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frogtanii · 4 years

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embarrassed ft. matsukawa issei

wc. 2.7k (???)

warnings. SMUT, not proofread lol, mutual pining (??), friends to lovers (???), cunnilingus lmao, no dom/sub dynamics, well actually dom&sub issei if you squint rlly hard hehe, kinda cute, embarrassed issei <3, also one (1) WAP reference

an. it’s 2:30 am and i have no idea why i wrote this and who for???? i got the idea from a 🦋😳🙈✨ audio and was immediately inspired idk, sorry if it’s bad i lichrally have no idea since i didn’t read it after it was done :p

( ˘ ³˘)♥︎

it wasn’t like matsukawa issei to be embarrassed.

he was handsome, intelligent, and funny, not to mention he never left women wanting after a night with him.

issei was the entire package and he knew it.

beyond superficiality though, he was happy with his life. he had a great group of friends, a nice apartment all to himself and a completely normal job.

yes, being a funeral home employee wasn’t the most glamorous career a person could have but he was happy. besides, it never deterred him from getting a warm body to sleep with which was a win in his book.

all in all? his life was great!

so why did he have to go and screw it all up?

issei blames makki and the dumb flyer for the reason his life went to shit. (maybe he’s being a little dramatic, but let him have his oikawa moment.)

he was minding his own business when his best friend (recently turned enemy) burst through his apartment door with a piece of paper in his hand and a fire in his eyes.

“dude, look at this!” issei rolled his eyes, putting down his casket catalogue and turning to meet takahiro’s gaze.

“why hello to you too. remind me why i gave you a key again?”

“because you love me and because i bring shit like this to you. look!” with another long and suspiciously tooru-like sigh, issei took the crumpled paper from makki and immediately stopped in his tracks.

“makki... what the fuck is this?”

written in large pink letters and a flowery, borderline illegible font was the name, coffee and cunnilingus. upon further inspection and careful reading, it revealed itself to be a little cafe opening up about 10 minutes from issei’s apartment complex who were looking to hire “young, attractive men who are proficient at eating pussy.”

issei could feel his eyes narrow and his mouth drop open in shock as he repeated his question. “the fuck is this?”

makki shook his head excitedly, tapping to another portion of the flyer that matsukawa had not yet read. “no, no dude, just look at how much they’re paying per hour.” issei begrudgingly obliged but the minute his eyes touched the (Massive™) number, he felt a little faint.

it was a lot of money. more than the funeral home was paying, that’s for sure. with that kind of money he could move out of this suddenly dingy seeming apartment and into a nice flat in the city were he’d always wanted to live. maybe he could buy himself a nice watch or even a high-end suit to replace the one from his highschool graduation (aka the only suit he owns). with that kind of money, he could erase his student debt 3 years ahead of schedule and get his mom into a nicer place.

it was these thoughts that clouded issei’s head as he found himself standing in front of a cute looking building, matching the address on the flyer. i’ll only be working part time, he thought as he pushed the door open to reveal an equally impressing interior with curtained booths and a wide variety of coffee on the menu. i’m only doing it for extra money, he thought as he shook the owner’s hand after he finished his successful interview. no one can ever know, he thought as he dressed himself in the uniform on his first day.

thus began issei’s super secret side hustle where he ate women out for cash.

sounds worse when you say it outright but it was just working. he was good at it, the women liked him, and he was making BANK. still, there were challenges. some women refused to bathe before coming and he would have to send them to the restroom to freshen up which absolutely ruined his chances for a good tip. some women would become heavily infatuated with him, believing that they were in some sort of forbidden romance. he learned to turn them down quick and easy to avoid conflict in the workplace which furthered his space as a boss favorite. but his hardest challenge by far was meeting you.

you were one of hanamaki’s friends, having met him at one of his brief stints in retail on his search for a job. he had gotten fired but you both stayed in touch after he left, becoming really close, really fast.

issei had met you first when takahiro had invited you to the biweekly seijoh third-years movie night. at first, he had been pissed as an “outsider” had never been invited before and he was worried you’d ruin the vibe, especially since it was the first time in months that oikawa would be able to join them. makki vouched for you through and through and the other boys were okay with it so you were in. the second he met you, all his fears of awkwardness and discomfort faded away.

you were great.

you were hilarious, pretty, and could keep up with makki’s harsh jokes, tooru’s diva attitude, iwa’s tendency to hit (hard), and issei’s original disdain. by the end of the night, he had completely forgotten why he didn’t want you there in the first place.

from then on, you were a staple in their little friend group. you were added to the groupchat where you balanced memes with spouts of deep wisdom and you were ever so reliable, always there if any of them needed it.

yeah, you were great. that’s where the problems started.

issei’s feelings for you quickly went from platonic to romantic, faster than you can say godzilla. he hadn’t even recognized that he was falling for you until it was way too late. normally, he wouldn’t have a problem confessing to you but because of his newly found ...occupation, he was too nervous. how would you take it that he was basically a glorified prostitute? ok, that wasn’t exactly what he did but still! you’d probably find him disgusting and horrible and leave the friend group forever. then he’d have to deal with oikawa’s senseless whining and makki’s subtle digs, blaming him for your departure. yeah, he wasn’t going to put himself through that so he decided to keep his mouth shut.

too bad he didn’t have any control over makki’s.

you and takahiro had been on a little friend-date at mcdonald’s after you’d had a long and frustrating shift. you just wanted to vent, expressing your general hate for your job and desperate need for stress relief.

that’s when makki opened his (big, stupid) mouth and suggested that you visit a little place called coffee and cunnilingus. you nearly choked on your fries at the title before quickly pressing him for details. thankfully, he had the decency not to expose that issei worked there but he had not done a good enough job convincing you not to go there. not that it would’ve mattered. your curiosity was peaked and your libido was high so why not try out the weird cafe where you let a complete stranger stick his tongue inside you?

it was settled. you were going to go and you were going to get eaten out and you were going to like it!

or at least that is what you repeated in your head as you walked to the address on your phone before taking a deep breath and walking inside.

“hello, welcome to coffee and cunnilingus, how might i pleasure you this afterno— yn?” issei’s eyes widened as they met your equally bewildered ones, the both of you staring at each other in shock.

“matsukawa-san, is everything alright?” a large hand rested on issei’s shoulder, startling him out of his thoughts and forcing him to break (horrified) eye contact with you and move it onto his boss who was now looking down on him menacingly.

“y-yes sir, everything is fine!” he squeaked out, hating the way his voice cracked on his first syllable. his boss looked at him suspiciously but thankfully didn’t press.

“well, since nothing is wrong, take this beautiful young woman to a booth where you will assist her!” the hand resting on issei’s shoulder slowly squeezed, making him wince in pain. the pain was only an afterthought though to the larger implication of his boss’ words. he’s going to assist you. assist as in pleasure. pleasure as in eat you out.

holy shit, you were going to pass out.

apparently, issei had the same thought process as you, his face whitening like a sheet. “m-me? but sir i-“

“do your job matsukawa-san!” his boss cut him off with a forced smile. all issei could do was nod and silently lead you off to a closed booth near the back or lose his job. you stayed close behind him but remained quiet, absolutely terrified of breaking the silence and ruining the bubble you had created.

you finally reached the booth in question. issei gently opened the curtain and motioned for you to get it, to which you obliged and he followed just behind.

the moment the curtain closed, you were enveloped in an awkward silence and tense atmosphere, neither of you speaking or looking at one another for fear of one of you running out. after what felt like hours, you opened your mouth to speak, not realizing issei had thought the same thing.

“so-“

“i-“

you finally made eye contact with him and burst into the laughter, the tension quickly broken. it took a full minute or two for the both of you to calm down, the absurdity of the entire situation finally catching up with you.

“you first,” issei said, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes while fixing you with an intense gaze swirled with an emotion you couldn’t quite place but it made butterflies bubble up in your stomach. you quickly turned your gaze to the comfortable seat beneath you, your fingers playing with the red stitching while you thought of what you had wanted to say.

“are you any good?” your hand flew up to cover your mouth as your cheeks filled with heat, the embarrassment of your words catching up to you. you hadn’t meant to say that but when you opened your mouth to apologize, you were stopped in your tracks by the lovely sound of issei’s full-bodied laughter filling the tiny booth.

you had heard it just moments earlier but without the sound of your own giggles drowning it out, you couldn’t help but think that he sounded beautiful. you basked in the sound as it slowly trailed off back into silence. now it was you doing the staring making issei look off with a red face and a heart threatening to pound out of his chest.

“y-yeah i’m pretty good. you want to try? me, i mean?” his words nearly leave you gasping, your brain working overtime to try and comprehend what he was saying to you.

“only if y-you want to? what do you want issei?” you whispered, suddenly unable to find your voice. you wanted this to be okay for him too; you didn’t want him to be uncomfortable even though you wanted him more than you could verbally express. despite the embarrassment and fear of rejection lingering under your skin, you stared at him, awaiting his answer. a tiny minuscule nod came from him and you internally shook your head. you needed to hear him.

“i need you to say it, issei.” your words, while quiet, were firm and issei felt himself hardening in his uniform slacks. he swallowed in his increasingly drying mouth before opening his mouth to respond.

“i want to eat your pussy. can i?”

shit.

your own voice was stolen by his words and all you could give him was a nod before he was on you.

issei didn’t waste any time falling to his knees, pulling your panties down, and hiking your skirt up to your stomach, revealing your glistening folds to his hungering eyes.

“fuck, you’re so wet,” is all the warning you get before he’s licking a long stripe up you from entrance to clit before he’s sucking the hard, sensitive nub into his mouth. your eyes immediately rolled back into your head, your hips instinctively bucking up into his mouth while a gasped moan of issei left your lips.

if he could bottle your moans and use them whenever he pleased, he would, the sound sending another pulse of arousal to his already hard cock. he was tempted to reach down and pull himself out of his trousers but he denied himself. this was about you; you and your wet ass pussy.

issei continued his ministrations on your clit, circling it with his tongue before pulling it into his mouth while his hand was ready to get busy. it crept up your thigh, sending shivers down your spine until it reached your sopping entrance, two of his fingers teasing the slit before delving in to the third knuckle.

the moan you let out is borderline animalistic as your body sends another wave of slick pulsing out over his hand. he groaned into your cunt at your tightness, his mind only imagining him deep within you while you squeeze him for all he’s got.

the amount of slick you produced made it easy for him to add a third finger, thrusting them in and out while also crooking them upwards in search for your special spot that would have you seeing stars. it took him a little prodding but he knew he found it when your back arched, your hand came down into his hair, and you whimpered out a string of curses.

“that’s it baby, cmon, you’re doing so well, wanna see you come apart for me,” he all but growled against your clit before delving back in with a higher intensity, his desperation for you to come winning out his desire to tease you and drag this out as long as possible.

with his incessant pressure on your g-spot and his lips suctioned around your clit, it wasn’t long before he got what he wanted.

“isseiisseiisseiissei, i’m coming, i’m coming-oh fuck!” you screamed as you clenched and gushed all over his fingers, your entire body caving in with the intensity of your orgasm. his fingers were practically forced from your spasming cunt but they quickly found a place rubbing your nub side to side as fast as possible. the overwhelming urge to pee came over you and you shook your head, trying to push his hand away.

“no, no, give it to me, i know you can,” issei groaned, his eyes locked on your dripping pussy. the pleasure he was giving came to a head at his words and you felt a clear liquid escape from your tired, overstimulated cunt, your mouth opening in a silent moan before collapsing back on the seat.

the sight proved to be too much for issei as he felt his body tense, his own orgasm washing over him as he emptied himself into his boxers. he fell back onto the ground, in shock of himself coming entirely untouched. he’d never done it before but of course it was you that would bring it out of him. a smile spread across his face at the thought, his head tilting back as he laughed, catching the attention of your worn body.

“what’re y’laughing at?” you slurred, cringing a little at how fucked out you sounded but issei didn’t seem to mind, his face glowing while covered in your slick and cum.

“nothing, nothing, but uh, i have a question.” you felt your heart leap to your chest, your mind already racing with the possibilities. he’s going to say this was a mistake, that we’re just better off as friends. oh god, what if he says i stunk? or the worst pussy he’s ever had? or what if—

“want to go and get a coffee?” he asked, the smile still plastered on his face but with an uncharacteristic hint of shyness. the butterflies were back in your stomach as you shyly nodded before allowing him to help clean you up and standing, not missing how he slipped your lacy underwear deep into one of his pockets.

issei’s hand found its way into yours as he said goodbye to his coworkers and boss before leading you out of the cafe, watching you tell an animated retelling of the bullshit that occurred at your job with a warm grin on his face and pink cheeks.

it might not be like matsukawa issei to be embarrassed but if it resulted in getting you by his side? he would do it again and again.

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tonystarktogo · 4 years

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Part 3 of the SNEAK ‘verse

Four months later, Tony has successfully hidden three different back-up power sources for JARVIS in vacation homes his parents’ hopefully won’t ever find out they own. He’s already working on better solutions and improving JARVIS’s safety, but for now it’s a start.

They can work with this.

Roughly nine weeks after Tony’s twenty-third birthday and a particularly exhausting dinner filled with unwelcome career advise, Tony Stark walks out of his parents’ mansion and doesn’t come back.

[He leaves a note. He’s not a complete jackass. Also JARVIS insisted.]

[continues under the cut]

Tony disappears in a small, unremarkable apartment in a small town in Pennsylvania. It’s a temporary solution, one that is unfortunately necessary while Tony plans his next move. He already knows where he’s going to resurface, where he’ll establish himself officially — there’s no place like NYC if you want to entrench yourself in the super community, particularly on the vigilante front — but from the moment he does that, people will be watching.

And that’s not Tony’s arrogance talking. The fact remains, Tony Stark establishing himself in a super community will draw attention. Some of it will be inconvenient but harmless and ultimately fade the moment a new supervillain disrupts everyday life. Some of it won’t be.

[There’s a reason why the first step in the plan has been to create an AI that people would label SKYNET if they had any idea of its existence and it wasn’t because Tony needs a personal assistant to remember his parents’ birthdays. If he wants to actually succeed, to establish himself as a useful resource for supers, then the privacy and safety of his customers is paramount.

There’s also the fact that Tony is a noisy little shit who likes being able to hack into the various three-letter-intelligence services whenever the mood strikes him and assistance is appreciated, but that’s really just a bonus.]

People will dig into Tony once he makes his intentions clear. Because supers. Supers have been the most polarizing topic on the world’s collective political agenda since their first creation and times may have changed but not by that much.

So. By the time Tony opens his business for the first time, he needs to have everything in place. The safe houses. The back-up safe houses. The storage places. The identities and resources to fall back on in case his home will get compromised. Which — considering Tony is planning on dealing with superheroes and supervillains — will happen. It’ll only be a matter of time.

And Tony is many things, brilliant, confident, arrogant, human, but no one has ever accused him of being stupid. Opening up a super-focused business is gonna step on a lot of toes, piss a lot of powerful people off and raise the interest of even more. But if it was easy, Tony wouldn’t bother, would drop the idea on some of his over-eager college friends, give them a couple of hundred thousand to get them started and revisit their efforts again in a year or two.

Tony’s doing it because it’s gonna be tough, because it’s gonna be tricky. And. Because Tony Stark will be a hell of a lot harder to disappear than most. [But not impossible. Hence the creation of JARVIS. And the Legacy Protocol.]

With Phase 1: Build the World’s Most Kickass AI — from now on referred to as this operation’s Head of Cyber Security and Market Analysis — completed, Tony has two months to put Phase 2: Back-ups B to Z and Phase 3: Build a HQ Worthy of the Cause into place. It’s not a lot of time, but that’s as long as Tony can reasonably disappear without anyone asking too many inconvenient questions or getting too suspicious. [Especially once Tony pops back up with all these nice, dangerous ideas and plans.]

Besides Tony’s always thought that the deadline is it’s own kind of inspiration.

"Alright then." He cracks his knuckles, which earns him JARVIS’ judging silence, and opens a new window on his newly-acquired computer. "Let’s fuck up a lot of plans and have fun doing it."

JARVIS, the party-pooper, plays the audio recording of a very done-with-your-shit™ exhausted sigh. Tony can’t even be annoyed at the lack of faith because his baby boy is developing a sense of humor. [Even if all of Rhodey’s many warnings come true and J ends up taking over the world, at least he’ll do it with awesome quips and fucking style.]

#ReRe writes #Tony and his bots #meaning JARVIS but JARVIS counts okay #Tony Stark #JARVIS #SNEAK verse #this could've been a villain's origin story 'verse #fic #basically Tony's backstory in this 'verse #listen he put a lot of effort into this plan #like he genuinely made SKYNET just because he needed decent cyber security #meanwhile there's Rhodey shouting THAT MOVIE WASN'T A FUCKING INSPIRATION YOU MORON #but Tony just bobs his head to music and let's JARVIS hack Rhodey's phone and mess with his contact list #superheroes and supervillains are known and (fairly) common #Tony's relationship to his parents is complicated #but when is it not

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seaswalllow · 3 years

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concept below :P

snippet one is mostly establishing format, snippet two, though... ;]

> User: E@>>J registered.

> Audio components active. Visuals active.

The camera's screen flickers. It is held in a surprisingly steady hand, although its wielder is excitable- and loud. As the pixels resolve themselves into a grainy picture that steadily sharpens, you can make out grass underfoot.

Shadows flicker on the edges. They resolve, too, into the shadows of two other boys.

> User: EF33@ registered.

> User: C2?3@@ registered.

The voices of all three fade in.

> "-did you bring the extra flashlights? Batteries? Snacks?"

The camera-holder scoffs. From your angle, you can see him dig the toe of a scuffed sneaker into the earth.

> "Yes, I did. Water, too. I'm not an idiot."

Speculative noises arise from his companions. He pans the camera up aggressively, zooming in on the shorter one who makes direct eye-contact and shrugs.

> "You're excitable."

The taller one seems more careful with his words. This earns another aggressive- relatively over the top- scoff.

> "And you're a bitch, Ranboo. Ranboob."

> "Well now that was just uncalled for-"

Ranboo's protests are overlapped by the camera-holder walking forward, and beginning to talk.

> "Let's get going! It'll be nighttime by the time we get there, and you'll want to go back because you're a little bitch-"

> "Because we don't want to break our necks-"

The camera is snatched amidst the argument; the camera flips enough for you to see that it is the other boy waving to you.

> "While they argue, we'll keep walking. We're walking down to this ravine that Tommy had found."

As he speaks, he briefly pans over to the boy arguing with Ranboo, before returning to the path in front of them. In front of you, the woods loom. This close to the edge, sunlight dapples the floor.

The boys overhear him, and their arguing seems to cease. Tommy speeds up to walk in front of the camera.

> "Tommy, is there anything that you wanted to tell us about the ravine?"

> "It's haunted, bitch."

This draws a yelp from their companion. Tommy's expression twitches with a barely concealed smile; neither the camera holder nor Ranboo seem as amused. The camera holder skirts around a tree, and you watch as a squirrel scuttles past.

> "What do you mean, haunted? Tommy, what do you mean haunted?"

> "There's no way that it's haunted. You're trying to get a spook out of us."

Ranboo and the camera holder's complaints overlap. Tommy waves a hand dismissively at the camera.

> "Take a look and find out, Tubbo. There's supposedly a sad little man who wanders around the place, playing with the lanterns-"

This time, the camera pans up again to Ranboo, who shakes his head at it.

> "This is going to end so badly."

> "It'll be fine! Just don't pussy out and run off on your own!"

A huff sounds from behind you. Tubbo pans the camera around to catch more of the forest; here, the undergrowth sprawls wildly about the floor, and it nearly trips Tommy up. Birdsong grows fainter, and fainter, and Ranboo rubs at his arms.

> "Should I turn the camera off until we get there? I'll save its batteries."

> "We brought extra, it'll be fine!"

> "Besides, if we end up getting murdered in the forest, at least someone can stumble onto the camera-"

> "Someone's just gonna leave the camera behind, right-"

The three boys' arguments overlap each other, but Tubbo does not shut the camera off.

Tommy brings the group to a stop in front of a hill. From behind Ranboo, you can't see why they've halted; when Tubbo pans the camera around, you can see the cave entrance.

The sunlight hardly reaches you here, thick as the canopy is. It doesn't stretch much further into the cavern.

Tommy pulls out a torch, and flicks it on. Ranboo does not follow suit; Tubbo does.

> "So this is the ravine. It goes down a passage, and then supposedly opens up."

> "I still say this is a bad, bad idea. We are going to break something, we are going to get murdered-"

> "We'll be fine. We're three big men, we can take whatever bitches try to jump us. I'll just flex- and punch them-"

> "And break your hand."

Tubbo sounds amused; Ranboo has hesitantly taken out a torch and flicked it on.

> "You go on then, bossman. You want to show us this badly, you go first."

> "Fine! Fine."

Tommy steps into the cavern; the camera is panned down to note that the floor dips down immediately within the entrance. He forges on, further, gravel crackling underfoot.

The party pauses at indentations in the floor, scrapes around it- Tommy pokes it with a foot. The camera zooms in on it.

> "Looks like somebody hollowed out this place at least a little. Did you say that this place was manmade?"

> "Well, somebody had to have found it if there's a fucking ghost here."

> "If there's a ghost here, then someone died, and we shouldn't be here at all!"

Tommy does not answer, having moved on. Tubbo only pans the camera to Ranboo- your view bobs, presumably from a shrug.

> "Come look! I found the way down, look at how cool that is-"

The camera just catches Tommy sliding into a crack in the wall, and beginning to make his way downwards. Tubbo follows. He makes a surprised sound, and points you at the stairs.

The very clearly manmade stairs. They are unevenly hewn out, and although Tubbo doesn't slip, you can hear Tommy swear up ahead as he grabs at the walls for support.

> "Definitely manmade."

Ranboo's voice does not sound terribly excited with this revelation. Tommy has stopped firing back particularly acerbic retorts- Tubbo silently zooms in on his white-knuckled grip on the torch and doesn't say another word.

> "How deep can this go? We've been in here for what feels like hours-"

The camera jerks up sharply at Tommy's loud swear, and you come to an abrupt stop. Tommy steadies himself for balance on the floor, and the camera peeks around him, Ranboo whistling under his breath.

The three beams of light play over the expanse yawning below them; pathways arch, thin and winding, between the cavern walls. Tommy's light lingers over a lantern, rusted and long-burnt out, before it wanders further down to the floor. Below them, something clicks, once, twice, three times. A rock, presumably, hitting the floor as they enter the path.

Ranboo's, meanwhile, explores the pathway that sprawls in front of them and follows it down. The camera flicks between both, before Tubbo starts cautiously following the path in turn.

> "So somebody clearly was here. They spent lots of time here if this wasn't- natural."

Tubbo's light flicks to a wooden pathway, rotted through.

> "No way all of this was natural, bossman."

Distantly, Ranboo can be heard muttering under his breath. Whatever it is, it is worried; but it's too quiet to be distinct.

By now, Tubbo is halfway down the path. Closer to the ravine floor, more cracks can be seen in the walls.

As one of their lights wander across the walls, Ranboo clears his throat.

> "Guys. Guys, are those- what is that in the walls? Buttons?"

Tubbo hops the last distance off, and wanders closer to one. The camera, grainy as it is in the low light, zooms in on one of the little square mechanisms. It's wood, and oddly smooth, despite the rot that's wormed its way in.

> "Sure seems like it."

> "You should press it."

Quick as a flash, Tommy comes up behind him, and presses it. Other than a gentle click, despite Ranboo's scandalized hiss, nothing happens. It pops back into place.

> "Next question: why're there so many of these?"

> "Someone was bored, probably."

Tommy's peeled off again, turning in a circle. Tubbo zooms the camera in on a crack in the wall.

> "Is this an actual cave system?"

Tommy moves ahead of him, peeking into the crack. Crack is inaccurate- more like an opening, oddly tall enough and spacious enough for two of them to fit through comfortably.

> "...This isn't a fucking cave."

Tommy disappears into it, and Ranboo hovers outside. His attention is drawn somewhere deeper into the ravine- Tubbo zooms in on him.

> "Shadows got to you?"

> "I thought I saw something."

Even in the low light, Ranboo's troubled expression is easy to make out. Tubbo swings the camera around to follow where he stares. The torch cuts deep enough to come across the other wall- not a single thing moves.

Tubbo swings the camera back to Ranboo.

> "Here, you follow Tommy, and I'll go behind."

> "For you to spook me too?"

Nonetheless, Ranboo does follow Tommy in. Tubbo pans the camera a last time down in the direction he was staring in- nothing. A rusted lantern swings in a breeze.

Odd, that. A breeze in a cave.

The view lingers on it, and when it's pulled away, seems grainier than normal.

> "This is an actual room. This isn't a cave. Someone made this room."

Tubbo zooms in on more scratches in the side of the wall. Some of it looks like somebody was hacking away at the walls. Others...

> "What, someone hacked out this room, and went- hold up, hold up. What the fuck is this shit on the ground?"

Their footsteps don't echo here, muffled by what appears to be softer ground. As multiple torches are pointed down, Ranboo crouches down, and pokes at it, before taking a handful. Dirt trickles through his fingers.

> "Did someone just- just haul down some dirt to shove into a random cave room? What kind of- who made this place?"

None of the others have answers for him; Tubbo crouches as well, and digs his hands deeper. He does not meet stone anywhere underneath.

> "It goes deep, too. Wonder why."

Tommy ducks out of the room; his footsteps echo as his feet meet stone once more.

> "There's more further down the hall. There's- guys. Guys, come look."

This time, his confusion sounds tangible.

The camera is lifted back up to eye level, as they follow his voice, into another room.

> "That is very clearly a bed. That is a bed. That is a table. And a chair across the room. Did- there was somebody living down here."

> "Tommy, what kind of ravine did you take us into?"

Tubbo takes the camera closer to the bed. Most of the fabric is long gone, eaten away by moisture and insects. The wood creaks as he reaches out a foot to nudge it.

The table is in no better condition. Tommy attempts to lean on it, only to jump away as it creaks.

> "They're definitely not here. Right? Why would you even live down here? How?"

The camera bobs with Tubbo's shrug.

> "Maybe this was like... someone's secret base."

> "In the middle of a ravine, in the middle of the forest?!"

> "I didn't say it was normal!"

> "We should leave."

Outside, the lantern chains gently scrape together, again. Ranboo jumps, and Tommy shoves him with a shoulder.

> "Calm down. Whoever was here is clearly long gone- and if we see a ghost, we have some cool footage!"

> "Or we just- don't mess with them because we don't know what would've killed them down here."

> "But ghosts, Ranboo. Ghosts!"

By now, they're ducking out of the room. Ranboo continues to look back behind him; Tommy continues to walk further into the ravine.

Above them, the wooden pathways creak, and all three freeze.

The torchlight reveals nothing.

> "You've already gotten enough footage."

For all of Ranboo's efforts, Tommy keeps going, poking his head into cracks and walking up roughly hewn stairs.

> "Bossman, Ranboo might be right. It's time to go, we spent a good part of the day already."

Tommy's grumbles float back up to you, but he rejoins not long after.

It's at this point that they begin maneuvering back.

The footage is fuzzier than ever. Tubbo hums, disgruntled, and the view jostles; presumably as he lightly smacks it.

> "Something wrong?"

> "The footage's gone all weird; it's even shittier than before."

> "Give it here."

The camera switches hands; your view sweeps across the ravine ceiling, faintly catching four shadows. Tommy flips the camera over, presumably examining it by torchlight.

> "That's weird. Maybe the lighting's got to it. Or maybe it's the ghosts."

A faint thud sounds, Tommy letting out a huff.

> "Don't fucking- elbow me, you're like double my height-"

> "Don't try to freak us out!"

> "Okay, let's go, boys."

Tubbo's interruption breaks up the bubbling argument, as he takes the camera and starts back to the path. The view is slowly panned around them.

> "Nothing now, see? It's just you freaking out, Ranboo."

> "Or maybe whoever it is heard that we're leaving."

Ranboo is vocally displeased with the idea of Tubbo's suggestion. Tommy only snickers.

No other banter is picked up.

> "Look, there's that weirdass bridge again. It won't hold my weight, will it?"

> "No, definitely not, Tommy. It's been God knows how many years."

The camera sweeps back to face Tommy, who has a single foot gently testing the weight of the bridge. Ranboo hovers nervously to the side.

Behind Tommy, on the film, through the increasing static, a faint figure pulls itself up from where it was dangling its legs over the side. The camera freezes where it is.

> "Tommy. Tommy- are any of you seeing this? On the bridge?"

The figure pauses. So do the boys- they look at the bridge, and then back at Tubbo.

> "There's nothing there. See?"

The flashlight plays over the bridge, passing through the figure watching them. Faintly, a trenchcoat can be made out. A tattered sweater.

> "That- Ranboo. Come here. Look."

Gravel crackles to the side, and a sharp intake of breath can be heard; presumably as Ranboo approaches.

> "Tommy, get away from the bridge. Get over here."

Tommy moves towards the camera. The figure stops moving towards Tommy.

> "Oh, what the fuck. What the fuck."

The camera zooms, slightly. With three torches now focused on the figure, more details of the patches on the coat emerge. The man wearing it- he's folding his arms, staring them down.

From further down the bridge, a fourth voice echoes.

> "Hasn't anybody taught you boys not to play on rotting fucking bridges?"

#dream smp #tommyinnit #tubbo #ranboo #wilbur soot #found footage au #boys explore pogtopia babeyyyy #this became a whole fucking fic lmao #im also tired so thats how far im taking this concept <3 i may or may not do a follow up depending

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mochirou · 4 years

Note

prompt “I can’t keep kissing strangers and pretending that they’re you.”

HELLO THIS GOT LONG

•♡︎•

like real people do

krbk, getting back together, angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort

tw alcohol, intoxication, emeto, self neglect

——————————————

A month. That’s how long it’d taken for him to break and hit the call button. It was a mistake, really, his finger had been hovering over the icon for five minutes at least. The tap barely registered through the haze in his head, and the ringing was a dull, faded noise that merely bounced off the thick layer of fog surrounding him.

It echoed through his empty apartment, which was depressingly colorless. He had refused to buy anything that wasn’t some shade of grey or orange, but now that his stuff was gone, he kinda really missed the obnoxious neon hues of his clothes strewn everywhere.

He never thought he’d miss the mess that he had angrily mentioned while chasing him out. The apartment was too sterile, bearing no trace that anyone had ever lived there. Except for the table, filled with empty glass bottles whose contents were an unwitting part of the failed attempt to drown and bury feelings that were now threatening to boil over inside of him.

“Ka… Bakugo?” The voice was soft and hesitant, laced with sadness, and an emotion he couldn’t pin down.

“E-Eijiro— I didn’ expect you to pick up…” He slurred his words, half from inebriation and half from crying.

“What did you call me for?” His voice gained a little bit of hostility, the phone audio crackling as he spat those words.

“I’m… I’m really sorry, I fucked up, I… Shouldn’t have- I miss you so much.”

“Wha-“

“Fuck, I’m so lonely. I can’t keep kissing strangers and pretending they’re you. Even though they have your hair color, none of it looks as… hah… dumb as yours, and they don’t have your smile, or your laugh…” His voice broke, and he set his phone down on the table as he was overtaken by sobs. He put his face in his hands, muffling his crying and making the tears streaming down his face gather in his palms.

“Are… Are you drunk?”

“U-Uh… No,” He mumbled, unconvincingly. Kirishima stayed silent, thinking.

“I’m coming over.”

“No, wait, I-“ He tried to protest, but he was cut off by the sound of him hanging up. He was about to hit the call back button but he suddenly became aware of the fact that more than just strong feelings were coming up his throat.

When Kirishima opened the (thankfully unlocked) door, he was greeted with the sound of sobbing and retching coming from the bathroom. His phone was sitting on the table, with a dribble of vomit next to it.

“Baku- Kat- Uhh….?” He cycled through his given name and surname, unsure of how to address him.

“K-Kaa-hatsuki,” He gagged in the middle of the word, leaning back over the toilet. Not much came out, just pure bitter bile. He hadn’t eaten well in weeks, only having enough to not pass out from hunger while he sat listlessly around the house or went to work. He coughed from the feeling of acid in the back of his throat, and the action caused him to dry heave.

That was what Kirishima walked in on, him leaning over the toilet, unable to move from where he was hugging the bowl. He kept retching, but nothing was coming out.

“Jesus Christ Katsuki, how much have you drank?” He asked incredulously, staring in shock at the gaunt figure in front of him.

His skin, which had once been colored, was now a dull grey. He had deep bags under his eyes, and he trembled even when he was sitting still.

“I dunno why you had to come over, I’m fine. Fucking peachy. Calling you was a mistake.” Bakugo sneered at him, but there was no malice behind it. Just sadness and hurt.

“See, this is why we broke up. You wouldn’t accept my help, even when you clearly needed it. Alright, okay, whatever. I’m too nice for this shit, I don’t know why I came over. Maybe I had hoped you changed. Maybe I have that savior complex you mentioned and I hoped you were finally broken enough to be ready for me. I don’t fucking know.” Kirishima was angry, yet his tone was icy cold and mechanical. It was paired with an unfamiliar scowl, and a pair of eyes filled to the brim with rage.

“Fuckin’ shit I did it again- Eijiro, I’m so sorry, it’s just habit. P… Please don’t leave me,” Bakugo whimpered pitifully, arm still wrapped around the toilet bowl.

“I… I need you.” Those words stopped Kirishima in his tracks, whose back was turned to leave the bathroom. His face softened, and he swiveled around to look at him.

“I love you too. You’re kinda a mess right now, when’s the last time you showered?” His voice was full of sympathy, concern, and genuine sweetness, a complete 180 from what it was just a few seconds ago.

“I don’t remember,” He said softly. He hadn’t been keeping track of it, but it’d been five days. His unwashed hair laid flat with grease, having lost its usual poof. At the mention of showers, he suddenly felt all the grime and sweat caked on his skin at once. He sniffled, and his skin crawled at the thought of how dirty he was.

“Here, I’ll take a shower with you. Maybe you’ll feel less gross afterwards.” Kirishima held out his hand, letting Bakugo lean on him to pull himself up. He stumbled right into Kirishima once he was upright, dizzy from intoxication. They both started undressing automatically, Kirishima turning on the water while they settled back into a familiar routine. When it was warm, they both stepped in, the water instantly making Bakugo feel a bit better and washing off the built up dirt. He sidled right up to Kirishima, settling in his arms and relaxing against his chest with a sigh.

“Isn’t this a bit weird, seeing as you kindaaa... chased me out of the apartment screaming a month ago and told me to never come back?” He was genuinely confused, but still wrapped his arms around Bakugo’s torso and squeezed him gently. He hummed in response, and pushed his face up against the side of his neck.

“I missed you. I’m sorry fer bein’ a dick, you didn’t deserve being treated like shit.” He interrupted his apology by pressing a kiss right behind his ear.

“I’ll try to do better, if you’ll have me.” He pushed his body flush to Kirishima’s under the water. He’d never admit it, but that was one of the things he missed most.

“Can you wash my hair? Feels better when you do it.”

taglist:

@friendly-neighborhood-pan @burn-the-witch-now @koifishkiss @plusultrachaos @sillysaladtrash @demumbrigde @worst-bunny @nebula--system

feel free to ask to be added/removed!

#kiribaku #bakushima #kirishima eijirou #bakugou katsuki #krbk #angst #hurt/comfort #mochirou writes #anon prompt

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smokahuntis · 5 years

Text

Tempestas

Word count: I don’t know, medium length?

Warnings: Angst, Mentions is blood, Reader injury, violence. Little fluff, if you really look for it. Mentions of death

Summery: (Y/N)/ Tempestas, is an ex Mandolorian who crashes while doing a delivery, everyone thought she was dead. Until 6 years later they get a mysterious message.

Key words

Alibine- Readers ship

Wraith- readers race

Tempestas- Latin word for storm and code name for the reader

Authors note: I made us a species for this world, also I wrote this at 4 am, and it’s my first story in here. I hope you like It!

Chapter 2: Tonitrua

Chapter 3: Fulgur

Delicate fingers started flipping on the switches to the Alibine, as (Y/N) entered the vicinity of Nevvaro city. Her communications lit up as the helmet of the Mandolorian Armorer showed in blue on her dash.

“I’m near Nevvaro, I should touch down soon,” the cold blooded girl said as she kept flipping a yellow switch that wouldn’t turn off.

“How many did you get?” The Armorer asked watching the girl from the small projection.

“36,” the ex-Mandalorian said, still playing with the switch as she referenced the Beskar she got for the creed.

“Is something wrong?” The horned helmeted woman asked.

“This Damn passenger light won’t turn off, and I don’t have any passengers!” (Y/N) said looking back at the projection, but before her uncovered eyes reached it she saw the reflection of the man behind her in her windshield. “Shit!” She said pressing auto pilot mode as she grabbed her gun.

The small girl turned around in her seat and kicked the man in the chest before he could react, sending him back and against the cold metal of the cockpit. He grabbed his gun and shot grazing the girls arm and hitting the control panel, causing the ship to shake.

The Mandolorian stepped into the dimly lit room the Armorer kept, his eyes scanned the room threw his shining beskar helmet before he caught her in the corner making Whistling Birds. “I got your message. “ he said ima monotone voice, the modulator of the Helmet not helping.

“Do you know what today is Din?” The Armorer said not turning away from her work.

“Taungsday?” He said, the slight sarcasm in his voice toned out by his helmet. The Armorer glanced at him.

“Exactly 6 years ago yesterday, don’t you remember.” the Armorer said finally turning to him.

(Y/N) gripped the mans head, her knee meeting his skull as he tumbled to the cold silver floor of her white ship. The ship only continued to shake, as she made her way over to the control panel, believing she had enough time before the man stood. She flipped switches and turned knobs, just as the ship began to stabilize, the tall man used her large gun to strangle her. She grasped at the weapon to get it away from her throat. Her eyes quickly scanned the room in-front of her before her eyes landed on her old helmet, grabbing it she hit the man on the head with it making him drop the rifle and stumble back. She quickly turned kicking him in the head busting it on the wall, knocking him out into the floor, his blood painting the wall in a smear.

“She wasn’t a Mandolorian when it happened, why do you care?” The Mandolorian said as he sat at on the small bench, the armorer setting across from him.

“She May have not be a Mandolorian when it happened, but she still helped us.” the Golden helmeted lady said looking at him.

“Helped us?” He turned his head slightly in confusion. “ how?”

“There is a lot you do not know, din.”

“Then tell me, why was she not a Mandolorian if she helped us.”

(Y/N) moves to stabilize the ship, giving a quick glance to her old helmet, her mind flooding with memories of how she lost it. She had gotten captured by a group of Twi’leks who had a bounty on her. The purple one removed her helmet while she was knocked out, but it didn’t change that (Y/N), the cold blooded woman known as ‘Tempestas’ was Mandolorian at heart. She honored the way and never put it back on, but she would deliver them Beskar when she could. For the former foundling never forgot the people who saved her life.

Just as the ship began to fly fine, she went flying across the cockpit from an impact on the outside. As everything faded she pressed the call on the Nevvaro Base.

The armorers contact link lit up again ‘[Tempestas]’ she answered instantly. Masking the worry that cascaded her voice. “Tempestas , is everything alright?”

“I’m off course, something is attacking the ship I-!” The small girl was cut off by the ship being blasted from the sky.

“She honored the code, but she did not change her actions, she took jobs regularly, used her real name, and gave us any Beskar she collected on the journey.” The armorer said laying Whistling Birds in-front of him.

“What did she get in return?”

“The only thing she ever asked for.”

The fire was bright, and the ash planes coated the scraps of the ship that layer around. Her vision was blurred and all she could see was the bright fire that contrasted to the ash. Turning her head she could see the man from earlier, near him was the large glass box of Beskar.

She lifted her hand to send a message with her wrist communicator. Tapping in the code for the Mandolorians was all she cared about at the time, she didn’t notice the three men walking her way until after.

“Shit...” she looked up at them, trying to move she found she couldn’t. Her legs trapped under parts of the white metal of the Alibine. So she did what she could, cocking back her wrist she let the Whistling birds go.

Zipping threw the air taking out the three men, or so it seemed. One lasted, and that one grabbed her, dragging her to a darker ship. She only blacked out in response.

“When they arrived, she was no where to be seen, the only parts of her we could find was blue, and ice cold.” The armorer said, neatly laying out Whistling bird by whistling bird.

“Her blood.” Mando commented, looking down. He had heard the story before, he was away on Hoth at the time or he could have saved her, he blamed himself over and over again for what happened. “She was destroyed in the crash, you’ve told me...”

“Thats what you don’t know, mando.” She looked up at him once again. “She was your foundling sister, so we didn’t want to tell you about what we really found. Or what we thought we found.”

Six, six Mandolorians arrived at the scene. Instantly taking in chaos that was now the Alibine. A beautiful ship, and it’s beautiful captain ripped to shreds in a crash.

“Find her, and the Beskar. We don’t leave here with out them!” A larger Mandolorian yelled causing the others to nod. Even though (Y/N) was no longer a Mandolorian, she was family. One of the best Bounty hunters the Mandolorians ever saw, not only did she hunt but she also did stealth missions for people, had a whole suit for it.

The Mandolorians kept looking until one smaller, much younger Mandolorian came across a deep blue luster of liquid. “ I got something.” He said causing the oldest to come over.

“ I think we’re gonna have to call it.” He said looking down at the liquid that seeped into the ash as it dropped from the debris of the ship.

“ what is it?” The younger one asked.

“It’s her blood.”

“ why is it blue?” He asked looking back down at the beautiful royal liquid.

“ she’s part Wraith.”

“So what is it you’re not telling me?” Din said watching the woman. The armorer stood walking across the small room.

“ she never found any pieces of her body, not one... we bared her necklace...” the woman said grabbing a small round object.

“ Why are you telling me all this now?” He said standing up looking at her, there was a small peak of anger in his voice.

Din grew up with the warrior in question, they knew each other before becoming Mandalorians, they knew each other while becoming Mandolorians. And because of this she was the only person aloud to see his face and vise versa. Every three months they would meet on Sorgan, just to bask in the attention of another human. To be able to joke, and smile with another human, without the helmet.

For him, it was the contact he wanted, the friendship he missed. The soft touches and teasing pushing, it’s what he’s craved for 6 years now, without her he was starved.

For her, with was being comfortable in her own skin with someone, being able to pretend everything’s ok. Because she knew even if she did take her helmet off, she could never take her armor, in fear of the looks she would get. She had scars, and markings. What stuck out the most was her veins, black, pitch black, spreading from her heart down her arms, slowly up her neck. She couldn’t help it, the more she used her powers the more it spread. But with Din, she felt comfortable to be herself.

“Two days ago I received a message from a ‘ OV-813’, and I think you should hear it.” She said playing the audio.

The soft voice of (Y/N) now scratchy, more mature, was brought to life from the small box.

“I-If anyone can hear this, I-it’s “ the audio began to cut out, but not before they caught the code name. “Tempestas.” The audio became scratchy but in the back grown he could hear a guard, someone yelling. Before the final words spoken were

“ send help.”

#the mandolorian x reader #din djarin x reader #star wars x reader #the mandolarian #baby yoda #angst #din djaren #armorer #tempestus #mandolorians #bounty hunter #author #short story #imagine #oneshots

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sign-from-god-complex · 5 years

Text

Warmth

Summary: Despite the reality of it, the room didn’t feel empty. It felt soft—hazy and warm like a mug of hot chocolate or a sleepy summer morning or like Emile. It felt like the air around them was filled with sunbeams or cotton wool or a slow but sweet grin. It felt like love. And Remy was drowning in it.

Pairing: Remile (with background familial sleepxiety)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“One, two, three. One, two, three,” Remy murmured under their breath, hands held out in front of them as they twirled around the room.

It wasn’t graceful—their footwork was sloppy and every so often they’d miss a step before taking a breath and starting again—but they were learning. They couldn’t expect to be perfect immediately! Or at least that’s what Emile would tell them anyway.

The music faded out slowly and Remy dropped their arms, heaving out a sigh. Quickly going to check their phone, which was still plugged in to the speakers, they noted it was only 4:30—plenty of time left to practise before they were expected home.

“Rem?”

“Milly!” Remy yelled, scrambling to pause the music which—as they’d set it to loop—was just beginning to start up again, “What the fuck are you doing here?!”

In response, Emile giggled and Remy tried to ignore how it made their chest feel like it was filled with helium or rays of sunlight or cotton candy fluff.

“I was just about to pick up Pat and Ro from rehearsals!” he replied, pacing his way forward into the room. He glanced around, taking in the mostly empty space filled only with mirrors and the sound of Remy’s heart beating out of their chest, “I heard the sound of Disney and I couldn’t help but come and investigate. Was that Someday My Prince Will Come from Snow White?”

Remy scratched at the back of their neck for a moment. “A version of, yeah.”

They’d actually searched for ages to find an instrumental recording where it didn’t cut out or slow down too much to get in the way of their practice. In the end, they’d just had Virgil cut it for them in some audio editing software. Thankfully, he agreed to do them a favour without asking what they needed it for; they aren’t entirely sure they could have handled the embarrassment.

“What are you doing in here?”

Emile’s tone was slightly baffled but his expression more curious than anything. Honestly, sometimes he reminded Remy too much of Logan which, if you knew how close the four of them were brought up, wasn’t really very strange at all.

(Of course, that wasn’t taking into account the fact that Logan was entirely spoken for and, regardless, Logan didn’t have that delightful sparkle in his eyes when they walked through the park together, chattering about nothing and everything all at once. He didn’t have that look of absolute wonder when he glanced up at Remy, his lips parted and his eyes wide and just crinkled at the corners like he was barely holding back a laugh.

He doesn’t dance around the kitchen, singing and giggling to music playing from his phone; he doesn’t pull Remy into the pool when they refuse to get in, complaining about their hair getting ruined; he doesn’t make Remy’s stomach flip and their cheeks heat and cause their smooth demeanour to abandon them.

So, maybe Emile wasn’t that much like Logan at all.)

They ducked their head, feeling Emile’s gaze on them as they moved to pick up their jacket from the ground. “Uhh… Practising.”

“Practising?” Emile parroted, grabbing Remy’s water bottle from the floor in front of him before handing it to them—Remy just hoped their face wasn’t as red as it felt, “For what?”

“Prom, actually,” they admitted.

They weren’t entirely sure what expression it was that flit across Emile’s face but it barely lasted a moment before his features were set into a look of mild surprise—fake, Remy suspected; sometimes they wondered if Patton was a bad influence on him.

“Oh! I thought you said you weren’t going to prom.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to but Virgil called me a chicken and basically blackmailed me into it. Babes, I swear, that little shit can be so sneaky when he wants to be.”

“What do you mean?”

Remy sighed, running their hand through their hair and immediately regretting it as they realised they were still slightly sweaty from their dancing. Probably should take a shower when they get home. “Uh, just that he knows there’s someone I wanted to ask.”

“Oh.”

Emile stopped in his tracks, blinking a few times before turning up his smile a few notches too bright. There was no crinkling at the corners of his eyes, no glitter in his gaze and it made something in Remy’s chest tighten.

“I, uh- I just remembered I have to go pick up Pat and Roman! They’re probably waiting for me. I’ll see you at school tomorrow, yeah?”

Remy barely had time to reply in the affirmative before he disappeared around the corner, practically leaving an Emile-shaped dust cloud in his wake.

“Well, that can’t be good,” Remy mumbled before resigning themself to finding their own way home.

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

The next few weeks saw Remy back in the studio, wishing that they had a partner to practise with. They had very briefly considered asking one of the kids to help them out but Patton had no idea how to dance, Roman was far too much drama and Logan almost certainly would refuse to agree—and dancing with their brother was absolutely a last resort.

Thus, here they were again, partnerless and only feeling slightly less ridiculous about it than they had been to begin with.

Pressing play on the recording, the speakers dragged out the opening bars to Once Upon A Dream, maybe not quite as smoothly as if Remy had left the intro in but they didn’t quite have the patience to sit through 8 something bars of useless instrumental.

It had turned out that Virgil had been entirely too aware of why Remy had needed the recording and, when they’d come to him to ask for help again, told them, “if you need any more disgustingly sappy music to pine to then you’re gonna edit it yourself”. As such, maybe the recording wasn’t quite the quality Virgil could have provided but considering it was only to practise anyway, Remy wasn’t actually too worried about it.

They hummed along softly as the music filled the room, their eyes falling closed as they lost themself for a moment—their head only filled with scraps of conversations, half-formed daydreams and the exact colour of the blush on Emile’s cheeks when they’d told him how much the skirt he’d worn today suited him.

“You’ll love me at once, the way you did once, upon a dream,” Remy sang quietly, their voice barely a whisper in the emptiness around them.

It didn’t feel empty, though. It felt soft—hazy and warm like a mug of hot chocolate or a sleepy summer morning or like Emile. It felt like the air around them was filled with sunbeams or cotton wool or a slow but sweet grin. It felt like love. And Remy was drowning in it.

As the song came to a close, Remy’s motions slowed to a stop. For a moment, they just stood there; their eyes closed as they took their time coming back to their surroundings. Once it registered that they’d managed to run through the entire song without screwing up they beamed—breathless and so proud.

It definitely didn’t mean that this journey was over but they were well on their way.

As Remy was preparing to restart the music, they heard a quiet gasp from the doorway—soft and awed and shocked all at once. They spun around, barely catching a glimpse of a skirt whipping out of sight—in fact, the exact same skirt Emile had been wearing earlier that day.

“Emile?” they called out, half-jogging their way over, “Are you there, babes?”

Their heart was bouncing up and down in their chest, hoping—hoping—that Emile would finally provide them with a good chance to ask him out. He’d been suspiciously absent recently, ducking out for homework more often or claiming overtime at work and they were trying really hard not to worry about what that might mean.

Virgil had been entirely unhelpful in this matter. Really, Remy would have thought Virgil could be a little more sympathetic towards potentially unfounded anxieties but he just kept pressuring them to tell him their “feelings” or whatever. It was getting a little bit exhausting.

Unfortunately for Remy, there was no sign of him; the corridor void of any life that wasn’t simply their own echoing breaths. Resigning themself to the belief that they had only seen what they wanted to see—that it was nothing more than one of the younger kids, surprised to find someone in the practise room and running out of sight before the person inside could identify them—they sighed and began to gather up their things.

They weren’t really in the mood to dance anymore.

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

Things between the two of them had been weird.

Remy had managed to pinpoint the origin to about a week or so ago, around the time Emile had caught them dancing for the first time. They didn’t want to admit that that was the reason that Emile was avoiding them now, was cutting himself off mid-thought and not smiling that smile that made Remy’s insides light up like a supernova. Because acknowledging that would mean acknowledging other things—acknowledging that maybe Remy was the only one pining, acknowledging that maybe Emile was uncomfortable with their affections, acknowledging that maybe Remy had ruined everything.

And they didn’t think they could do that.

They had skipped practising for the last few days, feeling like it wasn’t really worth it if there was no chance that they’d be able to go to prom anyway. Plus, Virgil’s needling had really started to get on their nerves—always going on about when they were going to finally ask Emile out—so they’d just told him they changed their mind. In response, he’d just sighed, giving Remy a look they didn’t quite understand but they think may have been disappointment.

They didn’t blame him; they were pretty disappointed in themself as well.

Today, though, they’d come back. They weren’t sure why. Nothing about this day was different than the last ones had been—sympathetic looks from their friends, stilted conversations and awkward silences—but, for some reason, they’d just felt like they’d needed to.

They’d come to really enjoy dancing over the months they’d been doing it and if they couldn’t find a way to express their emotions through that, they weren’t sure they were going to express them at all. And Emile had always told them bottling things up was unhealthy (though, if you asked them, that had always felt slightly hypocritical).

It was unexpected, maybe, but Remy had long since stopped worrying about what was expected of them.

After scrolling through their music library for a moment, Remy pushed play, locking their phone and coming to stand more in the centre of the room. There were a few bars of pure instrumental—they hadn’t ever thought this was a song they’d have to worry about cutting—but after a few moments, the vocals streamed in.

When somebody loved me, everything was beautiful.

Every hour spent together lives within my heart.

And when she was sad, I was there to dry her tears.

And when she was happy, so was I.

When she loved me.

Remy closed their eyes, spinning in place a few times and just letting the music wash over them. Then, they began to move, slowly and fluidly, showing off for themself just a little. They needed to feel like it was worth it—like all those days they’d spent in this very room, letting themself just be vulnerable hadn’t simply gone to waste.

Through the summer and the fall, we had each other, that was all.

Just she and I together, like it was meant to be.

“And when she was lonely, I was there to comfort her,” Remy sang, the words wavering slightly, “And I knew that he lov-”

Voice breaking, they folded over, hands gripping their thighs and just breathing as the music played on in the background. Their eyes were stinging and the crack in their chest only seemed to widen with every word so they moved to turn the music off, taking something of a steadying breath once silence filled the air again.

“This is stupid,” they muttered, rubbing at their eyes to remove any evidence of their breakdown, “What am I doing?”

“I thought it was amazing.”

Remy’s head shot up, staring at Emile in the doorway with a look of mild horror—though, for his part, Emile didn’t seem to notice.

Slowly, he walked up to them, so close that Remy could lean forward and bump into his chest and despite the fact that their brain was telling them to run as far away as possible, they were completely frozen to the spot. And as Emile gave a small smile, Remy wondered vaguely if it was possible to actually die from just being way too gay.

(They then realised if it was possible to die from being too gay Roman would absolutely have gone first, so they were probably safe.)

“May I make a song suggestion?” He asked, voice soft and just brushing up against their skin.

It took a moment too long for them to register that was a question—something Remy would entirely blame on Emile’s proximity and the fact that they were kind of a gay disaster—but they nodded, letting Emile pluck their cellphone right out of their hands.

It only took a moment of searching before music started flooding out of the speakers and it took Remy less time than that, after the music began, to place it. They refused to close their eyes, not when Emile was standing in front of them looking like that—like fond and soft and sweet and like maybe all this worry was for nothing because he looked a little bit like love too.

“All those days, watching from the windows. All those years, outside looking in. All that time, never even knowing just how blind I've been.”

Emile’s voice was soft and rich and warm and Remy couldn’t help but be reminded again of hot chocolates and sleepy summer mornings and the culmination of every conversation the two of them had ever had. His eyes traced their face with each line he sung and Remy was sure it was bright red but they didn’t feel as if they could be blamed at all.

“Now I'm here, blinking in the starlight. Now I'm here, suddenly I see. Standing here, it's, oh, so clear, I'm where I'm meant to be.”

With a grin—and still singing softly into the space between them—Emile took a step back and offered them his hand. There was almost no hesitation in their reply, grabbing his palm and letting him pull them out further into the room and then tighter against his chest.

“And at last, I see the light and it's like the fog has lifted. And at last, I see the light and it's like the sky is new. And it's warm and real and bright and the world has somehow shifted.”

Remy could hear his heartbeat from where they were tucked into his arms but they pulled away slightly—enough to grab his hands and begin to guide them around the room.

“All at once, everything looks different. Now that I see you.”

There was a moment of silence between the pair, blanketed in the music and Remy’s gentle touch keeping them moving across the floor. Emile’s ballroom dancing lessons from years prior seemed to have kicked back in and though he let Remy lead, he certainly wasn’t stepping on anyone’s toes.

He was avoiding their eyes, though. And Remy knew that fear—even if they’d like to pretend that they didn’t—so they took a deep breath. And they sang.

“All those days, chasing down a daydream. All those years, living in a blur. All that time, never truly seeing things the way they were.”

Truly, Remy didn’t know why Emile was so shocked. Yes, they’d never been particularly open with their emotions but they were so gone on him and they had never been good at hiding it. Years and years and years and years, Remy had been pining after him—long before there was even a him to pine over, long before Remy had even known what pining was.

It was always Emile. Always.

“Now he's here, shining in the starlight. Now he's here, suddenly I know. If he's here, it's crystal clear, I'm where I'm meant to go.”

They hadn’t been entirely sure that the change in pronouns would be audible enough over the sound of the speakers but as Remy watched Emile drop his head with a smile, cheeks stained red, they were glad they had taken the chance.

“And at last, I see the light and it's like the fog has lifted. And at last, I see the light and it's like the sky is new. And it's warm and real and bright and the world has somehow shifted.”

Their voices melded together, like a tapestry woven with two different threads—circling around each other and weaving in and out but never straying too far.

It was even better than Remy had imagined it to be. It felt so easy—like they were dancing with a sprite or a fairy, something magical that fit perfectly in time with them, except also knowing it could be no one but Emile. He was in every sense they had, overwhelming them almost but in a way that they’d gladly experience for the rest of their life.

“All at once, everything is different, now that I see you.”

Gradually, Remy slowed them to a stop, migrating their hands down to rest on Emile’s hips and watching him blush.

“Now that I see you.”

And with the end of the song fading out came silence, filling up the air in a much more comfortable manner than they had been afforded the last few weeks. Though there was no longer anything to dance to, neither of them moved—neither of them felt they could move, lest they disrupt this sense of calm that had settled.

In the end, Remy caved first, sighing ever so softly. “We should probably head out, doll.”

Emile ducked his head, chewing at the inside of his lip. Remy didn’t move their hands, not wanting to depart just yet, despite their words.

“I’m sorry,” Emile breathed out, honest and remorseful, “I’ve been really silly these past couple days.”

Remy shrugged. “It’s okay, hon, I-”

“No, it- it’s not,” he interrupted, eyes meeting Remy’s for the first time since the silence had been broken. They were almost teary and Remy just barely resisted the urge to reach up to cradle his face in their hands, wiping away any that manage to leak out. “I’ve been so cold to you and all because I was- was jealous! It’s so stupid!”

“Jealous? Darling, there ain’t nobody to be jealous of.”

Emile scowled and even though Remy could tell it wasn’t directed at them they still felt their chest ache. “Well, I know that now.”

“And what are you gonna do with that information, huh, babe?”

Remy had entirely meant to add an “s” to the end of babe, they just… hadn’t quite managed to get it out of their mouth. So as it was they just watched as Emile’s eyes widened slightly and his cheeks flushed even more and, Jesus, if Remy didn’t get to kiss him soon they were almost certain they were going to die.

It seemed as if Emile was on the same page because, with nothing more than a gentle head tilt and an answering nod from Remy, he leaned in and up, pressing their lips together.

It wasn’t a long kiss; it wasn’t a deep kiss; it was simple, soft and sweet and it was everything Remy had dreamed of and more. Their hands slid up from Emile’s waist to cup his cheek and rest on his shoulder, guiding him gently and feeling the warmth of his skin beneath their hand.

They drew away after a few moments but not too far—resting their forehead against Emile’s and unable to take their gaze away from the crinkles around his eyes and the sparkle that was staring straight at them.

“Hey, Remy?” Emile asked, the corner of his mouth quirked up in a grin, “D’you wanna go to prom with me?”

Remy beamed. “Honey, I would love nothing more.”

Taglist: @mutechild @super-magical-wizard @shadowsfromthesun @teadays @sandersships @camcam774 @autism-goblin @deadlyhuggles6 @romanthestarstruckqueer @whispers-stuff-in-your-ear @rainboots-are-for-snobs @sanders-and-sides @spirits-in-my-thoughts @kee-and-co @primaryyblogg @stop-it-anxiety @figurative-falsehood @jadedfantasies231 @idosanderssidespromptssometimes @poisonedapples @sanders-screams @another-sandersidesblog @do-not-just-see-observe @mychemicalpanicattheemo @goodandbadisallmadeupnonsense @localtransgrape @fandomsofrandom @gattonero17 @airiervessel @ollyollyoxinfree

#thomas sanders #cartoon therapy #remile #emile picani #remy sanders #virgil sanders #sanders sides #(oh shit I just realised this isn't even tss)#(oh well hahah the boys /are/ there)#(they're just;;;; background characters)#also Yes emile is trans to be clear #there's only really one line that alludes to it so I felt I should state it hahah #lo can write

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flatstarcarcosa · 4 years

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but ugh actually though

slade being in the area for whatever the reason, loosely tied to waller again, and super fucking pissed about it. he hates it when she’s in his business, he doubly hates it when she manages to corner him into having to work with her. not for her, mind you, just with. he keeps telling her he’s going to find a way out of this, and of course she doesn’t believe him.

she also doesn’t realize he’s intentionally being a bit sloppy with his work. not enough to ring any of the alarms she would have on her level, of course. but the Louisiana state CID is certainly noticing. they have no idea what they’re really dealing with, they never do.

bust rust is like a starving dog with a bone. he never chases the easy answers because the easy ones are never the correct ones.

it takes months, but he gets his man, and as he watches slade from the other side of the mirror, it still doesn’t seem like the right answer.

“wasn’t it, uh, you that said you ain’t never been in a room with a guy more than five minutes and not known if he done it or not?” asks marty as he blows into his coffee. there’s still friction between the two of them, he still revels in every answer rust gets wrong.

“i did,” says rust, “and he did it. but it still ain’t right.”

slade’s too cool, too calm, too collected. he’s too unbothered by the whole situation and as soon as rust sits across from him and starts pulling the file apart, he knows why.

there’s nothing to pull from this man. there’s no deep seated fear or regret, there’s no gazing into the abyss of a life behind bars and a last hope for redemption.

there’s just a smooth admission and a light smirk as he leans back in his chair.

“looks like an easy closer for you, detective,” he says. rust glances down at his file once more. the information he could find that wasn’t redacted, the information that he wasn’t told repeatedly he didn’t have the clearance for.

“looks that way,” he agrees. “but somethin’ tells me it isn’t. there’s more.”

“there’s always more, detective.”

rust chews on it for a minute, and then stands. he cuts the audio feed to the room, locks the door, ignores marty’s aggressive knocking on the window.

slade tells him the rest, and an hour later they’ve reached an agreement:

state CID will continue with their case, and their charges. they will get pushback from amanda waller, and they will have government suits swarming the building and claiming jurisdiction.

and slade will tell them too bad, and he will tell them to tell waller that he can easily blow the lid off task force x, and all the other dirty laundry and disclose the locations of all the skeletons in her closet. he will back her into a corner and she will have no choice but to relent.

slade of course will slip away from the CID when they move to transport him to angola, and rust will pretend he didn’t see that coming and offer a shrug and a ‘oh well’, and everything will just fade into the next news cycle and the next murder and the next case.

his job ends once the case is closed, and technically, it was.

and a few weeks after that rust comes back to his half empty house and finds his lone living room lawn chair occupied and slade with his feet on his lock box and his stashed jack daniels in his hand.

“just thought i’d stop by and say thanks, detective,” he says.

“oh yeah, what for, colonel?” asks rust. he tosses his suit jacket on the counter, makes a show of loosening his tie.

“i dislike being used by people,” says slade. “i usually keep a wide berth of amanda, but she’s always interested in snagging me into the fold. had you not been so determined to close your case, who knows how long i would have been stuck dealing with her.”

“something tells me you woulda worked it out eventually,” says rust. he takes the jack daniels, leans against the counter. slade gives a snort of agreement.

“always nice to make friends in low places, though.”

rust raises an eyebrow, passes the bottle back.

“is that what we are?”

“maybe acquaintances,” says slade. he takes a swallow of whiskey, then gestures behind rust towards the door. “you’re popular tonight.”

rust frowns, and does not turn immediately, as his first thought is what misdirection slade is playing at. and then he hears the front door open, and a set of keys jingling down the hall.

“hey crash,” calls a familiar voice, “heard you were in town.”

and when rust turns, softly whispering shit, he is unaware as yet that slade has heard him. just as he has not yet realized slade heard the motorcycle engine when it was half a block away, and waited until it died in his driveway to mention the owner.

at this time and on this night, there is still so much undiscovered between the three people now occupying the same building. so much time that has not played out, and so many miles on the circle left to go.

#txt.txt #ship: the locked room #under a cut bc this is another headcanon post that turned into a half way fic

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heartofether · 4 years

Text

Episode 4 - Hungry, Hungry Bears TRANSCRIPT

[You can listen to the show wherever you get your podcasts, or go to our “Listen” page if you’re on desktop.]

AUTOMATED VOICE

Please state your message.

[THEME MUSIC AND INTRODUCTION PLAYS.]

VAL

Three-Eyed Frog Presents: The Heart of Ether.

[THEME CONTINUES BEFORE COMING TO A STOP.]

[PHONE BEEP.]

[INT. IRENE’S WORK.]

ADEN

[WORRIED] Are you really, really sure that’s a good idea?

IRENE

[SHE HUFFS A SIGH.] Yes.

ADEN

I mean, I just think it’s a bit late to be going out into the woods and such, right? If there’s really is an issue with the trees dying, then, then they should still be dead tomorrow. Not like they’re just going to come back to life overnight. [NERVOUSLY CHUCKLES.]

IRENE

It won’t take long. You said it was just off the trail?

ADEN

[HE SWALLOWS.] Yes, but I’m almost certain nobody else is going to be out.

IRENE

Exactly. It’ll be perfect for me to just get in and out quickly, then go home.

ADEN

But what if they’re not human? [HE PAUSES, THEN, FRANTIC] There are bears out there. You know that, right? Hungry, hungry bears. What if nobody’s there to help you when one of those big-toothed beasts tries to maul you with its massive claws?

IRENE

Look, Aden, if you’re really worried about me going out there, then I’ll bring a radio with me. I hereby promise that if I have any bear-related incidents, I’ll contact you, and then you can call for help before I bleed out and die.

[ADEN NERVOUSLY LAUGHS FOR A FEW MOMENTS BEFORE SPEAKING IN A DEAD SERIOUS TONE.]

ADEN

That’s really not funny, Irene.

IRENE

I won’t go exploring or anything. You have my word. Just in and out, find the problem, and then go home.

ADEN

[HE THINKS FOR A MOMENT.] Fine. Just come back to work tomorrow in one piece, okay?

IRENE

[SARCASTIC] I’ll try my best.

ADEN

Irene!

IRENE

Alright, alright, I’m just messing with you. I’ll be fine.

ADEN

[MUMBLES] If you say so.

[PHONE BEEP.]

[RECORDING ENDS.]

[ANOTHER PHONE BEEP.]

[EXT. THE FOREST.]

[THERE IS THE SOUND OF CRICKETS IN THE BACKGROUND, ACCOMPANIED BY THE CRUNCHING OF DIRT AND TWIGS AS IRENE WALKS.]

IRENE

I think Aden worries too much. He’s a sweet guy, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t think this is as big of a deal as he made it out to be. I mean, I’m just looking at some dead branches.

[SHE PAUSES.] There is a reason I chose to do this. Trust me, it’s not because I wanted to wander around in the woods. I tried to record this when Aden came in, but, well, it seems like I always get interrupted when I record in the office.

I need to think, though. There’s a lot on my mind, and I just need someone who will listen without judging me. [MUMBLES] Not that you’re listening, but, it’s not like I have anywhere else.

[THERE’S A MOMENT OF SILENCE AS SHE CONTINUES TO WALK.]

IRENE

I was thinking about what Carol said. Not about how I need friends, but about the person who lived in my house before me. I asked my landlord about it. He said the dude’s name was Bernard Kelly Valencia. [SHE CHUCKLES.] Which is quite the name, isn’t it?

Valencia was—well, to be blunt, he was a strange man. Hardly talked to anyone, but apparently, everyone knew who he was. He hung out a lot with this woman named Dorothy Wood, who I looked up. She actually owns—or, owned—that one bookstore near downtown. Open Eyes Bookstore, or something? Anyways, nobody knows if the two were together or what, but they met up constantly.

Every time the landlord went over, he said there were papers and books everywhere. If he so much as glanced at any of it, or asked about it, Valencia would flip his shit. Dorothy was there a lot, too. Valencia wouldn’t tell anyone about what they were working on. Neither would Dorothy.

[THERE’S A BRIEF PAUSE. MORE FOOTSTEPS.]

IRENE

He died a couple of years ago from lung cancer. All his stuff went to either his son, the only family member who cared enough to come down and get it, or to Dorothy. She died last year, though.

The house itself must have a reputation, because I even found some people online talking about it. [IN A MOCK GHOSTLY TONE.] Some locals apparently think it’s haunted by Valencia’s ghost. [CHUCKLES, BUT SPEAKS IN AN UNSETTLED TONE] Not sure how I feel about that.

[A PAUSE.] What were they researching? I mean, I don’t know much about Dorothy, but Valencia seems like he dedicated his whole life to whatever secret work they were doing. It’s weird as hell. Maybe I’ll never know.

I can’t stop thinking about it, though. It’s none of my business, I know, but still.

[HER FOOTSTEPS COME TO A STOP.]

IRENE

This must be the spot. I know you can’t see, because these are audio, not video. Basically, these hikers were worried about this big pile of dead branches, especially because it’s fire season.

There’s nothing really exciting about it. Just a big pile of dead branches. The surrounding trees seem fine.

Huh. Wonder how they got here. We’ll just have to—

[SHE IS CUT OFF BY THE DISTANT SOUND OF A HORRIFIED SCREAM.]

IRENE

What—Who’s there? [CALLING OUT] Hello?

[FOOTSTEPS AS SHE WALKS IN THE DIRECTION OF THE NOISE. AS SHE CALLS OUT, HOWEVER, THERE IS THE SOUND OF BRANCHES SHIFTING.]

[EERIE MUSIC BEGINS PLAYING.]

IRENE

I swear, I heard someone. [CALLING OUT AGAIN] Hello?

[THE SOUND OF MOVING BRANCHES AND SHIFTING DIRT GROWS LOUDER AS SHE SPEAKS. THERE IS A LOW GROANING. IRENE, SEEMINGLY UNAWARE OF THIS, STEPS BACK TOWARDS THE PILE OF BRANCHES.]

IRENE

No one. That’s odd? Must have just been the…

[SHE IS CUT OFF AS SHE TURNS AROUND, SEEING THE SOURCE OF THE MOVING DIRT NOISES.]

IRENE

…wind.

[SHE IS THEN HEARD RUNNING AWAY. THE GROANING SOUNDS OF WHAT SHE SAW FADE OFF AS SHE RUNS. THE RUNNING STOPS, AND SHE IS HEARD OPENING AND CLOSING HER CAR DOOR.]

IRENE

[OVERLAPPING STATIC] Aden? Aden, are you there? It’s Irene, do you copy, I’m— [MORE STATIC] Shit, shit! [SHE HITS THE RADIO A FEW TIMES.]

[SHE STARTS THE CAR. THE ENGINE IS HEARD FOR A FEW MOMENTS BEFORE SHE SPEAKS.]

IRENE

[EXASPERATED] Oh goddammit, is this still—

[EVERYTHING IS ABRUPTLY CUT OFF BY A PHONE BEEP.]

[RECORDING ENDS.]

[TIME SKIP: HALF AN HOUR LATER.]

[ANOTHER PHONE BEEP.]

[INT. IRENE’S CAR AT THE SONIC DRIVE-IN.]

[”EVEN THOUGH YOU ASKED ME TO” BY ROSEMARY ROMANO IS HEARD PLAYING IN THE DISTANCE.]

IRENE

[TIRED] I am now sitting in my car at Sonic, drinking a cranberry slushie. I know, that’s weird, but I wasn’t sure if that…thing was going to follow me. I wanted to go somewhere public, just in case.

Plus, I think I deserve a slushie after what I’ve been through.

Would you even believe me if I told you? Hm. Probably not. Good thing you don’t have to believe me, then, huh?

Well, I heard a scream. [MUTTERS] I swear, if I go back and there’s no scream at all on the recording, I’m gonna—

[SHE TAKES A DEEP BREATH.] I heard a scream. I turned around and, uh, called out a bit, to see if there was anyone in danger. There was nothing, though, and there wasn’t another scream or anything like that. I thought I had just heard it wrong, that it was just the wind or a wild animal.

But then, when I turned around—how do I even begin to describe it? [SHE SPEAKS SLOWLY AS SHE STRUGGLES FOR WORDS] The branches rose up? The forest floor underneath them did, too.

It wasn’t like there was something coming out of the ground, though. No, it was like there was something in the ground that was trying to get out. It looked kind of like bread dough rising? No, that’s not right. Whatever it was swelled like it was alive?

Now that I think about it, actually, there were multiple things in there, throbbing inside of it. Squirming around. It was like a cat under a blanket—or, cats plural, I guess? This big—whatever it was, clearly not just a pile of dirt and branches—rose up, and I swear, this [HER VOICE GLITCHES FOR A SPLIT SECOND] thing didn’t have any eyes, but it was looking straight at me.

I just ran. What else could I have done? I looked over my shoulder once to see if it was chasing me, but that was it. When I did, it seemed to be moving, though I’m not sure where it was trying to go. It was big. It would have been hard for it to navigate through the trees.

Unless it could, I don’t know, morph around them? It didn’t seem to have a concrete body or anything. Just one big writhing mass.

[THERE’S A LONG PAUSE.]

IRENE

Don’t know how I’m going to approach Aden tomorrow. “Hey, so there was no bear emergency, but I did almost get killed by a really big pile of dirt that seemed to gain sentience. Why the radio silence, bud?” [SHE CAN’T EVEN BRING HERSELF TO PROPERLY CHUCKLE.]

Should I tell him? I mean, would he even believe me? Can I tell anyone about this? I mean, of course I could tell someone, I sure was more than willing to tell someone who— [SHE STOPS HERSELF.]

[ANOTHER LONG PAUSE.]

IRENE

Maybe I was wrong before. You would believe me, Rose. Right?

[HER VOICE BECOMES SAD AND SMALL.] I miss you so much. I know I’ve said that a lot, but I was so scared. I still am. I don’t know what that was, or if it’s going to come back. I’m at a loss, and I have no one else to go to about this.

I wish you were here. Not just some recording on my phone, but in the car with me. I wish I could hold you. [A WET CHUCKLE.] Actually, I think more than anything, I just need a really long hug. It wouldn’t be the same if it weren’t from you, though.

[SHE PAUSES.]

IRENE

[SHAKILY, AS IF SHE’S ABOUT TO CRY] You know why I think I kept doing these recordings? Why I could never get over you, even after all these years?

[HER TONE BEGINS GROWING IN EMOTION.] Because maybe, if I had gotten an answer, I would have been able to move on. Maybe you had drowned in the lake. Maybe you had gotten a job at a diner in California, with a new name for your new life. Maybe you just found someone else and were too afraid to tell me.

I never got that, though. I never got that closure. One night, you were there, and then the next morning, you weren’t.

And I’ll never know, will I? Because I’m just going to keep denying the truth and telling myself that you still care. That someday, you’ll show up at my doorstep, and like the fool I am, I’ll just let you come in. You won’t even have to tell me where you were these past four years, I promise.

[WEAKLY] ...I promise.

[SHE PAUSES.] But you won’t. You’re never coming home. Because I never really was your home, after all.

[THE SONG COMES TO THE FOREGROUND AS IRENE STOPS TALKING.]

MUSIC

That’s why I stay, that’s why I stay.

[A SHIFTING SOUND BEFORE A PHONE BEEP.]

[RECORDING ENDS.]

AUTOMATED VOICE

Today’s quote is: “I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you.”

Walt Whitman in “To A Stranger” from Leaves of Grass, 1867.

Are you listening to us? Because we are listening to you.

[THEME MUSIC AND CREDITS PLAY.]

#heart of ether transcripts

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ma-sulevin · 4 years

Photo

WHOA it’s here. It’s not finished because there are going to be like two more chapters, but GOOD NEWS that’s more smut for you. There’s also, like, actually a little plot this time.

Pairing: James Vega/Avery Ryder Rating: E Warnings: No warnings, just smut. Check out the tags on AO3. Word Count: 5969, chapter one of three.

Read it on AO3 instead, or catch up on their story from the beginning.

---

Avery’s halfway through her third reading of an article her doctor gave her about why the new synthetic DNA that had been found mixed with most humans after the end of the Reaper War had made the most popular contraceptive implants less effective when her omnitool chimes with James’ special chime. She jumps and drops the datapad. It clatters to the floor and Jonesy opens one eye to glare at her from where he’s napping on the other chair.

The orange interface pops up when she lifts her wrist to display James’ message: I found the perfect hotel for when you visit! Dec 30-Jan 5 still good??

Oh, James. She’s going to have to tell him before January. It's a few months away, but… she's going to have to tell him.

Another message comes through as she’s considering the first. I know you’ve been sick so thought I’d cheer you up. And then: Whatdid the doctor say?

She closes her omnitool without replying. She can’t talk to him right now. She can’t. She needs to talk this out before she brings him into it, needs to weigh her options and have… she needs help. She would have talked to her mom about all this, before, would have called her up when she first felt sick and gotten a ride to the doctor and then had someone to comfort her when she wanted to cry after.

Every unsafe encounter they had plays out behind her eyelids, in vivid detail: the broken condom, the drunken fuck behind Sam’s house, the sober but ill-advised condom-free sex the rest of the weekend before he shipped out.

One of those times did it.

They’re not goddamn teenagers. This was stupid, and they should have known better. There’s not any fucking excuse for this.

Her omnitool vibrates as James calls her, and she answers out of habit before she realizes what she’s doing.

“Hey, birdie!” His voice is optimistic, almost aggressively so, and she realizes he’s probably convinced she’s dying and doesn’t want to tell him. “You home yet?”

“Yeah, I’m home,” she says, and then… shit.

She chokes on a sob as her vision starts to swim, and she claps a hand over her mouth to stop herself from making any noise that will out her reaction to James.

It doesn’t work.

“What’s wrong?” His response is immediate, his voice low and comforting, and when she doesn’t respond right away she hears him shuffling around over the audio connection. He says something she can’t hear to someone she can’t see, then a door clicks closed and he’s speaking to her again, “Talk to me, Avery. What did the doctor say?”

She clears her throat and wipes at her eyes. “I, uh. I’m pregnant.”

His response is slower this time. It gives her enough time to take a few gasping breaths and for Jonesy to drag himself away from the sun and drape himself over her lap instead, a spot of comfort for the human who took him in after the reapers left.

“What?”

“Yeah, uh… I guess I’m due at the beginning of June.”

She can hear him sighing over the connection, a long exhale that makes her eyes well with more tears. She didn’t mean for this to happen, she thought she was preventing it, even if she wasn’t being as careful as she should have been.

“Birdie,” he says, still kind of sighing, “I thought you were going to tell me something awful.”

“I wouldn’t say this is great news.”

“But you’re okay, you’re not sick.” There’s more shuffling from his end of the line, more mysterious noises she can’t put a name to since he’s on the other side of the planet. “I’ve been worried about you.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, miserable, voice on the edge of cracking again.

“It isn’t your fault—”

“It kinda is, though.” Avery’s not ready to let it go, but James doesn’t seem to be either.

“If anyone’s to blame,” he interrupts, voice a little louder to get her attention before it returns to the lower, more serious tone he’s been using, “it’s me. I wasn’t being careful, and I’m sorry.”

Avery groans and pulls Jonesy up to press her face into his fur. He chirps a little and lets her, starting to purr under her attention. “We can do this all day. I know, I know we said we’re going to try the whole long-distance boyfriend-girlfriend thing, but… this isn’t something we talked about, and I’m not asking you for anything. I don’t want you to feel, like, trapped or anything.”

“We did talk about it.” James doesn’t quite cut her off again, but it’s a near thing, and her temper starts to spark and then fades right away at his words. “You told me you wanted a family, and I said we’d make beautiful babies, and then we started making out on your sink.”

“That’s not really, that’s not really talking about it,” she protests, ignoring the warmth in her cheeks at the memory. “Not, like, ‘what if this happens this weekend,’ talking about it, it was more like ‘generally in the future we have this in common.’ Right?”

“Sure, but…” He trails off, muffles a groan, starts again. “I told you before, I’m not Alec. You don’t have to doubt me. I know this is, uh, way sooner than we thought it would be, but if you’re in this, I’m in this. All the way.”

Avery starts crying again, quietly this time. She hadn’t really had enough time to think about how James would react, but this is more than she could have hoped for. He doesn’t even sound worried or scared or any of the other emotions that have been swirling around in her mind since she found out.

He just sounds… supportive.

Here for her.

No matter what.

“If you still can, I still want you to visit in January. I found a great little house on the beach, it’s new construction obviously, but it’s in the old style. You’ll love it.”

She wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “January?”

“Yeah, birdie.” He sounds hopeful now, more relaxed, and she smiles despite herself. “It’ll be nice and hot, and I have a few days off between training. It’ll be perfect. Just the… just the three of us.”

She laughs, just a little, and James does too.

“Come on, we’re in this together, right? I miss you.”

“I miss you too.” A pause, as she considers, tries to figure out how pregnant she’ll be in January, decides it’s probably okay. “I’ll come see you.”

“Fuck yeah,” he says, and she can hear the smile in his voice, can picture it so clearly in her mind. “I can’t wait.”

And, despite the tears still threatening to come back, she can’t either.

—-

James is fucking terrified. He’d never ever tell Avery that in a million years, absolutely unwilling to freak her out or make her worry for even a second that he’s going to leave her or treat their baby like Alec treated her, but he’s terrified about the future.

Sam gets an earful about it every time he comes up with a new concern, and she calms him down or calls him an idiot, depending on what the problem is, at least once a week. With her on his side, he’s able to listen to Avery’s worries and excitement (depending on where her mood has swung) and calm her down or gas her up, whatever she needs, whatever support he can offer her from the other side of the planet.

N-school is tough, and he’s exhausted so much of the time, and he misses her with every fiber of his being. He wants to be there with her right now, he wants to be home in her apartment, but every time he casually mentions putting off N-school for a year or two, she yells at him.

She’s not going to be the reason he puts off his dreams, even if his dreams are keeping them apart.

They’re starting a family at the worst possible time, and he can’t be with her, and he’s in love with her and she doesn’t even know it yet because he’s too much of a fucking coward to tell her.

He keeps trying, wants to tell her when they’re video chatting, staying up way too late to share their secrets; he wants to tell her every time she sends him an ultrasound, every time she sends him a picture of her belly as it grows (he still thinks it’s pretty small, even though she insists she already feels big), every time she sends him a dirty picture when he’s in class, and every time she smiles at him, flushed and happy, over a late-night vid call that ended in yet another round of phone sex.

He wants to tell her, but he’s a coward, and he’s afraid of her response, and anyway, shouldn’t that kind of confession be in person?

That’s what he’s been telling himself at least, and so he’s kept his mouth shut, and he’s fucking terrified because he’s going to be a dad and he’s in love with his girlfriend and he’s standing at the shuttleport with flowers clutched in sweaty hands because he wants to give her every good thing in the world.

He’s not prepared to see her being pushed in a wheelchair by a put-upon employee, looking absolutely murderous as she slouches with her shoulders up around her ears.

She catches his eyes and her face flashes as red as her hair, but she still points him out to the man pushing her. They change course and head straight for him, the employee looking at James with something like pity before he manages to smooth his expression back out into something politely neutral.

“What the — what happened?”

He looks from Avery to the man helping her and back, completely torn, flowers forgotten in his hands as he lowers them to his side.

Avery hauls in a deep breath. “You get a little motion sick—”

“She passed out, sir,” the man says, obviously done with Avery’s bullshit if the interruption and somewhat dead expression in his eyes is any indication. “It’s company policy to assist ill passengers to either medical help or to their destinations.”

“Okay, uhh, thank you.” James stares at him for another minute before moving a little closer and offering Avery his free hand. She takes it with a mutinous expression and stands up mostly under her own power, stumbling a little before she’s fully upright. She flushes red again, this time, he thinks, in embarrassment. “Do you have — oh, thanks.”

The man hands James a duffle bag and takes the wheelchair with him as he leaves, and James stands staring at Avery for several seconds before he manages to find his words.

“You passed out?”

She shrugs and avoids his eyes. “Just a little.”

“Birdie—”

“I just get motion sick anyway and the baby makes it worse. I promise I’m okay. Hey.” She finally looks up and meets his eyes, reaches out and puts her hands on his waist. “I missed you.”

The little knot of terror and worry relaxes a little when he sees her smiling at him, a soft expression aimed at him, close enough to kiss… so he does, leaning down and pressing his lips to hers in the softest kiss he can manage as she tries to push herself closer and hold him in place with her fingers tugging at his shirt.

He forces himself back up to his full height and smiles widely at the little pout she gives him.

“C’mon, let’s go to the house. Here.” He hands her the flowers he brought with him, excitement briefly overwhelming the anxiety that’s been plaguing him. She smiles and gives the bouquet a tentative sniff before inhaling again, more deeply.

He waits for her to pass judgment — on the flowers, on him, on the trip in general — and he’s still staring at her when she opens her eyes and offers him a wide, bright smile. She looks more like her old self, the one he remembers from London, color coming back into her cheeks and something playful in her expression.

“Get moving, soldier. We have a vacation to start.”

He grins down at her and slings her duffle over his shoulder before taking her hand. She lets him pull her outside to flag down a taxi, then she snuggles up against his side and slips her hand into the back pocket of his jeans.

“I’m glad you could come.” He wraps his free arm around her shoulders and squeezes, and when she giggles, the noise is pressed against his ribs. He glances down and all he can see is one of her eyes as she peers up sideways at him.

“You’re going to be extra glad when you see what I brought.”

A taxi pulls up and the driver pops the trunk for her bag. James detangles himself from her, taking a second to enjoy the sight of her smirking at him with one hand resting on the bump that her shirt mostly hides.

“Oh? You bring something fun?”

She shrugs one shoulder and then somehow manages to look up at him from under her lashes without moving, and his heart does a funny little flip in his chest that has nothing to do with the promise written on her face and more to do with the confession he wants to make.

“A few things I think you’ll enjoy. You have to wait.”

He opens the door for her and snags a lingering kiss before she climbs in, swiping his tongue against her lower lip just to see the way it makes her eyes go dark and her lips part a bit.

Dios, she’s beautiful.

He loves her.

She climbs in the taxi with a wink, and he follows her without another word.

—-

He’s a little disappointed but not particularly surprised when she falls asleep on the way to their little rental house, her head tucked against his shoulder and her fingers tangled up in his like she never wants to let go.

She snores a little bit the whole way there, earning her several amused looks from the driver. James just keeps her hand tight in his and the warmth locked in his chest.

He can’t stop himself from smiling, though, not with her resting against him.

It almost makes him wish he hadn’t come to N-school at all.

She’s groggy when he wakes her up, rubbing at her eyes and smearing her mascara without noticing, and he ushers her into the rental without stopping to point out how close they are to the ocean, how private it is with the closely-growing foliage, or how he came out early and stocked the kitchen so they’d only have to go out in public if they want to. He just points her in the direction of the bed and takes off her shoes when she drops onto the blankets without undressing at all.

He putters around the house, looking for something to do to give her space. He puts the flowers in water, puts her bag up next to his, then eventually settles on the bed next to her with the datapad he wasn’t supposed to bring to work on reports for N-school he isn’t supposed to start until after she goes back to London.

He wonders if she’ll be willing to ask for a transfer to Brazil, or if she’ll want to stay in London where she has more friends, something of a support system for when he’s too busy or gone.

At least in London, she has Sam.

He decides he won’t ask.

At some point, she rolls over and shifts higher up the bed, opening one eye to stare at him like she’s not sure who he is or why he’s in her bed, then she blinks and a slow smile stretches across her face. She reaches out one hand for him, and he wraps his fingers around hers until she falls back asleep about ten seconds later.

It’s the cutest fucking thing he’s ever seen.

She finally wakes up after a couple hours and staggers to the bathroom without saying anything. She pops back out a minute later, all smiles, shaking out red hair that’s almost down to her elbows now.

He puts the datapad away and moves to sit up right at the edge of the mattress.

“Feel better?”

“Mhm…” She comes to stand between his knees and he lets his hands rest on her hips, easy as anything, like it hasn’t been nearly five months since he’s seen her. She stops playing with her hair and runs her fingers into his the best she can with most of it so short. “You shouldn’t’ve let me sleep so long.”

He slips his hands up under her shirt to rest against her skin. “You needed it.”

She makes a quiet little humming noise, not really agreeing or disagreeing, and leans in close like she’s going to kiss him. Their noses brush together, but she doesn’t press her lips to his, and he can’t help but tighten his grip on her.

“You know what else I need?”

He thinks he has a pretty good idea, but when he tilts his head up to kiss her, she stays just far enough away so he can’t.

“Birdie…”

She dips her head and he tilts his chin up, but she refuses to come close enough, her fingers tightening on his scalp in a way that sends shivers of pleasure down his spine.

He loves when she’s like this.

He loves it.

“I believe I was promised a nice, big, delicious —” He tries to pull her closer mid-sentence, but she resists as her grin grows, “—fruity drink, and a white-sand beach, and a chance to show off the little bikini I bought.”

She nips his lower lip instead of kissing him and slips out of his grip as he groans. He can hear her giggling to herself as she grabs her bag and disappears back into the bathroom with it, leaving him to sit on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands.

He’s been waiting so long to get his hands on her and he can’t even lie to himself to say he’s annoyed with her teasing.

He loves that too.

He’s still sitting on the bed when she emerges from the bathroom once more, this time in the little bikini she’d promised, the one he’d requested be held together with strings. It’s tiny and black, and it shows off her curves, and all he can think about is tangling his fingers in all that red hair and refusing to let her out of the house all week.

He doesn’t realize he’s just staring at her with his mouth open until she starts to laugh, walking closer with an exaggerated sway in her step to stand between his knees again.

She tips his chin up with her fingers. “See something you like?”

“Uhh… can I…” His hands hover in the air on either side of her stomach, a swirl of confusing feelings washing over him. He wants to yank her into his lap, roll them over on the bed, absolutely devour her; he wants to take her to the beach, take her to his favorite restaurant, show her off to the world; he wants to hold her and tell her she’s beautiful, that he loves her, that he can’t wait to meet their baby. He wants.

She’s smiling at him still, but it’s a little softer, something in her eyes he can’t quite identify. “Go ahead.”

He’s tentative as he finally touches her, hands running over her biotic-warm skin, over scars and skin weaves and the surprisingly firm slope that leads down to her belly button. He brushes his fingertips across her skin, just the barest of touches, and she rests her hands on the small of her back as she waits for him to finish exploring this new part of her.

“Is she, um. Is she awake?” The question feels silly, he feels silly for asking it, but Avery doesn’t look like she’s laughing at him.

She just looks happy.

She puts her hand next to his as she shakes her head, then she pushes hard against the bump. “Nope. Lazy little thing.”

“Hey, growing is a hard job.” He leans forward and kisses the biggest part of the bump, then just under the string of her bikini top in something meant to be little gestures of affection but that makes her inhale sharply instead. He rests his chin there and looks up at her, unable to stop from smirking when he sees her cheeks stained pink. “Give her a break.”

He slides his hands around to rest on her back and pulls, and this time she lets him tug her all the way into his lap. She settles with her knees on either side of his hips and rests her hands on his shoulders.

“She can have a break when I get one,” Avery says, voice prim, repeating something she always says, and then she finally finally kisses him.

Oh, he’s missed this.

She kisses him like she can’t get enough, like she’d devour him if she could, hungry and desperate and everything he’s been waiting for. He opens his mouth to her and lets her lick into it as he runs his hands up her back. She’s warm and delicious and everything he wants, and he pulls at the bow holding her bikini top together without thinking about it.

She giggles and bites at his lower lip, tugging as she leans back before releasing him to pull her top off and drop it to the floor.

“Guess we can look at the beach later?” She arches her back as she speaks, and he barely hears her words as his gaze is drawn, as she intended, to her breasts and nipples that are little darker than he remembers, but still beautiful all the same.

He doesn’t bother to answer whatever she asked, choosing instead to let her figure it out by kissing down between the valley of her breasts and then over, keeping her in his lap with one hand on her back and cupping the weight of her breast with the other, squeezing, licking and sucking at the hard peak as she gasps and squirms in his grip.

The pressure of her body on his dick is getting to him, her restless little movements just making him harder, and he groans around her flesh in his mouth as she manages to hit him just right, grinding against the bulge trapped in his pants like she was always meant to do this.

“Fuck, I missed this,” she says, voice small and breathy. She digs her fingernails into his scalp and holds him close, like he’d ever willingly push her away right now. “Your tongue is amazing. I could come just from this.”

She gives her hips another strong thrust as she does, like she’s trying to prove her point, and he can’t help but peer up at her.

He’s never been one to back down from a challenge.

He braces his feet better on the floor and moves both his hands to her hips to help guide her, forcing her hips into a steady, rolling movement over his lap until he hears her shuddering little gasps each time he hits her clit just right. He keeps his mouth busy leaving little nipping kisses across her chest, giving both breasts the kind of attention he’s literally been dreaming about, letting her ramble about how good he is to her, just giving her all the attention she deserves until…

Her breath catches in her throat and then bursts out of her in a high-pitched whine, and her hips fight back against the motion of his hands, and her fingernails dig into his scalp.

She’s close, she’s so close he knows she just needs a little push, and so he groans against her chest and bites down just enough to change up the sensation, just enough to give his kisses that edge, and then she’s falling apart in his hands just like he knew she would.

A wordless cry falls from her lips and she shudders through it, holding him tight and pressing against him as hard as she can. It’s beautiful, and he can’t keep his eyes off her, off the goosebumps that flow over her skin and the red flush that reaches from her face down across her chest.

He wants to make her feel this good every single day of her life.

She pulls away after a moment, still panting, a wide grin on her face as she opens lust-darkened eyes and stares down at him.

He smirks up at her, stupidly pleased, and then she’s pushing at his shoulders so he’ll fall onto his back.

“You have five seconds to get your clothes off,” she informs him, and then she stands up to follow her own command.

It takes more than five seconds, but he’s so ready to get his pants off that he doesn’t argue, jumping up and stripping in record time as Avery simply pushes her bikini bottoms over her hips and leaves them on the floor.

She’s already scooting back on the bed to get comfortable, her eyes on his dick where he’s stroking it because he can’t help but touch it to push back the desire to sink into her biotic-hot body and forget everything else in the galaxy.

He crawls over her, and she opens up for him, bracketing his waist with her knees and parting her lips to make their first kiss deep and wet, already trying to angle her hips up to meet his even as he keeps his weight braced up and well away from her.

She makes a little frustrated noise, grabbing for his dog tags like she always does. “C’mon, Jimmy.”

He lets her pull her close enough to kiss her, a teasing little swipe of his tongue across her lower lip. She releases him with a smile, then she squeals as he leans down and bites at her nipple once more, still reddened and swollen from his earlier attention.

He kisses between her breasts, down her stomach, across her hip, pausing to nip at her inner thigh when she spreads her legs further apart for the breadth of his shoulders.

She’s grinning down at him when he looks up at her, something smug on her face as she anticipates what he’s about to do.

“I missed that tongue of yours while you’ve been here.”

“That right?” He licks over the spot he bit and watches as she bites her lower lip. “Well, it missed you too.”

She huffs out a laugh and flops back onto the pillows, but her legs stay open and her hips cant up toward his mouth, eager like always.

He gives in, like always.

The taste of her bursts bright and tart on his tongue, and he moans against her as he licks up her slit. He presses his tongue in deep when she starts to grind up against his face, then moves a little closer in on his elbows so he can start up a fast pattern over her clit just to hear her—

She swears roundly, hands landing on the back of his head like they belong there, tugging him closer like he’d try to leave.

He never wants to leave.

He holds her hips as steady as he can with his arms under her thighs, and doesn’t put effort into teasing her in favor of just giving her what she wants. She came all this way to see him, and he’s going to make sure she never forgets what he’s able to do for her, what he’s able to coax out of her body.

Her quiet groans become louder, cries of his name and little admissions that make his dick ache to be inside of her, unhappy to be pushed into the mattress for the time being.

“Fuck, you’re so good at this,” she says, voice breathy and rambling like she can’t help it, “I don’t know how I snagged you, don’t know how there aren’t girls lining up for a turn.”

His laugh is buried deep in her cunt but she hears it anyway, or she feels it, because she bites off a high-pitched moan that lets him know she’s close but not quite there before she picks back up where she left off.

“Mmm, yeah, you know it’s true just look at you, fucking hungry for it, couldn’t even wait until after we went to the beach.”

He’s not about to pull his mouth free to remind her that she’s the one who started teasing him, she’s the one who was talking about what big delicious things she needed, so he just tightens his grip on her hips and closes his eyes and focuses on the way his tongue is dancing over her clit because she’s so close and if he can just get her in the right spot…

“Fuck, right there.” She catches her breath, lets it out in a whoosh, and her thighs start to shake by his ears. “I’m gonna come, baby.”

It’s the only time she calls him baby, right as she’s about to come, and he loves to hear it, loves to coax it or force it out of her, and he just has to wait one more second she’s so close—

When she comes it’s absolutely silent, her body going taught around him, her fingers digging painfully into his scalp, her thighs tense and shaking, blocking him in from moving, her feet pressed against his sides like she can hold him there.

He keeps licking her until she catches her breath and manages to wail, the sound ripped from her almost against her will, and then she’s pushing him away because she’s too sensitive now, but he needs to be able to breathe anyway.

He sits back on his heels and wipes his face as she tries to catch her breath, legs still spread obscenely on either side of him, one arm hooked over her face so she can hide her eyes behind her elbow.

“That good, huh?”

“Fuck you,” she says, absolutely no venom in her voice.

He snickers and leans over her, bracing his weight on his elbows and knees, kissing her under her arm. She kisses him back and hooks her elbow around the back of his neck instead of holding it over her face. She licks his lips, into his mouth, moaning at the taste of herself like she always does, and he follows his instincts to sink down lower when he feels her legs come up around his hips too.

Her stomach bumps against his before he’s expecting it to, and he tries to push back up before she locks her ankles at the small of his back.

“Nuh-uh,” she says, fucked out and eloquent.

“You sure this is—” He trails off because she finally opens her eyes and looks up at him, moving her hands around to cup his jaw.

Her fingers trace his cheeks, dance over the scar that traces across his face, and his heart does that same little flop as before. “Perfectly safe. Recommended, even. I’ll tell you if something hurts, just, please, please for the love of god, fuck me.”

Well.

He can’t argue with that.

He kisses her again, then pulls away with a little smirk. “Yes, ma’am.”

She lets go of his neck and puts her hands flat on the headboard behind her, smirking right back, and he takes his cue to sit back on his heels.

He takes himself in hand and lines up, not bothering to tease anymore, slipping deep inside her with one slow, delicious thrust.

He can barely hear her whimper over his own groan at being inside of her again. It’s everything he’s been missing and somehow better than he remembered, tight and almost too hot and he never, ever wants to leave.

When he doesn’t move fast enough for her, too busy enjoying the feeling of being inside her again, she uses her leverage to push her hips hard into his, nearly knocking him off-balance

“Goddamn,” he says, forcing the word out through grit teeth. “Okay. You asked for it.”

He looks down to see her face break into a wide, dirty smile, her face flushed and hair sticking to her damp forehead.

And then he pulls out, and pushes back in, hard, and he grins at the delighted laugh that pushes from Avery’s throat.

He can do better than that.

He fucks her, hard, just like she asked, a punishing pace that has sweat dripping from his scalp and pleasure shooting up his spine faster than he’d like.

It has been a long time.

He puts his hands on her ass and lifts her hips onto his thighs, and the next thrust makes her howl and arch her back, a delighted sound that he wants her to make again, so he grits his teeth together against the mounting pleasure and keeps fucking going.

She’s going to come again.

She deserves it.

“This what you wanted, birdie?” His voice is rough, words forced out between sharp thrusts and harsh breaths, but they have the effect he wanted. She arches again, squirming against his bruising grip, face twisted in what he would think is pain if he didn’t know better. “This what you flew all the way out here for?”

Her “Yes!” is frantic, barely an answer to his question and more of a general exclamation of approval, and he smiles to himself as he shifts his grip on her so he can bring his right hand to her clit. She shrieks again when he presses his thumb against it, hips moving a little slower now so he can focus, but no less hard, and she absolutely howls with it.

She’s so close.

He is too.

“Come for me,” he says, trying to make it sound more like a demand and less like the plea it is. “Let me fucking feel you.”

She nods, fast, eyes squeezed closed and mouth open, chest heaving as she draws in ragged breaths.

He presses harder with his thumb, his orgasm threatening to overwhelm him at any moment, praying, praying, praying…

She begins to come barely a second before him, his name dripping from her lips as her cunt clenches around him, and then he can’t hold on for anything. He fucks through it, pleasure bursting through him and making his vision go white, and he curls around her to bury his face in the crook of her neck as he comes inside her.

When he comes back to himself, she’s rubbing circles on his back with one hand, the other cupping the back of his head.

“Doing okay there?”

She sounds amused, so he just groans in answer, earning the giggle he was aiming for.

“You’re gonna crush me,” she informs him, still sounding amused.

He rolls to the side but doesn’t let go of her, tugging until her back is against his front and her hair is all over his face. It’s annoying, but he can’t make himself care.

She wiggles in his grip. “I thought you were taking me to the beach.”

He squeezes her tighter, presses a kiss to the back of her neck where he thinks her amp port is. “I’m just catching my breath. Give me a minute.”

He’s asleep before he hears her response.

#james vega #mass effect #x: say you won't let go #my writing #pregnancy #oc: avery ryder

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quinistiredd · 4 years

Text

Who Killed Jacksepticeye? (part one)

(yes this is obviously based off Who Killed Markiplier and i had this idea and went with it and here we are. also forgive me if the spacing is bad, still figuring out tumblr)

"Hey, Jack," I called as I walked in. The house was quiet, which was odd. "Jack?"

I wandered back to his recording room and listened. I didn't hear him yelling, or any noises from his room in fact. I cracked open the door and looked in. The only light in the room came from his computer. I opened the door completely and flicked on the light. I gasped. My blood froze as I stared at his. Jack was on the floor, his throat slit. Blood pooled under his head, staining the carpet. When I finally managed to tear my eyes from him, I fumbled for my phone and called the first person I could think of.

"Y/N, hey! Whatz u-" Hendrik started

"Jack's dead." I sputtered, interrupting him. "It looks... It looks like Anti again."

He was quiet for a moment, before finally speaking. "I'm on zhe vay." And with that, he hung up. Shakily, I walked out to the kitchen. My phone buzzed, and again, and again. I looked down, a few messages on my screen.

Chase: are you alright? omw

Jackieboy: You alone there? Hell no, I'm on my way

Marvin: I'm coming, He may still be there.

Marvin's text sent a chill down my spine. Suddenly, I was aware of how vulnerable I was. I swallowed hard, looking around the room for something. A weapon, an enemy? I didn't know.

A splitting pain shot through my skull. I stumbled, falling to my knees with my head in my hands. I groaned and gritted my teeth. After a minute, I finally forced my eyes open. The room was illuminated in neon pink lights. Everything was neon... except the writing on the walls. In a dark substance, various phrases were scrawled everywhere. While they all said different things, one theme was common: Someone was here.

Once more, the pain shot through my head and as fast as it came on, the weird vision was gone, and so was the writing. I shook my head before hearing a knock at the door. Quickly, I opened it. Hendrik was there, a worried look on his face.

"Y/N, you okay?" I nodded, and I watched him relax a bit.

"Yeah, I'm just scared." He put a gentle hand on my shoulder. Together, we walked back to where Jack was. As he examined him, I was unable to look at Jack.

"It'z definitely him... Dammit." He whispered before standing up. He looked over at me. I took a calming breath before speaking again.

"Can you fix him again?"

He sighed, looking down at the floor. "I'm not zure. Last time, he wasn't dead when I got him. But now..."

Frantic knocking echoed from the front door, and we quickly ran out to open it. Outside was Marvin, Jackieboy, and Chase. I did wish JJ had come, but considering his situation with Anti, it's probably best he's not here. Chase pulled me into a hug. I laughed lightly.

"Oh thank god you're alright." He muttered. When he finally let go, he didn't move away much. He stayed close, protectively.

"We need to figure out who-" Chase was cut off.

"It's definitely Anti." Hendrik said. We were quiet for a moment, sharing a glance between us. Chase cleared his throat.

"Let me see him." Everyone looked at him.

"Chase, are you zure?" Hendrik asked. Chase nodded. Without another word, Hendrik led Chase to Jack, hesitantly, the rest of us followed. I hung back, being the last of the group. I groaned quietly as pain struck me again. I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples. When I opened my eyes again, the weird neon vision was back. I looked around, the writing different. Now, only one phrase was repeated: At first glance, it isn't who it seems.

I closed my eyes and tried to push the vision away. After a moment, the pain faded and I opened my eyes again. Everything was back to normal.

"You alright Y/N?" I jumped as Marvin spoke. I turned to him and nodded.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just lost in thought" I smiled. He put a gentle hand on my shoulder, also smiling. His hand was cold.

Everyone had done their analysis of Jack, and we made our way to the living room. I sat down, my head in my hands. The reality of the situation was hitting me. I swallowed hard.

"Hey kiddo, you alright?" Chase sat next to me. I looked over at him.

"I'm just scared." I didn't realize how close I had been to crying before I spoke. I took a shaky breath. "What if Hendrik can't bring him back? What if..." I couldn't finish my thought.

"No no, it'll be okay." I knew he was thinking the same thing, though. I shook my head.

"Y/N," Hendrik called my attention. We looked up at him, "You found him juzt like that? Waz anything... off?"

"No, everything was as normal as it could have been." I thought for a moment. "His computer was on, but I didn't think to look at it."

We all quickly got up and went back to the crime scene. The screen was still on, and displayed on it was a video, paused. The preview was dark. I took a breath and pressed play.

"So I see you've found him." A voice spoke, but the video was still dark. A glitch rippled through the audio. I instinctively tensed. "How exciting. I bet you already know who did it. But, do you know your partners in this mystery? Like, really know them?" He laughed.

"What the hell...?" Marvin muttered. The voice continued.

"You see, two of the people in your little mystery gang are hiding their own little secrets. One of those secrets will help you, while the other may kill you.

"Oh, and don't mind the fact that the body's gone. Hope you got all your observations down." The video stopped. The screen glitched before the computer turned off. We looked towards the body. Sure enough, it was gone. I shook my head.

"Alright, who's hiding something?" Jackieboy looked at all of us in turn. I managed to choke down my anxiety and spoke up.

"Something happened." Everyone turned to me. I took a breath. "After I found him, I got this pain in my head. I closed my eyes, thinking it was just the light making my eyes hurt. But when I opened my eyes... everything was different. The room was neon and pink and there... was writing all over the walls. Something was here with me... I should've said something sooner but-"

"Y/N, it's okay." Chase said softly. I smiled warily. I saw he wanted to step closer to me, but with all that's been said, it was better if he didn't.

"Haz it happened since?" Hendrik asked after a moment.

"Only once more. The writing on the walls was different. It said some cryptic shit: At first glance, it isn't who it seems." I shook my head, sighing softly.

"So someone is still hiding something, and it may not seem like Anti did it?" Jackieboy shook his head.

"...One of us is embodying Anti." Marvin said. We all shared a glance, the tension in the room palpable.

"It's Chase." Jackieboy said suddenly, breaking the silence but worsening the tension. Everyone glanced between Jackieboy and Chase.

"What?" Chase spat, stepping back. "You can't just fucking say that!"

"You've been suspiciously quiet this whole time. Hell, you wanted to see Jack's body!" Jackieboy retorted. Chase frowned.

"Y/N was here first-" Marvin butt in. "-they're the most likely one."

Everyone averted their gaze to me. I shook my head, holding my hands up.

"Listen, we know Anti. If any of us pointed him out with a valid reason, he'd show himself."

"That's what he would say." Marvin responded.

"No, Y/N's right." Hendrik shook his head. "Anti would come forward and take credit for his work." I glanced back at Marvin, and he looked almost angry.

"We should stop fighting and resolve this amicably." Chase said.

The skull-splitting pain returned. I grabbed my head again and stumbled back. I tripped over my feet and hit the ground hard. I could barely hear everyone over the static filling my ears.

"Listen to me," Anti's voice echoed around me. I tried to open my eyes, but my body was frozen. I couldn't move. "You will figure out who I am, I know you will. Hell, you might already know. But, if you tell anyone who I am, I'll hurt the only person I can. And there's no way for you to protect him."

I was shot back to reality, and it was quiet again. I slowly opened my eyes and saw everyone looking over me. Then did I realize I was laying on the floor.

"Y/N, are you okay?" Hendrik looked stressed. I sat up, my head spinning. I slowly nodded before groaning. "What happened?"

"He's in my head." I mumbled quietly. I took a slow breath. "He told me that if I told anyone who's body he's using he... he'd hurt someone."

"He can't hurt anyone, we're all together. It'd be four against one." Chase grinned, but I shook my head.

"No, I think he'd hurt JJ."

Everyone was quiet for a moment.

"Oh god, you're right." Chase swallowed hard. "He's the only one not here, we need to call him or-"

"We can't, it wouldn't work. Anti's controlling him." Marvin muttered. We were all quiet for a moment.

"So what do we do?" I asked quietly, looking at everybody.

"We go to him." Hendrik chimed. "But where is h-"

A wave of pain washed over me. I grabbed my head again, groaning.

"Not again..." I mumbled, forcing my eyes open. Neon vision was back. I looked at everyone, stopping on Marvin. Dark blood stained his clothes, and a deep cut on his neck added more contrast to the normally neon place. A smirk tugged at his lips. Another wave of pain washed over me, causing me to squeeze my eyes closed again. I doubled over before feeling a hand on my shoulder.

"Y/N?" Chase's voice brought me back to reality. I quickly opened my eyes, looking at Marvin again. There was no blood, no cut, no smirk. He looked normal, but I knew. A soft knock came from the front door. I looked at chase before racing to the door. Throwing it open, I was met face to face with JJ. I grabbed his hand and pulled him inside.

"JJ!" Chase exclaimed as he, and everyone else, ran into the room. "You're okay!"

"Why wouldn't I be?" He signed, cocking his head to the side. I shook my head.

"It's okay, you're safe now." I took a deep breath. He still looked confused, but Hendrik spoke before he could ask anything more.

"Y/N, he's safe. Anti can't hurt him."

I took a breath, looking at everyone again. I close my eyes and let the pain wash over me. It was less now, dulled down. I opened my eyes again, the neon scenery had become a familiarity. I looked over at JJ. Strings suspended his arms in place, and details on him made him look like a doll. I quickly averted my eyes to where Marvin was standing, except he wasn't there anymore. In his place stood a smirking Anti. He slowly put a finger to his lips, I smirked back at him before blinking a few times. My sight returned to normal and I took a step towards Marvin, who was back in his spot.

"It's him." The confidence in my voice surprised me. It contrasted with the rising worry in me. Marvin sighed before chuckling.

"You know, I did tell you not to tell." He glitched a few times before his disguise faded. Anti stood where Marvin had meer moments before. "No one likes a snitch."

"Where the hell is Marvin?" Jackieboy shouted. Anti just rolled his eyes.

"Relax, he's fine... I think." He chuckled. I stepped forward before I could think. "I suggest you don't do that."

"Tell me where he is." I stood my ground, balling my fists. I knew I couldn't take him, but I couldn't just do nothing. We stared at each other for a moment, before a sharp pain ripped through my abdomen. I gasped, grabbing my stomach. He laughed and pushed me back. I hit the ground hard and saw a blood-red knife in his hand. Hendrik was immediately kneeling by my side, trying to stop the blood flow. I looked at Anti again and found myself unable to tear my gaze from his.

"You don't tell me what to do." His voice was low, dangerous. I heard a crash, and then he was gone. I coughed and felt blood drip from my mouth.

"JJ's gone." Jackieboy said. I heard other voices, but I couldn't focus on them past the pain pumping through me. I tried to keep my eyes open, but it was getting harder and harder to do so. Someone took my hand. I looked over and saw Chase, tears streaming down his face. I looked down at my abdomen and saw a knife gash about a foot long. I took a shaky breath but winced as I felt more pain. I coughed again, more blood flooding from my mouth. Chase was speaking, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. My vision was getting blurry, I was fading. My eyelids got heavier and heavier. Slowly, I fell into the dark.

#jacksepticeye #chase brody #marvin the magnificent #jameson jackson #anti septiceye #jackieboy man #dr schneeplestein #who killed jacksepticeye #tw death

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aphelyons · 5 years

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Mer Hugh Culber

I know Mermay was like.... months ago. But here we are, in August, and this is finally done. ..and why not? because lets be honest.... stranger things have happened in Star Trek canon. Lol. I also wrote a little introductory story, where Hugh is a merman and Paul is human, which I have put under the cut below. (It’s 2k.) I’m still writing more for this little AU, as it’s really chill, light and just exploratory - so, I’m enjoying the world building. I’ll eventually upload it to AO3 when I’m done. Anyway, lil story under the cut. It’s quite rough, and un-beta’d.

fyi; It’s set a little in the future, but not quite as far as prime!verse. Maybe on Earth? Maybe not? ---- ---- ---- ---- Paul is an officer aboard a submarine vessel, and is one of the offers in charge of navigation and subsequently has to monitor all activity on the sonars. He notices strange ambience waves, much like a whale songs, on the radar. It's a ‘guilty pleasure’ of his, to sit there and watch the radars with whalesong in his head, while on duty. The submarine is awfully stifling, clinical, isolated and just... shit, honestly. How he ever ended up here he’ll never know. Every time he's under the ocean in this damned tin-can, he misses the life from above, and even the life of coral littered floors.

So he picks up his headset, and listens to the whale-song.

It's not a whale he's ever heard before - and he has heard a lot of different whalesong, from many different waters - it's... not quite as pitched as a whales, not as loud. It's soft and close. Although it’s too deep to be a dolphins, and dolphins ‘in this area’ don’t really venture out this far anyway. Whatever is making the song, it's beautiful, so he sits back for the rest of his shift - monitoring the radars, doing his systems checks, just listening to the song.

It's an hour before the end of his shift, and the song simply stops without much warning. He waits for that remaining hour, but the song doesn't return - usually it does. The creature must have swam away, or maybe something happened - as is ocean life. So he goes through changeover, asking the next crewman to record any whale-song he might hear, to which they’re friends and he’s happy to oblige Paul’s strange tendencies. He goes off to the mess hall - which he calls the sardine can, with little affection - for a quick dinner. He finishes his evening up quickly with a shower, then returning to his bunk to read and ends up falling asleep with the book half open on his chest as usual.

The next day an aircraft carrier, from the direction they came from, was requesting their assistance with drills. So they divert route, and go back the way they came. There was no urgency to the request, no rush at all, so the engines worked at the same speed. It’s an opportunity to restock supplies anyway, not that they were low, but on a submarine, it is never a bad thing to have supplies.

When Paul’s shift recommences, returning to his station, they are passing through the same waters that they had yesterday. It was almost at the exact same coordinates when the song began again. Puzzled, he records it - as his friend hadn’t heard anything overnight - this time for further analysis. He’ll cross reference the audio with the archives to pinpoint what creature it might be. He marks the location, and makes many observations as he can with the fluctuations and patterns of the creatures song.

Nothing had quite excited him in this tin can as much as this does, not for a long,long time.

When they reach the rendezvous point, something went horribly wrong with the drills, and they will end up needing repairs. Thankfully nearby an island, to which the crew who is not needed - like navigation - will spend the next while off-duty while the repairs are taking place.

Paul takes the opportunity to hire a small vessel to go investigate the sonar readings. Attached to it is a one man pod meant for deep sea diving. The sea here is not so deep and nearby there are plenty of coral reefs and other islands, too. So him, his friend Straal and a small team, charter out to the location of the coordinates that Paul had marked. They monitor the radar, listen with sonar devices and other equipment that they have on their very small vessel.

They pick up something faint, and perhaps the equipment on the ship just isn’t comparable to high grade military equipment, so he Paul takes the one-man pod and dives down into the waters with it, trying to navigate and triangulate where the song is coming from.

He does so, fairly close to the surface, really, as the ocean at this point falls away into a deep trench, and he hasn’t dived that far down into the waters comparable to the depths available. On the little radar within, he notices that something is in his direct vicinity and the song is so loud now. Even if he turns off the recording device Paul can hear it faintly, and so softly through the hull of the pod.

Yet, there's still no sign of the creature. He manoeuvres the pod around in circles, in all dimensions, trying to get a glimpse of the creature. Surely it must be close, so close. It’s when he catches glimpses of bubble trails and disturbed water that his heart begins to race. He should be frustrated, really, but the mounting feeling of just being giddy and excited is overwhelming.

Eventually, he's quick enough to catch a glimpse of a tail - just a corner of it - it's dark, and illuminated with spirals of reds, oranges and deep purples. It's... Well, it’s certainly not what he expected. And what kind of creature moves like this? It’s so agile, and fast. It’s certain to him now that that wasn't the tail of any dolphin he knows. Yet it’s as playful as one.

He has to see this thing more than just a tiny glimpse of it’s tail before he could ever allow himself to surface. He’s so close to figuring out his mystery. So, he gets an idea.

He cut the engines and turns off the lights. Only the faintest lights from the instruments were left, and glow faintly over his skin. He waits. It’s clear that the creature is curious. Eventually it will be curious enough to face him. Well, it should be. He hopes.

He hears a soft thud of something, making contact with the hull of the side of the pod, it wasn’t violent or hard. The noise came from just out of sight from the large window that spans the entire front of the pod, allowing the driver of the pod to have a vast and wide view of the ocean before them - before Paul.

It’s a few moments later - and by this time Paul’s heart his hammering nervously in his chest - when the tip of the beautifully patterned tail came into view, edging its way very slowly into the view of the window. It's tail was beautiful, scales gleaming under the glistening low light, and the light of the colourful instruments inside of the pod danced over the membrane. Whatever this beautiful tail belongs to, for all their playful antics from before, somehow now they had become shy or cautious. Paul can’t tell which.

It was when the body of the creature came into view that his heart stopped dead in his chest.

It’s a man.

But what man can swim unassisted at these depths? With no gear at all? And what kind of mans body was ...attached to a beautiful tail? He can’t comprehend what is in front of him. His mind flips and churns over trying to reason with what he is witnessing. A creature? A man? A myth? All of the above? What was right before his eyes didn’t make sense. Paul’s eyes are as wide as his, and his skin, unlike Paul’s is dark, and gleams and glistens so beautifully in the low light of the ocean. Paul slowly begins to take in all the stranger details of what is before his eyes, this myth does in-fact have gills that trail down his neck - more along his torso - as well as golden markings along his sides and back that contrast so vibrantly against his dark skin. Frills and fins adorn his back and shoulders, his defined and muscular chest is dotted with more glowing, golden markings.

Despite all of this - despite all these strange and unfamiliar things - he seems so human. He looks so human. His face is just the same as any humans, his arms and his entire torso too.

His hands, that are darker again, and dotted with more glowing markings and fade into the tone of the rest of his torso further up his arms you go, are so gently placed on the glass as he stares inwards directly at Paul. They are human hands, even if they are sharply clawed. This creature - no, this man - is staring at him, and Paul can not bear himself to tear his vision away from him, either. They’re curious, he can see it in his eyes, but also considering and perhaps a little cautious. The intelligence behind his eyes is undeniable. This is no creature.

After forever and a moment, Paul remembers how to breathe. The next moment, he forgets how to move autonomously and finds that his body is arching forward, slowly, towards the glass. He’s reaching towards where the webbed hands that are pressed up against the pods thick glass and he places his against it, against his.

The man, this mythical man, breaks his gaze away from Paul's eyes, looking over his hands. Then his gaze wanders all over the rest of Paul's body, tilting his head in the most universally understood motion. He's learning.

So Paul slowly brings his free hand, careful not to startle this man, and gestures towards himself.

"Paul." He says simply, his voice too quiet, from how awestruck he is. "Paul." He says again, louder, more assuredly, pointing to himself again.

Then this impossible man performs the impossible, as at this depth where light was scarce - he illuminates the cabin with just his smile. Not literally, of course, but Paul is entirely mesmerised by how bright and illuminating his entire presence is. Paul’s curious companion begins to hum the song that had become so familiar to Paul, singing to him - for him. Paul finds himself smiling along with him, entirely captivated by everything about him.

Suddenly the mythical man looks out into the waters behind him, and it’s clear that there is something out there that has caught his attention and bothers him. He frowns - and it’s so relatable to human experience, it surprises Paul - and turns back to Paul. He makes a gesture so alien to him, he can’t even begin to decipher what it’s meaning can possibly be.

Then he turns, and swims away. He’s out of sight - gone - into the beyond of the inky waters, leaving Paul mystified and in awe, over what had just happened.

The reality of it has already started to feel like it was all a dream. But, there, right on the glass, is a hand print with several tiny scales that had stuck to the window. It wasn't a dream, and that is his only proof.

He snaps back into reality as he becomes aware of the distant sounds of his comms blaring, from somewhere behind him where he had discarded the device. Straal and the team are calling out for him, wondering ‘what the fuck is going on, Stamets. What had happened?’ Silence from him was rare, after all. He puts on the headset again, restarts his engines, and assured them that all is fine and he is fine. He manoeuvres the pod back to the boat, and as he surfaces, swinging the hatch free, he steps out of it bearing a smile that he knows that none have them have ever seen before in his life. He doubts he’s ever smiled this hard in his life.

Instantly the team on the boat descends on him, asking what on earth happened.

"He found me." he says still entirely bemused.

"He?" Straal asks. And if Paul has never smiled this much, Straal certainly has never looked so bewildered.

"Oh, Straal... You will not believe who that song was coming from, and he is unspeakably beautiful."

So Paul dedicates himself to finding out more about this man born of myths. What does he know? Who does he sing to? Is he alone? Will they ever be able to communicate?

He endeavours to found out.

//end

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upontheshelfreviews · 5 years

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And now we come to the final piece of Walt Disney’s original animation trifecta, Fantasia, and it’s one I’m both anticipating and dreading. Fantasia isn’t just one of the crowning jewels in Disney’s canon, a landmark in motion picture animation, and second only to Snow White in terms of influential music and storytelling in the whole medium, it’s one of my top three favorite movies of all time. Discussing it without sounding like an old history professor, a pretentious internet snob, or a hyper Disney fangirl is one hell of a daunting task.

“Did someone say hyper Disney fangirl?! I LOVE Disney!!”

“I thought you only liked Frozen.”

“Well, DUH, Frozen is my favorite, which makes it, like, the best Disney movie ever! But Disney’s awesome! There’s a bunch of other movies I like that are almost as good!”

“And Fantasia’s one of them?”

“Yeah!!…Which one is that again?”

“The one with Sorcerer Mickey?”

“Ohhhh, you’re talking about the fireworks show where he fights the dragon!”

“No, that’s Fantasmic. I’m referring to Fantasia. Came out the same year as Pinocchio? All done in hand-drawn animation…has the big devil guy at the end?”

“THAT’S where he’s from?! Geez, that’s some old movie. Why haven’t I heard about ’til now?”

“Probably because you spend twelve hours a day searching for more Frozen GIFs to reblog on your Tumblr.”

“Ooh, that reminds me! I need to go post my next batch of theories about the upcoming sequel! Toodles!!”

“Thanks. Another second with her and I would’ve bust a gasket.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Anyway, it’s no surprise Sorcerer Mickey is what people remember the most from Fantasia, and not just because he’s the company mascot. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” was the reason we have the movie in the first place. It began as a pet project between Walt Disney and renowned conductor Leopold Stokowski.

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“Yep. THAT Leopold.”

However, between the upscale in animation and the use of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the cost grew too high to justify the creation of only one short. Over time more sequences featuring animation set to various pieces of classical music were added in what was initially dubbed “The Concert Feature”. Later it was wisely changed to the more memorable “Fantasia”. It works not only because it’s derived from the word “fantasy”, but because “fantasia” is a term for a musical composition that doesn’t follow any strict form and leans towards improvisation. Combine the two meanings and you get the whole movie in a nutshell.

And this leads us to –

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #1: “It’s SOOOOOO boring! Nobody’s talking and nothing ever happens!”

You know, few recall that decades before Warner Brothers was known as that studio that made rushed prequels to beloved fantasy franchises and a hastily cobbled together superhero universe, it had humble origins in the music business; their Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts began as music videos made to sell their records. Disney’s Silly Symphonies followed in the same vein, though they focused more on pushing the envelope in animation technique and character resonance than selling music, as did the lesser known Harman-Ising Happy Harmonies.

And if that’s the case, then Fantasia is the Thriller of animated music videos. It’s the result of years of technological advancement and trial and error, all culminating in the flawless weaving together of visuals and some of the greatest music mankind has created to tell seven stories and elicit an emotional response for each one.

Let me repeat that: FANTASIA. PREDATES. THRILLER.

“And unlike Thriller, Fantasia has the advantage of NOT being directed by a man who literally got away with murder or involving an artist whose pedophilia accusations are still discussed a decade after his passing…at least as far as we know.”

By the way, if you’re watching the current version of Fantasia that’s available, do me a favor and pause the movie to watch the original Deems Taylor intros; while they’re shorter than the ones on the blu-ray, they have Deem’s original voice. All later releases have him dubbed over by Corey Burton because the audio for these parts hasn’t held up as well over time. Now Corey Burton is a phenomenal voice actor who’s done countless work for Disney before, but there’s a problem I have with him taking over these segments: One, he and Deems sound nothing alike, and Two, he makes him sound so dry and dull. Not to mention the longer intros practically spoil everything you’re about to see whereas the cut versions give you just enough to build some intrigue for what’s to follow.

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Regardless of whichever one you’re watching, Deems gives us the rundown on what Fantasia is all about and lists the three categories that the sequences fall under.

A concrete story

Clearly defined images with something of a narrative

Music and visuals that exist for its own sake

And the very first of these parts falls directly into the last one.

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor – Johann Sebastian Bach

Some hear this tune and attribute it as stock horror music, but for me it’s the start of a grand, dark, fantastical journey through realms of the imagination. While it is intended as an organ piece, this full orchestration blows me away. Capturing the orchestra in bold hues and shadows with colors specific to certain highlighted instruments was a brilliant move, setting the stage for what’s to come.

And if the previously referenced Bugs Bunny cartoon was any indication, the real Leopold Stokowski is one of the main draws to this segment. Stokowski’s claim to fame was that he ditched the traditional conductor’s baton and used his hands to guide the orchestra. His passion and restraint is plain for all to see, even in silhouette.

Ultimately Stokowski and the orchestra fade away into the animated ether. The idea behind Toccota and Fugue was to show a gradual transformation from the conscious world to the subconscious, providing a literal and figurative representation of what you see and hear with the music. That’s why the first animated images resemble violin bows sweeping over strings. Over time those distinct objects evolve into abstract geometric shapes.

Honestly, no amount of stills can capture what it’s like to watch this sequence play out. It’s a radically unique experience, almost like a dream.

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #2: “It’s the world’s first screensaver/musicalizer!”

This is something I hear often from people (ie. the people making the complaints I’ve chosen to highlight). First, read the previous Thing. Second, Toccata is not so much about recreating a story as it is capturing a feeling. And yet a story isn’t out of the question. I always saw at as glimpses of a battle of light versus dark, heaven versus hell, albeit not as overt as the opening of Fantasia 2000. That’s the beauty of this segment. It’s all up for interpretation. You can let the images and sounds wash over you as if you were dreaming it, or attach whatever meaning you find.

And on that note (ha) –

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #3: “God, all these animators must have been so fucking high to come up with this shit.”

I tell ya what, if you’re one of those people who think that, take whatever drug is handy, grab some crayons or whatever you feel comfortable doodling with, and when you’re comfortably high, draw one full second of animation. That’s 24 consecutive drawings that need to flow, squash and stretch into each other realistically. It doesn’t have complicated; it can be a ball bouncing, a flower blowing in the wind, an eye blinking, but it has to work.

Not so easy, huh?

Classic Disney animators who lectured at art schools received comments like this all the time. While there were some like Fred Moore who would go for the occasional beer run on breaks, there’s no record of narcotic or alcoholic influence on the animators’ turnout. I’m pretty sure Walt would’ve fired anyone who turned in work produced while high because it’d be awful. Animation was still a fairly new medium at the time, and Disney was constantly experimenting with what it could do, which is why we got things like this, the Pink Elephants, and other delightfully trippy moments throughout the 40’s, not because of drugs. Isn’t that right, classic Disney animator Bill Tytla?

“Of course! I’ve never done drugs, and I never drink…wine.”

The Nutcracker Suite – Pyotr Illich Tchaichovsky

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #4: “Yawn. Nutcracker is SO overplayed. Of course Disney had to jump on the bandwagon with their version!”

Ironically, the extended Deems Taylor intro has him mention how nobody performs Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker; in light of its modern seasonal popularity, the sentiment is rendered archaic. True, the ballet wasn’t an initial critical hit and Tchaikovsky himself virtually disowned it, but much of its ubiquity is largely due in part to Disney adapting it for Fantasia. It eschews the title character in favor of a nature ballet portraying the cycle of seasons. Initial planning included the overture and the famous march featuring woodland critters, though they were eventually cut. Walt considered pumping scents into the theater during this part, but was unable to figure out how to do it naturally. If they had Smell-O-Vision that might work, but what scents would you have to scratch off for the other Fantasia segments? Wood resin? Wine? Wet hippo? Brimstone?

The sequence begins with The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. In the night a group of fairies dance like fireflies, gracing spring flowers and spiderwebs with delicately timed dewdrops.

“Any of you girls seen Tinkerbell?” “She ditched us to hang out with that obnoxious flyboy.” “Again?! That’s the third time this month!”

The scene is atmospheric with beautifully rendered pastel backgrounds. After the fairies comes The Chinese Dance performed by a group of little mushrooms. It’s a cute number, and just another that was parodied more than a few times in other cartoons – wait do those mushrooms have slant eyes? And they’re prancing around nodding like extras in The Mikado…

You fungi are lucky you’re so darn adorable otherwise I’d sic the self-righteous side of Twitter on you.

Dance of the Reed Flutes follows. Lilies gently float on to the surface of a pond before inverting themselves to resemble twirling dancers with long, flowing skirts. And since I’m not always one to take the easy route, enjoy this niche reference instead of “You Spin Me Right Round”.

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A gust of wind blows the spinning lilies over a waterfall into some moody underwater caverns, where a school of unusually sultry goldfish perform the Arabian Dance.

Cleo, does Gepetto know about this?

A novel idea, using the basic swimming motions of a goldfish and their naturally diaphanous tails and fins as veils to resemble exotic dancers, though like other animated characters in a similar vein, this has led to some…”interesting” reactions from certain people.

Right, well, bubbles transition us into the penultimate movement, the Russian Dance. Thistles and orchids resembling dancers clad in traditional Russian peasant clothing spring to life in this brightly colored energetic minute. You’ll be chanting “hey!” along with it.

And finally, the Waltz of the Flowers. As a little girl I would often hold my own “ballets” to this scene, which mainly comprised of me in a ballet costume or fancy nightgown spinning around in circles for family members with this playing in the background. Top that, Baryshnikov.

Fairies similar to the ones from the beginning transform the leaves from fresh summer green to autumn orange, brown and gold. Milkweed seeds blossom forth and float through the air like waltzing ladies. This piece above all else is what really shows the beauty of nature. I feel more emotion watching the leaves pirouette in the wind than any plain live-action drama.

Fall turns into winter, and the fairies, now snow sprites, skate across a pond creating ice swirls while even more spiral down from the sky as snowflakes. The secret of animating these snowflakes was nearly lost to time. Several years ago a notebook by technician Herman Schultheis was rediscovered, revealing how many of the special effects in Disney’s early films – Fantasia in particular – were brought to life. The snowflakes were cels on spools attached to small rails from a train set that were filmed falling in stop motion and black and white, then superimposed on the final picture.

In conclusion, The Nutcracker Suite is a lovely piece of animation and music, and I’ll pop in Fantasia at Christmastime just to watch it. This was my introduction to The Nutcracker, and it’s an excellent and unique one.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – Paul Dukas

The symphonic poem of the same name now gets a proper name with Mickey Mouse stepping in the title role. It’s impossible to imagine any other character in his shoes, but for a time there were other considerations.

“Nope. Too wooden.”

“Too angry.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re just too darn loud.”

As we all know, Mickey was given the part since his popularity needed a boost. He doesn’t talk here, and I know those who find his voice grating wholeheartedly embrace that fact, but what we’re given is proof that Mickey works just as well silently as he does speaking. Very few cartoon characters can pull off that kind of versatility.

And while we’re on the topic of sound, Walt was so determined for the sound quality to match what was happening on screen that he devised a system he dubbed “FantaSound”, where it would seem as though the music would move around the the theater instead of just blare out from one speaker.

You read that right. Fantasia is the movie that invented SURROUND SOUND.

But that’s not the only technological leap Fantasia is responsible for – this is the first time we see Mickey with sclera.

That’s the white of the eyes for those who don’t speak science.

Before Fantasia, Mickey had what we refer to today as “pie eyes”, a relic of the era he was created in. As the art of animation progressed, animators found it increasingly difficult to create believable expressions with two little dots. Fred Moore is responsible for the mouse’s welcome redesign. Mickey as the apprentice serves the sorcerer Yen Sid, named after his real world counterpart.

“Hey! I didn’t teach him that!”

Mickey’s craving a taste of his master’s power, so he borrows his magical cap after he goes to bed and enchants a broom to finish his work of gathering water. It’s fun and bouncy, though the part where Mickey dreams he can control the cosmos, seas and sky is something to behold.

“The power! The absolute POWER!! The universe is mine to command! To CONTROOOOOOL!!!”

But Mickey is jolted from his dream of ultimate conquest when the broom begins flooding the place. Unfortunately the sorcerer’s hat doesn’t come with a manual so Mickey doesn’t know how to turn it off. He resorts to violently chopping the broom to pieces with an axe. The animation originally called for the massacre to happen on screen, but was altered to showing it through shadows instead. I think it’s much more effective this way. The implied violence is more dramatic than what we could have gotten.

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One of my favorite stylistic choices in Fantasia is what follows. The color is sucked out, drained if you will, mirroring Mickey’s exhausted emotional and physical state after committing broomslaughter. But it slowly returns as the broom’s splinters rise up and form an army of bucket-wielding drones. They overpower Mickey and catch him in a whirlpool until Yen Sid returns and parts the waters like a pissed off Moses.

“You! Shall not! SWIM!!!”

Mickey sheepishly returns the hat, and I have to give credit to the animators for the subtle touches on Yen Sid. He appears stern at first glance, but the raised eyebrow borrowed from Walt? The slight smirk at the corner of his mouth? Deep down, he’s amused by his apprentice’s shenanigans. Even the backside slap with the broom, while rendered harshly due to the sudden swell of music, is done less out of malice and more out of playfulness.

The piece ends with Mickey breaking the barriers of reality to congratulate Stokowski on a job well done.

“Hey! I didn’t teach him that!”

If you haven’t already guessed, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is easily one of my preferred sequences. It’s energetic, perfectly matches the music, and features my favorite mouse in one of his most iconic roles. I joke about the scene where Mickey controls the waves and the sky due to Disney’s far-reaching acquisitions in the past decade, but within the context of the film it’s one of the most magical moments. Some theorize that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is an allegory of Walt’s journey to create Fantasia itself, and there’s some merit to it – Mickey’s always been Walt’s avatar after all, and here he dreams big only to wind up way in over his head. But you don’t need to look for coincidental parallels to enjoy this part.

Rite of Spring – Igor Stravinsky

Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is admittedly my least favorite part of Fantasia, though I don’t hate it by all means. Thematically it’s the furthest from the original work’s intent: instead of a pagan ritual involving a virgin sacrifice, we witness the earth’s infancy. I was never really into dinosaurs as a kid (I didn’t even see Jurassic Park until I was in fourth or fifth grade), and the thundering, threatening music put me off. I found it too long (twenty-two minutes is an eternity in child time), uninteresting, and dour compared to the other sequences, with the exception of one moment. I can appreciate it now that I’m older, though.

A solitary oboe echoes through the vast darkness of space. We soar past comets, galaxies, suns, and down into our lonely little planet still in the early stages of formation. Volcanoes cover the earth. They spew toxic gas, but their magma bubbles burst in precision with the music. Once again this is due to Herman Schultheis. He filmed a mixture of oatmeal, coffee grounds, and mud with air pushed up through a vent, and let the animators go to town on it.

The volcanoes erupt simultaneously. Lava flows and the ensuing millennia of cooling form the continents. But deep in the sea, the first protozoan life wriggles, divides, and evolves into multi-cellular organisms. One of them crawls up on to land, and finally we’re back in the time where dinosaurs weren’t just confined to zoos.

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #4: “Dinosaur inaccuracies…brain melting…”

True, most of the dinosaur and plant species here never shared the same period of existence, but try telling that to the animation studio or John Hammond. They mostly went for whatever looked cool and prehistoric regardless of scientific accuracy. Some of the designs themselves are a bit off, but the animators did their best considering how much we knew about the creatures in the 30’s and 40’s. Heck, we’ve only recently discovered that most dinosaurs were covered with feathers or fur, and I don’t see anyone harping on Jurassic Park for omitting that detail. Thank God Steven Spielberg doesn’t harbor George Lucas’ affinity for reworking his past movies with extra CGI.

Believe it or not, this scene was once considered the height of accurate dinosaur depictions on film, because nobody else had done it before with this level of research and care in animation. Without Rite Of Spring, we wouldn’t have The Land Before Time or Jurassic Park in the first place. Look at Land Before Time’s bleak, orangey atmosphere and the Sharptooth fights and tell me this didn’t influence it in any way.

The dinosaurs themselves have little character and, while fascinating to see how they might have lived, are not particularly engaging. Until…

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Yes, when the king of all dinosaurs makes his entrance, bringing a thunderstorm along with him no less, all the others are wise to run and hide from him. I would hide under a quilt but still peek through the holes in awe. He snaps about throwing his weight around, but when it goes toe to toe with a stegosaurus? That’s when things get real.

This battle, by the way, is animated by Woolie Reitherman, who had a knack for bringing gargantuan characters to life. He was responsible for animating Monstro in Pinocchio, and was behind Maleficent’s dragon form in Sleeping Beauty.

Though what follows is far from triumphant. The earth has become a hot, barren wasteland. The dinosaurs trudge through deserts and tar pits, their fruitless search for water turning into a slow death march. Not even the mighty T-Rex can survive this.

California: present day.

Some time later, the dinosaurs are all gone. Only their bones bleaching in the sun remain. Without warning, a massive earthquake hits and the seas flood through, washing away the remains of the old prehistoric world. The sequence comes full circle as the lonely oboe plays over a solar eclipse, which sets on an earth ready to step into the next stage of life.

If Walt had his way, the segment would have continued with the evolution of man and ended on a triumphant note with the discovery of fire, but he was worried about the possible backlash from zealous creationists. And I don’t blame him for wanting to avoid a confrontation with that crowd.

“It’s bad enough he makes a mouse act like a people with his dadgum pencil sorcery, but propagandizin’ evil-loution in mah Saturday mornin’ toon box? That’s just plum un-okkily-dokkily!”

“…You wouldn’t happen to have a dictionary on hand, would you?”

“DICTIONARIES ARE THE DEVIL’S BOOSTER SEAT!!”

Subsequently, those edits made to Stravinsky’s score pissed off the composer so much that he considered suing Disney for tampering with his work. He opted not to, yet the experience turned him off animation for good. A crying shame; Stravinsky, apart from being the only classical composer alive to see his work made part of a Fantasia feature, was excited to work with Walt. The two deeply respected and recognized each other as artists ahead of their time. Who knows what else could have come from their collaboration if things ended better?

With that knowledge, it makes sense that one of Stravinsky’s most famous pieces, the Firebird Suite, was included in Fantasia 2000: perhaps on some level Disney wanted to apologize for how the finale of Rite of Spring was mishandled by making Firebird the grand finale (though knowing Stravinsky he would have hated the little changes made to his music there as well).

Following the intermission, the orchestra reconvenes and has a fun little jam session. Deems Taylor takes a moment to introduce us to the most important – but rarely seen – figure that makes Fantasia and most music in movies possible, The Soundtrack.

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Once again, Disney does what it does best and anthropomorphizes what no one thought was possible. Think about it: giving personalities to animals is one thing, but they’ve successfully done the same for plants, planes, houses, hats, and here, sound itself. It may seem silly and out of place, but I think it’s brilliant and charming. The visuals it creates to represent different instruments are perfectly matched; some of them harken back to Toccata and Fugue. This, combined with the improv from the orchestra, is a good way to ease us back into comfort after the harshness of Rite of Spring.

Pastoral Symphony – Ludwig Van Beethoven

There’s a famous story about Walt Disney while he was pitching this segment. When met with complaints that it wasn’t working, he cried out This’ll MAKE Beethoven!” In a way, he was right. This was the very first piece of Beethoven I ever heard, even before the famous “da da da DUUUUUN” of Symphony #5. And as far as I know, it was for a good many Disney fans too. We still get a romantic depiction of the countryside as was the composer’s intent, but instead of an rural utopia, we see the Fields of Elysium at the foot of Mount Olympus. It’s home to a variety of mythical creatures from the golden age of Greece: fauns, unicorns, cherubs, centaurs and Pegasi.

If there was ever a Disney world I wanted to spend a day in, this would be it. It’s so innocent, laidback and colorful; it takes me right back to my childhood. A great portion of this sequence was used in my favorite music video in the Simply Mad About the Mouse anthology album, “Zip A Dee Doo Dah” sung by Ric Ocasek from The Cars. Whether that was my favorite because it featured Pastoral Symphony or Pastoral Symphony was my favorite because it was featured in the video I don’t know. There’s nothing that could ever destroy it for –

Oh son of a…

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #5: “RACIST. FUCKING. CENTAUR. EQUALS. RACIST. DISNEY… RACIST!!!”

Yes ladies and gents, that image is real. Meet Sunflower (or Otika, I’m not sure which one she is) one of the the censored centaurettes (for very obvious reasons). I’m of two minds when it comes to their inclusion. First off, yes, they’re crude and demeaning blackface caricatures that have no place in a Disney movie, let alone one of the best ones and in one of my favorite sequences. But my inner art/film historian that despises censorship feels that erasing these depictions is the same as pretending they and other prejudices of the time never existed.

Thank you, Warner Bros.

As time and the civil rights movement marched on, all traces of the Sunflower squad were removed from later releases of Fantasia. The downside to that was editing techniques at the time weren’t as high-tech as they are today; I was lucky to see a film print of Fantasia at the Museum of Modern Art in 2015 that must have dated as far back as the ’60s because she wasn’t there, but the cuts were very noticeable. Sad to say the amazing remastered tracks done by Irwin Kostal in the 80’s used a similar print because the shift in the music is very jarring at points in this segment. It wasn’t until Fantasia’s 50th anniversary that they were able to zoom in and crop the scenes that had Sunflower in them while recycling other pieces of animation over parts where they couldn’t get rid of her, eventually managing to digitally erase her from some of the film entirely (look carefully at the part where the red carpet is being rolled out for Bacchus on the blu-ray. Unless he got it from the Cave of Wonders, carpets normally don’t roll themselves…)

I completely understand the reasoning behind Sunflower’s removal, but can also see why animation aficionados would try to pressure Disney into bringing her back with each new re-release for Fantasia, possibly with one of those great Leonard Maltin intros putting everything into context like in the tragically out-of-print Disney Treasures dvds – though the chances of that happening are as likely as Song of the South being made public again (the Disney+ promo should have made that clearer when they claimed Disney’s entire back catalogue would be available for streaming, but I doubt the tag line “We have everything except Song of the South” would hook people). It’s an issue I’m very torn on. So if there was ever a chance that a version of Fantasia with a restored Sunflower was possible, either through Disney themselves or fan edits, my thoughts on it would be a very resounding…

The first movement of the symphony is “Awakening of Pleasant Feelings upon Arriving in the Country”, and this part does just that. As the sun rises and we get our first glimpse of the technicolor fantasyland. Pan flute-playing fauns and unicorns frolic with each other while a herd of Pegasi take to the sky. Again, going back to other notable movies taking cues from Fantasia, Ray Harryhausen carefully studied the movement of the Pegasi here when creating his stop-motion Pegasus for Clash of the Titans. They canter through the air as they would on land, but in the water they move with the grace of a swan.

And look at the little baby ones, they’re just too cute!

The second movement, “Scene by the Brook”, takes place exactly where you think it does. A group of female centaurs, named “centaurettes” by the animators, doll themselves up with the help of some cupids (and the aforementioned Sunflower) in preparation for mating season.

“”I used to like the centaurettes not just because they were pretty but because each of them having different colors could be interpreted as women of all colors hanging out together and finding love. But no, having Sunflower there confirms that they’re all supposed to be lighter-skinned ladies. Racism given context makes it no less of a pain in the ass.”

The male centaurs arrive and hook up with their conveniently color-matching counterparts. The cherubs help set the mood for their flirting interludes until they discover two shy, lonely centaurs (Brudus and Melinda, because I’m that big of a Disney nerd that I know their actual names) who haven’t found each other yet. They lure them to a grove with some flute music a la The Pied Piper and it’s love at first sight.

One of my favorite details throughout the Pastoral Symphony is that we keep coming back to Brudus and Melinda. They’re a cute couple, one of the closest things we have to main characters in this sequence, and it’s nice to follow them.

Our third movement is “Peasants’ Merrymaking”. The centaur brigade prepare an overflowing vat of wine for Bacchus, god of booze and merrymaking. Bacchus, forever tipsy, arrives backed up by some black zebra centaurettes serving him. Maybe they were considered attractive enough to avoid being censored.

The bacchanalia is in full swing with everyone dancing and getting loaded. But Zeus, who appears more sinister than Laurence Olivier or his future Disney counterpart, crashes the party with a big thunderstorm. I used to think he was a jerk for endangering his subjects just for kicks, but in light of recent revelations maybe he had ulterior motives.

“Feel the wrath of the thunder god, you fucking racists!”

“Come on, dad, you used to be fun! Where’s the Zeus turns into a cow to pick up chicks?!”

“He grew up. Maybe you should too, son. Now EAT LIGHNING!”

“The Storm”, our fourth movement, provides some stunning imagery against the torrential backdrop, from the centaurs being called to shelter to the pegasus mother braving the gale to rescue her baby.

Ultimately Zeus grows tired and turns in for the night, ending the storm. Iris, goddess of the rainbow, emerges and leaves her technicolor trail across the sky. The creatures revel in the effects it has on their surroundings, then gather on a hill to watch the sunset, driven by Apollo and his chariot. Everyone settles in to sleep, and Artemis, hunting goddess of the moon, shoots an comet across the sky like an arrow that fills the sky with twinkling stars.

Pastoral Symphony was the one part of Fantasia that always received the most derision from critics, but racist characters aside I simply don’t get the hate for it. It may be longer than Rite of Spring but feels nowhere near as drawn out. I love the colors, characters, and the calm, bucolic fantasy world it creates. This was my first exposure to Beethoven and the world of Greek mythology and I still hold plenty of nostalgia for it. I admit it’s not perfect, and not just for the reason you think. Out of all the Fantasia pieces, this is the one whose quality is closest to an original Disney short than a theatrical feature. It’s a bit more cartoony and there’s some notable errors, particularly when the baby Pegasi dive into the water and emerge different colors. Also, Deems and the animators flip between using the gods’ Greek and Roman names, and the stickler in me wants them to pick a mythos and stick with it. But for all it’s flaws it’s still among my very favorite Fantasia pieces and nothing can change that.

The Dance of the Hours from the Opera “La Giaconda” – Amilcare Ponichelli

Like I said before, Disney was a master of the art of anthropomorphism. And nowhere is this more true than Dance of the Hours. Animals portray dancers symbolizing morning, noon, dusk and evening – only they’re the most unlikely ones for the job. The characters of our penultimate act are as cartoony as any you’d see in a Disney short from the era, but what puts the animation above it is the right balance of elasticity and realism. The exaggeration is on point, but there’s enough heft and weight to the animals that I can buy them being grounded in (some semblance of) reality. The animators studied professional dancers and incorporated their moves and elegance flawlessly. Half of the comedy derives from this.

The other half comes from how seriously the mock ballet is treated. We’re never informed who the dancers will be, leading anyone who hasn’t seen this before to assume they’re people. The ballet itself is a parody of the traditional pageant, but the performers carry on with the utmost sincerity. It doubles the laughs when it comes to moments such as Ben Ali Gator trying to catch Hyacinth Hippo in a dramatic pas de deux or an elephant getting a foot stuck in one of her own bubbles as she prances around. The familiar lighthearted refrain of the dance provides wonderful contrast to the caricatures on screen, particularly if you recall its other most famous iteration beyond Fantasia.

No one ever told me Camp Grenada was this Arcadian or zoological.

Morning begins with a troupe of uppity ostriches in ballet gear waking up, exercising and helping themselves to a cornucopia of fruit for breakfast. They fight over some grapes only to lose them in a pool. Something bubbles up from beneath and the ostriches run away in terror, but it’s only the prima ballerina of the piece, Hyacinth Hippo. She prepares for the day with help from her handmaidens and dances around a bit. Then she lies down for a nap, but no sooner do her ladies in waiting leave than some playful elephants come out of hiding and dance around Hyacinth unawares.

Elephants blowing bubbles in a Disney feature…nah, it’ll never catch on.

The elephants are blown away by a gust of wind (must be a really strong breeze), and with the coming of night a sinister band of crocodiles sneak up on Hyacinth. They scatter at the sudden arrival of their leader, Prince Ben Ali Gator, who immediately falls in love with Hyacinth. Surprisingly, the feeling is mutual.

I’m calling it – first body positivity romance in a Disney flick.

The climax of the piece has the crocodiles returning to wreak havoc on the palace and pulling the ostriches, elephants, and hippos back into a frenzied dance which brings down the house.

No bones about it, Dance of the Hours is a comic masterpiece and one of Fantasia’s crowning jewels. And the moment it ended was always the signal for younger me to stop the tape and rewind it to the beginning, due to what follows making a complete and terrifying 180…

Night on Bald Mountain – Modest Mussorgsky / Ave Maria – Franz Schubert

At last we come to our final part, two radically different classical works that blend perfectly into each other. And brother, what a note to end on.

Composer Modest Mussorgsky passed away before completing his masterwork “Night on the Bare Mountain”, a tonal poem depicting a witches’ sabbath from Slavic mythology. His friend, the great Rimsky-Korsakov, finished it for him while adding his own personal touch. The result is some of the most iconic and terrifying music ever created, and the accompanying animation, with the exception of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, is the most faithful to its source material.

The scene takes place on Walpurgis Night, which is the closest thing Europe has to a real-life Summerween (those lucky so-and-so’s), on the titular mountain. The mountain’s peak opens up revealing Chernabog, the Slavic deity of darkness.

Chernabog is a masterclass in design and form. It’s easy to mistake him for Satan himself – Walt Disney and Deems Taylor both refer to him as such – though considering he’s technically Slavic Satan, there’s not too big a distinction. Chernabog radiates power, terror and pure darkness from his intro alone. You can imagine him influencing all other Disney villains to do his will, essentially filling in the horned one’s hooves. Chernabog was skillfully handled by Bill Tylta, an early Disney animator with enough talent to create characters as diverse as Stromboli and Dumbo. Bela Lugosi, the original Dracula, posed for reference pictures in the early design stages, though Tylta ultimately discarded them in favor of some different inspiration – sequence director Wilfred Jackson as model, and Tytla’s own Czech heritage. He grew up with folktales of Chernabog, which served him well during the production.

“Soon, master. The one known as Jackson shall take up your mantle and we shall feast upon humanity yet again.”

Chernabog unleashes his might on to the sleeping village below and raises the dead from the cemetery. A cabal of witches, wraiths and demons gallop on the wind and take part in his infernal revelry. Yet they are but playthings to the evil being. He transforms the creatures into alluring sirens and wretched beasts, sics harpies on them, condemns them to the flames, and lustfully embraces the hellish blaze. It’s an in your face pageantry of pure malevolence that you can’t look away from

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #6: “This is too scary for kids!! What the hell were they thinking?!”

I think it’s time we made one thing clear: Fantasia was NOT made for children – or to be more accurate, not EXCLUSIVELY for children. While Disney movies are made to be enjoyed by both kids and adults, Fantasia is the only one who dared to appeal to a more mature audience, and Night on Bald Mountain is proof of that. It had the audacity to explore some of the most darkest, ancient depictions of evil in a way that no Disney feature has before or since. Most importantly, it’s not done for shock value like any random horror movie you could name. It’s meant to show the juxtaposition between the darkest depravity and purest good; combined with Ave Maria it makes for the perfect symbolic climax to Fantasia. Light versus darkness, chaos versus order, life versus death, profane versus sacred, and the quest to master them all are the themes that unify the seemingly disparate sequences, and this finale is the apotheosis of that.

I stated in my Mickey’s Christmas Carol review that Bald Mountain was one of my first introductions to the concept of eternal damnation at the tender age of…I wanna say four, five? It was easily one of the most petrifying things from my childhood, but at least I could avoid some exposure to it thanks to its position at the very end. Though now I adore Night on Bald Mountain for how bold and striking it is. Tytla’s animation, Kay Nielsen’s stunning demon designs, and Schultheis’ effects culminate in harmonious diabolical artwork that’s impossible to extricate from the music. It’s a shame Schultheis left the studio after Fantasia. He met a mysterious, tragic end in Guatemala, right around the time Bill Tytla left too as a matter of fact…

“He knew too much…about the secrets of animation, I mean. Nothing at all about das vampyr walking the earth. No sir.”

Yet at the height of his power, one thing stops Chernabog cold – the sound of church bells. Disney historian John Culhane saw Fantasia during its original theatrical run (lucky so and so…) and he recalled how much having FantaSound affected his screening: when the bells rang, he could hear them coming from the back of the theater and slowly course their way up front as their power grew. It was an awe-inspiring moment that took the Bald Mountain experience one step further into reality.

The bells and the rising sun drive Chernabog and his minions back into the mountain and the restless spirits return to their graves. In the misty morning a procession of pilgrims glides through the woods like a parade of tiny lights, and thus the Ave Maria begins. It’s one of the rare times Disney has gone overtly Christian. Maybe Walt wanted to get back into the God-fearing American public’s good graces after the sorcery, paganism, devil worship and evolution theory we’ve witnessed in the past hour and fifty minutes. It does relieve the tension from the previous turn of events.

The first pitch had the march enter a cathedral, but Walt didn’t believe recreating something people can already see in Europe. So instead they move through a forest with trees and natural rock formations resembling the Gothic architecture of a cathedral. It’s the stronger choice in my opinion. The implication speaks greater volumes than a specific location, subtly connecting nature to the divine. It’s difficult to make out most of the hymn’s words, but regardless it sounds beautiful, especially those final triumphant notes as the sky lights up over a view of the verdant hilltops.

“When the sun hits that ridge just right, these hills sing.”

And with that, Fantasia comes to a close.

Really, what else can I say about it at this point. I keep forgetting this movie came out in 1940. It’s virtually timeless, and a must-see for anyone who loves animation and classic film and wants to jump into either one.

Fantasia was a critical and box office success…sort of. Despite the praise and high box office returns for the time, it sadly wasn’t enough to make up for the cost of putting it all together. Like Pinocchio before it, the war cut off any foreign revenue. And not every theater was willing or able to shell out for that nifty surround sound so the effects were lost on most people. Then there’s the audience response, which is the most depressing of all. The casual moviegoers still viewed Walt as the guy behind those wacky mouse cartoons and called him out for being a pretentious snob, while the highbrow intellectuals accused Walt of debasing classical music by shackling it to animation. The poor guy just couldn’t win.

Fantasia marked the end of an era. Never again would Walt attempt a feature so ambitious. His plans of making Fantasia a recurring series, with old segments regularly swapped out for new ones, would not be seen in his lifetime. There’s been the occasional copycat (Allegra non troppo), a handful of spiritual successors (Make Mine Music, Yellow Submarine), and of course the sequel which I’m sure I’ll get to eventually, but through it all, there is only one Fantasia. And no amount of my ramblings can hope to measure up to it. Fantasia is one of those movies you simply have to experience for yourself, preferably on the biggest screen available with a top of the line sound system. I know it’s a cliche for Internet critics to name this as their favorite animated Disney movie, but…yes, it’s mine too. It opened a door to a world of culture and art at a young age. The power of animation is on full display, and it’s affected the way I look at the medium forever. Fantasia was, and still is, a film ahead of its time.

Thank you for reading. I hope you can understand why this review took me nearly three months! If you enjoyed this, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Patreon supporters get perks such as extra votes and adding movies of their choice to the Shelf. If I can get to $100, I can go back to making weekly tv show reviews. Right now I’m halfway there! Special thanks to Amelia Jones and Gordhan Ranaj for their contributions.

You can vote for whatever movie you want me to look at next by leaving it in the comments or emailing me at [email protected]. Remember, unless you’re a Patreon supporter, you can only vote once a month. The list of movies available to vote for are under “What’s On the Shelf”.

Artwork by Charles Moss. Certain screencaps courtesy of animationscreencaps.com.

To learn more about Fantasia, I highly recommend both John Culhane’s perennial book on the film and The Lost Notebook by John Canemaker, which reveals the long-lost special effects secrets which made Fantasia look so magical.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be spending the rest of the month with my handy dandy garlic, stake and crucifix and pray Bill Tytla doesn’t visit me this Walpurgis Night. I suggest you do the same.

March Review: Fantasia (1940) And now we come to the final piece of Walt Disney's original animation trifecta, Fantasia, and it's one I'm both anticipating and dreading.

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waypathfinder · 6 years

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Crimson Lane - Chapter 11 - The Traitor

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Chapter Text

Morning in the city was a deranged cocktail of senses to Kylo: jackhammers pounding, sirens screaming, crying babies, all of it stewing in a pot of pollution and garbage.

He stalked forward, head down with his hands stuffed into his pockets, his path direct; determined. People passed him, bumping against his body while fiddling on their phones, careless and self-absorbed, ignorant of how every touch made him stiffen; hyper-aware.

The product of someone who’d always had to watch their back.

And never more so than right now.

Normally, if he had to walk down the street, he did so with a pair of earphones in, tuning out the world around him.

But today, there was no music. He needed to be aware.

The noise of the city dulled into the background, the jolting disarray of sound overwhelmed by a subtle roar, breathless and quiet. Like the wind before a train cuts through a subway tunnel.

Everything fell silent but the roar of his inner monologue: You were the one who chose this path, you, a grovelling, terrified teenager.

And now his road cut deep, a chasm with no escape. He’d tried to claw his way out of it many times, but Snoke had always been one step ahead of the game.

Not any more.

Two weeks ago, Kylo Ren waited in Snoke’s office, eyes downcast, hands in pocket, toying nervously with a sleek black cylindrical shaped UBS Drive in his pocket.

“You wanted to see me?”

“Be patient!” Snoke scolded him, hungrily clicking on his mouse, the pink flesh of his tongue coasting across his lips.

“You said it was urgent.”

Snoke glared at him, lips moving, silent and angry.

“Were you on my computer before?”

“No,” Kylo said flatly.

“My settings have changed.” He clicked his mouse in loud tapping motions, annoyed. “That bastard San Tekka has been leaking info to the press again. I thought you were taking care of it.”

“I am. Hux and I have almost tracked him down. We’re close.”

“So you keep saying.”

Snoke clicked on the mouse a few more times, fascinated with whatever was on his screen. “For ex-security, he seems to know a lot about our operation.”

The hairs on the back of Kylo’s neck prickled unsettlingly. “Lor San Tekka may have just been a security guard, but he had the means to access a lot of information.”

Snoke was silent.

Watchful.

Kylo pulled at the collar of his shirt, feeling as if he were being choked.

“Do you think he’s getting his info from someone else?” Kylo asked.

“Possibly.” Snoke shrugged. “What do you think?”

“Unlikely—” he began, then smirked, thinking of a better response, “How much do you trust Hux?”

Snoke’s shoulders moved, a laugh. Kylo was almost ready to breathe a sigh of relief when his boss’s eyes narrowed at him as they flicked between the monitor and him.

“You little fucker!”

Kylo paled, throat closing.

“Did you think I wouldn’t see this?”

Snoke spun his laptop around. The footage was dark and the sound unclear, but there was a clear outline of men wearing black balaclavas. In the middle of the room was an elderly man, blabbering incoherently.

The tallest of the masked assailants took a step towards him and, with lightning speed, kicked him in the loin. The audio bled into weeping screams and Kylo stepped back, turning away. It always made him sick to watch himself work.

“Did I tell you to look away?”

Kylo straightened, his pulse pounding at the base of his neck. “I don’t see what the problem is. You got your money.“

“You call that a Mawashi Geri? You are off-balance. What am I paying you for if you can’t even deliver a simple roundhouse kick?”

“We got the money,” Kylo stressed the point through gritted teeth, balling his fists behind his back.

Snoke rolled his eyes as his lips curled into a sneer.

“It’s not just about the money, son. These vipers need to learn that the First Order owns them. Did he need to go to a hospital?”

No, they had left him bleeding and screaming on the floor. In pain, but not seriously injured.

A failure, in Snoke’s eyes.

“Just what I thought. I have no use for spineless worms who can’t follow orders.”

Kylo nodded, eyes downcast. “Is that all?”

“No.” Snoke stood, his golden robe sweeping around his body in a gesture of grandeur. He glided towards Kylo, slow and smooth as a snake slithers through the grass.

“I have a question for you,” he whispered. “Blonde or brunette?”

“Huh?” Kylo asked, taken aback at the change in conversation.

“What do you like to fuck, blondes or brunettes?”

“I…” he stammered. Some part of him still felt ashamed that he used the girls here. It was— It was not the way he saw his future playing out.

“Which one—” Snoke’s voice rose.

“Brunette.”

“Ha!” Snoke purred. “Interesting. You know, I found a pretty little piece of flesh the other day. Phasma’s going to bring her in. She has no family, is desperate for cash, young. You will like her. Brunette. ”

“They all do the same job once the lights are off,” Kylo said dryly.

Snoke chuckled to himself, his bony fingers reaching out and squeezing Kylo’s shoulder. “Well, that’s true. I’ll book her in for you. Monday, July 2. Kanjiklub are late with their payment again. I need you to show Tasu Leech we mean business. Smash his kneecap, I don’t care which one. You can have this girl when you’re finished… to unwind.”

“Fine,” Kylo grumbled. “Bring her in.”

“Oh, I will,” he hissed, those icy eyes filling Kylo with a chill that ran straight to his core.

***

Bring her in.

Those three fateful words. Kylo had said them just to shut Snoke up. But his boss had planned this from the beginning, setting the trap, using Rey as the bait. The question was why, now, after all this time, was Snoke so focused on him? Was it a power play, a lesson to bring him into line, or something bigger and far more dangerous?

And Rey.

Snoke had dragged her into this shit-show. Manipulated and lured her into thinking she could pay off her debt—the one he had forced on her.

Kylo stormed past a metal bin anchored to a pole, battered and dented from years of misuse.

Rey.

He kicked it as hard as he could. The metal crash rang out, scattering loose pieces of rubbish on the ground.

He had to keep Snoke away from her, and time was running out.

Kylo kicked the bin again, this time it dislodged from its anchor, and crashed onto the sidewalk, almost taking out a middle-aged couple in the process. They exchanged knowing looks at each other and mouthed the word ‘drugs’.

If only it was drugs. Then he would have an excuse for being the way he was. Violent. Unbalanced.

He charged down the street, fixated on the passing pavement beneath his feet until he was standing in front of a faded red door.

Kylo hammered on it.

No answer.

Again.

He stopped, knuckles stinging, from the other side there was the sound of rattling keys and... one, two, three: the locks snapped open. The handle turned and the door creaked open, just enough.

A gaunt man with short-cropped white hair, a neat beard and pale blue eyes peered out.

Kylo pushed the door open with his boot and Lor San Tekka took an unsteady step back.

“Look how old you’ve become.”

”Something far worse has happened to you,” Lor replied.

Kylo straightened his spine, glowering. “You know why I’m here.”

“Take a seat.”

Rey crossed her arms, gnawing at the inside of her mouth like she was chewing on a bone.

This was a bad idea.

A very bad Idea.

“Come on, Rey. I don’t bite,” Poe said, flashing his dazzling white teeth at her.

She studied him warily, noting the way he stood between her and the exit; one hand clutching his briefcase, the other inviting her to sit. Ridiculous smile, glued in place. No doubt he tried to look welcoming, but it was too eager, like she was being lured into a trap.

You could still leave. She tried to stay calm. Just turn around and disappear forever.

Poe must have sensed her hesitation, because he sat down with a lazy thump, kicking his feet up on the chair opposite, and casually began reading the menu with a bored expression.

Eventually, Rey took a measured breath and lowered her body slowly into the booth as Poe watched her subtly, peering out beneath his thick brows. At the far end of the room, a tray crashed to the floor and the sound of breaking glass shattered around her. She jumped, skittery as a wild deer. Heart pounding.

“Here.” Poe pushed the menu towards her, his voice placating. “Order whatever you want. My work’s paying.”

She supposed she could stay for a bite to eat if he was paying. After all, Rey looked around at the plush velvet seats, vase centrepieces with explosions of colour… and then there were those rich aromas wafting from the kitchen. She closed her eyes and inhaled.

A restaurant meal. When would she be lucky enough to score one of those again?

“Okay,” she sighed and opened the menu, running her finger down the line of prices.

$29, $35, $32…

Ah. There it was.

“I’ll have that one.” She tapped her finger against the menu.

“The lobster?” Poe squinted at his own menu, jaw dropping. “It’s sixty-five dollars!”

“Yes, that’s the one.” She nodded decisively. “I’ve not tried it before.”

He took her menu back and groaned. “Really? You’ve ordered the most expensive thing on the menu.”

“Did I ?” Rey teased, a picture of innocence.

Poe shook his head, mumbling something about a thirty-dollar limit. It was a small victory, but it was sweet enough.

Once the orders were taken, Poe pulled out a dog-eared file and whacked it on the table.

“Don’t you use computers at the Hosnian Herald?” she asked.

“Cute. You want to be a reporter sweetheart? You watch and learn.”

Rey rolled her eyes, but watched anyway, because hell yes, she wanted to be a reporter.

Poe placed a notepad filled with messy shorthand strokes on the table, followed by a dictaphone.

“I thought you said you left that back at the office?”

“Did I ?”

Rey scowled at him, but that may have been because otherwise she might have smiled. Bloody reporters!

“Right, let’s get started.“ Poe bypassed the notepad and pressed ‘record’ on the dictaphone.

“So, Rey,” he said, locking his black coffee-coloured eyes on her. “How’s life in the sex industry?”

Shit! She shot her hand to turn off the recording device.

“You can’t record that!”

“For a girl who’s trying to protect her secrets, you’re not very obliging.”

“What makes you think I’m trying to hide anything?”

“Oh, in that case, I’ll call Finn back and he can take notes. Sorry, my bad.”

Rey’s mouth turned to ash, fingernails pushing into her forearms, leaving half-moon pressure marks on her skin. She was stuffed, and could only watch in horror as Poe unlocked his phone, flicking through his contact list.

“Wait!”

Breathe, Rey! The words were her own, but they had mixed with the gravelly undercurrent of her former Sensei, Master Skywalker. The memory swept her away to a quiet hall with bright, sunlit windows and polished wooden floors.

“ What do you see?” Master Skywalker asked, his voice filtering through her meditation, guiding her.

“The man in black,” she whispered. Those quiet moments of self-reflection always wrenched her back to that cesspit of a home, to the night she was attacked. She could never stop seeing him.

“You see your enemy?” his voice was calm, a safe harbour in stormy seas.

“Yes.”

“Never show weakness before your enemy. Stand strong.”

And like that, she was back, faced with this smiling, ambitious reporter who thought he could bully her into exposing her story.

She stiffened, lifting her eyebrows and meeting his eyes with a level-headed coldness.

“Are you blackmailing me, Poe Dameron?”

“Blackmail?” Poe looked affronted. “What!? No!”

“So, what if I refuse to tell you anything?”

“Then you refuse. There’s not much I can do about it.”

“You won’t tell Finn what I’m doing?”

Poe sighed. “Look, I don’t want your story, Rey. I have no wish to expose you or call you out. I just want you to tell me everything you know about Snoke.

Alexander Snoke. Rey shivered. Even the thought of that deceptively frail, hulking creep made her want to disappear forever. “I don’t know anything about Snoke.”

Poe nodded, as though he expected as much. Untying the document wallet before of him, he opened the flap and pulled out a stack of newspaper clippings.

“Let me enlighten you then.”

Terror bombing kills 120

First Order scores multi-million dollar government security contract

Palpatine’s popularity soars amidst vote of no confidence

Resistance battered into submission, Organa-Solo resigns

“And my personal favourite.”

Reporter targeted in Yavin car bomb

“Your boss, Alexander Snoke, is behind every single one of these stories.”

Rey sifted through the articles as Poe continued to bring more out, scattering them on the table in a messy collage: reports of beatings, stabbings, robbery, blackmail… the list seemed endless.

“To the public, he is the revered CEO of the First Order. Fortune magnet. But behind the scenes, he is manipulating the government and crushing anyone who gets in his way.”

“What’s his endgame then?” Rey flicked through the pages, amazed at how much Poe had actually pegged against him.

“Power.” Poe twisted his cup of water on the table, watching the way the water stayed still regardless. “By bombing the Resistance, he created a sense of panic. Meanwhile, he has a few quiet words to his mate Palpatine, and what do you know? The First Order scores a huge government contract, providing security and weapons to the police force. Suddenly the Imperial government’s rigid military rule starts to look like a pretty good idea, and since Palpatine owes him a couple favours he can start to cash in and make things go the way he wants on a larger scale.”

“That seems like a bit of a far stretch for a guy who runs a brothel.”

“A brothel and a multi-billion-dollar company. Anyway, the brothel is just a front, essentially; plus, he likes it. The guy’s a complete sexual deviant.”

Rey thought back to his special cupboard, the way he had filmed her. Poe sure as hell wasn’t wrong about that.

“From Crimson Lane he does all the illegal stuff because he wouldn’t be caught dead doing that at the First Order; it’s under a lot more scrutiny. Also, he can’t fund any underhanded deals through First Order books, so that’s where the loans and drugs come into play. He preys on junkies and anyone else in desperate positions. He finds their weak spot and breaks them through blackmail, loans, threats, addiction, whatever he can to fund his operation.”

Rey searched through the clippings, her expression hollow. It was so much bigger than she ever thought.

And was this what Kylo Ren was part of? She couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t.

But…

And there was a but. A brutal threatening fact that lurked in the shadow of her mind.

Her hand strayed across the Resistance bombing articles, Senator Leia Organa-Solo had stepped down after they had lost so many lives, feeling somehow responsible.

She picked up the largest article on the Resistance attack:

Terror bomb devastates. Beneath the headline was a photograph of broken bodies beneath white sheets that were smeared with blood. From beneath one of them was a child’s hand outstretched, charred and bloody. Lifeless. She had seen images of that hand on the television news that day. It had stayed with her long after.

She read beneath the image.

There are fears up to 120 are dead today after a mysterious bomb blast crushed Resistance headquarters in the early hours of the morning.

A spokesperson for the Police first response team said the perpetrators designed the bomb to cause maximum damage.

The Imperial government has denied any involvement and has condemned the attack as “despicable”.

It looks to be the end of an already embattled Resistance party, after they suffered a landslide defeat in the last election.

Rey glued her eyes to the story, hand trembling.

Did Rose know she was working for the man responsible for her sister’s death? Did any of them?

“How can you be sure that Snoke is behind all of this?”

Poe lowered his head and whispered, “I have a source.”

Rey nodded, furrowing her brow. There was a rising feeling of anxiety from deep within. Poe pressed on, leaning forward.

“I promise you, once we’re finished with this story, Snoke will be done. We’ll have him on the Resistance bombing and so much more. Rey—”

He said her name with a breath of desperation, as though he had come to the point where he would plead his case, but he held back.

Rey gnawed at her fingernails, mind racing. If Snoke was behind all this, then did it mean Kylo was the one inflicting the damage?

“We need to get him, Rey. This bastard never gets his own hands dirty. He gets his army of trained mercenaries to do it for him — he calls them his Knights.”

She nodded, face ashen, the newspaper report on the Resistance bombing trembling in her shaking hands. Her eyes, glued on the pictures of covered bodies. The sound of that explosion, rippling through her brain. The stench, smouldering rubble, singed flesh, sirens, screams, despair. She hadn’t even there, walking two blocks away, but it was close enough.

“What do you know about the Knights?” she asked.

“There are nine of them, headed up by the guy only known as Kylo Ren.” Poe pried the article from her fingers and slipped it back inside his folder. “No one knows who he is or what he looks like, but from what I understand, he comes around the brothel from time to time—”

Her lungs were burning. Why couldn’t she breathe?

Poe paused, eyes narrowing in on her. “Rey, do you know who he is?”

She opened her mouth, closed it again and looked away.

“This is important Rey. If you can identify him—”

“No,” she snapped, shaking her head. “I don’t know who it is. I’ve just heard his name mentioned, that’s all.”

Poe exhaled, his demeanour slumping into the chair. “That’s a shame. Well, anyway, if you come across that guy, Rey, you run and don’t look back.”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured and meant it. Sorry that she had lied. That even while she understood Kylo was one of the “bad” guys, deep down she wasn’t ready to believe the worst of him. Perhaps, just perhaps, he was stuck, like she was.

But if Kylo was involved in that bombing, she couldn’t…

She swallowed. Her body was prickling with feverous heat, like the temperature rise before throwing up.

“Do you think he…” She took a drink of water, trying to hide the way she couldn’t stop shaking. “Do you think Kylo Ren was behind the bombing?”

Poe stared at her for a beat.

Too long.

“No. Anything with pyrotechnics is Armitage’s work. Red-headed English guy. A snivelling rat. You’ll know him when you see him. Total psycho. Loves his work.”

Rey startled as the waiter slid their meals in front of them without a word. Rey ignored it, even though her stomach was rumbling and the rich smell of the lobster with white sauce was wafting before her.

“If you’ve got a source, why do you need me?”

“Because I don’t know how much longer I will have him.”

Poe cut into the tender flesh of his steak. The juices bled onto the plate, drowning the rest of his food in red.

“A guy named Lor San Tekka got in touch with me a month ago. He’s been feeding me information on Snoke. He used to work for him until last year as a security guard. He quit after the attack. His wife, Marianne, worked for Senator Organa. She was one of the first ones found in the wreckage that day, or at least, they found parts of her.”

Rey shivered, nausea growing in her gut.

“Why on earth would you tell me who your source is?” Rey asked, horrified. She had learnt that much in the university; never, ever reveal your sources.

“I’m telling you because I need you to listen out for me. If you hear anything that sounds like they will make a move on San Tekka, I need you to tell me,” Poe said in a hushed voice. “The guy has a USB drive with enough dirt to take down Snoke and the First Order once and for all. But I don’t know…” He dragged a hand down his face, all of his suave arrogance disappearing in the movement.

“I have a bad feeling about it, Rey. Like it’s all too easy. This San Tekka guy’s got a target on his back. He’s the only one with the motive to take down Snoke. It won’t take them long to figure out he’s the leak... if they haven’t already.”

Rey thought about it. Something wasn’t right here, and she had good instincts about these things.

“So, you have him on the Resistance bombing?” she asked.

“That and so much more, I mean, this last Monday, Tasu Leech, who heads up the Kanjiklub crime family, was left beaten within an inch of his life. That was Kylo Ren’s work apparently, according to my source.”

Monday. Rey felt the blood rushing from her face. Their first night together.

“What else do you have on Kylo Ren?” God, she wished her voice would stop shaking.

“We have everything, Rey. Everything he’s been involved in over the last ten years up until last week. Well, everything except his true identity.”

Rey played with her food, quiet and thoughtful. There were so many mixed emotions fighting within her. And then a thought struck her.

“If San Tekka was just a security guard who quit his job over a year ago, how does he have access to all of this? I mean, these are some of Snoke’s biggest secrets. That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Well, wouldn’t it indicate there was another source? One that still works for Snoke really closely. Perhaps Lor isn’t your primary source. You said his wife was murdered in the attack, but what if he was just a front-man, who was being fed information from the real source, so he or she can stay in a position of trust.”

Poe gawked and then smiled appreciatively. “Well, I’ll be damned, Rey. Finn said you were brilliant.”

“I’m far from brilliant—” Blighted, more like.

But Poe ignored her. “Tell you what. You help me crack this case and there will be a job for you at the end of all this.”

“What, as your coffee assistant?” she scoffed.

“As a reporter, if that’s what you want? You ask the right questions, Rey, and you can obviously write, since Finn said your first year was on a scholarship. And you’ve got sass. I like that.”

Rey considered his offer. What if, after all of this, she could still have a future… How dangerous could it be?

“You’re thinking about it.” Poe leaned in with a hungry smile. “Maybe once this story is done, I could even give you a joint byline with Finn.”

A byline. Her jaw dropped, eyes smiling. Could it happen? She almost felt like crying at the possibility.

“Poe, I—”

“Don’t thank me yet. Because there’s one more thing I need from you.”

Kylo Ren squeezed into the ornate dining chair, covered in floral upholstery. The cushion of the seat was stained yellow and every time he moved it creaked, threatening imminent collapse.

Lor San Tekka’s late sister’s townhouse was a time capsule of 1970s decor, vomited up into the modern day. Vintage brown paper lined the walls and floral drapes with dusty sheer curtains clothed the windows. There were layers of dust upon every surface and it stunk of potpourri.

Next to the front door, a stoic grandfather clock stood guard, passing time with resonant beats. It was near midday. Six hours before he would be with Rey. The thought of it made his throat dry, senses alert.

She had left things … hopeful.

But he couldn’t think of her now.

Kylo sat alone at a compact dining table with two regency chairs.

The silence of the lounge room forced Kylo to listen to the old man groaning with pain, accompanied by the sound of an erratic flow of urine splashing into the basin with moans of relief.

Fuck old age. He never wanted to be old and weak. Luckily, he figured his time would come sooner rather than later—

The toilet flushed and Lor battled to return down the hall, face wincing with every step he took towards the small dining area.

Lor smiled weakly. He‘d withered into a shell of a man, with dark circles beneath his eyes, bones protruding against stretched white skin, his hair missing in clumps. And then there was that smell, hidden beneath the layers of potpourri, a stench that hovered like a low cloud blotting out the sun. It was the smell old age, like candle wax and old newspapers; the promise of death. He knew Lor was sick, but he hadn’t realised how close he was to the end.

“How have you been?” Kylo asked, ignoring the expressions of pain that fleeted across Lor’s face as he sat.

“The doctors say there’s not much time left. The cancer has spread too far. Inoperable, apparently. Let this be a warning, young Solo, to get your prostate checked regularly.”

Kylo looked out the window, past dust floating in roads of sunlight. He had known Lor his entire life; the guy was his goddamn Godfather. But even in his old age, Lor had been a beacon of strength, both physical and mental.

That had changed after the bomb. After Marianne had died…

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Kylo said, refusing to meet his gaze.

“Don’t be.” Lor poured a cup of tea for them both.

“Is there nothing they can do?”

“Why should they do anything?” Lor stirred his tea, spooning out stray tea leaves. “I have been hanging on here by a thread, Ben. I want to go home, I want to be with my wife.”

“Let’s get on with this—” Kylo snapped, pulling a USB stick out of his pocket.

Lor smiled, eyes distant. “You know, I still remember the day I met her. Marianne was an intern for the Resistance, and I was First Order security.” He laughed. “If looks could kill! Well, let’s say I wouldn’t be around to talk to you.”

Kylo flicked him a fake smile, more focussed on the small cylinder of information that could potentially destroy him and everyone else that worked for Snoke, than Lor’s musings of yesteryear.

“She was sharp as a tack, outspoken with a fiery temper. You can only imagine how much grief she gave me.”

Kylo nodded, a half smile. He could imagine Marianne putting San Tekka in his place, almost like… he saw her in his mind’s eye; hazel eyes, sun-kissed cheeks, dotted with a galaxy of stars…

Lor was still talking, but he had stopped listening, although now the old man’s tears fell, simply, without fanfare.: Chronic sadness.

He couldn’t imagine that pain. He wouldn’t let that happen to him, to Rey. Not that he loved Rey, or even…

He didn’t know. But he sure as hell wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

“What’s on your mind, Ben?”

Kylo straightened his back against the chair, hesitant to ask, but he had to know.

“How did you change her mind about you?”

“I didn’t. She fell in love with me despite what I did or the fact I worked for the ‘enemy’. She made me a better man.”

“You sold out then.” Kylo took a sip of his tea, dark eyes flashing up at Lor to check his reaction and was not disappointed,

Lor glowered, cheeks red, the first glimpse of colour on his grey face.

“No, you idiot. She made me want to be better.”

“How sweet.” Kylo gave him a wry smile.

“Mock all you like. But I know where you came from, before you called yourself Kylo Ren. I know what lies beneath the darkness.”

“Anyway.” Kylo rolled his eyes, weaving the small cylindrical shaped USB drive between his fingers. “This has all Snoke’s correspondence leading up to the Resistance bombing, and plenty of dirt afterwards. You need to get this to Poe tonight. I won’t be able to get you another copy, I risked everything just getting this one.”

Lor took it from him, appearing to marvel at the size of something so powerful.

“This is it, Lor, this drive has everything we need to take Snoke down.”

“Everything?”

“Video footage, photos, emails, for the last five years, the lot. It will ruin him.”

“And what about Kylo Ren? Where does he fit in all of this?”

Kylo got up, hands restless as he paced about the room. “I told you, I wasn’t involved in the Resistance bombing—but my hands aren’t clean.” He stopped, meeting Lor’s gaze. “I’m not hiding anything. If the First Order is to burn, Kylo Ren will burn with it.”

“Ben—” Lor leaned in, as though he would stand, but that bolt of pain showed in his face again and he clearly thought better of it. “You can still…“

“No.”

Kylo looked out into the street beyond, face resolute.

“It’s time to let the past die. I’m done with all of it. Snoke, the First Order, the Resistance. Everything.”

“I still don’t understand why you’re rushing this through now,” Lor said “It was safe when we were just trickling information to the press, pulling back when Snoke got suspicious. If this doesn’t go to plan, we’re both dead men.”

Kylo gazed out the window as cars streamed past, colours muted by the lace curtains. On the footpath, children rode their bikes. People. Peace. Life. It went on, regardless of what happened to him, or Lor.

“It’s not negotiable. I need to bring him down by Friday.”

“But why—”

“Because!” Kylo snapped. Because if he didn’t, how could he keep protecting her from Snoke? No. From Friday, that bastard had cleared her bookings for the rest of the week; apart from the odd session with Hux, the rest he had pencilled in for himself.

Not a fucking chance.

It was the least Kylo could do to make it up to her. For being the one that haunted her nightmares, and terrorised her daydreams. If he couldn’t tell her the truth about that night in Jakku, he would at least do this. To free her. To free them both.

“Very well,” Lor conceded. “I will get this to Poe tonight. It’s time we brought this bastard down once and for all.”

Kylo gave him a solemn nod and turned, throat dry, blinking. He worked to clear it, trying to hold back the unsettled feeling bubbling in his gut.

“There’s one more thing—” Kylo paused as he took a deep breath, forcing himself to look the old man in the eye. “After tonight, you need to leave. Snoke has a hit on you.”

“That old bastard’s had a hit on me since I left the First Order.”

“But this time—” Kylo clamped his jaw, rolling his lips together. Time was running out for Lor.

“Snoke will send you after me.” Lor guessed what he would say. “And Kylo Ren never misses.”

Kylo was silent, but his face gave away the truth, it always did.

“Maybe it’s time I started missing,” said Kylo.

“No.” Lor shook his head. “Not this time. If Snoke discovers you’re the leak, then any chance we had of taking the First Order down is over. You need to protect your position, play the game. It isn’t worth risking everything for—”

“I won’t let him find you.”

“And if he does? What will you do?”

Kylo stared at him, silent.

“You will need to do it, Ben.”

Kylo looked away, eye’s glassy.

“You will do it, won‘t you Ben?”

Lor reached forward, grasping his hand around Kylo’s wrist. His grip was firm, even though his end was coming.

“We have to see this through, Kylo. Who will be next, your father? Your mother? This girl Snoke’s toying with in front of you? The bastard will never stop until he’s removed everyone you’ve ever cared about.”

Kylo pinched the space between his eyes at the sharp pain that was building there, increasing every day.

“He wants you Kylo. You’ve always been a prize to him, something he can covet and keep and control. If he can’t have you, he will destroy you.”

Kylo fingered the keys in his pocket as he nodded a quiet goodbye.

“It’s all right, Ben.” Lor eventually stood again, grasping his shoulder, breaking him out of his reverie. “Whatever happens tonight, it will be all right.”

Kylo moved towards the door, silent and dark, a black shadow disappearing into nothingness. He gripped the front door handle, eyeing the moving hands of the grandfather clock. The noon chimes would sound within the minute. But he had an overwhelming urge to leave before the hour struck. He pulled the door open, just as the sound of the low, ominous toll of the clock chimes followed him out. They were like the strike of a death knell, forcing him to a fate he couldn’t escape.

The door closed behind him and the cries of the clock chased him into the daylight again. He keeled over, pushing his hands against his knees, trying to breathe, trying to think.

But all he could hear was the roar, loud and consuming, tearing at him now.

It was a feeling, a warning, that this plan of theirs was all going to hell.

Poe hesitated, scanning the room before continuing, “If things fall through with Lor—”

She buried her forehead in her hands, dreading what was coming next.

“Rey, this is important. If things fall through with Lor, I need another backup. Someone on the inside who can get close to Snoke and Kylo. Someone who can feed information to us without suspicion.”

Rey groaned and pushed her plate away, no longer hungry. “I knew you would ask me this.”

“People’s lives are on the line.”

She raised her voice. “ My life is on the line!”

Restaurant patrons froze, forks hovering mid-air to their mouths, looking at her, silent. She slid deeper into her chair, lowering her chin and rubbing her forehead as though she were pushing away a headache.

Poe smirked. “Are you trying to draw attention to us?”

“No,” she sulked, poking at the remains on her dinner plate like it were a dead carcass.

After a time, the diners resumed their chatter and returned to their lunch. Rey breathed a sigh of relief, careful not to draw more attention to them. There was no guarantee that there wasn’t a spy or friend of Snoke’s lurking around, listening.

“Poe, look, you seem like a nice guy. Fighting the good fight and all, but I need this job. If I lose it—”

She met his gaze, unflinching and thoughtful. Should she tell him everything? He might know who was holding her ransom with this crippling debt.

The scraping of plates, murmuring patrons and gentle jazz faded away, leaving a heavy silence between them.

“I owe some money, and someone’s after me to get it back,” she whispered.

Poe leaned in; that reporter’s spark shining in his dark, hungry eyes. “Who’s after you?”

“I don’t know his name or anything about him. He wore a black mask and black clothes.”

“Right,” he drawled, leaning back in his chair. Thinking. “A man in black. Like in The Princess Bride ?”

“What?!” she shrieked. “Nothing like the Princess Bride. Have you even watched that movie?”

“Hey, I saw the trailer. Twice.”

“Well if you’d watched it you’d know he was trying to rescue her the entire time. He was the love interest. Forget it!” she snapped and grabbed her bag, pushing an uneaten dinner roll into the front pocket.

“Hold on, hold on! I’m sorry, Rey,” Poe pleaded, hand outstretched, patting the table before her. “Don’t go!”

She paused, still clutching her bag, itching to leave.

“Please, Rey,” Poe continued, his voice gentle, disarming. “I want to help you.”

“You can��t,” she breathed.

He took her hand in his own. It felt warm and rough, thick and gentle. “Try me, sunshine.”

Rey sighed.

“Okay… six years ago.” Her stomach churned at the memory of that time. “I went back to my home in Jakku…”

***

There she was again. Transported to the deserted apartment building, forgotten by everyone except the resident cockroaches moving in scattered swarms across the kitchen floor.

Rey had hauled her dog bed up from the street below, opened the windows, and cleared the cigarettes and beer bongs. Within a week, the chemical haze had disintegrated, and now she almost felt comfortable.

Her late parent’s apartment was scorching in summer. Heat rose through every storey, making her little spot like an oven during the night and even more unbearable in the day. The cockroaches dwindled in number but no matter what she did, there were always flies; buzzing and bouncing around the rooms clumsily.

But, it was home.

The days were easy, filled with scavenging and hunting for treasures she could swap for food. But the nights were something else. The abandoned building had become a hive for squatters; she could hear them through the walls, shouting, fighting, humping. Sometimes, they tried to ransack her room. Banging at the door with broken bottles, asking her to come out. She had bolted the door and hammered planks across the doorframe, barriers to stop them getting in. But there was always the fear it wouldn’t be enough to hold them back.

And it wasn’t.

***

“The chair!” a voice hissed. “Tie her to the chair.”

She scrambled, arms and legs flailing. She lashed out with her nails, kicking at whatever flesh she could find, even biting when she had the chance. The fight was short-lived and pathetic; in under a minute, the cold steel of the chair was hard against her back.

“Stop!” she cried. “I‘m just a scavenger. Can‘t you see I don‘t have anything?”

A man in black towered over her. He was over six feet tall with broad shoulders, and while a balaclava hid his face, she could clearly see his eyes like pieces of coal. Cold and empty.

“Quiet,” he hissed, pinning her hands down with his forearms while he tightened cable ties around her wrists.

“Last month you came into a sum of money…”

“No,” she whimpered. The money she had gotten for selling her body. The money that Unkar Plutt had stolen from her the same day. “I don’t have it!”

He came closer, voice calm and deadly. She felt his gaze all over, studying her from top to bottom, assessing her. A wooden club tapped against his leather palm in a slow staccato rhythm.

“She’s lying.” Another man stepped out of the shadows, also masked, but with fire-red tendrils of hair poking out from beneath his balaclava. “I just got off the phone with him. She has the money to cover the parent’s debt.”

Her assailant stepped forward again, squatting before her, resting his heavy elbows upon her knees. He raised her chin with his club, forcing her to meet his piercing gaze.

“I know you have the money.”

She shook her head again, but he pressed the club hard against her.

“And now you‘re going to give it to me.“

She kicked her legs at him, aiming for his groin, but missed, hitting his shin instead. His eyes twitched with pain, and he wrenched her hands forward, almost ripping her from the chair.

To fight or take flight? There was no longer a question.

She riled. An inferno of heat exploded in Rey’s body. She’d had enough. So far she had been abandoned, abused, taken advantage of and now assaulted. Enough!

She drew the saliva from her mouth and spat at him with as much force as she could muster, her spittle landing in his eye.

He wiped it away, and she smirked.

“I’m not giving you anything!”

“We’ll see.” He stood, turning away from her as he tapped a number into his phone, bringing it to his ear.

The room fell into silence, the subdued ringer, the only noise in this vacuum of sound. The red-haired man paced in front of her, while the other men anchored around the perimeter fixed their eyes on her like hungry dogs waiting for the kill.

“You were right. The parents died of a drug overdose a year ago,” the man in black spoke quietly into the phone. “The girl’s here like you expected. What do you want me to do with her?”

Silence.

He nodded, covering the mouthpiece to speak to her.

“Is your name Kira?”

“Piss off,” she hissed.

The man gave her a wry smile. “Yeah, it’s Kira.”

He walked around the room, murmuring into the phone inaudibly. At one point, he walked straight over her bed on the floor, tripping on it. He kicked it out of his path, and then paused, looking back at her.

“You got a dog?”

Rey shook her head, brows knitting in confusion until she realised what he was talking about. Her cheeks burned as she looked at the dog bed, her bed.

He stared at her, almost like he knew. She didn‘t know where to look, because now he studied her with a gravity that made her even more unsettled than the cold darkness in his eyes.

“Right.” He held the phone out to his partner. “He wants to speak with you.”

The red-haired man snatched the phone. “Yes, I’m here,” he said with a pompous voice, too grandiose and out-of-place for a common thug. He walked out with the phone, leaving Rey alone with her assailant and his silent disciples.

She tried to quiet the threatening thoughts in her mind, her imagination running wild, picturing what a gang of criminals might do to her alone, in her apartment, with no one to help her. She closed her eyes, praying to whatever God was listening to her, to get her out of this alive.

When she opened them again, the man in black was right there in front of her, squatting, in her space. She could smell the spicy aroma of his aftershave and see the bags under his eyes.

When he kneeled this close to her, the cruellest thing was that those eyes were not un kind—in fact, they were almost sensitive.

But there was the lie. For this person was dangerous, a harbinger of all her worst nightmares.

“How old are you?” he asked, voice quiet. She would almost have thought him gentle, had he not been holding a weapon at his side.

She gathered herself, pushing back the tide of terror threatening to overwhelm her.

“I’m s—sixteen.”

He turned away, mouth furrowed.

He went to speak, but just then the door thumped open and the redhead stormed in with a satiated grin.

“What the fuck are you doing?” the man in black shouted, as his companion held out his phone and hit record.

“The boss wants to watch you work.”

“Turn it off,” he growled.

“No can do. He wants you to break her arms, just to see if it will loosen her tongue.”

Rey’s blood ran cold, and the world slowed into some terrible horror film. The man in black marched to her, gripping her left arm between the fingers of his black gloves.

“Speak,” he ordered, squeezing.

Tears welled, burning her eyes, she couldn’t hold them back. It was too much, the fear, the pain…

“I can’t—- I don’t…” she stammered.

“Tell us where the money is!” The grip on her arm grew tighter, bruising her flesh.

Her tears came faster now, hot torrents streaming down her cheeks.

It was too much.

She could barely see, vision blurred by those hot salty tears, but she could still make out the baton held back and ready to swing against her arm. And then he crushed his fingers around her tighter, so hard she thought her bones would break.

“Stop!” she screamed. “Stop, it hurts too much.”

He faltered, letting her go. She crouched over as much as her bindings allowed, heaving sobs rushing from her chest, as the men who had watched silently from the edges sniggered.

“Please,” she whimpered. “I don’t have the money. I never had it.”

The heaving breaths would not subside and she squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the crack that would splinter her bones.

A beat of wind rushed past her and every muscle in her body clenched as she waited for impact. There was a loud crash, followed by a ruckus of yelling and swearing. A wall mirror shattered, shards of it cascading around her.

Rey lifted her head, confused. He hadn’t hit her.

Another smash, but this time she had seen the moment the man in black had raised a chair above his head, throwing it across the room and smashing a coffee table, destroying a thousand-piece puzzle she had been constructing.

“Speak, or it will be your head next!” he roared, with a voice as wild and untamed as a feral beast.

“I don’t—” she sobbed, her voice coming in waves of sound and silence. He was going to kill her. This monster would be the last person she would ever see. Even as her tears came, he smashed his club around the room, forcing holes within the wall, destroying pictures, every last thing she had ever owned.

Rey watched them all fall in pieces at her feet.

“Are you quite finished?” the red-headed man sneered at him, holding the phone up to get a better angle of her attacker.

“I’ll make her talk,” the man in black growled.

“I knew you wouldn’t be man enough to follow through. Do it.” He turned his rat-shaped eyes intently toward Rey. “If that doesn’t loosen her tongue then she can pay off her debt in the brothel. We can all help her, lads, can’t we?”

The men cheered. Rey tried to swallow, but her mouth felt like flint. The only one who hadn’t cajoled was the man in black. But his expression was different, fiercely intent and no less terrifying.

Rey’s heart dropped. Was this what her life would be reduced to? To spend her life as a whore, without love, without a home, a slave—

She was jolted out of her thoughts as the chair she was tied to was dragged backwards, the sound of metal screeching across the tile floor. All she could do was look back at the surprised eyes of the men who watched her being dragged away.

Alone, with this psycho.

She squeezed her eyelids shut. Preparing herself for whatever was coming next.

“Open your eyes.” His voice was like steel, firm and low, cutting sharp in the scorched air.

She did. They were alone in the kitchen.

And he had her knives.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

A blast of hot wind blew in from the open window as he unrolled a small bundle of Brazilian knives. She had kept those on the bench for cooking. Meticulously, he slid one out, flicking the blade, testing the sharpness by pressing the point through the finger of his glove, making it bleed.

He came to her with silent footsteps, sucking the blood from his finger. He pulled her chair in front of the window with a rough jolt.

From here she could see the street, five storeys below, empty and black. She thought about screaming.

He placed a hand on either side of the armrest, and he peered at her again, biting his lip.

“You know I can take whatever I want.”

Rey swallowed. Her tears were dry now, courage resurfacing. “That’s no less than I would expect from a monster in a mask.”

“A monster?” He stepped back.

He lifted his hands, the black leather gloves pulling up the base of his balaclava. Rey’s panic increased tenfold; everyone knew an attacker who was willing to betray their own identity was going to go the whole way.

He pulled it up over his chin, revealing a narrow jaw and then…

He stopped, before she had seen anything, as if suddenly changing his mind.

An ambiguous looked passed between them before he went back to the knives, placing one in each hand.

“I never miss,” he said calmly, lifting a filleting knife up for her to see.

He flung it at her and it speared past her head, smashing through the windows and clattering onto the dilapidated fire escape outside.

Rey shrieked, and he threw another, cutting through the wind beside her ear on the other side. More glass.

She had no more words; they were drowned by her sobs. She wanted her mother. Her drugged-up, absent mother. Anyone—anyone else in the world other than him!

“You need to learn how to fight,” he said surely.

The words surprised her, but only for a moment because then he slammed the wooden baton against one leg of her chair, the force of it flipping her face down against the tiles.

She lifted her body, just enough as to splay her hands against the cutting board on the floor. He grabbed her fingers, forcing them flat on the board. She fought against him, trying to clench her fist shut.

“Spread them.”

She shook her head, tears spilling on the white tiles.

“I said spread your fucking fingers!”

She obeyed, waiting for the pain of losing them.

“Bring her back in here,” the redhead’s voice came from the other room. “Or do I need to come into that fucking roach-infested kitchen?”

“Keep still,” the man in black whispered, eyes narrowed, knife poised.

“Please!” she cried once more.

“Still!” he roared, and she closed her eyes, keeping her fingers as steady as she could.

There was the clean-cut sound of a knife slicing downwards and Rey jumped as it landed with a thud.

She opened her eyes to see a silver blade wavering between her index and middle finger. And then his feet, perched either side of her, crouched down, breath pressing against her ear, dark wet hair falling onto her cheek.

“I suggest you think very hard about what you will do next. You have two minutes.”

***

“Rey, I—” Poe stammered, his face the colour of curdled milk. “What happened next?”

“He left me there,” she said, taking a shaking breath. “As soon as he was gone, I used the knife to cut the ties on my wrists and then my feet. I jumped out to the fire escape before he came back. The bloody thing almost collapsed. I ran and ran. I don’t know if he saw me go. I didn’t look back.”

Poe bit his lip, eyebrows knitted, like a thought was building that he wasn’t ready to speak yet.

“And then what?”

Rey smiled, face wistful, as she remembered the moment Maz had found her curled up behind a dumpster. The barely-there woman with dark skin and large thick glasses crawled down on her hands and knees to get her. She never did ask Maz how she managed to find her there.

“A woman named Maz Kanata found me, she has a home…"

“…for disadvantaged kids,” Poe finished the sentence, face brightening as he spoke. “Yeah, I know Maz. We go way back.”

Rey took a napkin and dabbed at her eyes. Retelling the full story for the first time had felt cathartic. But she was surprised to find her eyes were still wet with tears.

“How do you know her?”

“I used to work as press secretary with a close friend of hers, Senator Leia Organa-Solo.”

“Senator Organa? That’s big time, Poe,” Rey gushed, before blushing at how pathetic it sounded. “She’s practically a hero.”

“She’s a good woman. Our families have been friends for years,” he said. “Small world, hey?”

Rey nodded, a little more impressed by him.

“I thought Maz only took on younger kids though?” Poe asked.

“Normally she does,” Rey said. “But I think I looked too pathetic. She was amazing, she put me through school during the day and tutored me at night. On the weekend she arranged private self-defence lessons at Skywalker Academy—”

She was rambling, relishing the happy memories that followed. She hadn’t even noticed the way Poe scrunched his face in thought and worry.

“Rey, who is your debt to?”

She shifted. “I—I don’t know.”

“Have you got anything, a business name, email, phone number, anything?” His voice was urgent, pressed.

She shook her head, but then remembered. Fishing around in her bag, she grabbed her wallet and pulled out a crumpled-up note

“All I have is an account number.” She pushed it across the table. “Do you think you can find out who owns it?”

“It’s not much to go on, but maybe.” He pocketed the piece of paper, looking over to the door and eventually behind Rey with a half-smile.

Rey started, feeling two warm hands on her shoulders.

Finn!

She jumped up and gave him a hug, wrapping her arms around him and hiding her face in the crook of his neck. Finn laughed, his broad lips and wide smile settling the fear and worry in her heart.

“I missed you too, peanut!” he joked. “Poe, I have no idea where you’ve put your dictaphone, mate.”

“Oh.” Poe smiled guiltily and exchanged glances with Rey. He stood, leaving a wad of cash on the table. “Not to worry, I’ll find it somewhere. By the way, your girl’s going to work with us on the Snoke story.”

“No, I didn’t say…”

Poe stood suddenly, eyes fixed on some point outside.

“Poe?” Rey asked, but he was transfixed.

“I’ll be goddamned,” Poe said to himself. “It’s Ben.”

“Who—”

Poe dashed out of the cafe without a word.

“Well, that wasn’t weird,” Finn said, grabbing the files and papers Poe had left sprawled all over the table.

Rey smiled. “Is he always like that?”

“Pretty much.”

Finn pulled her close, beaming with excitement.

“Oh my God, peanut! I’m so excited you’re going to work with us.” They walked towards the door, Finn’s arm resting on her shoulders. “I told him you were bloody brilliant. You won’t regret this.”

Rey blushed, punching him gently to stop. Up ahead Poe was waving his hands wildly. Then his booming voice made almost every passerby stop and gawk at him as he bellowed, “Ben Solo, over here!”

In the distance, a tall, dark-haired man, in a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, froze on the footpath.

He had his back to her, and even though he looked different, polished and pristine, Rey knew at once.

It was him.

And that meant she held the most dangerous secret of all.

The real identity of Kylo Ren.

#reylo #reylo fan fic #modern reylo au #protective kylo ren #kylo ren x rey #reylo fan fic rec

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