#Write A Paper For Me

[himbosandhardwear]

"Look who's talking, Mr Ponytail and a Crop Top," Steve says with a smartass grin.

Eddie looks down. "Huh?"

"You," he waves toward Eddie's general vicinity, "looking like some kinda Metal Cheerleader." He noticably swipes his tongue over his bottom lip.

Okay. This is it, this is the perfect moment to tell Steve he's sending signals that he definitely doesn't understand he's sending.

"Steve," he has to clear his throat before continuing, "I need to tell you something."

He leans in, wide eyed and focused. "Yeah?"

That's not helpful. "Um. So, to guys like me... Gay," he chokes out, still hard to say aloud even though he knows Steve knows, "sometimes you say things or do things that come off as...flirty. And I know you didn't know," he rushes to explain, "but I wanted to make you aware. To not do that. You know, in case the wrong person overhears it. It's a safety concern," he finishes lamely. Safety concern! Ugh. More like 'You're breaking my heart, I can't take much more of it.'

He waits for Steve to say something but he's just blinking owlishly.

"Steve?" He prompts, concerned.

"......yeah?" He finally seems to come back to himself. His eyes drift away, over Eddie's shoulder. "So...you want me to stop flirting?"

"Yeah, just in case, you never know who-" Wait. What? "What?"

Steve still isn't looking him in the eye. "What?" He mumbles.

"Did you say..." He can't even repeat it, it sounds like putting words in his mouth, but he did say that, right?

"Yeah. Sorry. I'll stop. I didn't realize it was bad, I guess. I thought... It's stupid. Nevermind. I'm gonna, um, take off actually. I'll see ya around, maybe."

He hops off the back of the van and actually starts walking away, like they're not 6 miles from his house. That snaps Eddie out of the paralysis spell he was under, adrenaline taking over like a bump of cocaine.

"No!" He shouts, like an insane person, and then takes it one step further by jumping up and tackling Steve into the grass.

"Uggff," Steve grunts when Eddie accidentally shoulders him in the gut, but he ignores the embarrassment in favor of crawling up his body so they're eye to eye.

He gets Steve's face between two hands and smooshes it. "Were you flirting with me on purpose?" He shouts.

"Are you serious?" He mumbles, half coherent, through pursed lips. "I'm gonna jump into the quarry."

"Answer the question!" He rattles Steve's head a little bit, for good measure.

"I work for Scoops Ahoy." Steve deadpans, unamused.

Eddie is going to throw one hell of a tantrum in a second. "Steve."

He smacks Eddie's hands away from his face. Doesn't bother to move out from under Eddie, he notes absently. "Yes, dude, obviously I was flirting with you on purpose! I thought that was, like, an understood thing that was happening. Why are you surprised?"

He feels like he's losing his mind. Why are you surprised the grass is made out of taffy? Would've made more sense as a question.

"Because you're straight." The duh is implied.

Sensibly, he asks, "Why would I flirt with you if I was straight?"

Eddie becomes very aware of every inch they are pressed together. Aware of the sound of the leaves rubbing together in the wind, aware of Judas Priest still playing through his speakers. Love Bites is a hell of a track to be having this revelation to.

"You're not straight?"

"No."

"And you were flirting?"

"Yes."

"With me?"

He rolls his eyes, not an ounce of bitchiness lost to his embarrassment. "No, Eddie, with the crusty blanket on your van floor. Yes, of course with you- Mmmphh!"

They probably shouldn't be making out on the ground at Settlers Quarry in broad daylight but, honestly, the shambling corpse of Jason Carver could show up right now and Eddie would not give two shits. Steve slides a hand down the back of Eddie's pants, grabbing what little bit of ass cheek he has, and Eddie thinks, Hope you're watching from hell, you bastard. Enjoy the show.

[abstractfrog]

Happy 1 year anniversary to Mr Sherlock Holmes! Here's a litttleee celebratory comic from me

[samuelroukin]

it's so funny that you can hit all these buttons on a keyboard to make words appear on a screen. i will use this power to write about gay sex

[lazylittledragon]

ok someone please correct me if i'm wrong but am i weird for thinking those 'audiobooks don't count as reading' posts are ableist as fuck????

[teethlordd]

There are worms in my head

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS Severance AU: Get me out of here.

[cowboylikeyouu]

writing fanfiction on paper is so fucking therapeutic

[edandstede]

imagine it. sherlock returns in 2026. the baby is gone. what baby? the baby never existed. all the conspirators are vindicated. sherlock and john fuck nasty and the skull with glowing eyes on the wall watches. mystrade is canon. there is never any mention of his sister again and we still don’t know if sherlock’s best friend was a boy or a dog and at this point everyone is too afraid to ask.

[myceliumelium]

The first sons of Maedhros

(Do not repost)

Excerpts of “Pre-Numenorean Elves and their Influences on the Blessed King Elros, Volume 3” by Idril of Dol Amroth, under the Stewardship of Thorondir.

“The descendants of Nelyafinwë “Maedhros” Fëanorion are a matter of great confusion and consternation to the histories of the First age. This confusion and consternation is only made worse by the fact that Maedhros claimed to have no children at all. Throughout his long life, we have no record of a wedding or dalliance whatsoever, as the Annals of Numenor, preserved by the blessed King Tar-Minyatur, list him as childless and wife-less. However, there have been many individuals who either claimed to be his children, or were rumored to be such. In this study, I intend to parse out the truth of these claims. Thirty two letters addressed to “Atya Nelyo” commonly translated as “Father Maedhros” have been uncovered in the archives of Rivendell, and I have gone through the great effort of having my assistants travel there to transcribe them.” pp. 14

“The earliest of these letters are somewhat of a curiosity, as they are attributed to elves whom by dominant account already had a father. The twin sons of Fëanor, Amrod and Amras who’s valinorian names are lost, only the shared epessë Ambarussa survive to us, were the earliest figures to claim Maedhros a their father. The common knowledge places the Ambarussa as the sixth and seventh sons of Feanor, but interestingly enough, these letters are not the only time that the Ambarussa have rejected this parentage. In an argument between Amras and Curufin, recorded by a scribe in the planning of the second kinslaying, Amrod is reported to have interjected, say “I recognize no father but the one who raised me. The madman who named me forteit his claim on the banks of Beleriand.” Other letters, in dealings with the elves of Ossiriand, have Amras signing as Amras Nelyion, likely in reference to Maedhros’s Quenyan name.” pp. 68

“I feel confident in saying that even if all speculation about the Ambarussa’s actual parentage is erroneous, they, and Caranthir to a lesser extent, conferred onto Maedhros the respect and deference owed to a father, rather than onto Feanor. This role as the patriarch of the house of Feanor, and a father-figure both to his siblings and a number of fostered thrall-children previous to the blessed king Elros and his brother Elrond, raises questions upon the exact conditions, and emotional situation surrounding this period of the king’s life." pp. 205

"Lord Elrond has declined to comment. Repeatedly.” pp. 209

Translation notes

“It’s quite cute, really, the way that they address each other. Lots of little nicknames, though I find it strange how few of these letters have been signed. One can only assume that it went without saying for the recipient.”

“The thirty second letter is nearly unreadable, by what seems to be water-damaged. It is addressed to Ambarussa, and likely authored by Maedhros himself, and thus unsent, since these were letters in Maedhros’s possession before his death. Tentatively dated to 539 Y.S. based on a smudged date at the top left of the page.”

[paperbodiesamongthestars]

How can you say that you love someone you can't tell is dying?

I am having feelings about that episode, so please enjoy 3k words of fic about it. I told myself yesterday I wasn't going to write anything about it because I didn't think I had much to say, and then this hit me like a truck at like midnight. Exceptional timing, brain, no notes.

Title is from You're Losing Me by Taylor Swift. (The other line I considered was "I know my pain is such an imposition," for obvious reasons, but I made a different call. Hopefully this one is pointed enough. 😂)

Tommy thinks about reaching out. Tommy thinks about reaching out a lot, but he doesn’t do it. The footage from the cameras in the tunnel plays on a loop in his mind, but Evan had been red-eyed but composed by the time he and Athena came out of there, and the last thing Tommy was going to do was blurt it out in front of everyone. That he’d seen something no one else had. That he knew, and the knowledge was lodged in his chest like a knife. 

Evan kept it together that night, but Tommy can’t imagine that persisted for long. He was subdued at the funeral—and Tommy was focused on doing his own part as respectfully as possible—but there were times when Evan had seemed…lost. Unmoored somehow. It was understandable given where they were, but it had made Tommy wonder, a little bit, who Evan was leaning on to get through this. He had banished the thought as soon as it had surfaced. The 118 was Evan’s family; of course they were seeing what was going on with him, probably more clearly than Tommy could. No doubt they had it under control. They would never let Evan suffer through a loss like this alone.

So Tommy doesn’t call after the funeral.  

He doesn’t call, and he doesn’t call, and he doesn’t call, and he falls asleep almost every night to a vivid memory of the way Evan’s legs had just given out under him. He doesn’t call and the impulse to hold Evan—just briefly, just because he couldn’t then—is almost overwhelming. But that’s not what they are anymore. He’s not sure if they're anything, honestly, and he’s not going to ask. Evan has more important things to worry about right now, and Tommy’s not going to barge in demanding anything at all. 

And then a building goes down, of course with half the 118 inside, and Tommy’s still on ground ops until Melton forgives him. Evan and Ravi are finally pulled out—dusty and scraped up, but whole—and Tommy sees them making their slow way toward the 118 engine and Gerrard.

Evan brightens a little and waves when he looks up and sees Tommy, and Tommy really hopes he’s got a handle on his expression, because Evan looks awful. His smile is brittle and the hollowness in his eyes is concerning. Tommy almost looks around for the rest of the 118 because what the fuck are they thinking? They wouldn’t let Evan walk around like this, looking like an open wound. Right? They would do something about it.

For the first time, Tommy considers the possibility that he’s made a few too many assumptions about what the 118 would and wouldn’t do. 

He jogs over to where Evan and Ravi have stopped. Ravi is chatting with a firefighter from the 133, but Evan is just…standing. His eyes are blank and unfocused, and Tommy is starting to get a little pissed at all the people who are supposed to have Evan’s back because what are they doing?

“Hey,” he says quietly, but Evan startles anyway.

“Oh! Uh, hey Tommy.” He dredges up a smile that goes nowhere near his eyes. “Ground ops, huh?”

“Yeah, Melton’s still pissed, so…”

Evan frowns. “I’m so—Tommy I’m so sorry.”

Tommy frowns back at him. “For what?”

“I shouldn’t have asked…I didn’t think,” Evan says, his shoulders slumping, and Tommy doesn’t like that reaction at all. 

“Sure you did. You thought ‘The team is in trouble; I wonder if Tommy can help,’ and the answer was yes.” 

Evan gives him a wan smile. “But you love flying.”

“I do,” Tommy says slowly, “and I’ll be doing it again in no time. It’s really not a big deal.” He catches Evan’s eye and says firmly, “Hey, I’m a grown-up. I have a mortgage and everything—I can absolutely deal with the consequences of my own actions.” 

Evan stares for a second and then starts blinking faster. His hand starts to come up, like he’s going to wipe his eyes, but stops halfway. He looks around at the clusters of firefighters around them. 

“I have to—” he says, and gestures vaguely in a direction, and then he’s gone. Tommy frowns after him, wondering where exactly he went wrong. 

He thinks maybe he should call this time. 

He doesn’t get the chance. 

The day after the building collapse, Tommy drives home from his 48—which was a bitch and a half, and not just because a building came down—and finds a very familiar jeep parked in his driveway. He stares at it for a while, failing to make sense of its presence, and then realizes he’s been sitting there for too long. He gets out of his truck and lets himself into his house. He can hear water running in the kitchen, and the house smells like red sauce, similar to the one his mom used to simmer on the stove on Sunday afternoons. It smells like home, and he buries that thought as soon as it surfaces.

Tommy drifts into the kitchen, uncertain what he’ll find there. Evan has his back to the door, rinsing a cutting board in the sink. He looks over his shoulder as Tommy comes in. 

“One sec,” he says, and Tommy nods. He takes the time to go set his bag down in his bedroom, kicking off his shoes and changing into sweatpants. When he makes it back to the kitchen, the board is in the drying rack and Evan is standing at the kitchen island, staring down at his hands on the countertop. 

“Hi,” Tommy says as he comes back in. He skirts carefully around Evan to grab a beer from the fridge and opens it, and then he goes back to the other side of the island. Whatever Evan is doing here, Tommy has no desire to spook him. His kitchen is Evan’s kitchen. Hell, if he’s being really honest with himself, his everything is Evan’s everything, to a probably concerning degree. 

Whatever. Not the point right now. 

“Hey,” Evan says, and takes a swig from the bottle of water in front of him. “Your spare key is still in the same spot.”

“Sure is,” Tommy agrees. There’s a brief silence. “What are you making?” Tommy asks. 

“Meat sauce,” Evan says. “I was going to make fresh pasta, but I wasn’t sure when you’d be home and I didn’t know if I’d have time.” 

Tommy nods. “It smells great,” he says. 

Evan glances at him, and then away. “Sorry for invading your kitchen,” he says, but it sounds likes something he thinks he should say rather than something he really means. Tommy can work with that. 

“Don’t be,” Tommy says. “You’re always welcome here.” His tone is warm and probably too fond, but there’s not much he can do about it. He’s just really happy Evan is in his kitchen, looking tentative, but maybe a little less hollow than he looked yesterday. 

Evan looks up at that, faint surprise and…something else flitting over his face before he smiles. “Yeah?” he asks, like that’s a real question. 

“Of course,” Tommy says, and he’s probably giving himself all the way away, but he’s finding it hard to care. He’s tired. Tired of pretending he didn’t see what he saw, tired of pretending he doesn’t desperately want to hug Evan, just to do it. Because he couldn’t then, but maybe he can now. 

As soon as he has the thought, the words come out without him ever deciding to say them. “Could I—do you mind if I hug you?”

Evan glances over his shoulder at the sauce, and then the kitchen timer. There’s a lot of time left on it, and Tommy briefly wonders what it means that Evan came over and let himself into his house to make a dish that has to simmer for hours. 

Evan turns back to Tommy, his expression a little rueful. He’s twisting his hands together in front of him. “I think, uh. There—there’s a solid chance I’m going to cry all over you if that happens,” he says, eyes downcast. 

“I can live with that,” Tommy says immediately.   

Evan’s head comes up, eyes huge in his face, and he drinks in Tommy’s expression. Tommy doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he seems to find it. He moves, and then Tommy moves, and they crash into each other halfway around the island. Tommy clings because Jesus Christ, he’s been desperate to ever since he watched Evan sink to the ground, face twisted in anguish. He’s so focused on Evan, solid and real in his arms, that it takes a second for him to realize that Evan is clinging just as tightly, his face buried in Tommy’s shoulder. And—yep, there are the tears. 

Tommy feels himself tearing up too, for Bobby, for Evan, for Athena--for all of them. For this awful, overwhelming loss, and the horror of how it happened. 

Evan’s breaths start to hitch, and he slumps further into Tommy’s hold. Suddenly he’s choking out deep, gasping sobs, sorrow pulled up from so deep it sound like it it’s physically painful. Tommy just tightens his grip, trying to ignore the part of his brain that is loudly demanding to know why, exactly, Evan seems to need this so badly. He can pull on that thread later. For now, he can do this. He can stand here and be as solid as possible so Evan has something to hang onto while he falls apart.

Later, they end up on the couch. They each have a glass of that stupid passion-orange-guava juice Tommy just keeps adding to his cart at the grocery store, even though Evan hasn’t been around to drink it for a while now. Tommy keeps nudging the plate of cookies toward Evan. 

“Eddie’s crashing at my—at his—on the couch at the house,” Evan says, and his tone is all wrong. It’s stilted and a little wobbly, and Evan’s eyes stay fixed on his hands. He sighs. “He’s probably wondering where I am.” 

Tommy tries to keep the surprise off his face, but something must get through. 

Evan grimaces. “We had a disagreement the other night. I know he’s trying to make up for it, in his own way, but…I. I just wanted to be somewhere else for a while.”

Tommy’s not sure what to say to that. “Well,” he finally gets out, “like I said, you’re always welcome here.”

Evan nods a little, but it’s clear his mind is elsewhere. “Do you—” he starts, and then stops. Tommy cocks an encouraging eyebrow. “Do you think…that is…”

Tommy waits. Evan will decide how he wants to say whatever it is—or decide not to—in his own time. 

Evan looks back down at his hands. “We did everything we could to save Bobby,” he says. It’s a statement, kind of. He looks up at Tommy. “Right?” he asks, eyebrows furrowed, and his expression is full of such naked vulnerability that Tommy is tempted to look away. He doesn’t, because Evan Buckley deserves all the courage Tommy can muster, even if he’s never had quite enough. 

Tommy takes a slow breath in, and lets it out, and reminds himself that giving in to the rage igniting in his chest would be neither helpful nor productive. But what the fuck, Eddie?

“Evan,” he says firmly, “of course you did. You all did.”

Evan looks up at that. “We did,”he corrects, and shoots Tommy a tentative little smile. 

“Of course we did,” Tommy agrees, unwilling to quibble about his own minor role when there are much more important things he needs to say. “It was an impossible situation, and everyone did their absolute best.” He starts to reach out for Evan’s hand, and then stops himself, and then Evan reaches out and takes his hand anyway. “Unless there was a secret second vial we didn’t account for—which there wasn’t—there was nothing more anyone could have done.” He pauses and thinks about how he wants to say this. “It was horrible, and tragic, and I know that every single person there would have done absolutely anything to prevent it. Which is how I know no one could have.” He smiles, but it’s small and sad. “If the folks who were there that day couldn’t find a way, then there just wasn’t a way to find,” he finishes. 

Evan slumps a little in his seat. “Yeah, that’s—” he stops and swallows. “That’s what I thought too, but then Eddie said—” He cuts himself off and shakes his head. His shoulders are curled in, making him look small. Tommy hates it.

“Hey,” Tommy says, squeezing Evan’s hand, and Evan looks up at him. “I know everyone is hurting”—he was going to be diplomatic about this if it killed him—“but that is some Grade A bullshit.” Evan blinks at him. “That’s a fucked up thing to say, sweetheart, and I’m so sorry someone said it to you.” The endearment just slips out, and he doesn’t overthink it. He kept himself from saying What the fuck is wrong with your best friend? and I don’t think grief is a good enough explanation for that level of cruelty, so he gives himself a little mental high-five for his restraint.  

Evan blinks a little faster and lets go of Tommy’s hand to wipe at his eyes. He laughs a little. “God, I don’t know why I can’t stop crying.”

Tommy’s got a few hunches, but he doesn’t voice any of them. He shrugs. “Grief is a bitch like that.” He smiles at Evan and gestures at the box of Kleenex on the end table. “I buy tissues at Costco, so, you know—cry as much as you need to.” 

Evan laughs again, and relaxes back into the couch. Tears continue to slip down his face, and he periodically wipes them away. They sit there for a while, and the silence is comfortable. Tommy doesn’t take his hand back, and Evan makes no move to let it go.  

After a while, Tommy gets up to take a real shower, and Evan gets up to stir the sauce. He’s asleep on the couch when Tommy comes back, and Tommy pulls the afghan down from the back of the couch and carefully pulls it over him. He checks on the sauce and then settles into the armchair with his book. The house is quiet, and it smells amazing, and something in Tommy’s chest is settled for the first time in weeks. 

Evan wakes up when the kitchen timer goes off. He blinks a few times, and smiles a little when he sees Tommy in the armchair. Tommy smiles back.  

They eat pasta—the meat sauce is fantastic—and then Tommy serves them bowls of ice cream drizzled with caramel sauce. They eat it on the couch while while they watch some nature documentary, and Tommy follows almost none of it because he keeps glancing over at Evan’s profile. He looks soft and relaxed, and that terrible brittleness seems to be gone. He’s still marked by sorrow—he always will be, to some extent—but he doesn’t look empty anymore. 

Eventually the ice cream is gone, and the documentary is over. Evan shifts on the couch and glances at the clock in the kitchen. 

“I should get back,” he says, with visible reluctance, and Tommy doesn’t hesitate. 

“You could stay,” he says. 

“You mean for the night?” Evan asks, tentative again the way he was when Tommy first walked in to find him in his kitchen. 

“Sure,” Tommy says, “that.” He does not sell it, at all, and a slow smile starts to spread on Evan’s face. 

“Yeah?” he asks, and they both know what he’s asking. 

“Of course,” Tommy says, soft and sincere. He straightens a little. “I have a guest room,” he says, and Evan’s smile dims. “Not like that,” he says quickly. “Just—you’ve been through a lot, and if you just need a safe place to be for a while…”

Evan’s nodding as he talks, and he shifts closer to Tommy on the couch, meeting Tommy’s eyes. “I do need that,” he says. “I do need a safe place to be right now. And that’s you, Tommy.”

It sits there for a second because Tommy doesn’t know what to say, and Evan’s smile falters. Tommy reaches out for his hand. 

“Oh,” he says, and it’s soft and a little awed. “I didn’t”—he clears his throat—“I didn’t know that.”

Evan nods gravely. “I’ll do better this time. At making sure you know.”

Tommy grips his hand tighter. “I—me too. I’ll do better.”

Evan smiles at him, sweet and pleased. “We both will. We’ll do it right this time.”

Tommy can’t argue with that. God knows they have a laundry list of stuff to talk about, to figure out, but…

“We will,” he agrees, and for the first time, he lets himself truly believe it. 

[sieglinde-freud]

ekko having x’s sprayed all over him and jinx wearing the firelight symbol into battle what in the fresh hell kind of affection is this. are u telling me they were late to the fight bc they were busy DOODLING on eachother??? what the hell. WHAT THE HELL. im sick. theyre so cute are you joking. and then they didnt even show us that scene like fuck off riot

[markscherz]

Bad Newts: Amphibians are in Serious Trouble

My colleagues and I have just had a paper published in Nature, based on our efforts to assess almost all amphibian species for the IUCN Red Lists. The major takeaway messages:

It is a bad time to be an amphibian

Two fifths of all amphibians are threatened with extinction.

Salamanders are the most threatened group; three fifths of all salamanders are threatened with extinction!

Climate change is a major driver of amphibian declines globally

Habitat loss, especially due to agriculture, is a problem for the vast majority of amphibians

Chytrid pandemics have caused and continue to cause catastrophic declines of both salamanders and frogs

Protected areas and careful management are working as strategies! They are actively improving the outlook of some species

As many as 222 amphibian species may have gone extinct in recent times; of those, 185 are suspected extinct but not yet confirmed.

Our paper is Open Access, you can read it here!

Photo of Atelopus hoogmoedi by Jaime Culebras, used with permission

[learnandturn]

I, a student actively protesting against investment in Israel, called my grandmother yesterday. I offhandedly mentioned that I was still bruised from my run in with the cops. She was appalled. She asked me “why on earth would you be protesting?!”. I, somewhat surprised, she knows I care about left wing political causes and like, human life, told her I was protesting because I believed in the cause. She then asked me “you believe in the cause of getting rid of Jews?!?”

Of course not. I told her that I was protesting against genocide and that many of the people protesting beside me were Jewish. That our encampment held a Seder led by Jewish students followed by Maghrib (evening prayers) for Muslim students. She was so surprised. She told me to be safe and to call my mom if I got arrested.

These right wing fake news rabbit holes are so easy to fall down and get stuck in. To the extent that this very smart woman genuinely thought I was protesting to get rid of Jewish people rather than against genocide.

Good luck out there folks. Keep pushing, keep supporting Palestinians and protestors in any way you can. Call your grandma.

Free Palestine!

[thewormscientist]

[klauw22]

maybe its just me but tfone elita-1 kinda reminds me of a mantis. it hit me bcs of her wider helm that looks like a mantis head, wider at the top-middle and then goes into a narrow point at the bottom. and her little already bug looking antennas???

long limbs and thin build (at least in tfone bcs of how the bots are stylized for animation), small but packs a punch, feminine and dangerous. if youre not convinced look at the comparison between an orchid mantis and elita.

beastformers elita would be a mantis i think i must zap her with my bug beam

[reallybadblackoutpoems]

gravity (2003) - james cathcart

"which could mean nothing..."