End of London, the answer is very simple. I’d discovered the Beatles a year or two prior and they remain one of my favourite bands in the whole world ♥

“Well, I followed my sister,” Jonathan replied, grinning. In fifteen years or so, he had not realised how much he had actually missed this accent. “She’s giving a hand to the curator of the Museum of Antiquities – she’s something of an authority now, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh aye? That’s fantastic. I en’t forgotten how you’d talk about her, y’know. On and on and on. I’m curious to see what she looks like.”

Somethingthat didn’t change after rewrites is the idea that Jon was verysecretive about his Oxford years. Tom and Evy never met before this,and Evy hadn’t even heard about Tom before.

Jonathan stole a glance at the entrance steps of the Museum, and turned to Tommy with a smirk. “Really? Well, if you really want to, I suppose I could…”

His sister had just appeared on the stairs, accompanied by the curator, an elderly man with greying hair and whiskers. The curator, Dr Fahad Hakim, has a somewhat larger role later on, but this is just a cameo to let you know he exists :o) There’s another mention earlier, too. Tommy followed Jonathan’s gaze and looked at them, goggling at Evy in particular.

“Jon – are my eyes mistaken, or is this gorgeous woman Doctor Evelyn O’Connell? I’ve read about her, she’s famous in my line of work… According to what I’ve read, she was one of the first people to make it out of the City of the Dead alive –”

He doesn’t say what his “line of work” is, but we (and Jonathan) can infer it has something to do with archaeology or Egyptology. And, incidentally, I’m setting up the first alarm bells here because, as Evy points out in the following chapter, at the time her name was “Carnahan”, so how come Tommy didn’t seem to make the connection between Jon’s bookish sister and this English librarian with the same name? The answer is: because he’s nervous (because he’s in Cairo on secret Chamber of Horus business) and as delighted as he is to see Jon again after so many years his brain went “YOU KNOW NOTHING” then backpedalled and went “…OKAY, YOU KNOW SOME THINGS.”

Jonathan’s grin widened as he nodded. “Yes, that’d be her.”

Tommy rambled on as they walked closer to the stairs, “That’s bloody amazing! I thought she’d look, you know, like in the pictures in the paper, the bookish type with glasses – your typical Southern spinster,” he added with a wink. They waited for the curator to bid her goodbye, and Jonathan, greatly enjoying the situation, crept up on his sister to kiss her on the cheek.

“Hey there, old mum – how’s your day been?”

Evy started, then her expression shifted from slightly irked to a smile at her brother’s laugh. She rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Jonathan, the things that amuse you…”

SIBS!!! I love writing siblings, and those two in particular. One of the things that I find amusing/endearing is how comfortable they are with each other, physically (and emotionally) speaking. It’s all gentle touch here, light slap there, running hand in hand, lots of things you wouldn’t expect from two Very English siblings from the first half of the 20th century.

“You’re just miffed that I startled you. C’mon, I’d like you to meet someone – an admirer,” he added with a grin to Tommy, who stood there, his eyes wide. “Thomas Ferguson, an old school friend of mine. Tommy – Evelyn Carnahan O’Connell, my famous baby sister.”

There’s a couple of instances where someone introduces Tom as “Thomas”, or Tom introducing himself as such. Most of the time, though, he’s “Tommy” - until chapter 9, where we spend some time in his head for the first time and see he thinks of himself as “Tom”, and when we go back to Jon’s PoV in chapter 11 Jonathan made the mental switch to “Tom”, as well, to separate the boy from his youth from the man he’s become. I actually spell it out in chapter 17: “A lot had happened since that late afternoon in Giza when his friend had pointed a gun at him and stopped being ‘Tommy’. ‘Tommy’ was a warm memory of loud laughter, daring escapes, bright eyes over pints clinking in the comfortable darkness of a well-loved pub. Tom, on the other hand, was a fairly decent man chucked into a complex situation, who had a wife he loved dearly but lied to about his job, who had not wanted to bring harm to an old friend but had done so anyway.”

Evy held out her hand, which Tommy grabbed and shook heartily. “So you’re the old scoundrel’s sister? No wonder he talked about you – though you don’t quite fit the description now…”

“What exactly did you tell your ‘school friends’ about me?” asked Evy, warning in her voice, though the twinkle in her eye did not quite disappear. Nevertheless, Jonathan preferred to ignore her question, earning a hard nudge in the ribs.

He bragged, actually. A lot. Since he thought Tommy and Lizzie would never meet Evy, Jonathan considered himself free to speak quite enthusiastically of his baby sister’s achievements and how bright she was. Of course, he also complained a good deal, because even at 12 Evy had a penchant for being bossy that came out even in letters.

“So, what did you say your ‘line of work’ was?” he asked Tommy.

“Well – don’t laugh. I work at the British Consulate in Cairo, specialising in antique stuff. Oh, I’m sorry, Dr O’Connell,” he stammered with a glance at Evy who had an eyebrow raised, “I mean I’m one of the chief agents in the British Antique Research Department.”

No he’s not! He’s actually a secret agent, kinda :D And not remotely close to a “chief agent”, at that. Tom Ferguson is deeply in love with his wife and nothing will ever change that state of affairs, but he might have a little intellectual crush on Evy, which leads him to… wanting to impress her a little bit.

“I’ve heard of you!” exclaimed Evy. “At least of that Research Department. They’re gradually cutting off public funds – encouraging individual financing – but that won’t do any good for scientific research! Such a stupid decision is only going to –”

“So you lot are the ones she kept fuming about for half a year!” Jonathan snorted. The infamous Ferguson rotten luck struck again.

I still regret I didn’t find more opportunities to showcase how ridiculously unlucky Tommy could get sometimes. Ah well.

Tommy looked dejected. Evy must have seen this, because she bit her lip and said, in softer tones, “Look, I’m sorry I snapped at you. But as my brother said, I’ve been… rather upset over this. There’s been some pressure on the British Museum lately by private patrons who threatened to pull out their funding on some… sensitive collections. Without the Crown to back us up, we might have to cave in to their ridiculous demands.”

Before the rewrites, Evy’s speech used to be a lot more “private funding is bad” without much nuance or justification. I changed it to something that hopefully makes sense and justifies her previous outburst. 

“I’ll – I’ll tell my superiors about it,” said Tommy, still looking unsure. “See what I can do. I’m sure it won’t be much, but… Well. I’ll have tried.”

“That’s nice,” Evy said cheerfully, taking Jonathan’s arm and starting to walk. See what I mean about physicality? She doesn’t even ask him with a look, just takes his arm and that’s that. And he lets her, because he’d do the same thing. “Look, the two of you – I’ve had something of a rough day, so I’ll go home, if you don’t mind. You can –”

“Brilliant idea!” said Jonathan, flashing a grin at his sister. “I thought of going to the Sultan’s Casbah, but you might find it a tad – let’s say – dingy, my good friend.”

The Sultan’s Casbah, in the novelisation of the film and my personal headcanon, was the bar Jonathan patronised the night before the first time we see Evy and where he stole a valuable-looking puzzle box from an unsuspecting drunk American. 

“Worse than the Turf?” Seeing Evy’s puzzled look, Tommy explained, “Sorry, private joke. I mean the Turf Tavern, that’s where I saw him for the first time. Me family didn’t ‘ave much money, so I used to work there to pay for my studies. Very nice pub, didn’t deserve the reputation.”

The Best Beloved and I took a trip to Oxford in the spring of 2003 (by bus - 20 hours to get there, same to come back home) and while we were so broke we had to settle for a soup and some rice in a lovely Thai restaurant we did go for a drink at the Turf. I remember a dimly-lit room with dark wood, and I think either they changed a lot of it or my memory isn’t that good because it doesn’t really look like that on the Google Maps pics. Still, I liked it, and when I needed an Oxford pub for the story it’s the one I worked in. Incidentally, there was a lot of illegal gambling going on in there in the 19th century, hence Tommy’s mention of the pub’s bad reputation.

“I’m sure you did indeed see a lot of my brother there,” Evy slipped in slyly. Jonathan threw a mock glare at her.

“To think you are almost my only family. What a shame.” Then, as Tommy looked uncertain, he added, “Carry on, Tom.”

“All right. So I was one of the only students who needed a job, and there were some others who thought that it was – how’d they put it? – a ‘disgrace’ to our university.”

“Preposterous,” said Evy sternly. “As if money could take you further than talent.”

Jonathan bit back on the cynical comment that crossed his mind. Sometimes Evy’s naïveté baffled him.

“Right,” said Tommy uncertainly, glancing at Jonathan. “So, one day, a little bunch of lads come in, and Jon here was sometimes hanging with ‘em at the time –”

Because Jonathan likes to gamble with people with deep pockets :P

Evy glared at Jonathan in advance, and he threw his hands in the air. “Don’t look at me like that! I haven’t done anything!” Evy’s gaze softened, and Jonathan finished, “…Yet.”

That earned him a playful slap on the arm, and a laugh from Tommy, who went on, “Anyway, one of the blokes orders somethin’ or other, and starts to poke fun at me. Well, I was used to it, so I let them be. Then they continued, and I finally noticed that skinny lad in the corner who was makin’ fun of them for making fun of me. Didn’t quite understand what the hell was going on – oh, sorry, Dr O’Connell – what was happening.”

While John Hannah is not “skinny” by any stretch, he is rather svelte, and one of my unimpeachable headcanons for Jonathan is that he was skinny as a rake in his youth - until he went through basic training (then WW1) and his shoulders filled out a little. It’s more or less what happened to the Best Beloved, so I feel quite secure in this headcanon’s plausibility. Plus, picturing 18 year old Jonathan as a mix of awkward gangliness and skinny limbs and aristocratic poise is just funny. (and I find the comparison with Tommy - who at that point was soft and a little chubby but already had broad shoulders - rather endearing.)

Evy smiled. “You’ll have to watch your mouth in front of my son, but otherwise it’s fine. And please, call me Evelyn.”

Tommy beamed. “Right, uh, Evelyn. So, uh –”

“What he didn’t know at that point,” interrupted Jonathan, “was that I had my eye on that fellow – what’s his name – Farbow. He owed me quite a bit of money, but wouldn’t repay me. So I was looking for a way to get him back for it.”

“And get the rest of his wallet in the process, of course.”

“Evy, he owed me seventeen pounds. (Which used to be £70 until I did some research and saw that £17 was A Bloody Fortune a the time.) And he was not what I’d call a ‘decent bloke’ – nasty, disdainful piece of work he was, and his little friends with him. Always a dirty word about the Scouser who worked at the Turf Tavern, just because he didn’t belong to his snobby little world. I did the community a favour, really.”

What he doesn’t say is that Edwin Farbow also had a lot to say about “half-Egyptian mongrels” who thought they belonged in those ancient walls. Too bad I couldn’t find a way to work it in this particular fic. If I ever manage to finish at least Tommy’s part of One-Step, Two-Step, Waltz, the first chapter of Pirouette features the whole scene.

“Don’t push it, Jonathan,” warned Evy.

Tommy carried on. “Well, I was glad there was at least one person who didn’t think like Edwin Farbow – nice change. Then Farbow said something – I don’t remember what it was about, I just remember it made me really angry, really. An’ it’s not a pretty sight when I’m really angry at someone.”

It’s always the quiet, genial ones, isn’t it.

Jonathan remembered, but thought it wise to keep his mouth shut.

Both because what Farbow said was pretty damn offensive to Tommy’s character, background, and lineage, and also because Farbow’s rant included “It’s bad enough they let inpeople like Carnahan, who only exists because a glorifiedgrave-robber shagged some darkey and didn’t even have the decencyto pretend otherwise –” and he really doesn’t want to bring this up in front of Evy, who’s had to deal with her own share of this kind of racist bullshit and doesn’t need a reminder.

“An’ – an’ I just lost it, y’know? I dropped his tea over his ‘ead –”

“I say, that one was pretty funny,” Jonathan said, smiling widely at the memory. The strangled yelp that had followed had definitely been one of the best parts.

“So they all leaped for me, obviously – began to punch me, the five or six of them – hey, I still managed to get back at them!” Tommy added quickly, as if defending his honour. Evy hid a smile, and it occurred to Jonathan that that last sentence had something very Rick-like about it. “But I en’t a fool. I know a losing fight when I’m in one.”

“Don’t tell me. Jonathan bravely threw himself into the fight to take on as many attackers as possible.” There was mischievous laughter in Evy’s voice, and her eyes were twinkling. If anyone other than her had quipped that way about him, Jonathan would probably have taken offence, or at least pretended to. But they knew each other enough not to cross the line.

Tommy raised an eyebrow. “Well, that wasn’t quite Jon’s style – I don’ know, might’ve changed since then. But yeah, he did. One moment I was squashed under five or six, the next I found out we were two on the floor.”

This was perhaps the biggest suspension of disbelief I’m asking the reader to make - which, in a story where governments have secret agencies to keep an eye on magical ancient artefacts and a diamond has magic powers, is saying something. Jonathan throwing himself into a fight because someone he loves (ie. four people in the whole world that we know of) is in danger? Yep, that checks out, that’s what he does both in TM and TMR. But an (almost) complete stranger? I needed one hell of a justification. Which ended up… 60% Farbow’s money and 40% Farbow being a giant arsehole who had no business making decent bartenders look like that.

Evy began to laugh. “Why, Jonathan? My Jonathan, in a fight, for someone he barely knew?”

At that Jonathan cleared his throat, a mite embarrassed. “I told you, I was looking for Farbow’s wallet. That was the perfect diversion – you should’ve seen that twit looking in every corner for his lost wallet afterwards. It was three months before he gave up.” And it’s lucky you didn’t see me then. I was a bloody mess. “Why’re you looking at me like that?”

“Nothing.” Evy smiled. “You never told me that.”

To be fair, there’s a LOT of things he never told you, old girl ;o)

“Should I have?”

“I don’t know, it’s – it was nice of you to do that, even for the wrong reasons. I’m proud of you.”

Jonathan felt an unexpected lump rise in his throat. Not a very big one, but enough to keep him from talking for a few seconds. It was always like this whenever she said something really nice to him. It caught him off guard each and every time.

Look, it took me years to realise it, but I’m a sucker for validation. Sometimes it bleeds out on characters I write.

After a little while, Evy stopped in front of a door and announced, “Well, we’re home.”

“Nice house,” commented Tommy, taking in the sand-coloured neat front and the curtains at the windows.

“Our ‘old haunt’ since the family moved to Egypt,” Jonathan said, opening the door and stepping aside to let his sister in. “Evy wasn’t even walking then.”

In the first film, Evy, Rick, Jonathan and the remainder of the American party go straight to Fort Brydon, and the next thing we see is Evy emptying her suitcase while Rick tries to fill it. Since both Carnahan siblings actually live in Cairo, I thought they would live in an actual house, and from there I extrapolated that the family had one house in England (the manor we see in TMR) and a smaller pied-à-terre in Cairo.

“I do believe I was,” Evy protested.

Jonathan snorted. “Oh, you weren’t. You crawled.”

si b l i n gssss ♥♥ And like, you can always count on a big sib to remind you that you could be ridiculous as a kid. I should know, I’m the big sister :D

Evy seemed to resist the urge to slap her brother and walked into the living room, her nose in the air. She was greeted by two simultaneous voices:

“Mum!”

“Hey, hon.”

Rick’s first words in this story, and it’s greeting his wife ^^ I didn’t do it on purpose, but it’s. Y’know. There.

Jonathan waited a few seconds, then walked into the room in turn, and grinned at the sight of his nephew looking genuinely eager to see him. He was not fooled, however – as soon as Evy wasn’t looking, Alex mouthed the words “Got one?” and frowned as his uncle shook his head. No, he still had no present for Mum’s birthday.

Evy’s birthday mainly originated as a device to get characters (especially Jonathan) moving. It’s the reason he’s roaming the streets of Cairo just before he bumps into Tommy, and why he and Alex go to the bazaar in chapter 5. It also pops up further on in the story, but I’m not saying anything because spoilers.

“Uncle Jon? Who’s that?”

“Who, him?” Jonathan pointed at Tommy behind him, looking uncomfortable at the family reunion, and Alex rolled his eyes. “Tom Ferguson, he was in class with me at Oxford. I ran into him by chance today.”

Tommy stepped past Jonathan and held out his hand to Alex, nearest to him. “Hi – glad to meet you. Jon’s nephew, eh?”

“Yeah,” said Alex, eyeing him with all the suspicion of a ten-year-old who’d seen what he had seen. Behind him, Rick’s eyes spoke loads about his own distrust. But mistrust towards Jonathan and everything related was par for the course on his part, and, admittedly, reasonable.

Alex has Seen Things. This may sound tongue-in-cheek, but it’s true. After what happened in TMR, he’s 100% entitled to being suspicious of strangers. As for Rick, I took my cue from one of his first lines to Jon in TMR being “What did you do this time?” implying that the weird shit happening right now, with the men in red and the sexy lady waving snakes around isn’t exactly unheard of. Hence the “and, admittedly, reasonable”, which I added in the rewrites.

“Thomas Ferguson, British Antique Research Department,” said Tommy, holding out a hand towards Rick, who shook it slowly, still reluctant.

“Rick O’Connell.”

“So you’re Dr O’Connell’s husband? Pleasure to meet you, sir. I’m impressed, you’ve no idea.”

Rick raised an eyebrow. “Impressed?”

“It seems I’m rather famous in the Research Department,” said Evy, laughing.

“Make that infamous,” quipped Jonathan.

“The Department owes your wife a great deal. She was the one who uncovered a huge amount of our information about some obscure periods of Egyptian history, as well as the major part of serious knowledge we’ve got on Hamunaptra,” Tommy pointed out, and Evy blushed. “She’s a legend – one of the original three who managed to go to Hamunaptra and live to tell the tale! But… I assume you’re another one?”

Oh, Tommy. MATE. You’re saying you know three people made it out of Hamunaptra alive, one of whom a woman with the exact same first and last name as your best friend’s sister who had a passion for ancient history, but you had no idea he was one of them as well? 

Incidentally, the early installment weirdness I mentioned earlier mostly consists in Tommy being a lot more energetic and innocent-looking than he later proves to be (which is a little more grounded and pragmatic than Jon). In fact, he and Jonathan’s first couple of scenes together give the impression that he’s the red and Jon’s the blue in the “Bue oni, red oni” trope, when later chapters show Jon as a little bit more of a disaster while Tom struggles to make better choices and be more sensible. Which in the end would make them shades of purple, really.

“Yeah,” said Rick, looking a bit nonplussed. Jonathan definitely didn’t regret bringing Tommy in. Seeing Rick O’Connell confused was a very rare occurrence, too rare to be missed.

“I never knew – who was the third one?”

Jonathan was now struggling to keep a straight face. Rick blinked, and pointed at his brother-in-law. “That was him.”

“You!?” God, the look on his face was priceless. “You were at Hamunaptra?”

“Yes,” risked Jonathan, laughter rising in his voice. “And believe me, it wasn’t exactly a picnic. Oh, by the way, there were four of us, not three.”

Meaning Ardeth, of course. My take is that Tommy - and by extension the Chamber of Horus - know about as much about the Medjai as Evy knew about the Book of Amun-Ra prior to the events of TM: a non-negligible amount of information, but all of it second-hand and some of it a bit dicey.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Rick roll his eyes and grinned, undaunted. This was proving to be a fun evening.

Make the most of it, people, because it’s all going to go downhill fast…

Thank you ♥♥♥

[bountyofbeads]

Shootings Renew Debate Over How to Fight Domestic Terrorism https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/us/politics/domestic-terrorism-shootings.html

For starters, try removing and arresting the occupant of the White House and his minions. The fish rots from the head.

Shootings Renew Debate Over How to Combat Domestic Terrorism

By Sabrina Tavernise, Katie Benner, Matt Apuzzo and Nicole Perlroth | Published

Aug. 5, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 6, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement officials have sounded the alarm for months: Homegrown terrorism, including by white supremacists, is now as big a threat as terrorism from abroad. But the mass shooting in El Paso last weekend, the largest domestic terrorist attack against Hispanics in modern history, has made it glaringly clear how poorly prepared the country is to fight it.

The United States spent nearly 20 years intensely focused on threats from Islamic extremists. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, rerouted the machinery of government to fight against threats of violence from the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan. But those attacks have waned in recent years, replaced by violence from white supremacists — an increasingly internet-driven phenomenon of lone wolves, not groups, that will prove immensely difficult to combat.

On Monday, President Trump pledged to give federal law enforcement authorities “whatever they need” to combat domestic terrorism. The motive for the second attack of the weekend, in Dayton, Ohio, remains unknown. But even before the shootings, which left at least 31 people dead, officials said that preventing attacks from white supremacists and nationalists would require adopting the same type of broad and aggressive approach used to battle international extremism.

“We need to catch them and incarcerate them before they act on their plans,” Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, said in an email interview. “We need to be proactive by identifying and disrupting potential terrorists before they strike, and we can accomplish that by monitoring terrorist propaganda and communications.”

Under current federal law, that is difficult. Federal officials have broad powers to disrupt foreign terrorist plots, given to them as part of the Patriot Act passed after the 2001 attacks. They can take preventive action, for example, by wiretapping or using an undercover online persona to talk to people anonymously in chat rooms to search for jihadis.

But domestically, federal officials have far fewer options. A federal statute defines domestic terrorism but carries no penalties. The First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech, makes stopping terrorist acts committed by Americans before they happen more challenging. No government agency is responsible for designating domestic terrorism organizations. And individuals who are considered domestic terrorists are charged under laws governing hate crimes, guns and conspiracy, not terrorism.

“It’s a big blank spot,” said Mary McCord, a former top national security prosecutor who has drafted a proposed statute to criminalize domestic terrorism not covered by existing laws. This would include criminalizing the stockpiling of weapons intended to be used in a domestic terrorist attack.

The issue is urgent. Right-wing extremists killed more people in 2018 than in any year since 1995, the year of Timothy McVeigh’s bomb attack on the Oklahoma City federal building, according to the Anti-Defamation League. And the attack in El Paso and an April shooting in a synagogue in Poway, Calif., alone have claimed as many lives as all extremist homicides “of any stripe” in 2018, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

The F.B.I. field office in Phoenix recently issued a report that said conspiracy theories — often with racial overtones and fueled by dissemination online — had become a growing national security threat.

Mr. Rosenstein said that law enforcement needs to model its domestic terrorism response after the international counterterrorism efforts undertaken in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

“In the same way that honorable members of mosques report people who express violent designs, so, too, should people report violent white nationalists to the police,” he said.

The First Amendment’s protection of citizens’ rights to engage in hateful speech makes it difficult to track down attacks before they happen.

“From the perspective of the courts, white supremacy is a hateful but protected form of speech,” said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University. “What courts resist are efforts to classify whole movements as violent as a result of the actions of some of its members.”

The problem touches every aspect of American life — politics, civil liberties and business — and involves complicated new questions around the issue of technology. How much will technology and communications companies, including the big social media platforms, be willing to share information about domestic customers with law enforcement agencies? On the internet, white nationalists can align with other radicals, become inspired and find the resources they need to act alone — a process that has also helped foreign extremists become terrorists.

Perhaps most important, a new focus on white-supremacist violence would test whether Americans are as accepting of aggressive law enforcement tactics when the targets aren’t Muslims, but white Americans.

“If they did the same thing that they did with the Muslims, they’d say every white guy is a potential terrorist,” said Martin R. Stolar, a New York civil rights lawyer. “You can’t do that with white people. The blowback would be outrageous.”

The rise in the white supremacist threat has paralleled an increasing racialization and divisiveness in the nation’s immigration debate. Mr. Trump has used ethnonationalist language that his opponents argue is arousing political extremists. Even in past years, some political leaders have been slow to recognize the existence of domestic terrorism: After the Oklahoma City bombing, Newt Gingrich, at the time the speaker of the House, refused to hold hearings on white nationalist terrorism.

In the years since, the nature of white supremacism has changed. It used to be that white supremacists, for the most part, operated in groups, often living in the same area, said Brian H. Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. The chapters had some control over the timing and choice of targets. He cited as examples Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan and local Nazi skinhead groups.

“The top-down hierarchies of the past have been increasingly supplanted by a more democratized and a geographically dispersed set of erratic do-it-yourselfers,” he said. “Now, so-called lone wolves are turbocharged by a fragmented and hate-filled dark web which has become a modern-day, virtual neo-Nazi boot camp available 24-7 anywhere in the world with an internet connection.”

Examples of these kinds of actors are the attackers in the Poway synagogue shooting, the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last fall and now, according to the authorities, El Paso.

While these men often act alone, the F.B.I. says that technology has allowed American terrorists to plug into a global community of terrorists who espouse similarly hateful ideologies. Domestic terrorists are increasingly citing terrorists overseas in their killings. In his manifesto, the suspected El Paso gunman said that he agreed with the gunman who attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The suspect in New Zealand said in the manifesto he is believed to have written that he had been inspired by Dylann Roof, who murdered nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.

Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. special agent and the author of “Anatomy of Terror,” said he had been struck by how much white supremacists resemble the jihadis he spent so many years fighting.

“There is a striking resemblance between jihadists and white supremacists, and it goes way beyond just utilizing social media in order to spread ideology,” he said.

[Terrorism from white nationalists shows “stunning” parallels to the rise of the Islamic State.]

Both use violence to reshape society in their own image. Both use recruitment videos that emphasize a lifestyle of “purity,” militancy and physical fitness. Jihadis share beheading videos, while right-wing extremists share the live stream of the attack in New Zealand. He said Ukraine was now a global gathering place for white supremacists, much as Afghanistan was for jihadis in the 1980s.

“This is becoming a global network in so many different ways, just like we’ve seen with the jihadis before them,” he said.

Federal investigators have also found white supremacist elements flourishing in prisons. In March, federal prosecutors in Alaska announced that an investigation had resulted in charges against 18 members and associates of a white supremacist gang known as the 1488s. In May, a federal grand jury indicted members of an Aryan Knights prison gang that had operated in Idaho.

The indictment in the Alaska case described the 1488s as a gang with dozens of members operating in Alaska and elsewhere.

David Neiwert, who has long reported on extremism in the Northwest and has worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said he sees the threat of the Northwest’s racist groups returning to levels of the 1980s, when neo-Nazi elements around the country had moved into the Northwest in a bid to create a white ethnostate. In the 1990s and 2000s, those groups lost much of their power and subsided.

Mr. Neiwert said people with extremist sympathies were now organizing online and attaching themselves to groups that aren’t as explicit about white supremacist notions.

“Local agencies in particular should be better equipped,” Mr. Neiwert said. “On the other hand, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department could probably do a better job of equipping local law enforcement.”

As the international terrorism threat evolved to include more lone actors, radicalized online rather than in terrorist cells abroad, the F.B.I. sought to enlist technology companies in its efforts to combat the threat. But companies have been slow to respond — and have been shielded, in part, by the First Amendment.

“It’s been a very long few years of getting platform companies to understand the role that digital media plays in spreading hate speech, harassment and incitement to violence,” said Joan Donovan, director of the Technology and Social Change  project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center. “Generally, a piece of content is only reviewed if someone else has flagged it first.”

Under intense criticism for their delayed reaction to disinformation and hateful content after the 2016 presidential election, technology companies have started to take a more proactive approach to disinformation and hate speech. In most cases, spokeswomen for Google and Facebook said the companies report white supremacist content only when it poses an imminent threat to life, or when they are complying with valid legal requests.

In May, Facebook evicted seven of its most controversial users, including Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, and Laura Loomer, a far-right activist.

But critics say that is not enough. “White supremacy, at least at Facebook, was seen as a political ideology that one could hold,” said Jessie Daniels, a sociology professor at the City University of New York and the author of a forthcoming book on white supremacy. “It’s only recently that they’ve said they recognize white supremacy as an ideology of violence.”

Ms. Daniels said there was an important lesson in what happened to Milo Yiannopoulos, the right-wing provocateur, after he was banned from using Twitter and Facebook.

“Milo has ceded from view since that happened. I really think that’s an argument in favor of this strategy,” she said. “He lost a book deal. He’s bankrupt. It showed ‘deplatforming’ is a useful tool and we need to find more ways to adopt it in the U.S.”

Ms. Daniels and others say the companies’ own algorithms for deciding what constitutes far-right extremist content are insufficient in tackling the threat. Often they rely on users, and in many cases names and content that percolate in the media, to decide what content and accounts should be taken down.

“We’ve reached this position where these companies have scaled beyond their capacity for safety. We don’t know what the next steps should be,” Ms. Daniels said. “We’re in a pretty significant bind now that we have a very large tech industry we all depend on, and we don’t feel we can trust them to keep us safe.”

[dragon-fics]

S&H: Ch. 26 Bundle of Joy

Chapter summary: Molten and Zion welcome their child to the world.

Notes, Ch. 1, Ch. 2, Ch. 3, Ch. 4, Ch. 5, Ch. 6, Ch. 7, Ch. 8, Ch. 9, Ch. 10, Ch. 11, Ch. 12, Ch. 13, Ch. 14, Ch. 15, Ch. 16, Ch. 17, Ch. 18, Ch. 19, Ch. 20, Ch. 21, Ch. 22, Ch. 23, Ch. 24, Ch. 25, Ch. 26, Ch. 27

Molten held Zion’s pale hand as they waited for their obstetrician-gynaecologist Dr Davis to call them into her consultation room. Beside them sat Firestrike, who had come for emotional support. They sat in the waiting area; it was just the three of them in their human forms as the hallways were tight and Molten and Firestrike often caught their tails in the seats. It had been three years since their wedding, and Molten and Zion felt that they were ready to have a child. But to do this they had two problems; one, they were of different species and two; they needed to find a surrogate mother willing to bear the child.

Today would be Molten and Zion’s final consultation to see whether they had found an appropriate surrogate to bear the child. They had found that the best way to mix both parents’ genes was to have the child be a furdrake. This way the child would still have Zion’s family markings and could blend in with society. According to the tests the doctors had done, they were certain just about any dragoness or drakess could bear the child. After that, the couple had no more requests to make in relation to the gender or fur colour of their baby drake.

Zion looked at Molten and nudged him with his shoulder. Molten gave him a small smile and Zion smiled back. “You okay?” He asked.

“Yeah,” Molten said, squeezing Zion’s hand a little.

“There’s no harm in being nervous, Molt,” Firestrike said, nudging him with her shoulder. “It’s a big deal to get this far,” she said. “And I’m tired of being the only one out of us three with a child,” she joked. Molten chuckled.

He was about to respond when Dr Davis came out of her office, out into the waiting area. She was wearing a long, crisp, white doctor’s coat. She tied her long brunette hair up into a bun.

“Come on in,” she said. The trio stood up. Zion let out a noise of excitement as they walked into the room. Once they were inside, Molten introduced Firestrike to Dr Davis.

“It’s wonderful to meet you,” she said, shaking Firestrike’s hand fondly. “I’m glad you took ok my advice of bringing a sister and female friend along,” she said. She gestured to three leather chairs beside them. Dr Davis sat across from them behind a polished, white desk. The rest of the room wasn’t that different; white and sanitary. She glanced at her computer monitor and typed on her keyboard.

“The good news is that the embryo is ready to be implanted. But I’m afraid that we haven’t found a surrogate,” she said regretfully. Zion’s face dropped, Molten sighed sorrowly. Firestrike looked to them both sympathetically.

“Is it because of us being different species?” Molten implored. Dr Davis glanced down.

“I’m afraid so. They’re just worried about the effects for both their own health and the unborn child’s,” she explained. Molten nodded silently; he understood their worries, and they had every right to not want to bear the child—even if doctors had already made sure the child could be carried to term without risking the mother’s health.

Firestrike listened carefully to what the doctor was saying. “What if I carried the child?” She asked, more towards Dr Davis than Molten and Zion. Molten turned to her.

“Strike, I couldn’t ask you to do that—“

“—We couldn’t ask you to do that,” Zion corrected.

“I want to,” Firestrike insisted. She placed a hand on Molten’s wrist. “You were there for me when was expecting Ember, let me do this for you.” Molten glanced aside. “What do I need to do to be their surrogate?” She asked Dr Davis.

“I’ll get you in touch with a surrogacy agent—to keep this a legal as possible—and then we’ll work from there. I’d have to conduct some tests and such, and the surrogacy agents would make everything clear about what will happen and then it’s up to you on whether you still want to be the child’s surrogate mother,” Dr Davis explained. She gave Firestrike a brief rundown on what would happen. Molten, Zion and Firestrike left her consultation room with an abundance of leaflets and booklets, so Firestrike would have plenty of reading material.

As they walked out to their cars Molten turned to his sister.

“You really don’t have to do this, I’m sure we’ll—“

“I’ve told you already, Molten; I want to do this. And if I change my mind, I know you won’t be mad,” she unlocked her navy blue, Volkwagon Golf. “I really do want to do this, you’ve helped me like no one else has.”

“But I wasn’t always there for you,” he looked up at her.

“You had to finish school so you could get a better job to help pay for the nursery. You—a sixteen-year-old—had that all figured out so you could renovate a room that was going to be yours so that your niece and goddaughter could have a nice nursery,” she reminded him. “I want to do this,” she repeated before opening her car door. Molten pulled her into a hug, though the car door still separated them.

“Thank you, Strike,” he said. “But what about CJ, shouldn’t he have a say in this?”

Firestrike sat into her car. “Maybe, but it’s not his body—it’s mine.” She grinned and closed the door. Molten stepped out her way.

“Let’s just hope it all goes well,” he mused to himself.

*-*-*-*

The IVF treatment was a success. Firestrike was pregnant with Molten and Zion’s baby. They would visit her as often as possible—usually a few times a week. They’d bring her Chocomantic bubble chocolate and her main craving—canned Fanta Orange. Firestrike enjoyed the time they spent with her and insisted that they didn’t need to bring the chocolate and soft drinks—even though she was grateful for them and physically needed them—this baby was demanding. They would often ask to feel the bump and talk to it, so the baby would get used to their voices—they really had been thinking about what would happen during the pregnancy and wanted to be involved. Most of the time her answer was yes(I), though there were a few times where she didn’t want anyone touching her, and although it took Zion and Molten by surprise, they didn’t convince or guilt-trip her; it was her body, and they were thankful for what she was doing for them.

Zion was shyer than Molten with touching her bump. So shy that whenever he was over with her alone, he never asked, he’d just awkwardly look at the bump, longing to touch it. And so, Firestrike would have to take his hand and place it on her bump. The gesture was awkward, but it meant he wouldn’t feel regretful when he left her and CJ’s bungalow.

Ember was also looking forward to the baby arriving. She was now 11 and was starting to not be so mesmerised by Zion’s magic tricks, though she still enjoyed them. She understood that this baby would not be her sibling, but her cousin—but she hoped it was a girl. After hearing that the baby could hear things from outside the womb, she had read the baby stories and speak to the bump, though it wasn’t until the fourth month Ember got a response from the baby with a lively kick. Ember laughed when her mum jumped in surprise because that was the first time she had felt movement from the baby.

With this new revelation, she quickly told Molten. It was an understatement to say he was happy about the news. He and Zion promised to visit Firestrike soon; they were away on a couple’s retreat. They came to visit that weekend, bringing their usual gifts of Fanta and Chocomantic. They talked about their trip for a bit, which was a week away in Trita, before getting down to business. Molten wanted to try something he used to do when Firestrike was pregnant with Ember.

Molten knelt in front of Firestrike, his hands on her bump. “That okay?” He asked. Firestrike nodded. Molten focused and his marking glowed. He focused his energy on his hands, getting his palms to glow. A few moments later, he felt a throb against his hand. Firestrike jumped in surprise.

“There it is,” Firestrike said. The baby kicked a few more times. She took Zion’s hand and rested it near where the kicking was. All three shared a bright smile. Zion’s stood out a little more, as he had never felt a baby kick before in its mother’s womb. Molten looked at Zion; it had been a long time since he had seen that smile.

Molten tried resting his head on the bump, trying to hear a heartbeat without an ultrasound, though he heard nothing.

“It’s way to soon for that, Molten,” Firestrike said.

“I know, I know,” Molten said. He rested his forehead against the bump. “Hey, little one,” he started.

“Could... we use the Doppler?” Zion asked shyly as Molten stayed talking to the bump.

Firestrike smiled. “I’ll go get it, I’ve been getting some promising results so far,” she said. She tapped Molten’s hand. He looked at her and got back onto the couch as she stood up.

Molten and Zion sat close together on the couch. Firestrike returned with the pink and white Doppler in hand. She sat on the couch, Zion held Molten’s hand, resting his chin on his shoulder. Firestrike lifted her shirt so her scaled stomach was bare. The wand glided over her bump as she tried to find the spot where she heard the heartbeat last. After a few moments of searching, they heard it. The heartbeat sounded like a galloping horse—literally; it was fast and never faltered. Molten and Zion smiled to each other. They had heard the heartbeat many times before, but this was the first time they had heard it in the comfort of themselves—without a doctor also being there. They listened to the baby’s heartbeat for a few more minutes.

Firestrike put the Doppler away. “I want to talk to you two about something,” she said, pulling back down her shirt.

Molten and Zion looked to each other and sat up. “Go on,” Molten said, worried it was their constant visits or how touchy they were with her bump.

“It’s nothing serious, relax,” she said, noticing the worry on their faces. “I was wondering whether you two were going to find out the gender of sprog,” she asked, referring to the name she had given her bump.

“Eh... No, we don’t think we will,” Molten responded.

“We want it to be a surprise,” Zion continued.

Firestrike nodded. “Then what about names?” They looked at each other.

“Well, we were thinking, Zuma for a boy—,” Zion said.

“—And Mizu for a girl,” Molten continued. Zion turned to him sharply. Firestrike raised a brow.

“Or Lume,” Zion said, looking back at Firestrike.

“As in, Molten’s favourite musician and role-model from when he was a teenager?” Firestrike questioned.

“She still is(I) my favourite musician,” Molten retorted.

Firestrike nodded. “I like it. I prefer it to Mizu anyway,” she said.

*-*-*-*

Firestrike gripped Molten’s hand as he looked down at the midwife at the end of Firestrike’s bed. The contractions were now a minute apart, and the midwife looked concerned. Sweat poured down Firestrike’s face as the contraction kept going. Her hold on Molten’s hand tightened. The midwife looked to Dr Davis, who had only arrived into the room a few minutes prior after delivering another baby down the hall.

Firestrike had been in the hospital for quite a few hours now. Molten had guessed it was at least five hours. It had been a case where both he and Zion had gotten a phone call in the middle of the night from CJ with news that Firestrike’s waters had broke. And the rest was a blur of driving and jogging down hallways. There was a window behind Molten which let him guess what time it was, and the hot June sun had risen about an hour ago.

He grabbed a cool cloth from beside him and wiped away the sweat from Firestrike’s forehead. It was only him, her, the midwife and Dr Davis for both Firestrike’s comfort and Zion’s. She really didn’t feel comfortable with her brother’s husband in the room and Zion didn’t like blood, so that was the end of that dispute. Also, the fact and Molten had been there for Ember’s birth made Firestrike a lot more comfortable in his presence.

There was some muttering between the midwife and the doctor when the contraction ended. Firestrike’s grip on Molten’s hand relaxed, and she brought her breathing back to a normal pace.

“You’re doing really well,” Molten whispered awkwardly, and his more natural colour of blue returned to his hand.

“Oh, shut up, nothings happened yet,” Firestrike said. She noticed the concerned looks on the doctors’ faces. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Dr Davis came over to her. “Your contractions are close together, but you haven’t reached ten centimetres,” she said.

“So, what does that mean?” Molten asked he was worried about what this meant for Firestrike and the baby. Had a ten-month pregnancy been for nothing? Were they going to lose it all?

Molten panicked quietly.

“It means we must perform a cesarian section,” Dr Davis said, more towards Firestrike.

“Is the baby ok?” She asked.

“The baby’s fine, it just hasn’t moved into the right position to leave the womb yet,” the doctor continued. She left the room swiftly, to prepare the surgeons required for the procedure.

*-*-*-*

Zion held the baby furdrake in his arms. She had been born the day before, and he and Molten had been keeping a close eye of her and Firestrike. She had spent the night with Firestrike, per the couple’s request. They were lucky enough to be in a room with only two other newborn dragonlings and their parents.

She had Zion’s coat colour and eyes, with fair hair and his family’s markings on her back. She had a sky blue fin at the end of her tail similar to Molten’s. She was dressed in a soft yellow romper. She was more awake today, looking at her father with bright eyes and a wavering tail that afternoon.

Most of Molten’s family had met the little bundle, apart from Blaze, who was away on a business trip. She would meet Zion’s side of the family in a few days at a small family gathering in a hotel nearby.

“She seems happy to have one of her dads here,” Firestrike said. She half-sat on her bed, scrolling through her phone. Molten was still at the DRDR studio, the radio was playing in the background.

The dragonling sucked on her thumb, much like Molten sometimes did in his sleep, as they had seen her do in many of the ultrasounds. With the same hand, she gripped Zion’s finger.

Zion smiled. “I guess. And I’m sure he and CJ will make a game out of getting here first.” Firestrike laughed. He was right.

It was another ten minutes of baby talking to the dragonling and discussing a little of what to expect from her in the next few weeks before Molten arrived. He kissed Zion on the head and gave Firestrike a hug before looking at the white bundle of fur in Zion’s arms.

“Hello, little one,” he said babyishly and pecked her on the forehead. He pulled up a seat. “How have you been since this morning?” Molten asked Firestrike.

“Fine, though something has been troubling me...”

Molten looked to Zion, concerned. “What?”

“What are you going to name her?” She asked, reaching over to stroke her short fair locks.

“Well—“

“—Lume. We’re calling her Lume,” Zion interrupted. A smile grew on Molten’s face. She did look a lot likes his role-model, only baby-sized and natural-looking hair that wasn’t dyed to look like candyfloss.

“Thank the Gods,” Firestrike swore under her breath, “because I wasn’t having a niece called Mizu. She doesn’t even look like a Mizu.”

After another day in the hospital, they discharged Lume. Molten and Zion brought her home. It confused bandit what this other bundle of fur was and why it was in his house. The Ragdoll cat took a quick sniff of the removable car seat and bolted before Lume could reach for him.

They then brought her up to one of the spare bedrooms, which was now a nursery that was painted a pale yellow with a matching white cot, drawers and changing table. But she wouldn’t be sleeping here for the next few weeks, she’d be sleeping in a small travel cot by the side of her parents’ bed.

Lume liked to grip her fathers’ finger as they held or fed her. Zion had also found an old terrier dog teddy that was Molten’s. It was scruffy and easy to hold. Molten hadn’t the heart to ever get rid of the toy. After washing it, he gave it to Lume after she went down for a nap. When he went back to check on her, her little white hand was wrapped around one of the front legs of the teddy.

One thing both parents had noticed whenever they came back home, was the unfamiliar smell in their home, the smell of a newborn baby. It was a unique smell and was hard to describe, but once you drew in its scent, you knew what it was. Another thing they had noticed was that Bandit’s hostile-ness didn’t last long. If Lume was in her baby bouncer, he’d sometimes ‘check her out’. Whenever either Zion or Molten was lounging in their sitting room, bouncing her with his foot, and wasn’t paying attention, he’d slither on up and give her a sniff. Lume would usually tap him or let out a sound of curiosity before he’d saunter away again.

Bedtime was an easy enough process, and they learnt it on the first night. Usually Molten would have argued with cradling a child until they fell asleep—because it seemed cruel to have them stay awake for so long, but he went with it just this once. Lume fell asleep in his arms at around seven-ish on the first night. Molten and Zion waited for just a couple of minutes more before bringing her upstairs. They laid her in the small travel cot by their bed. She let out a small moan as her body touched the small mattress. Molten brought up her blanket to fit snuggly under her chin. Her tiny chest rose and fell smoothly as she slept. She lifted her tiny fists above her head—which really meant she was out for the night. She was just so tiny. Neither Molten nor Zion could get over it.

Molten looked to Zion, who sat on the bed beside him. “I love you,” he whispered, leaning in close and sharing a sweet kiss with his husband.

“I love you, too.”

[bakugou-ou]

Ik I'm anon and all, but I don't wanna get off it because the embarrassment would probably make it worse. I'm just tired of life… mines is pretty useless if you ask me, and according to everyone else who if ever met, I'm ugly too, I wouldn't kill myself because I'm too much of a coward to do that, but I don't know what I wanna do with my life and I can never be happy without someone ruining it That's why you and other creators' story helps me, it makes me think about my dram life I'll never get

Listen, friendo, whoever you are, you’re not ugly, and not useless. You don’t need to come off anon if you don’t want to, I get it. This is gonna get v personal here in a sec, so I’m putting the rest of this down under a cut in case no one gives a shit about my personal life and doesn’t wanna see my tragic anime backstory, but I’m sharing it with you because you said that you like my writing. This is the story of how I ended up running this blog, it’s got lots of talk about suicide, mentions of rape. It’s not pretty, so read at your own risk. Also, it’s long.

When I was four years old, I tried to jump off the balcony of my apartment, I wanted to die. It wasn’t a kid doing a stupid thing, I literally thought if I fall from this height and hit my head on the ground, I will die and then went for it. I fell onto a 7ft tall cinder block mailbox on the way down, four feet below my balcony, crawled off of it, and walked back upstairs to my parents like nothing had happened. 

What was wrong that someone barely past toddlerhood wanted to kill themselves over? I don’t know, maybe it was just that my parents were fighting all the time and hated each other, maybe it was because I have the genes for it. More on that last bit later.

When I was six, I tried to throw myself in front of a car, thinking that if a small child like myself got hit by a car going 25+ mph, I’d die. The driver hit the brakes, I played it off like I’d tripped into the road, no one knew how I really felt. When I’d told my parents I wanted to die, they thought I was being dramatic, they didn’t think a kid my age even knew what that meant, the finality of it. But I knew, and I craved it.

When I was eight, I tried to hang myself in my older sister’s bedroom with her sheets. She found me, took me down before I blacked out, and we never spoke about it again after that night. I was pissed with my sister for saving me, I cried and punched her as she held onto me.

When I was twelve, I tried to eat a bottle of Xanax, thinking it would kill me. It didn’t, it just made me really, really fucking sick. Not sick enough to go to the hospital, but very sick. I had no lasting organ damage, but I still wanted to die.

When I was fourteen, my boyfriend dumped me over the phone on a day he was supposed to come to my house, and ignored me while I cried. He had me on speaker phone, actually, and his friends were laughing about it and I could hear them. I could hear him laughing along with them. So, I decided to eat a bottle of asprin for dinner a couple of weeks later. I was stupid, it didn’t work, and I was hospitalized in the mental ward for 2 weeks.

When I was seventeen, I had just left an abusive relationship, graduated high school, and my mom told me that my ex raping me repeatedly for 9 months was my fault and that I was asking for it by continuing to date him the whole time. I was too scared to leave, I had been told by a counselor at school that no one would believe me. I tried to eat all of my antidepressants. I was hospitalized for 3 weeks in the mental ward.

When I was eighteen, I tried to do that same thing again, in conjunction to another thing my mom said about my abuser. My cousin had been raped while studying abroad, and she was talking about poor cousin, your poor cousin, it’s so traumatic, but when I mentioned that I’d been abused for three quarters of a year and no one batted an eye, she told me I was being selfish, and that my time for being the victim was over. How dare I detract from my cousin. So, again, I tried to eat a bottle of pills. I was hospitalized for one week in the psych ward.

Earlier this year, at the age of twenty, I was hospitalized because I felt like I was going to slit my wrists if I stayed home. So I checked myself into the hospital. I was there for a week while my doctor tried to find better meds for me because clearly mine weren’t working. My mom had told me that she was ashamed of my sexuality and my gender identity, and the rape issue came up again, with her saying I wanted it, that I let it happen.

I have bipolar II, borderline personality disorder, OCD, PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, and selective eating disorder. A lot is messed up with me. I get the anxiety from my mother, and the bipolar II from my father. The PTSD was a gift from my ex boyfriend, and the rest I just ended up with.

When I was a little kid, I loved books; my father read all sorts of books to me, all the time. Artemis Fowl was the first series we read, then Harry Potter, then my mother read me the Chronicles of Narnia, then my father read me A Series of Unfortunate Events. We also read other books, things that weren’t series. I loved reading, and I wanted to write things that made people feel the way I felt about the stuff I read. 

Both of my parents are naturally talented writers. At the age of six, I began to write fan fiction for Harry Potter. I was way too young to be on the internet, but I was online writing fanfics on snitchseeker. Some of the only validation I found in my life was from random strangers on the internet, encouraging me to continue writing and complimenting my plot lines, even if my grammar and spelling were atrocious; on the internet, no one knows you’re a little kid writing Drarry fanfic.

I was a really athletic kid, so I didn’t spend all my time writing, but a good chunk of my free time was spent writing if I wasn’t surfing, playing soccer, or skateboarding. I didn’t have a lot of friends, I wasn’t likable, apparently, and I had a really hard time in school. I got into a lot of fights because people picked on me, but I was always the one who got in trouble for defending myself. It pissed me off. I developed issues with authority. I wrote in composition books to escape all the crap around me.

By the time I turned 11, writing was my life. I had just moved to California from Hawaii, my life was basically turned upside down, and I was miserable. So, I made a myspace account, wrote fanfic on there, and threw myself headlong into it. I have a fanfiction.net account I’ve long since forgotten my username and password for, but it’s out there with dramione fanfic, sasusaku, things that I liked at the time. I need to escape everything happening around me. My dad, my best friend, wasn’t anywhere near me, my mom was a bitch, and my demented grandmother moved in with us. It was miserable.

By the time I was 15, the only hobby I had outside of practicing for orchestra, was writing. I laid in bed on days off and just sat on my laptop, writing. I stopped publishing things after I got a mean comment once, my first one ever. It bruised the ego I didn’t even have so badly that I refused to publish anything for three years.

When I was 18, I published my first fanfic in 4 years. It was a Criminal Minds fanfic, featuring an OC and Spencer Reid. I was so fucking proud of it, and while lots of people loved it, a lot of people said mean shit. So, I posted Loki fanfic, which got infinitely more love, and then I did an alternate version of my Criminal Minds fic, that one got even more hate than the original. Then I published a Wallander fanfic. I haven’t touched them in 3 years, despite people asking me for more.

Up until this time last month, I never showed my writing to anyone. I kept everything to myself, hidden, I was ashamed of it. It is my only coping mechanism, but I couldn’t share it with anyone. My parents had my computer passwords up until I was about 16, sometimes they’d look through my text files and come to me later and tell me how amazing my writing was, and encourage me to publish it. But I never believed them.

On a whim, I started this blog; I love Boku no Hero Academia, it has given me something to look forward to every week. I live Chapter to Chapter, episode to episode, I track my time with it, it’s a coping mechanism. I saw that there was a decently active fandom on here, and I wanted to be a part of it. I hesitated on making the blog for a few weeks, thinking that no one would want to read my writing.

A month later, there are nearly 600 people here, constantly asking me to write scenarios and headcanons for them, telling me they love my writing, and think I’m a nice person, and that they’re glad I’m here. Every time I get a message like that, I cry. I never thought anyone would ever care about my writing, let alone write it. When I got a single follower that wasn’t a friend I know in real life, I cried. I was so excited. When I got my first request, I was so, so excited. When people began sending more stuff in, when people started talking to me and wanting to be friends, I cried. I’ve made a dozen friends on here as a direct result of their writing, and my writing.

I love running this blog, and I love writing for everyone. I have felt useless and like a waste of space my entire life, I’ve been told that my entire life, I’m made to feel like that every day of my life even now by the people around me, save for my friends, but when I log on here, I’m reminded that hey, maybe I’m not useless. If I manage to make even one person happy with what I do, that’s all I want.

So, you saying that my writing helps you, helps me. All I’ve ever wanted in life is to make other people happy, to please them, and my writing is apparently doing that. I’m really, really lucky to be in this position.

Even if you don’t have something like this, you’re not useless. You should be here. I know you said you’d never kill yourself because you’re too cowardly, but I’ve never seen suicide as cowardly, but that’s probably because I’ve tried to do it so many times. I’ve made a total of 8 attempts in 21 years. I don’t think I’ll be trying it again, though. It’s taken me 21 years to find something that I’m kind of maybe a little good at, that makes me even a tiny bit happy, and that does some good for other people, too.

Shit sucks, life is really awful, and I completely understand the plethora of reasons any given person would feel like wanting to die. I’ve never thought it unreasonable or dramatic to feel that way, it’s just how some people feel. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life until 3 years ago, and even now I’m unsure if it’s really what I want to do with my life. I’ve got a lot going on behind the scenes that makes me feel like shite, and a lot of the time, the people around me try to ruin what little I have that I enjoy and that makes me happy…

Even with all that happening, somehow, I’m still here, and I’m writing this. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I get your feelings, I hear you, they’re valid, and I love you, stranger. Because I feel the same way as you all the time. This blog is my escape from that. It’s really the only thing I have keeping me from my intrusive thoughts.

If you never come off anon, that’s fine, but if you need to talk about things, I’m here for you, or anyone else who needs it. Really, if I can even try to help, I’ll do my damnedest to help. I hate seeing other people feeling as junk as I do on a daily basis, I want to try and make it better. If being a friend, even if I don’t know who you are, helps, I want to help. If writing things helps, I want to do it. But, for me, it’s not just helping other people, it’s helping myself. You coming into the box helped me. So, you’re not useless. You’re keeping me here, too.