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caramelcal · 3 years

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her favorite protector

summary: its been weeks since Luke and Bambi last spoke after their argument at the club, and everything seems bleak. things take a turn for the worst for bambi, but it seems only luke can save her from this one.

word count: 3.25k

requests: Anonymous asked:Hope your doing well and Omg you cannot leave us like that with his favorite club :( my heart is breaking. We need more!! We need cute fluffiness where Luke can change some of those controlling ways. Maybe a kidnapping or something? His worst nightmare coming true that his rivalry is using Bambi to hurt him?

Anonymous asked:For the next part of bambi and Luke, maybe while bambi is at Anna’s, a rival of Luke finds her and she’s really scared and even though they aren’t on the best terms Luke somehow finds her and rescue her

this gif...wow. he’s so pretty <3

ALSO?? LUKE IS ENGAGED TO SIERRA??? I FOUND OUT AND SCREAMED FR AHDFGHBNJHGFD IM SO HAPPY FOR THEM OMG

ᴅɪsᴄʟᴀɪᴍᴇʀ- ɪ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴄᴏɴᴅᴏɴᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴇᴘᴏsᴛɪɴɢ ᴏʀ ᴛʀᴀɴsʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴍʏ ғɪᴄs ᴡɪᴛʜᴏᴜᴛ ᴍʏ ᴘᴇʀᴍɪssɪᴏɴ. ɪ ᴏʙᴠɪᴏᴜsʟʏ ᴅᴏɴ’ᴛ ᴏᴡɴ ʟᴜᴋᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜɪs ɪs ᴘᴜʀᴇʟʏ ғɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ. ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs ɴᴏ ᴅɪsʀᴇsᴘᴇxᴛ ᴍᴇᴀɴᴛ ʙʏ ᴛʜᴇsᴇ ғɪᴄs, ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴀʀᴇ sɪᴍᴘʟʏ ғᴏʀ ᴇɴᴊᴏʏᴍᴇɴᴛ. ᴛʜᴀɴᴋʏᴏᴜ <3

Bambi hadn’t had a particularly great few weeks. She needed space, she knew that, and she knew that time away from Luke would do her the world of good. Anna had been nothing but kind to her, hospitable, not asking too many questions about why she was there and why Luke hadn’t shown up. Anna knew of Luke’s more controlling ways, so it baffled her that he hadn’t even acknowledged the girl being away for so long.

From what Anna had observed previously, Luke could barely breathe without the girl by his side; couldn’t rest easy. Neither could his girlfriend...if they could even call each other that anymore.

Anna, in all honestly, just wanted to know what the hell happened. She knew her best friend well, and she hadn’t stopped looking like you had kicked a puppy right in front of her. Hardly even speaking, barely going out, a very small and almost unnoticeable frown on her face.

It was a miracle that Anna had managed to get her out to the club last night. Sure, the smaller girl didn’t have the best time, but it was far better than any plans that she had at the weekend. All she planned on doing was sitting around and moping, the girl was miserable.

Maybe it was selfish, but she really wanted Luke to text her. She wanted some sort of proof that he still cared for her, and compared to his normal overprotective nature, this was so...different. It was almost as if he didn’t care for her anymore, maybe he moved on. Bambi didn’t know. What she did know of, however, was that Luke had a history of sleeping around. What if he didn’t bother coming back for her and just went back to his old ways instead?

It made her feel sick.

Maybe that’s why she barely got through the first round of shots before she was telling Anna she was going to head home, not wanting to be too much of a damper on her best friend’s night.

It seemed that the plan had worked. By the next morning, Anna was nursing an awful migraine due to her hangover and was sporting many new bruises that she didn’t know where they were from. At some point during the night, she had broken a heel off of her shoes, the discarded heel nowhere to be seen.

Anna still demanded they were going out to run errands the day after, dismissing her hangover but demanding that the smaller girl drove her. Surprisingly, she had gotten used to driving after so long of not even having her hands on a steering wheel. It wasn’t her fault that Luke had always preferred that he or Jacob drove her.

Granted, the girl didn’t have a car yet, but Anna was chill about her using hers.

“Anna,” The girl called out from the room, putting her converse on and tying them up, awaiting her friend to reply to her shout.

However, her reply never came, making the girl sigh. Maybe the girl had fallen asleep or just didn’t want to shout back due to her headache. She quickly picked up her purse and walked into the hallway leading into the main front room, “When are we leaving for-”

The smaller girl cut herself off, looking up towards where Anna should have been by herself but instead was pulled against a man’s chest, tears streaming from her eyes, absolutely horrified. A gun was pointed at Anna’s head, making Bambi still in fear.

“One bad move and this bullet goes into her brain, kid,” One of the men’s gruff voices warned, making fear hit the small girl like a wave. She didn’t know what to do, she wasn’t exactly prepared for it.

Bambi stilled, eyes traveling up to meet the older man in front of her, he looked powerful, must have been their leader. He was older than her, but couldn’t have been much older than 30. Small pieces of stubble decorating his jawline and a black shirt covering his muscles, stretching across his wide chest.

“Good move, princess. You’re coming with us,” The next thing the small girl knew was that the gun was no longer pointed towards Anna, instead, it was directly facing her. One pulling of the trigger and a bullet was going to lodge its way between her eyes.

Bambi didn’t have any time to react or notice the person behind her before their cloth-covered hand was covering her mouth. She was pulled against their body, restricted, unable to scream. Her mouth was dry with fear, the strong smell of chemicals hitting her nostrils as she breathed in. Chloroform.

Bambi’s eyes meet Anna’s tear-filled ones, her figure shaking lightly with terror. Anna was pressed down against the counter now, cheek against the marble, hands behind her back, and gun pressing against her temple. She could only watch, helpless, as her best friend was being manhandled out of the house.

Bambi couldn’t do anything either -weaponless- defenseless against these guys but she knew exactly why they were there. They were there to get her, to use her as a bargaining chip against Luke, just about the biggest cliché in the book. The small girl couldn’t help but wonder what they would do to her once they found out that she was useless, and no longer affiliated with the tall Australian. Would they put a bullet in her brain? Send her in a bag to the bottom of a lake?

However, the girl didn’t get much time to question or worry about this as the chloroform from the cloth weakened her as she was about the be thrown in the car, slumping against the man behind her, eyes closed, legs collapsing from beneath her, her consciousness slowly ebbing away into nothingness.

By the time that the girl had woken up, her vision was blurry, and she was tied to a chair, her arms behind her, legs tied to an individual leg of said chair. She was in a warehouse that looked to be completely abandoned, a hole in the roof allowing cold air to waft about. It was freezing.

“Looks like sleeping beauty had woken up,” A scratchy masculine voice taunted at the small girl, standing tall in front of her, blocking her from seeing anything.

“What do you want from me?” Her voice was also scratchy, maybe from the chloroform, she wasn’t entirely sure. She still felt disorientated, barely keeping herself from staying upright as she looked at the man who stood above her, a sinister grin on his face.

“We don’t want anything from you, kid. We want your boyfriend’s head blown off his body.”

“I don’t,” Bambi cut herself off for a moment, coughing, “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

The man above her scoffed, rolling his eyes as he looked back down at the girl again, “Don’t act like I’m stupid, princess. All you gotta do is phone him, and Hemmings will come rushing to save his little girlfriend.”

Tears gather in the girl’s eyes as the reality of the situation kicks in. It isn’t a dream, this was her real life. She didn’t want to be trapped like this, in this chair or this life. Luke didn’t care for her anymore, he hadn’t talked to her in weeks, why would he come and save her?

“He won’t come.”

“Don’t play me, princess. I’ve never seen Hemmings ever with a girl twice until you,” He pointed towards the girl, sneering ever so slightly, “You are the key to us getting his gang wiped off of the map. starting with Hemmings, then Clifford, then Hood and Irwin.”

Tears choked up the girl’s throat, her mouth opening as she thought of the fight that she had with him, then the weeks of not talking. The loneliness, the discord. Luke hadn’t bothered to reach out to her, to check that she was ok. Her head shook slightly as the strong emotions continued to arise, “He doesn’t love me anymore, it’s useless.”

The man’s hand gripped the edge of Bambi’s shirt lightly, his jaw clenching as he spoke harshly, spit flying out of his mouth as he threatened the young girl. The gun, which had loosely been held in the man’s hand was now pointed at her once more, “Didn’t ask for your fucking sob story, kid. Open your fucking phone and call him.”

Bambi was frozen in fear, it felt like ice was going through her veins as her phone was thrashed harshly into her shaking hand. At her hesitance to call him, the gun was pressed harshly into the skin of her ribcage as the man ordered again, this time with his words even more clipped, “Now.”

She knew the man wasn’t asking, it wasn’t even an order, it was a threat. This man was dangerous, and she was defenseless against him, if she even wanted a chance of survival she had to comply and hope that he prayed mercy on her and let her go when she realizes she isn’t of use. Shakily, the girl found Luke’s contact, swallowing back her tears, she pressed the call button.

It was silent in the big room in the warehouse other than the few rings the phone made out as the man made her put the phone on speaker. Surprisingly, only a few moments of the phone ringing, it stopped, connecting onto the call with the tall Australian himself.

“Hello?” Luke’s voice sounded out and the girl felt the tears begin to roll down her cheeks at the sound of his voice. It was familiar, it felt like home but at the same time, she felt her stomach clench. His voice was surprisingly soft, the only indication that Luke knew that it was his Bambi calling.

She knew that he had been expecting her to call most likely. She just wished it hadn’t happened like this. She opened her mouth to talk, but the words didn’t form as the tears fell harder, his voice sounding through once more, this time sounding more concerned, “Bambi? What is it?”

“Luke I-” She cut herself off, forcing her sobs to stay silent as she felt the man press the gun against her in annoyance, rolling his eyes before stealing the phone out of the girl’s hand.

“Hemmings, you know when I found out you had a new girlfriend I didn’t think she’d be quite as soft as this,” The man taunted as he stared down at the girl in front of him, “She’s not your usual type, is she? Where’d you find this one?”

“What do you want, Andrews?”

“I want you to meet me at the warehouse, you know the one I’m sure,” The man had rolled his eyes, not that Luke could have seen and a smirk rose to his face, “I’d tell you to come alone without any weapons but I won’t. Bring Hood, Clifford, Irwin, I don’t care. I can just wipe out you all at the same time.”

It was silent for a moment, “What makes you think I will?”

“Because if you don’t I’ll make sure the next time you see your little love she’ll have a bullet in her head. Wouldn’t want me to mess up her pretty little face, would you?” He looked back at the smaller girl again, sending her a malicious smile that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up, “You have an hour, Hemmings.”

With that, the man hung up, tossing the girl’s phone to the floor and crushing it swiftly with the heel of his shoe.

The next hour was taunting for the small girl. The man didn’t leave her side, almost as if he was afraid that she would escape. At that time, she tried to distract herself with anything, but the cold warehouse was bare apart from the chair she was stuck to and the clock that stood high on the wall in front of her, taunting her almost.

The time slowly went by, and the girl lost hope. Luke wasn’t coming for her. Soon enough, the clock struck the time that would have been an hour past the phone call. Then another ten minutes passed. Another five.

“He isn’t coming,” The girl had spoken up to the man, which most definitely wasn’t the smartest thing.

The man continued to look straight forward, scoffing, “Shut up girl. He will.”

He seemed so assured of himself, of Luke. For a man that hated Luke so much, he seemed to have a lot of faith in him. The silence, which had yet again filled up the room was broken by the sound of someone talking through the radio, yet it was too broken up to hear.

The man took the radio off of the side of his pants, holding it up to his face, “Jason? Tyson? Can anyone hear me?”

Only more crackling sounds were heard until it faded off into silence. The man’s face twisted into a scowl as he cursed under his breath, getting his gun out and marching towards the door. He wasn’t very smart, clearly, leaving the girl unguarded and alone; she was all of the leverage he had against Luke.

The sound of gunshots made the girl flinch, eyes screwing shut as she began to shake. She didn’t want to be here. She just wanted to be home, in her bed. Not Anna’s guest bedroom, but her own. She couldn’t deal with this anymore.

The fighting got louder and louder until she heard someone battering right against the walls of the room she was in. The door heaved open, but she couldn’t find it in herself to open her eyes, too petrified of who could be there if she did. Hands pressed against her skin as she jumped, trying to fight them away but to no avail as they untied her bound legs.

“Bambi,” The man breathed out, and suddenly the smell of a familiar cologne clung to Bambi’s nostrils, her tears going thicker.

Her eyes opened to find Luke in front of her, crouched down, throwing the rope away that she had been tied to. She threw herself into his arms, hands going around his neck, one hand in his curls. He held onto her like he was scared she was going to evaporate right between his arms, holding her close against his body.

“It’s alright dove, I’ve got you,” He whispered, trying his best to comfort the sobbing girl in his arms. His eyes were closed, thankful to have the girl back in his embrace, and had no plan to let go of her anytime soon, “I got you.”

Calum, Ashton, and Michael had covered his back, successfully eliminating all of the threats as he had raced to get his girl, to have her safe with him once more. They had entered the room to see their best friend crouched down, practically encasing the smaller girl in his arms as she cried, him comforting her. They deserved their privacy, even after everything that had gone on, but they knew they needed to get out of here soon.

The girl’s tears subsided for a moment as she pulled away from the man, eyes darting around and voice panicky, “You need to find Anna, she was-”

“I know, she called me. She’s safe. We’ve been trying to figure out a plan to get you back for three hours now baby,” After his reassurance, he used the hand that was on the back of her head to push her towards him slightly, kissing her forehead as he played with her hair.

Soon enough, he has his leather jacket off, leaving him in only his black button-up, splaying the jacket across her shoulders to keep her warm. The drive back to their condo is silent, but that’s exactly how it should be. Luke doesn’t take his hand away from Bambi for the entire ride, despite how dangerous it could be. He just wants to remind himself that she’s there; back in his arms.

Luke had to admit, the condo felt warmer now that she was back in it. She sat on the counter in the bathroom, hand holding onto Luke’s as if it was her lifeline as he ran them both a bath, helping her strip down and get into the bath before sliding in behind her, pulling her against him.

Bambi basked in the warmth that both the water and the person behind her gave her. They barely talked for the first ten minutes, enjoying the comfort that the silence brings with it.

“I love you,” Luke murmured, pressing a kiss against her shoulder, stubbly beard itching her shoulder.

“I love you too, Lu,” The girl twisted around to face the man, pressing her lips against his, bubble-covered hand getting bubbles on his face. She doesn’t mention the beard, far too tired to make unnecessary conversation. She, however, noticed the guilty and solemn expression on her boyfriend’s face, quietly stating, “It’s not your fault, you know.”

“I should’ve protected you,” He whispered, hand reaching up to cradle her cheek, softly tracing patterns on her cheek with his thumb.

“No, you were giving me space, as I wanted. You were being respectful of my boundaries, and I love you for that.”

“It put you in danger, Bambi,” His hand that was around her waist pulled her closer when he said that, “I’ll do better, I promise. I’ll protect you.”

“No, Lu. You can’t protect me forever,” The girl said, kissing him on the cheek before speaking again, eyes never moving from the gaze that she held with the blue-eyed man, “I wanna drive, go out by myself without Jacob. I wanna go to the club-”

“Absolutely not,” Luke scoffed, shaking his head, his protective side of the smaller girl coming out.

“Luke,”

She looked up at him, head tilted slightly to the side with an eyebrow raised. He stared down at her, holding his ground before he looked away, letting out a slightly exasperated and breathy laugh, “Fine. But you only go to the club with me and you never leave my side. And you’re taking boxing classes. MMA, whatever. I’m teaching you how to fight. You need to tell me where you’re going at all times and sometimes let Jacob drive you but you still need to leave when low-level gang members are here-”

“Luke.”

“Fine. But you need to keep your distance from them, ok?”

The girl smiled beamingly, kissing him on the lips. She knew that from a protective boyfriend like Luke, that was the best that she was going to get, “Thanks babe, love you!”

Luke grumbled something lightly that sounded like ‘yeah, love you too’ as he rolled his eyes, the girl starting to clamber out of the bath. Her hands were starting to wrinkle due to the water, showing her that she needed to get out. However, she nearly slipped, thankfully being held back by her boyfriend, who helped her get out safely.

Slipping a towel over her body, she sent her boyfriend a sheepish smile, “How’re you expected to defend yourself at the club if you can’t even get out the bath, Bambi?”

“Oh shut it, Lu,” The girl laughed, making the blond’s face crack out into a small smile, “You coming or what?”

“Yeah yeah, give me a minute,” With that, the girl left, leaving the man to shake his head with a smile on his face. They were both back, with each other, where they belonged.

#luke hemmings 5sos #luke hemmings #luke hemmings smut #luke hemmings x reader #luke hemmings gang #luke hemmings x you #luke hemmings x oc #luke hemmings x y/n #gang!luke hemmings x reader #gang!luke hemmings #gang!sos

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creativeashproductions · 4 years

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Songbird Shenanigans // Charlie Gillespie

IN WHICH: The reader will routinely sneak away from her band/hotel to continue her tour shenanigans in parking garages. A way for the young star to return to the stupid years where the concert venue was a car and the mic was the steering wheel. As each city comes and goes with the tour, one thing never changes, driving to parking garages to scream songs at the top of your lungs.

Warnings: Swearing, Mamma Mia songs (oops), and fluff

Words: 4.0k (with lyrics included)

A/N: There’s something endearing about Charlie randomly going a stranger in a duet and dance without a care. This was loosely inspired by the chaotic live they did when Jeremy and Charlie stayed at Owen’s place. I loved Charlie’s tropical shirt giving Animal Crossing vibes.

TO BE TAGGED SEND AN INBOX/ASK PLEASE!

Masterlist

A moment you had desired for a while finally came around in Oklahoma City during the free day between the two concerts. The pure quiet away from the interviews, photoshoots and demanding life of a musician. Yet despite wanting this time, you definitely felt bored, which only meant one thing.

A new video for your followers as you had done since the beginning of your successful career. Back before, you had the prominent following you had; now you would travel singing in your car, and then one video got viral. That elevated your following until you had signed a record deal with your brand new agent.

A series was then born of driving at night to the parking lots and garages in the city you temporarily visited. You'd park and sing any suggested songs from a previous video for an hour to see if a fan could find you. It was a fun game you had developed.

Y/N Y/L/N: Another installment of Songbird Shenanigans. From 9pm to 10:30pm, I'll be somewhere in Oklahoma City. Come find me for the prize!

Your agent both hated and loved the series as it brought attention to your career and songs but also was a hazard during the tour. The risk of losing your voice made your agent nervous, but the positives outweigh the negatives.

"What song are you doing?" Maddie asked from her chair in your hotel suite with a ratty book in her hand. Her rich dark hair pulled up in a high bun with a few pieces of bangs pulled down to hang free.

You didn't know if you could do what you do if you didn't have Maddie by your side as your singing partner and chief stylist. Maddie also always knew without looking on social media when you had a new installment coming.

"My most requested video is Train Wreck by-"

"James Arthur." Maddie snickered with her grey eyes pinned to the page she was reading faithfully. The book had seen better days, but it was her absolute favourite one by far and one of the only physical books she had.

"Somehow forgot you had it on repeat for a week straight." You snorted, shoving a hat on your head for warmth. A plain black coat pulled over your arms that matched the warm boots you had chosen, "I'll send you my location."

Maddie waved on hand in response, having known the routine since you first started this fun series. It allowed you a bit of your old life when the concerts you performed was solely in your car with the steering wheel as the microphone.

Judy, your agent, was sitting in the lobby with her binder surrounding her when she looked with a sigh. Without a word, she tossed the keys to the rented car she knew you'd need, so in each city, she rented one. A smile of gratitude shared before you were out the door with your hood up.

"Be careful!" Judy exclaimed just as the sliding doors closed behind you, sending you out in the cold night.

Almost instantly, your cheeks turned a light pink in the cold winter air, even if the walk to the war was short. As requested, the car was a newer model but one that would blend in with other city cars. It made finding you harder, but the windows couldn't be tinted.

"Here's to hoping I get a place with good acoustics." You muttered, starting the hatchback vehicle. Despite the cold winter weather, the road conditions were surprisingly okay, but then again, you were from a small town. Roads were shit in general.

You didn't bother playing music as you used the drive to find a parking garage and warm up your throat. Your vocal coach would have your head if you didn't warm-up, and then Judy would kill you even more.

You lucked out in a parking garage to a building that seemed to be a renovated warehouse with insanely cool windows. The metal was a dark shamrock green with a multitude of small rectangular glass between the metal. The panes swung open upwards in a fascinating design.

"Perfect." You muttered, signalling to turn into the parking garage that was easily accessed and without any trespassing signs. It was desolate, with cars parked here and there in the stalls.

A bright orange Subaru definitely took the cake as the most 'flashy' vehicle among the more nondescript ones. Not that it caught your attention when you lowered your windows marginally while simultaneously clipping the phone onto the dash. Immediately you double-checked for any apparent signs to your location before declaring it safe; with a tap of your finger, your Instagram live began.

"Welcome to another part of our Songbird Shenanigans. This time I'm in Oklahoma City for a two-day concert. The most requested song is Train Wreck by James Arthur."

Laying in the silence

Waiting for the sirens

Signs, any signs I'm alive still

I don't wanna lose it

I'm not getting through this

Hey, should I pray? should I pray

A natural instinct of closing your eyes as you got more into the music occurred. Your voice belted into the garage beautifully. Tons of comments appeared in the insta live chat of both supportive and haters.

username3: I suggested this song!!!

username88: Your voice goes perfectly with the song.

The song came to an end quicker than you would have liked since it was definitely one of your favourites to sing.

Unchain the reactions, I'm not ready to die, not yet

Pull me out of the train wreck

Pull me out, pull me out, pull me out

No action was helped back from taking a swig of water from the reusable bottle you had brought along. Your eyes scoured the comments for more suggestions or things that stuck out.

"Why don't you include hints in the Songbirds?” You read out from the comment section with a smile barely held back, "Why would I? You all know that my windows are often down, and even the most unoriginal locations have tells. There's been a few people that have found me."

Username13: I think I know where you are (insert heart emoji)

↳Username63: username13 where?! How do you know?

↳Username13: jatp is streaming all day and the guys are in a car. Same background

Your eyes read the short but interesting conversation between the two different accounts on something called jatp? Whatever that was.

"Any other requests?" You asked, scrolling through the suggestions, "Sing something from jatp? I'm sorry, guys, but I have no clue what that is? Is it a movie? OH! It's a show. My bad."

The comment section was flooded, "Okay! Let me look up the lyrics and the melody!"

Three males: a blonde and two brunettes, walked between the rows of both occupied and unoccupied parking spots. The blonde wearing a black t-shirt with BEANS written across the chest and the brunette with short slicked-back hair crowded the middle guy. All three pairs of eyes watched the iPhone stream the television series.

"I call shotgun!" Owen spoke as the car in question came into view, "We gotta Livestream in the car again!"

"Your neighbour sucks, man." Charlie groaned, nudging Jeremy to unlock the car when the older man hesitated.

"If we're going live in the car, we should cover your license plate," Jeremy suggested to a resounding agreement.

Charlie drove an obscenely vibrant coloured car that could be picked out quickly, so he didn't need any help in broadcasting his location. Owen grabbed the book from the passenger seat to angle it to lean against the plate.

"Done!" Owen called, racing back to climb into the car with his friends. The blonde-haired man bounced in his seat as the owner of the vehicle set up the screen.

In seconds, the streaming went from the app on the phone to the car's built-in screen to the boys' delight. In a moment of what some may call brilliance and others stupidity Owen went live on Instagram with Charlie joining him swiftly.

"Do you rem-"

Username76: Songbird chose a shitty location.

↳Username 39: Or we just got a Hail Mary hint

"Who is Songbird?" Charlie questioned, leaning closer to his friends in the front, catching a few comments.

The comments were mixed among other unrelated ones, but all had Songbird, Shenanigans or both words. The mystery was so intriguing the boys turned down the show to scour the comments for tidbits.

"Wait? Do you hear that?" Jeremy questioned, scanning the parking garage with his blue, green eyes. Soon his head was sticking out the window, "Someone is singing here."

Jeremy's hand turned the key of the car, "Is that-"

"Oh, no." Owen groaned, seeing that specific light appear in Charlie's eyes just as it did each time one of the songs came on. His pink beanie slid around his long blonde locks.

The two guys watched as the second oldest in their group did some kind of shimmy after pushing his phone to Jeremy. Jeremy's hand scrambled to get a grip on the phone as Charlie delved into his love for these songs. Sharing a look, Jeremy and Owen followed the Canadian to a car with a girl singing in the open hatchback car.

(Italics is you! Italics and bold is Charlie and you! Just bold is Charlie!)

When you were lonely, you needed a man.

Someone to lean on, well I understand

It's only natural

But why did it have to be me?

Your eyes remained shut as you neared the middle of the first verse. You completely stopped when a voice joined. Your e/c eyes met the twinkling brown of a handsome guy with the best voice you'd heard in a long time.

Nights can be empty, and nights can be cold

So you were looking for someone to hold

That's only natural

But why did it have to be me?

Your lips parted in a grin as you grabbed the hand being offered to be pulled out of the car; on your way, your hand nudged your phone. Your phone was in a mount attached to the roof of the hatch. When you followed the stranger, the phone turned in perfect view. Your free hand turned to hover over your forehead, legs bending to feign a swoon.

I was so lonesome, I was blue

I couldn't help it, it had to be you and I

Always thought you knew the reason why

Charlie beamed playing being shot by the arrow you pretended to shoot with a grin planted on your own lips. Charlie's hand flirted with your hip as you sashayed around his body from his left to his right. Hand grabbing a first full of his white with light teal with light pink design to tug him chest to chest.

I only wanted a little love affair

Now I can see you are beginning to care

But baby, believe me

It's better to forget me

In turn, Charlie grabbed your wrist to twirl you into his arms straight into an impressive dip with the toe of your shoe pointed to the far wall. Your fingers just barely caressing the rough paved lot.

"I'm Charlie," Charlie murmured during the instrumental between the chorus and the second verse. Your eyes scanned his features with an expression you would later be glad was hidden from the lighting in the garage.

"Y/N." You breathed, clutching his shoulders still low in the dip, hoping subconsciously that your breath was still fresh.

"Wanna finish this?" Charlie spoke, searching your eyes with his own; up close, you could see his eyes were a mixture of colours. You only nodded before he continued singing to the music.

Men are the toys in the game that you play

When you get tired, you throw them away

That's only natural

But why did it have to be me?

"Are you seeing this?" Jeremy whispered to Owen as they watched Charlie literally sweep a stranger off her feet. Owen could only nod as Charlie went into the next verse, still dancing as if he was in Mamma Mia 2.

Falling in love with a woman like you

Happens so quickly, there's nothing to do

It's only natural

But why did it have to be me?

Charlie spun you back away from his body in a graceful twirl your choreographer would be incredibly proud of. The moves you made somehow made sense, with the movements matching the spontaneous duet-er.

I was so lonesome, I was blue

I couldn't help it, it had to be you and I

Always thought you knew the reason why

Once more in his arms dancing, he dipped you once more as you finished the end of the last chorus breathing heavily. The two strangers staring intensely into each other's eyes with an intense look that had tensions in the parking garage.

I only wanted a little love affair

Now I can see you are beginning to care

But baby, believe me

It's better to forget me

"Intense." Owen chuckled as Charlie raised you back onto your feet with a matching grin to yours, "Oh! Look at the comments!"

Username24: Holy shit! They ooze chemistry!!

↳Username9: lol, okay Alex.

"You aren't a viewer, are you?" You breathlessly laughed, taking a step away from Charlie as the music faded away.

The equally breathless spontaneous performing partner laughed as well, "I heard the song and hoped for the best."

"Are you Songbird?" Came a voice from a few feet away. Behind the once upon a time stranger stood two males approaching slowly.

"Oh!" You gasped, turning on your heel to see where your phone was pointing, "Well, that's convenient! One moment."

Jeremy and Owen flanked Charlie as you repositioned the phone at the moment with practised precision. You kept the three people out of the shot for privacy reasons.

"There is about ten minutes away from the end of this installment being over. For the first time since we started this series, I had a duet." You playfully laughed, looking over at the trio, "It's completely up to my sudden partner, but would you like to meet your audience?"

Charlie simply shrugged, "Sure. They've seen you be serenaded by a stranger."

A short laugh came from the three individuals around Charlie as he moved into the camera frame with a large smile. As soon as he was in sight, the comment section went nuts, furthering when Owen and Jeremy came into view.

Username1: DREAM COME TRUE

↳Username4: omg jatp in Songbird Shenanigans?? Life accomplished.

You couldn't hold back the snort at the comments you could read quickly as they disappeared after new ones. The three guys couldn't help but chuckle as well.

"I've never seen these guys before. If you could introduce yourselves." You asked the three guests, to which each sent a reassuring smile to your hesitance.

"I'm Charlie Gillespie, and these are my friends Owen Joyner and Jeremy Shada." Charlie took the liberty of introducing both his friends and himself. His heart fluttered at the adorable smile that had appeared on your pretty face.

"I'm afraid this concludes this edition of Songbird." You apologized to the camera as the time passed the allotted hour and a half. The comments turned sad before most of them started sending questions, "I'll let you know when I do another edition! Bye for now!"

Your finger clicked the end button firstly before clicking the save button for when you would upload it to your account later.

"Thank you for doing that. I'm Y/N." You chuckled, shaking hands with Jeremy and Owen, who each grinned back, "So what brought you guys to the parking garage with three phones and a live-action Animal Crossing shirt?"

Amusement was found on all four young adults in the parking garage, pinning a gaze at the material. You had to admit you kinda adored the shirt, or maybe the person wearing it was the reason.

"We're trying to get Julie and the Phantoms to number one again." Owen offered as he displayed the live still going on his phone.

"That's a tv series. That was the second song I did on the live before Charlie joined the little concert." You told the boys all the while aware that thousands of people watched from the phone still streaming.

"The phone's about to die." Owen piped up, catching the single decimal number broadcasting the percentage. Without any prompting, he ended the live to save it solely for the little performance Charlie did.

"Did you save it?" Jeremy asked, lifting on his tiptoes to check the phone Owen had commanded for the last half hour. Like Owen, Jeremy wanted to save it solely for the stellar performance.

"So, how'd this series start?" Charlie questioned, pushing his hands into his pockets, ignoring the subtle glances of his best friend.

"I needed an escape from touring so many cities. It's reminiscent of the days before I was discovered. When my audience was the dials in my car and my family." You half-smiled, recalling all the times you had simply driven around to sing.

"You're a musician?"

"I am. I'm currently on tour for my second album. Every second or third city I'm performing in, I take the rented car to parking lots or garages to sing. I always have a prize for the fans that find me."

"Could I get your number?" Charlie hesitantly questioned. His features twisting with the manipulation of nerves.

His palms had gone clammy enough to inconspicuously wipe them on his legs; this version of Charlie was unfamiliar. Owen and Jeremy had only ever seen him as this bundle of joy and energy, not to say he didn't have his low days, instead of nervous. Owen slipped his fingers behind his back to cross them. He hoped his Canadian friend would get it.

"You don't leak mine, and I won't leak yours." Your e/c eyes twinkled with the brush of Charlie's warm fingers on your own. The new contact waiting for his information, "Maybe we can meet up with each other?"

"I'd love that."

Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York, Unspecified Date

The sounds of screams and heavy instruments blocked by the unique in-ears explicitly made for your ears alone. You'd heaved, catching a breath after such an energetic song you'd just performed for the sold-out venue. You just jogged to the side for a chug of water as your band switched instruments.

"Are you having fun tonight!" You asked the crowd who had fought tooth and nail for tickets. The crowd screamed back louder than before.

Selling out MSG for completely insane even after touring the country with your band three times. It was still a little jarring, going from a nobody with untapped potential to selling out concerts and very successful albums, in all honesty.

"That's what I like to hear!" You beamed, pushing a strand of your unruly hair away from your face. Your eyes momentarily cast to the side stage with the equipment hiding the crew, "I have a surprise for you. A couple years ago, I had a spontaneous duet partner during one of Songbird Shenanigans. I'd like to invite my fiance Charlie out here."

The crowd went nuts as Charlie wandered towards you from the side of the stage away from Owen, Jeremy and Madison. Charlie's hazel eyes scoured the oceans of your e/c eyes he got to wake up to each morning. Mostly when Julie and the Phantoms had been offered to open for you; to be frank, it was more of an unspoken co-headlining.

"Can we tell?" You asked, keeping the mic covered and away from your body. Your body bounced, waiting for the smile from him.

Charlie nodded, accepting the guitar from one of the crew members. It was a song you had written a few months back. Charlie had memorized the entire piece with the deep adoration he felt for it.

The couple perched on the bar stools brought to the middle of the stage with a secret smile. One that only they and their immediate family understood.

Three months ago, you had sat Charlie down in your home to play him a little song that changed everything.

Charlie placed the last bag of groceries on the counter when he felt arms wrap around his midsection. He immediately knew that it was you welcoming him home from a very short trip to the store. In a swift move, he had manoeuvred you to sit on the counter while he scooched himself between your legs.

"Hi." Charlie breathed, rising to press a kiss against the smooth skin of your cheek, leaving heat in its wake.

"I want your opinion on a song." You burst out, unable to refrain from showing him a song you had been secretly working on. The French Canadian was beyond intrigued by the sudden announcement from his fiance.

"Oh?"

"Come." You coaxed the man from the kitchen to the designated music room filled with instruments of all kinds—even a recent addition of a recording booth in the corner with high-end equipment.

You bypassed everything for the grand piano you didn't play as often as you wished to be able to. Your fingers brushed the ivory keys for a mere second before you began playing the melody.

I, I have known love before

I thought it would no more

Take on a new direction

Still, strange as it seems to be

It's truly new to me

That affection

The smile that grew across Charlie's expressive face was uncapturable from the best of the best; he adored your voice. He had a personal ringtone you had explicitly done for him a few months into the relationship.

I, I don't know what you do

You make me think that you

Will change my life forever

I, I'll always want you near

Give up on you, my dear

I will never

You thrill me, you delight me

You please me, you excite me

You're all that

I've been yearning for

I love you, I adore you

I lay my life before you

I only want you more and more

And finally it seems

My lonely days are through

I've been waiting for you

Charlie's frown, however, faltered as your face ever so slightly paled with trepidation coating your pretty irises. Your voice even quivered with nerves he'd never heard before, but it made sense from the third verse started.

I'll carry you all the way

And you will choose the day

When you're prepared to greet me

I'll be a good mum, I swear

You'll see how much I care

When you meet me

You finished the song with the last note drawn out ever so softly, freezing as the room went quiet once more. This song was definitely vulnerable and personal; you felt naked under Charlie's silent stare.

"You're really?" Charlie breathlessly chuckled, his wide eyes screaming disbelief.

After a few years together with an engagement ring on both of your fingers after you had both proposed to each other, with the relationship very serious, you two had decided to stop contraceptives and let everyone happen if it was too happen.

"Yeah." You laughed as he swept you off the bench into his arms, "We have little Birdie to prepare for."

"I love you so damn much." Charlie choked out, spinning the two of you around in his arms. The smile never fading as he drank in the special moment of learning you had created a life together.

PRESENT

"With the impending arrival of our child, I will be taking a break to prepare. Even though I wouldn't be performing, I will still do Songbird Shenanigans. I'll just have to up my game on staying as hidden as possible." You informed the audience as the song came to an end.

Next thing you knew, you couldn't discern between the crowd and your friends now on stage screaming. You were able to feel Charlie's hand on your barely-there baby bump and his lips pressed against your temple.

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#charlie gillespie imagines #charlie gillespie fanfiction #charlie gillespie x reader #jatp fanfic #luke patterson imagines #charlie gillespie #luke patterson #charlie gillespie imagine #caitsy and ash productions

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sellyoursoulforagoodfic · 4 years

Text

Aliit ori'shya tal'din Epilogue

Jango Fett x reader

Word Count: 1085

Summary: At last . . . my love has come along . . .

Note: Boba died to that sarlacc pit. Not Mandalorian compliant.

For years, Jango had wandered the galaxy as a spirit. Upon his death, his attachment to the clones, his sons, kept him tethered, doomed to invisibly watch their lives while unable to help them.

During the Clone Wars, Jango had found that many shared traits with him. Their loyalty to their assigned Jetii--much as Jango despised them--, their tenacity in battle, their gentle souls when not on the battlefield. Truly, they were his sons through and through. And yours. They were your boys too in ways. The oldest group, the ones he’d trained, told their little brothers the stories he’d shared about you, the woman who was their mother. You’d become a symbol of hope to them in spite of the fact that they’d never met you.

But one by one he’d had to watch them all die until that cursed Order 66. That Order may not have immediately killed their bodies, but it sure as shit crushed their souls. The handful that were able to shake the programming were the only ones that lived long enough to recover. Not too long after that, there was only one left. Boba. The one who’d kept his family name and armor all these years, keeping the old way alive even if he had to work for the empire to survive. Jango couldn’t find it within himself to be angry about that. The boy was a survivor, after all. And the money was good while it lasted.

And then even Boba passed. And Jango was finally free, free to join his family in whatever afterlife awaited him.

But first he allowed himself to rest and watch Tatooine’s twin suns set and rise and set again while he contemplated all he’d seen, what’d become of the galaxy in the years he’d haunted it. His people were truly gone now; the last bunch of Mandalorians that followed the ancient culture (and weren’t fanatics about it) were gone. What hurt his heart most about that was that Jango knew history wouldn’t even remember it thaht way. The galaxy would remember Death Watch and the Pacifists that butchered their culture but not the warrior people with honor that completed contracts at all costs.

A voice almost identical to his own pulled him from his thoughts, “Yo just going to stand there forever, buir?”

He turned, smile forming on his face as he recognized the blond before him. “Rex,” he breathed.

The man looked younger than when he died, and he was clad in his old armor, helmet clipped to the belt. “We’ve been waiting for you, you know.”

“You have?”

“The boys and I always knew you were watchin’ over us,” Rex explained simply. “But what I don’t get is why you’ve kept your wife waiting.”

Jango chuckled. “You’ve finally met her?”

“We all have,” he replied, amusement coloring his tone, “and she’s every bit as amazing as the stories said.”

“And she’s told all of you plenty of embarrassing things about me, I assume?”

“Naturally. Now come one. She was getting impatient when I left; I can’t imagine how she is now.”

He should have known. It was a beach that greeted his arrival into the afterlife, a perfect copy of that place you’d loved so much so long ago only now it was surrounded on all sides but oceanfront by other houses. Those belonged to his sons, he’d wager. And there was a bonfire with a few familiar faces gathered around it waiting for Jango’s arrival. Fives, Wolffe, Cody, and Echo sat on various logs. But most importantly you were there in the middle of them.

Not for long, though. As soon as your eyes met Jango’s, you were up and sprinting towards him. His arms locked around your body as you tackled him in a hug.

Silence hun heavily around the two of you, the small group of clones anxious about how this reunion would turn out.

Eventually, you leaned back to say, “What took you so long, asshole?”

Everyone--including Jango--bursed into laughter at that.

“All hese years, and that’s the first thing you say to me?” he questioned. “I had to watch out for them.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine, but also not what I’m talking about,” you rolled your eyes. “It’s been days!”

“Two days, sweetheart.”

“Exactly! And you haven’t even kissed me yet!”

“Yeah, Dad!” Fives called out. “Why haven’t you kissed her yet?!” The clone snickered as Cody reached over to slap the back of his head.

Now Jango was the one who rolled his eyes, but nevertheless he leaned down to seal his lips against yours.

A cacophony of cheers and wolf-whistles went up around the two of you until you parted.

“Now that’s more like it,” you panted, breath having been thoroughly stolen by your husband. Linking your hands with his, you asked, “Okay. Where’s my youngest?”

“He wanted to make his own way here,” Wolffe replied.

“And he has,” a new voice chimed in from the far side of the fire.

When he stepped closer, there was a moment where Boba and Jango sized each other up.

“Love the paint job,” Jango offered stiffly, heart firmly planted in his throat.

“Thought you might,” Boba replied with a small smirk. “You know. Since you hated the chrome.”

“I’m going to hug you now.”

“Okay, Dad.”

The embrace that followed was every bit was tight as the one Jango had shared with you, but it was shorter. When he turned back to face you, he saw that you had tears streaming down your face. “You alright?”

“The family’s all here,” you said thickly. “At last.”

“Well in that case: Boba, this is your mother.”

The boy--no, man could only walk over and repeat the hug he’d just shared with Jango.

While your arms were thrown around Boba’s shoulders and you were standing on your toes to be a comfortable height to hold him, Jango could just barely hear you murmur, “I’m so proud of you,” next to Boba’s ear.

No one commented when Boba hid his face in your shoulder to hide the tears that fell upon hearing those words.

You met Jango’s gaze over your youngest’s shoulder and gave him a watery smile. “We did good, Jango,” you told him. “These are our people; these are our sons, our boys through and through.”

“Here, here!” Rex cheered in a call that was immediately echoed by everyone present.

Yeah, Jango agreed silently. We might not have been there, but they sure did turn out good.

#jango fett x reader #jango fett imagine #jango x reader #jango imagine #reader insert #star wars imagine #sw imagine

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thebmatt · 3 years

Text

FFXIV Write 2021 Prompt #22: Fluster

Fluster – make someone agitated or confused.

Aetherytes were constantly busy. You learned pretty quick to move away from one as soon as you manifested next to one, lest someone suddenly appear next to you and knock you both down.

Old Man Franks, tired as he was, almost forgot this, and only barely missed being clipped by an arriving Roegadyn armed with an enormous spear on his back.

He quickly moved out of the plaza and cast a quick glance about, and then raised his hand to his ear, activating his linkpearl

Rheika’s voice answered him. “Heya Franks. You get to the Toll already?”

“Yeah, I’m here. I take it you’re not?”

“Not yet. Fearless isn’t answering her ‘pearl, so Dahk and I went to her place. Ranaa said she and Makoto went to the Sekiseigumi HQ, so we’re headed there. Turns out she left it at home. Again. Anyway, go on in and figure out what’s going on, we’ll be there as soon as we find her. “

“Copy that. Hopefully whatever this is can be resolved fast. I need to catch up on some sleep.”

“Did you stay up all night working on cross-world portals again?”

“I admit nothing, see you soon.” He disconnected the link before she could chastise him further and headed into the Seventh Heaven bar. A few of the regular patrons tossed greetings his way, which he returned as best he could in his sleep-deprived state,

The bouncer who guarded the door to the Rising Stones nodded at him and stepped aside. Franks strode in, turning to shut the door behind him quietly. Darn thing tended to slam, he’d been meaning to install something to slow it down. Maybe after some rest today.

“All right, Tataru, what is this emergency…about…” Midway through his sentence, he’d turned to face the room. Sitting at one of the table were Tataru, Y’shtola, and someone who shouldn’t be there. Someone who couldn’t possibly be there. Because she was dead.

Standing up at the table, hand over her mouth and tears streaming from beautiful sea-green eyes that he hadn’t witnessed in years, was a viera woman that happened to be the spitting living image of the woman he’d married so long ago.

She dropped her hand, looking for all the world as happy as the day they’d wed. “Hello, my love.”

Twelve forfend, it sounded like her too. “What the hells is this? No…you’re dead, this is some kind of trick!” He pointed a shaking finger. “You’re a godsdamned Ascian, you HAVE to be! How the hells did you make someone look like her??”

She ran to him. “Darling, no, it’s me, I swear it!” She moved in close, trying to embrace him, but he backed away, shock and anger on his face.

“Fandaniel, that you? Because you just crossed a fucking line, you piece of filth, and I’m going to make you regret it!”

The woman looks over to Y’shtola, panicking. “He…what’s happening, who does he think I am?”

Y’shtola has already moved next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and holding the other with her hand. “Aleister, I swear to you on my life, this is not a trick. Do you remember how Rheika unmasked Elidibus, by tricking him about the Amaro? It proved that an Ascian can’t access memories of their hosts, do you recall that?”

He had stopped backing away, but his eyes didn’t waver from the woman who looked like his wife. He nodded.

Y’shtola looked to her. “Tell him something that only you would know. Something you’d never reveal under even the gravest duress.”

Her eyes danced back and forth, considering, thinking. Finally, they widened and she smiled again. Closer and closer, she approached him, but now he didn’t move. Could….could it be?

She whispered in his ear and he cried out in joy. His world faded, and there was nothing more than the woman in front of him. He pulled her in, crushing against her. Her arms wrapped around his back and pulled in just as strong. So many sensations, so many memories flooded him, and he took all of them in. The scent of her, the feel of her living body preseed to him, the sound of her voice as she whispers her love between sobs. He could not reply, too overwhelmed to cry and breathe.

Tataru moved next to Y’shtola, unable to take her eyes off of the embracing pair. “It…it really is her.”

Y’shtola nods.

“But…how?”

“I think that story is best told to us from them. Once everyone has joined us. I think our resident Old Man may finally be ready to open up, since the loss that caused him so much pain is no longer lost at all.”

Finally, Franks was able to catch his breath and he pulled back to look at her. He kept her close, arms wrapped around her waist, as though he feared she might vanish into mist if he let go. For her part, she likewise kept her arms solidly behind his neck. “Gwen….I…I don’t understand. They…multiple people told me they saw you get taken by Sylvanas’ death squads. We…” He hiccuped. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he kept going. “We scattered when we heard you got taken…that’s, that’s how I ended up here.”

She smiled. “They were right. I was put in with dozens of others, taken to a camp somewhere in Hillsbrad, couldn’t tell you where exactly. We were lined up. Living prisoners had their names taken, checked off a list, then executed right then and there. Some were….were fed to the soldiers. Others to plaguehounds. But for whatever reason, they didn’t kill the Forsaken. Maybe she had sentimentality about us, or maybe she planned to do it later, but we were just shoved into a makeshift prison and left there. We got food occasionally, but no interaction otherwise. Just neverending boredom. Zenjulin and Beskar finally found the place and killed off the few remaining loyalists that still manned it, freeing us.”

She shuddered. “By that point, the Banshee had fucked off to…wherever it was she went. I don’t know. Zenjulin explained it, but I wasn’t listening very well. Or he was missing details, I don’t know. Anyway, he said that our allies were being brought back together to stop her and whatever else she’d brought with her, but that you were still missing. I told them I refused to do anything until I found you. They understood, and I started tracking your movement. Which was hard, because you’d concealed them well, but eventually I made it to Stranglethorn and discovered the cave, the one Y’shtola tells me you came to that same one and it brought you here.”

Franks looked over to Y’shtola, who smiled. “I went there to take some readings, and found her emerging out of the cave. Once I realized who she was, I brought her straight here and had Tataru contact you.”

“Thank you.”

She shook her head. “There is nothing to thank.”

Franks looked back to Gwen. “I… gods, Gwen, you look like the day I asked you to marry me. Even despite all the years, both living and dead, I recognized you right away. I…I actually hallucinated last night…I saw you. Worked for too long without sleeping again. You looked…almost exactly as you do now.” He chuckles. “You uh…you didn’t have these, though”.

He reached up to stroke the fur of her ears. She made a very happy noise at the touch. “Okay, those are definitely a little sensitive, good to know.” She cuddled up against his shoulder, enjoying the sensation.

Eventually he stopped and pulled back again, looking her over. Everything was the same, her long graying hair, two green eyes, one slightly darker than the other, on a heart-shaped face. Everything save the ears. He vaguely recalled the shape of her human ears, but they were no longer there.

She giggled. “I…I don’t know what changed me or why it gave me my youthful body with these ears, honestly. You, though, you look a little bit older than the day you asked me to marry you. Maybe…around our 10th anniversary, I’d guess? Bit more white though, not that I mind. That haircut’s definitely a lot better, someone’s been taking care of you on that front, I see.

She placed her hands on his arms, rubbing them appreciatively. She moves them to his chest and down to his abs, sculpted like they’d been in his younger days from long hard hours of farmwork. “And I see you’ve definitely been taking care of the rest of you. Been way too long since I’ve seen these muscles.” she purred.

Franks laughed nervously. “Well, um….you get a second chance like this, you tend to appreciate and take care of things you took for granted…before.” His hands slipped down to her hips.

Their eyes met, growing lidded. Slowly, he ran his hands up her sides, appreciating every ilm of her curves, ghosting the sides of her breasts. He pulled her close, and their lips met in a kiss they’d not been able to share in decades.

Memories of all of their favorite intimate moments with the other flooded their minds, and both had a realization that those moments could now not only be remembered, but now relived. The rest of the world had long been forgotten and their kisses and touches became more heated when the world suddenly reminded them that it was still there.

“Ahem”

The pair broke, looking in the direction of the voice. The other Warriors of Light and the senior members of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn had all entered and were staring at the pair in varying levels of confusio

Rheika spoke up. It had been her voice that broke into their moment, Franks realized. “I hate to interrupt your moment, I swear I do, but uh…didn’t we have some kind of emergency? Also, um, who is this? Not that you don’t deserve to kiss someone that gorgeous, but I feel like I’m missing part of the story here.”

Franks laughs. Both he and Gwenefyr have turned beet red having realized just how much of a crowd their reunion had attracted. “Ah, yes. Um, well, everyone…allow me to introduce you all to Gwenefyr Franks. My…not quite late wife, as it turns out”

She giggled at that. “Hi, everyone. Y’shtola’s told me a little about you all. I…think I recognize at least some of you from her stories.”

Franks looked over everyone. Thancred, Estinien, and Alisaie weren’t even masking their suspicion. Dahkar, Alphinaud, and Rheika wore expressions of shock. Fearless looked like she was going to explode with joy. Urianger just looed perplexed.

It was Thancred who stepped forward. “Franks….are you sure? I mean, we’ve seen the Asicans puppet dead bodies before..

He immediately shook his head. “No, no, I thought the same thing. But remember, Elidibus didn’t have access to Ardbert’s memories so Y’shtola asked her to tell me something only she would know. It…it’s definitely her.”

Gwen took his hand and looked to the gunbreaker. “Thancred, right?”

Thancred nodded.

“Y’shtola told me you’d probably be the hardest to convince. I don’t know what to say or do to prove to you that I’m not a…..Asican, was it? But I’ll do whatever it takes to prove it to you. To all of you. Because I’m not going anywhere.” She looked up to her husband. “Right?”

He looked right back to her, his eyes sad. “I…don’t think I can go back there again. Not if it means…going back to the way our forms were.Are you…okay with that? With leaving it all behind? I promise, this place is…it’s worth it.”

She nodded. “I don’t think I can either. Azeroth has taken enough from us. And the others…they told me they won’t be surprised if we don’t return to the fight. They’re prepared to keep working towards the dream, but they’ll have to do it without us. I’m not going anywhere without you, love. We have a second chance at actual life and I’m not going back to a world without it or without you.”

Alphinaud speaks up. “Apologies, but did you say Azeroth? I’ve not heard of such a place.”

Franks nods. “Yeah. That’s….that’s the other reason I’m pretty confident she’s not an Ascian. And it’s a story most of y’all long overdue for hearing. And now that I have…gods I can’t believe I have you back…ahem. Well, there’s just no point in hiding it anymore. Gather round…time I told the full story of where I….where we are actually from.”

#Final Fantasy XIV #FFXIV 2021 Writing Challenge #oldmanfranks #Aleister Franks #Gwenefyr Franks #Rheika Aliapoh #oh I am so happy I got to write this reunion.#I tried writing the time they were reunited in WoW and it just felt unnatural and weird.#This is so much better

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spacetwiga · 4 years

Text

leave c!phil out of bullshit 2k21 -- a not so tiny post by a new enthusiast

As someone who finds both common fanon and actual canon to be quite fun, I really think the general DSMP fandom would benefit greatly from a few things in general: the greatest, in my opinion, is learning to accept that popular fanon won’t usually be the canon you receive. Another, of course, is that POVs are golden, but with these two things being flimsy in being accepted, they are the major flaws that cause about 90% of the absolute messy takes that gain traction, oftentimes poisoning a canon character's ability to exist in the story.

My biggest beef regarding this comes from how y’all treat c!Phil, so here I am, being annoying on main side!

TL;DR... Just because someone acted like like a guidance to others, doesn’t always mean that they'll want to be the father figure role for everyone that breathes. Similarly, pinning down a character on a single trope is wack, so don't be surprised if they grow away from it.

Baby’s first little dsmp rambling below!

(Warning: it's long as hell)

The Dream SMP plotline is not written out like most popular media. With so many moving parts in the form of daily streams and the wonderful tool of live improvisation, it makes perfect sense that such a giant cast would not always be on the same page. Adding onto that, it also makes more sense that a vast majority of the cast will be placed into supporting roles, as the story needs to have characters that serve as narrative anchors and others that function as the links in a chain, all weathering the storm that is the plot.

Screentime, of course, plays a major factor into canon exposure -- in terms of the Dream SMP, POV matters equally, if not more, too.

It’s a pretty neat way of showing things, but in the end, the fanbase has a lovely (read: godawful /lh) way of analysing characters, particularly when it relates to how they interact with others from their fave character’s POV. The tendency to analyse things from a single character's POV is fine, but not when attempting to critique the greater whole of a conflict. Both sides, no matter how wrong they may seem to be, matter.

Adding onto the fact that everything is live, there are things that will spiral out of control, casual words being skewed and thus having the potential of a single line seemingly contradicting the entire ‘story’ that the fanbase has made. If it directly affects a fave's POV in particular, one is more likely to take offense, as bias immediately bars one from trying to see the other person's side of things.

POV is important.

Which brings me to c!Phil, and how critics tend to ignore his perspective to prop up another character, or justify the tearing down of another.

Improvisation is both a blessing and a curse; the fanbase, however, loves to test out the latter. With it, the fanbase starts crafting tales to justify it...And so begins the mess that is c!Phil discourse.

Say it with me, folks: c!Phil is not supposed to be your fave’s fluffy father figure... unless you’re c!Wilbur!!!

😃☝🏾Dadza is good...👉🏾😎👉🏾 But fandom wants the excessive, idealized version.

-- birb 2k21

Family dynamics are generally loved for their potential for comfort, particularly those of a found family nature. Fandom in general tends to lean into them wholeheartedly, with most major bases having at least one prominent group present; SBI, of course, is no different. From fanart to popular fanfiction, it's arguably the biggest group dynamic alongside the Dream Team, and for that, a precedence was set.

c!Phil, if he ever joined, would fix everything! All of the ‘kids’ would turn to their new mentor and everything would turn out fine! This all knowing, morally just character will chuckle at their antics and wacky hijinks will follow! Fun times, right? /s

The hope for it, however, has long since been shattered, and frankly, good for him!

To go a little ooc, cc!Phil has stated multiple times that, while he was friendly with a lot of the cast as c!Phil, his only paternal link (at least biologically) lies with c!Wilbur. Simple, right? It should be -- there are multiple clips of him saying this -- but fans choose to ignore it in their critiques, generally citing favouritism or downright neglect for the character’s flaws. From 'favoring' Techno (who, in canon, holds the highest link in friendship outside of c!Wilbur's familal link) to 'neglecting' to visit Tommy (who he barely knew, and also assumed, like many others, that he was fine), these critiques weigh heavily on the scale that judges Phil’s so called father figure trope.

The story, however, has only leaned into (and persisted with) that for c!Wilbur alone, and adding onto it, there is an established acknowledgement from both ccs. That confirmation should hold the most weight, especially since both Phil and Wilbur seem alright with it. Even so, that familial has yet to be explored much for both characters, particularly regarding c!Phil, who has his debut (at least narratively) in a scene that feels opposite to the classic fatherly role.

c!Wilbur denounced accepting that helping hand to fall entirely into his explosive end, setting a precedence unlike most fatherly types arriving to save their kid. Usually, fandom narrative would love a close save, father and son uniting to heal and build up what was broken, but c!Phil’s entrance inks his story in failure. Angsty, right? We love angst!

And yet, as the story ticks on, the bad takes pile up.

Why? Well, I’l used to think that it is a “funny haha” type thing; a way to grieve for a character that was lost, as Alivebur was genuinely a great character. However, with the plot slowly progressing c!Phil’s story to evolve away from the ‘mentor the kids’ trope , I should have seen a storm on the horizon.

It should have been seen from the moment he stabbed c!Wilbur in the chest, but optimism is one hell of a smokescreen.

Built up fanon, however, is probably the greatest fog to ever exist.

There are lines before the button room confrontation that paint a picture of Wilbur seeking out the approval of his father (who seemed distant, at least from his POV), as well as hints to the SBI dynamic, but with the countless dismissals/retcons from CCs involved, as well as little to no consistent canon acknowledgement of this team dad role...Why base an entire hate piece of c!Phil just because popular fanon isn’t real?

Why, for the sake of building up a well rounded character, would one place the title of a communal parental figure on a grieving father who has little attachment to the community involved, especially when most of them are too busy delving into their own issues?

Furthermore, why go for Mr. Philza Minecraft: Angel of Death, CEO of KEKW, Functioning Immortal????

It’s madness, luv, and frankly, antis cannot let c!Phil process any of his grief (or flesh out his character) without his contributions being fatherly. His role has been idealized to the point where he is not a character on his own, but an accessory to the happiness of other characters. That is not how the world works, and in a conflict riddled server like the dsmp, arguing that it should be like that is counterproductive.

c!Phil had his own shit to deal with, and as he slowly uncovers how fucked up the server actually was, he merely adapts to it. He learns to play the game by his own rules, and people become mad that he’s succeeding in his own way. It's as simple as that, particularly when referencing his initial exposure to the world he now inhabits.

c!Phil is a man who used to hear of his son’s success from the letters he received, words spinning tales of won revolutions and newfound friendships. To a father, those letters are more than enough to assume that all is well, and with it, he had no reason to check on his son, who was already old enough to be carving his path alone. For him to arrive and see just how broken his son actually was, and then, in front of faces he only vaguely knows, kill said son... There's a lot to take in.

He shouldn't have had to care about L'Manberg in those moments, not when he had his son in his arms, dead by his own goddamn weapon; his son who, to his knowledge, was doing pretty well up until he caught wind of his plot. Yet, he does.

He gives them the benefIt of the doubt, even ignoring the one person he has shown to have deep history with (c!Techno) to assist the nation in defeating the withers and rebuilding what was lost.

c!Phil stays in a nation that has seemingly brought his son right into his demise, holding in that grief to help people who he assumes have the chance to rebuild, to reform. For a moment, he trusts that the system can turn into something positive, offering to hunker down and do what he can to help. That’s the start of a fatherly type role for most -- with many expectations rising from fans to ‘fix’ all these traumatized characters.

In another plot, perhaps critics could have gotten the tropes they want from c!Phil, but to blame the character for reacting negatively to a world he barely knew, right after seeing it ruin his son and target a friend...Maybe the need for a "father figure" only stems from making their faves happy.

Characters that don't directly support your fave are not inherently awful characters. Critique based on that alone is...flimsy, really, but honestly, you can use to to show how they process things.

Which brings me to the events leading up to Doomsday, and with it, the steady rise of c!Phil’s defining traits.

Say it with me, folks: c!Phil is one of the most loyal members on the server, but loyalty doesn’t mean he's blindly following along!

😃☝🏾Butcher Army take this L👉🏾😎👉🏾 Found it in the L’Mancrater

-- birb 2k21

The butcher army arc, while nestled among the mainline story of Tommy’s exile (which I will not even mention, because those dadza takes about visiting may deserve a post on their own), allows for c!Phil to see into the minds of those who had once been with (or even against) his son’s plans. Sure, he may be witnessing them after the eve of their newfound traumas, but this is an important observation to make when comparing how easy it was to denounce his affiliation to them and side with c!Technoblade.

Unlike the new Administration, slowly dipping deeper and deeper into their own form of power hunger, c!Technoblade’s base desires had never wavered. His trust in others, however, had, still nursing the sting of a betrayal, but with no conflict in sight. He is reforming, finding comfort in his solitude, and still maintaining contact with those he trusts.

Techno's Compass, for one, is a major example of their mutual trust. Despite being on opposing territories, they are civil enough to trust each other, just like old friends.

Thus, when you take two old friends who are more than used to conflict -- one grieving and one betrayed, but both seeking neutrality -- it shouldn’t have surprised the antis that c!Phil would place c!Techno’s whereabouts (and life, mind you) over some government he barely knew.

And yet, above all else, c!Phil starts off as a neutral party for everyone's sake, forgoing potential conquest for peace.

To c!Phil and c!Techno, it’s like fighting back to back, knowing that one can always trust the other to fend off those just waiting to take advantage of your blindspot, while also quelling the need to imagine your partner turning around and doing the same. That sort of friendship is forged through many, many hardships.

They betray what little trust he had built in them. That’s on them.

c!Phil is aware how untrusting c!Techno is, and while c!Techno feels safe enough to give his all for c!Phil, he never exploits it to get ahead, which is something L'Manbergians felt okay with doing.

They take a book out of the playbook used on c!Techno, for c!Techno.

They went after yet another person who was close to him, using their power and influence to hold an execution under the guise of seeking justice. If c!Wilbur, at least pre-corruption arc, sent letters to his father, one would at least expect some of his old ideals of freedom and fairness to leak through into his friends, right? To see those c!Phil assumed would hold similar ideals immediately skew towards a darker, brutal side, particularly in threatening others to get what they wanted...Well, shit hit the fan.

c!Phil does not have that strong relationship with any former L’Manbergians, and despite there being potential for such, it didn't work out that way; instead, however, those characters manage to mistake his kindness for weakness. They take his preferred neutrality as a way to exploit him, to gain in such a way that he lost agency...

No more Mister Nice Dadza, and honestly, he’s justified in that notion.

They’ve lost his trust, time too short to have gained that strong link like c!Techno’s or c!Wilbur’s, and with it, came the inevitable association with Doomsday.

c!Phil knew c!Techno’s intentions from the beginning -- which had only wavered into dormancy because he had grown tired of fighting, understanding that the cycle he wishes to break is not worth his efforts -- so the agreement in participating is effortless.

c!Dream was there too, of course, but in their mutual quest for eradication, it’s made canon that c!Techno and c!Phil hid away most of their arsenal, despite seeming overprepared. They have no loyalty to c!Dream; they’re smart enough to play along, however. He was a means to an end.

There’s no lies present in their relationship; c!Phil needed someone who didn’t try and pull wool over his eyes, and c!Techno let him see.

c!Techno needed someone who wouldn't stab him in the back, and c!Phil stayed true as his hidden sword.

Which is why, as the two joined forces, ideals aligning and power synergized, they didn’t think twice about nuking the nation to bedrock. Mutually agreeing that the system needs to die, they did what they could, and they succeeded.

How cool of them, tbh LMAO.

New L’Manberg tugged too hard at the sleeping tiger’s tail; they shouldn’t have expected it to roll over.

Their openness to each other was known.

There was no need for underhanded plays, for hidden betrayals, for undisclosed words.

Their loyalties were strong.

They were in sync.

In conclusion (maybe, maybe not...this shit is long holy heck)

😃☝🏾 I may hate this analysis in 30 minutes👉🏾😎👉🏾 Or I may make a part 2. Fuck it!

-- birb 2k21

And that’s what makes c!Phil an interesting character: He tends to be critiqued in reference to chatacters who have very well wronged him, have no affiliation to him or get associated to him through popular fanon. There's a lot to cover that I haven't (from Ghostbur to the whole Tommy 'dilemna') but overall I'm digging what I have now and if I ever get more energy, I'll continue!

c!Phil enthusiasts, I hope I did you proud LMAO. It's my first forray into this side of tumblr 👉🏾👈🏾 I'm a lurker.

c!Phil antis, you can either act respectful or go argue with a wall. I got experience dealing with antis on Tumblr; I am immune to BS.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed. Signing off!

- BIRB.

#dream smp #dsmp #philza #ph1lza #this one's for the c!phil enthusiasts hello hi ily all #I have spent the entire afternoon writing this while the power is out lmaoo #fandom leave my mans philza minecraft alone challenge #god i don't even know how long this is I'm so sorry #i let a little bit of my c!techno enthusiasm shine through too

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violexides · 3 years

Text

The DreamSMP Explained (By Someone Who Has Never Watched Any DreamSMP Stream)

cracks knuckles. okay, fucking FINALLY doing this. ahem.

Couple things to preface with, will keep this brief.

This isn’t entirely blind. One of my best friends has helped out in places, just because I wanted to hit on everything (accurate or not), and I know mutuals/friends who post and write about DreamSMP (though how much of that is AU or canon-typical, I can’t say. I can’t tell). I’ve never seen a single stream, but I’ve seen a few clips. So, my understanding is a bit more than the title may imply, but still not a lot. Sorry.

Also, this will be very, very long (near 2k words). All under the cut, will TW this with themes of abuse, death, manipulation, unreality, hallucinations, and me having an abrasive sense of humor where I revel in the glee of calling these guys European twinks. Though, speaking of. This is ALL about the actual characters, not the people. I don’t know anything about most of these actual streamers, so, no hate to them. In fact, I think they’re pretty cool for having come up with a… somewhat coherent… narrative, all through using Minecraft as a medium. Anyway.

Sigh. Without further ado,

So. There’s this place. Made by Philza, AKA God, AKA one of like six different gods. Philza, born from the womb acting like someone’s 43 year old uncle, has three kids. Wilbur, Tommy, and Tubbo. There are other people here, with some scattered ancestry that raises some questions, but I don’t really care who fucked an Enderman and had an 8’0 tall kid (Ranboo DNI).

There are also places! Sometimes! On a good day, there are actual, intact locations. We’ve got hits like “The Badlands”, which I think was taken from about three different dystopian novels I read in third grade, “El Rapids” (Quackity, Subpoena (autocorrect wins this round), and Karl made this one), “Pogtopia”, no comment on this one, and “L’Manberg”, which Wilbur made.

Only one of these is going to be important.

So, might be a good time to say this: I don’t know what the inciting incident of DreamSMP is? I don’t know what was the catalyst for all this shit, but I’m going to take a guess and say Wilbur blowing up L’Manberg had something to do with it.

… That’s going to be a pattern, by the way. Just. Stick with me here.

So, Wilbur is an older child who read the Hamlet parts in literature class and can only cope by ripping down the very creations he has and taking the entire world down with him to hell. Which is to say, he throws a pity party after Jschlatt (some bitch who abused Quackity, that’s another trend, yippee) wins an election and decides to blow up the fucking kingdom and kill Jschlatt.

Little does Wilbur know, the devil may work fast, but Jschlatt getting a fucking stroke and dying out of nowhere works faster.

I’m not kidding. He gets a stroke, he dies, and Tubbo takes over. I’ve tried to puzzle out the government structure of DreamSMP for a while and have drawn zero conclusions. In any case, Wilbur also tells Philza, his… father…, to kill him. And Philza fucking does? For some reason, like, holy shit.

Anyway. Wilbur is now a ghost. So is Jschlatt. The… life system, on this server, is really strange and I don’t know how to fully explain it. Just know that nothing has permanence here.

I’m going to throw this out here because I don’t know when it’s relevant, but I wrote down something about Karl being in a place called the In Between. I don’t know how the hell he got there or what the hell he’s doing. This might be where the discs are? I can’t explain the discs. I… think they are fighting over the discs? Don’t know why, Wilbur makes music himself, I feel like you have enough to go around.

(Stream Saline Solution it reminds me of my best friend only if you want okay thx)

L’Manberg gets blown up again. This time, Techno did it. He did it just after giving this speech about Theseus, which, jokes aside-- the writing of DreamSMP is actually really good. That was all done on improv, and I did watch an animatic with some of the audio from it, and damn. I’m a whore for metaphor and I love this for him.

This happens, and Ranboo and Tommy decide to do a little hehe and burn down George’s house. Who is George? Good question: a king. Of what? Good question: call me the antithesis of a Ranboo kinnie and get me some discs because I hear no answers.

Dream gets pissed off by this (who gave him authority, I don’t know) and builds a wall. He for some reason decides that if Tommy, and only Tommy, breaks some rules, the wall will stay up forever. So, naturally, Tommy immediately yells at him, and Tubbo gets pissed (what happened to the whole, who are you without me, yourself, thing?). Dream exiles him, which is bad enough, but then Dream burns down his house, so now he’s double exiled.

Dream kins Julius Caesar but Julius Caesar does not kin Dream and I think that’s important.

(It had to be important enough for me to literally go back and edit this in, for no reason, because I think I’m really fucking hilarious.)

Techno takes in Tommy and shows him his super secret cave of evil, which Tommy promptly screams at. Philza and Ranboo visit sometimes, but mostly Tommy just sits there. Dream says “fuck you” to Techno, but Techno decides to wage war on L’Manberg, so Quackity and co. come over to try and kill Techno, but Techno kills Quackity with a pickaxe, but Quackity has three lives for some reason, and then Dream blames Ranboo for blowing something up for literally zero reason, and can you tell how tired I am.

Ranboo sees a smiley face in his notebook and zones the fuck out while Dream tries to kill… Tommy? No, Tubbo. No, fuck, no it was Tommy. I don’t know why people suddenly care about it n- NO, NO IT WAS TUBBO, he is TRYING to kill TUBBO.

I hate Europeans.

Ahem. Dream goes to jail, but he has books in jail, which is a horrible idea. Everyone knows that if you give a war criminal some novels he’ll accidentally haunt someone else’s dreams and launch psychological warfare with the prison guard, Sam, who has zero idea what he’s doing because he probably didn’t sign up for this.

Also, I’m gonna say this here because I don’t know when it will fit in. There’s this place. Called… the Egg. Now, I don’t know what goes on in the Egg. I don’t know what the Egg is. I don’t know who decided to name all these fucking things, because I think the Egg is just a box made of bedrock. I think Ranboo hallucinates about it, but Ranboo hallucinates about everything so I’m not really sure. I’m going to call it here and say that this is probably a bad sign.

People are trying to talk to Dream. First BadBoyHalo, who gives Ranboo this little note from Dream with a smiley face. Or maybe that was SapNap. Either way, Ranboo hallucinates seeing Dream, and then actually sees Dream but he thinks he’s hallucinating? I don’t know.

Then we get Tommy. Basically he kind of comes in here and Sam, being a good prison guard, allows Dream to beat Tommy to death and then revive him (don’t ask about the revivals just pretend it makes sense please). He tells Tommy he’s also going to revive Wilbur which Tommy isn’t a big fan of, considering that Wilbur, uh. Vague hand gestures. You get the schtick. Hopefully. I don’t know.

Anyway. Uh. Quackity loses his shit, also.

As in he talks to Jschlatt, the ghost of his abusive husband. Makes a deal-- if Quackity here loses, he revives Jschlatt. I don’t know what the winning conditions are, but, thankfully, they don’t matter because Quackity loses damn near instantly.

So he goes to Dream and Sam gives him really powerful gear for no reason. Dream is a bit terrified by this situation, and Quackity is like “give me the fucking book”, and then we never find out what happens because Quackity ends up covered in blood about to blow up El Rapids. I hadn’t expected to mark Quackity off on the demolitionist bingo, but hey, all’s fair I guess. My next bets are on Tubbo or whichever bitch became god of the sea.

(I also made a joke to my friend about me kinning Quackity (the character not the streamer could you fucking imagine), to which they said “you’d torture someone for information”? So. I guess Dream, uh. Hm. That explains why Quackity was bloodied. Uh. Oops. Don’t know why he’s playing Poker, though.)

So, for my sanity, as we come to a close, I’m going to start listing lore details that I don’t know nearly enough about but are probably important. Just… bullet point them. Might be a bit tacky of me but I have shit to do, dammit. By that I mean, I don’t have shit to do, but I’ve had this doc open for literally 1-2 weeks and I just want to be freed.

List Of Other Shit That Happened:

Ranboo started an arg, so there’s a character named Z now. Can’t believe the kid I knew in middle school who didn’t know where the Middle East was made it into the dreamSMP omg!

Tubbo did something immoral, and we still don’t know who his dad is. By we, I mean me.

Eret exists. That’s all I’ve got for this one. They’re important. Probably.

Karl hallucinated six versions of himself and left the In Between to go to hell. (Lil Nas X girlboss gaslight gatekeep in this motherfucker!!!)

Ranboo and Tubbo got married because taxes exist </3

More on this last point: they opened a hotel, despite Tubbo being a king, and Tommy got mad at them for getting engaged without his permission. But Tommy was literally dead when they had the wedding so I’m not exactly sure what he was expecting. Either way, he’s fine with it now.

Kids getting adopted oh shit oh fuck. Also, mpreg is canotical. Make this what you will.

DreamXD is a god now. I don’t know who DreamXD is. I don’t think anybody else does either.

I’m like 60% sure George is dead.

I’m like 60% sure Philza is immortal.

Going through my ‘notes’ to make sure I didn’t miss anything and I’m just getting more confused, so I think I’m going to call it here. Props to everyone in the dreamSMP for creating kickass lore, I would not summarize any of it ever again if you held me at fucking gunpoint, and thanks to my mutuals/friends for letting me ask a lot of really stupid questions as I try to puzzle this out. And also, another thanks to you all for reading this. I hope to God this was funny.

I really, really, really fucking hope that Tumblr doesn’t cut this off for a long character count. This is longer than some of my fucking oneshots. My God. This was so fun, don’t get me wrong, but I also want a hit of a candy cigarette. Make it two, actually. Or three. All at once.

Anyway. Drink some water, stay safe, and remember that statistically speaking, 100% of people with a name starting with “T” need to put down the Greek mythology books and learn about the ethics behind pyromania. Goodbye, Theseus.

#dreamsmp #mcyt #FINALLY. FINALLY. FINALLY.#i have been sitting on this for literally two weeks i hope to god it's funny #phea (friend) said that they chortled at some parts so i guess that's good #sorry to my mutuals who do not care about this #dreamsmp is actually really neat though ngl i'm invested from a distance #also if this is funny i might start making more posts like #[] summarized without knowing about it #because my number one hobby is getting invested into things i know nothing about and continue to know nothing about #i feel like this is overwhelming hhh f/ck #anyway. this is all i think #god help you if you decide to read this

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luisjuanmilton · 4 years

Note

have u ever thought about writing something, that includes a crash? Like Seb crashing his Car because it's shitty or someone else or he himself made a mistake and it looks really bad for a second but it turns out to be fine? Sebchal or Sewis 👁️👄👁️

Not me making this be 2k words... I am so sorry anon I got very carried away 🤍

Sebastian Vettel/Charles Leclerc

(tw for description of a crash that results in a concussion, but rest assured it’s not very graphic and everyone’s perfectly okay in the end)

Sebastian thought that every driver had a sixth sense about crashes.

It was like an instinct, something that warned you about what was going to happen seconds before it actually did.

Which was why, as he took a corner and went a little too wide, the car just barely clipping the border of the track, he knew to instantly let go of the steering wheel.

Something had to be amiss with the car, because there was no way it should have reacted that violently to such a tiny error, but before he knew it the car was upside down.

His Ferrari rolled around for what seemed like hours but realistically had to have been only seconds, only coming to an abrupt stop when it collided against the barriers with a sickening thud, the force of the impact making Sebastian’s head slam against the side of his seat before everything went black for a moment.

When Seb came back around he could hear a shrill ringing noise in his ears, and he felt a little dizzy both from the crash itself and because he was still hanging upside down.

It took him a couple of minutes to actually become aware of what was happening, and he blinked slowly as he tried to get rid of the black spots that were dancing in front of his vision.

“Sebastian? Sebastian, please respond”

And Sebastian really tried to do that, but his mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. His mind was thankfully clearer, until he was conscious enough to take account of all his body parts and confirm to himself that he was alright.

His head did hurt like a motherfucker, but all things considered he thought that it could have been a lot worse. He really wasn’t looking forward to having to see any bright lights in the foreseeable future though.

“Sebastian”

Oh right, the team were probably expecting an answer.

He opened his mouth to say something, but the only thing he could get out was a pitiful groan. Alright, so maybe his concussion was a little worse than he thought.

“Sebastian, can you confirm you’re alright?”

And well wasn’t it a surprise to hear Mattia’s voice. He even sounded worried, which could have fooled Sebastian.

Okay, that was a little mean.

And he was now talking to himself inside his head. Great.

Right before he was going to try to give a verbal answer once more, he felt his vision go even darker than it already was, and he somehow managed to turn his head to the right to find who he assumed was a marshal kneeling next to the car.

“Mr. Vettel, can you move?”

It probably took Sebastian longer than it should’ve to answer, but after thinking it through he decided that he could at least try.

“Mr. Vettel?”

Oh right, words.

“Y-Yeah” he finally managed to get out, even if his voice sounded like a croaky mess to his ears.

The marshal looked visibly relieved after hearing it though, and Sebastian for the first time wondered exactly how bad the crash looked from the outside.

After being asked if he was bleeding (to which he answered “I don’t think so”), the man instructed him to unclasp his seatbelts, and he couldn’t help the startled yelp that left his mouth after he did that and fell headfirst into the awaiting arms of the marshal.

He was pulled out from under the car in a very unceremonious way, but even after being freed from the metal contraption he found that he was way too tired to move without some sort of assistance, so he allowed himself to be manhandled by the unknown man.

“Do you think you can stand up?”

Sebastian grumbled, if he was being perfectly honest, what he really wanted to do was lay in the floor and take a nap.

The marshal chuckled “I don’t think that’ll be possible right now sir”

Had he said that out loud?

“Yes”

Oh.

“We better get you checked for a concussion as soon as possible” the marshal replied, sounding both worried and a little amused by the entire situation.

Sebastian hummed in agreement, and before he knew it, he was being lifted in the marshal’s arms, the man doing it with an ease that made it seemed like he weighed nothing more than a sack of potatoes.

The man was careful not to move his head too much as he placed him on an awaiting stretcher, and Seb let out a happy sigh at the feeling of the cushion below him. Now he could finally take that nap.

“Please try not to fall asleep Mr. Vettel”

Or not.

A couple of paramedics lifted the stretcher and placed him inside the ambulance, and only then did they carefully remove Sebastian’s helmet, making him wince as he was suddenly faced with the incredibly bright white lights of the vehicle.

The doctor asked him a couple of questions that only took him a little more effort than usual to answer, like what date it was, how much was seven times nine, when he had won his first championship and which country they were currently in.

He thought he had passed the test with flying colors, but the doctor still insisted on driving him to the nearest hospital and conducting a proper examination.

And he still wasn’t allowed to take his nap.

All the fancy tests did was confirm that he was in fact alright, and with every minute that passed he felt the concussion-induced ditziness fading away.

The return to his usual mental state coincided with the small tv screen that was hanging on the corner of his hospital room playing images from his accident, and he felt dread rising in his chest as he saw just how bad the wreckage looked from an outsider’s point of view.

He even felt worried when he saw his limp body getting pulled out from the cockpit, and he obviously knew that he was alright.

“Ah, fuck” he cursed, hoping with all his might that someone had announced that he was perfectly alright by now.

Although if the footage being replayed over and over again without any sign of an update of his condition was anything to go by, he seriously doubted it.

Someone really had to do something about F1’s tendency to show such traumatizing images to their stupidly large audience.

With that thought in mind he shut the tv off, and without the noise coming from it he thought he could hear a very familiar voice screaming down the hall.

“Do I look like I give a shit about not being his family?! You will let me through at once! Mais bon sang pour qui vois prenez-vous?”

Sebastian had to stifle a laugh. Oh, he knew who that voice belonged to alright.

“Sir please calm down –“

“Do not tell me to calm down! Tell me where I can find Sebastian!”

The voices kept growing louder, and Seb sat up straighter in his bed so he could look out of the room’s windows that showed the hospital’s corridors.

“I can’t give you that information sir, I don’t even know how you got past security –“

“Ta gueule! Just tell me where he is!”

As amusing as it was to hear him curse out hospital staff in french, Sebastian thought it was in everybody’s best interests to put a stop to his rampage.

“Charles, I’m over here”

The noise instantly died out at the sound of his voice, and it was replaced by thundering footsteps as Charles followed after it and finally stopped in front of his room’s open door.

And as soon as Sebastian laid eyes on him, any trace of amusement he had felt instantly fizzled out.

“Sebastian?” Charles choked out, his usually confident voice sounding incredibly small as he clearly tried to fight back tears.

The German felt his heart clench at how red and puffy his usually bright green eyes looked, and if all those tell-tale signs of crying weren’t enough, there were also dried tear tracks running down his face.

“Hey Charlie” Sebastian smiled softly, but any reassurance he thought that might have had was quickly discarded as Charles’s eyes brimmed with tears.

“I thought you were dead” the younger man gasped, crossing the room with two long strides and all but launching himself on top of Sebastian.

He instinctively brought his arms around Charles’s shoulders, holding him close to his chest as his shoulders heaved with sobs.

“Whoa, hey it’s okay, I’m okay” Sebastian soothed, tracing circles over his back in what he hoped was a calming motion.

“You took so long to answer, and no one was telling me anything” Charles hiccuped, face still firmly buried on Seb’s chest “a-and, and then I saw the footage and when they pulled you out of the car – merde, Seb. I thought I had lost you too”

And well, Sebastian truly thought the despair that tinted Charles’s voice was more painful than any crash could ever be. He would genuinely give away all he owned just to never hear him sound so broken again.

“But you didn’t love, you didn’t lose me” he murmured, gently moving Charles away from him so that he could actually look at his face.

Sebastian carefully brought a hand up to cradle Charles’s face, using his thumb to wipe away the tears that were still falling in a steady stream.

“I only got a concussion, I’m so sorry for making you worry”

Charles sniffled, the pitiful sound making him look even younger than he was “I-I just thought, I thought I’d never get to see you again”

“I’m right here sweetheart, I might be a little old, but you’re not getting rid of me anytime soon”

The snort he got out of Charles was enough to make a large smile appear on his face, happy to see some of the sparkle back in those eyes he loved so much.

“I’m holding you to that promise old man”

“And I intend to keep it”

With that, Sebastian leaned upwards to close the small distance that was left between them, pressing his lips against Charles in a soft kiss.

Charles’s lips tasted a little salty because of his tears, but Sebastian didn’t care in the slightest, content enough to lazily move their mouths together and feel the way the Monegasque melted into his arms as he effectively distracted him from what had happened.

His boyfriend always seemed as eager to kiss him as he had the first time, and Sebastian would be lying if he said he didn’t feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that he was so loved and so desired by him.

Charles looked entirely more content as they separated, pressing another kiss to Seb’s cheek before making himself comfortable next to him on the bed and letting his head fall back to rest on top of his chest, Sebastian immediately starting to run his fingers through his soft black hair.

It was a position they had become incredibly familiar with during the past two years, but now it was even more comforting than it usually was for Charles, because he could actually hear Seb’s beating heart below his ear.

“How did you even get here so fast?” Sebastian asked after they had laid in comfortable silence for a while, the throbbing in his head reduced to a tiny pang by now.

“Ah, yes. Uhhh, I might have sneaked away as everyone else parked the cars and bribed a security man to take me here”

Sebastian was rendered speechless by his boyfriend’s admission, before he broke out into a fit of giggles that made his entire chest rumble with the sound, Charles eventually finding it impossible not to join in.

“You sneaky little gremlin” Seb said in between his chuckles, which only grew louder when the Monegasque turned to look at him with a smirk and a very self-satisfied look in his face.

“I did learn from the best”

“That you did”

The two fell silent again after that, and it didn’t take long at all before they drifted off to sleep, the events of the day being entirely too much for them to handle.

And that was how a gaggle of worried drivers found them hours later, with Lewis just barely being able to stop the younger men (and Daniel) from storming into the room and waking up the couple.

The Brit smiled fondly at the sight of Charles carefully snuggled up against Sebastian’s side, a protective arm firmly planted across the older man’s waist. They were both wearing content looks on their faces, and not for the first time he felt incredibly glad that they had found each other.

“Okay boys, we can come back later. It’s better if we let them sleep it off”

Lewis carefully closed the door to the room as he herded the others away, but not before taking at least fifty pictures of the happy couple that would certainly come in handy as blackmail material some other time.

#writing prompt #anon i really hope this was what you had in mind #i’d never written sebchal i’m a little nervous #i got many sewis requests so that’s why i went with sebchal hopefully it’s alright!#oh also trigger warning for my terrible french skills #sebastian vettel #charles leclerc #sebchal

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one-boring-person · 4 years

Text

Only Traitors Consort With The Damned (Part Eight)

The Lost Boys x reader

Warnings: mentions of death

Context: (y/n) has to stay entertained at the cave, and so goes about setting up defences.

A/N: I think this chapter is a bit dull, but I promise it gets better soon!

Masterlist

Unsurprisingly, no light filters into my room when I wake again the next morning, my eyes having to swiftly adjust to the shadowy sight before them as I sit up, rubbing at my scalp. A pounding headache has set in, thanks to the lack of sleep and the sheer amount of over thinking I did last night, my skull feeling as if it's about to explode as I swing my legs out from under the covers, knowing that I have even more planning and preparing to do if I want to survive long enough to see the end of the year. Stretching out the dull ache in my muscles, I check the watch on my wrist briefly to get an idea of the time: 4:23. Whether that is AM or PM, I have no idea yet, but I aim to find out, quickly grabbing my rucksack and jacket as I stand and leave the room, heading out into the main hall where the boys usually spend their nights.

Bright light streams in from the outside, indicating that it is 4:23 PM, illuminating the decrepit lobby in a new clarity I've not seen it in before, every piece of scattered rubbish given a new appearance. In the daylight, the whole place looks less sinister, and more like an abandoned antiques shop, the dusty bits and pieces casting odd shaped shadows onto the floor as the sunlight hits them from a certain angle, every dull colour suddenly highlighted more than usual. I have to blink a few times to allow my eyes to adjust, but they quickly do so, my gaze swiftly flicking around the looming room so that I can take it all in, a plan springing to my mind as I observe it all.

Silently, I get to work, dropping my bag on the fountain ledge and rummaging around in it, pulling everything out to lay it out in front of me so that I can properly see what I have. It's not much, but it's enough to satisfy what needs doing. Picking up the lightweight chains we are required to own, I grab some dirty old cans lying a little way away, the litter most likely the remains of a meal from sometime before, their rusted forms almost perfect for what I need them for.

Eyeing the brightly lit entrance, I take up a ball of string, too, and go over to it, stepping out onto the rickety walkway, examining the rugged wood with a critical eye as I walk out a little way, putting some weight in my step. Under each step, the wood moves slightly, the material having a light spring to it thanks to its age and exposure to the elements, which makes me frown slightly, hoping my plan will still work even though this is the case. Kneeling down, I measure out a length of string that runs the width of the walkway and use my knife to cut it to size. Setting it aside, I get to work on the chains, making six separate lengths with cans attached to them, each one of them rattling loudly as I shake them out experimentally. Smiling to myself, I connect one chain to the end of the piece if string, doubling it over itself for a better result, quickly doing the same on the other end of the string, weighting it down perfectly. I find a pair of small rocks lodged into the cliffside beside me and place them at opposing ends of the walkway, but not before I've scraped a small groove into their surfaces, where the string rests once I've set it up, hanging the chains over the sides of the walkway. The string sits an inch or so above the surface of the walkway, meaning it is easily tripped over, setting off the rudimentary alarm.

I repeat this twice more, leaving them at alternating distances from each other to provide a crude trap to alert anyone inside the cave of approaching intruders: when someone trips the string, the cans and chains will rattle loudly, signifying their approach. Absentmindedly, I hear a small voice in my head telling me that any SRS soldiers will be expecting this, and won't fall for such an amateur trap, quickly deciding that I need to work on something inside the cave, too, something more hidden.

Going back inside, I wipe some sweat from my upper lip, surprised at the heat of the day despite it being mid-October, my clothes sticking to me as I go back to my rucksack, trying to figure something else out. My eyes are quickly drawn to the grenades I have left. They won't work very well on humans, but the loud noise and subsequent explosion of mist will throw anyone off if caught up in it, meaning they are somewhat effective for this purpose.

Grabbing them, I take the string again and go to the entrance, making sure to set up two of the conveniently placed barrels of charcoal the boys use as braziers, setting them up a little way apart around the front of the cave. Going a little way ahead of them again, I place a seemingly random cardboard box face down on the floor, checking the layout once more, before measuring pieces of string again. Cutting them all to size, I tie one end of each of the length to the ring of a grenade, which I carefully loosen, hiding the two explosives under the cardboard box as I loop the string around the two barrels, pulling it tightly enough that it creates another tripwire across the entrance.

Sitting back, I look at my handiwork, noting that the string isn't too obvious and that the overall look isn't too bad. Cautiously, I pull the string taut again, knowing how tense it needs to be for this trap to actually work. Aware that this is now a near-fatal hazard for the four original residents of the cave, I make a mental note to warn them of the new trap before one of them accidentally trips it and gets a face-full of burning holy water.

Sighing, I go back to my rucksack and pick up the gun, checking the clip for rounds, annoyed to find it only about half-full, most of them having been used over the last few days, meaning it needs reloading. I check over the rest if my stuff, growling when I realise that I haven't got anymore bullets with me, leaving me with a pretty much useless weapon which will need reloading very quickly. Setting it down again, I quickly make a decision, going back out into the daylight and up to the cliff top, where I grab some of the random pieces of driftwood lying around, returning to the cave with an armfull of them. Tiredly, I drop them to the floor and sit down, pull in out my knife so I can start whittling them down - a skill every Hunter is taught is how to make wooden bullets, seeing as they are effective against both supernatural and natural creatures.

A small pile of bullets has steadily grown by the time the boys finally emerge from their sleep, the last rays of sunlight having dissipated an hour or so ago, my fingers sore from scratching the knife over the dry wood for so long, though it has paid off: I have enough to fill four or five clips, now. As they enter the room, I look up at them with a tired smile, glad to have some company now.

"Hey guys. Sleep well?" I greet them, waving slightly with the knife, my tone light despite the tension in my body.

"Mostly, yeah." Marko responds, coming over to me with the others, their brows furrowed as they see what I'm doing.

"What're you up to?" Dwayne questions, eyeing the bullets apprehensively.

"Making some more rounds for my gun. I didn't bring enough ammo, so I'm making my own." I explain, gesturing to the pile dismissively.

"Out of wood?" Paul interjects, looking genuinely curious.

"Yep. It's the only available material."

"That's...kinda cool, but also pretty worrying." The blonde vampire muses, dropping down beside me as he goes to pick one up.

"I'm not planning to use them in you guys, don't worry." I reassure them, rolling my eyes.

"Why do you need so many?" David asks, blue eyes appearing much darker in this light.

I shrug casually, finishing up the one I'm currently working on.

"In case the SRS comes knocking. Speaking of which, I've set up some traps by the entrance, so just be careful of them." I make eye contact with David, "One of them will be very painful if it's tripped."

He frowns a little, but nods in any case.

"Duly noted." The vampire licks his lips carefully, "I'm hungry, so I'm gonna head out and get something to eat. You boys coming?"

Marko and Paul eagerly agree, though Dwayne politely declines.

"I think it's a good idea if someone stays here with (Y/n), and I'm not that hungry so I'm happy to do that." The dark haired vampire explains, watching me for a reaction as I give him a confused look, surprised at the offer.

"You don't need to, Dwayne. I'm grateful for the offer, but I don't want to ruin your night..." I start, only to be cut off by him sitting down beside me.

"Don't worry about it, I'd rather stay here. Plus, maybe you can show me how to do that. It'd get the job done quicker with two people doing it."

"I guess. Thank you." I murmur, still surprised, trying to ignore the blush rising to my cheeks.

"No problem."

"Right, well, we'll be back in a few hours. Want us to bring you something back, Dwayne?" David cuts in, eyeing the two of us carefully.

"No, it's alright. I'll go out when you guys get back."

"Ok. See you two later." Without another word, the three vampires leave the room, the surrounding quickly lapsing into silence as Dwayne and I sit there.

"So, how do you carve these?" He finally asks, pulling a knife from the pocket of his jacket, his thumb running swiftly over the blade to test it's sharpness.

"Oh, it's pretty easy. Just copy me..." I run through the basic premise of what needs doing, the vampire easily picking it up, the two of us starting to produce a good amount of them between us.

Part Nine

#the lost boys #joel schumacher #vampire #david(thelostboys)#kiefer sutherland #paul(the lost boys)#dwayne(the lost boys)#santa carla #marko(the lost boys)#star(the lost boys)

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silvanils · 3 years

Text

can’t stay mad at you

I seem to have misplaced the ask(s) but this short fic came about when I combined a few prompts @curiousartemis sent me!

2 intimacy prompts + 1 cliche trope prompt

20. a hand written note

29. kisses when they’re mad

46. Argument leading to kissing/sex (Since they're always so fluffy, how about a little squabble?)

This short fic takes place after “Diplomatic Immunity” aka the quest that sends the Dragonborn to the Thalmor Embassy to steal stuff from them during a party. Aril and both of his siblings end up spending some time with the Blades while hiding from the Thalmor, while waiting for things to settle down a little bit.

If you prefer to read fic on Ao3, you can find it here!

Farkas,

I’m sorry it took so long for me to write you. If it were up to me, I would’ve done it right away, but (struck out) our new friend has been worried that we could still be discovered, which would be very, very bad. Obviously.

I just want you to know I’m alright, but… I miss you a lot. It’s cold and drafty here, at (big smudge) THIS Haven, where we are currently hiding. I know I’d be much warmer and happier if you were with me. I hope I can return to you soon — in the meantime, please, stay where you are. It’s much safer for you in Whiterun.

Miss you so, so much,

Aril

Barely a week after Aril managed to get a bird out, carrying that letter, he was surprised to hear a loud clatter coming from just outside Sky Haven Temple as someone frantically pounded the doors with armored fists.

“Let me in, damn it! I know this is the right place!”

Esbern and Delphine were both startled, sharing a glance as they started to reach for their weapons, but Aril jumped to his feet quickly and rushed to stand between them and the door.

“Wait! I know who this is! He’s… definitely not an enemy!”

“No one’s supposed to be able to get here,” Delphine said, glaring at the door for a moment before her cold gaze fell on Aril again. She studied him for a moment, then sighed and returned her half-drawn blade to its sheath. “Make sure he wasn’t followed — and make sure he knows he can’t leave until we clear him.”

“Yes, of course,” Aril hastily said, stumbling a little as he hurried to the door. As he started to unbar it, he felt Farkas slam against it again. He sighed, frustrated. “Give me a moment, won’t you? This is heavy, and... I’d rather not get crushed!”

When he finally got the door open, Aril only gave the cavern corridor outside a quick glance before his attention was completely captured by Farkas, who looked slightly singed. He’d probably set off most of the traps along the way.

Aril huffed, grabbing him by the arm to escort him into the temple. Esbern glowered at them both sternly as he took Aril’s place at the entrance. He’d probably double or triple check their surroundings before locking everything up again — but his paranoia wasn’t unfounded, so Aril left him to it.

He led Farkas down a hall, toward one of the unused side-rooms where the recruits used to sleep, back when the Blades had recruits. “Hold up, Aril,” Farkas said, his voice a little pained. “My leg’s — ”

“Hurt? Yes, I know,” Aril said, anger making his words clipped and venomous. “You really are stupid. I told you not to come! It’s dangerous! You’re lucky it wasn’t worse…!”

Farkas stopped walking abruptly, making Aril stumble. The only thing that kept him from falling was Farkas clasping his hand tight against his arm, his palm strong and warm. Aril shot an unamused glance over his shoulder, but his anger dissolved when he saw the look on his lover’s face. Those words had cut deeper than he’d intended, but the thought of what could have happened cut him deep, too.

Aril swallowed, suddenly struggling to fight back tears. “You could’ve died!”

His shout rang out in the narrow corridor. Farkas winced, pressing his hand against Aril’s a little harder. “I’ve been so worried,” he said, his voice barely a whisper, slightly cracked. “Ever since you didn’t come back, that night. You… didn’t even say goodbye.”

“Oh, Farkas…” Aril said, unable to hold back any more. The tears started streaming down his cheeks. There was no stopping them. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t — there wasn’t any time.”

He could tell Farkas wanted to pull him into a big, comforting hug… but he pulled his hand away before that could happen and pushed open a door to one of the old, barren bedrooms. He gestured for Farkas to enter, wiping at his face with his sleeve. “In there. I’ll… check on your wounds.”

“Right,” Farkas said, ducking through and taking a seat on the side of one of the beds. It didn’t take Aril long to prep some astringent and ointment, but he took his time helping Farkas take off his armor — wanting to be sure he didn’t miss any of the various burns and puncture wounds he had accumulated. Each one needed to be cleaned, healed, and soothed.

“Did you set off all the traps?” Aril asked, still a bit miffed, as he poured a little restoration magic into the worst of his wounds, where it looked like something had gone right through his calf.

“There were a lot,” Farkas said, wincing as he watched his skin knit back together. “I figured, though, as long as I was still stumbling into traps… I was going the right way.”

Aril snorted, shaking his head. “Can’t argue with that logic, I suppose. It worked, even though it was a fool’s plan.”

“You’re still mad,” Farkas said, a little sigh leaving him.

“Aren’t you?” Aril asked, tilting his head to one side as he observed his lover for a moment. “I called you stupid, and a fool — ” He couldn’t find the right words, so he cut himself off and sighed, letting go of the newly-healed leg.

Farkas didn’t say anything in response, just frowned. Then he reached out to grasp Aril’s collar and tugged him in, surprising him with a rough kiss. Somehow, it conveyed all the emotions they were both still bottling up. Anger, yes, but also concern. Longing. Love.

Aril grunted when Farkas tugged them backwards, allowing Aril to pin him against the mattress when they hit it. He felt Farkas gasp quietly and press his hands against his belly, familiar heat quickly spreading from that point.

“Can’t stay mad at you,” Farkas said, before letting out a quiet, needy whine. “Couldn’t stay away either — don’t ask me to do that again.”

“I won’t,” Aril promised. He smirked a bit, leaning in to press Farkas down for another kiss while he started gently tugging at the drawstrings of his clothing. “Besides, you’re stuck here with me, now. The Blades won’t let any of us leave yet — hope you don’t mind?”

“Never,” Farkas said, a wolfy grin crossing his own face. “We’ll manage.”

The next morning, Farkas woke up alone — the sunlight from the window streaming in to illuminate a scrap of paper on the empty pillow next to his. He frowned as he sat up and rubbed his eyes, then plucked up the note to read it.

Farkas couldn’t hold in a little smile as he let his eyes linger on Aril’s neat, delicate handwriting. The letter he’d sent before had filled him with worry, but this one warmed his heart the same way the morning sunlight was warming up the sheets.

Darling,

I wanted to stay with you until you woke up today, talk with you about all of this a little bit more, but… the Blades made me get up early, I’m sorry. I want our lives to return to normal soon — er, well, whatever counts as “normal” for us, right?

Oh, my silly wolf. I missed you more than I even thought possible. Perhaps I can make things up to you again later? That’s something to look forward to.

Love you so, so much,

Aril

#elder scrolls #skyrim #skyrim companions #farkas x oc #farkas x m!dragonborn #;Aril/Farkas #;knight writes

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docholligay · 4 years

Text

Follow Water Down

I have been wandering around in the woods since I was a small child. My family was not particularly well off, and from the ages of probably 3 to 16, the only vacations we ever took were camping trips. We left the house for the woods nearly every weekend. I live in Montana, and so when I say camping trips, I don’t mean we headed off to the KOA with a pool, I mean if I walked away from the campsite I was in the goddamn National Forest. I was genuinely happy with this arrangement, as I was a strange child who grew up to be a strange adult, and I enjoyed the quiet, the sense of exploration, the smell of the trees.

I began leaving the campsite nearly from the word go, and by the time I was about 8 or so, I was very much off by myself in the woods for the majority of the day, which leads us to our post today. There are people who would call my mom grossly neglectful for having allowed me to do so much on my own at such a young age, and even she gets bashful when she talks about it, but I credit it with a lot of positives:

I have an extremely good sense of direction

I have a strong core of self-sufficiency and am not easily overwhelmed by anxiety

I can be alone in the quiet with my thoughts

I am rough and tumble as HELL, owing to many many many falls down the sides of mountains, huge gashes in my legs, being stalked by a mountain lion, and one very memorable miscalculation that ended in me falling off a (small) waterfall

When I meet my fear, I can master it*

So what I am here to present to you today are very basic survival skills such as I would teach my own child, such as I was taught as a child. This is by no means comprehensive, and if you intend to get seriously into outdoor life, I recommend both doing far more research, and taking a a Wilderness First Aid class, which are frequently offered when it’s NOT Covid, and which I take about once every 3-5 years (I am due). This is a primer for those who are young, or new, or mostly want to experience the wilderness by reading about me doing it.

Follow Water Down.

I cannot remember how old I was when I learned this. It’s the sort of thing that is a part of my makeup, my mother must have told me when I was only a toddler and its stuck with me so hard that it’s one of the first things I tell people.

If you are lost:

Water will always lead you back to civilization eventually. Join up with the stream. See which way its going. Go that way. This is obviously not significantly helpful if you are lost in a flat desert plain but then again, I did start this by saying I was a child of the woods and not the desert. This seems like such an easy trick that people often ignore me when I say it, but it is the simplest thing for a child to remember.

I can’t remember how old I was when I got lost in a tangle of hills and mountains in the Little Belts, where the trail faded but I kept going in my normal bullheaded way. But I was well and truly lost by the time it was about 3 pm, and in some ways I wish I had worn a step tracker back in those days because I am extremely certain I went miles and miles, as one does when they leave immediately after breakfast and don’t come back till dinner. I had no idea where I was, where the campsite was, or what direction I should be going.

I was not thrilled.

But I was not a kid who sat down and cried, in that I had smaller concerns before, and so could easily grow to meet the larger ones. I simply walked down the mountain, knowing a valley was more likely to have a stream I could easily join. Lo and behold, there in that little valley was a snowmelt creek, and I followed it downstream, knowing eventually there would be a house, or a campground, or something. In a twist of glorious good luck, it actually led me back toward where the campsite was, and as I began to recognize things, I easily clipped into our campsite long before any sign of trouble.

Follow Water Down. If you aren’t near a stream, head for the nearest valley, and follow the valley. This will generally lead you to water. People will tell you to stay put and that is WAY smarter than wandering aimlessly in circles, which is why I say to follow something. You think you won’t go in circles, but you will. By following a streambed, not only are you doubtlessly heading back to civilization on a long enough timeline, but you keep yourself from doing that.

Your Pack:

Before you go out for the day, you should have a simple day pack. Mine is an Osprey Hikelite 18, but I hike all the time, and you don’t need something that technical. A plain ol Jansport will work as long as it fits you well. I do however, really approve of and recommend a waist clip. I also think a pocket for a water bottle on the outside is really useful, but you’re not going to fucking die if you have to take off your pack to get to your water bottle. I just find it takes up space I don’t want.

Gear:

More important than your pack itself is what you have in it. Again, this is according to people named Doc, who are me. This is stuff I always take with me when I am by myself, on a trail where it would be realistic to assume I would not see someone else for hours. This is like 95% of Montana trails, or any time that I am off trail.

Compass. You can get fancy, pretty compasses, but a lot of times they lack the actual essentials you need. I like this guy, which is well made, can be clipped to you backpack easily, and is inexpensive. I don’t have the time or space to really try to teach you how to use a compass, but here’s a really good simple primer from the American Hiking Society.

Paper Map. I sometimes break this one, admittedly, but I shouldn’t. Having a paper map of the area is always a really smart practice, and used in combination with the compass, can help you get unlost quickly, or at the very least give you an idea of how close to any given outpost you are.

Water Bottle. Please don’t tell me you were going to attempt to leave without this. I have no preferences on one, shockingly, and I’m being serious. I’ve been given to use an old disposable one, who gives a shit.

Water Filter. Now THIS I did not have as a child, because my parents didn’t know any better, but if I follow in the grand tradition of my people and release my child into the mountains, I will give them one for certain. I knew what kind of water to look for if one was going to drink from a stream, and I did so, which probably explains why I am not susceptible to ~tummy upsets~ to this day. However, it would have been smarter for me to have one of these. I like LifeStraw but Sawyer makes a perfectly good one. Look for lightweight, it’s a day pack, kids.

Knife. I have many many feelings about knives, which would require its own post, but this is fairly essential for being out and about. This is not a thing I would necessarily cheap out on, though there are fine options at most price points. This is my knife:

The Gerber Propel AO. The serrated and straight blade edge means there’s a lot of options for use as a tool, I find the blade to be strong and hold an edge well. Most American-made Gerbers (be sure and check, as they have a much shittier Chinese-made division) are incredibly well made knives. Leatherman multi-tools and Swiss Army Knives are, if you ask people named Doc who are me, a waste of weight and size, but if I were to buy a Leatherman, it would be a Free K2X. I would not buy a Swiss Army Knife.

A jacket/fleece/pullover. Listen, i am the last one who wants to carry this shit but if you get lost overnight (as has never happened to me, kinehara.) you are going to want it. Read up on what the lowest temperatures are, and rate it to that. Depending on what mountain you are in, this is going to vary widely. And for the love of god, wear pants. I know, I know, it’s in the 70s and you’re hoooooooot but seriously, you’ll be less likely to injure yourself and you won’t fucking freeze.

Flashlight/headlamp.

There are fancy firestarters, but honestly I just throw in a bic.

Food! Clif bars are great for this, lightweight, high calorie, keep well. this is in addition to your sandwich or whatever you’re packing for planned eating.

Sunscreen/bug spray. Don’t be stupid.

Whistle. Three sharp shot blasts is the easy and international sign for help.

FIRST AID KIT this has its own thing. A first aid kit can be very basic to very intense. Our group first aid kit is more intense, but when I’m stuffing a day pack, I want stuff that’s light.

Ibuprofen

Bandages

Gauze

Leukotape

wound wipes/antibac

Imodium, benedryl, caffeine

Oxycontin. This is leftover from long ago and basically exists in case I break my leg and have to drag myself out of there, or, as we like to say, a Worst Case Scenario.

That’s it! It essentially fits in a bento box.

You will want to be wearing a sunhat of some sort, sunglasses at hand, and a watch. Not a smart watch, a watch watch. It’s good to know what time it is, better to know that after your phone dies. Attach bear bells to your pack, or your shoe, or something. You do not want to surprise a bear, that is how people die.

You may notice that I do not have a phone, external battery, GPS tracker or anything like that listed. GPS trackers are not a bad idea if you want to invest the money in backcountry--my wife has one--but I never have and I do not consider them essential. Phones and external batteries are not useful to me, and in the places I go there’s often not service. If there IS service, I find I’m more irritated than not by the people with me, who often can’t pull their faces out of telling their audience how much of a life they have to actually have one. Be alone with your fucking thoughts for once.

Which leads me to my next thing: DO NOT WEAR HEADPHONES TO HIKE OH MY GOD. Being able to hear what’s going on around you is key to safety, and also to allowing you to get your bearings. If you are listening to music or something, you are far more likely to sneak up on something, or allow it to sneak up on you. Don’t do it. It’s a terrible idea.

Should I bring bear spray? This is an excellent question! We have ample bear spray, and I often wear it but I just as often wear Montana Bear Spray (a gun). It’s easier to practice with a gun, I feel more sure of how to use it, and I’m comfortable around it. That being said, this is not the story for most of America, and I understand that. So make sure you are VERY familiar with how to use your bear spray.

I suppose this went off the rails into supplies more than “tips for survival” but honestly I would rather help you all AVOID trouble than help you out of it. It’s easier to pack clif bars than set a rabbit snare, and its easier to not get lost than it is to build shelter. Also, this is already at 2,000 words, so if you have a SPECIFIC question, let me know!

*Apologies to Phillip Pullman, but if I were going to get anything from HDM tattooed on me, this sentiment would be it, the only problem being the actual line is “You ent afraid are you?” “Not yet. When I am, I shall master the fear.” which doesn’t look as good but damn has that resonated with me since I read it.

#That was Oddly Specific #Holligay is 34: The celebration

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inkinmyheartandonthepage · 4 years

Text

Coming Home

AU – Peter Stark was kidnapped when he was just three years old. Tony and Pepper never stopped looking for their boy. Years later, Peter finds his way back home.

You can find it here on AO3

Part One

Tony Stark smiled as he felt warm arms slip around his neck, petite hands settling over his heart and arc-reactor.

“What are you looking at?” Pepper hummed in his ear.

“Just viewing the latest YouTube clip of the Spiderling vigilante,” Tony said, eyes never leaving the Stark Tablet in his hands.

“What has he done this time?” Pepper asked.

“On today’s vigilante swing,” Tony tapped at the screen, pressing play on the video. “He rescued a stray dog about to be hit by a car.”

Pepper watched as the blue and red figure swung down in the front of a car, the horn blaring loudly, and scooped the dog up with his free arm, just before the car came speeding past. The one they were calling Spider-Man landed lightly on the sidewalk, putting the dog down safely. She watched as the blue and red vigilante patted the dogs head before he was shooting a web at the nearest building and swinging away.

“Amazing,” Pepper said softly.

“That tensile strength of that webbing is off the charts,” Tony shook his head lightly. “I wonder if they’re the manufacturer of it or if they’re getting it from somewhere else.”

Pepper placed a kiss on her husband’s cheek. “You could ask him.”

“I’m going to have to,” Tony sighed.

“What do you mean?” Pepper asked.

“Fury wants to know who this guy is,” Tony said. “He’s starting to make a big name for himself and you know Fury, he likes to know everything about everyone. Especially when they are enhanced like the Spiderling appears to be.”

“He saved a dog from being hit by a car,” Pepper pointed out. “I don’t think he’s dangerous.”

“Fury thinks he could be Avenger material,” Tony switched the tablet to sleep mode and settled back into his wife’s embrace. “I disagree solely on the onesie he’s wearing.”

Pepper chuckled. The suit the vigilante was clearly a handmade costume. Whoever the vigilante was, they were obviously on a budget.

“Boss, the FBI are calling,” FRIDAY’s voice filtered through the workshop.

Pepper frowned, pulling back from Tony’s shoulder’s, allowing her husband to spin around on her stool. She raised a brow at his confused expression. “What did you do now?”

Tony scoffed. “I didn’t do anything. How do I know they’re not calling about you?”

Pepper smirked. “Because I would never get caught.”

Tony mirrored her smirk, sneaking an arm around her waist. “Patch them through FRIDAY.”

“Mr Stark. This is Agent Williamson from the FBI.”

Both Pepper and Tony froze as the man introduced himself. The name was one they knew well but had not been one they were expecting to hear from for another few months.

“What can I do for you, Agent Williamson?” Tony asked, arms tightening around his wife’s waist, his voice steadily controlled.

“Mr Stark, my apologies for calling so early,” Agent Williamson said.

“It’s fine,” Tony said. “What can I do for you?”

“My office was alerted when a fingerprint was run through our system yesterday,” Agent Williamson said, always getting straight to the point. “Mr. Stark, the fingerprint was a match to your sons, Peter Stark.”

Pepper’s hands flew to her mouth, Tony’s tight grip on her waist the only thing keeping her upright. She locked eyes with her husband, watching as the blood drained from his face and his lips became a thin line.

Eleven years ago, while Tony had been kidnapped and trapped in a cave by a group of terrorists for three months, Pepper had been left alone with their three-year-old son Peter. To her horror and devastation, Peter had been taken in the dead of the night. While Rhodey searched for her husband, Pepper and Happy had worked with the FBI to find their son.

Tony had been returned to her, harmed, injured but alive but they had never found Peter. As it came to light that it had been Obadiah who had been the one to orchestrate Tony’s kidnapping and Peter’s, the man had never given up their son’s location before he died. They had poured over Stane’s files, but the man hadn’t left a trace. That had not stopped Pepper and Tony from using all their available resources into finding their son, including SHEILD but they had never uncovered where he was.

“Are you positive?” Tony managed to choke out.

“We brought in the boy for some questioning last night and to run a blood sample against the one you provided us,” Agent Williamson said. “Are you available to come to the FBI?”

“We’ll be there in ten,” Tony said before he had FRIDAY end the call.

“Peter,” Pepper whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Tony.”

Tony buried his face in Pepper’s stomach, clutching her tightly. He took a few steadying breaths, trying to get his thoughts in order but he couldn’t get past the constant stream that they had found his son. Pepper’s fingers found their way into his hair, gently brushing through the strands. He shuddered, pulling back and swallowing hard. He stood, gently cupping his wife’s face and wiped away her tears. He kissed her forehead before pulling back.

“You get the picture of Peter and I’ll get Happy to meet us out the front,” Tony said.

Pepper nodded, almost frantically, before she spun on her heels and left the room.

Tony swayed as she left, his heart clenching painfully. He took a few uneven breaths before he ran a hand down his face. “FRIDAY, call Happy and get his ass out the front.”

Peter Parker’s legs bounced as he took in the small waiting room. He sat in one of the comfy chairs that was provided, leg bouncing as he waited. There was a tall plastic smelling plant in the room and a painting hung on the wall. A table sat across one of the walls, refreshments available if he wished for one.

He didn’t, his stomach twisting with nerves.

He and May had been on their way home after eating at their favourite Thai restaurant when they had been stopped at the front of their apartment. By the FBI. They had offered no explanation other than they needed to come down to the FBI to sought something out and if they didn’t cooperate, they would be arrested.

Peter’s first thought was that they had found out about his alter-ego, Spider-Man. On the car ride there May had tried to get them to answer why they were being detained but they had not said a word. When they arrived, Peter and May had been separated and he hadn’t seen his Aunt since.

The door opened to the waiting room and Peter straightened, eyeing the sharply dressed man who entered.

“Peter? I’m Agent Williamson,” the man introduced himself with an easy smile. “My apologies for keeping you waiting.” He crossed the room, taking a seat near Peter.

“I’m Peter Parker,” Peter introduced and then winced. The FBI most likely knew who he was since they had been waiting for him and May. “Where’s my Aunt?”

“Your Aunt is answering a few questions for us,” Williamson said.

“What kind of questions?” Peter swallowed.

“May Parker is helping us clear up a few things for us,” Williamson smiled. “You aren’t in any trouble, Peter.”

“Oh,” Peter blinked. “Okay. That’s good. I mean – I hadn’t done anything to warrant being in trouble.”

“I know you haven’t,” Williamson said. “Peter, are you up to answering a few questions for me?”

“Um, yes, I guess so,” Peter shrugged. “What do you need to know?”

“Great,” Williamson smiled. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped together. “How long have you been living with May Parker?”

Peter blinked, brows contracting together. “My aunt? Ummm, since I was six or seven. She and my Uncle Ben took me in when my mum and dad died.”

Williamson nodded. “Your uncle passed away recently, didn’t he?”

Peter looked down at his hands, watching his fingers twist together. “Yeah, about six months ago. He was – um – he was shot by a mugger.”

“You were there?” Williamson asked gently.

Peter nodded; his throat tight. “I – we were coming home. Uncle Ben had taken me out for ice-cream to celebrate an A I got in my chemistry class.” He took a shaky breath, his nose starting to sting. “We were just walking home.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Peter,” Williamson said.

Peter nodded. “Thank you.” He looked back up at the FBI agent. “Umm – the police took my statement months ago. Why are you asking about Ben?”

Williamson didn’t answer his question. “What do you remember about your parents?”

Peter frowned. He was beginning to think that maybe this had nothing to do with his alter-ego. “My parents?”

“Richard and Mary Parker,” Agent Williamson prompted. “What do you remember about them?”

“I know they were scientists,” Peter said slowly. “I don’t know what kind though. I remember my dad doing experiments with me. You know, stuff with magnets and dropping Mentos in coke. I – I don’t remember a lot about them.”

“Did Ben and May ever tell you stories about them?” Williamson asked.

“Uncle Ben was my dad’s brother,” Peter said. “He would tell me stories about them growing up. Uncle Ben told me about how my dad met my mum at a convention. They would travel a lot for their work. That’s how they died. They were heading out on a business trip and their plane crashed.”

“And you were staying with May and Ben Parker at the time,” Williamson said.

“Agent Williamson? What is this all about?” Peter asked. “Why are you asking me questions about my parents?”

“Peter,” Williamson's voice was gentle but controlled. “You had a police officer come to your school today, correct? For careers day?”

Peter blinked at the rapid change in conversation. “Yes.”

“And he went through the process of his job,” Williamson continued.

Peter nodded.

“He also went through the process of fingerprinting and how each one is unique. He even let your class participate in fingerprinting,” Williamson said.

“Were you there too?” Peter blurted out, confounded as to how the agent was detailing the officer’s presentation exactly. He didn’t remember seeing the agent there at all.

“No,” Williamson chuckled. “I spoke with that officer earlier today.”

“How come?” Peter asked.

“The officer put your class’s prints through our database to demonstrate how we use prints to find a person's identity,” Williamson explained. “When he did this, we were sent an alert when your prints showed up in our system.”

Peter swallowed. They knew. They knew that he was Spider-Man. Peter was sure that he had always worn his gloves when he was out patrolling but maybe he had slipped up and left his prints at a crime scene. Oh god he was going to be arrested.

“Oh?” Peter squeaked out.

“Peter, what I am about to tell you will be a shock,” Williamson said seriously. “But we are here to help you. Okay?”

Peter couldn’t speak and stared at the agent, willing his heart to stop racing in his chest. They were going to arrest him. They were going to take away his homemade suit and throw him in jail all because he was trying to help.

“Peter, your prints were in our system because we’ve been looking for you since you were a baby,” Williamson said.

Peter opened his mouth to defend that he wasn’t Spider-Man when the Agent’s words kicked in. “Wait – looking for me?”

“Peter, Richard and Mary Parker were not your parents,” Williamson said. “Your last name isn’t Parker.”

May Parker straightened as the door to the interrogation room was opened. A female agent, dressed in an expensive looking back pant suit stepped into the room, the door clicking behind her. She looked around the same age as May, blonde hair pulled back into a severe looking ponytail. Strictly business.

“Where is Peter?” May demanded.

“Peter is safe,” the agent said, taking a seat on the opposite side of the table. “I’m Agent Harper. I need to ask you some questions about Peter.”

“Is he okay?” May swallowed. “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“He’s fine and not in any trouble,” Harper said, flipping open a file she had placed on the table. “You are Peter’s current guardian, correct?”

May placed her hands on the table, shifting in her seat. “Yes. My husband and I took in our nephew when he was six. His parents were killed in a plane crash.”

Harper nodded. “You were not related to Richard or Mary Parker, were you?”

“Only by marriage,” May pushed her glasses up her nose. “Ben was Richard’s brother.”

“Ben passed away recently, correct?” Harper asked.

May swallowed around the tight lump in her throat. “Yes. Six months ago. He was killed in a mugging. Peter was there with him.” She inhaled shakily. “The police talked to him about this already. They took his statement.”

“I have the report here,” Harper tapped the file with her pen.

“Then why did you ask me about it?” May snapped. She took another shaky breath. “What is this all about?”

“You continued to care for Peter, even after your husband’s death?” Harper asked, ignoring May’s outburst.

“Of course,” May huffed. “Peter’s family. My family. I would never abandon him.”

“Were you there for the birth of Peter?” Harper asked.

May blinked at the left fielded question. “What?”

“Were you present when Mary Parker gave birth to Peter?” Harper repeated.

“I – no. No, neither Ben nor I were there,” May hesitated.

Harper nodded, making a note. “When did you first meet, Peter?”

Something churned uncomfortably in May’s stomach. “Three. Peter was three years old when Richard and Mary first introduced us to him.”

“Why so old?” Harper asked, cocking her head to the side. “Your first and only nephew and you only met him when he was three?”

“Mary and Richard weren’t living in Queens,” May argued. “They were away on business. Ben and I didn’t hear from them much – a phone call once a month was the most contact Ben had.”

“How well did you know the Parker’s?” Harper asked.

“Not very well,” May admitted. “They were always travelling for business and after Ben and I got married they had accepted a job across the country. They came back after three years and that’s when we learnt of Peter.”

“You didn’t question why they hadn’t told you about their first-born child?” Harper asked.

“Well, it was a little weird,” May agreed. “But Ben and Richard weren’t super close. Ben felt he could never live up to Richard’s expectations. He was a scientist and Ben wasn’t. Once we met Peter, we got swept up in him. He was adorable. Still is.”

“Did you often spend time with Peter before his parents were killed?” Harper made another note.

“We would babysit Peter when Mary and Richard were travelling for business,” May said. “Ben hoped it would bring him and Richard closer together and we adored Peter, so it was no trouble to us.”

“How long would he stay with you?” Harper asked.

“A week at a time, sometimes a little longer,” May bit her bottom lip. “What is this all about? Where is Peter?”

“When you were looking after Peter, did Mary or Richard Parker ever give you instructions?” Harper asked.

“Instructions?” May repeated blandly. “Like don’t let him eat the Lego pieces?”

Harper cracked a small smile. “No. Like if he was injured, don’t take him to the hospital? Did they ever tell you not to take him to certain places?”

“Not to me, no,” May shook her head.

“Did they give Ben these instructions?” Harper asked.

May sucked in a breath. “I – I don’t know.”

Harper caught the stutter and her mouth tightened. “But Ben knew something?”

“Peter has asthma,” May swallowed, her voice shaky. “Ben always picked up his inhaler from the same place.”

“Where?” Harper demanded.

“Some chemist. I’m – I’m not sure. He always picked up a script before Peter ran out. Since – since Ben died, we haven’t needed to get one,” May rubbed her chest with a frown. “I’m not sure where Ben got the script from.”

Harper scribbled notes quickly. “You never adopted Peter when Mary and Richard passed?”

May shook her head. “We didn’t need to. In their will they named us Peter’s guardian’s.” She stared at the agent across the table from her, something twisting sharply in her chest. “You said Peter wasn’t in trouble. Am I in trouble?”

“You tell me,” Harper said, her voice never losing the tightly controlled sharpness of her tone. “Did you ever question Ben about Peter’s parents?”

“I never saw a reason too,” May insisted. “Peter was never hurt when we babysat. He was healthy, clean, had new clothes and toys. He had no learning disabilities. The opposite, actually. He’s incredibly smart, even when he was young. He was a perfectly happy boy and I had no reason to question anything.”

Harper nodded.

“Why are you asking about Mary and Richard?” May asked.

“May, were you aware that Richard and Mary Parker were not Peter’s biological parents?”

May stared at Agent Harper for a beat. “What the fuck?”

“Am I to take that as a no?” Harper quirked her brow upwards.

“What do you mean Peter isn’t biologically their son?” May demanded.

“Mary Parker never gave birth to Peter,” Harper said.

“So, they adopted him?” May asked. “Is that what this is? Is his biological mother asking for him?”

“Peter's parents have been looking for Peter for eleven years,” Harper said coolly. “Peter was not adopted by Mary and Richard, he was kidnapped.”

May sunk back into her seat, staring wide-eyed at the agent opposite her. She turned over the words in her mind, but she simply couldn’t grasp them long enough to understand.

“May, did you have any idea that Peter wasn’t Richard and Mary’s Parker’s son?” Harper asked.

“No,” May breathed out, blinking dumbly. “They – they kidnapped Peter?”

“We were alerted when Peter’s fingerprints were processed earlier today,” Harper said. “The FBI and his parents have been searching for him since he was taken eleven years ago.”

May covered her mouth with a shaky hand. “Oh my god.”

“Have you ever met a man named Obadiah Stane?” Harper asked.

May shook her head. “No, never. I’ve never heard of him.”

“May, did Ben know about Peter?” Harper asked.

Lowering her hand, May opened her mouth several times before any words came out. “I – I don’t know. He never said – never said anything. Oh my god.”

Closing the file, Harper got to her feet. “Let me get you some water.”

May said nothing as the agent left, her mind reeling. Had she and Ben really been raising someone else’s child? All these years and May had unknowingly kept a mother and father from their child. Had Ben known? Before Richard and Mary – those strangers – told Ben the truth before they died? Or had her husband uncovered the truth and kept it to himself?

Harper returned and May shakily accepted the glass of water, taking a few sips.

“Where is Peter?” May asked.

“He’s being informed of the situation as we speak,” Harper said.

“You’re telling him alone?” May cried. “How could you do that to him? Where is he? I want to see him.”

“You will shortly,” Harper said. “I just have a few more questions.”

Peter stared at Agent Williamson; not sure he had heard the man correctly, even with his super hearing. “What?”

“Richard and Mary Parker were not your biological parents,” Williamson explained.

“Oh,” Peter blinked.

When people asked Peter if he missed his parents, he said he did. It was true, but also not true. Peter didn’t remember much of his parents as he had been so young when they had passed away and he remembered they often left on trips. He remembered often staying with Ben and May and never feeling unhappy or scared. He did miss his parents, but mostly he missed the idea of what him and his parents could have been. But May and Ben had raised him, had given him a loving home and he couldn’t have been happier.

“I was adopted?” Peter frowned.

“Unfortunately, not,” Williamson said. “You were kidnapped from your family.”

Peter froze, limbs locking in his seat. “I don’t feel kidnapped. May didn’t – she wouldn’t kidnap me. I’m not even related to her and took me in.” You’re not related to any of them. “She kept me after Ben died. She didn’t have to.”

“Take a breath, Peter,” Williamson coached. “I know this is a lot to take in.”

“A lot to take in?” Peter repeated. “You’re telling me that I was kidnapped! That the people that raised me, gave me a home, weren’t my family at all!” He sunk back in his seat, crossing his arms and shoved his hands under his armpits. “I want to see May.”

“You will, soon,” Williamson said. “We just need to ask her some questions.”

“She didn’t kidnap me,” Peter nose stung with tears. “She wouldn’t do that. They never wanted kids.”

“Who?” Williamson asked.

“May and Ben,” Peter sniffed. “I asked them why I didn’t have a brother or sister once. They said that I was all they needed. They were never planning on having kids. But they took me in when my par- when they died.”

“Okay,” Williamson said. “Maybe they didn’t know.”

“May wouldn’t do that,” Peter said stubbornly. “She wouldn’t.”

“That’s what we need to get to the bottom of,” Williamson said gently.

Peter slumped in his chair as he watched the agent get to his feet.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” Williamson said. “Can I get you any water?”

Peter shook his head and watched as the agent left the room, leaving Peter all alone with nothing but a tight feeling in his chest and wishing that this had all been about Spider-Man.

#irondad #spiderson #peter parker #tony stark #tony stark acting as peter parkers parental figure #Peter Parker is Tony Starks biological son #Kidnapped Peter #ao3 fanfic

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 4 years

Text

Witches, Chapter 29: something of an overdue talk, in a long overdue chapter.

Hey everyone! We’re back at it, hopefully, with a few orders of business.

First things first: I’d like to issue a small warning for a short discussion of past suicidal ideation that pops up during this chapter. Since this series is a retelling, generally most of you do know what’s coming up next and what we’ll run into and to brace ourselves for that. You know about the characters’ past traumas and future choices and know where that pops up, or if it becomes unexpectedly relevant or makes a new parallel, you did at least know in advance that it happened. Phoenix’s occasional oblique allusion to Edgeworth’s “choosing death”, for instance.

As this is not something quite like that and comes up more out of nowhere than usual, I just wanted to make sure that no one is uncomfortably caught off-guard. It felt like something different to me personally as I was writing - whether it’s going to strike any of you as different than other heavier material we’ve had in the past, I can’t say, but I’m erring on the side of caution today. If you’ve got any questions or concerns or anything you want done for content warnings in the future, please do come talk to me and let me know!

On two lighter notes: thank you all for bearing with me through the “oops all Fire Emblem only Fire Emblem” hiatus. It’s been a weird year, obviously. I’m hoping that I can carry on with room in my brain for both.

And finally: Happy UR-1 day! Today is, yes indeed, the exact day that Simon Blackquill is arrested for murder, and in honor of that, have a chapter where I mention him one (1) entire time.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches of Los Angeles Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

Golden Saturday-morning sunlight streams in through the blinds, lighting up the dust particles swirling through the air. The office is colder than Apollo expects for the end of October - colder than it was last year this time - and Phoenix is even wearing a sweater, the shining locket that Apollo hasn’t seen in a while hanging around the outside of the tall collar. “Morning,” Phoenix says, without raising his eyes from what appears to be a manila folder full of newspaper clippings he is perusing. “What’s up?”

Straight to business, then. Apollo is fine with that. He grabs the chair from his desk and drags it around, not directly in front of Phoenix’s desk, but near enough that it will be harder for Phoenix to ignore him.

“Is there any way to break a curse?” he asks, shoving his hands deep in the pocket of his hoodie. If it were this cold in a regular office on a Saturday, that would make sense; save money on heating bills when no clients are coming in. This is just - fae bullshit. The beginning of their seasonal tantrums. Winter only properly begins on the solstice, and Apollo really wishes that the fae of Kurain would respect the astronomical seasons. Stave off the snow until the end of December and end it in March. Don’t allow it to span from October to April.

Phoenix sweeps the scraps of paper all back within the folder and ducks down to set it inside a drawer. “If I knew a way,” he says, rising back up with the magatama in hand and setting it down on his desk with a hard clack, “do you think I would go around looking like I do? You don’t think I would’ve gotten this mess cleaned up a long time ago?”

He doesn’t offer Apollo the magatama for a refresher on what that mess looks like. Maybe he was just making a dramatic point with it. “Oh,” Apollo says, scratching the back of his head, faintly embarrassed by how obvious the answer is if he’d given it a modicum of thought from that perspective. “I guess not.”

“Right,” Phoenix says. “As my understanding goes, you can theoretically maybe mitigate a curse, if you layer another opposing blessing on. I am ‘lucky’” - he makes sarcastic quotation marks to ensure that the bitterness dripping from the word doesn’t go unnoticed, as if Apollo could possibly not notice - “to have known enough fae that I’m saddled with both Fortune and Misfortune, and Life and Death. But I’m also not certain that when you drop those on each other they don’t just each take their own separate niches. I’m not dead, but god knows when I try to go somewhere for a vacation or a day off, I still stumble across crime scenes like nothing else. Stunningly lucky in some aspects, and wildly unfortunate in others. You know me. I don’t need to elaborate too much, do I?”

Apollo nods.

“So that’s the theory, but I don’t think that helps anyway for your purposes, which - this is about Prosecutor Gavin?”

Apollo nods again. Phoenix sighs and rubs his eyes. “Shit,” he says, folding his hands together in front of his face and leaning his head against them. “I - believe me, Apollo, I wish I had some - I wish I had any way to help him.”

And Apollo does believe him. Apollo has to believe him, and believe that Phoenix means well, because he’d go crazier if he wasn’t reminding himself that Phoenix’s most frustrating decisions are born out of good intent. That Phoenix thinks he knows what’s best, but there’s still that old saying about good intentions.

“Why didn’t you tell him?” Apollo asks. “You knew before this. You knew before he asked you.”

Phoenix raises his head. “And what does telling him get him? Secure in the knowledge that his brother - who is already in jail by the way, don’t need any more proof of his crimes, he’s already never getting out to be able to hurt anyone ever again - hates him enough to have wished him dead?”

Basically the same reasoning that Klavier had, but Apollo has a counterargument now. “Gives him time to come to terms with it before someone dies!”

“You don’t!” Phoenix slams his palms on the desk. Apollo flinches. Of course everyone is volatile and heated over this topic, but that doesn’t make it easier in the moment that it first gets directed at him from people who are usually frustratingly calm and casual. But Phoenix winces, lifting one of his hands and dragging his fingers through his hair, and sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says, and repeats, much quieter, “You - you don’t. Or I never didn’t. I knew from right when it happened that I was cursed; I had three years between then and when Mia died - it - I could’ve had a decade, or two, and it - it wouldn’t have helped. I wouldn’t have felt any differently. Any more come to terms with it. With the thought that I - helped cause—”

His tongue heavy in his mouth, Apollo nods. “But - but wouldn’t it have been worse to find out right after she died?”

“Of course it would have,” Phoenix says blithely. “Of course that - this - is the worst possible alternative. Of course I would’ve said something if I’d known that this was what would happen instead.”

“But you have to have expected that someone would—”

“No, I didn’t,” Phoenix interrupts. “That’s not how this works. You know Klavier. You know how much he doesn’t say, don’t you? How much I don’t - you know what people like us are like. Who’s going to tell him? Sebastian forgets half the time that he even has the Sight. Kay only acts like she knows things. Prosecutor Blackquill spent until two days ago acting like magic isn’t real even when he knew we knew otherwise. Someone who means ill isn going to keep that information to use it, and not to just plainly say something.” He frowns. “Well, usually not. Unless they’re a clumsy interloper stumbling in somewhere they don’t belong and getting themselves fucked over for it too.”

“So other than Means just walking all over everything” - because he wasn’t immersed in this kind of fae etiquette, didn’t grow up in it, learned just enough to spot what he thought were opportunities and ruined himself by it - “you think every other random stranger is just going to respect all these - these weird little rules about what you don’t say?”

“Rules of engagement, basically,” Phoenix says. “Yeah, I do.”

“Prosecutor Gavin told me that you’re cursed,” Apollo says. “Don’t just tell me that’s - that’s the exception that proves the rule, or whatever.”

Phoenix’s expression, smug and trying to dampen that smugness back into something that respects the seriousness of the conversation, tells Apollo that yes, yes that is absolutely what his retort was going to be. Apollo considers screaming. “I’ve been tangled up in this for far too long,” Phoenix says. “I can promise you, I know the patterns. I know the way these things go.”

“And because you’re so much smarter than the rest of us, that makes it okay?” Apollo demands. “To take a gamble and just hope that it won’t go wildly wrong?”

And he wants to, really wants to add, I guess that’s what you do, just gamble with people’s fates, and he doesn’t, and Phoenix’s face still darkens like he knows, like he can read Apollo’s mind. Because every time Apollo ends up arguing with him, that’s always at the core. This playing card that haunts them both, burnt a bridge barely built, and they keep trying to balance on the ashen skeleton of it. “Just because Prosecutor Gavin is too fucked up about everything else to be mad at you for hiding this—”

“I did,” Phoenix says, voice low, eyes narrowed and dark as an evening’s storm clouds, “what I thought would be best, based on my prior experiences of both how curses don’t get talked about, and knowing exactly what it is like to personally live with knowing that I’m cursed. This is not something I want anyone to have to know how it feels.”

“So you think ignorance is bliss,” Apollo says. Klavier said that. Apollo wants to know how Phoenix takes that statement.

“I wouldn’t call it ignorance,” Phoenix says. “It’s not like he, or you, didn’t know what Kristoph was like until you found this out. You know the crime, the verdict, the sentencing - and everything else that Kristoph tried but failed to do. That Kristoph also wanted Klavier dead is only another small piece in the grand scheme of it all.”

Still the same argument that Klavier made; Apollo can’t imagine they discussed it. What brought them to the same conclusion? That they both have lived this strange specific kind of grief? This common ground that they share that is foreign to Apollo.

“Come to terms with - Klavier’s already got to come to terms with the rest of that,” Phoenix continues. “It was obvious during that trial how much Kristoph despised him. He knew that too. He knows that Kristoph ruined more lives than just the people he murdered - that he tried to kill more people than he actually succeeded at - cursed and tried to kill children because he couldn’t have - didn’t want anyone remaining who - who could - could… say…”

If Phoenix hadn’t faltered like that - fumbling and failing to continue, words petering out as he went back over what he just said, his eyes going wide and welling up with horror - then Apollo would have simply assumed that his thoughts were moving too fast for his mouth and he couldn’t keep them straight. It would have been easy to talk right through it, and Apollo wouldn’t think twice. If Phoenix hadn’t showed his own hand, gave the game away. Something too terrible for even seven years of professional poker to hide.

“Mr Wright?” Apollo asks, and Phoenix turns his head, glancing away away, no longer meeting his eyes when less than a minute ago he was staring him down with a cold confident glare. “What - what are you talking about? Vera, and - not someone else? Who else?”

Phoenix makes a tiny shake of his head, and even that little motion is a bright, distinct liar’s red. It lights up his eyes, too, when they dart down to the floor. “Mr Wright?” Apollo repeats. When would this have been? He casts his mind over everything he learned, just a little over a year ago, Phoenix sitting him down to explain seven years of information collected about Kristoph, what he’d done and how he’d tried to cover it up. He tried to kill Drew Misham to tie up that loose end; he cursed and poisoned Vera, two precautions because he wasn’t confident enough in the former, hoping that if she ever left the house she wouldn’t be able to speak to his identity and the forgery he requested. He killed Zak Gramarye seven years later to hide the same. He wanted to eliminate every link in the chain that connected the diary page to him. Its makers Vera and Drew, and Zak who knew he was the first attorney on the case, and then the page got to Phoenix via—

Via—

“Mr Wright,” Apollo says. His voice shakes. “He didn’t—”

“Promise me something, Apollo,” Phoenix says firmly. His mouth is drawn in a tight line but he doesn’t look stern. He looks more like he’s going to cry and is desperately trying to stop himself. “Promise me.”

“Wh - what? I can’t—”

“Promise me, Apollo.”

Not until you tell me what I’m promising, Apollo thinks, Apollo knows is what he should say. He’s been told this enough times; he’s aware of this on his own. Don’t agree to a deal before all the terms are set. Don’t sign the contract before it’s read thoroughly. Rules for lawyers and fae are the same. Just because Phoenix means well doesn’t mean that Apollo agrees with those decisions he makes; certainly not the one they have been discussing, and likely not whatever Phoenix is asking him to agree to.

“Please.”

The air in the office is so cold. Even the sunlight seems cold now. Apollo shivers, hunches himself up further. What does Mia think? Is this secret-keeping so natural to her, easy as breathing once was, because she’s fae and that’s what they are, liars by trick and by trade?

“Just promise me you won’t tell her until I do.”

His mouth dry, Apollo nods and croaks out, “All right. I won’t.”

He almost regrets pushing the issue,regrets ever asking Phoenix why he faltered. Phoenix sits slumped, his hands in his hair, and when he glances back up at Apollo, he looks so exhausted that it reminds him of Klavier last night. Burnt-out and broken, when it’s so rare for either of their masks to break. Rarer for Phoenix not to be positioning himself as the one with all the cards in hand; for him to fall apart, for Apollo to actually see him upset. “Yeah,” he whispers, soft enough that Apollo sits forward to make sure he can hear him. “Everyone involved in getting the diary page from him to me, Kristoph wanted dead, or to make sure he could silence them. Everyone who knew, even if she was - eleven years old, or eight. The girl who made it, and the girl who gave it to me. He fucking hated the Gramaryes. You think he didn’t jump at the opportunity to try and get rid of all of them that he could? That he wouldn’t cast a curse on each one who ever entered his sight?”

“And she” - Apollo’s voice cracks - “she doesn’t know? You didn’t tell her?”

“Shit, no,” Phoenix says. He sounds close to cracking, too, and when he drops his hands to his desk he starts shaking his head, his eyes scrunched closed. “Being a Gramarye has been goddamn enough of a curse for her. She lost all her family and then found out that her grandfather buried her mother’s soul in the woods because he was a monstrous son-of-a-bitch who deserved worse than getting to go out on his own terms by shooting himself in the fucking head—”

Apollo shudders. Phoenix had never before directly stated his opinion on Magnifi, but Apollo could definitely tell he held only disdain for the man. This, though, is more than disdain. This is positively venomous, and more than a bit frightening. Did he always feel like this, and hid it, or is this hatred something that has only come about since last year Trucy came back to the office with her mother’s soul in her hands?

“—so yeah, on top of that, I’m definitely going to tell her that the same man who killed her father cursed her just because of the accident of who her family is.”

“B-but—” Apollo doesn’t quite know what he’s arguing. He also doesn’t know where all of his prior conviction went. Of course Klavier should have been told - because he found out in the worst way possible - and Trucy - to take a gamble with her too - that’s got to be just as wrong— “Nine-Tails Vale,” he says suddenly. “We went there, and then there was a murder - that - that’s - is that like—”

“Like what happens to me?” Phoenix asks. “What happens with a curse? Yes. That’s how it goes.”

“And you - you’re not going to - to tell her? Ever? In case - in case something happens to her like with Klavier, or—” Too many thoughts are playing in his head, and the next one grabs hold of him and pivots him away from the point he was going to make about maybe why Trucy should know. “The concert,” he says. “When we went to the concert, Trucy and I, and Klavier was there too of course but that’s - Romaine LeTousse was murdered. They’re both cursed and they - wait, was Klavier cursed then? That was before…”

Did Klavier know when it happened? Did he tell Apollo? He’d said that Phoenix had seen him twice since the trial last October. Presume then that Kristoph cursed him then. The last time the brothers saw each other, and that doesn’t make one bit of sense.

“How could Kristoph have cursed him?” Apollo asks, and he doesn’t miss a momentary flash of panic that passes over Phoenix, his eyes popping wide for half a second and a loud, sharp intake of breath. “Klavier always has iron on him. He gave me—” He looks down at his hand, and then back up, to Phoenix’s lifted eyebrows. Apollo sticks his hand back in his pocket. “What’s the point in iron if it doesn’t actually save you from being cursed?”

Phoenix is obviously trying not to move. He knows Apollo is watching him, waiting for a twitch, anything to pounce on and draw an answer out of him. Staring steadily back at Apollo, he barely blinks; he rests his folded arms on his desk and his fingers curl just a little tighter into where he’s gripping his arm. Apollo is right to be asking these questions. He’s getting closer to something that Phoenix is hiding.

“Or it does,” Apollo says. The veins on the back of Phoenix’s hand flex from his grip. Apollo thinks about someone else with a tense hand and secrets. “And he couldn’t have been cursed then, at Vera’s trial, if it does. So then Mr Gavin hated him that much before then.” Phoenix blinks placidly, but he doesn’t adopt his lazy-eyed gaze. Too serious even for that. “And you lied,” Apollo adds. “You lied about when.”

Phoenix flinches. It’s just a tiny one, pulling his head back, the muscles in his jaw and neck tightening, but Apollo can’t miss the light show. Can’t miss that the lie is bleeding out of him.

He finds himself on his feet, not stepping any closer to Phoenix’s desk, just needing the height, just needing to move a little to stop the shaking in his hands and in his chest, a trembling that goes right down to his heart. “He knew already that he’s cursed! Why did you keep lying to him!”

“I didn’t lie to him,” Phoenix says evenly, but very quietly, and Apollo wants to go over and slam his fists on the desk and make him stop with these hollow justifications, make him face what he’s done couched in none of his winding words. “I just didn’t correct his assumption.”

“That’s lying!” Apollo shouts. “That’s still lying! That’s what happened in Mayor Tenma’s trial! Do you remember that? Do you care!”

“Don’t accuse me of not caring.” Phoenix’s voice is low, his eyes dark, staring up at Apollo. “I do care. I—”

“You don’t care about lying! But you do care about - what, about us? Doing this because you care, because you always know what’s best for everyone not to know!” Apollo throws his hands in the air. Phoenix’s brow furrows further, his jaw set tightly. “Never mind that Athena had a breakdown during the trial because Means hit her exactly where you were worried she would be! And you didn’t prepare her! Never mind that Klavier’s having a breakdown now because he found out at the worst possible time! When you could have told him! You know—”

“And if what he knows already hurt him this badly, then what do you think would be happening if he knew Kristoph cursed him years ago?” Phoenix slams his hands on his desk like he’s at the defense’s bench, pushing himself up out of the chair and onto his feet. “That his brother’s wanted him dead for that long? You think that’ll help anything, for him to find that out right now on top of all this? You want him to have that to come to terms with right now, too? I didn’t lie to him! He made an assumption that I didn’t correct because I’m not in the business of salting anyone’s wounds!”

He makes - a point. Apollo sees where he’s coming from. Why he’d do that. An additional piece of truth, yesterday the same as a salting of the wound. “But you don’t think he’s ever wondered if - if Mr Gavin resented him for that long? If he - if you would be setting something to rest, if you told him that. You can’t decide for someone else what they’re capable of handling.”

“Fair point,” Phoenix says. He sinks back down into his chair, and then motions to Apollo’s, suggesting he sit back down. “If he’d asked, I’d have told him. If he ever asks, I’ll tell him. I just wasn’t about to drop that on his head with him unprepared. Or if he asks you - I’m not asking you to swear silence to that. Shit, if you ever think that it’ll help him to know, then tell him - tell him you just found out from me, throw me under the bus and lie to make me look worse, that’s fine.”

Apollo returns to his chair, still not feeling any less like he wants to take a swing and see if he’s gotten any better at punching since last April. “You want me to lie now too?” he asks.

“I want you to use your best judgment about what he might want to know or be able to handle,” Phoenix says. “To not pile on more if he didn’t ask, if you don’t think he’s prepared. Like I said, when it comes to being cursed, I didn’t ever not know, and I know what the knowing is like. Yeah, I took a gamble that if I didn’t tell them then no one else ever would. That they’d never know, I hoped.”

He shakes his head and then leans it back against his chair, his eyes closing. “See, it’s not just grief, not at all. The woman who cursed me was someone I thought I knew. Though I’d known for a while. She had actually wanted me dead since we first met.” His eyes pop back open. “Eventually she tried to poison me, and when that didn’t work she tried to frame me for murder, and when that plan fell apart she just tried to kill me with a curse because she was pissed about it. She was a lot stronger than Kristoph, I’ll tell you that much. But Mia stepped in, and now I’m still alive and other people just drop dead all around me instead.”

He sounds almost like he is making a recitation, like he’s rehearsed it, scripted it. Apollo wonders if he’s ever told anyone else all these details, if anyone else lacking the Sight knows that Phoenix is cursed, and if he used this same script then too. He’s speaking about himself, something so personal, in a way so curt and crisp, so much more detached than he’s been speaking about Klavier, or Trucy.

Apollo nods numbly, unable to force his tongue to ask any of the questions he has.

“I could have come to grips with her hating me that long and that much - I could’ve come to terms with it and moved on. I was - well, I eventually became glad to know what she was. I could’ve been okay with all that. Eventually. If I hadn’t known about the curse. But I did and the - the knowing, the - Mia was murdered. Three years after she saved me. That long, thinking I could accept that I was cursed, and as soon as something really happened - I couldn’t.”

He presses his hands together and rests them against his chin. “And I couldn’t ever even just grieve her, because I had this guilt. That her death was my fault - I know, I know, some other man murdered her. He got to rot in jail for the rest of his life for his crimes, and he would’ve hated her whether or not I was cursed. For the things she did and because of what he was, and I had no part in any of that, but I was still - thinking, if maybe if she hadn’t ever taken me under her wing. If I hadn’t been around, maybe it would’ve been different somehow. Maybe she would have survived.”

The lights flicker gently and return dimmer and softer than they were before. Everything that gets talked about in this office, Mia hears; Apollo wonders if Phoenix doesn’t get sick of it sometimes, just want to say something without her offering input. Even if this is presumably well-meant, some attempt at comfort, the most a dead woman who can’t speak can give. Apollo exhales and can see his breath. He shivers again. “Why are you telling me this?” he finally asks.

“I want you to understand.” Phoenix rubs his hands together, a vacant look in his eyes, like he hasn’t quite realized why he’s so suddenly cold. “What it felt like, and what I’m worried about. If I’d told Klavier, or I tell Trucy - once I say something, I can’t take it back. That’s it, and they know, forever, just like I do. So I want to be sure that this won’t - I want—” He drops his hands and reaches over and picks up the magatama, idly spinning it around between his fingers. Apollo can’t remember ever seeing him this uneasy, this fidgety. “Klavier, especially, reminds me of myself when I was his age, and of a prosecutor I knew then, too. And that - recognition” - he gestures with the magatama clutched in his hand - “is not good, because we were not - okay.”

Apollo wishes he could remember with clarity all that Phoenix said to him about this time a year ago, about Klavier, about Phoenix being concerned for him. He does remember that Phoenix said something about some other prosecutor then, too, that Klavier reminded him of. Or that he was worried Klavier was going to end up like.

Phoenix inhales slowly, and says, “Six months after Mia was murdered - which was three, three and a half years after I was cursed, mind you - I lost someone else. I didn’t realize how badly he was doing - he did a good job at hiding it, and I didn’t know how to reach out. I was wrapped up in my own loneliness and depression, and then he was gone.”

He stops turning the magatama between his fingers, staring down at it for a few seconds, and then he resumes fidgeting with it. “I felt like I’d caused both of those. Couldn’t convince myself otherwise. Every other factor I knew there was, every single thing I couldn’t prevent or control, all these other things that other people did - I still thought that if I wasn’t cursed, then it could have been - just different enough that they would still be here.” He reaches up, brushing his fingertips across his temple. “Wouldn’t have been a fatal wound. Or wouldn’t have—”

He falters, staring past Apollo now, over at the window. This is the same thing he said about Mia earlier, about that sense of guilt, even knowing someone else murdered her. That he held some kind of responsibility, for a curse that seems to manifest itself as coincidence. Just coincidence, a little too often.

“They could’ve been okay, somehow, in the end, I thought,” he continues. “And instead, I was - I was there, I was still around, and they weren’t. And all I could think was that if I didn’t do something, then I would just lose the other few friends I still had - they would be around me, and they would die for it.”

“Didn’t you say that there’s no way you know to break a curse?” Apollo asks. From Phoenix’s solemn expression, he’s not going to suddenly say that there is a method, but Apollo has no idea what he is going to say. What that something he thought to do was.

“Right,” Phoenix says. “So I thought - only way to take the curse out of the equation is by taking myself out of the equation. I thought - as long as I’m not around - if I go and die, then anyone else who I love won’t. The curse will be gone, right, if death finally takes me. But the curse only seemed to hit other people, not me, so if dying was what I needed to do, then I…”

Klavier lying on the stage, wondering why it had to be Courte who died instead of himself. Phoenix’s dark, pained eyes, as he speaks again, finishes the thought in a voice barely above a murmur. “It made - made far too much sense to me, then. Was far too appealing a prospect.”

The question of what Phoenix won’t quite spell out catches sideways in Apollo’s throat, and when he tries to force it he just makes a soft croaking sound. Phoenix presses his lips together and glances away. “It’s a pain I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” he adds softly. “Klavier’s - he’s what, twenty-whatever? I was twenty-five when I—”

When Mia died, Apollo thinks, but that Phoenix doesn’t finish the thought, swallows hard and stares at his desk and says something else, makes Apollo think there was something even worse he could have said, with that implication he didn’t say. “And Trucy - she’s my daughter. I’m supposed to protect her. I took her in because I couldn’t live with the thought of anything else happening to her when I could bring her here, hope that Mia could somehow bless and protect her as much as she did me. But I can’t imagine just - I can’t let that happen to her. To suffer the way I did, to - to spend her life wondering if wherever she goes, someone’s going to die - the concert, Nine-Tails Vale, to ever - to think she can blame herself. Or that everyone she loves is better off without her. Or to—”

He blinks, fiercely, his eyes watering, and Apollo hopes he’ll never have to see Phoenix this close to tears again. Phoenix, cursed and trying - and in the case of Klavier, now failing - to shelter others from that same pain. Klavier, and Trucy, and—

“What about Vera?” he asks. “You explained to me, but did you ever tell her that she’s—” Phoenix stares at him, blinks slowly. Apollo squeezes his own eyes shut. “You didn’t tell her.” He’s unable to muster the same indignation he was before. He can’t really even bring himself to feel manipulated. Phoenix told him exactly that he was saying all this to make Apollo understand. Phoenix sought this reaction. But Phoenix’s chessmaster act has never superceded his desire to keep secrets before; there’s no way that Apollo can convince himself that this emotional vulnerability is all entirely a ploy to get Apollo to shut up. How many times has he refused to explain something and just left Apollo to stay angry about being in the dark? He has never been reluctant to do that. To just sit silent and lock Apollo out. To let Apollo hate him for his secrets.

He wanted Apollo to understand, intimately, whatever it took. So that Apollo would agree keep these secrets. So that Apollo would go along with him. And it might be concern that drives him - he cares, of course he does - but it’s still manifesting in the most infuriating ways possible. In well-meant silence.

“Would you want to know?” Phoenix asks, and that question at this time is an answer and confirmation in itself. “I know the truth is important to you, Apollo - I know it is to all of us.”

For once, Apollo believes he means it. He’d know it’s the truth because he can see when Phoenix is lying, but he’s actually convinced, this time.

“But,” Phoenix continues, “if you already know that the person who cast the curse hates you and is in jail for committing murder - already got to come to terms with that, or grieve that, or for someone else dead - you already know that truth. Would you really, honestly want to live with also knowing that you’re cursed?”

To possibly want to die because of it, like Phoenix did? Apollo opens his mouth. He wants to say yes, yes he would like to know, because that’s the truth of it and he wants to always know the truth, all of its facets no matter how ugly.

Doesn’t he?

He thinks about Nahyuta, about Dhurke, about trying to forget they ever were anyone, because that’s easier than facing the fact that Dhurke abandoned him, and they might both be dead by now. Easier than wondering whether they were human or fae or something else. He doesn’t want to know what they were. He wants to deny the dreams, to convince himself they’re nothing but the weird subconscious mash-up of memory and the fae horrors Clay has spent all these years warning him about. He doesn’t want the truth about his childhood. He doesn’t want to remember his childhood at all.

(Is it well-meant silence when he doesn’t tell Clay, or Trucy, or Klavier, about them? To not worry them about his life and his past? Or is it just cowardice on his part? Blissful ignorance.)

He closes his mouth. Thinks about the smile Trucy forced onto her face as she realized that Apollo was about to reveal to the court that her father Zak Gramarye was murdered six months before then. Thinks about how she couldn’t keep that smile forced when she found out that her dead grandfather took her mother’s soul for his own personal gain. Thinks about Klavier lying on the stage wishing that he had been the corpse there, not Courte. All the pains that truth has caused them. Is that better or worse than that alternative? Does it depend on what truth it is being hidden?

(He thinks about how long it’s been since he’s said Nahyuta’s name out loud. What color were his eyes in real life, and not Apollo’s haunted dreams? He doesn’t remember.)

“I - I don’t really know,” he admits.

The smug, victorious expression he expects never arrives on Phoenix’s face. There’s no satisfaction in winning this argument. “I’m sorry,” he says, closing his hand around the magatama. “I told you about Vera because it mattered directly for that case, but the rest of this - I wanted to shoulder it myself. So the rest of you don’t have to worry about it. I don’t want you to have to keep secrets from anyone. But I don’t know what else to do.” He forces a smile onto his face with visible effort that makes Apollo wince. Nothing masks the exhaustion written into the lines on his face. “Maybe we put our heads and together we figure out some better way to talk about it. If I ever figure that I should tell…”

He trails off, touching a finger to his locket. Tell Trucy. If he ever gains reason to think that he should tell Trucy. Would he actually run it by Apollo first, ask for his advice? The possibility of being in Phoenix’s confidence for something that isn’t a case doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.

“I still don’t think you should try and keep it secret forever,” Apollo says, “but I - I guess I see what you mean. And why you don’t just…”

Why he doesn’t just tell her. More reason that just because Phoenix doesn’t “just tell” anyone anything. For once, he’s not being a cryptic bastard.

“Believe me, Apollo,” Phoenix says darkly, “I’m always thinking ahead and trying to plan for the worst. I’m not naive enough to just hope that anything will stay one way ‘forever’. But I have to be sure I don’t make it worse, either.”

It isn’t the lack of a visual cue that makes Apollo believe him. It’s knowing him that makes Apollo believe him. Phoenix always has his eye on something down the line, playing out the plan a few steps ahead to find the complications. Even - especially - while he wasn’t a lawyer. A gambler’s steady hand holding the cards, chancing on an outcome, because the cost of doing nothing at all is even more unthinkable.

Apollo nods, more times than necessary, lacking anything else to say. Phoenix cocks his head. “Apollo, you all right?” he asks.

What the hell is he supposed to say - how the hell is he supposed to be? Fine? In what world is he possibly fine? At the end of this, he’s learned more than he ever dreamed he would from his sole initial question, but in it all, that first answer has never changed.

This is all there is. A rabbit hole of pain so unfathomably deep and winding, and in its darkest depths, the same as the answer given to him on the surface: there’s no way to break a curse. Their lives aren’t the kind of fairy tale where true love’s kiss can wake a sleeping beauty or transform a beast back to a prince - it’s grimmer than that, colder than that, crueler than that. Curses not so concretely visible but more like haunting coincidence, a ghost whispering at the shoulder with reminders of guilt. How could a man who wasn’t even there when the crime happened blame himself for his mentor’s murder? And yet, even after the killer’s confession, how could he not? How can even the curse’s caster be blamed when someone else wielded the murder weapon? And yet, how could they not share in it?

Apollo would rather someone have been turned into a frog, honestly. Wouldn’t that be easier to grapple with, a simple chain of cause and effect, and no ambiguity in who to blame.

“No,” Apollo finally says. “Not really, no.”

“I guess that was a bit of a stupid question, huh.”

Apollo nods. No kidding. What’s a better question at this point, anyway? Not what he says. “How - how can there really not be any way? For a curse to be broken, I mean.”

Phoenix spins his chair around, resting his head back against it, eyes turned up to the ceiling. Once he slows to a stop, facing the windows, he says, “I mean, maybe it’s possible there was, once, but it was forgotten. There’s a lot of magic that’s gone that way.”

He gives Apollo a moment to digest that, and then continues, “The Court’s heyday was thousands of years ago. They’re living ruins of what they used to be, and a fraction of what they used to know. Maya - you haven’t met her, she’s Pearl’s cousin - Maya’s helping me out with some matters by trying to dig up more about some kinds of magic they’ve forgotten the nuance of. But even that’s something we’ve got a hint that they knew, once. Not like—” He shrugs helplessly. “I’m sorry. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a way to break a curse.”

“Oh,” Apollo says, somewhat surprised, but pleasantly so, that Phoenix said that much. It would be typical of him just to reiterate that no, there just isn’t any way he knows, that’s all, and to skip the explanation for fear of giving Apollo false hope. But thinking about the prospect of false hope is still easier than really, truly considering the meaning of what Phoenix just said - that this, that everything they’ve ever had to deal with in regards to the fae, could have be so much worse. They could do so much worse than all this pain they’ve ever wrought - they were once so much more dangerous than this, and now their Court is only ruins. This is what they are when they are weak.

“If I do find anything out, I’ll—”

Phoenix breaks off, rising up slowly from his chair, staring at something past Apollo, over his shoulder. Apollo twists around to look, not sure what he expects to see, but it certainly isn’t Vongole standing in the doorway, her head held high, her body much more solid than it usually appears, and stiller. The wispy fur at the back of her legs and off of her tail does not stir as though she is made of mist and surrounded by a breeze that affects only her; she could almost, in this moment, be a normal dog, but for her glowing eyes and her ears so bright red as though they were dipped straight in paint.

All the color drains from Phoenix’s face. He snatches up the magatama and springs to his feet, hurrying past Vongole to peer into the other half of the office. Apollo rises to his feet; if Klavier was here - if he heard what Phoenix was hiding - how Apollo promised to keep it a secret—

Vongole stares at Apollo. She doesn’t move. Phoenix reappears in the doorway, curling a hand in his hair, but his face has fallen slack with obvious relief. The claws curled into Apollo’s heart unclenches. “So then what are you doing here?” Phoenix asks the hound, whose ears fold back flat against her head, though her snout does not turn to shift her attention to Phoenix. She stares Apollo down like she will pounce. “Does he send you places or did you just wander here yourself?”

“You don’t know?” Apollo asks.

“You think I’ve ever had the chance to ask either Kristoph or Klavier about the logistics of their spectral hellhound?” Phoenix asks. Apollo tries to remember when he first started seeing Vongole. Whose ownership she would have been under. How soon after Kristoph’s arrest did Klavier come back to Los Angeles?

Despite her weirdly lanky proportions, like a regular dog was put on a rack and stretched out, Vongole always moves with grace, a predator’s prowl and elegance. A monster, but a beautiful one. She circles Apollo like she intends to herd him somewhere, like she is a shark smelling blood waiting for the moment to strike. “What—” Apollo spins too, trying always to keep her in his sight. She moves just slowly enough that he can keep up, but just quickly enough that he becomes slightly dizzy in his efforts. “What do you want?”

She stops. Apollo steps forward, trying to escape her circle, but she swings suddenly to the side, throwing her body up against Apollo’s hip. He expects her to fade through him, as she does walls and doors, but when she hits him he staggers with the force of her weight. And the cold - her body is cold and it reaches straight through his clothes, cold enough to burn, ice on bare skin type of burning, and Apollo doesn’t understand. He’s touched Vongole before, without problem, hasn’t he? Surely he has. What’s wrong with her? Or is something wrong with Klavier?

She trots over to the door, standing on the threshold, staring back at Apollo with her head aloft. He can’t bring himself to move, can’t unfreeze his feet from where they are riveted into the ground. Vongole presses her ears back against her head, lowering it so that her neck is level with her shoulders, prowling again, and she makes another circle of Apollo before again stopping in the doorway.

“I think she wants you to go with her,” Phoenix says.

She wags her tail, much faster than the usual low, wide swishing path that it takes. Apollo wrenches his foot from the floor and takes one step forward. Vongole bounds through the front room of the office, weaving between magic props tossed carelessly on the floor as though she couldn’t pass through them. And she stops and waits at the door, glancing expectantly back at Apollo. He fumbles his phone free from his pocket, finding no messages waiting for him; why would Klavier do something as cryptic as sending his faery dog to collect Apollo, rather than just calling or texting him?

Unless it isn’t Klavier instructing Vongole. Unless she’s acting on her own. Or unless Klavier is in trouble.

“You’d better go,” Phoenix says. “I can lend you the—”

“It’s fine,” Apollo says. He’s pretty sure that Klavier hates the magatama, and he found him fine without it last night. And he didn’t have Vongole guiding him then.

“Let me know that everything’s all right,” Phoenix says quietly. Apollo opens his mouth to ask what Phoenix knows, why he’s so sure that this means something is wrong - remembers what Phoenix said about himself and how Klavier reminds him of himself, long ago. Closes his mouth. Knows why Phoenix worries.

Phoenix always worries. He means well. His road is paved in well-intended worry.

“Yeah,” Apollo says. “I’ll - I’ll let you know.”

Vongole waits for him only to reach the door, diving through it as his hand reaches for the doorknob. He next finds her waiting beside the bike rack, her smoky fur drifting independently of the chill breeze, and as soon as he mounts his bicycle she lopes off down the sidewalk. She never looks back at him but is obviously monitoring him in some way, her pace changing depending on obstacles and traffic so that she always remains in his sight. He follows her through the quieter (relatively, anyway) city of weekend mornings, through his usual stomping grounds, to end up on the stoop of an apartment building that is - quite frankly, not as grandiose as Apollo would expect. He presumes this is where Klavier lives.

(If it’s not, then he’s far too deep into something that it’s also far too late to back out of.)

Vongole noses one of the buttons on the buzzer at the entryway and disappears through the door. Only seconds later, too quickly for her to have physically covered the necessary amount of ground, the door clicks to unlock. Apollo enters the lobby and before he has time to take in his surroundings, she appears in front of him. Literally appears - not bounding up to him out of a wall, but materializing out of the air, white fog swirling in circles around her ankles. She directs him to the elevator, pressing her nose into the button for the fourth floor and then several times in quick succession slamming her nose into the close doors button. “So were you always like that, or did you pick up your impatience from him?” Apollo asks.

She sits down and fixes her eyes on him. He doesn’t know what that means. He’s not sure why he bothered talking to her. She can’t respond - can she understand? Does she have some way to communicate information she hears to Klavier? Surely not - hopefully not, depending how long she was in the office.

She does not move until the elevator halts at their destination, and she springs to her feet and slips through the doors before they have opened wide enough for a fully-corporeal dog of her size to pass through. But when he makes it through, she meets him right at the other side, her impatience not taking her any further down the hall until Apollo can follow right at her tail. The walls are not cracked and peeling as in Apollo’s building, but they are certainly plain - again, very much not the kind of place he would imagine Klavier to live.

Vongole throws herself through the door of Apartment 404, and Apollo waits in front of it. A moment passes, and then another. Right. Even a faery dog doesn’t have opposable thumbs to grip a doorknob. He fails to swallow his apprehension but knocks anyway. There has to be a reason Vongole brought him here. He can’t just run away from it.

The seconds crawl past. Apollo reaches up to knock again, but the door swings suddenly open, and he flinches back.

Klavier’s hair is barely held together in a ponytail, strands falling loose around his face, and he looks even more like he hasn’t slept, going by the shadows under his eyes. And Apollo never thought there would come the day that he sees Klavier in sweatpants, but - he’s still alive. He’s still intact in one mobile piece, and he’s lucid enough to look annoyed. Apollo fumbles for words, any at all, but none arrive on his tongue. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. He starts to raise his arm to point at Vongole, to blame her, and before he can, Klavier sighs, shaking his head, his apparent annoyance sliding into exhaustion, and he steps out of the doorway, pulling the door open wider, and gesturing for Apollo to come in.

[notes on the chapter]

#roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles

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marjanefan · 4 years

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‘Dead Line’ and ghosts in the machine

This review will contain extensive spoilers for the episode (and A Quiet Night In) so only continue if you have watched the episode. It also contains spoilers for ‘The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse’

Along with ‘The Twelve days of Christine’ ‘Deadline’ is one of the most discussed and analysed episodes of ‘Inside no.9’ with numerous vlogs and blogs dedicated to it. There are even several affectionate pastiches on Youtube. There is much in the episode that is worth discussing so I hope I can bring something interesting to analysing this astonishing episode.

I will be referring to both Stuart Hardy’s (Stubagful) and Inside an Mind’s vlogs about this episode so and the Q and A with Barbara Wiltshire (who directed the episode), Adam Tandy, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith at the BFI in April 2019 here are links to.

Stubagful’s review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrlU9jaMP2k

Inside a Mind Analysis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUN6zqCHh18&t=58s

BFI event

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4RgjPJKNkI

Both Stuart Hardy and Inside a Mind explore the importance of experiencing this episode as a live experience on October 28th 2018 (the date of broadcast). As someone who did watch it live all the way through on broadcast I can confirm that it was a very rewarding experience to watch live that could never be replicated. There has also been considerable analysis of how Pemberton and Shearsmith utilised the process of pre broadcast publicity (such as their interview on the One show a few days before broadcast) to set up the misdirection and theme of the episode. However this is an episode that stands up to repeated viewings (as does every episode of Inside No. 9). The episode can be enjoyed as a ghost story with a very modern sensibility and as a meta commentary on the nature of television. There is an underlying message that allows this episode to retain its power.

The very title of ‘Dead line’ hints at obsolesce and broken down technology and communication. Under the surface of both the Arthur Flitwick storyline and the actual story of the episode we see the voices of the dead come back to avenge themselves on the living who have failed to respect them. You ignore them at your peril. /p>

The ostensible story of ‘Deadline’ -Arthur Flitwick’s fateful finding of a mobile phone is worth looking at in more depth. The story is run through with references to aging and mortality. Arthur lives alone in what may be either a retirement community or sheltered housing for older people. The classical music radio station he listens to aims its adverts at older people. We see Arthur get annoyed at a radio advert for a will writing service yelling ‘We’re not all one foot in the grave!’ (possibly a reference to the long running BBC TV series). Moira refers to the fact that Elsie and herself are apparently widows. It is worth noting that Stephanie Cole who plays Moira is well known for playing Diana Trent in the long running comedy series ‘Waiting for God’ which was set in a retirement home. Arthur and Moira are dealing with the fact that they are nearing the end of their lives and the particular forms of loneliness that affect the elderly. Arthur’s eventual breakdown and murder of Rev. Neil reflects his anxiety about the intentions of younger people toward him and his generation and his isolation(it says something that he choses to befriend a ‘ghost’). This also links this plotline to the main plotline as like Arthur, Alan Starr believed he was hearing the voices of the dead. This eventually drove him to suicide.

Rev. Neil is dealing with an ever aging and dwindling congregation. The physical disrepair of his church (referred in the second clip from the Arthur Flitwick story) symbolises this decline. (Is this also a comment on the decline of the influence of organised religion?) He makes a quip about his church always being on the lookout for ‘new blood’ which can be read as being about the graveyard where Elsie is buried. This links back to the main storyline of the episode being filmed in Granada studios which is apparently built on the site of a Victorian cemetery. (The ghosts recruit the ‘new blood’ of the unnamed continuity announcer, Stephanie Cole, Steve and Reece to their ranks).

One of the most interesting things for me about the ‘Arthur Flitwick’ section is the fact that the mobile phone Arthur finds is an old style Nokia phone. This type of mobile phone has been out of fashion for several years being overtaken by smart phones. This type of phone cannot be used to access the internet or online services such as TV streaming services. It could be a nod to a time where there were no streaming/catch up TV services and where social media was not prevalent. Television was experienced very differently and as Stuart Hardy noted in his review was more of a collective experience. ‘Dead line’ is almost a comment on what has been lost for audiences and those who work in television in the age of television on demand. The pleasure of watching a programme along with millions of others and being able to share simultaneous reactions (and not spoil the programme for others!) has been more or less lost.

The first reaction of Reece and Steve to the apparent break down of the show is to reach for their smart phones to try and find out what is going on. We see Reece moan he cannot connect to his smart phone via WIFI until Steve shows him the password (there is a joke about Stephanie Cole being able to connect to WIFI while Reece cannot). Steve uses his phone to research the history of Granada studios for clues as to what is happening. Reece uses his phone to check the reaction on Twitter, getting angry at people asking if ‘the breakdown’ is part of the twist (playing on his twitter persona). It is no accident that later in the episode Steve is so engrossed with his phone that he both fails to notice Stephanie kill herself on camera or ‘Alan’ advancing toward him in the mirror, commenting on the fact that people have become so engrossed at looking at their smart phones they ignore what is actually happening in front of them.

Steve gets Reece to post a tweet asking people if they are live on BBC Two at that moment. This tweet both proved that events were happening live and comments on the way that social media has changed how audiences interact with television shows and those involved with them. For better or worse platforms like Twitter has changed this permanently. Both Stuart Hardy (Stubagful) and Jamie (Inside a mind) discuss the importance of the Twitter reaction to the show in helping build the experience for the audience during broadcast. Steve Pemberton continued this, posting a photo of himself on Halloween itself looking none the worse for his adventure bar an apparently injured arm (from apparently being electrocuted duing the show)- however a 'ghost' seemed to still be following him! (he also joked if ghosts were going to take over the episode of 'The Apprentice' that was due to be broadcast that night)

https://twitter.com/SP1nightonly/status/1057690095996858368

Many people have discussed the influence of the 1992 drama ‘Ghostwatch’ on ‘Dead Line’. Pemberton and Shearsmith acknowledged its influence at the BFI screening of the episode. Ghostwatch was itself intended by its writer Stephen Volk as a commentary on the direction of television at the time, with the growth of docusoaps and reality TV, and how audiences perceived what was presented to them on TV. It made use of the methods of viewer interactivity of the day with its live broadcast/phone in format. There was a dedicated telephone line for viewers to call into (they were supposed to get a message that ‘Ghostwatch’ was a drama). This is echoed in ‘Dead line’s use of social media. ‘Ghostwatch’ itself references the past as it was in part inspired by the story of the Enfield Poltergeist and its coverage. Television programmes referencing back and paying tribute to earlier programmes is nothing new. It helps to build continuity and tradition in what is still a relatively new format, and helps to show that television can produce work that is lasting and worthwhile. Indeed ‘Dead Line’ helped to create interest for a new generation in ‘Ghost watch’.

Pemberton and Shearsmith decided to set ‘Dead line’ in Granada studios after researching alleged hauntings of the studio. This is referenced in the ‘Most Haunted’ episode that ‘Dead line’ includes clips from. Pemberton mentioned at the BFI that it was this episode that inspired the plot involving ‘Alan Starr’, the technician who killed himself after been haunted by the voices of the ghosts of Granada studios. The original plan had been to film the episode at Granada Studios itself but at the last minute this was not possible, so it was filmed at Maidstone Studios instead. The archive material included in the show is not just furthers the story of the apparent haunting but refers back to the studio’s important status in UK television. Granada Studios had been closed for a number of years before the filming of the episode. Even if it is not actually physically haunted, it is now a dead space which carries the memories of the programmes that were filmed there and the people who worked on them. The television industry may have physically moved on, but the programmes made there remain. I wonder if this was part of the appeal for Pemberton and Shearsmith in setting ‘Dead line’ there.

It was also not the first time that Pemberton and Shearsmith had used meta commentary or included themselves as characters in their own stories. They had of course both played themselves (or versions of themselves!) in ‘The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse’ film. At least one podcast noted this and how the ‘Reece’ and ‘Steve’ we see in ‘Dead line’ are similar to the ‘Reece’ and ‘Steve’ of the film. They have great fun in playing themselves as arrogant and self-centred. This is in part self-mocking and self-depreciating but also shows an awareness that in order to be successful in the entertainment industry you do require a certain level of self-confidence and self-centredness to get your vision realised. ‘The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse’ was an attempt by the various members of the League to explore the legacy of the League and what it meant to be the creators of this very specific world and characters at a point where they were beginning to develop their own separate careers away from the League. ‘Reece’ and ‘Steve’ die in ‘The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse’ as they do in ‘Dead Line’. This represents them acknowledging that the work and characters they have created have a life beyond them and that they will outlive them. The use of ‘A quiet night in’ in the episode also comments on how creators can recontextualise their work to give it a very different meaning. Indeed some fans of the show joke that they cannot watch ‘A quiet night in’ the same way since watching ‘Dead Line’.

As mentioned at the beginning, the episode has much to offer those who have not yet seen it beyond it being a ‘live’. It certainly got a great deal of publicity for the show with several UK newspapers discussing and praising the episode and complementing Pemberton and Shearsmith for how they pulled off the twist. Inside a Mind's analysis of the episode has had over three million views. WeeLin in her Youtube analysis suggests showing the episode to someone who has not seen it each Halloween. Reece Shearsmith still gets regularly asked on Twitter if the BBC has ‘fixed’ the apparent technical faults or if they plan to try and do the episode live again. There are still people who started watching the episode on October 28 2018 or who began watching on iplayer who stopped watching after ‘the breakdown’ who are discovering or yet to discover that they need to continue to watch beyond the ‘breakdown’ at nine minutes. People are also still discovering this episode. Steve Pemberton discusses how this is part of the narrative of the episode in the Q and A after the BFI screening. The number of affectionate homages to the episode that appeared on Youtube in the months after broadcast testify to the fact the episode has a very distinct feel and structure that makes it stand out. It has become one of the most acclaimed and beloved epsiodes of the series

#Inside no.9 #Dead line #reece shearsmith #steve pemberton #ghostwatch

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porkchop-ao3 · 5 years

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A Thrill I’ve Never Known (Chapter 54)

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Times are tough right now, aren’t they, folks? We all deserve a bit of fun smut to distract us for a while. So yeah, this chapter isn’t entirely smut, but its mostly... Specific tags: semi-public, oral, first-times

Enjoy! x

Tagging @emily-strange ❤

(All chapters tagged with #ATINK and also posted on Ao3, username PorkChop)

The next time I saw Arthur was after a couple of days, and he had just got back to camp and was trimming his beard. I hadn't seen him arrive since I was busy chopping vegetables, thankfully my leg was healed enough to stand on comfortably and I was taking advantage of my returning mobility by helping out. I still needed a cane to walk to give me that extra sense of stability, it was more because I was scared of tripping and landing on my wounds than an actual necessity.

I approached Arthur when I was done with the vegetables and Pearson no longer required my help.

"Hi stranger," I said, sidling up to him. I made him jump a bit by accident, and he turned to look at me.

"Oh, hey, it's nice to see you moving about, that leg's getting better," he commented, "I'm sorry I ain't been back in a couple days, I had stuff to do over in Annesburg and I didn't wanna keep riding back and forth, not through Murfree country," he explained.

"Oh, of course, can't be mad at you taking care of yourself. You bumped into any since we've been staying here?" I asked. He paused for a moment.

"Yes," he said, but offered no elaboration. I didn't prod. "I'm heading down to the river for a bath before I leave you again," he said, his tone lightening up as he changed the subject.

"What you gotta do next?" I questioned. He brushed his fingers over his chin, dusting away stray clippings of hair.

"I gotta meet Sadie and Dutch in Saint Denis," he told me, putting down his scissors. Saint Denis! His insistence on tempting fate by going back there again boggled my mind until he told me his reasons. "Colm's being hanged."

"Colm O'Driscoll?" I balked. Arthur nodded. "Oh, my. And you're going there to watch?"

"I'm going there to make damn sure it happens. This ain't the first time he's been dangled off a rope, somehow his boys always manage to get him out of there. This time, he ain't getting away."

"I'd love to come watch," I told him. Oh, to see the man who'd caused Arthur so much pain and caused the gang so much trouble swinging from the gallows, to hear his neck snap as the floor opened up, to see the colour drain from his face and the motion cease in his body…

"You wouldn't," Arthur snorted, knowing me far too well.

"The idea of it appeals, but right, I've never been able to watch that kind of thing," I admitted with a chuckle. Every time I happened to be passing a public hanging, I'd look the other way as soon as the lever was pulled. The truth is no matter what that sicko had done, watching death was not something I could take satisfaction in.

"You coming to uh, keep watch while I bathe?" He asked after a moment, his voice quiet.

"What am I watching, you?" I teased.

"I ain't fussed where your eyes go as long as there ain't no nasty fellers passing by trying to start some funny business while I ain't got nowhere comfortable to holster a gun," he chuckled.

I giggled and nodded, "I got your back."

"Come on then," he jerked his head and picked up a towel and some soap, and we headed down the slope towards the river. We walked down a ways until the area felt excluded enough, and Arthur held onto my arm the whole time to make sure I didn't slip.

I sat down on a nearby rock as Arthur stripped bare, leaving his clothes with me. I smiled at his tan-deprived buttocks as he waded into the water, hissing at the cool temperature, his body tensing.

"How's the water?" I asked sarcastically.

"Let's just say there's a reason I ain't turning 'round yet," he said, his voice a little jerky as he shivered. I frowned.

"Why's that?" I asked in genuine curiosity. He laughed aloud.

"Never mind," he was quick to reply, then turned to face me once his lower half was submerged in the water.

"Hmm," I hummed aloud, still frowning.

"You'd be coming in with me if it weren't for the dressing on your leg," he said, changing the subject.

"Why, do I stink?" I asked with a laugh.

"No, not that I've noticed," he smirked at me. "But I could've just got used to it, you never know," he teased.

"Don't even joke about it, that might be true."

"If it is, we all reek. Don't worry about it," he shrugged in amusement, then dipped down under the water and scrubbed at his hair, rising up and shaking a spray of water in all directions. He lifted his hands, "throw the soap?"

I tossed it, watching it plop into the water a short distance from his outstretched hands. He sighed and crouched, reaching around underwater for it, trying to grab it before the current took it away.

"Sorry, I never said I could throw," I called.

"You can shoot an arrow straighter than I can and yet you can't throw a bar of soap?" He questioned. I smiled at him and shrugged. He managed to find it, and scrubbed the thing over his chest and under his armpits.

"So what have you been doing while you've been out?" I asked. He blew out a stream of air through pursed lips and met my eyes.

"A couple of jobs. I helped get those stolen horses back for Eagle Flies, then yesterday I went along with Bill to Van Horn," he told me, then dropped his gaze down and started washing his legs, "stagecoach thing. Explosives. Nothing good or exciting, I assure you."

"Charles said you met someone in Annesburg," I said. He hummed and nodded.

"I saw someone I recognised when I took that girl home. Went to check it out," he said, his expression a little tense, "Mrs. Downes. Her husband owed us money, died before I could collect it. This was months ago. She paid off the last of the debt and now she's– well, she's doing things she shouldn't have to be doing just to get by."

Arthur was ashamed, I could see it on his face.

"I've tried to offer her some help but she ain't ever gonna forgive me, I know that," he added, and I nodded slowly.

"I'm sorry, you can't change other people's feelings," I said softly, and he nodded.

"I don't… necessarily want her forgiveness. I just wanted to do something good for her, maybe help her get out of where she is– ain't a nice place for a lady and her son," he said, then looked a little nervous to say the next thing, "I, uh, I gave her some money. Not too much, just…" he trailed off.

"That was kind," I told him, and he stared at me for some time. I frowned a bit.

He recognised my confusion and cleared his throat. "Was worried you might be a little upset that I gave her money when I should be saving for you an' me."

"I said I'd let you do what you gotta do. This included. I ain't mad, Arthur, money ain't anything I care about," I shrugged my shoulders and he watched me for a while before relaxing.

"You're a good lady, a real good one. I don't deserve–"

"Don't start," I rolled my eyes and smirked in amusement, cutting him off before he could go there. I fought the grin trying to spread across my face and looked down to tweak the buttons on Arthur's shirt, smoothing my fingers over the fabric.

"Hey," he said, "look at me."

I did as he asked, meeting his eyes.

"Once this is over you and me are gonna have the rest of our lives together," he told me. "We just gotta stop ourselves getting impatient."

"The rest of our lives," I repeated, letting the grin take over. "I hope I get to see you become an old, old man."

"What'chu on about? I am an old man," he gestured to his broad chest and soft yet toned stomach with his muscular arms and I cocked a brow at him.

"You ain't old. I mean Uncle-old," I said, "at the very least."

"I ain't too sprightly," he shook his head. "I'm not like Uncle just yet but I'm sure starting to feel my age."

"Christ, Arthur, how old are you, exactly?"

He had to think for a moment. "Thirty-six. I think," he shrugged one shoulder.

"Thirty-six. And you're talking like you're in your fifties," I shook my head at him. He snorted and looked away, stretching as he tried to scrub his back with the soap.

I admired the way his arms and chest worked with his movements, pressing my lips together to resist the indulgent smile that wanted to appear. I wondered if it was bad of me to enjoy watching him so much, the poor man was only trying to bathe.

"You sure don't look like an old man," I told him, my voice coming out lower and a damn sight more sultry than I intended.

"Mm?" He hummed lightly, the corner of his mouth lifting.

"You look… handsome."

"Why'd you hesitate before you said that?" He let out a breathy laugh, his hand moving under water, between his legs, looking indecent only because I'd chosen to see it that way once my mind had begun to turn down an inappropriate path.

"Because handsome don't feel like the right word. Handsome is when you're wearing a nice shirt and vest, and you've put a little pomade in your hair," I explained, tilting my head, pausing as he ducked under water briefly again to scrub at his face and hair. "But when you're all wet and your hair's messy… I sure like looking at it but it's a different kind of nice," I grinned.

"That's pretty complicated," he teased me, beginning to emerge from the water, apparently satisfied that he was clean. "But I appreciate the sentiment."

"You ain't gotta be shy," I told him playfully when he cupped his privates with his hands, not allowing me a single glimpse of his entire body.

"I'm not shy," he chuckled, but still didn't move his hands. I looked around, the area was completely void of passers by, there wasn't an easy path close by so I doubted anyone would ever see him.

"It's just me," I reassured him, holding the towel towards him when he got close enough, swapping it for the soap.

"That's my point. It ain't a modesty thing, it's a pride thing. I don't wanna put any pictures in your head," he laughed, scrubbing the towel over his body, always careful not to flash a glimpse.

"I am so confused," I said slowly, shaking my head like an idiot.

Arthur was flushed since I'd basically cornered him into explaining. "The water's real cold, princess. Some things... get a little smaller. You don't need to see nothing."

"I'm perfectly satisfied with the size of everything on your body, I couldn't possibly be disappointed by anything you could show me," I smirked. "Come a little closer."

"Why?" He asked suspiciously.

"I won't look. But maybe I could…" I trailed off, my eyes dropping to the towel. "I could warm you up a little."

"You being dirty, sweetheart?" His face was a mix of surprise and amusement.

"I'm in the mood for it," I admitted.

"Out here?" His voice raised in pitch.

"You opposed to that?"

Arthur glanced around. "Not really," he said, scrubbing the towel under his arms, still keeping the bottom of it hanging down over his groin.

"Come here then," I purred, and he slowly closed the gap. He stood just in front of me, his knees close to mine. He watched me intensely as my hand slid under the edge of the towel, my fingertips walking like little legs up his inner thigh.

I could tell he wasn't breathing, but he let out an audible hiss of breath when my hand wrapped around him. I looked up at him to see his eyes flutter closed momentarily as I began to gently play with him, brushing my hand back and forth, rubbing my thumb in a feather light dance over the tip.

"What– what're we doing? You want to lie down with me, want me to take you out here?" He questioned, his voice shaking a touch.

"I want to play around, try something," I told him. "You ever had a lady use her mouth to make you feel nice?"

"Fuck, only once," he breathed.

"Did you like it?"

"Yes," he nodded easily and I smiled.

"I liked it when you did it to me," I whispered.

"You want that now? I can– I'm real happy to, I like doin' it," he stammered out, his cock filling out in my hand, twitching upright, lengthening.

"I'm not asking you to do anything, I just want to play, for now," I told him.

I brushed the towel aside, exposing him. He didn't stop me and I leaned forwards to his belly, pressing kisses to his warm, soft flesh, moving sideways under his chest, lingering at the shallow hollow beneath his rib cage. I breathed over him, tilting my head until my forehead pressed against his chest. I looked down at my hand as it moved over him, and I paused briefly to slick my palm with spit. Arthur moved the towel completely, draping it over his shoulders as he hummed out his first audible moan.

"This nice?" I asked, returning my lips to his body, kissing down over his abdomen, the toned line down the centre towards his navel. He exhaled his confirmation without hesitation.

His abs flexed when I brushed over a sensitive, ticklish part of his belly and a low, sudden grunt sounded above me. I brought my free hand to his body, stroking it up over his chest, my palms feeling the firm peaks of his nipples before I slid my hand all the way down. It slipped between his thighs, cupping and fondling him as my other hand picked up the pace over his shaft. My heart began to pound, and I turned my eyes upwards to see him watching me closely. His hand brushed over my cheek, up to my temple and through my hair. I exhaled softly at his pleasant touch, closing my eyes and kissing down lower, beneath his navel, down to where his hair became thicker and more coarse until my hand knocked into my chin and I realised how close I was…

"Jesus Christ," Arthur exhaled almost inaudibly, his fingers burying themselves in my hair, scratching lightly at the base of my skull. "I feel like I'm gonna cum before you even start, watching you's getting me so worked up," he whispered. The corner of my lips lifted in satisfaction.

I loosened my hold on his cock, thumbed at the head and smeared the slick that gathered there as I slid my hand right down to the base. I watched as it twitched when the cool air met it, and heard Arthur's small, growl of a moan. I opened my mouth a little and tilted my head, leaning in to press a lingering open-mouthed kiss to the side of his cock, low down beside my hand. Arthur made a sound mighty close to a whimper and he rocked forwards on the balls of his feet momentarily before dropping back and letting out a stuttered breath. Warmth flooded and pounded between my legs and in my cheeks as I saw how aroused he was, how starved for the pleasure I could give him he was becoming.

I kissed him again, and again, moving up his length towards the tip, where my lips lingered with the kiss. I turned my head to and fro, dragging my lips over the slick head and feeling his arousal coating my lips like rouge. Arthur released a series of high pitched ah's and I pulled back to look into his eyes as I made a show of licking my lips. I didn't know what to expect but the flavour that hit me was a mild one, just a little salty, and I resisted the instinct to make a content hum as if I'd just tried a new kind of food.

"Fuck, fuck," he whispered, licking his own lips and fidgeting on his feet. His cock twitched in my hand again, and a clear stringy bead oozed from the tip, dripping down before I could attempt to catch it with my tongue.

"Oh my God," I breathed, my whole body tingling with intense, unignorable arousal.

I pushed forward, drawing my tongue over his cock, right down to my hand before tilting my head and retreating right back up to the tip. I encircled my lips around the end of it, immediately gaining a gasp and a jolt of Arthur's hips. I let out a sultry laugh at his reaction and he wailed out like he was going to cry. I'd never seen him like it before, not so intensely.

"Please," he begged, his voice low and husky. Please? Please what? I thought to myself, sliding my lips down a little more. "Ah, fuck, that's it, princess. Good girl. How much can you– you're going real far, shit," he commented as I slowly took more of him into my mouth, being careful to keep my teeth away.

I soon felt like I'd start to retch if I went any further and I froze, how on earth was I meant to tend to his entire cock? Was I even doing it right? It was supposed to go this far into my mouth, wasn't it? I was only assuming. I began to feel nervous, heart rate galloping again. I slid my lips back over the head, and he groaned when the tight ring of my mouth slid back and forth over the most sensitive part of him, and my hand began to stroke the rest of him. I sucked a little as I pulled back and Arthur's moan was loud and unbridled, so I did it a few more times, producing more and more intense reactions until I lifted my eyes to meet his, and suddenly the hand on my head pulled me off.

He gasped, tensed, cock pulsating.

"S-sorry, I nearly came and I didn't– fuck, it feels so good I don't want it to be over yet," he told me, and I let the relief slow my heart, for a moment I feared I'd done something wrong. "Okay… okay I'm good," he told me after a moment and I returned to him, taking him back into my mouth and sliding down.

I went a little further than before, trying hard to relax so that I wouldn't gag. It was hard, my mouth watered profusely and I tried to swallow what I could before I started drooling all over the place like a mess. The act squeezed the muscles at the back of my mouth around him and Arthur's hips rocked forwards a bit as he growled out. I coughed as my gag reflex was triggered and I withdrew.

"Shit, princess, I never meant to do that. You alright?" He questioned, cupping my face and tilting my head up to look at him. I nodded licking my lips and looking into his eyes, watching them soften in concern before shifting into something more sultry and aroused at the sight of me. "Do you want to stop?" He asked, despite his clear enjoyment.

"No, I like it. Just don't– try not to do that again. It'd be real embarrassing if I threw up," I laughed, out of breath.

"I won't, I promise I'll have more control over myself," he whispered, stroking the sides of my head as I trailed my tongue around the head of his cock, then up and down the sides slowly, hearing his little hums and groans returning. "I'll warn you when I'm about to… I won't do it in your mouth," he told me.

I hummed against the underside of his cock as I lifted it up, peeking up at him past his length. "I thought that was the idea of this," I murmured.

"Not… not always. You don't have to," he said, shaking his head and looking down at me with glazed eyes.

"What if I want it?" I asked, tilting my head at him as I jerked him quickly, letting the head of his cock brush over my lips.

"Then you ain't gonna be waiting long, you keep talking like that," he shuddered, his eyes closing for a moment before opening again.

"I want to try," I whispered, flashing a sultry smile, "I always wondered what you tasted like."

"Oh fuck," he whined, breathing heavily. I wrapped my lips around him, chased my hand up and down his length with them, sucking on the draw back, using my other hand to play with his balls. "Ohh, I'm gonna cum," he sighed.

I moaned around him, spurred on. I was surprised at how much I was enjoying myself, how much gratification pleasuring him provided me with, my body throbbed and pulsed with pleasure and I felt so slick between my legs I must've soaked my drawers by then.

"Oh baby, I love you, I love you so goddamn much," Arthur panted, his hand stroking back over my hair over and over, "I'm gonna– fuck, almost there. Almost– I'm cumming!" His voice was strangled as his cock started to throb and twitch inside my mouth.

I felt a sudden flood of liquid, it hit the roof of my mouth and flowed down over my tongue, filling my mouth with a flavour far stronger than I'd tasted before, definitely salty, a little bitter. I swallowed it down as a knee-jerk reaction, mainly to get the foreign texture out of my mouth. My eyes closed in concentration as I drank him down with each throb and pump of his cock, until he was spent, just twitching rhythmically as his loud moans died down. I pumped my lips over him a few more times, wringing the last sparks and shudders from him before tonguing away any residual spend from his tip, opening my eyes to meet his.

"Jesus, fuck, princess," he sighed, sagging a little on his feet, swaying a bit.

I was breathless, staring up at him as my whole body buzzed with an indecent yet wonderful thrill. I was suddenly very shocked at myself, performing such an intimate and dirty act, and getting such a release from it that wasn't like an orgasm, but it was certainly something. I received a special kind of satisfaction and gratification when Arthur spilled into my mouth, riding waves of his own pleasure that I had brought him.

Arthur recovered, panting as he bent down, tilting my head up and kissing me hard, his tongue probing enough for him to surely taste himself. He quickly dropped to his knees, dirtying himself up on the ground. As he kissed me his hands went to my skirt, lifting. I jolted and grabbed his hands to stop him. He must've forgotten about my current condition, I was bleeding, in no fit state to have such attention.

"No?" He questioned lightly, not needing to string together a whole question for us to communicate. I shook my head.

"I only wanted to do you," I whispered.

He carefully placed his hands on my thighs and nuzzled his face into my neck, inhaling and kissing between words. "I'd like to do you," he returned, tone a low hum, "you don't want me to?"

"I'm satisfied," I whispered. "Besides, you know I can't," I added sheepishly. He seemed to remember, exhaling quietly.

"It's okay," he nodded, drawing back. "How was that?"

"What we just did?" I breathed, smiled. Arthur nodded. "I liked it."

"You did?"

"You seemed to enjoy it a lot, and that really does something for me," I admitted, wrapping my arms around his neck.

"I did enjoy it a whole lot, you're real good to me," he pecked my forehead.

"You're gonna need another bath, kneeling in the mud like that," I warned, and with a groan he pushed himself to his feet. He sighed as he dusted his hands over his knees, not at all shy about standing naked so close to me, especially in comparison to earlier on.

I didn't think when I reached out and pressed my hand to his chest, stroking down and feeling his muscles, humming pleasantly to myself.

"You sure you don't need taking care of?" He smirked, seeing my handsyness for exactly what it was. There was no denying I was aroused. Still, the impulsive cloud had passed and I wasn't going to lift my skirts for him, despite his apparent willingness.

"I'm sure," I grinned at him, letting him go and handing him his clothes an article at a time so he could get dressed. "We should be heading back anyway, that's a long bath you just had."

Arthur hummed in agreement, flashing me a dirty smile.

Arthur left to meet Sadie and Dutch after having a quick bite to eat; a lump of pork he cooked over the fire himself on the end of his knife. He kissed me goodbye by the horses and I wished him luck, telling him to give Colm a wave goodbye from me. I spent the remainder of my day doing chores and trying not to scratch at my leg where it had entered the itching phase of the healing process; at least it no longer hurt.

I was taking a break with a cup of water and a little bit of chocolate Pearson had snuck me from the back of his wagon, I was discreet in eating it. There was not enough to share and it'd been so long since I'd eaten chocolate, I decided to be a bit selfish. So when I saw Tilly approaching, I shoved the last tiny piece into my mouth, screwing up the wrapper and pocketing it.

"Why's it look like I've caught you doing something you shouldn't?" She smiled playfully at me as she got closer.

"Cause I'm sitting down doing nothing, don't you feel bad whenever you take a break?"

"Not at all," she huffed a laugh. She stretched out her arm, handing a letter to me. "This came for Arthur. Would you give it to him?"

"Course," I said, looking at the handwriting on the front of the letter. I knew who it was from.

"I think it's from Mary," she said with a bit of an unimpressed tone. I nodded in agreement. "God knows what it is this time."

"I'm a little shocked. When we saw her last things seemed to get wrapped up, Arthur told her how it was," I hummed, and Tilly sighed.

"Feels like there's something inside it," she noted. There was a hard lump between the layers of paper, and a squeeze had me recognising the shape. My eyes widened a bit.

"I think she got the message," I murmured, "it's a ring."

"Oh," Tilly's brows raised, "ouch. She didn't have to send it back, that seems a little… why make a thing of it?"

"I don't know," I shook my head, "maybe she thinks Arthur could do with the money," I snorted.

"Mm, maybe," she said, her tone low. "With a stroke of luck, that'll be the last he hears from her," she patted my shoulder, and with a sigh I slipped the letter into the pocket of my jacket. Tilly went to leave but I called after her.

"Hey, Tilly. You mind sitting for a second?"

She hesitated, only out of surprise, then turned back and took the seat next to me. "Sure, what's up?"

"Nothing, really, I just– how're you feeling?"

"Me? Well, you know, I'm just trying to get through each day just like everyone else. This place is like purgatory, though. I'm not liking it one bit," she told me with a heavy sigh, shaking her head and looking out across the camp.

"What do you think's gonna happen?"

"I think Dutch will figure it out. He always does."

"You think he still can? My understanding is this is far worse than it's ever been for the gang," I tentatively suggested, trying to figure out how much confidence she had in him after all that happened.

"I think he'll do his best, and he's never let us down before. He came back to us after Guarma, didn't he? He and the boys could've not looked back, sailed on off to some other country where the law wouldn't know nothing about 'em," she pointed out and I bobbed my head in consideration. Dutch, Micah, Bill… possibly Javier, I could see doing that if things were dire enough. But Arthur? Even if I didn't exist, I doubted he would leave the gang so stranded.

"I suppose so," I said anyway. "You really believe in Dutch, don't you?"

"Right now, I have to," she said, almost sadly. I rubbed my hand up and down her arm briefly. "What about you; how're you feeling?"

"I'm alright," I nodded, "I reckon I'll be fine as long as Arthur keeps on coming back. This is all way over my head, way more than I expected when I joined. But I'm sticking with it, just thinking of what's important."

"And what about Dutch? Do you trust him?" She asked. I was quiet for a moment, my eyes locked with hers for a few long seconds.

"Well, it's like you said. He'll do his best. The rest of us? We'll just… follow," I said quietly. Tilly's lips parted, but she closed them again and nodded slowly.

"Anyway, I better get back to my chores," she told me, putting on a small smile. I nodded and watched as she got up and headed away, glancing over her shoulder at me once.

I sighed and dropped my head into my palms.

#rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #arthur morgan #fanfiction #arthur morgan x reader #arthur morgan x female reader #atink #reader insert #nsft #rdr2 fanfic

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