#again the second option is meant to be unappealing and uncomfortable

[ase-trollplays]

So recently I made this poll, and in typical fashion, I didn't quite think it through. As a result, I made it way too easy to choose. 😅💦 That's my B. So in an attempt to make something a little bit less unbalanced, I'm redoing the poll with some changes.

Same scenario: Two job offers, can't have a second job or a side hustle.

The first offer is still your dream job, but this time you make enough to support yourself. And nothing else. Your bills are paid, and there's food on your table and gas in your car, but there is no room in your budget for anything beyond that. You are only making just enough money to keep your head above water. God help you if you have an emergency.

The second job is essentially the same as last time: Naked in an empty room for eight hours a day, Monday through Friday, with a lunch break, and you're allowed to bring your own entertainment. Whatever you bring in the room with you has to leave with you at the end of the day, you can't bring other people with you, and you are being recorded and livestreamed for the whole eight hours barring your lunch break. You're not allowed to cover yourself. The job pays six million a year.

I'm curious how much the answers will change compared to the first time around. And if you voted in the last poll, tell me if your answer changed and why. 😃

[hopelesshawks]

Physical Fatality Part 13- Icarus

18+ Hawks x fem, pro hero!reader

Summary: You’re a rising star in All Might’s agency. Hawks is the darling of Endeavor’s. By virtue of your job descriptions, the two of you are supposed to hate each other, or at the very least be cautiously neutral. For a long time that’s exactly what the two of you did. You stayed out of each other’s way and formed little opinion of the other. One fateful night at an HPSC gala changes all that. Based on the album Hopeless Fountain Kingdom by Halsey.

If you don’t want to see Physical Fatality content blacklist #hopelesspf

This story will have multiple NSFW parts so it is 18+ ONLY minors dni

Warning for very slight suicidal themes this fic has a happy ending I swear

Masterlist

Agony.

Losing you is agony.

Endeavor is lecturing him for pulling the stunt with Bakugo earlier that day but he can’t hear or really process any of it when all he can think about is the fact you’ve blocked his number and seem to want nothing to do with him. He vaguely registers words of “I told you so” and “I warned you” and even a word or two about a demotion but none of it matters. Hawks doesn’t know how to do anything but be a hero. It’s been the driving force behind a lot of the choices he’s made in your relationship and he knows it’s the same for you, but that doesn’t make any of this easier.

“You’re going to have to work really hard to earn my trust back Hawks and the trust of your coworkers,” Endeavor warns. “Understood,” Hawks replies, his voice almost detached. It seems to disconcert Endeavor, the other man being far more accustomed to the snarky Hawks persona than the serious man in front of him now. “Hawks, uhm, do you,” Endeavor stutters suddenly unsure. He coughs to cover his discomfort and clears his throat before resuming. “Do you need to talk about what happened between you and Artemis?” he finally manages to ask. He looks so deeply uncomfortable potentially talking about the subject and his discomfort only grows when Hawks continues to give him nothing back. “That won’t be necessary,” Hawks replies before turning and walking out of the office. If Hawks doesn’t know how to live without hero work, Keigo doesn’t know how to live without you. So his only option is to abandon Keigo until the pain stops.

He can’t have slept more than a handful of hours that night but he still wakes up early the next morning to run an extra patrol before his normally scheduled one. He files paperwork, even revisits old cases, all in a bid to keep you off his mind. Of course it’s not enough to stop his coworkers from whispering. Typically he ignores the gossip of the lower ranking heroes but it’s hard when he knows they’re speculating about you and him. It certainly doesn’t help that your break up was so public and now it feels like nearly all of Japan has watched the video of it happening. Hawks used to be the darling of Endeavor’s agency, beloved by all of his coworkers. Now he’s practically a pariah.

His new outcast status is only made more obvious at the cocktail party later that day. He’d wanted to skip it entirely, the fact you were supposed to be his plus one to the event made it all the more unappealing, but he’s already skating on thin ice and had no legitimate excuse to justify his absence. So instead he watches the other heroes talk and drink and laugh about things while he hides in the corner, too exhausted and heartbroken to put up the persona necessary to maintain conversation. No one seems to ask about him anyway or even care what he thinks despite the fact it’s his personal life that’s become the hottest topic in all of Japan. He wonders if this is how Icarus felt as he plummeted to the earth. Hawks had flown too close to your light and warmth and now he’s fallen from grace. He wonders if it’s true that Icarus laughed as he fell. If so he can empathize. As painful as this fall is, he would live it over and over if it meant he could catch even a glimpse of you again.

When Shoto comes to join him it’s literally the first genuine interaction he’s had all day. “You look like shit,” Shoto comments by way of greeting. “Thanks. Feel like it too,” Hawks replies. He doesn’t have to pretend with Shoto and for that he’s grateful. “Are you ok?” Shoto asks. “Even though I’ve always hated these things I was always so good at them,” Hawks starts in response. “I’d talk, drink, laugh just like everyone’s doing, be the center of attention, play the part of the charming number two hero. And look at me now. I’m so fucking anxious about what they’ll say about me, about her, about us and what happened that I can’t have a proper fucking conversation. I used to be on fire and now I’m standing in the ashes of who I used to be and I’m just fading away. Without her I’m fading away. I’m just as pathetic as she said,” Keigo confesses and it’s a weight off but it also makes the hollow space behind his ribs where you used to live feel all the more prominent. “This right here is kind of pathetic,” Shoto starts, earning him a shocked almost laugh from the other man, “but you are not pathetic Hawks. I think (y/n) knows that, she’s just hurting. Rightfully so. The bullshit with the others in the agency will get better too.” “I don’t know about that one.” “You’re not the only one who’s done dumb or bad shit. Not by a long shot.” “Really?” “You know Iida?” Shoto asks, pointing to the man in question as he obliviously continues his conversation with one of the others present. “Yea. Your year at UA, stickler for the rules. What about him?” Hawks asks. “He chose his internship our first year with the sole intention of trying to hunt down and kill Stain to avenge his brother.” “Really? That guy?” “Yep. My dad isn’t so innocent either: quirk marriage, child abuse, oh the stories I could tell you.” “Jesus Christ.” “Exactly. Everyone has their own shit Hawks. This will pass and hopefully you and (y/n) can find your ways back to each other when it does.”

Shortly after Todoroki finishes speaking his phone rings and he frowns down in confusion when he notices it’s Bakugo calling him. “I didn’t think we had task force business today,” Shoto says as he answers the phone. “We don’t. Is Hawks there with you?” Bakugo asks, his tone betraying his worry. “Yea he is.” “Shit.” “What’s going on Bakugo?” “It’s about (y/n),” Bakugo admits and Shoto’s eyes widen. He casts a look at Hawks before finally deciding to drag the other man with him to an empty office on the floor they’re currently on. He locks the door behind them and then pops his phone on speaker. “Ok you’re on speaker with me and Hawks what’s going on with (y/n)?” Shoto asks, his voice remaining calm. “All Might fired her last night so she was supposed to come in this morning and collect her stuff except instead she pretty much just threw everything away. I came back to patrol and found out she’d left Midoriya and I little gifts on our desk which was weird, so I hit up her roommates and apparently she never went home after she swung by here. I thought she and Hawks may have run off together but if he’s with you...” Bakugo explains. “Maybe she’s just clearing her head or something,” Shoto suggests. “No way. The whole of Japan is gossiping about her right now, the last thing she’d want is to be out in public,” Bakugo quickly refutes. “Was there anything else off about your desks? Drawers opened?” Hawks asks. “Maybe, I wasn’t paying that much attention. Why?” Bakugo asks. “Your task force notes still there?” Hawks asks in lieu of an answer. Hawks and Shoto wait with baited breath as they hear the sound of Bakugo moving around and then opening a desk drawer. “Nope, they’re gone,” Bakugo finally reports back. “Thought so. (Y/n) wouldn’t just roll over and kiss her career goodbye, she’s probably trying to take out the terrorist cell herself and use it as leverage to get her job back,” Hawks deduces. “Alone? That’s a suicide mission,” Shoto says. “Hence the gifts on the desks,” Hawks replies grimly. “Most of our notes are over there with you guys though,” Bakugo points out. As if on cue an alarm starts blaring overhead warning of an intruder. “That’s gotta be her,” Hawks says. “I’m on my way, hold her there so we can talk some sense into that idiot,” Bakugo tells them before promptly hanging up the phone.

Hawks has to give credit where credit is due. As foolhardy as your plan is, it’s incredibly well executed. As a former member of the guest list, you would’ve known everyone would be occupied with the cocktail party on one of the lower floors, far away from where the files you need are. The elevators will take forever with so many people trying to all get upstairs which only leaves the stairs, which are marginally better but still relatively slow. You must have spent most of the night planning this out. That thought fills Hawks with a certain amount of dread. You’re probably emotional and sleep deprived on your way to take on an entire villain group yourself all in a desperate bid to save your career. It almost sounds ludicrous. Yet, as Hawks races to the top floor in hopes of catching you, all he can think of is something you’d once told him during happier times, late at night as you two were wrapped up in each other:

“Honestly Kei? I’d rather die a hero than live long enough to prove those stupid reporters right about me.”

Author’s Note: Does this still count as a double update if I’m posting the second one after midnight 💀 anyway I can’t believe how quickly I was able to get this chapter out. The image of Hawks standing in the corner of a massive company party feeling like a shell of himself is actually a large part of what sold me on writing this fic for him. The song this chapter correlates to just felt so right for his character that I knew it couldn’t be anyone else. I thought about waiting to post this until later tomorrow today? but I’m ✨impatient✨ so instead y’all get it now

Taglist [open]: @akkaso @cathy8taffy @eeppff @iikillerkitteh @pixelwisp @pokesosa @lildockel @bread0nhead @lavender-moon13

[pumpkins-s]

Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink

Read on AO3 Here

Read the Other Chapters on Tumblr Here

Lance Alexander Rafael McClain is born in the middle of a summer storm, thunder cracking and rain slamming onto the roof of an old ramshackle house that had seen more than its fair share of children.

The miracle baby, that’s what the family had called Lance. The unexpected son to a mother of five daughters.

(In which family is always complicated, Lance’s life hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, and he and Keith are really emotionally constipated for each other.)

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Relationships: Keith/Lance, significant platonic Lance & Hunk

Characters: Lance, Lance’s family, Hunk, Keith, Shiro, Pidge, Allura, Coran

Chapter 9: Liar

((Author’s Note: 

Hello! New update here for SLAOS to kick off July before I get busy with my Klance Big Bang fic!

Before we begin, a few exciting things:

My lovely friend Logan has done some beautiful doodles of Mavis and Loraine, which you should absolutely check out here and here.

Also! Since I love having something to listen to while I read/work, there are now matching playlists for Loraine & Mavis for you to so check out if you so please! You can find the tumblr post for both playlists here (complete with coverart!), or go to them each directly-- Mavis: Spotify. Youtube. Loraine: Spotify. Youtube. ))

It takes four days before things to go to shit.

…Naturally.

Why on Earth would Lance have expected anything else, with such a foolish, hopeful, half-thought out idea?

It’s four days of awkward, stumbling missteps in trying to relearn himself, filled with scrambling changes of clothes every time he dares to look in the mirror and feels his stomach flop unsurely at seeing bright patterns and knock-off chiffon, pairing skirts with his loose, faded t-shirts in hopes of finding some suitable balance between memory and self-taught reality, and one rather memorable incident on the second day of this little mini-venture when Mavis had opened the bathroom door to find Lance in tears after he had accidentally jabbed himself in the eye with her half-stolen, half-borrowed mascara brush.

Even after making the decision to give this a try, it’s not as simple as throwing on a new set of clothes and calling it done. It’s hardly easy unlearn a year of practice keeping himself from these things, and it’s never really just been about clothes, regardless.

After all, Lance thinks, if this was just an odd addiction to what most people might call cross-dressing, then that might be easier to be rid of. But this… This is just himself. Lance. It’s an itch under his skin on hot, muggy mornings that he cannot escape and a distinct feeling of wrongness every time his shirts rub against his collarbone and long skirts sit too low on his thin, unshapely hips.

No matter what he does, even in this… experiment, it still feels like he’s running from himself, and it leaves him with an aching, wishful desire for the easy sense of self he’d known as a child, happy and unquestioning of what he wanted or how he wished to look or feel.

He’s not sure if this is all a result of his choices in the last year after losing Loraine, or if this was, perhaps, inevitable. Maybe he would have faced the same struggles had he persevered anyways as he got older.

Still, no doubt this would have been easier, with Loraine here.

…Then again, having Loraine would have meant no Mavis, and that in of itself is a can of worms and complicated feelings Lance isn’t quite ready to open yet.

Regardless, for those few strange, itchy, yet oddly content days, he presses on to figure out what he wants from this, what he wants from choice.

On the fifth day, he finds himself sprawled out on Mavis’s couch in the heat of the summer afternoon as the humidity clings to his skin, NASA t-shirt from his suitcase and skirt from Mavis’s purchases thrown on and the hair bow pinned haphazardly to his curls, tongue darting out idly to prod at the leftover sticky sweetness on his lips from an ill-advised foray into lip gloss, old stuff found in Mavis’s bathroom drawer that likely hadn’t been touched in years and was well past any advisable expiry date. He’s sitting in a position that would likely get him scolded for indecency at home— Shoulders resting on the cushions where he should be sitting and legs flung up in the air, knees hooked over the back of the couch and skirt pooling in his lap as his arm stretches past his head to flick through channels on the television with the remote clasped upside-down between loose fingers. Across from him, Mavis sits with her feet tucked up under the pillow Lance rests his head on, shirt abandoned in favor of just her sports bra and jean cut-off shorts, brow furrowed as she fiddles with a replacement string for her violin, loudly confident in her occasional bluster that she can do it herself rather than take it to the shop.

It’s a quiet, pleasant kind of companionable silence intermingled with the background noise of the TV ads and Mavis’s occasional swears as fine, long fingers poke and prod at delicate woodwork.

At least, until the sharp rap of knuckles on the front door jolts them both into awareness, attentions turned to it in half-awake confusion.

“Mavis?” A man’s voice rings out. “It’s me, are you home?”

Mavis blinks, looking to Lance for a moment, and then promptly trips over herself and falls to the floor with a squawk as she tries to scramble off the sofa. “Shit!”

“You okay?” The voice asks, concern drifting into the friendly words. “I’m gonna come in, alright?”

There’s the scraping of a key being inserted into the lock, and the door handle turns, sending Lance wiggling desperately in a similar failed maneuver to Mavis’s in an attempt to at least sit up properly. In some distant part of his mind, he wonders in what alternate universe Mavis, paranoid, private Mavis, would ever give some random guy who clearly wasn’t a relative a spare key, as Mavis waves her arms pointlessly from her upside-down position on the floor at the door, one knee still caught on the sofa, and screeches. “No, wait! Jeff—“

The door slams open all of three inches, before catching on the chain lock, and jolting to a sharp stop. Sighing, Mavis drops her arms, covering her face with one of them tiredly. “Chain lock, Jeff.”

“Whoops.” Half a man’s face hovers in view in the crack between the door and the wall, grinning abashedly. “Sorry, forgot.” Below him, another face, younger and with wider eyes, peers into the space as well as the man’s eyes slide over to Lance.

Lance’s heart catches in his throat as it finally registers with him what he is wearing, in plain view, to this man who is not Mavis and not safe, and he finds himself frozen, half-tempted to flee, but unable to find his feet.

“So…” The man drawls, thick New Jersey accent caught up in cigarette smoke roughness visible in his words. “Who’s the girl?”

“The what?” Mavis half mumbles, stumbling to her feet, grabbing her shirt where it lies on the coffee table and pulling it over her head as she staggers to the door and nudges it back enough to unhinge the chain lock, opening the door properly once it’s free.

“The kid?” The man says, sticking calloused hands into loose jean pockets and meandering into the room enough for Mavis to shut the door behind him, with his shadow hot on his heels, a boy around Lance’s age with dirty blonde hair that hangs in front of his eyes and a scattering of freckles on his forearms that stand out against his pale skin. “Wait, wait, don’t tell me…” He pauses, thinking. “…Your brother’s daughter? You mentioned you had family coming to visit, and you’re the youngest sibling, right? So…”

The guy’s gaze slides between Mavis and Lance, questioning, and with a lurch in his stomach, one part horror, one part elated relief, several things click into place for Lance all at once.

Most importantly, that this guy, amazingly, impossibly, thinks he’s a girl. Somehow.

A girl, not… Well.

Apparently a skirt, a hair bow, and a bit of old lip gloss did a lot more than Lance gave it credit for, especially given this was paired with his loose, boyish shirt that he knows for certain is one of Carlos’s old things, and his distinctly short hair.

“…What?” Mavis says, and then her eyes widen as she catches on, darting to Lance in a panicked question. “I mean, uh…” He stares back at her with something like frightened desperation as it fully registers their only options here are to roll with it or correct the man’s mistake and face the potential consequences, which is… unappealing. Making a split-decision in seconds, he silently begs her to play along.

He’s not ready to face it again. The judgmental looks, the uncomfortable questions. Not in this place that is supposed to be his secret haven. He knows nothing about these people, aside from the fact that they seem to know Mavis, and that alone is not enough to confirm they are safe for Lance.

“…Yeah.” Mavis finally finishes, trailing off unsurely and lapsing into momentary silence. “This is… My niece… Lance.” The man blinks, surprise flickering over his face, and Lance looks to his cousin with a strained, pleading expression, prompting a quick, aborted movement on her part that looks like something between a shrug and throwing up her hands, the meaning, as far as Lance can determine, best equated to a sentiment along the lines of ‘I panicked’.

Which… Fair enough.

“It’s… a nickname.” Lance offers unsurely, edging closer and wincing at how frail and borderline whispery his voice is. “Long story.”

“Alright then.” The man’s voice is bemused, but not unkind, and Lance unfurls, shoulders relaxing ever so slightly as he registers that, yes, this guy has accepted the ruse without question. “Lance it is. It’s nice to finally meet Mavis’s niece. She doesn’t talk ‘bout her family half as much as she should.”

“Right then.” Mavis coughs into a fist, eyes flickering unsurely to Lance once more, as if she can’t quite believe this is happening either. “Lance, meet Jeff and his son, Tommy. Jeff and I um… work together, and Tommy helps out sometimes around school.” She turns back to the newly christened Jeff, sticking her hands into her back pockets in a nervous gesture that is purely Mavis, and goes to work doing what she does best— Deflecting. “You’re supposed to call me before you just come over, jackass.”

Jeff grins unashamedly, holding up his hands in an easy gesture of surrender. “I needed to go over some numbers with you for next month’s stock, and I was in the neighborhood.” Mavis raises an eyebrow, distinctly not amused, and Jeff waves the plastic bag in his left hand carefully. “I brought takeout, your favorite Chinese place.”

Something gives in Mavis’s expression, and she looks to Lance. “I don’t know if now is the best time, Jeff…”

“Come on,” Jeff waves his hand dismissively, and for the first time Lance finds his mannerisms rubbing him the wrong way. People listen to Mavis, that’s just part of the way she works, and to see someone so casually ignore her unsubtle suggestions is… unusual. Different. “You love Chinese. It’ll just be for a bit, promise.”

Hesitantly, Lance reaches out, catching Mavis’s fingers at her side, and she glances at him again, clearly sensing his discomfort. “…Leave the food on the kitchen counter. We can talk in my room, give us some quiet.”

“Great.” Jeff says jovially, sliding a hand around Mavis’s waist that makes Lance’s skin itch uncomfortably, and leading her away without a backwards glance. “Tommy, keep Ms. Lance company, yeah? Talk about your video game things or something.”

“Yeah, sure…” The boy mutters quietly, sounding as if he’d really rather not, and then Mavis is gone into the other room, quickly flashing Lance a reassuring smile as the door shuts behind her that he does his best to mirror.

After a couple long seconds, it properly registers that he is alone with Tommy, and he turns back to the other boy, the other boy who thinks he is a girl and who’s father apparently is close enough to Mavis to touch her like that, and prays that he doesn’t fuck this up too badly.

His only reassurance is that Tommy looks just as unsure and uncomfortable as he does.

“So…” The boy drawls, soft and questioning. “You’re… Mavis’s niece.”

“Um. Yeah.” Almost unconsciously, Lance crosses his arms, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “And your dad and Mavis… They… Work together?” His voice lingers on the last words, dubiousness easily soaking through. He may not know an exceeding amount about the adult world just yet, but he doesn’t think randomly showing up to someone’s apartment that they apparently have a key to with lunch is standard coworker behavior in the slightest.

At least, no one’s ever shown up to their house with lunch for any of his sisters or mother claiming to know them from work.

“A-Ah, yeah!” Tommy brightens considerably, nodding and shoulders relaxing slightly. “She works at Dad’s bar! She helps with my music theory homework for band class when I’m there after school sometimes, she’s really nice.”

“Yeah…” Despite himself, Lance feels a smile slip onto his face. “She is.”

“’M sorry about my dad, for the record.” Tommy offers. “I know he can be a bit… much. He just… really likes Mavis. He tries to find excuses to talk to her and stuff.”

“It’s alright.” Lance offers hesitantly, not completely sure if it is all right at all but trusting the other in his honesty in regards to the situation.

Tommy grins unsurely, bright and cheerful, and idly Lance catches a similar, fainter pattern of freckles along his cheeks to match the ones on his arms, scrawling around the length of his face and catching on the edges of his nose. “Yeah— Sorry, I don’t think that was a very good introduction before, with me hiding being my dad like that.” He sticks a hand out, thin fingers smudged with dirt and ratty friendship bracelets crowding his wrist. “Tommy Buchanan.”

Lance smiles, and takes the proffered hand, his darker skin tone contrasting sharply against Tommy’s. “Lance McClain.”

It’s only then that he once again considers the oddness of his name compared to this ruse— So easy Tommy’s presence is, at least, compared to his father, that it previously slipped his mind once more that this is… Happening.

Lord help him, whatever this is. Perhaps he would have been better off never touching those clothes Mavis had bought, had he known such complications would arise so quickly.

“Um—“ He shifts awkwardly, and Tommy shrugs amicably, retracting his hand as Lance lets go.

“Don’t worry. I know a girl named Dylan and another named Billie… And a guy who insists people call him Sugar. Lance isn’t the oddest nickname I’ve heard, especially not for a girl.” Tommy smiles, young and unassuming and all the things his father appears to be without the undercurrent of wrongness Lance in his potential paranoia feels. “I think it suits you.”

“Oh.” Lance feels heat scrawl across his face and shuffles back, bringing his hands in front of him and twisting his fingers together nervously. It’s… strange. It’s not that he’s never been complimented on his name before, but the idea of someone now appreciating it in a way that is wrapped up with the idea of him being not-a-boy is odd. He’s so used to forcing himself to associate what it means to be Lance with being what he needs to be— Not his memories of being Lancie Loo-Loo, the child that never feared these associations of name and meaning at all.

And no, someone thinking Lance and associating it with girl isn’t quite right either, but it’s something different, at least, and that is… enough. Maybe. Maybe.

“Thank you.” He says softly, and Tommy brightens.

Perhaps, he thinks, this is not so bad after all.

“…Do you want to watch TV with me?” He offers. “Mavis and I were watching this old music competition she likes.”

Tommy nods enthusiastically, hands shoved into his pockets and previous nervousness all but disposed with, and Lance feels himself breathe a sigh of relief.

Later, much later, long after the Chinese food resting in its plastic bag in a sorry heap on the counter has undoubtedly gone cold, Jeff and Mavis reappear from her room. Jeff collects Tommy as he leaves, the food still untouched where it sits as he loudly laughs and talks his way out, hand on Mavis’s back all the way to the door, and Tommy shyly waves Lance goodbye, chasing after his father down the hall without bothering to close those last couple steps of space between them.

They migrate back to the kitchen on an unspoken agreement in awkward silence, Mavis spooning out the now sticky, clinging-together mixes of rice and meat and vegetables into chipped bowls and shoving them into the microwave to reheat while Lance perches on one of the too-tall bar stools, legs kicking idly and meeting only air.

After their food is placed in front of them, Mavis sits down next to him, fork twirling in her hands as she pointedly looks down at the bench and not at Lance. “So that was… a thing. That happened.”

Lance blinks, and automatically fills his spoon and shoves it into his mouth. “…Yeah.”

“Jeff thinks you’re a girl.”

“They think I’m a girl.”

Mavis’s head thunks dully against the kitchen counter as she drops it, arm outstretched to snag the glass of some dark, auburn liquid Lance can safely assume isn’t meant to be shared with him that she’d poured while reheating their food, and then once again brings her head up enough to down the liquid in one fell swoop. “Is this good or bad?”

“I don’t know.” Lance says honestly, bones thrumming with the knowledge of exactly what just has occurred, and it’s the truth. He really doesn’t know— On the one hand, there’s the strange, bubbling elation at the idea of being something else for once. Maybe not what is right, whatever that is, but… Something. On the other, though, there is a kind of precarious inevitability to this sort of thing that promises doom. He is not prepared for this sort of situation, for the upkeep and forward planning needed to maintain... this.

If his mother or Marcie were here, they would promise him that this is his life, and he doesn’t have to keep secrets or, vise-versa, tell anyone anything he doesn’t want to, especially things that are none of their business. If Karen or Igraine were here, they’d call him an idiot for getting himself into such a mess, and then they’d smack Mavis upside the head for letting it happen.

If Loraine were here…

He doesn’t know.

If Loraine were here, it is very likely he wouldn’t be here altogether, either.

Lance trusts Mavis though. He knows this much, whatever that means for this rather odd little situation. “I really… don’t know.”

Distantly, he wonders if he should be panicking over this.

…Probably should, in all honesty.

He isn’t. At least not currently, though he can’t speak as to whether some kind of panic will set in later— He got good at compartmentalizing these things almost subconsciously, after Loraine. Right now he just feels… numb. Lost.

This is not overwhelmingly positive in any way, and this is not awfully bad. It’s certainly not easy, definitely, but it is what it is, and now the only question that remains is what to do with it.

“Mm.” Mavis hums, staring down at her empty glass and swishing the ice resting in its base gently as if it might offer her the secrets of the universe, or at least of their current predicament. “You’re damn lucky you inherited whatever same genes that Lucas got for a pretty androgynous appearance, honestly. And that your voice hasn’t dropped yet.”

Lance pales, and Mavis blinks, eyes widening as she rethinks her words, turning to him with a faintly panicked expression. “Hey, not saying that it will happen! You might get a fairly ranged or high-pitched voice, lots of people do! Look at me, I sound like a forty-year-old man often enough and I’m trying to pass myself off as a singer half the time!”

Lance snorts, breaking into unexpected giggles. “No, you don’t. You sound like Mavis.”

Mavis pauses, and then relaxes, a small, fond smile slipping onto her face. “…Sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Lance says, awkwardly poking his spoon around the remnants of his lunch. “I’m not that worried about that sort of thing with um, with Jeff and Tommy, anyways. Like…” He frowns. “Yeah, it’s surprising, and it makes me a little nervous, not gonna lie, but this isn’t my real life, really. What they think I am or am not, it doesn’t matter that much. I’d just never really considered the fact that those… changes will happen one day.”

“Growing up happens to the best of us, Lance.” Mavis grins wryly. “We all just have to live with it, there’s not many alternatives.”

There’s a pause, soft but peaceful, as they both poke unsurely at their food, and then Mavis breaks into giggles, growing in volume and hysteria quickly. “God, what are we doing?”

Despite himself, Lance finds the infectious laughter catch him, leaving him burying his mirth in wide, tight-lipped smiles against his palms. “No idea.”

Mavis cackles at that, hunching over and sending her bar stool rocking unsteadily, and it only sends Lance into further giggles, grinning over his fingers as he peers down at her doubled-over form, her shoulders shaking from surprised, relief-stricken nerves.

It’s all a mess, but at least it’s their mess— To own, to claim, to do with as they please.

And that? That is good.

Eventually, after the food is finished and the dishes washed and left on the drying rack, they find themselves curled back up on the couch as the evening heat falls to mildly warm and humid night air that clings to their skin like a second pair of pajamas. The two of them sit in the middle with Lance slumped into Mavis’s side, her arm thrown over his shoulders and his fingers tangled in the edge of her large sleep shirt as she flicks through channels, looking for a late-night rerun of a movie or a cartoon.

There is a steeping quiet, made up of uncertainty and a million questions they both have about all this, and all the things they cannot understand about each other, even after Mavis finds an old anime being shown and leaves it with the volume on low.

Lance lets himself be the first to break their waiting, speaking into the night where the daylight may not have his unsure thoughts. “So… Jeff.”

Mavis freezes ever so slightly, eyes trained on the television. “Jeff.” She says. “Jeff is… a friend.”

“You said he was a coworker.”

“He is!” Mavis blinks, and then shrugs. “Well, I mean, technically it’s more like he’s my boss—“

“You’re sleeping with your boss?!” Lance screeches, surprise getting the better of him, and Mavis cringes.

“I’m not sleeping with anyone. And how do you even know what that means?! You’re like… barely twelve.”

“Mavis I grew up in a house with eight teenagers.” Lance deadpans. “I know what sex is, thank you very much!”

Mavis turns red, sputtering, and he sighs. “Geez, what is he like, ten years older than you?“

“Only eight, and it’s really— It’s really not like that, okay?” She says sharply, cutting him off, frame still tense and awkward, and Lance relents, burying back against her side and resting his head against her chest.

It’s a different sound than Loraine’s heartbeat, just ever so slightly in its feeling in a way he cannot explain, but it’s still calming, regardless. Mavis is not Loraine, but that does not inherently make her lesser. It just makes it… Well, different.

Loving Loraine, attaching himself to her as his anchor in the world, that was easy, natural. Mavis is… This is a foundation, a trust they have chosen to build, rather than one that was innately there from the beginning. They do not automatically know each other the same way Lance and Loraine did, but they have chosen to, and in a way that is maybe even more powerful.

Maybe.

It is difficult, he thinks, to define his relationship with others without using Loraine as a reference point, and he neither wants to live his life seeing everything as lesser than Loraine in some way, nor as ever coming to see the bond he shared with his sister as somehow less important, because of what it held in inexplicable connections over fostered faith and work.

“So what is it like, then?” He asks instead to quiet the rabbit-heartbeat thoughts of his mind, and Mavis hums, unsure and considering.

“I dunno kid, alright? It’s just… Jeff is kind to me, and the attention is nice, I guess. He’s apparently been really lonely since his wife, Tommy’s mom, left a few years ago, and I think he just likes having someone to talk to.” She shrugs, shifting Lance’s weight ever so slightly. “He says he needs me around, and it’s… It’s flattering. He owns the bar I work at, and when I started helping him with more managerial duties, my paycheck like… doubled. I was really struggling to make rent at the time so he inadvertently helped me out a lot there.”

Lance crinkles his nose. “Still. Giving him a key, though? You used to lock your bedroom door at home just to stop people from getting in. Including your brothers. Whom you shared the room with.”

Mavis makes an unhappy noise of half-hearted denial at that, twisting her hands together in a way he knows means she’s fibbing. “It just sort of ended up that way. I started doing all this extra work around the place and helping him with the books and suddenly there was just a lot of off-hours talks and him showing up with lunch and stuff and then it was just… easier, for him to have a key. I got used to it, I guess. He means well, and I don’t dislike the company. And it’s free food and stuff and… My job too, y’know.”

“It doesn’t sound like it makes you happy, though.” Lance says, because no matter what his dwellings on the knowing of Loraine versus the knowing of anyone else, he understands enough about Mavis to discern this, at least.

“It doesn’t make me unhappy, and that’s enough when it comes to me dealing with people.” Mavis says firmly. “He’s… It’s complicated.”

“I guess.”

“I promise you it’s fine.” She says with all the certainty that comes with being someone like Mavis. “I’m not going to start shacking up with psychos or something, don’t worry.”

Lance grins against her sleeve, shaking his head ever so slightly. “If you say so.”

That night is when the panic does come, fleeting but certain as it leaves him breathless and stumbling from sleep, dreams of hands yanking back his hair and cutting and of whispered voices from long-left classrooms chasing after him. It’s a wordless hum of anxiety of what happens if they know, what happens if they find out, that leaves him rolling and scrambling his way off the pullout mattress and up into Mavis’s bed, clinging to her shakily as she whines sleepily and shifts over enough to make room for him, patting his head absently as she passes out again.

He falls asleep to the soothing sounds of her breathing and the distant honks of the cars in the night traffic outside, and in the morning she makes him frozen waffles that are still soggy after being toasted and promises him that if he wants it so, Jeff and Tommy will never set foot in this apartment again while he is here.

And it’s the truth, for a couple days— Before Jeff calls to invite himself over for lunch with a fifteen minute warning Mavis cannot seem to deny him, and Lance throws on a frilly shirt and shorts without thinking.

That second time, he doesn’t bring Tommy, and Lance sits fidgeting uncomfortably in the corner.

The third time, he does, and Tommy teaches Lance poker with the card set he brought stuffed in his shorts pocket with a hopeful, hesitant expression.

Despite everything, the Buchanans suddenly seem to become a part of the regular schedule, after that.

Perhaps it’s not surprising, in a way. This may be Lance’s escape from his reality, but this is Mavis’s actual life at the end of the day, and apparently Jeff and Tommy, for better or for worse, are part of it.

And so he gets used to Jeff showing up every few days to eat or to talk or to drag Mavis out to go somewhere with him, and to dodging inside the bedroom every time he hears a knock at the door and he’s not appropriately dressed, per se, just in case.

It becomes a part of the new normal disconcertingly quickly, if he’s being honest.

He likes Tommy’s company, at least. It’s odd, hanging around someone the same age as him— He’s used to befriending people who are technically older, no matter how infinitesimal that one year gap between himself and Hunk might feel, and knowing Tommy’s only a few months older is odd.

Not bad, but… Definitely odd.

Still, it’s nice, to have someone to hang out with when Jeff inserts himself into Mavis’s daily schedule with charming smiles and reassuring words, and Tommy holds a kind of quiet peacefulness different from Hunk or Yuu’s that Lance can appreciate. The afternoons he spends playing snap or go fish with him and helping him braid more messy friendship bracelets for his wrists and ankles are… Good.

It’s undeniably strange when Tommy braids him ones in bright pinks and yellows and tells him that they’re nice colors for a girl like him, but that’s not bad either. It’s a strange half-ruse he adjusts to. Not quite a lie, not quite truth.

He thinks of home, sometimes, when he works, and he sets aside three bracelets, lavender and yellow and dark red, for Ritzie and Hunk and Yuu.

An obnoxiously neon pink one gets made for Mavis, to match the bright nail polish she puts on her toes every few days with consistency, and she ties it to her ankle and doesn’t take it off.

Lance ends up with six, all from Tommy in varying colors, scattered up his arms, and he admires them as he desperately tries to ignore the anxious curling in his gut when Tommy rambles happily about his father.

Jeff makes Mavis happy, or so she says, and that’s what’s important.

Outside of that, it’s nice. Mavis cooks oversized bowls of spaghetti or makes toasted tomato and cheese sandwiches on the nights she doesn’t give up and order takeout or pizza, and the two of them eat dinner sometimes on the couch with old anime reruns on the television. She takes him sight-seeing around her schedule and to the theater she works as a stagehand at on the slow days, introducing him to her coworkers there, all of whom Lance likes infinitely more than Jeff, if he’s being honest. He dresses in his clothing from home on those occasions, until his second visit when he spots what he had at least previously assumed was a man in tights and heels milling about the stage and a then assumed woman wearing a binder and wifebeater.

“It’s off-Broadway theater in New York, Lance.” Mavis tells him airily. “Almost everyone’s either queer, not-cis, or liberal as all fuck.”

After that, he hesitantly dresses as he pleases for each particular day on those occasions, and Mavis takes him for ice cream from the corner dairy afterwards like clockwork.

He listens in the spare evenings as Mavis practices the instrument of the day, most often the tiny upright piano jammed in the corner of the living room or her violin, and calls out song requests based off whatever show or movie was just on TV.

Mavis, blessed by her ability to play by ear, normally nails them.

Once his three and a half weeks are up, Lance packs away the clothes he didn’t bring with him in the first place into Mavis’s closet, pockets the random junk she bought him, and leaves with photos for Marcie, a book for Evie, Tommy’s number programmed into his phone with a promise to text, and thirty-six missed calls from Hunk.

And then he, reluctantly, unsurely, clinging to Mavis’s sweater in the airport as he hugs her goodbye and wonders how long it might be until he sees her again, goes back home.

Home to Veradera.