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#and be aware that like. if you pirate to say fuck you netflix...you do fuck over the little show you're pirating as well
utilitycaster · 1 year
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OGL 1.2 summary
Finally have had a chance to look through properly. I do strongly suggest following people like Gabe Hicks and James Haeck, who are game designers with extensive experience working with WoTC but neither of whom are currently employed by them; Hicks also has done extensive design on other TTRPGs (as showcased in Dimension 20's Shriek Week; they are also a developer for Motherlands RPG and worked on the Uk'otoa tabletop game). Both have had pretty thorough and thoughtful criticism that is grounded in the facts of the matter.
Also: I am doing my best but I am not a lawyer. Please defer to verified lawyers if my paraphrasing is incorrect. Additionally, I am rephrasing things in simple terms, so do not jump to conclusions based on my word choice; if you are looking at the highly specific legal implications of a word you should refer to the actual OGL 1.2 document. And, most importantly, All of this can be commented on at this survey link.
In general:
The core rules, not including classes/races or specific spells, will be covered by a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. This includes things like ability checks, saving throws, the core stats stuff, conditions (prone, exhausted, etc) and creature types (but not the creatures themselves). The full SRD 5.1 is available here if you want to check for yourself.
It affirms the fan content policy (never affected by 1.1, but worth mentioning given how often it came up; Actual Play is covered here)
D&D Beyond and DMs Guild are, also as previously, under their own standards that are available for review on those sites. (I think I may have made some errors regarding DMs Guild being a WoTC property with its own rules in the past, but it is and you can review some of their policies here.
The OGL 1.0 is deauthorized, which means that once the OGL 1.2 (or whatever version is ultimately finalized) takes effect, new works must abide by OGL 1.0 rules; however, older materials originally created under 1.0 are still valid under 1.0. The full revocation was perhaps the most problematic part of OGL 1.1, so this is a good step forward and means existing 3PP materials you have can continue to be sold as is.
The actual OGL 1.2 stuff
This applies specifically to commercial content using material in the WoTC SRD not covered by the CC-BY 4.0 license created after this license goes into affect. Again. Does not affect streaming or other fanworks including free homebrew; does not affect other games; does not affect material published in the past.
It also only applies to static published materials and to VTTs; VTTs have a separate section.
Third party works under the OGL 1.2 are owned by their creators in full (this means no possible claims from WoTC to royalties or the IP created by those third parties). There is a clause stating that in the case of unintentionally similar content (the "3PP creates a fire-based druid around the same time as Tasha's came out" case I mentioned previously) a lawsuit may only be for financial damages, not injunction (which I understand to mean things like emotional impact etc) and must rely on proof that WoTC "knowingly and intentionally" copied the work. This is, from what I am given to understand, extremely standard in copyright law because coincidences do happen and people do try to sue over them, and has been deliberately rephrased to affirm that WoTC does not own the third-party content provided the terms of the OGL 1.2 are maintained.
Works must also indicate they are derived from OGL content using appropriate signifiers as put forth by WoTC, clearly state they are third-party and not endorsed by WoTC (this is why Griffon's Saddlebag has been foaming at the mouth) and creators must be in a position to enter into the terms of the license (of age or has had a legal guardian review the terms as proxy), cannot infringe on material that is not in the SRD, cannot violate the law; and there is a morality clause regarding no hateful conduct, the decision of which is made by WoTC.
Additionally, the OGL 1.2's terms cannot be modified, other than the specific details of how to attribute, and some legal pieces at the end regarding notifying creators.
VTT Policy
SRD materials are permitted in VTTs these do not and have never included official images as the SRD does not have images. Fan images are permitted. This information must be static; stat blocks are permitted, but, per the example given, animations such as that of a magic missile are not.
My thoughts/editorial:
I will direct you to James Haeck about VTTs. I have said before I don't really like VTTs. I don't even have a D&D Beyond subscription. I went to cancel mine and found that I was actually just using the free tools (I've bought some books through D&D Beyond, to be fair but I have not subscribed to share them and I have under 6 characters). Personally, I find myself in the awkward position of "I love theater of the mind and imagination in TTRPGs and so I think having an animated magic missile is kind of stupid; honestly I'm not even into D&D Beyond animating the dice rolls" and also "you shouldn't disallow things at a business level solely on the belief that they are kind of stupid." So: worth providing feedback on that one! Also, more relevantly, is this only about licensed D&D content? Can you provide animation for your VTT if you're doing things in a different game, just, once there's SRD content in play on the field, you must stop? Can you provide animation in D&D as long as it's not material covered in the OGL, ie, can you have a sword swinging animation or can the player sprites move rather than just appear in a space, neither of which are unique concepts to D&D (vs. magic missile which is)? In summary: my feelings aside re: VTTs, clarification is in order and I will be providing the latter feedback.
Morality/Hateful conduct clauses are complicated. I absolutely agree that I do not trust a corporation to determine what's hateful. I also 100% do not trust the community either, and I 110% do not trust people who say the community will police itself. I've been open in the past about how I don't fucking trust the D&D community on Jewish depictions (spoiler: actually, non-Jewish people handwringing about goblins, golems, and phylacteries has often been extremely condescending and misinformed, and while obviously Jewish people are not a monolith, my primarily Jewish D&D tables have never taken issue with these things as presented within WoTC materials, but have taken issue with fan-created depictions, and I'm tbh hardcore side-eyeing the Hasbrodeus module for like 20 reasons, of which that is one). However, the same is not necessarily true for other minority groups, notably PoC, of whom there have been some quite harmful depictions; and I think most of us are aware that morality clauses have long been exploited to label queer depictions as obscene: I don't have a good answer for this other than "needs more specificity." A good start for the latter issue would be spelling out bigotry (ie, "discriminatory on the basis of sexual orientation or gender presentation") and providing a clear process for appeal. I do understand where WoTC is coming from given the whole issue with the new TSR but this is incredibly complicated and impossible to outline in a one-size-fits-all clause. Worth noting, however: DMs Guild, again, has separate and more rigid standards. This does not mean the horny gay vampire game that was removed from it would be permitted to be self-published under the OGL 1.2; it also does not indicate that it wouldn't, because, again, lacking in specificity on what "obscene" means.
I find the choice to make the core mechanics Creative Commons but not the class structure (which is under the OGL 1.2 proper) to be a really interesting one, and I mean this in a neutral-to-complimentary way. Not sure what the implications are, but excited to find out, because I think it might lead to more interesting indie games that can capitalize on the widely known core combat/ability check mechanics of D&D but develop wildly different class structures.
DnD Shorts continues to shit the bed in the extreme; for real, do not listen to this dude. His twitter is currently a wild self-contradictory mess, his journalistic integrity never existed, and he is literally a clickbaity mediocre white man who has probably been playing D&D for less time than you. I understand that not everyone learns how to determine trustworthiness of a source online but like...why would you trust a guy who has no reason to have insider information and every reason to want clicks and attention. He isn't even a creator affected by the OGL (unlike, say, Hicks or Haeck), and some of what he said was literally obviously false to anyone who's filled out a UA or OneD&D survey.
Honestly, in general, I think the end takeaway really has been "try to determine the motivations and concrete actions of people talking about this." Are they pushing a specific game (rather than generally providing alternatives for those looking)? Do they run channels that don't rely on the OGL 1.0 OR 1.1/1.2 in any way but do rely on clicks? Are they a creator genuinely concerned for their livelihood, or are they a person who thinks that when a game company gets sufficiently large (or even when they don't...see someone asking a tiny Native-owned TTRPG for their SRD) IP laws should no longer apply?
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inazuma-fulgur · 1 year
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Gotten aware of the fact that some people defend the Harry Potter game by pointing out that other games also had terrible people working on and profiting from them
Not all too different from tactics utilized against activist, claiming they aren't fighting the biggest and most important fight and therefore they shouldn't do anything. A classic
And even apart from this missing the whole point, that yeah you shouldn't support any of these kinds of people
It also distracts from the fact that jkr isn't a random developer, she gets all the money
It also misses the fact that most of these are normal people that have done shitty stuff, sexual assault among them, but without ideological intentions. They're just pieces of shit
The hp developer is a far right whatever the fuck. Way way above anyone who is named as a defense/comparison. Dude would probably go murder people himself if he could get away with it. Maybe he does idk. - like to continue here, unlike many of these cases (comparative to ie dragon prince (don't watch dragon prince on Netflix, pirate. It's a good show but Aron Ehasz is also a predator)) pirating isn't the solution. Because the game itself is anti semitic. Like you probably shouldn't play cod ww2 if you care about not glorifying war and imperialism, just my opinion tho (you really shouldn't) (yeah they say Nazis bad in that game and that's good and all, but doesn't change much about it portrayal of violence and justice. States and militaries aren't going to be the ones saving us from fascists. They'll only fight them if their goals are contradictory. Most likely they will team up against us. No matter how much they say "Nazis bad" I will not be able to see cod games as anything but military propaganda.)
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notstilinski · 3 years
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Midnight Mass Starters !
Taken from the 2021 Netflix series, Midnight Mass! Some of these have already been edited. You can change them however you see fit! Keep in mind that some spoilers for the show will be present!
“Are they okay? They’re gonna be okay?”
“While you’re at it, ask him why He always takes the kids, while the drunk fucks always walk away with scratches.”
“Oh, their lips to God’s ears. No. They’re lips to my ass.”
“I’m good. I’d actually prefer not to smell like cat shit.”
“You know, sometimes there’s a storm, and it floods, and those bodies just pop up right out of the ground. Cat food.”
“I’m surprised that you’re surprised. I figured this is where you wanted to be. You were trying to break in, after all.”
“This isn’t a community anymore, honey. It’s a ghost.”
“Come on, no one can fool the altar boys.”
“No, uh, I think that you’re the prodigal one. I’m just the black sheep.”
“Look at us, back where we started. The one place that we swore we’d never end up.”
“So, I mean, you came back… Here. You came back here on purpose. Why?”
“Ride out the storm tonight, and then tomorrow, you’ll see what tomorrow is all about. Find another project.”
“Well, that’s the thing about where we’ve been. It’s important, sure. But it’s not as important as where we’re going.”
“Every place before where I am now, well, they were just leading me here even if I didn’t know it at the time. Even if I didn’t see it.”
“Are you really walking by without saying hi?”
“This darkness. This blackness that spilled into us.”
“Even out of the blackness, love will rise again.”
“I don’t want to hold up the town’s pariah.”
“Shit I did, I don’t care about me so much either. But what did he ever do? What did he ever do to you?”
“My friend here is just leaving, and they mean no harm. Not they’re fault that they were born woefully fucking unfunny.”
“You ever hear of RR? AA for pirates.”
“See, I’m a pretty rational person, and you know that all our myths, our religions, come from natural occurrences that we can’t explain.”
“No, it’s more than that. You take care of people.”
“You stole from me things I didn’t even have yet. You reached through time, (Name)! You reached through time and stole!”
“If I can forgive you, (Name), then anyone can.”
“It’s like this particular brand of self-righteousness that is exclusive to a certain breed of religion.”
“But just now… It’s like I woke up, and there you are.”
“Told you they’d catch on. We’re a trio now.”
“But then being in there with you, and (Name), and talking like that, talking under those circumstances where I feel like... maybe my life might be worth it.”
“It felt too easy to leave. Like, I shouldn’t just leave.”
“I guess I’m a glutton for punishment.”
“I knew all the while that I’d have to lie to the very people that I’m here to save.”
“All three of us, we, um, we were a little scared shitless.”
“I already had resentment in my heart, and I shouldn’t have.”
“But children just don’t do what you did on their own, not unless one of their parents has failed them something awful. And you’re mother’s a saint, so I guess that just leaves me.”
“It’s a special kind of self-pity to identify with the destruction of Jerusalem.”
“Everyone gets their wings clipped at some point.”
“I think we all want, so badly, for there to be a reason. For everything. And some justice, and some comfort when we die.”
“That’s what we mean when we say heaven. No mansions, no rivers of diamonds or fluffy clouds and angel wings. You are loved. And you aren’t alone.”
“Give yourself over, while you understand it or not.”
“Well, at least they didn’t call them Bong.”
“When something like this happens, we are all supposed to be the same.”
“He seemed fine. But that’s what they say. People who aren’t okay.”
“Just wondering who the hell lit those campfires in the sky.”
“You were aware of yourself, but you acted involuntarily.”
“I worry. I worry about that one. They’re hardly the reliable sort.”
“You brought me out here, where there is nowhere for me to go, to do what exactly?”
“See, I can’t believe you’d want to scare me. I don’t believe that.”
“I’m not as strong as you. I never was.”
“I’ll show them, they don’t have to be afraid of us. I’ll show them who we are.”
“What I know is that (Name) sacrificed everything. Everything. Because they thought I could help.”
“It never made sense to me. We say there’s a heaven and that it’s waiting for us. Then we claw, fight and beg for a few more minutes at the end.”
“We made our choices. We lived our lives.”
“Is that what I’ll become? Just an animal who can’t resist?”
“I suppose virtue isn’t a virtue if it doesn’t cost you anything.”
“I am so proud of you, and I just wish that we had gotten to know each other.”
“I don’t know, but I think that I killed my mom.”
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lannasroleplaymemes · 3 years
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BO BURNHAM: INSIDE Sentence Starters
From Bo Burnham’s newly released Netflix special. Trigger warning for mentions of suicide and generally pessimistic/cynical statements, plus swear. Tweak as needed.
"It's a beautiful day to stay inside." "Daddy made you your favorite, open wide." "The world is so fucked up." "There's only one thing I can do about it...while being paid." "Should I be joking at a time like this?" "Don't panic, call me." "Should I stop trying to be funny?" "Should I give away my money? NO." "I'm a special kind of guy." "I self reflected and I want to be an agent of change." "So I am going to use my privilige for the good." "So maybe I should just shut the fuck up." "I don't wanna do that." "I'm ___ and I'm here to save the day." "And yes they'll pay me, but I'd do it for free." "I'm healing the world with comedy." "If you start to smell burning toast, you're having a stroke or you're overcooking your toast." "Somebody help me out, 'cause I don't know." "And I want to help to leave this world better than I found it." "Welcome to whatever this is." "Trying to distract myself from putting a bullet into my head with a gun." "Pour me a drink and clear my schedule." "These 40 minutes are essential." "Say hi to dad." "And that's the deepest talk we've ever had." "Today we're gonna learn about the world." "I've been in a frightening liminal space between states of being. Not quite dead, not quite alive." "It's similar to a constant state of sleep paralysis." "The simple narrative taught in every history class is demonstrably false and pedagogically classist." "Don't you know the world is built with blood and genocide and exploitation?" "Private property's inherently theft." "Every politician, every cop on the street protects the interests of the pedophilic corporate elite." "Just don't burden me with the responsibility of educating you, it's exhausting." "I'm sorry, I was just trying to become a better person." "Why do rich people insist on seeing every socio-political conflict through the myopic lens of your own self-actualization?" "This isn't about you. So either get with it, or get out of the fucking way." "Have you not been fucking listening?" "I can't go...I can't go back. I'm sorry." "Are you going to behave yourself?" "Yes. Yes Sir..." "I learned my lesson and it hurt." "I come in and I put their fears to rest." "Tell them you're against racism -- in theory." "Will you support us in the fight against lyme disease?" "There's no sugarcoating it, the world is fucked up." "An avocado, a poem written in the sand..." "Is this heaven or is it just a white woman's instagram?" "It's been a decade since you've been gone." "Your little girl didn't do too bad." "Is that...is that necessary?" "Can anyone, any single one of you, just shut the fuck up? Just about any single thing? For an hour? Is that possible?" "Who needs a coffee 'cause I'm doing a run?" "I'm an unpaid intern." "And since you can't afford a mortgage, you just torrent a porn." "If you had told me this a year ago, I would've said 'Interesting, now leave me alone.'" "Look, I'm confused. I'm very, very confused." "Oh, if I'm self-aware that I'm a douchebag, it'll make me less of a douchebag." "Am I balding?" "This is really, really disturbing." "Amateurs can fucking suck it." "Fuck their wives, drink their blood!" "A handful of bug-eyed salamanders in silicon valley..." "Maybe that as a way of life, forever, maybe that's um...not good." "I'm...horny." "It isn't sex it's the next best thing." "Tonight I'm thinking of taking it slow." "We'll use emojis only." "We don't need phonetical diction." "We'll talk dirty like we're ancient Egyptians." "What if now you think that I'm implying your vagina is as big as a Ferris wheel?" "Crisis averted, thank god." "They made the internet for nights like this." "I love you, baby. Send a picture of your tits, please." "Jesus fucking Christ I guess I never learn." "My phone's flash is my only light and the flash makes my dick look frightened." "I chicken out and send a picture of my face instead." "My dick looks like the baby from eraserhead." "So I send it to you and then my phone dies." "One hand on my dick and one hand on my phone." "Another night on my phone, yeah." "I'm not feeling good." "All my clothes are dirty." "What's up you useless fuck?" "I haven't had a shower in the last nine days." "I'm not really feeling like I wanna get lit." "My current mental health is rapidly approaching an all time low." "Yeah, so um, yeah, not doing so great." "Do I really have to finish?" "Do returns always diminish?" "Did I say that right?" "I wrote offensive shit and I said it." "Times are changing and I'm getting old." "My bed is empty and I'm getting cold." "I'm problematic." "He's a problem." "Are you gonna hold me accountable?" "I'm gonna go home and burn it." "I've been totally awful." "And I'm really fucking sorry." "Bitch I'm trying to listen." "Well that's fine, you radiate such youth." "Yay." "Nooooooo!" "God...goddammit." "Oh yeah? Well your fucking phones are poisoning your minds, okay?" "So when you develop a dissociative mental disorder in your twenties, don't come crawling back to me." "My stupid friends are having stupid children." "I'll be 40 and kill myself then." "I just want to say for the record, um, that I do not want to kill myself, okay?" "Can you not, please?" "There are people that love y--I mean, that's not true, necessarily, but there could be." "Are you tired of it? Never mind, I don't want to know." "Welcome to the internet." "There's no need to panic." "Don't act surprised, you know you like it, you whore." "Apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime." "And that has made me completely freak out." "So, yeah, who fucking cares?" “Is it just me or do pirates need to take better care of their fucking maps?”
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larsisfrommars · 2 years
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This is probably going to piss a lot of people off.
But one of the most terminally online (particularly terminally on Twitter) takes I’ve ever seen in a while is “if this extremely problematic creator says your on their side politically if you consume their work (even if you haven’t and refuse to give them money) than you ARE on their side.”
No. Just… No.
I’m not supporting Anne Rice’s attempts to destroy fanfiction as we know it because I watch a secondhand dvd of Interview With A Vampire I got in a bargain bin every Halloween. I do not like 90% of Stephanie Myers opinions, but I’m still gonna reblog a twilight meme. The examples of messed up, morally disgusting creators are practically infinite. Not to mention the hundreds upon hundreds of films we all watch with actors who would consider us fans who support their causes. Even though they’re objectively fucked up and wrong. Just because we watched a movie with them in it. Observation (with no monetary gain) does NOT equal solidarity.
Just to be clear and thorough. This tactic does not work as well for streaming services for books or movies, musicians (if you use music streaming), or internet celebrities since the act of watching their content is an act of solidarity since the monetization of their content happens through ads and membership fees. Which is why people SHOULD NOT watch the potential Harry Potter Netflix series ever at all. OR listen to Rowling’s books on Audible, or watch the movies on any streaming platform!
I’m trans, and I hate JK Rowling, I hated her before I knew I was trans because she hates trans people and gender essentialism sucks for everybody. I hope her bullshit Netflix series flops because she doesn’t deserve anymore monetary fuel for her TERF machine. She doesn’t deserve another goddamn dime from anybody and she’s certainly not going to be getting it from me.
Am I going to set fire to the beat up copy of the Sorcerer’s Stone I’ve had since I was eight years old because it was one of the few things standing between me and the traumatizing shit that was going on in my life at the time? No.
I’m not gonna just get rid of any other sentimental piece of HP media that I’ve had since before I could buy anything of my own free will either. Because despite how I understand now as an adult that it’s a classist, anti-Semitic, transphobic dumpster fire that isn’t nearly as good of a mystery franchise as a LOT of people acted like it was. It’s not ‘just trying to get through bullying and separated parents’ child version of me’s fault that his hero turned out to be a complete fucking asshole nutcase who would hate who he is fundementally if she met him now.
Am I ever going to read it again because her actions have tainted the content somewhat? Even though these things impacted me heavily as a child and have intimate sentimental value? No, probably not.
Am I ever going to go on Pottermore or buy any merch, books, films, or interact with any online content she’s made ever again? No!
Am I still going to interact with content others have made assessing and thinking critically of her books and the films? Or satirizing/parodying it? Especially in light of how truly fucked up the author, and often as a result, the content of the books, are? YES.
Because we consume and analyze problematic media all the time! Even when we know the creator is problematic! Alive or dead! From A Brave New World (racist) to Supernatural (homophobic, almost never passed a Bechdel Test) to Lord of The Rings (racist, yes the films and books). What matters is that we are aware and critical and don’t support them in the future! (Sidenote: I’m not advocating you pirate classical literature unless you really have to. Because the classics do need to stay in print. But seriously, have fun with everything else I don’t give a shit.)
I liked (emphasis on the past tense) Harry Potter as a kid, it was my rock during an extremely unstable time for me. Doesn’t magically unfuck up the author or the books’ contents. It does NOT make me a TERF. Bottom line is it doesn’t matter what she (or any other creator for that matter) presumes our opinions are, it’s about her having the money to promote her transphobia. So don’t buy her shit, if you are less sentimental than me and can renounce her every piece of media entirely that’s great (/srs). But don’t attack people for who they were and what they needed. Some of us ex-potterheads are trans and can’t have completely binary emotions about the franchise, just sayin’.
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thejudgingtrash · 4 years
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Now hold up I would personally love to hear a full rant on this supposed adaptation I have never heard of until now. Like, legitimately, I wanna know what you have to say about this cause you seem to be one of the most valid PJO blogs
Uhhh what??? Me one of the most valid PJO blogs??? What kinda crack have you been smoking WHAT afahsgjskdh.
But still thank you 😊🥺🙈
Alright, you wanted a rant. You got a rant. Fuck the positives let’s just straight up jump into my aggression.
WARNING: Massive rant with a lot of swear words. If you can’t handle the heat, feel free to ignore this. I personally haven’t worked in Hollyweird, but I had some behind the scenes stuff here in Europe going on for a short period and also the trusty words of my college professors. So here will be a lot of prediction and speculation involved. Yes, I know that I’m a huge hypocrite for voicing my opinions based on stuff that hasn’t been pushed through in months and that I could be easily proven wrong in a few weeks/months. Still thank you should you actually take the time to read through this tomfuckery.
If things are wrong, please DO correct me!
Links to further reads will be included partially.
TL;DR: Keep your hopes to a low, stop harassing people online and mAnAgE yOuR eXpEcTaTiOnS!!111!!
Okay. First things first:
DISNEY
DOESN’T
GIVE
A
SINGLE
FUCK
ABOUT
YOU
Disney is a fucking multi-billion dollar corporation with many, many, many studios, stations, brands and franchises worldwide. The Percy Jackson franchise is a dime in a dozen. Disney doesn’t give a single fuck about the PJO fandom in general.
Disney doesn’t give a fuck about you 20-something year old with your 9 year old blog discussing which toilet paper brand Percy uses. And Disney also doesn’t give a fuck about you 16 year old, writing the worst fucking Solangelo fanfic I’ve read so far on this hellsite. Like goddamn.
Trust me, they know you are interested. They know they got you hooked. They see the numbers, they see the like/reblog ratio, they see the Twitter engagement. They see you with #disneyadaptpercyjackson. They see the petitions, they see how excited you were for the musical. You don’t get to be a gigantic conglomerate like Disney with playing stupid.
Also to you fuckfarts saying oH nO I wOn’T wAtCh It I dOn’T cArE aBoUt NeW sTuFf. Congrats dipshit. You are STILL alerting followers and people about what’s happening and creating more buzz, giving more awareness and adding to the transaction costs. You really cheated the system, you little edgelord. Again:
You are nothing but a number. You are a fucking walking dollar bill. You are a consumer waiting for a new shiny product to fill the void in your life for 45 minutes weekly or by two hours at some point.
The PJO movies 1. & 2 happened for a reason. Because Fox saw a popular book series á la Harry Potter, Twilight (and The Hunger Games) and wanted a piece of that action. They wanted your fucking money. Them entirely fucking up and ignoring Riordan’s advice is on them of course. But still. The movies happened. (And also saw people saying they were flops. Reception wise: hell yes. They are awful adaptations (not per se awful movies, there’s a difference). But money wise?? They made together over 245 million dollars in profit. Of course, that isn’t today’s Marvel level but it’s still fairly decent. Also don’t forget that the second movie still got greenlit. Interest was still there despite part one. You disliking something doesn’t turn it into a flop)).
Again, Disney doesn’t care about you. THIS is what Disney cares about:
1. MONEY
2. PROFIT
3. ENGAGEMENT
4. TOTAL GROSS
5. CONVERSION RATES
11. …. “Artistry“
So in terms of money, we gotta speak about the on-going woke culture. You know, lgbtqia+ stuff, poc representation and all the good shit we want and need in our life, right?
Well, I got bad news for ya. Disney being money hungry has its massive downsides. Because where is the money? In the east. Well and what happens if we include the woke stuff? Possible censorships (even retroactively! You know Gravity Falls went through that), bans, etc.
So all of you talking about representation and artistic vision and being bold and brave and blablabla… Throw that into the fucking trash. We can probably be glad if we get Grover back as the token black kid and a few other minorities sprinkled here and there. Open gay Nico? Doubt it. Your afro-latino Percy head canon? Definitely keep that but unlikely to be realized. And also, if you think that Annabeth wouldn’t get turned into the blandest whitest “I dOn’T nEeD nO mAn“ radfem, I got some bad news for ya…
The likelihood of everything being dumbed down, toned down with the exception of a few adult jokes or being even partially censored (depending on certain regions) is very, very high.
Also what makes you think we’re even getting close to the Heroes of Olympus and Trials of Apollo saga? I doubt you will see The Seven for a long time unless Riordan really says fuck it and throws his final ace card into Disney’s filthy greedy mouth.
So if Disney doesn’t have the fandom’s interest at heart, what are they interested in? Well… MONEY. Also NEW engagement. They know your funky ass is going to tune in. They know people will pirate the shit (Me waving like a maniac), they all KNOW that. Again, they aren’t stupid.
So: MORE engagement. MORE money. How do we get even more engagement? By luring new people into the fandom. Who is most likely going to get lured into a family friendly show/movie series because let’s not forget that we’re talking about Disney+? The targeted audience of the books. Who is the targeted audience of the books? MIDDLE SCHOOLERS. 11 to 14 year olds. Disney wants those kids’ (well their parents’ hard earned) money. They want to sell products, in that case books + Disney Plus subscriptions + possible merch. There you also have the likely future rating for the fucking show. Sorry to disappoint everyone that was hoping for gritty Game of Thrones filled with 12 year olds (like seriously wtf?).
Now that that’s settled, let’s talk about the outlook on the show/movie and Riordan’s influence that you people clearly overestimate.
How much power or say does Rick Riordan actually have?
ZERO. ABSOLUTELY NONE.
He’s in the worst fucking lose-lose-situation you could imagine.
Disney owns the books and Fox owns the movie rights. Wait. Fox got bought. By whom you ask? DISNEY, what a coincidence! In Rick Riordan’s own words:
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Disney has him by his fucking balls and could crush them at any minute. And if you think, that Disney is letting go of that sweet sweet intellectual property you are fucking mistaken. Riordan isn’t a J.K. Rowling who OWNS the Wizarding World. You have no idea what Disney are capable of with massive lobbying that goes so far to influence copyright laws in the States (LINK)
So you can stop harassing him about a fucking Netflix adaptation as well! Or petitions that do nothing but annoy people.
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These negotiations take up YEARS to get the simplest stuff done. No need to shit your pants whenever Riordan’s tweeting stuff.
Still: would Disney be fucking mad to do this without him? Absolutely!
Should Disney involve him to prevent a PJO movie 2.0 scenario?
Yes, they definitely should!
But CAN Disney do this without him?
OF COURSE THEY CAN! THEY OWN EVERYTHING.
In Riordan’s own words:
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Read carefully what he has written. He doesn’t say he’s going to halter productions, he’s saying HE WON’T BE A PART OF IT. This also makes me curious about WHO approached WHO in the first place (my guess Disney tried to make some amendments because Fox ain’t shit and trying to alienate the author again would be a goddamn stupid move). Disney has the fucking film rights. Of course they can pump out shit without involving him. They could pull a Fantastic Four (the awful 2015 version) just to keep the rights and for the fuck of it.
There are the following possibilities with Riordan’s involvement:
1. Riordan as a producer: Dude’s gotta be loaded. We know that. But backing the production costs many, many, many millions and I don’t know if he’s THAT loaded. Also film producing isn’t his forte.
2. Riordan as a screenplay writer: Now we’re getting closer to something. Yes, many productions these days have authors directly involved which is great! But also can go the other way around (J.K. Rowling and her Grindelwald fiasco. Author’s do NEED to learn when to stop intermeddling with their franchises, just saying) Book writing and screenplay writing are two very DIFFERENT disciplines. You don’t have the liberties of book writing when it comes to film. The screenplay is the guide for the entire production, the visuals, the set design, the whole atmosphere of the product, the very first thing that needs to be done so that directors, designers and lastly the casted actors know what they have to do. Everything has to come to a point in a very short time and there are many, many, many versions of a screenplay before a final raw draft gets handed out. If that isn’t in Riordan’s interest (which I can completely understand) then that’s simply not happening
3. Riordan as a guide: Directors, screenplay writers, etc. sit down with Riordan on a regular basis to show him the written screenplay, which actors they have in mind, the whole vision and he has a mini veto right.
If you ask me, a mix of scenario 2 and 3 is the most likely to be the most successful. That means, that Riordan needs to have a good faithful team, that sticks closely to the source material. That isn’t guaranteed! Again: look at the PJO movies. But of course, we don’t know the internals of these meetings.
So… now the final part. The whole fucking “Animation vs. Live action“ debate. Well, both sides have their pro’s and con’s. And both sides are filled with a bunch of fucking morons. I won’t try to get you to either side.
But to those that want are begging for a live action version with age-appropriate actors I have the following to say:
FUCK
YOU
IN
PARTICULAR!
WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU WANT CHILDREN TO GO THROUGH THE HELL THAT IS DISNEY AND THE SHADY SHIT GOING ON THERE SO THAT YOU CAN BE ENTERTAINED FOR SOME MERE MINUTES?!
Oh my god…. You people REALLY really want a fourth wave Me Too movement in 15-20 years. Not every Hollyweird kid has a helicopter parent hovering around them on set and many do get abused/robbed by their parents. And the people involved in the production! Of course, animation has still a chance of this happening but the risk is somewhat lower when it just comes to voice acting.
Tbh, I actually wouldn’t mind an aged-up cast again just to prevent this as best as possible. Unfortunately, child actors will always be needed.
I have nothing much to add to this, I’ll just drop a link to an old small post from me about that right here (LINK)
Personally I lean more towards animation but in the big picture I won’t care. (Also the whole animation is for kids and dumbs down the whole narrative for PJO is fucking stupid, boo boo the fool. You being in your late teens/twenties and grown out of the targeted audience is the cause of nature. Animation can be mature or would you show Attack on Titan or South Park to your 8 year old cousin?)
I’ll be just tuning in to see if this is as messy as I’d expect it to be or to be pleasantly surprised.
Also again: this process is a long one. It’s going to be exhausting, depressing, demanding, pushing.
From the meetings now that will take a very long time, to a screenplay, which can take YEARS in finalizing, to hiring staff, location hunting and set design (should they go the live action route), to casting, to costume design, to rehearsing/production, to filming, to dispersing, to editing, to fx, to finishing, to marketing, to publishing, NOTHING IS SET IN STONE! This is a very, very, very, wanky process despite contracts and everything on paper. Let’s not forget, Disney can afford some good lawyers.
And even if everything goes as smoothly as possible. Higher up people could see the final edit of everything with editors having scenes close to the books in an a/b/c/d cut and some producer says NO! I want an c/a/b/d version that again fucks up the dynamics of the books. Or something terrible: everything is shot and done and THEN it get’s postponed. Or even fucking worse: SHELVED to be NEVER RELEASED. Aka Henry Selick’s career after Coraline (Coraline from 2009 is STILL his latest release because of his fucked up Disney contract and them cancelling his shit). Millions of dollars wasted and we won’t get to see ANYTHING. This is all very possible and happens constantly in the film business AND at Disney. This is nothing new.
And there’s nothing we can do about it. No one cares about Riordan, no one cares about the books, no one cares about the fandom.
DISNEY holds the cards. DISNEY gets to decide. Neither Riordan, nor you nor me hold ANY power in this.
So kids… what have we learned today? In conclusion:
Keep your hopes to a low, stop harassing people online and mAnAgE yOuR eXpEcTaTiOnS!!111!!
That’s it. That’s all I wanted to say.
WHEW.
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Stone Hearts Chapter 6
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Summary:
Emma should have known. She should have known that they couldn’t just go to the underworld and not suffer any consequences. She should have known they’d bring something back with them.
Cannon Divergent after 5x21 Last Rites. No Hyde. No serum. No Evil Queen split. No prophecy. No season 6.
Read from the beginning on Ao3 or FFn because tumblr eats all my italics.
Rated E
Chapter 6
Emma is tired - really tired. Like fall asleep on your feet, collapse on the nearest surface when you get home and pass out tired. Today had been awful. All week there had been a non-stop chaotic inflow of stupid calls from stupid people with their stupid small-town problems. But today was different. Today there had actually been a few real problems along with the usual bullshit she’d gotten used to. Today she’d had to deal with vandalism, three fights, two women who wanted to divorce their husbands and thought the police were the right people to call for that, trespassing, and even a suspected stalking. And it was fucking exhausting.
To make matters worse, she had been alone today. Her parents are out of town for the day, picking up some order she couldn’t remember that Snow needed for one of the events she’s throwing to try boost town morale. Emma’s lost track of which event it is. She’d have asked Killian to come in but he had booked the day off to go sailing with Henry before Henry left to spend the weekend at a friend's cottage. And with everything that her kid was dealing with right now, she didn’t want to take that away from him. And Killian deserves a break too. He works just as hard as she does at the station. It isn’t his fault that today happened to be the day that all hell broke loose. 
She’s so relieved when she reaches her front door that she barely registers Killian’s ‘Hello, Love’ as she walks inside. All she can see is the couch. The big, comfy, soft couch that looks so inviting and so very enticing. She drops her keys and her bag and shuffles the short distance into the living room before collapsing face first onto the cushions. She can hear Killian chuckling behind her. 
“Rough day?” he asks. She lets out a long suffering groan that’s slightly muffled by the pillow under her face and Killian laughs again. She feels him sit down, his weight shifting the couch beneath her and she forces herself to roll onto her back so she can look at him. She likes looking at him. He has a nice face. Looking at him always makes her feel the tiniest bit better even when she feels her worst. He reaches forward and brushes her messy, staticky hair off her forehead. “Want to talk about it?” 
No, she really doesn’t. She wants to lay on this couch with her boyfriend and snuggle and eat bad food and watch bad movies. She shakes her head and then notices a bag, packed and sitting near the coffee table. Oh crap. She forgot. They’re supposed to have a date night tonight. Emma practically wants to cry at the idea of leaving the house right now - at the thought of standing up honestly. She takes his hand that’s still stroking her face and holds it with both of her own against her chest.
“Do you mind if we reschedule our date tonight?” she practically pleads. She feels guilt drop like led in her stomach when he looks really thrown - and a bit disappointed - by her request. His expression is shocked and even a little bit panicked and Emma quickly rushes to explain. “I really wanted to but I'm just so tired and I know I won’t be any fun,” she explains. Killian gives her a soft smile then.
“You’re always fun, Emma,” he tells her and she smiles back at him appreciative of the blatant lie. 
“Can we just stay in? All I want to do is eat an entire tub of ice cream, put on my PJs and watch bad Netflix with you.” 
He nods. “Go get changed. I’ll make dinner.” She beams at him. This man is too good to her. She loves him so damn much it actually scares her sometimes - like she doesn’t know if she’s physically able to contain all of that love inside of herself and one day it will just explode. 
She uses his hand to pull him down to her so she can kiss him. He comes willingly and presses his lips to hers. He kisses her softly, one of those long, slow, reverent kisses that he always means to be sweet and innocent but that instead always sends her pulse rocketing and heat flooding to her belly. She groans a bit and pulls him closer, fisting her hand in his hair so she can deepen the kiss, opening her mouth under his in invitation. He’s the one who groans this time, pushing his tongue into her mouth as his hand drops hers and slides up her side under her jacket and t-shirt, leaving fire and goosebumps in its wake. 
“I thought you said you were tired,” he reminds her with a smirk, pulling back slightly so he can speak but not so far back that they’re lips have to stop touching. 
Emma lets out a sad, pathetic whine. “I am,” she admits bitterly. She is tired. Too tired for sex. Not that she doesn’t want him. She always wants him. Her body is screaming at her right now for daring to stop Killian once he gets going but she just doesn’t have the energy. She hates her job so much. He chuckles and kisses her once more on the mouth and then once on her forehead. 
“Come on,” he says, standing. “Need a hook?” he offers, holding the appendage out to her with a stupid grin on his face. She rolls her eyes at him as she grabs hold of it and he heaves her up off the couch. She loves him so damn much. 
Slowly, ridiculously slowly, maybe a bit dramatically slowly, Emma makes her way upstairs to find her pyjamas. This house is too big, she decides as she climbs what feels like the millionth stair and walks down the longest hallway in the world to their room. She changes slowly, every movement feeling like a momentous effort as she becomes aware of how sore she is. She’d had too much adrenaline in her system today to notice how much of a tole the running and the breaking up fights and the getting struggling idiots into the back of her bug had taken on her muscles. She debates a shower but as good as that would feel she fears falling asleep in it and drowning. She feels very dramatic tonight.
When she finally reaches the living room again, there’s a grilled cheese waiting on the coffee table and a handsome pirate waiting on the couch. His plate is already finished. She smiles, taking a seat next to him - well she doesn’t really sit, she throws herself across the couch with her legs in Killians lap - and takes a bite of the sandwich. She’s touched. He didn’t even try to sneak anything healthy into it. She moans as she chews her first bite. 
“Thank you,” she says around a mouthful and he smiles endearingly at her. He produces a pint of ice cream from beside the couch and Emma puts her hands to her chest, greasy bread and all. “I love you,” she tells him and he laughs.
“Never let it be said I don’t know how to keep my woman happy,” he jokes and Emma nudges him with her foot.
“You do,” she agrees, accepting the ice cream.
Later, when the grilled cheese and the ice cream are finished and they’re lounging, watching some crime documentary, Emma takes a look at the man beside her. He’s relaxed now, laying back against the armrest with her legs in his lap, absentmindedly rubbing the arch of her foot. He’s taken off his jacket, vest and shirt, leaving him in only his black t-shirt - the man wears way too many layers, she thinks not for the first time. His shoes are on the floor, having been kicked off at some point between this show and the last. She loves seeing him like this, so comfortable and at ease, looking like he belongs here in her living room - like he doesn’t want to be anywhere else. He does belong here, she thinks and she belongs wherever he is. This is exactly what she never knew she dreamed of. Lazy evenings on the couch with the man she loves and who loves her more than she ever thought anyone would. 
He looks over at her, seeming to have sensed her staring at him. 
“What?” he asks, voice not too troubled. 
She smiles at him and shrugs. “Nothing,” she tells him. “You’re just kind of perfect.” 
Killian scoffs. “Hardly.”
Can’t have that, she thinks. With great effort, she sits up and crawls across the couch so that she can lay against his chest, tangling their legs together on the slightly too narrow sofa. She brushes his cheek with the back of her fingers, somewhat in awe of how beautiful he is. She’s still not used to it. But it’s not just his face. His heart is beautiful too and that’s something she doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to - how kind and supportive and loving he is. Always. She cups his cheek in her palm.
“You are,” she tells him firmly and his eyes soften a little at her words. She forgets sometimes that he needs to hear it too. He’s so good at telling her how beautiful, how smart, how strong she is but she realises that maybe her lack of skill with words has made him doubt himself. She resolves to make an effort, to tell him more often, all the time. “This is perfect,” she says, still holding his gaze.
He gives her a small smile, eyes full of affection and love and pure contentment as he brings his own hand to her cheek. “It is,” he agrees and she lays her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat and feeling his fingers brushing gently through her hair until she starts to drift off. 
“I want to spend the rest of my life with you, you know.” She vaguely hears the words, drifting in that space between sleep and wakefulness, not quite registering their meaning but it fills her with a soft warmth and she snuggles deeper into him, breathing him in.
“Okay,” she mumbles, nuzzling at his chest as she tries to find sleep again. 
She feels his whole body tense and Emma feels her own instantly do the same. He thought she was asleep, she realises. 
“Do you mean it?” he asks, craning his neck to try to look at her. She lifts her head and rests her chin on her hands, folded over on his chest. She meets his eyes and he looks so anxious, so nervous and it rattles her. She did mean it. Of course she wants to spend the rest of her life with him. She went to Hell for him, literally. She’s been afraid of this kind of love, this kind of commitment, her whole life. But now, with him, it doesn’t feel scary. Why should she be afraid to tell him that she’s in this for the long haul? 
She knows he’s looking for an honest answer so she gives him one. “Yes.”
She watches as his eyes go wide for a fraction of a second, like he can’t quite believe it. Then, he wriggles beneath her as he reaches for something in his pocket. She lifts some of her weight off him to help. He brings whatever it is up between them and holds it out to her, his arm wedged between the couch and her head. She turns to look at it.
Holy shit. It's a ring. A diamond ring. The kind of diamond ring that can only be that kind of diamond ring. Holy shit. Holy shit. Her heart is pounding against her ribcage, blood rushing in her ears and she reels up so that she’s sitting on the other side of the couch, staring at him in shock. 
“Emma?” he asks, sitting up as well. He's worried and Emma tries really hard to fight through her initial shock. Crap. He probably thinks she’s panicking, probably thinks she’s changing her mind or didn’t mean what she said. She takes a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. It hadn’t been doubt or fear, it had just been shock, she hadn’t been ready for it and she needs to make sure he knows that’s all it is. 
“Sorry,” she says, reaching out for him, scooting herself closer so that she’s practically in his lap. “You just surprised me.” He looks apprehensive for a moment but then she sees the anxiety leave him in one heavy breath. He holds the ring between them, just by his heart, looking at it and then chancing a glance up at her.
“So you still want to…”
“Of course I still want to!” She practically giggles she’s so excited. Now that the panic is gone she’s able to take it in. This is real. Killian Jones is asking her to marry him. She could cry she’s so happy. “I just didn’t know you were planning to -” she cuts herself off as she realizes. “Oh my god,” she groans. “We were supposed to go out tonight,” she brings a hand to her face, remembering their plans to take the Jolly Roger out overnight. He’d said he wanted to take her stargazing. “You probably had a whole thing planned didn’t you?” She feels awful. “And now I’ve ruined it.”
Killian puts the ring in his pocket and takes hold of her face, gently urging her to look at him. “You didn’t ruin anything,” he tells her, his thumb coming up to sooth the frown between her brows. “I like it better this way,” he confesses and Emma lets herself relax a little as she listens. “Actually, Henry and David were the ones who told me I should make a grand gesture out of it. They said that’s what women in this realm expect.”
“You went to my dad?” she demands, somewhat shocked. Henry she could understand. Henry had been dropping hints about how they should just get married already for months. But her dad? David had certainly grown to like Killian, she’d even dare say they were friends now. But she worried about how he’d react to anyone wanting to marry her. 
“Not for permission,” he assures her. “For advice.” 
“What did he say? When you told him.”
Killian goes a little red, the tips of his ears and the top of his cheekbones flushing. “He hugged me.” 
“He hugged you?” This night is just one twist after another. 
“Aye, he gave me some speech about how proud he was of me for changing from a - quote - vengeful pirate to a man willing to give someone his heart.”
She smiles, her heart filling with love at the idea of David being so happy for Killian. He didn’t need her father’s blessing, but somehow, knowing that they have it makes this moment all the more perfect. 
“And what did you say?”
Killian brings his hand up to scratch behind his ear. “I told him anyone can give their heart away if they truly wish to.” He looks at her then. “And I do, Emma, I have ever since we climbed that beanstalk.” 
She leans in and kisses him, eyes brimming with tears. “Me too. I’m sorry it took me so long to realise.” 
He smirks at her. “Don’t be. You know I love a challenge.”
“So, wait,” she asks, still trying to put together all this new information. “You said Dad and Henry told you to propose on the ship.” He nods. “How did you want to do it?” 
Killian smiles, a slow, fond kind of smile with just that little bit of mischief that she loves about him. He takes her hand in his again. 
“In New York, when I found you after the longest and most difficult year of my life.” He presses a kiss to her knuckles. “In Storybrooke, when you sacrificed your magic for me.” His lips press against the tips of her fingers. “In the Enchanted Forest… so many times then.” She feels him place another kiss in the centre of her palm. “When I found you in Camelot after I thought I lost you.” On her wrist this time, a longer, more lingering kiss and it makes her heart race. “When you found me in the Underworld, when Zeus sent me back to you…” he looks at her then. “It’s always been you Swan. Since the moment we met.” 
She smiling through her tears now, practically blubbering as she grabs hold of his face and kisses him with everything she has inside. How she ever doubted this man she’ll never understand but she knows she never will again. 
“And,” he says as they break apart for a moment. Emma is torn between wanting to hear what he has to say and wanting to continue kissing him. He’s reaching back and digging into one of the many pockets in his jacket until he finds what he’s looking for. “I wanted to ask you with this ring.” 
Emma looks at the ring he holds up between them. She recognizes it. It’s small and silver with a dark stone in the center. It was the one he wore when he got his hand back. 
“It was my mother’s,” he says and then shrugs. “But, David and Henry said people propose with diamonds here.” 
It takes everything in her power to compose herself but she manages to stop the continuous stream of happy tears long enough to take his hand, and the ring, between both her hands. He looks at her questioningly.
“Ask me again,” she says. “Ask me with this ring, the way you want to.” He beams at her like he’s having as much difficulty containing his happiness as she is. He clears his throat, holding the ring up between them. 
“Will you marry me, Emma?” 
“Yes!” She practically throws herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck as he lets out a laugh that comes from deep within him, one of pure joy and something that almost sounds like relief. She muffles it with her lips on his but can’t silence it completely, both of them attempting to continue the kiss while laughing and smiling so hard her face hurts. They fail miserably but she doesn’t care. 
They detangle long enough for him to slip the ring on her finger and for a second he just stares at it and she wishes she knew what he was thinking. After a moment, he presses a kiss to her finger and she drags him back up to her lips. Shitty day at work and stupid townspeople be damned. Emma has never been this happy in her life.  
She woke up the next morning to a shut and locked door. The faintest shadow of a profile through the window let her know that her guard was still there, standing on the other side like nothing happened. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe she’d dreamed it. Whatever it was, it didn’t change anything. More likely than anything he was supposed to listen to her talk, get information, pass it on to Gold and the King. 
What a pretentious fucking name, she thought. What kind of high and mighty son of a bitch just comes into a town or a realm and demands to be called a king. She has other reasons to hate him, plenty, but this is just another good one to add to the list. Only a monster would come up with this kind of torture, making her spend day after day with the thing that killed the man she loves while pumping her for information. 
The last few nights, thinking that maybe he was in there, maybe he was trying to get out… she’d been an idiot. That kind of stuff wasn’t real. True love didn’t conquer all and she’d let herself be drawn in by the memory of a love so overwhelming she didn’t know how to exist without it. She was trying, every day, but it just got fucking harder and harder and having him here - she couldn’t think about it. She needed to do something else, distract herself.
She took the stolen pages out of her pocket, unfolding them and finding a book to read them behind. There had to be some kind of loophole. There was always a loophole wasn’t there? She read the spell over and over again. And then she read it three more times. Nothing. There was nothing except - holy shit. She read the phrase over and over again. It could work. It was huge fucking gamble, but it could work.
She shoved the pages back in her pocket and started pacing her room. Okay. Okay. She had the beginnings of a plan. She had something. She could feel herself getting riled up, more energy coursing through her than she’d had since she was brought here. She didn’t want to let herself hope but if this worked - no, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered unless she could find a way out of here. How the hell was she going to get out of here? How was she going to get Henry out? That was what mattered. She didn’t care if she didn’t make it out. There was nothing out there for her. All that mattered was Henry and if he was safe and alive then she could rot in here for all she cared. 
She had a vague idea of the layout of the hospital after the many visits paid here in the past. She knew the path between her cell and Henry’s and had a vague sense of who was usually on guard. She’d passed the same people on almost every walk there. And  as Henry himself had said, Archie only occasionally guarded his cell and if she needed to she knew she could take him out - kill him if she had to. She tried to remember who the others were, which ones she could fight and which one’s she’d have to avoid. She’d seen Jefferson once and he was her biggest worry. She’d bested him once but that had been luck. 
Killian though - no. not Killian. Some imposter, some monster who had replaced him - he would be the most difficult. There had been moments. Small, almost insignificant little blips where she thought maybe she was getting through to... something. She couldn’t believe that it was Killian in there, that he was trapped and trying to break free. No. Killian was dead. He had to be dead. Everyone else was. She remembered the way his face had twisted the time she demanded more time with Henry. What the hell was he? 
Her musings were cut short by two hard raps on the door. She looked up to see her guard holding up the cuff. She sighed. She really didn’t have fucking time for whatever Gold wanted. Screw him. She said she’d try to work on the spell to keep Henry safe but she’d never promised to be at his beck and call. She sat on her mattress, arms crossed in a pathetic attempt at defiance, at exercising the feeble bit of free will she still had. 
After a moment there were another two raps on the door. Emma held firm. They’d have to drag her out if they wanted her. He could come in here and force her to put the cuff on. Let him try his luck once he was in here and she had her magic. She would destroy him, for Killian’s sake. She waited. Again, there were two raps at the door. 
Finally, after she didn’t respond for a third time the door opened. He just stood there, staring at her, holding the cuff up in the air beside him. She glared at him. She hated him. She hated the way that whatever he was had warped and twisted the beautiful face that she’d loved so much, made it dark and cruel. No, not cruel. Cruel required emotions. She could handle cruel. She had handled cruel when he was the Dark One. This was just… empty. All of the love and hope and kindness that Killian had in his heart had been snuffed out by this thing that dared to wear his face. 
He didn’t move, just waiting. It broke her heart to look at him. Even now she could feel the raw ache starting to claw at her chest, ripping out bits of her and leaving them to drown in the misery that was left behind. She glared at him, arms tightening around herself as though she could physically keep herself together, protect herself from the memories that every look threw her way. 
“What do you want?” she spat. He gestured with the cuff, barely a movement. “I’m not putting it on.” He continued to stare. “Go away!” she demanded, feeling like a teenager now. She picked up a book and threw it at him. It hit him squarely in the chest. It had to have hurt. But he didn’t flinch. Of course he didn’t. This imposter didn’t feel anything. It just existed, some kind of abomination with no soul and -
He looked away. It was the first time he had moved since opening the door. She followed his gaze down to the book which had fallen at his feet. She hadn’t even noticed what she’d thrown at him. It took her a second before she recognized it. It was the storybook. He tilted his head as if trying to make sense of it. 
The book hadn’t fallen completely open, the pages only half turned, wedged between his foot and one of the other piles of books by the door. It was inside though, and Emma watched him watch it. His expression didn’t change but he continued staring at it. There was no recognition but he didn’t look away. What was he doing? she wondered. 
Her heart started racing. The book was inside the room. Her magic worked inside the room. Maybe… she didn’t want to hope, she was so fucking scared of hoping, so tired of having it dashed away every time she let it creep in to her bones. But she needed to know, needed to see his reaction. See if there would be a reaction. She braced herself, braced herself for the pain that would come if there was nothing.
She waved her hand and the pages of the book flipped until it fell open to that same picture that had stepped on her broken heart not just once, but twice. She watched him closely as he took in the image of them dancing, holding each other close and smiling, happy. He remained stoic, unmoving and Emma could feel pain starting to flow up in her throat, like bile burning her, when suddenly, there was something. She almost missed it. A flicker, like an involuntary reaction. A small twitch in his eyebrow, a microscopic clench in his jaw. And just like that it was gone.
Emma lost all the air in her lungs. She couldn’t remember how to breathe. Did he know? Did he remember? She looked at him as he turned his gaze back to her. She watched every inch of his face, heart racing in her chest, stomach clenching. Please. Please. Are you in there? 
He motioned with the cuff again and Emma let out an exasperated breath. Of course he wasn’t. But there had been something. She hadn’t imagined it, hadn’t dreamed it this time. She saw it. She just didn’t know what it was. She stood, walking to the door and accepting the cuff, putting it on her wrist and showing him it was on her wrist with a bit more sass than was really necessary. But it felt good. 
Once it was on he turned and allowed her to walk past him out the door. She followed him down the same hallway she always did. As always, he didn’t look at her, just stared straight ahead, like she could have been a dog or some other animal just walking along beside him. Like she was nothing. 
They reached the fork where they had turned towards Gold’s office last time and she headed to the right. She was stopped with a hand on her shoulder. She looked at him, then at his hand, then back at him, wishing looks could kill. After a moment, he dropped his hand and started down the opposite hallway. This was new. He’d never taken her this way before. She stayed vigilant of her surroundings, trying to take note of where they were, if there was any sort of escape route, or any indication that he was taking her somewhere dangerous. Maybe they’d decided to just kill her and take her heart themselves from her corpse. 
She watched the man in front of her carefully, taking note of his defenses. If she had to fight her way out she would. She saw his sword at his hip but knew there was no way she’d be able to get that from him. She remembered that when she first met Killian he used to wear a dagger on his ankle. She wondered if he still did - or well, if he’d been wearing one when this thing had stolen him. They had been living in fear for months, always armed, always ready for a fight. Maybe he had taken to his old ways, concealing weapons to protect himself - protect them. 
She didn’t have long to ponder that thought before her guide stopped, unlocking a door and holding it open. As always, there were no words, no gesture that she should enter. How galant, she thought sarcastically as she brushed past him into the room. It was a locker room. With showers. She glanced back at him in surprise but his face remained impassive. There was a towel and a bar of soap on a bench near them and she realised they were for her. She waited for an explanation, but of course, none was given. 
Screw it, she thought. It was just a shower. If he was going to kill her at least she could die warm and clean. She hadn’t had a chance to wash since before she’d arrived and she could smell how much she stank. She decided she didn’t care if this was a trap - if it was one, it was a really bad, really weird one. She let her vanity take over for a moment. She was tired of feeling and looking disgusting. She wanted to feel clean and normal. She wanted to feel human. Just for a second.
She heard the door shut behind her as she started stripping off her clothes. She looked up to see not-Killian standing inside of it, hook at his side and hand on his sword. Standing guard, she realised. He didn’t seem to care about where they were and why would he? He didn’t care about anything. But she did.
“Turn around,” she told him. She wasn’t going to undress in front of this thing. He may look like Killian but he wasn’t. He didn’t move but his eyes met hers. “I mean it. Turn around.” He stared at her for another second, and she could have sworn she saw the slightest twitch in his eyebrow, but then he turned around and it was gone. 
She stared at the back of him. He shouldn’t have listened to her. She knew he shouldn’t have. Had he been told to? How many times now had he done as she asked? First with finding Henry, then giving her more time, opening the door last night… and now this. How many times had those actions gone against what he’d been told to do? She didn’t know. She had no idea what he’d been told to do and so she couldn’t trust him. Couldn’t trust this feeling that pounded in her stomach every time he did something… wrong. She knew the feeling. It was her gut, her unwavering trust in Killian telling her to believe, believe that he was in there, that he was trying to get back to her. But she couldn’t trust it. It was too dangerous to trust anything, to believe in anything. 
She finished stripping off her clothes. She didn’t enjoy the thought of having to put them back on. She wondered if maybe he’d give her time to wash them, at least her underwear. She wondered if he would if she asked him. Angry with herself for the thought - don’t be an idiot. He doesn’t care about you. You mean nothing to him - she grabbed the soap and turned on the shower. She decided just to keep her underwear on and wash them that way.
Stepping under the spray felt like heaven. The water was hot and the pressure was good and she allowed herself a moment to just stand there, letting the water cascade over her tired, cramped muscles and warm her from the outside in. She tilted her head back, letting her hair get soaked and did her best to lather the bar of soap into it. It would still be a tangled mess but at least it would be a clean tangled mess. It flopped wetly against her back as she turned to let the water wash over her chest and stomach.
She felt him move before she heard it. She froze, not daring to turn around. The footsteps didn’t sound aggressive they sounded… tentative? She hadn’t heard him draw his sword, hadn’t heard any kind of weapon be unsheathed. Just footsteps. She waited, waited until she could feel him standing behind her. She should have felt afraid. She was vulnerable and exposed and he was armed. But she couldn’t summon any fear. Maybe it was because she had given up on caring about her own life, about her own safety. Or, maybe, it was because she could hear him breathing behind her, his breath shaky and uncertain. Or, maybe it was because of the strange, gut feeling that if she told him to leave… he would. But she didn't. He was so close and it killed her. Everything about him felt like Killian. She could smell him, feel the heat of him radiating against her back despite the distance and the hot water. 
She closed her eyes and just for a minute she let herself imagine that it was him. If he was going to kill her, if she was going to die, she wanted to remember him one last time before she did. She wanted to let herself believe that he was here with her, that he’d come back to her, that none of this had ever happened. 
She heard the rustle of his coat as he moved and then gently, almost reverently, his fingers combed through her hair. She had to cover her mouth with her hand to stop the sob that wanted to break out of her. He touched her like he always had, like Killian always had, brushing his fingers through her hair until he came to the ends. She risked a glance over her shoulder at him. She couldn’t see him well, just bits of his profile. He was closer than she’d realised, fingers toying in the ends of her hair, head bent forward so that she couldn’t make out his face. 
She waited, holding her breath, afraid to break whatever was happening, break whatever spell or trance he was under. There was a moment before she felt him let go of her hair. She felt his fingers on her back. Tentatively at first, just the tips of his fingers brushing along the line of her spine, leaving goosebumps in their wake, and then he pressed his palm the to small of her back. His forehead fell against her shoulder. 
Killian? she thought, and the word was like a knife ripping through her, ripping open the bag in which she had kept all of her hopes and fears safely stowed away and letting them reap havoc inside of her. Could he be in there? God, she’d fought it but she wanted him to be in there. She would do anything for that to be the case. She fought the tears that wanted to fall, that wanted to wrack her whole body with pain and loss and desperation - this small piece of her just begging for it to be real. Killian, come back to me, she thought, raising her face to the spray so that the water could wash the tears away.
His hand rose up, fingers barely touching the hair at her left shoulder, the pieces that had fallen across her chest. Gently and agonizingly slowly, he brushed her hair off over her right shoulder, revealing her back to him. And he froze. 
She whirled around, watching as he stepped back quickly, like she had burned him. His face was still blank but his eyes were fixed on her. His hand came up to his chest, fingers resting over his heart and she knew what he’d seen. The small tattoo on her back, over her heart. He broke away from her eyes and looked down at his hand, at his chest where she knew, and apparently he did too, that he had the same tattoo. 
He looked at her again and she could swear there was something. Another twitch that felt like she could have imagined it. But she didn’t imagine it. Maybe she hadn’t imagined any of them. But then it was gone, as always, and he was empty again. A shell, a husk, a corpse. He picked the towel up off the bench and handed it to her.
They went to Henry’s room after. On the way, Emma kept trying to rationalize what had happened, ignore it, convince herself it wasn’t real. But then she’d notice the dampness of his shirt or the droplets hanging off the tips of the hair that fell over his face and she knew it was real. She just didn’t know what it meant. But she did know how she could use it. 
She and Henry had the same routine as always. They were given their five minute order and spoke their code words and then he threw himself at her and she clung to him. This time though, she actually had something for him. She had a plan. She held him tight, turning her head to whisper in his ear. 
“Tell Ruby to be ready. We’re getting out tonight. I'll come find you. I know what to do now.” 
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Laughter, Love, and Other Products of a Quarantine
Yay, I’ve gotten around to actually posting it on here! I’m so lazy and I can never figure out how to get the italics to transfer because I copy from google docs so I copied it from there to word and then copied it again and pasted it here but THEN it kept all the weird indents that look icky on Tumblr so if anyone knows how to get rid of all these annoying issues I’d really love to know
I’m absolutely interested in taking prompts if anyone has something Captain Swan they’d like to see...as I’m sure you could guess, I definitely have the time. For those of you reading Even If It’s A Lie (first of all, thank you, I love you), I’m hoping to update that soon too. If you haven’t read it but you’re interested, here’s a link to that.
@coffeenotess​ made this lovely moodboard for my fic:
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summary: Emma Swan has been roommates with Liam Jones for years, but hates his brother. Okay, so she's met him once and it was a brief encounter, but still. But of course he's visiting for the week when the mandated quarantine happens. And of course Liam just happens to be out of town for the weekend when it does. 
word count: 8,716 (yes, it got a little out of hand)
rating: M, entirely because of language
also read it on: AO3 | FFN
Emma sighed at the knock on her door, pushing herself off the couch to open it. She knew who would be on the other side, and it made her blood boil to think about it.
“Swan!” The dark haired, broody, eyebrow wiggling man exclaimed as soon as the door was open.
“Jones,” she managed to grunt, turning to find her place on her comfy couch for her current Netflix binge. She so desperately wanted to ignore him for the entirety of his stay at her apartment.
 “Liam is so lucky to have such a charming roommate, love,”
“His bedroom is the second door on the left,” she said instead of making a snarky comment about his usage of the nickname ‘love.’
She really didn’t have any reason to truly hate him. In fact, she’d only met Liam’s brother once before, but there was just something about him that rubbed her the wrong way. Maybe it was the smirking, or the innuendos. Either way, she wasn’t exactly thrilled when Liam offered him lodging while he was in town for work. And of course Liam just had to have a weekend trip planned for him and his girlfriend. Emma absolutely adored Elsa, she even introduced the two, but she mildly resented her friend for taking her roommate away and leaving her with Killian Fucking Jones.
He left her alone for an hour or so, probably unpacking and making himself comfortable, and of course she could not care less about what that man was doing. Except when he decided to interrupt her show.
“Would you like some tea, Swan?”
Okay, so it was a polite interruption but still. This was an important part in her show. “No thanks,” her voice quick and rather icy.
But then she felt rude, so she tried to make up for it with conversation—he was Liam’s brother, after all, and she didn’t want to cause any unnecessary friction between the brothers. So she reluctantly got up from the couch and moved to lean against the kitchen counter in an attempt to be mildly civil. “So um, I’m surprised your work still has you traveling, you know, with the pandemic and all,”
He chuckled lightly, and she was glad her snark hadn’t wounded him permanently. “Me too, but it’s all about the money, of course.”
She struggled to recall the conversations Liam and she had about Killian and his life. “What is it you do again?”  
 “I’m a strategy consultant for publishing companies along the east coast,” when she couldn’t stop the raising of her eyebrows, he laughed. “What, expecting something more befitting of a scoundrel such as I?”
She rolled her eyes at his drama. “Well, Liam said you enjoyed sailing, maybe I thought you were a pirate,”
“Alas, such a profession is frowned upon by societal norms. Plus, I wouldn’t get benefits with just a ship and a crew.” He took a tea bag from the jar of Liam’s favorite Irish breakfast tea. He paused, “Are you sure you don’t want any, Swan?” He was way too considerate for her liking, but she tried not to let it fuel her bubbling hatred. He would be with them for a little while, and she didn’t want it to be awkward.
 “I’m good, I promise. I will, however, make some hot chocolate.” She went straight for the cinnamon, extracting it from its place in the cupboard before grabbing the mix and her favorite mug. She’d just finished stirring her drink when she was interrupted by her phone ringing. “Hey, Liam,” she greeted.
“Emma, where are you right now?” His voice was a little panicked, a little hurried.
“I’m at home with your brother, why? What’s going on?”
“Turn on the news. Now.” She rushed to change from her Netflix show to the local news channel.
“Breaking news for the Boston area: we are going into a mandated lockdown. The lockdown begins at midnight tonight, so I hope you have stocked up on all your essentials. There will be limited officials who will be able to deliver supplies upon request, but unfortunately it looks like we will be stuck for at least two weeks. Stay tuned for the latest—”
Emma stopped listening, trying to figure out how the fuck she was this unlucky. One more day, and Liam would have been home. But no, of course he couldn’t be. Now she was trapped with his smirk-happy, younger, more annoying (and more attractive, though she wasn’t quite ready to admit that yet) brother.
“Emma?” she’d forgotten that she was on the phone.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. I just heard,” she was trying very hard to remain calm. “Are you sure we’re not just being pranked right now? Like maybe this is some new reality TV show thing that they’re trying out and they’re trying to convince everyone the world is ending,” she knew it was far-fetched and absolutely ridiculous at this point to hope it wasn’t real, but it was easier to process than her present situation.
“I really don’t think that’s it, Emma,” he replied, and the way he said her name reminded her that she needed to relax.
“You’re right,” she took a deep breath. “I’m fine, look, I’m gonna go figure out how we stand on supplies. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Call me anytime,” he replied, and she was struck by the fact that she had people now, but it was not the time for that brand of breakdown.
“Looks like we’re stuck together,” Killian joked once she was off the phone, but she could see that the smirk didn’t quite reach his eyes. There was a bit of fear behind them, and somehow it made her feel better.
Her panic was still fresh, and she needed to get away from that room and that man. “I’m gonna...go see how much toilet paper we have left,” and she left as fast as she could without actually running.
It wasn’t that she was worried about her health. She was fine, and David, Mary Margaret, Ruby, Liam, Elsa, Anna...her family was all in good health. A lot of the world would be okay, and a lot of the world would not be. But that part was surreal, far away. And also out of her control, which wasn’t exactly something that made her jump with joy. What she could control and worry about was her new roommate for the foreseeable future.
Killian was somehow simultaneously easy and hard to hate. Somehow. His tendency to flirt with anything that breathed and the fact that he could see right through her like he knew her...that made it easy to hate him. But she had also seen, not only in the last twenty minutes or so but also in Liam’s infinite stories of him, that he had that bad boy with a heart of gold thing that just so happened to be her fictional character ‘type.’
It didn’t help that her mind was at war. One side of her, the instinctual, foster kid side, told her to run. Avoid him like the plague. Ironic, really. She wanted to hide in her room for two weeks or a month or however long they’d be stuck in her now-too-small apartment.
But the other side, the side that came directly as a product of spending years in the company of her friends—no, her family—told her to open herself up to him, take advantage of the time she’d have with him and try to really get to know him, to see the man Liam had raved about for years.
Needless to say, Emma had a headache.
She spent ten minutes or so just pacing in her room, before deciding to actually check to see how much toilet paper she had in her personal bathroom. Once she’d calmed down enough, she returned to the kitchen, only to find Killian rifling through the pantry.
“What are you doing?” She hoped it didn’t sound like an accusation, but an innocent inquiry.
He didn’t seem fazed by it and simply replied, “I’m trying to determine how long we can survive without supplies,”
“And?” She’d succeeded this time in making her voice much more inquisitive than sharp.
He moved to face her, done with his assessment of the cabinet. “And, we have plenty of alcohol, a good amount of coffee as well as a few other beverages, and on the food front, I think we’ll be okay for about two weeks.”
“Good, good. I’m sure we’ll be able to get groceries before then,” she said, although there was no way she could be so certain.
 She cleared her throat anxiously, “Look, Jones, I think we should be friends.”
“Friends?” His stupid eyebrow was doing that thing again.
“Yes, friends. We’re stuck together, so we might as well make the most of it. I think if either of us would like to retain a single shred of sanity by the end of this, we have to get along.”
 “I wasn’t aware that we weren’t already friends, Swan,” his gaze made her stomach turn.
 “Oh really? You think I’m just this warm and bubbly to all my close pals?” She joked, then added, “Do you think we can just start over?”
 “Of course, love,”
 She held out her hand, and he took it. “I’m Emma Swan,”
“Killian Jones. It’s lovely to make your acquaintance, Swan,” he grinned.
 She rolled her eyes once more at his drama. “Now that that’s over with, what should we do now that we have all this time?”
“Well, I do have one idea…” his voice was so suggestive and seductive it should be a crime.
 “Woah, woah, woah,” she held up a hand as if she could force his train of thought to come to a stop.
 “Come now, Swan, I was going to suggest a movie. I don’t know where your mind went, but my idea was entirely innocent,” he assured her, although the teasing in his voice made her positive of what he’d intended her to think.
 “Ah, yes, a movie. Of course,” she nodded, crossing the room to take her place on the couch. He joined her tentatively, taking Liam’s usual seat on the other end of the sofa. “Any suggestions?” She asked, and he looked thoughtfully for a moment.
“I’m not sure, do you have a genre preference?”
Her lips ticked up a little, “Well, lately I’ve been on a rom-com marathon, but I’m not sure how much you’d enjoy that,”
He feigned offense, “I am always in the mood for a romantic comedy, Swan. I’m insulted that you would assume otherwise,”
She put her hands up as if in surrender. “Okay, okay, I shouldn’t have assumed. But do you have any ideas?”
“Well, what do you have?”
After showing him her extensive movie collection that she was extremely proud of, he selected one of her favorites and they settled in.
What shocked her more than the fact that Killian Jones enjoyed romantic comedies was that he also got rather worked up when the characters did something he didn’t agree with. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised her very much, given his tendency for drama in his life, but it was still jarring to have him yell at Jude Law.
“Come on, mate,” he muttered, exasperated. When she looked at him curiously, he exclaimed, “Well, he’s just letting her go!”
But all was well, of course, because Cameron Diaz decided not to leave, and as always, everyone lived happily ever after.
Once the credits rolled across the screen, Emma excused herself to go to bed.
“Sleep well, Swan,” his voice was unusually soft.
“You too, Jones,” she called over her shoulder as she headed towards her room.
It was annoying how often he crept into her mind as she went through her nightly routine. He was a baffling man, and it was getting harder to hate him. Especially after seeing him call Jack Black ‘blind.’
“He’s been in love with her since he laid eyes on her, Swan,” he’d said.
She looked forward to seeing more rom-coms with him in the coming weeks, and that kind of freaked her out. She’d never say it out loud.
Emma woke to the smell of bacon, and it startled her. But as soon as she remembered the night before, one Killian Jones, Mr. Would You Like Any Tea, she really should have known. She didn’t mind in the least, as her usual breakfast was just toast or cereal, or if she was going out, a good bearclaw.
“Good morning, love,” he greeted, just as cheery as his brother at that time in the morning.
“Is it a Jones family requirement to be a morning person?” Emma was famously grumpy before 11 o’clock, even more so if she didn’t have a warm beverage in her hand.
He just laughed, and placed a mug of something in her hand. When she stared at him questioningly, he told her, “some hot chocolate, Swan.” With an eye roll, he turned to flip a pancake.
She took a sip carefully, mostly because her brain was still trying to figure out what the hell was going on. She looked down at the drink she was holding. “This has cinnamon in it,”
“Aye, that’s how you like it, isn’t it?” Although he faced the stovetop, she knew that his eyebrow would be raised.
“Uh, yeah, I’m just trying to figure out how you knew that,”
“You made some for yourself last night, Swan. Remember?” He told her, as if it were the most obvious thing.
“Oh yeah,” she muttered. He noticed. And remembered.
At this point, to say that she hated Killian Jones would be an outright lie. This charming, annoying, thoughtful man was making her breakfast and he remembered how she liked a drink she made in front of him one time.
In fact, if she were a different person, she might even say that she liked him.
“It’s ready, Swan,” he said.
She watched him as he took two plates to an already set table. She would not let this freak her out, she promised herself. She knew how important it was that they both try to have fun and relax during this extremely confusing and anxiety-inducing time.
So instead of obeying that voice in her head that was yelling at her to run, Emma took a seat across from Killian at the table and smiled at him.
After breakfast, they brainstormed activities, then got to work. Although, it was much more like play.
Emma beat Killian at Wii bowling, but he kicked her butt at tennis.
“Oh, come on! How are you this good?” She cried after he scored on her yet again.
“I don’t know, love, I guess I’m just a very skilled man,” he told her with a wink.
They got a little too competitive once they started playing baseball, and they decided it was better to stop playing than to potentially cause permanent damage to any furniture.
“We could reorganize the kitchen,” Killian suggested.
“Are you kidding? That sounds terrible,” she grumbled.
He chuckled at her childish attitude. “It’ll be fun,”
She wasn’t sure how that worked, but somehow it did. They reorganized the pantry and all the cabinets before she started whining. “This is horrible,”
“Fine, Swan. What do you suggest we do?”
“I’ve been meaning to change the light bulbs in my bathroom for like six months,” she said.
He rolled his eyes. Maybe she should start counting. “Okay, and after those five minutes?”
“I’ll let you know when we get there,”
It did take five minutes, but then she decided to find a new mop on Amazon for the one she’d been thinking about replacing for a year. Killian very harshly judged her shopping methods, claiming that she shouldn’t buy it unless she is able see it and touch it herself, but she reminded him that they couldn’t exactly go out.
They ended up going back to the Wii, this time playing Wii Sports Resort. He complained that basketball was a stupid game when she won, and then proceeded to kick her ass at swordplay.
“Swordplay? Really?”
“Come on, Swan, you yourself called me a pirate,” he teased.
She shook her head, “I did not, I only said I thought you might be a pirate.”
“Same thing,”
She sighed, “do you think it’s lunchtime yet?”
He looked at his watch, groaning. “It’s only been an hour and a half,”
“What?” She almost screamed. “How is this even possible? I thought it had been like four,”
“Unfortunately not,” he sighed. “But don’t lose heart, Swan. I’m sure there’s lots more we can do,” he said, and thought for a moment. “Do you have any board games?”
“Oh hell yeah,” she led him to their game closet, and he immediately went for Monopoly. “That’s a dangerous game, Jones,” she warned.
“I’m well aware, Swan.” He met her wild eyes, “And I do so love a challenge.”
“You’re on,”
They played for three hours, and they were quite equal opponents. Neither let the other hoard all the railroads, and they were good at snatching up the last of a color before the other could have a monopoly.
But then Killian landed on Park Place. He already had Boardwalk.
“No!” Emma cried, but of course he purchased it, and began piling on the houses.
It was a long time before Emma landed on either property, but she did. It didn’t damage her bank too much, but she knew she wouldn’t survive a second payment.
Sure, in a typical game, Park Place and Boardwalk weren’t really the smartest investments. They take up so little space on the board, it’s complete luck to have a player land on it. But because they were both so strategic throughout the earlier game, neither even held a monopoly until Killian got ahold of Park Place. And in a game of just two players, trading wasn’t going to happen.
She cringed when he added a hotel, and just hoped she wouldn’t have to find out what the rent on that one was.
A few turns later, she landed on Boardwalk. “Pay up, love,” he was absolutely beaming, and instead of handing over the cash, she just started throwing hotels at his head.
They called it off after that.
 “Tell you what, Swan, I’ll think about forgiving you if you help me make lunch,”
She considered it for a moment, but decided it was for the best. “Fine, just don’t make me do anything difficult.”
They just had grilled cheese and tomato soup (unfortunately there were no onion rings on hand), but it was the best damn grilled cheese she’d ever had. She hoped it had more to do with a secret ingredient Killian had somehow added when her back was turned, rather than the person who made it.
They decided to try to do some work, but it was short lived. Emma studied the information she had on her current skip for a little bit, but there was no further she could go without actually tracking the guy down.
Killian was also unable to get very much done, because as he discovered shortly after opening his computer, the company he was working with at the moment had temporarily shut down. He couldn’t exactly strategize without a company to work with.
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” he declared once they both realized there was no work to be done.
Emma just stared out the window for a few minutes, never before wanting to go out more than in that moment. Wordlessly, she got up, searching in a drawer beneath the TV.
“Ah ha!” She held up the treasure she’d just located.
“Fuck yes,” Killian jumped to turn the Wii back on.
She laughed at his enthusiasm. “Just to warn you, I am a pro at Mario Kart.”
“Of course you are, Swan,” he smirked.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re a very talented woman, love, and I’d never claim otherwise.”
“But?”
“But, that’s what you said about Monopoly. And we saw how that turned out...” She smacked him playfully on the arm at the reminder of her painful loss.
“No, no, no, Jones. I never said I was a pro. If I remember correctly, I only implied that I was good.”
“Fine. We’ll just have to see who the true champion is, won’t we?”
She was good; ‘pro’ wasn’t an easily-earned term for Emma. Killian couldn’t deny that she was extremely skilled. They played for an hour, and Killian had only won twice. He admitted defeat, which was a difficult thing for him to do.
She bowed at his recognition, secretly very proud of herself at beating him after not playing for like three years.
Emma left after a little while to take a shower, surprisingly sweaty after Mario Kart. She used her time under the hot water to release her tight muscles in her back and shoulders. She was sure they were a product of her tensing over the remote, absolutely determined not to let him win.
She tried not to let her mind drift to him as she attempted to relax, but that was proving more and more difficult as she spent time with him. It certainly didn’t help that she was pretty much only spending time with him. But that was inevitable.
She took her time brushing her hair out and getting dressed, trying not to let her newfound sense of calm to slip away.
She was just considering returning to the living room when a Skype call came through on her computer.
“Emma! How are you? Are you okay there by yourself?” Mary Margaret asked, the worried mom-friend as usual.
“I’m fine, I’m great. And I’m not alone, Liam’s brother is here, remember?”
She cringed at David’s sudden appearance next to Mary Margaret. “Oh yeah? And how’s that going?” David asked, a hint of something with an edge in his voice. Accusation? She wasn’t sure.
“It’s great. I promise,” she hoped her words would calm him. It’s a good thing he was married to the mom of the friend group, because he was definitely the dad. “We’ve mostly just been playing Wii. I just destroyed him in Mario Kart,” she told them proudly.
Mary Margaret laughed, and David added, “Attagirl,” as if she were actually his child. Ridiculous, but it made her smile.
They chatted for a little while, catching up on all the personal life things they’d been missing the last few days in an attempt to do some social distancing.
“But I guess the party’s canceled now. I hope this is all better by the Fourth of July, or I’m going to be very grumpy,” Mary Margaret nearly pouted, and it made Emma laugh.
“I’ll let the authorities know that it’s gotta be finished before then, okay?” Emma teased.
“Swan?” Killian called, knocking on her door. “May I come in?”
“Yeah, what’s up?” She asked as he cracked open the door, just his head peeking in.
“I was wondering what you’d like for dinner, but I can come back later, I can see you’re occupied.” He moved to close the door, but she stopped him.
“No, no, it’s fine.” She gestured for him to come in, and then angled her computer a bit to introduce them. “Guys, this is Killian, Liam’s brother. Jones, this is Mary Margaret and David. They like to think they’re my parents,” she grinned at their objections.
“It’s nice to meet you, Killian,” Mary Margaret said once she was done reprimanding Emma.
He shifted nervously, and he had this look on his face that she couldn’t quite read. “It’s lovely to make your acquaintance.”
He was the pinnacle of manners, and she should’ve seen it coming with the way Liam was.
“I heard that Emma kicked your ass in Mario Kart Wii,” David said, pride dripping from his voice. It made heat rush to her cheeks.
“Aye, that she did. It was a well earned victory,”
Once again, Emma was surprised at Killian’s words. Although it was more the tone that confused her, the hint of pride that matched David’s. It was rather unexpected.
Dinner was an interesting affair to say the least. Emma tried to help, really, but she wasn’t one for cooking. Luckily, he’d noticed that from her attempt at assistance when they’d made lunch earlier, so he was prepared.
“All you have to do is stir,” he told her.
“Are you sure?”
This made him laugh, and she caught herself watching as his eyes squinted and his head was thrown back in the movement. “I’m positive, Swan.”
Killian put together the most gourmet spaghetti and meatballs she’d ever seen, and it was fascinating to watch him flit around her kitchen, adding this and that, completely focused and in his element.
The stirring he’d tasked her with was a homemade sauce, which she thought was a little crazy, considering you could just buy some in a jar at the store. When she mentioned this, he shook his head.
“Sure, you can buy the premade sauce, but why do that when it’s so easy to make your own, plus, it’s so much better,”
She bit back a laugh at his passion for anything homemade. It was adorable.
She froze for a split second. The thought had just appeared in her head without warning. She returned to her mechanical stirring, but she remained in her head, trying to find the root of the thought. Did she really think he was adorable? She must have, or else the thought wouldn’t have been so instant. But really, you’d have to be blind to miss the attractiveness in his features, and claiming otherwise was what they called denial. Maybe it wasn’t such an important thought after all.
“It’s ready,” he informed her as he opened the fridge and pulled out an unopened bottle of red wine.
“Good thing we reorganized the kitchen earlier, or else you wouldn’t know where the corkscrew is,” she grinned.
“You’re so right, Swan. A wonderful idea on my part,”
They enjoyed their meal in a comfortable, companionable silence. It was kind of funny, how completely opposite their relationship was from just the night before. She’d dreaded his arrival for hours, and now she was starting to think that perhaps she was trapped with just the right person.
She was surprised she didn’t choke on her food when the thought popped into her head. She hoped maybe some conversation would distract her from her head.
“You’re a wonderful cook,” she commented.
“Thank you, love. I learnt the importance of a well cooked meal from my mother,” he told her, fondness in his voice.
Liam never really talked about their mom, but she knew she’d died when they were young. “That’s what Liam usually says,”
“Aye, he was lucky enough to learn a lot from her before she passed, and I was lucky enough to have him to teach me when I was older,” he said, his smile much softer than before.
“He’s a good brother,”
“Aye, too good to have to put up with my shit,” he agreed, but she could hear the hidden meaning in his words.
“You know, Liam’s spent the last five years or so talking you up. Always telling me how great you are, how proud he is of you...it got pretty annoying after the first few times,” she tried to make it casual enough that he wouldn’t be uncomfortable with her confession.
His eyes got slightly bluer somehow, and his smile turned into a smirk. “Well, how could he not boast about me?”
She decided that her mission was successful, and it eased a weight around her heart to see him accept this new information.
After a second glass of wine, she helped him clean up. He washed, she dried, that was the system, and a good one at that. They made quite the team.
They chose another rom-com from her collection, and once again Emma enjoyed Killian’s comments, although this time most of his anger was directed towards Justin Long. “Does he really think he’s not completely in love with her? That’s ridiculous,” he huffed.
She grinned, “I don’t know what to tell you, Jones. Men are blind, I guess,”
He shook his head. “Not all men are that blind, love, I promise.”
She tried not to think about his words as she climbed into bed. She was exhausted after all that competition and emotional energy. There were so many little things she’d picked up on over the course of the day, it was no wonder she was so good at her job.
She didn’t hate him, and probably never did. He was far too thoughtful to be real, too considerate. He read her like a goddamn book and she had no idea how to deal with it. She just hoped their understanding of each other would be to her advantage and not cause her harm.
Over the next few days, the two of them fell into somewhat of a routine. Killian would make breakfast, then they would goof off and play games until lunch. After that, they tried to do something productive, but as the days passed that got a bit harder, especially after they’d deep cleaned the whole house. On day four, they prepared what Emma called ‘niche powerpoint presentations.’ It was a good way to kill an hour or two, especially when Killian created a literal Ted Talk about why Peter Pan is actually the villain. It made Emma laugh so hard her stomach hurt.
After their productive time, they’d give each other some privacy for whatever they needed or wanted to do. Emma usually just showered and Skyped her friends, although one day she took a nap.
Then it was dinner, which Killian would make, and then Emma would help him clean up. They finished off their days with a rom-com that usually had Killian annoyed at this character or another. It was funny (and adorable) every time.
On day five, Liam and Elsa Skyped her, and Emma brought her computer out to sit on the coffee table so they could both talk.
“So Emma, how are you getting along with my little brother. Is he giving you a lot of trouble?” Liam chuckled.
“Younger. Younger brother,” Killian muttered, arms crossing his chest like a four-year-old.
“No, he’s been feeding me, so that’s good,”
“I was a bit worried you might starve with me gone for so long,” Liam teased.
Killian rolled his eyes. “You know I’m perfectly capable of cooking, Liam,”
“Oh of course, of course,” he agreed too quickly. Emma was no expert at sibling relationships, but she was pretty sure that he was implying he was the superior cook. He wasn’t, but she was afraid she was beginning to become biased, so she didn’t trust herself to say it.
“Emma, have you been talking to David and Mary Margaret much?” Elsa asked.
“We Skype just about every day. They’re so parent-y, still,”
“That’s definitely not a word, Swan. ‘Parent-y,’ really, that’s not even creative,” Killian shook his head in feigned disappointment.
“I’m sorry, but I momentarily blacked out and forgot the word parental. Are you happy?”
“Overjoyed.”
“At least I don’t have to worry about you two destroying the apartment,” Liam said.
“What are you implying?” Emma raised her eyebrows.
“I figured that by now you would’ve murdered him, Emma, but you’re more tolerant than I thought,” he said.
“I can’t say I haven’t considered it once or twice,” she ignored his call of ‘hey!’ and added, “but I would’ve been left with the mess, plus it would’ve just been me for two weeks and that doesn’t sound fun,”
“That’s understandable,” Liam nodded seriously.
“We’re so proud of you, Emma,”
They ended the call a little while later, and all was well until Elsa called her just after she’d gotten out of the shower.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“I just wanted to talk to you, uh, alone,” Elsa said.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“No, no, everything’s fine. Sorry, I realize how that sounded. No, I mean...you and Killian seem to be getting along really well,”
“Oh,” that made her pause. “What makes you say that?”
“I kind of thought you still hated him, but, well, you guys were very much flirting while we were on Skype, Emma,”
“Oh.”
She’d gotten so used to his company and their playful banter that she didn’t even realize what had been right in front of her. “Oh,” she repeated once it sunk in. “Well shit,”
“What are you going to do?”
“I have no idea. I’ll, um, I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Emma, are you sure—”
“Bye, Elsa,” she hung up before she could finish her sentence.
Over the course of the next few minutes, Emma’s brain became what she liked to refer to as a Shit Tornado. It was just...shit. Flying around, spinning, going one hundred and fifty miles per hour and destroying everything in its path.
She liked him, like liked him. Yes, the official middle school definition. She actually cared about him, and she had no idea how it happened. But did he also care? She should’ve figured that one out days ago, really. The hot chocolate that first morning? It was so obvious. There were so many looks she tried to ignore, on both ends, actually. Many comments she pretended never happened. God, she said that men were blind, but holy shit! She might as well donate her eyes, because she clearly hadn’t been using them.
She wasn’t sure how long she let the Shit Tornado ravage her brain as she sat on the floor of her bathroom, but there was a knock on the door.
“Swan?” His voice was soft and sweet and fuck.
“Go away,” she muttered, absolutely in no state to see him.
“Love, what’s going on?”
He was so goddamn nice it made her want to cry. “Nothing,” it was a blatant lie, they both knew it, but she didn’t care. There was silence on the other side of the door, and she wasn’t sure if she was more relieved or disappointed.
But after a moment, he said, “I have rum,”
She sighed, going against at least half of the cells in her body and reaching up to open the door.
He was extremely polite and didn’t mention the fact that she was just in a robe, and he moved to sit beside her on the floor. Wordlessly, he unscrewed the cap to his flask and passed it to her.
She took a few sips and returned it to him. He didn’t pressure her to speak, and at this point that didn’t shock her. He wanted to wait until she was comfortable.
“Do you remember when we first met?” She asked.
“Of course,”
“I was a little rude,” she said quietly. “Do you know why?” He just shook his head, letting her continue without interrupting. She smiled. It was a weak one, but it was still a smile. “Something you said really freaked me out,” she looked at him.
His eyes found hers, and she could see that he was searching his memory.
“You said, ‘try something new, darling. It’s called trust,’”
“I sounded like a jackass,” he mumbled.
She laughed, “That’s not what freaked me out. What freaked me out was that just before you’d said that, I wanted to trust you. I felt like I could, and I’d known you for like ten minutes. Everyday, when I’m working or whatever I’m doing, I listen to my gut. That day, it was telling me to trust you, to open myself up to you. But I couldn’t risk being wrong, and it was so startling to want to trust someone, and I just-I couldn’t handle it. So I pushed you away,”
“That makes perfect sense, love.”
She sighed. “But this funny thing has been happening. I don’t want to push you away anymore,”
A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “I’d like to not be pushed away,” he told her. “But I also want you to be comfortable, and happy,”
“I know, but I realized today that I am comfortable. So comfortable it scared me,”
“Look, Emma, I know you’ve been hurt before. I know that it takes a lot to earn your trust, and I want you to know that it would be very much worth the effort, for me.” He shifted to face her properly. “I don’t do things part way, Swan. You should know that. If you’re willing to give this a shot, I’m ready to go all in,”
She stared at him for a moment, as if she were expecting to wake up from a dream or snap out of some sort of hallucination. “I’d like to try to give this a shot,” it was just a whisper, but the effect it had on his whole being was massive. His grin alone created a fire that warmed her heart.
Emma awoke with that childlike first-day-of-summer hopefulness, ready for all the joy and possibilities that lay in front of her.
But once she was out of her room and staring at him at the stove, she realized that she had absolutely no idea how she was supposed to act or even feel. She had a new tornado in her brain, but this one was the polar opposite of the Shit Tornado, this was a...Joy Tornado? It was definitely not something she’d experienced before.
 “Swan! I trust you slept well,” he said, handing her a mug. Her favorite mug, as usual, the yellow handmade-looking one that she used everyday, the one he discovered after that first day when she’d mentioned it offhand. Every day after that, that was the mug he would hand her as soon as she stumbled out of her room, hands rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
 “Your breakfast is on the table,” he informed her. He looked almost as excited as she felt, and it was really cute.
He joined her a minute later, his usual place at the table passed over for the seat beside her. She tried not to let it distract her, but unfortunately the Joy Tornado was picking up speed.
There was a different ease between them, something that had been a result of their conversation the night before. She caught herself watching him in a way she hadn’t allowed herself to just twenty-four hours earlier.
They made cupcakes for some reason, maybe because they discovered there was absolutely nothing else to do, and Emma couldn’t remember a time when she laughed more.
“Swan, try this!” He called, handing her a spoon with a bit of the chocolate batter.
It was heaven, and not just because she hadn’t had cupcake batter in years. When she gave him back the spoon, he tried it himself, and she couldn’t help but watch as the dark batter touched his lips.
Once he noticed she was staring, his eyebrow did that thing again, although this time the feeling in her chest wasn’t anything related to annoyance. In fact, she found it rather alluring. “See something you like, Swan?”
“Nope, not at all,” she said, a smirk creeping onto her lips.
“You’re a terrible liar, love,”
Emma caught herself far too many times thinking things that would make old Emma puke. Although ‘old’ more meant ‘a week ago.’ But she couldn’t find herself to care one bit.
They were crafting, yes crafting, with some random supplies they found hidden away in a box shoved into a corner in one of the many closets. It was pipe cleaners and stickers and children’s glue, but it was entertaining.
They’d made it a competition, of course. Whoever made the best picture in twenty minutes won, though there was no prize other than bragging rights. So naturally, the entire twenty minutes was spent throwing insults at each other, promising that their picture would be better than the other’s.
When the buzzer went off, Emma was embarrassingly proud of her creation. It was an extremely abstract landscape that reminded her of one of the places she’d lived as a foster kid. Sure, the forest was made up of pieces of green and blue pipe cleaners, but it was the best damn thing she’d ever made.
But Killian presented his masterpiece, and she almost lost it.
It was a swan. Aboard a pirate ship. Damn him.
“I think yours is brilliant, Swan,” he said, pride in his voice.  
She rolled her eyes, “You made a pirate ship, Jones. You win.”
“Well, if you insist. But I do plan on hanging both up on the fridge,” he said, and then actually got up and put them front and center, moving the magnets until they were sturdy. “There. Now, are you hungry?”
Emma spent their entire dinner trying to figure out how this man was even real. He was so considerate, and he always knew just what to say. He remembered all those little details and made her feel important. He never teased her in ways that actually inflicted any damage; it was like he knew which areas to avoid. All of this led her to one conclusion, one that she should have determined a long, long time ago: Killian wasn’t Neal.
In fact, the entire week she’d been pushing away thoughts of comparison before they could take form. When he made her hot chocolate, she’d tried not to remember how Neal could never get any of her orders right. Coffee, Chinese food, whatever, he could never get it right. Killian also never insulted the things she cared about, and took interest in the things she enjoyed. They were making the way through her rom-com collection, after all. Killian wasn’t pushy, he didn’t pry. He didn’t expect things from her that she wasn’t ready to give. It was a lot to process.
“We’re very pensive this evening, aren’t we?” Killian asked with a small smile. He too had been quiet.
“Sorry, I just have a lot on my mind,”
“No need to apologize, Swan,” he said, and it reminded her of another reason he wasn’t Neal. Perhaps she should start making a list.
“There’s something I’d like to tell you about,” Emma began once they’d finished eating, “but I think we’re going to need something a little stronger for this conversation,” she picked up her empty wine glass in show.
Killian nodded, moving immediately to take a bottle out of the cabinet. Rum, of course.
“Last night, there was something you said,” she told him, watching as he poured the alcohol for them. “You knew I’d been hurt before, and I think you should know about it,”
“You needn’t tell me if it makes you uncomfortable, love,”
Emma sighed, “That’s the thing, I know that I can share it with you. And I want to,” he didn’t reply, which she took as a cue to continue. “I met Neal when I was seventeen. I tried to steal a car that he had already stolen,” she laughed, and he raised an eyebrow. “I lived a much different life back then. Anyway, we fell in love, or so I thought, and we were together for a while, stealing what we needed to survive, planning to run away together after we’d had enough money. But Neal wanted to steal something bigger, some expensive watches, and when he got caught, he framed me. I went to jail for his crime,”
The silence that followed her story was deafening, and she shifted uncomfortably for a moment. “So that’s why I don’t do the whole ‘trust’ thing easily. I didn’t see it coming, and I should have.”
“Don’t blame yourself for that coward’s decisions, Emma,” his voice was quiet and restrained.
“I don’t. Or, I try not to. I know now that I was just a pawn, but it took me a long time to figure it out.”
“Thank you for sharing that with me, love,” he said, adding more alcohol to their glasses. “Well, while the rum is out, perhaps you’d like to hear my own depressing tale,” he joked, although his laugh wasn’t as hearty as she knew it to be.
“I met my first love, Milah, when I was a young lad. Twenty-three, actually. She was adventurous and a bit older, and I fell deeply in love. I didn’t know she had a husband and a son until almost a year later,”
“Shit,” Emma muttered, and he smiled.
“Aye, my sentiments exactly. But I was positively head over heels—young love and all that—so I stayed with her. We met in secret for a year after my little discovery, although it had really been secret the entire time. And then her husband forced her to move far away, I’m assuming he found out about me, and about six months after that, I’d heard that she had died in a car crash. I’m not sure if she ever truly loved me, or if she just saw me as some sort of rebellious freedom,” he finished.
“Aren’t we a pair,” she said after a few minutes.
“Aye, I believe we make quite the team, love,”
They ignored Emma’s movie collection and just spent the rest of the evening consuming the contents of the bottle on the table, bonding over shared (mostly heartbreaking) experiences. She knew she would regret the last few drinks in the morning, but that wasn’t important. What was important was that Emma now understood how Killian could know her so damn well.
And she couldn’t bring herself to mind at all.
As expected, a headache greeted Emma when she got up, and the light peeking in made the pounding against her skull much worse. She groaned as she pushed herself out of her bed, hoping very much that Killian wouldn’t be as chipper as he usually was in the morning.
A rather familiar green and disgusting-looking drink sat on the counter waiting for her. “Ah, the famous Jones hangover cure,” she mumbled, grabbing it and trying not to think about what she knew it contained.
“So you’ve heard of it,” Killian’s voice was much more subdued than usual.
“Yes, Liam has made it for me many times,” she explained, and he nodded thoughtfully. She downed the glass, holding her nose as she did so. “Gross,” she commented, placing the cup on the counter.
“True, but give it half an hour,” he said, turning off the stove. “I made us omelettes this morning,”
“I didn’t expect you to make breakfast...I don’t even think I could stand up for five minutes right now,”
“What can I say, I’m a creature of habit,” he grinned, handing her a plate full of food and moving towards the table to put down his own. “Besides, I very much enjoy cooking for you, Swan.”
“Why’s that?” She wondered, crossing the kitchen to place her plate directly beside his.
She looked up when he didn’t reply right away, just in time to see him reach up to scratch behind his ear, a nervous habit she’d noticed around day three. “Perhaps it’s because that was the first time I actually made you smile, that first morning,” he said quietly.
She stared at him for a moment, her brain processing his words much slower than its usual rate.
But then her lips were on his, and she couldn’t even remember actually closing the distance between them. One minute he was three feet away, the next minute, he wasn’t.
His body froze for just a fraction of a second before he responded, his hand coming up to tangle in her hair. Emma’s fingers played at the hair that rested at the nape of his neck as she stood on her toes just to be closer.
It was passionate and desperate and Emma could spend an eternity there, but before that could happen, Killian took one step to separate them. She looked at him for a moment, brow furrowed in a question.
“As much as I am enjoying this, love, and I am, I think we should stop before we take this elsewhere,”
She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
“I’m not interested in a one-time thing, Emma. It’s important to me that you know that,”
“Oh,” was all she could say.
“Of course I want to, believe me, love. I just...I have a history of one night stands, and I don’t want you to think that’s what this is. One night with you would certainly not be enough,”
She blinked for a second. “I don’t want this to be a one night stand, Killian. That would be really difficult to pull off, too, because we’re kind of stuck here, remember?” She joked.
He chucked. “True, very true.” He scratched behind his ear again, “I wasn’t—I’m not rejecting you, love.”
“I know, and I understand. I also have been known to have a one night stand here or there, and I agree. Maybe jumping right in wouldn’t be the best course of action, here.”
In response, Killian bent down to place a much more chaste kiss on her lips.  
 Emma spent the next few hours reminding herself of his words, convincing herself that he wasn’t lying when he said he wasn’t rejecting her. She knew it, it made sense, yet that part of her, that annoying little voice that liked to tell her she wasn’t enough, told her that he didn’t want her. At least, the little voice had been trying to, until Killian’s actions spoke louder.
They watched a movie instead of being productive, and he very neatly tucked her into his side as soon as they sat down. She couldn’t even pay attention as Ryan Reynolds was being yelled at by Sandra Bullock, because Killian kept tracing the back of her hand with his thumb.
 And then when the movie was over, he pulled her up off the couch, dragging her to the kitchen where he made her a hot chocolate. Killian found casual, normal, everyday reasons to touch her, and she loved it. It was the casual intimacy that she’d never had before, and it made her heart so full that it hurt.
“David, will you relax? We are not going to run out of toilet paper. We’re fine!” Emma tried to convince him. They’d been Skyping for about ten minutes in the living room when Killian came out of his (Liam’s) bedroom.
“I can just order you some. Right now. I’m on the site already,” David said, holding up his phone.
 “We have plenty, right Killian?” She asked, and he came over to sit beside her on the couch.
“Yes, mate, we’ve got enough to last us three months if need be,” he told him.
“I told you, David. You’re so dramatic,” Mary Margaret said, but there was so much love in her voice that it was clearly not an insult.
“Yeah, you and Killian could start a club,” Emma nudged him playfully.
Killian just shook his head, grinning at her. She couldn’t help but grin back.
“Emma?” Mary Margaret called.
“Yeah?”
“This might sound crazy, but are you two…is something going on between you two?”
Emma’s eyes widened, and she looked at Killian, no idea how to reply. He just gave this little encouraging nod, and she sighed. “Fine. You caught us,”
“I knew it!” Mary Margaret exclaimed.
“Okay, what? You just...started dating in the midst of a global catastrophe?” David interjected.
“It’s not like we planned it!” Emma said indignantly.
Killian beamed, “No, this was definitely not planned. Although, I couldn’t have picked a better person to be in quarantine with than you, love,”
Emma ignored Mary Margaret’s loud ‘awe’ and replied, “Damn right. You could say that we make a great quaranTeam,”
Killian pretended to be deeply offended by her terrible pun, putting a hand over his chest. “Swan, I daresay that was the worst pun I’ve ever heard,”
“What are you gonna do? Break up with me?” She cocked an eyebrow.
“I would never,” he said seriously, and it made her heart stop.
She was glad that she had an indefinite amount of time to figure that one out.
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Love in the time of Plaguelings or, The Outpost Season 2 and its romance plots
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A bit late the party and it isn't even a particularly popular party at that, but I just had to get some of my thoughts out into the internet-ether.
First and foremost, I recall seeing someone(probably on Tumblr) remarking that the show was "depressingly straight" or some such and it is hard not to agree.
Now I don't think everything needs to be as queer as queer can be(it certainly doesn’t hurt though) and it is not like one can't do straight-romance well(watch High Seas on Netflix to see one recent and great example), but with The Outpost the lack of queerness is compounded by the terrible straightness we are given.
Here is something I never thought I would say: For the majority of the first season I kind of liked the little love triangle we had between Talon, Garret, and Gwynn. It felt refreshing to me because all three were aware of it but none of them allowed it to ruin the growing friendship between them. Garret is in love with Gwynn but has the hots for Talon, Talon has the hots for Garret but is friends with Gwynn and is content to be friends w/ sexual tension with Garret. Gwynn is with Garret, is friends with Talon, and is aware of the aforementioned sexual tension between her love and her friend. It just isn't that big of a deal for the most part, at least until the end of the season where they ruin this pleasant dynamic.
I wrote the above to kind of highlight that the show can do a decent(not great but far from terrible) romance, so the junk we get in Season 2 isn't just my lust for a Gwynn+Talon pairing coloring my view of things.
Season 2 tries to give each of the two female leads new romantic partners and they are both disasters. I actually don't mind Tobin as a character unto himself but pairing him with Gwynn does real harm to her character. The show seems to think that because he stops drinking(for purely selfish reasons) that he is no longer the boorish dick that he was before, the guy who basically walked up to a Queen he was trying to convince to marry him and said "Wanna fuck?" and then, when shot down, immediately asked her handmaiden the same. And when you have Gwynn falling for this it immediately makes her look incredibly foolish. It seems clear they are aiming for a Han and Leia type of dynamic but we never had to watch Han being a gross piece of shit for multiple episodes and then get told to ignore all that because...? Seriously, Tobin's whole "I'll stop drinking and become a better man!" thing is just so poorly conceived.
If they had played this all out nice and slow with their relationship portrayed as the political maneuver it is and nothing more, letting a romance grow out of that at a deliberate pace, I could probably see it working. But as it is, the Tobin of the second half of the season is basically a different character than his initial portrayal, the only way to accept who he is in the second half is to ignore who he was in the first. It is madness. And then to add insult to injury, we now have to contend with a probable Tobin+Gwynn+Garret triangle which is about as much "Thanks, I hate it!" as you can get.
Zed, on the other hand, is just terrible outright. Terrible and boring. He and Talon don't even really get along which makes their pairing just head-scratching. I'm not sure calling it a romance is even fair all things considered, their entire dynamic is so plot-heavy(she is no longer the last of her people, he can teach her stuff, we got to find the key, blahblahblah) that it feels like there is absolutely nothing between them as people, the only thing the have going is the fact that they don't see eye to eye on anything. So when they first get to it I was completely taken by surprise and not in a good way. Nothing between them had been leading to this and yet here we suddenly were, fucking on the side of a road.
The show seems to have latched onto the 'opposites attract' concept but did it in the worst way imaginable, employed on the show it is less 'opposites attract' and more 'people who don't like each other, like each other' and it feels as awkward as that statement sounds.
Outside of the character dynamics, the big thing is chemistry. Jessica Green and Imogen Waterhouse have it in a way that their characters don't with the men they are saddled with. Whenever Talon and Gwynn are put together on screen there is a spark in the air, whether there is a light playfulness or heavy tension the scenes between them carry a weight that isn't there for anyone else(well at least in a romantic sense, Elinor and Gertie have a great antagonist thing going on and Garret and his father really sell their conflicted bond quite well).
The show has Gwynn and Tobin having dinner together, she brings him lunch, she ogles him from afar, and none of it registers as well as any single scene between the two ladies. Scenes that have no romance in mind in the text itself.
It eventually reaches a point where you start to notice that the show seems like it wants the two ladies to always be apart, that despite being the two most important characters they have relatively few scenes together. Talon is just kind of off doing her thing for long stretches, dealing with the whole Blackbloods and all that but she does it all fairly dispassionately, it is only when Gwynn is involved(and generally in danger) that she gets all heroic and passionate. Talon riding off to save Gwynn, her Pirates of the Caribbean-esque fanfare blaring, is like the pinnacle of romantic heroism, but she is confusedly not going to save her love but rather her 'friend'.
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Just a friend doing everything the love interest should be doing.
But of course Tobin, who Talon had just slapped for being a useless drunkard, tags along and we get some completely hollow "My how you have changed, Tobin." even though he hasn't really. And having been injured in Gwynn's rescue, Tobin receives the 'wounded warrior gets bedside romantic moment' with Gwynn even though he didn't do much besides get shot with a bunch of arrows.
So we are left with two awesome ladies who are given romantic partners/relationships that seem to be anchored only by the fact that the guys are handsome(and they are). But that certainly isn't enough, especially on a show where everyone is attractive. The show couldn't even cast the nerd/clown role without getting a handsome fuck in there. And speaking of Janzo, his relationship with Naya is something I'm still not sure of honestly. It was simple and sweet, which goes a long way, but not exactly riveting to watch. And then you get to the big moment and I think it was brilliant...maybe?
And I would be foolish to not mention that the show thankfully kept the sexy train going even when casting actresses over the age of 50. I am eternally grateful that Glynis Barber at 63 has been on my screen as of late, she can get it any day of the week.
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Oh my, Auntie Gertrusha.
Now my little rant has come to an end and I don't really have a way to wrap it up. It feels weird to write so many words about this for a show like The Outpost. It is a fun little show of modest means and modest aims, that maybe doesn't deserve to bear the weight of such scrutiny. Scrutiny of things that it appears to have no real interest in.
But I quite like The Outpost, I like this type of meat-and-potatoes fantasy that we don't really get anymore, and isn’t thinking too much about a show the ultimate sign of love?. With swords aplenty, evil to be thwarted, honest-to-god comic characters(I can't adequately explain just how much I loved Munt in Season 2), I feel The Outpost is worth that admiration but in the center of all this fun swords-and-demons-and-whatnot we do have these feckless romances just dragging my enjoyment down.
It just sucks that after all these years, seeing the television landscape grow as it has, we still only have Xena and Gabrielle. I don't expect them to be toppled off their mighty thrones but it saddens me that no one ever even tries, that one of the reasons they sit on said thrones is because there is no one to even challenge them.
But, hey, Munt on a donkey. It isn't all bad.
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tyrantisterror · 5 years
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Oh Fuck I’m TV Troping: A Short & Incomplete List of Bad Girls
Since that whole post about Bad Girls and Compassionate Male Heroes kinda blew up and the discussion just... isn’t stopping, I’ve been thinking of this trope a lot and uh, I guess I’m gonna list a bunch of examples of it since I’ve kinda been doing it already and it’d be nice to have them all in one spot I guess.  Gonna put a cut because even though I don’t want to make a huge list, I still think this is gonna be long.
4 Tried and True Bad Girls -  the following fit the archetype as I roughly defined it here pretty much to the letter.  Of course, the thing about archetypes and tropes is that you don’t have to hit every single detail to still “count,” but it’s good to have a baseline.
Jessie
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A member of an international crime syndicate, a notorious thief, and a recurring antagonist for the hero, Jessie from Pokemon is an excellent example of the Bad Girl trope because if you remove female pronouns while describing her, she basically fits the stock Bad Boy traits to a T.  Aggressive and arrogant?  Check.  Prone to violent outbursts?  Check.  Intensely jealous of people who seem to have it easier?  Check.  Hidden tender side and tragic backstory?  Check.  Also she’s one half of the greatest romantic couple ever portrayed in fiction - and her counterpart is a compassionate, sweet-natured guy to boot!
Ryoko
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I’m not going to fill this up with anime examples (though I probably could - Bad Girls are much more common in Japanese media), but I couldn’t resist including Ryoko, because she’s not just a Bad Girl - she’s a PIRATE, which, if my grandma’s collection of romance novels was anything to go by, is an incredibly popular occupation for a Bad Boy to have!  More than that, she’s a space pirate, the plunderer of countless worlds, wanted by the space police force and considered a villain of legendary power.  More than that, she can wield store brand lightsabers, shoot lasers out of her hands, and even spent a good chunk of time as a mummy!  Ryoko’s personality is pure Dashing Rogue, the Bad Boy Girl who’s definitely a scoundrel but, maybe, just maybe, the kind of scoundrel who’s got a good heart.  She definitely pines for love and an amount of stability, though she doesn’t want to stop traveling the stars as a boozing adventurer who gets into the most ludicrous scrapes.  Everything about Ryoko plays up the ideas of a Bad Boy romance with the flair for drama and fantasy that a space opera can provide, except the Bad Boy is a girl and the sweet ingenue heroine is a boy.
Ryoko is who you wish Jack Sparrow would be.
Faith
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Faith was introduced as a second Slayer in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was the result of magical shenanigans that suddenly rendered the whole “there can only be one slayer at a time” rule kinda moot.  Ok that’s an extremely abbreviated summary and it’s really more complicated than that but I can already feel the non-Buffy fans falling asleep so let’s stay focused.
Since Buffy is, y’know, the main character, Faith was brought on to be her foil - an example of what Buffy wasn’t, but possibly could become.  And since BtVS was a horror dramedy, Faith wasn’t a GOOD alternative - she was, explicitly, Buffy’s dark counterpart, from her brunette hair to her heavy and darker makeup to her rad leather jacket and, as the show frequently said, “slutty” wardrobe.  Faith was more violent, more sexual, and more apathetic to others than Buffy was, and holy fuck did the show just hate her for it.  Almost every character in it treated her like shit, with her sexuality in particular being a sticking point for many of them.
Faith is particularly interesting because she differs from Buffy (and the female cast at large) in almost the exact same ways that the show’s main Bad Boys, Angel and Spike, differed from its male characters - more violent, more sexual, darker clothes, etc.  But while Angel and Spike get a great deal of sympathy from the narrative, Faith... didn’t.  I mean they kinda sorta gave her some eventually, but most of it played out in the spinoff Angel, and the other characters continued to hold a grudge against her.  Faith isn’t just an good example of the Bad Girl trope - she’s an example of how the reaction to Bad Girls differs from the reaction to Bad Boys, despite them being almost exactly the same.
Vriska Serket
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OH FUCK IT’S HOMESTUCK
Ok, everyone still hates Homestuck, so I won’t belabor this point, but Vriska Serket, who is infamously the most divisive character in the entire story, is absolutely a bad girl.  Arrogant, ruthless, abrasive, with a tragic backstory, a desire for both compassion and redemption, and a truly ambitious schemer, she ticks so many boxes and OH SHIT SHE’S ALSO A PIRATE.  Like Faith, Vriska was in a story that had a lot of examples of Bad Boys too, and while the fandom fucking HATES Vriska, her Bad Boy counterparts are nowhere near as divisive, with one of them being extremely popular despite being a clown who murders people.  The other one explicitly wants to commit genocide, literally saying almost exactly that, and is also far more well liked.  WHY IS THIS?
But enough of the homestucks!  Let’s move onto some...
Borderline Bad Girls - these ladies don’t fit the trope quite as neatly, but I still think they capture the jist, or at least used it as a base before experimenting in different directions.  They are, at the very least, closer to the Bad Girl archetype than its sibling tropes, the Badass Heroine and the Femme Fatale.
Jessica Jones
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I’m just gonna talk about the Netflix incarnation of this character, as I have not read the comic books featuring Jessica Jones and thus cannot comment on them.
The only real strike against Jessica Jones is that she isn’t a supporting cast member, like pretty much all other Bad Girls are.  She’s the protagonist, the titular main character.  That’s a unique honor for a Bad Girl to have!  Otherwise, she fits - hard drinking, abrasive, rude, surly as hell, but with a tender heart, a tragic backstory, and a desire for redemption.  Hell she’s even wearing the Bad Girl leather jacket.
Morrigan
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Ok, we’re straying a bit far here, but I’m going to try to make a case here.  Morrigan’s rudeness and abrasiveness isn’t quite as bombastic as the standard take on the Bad Girl trope - she actually phrases things very politely and speaks very softly most of the time, and is generally cordial to people when they are cordial to her.  It’s the content of what she says, rather than the way she says it, that sets most people off.  There’s also an odd naivety to Morrigan’s interactions that isn’t immediately noticeable because her vocabulary is so, well, verbose.  She doesn’t make the “ill tempered thug” impression most Bad Girls make when they’re first introduced - she instead comes off as very sophisticated yet oddly ignorant of the civilized world, which is a very different starting point for a Bad Girl.
BUT!  Morrigan’s character arc follows the rough path of a Bad Girl.  She verbalizes a lot of callous and cruel ideas about the world when you first meet her, giving the impression that she is some sort of sadistic monster.  It’s done in a very different way than the standard Bad Boy/Bad Girl, but it has the same effect - you are led to think this girl is a Bad Person very early on.  And yes, to some extent she is - but, just like any other Bad Boy/Bad Girl, her actions later on show that’s not all there is to her, that, even if she isn’t aware of it, there is a loving core to Morrigan - she wants to be good.
Like most Bad Boys/Bad Girls, it’s eventually revealed that Morrigan’s childhood situation was NOT GREAT, and that she has been the victim of abuse and some very bad parenting.  A great deal of her wickedness isn’t inherent to her, but something she was indoctrinated into - and, in TRUE Bad Boy/Bad Girl fashion, love, especially romantic love, makes her doubt her view of the world.  It begins to break apart, and she gradually learns, to her confusion, horror, and eventually, hope, that there is another way to live - a better, kinder way.
One might argue that Morrigan doesn’t fit the Bad Girl trope, but another villainous female archetype instead.  For instance, one might say she is instead a Femme Fatale, since she dresses all sexy like and whatnot - but Morrigan doesn’t really seduce people all that often in the narrative.  Early on in the first Dragon Age game you have an option to ask her to seduce a guard, and Morrigan not only reacts in disgust, but instead horrifies the guard into letting you by instead (because Morrigan is great).  The only time she does seduce someone is specifically to keep the main characters from an otherwise inevitable death via a dark magic ritual - and yes it does feel ridiculous to type that out, but 1. it makes more sense in context and 2. I think the ridiculous circumstances of this seduction kinda illustrates why it’s not really a core character trait of hers, which is why she doesn’t fit the Femme Fatale mold.  Likewise, while one could say she fits the idea of a Vain Sorceress... well, other than being pretty and using magic, Morrigian really doesn’t.  She’s not motivated by preserving her youth, and doesn’t really seem to care much for traditional beauty standards at all if her conversation with Leliana is anything to go by (though she does meet them anyway because, well, Video Games).  Morrigan doesn’t really fit any villainous female archetype perfectly, but if we accept her as a Bad Girl, she makes for a particularly interesting example.
Hexadecimal
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Straying further!  Like Morrigan, one might be tempted to put Hexadecimal in the Vain Sorceress or Femme Fatale archetypes instead, but again, like Morrigan, she really doesn’t act like either of those two despite being a sexy lady who uses magic for villainous ends.  Instead she’s defined by being the sort of superhero/action adventure cartoon variety of “crazy,” which isn’t based on any real mental illness, but rather an excuse for her to cause a lot of mayhem for no real reason.  Unlike most “crazy” villains, though, Hex’s insanity is treated with sympathy by the narrative and the main hero - while most people would be willing to write Hex off as someone they’d rather live without, Bob, the hero, continually tries to reason with her and help her overcome her madness.
Most people wrote her off as a lost cause, but the hero showed her compassion.  There’s smackings of a Bad Boy in that.
As the show goes on, Bob’s compassion for Hexadecimal is repaid with her own affection, and she slowly turns from villain to hero out of a desire to not only keep Bob safe, but make sure he’s happy - and she comes to realize he can’t be happy without the people he loves.  Hex becomes a truly tragic and noble character towards the end of the show, as she knows Bob will never reciprocate her romantic affections but still remains on his side anyway, even saving the lives of people who argued against saving her.  A villain who seems like a frothing mad dog, only to be turned into a hero after the compassion of a hero makes them realize the value of human life?  That’s is SUCH a Bad Boy arc.  Hexadecimal may not fit some of the aesthetic trappings of the Bad Girl archetype, but her arc fits it perfectly.
Harley Quinn
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When she was first introduced, Harley Quinn wasn’t a Bad Girl so much as she was, like, the perky love interest of a bad guy.  She wasn’t given enough focus and agency in the narrative to really fit the Bad Girl archetype.  However, in recent years she’s been retooled a bit to work independently of the character she was designed to orbit, and as a result she may be our second example of a Bad Girl protagonist.  She’s a supervillain, or at least was, and was in league with one of the worst at that.  She’s loud and aggressive in combat, has a big bombastic personality, and revels in living an anarchic lifestyle.  But, as her solo series shows, she does have a good heart deep down, adopting stray dogs and helping out fellow weirdos who have been left behind by a world that doesn’t give a damn about them.  Harley Quinn is and has always been defined by her desire to be loved, which is very much a Bad Girl sort of trait - especially since that desire often leads to her acting out, just as most Bad Boys and Bad Girls act out because, ultimately, they haven’t been shown enough love.
Plus a lot of her modern designs add a leather jacket, and it just seems that once a girl wears a leather jacket she has at least a 70% chance of being a Bad Girl.
Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee
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I had no idea where to put these ladies and whether or not they fit this archetype, but I felt they had to be noted because they’re very well known examples of complicated female villains who don’t fit the Femme Fatale archetype at all, which in turn makes them feel like pretty good candidates for Bad Girl-dom.  Azula probably fits the archetype the closest, though you don’t see her desire for compassion until VERY late in the series (where she is, sadly, too far gone to get her redemption).  Mai comes in close second, though her sullen demeanor oddly fits the Badass Heroine a bit better.  And then Ty Lee... Ty Lee... I mean she’s like an even sweeter and kinder Harley Quinn, she hardly even counts as a villain except she works with the bad guys... I don’t know what we do with Ty Lee, guys.  Ty Lee’s just her own thing.
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laschatzi · 6 years
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A Hard Day’s Night
After a bunch of super angsty stories I had a mighty need to write some smut. I’m not even sorry. And yes, of course I stole the title!
title: A Hard Day’s Night
summary: Emma sends Killian an indecent selfie, and like Regina once said: never thinking of the consequences...
rating: m, hell yeah.
word count: 4k
also on ff.net and ao3
With her hair tied into a loose ponytail and still damp from her evening shower, Emma leaves the bathroom, just clad in a white tank top and soft grey cotton panties. As she won't be leaving the house again today and Henry isn't home, she hasn't bothered to put on a bra. She's contemplating whether to put on yoga pants or sweatpants for the cozy evening with pizza and Netflix she's planned, when the bedroom door is thrown open. Not really startled, because she knew Killian would be home around that time, she still jumps a little.
“Hey!” she greets him with a smile and walks up to him immediately, raising on her tiptoes to press a lingering kiss to his lips. They taste salty, as he has been out with his ship all day, testing and fixing the new sail he has rigged her with. Playfully, she nips at his bottom lip before releasing him. “I just got back in from the station,” she tells him, “I'm glad you're already home!”
He growls a little in response to her kiss, pulling her against him with his hand splayed on her lower back, before he replies pointedly, “So am I. For various reasons.” Stepping back, he tilts his head and raises his eyebrows at her, adding dryly, “As you certainly can imagine, love.”
Emma bats her eyelashes innocently. “I have no idea what you're talking about, husband,” she claims, the smirk playing around her lips clearly belying her.
“Oh, really?” He points his ringed index finger at her. “You are a dirty little liar, Swan,” he declares, “and a bloody tease.”
She can barely keep the self-satisfaction from her voice. “You're talking about the... message I sent?”
“Message,” he snorts. “You mean the picture you took of yourself before you were decent.”
Emma laughs, a glorious, carefree sound he could listen to all day. “Oh, come on, I wasn't even naked,” she defends herself.
“Perhaps not, but the image of you clad only in your knickers and that feeble excuse for a bodice you call brassière,” he emphasizes the French word in a way that sends tingles down her spine, “doesn't allow a man to concentrate on his task. In fact, it renders it quite...” he pauses for a moment to tilt his head and run his tongue along the inside of his teeth, “...hard.”
She grins at his innuendo and bites her full bottom lip slowly, deliberately. “Sorry?” she offers in a voice that makes clear how blatantly not sorry she actually is.
“Cheeky, are we?” he comments and takes another step back, much to her dismay.
But she knows he's playing a game, and playing along is always fun. So, she smiles seductively and breathes in a husky voice, “I'll make it up to you...” She reaches out for him, but he holds up his hand.
“Not so fast, my love,” he scolds, “I had a very long and uncomfortable day, you can display a little patience now, can't you?” With his hand and the dull curve of his hook on her shoulders he pushes her gently down to sit on the small bench in front of her dressing table. “Why don't you take a seat?”
Emma looks up at him questioningly, trying to anticipate what he's up to, but even though his eyes are dangerously sparkling with mischief now, she has no clue. Her hands are reaching out for him again, but once more, he eludes her touch and steps back. She's slightly disappointed when he turns around and saunters away from her (on the bright side, it gives her the opportunity to admire his pirate swagger), but smirks to herself when he starts to unbutton his shirt.
“What now?” she inquires to his back and hums in appreciation when he lets his shirt slip down over his shoulders. She lets her eyes roam over his bare back, wishing she could trace the scars he bears there with her fingers, and as always, her gaze gets caught by the freshest and angriest of his battle marks, right below his right shoulder blade; the scar left from the exit wound inflicted by Excalibur. The eternal reminder of how lucky they are to be still here, together – and she thanks the fates every day for that. With a little shake of her head, she clears her mind from these distressing thoughts, because now's definitely not the time for that.
Killian slips his shirt skillfully over his brace and hook, tosses it on the bed and turns around. She can't completely suppress a contented sigh and drinks in the enticing sight of her half-naked husband, clad only in his tight black jeans and his boots now. Subconsciously, she curls her fingers around the edge of the bench, wishing she'd be raking them through his chest hair instead, caressing down the flat planes of his stomach and following his treasure trail down to the waist of his jeans. While the hair on his chest is more coarse and curled, the one trailing over his stomach and further down is a bit smoother to the touch. She loves both feelings equally on her skin.
He moves his hand and hook to his belt and starts to unbuckle it, and she huffs.
“Really?” she feigns annoyance, but then accidentally betrays herself when she automatically licks her lips without even noticing. “Are you putting on a show now?”
“No,” he replies in a husky voice and pops his button open, “just relieving a little pressure.” He lowers his jeans just enough for her to see the bulge straining in his boxer briefs and plops down on the bed with a low groan that sends a bolt of heat into the pit of her stomach. “Ah, that's much better.”
Carefully, she folds her right leg over her left. “Have you been like this all day?” she inquires in a teasing tone, obviously pretty satisfied with herself.
“Was that your intention, love?” he asks back and reaches into his boxers, letting his thighs fall apart to have better access. Then he shimmies his pants a little further down and wraps his fingers around his heated flesh, pulling himself out.
Emma swallows thickly at the sight. “I could help with that,” she suggests a little breathlessly and presses her legs a little closer together.
“Oh, so now you're gonna be helpful,” Killian growls and runs his thumb slowly up and down his length in a lazy caress, “after I had to go through the day with naught but my fantasies?”
She takes the bait eagerly. “Fantasies?” she echoes and shifts a little on her bench. “About me?”
“Aye.” He closes his fist around his shaft, not too tightly, and strokes himself from base to tip and back down very slowly. “You were on my mind all day, Swan.”
She bites her lip and feels wetness pool inside her. “Tell me about it,” she encourages, trying to keep her tone nonchalant and not so desperate, but it's useless, of course. She always found his voice very enticing, but when he talks dirty... oh, that has been her downfall on more than one occasion. The combination with the show he's regaling her with is almost too hot to handle. He's aware of that, of course.
“Hmmm, let's see...” he drawls and looks at the ceiling, as if he has to strain his memory to recall the details. “First, I was thinking of taking you down to the Captain's quarters and having you on my desk. The classic, you could say.” His hand keeps moving steadily while he talks, nice and slow, and he closes his eyes for a moment with an appreciative sigh.
“Oh yeah, classic for sure,” Emma agrees, her eyes glued to his hand, and her own fingers fidgeting restlessly in the urge to touch herself, but she knows Killian would notice, and she doesn't want him to stop talking. “Bent over?” she asks hopefully.
His eyes open and focus on her again. “No,” he replies firmly, and she sees his fingers tighten their grip a bit while never stopping their rhythm, “on your back.” He savors the word, his voice dropping a little nuance. A delightful little shiver runs down her spine when he continues, “You're looking at me while I make you fall apart.” His eyes glitter with a devilish spark, and he runs his tongue across his full bottom lip and adds, “Repeatedly.”
Oh yes, he certainly has a kink for this, she knows. He loves to see and to hear what he's doing to her.
“Is there more?” she urges.
“M-hmm,” he hums almost nonchalantly, “I imagined tying you to the mast, having my wicked way with you, using my fingers and tongue... until you beg me to give it to you.” He ceases his ministrations for a moment to swipe the pad of his thumb over his tip. “Which I, of course, do gladly.”
She can see his flesh glittering with moisture, and in her mind, she can almost physically feel him against her skin, thick and hot and hard. Emma presses her lips together and squirms, trying to apply some pressure on her core. He raises his eyebrows in reprimand.
“Ah ah, what's that, love?” With a wicked grin, he tilts his head. “No friction for you, I'm afraid.” She stops moving and glares at him, trying to ignore the ache between her thighs. Killian starts to busy his hand again. “Tell me, are you wet for me yet?”
Damn that pirate. “You know I am,” she presses through clenched teeth.
“Show me,” he demands. “Spread your legs.”
God, he isn't gonna let her even have the slightest pressure, the bastard. Even though she knows the pay off will be impossibly sweeter if the pleasure is delayed like this, his relentless teasing is killing her at the moment. Regardless, she follows his demand – and how could she ever deny him anything? – and reluctantly unfolds her legs, spreading her thighs for him to see. She doesn't need to look down to know there's a dark stain of wetness on her cotton panties; actually, they're fucking soaked.
His lips curl into a wicked smile. “Oh my, getting a dose of your own medicine now, are you?” he comments and gives his tip an extra swipe, his own eyelids fluttering for a moment at the sensation, for which she could kill him.
He's a devastatingly gorgeous sight as he sits there on the edge of their bed with his upper body bare, chest puffed out and shoulders broad, legs sinfully spread, and his glorious cock grasped firmly in his hand, working himself lazily while she's condemned to helplessly watch. She wants nothing more (and seriously contemplates it for a moment) than to get up and walk over to him, swat his hand away and push him on his back, straddle him and ride him for good measure, his little game of teasing be damned. But fuck this, she knows whatever he has in mind will be worth the torture she's going through right now, so she fights back her urge and continues to play along.
“I'd rather get a dose of yours,” she replies in a strained voice, to which he chuckles amusedly.
“Of course you do,” he comments almost nonchalantly. “But don't you want to hear about my favorite fantasy, love?”
“Tell me already,” she barely manages. Funny how opposite they are – the more the sexual tension rises between them, the wordier he gets and the more monosyllabic she becomes.
“As the lady wishes,” he replies with a tilt of his head and licks his lips in a purely lewd gesture. “I make you bend over,” he emphasizes, “and grasp the helm, hold on to it, while I pull down your jeans and ravish you from behind.”
Emma is breathing heavily now. “Hard and fast,” she assumes in an almost pleading voice, because yes, she has the image in her head, very vividly, and God, she needs that now. Anything.
“Gods, no,” he replies, “nice and slow and thorough, with deep strokes, just like this.” And he stills the movements of his hand and rolls his hips forward in a dirty grind instead, languidly thrusting into his hand. His lips are slightly parted, tongue restlessly moving behind his teeth, and he groans, a deep and feral sound that rocks her right to her throbbing core.
Emma squirms again, her hips moving in sync with his, she can't help it. The sight of Killian leisurely fucking his hand drives her to the brink of madness and desire. She can feel her panties getting soaked even more, and damn, she needs to do something about it now or she'll come on the spot just from listening to him and watching him.
“I could make you feel so good...” she all but begs.
He stops the rolling of his hips and shoots her a filthy look. “You really want to get your mouth on me, don't you, Swan?”
She huffs. “Don't tell me you don't want it just as badly, Jones.”
He tilts his head. “Fair point.” Letting go of his cock, he gets up from the bed in a fluent move and saunters over to her. “Who am I to deny my wife any of her wishes?”
When she makes a move to rise from her bench, too, he holds up his hand. “Just stay comfortable right where you are, love,” he tells her and she obeys with a knowing smile, opens her arms and beckons him nearer.
As soon as he's within her reach, she grabs him at the hips and pulls him close, leaning a little forward enthusiastically. He doesn't even have to guide his cock to her mouth, she finds him, meets him eagerly, and sucks him in deep without any preliminary such as kissing, licking or nibbling which she usually revels in before getting on with it in earnest. But tonight, she decides, they're both just way to worked up for that. Both groan simultaneously when his sensitive tip hits the soft back of her throat. She firmly cups his ass with her hands to hold him in place and gets down to business, and she has no chill.
Killian tangles his fingers into her hair, but lets his palm rest only lightly against the back of her head. He isn't guiding or pushing her; she has the lead in this, it's her show. He looks down at her blond head, bobbing back and forth as she blows more than just his mind, and despite the heat of this moment he's overwhelmed by tenderness. They are both so vulnerable in these moments, both at the same time in control of the other one and at their mercy.
“Bloody hell, you really love doing this, don't you?” he manages in a hoarse voice, and Emma hums in agreement, the vibrations around his heated flesh sending a shiver down his spine. “Show me how much,” he demands. She slows her movements a bit, maybe thrown off track for a second, because how on earth could she show him better than by pouring all her enthusiasm into her ministrations? She looks up at him questioningly, and he tells her breathlessly, “Touch yourself. Make yourself feel good.” His lips curve into a grin. “You've earned it.”
He doesn't have to tell her twice. Her right hand lets go of his ass and wanders right between her spread legs. Immediately, her fingers find the right spot where she aches for release, and she breathes a whimper of relief through her nose. Like before with him, she leaves out all the preliminaries, doesn't start by teasing herself with gentle fluttering. She knows what she needs and where she needs it. With firm and expert fingers, she starts to circle her swollen nub through the soaked fabric of her panties while her mouth never stops working Killian's cock.
“You're a bloody marvel,” he praises as he watches her, absolutely fascinated by the enraptured expression on her face. His eyes dart to and fro between her slender fingers caressing herself and her pink lips wrapped around his erection, gliding back and forth over his length. For a moment, he allows himself to close his eyes, to let his head fall back and just revel in the sensation of her mouth on him, always a marvel, bringing him infinite pleasure. The heat pools low in his belly, sparks buzzing at the base of his spine, and his fingers flex in Emma's hair. But he fights the urge to tighten his grip and roll his hips into her face, forcing himself to practice complicated sailor's knots in his head. He doesn't want to get his release like that, he has other things in store.  
But she doesn't bloody make it easy for him to stick to that resolve; the urgent little noises she makes while her fingers dance over her core faster and faster arouse him even more, and he says a silent prayer, hoping she'll reach her peak soon. He knows, it can't take much longer now, if the increasing frequency of her whimpers is any indication. Also, the moves of her mouth are getting sloppier, more erratic... Emma's about to lose control.  
“Aye, love, just like that,” Killian spurs her on, knowing that his voice and his praise never fail to motivate her. “Rub that magic bean. I want you to come with my cock in your mouth.”
She almost sobs, and he can feel her whole body tense while her mouth comes to a stuttering halt, even if she's still holding him between her lips. The fingers of her left hand dig into his hip, and he knows she's falling. When she starts to climax, he withdraws from her mouth and moves his hand from the back of her head to her elbow, pulling her to her feet. Her eyes are blinking rapidly in confusion, behind her fluttering eyelids he can see how dilated her pupils are.
Before she has a chance to say anything, he flips her around and, his hand placed firmly between her shoulder blades, bends her over the dressing table to which she obeys with a surprised sound that doesn't even resemble a word. Quickly he pulls down her panties, and when he sees and feels how soaked they are, it sends a fresh wave of arousal through him. All of that happens in the course of mere seconds, and he knows her orgasm is still holding her in its relentless, delirious grip. He doesn't give her the chance to ride it out, but pushes into her with one single, swift thrust, knowing if he doesn't allow her to come down from her high but keeps her right there, he can make her come again in no time. She's still twitching and quivering inside, and she cries out at the sudden feeling of being filled by him, and the feeling is incredible: he's still slick from the blow job she just gave him, and she is from her climax, but when he thrusts home, the drag is impossibly delicious, because she's all tight and swollen inside.
“I'm not done with you yet,” he growls and, with a flick of his wrist, wraps her ponytail around his hook, pulling her head back a little so that their eyes meet in the mirror. “Watch.”
And she does.
This – when he takes her from behind – has always been one of her favorite positions, the angle is exquisite, the pushes deep, and Killian's thrusts have even more drive. There's just one disadvantage: when he's behind her, she cannot see his face, cannot look into his eyes. But now she can, and it doubles her pleasure to see his fingers press into the flesh of her hip, the flex of his left bicep as he tugs at her hair, the feral, predatory expression on his face as he pumps his hips forward, and the lust in his eyes. And – not only can she see what he's doing, she can also see what it's doing to him. The cords of his neck look hard as steel ropes, and his upper lip pulls back to bare his teeth, giving him an even more animal expression. That is when the flames are licking at the base of her spine again, and her eyes flutter shut.
Emma presses the heels of her hands down on the wooden desk to hold up against the impact of his pushes and concentrates on the sensations. Goosebumps break out between her shoulder blades, and the soles of her feet prickle, always a undeniable sign of her impending orgasm. She feels her hair being released and drops her head a little as she pushes her hips back to meet Killian's. The dull curve of his hook pressing into her left hip and pulling her back against him is the last thing she's consciously aware of before her climax is crashing into her, rolling over her with might. Because she hasn't even had the chance to recover from her first one, to really come down, it feels almost like a continuation of it, and she's shaking all over. Killian fucks her through it, and as the rushing of the blood in her ears subsides, she vaguely feels him tense inside her.
When it's over and she feels the heavy calmness settle in her bones that always follows such a feverish high, she opens her eyes again and studies him in the mirror, but he doesn't look at her. His eyes are closed and his head thrown back, his beautiful face flushed yet relaxed in complete abandon, glistening with a fine sheen of sweat as he rides out his own high. His fingers and hook are still pressing into her hips, and the muscles of his abdomen flex when his hips stutter erratically as he thrusts his aftershocks into her. To Emma it's a gorgeous sight, seeing him so vigorous and vulnerable at the same time, and it's really cheesy, but in moments like this she can't help but think how much she loves him.
Finally, Killian stills completely and lets out a deep breath that comes out as a sigh. She smiles to herself and clenches her inner muscles around him. He opens his eyes.
“Are you trying to wreck me, wife?” His voice is still a little breathless.
She grins. “Serves you right.”
She straightens her back and pushes herself up into a standing position, causing him to slip out of her and making a complete mess of her panties; but when you have magic, any sticky mess, be it due to sex or kitchen mishaps, really isn't anything to worry about. She turns around to face him and smiles when he leaves his hand and hook resting against her bare hips. Content to finally be able to touch him, she lays her palms on his pecs, dragging her fingertips through his slightly dampened chest hair. Quickly, she leans into him and swipes her tongue across his left collarbone, humming at the taste of salt on his flushed skin.
“Did those fantasies of yours involve a shower at some point?” she murmurs against the crook of his neck where she continues her nibbling, causing him to draw in a sharp breath.
“Bit of advice,” he growls, “You're playing with fire.”
Emma chuckles and nudges the side of his throat with her nose. “Oh, I've been doing that since I let you put a magical cuff on my wrist and then climbed that beanstalk with you.”
When she feels his Adam's apple bob, she tips her head back to look at him. The suspicious glittering of his eyes and the twitching muscle in his jaw betray how much her words, her casual admission have touched him. He swallows again. “Have you, now?” he whispers huskily.
She smiles and brushes a kiss on his lips. “And never regretted a single moment.”
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khrisjavier · 7 years
Text
Sam, and the Whore.
PT. I
Saturday night, just out of work, what to do, what to do. These six-day work weeks are killing me. Meet me at the bar I can’t spend another weekend binging on Netflix. 
I can’t wait, these days have been ridiculous from start to finish. “Sam get the final prints here, Sam edit the articles there”, “…Oh Hey! Sam! We’re going to need you to wait until nine on Saturday to receive those fresh clips from out east for Sunday roundups!” I just want a drink and to think of anything besides work, and if this bitch doesn’t respond before I get in this taxi I will change my damn Netflix password.
“Sam?”
“Yes?”
“This is your Uber I am rounding the corner now.”
“Ah! Thank you see you at the curb.”
Still no response and my driver is about to turn past Kellogg’s on Grand.  I hope D is already there, three L.I.Ts down and too busy having a good time to answer.
“Right here Muhammed and thanks for the ride! Have a good night and get home safe.”
“You too Sam, Good night.”
I don’t see D through the window but the bar is fairly packed, I just need a drink, today has been the day of days. At least Phil is working the door tonight, good ol’ Phil.
“Hey Phil!”, I can’t help but smile at Phil and that big ass pirate beard he sports. It is definitely not Security Guard standard but honestly I feel it should be. Great mix of welcoming and affirmative somehow, or maybe that was just Phil.  
“Hey Sam! How you doin’ long time no see.”
“Yeah I have been working these six-day weeks the last month so it’s been tough to make it out to the Nest, how have you been? How’s Stella? Laurie doing better after poppin’ that thing out?”
“Stella is beautiful, thanks for asking. Babies are always so beautiful right out the oven, Sam give me a second?” Phil’s big arms unfold to open the door for some loud college crowd coming out en masse for a cigarette and now it’s a bit too loud outside for us to catch up and Phil knows that he will have to focus on bouncing and not storytelling so he welcomes me inside. I forgot to ask if D made it through already, and still no text. Well the bar it is and an old fashioned for these old bones. John’s not behind the bar but some tall and beautiful girl that hopefully doesn’t need an instruction manual is in his place.  
“You’re new, covering for John?” “Mhm, what can I get you?”
Honestly being a little closer I started to grow a bit of an odd attraction to this girl, as if she went from softly beautiful to strikingly gorgeous in ten steps, did the dark lighting in here really rob her of so much?
“Can I have an Old Fashioned to start? Open my tab thank you.” As she walks away with my credit card I still can’t put a finger on what makes her so beautiful. Her modest frame? Beautiful posture? She is far from a lusty vision which one would want behind the bar in a club, hanging halfway out of her dress from the front and back. She does seem though, like she belongs in a museum, a marble statue that escaped from Manhattan and became a Brooklyn bartender. I must admit above all those looks, she does make a damn fine drink.
“Excuse me what is your name?” I had to ask, especially after tasting her work.
“Diana…”
“Thanks Diana, you make a fucking great drink and you’re beautiful, really, really beautiful.”
She just smiled back and lowered her eyes shyly, winning herself an amazing tip with that modesty. Still, halfway through this drink and no response from this bitch, I can’t believe this. What can she be doing? Seeing that guy again? The one with the pretty hair? I never fail to respond to a text from her even when I’m with someone. I just go to the bathroom and make a quick “heyyyy I’ll be busy tonight” or “They’re almost asleep I’ll see you there in 40 minutes.” Though here I am, again, waiting for a damned text when I finally decide not to pussy out of a Saturday night out. I don’t want to be that person sitting at the bar alone all night, and I also don’t want to be the person texting outer circle friends at Ten on the weekend looking for plans. Am I going to have to call her and really be that person hounding down their friends? I need another drink, and now someone is taking up the empty seat next to me.
“Hello?”
“Hi.” I never really had a thing for blonds, not after my last… three.
“Want some company?”
“What makes you say that?” Honestly, what makes someone say that? Do I look lonely? Or is it just that obvious that I am neither waiting on someone or with someone currently?
“Well besides no one being here? I saw when you came in and noticed when you gave up looking around the bar and started staring at the waitress instead. Sorry if that sounds weird… just the truth.”
The truth, well that’s interesting, many people believe they know the truth but mostly they just don’t know they’re wrong. Maybe they’re telling the truth, maybe they’re as observant as I am behind those blue eyes.
“Good call, well I am alone but not exactly looking for company… though if you want to join me that’s fine with me.” I can outwit this kid in a conversation till they just go running back to their friends with god awful stories about me, and me to D, telling her all about ruining their life in her absence.
“Excuse me Diana, can I have another?” She was already winning my heart again by being so attentive and swift in her bartending, distracting me from... “Excuse me, what’s your name?”
“Mine? It’s Tracy, and yours?”
“Sam”, “Sam I am!”, am I drunk already? It has been a while since I could kick back curled around a glass, I really hope I am not making an ass of myself. At least Tracy laughed along with my nervous laughing.
“So Tracy, are you alone in this bar as well?” This bar is being overpopulated by beautiful people it really is hard to believe they’re all alone. “Actually my friend is bartending tonight and asked me if I wanted to tag along and keep them company.” He slips a look at Diana and she gives the same modest smile she gave me when I complimented her.
“So you and Diana, great choice I mean I would if I could, congratulations.” I definitely slurred some if not all of that.
“Oh, oh no, trust me I would too but we’re just friends, I’m just keeping her company since I have no plans for tonight.” I can’t tell if Tracy’s face is embarrassed or sad but I immediately knew I had to change the subject.
“Did you just get out of work?”
“For the most part I’m a little out of work as of this week, and Diana is feeding me drinks for free tonight, one of the many perks.”
“Ah, what did you work in?”
“Online work… Mostly streaming and editing, my PC just died though putting me into a little hiatus.”
“Oh… interesting”, I lied, it has blown up so much I’m not surprised and not impressed.
“How about yourself?”
“I’m a junior editor at The Hub. It has its perks but the hours really kill any fun I used to have before it.”
“Like?”
“Sex.”
I must be drunk from this second drink I just let that one out and now Tracy is struggling to make eye contact. Either roll with it Sam or keep it moving.
“So next time you see a priest tell him he’s in the wrong profession if he wants to get out the word!” I’m a horrible drunk and I think Tracy knows it. Though after an hour of bad puns back and forth between us I think I made up for it, and I think blond is affecting me again. I need a cigarette to clear my mind.
“Going out for a cigarette, be right back”
“Can I join?”
“I wouldn’t mind if you do, I wouldn’t mind if you don’t.” I feel light on my feet, obviously flirting but less obviously not having a care in the world either way. I could leave now and fall asleep happily alone, or with anyone, even Diana, hopefully Diana, that would be something.
“Hey Phil!” Those eyes were shut and his mouth was slightly parted and yawning through his beard.
“Oh hey Sam, still here at this time?”
“Yes, yes, need a coffee or something?”
“Shit if you wouldn’t mind asking Diana for a Redbull for me I’d appreciate it.”
I pass Phil my cigarette even though he doesn’t smoke, head back inside and right back out with the caffeinated poison of his choice.
“Thanks Sam” He passes me back the cigarette, it wasn’t even lit. Tracy was about a quarter of the way done with his cigarette, he couldn’t wait I don’t blame him. Luckily he decided to move to my usual spot on the wall downwind from Phil, far enough outside the bar’s spotlighted front to not be a nuisance but close enough to call for help if something happened, which has happened but thankfully has become less frequent with Phil here. Standing next to Tracy, lighting my cigarette with one leg propped on the wall behind me, I feel quite cool, quite comfortable with the fact that I came here alone. I wonder if D decided to stay in tonight, I wonder what stories she’ll bring me tomorrow, I wonder if she’ll even care to tell me the truth or just write it off till I find out from someone else. I’m being awfully quiet, thinking here to myself next to new company.
“Sorry if I have been quiet.” My cigarette was nearly done, his has been cast away.
“It’s okay, silence can be warm and welcoming sometimes.”
“It can be you’re right, you’ve been warm and welcoming tonight.”
“So have you.”
And all at once I don’t know which happened first, if I rolled in front of him or he in front of I but we were connected by the lips. My eyes closed I felt him on me and I on him. Fingers tracing each other’s backs as if we were looking for a way in, but in fact we were looking for a way to come closer, just then I remembered Phil and backed away.
“I’m sorry… that was, um, unplanned.” I felt all at once aware of how the scene looked and needed to escape it all.
“I’m going to uh… head home it was nice meeting you.” Running away from Tracy and back into the Nest I nudge past the rowdy college crowd which still hasn’t settled down and settled my tab with Diana. I hope I didn’t look as rough to Diana as I felt putting myself on exhibition on the street.
“Have a good night Phil, get home safe and send my love to the family!”
“You too Sam have a good night!”
I don’t know where Tracy is but I’m glad I didn’t have to explain myself, though honestly I don’t know what I would say or how I’d apologize. I don’t feel like apologizing though, I feel like taking him home with me, using what I just had a taste of and leaving him behind in time for Sunday brunch. Past the corner is just two blocks till home, even if I’m drunk and alone I should be able to make it home and to bed okay.
“Hey, Sam!”
Oh no, not…
“Sam, it’s Tracy wait up!”
Fucking seriously this is not good, how do I run, if I run does he follow? Do I want to run? I just have to turn and face him.
“Hey Tracy… Sorry about that. It’s been a while since I’ve drunkenly hooked up with someone outside a bar.” I can’t help but be honest. I’ve been fighting his blue eyes for too long and they have drained me of all my strength, either that or I’m too drunk to lie.
“It’s okay, I just didn’t want to have you leave on that note, it really was nice meeting you and spending the night together.”
“You too…”, at this point I know what I want and know how to get it, I just have to ask.
“...do you really want to stop spending the night together or would you like to keep me company at home?” I asked, and to my surprised he hesitated before saying yes.
Before I knew it we were through the threshold, clothes on the ground, again on top of each other without clear knowledge of who started on who, just lost in it all. I could feel him all over me, hands on my hips, pulling me closer as I try to grasp his entirety between my legs. His hands can’t stop wandering from my legs upwards and I can’t help wanting more.
“Choke me” I let my fantasies slip from my subconscious.
He hesitates again, so I guide his hands to my neck.
“Don’t worry just do it and kiss me”, I grab his neck and drag him close, hoping he would grab me with the same force. It was lacking until I said “harder”, then I couldn’t help but moan “right there.”
We both fell asleep, but I don’t remember when or if it was at the same time. Though I’m awake now and the sun in spilling in through my curtains. Tracy was face down in the mattress next to me, either I stole the pillow or he decided to let me have it instead of trying to share. All night he has seen my naked body but I just want to wrap myself up, as though he wouldn’t approve in the daylight. What was I thinking? Am I a whore now for bringing someone home the first night I meet them? I needed it, I know, but was this the best solution to my dry spell?
“Hey, good morning” He slid over and caught me covering myself.
“Did you really need to cover those girls up? I was hoping for a bit more of last night this morning.” Those blue eyes were squinting at me, but their effect on me was waning with my hangover.
“Yeah sorry, have some early plans today, need to head out.” I lied, of course, but I don’t want to turn a one night stand into anything more so quickly. I need time to think, I also need a big breakfast. “That’s okay I’ll get out of your hair, I don’t know if we traded numbers last night but I’ll leave mine on the table in case you want to meet up again.” Then I just realized we actually never became intimately connected past first names and started dressing faster. Tracy must’ve noticed my own haste to get dressed and rushed himself into his clothes from the night before. Finally, completely dressed we both looked at each other through fresh eyes, and give out a sigh. “I’ll just leave my number here”, he picks up a pen off of my night stand and begins writing his name followed by his number on a tissue.
“Thanks, maybe I’ll call you this week if I’m not swamped by work?”
“That’d be cool, I remember you mentioning how work was a real struggle recently for you...”
“mhm, well…” I take a few step forwards and he guesses that it is his cue to start walking towards the exit. At the door he turns and looks at me, waiting for a kiss, and although we had an amazing night, I couldn’t help but give just a single kiss on the cheek. He smiled behind a “thank you, see you soon hopefully”, then made his way out of the apartment complex.
Gone, gone, gone, finally gone and finally I can think. What is wrong with me? How can I let myself do that? All of that? Was I really becoming such an irresponsible and easy girl? Is it really so bad to simply know what I want and take it when I want it? Most importantly over all, where in the damn hell is D so I can get another opinion on this?
I give in and call, and I guess D gives in and starts caring about her friends.
“Hey D where in the hell have you been?”
“Heyyyy Sammmmm, I’ve been a bit busy I got caught up with some people last night.” She was obviously still high from the night before.
“Whatever D, want to meet me at Café Olé for breakfast?”
“Fuck yes that sounds great right now, meet you in thirty.”
Café Olé was a good thirty minutes from either of us so we arrive at basically the same time and take our usual seats outside under an umbrella. Our young waiter comes equipped with a menu and water for both of us, taking our drink orders then returning inside to the restaurant.
“You look… refreshed.”
“So do you!” D has such a bubbly attitude though she works in accounting. On the weekend her tightly packed hair bun becomes a cascade of curls that animates every phrase she says into a huge theatrical statement. During the week that bun must be necessary to be taken seriously, I halfheartedly wish she was wearing it now so I could take the conversation seriously. 
“Why didn’t you answer you phone last night?” my stern expression was faced with her laughs. 
“Welllllll, I got a call from an old someone early last night and took a little trip, as you can say, kinda lost track of time but here I am!” her smile was obnoxiously cute, to the point that my seriousness has melted into laughs.
“Wait… so you’re telling me you tripped last night?”
“Mhmmmmmm, it’s been a w h i l e.”
“You don’t say, years I bet, since Tom moved away to California.”
“Mhmmmmmm”
“It was him wasn’t it, the “old someone”…”
“Mhmmmmmm”
“Oh wow it was?” I suddenly remembered the last time we spoke of him, D wasn’t so much excited to admit he was leaving, yet not outspokenly sad about it either. It was hard to pin down exactly what D was feeling in the moment, and usually took a while to get an answer after the moment has passed.
“…Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, fine, and you? How was your night.” D was smart enough under all that bubbliness to know how to smoothly get off a subject.
“Long, weird, still stuck in it a bit.”
“Wow Sam, who did you let in your cookie jar last night?”
I can’t help but laugh at my transparency and her juvenile way of bringing my attention to it, “Shut it Delilah, no one wants to hear about my cookie jar over brunch.”
“Well I beg to differ Samantha, who wouldn’t want to hear about a petite and nubile cookie jar getting into some frisky business?” Those damned curls really make this conversation so hard to get away from.
“Okay, okay, it’s true…” I try to whisper to her as our waiter comes out of the restaurant with our mimosas, “someone has… gotten in the jar last night.”
“Finally!” she yells it loud enough for the waiter to take personal offense to it and start walking faster to the table.
“Who was it? Billy from the Creative Department? Hasn’t he been sending you not so subtle hints for the longest time?”
“Oh hell no, never Billy. It was someone new you don’t know about.”
She is left speechless at this, motionless even, as if a crime scene unfolded in front of her.
“How. Drunk. Were. You. Last. Night?” after this staccato response a rush of questions came at me from the other side of the table like an avalanche.
“Was it someone you know? Where were you? Were they someone from work? Did you go to theirs or did they go to yours? Was it good? Was it bad? Are you going to call him? Her?!” then a breath, “Was it consensual?!”
“Very, no, at the Nest, no, my place, can’t remember the rest, and yes it was consensual or I’d be having this conversation with the police!” I was out of breath sooner than she was and it became apparent to me that the waiter was back for our order.
“The Special with Pancakes, please.”
“I’ll take the same.”
The waiter walks away with a bewildered look on his face.
“That waiter might spit in our food…” I truly couldn’t blame him after that last fiasco.
“No he won’t, he’s been checking us out this whole time.”
“Hope you’re right…” my attempt at changing subjects was detected and D was back on it harder than before.
“So Sam, going to call back the mystery guy or not?”
“His name is Tracy and I don’t know.” I truly didn’t know. He was interesting, but nothing to break my head over. Good in bed but I had to tell him what to do. His saving grace was that he listened. It took a little while but people usually never listen or just listen when it is too late.
“Maybe again to rattle my brains if he is down with no commitment but that’s it.”
“A guy that would be down with no commitment, that’s really hard to find.” Her sarcasm was just as animated as everything else she said.
“You’d be surprised.” She really would be surprised, sometimes it is the hardest thing to find, because even if you make intentions clear everyone always wants more.
“So you’re joining the wild bunch? Swearing off relationships and using men for the only thing they’re good for?” She smiled at me behind this statement but I could tell she was hoping for a sappy response to warm her heart and reaffirm her lost faith in love.
“No, not yet, but I’m considering it. I mean if I can find someone that can take all my bullshit and my work schedule, great, but if I can just have someone to jump on top of when I feel like jumping, that would be great too.”
She smiled and was quite speechless at this, and I knew the next thing she said would be an attempt to embarrass me to the fullest extent.
“My Sam is finally becoming a woman!”
There it is, the eventual salt to the wound that I saw coming from miles away. It is alright though, with each insult I become a bit stronger, a bit more immune.
“If only you could follow in my example, huh D?” I’ve learned to bite back a bit.
“Hahaha sick burn Sam, back to business however, how is business? Any hope in escaping hell at work?” my quip calmed D down a bit and brought a more serious tone to her.
We went on for well into our meal about the intricacies that is junior editing for The Hub. The go getting, the long nights, the tedious copies and summarizations that eventually go unused, the meetings, oh god the meetings. As if we needed another hour in our sixty-hour work week to be told what to do. The frivolous memos, and worse, the amount of ass-kissing to be seen day in and day out. You can’t expect any different from a modern day internet start-up that has blown up into a corporation. Everyone is trying to make sure they’re on the next Zuckerberg’s dick before he makes the new Facebook. I tell her that now you’re either the innovator, or the curator. You’re either making something new, or reporting on what was done. To move up to senior editor I would have to do the same, I would have to either make something new inside the Hub, or find something inside of it good enough to piggyback on.
Either full of conversation or pancakes, I’m not too sure, but we left Café Olé walking silently for a while until for some odd reason the conversation returned to work for a moment. D began talking about her job, which she rarely spoke of beyond the odd, “If I never see an excel sheet again, I will be a happy lass”, I knew next to nothing about her accounting firm.
“Y’know there’s this guy John in Acquisitions that who went through a bad breakup, his fiancé left him for an old boyfriend from College...”
I looked at her a bit confused as to why this came about, but curious, “Wow that kinda sucks…”
Under her breath she continued, “that’s not the worst of it, this happened only a week before the wedding… everyone in the office was invited.”
“Holy shit, wow, that really sucks.” My response was genuine; I couldn’t believe someone could wait that long to leave someone out on the wire outside of maybe a movie. Though it must’ve sounded out of character because D became quite defensive.
D pulls out a cigarette, something she usually does when drunk or mad, after that meal it had to be the latter. “I’m serious, and I couldn’t believe it… it was crazy to hear. The guys almost didn’t want to tell me about it because they thought I would side with her, can you believe that? They thought I would somehow rationalize a person waiting until after ten thousand plus dollars is spent on a reception, just the reception mind you, with some feminine romantic spin on story. As if I, head of the budgetary committee, would be so airheaded to see pass the financial loss. After I heard it from my secretary I went right to the break room to see John and told him, “that bitch could go fuck herself, you’ll find better”, and the chatty guys finally got together and told me the rest of the story.”
“Wait there’s more?”
“Plenty.” She passes me the cigarette and proceeds to pull her tangled curls into a messy ponytail.
“So she left him two weeks ago and the wedding was supposed to be last weekend. I didn’t find this all out until this week because I didn’t R.S.V.P. for the wedding anyway so I guess I didn’t deserve a cancellation notice. I also guess the guys didn’t find out until late because I remember John took off sick during the beginning of the week. Anyway, as the story goes…”
D reaches out for the cigarette which was mostly filter at this point, takes a drag then tosses it aside, continuing her story.
“As the story goes, the guys decided after hearing all this the best remedy for John’s broken heart was a quality person to fuck it back together.”
“They got him an escort?”
“They got him a fucking escort. For what would’ve been his wedding night.”
“Oh, wow.”
“Oh wow indeed, so when I told them congrats on being the best co-workers a person could ask for and actually went to go in for my first high five in the office I was really pissed when it wasn’t immediately returned.”
“You actually went for a high five?”
“I fucking did and they just stared at me until Bill, openly singing Taylor Swift sober at Office Karaoke night Bill, came out of the copy room and gave me one, not even knowing why.”
“That’s fucked, so then what happened?”
“Then the whole thing turned into a discussion on the financial pros and cons of hiring a hooker over tying the knot until Fisher came out of his office and we got back to work. No one would want to have a conversation like that next to that born again Christian.”
“That is pretty great, so why are you mad about it?” I light up a cigarette and pass it to along.
“Where we left off the conversation. We basically agreed that paying just for sex saves you plenty in the long run, for both sexes, but when I began to bring up my last points for the biggest expenditures a woman could save on in an economy with legal prostitution, the intern that was listening in on the whole thing laughed. I asked why and he simply said, “who would hire a male prostitute instead of going out and getting it for free, only an ugly broad, and I mean ugly, would have to do that” and everyone else started to laugh at that too, so I became mad and started to defend why even I would consider it, and that’s when Fisher’s door opened.”
“I hope he didn’t hear.”
“Christ I hope he did, exorcise the stick that guy has in his ass.” She passes me back the cigarette, returning the favor with an ace that I quickly toss away.
“Can you believe that intern though? The balls to make a statement like that?”
“I mean, if I could pay to make sure that the dick I was getting was worthwhile, instead of getting strung around on three dates I have to put hours of commitment in just to find out he’s married, and can’t get it up, why not make the investment?”
“Exactly, sometimes you just need a little and that’s it, back to business. We all have needs; they just weren’t getting it.”
Of course I had my own cynical view of hiring a male prostitute but who wants to get into a debate this early on a Sunday afternoon. The intern was an asshole, but he has a misogynistic point. In the relationship world, women do have the upper hand in being able to pounce and flirt better than men. It wouldn’t be hard for me, or D, to find some Joe in Café Olé, or even on this walk, and convince him to give us his number, and we’re not supermodels. I wouldn’t doubt any women, of any shape, size, or form, would have too much of an issue finding a suitor. Though where the intern put his head up his ass is when he used that word ugly. It immediately implies that he, and everyone that laughs, owns a standard of beauty and may use it to take advantage. To tell someone they have to pay for it, or to treat them like garbage and leave them on the curb after taking whatever they want. It’s how they rationalize all the worst things, “she’s ugly, she’s lucky she’s getting any in the first place”, or “better pretty up or you’ll go nowhere”, we’ve all heard it before in some form.
The more I think about it however the more I start to rationalize the use of a male escort. The control to say, “please leave”, without remorse or ramification would be a nice start. How about not having to meet another group of friends that seem to have a collective IQ lower than their collective alcohol content? If we’re being really imaginative, how about being able to not go to another reunion or banquet alone or with your best friend? The perks are there, especially if it was legal and regulated, because we all have heard that one story that has come out of that one long relationship, where suddenly, everyone has chlamydia. By the end of the walk to the subway there was only two thoughts on my mind, why isn’t this legal, and what kind’ve money can even be found in a business like this.
“So D, did you ever find out how much the guys paid?”
“That’s the crazy part, they told me they really felt bad, so they pooled together as much as they could spare from that payday and hired one for about six grand.”
“Wow, that much? That can’t be normal.”
“Oh no, not at all. They got him the Ferrari of escorts. I wouldn’t doubt that girl did things to him they don’t even allow on the internet. I asked them the usual going rate and they told me if you don’t want to wind up with itches and creams you usually spend the better part of a grand, but if you want to take a coin flip, three hundred isn’t bad odds, though anything less, and you’re asking for it.”
“Still that is black market sex, in a regulated world I bet that would drop.”
“It would but to be honest”, lightening up a little D removed her scrunchy, releasing those curls from their prison, “whoever is running that black market gambit is making plenty scratch, especially those Ferrari dealers.” As she said this she slipped out a smile and the oncoming train sent her curls in a frenzy.
“Well I guess I’ll see you later!”
The train stops and the doors open as we open up from our hug. She waves goodbye to me and I to her as the doors close and the train speeds away. Walking down the stairs of the station, in through one corridor, then up another stairwell and onto the downtown platform I started to think of the last night, of this morning, of everything. Of all the quirks, of all the stories, and most of all, the possibilities.
 PT. II Soon.
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plinys · 7 years
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dear yuletide author (2017)
hello and welcome to my letter!
i am so happy to have you reading this letter and going to be writing a fic for me! why? because you dear writer are an amazing and wonderful person, deserving of all the kudos in the world!
please remember as you look at these prompts, that if something in my likes inspires you more than any of my specific prompts, totally feel free and run with that, and know that i will enjoy any fic that is gifted to me!!
ao3/lj handle: plinys
now lets get down to business:
the fandoms i’ve requested this year are: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator,  Galavant (TV),   Legion (TV),  Powerless (TV 2017),  Star Trek: Discovery,  Young & Hungry
but before that, my likes/kinks/dislikes/triggers:
likes: alternate universes, characters that are in character, lady-centric fics, angst, fandom cliches, dysfunctional relationships, friendships, friends/enemies to lovers, soul mates, road trips,  hanukkah fics, jewish characters, bisexual characters, poly relationships, character studies, origin stories, ambiguous endings, meta fic, slow build, fics that incorporate social media, crack treated seriously, drunk confessions, miscommunication, 
kinks: threesomes, competence kink, phone sex, masturbation, crying during sex, hate sex, shower sex, praise kink, guys going down on girls, rough sex, first time, spanking, daddy kink, sex in front of mirrors, voyeurism, make up sex
dislikes: pwp, main character death (unless it really makes sense/happens in canon), character bashing, non-con, mpreg, a/b/o, 1st person.
my triggers (please no matter what do not include these): school shootings, cancer, terminal illness, riots, child abuse.
and now to the fun stuff -
Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator
requested characters:  mary christiansen, joseph christiansen, crish christiansen
where to find: it’s a video game on steam, you can purchase for about $15, otherwise there’s plenty of walkthroughs of people playing it on youtube. recommended routes: joseph, robert, and damien to get the full christiansen story family backstory. 
anyways first play through i did josephs route and he broke my heart, and i was like wow mary deserves better and then after playing robert and damien i was like no wow mary deserves the world, so as long as your gift doesn’t include mary bashing im happy
would love any backstory on this family (featuring robert in any way is totally welcome), whether its weird family stuff, crack fic, the cult stuff. like im pretty open on this one
specific prompts:
cult backstory, give me that hidden cult ending. give me them joining the cult together when they were young. give me them scheming together or scheming separately. or give me mary realizing she’s married a gay demon only after the fact and its too late to get out. like honestly give me anything cult
the mystery of crish? i can’t believe he’s in the character list and now i want someone to explain why we’ve never met him? does he really exist? this can (and probably should be total crack)
remember how i mentioned robert was an option, feel free to mix in his connections with the family, the affair that clearly happened. being part of their cult. mary just bonding with her best friend and being drunk together? joseph fucking robert while mary is aware of what is going on. how they even became friends with all that happened?
honestly, there’s just so much not explained about the christiansen family, so anything about them is 100% up my alley. 
Galavant (TV)
requested characters:  madalena (galavant), gareth (galavant)
where to find: both season are on netflix!
so im biased because i was convinced to watch this show because of my mallory jansen, so madalena is of course my favorite character. and then this ship hit me out of nowhere, so now here i am
im either looking for madalena centric fic, or shippy fic with the both of them
specific prompts:
the end of s2 left so many openings that weren’t explored because we never got a s3 but give me madalena learning to do the d’dew, and getting to finally be the evil queen that she deserves wow
also feel free to give me that shippy stuff with gareth going to save her, and then realizing how much they love each other (as they should have wow)
alternatively a fix-it for the finale where madalena chooses gareth over the d’dew and they figure out where they can go from there. rebuild that trust, just be happy together though still sorting things out because now they do’t have a kingdom
smut? this ship is built for smut? madalena literally has a body built for sin, give me that sin
alternatively, give me fluffy, them finally getting to be “happy” together, madalena learning to have emotions and to love
also for non shippy plot any future fic for madalena or character study set during season 2/post season 2 would be the dream
Legion (TV)
requested characters:  cary loudermilk, kerry loudermilk
where to find: honestly i have no clue? fx? pirating sites? i watched this one live when it was airing. 
this show hit me with so much backstory and explanation not given and like that’s the aesthetic of the show, but i was specifically drawn to these two and their unique set of powers and i just ?? need more??
while i’m mostly into gen for these two, if you want to do weird stuff, like, i’m curious and not opposed (does it count as incest if they’re technically the same person?)
specific prompts:
BACKSTORY, any thing with their backstory, build on what canon told us and give me more, like what is it like for cary to keep aging on while kerry stays younger, what are the limits of their powers, how much can they feel
that hurt comfort after the stuff that happened towards the end of the season, like these two need to bond and recover after all the trauma 
5 times they were overly protective of each other
just man their dynamic is so weird and i need that to be explored, feel free to ship them with any of the other characters or ?? with each other if youre into that?? just like give me more of these two
actually, does it count as incest if their the same person is now a prompt, like maybe someone asks that? idk man just discuss
Powerless (TV 2017)
requested characters:  beatriz da costa | green fury (powerless), emily locke
where to find: this is another i have no clue situation im sorry
this show got canceled because it was like bad dc sitcom airing the same night as arrow but before it did it gave me this hint of femslash potential and tbh this is why im most offended that it was canceled
specific prompts: 
so if the show had lasted longer i am convinced that beatriz and emily would have been gay together, so give these ladies the show they deserved and tell the story of them falling in love
the news already thinks their dating so what about super villains, how many times does emily get kidnapped for being the green fury’s girlfriend before they actually art (or before she realizes she actually is)
how does dating a superhero effect her work life
also just emily loves superheroes, so she’s probably so pumped to be dating one like “wow babe can you believe im dating a superhero” and beatriz like “we were just making out obviously youre dating a superhero”
give me cute gay girls honestly 
Star Trek: Discovery
requested characters:  michael burnham (star trek: discovery), saru (star trek: discovery)
where to find: cbs all access! its ongoing, as i write this letter on its second episode!
okay since this show is ongoing these prompts might get joss’d but it’s too late to go back because two episodes in got me interested in the dynamic between these two
this can be gen (and feature other ships if you want) or can be shippy for these two. im pretty open since this show is so new. 
specific prompts: 
so they were together on the shenzhou for 7 years according to canon so lets get some back story between these two, how did they get to where they were. was there rivalry between the two of them from the very beginning? how does saru feel about someone who has never been to the academy out ranking him? bridge disagreement shenanigans? their captain locking them in a room until their sort out their issues
like, do you want to write alien sex? because a part of me wants to receive alien sex so like? this is an option?
what about them now both on the discovery together, that distrust because of what happen on the shenzhou? building up into something  new? better than before? building into feeling that may have been hidden all along?
on the discovery, forced to work together to save the team and putting their issues asside for the good of everyone else
honestly i just feel like they were supposed to be the spock/bones dynamic of the shenzhou before things went bad and like ??? i want that ?? 
Young & Hungry
requested characters:  caroline huntington 
where to find: it’s all on netflix (though caroline only appears in season one)
yet another show i watched because of mallory jansen, and her character is only in the first season and really all i cared about on this show so guess who i want backstory for
specific prompts:
caroline character study? i mean, she’s written as the rich bitch girlfriend rival in the show but let’s just say she deserves better, flush her out and give her life for me
she definitely deserves better than josh, and i like femslash so pair her with one of the girls in the tag set if you want
just more on her and the horse from young & pregnant this is mostly crack but like also
consider for a second that instead of the plot being gabi sleeps with josh on the first day and starts all of the show drama. what if instead she sleeps with caroline, and we get the aftermath of “oh hey i slept with my new boss’s finace, this isnt awkward at all” rewrite of season 1 with 95% more femslash 
just give me more caroline
ANYWAYS, I HOPE YOU ENJOYED MY LETTER AND I’LL LOVE WHATEVER YOU DECIDE TO WRITE ME!
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