#background slider

[thebramblewood]

Taken circa 1901, this family portrait hung in the Vatore family’s Willow Creek residence until the mid-1950s, when the abruptly surfaced “children” of Lilith and Caleb Vatore procured ownership, promptly selling the property and much of its contents. The current whereabouts of the portrait are unknown. It is preserved in a single photograph taken during the appraisal of the estate leading up to its sale. Another portrait, a commissioned painting of the Vatore siblings taken upon the eve of Lilith’s 21st birthday, was never accounted for in photographs or documents.

Supplemental Material from Tangled Vines: A Complete Investigation of the Vatore Disappearances

[slidershothours]

Inukag slider shot

[shapeshiftinterest]

isabelle took charge of the festival preparations so redd and tom could prepare kk slider's stage

tom's excited to see kk slider

redd just really wants to hold hands

redd: i wanna hold his paw so bad

[roguefankc]

(Maverick is lying in bed in the emergency room of the hospital after one of his mishaps; the Dagger Squad, Iceman, Hollywood, Slider, Merlin, Wolfman, Cyclone, and Penny are gathered around with the doctor)

Doctor: Not to worry, the CT scan showed no signs of trauma and damage. Mr. Mitchell is going to be fine after a week of rest.

Cyclone (smugly): Good. Now you can put that metal plate back in his head. Although in Maverick's case, that would be like putting a lid on an empty jar.

Maverick:…or a cup on you.

[tuhhadkeryo]

To anyone who used to follow my old insta acc, you might remember this

[sol-consort]

I...I've somehow manged to create this miracle

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

The drow version of a centaur! Btw, if we assume that old lore stays true unless refuted, we actually do know which half has the spicy anatomy! Neither, when Lolth makes them she very specifically makes sure they can't reproduce. Oh well, doubt that's gonna stop anyone. They're also venomous and drink blood! EDIT: Oh, and apparently some are able to spin webs, about 50%

On the right is the Balor! A 12 foot tall (3.7 m) demon and quite blatantly a balrog. One of the strongest things in the Abyss, "They are passion and reason combined, a lightning dance of pure hatred and emotion unchained." They're incredibly intelligent and charismatic, but most strive to release all thier emotion of every kind in the fullest way possible. From self loathing to rage to euphoria.

[the-ace-with-spades]

this is part two of this angsty post about Baby Bradley (you might wanna read it first, just to make sense of this part) - Slider POV

It’s late, too late, when he hears the front opening. He is instantly on alert — Shay’s been sleeping for two hours now, conked out by a whole day at work and cooking up a baby inside her — because it’s too late for visitors.

He almost hits Baby Goose with a baseball bat.

Bradley is taking his shoes off, the spare key they have in the flower pot at the front stairs lying near his backpack. His hands are covered in dirt and he’s looking at Ron with his doe eyes wide.

Everyone says he’s Goose’s mirror image but when he stands there, curly hair getting too long again and messy, with those innocent big eyes and head tilted back, all Ron sees is Carole.

It always makes him melt into a puddle, too.

“Do your folks know you’re here?” Ron will take the dead silence as a no. “How did you even get here?”

Bradley is allowed to take the bus on his own, now that they live in one, stable place and Mav had gone on the three major routes with him — the bus to school, to Ron and Sarah’s house, and to the base.

Ice still insists on driving him around everywhere, just because he is such a control freak.

Bradley’s voice is barely hearable and he isn’t meeting Ron’s eyes as he admits, “I walked.”

They don’t leave that far away — less than two miles — but an eleven-year-old should not be walking around alone on the streets past nine.

Ron takes a deep breath. “Look, I’m going to call Ice—”

“He’s at work,” Bradley interrupts, because of course he does — he always has an answer, growing into the mini Maverick that he is.

“Then I’ll call Mav,” Ron counters.

“He’s asleep.”

“Then you shoulda thought about that before you walked here at one in the morning,” Ron points out before he steps back into the kitchen to grab the phone off the wall.

Midway through the kitchen floor, still in the dark since he forgot to turn on the light, Ron feels a weight hanging onto his pajama sleeve. “Do you have to call him?”

“Buddy,” Ron says because he’s so weak against those big brown eyes but can’t just let Bradley get away with everything. What he did was dangerous. He could have gotten hit by a car, kidnapped, or lost, or—Ron doesn’t even want to think about all the things that could’ve happened.

“I promise I’ll go back home before Mav wakes up,” Bradley pleads.

That’s really not the problematic part in the whole situation. “And what about when Ice comes home and goes to check on you and you’re not there?”

Bradley turns his head away and mumbles under his breath, “He won’t.”

“He won’t what?”

“He won’t do that,” he says, eyes on the floor.

And Ron doesn’t know what it is but there’s just something in his voice, in the way it cracks despite being so quiet, and in his posture, the way he raises his shoulders like a guard — and it’s make something under skin crawl.

“Bradley, what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he mumbles, turning away from him.

Ron is weak. He is getting bigger and bigger but he is still so tiny it feels like Ron could fit him in the palms of his hands. He looks even smaller, now, coiled up against Ron’s leg like he wants to turn invisible.

“Okay, you can stay the night—”

“Really?”

Ron would scold himself for falling for it, again, but Bradley’s eyes, even with the excitement in his voice, don’t lose the sad tinge completely.

“But only on the condition that I’ll call Mav anyway and tell him where you are,” Ron says, kind of proud of himself for not giving in completely. “And you have to get up bright and early tomorrow—today, so we can take you to school on time.”

He waves his hand, just so those doe eyes go away before he caves in completely. 

“Go get your jammies and make those pearly whites—”

“You’re talking to me like I’m five again,” Bradley says and Ron holds back a smile.

“You gotta deal with it, kid,” he says, shushing him upstairs. “Go, I’ll call Mav.”

Ice’s house (and Mav’s, no that he’d call it that, ever, Maverick will never be his brother-in-law, even if they actually get married someday, he's going to be at best a menace-in-law) is on their speed dial as number one.

He’s expected to wait a few minutes on the line, until Mav wakes up and strides huffing and puffing into the kitchen to pick up the phone, but he barely gets the second tone and hears, “Hello?”

“Mav—”

“Slider, this isn’t a good time, Bradley is—”

“—here,” Ron finishes for him. “He’s here, Mav, showed up about ten minutes ago. Says he walked here.”

“What?” Mav spits out. “I was about to call the goddamn police! Ice, I was about to call Ice!”

Ron’ll never admit it but he agrees that Ice probably would throw a bigger manhunt than the police if he found out Bradley was missing.

“Look, he doesn’t want to go home—”

“Oh, hell no, he’s coming home now, I’m getting my keys—”

“I already promised him he can stay the night,” Ron cuts in, feeling a headache coming.

“You can’t promise him stuff like that!”

Ron might be a dad-to-be only, but he can understand why Mav is pissed off. He certainly would prefer if his kid that he thought was missing came back home so he could at least see that he is safe and in one piece and maybe so he can ground his ass but Bradley—there’s just something off.

“What, do you want me to send him home so he runs off again to some unknown place in the middle of the night?”

“Oh, he can try,” Mav says. “Even if he somehow managed to sneak out again, I’ll now know where he is. I’m going to take my chances.”

“I don’t think he’ll come back here again, not knowing I sold him out to you and let you take him back home,” Ron says. He can hear Mav groan into the phone in frustration and he gets it, he really does, but— “He looks upset, Mav, okay, I don’t know what happened but he wouldn’t have sneaked out on a whim, you know that.”

It takes him fifteen minutes and about a dozen promises to talk Mav into letting Bradley stay the night — he knows Mav probably won’t sleep a blink anyway — but finally, Ron settles on making them some tea so they can have a talk about safety and not giving his parents a heart attack.

And about whatever made Bradley act out like that.

He comes back downstairs and the ginger tea is already lukewarm enough to drink — they only have ginger tea now because Sarah is still nauseous despite being well out of the first trimester. Bradley sits down with him at the table, his Spiderman pajamas on, takes a sip and promptly grimaces.

“That’s yacky,” Bradley says.

“Believe me, I know, kid. It was two against one,” he says, feeling sleepy out of a sudden. “Your aunt would bite my head off if I said anything, anyway.”

Bradley still drinks more because he’s a good kid that never complains. Or maybe because he doesn’t want to talk to Ron.

“You want to tell me why you left home so late?” he prompts. “Did you have a nightmare?”

Bradley crosses his legs on the chair — Ice would’ve told him to sit properly but he’s not here so Ron lets it slide. Bradley shakes his head, wordlessly.

“Did you argue with Mav?” Ron tries again. Bradley looks away, at their fridge and the family photos and their collection of sonograms, and shakes his head, eyes not present. It scares the shit out of Ron. “Bud? Did someone say something? Do something, to you?”

“No,” he says, finally, barely hearable. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

Ron weighs his options. Bradley's always been a kid with lots and lots of emotions but usually, he wouldn't mind displaying them raw — he could push but he isn't sure whether that would help or harm the situation more. He doesn't want to pressure him but he also doesn't want him to feel like he's alone with whatever made him act like this.

“You want to sleep in your room? Or do you wanna sleep with us, today?”

"Could I—" he begins and then closes his mouth. Ron lets him think through whatever is going over in his head, waiting, until Bradley asks quietly, "Could I sleep with you?"

"Of course you can," Ron says straight away, still feeling unsettled, like he's missing something. "Just try not to wake up your aunt, she's really grumpy in the morning lately. Don't tell her that I said that, either."

*

Bradley’s been—quiet.

The night visits became frequent. Frequent enough that after the fourth time Ice, like the insomniac he is, woke up and went to check on Bradley to find him missing, Mav and Ice bought him a bike. It was safer if he had lights and a helmet on, and the trip to Ron and Sarah’s house took him less time that way. It still isn’t safe but Bradley hasn’t even tried to wake any of them to take him to Ron in a car, like they promised they would, so any alternative was better.

Ron can’t exactly pinpoint what changed aside from how Bradley’s no longer bubbling a mile a minute and how he seems both clingy and unusually detached from them. He’s been staying vaguely around them but never close enough to touch, like he used to.

Today’s been especially strange. Bradley hasn’t even let Sarah cuddle with him after dinner. He helped her prepare the food, quiet and way too focused on tasks for the bouncy eleven-year-old he is, just asking her what to do next and not even humming along to the radio in the kitchen.

Ron, if this was any other kid, would say he is jittery about the parent-teacher meeting and what his folks would hear while talking to his teacher but in all honesty, Bradley doesn’t have anything to worry about — he has perfect grades, and aside from that fight he’d gotten into a couple weeks ago Ice and Mav already know about, he is a sweet, a bit shy kid who isn't much trouble.

Ice and Mav show up to pick him up at half-past eight. Sarah’s already gone for a nap that will turn into nine hours of sleep and Ron and Bradley are quietly sitting in the living room, each reading their own book. Their faces are turned into a grimace from the minute they step in to greet Ron and Mav is observing the kid like a hawk.

Bradley curls his legs closer and gives Ron a very short look, the big doe eyes telling Ron he is about to ask if he can stay the night. Ron shakes his head before he does it long enough he’ll give in.

“Go say bye to your aunt, buddy,” Ice tells Bradley which is a code for an adults-only conversation.

Ron doesn’t like it.

“She’s asleep,” Bradley points out.

It’s the truth, but Mav still hasn’t said anything, just staring at Bradley, so Ron says, “You can wake her up for a minute, she’ll probably want to know you’re going and will give you a kiss goodbye.”

Bradley hesitates, looking between Ron and Ice like they're tricking him into something. He and Sarah didn't have the greatest of starts — she moved to California not long after Carole got diagnosed and was the least familiar face during that hard time, often completely omitted when Bradley sought out adult comfort. It's been getting better and better the more time they spent together, and Bradley's been especially warming up since they told him about the baby — Sarah would talk to Bradley about the pregnancy often, explaining different things, taking him to shop for baby clothes, letting him think of baby names, letting him touch the baby bump. Ron has thought that maybe Bradley finally felt included enough by her to include her in his little trusted family.

Ron sometimes wonders if it's because Bradley knows he'd almost become his stepdad before he and Carole called it quits — they never told him they were together, tried to test it out before Bradley became attached but maybe they hadn't done a good job of it. Maybe when they broke up when it kept on feeling weird with Goose's memory still in both their heads, they should've explained it to him. Maybe he felt like Sarah took Ron away from him and his mom when he started dating her not long after she moved to San Diego.

"You go, bud, you're probably the only person that won't make her grumpy," Ron encourages.

Bradley jumps off the couch and meticulously puts his bookmark in his book and closes it, careful not to crease the pages or the spine — in a mirror image of Ice, because of course — and walks away to the corridor.

They listen until the bedroom door closes behind him, Ice picks up Bradley’s book and puts it in his jacket’s inside pocket, and Ron turns back to the adults-only conversation with a heavy heart. 

“He’s apparently been asking about adoption,” Maverick finally says, barely audible.

“I thought you already adopted him. The guardianship was switched to custody after a year, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, he, uhm—”

He doesn't continue and it's scaring the shit out of Ron. He looks like a wreck of a person.

“He’s been asking whether we can give him up,” Ice supplies, voice perfectly leveled, his hands tucked into his jean pockets. Just, expressionless, really.

“For adoption?” Ron asks. Ice nods. “Jesus Christ.”

Even with how withdrawn Bradley's been, he'd have never gone into that territory with his theories.

No wonder Bradley didn't want to say a goddamn word about what was bothering him.

Ice takes a deep breath and says, voice urgent, "Look, he comes to you a lot when he's upset, did he say anything? Anything that could explain where all those questions came from?"

“No,” he denies instantly. “Do you think someone at school could, you know, be a bit too nosy again?”

They had that problem before, in Lemoore, straight after Carole's death and before they moved, when some concerned parents had started asking too many questions about who Mav was and how he was managing Bradley's childcare and who was Ice and why was Ice so involved. It was the whole reason CPS has even bothered to look at Mav's custody agreement and put Bradley in foster care for so long.

“Bradley barely talks to the other kids, still, even if someone’s parents—” Mav stops and his gaze gets all wet and it doesn't go away even when Ice grips his hand. "I don't know."

"Come on, you know it's not—You're doing everything the right way, Mav, he's been through a lot but you could see he is dealing with it now and he's been happy, it's not—"

Ron doesn't know what he wants to say.

"Just talk to him," he says in the end. "He's your kid, just make sure he knows that."

When he looks at Ice, he doesn't know how to react — he's never seen him looking so lost.

"Where's he anyway? He should be back by now—" he grumbles. Maybe actually having Bradley within their range of sight, unharmed and present and not at some strangers house god knows where would make them feel better. "I'll go get him."

Ron walks to their bedroom like a robot, trying to school his expression by to calm so his helplessness doesn't show.

"Buddy, what's taking so long, did you fall asleep too—"

He stops talking at the view he gets when he opens the door — Bradley is curled up around Sarah’s baby bump, his hand under her t-shirt, and Sarah is dozing off again with her fingers in his curls, blinking sleepily at Ron.

"The baby is kicking," he says and he's whispering like anything louder would spook the baby into hiding again.

“I’ll come back in five minutes, buddy,” Ron says, keeping his voice low.

*

Ron's been baby-proofing the house for what feels like weeks now and Sarah is still insisting it's not enough, finding new boops and beeps to improve. And Ron loves her, really, but he also still works about fifty hours a week and the kid is not going to even be moving much for at least six or seven months after they pop out.

They're certainly not going to let the kid out alone on the terrace for longer than that, he's sure, but he's also sure if he told that he's nine months pregnant wife, he'd be sleeping on the couch. 

So he's modifying the terrace, so they have baby doors to the steps and the spaces in the little fence around the elevation is baby-proofed with a bouncy mesh net that their baby can smash their face all they want and not fall off.

It's almost eight already and Ron is still going at it, knowing he won't have the time later in the week but also running on about five hours of sleep, when he hears Bradley's bike rattle on the gravel on their driveway.

"Hey, kid," he says, not turning around from the task and trusting that Bradley is not going to run over Sarah's pansies again. Ron really doesn't want to find her planting new ones while nine months pregnant and he knows she would. "You here for anything in particular or just passing by?"

Bradley stops the bike, getting off and carefully avoiding the flower rows, thankfully. He is walking the thing now, to leave it next to their ugly garden shed.

"I was sick the whole week and now I don't understand my science homework," he tells him. "Mr. Kraig said I should come to the extra classes but we have a test before that."

Ron doesn't look from where he's measuring the stupid tiny fence. "Isn't this something you usually do with Mav and Ice?"

“I didn’t want to bother them.”

“So you thought you’d bother me?”

It’s just a joke — if Ron was a little less tired, he’d have remembered that Bradley’s already been feeling fragile around all the adults in his life and not having the greatest of times in general. He’d have been less snarky or maybe he’d have said nothing or maybe he’d prodded a little bit about why Bradley doesn’t want Ice’s or Mav’s help with homework anymore.

It’s just a joke but he doesn’t even manage to turn around and he hears the bike’s chain rattle as the kid starts biking off god knows where, not looking back.

“Bradley—”

He stands up to go over him but the stupid baby doors are in place and he trips when he tries to jump over them, knocking down the roll with the mesh net. It unrolls on the grass and by the time he's untangled from it all, he can't see Bradley on either end of the street.

"Sarah—" he calls out as soon as he's back in the house. "Call Ice and tell them to call us if Bradley turns up back home."

"What? Ronnie, where are you going?"

He's grabbing his car keys because like hell he's just going to sit and wait.

Bradley didn't say a single thing, just ran out. He's not coming back to them, he knows, and he's not sure how long it'll be before he caves in and goes back home.

He doesn't like it. He doesn't like it all.

He keeps on driving around in circles between theirs and Ice's house, looking out for Bradley's bike anywhere on the road, turning up back to check with Sarah that Ice hasn't called every twenty minutes or so.

It's getting dark when he notices Bradley's bike on Ice's porch.

"I'm going to call Sarah, tell her you're here already," Mav says and he dips into the kitchen.

Instantly, Ron's eyes search for Bradley and he's there, in one piece, in their living room, still getting scolded by Ice.

When he notices Ron and their eyes meet, he looks away, stepping to the side enough that he's well hidden behind Ice's legs.

Ice turns around. "Slider—"

Maybe he's too big, too old, for that, but never for Ron — he grabs Bradley under his arms and hugs him, one hand on his back, another under his thighs. It's as easy as it's always been despite what everyone says.

"Jesus Christ, kid," he blurts out. "You scared the living shit out of me."

"I’m sorry,” Bradley says and his voice is hoarse.

“No, I am sorry, kid,” he says, adjusting Bradley in his arms so he can flatten his cheek on Ron’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean it like that, I swear, you’ll never — never, all right? — bother us, I just—It was a bad joke, okay?”

“I know,” Bradley mumbles into his collarbone. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing, kid,” Ron insists.

He maneuvers him in his arms, detaches Bradley’s hands from around his shoulders so he looks at him and his eyes are shiny and red, and god, Ron just wants to take it all back, take it all away.

He doesn’t know what is going on with Bradley lately and he isn’t telling them but he wants them to have a safe place in them, he wants him to keep coming to them until he finally lets them help with whatever is happening.

“Promise me you know that, promise me you know you’ll never ever bother us, no matter what.”

Bradley doesn’t reply anything to that, instead saying, “Can you put me down? I’m not five.”

“Bradley,” Ice reprimands and Ron doesn’t care if he has a tone when he speaks to him, he just cares that—

“Promise me you know,” he repeats.

“I know, I promise,” he says.

He’s still not looking at him or at Ice, and he still seems so small, like he’s trying to take the least space he can, but he’s—he’s promising and Ron has to let go off him at some point, as heartbreaking as it feels.

He sets him back down on the carpet and Bradley curls into himself even more.

Ice opens his mouth, probably to continue the scolding and use Ron’s worry as a leverage, but Ron catches his eyes before he says anything. He shakes his head.

*

Juliette Nicole Kazansky Kerner was born on Friday, just a few minutes after three in the morning, after about twelve hours in labor and delivery.

They've decided early on that it was just going to be the three of them in the delivery suite and then for another twenty-four hours. Ron's mama was coming from Minnesota in about a week and that left just Ice and his little family.

They know the plan so they come in on Saturday, after breakfast, after Sarah slept off the exhaustion and is finally ready for visitors.

There are congratulations and hugs and then Julie crying and asking for food. There is the moment Maverick gets to hold her when she doesn't want to burp and gets her to do just so like it's the most natural thing and the moment after when Ice is looking at him with that smitten expression that Ron used to make fun of, before it became almost constant on him whenever Maverick is around.

There's a moment when finally, Bradley gets a very close look at Julie and stares at her with his mouth open and eyes wide and Sarah asks him, "Do you want to hold her?"

And then he's listening like his life depends on it when Sarah and Mav explain to him how to hold a baby and how he needs to be very careful with her head and not make too many movements not to drop her.

“She’s so tiny,” Bradley says and Ron is pretty sure he's repeated it at least three times now.

“That’s why you have to be really careful with her, buddy,” Ice says, adjusting Bradley's arm so it's holding their little Julie closer to Bradley's chest.

They're safely sitting in a big armchair with a pillow underneath just in case, but Bradley seems to have taken the cautions to heart and is holding Julie's limp head up and coconing her with his arms like it's a mission.

“She looked bigger in Aunt Sarah’s belly,” he says, still sounding awed.

Sarah laughs because truly, Bradley was the only one who could indirectly call her big and not unleash a hormonal wrath.

Maybe he said it too soon because Sarah starts crying instead, her lips are trembling when she looks at the two of them from where she's lying in bed still and next thing Ron knows, there's a waterfall.

She's smiling so he isn't too worried. He gets a whiplash because in less thirty seconds, Ice is crying to, still hovering over Bradley like the control freak he is, and if Ice is crying, that means Mav is not far behind.

Bradley lifts his head from where he was gazing at Julie and okay, Ron is a bit teary-eyed, too, by the time Bradley asks innocently, “Why is everyone crying?”

Those big doe eyes just make him weak. He's just praying he'll have more restraint with his own kids.

The nurse comes in to check on both Sarah and Julie, telling them she's probably going to be discharged tomorrow morning if their obs keep on being so good.

"We probably should grab something to eat," Ron supplies. "There's a buffet nearby."

Sarah had refused hospital food. And he's not going to be refusing her some good food when she's just popped a whole human into the world.

Bradley, realizing that standing up would mean letting go of Julie, asks, “Do I have to go with you?”

“No, but remember Mav is going to be picking your food if you stay and you know how he feels about vegetables,” Ice says.

“It’s fine,” Bradley decides and wow, the kid is really smitten, too. “Can I stay?”

They switch Bradley from the armchair to sitting next to Sarah in bed, just in case, and he's pouting the whole two minutes he doesn't have Julie in his arms.

"That was adorable," Ron says as soon as they leave the room. "I didn't think he'd take so well to her."

“I kinda wish we could have another kid just so he could be a big brother,” Mav says and he sounds like he's still melting inside.

“Yeah,” Ice agrees absently and he sounds so dreamy Ron snorts. “What?”

“Tom ‘I Don’t Like Kids’ Kazansky wanting more kids is never not going to be amusing,”

“It’s different when it’s your kids,” he protests, not ashamed at all.

And Slider supposes it is, at least for Ice because Ice is so good with Bradley, loves him so much, that he sometimes wonders if Ice's aversion to kids was just some way to protect him from heartbreak when having kids seemed impossible, given who Ice tended to love.

*

"Our three-month check up is on Friday, do you think you will be able to go with us? It's at six."

He's unpacking groceries in the kitchen, late after getting back from work, and Sarah is sitting in her rocking chair, nursing Julie for the last time before they put her to sleep for the night — she's going to wake up at least twice, but she seemed to have faded into tiredness as soon as Ron got to hold her for five minutes.

He's pretty sure he's only got paperwork to do on Friday so he should be fine, but—

“Thought it was going to be on Saturday?”

“Tom mentioned Bradley’s match is on Saturday, I thought you’d probably like to be there, too, so I made the switch,” Sarah says.

“He didn’t say anything about a match,” Ron notes. “Baby Goose, I mean.”

“We missed his last two so I thought we should probably start going to them again,” Sarah explains gently, her voice going quieter as Julie starts to fall asleep mid-feeding again. “He’s apparently banned Ice and Mav from coming because he’s embarrassed when they come, you know Tom is a bit of a soccer mom and—Ronnie?”

He—He feels it again, the feeling that something is wrong, but he can't really explain what is wrong with Bradley's behavior — kids do grow, get embarrassed by parents and uncles and want more independence. It just doesn't sit right with him.

“He didn’t tell me about his matches,” he realizes. It’s baseball season, it’s been for weeks. “He hasn’t slept over in four months, Shay.”

“He’s almost a teenager, he’s bound to start thinking you’re uncool,” Sarah says and it doesn't—

She isn't saying anything that doesn't ring true, Ron himself had those thoughts when he was much younger than Bradley. But it doesn't sit well with him. Bradley's been so off before Julie was born, for months, and now suddenly he seems to be not only fine, but fine without any of their support.

Sarah bumps Julie's nose, putting her shirt back over her arm and grabs the towel to put over her shoulder—

“At least you’ll have this one thinking you can save the world for a few more years," she says. "Can’t imagine how Mav and Ice are feeling right now.”

some people requested tagging so here you go hons: @callsign-hummingbird, @happypopcornprincess, @nearlynadin, @strangelove97, @pollyna, @heartthyshark

i know it's been a long time so let me know if you don't want me to tag you for the next part

[nade2308]

My heart is working overtime

In this kind of game

People get hurt

I'm thinking that the people is me

— Kenny Loggins, "Playing with the boys"

@thethistlegirl @malewifebillcage

Part 1 || Part 2

[eddiemunsonsmum]

I accidentally made something terrifying while editing a character please tell me someone wants to see it because I can't keep chuckling about this fuck up alone 😂

[slidershothours]

This one was the most complicated to do yet

[oh-great-authoress]

Slider: Who the fu—

Ice, smacks Slider, gestures towards Bradley: Language.

Slider: …

Slider: WHOMST THE FU—

[inorganicorgan]

Eyestrain I think? I'VE certainly got a headache now

I completely created this image. It's pretty, I think.

It's been heavily edited, but only through the use of the samsung photo gallery editing feature.

Can you guess what it is?

No. No you can't.

It's a drawing of Monika from ddlc. I drew her on a whiteboard, took a photo of her, and then to anger my friends crunched it into oblivion. These are the most significant stages.

Stage One: Original image. She's chilling

Stage Two: Messed with brightness, tint, temperature, and sharpness until it turned yellow. Pixels starting to be visible.

Stage Three: Overexposure and extreme saturation. The light glare has started crumbling.

Stage Four: Darkened the image. It's important to know that every edit has been saved as a copy, making it a new image. This means that every time the sharpness was edited, it stacked. This is visible here.

Stage Five: Why Is She Green I Don't Remember

Stage Six: Brightness all the way down, tint, highlights, and shadows all the way up. I think.

Stage Seven: the most destroyed the image can get before screenshots have to be involved. Not much change from stage six. Slightly desaturated. May be the same image but you get the gist.

Stage Eight: Screenshotted and turned her blue

Stage Nine: The final result. The top image is pulled directly from this.

[artyswirl]

some refs ive redone in preparation for artfight- some of the character designs changed a lot

[sliding-into-space]

What did he do with a big ass trophie. It's just awkwardly sitting in his backyard like a weird lawn decoration.

[the-ace-with-spades]

A tiny little scene from way further in my trans! Bradley fic - chapter 14/15 o (sometimes I feel) like a monkey pilot, we're currently on chapter 5 - featuring Uncle Slider

For context, Bradley came out after a mental breakdown and reunited with Mav and Ice less than two months before this scene. tw: slight misgendering (one slip-up)

*

March 2013

It was a big day — Bradley had been asked by Maria to meet someone else from the family as his therapy homework and Uncle Slider was selected as the one to fulfill that assignment. Out of the whole family, it was just him and aunt Sarah that lived in San Diego, and only the two of them knew that, well, that Bradley wanted to be called Bradley now and that he’d come out in the worst circumstances possible.

At least Ice said he did know — he was the one to tell Slider when Bradley moved in with them and he hadn’t said more than he was a little confused but he’s okay when Bradley asked how it went. He still didn’t know if Ice didn’t tell him more because he wanted to protect him or if it was truly all the reaction he had from Slider. He hadn't talked to many people since he came out and even the people he did talk to were strangers who Bradley would usually either never see again or could avoid seeing again. Family seemed like an entirely different category, one that made him freeze and tense with dread.

Hopefully, by the end of the day, he’d still be Bradley’s uncle.

He and Mav had just finished kneading the dough for the ravioli they were making when the front door bell rang. Ice, who was just watching them from the other side of the kitchen island, let his book fall down next to the fruit bowl and walked to the foyer.

Ice and Slider talked in the foyer for a minute, tones too quiet to hear the words, before Bradley heard their footsteps and Slider's voice broke through the door to the corridor, “So, where’s the wayward son?”

Ice sounded a bit exasperated when he replied but Bradley could still hear lightness to his tone as he said, “In the kitchen with Mav."

He tried not to worry. Tried to take it as a good sign and not to have the worst case scenarios flash before his eyes.

He turned away, back to the kitchen island and the entrance, looking at his hands, still covered flour from the dough. He saw Mav's concerned gaze in the corner of his eye, but he only shrugged, trying not to worry him.

It all should be fine. Even if Slider didn't react well to actually seeing Bradley as Bradley, it wasn't going to be the end of the world.

Mav pinched the bridge of his nose, a sigh that could be only directed at Uncle Slider leaving his mouth. Bradley turned around.

First thing that caught his eye was a giant baby blue balloon, floating around Slider's head, the It’s A Boy! text in a darker shade of blue in semi-cursive.

Slider himself didn't look much different than the last time Bradley saw him in 2006, right before he retired from the Navy. He already had grating hair back then, now they were almost completely gray, there were a few more wrinkles around his eyes and he seemed to have lost some muscle from around his shoulders but he still mostly just looked like Bradley's Uncle Slider.

“Hey, kid,” he said, like he had always been. “I didn’t want to come empty handed but Shay is at a conference in LA and she’s the one who chooses gifts usually so… There was a shop next to the girls' school and I thought it would be, you know, fitting.”

Bradley hadn't been in contact with them when Slider and Sarah's second daughter was born — he had only heard about her from Ice, a couple of weeks ago when they tried to catch up on all the family matters he had missed in the years he was away.

“The youngest is six now, isn’t she? Sof, right?”

“Almost seven,” Slider replied, sounding quite proud. “Tells us to call her Sofia now, because she is too big for Sof. Well, unless you’re her Uncle Mav, then you can still call her Sof.”

“What can I say? Kids love me,” Mav quipped, right from behind Bradley.

“That’s because you’re a big kid yourself,” Ice supplied, rolling his eyes.

Now that he wasn't standing right behind Slider, watching him for any wrong moves or words toward Bradley, he had moved back towards the high chair on the other side of the kitchen island.

“He’s as big as a kid you mean,” Slider said, one hand making a little measurement gesture, cutting the air right below his shoulder, where the top of Mav's head would reach.

Bradley couldn't help it — he snorted.

Slider used the moment to step closer, pulling on the balloon's string, and handing it off to Bradley.

“Thanks,” he said. When Slider opened his arms, the same way he used to do whenever he wanted a hug from Bradley, his voice cracked as he added, “I’m covered in flour.”

“Come here anyway,” he told him and Bradley did, stepping into his arms. It had been a while but it also didn't feel any different — Slider was still the only person from their nearby family who was taller than Bradley, still would just wrap his long arms around his back and bring him close enough that he'd be sinking into his chest, put Bradley's face in the crook of his neck and say into the curls behind his ear, “You gave your folks quite a scare.”

“I know,” he whispered into Slider's shoulder.

“Good to have you here with us, buddy, really good,” he said and Bradley tried to soak in the moment, but at the same time not to put his dirty hands on Slider's nice black polo.

“Now, is any of you going to roll the dough for me or are you just going to stand there?”

Bradley let go of Slider, still not completely sure this day wouldn't become a disaster, but a bit more relaxed.

“I thought you finally bought him that pasta machine,” Slider said, mainly toward Ice as he took a step back toward the kitchen island.

“Oh, I did,” Ice said, with an accusatory tone to his voice. “Put it in the back of the cupboard right away and never used it.”

“My mamma didn’t need a fancy pasta cutter, I don’t need it either,” Mav said and it sounded like they'd had that discussion at least a couple of times. “Baby, can you roll the stuffing for me?”

“Yeah, just let me wash my hands again,” he replied, giving Slider one last glance over his shoulder as he moved to the sink.

Mav, satisfied now that Bradley was within his reach, turned to Slider with a glare. “What? If you’re not going to be useful, get out of my kitchen.”

Slider raised his arms and backed out, sitting down next to Ice at the other side of the island. Bradley could feel his eyes on him, following him all the way inside the kitchen but not adding anything.

Mav stepped next to him, bumping their shoulders — or his shoulder and Bradley's elbow, really — and asked close to his face, “You doing okay, baby?”

He turned on the tap, trying to gather his thoughts. “Yeah, I just—”

“I can still kick him out if you want,” Mav offered, way too eager. “In fact, I’ll take great joy in kicking him out.”

“You invited him,” he reminded.

“No, we invited him,” Mav corrected. “If it’s too soon—”

“I can’t live behind closed door forever, as much as I want to,” he noted because that was the truth. The past almost two months now, Bradley'd been seeing his parents and the healthcare professionals that were taking care of him and then almost no one else. At some point, he had to start living again, even if it was scary, being in the world and out and not in the safety of his parents house. Most of the time, he still felt a bit like a fraud, calling himself Bradley, telling people to use he and him when talking about, that he was guy — almost like he didn't deserve it until he looked the way people expected him to look.

“I know,” Mav said and he didn't seem any happier about it than Bradley, his eyebrows creasing as his hand reached to caress Bradley's cheek gently — he had flour on his hands, too. “I wish I could make the world a better place for you.”

“Thank you, Dad.”

“Promise I’ll kick him out if he says anything,” Mav added, giving his cheekbone a last swap with his thumb and then putting his hands under the running tap.

“I’m pretty sure that if he does, Pops is going to be the one who’d kick him out,” he noted.

They were both standing around, watching their interactions like guard dogs, ready to bite at any slide of hand, and Bradley felt almost okay with it.

Bradley washed his hands and dried it off on the nearby towel. Mav sent him a wink before stepping away, bending down to find the rolling pin somewhere in the mess of their corner cabinet.

Slider called out, louder than he'd been talking to Ice. “Hey, is there a chance you made enough that I won’t have to think what to make for dinner for the kids?”

Ice sounded exasperated again, shaking his head at him and Bradley smiled as he said, “You just came here to steal our food again, didn’t you?”

“Told you a hundred times, brother, cooking well is his only good quality, I might as well milk it.”

Bradley shook his head at the familiarity of the whole moment and said, “You’re in luck this time — we’ve already frozen the first batch.”

“Don’t let him win, buddy,” Ice quipped.

Bradley pulled up the sleeves of his hoodie, taking out the bowl with the spinach and ricotta filling out of the fridge. As he carried it to the counter, the free space on the shelf below the kitchen island, right next to the ravioli dough, he felt watched again. He tried not to pay attention to it, but Slider was suspiciously silent, eyes scrolling over Bradley's mostly flat chest, clad in a binder invisible under his hoodie, and going up to Bradley's military-regulation short hair. He'd been looking like that the past few weeks every day but suddenly, it felt inadequate.

“Since when do you like Dallas Cowboys, kid?”

Bradley didn't have to look down to remember what he was wearing — the blue Dallas Cowboys hoodie he stole from Jake when he left Lemoore. Bradley didn't know shit about football but he used to go to NFL games with Jake whenever Dallas Cowboys were playing and they were in the area, it was Jake's team and Bradley would always wear one of his t-shirt or sweatshirts to blend in with the crowd and, well, because Jake liked when Bradley wore his clothes and Bradley like to wear his clothes. The past four months, the hoodie had been a source of comfort in the situations that made him nervous, used almost as often as the blanket hoodie Mav bought him in high school.

He wasn't about to tell them he missed Jake or who Jake was or anything else. "Can't I just like football?"

“I thought you were a basketball kinda girl—boy—guy—Shit.” It was clumsy but Bradley would give him points for trying. When Ice elbowed Slider into his side, he added sheepishly, “Sorry, Brad.”

“Please don’t call me Brad.”

“Sorry,” Slider repeated, scratching the back of his neck. “I thought it was Bradley now.”

“It is,” he said. “I’m just trying to avoid all the Brad Brad jokes that will come with it.”

“Yeah, you did make your life harder with that name change,” he said and just as he finished the sentence Mav and Ice turned toward him again, glaring. “I meant—”

“I know what you meant, relax,” Bradley told him, somehow feeling the tension oozing out of him now that the first slip had been made. “Mav said my parents had it chosen for a boy, so…”

“That does sound like something Goose would choose,” Slider said, slowly, and Bradley almost laughed at how hard he was trying to avoid his usual speak-before-think mode. “You can always go by your second name. Plenty of people do.”

Yeah, that was not happening. “I think I will just stick with Bradley.”

“By the way, Ron would make a great middle name,” he added. Ice elbowed him again but he didn't seem to mind too much and honestly, Bradley didn't mind the turn conversation had taken — it was all good-natured and so casual that it had almost calmed down most of his nerves. "Simple, traditional, can't be confused with a female name, what's not to like?"

Mav huffed. “Kerner, don’t even try—”

“What? He had a second name before,” Slider cut in.

“The paperwork is done already, anyway, so you’re a bit late,” Ice pointed out.

Mac turned to him this time, frowning. “It is?”

“Ice took me to the courthouse this week, after—after the session,” he admitted. Ice went with him inside and did most of the talking with the court clerk when Bradley couldn't reply to the simple what is the petition you need for question without spilling his whole life history. “I filed the petition.”

“I don’t think we chose a middle name, did we? Did you put one down?”

“I did,” he admitted, not elaborating and hoping they would leave it at that.

He concentrated on taking out the ravioli filling and scooping it into balls

“What is then?”

He only glanced at Ice shortly but that was enough for them to realize.

“Oh,” Uncle Slider only said before his typical shit-eating grin made its place on his face.

Mav didn’t say anything but he stepped closer toward Bradley, his close presence more than words.

Ice didn’t move even a millimeter. He bit down on lip, blinking the wetness out of his eyes and asked quietly, “You went with—with Tom?”

“Thomas,” he corrected, just barely hearable. "It's Bradley Thomas Bradshaw now. Or will, when the petition goes through."

"It's a good one, baby," Mav said, giving his shoulder an approving rub, eyes a bit watery. 

“Not as good of a choice as Ron, but I supposed you can live with it,” Slider said and just like that, Mav turned to him and tried to hit him with the rag he was holding — he dodged last minute and Mav tried to hit him again, basically crawling over the kitchen island, until Bradley started laughing at them.

Ice was still looking at him, though, still speechless but with the corners of his lips quivering now.