#GIANT BRAIN MOMENT FROM TEENAGE ME

[dbphantom]

on this laptop is some old near art from hs/college and augh them...

[hiimawarish]

like passing notes in secrecy

s. jing yuan being as clingy as mimi is with you. cw. female/afab reader. fluff. established relationship (you've been married for a long time). jing yuan is whipped. he's also a menace. tw. none? not proofread (as usual). wc. 0.8k a/n. what can i say more than the brain rot this man causes me is endless? credits. dividers by @/cafekitsune.

Jing Yuan ponders, for a few seconds, how he got himself into this situation.

As he watches the scene unfold in front of his eyes—the sight of you laughing loudly as Mimi followed your every command—, he wonders if he has ever experienced peace as overwhelming as this. Odd, isn’t it? That one can feel such peace that it’s unsettling. Yet, he does. The fact that he can spend his day off here, merely watching you play with Mimi is proof enough that he has more than he deserves. 

A smile curves into his lips at that thought. If you were to listen to his thoughts, you’d already be lecturing him on his self-deprecation—on how everything that has happened is not his fault. It has been a long road, he realizes, but it’s been worth it. Even if you had yelled at him the moment he brought Mimi home with that absurd story about being a grimalkin cub, even if you had seemed rendered speechless by a mixture of surprise and concern when he appeared home with a baby Yanqing in his arms… It had been a long and arduous journey, still you remained by his side. Most of the time he feels like he does not deserve such consideration, but through the centuries you’ve managed to change his mind.

You’re stuck with me for life, you’d say, sticking your tongue out at him in that cute and playful expression he loves so much. For life. For eternity. Those were big words, and yet you’ve meant each and every of them.

“Come on, Mimi, I’m tired already!” He can hear you complain. The amused smile on his lips widens at that—you always try to tire Mimi out, but it always backfires. Jing Yuan can see Yanqing standing outside with you, and by the expression on the boy’s face, he knows he thinks the same. The lion had grown unusually attached to you over the years, and instead of settling down with you, it seemed to fill with an infinite amount of energy. “Stop! Stop!”

The lion did, in fact, not stop.

It chased you around the backyard again, and Jing Yuan watched you laugh. Your hair free, just like you liked it, messy from the wind and your play. Your cheeks have turned pink by now, the strain of keeping up with Mimi clear in your face and your heavy breathing. Yet, you still play with it. You allow Mimi to chase you, to tackle you down, to nuzzle into your neck, and to finally rest its head on your shoulder.

“I’ll bring you water,” Yanqing sighs, shaking his head as he disappears into the main house.

Jing Yuan watches him leave with a hint of amusement in his golden eyes—the boy is definitely acting like a teenager now, he realizes. Bothered and moody, and yet he would never deny you or him help. He seems exasperated as he walks away, and if the General paid enough attention, he could have listened to Yanqing wondering how his mother had gone crazy from playing with the lion. Instead, Jing Yuan is focused on you; the way your fingers lazily play with Mimi’s mane, how the lion almost purrs.

“Aren’t you two cozy, hm?” He says, as he finally approaches you.

You open your eyes lazily, lips curving naturally into a grin that could melt even the everwinter from Jarilo-VI.

“We’re resting,” You say. The moment your hand stops playing with Mimi’s mane, the lion reacts—it nudges your face, a clear demand for you to continue. “Well, Mimi is resting, and apparently I’m giving pets.”

“So it is a bad time to ask for my cuddles, hm?”

You can feel the rumble of laughter from within his chest as he tries his best to lay down on your other side, and now you’re trapped. Trapped between a giant cat and your husband. His laughter is contagious, though, and soon you’re laughing, too. His hand snakes around your waist, pulling you into his chest lazily. 

Mimi whines.

You laugh, again.

“Who would have thought the cub would be so jealous?” Jing Yuan complains, playing dumb.

“Mimi is anything but a cub now,” You nudge him softly, giggling when Mimi follows you, placing its head on your chest again, its mane tickling your neck. “And, for your information, it takes after you. You’re just as demanding, if not more.”

More laughter. You can feel it on your back as he holds you, his hand on your waist soft and gentle, tracing lazy figures on the fabric of your dress. 

“But I’m a general, darling mine.” He presses a lazy kiss to your neck. “Demanding is part of my job, wouldn’t you say?”

You elbow him, and you don’t miss the vibration of his laughter against your back. Sometimes, you think, your husband is insufferable.

If only the people of the Luofu knew that, within the four walls of your home, the Dozing General is better known as the Doting General.

more works.

©2023 hiimawarish do not translate, repost, copy, modify

[autumntouched]

If Lost Return to Jake

Summary: Jake is a simp. It says so on his shirt

Pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x GF!Reader

Warnings: mention of sex but nothing explicit

A/N: Got drop kicked HARD today (at least a Phoenix fic was born for later), went looking for comfort, and came across something I whipped up a few weeks ago based on a chat @glen-powells and I had about t-shirts Jake definitely owns. Could be better, but it made me smile

As soon as you get home, you change into leggings and a sweatshirt and curl up on your bed. You’re exhausted from a long week at work and planning your friend’s bachelorette party. You wish you’d told her bridal party only, but you adore her and it’s her special weekend so you’ll put in the extra work to wrangle fifteen women for a weekend in New Orleans. Five minutes, you tell yourself. You’ll start dinner in five minutes. But ten minutes later, you’re still curled up in the cozy nest of your comforter and after twenty minutes you start to wonder whether you can skip dinner altogether. Try again for breakfast in the morning.  

You’ve just resigned yourself to letting your stomach growl itself to sleep when you hear keys in the door, and Jake calls your name. You let him know that you’re in the bedroom. Your body aches, it’s so tired but just the sound of his voice has your heart rate stumbling over itself in excitement. Guess you’re cooking dinner after all. You bury a groan in your arm, but you’re already smiling. 

He’s still in uniform when he eases the door open. In uniform and holding a giant bouquet of your favorite flowers. Maybe you fell asleep. If you are, you’re already looking forward to seeing where this dream goes because those twinkling green eyes and dimples are really doing a number on you. 

Your brain catches up to the moment and you fly up. “Wait, what are the flowers for?” You can’t quite hide the pitch of panic in your voice that you’ve forgotten an important date. You have to put multiple alerts in your phone for anniversaries and birthdays and still sometimes they slip past you. 

“Oh, these?” He’s trying to sound off-handed, but he’s beaming at the excitement edging out your concern. “Just a pretty excuse to drop in on an absolutely stunning woman.” He lays them on the bed beside you because you’re already waiting for him on your knees. Jake runs his hands down your arms, his rough fingers skimming the sensitive undersides of your forearms and wrists as he lifts them around his shoulders and sidles closer. You’re practically nose to nose. “Also thought she might like something to eat,” he murmurs, lips brushing yours. “So I stopped and got her some dinner.”

“Such a simp,” you smile, still amused by his teenage cousin’s wry assessment of him after you met his family at Thanksgiving.   

He wraps his arms around you and pulls you flush to him. “And proud of it,” he brags before claiming your mouth. 

So when you’re scrolling through endless Etsy pages for your friend’s bachelorette party and come across a “Proud Simp” t-shirt, you giggle and immediately add it to your cart. You wrap it for him as beautifully as you wrap his birthday and Christmas gifts. You might be bad with dates, but you’re a wiz with some paper, ribbon, and a little tape. 

“What’s this for?” Jake asks when you go to his place to give it to him. You’re so excited to see his reaction that you nearly blurt it out. 

“Open it!” You rush him. 

But he notices how beautifully you’ve wrapped it and takes his time carefully trying to preserve your work, and it makes you want to shake him and kiss him all at once. 

You go all warm at the way his face lights up when he sees your inside joke in t-shirt form. Immediately, Jake strips off his black tee to put it on. But once you glimpse his muscled chest and the dark trail of hair from his pecs down into his low slung shorts, you decide he can also lose the shorts and everything under them for now. He’ll have plenty of time to wear your gift after he’s thoroughly thanked you for it. 

And thank you for it he does.

Jake wears it. A lot. At first you think it’s just around the house, but as he spends more and more time at your place you realize he wears it out too. To run errands, to football nights with his Dagger Squad buddies Rooster, Payback, and Fanboy despite their teasing, even to pick his cousin up from the airport when she comes to visit. 

Her latest assessment of him? “Please get help.”

You draw the line at him wearing it to his commanding officer’s cookout, which he pouts about until he’s distracted by your braless sundress with the spaghetti straps crossed in the back.

For Labor Day weekend, you fly to Texas to visit his family. He picks you up from the airport. When he gets out of the car to kiss you and load your bag into the trunk, you laugh at the t-shirt he’s wearing. It says ‘I’m Jake.” 

“Did you forget your name or something?” you ask, trying to figure out if he’s playing a prank on you. 

“You’ll see,” he promises, the lines around his eyes growing more prominent with his suppressed smile. 

There’s a tissue paper wrapped box on your seat when you get into the rental car. “This better not be a ring,” you blurt out, trying not to hyperventilate. It’s not that you don’t know at this point that you’re going to spend the rest of your life with him. But your younger brother just got engaged, and you know your future sister-in-law would feel overshadowed if you took that step just now.

Before he drives away from the curb, Jake gently cups your chin and runs his thumb over your bottom lip to calm you down. “Sweetheart, I’ll wait as long as you want me to pop the question.” One of his mischievous smiles flip flops your heart, and you close your eyes as he kisses the scowl of concern from between your eyebrows. “Personally, I think this is better than a ring though.” 

That statement warns you what’s to come, but you’re still not prepared when you lift a t-shirt from the box. 

“If lost, return to Jake,” you read. You mouth the words, trying to put together what it means until you realize it’s the same color as the shirt he’s wearing. 

You feel the blood drain from your face. “No.”

“No what?” he chuckles, taking his eyes from the road for a moment to check your expression. He laughs even harder at what must be a look of horror on your face. 

“I’m not wearing this, Jake. The people who wear these carry AARP cards and have those help I’ve fallen and can’t get up buttons. I’m not even old enough to have a geriatric pregnancy! And if lost? When do I get lost?” 

“When you drive with the gps on mute,” he answers a little too quickly. Your face lets him know he’s made a big mistake. He adds even faster, “But I’ll never make you unmute the GPS because this proud simp loves it when you need him.”

Flashing you his biggest, most you-know-you-love-me grin, he reaches across the console and takes your left hand. His thumb strokes the place on your finger where an engagement ring will one day rest before placing a quick, but lingering kiss there. “C’mon sweetheart,” he says quietly, but you can hear the sudden weight of emotion in his voice. “I promised to wait to ask you to marry me, so how else am I supposed to let you know that I’m never going anywhere before I leave?”

This man really knows how to wreck you. He’s in Texas to say goodbye to his parents before he deploys until March. After growing up with your dad’s deployments, you swore you wouldn’t fall in love with a Navy man, but Jake had other plans for you. “Wear it with me please?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you agree, too choked up to say more. You know from experience crying before a goodbye only makes it harder. There will be plenty of time later to let his gift catch your tears. 

You put on the shirt before you get to his parents’ house because you know it will make his family laugh and that’s what you want to remember later too, the laughter. 

Arm slung over your shoulder, in your paired “I’m Jake” and “If lost return to Jake” shirts, he takes you to his favorite ice cream shop. You both laugh at the judgmental looks the teens and even some people your age give you. His cousin, Danny, insists she’s too embarrassed to be seen with you two. 

You wear the shirt to see him off and again when he gets home. And as soon as you’ve flown into his arms and kissed every inch of his handsome face (you’ll save the rest of him for later), he sets you down so he can show you that he’s wearing his too. You notice his shirt is as faded as yours from going through the wash so many times.

Gathering up his seabag, he hooks an arm around your shoulders to hold you close as you walk to the car. “I’m thinking it’s about time we sealed this relationship with something a little more durable than cotton,” he says. “What do you think?”

“I’m tired of people asking me where’s Jake,” you agree. “So yes.”

[corrodedbisexual]

Love blooms, love hurts, love prevails

Steddie | M | angst (but the bittersweet kind) with a happy ending | ~5.5k

AO3 link

The flower sickness is ruthless; its seeds grow on love, and if love is locked away in secret, inside the cage of one's heart, nowhere to go, it will eventually kill its host. When Eddie starts coughing up blooms for Steve, he has no choice but to confess his feelings. He never expected his straight friend to reciprocate; but at least his worst fears don't come true, Steve still seems happy to have him around. And, with his feelings out in the open, Eddie's no longer at risk of choking to death on another flower, so there's that to be thankful for. After overcoming some initial awkwardness, Eddie finds joy in whatever closeness he can have, in Steve just letting him love him in small, seemingly insignificant ways. Their friendship grows, eventually blurring the edges between platonic love and something more.

So, uh. I read this post about hanahaki with a twist and immediately became obsessed. I mean. OBSESSED. Huge thanks to OP @lovedumbandbroke for this inspo. I am kissing their brain.

@sidekick-hero thanks for the encouragement my dear! 🧡

┗━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━┛

"Son, you can't go on like this."

Eddie's uncle sits next to him on his bed, rubbing his back gently as Eddie still wheezes, struggles to get his breathing back to normal. A giant, fist-size peony blossom lies on the floor in front of him, looking pretty and innocent, as if it hasn't just nearly choked him to death. 

“Whoever it is," Wayne insists. "You gotta tell him. I know it’s scary.” 

“Terrifying,” Eddie croaks, wincing. Using his vocal chords right after another… incident, always feels like sandpaper on the inside of his throat. 

“I know, buddy. Look,” Wayne pulls on his shoulder, makes him look up. “What’s the worst thing you think will happen? Can he hurt you?”

“No.” Eddie shakes his head, confident. At least there’s one thing he’s sure about. “No, he wouldn’t. I think…” He takes a breath that’s suddenly a little too deep for his lungs, and he coughs again; thankfully, no petals come out this time. He takes another careful sip of water from the glass his uncle brought. “I think he just wouldn’t wanna be around me anymore. And that would really, really suck.”

They sit in silence for a moment. 

“Promise me you’ll do something about this, Eddie,” Wayne finally asks. “I just… I can’t keep wondering if you’re gonna make it through the night.” 

Eddie lets out a sigh, is grateful for the lack of coughing to accompany it, despite the burning in his chest.

“Yeah. Okay. I will.” He nods, determined. “I’ll tell him. Tomorrow. M’sorry for worrying you.”

“Don’t be sorry, it’s my job to worry.” Wayne squeezes his shoulder once more before standing up. “I’m gonna make some mint tea, should be good for your throat.”

When his uncle leaves the room, Eddie picks up the flower, absentmindedly starts tearing the petals off of it, one by one. He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, his brain stupidly supplies, and oh no, he’s not doing that. He throws the tattered remains of the flower across the room, experiencing mild satisfaction when it lands right inside the trashcan. 

Eddie flops back on the mattress with a frustrated groan. Fuck, he was so careful. His whole teenage life, he stayed far away from all the straight pretty boys, precisely for this reason. They were dangerous. Getting close to anyone that way was dangerous, he knew he had the seeds of the disease in him; his mother died from it, too scared of his father to do something about the feelings she had for another person. 

And just as he was almost safe, has almost graduated, almost out of Hawkins and on his way to Indianapolis or Chicago or any other place he had a real shot of meeting someone he could be with… Steve goddamn Harrington had to barge into his life, literally save him from the brink of death, and then stick around, god knows why, maybe just to torture Eddie with his stupid doe eyes and sunshine smiles. 

The rest on AO3

[sl33paholics]

Darling Dearest

Okuyasu x bimbo black!fem reader

Dating Okuyasu headcanons

Warning(s): None. Only fluff and wholesome shit (for once lol)(possible mentions of lewd here and there)

Song: Attachment (she wanna love) by Kanii

You two are like two peas in a pot. You two were sealed to be with each other based on your first introduction

Brain cells? Ermm, you two may lack some intellect but you both aren't that dumb (maybe)

How could someone as gorgeous as yourself be willing to date a boy like him? Okuyasu puts himself down a lot. Saying how much he's hideous, a burden, and other things. But you cup his cheeks and tell him he's the most handsome and reliable person you've ever met, making him cry each time

It was no doubt he was head over heels for you when you spoke to him, the euphoric feeling of being on cloud 9 whenever you two are alone in the classroom or any private area of the building

Absolutely loves when you call him pet names! "How you doin' sugar?" "You alright, honey?" "Want me to give you a massage, sweetpea?" he can't get enough of it, immediately melting at those words

Small dates here and there. You guys walking around the park and dining at an Italian restaurant, events like this never failed to leave you unsatisfied.

Before you two started dating, he'd always go to his boys, Koichi and Josuke, for advice. What accessories to get you. Do you like dark or lighter colors? Should he buy you magazines or your favorite sweets? When should he make his first move on you? The questions went on and on and on and on, oh you could just imagine the annoyed feeling those two had, but it paid off.

In Summer, you didn't believe he was ripped, as a matter of fact, the thought never came to your mind until you were invited to go to the beach with the boys (and Yukako too) let's just say you were all over him once you saw those muscles, poor Okuyasu was drowning in your affection while the other 3 went on playing on the other side of the shore.

Speaking of summer, Okuyasu tries his best to not act on his urges. You look stunning in your swimwear and the poor boy always looks away from your direction when you're standing in front of him. Getting a boner in a big public area? He'd rather fight the horny rather than go down as a boy who got hard around the girl at the beach.

Around the Fall season, Okuyasu most definitely showed up at your house 2 days before to invite you to the school festival once he heard that you weren't going. Pleading for you to come with him and have a good time on the weekends. Who would want to miss out on the light snacks and sweets there? Especially the plays and dances!

Within a matter of time, you guys made it official.

It was around Winter, and Josuke was holding a Christmas party at his place. Almost everyone was there, it was exciting to see some new faces there as well. A party not too small or big, just the right amount of people to be around with.

Here's a funny moment, while listening to some holiday jingles, you were handed a beer bottle. Only to look up and see a giant with a stern look on his face honestly scaring you for a second. "Take it, I'm sure being around teenagers must be a hassle" just for you to laugh at his face. Josuke pulled him to the side to tell him that you weren't an adult, you were his classmate and he was (secretly) hooking you up with the giddy guy in the corner of the room. Second-hand embarrassment appeared on Jotaro's face and quickly apologized to you, hoping that you didn't take it the wrong way and made you uncomfortable.

Present opening time! Giving and receiving the best of presents from everyone.

When everyone else was busy opening and gifting, you and Okuyasu were in a room together after Koichi said he'll "be right back" with something it's been more than 10 minutes but hey, who's counting? (Okuyasu is counting)

It was time. He turned to face you and vice versa handing you over a small box with a note over first.

— You always mention how you always wanted a new hairpin but I didn't know what kind of color to pick so I hope you enjoy this :)

A goofy smile appeared on your face when opening the box. "This is very adorable, Oku, thank you!" you said, without a thought you turned the paper around you see more writing

— I love your smile, laughter, your humor. Your (e/c) eyes and the way you carry yourself. We're almost alike in every way! And that's what I love about you. You don't judge me and are always here when I need comfort. To keep it sweet and simple, I want to be your boyfriend, (Y/N). I hope you accept my feelings for you.

You look up to see Okuyasu shaking and trembling in his spot, you could've sworn you saw his eyes shine up with tears. You became flustered and got closer to the boy, wrapping both of your arms around him. "I'd love to be your girlfriend, Okuyasu~" you said teasingly before pecking his cheek.

Tears. Nothing but tears and a sobbing mess after you said yes, Okuyasu felt like the happiest man in the world. After avenging his brother, defeating Kira, and taking care of his father, he can finally have peace with the girl who is finally his! He hugged you tightly and didn't want to let go, saying how much he admires you and so on.

Little did you two know that the door was cracked open a bit, a camera zooming in before a click sound was made. Josuke was quietly snickering while Koichi was trying his best to not laugh, quickly and quietly telling Josuke that they should leave before they get chased around for their trolling. The two are going to tease Okuyasu about this for the rest of their lives.

[dirtytransmasc]

The 3 sibs are fucking menaces. Like General Ardmore was fucking down to let Quaritch and the recoms take responsibility because 'Jesus fuck get them out of here'

I imagine that due to them adopting Spider as their brother at a young age they ended up spending a lot of time with the humans that remained at Hell's Gate (might have even taken to living in the old Avatar area) and likely picked up on a lot.

Like they know tech better than any Na'vi, and it's mildly terrifying for humans when they realize that these 3 siblings know shit.

I also imagine that they might have become a bit disconnected with the Omaticaya, not anything super big, but their insistence that Spider is their brother probably hindered them getting adopted by a Omaticaya couple.

But the recoms probably are so confused when they learn that Norm fucking Spellman is the one who technically raised these feral gremlin children. Sure they are smart as shit but God damn these kids are jumping out of a moving helicopter into the fucking trees.

Don't get me started on Quaritch's and the recoms reactions to the story of when the little brother tried (and nearly succeeded) in mounting/claiming an adolescent Thanator.

AKA the giant deadly space cat who's na'vi name literally translates to dry mouth fear of death.

(Also the heart attack Quaritch gets when he sees them tossing Spider between them like a sack of potatoes. I do not doubt for a second these kids haven't developed a 'system' when it comes to traveling with Spider.)

I love how not even cut-throat Ardmore, she doesn't care what possible information she could get from them, she want them off of the premises asap.

so that leaves a group of morally complicated, adult-teenage-newborns, with 3 young adults that will make it their life goal to be the biggest thorn in the sides, but also to flip the recoms on their heads.

sometimes the questions aren't even asked to try and tie the recoms brains in knots, sometimes they genuinely want to know. other times they ask question that are meant to make the recoms question everything. they love the chaos, but also watching the recoms change, watching them become na'vi.

on top of it all they're wicked smart, they're always helping out, both technologically and in the field, they clearly know a shit ton about jake and his little possy, they were raised by spellman after all, but they're loyal, they don't say anything. but that's strangely fine with all the recoms (aka, they stopped caring about their mission and only do whats necessary to please ardmore, but shhh, they haven't realized that yet, if they do, they may implode).

and the amount of worry quaritch develops for these kids is unreal, and like, this guy's military, so every night he checks on them like 10 times a night, at first cause he didn't trust them, but it slowly turned into him just worrying about them. he normally takes nightly rounds so he's always going through the effort of climbing into whatever tree they've nested themselves in and just watching for a moment. those are his kids, in some way, he knows it.

so when they really start doing stupid shit, he feels his heart age 50 years. he worries everytime they fool around on the ikran, everytime they fuck with the wildlife, everytime they climb to high for his taste. he's just a big old bag of anxiety.

[teenandbeyond]

Okay this is kind of dorky but could I maybe have some mikey hc where he meets I guess Casey's cousin or little sister or whatever (the reader) and they're like super quiet and shy at first but after awhile they surprise everyone bc theyre almost just like Michelangelo? Can be super goofy and loves video games, just not very feminine? Idk it sounds kinda silly XP if it doesn't spark anything dw about ignoring it

Michelangelo x Fem. Reader

I have a lot of requests for the same thing so they're a little delayed due to disinterest, but when I finally saw something different, I almost cried. I was so ready, I like diverse requests. I assumed it was a female reader since you mentioned a sister and not being very feminine, but let me know if I'm wrong and I'll re-write it.

🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕

Want more from me? Check out my Masterlist!

🍕Dudette🍕 (TMNT or Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles)

Warning: Fluffy as a perfect pizza slice, like, 2 curse words, low-key became a one-shot bc I got into the zone

As far as Casey was concerned, you were off-limits to the boys, but...Mikey always had that little rebellious streak.

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

One day, Casey let it slip that he had a sister

The guys were literally so confused because he never mentioned a sister before

Mikey immediately wanted to meet you

"Don't even think about it. She's off-limits."

But due to April being eager to meet you and the woman wanting her family to meet you, he relented.

He definitely was cool about it as he awkwardly leaned against a wall, thinking he looked badass

He didn't.

"Hey, sis. My girlfriend really wants to meet you...and her brothers..."

You groaned at your hand, wiping some pizza grease on your sweats, holding your game remote in one hand to continue playing for a moment, "Uh...sure. That's pretty normal at this point, right? You've been dating her a while. Why d'ya you look like you're preparing for a battle royale game? Are her brothers bigger than you or something?

As you stood in front of a group of gigantic turtles crowded together after meeting April, you realized, that, yes, they were much bigger than Casey.

Now you realized why the couple seemed to be trying to ease you into meeting them.

Now, you thought they were exaggerating. You were expecting much worse, like evil ex-convicts that eat brains or something.

But you supposed giant turtles with weapons should've been more concerning to you.

While on the other hand, the brothers were concerned themselves.

Were you nice? Would you be scared of them? Were you just like Casey? Were you like the girls they saw on TV, in the magazines, or like the typical eccentric New-yorker?

But turns out, you were dressed pretty simple, oversized hoodie with a bold pattern, shorts, and combat boots, seemed you weren't a total fashion-crazy girl.

You didn't look like a girl in the typical media, but you were still pretty.

They were confused about whether or not you were scared because you didn't say anything and just barely made eye contact.

Mikey decided to be the ice-breaker, hoping to make you feel a little more comfortable by complimenting you about your look.

"Thanks...I'm [N-name]."

Despite your brother writing you off as shy, Mikey didn't truly think you were at heart. Your fashion sense said differently.

"Mikey, back off."

But telling Mikey something is off-limits is like telling him to do it.

As Mikey decided to introduce everyone and be your tour guide, he ended up hogging most of your time, showing off his art, hoverboard, and anything else he could find.

Until Casey finally found you and dragged you away, but you didn't mind, you wanted to meet April, too.

Then you wanted to come back again.

And again. And this would be the fifth visit.

But this time, there was Pizza and Mikey was playing your favorite game.

"Dude, Pizza and Party Crasher 2? I'm in literal heaven!"

They all were quite surprised by the sudden change in personality, usually, you were much less...talkative.

Mikey snapped out of it first, "You like meat lovers, Dudette?"

"Hell yeah."

"You're totally free to grab a slice."

"Hey, is that Vileior? You unlocked him? Wicked, takes mad skill."

He offered a second remote and a few minutes later you were playing. The playing field was even, you both were good at that game.

Mikey groaned as you both joint-battled a superhero, "Mr. Cool is totally relentless!"

You scoffed, "Jeez, with a name like that, he really needs to get laid.--That's like a username a twelve-year-old playing as fifteen would have."

A totally pretty girl who loves pizza, video games, and isn't afraid to get dirty?

Sorry, Casey. Mikey won't be able to keep you off-limits for long.

[infernaleikon]

and isn’t it fine losing your mind? | obikin new girl au | 3.2k words | cw: cheating.

*     *     *     *     *     *      *     *     *

Obi-Wan’s palms are sweaty.

He remembers his first time teaching high school: the way his mouth had felt so dry that his tongue had kept sticking to its roof, his heart stuttering against his ribs as his brain had kept chanting a canon of don’t screw up don’t screw up don’t screw up and you’re not ready you’re not ready you’re not ready, and how inadequate he’d felt standing in front of a bunch of hormonal teenagers whose education he’d been responsible for.

He remembers his first time teaching college: the nervous flutter of his heart and the thrill of a new challenge coursing through him as he’d stood in a lecture hall full of students who’d been looking at him with expressions ranging from boredom to curiosity to disinterest to open leers, and even though he’d still felt like he was flying by the seam of his pants, there had been excitement, too.

But despite the nerves, his palms had never been sweaty.

“Come on, guys,” Anakin is saying to the giant sliding door separating the living area of the loft from the hallway to the bedrooms. His voice carries an odd tone, something that’s difficult for Obi-Wan to pinpoint but that sounds deceptively like desperation. “This is stupid.”

“This was your idea,” Ahsoka’s muffled voice answers. “Now kiss!”

Anakin makes an irritated sound as a chant of Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! erupts behind the door, and Obi-Wan wipes his palms on his pants while Anakin isn’t looking.

They’ve ended up here playing a game the rules of which Obi-Wan still—in his second year of living here—doesn’t really understand; though in his defense there doesn’t appear to be a comprehensive set of rules to begin with. They always appear to be made up on a whim. Every time he’d asked Anakin to explain them, he’d gotten an exasperated roll of eyes and a wave of hands with the promise that Obi-Wan would get it once they played the game.

Maybe the answer is even simpler: He’s too old for this.

In moments like these he wonders what possessed him to move into a loft with a couple of twenty-somethings who refuse to play anything by any sort of standard rules, defying everything Obi-Wan has ever lived by and understood.

It’s as bewildering as it is infuriating and inspiring.

Now, though, it’s terrifying. His palms are sweaty.

Anakin whirls around to him, the bright red petticoat he’d donned over his jeans for some reason at some point during the night swirling around his legs, and there’s a faint flush across his cheeks when he fixes Obi-Wan with an accusatory look on his face. “Why did you throw up a two?”

Obi-Wan doesn’t splutter. “You told me to.”

Anakin throws his hands up and the flush spreads down his throat to his exposed chest. He also lost his shirt some time during the game. Though why, Obi-Wan couldn’t tell if his life depended on it. Again: rules.

“I said not two!” He huffs and scrubs a hand over his face.

“Apologies,” Obi-Wan says as something curdles in his veins. It’s acrimonious and biting, and if he looks at it too closely, he might lose his mind, so he pushes it away and rubs at his jaw a little too hard, the discomfort a welcome distraction.

Anakin chews on his bottom lip as if he’s trying to think up ways of how to get out of this. He probably is. His girlfriend is behind the door and it’s one of the rare nights where she’s letting loose, too, drinking and laughing with her head thrown back, dressed in nothing but one of Anakin’s shirts. Of course he’d rather be kissing her.

But Padmé is behind the door and Obi-Wan can pick out notes of her voice as she chants with the others, and Obi-Wan wonders if she’d still be doing it if she knew just how badly he wants to shove his tongue into her boyfriend’s mouth. Or other places. That he doesn’t think about.

Right.

It doesn’t do good to dwell on things he can’t—and shouldn’t even want to—have. Anakin is twenty-four and his roommate. Anakin has Padmé. Padmé who Obi-Wan has mentored and who’s his friend.

Anakin is his friend, first and foremost, and Obi-Wan refuses to be—isn’t—some dirty, old pervert lusting after a college kid who has the world at his feet and the sky as his limit.

He almost startles when Anakin claps his hands. “We can do this,” Anakin says with the uniquely cocky self-assurance of a twenty-something. “It’s just a kiss. No biggie.”

No biggie. Obi-Wan repeats it over and over in his head like a mantra. No fucking biggie.

Anakin lifts up the hem of the petticoat to fish the phone out of his jeans pocket. Obi-Wan briefly wonders who the petticoat even belongs to because he knows for a fact that it’s not Ahsoka’s and he’s never seen Padmé in one. It does nothing to distract him from Anakin’s pebbled nipples, seared into his mind, even when he’s not looking at them.

“Okay,” Anakin says, stepping closer to Obi-Wan as he unlocks his phone and opens the camera. He lifts his gaze to meet Obi-Wan’s eyes. “Just…pucker your lips.”

Obi-Wan blinks at him. “Pardon?”

Anakin rolls his eyes half-heartedly and waves his free hand in an undefinable gesture. “And don’t close your eyes. That would make it weird.”

“Me closing my eyes would make this weird?” Obi-Wan asks dubiously, kinking an eyebrow, and watches with mild amusement as Anakin pinks up.

“Just—” Anakin huffs and raises his arm, camera pointed at them, and says with a rough note in his voice, “Let’s get this over with.”

“So romantic,” Obi-Wan teases with a light-heartedness he doesn’t feel.

“I am, shut up,” Anakin says, and then surges forward and plants his lips on Obi-Wan’s.

The kiss is as short and dry and unromantic as a peck on the lips he used to get from his mother as a kid and still it raises all the hairs on Obi-Wan’s body, sweeping through him like electric current and making his skin tingle.

No biggie.

Anakin withdraws quickly without meeting his eyes and immediately sets to sending the photo to the others as proof. He bangs on the door.

“Okay, we kissed, you can let us out now!” he hollers.

A chorus of boos erupts from behind the door.

Obi-Wan hears Quinlan’s barking laughter. “What’s that?”

“Our kiss,” Anakin says as he tries to pull open the door to no avail and the petulance in his voice reaches whole new levels.

Obi-Wan loses his mind at his use of our. He closes his eyes and inhales counting to four. It’s not better than screaming but he’s forty years old, he has some composure.

“That’s not a kiss,” Aayla comments. “It’s you two duck-facing at each other.”

Kit snorts. “Yeah. We’ve seen Obi-Wan kiss and it’s always at least R-rated.”

Quinlan whoops and Cody groans. Someone catcalls.

Obi-Wan looks at Anakin in time to see his eyes skitter away, lips pressed tightly together and eyebrows slanted downwards. Poor boy. He shouldn’t be spooked into thinking Obi-Wan is going to ravage him.

“Anakin—”

Padmé’s pearly laughter rings through the air. “Come on, Ani, you can do better than this,” she teases. “Kiss him like I taught you. Kiss him like you’d kiss me.”

Anakin ducks his head with red ears. The small crowd behind the door cheers. Ahsoka makes an exaggerated retching sound.

Something roars inside Obi-Wan. Something dark and ugly and jealous. It claws at his throat, writhing and thrashing, making it hard to think beyond the unbidden images of Padmé guiding Anakin through how to kiss her, how to kiss, how to make it good, how Anakin would react to her praise—beautifully, Obi-Wan is certain, and hates it—and he forces himself to suck in a breath and keep his hands to himself so he doesn’t pull Anakin to his chest to—to—to overwrite Padmé’s claim on him.

Padmé’s laughs and laughs and laughs, unaware of the effect her words have on Obi-Wan.

For a brief, scorching moment, Obi-Wan wants Anakin to kiss him like he’d kiss Padmé and see for himself if he’d like that; if the way Padmé likes to be kissed is anywhere near to how Obi-Wan likes to be kissed. Wonders if Anakin would return to Padmé and kiss her like Obi-Wan showed him how to kiss.

It’s a dangerous train of thought. Obi-Wan folds his hands behind his back and breathes in deeply, smothering the wildfires of his unwanted and unwelcome jealousy that burns right through his bones.

It’s pointless to entertain such fantasies. Obi-Wan doesn’t like and doesn’t want to kiss people who don’t want to kiss him.

It’s clear beyond a doubt that Anakin doesn’t want to kiss him. He’s not going to push it. The last thing he wants, in fact, is to make Anakin uncomfortable.

“Anakin,” he says, softly, and waits until Anakin lifts his eyes to look at him. “There’s no need for us to kiss like that. It’s just a stupid game.”

Their friends have started up their Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! chant again but Obi-Wan ignores it and focuses all his attention on Anakin, tracing his eyes over the planes of his face. It softens the riot of emotions inside him to something achingly deep but sweetly tender.

Anakin scowls at him. “Yeah,” he says after a beat and then looks away, scowling deeper. “Duh.”

Obi-Wan huffs out an indulgent laugh at Anakin’s irreverence. “I’m glad to know that we’re on the same page about this.”

When Anakin looks back at him, there’s a determined glint in his eyes, and Obi-Wan moves to step closer to the door, only stopped when Anakin says, “I’m not a chicken.”

Obi-Wan balks. “Okay,” he says slowly. “At no point in time did I assume you were.”

“Good.” A smirk steals across his mouth, roguish and alluring. “Then let’s just kiss and give the people what they want.”

Obi-Wan’s brain grinds to a halt and for a second, he fears he’s having a stroke. “Fine,” he hears himself say and it sounds—nonchalant. As if kissing Anakin for real wouldn’t drown him in his desperate wish to have him all for himself when he so absolutely can’t. Shouldn’t. Won’t.

“Fine,” Anakin echoes, slapping the word between them with something that sounds like pettiness, and turns fully toward Obi-Wan.

They’re standing close enough that Anakin’s body heat sears into Obi-Wan’s exposed forearms; close enough that even though there’s only an inch or two height difference between them, Obi-Wan has to tilt his chin up just a tiny bit, and it’s so heady and tantalizing that Obi-Wan has to wet his lips. Anakin’s eyes track the motion.

A tiny crease appears between his brows and he flicks his eyes up to stare at Obi-Wan. “What are you doing?”

“Pardon?” He raises a hand, smooths it over Anakin’s hair before settling at the base of his neck, and almost comes undone when Anakin shivers beneath the touch.

Anakin’s gaze grows tempestuous and he retreats a half step. “Are you trying to prove a point?” he asks, sounding accusatory.

“And what point would that be?” Obi-Wan returns mildly. He retracts his hand carefully but doesn’t move away any further. Something is simmering in the air between them, though it’s impossible to pinpoint what it is. He keeps his own desire neatly folded away; there’s no need for Anakin to be confronted with it.

Anakin makes a frustrated, aborted noise. “You don’t need to be PG-13 with me,” he huffs with a roll of his eyes, insolent beyond belief. “I won’t break. I’m not a kid.”

“No, but you are a brat,” Obi-Wan answers without thinking and with a slight shrug.

“So you’ve said before,” Anakin scoffs and narrows his eyes. “Now will you please kiss me?” He says it like he’s throwing down a gauntlet between them.

“Darling, I’m trying.” He moves in again, his fingers drifting softly along Anakin’s jaw.

Anakin shifts, restless. “Like you would kiss—like you’d kiss Quinlan,” he says. There’s an edge to his voice that sounds very close to petulance but it’s not. Obi-Wan knows how Anakin sounds when he’s petulant, has dealt often enough with it to hear the distinction. And this is not it. But it’s impossible to place.

Suddenly, he doesn’t want to kiss him anymore. He takes a breath, the beat of his heart hard against his ribs and loud in his ears. “I can’t begin to fathom what you thought I was trying to do, but now I really don’t want to do this anymore.”

It sounds—too suggestive and he only barely holds in a wince.

Anakin groans and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. Dropping them, he says, “Just kiss me!”

“I’m really not in the mood anymore.” He needs to stop talking.

“If you were before, you’ll be again.” Scratch that, Anakin needs to stop talking. “I’ll be quiet, I promise.”

Oh, how Obi-Wan hopes not. But—

“Anakin—”

“Kiss me.”

Obi-Wan feels like he’s rapidly losing control of the situation, irritated and spread thin. “Anakin—”

“Come on, Kenobi, just kiss me already!”

“No, not like this!”

It spills out of him unbidden, desperate and raw, and Obi-Wan freezes when the words drop between them.

Anakin blinks big, blue eyes at him. “What?”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Obi-Wan clears his throat. “No, I—”

Anakin’s gaze grows laser-sharp and Obi-Wan feels stripped bare beneath it, winding the threads of himself tightly around his fists to keep from unraveling.

“What does that mean?” Anakin asks quietly, knifelike and piercing. “Obi-Wan, what do you mean?”

“Nothing,” he says, steady and calm, over the erratic beating of his heart and the storm that’s raging in his head. “I’m—let’s not make something out of this that it’s not.”

He steps away and to the door.

“Obi-Wan.”

He’s probably imagining the desperate note to Anakin’s voice when he yanks the door open to be met with a crowd of surprised-looking faces.

Quinlan is the first to speak. “I see no signs of debauchery.” He arches an insufferably smug eyebrow.

Obi-Wan has the mild urge to smother him.

“Debauchery wasn’t on the menu tonight,” Obi-Wan replies smoothly, and Quinlan laughs, the dick. “We kissed. Game over.”

They all stare at him expectantly. He shrugs. “Anakin sent you the picture.”

He’s met with a chorus of groans when they realize he means the one of the kiss they deemed inadequate and start protesting, but Obi-Wan is tired and there’s panic simmering beneath his skin still.

“There’s no rule that says it needs to be more than that,” he argues, glad that the apparent lack of rules is in his favor.

Ahsoka looks from him to Anakin with a raised eyebrow. “Anakin said ‘threat of tongue’ when we stipulated the conditions.”

“Prove to me that there wasn’t ‘threat of tongue’ in the kiss,” Obi-Wan says.

“Touché,” Ahsoka concedes, laughing, and raises her beer can in acknowledgement.

The rest of them boo like little children, which should be more irritating than amusing but Obi-Wan shakes his head grinning, despite himself.

As he makes his way to the kitchen, Obi-Wan is certain—by the way his skin tingles and pebbles with goosebumps—Anakin is staring after him. He barely even hears Kit and Quinlan’s heckling cries over the sensation or the others’ disappointed booing, and bites back a sharp rebuke.

He wants to slink away into his room to breathe, quite honestly. He doesn’t.

Instead, he waits until their little party winds down; until Ahsoka and Barriss—who’s endured this night gamely—slip away to Ahsoka’s room, and Aayla promises to get both Quinlan and Kit home without detours. Cody crashes in Rex’s room. Padmé stays over tonight as well, and Obi-Wan does his best not to pay attention to it.

Obi-Wan pads into his room through the deserted hallway, exhausted and relieved. He’s almost at his door when Anakin slips out of his own room.

He feels his confession hanging in the air between them like a haunting. He doesn’t know what to say, so he simply wishes Anakin a good night.

“You could’ve just said, you know,” Anakin says before Obi-Wan turns away. At Obi-Wan’s confused look, he adds, “That you don’t want to kiss me. You could’ve just said that. I wouldn’t have made you. It’s fine. I get it.”

He really, really doesn’t.

Anakin smiles at him, small and soft and—sad, maybe, impossibly. He turns to go towards the kitchen.

Obi-Wan doesn’t think. He reacts to Anakin thinking he didn’t—doesn’t—want to kiss him. (Though how he arrived at that conclusion might forever be a mystery to Obi-Wan.)

He spins Anakin around by the biceps, winds an arm around his waist, threads his free hand into Anakin’s curls and slots their mouths together.

Anakin makes a soft, surprised sound against him but his lips open without hesitation.

And then they’re kissing.

Obi-Wan licks into his mouth hungrily and swallows another little noise Anakin makes, pulls him closer and curls a hand around jaw to angle his head. Anakin opens up so beautifully, meets Obi-Wan’s tongue with his own and sucks on it as he fists both hands in Obi-Wan’s hair, urgent and desperate. Obi-Wan maps the inside of his mouth, hears himself make broken-off gasps as Anakin bites at his bottom lip before soothing it with his tongue.

They both pull back for a split second before crashing back together again and there’s no finesse to it: they bite and suck and lick at each other as if starved for one another, greedy, so greedy, and Obi-Wan drinks in all the beautiful soft sounds that roll of Anakin’s tongue.

The kiss gentles to something sweet and lovely and they separate, just briefly, just for one breath, and Obi-Wan presses one brief, gentle kiss to Anakin’s seeking mouth, and then another.

The world crashes back in between one second and the next, and Obi-Wan releases Anakin reluctantly.

For a moment, they breathe together. Anakin raises his fingertips to his lips and when his eyes find Obi-Wan’s, his pupils are blown wide.

“I meant something like that,” Obi-Wan murmurs, and steps away, toward his room.

Anakin startles when the door to his room opens and Padmé peeks her head out. “Ani?”

Anakin clears his throat once, twice. “Be right there,” he says, voice rough, without looking at her.

Obi-Wan smiles at her and waves. She returns it before closing the door again.

“Good night, Anakin,” he says quietly, and slips into his room.

With his heart beating in his throat, Obi-Wan leans against his door and tries to catch his breath while his mind replays the kiss in an endless loop. He licks his lips, collecting the spit on them, and the ghost of Anakin’s touch sears into them, unmistakable and ineradicable.

He should feel guilty.

He doesn’t. Not for kissing Anakin. Not for kissing Padmé’s boyfriend.

At the core of him, there’s no regret.

Only the question of when he can kiss Anakin again.

Obi-Wan exhales, deep and long. His palms are sweaty, again.

Huge fucking biggie.

[not-alien-girl-v]

Hello, today is my birthday, could you dedicate a tate fluff to me?

of course!!!! happy birthday!!!! <333 (combining this with a separate ask for a ‘conserving body heat in a cold place’ type ask i got earlier from anon so idk who to @ about it, sorry!

summary: you fell in love with him at coldstone. but he was an asshole, so things didn’t work out, until one day in the walk-in freezer, all that changed

warning: language, angst i guess

5 hours had passed now since you clocked into your job at coldstone. you had always wanted to work there, the sweet smell of ice cream and cake always fresh in the air, the air conditioning saving you from the sweltering summer heat, but most of all, there was a really cute guy who worked there.

the first time you lay eyes on him was last summer, mid july, when you made the 10 minute trek under the scalding sunlight to the ice cream store. this was the summer before you learned how to drive, so you didn’t have any other option, either walk to coldstone or die at your own residence where there wasn’t any air conditioning at all. it’s manageable at night, but at 2pm, it’s unbearable.

the moment you walked in, no one was up at the counter, but you didn’t mind, as you took a moment to enjoy the cool air engulfing you like a hug from a giant snowman. you closed your eyes, really loving it, when a voice interrupted you. “what are you doing?”

you froze (literally) and turned around to meet the source of the sound. it was then that you saw him. shaggy, dirty blond hair almost covering his deep brown eyes, donning a stupid little apron and a hat with the coldstone logo on it. you must have seemed foolish, staring at him in awe the way you did, because he seemed to pay no mind to your appearance in the way you did to him.

“uh, hello?” he snapped you out of your love at first sight trance you had been stuck in, and the memory of what you were doing flooded back into your brain.

“can i get a double scoop of cookie dough?” you croaked, feeling tongue tied at the sight of him talking to you.

he was monotone in his responses, not showing any type of enthusiasm at all, which you didn’t blame him for, as a minimum wage teenage employee working during summer. “cone or bowl?”

“cone please,” you sweetened up your voice now. you wanted this interaction to stick with him, you wanted him to remember you, even if for just a moment.

of course, things didn’t work out how you planned. you received your ice cream from the gruff boy behind the counter, ate it in silence, alone at a table inside the store, while he stood there at the counter, awkwardly trying not to engage in eye contact with you. so you threw your trash away and walked back home.

flash forward 12 months later, you’ve now been working at this very coldstone for about 6 months. you got your wish, to meet the boy who worked there. in fact, you got to know him quite well, considering the shop was wildly understaffed, the two of you almost always were scheduled to work together.

however, as foreseen, things didn’t go as you planned. he wasn’t some prince in shining armor your small little teenage brain imagined, hoped, and dreamed him to be. he was just tate, and if you were being quite honest, he was a bit of an asshole.

it started off him locking you in the walk-in freezer for 5 minutes, or however long it would take him to attend to a customer at the front, just so he wouldn’t be bothered by you for a moment. being the person you are, you didn’t let that slide, so the next day, you locked him in for 5 minutes. this slowly escalated to other things, purposefully making messes and blaming it on the other so they’d have to clean it up, stealing the others phone from the break room and changing the alarms on their phones so they’d be late for work.

for as long as you could remember, tate just hated you for no reason, but that was reason enough for you to hate him back. he was a dick, and not to forget that he was the one who started this little feud, anyway. you were just leveling the score when he decided to take that personally.

it had been 5 hours since you began work, and you had just clocked out, when you realized you left your ring in the freezer.

walking in, you shivered a little bit, wearing only a t-shirt and jeans since you removed your apron to signify the end of your shift. you took a quick glance around the room, realizing your ring was no where in plain sight, you walked in further, going behind a few racks of ice cream, bending down to search the floor for your ring. it was then you heard the door open.

although you only heard the cadence of this individuals footsteps, it was enough to know it was tate. there was something specific about the way he walked, something you had come to notice.

he searched a shelf adjacent to you, not realizing you’re in there with him. then, the door suddenly shuts and locks from the outside. you heard him breathe his signature deep sigh, and walk over to the door. “oh, real mature, y/n!”

you popped up like a jack in the box behind him. “wait what?”

he nearly jumped out of his own skin, letting out a high pitched shriek. “relax, helen,” you teased.

he glared at you then remembered your shared fate. “wait, so if you’re not in here, then who locked me in?”

“maybe the manager? other than that, we’re the only two people on shift today,” you reasoned, pacing around now. there was no use in trying the door. as you both had learned several times now, once it’s been locked from the outside, you’ll only be set free once whoever locked you in opens it again.

“shit, we closed an hour ago, whoever closed it probably went home already.” he sits down on an empty crate now.

“i left my phone in the break room, do you have yours?”

“of course not, i always keep it in the break room, where it’s supposed to be,” he snapped.

you raised both your hands in defense. “that was one time okay, i just wanted to see if somebody texted me back or not!”

“yeah, you and your little boyfriend, because he’s so much more important than me busting my ass alone at the counter during rush hour,” he grumbles to himself, mostly, not caring if you hear the words or not, just hoping you’re understanding that he’s insulting you.

“what are you talking about? i don’t have a boyfriend,” you dismissed and sat on a crate parallel to him, across the room in order to keep your distance.

“whatever. just stay over there and out of my damn business,” he crossed his arms and pointedly looked away from you, resembling a toddler throwing a fit.

an hour passed at 0 degrees farenheit (-18C), and needless to say, you were so fucking cold. “i’m so fucking cold!” you exclaimed out loud.

“yeah no shit,” he had hunched over and curled into a little ball to preserve body heat.

you sat in silence for a moment, thinking. “tate, you don’t think that we’re gonna like, die in here, right?”

“what do i look like a fucking doctor?”

“just asking. since you’re such a damn know it all.”

“i’m only a know it all to you because you’re so stupid.”

you didn’t talk back that time, and he began to wonder if he really hurt you.

“hey, i’m sorry-“

“wait! it says something on the safety form here!” you carelessly interrupted him, though you didn’t listen to what he was saying anyway. “don’t panic, layer clothing, don’t exercise, conserve body heat in any way possible. with these safety measures taken, the risk of death is less likely.”

“fuck, less likely?” he cursed and put his head in his hands again. “well, there’s nothing in this room that will keep us warmer than we can keep each other so, i guess…”

“what?” you turned around, expecting to see his goofy grin, signifying his humor, but instead, see a solemn expression on his face. “you’re serious?”

“well, i don’t want to die, y/n,” he stood up and took a few steps closer to you.

“well i don’t want to touch you!” you fight back and he lunged toward you with outstretched arms. you dove out of his way.

“get over here, you little bitch!” he started to chase you around the freezer, you doing everything in your power to avoid his warm embrace, like it wasn’t something you’ve dreamed about for months now.

suddenly, you stopped running and he crashed directly into you from behind, causing both of you to topple to the ground.

taking advantage of being on top of you, he grabbed you tight and refused to let go.

“get off me!” you squirmed underneath him, but he didn’t ease up at all. eventually, through enough silence, you gave up.

“good gir-“

“oh shut up,” you silenced him with that, and he let you. you hated to admit he was right, but you soon began to feel at ease in his arms, slowly warming up.

you let it happen now, slowly running your hands up and down his back, pretending just for a moment that there was more to this embrace than survival, that you were two lovers. you knew this was false, but it was nice to daydream.

“see, this isn’t so bad,” he spoke lowly. you quietly hummed in response, almost sounding like a groan. “i know i don’t say things like this often, and if you tell anyone, you’re dead, but if i’m gonna be trapped with anyone in a freezer, i’m glad it’s you.”

“really?”

“yeah. i mean, could you imagine being trapped in here with fat craig? he’d eat me before we even run out of food.” you giggled, understanding what he meant now, hoping he was being sincere but knowing he was just joking, like he always was. “if i’m being honest though, you’re not the worst person to be around.”

“yeah you’re not so bad yourself.”

“i know, i’m pretty awesome like that,” he laughed a little too hard at his own joke and you rolled your eyes but he didn’t see it.

“can i ask you something?”

“i don’t know, can you?” he retorted and you ignored him.

“why did you lock me in here that one time? if you don’t hate me, why did you start this weird feud thing?”

“because i like you. was that not obvious?”

“not when you treat me like shit for 6 months. why did you do that? that really hurt, you know?” you almost felt yourself tearing up as your eyes welled up and your voice did that pathetic crack.

“because it was entertaining. you do have fun with me, don’t you?” he asked you, actually sounding sincere for the first time ever.

“i guess i do, i just never thought you actually liked me.”

his face ends nuzzled in your hair. “so you don’t like me back?”

you are silenced for a good long while. is this actually happening? “well, i didn’t say that.”

“did you mean that, though?”

“i don’t know. why don’t you take me on a date, feud aside, and i’ll let you know for sure?”

he laughed. “i’d love to.”

[denimbex1986]

'In the autumn of 2021, Christopher Nolan knew just where to find Cillian Murphy. The director flew to Ireland with a document in his hand luggage, Hollywood’s equivalent of the nuclear football. It was a script for his top-secret new film, printed, apparently, on red paper. “Which is supposedly photocopy-proof,” Murphy explained. He wasn’t surprised by the in-person visit. The two had worked together on five previous films, and every Nolan script, Murphy said, had been dropped off by Nolan or one of his family members. “So, like, it’s been his mum who’s delivered the script to me before. Or his brother; he’ll go away and come back in three hours. Part of it has to do with keeping the story secret before it goes out. But part of it has to do with tradition. They’ve always done it this way, so why stop now? It does add a ritual to it, which I really appreciate. It suits me.”

Murphy met Nolan at his Dublin hotel room – and Nolan left him to read. He read and read and read. All 197 pages; the rarest kind of script, written in the first-person point of view of the film’s protagonist, J Robert Oppenheimer. All action, all incidence, swirling around this character – a big-brained, psychologically complex giant of world history. Murphy had never played a lead in a Nolan film before, but had committed to this role as soon as Nolan told him about it, before he’d even seen a page of the script. “He’d already called me and said he wanted me to play the part. And I had said yes, because I always say yes to him.” The afternoon ran out. “And he doesn’t have a phone or anything,” Murphy said. “But he knew instinctively when to come back.” Nolan in command of time, as ever. They spent the rest of the evening together, and then Murphy took the DART train home, and got to work.

The result was one of the most watched and most acclaimed films of 2023 – a nearly billion-dollar blockbuster about a tormented genius (and, yes, the father of the atomic bomb). The performance affirmed for many what has been quietly known for some time: that Cillian Murphy is, or at least was, one of the most underrated actors in all of Hollywood. In small potent roles in those other Nolan movies. As a shapeshifting bit player and lead in dozens of films and plays over the past three decades. And, of course, across 10 years and six seasons of Peaky Blinders – the hit series that made him truly known globally. “Some years ago,” Christopher Nolan said, “I made what was probably a mistake in some moment of drunken sincerity of telling him he’s the best actor of his generation. And so now he gets to show that to the rest of the world so everybody can realise that.”

Part of the reason that Murphy still felt like something of a secret until recently is that he lives, breathes and resides at a remove from the noise. This is by design. In 2015, Murphy returned home to Ireland from London, already some distance from Hollywood proper, to a quiet hamlet on the Irish Sea – not exactly off the grid, but one ring further outside the blast radius of his industry.

One evening this winter, I took the DART down the coast from Dublin city centre to Monkstown to have dinner with Murphy. We met at a restaurant where, he told me, “I have a usual table, would you believe it?” He sat there comfortably for most of the night, bouncing, leaning forwards, his floppy rocker-dad hair swept casually across his forehead, his famously light eyes drawing in passersby like two pockets of quicksand.

Murphy and his wife of 20 years, artist Yvonne McGuinness, live by the sea with their two teenage sons. In Ireland, the abundance of their creative existence is all around them. The art galleries all seem to be filled with work by his family members. The music on the radio is curated by friends – or Murphy himself. There are occasional pints with his elder Irish actor idols, Brendan Gleeson and Stephen Rea.

Life here for Murphy is filled with, well, life. His boys are approaching exit velocity. There are exams. Chores. Errands. He and his youngest were flying out in the morning to attend a football match in Liverpool. “I would’ve taken you elsewhere for some Guinness,” Murphy said, “except I have to drive to drop my boy off at a party tonight.” The brand of busyness felt quite far from the bubbles that typically cocoon the leading men in the film industry.

“I have a couple of friends who are actors, but a majority of them are not,” Murphy said. “The majority of my buddies are not in the business. I also love not working. And I think for me a lot of research as an actor is just fucking living, and, you know, having a normal life doing regular things and just being able to observe, and be, in that sort of lovely flow of humanity. If you can’t do that because you’re going from film festival to movie set to promotions… I mean that’s The Bubble. I’m not saying that makes you any better or less as an actor, but it’s just a world that I couldn’t exist in. I find it would be very limiting on what you can experience as a human being, you know?”

Cillian Murphy, at least on that weekend last winter, seemed to me to have something so deeply figured out that I spent the month after our time together unable to shake the experience of being in the presence of someone living so much the way that so many other actors – so many artists, so many people – claim to want to live. Away from it all, but in highest demand. Delivering Oscar-worthy performances while also seeming convincingly content to disappear for a long while, at any point, no questions. The stabilising forces at home seemed to work as an anchor point from which Murphy could go off and wander as an artist. “He has this rare blend of humility with this supercharge of creativity,” Emily Blunt said. “He’s just a lovely, sane person. He���s so, so sane. And yet he’s got such wildness in him in the parts that he’s able to play.”

He was the first of his friends to have kids, and thus will be the first with an empty nest. More time for films. (Maybe.) More time for music. (Certainly.) More time to go on runs at night, when the lights streaking by make him feel like he’s going faster. Even more time for sleep: “I sleep a lot. I do 10-hour sleeps.” He seemed immune to the need to be in the mix – of fame, of fashion, of free dinners, the titillating offerings of a scene. A lot of actors age out of that compulsion, but the thing is, Murphy’s not old. Forty-seven. At the height of his powers, entering his prime. Not exiting the industry, but just floating lightly beside it until called upon, which he often is, and will be more now than ever.

He tries to do one movie a year, preferably not in the summer, when he likes to spend most of his time on the west coast of Ireland, doing nothing much but finding new music for his radio programme on BBC Radio 6 Music or walking his black Lab, Scout. He is perfectly happy to be “unemployed” while he waits for the right new film to come his way. “There could’ve been a situation when Chris called me up that I was doing something else,” he said. “And that would’ve been the worst of all scenarios.”

In this way, Murphy seems to adhere to his version of Michael Pollan’s adage about healthy eating: “Make movies. Not too many. Mostly with Christopher Nolan.” Imagine the discipline, the confidence, the peace of mind, to not worry about missing an opportunity, a lunch, a party, a fork in the road back in one of the frothier Hollywood hubs, but rather to stroll along emerald shores, as the days stretch out until 10pm, knowing that they know you – and that, ultimately, they know where to find you.

In Monkstown. Probably at his table. Looking present. Clear-eyed. Like any local, but with more moisture in his skin. At dinner, he asked me just once not to put something in the piece: a nuanced take he shared on a local establishment. Nothing so dangerous as an unwelcome opinion in a small town. No truer sign of someone “just fucking living” there. The dream.

Nolan had first seen Murphy in 2003, in a promotional image for 28 Days Later that had run in the San Francisco Chronicle. “I was looking to cast Batman, looking for some actors to screen test, and I was just very struck by his eyes, his appearance, everything about him – wanted to find out more,” Nolan told me. “When I met him, he didn’t strike me as necessarily right for Batman. But there was just a vibe – there are people you meet in your life who you just want to stay connected with, work with; you try to find ways to create together.” So Nolan put him on camera just to see what happened. “He first performed as Bruce Wayne, and I saw the crew stop and pay attention in a way that I had never seen before, and really have never seen since. And it was this electricity just coming off the guy, it was an incredible energy. And so I called some executives, and they were impressed enough with him that they let me cast him as Scarecrow. Those Batman villains at the time had only ever been played by huge stars – Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger. So it’s just a testament to his raw talent.”

Batman Begins was the first of his smaller roles in Nolan’s three Batman movies, Inception, and Dunkirk. “I hope he won’t mind me saying, but when I first worked with him, he was all pure instinct, and the technical side of acting wasn’t something that had registered as important with him. We would literally put a mark down and he would just walk right over it,” Nolan said, laughing. But over two decades, “as I saw him develop his technical facility, it did not in any way distract or diminish the instinctive nature of his performance.”

For the lead in Oppenheimer, Murphy prepared at home for six months, focusing first on the voice and the silhouette (in other words, shedding weight to reflect the skin and bones of a world-renowned physicist who subsisted primarily on martinis and cigarettes during his years developing the bomb). On set, as the days of filming wore on in the New Mexico desert, the significance of what Murphy was up to started to spread across the set among the cast and crew “like a rumour,” Nolan said. “I remember the same thing with Heath Ledger on The Dark Knight.”

Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s beleaguered wife, Kitty, first got to know Murphy well on A Quiet Place Part II. “Cillian’s really kidnapping to be in a scene with. He pulls you into this vibrational vortex,” she told me. “He loves a party. But when he’s working, he’s intensely focused, and won’t socialise very much at all. Certainly not on Oppenheimer; I mean, he didn’t have anything left in the tank to say one word to someone at the end of the day.”

Matt Damon told me that when they were shooting out in the middle of New Mexico, he and Blunt and the rest of the cast would go down and eat at this one little café. “It was like a mess tent,” he said. “And Cillian was invited every night, but never made it once.”

Murphy was back in his room, preserving his energy, prepping for the next day, minding the Oppenheimer silhouette.

“OK, he’s losing weight, he can’t eat at night, you know he’s miserable,” Damon said. “But you know he’s doing what’s best for the movie that you all want to be as good as possible, and so you’re cheering him on. But at dinner you’re sitting there and you’re all shaking your heads, going, ‘Man, this is brutal.’

“The one thing that he would allow himself, his one luxury, is that he would take a bath at night. I mean he would allow himself literally a few almonds or something. And then sit in his bath with his script and just work. By himself, every night.”

The performance is so big, but so much of it is invisible to the audience, in the concentrated intensity of the interpretation. The nucleus towards which so many elements subtly draw us, closer to his character. Just one example: if it were period-accurate, Murphy said, everyone would be smoking and wearing hats, but he’s the only one doing either: “It’s emphatic, but subliminally so.” The author Kai Bird, who co-wrote American Prometheus, the monumental biography of Oppenheimer on which the film is based, spent a day at the Los Alamos set, watching Murphy play the scene where Oppenheimer talks to his team of scientists about the bomb while someone drops marbles into a fishbowl and a brandy glass. “At one point during a break, he approached wearing his baggy brown suit and turquoise belt, and I raised my arms and shouted, ‘Dr Oppenheimer, Dr Oppenheimer, I’ve been waiting decades to meet you!’ ” Bird said. “He especially captured the voice and Oppie’s intensity.” (At one point during our conversation, Bird asked me to confirm: “Those are his blue eyes, right? Or is he wearing lenses?”)

The film was released on Barbenheimer weekend, just after the SAG-AFTRA strike began, and despite enjoying some lighter time with Blunt, Damon and the cast, Murphy was relieved to cut short the promotion of the film. “I think it’s a broken model,” he said of red carpet interviews and junkets. Outdated and a drag for actors. “The model is – everybody is so bored.” Look what happened when they went on strike, he said. It all stopped. But the fact that the film was good, and Barbie was good, two at the same time, with people going crazy – it just shows you don’t need it. “Same was the case with Peaky Blinders. The first three seasons, there was no advertising, a tiny show on BBC Two. It just caught fire because people talked to each other about it.”

Murphy’s reticence in many interviews is palpable. “It’s like Joanne Woodward said,” he told me. “ ‘Acting is like sex – do it, don’t talk about it.’ ” Although I wouldn’t characterise his disposition on, say, late-night TV as gruff, he’s basically just incapable of going full phoney. He is, in other words, reacting the same way you might to being asked the same question for the hundredth time in a week. I’m curious to watch him suffer through his first Oscar campaign, where answering the same questions about his performance is essentially the point, for several months.

“People always used to say to me, ‘He has reservations’ or ‘He’s a difficult interviewee,’ ” Murphy said. “Not really! I love talking about work, about art. What I struggle with, and find unnecessary and unhelpful about what I want to do, is: ‘Tell me about yourself…’ ”

Nonetheless: He grew up in Cork. Went to a Catholic school better suited for a certain kind of athletic boy than an artistic soul. “I always fucking hated team sports. I like watching them. But I was terrible at them,” he said. That classic system for schooling was not good for him, “emotionally and psychologically,” he said. “But at least it gave me something to push against.”

Murphy played in a successful band with his brother, half-heartedly entered the local university as a law student. While at school in Cork, he stumbled into a performance of A Clockwork Orange and fell in with the stage scene there. He hadn’t trained in any way, but he got the first role he ever auditioned for, in Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs, which travelled around the UK, Europe and Canada, and transformed his life. “It all happened to me in one month, in August ’96: we got offered a record deal, I failed my law exams, I got the part in Disco Pigs, and I met my wife,” he said. “I now look back and go, Oh, shit, I didn’t know then how important all these things were – the sort of domino effect that they would have on my life.” I asked Murphy, who has said in the past that he identifies as an atheist, if such a confluence ever made him wonder if there was indeed a higher power organising all of this. “Ohhh,” he said. “I love the chaos and the randomness. I love the beauty of the unexpected.”

That winter weekend, while walking around Dublin on a bit of a Joycean ramble, we passed a bookshop. “This was my favourite bookshop when I first moved up to Dublin. I didn’t have any money and I was living with my mother-in-law. And I would come in here and get a coffee for 50p, but then they would, like, refill it, you know? So, I’d sit in there all day and just read plays and then put them back on the shelves, and then go home and my mother-in-law would feed me dinner,” he said. “Just to educate myself. To catch up. ’Cause I didn’t go to drama school, so I’d read all the plays I should’ve read if I went to drama school. I’d ask all these writers and directors to tell me all the plays that I must read.”

“Theatre is the key to Cillian,” director Danny Boyle told me. “Weirdly, given that he is such an extraordinary film actor.” It’s the ability, from the theatre, to travel the great distance of an extreme character arc. “Everybody talks about his dreamy Paul Newman eyes. And all that’s to his advantage, of course, because behind is this capacity, this reach that he has into volcanic energy.” (The other key to Cillian, Boyle said, is that he’s a bloody Irishman: “He’s one of the great, great exports, and the homeland clearly nourishes him constantly.”) Boyle cast Murphy in 2002’s 28 Days Later, the first film of Murphy’s that made him known. It led, in its way, to the Nolan partnership, as well to working with Boyle again on 2007’s Sunshine. “When we did 28 Days Later, he was really just starting off,” Boyle said. “By the time he came back for Sunshine, he was a seriously accomplished actor.”

In the noughties, Murphy was working frequently. Some of the movies were better than others. “Many of my films I haven’t seen,” he said. “I know that Johnny Depp would always say that, but it’s actually true. Generally the ones I haven’t seen are the ones I hear are not good.”

I asked him if he’d seen Oppenheimer.

“Yes, I’ve seen Oppenheimer…” he said, rolling his eyes.

When Nolan finished the film, Murphy, his wife and his younger son flew to Los Angeles to watch it for the first time in Nolan’s private screening room. “It’s pretty nice…” Murphy said, trying to balance obvious enthusiasm with not giving too much away. “You know, he shows film prints there. The sound is extraordinary.” How many seats? “Uh, I’d say maybe 50?” So, Murphy did see this film of his – in perhaps the most dialled-in home cinema known to man.

In the summer of 2005, just a couple of months after Batman Begins came out, Murphy was back in cinemas with Wes Craven’s Red Eye. It was villain season. And the two roles, in close quarters, seemed to coalesce around a feeling: that guy creeps me out. When casually canvassing people about what they think of when they think of Murphy, I was shocked by the imprint that Red Eye had on an American of a certain age.

“Oh, I know, it’s crazy!” Murphy said. “I think it’s the duality of it. It’s why I wanted to play it. That two thing. The nice guy and the bad guy in one. The only reason it appealed to me is you could do that –” he snapped his fingers “– that turn, you know?”

“They say the nicest people sometimes make the best villains,” Rachel McAdams said, recalling her time with Murphy on the cramped aeroplane set of Red Eye. “We’d listen to music and gab away while doing the crossword puzzle, which he brought every day and would graciously let me chime in on... I think the number one question I got about Cillian way back then was whether or not he wore contact lenses.”

“I love Rachel McAdams and we had fun making it,” Murphy said. “But I don’t think it’s a good movie. It’s a good B movie.”

During that same stretch, Murphy starred in Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, one of the best films he’s made, and one that Murphy is uniquely proud of. It’s a period epic that tells the story of a crew of Irish friends who find themselves fighting first the British, in the Irish War of Independence, and then one another in the Irish Civil War. The film is lush, harrowing, relentless and transporting. Murphy has a face that sits cosily at home in any decade of the 20th century. He is at his most vital in the ’20s, the ’30s, the ’40s – and that’s one of the factors that works so convincingly in Oppenheimer. Matt Damon, for better or worse, looks like Matt Damon. Emily Blunt, again for better or worse, looks like Emily Blunt. Whereas Cillian Murphy looks like a scientist from 1945.

Murphy and his filmmakers have run this play several ways in recent years. In Anthropoid (2016), as a Czechoslovakian resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied Prague. In Free Fire (2016), as an IRA member caught up in an arms deal gone horribly wrong. In Dunkirk (2017), as a British “shivering soldier” suffering from PTSD. And, of course, in Peaky Blinders (2013–2022), as a First World War hero turned gangster in 1920s Birmingham. With that face, he can play every side of the die of the embroiled conflicts of pre- and post-war Europe. “Cillian’s always laughing about how he’s perpetually playing people who are traumatised,” Blunt said. “There must be something about his face that sort of entices those kinds of offers.”

In the first frame of Anthropoid that Murphy appears in, a moonbeam strikes his cheekbone like it’s a plane of alabaster, and the question immediately pops to mind: are you a Nazi or the resistance? Are you the good guy or the bad guy – or both, that “two thing”? The stable and the wild. The duality. The pull within.

In Dublin, we found ourselves walking through busy streets, beneath abundant winter sunshine and caustic seagulls. We were approached by fans at a shocking clip – but also by sisters of friends.

“I’m not a stalker…” one said, politely.

“Oh, hi, Oona!”

I asked him if he’d sensed that his life had palpably changed in any way since last summer, given that a billion pounds’ worth of people saw him in practically every frame of one of the biggest films of all time. “To me, it always seems to go in waves,” he said. “When Peaky was at its kind of apex, you’d feel a different energy around, walking around, a little bit like I do now – but then it settles down again. It kind of comes in waves. And then you don’t have something in the cinema for ages, and people forget about it. So. It seems to be like that, and you sort of ride that, and then things go back to normal.”

With all due respect to the Peaky hive, this film did seem to go especially wide.

“Yes,” he said, laughing. “But you’d be surprised. Peaky is still the thing I get asked most about in the world.”

As if on cue, Murphy was approached by a fan on the street, who asked for a photo.

“Oh, I don’t do photos,” he said to the disappointed lad, who nonetheless got 20 seconds of Murphy’s time to chat.

“Once I started doing that,” he said, “it changed my life. I just think it’s better to say hello, and have a little conversation. I tell that to a lot of people, you know, actor friends of mine, and they’re just like, I feel so bad. But you don’t need a photo record of everywhere you’ve been in a day.”

“There is a culty, effervescent kind of wonder about Cillian,” said Blunt. “I think for someone as interior as he is, this level of kinetic fame is, like, horrifying for him. If anyone is not built for fame, it’s Cillian.”

To make it up to that fan, I asked Murphy what the status is of a potential Peaky Blinders film. “There is no status, as of now,” he says. “So I have no update. But I’ve always said I’m open to it if there’s more story. I do love how the show ended. And I love the ambiguity of it. And I’m really proud of what we did. But I’m always open to a good script.”

We passed some young people in dark dresses and heels, absolutely the worse for wear. “Look at these guys, out from the night before,” Murphy said, smiling. I asked him if he had his days of partying in Dublin, in London. “I mean, I did, but it was with my friends. I was never part of any scene – or went to, like, acting clubs. I would never go to the premiere... The idea of going to a premiere that isn’t your own, seems to me like…”

We passed Trinity College, an occasion to discuss the breakout Irish series Normal People and its breakout Irish star Paul Mescal. “He is the real deal. He is like a true movie star. They don’t come along that often. But,” Murphy said, serving the lightest and rarest touch of pride and swagger, “luckily, they seem mostly to come from Ireland.

“It’s a good time,” he added, “to be an Irish actor, it seems.”

We stopped in at the Kerlin Gallery to see the show of his sister-in-law, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain. She and Murphy’s wife were friends in graduate school in London, and Murphy’s brother met her while visiting Cillian there. This is his scene. He walked around admiring the pieces, which he’d heard about at family functions but not yet seen in person.

“Now this work immediately appeals to me,” he said, “because you can feel it’s pushing at big, big themes, and to me, that’s what I’ve always loved. I don’t really go for pure entertainment. I love when it makes you feel a little bit fucked up. Not in a horror-genre way, but in a psychological, existential way. That’s what I love in all the work that I enjoy and the work that I try to make.”

Murphy executive-produced the last three seasons of Peaky Blinders, but had been looking for a first film to produce. He secured the rights to Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, a Booker Prize finalist, and one night on the set of Oppenheimer, while they were just sitting there in the desert, Damon told him about Damon and Ben Affleck’s then unannounced new company, Artists Equity, whose novel financial model is based on profit sharing with the crew. Murphy sent them the book and Artists Equity ultimately financed the film. “Normally, you’re trying to put together all these different entities, and then you have all these points of view on the edit,” Murphy said. “This was just those guys.”

Small Things Like These centres on an average man about Murphy’s age in a small town in County Wexford, who, one Christmas, stumbles upon a horrifying secret in the local convent – the Magdalene Laundries, which from the 18th century to the 1990s held thousands of girls and women prisoner in Church workhouses. I asked Murphy if, with his new power, it was important to him to tell Irish stories. Not especially, he said. The only criterion was: what’s the best story for right now? “Still,” he said, “it’s a good time to be looking at that story, because we have distance from what happened with the Church and everything. But yet I don’t think we’ve still fully addressed it. So, if you can make something that’s entertaining and moving, but also asks a few questions about who we are as a nation, and who we were as a nation, and how far we’ve come – then that’s great. But, again, they should happen after you’ve gone and had a reasonably entertaining evening at the cinema.”

Murphy joked at one point that he spent the actors’ strike at home “eating cheese,” but what he really did was spend the strike editing Small Things and overseeing “all the lovely stuff that we actors never get a look in on.” (His production company, Big Things Films, would’ve been called Small Things Films, he said, except that Small Things suggests “a lack of ambition, perhaps.”) Small Things will premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival this month.

One film a year, control, restraint, a hand firmly on the wheel.

Murphy has a natural propensity to an analogue lifestyle that works well with Nolan, who doesn’t use email or have a smartphone. “I aspire to that life,” Murphy said. “I was just clearing stuff off my phone, but have to keep the apps for music and music discovery.

“I still have all my CDs and DVDs and Blu-Rays,” he went on. “I cannot get rid of them. I did get rid of my VHS, though. I just left them on the street because nobody wanted them. I went and brought them to a library and was like, Look at this pretentious collection of art films! and they were like, No thanks, man…”

I asked him if he saw the viral TikTok of Nolan showing a zoomer how best to project Oppenheimer. He started laughing. “My son showed me that. A clash of cultures.”

Working with Nolan can feel like a much-desired retrenchment from modern life. “When I’m on a Chris set, it does feel a little bit like a private, intimate laboratory,” Murphy said. “Even though he works at a tremendous pace, there’s always room for curiosity and finding things out, and that’s what making art should be about, you know? There’s no phones – but also no announcement: everybody just knows. And there’s no chairs. Because he doesn’t sit down. Sometimes a film set can be like a picnic. Everyone’s got their chairs and their snacks and everyone’s texting and showing each other fucking, you know, emojis or whatever, memes – which I do know,” he said, referring obliquely to the meme of Cillian Murphy not knowing what a meme is. “But why?”

Do you know what Nolan is doing next? I asked him.

“Nooo. But, like, I didn’t know that he was writing Oppenheimer. We don’t stay in touch that way.”

It’s like Mission: Impossible. Do the hard thing together, then sever communication. “Chris is the smartest person I’ve ever met,” added Murphy. “Not just the director stuff, but everything else.”

Nolan had told me that he’d wanted to give Murphy the role that he would be dogged by forever – that he would spend the rest of his career trying to crawl out from under. “And,” he said, “I think I’ve done it.”

When I put it to Murphy, he took a beat: “There’s a big, big body of work that I think people that know know.” I think it was his modest way of saying: I’ve got a few others too.

Murphy told me he’d heard that “one of the Sydneys” – Lumet or Pollack – once said that it takes 30 years to make an actor. He believed that. “I’m 27 years,” he said. “So I’m close.”

After Nolan hand-delivered the Oppenheimer script to Murphy and left him to read in that Dublin hotel room, he made his way to the Hugh Lane Gallery, and, more specifically, to the Francis Bacon studio there, a perfect preservation of the impossibly messy London studio where the Irish-born painter had lived and worked for much of his life. Murphy and Nolan share a love of Bacon – a towering figure of the 20th century, born in its first decade, dead in its last. Besides the reassembled studio, the museum has several paintings by Bacon – some finished, some unfinished. In all instances, though, the portraits of people – ghoulishly distorted figures – are rendered unsparingly. Never perfect representations. Never straight impressions. But rather an artist’s interpretation of another being, reconfigured into a stark image. You can see what might appeal to both a director of a biopic and his leading man.

That winter weekend, I made the same journey across the River Liffey that Nolan did, past a poster for Oppenheimer in a Tower Records window, past the Garden of Remembrance (for all who gave their lives for Irish freedom), and met Murphy at the museum. He had on a black puffer jacket, a black hoodie, and a pair of black Ray-Bans with that starburst that movie-star lenses do when subjected to a flash on a red carpet. He removed them inside and took the well-worn path back to the Bacons. “Most people don’t know about this place,” he said. “It’s kind of like a little secret. But I just come here when I have time to spare in town.”

We looked at Bacons. Bacons everywhere. We talked about the Bacon biography that came out in 2021. “I love the work,” Murphy said, “but just the life. That kind of unique relentlessness that he had as an artist.” I asked if he read actor biographies. “When I was starting out,” he said. “I always worry, though, reading them – because I can’t remember what I did last week... I often wonder about the self-mythologising.”

We peered in on the studio itself, every cigarette butt and crate of champagne archived and put in its place. “Chaos for me breeds images,” Bacon had said.

Do you have a room in your house that looks like this? I asked.

Murphy laughed. “No, I do have a man room, a man cave. But it’s incredibly tidy.”

In another room of the museum, we sat before a looped TV special on Bacon from 1985, an hour-long interview with presenter Melvyn Bragg, where the great painter spits off charisma and wisdom in pithy responses to the biggest questions an artist can be asked, all while wearing a perfect black leather jacket. We sat there quietly together, until Murphy interjected: “It’s kind of mesmerising, isn’t it?”

Before I’d arrived in Dublin, Nolan had told me that Murphy’s career tends to make sense if you think of him more as an artist than an actor – as you would a painter or a musician. That his filmography isn’t a line going up or down so much as filled with distinct periods of development. It helps explain the approach to the work. How patient and restrained. How clear the point of view. An act of accretion rather than explosiveness and volatility. So unshaken by the things that rock the boat for so many actors. It’s the clarity. The authenticity. The answer to the question: when you’re tested again and again, what is there? Who is there? Here is a man – a 47-year-old who could play 27 with the right light and 67 with the right make-up – who is probably going to win the Oscar for best actor, but whose mind couldn’t be farther from the chatter of his industry and the noise, the noise. At one point, I asked him if he feels like he’s uniquely well-positioned to play roles of middle age – if Oppenheimer feels like the first film of what could be the strongest stretch of his career.

“I really don’t know,” he said. “I really haven’t thought about it.”

Here, then, was another thing Murphy had seemingly figured out – consciously or not. Almost all religions, coaches, gurus, and enlightened friends tend to offer the same advice: don’t lose yourself in the past, don’t fixate on the future, but focus six inches in front of your nose, and on the Now that you can control. “I really am kind of like, pathologically unsentimental about things,” Murphy said. “I just move forward very quickly.” The past wasn’t a problem because he couldn’t remember it – or wouldn’t romanticise it. The future wasn’t a concern because he didn’t like to plan too far out. And so: the one film on the horizon; the one song on the radio or the one painting on the wall. He was, in this way, an authentic presentist. Or, less abstractly, just a good listener, a good seer, a good scene partner, a good person to have dinner with.

There, in the museum, we sat and we sat, watching the Bacon interview as though there was nowhere else to be (because there really wasn’t) and nothing else to think about (what more was there than how an artist’s life might be lived?).

Murphy broke the silence. “Did you ever hear this theory that [Brian] Eno has? About the farmers and the cowboys? There’s two types of artist – there’s the farmers and the cowboys. The farmers, like in his studio for example,” he said, gesturing to Bacon on the screen. “He’s mostly kind of doing the same thing, refining and refining and refining the same thing. And the cowboys, who go off, they’re like prospectors, that go off and do mad work. Eno puts himself in the second bracket, ’cause he’s such an innovator, with the music and the production and all of that. Or somebody like Bowie, constantly reinventing. Neither one is better, it’s just a different way of making work.”

Which do you fall into? I asked.

“Definitely the cowboy, I think. But there are actors that just play similar parts, versions of themselves all the time. Again, I don’t think either one is better.”

Do you think that sometimes an actor falls into the other category by accident, when their public persona intersects with – or eclipses – the work? I asked.

“Perhaps. Yeah. I’m sure that’s the case. Yeah.”

He sat back and sank into the film again, giggling at some of the things that Bacon said and did. “There’s a few things he says that I always think apply to our work,” he said. “ ‘The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.’ ” Provocative movies. Provocative performances. No easy answers – but perhaps a few new questions.

Don’t give it all away. Don’t even give most of it away. Retrench. Be clear. With yourself, but not necessarily with others. Let the fame wave pass. Live by the sea.

He said it again: “Deepen the mystery. That’s it, isn’t it?”'

[harveyb-wabbit92]

{When Akari was spat out into Blazar's world shocking the hell SKaRD.]

*Akari looks around panicked*

Blazar: hm?!

Teruaki: what?

Anri: It's..

Gento (in Blazar's pocket space): Another Ultraman?

[Then this dragon like monster fell through the portal, unlike the new ultra who was completely overwhelmed by their new surroundings. It monster shook off it's shock and went to attack them only for Blazar to jump in; he went berserk on it much Gento's shock! the almost feral giant managed to rip off of one the monster horns before it released a smoke breath and escaped by burying itself underground.]

Gento: Blazar what was that reaction just now, does it have something to do with them?

{Blazar sends Gento's memories of Jun crying.]

Gento: What, why are you showing me Jun...

{Gento stares at the new ultra's body language the way they were fidgeting and frantically looking around; it kind of reminded him of a lost...]

Gento: No way, It's...They're a kid?!

Blazar, approaches the antsy ultra: Um..

Red Ultra, suddenly tenses up backs away: Get away!

(Blazar put his hands up he meant no harm.)

Gento: It's okay, we're not going to-

{Before he could finish the younger ultra's body started to glow and in moments they were gone...at that least that was Gento thought until later when he was headed back home, he saw a teenage girl wandering the dark streets by herself late at night, she looked no older than 15. And as Gento got closer he noticed how worn out her clothes were and how beaten up she looked causing his parental instincts to take over.]

Gento: Hey. kid, Are you okay?

????, glares: What do you care?

Gento: Look, you don't have be afraid of me, my name is Gento, I work with SKaRD. I help people.

????: Well good for you Gento, but I don't need help just forget you ever saw me...

{The girl said trying to walk away when Gento noticed the Charm stuck to the girl's hat was the exact same ax the ultra from before was holding causing Gento to grab the girl by her backpack.]

Gento: Hold on!

????: Lemme go, or else!

Gento: Your that ultra from before aren't you?

[the girl looked at him apprehensively when the Blazar medal in Gento's pocket started burning causing him to wince as he reached into his pocket, the girl saw it and looked at Gento confused, cut to the two of them at a diner Gento watches stunned as Akari who the girl introduced herself as, downed her third large bowl of udon.]

Gento: So how long have you been like this?

Akari: Like what?

Gento: Bonded with...does your ultra have a name?

Akari: Of course I have a name, I'm Akari.

Gento: No, the ultra I mean, do they have a name?

Akari: And I just told you, that's me.

Gento, blinks: You...are the ultra?

Akari: That's what I said.

{Gento asked her to elaborate and she gave him the rundown she's half ultra and turns into an ultra at will, when Akari mentioned that she was half ultra seemed to cause Gento's brain to stall he asked for more info which led to this conversation.]

[handoverthekawaii]

Your Strongest Soldier | Levi Ackerman x You | Chapter XII

Time seems to stand still as Levi pulls your body close, his grip around your waist so tight that you can hardly breathe. You feel the tension in his muscles, the pounding of his heart, and the visceral, electric crackle where your skin touches his.

Almost unconsciously, you caress Levi’s cheek and run your fingers through his hair. He places his other hand on the back of your neck, pulling you into an even deeper kiss as his hips grind against yours.

You hear yourself moan as Levi’s tongue enters your mouth, and an unmistakable wave of desire crashes over you. You want this moment to last forever… but, suddenly, the logical part of your brain takes over. With a jolt, you realize what an irreversible mistake you just made.

You, a nurse, are literally making out with your patient. You allowed your feelings for Levi to overwhelm your ethical obligations. While you intended to silently ride out your crush on him, instead you acted on your feelings like a horny teenager. And now you are engaging in a truly reprehensible breach of professional conduct.

The only way things could get worse is if you allowed yourself to continue. No, you have to nip your bad behavior in the bud right this instant.

You have to atone for your mistakes.

So you force yourself to pull away from Levi and take a giant step back. Levi’s arms remain outstretched as though you were still resting within his embrace, and the confused hurt in his eye makes your heart break.

“Levi…” you whisper, your eyes immediately filling with tears. You’ve ruined everything, you think to yourself — now, you have to forfeit whatever remaining time you might have had in the life of this wonderful man. It’s the only way you know to make things right.

The room is deathly silent for a long moment. Then, with tears flowing freely down your face, you manage to utter two words — “Forgive me” — before you bolt down the stairs and out of the townhouse. [continued in AO3]

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

Fic Writer 20 Questions

@the-tomorrow-road tagged me!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

15

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

22,803

3. What fandoms do you write for?

At the moment it's Leverage and The Librarians. I used to also write Stargate Atlantis, Thunderbirds and The Doctor Blake Mysteries so there's some of them on there too.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The What-to-do Guide For When You've Pissed Off Eliot Spencer (Leverage - 104 kudos)

Dead Air (Leverage - 98 kudos)

Concussion Check! (Leverage - 54 kudos)

A Prickly Situation (Thunderbirds - 40 kudos)

Paralysed (The Librarians - 28 kudos)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I didn't used to (thanks, anxiety), but the last few fics I've made a conscious effort to do so.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Le Morte D'Eliot (The title should clue you in to why.)

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Dead Air probably, or maybe Paralysed.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not on my AO3 account, but I once did back in my ye olde fanfic.net days (most of those fics can and will stay lost thankyouverymuch!)

9. Do you write smut?

Nope!

10. Do you write crossovers?

I want to, but I haven't so far.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Don't think so.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I know of.

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Not yet! But there is a brain worm that I plan to try and do a bit more on with @the-tomorrow-road at a time when I'm not drowning as much under a giant pile of work.

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

Ah! It's nothing to do with any fandom I've written for, but Henry Morgan/Molly Dawes from Forever.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I don't have any unpublished wips but there are many sitting on my laptop that are slowly sending me mad like a heartbeat under the floorboards, some of which are years old and I'm not even in those fandoms anymore.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Writing the rest of the fic minus the dialogue! Hence why I have a few pics that are dialogue only! That, and getting in waaaaay too deep into researching and perfecting the tiniest detail that nobody else would ever, ever notice and needing a virtual slap from someone to bring me back out of it!

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I wouldn't do it myself as I would be guaranteed to mangle it. Everyone else, yeah go for it, as long as you also provide a translation!

19. First fandom you wrote for?

*Ahem* Doctor Who, in my teenage years. The less said about that, the better!

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

The What-To-Do Guide!

And I'm tagging: @my-beloved-lakes and @lindseymcdonaldseyelashes

[aldakat31415]

Soooo uhhhhhh...

the dsmp got me down bad.. technoblade is.. ight I know but hes so.. anyway uhhh.. here.

Technoblade x reader

Warnings: Mythology may be inaccurate I went off memory.. sorry.

The sound of books hitting the counter, dust flying everywhere as you opened the book in front of you. The pages stacked up for what seemed would take centuries to read. You had no idea what had possessed you to come back here, the library.

The bookshelves didn't just shelve novels, but memories. The two of you used to run through the building, knocking over book-karts and bumping into people as the librarian shushed you.

"Blood for the blood god!" the boy shouted, a fake wooden sword in one hand as he stood atop of his book pile. King of the hill.. You looked up at him, a literary throne fit for a king. Laughing while trying to climb the mountain and accidentally knocking him down under you, the two of you laughing your heads off until something smacked into him.

"huh.." he picked the book up, showing it to you. It had a large hardback cover, images of strange people. One had shoes with wings, and he flew over another man who was half horse? You laughed at the absurdness, but Techno stared at it for a second, seemingly intrigued. "Greek mythology.." He mumbled under his breath, staring at the words.

"Isn't that the weird story from history class?" You asked as you both stood up. He opened it up, and the first page was a little terrifying. A giant man, swallowing babies.

"Oh its Kronos." He commented, far more educated on the subject than you had been at the time. "He ate his children so they wouldn't overthrow his rule."

You stared at him, disturbed. Your elementary school brain did not like or really get what this was. " He ate his kids.. Yeah.. that's freaky.." You said, making a face at the picture.

"Well it doesn't end badly." Techno begins, trying to ease your discomfort. "The kids actually win at the end. " He flipped the page, pointing to a bunch of people in bed-sheet dresses. "Zeus mom actually tricked his dad, so he didn't get eaten. Instead he grew up, and formed a plan. He made his dad eat a really gross mixture and throw up all his siblings, and they defeated him afterward. So they got to rule Olympus."

You were silent for a moment. "You know a lot about this.."

"I actually pay attention in class."

You laugh a little, remembering the two of you as kids. You opened the book in the middle, knowing it like the back of your hand as you flipped to your favorite part.

"Theseus.. Theseus.. who is this guy.." A teenage you mumbled to yourself. "Is he like Perseus..? Is he in Percy Jackson.." You looked at the book, not really wanting to read it and just hoping your memories of your favorite children's novel would help.

"It's disappointing to know you only know stuff from that book.." A voice behind you grumbled, the piglin holding his books close to himself as he sat the stack next to you.

"I like books, but I have other hobbies Tech. I can't dedicate my whole life to them you do.." You reply teasingly, finally giving in and opening the book.

"Hey! I play Minecraft!" He argues, reading over your shoulder.

"And kill orphans, such a booked schedule tech.." You comment absentmindedly. "It's a miracle you have enough time for me."

"Hey, you would fail English without me."

"I would not. I'd have B's."

"So thank me for the A's." He teases, tucking a piece of hair behind your hair. You look up at him, snorting at his action. He was always so touchy, at the time you didn't think much of it. He was just Technoblade.

"Thank you so much.. Technoblade ruler of English class.." You rolled your eyes, before scrunching up your nose at one part. "He reminds me of your little brother... wait.. is this where the nickname comes from?"

He stares at you light your dumb.

"Right.. Mythology nut.. of course it does.." You mumble and he laughs, leaning his head on your shoulder. Even at that age he towered over you, just not as badly as he does now.

You pushed him off. "Why do you like this shit so much?" You wondered, a little grossed out at these supposed 'heroes'.

He thinks for a moment, before taking your hand in his own. " It's just.. it's cool.."

You sigh. "Is that the best I get.. that's so little from a nerd like you."

He laughs. "Like you're not one.. You got all those weird things you like too."

"Touche, now.. maybe you could give me a better answer?"

"...no.. But maybe you could actually study.. don't wanna fail that essay do we?" You sighed, some of his mothering tendencies could be annoying.

"Like I could with you around." You mock.

"...flattery. I like that. Does work on me. Okay, I guess it's because.. i like how exciting it is, the danger and the romance. Not everybody is great, but it's.. compelling. Besides, this book reminds me of you." He points to the one you were reading. "It always finds you, you say you can't stand this subject, but I always find you looking into it. It feels.. special."

He stared into your eyes, and suddenly you were hyper aware of his hand on yours as you found yourself feeling warmer. His words touching something inside of you as you looked into his glistening orbs of eyes, something you had never seen in them before.

A sigh and a vague feeling made you close the book. You could recite every word inside out and backwards and the words were dancing along the tip of your tongue. Tears started to fall down your cheek, and you came back into reality cupping your cheek with a realization.

"Thump. "

A book hit the floor.

You turned around to see long pink hair fall across a man's shoulder as he bent down to pick up what he had dropped, his appearance was familiar, but when he looked back up at you your heart popped.

"Y/N.." The word came from a voice both familiar and not. You stood up, the book to your chest. You legs found their way next to him without you telling them to, staring at his face like a book you couldn't put down.

"Tech.. It's been a while. " he had gotten tall, and you noticed how nicely he kept his hair in a braid. A collared white shirt that practically came from a fairy-tale. You couldn't help but admire how much he looked like a prince.

He held a hand close to his chest, the words catching on his throat."Y-yeah.. It's.. I haven't seen you since high school, have I?"

You giggled at his reaction, his emotions clear as day. "..Missed me?"

His breath catches, such a strange but beautiful reaction from such a large man. "Y-yes. Yes I missed you. Oh Y/n, I missed you."

You sigh as he cups your cheek noticing your tears. "Y-"

"I missed you too." You cut him off. "The past three years.. have been so.." You bit your lip, clutching the book closer to you.

He noticed the book, his eyes widening before he laughed out. "You have it!" He held it up, before looking at you. Something in his eyes changed as they widened at his realization.

You nodded. "I'm actually a teacher now.." You looked down blushing. "I needed it for my class.. thought I would use the special one.."

"You're a teacher?" He looks at you curiously before you notice his badge.

"You work here now?"

"Literature major.. I'm hoping to become head librarian.." He looks away blushing.

You hold the badge in your hand, admiring it. "You're gonna be an amazing one."

"thanks.. I thought you hated mythology.." He commented, handing the book back to you.

"I changed my mind.." You replied, as one last memory came back to you.

It was graduation day, and it was pouring rain. You and Techno sat under the bleachers, laugh at you used him plus his jacket as an umbrella. He was drenched, and not a drop had touched you. "This is not fair.." He complained.

"You're the one who wanted to read it to me.. here's the best spot.." You replied, trying not to laugh.

He let out a annoyed sigh, opening the book as you leaned into his chest. "People are gonna think were making out or something.." He replied blushing.

"Let people think what they want.." You were serious, but a warmth crept through you at his words as butterflies filled your stomach.

"Okay.. Theseus?"

"You read that every time.. " You complained. "Any new ones?"

"No.. But we haven't read this one in a while. " He pointed to a page with a goddess with flawless skin and gorgeous features adorned. "Aphrodite."

"Hmm.. Okay.. but you gotta spice it up if I'm not supposed to get bored. "

"I didn't write it.. how could I.." He sighed at your look. "Aphrodite was the goddess of love. One of her birth stories is that she came from the ocean, the foam of sea birthing her. She's married to Hephaestus, but cheats on him with Ares.. who's apparently much hotter. Her son is Eros, who is the god of love-"

"I'm bored.." You admitted after trying to pay attention for a while. "Can't we do anything else.. "

"Aphrodite is interesting.." He whined.

"While her love life may be, i beg to differ.. " You sighed and closed your eyes. "I'm gonna fall asleep.."

He laughed, running his hands through your hair. "You think her love life is interesting? That's.. a start."

You laughed with him. "Well it's better than mine, I've never even dated.. I don't think anyone's attracted to me.."

"What no.. you're plenty hot. You'll find someone in no time." He tried to cheer you up, and ignore the blush that the words caused him to adorn.

"Mmmm.. maybe a person like Hephaestus. Ugly face and good personality. Good spouse, just a little.. boring. I'd marry them in like ten years." You tried to think of the best thing you could think of for yourself.

"So you do listen.. "

"Yeah I know his mom yeeted him off a cliff for being ugly.." You replied. "Like me."

He sighed. "You're anything but ugly. You rival.. you rival Aphrodite. " He did the look once again and you felt yourself pulled in.

"You reall-"

"...Yeah.. Look you're gorgeous.. inside and out.. You make the goddess of love look like some nobody with how much you outshine her. And I.. I love you. I love you so badly.. " He looked away and you could feel his heart beat against his chest, practically trying to escape.

You opened your mouth only to close it, and what started as pull was now a force of magnetism so great you found your lips close to his before you pulled away. "You.. Technoblade.." Your heartbeat was a stampeding armada. He looked down and you cried, tears dripping down your cheeks.

"I know you don't feel the same.."

"I didn't say that."

His eyes slowly met yours, and you felt like the sun and moon had become one and the same. The sky was a storm overhead and the man you loved and who loved you looked at you with such a gaze that you felt like you might pass out. You leaned in, and you found yourself in the present again. Staring up at him and techno staring down at you like both of you had just had gone through the same memory.

"I Uh.. " He looked away blushing, his glasses catching the light and glinting pink. Those were new.

You held his hands. "I know.." his eyes returned to you. "I know.. I know Tech." Pressing one of his palms into your cheek you looked up at him and a wave of emotions passed between the two of you, it had been years, but that same magnet drew the two of you closer. His lips touched yours as he cupped your face with a hand, the other wrapping around your waist.

Right where it belonged.

[inhumanmadman]

[ I had one of those cinematic dreams again. Strap in. It's a wild ride.

So...Something was happening. It didn't make a whole lot of sense, but I will try my hand at explaining it. The sentinels were attacking the mutant nation of Genosha.

(Yes, I know. "But that doesn't exist anymore! Why would Maximus even be there?" It's not like my brain was obeying any version of canon, and Maximus wasn't there. Maximus will appear later. Give me a minute.)

Genosha crumpled like a paper bag under a tank. Everyone was wiped out, except one William Lehnsherr, my own alternate Billy Kaplan. He sat in stunned silence over the corpses of his beloved twin and grandfather, a sentinel looming overhead. Death was imminent. Until he had the typical Scarlet Witch moment. An epic scream. White light. Bodies around him gasped in the breath of life. Buildings reformed. And the sentinels evaporated into a fine sparkling dust. Billy then collapsed into unconsciousness. I don't blame him. Bringing people back to life has to be hard on a teenager.

Magneto jumped into action at that point, despite his shock. "Thomas, carry your brother inside. I have some calls to make."

The first call was to Namor, who was none the wiser about the slaughter. Magneto informed him, and Namor was not happy. I can only imagine what emotions that would have stirred in someone who had witnessed the actions of the Nazis. When asked if he would shelter some of the Genoshan population, he agreed, but only so many. His kingdom didn't have the oxygen to spare too many sets of lungs. Magneto agreed.

He then contacted Attilan. Medusa claimed to have seen the slaughter. (I...don't know how. We'll assume Magneto was having it broadcasted so the planet could see how mutants were being slaughtered like pests. You know, to gain sympathizers.) She was happy to hear they had all somehow survived. Attilan agreed to take the remaining Genoshan population.

Magneto ordered Tommy to take Billy with the group to Atlantis because, "There is no king more dangerous than Namor when his people are under siege. Make certain our people are in the heart of Atlantis, and he will protect them."

(That didn't make a lot of sense. Tommy is useless inside a submarine, while Magneto is perfectly able to use his powers inside of a submarine. He basically sent his grandchildren down in a sealed prison while giant robots were after them. Meanwhile, he was off to, what, cower behind Black Bolt?)

Genosha had a teleporter type...thing. The people just walked through to Attilan, which welcomed them with blankets, water, and food. Black Bolt greeted Magneto with a nod, before they both ascended to the highest flat point of the city, where they waited. While waiting, Magneto contacted Tommy.

"We're fine. I should be there, though. Billy is out cold. I feel like I'm babysitting him," he griped. He was told he had to be his brother's protector, before a rush of water spun the submarine around. There were no windows, only monitors, so Tommy looked up at the monitors to see Namor taking no chances. He saw a sentinel hot on the submarine's tail, so he was crushing it between his hands like an empty can of soda. After the chaos, Tommy responded to his grandfather's worried calls. "Yeah, we're fine. I have a fear boner now, though. Namor is intense."

There was a loud laugh on Magneto's side; Maximus had joined the two of them, along with Medusa and Crystal. "The others wanted to hear what was happening..."

"Shit--I mean--Sorry!" Tommy stammered.

Medusa sighed. "You're allowed one social faux pas after almost dying."

"Thank you, Medusa...ma'am...Uh, Queen Medusa I mean."

That was when Iron Man arrived. Underwater. Not his best decision, but he seemed to care about the boys. "How are you boys holding up?" he asked, hacked into their comms. He was greeted by the other voices, then apologized for being late. "Too late...I'm sorry. I saw everything from my satellite." His sorrowful words were interrupted by another sentinel attack, which they were warned about by SHIELD.

"Heads up, boys. We got another one coming in hot towards Atlantis." It was Samuel L. Jackson Fury in his own underwater craft following behind said sentinel.

Iron Man, Antonio (which makes two 1610 characters for some reason), was nigh useless, but he was distracting enough to enable Namor to do what he had to do.

When Fury's craft arrived on scene, a comm was ejected out of it to Namor, who clipped it to his ear. "Better late to the party than absent. We're tracking the trajectories of the robots. Does anyone have any info on them?"

"They are not built for this depth. I hear them creaking under the pressure," Namor told them.

Fury hummed. "Makes sense. They're only targeting mutants, and you're the only mutant who lives this far underwater. It doesn't make sense to prepare them all to kill just one mutant." Commotion on the line signaled a sentinel attack in Attilan. Then, a sound made anyone listening either cover their ears or pull the device away from their head. Black Bolt's voice. When it calmed down, Fury asked, "Is everything alright over there? I have some agents en route."

"All is well," Magneto told him, a little breathless. He hadn't fought, but Black Bolt's voice could be staggering. Behind him, Maximus was leaning over the edge of the building to see where the pieces of the sentinel had landed. Crystal had to pull him back by his coat so he wouldn't tumble over.

Some more commotion erupted over the comms, screams, then nothing. Fury cursed. "Well, I guess that plan didn't pan out...Keep an eye out for an incoming agent-killer. I'll send another team over if they come up with another plan."

Black Bolt positioned himself for another scream, but, just as he was about to unleash his power, Maximus placed a device in front of his mouth, which narrowed his attack area. It focused the damage into the chest of the sentinel. The head and body were separated, the head landing on the roof they were standing on. Maximus wiggled his fingers. "Oh, goodie~."

Namor sneered. "Is that Maximus?"

Magneto sighed. "I'm afraid so."

"Let him have his fun, as long as it helps," Antonio interjected.

Namor simply shook his head. His mood turned hostile, though, when he heard the approach of another sentinel. But, then, there was something else. Seeing a red glow, he was poised to attack when--

Antonio called out, "Wait wait! Stand down! It's dangerous, but it's not a robot. Everyone make way for Mama Bear. She needs through to her cubs."

Wanda moved through the water in an orb of magic before teleporting into the submarine. There, she sat by Tommy, who was cradling Billy's upper body, and touched both of their cheeks. She ensured the two of them were alright, before she finally asked how they were alive. She'd felt the emptiness of losing them. Tommy explained that Billy tapped into the Life Force, something he only seemed to be able to do when he needed...well, the force of life. Wanda sighed, both relieved and worried about her unconscious son.

There was a long stretched of time after the last attack, but everyone remained vigilant. Tommy was frustrated by his inability to help. "It feels like I'm gonna explode if I don't do something!"

"That's the adrenaline, Thomas. Embrace it. You don't want to be without it when you need it." The wise words of his far calmer grandfather.

Finally, Maximus broke the tense quiet. "I've got it! Take a listen!" On the line, there was a faint beeping, barely discernible from the static of wind to the average person.

Antonio smiled. "Oh yeah, baby, talk binary to me. Namor, if I die, tell Steve I died with a new man crush."

Maximus only laughed. Namor rolled his eyes.

Medusa asked what everyone was thinking. "What is it?"

Antonio told her, "Incoming instructions. Manual. Friday, are you getting this?"

"Every instruction," the computer confirmed.

"And that means--?" Tommy asked.

"It means someone is directing them to one of us as we speak. Whenever the sentinel arrives, we can follow the instructions in reverse back to their origin," Maximus explained.

"How did you tap into them? I've been trying to find their feed since I got here." Antonio was clearly impressed.

"I have one of their heads."

"Are you elbow deep in it right now?"

"Wrist deep at the moment."

"Dig deeper. Give me all the dirty details." He was definitely flirting. (This is not a ship I usually ship, so I have no idea where it came from.)

"Stark, we talked about you inviting crazy into your bed. He's not just certifiably insane, he's certified," Fury warned him.

"And no one wants to hear nerd flirting."

Namor smirked at Tommy's comment. Teenagers were amusing sometimes, even to the king of Atlantis.

Time ticked by, everyone listening to each beep and holding their breath. Which one of them was going to be attacked?

Just as a sentinel came into view, it exploded, leaving a cloud of smoke and a badass backdrop for a craft and some flying backup on the horizon. Landing on the rooftop in Attilan, the mutants of Krakoa (Look, I don't know. I--There's two mutant factions in this world, I guess.) surrounded Magneto. Charles embraced him. "I came as soon as I heard. I'm sorry I'm so late, my friend..."

"I'm just glad to see you're unhurt," Erik told him.

They discussed their plans of action, settling on following the signal back to their origin with a team fit for destroying a small army of sentinels. Medusa and Namor both protested. What if it was a trap? They'd be down some of their key fighters. "If it isn't a trap, we can't risk throwing away what could be our only opportunity to destroy them," Charles explained.

So a team consisting of many mutants, including Charles Xavier, Magneto, Wolverine, Quicksilver, and Wanda (not currently the Scarlet Witch for whatever reason) flew in the Krakoan craft to the location of where the sentinels were coming from. There was an anxiety-inducing battle, where many close calls were had. Magneto slapped a device onto one of the sentinels at one point, and it began to attack the other sentinels. He exclaimed what was happening like a 60's comic. "I placed the device on the robot, and, now, it's acting as our ally!"

Maximus cackled over the comms. "Its programming was overridden by my own!"

Iron Man arrived on scene. He couldn't miss out on the epic climax. "Oooh, you and I have got to get together sometime."

"You can duplicate it easily, Stark. It's universal~."

Stark groaned as he copied the device's code and relayed it to the other sentinels. At that point, the mutants barely had to fight. The fight was won. When they found the person responsible for it all, he was dead by his own hand. Antonio didn't care, though. He tapped into his console. "I'm in."

"Are you?" Maximus teased.

"I'm in, and I have every dirty detail. Wanna hear it?" Antonio teased back.

"Tell me."

"They copy mutant powers."

Maximus gasped. "Impossible. Tell me more~."

"By [insert my brain's nonsense here]."

"Through what?"

"[Again, of course I wouldn't have an actual answer for it.]."

Maximus literally moaned, which Medusa scolded him for. "Genius. I utilized [blank] to counter the Fantastic Four, but that, that wasn't nearly as creative."

Antonio was smirking inside his suit. "I guess he was kinkier than you."

"I wish I'd met him."

"Well, maybe I should keep some of these details to myself, and you can hear them over...dinner on Friday?"

"Stark, no!" Fury yelled over the communicator. Stark cut him out.

"Stealing a man's techniques for a date. Shameless, Stark. Time and place?"

"Maximus, absolutely not!" Medusa interjected, but she was simply ignored.

"My California mansion. 1800 Pacific."

"I will be there. Whether my family approves or not."

Now, there was more. It involved kinky sex that left bruises on Maximus, the death of Antonio Stark, and a clash between SHIELD, the Avengers, and the Inhumans, but I'm now too tired to type it out. :|

Fin. ]

[thewordslam]

Some days I can go nearly an hour without thinking of the taste of your mouth. Right now, I’m at school watching teenagers fidget through a test. Outside, the sky is smoky and streets are wet and two grackles step lightly in yellow grass.

Two weeks ago in Atlantic City I stood on the boardwalk and looked out across the water – the railing was cool, broken shells dappled the beach – I had been playing the slot machines and lost all but a dollar. I tried to picture you in Paris, learning the sound of your new country where, at that moment, it was already night.

I thought maybe you’d be out walking with the street lights glossing your lips, with your eyes deep as this field of water. Maybe someone was looking at you as you paused under the awning of a bakery where the smell of newly risen bread buttered the air.

I remember those suede boots you wore to the party last December, your clipped hair, your long arms like the necks of swans. I remember how seeing the shape of your mouth that first time, I kept staring until my blood turned to rain.

Some things take root in the brain and just don’t let go. We went to a movie once – I think it was “The Dead” – and near the end a woman told a story about a boy who used to sing: how, at 17, she loved him, how that same year he died. She remembered late one night looking out to the garden and he was there calling her with only the slow sound in his eyes.

Missing someone is like hearing a name sung quietly from somewhere behind you. Even after you know no one is there, you keep looking back until on a silver afternoon like this you find yourself breathing just enough to make a small dent in the air.

Just now a student, an ivory-colored girl whose nose crinkles when she laughs, asked me if she could “go to the bathroom,” and suddenly I knew I was old enough to never ask that question again.

When I look back across my life, I always see the schoolyard – monkey-bars, gray asphalt, and one huge tree – where I played the summer days into rags. I didn’t love anybody yet, except maybe my parents who I loved mainly when they left me alone. I used to have wet dreams about a girl named Diane. She was a little older than me. I wanted to kiss her so bad that just walking past her house I would trip over nothing but the chance that she’d be on the porch. Sometimes she’d wear these cut-off jeans, and a scar shaped like an acorn shone above her knee. In some dreams I would barely touch it, then explode. Once

in real life, at a party on Sharpnack Street I asked her to dance a slow one with me. The Delfonics were singing I’ll never hear the bells and, scared nearly blind, I pulled her into the sleepy rhythm where my body tried to explain. But half-a-minute deep into the song she broke my nervous grip and walked away – she could tell I didn’t know what to do with my feet. I wonder where she is now, and all those people who saw me standing there with the music filling my hands.

Woman, I miss you, and some afternoons it’s all right. I think of that lemon drink you used to make and the stories – about your grandmother, about the bees that covered your house in Africa, the nights of gunfire, and the massing of giant frogs in the rain. I think about the first time I put my arm around your shoulder. I think of couscous and white tuna, that one lamp blinking on and off by itself, and those plums that would brood for days on the kitchen counter.

I remember holding you against the sink, with the sun soaking the window, the soft call of your hips, and the intricate flickers of thought chiming your eyes. Your mouth, like a Saturday. I remember your long thighs, how they opened on the sofa, and the pulse of your cry when you came, and sometimes I miss you the way someone drowning remembers the air.

I think about these students in class this afternoon, itching through this hour, their bodies new to puberty, their brains streaked with grammar – probably none of them in love, how they listen to my voice and believe my steady, adult face, how they wish the school day would hurry past, so they could start spending their free time again, how none of them really understands what the clock is always teaching about the way things disappear.

“Slow Dance” by Tim Seibles