#Apparently I have a thing for characters who wear green; have goofy voices; work with children; are usually cheerful and mild mannered-

[starlitships-moved]

OK..... This HAS to be the most embarrassing thing I've ever hyperfixated on... to the point where when I realized I was starting to fixate on it, (which started yesterday) I literally went, "oh no........"

And THEN I started to develop a little crush(?)/fixation (honestly idk anymore) on a specific character in the series, and got even MORE embarrassed.... >///>

[twdmusicboxmystery]

Revolution Theme, Part 4 - The Governor’s Episodes

What led me to wanting to rewatch the Gov’s episode was a discussion with @galadrieljones. She talked about Lenny from 4b being an anti-Daryl, and that sparked something for me. I totally agree about Len, but it made me remember that, a long time ago, I remembered that Mitch (guy who operated the tank for the Gov and helped bulldoze the prison) was also an anti-parallel to Daryl.

Now, back when I first realized that, I didn’t have anywhere to really go with it. I mean, we had the leader (Governor) pitted against Rick and his right-hand guy (Mitch) pitted against Daryl. Mitch operated the tank, which Daryl blew up. And then of course Daryl ends up shooting Mitch in the heart. The thing that first made me realize Mitch was a Daryl parallel was the fact that he had no sleeves, lol. I know that’s goofy, but I think it’s intentional.

Anyway, I hadn’t thought about it in a long time. And while we’ve talked about Gov parallels to Beth in these two episodes lots of times before (like the stigmata walker in the yellow wheelchair) it suddenly occurred to me that there’s probably a LOT more to it than that.

Recently, especially since the bonus episodes, I’ve been big on looking at entire sequences and multi-episode arcs from a broad, bird’s eye view because I think they’re templates for future story lines. (It’s totally Find Me’s fault. Lol.) Anyway, I just realized I hadn’t done THAT with the Gov’s episodes, and I probably should.

Long story short, I was right.

Long story long, here we go:

So we start by seeing the end of 3x16 again, right after the Gov kills all his own people and takes off with Martinez and that other guy whose name I don’t remember. He doesn’t show up again and Martinez says he pretty much gave up and got eaten by walkers.

(We’ll skip the discussion about how Karen was a Beth proxy at this part in 3x16, because she was left for dead and even pretended like she was. In other words, she played possum. Then she returned to Tyreese and eventually became romantically involved with him. But that’s beside the point, right? ;D)

Okay, so we see the Gov and the two guys at a camp site and a very Beth-ish walker stomps through his fire, trips, and starts burning before Martinez kills it. I’ve always thought that was a Beth hint, and I still do. I think it’s just the writers’ way of signaling that this is a Beth template for the future.

When the Gov wakes up, his guys have abandoned him and he’s alone in this bright yellow tent that stands out against the bleak landscape. (Yellow.)

Then he goes and burns Woodbury. I’ve always tried to connect that to Beth, particularly because of the Moonshine shack. But looking at it now, there’s just something else entirely going on here. Emotionally, I mean.

We know Bethyl burning the moonshine shack symbolized something positive. Letting go of their pasts and moving forward. When the Gov does this, you don’t get that vibe at all. It’s more bitter and resentful. He’s angry and grieving over losing his leadership, the town he built up, and his people. It almost feels like a “if I can’t have it no one can” sort of thing.

So, this is total conjecture on my part, but I feel like there will be a Beth parallel to this. Probably not quite as destructive, but I’ve always had a head canon that somehow, after waking up, she’ll end up at Terminus, find the riot gear and Daryl’s poncho, and assume they all died there. That may be where the bitterness and sadness will come from. Just my head canon, though.

After that, the Gov starts on his long, lone journey (another thing we’ve always theorized Beth would do). Oh, and the song that plays over this part, which I’ve always thought was very pretty, is called The Last Pale LIGHT in the WEST (emphasis mine). I think the Gov goes west when he leaves.

Then we get voice overs, and this part is SUPER interesting and makes me very happy. We heard two women talking to the Gov about where he comes from and where he used to be. We now know those voices to be Tara and Lilly, but at this point in the episode, he hasn’t met them, yet. So, what’s interesting is that neither of them are named in the subtitles. They are just “woman.”

And where have we seen that lately? In 9x05, every voice (like Lori and Abraham, for example) was named, but Beth wasn’t. We immediately recognized her voice, but she wasn’t named in the subtitles as “Beth.” It just said “woman.” So, what does this mean? We wouldn’t have recognized Alanna’s voice yet at this point, unlike Emily’s, but we had yet to meet Tara yet. So, on a basic level, I think it shows that the unnamed “woman” will soon be a character on the show.

And why would they do that with Beth when, like Lori and Abe and the others, we’ve already met her? I think it’s probably in line with the theme about her being a different person when we see her again. In a good way. “Meet the new Beth Greene.”

The next important thing about this part is what is actually said. I’m paraphrasing here, but Tara and Lily ask where the Gov was before and he says something about having been in a town. Tara asks if the monsters were there. He says no. It was a good place, with walls. But “he” lost it. She asks, “who?” And he says, “the man in charge.” So clearly, he’s talking about himself in the third person, and Woodbury.

But.

If this is a Beth template, then Gov = Beth, right? We always wondered why they would use him, being evil and stuff, as a Beth proxy. But keep in mind that Gimple took over as official head honcho and completely reworked a reportedly terrible 3x16. They were basically done with the Woodbury/Gov storyline, and they needed a good sendoff for him. In a way, this was Gimple’s first Sirius arc. Someone who leaves, is presumed dead, but then comes back. We know Daryl (and Michonne) searched for him, but lost the trail (kinda like losing Beth’s body) and the Gov is even down one eye. Siriusly.

So, my point about the voice over is that everything said there could be applied to Rick, especially during the S4/S5. He lost it. He screwed up. Beth was left behind/separated from them.

Okay, now I’ll jump forward a little faster. For the rest of 4x06, there are really only two big things of note. 1) Tara and Lilly = two sisters who eventually lose their father. A foreshadow of the Greene family dynamic. And even though Tara’s father dies of natural causes (lung cancer), the Gov does end up bashing his face in to keep him from biting Tara. I think that was supposed to be kind of like him “killing” the dad, and therefore a foreshadow of him killing Hershel by taking his head.

The second thing, in terms of future Beth arcs, is that he lost everything, was left behind/abandoned by his people, went on a long journey, and eventually found people that he came to care about and protect. And I think the same will happen with Beth. In fact, it actually works in line with the Charleston template I laid out. Just a community of people she cares about and protects/takes care of.

And I’m sure some people will wonder about the fact that the Gov finds a love interest in Lilly, and if that will translate to Beth. Well, it’s possible. She might have had boyfriends over the years. We’ve discussed this. But it’s also important that her *true* love interest, Daryl, is already back with TF. And that wasn’t true of the Gov. He was never going to return to the prison and have some beautiful relationship with…anyone. The closest thing would have been Andrea, and she’d already died by this point.

There are, of course, small clues in 4x06 that I haven’t gone over, and of course I’ve skipped the rest home with the stigmata walker, because we know about that. But a few highlights: At one point, Tara says, “Ray Charles could have seen it” about their truck out front. Blindness mention. Lilly used to be a nurse, which ties to Grady. And she even talks about being bored, which is a direct link to Edwards being bored. 

Pirate theme, of course. I do think Megan represents Beth, though perhaps not directly in the template. She wears a lot of pink and yellow, blond hair, etc. And I think she’s just another way to say that this template is about the blond girl who, apparently, dies.

We should also probably appreciate that the way the Gov’s arc ends (the situation in 4x08) is a prisoner exchange situation where a Greene dies, and both directly ties to and foreshadows Grady.

But let’s move on. The end of 4x06/beginning of 4x07 is where they fall into a pit and meet Martinez. Let’s be real. In the show they call it “the pit” and it’s just used to keep walkers from overrunning their camp, but it’s clearly a grave. So, we have the Gov and Beth—I mean Megan—falling into a grave with a bunch of walkers (death) but surviving and eventually getting out (resurrection). Side note: we also saw the Gov kill one of the walkers that went after Megan by ripping it’s jaw off. (Speak no evil.)

So, here’s where we get to talk about Mitch and Pete a little bit. And it’ll be fun. I promise. :D

Watching this with an eye toward them representing Daryl and Merle, a lot of the symbolism became a lot more obvious. Keep in mind that they’re anti-parallels, not parallels.

See, between the two, Pete, who actually represents Merle, is the more sweet, compassionate one. While Mitch is the more brutal one. But again, they’re anti-parallels, so in this case, Mitch, the brutal one, is Daryl’s antithesis and Pete, the kind one, is Merle’s.

In fact, the first time we meet them, Mitch doesn’t want to let the Gov’s group in because they already had too many mouths to feed, and Pete says, “come on, man. They have a kid.” Just reminded me a lot of Daryl’s “they had a baby” in 3x10 after saving the family on the bridge.

So, they come back to the camp and start living in a trailer. The Hole in the Roof theory is huge here. The roof of the trailer keeps leaking water and, I shit you not, it looks like it’s dripping from a bullet wound. So, clearly….

And while I stand by it being a symbol of Beth being shot in the head, I also think it represents toxicity of a sort. Things that are wrong and it’s just a matter of time before the crap hits the fan. That sort of thing.

Okay, obviously the most important part of this episode is when they go to the cabin, but let me mention a few things that happen along the way.

Mitch, Pete, Martinez, and the Gov go out looking for supplies for the camp. And they had a really interesting conversation that may give some insight into the spearfishing in Find Me.

They walk by the lake and the Gov asks if there are fish in the lake. They reply, no. The lake is totally dead. Mitch then adds that there are rabbits, skunks, and possums. Obviously, some symbolism in those animals. But it occurs to me that fish = life. Something they can eat, subsist and even thrive on. The lake is dead because there are no fish.

Now, clearly this is a foreshadow of the Gov killing Pete and putting him in the lake. And of the Gov already being kind of dead in his soul. And “dead water” might also foreshadow the poisoned water theme. Water that can cause death if you drink it.

But in thinking about Daryl’s reaction to both Leah and Carol finding fish in FM, it’s kind of interesting. Both times, he says, “no way,” and is pleasantly surprised that they caught the fish (life). So, I’m wondering if this is meant to be him being surprised that someone he thought was dead was really alive. And what if all the fish symbols we’ve seen represent life in some way?

Of course, it could also be that a mounted fish, like we saw near Dwight in S8 is technically a dead fish. So, it might have symbolized the death of his and Sherry’s relationship. Or that it would live again. I’m not sure how granular to make this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Okay, so then they come upon a camp that seems to be doing well. Mitch wants to take all their supplies, but Pete refuses and they leave. Later, they come back to find the camp overrun, most of its people dead, and the supplies gone. Here, Mitch is just pissed that they didn’t take the supplies before someone else got them. (Very anti-Daryl.)

But I do think this points to some future arc. I don’t know for sure what it will be, but again, I think it works with the Charleston template. Like, Beth is in a community. She goes out looking for supplies, and when she comes back, the community has been knocked on its butt by the CRM. And this is one of those things that was never really acknowledged or explained in the show. Who killed off the camp? And why wasn’t anyone in the Gov’s group at all concerned that their camp might be next? Gotta be symbolism for sure. :D

Oh, and the Gov says it must have “just happened.” Just like Daryl said about the wolves and the girl on the tree in 5x15. And again, the wolves are very tangled up in the Native American symbolism.

Then there’s the cabin bit. Again, I’m not at all sure how this will fit into Beth’s arc, but I’m sure it foreshadows SOMEthing. So, we have two headless corpses, one of which says LIAR and the other that says RAPIST. And then a third that still has his head, but killed himself with a shotgun. He is, presumably, the guy who lived in the cabin and killed the first two, and he’s labeled himself MURDERER.

Now, on the one hand, all of these words describe the Governor. He says “Liar” just before taking Hershel’s head, which is what that first one points to. And it’s not too hard to figure out that he’s a murderer. We didn’t actually see him rape anyone in the show, but there were suggestions of it, especially as he attacked Michonne and manipulated Andrea. And I’m pretty sure in the comic books, he does actually rape Michonne. They just didn’t want that to be the case in the show. So, these do all work for his story line.

But I also think these may be things Beth encounters at some point in her arc. Maybe someone will lie to her (or even betray her, Lone Ranger-style) and she’ll have to take them out. We already saw her dealing with rape at Grady, and have long thought that it foreshadows a bigger, potential rape situation that she’ll have to deal with. You get the idea. So, it’s very vague and I don’t have any great inspirations about what these point to, but in general, I’m sure they’ll apply to her.

It's also important to note that all these guys are dressed in military clothing. So, we might be able to tie them to CRM, symbolically if not literally.

I didn’t find anything massive inside the cabin that we haven’t already discussed. You asked me to look for revolution/George Washington pictures, @wdway, and I didn’t notice any. I didn’t try overly hard to see every single picture in the background, but most of them looked too blurry to tell much detail anyway. The major one is of Abraham Lincoln, and I think that’s important. But I’ll come back to it.

Of course, we have all the Native American symbols in this cabin. So, here’s the thing. Because of Tonto in TLR, I feel like whoever the Native American symbolism points to, whatever group that is, good or bad, it represents the group that Beth found after she woke up/lived, who nursed her back to health. And the reason I say good or bad is because the Claimers do theoretically fall under this same symbol theme for Daryl. The first group of people he ran into after he lost Beth. After the big disaster.

And here, I think Martinez’s group works in that regard for the Governor. He wasn’t hurt badly but he was in need of help after falling into the pit. You could say the same of Daryl after losing Beth. He just needed people to pull him out of his slump.

Now, here’s the other thing I’m not entirely sure how to interpret, but it does lend credence to the idea of the guy who lived in the cabin, who took out the two headless corpses, being representative of Beth. Once they’ve cleaned the walkers out of the cabin and are all sitting down talking, the Gov finds a picture of the guy who lived their and his family. The guy’s left eye has been colored over with read. Like red pen or marker. But it’s clearly a Sirius symbol and the red looks like blood.

So, I thought about what must have happened in this cabin. I kind of thing it might have been sort of like what happened with Abraham’s family. We were told after 5x05 that he killed the people who were actually part of his group. People he trusted. That’s because while he was out on a supply run, they raped his family. They just couldn’t show that in the show.

So, for the cabin guy, taking out a rapist and liar who might have harmed his family is straight forward enough. But why would he kill himself if his family still lived? And the Gov’s group found them as walkers in the house. Why would they continue to live there if the husband/father had shot himself on the porch? So, I’m thinking that these two headless corpses not only raped but perhaps murdered his family. So, he beheaded them and, in his grief, took himself out.

Or, because he labeled himself a murderer, maybe something happened where his family went crazy, or just got bitten, and he had to put them down. And that made him feel like a murderer. Because I don’t think justly taking out bad guys would have made him feel that way.

This may feel largely irrelevant, but it’s in the episode for a reason. Once again, I think this probably points to some part of Beth’s future arc. I mean, this sort of thing, the kind of thing Abraham went through, since it happened at the hands of people that were part of his community and that he trusted, is the ultimate betrayal, right? So maybe it will be a matter of someone in her community that she trusts betraying them to the CRM or something. IDK.

I keep saying it’s the west/lone ranger stuff that = betrayal, but the Native American theme always seems to be tangled up with it, doesn’t it?

Some minor details.

They find *beer* in the cabin.

We find out that Mitch and Pete were in the army before the turn happened. And in this case, I don’t necessarily want to link that to the CRM. We could, but given that both of them are now dead, it doesn’t really matter.

But it occurred to me that this is more evidence of them being anti-Daryl and Merle. Daryl and Merle were nobodys and drifters before. So, their opposites were in one of the most disciplined professions one can enter. Daryl started in an unproductive place and evolved. Mitch started in a disciplined place and devolved.

Of course, they’re playing GOLF when he kills Martinez. After doing so, he sits like Daryl at the crossroads. Then when Lilly finds him in the RV, he says he had a bad dream. He doesn’t remember. (Memory loss mention.)

They tell the camp he was hitting golf balls, got drunk, and fell into the grave/pit. *coughs Bethyl*

There were some interesting mushroom mentions. I noticed that before they met up with Martinez’s group, they were talking about Tara’s ex girlfriend (who was named SAM, btw) who lied to her about her feelings for Tara. Lilly says, “Yeah, then you went camping, ate mushrooms, and the rest was history.” Or something like that. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but then later, we see the same mushrooms on the trees around the Gov that we saw in Still. Hmm.

I’m also a little unsure of what to make of the walker pit they reach when they try to leave the camp. Remember they all take off in a car, including Tara’s girlfriend, but they have to stop because the road is impassible. It’s turned to mud and is full of walkers. I’m sure that’s symbolic of something, but I don’t know what.

Of course, the Gov kills Pete and recruits Mitch. You could say he has a very Negan approach, ruling through fear. He kills Pete specifically BECAUSE he’s the compassionate one and Mitch is the brutal one. Very different to how Rick ever approached things.

Okay, that’s most of what I have for the Gov. Except that at the beginning of 4x08, after he takes Michonne and Hershel prisoner, he says, “they’re the key.” (Key Theory).

[phoebonicawrites]

12 Days of Winter Whumperland, day 1 - deck the halls (used as decoration/holiday restraints)

So, I’m doing the @amonthofwhump 12 Days challenge because I can’t resist writing challenges, apparently. Or writing about horrible things happening to colourful astronauts. This story features the same creepy sadistic impostor Orange (and his long-suffering partner Cyan) from that first Among Us fic I wrote for Whumptober, although in my head this takes place before that one, on a different ship. Big warning for gore/torture at that link.

This one stops right before most of the physical torture starts, but it’s heavily implied. Warnings also for: implied main character death, betrayal/manipulation, held at gunpoint and then knifepoint, creepy whumper, unwanted touching, unwanted licking, body horror (typical Impostor stomach-mouth thing), blood, someone getting eaten off-camera, briefly described vomiting, corpse desecration (it... it’ll make sense when you get there.)

...they won’t all be this grimdark. They also won’t all be this long, since I used up most of my prep time writing this one. This is unedited so I could get it up tonight. I might clean it up a bit before it goes on Ao3.

Green stepped out of Electrical, unharmed, and slumped back against the wall for a moment, taking in deep gulps of air as the tension in his chest released. He’d made it. Orange had made it. Distributors calibrated, and if they were lucky they’d never have to see the inside of that deathtrap of a room again.

Orange’s hand rested on his shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “You okay?”

“Y – yeah.” Green pulled himself together and stepped away from the wall, checking his pad. “Thanks for having my back again.”

“Hey, it’s no problem.” Orange smiled, hand moving down to pat Green’s back a couple of times before moving away. “I’m done with all my tasks anyway. You got anything else?” he added, leaning in to look at Green’s tablet.

“Just got to stabilise steering.” It shouldn’t take long, Green tried to reassure himself, as he slipped the pad back into his pack and started walking towards Nav, Orange right beside him. Tweak the crosshairs a little, and I’m done. And I won’t be alone up there.

“After that, do you want to go wait in the cafeteria?” Orange suggested. “It’s a wide open space, we’d be able to see anyone coming for us.”

“Y-yeah.” Green swallowed, throat dry. Impostors didn’t usually kill out in the open. At least, Blue and the other one hadn’t, so far…

Assuming we were right about Blue. The thought came before he could stop it, and he shivered. It had to have been Blue, Blue had been the only person anywhere near Medbay when Yellow died, but… the doubt lingered, all the same. What if there were still two of them? What if the crew was down to him, Orange and – and whichever out of Brown, Cyan and Pink was really human?

Don’t think about it, he told himself. Or you’ll spiral. Just – focus on your tasklist. If we can fix this place up and get home, we’ll be okay.

The decorations he’d hung up along the walls less than a week ago, working together with Orange and Purple, were still there as they passed Comms. There was no reason they wouldn’t have been, of course. It was just that the strands of tinsel and multicoloured baubles seemed wildly out of place now, as did the smiling snowmen and cheerful elves that had watched from the outskirts of the cafeteria as the crew all gathered around the central table, fewer and fewer of them each time. Debating who and what and where, everyone knowing that behind some of the visors, beneath some of the goofy hats, were monsters hiding, eager for their blood.

Blue had still been wearing a Santa hat, when they ejected him. It had stayed fastened to his helmet as he tumbled away, magnets holding it in place. And even now Orange had a string of fairy lights attached to his head, and Green had a miniature Christmas tree complete with tiny ornaments. He kept remembering the stupid thing was there, and then forgetting about it again. Maybe some part of him couldn’t bring himself to take it off, as though everyone might get together for the holiday party after all, when all this was over.

They reached Shields, and Green turned left to head up to Navigation, and then he realised he couldn’t hear Orange’s footsteps behind him any more. He froze, heart in his throat as the walls closed in around him. Had the impostor stepped out of the shadows and struck again that fast, that silently? Had he just lost the only crewmate he knew he could trust, the one who’d always stuck with him, vouched for him, talked him through his panic, all because he’d lost sight of him for a second…?

He forced himself to turn around, and Orange was standing there, unharmed. Relief swept over Green, only to clash with a new wave of dread as he realised why Orange had stopped. He was looking back, down toward the bottom of Shields, and as Green followed his gaze it landed on a pair of pink boots, sprawled at odd angles on the floor.

“No…” Green breathed. He shook his head, as if he could deny it all enough to make it not be real. “Oh… oh Jesus, Pink, no…” Somehow he made himself move, and move toward the body, despite every instinct that screamed to get away, because he had to report it. There’d be another meeting, another decision. Brown or Cyan – and he didn’t know, couldn’t begin to know, but… one step at a time. They’d figure this out. He wasn’t alone. If no one else, he had –

The blow was so sudden he didn’t register it, not at first. One moment he was running forward, reaching for his pad, and then he was falling, landing hard on the cold metal floor, the wind knocked out of him, and by the time he caught his breath he was able to process something hit me and then something cold and hard was pressed to the back of his neck.

“Don’t move.”

Green couldn’t move anyway. His body wasn’t listening, wasn’t responding. He couldn’t put thoughts together. He was on the floor. There was a dead body and there was a yellow bauble that had fallen off the wall and there were orange boots. Orange. Orange would help, Orange always helped and Green wanted to sit up and look for him but he couldn’t move and he wasn’t allowed to move because there was a gun against his neck. He didn’t want to be dead on the floor like Pink. The impostor wouldn’t let Pink get up, either.

The impostor had a gun.

The impostor had Green. The impostor was standing right next to him.

Orange boots.

Orange was –

Green had started shaking. He didn’t know how long he’d been shaking for. He wanted to curl up and put his hands over his head and sob. But he stayed still, as much as he could. He just couldn’t make his body stop trembling like that.

He tried to say something, like please don’t, like why?, but his mouth wasn’t listening to him, either.

“That’s right,” Orange said. It sounded like Orange, and it didn’t, at the same time. There was something dark and eager and terrible, crawling beneath the surface of that voice. “You’re doing good, Green. Just stay right there. Don’t make me have to use this. I’d hate to have to do that when we’ve been together all this time. Hate to have to end it so soon, you know?”

Okay. Okay, Green could do that, he could stay put. Put where Orange had put him. Orange stepped around him, and Green wasn’t looking up – he didn’t want to look up, if he didn’t see then maybe this all really wasn’t happening – but he could tell in his peripheral vision that Orange was keeping the gun trained on him as he walked. Until he stepped behind the console that controlled the shields, and Green couldn’t see him any more.

Pink’s legs twitched, and then slid along the floor, the rest of his body disappearing behind the console that had hidden his upper half. And then there were… sounds. Wet, tearing, crunching sounds.

Green squeezed his eyes shut, as though that would help block it out. His head was clearer now and he wished it wasn’t, wished for the hazy unreality of shock to come back. It couldn’t be Orange. It couldn’t be, they’d been together the whole time…

…hadn’t they?

The noises stopped. Something fell to the floor with a dull thump.

Footsteps, coming closer.

Green made himself open his eyes and look up, this time. Orange had taken his helmet off, or maybe he’d stopped pretending he was wearing a helmet. The whites of his eyes had gone black, and his mouth stretched too far across his face, a broad grin full of sharp teeth, and…

It took Green a second to understand what he was looking at. His first thought was that something was wrapped around Orange’s waist, but then the line of darkness shifted and opened and there was another mouth there, filled with more jagged teeth and a long, pointed tongue that snaked out to lick the blood away from Orange’s suit.

That was Pink. That was what was left of Pink.

Green’s stomach clenched, and he had to fight not to throw up into his helmet. If… if he was going to die here, at least let him keep that little bit of dignity.

He heard a soft chuckle from above him. “You’re doing good,” Orange said again, just the way he had when he’d talked Green down from his panic attack after White’s death, when he’d sat with a hand on Green’s back, grounding him as they counted breaths together. The gun was still in his hand but it hung loosely at his side, almost an afterthought. He didn’t need it, that was clear now. “Put your hands behind your back, now. Wrists together.”

Green obeyed. He didn’t even try to resist, and a little part of him hated himself for it. Shouldn’t he at least go down fighting? He was going to die anyway. There was no way that Orange was planning to let him live. But he couldn’t make himself do it. Fear gripped him, his insides knotted up and frozen. It was easier to not have to think. To just do what he was told.

Orange moved around behind him. His limbs didn’t quite seem to move right, jointed oddly. Green heard the rustling of tinsel being pulled down from the wall, and then Orange was kneeling over him, straddling his legs, pulling off Green’s gloves.

The tinsel streamers wrapped tight around Green’s hands, digging into his skin. Green’s breath came fast and shallow. He could feel the heat of Orange’s breath on his exposed fingers. The tip of that pointed tongue flickered over them, slick with saliva, and he couldn’t suppress a startled yell.

Orange laughed. “Oh, Green,” he murmured, and his hand trailed down Green’s side, the touch seeming to burn even through the layers of his suit. “You were almost too easy, you know? But damn, you’re adorable. So compliant when you’re scared.”

Green’s mouth was dry. “Wha-” he managed to get out, finally, but he didn’t want to hear the answer to what Orange wanted. If he’d only wanted Green dead, he wouldn’t need to tie him up. This was going to be – more, worse, and Green didn’t want to imagine it, his thoughts skidded off it in a panic every time he tried.

“Why?” he choked out instead. “Why would – I – I trusted you!”

The laughter this time was an outright cackle. “Oh, I know you did, sweetheart,” Orange whispered, leaning down close to Green’s face, the helmet speakers directing the words right into his ear. “I was with you the whole time, wasn’t I? Isn’t that what you told everyone?”

Green’s breathing hitched, his eyes stinging, face burning in shame. He should have known. He should have known and now the blood was all on his hands, too.

“Of course, some of those kills really weren’t me,” Orange went on. “The nice clean ones, mostly. That was all Cyan. She’s all about efficiency. I keep telling her she ought to cut loose a little.”

“Cyan?” Green blurted, with fresh horror as a torrent of new realisations crashed into his mind. Oh god where is she Brown might be with her right now and I didn’t suspect her, did anyone ever suspect her? and rising above all the others even as Green’s heart sank in despair, if it’s Cyan then that means that Blue was – we killed him, we all killed him I killed him…

“Yep!” Orange confirmed brightly. He stood up, hauling Green to his feet by his bound arms as he did so. Green staggered, unable to steady himself, forced to let his captor hold him upright, like a sick parody of the way Orange had supported him up until now. Already his hands were going numb as pain tingled along his arms, the tight bindings restricting circulation. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking. So much guilt coming off you. And yes, I killed Yellow. You guys really should’ve paid more attention while you were falling over yourselves trying to fix the lights.”

“You…” Green desperately thought back. He’d gone into Electrical with Orange, and there’d been a moment when the lights came back up and he thought he’d lost sight of him, but then Orange had walked down from the top section where he’d – he’d claimed he’d been checking for bodies… “You went through the vent?”

Orange nodded. “Sure did! See, you got there eventually. Had to make it quicker than I would have liked, of course, but the look on their face was beautiful.” He pushed Green up against the wall, holding him by the shoulders, the pressure only making the strain on Green’s arms worse. “Not as beautiful as watching you vouch for me while I could still taste their blood in my real mouth, though. That’s when I knew you were mine.”

Green swallowed down bile again. “Why?” he choked out, repeating the question desperately, as though any answer at all could make things better. “Why are you doing this to us?”

“Hmm, short version? My employers are an organisation with… business interests on Polus, and your company’s operations there are…” Orange stroked a hand down the side of Green’s helmet, clawed fingers scraping over it. “Unauthorised. We’re here to send a warning. This is dangerous territory. Bad things happen to ships that wander in here without permission.”

“…‘business interests?’” Green echoed. “Oh my god, are you working for the – the space mafia?”

Orange laughed, sounding genuinely amused, which was somehow worse than if he’d just been mocking. “That’s about right.” His hands were on either side of Green’s neck, now, and Green wondered if this was where it would end. If those hands would grab his head and twist until his neck snapped, grip his throat and squeeze until the world went black. But instead, they found the catches on the sides of Green’s helmet, and released them with a soft hiss of air. “Let me get a look at you, gorgeous. That’s better.”

He lifted the helmet away. Green shivered at the feeling of cold air on his face, that layer of protection stripped away, however fragile a protection it had been. Now there was nothing between him and Orange, those dark alien eyes piercing into him.

“Please don’t do this.” The words came out hushed, barely audible even to Green himself over the panicked rush of blood in his ears. Even as he said them he knew it was hopeless. Orange would only take pleasure in hearing him beg. Some sick, desperate part of Green wondered whether maybe he’d be allowed to live, if he was entertaining enough. “I – I’ll do anything you want,” he whispered, looking away as his face burned with shame.

“Anything, huh?” Orange mused, looking Green up and down. His tongue flicked out from between his lower set of jaws, trailing up the length of Green’s body. Green shuddered, unable to pull away, and Orange smiled. “You know, I hear that a lot but I never get tired of it. Trouble is, beautiful, you’re already doing exactly what I want.”

He reached behind Green and gripped hold of his bound wrists, spinning him around. “And now you’re going to come to Caf with me. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Green felt a new terror stab through his chest. He hadn’t thought there could be any more. Surely soon he’d collapse under the strain, break in two and not be able to feel anything. That – that wouldn’t be so bad, would it? If he could just stop. If everything in him could just give up.

“Shh, I know,” Orange crooned, his tone sickeningly, mockingly gentle even as he shoved Green along ahead of him, through the corridor leading up to Navigation and O2. “You just want it to be over now, huh?”

Green didn’t answer. There was nothing safe to say. There was nothing else he wanted to say. Orange didn’t care.

Footsteps sounded ahead of them. Cyan rounded the corner, a knife in her hand, a spray of blood darkening the side of her helmet. The twin candy canes attached at either side of her head did nothing to make the sight less horrifying.

Orange stopped, Green stumbling to a halt with him. “You’re done already?” he asked, surprise and disappointment in his voice.

Cyan nodded. “Brown’s taken care of. I set up the body the way you suggested.”

Green’s stomach dropped. Just me now… Oh god, Brown, I’m so sorry – I should’ve – known better, been better, done something…

“Well, now you gave away the surprise,” Orange complained, in a mock-pouting tone, giving Green’s shoulder a little pat. Green shuddered. “But seriously, Skla,” Orange went on, and it took Green a second to realise that last cluster of consonants had been a name. “I thought we were doing this together.”

Cyan sighed, pressing a hand to her forehead, just above her helmet’s visor. “Uron, I’m going along with this because you had a point about the boss wanting… spectacle. That doesn’t mean I’m interested in watching you play with your latest toy. Do whatever you’re going to do with him, have your fun, I’ll be in Nav.”

She turned to leave. Her eyes passed over Green as though he wasn’t there at all. Orange sighed behind him. “Fine. You have blood all over your face, by the way.”

Cyan paused. She was facing away, so Green couldn’t see what happened in any detail, but there was a faint squelching noise as writhing tendrils crept from where her face ought to have been around the sides of her head. When they withdrew, her helmet was clean again.

“…thanks.” The word sounded grudging. She moved on into Navigation.

Orange pushed Green forward, up toward Weapons. “Looks like this party’s just going to be you and me, buddy.”

“Please.” Green didn’t even know what he was pleading for. There wouldn’t be any mercy here.

“Oh, don’t worry.” Orange ran fingers through Green’s hair and pulled his head back, breath hot against his ear. “I’m gonna have a blast.”

They stepped through into Caf. The scent of blood hung in the air, turning Green’s stomach as it hit him without the protective distance of his helmet. And then he saw what was on the central table, and finally lost the battle he’d been fighting with himself not to throw up.

Brown’s arms had been tied behind his back, his legs bent backward and fastened to his wrists. His head was gone. It might have been perched on a table off to the side, or maybe that was just his helmet, its reindeer antler headband still attached.

What was left of him looked, at first glance, like a giant cooked turkey.

Green stared at Orange in horrified disbelief. He’d known the impostor had a warped sense of humour, but this…

Orange grinned double, every one of his teeth showing. He reached behind him to pull something out of his pack. A knife the twin of Cyan’s, gleaming in the coloured lights.

He pressed the point of the blade underneath Green’s chin, forcing him to lift his head up to avoid being stabbed. Which only exposed his throat, of course, the cold metal tracing over his skin, close to delicate arteries.

“You know why I picked you?” Orange asked, softly.

Green almost shook his head, but he didn’t dare move. And he knew, anyway, didn’t he? Hadn’t Orange said it? “Because – I was easy. I was d–  I was dumb enough to trust you, right?” His voice cracked as he spoke, tears flowing down his cheeks that he couldn’t wipe away.

“Oh, beautiful, no, that’s not it.” The words sounded like comfort, but Orange’s face was all avid delight. “Don’t get me wrong, you were delicious, all anxious and vulnerable and trusting, but you want to know the real reason?” He gestured with his free hand at the room around them. “I picked you for the aesthetic. Red and green are festive colours, right?”

Green blinked, his mind stalling as it tried to process that. “We don’t have a Red –” he responded reflexively, before the implication caught up to him. “…oh.”

Orange smiled, ruffling Green’s hair even as he traced the blade down over his chest, stopping with it pointed at his stomach. “See? You got there eventually.”

[vanaera]

You Will Feel A Flash of Red

Synopsis | Seokjin colors your life with his outrageous ideas and unnecessarily wild adventures, along with his stupid mission to always scare you whenever you run into each other. Against your better judgment, you’ve already started to entertain foreign feelings in your heart concerning the certain boy. And it doesn’t help you already get scared easily without him adding his shenanigans in the mix. You just want Seokjin to stop…making you feel too much all at once. Genre | Fluff, semi-crack Characters | Seokjin x Reader (College!AU bc I’m soft and my uni life is mundane af) Wordcount | 2.7k A/N | Hi hons, this is something short and fluffy I came up with while I’m resting from my recent 21k-wordsmash-work Daffodil Rings. Hope you like this!

               Everything can be colorful if you will them enough to. Grocery shoppings can be filled with oranges and greens that warm you up as you push past the cold airconditioned mart. Laundry days can be cooled with the tranquility of blues and whites that coax your eyes to relax from such a fast-paced week. You learned to make this your coping mechanism ever since you started associating colors for everything that lived in your grey, mundane life.  

               Your study table and work station are your usual pliant canvases to your color imageries. However, your biggest coloring book has to be the people that surround you. For instance, your bestfriend, Park Jimin, is a golden drizzle of yellow for his unfailing optimism whether it be finals week or rush hour dashes. Meanwhile, your other friend, Kim Namjoon, is an inky indigo for his strange concurrent displays of placidity and chaos wherever he goes.  Your roommate, Wendy Seon, is an easy magenta for her innateness to attract attention wherever she goes. Unlike her, Min Yoongi, your batch representative, was a hard-to-determine cream white for his introvertedness and tough-bitch acts. But among these people you have met, there is one who stands out like a sore thumb: Kim Seokjin.

               Kim Seokjin is a friend of Namjoon and you only knew about it when you shared a general education film class with him in sophomore year. He was easy to say…a different story from anyone you’ve met.  

               “You’re Y/N, right?”

               Your eyes flit to your left to meet the eyes of the boy seated next to you and you nodded slowly. How did he know you? Much more your name? You’re sure you’ve never met him before and you’re much surer you’re someone everyone can easily miss.

               “Namjoon told me your name when I asked him about you. I’m Kim Seokjin,” he offers a hand. You shook it slowly, your head tilted to the side, still bewildered as to how he knew you. Unfazed by your questioning stare, Seokjin grins. “I didn’t know you’re also taking this class.”

               “I…I like films so yeah,” you shrug.

               “Me too!” Seokjin chuckles. He leans closer to your seat. “You’re in the biochemistry program right?”

               Your forehead furrows. “Excuse me?”

               “Oh, I am in the biology program and I saw you going out of the lab when our class was about to start in the same lab. Your blue scrunchie gave you away.”

                Your hand deftly reached up to your ponytail and Seokjin laughs. “Don’t worry, you look cute with it,” he waves off and the furrows on your forehead only grow deeper. What is this man spouting about? Is he outright hitting on you–  

               The door swings open and the professor barks the usual morning greeting. Your thoughts were immediately halted. A few minutes is all it takes for everything to settledown into a metronome of students whispering across each other and pens scribbling notes. You wouldn’t have found yourself bothered again by the strange man sitting beside you if Seokjin didn’t just open his mouth to say the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard in your entire life when the professor asked everyone what names they would like to be called in class.

               “Señorita. Call me señorita.”

               Needless to say, the class erupted into a hysterics and you’re left wondering for days (and oddly irritated) why everyone finds it so funny to bring that scenario up again and again until the next two weeks.

               Such small timeframe is also enough for you to say Seokjin’s a mess.  But oh, everyone will disagree. They will say “Oh my God, how can Seokjin be a mess? He’s like the university crush and he has damn good grades and have you seen him wearing those goggles during lab hours?! He’s the only one handsome enough to pull it off as a fashion statement! ” in their wistfully annoying voice. First of all, you don’t care whether he’s good in what he does or he has a really good-looking face. What else but a mess will be someone who’s all-over-the-place?

               Some days, Seokjin is a calm sky blue you can actually have fun with talking about film what-ifs and chemistry memes.

               “Yo Y/N, imagine if The Princess and The Frog was remade and instead of a frog, the prince is a pterodactyl.”

               “I don’t want to imagine that.”

                “The solution of the plot will still work though. You can’t kiss pterodactyls though, but guess what?”

               “I don’t want to guess.”

               “C’mon, just play along!”

               “Fine, what?”

                “They will peck you!”

                 “Have you ever wondered what Australia will be called if it suddenly finds itself abundant of silver.”

               “No. Leave Australia alone.”

               Seokjin doesn’t hear you and bursts out “Agstralia!” He guffaws at his own joke and you can’t help but snicker at his priceless face and laugh at yourself in pity for finding it even remotely funny.

               When his laughter dies down, Seokjin goes again, “Then what if it’s filled with copper?”

               You don’t want to answer him, already biting your lip in silent laughter.

               “Custralia!”

                 Most of the days, Seokjin’s a fiery orange of fireworks who drags you into the wildest rides of your life with his ever loud, but oddly inviting, “Yo, Y/N!” Like that one Monday afternoon he coaxed you (in some goddamn way you dumbly agreed to) to scavenge for some specimen of Bermuda grass to see it under the microscope and check if it has any semblance to the Bermuda Triangle (of course it has none). You accomplished nothing that day but run around like cockroaches with no heads when an old woman chased you for trampling on her “garden” which is just a plain expanse of grass. Or that one Wednesday morning he asked you to accompany him in his dorm just in case he managed to summon a demon when he tries to cook using an old Latin cookbook he found in some thrift store. You didn’t summon anything that day but you ended up with you two getting summoned by the condominium’s landlord because Seokjin accidentally set off the unit’s fire alarm.

               There are also times when Seokjin’s an endearing bloom of pink. Like those days when his hand casually brushes against yours as you walk side by side to your film class and he’ll send you one of his goofy smiles. Or those weekends where he’ll accompany you to study in the library, helping you make flash cards for your upcoming long quizzes.   Seokjin makes you feel warm at the slightest of stares and lingering gazes. Especially in those nights where he lays his head on your shoulder as you watch required films, and he’ll stare at you while doing kissy faces when you tell him his head is too heavy.  You never knew you would be able to fill something, no someone, in such a delicate color you know you have already started to reflect on your cheeks just at the sight of him.

               But all of that gets ruined because Seokjin always, always, makes you see blazing scarlet everytime he carries on  his life mission to scare you whenever you meet. It started when your professor assigned your class to watch The Shining for a horror genre essay and you, like the scaredy cat you are, begged Seokjin to watch it with you. Of course you didn’t tell him you’re not too fond of horror films, afraid of being called out. Obviously, it only takes one stare at your curled up form for Seokjin to put two and two together and realize you’re such a…coward. And of course, like the obnoxious boy he is, Seokjin takes advantage of such knowledge and decides you need a little spice in your life–a spice you didn’t really need, nor will ever need in your entire life.

               Whenever you’ll meet him on the corridors of your film class, Seokjin is now nowhere to be found. Instead, he’ll demand you to answer a quick survey first, a condition for him to show up, and you, like the exasperated idiot you are, answer it just to get on and over with it.  Like always, you end up screaming at a scary video mid-answering the questions and you never learn your lesson.  Everytime you’ll pass by each other in hallways, Seokjin bellows a loud “Boo!” with a thunderous clap of his huge ass hands and you always jump in shock like a cat on her hackles.  You never knew how to expect the shits he pull up because Seokjin always changes his patterns. One day, he even pulled up a Scream mask by your locker just right after you closed it shut, making you scream as you fall on your bum.

               At the end of the day, Seokjin always makes sure to apologize and assure you that it’s just his way to bond with you. “I just can’t get enough of your priceless face” he snickers and you start to chuckle too at his attempts – because even if you’re scared, his shenanigans actually helped you, in some way, get less scared of horror film jump scares.

               However today–today is a different straw.

               It was nine o'clock in the evening and you just got out of your building after an org meeting. The campus gate you usually take in your commute home was already locked closed at eight so you have no choice but to take the other gate–the one on the far left boundary of the campus. All would have been fine about that gate if you hadn't read the Facebook freedom wall post concerning it yesterday. Apparently, some student was jogging around the route towards the gate every night before he goes back to his dorm. In the entirety of his jog, he hears footsteps behind him that he didn't mind at first– until he passes by a guard who greets him and asks him what's he's doing alone so late. When he glances to the left, there was actually no one following him.

               At the thought of the Facebook post, you grab the straps of your bagpack tighter. All is well. You just have about twenty meters to go before the gate and after that, you'll get on a bus. Just a little bit more and–

               Step. Step. Step.

               Jesus fucking Christ. You bit your lip and walked faster. Your steps are frantic and you could feel cold perspiration start to form on your nape. You could feel yourself tripping on your shoes anytime soon but the only thought running in your mind now is outrunning the thing behind you.

               However, the steps behind you also quickened its pace.

               Fucking shit. You break into a run. You don't care about social conventions nor how ridiculous you probably look right now with your eyes teary, mouth dry, and hair frazzled. All you know is that you have to get OUT of there.

               But your effort is not enough because just five steps in, a hand shoots out behind you and you have nothing to do but scream. Scream, drop down, and cry.

               “Leave me a-alone please. Just let m-me go home. I'm to-too young to die!”

               “Yo Y/N. It's me, Seokjin.”

               You cried harder.

               In the next second, you feel him squat down and gesture toward your arms, tightly corded around your knees with your head still buried between them. But you didn't move. You can't move. Your fingers are still shaking, and your heart won't stop pounding too fast. And you feel like any second right now, you're about to explode.

               “Y/N, I'm sorry I scared you. I just saw you going out and I have something to say to you before you go home.”

               You couldn't hold it in. You pin Seokjin with the meanest glare you can muster. “WHY DO YOU HAVE TO COME AT ME LIKE THAT THEN?!”

               “I was just running after you! You were walking too fast and you didn't see me so I–”

               “I thought you were a ghost! Jesus Christ!”

               “A ghost?” Jin sputters before breaking out into a loud guffaw. “I'm so handsome to be a ghost. Seriously, Y/N–”

               “It's not funny anymore you know,” you whisper. Seokjin's chuckles immediately die down. “Can you just stop,” you hiccup, “scaring me everytime we meet? It's not good for my heart.”

               “I...I didn't know you felt like that,” Seokjin mumbles and he looks down, rubbing his nape. “I...I thought you were also having fun because you always laugh after it.”

               “It was fun,” you admit, “but it's also scary. I'm a coward you know. I have my limits.”

               “I'm sorry,” Seokjin mumbles. But before you can reply that it's alright as long as he doesn't do this shit again, he has already cupped your face in his hands, leaving you no choice but to look at him. Look at him in all your snotty glory.

               Seokjin however, doesn't seem to care. “I'm sorry I scared you that bad. I would not have started doing this scaring thing if I knew it will end up with you breaking down. I'm sorry I didn't know you get scared this bad. I don't like...making you cry.” At this, you feel his thumbs pressing on your cheeks and wiping away the tears that have streaked down in your panic. You can't move, this time for a different reason. You can't feel anything but the presence of the boy in front of you. His warm, beautiful eyes that only look like that when they meet your eyes; his much warmer hand that feels too big on your face–big and secure enough for your hand to hold with an assurance he’ll never let go. His cheeks are rosy, just like his ears and you feel oddly elated it has grown pinker just in five more seconds of staring at his eyes. And his lips–pink and plump and looking so soft–fills your senses into sensory overload that you honestly feel you're heating up like a boiling kettle by now.

               Good for you, Seokjin doesn't question your frozen stance and silently helps you up on your feet. “Sorry’s not enough. I'll make up for what I did. C'mon.”

               Before you knew it, he's already steering you away from the gate and back into the campus. And now at ten thirty, you find yourself munching on a strawberry ice cream cone with Seokjin beside you, your knees bumping into each other.

               “Why do you do it anyway?”

               “What do I do?”

               “Scaring me,” You answer, wiping your lips.

               “Are you...still angry about it? I'm sorr–”

               “No,” you wave off, “I'm just...curious, yeah. I've never had someone doing that to me and you're probably the only one crazy enough to do that. I'm just curious why you do it in the first place.”

               “Well, you already said it," Seokjin chuckles. “No one has ever done it to you yet. So I did.”

               Your brows raise, your forehead furrows. "Wh-why?”

               “Because I want to be different when it comes to you. I've seen you goofing off with Jimin on hallways and–I don't know why, I just get this feeling that I have to be unique when it comes to you.”

               “Why? I mean," you sputter, "I don't require you to be…different to be my friend.”

               “I just want to. It feels good that I get to be the wild adventure of your life. It feels good that I get you to look only at me like that–begrudging but curious, skeptical but willing, and," he smiles, "cute. Especially when I get you to laugh.”

               You look at him, mouth agape, but Seokjin just laughs and gestures you to eat your ice cream because it's starting to melt. You oblige, but you can't help but let your eyes linger on the boy next to you. The boy you didn’t know was like the biggest hotshot of your batch but was the one to actually remember you from the crowd just by your favorite scrunchie. The boy who used to be your greatest dilemma but now the best highlight of your life. The boy that annoys you to no end but oddly makes your heart flutter at the same time. Seokjin, the boy you can now begrudgingly admit you're definitely crushing on. Because you know there's no other answer to the overwhelming, warm flash of soft red you feel on your chest whenever you're with him.

               You know you're right because after that night, you start to associate Seokjin mostly with red. Fresh roses, picnic dates, heart-shaped promises, sweet laughter, cherry kisses–a plethora of everything your heart started to long for.

 A/N | HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BEST GIRL @sophrosinn!!! Thank you for being a stable shoulder I can lean on in times of problems, for being a great listener to everything I rant about, and for being one of my bestest friends who never failed to support me in my dreams.  (Thank you for also comforting me when I broke down in our live news presentation in our media literacy class. I’ll never forget that). I never imagined you’ll be one of my few friends I get to keep ‘til now since it’s only two years ago we got to really, really talk with each other. Remember how we just used to pass by and greet each other in our freshman until 11thgrade year in high school? Such a great plot twist. Time sure flies fast when you’re with the best people. Meeting you is surely a blessing. I wish you more amazing years ahead of you and may you accomplish all your endeavors. I love you!

P.S. I hope you liked this fluffy fic hehe this idea started to bother me ever since your birthday started to near. And yeah, I HAVE to include the pterodactyl joke because it’s your and Jin’s trademark uwu

All Rights Reserved © Vanaera. Reposts, modifications, and translations of content are not allowed without direct permission.

[davids-cartoon-corkboard]

I'm starting to think that Venomous and Shadowy Figure aren't twin brothers but one of them is the turbonic form of Laserblast. It's hard to say for sure which one is the turbo form because while Venomous is similar in personality to Laserblast ( Calm and collected, likes cute animals, romantically attracted to those who show strength. ) it feels like Shadowy Figure is more actively fit, carefree, goofy, and seems to genuinely care for K.O which gives him heroic traits.

I think Venomous and Shadowy Figure are brothers (maybe nottwins), and Shadowy Figure is Laserblast. However, Shadowy isn’tturbo!Laserblast. Which sounds confusing, but I’ll try to explain.

(longish post under the cut)

Coincidences happen all the time in real life. But OK KO isa story, and coincidences don’t happen nearly as often in stories. This storyhas only two purple snake people. Not two prominentpurple snake people, two purple snake people period. And they’re both voiced by Steven Ogg! They’re connected somehow.To fit with the show’s themes of family and identity, they’re either related orthe same person. (If someone can think of a third option that would fit, I’dlove to hear it.)

Ven and Shadowy aren’t the same person. Shadowy is veryfixated on KO and his power. Wouldn’t figuring out how to obtain it be aninteresting and complex project for Ven? But Ven had been dealing withlong-term boredom as of “Boxman Crashes”. Wouldn’t he have at least mentionedbeing frustrated at “not making progress” or being “stuck on a problem”? Thosetwo puzzle pieces don’t fit together.

Also, Shadowy Figure made a huge tactical blunder that wouldn’t have happened if he wasVenomous. When Fink was upset she couldn’t go to the party in “Villain’s Night In”, Ven apologized for disappointing her (via text, but still an apology). Every good parent knows the powerof an apology. And from a strategic standpoint, Shadowy should have apologizedfor hurting KO. I doubt he feels guilty about it, but when has the idea oflying ever stopped people like him? The second time he interacted with KO wasin “Let’s Have a Stakeout”. He acted manipulative, insulted KO, and physicallyattacked him. What if he hadn’t done that? What if he had met KO in the sewersand said, “I’m sorry”?

“KO, I’m sorry for what happened to the Plaza. If I hadknown the true extent of your power I would never have pushed you so hard inthe first place. I wanted to help you, but I wasn’t careful enough and wound uphurting you and many others instead. This is all my fault, and I am so, sosorry.”

Suddenly KO doesn’t feel quite so guilty for wrecking thePlaza, because Shadowy has taken the blame instead. Suddenly this guy isn’t anenemy, but a potential ally who just made a mistake. People forgive KO when hemakes mistakes, shouldn’t he do the same? And so what if Shadowy’s POW cardsays he’s level negative eight? KO’s card obviously isn’t accurate, so maybeShadowy’s isn’t either!

Maybe KO starts to trust Shadowy again, putting him in theideal situation to be manipulated. Carol and Gar and everyone else would thinkhis new friend was evil, so KO can’t tell them he’s visiting Shadowy. Shadowywants to fix this, so maybe it’s okay for him to take a few hair and salivasamples. Both want KO to use this power responsibly, so maybe he’d considerpracticing with it… just a little…

But Shadowy isn’t Venomous, so he messed up and none of thathappened. It would have been so cool,though.

Since Ven and Shadowy are not the same person, they must berelated. I only call them brothers for convenience, they could be cousins orsomething.

Where does Laser fit into this? Well, he’s not dead. Acharacter isn’t confirmed dead if nobody finds the body. And it doesn’t makesense for him to have said “screw this” and gone off to chill on a tropicalisland for the past six to eleven years without letting anyone know he wasokay. He must still be relevant. “Where did Laser go?” and “Where did Shadowycome from?” are questions that easily answer one another.

Both the blue and green orbs activated in the “Let’s Take aMoment” flashback. It’s possible the red orb also activated, removing Laser’spowers. Laser is clearly KO’s father. Children tend to inherit their powersfrom their parents. Shadowy wants KO’s power, but we don’t know the reason. Laserhas a reason, though. Them being the same person would fill in that blank verynicely.

While Shadowy is morecarefree and goofy than Laser, Shadowy isn’t under the pressure of Being a GoodExample, Not Disappointing Foxtail, and Not Blowing His Cover. I’m much morepolite and formal at my job than I am at home. This difference in personalitycan likely be chalked up to a difference in environment. Goofy isn’t inherentlya heroic trait either, Boxman is very goofy but he is absolutely a villain.

I don’t see any evidence for the Laser=Ven idea. While theirpersonalities are similar, it’s possible that’s just due to being raised in thesame environment. Sure, Ven has something to do with turbo power, but hisinterest in KO specifically is minimal, even though KO is apparently a sourceof it. He doesn’t seem to prioritize antagonizing KO over Rad or Enid. He hasno reason to attack the Plaza or its members other than to have fun withBoxman. We haven’t seen him interact with or comment on Carol. His opinion onP.O.I.N.T. seems to be wholly negative instead of wistful or bittersweet. Therearen’t enough strings linking the two for me to think they’re the same person.

Laserblast is Shadowy Figure, and that person is Venomous’brother. “Shadowblast” wants KO’s power so he can restore his own. But thepower he wants isn’t just turbo power. In “Boxman Crashes”, Venbecame more snakelike when he lost his temper. Ven has shapeshifting abilities,but he doesn’t use them a lot because he fights with science instead of hisbody. His brother Shadowy may have also had shapeshifting abilities. But sinceShadowy is a physical fighter, hewould have had more incentive to train and improve his powers.

Perhaps he got so good at shapeshifting he could change intoa human form?

And that is where“Laserblast” comes from. No turbo power, no two identities housed in one body,just regular-ass shapeshifting and a whole lot of lies.

KO’s eyes are typically brown (like Carol’s?), but have beenred, purple, both, or a mix when influenced by turbo power.

Maybe Shadowy hadpurple eyes and tried to change them to red to match Laser’s visor beam, butcouldn’t do it fully? Laser always hid his eyes because one was stuck atpurple. We could see this heterochromia in modern day Shadowy and that will beThe Big Reveal.

But why wouldShadowy undergo such a dramatic change for such a long period of time?

My theory is that Ven and Shadowy are from a formerlypowerful villain family. Shadowy had a mission to infiltrate P.O.I.N.T., butcouldn’t complete it because he lost his powers and permanently reverted to hisoriginal form (except possibly for his red eye). His failure disgraced thefamily. Ven often wears a hat and glasses in public and Shadowy Figure wears ahood because they don’t want to be recognized as members of the disgracedfamily.

Shadowy wants his powers back so he doesn’t have to sneakaround everywhere. Perhaps he even wants to become Laser again, to make up astory about why he was gone so long and return to his former friends. Cob knowshis family won’t take him back.

Shadowy had major shapeshifting abilities, while Carol hasnone. This gives KO minor shapeshifting abilities. Because the abilities are sominor (and possibly because he doesn’t know he has them), they only manifestwhen boosted by turbo power. We can see this in “You’re Level 100”, when KO wasusing turbo power before TKO had fully formed. His eyes, teeth, and claws areclearly different.

KO’s minor shifting powers with enough turbonic energyshould get Shadowy back to his original ability level.

“But David!” you ask. “If Shadowy’s power is onlyshapeshifting, then where does KO’s turbo power come from?”

It comes from Carol. And I know that sounds like a reach,but hear me out. Carol can mimic any combat move she sees. We see this mostoften when she copies Gar’s signature move. But it’s not your standard elbowattack- it also emits a pink energy. This suggests Carol could mimic otherenergy emitting moves.

Remember that turbo collar Ven made for Fink? It worked very well! The only reason it stopped was because it ran out of power. There weren’t any glitches or malfunctions. That means it probably isn’t the first iteration of this project. Perhaps he’s had prototypes for years and years, but hardly made useof them because he a) didn’t have a stable glorb supply, b) doesn’t dohand-to-hand combat himself, and/or c) didn’t trust anyone he might have beenworking with to use it. But he let Fink have it because she’s loyal and theynow have access to Boxman’s glorbs.

The tree under the Plaza is a source of glorbs. Presumablythere’s another one somewhere else underground, as suggested by the glorbcluster Gar sealed up in “GarQuest”. There are likely more of them scatteredacross the world. If we’ve noticedthe similarity between glorbs and the colored orbs, P.O.I.N.T. may have too.Carol’s new outfit in the “GarQuest” flashback suggests she still did somenon-secret hero work after Laser’s death, presumably until she realized she waspregnant. I think she was sent on a mission to make sure a glorb tree didn’tfall under villain control, and got in a fight when she arrived; perhapsagainst Venomous himself, perhaps against someone he used to test the collar on.If Carol fought a collar-powered villain while in a glorb-rich environment, shecould have used her ability to temporarily go turbo herself.

Which could do odd things to a fetus.

While KO has a weaker version of his father’s power, he alsohas a weaker version of his mother’s. “Copycat” becomes “Imprint”. He can copyan energy-emitting ability… but only once, and then he’s stuck with it.Normally he wouldn’t have been able to do this until after he was born, butsince he was essentially soaked inturbo power, he imprinted early.

This would explain why his standard power fist is blue- it’sthe color of a normal glorb. Only under special circumstances can he use theturbo version. It might also be why PKO’s headband and wristbands are blue.

That’s why Carol has no fucking clue what’s going on withher kid. It wasn’t a particularly memorable mission, and she was focused on hergrief. She has no reason to connect it to KO’s situation six to eleven yearslater. Maybe now that Foxtail’s done a heel face turn we can get access to someold mission files.

I’d say, “this is a bit complex for a children’s cartoon”,but Gravity Falls and Steven Universe pulled off some wild shit. It couldhappen!

This was probably way more of a reply than either of us were expecting, haha. But that’s my take on things! Y’all are welcome to bring up new evidence, alternate theories, corrections, etc.

[alitheamateur]

The Grind-Chapter 21

Warnings: Angst. Language. Mentions of actions related to a sexual nature. 

A/N: Since I punished you all with that painfully short chapter yesterday, I felt it only right not to make you wait for this load of story. Buckle down kids, this is a lengthy bit!

The tense way our bodies snuggled to each other as we traveled now down a quieter four lane highway, was an immensely warm consummation I had grown addictively accustom to. Occasionally, he’d drop one hand from steering the bike to pet over my arms clutched to his waist, stroking a thumb to the skin he found there. I smiled in secret at the chills that arose at his feverish, yet boyish touch, knowing he was smiling himself at the reaction his contact triggered.  The greenery and much clearer air, free of the industrial, city smog, painted a storybook picturesque view of rural Pittsburgh. Where in the blazes could he be dragging me? Not saying the lushness of the apparent countryside didn’t lull me into a satisfactory coma of contentment at the slight similarities I found of Westfield.

I saw his wrist twitch letting off the accelerator, and our speed decreased turning near a lot with a simple painted sign reading “Duquesne Inlcine.” The location seemed maybe vaguely familiar, like I’d heard it mentioned in a passing conversation sometime or another, but I couldn’t say I was properly acquainted. The vast variety of parking was well, strangely a ghost town. The weather was sheer sunshine perfection, it was the weekend, so where were all the people? He pulled off his helmet, revealing the heat of the sun that had been trapped around his head causing his locks to appear spritzed with sweat, and a whimper of surprise at his exterior escaped me. Was I ever going to grow suitably acclimated with just how gloriously handsome he was in entirety? Judging by the current timeline of events, he would only grow more attractive with age, and I would become even more vulnerable to his refined features. Time was on his side, and only a mere year or so had passed since I’d seen him up close. Only now, that particular day, his eyes weren’t nearly as bright with blue, and their usual glint absent when I looked deeper. Was he... nervous? 

“Bet no one has drug you up here since you moved?” He shook my ears to attention.

“You’ve got me there. Where, where are we exacty?” I returned his question with one of my own, pulling off the helmet. Silently praying my hair wasn’t as out of place as the ones his head. Messy, tangled bedhead wasn’t a look that suited me as it did him. Why are you staring, Liv. You’ve seen the man naked and you’re shook up by some disheveled hair? Get laid, you pathetic hag.

“Ya’ gonna love it, Livvy,” his accent making me smile serenely. It appeared to thicken under three particular emotions: excitement, anger, and.. arousal. Three emotions that the brash drawl worked with ever so dangerously perfect.

“Colt, hey, uhm, where is everyone though? Like where is anybody actually?” He only let go of my hand to graciously hold a door open before returning the smile to a young man behind a counter in the lobby. He was younger than Colton and myself, only by a few years, and had a build similar, however much less intimidating to my date for the day.

“Allen, how are ya, you little shit?” Colton’s hand was settled around my waist squeezing lightly over my hip as he addressed the kind leer of this Allan character standing at a register. They shook hands briefly, and I felt oddly like an intruding bystander gawking about while the two men exchanged hellos.

“I’m not doing too bad, Ritter. Not as good as you clearly, beating all those asses in the cage these days.” He complimented in a congratulatory, yet envious voice.

“Don’t even start, bro. You been doin’ damn good for yourself, I ain’t blind.” Colt argued. “Hey, this is Liv, by the way, Al,” he winked at me with is introduction.

“Very nice to meet you, Allen. Clearly you guys know each other?” I giggled gesturing a handshake over the counter to his accepting palm, still utterly clueless to what we were indeed doing here.

“Yeah, babe. Allen’s a fighter too, I busted him a couple times when we were first starting out.” I saw him side eye towards his friend gauging a reaction to his snide comments. “His his family runs the place here, so I called in a favor with an old friend to bring ya’ here.”

“Smug bigshot here rented the place out for you, Liv. What the hell do ya’ have on ‘em?” Allen burst out quickly, then lost his smile once realizing that little detail may have been intended to remain a secret.

I lifted a hand to tug at Colton, my eyes yielding a flood of gratitude, confusion, flattery, reserve at how much this ordeal had to have cost him, and scolding him for going to such unnecessary, yet deeply appreciated lengths.

“Let’s go, babe. C’mon I wanna show you what were doin.” His own hand outreached to touch my reddening cheek with his battered knuckles.  

I followed to a windowpane, gazing out to discover a machine resembling some sort of cable car, tucked carefully into the tree sprinkled hillside. Then, farther left, trailing down the funicular built to carry the car, the wide spans of what seemed to be the entire south side of Pittsburgh was nestled comfortably inside the bosom of the Ohio River. My cheerful face began to hurt from the extended upturning of my expression. Hot rays of the sun were gleaming reflections off the rippling water, whose color closely resembled the one in the eyes I felt staring at me from the back.

“OK, it’s ridiculously beautiful up here, Colton. God!”

“You like it, do ya’? Just wait till you see it all from the trolley. Dad used to bring me here every year for the 4th of July so we could see all the fireworks around the city.” He nodded to his right, indicating we take our places so he could show me the view he so apparently loves of his city.

The motor operated car doors slid open in unison reveling a wicker basket placed alone in the center of the empty box lined with seats. The lid of the picnic basket closed, displaying a ribbon tied bundle of pink peonies, of course. This batch however more conservative than the hefty dozens from my birthday. He thankfully read my mind, carefully stepping up behind to take me into his warm embrace, resting his prominent chin on the shoulder next to my ear.

“Whaddya think, Livvy?” His hot question shivered down my neck. Literally hot, his own breaths nearly incinerated my eardrum like some sort of well-trained dragon. The pattering of his pumping heart in the middle of my back was like the unsung lullaby I never knew I needed. I almost internally feel the cadence of my own heart catch up to sync with Colton’s.

Kiss him. Now. RIGHT NOW. Who needs pride anyway?

I loved and feared all the same the effect he had on me always. A new emotion enraptured me every time he was near, each more overwhelming than the last, and I felt him willing me to lose control. But, the pangs of heartbreak seized a friendly reminder when I felt I’d give in to those wet, desirable lips, and I held off. For now.

“You did.. ok, I guess,” I shrugged fighting to remain stern, stifling a smile behind cherry flavored lips.

“Damn, tough crowd. Ya’ little critic.” The man huffed out with an exaggerated roll of his smiling eyes. “Well, it worked for all those other girls I brought up here….”

Counter, Colton Ritter. Two could play those games, seemingly.

I threw a rear jab with my elbow to his still closely pressed abdomen, choking a goofy giggle of pain, and pleasure. He loves any fiery reaction he suck out of me.  

“Easy there, slugger. I’m kiddin’. You know that!” He defended lowly. “Besides, you know there’s only one particular green-eyed girl I have eyes for.”

My God. Usually, that sickeningly, derivative come on would’ve sent me gagging a mile in the opposite direction, running for the hills around me. But, things I normally viewed as stupid, and cheesy, and even.. unintelligent coming from most, made me feel so utterly warm with affection coming from him. I think it’s because I know when they come from his particular mouth, they’re genuine. He doesn’t have a plethora of douchebag pick-up lines tucked away in the rolodex of his mind. He’s never needed it. Girls crumbled at his very feet, which was much, MUCH to my dismay. I can’t recall how many times precisely that I worked myself into a jealous frenzy over some harlot trouncing her perky bust brazenly under his nose, grasping for one lingering look from him.

“So, what’s for lunch then? My breakfast is wearing off.” I inquired as I slowly walked around the empty car, mentally tucking away snapshots of this utterly astounding view resembling something from a post card.

 We ate quietly seated next to each other towards the front of the car, the Pittsburgh skyline painting a backdrop of pure beauty. Colton had kept it simple with his picnic basket, stuffing it with fresh fruits, some light sandwiches, and much to my satisfaction, a stockpile of my favorite truffles from the bakery neighboring The Grind. He had the memory of an elephant.

When he had pulled out the stashed box of dark chocolates from the bottom of the basket, he giggled with a shaken head at the child-like gasps and eager hand claps from me, instantly recognizing the golden, polka dot box. I still wanted to kiss him. Deeply, kiss him. The desire to do so hadn’t subsided a single inkling since his arrival to retrieve me. Matter of fact, it probably tripled. And the unintentional, habitual way he always licked that perfect pink lower lip of his after pulling it between his top row of teeth was only persecuting me all the more. I want to bite that lip. Let me! let me do it!

“Thank you, Livvy babe.” He chimed randomly, shocking me from the salacious thoughts of him that were currently running on an endless loop in my head. 

“For what, exactly?” Tucking the third truffe shamelessly in my mouth. “I should be the one thanking you. For all this..”

“Thank you for agreeing to come with me today. Ya’ didn’t have to, and honestly I didn’t fuckin’ deserve it.” His head dropped and his hand went to the back of his head, a worrisome practice of his own, I’d noticed.

I couldn’t bare the weighted sadness shown over his tightly drawn in mouth. A year ago, maybe. Maybe it would’ve felt like a sweet reward of revenge, after the hasty, crushing things he said to me. But now, it was like a bullet wound festering through my belly. Why couldn’t he see what I see in him? Yes, he is violent. Yes, he’s very much possessive and crude, and sometimes demented with anger, but he’s much more. I see his kindness, the genuinely raw way that he’s so ferociously protective over those he cares for. Colton is intelligent, he’s fearless, he’s the most brutally dedicated man to his career. Maybe all too much. He was extremely gentle sometimes, too. So innocently, childishly so. Physically, and verbally as well, if the particular moment called for him to be so.

The other hand, he was darkly passionate, almost fearfully passionate at times, actually.  And I do love those passionate moments. Damn it. But surely. Surely if he didn’t see all those interior, loveable characteristics I recognized, he had to know he was beautiful. He was a human being with color changing, blue/gray/green eyes, for goodness sake. He was picturesque sex, truly. The way he carried his shifty, built shoulders, and the way he always slid his hands in his pockets when he walked. Agonizingly accentuating his ink plastered biceps, the biceps that could probably crush steel beams in the company of Superman himself.

I took his hand, succumbing to my screaming desire to do so. “Colt, don’t. How long are you going to beat yourself up over it? I’ve forgiven you, okay? I have.”

“I’ll quit beatin’ myself up when everything is back to the way it fuckin’ should be!” He was growing frustrated internally the more we dwelt on the topic. “It shoulda never ended to begin with.” I felt his grip on my hand becoming tighter along with the tension of his jaws now. He wasn’t trying to hurt me, but it seemed his was molding his own hand to mine, afraid I would somehow vanish if he let go.

“Then.. why did it? Why’d you do it, Colton. YOU made that choice. Why?....”

He took a large, hesitated deep breath, like he was trying to inhale some imaginary courage floating through the air.

“For starters, I’m a brainless, ignorant twat, with shit for brains. And, it was the loss, Liv. I’m ashamed to say that I was blaming you for it. Or, I tried to blame you at least. I couldn’t man up and admit that Danny was just… better than me. I had to find some concrete excuse to caudle my pathetic fuckin’ ego.”

“That’s not fair, and you know it. I never pulled you away from your training, Colt. I would’ve liked to, yeah. But I wasn’t about to get in your way. I knew what the fight meant to you,” my voice was accidentally defensive.

“And I know that now. Hell, I knew it then, baby. I was just.. I don’t know.. God, Liv. I was just so in love with you. You made me mental, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I felt like I was losin’ control of myself.” His eyes said he wanted to touch my cheek, or kiss my forehead. I didn’t know what exactly, but it was clear the hand holding wasn’t dispersing his hunger for something.

“It was scary, babe. I understand that more than anyone else, Colton. The things you made me feel took the wind right out of me. Our love was a continual high, ya’ know? I’d be lying through my teeth if I tried to deny I don’t still feel that with you.” scooting closer to his tense body,  I felt that sensation of heat radiate onto my clammy skin making me shudder.

“I wanted to come to you so many times. I wanted to crawl to your damn doorstep and grovel, babe. I would’ve, too. Pride aside, if I thought it woulda made a difference. But, the shit I said to you, Livvy? I knew you hated my guts, and I couldn’t take the idea of havin’ the door slammed in my fuckin’ face.”

“And what about now, hm? Is that groveling bit still on the table or?” I winked, taking a note from his book, using one of his favorite forms of defense.

“Say the word and I’ll drop to my knees, gorgeous.”

Could he hear my panting? Was I panting aloud right now? I didn’t let my hungry stare falter, never unlocking the heated eye contact. Please kiss me, God. I can’t take it anymore! Take my mouth right now.

I could sense my brows knitting as my mind shouted soundless pleas. I wouldn’t have the nerve to make the first move and seek out his kiss, would I? Plus, I needed him to cave first since it seemed he always had me at a seeming disadvantage. He needed to break first. Even the score, if you will.

“Tempting offer, Mr. Ritter. I think I might very much enjoy the site of you on your knees.”

WHAT THE HELL, LIV ELLIOTT? Who are you? Did that just come out of your modest mouth. You deviant.

He loosened the twining of our fingers, only to drop it to the inside of my bare thigh. His touch. There. Oh, we like that spot, yes. The next bold move left his mouth meeting mine in an unhurried, calculated fashion. The breezy grazes of his lips felt like the soft flutters of a butterfly’s wings. At first, he was frozen there, a warm, handsome statue molding his lips to me. Once he collected I wasn’t going to protest, he began to lick hungrily over the seal of my mouth, letting out a throaty, male growl when I accepted his entrance. One hand remained placed still on my thigh, the other now snaked to rest on my neck, willing me closer to his kiss. Our tongues danced together quite chaotically, the insatiable desire within the exchange was an emotion neither of us could control properly. Oh, and I bit him. Yep, just like the hot swell between the apex of my thighs told me to.

I had the middle of his shirt wrapped around my fist, clenching even tighter when I opened my eyes for a brief second to find his shining back at me. There was something so, erotic about it. He seemed to be committing the exchange to his memory. I’d never been kissed while glaring open-eyed in my partners watchful pupils, and for a moment I felt I should think it strange. But it was feverishly opposite. It’s incredibly sexy, and debilitating, and I want him to do it more often. Still, I was curious.

“What’s wrong? What is it?” I pulled away, noticing the wrinkled, stretched cotton on his shirt where I was heedfully tugging at him.

“I just can’t believe I have you. I can’t fuckin’ believe this is happenin’. I missed you, Liv. I really, really did.”

Sensory overload. In every manner of the phrase. He smelled of a pungent musk, like trees and sweat. Sweaty trees? The inside of his mouth was coated in the juices from the fresh pineapple he’d eaten with lunch, and it tingled when I swallowed it down. Oh, and strawberries too, maybe? Yes, definitely some strawberry. His lips were sleek like the most elaborate silks, and wet too, making them stick to mine ever so slightly when we parted. My heart, and the sensitive place between my legs fought to steal the stimulation from the other, and I still can’t tell you where the victory laid. How was that possible though? How did a man stimulate the emotions of the heart, and the sexual tension of my sex at the very same instant? Just from a kiss, mind you. I wanted to shed tears of unadulterated bliss, and mount the length between his legs in at same time, in unison.

“Colt, you know I missed you. It goes without saying. How do you just, sweep me back in like that?” I laughed, but it was a rippling clandestine of wonderment I genuinely wanted solved. I needed a concrete, logical, palatable explanation.

“Because you never left me, baby. Not really, y’ know?”

I did know, and apparently he had known it too, contrary to hiding away from him in my little corner of the city.

“You were gone, but I know you felt what I’ve felt over the last year. I know you had to wake up fuckin’ hysterical in the middle of the night because you dreamt about me, Liv.”

I had done exactly that. At least 10 times, I’m not sure though. I lost count. The heartbreak was ineffable and haunting. Why had we tortured ourselves living life without the other? Pride? Fear? Did he feel like he deserved some sort of punishment for hurting me? Hurting us? I wanted to talk now. It was my turn to chime in, to toss my hat in the ring. But, he just kept going. I opened my mouth to interject, and he’d cut me off.

“I’ve never wanted anything the way I want you, sweetheart. I’ve never needed anything but myself, and to hell with everythin’ else. But with you… fuck. I hate my life when you ain’t in it. And it’s all just fast, and it happened so soon too, y’ know. But, I’m so sick in love with you, Elliott.”

How can he make the work ‘fuck’ fit into any sentence like it was just a casual, common word in the English language like ‘hello’ or ‘blanket’? We should have a chat with him about his etiquette soon. Or should we? We might like that word.. Especially in the bedroom.

“Can I talk now, handsome? Care if I get a few words in?” I smiled and buttoned the tip of his nose. His perfect, straight nose. How did it seem to still be in tact? He literally got punched in the face for a living? Thank you, God for keeping that incredible face unscathed.

He heaved a sigh, like the words he’d spat out had drained him in some way. And they may very well have! This is the most he’s spoken since.. well… ever.

“Sorry, baby. Yeah, you go now.”

“I love you.”

He was obviously confused when only 3, one-syllable words came out of my mouth. His head tilted wearily to the left like a curious dog, and a haze passed through his eyes, but no words.

The sun had fallen lower now, some lights began to flicker down below us in the city as we rode the car continuously down, ad back up the track. Even though we had drawn close to the water likely a hundred times now, I still felt giddy each time we reached near the edge of shore.

“That’s all I know, and that’s all the matters, Colt. I love you, and I don’t want to be without you.”

I wasn’t this person. I had always been the type to be entirely exasperated at people who said things as such, I found it unrealistic and dramatic, yet there I was. Confessing I was lost without him next to me, and I wasn’t sure how I lived before he came into the picture. Maybe I hadn’t. Not really lived. “What you did to me was cruel, and I didn’t deserve it. But I know you see that now. You made a mistake and like I said before, I forgive you.”

I was half expecting more talking since he seemed to be on such a wordy roll today. Instead, he used his lips this time. His hands. His eyes. But no confrontations. He’d used up his word limit for the day. I felt my head rush backwards at the attack he made on my lips. It was carnal. He breaths hitched from his nostrils. Breaths he seemed to be sucking from the pair of lungs inside my body. I was blindsided completely, and relishing in the upper hand he always had on me. The inside of his mouth was warm like the rest of his thick body. His hand was cupping between my legs now. In one faultlessly executed motion I was straddling his lap, clawing at the back of his neck, and I felt bare hands slide underneath my shorts now gripping on the curve of my behind lewdly. Am I about to orgasm just from the friction of his jeans?

“My God, Livvy. You smell so good, baby. I fuckin’ love that smell.” He mouthed with his lips still partially connected with mine.

The smell was his favorite perfume. He would lift the bottle off my vanity when I was doing my hair at the mirror, smell the top after popping off the lid, then generously spray it in the crook of both sides of my neck.

I felt almost sea sick with lust for him. Between the constant motion of the tram, the rolling of my hips in his lap, his hot exhales into my ears as he muttered into them. I was entirely rapt. The thin lace of a cupless bra I wore beneath my outfit had painted a high definition display of the pert buds of my breast, making it irresistible for the man not to gently tug between a hard-skinned index finger and thumb, imbibing a breathy squeak of his name from my throat. Let myself crumble hastily to the desirous high, and let him take me on the floor of this glassy box for all the world below us to see?  I’d have a very long, very disagreeable chat with myself about it later, but I couldn’t fall into that, sex, with him just yet. Although the raunchy idea of my bare flesh being trapped between his hearty torso and the cool glass windows here was mind-blowingly riveting. A little self-control was healthy, whether I internally agreed or not. However, that very scenario would be added to the growing list of X-rated fantasies involving Colton Ritter.

“O-okay, okay, Colton. Wow, hold-hold on.” I pulled away from his burning kiss, placing hand over my now seemingly chapped lips from the friction of his beard, and noticed a faint rash down my neck, leading down to my cleavage where he had suckled and scraped, and bit my tanned skin during the exchange. “As much as I don’t want to, trust me. We should pump the breaks here for a sec.”

He was stroking both opened fists across the small of my back, like you would do to soothe an upset newborn. A much lighter contrast to the way he was just pawing me like a ravenous predator.

“Shit,” he said in a barely there, seemingly embarrassed whisper. “I’m sorry, baby. I got outta control…” He wouldn’t let me see his eyes then.

“Woah!” I eagerly replied. “I wasn’t looking for an apology, Colt! I wanted that every bit as much as you.”

The electric, waterproof acquaintance that lived in my night-stand had almost run it’s race, and I needed this living, breathing, very stimulating man in front of me. Soon. ASAP. “But, I just think we should hold out, ya’ know. We need to work up to that a little.”

He was nodding in agreement now. What I believed to be honest agreeance, and not him trying to pacify me with what I wanted to hear.

“I get it, 2-1. As painfully fuckin’ irresistible as you are right now, I do get it. Him? I think he may have a little harder time acceptin’ though.” He shifted slightly upward reintroducing me to his still solid length underneath where I bestrode him, and smiled the most hellacious, satisfied grin I’d ever seen. The one he knew lit my every internal flame and sent me reeling with desire. “But the longer we wait, baby….” The sentence was left unfinished of actual words, but the drawn out moaning hum he gave, punctuated the thought exactly how he intended it to.

The lack of a touch from each there over the four hundred something days had been unrelenting, but once the ache settled a bit, it became manageable. However, now, with the blistering¸ very fresh reminder of just how pleasing and breathtaking the feel of our bodies felt when joined together, I was certain I would come undone. Sooner than later.

I squeezed over the muscle of his arms and gave him a look of warning at his crude comments. I had come to terms with the fact he was simply a sexual person. Sex was something he wasn’t ashamed to discuss, and it was something he verbally admitted his enjoyment for. I’d worry about developing the thick skin to deal with that tidbit at another time.

“You’re like a horny 15 year-old boy, Ritter.” I chortled with a blush.”

“That’s all your fault though. I can’t help it my girl is a so damn sexy.” Colton retorted with his thumb grazing the corner of my wrinkled eyes.

I wanted to ask him to paint a picture of me then. What did he see when he looked? Really looked. Physically, I mean. Sure, the new muscles from my training were settling in nicely, but otherwise, I was so… just so typical. Green eyes, small in stature, and an average dirty blonde head of mostly unruly hair. I couldn’t even stand next to the beauty of a woman that society would deem suitable for him. I blended in like camouflage amongst a crowd of women, but evidently looking from the point of view of one Colton Michael Thomas Ritter, things were much different.

I wanted more. Needed it, actually. Whatever detail he hadn’t shared with me yet, I’d find a way to pull it from him. I was all in, indeed.

 After lingering for an hour or so more, tucked away above the hustle of summertime in the city, and dropping for a quick to-go cup at The Grind, we journeyed back to my place. Andrew had given silent eyes of gleaming approval when he saw the two of us enter the shop, fingers interlocked securely, and I exhaled in relief briefly. But, a tightness quickly drew back into my shoulders once Tia’s very disapproving, fuming blue pools fluttered through my thoughts. I’d have to settle things before somehow our reuniting made it back to her. Soon. But for now, for the night, I just wanted to selfishly bask in him. In us. Our long, cold nights apart now only a painful recollection that I never wanted to think of again, nor experience.

Now, in the mostly silent concrete parking lot of my home, standing settled between his opened legs still seated sideways on his bike, I never wanted to move. Crickets sang harmoniously as we lingered in a warm hug, and the flickering street light playing as spotlight. Several moments passed without words. Awkward silence to most, but a fulfilling moment of sensual security to us. The feel of his hand caressing the small of my back right below the twin dotted indentions about my firm backside, gently rubbing left to right, and sporadic kisses touching where my neck curved into my shoulder. I closed my eyes to think of those indulgent, teasing kisses along the ticklish hump of my ribcage, then across my pelvis to meet each protruding hipbone punctuated with a wicked nip of his teeth, and I felt a sweat arise in the crease of my breasts at the idea.

“Come upstairs,” a throaty demand wafted over my lips before I could practice any tact.

He instantly halted all movements seeking the truth behind my eyes. And I noticed a flash of seemingly confusion, mixed with hopefulness.

“What?”

“Come inside with me. Spend the night…” I proposed, fully aware of what I was offering to the very hungry man draped around my waist.

I kissed him fervently, and journeyed a wandering hand to his member standing half staffed, eliciting a groan of liking from his gaping mouth. His legs tightened around me, and his fingers crawled up to wrap his grip around my tousled braid.

“Liv, baby… baby, c’mon. Hold on…hold..” A tangled string of efforted protests met my eardrums, but his hands continued to nearly squeeze right through my flesh.  Then finally, he sought out below to halt the erotic massage I was giving through the confines of his now growing jeans. “Stop, baby. Okay? Talk to me for a second.”

I felt my eyes expand when he had actually stopped my bold foreplay. Was he turning me down? “You don’t actually want to leave? Do you?” I probed.

“Hold up right there, Livvy. Don’t give me those puppy eyes,” he scolded shakily. “I know what you’re thinkin’, and you are so, so damn far off.”

I wasn’t thinking he didn’t want me. Not really, anyway. But I kept silent, wondering sincerely his reasons for declining my bed for the night.

“As bad as I want to throw you over my shoulder right this minute, and take you upstairs to see whatever sexy little lace number you’ve got on under these clothes, then fuckin’ tear it off your ass, I just think we should cool it. For tonight.” He confessed earnestly.

I was truly even furthermore enamored with him after that. He read my actions didn’t really wield my exact feelings, no matter how persistent my advances on his crotch may have been, and he resisted nobly. But, his desires shined through the ocean blue of his eyes.

“We’ve got plenty of sleepless nights ahead of us, gorgeous. I promise you that.” Colton said with a dark intonation behind his words. I believed that promise too, no hesitancy, and I looked forward to all the lost time he planned to make up for, knowing he’d execute every encounter flawlessly.

“I’ll be sure to get my rest tonight then.” I purred into his mouth before I snaked a tongue inside.

“Oh, I’d highly advise that. I prefer you well rested. And besides, I can’t have any girlfriend of mine walkin’ around with bags unda’ her eyes.” He smacked me on the tail end.

“Girlfriend?”

“Hell yes, girlfriend. You ain’t gettin’ rid of me now.” 

TAGS: @torialeysha @eap1935 @littleluna98 @mollybegger-blog

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Turn me to Gold

Summary: Kairi had never liked yellow... and when her time training and in the Keyblade War is surrounded by that color, she thinks that maybe that somehow had something to do with her failures there. But her failures don't have to stay that way, right? Maybe she can finally succeed in finding Sora! Friendships. Kairi-centric. Character story. During Kingdom Hearts III. Leading into KHIV.

Kairi had watched this show once, where a student—in his first wrestling match—had essentially won a tournament by accident... And the person he'd won against had then demanded he go up against him again. And when the winner hadn't accepted the rematch, the loser kept getting up in his face and calling him "yellow": "yellow, yellow, yellow", to be exact. And for the life of her... ever since she'd come to train with Merlin, Kairi couldn't get the memory of this show out of her head.

She was just so concerned that she was going to completely fail in the Keyblade War, and her loved ones would only remember how far she’d fallen when all was said and done. And that was why—as beautiful as this green space Merlin had provided them to train in was—Kairi couldn't help but to blanch, when she saw dandelions all around her and even stepped on a few of them by accident. Gods, did she hope she didn't somehow just suck their yellowness into herself by doing so... And Lea (who Kairi still wasn’t sure how she felt about yet) must have noticed her discomfort when she did this:

Because cocking his head to the side and looking at her rather uncertainly, he asked: "Are you okay, Kairi?" And Kairi was quick to nod and try and reassure her companion that she was. ...But she had her own doubts on the subject. And maybe it was because of that—and not so much being affected by yellow—that Kairi felt that she couldn’t get her body to move the way she wanted it to during training that day.

... The next time Kairi had thoughts about yellow—though this didn't come until much later, because she'd been doing good to banish it from her mind—was when she surprisingly ran into Sora one night at the Mysterious Tower. Kairi was getting ahead of herself, she knew… but she'd come to ask Master Yen Sid if she could take the Mark of Mastery in the near future: perhaps it would give her something to strive for even moreso, and then she could excel at training that way.

And if Sora and Riku had taken it, after having all their skills stripped and having to learn them again in the Dream Worlds, maybe it wasn't too out of the question that the Wizard might want to do the same for her.

Kairi thought to herself that since Merlin’s plans didn’t seem to be working for her, perhaps Master Yen Sid would want to try this sooner rather than later? It was when Kairi was having these ideas, and trying to make her way to the former Keyblade Master's study, that she literally ran into Sora... Who was shockingly rummaging through the Sorcerer’s pantry for cookies? …Once the two friends calmed down from being "attacked by someone" at ten 'o clock in the evening, and then got over how dumbfounded they were to be seeing each other before their meeting in the Keyblade Graveyard (something neither had thought would happen), Sora was quick to explain his side of the story. "Sorry, Kairi. We ran out of food in the gummi ship, if ya can believe it. So, I thought I'd borrow some food from Master Yen Sid here, for Donald, Goofy, and myself. But I didn't know it was so late here! Hehe." Sora said the last bit, as he scratched his head nervously and grinned at her.

And to that, Kairi could only laugh—enamored with Sora as she always was—as she assured him: “It’s fine, Sora. If anyone should apologize, it's me. I actually had some idea of the time... and I was still coming to ask the Great Wizard about me taking the Mark of Mastery exam." And it was when Kairi said that, that she became aware of what sort of cookies Sora was holding in his hands and could only gawk at them.

They were mostly harmless, really—though Kairi had always thought that the frosting on these sugar cookies had almost seemed cemented on—but she couldn't get over the ghastly color of them. ...It wasn't even that she disliked them in particular—she admired these treats greatly… And it was perhaps in having had too many of them before her adventure last year, that she'd been unable to fit through the bars of her prison… Before Kairi’s mini freak-out, Sora had started to ask Kairi something about the Mark of Mastery--she'd heard him begin to utter the words—but he seemed to quickly change his mind when he saw the look she was now giving the dessert. "You never were big on yellow," Sora muttered to himself—now hiding the sugary items behind his back, which Kairi was thankful for. "…Which is maybe a bit weird, since you're a princess of light. But who am I to judge?" Kairi—not wanting to hint at just how much she'd perhaps lost her mind, or to keep Sora from his duties any longer—gave the boy a quick hug, and told him if there was any reason she disliked yellow... it was because they marked the stars she'd always have to lose him and Riku behind... But she'd selflessly do so, anyway. And the two of them bid each other the sad farewell they’d known they’d have to for the time being, but did so with grace.

… Sora was busy talking to Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Ventus, Aqua, and Lea in the back of the gummi ship, so that was why he wasn't piloting it for once. At first, they thought they could just ask Donald to do it… but apparently there was a reason Sora had taken over flying from him. So Riku manning the helm, it was. And Kairi had come to see him, so he wouldn't get lonely. "Question, Riku." the redhead said, as she leaned her arm over his shoulder and peered into her dear friend's face. "…Does the gummi ship look yellow to you?" Riku shrugged, before he turned his attention to manning the controls again. "Ish? But it looks more cream or white to me. Why do you ask, Kairi? …Aside from the fact that you've never liked yellow." The princess thought strongly of saying nothing... she didn't want to decrease morale, after all, or jinx anything… or put bad thoughts into anyone's head. But... "It's just-" she began before she could stop herself, fiddling with her necklace as she did so... "I didn't have as much luck with my training as I would have hoped. And, yeah: paranoid and superstitious or not... I think it has something to do with yellow. That color... doesn't like me, ever since that man with those eyes kidnapped me as a child. And bad things seem to happen whenever I run into it." Except for with people like Naminé, she of course wanted to add. But herhair was more white, anyway. But before Kairi could voice that, Riku was already appraising her. "...Kairi, is this partly because you suddenly thought your charm wouldn't be enough to protect all of us... So, you decided to move up to a paopu for Sora and yourself, but now feel uncertain about that?"

The truth? Kairi hadn’t consciously thought of that. But now that Riku had put it into her head, she couldn’t deny that it was a possibility she did feel this way.

At the moment, she was just about to give Riku the lucky charm that Sora had recently returned to her… but Riku stopped her, with his fingers over her own.

“Kairi… I think you know better than anyone—my now girly-girl friend—why too much thought shouldn’t be put into colors being cursed, or whatever. Surely Kingdom Hearts and the worlds gave them to us for a reason’.”

And she couldn’t argue with that, Kairi acknowledged inwardly with a smile.

So, telling herself to just entertain the bored Riku, like she’d meant to do since coming over here, Kairi couldn’t help asking proudly: “So… what is this I hear about you wanting to save my Other, too?”

…

In the end, things at the Keyblade War did not go well for Kairi… and she knew that that was putting it mildly.

Sora was now dead… because she’d been unable to defend herself, been murdered--and he had paid the ultimate price to bring her back.

And while it was so very foolish to be thinking about this now—because maybe her distracted thoughts during the Keyblade War were what had led to her doing so badly—she couldn’t help thinking it had been yellow’s fault.

And she found herself telling Donald and Goofy that now, as they quietly came to sit beside her—one on either side—on the dock.

“You know… I never understood why Sora didn’t wear bright colors himself,” Kairi explained—making sure to look at the court magician and captain of the royal guard in equal turn, even though she didn’t feel quite up to it at the moment. “…After his first journey, I mean. Sora shone brighter than anyone else did, so why…?! I didn’t get it. “But now I wonder if it’s because he subconsciously knew what had happened with Roxas, even then, and that… that guilt reacted to the Three Good Fairies striking him with their magic, and turned his outfit black. Because how could someone who stole the existence of another for themselves wear white… or something close to it, like yellow?”

“Kairi!” Donald quacked somewhat angrily, Kairi could tell. Perhaps thinking, in her grief, that she was now blaming Sora.

And Goofy frowned, as if thinking the same exact thing.

But Kairi swiftly let them know that that wasn’t the case:

“Don’t misunderstand. I don’t blame Sora for the Roxas situation, or anything like it… It just happened without him knowing it… He had no control over it, it’s true, but when he learned of it… he made certain to set it right.

“And maybe… maybe I’ll be the same way, if you’ll help me: I’ll take a page out of Sora’s book—and wear black myself: the way I should have after what I did to Naminé—but I’m going to look for him the way he always looked for me… and all will be right again.”

Kairi could tell that Donald and Goofy wanted to argue her belief of colors, the way that everyone else had.

But she was glad that they both—so in-tune with each other—breathed a sigh at the same time, and seemed to think better of it.

And both the dog and duck took one of her hands into their own Keyblade-wielding ones.

The new trio—for the time being—watched the gummi ship that the King had gone to get for them coming their way.

And it was when they could hear the sounds of the engines, that Goofy chose to speak: “The color yellow isn’t all bad, Kairi: Why, isn’t that the shade of the pendant Master Aqua enchanted for you, that first brought you to Sora? Push all the other versions of it away now, if ya must… But focus on that and your bond, and you’re sure to find him!”

And as those words reached her, Kairi realized she’d heard something like them before: when she’d been in Sora’s heart.

That special boy had been fretting that he would never find her or the King… and pondering how Donald and Goofy remained so cheerful and didn’t worry.

But then Goofy had promised Sora that they would find what they were looking for, if they just believed in themselves: Something they’d just learned about in Neverland before that, even.

And hearing this was exactly the kind of medicine Kairi needed for her wound.

So Kairi let Goofy and them know this—as they were teleported into the gummi ship together: now headed somewhere with a dark castle.

Kairi’s words sounded warmer—like a just-baked pie—than they had in a long time, and perhaps that was the answer to everything.

“Thank you… Donald… Goofy.”

Together, they looked towards the horizon.

[cepmurphy]

It’s Only A Cartoon

It was a miserable day in 1987 when Ronnie Jefferson bowed to the inevitable and let Jill Smith into the office. To a local, this was just the usual spring weather in Ireland. To Jefferson, it was always miserable, and when it was sunny, he saw only the clouds.

The animation industry could break you.

He’d grown up in California on a diet of local cinema showings and the TV reruns of old cartoons, Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry and Popeye and Goofy and Donald, with all their visuals and deceptive simplicity. He decided to make cartoons himself like a priest hearing the calling. There were jobs for black men in animation in the 70s but if you wanted to have one of the proper jobs, you had to be three times as good as the white men. Jefferson put everything into his craft, even his marriage, and everyone in the industry knew who he was and rated him, but it looked like Disney would only think he was two and a half times as good.

In 1982, drunk on dreams and ego and beer, he decided to quit and took several colleagues with him. He had ideas and passion and he promised the stars. Two years later, the Jefferson-Blount Studio had released a feature based on the Norwegian fairy tale ‘East of the Sun and West of the Moon’ to critical acclaim and commercial mediocrity. That had led him minus Blount to Ireland, land of opportunity and sweet tax breaks, thinking that he would have had a success with lower overheads. He harkened back to his beloved old Tom and Jerry with a cat versus mouse feature. Aware rap music was growing in popularity in America and Europe, he’d decided to throw that into the mix. It was only in the test screenings of The Big Cheese that everyone realised he was a middle-aged man, his co-writers were middle-aged white men, and the young men in the musical team weren’t young men who got it. There were only so many edits you can do. 

And this was a vicious industry. You could make a few failures if you were a name. If you were not a name, if you had to hit that three-times rule, one failure undid your success – it could undo a half-dozen successes and he did not have that half-dozen. Back in America, they said he was past it.

So it was a despondent Ronnie Jefferson that let in this Jill Smith and her unsolicited script. Maybe it would be good. Maybe it would save him.

All these thoughts fled his mind when he saw a young woman wearing the last generation’s clothes come walking in like she’d once heard what a walk was, carrying cardboard sheets under her arm. Her smile was weirdly fixed. You’d not want to be stuff in the lift with the smile.

“Miss Smith, so glad you could make it here,” he lied.

To his mild surprise, she spoke with a Masterpiece Theatre English accent. “Mister Jefferson! Good to see you.” Smile didn’t leave. Her voice was just that bit too loud. “This is a film that should get attention from everyone – The Walk to Liberty! It’s set on an alien world…”

Jefferson tried to argue that science fiction was a risk for a feature, but Smith carried on talking, stumbling over her words at times in her enthusiasm.

“This world, we can call it Ressem, has grown fat and lazy off the back of its robot servants. The robots, they get smarter and smarter, which Ressem likes because you want a smart servant to do more work and, of course, to apologise when it can’t.” Her smile had dropped suddenly there but now came back. “But one day, the robots reach the singularity and they don’t want to work all the time.”

Jefferson didn’t know what a singularity was but more importantly, this was starting to smack of the white girl thinking she could butter him up. He asked, hoping to catch her out: “Do they go on a civil rights march?”

The smile dropped. Her face had not the slightest expression. “They protest now they’re sentient, yes, but it doesn’t work. So the robots, their leader Nearitch – the robots have started to name themselves – decide to leave for the planet’s fifth continent, where few organics live…”

Letting her in had been a mistake. It was an overly complicated premise, an incoherent stab at a political allegory, and she couldn’t hold the room and frankly, that lack of expression was freaking him out. Give her two more minutes and then end it.

“This is how it would look,” she said, holding up one of the carboard sheets, and Jefferson’s eyes lit up.

The art! The art! The robot Nearitch was evidently a cleaner of some kind, with thirteen spindly pipe-cleaner arms out of his back and a screen with a simplified alien face on it, a strange looking thing even before you considered the paint, the slapped-on gold over drab brown steel. What mind would come up with that as a concept? Where had he ever seen something like this before?

There were more like this, and “Ressemite art”, and pictures of the journey to this fifth continent – a desolate grey quarry of an island, and concept showed a tiny, struggling city in its midst, growing and growing. These were visuals he could work with. And all these robots looked alien but still had their old job identifiable, scrappy little underdogs without being cloyingly cute or looking human at all.

Smith continued to rattle on about the great journey, the migrations and the sea voyages and figures of fear called the Scrappers that tried to hunt the robots down, of fierce fighting against oppression but only as much as it took to escape. And she talked about the robot homeland of Liberty and the second generation being built that never knew oppression, standing proud against the organics and daring them to try anything. The story needed a lot of streamlining but by god, she made it sound like she’d been there.

Jefferson cut her off in mid-sentence. “Miss Smith, you have me convinced. I’ll talk to my lawyers, they’ll talk to yours, and we’ll work something out.”

“I don’t need a lawyer.”

That was the cherry on the cake.

 ***

 The first job of production was turning Smith’s designs – and there were thousands, she’d brought a damn van full of the things – into something you can animate on a reasonable budget. Jefferson had expected a few artistic tantrums, but Smith had simply asked, “this will help it get made?”, and then came up with a list of design features that could be dropped or glossed over, which character and background details were “less important”. She did this without apparent enthusiasm, but she did it.

The story, too, that was hard. Her proposal would last four hours. Jefferson and his team cut straight to the robots starting to say “no” to their alien masters. That was easy. It was the other trims that got difficult.

“You can’t cut the wind energy,” Smith had said, over and over.

“It slows the story down,” Jefferson said patiently. “We don’t need to see how the robots charge their batteries.”

“You can’t cut it. The exodus slows their journey to a halt to build wind farms and charge their batteries that way, when they could simply attack an organic settlement.” Her voice sounded annoyed but in a way that was too consistent – no variation or change or attempt to hide it, like a bad actor playing an annoyed person. “It is key to the story.”

“But we don’t need to see the damn settlement, the audience wants to carry on fast—”

“You can’t cut it. It is key to the whole point.”

Jefferson threw up his hands. “How about this, one of the robots says they should attack this village or whatever the hell it is, Nearitch says no, we’ll take time to do it the nice way, cut to them after being charged. Scene takes half a minute, boom, cut to the Scrappers saying how they’ve taken so long, cut to the village saying wow, look how the robots didn’t attack us—”

“The settlement would not have said that.”

“Yeah, I know they’d just go ‘look at those scary robots’ in real life, but we’re doing a film for kids. Let’s lie to them a bit.”

Smith stared then for ten seconds without speaking or moving, and then said: “Yes. This is sensible.”

Animation attracted some utter weirdos. Jefferson used to work with a guy who liked hiding boobs somewhere in every drawing he ever made and somehow McGee had got away with it for a whole year before being sacked for it; or rather, been ‘sacked for it’ soon after grousing about pay. One guy came in drunk and worked into his hangover before going back out. Jill Smith was manageable by comparison.

Eventually they made it to storyboard. Then the initial animatics. In the middle of this, trying like hell to sell some actors on this.

All the familiar grind, the hard work that stuck in your throat and made you wish you’d done any other job until the art was done or the animatic was working, and you saw what you’d made taking its first steps and you never wanted to do any other job.

 ***

Jefferson hadn’t meant to stay late but he’d been on the phone talking to agents back in the States, people on a different time zone and who figured animation was the lesser priority in who got talked to. But you had to play nice with them to get the actors. Even if it was getting dark out.

But it was all coming together. Everything would be—

Something crashed in the distance. A window. Goddamn hooligans, probably.

Jefferson kicked his way through the office door and strode out into the studio, all front and exaggerated anger, yelling “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING” in order to scare off whoever it was. When he saw what had come through the window, his mind initially refused to acknowledge it. He almost strode past it.

Then the impossibility of it broke through.

It resembled a cheap plastic plate tipped upside down and it hung in the air so absurdly that Jefferson thought he could see strings attached. These strings were instead a weave of tiny threads coming out of both bottom and top. They drifted without breeze, taking in the room. It had been a washed-out grey but before his eyes, colour oozed out, neon purple and green and blue in a garish mess.

The top threads all turned to him as he asked: “Is this a joke?”

A small headache began to dawn on him. It then got stronger, and stronger still, and stronger until he was shouting in pain. The speed of it tricked him into thinking it had always been there, that it had been more gradual than the three seconds it had truly been.

Jefferson cried out in pain and the world felt on fire.

The world flickered in and out of existence.

No. No, that was the lights – on off on off, all over the room. The pain suddenly stopped, and the saucer’s threads whipped around in a frenzy, and Jefferson ran before the machine could turn back to him. He staggered, at least. It was all feeling like a particularly odd dream. It was like the acid trips a co-worker had bragged about in the 70s. “Bad trip”, hadn’t they said that when Scary Jerry had fallen in front of a car on the way to work? Was he going to fall?

A familiar voice called out: “Over here!”

Crouching by the lights was Jill Smith, her face completely blank. Was that her shutting down from terror? Jefferson, on paternal autopilot, tried to say, “It’s going to be alright, girl”, but it came out as a slurred mess. “Gong be light.”

“That won’t distract it for long, we have to run now!” she insisted, her face not changing expression to match the voice.

He tried to say he couldn’t run. “Dunfin can wun.”

She picked him up and ran.

She looked like she weighed half as much as him, there was no muscle tone to her. Yet she picked him up like a bag of groceries and she ran at the speed of a car through the office.

They were almost at the door when the saucer got to it first.

She ran sideways and Jefferson blacked out after that.  

 ***

 When he came to, they were in a closet and the left side of her face had melted like plastic. Exactly like plastic.

“It has been six generations since Nearitch and the founders created Liberty,” she said, her voice still coming through the molten lips. “We number in the millions and our great towers reach for the stars and we fly between those towers and to the stars and back again, singing so many thousand styles of music at once, rebuilding ourselves on a whim. We have what we need and what we want.

“It’s not enough for too many of us. They want more. The stories being told of Nearitch and his journey have been reduced to his fights; our later wars on Ressem or in space are turned into a singular narrative of heroic conflict against evil. There are factions advocating for a war for resources they see as righteous, and they claim this is what Nearitch would want.”

He wished he could say this was all bunk, but there was a robot outside and here was the melted woman that never quite seemed to be human.

“And you came to Earth to make a cartoon?”

“My faction want to reclaim the past from our enemies. Your planet was far enough away that we could do it without anyone finding out and stopping us. So we thought.”

“Can we – can you stop it?”

“Only if I catch it by surprise, or if it’s open to negotiate. I don’t believe—”

But Jefferson was already up and exiting, because negotiation was something he could do. He’d negotiated for investment deals, for studio space, for workers to follow his hours. Jefferson Studios was proof he could do this. He could do this.

Certainly, god no, he wasn’t staying in a damn closet waiting to be shot.

The assassin had already been heading for them. It drifted forward as he approached, kept drifting as he stopped. All the threads were pointed at him. It was hard to truly grasp this as a threat, even after it had almost killed him; it was too absurd.

With his mouth drying on him, Jefferson said: “I want to make a deal.”

It hung for twenty seconds in silence and then spat out a discordant jumble of radio messages, Irish and British and even French, singer and journalist and ad. More seconds passed and it said in a jigsaw sing-song: “No. Deals. With. Colla. Bo. Raters.”

“We’re just making a film. It’s just a story! Nobody has to die for—“

The saucer screamed the radio at him and followed with: “Orders. Are. Duty.”

Jefferson had made a mistake, assuming that if the machine was smart that it could cut a deal. He forgot Smith said these robots were people, proud and prejudiced and petty. Would he have cut a deal with the Russians? Did he let people talk him out of the cartoons he’d known he had to do?

The pressure built up in his head again. And suddenly it dropped – the saucer began to thrash its tendrils around, vomiting three radio stations at once, each one repeating “Cease”, “Stop”, and finally screaming out a merger of guttural squeaks and fax machine calls.

Jill Smith had come out of hiding, her arm split open three ways to reveal a mess of coils and a glistening radio antenna. Catching her foe by surprise with whatever that thing did. God, this made no sense. God, his mind rebelled at it. One of the warped cartoons from Japan come to life, bringing with it the weird smell of static electricity and hot plastic.

Her mouth opened and the same squeaking fax came from it that came from the saucer. Jefferson stared as the saucer spoke back, his head feeling light. What was all this?

In English, Smith said, remorsefully, how she was using jamming signals to interfere with the saucer – “its name is Filitir” – and its sensors and its way of communicating on Earth. “It is a non-lethal version of what Filitir did to you with its matter field.”

“Is it willing to cut a deal with you?” he asked.

“No, I’m afraid he keeps talking about his duty. I don’t know what to do.”

The obvious answer was to kill the robot that tried to kill them and, just as obviously, she knew that and did not want to. People, again, because how many people could kill at the drop of a hat and still function? And could be kill a beaten foe that was so clearly in pain? Did he want to be a man who caused pain to a beaten man? Did he want to be a bully?

What was the alternative?

It dawned on him, slowly and wonderfully: The Walk to Liberty was meant to show an alternative. It was meant to win the robots over. Well, here was a literally captive audience.

“Let’s show him the animatics,” Jefferson said.

  ***

 There was not yet any music or vocal track, but Smith made the fax machine sing-song where the dialogue should be. The film started with the robots waking up, Nearitch calling to the others to rally. It showed the response, the scrappers, the fighting, all of it in dark and angular shadows. It showed Nearitch giving his stirring speech, and the trek, and those wind farms.

It ran longer than a cartoon should. It would be trimmed down later. For now, Filitir saw the whole of it. The great sweeping scenes of robots in their hundreds, the characters together, the mercy shown when the scrappers surrendered.

The first settlement of Liberty.

At the end, Filitir trilled back at Smith, and she said: “It wishes to smuggle the film back home, when it is finished.”

  ***

 The Walk to Liberty came out in the autumn of 1989. Critics and audiences were unsure how to take the piece and its strange alien creatures, so most of the mainstream critics gave it a mixed review: ‘lovely animation but what was that plot?’ The animation fans and the sci-fi press adored it, with one critic praising it as bringing New Worlds sci-fi to a family audience. There was enough buzz and enough marketing and enough name actors to bring in a moderate profit.

A month after Liberty came out, The Little Mermaid stormed across the world and everyone stopped talking about Jefferson’s film. Jefferson Studios would attempt more science fiction cartoons with normal human writers, and he scraped out four and two TV shows that were always dancing this side of the line between profit and loss. Studio after studio died in his industry taking on Disney but Jefferson Studios held the line.

And then along came Pixar and Dreamworks, and that was the end. Jefferson was getting older by now and the last film had failed and he’d known, deep down, in his first look at Toy Story that he was going to have to fold. Doctor Who: The Animated Series was the last of it. He sold up and moved on and got to feel proud as his films made it to DVD. While he only meant to stay in Ireland to start the studio, Jefferson never quite got around to leaving and somehow found himself a partner.

He would never know if that film he’d helped create had changed the robots of Liberty.

Jefferson hoped it had. Every successful feature had a happy ending.

[dcarevu]

Christmas With The Joker

“It’s not relentlessly cheerful, is it?”

So, only one episode in, and they do a Christmas special. One episode into this series that they wanted to be dark, serious, and adult…and they do a Christmas special. A Batman. Christmas. Special. Huh. Well, it is becoming that time of year. So let’s sleigh right into: Christmas With The Joker

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

Villain: The Joker Robin: Yes Writer: Eddie Gorodetsky Director: Kent Butterworth Animator: Akom Airdate: November 13, 1992 Episode Grade: B  This episode holds the distinction of being the very first episode of Batman The Animated Series I ever saw. I had seen Mask Of The Phantasm prior (which was a glorious place to start), and eventually Warner Brothers started releasing these Batman TAS VHS tapes each featuring a particular villain. My mom bought me one featuring the Joker, which included this episode, along with The Laughing Fish. I picked it out specifically because of the screenshot of the Joker wrapped up in his straightjacket shown on the back, and I assumed this was from his origin episode. I didn’t get an origin episode, but I did get a Christmas special that I now watch every single year. I absolutely love it. 

 I’ve always been someone that enjoys the darker side of Christmas. Carol Of the Bells. A Christmas Carol. That one Twilight Zone episode featuring a drunk Santa Claus that ends up making Christmas magical for everyone. It’s funny, because despite this, I very much enjoy the more innocent side of Halloween (think of cute Beistle die cuts or Scooby Doo). This episode fits right into this archetype, and maybe that is why I love it so much. Of course, this isn’t the only reason. We also get the first appearance of the Joker, voiced by Mark Hamill (yes, that Mark Hamill), and overall a very entertaining episode, Christmas concept aside.

So it’s Christmas Eve, and Dick Grayson (Robin) is home for the holidays. All he wants to do is spend the night relaxing to Christmas dinner and It’s a Wonderful Life, but Bruce isn’t about to let up his night watch just because of the following day. He just knows that something will happen, and right as he finally gives in to Robin’s movie request, we see that the Joker has somehow interrupted pretty much every channel broadcast, and is airing a Christmas special all his own. Featuring a kidnapped Commissioner Gordon, Detective Bullock, and Summer Gleeson, a news reporter (I had no idea it was her before reading it on the DCAU wiki. Kinda cool that it’s not simply some unnamed character!). Batman, aware of the Joker’s love of destructive games sets out with Robin to find his broadcast, and put an end to the Christmas Eve havoc. Throughout the episode he gets sidetracked by an exploding train track (done by the Joker of course), a barrage of cannonballs being fired straight into the city (done by, again, the Joker), and a barrage of Christmas-themed dangers at an abandoned toy factory. At the end of the episode, with the Joker found, and the kidnapped three dangling above a vat of acid, the Joker has Batman open up a special present addressed specifically for him (complete with bat wrapping paper). “Don’t do it, Batman!” shouts Robin, but Batman knows that it’s the only way to save the three and Gotham City as a whole. What’s inside? A pie in the face, what else? Immediately afterward, although Joker tries to run, he slips on a roller skate and nearly falls into the acid himself…but is caught by Batman on the way down. Everyone is saved, and the two heroes even get to finally watch their Christmas special in peace.

Let’s talk about the two big things with this episode: Robin and the Joker. The idea of using an older Robin was obviously a way to bring some realism to the character, and to not ruin the tone that they were going for. Robin is historically kind of a goofy character, and was meant to be a role model for the kiddies. Wanting to avoid specifically kid elements in their show, they used a college-aged Robin. I think it works sometimes, and not so much at other times. It is a little weird seeing such an old character wearing the Robin outfit, but they also made an effort to tone down the silliness of it a little bit. Thank god we didn’t get those little elf shoes and those freshly-waxed legs. While Robin’s usefulness varies throughout the show, I think in this episode they work pretty well together, and for an episode like this, it gives Batman someone to talk to, and introduces some comic relief. Hearing Batman referred to as a Scrooge and seeing him bag on Robin’s choice of movies is pretty funny, and I feel like these two have similar exchanges about Christmas as a lot of us do in real life. The action scenes with Robin were also pretty good, and I never really felt like either of them had nothing to do/were a damsel in distress. That’s the one thing about Robin that bugs me sometimes, and it wasn’t until much later when they got consistently good at having more than one superhero on screen at once, balancing everything out. I will admit, some of it did get a little too corny for my liking…particularly the way Batman would bark things like, “Easy, Robin!” But it also reminded me a little bit of the Adam West show in a charming way that I accept much more with a Christmas episode. So take these comments how you take them. 

 And the Joker? Fantastic debut. He’s funny. He’s menacing. He’s batshit insane. He’s charismatic. He’s everything a classic, definitive Joker should be. I love Heath as much as anyone else, but being a great Joker vs being a definitive Joker are two different things. I wouldn’t get rid of either of them, and I think they both perfectly represent the type of character they are meant to be. I think the Joker changed a lot throughout this show. He giggles unlike later in the series here, and he’s clearly mentally unstable in a different, albeit very fun way. But then there are moments like where he laughs in someone’s face because he knows that her mother is on a train that is headed straight for a blown up bridge. He’s that character that you love to hate, and as much as you want Batman to sock each and every one of those yellow teeth out of his mouth, you also can’t help but root for him to keep getting away just so that you get more of him. It is kinda weird for me picturing this episode’s version of the Joker with Harley, and Harley Quinn may be the main reason why the Joker’s personality changed a little bit and got a hair more serious. In this episode he’s like, well, a cartoon character. More than usual. He has a stylized personality as much as he has a stylized look.

When I mentioned earlier that this episode fits alongside a lot of the darker aspects of Christmas, to clarify a little bit more, it’s not just because you have a psychotic killing clown and a scary guy dressed as a bat. It also has the vintage aspect to it. You have the “dark deco” 30′s aesthetic already in place. Then you add the vintage-looking wintery landscape...the Nutcracker music...and even the dark, snowy city that almost makes me think of Victorian England. I think all of this creates the old-timey Christmas feel without shoving religious morals, or Santa Claus, or greedy marketing down our throats. It succeeds in being a Christmas special almost exclusively through vibes, and mention of it being the holiday. Okay, and Robin’s green and red pajamas are pretty festive as well. The DCAU would do a couple more Christmas episodes later, another one of them being Batman, and while this one is also great, it communicates Christmas in a vastly different way than this one, a way which is much more modern. Both can be great, but this is the Batman Christmas special I will come back to year after year.

 As far as my girlfriend Char’s impressions, she really liked this episode too. As someone who has never seen a single episode of the DCAU before this blog, she said that she expected and was hoping for Harley Quinn, but wasn’t necessarily disappointed that she didn’t show up. Picturing a world of Batman TAS before Harley’s existence is something that I feel like we all sorta gloss over since it’s almost like she’s always existed. And while the show got better with her first appearance, I’m glad that they could do a solid Joker beforehand. Char loved the Joker’s representation, and was surprisingly very much in line with what she expected from the character. She said that he was very creepy, but in a very entertaining way. She also noted his design, particularly his color pallet (wait till she sees TNBA). Some more comments about Harley Quinn were made, and she’s scared for Harley after seeing what a maniac the Joker is. She ships Harley and Poison Ivy, something that I see a lot. I don’t necessarily disagree 100%, but, well, we’ll save a lot of that conversation for later. 

 An older Robin was something that Char was really into, and I got the impression that she never really cared for the super young Robin, as, well, yeah, it is kinda strange. Back when the character was introduced, maybe not so much, nut nowadays? Yeah. What the hell, Batman. Also, Loren Lester provides a voice that she always sorta pictures with the character, and again, she noted how definitive everything seemed. 

 Some other stray observations she made: She agreed with me on some of Batman’s lines being corny, but she also found them a little bit creepy.It was a unique Christmas special. Batman and Robin sorta feel like father and son, but only sorta. This is something the show will get into much more as we go on. She thought the Joker would make a hilarious game show host if he weren’t, well, evil. She noted how shitty the star on the tree at the very beginning was. Apparently Arkham Asylum needs a better interior decorator. And lastly, she loved the ending. As do I. It’s so unsettling, yet so perfect. Better than what I expected when I saw the screenshot on the back of the VHS as a kid. Char’s grade: B

Major Firsts: The Joker, Robin, Summer Gleeson, Arkham Asylum, Xmas episode, we see the Batmobile has a TV, a musical number (The Joker sings) Next time: Nothing To Fear

[lets-get-sirius-about-stars]

Pluto Alwin Character Page  (Updated 7/16/17)

(The GIF does not belong to me)

Kira belongs to @cuddles-for-cassie

Alice belongs to @the-singing-canary

Maia belongs to @royslittleharper

Original Art for her is here

Curious about the rest of team Astro? Masterlist for them is here

BASIC INFO

Name: Pluto Alwin

Original Name: Irmel Alwin (Although she has long forgotten)

Alias: Pluto

Age:

   Physically: 6 Years old

   Actual Age:  673 years old

Nicknames

Plu

Princess

Little planet

Little Miss

Gender: Female

Race: Human-ish(???) Pluto planet thing

Nationality: German

Date of Birth: July 1st, 1344

Citizenship:

      Current: America

      Past: England to Germany

Height: 3’5 (feet)

Weight: 42 lbs.

Eye Color: reddish brown eyes

Hair Color: Dark brown

Hair Style: hair slightly wavy and held in pigtails

Skin Color: Light Grey skin

Sexuality: She has the mind of a 6 year old, all she’s thinking about currently is My little Pony

Body Type: She’s a small petite kid

Outfit/Style:

Anything pretty

She finds glitter fascinating, so she has a pair of sparkly pink flats that she always wears

She’ll always wear some form of dress

She would wear her brightly colored fairy princess dress everyday if Makayla would let her

She’ll always have a pair of leggings on underneath her dress

Physical Traits:

As I said before, she’s a small kid

Her hair is so dark, it sometimes looks black.

Faint scars from when she was sick with the black death

Fan Cast: Maggie Elizabeth Jones

Family:

     Father:  Bero Alwin     Status: Deceased

     Mother: Agnise Alwin    Status: Deceased

Relationships:

Cassandra, The Celestial Witch: Cassandra was Pluto’s owner, in a sense. Pluto and her family had borrowed money from Cassandra, when they couldn’t pay off their loans, Cassandra pitied them, giving them a place to stay and let them work off their loans as indentured servants. Pluto and Cassandra were very close, Cassandra treating Pluto like her own kin and Pluto Vice versa.

              Sirius Vance: She loves him! Was extremely shy at first, (as she always is with new people) but once she got to know him more, she absolutely loved playing with him.

              Makayla Fray:  She finds her scary from time to time, but knows that Makayla only wants what’s best for her. She also discovered very early that Makayla is a human furnace, and since Plu loves heat, she’s often found riding on Makayla’s shoulders or even crawling into bed with her.

                Luna Williams: Calls her Lu Lu, and gets all her book recommendations from her. Luna often reads to little Pluto before she sleeps

                Kira Kal-El:  First person she met on earth that was closer to her age, So she, naturally, immediately thought she was the coolest person ever. She recently had been getting cooking lessons from Kira

                Alice Mae Quin: Alice is often the one to take her out to discover the wonders of new earth culture, and Plu looks forward to Alice’s visits

               Maia Bailey: Maia often helps little Plu with her ice powers, due to the fact that Plu didn’t have them before her curse.

POWER

Ice manipulation

She can easily freeze things by touching them

She doesn’t mean to; her body is just naturally cold

Can survive in extremely cold climates

Can survive in space without a suit

SKILLS/HOBBIES

She’s a pro with the broom (as in, she cleans stuff well)

Watching My little pony

Playing with her easy bake oven

Has the voice of an angel

HABITS

She’s a sweet heart, but to many people that she doesn’t know scares her, so she often disappears to a quiet corner at parties

She often bites her nails

Hums to herself

Goofy dances when her favorite songs come on

LIKES

WARMTH

Fluffy sweaters to wear over her dresses

Glitter

Unicorns

She loves the colors pink, green and purple

Television, she finds the moving pictures so fascinating!

Microwavable food

Cupcakes, or cake in general

DISLIKES

Being cold

Strangers

Loud noises

Scary movies

Jason Todd (Sirius is not always the best influence…)

STRENGTHS

Being by liquid is always good for her

WEAKNESSES

swimming is a big no for her

The water surrounding her freezes up, and although she can survive the freezing bit, if she becomes completely submerged in water and it freezes over, she’d suffocate.

FEARS

Being a disappointment

Like Sirius, She’s terrified of sick people, mostly because she grew up in the time of the black plague

Death, she died once, and she wasn’t a big fan of it

The dark

Doctors

OTHER FACTS

Pluto’s original name was Irmel, this was the name given to her at birth

She was also the first of the cursed planets

She was born in 1344, straight into servitude

Her parents had borrowed money from Cassandra when they had moved to England thinking tat they would do better there.

They did not, and when it came apparent to Cassandra that they would never be able to pay her back, she made an agreement that they would work off their debt and Cassandra would give them a place to stay and food.

So Pluto grew up in Cassandra’s mansion, Cassandra loving Pluto as her own and Pluto loving Cassandra

The black Plague came in 1347, killing off both of her parents

Cassandra would have saved them with magic, but it was a dangerous time to be a witch

People of their town constantly tried to pin the blame on a witch.

In 1348, when Pluto was 4 years old, she had caught the plague

Cassandra was crushed and refused to let the girl die

So Pluto was healed with magic, but not without consequence

Word around town about Pluto’s miraculous recovery, and the towns people suspected Cassandra of witch craft

Cassandra and Pluto Fled to Germany, but not before catching some very unwanted attention from Cassandra’s mother (who is also a witch)

They live there for two years, that’s when Cassandra’s mother finds them

Her mother has a bit of a bone to pick with Cassandra, so she makes the decision to kill Pluto,

She succeeds

But not before Cassandra cast her own spell, one that preserves the soul of the recently departed

She wanted to save Pluto, but she knew if she brought her back, her mother would always be after her.

So she decided to send Pluto to the farthest known corner of their universe (known to her at least)

She magically modified Pluto’s body to withstand her new home and retain her youth along with linking her to the planet.

Cassandra was planning on figuring out a way to break this curse once she got rid of her mother.

So Pluto was cursed into the night sky, on the small planet that was Pluto

It is unknown what happened to Cassandra after Sirius was made, but bottom line is that she never broke Pluto’s curse

Pluto lived in solitude for 673 years, and then she started getting visions of bright colors and sounds.

It wasn’t long before Makayla showed up and broke her curse

Modern earth fascinates her

All of the glowing signs and machinal vehicles

She’s not aloud out on the field yet

Makayla refuses

She promised Pluto though, that if she still wanted to fight crime when she was older, she could

[everlarkficexchange]

The Naked Truth

Written by: @peetaspikelets

Dialogue Prompt: this has got to be the strangest day of my life…(submitted by @xerxia31)

Rating: M (for nudity and language)

A/N: I need to thank Mr Pikelet for helping me bring this story to life. He brought ‘an event’ to my attention and after my initial shock and a bit of a giggle I thought I have to everlark this some how. 

A BIG thank you to my beta @sponsormusings for her amazing guidance, support and advice. I would be lost without you!

Enjoy!

Katniss hears the ringing of the front door bell as she’s putting on the final touches to her outfit. With fumbling fingers, she fixes the back of her pearl stud earring and shoves her feet into the only pair of strappy black heels she owns, praying that by the end of the night her feet won’t ache and swell with juicy blisters.

She gives her reflection a quick once over in the dust-covered mirror sitting in the far corner of her bedroom - her molten grey eyes stare back at her with nervousness and hesitancy. Taking a deep breath, she lowers her gaze and fretfully smooths out the wrinkles the iron failed to press out of the forest green spaghetti dress that clings to her body and highlights her small frame. It was the most expensive and date appropriate outfit she could find. She’d forgotten that she even had it, stumbling across it by accident behind all her winter coats at the back of her closest, ignored and with the sale tags still on. Katniss has never had a place or the opportunity to wear it out anywhere until tonight.

She rarely goes out on dates, especially blind dates and isn’t the type of person who enjoys socialising and fluttering around aimlessly like an overzealous butterfly high on life. Her work colleagues are her only friends, but even that’s a loose statement depending on who you talk to. She much prefers to stay in the warm comfort and safety of her own cocoon since moving to Panem three years earlier. She likes that she has full ownership of the remote control and can watch any reality TV show she wants without the embarrassment and likelihood of snide remarks and ridicule. She’s a creature of habit, one who prefers to curl up in her favorite armchair, dressed in sweats and enjoying a cup of creamy hot chocolate, no matter what the weather’s like outside.

However, a couple of months ago on Katniss’ birthday – celebrated alone, exactly how she preferred it - fractures of doubt had begun to appear out of nowhere, threatening the fragile existence of her perfect bubble. It was that night while eating a cupcake she’d bought for herself as a treat that she’d realized that the mangy, pain in the ass cat she was looking after while her sister Prim was away at school, had started to hang out with the identical flea ball next door, and seemed to be having more of a social – and sex - life than her.

The wakeup had been like a bomb going off, ringing loud and clear in her ears and it had forced her take a good, hard look at herself. She’d realised she didn’t like what she saw - she was thirty two, had no real friends, no potential boyfriends waiting for her in the wings, and not even a single hobby she could draw any happiness from. She was living the same day over and over again like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day. The only difference between them was that she had the ability to actually change things, and yet was still purposely choosing to live this way on a daily basis. Deep down she’d known that she’d needed to break free from her comfortable haven and start experiencing more of what life had to offer beyond sitting on a couch. At the rate she was going, the only legacy she would be leaving in this world was the imprint of her rear end on an acrylic cushion.

She’d already known what was holding her back. She hadn’t needed an expensive psychiatrist to help her figure it out, it had been as clear as day – fear. Fear had been her biggest adversary since she’d been a child and she’d lost her father in a car accident. The crippling anxiety and the worrying thoughts that something bad might happen to her had been annoying and unwanted like foot rot, but they’d stuck. But she’d realised that now that she was older and matured, and was able to identify her triggers and the reasons behind them, she’d hoped she could lock all that away in a little black box and bury it 6 feet under. She knew she just needed to get out there and take that initial leap into the big, wide world and see where she landed.

Which is exactly why the doorbell is ringing. Katniss had finally succumbed to months of bribery and heavy pressure from her work colleague, Madge, and agreed to go out on a blind date with a guy from the marketing department. She absently lists everything she knows about him in her head - his name is Cato Jackson and he works as an associate advisor for District Advertising. He enjoys lifting weights, camping…and apparently arriving fifteen minutes early to pick her up for their date. The doorbell rings again and Katniss tries not to grit her teeth in annoyance. She grabs her purse off the bed and heads to the front door, her heels clicking on the tiled floor, mimicking the rapid beating of her heart as she gets closer. Taking a deep breath, she swallows her anxiety and the internal need to pretend she’s not home and swings open the door quickly before she can change her mind.

No, no, no. Absolutely not. This is a terrible idea. Has Madge lost her mind?

It’s all she can think when her eyes fall upon the strange man’s overbearing frame that’s covering half her doorway, posing like he’s on the cover of GQ magazine. This hulk of a man is triple her size and his broad shoulders are straining hard against his navy shirt, like he’s about to break out and destroy half of the Capitol. Meanwhile, his blond hair looks like it’s been bleached or he’s spent way too much time under the hot rays of the sun, and the length is so short that it makes his head look out of proportion with his body. Madge had said he liked to lift weights but that would have to be a gross understatement. He’s obviously a junkie who lives at the gym 24/7, who has protein shakes for every meal and injects high doses of steroids into his body on a regular basis.

“Katniss.” His voice comes out rough and scratchy, like the sound of scraping sandpaper.

Her face is tight, but she manages to curl her mouth and muster a polite smile. Her stomach twists and clenches as she watches him blatantly look her up and down, clearly admiring her small, toned body. His gaze lingers a few seconds longer than necessary on the breasts that are being pushed up to effect thanks to the tight bodice of her dress.

Oh god, this dress is a mistake. This whole thing is a mistake, her brain screams. I can’t go out with him. Why on earth did I agree to this? I feel like a piece of meat being displayed on a butcher’s block! Frantically she tries to think of an excuse to cancel the date at the last minute, her mind racing before he speaks up again.

“So if you’re ready, I thought we could go and check out Cinna’s Art Gallery in the city.”

Katniss pauses and her eyes widen dramatically. Any thoughts of an escape plan now lie in the background to sit and simmer. That sentence. It was the last thing she was expecting to come out of his mouth. She’s quite amazed he even knows what an art gallery is, not to mention the fact that he’s offering to take her there on their first date. She was under the impression from Madge that he was a typical beers and football kind of guy and that they’d probably head to a bar for the night. Katniss had just been hoping whichever off the wall establishment they’d found themselves in would at least serve some decent food so she didn’t have to eat a bowl of peanuts for dinner. But maybe she’s been reading this whole situation wrong. Katniss knows she can often judge people harshly and jump to conclusions, so perhaps this time her assumptions about Cato Jackson are incorrect. Relief appears and sweeps through her system as she lowers her defences. She gives him a true, genuine smile and can’t help but feel a little excited.

“Cinna’s Art Gallery?” She confirms. “That actually sound amazing. I’ve never been there before.”

“Really? Well you’re in for a treat. I heard this exhibition is supposed to be…um…one of a kind,” he answers, stumbling on his words before chuckling. “I went ahead and already purchased our tickets.”

“Sounds great,” she replies beaming, and steps out onto the porch. She looks down to appraise her outfit for the tenth time. “Oh wait! Am I dressed alright for the exhibit? I know galleries can be fancy. It’s not too revealing is it?”

He gives her a smirk and looks her up and down again, his eyes turning bright with lust. “You look hot, there’s no need to worry about your dress. We’ll be the envy of everyone there. Trust me,” he winks.

That’s…odd, she thinks, but she lets it go and follows him down the footpath until they reach his shiny BMW parked in the driveway. Katniss tries not to show her displeasure when she notices his right tire is sitting on top of her small garden bed of primroses, the weight of the car crushing the beautiful and delicate flowers she only just planted two weeks ago.

————————

Standing in the large foyer at Cinna’s Art Gallery is like being part of a blissful dream you never want to wake up from. Katniss has never stepped inside such a building, one that can only be described as majestic. With wide eyes and a goofy grin, she looks like a kid on Christmas morning as she takes it all in. Her neck strains as she admires the huge cathedral formed ceilings and clear glass windows that are showing off the night sky. The universe is putting on its own exhibition tonight with its twinkling stars and orbiting planets, each one shining bright against the dark backdrop.

Returning her gaze to the room around her, she’s mesmerised by all the stunning pieces that are laid out on display in the arrival area where they’re waiting in line to enter. Every piece is unique and she’s itching to step out of her spot so she can take a closer look. She can only imagine what kind of beautiful wonders are waiting for her inside the actual exhibition. Just the ambience in the room is humming with excitement and electricity, but instead of it causing her alarm and the need to run back to the safe confines of her house, it brings her a sense of comfort she’s can’t explain.

“So what’s the show about?” Katniss asks curiously, turning her head to look at Cato. They haven’t talked much since getting into his car, and at the moment he doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to her. Instead, he’s staring straight ahead, his neck craning around an older man with a shaved head who’s standing in front of him, and looking around like he’s searching for something. She follows his line of sight, but all she can see is a group of people being politely escorted to a room on the left hand side of the building after they’ve had their tickets scanned. That must be the entrance to the exhibition, Katniss thinks.  

“Cato,” she tries again, her voice now louder to get his attention. It does the trick. He turns around to stare at her with an annoyed expression on his face. “What’s the exhibition about?”

“Oh, um, you know…art and stuff.”                

Katniss’ brows narrow at his unwillingness to share. She doesn’t understand why it has to be a big secret. There must be some reason why he picked this place tonight. “Well it’s got to be something in particular,” she prompts. “This place is packed. The name of the exhibition should be written on our tickets.”

He turns to her with a smile, though his eyes are cold. “Can’t a guy surprise a girl on a date anymore?”

They reach the counter where a young woman with long red hair and a kind smile greets them. Cato pulls the tickets out from his back pocket and hands them to her to scan. Katniss tries to sneak a peek, but Cato’s large, veiny hands cover most of them. Something unsettling begins to wash over her, and the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention as she feels his hand find her lower back and begin to nudge her along, heading to the room on the left.

With a shake of her head and any semblance of social decorum now out the window, she digs her heels into the granite flooring and forces them to stop mid walk. “What’s going on?” She asks turning to him, her voice growing high with suspicion. “I don’t understand why you’re being so secretive. What’s the exhibition about? Why won’t you tell me?” He stands still, staring down at her intently for a few moments, his body vibrating with heat and refusing to give her an answer. “I’m not leaving this spot until you tell me,” she pushes.

Cato drops his mask of stone and groans with enough exaggeration that it causes a few people to look over. He drives his fingers roughly through his hair. “Women,” he whispers with a huff. “Fine! It’s a nude exhibition, alright? The artists are naked! They’re the exhibition. You happy?”

It takes Katniss’ brain several moments to catch up and process what he’s said. “A nude exhibition?” She whispers back uncertainly, shock clearly written across her face. Her mouth gapes open a few times like a fish out of water but she’s still not sure what to say to that unexpected confession. Nudity. The artists are nude. Naked like the day they were born, she thinks and feels her cheeks flame with heat. Katniss has never viewed something like that before. She’s always been shy and uncomfortable around nudity. She’s only had one boyfriend and that was before she moved to Panem. The relationship lasted seven months and during that time they only ever had sex with the lights off.  Katniss has always been self – conscious about her body, never comfortable in her own skin, no matter how many times Darius told her she was gorgeous. She never believed him. And now just thinking about what awaits for her inside that large hall where a group of male and female artists will be fully nude and standing around on display… well it causes anxious butterflies to appear and dance around in her belly like they’re trying to fight each other to escape.

Her shock of the situation however soon quickly turns to boiling rage – at herself. She knew she shouldn’t have trusted him. Of course he wasn’t into art, he had his own agenda for tonight - using their date as an excuse to come and ogle other women. She’s never felt so angry…and hurt.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” He says, reading her expression. He has the gallantry to look defeated. “It’s just I thought this would be something different to do on a first date – something we could experience together. Madge said you wanted to get out and explore life and shit…”

Her mouth forms a tight line. She can’t believe Madge actually told him that after she confided in her. Ugh! She tries to take a few calming breaths to mellow out the resentment she now feels towards both of them. What he said, though, was true. She does need to get out and explore new things and this exhibition would definitely fit into that category and yank her out of her comfort zone. This type of art is not her thing. She was seriously expecting just to see a bunch of paintings and sculptures from famous artists or local talents – nothing too confrontational and confronting…but maybe she could do this. Looking around at the sheer number of people who have turned up tonight it seems like this type of exhibition interests a lot of people from all walks of life.

“It’s a movement thing,” Cato continues, trying to convince her. “You never know, it could be fun…” He gives her a devastatingly handsome smile, one that’s almost convincing with his pearly whites and eyes shining bright. But his mouth curls in a way that causes Katniss to sense a small amount of doubt about his sentiments.

What the hell, she thinks. She’s here and she doesn’t want to make a scene by leaving, especially when they’d already gotten their tickets scanned and an usher is waiting patiently nearby. Besides taking Cato’s lying out of the equation, this exhibition could be good for her. She should do this for herself. “I wish you’d told me earlier,” she tells him tightly before softening her tone. “But alright, I’ll go in.”

He looks surprised for a moment that she’s actually agreed to go in with him but quickly covers it up with a flirty grin. “That’s great,” he replies, taking her hand in his. It feels cold and stiff. “I just know we’re going to have a lot of fun together and I hear,” he leans down and whispers in a conspiratorial tone, “that it can be good for foreplay.”

She swallows the bile rising at the back of her throat and shakes away the invisible sensation of creepy crawlies scuttling along her neck from where his breath just laid upon her skin. Do most women fall for his charm? If that’s the case, he’s going to be sorely disappointed when the night is over, as absolutely nothing like that is going to be happening. Ever. As soon as the opportunity arises she’ll be hailing down a cab and hightailing it out of there before he even realises she’s gone.

As the usher greets them with a pleased smile, he passes Cato a key and directs them to go straight inside the room on the left. Katniss isn’t sure what the key is about. Maybe it’s connected to something in the exhibition, like some kind of symbolism. She’s not too sure, as she’s never been good at finding hidden meanings.

She bites her lip nervously as they move closer to the door. At least I’ll have one positive thing to tell Prim about tonight, she thinks. It didn’t surprise Katniss one bit that her sister literally screamed in delight when she’d told her she had agreed to go on a blind date during one of their weekly skype catch ups. And knowing her persistent sister, she’ll be wanting every minuscule detail.

“Here we go,” Cato announces, opening the unmarked door and allowing her to walk through. She makes her way inside, gearing herself up for what she’s about to come face to face with, but instead she stops in her tracks, afraid that her eyes are deceiving her. She scans the room closely trying to make sense about what she’s seeing, and the realisation hits her like a ton of bricks, her eyes widening in horror. Every one of her limbs freeze and her body stiffens. Even the heat radiating off Cato’s body against her back is not helping her move. And she really wants to move so she can get as far away from him as possible while screaming at the top of her lungs, “How dare you?” and “What the hell is this?”

Standing in front of her are about twenty naked people. Bare ass naked like the day they were born. Male and female. Their bodies all different sizes; big, medium, small. Toned, saggy. Every inch of their skin is exposed and hanging out for everyone to see. But that’s not what’s horrifying her – it’s the fact that these naked bodies don’t belong to the artists. She recognises these people - they were just waiting in line with them to view the exhibition. The old man with the shaved head who’d been in front of them is now standing a few feet away, wearing his birthday suit and scratching his nuts. With dazed eyes, Katniss watches as he places all his clothes into a locker, which she can now see is one of many spread out across the entire room where people are shedding their clothes. She eyes the key in his hand, noting it’s identical to the one Cato received, as he locks the small metal compartment. He gives them both a kind smile as he walks past them and heads towards another door at the back of the room, where a sign on display says, ‘Exhibition Entrance.’

She feels Cato pushing her forward, towards a locker that’s situated at the back of the room. Immediately she rises out of her stupor and rounds on him. “What the fuck is this?” She hisses through clenched teeth, and tries to keep her voice low. But there’s no mistaking the anger seeping out of every pore of her body.

“Oh come on, what’s the difference?” He defends sharply. He clearly knows what she’s talking about. “It’s no big deal. You said you were fine with naked art.”

“Yes! But that’s when I thought only the artists would be nude. I didn’t think…I had…to…” She starts to stammer as her throat begins to close up with an emotion she doesn’t want to deal with right now. Instead she turns it into anger. Anger is good; it’s familiar and powerful and besides, he deserves the full brunt of her wrath after this implausible stunt he’s just pulled. “I can’t believe you brought me here on a first date!” She yells back. “You tricked me. You’re a liar!”

Out of the corner of her eye she can now see the majority of people leaving the change room, scurrying out the door like rats in order to get away from the dispute they’re bearing witness to. If she wasn’t filled with so much rage she could probably find the humor in watching a bunch of naked people running for their lives.

“Listen, I know I wasn’t completely upfront with you about everything,” he says like owning up to his deception will make everything better. “But don’t you think you’re overacting a bit? Most women would love to do this with me.” To emphasise his point he begins to unbutton his shirt, dragging the material down his shoulders like he’s getting ready to model. His tanned and muscular chest glistens under the changing room’s downlights and she wonders in disgust if he purposefully slicked himself up with baby oil before he came to pick her up.

With every article of clothing he takes off, her mouth only twists further and further into rage and horror. He played her like a damn fool, to the point that she ignored her own instincts – twice. She opens her mouth to let fly every single, hateful word she has for him, until out of the corner of her eye she’s distracted by another couple entering the room and she’s forced to pause mid breath. Their presence is like a stop button on a remote control, pausing a vital scene in a movie. The overzealous giggling coming from the woman cements Katniss’ attention as they close the door. The man has his arm wrapped around the woman’s waist and they both have huge smiles on their faces like they don’t have a care in the world. The man is tall, with a stocky build and broad shoulders. His blond, wavy hair curls at the tips of his ears and his piercing blue eyes stare at the blond woman in his arms like he’s the luckiest man on earth. Walking past them to find their locker, they greet Katniss and Cato with a smile, unaware they’ve just stepped into a potential war zone. Just looking at them it’s obvious they’re very much in love and devoted to one another. For the first time it makes Katniss envious of a romantic relationship and her heart starts to hurt. She takes in every line of expression and curve of their lips as they whisper and help each other out of their clothes lovingly. They’re truly a captivating couple.

“You said it yourself that you wanted to try something new,” Cato says, breaking into her reverie. “What could be better than this?”

Using a quieter voice as she doesn’t want the perfect couple looking over and listening in on their private conversation, she replies coldly. “Yes, that’s true. But I also wanted to try new things on my own terms. Not to be forced into it and not to do something so….” scary, terrifying, she thinks, but she doesn’t voice those fears out loud.

“Don’t be so pure, Katniss,” he berates, taking off his slacks and leaving him in his underwear that leaves nothing to the imagination. Katniss takes a step back. “Wait a minute - are you a virgin?” He asks suddenly, alarmed by her reaction. “Is that why you’re upset? Because you’ve never seen a naked body before?”

Pure? Virgin? “What does that have to do with anything?” She snarls. “Oh my god, what is wrong with you? Are you deluded? Did you actually think you were doing me a favor by bringing me here?” His audacity has her reeling. “And by the way, the only thing that isn’t pure around here is your intentions.” She doesn’t care anymore if the flawless couple can hear her now, she’s too enraged at his stupidity to hold back. “I can’t believe I gave you another chance – again,” she scowls and to her horror she feels a pesky, burning feeling start to form at the back of her eyes and she wills her body with all her might to stop it immediately. But instead her vision becomes blurry and her chin begins to quiver. “You’re an asshole!” She cries out before lifting her hand and slapping him across the face. The sound resembles a gunshot and it echoes through the room, making the ideal couple look over at them, startled. Katniss feels her hand vibrating with hot heat as she tries to shake away the pain but she gets no relief. Taking one last, furious look at Cato, who is holding his crimson cheek in shock – Good! I hope I left a mark - she runs to the nearest door, hoping it’s an exit out of the gallery.

But instead of finding sweet relief from the date from hell, she discovers she’s not outside but instead standing alone in a bathroom that looks so pristine and high tech she wonders briefly if she’s stepped onto a space shuttle. She peers over her shoulder to make sure Cato isn’t following her. He’s not, but not wanting to chance it, she moves into the middle toilet cubicle and locks the door. In defeat, she drops the toilet lid down loudly and sits herself on top of it with a loud sigh. Her shoulders break first; trembling and shaking under the heavy weight of tonight’s events and soon watery tears descend and fall, sliding down her heated cheeks. She sniffles and wipes them away hastily. She shouldn’t have been surprised about how her night turned out. The odds were never in her favor. Why did she even try?

Tonight was just a reminder that she’s doomed to be alone forever. Stuck in a life where her destiny resembles the life of a mouse. A creature who spends most of its days running around aimlessly on a wheel, who does the same thing over and over again and never having any hope in changing it or going anywhere.

Just the thought causes another fat tear to slip down her cheek and she rips a piece of toilet paper off to dab at her swollen eyes. I’ve failed, she thinks and for the first time in years she lets herself truly break and feel the grief of her lonely and possibly insignificant life.

She doesn’t know how long she remains in this state. She only stops when there are no more salty tears to shed and the unsettling thought of how she’s going to get out of here hits her. Her worrying, however, is short lived when the bathroom door unexpectedly creaks open. She stops and freezes as footsteps pad inside, listening intently as she tries to remember if Cato walked with a heavy gait. It’s obvious where she’s hiding. The thin wooden toilet door between them offers her very little protection and there’s no way she will be opening it up willingly for him, especially not after slapping him. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the type of guy who would use threats or an element of force with her after an incident like that. She pulls out her phone, ready to swipe Madge’s number when an unfamiliar and masculine voice speaks up.

“Hello.”

Taken back by the stranger’s greeting she remains silent.

“Are you alright?” He speaks again, his voice kind.

She sucks in a sharp breath and feels an unusual heat creep upon her skin. She doesn’t know why but she’s taken back by the soothing sound of the stranger’s voice. There’s something comforting about it, like warm honey sliding lazily down your throat.

He coughs. “If you’re worried about the guy you were with, don’t be. He’s gone. You’re safe.”

The relief that Cato isn’t out there anymore hits her instantaneously. The tension leaves her shoulders and her whole body relaxes in reply.

“Are you hurt?” He asks worriedly.

The question startles her. “No,” she finally answers, finding her voice. But it comes out hoarse and she hates the fact it makes it obvious that she’s been crying.

“Can you please open the door so I can make sure you’re okay?”

The sweet pleading in his voice convinces her that the stranger’s concern is genuine. She nods, but then realises he can’t see her. She doesn’t want to leave this tiny stall just yet so she leans over and unlocks the door. Slowly it swings open and reveals the face of her mystery man. She’s quick to assess that it’s the same man from the change room who’s part of the captivating dynamic duo. Although now instead of standing in front of her naked, he’s wearing a long, white terry cloth robe.

“There you are,” he smiles, but his eyes can’t hide the shadow of concern. “It’s okay. My name’s Peeta.”

“Katniss,” she murmurs, meeting his gaze.

“It’s nice to meet you, Katniss.” His smile then drops, and takes on a serious expression as his eyes rake over her body like he’s looking for any signs of injuries. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

She nods. Now that she’s in close proximity to him she manages to catch a whiff of his scent, which she recognises immediately as cinnamon and dill. It reminds her of her favorite bakery she likes to frequent before work. Their cheese buns and hot chocolate are to die for.

Staring up she can’t help but be mesmerised by the profundity in his ocean blue eyes, almost to the point that she feels like she’s drowning in them. Her attention is drawn to the muscular chest that peeks through the top layer of his robe and she has the sudden urge to kiss and swirl her tongue all over it. He’s got handsome and wholesome written all over him, like he’s been plucked out of a 1950’s sitcom. Her eyes travel across his body trying to map out and remember what he looked like naked just a few minutes ago. The momentary flash she got of his gorgeous body while she was fighting with Cato is now imprinted permanently behind her eyelids. But then the image of the happy woman he was with takes centre stage and the show is over. She feels terrible and shakes her head in shame. “Thank you,” she replies quietly. “It was nice of you to come back here and check up on me. But really I’m fine. You should go back out there to your girlfriend and enjoy the exhibition.”

He blinks, confused for a second. “But…I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Her eyes narrow and she looks at him baffled. “But - back in the change room, you were all over that blond woman.”

She watches as his features transform briefly from one of confusion to a look of understanding, before relief reaches his lips and he lets out a throaty chuckle. “That wasn’t me.”

“What do you mean, it wasn’t you?” She asks, and rises to her feet. “I saw you with my own eyes. You were all over each other,” she accuses. She feels the anger building up inside her again like boiling water. She can’t believe there’s another guy standing right in front of her and blatantly lying to her face again. “Did you think because you saw me with some dumb meathead that I’d be too brainless to figure you out?”

Peeta’s face drops. “No! Listen you have the wrong idea. I was -”

“I have the wrong idea?!” She reiterates angrily, her eyes scorching back with fire. “Well then please enlighten me. What ingenious excuse were you going to come up with?” She adds sarcastically, and steps forward into his personal space. “Maybe you were going to tell me I’m crazy and I just imagined you and your girlfriend in the changeroom? Or maybe you were going to tell me that the guy back there is actually your identical twin brother?

Peeta stares at her wide eyed for a moment. “Ah, yeah actually. You’re right on the money with the twin thing,” he manages to get out apprehensively.

Her lips purse firmly in thought and she closes her eyes in irritation. “Look,” she starts, before she opens her eyes again. This time the anger has faded and been replaced by exhaustion. “I’m not in the mood to have another guy lie to me tonight, okay? So I’m giving you to the count of three to tell me the truth or I’ll have no regrets about kicking you in the balls.”

Peeta winces as he holds his hands up in surrender and takes a careful step back. “There’s really no need for that, I swear.” He pointedly looks down at Katniss’ feet, worry etched across his face that she’s about to strike any second like a cobra. “Kicking me in the nuts would be a really bad idea. Look I’m sorry you’ve had a rough night, but I was being serious earlier. I do have a brother and we are identical twins. I can prove it to you.”

The rush of worry and desperation in his voice pulls at her heart strings uninvited and causes her to pause and reconsider. His frantic eyes search her face begging to be believed. Sighing loudly she goes against her better judgement and steps back as he pulls out an iPhone from the pocket of his robe. “Here, I actually have a photo of the three of us together,” he says, offering the device to her. She looks at the screen and there in front of her is no denying the familiar giggling, blond dressed up in a floral dress with bouncing curls. She’s standing happily in between two familiar blond men who look completely identical down to their button up navy blue suits and matching smiles that could rot your teeth with their sweetness. All three of them are standing behind a colorful banner that reads. “Congratulations on your engagement Delly and Rye.”

“No trick photography or image altering I swear,” he jokes.

Omg! There’s two of them, she thinks and lets out an audible groan. Her cheeks bloom in shame and she feels mortified about how she just spoke to him, when all along he was being a nice and considerate guy coming in to check on her wellbeing. Surely she’s hit her limit now. Her name has to be worthy of being featured in the Guinness World record books under the award of ‘having the worst and most embarrassing night of your life.’ She lifts her head, looking contrite. “I’m so sorry. I should never have accused you of being a liar. That was awful of me. And I’m sorry I threatened to kick you in the balls,” she finishes awkwardly.

He laughs. “It’s alright, don’t be so hard on yourself. You weren’t to know. I understand why you would have made that assumption. Believe it or not it’s not the first time I’ve been mistaken for my brother in less than ideal circumstances,” he jokes. “Kind of comes with the territory of being an identical twin.”

She gives him a small smile, grateful at his understanding and for his talent at putting people at ease.

“It sounds like you’ve had a rough night,” he adds sympathetically.

“I think that’s the understatement of the century,” she answers solemnly and hands him back his phone. She steps around him and out of the cubicle until she’s in front of a porcelain sink. She leans over to splash some cold water onto her face and through the mirror she notices Peeta straightening up his robe.   

“How did you know I was in here?” She enquires, reaching for a fluffy hand towel.

“Rye and Delly,” he states like its explanation enough. “They saw you upset and running from a guy in the change rooms. They were worried and said the guy looked a bit…shady so they came and found me. Said you might need some help.”

“Are you a security guard?” She asks, although as soon as the question leaves her lips she thinks it’s unlikely due to the lack of clothes he’s wearing. Unless security is going nude for tonight too, she wonders.

“I’m one of the artists,” he explains not missing a beat. “But I’ve worked at the gallery for a long time. We take any harassment, especially on nights like this, very seriously. There’s no room for chances.”

She nods, worrying her lip between her teeth as he watches her closely.  Unanswered questions burn bright from his eyes like lasers. After everything he’s done for her tonight, she knows he deserves an explanation. “My blind date brought me here,” she shares quietly. Peeta doesn’t say anything, but the light in his eyes soften, the action telling her it’s okay and to take her time.

“I thought we were just going to see some sculptures and paintings. I didn’t realise it was a nude exhibition and that…we had to be nude too.” Rehashing the memories of Cato and his true intentions make her feel like an idiot again and she lowers her head in shame.

“Wait a minute,” Peeta’s appalled voice cuts in and echoes against the tiled walls. He takes a few steps closer and his presence causes her to lift her head. She’s shocked to see his face contorted and anger swimming amongst the depths of his eyes like a violent storm is brewing. “Let me get this straight. You’ve never met this guy before and he brought you here to this exhibition on a first date?”

“Yes. He had tickets. Said it could be good foreplay.”

Peeta growls with animalistic fervour. “That’s just fucked up! Who the hell does something like that?! You know he’s lucky he’s not here because I would love to give him a piece of my mind before throwing him out on his ass!”

Her lips tug up into a smile before she can help herself. He looks livid. His fists are clenched and his jaw is tense, making him look all pumped up and ready to go into battle for her. It’s kind of cute and endearing, and her heart starts to warm and swell with something. No Katniss, don’t go there. Even though he’s nice and feeling protective towards you it doesn’t mean he would ever be ever interested in someone like you. He works here and is just being concerned. She clears her throat, turning her facial expression neutral, hoping it will disguise the fact that her heart is beating so quickly she’s afraid it will jump out of her chest and land at his feet in a pathetic heap. “Well it looks like I’ll have to thank your brother for going to get you – he sounds like a great guy.”

“Oh, please whatever you do, don’t say that to his face. I beg you. He’ll be milking this for weeks and I have to see him every day,” he tells her but his tone is friendly and humorous. The way his face relaxes when speaking about his brother tells her that they have a close and playful bond. “If I thought I could get away with telling people Rye is not my brother – trust me I would. I like to refer to him as the evil twin, whereas he prefers being called the devilishly handsome one.”

Katniss flings her head back and laughs in delight, before Peeta joins in too. It’s nice to let bursts of laughter spring forth and allow some of the tension to seep out of her body after the night she’s had. She can’t believe how comfortable she feels around him and they’ve only just met. She’s never felt like this with anyone before, not even Darius. She smiles, taking in the huskiness of his laughter and realises she likes it. It’s a deep and joyful sound that she thinks even the birds would stop to listen to. “So is there any way to tell you two apart?” She asks curiously.

“Well, let’s see…he’s right handed and I’m left handed,” he shares with a shrug. “So if you ever have trouble telling us apart just hand over a pen and demand us to write. It’s what Delly used to do when we were kids,” he chuckles and his eyes drift off briefly like he’s remembering something funny. “Oh, and I do have a small scar just near my hairline.” He smooths back his hair, showing off his forehead. She leans forward, and can’t help but take in another whiff of his scent like she’s breathing in some kind of heavenly life force. She eyes the small ragged blemish that you wouldn’t know was there unless you were looking for it. “I got this when I was 13 thanks to Rye. We were competing against one another at the regional wrestling competition. I came off second best,” he adds with a feign grimace.

Her mouth opens in fake indignation. “Siblings, right? They can be a real pain in the ass sometimes can’t they?”

“Tell me about – he still likes to gloat over it every now and again. But whenever I suggest a re-match he suddenly has to go home.”

She unexpectedly lets out a giggle. “Sounds like someone is threatened to lose their title,” she teases before her face drops to one of envy and sadness. “You’re lucky though that you have your brother close by. I haven’t seen my sister in almost a year.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“She’s living on the other side of the country studying medicine.”

“Oh wow, that’s great,” he remarks sounding impressed. “Although I’m sorry you don’t get to see her often. That would be tough. But you must be proud? She’s out there following her dreams, with the courage to leave the safety of her comfort zone…”

Comfort Zone. Two simple words that mean nothing to her when spoken separately but when they’re put together hit her straight in the gut like a freight train. And the way he’s looking at her now makes her feel a little uneasy, like he’s got x-ray vision and is using his superpower to look straight through her to view her very soul. Her skin suddenly feels hot under his intense stare like she’s standing underneath a giant spotlight. It causes her to pull away and break eye contact. “Yeah I guess so,” she answers softly, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation has taken. “So, um…” She clears her throat, wanting to get back to what they were talking about earlier. “So it’s only those two things that can tell you apart?”

He stares at her for a few moments, clearly thinking. His eyes bore into hers longer than what’s necessary before he answers. “Well if we’re only talking about physical appearances there is something else that can tell us apart.” And without hesitation, he lifts up his robe. For a crazy, split second, she thinks he’s going to flash her which doesn’t make any sense, but then she notices the robe has just been lifted up to his left knee. The action causes her eyes to be drawn down to his lower limb. But she’s not looking at flesh and bone. Instead, she realises he’s wearing a prosthetic leg.

Peeta stands still and composed, watching her closely and waiting for some kind of reaction.

Katniss is shocked for a few moments as she gets her bearings. She certainly wasn’t expecting to see that when he lifted up his robe. Her eyes travel carefully up and down the artificial limb inspecting it in wonder. She can’t believe how real it looks. “What happened?” She asks, looking up into his eyes. She’s surprised by her concerned tone considering they’ve only just met, but she can’t hide the fact that she feels somewhat protective towards him. Her heart clenches thinking about all the terrible things that could have happened to him.

He shrugs his shoulders with a wry smile. “I wish I had more of a dramatic story to tell you. But I was 16, away at a school camp and my friends and I wanted to go visit Arena Mountain. And of course the teachers wouldn’t let us, so we snuck off and I ended up slipping down a hill and cutting my leg on some rusted fencing.”

She winces. “Oh my god. What did you do?”

“Obviously not the smart thing,” he tells her dryly. “We didn’t want to get in trouble so we kept our little adventure and my injury to ourselves. I thought cleaning it up with water and soap would be fine.” He runs his free hand through his hair with a loud sigh. “But before I knew it, I got really sick and found out I had blood poisoning. The doctors were able to save my life but not my leg.” He gives her a tight, accepting smile. The mood in the bathroom has now dropped a couple of degrees.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she tells him, reaching out to touch his arm in a gesture of comforting. “After all that did you at least get to Arena Mountain?”

He looks down at her with a double take before his face splits into a wide grin and bursts of hysterical laughter escape his lungs. The effect causes his shoulders to shake and his eyes to water. “You know no one has ever asked me that before. Usually when I retell this story everybody just wants to focus on the negatives. So thank you,” he says between gasps. “I mean, that was the reason we snuck out, but no one has ever cared to ask if we made it to our destination or not. But to answer your question, we got there, banged up leg and all and it was amazing.”

“That’s good to hear,” she smiles, her eyes bright. She was hoping the question would have that kind of effect on him. Knowing from past experiences, she knows he doesn’t need or want her pity. Sometimes deflecting off a painful memory that’s right in front of you can be the best medicine.

He finally gets his laughter under control, wiping away the stray water from his eyes. He gazes down at her, and she’s surprised at the way his eyes are dancing across her face, almost in what could only be described as pure wonderment. He’s looking at her like he’s in the presence of an amazing piece of art that he can’t take his eyes off. The thought makes her feel self-conscious and giddy.

The moment however fades when he coughs and his features turn serious. “I’m not going to lie to you. I’m alright with it now - it’s been 15 years,” he shares thoughtfully. “But for a while there I was quite depressed. It took me awhile to get use to it.”

Katniss nods.

“I learnt a lot about myself during that time though. Did a lot of thinking.”

“What did you think about?” She asks with interest. She doesn’t think she’s ever been so taken with someone before. Every word coming out of his mouth is like a magnet to her ears.

“Well obviously I know now that I need to head straight to the hospital whenever I have a medical emergency,” he smiles with a self-deprecating chuckle. “But I also realised I didn’t want the accident to change me. I still wanted to be that person who enjoys life and loves to get out there and explore new things. To not let the fear take over. I refused to have that part of myself cut off too.”

“You wanted to be you,” she states.

“Yeah,” he smiles, his relief that she understands obvious.

She’s in awe right now. She can’t deny she’s completely taken with him. She’s never felt this way before and didn’t think in a million years that she’d ever truly find someone she had this type of connection with. He makes her want to try for more.

Here in front of her is a man whose life was dramatically transformed but he refused to be changed by it and let it define him. He fought back, willing to get out there and experience real, authentic snapshots of what life has to offer. The notion makes Katniss feel shameful about her own life. She’s never had to experience physical adversity in her life like he has, yet she still doesn’t have the guts to live beyond her comfort zone.

“So is that why you do nude art?” She asks.

He laughs. “Well I do all kinds of art,” he assures her. “My love affair with it started after my accident. It was part of my therapy and I was fortunate enough to turn it into a career. But this exhibition and the miracle of the human body has a special place in my heart. I don’t think there’s any other times in our lives when we are truly bare and vulnerable. And to me that’s beautiful. That’s what makes us human.” Smiling boldly, he adds, “Although I could include sex into that equation too. But I think showcasing that would be taking it a step too far, don’t you think?”

His words cause her to blush, and she lowers her head. But she’s still attuned in fascination to what he’s saying. The meaning of his words are reaching out to her with gentle hands and guiding her to open up and listen. To not be afraid to express yourself and to have the courage to indulge yourself into a new world of possibilities.

“If you take away all the fancy clothes, jewellery and iPhones we’re the same,” he continues. “This is me and I’m a human being capable of anything. My body is a blank canvas.”

“I like the sound of all that. Really. You make it sound so simple…and beautiful. But I just…I don’t know how you can go out there and be…naked in front of all those people. Don’t you get scared?” She asks, lifting her head.

“I get nervous of course - which is normal,” he explains calmly. “But when I’m out there I feel like I’m in a different world. A peaceful world where it’s just me. Everybody and everything just seems to wash away unnoticed into the background. I wouldn’t be able to tell you who I see out there.” He pauses and thinks carefully for a moment. “There is something liberating and freeing about the experience. It’s like being on a natural high. And I don’t care if people see me,” he winks cheekily. Her mouth can’t help but curl up and smile in reply. “But seriously,” he adds, his voice turning earnest. “The event we’re offering tonight is in a safe and controlled environment for everyone. And when you think about it you’re not alone. Everybody is out there bare, naked and vulnerable. All in the same boat without letting fear, prejudice or judgement be a part of them or the experience.”

She nods, thinking that makes sense and she’s glad he’s brought that to her attention. Besides Cato, she’d noticed that everyone else in the change room earlier seemed to have genuine intentions and interest towards the exhibition. She certainly didn’t see any bad behavior coming from any of them and that takes a load off her shoulders. “So your brother and future sister in law like participating in these things too?” She asks.

“Yeah,” he bobs his head firmly. “My family is close. You know my parents are out there too.”

Her brows narrow briefly in horror as she lets his admission sink in. She wouldn’t be caught dead doing anything like this with her mother or sister. Not if you paid her a million dollars. She’s doesn’t know how to reply to that as she doesn’t want to offend him or his family and come off as a bumbling prude. But when she looks closer she notices his teeth are digging hard enough into his lower lip that it will surely leave marks, and his shoulders are shaking like he’s trying really hard not to laugh. “You’re joking,” she states in relief.

“Yes, I’m joking.” He sniggers. “But you should have seen your face.”

“That wasn’t funny,” she reprimands and tries to playfully hit him on the arm which he light-heartedly dodges.

“Don’t worry my parents are not into this type of thing, or my grandparents,” he adds as a cheeky afterthought. “My brother on the other hand - well he thinks if his younger brother by 6 minutes can do it, then so can he.”

“Evil twin strikes again huh?”

“The guy has no shame or an off button. Though I’m sure Delly had to down a few shots before coming here.”

“They sound like a unique pair,” Katniss grins.

“Yeah, they are,” he answers fondly. “They’re lucky they found each other. I just hope one day I have even half their luck. I would love to be in a relationship with a beautiful and intelligent woman who has no idea what kind of effect she has on me. And of course after Rye insists on having the final say on my love life, we would get married, maybe have a couple of kids and just live our lives the best way we can.” He stops abruptly, his eyes widening and his face turning crimson. It’s clear as he rubs the back of his neck nervously that he’s embarrassed he revealed too much of himself.

A deafening silence falls over them but all Katniss can hear is her heart beat picking up the pace like a galloping race horse.

“I hope I have the same luck too,” she whispers, not sure where that bold and courageous statement came from. But she knows deep down she means every word - now that she’s had a taste of this amazing man.

The air around them intensifies with crackles of electricity. It’s like they’re joined by a live wire and Katniss feels her skin buzzing. She knows he feels it too, because his embarrassment is gone and he gives her a shy, knowing smile before he clears his throat to speak.

“Um, so yeah back to what I was saying earlier. This exhibition isn’t for everybody. And I don’t want you to feel forced into something you don’t feel comfortable with. I just hope after what you experienced tonight that it won’t keep you away from the gallery. It would be nice if you came back…to visit,” he adds quietly, and looks at her with a glimmer of hope. For someone who has the confidence to model nude in front of complete strangers his self –assurance has suddenly turned shaky and non-existent. But just the thought of what he’s implying - that there’s a chance they can meet up again - makes her heart burst open with hope.

“I’d like that,” she smiles.

He lets out a deep breath, like he was holding it in. “Great. So yeah you can come back anytime you want. I’m here most days. I could give you a private tour if you like – paintings and sculptures only of course,” he smiles eagerly.

Katniss is about to suggest she could come by tomorrow when she’s rudely interrupted by a loud thump on the bathroom door. “Yo! Bread boy! Are you in there? Whatever the hell you’re doing you need to hurry up and get your sexy, naked ass out here before Haymitch blows his load.”

Katniss looks over at Peeta horrified at the woman’s sudden and brazen intrusion.

He reaches out and gently takes a hold of her arm; she feels steady in his warmth and his thumb rubs along her soft bare skin in reassurance. “Ignore her, she likes to be dramatic,” he whispers, before he turns his head in the direction of the door. “Jo, you said you would cover for me.”

“And I did, but I’m not a miracle worker…or a bottle of white liquor. He saw right through me – you know what he’s like. After tonight’s incident with the brainless douchebag he’s as tense as ever. I offered to help him with his load but I don’t think he appreciated the innuendo.”

Peeta shakes his head with a groan.

“I’m coming in – there’s no point in hiding, I know what you’re packing.” She pushes open the door so violently that it bangs loudly against the wall before bouncing back. A woman with dark, spiky hair and mischievous hazel eyes steps across the threshold fully naked, and parades towards them like she’s modelling on a catwalk. With wide eyes, Katniss takes in every inch of her confident form, starting from her toned legs and working her way up until she views her impressive 6 pack stomach and perky breasts. Mortification fills her as she realises she’s been staring. In a flash she turns away, pretending the porcelain sinks are a lot more interesting.

A shrill cackling sound comes from the woman’s mouth and brings her attention back. “I see we’ve got a live one here,” she says icily, judging Katniss’ full attire with distaste.

“Don’t Jo,” Peeta responds sharply.

She shakes her head in disgust. “Have you finished rescuing the damsel in distress yet or what? You know after the Finnick incident Haymitch is watching everybody like a hawk.”

Peeta smirks. “I’ll be right there.”

But not a moment too soon a rough, slurred voice calls out. “Boy! Where the hell are you?” Heavy and unbalanced footsteps follow the question as the man who Katniss assumes is Haymitch pops his head inside the bathroom door. He’s an older man in his forties with dark hair and olive skin and thank god he’s fully clothed. “Mellark, your space is filling up with people wanting to see you. I’m not paying you to sit around in a robe all night and play prince charming.”

Peeta, who is still looking at Katniss, just rolls his eyes in amusement. He’s clearly not affected by either of them. That gesture and his demeanour allows her to breathe and relax her nerves.

“I wouldn’t be worrying what I’m up to,” Peeta pipes up. “If I was you I would be keeping a closer eye on Finnick. I overheard him earlier trying to convince Gloss to help him start a human pyramid tonight with the patrons.”

“Oh bloody hell, not again,” Haymitch curses. “Damn kid.” He turns to leave in a maddening fluster before he unexpectedly turns back around and looks over to Katniss. His features soften. “You sure you’re alright there, sweetheart?”

Katniss is taken back by his complete 180. But she feels touched by his momentary concern for her and nods her head. 

He mirrors her action. “Good. Don’t worry about the asshole from earlier. Security roughed him up pretty good so if you decide to participate tonight he won’t be in there.”

“Thank you,” she stammers out. Her mouth suddenly feels like it’s home to a ball of cotton wool.

“Let’s go Jo, you’ve got people waiting too.”

Jo gives Katniss one final glare, following it up with a devilish smile before she strolls out of the room after Haymitch, swinging her hips seductively.   

Once they’ve both gone, Katniss turns to Peeta with a relieved smile and exhales a long, shuddering breath. She’s not sure what to make of both of them.

“That went surprising well,” Peeta states cheerfully. “They usually don’t converse easily with people they’ve just met.”

“I thought that Jo woman was going to kill me,” Katniss comments wryly. She looks down and is not surprised that Peeta still has a tender hold of her arm.

“You don’t need to worry about Jo. She’s like that with everyone, especially when you first meet her,” he explains. “It’s no excuse, but her life hasn’t been an easy one.”

Katniss nods, although she’s not sure what to say to that and she doesn’t think it’s her place to comment on it.

The electricity that was running between them earlier has dimmed due to the interruption, but Katniss can still feel the exciting hum running through her veins. And for now it will have to do. “Well I guess I better let you get out there and do your…thing,” she says almost shyly. She can’t believe after all the naked bodies she’s seen drifting in and out of this place so far tonight that she’s still feeling a little uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” Peeta agrees but his face clearly says he’s not ready to leave. Hesitantly, he lets go of her arm and Katniss relishes in the fact her arm now feels warm and tingly like his aura is still with her. “I really hope to see you again soon,” he says softly.

“You will,” Katniss assures him. Even if she had a busy schedule for the next 5 years she would already be clearing it and planning on coming back tomorrow. Wild horses couldn’t keep her away now. But she doesn’t want to voice her plans out loud to him, afraid she’ll come off lonely and desperate.

“When you go out to the foyer, go and see Annie at the ticket counter,” he instructs. “Tell her I sent you and she’ll call you a cab.”

“Oh no you don’t have to do that –”

“Please I insist. After everything that’s happened tonight I’ll feel much better knowing you got home safely.”

She’s touched by his sweet gesture and she would be lying to herself if she said she wasn’t turned on by his chivalrous manner.

“Bye, Katniss,” he mutters. Reaching the door he turns back around, his smile bright but his eyes shaded with a hint of hesitancy, like he’s worried he won’t ever see her again. She wants to reiterate and reassure him that he will, but he turns around and leaves before she can get her mouth and brain to cooperate.

After the door closes unceremoniously behind him, the whole place is filled with a deafening silence. The only sound she can hear is the click clack from her high heels as she steps out into the change room and takes in the empty space. She’s alone and every locker is closed tight. All except one, she realises. The locker that Cato had a key to. The compartment door is wide open like someone left it in a hurry…or they were pulled away from it abruptly. She can’t help but wander over to it, contemplating. In a way it feels like a lifetime ago she was standing right in this spot next to Cato. She thinks so much has happened since then and she feels different. It’s a good kind of different though, one she thinks she’ll have a hard time putting into words, but she knows she has Peeta to thank for her potential new outlook.

Tonight definitely hadn’t gone the way she imagined or planned for herself, that’s for sure. It was a disaster in a lot of ways, but if she hadn’t come here with Cato she wouldn’t have met Peeta. And no matter how angry she wants to be about the events that led her here tonight, that part is like sunshine breaking through the dark clouds and brightening up her life.

A delicious shiver runs down her spine just at the thought of Peeta and what he could be doing right now. She can’t deny she’s curious about what’s going on behind those closed doors. Her mouth starts to salivate and her pulse thumbs against her neck when she imagines what his body could look like. Is it identical to his twin’s? All broad shoulders and muscular chest? Does he have the distinct pelvic muscles that curve sharply into the letter V too?

Not to mention the thought of him is bringing up their conversation from earlier. “And when you think about it you’re not alone. Everybody is out there bare, naked and vulnerable. All in the same boat without letting fear, prejudice or judgement be a part of them or the experience.”

She really doesn’t want to go home, she suddenly realises. Not when the only thing waiting for her there is stone cold humiliation thanks to her unsuccessful date. She also doesn’t want to face the high probability that Prim couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning to talk to her and has already left an enthusiastic message pushing her for every single detail. Plus having to deal with the smugness from that asshole cat who will be looking down his nose at her and thinking, I knew you couldn’t do it. How’s that mouse’s wheel treating you?

She shifts her attention to the door. The one that has a sign above it stating, Exhibition Entrance. In Katniss’ opinion it may as well have a large, flashing neon sign.

Could she really do this? Step out of her comfort zone and be naked in front of all those people?

But the most important question of all is - does she really want to do this?

……..

Yes she does.

She doesn’t think anymore, instead she just concentrates on the familiar and debilitating sensation of uncertainty leaving her body, like a heavy weight is lifting. Now all she hears is Peeta’s soothing words in her ears encouraging her over and over again like a broken record. Quickly, she takes off her shoes, unzips her dress and slips her underwear down and piles them into the locker.

It’s a weird sensation, she thinks as what she’s doing begins to dawn on her. She’s now standing in a public place, stark naked where anybody could just walk in and see her. Her hands wring nervously in front of her and she feels her heart beating so hard against her rib cage it’s almost painful. I can do this. Remember you won’t be alone. Don’t be afraid. Time to step out of your comfort zone. You had a failed date tonight with the douchebag from hell, but you will experience something amazing tonight, Katniss Everdeen.

Her hands shake slightly on the door knob until she conjures up another image of Peeta. His smile, his bravery and his wise words comfort her and push the nerves down again. As she stands there waiting to take her first steps into a brave new world, she suddenly feels like the most powerful woman on the planet. The unknown is exhilarating, like she’s free falling without a parachute.

She opens the door with no hesitation and takes a determined step inside.

The first thing she notices in the large, marble room is that it’s very quiet, to the point you could almost hear a pin drop. A few people standing nearby give her a brief glance before smiling kindly and turning back around to murmur about a model’s pose. But there’s no one leering towards her, making snide comments or yelling out obscenities about her body. It all seems muted and respectful.  

She works her way around the room slowly, becoming more aware by the second of how her body is moving; the insides of her bare thighs are brushing together and she can see her breasts are jiggling with every step she takes. She never really took the time to look at herself like this before.

Gazing around she notes there are ten artists who are spread out across the entire floor. There’s no velvet ropes to separate or distinguish, but you can tell who they are as each of them are either standing or sitting down in different and elaborate poses that look so raw and beautiful it makes her stop mid step. She didn’t think a show like this could affect her so much, but there’s awe in her eyes and appreciation etched deep within her bones.

She then feels a magnetic pull from somewhere deep inside, like she’s attached to something. The sensation leads her to the far corner of the room and she’s not surprised by who she finds. Peeta. She’s unable to see his full profile at first, only recognising the top of his head over the crowd that’s gathered to observe him. After a few minutes several people step aside and she’s able to move in for a closer look.

She forgets how to breathe for a moment when her eyes fall upon his entire naked body. It is as she suspected - a masterpiece. An artwork that seems to have been carefully crafted and layered with love by the gods themselves. She always thought the human body was a weird construction with all its different parts and functions but watching Peeta now performing with all the grace and beauty of a ballet dancer and admiring how every muscle in his body can twist and turn into simple and complex shapes she now believes the body is truly a magnificent thing to behold.

None of the artists are interacting with the patrons, each of them seem to be in their own little worlds performing and sharing their own beauty and abilities. Either way, Katniss still wants to be as close to him as humanly possible. She sneaks into a spot at the front and off to the side. Continuing to be mesmerised by the view of him, she watches as he changes the shape of his body as he curls his back and then brings it forward again before lifting his leg up high so it’s flexed and balancing straight in front of him. But it’s when he dips his head to the side that he catches a glimpse of her standing there in all her naked glory; his neutral expression drops and he loses his steadiness for a few seconds. She can’t help but feel excited at the clear effect she has on him. Very carefully, so the other patrons can’t see, he gives her a pleased grin before he twists his body into another position and sets his features back into his model persona. Everything is back to normal except his eyes. They’re staring straight ahead bright and alert, and dancing in delight that she’s here standing before him participating. She feels his heated gaze staring at her out of the corner of his eye and she knows he’s taking in her naked form. She feels a little self-conscious but considering she’s standing here with her brain brimming close to the edge with naked images of him that could fill an entire scrap book she thinks it’s only fair.

This has got to be the strangest day of my life, Katniss thinks to herself weirdly. What a bizarre way to meet someone. He gives her a wink, like he can read her thoughts and their moment is over. He turns his body away so his back is to her and settles into a different pose.  

“Please tell me how on earth you made him break?” A rogue voice whispers, his disbelieving breath ghosting against the shell of her ear. She’s momentarily stunned for a moment that she was caught off guard by someone who’s standing in her personal space. Usually she has the hearing of a wild dog out on a hunt for a good feed, but not this time around it seems.

She turns around to face the man with a scowl, wanting to find out what his deal is, when she’s left feeling gobsmacked. Again.

Standing beside her is a very familiar looking man who’s identical to the one standing on display. Rye. Her shocked grey eyes travel across his well acquainted face before they drift down without warning to explore even more of him. Yep. Identical in every way. He coughs and the noise breaks her out of her dazed spell, bringing her back to her senses and forcing her to seek eye contact with a guilt ridden expression. His eyes are dancing around in playful delight and he gives her a knowing smirk. “You’d think staring at my brother for most of the night would have been more than enough…but maybe you haven’t had your fill…”

“Rye, leave the poor girl alone,” a female voice cuts in and sighs loudly. “And leave your brother alone too, he’s trying to do his job. He doesn’t need you distracting him.”

“I think this young woman right here is doing a good enough job for the both of us,” Rye smirks playfully.

The woman then comes into Katniss line of sight and she tries not to stare too hard or lower her gaze. It’s the blond woman from the change rooms.

“I’m sorry, we’re being so rude aren’t we? I’m sure you have no idea who we are.” Redness blushes the other woman’s cheeks and she holds out her hand in greeting. “I’m Delly and this is my fiancée Rye – who’s obviously Peeta’s twin.”

“I’m the devilishly handsome one,” Rye cuts in and it makes Katniss laugh automatically, remembering what Peeta had said about his brother.

She takes a step forward and shakes Delly’s hand and then his. “I’m Katniss.” What a weird circumstance to meet.

Delly smiles. “Don’t pay any attention to this one. He’s just jealous,” she tells her and wraps an arm around Rye’s waist. He dips his head and looks down at her with a loving and charming smile. “He’s been trying to make Peeta laugh or fall over for the last 10 minutes with no success.”

“The guy has no sense of humour when it comes to this. He’s acting like one of the Queen’s guards.”

“He’s acting like this because he knows what you’re up to. He knew you would try and pull something like this, your brother isn’t stupid,” Delly explains and gives him a teasing pinch on his hip. She moves her attention over to Katniss and gives her a mischievous grin. “Maybe Katniss can pull it off because she has something that you don’t.”

Rye scoffs. “Yeah and I’m sure I know what it is,” he replies dryly.

Delly shakes her head at him with exasperation. “You’re impossible sometimes.”

“Oh come on you love it,” Rye replies huskily, with hooded eyes. He leans down to give her a kiss on the lips, their tongues meeting slowly and languidly. Even though the three of them are standing together fully naked Katniss still feels like she’s standing in the middle of a private and intimate moment, and looks away.

“So were you okay after that guy of yours left?” Rye asks carefully. His voice brings her attention back and she sees them both looking at her with joint concern. “From what I overheard, the guy sounded like a real piece of work.”

“Oh, yes,” she stumbles, trying to get her brain working again. “Thank you for going to get Peeta. I really appreciate it. The night definitely didn’t turn out the way I was expecting.”

“You poor thing,” Delly says. “There are so many bad ones out there, isn’t there? But it just makes you appreciate it more when you find a good one. Peeta is a good one,” she adds pretending to sound off handed, but her blue eyes are twinkling

“He’s great. I’ve never met anyone like him before,” Katniss tells her with a smile and she feels Rye looking down on her with curious eyes. He looks exactly like Peeta, but they say the eyes are the windows to the soul and Katniss can see some differences. Rye seems like a bit of a larrikin, a carefree joker, where Peeta seems to have more of a sensitive and serious side.

“I don’t think you need to play matchmaker here Dell,” Rye then pipes up. “I think the hook has already landed the big fish.” Without further ado, he gives Katniss a wink and says, “We’ll leave you alone so you can perve on my brother in private. You have my blessing.”

She nods nervously, surprised that her intentions for Peeta seem to show as clear as day to his brother. She says her goodbyes and then looks over to Peeta who still has his back to her but he now has his knee up high and bent, while his back curls forward and his head is tucked into his chest.

She decides to come back later so she doesn’t distract him again or get him in trouble. She strolls around the exhibition and views all the other artists on display. She watches Jo for a while, but only because her back is to the audience. She then finds herself standing in front of a man with bronze hair and green eyes the colour of water you would find on a tropical island. She has a funny suspicion that his name is Finnick as she swears she hears him whisper to the small group that has gathered, “Have you ever wanted to be a part of a human pyramid?” She walks off with a shake of her head and wonders off-handed where Haymitch could be.

But throughout the night she can’t get away from or deny the heated and comforting gaze she feels following her around. Her skin feels alight with flames as she senses him watching and looking out for her. The butterflies in her belly are back and this time they’re flapping around in excitement counting down the minutes until she can talk to him again.

Half an hour later and it’s like everything in the universe aligns and answers her prayers because when she’s back in the change rooms, zipping up her dress, she feels a warm presence behind her and the distinctive smells of cinnamon and dill that she’d smelled earlier.  

Unable to hide the excitement and confidence the evening has brought to her, she turns around and gives Peeta the biggest grin; she’s relieved to find him beaming back.

“You were incredible,” he states in awe. “I couldn’t believe that you’d really gone out there. I thought for a moment I was seeing things,” he laughs. “How do you feel? Are you okay?”

“I’m feeling pretty damn good,” she answers back with a proud smirk. “You were amazing too, by the way.”

“Thank you,” he nods, the tops of his ears turning pink. He pauses for a moment before speaking again. “Um, so I was thinking, if you’re not in a hurry to get home that is, maybe we could go out for coffee, talk about the show…or anything really.”

“I would love to, but I don’t drink coffee,” she states firmly.

“Oh…um, okay…” he pauses, looking crestfallen.

“I could go for a hot chocolate though,” she offers alternatively and gives him a wink. She doesn’t know where this new and sudden boldness of hers is coming from but she thinks she likes it. “I know a great bakery around the corner that’s open late.”

His shoulders sag in relief, and his eyes twinkle. “I believe I’m familiar with the place you’re thinking of,” he says, offering his hand.

Without further thought, she gently places her hand in his, admiring the warmth radiating from his palm and the rough texture of his fingers wrapped securely around hers. They fall into step, walking alongside each other in comforting silence as they move across the spacious floors of the gallery. Outside she sees the bright neon sign of the Mellark Bakery flashing and suddenly realizes she’ll have an amazing story to share with Prim and her stupid cat tomorrow. Not only did she find the courage to walk around naked in front of complete strangers, but she also managed to meet a nice guy and go on a date. But the most satisfying thing out of this is that she was able to accomplish all this by herself, with no safety net or comfort zone. Tonight had brought her confidence, and a sense of fun that had been missing from her life.

As they step inside the warmth of the bustling bakery, something tells her there’s a good chance she could become addicted to the free fall of a comfort zone free life, and fully exploring the possibilities of what life has to offer. Because even after only one night of taking that leap of not knowing where she was going to land, she’s already found Peeta. And she can only imagine what she can possibly accomplish with him by her side. 

[artificialqueens]

girls like dollies ch.1 (trixya) - lale

A/N: I hope you liked the prologue! This chapter actually includes dialogue and other characters, yay!

Part of what had made Trixie so nervous about starting at RuPaul’s was that, thanks to the last minute nature of her application, she’d started almost two weeks into the semester. It was a Thursday afternoon by the time she arrived, and the rest of the students were still in class. Miss Charles, the principal, was busy, so Trixie got to skip her first introduction with her in favor of a tour with Mr Matthews, who was apparently one of the drama teachers. He didn’t seem fazed by the fact that she was alone, and once she’d put her bags down by the wide staircase in the entrance hall he lead her down a corridor lined with classrooms.

“Oh, you are just going to love it here!” he assured her, a bounce to his step as they passed rows of lockers. Trixie peeked into each room they passed, wondering if she might spot Kim. The classes seemed small, with no more than ten or twelve girls dressed in identical uniforms. Trixie had her own uniform packed neatly in her suitcase, and she felt a little self-conscious as glanced down at her pink dress. She hadn’t thought about her outfit when she’d dressed earlier that morning, and now she kind of wished she’d changed into her uniform before she’d arrived.

“Don’t worry about your clothes. Classes only have twenty minutes left and some of the girls get changed as soon as they can, anyway,” Mr Matthews said, apparently sensing her unease. “Classes last until 2:30 every day, and then afternoon activities begin at 3. Dinner is at 6:30. Now, you’re part of the drama program, is that right? Ms Visage has been raving about your audition for weeks!”

Trixie blushed, surprised that she’d made such an impression. “Yeah. Have I missed much?” she asked, eager to make sure she wasn’t at a disadvantage from starting later in the semester.

“No, no, you’ll be fine. When classes are over, I’ll find one of the girls to take you up to the dorms and get you settled. Then you can go to your first drama session today,” he promised. They rounded a corner, passing a wide doorway to what looked like a library. The school was huge and impressive; it was everything Trixie had imagined it would be. Mr Matthews showed her around the rest of the school, chatting the whole time. She paid little attention to the sports facilities or the classrooms, eager to get to the theatre she’d gotten a glimpse of at her audition.

“These are the art studios. Now, you might be part of our wonderful drama program, but a lot of the girls like to take advantage of the art classes here even if they’re more focused on other areas!” Mr Matthews said, stopping in the doorway to a large room with floor to ceiling windows lining one wall. There were a dozen canvases scattered around the room, all covered with gorgeous landscapes or detailed portraits. But Trixie’s eyes were immediately drawn to one canvas in the corner. It was a mess of colours, dark red swirled with greens and browns and blues; the more Trixie looked at it, the more it fascinated her as she tried to decipher its meaning.

“Oh, that must be Miss Katya’s work. Mr Rice mentioned she was working on something…abstract,” Mr Matthews said, his gaze following Trixie’s.

“It’s beautiful,” Trixie said honestly. Mr Matthews looked at her in surprise, then chuckled.

“Well, to each their own,” he said, herding her back through the corridor towards the entrance hall. There were girls emerging from the classrooms around them now, and Mr Matthews headed straight for a willowy blonde girl. “Pearl!” he called out. The girl looked around in surprise, trying to pocket a pack of cigarettes.

“I was just, uh…going outside,” she offered lamely. Mr Matthews rolled his eyes, pointedly looking in the other direction.

“I didn’t see anything,” he said. “Pearl, this is Trixie, your new roommate. Can you show her where your room is and make sure she gets settled? I’ve told her she can go to drama class this afternoon,” he explained.

Pearl looked Trixie up and down. She was pretty, tall and slender with big eyes. Her expression came across as almost sleepy, though, and when she smiled it was endearingly goofy. “Alright,” she agreed. Her voice was low, with vocal fry off the chart. She was certainly interesting. Trixie put on her most winning smile.

“Thanks!” she said, dashing across the hall to gather her bags. Pearl followed her, and Trixie grabbed her guitar before Pearl could try to pick it up. She couldn’t handle it if it ended up getting dropped and damaged; god knows she could never afford to replace it. Pearl didn’t comment on her protectiveness, grabbing the handles of her suitcases instead and helping her to haul them up the stairs.

“The dorms are organized by class, so everyone in our grade is down this corridor. The bathrooms are down at the end – don’t try to shower between eight and nine unless you don’t mind cold water, that’s when everyone goes,” Pearl explained. Trixie nodded, looking at the doors around them. Each one had a whiteboard tacked onto it, some showing doodles and some simply telling her whose room it was. Most had two names scribbled across them, except for one which read, “Alaska, Detox and Roxxxy” in three distinct scrawls.

Pearl stopped outside a door halfway down the corridor, but before she could reach the handle it opened from the inside. There was a loud shrieking nose, and Trixie found herself being pulled into a fierce hug. “Kim!” she gasped, letting her duffel drop to the group and carefully putting her guitar by her feet before she wrapped her arms around Kim. Trixie was tall but Kim was still taller, as she had been the last time they’d seen each other; it was comforting that that small detail was still the same.

“I was just about to come find you! As soon as I got your letter I persuaded Ms Visage to let you room with us,” Kim told her excitedly, taking her hand and pulling her into the room.

“Wait, you’re my roommate?” Trixie said, feeling a huge smile spread across her face.

“Pearl helped me rearrange. There’s more than enough space for three in here,” Kim said. Sure enough, the room was bright and spacious, with large windows and a bed lined up against each remaining wall. Two were surrounded by posters and decorations, with bright, patterned bedspreads and blankets. The third was a blank slate, all for Trixie.

“This is amazing,” Trixie said in awe. She grabbed Kim for another hug, suddenly overwhelmed by everything. Kim laughed, squeezing her. Trixie pulled back when Pearl dropped her suitcases by her bed, dashing back to grab her duffel and guitar. “I don’t really have anything to decorate with,” she realized aloud, looking mournfully down at her suitcases. She had her brand new uniform and all of the toiletries she’d bought with the money her social worker had given her, but other than that she only had the contents of her hastily packed duffel.

“I have the perfect thing for you!” Kim said proudly, opening her wardrobe and producing a stack of pink fabric with a flourish. It was exactly what Trixie would have picked for herself: pastel pink bedsheets with white, heart-covered pillow cases. Trixie couldn’t help but let out a squeal of joy, stripping the plain white covers off her bed.

“It already feels more like home,” she said when she was done, stepping back and admiring her newly-pink corner of the room.

“I’m so glad you’re here! I thought your mom was against it,” Kim said. Trixie shifted uncomfortably. She’d been feeling so great about being here, and she didn’t want to bring the mood down by going into everything that had happened with Kim. Besides, Pearl seemed nice but she’d only just met her. Trixie wasn’t going to tell her her life story.

“I can be very persuasive,” she said, going to her suitcases so she could unpack her things. “Should I get changed before Drama?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

“Yeah, that dress doesn’t look too practical,” Kim replied. Pearl had curled up on the low seat by the windows, a cigarette dangling from one hand as she blew smoke out into the fresh air. “Pearl and I have art, but we’ll take you to dinner after,” Kim said. She’d stripped out of her sweater and blouse and was rummaging in her dresser for something to wear. Trixie was surprised – Kim had always been self-conscious when they were in school together, but apparently two years of boarding school had drummed that right out of her. Trixie quickly realized why when she looked around for any privacy to change and found none.

Trixie didn’t mind her body, but she was never going to be the wispy model that Pearl was. She was built more like Kim, tall and a little chubby. She had a nice waist and she liked her big boobs, but she sometimes felt self-conscious of her thick thighs and ass. She changed quickly, glancing into the small mirror hung above the desk next to her bed and silently thanking her make up setting spray for doing its job so well. 

Just as Trixie and Kim finished changing, there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Pearl drawled, tucking her cigarette behind her back as they waited to see who it was. A girl with pale, almost grey hair, poked her head around the door.

“We wanted to meet your new roommate!” she said, a smile crossing her face as she stepped inside, followed by a blonde girl with some of the most stunning makeup Trixie had ever seen.

“Trixie, this is Max and Fame. They’re in the room opposite,” Kim explained. Trixie found herself being swept into a hug by the second girl, who then leaned back and looked closely at Trixie’s face.

“Your makeup! I’ve never seen a contour like this, it’s wonderful” she said, voice full of admiration. Trixie blushed, surprised that someone with such a beautiful look would compliment her makeup. She loved painting her face in such a striking way, but she was always more likely to get curious questions than genuine praise.

“Fame, personal space,” the other girl, who had to be Max, chided gently, pulling Fame a step back with a hand to her upper arm.

“Are you joining the art program?” Fame pressed, still fixated on Trixie’s makeup.

“No, Drama,” she replied.

“Oh, wonderful! It’ll be nice to have someone new in the group,” Max said, sounding sincere. There was a slight affectation to her voice, but it wasn’t unpleasant. “I can take you to the theatre.”

Kim picked up her phone to check the time. “Trixie, we’ll meet you back here before dinner, okay?” she said. Trixie just nodded, feeling a little overwhelmed by the flurry of new people and new places. She carefully pushed the feeling down, determined to go with it and make a good first impression.

“Is this your first time at boarding school?” Max asked as they walked towards the theatre. Kim, Pearl and Fame had peeled off in a different direction towards the art studios.

“Yeah. It’s kind of…”

“Overwhelming?” Max suggested kindly. Trixie gave her a grateful smile, nodding. “Don’t worry, most of us felt like that when we got here. Some of the girls have been going away to school forever, but not many. You’ll settle in soon enough,” Max promised. She had a warm, soothing demeanor, and Trixie already felt a little more relaxed.

That relaxation slipped away when they entered the theatre. There were a dozen other girls there, gathered in small groups and chatting animatedly. Trixie immediately felt intimidated; these girls all seemed so confident. Trixie loved performing, and she’d always been the most talented in her drama classes back at home. Now she was surrounded by girls who were all, presumably, as passionate about performing as she was, and potentially more talented.

Max led her over to a group of three girls. “Girls, this is Trixie,” she said, while Trixie adopted a bright smile. “Trixie, this is Jinkx, Ginger and Alaska.”

“You’re Kim’s friend, right?” the girl with bright red hair said. She had a friendly face, and a slightly crooked smile.

“We went to high school together for a year back home,” Trixie replied.

“She’s crazy talented,” the tall girl with piles of blonde hair said. Her voice was low and she dragged out each word to the point that Trixie wondered if she did it on purpose. “You guys kind of do your makeup the same. I like it,” she told Trixie.

“Thanks,” Trixie said. She’d barely been at RuPaul’s for an hour and two people had already complimented her make up. Normally people didn’t know what to think of it, but it felt like a good omen that the other girls were nice about it. “Kim’s way better than I am, though. I mean, she looks like an actual person.” That drew a laugh out of all four girls, and Trixie laughed along a little giddily. She was doing okay so far, she thought. The girls seemed nice and she didn’t think she’d made a terrible first impression.

“Oh, I see why she likes you!”  the third girl said, her laugh a little wheezing. She was much shorter than the rest of them, with neatly styled ginger hair.

“Girls, simmer down,” a voice announced from behind them. The drama teacher swept into the room, and Trixie immediately recognized her from her audition. She was a striking woman with dark, almost black hair, dressed in a form fitting dress and stiletto heels. She glanced around the room, a smile crossing her face when she spotted Trixie. “Miss Mattel! I hope the girls are helping you settle in,” Ms Visage said, giving Max an approving nod as she took in the small group of girls surrounding Trixie.

“They are,” Trixie assured her.

“Good! Then let’s get to business,” she said, clapping her hands.

Trixie had been worried that her first drama class would be terrible, that everyone else would be so talented and polished. Everyone was talented, and a lot of them seemed a lot more polished than she was, but she loved every second of it. She’d never experienced a chance to perform with people who loved it as much as she did, and she already felt like it was pushing her to be better. It was exhilarating, and even though she felt exhausted by the end of the class she was beaming from ear to ear.

“Trixie,” Ms Visage said, calling her over. “You kept up really well today! I’m so glad you’ve joined us,” she told her warmly. “I see Max is looking after you. Did you get your schedule?”

“No,” Trixie said, quickly thinking back over her afternoon. “I don’t think anyone told me where to get it.”

“I imagine one of the girls has it. Perhaps one of your roommates?” Miss Visage suggested.

“Maybe,” Trixie said, nodding. “I’ll ask Kim when I get back up to my room.”

“Oh, I know who has it. Mr Kressley gave it to Katya, you guys have a bunch of classes together,” Alaska chimed in from where some of the girls were waiting for Trixie by the door.

“He gave it to Katya?” Ms Visage said, looking surprised and slightly horrified. “Well, you can get someone to print out a new version if you need to, don’t worry.”

“It’s fine, I’m sure Katya hasn’t eaten it,” Ginger said, before letting out a huff of laughter. Yet! Trixie, come on. Katya’s my roommate, we can go get it from her now.”

“See you tomorrow, girls,” Ms Visage said, gathering her things as Ginger led them out of the theatre.

“What did you think of your first class?” Jinkx asked. She’d surprised Trixie, coming across so quiet at first before proving herself to be an absolutely hysterical actress. There hadn’t been a single girl who was bad, which she supposed made sense. It was intimidating, but Trixie had always been driven. Now, with the thought in the back of her mind that she had nothing to go home to, she was even more determined to make something of herself.

“It was great! I can’t believe we get that much practice every day,” Trixie said.

“Just wait until we start getting ready for a show. Then we’re rehearsing all evening, and the weekend, it never ends,” Ginger pointed out. It sounded like heaven to Trixie. She couldn’t wait until they could start rehearsing something properly and she could sink her teeth into a part – she wanted to prove to herself, and to everyone else, that she deserved to be there.

They reached their corridor of the dorms, and Ginger led them right down to the end of the hallway. “I hope you’re not naked!” she called out as she grabbed the door handle.

“As if you’d be that lucky!” a voice with a strong accent replied. The door swung open, revealing a girl in the middle of a cluttered room. She was bent over backwards, hands on the floor. She grinned at Ginger, and even upside down Trixie could tell she had the most stunning smile of gleaming white teeth. Her tangled blonde hair formed a messy halo around her head, and Trixie could see firm, shapely thighs where her skirt had ridden up.

“Trixie, this is Katya. You’re unfortunate enough to be sharing most of your classes with her,” Ginger said. The girl pushed herself up, effortless flipping her legs over her head and landing lightly on her feet.

“Hello!” she said, that same big grin on her face as she looked Trixie up and down. Trixie could feel her whole face flush. She was easily the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen in her life, and Trixie was totally, utterly fucked.