#OKAY I have one more on the backlog to edit

[bcdrawsandwrites]

[ID: The first image Psychonauts fanfic banner on a black-to-gray gradient background. On the left in white text it says “Prompt #4: Rescue Mission” On the right is a pink animated figment of a thought bubble, inside which is a donut with frosting and sprinkles.

The second image is a Bad Things Happen Bingo card. Various prompts are marked with a half-brain (prompt requested but not filled) or full-brain (prompt requested and finished) symbol, while the “Rescue Mission” prompt specifically is marked with a full brain symbol. /end ID]

Okay so I hate the way Tumblr crops these so I’m putting the banner above the bingo card. I hope that’s okay, @badthingshappenbingo ​! (also I promise the figment in the banner makes sense for the fic)

I am currently NO LONGER OPEN FOR REQUESTS. I have enough to work on to get a bingo! I MAY decide to reopen prompts later if I want to keep going after finishing these fics, but for now, requests are closed!

This request comes from @echoing-interests​! Hope you liked my take on this. \o/; Thanks to @jaywings​ and @of-science-and-stars​ for beta-reading!

Prompt: Rescue Mission Characters: Sasha Nein, Milla Vodello, and Razputin Aquato Warnings: None

---~~~---

Status report. Dustpan?

Listening to conversations at the water coolers, darling.

Have you gathered the intel?

No, just gossip. It's quite juicy, but I'm keeping an ear out for our target. What about you, Shoehorn?

Searching the trash bins. Sasha flipped through another folder in the file cabinet. The Gastronauts are still terrible at... recycling, so this is taking longer than expected. Eggbeater?

I'm still wondering why we have to use our code names when we're talking through telepathy.

Because the devices Egg Carton gave us to counteract the disruptive waves the Gastronauts put around their base are still experimental, and we don't know that they aren't listening in.

...Are there really devices that can listen in on psychic thoughts?

We don't know yet, darling.

Do you not recall our briefing?

I uh... Raz's mental voice faltered. I... was kinda so excited that we were infiltrating an enemy base that I... forgot to listen.

Sasha's brow furrowed, and he let out a hum. It's a good thing this isn't a more serious mission, or you would be in danger.

Sorry.

Darling, do you at least remember our goal?

Oh! Yeah, got that one. Find the blue—wait! We weren't supposed to relay that over telepathy, were we?

Correct. Can you relay your position?

Affirmative. I'm still in the air vents and looking for the office, as instructed. Over.

Let's resume. Let me know if you find anything.

With that, Sasha TK'd another stack of papers out from the filing cabinet, quickly sorting through them, his eyes darting over the dates. Annoyingly they seemed to jump from January, to March, to November, to May of last year. Either they never referenced their files or they just didn't care how disorganized they were, and he wasn't sure which was worse. Frowning, he slid the papers back into their places and moved onto the next drawer. This went on for some time—there were a grand total of ten filing cabinets in this forsaken clerk's office with four drawers each. This combined with how awful the Gastronauts' bookkeeping was certainly did not make it easy for Sasha to find what he'd been looking for.

At the very least he had a bit of time—this clerk, he'd discovered, liked to take his sweet time with his lunch break, sometimes taking longer than the time allotted. Plus, if their telepathy was intercepted, then whoever tried to investigate them would be looking in the wrong places. Typically for something like this they would've used encrypted telepathy, but Raz had yet to learn it, and the agent that usually taught it was out on a lengthy mission, so they had to fall back on simpler methods. This, at least, was something Raz had no trouble with.

Eggbeater is quite enthusiastic, isn't he? came Milla's voice over telepathy. It was a message sent to him alone, a familiar psychic whisper.

Yes, but his enthusiasm can be a bit... misplaced at times. Finding this stack only had papers from three or four years ago, he sighed and moved on. He needs to pay attention during briefings.

He'll get the hang of things soon, Shoehorn.

I'm sure you're right. Stooping down, he opened the last drawer to find it only had one folder within. He TK'd out its contents, looking them over. Eyebrows raising, he put a hand to his temple. I've only found worthless things here.

That's terrible! We'll have to move on, then, Milla replied with an excitement that did not match her coded words.

Sasha smiled, waiting for Raz's equally-enthusiastic response. As he quickly folded the paper and shoved it into his jacket, however, no reply came. Eggbeater? he asked. Please confirm you received the message announcing my failure.

Perhaps he's forgetting things again, Milla suggested.

Frowning, Sasha sent a stronger signal. Eggbeater? Respond.

His telepathy was met with the almost-physical thud of psychic energy striking against a barrier. Sucking in a breath, Sasha straightened his back. Dustpan, send a message to Eggbeater immediately.

Several heartbeats later, Milla sent an uncharacteristically quiet response: His signal was... blocked.

Change mission objectives immediately. Retreat to base.

Instead of heading for the exit, however, Sasha scanned the darkened office he'd been sneaking around in. Its owner had been out to lunch, but... He hurried up to the desk, spotted a pen, and put his hand on it before shutting his eyes.

Immediately his view was replaced with that of a half-eaten plate of french fries and ranch dressing. (Eugh.) With a subtle suggestion he made the person look up, granting him a better view of what appeared to be a cafeteria. Several other workers were milling about, chatting with each other and eating food. With a few quick uses of clairvoyance, he jumped from person to person, taking a moment to listen to their thoughts.

Ugh, that report is due tonight, gonna have to work overtime.

Can't believe they caught that listening device! That took months to plant.

Man, why are the fries always cold?

While Sasha could feel the anxiety tugging at his mind at finding no information on Raz's whereabouts, at the very least none of these people were aware that there were intruders, meaning that perhaps only a few people had found Raz. The fewer people they had to deal with, the better.

Finally he caught someone that was heading out of the room, and CV'd into her. Meanwhile an encrypted message reached him, and he quickly untangled it: Sasha, have you found anything?

He replied with an encrypted message of his own: I'm currently employing use of clairvoyance to check around the base. A note on the listening device we found in the Motherlobe, but nothing on Razputin.

I'm searching for ripples as we speak. This shouldn't take long.

Yet even now it already felt like they were taking too long. The woman whose head he'd hopped into was walking to the restroom, so he moved from her to a man that was exiting the men's room and striding down another hallway. This one only had a stack of paperwork on his mind, so he jumped from him and over into a person lingering in the doorway of an office. There was nothing of note in there other than a very tired worker holding his head in his hands while the woman in the doorway rambled about the latest football game. The man at the desk finally raised his head. "Rhonda, I know, I know we lost. Man, I can't believe I stayed up to watch that mess." He rubbed his eyes. "I'm so tired I think I'm hearing things—I swear I heard a kid in here earlier."

Sasha gave a start.

Sasha, Milla's encrypted voice came over telepathy. I've got something.

I may have as well.

"Seriously, like, did Jakob bring his kid in again?"

"Nah, we would've heard from Morter if he did."

"True..."

Quickly Sasha compelled the woman in the doorway to glance out into the hall, and from there, jumped into a different person's head through another open door. Some people here may have heard Raz's voice, he replied quickly. I may be close to where he was taken. He took a moment to listen in on the worker's thoughts, and upon finding only an extreme longing for donuts, he jumped to the next worker he could spot. What have you found?

I may have pinpointed where Raz was taken. Raz's signal is blocked entirely, but I've found a man who's very intently focused on a child, in a storage room...

Sasha's stomach dropped, his mind racing to several different conclusions, none of them positive. Perhaps a secret interrogation room, he thought frantically, compelling the man he'd jumped into to glance around the hallway. Sure enough, he spotted a storage room, but the door was shut. Frustration gnawing at his astral consciousness, he tried to send a subliminal urge to the man to grab some files that had definitely been put in that particular storage room.

What? the man thought. Where'd that come from? That one doesn't even have files in it, that's in the one on the second floor.

Gritting his teeth, Sasha sent another subtle signal: Someone left a very important file in there and it will get lost if I do not grab it.

...Oh yeah, Elliot dropped his report in there last time. Ugh.

With a sigh, the man fished in his pocket for a key before moving to open the door.

"Uh-uuhhhh hang on, occupied!" a frantic voice came from inside, followed by a lot of scrambling and clanking.

"Wha'd'you mean, 'occupied'?" the man outside asked. "You're in the device storage, Morter, not the bathroom!"

"Look I'm—I'm conducting something in here, okay?"

"Conducting... what, exactly?"

"An... interview?"

The man outside groaned. "Man, why don't you interview applicants in your office? What've you got one for if you're just—"

"R-Rhonda wouldn't shut up."

"...Ah, got it." Sighing, he shook his head. "Look, did Elliot leave his report in there?"

"I... oh. Huh, he did."

"Just hand it to me, and I'll leave you and the new guy alone, okay?"

"R-right."

Sasha readied himself, and the second the door cracked open, he jumped into the man—Morter's, apparently—head. Sure enough, once the man turned around he found himself staring at a dimly-lit room with shelves and shelves of boxes and strange devices he didn't have time to analyze.

And in the middle of the room was a metal chair, with Raz sitting on it, bound and gagged, a look of fear and worry in his eyes. The counter-device Otto had provided him with was sitting on the floor a distance off, too far away to properly block the disruptive waves around the building. He jumped into Raz's head, taking a quick read of his thoughts.

Oh no, oh no, please don't come back here, this isn't good...!

He'd seen enough.

Don’t worry, Eggbeater, we’re on our way.

Without waiting for a response, Sasha yanked his consciousness back to his own body, shutting his eyes against the dizziness it brought. He pressed a hand to his temple, fingers digging in so hard they hurt. I've found him. He's in danger.

There was silence on Milla's end for a moment. When she replied, her mental voice was cold. We've known the Gastronauts could do questionable things... but placing a child in danger...

There's no time to waste.

Nothing more needed to be said. Sasha levitated up into the ceiling vent he'd initially come out of, closing it behind himself and crawling through. He'd come to this place a number of times for routine missions, but he was less familiar with the location of the device storage. He'd seen the cafeteria before, so if he could remember where that was from his current position, and build a mental map of where he'd gone to find the door to storage...

It wasn't the first time he'd had to do something like this, yet for once he was having trouble focusing; the longer he took to do this, the more likely it was that Raz could get hurt. How he was being hurt, he wasn't sure, and not knowing only worried him more.

A hand—one that wasn't truly there—gently rested on his shoulder before squeezing it. Sasha, Milla said, and he shook his head, bringing himself back into focus. Silently he crawled through the vents, heading in a direction just west of the cafeteria. Milla, meanwhile, was disguised as a Gastronaut herself, and navigating the building below him, moving over to where she'd felt the waves. Sasha could feel the frustration bubbling on her end when an actual Gastronauts agent stopped her to ask some questions, but he moved on, heading closer and closer to the storage room.

A wailing noise, distorted through the vents, made the hair on his neck stand on end.

It was coming in the direction of the storage.

Sasha was over the vent cover in moments, and with a single psi-blast knocked it off its screws and sent it crashing to the ground. He followed seconds later, landing a bit more roughly than usual, one hand to his temple. On the opposite side of the room, Milla slammed the door open, her presence filling the doorway.

Both of them stood partially crouched, one hand to their temple... until they took in the sight before them.

Raz was still sitting on the chair, no longer gagged, while the man that Sasha had caught a glimpse of earlier was now lying on the floor, hands covering his face as he sobbed. Between them sat Raz's Psycho-Portal. Upon seeing Sasha and Milla barging into the room, Raz whipped his head around, eyebrows raised in surprise.

"Oh! Hi, guys!"

Slowly Sasha and Milla straightened their backs, lowering their hands as they both stared at him.

"...Razputin. What."

Raz shrugged sheepishly. "I felt your CV earlier, but I was kinda preoccupied with helping Morter, and I was also really worried that his coworker would come in here and see us. Which, speaking of—Milla, can you shut that door?"

Blinking, Milla stepped into the room and shut the door softly behind her. "Who's... Morter?"

"ME!" the man on the floor cried, scrubbing the snot and tears from his face.

"But don't worry! We've got it all settled now. D'you mind untying me, though? I was gonna ask Morter, but..." He lowered his voice to a stage whisper, "I think he's kinda having a moment right now."

Sasha felt oddly lightheaded as he stepped up to Raz, using telekinesis to untie the ropes that bound him. "So you're not hurt?"

"I feel a little stiff now that you mention it," Raz said as he hopped down. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his legs. "I think I can walk it off, though."

"We... may have caused a bit of commotion," Milla remarked, glancing back toward the door. "I think we should take our leave."

"Already?" Frowning, Raz snatched up his Psycho-Portal, hurried over to Morter, and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, I gotta go. Sorry I couldn't stay longer. But you're gonna stand up to Jakob from now on, right?"

Morter raised himself up onto his knees, scrubbing at his face again. "Y-yes!" he sobbed. "I will!"

"Great! Glad to hear it." Giving him a positive thump on the back, Raz stood up straight and hurried over to Sasha. "Are we heading back through the vents?"

"...Yes."

"Okay, got it. See you later, Morter!" He paused. "Please don't rat us out to your bosses, okay?"

"I-I—I won't!"

"Thanks!" Grinning, Raz hopped up onto his levitation ball and bounced up into the vent. Sasha and Milla exchanged bewildered glances before following.

Once they were out of the building and heading back to where they'd arranged for Oleander to pick them up, Milla finally spoke up: "So... can you tell us what happened in there?"

With a wince, Raz ducked his head. "Yeah, so, I kinda got caught..." Then his head shot back up, and he held up his hands. "But it's okay! 'Cuz Morter took me into that storage room—he wanted to interrogate me, I think, but I saw he was all stressed out, and I asked him about what was wrong, and he talked about how he's this office worker and this one agent keeps bullying him and dumping all this work on him and making him watch his kid at work, and... I kinda... asked if he'd like me to take a look around in here." He tapped on his head. "He was actually kinda curious about how we do that kinda stuff, so he agreed, and... I... kinda helped him sort things out from there." Raz paused, then screwed up his face. "His mental world was a daycare."

Sasha laughed, quite a bit louder than he'd intended, and Milla and Raz stared at him. "That's... quite remarkable, Razputin."

"You think so?" Raz smiled, only for his face to fall as he glanced aside. "I was... kinda worried that I wasn't doing as well on this mission, especially since I missed so much of the briefing."

Milla stooped down closer to him to give him a grin. "You did amazing, darling!"

"Awesome! Man, for a bit there I was worried we weren't gonna pull that mission off."

"Well, about that..." Frowning, Sasha pulled the paperwork he'd found out of his jacket. "I did find the new employee paperwork, but we weren't able to secure the blueprints for their newest device."

"...Oh, yeah! Almost forgot. I did get taken to device storage, so at one point while Morter's back was turned..." Glancing over his shoulder, Raz TK'd a rolled-up sheet of paper out of his backpack.

Sasha and Milla exchanged glances, both of them giving a relieved smile as they looked back down at Raz.

"You really are something, Agent Aquato."

[sysig]

Goal: Be normal

Obstacle: Watching literally any interpretation of Treasure Island, apparently

[seventh-district]

oh my god i can’t decide what to do with my time today

[real-total-drama-takes]

Important! PLEASE READ!

Hi everyone!

So, it’s been a while. There’s been a lot of people asking where I’ve been/if I’m okay/when I’ll update the blog again. I’m sorry I left you guys in the dark! My personal life has been crazy busy and I couldn’t find the time to sit down and type up an explanation. I wanted to be thorough, but more than that, I wanted to be accurate about what the future of this blog looks like. So, without further ado, here’s the long awaited update post.

This blog is going to be taking a hiatus. I love the total drama fandom with my whole heart and soul, but there are also a lot of weirdos who turn up in my ask box. It only takes one look at TD reddit and all of the homophobic/transphobic/racist content on there to know what I’m talking about. Not to mention— things got WAY worse with the td2023 season 2 drop. In short, it’s exhausting to deal with. When I first started this blog, it was significantly easier for me to manage the toxicity, but now I work in a position where dealing with bigotry is sort of an important part of my job. It’s become way too draining on me. At least— for the time being.

This hiatus is NOT permanent, and I will come back to tumblr some day. I don’t want to set a specific time frame for fear that just won’t be feasible, but I won’t be gone forever. I’ve seen so much love from this fandom, so I could never abandon it. So many people have sent me well wishes over the past few months, and it has genuinely made me emotional at times. I love you guys so much.

Okay. The last thing I want to say is this. I am going to post the backlog of asks currently sitting in my inbox, so this blog will continue to update. The ask box will be closed, but replies are on for all my posts, so there can be continued conversation. This post will take the place of my current pinned post until I decide to come back to tumblr.

Thank you guys SO much. I am so grateful for (almost) all of you. I love you 🩷

EDIT: I am SO sorry for worrying everyone by not posting for a while. I should’ve hopped on to let everyone know I was at least okay way sooner. I am okay, I’m not dead, and I am really sorry for causing concern.

[ladykailitha]

Not All That Glitters is Gold Part 15

The second part being released today. And it's looking like people really want more of this AU. Which, I really should have seen coming.

So once I get my backlog up for Moonlight and Indiana (I just need to write one more chapter each to get the stories up to three chapters) I will start working on it for you.

And because I've been zooming past my daily goal of 400 words a day (I'll often get 1500-2000 words a day) I've decided as a way to pump the breaks so that I don't get too far ahead again is to spend my evenings editing stories for my beta to edit for AO3. I already have one in the works, I'm just waiting for her final edits to put it up on AO3.

In this we have Steve being awesome at what he does, he dodges one hell of a bullet because Robin is awesome, and Eddie falls just a little more in love with Steve.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14

****

Steve was busy leading up to Eddie’s rut, Chrissy being right about him getting more clients just from being on Eddie’s arm.

Everyone clamoring to see what it was that made Eddie fall head over heels in love with the omega escort.

Steve ate up the attention. He had talked to Eddie about the actress and how it made him feel.

Suddenly Eddie was all apologies. The actress was a good friend of his and he had just been so excited to see her that he forgot what it would look like to Steve. Especially since Eddie hadn’t introduced them. Plus it had left Steve open to Tommy’s sneering.

Steve had backpedaled then. He hadn’t meant for Eddie to make a big deal out of it. He had thought that Eddie would apologize, they’d fuck about it and Steve would learn that with Eddie being as famous as he was, Steve would just have to learn to share him.

But Eddie wouldn’t let him. He had hurt Steve’s feelings over something that he could have and should have avoided. Now he knew why Tommy’s words had stung as badly as they had.

So he showered Steve with all the affection in the world. Taking him on picnics to the beach one day and bowling and miniature golf the next. Fancy dinners and shopping sprees. Intimate to formal, fun to stately. Concerts and plays.

Every spare moment Steve had was spent being wined and dined by Eddie.

The courting was intense, but then again so was Steve. He liked intense, he was intense.

Steve was getting ready for a final rut, before Eddie’s next week when Robin called him up.

“Hey, what’s up?” Steve asked in confusion. “What’s up?”

“Management just flagged the client.”

Steve’s blood ran cold. It took a lot for management to flag a client. They always did checks on their clients before letting them hire their escorts. But sometimes they’ll do a deeper check if they feel something is off.

“What caused the flag?”

“Something in the wording,” Robin said. “I had been trying to pin down where I had heard it before. It was only yesterday I realized it sounded like some of the stuff the alpha from the Grammy’s was spouting as we hauled his ass out of the venue.”

If Steve was cold before, now his spine was ice. “Holy shit.”

Robin hummed her agreement. “So I had Hopper dig deeper. It’s–it’s not good, Steve.”

“Just tell me.”

“The idiot had used his real accounts to plot your kidnapping after going through all the work to hide who he was to the company,” Robin said grimly.

Steve sat down on the sofa with a thump. “Was he–did he know where I–Robin I’m scared.”

“I’m already in the elevator, babe,” she said softly. “He doesn’t know where you live or even where Eddie lives, okay? Starcourt alerted his security detail as soon as the plot was uncovered.”

Steve breathed out a sigh of relief. “That’s good. Will I still be able to service his rut?”

“Yes,” she said, “I’m at your door, I’ll tell you all about it, face to face, okay?”

“Okay.”

Robin let herself in and hurried over to the sofa to throw her arms around him.

“Everything is okay,” she promised. “There hasn’t been a successful kidnapping of a Starcourt omega since the 1940s. Trust us, we’ve got this on lock.”

Steve nodded. “Tell me about Eddie’s rut.”

Robin grinned mischievously. “You’re going to love it.”

“Oh?” Steve’s interest was piqued. That interest drew him from his fear and anxiety, just like she knew it would.

“It’s going to happen here.”

Steve’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit!”

“It gets even better,” Robin said sing-song.

“How could it get any better than that?” Steve asked once he had picked his jaw up off the floor.

“Management is letting him know where you live,” she squealed.

Steve’s hands went to cover his mouth. “Shut up! Tell me everything!”

So she did.

She broke down what would happen if Eddie’s rut broke through the scent.

She went over the different things that would happen due to it being in Steve’s room with his nest, but it was amazing news.

“What made them decide to let Eddie in on the secret?” Steve asked when she was done.

Robin set down her tablet she had used to go over all the information and turned her full attention to him.

“Because he tried to cancel his rut servicing with you but with you still getting paid because he was worried that you might be followed to his place,” Robin explained.

Steve blushed a deep red.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

He looked up at her with glistening eyes. “He really loves me, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, yes he does.”

****

Steve didn’t have any other clients that week, so he spent the week getting his penthouse suite ready for his alpha. He already knew Eddie’s favorite snacks and how he could just eat handfuls and handfuls of trail mix as long as there weren’t raisins. So Steve subtly tried out other dried fruits and found he loved dried apricots. So those replaced the raisins.

Protein shakes were okay as long as they had some chocolate in them. But he could tell if there was any herbs to them. Thyme, basil, you name it, if it was there, Eddie wouldn’t drink them.

It was actually kind of fun tailoring the rut servicing to what Eddie enjoyed. Cotton sheets over satin. Certain brand of bottled water. How often he was lucid during the five days.

His nest was carefully packed away into another room, so that Eddie’s scent didn’t get embedded into the materials. There would be plenty of time for that when they bonded, doing it too soon could result in a faux bond and Steve would get sick.

Which was the last thing either of them wanted.

Steve was fluffing the pillows for the millionth time when Robin radioed that Eddie was about to pull up. He made his way to the front of the hotel and watched as Xander pulled up to the curb.

Eddie stepped out onto the pavement and looked up at the hotel in shock.

“La Rose?” he asked Steve in confusion. “Isn’t this where we met up for drinks after my interview?”

Steve grinned, taking Eddie’s bag from Xander. They walked past the hotel bar and Eddie turned to him.

“Holy shit!” he gasped. “It is! I thought we met up here.”

Steve giggled. “We did. I just came down the elevator instead of arriving by car.”

“How the hell did you manage that?” he asked, bumping Steve’s shoulder with his own.

“Robin,” Steve said proudly. “She can work any magic she wants to with management. I swear she has blackmail information on key members.”

Eddie threw back his head and laughed. “That sounds like Buckley.”

They finally got to Steve’s floor and he pointed to a room to the far right. “That is where you’ll be taken if I go into a mini heat.”

“Wouldn’t they want me to be far away from you as possible?” Eddie asked.

Steve shook his head. “They want to whisk you away to a nearby room on the same floor so your scent could calm me down and help me through my heat. If they took you off the premises I could get rejection sickness.”

Eddie blinked at him a moment.

“Oh.”

Steve smiled and led the way to the door that would lead to his apartment. He opened the door and moved out of the way so Eddie could enter first.

“Wow, Stevie,” Eddie murmured. “This is amazing. You live here all by yourself?”

“On this floor,” Steve answered. “Have a seat, we’ll talk about the coming rut and then get you settled. I’ll just put your bag in my bedroom.”

Eddie did as he was told, sitting on the nice fluffy sofa.

“All right,” Steve said, sliding onto the sofa next to Eddie. “So walk me through your ruts, what happens?”

Eddie squirmed a little. This was Steve Harrington, professional escort, and not Stevie, his hot omega boyfriend speaking.

“My pre-ruts start hard and fast,” he said, rubbing his chin in thought. “Then they last five days and I’m barely lucid through them. It’s how I got caught by that omega who told me they were infertile. I wasn’t conscious for much of it.”

Steve nodded. “When do you lower the light in wherever it is that you spend your rut?”

Eddie blinked at him. “Lower the lights, what do you mean? You don’t have sex with the lights on?”

“You’ve always had light on during your ruts, even at night?” Steve asked, tilting his head to the side.

“Not lucid enough to turn them off,” he said with a shrug.

Steve picked up a remote from the coffee table and closed the drapes and dimmed the lights.

He could see the physical change that came over Eddie. His shoulders relaxed and his eyelids drooped. His skin color which had been pale and clammy when he arrived was starting to get color back in his cheeks.

He tilted his head up as he examined the lights. “What is this feeling? I feel warm and drowsy.”

Steve sighed. “It’s how ruts are supposed to start. But it’s not mentioned in health class or anything. The bright lights signify to our poor little lizard brains that we’re still out in the open where we can be attacked, instead of safe in our caves. It wasn’t until the advent of modern light that it was ever a problem for alphas, but the science of it has come a long way in recent years.”

“Huh.”

Eddie rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “You think that’s why I’ve had trouble staying lucid because I’ve been forcing myself to be on high alert all the time?”

“Could be,” Steve agreed. “But even if it isn’t, you can trust me to keep you safe. I will not trick you and I will not harm you. You want condoms on all the time, I will be sure to change them as often as required. I’ve been on birth control for twelve weeks as you requested.”

Eddie blushed. “Thanks for sending me the video of you taking the pill every day, that must have been so humiliating for you.”

Steve shrugged. “I’m an escort, the amount of humiliating things I’ve had to do, that doesn’t even make the top twenty.”

“What, now?”

Steve laughed. “Alphas will sometimes hire us for humiliation roleplays. Did a fair number of those before I was big enough to reject them. But I know a couple of omegas that live for that shit, so if a new omega is really uncomfortable with it, the roleplay will be passed to one of them.”

Eddie blinked again. “Darlin’, the more I learn about your profession the more intrigued I am.”

“At least you’re intrigued,” Steve chuckled. “Most aren’t. They tend to be pearl clutchers about it.”

“Not even the highest paid actresses have to do the kind of work you do,” Eddie breathed. “Why aren’t there award shows for you escorts?”

Steve smiled sweetly. “Because it’s all confidential. But maybe I can convince a couple of my friends to do our own version of that for booze and prizes. I think it’d be a hit.”

Eddie grinned. “Oh to be a fly on that wall.”

Steve reached out and rubbed his arm. “How are you feeling? Is the pre-rut still progressing or have you hit full rut yet?”

Eddie frowned as he took stock of his body.

“Still in pre-heat,” he said thoughtfully. “Huh. My uncle was a beta, so he wasn’t able to teach me this sort of shit, but you would have thought that someone along the line would have said something.”

“The education in this country is still woefully behind for anything regarding sex,” Steve said ruefully.

Eddie snorted. That was like calling a hurricane a little summer storm.

“But at least they teach you this shit,” he said.

Steve grinned. “Indeed they do teach me this shit.”

He got to his feet and gently led Eddie to the bedroom. He got undressed and sat down on the bed. He took Eddie’s hand and directed it to his thighs.

“Is it time, baby?” Eddie murmured, looking down at this beautiful, smart, talented omega in utter awe.

“Almost, alpha,” Steve purred. “But being in bed when it hits is easier on the knees.”

Eddie cackled and Steve’s omega chirped happily.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he cooed back, “the things that cute little noise does to me.”

Steve laid down on the bed, as pretty as a picture and oh how Eddie wanted.

He got undressed and slid the first condom on. He straddled Steve’s hips and kissed him deeply.

“Oh, Stevie,” he murmured. “I feel so good.”

Steve stroked Eddie’s cheek. “And I promise it will continue to feel good for the next five days.”

Eddie looked into his eyes and believed him.

****

Part 16 Part 17

Tag List CLOSED: @mira-jadeamethyst @rozzieroos @redfreckledwolf @emly03 @itsall-taken

@spectrum-spectre @estrellami-1 @zerokrox-blog @swimmingbirdrunningrock @gregre369

​@a-little-unsteddie @chaosgremlinmunson @chaoticlovingdreamer @messrs-weasley @goodolefashionedloverboi

@maya-custodios-dionach @val-from-lawrence @i-must-potato @danili666 @carlyv

@wonderland-girl143-blog @justforthedead89 @bookworm0690 @bookbinderbitch @yikes-a-bee

@littlewildflowerkitten @vecnuthy @scheodingers-muppet @y4r3luv @cinnamon-mushroomabomination

@genderless-spoon @anne-bennett-cosplayer @awkwardgravity1 @irregular-child @nburkhardt

@apomaro-mellow @yellowdevilkitten @eyehartart @mangoinacan13 @demolvr

@ellietheasexylibrarian @rememberthatiloveyou @slowandsteddie @r0binscript @alyelf

@melodymeddler @mogami13 @annabanannabeth @disrespectedgoatman @manda-panda-monium

[five-rivers]

The next part of my pollfic! You guys got me with a tie last time. I tried my best!

Previous.

(Edited to actually put the poll in, sorry about that.)

.

For a moment, Danny was paralyzed by indecision.  Who should he go to?  Who should he help?  But then he remembered that this wasn’t a combat situation.  He could help both, one at a time.  

There were, perhaps, some negative side effects from spending his formative years as a ghost as a superhero and satisfying his Obsession through combat.  It was very unfortunate.  Useful in combat!  Less so at other times.  

But he should ask the large man first, or else by the time he finished translating for the attendant he might be done.  He inched closer, hovering so he could actually see what the man had spread out on his table.  

His heart sank when he saw clay tablets and papyrus scrolls covered with the tiny, black squiggles of Coptic.  

Danny knew a fair amount of Akkadian cuneiform.  While Pandora tended to focus on the immediately and practically applicable when it came to language lessons, Clockwork had a more chronological method.  As in, he seemed intent on teaching Danny languages in the order of when they were first written down, except for when a certain language was necessary for one of the time field trips he sometimes sent Danny on.  

(He had not, perhaps, revealed the extent of those trips to his parents.  A story for another time.)

Coptic was, sadly, not among those.  

Still.  He was a bit more concerned about the expressions of abject suffering the man was making.  

“Um, excuse me?  Sir?  Are you alright?” asked Danny.  He bobbed in the air, near the man’s shoulder.  “Do you need help?”

The man looked up in clear surprise, eyes flicking over Danny from head to toe.  Not that there was a whole lot of Danny to look over right now.  “Ah,” he said, “I am afraid I have reached beyond my grasp, but unless you have the Coptic and the language of Blessed Sargon both, it is not to be.”

“I know some Akkadian.  I could translate it into English and then you can put it into Coptic?” suggested Danny. 

“Alas, I am going the other way,” said the man, pulling slightly on his curly beard.  “The Coptic, into mine own language, yes?”

“Oh,” said Danny, deflating further.  “Okay.  Sorry.  You just looked, um…”

“Wait,” said Dad.  “He’s from ancient Sumeria?  Ask him what that was like!  He’s got to know so much stuff!”

Danny was not going to ask him that.  That would be rude, considering how hard he was working, and edged just a little too close to asking a stranger about their death for Danny’s peace of mind.  

“That is very dear of you, to come see,” said the large man.  “Perhaps after this, our paths cross again, hm?”

“Maybe,” said Danny.  “Sorry for interrupting you.”

The man waved him off, already refocusing on his tablets.  Danny gathered up his things and hurried to the attendant’s desk only to discover that she had been watching him.  But for how long?

“Hi!” he said, a little nervous from the pressing need of his Obsession.  “I finished this translation, and I was wondering if I could help you out with the others you mentioned?  Or other Elysian ones?”

The attendant stared at him for a long moment, and Danny got the distinct and vaguely embarrassing sense that his Obsession had been correctly clocked.  

Then her face scrunched up into the expression people made when they had seen something indescribably cute.  Ugh.  

“Oh my goodness,” she said, “that’s so lovely and sweet of you to offer!  Like I said, we have a pretty big backlog, so any help you can give us there is greatly appreciated.  But… if you don’t mind doing something that isn’t strictly translation, there’s something else you can help us with that needs Elysian Greek.  Among other things.”“Er, Danno,” said Dad, “why are we doing this?  I thought you just wanted to give us a look around the library?”

[matchagyudon]

Showdown! Aquatic Fight!! ~Kazutora Hanemiya ver~

tl note: doing a bit of backlog with some pazuribe events, only because i like baji, kazutora, and chifuyu haha. sorry if the format is off, i just paste from docs. but enjoy~

Showdown! Aquatic Fight!! ~Kazutora Hanemiya Edition~ (google.com)

Chifuyu Matsuno おぉ〜！ ここがアクアティックフェスか！ Ohhh~! So this is the Aquatic Festival!

Takemichi Hanagaki 水上スポーツ体験 海の生き物のふれあいコーナー・・・・色々あるけどどこに行く？ They have water sports, even an area where you can touch the sea animals… There’s all sorts of things, where should we go?

Chifuyu Matsuno 悩むなぁ・・・ I don’t even know where to start…

Keisuke Baji イルカショーまで結構時間あるし There’s still some time to kill before the dolphin show.

Keisuke Baji 好きなとこから 回ればいいんじゃねぇの？ Why don’t we just circle around, starting from the one you like the most?

Chifuyu Matsuno 場地さんは 行きたいとこないんすか？ Is there anywhere you want to go first, Baji-san?

Keisuke Baji あぁ～そうだな・・・ Aah~ well…

Kazutora Hanemiya よぉ！ 行きたいとこねぇならココー緒に行こうぜ！！ Hey-o! If you can’t decide, why don’t we all go together, over there!!

Keisuke Baji うぉ！ んだよ、一虎か Woah! The hell’s with you, Kazutora?

Kazutora Hanemiya マイキー達は フード食いに行くっていうしさ… Mikey and them went to get some food…

Kazutora Hanemiya ココ！行こうぜ！ 巨大迷路！！ But there! Let’s go there! The huge maze!!

Takemichi Hanagaki 巨大迷路ですか？ A maze?

Kazutora Hanemiya そうそう！迷路だけど対戦型 ゲームになってるんだってよ 面白そうじゃね？ Yeah! They even made a game out of it, don’t that sound fun?

Takemichi Hanagaki えーとなになに・・・「迷路を駆使しながら頭、肩、腰に紙風船をつけて Okay, let’s see… “A round-robin competition where teams of 2 aim for…

Takemichi Hanagaki 水鉄砲で狙い合う 2人1組の総当たりマッチです。」？ the paper balloons attached to the head, waist, and shoulders using water guns”?

Chifuyu Matsuno へぇ〜そういう感じなのか！ 面白そうすね Ah, so it’s like that! Actually sounds kinda fun.

Kazutora Hanemiya だろだろ？ な！一緒に行こうぜ！ Righttt? Come on, let’s all go!

Chifuyu Matsuno どうしますか？場地さん Is that alright with you, Baji-san?

Keisuke Baji いんじゃね？ 行くとこ悩んでたし 面白そうだしな Don’t you guys wanna try? It don’t matter to me, don’t worry bout it. Sounds cool, anyways.

Kazutora Hanemiya よっしゃ！ じゃあしゅっぱ一つ！！ Hell yeah! Alright, move out!!

…

Kazutora Hanemiya チームはこれで決まりか～ 場地と組みたかったな〜 I guess we’ll team up like this then… I kinda wanted to be with Baji…

Takemichi Hanagaki （一虎君とチーム・・・不安しかねぇ！！） (Teaming up with Kazutora… makes me a little worried!!)

Chifuyu Matsuno 頑張りましょうね！ 場地さん！！！ Let’s do our best, Baji-san!!!

Keisuke Baji おー やるからにはぜってぇ勝つぞ！ Yeah, if we’re gonna do this, we’re definitely gonna win!

Takemichi Hanagaki あ、そろそろ始まるみたいっすよ Oh, it looks like it’s gonna start soon.

Kazutora Hanemiya ！いいこと思いついた♪負けたチームは罰ゲームな！ じゃ！負けねぇから～ I just thought of something fun ♪! How about the winning team gets to do whatever with the losing team! So! Make sure not to lose~

Takemichi Hanagaki え！待ってください！ 一虎君！！ Eh, wait a sec! Kazutora!!

Keisuke Baji あ、おい！ 言い逃げしてんじゃねぇ！！ Hey! Don’t run off after sayin’ somethin’ like that!!

Chifuyu Matsuno オレたちも行きましょう！ 場地さん！ We better get goin’ too, Baji-san!

Keisuke Baji はぁ〜 そうだな、行くぞ千冬！ Haah… Yeah, let’s go Chifuyu!

Chifuyu Matsuno はい！！！ Yessir!!!

…

Chifuyu Matsuno クソッ！ 場地さんと逸れちまった・・・！ Damn it! I got separated from Baji-san…!

Chifuyu Matsuno 思ってたより迷路が複雑だな 早く場地さんと合流しねぇと！！ This maze is turning out to be a lot more complicated than I thought… I better meet up with Baji-san quickly!!

??? ばーん！！ Pow!!

Chifuyu Matsuno おわっ！！ あぶね！！！ Crap!! That was close!!!

Kazutora Hanemiya ���変わらず反射神経やべーな 千冬♪ As always, your reflexes are pretty insane, Chifuyu ♪

Chifuyu Matsuno 一虎君こそ相変わらず 奇襲っすか Always with the surprise attacks, Kazutora-kun.

Kazutora Hanemiya サバゲーの時と同じだと思うなよ！？ Ain’t this like the airsoft game that one time!?

Chifuyu Matsuno それはこっちのセリフっすよ！！ That’s my line!

Kazutora Hanemiya オラオラ！どうした千冬！ そんなもんか！？ Take that! What’s wrong, Chifuyu! Is that all you’ve got?

パァン！ Bam!

Chifuyu Matsuno クソツ！ Crap!

Kazutora Hanemiya 結構息上がってんなぁ？ もう限界か？ You’re breathing pretty heavy there, aren’t ya? You already done?

Chifuyu Matsuno なめてもらっちゃ困るぜ今から大逆転決めてやりますよ！ Don’t underestimate me, I’m boutta make my comeback!

Kazutora Hanemiya そうでなくっちゃなぁ！！ I sure hope so!!

Chifuyu Matsuno オラァ！！ Take this!!

パァン！ Bam!

Kazutora Hanemiya おっと！ Woah!

Chifuyu Matsuno （一虎君の風船は1個潰せた・・・けど足場のせいか消耗がすごい） (I managed to get one of Kazutora-kun’s balloons… but all this footwork is wearing me out.)

Kazutora Hanemiya 1個潰されちゃったか・・・でもまだまだだな！！ You actually managed to get one… but we’re not done yet!!

Chifuyu Matsuno あぶね！！ クソ・・・負けねぇぞ！！ 一虎君！！！ Crap!! Damn… I ain’t losin’!! Kazutora-kun!!!

Kazutora Hanemiya やってみろや！！！ Come and get it!!!

Kazutora Hanemiya イエーイ！オレの勝ち！ Hell yeah! That’s a win for me!

Chifuyu Matsuno クソッ！ すみません・場地さん！！ Damn! I’m sorry, Baji-san!!

Kazutora Hanemiya でもギリギリで風船残り1個にされちまったな・・・ And just in time too, I only had one balloon left…

Kazutora Hanemiya 場地が3個風船残ってたら流石に相手するのきちぃかも If Baji still has all three balloons, that’s gonna be too much to deal with.

Takemichi Hanagaki あ！！ 一虎君こんなところに！ Ah!! Kazutora-kun, there you are!

Kazutora Hanemiya おせぇよタケミチ〜 ってオマエ2個も 風船潰されてんじゃん You’re slackin’, Takemitchy~ … you lost two of your balloons already?

Kazutora Hanemiya 何してんだよ〜 What’re you even doing?

Takemichi Hanagaki え！ 一虎君も一緒じゃないすか！ Hah? It’s cus you weren’t with me!

Kazutora Hanemiya オレは千冬相手にしてたんだから仕方ねぇだろ I can’t help it, I was dealing with Chifuyu.

Takemichi Hanagaki 千冬相手にって・・・ え！千冬風船全部潰れてんじゃん With Chifuyu… Huh? All his balloons are gone.

Chifuyu Matsuno うっせ！！ Shut up!!

Kazutora Hanemiya うし、場地探すか Alrighty, time to look for Baji.

Takemichi Hanagaki 今度は置いてかないでくださいよ！ Please don’t leave me this time!

Kazutora Hanemiya 着いてこれねぇのが悪りぃんじゃん？ Are you that bad that you can’t keep up with me?

Takemichi Hanagaki うっ・・・ Ugh…

ピュン！ パアン！ Whoosh! Bam!

Takemichi Hanagaki え…・・？ あ！！！風船潰された！ Huh…? Ah!!! My balloon got hit!

Kazutora Hanemiya そこか！！ There ya are!!

Keisuke Baji おっと！ Woah!

Chifuyu Matsuno 場地さん！！ Baji-san!!

Keisuke Baji あと風船1個じゃねぇか一虎 すぐ終わらせてやるよ You’ve only got one balloon left, Kazutora? Lemme finish this right now, then.

Kazutora Hanemiya 負けねぇぞ場地！！ I ain’t gonna lose, Baji!!

[a-student-out-of-time]

Hello there boys, girls and enbies, I’m BAAACCCCKKKK!…sorta.

Okay so the obvious question is gonna be why I peaced out when Dianthus Memory started, and to cut a long story short, I was going through some serious irl issues which I know having a heavy arc would make my emotional state worse. Ironically enough as soon as I said “IGHT IMMA HEAD OUT” the irl issues actually started to improve and clear up. But I still had the aftermath to deal with, plus I know I’ve got a backlog of work to do here.

Rather then just do a normal post, I’ve decided to announce my return with something I frankly should have done ages ago; update my Anonsona. People who have recently joined the blog probably don’t know what this is about but around The Puppetmaster time people were posting their Anonsonas and so I whipped up mine, but not only has the lore behind Anons changed since then, most of us aren’t ghosts, but also more details for my Anonsona so it was in need of a rework.

So the big differences is my ghostly Anonsona now looks more like a drowned ghost, which if you have read my Black and White Christmas review you would know how I would meet my end in the Tragedy, and that’s not hair, its seaweed. Psychic powers are still used to write because claws are not the best writing material. Also I cannot draw people holding stuff but let’s pretend its the claws. Why did I do this? because it was something I needed to do for a long time, but also so if any of the artists here was planning to draw me smacking Hajime with a clipboard when he’s being stubborn and self-loathing, they have an actual reference model to draw from.

Anyway time for me to talk about the sorta as I have unblocked this blog but I haven’t refollowed as I got to get back to doing my Arc Reviews, starting with The Price of Fate and let’s face it, if I was catching up on Dianthus Memory and refreshing myself on The Price of Fate at the same time, it would have emotionally destroyed me. So I’m not read any of Dianthus Memory yet so please don’t ask me about anything on there. I WILL get around to it, but one thing at a time. But what IS my current status on my writing? Well I’m pleased to say that…

I’ve finished writing up The Price of Fate Arc Review and its currently in the editing phase. Therefore either within the week this post goes up or the following week, the review will be out. My scdhule going forward will be elaborated on when that review comes because this is getting too long as it is.

Either way, it’s good to be back, and hopefully I won’t need to go away again. -Review Anon

//Oh dang, welcome back! Glad to hear you’re doing better ^^

//Really looking forward to seeing your thoughts once again!

[obsessedtomone]

Unravel Status Update:

Okay first of all HELLO!!! I talk a lot on ao3, but I rarely make a separate post on tumblr for some reason!

I've decided to take a short break from updating Unravel, not because there's no content (there's a backlog of another 8 chapters and the ending is already decided LOL), but because of two other reasons! First one is that I wanna add more to the future chapters, shift things around and make sure the writing is impactful for what's to come (oh boy) and second of all, I wanted to edit all the earlier chapters, not content-wise but writing wise! I wanna flesh out the scenes a little bit more, improve the grammar/typos and apply things that I learned later on! I want people to have fun re-reading my story! (It's my very first fic, I've never written properly before and there was a gigantic learning curve for me SO HAVE MERCY <3) Aside from all that, I realized I'm the type of person to want to see the ending on paper before sharing the story, so it kinda sucks that I was impatient with the posting, but I can't blame myself since I wanted to see if people would react well to my ideas or if I was being delusional. The break will take 2-3 weeks, but I might come back earlier if I'm satisfied with how things are going! Don't count on it though, but keep your eyes peeled (as if tumblr isn't gonna shove it in your faces 20 times... or is that just MY algorithm? LMAO) Thank you so much to everyone reading, it brightens my days up and I promise I'll do my very freaking best to post the next chapter as soon as I can!

I appreciate all of youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu <3

[poupeesdecirque]

Here he is ....

... random funfact: he can't sit down his pants are too tight. Doll Lavi will never sit in a chair :'D this makes me laugh so much. Also I love how the sizes for him and Bookman turned out, it was such a good decision to get the small body for Bookman.

Still can't believe he is done. 1 1/2 years after I bought the first shell, a bit over a year after I got told he will not happen. I had given up on him to be honest.

For those who are interested, more insight babbling under the cut:

As I got the new head I was not sure if I could make it work for Lavi, the promotional photos were a bit blurred, I just hoped for the best. The arrival was not .. sparking much for me as he was just too tainted still. The thing I enjoy the most was making wigs and even that was kind of not working for him bc the fiber was weird to deal with. I decided to give him the body I originally bought for Kanda as the other one would mess up their heights, so he became a full doll earlier. As the body got shipped I painted the head and was still pretty bummed about it but I wanted to give it a try at least.

When I finally started working towards my emotional backlog regarding the dolls and wrote a blog entry about my 'tainted' dolls it somehow .. clicked for me? Like, I had painted the head short before I wrote the entry and I went the next day and repainted him, somehow I felt like the burden was gone and I started to bond with him???

January was a super intense doll month for me, I worked through more dolls than I did in the year prior, went down from overall 14 Work in Progress dolls to ... 6. That still baffles me a bit as majority was sewing and I don't even like sewing that much.

I got the first two days of February off and decided to give Lavi a try, he felt like a bottomless pit with all the details but somehow working on him, especially the harder parts, was ... okay? Like, yeah, it took forever bc it was so much hand stitching but as I went slow and had expierence from Lenalee & Bookman I was able to trust my skills.

On the third day as I cut the wig and put him next to my window for the almost final photos I just was in denial that he was done. I added the hammer then and ... I have a Lavi.

A doll I had given up upon, it feels like the "preorders of hell" are finally done, at least mentally, the whole situation, I feel like I am more free again. I enjoy having projects of course but it was a mental burden and it's almost gone.

Edit:

I have to say, now, 2 months after finishing him, getting in character photos of him done is hard as the face is limited and I kind of regret getting that body as it's just a brick. I'm glad though i swapped it as Kanda needs a body that allows more movement, Lavi in general is not the type for dynamic poses. Overall I still have to get used to him, but it's like that with a lot of dolls. The Storyteller needed 2 years :')

[kirnet]

actium update sunday

yeah it's been a hot minute since I did this!! Actium has currently released 112 pages (not including covers and other illustrations), which mostly shows poor pacing and a lack of experience on my end lol, but is also an accomplishment! i am almost done with chap 3, i just have one more update to release for that... which is unfortunately in the sketching phase still. whoops.

speaking of massive page counts being a symptom of poor planning lol, i am currently rewriting a lot of the future chapters i have planned, with special attention to chap 4. chap 4 introduces the main conflict that every character going forward will be competing for, and so i need to make sure it's solid, that i have no possible questions or vagueness about it. other than that, i'm rescripting a lot of things, cutting down on page counts and learning to use my panels more effectively. this is something that i will continue to get better and better at the more i do it, so i'm okay with the fact that it will probably change in the future as well.

to be completely honest, i was really throwing myself into a wall trying to rewrite, just getting stuck because i was so attached to certain sequences and ideas. i've finally gotten over that, and a part of that was changing the way i thought about actium's story structure! actium was always going to have three acts, but my problem was that i was looking at them as three acts of one "book," so to speak, and thus the structure wasn't really working. actium is big, it has a lot of ground to cover (a lot that i should cut probably lol), and thus the 3 act structure was leaving me treading water in some places... so i just changed it from 3 "acts" to three "books"! Thinking of actium as a trilogy honestly helped me slot a lot of my puzzle pieces into place? no idea why, but it's given me a clearer idea of that i want to accomplish going forward. it will all be released under one account and such, i'm not splitting it up other than mentally.

actium was always going to be an amateur passion project, something i love and embrace. it will show my flaws as a writer and artist (to an almost unbearable degree lol), but the only way for me to ever do or get better at anything is to dive in head first. I've learned a lot already from these 112 pages, and I know that it will just continue to get better and better as I go on. but, of course, making sure that my foundation is solid and fixing up my outline now will really help with that.

in terms of uploading, it will happen when it happens lol. im job hunting for a second job unfortunately rn, so my time will just be what it is. i might start uploading just the lined uncolored pages on patreon when i finish them, or i'll just put all my pages on patreon until i have enough of a chapter's backlog to start releasing them publicly. in terms of the website, it is still down, i just need to dedicate the time to rebuilding it off of wix, and i've been more focused on creating the actual pages to learn neocities or wherever i'm gonna host it. it's all very messy lol

as always tysm to everyone who reads it!! you all mean the world to me <3 i 'm spending the entirety of my day today (fingers crossed) on writing and editing, so I hope to have this phase wrapped up soon!

[nightfal1n]

Just curious, what sort of drawing equipment do you use? (Tablet, drawing laptop etc.) - sorry if this has been asked/mentioned before 😅

I have an HP Spectre myself, but it’s Very Old so I have to get something new soon and there’s too much to choose from 🫠

Also, I love your drawings so much!! I’m amazed at how you’ve been able to release new pieces daily - hope you’re not pushing yourself though 😣

Thanks for an ask! also been enjoying your okohoshi art and hc a lot.... they're soft (,,´ω｀*,,)

For my setup, I have gaming laptop (2021 ryzen 9 zephyrus) + xp-pen 14 (2nd generation) poor bundled remote control is never used for drawing and recently got Ipad pro (12'' 4th generation) as a backup device which I'm still trying to get used to.

Both has their own merit but maybe Ipad will be a better value for newcomers? They has a great screen and optimized application for more compact and cheaper package (compared to high-spec pc+tablet combo. full setup and software will end up cost you more). Though personally I'll still keep using PC as a main because everything on ipad are so heavily rely on internet. As much as I'm thankful to Procreate for one-time purchase it's still no Clip Studio Paint (sadly subscription-only for mobiles) and I'm aware of compatibility and stuff. For laptop at least I have windows 7 and old csp installation files to turn back to (<- will continue to be wary of everything live services until he dies)

Honorable mention: There's Z fold 4 I use when I'm outside and need sketching...it's okay for drawing (and excellent for almost everything else) but I do regret buying ibispaint on it. Didn't plan to have ipad back then orz (Concept free edition and Artflow are more than enough)

It's warm my heart to know there's people enjoying my arts out there. I do those routine to cope so...not a big deal.....um... (look at my own backlog and thinking what's wrong with this guy? is he planning to die sometime soon?....totally in deny that I'm looking at my own works)...I need to get something out to compensate saturday kn8 loss TTwTT AND NOW THAT I REMEMBERING IT THAT MANGA CLIFFHANGER IS KILLING ME AGAIN...yeah, I'm not pushing myself at at all (read: my life is already over since I decided to pick up the manga...but I'm content with that (*'▽'))

Here is a virtual tea&cookies set! Have a nice day (っ・ w ・)っ🍵🍪

[simmyfrobby]

what’s your process like for making a new poetry edit? like, do you find a poem and go hmm i could do something with this, do you look for poems/images that fit a specific narrative, or something else entirely? i just love all your edits, and i’m curious about the creative process behind them!

ooh i love this question! i love talking poetry edits!

it depends a little bit!

sometimes (and this is especially true for the shorter poems) i come across a poem that reminds me of a player and immediately sorta know what i want the finished product to look like.

(like with the Marner “i was never a child just a smaller image of myself” edit where i stumbled across the poem and KNEW there were pictures of baby-leafs-fan Marner i could use)

more often than not i will see a picture or read someones analysis of an event and it will remind me of a specific line of poetry. (see: the Tkachuk poem inspired by this post, and the Marner poem inspired by this post) these are usually the better edits! 

every once in a while i will collect a few pictures that tell a story on their own and try to match them with a poem after the fact. (flower poem is an example of this) 

And sometimes my friends send me poems and go “i bet you could do something really awful with this” (@charleskachow & @jonassiegenthighler honourable mentions) in which case i usually just go “okay i have a poem. i have an hour. what am i doing.” (result: hot dog poem, red wings poem, Tavares poem)

when it comes to the little impromptu ones there is no system. no process. just whichever poem first comes to mind when i think about that player + a getty images picture i like

all this goes to say: no real process. i am chronically online. i listen to a lot of hockey podcasts. i think about poetry 24/7. everything reminds me of some poem or other. and even when i’m not feeling terribly inspired i have a backlog of 20+ poems that i should really get around to finishing at some point. 

[mister-e-muss]

Time for another backlog report, August 2024 edition. As always, thoughts are below:

Mega Man X:

Both this and X2 I beat as part of the Legacy Collection bundle. At first I stuck to the idea that each ‘collection’ counted as a single game, with individual games being more like chapters. That’s why I didn’t write my thoughts on Battle Network 1 when I finished it. I realized however that if I thought that large-scale, I was never going to actually finish it, or any of the individual games.

So what exactly do I say about this game? It’s Chrono Trigger levels of revered. Even Arin ‘I refuse to read more than three words consecutively’ Hanson of Game Grumps fake calls the intro stage genius for how it visually teaches the player about wall jumps.

I can hardly say a bad word about this game, not just because it’s so enshrined in the top tens of SNES games ever, but because I genuinely agree that it’s a great, tight action platformer with some kick-ass music.

Mega Man X2:

Okay, Capcom proved they could innovate the Mega Man formula. Could they follow up?

Turns out yes. While I generally hold the music as overall inferior to X1, I still think that there’s some great tracks in here. (My personal favorite is Flame Stag’s Stage btw.)

As for the story, I think the tension of Zero’s lost parts is both a good way to add more personal stakes and a clever way to justify reviving a character that had died in the last game. Believe me, it happens more than I’d like it to. Also, I took a screenshot of this specific dialogue because it is both a brilliantly dick-ish move and really stupid of Sigma to try and guilt trip X about his supposed failure. . . After he’d already beaten the X-Hunters and recovered Zero’s parts.

The stages themselves are a lot of fun to go through, with the exception of a few of the X-Hunter stages.

Trails of Cold Steel:

When discussing the Trails series, Cold Steel is the arc that everyone points to and says “Trash Anime Harem game.” That is not my issue with this game.

I think where I generally take issue is the scope. I know that’s a weird thing to say about these games considering just how grandiose and meticulous they are about every single detail, but it’s the most general way to put it. The cast is large, the maps are large, the grand tale of political intrigue is large. The strange part is that for all of its largeness, it could have been cut down by a quarter and still be able to do a lot of what it sets out to do.

Having the cast split themselves in half is an effective way of rotating the spotlight so that almost everyone gets a turn, but if they just compressed one or two character ideas they could have ensured that everyone had more room in their niche.

For that matter, the gameplay has also been expanded and shrunk down. The addition of combat links is a fun idea that makes you think about party comp and which characters pair well with others, but in this first outing, they don’t really do much. The fact that the game hides the two extra payoff options until a third and halfway through the game also doesn’t help. Where the series shrinks is in the orbment system. The master quartz return, and they’re just as fascinating as ever, but the quartz themselves have taken a turn for the bland. Rather than have each gem hold an element value, and arts appearing on characters as you build them, arts and passive bonuses have been divided in two. Except not really because high-level quartz give both. What this means from a design perspective is that players don’t have to keep track of seven different values building up a cast of 11 total playable characters. (Again, you could have cut that by half.) What this means from a gameplay perspective however is that orbments are much less interesting to tinker around with, turning what was a miniature puzzle into a simple best-in-slot. For a 60+ hour game to have one of its core systems be stripped like this, it makes the game feel more monotonous than it really is.

Despite all these general complaints, I honestly can’t recommend it enough. The soundtrack is just as good as it’s ever been, the plot does in fact try to strike a balance between zoomed-out political intrigue and zoomed-in character drama, and the combat is still among the best turn-based systems.

I even liked the bonding points for what they were. Having to chose which characters were worth your investment was a bit itchy, but the one-on-one spotlights were nice. That they also increase Link levels is also a very nice gameplay-story-integration that I will never say no to.

[missiletoe]

very backlogged on the ao3 comments, thank u everyone for commenting <3 and will get around to answering them at some point o7 (hopefully this weekend, maybe next though)

have some more kittyuri in the meantime for the yuri shipping olympics!! i also cooked another kittyuri last night that i will formally link on tumblr at some point and i have an alien stage crack fic actor AU that is literally 99% done but i have been putting off edits for a week now so stay tuned!!

Prompt: “The two of you look cute together. I think you should go for it.” “That’s not what I meant!” “My point still stands.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Q!” Kitty screams at the top of her lungs. There’s the sound of boxes falling in the distance. “IT’S AN EMERGENCY!”

Q comes barreling out of the bedroom and sticks the landing on Minho’s new shipment of Ultra-Rare-Hygienic-Made-From-Fairy-Tears-Probably skincare products. Thank god she won’t be around for the aftermath.

“Good morning, Kitty,” Q says as the afternoon sun beats down on him through the window. His pants are on backwards and he looks like he hasn’t slept in days. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Kitty screams because she thinks that’s the best way to express the news. Q jumps a foot in the air in response.

“Yuri asked me out!” she shrieks.

“The two of you look cute together. I think you should go for it.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“My point still stands. Okay, slow down.” Q mimics deep breaths like they’re in a grade-school level health class. Kitty doesn’t like the sarcasm but appreciates the gesture. “Start from the beginning. Tell me what happened.”

“I-I don’t know,” she replies, rolling her wrist. “We were just talking and I think I told her she was pretty or something–I mean, she’s always pretty, it’s like saying the grass is green or the sky is blue, did you know the other day–”

“Kitty.”

“Right. Staying on track! I don’t know, it was all out of the blue and then she laughed and she looked at me and it was like one of those slo-mo shots in a romcom and she asked if I wanted to go out with her and I asked her where and then she said no, silly, do you want to be my girlfriend and then I panicked.”

Q closes his eyes slowly like he’s been slapped across the face. 

“Okay, that was a lot but that’s good! When did this happen? And where?”

Kitty glances quickly at the door. Q groans and slaps one hand over his forehead.

“Kitty, you didn’t.”

She gives a garbled noise of protest in response.

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Ukrainian. What I’m sure you’re trying to say though is that you definitely did not slam the door in Yuri’s face after she confessed to you–especially after I had to struggle through a year of watching you hopelessly pine, right?”

“Actually, I asked her for 1-3 business days to think about it.”

“KITTY!”

“Can’t you frame it in a more positive light?” she hisses. Now that Q’s pointed out the door, she’s hyper-aware of it–or more accurately, what’s behind it.

“There is no light that can save this situation!” Q yells back. Wonderful, the whole floor’s probably heard the news by now. Kitty Song Covey is a bisexual disaster who doesn’t have a single thing right in her life–not her grades, not her understanding of her culture and definitely not her love life.

“It’s fine.” Q’s pacing now and it’s not a good pacing. It’s more of an anxious stomping that looks like it’s gonna leave dents in the carpet. “It’s fine! Yuri’s spent a year with you. She knows what you’re like and she still asked you out, which means she likes you for you and I’m sure that slamming a door in her face won’t change that.” They both stare at the dorm door that suddenly looks like it’s looming over the room. “I hope.”

“Okay, moving on. Why didn’t you say yes? You’re clearly crazy about Yuri. And Yuri’s apparently just as crazy about you.”

“I don’t know, Q.” Kitty pushes aside a notebook to make room for her to sit on the counter. It’s probably Minho’s. It makes her feel less bad about the way it falls into the sink. “It’s been a year and I still don’t know if I’m gay or bi or pan or… something else entirely!” Kitty slaps a fat stack of paper on the dining table for emphasis–a physical copy of the Lesbian Masterdoc, courtesy of one crappy KISS Academy printer. “I don’t even know if I like girls! I mean, Yuri’s the only girl that I’ve ever felt like this about… I think?”

Q sticks one hand out into the Kitty-tornado swirling around him.

“Kitty, understanding your sexuality is a process. It’s not always a static thing–sometimes things happen and you learn something new about yourself. And sometimes, the thing you discover at the end of researching all these labels is that you don’t actually like any of them! And that’s totally fine. You don’t need every detail about yourself figured out before you jump into a relationship.”

Kitty blinks up at him wordlessly.

“Kitty, do you like Yuri?” Q asks, and it’s really more of a formality than anything. Kitty nods and thinks it doesn’t even come close to expressing her affection. “Then that’s really all you need.”

“Okay,” Kitty says as she pushes herself off the counter. She’s hopping from foot-to-foot like one of those boxers warming up in the ring before the fight. Q’s in the coach’s corner, hyping her up. “Okay, I can do this!”

Kitty flings open the door to a startled Yuri, still leaning against the wall from where Kitty left her 20 minutes ago.

“Yes, I’ll marry you! Ah, wait, no I meant I’ll go out with you! Please let me be your girlfriend, I promise I won’t mess up this much!” She’s half-sobbing by the end and Yuri nearly doubles over from laughter.

“Is she always like this?” she asks Q.

“You know it.”

“I do.” Yuri looks up at her and there’s that smile again that makes the world melt away. “It’s what I like about her.”

[torreshalstead]

It Seemed Like a Good Idea - Chapter 6

Summary - Hailey’s US visa was due to expire, which normally wouldn’t be an issue as the CPD would get it renewed but due to a backlog of paperwork, this wasn’t possible. This meant Hailey was faced with the real possibility of having to leave the country, her job and everything she held dear. That was until Jay offered up a solution which would allow her to stay in Chicago, in Intelligence, with him - they could get married. Getting married was a good idea, right?

Chapters - 6/18

Chapter Title - The Written Proof

Notes - absolutely blown away by the response on the last chapter so thank you so much! I hope you enjoy this chapter! AO3 Link

‘Wait so let me get this straight,’ Mouse’s voice echoed through the speaker of Jay’s phone. ‘You, the law abiding cop, want me, your not so innocent friend, to change the metadata on some photos and edit your text and phone records? And you won’t tell me why?’

‘That’s about the thick of it, yes,’ Jay said with a sigh. He knew it was an ask and a half. It would have been a lot to ask of Mouse even if he gave him the full story but he was keeping him in the dark. Having Will know what they were doing was already a big enough risk, they couldn’t have their secret in the hands of someone who by his own omission was less than innocent. Jay trusted Mouse, he trusted him with his life and he had done so on more than one occasion, but this was something bigger. It wasn’t just Jay’s life on the line here, it was Hailey’s too. And it was Jay’s job to protect her.

He heard Mouse laugh down the phone, ‘I’m in.’

‘Really?’ Jay said, a little shocked with how easy his friend had agreed to it.

‘If you say you need it done, then you need it done,’ Mouse said nonchalantly. ‘Just checking, is this for a case or something else?’

‘Something else,’ Jay admitted.

‘Okay then brother, I’ll do whatever you need. Come over in an hour or so, bring both the phones and I’ll see what I can do.’

‘I’ll owe you one Mouse,’ Jay said, running his hand through his hair. This part of the plan was making him a little nervous, even if he’d admitted the opposite to Hailey this morning when she had asked. He had told her that it would all be fine, no problem at all. However his mind had been full of images of them both in cuffs being perp-walked out of the district. It wouldn’t get that far, and if it ever did, there was no way he was letting Hailey take the fall for it. It was his idea. This whole thing, it had been his idea.

‘I’m sure I’ll cash in on that someday,’ Mouse said with a chuckle before ending the call.

Before Jay had too long to spiral about the fact they were really breaking the law now, he heard the front door open and he greeted Hailey with a warm smile.

‘Hey,’ she said, her arms full of shopping bags. ‘I may have gone a little overboard but I thought better safe than sorry,’ she lifted both her arms to demonstrate and Jay chuckled.

‘Well we don’t want the apartment looking bare,’ Jay got up to relieve her of some of the weight. ‘Okay, maybe a little overboard,’ he said once she passed over a couple of the bags and he felt just how heavy they were. ‘Did you buy every frame in Target?’ He joked.

‘No, but I did go to HomeGoods as well just so we had a variety,’ Hailey dropped all the remaining bags onto the coffee table, rubbing her hand over her wrists where the bags had started to cut in.

‘And you got the photos printed too?’ Jay asked, starting to decant the bags and stack the frames according to size. There were some small ones with plain frames, some larger ones, a couple with different shapes for the photos, and one large one that he already knew was going to take pride of place on their shelves.

‘Yep, I just got them all and figured we could see which ones we liked?’

‘Sounds like a plan. Oh I spoke to Mouse,’ he added.

‘And he’s okay with helping us?’ Hailey asked, pausing from unpacking her own bags to glance up at him.

‘Meeting him in an hour,’ Jay nodded. ‘I just told him I needed a favour, he doesn’t know anything else.’ Hailey hummed in response, turning her attention back to the stacks of frames.

‘Sorry you have to lie to him,’ she said quietly after a moment. ‘I don’t like putting you in that position.’

‘Hails, we talked about this. It’s a necessary evil but if he knew, he’d understand. They all would, you know that,’ Jay said, taking a seat on the couch although Hailey kept her back firmly to him. ‘I need to bring your phone too, you going to be alright without it for a bit?’

‘Oh, of course, I hadn’t thought about that, but yes, I’ll be alright. I’ll get all of these put together and put up. Do you have any preferences about which ones we use?’

‘No, just leave me an empty one?’ He asked. They had discussed putting a photo on each side of Hailey’s bed, and Jay knew exactly which one he wanted on his side, but knew if he asked Hailey to frame it, she’d say no. When they had been taking photos on the dock of the lake house, it had taken him a couple of tries to get the timer set up properly so there were some candid shots of just her at the end of the dock. In one of them she had been laughing, he couldn’t remember what he had said or done to cause such a reaction but she looked so happy, so free. She looked beautiful in it, and he had known as soon as he had seen it, that that was the one he wanted in a frame. But she had blushed when she had seen it, it probably hadn’t helped that he had told her it was a beautiful photo. But it was, and Jay wasn’t in the habit of lying. Especially not to Hailey, not about that.

Hailey paused and turned to look at him before nodding, ‘yeah I can leave you one if you want.’

‘Thanks,’ Jay said, relieved that she wasn’t questioning him on it. ‘I’ll pick up some dinner on the way back from seeing Mouse?’

‘I’m feeling Thai if you are?’ Hailey suggested.

‘Thai it is then.’

——————————————————————————

Jay had been sitting in Mouse’s rundown studio apartment for over an hour, both his and Hailey’s phones were connected up to a number of monitors and goodness knows how many wires. He had no idea how Mouse was doing what he had requested and he really didn’t want to know how many rules they were breaking, or at least bending by doing what they were doing.

‘So I’m changing the dates on the photos to random days over the past 2 years? Or 18 months?’ Mouse asked, not looking up from where he was typing away feverishly.

‘18 months would be fine, maybe the ones at the lakehouse more recent, the ones at the Bean the oldest?’ Jay suggested. He knew the ones they had taken at the lake were the most romantic, and if they truly had been in a relationship then a weekend away wouldn’t have been something they had done right in the beginning.

‘I got it,’ Mouse said. ‘I’ve gotta say though mate, this girl. You’ve lucked out with her.’

Jay couldn’t help but blush slightly. ‘Thanks man,’ was all he could say. He knew Hailey was gorgeous, had known it for a long time, and he would be incredibly lucky to truly have her as his own. But he didn’t, not really, he was just her best friend. And as much as part of him may want something more, he loved being her friend. He wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardise that, she meant too much to him for that.

‘Don’t know what a girl like this is doing with the likes of you though,’ Mouse chuckled.

‘You almost done?’ Jay said, not wanting to acknowledge Mouse’s comment. It hit just a little close to home for him.

‘Almost with the photos, then I’ll need a little more instruction about what you want done with the texts.’

‘Great, I promised Hailey I’d get dinner.’

‘And you want to get back to your girl, I get it, I get it,’ Mouse chuckled. ‘Okay that’s the photos done. If anyone looks at these it’ll look like they were taken across the last 18 months and the data matches on ones on both your phone and hers.’

‘Thanks Mouse,’ Jay said with a small smile.

‘Sometimes I use my powers for good,’ Mouse said, taking a swig of the beer that Jay had brought him. Jay had offered to pay him for his help but Mouse had refused, saying he didn’t charge friends who needed help. But Jay had still brought him over a six-pack and if he was planning on leaving some twenties tucked down the side of the couch when he left, he would deny it if anyone ever asked.

‘So these texts,’ Mouse said, scrolling through the conversation between him and Hailey. ‘Not going to lie to you man, they are pretty flirty anyway.’

‘No they aren’t,’ Jay said, blushing slightly. ‘Strictly professional.’

‘Well I’d like someone to be this professional with me if you get my drift,’ he winked and Jay threw one of the pillows from the couch at his chair. ‘Hey, I’m just saying!’

‘Can you just add some love hearts or shit like that?’ Jay ran his hand through his hair, he hadn’t really thought this bit through. ‘Maybe some I love yous?’

‘I can definitely add shit like that,’ Mouse chuckled, turning his attention back to the screen. ‘I would ask why, but I know you’re not going to tell me.’

‘Wish I could man, but…’ he tailed off.

‘Need to know basis, I’m sure,’ Mouse shrugged. ‘Now when did you first tell Hailey you loved her?’

‘What?’ Jay spluttered on his own beer.

‘Well when did you say it and then I’ll add some in from that point onwards.’

Jay was glad that Mouse still had his back to him, he was certain his cheeks would be the colour of beets right now.

‘Oh umm, like 2 months in,’ he said, thinking quickly on his feet. ‘We had been partners for a while first so it didn’t take long.’

‘Halstead the hopeless romantic, who knew,’ Mouse chuckled as his fingers continued to work at breakneck speed on the keyboard.

‘Shut it,’ Jay murmured without much conviction. It was true, he thought, he was a hopeless romantic and his current predicament had done nothing to change that.

‘This Hailey must be really special if you’re going through this much trouble,’ Mouse said.

‘You have no idea,’ Jay muttered.

——————————————————————————

When Jay walked back into the apartment that evening, he’s struck by how different it felt. A good different. Hailey had finished putting all the photos in the frames and had scattered them around the room, it immediately gave the place a feel of a home. A home for two people who loved each other. He swallowed quickly, his throat suddenly hoarse before calling out.

‘Hey I’m back.’

‘Oh great, I was about to starve,’ Hailey said dramatically, appearing from her bedroom.

‘Because there’s no food in the cupboards for you to eat,’ Jay smirked as he started to place the take out on the counter.

‘Of course not,’ Hailey grinned as she jumped up onto the counter, swinging her legs happily as Jay passed her some food. Jay couldn’t help but smile, seeing Hailey happy and comfortable like this, it really felt like something special. Sure they had spent plenty of time together as partners and as best friends but sharing a space like this, it was like seeing her in a brand new light. And he wasn’t complaining.

‘So Mouse sorted out all of the photos and added some stuff to our texts to make them flirty like we were actually dating,’ Jay said as he opened his own order. He left out the bit where Mouse had stated that their texts were already a bit flirty, he didn’t want to make Hailey feel uncomfortable. Passing Hailey her phone, he turned his attention back to his dinner as she scrolled through the messages.

After a brief moment he heard her breath hitch, glancing over he noticed that her cheeks had reddened slightly too. It was quite embarrassing having someone else read through all your texts, he assumed that’s all it was.

She cleared her throat, ‘thank Mouse for me, these should be perfect.’

‘I will do,’ he smiled gently up at her.

‘So the next step is setting a date to have Trudy and Mouch round for dinner,’ Hailey said.

‘Still can’t believe you invited them for dinner,’ Jay chuckled. He loved Trudy as much as the next person but having her over seemed like a recipe for disaster.

‘It’ll be fine!’ Hailey responded. ‘But we should probably set some ground rules.’

‘For them or for us?’ Jay raised his eyebrow.

‘For us, if they are seeing us in our home then they are probably going to expect us to be a little more… umm… hands on than we are at the district or even at Molly’s,’ Hailey’s cheeks reddened as she spoke.

Jay choked on a piece of chicken at the thought of him and Hailey being hands-on, he tried his best to disguise it as a cough. ‘Umm, yeah I guess so. No different from being undercover right?’ He remembered her words when she had first mentioned the dinner.

‘Exactly but we should probably have some lines, what we are happy with and what we aren’t’, Hailey brushed a loose piece of hair that had fallen out of her messy bun behind her ear.

‘That sounds like a conversation that would be better with beer,’ Jay smirked when Hailey nodded and scooted down off the counter to fetch them both one from the fridge. As they both settled down on opposite ends of the couch, they took matching long swigs from the bottle before Hailey finally spoke up.

‘So holding hands and hugging, we are fine with that right?’ She asked.

‘Yep, I mean we hug anyway right so that’s no problem,’ Jay said calmly, wondering what else she was going to list off.

‘And small touches like a hand on a back or shoulder or something like we did on the photo day?’

‘Fine with those too,’ Jay agreed.

Hailey pauses before continuing, taking a long take from her beer, ‘but not kissing, I mean we wouldn’t be making out in front of Platt anyway would we?’ She chuckled, her embarrassment clear.

‘No I don’t think we would, I mean maybe on the cheek or something but not if it makes you uncomfortable,’ he said, running a hand through his hair as he spoke. Even the thought of kissing Hailey was making his heart quicken, ever since she had kissed his cheek at Navy Pier he had wanted to reach over and return the favour. His dreams had been a repeat of the same scene over and over, many a time she turned her cheek just as he was approaching and he caught her lips with his own.

‘That wouldn’t make me uncomfortable,’ Hailey said quietly, barely louder than a whisper but it was enough to wake Jay up from the semi-conscious dream he was experiencing. ‘If it was the right moment.’

‘Okay, we will just see how the evening turns out?’ Jay asked, hoping to put an end to this conversation quickly. Trying to list things he was uncomfortable doing with Hailey when it couldn’t be further from the truth was what was making him uncomfortable. He was also worried that she might be able to see through his facade, she could usually tell everything he was thinking. Lucky for him, she was clearly preoccupied with the current topic to notice.

‘Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. We are both good at thinking on our feet right? It’ll be fine.’ It sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than him at this point. This whole thing had been her idea but now it was actually about to happen, it clearly was fazing her somewhat.

‘Have you decided what you are going to cook?’ Jay asked in a subtle attempt to change the subject. It clearly worked as Hailey perked up as she answered.

‘I was thinking Spanakopita, it’s a classic,’ she smiled.

‘Sounds delicious, I can pick up some wine on the way home tomorrow if you want to invite them for like 7?’

‘Okay, and for dessert?’

‘I’m happy to make my Mom’s apple pie? It’s not Greek but it is really nice,’ he offered.

‘No that sounds perfect, you’ve never made me that before?’ Hailey’s head cocked slightly to one side as she asked.

‘No, it’s umm.. it’s a special one that I just don’t make often but this seems like the perfect occasion for it,’ he shrugged. Truthfully he hadn’t been able to make it for years after she passed, it would make him cry halfway through and it never tasted quite as good without having her to share it with. But in a way it felt like it was his way of introducing Hailey to his mother, he knew it was silly but he knew his mom would love Hailey, and he knew Hailey would love this pie.

‘Well then I’m honoured, and I’m sure Trudy and Mouch will be too,’ she smiled warmly, reaching out to squeeze his knee. He rested his hand on top of hers appreciating the support. Hailey knew how much he loved his mom and he could tell she knew how much it meant for him to share this with her, even if it was just a pie.

—————————————————————————

The evening was going surprisingly well, a slightly awkward start had melted into a lovely meal with good company. Platt gave Jay permission to call her Trudy which made Hailey give him a playful nudge with her shoulder as he had spent 15 minutes before they had arrived worried if he should call her Platt or Sarge and Hailey had laughed at him the whole time. Slipping into pretending to be dating Hailey was also very easy, just like it had been when they had spent time taking the photos round Chicago. It meant Jay didn’t have to second guess every time he was drawn to touch her whether it was an arm around her shoulder, a hand on her thigh or his hand on her back as he slid past her in their kitchen.

Hailey seemed to find it equally easy, she gravitated closer towards him than she usually did, leaning against him in the kitchen as he poured the wine, scooting her chair slightly closer to him when they sat down to eat, rubbing her hand across his back when talking about the trip they had taken up to Wisconsin. It was easy to forget it was all for show.

Jay almost forgot how to spell his own name towards the end of the evening. He brought out the apple pie for dinner, the one he had made earlier from his mother’s hand written recipe cards, the one Hailey had offered to help with and stood with him as he made it, listening to him telling stories about his mom and her famous desserts. She proudly told Trudy and Mouch all about it when he sat it down on the table and he couldn’t help but smile. He knew his mom would have done the exact same thing and that brought him such comfort.

When they all dug in and exclaimed how delicious it was, she leant across and kissed his cheek. He felt the warmth grow in his cheeks at the feel of her soft lips against his skin, it took everything he had not to close his eyes and relive it again and again. She’d kissed him on the cheek before, twice. Once during an undercover role and then once when they had been taking their photos the other week, he remembered both times vividly. But this was different, they were just quick kisses, mere pecks to be precise. This was a kiss. Her lips had grazed the corner of his, far closer than just a friend would kiss. She lingered longer too, he felt her breath on his cheek as she pulled back and felt the imprint of her lips. He knew he would feel it for hours.

‘It’s wonderful, babe,’ she said as she pulled back. It felt so natural, so right so he tugged her into his side in a quick hug before letting her go. If they didn’t have company he might have kissed her right there and then, just pulled her into his arms and tried to show her how wonderful he thought she was. But the realisation hit him - that if they didn’t have company, she wouldn't have done it. She wouldn’t be calling him babe, he wouldn’t be hugging her like that, she wouldn’t have kissed him. It was all for show. It wasn’t real.

After they had said goodbye to Trudy and Mouch, waving them off with their arms around each other, slotting together as if it was something they did all the time.

‘That went well,’ Hailey said as she pulled away and Jay tried to pretend that he didn’t miss the warmth of her body against his.

‘Yeah it did,’ he said, a fake smile fixed to his face. It wasn’t a lie persay, it had gone well, but it had also made Jay remember that it wasn’t real.

‘I don’t think they suspected anything,’ she said from where she had busied herself in the kitchen cleaning up and loading the plates into the dishwasher.

‘No not at all,’ Jay stood awkwardly by the door. ‘You can leave that, I’ll clear up in a bit, I’m just going to shower first,’ he said, heading towards the bathroom quickly before waiting for her to answer.

If he’d have turned back, he would have been met by a confused expression from Hailey. She had thought it had gone well, but maybe the kiss was too far. She hadn’t meant to do it, but it had just felt right but maybe she had crossed a line. She hadn’t meant to make him feel uncomfortable but by the way he scurried out of the room as quickly as he did, clearly she had. Seeing the words ‘I love you’ on the texts earlier from him, well edited to be from him, had lit something inside of her that she had unknowingly been ignoring but now it was bubbling right up to the surface. She just wished she hadn’t made him feel uncomfortable over something that wasn’t even real. Those words weren’t really from him.