#because I have shit going on and I’m not always in the mood or headspace

[scoops-aboy86]

well in that case,,, ♠️♥️

had a lovely idea of Eddie working at a diner and sort of getting pressured into eating what the customers send back; initially started as Eddie just asking to keep the food and since the staff see how skinny he is they're like grandma's always trying to feed their grandkids. This unintentionally becomes the norm and since he's a little shy in telling the grannies no thank you, he keeps going along with it. Unfortunately for him Steve, Tommy, and the one redhead girl tend to come in and be shitheads and they somehow always find “something wrong” with their food which ends in them basically getting a free meal. His loose apron grows tighter and tighter, belly spilling out the sides throughout the months and poor boy is always a little nauseous from pounding it back in between shifts. What's worse is the fact that nearly all the weight clung to his stomach meaning it's on full display even with the apron covering him and Tommy Hagan never let's him forget just how much he’s “porked up”. 🐷

I feel like you were thinking this would be set during high school, but I started writing and that’s not what ended up coming out. (That would be so much fun too, I’m just not in the headspace for writing mean girl era Steve at the moment.)

When I put this on ao3 the title is going to be “Kitchen Pig,” in honor of Tommy being an asshat and calling Eddie a garbage disposal.

~

It’s a quiet day at the diner but it’s already been a long shift, and Eddie is full. Just the right combination of patrons have come through so far—grannies missing their grandkids because their children got the hell out of Hawkins at first opportunity like sensible people and little old ladies who never had kids but have all this grandmotherly energy with no other outlet, mostly. They come in for the early bird specials and stay to dote on him, ordering extras and giving it to him because “you look dead on your feet, honey” or “you’re just so skinny!”

Which was fine a few pant sizes ago, but now that he's decidedly not skinny anymore it’s become routine. Just like it’s routine for Eddie to go along with it, because the handful of times he’s tried the combination of guilt and lightheadedness as his body tried to run on sensible portions of healthy things eaten at reasonable intervals had trained him not to bother resisting. Maintaining his former beanpole appearance isn’t more important than a paycheck, or not tripping over his own feet and whacking his head on something on the way down. (Only happened once, and he’d come out of his daze already sucking down the sugary soda and plowing through pieces of buttered toast that his own boss had foisted on him. Resistance, apparently, is futile.) 

He’s gotten to where eating is the only thing that keeps his mood steady while dealing with the roller coaster that is the service industry, and his only regret when he sees the couple that just came in is that he’s too full already to scarf down the slice of cake that Ethel Butler had ordered but barely touched, too preoccupied with showing Eddie the pictures her daughter-in-law had sent of the new baby. 

With a sigh, Eddie makes the extra effort to adjust himself, tries to get his shirt tucked into his pants without unsettling the apron that passes as a uniform. Tommy fucking Hagan is always ten times more likely to give him shit if it rides up; Carol Perkins, that gum-snapping bitch, always pretends to make sex moans while eating whenever Eddie passes, regardless of how he looks. All damn summer while they’re home from college. 

See? Routine. 

What’s not routine is that Steve Harrington is with them. 

And look, Eddie gets it. He and Steve are friends, but Steve had known Tommy and Carol since kindergarten. The three had split, and rightly so, back in ‘83 because the latter two were miserable assholes. Eddie would argue that that hasn’t changed, based on all his encounters with them any time they’re around. He hasn’t made this argument to Steve only because Steve is so optimistic about his former best friends growing into better versions of themselves now that they’ve seen more of the world, maybe had some sense finally knocked into them the way he had. It’s a nice thought. Eddie would love it if that were the case, because it would make Steve happy and he… likes Steve a lot. A normal amount! Because they’re very good friends. 

People who choose Hawkins, though, all seem to have something in common, even if Tommy and Carol come by it in a much different way than the old ladies. 

“Oh waiter,” Tommy calls out a few minutes after Eddie has brought the trio their orders. Like fucking clockwork. He doesn’t even listen to what the imaginary problem is, he’s heard it all by now: found a hair, food’s undercooked, food’s overcooked, too slimy, too dry, not enough salt, tastes like licking a salt-lick. What-fucking-ever. 

“I’ll get you something else,” Eddie says blandly, not looking at Steve as he takes the plate and turns to head for the kitchen. 

“Yeah yeah, as long as I’m not charged for this shit.” Tommy waves him off with a smirk, waiting until Eddie is half turned away before he adds, “Enjoy the extra snack, lardass.”

Carol giggles. “Do you think he’ll wait until he’s in the kitchen again, or is he finally fat enough he’ll just unhinge his jaw right here?”

Eddie freezes. Waits for Steve to say… anything, really. But when he glances back, Steve’s face is bright red, his lips pressed together so tight they’ve gone pale and a pained, uncertain look on his handsome face. 

It stings. And later Eddie can blame that hurt on what he turns back and does next, because he’s a big boy in  more than one sense; he can take what they throw at him because he’s been putting up with bullies his entire life. But right now he wants to look Steve square in the eyes and say Look, this is what they do. This is what you want to reconnect with. You’re really going to stay quiet?

“Hey Frankie,” Eddie calls over his shoulder, not quite breaking eye contact with the table. “Redo the entire order for table seven, okay? I gotta take my fifteen.”

His boss, who usually only allows ten minute breaks but knows all about these assholes and wouldn’t stand between Eddie and taking them down a peg or two, hollers back an affirmative while Eddie unties his apron. 

“Ooh, whatcha gonna do, Freak?” Tommy taunts. “Challenge me to a fight in the parking lot? You’re so out of shape, I bet even Steve here could take you. Hell, even Carol, couldn’t you baby?”

“He’d probably get winded just walking there,” she scoffs, but there’s a wary look in her eye that only intensifies when Eddie steps closer to the table. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Tommy asks, at the same moment Eddie says, “Scoot over, Harrington, I’m coming in.”

“Steve, don’t—”

But Steve is already shifting, ignoring Tommy, watching Eddie with big eyes that he can practically see the reflection of his own crazy-edged grin in. It’s one the kids in Hellfire know well from the punishing twists to his campaigns, and Steve knows from hanging out together ever since Spring Break last year. The one that did a lot of the heavy lifting to earn him the name Freak in the first place, all the way back in middle school when his head was still shaved. 

“Since I’m on my break now,” Eddie says with forced brightness, grin still in place, and setting Tommy’s rejected plate down in front of himself. Glances over and steals Steve’s fork and knife right out of his hands to dig into a big plate of huevos rancheros. “Oh damn,” Eddie comments with his mouth full, “you really don’t know your food, do you? Nothing wrong with this at all. That’s because Frankie knows his shit.”

There’s a distant clang from the kitchen and a muffled, “Damn right!”

“Mm—too bad you have zero taste.” Eddie levels a look at Tommy and Carol, sitting stiffly on the other side of the booth, looking as though a deer in the headlights had suddenly taken off its hoves, wiggled its fingers, and climbed into their car to hitch a ride. To his side, he can feel Steve’s warm presence and wishes it were a reassurance, rather than a possible liability. He doesn’t think the guy will push him out on his ass, but if these are the kind of jokers Steve wants to associate with? It never hurts to be prepared. 

So, Eddie stays alert as he can while he tucks into his impromptu meal. This isn’t one of his go-to entrees but it’s good, filling his mouth with rich, heavy flavors and lighting him up with the joy of savory food after a morning of nibbling on sugar-drenched waffles and pancakes. He takes a page out of Carol’s book, moaning through a full mouthful and hopefully ruining the taunt for her. Makes direct eye contact and does it again, dropping his table knife to place a soothing hand on his tightening belly. 

And it is tight, because he’d already been full. But Eddie Munson is not a runner these days; he’ll see this challenge through to the end. The stretch kind of feels good, after all the unintentional practice, and he knows he hasn’t hit his limit yet despite the discomfort. 

So he smirks in victory at the disgusted face Carol makes and takes bigger bites. The beans and salsa and egg, the tortillas that sop up all the favors, it all goes down surprisingly easy. If some of it drips onto his shirt, so what? Apron’ll cover that up. Uncaring, he spreads his legs (bumping up as against Steve’s warm thigh on one side) to give himself more room to expand, stealing Steve’s glass and taking several big gulps of Coke to wash down the last bites of Tommy’s food. 

“Aw yeah, hit the spot,” Eddie sighs once he’s scraped the plate as clean as possible with just a fork. He pats his belly with feeling, a few audible slaps, and it wobbles where it muffins out over the top of his pants, shirt already half untucked below the table despite his efforts earlier. 

Carol’s nose is still scrunched up and he hopes it sticks that way. “Well I’ve lost my appetite,” she announces, giving her own plate a dainty little push away. “I’m surprised this place even manages to stay open with you around, eating the customers’ food like a pig.”

Sensing another challenge, Eddie leans forward as if to investigate the food she’s rejecting. He already knows it’s tomato soup and grilled cheese, still hot from the kitchen, and he can feel his mouth watering in spite of himself. 

“Only the food they don’t want,” he replies easily, reaching forward and snagging it for himself. The bowl rattles on top of the plate as he drags it closer, ignoring the spoon still untouched on Carol’s napkin to go straight for dipping the sandwich in the soup and taking a big, dripping first bite. If he lets out a little moan again, no one has to know it’s for real. “People can be fickle, y’know,” he adds through a full mouth. “One minute they want what they ordered and the next they ditch it like miserable assholes. Not like that’s my fault, right? Or the food’s.” He swallows, takes the opportunity to glare and say more clearly, “You not liking something doesn’t mean it goes in the trash and rots. Who made you judge, jury, and executioner, huh?”

Steve stiffens beside him, and Eddie feels the sudden loss of him moving his leg away. And fine, yeah, he’d made a pact with Robin not to air how much they feel Tommy and Carol both suck and definitely don’t deserve Steve’s attempt to mend old bridges. Fuck it, though. If Steve won’t defend him then he’s on his own, right? The door swings both ways. Eddie didn’t start this. 

The tableau is interrupted by Frankie bringing out the three re-made plates himself, raising an exasperated eyebrow at Eddie. Naturally, Eddie responds by shrugging and then taking a large bite of soup-dunked grilled cheese. 

“Sir,” Carol says in an overly honeyed tone, “I’d like to make a formal complaint about our waiter. He’s—” she waves a hand in Eddie’s direction “—sitting at our table and eating our food.”

“Yeah,” Frankie grunts, just as exasperated as before regardless of the target. “And you kids always pull this one way’r another any time you come in. At least someone’s eatin’ it.” 

“We’re not kids,” Tommy says impatiently. “We’re in college.” (Again, Eddie feels Steve flinch slightly at his side, because only two of the people at this table are college students.) “Is this really how you treat paying customers?”

“You ain’t paid yet,” Frankie retorts with finality. He thunks the new plates down on the table and shuffles back to behind the counter, grumbling under his breath. Hard to make out what, but Eddie can guess it’s the one about spoiled brats with nothing to do but spend mommy and daddy’s money, that’s a pretty common one.

A moment later he returns to toss some to-go containers down too, along with the check, silently dropping the gauntlet. Because sure, it’s a quiet day, but this is the only diner in Hawkins ever since Benny’s closed. Frankie isn’t hurting for customers and doesn’t give a shit about being rude to a couple college students, having even fewer customer service bones in his body than his currently off-duty employee. 

Eddie shoots Tommy a baleful grin across the table and takes another big bite of Carol’s abandoned lunch. Grilled cheese has always been a favorite of his, crunchy and gooey at the same time and perfectly accentuated by the tanginess of the tomato soup; he’s quite enjoying it, despite the tension. 

“Fuck this,” Tommy snaps, and starts to stand—when Steve finally makes a move, reaching across the table and closing one hand around Tommy’s forearm. 

“Tommy,” Steve says, and he sounds weary. “You should pay for your food. I’ll cover mine, but don’t dine and dash, man.”

The look on Tommy’s face is one part surprise, two parts petulant. “The fuck, Steve? We didn’t even eat anything, this garbage disposal did.” And he glares at Eddie like this is all his fault, as though he hadn’t started it. Eddie finishes the last of the first half of the sandwich in one huge bite to keep from hissing at him like a feral cat. 

“You asked for new food and they made it,” Steve replies flatly. “Come on.”

Eddie opens his mouth to say something sarcastic about leaving a tip for prompt service, but catches Steve’s warning look out of the corner of his eye and thinks better of it. 

Because Steve is a good guy, he helps box up their food. But he leaves his own two BLTs where they are and doesn’t go to follow them when they scoot out of their side of the booth, not even when they stand around awkwardly for a moment waiting for him to, what? Kick Eddie off the edge of the bench?

Probably. 

Instead, Steve stares Tommy down until even he gets a scowl. “You know what, Harrington? Fuck you. You think you’re so much better than us, because you stayed in this shithole and now everyone thinks you’re some sort of hero for helping rebuild it after the earthquake. Fine! It’s all yours. Hope you enjoy the smell of pig shit.” He shoots Eddie one more parting sneer. “Take that one to the county fair and you’ll probably even win a prize.”

They leave the diner, and Eddie turns to Steve to say… he’s not even sure what, some combination of good riddance and sorry for how much you got caught in the crossfire there man, probably. He’s already forgiven Steve for not speaking up, never able to hold anything against him for long. Doing so probably would have just made even more of a scene, anyway. 

But before he even can, Steve nods to the second half of the grilled cheese and says, “You should finish that.” And when Eddie just blinks at him, he points helpfully to the remaining grilled cheese and soup. “Don’t waste food, Eds.”

Which spins him a little because… is Steve mad at him? He doesn’t seem mad, but he can be good at hiding it sometimes and Eddie can’t tell. And if he’s not mad, then what is this?

“Come on, I know grilled cheese is your favorite.”

Slowly, Eddie brings the other half of the sandwich up to his mouth. He takes a big bite, out of habit. Chews and swallows. The food lands warm and heavy in his stomach, comforting even though he’s still uncertain. Steve watches the whole time, looking calm and collected and not at all like his childhood best friend just told him to go fuck himself. 

When he finishes that, Steve reaches for the plate with the extra BLT and moves it in front of Eddie. “Think you can fit a little more?”

Frankie’s BLTs aren’t what Eddie would call little. Without squishing it down, he actually might have to unhinge his jaw to get a full bite, and he’s eaten so much today already. But then Steve’s thigh bumps against his again, and Steve leans against his side just a little, and there’s a hand… Steve’s hand, slipping palm down between his belly and where it rests on his lap. 

“Um,” Eddie says stupidly. 

“I thought they would’ve grown up more,” Steve says quietly. “But then we got here, and they started saying shit to you… I'm not sorry for giving it a shot, but I’m sorry they’re such assholes. I should’ve at least made us go somewhere else so you didn’t get caught up in it. Thanks for what you said, about… about being fickle and ditching stuff. You’re a good guy, Eddie.”

“I try,” he replies, very much trying to not pop the world’s most inappropriately timed boner. Because even though his pants are cutting into his middle and his shirt has ridden a good inch or two all the way around and that means Steve is touching his bare skin right now, Eddie feels strangely comfortable. He’s off of his tired feet after a long shift, he’s so full that he aches a little, and the guy he—his best friend is close and warm, anchoring him so firmly in his body and the present moment that he feels everything. It’s overwhelming, but so good. 

“And the other reason we should’ve gone somewhere else,” Steve continues, his voice dropped to a smooth murmur now that makes Eddie shiver, “is because I didn’t realize how early you started today.”

Eddie swallows hard, barely processing the words. That tone is making his boner situation worse, and Steve, who is moving his hand in slow, aimless circles along his thigh, could notice it any minute now. He doesn’t want to have to explain it, but feels a hopeless little thrill at the prospect of trying. “My, uh. My shift’s almost over.”

“I can tell. Wanna know how?”

Does he? “Yeah…”

Three things happen in quick succession, bam bam bam. Steve’s breath hits his ear; his hand slides to where Eddie is very obviously chubbed up in his increasingly tight jeans; and Steve whispers, “You move differently when you’re full.”

“Oh fuck,” Eddie breathes, eyes fluttering shut. “Are you—Is this happening?”

An hour ago he’d been looking at baby pictures with a new grandma, and now Steve Harrington is feeling him up at work. 

Steve gives him a little squeeze that makes Eddie want to turn inside out, it feels so good. His blood is pounding in his ears and dick and stomach. “Yeah. Why, have I been running through your dreams?”

That is such a line, Eddie almost says, but apparently lines work with him when it’s Steve saying them. Instead, he nods. 

“Makes more sense than the other way around, doesn’t it?” he manages, hand patting his own belly again as though anyone looking at him could possibly miss what he means. 

“You’ve been in my dreams plenty,” Steve replies, making Eddie shiver again. “But yeah, you don’t do a lot of running in them. So… here’s an idea.” He takes a breath, the first suggestion of nerves Eddie has noticed so far. “If you still have room, I’ll take the rest of this to go and wait for you in my car. Your van’s still in the shop, right?”

Now Steve’s hand is rubbing again, a slow grinding up-down-up-down of his palm through denim that feels so exquisite it’s otherworldly. Eddie is fighting to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head. “Y-yeah…”

“Good. Call your uncle, tell him you don’t need a ride home. I’ll take all this and pull around back and wait for you… Do you have anything else set aside in the kitchen?”

For a second, part of Eddie thinks, Steve knows about that?! But that’s stupid, because he’s laughed about it with all his friends, the way the little old ladies fuss over him and insist he eat while he works—like they didn’t get the memo about the whole cultist, wanted murderer thing, or maybe don’t recognize him from the wanted posters. (He does wear less black and puts his hair up at work, after all.) Laughed about it more as he started to look plumper, went from overfed to overweight. 

What was it Steve had told him once? That… That he shouldn’t worry about it, because he wears it well. Jesus, if Eddie had known he meant it like this—

“Slice of cake,” he whispers, the only way he can stop it coming out as a moan. God, he’s so full and bloated, belly on display in a shirt that might never fit him again, but he wants that cake now. Wants to shove it in his face while Steve keeps touching him, never stop if that’s what it takes to keep his attention. “Ch-chocolate cake that Ethel didn’t eat.”

“Good. Bring that when you clock out,” Steve tells him. “And anything else you want. Maybe a few sodas? Since you sucked down half of mine like it was nothing.”

Eddie’s eyes fly to Steve’s face, but he doesn’t look annoyed. He looks kind of smug, but mostly… hungry. It sends sparks through Eddie’s entire body, that goddamn Harrington charm. 

“I want to see what you look like filled all the way up, big boy.”

The end of Eddie’s shift can’t come soon enough. He’s never moved so fast while already feeling this stuffed before, and Steve’s bright laughter follows him through snatching up all the cash on the table and booking it through the kitchen's swinging door, apron forgotten at the booth.

Permanent tag list (ask to be added): @hotluncheddie @lawrencebshoggoth @tangerinesteve

[onegianthotmess]

✨Amelia’s Peachy Blog Rules✨

Hello to all of my fellow weirdos! Welcome to the hot mess that is my blog! Here, I will establish my rules and the fandoms I write for and will talk about with all of you!

But, a small note to add before we start is that I will not tolerate any sort of hatefulness or rudeness on my blog towards myself or anyone. This will be a free space to debate and discuss opinions and for people to feel safe and comfortable. If you do not like what I post or reblog, please just move along and go about your day without even sparing a glance at my blog.

Also, if I post anything of my own, I will not tolerate it being taken and edited without my permission or reposted without my permission, but reblogs are greatly appreciated. Thank you and I hope you have a good morning/afternoon/evening/night/overall day and stay safe out there!

I Will Write:

🍑 “X Reader” to the best of my abilities (Maybe some OC inserts if I’m up for it, it’ll depend what is requested of me)

🍑 “X Reader” will always have a female or gender neutral reader as I am a female myself and am not comfortable writing for a male reader, but I will do a gender neutral reader if that is requested of me

🍑 Fluff

🍑 SOFT Angst to Fluff (I’m an emotional, sappy wreck, can’t handle hardcore angst)

🍑 Family/Domestic Headcanons

🍑 Romantic Headcanons

🍑 Overall cuteness

🍑 Little Space (Little space is sort of a thing that some people use to destress like me or cope with trauma by mentally aging down to a headspace or age that is younger than they actually are and sometimes some people, either good friends or a romantic partner or someone else, act as a caregiver towards them. It’s not like an adult being attracted to a child in the case of a romantic partner, but rather an adult attracted to another adult who regresses)

🍑 Some suggestive content, depends on what is requested of me

I Will Not Write:

🍑 HARDCORE Smutty Smut

🍑 Character Deaths (I can, but it depends on my mood and the story and who I have to kill off. You can request it, but it may or may not be possible depending on the factors previously listed-)

🍑 HARDCORE Angst

🍑 Pedophilia (Fuck off if you came here for that shit)

🍑 Incest (The fuck is wrong with you people? GET SOME GODDAMN HELP IF YOU INTO THAT!)

🍑 Little Space smut (If it’s your little space, you can do what you’d like, but I’m personally uncomfortable with writing this kind of thing and I’m going to keep that boundary in place.)

🍑 Anything to do with racism, homophobia, transphobia and just discrimination against anyone in general. This is a safe space for people to enjoy some nice fanfiction, not to be haters and to be hated on!

Fandoms I Partake In:

🍑 MHA/BNHA (I have not finished the anime nor the manga, I don’t have any services to watch it, so no spoilers please!)

🍑 IkemenVampire (I might try out a few more Ikemen games, so be aware of that)

🍑 IkemenVillains (I’d like to be in the middle of a William and Ellis sandwich. That will be all-)

🍑 Fruits Basket (Haven’t watched the third season, in the middle of trying to rewatch the first two because it’s been so long)

🍑 Demon Slayer (I AM READY FOR SEASON FOUR, BABES!!!)

🍑 TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Specifically 2012, Bayverse, Rise, and Mutant Mayhem)

🍑 HTTYD (How to Train Your Dragon)

🍑 MK (Mortal Kombat. I was a late 2000’s baby that grew up playing MK9 as my first ever Mortal Kombat game, so I don’t know the full cast of characters from previous games, but I have a good list of characters and story from earlier games in my head from the videos I’ve watched from my wormy brain hyperfixating on Mortal Kombat)

🍑 Harry Potter (I’ve only watched the movies, but I have seen videos about the books, so I do know what the books were like, to an extent at least)

🍑 FNaF (Five Nights at Freddy’s. HOW TF HAVE I GONE A WHOLE MONTH WITHOUT ADDING THIS?! WELL, NOW I HAVE ADDED IT, IN MID-NOVEMBER OF 2023!)

🍑 Mariolore (It’s these cosplay shorts by this amazing cosplay couple named DinoBunny that are a sort of a spin-off of the Mario franchise, but with its own unique story involving adaptations of the characters and different events based on what happens in the original story/franchise. I watch them on YouTube, just in case that is relevant to how much of the story has actually been released)

🍑 Resident Evil (I’m not too well versed on the overall story, but I know the story from the RE1 Remake, the RE3 Remake, the RE4 Remake, the RE4 Remake DLC: Separate Ways, RE7: Biohazard, RE8/Village, and RE8/Village DLC: Shadows of Rose. I just know, in summary, that Umbrella Corporation bad and pulled some fuckery with the T-virus and bioweapon shit, the Connections are bad and made bioweapon shit, Mother Miranda pretty much started it all in hopes to revive her daughter, and Rose is doing some shit working with Chris Redfield who helped to raise her in honor of Ethan’s dying wish during the whole village incident. I’ll try to get better versed on the story and characters in the future, but that is all I know at the moment)

🍑 My Happy Marriage (Anime watcher! No manga reading here yet!)

🍑 Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (My fifth grade teacher read the first couple books to me and my class while also showing us the Netflix series to show the differences between the two and make it more fun. I ended up watching the whole series as it progressed outside of school and was partially traumatized by the episode where Sunny almost died from a fucking fungus. That scared the shit out of me, but it’s still a damn good series if I do say so myself.)

🍑 Poppy Playtime (I find it an interesting concept and I may write something for it at one point!)

🍑 Sofia the First (It was one of my favorite shows as a kid and I’m so sad we never got a continuation of the story to see them grow up! ALSO I’M SO FUCKING MAD WE NEVER GOT SOFIA AND HUGO’S WEDDING!!!)

🍑 Komi Can’t Communicate (Komi Shouko is my wife. That’s it.)

🍑 The Way of the Househusband (Anime watcher!! And I think Tatsu would be such a cool and funny dad with all his yakuza lingo!)

🍑 Monster Prom (Haven’t seen any other full playthroughs, I’m watching a Monster Camp one rn, and I wanna makeout with Damien and gossip with his little sister that he DEFINITELY has because I fucking said so, fuckers-)

🍑 Buddy Daddies (You know that scene where they’re running away into the woods while Rei shoots back at that guy’s goonies?? Yeah, I wanna do that with Rei because I love him and want to take care of him while also forcing him to learn household chores!)

🍑 Yuuri!!! On Ice (I’VE FINALLY GOT CRUNCHYROLL ON MY PHONE PEOPLE!!!)

🍑 Twisted-Wonderland (My current “Holy Trinity” contains Riddle, Deuce, and Malleus-)

🍑 Aphmau (Were you a MyStreet kid or a Diaries kid? I was a MyStreet kid!)

🍑 Nimona (Ambrosius and Ballister are definitely girl dads and I’d like to petition for a sequel to Nimona, pwease!!!)

🍑 Law & Order: SVU (Olivia and Fin are my favorite characters and I know the show is probably bad for my anxiety, but I shall still continue to watch it!)

🍑 I’ll add onto the fandoms list if anymore come to mind

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

Thank you for reading my rules and I look forward to your requests! I hope you enjoy your journey on my blog, fellow weirdos! Have a peachy time!

[galaxywhump]

if you're interested and willing: would love to see wren having a bad day (depressed/frustrated/etc) and seeking out comfort from daniel unprompted, and daniel's reaction to that

[SV-240 masterlist]

contents: forced relationship whump, slavery whump, creepy/intimate whumper, depression, creepy comfort.

~~~

"What's wrong, sweetheart?"

At least, Wren thinks, Daniel still knows that something must be wrong when he sits down next to him of his own free will; and something must be even more wrong when he leans his head against his captor's shoulder.

It's not a good day. He's not in any physical pain, he hasn't been tortured in a while, but that just means that torture is approaching, which doesn't help.

It's just depression, really. It almost feels trivial in this nightmare, but he can't deny there's no way to avoid depression in his situation, and… maybe it had been there even before the kidnapping.

Apparently it took being kidnapped and sold for him to realize his mental health has been in shambles for a while.

Today he needs comfort, but continuously reminding himself that he’s going to escape does not cut it. He needs touch, contact, but the only person who could provide it is the one who’s been hurting him this whole time, making him depressed. 

Maybe he could make it work, get that much needed touch and closeness while forgetting that it's Daniel giving it to him.

"Can you be quiet?" Wren mutters, closing his eyes.

"Why?"

"Because I just need you to hold me and not say anything and let me feel like shit in peace."

Daniel huffs, amused, and wraps his arm around Wren, holding him closer. Wren is tense at first, but when he realizes that Daniel seems to have agreed, he allows himself to relax in his embrace.

“You know you shouldn’t be ordering me around, right?”

“I’m not,” Wren groans. “If you want to punish me, then whatever, but later. Please.”

“Alright.” Daniel’s voice is soft, affectionate, and Wren doesn’t know - nor does he care, really - whether the word carries with it the promise of punishment or forgiveness.

Daniel goes back to reading - Berkeley had brought some new books, so he has plenty to read; on second thought, Berkeley’s recent visit might have contributed to Wren’s foul mood - not saying another word. Wren takes a deep breath, keeping his eyes closed, and tries to get far away from the house. He’s curled up on a couch, or an armchair, or a bed, in a living room, or a bedroom, it doesn’t matter; he’s sitting on something comfortable, and, more importantly, he’s being held by… someone. Someone without a face or a voice, who, after a minute or two, starts to run their hand up and down Wren’s arm, gently, like they could never do harm.

He knows their name and just how much harm they’re capable of doing, but he has to pretend he doesn’t. Right now the person is nothing more than a source of comfort he so desperately needs, and they want nothing in return. He’ll have to open his eyes eventually, face his captor’s delight at him seeking out his touch like this; it’s the price he’ll have to pay for this moment of peace.

Eventually, when he escapes, there will be no price. Until then, trading tiny bits of his determination for tiny bits of comfort is all he has.

~~~

taglist: @faewhump @inky-whump @whole-and-apart-and-between @whatwasmyprevioususername @procrastinatingsab @funky-little-glitter-bomb @goneuntil @redstainedsocks @luminouswhump @lonesome--hunter @as-a-matter-of-whump @renkocchi @whump-only @muddy-swamp-bitch @girlwithacoolcat @watermelons-dont-grow-on-trees @sophierose002 @whump-headspace @to-whump-or-not-to-whump @kixngiggles @ohwhumpydays @whumpvp @wibbly-wobbly-whump @stab-the-son-of-a @his-unspoken-words @pumpkin-spice-whump @onlyhappywhenitpains @suspicious-whumping-egg @morning-star-whump @burtlederp @there-will-always-be-blood

[this-has-returned]

Part 3 of Dwarf Fortress meets Deep Rock Galactic...

Reiner sat down beside Thorn at the Abyss Bar. Behind them, by the barrel disposal area (which Karl had modified into a game for everyone), Ulla sat in a low chair. Donner was nowhere to be seen, as he had left for Hoxxes ten minutes before, bringing Bosco along.

Reiner sighed. Thorn knew this meant that something was on the scout's mind, and he was inviting Thorn to ask first.

The gunner had made it very clear that they didn't have the energy to worry about the thoughts and opinions of other people, but Reiner often had something to share anyway. So, shortly after Thorn was contracted, they and Reiner devised a system where the mulling of thoughts would be hinted at, before being shared, allowing Thorn a chance to decline the start of a conversation.

When Ulla first learned of this, she found it to be rather rude, but Reiner had explained it simply: "Thorn provides the mobile shields, along with a few thousand rounds of armor-piercing death. As long as they drop with us in tip-top condition, they will always go back to save our asses in the end. I think being mindful of the mercenary's social energy budget is the least we can do."

Fair enough, everyone had agreed.

Today, Thorn seemed to have some extra energy to spend, and nodded to the scout. "Something on your mind, Reiner?"

Reiner was a little too anxious to start speaking. "Yeah, uh, does Urist seem a little...off? He's been in a rather strange mood lately. He was watching the DRG training videos, but then he suddenly stood up, and walked over to the workshop."

Thorn blinked, and leaned to see Urist across the area, his back facing the rest of the team.

"How long has he been like that?" asked the gunner, inspecting their empty mug. "I must have been dissociating again..."

"He's just been...standing there, for..." Reiner stammered, trying to estimate the passage of time.

"I think he's been there for about an hour, now," said Ulla.

Thorn looked back over to the distant, stone-still Urist. "Hm. Well, Reiner, that seems like your problem. I'm not exactly in the headspace for talking about his feelings right now."

Reiner rolled his eyes. "Rock and Stone, ya cold bastard..."

The scout left the bar to go talk to Urist.

"You suppose he's home-sick?" asked Ulla.

Thorn shrugged. Ulla stood to walk over to the railing across the bar, trying to get a better view of the workshop.

An uncertain amount of time had passed, and then Urist's voice exploded into the silence. "Gold!! Gold, I need gold!!"

"Oh, okay," Reiner stammered, a little shocked by Urist's shouting. "You got a purchase to make...? We can set you up with some cred—"

"No!! No purchases; I need gold!" shouted Urist.

Thorn shook themself out of their timeless brainfog, and stood up, wondering if a brawl was about to start. Reiner could defend himself, but there was little value in having someone sit out, because they were stuck in a medical bed.

"Okay, okay," said Reiner, holding up his hands defensively. "I can get you some gold...! Here, you can have some of mine; I just need to get to my locker..."

Thorn could almost see Urist shaking, all the way from the bar. Reiner grabbed some gold nuggets from his locker, nervously eyeing Urist like a prey animal. Normally, other minerals were stored in the lockers for various homebrew solutions, but Reiner liked to reserve some gold, just in case shit hit the drills, and he needed to escape on a cheap transport one day.

Urist grabbed the gold, manic and desperate, and slammed it down on the workshop table.

"Shape!! Mold!!" the man screamed.

Ulla started to make her way down to the workshop.

"Are...are you trying to sculpt with gold...?" she asked, gauging the danger of standing near the frazzled one.

"Yes!!" Urist shouted back, wild-eyed. "Where are your furnaces and anvils?!"

Ulla blinked. "Uh...well, we don't have furnaces or anvils, but we do have metal files, punches, and electric crucibles..."

Thorn made their way over as well, more to watch the show than to break up a potential brawl, at this point.

Urist emitted a ragged scream, thrashing a bit at the air. He was obviously trying to contain himself, but something had clearly gotten into him.

"By the beard, Urist, calm the fuck down," Ulla snapped. "Here, I'm sure you understand how most of this stuff works, but have you used a crucible before...?"

Urist wasn't having it. He exploded into a fugue of activity, abusing the gold in every imaginable way, as though he were racing against a competitor to save his own life.

The three other dwarves backed up, giving him space, and watching in concern, confusion, and fascination. At one point, Urist threw open Reiner's locker and grabbed a handful of nitra and bismor.

"Uh-oh," Ulla muttered, taking a few more steps back. Reiner followed, but didn't know why.

"What's the problem?" asked Thorn, not moving.

"So," she began, "nitra is normally inert, but its internal structure stores a lot of potential pulsefield energy, kinda like morkite does. Our comms, interstellar drives, and artificial gravity generators run off of the stuff. Short-ranged stuff or devices like your shield tend to use nitra, as morkite is too slow-burn."

"Yeah?" muttered Thorn. "Well, we get up to all kinds of shit in the tunnels, especially when Donner's around. I've never seen nitra or morkite explode or anything."

"No," Ulla stammered, "but the crucible gets rather hot, and gold is a good conductor, and Urist is doing all kinds of wild shit, and it'll be just my luck if sets up the right conditions for a pulsewave reaction."

"What's the worst that could happen?" asked Thorn "He's not working with a lot of nitra. It's maybe a handful."

"Well..." began Ulla, trying to do some mental math. "Pulsewaves can decay a few different ways... If it enters gravity decay, it might shatter first, and those shards could fly about. If it's just field decay, then Klaus will see a noise spike on comms, but nothing more. Again, it's probably fine, but whatever happens, it's starting within Urist's hands. Just hope the temperatures stay low enough, and local EM noise doesn't affect the gold much. With luck, the hot temperatures will make the gold more resistant. He should really be wearing safety gloves, though."

Reiner glanced at her for a moment. "Why the fuck aren't you in R&D, again?"

She shrugged. "I like being present during the field tests."

Urist was going wild on the bismor, and the nitra seemed to behave so far, even as he hammered it into small shards on the table. Eventually, he lost his patience while filing the bismor into shape, and went to melt it into the surface of the gold, just as he did with the nitra shards.

"It's like watching an artist's timelapse," whispered Reiner.

Another wave of furious motion followed, and finally the poor craftsdwarf finally collapsed. On the table was a golden figurine of a hideous, six-limbed, lizard-like creature. It menaced with spikes of nitra, and studs of bismor. All craftsdwarfship was of the highest quality.

"Behold," Urist croaked, drained of energy. "It is my masterwork, and I claim it as a family heirloom."

"Uh, okay," stammered Reiner. "What the fuck is it, friend?"

"It's a figurine, depicting Kaldath Roughtraveled, the demon that evicted me from the universe I had once known," the exhausted dwarf explained.

Thorn tilted their head, giving the work a brief look-over. "Uh...care to explain how you came upon such a creature...?"

Urist turned his head to look the gunner in the eyes.

"We dug too deep..." he whispered.

Thorn and Reiner shared a glance.

"Rock and Stone..." whispered Ulla, leaning over to inspect the detail of the art piece.

See the infopage here!

[allblackeverything888]

🌞♋🌔♐

listening to: Tool Lateralus (2001)

dear diary,

i can feel myself coming out of the deep fog i’ve been in. music is always the main indicator of my overall mood. the clearest indication of the particular headspace im in is whatever musical cloud i’ve got going on around me. i’d been listening to jungle, the darkest i could fiind, early 90s darkside tracks for the past few years. jungle is probably one of my favorite genres of music, because it really revels in dark spaces &creates pockets of joy &self-abandonment in the midst of great pain. im grateful it could go to those dark places w me &keep me company. that said, that fog was heavy and im glad to be emerging from it.

i like my music heavy, but my clearest, healthiest headspace is one of frenetic musical curiosity &exploration. soooooo, listening to one VERY specific subgenre of VERY dark electronic music for 3+ years was truly me going thru the valley of the shadows, as it were. necessary—i got what i needed—but christ im glad to be moving on.

i don’t know why 90s music has a chokehold on my psyche, but it is what it is, and im on my 90s alt rock shit rn. im working on my first book, tentatively title ｔｈｅ ｚｅｒｏ ｐｏｒｔａｌ, &the first chapter links my ideas w the smashing pumpkins song ‘zero.' so, i’ve been reading up on mellon collie &the infinite sadness-era SP lore. (ca. 1994-1996). reading abt billy corgan’s headspace while creating that album is interesting. his sense of grand ambition, of wanting to simultaneously sneer at and fully embrace this temporary role of ‘rock god’ or idol…

i was struck by the fact that the album, and the whole concept for “Zero” as a song, a character, an ethos, was borne from this strange series of events that created the void space for Billy Corgan & the Pumpkins to essentially become the rock idols of their ambitious dreams. when Nirvana, the de facto alt rock gods of the era, had to bow out of their headliner spot at Lollapalooza ‘94 after Kurt K.O.’d &the band went instant kaput noodles, who was called to replace them as headliners? The Smashing Pumpkins.

im obsessed with this idea of fated events, of purpose paired with passion, the delicate dance between ambition and arrogance, posturing &pretention. like, you can’t realize a dream if you never dream it, but also, why bother even attempting the realization of a dream if at least some part of you doesn’t believe you can make it all the way there.

my research led me to this cute lil smashing pumpkins fan pod, and they smartly related Billy Corgan’s transformation between Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (ca. ‘93-’95/’96) to a quote from the very mid biopic about another rock legend, Elton John. the Rocketman quote goes,

you got to kill the person you were born to be in order to become the person you want to be.

which is very much exactly the concept i want to use SP’s “Zero” to illustrate at the start of my book. i’m going thru a death and rebirth process currently, dying to the old &recognizing that if im ever gonna get close to any of these dreams that keep dancing spectacularly thru my head, this current version of me is going to have to die. kaput. zero out into nothingness to be born again.

[strangelysamantha]

bittersweet ☆

possessive!rafe x plus!sized reader.

warnings: crazy rafe, possessive and obsessive behavior, swearing, underage drinking, reader gets hurt, physical fight, ect.

words: 2,167.

summary: you went to a local party by the beach when rafes unstable side peeked out. jj maybank finds you alone, and decides to talk to you. rafe gets possessive and upset, thinking that jj was hitting on you.

request?: no :)

a/n: i’m working on requests but since my computer is down it’s taking longer because i hate typing on my phone especially because tumblr always deletes what i’ve written. i’m hopeful that my computer will be fixed by tomorrow, until then i’ll try and produce a few stories since i’ve been MIA for a few days. remember to like and comment if you enjoy this! <3

my masterlist

——————————————————————————

“please just come with me.” rafe frowned as he sat on your porch pleading to you, telling you why you should go to a beach party with him. “why rafe?” you frown, not in a partying mood. instead, you would much rather stay home and do a movie marathon. “please baby, i swear i’ll make it up to you.” you roll your eyes at his begging. “fine, but only because you are so cute.” his eyes sparkle as a smile lifts on his lips, you pull him into a quick kiss.

you walk back inside to get dressed for the bonfire. rafe was wearing blue and orange, and you wanted to match him. so, you grabbed a pair of dark blue ripped jean shorts, and an orange v-neck. you apply some perfume and jewelry before putting on some shoes. just as you were finishing up, rafe walked into your room smirking. “awh, you wanted to match with me.” he smiled. despite you knowing his look was filled with adoration you couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable under his long glance. “obviously, don’t you want people to know i’m yours?” you question him, waiting for his response. “well, matching clothes won’t change anything. everyone already knows.” you nod smiling before pulling him into a kiss.

once you pull away from the kiss, he grabs your hand and leads you to the car as he drives to the beach. his hand finding its way on your thigh; gripping it tightly. while he drove to the beach, you paid close attention to your phone, checking social media for any major updates. rafes grasp on your thigh loosened as the car came to a halt. you were parked on the beach, the sun was already setting.

you both exit the car, rafe swiftly moving from his side of the car to yours. “thank you for coming with me.” his hand finds yours, pulling them together. “of course, i love hanging out with you.” he lets go of your hand, and moves his arm to hold closely around your waist. the two of you begin to walk towards the already drunken teen filled beach.

you frown at the amount of trash that litters the sand. you stay close to rafe, as he approaches topper and kelce. “hey guys.” you say to them to make conversation. they nod in your direction, acknowledging you before their attention turns towards rafe again. you don’t pay any mind to what the boys are discussing. after a while you become bored, so you slowly slip out of rafes arm to go get a drink. “i’m going to go get a drink, do you want one?” you ask rafe, and he glances at you smiling. “yes please, thanks baby.” you lean in for a quick kiss before leaving to go get drinks. you weren’t a heavy drinker, always scared of what you would say or do under the influence, so you grab yourself a water and grab a beer for rafe.

you return to the spot you were in earlier, but it’s now vacant. rafe, topper, and kelce all leaving you behind. you frown, looking around for them but coming up short. you had no idea where they could be since this beach was huge. you don’t bother wasting your time looking for them, instead you start to head for the bonfire.

you weren’t surprised that rafe had left you all alone. this always happened. he would beg you to go to something, just to abandon you half way through it. it didn’t bother you, it just worried you, scared of what he was doing without you.

once you arrived at the bonfire, you decided to down the drink once made for rafe, the beer stinging your throat. you drank three more chugs before drinking water as well. it doesn’t take long for the alcohol to come into effect. you knew it had clouded your judgement when you were laughing at jj maybanks jokes of all people. “i’m telling you, these people were fucking crazy.” you giggled as he made exaggerated reactions. “you’re telling me! that sounds scary as fuck. i wouldn’t have survived.” he shook his head looking down at you, “i’m sure you would have figured something out.” you nod at him.

“have you seen those dudes since?” you ask, intrigued by his story. “actually, yeah. their story isn’t the brightest… sheriff told me that they-” his voice cut off as he made a slicing noise above his throat. your eyes widened in shock. “oh my god! really??” you grab his arm, “what if they came back for you! bro no way…” your heart rate quickens at the thought of evil men chasing random kids. “no, i know right, scary as shit. i guess it’s bittersweet because they died, but now they aren’t after us anymore.” he shrugs, sipping his red solo cup. “i guess. it’s still scary. so many people are unexpectedly dying nowadays, i definitely-” you were interrupted as rafe put an arm around you, eyeing jj up and down.

“continue baby, what were you saying?” rafe asked, smiling at you for a split second before it disappeared when his eyes focused on jj again. “oh we were just talking about bad men, and how this town is scarier than it used to be.” he nods at you. “jj what are you doing talking to my girl?” jj stands up straighter, “why do you care? do you own her or something?” rafe scoffed, “yes.” the confusion on your face was evident and jj was quick on acknowledging it. “oh really? by the look on her face, she doesn’t agree.” he glances at you, but you have quickly recovered. “what are you talking about maybank?” you interrupted the two immediately not wanting a fight to break out. “i was just talking to jj because he had a funny story. it wasn’t anything like that, i swear babe.” you words slurred together and it was evident you weren’t in the right headspace.

rafes eyes widened as he fully realized that you were so intoxicated that you had no idea what was going on, “what the fuck maybank? you got her drunk for what? you trying to fuck her?” jj couldn’t believe rafes nerve. “one, she was drunk when she came up to me, and two, i don’t need to fuck her, i already have.” your heart dropped at jj's confession.

“maybank, do you want to take that back?” you could tell rafe was trying to give jj a chance to redeem himself before all hell breaks loose. your hand tightened on rafes bicep trying to get him to move on, but he wouldn’t budge. “can't take back what’s already happened.” jj shrugged again, smirking.

rafe was the first one to throw a punch, you stumbled back as he had pushed you away. with your luck, your head had landed right against the beverage table, scratching the side of your face from your temple to the side of your cheek. you hiss in pain, moving your fingers to feel it. when you retreat your hand you see it covered in blood. you groan in pain, hissing as the cool air makes it sting.

you clumsy stand up, looking ahead to see rafe and jj were still fighting. “rafe!” you weakly call out, but he was stuck in his own little bubble as he pounded his fists against jjs face. you stumble away, walking far from the beach. you were too tired to even try to process what was going on. the yelling behind you quietly faded as you made your way farther along the beach.

not even a minute later you hear rafe running after you. “what rafe?” you ask, but your back is still turned to him. “baby, please just- i’m sorry okay. i, i don’t know. i was just scared he’d take you from me. i don’t want to lose you, you are all i have. you mean too much to me for some pogue to take.” his rambling only pissed you off more. “rafe, please. i have a headache, all i want is to go home.” you frown.

his eyes moved from the sand up to your face, surprised by the huge gash on your face that was oozing blood. “baby?! who did this to you?” you couldn’t contain your anger any longer. you used all your strength, pushing his shoulders back. “you did! you fucking asshole.” the fact that he didn’t even budge from the push you sent his way, pissed you off even more. “baby, i, you know i would never do anything to intentionally hurt you?” your silence only scared him even more.

“baby, i wouldn’t- i didn’t mean to hurt you.” his breathing was heavy as the realization hit him. he had undeniably hurt you, and he had undoubtedly lost you. “no, because this can’t be happening. i can't lose you. baby, i- it was an accident. please, you gotta understand i didn’t want to hurt you, it was just jj fucking all over you, and the way he tried to claim you, saying he already had you, it just- the anger i couldn’t even hold myself back.” you nod at his words. “rafe i understand that. i, just. i don’t want this. do you think i want you to assault every guy who even looks at me? it makes me feel like shit. do you know how shitty it makes me feel? that you think i would chose anyone else when i have you. it hurts to know that you think i’m not loyal enough.” you frown, tears easily falling out of your eyes.

“baby- it’s not you i’m worried about.” you nod, “i know… it just doesn’t feel that way.” he goes to speak again but you quickly interrupt him. “can we please continue this at your house? my head seriously hurts.” his eyes soften, his hand cupping your cheek. he hesitated before he pulled you into a kiss, when you kissed him back he could feel his smile come back. “rafe.” you say again, before pointing to your head. “right baby, i’m sorry. let's go.” you nod.

he walks you to his car, opening the door for you before you hop in. he puts your seatbelt on for you. his protective side shining through once again. he walks around, before hopping in himself. he starts the car. “seatbelt…?.” you question. he laughs quietly. “of course, baby.” you nod as he puts his seatbelt on. his hand reached for your thigh again, before he drove the two of you to his house.

when you arrived, your head was pounding. you could feel it throbbing, the blood dripping onto your orange v neck. you frown at the sight. the two of you walk inside, and he immediately pulls you into his room, placing you on the edge of his bed. he runs to his bathroom grabbing a table cloth and the first aid kit.

he opens the first aid kit, placing it beside you. he takes the wet washcloth, wiping away the blood. after cleaning it, he added antibacterial cream, and then covered it in gauze. he kissed the bandage covering it before walking to his closet.

“here. wear this, and i’ll wash your t-shirt.” you nod, “thank you rafe.” he turns around and you swiftly change your t-shirt. he turns around, his heart hammering inside his chest, still scared about where you stood.

“rafe. i don’t want to lose you. i love you a lot, but i don’t want to continue this if every time a guy looks at me funny, you beat him up. i appreciate you protecting me, but they aren’t worth it.” he nods, soaking up every word. “if you can promise me that you won’t fight random people anymore, then i think we can work this out, and work through this.” he smiles softly, “is that a deal?” you ask. “of course baby. i promise i won’t fight anyone unless they really deserve it.” you roll your eyes, “fine. that’s good enough; but please, let’s hope it doesn’t get too bad.” he laughs, “let’s hope.” you grab his hands, realizing they were quite bruised. “let’s ice these.” he follows you to the kitchen, as you prepare an ice pack.

once the ice pack is ready, you place it on one hand, the other is intently grabbing your thigh. “baby you don’t have to do all this.” he reached for the ice and you lightly pushed his hand away. “you fixed me up, let me fix you up.” he sat back and watched as you cared for his bruises. rafe was glad he didn’t lose you, and he was glad you were still there with him. having you so close to him made him realize he couldn’t sacrifice anything to lose you. he kissed your bandages once more before you two prepared for bed and started to comfortably cuddle together.

[partyinthemysterymachine]

you've probably been asked this before, but what advice would you give to someone who's thinking of getting into writing? love ur stuff btw

[three months later]

hello!! THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!!!!!! i super appreciate that!! it fills me with mountainous joy and it's SUCH a high honor!!!! i actually haven’t been asked that before (iirc, that is….. and my memory is a pot of fried and boiled milk steak). that means a lot that you’d ask me for advice 😭😭🥚🙏❤️❤️❤️ thank you so much for that compliment, that really means the world to me. 

this is what gets me through, what i’ve learned and what works for me; and i hope it’ll do the same for you. 

when it comes to approaching writing (and drawing), i have some rules, and they are as follows:

do whatever the fuck you want.

do it FOR YOU.  

do whatever the fuck you want - this time, with feeling!

be kind to yourself. 

be messy. write messily. be unpoetic and frivolous, use the same word 6 times in a sentence. who curr. when inspiration hits, grab it by the tit and honk. you can edit later. 

and finally: do whatever the FUCK you want, FOR YOU, and BE KIND TO YOURSELF. (and then do it once more, with EXTRA feeling!)

and of course one of the hardest things to do:

don’t give a SINGLE SHIT - not even ONE. FUCK. EVER.

(and do it with a smile!)

NOW LET'S GET INTO IT:

DEADLINES & WORD COUNT & WRITING EVERY DAY, OH MY!

in the beginning of GOOMT, i used to set a deadline for myself; get a chapter out every 7 - 10 days (my best friend and editor’s schedule permitting lmao hiiii Ren <3 she’s gonna murder me one day bless her). 

setting a deadline isn’t viable for me anymore. GOOMT will get out when it does; especially right now, while i’m in an important arc that’s setting up some plot points and future. 

i also tend to write on average 3000 - 4500 words per chapter, with a page average of about 8 - 12. (current library arc not included. Yikes. sorry everyone!!) it’s not an intentional thing either; it’s whatever the chapter comes out to be. dialogue fluffs up the page count a lot too (and dialogue is my strength lmao, but sometimes, god shut UP, Harry!!!!! i’m so with James on that one lmaooo) (jk i love u baby, u make my world go ‘round in a blender) i feel that setting a goal or bracket for x amount of words or page count per chapter is stifling for me, so i don’t do it. 

same, again, with deadlines. this arc is gonna take a hot minute and i’ve written a lot for it already and so i can’t force myself to adhere to anything. if that works for you, peachy; it’s all about trial and error, and, u guessed it - BEING KIND TO YOURSELF. 

beating yourself up for not getting something done just does harm in the end and lord have mercy it happens anyway - but that there is a muscle to build.

you won’t always be perfect, so make the most of what you do at the moment, then come back to it later. 

a popular piece of advice for writers is to write x amount of words a day, or to write ANYTHING every. single. day..... and that might be great for some, but for me, it doesn’t work so well. i don’t like to force myself to write. or edit. sometimes, i do - when i’m frustrated with a chapter or a part, i’ll pluck at it or reread it when i’m >:(((( the entire time or am impatient, or just straight up am NOT in the mood or headspace. sometimes i can power through and get inspiration!! other times, i just get more upset and frustrated. mixed bag. overall, tho, i try not to press my luck. 

figure out what works for you. what works for me in what i write, or when i write..... is vibes.

wish i was joking, but. can't make some shit up, mates.

that said.... trial and error. i don't believe in the write every day advice. i don't believe in setting a writing schedule because my brain doesn't operate like that. might work for you or someone else though and oh my god i wish that were me, LOL. i salute your shorts.

===

TAKE A BREAK ONCE IN A WHILE WOULDJA/[SALLY NMBC VOICE] BUT I DON'T WANNA BEEEE PATIENT

no seriously.

take your breaks. try not to feel guilty; cope with feeling guilty and learn how to get over those hurdles; and press on when you can.

your health and wellbeing comes first and foremost. the story will not thrive when you aren't. take your breaks; take six months to get out the next chapter. your readers will still be there when you do, and new readers will be excited to read something that just cropped up on their feeds.

this isn't a race. this isn't your job. this is fun. be patient with yourself. you'll get there when you get there.

be patient, mfer. or else 🔪

===

WRITE SIMPLY AKA OH MY GOD DON’T BE LIKE ME AND ABUSE ONLINE THESAURUSES OR KEEP 50+ GOOGLE DOCUMENTS OF WORDS I’D LIKE TO USE OH GOD BRO DON’T DO IT

WRITE SIMPLY.

this might be big talk and side-eyeing coming from me lmao and you know what?: fair.

but i mean it. purple prose can be too much of a good (or bad) thing, and never you mind my 5 google documents of words and definitions i’ve saved for future use that average about 45 pages do NOT do as i do—

however wordhippo is my favorite thesaurus site and use it - but use it well, and use it WISELY. lord knows i’ve got a few chapters where i went HAYWIRE on the thesaurus and synonyms— and god, i’ll come back to it much later when i re-edit everything!!!! but don’t be like me. be intentional; be precise. it’s a hard act to juggle and don’t get down on yourself. it takes time, and it takes a lot of work and practice. it’s a constant struggle. 

that’s the beauty of art. 

just word barf onto the page. fuckin'. stream-of-conscioussness that shit. you can fix it later. 

===

WRITING OUT OF ORDER

one of the things i like to do when i write is write out future scenes. i’ll get a bout of inspiration and just go for it, no edits - even if it’s just inane blather. get the idea out!! consider it a skeleton for beefing later. (yummy.)

GOOMT has a folder called SCENES NOTES wherein there are, you guessed it, notes for future scenes - and i’ve written a metric fuckload of these.

they're separated into categories, such as "general" and "romantic". i know i'll want to use in the future somewhere. many of them date as far back as 2019 and 2020 and haven't yet seen the light of day, while others have already been published. some are still waiting for their time.

99% of these scenes are going to need heavy editing and tweaking because they are all written without knowing where the hell they're actually going to go, or if they'll ever get used. the "prom stories" scene in ch48 was one of these random ass scenes notes that i KNEW i wanted included somewhere, but where? how?

i had no idea. i just knew i did NOT want to shoe-horn it in (and there's more about that later in this post). there's another coming after the library arc (ho ho ho!!) that has been sitting waiting for its time probably since 2020 or maybe early 2021. i do hoard a lot of random scenes and writing though i do understand i MIGHT never use it; but if anything..

consider it as character development.

===

HEHE WHAT A FUNNY LIL GUY WITH A FUNNY LIL PERSONALITY

character development.................

rubs face. what can i even say about this LOL. pull shit out of your ass.

again: no, really.

believe it or not i used to create a LOT of OCs and while i still have a pet project and OCs lurking in the background, there is one thing i learned to do in regards to creating/developing them, and this one neat trick that i'm still very good at it to this day:

pulling shit out of my ass.

whenever i get a character question (what do you think x feels about y) or response to a hc meme or w/e, there is a very, very high chance (about 80-90%, depending) that i haven't thought about this (or the character in terms of personal ideas) before. most of the time it's actual just stream of consciousness.

tbh. i recommend that as a writing exercise. taking a character question meme and answering it yourself. go into details if you can. it doesn't matter how "cringe" or whatever it is. write. cook that lil mfer in your head. spin 'em around like a salad spinner. just. write.

i can't get enough of detail. i fucking love and THRIVE on the mundane. slice of life is my entire soul. i have found that in writing, the most mundane and "boring" pieces of a character's slice of life becomes so crucial to what they become in my writing. i'm constantly picking up and deciding new tidbits/factoids. those really help set foundation and building blocks for the character (and story)'s future.

however, as with the advice above with writing out of order: it's incredible what happens in character development when just dotting down those notes.

and don't be afraid to let the characters do it themselves, too. the sentiment is super real about you as the writer having zero will sometimes over what a character does lmfao. that's just how it be.

also remember: people are extremely diverse and surprising. i dont' think it's fair to you or your writing or the characters to hold back purely because you fear something you may have discovered about them (or backlash for writing it).

for example: James "no fat chicks" Sunderland, re: ch61.

i've joked about it before; but since it's actually published GOOMT canon that James is an Actual Asshole about fat people (Harry), i was actually pretty damn worried that i could get some flack for it, LOL, despite knowing this piece about him for quite some time. it, while rather :\, is important to James's characterization and development throughout GOOMT.

not even Harry is safe from the ":\ seriously bro?" disappointment moments. and it's going to be nail biting for me to write and publish them because i of course don't want to face flack for it; but i would consider it a disservice to me and my writing and my storytelling if i didn't. people are disappointing; people are surprising. they're flawed and weird and fantastical. they progress and regress.

so let your characters do that, too.

===

PLANNING & OUTLINING & ORGANIZING LORE

this is a tough one for me. with GOOMT, its lore is in constant development and it’s massive. here’s what my organization looks like for GOOMT (with redacted folders bc Spoilers - and i’m a VERY superstitious writer lmao):

PLOT folder i have:

and within character ref:

may look like i have my shit together, but looks are deceiving LOL. it is a bit of a mess but hey at least i’ve got the heart, right? 

i recommend setting up something like this if you’re gonna be doing something even small and medium sized, and do THIS ONE NEAT TRICK (that i didn’t do in the beginning because i had no idea what i was doing, nor thinking GOOMT would get this far):

SAVE. YOUR DETAILS. AS. YOU. GO. ALONG. 

!!!!

really mate. superstition, unfortunately, doesn’t allow me to show you GOOMT’s versions exactly, but here are some examples, with [REDACTED]s in effect LOL 

PLOT:

CHARACTER REF:

MONSTERS:

it’s imperative!!! that you keep your shit together as best as possible.. and perhaps even MOREso that you actually LOOK at it more than twice a year ansishdhdjfhfjsbf good god i can forget it’s there so often and then i’m like. well WHO BETRAYED ME. WHO DID THAT. WHO FORGOT TO TELL AND/OR REMIND ME OF THAT. looking at everything else but the mirror i’m standing in front of, lmao

but remember: do only what you need to, and what works for you..... and remember too that all this is because GOOMT is ENORMOUS, and it's always, ALWAYS growing. so my apologies if this is kinda overwhelming, but... gestures.

GOOMT.

===

EDITING & EDIT HELL

a lot of what i write never makes it to see the light of day. i cannot stress how much i’ve written and cut. sometimes.. you're going to have to cut that thing you really really like about the chapter/piece. sorry. it's going to be a bummer to cut it but you're gonna have to cut it.

for example: ch60 had more than seven iterations or more in total.

no, seriously. and one of the things that sucks about it is that i cut a lot that i was very proud of, thought was important, but ultimately was not the right place or time: and very frankly, it may never have a place or time in the story. i still have them, though.

while they can definitely be discouraging, but in my mind, what they really are/were, were character development exercises. i’m not interested in shoe-horning them in either, even if they were genius, tho retooling is always a possibility. but in those moments, considering what you’ve written as character development exercises for YOU to understand them, and where you want to take the character and build their dynamic potential and future, is GREATLY beneficial in the long term for you as the writer, and those reading.  

i tend to write all i can in one go and then go back and edit and tweak. then when i say i'm in "edit hell", i'm talking about taking an entire week for purely editing. what editing means to me may not mean to you, either; so i'm not really sure how to advise.

i do recommend grabbing a friend who makes the mistake of offering to edit a chapter for you 52 chapters ago and is still editing for you to this day and very likely for the many mountains of months to follow tho :) (hi ren <3)

===

PACING & AH SHIT I REGRET PUTTING THAT THERE

shit happens! and sometimes you want shit to happen like. NOW. well..

you sure about that?

i’ve mentioned before how many times i’ve rearranged parts of GOOMT, and even regretted already revealing things. take some good keen time and CONSIDER what you’re writing; WHERE you're writing it; WHY you're writing it; and how the story is supposed to be going.

i think it’s also important to remember that not everything needs to ever be revealed, or revealed at once. you can allude to a lot of things. GOOMT and POTF have a LOT of lore stacked up (and always more being developed) and there’s a whole lot of it that’s not MEANT to see the light of day (tho, of course, that may change, and i’m willing to let that happen as needed). 

that said: ALWAYS make sure that revealing any big details or lore is necessary in what you’re writing. it’s very tempting to bring something into the chapter that you’ve been just itching to get out, but is it necessary? does it actually fit? and those questions aren't always easy to answer at the time, or simply can't be answered until 20/20 hindsight.

for example: revealing the Memory of Harry monster in GOOMT.

MoH originally was going to be debuted back in ch21, when they returned to the alley first seen in SH1. i had his whole scene written and ready to go but i cut him out just about before i handed the chapter to Ren for editing. instead, he made his appearance in Balkan in ch27.

looking back on it now, i wish i had waited until they were in Midwich.

i got a little too eager to introduce him. i didn't know where else to slap him down and at the same time too, the first Midwich arc wasn't yet much of a thought (and it began ch31). so at THAT time, i thought it was a good place to put him.

to be fair on myself: it was. it was a good place. but it would have made more sense and been more impactful, i realize in hindsight, to have dropped him into Midwich. still, it was a damn good reveal if i do say so myself, and pretty impactful too!!!

so there are always going to be regrets or even mistakes in pacing and placement. it’s a good learning experience and learning curve to take in and work on.

just.. whatever you do: DON’T. SHOEHORN. IN. if it's not time for it, it's not time. it's absolutely not worth it imo. take the piece that isn't working and set it to the side. you can use it later if the time/need arises.

pacing is super fucking hard to me and i gnaw at my hands about my arcs and how long they can take, and i have worry about things moving too slowly for readers. on the flip, i have a shitload to go through. and i'm going to make mistakes about reveals. and pacing is going to get wonky and GOOMT is going to get boring or drag on in parts and the reality is, is that that's just normal for it to happen.

i'm not sure what advice i have about pacing really. just be sure to sit down and give your story a great big think and re-read every now and then.

===

CONSISTENCY & WRITING STYLE & ACCEPTING ITS WEIRD JOURNEY

oh lord, have mercy; oh how the times do change, and ebb and flow through every fucking chapter, LOL

this is just natural. let it happen. of course your style is gonna change over time - especially if you’re writing long form. it could be disappointing; i know i look back at some chapters and go, shit, i LOVED the way i wrote here! how can i get that back?

and then you might also feel like your quality declined. i’m kind of in that phase right now; it sort of feels like my writing took a nosedive. for that, what i’m doing, and therefore i suggest it, is read back over old work you wrote and liked a lot. and even better?

read a book. read an old favorite or a new one. get some inspiration and mojo. take down notes of phrases you liked, or mark pages. just to have on hand. take a breather. remember: you're here to have fun.

===

JUST WRITE THE CRINGE, BRO

seriously: who. te fuck. cares. all the wrong people, that’s who! self-indulgence is the name of the game, babey. your world, your oyster. you don’t have to post it. just write it. remember:

if it makes you happy, then write - and draw - whatever the FUCK YOU WANT.

and if anyone tries to make you feel bad about it, just come back to me, or send the haters to my door. 🔪 i gotchu, bro. 

:3c 

===

CONSIDER A PET PROJECT

i’ve got a slew of personal work (-adjacent being one) that won’t see the light of day (ok so i’ve talked a little about it/posted one or two things, but that’ll be the extent). i love looking back at it or tinkering with new scenes bc it makes me happy and keep me sane LOL and i refuse to deny myself!!! MY HOUSE MY TRASH WE ROLL IN IT

however!! when GOOMT is being a right wanker about things, i’ve taken to writing pet projects - either working on my personal stuff, OR things i actually intend to publish. 

they aren’t always one-offs either; i’ve got two other series i work on and publish (Heya, Neighbor! and Puttin’ On The Fritz) and a few things that won’t see the light of day (.. or some pornographies..) and LIGHTLY edit. BIG STRESS ON LIGHTLY. EDIT. i go through Edit Hell enough with GOOMT; i don’t need or WANT the stress of doing that with these things i’m doing for shiggles. they’re just my palate cleansers for when GOOMT is being an asshole and so is being put in the “time-out corner”. 

the side projects are for my need to refresh myself and write freely. they’re a little cringey and maybe OOC for some, but it’s MY cringe and OOC and i LOVE IT because…… oh wait that’s right, it’s FOR ME and MY shits and giggles - but all y’all can read it too if it tickles your navel, LMAO. they get updated very, very slowly, and that’s fine. that might be a bit too much for some people to juggle and/or balance and that’s fine too. 

===

REMEMBER ALWAYS: you are writing FOR YOU. yes - absolutely you CAN write for the intent to gain popularity (and here’s a good article by @javert on how to approach that), but that’s not my style or intent. i just want to write fun stories and fling them out into the world and maybe someone will get a kick out of it, too. that’s what keeps me going. 

not giving a fuck about what you write or create is probably, definitely, at the very top of the highest peak, super hard; but not giving a fuck either about whether or not you receive validation? the HARDEST. (but today is not the day we get into that).

the moral of this story is:

if you write it, they will come.

your passion and your love will bring them in. somebody wants to read what you're writing. i promise it.

i started GOOMT, and i write it, and WILL keep writing it because i LOVE what i’m doing. i’m writing for ME, and i’m posting it so that anyone else who might be interested to share it with me can take the journey alongside. i never, EVER expected it to gain traction or the amount of attention it’s gotten and i’m truly, madly, DEEPLY grateful for everyone who has joined me and my boys through the story i have to tell. i’m straight up blown away that people like, or even love it as much as i do. i’m THRILLED. and for everyone who reads my older stuff (you nasties (loving), i see you digging around in my Batman trash, yeah you like that shit huh??? well i’ll do more….. Sometime In The Future™️), THANK YOU so MUCH. it keeps my ego inflated as well, as humble. 

all in all my advice is: write. just fuckin' write.

write cringe.

write the AU you dream about in the messiest way.

just barf out all the words as they come, let them fly through your fingers.

write shit you’ll never post.

write it because it gives you a giggle or warms the cockles of your heart (or the sub-cockle area; maybe even your kidneys; i don’t know). 

just write it. someone’s gonna fucking love it to the ends of the earth and thank you for writing it. they may never say anything, and you may never know how your work affected them - gave them confidence to create their own content; to interact with the fandom; to pursue another day, etc - but someone is always reading. someone is interested.

love yourself, love your work; they will see you, they will see how much you love what you do, and they will love you, and your creations, for it, too.

🥚🙏❤️

[fruggo]

Hi hi can I req Danny, Leon and Steve with a male s/o who's a real goofy guy? Cracks jokes during chases, just can't take things too seriously, laid back and chill guy who prioritizes having fun

absolutely, thanks for requesting!! :D this is cute haha. i hope you like it!

danny, leon, and steve with goofy m!s/o

𝐃𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐘 𝐉𝐎𝐇𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐍

danny would consider himself a pretty fun guy, though perhaps his idea of fun would not be the same as a normal person's. so i wouldn't take his word for it if i were you.

honestly? he thinks you're the shit. he genuinely likes your bad dad jokes great puns, will banter back and forth with you, and he might even give you the hatch instead of a mori. although he would love to have your picture, it can wait until the next trial. or the next if he still doesn't feel like it. who knows?

he likes that you're not too serious about everything. since danny is the entity's golden boy, he never has to worry about anything! he likes it here! and it's cool that someone else has a similar mindset about things. although he might have misunderstood "making the best of the situation and just being a goofy person" for "liking it here". you never really clarified which one it was, and why should he ask?

when danny finds out that you act basically the same way with all the killers, cracking jokes and laughing things off in chases, he gets all pouty. he thought he was special. well, looks like you're getting that mori now.

he still likes you though, and he gives you even more special attention now in the form of tunneling and camping! he means well <3 (no he doesn't he is a little bitch and a loser)

but then he hears stories from the other killers about you, and is pleased to find that you are significantly more fun with him, and, dare i say, flirty!

but he still wants to tunnel and camp you.

when you realize what he's doing, you don't get mad about it. what's the point? in fact you think it's really funny.

the first time danny proximity-camped you, you found it rewarding to just talk and talk and talk until he finally talked back. it took a while, but he did finally respond.

you would just say dumb shit, and then you would say more dumb shit, and then it got annoying and danny had to tell you to shut up. and then you would just dramatically whisper something like "okay, pissbaby."

and danny thought maybe he should be angry with you, but he just wasn't. he couldn't be mad at you, because even if he was, you wouldn't care. you weren't scared of him.

so when he finally left and you got unhooked, he tunneled you obviously. it makes sense, okay?

"wow, am i that handsome and gorgeous and attractive?" you monologued while smashing a pallet onto danny's head. "i'm really just so irresistible that you want to tunnel me? honestly, danny, i'm flattered. i'm touched."

danny couldn't remember since when you were on a first name basis, but he let it slide. just because maybe he thinks you are that handsome and gorgeous and attractive.

dude danny is kinda fucked up but like. he's funny. and charming. and he also let you take off his mask once, and so now you know he's also hot. he has a few things going for him as long as you ignore the part where he chases you with a knife.

𝐋𝐄𝐎𝐍 𝐊𝐄𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐃𝐘

leon, our favorite rookie :D he's so cute!!! sorry im gushing i just cant resist i love him !!

and you love him too, so much. that's why you accidentally distract him during trials by goofing off and almost getting him killed

it's out of love. leon knows that. you don't really mean to.

while leon's doing a generator, you are probably somewhere nearby trying to find something even remotely interesting to do. and that might involve climbing a tree, then falling out of the tree. but it wasnt your fault! you swore the crows were attacking you, they didn't want you up in that tree because they knew you were just so cool up there and the Entity couldn't have somebody being better and hotter and funnier than itself so high in the sky.

leon could only smile and shake his head, inspecting you for the wounds you inevitably had. when you said you were fine, he was very skeptical, because your version of fine was never the same as his.

the killer knew where you were now because of your very loud "FUCK!" as the crows supposedly attacked you and forced you out of the tree, so you immediately put on your game face and got ready to command some attention.

leon said no, you were not in the right headspace to get chased. you only shrugged at him, slapped his ass, and ran towards the killer yelling, "HEY YOU WANNA HEAR AN AGGIE JOKE?"

leon was used to this by now, and he found it rather endearing. you were an enigma to him, really. how you could be so laid back about this whole murder-die-sacrifice thing was beyond him, but it was refreshing. he liked your enthusiasm.

since he had just come from raccoon city, he was still in his "i have to do the right thing and save everybody because it's my duty" kind of mood. you made sure to lighten up that burden and remind him that it's okay to chill sometimes, and he can't save everybody, especially not here. if you were in a particularly bad trial, you always made sure to get him to crack a smile.

likewise, leon wasn't always too jazzed about your "funny guy gets killed so the team can live" complex. he knew you didn't care, or at least you said you didn't, but he still hated that you constantly sacrificed yourself and acted like it was no big deal. to him, it was. he hated going back to the campfire alone and waiting forever for you to show up again; he cared about you and it hurt to see you sacrifice yourself so much even if he knew you would return.

leon didn't have a stick up his ass or anything--he had his fair share of humorous moments (i mean have you seen infinite darkness ashdjshdf that man just wants love and food). he just wants to save everybody, you included. it's frustrating to come to terms with the fact that he can't.

he loves it when he can hear you yelling at the killer mid-chase from afar, be it a pun or a swear or both. you've even influenced him to crack his own jokes while being chased sometimes--it comes out more often if he's being tunneled. if you ever happened to see him do it, you would wipe a fake tear from your face and start clapping. you were very proud of your rookie.

𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐕𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐓𝐎𝐍

the killers hated you and steve, and i mean like despised you

you were so chill. and for what???? why do you have chill???? nobody else has chill, what makes you think you deserve to have chill????

they could never make you angry and that made them super angry

you and steve would quip back and forth between chases, sometimes going so far as to pretend the killer is not there and talk about something like what kind of cheese you missed eating the most. let me tell you, that did not make the trickster happy.

he was a star!! a star, and here you two little shits were, ignoring him to talk about cheese. honestly, the audacity.

you and steve ran to the killer shack with the trickster on your heels, still talking about cheese. how the conversation had gone on this long was a mystery, and it continued to be a mystery while the two of you shared a chase in the shack.

steve was very happy to have found someone to share his sentiments with. everybody was so serious all the time, and while he was similar to leon with his altruistic streaks, he was slightly less responsible and occasionally enjoyed doing dumb stunts just for shits and giggles.

you can bet that whenever you are in a trial together, it's a competition to see who can hold the killer's attention longer. your teammates don't mind--all they have to do is complete gens, so their job is fairly easy. and it's always entertaining to catch sight of one of you sprinting with a new flashlight in your hand to go annoy the crap out of the killer.

there's no question that steve would die for you a hundred times over, and you would do the same for him. you didn't see it as a very big deal--you didn't see anything here as a very big deal. steve was the only important thing you had, really, and you cared for him a lot. saving him? kapeesh. no sweat.

scenario: steve is being chased, you throw yourself in front of him, the killer has noed, you are hooked, you give him a thumbs up as you die, he flips you off because why the fuck would you die for him what is wrong with you he's supposed to die for you and you know that?? why would you do that???? great, now steve gets to escape and it's all your fault.

you would simply smile. he was so cute sometimes.

[emmyrosee]

Ragnarssons as subs? 😏🤤

HOW DARE 🥵

———-

Björn is not exactly a sub, so much as he is a compliant bottom. Watching you bounce up and down on his member, massive paws touching your skin, thighs and breasts and just praising you the whole time. He never tires from watching you move against him.

“Just like that, my love.... fuck, you feel so good...” 🤤

Ubbe will very seldom allow you to take control, but boy when he does, WHEWWWWW.

He likes it rough. He likes marks and hickeys and even bruises, loves watching you take control and take your aggression out on him. He’ll never ask for it, but he can always tell when you need to shove him around and push his limits. Not to say he doesn’t find it beyond sexy, he’s just learned to appreciate it whenever it may come.

“Fuck yes... that’s my girl.” 😍

Sigurd, much like Björn, just loves to watch you- the difference is, however, that Sigurd IS a sub. Like when he’s cocky and teasy when you’re in a mood, it’s because he wants you to snap and just completely rule the bed. He likes your dominance, likes your bite and would happily let you degrade him with the filthiest things your mind can conjure.

When you do snap and yell at him for his perverted advances when you’re at your wits end, he smirks and just slowly sinks to his knees, burying his face between your hips as his large paws trace the curves of your hips and thighs.

“Anything for you, princess.” 😏

Hvitserk.... oh hvitserk 😍

Hvitserk is the most primal, needy sub you’ll ever know. The man goes above and beyond to hear you purr his name, never going out of his way to be disobedient because the feeling you give him when you cry his name with the utmost pleasure, that alone is enough to paint the inside of his pants, all in efforts to please his queen.

But he’s a man, and he does break rules because he only thinks for himself- and when that happens, he takes his punishments well, open to any twisted scold you could give him.

We stan a switch baby 🥰

Ivar is a complicated sub.

He would NEVER admit to being a sub, NEVER admit to craving your control, but he doesn’t have to. It’s obvious in his actions and utter need for you that if you were to deny him that special affection, it would destroy him.

He doesn’t do well with punishments, and you do go easy on him when he’s being a little shit brat because he would never be able to handle your roughness when he’s in that headspace. He’s still learning how to navigate it, so you’re sure to be gentle.

“Don’t hate me... I’m sorry... I’ll be your good boy, I promise.” 🥺❤️

[deniigi]

hi I have something for y’all called a disaster.

I wrote an Inimitable!Spiderman/Modern Star Wars AU because no one can stop me, not even myself. it is like 47 pages long. I am handing it tenderly to y’all.

--------------

Title: impossible scenario

Summary: Peter runs into some drunk assholes arguing, calling each other Han and Luke. He lets it roll off him until he can’t anymore and eventually finds himself for the first time on the other side of someone more chaotic than himself.

------------

There was an argument happening under a fire escape. Peter knew about it because a concerned dude wearing a fuckin’ Yankees cap had flagged him down with waving arms and told him that someone needed saving, Spiderman. Some tall asshole was kidnapping a young blond dude, the guy  and his too-cool-for-him girlfriend explained. They’d heard the two scuffling.

Peter maybe stared for a beat too long at them because the gal pointed two blocks behind him and said, “That way. I think the blond guy might be drugged. He’s slurrin’ something strong.”

Peter liked her shoes. They looked like Miles’s, but blue.

“Spidey?”

Miles told Peter all the time that he wasn’t cool enough to wear Jordans. MJ and Johnny had agreed. Such sad times.

“Spidey.”

“I got it,” Peter sighed.

The gal tsked.

“Man, you’re too young to be this jaded,” she said.

Peter sighed.

“You’re the third person to say that this week,” he said. “You think I should go back to therapy?”

There was a pause.

“You know that answer, dude,” cool-gal said. “Go save the twink.”

Twink. Got it. Thank you, citizen.

“There are websites for that shit, Spidey.”

Bye now.

“Apps, even.”

Bye, bye.

“BetterHelp or Headspace or somethin’—”

“Two blocks, you said?” Peter asked.

 --

 Two blocks away, there was indeed a man with dark hair trying to lift a violently intoxicated twink up onto the first steps of a fire escape. Peter examined his options. There were many ways to ruin a potential kidnapper’s day. His favorite involved coke and mentos, although he’d received feedback that that was a waste of perfectly good food. Down the list was also the option to walk over and scream bloody murder so that the kidnapper shat themselves and dropped their target.

That was good, but Peter was tired and the thought of mustering up the energy to scream at a noticeable volume made his thighs turn to Jell-o.

That left snark and violence.

Today, he would not choose violence. Only for today.

He strode out of his dark temporary residence between two dumpsters directly towards the tall dude and his mark. The mark was a messy one. Bless his heart, he was unwittingly making himself the most noncompliant victim to have ever victim-ed. Every time the tall guy got him almost vertical, he gave up his corporeal form to become drunk slime and ooze back to the ground with various moaning sound effects.

It would have been funny if not for the kidnapping context.

The fact that Peter had been standing there under the beams of two separate side-building security lights and neither of those two had noticed yet was also objectively funny—or would have been, if Peter had the capacity for processing humor at the moment.

Alas. This was what he got for telling Tony that he’d evolved beyond the need for sleep. He got caffeine-pilled. And there would be no true rest until that shit wore off, exhausted as Peter’s body yearned to be.

“Kid, work with me here,” the tall guy said.

“I can’t, I’ll die,” the shorter one moaned.

“Luke.”

“I’ve done my time—thirty years in AZKA—”

“Keep your voice down, oh my god.”

Peter was just standing here, fellas.

“Luke.”

“Why’s it always me? Why’s it always gotta be me? The hell did I do to piss off the whole galax-galaxy? HA. My bad, my bad. The whole universe?”

God, what a mood.

The tall guy dropped his grip on the smaller one and loomed over his puddle of ooze with poison in his gaze.

“People are going to die, Luke,” he said.

“So what? They’re always dyin’. Everywhere I go, people’re dyin’ and when it’s not them dyin’, you know who is?”

“Kid.”

“ME.”

“So you’re just gonna wallow there, feelin’ sorry for yourself?” the tall dude snapped.

“Sure am,” the puddle of ooze hummed.  

This was not a kidnapping. This was a come-to-Jesus in the back alley of a bar. Peter was not needed here. He turned around on his heel and stopped when he heard a sharp intake of breath.

“Is that?” someone whispered.

“Don’t mind me, pal, just your friendly neighborhood—” he started.

“Look what you did,” Tall and Handsome hissed at Ooze-Man. “Someone went and called Spiderman on us.”

Peter lifted a brow as Ooze-man ripped its chest up from the asphalt and composed itself back into a human shape with fluffy blonde hair and huge wide eyes.

“Omigod, it’s Spiderman,” the guy said. “Wait, no. Gimme a hand. No, not that one, fuck off, nevermind, I don’t need you.”

He drew himself up to standing, only leaning slightly on his buddy there and gave Peter as lopsided smile.

“Hi, there,” he said with a twang that Peter couldn’t place. “Were you lookin’ for someone, handsome?”

Ah, they had reached the time of night when all the drunks needed to tell Peter things he already knew about his ass. He loved this time.

Not to mention that this dude looked eerily like Johnny. Scarily like Johnny. So much like Johnny that Peter almost wanted to take a picture of him to send to Sue so that she could print up some lost and found posters.

“Just lookin’ at you, babe,” he said. “This guy botherin’ you?”

The tall guy blanched and then grabbed at his face in horror. Peter swallowed his laugh.

“He sure is, hon. You got time to rescue me?” Blondie crooned.

“Luke, please. Please.”

“Because I’m in real distress,” ‘Luke’ said with a pout mighty enough to fell Thor.

“You sure seem like it,” Peter said. “C’mere. I’ll walk you home. Leave that tool, he ain’t worth your breath.”

He held out an elbow like proper gentleman and was pleased at the hand that Luke laid over his heart in response.

Peter could imagine Johnny’s face in six different expression of jealous horror at a selfie taken with this look-alike. Each was beautiful in its own special way. As payment for being referred to counseling by the public, he at least deserved to receive at least two of those faces.

“You mean that?” Luke asked him.

“He doesn’t,” his tall companion said.

“I sure do, where do you live? I’ll walk you,” Peter said.

“Oh my god, I’m gonna cry, he’s gonna escort me,” Luke said, all choked up and fanning his eyes lightly.

This tall friend grabbed him before he could escape, though, and pulled him back behind his own body.

“Listen, Spidey, this is a misunderstanding,” he drawled. “I know this idiot—he is technically my idiot— and I’m the one escorting his ass home. Thanks, though. You’re a real menace. Beat it.”

MMMMMMM.

And here Peter had been planning on being jaded and miserable this fine night. How could he now when this dude was ticking every box that made him feel alive?

“What’s your name, dollface?” Peter asked across the short distance.

“None of your business,” Tall Guy answered abruptly.

“Luke,” Luke said around him. “Are you gonna save me?”

“In just a minute,” Peter said, striding forward with a hard roll in his shoulder and deep drop in his knees.

It was amazing how Tall Guy wanted to take some steps back all of the sudden. Peter couldn’t help but let a smirk widen his face as he advanced.

“Okay, hang on now,” Tall Guy said with both palms out in front of him. “You don’t know what this is about, Spidey. You don’t want to get involved with this, trust me. He’s just bein’ dramatic. No need to get testy.”

“You sure do a lot of talkin’ for your friend there,” Peter noted through his grin.

“Yeah, Han,” Luke said.

Ha.

Han. Han and Luke. Ned was gonna be enraptured when Peter told him about this later.

“Luke. Back me up.”

“Why should I?”

“Because,” ‘Han’ finally snapped. “I’m not doin’ this because I want you to suffer, alright? I don’t want nothin’ to do with it either, okay? No one does. But it’s this or—”

“Or everyone else,” Luke finished for him in a strangely toneless voice.

Han sighed.

“It’s always everyone else,” Luke said.

“Not here.”

“Why’s it always everyone el—No, no, here. Why not? We’ve got fucking Spiderman in our midst, how much more surreal can this moment get? No. You listen to me, Han—”

“I’ve been listening to you all damn evening and you know what I’m hearing?”

“—I lost my life for this. I lost my home, my aunt, my uncle, my hand—”

“I’m hearing you making this about you.”

“—everything I ever knew, and I tried to make it right, didn’t I? I made the school. I gathered the kids—”

“And it’s not just about you this time, kid. It’s not about you, it’s not about me, or Leia, or Chewie or—”

“—I lost my kid and the love of my life, and I finally get a second chance at finding them and giving them the goddamn happy ending they deserve, and the next thing I know—”

“Luke, you’re the only one,” Han said.

“I WAS NEVER. THE ONLY. ONE, HAN,” Luke roared out of absolutely nowhere, sober as a saint. “I was never the only one. EVER. Ahsoka. Go find her. She’s everything that I’m not and more. She’s the real—”

“Luke.”

“Stop saying that name. I HATE that name. I would do anything for twenty goddamn seconds where I didn’t have to be him.”

“You don’t mean that,” Han said quietly. His shoulders had rounded out and become black and heavy under the weight of their shadow. Luke’s eyes, however, looked like topaz.

“I mean it,” Luke said.

Oho.

So shit had gotten real tense, real fast, so Peter about to make a decision that was gonna make Shelley so proud of him she would weep when he finally slunk back in through her office door.

He was leaving. He was turning around and taking a wee jog. Maybe turning a corner, having a little jump over a fence, up a wall, to a place as far away from this one as superhumanly possible.

Bye, bye.

“This galaxy needs you, Luke.”

Peter stopped five paces away.

“They need you,” Han repeated. “And I need you.”

Peter slowly looked back to see that Luke’s face had twisted sharply out of the light, towards the alley wall.

“I’m sorry that we met again like this,” Han said quietly. “I’m sorry it’s always you. You don’t deserve this. No one deserves this.”

“Shut up,” Luke said.

“But if you don’t do something, then it won’t be just me and you and all these random others sliding back into that cesspit we all barely crawled out of.”

“Stop.”

“You’ll never find him if things go back the way they were.”

“You—you don’t know that. There—maybe—”

“Luke. Listen to me. Please.”

“Maybe there’s a chance—”

“Luke,” Han said reaching out and putting a hand on Luke’s shoulder and clenching it hard enough that Peter should see the bunched fabric, “Do you want Din to live through this shitshow a second time? Hasn’t he suffered enough?”

Peter shivered. The pressure at the base of his neck was building. The Spidey Sense wanted to hiss in his ears like white noise. It pinned him where he was, staring over his shoulder at those two solid shapes, one digging a hand into the flesh of the other.

His stomach turned.

Luke said something that Peter couldn’t hear. Han pulled him toward his own body by the grip he had on his shoulder. At first, Luke seemed to stagger, like he was walking on black ice. He stopped a single step away from Han’s body, still with his face angled severely away. Han said something to him.

There was a long pause, then Luke seemed to fall forward. Han caught him and crushed his head into his shoulder, lowering his own until it was almost touching Luke’s ear. They clung to each other.

Luke was crying.

The Spidey Sense started to crackle and pop in Peter’s ears.

“I gotchu, kid,” Han said in a rasp. “I gotchu. We’re gonna get through it.”

Peter blinked once and finally unlocked the muscles in his neck. He wasn’t meant to witness this. He held out a wrist and fired a line.

  --

It was weird.

It was just weird.

Something wasn’t right. And Peter couldn’t make his stomach not writhe about it.

Luke.

Han.

An offhand mention of like, characters. Character names. They were character names. Leia, Chewie.

Peter had heard of people who lived their lives honestly believing that they had been other people—fake people—in past lives, but like, damn man. Why would you put yourself in a position like that were you were moved to actual tears for some elaborate street-drama?

Maybe it had been a joke? That was the only thing he could think it could be. Maybe the universe had gazed upon his hubris at work and gone ‘ah yes, I know what this young man needs: emotional confusion at midnight on a Thursday. That’ll fix him.’

If that was the case, then yeah. Good job, universe. Good job, larpers. Y’all are equally sick.

But if not—and Peter no longer lived in a world where he could rule out any possibilities—then he had just witnessed—Dude, he’d just witnessed—

He couldn’t even think it. It was beyond him. It was so far beyond him that like he might have a real stroke taking the thought seriously.

There was only one person who could hold that kind of information unscathed.

Only one.

  --

PP: Ned. I need you to listen to me and tell me I’m not crazy.

NL: no promises but go on

PP: I think? I just saw? Luke Skywalker? And Han Solo? In an alley behind Kitty’s?????

NL: fascinating

JS: Say more

PP: who let you in here?

JS: you?

PP: SECURITY

NL: Peter say more

PP: I can’t there’s a nerd in here and it’s vibrating at the wrong decibel. SECURITY???

MJ: yeah?

PP: I’m trying to have a breakdown. Can you remove Matchstick please?

MJ: what kind of breakdown

JS: he thinks he met Luke Skywalker

PP: Security has failed me. God?

NL: Peter can you name three things you can see.

PP: I am not manic. I am in touch with reality. I’m just having anxiety because I just fucking saw two people calling each other Luke and Han fighting behind Kitty’s. Like real fighting.

JS: nicknames?

PP: I—

PP: oh my god nicknames

PP: Johnny I’m so sorry I ever doubted you. never leave my side

JS: 😊

MJ: wow that’s cringe. Imagine naming yourself after SW characters

NL: does kitty do a cosplay night now????

PP: idk it was wild. People thought that ‘Han’ was trying to kidnap ‘Luke’ but when I got over there, Luke started flirting with me and then shit got real and they started arguing over like him hating his name and not wanting to do something and losing everything or some shit

NL: that’s a lot. I’m sure it was nothing, though, peter.

PP: yeah it was. My SS has been going nuts ever since I left. You think they bugged me?

JS: yes I will come search your body imminently

MJ: my job storm, back off

JS: after MJ has finished prelim checks, I will then search your body for you out of the kindness of my heart ❤

NL: that’s weird, the SS doesn’t usually freak out about cosplayers

PP: ikr?

NL: lol imagine if they were serious

MJ: don’t say that

JS: well now we have to lean in. thanks ned

JS: they were definitely real. God they were so real. You hear that Fate? You got us. They’re definitely real.

PP: BUT WHAT IF THEY WERE?

MJ: cue breakdown

NL: that would be so fucking funny. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo trying to save the world from the hellscape of nyc. The rats alone would thwart them.

PP: ned I’m freaking out

NL: oh you mean you’re actually freaking out?

PP: deeply

NL: oh shit sorry. I’ll be over, have you slept yet?

PP: NO

MJ: on it

JS: can I join?

NL: no johnny

MJ: no johnny

PP: 😭

JS: one day our love will build a bridge, peter. In the meantime I am stroking your ear comfortingly from midtown

  --

Need and MJ’s weight pinning him to a mattress brought sleep but not necessarily comfort. They both thought that this was a sick joke someone had played on him that was now destroying his psyche. They thought that the couple pointing him back towards the cosplayers had been in on the joke.

Peter would have agreed with them if it wasn’t for the Spidey Sense. Everything else lined up perfectly.

Ned sighed in the morning and told Peter to go talk to Wade.

 --

 Wade’s hallucinations were, by far, more auditory than visual, but he stayed quiet while Peter talked his ear off over the phone in his locked office. He waited until Peter had run out of words to describe the feeling of impending doom and then huffed a bit of a laugh into the receiver.

“Them Star Wars people are unreal, Pete, you know this,” he said. “Look at Ned.”

Ned was perfect.

“Take off those rosy shades, hon. Now, look again.”

Ned had perhaps memorized the entire scripts of the first three movie and 90% of the spaceship names and the jedi lineages.

“Uh-huh. Keep going.”

Peter didn’t want to.

“We all gotta do shit we don’t want do.”

Fine.

Ned’s goal in life was to go to his wedding in a stormtrooper suit.

“Keep going.”

Every Lego project they’d built together since 13 years-old had been a Star Wars-related one. When Ned had decided to move out of his parents’ place, he’d shed actual tears over MJ and Peter mutually suggesting that he sell some of his memorabilia.

“Will this delightful buffet before our very eyes, what is the likelihood of your two pals being drunk larpers in too deep to quit?” Wade asked.

73%.

“Uh-huh.”

“Thanks, Wade.”

“No problem. Although, now I gotta see this. You said they were behind Kitty’s? You think I can get a stormtrooper costume in 8 hours?”

“They’re not still gonna be there, Wade,” Peter huffed. “It’s 10 am.”

“You ain’t know that. What if Luke Skywalker’s a useless drunk, huh? You ever think of that?”

No.

“What’d he look like?”

Peter groaned.

“He looked like Luke Skywalker,” he said. “Blond hair, blue eyes—sort of like a chipmunk that forgot its stripes.”

“I’m onto you, Skywalker.”

Peter hung up to Wade’s cackle. He slouched low and tapped his pen against his desk. Then against his fingers.

He stared at the edge of his keyboard.

“What’s the weirdest thing you could imagine, Pete?” he asked himself.

 --

 PP: sam

SC: yeah?

PP: do you like star wars?

SC: nah

PP: you’re perfect

PP: do you believe in past lives?

SC: like spiritually or culturally? I know I was a cult-kid for a min there but before that we were Buddhists and like, past lives are part of the package

PP: that’s cool. What do you think of people being reborn as themselves again like, 500000000 years later? From a galaxy far far away?

SC: I don’t think about those people

PP: okay well, hypothetically. Let’s say that you were going to imagine someone who embodied that whole spirit. Who would it be?

SC: Buddha

PP: not buddha

SC: is this a riddle? Is it Jesus?

PP: THOR. Thank you this has been helpful ily bye

  Mr. Stark asked him over a cup of viciously black coffee why Peter was seeking out the demigod of his present nightmares.

That usually meant that he and Thor had disagreed on basic physics principles again. Peter took that also to mean that the demigod was still in the building. Possibly loose.

“He’s with Banner,” Mr. Stark said scathingly.

“Thanks, you’re amazing,” Peter said as he sailed out of the room.

 --

 Thor was sitting on Dr. Banner’s lab table, despite Dr. Banner telling him to get off no fewer than two times in the five minutes that Peter was in there, schmoozing and making pleasantries. He warmed Thor up to the home-run hit by asking him all about past lives and present lives and what the soul was on Asgard. Thor was only too happy to explain a load of nonsense that made Banner roll his eyes and poke at his muscles with a thermometer.

“So, hypothetically speaking,” Peter drawled in a very casual lean, “With the infinite galaxies and universes, etcetera, there could be one where Star Wars people exist. And so hypothetically, they could get reborn into a universe like ours.”

Thor blinked at him.

“You remember the laser swords?” Dr. Banner deadpanned.

Thor lit up.

“I suppose it’s possible,” he told Peter indulgently. “But if that was the case then it would be a long tragedy, no?”

…yes…

Say more, Thor-man.

“Well,” Thor said with a big, happy smile, “The series of events that unfolded in that story seemed to me to be one of triumph and tragedy. With one would come the other—that’s how these stories work, yes?”

…yes.

“So if Master Luke Skywalker and his companions arrived into our space here, then they must experience the same in order to be themselves,” Thor said, bobbing his head in pity. “Perhaps what would look like a new start for such people would result only in terror and disappointment until the same conclusion was reached.”

Peter felt his own grin twitch.

“So it’s not impossible?” he asked.

Both Thor and Banner looked at him quizzically at the same time.

“Peter?” Dr. Banner asked. “Is this coming from somewhere?”

Peter’s grin twitched so violently, it turned into a grimace that even superstrength would not let him maintain.

“Can I borrow one of you?” he asked.

 --

 Wade was not happy to be met outside of Kitty’s in the middle of the day, especially because his stormtrooper outfit, in his words, ‘did no justice for the size of his balls.’

Peter was ignoring that. He dragged Thor past Wade’s righteous anger until he was standing on the place where the other two had stood the night before. Thor stood there gamely.

“There,” Peter said. “Any like, energy signatures?”

Thor glanced around and shrugged.

Wade scowled at him and hounded him off the spot so that he could stand there instead.

“I feel nothing,” he said, devoid of emotion.

“Same,” Thor said.

Damnit.

“Perhaps you are—”

The Spidey Sense smashed through all of Peter’s sense and screamed at him to get to the street.

Get to the street. Get to the street. Get to the—

There.

Across the way. Chipmunk, no stripes.

That was the guy from the day before. He was on the opposite sidewalk smashed in with the crowd, dragging a hand through his hair and laden with a backpack and two separate totes. He was wearing a strange set of clothes—a mash of casual and formal—and seemed to be in a hurry, the type of hurry that involved pushing past folks at a half-jog and not stopping at streetlights.

“Got ‘im,” Peter hissed.

“No shit?” Wade asked over his shoulder.

Thor made a sound of interest.

“I see him, too,” he said. “What incredible energy, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Wh—

Peter whirled on him.

“Don’t you fucking say that,” he warned. “I’m gonna go distract. You two, on my six.”

 --

 Peter broke four traffic laws on his way around the block. He swung himself around a corner and fucked up the collar on his labcoat and counted to four before stepping out right into ‘Luke’s path.

They collided. Luke stumbled back and dropped one of his totes.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Peter blustered. “Are you okay?”

Luke swore and dropped down without answering, collecting the odd ends of metal that had clattered out from his bag and now rolled loose over the pavement. Peter stooped to join, gathering rings and pipes of all sorts of sizes in his hands. Oncoming folks gave them a wide berth.

It took a moment for Luke to realize what Peter was doing, but when he did, his shoulders went stiff as a board.

“DON’T TOUCH THOSE,” he snapped, just as Peter made to pick up a little plastic bag with a wad of tissue inside it.

Peter froze.

“Oh. Sorry,” he said.

This time, Luke finally met his eye.

“Oh, Jesus. No. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Luke blustered, “Thank you. I’ll—I’ve got them. Thank you, though. It’s okay.”

He took the metal out of Peter’s hands and stuffed them back into his bag. He snatched the plastic bag before Peter could touch it and put that on top.

“Excuse me,” he said as he stood. “Thanks again.”

And just like that, he hurried off past Peter down the pavement.

Peter watched him go.

“Catch?” Wade asked softly from the corner.

“Negative,” Peter said, reaching into his sleeve and holding up the thin aluminum tube he’d hidden up there by the edge of his shirt-sleeve.

It was shiny and longer than he’d expect for any plumbing project. The inside appeared to be coated with some sort of heavy, non-reactive material, and half of the outside had grooved bands carved into it.

“Someone’s building something,” he said.

“Mid-century sink?” Wade asked, taking the tube.

“Nope,” Peter said.

 --

 NL: That is a lightsaber hilt

NL: where did you get that? It’s like mega accurate. Was it etsy?

PP: I stole it

NL: give it back

PP: I can’t I stole it from Luke Skywalker.

NL: Peter.

NL: we talked about this.

PP: He’s Luke Skywalker. I swear on the grave of my mother

MJ: this is a problem. This is now an intervention.

PP: I will prove it. If he’s Luke Skywalker, then he will do ANYTHING to get this thing back.

NL: and if not?

PP: then I will wait two days before politely tracking down his home address and then I will return it via wall crawling

JS: UM

JS: SORRY

JS: PETER CAN YOU CALL ME?

PP: no

NL: no

MJ: no

JS: are

JS: are you sure??? Because there’s a guy in Reed’s lab right now talking to him and Sue, asking SUPER politely for access to—I shit you not—the crystals we picked up from that space trip the other day???

NL: …

PP: …

MJ: …

PP: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

MJ: fake

NL: no way

PP: WHAT’S HIS NAME, JOHNNY BOY????

JS: I can’t

PP: nope you gotta

JS: I can’t I’m gonna cry I didn’t ask for this

MJ: out with it

NL: please say it’s obi-wan

JS: HHHHHHHHHHH

JS: nope

JS: just a guy named Ben 🙃

PP: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

PP: I told you motherfuckers

JS: right. So like. Awkward. But you uh, know that hilt thing you have?

PP: …is Obi-Wan Kenobi about to beat my ass, Johnny?

 --

 There was something about putting the hilt into the palm of someone more famous than Captain America that made Peter’s knees weak.

It did not help that Luke Skywalker had flirted with him the other night.

It did not help that Luke Skywalker didn’t recognize him as Spiderman.

Nothing helped, really, especially when those big topaz eyes lifted and Peter could see that their rims were red and raw.

“Thanks,” Luke Skywalker—the embodiment of hope itself—said in a soft, defeated rasp.

Every alarm in Peter’s head said to save him. Save him from what? How? Who knew.

Ned and MJ seemed to feel the same way, if the pressure on each of his arms was anything to go by.

“Well, that’s all cleared up, then. Thank you so much for your help; it is deeply appreciated,” a stupidly pleasant gentleman with a perfectly combed beard and lovingly coifed light hair said to the room at large.

Obi-Wan Kenobi—pardon, Ben Kennedi—was far more handsome than any movie could ever dream to make him. What they’d done to him in the 1970s, Peter saw now, was a fucking crime. He watched as this beautiful human being set a warm hand on Luke Skywalker’s—pardon, Luke Naberry’s—shoulder and used it to steer him towards the Baxter Building’s front entrance.

He watched as the two of them, like true Master and Padawan, stepped out onto the landing and opted for the stairs. For one fleeting, unbelievable second, Luke looked back over his shoulder at all of them before taking the next step after his Master.

He was right the other night.

He wasn’t the only jedi. Not anymore.

“So that just happened,” Sue acknowledged for everyone after the door had clicked closed and the sound of footsteps had faded off to nothing.

“I’m going to cry,” Reed announced.

“This is single-handedly the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Ned said.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi walked into our kitchen,” Reed told Sue like she hadn’t been there right next to him.

“The empire is trying to establish itself under our very feet,” Sue said back a little viciously.

“The real empire,” Reed whimpered.

Wait.

No, go back.

“For real?” Peter asked.

Sue and Reed looked back at the rest of them and then exchanged a look.

 --

 Peter was sad now. Depressed and laid out on his side staring back at Valeria’s huge eyes on the floor while Ned and MJ and Johnny asked Reed and Sue two hundred clarifying questions.

Peter didn’t need the specifics. He was thinking back on the conversation that he’d witnessed between Luke and Han Solo—Han Solo who was tall with dark hair and dark eyes and an accent straight out of New Jersey. Solo who had probably been charged with forcing Luke to face the facts in front of all of them because he was the one who Luke trusted most.

But it had shattered them—both of them.

The New Hope had given up everything. He was tired. His heart was torn. He was jaded just like Peter had been that same night. He’d been avoiding the tightrope that Peter had already started crossing, though, probably looking for every possible way to not have to set the first foot on that wobbly line.

He’d walked it before.

Valeria reached out with a chubby, round hand and touched the side of Peter’s face.

“Spiderman,” she said with terrifying understanding, “Someone needs help.”

He wriggled in close enough to bonk heads with her.

“Baby Storm,” he whispered, “I think you’re right.”

  --

MJ thought that Peter needed to leave things alone. She pointed out that he had plenty of problems without getting involved in universe-saving. She gestured to Johnny and volunteered him for the job.

Johnny refused on account of needing to be the prettiest blond in any room. He claimed that if he wasn’t, he had to fight for dominance.

Ned was on the other end of the spectrum. He had 43 reasons why Peter should get involved with things, and 40 of them ended up in the same place which was ‘it would be cool.’

One of Ned’s better reasons, however, involved pointing out that Peter had already stolen half of a lightsaber. He was good and involved now, whether he wanted to be or not. And that was enough for Peter to decide to go on a hunt to give a formal apology.

He recruited Ned to help him locate Luke Skywalker.

That didn’t work.

They tried Luke Naberry.

That didn’t work either.

They ended up going through every possible iteration of every Star Wars name they knew and then filtered out the people who’d been named by exuberant parents and then filtered out anyone who didn’t live in New York and they ended up with fat lot of still nothing.

It was like Luke Skywalker didn’t truly exist in this world.

Until MJ found his Instagram by typing in ‘guys who look weirdly like Luke Skywalker.’

She held the phone aloft in triumph and they all gathered round to gape in awe at her intelligence and research skills.

Luke’s Instagram was nothing but pictures of coffee.

He had one selfie and this selfie was enough to have gotten him onto a BuzzFeed article. In it he was holding—you guessed it—coffee. Iced coffee. One in each hand.

He was shaking them, and one had been labeled with his name—hence the public connection made.

“Someone needs to tell him that coffee is not a food group,” Johnny observed.

“Maybe he works nights,” MJ said.

Ned lifted an eyebrow.

“Maybe this is his job,” he said.

There was a pause.

Some snooping revealed that Luke was an honest to god food website editor. He was a cameraman.

Repeat. Luke Skywalker, cameraman. He filmed all the food hosts for his company’s Youtube channel. He edited videos. He more or less blended into the background of everything, while having his finger prints on damn near everything.

This was a man after Peter’s own soul. They were kindred spirits in hidden identities, content creation, and suffering under a boulder of responsibility too great to cope with.

He had to find him now.

And after they had his Instagram it wasn’t too hard. He seemed to hang out in various parts of the Bronx and Peter just so happened to know some folks out that way.

 --

 Louis told Peter that he would never speak to him again if he found, befriended, and then didn’t share Luke Skywalker (the man, the real man, I’m not fucking with you, Louis). But he also recognized a place on Luke’s instagram that he seemed to be working his way through the menu of. He sent along an address and told Peter not to forget his promises.

Angel asked why he was looking for Johnny Storm in the Bronx.

Peter left Louis to rattle sense into her.

He took a walk on Saturday morning. A long walk. A long train ride, then a walk, then a half hour of squinting, and then, lo and behold, he found a blond guy banging his head into the center of an out door metal table across from a woman with heavy braids trailing down the sides of her neck. She was much older than him and drummed white-painted fingernails across her cheek as she thought.

Peter hid and called Ned and MJ for an ID. He peeked the phone’s camera out enough for them to see the other two and then snatched it back.

Ned was about to flip a table.

“That’s clearly Ahsoka Tano,” he said. “She—the braids, dude. Dead give-away. And she put ribbons in them, like what even is discretion?”

Peter didn’t know that person. He continued not to know this person, even as Ned dragged him through a trainwreck of Star Wars lore.

“So she’s a friend,” he said.

“She’s like a jedi, but not like a jedi, she was a jedi, but then she said ‘fuck the order’ and—”

Great. Peter was approaching.

Ned held his face in his hands. MJ told Peter to report back on his findings. Peter ended the call and inched closer, weaving through the crowd and slipping into the coffee joint to see what nonsense they were selling.

It was nonsense with lots of syrup. He could never say no to syrup.

He watched the two outside while waiting for his order. Luke gesticulated to his friend and she spoke, giving reasonable gestures back. He stopped her and dug out his phone and that little plastic baggy full of fluffy material. He answered his phone. His friend took the little bag and held it up to the light.

She frowned at it.

Luke pushed away from the table and walked away to take his call. Peter’s order was called. He grabbed it and swerved out towards the patio.

“Hello,” he said at the edge of Luke and his friend’s table. “Is this seat taken?”

Luke’s friend stared at him.

“It is,” she said. “Move along, hon, you’re ten years too young.”

Wow.

“For your friend?” Peter tried. “Could I leave my number?”

He had this lady’s attention now. She was looking him up and down, appraising. Peter tried not to flex. He stayed cool. Matt-levels of cool. He smiled winningly.

“Alright, why not?” she said, digging through her bag for a receipt and a pen. Peter beamed as he leaned down to scrawl his number down on the back. He got halfway through before he heard a step stop nearby.

“Look alive, kid,” Luke’s friend said. “Hey, Luke, this guy was just—”

“You again?” Luke said.

Peter lifted his head and brows.

“Hi,” he said. “I just wanted to apologize.”

There was a long silence.

Luke’s friend looked between them and then gave Luke a long, judgmental stare.

“You don’t have to,” Luke said. “Thanks, though. How did you find me here?”

Mmm. Beginner’s luck.

“Here,” Peter said, offering his number on the receipt. “If you ever need someone to talk to who gets it.”

Luke’s friend bit her lip and looked away in secondhand embarrassment. Peter ignored her for now.

“Thanks,” Luke said. “You don’t and you won’t. But you’re very pretty.”

Nice.

“You’d be surprised,” Peter told him. “Gimme a text. I’ll leave y’all alone now. Enjoy your coffee.”

He left. But not before hearing, “but that ass, Luke.”

 --

 Ned told him that there was no way that Luke was ever going to text him and he was disappointed in Peter’s hostage-taking skills.

But he was proved wrong two hours later and, for his crimes, had to admit Peter’s brilliance publicly.

 LS: hi sorry. This is Luke. This morning when you stopped by our table, did you happen to see a little plastic bag on it?

 Why yes. The one in Peter’s pocket right now? That bag?

 PP: hi!! I did, actually. You guys aren’t very subtle 😏

LS: it’s not coke

PP: I’m not judging

LS: no, it’s not coke, I swear. It’s something INFINITELY more important. Did you happen to see if it had fallen on the ground?

PP: ah, no, sorry. I didn’t see it

PP: OH NO

PP: oh my god I’m so sorry, I think I took it with me when I accidentally took your friend’s pen.

LS: I

LS: what’s your name?

PP: Peter ❤

LS: Peter, you have a fucking problem

LS: I’m starting to think that you want something from me. And listen, you’re a handsome guy, but I’m not available and my type isn’t kleptomaniac. What do you want for it?

PP: well you got me

PP: to talk

LS: about what?

PP: mostly about why you look like you’re a wet phonebook in a bad gutter

LS: a phonebook???? What era are you even from????

PP: I could say the same to you, sir.

LS: I

LS: wh

LS: alright touche. The point is that I’m not going to talk to you. I just need that bag back. It’s a life and death situation.

PP: what are they? They aren’t coke crystals.

LS: how would you know?

PP: what are you, a cop?

LS: NO. This is going nowhere. What. Do. You. Want?

PP: To. Talk.

LS: I’m not going to talk to you.

PP: then why did you ask me to rescue you?

 He held his breath.

 LS: I didn’t

PP: you did

LS: I didn’t ask you for shit. This is it. What’s your last name.

PP: Man 😊

LS: Man what

PP: That’s my last name.

LS: Peter Man.

PP: oop, nope, sorry. That’s someone else.

LS: …so I’m calling the police, now. That’s what we’re saying?

PP: depends. Do you still need to be rescued?

 Come on, Skywalker. Come on, remember.

 LS: I never asked you to rescue me.

PP: You did. Think back.

LS: I didn’t

LS: I just made a joke to

LS: WHAT AFAJSDFA DTTH E FUCK

 Peter cackled and let himself fall onto his back.

 PP: Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ❤

LS: YOU’RE

PP: Just your friendly neighborhood guy ❤

LS: YOU

LS: you

PP: me

LS: THAT’s how the storms knew you

PP: yep 💋

LS: I don’t even know what to say

PP: it’s okay, you don’t have to say shit. The main thing I wanted you to know was that I hear you. And if you need it, I’ve got you.

LS: You’re literally trying to rescue me??

PP: it’s my job

LS: IT ISN’T. How have you never been arrested? how did you find me? Did you track my phone? Is it some kind of spider thing???

PP: yes

LS: I am legally obligated to kill you with the force now

PP: harder daddy

LS: ADaaSDASFSDFSdd

LS: oh my god Han is going to lose his gourd

LS: I’m sorry I just I can’t believe you of all people stole my damn hilt

PP: I’ve got……………………..sticky fingers

LS: go die

LS: no I didn’t mean that sorry that’s a thing with me and my sister. I mean, okay. You got me. Hero of NYC.

 Peter’s cheeks were starting to hurt.

 PP: I’ll bring them back to you.

LS: Please do, Ben’s about to have a stroke.

PP: you mean obi-wan?

LS: he’s convinced his cat ate them. There’s a staring contest happening. No one has blinked in two minutes and I don’t want to be here for the internal investigation.

PP: where do you live?

 Luke sent an address. Peter held his phone high and walked it into the living room where Ned was bitchily composing an Instagram post. He and MJ looked up at the same time.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Peter said. “Luke Skywalker and Co. live in a cemetery.”

 --

 It wasn’t a cemetery. It was a funeral home, but close enough.

Luke was waiting outside on the stoop in a cardigan about four sizes too big for him. It was there probably to protect him from the equally large ragdoll cat in his arms.

Peter smiled. Luke stared at him and then shook his head and went through the screen door. Ned gave Peter a biting look.

“Made friends, I see,” he said.

“We’re doin’ great,” Peter told him, hopping up the stairs. “Look at us, totally—”

“Insidious.”

Peter stopped and turned nervously to see through the screen door where Obi-Wan Kenobi had seized both of the cat’s cheeks. Luke continued to hold it with maximum doneness levels.

“Where have you been?” Obi-Wan asked the cat seriously.

“We have guests,” Luke said. “Take your beast.”

Obi-Wan snatched the cat out of Luke’s arms with contempt all over his face.

“You are a villain of the highest order,” he told it.

“Ben. Guests. Please evacuate. I am hosting negotiations,” Luke said.

“We should have named you ‘Sith.’”

“Ben.”

Peter was not going to laugh at Obi-Wan Kenobi. That was too surreal.

“Come in,” Luke said, returning to hold open the screen. “I hope you’re not allergic. There are two of them.”

T-two?

“The other one is Junior.”

Peter stepped over the threshold and found himself in a room that looked like a human birdhouse. It was full of surfaces that were almost completely empty, as though an enrichment object had once lived there but had been removed as punishment. Luke waved Ned and MJ in and accepted their apologies on Peter’s behalf.

Peter ignored them to lock eyes with a creature more stunning than any he had ever encountered. It sat on the kitchen counter by a single clear jar labelled ‘Not Spice.’ It blinked grumpy green eyes.

“Oh, it’s these people again?”

They all looked behind them to see Obi-Wan peering around a doorframe with the first cat draped over his shoulders.

“Kleptomaniac,” Luke said, pointing at Peter. Peter waved.

“Huh,” Obi-Wan said simply. “I will distract Ahsoka.”

He vanished. Luke grimaced after him.

“Let’s go talk in the back,” he said. “There are no bodies, I promise.”

 --

 The funeral home had a little deck and a yard small even for this far out in Queens. It was crammed full of plants that appeared to be in a competition to bloom. Luke invited them to sit and then left to make coffee.

Coffee, yes, how had Peter forgotten.

He peeked over the side of the deck down where there was a large stone set in the center of the garden.

“A seeing stone,” Ned whispered to him.

“Oh, how did you know?”

They all jumped.

Peter swore that Obi-Wan hadn’t opened that sliding door. How had—what—

Ned was at a loss for words in the face of one of his greatest heroes.

“I—uh. M-movie? I mean, sorry. It was in The Mandalorian, second season, with the—”

“Yet more television,” Obi-Wan said derisively.

They all stared.

“Can you teleport?” MJ asked him.

“I thought you were bothering Ahsoka?” Luke asked, from inside. He squeezed past the man and his cat with three glass mugs in hand. He set them down on the little square table off to the side of the desk railing.

“I was, but then I got curious,” Obi-Wan said. “And I lost Junior.”

Luke stared at him.

“I’m going to lock you in the basement,” he said.

“Try, try, and try again,” Obi-Wan told him, petting his beloved cat’s head.

“Do you even know who Spiderman is, old man?”

“More television.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Peter had to keep a conscious watch on his jaw, lest it fall open in the face of the most handsome, clueless man on the planet. He watched as Obi-Wan, disgusted with all this ‘television’ nonsense skulked back off into the guts of the home. Luke shut the door behind him.

“So,” he said, holding out his hand. “We’re talking. Fork ‘em.”

Ah.

Fair was fair.

Peter produced the plastic bag from his pocket and handed it over. There was a shout somewhere inside followed by someone going ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’

“Ben keeps our home ghost free. He terrifies all the wannabee haunters,” Luke said simply. “Thank you for these. I imagine it’s somewhat of a shock to learn that it’s all real.”

It was, but it wasn’t the weirdest thing Peter had encountered by far.

“How long have you lived in New York?” he asked conversationally.

Luke gave him a weird brow.

He seemed smaller than before in that enormous cardigan. Certainly smaller than the movies made him seem. His face was a little thinner too, and his lips seemed to slope into an almost permanent pout.

“About twenty years,” he said. “We were born in California, but Anakin moved us here when we were eight.”

Anakin? Like, Darth Vader, Anakin?

“’Luke, I am your father’—yeah, that guy,” Luke said with a scoff. “Except, you know, he ain’t dead. And he’s the only one who can make Ben remember that tea isn’t a meal, so we keep him around for that and to scream back at Leia.”

Peter was already completely lost to the dynamics of this household. It wasn’t like the books and movies—Ned’s twitching for his phone to take notes was proof enough of that.

“That’s awkward,” MJ said. “So did y’all do like, collective counselling for the past life shit?”

Luke deflated and moaned into his hands.

“It’s not past life shit if your damn name is the same,” he said. “It’s complicated.”

It sounded like it.

Imagine growing up with your apparently-Star War-obsessed father and uncle who’d built a home and a business (presumably) around that shit, only to find out later that they’d done it because it was literally their religion.

What a trip.

“When did you find out?” Peter asked gently.

“Oh, you know. Last week,” Luke said with a bitter grin. “Quit my fulltime job. Dumped my ex. Broke my lease and now here I am. Once again. Back at this place.”

“Do you want a hug?” Ned asked into the awkward silence.

“You’re very sweet,” Luke said. “If I touch another human, I will start crying and never stop.”

Yikes.

Barely holdin’ on by a thread there, buddy? How’s the hyperawareness going?

“Why does it matter, is my question. For you, I mean,” Luke said with a suspicious squint. “You fought a goblin guy, didn’t you? With a hover board?”

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh, yeah.

Yeah, Peter sure had done that.

“And like, the bird dude? Didn’t you down a plane?”

Perhaps.

But Luke had blown up the Deathstar, no?

“These things are not equivalent,” Luke said flatly. “I joined a rebel alliance. There were loads of us.”

Mmm. Perhaps so.

“God, how old are you even? You look 22.”

Peter gawked.

“I’m 27,” he said.

Luke did a double-take.

“That’s a lie,” he accused. “Tell the truth or be compelled.”

“By the Force?” Ned asked hopefully.

Luke blinked at him. He pointed at the glass sliding door which revealed Obi-Wan holding Junior the cat above his head by the kitchen sink.

“The Force,” he said.

Ned’s face fell.

“Do we not have the Force, here?” he asked.

Luke flinched.

“Listen,” he said abruptly, “We’re workin’ on it. This isn’t our original galaxy. The rules are all different. The only one who’s managed to make even a spark happen is Obi-Wan so far, but as soon as we find Master Yoda, it’s over. We’ll already have won.”

“You lost Yoda,” MJ mused.

Luke stammered and caught himself.

“We lost a lot of people,” he snapped. “It happens when you shift galaxies. Anyways, that’s what the stone is for.”

MJ glanced back at the stone and then leaned her forearms onto the small table.

“So, let me get this straight,” she said. “You jedi folks all popped up over here by some cosmic accident. You don’t have the Force. Most of you don’t even remember who you are. You lost your most experienced Master, and you’re going to fight the Sith?”

Peter stirred his coffee nervously.

Luke’s eye twitched.

“We don’t need the others,” he said. “We only need the Force. To fight the Sith. Yes.”

MJ frowned deep and held her chin with both hands.

“So you need the thing you for sure don’t have the most,” she said.

Luke opened his mouth, but not before the window by the door snapped open and Obi-Wan leaned out to say, “We always have the Force.”

Luke covered his face in despair.

“I was listening from the kitchen window,” Obi-Wan told him lovingly.

“GO FIND CODY ALREADY,” Luke roared at him.

“I did, he’s right here,” Obi-Wan said soothingly, stroking his angry cat.

“The other Cody.”

“Oh, I am trying, don’t you worry.”

“Ben, so help me God—”

“Force.”

“SO HELP ME FORCE—”

Star Wars had really left out the part about Luke’s explosive temper. Peter winced, but Ned laughed and the sound seemed to have a calming effect on Jedi-on-Jedi crime about to take place in the kitchen. Obi-Wan appeared pleased with this development and emboldened. He wove past Luke out onto the desk and came over, cat and all, to point down to the seeing stone in the middle of the garden.

“Others who feel the Force’s energy will be drawn to it,” he told Ned fondly. “It’s how we got Luke back home.”

“It’s not,” Luke said. “You called me.”

“And so others will also come,” Obi-Wan said with confidence. “The most important thing is that we believe in the Force. And from that, we will find guidance and power and—”

“He means Yoda,” Luke translated. “He’s been putting frogs on it as an offering, even though me, Ahsoka, and Anakin told him that this is a human’s world. A human’s world, Ben. Even if he did eat them, he’s not eating them raw.”

“Don’t be discouraged by Luke’s attitude, he is very stressed,” Obi-Wan told Ned and Ned only affectionately. “I told him not to be, you see there are four of us here already, and the Chosen One is among us.”

“Anakin told you to stop calling him that,” Luke moaned, massaging his temples.

“He was the first to be aware of our present situation,” Obi-Wan said.

“He took a hallucinogen and had a paranoid breakdown,” Luke pleaded. “Ben, please. Go inside. Think of your blood pressure.”

“Perhaps, but it was a useful breakdown, was it not?”

“I am so sorry for him, he’s getting senile,” Luke said to the rest of them.

“Your energy is different,” Obi-Wan informed Peter out of absolutely nowhere. “Are you also Force-sensitive? Were you drawn to the stone?”

Er.

No.

Sorry?

“He’s Spiderman,” Luke said, gesturing pointedly. “Remember Spiderman?”

Obi-Wan did not. Peter suspected, actually, that Obi-Wan still used phonebooks, if he used phones at all, that was.

Luke took a deep breath and let it out.

“Okay, let me just lay it out,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can with what we have. You don’t have to get involved with this. We appreciate your help, but what would help us even more is if you stay out of it, alright?”

Yeah, okay. Sure. Peter could respect that.

“Amazing. And don’t tell other people.”

Understood.

“Unless they’re Force-sensitive,” Obi-Wan said. “In which case, ask them how they feel about rocks.”

Luke just stared at him coldly this time.

“You didn’t used to be like this,” he said dangerously.

“No, I used to be stressed,” Obi-Wan told him. “But you and Ani are doing that for me, so I have resolved to be a free spirit. Nice to meet all of you. Have more coffee. I don’t like this one; I will have it out of the house by sundown.”

He left, and possibly for good this time. No one knew what to say in his absence.

“So,” Peter tried, desperate for something to break up the tension. “You said a few days ago that you were looking for someone?”

Luke finally stopped making growling faces towards the sliding door. He lit up like a bulb.

“I am, actually,” he said.

 --

 Luke was looking for a very particular person named ‘Din.’ He described him as ‘six feet tall and covered in armor.’ He asked if they knew of such a person.

Peter had to shove a hand against his mouth in case he made an unwanted connection between this description and Obi-Wan behavior.

“Haven’t,” MJ said. “Who is he?”

“My husband,” Luke said.

Ned choked.

Peter choked.

MJ tilted her head.

“You have a husband?” she asked. “I would have remembered a husband in that series.”

Luke leaned his chin on his palm and gazed sideways over the city. He seemed to sigh.

“I don’t know why he isn’t connected to me in the media created here,” he said. “It’s probably because he’s always been very shy.”

Oh, aw. Peter loved that. The contrast between them was heart-warming.

“We had a son together,” Luke said. “His child. He brought him to me. One of my students, at first.”

Hang on a minute here.

Peter exchanged a glance with Ned. Ned tried very hard to pick a way to approach this sensitively. He landed on asking, “What was his name again?”

“Din,” Luke said. “Din Djarin.”

Ned cringed.

“He was a Mandalorian,” Luke explained. “Very, very, very shy. Like, he would rather chew off his own leg than make small talk with a stranger. I think, before I knew all this, I was still subconsciously looking for him. All my exes are the same type.”

That—

Okay, so like.

Did these people own a TV?

“Do we look like we own a TV?” Luke deadpanned. “No. If Ben senses anything bigger than a datapad happening in this place, he’s driven to madness and breaks it.”

UH?

“He doesn’t actually break it,” Luke sighed. “He just finds a way to make it unusable—putting clothes on it, disconnecting the monitor, that kind of thing. He thinks they waste electricity.”

What a guy. Peter wanted to put him and May in a room and see what conspiracies they could spin together.

“Why do you ask?” Luke asked.

Ned cleared his throat.

“Do you have a, uh, datapad, then?” he asked.

 --

 “DIN. That’s DIN. He’s got his own show. Oh my god, that’s—stay right there. Don’t move.”

Bless this man. Peter wanted to hug him so bad. They’d lost him to the staircase leading up from the second floor to the attic. Peter wondered who he was showing the tablet to.

Maybe Obi-Wan?

“I told you this already,” a voice up there said.

“LOOK AT HIM.”

“You’re killin’ me, smalls. We had this exact conversation last week. Did you forget?”

“You knew where he was.”

“Alright, alright. Downward march.”

Anakin fucking Skywalker came down the stairs with a handful of Luke’s shirt in one hand and the tablet shoved under his other arm. He paused and frowned at the three of them in the kitchen frozen in shock, and then apparently decided that that didn’t matter. He carried on dragging Luke with him towards the kitchen counter. He dropped the tablet onto it and Peter realized that the lower half of his sleeve on that side was empty.

He watched as the guy let go of Luke and chased the not-angry cat off the counter, cursing.

“Alright, this?” he said, tapping on the tablet. “Is the link I put here.” He rapped the same finger on what Peter now saw was a whiteboard covered in rows upon rows of symbols that he’d never seen before.

“Din here? Din here. You see?” Vader told Luke with untold patience.

“I can’t read that,” Luke moaned. “You lied to me.”

“It’s up in the kitchen, Luke.”

“You’re a liar and a cad. Do it in Basic.”

“This is Basic.”

Oh, dear. All that fanfic about Luke meeting Darth Vader and having a breakdown was looking real embarrassed now, wasn’t it?

“If it’s Basic, why can’t I read it?” Luke demanded.

“Because, like I told you last night, the night before, and the night before that,” Vader said painstakingly, “It doesn’t all come back at once. It’s going to take time.”

“We don’t have time,” Luke snapped.

Vader leaned his head back with half-lidded eyes. Luke didn’t look even remotely like his kid, even with him looking all pre-quels-like now.

“We talked about this, too, remember?” Vader asked.

Obviously not. Luke was distressed. He had eyes only for the tablet now.

“No, of course not, silly me,” Vader said. “Why are humans here?”

“Ahsoka went home,” Luke said.

“Thank you, that was not my question.”

“What was your question?”

“Why are non-order humans here?”

“I told you, Ahsoka went—”

“Son, I will kill you if you continue to act like Obi-Wan,” Vader said without missing a beat.

“You can try,” Luke said offhandedly. “But only one of us has two handed grip.”

There was a long stare.

“It’s Obi-Wan,” Vader told him. “Why do we have living guests?”

He gestured back to Peter, Ned, and MJ like they were flies on a set of blinds.

“Oh, because that’s Spiderman and he stole your kyber crystals,” Luke said.

Vader rounded on Peter, and Peter actually felt fear.

Vader blinked once.

“This may as well happen,” he decided somehow placidly. “I’m going back upstairs. Where did your grand-master go?”

“Into the mist,” Luke said. “Can you feel Din?”

“Negative, ghostrider.”

“When the Force chooses you first out of favoritism, can you feel for Din?”

“Ah yes, can I feel for your Force-repellant life partner with all of the Force energy that I do not have? Yes, I sure can.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Anytime, primary monstrosity of my loins.”

UM?

This felt a little hostile for Peter’s tastes. Not that it wasn’t earned. Clearly it was earned. It was just horrifying.

“Guests, you are dismissed,” Vader said in their direction. “Unless you’re drawn to the rock outside, in which case, you may stay. Otherwise, do not darken this doorstep again, or else we will leave you with the other dead in the morgue.”

“Thanks for bringing the crystals,” Luke said from behind him. “And for talking. I do feel better, actually.”

 --

 They left the funeral home. Obi-Wan was outside by the mailbox as though waiting for them. Peter wasn’t sure he had any emotional energy left to approach him with.

“Thank you for speaking to Luke,” he said as the three of them attempted to pass unnoticed. “It’s good for him to talk to others his own age.”

Uh-huh. Good night, sir?

“Good night, Peter, Ned, and Michelle.”

They hadn’t given their names.

They definitely hadn’t given their names.

 --

 Ned wasn’t sleeping for two years. He made this clear with a lot of clapping gestures and then rolled around on the floor, talking about all kinds of shit that Peter couldn’t decipher. MJ watched him and flicked her eyes up to Peter with concern on her forehead.

“That family is cinematically dysfunctional,” she said.

Correct.

“They’re barely their own characters.”

Correct.

“What now?”

Peter wasn’t sure. The best he could think of was to just keep an eye on the situation. Maybe check in every couple of weeks?

“If you say so,” MJ said. “I think you made Ned’s life, by the way. Good job.”

 --

 Peter tried checking in every two weeks. It started because he happened to hear of a tunnel collapsing in Queens nearby the funeral home. He texted Luke to ask if he needed a save and all he got back was a ‘well, not anymore.’

After that, Peter kept a close eye on happenstances occurring around the city. There were more than he bargained for. And when he glanced at Luke’s Instagram after the first week after the tunnel collapse, he noted that two of the nails on the hand Luke held his coffee to the camera with had gone completely black.

That was worrying.

Peter was used to be the danger-prone asshole in his friendgroup. He did not like this role-reversal. MJ asked him sarcastically what the problem was.

He texted Luke again.

 PP: how many nails do you have left bro?

LS: we put a hole in one to release the pressure

PP: that don’t sound great bro.

LS: it’s fine. Oh, but good news

PP: oh?

LS: the most predictable thing ever has happened. The Vader has regained force power

PP: that’s worrying

LS: ? why?

PP: won’t he go dark?

LS: ah, no. He fucked up and raised me and Leia with Ben this time after our mom died. He had his chance to go dark and traded it for 8 consecutive hours of sleep instead.

PP: I truly don’t know what to say

LS: It’s fine we did 12 years of family therapy after the accident so we are no longer on the DSS watchlist

PP: I know less what to say

LS: he won’t find din :/

PP: is that your priority right now?

LS: aren’t you supposed to be spiderman or something? Don’t you have chaotic things to say?

PP: you know normally I do, this is literally out of character for me. but I think you also might be absorbing my chaos.

LS: that’s fair. I have that effect on people. Hey, is your buddy Ned available to chat? He knows more than I can remember about my old life. Can I borrow him?

 That sounded like a horrendous decision.

 PP: yeah let me get you his number.

LS: thanksssss

  --

Ned reported a few days later that his services were needed at the funeral home. He was leaving them all now to befriend Luke Skywalker as was his true destiny.

He came back a few hours later and reported that his services had been helpful and he was pleased to say that Darth Vader was now the official herder of ‘wans’ in the house. This included all Obi-Wans and padawans.

He seemed to be the only guy there who could like, retain information given to him for some reason. He accepted this as his lot in life and went around repeating the same things to the others ad nauseum until they finally stuck for them.

Peter wondered if that was his personal hell.

Ned didn’t think so. He thought the guy was pretty chill about it and had probably been doing it for a while now. He did it more for Ahsoka Tano and Luke than he did for Obi-Wan. Although that was probably because Obi-Wan appeared to be on a hunt that made all non-relevant information given to him slip off his back like water.

 --

 Another two weeks. Another text.

 PP: hey luke, I saw you drowning on the news. You okay?

LS: GOD my ex-workplace keeps calling welfare checks on our house. We’ve had more cops here then flies these last few days.

PP: ex-workplace is one way to refer to your old job. Sounds like they cared about you. What did you do?

LS: preschool teacher.

 Peter was going to lose his shit right here on this bed.

 PP: was that your calling?

LS: that was Luke Naberry’s calling. Luke Skywalker’s calling is to make the lightsaber go vrrrrrrm

PP: you honestly terrify me

LS: thanks han says the same thing. OH. HE FOUND CHEWIE.

PP: no shit??

LS: yeah I told Ned, not you. But yeah. He found him lugging boxes for a bodega. And now they both work at the same bodega. Which like, objectively, is a bad thing because Han was a UN translator.

PP: I’m

PP: sorry

PP: what?

LS: I know he was all respectable and shit. It was awful. I can look at him again without feeling like I’ve failed in every part of my life.

PP: dare I ask what your sister does?

LS: lawyer

PP: not senator?

LS: we’re not old enough to be senators.

PP: every moment becomes more concerning than the next. You fascinate me. This is why they put you in like, all the films.

LS: because I’m sexy yeah

PP: that too

LS: not to you. I’m off-limits bub. I’m married.

PP: how’s that going for you?

LS: Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

PP: I see. So no Din yet?

LS: I will find him if it kills me

PP: that’s so romantic. Hey you should watch that series. They gave him a little green yoda in it. Really cute.

LS: that’s my son you piece of shit

 There was no winning here.

 --

 MJ asked him a few weeks later if he was still keeping up with the Jedi drama since the whole city had recently decided that Peter was a snack.

Obviously he hadn’t.

She told him not to worry, Ned had. She told him to talk to Ned, so he went and talked to Ned with a heatpad in one hand and a coldpack in the other.

Ned patted at him sympathetically and informed him that Luke had reunited with the Force. It was going poorly for him, mostly because the Force wasn’t used to people being in touch with it in these parts of the universe. It kept telling each of the jedi that there was a disturbance and then luring them to each other to fight to the death.

Luke described it as the Force-equivalent of an auto-immune disease.  

They’d taken to gathering in the living room of the funeral home to meditate in a circle, as though to calm the Force’s anxiety while scenting each other for protection.

It had a 40% success rate. Everyone was sleeping in locked rooms for the time being, just in case someone got compelled to do something rash.

Peter asked Ned if he’d finally lost his crown as King Chaos of NYC.

Ned patted him on the knee more firmly than before and said that he could regain his crown by introducing a calming element into the jedi household.

Peter had his pride to defend, so he asked what that element ought to be.

  --

Din Djarin, the Mandalorian, the leader of all Mandalorians, was bound to have a name that looked nothing like the one they had for him. Luke nearly exploded when Peter approached him to asked him (and his taped fingers) more about who Din Djarin was outside the name.

They proceeded with caution, however. So far, Peter and Ned had discovered only dissonance between Luke’s account of his life partner (his ‘heart, stars, sun, and sand’) and the guy on the screen for the tv show. That was to be expected, given that they had met Luke now and learned of his somewhat explosive personality.

But even still, Luke’s description of Din Djarin as ‘kind, compassionate, tender, shy, emotionally stable, dependable, sweet, caring, and hunky’ seemed slightly biased.

Peter just wanted to know how tall this guy was. Hair color. Eye color. Skin color. Blood type. That kind of shit.

Luke said that Din had brown hair, brown eyes, Type Who Knows What blood, and was about six feet tall. He had no idea how much he weighed. He’d never had need for that information. He knew that Din was human, which was probably helpful in a galaxy far, far away. He knew that he spoke Mando’a as his first language, then Basic, then a whopping fifteen others. And he knew that Din was probably looking after their son.

Vader asked Peter over a mug of coffee (also labeled in the funeral home’s cabinet as ‘not spice.’) if Spidersenses could overcome a dearth of information. It took Peter a few moments to realize that he was sympathizing with him.

“You’re not going to find Din,” Vader told Luke. “You need to look for the kid. You’ll find the kid first, you always have.”

Luke took his coffee and poured it down the drain.

Peter decided that he didn’t want to get in between that burgeoning battle. He told Luke to text him if he remembered anything else.

  --

Wade was pissed that Peter had been meeting and ‘cavorting’ with Luke Skywalker without him. He claimed ownership of the Din Djarin mystery in order to cram himself into Luke’s good graces. But quickly, he ran into the same stumbling blocks as Peter.

Din Djarin was six feet tall with brown eyes and brown hair.

That was what they currently had to go on.

Wade would have torn out his hair if he had any, but he stopped himself and accepted the challenge. Peter watched over his shoulder as he chicken-pecked his way into a list of social security numbers held by the NYC State ID issuing department and started methodically filtering names that did not sound like ‘Din.’

He started broad with all ‘D’s and then narrowed it down further and further and further until he was left with a shitload of Daniels.

He stared at the screen before him and vibrated.

Peter massaged his shoulders before he cracked.

It helped. Wade started filtering by height, then by eye color. Then by hair, and only ended up with several hundred people.

He vibrated again, but this time, Peter couldn’t help him.

He sighed. Wade said that there had to be a better way to do this. He got up.

  --

Wade made about four thousand missing posters with the name Din Djarin on them which he recruited the whole team to plaster up around NYC. This was not a request.

Miles asked him why they were doing this for a tv character and had to be let in on the gig.

He lost his shit.

Louis tried to retain his shit.

Angel still didn’t know how the whole jedi thing worked.

Dave hummed and haw’ed and took his time in calling bullshit. Wade asked him to look deep into his eyes and ask if he was entertaining bullshit that fine evening.

Dave changed his opinion and took a stack.

  --

There was no way that shit was supposed to work. There was just no way. A) because Wade had the worst ideas of all mankind and B) because Peter had the worst luck of all mankind. So the two of them together should have destroyed all the prospects of success for that job.

But instead, while they were hatching a new plot involving setting up a sham sociological study for people who responded to Star Wars names, Wade’s phone went off.

He grabbed it and opened the message and lo and behold right there was a note that read,

“I hope you are not a reporting body because this is going to sound certifiably insane, but I think I might be the guy you’re looking for?”

Wade screamed.

Peter scolded him not to get too excited too soon. They had to see the man first.

Wade texted furiously, asking for a picture and got a message back that said, “please do not dox me.”

They got no answer until Wade promised not to dox the guy.

And then they got an image of a man with brown hair and brown eyes with olive skin. His face was remarkably square. The picture wasn’t just him, though, he had in his arms a little boy with a head covered in tight ringlets. His eyes were so dark they were nearly black and he was maybe two years old.

The caption said, “apologies, my son needed to be in the picture.”

Wade cooed and entered Dad Mode to ask how old the baby was and what he liked to do and Peter lost the fathers to that small talk for a while before Wade oh-so-casually asked, “So you feel like you’re from outer space?”

“It sounds strange,” the guy on the other said wrote back, “But I do. Like every day I wake up and look in the mirror and something is wrong. I feel like I’m always forgetting something when I leave the house. I watched the tv show of the guy who’s name was on your fliers and the kid in it reminds me so much of my son. It’s eerie. They make the same sounds. He made the same sounds before we even watched that show.”

Wade whistled.

“I think this is him, Pete,” he said. “He called Baby Yoda a ‘kid’ not a yoda.”

Peter stared. He hadn’t even caught that. That was smart as hell.

“So what now?” he asked.

Wade sniffed.

“Get Skywalker to send you a selfie,” he said.

  --

PP: Luke are you pretty right now?

LS: My face is intact

PP: take a selfie and send it to me

LS: cannot do that. Face is intact is a baseline situation. Let me find an old one. Oh, they all have my ex in them. This is awkward.

PP: it doesn’t matter I can crop it.

LS: no I have to be cute or I’ll perish hold on

PP: are you sure you’re not Johnny Storm?

LS: yes, he’s got loads of muscles. Sent.

 Selfie acquired.

Luke looked very smiley in it. His eyes were blown out from the lighting, but it showed his sloping smile and his low, back-set dimples. Peter sent it to Wade. Wade sent it to his new friend.

They waited.

They waited five minutes.

Then ten.

Then half an hour.

Then nearly two.

And finally, Wade’s phone rang. He picked it up and set it on speaker so that Peter could hear.

“Hello?” Wade said.

There was a long pause.

“Where did you get that picture?” a low, almost smoky voice demanded on the other side.

“A friend,” Wade said sleazily. “You know him? He’s a cute little thing, ain’t he?”

It took the dude on the other side of the line worryingly long to respond.

“What do you want?” he finally asked.

Wade brought his head down in interest.

“What’re you willing do to?” he asked.

They waited. Peter didn’t know what was taking this guy so long to—

“Anything.”

Ah.

Okay. That.

That sounded about right.

Wade cackled.

“You know his name?” he asked.

“I do,” the man said.

“What’s his name then, pal?” Wade asked.

“It’s none of your fucking business.”

Holy shit. Holy shit. Peter clutched the back of the couch. Wade was grinning so hard, Peter could see it through his mask.

“You want him, you need to show me that you know who he is,” Wade said. “I ain’t got ‘im here, but I know where he is. Come on, big boy. Who is he?”

Peter could hear the man take in a deep, shaky breath.

“His name is Luke,” Din fucking Djarin, the Mandalorian himself, said.

  --

Din fucking Djarin’s name at the moment was Danny Jabaran. He stood six feet tall with a medium build and that baby of his in his arms.

He was not afraid of Wade.

He was not afraid of Peter.

The suits didn’t scare him; this man was a space warrior. The leader of the space warriors. Peter was humbled to stand in his presence, old jeans and tattoos and all.

“Vigilantes,” he acknowledged.

“Deadpool,” Wade said, offering a hand. “And this is?”

“Grogu,” Djarin said.

Baby Yoda lifted his big liquid eyes up to Wade and blinked twice. Then he wriggled around and hid in Djarin’s neck. Djarin put a hand on his back and didn’t drop eye contact.

“Tell me everything,” Djarin said.

  --

Ned screamed. Michelle screamed. Peter reminded them that he had neighbors and invited Mr. Mand’alor to sit on the couch for a bit while he called Luke.

Michelle claimed the spot next to Djarin and asked Baby Yoda Grogu for his little hand. He studied her and hid again, making a prolonged sound of distress that Djarin cut off by saying, “Hey. Manners.”

This somehow made baby Grogu turn back to Michelle to stare at her offered hand.

He took it. She shook with him and then took hers away.

Grogu perked up and reached for it again.

“You’re the Mandalorian,” Ned said.  

Djarin looked right at him.

“A Mandalorian,” he corrected.

Ned blinked back tears.

“You’re so cool,” he creaked.

Djarin frowned.

“You...are too?” he tried.

Ned wept into a fist.

Peter left them to call Luke in his bedroom. Luke picked up on the third ring with the start of an ingrained greeting that sounded a whole lot like a customer service recording. He caught himself, though.

“I have someone I’d like you to talk to,” Peter said. “I think you might want to sit down.”

Luke’s unusual quiet on the other side made Peter grin.

“Are you sitting?” he asked.

“I’m sitting.”

“Alright, one moment,” Peter said, walking out into the living room. Djarin had edged far, far away from Ned, as far as he possibly could without being rude. He looked up when Peter came over and sat down on the arm next to him.

“Say hi,” Peter said.

Djarin frowned at him and then the phone.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

Peter waited. Djarin lifted his head over to see the phone’s screen.

“Hello?” he tried.

“Din?”

The Spidey Sense crashed through Peter like a tidal wave.

Djarin had gone completely still.

“Din? Is that you? Can you hear me?”

“Shit,” Djarin said, lifting a hand to cover his eyes. “Goddamnit. Jesus.”

“DIN.”

“Dank Fucking Farrik.”

“Oh my god.”  

Baby Grogu’s face snapped toward the phone with huge eyes. He grabbed at Djarin’s collar, then his jaw and started bouncing a little in his arms.

“Bu?” he asked.

Djarin couldn’t make himself move.

“Grogu?” Luke asked. “Hey, baby, is that you, bubba?”

Grogu grabbed Djarin’s face urgently, so that he couldn’t hide his raw eyes anymore.

He pointed at the phone.

“Yeah, I hear ‘im, kid,” Djarin said.

“MMMMM. Gib.”

“Ah. That’s not ours. We don’t grab. We ask,” Djarin reminded as Grogu pleaded for the phone. Peter snickered and gave it to him. He just held it, staring.

“Do you wanna see him?” Peter asked. “Luke, can we maybe video chat?”

“Y-yeah,” Luke said. “Hold on. Oh god, my face. Uh, hey Din are you still near-sighted, hon?”

Djarin huffed a laugh that turned into a whole-body tremor.

“I got contacts,” he said a little hysterically.

“You got WHAT?” Luke yipped, “Okay, no. No, I gotta. Be still, this heart. Okay let me just take off the butterflies. On moment, Grogu, Daddy’s just gotta dunk his face in the damn sink.”

MJ bounced her eyebrows at Peter as he gently took the phone back from Grogu and tapped on the camera. He offered it back the kid and received a deep gaze of wonder in return. Djarin turned the screen right-side up in his hands.

Luke finally turned his camera on and revealed himself to be very swollen in the jaw with damp hair and a cut very close to the rim of his left eye.

Grogu screeched.

Luke laughed.

“Look at you,” he said, “I’m gonna cry. Oh my god. Where’re your ears, pal?”

Grogu analyzed this reaction for 2 full seconds and then shoved the camera right into his dad’s forehead. Djarin took it from him and liberated himself so that he could see Luke who was clutching at his face, absolutely already sobbing, bless him.

He looked up to see Grogu and instead got Djarin and finally just broke right in half.

Peter swallowed back the growing lump in his throat. His eyes were starting to warm a little.

Djarin found a watery smile in himself.

“I know you’re not cryin’ because of me,” he said gently.

“Where’s your helmet?” Luke sobbed, wiping viciously at his eyes. “People are watching, you harlot.”

“I know,” Djarin said. “I lost it.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Luke.”

“This is all my fault. I should’ve—I should’ve—”

“Luke,” Djarin said again, full of warmth, “You died for us.”

Luke shook harder than ever.

“There is no greater sacrifice a warrior can make,” Djarin told him. “I was honored for you to have made it for me and our son. This has always been the Way.”

“This is the Way,” Luke stammered.

“I missed you,” Djarin said. “Where in God’s name have you been?”

“I was a preschool teacher in the Bronx, man, I dunno what happened,” Luke said tipping his face up to force the tears back in.

“In the Bronx? Where?”

“Uh, off Allerton and Lurting?”

Djarin started shaking with laugher.

“I work off Laconia and Mace,” he said.

“You what?”

“We’ve been blocks apart this whole time.”

Awwwwww.

“I’m going to stab myself,” Luke moaned. “I’m going to stab myself in the arm. I was right there and I sold out for my part-time gig barely weeks ago. Oh my god. I’m going to—move, old man, I’m suffering—Wait. Din, did you find your parents?”

Djarin stood up and held the phone out straight.

“Where are you right now?” he asked.

  --

Look at all these people hugging each other.

Look at them crying all over. There was a baby in there, wailing because he was so happy to be back in the arms of his other dad.

Aww. AWWWW. Peter was getting emotional again, he was going to see himself out.

“Wait. Peter.”

He looked up to find Luke holding a hand to him.

“Thank you,” he said. “You really are a superhero, you know that?”

Yeah.

Sometimes, he did.

 --

 The city had plenty of problems as it was, yeah, more now with a bunch of jedi running around, linking up with each other and spreading memory like mushroom spores. But it didn’t feel that much different.

What it felt like now was Ned showing Grogu how to hold his hand at the seeing stone in the funeral home’s back yard to make the Force happen while Obi-Wan reported cheerfully that the cat perched on it was still not levitating.

It also felt like watching Luke freak out over text to Ned and Michelle about his ex losing their mind at him dumping them after two years to marry this random mechanic within a week of getting together.

Peter got to see this from new angles, too, one of which was the bottom of the funeral home’s attic stairs, which Anakin Skywalker liked to sit on while his grandkids—both Grogu and Han Solo and Leia Organa (pardon, Leia Naberry)’s son—came over to show him things that he was very well aware of. These were stolen from him by Auntie Ahsoka and her friends who Ned knew and Peter did not.

And there was something warming about how even these folks—people from a galaxy far, far away, occasionally needed a Spiderman.

   --

[saphirered]

Could you write another fic for Kingsley? I absolutely adored The Lovers and there’s so little content for the pirate tiefling, it leaves me so sad. I was thinking something where the reader and him have been flirting for awhile but he’s still doubtful of wether they like him as Kingsley or they just see him as Molly. (The reader doesn’t, and they end up comforting him, just overall some of that good Hurt/Comfort)

Don't know why writing is taking so long for me but I blame the double shifts. Sorry this took so long to write. I hope it was worth the wait 😘

Some things are doomed to repeat themselves. Mollymauk had always been a huge flirt regardless of actual interests in people he knew exactly what to do and say to make someone blush. That’s not something lost in the resurrections. Kingsley is no different. Flirting comes like a second nature to the lavender tiefling.

Molly’s goal had been to make you blush a task difficult to achieve so when you quipped back each and every time the flirtations escalated to what some might consider inappropriate to be spoken in certain social circles. This little back and forth turned into a bit of a competition to see who could make the other blush or gasp the most because you did manage to get those responses of each other.

It was your game and when Kingsley began with endearing pet names you automatically felt yourself falling back into that habit. You don’t really know when you got back to the point where you’d be outright flirting but the gradual escalation happened before you caught on and since neither you nor Kingsley seemed to mind or made any efforts to stop your little game you continued to play.

Days turned into weeks and weeks into months and you were both in full force with the flirtations where you might make others around you blush. Even those used to your comments. That’s something both you and Kingsley took pride in. Despite your words you’re always mindful of each others’ hardline boundaries. There’s a mutual respect. You always know when to stop and not take it too far. Though that doesn’t prevent you from walking that boundary like a tightrope.

Currently you’re standing on the bow of the ship looking over the ocean when an all too familiar voice calls for your attention. You look over your shoulder fully prepared in case you have to quip right back.

“Would you mind moving that pretty behind of yours somewhere else, love?” You watch Kingsley standing spyglass at the ready to take a closer look at the islands up ahead.

“If you wanted a closer look you could have just ask.” You wink and blow him a kiss as you move away from the bow to let Kingsley take your place and take a look as he does you catch him glance at you for just a moment. Of course you can do nothing but put on your best seductive face.

“If you’re offering, the lighting in my cabin will be perfect for the occasion.” Kingsley returns with a half smirk lowering the spyglass. Leaning on the wooden border you make sure to arc your back just a little crossing your ankles as you look over your shoulder thoughtfully.

“Hm. Any suggestions for a specific spot? Lighting can be quite tricky. Maybe you should show me every corner of the room just to make sure the view is perfect?” You tease. The Tiefling’s smirk widens, task forgotten, he wraps an arm around you pulling you close to him.

Kingsley leans in and for a second you think he’s going to kiss you. Not that you would stop him. You’d grown to like him but since he’s new to the world you didn’t want to push him into the deep end before having had a chance to discover and figure things out for himself. Your hands slowly snaking up his arms to his shoulders you wait for him to quip back.

“Don’t make offers you have no intention to make good on.” Kingsley breathes removing his arms from you and taking a step back. You’re confused. Mixed signals? Not at all. Not to you. You know he’s a tease and so are you but this is not a quip back. This is a statement. Why? The flirty demeanour drops so you’ll reply with a statement of your own.

“Who says I don’t intend to make good on it?” You gage Kingsley’s reaction but come up blank. Nothing that gives away the sudden mood change. He excuses himself and goes back to work so you do the same; replaying the events of the day to figure out what may have lead to this shift. Still nothing.

Next day comes around and every attempt at flirting is shot down. You know how to take a hint and at first just assume Kingsley just isn’t in the mood or headspace to play the game. You’ll leave him be for a few days to sort out whatever he needs to sort out. No more flirting for a while until he initiates it. Your conversations are more cordial and less warm than they used to be but Kingsley doesn’t avoid you so you at least take comfort in that.

After two weeks you’ve had enough. Another day of work gone by, sun setting slowly you find yourself standing in front of the lavender tiefling’s door. Rapping your knuckles against the wooden door you feel confident the knocks are audible. There’s no response so you knock again but again nothing. A little frustrated you try the handle and the door opens. You don’t fully open it just yet.

“Kingsley? Are you there?” You speak softly in case he’s asleep. You hear a muffled grumble and decide to step inside. There you see the tiefling sprawled out across the bed on his back, pillow over his face held in place by one hand. He doesn’t move but you see the rise and fall of his chest; enough to give away he is breathing and in fact awake.

You close the door behind you taking a look around the room. As expected there’s very few personal artefacts; a spare shirt thrown over a chair, a coin pouch on the table, coins spilled, blue book, a pair of fine boots, an empty bottle and a half full one as well as a half eaten plate of food presumably for dinner. The light of the setting sun bleeds through the paned window providing just enough lighting to make out the finer details of the room. It’s well kept and actually surprisingly tidy. The bed’s made and the pillows neatly placed, the shoes next to the side table and a chest at the foot of the bed. Not a speck of dust or grime to be found.

“Kingsley? Are you alright?” You ask sitting down at the edge of the bed hesitantly. You’re not really sure how to approach him. You don’t even remember your plan you had before you got here. There’s a hum in agreement as the pillow is lowered from his face.

“Yes. Yes, I’m totally fine.” Kingsley sighs staring at the ceiling as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world. He rubs his eyes and sits up facing you. He looks a bit tired but what did you expect after a busy day of work. You don’t look any different.

“Are you sure? You’ve been a bit out of it the past few weeks. I miss my flirty tiefling.” He snorts at the latter. Does he know something you don’t? Why the attitude? You’ll have to get to the bottom of this because you fear your- whatever it is you have with Kingsley depends on it.

“Fine then. I’m worried about you. One second we’re doing our thing and the next you push me away distancing yourself from me and giving me the cold shoulder. If my words upset you you should have just told me like you’ve always done. Why the sudden change? If you wanted me to stop or if I made you uncomfortable you should have said so.” You twiddle your thumbs awaiting a response fearful his shift behaviour was because of you because what else could it be?

Kingsley doesn’t answer just yet. A single glance at you and your stupid pretty face has him melting like chocolate on a hot day. He’s filled with regret because you’re right. He should have said something. Anything. You deserve that much but no, he had to be stupid and avoid the topic in the hopes it would go away. Problems don’t disappear into thin air. It requires communication.

A hand hesitantly grasps your twiddling fingers. You cease the motions looking at the man. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the look on his face is guilt and pity as he finds the words.

“This is not on you. This is on me being an idiot instead of just talking to you.” There’s a brief moment of silence as he silently begs the gods will be kind and you won’t hate him for bring this up. Then again, you’ve been nothing but understanding and patient in the past.

“No matter how much I love our flirtations I think they should end. If not for your sake, then for mine. It’s not… healthy.” You see him glance at the blue notebook on the table. So he’s read it. That explains the sudden shift. You’re mentally preparing yourself for whatever comes next fearing that what he might have read about you and your past has driven him to push you away. It’s his choice and his right but that wouldn’t make it less painful.

“I know now you had this thing with Mollymauk and now you’re continuing that with me. It snowballed into what we have-had but it can’t keep going. You’re holding onto a thread of the past and I feel like I’m trying to fill the spot he left just because I like you. It’s not healthy for either of us.” You give him a sad smile, your fears have been pushed down and you’re happy it’s not what you thought was going to happen but how wrong he is; it’s almost painful.

Kingsley is conflicted because he really does like you and wants to be what Molly used to be but he also knows he can never fill the spot of a ghost. Nor can he compete with it. He won’t force himself to be someone he’s not or fight to live up to the expectations even if he really wanted to because that’s not what a relationship of any kind is about.

“Kingsley… You fool… You really are a shit communicator.” You laugh. Taken aback he doesn’t know wether he should be confused or offended.

“If you’d only just asked… You’ll never be Molly and I do not ever want you to be so never try to. I like you because of who you are and yes we might have fallen into a habit he and I once shared but that ended and what we have is not the same. Never pretend to be someone you’re not.”

“Well, not unless you’re conning someone.” Kingsley quips. The relief your words are honest washes over him. It’s like he can breathe again or was holding a breath he didn’t know he was. He had been so afraid that facing you with his conclusions would drive you away forever. Maybe he really needs to work on his communication skills to you?

“There’s the Kingsley I know. Never pretend to be someone you’re not for me because you feel like you have to. That’s not healthy. Just be you. If you’re gonna make me fall in love with you, you don’t need anything but your own charm and that grin of yours.” You can see him fight that very grin from crawling up his face but it does anyway.

“I think you got me pegged, love.” You raise an eyebrow suggestively and smirk as he swats at you but you catch his hands. You’re about to comment but he breaks your grasp and pushes his hand over your mouth to quiet you down. You fight against him so determined to make your comment to the point you’re on your back held down by the tiefling, giggles muffled.

“When I remove my hand, you promise to say literally anything but the thing you’re thinking?” You nod and hum in agreement. Kingsley gives you a threatening look before slowly removing his hand to reveal your grin mischievously. Still looming over you awaiting any kind of comeback.

“You know, when you said the lighting in this room was lovely you weren’t lying.” You pat his cheek and trace the peacock feathers curling up his neck and side of the face as you bask in the final rays of sunlight illuminating the room in a deep orange glow.

“The view definitely has improved.” His gaze is on you not at all paying attention to the horizon. You laugh. So cheesy and he knows it. You become more aware of your current position. Some people might think it inappropriate but neither you not Kingsley give a single flying fuck. As long as you’re comfortable be damned the opinions of others.

“You know, when I suggested you showing me the corners of the room I had hoped you’d be more creative than starting with the bed.” You obviously feign disappointment. Kingsley accepts your challenge as you weave your fingers in the hair at the back of the neck pulling lightly to tease him.

“Oh shush you. Your words might come back to haunt you.”

“Is that a promise?” You bat your eyelashes but the grin on your face remains. Of course it’s a promise. You’re counting on it and Kingsley tends to keep his promises. Maybe this miscommunication is exactly what you needed because it lead to where you are now and wherever it might take you. The possibilities are endless and unpredictable. Just the way you like it.

[st4rlabsforever]

post-episode 3 fix-it

words: 2.9k

notes: i started a long fic based on this post after watching ep 3. i cannibalized some snippets from another fic i wrote last week so if you see similar scenes, that’s why. i think this will end up being 12-15k words endgame sambucky by the end, but i refuse to post on ao3 until it’s complete. this is the first 3 scenes. feel free to comment and message me your thoughts since i’m still very much in the writing phase :)

summary: “It’s the kind of statement that should be screamed into Bucky’s face, but he’s learning that when Sam’s angry – when he’s truly angry – he’s just as soft-spoken as he is when he’s in one of his pensive moods. And he lets his anger build and build and build until it bursts in spectacular fashion.”

“I didn’t back Steve on the Sokovia Accords,” Sam says unprompted one day. They’re so close to apprehending the Flagsmashers and wrapping up this ridiculous saga.

“I don’t follow,” Bucky says.

“I was the one who refused to sign it first. Not Steve.”

Sam says it so softly that Bucky has to strain to hear him. Sam is loud and chatty and half the time he keeps up a constant stream of chatter just to get on Bucky’s nerves, but Bucky’s coming to realize that when he really wants to make himself heard, he’s soft spoken and mild. Bucky doesn’t entirely follow his train of thought, though.

The thing is, Sam is unreadable when it really matters. He offers words of comfort where needed – in Germany, after seeing Walker with the shield that wasn’t his, knowing that it had affected Bucky just as much as himself; in Madripoor, Bucky’s hand on the throat of some henchman or other, Sam’s hand on his when the Soldier’s memories threatened to overtake him; even in Riga, when Bucky’s guilt over releasing T’Chaka’s killer bubbled to the surface and Sam had checked in with him even though he couldn’t have possibly known about Bucky’s meeting with Ayo. Sam speaks with his eyes, always a searching look that leaves Bucky raw and feeling like he’s been x-rayed. I see you, is what those eyes say.

In contrast, Bucky’s words of comfort feel hollow. He knows that Isaiah is still a live wire for Sam, checks in with him after Madripoor when he can tell the conversation with Nagel weighs heavy on his mind. But he doesn’t see the way Sam does. He knows he’d missed something important because that conversation had ended in an argument and a threat from Sam to destroy the shield.

He never gets a chance to ask Sam what he’s getting at, because Torres signals to them that they’re at the drop point before all hell breaks loose.

***

In the end, after Karli and the Power Broker and whoever else decides to show their head from the emporium of supervillains are dealt with and they finally have a moment of peace, Bucky says, “The shield looks good on you.”

Sam freezes a few paces ahead of Bucky, the shield strapped loosely to his wrist.

“We make a good team,” Bucky says softly.

What he doesn’t expect is for Sam to whirl around suddenly. The look of barely restrained fury is enough to nearly knock Bucky off he’s feet. They fight without ever really fighting all the time, squabbles over who went left and who went right and who was supposed to lead and who was supposed to follow, but never has he seen Sam look like this before. The fury verges on hurt and it’s so fucking visceral that Bucky can barely breathe.

“You don’t get to say that,” Sam says quietly. His voice shakes and he closes his eyes like he’s steadying himself.

“I said I’d squash it until the mission was over, and I did. But you know what? I’m not doing this anymore.”

“Sam–”

“You don’t get to tell me what a good team is. Not after all the shit we just went through. You invited yourself to Munich, and I thought, ‘Fine. I could use the extra set of hands.’ We went through it together against Thanos and I respected that.”

Sam shakes his head. “But then you went off on some lone wolf woe-is-me bullshit, and look at where it got us. You broke Zemo out without even asking if I was down with that. You knew I wasn’t and you forced my hand. Now I’m an accomplice.”

“He was our only lead–”

“Bullshit. That field trip to Madripoor led us right back to Karli. Torres ended up tracking them to Riga anyway.”

“But the Power Broker–”

“–showed his ugly face in the end. All we got out of Madripoor was you digging up your trauma and us getting our faces plastered all over the internet. I promised Sharon one goddamn thing and I can’t even deliver on that now.”

“But I went along with it, fine,” Sam continues. “I knew it couldn’t have been easy reaching back into that headspace, doing what you did to Selby’s men.” The memory blindsides Bucky. “So I tabled it.” Sam taps out a tally with his fingers. 

“And back in Baltimore, you’d been too keyed up about Steve being wrong about you to even listen to what I had to say. Again, I tabled it.” Another tally. 

“I’ve been meeting you halfway this entire time, man, and I’ve gotten near nothing in return. You kept Isaiah a secret from me, and at first I thought you were just clueless about how damn significant it would’ve been for me to know about him.” Sam shakes his head. 

“But then we met him. You saw what they did to him. The one Black supersoldier – a fucking hero – and look what they did to him. You saw it with your own eyes and you still sat there and lectured me about what you thought I should’ve done with that goddamn shield.” 

“There’s precedent for it, you know,” Sam says. It takes Bucky a moment to realize Sam is expecting an answer.

Bucky doesn’t know, is the thing. He feels like he’s all of five years old again, put on the spot. He’s reminded of when Zemo just had to let him know about the African American experience; he’d felt chastised and embarrassed enough to pretend like he’d had any clue what themes lurked in Marvin Gaye’s work. Sam just searches him with those eyes, searches Bucky for something yet unfathomable and decides he hasn’t found it. That hurts more than anything else; Bucky wishes he could sink into the ground, make himself as small as possible. Sam doesn’t notice, or else doesn’t care, and just plows on with a scoff. 

“You don’t even know the true history of the country you’re living in. Figures.” He shakes his head. “You’re not ever going to be able to separate the shield from the history Black folks have endured at the hands of this country. Not now, not ever.”

Sam doesn’t even look angry anymore. Angry, Bucky can deal with. It would be a relief, even. 

Instead, Sam looks at him with a disappointment that somehow surpasses what Steve could have ever accomplished.

“Whatever. I tabled that, too,” Sam says. “And then after Madripoor, after we heard that doctor go on and on about Isaiah’s blood like he wasn’t even a real human-being? I said my piece and all you did was throw that shield bullshit back in my face.”

“Sam–” Bucky tries again. He’s mortified to hear the crack in his own voice.

“It’s honestly breathtaking,” Sam says with something that might be akin to genuine wonder, or maybe even morbid curiosity in his voice. “We saw the same things in Baltimore and Madripoor, but your head was so far up your own ass that you never once stopped to think all of it was just proof to me. That the shield in the hands of a Black man wouldn’t make any damn sense.”

It’s the kind of statement that should be screamed into Bucky’s face, but he’s learning that when Sam’s angry – when he’s truly angry – he’s just as soft-spoken as he is when he’s in one of his pensive moods. And he lets his anger build and build and build until it bursts in spectacular fashion.

Sam’s not even done yet. “And that’s another thing. Stealing the shield from Walker…” Sam rolls his eyes at the memory. “You want to run around with that giant frisbee, fine. That’s your business. But then you forced it on me–”

“That’s not fair,” Bucky says immediately. Desperately. “You didn’t have to accept it.”

“The whole damn country was watching,” Sam says hotly. “It was either accept it, or shit all over Steve fucking Rogers’s legacy and make myself into the villain half the country was already hoping I’d turn out to be.”

“You were dead wrong for that,” Sam says. “I stuck around until we took down Karli because it was the right thing to do. After Munich, though, this little adventure was all you. Zemo, Madripoor, the shield.”

Sam shoves the shield into Bucky’s arms, the impact so sudden that it forces him back a step.

“Since you’re so obsessed with this thing, it’s yours. Congrats,” Sam says sarcastically. “I’m sure you’ll do it proud.”

Bucky lets out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding.

“For what it’s worth,” Sam says, “Steve might not have understood everything about me. But in Vienna, when it came time to sign the accords? He was considering it. I put my foot down first and he listened.”

Sam shrugs. “Whatever you thought we were, it's not a team.”

Bucky knows where to drive the knife in to kill a man in as few twists of the wrist as possible – a brutal economy of movement and technique. But Sam...it pales in comparison to what Sam’s capable of. His weapons aren’t knives and his targets may not be made of flesh and blood, but he knows exactly where he needs to strike to rip Bucky open raw. Bucky feels like he’s been flayed alive.

“How about that long vacation?” Sam says, and claps Bucky on the shoulder. 

And we’ll never have to see each other ever again goes unsaid.

Fuck.

***

The thing about ignoring Sam’s texts was that Bucky responded if they were actually important. It just so happened that most of the nonsense Sam sent was inane prattling about his day, about his job, his sister, his nephews. Now that he’s on the receiving end of it, though, it feels awful.

3/25/21, 2:58 AM

I’m sorry.

Delivered

3/28/21, 1:51 AM

Can we talk?

Delivered

3/31/21, 3:05 AM

Let me know what to do and I’ll do it.

Read 3:34 AM

4/1/21, 12:42 AM

Or if there’s anything you need.

Read 1:05 AM

Yesterday, 1:00 AM

I’m available if you need another body for a mission.

Read 1:02 AM

A week into the admittedly one-sided exchange, Sam turns his damn read receipts on. It’s ridiculous and it’s fucking asinine and it gets under Bucky’s skin immediately. It’s a form of twenty-first century psychological warfare that he’s unfamiliar with and already can’t stand. Mainly, he hates that it makes him seem desperate (he’s not), needy (he might be, especially when he realizes with horror that he actually misses Sam’s rambling texts), and ridiculous (he definitely is, because he’s letting petty mind games get to him).

Normally, Sam would send him nearly daily updates on his comings and goings – whether he’d been in New York, D.C., or New Orleans. The radio silence is unsettling. Bucky wonders if Sam made good on his promise to take a long vacation. And then....

The thing about apologies is that Bucky isn’t sure he’s ever done a proper one in his entire life, at least nothing beyond a rote “I’m sorry” with the “let’s move on” part left unspoken. But it stands to reason, Bucky thinks, that a proper apology can’t be given if he’s not completely certain what he’s dealing with. That’s all well and good because he’s got the world at the tips of his fingers, is what Yori always said. And when he grows frustrated with reading on his tiny phone screen, the New York Public Library is only a train ride away.

Sam had mentioned precedent, so Bucky’s first search is for medical experimentation. He knows for a fact he was good at this once, a memory of Steve whining about him being too good at exams coming up unbidden. He reads voraciously. Anything and everything that might offer a clue on what he’d missed. And it doesn’t take long for him to find what he��s looking for. 

He reads with dawning horror. The Tuskegee syphilis experiments. Eugenics. God, the fucking Nazis had even modeled their race science on the American school of thought. The things that the history books left out. Some of it was even happening under his nose in the 30s, he’d just been blissfully unaware. He somehow ends up down a rabbit hole where words like `prison industrial complex’ and `school-to-prison pipeline’ make increasingly more persistent appearances. New Jim Crow. COINTELPRO. War on drugs. The way all of these horrors reached their long arms into the twenty-first century.

Bucky’s going to be sick. The memories come up one after another.

Just give him your ID so we can leave.

You think you can wake up one day and decide who you want to be? It doesn’t work like that. Well, maybe it does for folks like you.

So you’re telling me that there was a Black supersoldier decades ago and nobody knew about it.

This is what you’re not going to do. You’re not going to come here in your over-extended life and tell me about my rights.

The shield wasn’t yours to give away.

He spends the next week in his downtime reading. With the mission being over and his parole in jeopardy, his downtime mostly coincides with every day of the week.

Had Steve known?

No, he thinks. Steve was compassionate, but he wouldn’t have known because he’d taken one look at the problems of twenty-first century America and decided he’d had enough. Then he’d ran back to the 40s to live out some fantasy that simply didn’t – couldn’t – exist anymore. Had he eventually become aware of all the issues plaguing this country that they’d been able to ignore as starry-eyed kids in Brooklyn? Bucky hopes not, because that would mean he’d...no. 

A part of Bucky thinks he’s so surprised because he’d thought things – race relations, civil rights, not things, his brain amends – had been getting better in the 40s. Deep down, though, he knows that’s a lie. A 2 AM read through Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States confirms it. Shady politicians. Klansmen who went back to their day jobs as cops, judges, firefighters. Mass incarceration taking its place as the new king on the throne of segregation. Evidently, 

There had been plenty of folks – white folks – raising an uproar about these hidden horrors back then. The seeds of those movements had even been there in the 30s. Bucky tells himself that he’d been raised during the Great Depression, that his family had been too focused on putting food on the table to focus on social movements, but that, too, ends up being a lie. The poorest and working class whites – some, at least – in movement and solidarity with civil rights. Not him, though. Apparently he’d had his head up his ass back then, too.

Bucky can see the bigger picture a tiny bit more clearly, now. 

Fine. So he’s been disarmed of the little lies he’d used as shields, and he also owes Sam one hell of an apology.

Somehow, he doesn’t think “I’m sorry, I was ignorant then but I read some books and now I know better” is going to cut it. Maybe a commitment to do better would work? Perhaps after Baltimore, but not now. That ship had long since sailed. Some grand act of service, then? He’s sure he can think of something Sam needs in this post-Blip world that he can provide. He vaguely remembers Sarah mentioning something about a ship and bank loan. That could be a starting point.

It doesn’t take much time to find the public records on the Wilson family business and then the not-so-public records on the denied bank loan. It wouldn’t take much for him to pry a little, not when seedy bankers were astonishingly amenable to the threat of violence. But he’s reminded of Zemo and figures that he ought not to do anything so drastic that could jeopardize Sam’s family situation further.

He snorts. Did growth that came several months late still count?

In the end, he decides to rip the bandage off quickly, which is how he finds himself in the sticky Louisiana heat with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring back at an incredulous Sam through his open door.

“I did some reading recently,” Bucky says. 

“Hmm.”

It’s not outright refusal, so Bucky continues.

“About, um, the things you mentioned last time. Precedent.”

“Huh.”

For someone who’s normally so expressive with his language, Sam’s one-word answers as nerve-wracking as anything.

“I didn’t fully appreciate the situation that you were in. That you’re still in,” Bucky amends.

Sam shrugs. “It’s cool,” he says in a way that doesn’t sound like he really believes it. Bucky wonders if this is a test; he feels just as lost as he did on that plane a week ago.

“Let’s do this outside,” Sam says, closing the door behind him and ushering Bucky away from it. “Walk with me.” 

They head down to the pier mostly in silence until Bucky breaks it. “I’m sorry for making it all about me,” he says.

Sam stares at him. It’s true Bucky might stare a little too much on occasion, but Sam’s stares are utterly unnerving in the way he seems to see right through Bucky when he really wants to, like he’s already mapped out all there is to know.

[laurensprentiss]

Jouska [Hotch x Reader]

Chapter 5:

Warnings: Mentions of guns, lil’ bitta tension, lotta angst. Mentions of Haley. 

Word Count: 2,262

------

“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.” - Daniel Keyes

------

“Aaron would you just listen to me?!” The frustration seeps out of her pores, her hands running through her blonde hair. 

They’ve been going around in circles for months now, ever since he took on your case, the irregular hours and time away taking its toll. It seems like a never ending cycle, she argues, he goes to work anyway, brings her back some flowers or gifts, they make up. Rinse and repeat. And she’s at the end of her tether. 

He holds his hands up in defeat, setting his phone against the kitchen counter. “Haley! What would you have me do? I have a job, this is my career.” He says, almost condescendingly.

She slams the cupboard as her voice goes up a few octaves. “What is that supposed to mean? Don’t do that. Don’t you dare try to make me out to be the bad guy! Don’t you dare, Aaron.” Her eyes narrow and she’s seething, her face red and tears pricking the corners of her eyes. “You asked me to move in with you because you wanted to be with me. You wanted a future with me.” 

“-I do.”

“Don’t interrupt me.” She hisses. “We moved from Seattle to DC so you could chase your dreams. I left my parents, my family, my friends to be with you. Because I believed you when you said you wanted a future with me.” Her tears spill over as she wipes at them frantically. 

“Haley.” 

“No. Aaron. I can’t. I understand you want to follow your dreams, I know this is your job, that this is who you are. But you need to seriously reconsider what’s important to you, because I can’t keep doing this.” Her voice cracks.

The sentence hits him like a freight train as he swallows the lump in his throat. “Keep doing what?” He asks hesitantly. He’s not sure if he even wants to know the answer. She’s all he knows. 

“Going to bed alone.” She whispers. “I can’t keep living like this, I can’t keep being the only person all in for this relationship.” 

His heart sinks. He crosses the small kitchen to hold her hands in his, a split second taking him back to when he held yours in the car that day. He shakes the thought from his head and seeks out her eyes. He doesn’t really know what to say, can’t quite find the words. 

“I’m sorry.” He says defeatedly. He cups his hand around her cheeks and wipes the tears from her eyes as she leans into his touch, bringing her forehead to his. 

It hurts him to know that she feels like this, but it devastates him even more to know that he can’t promise her he’ll do better. He wants to. More than almost anything, to give her what she wants, but his commitment to his job is almost hardwired into him, his need to uphold his oath. And the strange pull he feels towards you makes him feel like there’s too many parts of him being pulled this way and that, being spread too thin. 

He feels torn. 

She leans into his touch, both of them sharing a quiet moment after their blow up, their eyes closed, a glimmer of hope emerging in her chest. 

But then his phone rings. He can almost see the disappointment rise in Haley’s shoulders as his eyes tear open at the sound, but Haley squeezes her eyes shut even more, knowing the answer. She already knows the outcome. 

She knows who wins in this situation. 

“Just go.” Her voice is barely above a whisper. 

Panic rises in Hotch’s chest, the magnetic pull of his phone and his job tearing him away from his childhood sweetheart. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. Can we talk tonight?” He pleads.

She doesn’t respond, just keeps her eyes shut as he places a chaste kiss against her lips. 

“I’m sorry.” And with that he leaves. 

———-

“Oh, so big bad Hotch’s gonna teach me how to shoot, huh?” You huff out a laugh as you hand him your bag to load into the trunk. 

“Yep.” 

You squint at him, puzzled by his sudden change in demeanour, a knot forming in your stomach. You step into the SUV, securing your seatbelt, your anxiety taking over, suddenly. 

You’ve noticed he’s been tense the past couple of days, but today especially. His eyebrows are pulled into a frown, he seems distant and unfocused and his jaw is set into a hard line, which ordinarily would get you into trouble with yourself, but today, it’s a sign for concern. 

He checks his phone for the fifth time in almost as many minutes, rubbing a hand over his beard, inhaling sharply. His jaw ticks as he rolls open the window before putting the car into drive. 

The car ride is literally and figuratively chilly, the spring air permeating the awkward atmosphere. Hotch doesn’t attempt to make any conversation with you, doesn’t even look at you, his nostrils flared and his mind elsewhere. 

You feel awkward, uncomfortable and there’s a creeping sensation up your neck, a sharp contrast to a couple days ago when he had held your hand in his, reassured you that he’d do whatever he could to catch this guy. Now, the butterflies are an unwelcome sensation. 

You continue on your wordless journey, pulling up to the shooting range. You take a beat and wait for Hotch as he unbuckles his belt and steps out of the car without even so much as acknowledging you. You swallow thickly, feeling an almost misplaced guilt towards his actions. 

Was it you? Did you do something wrong?

———

“Okay, you’re gonna start with this one here.” Hotch explains, holding the Glock 42 flat in his palm, weighing it in his hands. “You’re gonna start with the smallest, get used to the trigger and the weight before we can move up.” His voice is monotone, unwavering. No hint of levity. You move up to the shelf, taking the gun from his hands. 

Damn. What is with this guy today?

You clear your head.

Okay. Check the magazine, load, safety. 

Done.

Stance, aim, push, pull and squeeze. 

The smoke from the round wafts into your nose as you open your eyes to check the paper target in front of you, completely untouched. 

Shit. 

Hotch pinches his nose, the vein in his temple throbbing. “No, c’mon! How many times-“ 

He winces and stops abruptly. Stops before he says something he doesn’t mean, before he does something he knows he’ll regret. This isn’t him. And it isn’t your fault. He knows this, but he can’t help but feel that the misplaced frustration he has towards you is because of his guilty conscience, it’s compensation for the way he feels so torn. Still he pushes it down further. 

He clears his throat. “I’m sorry. I-. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to-“ 

You just follow his movements, watch him collect himself. He takes a breath and huffs out a dry laugh. “Alright. C’mere.” 

You shoot him a puzzled look, the swift change in his mood taking you aback. Part of you wants to rip him a new one for treating you like this, but it wouldn’t do any good. Strange attraction aside, he was fast becoming your friend, one of the only people you could rely on, and knowing he wasn’t in the right headspace but not having the answer for him was frustrating. 

He chuckles. “Come on. Come here.” He beckons you toward him. You plant yourself in front of him, as he moves in close, his body solid behind you. He grips your wrists from behind as your hands wrap around the glock, taking stance, his breath on your neck. 

His voice is low in your ear. “Remember to follow through, okay?” You don't dare turn your head, he’s so close. You glance at him out of the corner of your eye to find him watching you, his eyes flirting to your lips for a brief second and you feel that familiar heat creep up your neck. 

He moves back only slightly, giving him enough room to grip your hips, positioning your right foot back, angling your body at a slight diagonal. His hands are solid on your body, moving you with ease. You try your best to concentrate on the target in front of you and to hold the glock level, but Hotch’s presence so close is less than ideal when you need to focus. 

He positions your arms once again, touch feather light this time, brushing your shoulders as he does. He nods for you to try again. 

You keep your eyes on the target this time, trained on the marker body in front of you after you shoot and you can’t quite believe you hit it. You squeal with excitement and turn to face Hotch who looks proud but drops down quickly, seeing the Glock still in your hands. 

“Yeah, lesson number 2. Never-“ He nods at you to punctuate his point, taking the gun from you. “-Never. Point a gun at someone without aiming.” 

———

It’s dark when Hotch pulls up outside your building, the mood decidedly lighter than before but the unspoken heaviness still lingers in the air, carries all the way up to your apartment. You key the door open, switching on a lamp on your way in, Hotch making quick work of a window sweep.

“Two MPD officers are posted right outside, and there are two unmarked cars outside, too. Just in case.”  

You nod as you walk into your kitchen, a sudden surge of bravery taking over. “Hey, Hotch?” 

He doesn’t look up from his phone when he answers. “Yeah?” 

“Hotch.”

He looks up this time, sheepish expression on his face when he realises you’re staring at his phone, too, cursing himself for not minding his manners. 

“Sorry. What is it?” 

“Are you okay?” You ask, earnestly. 

He pretends to be oblivious, as you walk out of your kitchen and plant yourself on your couch, water in hand. He sits on the ottoman you use as a footrest opposite your couch, but says nothing. Just watches you, but you wait for him. 

He runs his hands through his hair. It’s endearing, you think. 

“That obvious?” He says with a dry chuckle. 

You wait for him to go on. 

“I know I’ve been ‘off’ the last couple of days. I’m sorry. It’s just- I don’t know. Stuff in my personal life, I guess - I let it affect my job. Won’t happen again.” 

“That’s not what I mean. Screw the job. I mean are you actually okay?” You feel a strange pull in your chest, the vulnerability is written on his face. But you don’t want to push him. “Would you like to talk about it?”

“It’s- just this job, y’know. My girlfriend-“

“-Haley.” You’re thinking out loud but he looks surprised as to how you could know her name. “I think I heard you talking to her a couple times.” You shake it off. 

“Yeah. Well. She’s struggling to cope with all of this, I guess. The job. It’s not like it’s a regular 9-5, and I don’t suppose it’s much fun going to sleep in an empty house most nights.” 

I go to bed alone. 

She goes to bed alone. 

He curses himself for his lack of tact. “I mean I know where she’s coming from, I wish I could be around more but it’s hard trying to get the right balance y’know? And I don’t know, I have the feeling she might not want to stick around much longer - and I wouldn’t blame her.” 

He whispers the last part, like he doesn’t trust his voice to betray him. He’s surprised he’s even opened up to you this much, this quickly and he realises his mouth has already betrayed him before his brain had even had a chance to catch up. He feels lighter though, maybe even optimistic. 

But you feel your heart sinking. The naive little girl in you had thought maybe Hotch could have felt attracted to you, maybe even had some feelings for you. The realisation that he has a foundation, a home, a long-term relationship - even if it was on the rocks - makes your chest heavy. Makes it hard to breathe.

You don’t want to give him advice. Don’t even want to really think about him and Haley at all. But the sadness in his eyes and the worry in his voice speaks louder than the little voice in your head. 

“You love her?”

He takes a beat, but nods.

“Then you know what you have to do, Hotch. Give her what she wants. Give her what she needs to stay.” You feel a misplaced, profound kind of sadness deep within you, and you can’t tell whether it’s because you feel utterly alone and like nobody would ever want to fight for you - or whether it’s because you know that person wouldn’t be the man sitting in front of you. 

Still, you inhale deeply and stand. “Well, listen - I don’t wanna keep you.” You walk him to your door. “I hope it all works out.” You tell him as you watch him leave. And you only half mean it. 

———

“Haley?” Hotch shouts through the door. He shrugs off his blazer and loosens his tie as he turns on the lights in their dark home, blinking as his eyes adjust. There’s no answer. 

“Haley?” 

Nothing.

He searches the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, a sinking feeling taking over. Still, he calls out her name, to no avail. He turns on the light in their bedroom, the wardrobes open and hangers laying on a neat pile in the corner. He sighs defeatedly. 

His eyes fall to a piece of folded yellow paper on the centre of their perfectly made bed. He picks it up and lets his body fall onto the mattress, unfolding the note.

Haley’s elegant, slanted writing reads: 

‘I’m sorry too. - HB’ 

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[noonegetsleftbehind]

Getting Personal With J (2021 Fucking Sucked)

So, this is, clearly, a very OOC post, but one that has been in the making for several months. It’s one that I really want to get off my chest and I debated a lot about whether I should share it here for any of those that do have the headspace or time/desire to read it or if I should just keep it to myself. But I decided... I’m tired of hiding. I want to be forthcoming and open about myself and what I have been through. I want to let others know that if they ever need someone to talk to that I am always here. 

So, this post comes with a huge HUGE trigger warning

Please do not read if you have triggers to the following: mentions of suicide, mentions of drugs, mentions of hospitals, mentions of mental health, mentions of trauma, mentions of breakdowns etc. And most importantly? Be advised that what is under the cut is heavy and may be hard to read or process for some. Please, please, PLEASE do not read further if you are not in the right headspace or frame of mind to do so.

So, if you are and you want to read? Click away

Point blank. I suffer from major depressive (treatment resistant) disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD, CPTSD, unspecified mood disorder, nightmares, panic attacks, insomnia, waiting on a diagnosis of ADHD/ADD and more. This is just the mental health side of things, mind you. Over the course of 2021 alone... early spring - tore the scar tissue from carpal tunnel release in my right hand, May - got a concussion from my dog and developed post-concussion syndrome, July - went to the ER twice in ONE week and then again the next week for excruciating abdominal pain - turns out I had a shit ton of gallstones and my gallbladder needed to come out - during this time until surgery I ate jack all nothing basically or I was in pain, October - Horrible asthma attack brought on at work and then a trip to the psych ER because there was a mix up with my pharmacy and I had been out of one of my meds for 5 days and hadn’t slept and blacked out and came to in my bathroom cutting myself.... Which brings us to....

November. The year, as you can tell, had already been stressful enough. I had to leave my job from August until the end of September in order to have surgery. This means I was not getting paid etc. The weight of financial stress, the stress of the entire YEAR, the stress of my job, the stress of the upcoming holidays, the stress of the loss of my guinea pig and the stress of a lease violation from my landlord because they didn’t get the paperwork for my ESA all just hit me at once. Stress is my biggest trigger. I can only take so much until I break and I broke HARD. Not the first time either. I had a complete mental breakdown in February of 2020 over similar reasons. This one had me in a psych ER for hours and wound up with me in about 3-4 months of intensive outpatient therapy. This time? Not so lucky.

I had gone to my doctor’s office to get a note to be released to go back to work as I had been out getting COVID tested. I was negative. As I was walking back home, I couldn’t stop thinking about just walking out into traffic. The thought of doing so didn’t even scare me, it CALMED me. I had this feeling that every stress would lift away and I wouldn’t have to keep feeling all of this weight and trauma and feeling so worthless and awful every single day of my life... That my wife would be so much better and happier without me etc. The thought of just falling into the street and getting ran over again and again made me happy. Before I knew it, I was starting to walk towards the curb. I stopped and walked fast back home and told my wife. She took me to the ER, but thanks to COVID she couldn’t come in. It was just me. 

Not only was it just me... It was me and my paper clothes in a dark, secluded room with a shitty mattress bolted to the fucking floor... I was seen by a social worker, a doctor twice and a nurse once... I was told by the doctor the social worker wanted to admit me.... I was left alone in that fucking room for 7 HOURS. Nothing said to me. Nobody coming to check on me. No food. No water. Nothing.  It wasn’t until around 3am that 2 paramedics came in with a stretcher and told me they were taking me. I had no idea what was going on. Again, nobody told me. They grabbed my belongings and proceeded to strap me all the way down to this stretcher from my feet to my head basically. They drove me 45 minutes away and dropped me off at a mental hospital. I had no idea where I was. It was after 4 in the morning. I hadn’t ate, slept or spoken to my wife which they did not let me do. I had to spend the next several hours answering questions, filling out paperwork, being strip searched etc. They pulled the strings out of my hoodie and threw them out, tried to ruin my shoes etc. It was the most dehumanizing thing I have ever been through. I was finally brought to a ward and a room just a little after 6am on November 30th. I laid down and cried myself to sleep or what I could... They had people come in every 15 minutes to check on you. 

Have you ever had a nightmare and you KNOW you’re having a nightmare? In it... you tell yourself it’s just a nightmare and you can wake up and it will go away? I had that. I dreamt it was a nightmare and all I had to do was wake up. But when I opened my eyes the nightmare was still there. It was the single worst fucking feeling I have ever experienced in my life. I still have not processed this completely. 

I stayed in this locked ward for 7 days. You may all remember when I was gone and in the hospital. I asked Spooper to keep the cause of hospital stay hush. Clearly you now know why. 

I could speak forever of the horrors of this stay. I really could. I am working with my therapist to actually give a speech and/or write up a piece about my trauma. Because in all honesty? What I experienced caused even more psychological damage and trauma than I went in with. I am still WORSE now than I was when I wanted to walk into traffic. The mental health system in the US is BROKE. It is a JOKE. It is AWFUL.

I can tell you I got a roommate who was a detoxing crack addict with about 40 different people in her head who constantly talked and had conversations and actual screaming FIGHTS with people who weren’t there all day and all night. When she wasn’t doing that she was in the bathroom using 6 rolls of toilet paper a day to scrub the floor and flush the toilet over and over and over and over.

I could not sleep. Ever. for 7 fucking days. I begged them to move me. Anything. I would leave the room and cry in the middle of the ward and all the would do was force more meds on me. I was double dosed on trazadone and vistaril. They never moved me.

There was a very violent individual who was on my ward as well. He would constantly talk about how he was going to kill each one of us. I lived every minute of every day in fear and trauma in there, just drugged out the ass. I was only allowed to call my wife at designated times. I had only one pair of clothes. Everything I had on me was locked up. I wasn’t even allowed to go to the cafeteria to eat as you are basically considered a prisoner unless you willingly sign yourself in.

On top of all of this... I had to see a therapist and a psych and attend group therapy ALL FUCKING DAY from 8am to 5pm. Every day. On no sleep. And drugged. Every day it got worse and worse. But I learned real quick that what I had to do to get out was pretend. You go to every group. You TRY. You express the want to be involved and get better... Which I did and I still DO, but I wanted no fucking PART of being there. I hated it there.  So, I finally got out on December 6. With it being December I was busy every weekend from then until now with holidays and family shit. I should have canceled everything but I didn’t. I wanted to pretend like I was fine. I tried doing that here too and it just... Didn’t help and didn’t work.

Truth is, friends. I am not fine. I am not even close to fine. But that’s okay. I am doing my best to begin to process all of this, but it’s so much. I just added more horrible trauma onto years worth of built up awful trauma... It’s a lot. It’s going to take a lot of time. Just know I still see a therapist weekly. My suicidal ideations are mostly gone aside from the general thought of just not wanting to be alive. 

On top of this? I was let go from my job while I was in the hospital. I feel so worthless and helpless and guilty over so much. This whole ordeal has just caused me to really hate myself and I honestly did start to pull away from this blog and dash, but you know what? I thought about Chris while I was in the hospital. A lot. And it sounds stupid but he did help me get through being in there. He came to me as a muse when I needed him most. 

I am in the long drawn out process of filing for disability. I am going through another med adjustment that is causing insomnia and bouts of fatigue. I am struggling. Every single day is a challenge. You just... Always remember you never know what someone else is going through. Be kind.  And that’s what I want you all to know. I am a safe space. I will ALWAYS be here to listen to you. No matter what. I will help however I can. I have suffered. I have been through hell and I know how that can be. The last thing I want is for anyone else to have to go through that alone. You are not alone. I promise.

So that’s it. That’s what 2021 was to me. An absolute nightmare piece of shit that is going to take years to recover from. This is what I suffer from day to day. This is what I went through. This is why I was in the hospital and why I struggle sometimes to be present. Why I sometimes get afraid that people know and people hate me for it. 

In all honesty? It felt good to finally get this out. I am not looking for pity or anything I just... I needed to be honest. I needed to get it out. This battle is far from over, but now you know about my war. <3

[northlight14]

A love for love

Description: Roman loved love. He always had, even as a small child. So why was it so different whenever he was involved?

TW: panic attack, mention of making out but nothing is actually shown, cursing, questioning, unrequited love, let me know if I should add anything else

Ships: unrequited royality, platonic roceit, dukeceit

Genre: high school au

Prompt: prompt 6, aromantic (prompt by @pridewrite2021)

Roman loved love. He always had. Even as a small child, he'd watch wide eyed as Prince Charming leaned down and gave sleeping beauty true loves kiss, something so powerful that it was able to break an evil witches curse. He'd stayed up till early hours in the morning, squealing with excitement as he read about two warriors able to take on an entire army, motivated by their want to keep the other safe and stealing glances at each other as their metal swords collided with the enemies weapon. He'd sing his heart out when a romance song came on the radio, gushing about their love interest with such emotion that Roman adored.

Yes, Roman loved love.

So why was it so different whenever he was involved?

The earliest memory Roman had of this was when he was in first grade. Two of his classmates ran up to him giggling as they sang "Savannah has a crush on you!" Instead of feeling that overwhelming joy like the ones described in his books and music, he felt a deep cutting disgust in his stomach. Roman felt less like he could conquer the world and more like the world was going to swallow him whole. Rather than singing any great love song that he'd sang so many times in his room or in the car, he began crying instead while the two girls looked at him in confusion.

"It was just because I don't like her." Roman told himself.

But this feeling of being out of place only grew as his fellow classmates gushed about their boyfriends and girlfriends, crushes and which cartoon character they find cute. Granted, they were in second and third grade, so the terms "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" roughly translated to "they let me borrow their crayon at break once and now we're in love and going to get married." However, this love for love spread like a virus and Romans desire to fit in only grew. So, during a sleepover with his friends, Roman looked upon the TV, at the princess Aurora and decided 'She'd make a good crush.' Before announcing it to the crowd of toddlers, the words immediately sounding wrong as he spoke them, as if he'd spoken them in a foreign language. He decided that night to never speak of his supposed "crush" ever again. Roman liked Aurora with Prince Philip much more, anyway.

Roman was in fifth grade when he was talking to one of his best friends, Valorie. The two of them just laughing and joking when his friends approached.

"Who's your girlfriend, Ro?" one laughed, putting his arm around Roman. And he knew it was a joke. He knew that. But it still felt like the arm hadn't wrapped around his shoulders and instead knocked all the air out his lungs in one hard punch. This moment lingered in his mind like a haunting apparition, quickly causing any friendships with girls to become strained. First only talking occasionally while in class or on the yard, to only talking when his guy friends weren't around, to only texting outside of school to nothing at all. Roman mourned these friendships but it had been made clear that boys and girls couldn't just be friends and the idea of people thinking he was dating any of these people made him feel like a caged bird.

Later that year Roman decided, despite his love for love, he didn't want to date. The reason for this being...

"I'm just more focused on my career."

"I just don't see the point in dating right now."

"I've never really liked anyone so what's the point?"

"I just like being more focused on myself."

And any other excuse he could possibly come up with, repeating them as many times as he needed to to believe them. Roman had always been a good actor, after all. But, of coarse, with this supposed decision came "reassurance" from adults, as if they had the ability to see the future.

"You just haven't met the right person, yet."

"You'll change your mind one day, when you get a bit older."

"All kids say that at your age."

"Roman isn't interested in dating YET."

These invalidating promises made Romans blood boil the more he heard them. It was as if he was yelling while trapped in a soundproof box, unable to escape. But, despite what seemingly everyone around him was saying, Roman knew deep down that romance just wasn't for him.

He also remained thankful that this love for love hadn't infected his friendship too much.

That was until seventh grade when what was originally a few cases of a love for love became an epidemic. It seemed that all anyone wanted to know was "do you have a crush on her?" "Did you hear that Lily and Reese are going out?" "Do you find her attractive?" This soon made its way over to his friends as they talked about how hot the girls were and teased each other relentlessly about who they liked. Roman once again felt like an outsider in his friend group. His friends conversations about their girlfriends may as well have been spoken in Latin.

Then the day came when his twin brother, Remus, came out as gay and started dating a guy named Janus. It then occurred to Roman.

"Maybe the reason I haven't been feeling anything for all these girls was because they were girls! Maybe I like boys instead!" Roman had never been a very logical person but this definitely seemed to make more sense. If he didn't like women then that surely must mean that he liked men instead, right? Because otherwise...otherwise Roman didn't know what that meant.

So Roman tried. Really God damn tried to find boys cute, to fantasize about dating them, to relate to gay experiences. But all he was met with was the same foreign and hollow feeling he'd felt when he lied about having a crush back in 2nd grade. Roman quickly began feeling his love for the concept of love diminish.

So when Roman entered grade 9, he decided to put anything to do with his romantic feelings (or lack there of) in a little box in the back of his mind to deal with later. Instead putting his passion and good acting skills to use by joining his schools drama department. The moment he stepped foot on stage, he felt himself come alive. The crowd, the praise, the creativity, it was addicting.

And it was only made better with the more friends he made. There was one person who he grew partially close to. Patton Heart. The two quickly became best friends, often hanging out outside of rehearsals and texting non stop. And, for the first time in what seemed like years, Roman was happy and comfortable.

That was until 10th grade. Roman way lying on his bed watching Netflix on his phone when a message from Patton came through. Roman clicked on the message and was caught massively off guard as he read it.

Patton: hey, Roman. So I've been thinking a lot lately. In particular about us and about you. And over the past few months I've started to realize that I have a really big crush on you. You're really handsome, funny and talented and I love spending time with you. It's totally ok if you don't like me back, but I figured it's better to be honest.

It should've been it. The moment when one of the main characters confesses their feelings for the love interest and they proclaim they feel the same way. Sparks fly and their hearts beat faster with excitement. It all becomes so clear when they hear that confession in movies and books.

But this wasn't a movie.

Roman felt time stand still as he read the message, his hands shaking so much he didn't think he would be able to respond even if he knew how to answer.

He couldn't breath. Why couldn't he breath?! The edges of his vision went fuzzy as he desperately gasped for air.

"Patton's great." He thought through his suffocating panic. "He's funny and charming and sweet. You should like him. Why don't you like him? What's wrong with you?!" Romans thoughts yelled as he tried desperately to hold back the tears threatening to spill over.

Not sure of what else to do, Roman ran to Remus' room, hoping he'd know how to respond.

Roman knocked on his brothers door and Remus responded with a very annoyed "come in" after a few beats of silence. Remus and Janus were sat on Remus' bed and Roman could tell from their slightly red lips that the two had been making out. But he wasn't in the headspace to even pretend to care that he'd interrupted them right now.

"Ugh, what do you want?" Remus said, clearly too irritated by his brothers presence to notice his distress.

"P-Patton just messaged me s-saying he likes me and I don't know what to say." Roman barely stuttered out, trying desperately not to cry in front of Remus and his boyfriend.

"Aw, cute. Roro finally got a man." Remus joked but Roman was definitely not in the mood for that kind of humor.

"Do you like him back?" Janus asked, calmly, clearly taking more notice of Romans distress.

"Well, I do. But not like that."

"Ok, so just tell him that. It doesn't have to be this whole thing. Why are you getting so upset?" Remus said, looking at Roman as if he was stupid.

Which, to be fair, Roman did feel very stupid right now.

"He's my best friend. I don't want to upset him." Yeah, that was the reason Roman was freaking out. He just didn't want to hurt Patton. That was it.

"Well, just say you don't want a relationship right now or some shit. Besides, he's probably more worried now because you've taken so long to answer." Remus pointed out. Yeah, Roman was never coming to Remus with his problems ever again.

"Yeah...ok." Roman said. Slowly, he walked out the room, noticing Janus looking at him curiously but deciding not to focus on it.

Roman: I'm really sorry Patton, but I don't feel the same way. We can still be friends tho. It doesn't have to be awkward between us. Especially because I really like being friends with you.

Patton: Yeah, that's ok. This is kinda what I was expecting to be honest. But yeah, I still wanna stay friends.

A few days later Janus came over again for dinner. Afterwards, Roman went into the living room and sat on the couch, scrolling through Instagram.

To his surprise, Janus followed after him and sat next to him. "So, how are you feeling after a few days ok. Broken his heart yet?" Janus teased.

Roman huffed out a laugh. "Uh, yeah, we agreed to just stay friends. Which I'm happy about but it's also really weird. I honestly don't know where we go from here which sucks because I really like Patton. Just not like...that." Janus nodded in understanding.

"You must care about him a lot if you had a panic attack just because you didn't want to hurt his feelings." Janus said. Roman just shrugged in response. "So, does that mean you like someone else?" Janus asked.

"No...I. I don't know. I've...I've never really liked anyone. I don't think I ever will. And people say I'll change my mind but...it isn't like I've made a choice. I've felt like this my whole life and everyone around me has had a crush on someone by now. I just... don't think I was built for romance. Which I know probably sounds stupid but that's just how I feel." He said, so honest it almost hurt.

Janus nodded slowly, taking in what Roman was saying. "It doesn't sound stupid." He said before pausing, as if considering his next choice of words. "Roman...have you ever heard of the term aromantic?" He asked.

"No." Roman answered, looking at Janus curiously.

"It basically means someone who experiences little to no romantic attraction. So they don't get crushes and stuff like that." He explained.

Roman felt his heart leap and for once it wasn't because of a fight or flight reflex. "Wait, that's a thing?" He asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, a surprising number of people identify with it. I don't want to assume anything but I thought I might mention it just from what you've told me and what Remus has said in the past. Plus that panic on your face yesterday reminded me a bit of when I tried to force myself into romantic situations with girls." Janus smirked to himself.

That night Roman researched more on aromanticism than he did for his science test. The more he searched, the more it just made sense. Of coarse, he still had a long way to go towards self acceptance. Roman could feel himself already starting to mourn the idea that this was a choice he'd made ages ago and he was going to feel romantic love one day. It was an odd feeling, realizing that even though he knew deep down it wasn't a decision and he'd always hated when people made those comments, a part of him took comfort in adults promising that he'd change his mind one day. He was also horrified to realize that he didn't know what his future was supposed to look like now without romance. After all, media seemed to show single middle aged adults exclusively as depressed and lonely. But as he scoured through wiki articles to tumblr pages to memes, he knew this was a good start to unlearning any nonsense society had been shoving down his throat.

The more Roman learned and the more people he talked to online about it, the more he started to feel his love for love increase. But instead of it being centered on a prince and princess in a movie, two in love warriors keeping each other alive in a book or a cheesy love song on the radio, it was a different type of love Roman was finally starting to feel the more he accepted himself.

Self love.

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