#NO BECAUSE SOME OF US PAY RENT AND ALREADY SPENT ALL THE MONEY ON GETTING INTO THIS FUCKING COURSE

[phantom-of-the-memes]

Since I’ve been making posts about American/ British entitlement towards Ireland, I thought I’d talk about this video here.

I am a student at this college. It’s a big tourist attraction for many reasons, but the main one being that the book of Kells is kept here. I am also from Kells itself, but Dublin having the book and not Kells is a whole other issue.

So this protest that’s been happening over the the past few weeks is in response to the college once again raising rents for student accommodation to astronomical rates. That being when rent in Dublin (and Ireland as a whole) is already unliveable. You’d find cheaper rent off student accommodation, but it’s hardly easy to find places like this. As well as this, the majority of the student accommodation isn’t even on campus to begin with. Most are about a 45 minute luas journey away. So what the fuck are you paying for?

This protest is necessary. It’s been a long time coming. Time and time again they prioritise tourists over us. Buildings are old and falling apart, equipment isn’t functional, accessibility is god awful. I know this because I am disabled and use a rollator, but I can’t even use it on campus most days because there’s simply no ramps/ elevators in some buildings.

In one of my lectures last week we were in one of the old buildings. We had a lot of content to cover, but of course the projector wasn’t working. The professor spent fourty minutes trying to get the computer/ projector to work, but to no avail. So we have a whole lecture to catch up on! All of this while I was looking out the window at this atrocity:

A new building for tourists! Yay!

They’ve been building new school buildings for years, but of course instead of finishing them, they’ll spend their time and money on the tourists. I’m not even having an exam in one of my modules because they told the professor that there simply isn’t enough room to host our class for the exam. And it would be “too expensive” to book a venue… it’s only a class of about thirty. He had written a whole exam and we were under the impression we’d have one, but now it’s just continuous assessment I guess!

So you have to understand why we’re not exactly jumping for joy for the tourists. There are hundreds on campus everyday, just generally being annoying and entitled. And yes DISCLAIMER; not all tourists, not all Americans/ British people, blah, blah. But from my experience, you do encounter some obnoxious people everyday.

So that’s why they blocked entrance to the book of Kells. That’s why it’s disgusting for the tourists to be arguing with them and demanding entrance. For once we just want our college to prioritise us! So yeah we will revoke your entitlement, because we are the ones who study here, we are the ones who have to LIVE here.

[cordeliawhohung]

You created a monster in me with underboss!Simon and now you must take responsibility.

Please feed my new addiction with relationship headcanons 😩😩😩. I love him and Shy!reader.

i've created so many monsters y'all gotta stop biting at my ankles or at least start paying rent or smth <3 also i'm still trying to work out a lot of the dynamics of the relationship between them so this is still a little bare boned but i hope you enjoy!

mafia!141 masterlist <3

warnings: mostly fluff :3 simon is a bit of a prick lol, fem!reader,

just in case anyone missed it, this is how underboss!Simon and shy!Reader meet <3

it takes a brutally long time for the two of you to start dating. a brutally long time.

and it isn't for lack of trying on Simon's end. he manages to get your number somehow (i hear Soap is very tech savvy...) and asks you out the week after the dinner at John's house, only for you to decline.

which is fine. he can take rejection. but this is... different. you're too kind when you say no. you're not saying it because you think you're too good for him, you're saying it because of something else, and Simon can tell the difference but can't exactly tell what it is.

it drives him nuts for a long time. you were supposed to be just another number in his phone for a booty call. he's used to getting pretty much anything he wants, after all, but even then it shouldn't have bugged him as much as it did. maybe it was because he liked the way you looked at him. not with disgust. not with some lustful intention. you were... soft. kind, even.

as for you? you think it's crazy how this 6'4", ripped, and kind guy showed interest in you. you, someone too anxious for her own good, someone who said no because it was less scary than committing to something. and you hate yourself for rejecting him.

so in an effort to stay close to him, you text him pretty often. you send him pictures of things you see or run into during your day. something funny at work, a cool rock you found in someone's garden, the spider that decided to make its home in your shower. and sweetheart, you have no idea what you're doing to the poor man ):

this goes on for a long while. just simon being a stupid man, not wanting to push your boundaries after you already rejected him, and you being too anxious to fix things and ask him yourself.

eventually, by some miracle (that i might write more about later because like i said BARE BONES) the two of you get together. and it's... interesting. simon isn't really used to dating. like properly. he's used to buttering a girl up, going back to her place for a quick fuck, and then only seeing her whenever either of them are too bored and horny to function. but with you it's nothing like that at all. there's no sex on the first date, not even a damn kiss, and he finds himself craving you more than ever because of it. wanting to be around you all the time, wanting to hear about your day.

man is fucking obsessed.

he treats you like a princess. he only ever really spent his money on stupid shit but now he can spend it on you! you never ask for anything, but god forbid if you express that anything, be it clothes or otherwise, looks cute because he will buy it for you, no matter how awkward you are at receiving gifts.

also! because he's so big and somewhat brutish, no one fucks with you when you're in public together. annoying kiosk clerks trying to aggressively sell you something? one look from him and they're gone. someone messed up your order but you're too anxious to ask them to fix it? he's advocating for you.

because of him, you find yourself growing less afraid and anxious of things. he teaches you how to be brave, and you teach him how to be soft. there's nothing in the world that he wouldn't do for you <3

oh also btw he's in the mafia. he might have forgotten to mention that... hope that doesn't freak you out or anything. don't worry about the blood on his shirt or the bruises on his face or the cuts on his arms or... oh god you look like you're going to cry. it's nothing, sweetheart! promise! stop trying to take him to the hospital!

also, some sorta unrelated comments: i think shy!reader is def a hostess at a restaurant. i feel like simon would hang out at the restaurant too just to be around you. he'd also slip you a tip, even though you tell him you make hourly and don't depend on tips.

"consider it my way of saying thanks for sitting us at the table with the best view."

the view is you, btw.

AHHH i'm sorry this was such a mess? i have so many jumbled thoughts but i'm glad i was able to get some of them out and i hope they were somewhat enjoyable al;kdjf i'll be working on a short drabble/oneshot for him over the weekend, so i'm hoping that'll make up for this <3

[r4ikkonen]

please can you do a fernando alonso imagine where she’s 22 years old and in college and he’s her sugardaddy, because he doesn’t have time for an actual relationship ? and he had a rule of no falling in love but then he realizes he’s in love with her when he’s bringing her shopping and he confesses it to her later that day after they have sex and she loves him back too

No strings attached | Fernando Alonso x Reader

———————————————————————

Ever since you got into your dream college Yale life has been a little bit challenging.You had to work a part time job at starbucks to be able to pay the rent and your scholarship.Yale is overall very expensive and your grades are not that bad either.All your problems disappeared over the summer break.Your friend Zara and you went to the Silverstone Grand Prix.Zara was sweet enough to get both of you the paddock passes and you enjoyed your time there very much.Zara was a big fan of motorsport and you would always come with her to watch Formula 1 or NASCAR.Even though you would struggle with understanding the terms you always found a way to enjoy every race.Zara introduced you to a lot of drivers and there was one that caught your eye.His name was Fernando and he drove for Aston Martin.

Zara often teased you about him and that drove you crazy.After the Silverstone race you and Nando got into contact and you would often talk to each other.He came up with an idea to meet at the restaurant.You gladly accepted and spent 3 hours getting ready just to see him.Your hair was shiny and your satin black dress was hugging your body.When you arrived you saw a man drinking wine graciously while waiting for you.You took a seat and his eyes went straight to look at yours.

“Oh hi y/n didn’t see you there” Fernando said giving me a slight smirk.The way he talked was very flirtatious and I tried not to fall in any off his gestures.He asked me about my college and about my life.I felt like he really cared about it and he would listen to me like I was a song.

After we finished off our desserts it was time to go home.He gave me a ride home in his new Aston Martin car that cost more than my life probably.When we arrived he stopped the car and looked at me right into my eyes.

“Remember Cariño, no strings attached” He told me while grabbing my thigh placing a warm kiss on my cheek.His dark brown eyes met mine and I felt goosebumps rising up on my arms.I waved back to him and entered my apartment.We were now using each other for each others needs, like money and attention..

Few weeks went by and I was living my life to the fullest.I truly had everything, from Dior to Chanel to all of those designers.I was now a sugar baby and Fernando made sure he spoiled me go bits.We were talking nonstop and he called me any second he gets.I really felt like he was my boyfriend.He always listened to me and he always helped me.We would often see each other when we could.He was busy with racing and scoring points for me while I studied my ass off to become a Doctor.Whenever I’d miss him I would always remember his words.”No strings attached”.They are still haunting me and I tried shaking off the feeling that I have a slight crush on him.

I went shopping to get some new clothes because I’ll be flying to Oxford to see him.I was very excited and I picked some gorgeous outfits that he of course paid for.

He greeted me with a big smile on his face pulling me into a big hug.As I wrapped my arms around his neck I could feel his after shave.I gave him a quick kiss on the lips and he blushed like crazy.We had time of our lives he showed me Oxford and we tried some great food there too.Living with him for these 4 days were amazing.

It was the last day and I already felt cranky.I didn’t want to leave him, I didn’t want to go back to my sad apartment.I wanted to stay with him forever.When I got out of the bed I saw him preparing pancakes.The smell was so strong and I couldn’t help but giggle while looking at his bare back.His muscles were so defined.His Samurai tattoo was exposed.I bit my lips and sat on the counter trying to catch his attention.

“Good morning Mi Amor” He said placing a warm kiss on my cheek while holding the pan carefully.

“Good morning love” I replied starring at him and admiring every move of his.

He slid a plate across the counter.

“Eat.” He demanded waiting for me to taste one of his pancakes.

“Mmm this is delicious, maybe I should kidnap you and make you make me pancakes mhm?” I teased trying not to sound too clingy.

“I wouldn’t mind that at all” He winked flirtatiously at my joke.

We spent the whole day to ourselves chilling on his big sofa.I was sitting on top of him resting and scrolling through tiktok.He grabbed my phone and threw it onto the coffee table. “Hey!” I yelled hopping that he didn’t break my phone.He didn’t say anything he lifted me up and undressed me exposing my bare breasts.I whined to his actions and he kept placing wet kisses on my neck while whispering something in Spanish.I wrapped my legs around his waist and he pulled out his member.I moaned at his actions as he pressed his warm fingers inside of me. “Fuck Nando please..” I groaned begging him to fuck me some more. “Be patient cariño” He whispered in my ear making me want him even more.We spent that whole morning making love..

After he made sure I was comfortable.We were still laying on his sofa naked.. I used his torso as a Pillow and his fingers were playing with my hair.We were just laying there in silence

“Cariño” He said with a frightened look on his face.Holding me by my waist.

“Yes?l” I turned off my phone locking an eye contact with him.

“Cariño there’s something you need to know” His words weren’t so clear and I was scared for the worst.I’ve thought to myself, what if he breaks up with me?What if he finds me too needy?I couldn’t shake away my fear.

“Uh look, I’ve been thinking about this for some time know and honestly, I think im in love with you, I know I know no strings attached but.. I feel very happy with you and I want to take you with me everywhere I go.”

My eyes went wide to his beautiful confession and I couldn’t help but to give him a big kiss.I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled away from the kiss “I love you”.

I’ve never seen such a smile on his face before he stared at me deeply and I could sense how happy he felt.He grabbed me closer and said

“Cmon let’s go get ready there’s one more place I need to take you too”

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for cutting my dad out of my life?

My (30F) dad (58M) has been an alcoholic for pretty much my whole life. When I was a baby, my parents frequently couldn’t pay the rent or other bills because he was the sole earner and spent the majority of his money on alcohol. They fortunately were never evicted because of it, but they never really had any money and always had to borrow from relatives to get by.

My mum (56F) eventually divorced my dad when I was three, but she still tried to help him and for the most part, he has always been in my life. She has loaned him money over the years and has supported him when he has tried to access support for addiction (rehab, therapy, etc.) or all the times he has been hospitalised due to his drinking. He has attended rehab several times but it never seems to stick. Most times he has been back drinking within days of leaving. My mum has pretty severe depression already and has been suicidal in the past and stressing about him made her (and my) mental health much worse.

Fast-forward to about four years ago. My dad would come to mine and my mum’s house most days to offer to run errands and such. I was often in work and so, against her better judgement, she would give him her bank card to go and do shopping for her. He would always get a receipt but she never really checked her bank account to confirm what he was spending.

She eventually noticed that he was withdrawing cash most times she sent him shopping. When she added it up, it came to hundreds of pounds. This is in addition to money she had actually loaned him. One day she gave him my card to use instead, thinking that he wouldn’t steal from his own child. I checked my account whilst he was gone and saw that he had taken £5. It was only a small amount but it felt like such a betrayal for both my mum and me. We had tried to help him so much over the years, often at the cost of our own mental health, and now he had stolen from both of us. When he got back to our house, we confronted him and he admitted it. He was very apologetic and ashamed but I think my mum and I had both reached our limit. We asked him to leave and not come back.

Since then, I have messaged him on his birthday and Father’s Day. My mum and I have also occasionally contacted him to check he is okay. Beside this, we haven’t really had any other contact with him. However, it is clear that his health is very poor. He has another child (36M) who has told my mum and me that Dad is frequently in and out of hospital due to his drinking. However, neither of us can bring ourselves to get involved again, as every time we have tried to help, he doesn’t seem to be able to help himself and it has a major effect on our own well-being.

I do believe addiction is an illness that people should be supported through more than punished for, but I do feel we reached a point where we could do no more and he had to do some of the work himself. But I feel like one day, we’re going to hear that he’s passed away or is dying and feel like we should have more, or that I essentially abandoned a sick parent over £5. But I’m not sure what more we could have done.

AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[bekandrew]

Queer Mutual Aid

I've asked for help recently, but we didn't get fully out of the hole yet and it's getting worse. I'm physically disabled and have debilitating PTSD which have made it hellish to find and keep work, particularly outside the house. I've been very ill for most of this past year, including a bout of sepsis where I nearly died. So even my attempts at self-employment have been... less than fruitful overall. I'm also visibly queer/trans in the Deep South, US. We should have been out of the hole this past week, except rent raised to ridiculous because HUD decided I'm not disabled by their standards (?????) so none of my medical expenses count. And I had to put all that aside first so it wouldn't actually get spent on anything. Wife's the one with an actual job outside the house. It pays over minimum but not much more, and not enough for two people to live safely on (especially with my medical expenses). They also have mental disabilities that need to be evaluated that we're only now getting some access for them. Hopefully. Wife's still without a phone currently. They got ripped off by the repair shop they went to and we ended up having to order a new phone anyway because it ended up being cheaper than the further repairs the shop wanted to make on the still not-working phone.

Because Wife is without their phone, they're locked out from the super duper secure government website like food stamps applications. Which we were in the process of when phone broke. We don't have money for groceries. We're nearly out and wife doesn't get paid for another week and a half. We had to entirely skip a planned grocery run. I've already been skipping meals for a while. We're about $90 short for our electric bill due tomorrow. I thought I paid it already. But nope, I hadn't figured in the past due amount when I paid. I'm unsure if we have money for me to make it to both my doctor's appointment on the 29th and the Vocational Rehab assessment on the 4th. I need to pay Uber fare since I can't drive. $55 should give enough padding for both trips and anything else would go toward food. I already rescheduled a post-surgical evaluation, which thankfully wasn't urgent, to a time wife will just be able to drive me. We've been trying to get permission to move my cousin in and applying for various other aid to relieve the situation, but bureaucracy's not been moving fast enough. I have a tip jar, art prints, ttrpg products, and linked commission info at linktr.ee/bekandrew

[callmewrinkles3]

One Day Soon

May 2018

He'd finally won Monaco, and it was awesome. It was even better winning it with Seb fighting him every second and a wounded car. He was just glad that Simon hadn't told him exactly what was wrong. If he'd known he wouldn't have made it to the line.

The podium celebration and being up there with Seb and Lewis was fun, the Prince handing him a trophy and doing a shoey up there. But somehow nothing felt as good as waking up in that hotel room with Em curled up around him. The best part of his weekend wasn't winning, it wasn't the gala and then party held in his honour. It was that he finally had the guts to kiss Em and he left that party with the most beautiful girl he'd met holding his hand.

The week before he was convinced that he'd leave the party with a random girl whose name he wouldn't remember after a night where he was handed massive amounts of alcohol. He thought he'd end up with a fun night, a fun but forgettable ending, and an awkward morning leaving a generic hotel room without offending a stranger. But it was Emmy.

The woman who had been living rent free in his head for literal months. Who made him smile every time he'd gotten a text from Wrinkles. Even his coworkers had been asking about her, a sly slagging from the mechanics when they met her in Barcelona and asking was that his friend he'd been smiling at. She'd made him lose interest in every single woman who wasn't her just from a simple smile.

Instead of the awkward morning after conversation where he tried to remember a name, he woke up to Em beginning to move in his arms, pushing a kiss to her temple. It was an "oh shit" and a giggle when Michael called him while they were having sex again and he was desperate to keep going. Emmy insisted she needed a shower because they smelled like each other, and he used it as an excuse because one night wasn't going to be enough and he was taking full advantage of everything he'd get with her.

Going back to reality fucking sucked. They had to leave her luxurious hotel room - that he was unashamed to admit he'd lied to her about and said it was all that was left at the Fairmont - and go back to just being friends. It was nearly impossible to not take her hand as they were walking out of the hotel. He wanted to pull her into a hug and hide his face in her neck to push a kiss to her instead of a brief half hug. He was already dreading not getting to spend the night with her again.

Instead he had to settle for having her for little moments during the day while everyone was there. He got to see her chatting with his parents, laughing like they'd known each other for years instead of only a few days. She'd already been asked to be in Abu Dhabi so they could spend more than a day or two together. He'd never admit how much it meant to him that his parents clearly liked her.

He brought her to the celebration brunch on his Vespa feeling Em holding onto his waist as he drove. Every single red light she leaned against him and squeezed as he started again. He got to play footsie with her under the table, watching as she smiled when his foot ran against her leg and she pretended it was from Mike's really bad joke. He listened to her insist that she paid for her snacks at the market because "you've spent too much money on me with the flights and my hotel room. You don't need to pay for some crisps and snacks." He got to steal a kiss when nobody was looking and watch her shocked smile when he did.

But more importantly he got to spend a full two extra days with her after everyone else left to go back to their lives. He'd insisted that there was no point in her staying in a hotel room alone when his spare room was free, and Em didn't want him to have to keep paying for it. So she moved her little case of clothes in that evening nad he tried to keep it friendly with her. Tried, anyway.

Em made dinner for them, they ate while they were listening to music and talking about the view over the Mediterranean Sea and anything that wasn't to do with his job. The conversation kept going while he did the dishes and she sat on the countertop to stay talking. It was a goodnight kiss on her cheek, Em saying she was exhausted after the hike they'd done in the hills that morning.

He watched her walk into her temporary room, the door closing with a soft click and Dan wanted to open it and go into her. Give him another minute or two of having Em in his arms and pretend he'd be ok with that. But instead he went into his room, closed the door and tried to forget that Emmy was in the other room.

Dan tried. He really, really tried, but he failed miserably. Not even half an hour later he was standing outside her door holding his hand up to knock. It was soft, not wanting to wake her if she was actually asleep.

"Come on in, Dimples." His heart gave a jump of happiness when he heard her speak, opening the door and seeing her sitting cross legged in the middle of the bed. Her laptop was in between her knees and he tried not to look at her bare legs. That was almost as impossible as stopping his heart from racing when she smiled up at him.

As he focused on her face he realised the one flaw in his plan. He had no idea what he was going to ask her. He always had a response, always had a funny answer or a one liner and now he was completely tongue tied. All Dan could do was look at her with what felt like a stupid smile on his face. He had been slowly falling for her but now that he'd gotten a night with her he knew he was a goner.

When the words finally came to him he cracked a grin, watching as Emmy smiled at him.

"Can I come in? Just for cuddles, I mean it." Em laughed almost too loudly in the quiet of the room, closing down her laptop and setting it on the floor beside the bed before patting the mattress beside her. He honestly meant to keep his word that it would just be cuddles, but they snuggled in and her face was beside his and he couldn't help pushing his lips against hers. They made jokes in between soft kisses about how they were pushing the limits of what could be considered cuddles but he didn't care.

Part of him wished that that night in his spare room was their first night together. He'd never complain about that first night they had because it was fun and exciting and the way she sounded when she came made him was priceless. But he wished he was sober the first time he heard her moaning his name. He wished he didn't have a hangover as he was watching her get dressed and pretend he hadn't been kissing her chest all night. So now that he had his second chance he was taking it.

There were going to be even more jokes about what they considered cuddles as he flipped Em over, his arms either side of her head as his knee slid between her legs. He was absorbing the feeling of having Em around him. Everything was her lips against his skin, her fingers holding every single piece of him she could grab as he kissed bruises into her skin, her soft voice begging his name between moans that he could never erase from his memory. Every single part of him was soaking in the memories just in case it never happened again. He would never forget the feeling of her warmth around him, his brain screaming mine mine mine mine because how could anyone compare to her?

Nobody made him smile as widely as she did when she was giggling and joking about how he just said he wanted cuddles while she was out of breath. He'd never followed anyone to his room - never brought anyone to his room in this apartment - the way he followed her, joking that his bed was more comfortable than the spare one, and Em saying she'd take the couch if he didn't want to share. And then he pulled her into the bed as she giggled.

He'd won fucking Monaco less than 48 hours ago and he felt even more powerful the way she admitted her legs were killing her, and not just because of the hike they did. But even with that half an hour later she was the one on top.

But even beyond that - beyond the jokes and the laughs and the mindblowing sex - he was never as happy as when he woke up by her side in his bed. Not even when they shared bowls of pasta at his favourite trattoria just over the border. She was a dream by his side, long messy hair spread across his chest and her face relaxed just inches from him. His favourite part of it wasn't even her naked body against him, but her hand resting on his chest as his arm was pulling her closer to him even in her sleep. It was so simple and wonderful and he couldn't explain it.

And she was leaving. That afternoon he had to drop her to the airport to fly back to London and he was staying in Monaco and he fucking hated it. He wanted to go back with her. Wanted to be with her and be more than friends and spend his week with her. But not yet.

He wanted her to be sure. He didn't want the glitz and glamour of Monaco and his job and everything to make a huge difference with them. Not that he thought she would, his Emmy wouldn't, but his world was too weird. He wanted her to be sure she was ready to jump in. Maybe not this week. maybe not even this month. But he knew what they had was special and he couldn't wait to see how they'd work it out.

[inkyquince]

thinkin about Whitney using his bombshell partner to get what he wants.

content warning. Whitney being Whitney, older whitney but not quite deadbeat whitney. free use, whitney renting you out basically, creepy kylar, wren being an actual rival and physical assault. possessive whitney to the point of maybe... being obsessive? BLOODPLAY, LOTS OF BLOODPLAY, who knows.

Late 30's, scruff, leather jacket, owns a bike and the only real investment he made was to get you a flat. Tattooed up and down his body, gets drunk at the pub nightly and stumbles home to you, clambering into bed to run his scruffy cheek along your back, sighing as he enjoys your warmth. Mumbles drunkenly and smiles as you run your fingers through his messy hair.

Knows he's got the only true catch in town. For fuck's sake, he hauled you onto the shitty mattress that was the only thing in the flat when your first moved in, and tattooed his name just below your ass cheek. What's awful for you, is that you think Whitney is the only person you could ever love fully. He's nasty, mean, violent but all it took was one walk home while both trashed, and you quietly knew that you would never ever want someone like you wanted Whitney. And Whitney was yours. Every ugly fight, every slammed door, every time you walked away from him, he came back. You would always just be about to forgive him when he was at your door, flowers stolen from the temple gardens or some house on Danube street. Hiccupped as he struggled to keep upright, waving the flowers and reeking of booze. Spent the night snuggled up to you, dragging his bruised fingers over your side and mumbling something about how good you feel.

Anyway, knows some utter suckers missed their change for you. Sneers at the people who stare at you, obviously longing. Litters your throat with hickeys and makes sure to kiss along your temple when out and about together. Loves dropping by the pharmacy and buying extra large condoms, sneering at Kylar, only to never use the things, abandoned in the bedside drawer beside yours and Whitney's squirreled away cash, growing in size ever since the blond offered to have Bailey buy half of his tattoo parlor to erase your debt.

Hates the fact your still on pleasant terms with your employers. Works because he doesn't ever want you whoring yourself out... Without his permission.

Knows you can have anyone twisted around your perfect little finger, with even just a smile.

Needs some money from Robin, or a favor from Kylar, or whatever? Just brings you along. Just the sight of you as Robin blushing and fidgeting. Drops you off like a playdate and Robin spends the entire time, pressing kisses to your skin with reverence, his money burning a hole in Whitney's pocket, counting down to the second to rip you away from the nerd.

Kylar is easier, the fucking weirdo forks over so much money for your underwear, which Whitney fingered you to orgasm in, over and over. For every plain cotton piece of underwear he swipes, he spends too much on lingerie that... He would greatly enjoy, more than you actually being comfortable in it. Grumbles and picks up the ones you like next time he's at the shop.

Sydney's harder, but always breaks apart in your hands. Just a few kisses to his quivering lips and he's done for. Mouthing at his bottom lip, and he just winds his arms around you, pulling you in closer and closer, before crumbling in your arms, whispering for you to disappear with him into the forest for a bit, get lost in each other. He's ashamed, but everyone knows that he only returned to the Temple when Whitney took you with him for two months the moment River finally let him pass Maths a year after you and the rest already passed.

Whenever short on the rent, the usual suspects pay a pretty dime, from Niki to Leighton, but Whitney has forbade you from ever going back to the estate.

Wren... Wren's the only person who had Whitney's teeth grinding, almost snarling. Card nights were always legendary, especially when moved over to your apartment and no one had to sneak anywhere anymore.

But just one time, he stumbled outside with two others to piss into the bushes, he returned, to find Wren murmuring into your ear, ring clad thumb trailing over your cheek as you laughed and let him cuddle closer.

It wasn't... Sexual.

That's what made Whitney snap. Lunged at the smuggler, ready to start a fight only for Wren to end it. He never lost a fucking brawl in his life, but there he was, laid out on his back, spitting up blood as Wren chuckled, smearing his own bloodied nose over his forearm before shooting you a wink and taking his coat.

"You know where I am, doll"

Whitney leaned up enough to spit at him, bloodied gob hitting his shoe. Swore as he stumbled up before gripping your face between his wrecked hands, crushing a copper tasting blood against your lips.

"I... I am going... To. Fuck. You. Up." He growled, using his split knuckles to drag blood over your mouth, groaning as you licked your lips.

He hadn't been so rough in bed since you and him first got together at his place, sneering at you as he fucked you against the wall, his own parents' words echoing in his ears about him ruining his life, dragging himself down by "courting" such disgusting gutter trash.

You two awoke, his dried blood smeared across your lips and cheeks and down your body, shaped into kisses. Whitney washed them away in the shower, hands dragging over your skin, weakly lathered up bubbles swirling around the drain.

"Don't go to him."

"Hm?" You ducked your face underneath the shower stream, letting the face wash run off.

"I'll kill him if you go to him. Then I'll kill you. Then I drink myself to death. No happy ending in that cute little cottage, traipsing around in an apron and wearing his ring, gotcha?" Whitney still hadn't washed off his own blood from last night, more preoccupied with watching you get clean yourself from last night.

"Not going to leave you for Wren." You snorted quietly, before turning to him, tugging him properly under the water spray. "Now, hand over the shampoo, there's blood in your hair."

Whitney ducked his head, allowing you to clean him up.

"Good. You're too good for him." Whitney winced as water ran down his barely healed nose. "Too good for me too, but your dumbass hasn't realized that yet."

BIG Big BIG shout out to @undead-merman for that Whitney line about fucking you up, we love one horny lad hyping up the most self indulgent shit known to man.

[poppyandzena]

Yeah, Saige is very done for me at this point. Her willingness to editorialize the narrative just to support her abusive partners is disgusting.

Saige. Read the doc. Actually read the doc. Your words make it clear you didn’t. Because everything you say is barely applicable to what Spawn went through.

“I exchanged harsher words with my ex-spouse on occasion.” Yeah, and I’m sure Zena and Poppy did too- sorry you can’t have voice recordings of everything. You think Poppy/Zena would admit to harsher? Or even fully recognize it? If I recall, your own partners admit to making Spawn cry on multiple occasions. They just paint the story as “oh they cry in such a way to make me disassociate. So manipulative.” Hmm, bo red flags? To blame their kid for being driven to tears from their actions? Alright. Sure, whatever you say, Saige.

“If drawing boundaries and setting expectations is abuse, idk how you function with others.” This is just proof you didn’t read the doc more than anything. If you think having narrow (less than 10 minutes in some cases) windows for bathroom, food making, JUST GETTING WATER is boundaries and expectations, then you are delusional. And, more importantly, If you think ‘the kid’ should have to follow expectations/boundaries, but Zena and Poppy shouldn’t have to (the document makes it clear they didn’t- they skipped on dishes/chores, took up the kitchen way longer then Spawn ever did, and more), please detail why for me. I’d love to hear THAT excuse.

“I suppose it was abusive to have to check in before making purchases that weren't already budgeted bc they kept spending our income on shit we couldn't afford.” No, that’s not abusive, and also proof you didn’t read the document either. There’s a huge difference between ‘the kid’ and your ex/you- the kid had their own bank account/job/trust fund. That was only their money. Not Poppy’s. Not Zena’s. Your ex and you? Joint money, most likely. If Spawn was on their bank account/using Poppy/Zena’s money to buy things? Yes, completely reasonable to monitor and discuss buying things. The kid’s own money? No, Poppy/Zena had literally 0 rights to control that. You would tell a 18 year old that if their parents are trying to control their kids spending- you’d say “fuck them” I bet- you should in most cases. Why not Poppy/Zena’s kid? Literally just because it’s Poppy/Zena? The only way you could argue this point at all is if you could prove, actually prove, that the kid spent enough that it affected Zena/Poppy (by forcing them to cover for rent, utilities, food, something on Spawn’s behalf).

"Saige Alexis was an abusive spouse bc fae asked her spouse to do things for themself & not constantly expect faer to do everything for them” Saige. Just scroll through until you find Spawn’s chore list for one day. You articulate to me what is POSSIBLY left for Zena/Poppy to do. Spawn did everything FOR Poppy/Zena. Your precious partners are the ones that could afford to do more for their kid WITH A LITERAL, DIAGNOSED HEART CONDITION

I notice a distinct lack of mention of internet restriction. So just because they have physical and mental disabilities, Poppy and Zena had a right to completely restrict internet access? Restrict Spawn from friends and support systems? Reminder- Spawn is an adult that was paying bills too- paying for that internet. But they were still allowed to be punished and have it taken away completely? I have a feeling you and your ex spouse never turned off the internet for each other. “Oh but Spawn had a hot spot.” 10gb. That’s literally nothing. If it was enough to do anything? Spawn wouldn’t have had to go to the library for job applications. So please, give me an excuse for this one this time. Love to hear it.

Just… Saige, either actually read the document, or stay in your fucking lane. You talk a big game about not being believed on your abuse and experiences yourself, but when there’s an abuse victim that’s right there, right in from you, basically begging to be believed- you continue to just blindly believe your partners. You’re no better than everyone you have villianized for not believing you.

You don’t deserve awful shit to happen to you as you are a fellow human being. But you don’t deserve to put victims names into your mouth and minimize their stories just to try and validate your path and make yourself feel good about your life choices.

Read and actually learn or go away, Saige. Live in denial about your choices, or bother to learn your partners may not be these perfect, do no wrong people they try to pretend to be.

^

[simplefelicity]

What I bought in 2023

this is the first in a series of posts in which i reflect on my 2023 from a financial perspective, using data from my financial journal.

initially i wanted to just list everything i paid for chronologically, but then i realized that data without analysis is not going to be much useful. so here is all i bought in 2024, divided in categories!

these are all unnecessary purchases (so no groceries, rent, etc).

material stuff

a kpop photocard. i’ve already talked about this, i think. there were a couple of months at the beginning of the year in which i desperately wanted to collect photocards of this particular kpop artist. i already had 2 but when i finally decided to buy this third one, i realized that i was quite underwhelmed. i do appreciate them and look at them from time to time but the itch to spend even more money on them disappeared. i’m glad i did buy it, though, because otherwise i would have spent months obsessively thinking about wanting to buy one. giving in once meant peace of mind afterward.

plastic reusable water bottle. kind of a fail. i would love to use it more, but i’d need to hand wash it (if i don’t want the water to taste like soap) and i just can’t be bothered. i’m sure i’ll use it while traveling. also, it was super cheap for a reason! the nozzle is too big and uncomfortable. oh well, you live and learn.

new passport photos. that was unfortunately necessary & they are horrible photos too. frustrating.

socks. i was on a trip and forgot to bring socks, so i had to buy some there.  

jewelry box. got it secondhand on Vinted after much thought. i don’t have much of a jewelry collection (if any) but i’d like to. i also wanted to get rid of all the small boxes and condense everything in 1 place. which worked for a while, but then someone gifted me more boxes and i can’t get rid of those ones, so that was kind of a fail.

2 secondhand books. i seriously do not need more books (i own like 20 that i haven’t read yet) but i have already read & resold one book so i’m not bothered about it. my rules with book buying are: 1) only if it’s secondhand, 2) only one for every secondhand bookshop i visit, 3) only stuff from my TBR list (that’s a more flexible rule, though). i’d say that it pretty much worked.

1 manga volume. I've been collecting this series for years because i love the art but, i've come to realize, not so much the story. i've decided to not purchase the next volume and am debating whether to sell the whole series as well.

yarn. i bought yarn for a sweater, for socks (three times), and for a cardigan (and its pattern). all in all, i’m satisfied with this amount. knitting can get expensive but i only bought yarn for planned projects, used my stash for at least another small 5 projects and i don’t think i’ll have to buy sock yarn for a while! money wise, i only had one doubt. a friend who also crochets told me that the website i buy my garment yarn at is too expensive compared to others. i thought long and hard about it & finally remembered that my friend’s cheaper yarn is super itchy. which is fine for her, as she mostly crochets bags, but i don’t knit bags! i knit sweaters! i’m fine with my yarn being a bit pricier if it makes for a comfier sweater.

25 padded envelopes. i used them when i sell my stuff online. i bought them new but secondhand on Vinted for a good price.

gifts. i bought 1 gift for a birthday and 2 for graduations. at the end of the year i tried to be smart and knit 2 gifts, but then i had to pay for shipping anyway so it didn’t save me any money. still, you know. it’s gifts and it’s my friends and i won’t be cheap with them.

immaterial stuff & experiences

i ate out with friends 3 times this year. the other times we just met and sat on a bench and talked.

movie ticket for Barbie. my only cinema going experience this year. that’s depressing. i’d love to go more in 2024.

underground ticket. that one time i forgot my underground card. ugh.

subscription to one of the secondhand book-selling websites i use. it’s the only one i pay for and it’s only 2€ a year. basically, it allows you to list more than 50 books at a time. i have 63 right now, so i’ll have to pay again this year, but hopefully in 2024 i will sell enough books to get under 50 & not have to pay again in 2025 :D

a very small charity donation. i sold more books than usual that month and decided to contribute a little to (hopefully) make the world a better place. it felt really good and i would like to do it again in 2024. but i need to set some rules or i might end up donating all of my savings.

trips

i went on 3 trips this year.

i bought train tickets and meals while there. i didn’t have to pay  for accommodation as thankfully i went to visit friends and stayed at their houses. i also bought some souvenirs (in moderation!), like a fridge magnet and a christmas tree ornament.

in conclusion & plans for next year

well, damn. i spent way less than i thought or expected! there were even 2 months in which i actually spent 0€. which i’m sure felt great at the time, but i quickly forgot about it & thought i'd never accomplish something like that, ever. queue to feeling guilty over spending money.

my only true indulgencies were while i was on a trip. and i remember feeling quite guilty about spending money while there, as well.

but that’s why i save money: to buy expensive yarn and enjoy myself while traveling. so why should i feel guilty about doing exactly that?

basically, i want to spend a bit more money next year if it will make my life easier or happier, without feeling guilty. I've tried to do that during december already but finding the balance between overspending and being a Scrooge is going to be tough.

[borathae]

Sibiiiiiiiii! Thank you!!! I 💜 you!!! And yes please write the Greece trip/ Kook’s trip and tell us where else these hot vampires own property! 😩😩😩 As if they weren’t hundreds of years old and hot as fuck, they own villas and castles and houses all over?! 😩😩😩 Please give us as many HCs as you want!

Of course they do 😏😩 I mean djsjs not all of them obviously. Hear me out

Jungkook is the BROKEST vampire ever. Because of his curse, he couldn’t ever get a real job which in return meant that he never aquired enough money to invest it in passive income. So that man is as broke as one could get jsjsjs.

Hobi has decent amount of money. He came from a upper middle class family and saved enough money to invest in a small passive income, which has gathered a good amount these days. But because he is still technically only in his sixties, his wealth is very much in human levels still.

Jimin is the third brokest vamp of the bunch. Example given: how he had to live while he was still persumed dead. I mean, one could argue that he was in hiding and didn’t want to risk getting found out, but there is also a good possibility that he is simply broke in vampire terms. Most property he owns, Tae either bought for him or they bought it together. And then there was also the whole part of where he had to live as Namjoon’s slave for centuries, so he didn’t really have alot of opportunity to, you know, buy property. He does have a very healthy sum on his bank accounts though, mostly because of the shared property with Tae and because Tae is tranferring him money on a monthly basis.

I would place Seokjin next. This man was already wealthy when he was still human and had two properties and some factories/warehouses as well as ships in his human years and he also invested in a lot of start-ups which bring in a lot of money these days. He is actually a huge stock holder in the mobile phone market and has his fingers in other techonological fields as well. For properties he owns the one Sanguis spent their "frat years" in, owns a house in South Korea and bought Emma her own shop in town so she could expand her perfume business. He also owns an apartment complex where he gets constant income. Fun fact? OC actually rented an apartment in the complex when she first moved here, which is why she never got in trouble for randomly stopping to pay rent. She and Seokjin laugh about the coincidence these days. He gets most of his money from his countless shares though.

And now this is where it gets hard to talk about because damn those vampires are RICH jdjdjs they're old, they've seen too much and they got way too much money to spend.

Taehyung I'd place third. He's both share holder in many businesses, owner of multiple art galleries and possesses property which is used commercially, as rentals or as his private escapes. So passive income is very much guaranteed on a constant. He owns a homely cottage in the Austrian Alps, owns a chateau at the coast of France and a small farm in the French countryside, owns a little Greek ocean house and invested in apartments in Paris, New York, Hong Kong as well as London. If he spends money he spends it on new property, promising shares and other investments. If he spends fun money he spends it on trips, whatever expensive item suits his taste, art and fashion. He also regularly wires money to Jimin and ever since recently, he opened two separate accounts for Jungkook and OC where he also makes monthly deposites. Trust that this man does not feel any change in his numbers with those new tranfers. And also that he LOVES spending his money most when he can spend it on his darlings.

And then there is Yoongi. Woof woof. I would say that he and Tae aren’t that far apart actually despite their age difference. One must consider though that eventhough Yoongi’s been alive for ages, it was rather difficult to make money which can still be used in the 21st century. You get me? He does own a lot of castles though from the earlier days. The one they all currently live in he bought around the time of the French Revolution, but he owns another castle in Romania and one in Germany. He also owns a town mansion in Geneva and has a penthouse in New York, which he never uses. He won’t ever mention it, but he owns a private island in the Carribbeans and treated himself to a very secluded cottage somewhere in the deepest Canadian forests. He also forgot about it already, but he owns property in South Korea and a villa in Osaka. It brings in money as they are both used as rentals, but Yoongi hasn’t set foot in either of them in decades. He gets most of his passive income through the various rentals he owns as well as being shareholder in some of the biggest markets these days. He also regularly buys property and sells it again to a higher price. Right now he plans on buying a house with OC close to Meredith's place and he also thinks about surprising OC with her own small plant shop in town. He doesn’t transfer to their accounts, but he never says no. If anyone of the family wants something, he'll get it for them no questions asked. He will also regularly hand over his black card with a nonchalant "don't look at the numbers, princess" and he genuinely gets pouty when she wants to pay for something when he’s with her. This man always pays even if she sometimes complains about it. And no sum is ever too big for him. You remember those 100€ he gave her in Paris for a cab? Yeah that was the equivalent to a few cents for him.

I don’t know where to put Namjoon on the list because being stolen of his powers and then hidden from the world kinda just cut him off from his wealth. You know? I do believe though that in his prime, he was the richest. And also the one who spent his money on the most fucked up shit.

[beautifulmadnesss]

"Slowly Sinking, Wasting" Rafe Cameron x Maybank!Reader Part 2

Summary: Rafe goes from being a total jerk to once again being there for her, only further complicating their relationship. Warning: child abuse and drug use.

A/N: the main character started to become more defined as I wrote this part (and the next one 😆) so I ended up just making her an OC, so her name is Cassie.

Part 1

I gave Rafe a quick smile as I passed by him to serve a nearby table. He glanced up at me, but didn't return my smile. Instead he looked rather nervous.

"Hi, what can I get for you?" I asked the customers in front of me while pulling out my server book to write down their order.

"I cannot believe you slept with a Pogue, dude and you're not even going to tell us her name?" Kelce's sentence pulled my attention away from my current task.

"There's no way she was that easy, especially not for you." Topper added.

"Excuse me, I said do you have any gluten free croutons for the salad?" The woman had the audacity to snap her fingers in front of my face after I had apparently waited too long to respond.

"I'm sorry, give me just a moment." I muttered as I was already walking away from their table.

I heard Rafe say something about the bathroom to his friends. Soon after we made it inside, his footsteps quickened, following me toward the utility closet.

"What the hell Rafe?" I exploded the moment the door shut behind us.

"Its not my fault you Pogues sunk Topper's boat."

"I don't have any idea what you're talking about and how does that have anything to do with you telling your stupid friends we hooked up?" I shot back.

"Pogues vs Kooks, that's how it's always going to be." He stated as if it was one of the fundamental laws of nature.

"I thought-" I stopped. "You know what forget it. What's the actual price of a bag?" I shoved my hand out expectantly, noting how it was already trembling despite the fact that I had a line before my shift this morning.

"You don't have to pay me." He said, already handing me a bag.

"Here's $40. I'm not owing you anything." I shoved the money against his chest and stormed out of the room before he could give it back.

I was so stupid to think he might actually be any different. He really is just a stuck up kook who thinks he's better than everyone else. Why did I let myself feel anything for him?

I hid in one of the staff bathroom stalls while I quickly snorted a line before returning to my shift so I didn't lose my job. It wasn't much longer before my boss sent me home early because multiple customers had complained about incorrect orders and slow service.

As usual JJ was not here, but my dad was, which meant I had to face him alone.

"Aren't you supposed to be at work?" He asked from the couch as I walked in.

"I got sent home." I replied, walking into the kitchen to look for something to eat.

"Rent's due." He said as he came into the kitchen behind me.

"I don't have much, they sent me home after only a couple tables and tips were shit today." It wasn't entirely true, but it wasn't a lie either. Anything was better than telling him I spent almost all the tips I earned on coke. Only he was allowed to use our money to buy drugs.

"Empty your pockets." I jumped, having not realized the he was right behind me. I turned around to face him, shrinking back against the counter as he trapped me by placing his hands on the counter on either side of me. My throat immediately dried up as I tried to think of some excuse. "Now!" He yelled, backhanding me hard enough that I immediately felt my lip split.

I forced my trembling hands into my pockets and pulled out the $37 I made in tips and the bag of coke I got from Rafe. He immediately snatched the wad of cash and stuffed it in his pocket. As soon as his eyes landed on the small plastic bag hanging from my hand, he laughed.

"Damn, I always thought JJ would be the one to turn to the hard stuff." Hot shame creeped up my neck and across my face. "What would he think if I told him about this?" He took the bag from my hand and dangled it in front of my face.

"Please, don't!" I begged. I couldn't fathom how angry JJ would be with me if he knew. I suppose it would at least get him to acknowledge me, which is more than he's done in weeks.

"Why not, huh? Don't want him thinking you're some degenerate like your old man?" He sneered, clearly enjoying having something to hold over my head. "Nah, I think I'll wait and see. Maybe I'll tell him, maybe I won't." He turned and left without another word, letting the door slam behind him.

I only waited a few seconds before running to my room and shutting the door behind me. The sobs escaped before I could stop them and my legs gave out. I heard the door open and immediately covered my mouth, not sure if it was my dad or JJ. Neither of them were a particularly great option, so I stayed where I was, crying into my hand until I didn't have anything left.

Eventually I got up and crawled into bed, simply kicking my shorts off and going to sleep without changing.

I woke up to JJ pounding on my door.

"Yeah, I'm up." I called back. He immediately came in. "That doesn't mean just come in!" I complained.

"Sorry." He turned away from me to face the door. I just scoffed and got up, grabbing the same shorts from last night, but quickly throwing on a different tank top. "Pope wants us down at Heyward's this morning."

"Me?" I asked, immediately hating how it sounded.

"Yeah, John B is missing, so we needed some extra help."

"Oh." I'm just the extra fill in. "I'm ready." I said, trying not to let the hurt seep into my voice.

He turned back around to face me, freezing as soon as we were face to face.

"Did he do that?" His thumb gently brushed over my lip, causing me to wince slightly and he pulled back instantly. I just nodded. "I'm sorry, I should've been here."

"It's fine." I said flippantly. "Let's go." There was a part of me that was happy to see that he cared, but I also thought of what my dad found last night and I still didn't know if he would tell JJ about it. If he ever did, I knew JJ would hate me the same way he hated our dad and I couldn't bear that.

JJ, Kie, and Pope were talking about some fight they got in last night with Kelce, Topper, and Rafe at the movies that they didn't invite me to. I was pissed that once again they were leaving me out, but I also realized that must have something to do with what Rafe was saying about a Pogue sinking Topper's boat.

"Pope, there's someone here to see you." Mr. Heyward interrupted their conversation and we all looked up to see Shoupe hovering behind him, handcuffs in hand.

If you would've asked me the person I thought would've been least likely to sink Topper's boat, it would've been Pope. Topper himself was more likely to sink it than Pope. He was an honor student and basically a Boy Scout. The rest of us broke the rules on a daily basis, but not Pope, he was always the voice reason. There was no way he did this and we were all following after Shoupe as he led Pope to his car in handcuffs, trying to tell him this.

"It wasn't him!" JJ yelled so his voice could be heard above all of us talking at the same time. It worked and we all turned to him as he said, "it was me." He was walking toward Shoupe and still talking, but I couldn't hear what he was saying. The blood was pounding in my ears and I couldn't hear anything over the ringing. It wasn't that I didn't think JJ did it, that was more believable than Pope, but I couldn't believe that he was going to be arrested. We had been so distant lately, but there was no way I was letting my brother go to jail.

"No, let him go!" I launched forward and because I had stood so still and silent, no one expected it and there was no one to stop myself as I started pulling on Shoupe's shirt and hitting him. Instantly he let go of JJ and tried to grab my arms, but I just kept hitting.

"Cassie, stop!" JJ yelled, but couldn't do anything with his hands in handcuffs. Pope was frozen in place and Kie looked on helplessly. Mr. Heyward was the only one to act, but he was only successful at stopping me momentarily. "Cass, please, don't!" JJ was begging me, but it was like all the emotions I had shoved down were coming out at once.

I felt the cool metal on my wrist before I heard it snap shut. "Cassie Maybank, you're under arrest for assaulting a police officer." Shoupe was out of breath, but was able to use my handcuffed hand as leverage to pull it behind my back and secure the other side of the cuff to my other wrist.

"You can't do that!" JJ yelled.

"Both of you, just calm down, this is not helping," Mr. Heyward cut in.

"I'm just going to take her down to the station to cool off. If she cooperates, she can go free when your dad comes to get you." Shoupe said, while pushing me into the back of his truck. I stopped fighting, both because it wasn't worth it and because I just realized how much trouble we were both in. JJ slid in next to me and we shared a look, knowing the wait in jail was going to be nothing compared to what our dad was going to do to us when he picked us up.

A/N: thank you so much for the support on part 1! Part 3 is up!

[guessimate]

We are concluding the 2nd rotation in the Asian part of my town with the Tians. They are getting a free goat from the ROS gods, which makes sense, since they have sheep already. I ended up just giving them 2 goats - a male and a female, for the chance of producing baby goats, because they really just started and they had some disposable money.

I rolled for a ROS for them again, because I felt like I went too easy on them. The 2nd ROS decided I would have to fulfill their wants this round (otherwise I'd need to do the same next round, but for fears). It was not difficult to achieve, but I must say Hiroki had the weirdest wants for a Popularity sim. He wanted to buy stuff, and get some skill points (that part I can understand, as it was autumn). The illness must have changed his priorities in life. Sadly, I couldn't get him a lot of the stuff he wanted (TV? toy dog pen (bunny)? I really wanted to give him a recliner, but the want wouldn't fulfill). He did get to Charisma level 5 at least.

I found a job for the man of the house, as this family is not going to be selling anything for a while. There was a vacancy in the Culinary career, and this is the perfect job for a food provider, and Hiroki's One True Hobby happens to be Cuisine, too. Hiroki also wanted to hire a nanny, but that couldn't happen... I'm guessing that means he prefers going to work instead of staying home though.

~*~

Tasuku is a Taurus. He's 6 Neat and 6 Outgoing just like his dad. He's also 4 Lazy like his mom. But he's also more Playful (9) and Grouchy (3) than both of his parents. Both Fumi and Hiroki are 7 Nice.

Fumi taught Tasuku all of his toddler skills (she actually wanted to teach him all 3, which is quite rare in my game). His dad taught him the Nursery Rhyme, because I wanted him to remember something related to his firstborn.

I wanted to wait with more babies, like I did with the Lao family, but Fumi wanted another baby, and I was supposed to be fulfilling wants...

So their next baby was meant to be twins, but one of them was not meant to be due to terrible rolls. I also rolled 3x at birth, as if it was a twin birth, but Fumi still survived it, so I guess it was just that unfortunate infant. Hopefully they will get one more later, but nothing will replace the unborn twin.

Fumi threw two birthday parties for her firstborn this round, in both cases when the man of the house was at work. Is it offensive to her husband? I don't know, but he works late, so I am not blaming her.

I wanted to add that I'm not sure if Fumi really wanted to throw the 2nd birthday party for her son, or for the occassion of her giving birth. Her husband just came back home and the party was halfway through, when she started giving birth and everyone ran to her. I named the newborn Hanako. She's a blue-eyed girl with black hair.

~*~

On the very last night of their rotation the burglar decided to come over. I flipped a coin and it decided that I should let Hiroki beat her up. I flip a coin for it now, because the Anyone Fights Burglars mod is always successful. I think the burglar wanted to steal some of the sheep, but she didn't get to do it fast enough.

Hiroki had two days off, I believe. Overall he got promoted once so he's on level 2 of the Culinary career track, which doesn't pay very well. But he has earned earned 966$ total.

500$ - rent

386$ - tax

97$ - tithe

They needed to pay 986$ (rounded down to 950$) + 500$ rent for last round. They are left with some change they could use to set up a store, but I don't think they'll be selling anything before spring comes.

There is 8800$ in the town's bank... Let's say it was all spent to erect the monastery from earlier, because the unfurnished building is worth around as much. I imagine the monks are starting out sleeping on the floor or something...

[pynkhues]

Can I order a headcanon for season 5 Brio please??😇 Also, your read on Rio seems so accurate like??? Having you as a writer on that show would have answered prayers I swear

Ah, thank you so much, anon! Given how much time I've spent over the last few years thinking about Rio, I'm very happy my read feeels accurate, haha.

And sure! Mmm, I'm gonna say - -

It wouldn’t have started well.

Because yeah, okay, s4 might’ve ended on the hook of a promise, of a path cleared, of something real, but she gets home after the park to a frantic Greg and the understanding of just what Annie’s done, and it all goes to shit.

Because it is Rio’s fault this time – he’s the one who had Lucy killed, even if Beth knows that her blood is on her hands too, he’s the one who got her fingerprints on the gun, and it was his threats that made Annie replace them with her own, and Beth feels the familiar rush of anger, but she also feels something bottom out in her in a way she hasn’t since Dean took the kids.

The staggering depths of her own despair.

And she would’ve gone after him at first, tracked him down at the bar, and she didn’t throw a pool ball this time, but she stood in his way, made him face her, spitting fury in a way she couldn’t contain, and Rio just - - he didn’t know what she was talking about. He wasn’t across Annie’s deal with Mick, and maybe Beth used that against him. Maybe she told him he was some king to not know what was happening in his kingdom, and Rio smarted, teeth grit, and suddenly that path that had felt so clear earlier that day was gnarled and overgrown.

Every old seed of hurt sprouting, every sharp-toothed betrayal yawning awake.

And so they split, fracture, and Beth goes back to her house without Dean but still with her children, and she googles criminal lawyers in-between bath times and leaves bitter voicemails on Mick’s phone after a few too many drinks.

And Rio, despite himself, calls Gretchen.

Which - - fuck, isn’t easy, right? Because Gretchen’s technically on Nick’s payroll, not Rio’s, and he’s already given her a mountain of shit with Nick’s arrest, but Rio tells her this is something real.

Somethin’ to maybe get back a bit of that soul she’s always complaining she’s lost.

So the next day when Annie’s pulled out of her cell and into another room, she’s not sure what to say when her court-appointed lawyer is gone and Gretchen’s there instead.

And it’s immediately different for Annie, right? Because Annie has no idea who she is, but the difference is stark immediately, and Gretchen is so collected and feels nothing like the lawyer she got for her custody trial or felony drug charge, and it’s the first time Annie’s taken a breath since the cops knocked on her door, and she knows it’s Rio, but she thinks Beth got him to do it.

So when she and Beth finally get to see each other, she says thank you.

(But Annie thinks no, she thinks this was supposed to be me being the un-fuck-up, she thinks this was supposed to be me looking after you).

And god, what’s Beth supposed to do with that?

She can’t bring herself to talk to Rio about it – sinks herself instead into scrounging up the money to pay Annie’s rent so she doesn’t lose her apartment while Gretchen’s working to get her out, into looking after Ben and her own kids and deflecting Greg and Nancy’s interrogations about it all, and trying to stay on top of the club and the city councilwoman work and ignoring the way Dean wants to talk custody arrangements, and god, all Beth really wants is Ruby.

And it’s sudden.

The way Ruby just shows up.

The way Ruby just steps into Beth’s living room and holds her, and maybe it’s only then that Beth really cries.

Only then that she feels like maybe she can get through this at all.

And the thing is, Rio’s maybe avoiding her too, because he’s not doing drops or pick-ups (and neither is Mick, which is good at least, because Beth’s not sure what she’d do if she saw him again right now), and Beth’s got no idea what to make of that, nor the gnawing feeling in her gut every time he misses a meeting.

But it’s not that long before Gretchen gets Annie out – a long argument of technicalities and legal loopholes that Beth doesn’t entirely understand – and Beth leaves the kids with Ruby and gets her sister back into her apartment and feels some storm of relief and guilt as Ben cries on the couch and Annie asks her to leave, to let her talk to her son alone, and Beth does, and she goes home, and she’s not sure what to make of it.

Rio’s G-wagon on her street.

He’s not in it though, and the familiar spark of something is felt in the sparse desert of exhaustion inside of her, but he’s not waiting at her doorstep or in her kitchen or in her bedroom, and then she sees him from there – sitting on the picnic table like he did all those months ago.

And it’s easier than it should be to slip out, to stand with the winter air nipping at her collar bone and lean herself back against the glass door and watch him for a minute.

He doesn’t look up right away, although she’s sure he knows she’s there, just threads his fingers together and holds them to the back of his neck, a cradle to push his head back into, and Beth wants to ask why, but she’s not sure what why she’s asking anymore, so instead, she just asks him if he wants a drink.

And yeah, he wants a drink.

It’s quiet inside without the kids, without Dean, and it’s not awkward like it was that time she brought him in to say goodbye, but it’s not exactly comfortable either. A stranger sort of silence that settles like a spell, and she feels him watching her when she pours him a drink, sees it when she walks over to him, passes him a bourbon, and she doesn’t say thank you because it’s his fault Annie was there at all, but she hopes maybe he tastes the words on her lips anyway when she presses them to his.

And it’s not like the first time, it’s not even like the other day – the path is still overgrown, still dense with creeping vines, with thickening thickets and poisoned fruits, but Beth thinks she likes it that way.

After all, the hunger in her is a wild thing too.

[farfromstrange]

Foreigner's God | m.m

Previous chapter ° Series Masterlist

Chapter Forty-Three: She Knows

Summary: Life is good, life is normal. All pieces have fallen into place. A routine night of patrol leads Matt and Eliza into the arms of one of Hell's Kitchen's notorious gangs who seem to have stolen alien technology. Chaos ensues, revelations are made and things go a little... out of control.

Warnings: Angst, Smut (fingering, this is relatively tame), attempt at humor, Canon typical violence, Season 3 spoilers (heavy on that), Avengers 1 spoilers, Infinity War spoilers, use of mutant powers, blood, hurt/comfort, mentions of suicide (briefly), fluff, declarations of love

A/n: I have worked long and hard on this. I spent a good ten hours, if you put them all together, just writing this chapter. Another ten the day before to plan out the way I want to change some things about how I'm going to portray Season 2 in this story, and some of the plot points I have added with my Original Characters to make it possible to put them all together to make it make sense (and erase some of the plot holes). I have written-down and solid plans until chapter forty-seven, and from there on they're just ideas that haven't been written out yet. But I think I just built a storyline that is somehow canon yet not canon at all and it might just keep you at the edge of your seats throughout the journey. I hope so, at least.

The days in New York kept getting hotter. It was a different kind of heatwave. Even though Eliza evened out the firm’s bills, the AC broke right when they needed it most, and looking at their budget — the one she had meticulously calculated — she realized they couldn’t afford to call someone to fix it, so they were stuck with two ventilators that were barely working, and the iced drinks their clients served them with.

She still had a significant amount of money left. It was enough to buy a car, but in a city like New York, cars were overrated.

She put some money aside in case her and Matt’s living arrangement would somehow be at risk if he, once again, failed to pay his rent on time, or the electricity bill got more expensive. The monthly bill had already changed from plausible to other-worldly — having her live with him meant the lights were on when it got dark; they had never been on before, except for the rare occasions Foggy stayed over. Therefore, the electricity bill grew in size significantly compared to his usually tame living costs, thanks to the discount and his blindness.

Not only was the buzzing something Matt had to get used to but having someone with working eyes living with him meant she usually left a lot of stuff lying out, or she would move the jars on his spice rack a little to the left without noticing, and once he was the one cooking in the kitchen, he touched the shelf like a lost puppy until he found what he was looking for. And she continuously switched the places.

At first, he didn’t say anything, but it eventually got too much when he couldn’t find the salt. “Babe, that’s sugar,” he heard her say behind him.

“If you’d put the jars where they were, I wouldn’t have that problem—“ he broke off, grunting in search for the tag that read salt. He found it where the basil usually was. “There it is. Where did you put the basil?”

“Lower shelf, ‘cause I couldn’t reach it.” She sounded so innocent then, eating her yogurt and watching him through hooded eyes. Eyes of guilt. “I’m sorry if, I’d known–“

Matt sighed. “It’s not that, baby. I’m just so used to everything being in the same spot, I get confused when it isn’t there, and then I have to read all of the tags to find what I’m looking for,” he explained, and it slowly dawned on her.

“Did I just completely disregard your disability because I only kept thinking about your super senses?”

“You didn’t disregard it, you just– you’re being you,” he said, “and I love that you’re you but I usually take a little longer to adapt to change for, uh, obvious reasons.”

“Don’t defend me. I totally disregarded it,” she got up, “and I am so sorry I did. Tell me what you need me to change and I will. For you, I will. I’m going to learn how to adjust to you so you won’t have to adjust to me.”

He chuckled softly. She stepped up to him, her arms snaking around his neck and he kissed her. “That’s not how this is supposed to be,” he told her.

“Yes, it is.”

“It’s not. You live here too, so you get to make this place your home the same way I did. You don’t have to adjust everything because I’m blind.”

“I want to help you,” said Eliza.

“And you are,” Matt caressed her face again, “you’re helping by being here.”

“What else can I do though to make this easier for you?”

He frowned. Usually, people didn’t ask. He was so used to living alone in his apartment that he almost forgot he wasn’t anymore, and their relationship was a two-way street, as everything else in their lives.

His head twitched toward the spice rack. “Put everything where it used to be, that would be a start,” he said.

“Okay, I can do that.” She tried to break free to do as she was told, but he held her back.

He wasn’t done. With his hands on her hips, he made sure she looked into his eyes.

“Everything except for the things you use the most,” he said, “because I need to adjust to your needs to and if you can’t use the sugar because you can’t reach it, we’ll move it to the lower shelf.”

“With the same positioning?” she questioned.

“Please.”

After a couple of days, his spices stopped wandering and he sighed a breath of relief. She was willing to learn and she adapted, something only Foggy had done while they were in college, and even then their dorm lacked of some accessibility.

Eliza put in an effort to make life easier for him. She made sure everything was where he left it, and she stopped leafing her stuff lying out because the first time he almost tripped was enough for her to change her mind about being a little messy.

When it came to the electricity bill though, she wasn’t sure what to do. Matt assured her it was fine, but she considered learning how to walk in the dark when she saw the number at the bottom. He told her he would take care of it but the man could barely afford his own coffee mix, and because of her he stopped buying his disgusting German beer (she told him he didn’t have to, but when did Matt Murdock ever listen to her?), so he lost more of his freedom than he gained when she moved in. She felt guilty, to say the least.  

Thankfully, work days weren’t so boring anymore. Eliza gave up on trying to convince Matt to take paying clients. The number of people willing to pay for their services was, well… zero. Nonexistent. At least they got baked goods as a generous ‘thank you’, but cake didn’t pay the bills. It left them satisfied and with lunch for days, but food couldn’t cover the cost of living or the cost of running a law firm in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen.

“Thank you, Mrs. Ingram, we’ll take a look at those complaints and get back to you.” As an introvert, talking to strangers wasn’t an easy task, but she had a way with people that often amazed Matt. 

The middle-aged woman bowed slightly, thanking her again in a tongue he didn’t recognize. The door closed, he heard the sound loud and clear, and the office finally went quiet. With the air so thick, he could barely breathe, the heat causing sweat to break out on his forehead and soak through his dress shirt. He had already pushed up the sleeves past his forearms and it bunched around his bicep, the one protruding vein now more visible than ever. He wanted to tear his clothes off but not even that would have sufficed to get rid of the heat under his skin. 

Foggy stood at the door to his office, holding a water bottle to his sweaty face. “She speaks Arabic,” he said. “Matt, your girlfriend speaks Arabic. Why does she speak Arabic?”

“Because she’s smarter than you,” Eliza retorted. 

Matt chuckled. “Let me state for the record that she said it, not me.”

“No seriously,” he pushed himself off the doorframe, “how many languages have you spoken today?”

“Three,” Karen cut in. She peeked down at the files scattered on her desk. “Uh, we had an elderly Chinese lady, Mrs. Rodriguez who only speaks Portuguese, and then Mrs. Ingram who speaks Arabic.”

“Yes, that. What’s wrong with you?”

Meanwhile, she had wandered off into the kitchen, taking one of the few mugs they kept in the cupboard and pouring the now cold coffee into it. “I told you, it’s an intelligence thing, you wouldn’t understand.”

It was slowly starting to dawn outside, the sun setting behind the many high rises around them. She hoped it would cool down soon. Having ditched her shirt, she was left in a burgundy top with quite a suggestive cleavage that Matt noticed instantly when the first pair of eyes of a client flicked to her breasts and he only grew more possessive with every passing male client.

“I’ll have you know,” said Foggy, “That I’m actually the smartest out of my family! I mean, I went to law school. Call me the golden child.” A proud, dorky smile grew on his face that caused his dimples to stand out. 

She tried hard to hide her own smile behind a mocking smirk. “That’s kind of like being the tallest dwarf,” Eliza said. 

He lifted his finger, eyebrows crinkling in a state of offense, but he quickly shook his head and put his finger back then. “Actually, that- that’s true.”

Reaching into the Tupperware that stood on the counter, she took one of the Brownies. She sniffed; it smelled like sugar and cocoa. She couldn’t remember who brought them, though she suspected it to have been one of the elderly women that came to them with their small legal troubles. It was the cinnamon that gave it away. A feeling of Christmas in the middle of summer, and it cooled down her skin when she thought about the snow that would come in December if they were lucky, and ice skating at the rink around Rockefeller Tree. Christmas in New York was magical and she looked forward to the holiday every year. 

Although this year, her Christmas would look different from what it used to before; Clint wasn’t there to invite her to his family home anymore, and she wouldn’t be able to spend time with his children under the tree. Her life changed drastically, but she wasn’t alone. She had friends and she had Matt — it would be their first Christmas together. She was excited about that.

At the beginning of the year, she figured she would be lonely on Christmas, but even that had changed and now she couldn’t wait for the magical time of the year that gave her an excuse to buy him several gifts that he couldn’t turn down. But no gift could be better than the one he gave her by taking her back. 

It was still summer though and the temperature melted her skin into the ground. 

On a Sunday, Matt believed it was, he woke up to the scent of cinnamon in the air. He reached beside him, but the mattress next to him was cold. He frowned, listening more intently to the sounds coming from the kitchen. Through the fog of his sleepy senses, he could make out her heartbeat. He relaxed. A sigh slipped past his lips as he heaved himself out of bed.

“You’re baking,” he stated, standing in the doorframe to the living room. 

Eliza looked up from where she stood in the kitchen. “Good morning to you too,” she chirped. 

He pouted. “Why are you baking? Are you okay?”

“What? Oh. Oh, no,” it dawned on her, “this is not stress-baking. This is- well, I guess you can call it cheerful Sunday baking,” she said, “but I’m actually just doing it because Sister Maggie asked if I could help out with the summer fest the orphanage is doing today.”

“Thank God,” he murmured. 

Matt appeared behind her, his hands snaking around her waist. He buried his face in her shoulder. She smelled of the cinnamon she used and flour — some of it got stuck in her eyebrows from where she had rubbed her sweaty forehead before, and some flour even collected at the tip of her nose. He chuckled when he realized. “You’ve got a little something there,” he brushed his finger over her nose. 

She scrunched. “Didn’t notice.”

“I know. There’s some flour in your brows, too. Here,” he repeated the same motion over the soft hairs above her eyes, “All done.”

“Thanks.”

He once again wrapped his arms around her waist, continuing to breathe all of her in. She leaned back into him, one hand coming to rest in his hair while the other stirred the dough before her. Wandering lips trailed over her pulse point, leaving a wet trail behind. Eliza sighed, momentarily forgetting that she was supposed to be baking a whole batch of brownies for hungry and traumatized children. His hands squeezing her hips and his lips exploring what was bare of her shoulders distracted her from the task at hand completely, and she found herself slowly caving into his touch. 

“You know, you have to stop back-hugging me when I’m baking,” she said. “You’re distracting me. I might burn these brownies.”

Matt chuckled against her neck. “How,” his lips brushed her ear as he asked, “They’re not even in the oven yet.”

“Precisely. That’s where they should be.”

“Then why don’t you put them in?”

“Because you’re distracting me from finishing them.”

“Huh, that sucks ‘cause I don’t intend on stopping–” he slipped his hand past the waistband of her panties, “anytime soon.”

“Ohhh-kay.” She grabbed the edge of the counter tightly, her knuckles turning bright white. Her hips bucked into his hand while at the same time pushing against his pelvis from behind. 

His chuckle fanned across her cheek now before he turned her chin with his index finger and captured her lips in a bruising kiss. 

“That is absolutely not–“ he started drawing slow circles over her clit with as many fingers as he could, “distracting— Oh God!” He kicked her feet apart, his middle finger already halfway buried in her cunt. 

“Not distracting, huh?” he hummed into her ear. “Is that why you’re so fucking wet right now?”

Oh, how she hated him. She clenched around his finger at the gentle mockery, meeting the now rough palm of his hand as it bumped against the nerves that craved him the most. 

“That’s it… good girl.”

The orgasm washed over her with surprising intensity. It hadn’t even been a full five minutes until her walls fluttered and she was coming undone around his finger, and he soaked up every last whimper she let out, her head now resting back against his shoulder while he gently rubbed her clit to draw the orgasm out but not to overstimulate her. 

He gently pulled out. “Good morning,” Matt smirked proudly to himself. 

“Oh, good morning indeed.”

His lips chased her movements as she turned around in his arms, leaning up to press her lips to his. It was a silent ‘good morning’, the first display of love that wasn’t connected to anything sexual. In the background, the soft tune of a song filled the room with a light atmosphere. She felt like a feather floating through the air, the air that was often filled with pain and the thick scent of tears shed. Sometimes, it smelled like his blood, other times it smelled like hers, and on extremely bad days, they were both bleeding. Physically and mentally they were often bleeding in each other’s arms, their souls scarred from all the suffering, and their hearts often tired of beating, but now it beat for each other. The only reason they were alive lay in each other’s arms, and they promised to continue breathing for each other, even when one of them got tired and the other had to catch them. Their arms were wide open at the bottom of the cliff, always ready to carry what the other was too weak to hold up on their shoulders. 

The pair stepped into Saint Agnes orphanage sometime around noon when the brownies were finished baking and the sun was less strong in the way it burned down on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen.

Matt sniffed the air; it was hot, humid even, and thick with the sweat and different perfumes of the people passing by them as they walked toward the place he grew up in. Through the fog of the different sensations blurring together, he could make out a slightly tangy scent that lay thick and even a little sour in the air, but it was mostly salt and a cold breeze that brushed past his nose. It was going to rain soon, he was sure of that. The air shifted and it got a bit colder, offering some relief on their heated skin, but the temperature still felt inhuman. 

Maggie greeted them at the door, “Thank you so much for coming,” she engulfed Eliza in a tight hug, “And thank you for offering to bake.”

“I’m glad to help,” said Eliza, handing the Tupperware that held the brownies over to the nun. She looked different from the last time they met; she wore a black dress that was the usual attire for the sisters at the church and the black-and-white headscarf that covered her brown hair. 

“Oh,” she grabbed Matt’s bicep to push him further into Maggie’s line of sight, “This is Matthew, by the way. The, uh, boyfriend I was telling you about.”

Her brain seemed to short-circuit. She blinked, looking the man up and down, then back at her. Her mouth opened, but no sounds would come out. She tried again, fidgeting with her fingers as she tried to find words that would make sense, words that wouldn’t give her away. 

Eliza was curious. Something wasn’t right and her suspicions overshadowed the excitement she had felt before. She needed to know why the nun was acting like that, and she needed to know now. 

Matt smiled awkwardly and Maggie returned his expression. The smile is familiar. Why is it familiar? She wondered to herself. She was probably seeing ghosts and her hands were tingling for no reason. The rational center of her brain was screaming unnecessarily, her suspicions stemmed from a place of curiosity and there was no reason to worry. There was no reason to be on edge or determined to reveal a gigantic lie that probably wasn’t real anyway, she was just paranoid. After everything that happened, everything seemed to have a deeper meaning, a meaning that often turned out to be false. Maggie was a good person and so was Matt; he grew up in the orphanage, of course, he took some of what he learned and observed with him, and it manifested over the years. He was still a broken child at heart. 

Still fidgeting with her fingers, Maggie chuckled. “I remember you,” she said. “You, uh, changed a lot since you were last here.”

“Uh, yeah,” Matt exhaled, “I was a kid.”

She straightened her shoulders. “Well, I’m glad that you’re here.”

“Me too, sister, although it feels weird being back here,” he said. 

Maggie waved for them to follow her. He held onto Eliza’s arm on their way down the long corridor toward what he remembered to be the door to the garden behind the orphanage and the church. It was far away from the cemetery, but he had escaped once while all children were playing outside and visited his dad’s grave. He never told the nuns how he found his way there, he simply stated that he wanted to get out and then got lost. His abilities would have been hard to explain, only Stick understood what he was going through, but even he left him. They all eventually did. Being at his father’s grave had filled him with dread and it still did whenever he set foot into the church, knowing Jack was dead and he was alone. He didn’t even know his mother. 

“You grew up here, it’s always going to be weird to visit your childhood home. Not to speak of the perhaps bad memories you connect with this place. Even a religious boy like you gets to have his reservations about God,” Maggie led them through the backdoor, “But destiny works in funny ways, doesn’t it?” she said. “That your girlfriend and I met and now you’re here.”

“Are you sure you can call it destiny?” Matt questioned. 

“What else would you call it?”

“I don’t know, coincidence, maybe? I’ve been coming to this church for years, and have spoken to Father Lantom ever since I can remember, he’s taken my confession many times and I’ve seen Sunday Mass more times than I can count. That my girlfriend ran into you one night while she was desperate wouldn’t count as destiny, just a very surprising coincidence.”

She chuckled weakly, her eyes stuck on her face, and something resembling adoration flashed across her eyes. Her brows furrowed slightly, it was a look of worry now, one of guilt and regret, and she turned away again. 

“Coincidence,” she repeated, “Yes, that might just be it.”

“I’m a man of God, I believe in what God wants. Anything else seems far-fetched, don’t you think, sister? God gives us all a purpose, so you could call it destiny, but as God’s disciples there really is nothing else but the role he cast us in.”

“Doesn’t that mean there are no coincidences, either? And call me Maggie, please. I insist.”

He tilted his head. Her statement worked through his brain and he contemplated. “You have a point,” he said. 

“I’m glad you came.” Her voice cracked at the end. Matt played it off; voices crack sometimes. Eliza, however, wasn’t convinced that it was a random crack in her voice when the look she had on her face spoke more than opening a Bible and reading every last verse ever could. 

Maggie was an expressive person. Her emotions displayed in her eyes, and whenever she was upset, her lips tilted down in a pout. Her brown eyes had green tints in them, but they were a darker brown, perhaps chestnut, matching her hair perfectly. Naturally curly hair. 

Oh.

Oh.

Fuck. 

Eliza didn’t want to connect the trains of thought that clashed, drawing and setting up an invisible string between them. 

“Brownies,” she blurted, her heart racing in her chest, and there was no doubt in her mind Matt could tell that she was shocked at something that neither he nor she could see because it happened in her brain and slapped her across the face. “Where should I put the brownies?” she asked. 

“You don’t have to put them anywhere,” Maggie insisted, “I’ll take care of it.”

“I should take care of it though.”

“If that’s what you want–“ she handed the Tupperware back to her. “Put it on the table over there,” she told her. “With the rest of the food.”

Eliza peeked over at the mentioned table that stood aside from the commotion of children and nuns that played in the garden. Willing investors were standing around, ready to donate money to keep the orphanage up and working, and others were simply there for the free food. Mostly those who couldn’t afford it by themselves, but that was the point of the summer fest. It was meant to bring people together. 

She nodded, “I’ll be right back.”

The table offered her some space to breathe away from now deep conversations between Matt and… Maggie. It all made sense now and she hated the knowledge she put on herself. There was no solid proof, but her gut hardly ever betrayed her. 

“Eliza,” Father Lantom appeared behind her. He smiled when he saw her. “So nice of you to join us,” he said. 

Her fists clenched. “Did you know?” 

“Sorry?”

“Did you know?” she asked. Her eyes switched to the pair at the other end of the backyard. “Did you know that she’s his mother?”

She had been betrayed before, told that her parents were dead, and withheld information on the whereabouts of her biological father, so she knew how bad it could hurt to find out the truth. 

The priest stuttered. His eyes were wide and he looked over to where Matt was standing with Maggie, still talking. It seemed he didn’t hear any of what Eliza said because he simply wasn’t paying attention and his senses didn’t quite work that way. If he didn’t consciously fan them out and focused on something else, he would tune the rest of the world out, and then a statement such as the one Eliza made would go over his head. 

He leaned into her. “How?” he asked. 

“Answer my question,” she shot back through gritted teeth. 

She already knew that Father Lantom did know and that he didn’t say anything to Matt, not even once in the time he went to church, prayed, and asked for guidance. He had been lost to the point he tried to kill himself when he was merely a child and everyone lied to him. Maggie was there to raise him after his father died. She worked at the orphanage, took care of him, and she knew who the lost blind boy she was supposed to take care of was. She knew and she never said anything. 

“Yes,” Father Lantom lowered his head, “I knew.”

“Great. That’s just… fucking great!”

But then Eliza realized something else. If Matt found out the truth now, it would shatter him. It would shatter him to know the lengths his own mother was willing to go to so he wouldn’t find out who she was, and the man he confided in lied to him too. It would shatter him. It would absolutely destroy him the same way it destroyed her when she revealed the truth. 

“Listen, I can explain,” he said. 

What explanation could there be? It was the same thing she had to go through all those weeks ago. She searched for answers for years and found them in the lies her friends told her, the people she thought she could trust, the people who loved her the most, and who she trusted with her life. It was the same fucking situation. 

She shook her head. “He doesn’t deserve this,” her voice sounded low, “He doesn’t deserve any of this.”

The priest sighed in exasperation, pulling her further aside. “There’s a reason we kept the truth from him.”

“What reason could there possibly be to lie to him about his own mother? She’s right there.” Her glowing eyes resembled those of a snake, a venomous being born from fury. “She’s right there and he doesn’t know.”

Eliza remembered her telling her that she was a mother but didn’t have any children. She had done things she wasn’t proud of, committed sins she had to repent for, and found her way back from the dark void despair drove her into. Maggie used to lead support group meetings for lost children, for those who had nothing left and wanted to be better for whatever reason. She was a good person but she lied. She lied to Eliza and she lied to her own son, the man that she was now talking to as if they were long-lost friends, but she never once told him. They spent years together and she never found the guts to lay the truth out for him. 

She didn’t want to hate her, she was a good person after all, but it was hard not to get angry at her. And Father Lantom played a huge role in it as well. She trusted him with her secrets. She misjudged him. She thought he was a righteous man, but he was nothing but a liar. 

“He’s not supposed to find out, and you weren’t either, Eliza. This is a secret we’ve kept for decades—“

“That’s even worse!” she snapped. 

He pressed a finger to his lips, “Not so loud.”

“I’m gonna be as loud as I fucking want because I’m gonna tell him.”

“No,” the Father stopped her by grabbing her arm and he said, “Please, don’t.” Was he begging or telling her not to? 

“You can’t keep this from him,” she said, “it’s not fair.”

“I know, but there’s a reason Maggie hasn’t found him sooner, a reason we didn’t tell him. It was never my choice to make, it was hers, and I swore to protect her as well as make sure he was okay. If he finds out now…” he trailed off, looking at the chatting pair. “He’s gonna be devastated, you know that. You’re the closest person to him, you’re the only one who understands him. Tell me, would he be able to survive to hear the truth?”

She hated the answer. She hated that the truth was that no, he wouldn’t survive. She hated that she now knew something so crucial and she hated that Father Lantom was right. He would be devastated and he would suffer. He would question everything he ever believed to be true and he would drown. She could try to catch him, but he would fall faster than she could run to his rescue. All of this for what?

“The people in my life lied to me about my father too,” she said. 

“I’m sure they had the same intention in mind.”

“They told me it was to protect me but I lost myself too. It broke me. I deserved to know and they took that right away from me until I found out the truth some other way. I would have understood if they told me themselves, but they were so adamant about lying I had to find out myself and that completely destroyed me. He deserves for the people who care about him to not lie to him,” she swallowed, “and if the truth breaks him, so be it. He deserves to know and he’d hate me for keeping this from him. I can’t live with this burden. I wish I never connected the dots, but I did, and this information is more than I can carry right now, so I have to tell him.”

“Eliza please,” Father Lantom begged. His hand was still on her arm. She broke free, glaring holes into his head. She hoped he could feel the hell she wished upon him. 

She stood her ground, “No.”

“If you tell him now, his world is going to end.”

“It’s not. He caught me and I’ll catch him. I know I will. I can.”

“You can’t know that and I think you know that you can’t.”

She hated him and his words and God for putting her in such a position. She hated her curiosity and how easily she could make connections even when she wasn’t trying. But most of all, Eliza hated herself for the decision she made. She was no better than the people who lied to her.

“I have to tell him,” she whispered. 

“No, you don’t.”

“I have to, but I won’t,” her voice dropped an octave and her eyes turned a terrifying color of maroon, “because if he does find out, he’s going to be devastated and he’s been through enough pain already. I’m doing this because I love him, not because of you. If you know what’s good for you, you stay away from me.”

“Eliza, wait-”

“Matt,” she walked up to him, the smile on her lips fake, but she managed to convince him. “Are you ready to go?” 

“Sure, yeah,” he said. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she assured him.

“Okay then. It was nice meeting you again.”

The nun nodded with a curt smile. “It was nice seeing you, Matthew,” said Maggie. “I hope we’ll catch up more soon.”

I hope the fuck not, Eliza cursed her inner monologue. But it was right. The more time they spent together, the guiltier she would feel, but by God, if she told him now he would break into a million pieces and their life was just starting to get better again. She didn’t want to steal the sparkle from his eyes. Matt didn’t deserve that. He also didn’t deserve to be lied to, but she loved him too much to break his heart. If he ever found out, he would hate her, but it was a small price to pay to keep his heart safe. He had lost enough for a lifetime. 

The thought kept her caught in the moral conflict that wrapped its hand around her soul and squeezed, its claws dragging her down into an abyss of endless guilt and shame. If she wasn’t careful, it would consume her whole soon and there would be no going back. She loved him so much, but was the sacrifice worth it? Was risking their relationship worth it just to protect his soul from breaking? It was wrong. She knew how much it hurt when the Avengers did the same, but carrying this knowledge with her now, she realized why they kept the secret of her true parentage from her. She understood the purpose of protecting the people you love by omitting now better than she ever did, but she still cursed herself to hell and back for not opening her mouth. She should have, but time had passed by since they were at the fest and she was already too deep into the lie to pull out now. She had to walk to the edge of the grave she dug and hope she wouldn’t fall in. 

The cool night air blew through her hair as she walked next to Matt over the dark rooftop. He had picked up on a commotion in the distance, gang activity, he had told her. They were partly responsible for the rising drug numbers in Hell’s Kitchen and Daredevil wasn’t pleased with what his city was turning into. He had to salvage what was left. Eliza tagged along, of course. She always did. Ever since he got her the suit, she felt more comfortable in her skin and her fighting abilities. She didn’t care much about her powers when she was around him because he told her every time, focus on your fighting skills not what’s going on in your mind. Channel your anger into something else. And she did. She channeled her feelings into her fists as she beat the criminals into a puddle. 

That night though, she was so stuck in her mind, her entire body was vibrating with the energy that she pushed down so many times before. She refused to study them further, but the need to let them out was growing with each passing day, and the more she thought about it, the more scared she got about what she would do once the stone decided it had enough of being pushed down. With the empathy gone, she thought she could catch a break, but her fingers always tingled and her soul craved the power. Her body craved to rise to its full potential, whatever that was. 

“How about Chinese?” Matt asked. 

Eliza shook her head. “No, we had that yesterday. I can still taste that fucking awful sushi on my tongue,” she said. “I feel like it was purposely made to not taste good because how the fuck can you screw up Sushi?”

“I think they might have put too much salt in the rice.”

“And used moldy cucumber.”

“If they did, you would be having serious stomach problems right now.”

She shrugged. “Maybe I am.”

“You’re not,” he said.

“Well okay, we’re not doing Chinese. How about Indian instead?” she asked.  

Matt contemplated before scrunching his nose in a disapproving frown. “We had that the day before that, and honestly if I have to taste Kurkuma one more time, I’m gonna puke. I love Indian food, but we’ve been eating too much of that lately.” 

“Okay, I get that. We’ve been spending a lot of money on Indian food. How about pizza? Italian, maybe even pasta and some breadsticks.  There’s a nice place around the corner from your apartment. And they got Uber Eats.”

“Yeah, let’s do pizza. But only if it has—“

“Cheese crust.”

“Exactly.”

“And I’m craving garlic bread,” she said.

He hummed. “Oh, yeah, garlic bread.”

“And if we both eat it, we can still kiss.” 

“That is a good argument, Miss Bennet,” Matt said, “I think you might have won this discussion.” 

“Pizza it is then,” she decided. 

Was it wrong to talk about dinner choices while walking into the arms of one of Hell’s Kitchen's many gangs? Possibly, but they had long stopped caring about what happened before or after. The fight became their life’s purpose. They couldn’t see themselves doing anything else. Eliza was a hero, she craved to be one, and Matt craved to help his city out in any way he could. He still believed it was his god-given purpose to be Daredevil, and he stuck to his principles. 

Sister Maggie is Matt Murdock’s mother. She bit her cheek. If the thought kept pushing against her head, she would burst. She had to and she said she wouldn’t, but fuck! Father Lantom wasn’t the boss of her and she knew better than let him tell her what to do. She knew better than to break Matt’s heart by lying to him and risking what they had because she didn’t want him to hate her, ever. She didn’t want to break his trust. She promised not to lie to him, and she was physically incapable of doing so, anyway. 

“Matt,” she caught his wrist and he stopped, giving her a puzzled look that she could read even behind the Devil’s mask, “I have to tell you something,” she said. 

Now or never. Fuck Father Lantom and Maggie for their lies. She had to be better than them. She was better than them. She wouldn’t make the same mistake Tony made because, in the end, he was more sorry than she had been safer. 

“What’s up?” he asked, his lip tilted down in a confused and worrying frown. “Are you okay?”

It was sweet how he suspected it was something about her rather than something that would tear his entire worldview down. 

She opened her mouth, putting aside all reservations. Eliza was going to tell him the truth about his mother right then and there and then wait for the music to come. He was going to implode but fuck, she couldn’t keep the secret any longer, it was eating away at her insides and it was driving her guilt to an all-time high that she seemed to be tumbling off any second now. It suffocated her, knowing the truth about him and keeping him in the dark. She wasn’t going to do that to him, not again. She made so many promises, she had to keep them. She promised she would keep them. 

“I-” 

The blast that sounded in the distance cut her off. 

They flinched at the same time, ducking behind the ledge of the roof. “You hear that?” he asked. 

She nodded, “Loud and clear.”

Something strange lay in the atmosphere. It was a familiar feeling, a tingle that shot up her spine and caused the hairs on her arms to stand up. 

Looking down at the layer they were supposed to stake out, she caught the blue glow through the dirty windows. The smoke from the blast clouded the inside. She tilted her head. It couldn’t be—

“You have to stay here,” she said. Her breath hitched. “You can’t go down there.”

Matt chuckled, the confusion written on his face as he asked her, “Why?”

“I’m not kidding,” and her serious expression told him as much, “You’re not going down there.”

“Angel, calm down. What is going on? Why do you-”

“It’s Chitauri tech,” she stated. The blue glow mixed with the almost radioactive-looking smoke told her everything she needed to know. Her hair bent in the direction of the alien force and her fingers tingled; this could only mean one thing - the Battle of New York had left a significant number of weapons and alien remains behind, and many people had stolen parts and taken them with them, and the weapons that came out of playing with such technology would always be life-threatening to any human being. 

“Chitauri as in–“

“The Battle of New York, yes.”

“Are you sure? How do they- how would they even get their hands on the technology? I thought Stark cleaned up all of it when his foundation paid for the reconstruction of downtown. That was four years ago, Eliza. Are you sure that blast wasn’t just a manipulated machine gun?”

“The glow, Matthew. You can’t see it, but you might feel the energy in the air. I do, I can feel it creeping up my spine and toying with my brain. It’s alien, definitely. I felt the same when I stood in the ruins of this city and had aliens jumping on the buildings around me, shooting their funny little guns at us.”

It was true, he felt the static change in the air, but he thought nothing about it. Explosions often manipulated the way air would graze his skin. She seemed convinced though and her heartbeat showed no signs of doubt. This was her arena. This was what she was best at. He had nothing on her ability to sniff out what he couldn’t see. She felt deeper than he did, she was more susceptible to the atmosphere and reality spoke to her in ways he couldn’t comprehend. When she told him it was alien technology they were dealing with, he had to believe her. 

“That day, death and destruction rained from the sky,” he said. “It wasn’t just a random incident. The world almost ended, New York City was destroyed, people died… why would humans want to acquire the tech that almost got them killed?”

“Why do humans hurt each other in dark alleyways in the middle of the night?” Eliza challenged. “Why do humans resort to violence when they can’t get their way? We’re animals, Matt,” she said, “we’re predators, we want to be better than any other species, so that’s why some humans don’t even fear God when it comes to ruining other people’s lives.”

“Well, then we need to stop them.” He made a move to get out of the crouching position, ready to reach for his Billy Clubs. 

She put her hand atop his. “Don’t,” she said. 

“They could seriously hurt a lot of people. If we don’t do anything—“

“I need to stop them, not you.”

“Did you miss the part where we decided we would fight together because we always have each other’s backs?”

“This is alien tech. You’re only human. You’re not indestructible. You don’t even have a shield. If they hit you, you’re dead.”

He only scoffed. “I’d like to see them try.” 

Usually, she found his confidence more than alluring, but at that moment she wanted to hit him. He wasn’t invincible, but he seemed to forget that from time to time. If she was right with her suspicions, he would be dead the second they stepped through the door. She could never forgive herself if that happened, which was the precise reason why she tried her hardest to stop him, even if she had to tie him to the roof. She would do it. 

“No,” Eliza insisted, “stop.”

“What are you so afraid of?”

“I don’t want to lose you,” her voice cracked. 

He hung his head low, exhaling a heavy breath through pursed lips, then turned his head up enough for her to meet his red eyes. His hand reached for her cheek, cupping the rosy skin and caressing her cheekbone with his gloved thumb. He sighed again, this time louder. Her eyes fluttered closed. 

“You’re not going to lose me,” he said. “Hey, look at me—“ She opened her eyes. Tears glistened in them, tears that came from a dark place of fear deep within her heart. It tore her apart to think about what could possibly happen to him. “You’re not going to lose me,” he said. “I promised I’m in it for the long run and I intend to keep that promise. We go in there together and we both come out alive. I love you, okay? Alone because of that, I would show death the finger.”

She dropped her forehead against his. “Promise?” she breathed the word into his mouth. 

He pressed his lips to hers ever so gently, barely brushing them, breathing her in as if she was the last thing keeping him alive. “Promise,” he said. 

“I love you too.”

“I know.” He kissed her forehead. “Trust me, I know.”

“Promise you’ll stay behind me until I tell you otherwise?”

He crossed his heart. “Promise.”

She prayed to God he would keep his promise. 

The inside of the garage was quiet. Occasionally, metal would scrape against metal and the whirring of a saw cut through the sound barrier. Sparks flew, lighting up the room, but as soon as it was over, the room fell silent again. Every person seemed to have their work cut out for them. 

They entered through the back, inching their way behind one of the shelves that protected them from the careful eyes of the men in leather jackets and their guns. It was a cliche, the way they looked, but gang members had their ways of fitting into cliches even when they weren’t trying. 

She eyed the structure of the building, the workbench, and the several weapons that were scattered all over the room. She couldn’t make out the source of the blast. The glow had disappeared. The saw whirred again, longer this time and metal thunked to the floor. Eliza craned her neck to get a closer look; she saw the blue core before she saw the man behind it tightening the screws on the gun. 

Nodding toward the front, Eliza patted Matt’s shoulder. He got the message. Using the furniture that adorned the garage as cover, he made his way forward. She stayed behind, making sure he landed safely where she wanted him, and when he stopped behind another shelf soon after, she exhaled. She calmed her heart and focused. 

“Now,” she breathed only loud enough for him to hear — and he did. She could have moved her lips and he still would have heard. 

He tossed one of his Billy Clubs into the room. It managed to hit the first man over the head. He tried his best to be subtle about it, but the metal hit the ground loudly and with how quiet it was, the sound resembled a gunshot in a silent neighborhood. 

She was about to warn him that they would start shooting, but the words died on her tongue when the first bullets started to fly in the direction they suspected the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen to be. Her target was the man at the workbench, his fingers wrapping around the gun he was working on. He never got around to using it. 

The blade graced his jaw. “Drop it,” she hissed into his ear. 

He lifted his arms and put the gun down, swallowing against the dagger that hovered dangerously close over his neck. Satisfied, she lowered the blade and instead, pushed him forward until his head collided with the wood of the table. His brow burst open at the impact, painting the brown surface red with his blood. 

She flipped the knife. That had been fairly easy. The tip of the blade collided with the blue Chitauri core of the weapon, breaking the glass and shutting off the only power source there was — the core itself. The gun could no longer shoot and with the first weapon out of service, she could move on to the next. 

The men that came at her underestimated what she was capable of. She dodged the first one’s punch, ramming her knee between his legs, and she buried her entire fist in his face. His nose cracked under her knuckles. 

Her knife flew across the room and hit her target’s shoulder while she flipped another man over her shoulder. She knocked his head into the floor, spilling blood in the process. The man holding her dagger headed for her, but she gracefully ducked under his arm, slinging her arm around his neck and single-handedly flipping him onto his back on the ground. The last thing he saw was her towering over him before her fist knocked him into oblivion. Wiping his blood on her suit, she hummed. This was going better than she expected. 

Eliza searched for Matt in the mess. Her eyes caught on him as he fought one of the larger guys. He looked graceful, pushing him back and further until he stumbled over his own feet and hit the ground. At the sound of a gun cocking, she turned her head to see one of the members he must have knocked out before rising to his feet and pointing his gun at the back of his head. 

She sprinted toward him. He saw her coming from the corner of her eye, now pointing the gun at her. It was a normal glock. With so many men, it was hard to tell who carried what weapon. She still hadn’t seen the source of the gigantic blast — the gun she disarmed couldn’t have caused it, as it was way too small — but she was sure she would find it soon enough. For now, though, her brain stopped functioning and she simply stormed toward the man with the gun, and she stared right down the barrel as she had back when Ivan rose from the ashes of the White Room and buried three bullets inside her chest cavity. 

She fell to her knees, much to the man’s surprise, and she slid her knife over his kneecap. The gun dropped to the ground. He toppled over, holding the pulsating wound with both of his hands. Jumping to her feet, she pushed her boot into his back, forcing him to his knees. Matt was safe, for now. 

Her eyes switched to him only for a second, but a second was enough for the man to pull the hidden knife from his boot, turn around and jab the blade into her side. Eliza cried out, the intrusion sending sparks of fire through her abdomen, a feeling too familiar. He definitely cut through many nerves and it went deep, too deep. Her flesh squished and she caught onto her attacker’s wrist, staring into his eyes. He grinned. She tore the knife out of her side together with his hand, punching him straight across the face, and as pissed as she was at him for stabbing her, she lifted her knee to knock his teeth out. He dropped to the floor. She kicked him again just to make sure he would stay down, then finally pressed a hand to her bleeding side. 

If the wound didn’t kill her, Matt sure as hell would. He would call her reckless and berate her. He would tell her that she was the one worried about him for no reason and that she should have taken better care of herself because she got hurt, but he didn’t. He would say a lot of things, but for that, they had to make it out alive, which suddenly seemed highly unlikely with her side throbbing as if she was losing pints of blood (she wasn’t). 

The Chitauri weapon was gigantic. It looked like a grenade thrower only two times bigger and the glow was already visible through the barrel she found herself staring into when she looked up. 

“Woah,” she called out when the stranger pointed the weapon at Matt. She lifted her hand, diverting the attention toward herself. 

She suspected them to pull out the big guns, but this was exactly what she tried to prevent — having Matt in the crosshairs. 

“Listen, I know you’re probably not planning an uprising or some other gang-related shit, but the weapon you’re holding in your hand right now is definitely not made for men like you,” she said. 

He laughed. “Men like me?” he said. “Who gave you the right to judge that? You and your little friend here came into our home—” he looked around himself, his men moaning and groaning on the ground, blood spilled and bones were broken, “and you think I’m just gonna let you get away with it?”

“I saw the blast.”

“The gun over there malfunctioned. The one you destroyed. Thanks for that.” His smile was bitter. 

Matt, the idiot that he was, stepped forward and she was about to yell at him for being so reckless, but he couldn’t be stopped. 

“We came here to get answers on the heroin that’s being sold on the streets right now. The laced heroin, the one currently killing dozens of kids and addicts alike,” he said. “We didn’t come here to be shot at or start a war. We just want answers and then we’ll go. You just have to put the gun down first.”

The weapon swung back over at him. 

“Daredevil,” the man stated, “I figured you’d come one day.”

“I’m not here to shed any unnecessary blood, but if you keep being a dick, maybe I will.”

“You already shed unnecessary blood. In fact, a lot of unnecessary blood has been shed lately. Instead of blaming every New York gang for selling drugs, maybe you should look into the murders that have been happening around you. ‘Cause, my people are dying and no one seems to care about that, not even the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Tell me,” he said, “Are you really that heartless?”

The pair shared a look. “What are you talking about?” asked Eliza. 

“Someone shot up the Dogs of Hell a couple of days ago. Each had about twenty rows in ‘em. Then, last night, someone shot up the Skulls’ layer up the street. Figured we are next, so we loaded up.” He pointed down at the gun. “We had the tech stashed away for emergencies, and since someone is slaughtering gangs here in Hell’s Kitchen — hell, they’re slaughtering gangs all over goddamn New York City, I thought it was necessary to get the big guns out. For our protection. Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

“We didn’t,” Matt said. He sounded just as confused as she was, and perhaps he felt a little guilty for not realizing what was going on. He was so focused on a problem New York has been having for decades he lost focus on what else was happening around him. 

“Someone’s shooting up gangs? Are you guys trying to start a war or something?” Her voice drew the attention back to her. “Because that’s what it sounds like to me. Is it because of drugs? I used to be an addict, I know how strong heroin is, but the stuff you’re cooking up is killing innocent children in a way I have never seen before.”

He scowled, “We didn’t shoot up anyone. We’re not that stupid. And especially not because of some stupid drug trade. Not every fucking gang is involved in that. We’re family, if that even matters to you brainless fuckheads.”

“Then who else would be shooting up gangs here in New York if not a rival gang looking for more power?”

“Woman, don’t you think I figured that? But it’s not us.”

“Okay, first of all, don’t call me a woman as if it’s a bad thing,” she said, “and second of all, if not you, who is?”

“I don’t know!” he cried out. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you guys but you seem so adamant about blaming us. So tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you on the spot for what you just did to my guys, huh? Tell me, woman.”

“‘Cause you don’t want to risk pissing me off,” Matt cut in. His teeth bared, giving the man a good sense of the darkness that lurked behind the mask he put on. The Devil came out to play. “And you don’t want to risk pissing her off either,” he said, pointing his finger at Eliza who simply smirked. “I’m not kidding, right now she’s holding back because of me but when I tell her to raise hell, you’re done for, and you really don’t want that.”

“He’s got a point. You don’t want that.”

“Don’t underestimate the power of a woman scorned, and she’s got plenty of rage where what she did to your men just came from. I will let her, trust me.”

He made her sound like a guard dog on a leash, but perhaps she was just that when they fought — his dog on a leash. It shouldn’t have been as exciting as it was.

“I don’t give a shit. You trespassed on our territory,” the man charged his weapon, she felt the sizzling in the air getting stronger and her hair tilting further in the direction of the alien power source. His body craved a taste, just a small one. She wanted to see beyond the blue core. It was almost as if a completely different being possessed her, her eyes wide as she stared into the barrel, but she wasn’t scared. She was far from it. She was intrigued. 

“Do you even know what you’re holding?” she wondered. “The kind of power you’re trying to wield without the necessary knowledge?”

“Oh, and you do?” he challenged. 

“You have no idea.” 

Her hands started to glow bright red. The maroon in her eyes faded into black, stars of scarlet dancing in her irises, and her lip remained curled in a smirk. The red rushing through her veins was natural, a familiar feeling that consumed her. 

The man’s face fell. “Fuck.”

She wanted him to surrender, it was all she planned to do, but she underestimated the lengths he was willing to go to prevent getting caught in the crossfire of a possible gang war or going to jail. He pointed the gun back at Matt, her weak spot, and he fired. 

How it happened, Eliza wasn’t sure. She only faintly remembered reaching her hands out toward the blast, redirecting it toward herself. As it hit her, her palms faced forward, a red wall of smoke and pure energy building between her and the alien force. Both clashed in the middle, red meeting blue, fire meeting water, energy bursting into energy, and foreign particles soaring through the air and setting the atmosphere on fire. The universe seemed to explode, her reality clashing with that of an entirely different world, a universe beyond theirs. Both forces crashed together like two cars driving at high speed over the highway. As soon as they drove head-first into each other, the force caused a chemical explosion. 

It was a blow-out of epic proportions and the force pushed her back. In the air, she was weightless, but pride goes before the fall and when she crashed into the shelves at the back of the room, her head hit the metal. She slid back over the floor, landing right in front of the wall. The back of her head collided with the brick wall. The energy compressed her lungs, a fire burning bright above her head, but she must have hallucinated. It couldn’t have been real. The fire slowly turned into dots of blackness, silence overtaking her, and her ears fell into silence as she fell victim to the compelling darkness. 

She, however, did not stop falling once her vision turned black. She fell through the dark void and barely caught herself on her feet when the ground came in sight. It was the red ground covered in sand and smoke; she could barely see her feet. She was still wearing the suit and otherwise, she seemed more than alive, but she had been tricked once. The wasteland was a familiar land in her mind. Something that she had once felt comfortable in only caused a numb thudding in her chest. It was so strange, so foreign now. 

The darkness around her fell into scarlet so dark it turned maroon and it twisted and turned in circles until it formed six individual stones formed like a rhombus floating around her being, the glow turning different colors wherever she looked. Six stones, six different elements, six broken pieces of the universe’s core. 

In the distance, she could make out the faintest of purple resting on the skin of a gigantic stranger, but he didn’t have a face. She stared at his back, unmoving, and when she tried to see more, he moved further into the distance. The stones kept her trapped in their circle and she bit her lip, trying to get closer. 

The red one called for her, but so did the blue one, and the others joined in. They were silent screams of her name, a pull, unlike anything she had felt before. Several threads connected her to each rhombus, a two-way street of invisible strings. She called for them as they called for her. Her body craved to be whole, and it would only be whole with all stones close to her, it seemed. So she stepped forward and reached out for the glowing red stone that seemed to scream her name the loudest. 

Where she was, her mind seemed to be malfunctioning. There was no voice of thought or reason in her head. It was just her, the stones, and the purple stranger in the distance, trapped in the maroon her mind called home. At least it had once been when she could still sort emotions, now it was void of anything important. It was just red now, as was the stone she reached to touch. 

She realized too late that it was probably a mistake. The middle of her forehead started to glow the closer she got, and when she finally touched it, the world around her exploded again. The stones broke, crystals soaring around her head as the floor opened up beneath her, fading into smoke, and the walls around her broke open to reveal a vast space of different colors - blue, purple, red, and golden, stars dancing across the endless sky and the glass of mirrors broken around her. 

She was falling again. Eliza tried to catch herself on the red stone, but the gem was gone like all the others, her head glowing, her hands glowing and somehow her soul was on fire. She could see the universe from the outside, could see the world, could see the reality behind a red screen, susceptible. Reality was open to being controlled and even manipulated. Not everyone had the power, but the stone had called for her and she had the power to manipulate reality. It felt strange like reality was an object she could hold in her hands, but it was invisible to the eye. 

Pictures flashed across the screen, faces dancing in the galaxy, planets passing by and she could have sworn she remembered some of the places she saw. Her face was there, Matt was there, the Avengers were there - she saw Tony and everyone she ever loved dead on a battlefield, but on the opposite side the world was prospering with life. She saw death and destruction, and happiness and hope. She saw the world end at one point and start anew at another. It was strange and not everything seemed to be in her grasp - it wasn’t her reality. Those she couldn’t touch, couldn’t feel, weren’t in her control. Time and space blurred together, she saw the blue line drawn across the universe, and the streaks that suddenly broke out of the line formed a new web of glittery roads across the galaxy. Green, it was definitely green. Space was blue. The pictures she saw were both red and orange, and she herself seemed to be floating in a yellow bubble. The pull she felt was the strongest and it made the world around her explode in a burst of pure energy; it was purple. Everything was suddenly purple. Those weren’t the colors of the emotional color wheel, they were much different and with every passing color she could feel a different aspect of the invisible ball of reality she held in her bare hands. 

Her back shattered through a mirror below her, glass splattering everywhere, the sharp pain cutting her skin open and bleeding into the vastness of space. She hit the glass and at the same time, she hit the ground. Her head thudded, her side burned with the wound of the blade that had cut her, and the darkness replaced the beautiful colors she saw. She woke up with a gasp, shooting up from her position on the floor. She reached out, panicking, and latching onto the leather next to her. The suit felt oddly familiar, and once her eyes adjusted to the light, she realized she was in Matt’s lap. 

He had removed his mask, leaning over her as if to protect her from the world. Tears glistened in his eyes. She wondered how long she had been out. The alarm bells in her head were still ringing, but the dull gray of the room they were in gently brought her back from the edge she had been standing on. She was no longer falling, she was safe in his arms. 

Her vision was working, but her lungs still struggled for breath. She pulled at his suit, not sure whether to push him away or pull him closer. She was oh so scared, and it showed in the way her heart raced against an invisible clock. 

“Hey,” his voice pushed through the cotton in her ears, “Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay!” he said. “Look at me. Look at me! There you go.”

Looking into his soft eyes, her heartbeat started to slow and so did her breathing. Her lungs deflated, then filled with air and she coughed. The action alone caused another sharp pain to rip through the back of her head, following all the way down to her side where she could feel the blood pooling out of the cut still. 

Matt smiled, his tears fading, but the redness of the hint of them was still there. “There you are. Hi.” He brushed the hair out of her face. “You’re okay, I’ve got you.”

Her hand shot up to her head. “Fuck,” Eliza cursed to herself. 

“Don’t ever do that to me again,” he said, his hand still running through her hair. “I thought I–“ He refused to finish the sentence. 

She weakly touched his cheek with her blood-stained hand. “I’m okay,” she said. Bittersweet Deja Vu, the blood stains on his suit. 

“You’re bleeding,” he was referring to the wound on the back of her head, which he touched with gentle fingers, but the amount of blood he could smell didn’t match up to what he could feel. 

He listened closely to her skin, the way it shifted over the bone as she breathed raggedly, and he followed the coppery scent of her blood, a scent that reminded him of a trauma he long tried his best to bury. 

She hissed when his hand found the hole in her suit, the knife had gone straight through the spot that was not made out of bulletproof material. The hot liquid coated his fingers, the cut deep and the fabric around the wound soaked already. 

“What happened?” Matt ground his teeth. “Which one of them did this to you?”

“It’s just a cut, I’ll be fine. My head-” she groaned, “hurts like a bitch.”

“You probably have a low-grade concussion and one hell of a head wound, but the one on your side… Sweetheart, this is bad. We need to get you out of here.”

“I’m ok-ah!” He lifted her up into a standing position, but the stretch helped neither her throbbing head nor the stabbing pain in her side. “Okay, maybe I’m not,” she grunted before she toppled over, hand pressed to her side in an attempt to stop the new gush of blood that came out. 

She felt a little dizzy and her muscles hurt. But most of all, the dream she’d had while she was unconscious kept her wondering about what she saw. It had been so much at once and still nothing at all. 

Matt caught her. His arm wrapped around her waist, hand applying pressure to where hers already laid over the wound. “Okay,” he murmured, “I’ve got you. Hold onto me.”

Her nails dug into his hip, a vice grip to keep herself from passing out. 

“You good?”

Eliza nodded through gritted teeth, “Just get me home.” She wasn’t sure how much longer she would be able to stand. 

He had never walked home that fast. With her in his arms, it was harder than without, but they eventually managed to stumble into the apartment. He set her down on the couch, her lips parting in a silent cry at how much the skin around the cut moved. Her nails clawed into the leather of the backrest, head resting against it. A thin layer of sweat covered her forehead, but it wasn’t the heat that caused her pores to open up. 

He knelt beside her then, she didn’t hear him coming, and he splayed out the first aid supplies on the living room table as well as a bottle of water and some rubbing alcohol. The thought alone pained her and he hadn’t even started yet. 

“Can you remove your top?” Matt asked her. His coordination was off, he couldn’t find the zipper. 

She nodded again weakly, somehow managing to slip out of the top half of her suit and dropping the soaked fabric next to the couch. She was left in her sports bra, the cold air of the room sending a shiver down her spine. 

Tipping the cotton swab into the alcohol, he pressed the other hand to her abdomen. “This is gonna hurt,” he said. 

She knew it would. The disinfectant burned on the fresh wound. It felt as if her skin was being seared off and skinned alive. She cried out, “Ugh- fuck!” Her nails dug deeper into the leather. 

“I’m so sorry, but it’s only gonna get worse from here on.”

The needle pierced her skin and once again, she cried out. Her eyes rolled back, the tears at the corner of her eyes spilling over. She was used to getting stitches, but something about the wound felt different than usual, and it hurt. 

Matt stopped, his eyes faced downward guiltily, almost. 

She assured him with a hand on his head, “Keep going, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay, you’re in pain,” he said. 

“I know, but you can’t change it. Just do it as fast as you can, okay? Please.”

He sighed, squeezing her flesh again and forcing the needle and the thread through. Her cries continued muffled through the back of her hand that she bit down on, the tears mixing with the sweat of blood loss and the aftershocks of the concussion. She forgot about the headache, the sharp pain in her side seemingly doing its best at burning her entire body on a stake. 

His work was thorough, but he rushed anyway because he could no longer hear her cries whenever he had to pierce her skin, and her pain projected onto him. He hated hurting her, he hated that she got hurt because of him and that they had almost been at the same point they were a month ago. He didn’t want to lose her, not again. 

Eliza finally relaxed into the cushions when he cleaned the wound with some water, put salve on it, and bandaged her up. An ice pack on her head eased the ache, too. The wound wasn’t deep so he decided to forgo the stitches and instead put a bandaid on it. The fight took it out of her. 

He listened to her slowing heartbeat. “For a moment there I thought–” he began, not sure where he was going with the vulnerable confession, “I thought I’d lost you again, and I- I felt hollow,” he said. “So fucking hollow, I thought- I really thought I’d have to hold you again, I’d have to hear the breath leave your lungs and your, uh, heart stop again.” A tear slid down his cheek and soaked into his suit. “I thought I’d lost you, Liz, and I realized- I don’t ever want to feel this way again.”

Her eyebrows furrowed. She couldn’t separate reality from dreams anymore. Surely she had seen the same picture as she was falling, and it didn’t end well for either of them. 

She sat up straighter, as much as she could with her injuries. “Are you–“ her breath shuddered and the tears reappeared, though this time the pain was entirely mental, and the fear paralyzing, “Are you breaking up with me, over a stupid gang fight?”

He was taken aback by her question. Matt blinked, licking his lips and reaching out to grab her hands. He caressed them, squeezing them in reassurance as he made sure not to terrify her further with his terrible choice of words. “No, no of course not!” he said. “I would never. God, don’t think that. I wasn’t- I phrased it wrong. This was not what I wanted to say, at all.”

She relaxed. “Oh.”

“What I was trying to say was, I don’t ever want to lose you. Never. I love you too much for that. You are- okay, I don’t know how- my feelings, they’re complicated. I don’t know how to phrase them or- or understand them. I–“ he grunted in the back of his throat, frustrated to the point he considered not trying to find the words to say what he felt, but he was already too deep in to pull out now. “I think…” he fidgeted with her fingers instead of his own now, “You are, by far, the best person I have ever met and you make me so fucking happy, but also so fucking scared something might happen to you. I might be traumatized after what happened, and I’m sorry if I scared you by being scared, I just don’t ever want to feel so empty again.”

Her heartbeat was still racing out of her chest. 

“I’m in love with you, Eliza,” he said, “I’m so in love with you, it hurts. And I just realized that you — insufferable, reckless you — might just be the only one for me. You are… you are the love of my life, and I don’t say that lightly because well, I have no fucking idea what’s going on inside of me, I just know that you are all I feel and it scares the crap out of me.”

The tears were streaming down her cheeks at this point and he didn’t have time to comprehend before her lips were on his. He held the back of her head, cradled her cheek, and drowned in the love she poured into a single kiss. 

“I thought you were breaking up with me,” she said. 

“I’m sorry, that wasn’t–“

“I’ve never been in love before, so I don’t know much about it, but I do know one thing,” Eliza held his face in her hands as she admitted what had been on her chest for so long, “You are my first and I want you to be my last, which means that you’re the love of my life too and you’re not getting rid of me, no matter how many knives to the stomach or- or alien blasts I have to take for you.”

He breathed a broken chuckle. “I’m so fucking happy to hear that,” he said. “But please, for the love of God, don’t ever take a knife or an alien blast for me again.”

“I can promise you a lot, but I can’t promise you that.”

“I know.”

She placed her head in the crook of his neck. “Take me to bed?” she said. 

He lifted her into his arms, carrying her to the bedroom where he placed her down softly enough so her stitches wouldn’t get disturbed, and he began to strip her of the suit. She was too tired to protest. He helped her into one of his shirts, soon enough returning with his own suit shed in the bathroom and nothing but his boxers and a white shirt on his body.

As Matt settled into bed next to her, her mind began to reel again. The vulnerable love confession was real. She was the love of his life and he was hers. That much she could tell wasn’t a fever dream. They were real, they were made for each other.

What she didn’t know where to sort were the pictures she saw, the infinity stones, or the creature she saw hiding in the distance. The stones screamed her name and the red one seemed to have screamed the loudest, almost like a warning. She saw the galaxy when she fell, and she places and people she recognized but were never the same. And the lines of glitter she saw, the splitting roads at the core of the universe seemed like they had a deeper meaning too, but she couldn’t sort them all, she couldn’t even sort the different colors or where they belonged. They were just there. They existed. It was real, but perhaps not in her reality and another instead. 

“Matt,” she broke the silence. His eyes were closed, but he was still awake. He hummed, telling her he was listening. “Do you believe that there is a multiverse?” the question came out of nowhere, surprising both herself and him. 

She had thought about it, but she never thought she would be asking a devoted catholic such a question. 

“A what now?” he asked. He frowned and paired with the small smile he gave her he looked way too adorable to be real. She traced her finger over his nose just in case. He shivered. He was real. 

“Multiverse,” she said. “Multiple universes existing simultaneously to ours, with different versions of ourselves and a different reality that is under someone else’s control.”

“Like in physics?”

“Yeah, like in physics.”

“Are you asking me if I believe in the string theory, physics, or the possibility of multiple universes in my personal opinion?”

He was just toying with her now, not taking her words too seriously. Considering how tired he was, she couldn’t blame him, and her question sounded too absurd to come out of her rather educated mouth. He blamed it on the concussion, surely, which was why he entertained her thought with amusement. She was serious though and she wanted to know because she was slowly losing her mind, it seemed. She needed to stop herself from splitting in two. 

“Can’t you just answer with what you think?” Eliza looked at him intently, her gaze burning through his closed lids. 

He shrugged. “I don’t know, why?”

“Curiosity. Reality is subjective, after all, and can easily be manipulated. You know what I can do, so I was wondering if you think a multiverse is a possibility that we, as a civilization, should eventually concern ourselves with. It happened with aliens,” she said. “It might happen with the string theory too. It might be proven right. We don’t know.”

“You just answered the question yourself. We don’t know. I guess we’ll find out eventually the same way we found out about life beyond our world. What else do you need?”

“A thought.”

“Do I get a penny?” Matt mused. 

She sighed, “Sure.”

“I believe in God, which means there is only our solar system, our planet earth, and our galaxy. There is no other universe but the one we live in,” he told her, “because there is only one God, and how would a civilization in another universe even exist without a God? Now, I know about biology, but evolution is essentially part of the Bible. God can’t be copied, so he wouldn’t be real outside of this world, and a godless universe seems wrong to me. So no, I don’t think we have more than one universe. We’re just fine with the one we’re living in, don’t you think?”

The statement itself deserved more argumentation, but she was too tired to argue and Matt seemed less interested in the topic than she was, anyway. 

“So,” he raised his eyebrows, “Answer enough for you?”

Eliza, too tired to protest, pecked his lips. “Yes,” she said.

“Okay then. If philosophical questions are what it takes to keep your concussed brain awake, keep ‘em coming.”

But she didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted to sleep. 

“Sleep is off the table,” he read her mind, “It’s too risky.”

“I fell asleep the last time. That was after we had sex, remember? People with concussions shouldn’t have sex either and I am so tired, Matty,” she pouted, “So please, let me sleep.”

He sighed. “Alright,” at the sound of her voice, he could only cave, “but you have to be okay with me waking you every ten minutes to make sure you’re still alive.”

Placing her head on his chest, Eliza inhaled his scent and felt his heart under her fingers. Real. Everything was real.

“That’s okay,” she was already yawning, half asleep.

Placing her head on his chest, Eliza inhaled his scent and felt his heart under her fingers. Real. Everything was real.

His soft 'I love you' was all she heard before she fell asleep.

[heliads]

just a short time chapter five: the system's breaking down

Y/N L/N and Nikolai Lantsov have already fallen in love. They have yet to meet. Their stories are over and done. There is far more to the world than just one series.

this time: Nikolai doesn't like thinking about the time he ran away to be a nobody in a ghost town by the sea. That doesn't stop it from being real, though, nor does it keep him from wanting to become Sturmhond again more than ever.

this chapter's song: glitch

chapter four / series masterlist / chapter six

Nikolai Lantsov almost doesn’t believe he’s going to get away with it until he’s already gone. Running away has been a fever dream of his for some time now. The idea that life in the rest of the city could continue on as normal— just as hollow, as saccharine, as worthless— without him feels impossible. 

Improbable, he should say instead, it feels improbable. Improbable, because today Nikolai has done the impossible and he got out. His fluorescent city is a smudge of light in his rearview mirror, already much too far away to ever have a hold on him again. 

Technically, he already departed the city. Ravka left his sights a while ago under the guise of Nikolai pursuing a university education. That much was true, Nikolai did go to college, but he also managed to get through it much faster than expected due to a masterminded application of previous course credit and placement exams. 

Time spent at the university is still the alibi cloaking him from the sights of the general public, though, and it’s the excuse Nikolai uses now. He was still monitored at college, photographed through the doors of lecture halls and videotaped on his walks throughout campus.

Nikolai didn’t like that very much. Sometimes, when his irritation got the better of him, he imagined running up to the paparazzi and smashing their cameras or ruining their film or doing something, anything, to erase any trace that he’d been there at all. 

He never did. Nikolai knows the expectations for his mother’s son and his father’s heir, he knows how the rumors would run rampant if he were to give the snapping cameras so much as a single sour look. Not only would he be ruined, called callous and cruel and some sick selfish kid who only got where he was because of his father’s money and his mother’s beauty, his parents would be punished as well. The apple doesn’t fall from the tree, and you can take that either way. If his parents were terrible, he surely is as well. If Nikolai’s damned, so are they. 

No, fighting isn’t an option. Running, though, now that’s certainly something. Nikolai first experienced the barest trace of it back in uni, and already it was enough to keep him going. This is altogether different. This is Nikolai sprinting for his life. He swaps cars three times, selling and renting with abandon, and then he’s gone for good.

Nikolai ends up settling in a small town. Nobody knows where it is, not even the occupants. The borough is so obscure it doesn’t even deserve a dot on a map, Nikolai looks at the place and calls it home without a second thought. There is not a single soul in this town that knows who he is, and it is marvelous.

Still, Nikolai has a few close calls his first week. He’s still a newcomer by time of arrival to these particular streets, and he walks and talks like he’s used to money. Nikolai has always been a damned good actor, though, so he decides upon his next role without a second’s hesitation.

They need someone who doesn’t breathe like an outsider, so that’s exactly what he becomes. Nikolai gets a job in town to pay off rent on a small shack near the sea that he thinks has less surface area than his mother’s closet. The walls are patched thrice over, the windows cracked. Nikolai can stand on his threshold and smell the salt on the air, ferried over to him by the waves breaking down the hill. He loves it like a paramour.

Nikolai gets drunk one night and hates the way he looks. He stares at himself in the bathroom mirror, knuckles white as bone around a chipped ceramic sink, and all he can see looking back at himself is his father. There are a thousand and one different rumors that Nikolai isn’t actually Alexander Lantsov’s real son, but at this moment, unlike any other, Nikolai doesn’t believe a word of it.

If he isn’t his father’s son, why does Nikolai see traces of the man in the disappointed set of his eyes, the tight, judgmental sneer that crosses his face when he least expects it? Nikolai wants to scream at people who don’t deserve his rage, that’s his father. He wants to blame the world for things he did to himself, that’s Alexander for sure. Nikolai is young and wants to make even more mistakes to cover up the ones he already committed, but that’s his mother speaking, telling him to keep going, keep hiding until no one knows him at all.

Nikolai steals one more glance, then all but runs out the door. He doesn’t know where he’s going until he blinks and he’s idling in one of the aisles at a nearby convenience store. There’s a box in his hand; it takes a few moments then Nikolai realizes what it is. Hair dye. Red, like dried blood. Nikolai can taste a copper tang on his tongue even before he hands over a few crumbled bills to the cashier so he can stumble back home and try to fix himself up.

It takes far too much time and far too much spilled color, but at the end of it, the early light of new dawn shines through Nikolai’s askew blinds and shows him someone else. Not his father’s son, not anyone his father could even recognize. Standing here, his hands streaked with red, his hair too dark, and his expression shifty, Nikolai knows for certain that he is the kind of arrogant youth who would make his mother cross to the other side of the street. His father would give him a glare, jut his chin out in that same way that makes his disapproval clear. Nikolai usually tries to do anything to avoid that, but today? Today he loves it.

That change, more than just physical, is apparently what Nikolai needed to blend into town for good. On his way back from work, he’s accosted by a group of teenagers about his age. At first, they were angling to jump him, but when Nikolai proves himself more than decent with his fists and beats up a few of them before they can even make him bleed, they change their minds. Then Nikolai has a crew, and he’s really good once he can start clawing his way up.

Nikolai has always enjoyed a good challenge. Once exposed to the complex web of adolescent thugs and convicts, he’s in a whole new world of opportunity. It doesn’t take long for Nikolai to rise up in the relative ranks. He switches gangs twice, merges a few, makes himself an empire.

Soon enough, his accomplishments are tossed around on the streets just as often as the day’s news. He doesn’t like being referred to by his birth name, still not liking the idea that someone could happen to connect the dots between that actor kid who dropped off the map a while ago and Nikolai himself.

With every problem to come his way, though, Nikolai has a knack for finding a solution. The perfect opportunity presented himself, and Nikolai jumped the gun just like he always does. Some tough guy who thought he was better than everyone because he’d been to jail and back tried crossing Nikolai to take over his followers. 

Nikolai was having none of it. The two of them were wary for days, and then the other guy attempted to take him out while he was walking one late night. Instead of caving, Nikolai beat him into a pulp, then set his own dogs on him. He can still remember how it felt that night, the stars watching over him in bright horror as the snapping of bone echoed in his ears again and again. It was the sort of thing you wouldn’t even want to look at in a movie, and this was real, blood moonlit. It did the job, though. No one crossed him after that without a damn good reason. 

It wasn’t a pretty picture when the cops caught him, but Nikolai had a damn good alibi. Every convict in the town was willing to go to bat for him, and when you’ve got dozens of eyewitnesses, no one can come for you. Nikolai is pretty much certain the only reason they backed him up is because they were scared he’d do the same thing to them, but he doesn’t mind that much. Power is still power, and that sort of rush doesn’t leave all that easily.

Besides, it earned him a new name. Sturmhond, they call him, Sturmhond of blood and bone, Sturmhond, the one who’ll kill you just for looking sideways at him. Not all of it is true, but it doesn’t have to be. Nikolai is having a damn good time being Sturmhond, and he isn’t inclined to leave it behind in the slightest. He changed his phone number, his location, now he’s changed his name.

At some point, Nikolai Lantsov will die out entirely. He doesn’t think anyone will be around to mourn. His face looks different now, his gaze hardened, his cheeks hollow. He looks like the sort of young man who’d do anything to get what he wants, and he likes it. He likes it quite a lot. He picks up a truly ridiculous teal coat from some abandoned shipping crate of equally luckless clothing. It’s gaudy and atrocious, perfectly him.

Nikolai manages to convince himself that maybe this is real, this is who he was supposed to be all along. He’s one of the gutter rats now, the kings and convicts who run with knives up their sleeves just to stab them in someone else’s back. He gets high off bringing someone else low, and he loves it. All of it.

And then, just when he’s certain that rock bottom has never felt better, Nikolai meets someone, a girl. She’s from out of town, that much is obvious. Her gaze is just as guarded as Nikolai’s must have been when he came all the way out here for the first time, like she can’t manage to convince herself that anyone crossing in front of her won’t be laying a trap.

Nikolai should just watch her disappear from his line of sight, let her sort out her problems on her own time. Saints know Sturmhond would never trouble himself with anything like a strange girl, especially not one that he’s certain is from the city he killed everything to leave behind.

But she looks so unhappy to be lost, yet so determined to make her way out. Nikolai watches as she stalks through unfamiliar turns like each alleyway is a bully she can best. He isn’t even surprised when he gets up from his perch on someone else’s back fence and heads over to her.

The girl looks to be about his age, he decides, and her eyes widen with a start when he appears out of nowhere. He doesn’t introduce himself, and the name she offers up is not hers but that of a hotel on the other side of town. The nicer part of town, Nikolai realizes, the part he usually doesn’t dare traverse. He is the physical embodiment of the shadow of that bright light, so clean streets and pretty girls aren’t usually included in Sturmhond’s empire.

Still, he isn’t about to tell her that, so he tells her to follow him and sets out into the maze of streets. He could abandon her at any point, or, worse, lead her further from her goal, but he doesn’t. Instead, Nikolai walks purposefully in the right direction. As they draw closer, she starts to lead instead, recognizing familiar landmarks as Nikolai’s grasp on the territory leaves him.

They talk the whole time over, and Nikolai can’t help but be surprised that someone from that damned city would be able to match his snapping wit measure for measure. A few times, Nikolai wants to bite his own tongue, certain that he’s been too rough or clunky for some girl still glowing with the thrill of someone else’s approval, but she just laughs even harder. 

He finds himself watching her out of the corner of his eyes, waiting for her to grow tired of him, but she never does. It makes Nikolai wonder if maybe the city has changed, if maybe there’s room for him there again. If someone like her can belong to it, well, perhaps he can too.

This isn’t what he’s supposed to be doing, what he’s supposed to be feeling. Sturmhond is harsh, uncaring, cruel; he does not fasten himself to strange girls with a stitch of borrowed time. Nikolai doesn’t trust himself to say goodbye to her, unsure if he even could, so he disappears into the shadows again the moment the hotel is within sight. He lingers for a second, halfway down an alley, watching the girl turn around to thank him. Her brow furrows with surprise, and she searches the empty streets for him before eventually settling on nothing and slipping inside.

Nikolai is not aware of the fact that his path will cross with the girl’s anymore. He does not know that their futures are hopelessly, inescapably bound together, that there is no one without the other nor would he ever want there to be. He doesn’t. But you do. 

Even if he never sees her again, intentionally doesn’t go to her concert so he can avoid something stubborn like missing her, Nikolai walks away from that encounter changed. He’s thinking about Ravka again in a way he hadn’t before, and it starts to gnaw at him, tearing open wounds he thought were long since scarred over.

Eventually, his conscience gets to screaming a little too loudly, and Nikolai has no choice but to respond. His actions start developing for the better. He doesn’t rob kids with nothing, he folds them into his ranks. Sturmhond doesn’t capsize random fishing boats for fun, he goes after the big schooners piloted by the corporate bigwigs who don’t pay their taxes and dump refuse in the water. Everything he does benefits the coastal town in some way, even if it isn’t immediately obvious. Framing goodwill as reckless youth gives Nikolai a lot of leeway that others don’t have.

It’s this newfound interest in being on the right side of the line, however, that does Nikolai in at last. Nikolai is coming back late at night, perusing the dark streets in search of trouble, when he stumbles upon some arrogant asshole trying to rob two young people at gunpoint. Usually, this is the part where Nikolai just ignores the whole affair, but he recognizes the gunslinger as someone who owes him money. 

This, of course, is why he challenges the would-be thief, not because of the way the two victims, clearly brother and sister, keep trying to protect each other from the path of potential bullets. Not because Nikolai remembers having a sibling of his own. Not because he wishes he could have counted on Vasily to care even half as much as one of these strangers.

Regardless, he throws a few punches and the kid runs off into the night clutching a broken nose. Nikolai shakes the blood from his hand and moves to leave, but one of the twins– a girl, with close-cropped black hair that makes her eyes stand out even more in the moonlight– calls out to him.

“Nikolai Lantsov?”

Nikolai freezes in his tracks. He didn’t tell anyone in this town his last name, and hardly anyone his first if he could avoid it. Slowly, carefully, he turns back around.

“I don’t know who you’re talking to,” he says as casually as he can, “but it isn’t me.”

The girl shakes her head, moving carefully forward as if she expects him to run like a wild animal. Maybe he will. Neither of them know for sure. “It is. You’re supposed to be at university, right? Saints,” she laughs, “you’re supposed to be blond, too, but it looks like neither of those things turned out true.”

Nikolai glares at her. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but you’ve clearly mistaken me for someone else. I should have just let that kid shoot you.”

“But you didn’t,” the brother presses, “because you’ve got a good heart. Because you got that from somewhere else. You are Nikolai Lantsov.”

It isn’t a question now. Nikolai sighs and, after glancing around to ensure no one can overhear them, fixes his gaze on the pair. “Yes. What do you want?”

The girl sighs in relief. “Thanks for not running. Took us a hell of a time just to find you. You’re too good at covering your tracks. I’m Tamar, by the way. This is Tolya.”

Nikolai’s eyes narrow. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

Tolya nods solemnly. “Your parents need you back. The world needs you back. We recently joined your talent agency, we were tasked with trying to bring you home.”

“I am home,” Nikolai says defiantly, “that place isn’t mine. I appreciate the effort, but tell the agency to get someone else to star in a show or two. My parents’ fame can stand on its own without me mucking things up.”

“Actually,” Tamar argues, “it can’t. Things are starting to come out about Alexander’s relations with a younger model, Genya Safin. Your mother has been under fire as well for refusing to speak out about it. And then there’s Vasily–”

Nikolai cuts her off, already getting the picture. “Alright, so they’re in trouble. Who cares?”

“You do,” Tolya says softly. The worst part is that he might be right.

Still, that doesn’t mean that Nikolai has to like it. “No, I don’t. I left for a reason. I’m not coming with you.”

He turns his back on them before they can argue further. Nikolai storms in silent fury the whole way back. Who do these twins think they are, barging into his town with such a demand? Nikolai doesn’t owe them anything. Ravka isn’t his place, his family has no claim on Nikolai’s legacy. They haven’t cared about him this whole time, but now that they’re broken, they need him back to fix them up. Ridiculous.

Yet Nikolai lies awake the whole night, wondering what it would be like to go back. In truth, this city isn’t Nikolai’s, but Sturmhond’s, and that’s a big difference. There’s a reason Nikolai always feels like he’s playing a part, running with the wrong sort of people in the hopes that it’ll make him feel right. Being Sturmhond has been wonderful, an escape utterly unlike anything Nikolai even dreamed about, but you do have to wake eventually. Maybe this is his call to arms.

Nikolai struggles deep in mental warfare for the next day and night, then comes to a decision. He packs his things, then unpacks them, then packs them again. He drops off his teal coat at the house of his second in command along with a note explaining that he’s leaving again. At roughly three in the morning, Nikolai shows up on the door of Tolya and Tamar’s house. They never told him where they live, but this is his territory and he has a way of figuring out what he wants.

Inside, they’re already awake. Tamar nods, keeping all but the slightest trace of satisfaction from her smirk. “We were waiting for you,” she says, and Nikolai sees the packed suitcases in the corner of the room.

Evidently he was easy to predict. That should anger him, but instead, Nikolai chooses to take it as further proof that this is the choice he was always meant to make.

And so he leaves behind his escape, his dream, his chance at being normal. His destiny has been to live and die in that accursed city, and although it has been paradise to push that off even temporarily, Nikolai could never truly leave, not forever. Fate doesn’t like it when its characters are offstage for too long. Something would always come about to drag Nikolai back, and now here he is.

He was gone for a few years, but it feels like he never spent more than an hour away. Nikolai looks up at the towering skyscrapers and knows that nothing has changed, not really. He stands alone in his new apartment with his blond hair peeking through bloody roots and lets go of the idea that he could ever be anything but this, a Lantsov, a figurehead. When he opens his eyes, he is back again. The prodigal son has returned. It is time to see what horrors he will commit in the name of making things right again.

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[our-time-is-now]

September 26, 2019 (1): You’re not my mother

(previous play)

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Thursday, 2:27 pm:

David: this morning, after saying his goodbyes to Matteo, he showered and put on fresh bandaids before he spent some time with new apartment advertisements but hasn’t found all that many and then he spent some time learning Italian again realizes once again how fun he finds it and immediately sends Matteo a few new sentences that he learned and which somehow fit the situation right now eventually made some fresh coffee and then got comfortable on their bed again at some point, hears the apartment door and frowns slightly because he didn’t expect anyone to already come home at this hour calls toward the hallway Hello?

Laura: doesn’t have to work today because she has too much overtime and because her group in the kindergarten is overstaffed because they have someone trying out for the job today has met up with a friend for brunch and to gossip and is coming home now takes off her shoes when she hears David and calls back Hello! goes to David’s room and immediately goes inside because the door is open Hi, everything okay? Do you need something?

David: hears Laura’s voice and frowns on the one hand, he is happy that she’s here, because since his conversation with her they’re really getting along quite well again, but on the other hand, he’s wondering why she’s already home calls back Hey… then sees her stick her head into the room and smiles No, everything’s good, thanks… scratches his neck I didn’t know that you’d be back early today…

Laura: shakes her head No, I wasn’t at work at all today… sits down on Matteo’s desk chair and rolls a little so that she can look toward David comfortably I have the day off because of overtime and went to brunch with Lizzy at the Bilderbuch-Café… rolls back a little But hey, I wanted to talk to you, anyways… I talked to Mama on the phone, because we’re paying less rent now than we did before. She said she’ll still continue to transfer the same amount. I figured I’d just transfer the difference to your account?

David: looks at her a little skeptical and worried when she says that she didn’t go to work today and wonders if maybe she’s sick but then hears that she has a day off because of overtime and grins slightly Yeah, nice… that’s also nice for a change! turns around on the bed a little and sits down cross-legged, so that he can look at Laura more comfortably nods when she says that she wants to talk to him and at first thinks that it’s about the apartment hunt but then hears what it’s really about and looks at her skeptically Huh? Why?

Laura: frowns when he asks again Huh? What why? doesn’t really know what’s so difficult to understand about it therefore says again We don’t pay as much rent anymore. So there’s money left. You’ll get it. Because I work and earn money, you don’t.

David: slightly shakes his head and laughs quietly when she also asks again and briefly wonders if they’re somehow talking past each other right now then hears her explanation and gets serious again That means because you work I automatically get the money that actually belongs to both of us, even though I can actually manage with my money? Why don’t we just share the money? That would be a lot more logical… and fair.

Laura: frowns, because she finds it really logical Nonsense. What’s logical and fair is that whoever has less money gets more. You have less, so there you go. Besides, you need the money, David, for university stuff, for food, for dates, whatever… shakes her head And I don’t really feel like discussing this with you any further.

David: looks at her pretty flabbergasted, because he feels like she thinks her statements are completely logical, and slightly shakes his head repeats again I can manage with my money, Laura. I don’t need more. then hears that she doesn’t want to discuss it any further and laughs quietly Umm… but I want to discuss this with you?! Where’s the problem with sharing the money? That we both benefit from it? For food, for dates… if you want to, then we can also save it and buy a new couch for the new apartment or something… I don’t care…

Laura: shakes her head when he says that he wants to discuss it Don’t be silly, David… rolls the desk chair back a little and is now more in the middle of the room I don’t understand why you’d decline money, no one does that. Please just accept it. I am responsible for you, I /care/ for you. Now just take the money, alright?

David: frowns when she doesn’t even consider his suggestion and slightly shakes his head Why is that silly? then shakes his head again and laughs quietly Huh? But you also decline money right now. Why is it silly when I do it, but not when it’s you?! then hears the rest of her words and gapes thinks that she can’t be serious and can feel his heartbeat accelerate because he’s so outraged still tries to stay calm, but says pretty determined And so far, I actually assumed that we had something like a flatshare - and not that you /care/ for me or that you are responsible for me… I’m 18, Laura… and even if I weren’t… you’re not my mother.

Laura: pffs slightly Because I already earn money, David. hears him say that she’s not responsible for him and that she isn’t his mother has been rolling back and forth with the chair until now but now stops and stares at him You’re not really serious right now, are you? can feel it seething inside of her and clenches her teeth together finds David ungrateful and childish and can feel it tumble out of her mouth Of course I CARE for you, David. I took you in, you went to school here, I took care of almost everything so that you could stay in Berlin. /I/ was responsible for all of it working out! I want you to do good and that’s suddenly wrong or what? Now I’m mothering you because what? I don’t want you to have to work while you study? I give you money? Oh yes, how awful of me! The good sir suddenly stands on his own two feet. You can hate it as much as you want to, but the fact remains that I’ve been busting my ass for you for half a year now!

David: opens his mouth to contradict Laura several times, but doesn’t have the chance to get a word in instead feels himself getting angrier and angrier, because she’s hitting him with all of this, as if he’d expected or demanded all of this from her takes a deep breath when she finally finishes talking and asks Are you done now!? but only gets an angry look from her and then continues You’re talking as if I am god knows how much of a burden… as if I demanded or expected all of this from you. But I didn’t. You did that voluntarily! It was /your/ suggestion that I come to Berlin to you! And I was happy about it, I thought that it would be cool - a flatshare with my big sister… but instead I’ve only been a fucking responsibility to you all this time?! Thanks a lot… I didn’t demand that you bust your ass for me! I would have managed to do all of this on my own somehow - all you had to do was say that you didn’t really want to have me and the fucking responsibility! Somehow, I’ve always managed everything on my own, but right now you act as if I wouldn’t be able to survive at all without you… only realizes toward the end that he feels some pain in his belly, that he’s gotten louder and really tense can’t believe that Laura really sees him like that

Laura: glares at him when he asks if she’s done immediately starts shaking her head when he starts talking gets up so quickly that the chair rolls back a little You really don’t understand anything, do you? I NEVER said that you were a burden. Burden and responsibility aren’t the same thing, David. And don’t tell me that I didn’t take care of you, because I did! And of course it was voluntary, of course I’d do it again and again, but that doesn’t make it any less of a responsibility! I take care of you because I want to, because you’re my brother, because I want what’s best for you. But I really don’t have to listen to this. What do you even want? A roof over your head, but apart from that I’m supposed to shut up or what? That’s not how it goes! can feel that she’s really angry and that she really can’t believe that David doesn’t understand at all what this is about

David: pffs at the beginning of her speech does think that it absolutely sounds like he’s a burden to her and as if her life would be easier without him frowns when she gets up so quickly and when she looks down on him like that then briefly feels like her words sound a little conciliatory, but then also feels them shift again and that it keeps seething in him and that the well-known flight reflex is rearing its head again also gets up and is annoyed that it still takes so much time, but really wants to be on the same level with her slightly shakes his head and snaps at her I never said that you didn’t take care of me! But I also never said that you /have/ to take care of me. And sorry, and even if you didn’t say that I am a burden… but that's just what it sounds like if you list all the things you did for me, as if I’m a dependent, ungrateful asshole just because I want to share this money with you. You want to know what I want!? Very simple: I want my sister back! And not someone who feels responsible for me in that way and who constantly mothers me as if I wouldn’t be able to deal by myself. You know exactly that I’m grateful to you for being there for me… but if you’re going to accuse me of this for the rest of my life or if you want to use it as leverage… then I can really do without it… reaches for his phone on the nightstand …and I don’t really feel like listening to this anymore right now… feel free to think of this as childish and immature as you want to! Add it to the list… another thing that you can accuse me of the next time we fight… then just leaves her standing there, leaves his room, slips into his shoes in the hallway, grabs his keys and leaves the apartment only realizes once he’s downstairs on the street that right now - for the first time in forever - he really took off again and weirdly enough the first thing he can think of is Matteo and that he promised him not to run away again but then also remembers that he told him that it’s okay as long as he doesn’t run away from him and if he lets him know that he’s doing alright briefly considers going to Matteo, to let off some steam and to whinge about it, but doesn’t want to bother him at work takes a deep breath and thinks for a moment then starts walking toward Alex’ apartment

Laura: listens to him and gets angrier and angrier because he just doesn’t get what it’s about opens her mouth a few times to disagree with him but can’t get a word in but at the end throws in, anyways I don’t want to accuse you of anything! but can see that he doesn’t seem to hear her, at all gapes at him in disbelief when it really looks like he’s going to run away David! Stay here! We’re going to clear this up! Now! but can only look after him as he rushes out of the room actually knows her brother’s flight instinct would usually worry about him, about how he’s doing and where he’s going but now she’s so angry at him that she doesn’t really care rushes out of the room and bangs the door even though no one’s there to hear it retreats to her room

(next play)