#because everybody will know that a dead man isn’t emailing them

[sandersstudies]

A scammer got access to a deceased friend’s email address. My (other, alive) friend pulled out his phone to send me an email and for a split second it was like he was punched when he saw the name in his inbox.

Grief is a weird thing.

[mrspasser]

In-flight entertainment

Matchablossom fanfiction

The narrow aisle between the seats in the aeroplane is crowded, making Kaoru feel even more anxious than he already is. They missed their connecting flight to Japan because their flight from Paris was delayed due to the weather and had to spend a gruelling six hours in an empty airport in the dead of the night, with nothing but hard plastic seats and a vending machine to their disposal. The airline already emailed him a formal apology and coupons to use on a future trip, but they hadn’t been able to do anything about their dismal situation. It should’ve been an easy lay-over, with minimal waiting time. Instead, Kaoru had a mini mental breakdown at five in the morning because the KitKat he wanted got stuck in the vending machine. He will deny the hot tears of frustration he spilled against Kojiro’s chest until the day he dies. And so will his gorilla boyfriend, if he wants to live to see another day.

Kaoru is more than ready for this part of the trip to be over, no matter how nice their two weeks in Paris were. So he hikes his shoulders up to his ears, stuffs his hands in the pocket of his hoodie and shuffles forward as fast as possible towards his designated seat. Kojiro’s hoodie is a bit big on him, so the hood hides most of his face. Which is a good thing, because everybody else on this 9 AM flight looks like they came straight off the runway, with a proper eight hours of sleep under their belt too. Meanwhile, Kaoru feels like he's been hit by a bus and subsequently rolled through a dumpster. He’s barely able to string more than two words together. He doesn’t know what he wants more: a shower or his bed. Yet for the next four hours all he has is a cramped aeroplane seat. His seat is the second one in the row, with Kojiro in the aisle seat next to him. Kaoru slumps down in the seat, leaving Kojiro to put away their carry-on bags in the overhead compartment.

His boyfriend does so with good cheer, even helping other people to put their bags away. How he can still be so cheerful after they pulled an all nighter in crappy plastic seats that couldn’t even fit Kojiro’s bulk properly, is beyond him. Kaoru glances up from under his hood and sees how Kojiro puts a small, sparkly pink roll case up in the overhead compartment, one that doesn’t belong to either of them. The female owner of the roll case stands next to Kojiro, ogling his muscles rolling underneath his thin I love Paris T-shirt as he stretches to put her luggage away. He should look ridiculous in the tourist shirt, but of course he doesn’t. When the green haired man looks at her, she bats her eyes at him in a way that is clearly meant to be seductive. Kojiro gives her a friendly nod and turns to go to his seat. He has to wait a bit though, because across from his seat there’s a man struggling to get his lumpy bag in its designated spot. Kaoru would’ve pushed past the man, but not Kojiro. The big oaf even offers to help, much to the enjoyment of the woman he helped before. She has the perfect view of Kojiro’s chest from her seat a row back. And she isn’t the only one watching him, Kaoru now sees. It seems like the eyes of every woman in their vicinity are locked on Kojiro in his slightly too tight T-shirt. It's actually Kaoru’s shirt: Kojiro bought it for him to sleep in at the beginning of their stay in Paris. But right before they were to board their flight back, Kojiro spilled his ice coffee over his shirt and the only change of clothes they had on hand was Kaoru's sleep shirt. And that was only in his carry-on bag because he almost forgot it in their hotel room; it had fallen underneath their bed and he saw it by chance the moment he was about to close the door of their room for the last time. The women know nothing of that, of course. They don’t know how Kojiro peeled him slowly out of that shirt on their last morning in Paris, to have lazy morning sex until they had to hurry in order not to miss the breakfast buffet. 

The women are not just feasting their eyes on Kojiro, they talk about him too. The man himself is oblivious, he’s chatting with the man with the lumpy bag. But Kaoru hears it all. 

“I wouldn’t mind getting up close and personal with him,” one woman titters to her friend. She isn’t even whispering, so Kaoru can hear it from several rows over. “I’d lick that,” her friend agrees readily. Another woman calls Kojiro their ‘in-flight entertainment’ and those are honestly the most respectable remarks; Kaoru hears some middle aged women say such lewd things that he doesn’t dare repeat them. Kojiro would probably just have a laugh if he heard, but still.

“Is he travelling alone?” a young woman wonders. She’s with another woman of the same age and they both lean out of their seats to get a good look at Kojiro. They’re both dressed to the nines and their make up is on point; they clearly don’t share Kaoru’s opinion that air travel needs to be done in comfortable clothing. Or maybe that’s just his anxiety, having him hide in the oversized hoodie that he stole from Kojiro long before they even started dating.

“I’m not sure,” her friend reacts, “I think he’s sitting with that girl there.” Now, this isn’t the first time that Kaoru gets mistaken for a woman, with his long pink hair and delicate features. It usually happens when he’s wearing one of his yukatas, though, not when he’s wearing leggings and a ratty, oversized hoodie.

“You think? If so, he’s way out of her league.” There are some condescending tutting sounds and Kaoru imagines they’re judging what little they can see of him. He fights the urge to hide further into his hood, to pull in the ponytail that’s sticking out over his shoulder. His hair is greasy and Kaoru feels even more filthy underneath the appraising looks of the girls. “If they’re dating it can’t last much longer. Look at what she’s wearing. She isn’t even trying anymore.”

Her friend’s comment gets lost in the white noise that starts ringing in Kaoru’s ears. He barely even notices how Kojiro wraps up his little chat with the man and angles himself into their row of seats. He makes some idle remark about plane seats always being too small for him, shuffling in his seat to get comfortable. “Kaoru? Hey, what’s wrong?” 

Kaoru can’t get words past the constriction in his throat, but a quick glance towards the women sitting in the other row is enough. For all Kaoru’s teasing and name calling, Kojiro is not actually a dimwitted primate. He’s intelligent, especially when it comes to understanding Kaoru and his many whims and shortcomings. He’s also vain enough to know he looks good and he’s adept in picking up social cues. So he only needs one good look around before he turns back to Kaoru and crowds in close. Kojiro’s large hand cups his face, pushing the hood back a little. “We’re almost home, sweetheart,” he croons, just loud enough for other people to overhear. “Just four more hours and then we’ll get a cab home, where I’ll run a bath for you. I’ll even light those scented candles you like so much.”

“You hate those candles,” Kaoru murmurs, his heart swelling at Kojiro’s mention of ‘home’. They don’t live together, but with Kaoru’s parents spending their retirement abroad, the Sakurayashiki family home is all his and it’s more comfortable than Kojiro’s tiny apartment. Kojiro spends most of his nights at the house. 

“I do, they smell like someone stuffed an entire garden of flowers up my nose.” Kojiro says it with a smile, moving his thumb slowly across Kaoru’s cheek. “But you love them, so I’ll endure them. For you. Because I love you.”

Kaoru meets him halfway for the kiss, finding glee in how Kojiro cuts down all the leering women on the plane in a few sentences full of sweet words. Sweet words that are directed at Kaoru and Kaoru only. “I love you too,” he says, right before slipping him some tongue. The white noise in his ears has disappeared completely, meaning he can hear the outraged whispers of the women perfectly well.

[shesawriter39049]

|AFTER HOURS| M|

Pairing: Namjoon X OC 

About-  Your husband and business partner finds you up way past acceptable work hours for the 3rd night in a row! So, daddy has to step in and remind you that’s not something we do in this household. You come before work, in every sense of the phrase!

OR- Namjoon and yourself run a successful Adult Film Entertainment Company called “Onyx” with your 5 best friends from college who you also happen to be in a open relationship with! Your in desperate need of a 2nd videographer/editor! So here you are, up at 1 AM scrolling through resumes because your that boss that hates to overwork her employess so she overworks herself!

Warnings:Daddy kink, Dom Namjoon, switch OC (More of a sassy/bratty sub)Top OC, Oral (F recieving) Light ass play, (Rimming), Dirty talk, Breath play, Spanking(Pain kink),Hair pulling, unprotected sex, light cum play, VERY LIGHT degration (He calls her a “little bitch” once but it’s playful still noting in case it offends ppl)The end hints at a threesum…...with a certain redhead 

Tae is their sassy exec.assistant and makes a cheeky little appearance at the end.

Jonnie baby is tatted...LORDT

There a fun freaky little couple...

WC:6k

NOTE- This is kinda old and  was set to be part 1 of an OT7 AU called “7 DEEP” 

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  “Really?” Goddamn, leave it to Namjoon to make one word sound just as sexy as it was intimidating! 

You heard the footsteps fuck you did, you just opted to ignore them and hope maybe he’d just, I don’t know leave? Maybe he was just doing a wellness check? But, if that’s the case, as your tired, unfocused, half-lidded gaze caught the bottom right of your laptop screen, which was glaring back at you something vicious! You realize that you’ve royally fucked up, and its a cute little 2 am right now! So no, he’s not going any damn were, anytime soon….

“Baby” The word left his lips just as much disappointment as it did allure which is a hell of a combination I know, I know, but in all honesty, it fits the mood. You caught his visual briefly through the mirror mounted against the wall and fuck, your man is fine as all hell! Frame resting casually against the entryway, arms folded firm across the smooth chiseled planes of his caramelized tattooed chest. Oversized cat-eye glasses perched on top of that cute little button nose of his, A pair of loosely fitted sweats sitting low against his v-lines, the thin grey fabric left nothing to the imagination as he’d clearly opted against boxers tonight. Shoulders and arms flexing effortlessly due to his current position which screams nothing but “Your ass is in trouble”. Which I mean, your kinda here for...kinda not….

Only offering a low hum in response as you continued scrolling through mounds resumes and video reels that were currently clogging up the admin email that was typically reserved for Taehyung. And that’s when you hear his feet shuffle closer, and closer until there’s a heavy yet comforting weight pressing against your back. The temperature around you shifting, as he leans down, arms braced on the table on either side of your frame. His long, beautiful, veiny fingers pattering idly against the glass, showcasing an array of rings, one of them being his Cartier wedding band as his lips nuzzling into your neck. Nosing up and down your skin slowly, almost teasingly, just breathing you in until your shifting back against him, a strong chill running down your spine. 

“We talked about this…” Voice low, seductive, yet stern and still clearly a little disappointed...nipping at your neck, not hard enough to leave a mark but just enough to make a point. Forcing yourself not to lean back into his touch no matter how bad you wanted to beg for more than just him grazing his teeth along your skin! You needed him to bite, hard, and he already knows it too, how much you get off on being marked..and that’s exactly why he’s not doing it...The little shit! 

“I know but -” Namjoon reaches up to slam your laptop shut, sliding it and the stack of papers to the opposite end of your dining room table, that you’ve managed to convert to a makeshift office. 

“We talked. About this” Simply parroting the words again, just slower this time as if to say you clearly must not have heard him correctly initially.

You sigh. Deep, slow, defeated, a nod rendering, out as a half-arsed response triggering Namjoon to pull back from you only to slide your chair from beneath the table. Shifting it to face him before dropping to a squat between your thighs. Gaze unwavering as he took in your blatantly exhausted appearance, still, he couldn’t help but melt as he reached out to caress your jaw feeling the way you nestled into it instantly. Your eyes fluttered shut briefly, as he smoothed his hands down your body, slipping beneath your robe to gently massage your thighs.

“So what the fuck, are you doin?” Brow arched as if he was daring you to actually respond, yet there wasn’t a single sharp edge to his voice, it was suddenly soft, calm. As if he was genuinely asking why you were doing this to yourself because he can’t make a lick of sense of it! You’re barely able to hold your eyes ajar right now yet you were out here working....

You couldn’t really handle the intensity of his gaze right now, more so because you knew he was right, you were so fuckin exhausted right now it’s unreal! Let’s also mention that the two of you have to catch a flight to Vegas for a business meeting in a good oh I don’t know 7 hours! So, instead of acknowledging that this was really stupid, you opted to reach for the one resume he didn’t manage to move out of reach. Eyes nervously scanning the paper as a distraction while you tried to think of a rational that even you’d believe at this point! 

'Fuck, we just- I don’t know Joon, we just have so much going on right now! And you know I’ll never complain about us having too much work I mean, I'm grateful every damn day that we’re not where we were!”

You intentionally paused, letting “that” have its own moment because it's something to always be acknowledged! The two of you went from living in a 900sq ft apartment with 5 other people to effortlessly clearing 8 figures as of this last tax year. Humbled and grateful to be busy isn’t even the beginning of how you feel! 

“But I just look at everybody...Yoongi’s responding to emails at fucking 3 AM! Jimin playing around docusign at the ass crack of dawn every damn day sending out contracts! Taehyung up scouting locations at 6 AM on a Sunday which is supposed to be his only day off I just- Everybodys in over their head so I thought I’d just- “ Namjoon reached up and grabbed your chin, snatching the paper out of your hand and forcing you to look him dead in the eyes. 

“So thought you'd overwork my wife instead?” 

You just shrug and nod again, tossing your hands in the air, it’s clear you have an attitude but it’s also clear it’s with yourself! You keep piling more and more on your plate instead of delegating it out to other people to handle! It’s a trust thing, and Namjoon know’s that,  it started out with just the two of you, then for years it was seven , seven deep. It’s hard for you to let new people into something you and your husband built from nothing! However, Taehyung just got a part-time assistant of his own so he can go back to strictly being your right hand, and realistically, he’s salary! Your little Gucci boy probably doesn’t mind drinking his Starbucks and driving his BMW around LA looking for houses to film in! You could have spread the workload out a little you just fuck, I don’t know, you’re always that person to put people first to a fault I guess! Point being, Tae could easily handle this, tomorrow, during normal business hours, you could have and should have been in bed with your husband! 

Namjoon can sense how uneasy you feel right now, almost like your a child being scolded and that’s not at all what he’s aiming for; he's just genuinely concerned. So he opts to ease the atmosphere just a little to remind you, that the two of you are always on the same playing field, he’s only reacting like this because he cares! Flicking the bottom of your chin before leaning in, pressing a firm, yet passionate kiss to your lips as if he’s trying to drive the point home, slipping his tongue past the seam almost instantly. Not even attempting to keep this somewhat chaste, needing you to feel every inch of infinite love and fire he has burning through his veins when it comes to you! Kissing you with enough force to knock the wind out of your chest, moaning contently as you give your husband free rein to explore your mouth. Turning the kiss slightly more delicate as he lets his hands slide even deeper under the robe to continue roaming your body. The slide of his tongue becoming softer, slower….as the pads of his fingers trickled up your spine.

Sucking your bottom lip between his teeth as he pulls back “Were all busy baby, I get it, I hate seeing them like this too, you know I love them just as much as you do! And that’s exactly why we put out those ads, but that does not mean you get to take on everyone else’s shit! Don’t make me put in a complaint to HR about unfair treatment within the workplace!”Murmurs against your lips, as you stare down at his, barely paying attention to a damn thing he said! 

“Joon I am HR…” You mumble low and unamused, eyes rolling to the back of your head in annoyance and he could give less than a damn. Leaning in with a smirk playing on his lips, leaving another lingering kiss against your own. Kissing you with enough fire to have every hair along your body standing on end! Until your practically chasing after him in a pout the minute he pulls away from you. 

“Mmm, and my point still stands….” Namjoon's hands tighten around your hips, scooting you forward so your legs are wrapped around his waist. Your arms instantly lace around his neck, trailing your fingers upward, so they can get lost in his freshly dyed locks.

“Stop, overworking my baby! You know I don’t like  it…” His delivery was just as much playful, as it was stern! 

“Fuck, whatever okay, sorry!” You really weren’t at least not right now, there wasn’t a lick of conviction in that as you reached up to bring his lips back down to yours. Sliding in tongue first, capturing his lips in another opened mouth kiss, the rhythm quickly starts getting messy more so on your end because you’re getting needy! Namjoon tastes intoxicating and you’re blissed out of your mind, even after all these years, this man can still manage to have your toes curling with just a simple kiss! , Arching forward giving him easier access to grab you ass and he takes the hint, the faint sting of blunt nails digging into the swell of your ass has you whimpering out low and filthy against his tongue.

The kiss breaks much to your dismay but before you can even protest Namjoons tongue is lapping down the side of his neck, mapping out all the places he’s learned over the years. Nipping down on your flushed skin ever so often this time he’s biting with a purpose though, giving it to you just the way you like it. 

“Y/n were done with work now right??” He can hear you panting out low and wanton into his ear once he attaches himself to the crook of your neck, sucking maliciously, an almost animalistic growl leaving his lips in the process. There’s a hint of frustration mixed in with arousal dripping off his tongue right now, your too caught up to notice! 

“Namjoon '' You breathe out his name with nothing but lust pouring off your tongue, not an ounce of shame insight in regards to how needy you sound right now. The sound goes straight to Namjoon’s dick which is beaming at you like a spotlight through the thin fabric of his sweats. Tilting your head back, and anchoring one of your hands into your husband’s hair keeping him in place, overwhelmed with pleasure as you go completely pliant under his menstruations. Regardless, this man's self control was somethin’ serious,and he wasn’t giving in just yet...you still had one more cross to bear baby girl! 

“Fuck. Please” Tugging on his scalp like the brat you tend to be, as if to emphasize your point, making Namjoon pull away licking up your jaw in the process. The drag was slow, messy, waving his tongue against your skin the same way he would your pussy and you felt yourself start to involuntarily clench harder and harder by the second. 

“Hmm? What was that baby?” Tugging the shell of your ear between his teeth hard enough to make you whimper into his hair “Now you wanna come to bed?” You can feel him smirking against your skin and you just really don’t like your husband at all right now just so we’re clear.

All you do is whine in response, yanking his hair even harder until you feel a firm hand land on your ass making you yelp out of your seat. 

Nam-fuck!” Hissed through clenched teeth, thighs tensing around his waist. 

“So again…” Tone as coy and casual as can be as he winds his hand back only to land smack dab on the curve of your ass again, right in the same spot, you wouldn’t be surprised if his palm left an indentation behind! 

Namjoon’s hand was literally pulsing against your skin the impact was so damn strong, all the metal dancing along his fingers didn’t help either! You swear the ripple echoed throughout your entire apartment, and the scream that left your throat was without a doubt noise complaint worthy! Fuck your gonna need to send them an edible arrangement or somehing, they already hate the two of you as it is… 

Your panting and whining opened mouth right into his ear, and it’s getting you nowhere but horny and frustrated! Nails, digging little crescents into his shoulders as you try and almost reroute so of the pain that’s buzzing through your veins. But it’s good, it’s soo good, the slickness coating your inner thighs gave that away! Namjoon can smell how much you’re enjoying this, his little pain slut as he often likes to call you! 

 “You wanna stay out here all damn night. Work yourself into the ground. Leave me in bed alone, and now all of a sudden you think you get to boss daddy around? Hmm? Just because your pussys nice and wet and your feelin needy ...now you want to go to bed?” Namjoons tone is blatantly taunting and a little harsh yet the slight growl laced with it all has your head spinning far too fast to even be mad.

‘Oh my god, Namjoon just fuck me already! Shit!” 

“Why the fuck should I do that? Could’ve had me hours ago baby, all I wanted to do tonight was fuck you, that’s all I wanted all damn day.” Slipping his hand between your thighs pinching your clit between his fingers, slowly rubbing the pads of his together on either side, stimulating your clit head-on until your groaning into the side of his neck.”Do you even, know, how hard it was for me not to just bend you over the conference room table today!?” 

“Joon” You try again and he doesn’t budge, he actually let’s go of your clit all together and just teasingly trailing his fingers along your entrance never entering just driving you fucking insane! Looking as fine and unbothered as ever, as his lips ghost up the curve of your jaw. 

“Hmm, let’s try this shit again.Why-” Bringing that same hand up to grip your jaw with enough pressure to indicate he wasn’t fucking around anymore. “Should I give you what you want when you continuously keep disobeying my only request? Hmm???” You can feel your own slickness against your skin, yet all you can focus on is the blatant aganer, and hurt running through your husbands veins. Even beneath all this bravado..he’s clearly really hurt about this, so play times over!

“Fuck, okay!” There was slight elevation to your voice, tetoring on yelling actually. The arch in Namjoons brow said you had about two seconds to fix that , but you already planned on it! Taking a deep slow breath, letting your eyes flutter shut to just...recenter yourself for a moment! 

“Baby, I’m sorry. I’m. Sorry. ” There it was, not that bratty whiney shit you did earlier to get what you wanted, a genuine “I’m sorry” . Soothing your nails through his scalp, it’s almost instantaneous the way his demeanor shifts once those words fall off your tongue in a more..sincere fashion.  

A low hum rang in the back of his throat at the admission, nosing at your cheek “Sorry for what exactly? Because I don’t want it if you doing this just to appease me baby. That won’t do shit for me. ”  Namjoon’s tone is a lot softer now, all of the prior theatrics and pettiness is gone as he awaits your response.

“No, Joonie baby, no!” Pressing a soft but firm kiss to those sinfully plump lips of his that you still can’t get enough of no matter how many years go by…”No”

“ As your partner, I gotta look out for me just as much as I look out for you and I clearly haven’t been! I know better! And I should be taking advantage of the fact that we’re lucky enough to now be in a position where I can hire an array of people if need be. It’s just- you know I’m a control freak, this business isn’t just a business it’s our baby!”

You watch his mouth open in protest and you just simply continue speaking “But regardless, I know it’s not more important than me, or my health I know…” You instantly feel the tension within his body dissipate at that, thumbs kneading at your hips.

“ I’m sorry, I love you and I’m sorry I’m not trying to stress daddy out!'' There's a slight playfulness to your delivery trying to lighten the mood a little though you know how serious this topic is for him! You find yourself wiggling in his hold trying to somehow get even closer than you already were. 

So here’s the thing, back when you were in college just starting out, the two of you had a lot on your plate! Between school juggling multiple jobs, internships, and just trying to figure out how to even start a company of this caliber….The level of exhaustion he often saw you at was utterly heartbreaking. The number of times you passed out due to lack of sleep is unmentionable… so seeing you like this...was fucking unacceptable in Namjoon’s eyes! 

You notice those big brown orbs of his get a little glassy so you grip the back of his neck even tighter dropping your forehead to his. Feeling like complete and utter trash right now! 

 “This business is not more important than my wife, my partner, my best friend...it’s not! However, you are more important than, all of it, this fuckin overpriced apartment, all the shiny little toys we’ve been able to buy, and this entire company in general! I love you, but I need you to look me in the eyes and fucking promise me that you’ll stop this! Please…” 

You can hear a slight trimmer laced within that deep honey-coated tenor of his and the sudden vibrato’s foreign, and you’re not a fan! It took everything in you not to cry at the blatant plea rolling off his tongue, well aware this man does not beg! So instead you just leaned in and kissed him, hard, slow, just letting everything you couldn’t really articulate pour from your lips to his and hope he got the message. 

“I promise, I love you…I promise!”

“And you know I fuckin love you…”  You do, fuck you do, even if this marriege was high key an accidnet..it’s without a doubt one of the best things that’s ever happened to you!

“I know”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck, yeah”

Ducking down, kissing you reckless and with fevour, messy, wet, teeth clacking together. Slowly transitioning the mood from deep and touching to just...raw and nasty which is kinda what you’d prefer at the moment!

 “I wasn’t lyin when I said I’ve wanted to fuck you all damn day though…”

“Please” you whisper out as he pulls back to lick down your neck, pressing your chest together to give him better access. Sucking his mark in a spot right beneath your jaw, well aware you’ll need an ass-ton of conclear within the next couple of hours, but right now you could care less!  

“Please what baby? Tell daddy, what you want?” Namjoon presses, biting his lip and sliding his hand back between your legs groaning out at how completely drenched you are right now. 

“Fuck me!” You pant out low and whiney

“You want it here baby? You want daddy to bend you over the table?” The familiar hunger that was back in his eyes was so fucking sexy and  it had you rutting against him for any ounce of stimulation! 

“No.Bedroom” Namjoon moans in agreement, securing your thighs around his waist and scoping you out of the chair, heading towards the opulent master suite the two of you shared.

Once inside he throws you down on the bed, hard and almost animalistic, making you bounce a little against the firm California king. Namjoon follows immediately, crawling over to cover your body with his own, his broad form completely engulfing your frame. Ripping your robe apart, and letting your tongues meet once more. Hot slick, and eager as you pant out hot and heavy against one another. Soothing is palm down your stomach, cupping your entire heat in his palm. Moaning out that it feels just fuckin like that. Wet and warm, so damn warm...ducking his head down to lick your nipple into his mouth, sucking slow but hard at the same time, nipping and grazing the bud between his teeth.

“Fuck” You moan back arching off the bed and into your husband’s mouth, as he licks trails across your sternum and over to your other nipple. While also stroking his entire palm against your pussy, Namjoon’s always loved how responsive you are to him even after all these years. Just letting his tongue lave over the buds over and over, alternating between, licking, sucking, and biting so your body never gets used to the stimulation. 

“You fuckin, love this shit don’t, you? Bet I could get you to come just like this...wouldn’t be the first time, would it?” You can feel his lips curling into a smirk around your nipples the harder he sucks, bringing his other hand into the mix, the one that’s nice and slick with your arousal. Using it to twist and turn your nipple between his nimble fingers until he can’t tell if your arching into the pain or away from it. He can feel you grinding against his thigh, more importantly, he can feel your clit sticking to his thigh your so damn wet, soaking straight through his sweatpants. Moaning out loud and unfiltered, eyes shut as you rock your hips against him, your hands getting lost in your hair the harder you rock against the bed.

“Fuck, look at you baby, rubbing your sweet little cunt against my thigh..” A low almost arrogant chuckle rumbling in his throat, vibrating against your skin making you moan even louder. “Fuck, here I was thinking you wanted to come on my dick...” 

“Fuck- I do, I wanna come all over you, want your mouth too though…” Reaching out to play in his hair, almost pushing his face down even harder, though you swear you can feel his lips curl into a wicked little smile at that moment. 

“Yeah? You want daddy's tongue all over your pussy…” He didn’t even bother phrasing it as a question, especially once he meticulously started rolling his tongue along your nipples, in a oh too familiar motion that had you turning into a whiny brat within seconds! 

“Namjoon!” He doesn’t even respond, just pulling off and flipping you right on to your stomach, hard and fast, making you damn near choke on your own spit. Face pressed into your fresh linen sheets.. You start to slightly arch your back on insctint. You feel him shift off the bed, peeping over your shoulder to see his sliding off his sweats, stashing his glasses in his side pocket. Namjoons length is just standing straight up, damn near laying flat against his stomach and you straight up moan, mouth-watering at the sight alone. A pleased hum leaves those plump lips of his as he shuffles back onto the bed. Kissing and licking his way up the back of your thighs until he reaches your ass, straddling your hips. 

Palm rubbing at the swell of your ass before smacking it, lightly at first, and your hip twitches you actually have the nerve to giggle. “That all daddy’s go-fuck” Another. Scream. Literally. Scream as he reels back even harder than he did earlier, just keeping his hand intact too, wanting you to feel the trob, the ache, radiating off his palm to your ass. 

“Hmm what was that baby?” Leaning down to spread your cheeks apart, just blowing a trail, against your pussy, watching the way your hole clenches from that alone. “Always so fuckin wet and ready for me…” 

He groans and you, arch your back, even more, moaning out slightly at the contrast hitting your skin. Bracing both hands on your ass and he can hear your breathing shutter in your chest, already anticipating the first drag of his tongue. Dipping one thumb over you rim, just circling it gently, feeling you jerk at the sensation, no matter how light, fuck your still so damn sensitive. That will never stop amazing him, it’s been almost 8 years. Yet you still react like it’s the first time he’s ever touched you like he’s still helping you explore new places along your own body! Namjoon leans forward, nipping, licking, and sucking, open mouth kisses, against the backs of your thighs, before leaning down to kiss your clit. Tongue and all, sucking it straight into his mouth, moaning out deep and strong around the bud. Inhaling slowly as if he's breathing you in and your knees already start to buckle,  nails clenching around the sheets. 

A broken moan of his name being muffled into the fabric, as he rolls his tongue in deep, languid strokes up and down your folds, licking from front to back. Your wetness is already painted all over his face and he wouldn’t have it any other way, as he continuously, maliciously sucks down on your clit, gently grazing the skin between his teeth just enough to make you squirm. Bringing his tongue to lather over your rim and he feels how hard you start shaking, sliding in two fingers into your heat, knuckles deep at the exact moment he slips his tongue past your rim. The vision that is you, open, needy, and whiney, on all fours...is driving your husband absolutely insane! How quickly you’re falling apart, knees spreading even wider to give him all the access he needs to do with you as he pleases. 

“Yeah..” You sign, blissed out of you goddamn mind ‘Fuck”

Your voice drips in the whiniest tinge of need imaginable like you’ve been aching for this, and the sounds richotect straight off your tongue and into Namjon’s lap! Your chest drops forward, letting Namjoon essentially all support your weight, as his tongue dives in even deeper, while continuously fucking you open with his fingers, he’s already added a third one. Mind completely spinning at how hard your clenching around all three of his fingers, cock throbbing at how good you’ll feel around him soon enough. You feel him pull back to spit right along your rim, watching it drizzle down toward your clit, he picks the trail up with his tongue and leads it where he wants it to go. Namjoon moans out, low, and content as he really starts to eat you out your tongue and fingers working your pussy open until your voice hitches in your throat and shatters. Ripping, a long drawn out whimper to leave your throat.

“That feel good?” He murmurs low and taunting, and you can’t help but roll your eyes, as if he can’t physically tell he feels good.

“I’ve had better”

He bites your cheek playful, a snort leaving his lips “Fuckin same..” slurs out against the swell of your ass and you can’t help but cackle.

“Fuck, I bet you have now, stop talking and get your fucking tongue back in ME!!” Bossy as ever, damn near pushing his head down and he reaches up, biting the side of your hand forcing you to stop. 

“How about my cock instead?” Leaning back to smack his length aginst your ass a couple times, letting you feel how hard and ready he is. 

“Yeah! God yeah, fuck yeah! Gimme! In me now! Fuck me!!” All your prior teasing is gone, just the mention of his cock has you needy and clenching painfully hard around his fingers, while also simultaneously rutting back against them as if you don’t want him to pull out. Pulling his fingers out slowly. Curling them upwards, purposely coating his fingers in your arousal to use to lather his cock which is so hard right now it’s almost painful. 

“Daddy” Wiggling your offensively empty ass in his face, making him chuckle, and smack it lightly. before gripping your thigh and flipping you onto your back with such ease it was almost offensive. 

“Nam-”

“Fuck off” Leaning down and stealing your breath and sarcasm away with a deep kiss “I wanna see my baby..” Lining himself up to your entrance, you exhale softly against his mouth as the blunt head of his cock breaches your entrance. Hiking your leg around Namjoon’s waist to make him slide in even deeper.

“Yeah, fuck” 

“I hope you don’t think…” Shifting forward wiggly his hips a little, giving you half a second to adjust to how fucking big this man is! “We’re about to make love or some shit, because I’m about to break your ass..” There’s just as much of a smile as there is a dangerous edge to your husband’s voice, that has you beaming up at him. Before you even had time to think of a response he was snapping his hips forward hard enough to have the two of you scooting up the bed a little.

Namjoon, propped your leg even higher over his shoulder, as he snapped his hips forward again, even harder this time. You moaned out, and scurried to grab onto your husband’s neck to anchor yourself as he fucked into you hard and fast, you tried to arch and fuck him back but it was hard with how intense he was pounding into you! 

“Oh my godddd” You drawled out, eyes rolling to the back of your head.

“Yup, Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been called that, in this position.....” You could hear the smile in his voice as he continued fucking you like he was trying to split you open with his cock. Nails clawing into his back hard enough to break skin! 

You could’ve just laid there and took, it because fuck if it wasn’t good, but that’s not the mood you were in at the moment. So you dropped your leg from his shoulder and wrapped them both around his waist. Tipping your hips forward, clenching down hard around his cock as you started grinding your hips against him. Fucking him back the same way he was giving it to you. Hard and smooth.. 

“Y/n” He half growled half whined as you smiled up at him, something wicked, releasing your hold around his cock only to clench down even harder. He groans in what seemed like frustration reached down to smack pinch your clit between his fingers hard enough to make you cry out his name. Arching forward even harder. 

“Yeah, daddy like that, fuck.Me.just like that” you were breathless but the sass was clear as day, a slight chuckle leaving your throat. 

“Fuckin brat!” Reaching down with the same hand that was on your clit, wrapping it around your windpipe, adding just enough pressure to have your eyes rolling to the back off your head. The added stimulation throwing off your rhythm a little but you didn’t care, he had you…

“Yesss,yes, fuck!” His tattooed chest was flushed and covered in sweat as you continued fucking back against his cock, which was warm and continuously pulsing side of you. Filling you up and sliding completely out every single time. Your hole twitched painfully hard as the two of you worked in sync thrusting against each other in a smooth yet malicious rhythm, the sound of skin slapping you moaning, Namjoon grunting... 

Fuck an edible arrangement maybe the two of you should treat your neighbors to a spa weekend or something because they damn sure aren’t sleeping right now! 

“Ya know, if you would’ve came to bed earlier” He panted right into the side of your ear, still rolling his hips into you “I could’ve fucked you, came inside you” Leaning down to lick up the side of your jaw  “Licked all, of my come out of you, and then” Pulling back and snapping his hips up even sharper, as if to accentuate every word “Fucked.You.All.Over.-Fuck-Again” Every thrust had the wind being knocked out of your chest  “ But now..we don’t have tim-” 

Reaching up to twist his nipple between the tip of your nail, kneeing him in the stomach just enough to make his hips stutter and have him shuffling back so you can push him onto his back which he falls to willingly. That is, until you literally bounced down onto his dick, damn near gagging in the process he feels so deep in this angle. Almost tempted to feel up your sternum and see if he’s poking through. 

“You little bitch” Chokes from his throat with a stated smile the tones playful and airy, digging his nails into your ass, letting out an involuntary gasp as he rolls his hips up. Only for you to start rolling your hips back, again, and again, and again, in deep, slow, circles, switching up the pace a little from what it was before. Making sure your clit grazes against his pelvic bone every time.

“Yeah, fuck you” Your breathless, and tired, but you can’t help but smile at how completly fucked out he looks right now, eyes barley ajar, jaw tight, he looks so damn good! 

“Yeah, yeah, fuck daddy baby..fuck me..” It’s clear he’s only egging you on but fuck if it’s not working,he sounds down right sinful as you ride him. His moans are deep, loud, almost needy, at every roll your hips make, and it’s intoxicating! Reaching up and grabbing you down by your neck , licking his way back into our mouth, his grip is strong enough to without a doubt leave a bruise. Both of you moaning out pleased and needy as you start slamming your hips down meeting his upwards thrust. Instantly matching the pace he’d set. Namjoon pulls back, and slips three fingers into your mouth, hitting the back of your throat to make you gag a little. Exchanging the grip he held on your neck for the back of your hair, as he brings his other hand down between your bodies to play with your clit, before licking his way back into your mouth.Feeling the way your thighs start to shake as you cry out against his tongue barely able to kiss him back at this point . 

“Your fuckin close baby, your pussy’s just screamig around me..” He’s breathless, not even trying to hide it anymore, voice horse and dripping with arousal. “Goddamnn I love you…” You clench so damn hard around him at that..I actually don't think anything turns you on more than hearing your husband say that. Especially sounding all fucked out and needy.

“Love you too baby..so fuckin much… “

“Good”  He chuckled low and dark agaisnt your lips “Now come, all over my cock like a good girl”  Fucking into you faster and harder, hand still rubbing blunt circles around your clit, tightening the grip he holds on your hair until your roots burn  “Y/n , baby, my baby, come for me, come for daddy...” 

It only took a few more thrusts before your orgasm ripped through you and you were crying out your husband's name, body spasming on top of him. Yet you still didn't stop rutting against him until he came in. You couldn't, you needed to feel it, body running away from him just as much as it was running towards him! You can feel how hard your clenching and its involnaty this time,so he reaches up with both hands rolling your hips against him one more time before slamming you down onto his cock. Just holding you in place while you continue to pulse around him, body shattering to pieces.

“Namjoonnnn fuck-fuck-fuck-” He grounds you agaisnt his cock as he jerks his hips up hard and fast, eyes squezzing shut, neck arching off the pillow, as his relase washed over him. A long drawn out moan of your name slipped off his tongue as he came, hard, hips stilling making sure to fill you to the brim, until he's sure he released every last drop he had to give..His own body shuttering in ovesentivty at this point. Namjoons fingers slowly soothed up your thighs, both of you panting painfully hard, wincing at the contact as you continue pulsing around him. Eyes locked in a half lidded gaze, a smile that started on your lips and ended on his as the two of you racked over each other's forms, hot sweaty, marked up, and fucked out. 

“Namjoon” You finally say, breaking the silence, a slight moan hanging off your tongue and he smiled back at you, reaching up to grip the back of your neck.

“Y/n” Parroting your name with the same lust filled drawl that you had, making you moan…

Nam-fucking-Joon” Leaning down to place a firm kiss to his lips, humming out instanly at the contact.

“Y/n Kim….” 

“Yup, that’s me!” Smiling out tired and dazed against his lips, while you felt his hand soothe up and down the curve of your back. 

“I love you”

“And, I love you” 

The two of you laid there like that for a moment, until his cock was completely soft and he gently slid out, still keeping you flush against his chest….just sitting in comfortable silence, breathing together..until..

“ Oww!! What the fuck was that for ?!” Your poor ass...at least it’s a pinch and not a smack this time...

“I mean it. I love what we do and I know sometimes realistically it happens there are only so many hours in a day I understand that. We wouldn’t be where we are if we didin’t work our asses off! But you’ve been doing this and running on fumes all damn week! I’ve just been watching from afar and keeping my mouth shut, hoping that you would sort it out yourself but I couldn’t watch you burn yourself into the ground anymore. Y/n. I’m serious! “

You can feel the weight behind his words, the way his heart seems to be beating harder now than it was when the two of you were having sex. 

So you lean down to press a kiss on his lips that almost seems far too delicate and out of place for what just happened only moments prior.

“I know.” 

Namjoon holds your gaze for a second longer before cupping the side of your face and kissing you firm and sweet, smiling against your lips once he feels you sigh into it. Hesitantly he pulls away and heads towards the bathroom and he already hears you whine in protest. Just flagging his hand in your direction, not even bothering to turn around.

 “We literally have a 9 AM flight and an 11:30 business meeting at the Plaza! Meaning, you have to be dressed and fully ready when we hop on the plane. Your fuckin showering..now. I don’t wanna hear it. ” 

Honestly, you were far too tired to protest and the tone of his voice let you know you wouldn’t win anyway!  So I mean, fuck, at least there’s a bench in the shower! 

“Ugh, fuck, fine! Come carry me! I have to preserve my energy to walk in my Louboutins tomorrow!!!” Making grabby hands in his direction knowing damn well he can’t deny you anything. 

“You mean today!” You heard his voice echo off the tiles and hoenstly he seems far to chipper to remind you have of, which only makes you whine even louder! 

Heading back out the bathroom with a smirk on his face, shaking his head in dismay as he scoops you effortlessly into his arms. “Come here you little brat!” 

“Your brat!” You fire back, with nothing but smugness rolling off your tongue as you loop your arms around his neck, kissing his dimple.

“Fuck yeah you are, my brat, my wife, my fuckin baby” Inviting his tongue back into your mouth as he leads the two of you back into the bathroom! 

The two of you moved together lazily whilst in the shower, taking turns washing each other, slow touches and kisses. Murmuring sweet nothings mixed in with business because though you tried to leave work at work...sometimes it’s impossible! 

Not even bothering to look at the clock once you finally melted into your bed, honestly, you didn’t even wanna know. 

~~~

 Far too soon the sound of all 6 of your alarms went off, ya know, the “Okay I should get up but I don’t have to get up” All the way to the “Fuck, I’m late!” Alarm! They all went off until you found yourself practically being scraped off the floor and led into the guest room that the two of you converted into an additional closet and a place for you to get ready in peace! 

Sitting down, Starbucks in hand as you set out to beat your face, do your hair and try not to look like you stayed up until 1 am then got fucked into the mattress until you damn near cried! 

The Starbucks was curiosity of Taehyung who had keys and free reign to your apartment whenever we felt so inclined. The redhead welcomed himself into your space, waltzing over in your direction with an all-knowing smile on his face. Ducking down to leave a slow lingering, open mouthed kiss along the one mark on your shoulder you apparently forgot to cover this morning. You can feel him smirking against your skin,as he pulls back to flop down on the pink furry chair currently covered in rejected outfit choices. Trying to force yourself to ignore the sudden chill that rang through your body because you didin’t have the time or the engery for anything else. 

‘Why aren’t you wearing this? Your ass looks fuckin great in this!” Holding up a black halterneck Jumpsuit, brows furrowed in the center of his face.

“I know, but, it needs to be steamed and I don’t have the time..” A feigned pout playing on your lips as you batted your lashes at him through the mirror. Watching as he slid off the chair, with an exasperated huff, eyes rolling to the back of his head more times than you can count. Heading towards the steamer you had hanging along one of your many clothes racks.  

“Thank you, baby!!” Blowing him a kiss that he swatted away in the process! 

“Yeah, yeah! Soo I see someone was impatient and went through the resumes last night…At fuckin midnight!” Eyes glaring in your direction, you could hear the frown in his voice. “Y/n-“

“Don’t!” Eyes narrowing in his direction through the mirror “Daddy Joon already got in my ass enough about last night for all of you!” 

 “As he fuckin should! That’s what you have me for baby, so you aren’t doing that shit to yourself anymore!” You can tell he’s trying to sound authoritative but instead, he just sounds sad and equally disappointed!”

“I know, Tae, I know, I’m fuckin workin’ on it!.” Your delivery comes out a little sharper than you intended but he’s known you far too long to take it personally or even fully acknowledge it honestly! 

“Speaking of, I actually met this kid, not fully a kid he’s like 21, but anyway he just graduated from USC, for some sort of Film. I actually ran into him at Starbucks today and he’s supposed to be sending me his resume and some video reels in a little while.” 

A low hum ringing in the back of your throat, far too focused on carving out your brows to talk...but he took that as a hint to continue. 

“His name is Jungkook, he seems somewhat promising just from talking to him, so, I’ll feel it out and if it seems worth your time I’ll forward over his information! I’m also going to try and set up a couple of interviews for you and Joonie next week!” 

Offering a faint nod in response, still far too focused on your makeup to give much else, or realize the sudden fire burning in Taehyung's eyes as he watches you get ready. Silk robe hanging loosely off your frame, a pair of white lace panties peeking out...

“What time were the two of you trying to get dropped off at the airport?” The sudden shift in conversation, and the blatant octave change had your eyes meeting him through the mirror. Trying to feel out his mood…

“In the next hour or so…” Then there’s Namjoon, standing in the doorway wearing nothing but his dress pants, an unbuttoned silk shirt, and a smirk that screams nothing but trouble. 

“Come’re” The bass in Namjoon’s voice alone has chills running down your spine, a second away from shifting out of your seat until you realize he’s not talking to you. Flicking his finger in the redhead’s direction, edging him off the wall slowly. Biting his lip as he sways coyly in your husband’s direction. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THAT’S ALL SHE WROTE! FOR NOW, IF YOU LIKED IT.. ,SHOW THIS SOME LOVE AND I’LL CONSIDER ADDING TO IT!  I DID MAP OUT THE FIRST 3 CHAPTERS LAST YEAR WHEN I STARTED THIS BUT I DIDN’T PHYSICALLY WRITE THEM! BTW I KNOW I DIDIN’T MENTIONED ALL OF THEM, BUT ALL O BTS MINUS KOOK WORK FOR THE OC AND NAMJOON!

MASTER LIST 

[alarawriting]

52 Project #30 (Writeober #15: Mortality): Everybody’s Happy As The Dead Come Home

Ever since my mother died of breast cancer a few years ago, I’ve been making time to go visit my elderly father about once a month. That may be conjuring up the wrong image in your head, so let me clarify. My father’s over 70, but he still has a lot of the energy he had as a younger man. He works as a consultant for the big corporation he spent his entire adult pre-retirement life working for, for about three or four times as much money, and he enjoys it. He’s got an active social life, spending time with friends he had shared with Mom as a couple, and new friends he’s made from his bereavement group or his consulting work. And my sister, the baby of the family, lives with him, and my two younger brothers come to visit him a lot more often, since they live a lot closer than I do. So if you’re imagining a lonely, stooped old man pining away in a house that smells like stale cat food – that’s not my dad, and I can’t imagine it would ever be.

I arrived late on a Friday night, as usual. My sister met me at the door, and actually looked me directly in the eye. Stephanie’s autistic; she never looks anyone in the eye. “Eleanor,” she said, and that was another strange thing, because she almost never calls anyone by name… unless she’s doing it for emphasis. “When you find out, don’t say anything about it,” she said.

“About what?” Most of the time Stephanie makes sense, but every so often she says something that sounds like her mind has jumped ahead in the conversation without realizing all the missing pieces she never bothered to say.

“You’ll know,” she said. “And you’ll want to ask ‘why’ and ‘how’, and I’m telling you that you can’t do that. Don’t ask any questions. Just come talk to me after you’re done.”

“Done with what?” I asked.

And then a voice called me from the TV room. “Lennie? Lennie, is that you?”

Only my mom and dad are allowed to call me Lennie. And that was a woman’s voice. I froze in place.

“Go see her,” Stephanie said, and headed off to her room.

I turned toward the TV room, slowly. “Lennie! Come out and see me!” my mom’s voice called.

I didn’t know whether to be terrified, or to start crying and fling myself into her arms. I walked very slowly, very cautiously, to the edge of the kitchen, where I could see my parents in the TV room. Both of my parents. My dad was smiling.

“Lennie!” my mom said, standing up. She hadn’t been able to stand up without help for months before she died, but here she was, standing up easily. She didn’t look any younger than she had when she died, but she looked healthier. The extreme thinness she’d suffered from at the end after it had metastasized and she’d barely been able to eat was gone; her flesh was filled out, her skin as taut as you could expect from a woman her age, and healthy-looking. Pale, but her natural paleness, not the weird, sallow, almost yellow color it had been at the very end.

“Mom?” I whispered.

“Come here. I need a hug,” Mom said, sounding exactly like she always had – joking, but there was always that note of truth under it. She didn’t wait for me to make my way to her – she never had, not until she was too ill to get up – but came straight for me and gave me a hug, and she smelled like herself. Not like a rotting corpse, not like ozone or nothing or whatever a ghost is supposed to smell like.

When I was a kid, my brother Jeff and I watched the miniseries version of “The Martian Chronicles”. In particular, he was always impressed (and terrified) by the part where the astronauts meet their long-lost loved ones, who turn out to be Martian shapechangers luring them to their deaths. I always wondered, if the people they saw on Mars were dead, how did they fall for it? How did they not know that dead people could not somehow be on Mars?

As I held my mom, who’d been dead a few years now, I understood. They’d wanted to believe. I wanted to believe. Stephanie had warned me not to ask anything – no “how are you not dead”, “how can you be here”, “why are you alive,” nothing like that. I assumed that was what she’d meant, anyway.

“Mom, I’ve been trying to trace some of my past that I’ve forgotten. Do you remember the name of my third grade teacher?”

“Huh.” My mom seemed to be thinking about it. “I think it was Mrs. Wilder, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. Second grade was Ms. Jenner, right? And fourth was Mrs. White?”

“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t, in fact, remember my third grade teacher’s name, and neither did my dad. The Martians in the story had been telepaths; they’d been able to perfectly impersonate the astronauts’ loved ones because they could read the astronauts’ minds. Now I had a piece of information whose answer I didn’t know, and no way to easily confirm it unless Jeff remembered; he was only two years younger than me and had had some of the same teachers. But some of the people I had friended on Facebook were high school classmates, and a tiny number of my high school classmates had also been with me in elementary school, and might remember my third grade teacher’s name.

“I haven’t seen you in so long,” my mom said. “What’s going on in your life?”

“Oh, you know,” I said. “Things are going okay. Mom, if I’d known you were here I’d have brought the kids.”

“You can bring them up next time,” Mom said.

This was so weird. My mom was definitely dead. I had seen her body in the coffin, lying in state, looking nothing like she had in life. But here she was, impossibly, and I was holding an almost normal conversation with her. “Have Jeff or Aaron come over since you’ve… been here?”

“Jeff was here last weekend,” Dad said. “And Aaron lives next door, so he’s been over nearly every day.”

My grandparents used to live next door. When they died, my mom and my uncle inherited the house. My uncle bought out my mom’s share and rented the house out, and my youngest brother ended up renting it. My other brother lives in an apartment down in the city; I’m the odd one out, living in a completely different state, with a husband and kids.

So all of them had known, and none of them had told me. I expected Stephanie and Aaron to never tell me anything, but I was more than a little irritated with Jeff.

“Let me go drop off my stuff,” I said, since I was still carrying my bag.

I went back to Stephanie’s room, which used to be my room, a long time ago. The boys used to room together, but my room was too small for Stephanie to share with me, and she had needed a lot of space of her own… so they’d converted the loft in the garage into a bedroom. It had never been warm in the winter, though, so as soon as I moved out, Stephanie had moved in.

Stephanie was, as usual, on her computer. I shut the door behind me. “Okay. What the hell is going on?”

“She’s not the only one,” Stephanie said, without looking away from her computer. “I’ve been doing research. They’re all over the place. There’s no explanation yet, and apparently none of them will talk about it. I asked Mom and she said I was really rude, and sulked and was really passive-aggressive.”

“So we’re not worried about Mom turning into a Martian shapechanger or vanishing, we’re just worried that she’ll get mad?” To be fair, making Mom mad had always been a thing worth avoiding at all costs. “When did she come back?”

“I don’t know exactly, but presuming that she came to see me right after she came back, it would have been Monday around 3 pm.”

“And no one told me? You have my email address!”

“…It just didn’t feel right, telling you something like this in email. I felt like I should wait for you to be here.”

“And Jeff didn’t? And Aaron didn’t?”

Stephanie shrugged. She still didn’t look away from her computer. “They probably felt the same way.”

“Does Dad… know? Like, does he even remember that Mom is dead, or does he think this is normal?”

“I didn’t ask him.”

I sat down on her bed. “Steph, I’m asking you to make an informed guess. Has he said anything to you that would either suggest that he’s aware this is abnormal, or that he isn’t?”

“I don’t read minds, but I haven’t heard anything from him one way or the other. He’s very happy, though.”

“I got that impression,” I told her. I went to the guest room, which used to belong to the boys, opened up my laptop, and sent Jeff a question on Facebook about my third grade teacher.

Mom appeared while I was debating whether or not to also ask him why the hell he hadn’t told me about her. “Lennie, don’t hide in your room. Come out and talk to me and your dad. You need to catch me up on your life!”

Part of me wanted to break down crying. Part of me wanted to run to the car. Part of me was annoyed the way I always used to be annoyed when my mom wanted to spend time with me and I had stuff to do. And part of me hated myself for being annoyed by my mom for any reason at all. She was back from the dead and I wanted to hide in my room? But I wanted to hide in my room because I wanted to do research to figure out if this was really my mom or not. And what had Stephanie meant by “all over the place”? People all over the place had returned from the dead? Why wasn’t this all over the news?

What I said was, “Okay, mom,” and I went out to the TV room to talk to her.

***

Here I was, having a completely mundane conversation with a dead woman.

Yes, my husband was doing well at his consulting business. Yes, my oldest daughter was doing well in college. My youngest daughter had a rough spot a few years ago but was doing better. The daughter in the middle was putting a lot of time into her music, and was getting really good. I didn’t mention that my oldest daughter had gotten a diagnosis of autism like her aunt, or that my middle daughter was failing all her subjects because all she cared about was music, or that my youngest daughter was openly bisexual and dating a nonbinary teen in her class, because those would be fraught topics around here. My mother would be openly disapproving of the failing in school – as was I, but I wasn’t here to listen to a lecture about what I should be doing differently to make sure Rhiannon passed her classes – and she’d be what she thought counted as supportive about the other things. Are you sure it’s a good idea for Janie to have an autism diagnosis on her medical record? Lots of people will discriminate against her, just ask Stephanie, it’s not a good thing to admit to the world. And if Lori wanted to date a person who claimed to have no gender, good for her, but was she sure it was a good idea to admit to the world that she was bi when the world is so prejudiced? Blah blah blah. No. I wasn’t going there, not with my mother back from the dead.

All the questions I wanted to ask. How? How was she back? Why? Was there an afterlife after all? What was it like? Are you absolutely sure you’re not a telepathic shapechanger who wants to eat us? Is anyone else coming back or is it just you? But I couldn’t do it. My mouth wouldn’t make the words, and I felt like Mom being alive was a soap bubble that might burst any moment. If I said she was dead, would she disappear? I couldn’t take the risk.

Now I knew why Jeff and Aaron hadn’t told me. The compulsion not to talk about it, the fear that talking about the circumstances of her death and her apparently-no-longer-deadness would cause her to stop being no-longer-dead. I wouldn’t be able to tell my husband about this, or my kids, not unless they came here. Not without feeling like Mom might disappear if I did.

Which was probably how Stephanie had gotten away with it, in the beginning. If this was some kind of emotional pressure, something emanating from the presence of a dead woman... Stephanie was typically immune to emotional pressure. Or pretended she was, anyway. She hid behind her monotone and her face that barely expressed anything until she couldn’t, and then she’d go and have a meltdown in the bathroom. But she wanted to please Mom. We all wanted to please Mom. So if Mom had told her she was rude for mentioning the death thing, Stephanie would be unable to mention it again. Because she wouldn’t want Mom to think she was rude.

This felt very much like I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone. Dead mother back to life, check. Weird inexplicable pressure not to talk about it, check. But Mom clearly remembered things that had happened shortly before her death, and showed no evidence of knowing about anything that had happened since, unless it was public knowledge. She talked about interests the girls had had three years ago, interests they’d all outgrown since. She talked about my plan to remodel my own garage – I had completely forgotten that was even a thing we’d planned at one point, because I’d lost my job shortly after Mom died and then the money wasn’t there for the remodel. She didn’t know I was working with my husband in the consulting business now, which a telepath would obviously know because it dominates my life nowadays. Obviously a Martian telepathic shapechanger would have to pretend not to know things that supposedly happened while they were dead, but if I’d forgotten about the garage, what were the odds a telepath could pull it out of my head? There had to be more accessible thoughts in there, after all.

I didn’t know what to ask Mom. How do you feel? That was always a good one, back in the day, because Mom’s chronic illnesses meant there was always something she could complain about, but she wouldn’t do it until she was asked… she’d just quietly resent the fact that no one had asked her. But did dead people still feel things? Would that intrude on the topic I wasn’t supposed to talk about? What’s going on in your life? Oh, nothing much, Lennie, I’m back from the dead, how about you?

So I talked about myself. I was learning to work leather and I’d made myself a wallet, but I left it at home, I could bring it to show her next time. I was also learning to repair dolls. The girls had all abandoned theirs and I felt bad about it, so I was cleaning them up and repairing them and putting them in dioramas. Mom was very interested in both topics, and asked if I could repair some old dolls she had up in the attic. I was pretty sure I’d already done it – if it was the dolls I was thinking of, Dad had given them to me right after Mom died, and they were the ones I’d learned on. But was it safe to talk about? Dad wasn’t saying anything; had he forgotten he gave me the dolls, which was entirely possible, or did he think it wasn’t safe to talk about either?

I’d wanted for three years to be able to tell my mom that she was wrong about all the weight loss advice she’d given me because now it had come out that scientists had never proven that fat made you fat and the low-carb diets were probably better for you than the low-fat ones, but I didn’t know if she could still eat. Also, my mom was back from the dead and I wanted to start an argument with her about a topic I’d always hated when she talked about? Didn’t I have anything better to do? That really kind of made me a shitty person, didn’t it?

When Mom had been dying, I couldn’t talk to her about the future. I didn’t know how to bring myself to talk about things she’d never see. I’d never known how much my conversations with her consisted of me talking about future plans until I couldn’t any more. Now I couldn’t talk about the future or the past, at least not the past three years, and large parts of the present had to be left out too, because I didn’t know what would remind her that she was dead and make her go back to her grave. Even though, logically, I knew that was unlikely to happen because Stephanie had done it and had just gotten a rebuke that that was rude.

At the same time… I knew I had to say something that Mom could talk about, because if I just talked about myself all night, later on she’d probably make some passive-aggressive remarks about how everything always had to be about me. In desperation, I asked her if she’d seen anything good on television lately.

“Oh, I haven’t been watching anything in a while,” Mom said. “It’s been so long since I felt well enough to go anywhere, so I’ve been going for walks, and your father and I have been taking trips to museums and historic sites. We’re going to be going up to Boston next week.”

“I have a client up there,” Dad said, “and they want me to do a training thing. And I was telling them, no, no, Boston’s too far, but I remembered how much your mom loved Boston, so I asked her if she wanted to go and she said yes, so now we’re going. We’re going to fly, though. The days I was willing to drive that kind of distance are long over.”

“You could take the Amtrak.”

Dad made a dismissive gesture. “It’s gotten so expensive. Flying’s actually cheaper.”

“When are you going?”

“Next Wednesday we’re going to fly up there,” Mom said, which said something about her opinion of the future, at least. “Your dad’s got his presentations to do on Thursday and Friday, and I’ll wander around the city, and then we’ll spend Saturday seeing the sights together.”

“There’s this fantastic restaurant I went to last time I was up there on business,” Dad said, “and I checked their web page, and they’re still open. So we’re going to go there.”

So Mom could eat. Or Dad wasn’t afraid of talking about eating with her, anyway. Maybe ruled out vampire, but Martian shapechanger was still on the table.

I didn’t literally believe my mom – or the entity that appeared to be my mom – was a telepathic shapechanger from Mars like in The Martian Chronicles. But it was obvious that something so far outside the norm that it was only imaginable by making references to fantasy and science fiction was happening.

I tried, very carefully, “How have you been feeling, Mom?”

“I’m great!” She laughed. “I haven’t felt this good in ages. Sugar’s under control, I can see pretty well, none of the usual aches and pains… I’m doing pretty good!”

Did she remember she had died of cancer? Did she even remember that she’d died?

It was 2 am before I got to go to bed.

***

6 am and I was up and out the door before there was any chance of my mother or father being awake, assuming my mom even slept anymore. But at the very least, she was in her bedroom with the door closed and no view of the driveway I’d parked my car in.

Do I sound like a terrible daughter when I tell you I’ve never visited my mom’s grave? I haven’t been back there since the funeral. I always knew my mother wasn’t really there – that if any part of her had still existed in any form, it wasn’t trapped in a coffin under six feet of dirt. It made it somewhat difficult to find the graveyard, though, because I couldn’t remember where it was, or its name, or which church it was associated with, and it wasn’t exactly like I could ask my mom. When I finally found the place– it wasn’t that hard in the end, my parents live in a small town and there aren’t many graveyards – it took me half an hour to find her grave.

It seemed undisturbed. But if Mom had been back from the dead since Monday, that would have been time to fill in a grave. I went looking for the caretaker.

They get to work early in the graveyard caretaking business, I guess; I found him pushing a lawnmower over on the other side of the graveyard.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“This is going to sound stupid,” I said. “But I got an email from a jerk I used to know in high school claiming he was going to dig up my mother’s grave, and I just wanted to make sure nobody’s touched it.”

“Nobody’s touched any of the graves, ma’am,” he assured me. “Aside from a couple of funerals we’ve had this week, no one’s done anything to disturb the ground here at all.”

“Thanks,” I said, “that’s reassuring. He was talking like he was actually going to do it, but I guess he was all talk.”

“Well, if anyone comes by and disturbs any of the graves, we’ll have them arrested,” he said.

I had my answer. My mother had not climbed out of her grave. Which seemed impossible anyway, now that I knew enough about the funeral industry to know exactly how hard it would be to smash a coffin open, let alone dig through six feet of dirt. I couldn’t rule out her turning immaterial and floating out of her grave, but my mom had seemed very material and biological when she’d hugged me. I’d always thought of ghosts as something that were almost never solid enough to interact with the world, if they even existed.

***

If I was going to get up this early, I was going to get a pancake breakfast at the diner. My parents still think sugarless cold cereal is a reasonable thing to eat for breakfast. They were always night owls; I made myself breakfast and school lunch every morning but the first day of school, every year after about third grade. I was also a night owl, once I didn’t have to get up for school anymore, but I used to make my girls a lunch every night and store it in the fridge for them. Now they’re too old and too cool for Mom lunches. They’re eating something, but it might be cafeteria food, lunch they pack for themselves, or for all I know sandwiches from 7-11 or Starbucks with their allowance.

The point is, I hardly ever get a nice breakfast, because I am hardly ever willing to wake up early enough to cook myself one, and my parents certainly weren’t going to. So I went to the diner.

Normally I don’t talk to anyone at a diner, beyond smiling at them and telling them my order in an upbeat, cheerful voice because waitresses get too much shit from too many people for me to add to it inadvertently. Also because I don’t want them to think I’m eating alone because I’m a sad, lonely bitch no one would love; I want them to know I’m doing this because I really, really enjoy not having to socialize. But today I had something I needed to know.

“I’m a writer,” I told the waitress, “and I’m doing research on ghost stories in the area. Have you heard anything, you know, Halloweeny or spooky? Ghosts appearing, dead people walking around, poltergeists, that kind of thing?”

“Can’t say I have, but I’ll ask around, see if any of the girls know any good stories,” the waitress told me.

And then she took my order back to the kitchen, and I surfed the net on my phone while I waited, and then I got my pancakes, and I ate them. I was chasing the last blueberry around on the plate when another waitress approached me. “Stacy told me you were collecting creepy stories for a book?”

“From the local area, yeah.”

“I don’t know if this is the kind of thing you’re looking for, but… my cousin says that a lady on her street, her husband died a few years ago? But she just saw the guy walking with the lady down the street, having a conversation like the guy never died.”

“Do you think you’d be able to give my email to your cousin and have her reach out to me? That sounds like exactly the kind of story I’m looking for.”

“Uh, sure.”

I gave the waitress my email address. This was probably going to come to nothing; I doubted the waitress would even remember to give it to her cousin. But it’d be really good if I could get the details from someone who knew more about it.

***

Jeff’s more of a morning person than I am. I got a response on Facebook, but I had to wait to get back to my parents’ house, where my laptop was, to read it. On mobile, Facebook will only let you read messages if you have the app, which tells Mark Zuckerberg exactly where you are and what you’re doing with your phone, all the time. I don’t have the app. Sometimes this means I can’t read messages on mobile, but I prefer that to having an evil data empire know everything about my movements.

My parents weren’t awake when I got home. Or they were still in their bedroom. They used to do that a lot. Mom’s desk was in there, and Dad had a laptop… which he usually used on Mom’s desk, since she died. I wondered where her machine was, and if she had made a thing about it once she came back.

“I’m not sure I remember what your third grade teacher’s name was… I can barely remember my own third grade teacher. Were they the same? I can’t remember. I think my own teacher’s name was… Wil-something? Wilber? Wilkins? You’d be better off… well, you’re at the house now, or are you back at your home? Kind of important to know, because I could give you some advice about who to ask, but it’d be a different thing if you were at Dad’s house.”

He meant, “You’d be better off asking Mom, but I don’t know if you know Mom is back from the dead or not.” I was pretty sure, anyway.

I responded. “I’m at Dad’s house. Wondering how I’d be able to tell the difference between someone who’s real and a Martian shapechanger. Could the name have been Wilder?”

Five minutes later I got my answer. “Mom isn’t a Martian shapechanger. It was the first thing I thought of, so I checked.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

That answer I didn’t get until half an hour later. “I… just didn’t feel right, talking about it in an impersonal medium like the internet. I know you have a cell phone and I probably even have your number somewhere, but I remember you’re not the biggest fan of actual phone calls, so I didn’t want to disturb you.”

I replied with my phone number and the message “Call me.”

And then I had to sit by my phone, doing nothing important, nothing that would engage my attention in any serious way, waiting for him to call. Which took twenty minutes, despite the fact that I could see that he was online.

Finally the phone rang. “You raaaaang?” I answered in my best parody of The Addams Family.

“I’m pretty sure I must have, or you wouldn’t have known to pick up,” Jeff said. “Of course, I might have buzzed. You could have your phone on vibrate. Or maybe I sang, depending on what you have for a ringtone.”

“’You saaaaang?’ doesn’t have the same je ne sais quoi to it.”

“Wow, how long has it been since I heard someone put je ne sais quoi in a sentence? I think we’re old. I think that’s an old person expression now.”

“What’s going on with Mom?” I asked, quietly, in case anyone might be in the hallway to hear me.

Jeff sighed. “I don’t know what is, but I can tell you what isn’t,” he said. “Stephanie confirmed that she eats, sleeps and goes to the bathroom normally, and I confirmed all of that for myself. The toilet in their bedroom is still broken enough that they don’t flush it unless they have to.”

I winced. That was a level of detail I could have done without. “So, not vampire or undead. How did you solve the Martian thing?”

“On Monday, Dad woke up and she was laying next to him in bed. If the goal was to kill him, it would have made more sense to do it then, before he woke up, than to put on this whole elaborate performance.”

“You’re taking me too literally. I’m not worried about aliens trying to take our family off guard so they can kill us. There’s any number of things they could be up to, and they don’t have to be aliens. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Stepford Wives. My Little Pony.”

“…My Little Pony?”

“There’s creatures called Changelings that feed on love. They impersonate ponies and take the love that other ponies feel for the ones they’re impersonating, as food.”

“Kind of psychic vampires mashed up with Martian shapechangers.”

“Yeah, but without the telepathy, so they’re not as good at it as you’d think. It’s a children’s show; they have to telegraph to the kids that these aren’t the real ponies. In real life, anyone who did something like that would be more competent.”

“How much verisimilitude do we need, though? She’s got moles in the same places Mom had moles. She’s missing a toenail just like Mom. Things I didn’t consciously think about, things I might not have remembered if you asked me to describe Mom.”

“That just means that if it’s not Mom, it has the ability to rummage deeper into our memories than we’re consciously aware of. That’s why I asked you my third grade teacher’s name. I genuinely don’t remember. Mom would, I’m pretty sure. Dad wouldn’t and Stephanie and Aaron were both too young.”

“I’m not sure I remember, but when you said Wilder, that sounded like it could be right. Do you know anyone from elementary school? Some of them went to high school with us.”

“I have some Facebook friends from high school, and maybe one or two went to the same elementary we did, but I haven’t been able to locate any actual people that I remember from elementary school. They don’t have a Classmates.com thing that works for elementary—”

“It says it does.”

“It lies, there’s nowhere to enter your elementary in your profile. All it lets you put in is high school, and it’s from a drop-down, not even freeform.”

“Huh. Guess I never tried it. I’m still in touch with anyone I cared about from back then.”

“I literally don’t care about anyone from back then, but that makes it hard when you’re trying to figure out your third grade teacher’s name.”

“If she can probe our memories,” Jeff said, “then nothing you or I know, or ever knew, would be safe. You’d have to come up with something to ask her that Dad wouldn’t know, or me, or Aaron, or Steph, or yourself, but that you know Mom would know and that you know someone else who would know it too.”

“I could ask Mariana for something.” My mom’s close friend and high school classmate was one of my Facebook friends. We don’t generally communicate directly with each other, but I follow her posts.

“That’s a good idea.” I heard the sound of a whistling teapot in the background. “That’d be my hot water for my oatmeal. If you get anything from Mariana, can you tell me about it?”

“Yeah.” I’d wanted to tell him about the story I’d heard in the diner, but no one got between Jeff and his oatmeal. “I’ll talk to you later. Probably online. Voice is making me paranoid.”

“I know what you mean. Do you need me to come up this weekend? I could make a day trip tomorrow.”

“That might be a good idea. I want to talk to Aaron, do you know what schedule he’s on?”

“He works nights now, so you’ll want to get him around 2 pm or so.”

“All right. Enjoy your oatmeal.”

“I will!” he said, putting a ridiculous amount of emphasis into it as a joke.

***

Before I could finish writing a message to Mariana – before I could really start, honestly, because how could I explain why I needed what I needed without admitting Mom was back from the dead? – someone knocked on my door. It was Mom. She was wearing one of her usual kind of shapeless but colorful nightgowns, and her hair was not brushed, so it was kind of a wreck. I noticed for the first time that it was grey. Mom had always dyed her hair since she started going grey, and it had still been auburn when she’d died. I’d never seen it fully grey. “Your dad and I are going to the arboretum,” she said. “Do you want to come?”

“Since when have you been into trees, Mom?” My mother had always been fascinated by history, and to some extent natural history like dinosaurs, but I’d never seen her express an interest in nature per se.

“I never was, much,” she admitted, “but the world is so beautiful. I was always more interested in the way humans shape the world than the way it came out of the box, but things like arboretums, Japanese gardens, zoos and aquariums… they’re made of nature, but they’re made by humans, and they say something about the people who chose to make them the way they are. And you know that your dad has always enjoyed nature.” My dad was interested in science, in general, and considered the natural world part of that. He was not exactly the kind of guy who would go camping.

In the past, I would have said “no, thanks.” I was never all that interested in nature myself, certainly not trees – maybe beautiful rocks or interesting landscapes, but looking at trees wouldn’t have seemed interesting to me. I still didn’t care much about trees… but my mom was back from the dead. I’ve gone much stupider and more boring places than an arboretum with her in the past, and now… if this was really her, if she was really alive again, I was going to spend all the time with her that I reasonably could.

“Sure, I’ll go,” I said. “I’ll take my own car, though. Just give me the address.” I always took my own car if I possibly could, because I’d get carsick if I wasn’t the one driving. “Should I ask Stephanie if she wants to come?”

“Sure, you can ask. I doubt she will, though.”

Stephanie, however, surprised me. “Yeah, I’ll go with you. We’ll meet Mom and Dad there?”

“Yeah.” Dad had texted me the address, so I pulled it up in my GPS. “About half an hour from here.”

In the car, she asked me, “Have you found anything out? I know you were looking into the whole Mom thing.”

“Jeff thinks she’s really Mom. We have a plan to get Mariana to give us a question that we don’t know the answer to, but that Mom and Mariana both would, so we can confirm she really knows things and isn’t just reading our minds. And a waitress at the diner said her cousin has seen what looks like someone else coming back from the dead.”

“It’s all over the place, actually,” Stephanie said. “I’m finding reports from everywhere.”

I glanced at her. “Why wouldn’t this be making the news, then? People coming back from the dead!”

“I feel like maybe no one wants to go on the record.” Stephanie looked out the window. “Nothing on Twitter or Facebook. No pictures of dead people on Instagram. I’m seeing things on Reddit and Tumblr – places where people use a consistent pseudonym, not like 4chan, but where that pseudonym can’t be tied to their actual identity. I’ve posted about it in both places, but I can’t make myself tweet about it.”

“Any idea why not?”

“It—” She shrugged, hands exaggeratedly widespread and head canted forward slightly. “It just feels wrong,” she said. “Like… we’re getting away with something. There’s a natural law we’re breaking here. I can post as toomanymushrooms or u/catonahottinroofsundae and no one knows who I am, but if I post as Stephanie Robbins and I tell everyone that my mom Suky Robbins is back from the dead…”

“What if that brought it to the attention of, what, some kind of authorities?”

“Yeah, pretty much. And even if I was just posting under my own name… I don’t have to say Mom’s name. I don’t have to put a mention to her Facebook in a post. But everyone knows my mother’s name, or they could find out from my name if they wanted to.”

“And you think maybe there are a lot of people with these weird feelings?”

“I don’t think so, I know so. A lot of posts explicitly talk about the fact that they can’t bring themselves to say anything in public, or talk about it with their real names on it.”

“Are they all parents?”

“No. It’s all kinds of people. Best friends, siblings, spouses, children… the only pattern I see is that nobody died a long time ago. It’s all, ‘my brother who died last year’ or ‘my aunt who died two years ago’ or something. Longest I’ve seen anyone talk about was a son who died five years ago.”

A thought occurs to me. “I can add something to your pattern, though.”

“Yeah?”

“You’d expect that, even if everyone with a resurrected relative feels this sense of dread about telling anyone about it with their name attached, because they feel it will, I don’t know, maybe cause the dead person to disappear back into their grave… you’d think somebody would do it anyway because they don’t care. Someone whose alcoholic abusive father came back and they wish he’d go away again, someone’s asshole brother, someone’s former best friend who betrayed them. But so far, no one has. How many people have you seen talking about this?”

“It’s hard to say because no one’s using their real names. Someone might post from their main blog and their side blog, or maybe they have a different name on tumblr vs reddit but they posted to both. But I’ve tracked thirteen separate names, and of those, I can tell for a fact there are at least nine unique ones because they talk about different people.”

“Thirteen isn’t ‘all over the place’.”

“I didn’t mean all over the Internet, I meant people coming from all over. I’ve tracked the UK, California, North Dakota, Ontario, France, India and New Zealand. Nobody’s tagging their posts and no one is willing to contribute to a master list, so it’s hard to find anyone outside of the people I follow or the subreddits I’m in, and I don’t know where everyone comes from. But it’s geographically widespread. I suspect it may also be happening in other places where people don’t generally speak English or maybe don’t have Internet access.”

“And what’s their sentiment? Like, are people frightened? Upset? Excited? Weirded out?”

She took a moment to think about it. “They’re happy. People are happy it happened. Weirded out, yes. But happy.”

“No whacked-out conspiracy theories about how it’s the contrails raining down adenochrome or something?”

“Not from the people it’s happened to. There was one flame war I saw where a religious person was saying that the person whose sister was back from the dead had to repudiate her. She’s not really your sister, she’s a demon from Hell sent to trick you, et cetera. And the person whose sister was back turned out to be just as religious, and they threw a holy fit. Literally. A holy fit.” She giggled. “A whole lot of stuff about how the righteous were coming back and Jesus had granted some people eternal life and this was that, and how dare you call these beings demons when they’re obviously blessed by Jesus himself and you’re the kind of person who would have called for Jesus’s crucifixion if you’d been alive then, and all that kind of thing.”

“Did anyone else who’d had returned people say anything?”

“This was Tumblr. None of the people who have had returns are communicating with each other in any way I can see. I reached out to a few on Tumblr private messaging but no one has answered. The only places I’m seeing conversations about it between people with returns have been on Reddit, because it has a forum structure. Tumblr is more like a whole hanging web of disconnected strings.”

“Still, you’d think that someone would be publishing a news article about it. Even if no one is willing to go on the record with their real name…”

“Maybe it’s not enough people. Nine unique instances, maybe up to thirteen, maybe more in places I haven’t surveyed. It’s not like I have access to literally all of Tumblr, after all. But that’s all I can confirm, and what if there isn’t any more?”

“If anyone came back from the dead I would expect the news to take notice.” I turned onto the final road; the arboretum was at the end of this stretch. “I went to the graveyard today. Mom’s grave hasn’t been disturbed. I checked with the groundskeeper. So either Mom’s body floated ethereally through the grave dirt, and her coffin, or her original body is still in there and whatever she is now, it’s not the same as what she was then.”

“It’s too bad we can’t have her exhumed,” Stephanie said.

“It probably wouldn’t tell us much anyway.”

“She’s younger-looking than she was before. Not by much, and the grey hair hides it, but she’s healthier-looking and less wrinkly. And I don’t see any evidence that she still has diabetes, or that she’s taking any pills at all. I haven’t seen her take any insulin shots, or anything.”

“Huh.” She wasn’t restored to her youth, or her hair wouldn’t be grey and there would be no wrinkles at all. She wasn’t restored to what she was at the moment of death, obviously. She wasn’t restored to what she’d have been at the moment of death without the cancer that killed her, if she didn’t have diabetes anymore. I felt like there had to be a pattern here I wasn’t seeing. I really wanted to talk to some of these other people having this experience.

I pulled in to the arboretum’s parking lot. Mom and Dad weren’t there yet; Dad doesn’t drive like an old man, but he doesn’t drive as fast as he used to, either. “Do they do this kind of thing a lot? Arboretums, parks, et cetera?”

“They don’t usually invite me, and I wouldn’t usually come if they did, so I don’t know. They do leave the house a lot.”

Dad’s car pulled in, and he and Mom got out. For the first time I could remember, Mom was actually moving a bit faster than him. Both Mom and Dad were the kind of people who walked quickly everywhere they went, but for a long time, Mom was slowed down by her various illnesses. Dad was still healthy for his age, but he’d slowed down a good bit since Mom’s death – grief was hard on his health, it seemed – and now Mom seemed healthier than he was.

“Did you know there are people who come here from all over just to see our leaves in the autumn?” Mom said.

I did know that; it was typically a factor in making it hard for me to come visit during the autumn. “I think it’s the mountainsides. There’s leaves turning colors all over the country, but not on mountainsides.”

“In California they don’t even consider these mountains,” Mom said. “They call them hills when they come visit.”

“No respect for the elderly,” Dad said.

“Yeah, these young mountains think they’re all that, but wait 100,000 years and see how tall they are then,” Stephanie said.

We strolled around, looking at the trees, reading what it said on the plaques in front of them. American Elm. Yellow Birch. Eastern White Pine. I’d seen trees just like these my whole life, and a good number of them, I’d never known the names.

“You never think about how beautiful the world is,” Mom said. “We’re all rushing through it, trying to accomplish the next thing. Or entertain ourselves. Read a book, watch TV. So few of us really want to interact with nature.”

“Careful, mom, your hippie roots are showing,” I said, teasing.

“I think if my generation had remembered what we were back when we were the hippies, the world would be better off.”

“We didn’t forget, Suky. The hippies were always big news, but you know as well as I do how many people our age just wanted to go punch a clock, buy a house, vote for Ronald Fucking Reagan… We thought we were the generation that would change the world, but it wasn’t our generation, it was us. People like us, who wanted to see a better world and weren’t content to just live like the sheep our parents were… but there’s people like that in every generation. And they’re always outnumbered by the assholes.”

“Actually, they’ve done a study,” Stephanie said. “The reason generations get more conservative as they get older is that at every point, the poor are more likely to die than the rich, and the rich are more conservative than the poor. So by the time you get to middle age, a lot of the people looking for social justice and diversity are dead. And there’s a lot more dead by the time they’re elderly.”

“I don’t buy it,” my dad said. “There’s entirely too many stupid poor people in this country who are brainwashed into supporting causes that help out the rich people and screw themselves over. They’re not living longer than anyone else in this country. The math doesn’t work.”

“Let’s not talk about politics,” Mom said. “I think we all know there’s something more important we ought to be discussing.”

“Mom?” Stephanie said, and looked at her, which is not a thing Stephanie does very often.

“Suky?” Dad said.

I didn’t say anything. I watched as Mom looked up at a tree and said, “It’s time we dealt with the elephant in the room, don’t you think?”

“Are you going to tell us about—” I couldn’t say anything more. I couldn’t bring myself to make the words.

“About the fact that I was dead, and now I’m not?” She looked at all of us. “I think we should talk about it, yes.”

It felt like there were eyes, watching us. I wanted to yell to my mother, to tell her not to talk about it, that someone might hear… but who? And why would it matter?

“Is that something you’re okay with, Suky?” Dad asked.

“I’m fine, but I’m getting the impression the rest of you aren’t,” she said. “Why haven’t any of you brought it up, except Stephanie, the once?”

“Well, you told me it was rude,” Stephanie said.

Mom sighed. “I guess I did. I’m sorry. This isn’t really easy for me either.”

She sat down on a bench, and Dad sat with her. Stephanie and I sat on a short stone wall around a tree. “I suppose I should start by saying, I don’t really know much more than you do. I don’t have any memories of being dead. I woke up in bed, next to your dad, on Monday morning, and for a while I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there… I assumed I went to bed the previous night, but I couldn’t remember what had happened the night before. I couldn’t pin down anything I remembered as to exactly when it happened, not in the recent past. And when your father woke up, the shock on his face and the fact that he kept asking me if I was really here made me think, wait, the last thing I remember was that I was in a hospital dying of cancer, so why am I here now?”

“So you don’t remember any kind of afterlife?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I believe I had some sort of existence, but I don’t remember anything about it. When I wake up, I have flashes, feelings that I dreamed something about it, but I can’t hold it in my head long enough to write it down or even talk about it. It just… disappears, leaving behind only the memory that something was there a few minutes ago.”

“You know how unlikely the idea that an afterlife exists is, scientifically, though. Right?” Dad said. “Consciousness is an emergent property of a trillion neurons working together. Imagining that there could be some sort of construct that exists outside the brain and body is like imagining that a video game character could be waltzing around in front of us.”

“And yet I’m here,” Mom said.

“Time travel or a Star Trek transporter with some modifications would make more sense than something supernatural, like an afterlife,” Dad said stubbornly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Stephanie said. “If Mom doesn’t remember…”

“Have you had a medical exam?” I asked.

Mom laughed. “I don’t have health insurance anymore. I’m dead, remember? I can’t even begin to figure out how we’re going to address getting me a legal identity again, and to be honest… I can’t know I’ll be around long enough for it to matter.”

“None of us know that,” I said, “about ourselves or anyone else.”

“True, and it’s going to be hard to travel if I don’t have a legal identity. So I suppose I’ll have to address it eventually, if I last that long.”

“Thank God your state ID hasn’t actually expired yet, or there’d be no way we could fly to Boston. The passport’s expired,” Dad said. Mom had been legally blind when she died, so she’d had a state ID rather than a driver’s license.

“Is there any reason you might not? Aside from the things that could kill anyone?” I asked.

Dad said, “Your mother and I discussed… when she first appeared, I found it nearly impossible to talk about the fact that she’d been dead. When she broached the topic, I could talk about it to her, but I couldn’t tell you kids.” He shrugged. “My working theory is that there’s some kind of alien experiment going on or that time travel is somehow involved, but the fact that none of you kids were able to tell each other about it until you knew the other one knew suggests to me that someone with the ability to directly affect human emotions or thought is, for some reason, making it hard to talk about this. Maybe that means it’s a short-lived experiment.”

“Maybe I escaped from hell and no one wants to talk about it for fear the devil will take me back,” Mom said, but she was laughing. Mom had never believed in hell. Dad was an atheist; Mom definitely had strong spiritual beliefs, but they were kind of a package of woo that included reincarnation and ghosts, even though she’d been raised Catholic.

“There are others like you,” Stephanie said. “None of them have talked about it themselves, but family members or friends have talked about it online, under pseudonyms. I haven’t found any evidence that anyone has mentioned anything under their real names.”

“A lot?” Mom was surprised.

“So far I count between nine and thirteen unique individuals, plus Eleanor heard a rumor that someone who might live in town might have come back. We don’t know any details, though.”

“We need to find them,” Mom said. “I need to find them. I have a second chance at life, and I’m not ashamed of it. I won’t be silenced about the fact that I exist.”

“It might not be the best idea, Suky,” Dad said. “There are a lot more crazies out there than there were when you died—”

“—there were plenty of crazies then, Dee—”

“—right, and even then it wouldn’t have been a good idea. There might be some religious nut job who thinks that if you were dead you should stay that way. Or someone else thinks that you know how you came back, and wants to force you to tell them.”

“Those are valid points,” Mom said, nodding. “And to all of those people who might want to harm me because they think I shouldn’t be alive or they think I know how I came back, I say a hearty ‘fuck you.’ I won’t be silent because there are crazy people in the world. I’m not afraid of death, not anymore.”

“You’re going to risk Eleanor’s kids?” Dad asked sharply.

“I agree with Mom,” I said, standing up. “Nobody should have to keep quiet about the fact that they exist. But I have to tell Will.”

Stephanie made a face. My family doesn’t like my husband. They have justifications, but in the past few years, since Mom died, Will’s gone to therapy and has done a lot of work on himself. Mom was the only one in the family ever willing to forgive anything, though, so I’ve never tried to get them to change their minds.

Mom said, “Well, is he still a total asshole?”

“He’s… been trying not to be. He’s in therapy, and we’re doing couples counseling, and he’s working through a lot of baggage from his upbringing.”

“Why not tell him to bring the kids up and join you here, then. Coming back to life, might as well start a clean slate and see where things go from there. And you’re right, he needs to be involved in the discussion. Your girls, too. They all are old enough to understand what’s going on here, and what could happen.”

“You know I will never stand in the way of anything you want,” Dad said, which is the kind of thing Dad says rather than “I love you”. Things like, “If they ever fail to respect you, I will smite them” – talking about us and our treatment of Mom – or “You have always been my worthy opponent.” Yes. Sometimes my father talks like a comic book character.

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea,” Stephanie said, “but I know you taught me to be who I am to the world and fuck anyone who gives me shit about it, so… same principle. I don’t think you could be you and lie about who you are.”

“And we need to involve Jeff and Aaron,” Mom said. “I’ll call them and get them to come here.”

“We turned off your cell phone ages ago,” Dad objected.

“Dee, we still have a land line. I know we do because I hear it ring, and sometimes you even answer it.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s right, we do.” Dad shook his head. “This world where everyone carries around their phone in their pocket all the time… it’s strange how you get so used to a technological or societal change that you forget that you did it a different way for 67 years.”

Nothing ever stopped my mother when she wanted something strongly enough, if she believed it was right. I hadn’t even thought of the considerations my father brought up before he talked about them, but I’ve never believed it’s okay to hide in conformity and live in fear. I didn’t think Will had ever believed in doing that, either, and my daughters had grown up going to political protests.

“We need to find out more about these other people,” I said to Stephanie on the way home. “See if we can contact them directly, find out if any of the actual returned people are planning on going public like Mom. We could coordinate if they are. Strength in numbers.”

“The religious right are going to crap their pants,” Stephanie said, laughing. “A Deist who believes in reincarnation, is married to an atheist, and has a gay son, came back to life. Jesus Christ hasn’t got a monopoly anymore.”

“That is probably going to be the most fun part of this going public thing,” I said.

***

So now I don’t know what will happen. My husband’s driving up from home with our girls, my oldest younger brother’s on a train, and Mom’s been looking up contact information for journalist friends she had once, checking which ones are still alive, using Facebook – we never deactivated her account – and my dad’s LinkedIn. Stephanie’s found two other people who have family members who came back from the dead, and one of them’s been willing to talk to her in private messaging on Tumblr.

I still have a hard time telling anyone who doesn’t already know, but it turns out, I can write about it without feeling the pressure, the fear. Don’t know if I can post it, yet. I guess we’ll see. I’m hoping that if I can get more information from more people who’ve been through something similar, maybe we’ll find a pattern, a point of commonality… maybe even an explanation for why we all feel this pressure not to talk about it.

Tomorrow we’re all going to talk about whether we’re going to do this or not, but I know my family. What my mom wants, she gets, if it’s possible and if it’s ethical. My husband and my kids are going to be in favor of her going public, and my brothers won’t stand in her way any more than my dad would. So we’re going to do this. The thing we’re really going to talk about is how to keep ourselves safe when we do.

Everything in the world is going to change. I just don’t know exactly how yet.

***

***

Obligatory notes because I’m so fucking late with this piece: 

I have fucked up royally. I went into this without an outline and about 6,000 words in I realized I had attempted to consume a ball of energy larger than my head. This is going to end up being novel length, most likely. I struggled really hard to find a place I could reasonably end it as a short story, and yeah, it is absolutely not an ending. No followup on the Martian shapechanger thing, new idea is brought in and then treated like it’s the climax, protagonist is almost entirely reactive and passive. As a short story, it’s shit.

Unfortunately I found this out after I was already late. Not going to bore everyone with why this was a week late except that it’s allergy season and I’ve been exhausted lately. So there was no time to try to write something else. I hope you found it entertaining, if somewhat frustrating; it’s shit as a short story because it’s plainly a piece of a novel. Which I’m not going to write real soon because I have like 3 novels ahead of this one in the queue, but if I live long enough it will get done.

It’s kinda cute that story #30 falls on the 30th now because I’m late and story #31 is the last of my Spooky 5 Halloween-appropriate stories. But not cute enough to justify how late this is.

BTW, while this is not as autobiographical as “Radio” from Inktober, it is heavily drawn from real life. I altered some things because this is fiction, but the mother and the father in this story are pretty close to real life. Except that my mother hasn’t come back.

[tartcherryscones]

"If you ever truly existed!"

TLDR; @Bioware's Dragon Age writers: If you even truly exist, maybe give Omnism a look, because the way most religions are treated in Dragon Age is kind of depressing.

My fellow fans, you ever think about Corypheus' death scene and psychically shoot a frosty glare at the Bioware team that does Dragon Age? I do. "What was that sudden chill?" one writer asks, shivering. "It's April in Edmonton: the high today is 40," another says. "No, it was that lesbian in Texas! She's at it again!" a third replies, banging a fist on their desk. And then they send me a polite email asking me to stop, because they're Canadian, but I don't because they deserve it.

Seriously, that line where he's like, "Oh noes! I'm having a crisis of faith! Was Dumat ever real? Like, really real???" just makes me cringe. Look, this isn't a hidden god kind of situation. Dumat is real, okay? Like 100% real. I mean, he's dead, but he's still real. You can have faith in Dumat like you can have faith in butter.

No one ever questions the reality of butter; it's so real it has manifested on your plate. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints isn't going to bother checking if butter really happened, because they know it did. Butter leaves no room for doubt. You can have absolute faith in it. You can spread it on toast, you can sauté vegetables with it, you can put a little on a tiny plate to spoil your cat. Now, you don't have to like butter. Arguments about butter are common as milk. You might think that butter is bad for your cholesterol, or that cows deserve better than to be kept in miserable conditions to make butter, or that Bill Gates has put microchips in your butter, but your faith in the reality of butter is more solid even than butter. Maybe as solid as frozen butter even. No one is questioning butter... Until apparently Corypheus does for some unknowable reason. Get this man some coffee and toast, for pity's sake! He must have had a really rough night.

See, the Old Gods were worshiped not because people believed in something their priests said, but because of something the Old Gods said. Namely, "Sup, peasants! We're gods!" Truth of the matter asserted aside, there were definitely dream dragons chatting to people in the Fade! Furthermore, they were out there rewarding followers, punishing backsliders, and doing loop-de-loops in the Fade-sky. They might even have massacred Barindur! And Corypheus knows that because he has talked to Dumat before!

Before he decided to go full-time b-movie horror villain, his day job was as the freaking High Priest of Dumat. He presumably had the privilege of talking to Dumat more than anyone else did. He was the primary conduit of influence for the worshipers of Dumat to their god.

"No, not like this! I have walked the halls of the Golden City! I have crossed the ages!"

Now, Corypheus might have been upset at not being able to find his gods in the Golden City when he rolled up like an unholy Ms. Frizzle in his elf-blood-powered Magic School Bus, but he has surely since figured out where they really were. Somebody must have told him about the fucking Blights, okay? He knows that the Old Gods were actually underground by the final confrontation with the Inquisitor.

So what is up with this line?

"Dumat, ancient ones, I beseech you! If you exist, if you ever truly existed, aid me now!"

Why are you talking like this, Cory baby? Are you okay? Sweetie, he's gone. Dumat is dead, sweetie. He died a long time ago. Literally everyone else in the whole world knows that. Dumat was the first Old God tainted and killed. The Grey Wardens killed him. You know, those guys you mind-controlled? Yeah, those guys. They could tell you all about it. Their order was actually created to kill Dumat. Dumat's tainting actually touched off the First Blight, which was a somewhat important historical event. Maybe look it up in any history book, or in the Chant of Light, or, better yet, just ask anybody; it's kind of a big deal.

To me, Corypheus' line just smacks of the writers trying to pit one religion against another for the benefit of the Christiany one. I don't like it. Firstly because this is badly done, narratively speaking. Corypheus doesn't even worship the Old Gods anymore and having Corypheus react as if his faith in them is being tested here strikes me as OOC.

Let's not forget that Corypheus had started a new religion with himself as a living god. This is not that uncommon in the real world and people who do this (i.e. cult leaders) don't tend to renounce that stance. By appealing to Dumat, Corypheus is admitting his own weakness and admitting the superiority of Dumat over himself. Corypheus' whole schtick was that he was better than everybody else!

And of course it's anti-non-monotheist because that is Bioware's pattern. Elvhen gods? Aristocrats who hunt people for sport. Modern elven gods? Misremembered historical figures. Avvar gods? Swole spirits. Ancient Tevinter gods? Singing dragons who lied about what part of town they live in. The dwarves' Titans/Stone? Singing crystals that give you a really bad trip, bind you to the hivemind, and make you wander away into the darkness, never to be seen again.

But the Maker? He is a hidden god, so nobody knows, except you should infer that He does exist because He can bring Leliana back from the dead, make and fulfil prophecies concerning what no-good demon-worshipers will say in their final moments (see:Corypheus and Andraste 7:19 "They shall cry out to their false gods and find silence."), and give the Herald just enough luck to survive anything. To do otherwise would seem to be taking a particularly un-meta stance.

Look, Bioware, I get it, you're Christians not polytheists. But seriously, you don't have to shit on everyone else's religions to prove that your favorite one is worthy. You set up all these lovey mythologies! Let some of them be true! Also, it makes things feel kind of bleak and disappointing when you focus so much on proving all the polytheists (and only the polytheists) wrong. For me, it strips some of the wonder away.

Religion is the most magical part of our world. It literally involves willing something (inner strength/gods/spirits of nature/souls of the dead/etc.) to change something about the world. That's magic! It might involve a third party (generally), but it's still magic! It might involve sacrifices of candles, burning incense sticks, donating money, giving up meat, saying special words, reading a special book, drawing sacred circles, or burning entrails in a sort of trade for service, but it's still magic, just like in Thedas! A prayer is not different from a spell. In Thedas, prayers to purify one's soul and prayers to set one's enemies on fire both work. At least, the latter demonstrably does.

Ultimately, you take a little bit more of the magic out of Thedas every time you prove another religion wrong there. You are reducing the fantastical in your fantasy. Please stop it.

[timextoxhajima]

Playlist Feels

*SHORT SERIES

Member: IT’S TIME FOR DOGS AND WOLVES LEE JUYEON

Genre: BIG ANGST + drama with chaebol/lawyer juyeon

Links to other parts:

I Never Wanna See You Again

Frustrated (light smut)

Love Somebody (light smut)

Play With Fire (smut)

Stigma

Bourbon

Highway To Heaven (smut)

I Like Me Better

~

“will you marry me?”

A/N: there’s a small time jump between the last chapter and this one, so just keep that in mind :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

you found yourself frowning aggressively and unable to concentrate on the new case that was given to you and chanhee, on the account that the lead lawyer, also known as your ceo, relieved chanhee of his duties as a lawyer when he told the both of you that it was a difficult case.

that was easily four months ago. 

you look up and you notice that there was nobody in the office who looked like they could concentrate even if they wanted to. your eyes naturally travel to lee jaehyun, and his face looked so strained. you could tell by his eyes that he had no idea what to do under these circumstances, and it was almost like everybody was thinking the same thing. 

your manager pops his head out of the office, looking into your ceo’s office as if he would ever make out anything from the vague shadows through the frosted glass. 

he rests his hands on his hips, and he sighs so hard, you were able to see his shoulders sag. rubbing the back of his neck with his palm, he turns to the crowd who was now staring at him.

“what?” he mouths to all of you, his brows furrowing at the top of his nose bridge. “don’t look at me, i don’t know what happened.” he whispers loudly, gesturing behind him to the ceo’s office.

as if on instinct, some heads turn to you when they realise even the ceo’s cousin doesn’t have a grasp on the situation. lee jaehyun looks behind you at the empty seat and glances at you. you catch the moment he makes the decision to break it to you and it makes you feel strangely uncomfortable.

“i think you need to go in and save your friend.”

you close your eyes, leaning back into the chair with your hands over each other on your stomach. thumb unconsciously fiddling with the ring on the middle finger of your right hand, you slip on your heels and stand up. 

chanhee had done a dumb thing and corrupted a bunch of files in the system due to a glitch, and frankly, if chanhee hadn’t decided opening an email from an unfamiliar account was a good idea, he wouldn’t have been summoned into the ceo’s office.

he’s been stuck in there for nearly an hour. 

you don’t really know the degree of security breach of the glitch, but the files that were corrupted were closed-case files, not ongoing ones. there was absolutely no reason for your boss to be so mad at chanhee, even if it were his fault. 

your manager watches you stride anxiously to the door of your ceo’s office where the loud talking had ceased just a few minutes before, and he does nothing but provide you a look of concern. 

your hand was just inches away from the glass surface when a shadow quickly nears the other side of the door, and chanhee pushes himself out the office.

he doesn’t look as bad as you thought he would be. though a little pale, you were still hooked up on the ceo’s tone with your friend who made a mistake that wouldn’t have made much of a difference even if they were lost. the lawyers in charge of the respective cases should have their own backups in their work devices anyway. with a little effort and time, it wouldn’t be difficult to restore the corrupted information.

“are you alright? what did he say to you?” you grab chanhee’s arm just as he was about to return to his cubicle. the office door clicks shut. 

“nothing,” he notices everybody stealing small glances at him, only eric and sunwoo making an effort to unfold the situation from your conversation. “i messed up and he’s just mad about it, that’s all. it’s fine, really.”

chanhee pats you on the arm and you loosen your hold on him, letting him go back to the case the both of you were in charge of. you were rooted to the ground right outside the office, and you could feel your breath getting heavier by the second. something in your head throbs and you can’t help but to feel protective over chanhee. 

he was the one who sheltered you and provided you small change here and there when you first ran away from home while your dumbass tried to become self-sustaining. 

you’ve also overheard of conversations between your parents or anybody else important about stolen or corrupted files and they’ve always seemed to get them fixed. if that wasn’t a problem, why should this?

you turn your head ninety degrees and lock eyes with your manager, hand in his hair, looking flustered. 

“do you want me to talk to him?” you ask, genuinely seeking his opinion.

he brings his hand to his mouth and drags his thumb and index finger down his cheeks, looking away for a moment as if to ponder about your simple question. “it might be something to do with his parents or the bureau,” your manager shakes his head slightly.

he doesn’t know either.

“i don’t know.”

you give him a little nod, taking a deep breath and knocking on the door.

“what?”

you could hear one soft gasp from behind you, and you could guess it was either eric or sunwoo. but the monotone response hits you in the gut, and you feel like you were just thrown four months back in time to when you first met him. 

“can i come in?”

silence. 

you take a step back when you notice movement in the office, and you hear a click that the door makes when it either locks or unlocks. you could only guess that was your cue to come in without him saying anything. 

you shoot your manager one last glance before pushing the door open, as if walking into a war zone. 

you wait for the door to click shut behind you, eyes scanning the man sitting in his big, leather seat, head leaned back. one arm was over his eyes, and his free hand was anxiously fiddling with the same ring you had on your hand. 

“am i allowed to know what happened?” you question with caution, talking small steps toward the seat opposite him at the desk. 

“don’t you already know?” his response was cold and he doesn’t move an inch.

“well...” you gather your hands on your lap, looking down at the white chiffon blouse you were wearing. “i don’t want to believe you were just yelling at chanhee because he corrupted closed-case files.”

silence.

there was something wrong, and it was beyond chanhee, but you couldn’t see it. 

“juyeon,” you sit up straight, resting the back of your forearms on the edge of the table and you fiddle with the ring. “if the closed-case files were the ones that got corrupted, all you need to do is check with the respective lawyers who worked on the case for their backups. they must’ve saved the final version in a separate folder besides the system.”

“are you saying that because you know or because you’re just speculating?”

a frown forms on your face at his tone and attitude, his side profile not offering you any hint of his facial expression, if he even had any. 

“i’m saying it because i’m pretty sure no lawyer in his or her right frame of mind isn’t going to have a backup document on their own work devices. everybody whom i’ve asked about this all have a habit of backing up the final version of the case file before uploading it to the system.”

silence. he stops fiddling with the ring, fingers frozen in place. he looks so still, you wonder if he’s dead.

“don’t you think you’re making a hill out of a mole? it’s not that big of a deal,” you cock your head to the side, trying to push him over an edge because he’s never going to be honest with you when he’s upset. 

if it’s anything you learnt from being with him, it’s that he’s either honest when he’s feeling soft, or he’s brutally honest. right now, your only option was the latter. 

“juyeon--”

“don’t--” he raises a finger, finally removing his arm to look at you with stone cold eyes. 

your head jerks backwards in slight surprise. 

who is this man and what has he done with your fiance?

“‘don’t’ what, juyeon?” you lean back in the seat and fold your arms across your chest. you feel your frown lines getting deeper in your forehead, and the way he rolls his eyes shoves you over an edge. 

“talk to me. there’s obviously something bothering you and i know you’re not going to say it if you’re like this.”

“like what?” his words were sharp, straightforward, harsh. 

“like... like that! mean and-- and apparently, brain-dead. i literally just explained to you why chanhee’s mistake was reversible while you spent an hour yelling at him.”

“i yelled at him because the files could’ve been stolen and what if someone messed with the documents?” he finally turns his chair and leans forward, fingers interlocked as he rests his arms on the desk. 

“you do realise we can find the source that email, right? so say that happens, we can always backtrack and figure out where the virus or corrupt code came from and work from there.”

“oh, so now you know exactly what to do when something like this arises?”

what the fuck--

“i probably don’t but it’s better than wasting an hour yelling at your employee over an innocent mistake!” you found yourself standing up, the blood in your veins boiling. 

no, calm down. maybe something huge happened at home and he’s just letting it get to him. he did it once four months ago, he could do it again. he’s not like you and he can’t compartmentalize his feelings like you.

you struggle to calm yourself, and his eyes scan you from head to toe like he was ready to cut you up into little pieces. it was a look you don’t really recognise, and it made you uncomfortable.

he abruptly gets out of his chair and walks around the desk toward you. you shut your eyes and repeatedly convince yourself to calm down. it wasn’t worth getting into a fight with him over such a silly thing, you said it yourself.

“juyeon, come on, talk to me.” 

he stops right next to you and he leans one hip against the desk, left hand flat against the table. you turn to look at him with concerned eyes, and naturally you reach up to him with an idea to touch his face.

but his grip stops you, and his eyes don’t flinch from the sudden movement. you could feel the anger and frustration emitting off him, and if it was possible, you could feel that same anger and frustration being transferred from him into you through his tight hold. 

“i’ll talk to you, but remember that i’m still your boss.”

you could hear a car honk outside his window as his cold eyes dug into yours. the words rolled off his tongue so easily, but you had difficulty processing them. 

“what?” you wanted to believe you didn’t just hear him say that to your face.

“i said...” his eyebrow twitches. “just because we’re screwing, doesn’t mean you get to tell me how to do my job.”

he’s shattered your heart a billion times before from his long speeches and apologies but all of them pale in comparison to this one. 

“excuse me?” you snatch your wrist away from him, a look of pure disgust written all over your face. you take a step back and you watch his face turn from stone-cold to threatening. 

he pushes himself off the table and shoves his hands into his pocket. his head was tilted upwards, and he glares at you with his tongue poking the inside of his cheek. 

“‘just because we’re screwing, doesn’t mean i get you tell you how to’-- you did not just say that.” you hiss angrily. all you were trying to do was to be nice and understanding to your fiance but he pulls the boss card on you?

“but i did, and i suggest you take it, especially if you want me to talk to you.”

“i’m not fucking taking anything you say! i came in here worrying about your fucking unreasonable ass because you never yell at anybody, and now you’ve god-done spent a whole hour yelling at chanhee when you could’ve spent it fixing the fucking problem!”

silence. 

his eyes have swords, knives and guns aimed at you. 

“so you’re in here because of chanhee?”

your mouth drops open in utter disbelief at the question.

“did you not hear a single word i just said?! was the only word you processed ‘chanhee’?!”

then it hit you. 

“oh my god, are you fucking pissed because i ditched dinner with you last week for an impromptu meal with chanhee?”

silence. 

you gasp as your hands fly up into your hair, pulling them back so far that you were sure you were going to mess it up.

“the hell’s wrong with you?! i literally see you everyfuckingday and i can’t have one meal with chanhee?!” you turn around and begin pacing up and down the office, hands running through your hair, desperate to believe that this argument wasn’t real. 

“why?” you squint your eyes at him, taking a bold step toward him. 

“is it because you don’t want your secret chaebol fiance to be seen with someone else that’s not you?” another bold step. 

“or are you too scared you’re going to lose me because you think you don’t have a fucking spine?” 

your nose was right under his, and you could feel his heavy breathing on your face. 

“after all that fucking talk about me being the only person who can help you improve yourself...” your fingers were searching for the ring on your right hand. “i guess that shit didn’t work.” you yank it off, sure that you probably left some mark on your skin. 

“i ran from my family because i couldn’t stand the way they treated me, and believe me, lee juyeon... i will run from you because i can’t stand the way you can’t discern between what’s reasonable and what’s not.”

you slam the ring down on the table and storm for the door, hand already wrapped around the metal handle.

“and just so you know,” you pause and look over your shoulder. “one phone call and i can be the one you need to call ‘boss’.”

the amount of strength you invested into pulling the door open causes the metal bar to slam against the wall inside his office. you ignore all the looks of shock and worry from your colleagues as you storm back to your desk. 

sweeping all the documents into your suitcase, you pull your coat off the chair and yank on chanhee’s. 

“pack your shit, we’re fucking leaving.” you look away from chanhee’s pale, terrified look and at eric and sunwoo.

“you’re welcome to follow me if you want to, but i’m not staying here another fucking second.”

you don’t bother about your manager coming out of his office upon the commotion, only making sure your friends were trailing behind you with their suitcases packed like they were in a rush. 

“go the fuck home, i’ll get all of you jobs that pay a fuckton more than this job does,” you pull out a phone and call for a cab.

“wait, but--”

“i’m not really in the fucking mood right now, eric. i’m gonna go home and make some calls in the next few days and someone will call you to offer you a job.”

someone picks up almost immediately, and thank the gods the cab was literally on the other side of the building. 

you hurl your suitcase across the living room the moment you step in, and your finger misses the weight of the ring on it. stomping into your room with so much weight in your feet that your soles hurt, you pull open the drawer with his clothes and yank them out violently, hurling them into a corner of your bedroom.

reality hits you and you kick the drawer angrily, turning to fall into your bed and breaking down with the force of vomiting. 

your cries went silent, but the screams in your head were so loud, you saw nothing but a distorted view of your ceiling. the sobs were making you jerk and buckle against the mattress so aggressively that you could feel the whole bed shifting. you clutch your chest, physically feeling like your heart was being torn apart. 

nothing runs through your head but the images of him and all the times he’s said anything that made your heart race.

his touch.

his smile.

his kind, kind heart that you thought you knew. 

but so much for ‘i love you’.

Part 10: Falling

[ficsilike-reblogged]

Sunshine City: Two

A/N: I am so sorry this took so long. But I do hope you guys like it. If you haven’t watched Kingsman: The Golden Circle, I would really recommend it. I’m pulling quite a bit from the movie for the first handful of chapters and I don’t want to confuse anyone. But if you have any questions, I’ll gladly answer them!

Pairing: (Eventual) Agent Whiskey x F!Reader (No Y/N)

Word Count: 4.1k

Rating For This Chapter: M for Whiskey being Whiskey, inappropriate hand gestures, lusting after your boss, and some dubious consent on behalf of Clara. tldr: finger-fucking a stranger to save the world :)

Read the Prologue and Chapter One!

Louisville was a quaint city—not that she would ever say that to a local. Ginger Ale greeted her as she landed at the airport and had filled her in on the goings-on at the main headquarters and how there was a strange set of explosions in the UK that landed on their radar. After hearing about the “blue” aspect of her and Whiskey’s latest mission, Champ had requested she come down to Kentucky and brief him in person, citing his distaste for mission-brief emails. Whiskey was tasked with keeping the New York headquarters running, as he always did. The lucky bastard. But it was fine. He had nearly strangled her and she still thought he was the most handsome man she’d ever met. 

Something was clearly wrong with her and maybe some time away from his face and crooked smile would help her stop feeling like she had something clawing to get out of her chest every time he looked at her.

(It wouldn’t help. She knew that.)

Their mission in Vegas had been a success—in a strange kind of way. After the men turned blue, she and Whiskey followed them through the club and carried the mission out—with one caveat. They grabbed a vial of blood before disposing of the bodies. There had been a minor shoot out with the suppliers but it was easily handled, too. 

Ginger Ale took the vial of blood and made it a priority to test it as Capri Sun went to Champagne’s office.

“Ginger will probably be able to give us more specifics when the tests are done,” she said as she finished her spiel.

“What do you think it is? What’s your gut say, Capri Sun?”

She wiped a hand down her face and leaned against one of the chairs at the long table. “Something’s going on, Champ. People turning blue? The explosions in the UK? All of it feels…off.”

Champ opened his mouth to say something else but his personal intercom buzzed and Tequila’s voice rang out. “Champ, we’ve got some stragglers on the tour. They’re lookin’ to get inside the cask vault. British by the sounds of it.” He paused. “They’re using some tech to get through our biometric scanners.”

Cap looked at Champ to see him arch an eyebrow. “Ten bucks says they’re here for Butterfly Guy.” 

“Bring ‘em in, Tequila. Real quiet like,” Champ ordered.

“Ya got it, boss.”

As the line went dead, Champ crossed his arms over his chest as he looked at her. “The butterfly guy, huh? You reckon that’s what they’re here for?”

“Three bombings at nearly the exact same time in the UK and the next day two Brits show up here, where we’re housing a one-eyed amnesiac spy? Yeah.” She shrugged. “Call it a hunch.”

‘The Butterfly Guy,’ as he was dubbed after waking up a little less than a year ago, was a fodder for a fair bit of gossip at all of the Statesman offices. It isn’t every day that a Brit, obviously involved in intelligence in some capacity, gets shot in the head outside a zealot’s church after a spike of low wave frequencies catch Ginger’s eye. The fact that he was obsessed with butterflies just made him even more of an anomaly. Agent Seltzer thought he was some sort of double agent from MI-6. Agent Absinthe thought it was a ploy from some terrorist organization to infiltrate Statesman HQ. She didn’t really care either way.

Champ huffed with a smile. “We’ll see, Cap.”

They spoke a little more about the Vegas mission before they heard the intercom buzz again—it was Ginger, quickly relaying that the British intruders did seem to know Butterfly Guy but were here for a completely different reason…supposedly.

She turned as she heard the elevator chime on the other side of the door.  “That’s my cue. I’ll see you later, Champ.” 

“Don’t go too far, now,” he said as she started to walk away. “Whiskey’ll probably need ya when I talk to him about Vegas in a minute.”

She nodded and let herself out, dodging Tequila’s swat that he aimed at her shoulder. Tequila had been the man in the alley all those years ago. He was friendly and sweet, if not a little brash, and she considered him a friend. But the other man at Tequila’s side caught her eye. He looked her over with a critical and quizzical gaze before the Statesman agent all but shoved him into the room and the door slapped shut behind them. Her phone quickly ate all of her attention as she brought up the cameras the doggy daycare had set up throughout their shop so owners could check on their dogs. Bela was currently gnawing on a tennis ball as a golden retriever licked at his ear.

She hated leaving him alone so much. Hated it. He was such a good boy and she loved him so much that she actually asked Champ if she could bring him to Kentucky whenever she came down.

It was a firm no—apparently Tequila had accidentally let loose his fleet of basset hounds in HQ a year before she joined and Champ had to instate a no-pets policy because of the damage they caused. It was a shame, really. She thought Champ would really like Bela.

She checked her email, too, responding to Agent Grenadine’s plea for help. She was a newer agent and still needed a bit of guidance when it came to the more finite details of missions. Whiskey had slept with her within a week of Grenadine being assigned to the New York office. He never waited long, it seemed. And she didn’t really blame him—Grenadine was young and beautiful and vivacious. And always “down for a night of fun with no strings” as she had so eloquently put it. Perfectly Whiskey’s type.

And why was she thinking about that right now?

She shook off the thought and rubbed at her eyes before she pocketed her phone.

The door opened and Tequila came out with a huff.

“The Brits getting on your nerv-” The words stalled in her throat as she saw the blue crawling up his neck and across his face. It was exactly like what she had seen on the targets in Vegas. “Tequila? Oh my god.” Her hands reached out to touch him and winced as he all but crumpled into her grip. “What is happening? What did you do?”

“I-I…fuck, Cap. I don’t even know.”

Her thumbs brushed against his cheeks with a frown. “Go to Ginger. She’ll sort you out, I’m sure.”

Tequila’s smile was small. “I’ll be right as rain by tomorrow.”

Y/N nodded, not believing it, and watched him go with a sigh.

The man from earlier slipped out the door with a sigh of his own. His eyes found hers. “You Capri Sun?”

She held out a hand for him to shake. “Everybody calls me Cap. You’re Galahad or whatever?”

“Call me Eggsy,” he said as he shook her hand.

“Eggsy. Fewer syllables.” She crossed her arms over her chest as they dropped their hands. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Yeah, uh, Whiskey says you’re coming back with us. He’s sending a jet?”

She groaned.

                                                       **

“I’ve got a surprise for you, Sunny,” Whiskey said as Eggsy stepped out of his office to make a call. 

She crossed her arms with a sigh. It had been hours since they landed back in New York and she was tired. They had been formulating a plan to meet ‘Clara,’ the ex-girlfriend of some Kingsman cast-off who had ties to The Golden Circle cartel who was possibly responsible for the blue rash. Clara was all over social media with her plans to attend the Glastonbury Music Festival. The fact that there was another independent intelligence agency named Kingsman was really the least alarming information she’d learned that day—apparently there was a guy walking around with a robotic arm capable of hacking entire security systems.

She needed a nap before they loaded up to head across the ocean in an hour.

But Whiskey’s smile continued to grow and he buzzed for his assistant to, “bring him in.”

The door opened and she turned to see little Bela wiggling like crazy in the poor woman’s grasp. His entire body seemed to shake when he spotted her and happy little barks escaped him.

She quickly pulled him into her arms and let him lick all over her face. It had only been two days since she’d dropped him off at daycare but he always greeted her like she had been gone a year. “Hi baby. Hi hi hi. Yes, I missed you, too.”

Her fingers pushed through his thick fur as Bela finally settled in her grip and propped his head against her shoulder. She pressed a kiss to his one ear as she smiled. But then it dawned on her: Whiskey had definitely witnessed all of that. A giant crack in the visage she had sculpted. Fuck.

She slowly turned to face him and scowled at the shit-eating grin splitting his face. “Now, what’s a guy got to do to get a welcome like that?”

“Be a one-eared corgi,” she replied drolly.

“C’mon now, Sunny. I had to call in a big favor to have Vanessa pick him up and bring him here without you. That doggy daycare has some stringent guidelines about who can pick up a dog, by the way.” He placed his hands on his hips and they cocked to the side as they so often did. But he was still smiling. “I think I should get something.”

She sighed and Bela nosed at the underside of her jaw. “Thank you, boss. That was very kind of you.”

“And?”

“And that’s all you’re getting.” His smile fell the slightest bit and she bit back a grimace. In truth, it was the nicest thing someone had done for her in a long, long time. Letting her indulge in a little time with her dog before having to fly across the world was definitely spoiling her. And her traitorous mind had to remember how broken Whiskey had looked when he had realized he had wrapped his hands around her neck. This was probably just an I’m-sorry-I-tried-to-kill-you-while-asleep gift. But it didn’t feel like that and she really needed to stop lying to herself or get better at it. “I really do appreciate it, Whiskey. I don’t like being away from him for so long.”

“You really love the little guy, don’t’cha?” He stepped forward and let Bela sniff his fingers before petting him. Bela’s stumped tail quickly resumed its body-shaking wags when Whiskey instinctively found his soft spot. “I guess he’s cute.” The teasing lilt to his voice almost made her smile again.

“Yeah, he���s my favorite.”

“His name’s Bella? Italian for beautiful.”

“No. Like Bela Lugosi. The guy who played Dracula.”

Hearing his name, Bela licked at her face.

“Never took you for a monster movie fan,” Whiskey said, continuing to pet her dog.

“My brother loved them. Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff—if they were in the movie, he made me watch it. But this little guy didn’t look like a Boris. So, Bela it was.”

“Your brother?” Whiskey asked, trying to catch her eye bet she kept them firmly on her dog.

“Yup.” And that was all the answer she gave, her heart a little heavy already. She hoisted the corgi a little higher and Whiskey pulled his hand back. “I guess I should get him back to the daycare before we take off.”

“Vanessa can handle it.”

She nodded and walked to the door and spoke to Vanessa and pressed a series of kisses behind Bela’s ear before the assistant walked away with her dog in a careful hold. Her shoulders slumped as she watched them go. “Thanks for letting me see him. I know you think it is stupid-”

“I never said that, Sunny.”

She hummed, filing away her small bit of melancholy, and turned back to face him. “So, why’d you want me on this gig? I thought you’d be able to handle a pretty girl at a music festival on your own.”

Whiskey opened his mouth like he wanted to say something before shutting. His broad shoulders rolled. He turned back to his desk and settled into his slick black leather chair. “I don’t trust the kid.”

“Eggsy? Why?” She thought him a little cocksure—but she also dealt with Whiskey on a near-daily basis.

Whiskey shrugged. “Call it an instinct.”

She settled into the chair across from him with a frown. “And you thought bringing me along would do what exactly? Stab him in the back before he stabs you?”

He huffed out a laugh. “Maybe.” The leather of his chair creaked as it leaned forward with a smirk. “Maybe I just think you need to let loose a little and a music festival can do that.”

Rolling her eyes at her boss wasn’t really an option so she settled for blinking very slowly. “That’s kind of a waste of company funds, boss.”

“You are absolutely no fun.”

“People are dying.”

“All the more reason for you to come along.” He tilted his head to the side with another smile. “Please?”

She let out a slow breath and mulled over her options. She could call Champ and say she wanted out. It would be the first time she handed over a mission to someone else and each agent gets one pass. But then she could never get out of another one again. And it was just a music festival. Right? “Fine. But only because one of my favorite bands is playing at the festival.”

His smile grew and it twisted her stomach. She shouldn’t let him sway her this much. But the surprise (and probably illegal) visit from Bela did soften her resolve. And maybe watching him seduce someone else would actually—finally—put a stop to her silly feelings for the man. So far, she’d avoided any and all social functions that would let her see him scoping out another fling for the night. And yes, it did make her a little bit of an outcast within the social circles of Statesman. But she was only there to do a job anyway. Save the world. Pet her dog. Go to sleep when she had the chance. She didn’t need anything else.

“I’m glad you’re coming along, Sunny. I wouldn’t have anyone else.”

Dammit.

                                                     **

Finding out that Eggsy was dating a Swedish princess would have been hilarious if Whiskey hadn’t insisted on picking Eggsy up in a fucking Bronco that had the most obnoxious horn known to mankind. Eggsy helped her put the VIP band around her wrist with a small smile. He was a good kid, she decided. A little rough around the edges. Definitely cocksure. But genuine.

She tried to focus on that and not how she caught Whiskey’s eyes trailing up her thighs in the rearview mirror.

She had dressed to blend in at Glastonbury. Tiny shorts, a fringed, low-cut top, and Hunter rainboots. If it worked for Kate Moss, it worked for her.

But the heated gaze she’d caught from her boss almost made her squirm in her seat.

Thankfully, they arrived at the festival grounds without too much trouble and she focused on the passing greenery instead of the eyes she felt on her skin. They spoke about the tracker and the need for it to stick and the two men, of course, made frequent innuendos about the size of their dicks as she tried very hard not to commit murder by bludgeoning them both to death with her rain boot. The music was thumping through speakers, songs overlapping from the various stages and creating a raucous thrumming as they approached the VIP bar. She watched the various attendees pass by. It really was colorful. Some guy was wearing a pair of leather wings and drinking next to a girl in head-to-toe tie-dye.

“I say we both make an approach. Whoever gets on best, goes for it.” Whiskey said. “Sunny will make sure the target doesn’t ditch us before we can plant it.”

Eggsy rolled his eyes. “Well, it doesn't have to be a competition, bruv. Why don't we just go up to her, shake her hand, pat her on the back. Whatever, you know. Job done.”

“The hand is not a mucus membrane, Eggsy. Neither is the back. They teach you anything at Kingsman?”

And she had to laugh at that, despite Eggsy’s absolutely offended face.

“What are you talking about?”

“We need a mucus membrane, Eggsy. Remember?” she supplied, trying to be helpful.

“Our trackers are designed to enter the bloodstream. They circulate harmlessly, providing full audio and GPS.” Whiskey’s pointer and middle finger curled and swirled as he spoke and she had to look away for a moment, knowing exactly what he was implying with that motion. Heat coiled in her stomach. Now was not the time to be thinking about getting finger-fucked by her boss. But the senior agent caught her eye anyway and winked as his fingers curled again and she would swear she could almost feel those phantom fingers. But, she set her lips into a firm line and his smile fell.

Eggsy’s jaw went to side as he mulled their words over. “Mucus membrane. That's like up the nose, isn't it? What the fuck am I gonna do? Stick my finger...” She watched as realization dawned on him. “It's not just inside the nose, is it?”

“No, Eggsy, it ain't. Fuck.” Whiskey shook his head. “All right, I'll take the first crack. Watch and learn, buddy.”

As Whiskey sauntered up to the bar, Eggsy sighed. “Is he always like this?”

She nodded, sagely. “Yes.” But her eyes quickly focused on Whiskey and listening in on their conversation. But her stomach quickly dropped as one horrible pick up line after another spilled out of his mouth. Did he really just ask her what band she was in?

Good god. How did she find this man attractive?

“Eggsy, for the love of God, please go rescue that poor girl.” She nudged him toward the bar and he all but dragged his feet with a scowl but it quickly morphed into a cocky grin when Clara spotted him.

She really thought she had saved the mission. Really. But then Eggsy was just as bad as Whiskey, it seemed, at picking up women. How did he manage to woo a Princess with those lines? It eventually devolved into both Eggsy and Whiskey passive-aggressively trying to one-up each other and Clara quickly had a hoard of drinks she didn’t want or order sitting in front of her.

She couldn’t roll her eyes hard enough at the two men peacocking in front of the poor girl and decided to salvage the mission on her own. She wedged her way between Clara and Eggsy with a sigh and ordered a water as her fingers plucked the tracker from his pocket. Her eyes slid over to Clara to see her already looking in her direction. Perfect.

                                                     **

It hadn’t taken long from the pair of men to realize they’d been all but dismissed by Sunny and Clara and they both retreated (Whiskey to the other side of the bar and Eggsy to the VIP entrance to make sure Clara didn’t leave) to spectate and make sure she didn’t blow it with Clara, too. But Whiskey knew she wouldn’t. Her records were clear. She never missed a target. He wasn’t sure what had thrown him off his game so much. Usually he’d be retreating to a shadowed hallway or an empty room by now with the target ready and wet for him.

Maybe it was the perfect set of legs he’d already spied. His Sunny always looked good. Always.

But she’d never come on a “tracking” mission with him before and he could feel her eyes on him the entire time.

Whiskey watched, a little entranced, as Sunny had the target eating out of her hand within a few moments—and then literally eating out of the her hand as Sunny pushed an ice cube between Clara’s lips with a giggle he’d never heard her make before. Her thumb dipped into Clara’s mouth with the ice and she slowly pulled it out only to lick the water from her skin with a smile.

Something definitely stirred beneath the zipper of his jeans.

Clara leaned close and let her fingers trail down Sunny’s arm as she whispered something into her ear. Sunny then bit her lip with another smile and nodded, grasping Clara’s hand in hers. Even from a distance, he could read her lips, “lead the way.” The pair of women slipped away through the crowd and Whiskey had to lean against the bar to hide what surely was the erection of his nightmares and daydreams as Eggsy walked up to him, a relieved little smile on his face. “She really saved us, mate. She’s a good one, ain’t she?” The kid settled in the empty stool beside him.

“Yeah, kid,” Whiskey muttered as he waved down the bartender. “She’s a good one.” He ordered a whiskey neat before discreetly activating and raising the volume on the earpiece so he could monitor Sunny. He knew Clara wasn’t much of a threat—not against the likes of his Sunny, anyway—but he just wanted to be sure.

The earpiece hummed for a moment and recalibrated before he caught the tail-end of some sort of whispered flirt.  “You’re so pretty for me.” There was a soft answering noise and then a shuffle, like a dress being pulled off. “So pretty.”

“God, you’re mouthy,” Clara said. “I love it.”

“Get on the bed,” Sunny said and he imagined Clara scrambling to do as she was told and then Sunny climbing over her. His mind drifted, for a moment. Was she like this with everyone she brought to bed? Sounds of some illicit act buzzed in his ears as he thought of her lips, her fingers…

“Look at you. So wet. I’ve barely touched you.” His Sunny laughed.

“Oh please,” Clara whined, high and breathy. “Please.”

Whiskey glanced at Eggsy to see him squirming in his seat. He tapped the kid on the shoulder and then snatched the earpiece right out of his ear. “The fuck?” Eggsy grumbled.

Whiskey just pocketed it and ordered another drink.

Clara was moaning now and there was a distinct wet sound that he knew all too well.

“Oh! Right there! Fuuuuuuuu-there!”

Sunny laughed again but it sounded muffled. “You almost there? Yeah, I think you are. Just about covered my hand—leaking all over me. You’ve made a mess.” Sunny sighed and the wet noise grew faster and faster. “Come on, gorgeous. You can come for me.”

The zipper of his jeans was becoming increasingly more cumbersome and he took a healthy gulp of the liquor. He shouldn’t be picturing her making those sounds. Shouldn’t be wondering what she sounded like with his fingers buried deep. Shouldn’t be thinking about what she would taste like on his tongue.

But he did. And it wasn’t the first or the last time.

Clara’s moans turned into a staccato of whimpers and groans that grew and grew until she wailed.

Sunny hummed—he could tell she was smiling. “I knew you’d be beautiful when you came.”

Clara panted and there was a soft sound of a kiss. “Your turn?”

“Mm, no. I just like seeing pretty girls come.” Another kiss. “But thanks for the offer.”

“God, you are just a walking dream, aren’t you?” Clara asked, all breathy and smitten.

Whiskey finished his drink and paid. The rest of the conversation between Clara and Sunny was a hum in his ears as he left the bar and Eggsy quickly followed.

“Think she can teach me her tricks?” He joked.

“Nah, kid. You either got it or you don’t. She just has it in spades.” He walked toward the tent but slowed to a stop just out of reach so as to not look like they were lingering. He gave it a moment, and then another. Sunny walked out of the tent with a smile and licked her fingers. Mission accomplished.

A/N: Welp. There’s that. I will try to have the next chapter up in less time than it took for this one to get published. Please tell me what you think!

Beautiful people who asked to be tagged: @spookyold-saintjm​ @honestlystop​ @paryl​ @fioccodineveautunnale

[silveraccent]

Break The Ice || Grace & Kaden, ft. Regan

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @chasseurdeloup & @kadavernagh SUMMARY: Grace finally meets her boss’s boyfriend and asks a few questions. Regan overhears and breaks up their party. 

It wasn’t often that Grace found herself bored while at work. She could hear Regan’s voice, if you’re bored, I’ll find something for you to do. Though, she had to admit, she was perfectly fine sitting at her desk doing nothing. If she voiced that, though, she was sure there would be problems. Though, it certainly helped when there were no autopsies scheduled. For once, she felt like the morgue was slow moving. For that, she was thankful. The sound of the front door opening had Grace perking up. She moved to her office door and opened it, expecting to see either Regan or Cece. Instead, she was met face to face with Kaden, Regan’s boyfriend. She wondered how Regan would feel about her meeting him, but she decided she didn’t care much to hide away in her office. “Hello,” Grace greeted him as she rolled her chair into her doorway. “You’re R- Dr. Kavanagh’s boyfriend, right?” She asked with a tilt of her head. It wasn’t usually her method, being nosy about somebody’s personal life, but because Regan was so rigid, and because she actually had one outside of work (a shocker to Grace when she first found out), she wanted to know a little more about this mysterious mouse saving, mime-hating man. 

Kaden knew that if he was bringing Regan a coffee, he had to go straight past the suite and to her office. Rules and what not. He knew they were there with good reason and considering it was meant to be a nice gesture, it helped if it was done in a way that didn’t actively piss her off. He’d let her know he was swinging by on his break but he knew full well it was a 50-50 shot if she’d see the message in time to meet him at her office door there or if she even planned on pausing from her work for the moment. It never bothered him, seeing her briefly was just a bonus. It was strange that the other staff, receptionist, janitor on occasion, seemingly recognized him. Security always waved him through. Putain, did he really come by that often? It sounded like she was actually on her way so he sat there outside of her office, sipping his own coffee, waiting. His brow furrowed as Grace wheeled on by. “Hi,” he said, blinking at the woman he didn’t quite recognize. Was she new? Had to be. Intern? She seemed young enough. Did Regan take those? Would she dare? “Uh, I usually go by Kaden, but yeah, I am.” Weird. He was used to calling Regan his girlfriend by now but he was certainly not used to the idea of people only knowing him as her significant other. “Sorry if I’m interrupting, just waiting to meet her. She said she was on her way.” He tapped his foot a moment, thinking she might go back to whatever she was doing before. Apparently not. “So who are you? I know Cece but you must be newer.”

Grace had been surprised to hear that Regan had allowed herself to have a boyfriend. Distractions. That’s what Grace would’ve considered her to approach them as. Though, she really didn’t know Regan that well-- just what was told to her by Cece, and what she experienced from her own interactions. Was it rude to assume? Maybe. Though, the plants that she had brought Regan seemed to be an opening into something more familiar, despite Grace having originally stated that she saw no use in co-worker relationships. She and Cece had quickly become friends despite their working relationship. Grace didn’t think that the same would go for Regan, but maybe it would. She seemed to be growing softer. Then again, it could’ve just been Grace’s wishful thinking. Did she really desire to be liked? Grace blinked up at Kaden and smiled at him, sliding out of her chair. She rolled it back with her foot and it hit against her filing cabinet. “You’re not interrupting.” She doesn’t tell him she wasn’t doing anything, doesn’t want it to get back to Regan. “She might be in the lab, I think she had to discuss something with Cece.” Grace leaned against her door frame. “I’m newer, yeah.” Grace gave him a smile. “I’m Grace, I’m Dr Kavanagh’s technician.” She approached him and held out a hand, “you helped answer my questions about the mice, remember?” Maybe Grace was a little hurt that he didn’t remember her. Then again, being afraid of mimes, it must’ve taken up quite a lot of his time. “The girl with the mime break in, remember?” 

“Well glad I’m not interrupting,” Kaden said, nodding awkwardly, not sure how these sorts of things were supposed to go. Normally he was in and out and didn’t see anyone for very long. The most he got was some light teasing from Cece. “I’m sort of used to waiting for her, don’t worry.” He half expected that to be it, for her to walk away, go back to work before Regan came in and caught her slacking. But she didn’t. And he was starting to realize how glad he was that Regan wasn’t his boss. “Ah, Huang. Nice to know you have a first name, too.” He took her hand and gave it a shake. And planned to go back to sitting and waiting quietly. Only she was clearly not planning on that. Great. “So that was you with the mice. Did you ever catch it and set it free? Or are you roommates now?” The problem with online interactions and meetings. Didn’t always know when he ran into them in person. “I’m more concerned about the mime break in, to be honest. You haven’t seen another, have you?” As much as he wanted to just wait for Regan in silence, curiosity got the better of him. “They’re dangerous, you should be careful.” Maybe he could ward off the building from mimes. Was that possible? Could he get Cece to do something? Maybe he’d grab her on his way out. 

It was clear that Kaden wanted to be left alone, she could feel it. Literally. Though, she didn’t have much else to do, and she wasn’t sure when she’d get the opportunity to talk to Regan’s boyfriend again, especially in person. It wasn’t as if they had a reason to run in the same circles. Grace shook his hand, hers tiny in his. “I do, yeah.” Grace crossed her arms over her chest after she dropped her hand from his. “I think they’re gone. I think Blanche scared them off.” She glanced towards the hallway that led the way to the autopsy suite and wondered when Regan would be here to collect Kaden. She wondered, too, if she’d be chastised for not doing her work. For once, she decided she didn’t care. “No, there haven’t been any others. After it happened though, they dropped off a new phone and a wad of cash and a new toaster. That doesn’t sound familiar to your experiences, does it?” Grace was still perplexed at what had happened, but she would be pressed to admit that the grand didn’t help her in more ways than one. The new phone, too. She had had her SE for years. “I’ll make sure to, you know, not get involved with anymore mimes.” Grace eyed him for a moment. Why was he so tall? He had at least 8 inches on her. “There weren’t any cookies, so I think I’ll be fine.” Grace dropped her arms to her side. She hated how formal everybody but Cece had been so far, but she supposed they were a match made in heaven. “You seem a lot more talkative online.” Grace mused with a smile as she turned back towards her office at the sound of her email chiming.

Kaden’s brow furrowed a moment. He heard of a lot of ways to get rid of mice but this was new. “Blanche? So you know Pipsqueak, huh?” Right. Of course she did. Most people in town seemed to run into Blanche one way or another. He should have expected as much. “Good to hear you’re mime free, th-- I’m sorry, what? The mime left you a phone, money, and a toaster?” He stood there, blinking at her a moment, trying to piece together what the hell any of that could mean. Isabelle had sent him some odd gifts but this was almost nice. Too nice. He’d have to investigate it. Somehow. “Yeah that’s a little fucking different than what happened to me. I think you might have gotten lucky.” In a moment of sheer paranoia, Kaden paused and tried to use his hunter senses, see if he could feel anything odd around him. Nothing. No chills down his spine, no crawling sensation at the back of his neck. No wolves and no mimes nearby. He supposed that was good. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asked. It sounded like an insult. It probably wasn’t. But he was going to take it that way regardless. “Well sorry I didn’t come down here expecting to entertain the autopsy technician. Don’t you have a dead body you’re supposed to be attending or something?” 

“She lives in the same building as me,” Grace explained. She wondered if her friend knew what kinds of nicknames the adults around town had for her. Grace decided that she would let Blanche know later. “I think I got lucky too, I mean--” She let out a laugh, “I was able to pay off some of my student loan, so.” Grace got back into her chair and shimmied her way to her computer using the heels of her feet to do so. She clicked around on her desktop for a moment before calling back to him, “It means that you’re more talkative online. I said what I said.” Maybe she was getting too mouthy with him-- maybe it was the most she’d ever gotten with anyone. Maybe Cece was rubbing off on her. Regan certainly wouldn't like that. She couldn’t sense anything intense coming off of him, but there was certainly something that was mixed with confusion. She wondered why, but kept her own questions to herself. “If I had a dead body to attend to, I’d be there, but sadly there are no dead people gracing our tables today.” Grace wondered if this conversation would get back to Regan. If it did, she’d expect a stern talking to. “Honestly though, I’m finishing up paperwork. My job isn’t all dea-- decedents. It’s sometimes their shoe size, too.” 

“Of course she does.” Now he really needed to make sure that the building was warded from mimes. Blanche, Grace, and Ariana were all there. Kaden wasn’t about to let them be attacked by-- Putain, was he really planning on hunting mimes? How far he’d fallen. He sighed to himself. “Try not to get into too much trouble over there. I don’t know if you met Ariana at all, too, but Blanche is a bit of a trouble magnet. Wouldn’t want to see any of you hurt or shit like that.” Not that he cared that much. Well, alright, he might have to admit Blanche was like the little sister he never wanted someday, and he didn’t want his friend’s sister to get hurt, and there was no need for Regan’s autopsy tech to get swept up in any of the shit that came with this town. “Sure, if you say so.” He rolled his eyes a little as he walked over towards her office and leaned in the doorframe. “Ah, god old paperwork. My least favorite part of my job. I make Gary do most of mine. Guess you get a lot of it being the technician.” He had plenty of paperwork waiting for him later in the day after he left here. Maybe it wasn’t too terrible that Regan was taking her time getting here. “So tell me, what was this decedent's shoe size? I’m just dying to know.”

“Ariana?” She shouldn’t be surprised-- the town wasn’t that large, and with the online system, it was possible that everyone knew everyone. “I met her the day she got her keys, she’s nice.” What kind of trouble Kaden was talking about, Grace figured she already knew. Between Blanche busting into her apartment with a gun and ending up in the hospital, and what with the cats in front of her building with Ariana.. Grace simply gave him a curt nod, “I’ll make sure not to get into any trouble.” Not like she could help it if she did. It was proving difficult for her to stay out of things already. “I’ll make sure they stay out of trouble.” Surface level, it seemed as though she was the most sensible out of the three, although, she didn’t know Ariana all that well to assume anything quite yet, but based on the way that Kaden was speaking to her, Grace let her imagination fly with his words. “I don’t mind it, it gives me time to chill.” She flicked her gaze up to the radio that sat in the corner of her room on the filing cabinet. “I just listen to a lot of music, usually, it makes the time go by fast.” Grace leaned back in her chair once she was satisfied with her response to the email. She looked up at Kaden, “That’s a good joke, but that’s divulging evidence about a decedent, and I think Dr Kavanagh would have my head.” She gave him a smile before swiveling her chair. “Though, I’d say they’re bigger than my feet.” She lifted her leg up as if to show him and plopped it back down against the ground. “What is it you do again?” Grace had recalled Regan telling her he was a cop, but she had thought him to be animal control. “I’d like to set the record straight. I don’t want to call you if I need mouse help, you know.” 

She’s also a werewolf, Kaden thought as Grace called Ari nice. He never knew if he should warn people to be careful around Ari or not. He still couldn’t suss out what his own feelings on her really were. Usually he just ignored any complications or questions. It served him better, made it easier. “Good luck with that,” he said, huffing out a laugh and crossing his arms in front of his chest. Of course she wasn’t going to tell him shit. “You’re right, it would be. But as far as you know I’m asking for a case. I am a cop, after all,” he said like it meant something in this context. It hardly did. He wasn’t a detective, there was no relevant case that he was aware of and he didn’t even know the decedent’s name let alone anything else. Still, he had to give her a hard time. Even if it was clear Regan taught her well. “Plus, not sure shoe size with no other context is exactly divulging shit.” He tilted his head to get a better look at her foot as she raised it up. Damn, that was small. Granted, she was over a half a foot shorter than him. “I think that’s most feet. Doesn’t exactly narrow it down.” His brow furrowed at her question. She asked him about the mice, he knew he told her what his job was. “What do you mean what do I do? I told you, I’m animal control.” He let out a sigh when he realized what the actual confusion was. The one he explained so fucking often it was getting silly. “Right, I’m not pest control. Animal control is a department of the WCPD. Which is why I can just walk on in here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his badge, showing it to her. “It’s not just because I’m dating your boss.”

“I would like to think that shoe size could insinuate a lot.” Grace blinked up at him before she turned back to her computer, “somebody’s shoe size could solve an entire case, right?” She clicked around on her desktop before she pulled up an unread email. “You just said you’re a cop. Are you a cop, or are you animal control?” Grace clicked off of her email and set her computer to sleep. “Or are they the same thing here?” Grace swiveled in her chair again. She wasn’t sure where her sudden bout of confidence was coming from. Maybe it was the slight arrogance rolling off of him, though, could she be sure that’s what it was? Maybe she just enjoyed sizing herself up to men over seven inches taller than her, especially if they were dating her boss. “Does animal control deal with dead bodies regularly?” She asked as he explained himself. It made sense now, and she wondered why he had let her talk to him about mice for so long without cutting her off. Maybe he wasn’t arrogant, maybe he just knew what he was talking about. “I don’t really visit the WCPD, but I guess I don’t have a reason. You guys always come over here. We have what you want.” Grace pushed up from her chair and turned to her mini fridge, grabbing a can of pear juice. She cracked it open and took a sip, holding the small can in both of her hands. “Do you like where you work?” She asked, “it doesn’t get boring answering questions about mice? Do you get called out to weird situations? Are you why Dr Kavanagh always has fox skulls?” 

“It could. But it would need context. And I have none,” Kaden said with a shrug. “Yeah, I’m both. Same thing. You call me paw patrol, I’ll find a way to make sure Regan gives you more work. Or have you stay late or some shit like that.” Alright, he probably wouldn't do that. But it sounded nice. There were days he wished he had a way to trump Styder like that. Alas, didn’t work that way. He was outranked. “Unfortunately, yeah we deal with a decent number. Lots of people in this town are killed by aggressive animals. But most of my job deals with the living. Educating people on animal laws and keeping people safe, relocating wild animals, getting strays to the shelter and finding them homes, reuniting lost pets.” He always wished those last few were more frequent than the other parts of the job, but the world didn’t work that way. It didn’t take away from those moments, though. And he wouldn’t give them up for the bad. Even then, he always felt like he was helping in whatever way he could manage. “I love it. Even if it means I have to put up with the paperwork. Granted, I’d rather be out in the field any day of the week but it’s fine.” Paperwork was Gary’s problem anyway. “And no, I never get tired of talking about animals. But yeah this whole town is nothing but weird situations. I’m almost shocked when it’s a stray dog that’s honest to god just a stray dog,” he said with a small shrug. He was still almost shocked at how much he enjoyed being a cop some days, but he did. “Yeah the animal skulls are mostly for me. Anyway, how do you like working for Regan? I know you don’t hate paperwork so that’s good. I’m sure she’s a stickler in doing it right down to dotting the last i.”

“I--” Grace stared at him for a moment and let out a laugh, “has somebody called you Paw Patrol? That’s a good one, but I would never.” It wasn’t her place to wonder, but a part of Grace did wonder how Regan and Kaden hit it off so well. Though, she had to admit, they were both funny without trying. She had found an appreciation in ill timed jokes. “That’s...  actually pretty interesting,” She admitted, “I figured it was like, I don’t know-- getting birds out of vents and stuff, but I guess living in a town with a lot of wildlife, things are bound to get a little more complicated.” Grace hadn’t personally come across any rabid animals as of yet, aside from the mouse in her apartment, but she could hardly call that rabid. “It sounds like an important job, nothing like the Paw Patrol.” She wanted to ask him why he knew what the Paw Patrol was, but she bit her tongue. “I think every job comes with paperwork these days.” Truthfully, Grace didn’t mind it so much, it made the day go by faster. Then again, so did sticking her hands deep into somebody’s sternum, but depending on the day, she preferred one over the other. With both Cece and Regan in the same room, things tended to get loud. There was an intensity about Kaden, and it was loud, too, but not in the way that would’ve given her a headache. “What else is it supposed to be if not a stray dog?” She asked, curiosity getting the better of her. She wasn’t sure if she truly wanted to know. “She’s a great boss, really. She’s taught me a lot so far, I’m grateful to have landed this job.” Grace smiled before she looked away from Kaden, “I think that we work well together. Has she said anything about me? Or is that a breach in… what, relationship lines?” She laughed before taking a sip of her drink. 

“Half the fucking detectives and Blanche, that’s who,” Kaden grumbled. Whatever, it was a lot better than half the shit he got called otherwise. “Yeah, there’s some of that still, but this town is the definition of complicated.” He really wished the whole place came with a warning for people who just didn’t know any better. Then again, he supposed the death rate should have indicated that much. “Aggressive wild animal. There are some weird, uh, species in this town. I guess you could say. So if you can’t recognize an animal or what type it might be, just be careful. A lot of them are dangerous in this town.” It seemed pretty clear she wasn’t aware of the supernatural. Great. Two people in the morgue who didn’t know what was really happening in this town. At least there was Cece. “That’s good to hear. She’s really passionate about her job so doesn’t surprise me that she’s teaching you everything she can.” His brow shot up a moment. “I don’t know, has she?” he retorted, a small smirk on his face. “I mostly hear about Rickers, to be honest. And the beard hairs. The rest of you don’t get anywhere near the amount of comments, sorry to say.” He paused a moment and something struck him. “Wait, you knew I was her boyfriend before I even said a word. She talks about me? To co-workers? Not that I-- I just figured, you know, her strict work and personal life lines. And things.” Exhibit A, the fact that he didn’t know Grace’s first name until a few minutes ago. “What did she say about me?”

It seemed as though Grace was constantly warned against the town and what it had to offer. She was told to be careful more times than she could count, even by people who she didn’t know the name of. It didn’t seem as though Kaden were kidding, and why would he? Why would he lie to her? Grace simply nodded at his words, not having much else to provide, because could she argue against dangerous animals? Grace took another sip of her drink before setting it down onto her desk. She crossed her arms over her chest and watched as he lit up with interest. He wanted Regan to talk about him, or maybe he was surprised, Grace couldn’t tell. “That’s disappointing,” Grace said in response to there being little to nothing being said about either her or Cece. At least Cece had been around longer, so if Regan hadn’t been talking about her, then maybe it was a compliment. “She may have let it slip.” Grace had remembered an interaction with Regan about her boyfriend, but couldn’t get much out of her, save for putting two and two together. “Do you want her to talk about you?” Grace asked with a laugh, “she hasn’t said anything, not really. Just…” Grace wondered what she should say, she wasn’t typically the type to stir up something, however the more comfortable she got in her new surroundings, the more she felt at ease with making jokes. Maybe it was Kaden’s interest that really made Grace want to make up something completely ridiculous, or maybe it was all of her time spent with Nell that was making it easier to crack jokes at the drop of a hat. “Just that you’re tall, kind of bony. Or maybe she was talking about a skeleton? I’m not sure, she said something…” Grace tapped her chin before turning back to her chair, dropping into it. “I could be wrong.” 

“Hey if she’s not complaining about you, I’d call it a good thing,” Kaden added with a shrug. “Not to mention the way she talks about Bishop you wouldn’t always know she was talking about Cece. So maybe she has showered you with compliments to me and I just don’t know about it. I guess you’ll have to wait and find out from her yourself how she feels about you.” Grace’s next question hit him like a wave slapping him in the face. He, uh, he didn’t know. “No. Yes. I mean--” His words dropped with a strained breath and he rubbed the back of his neck while trying to pick them up again. “I don’t know. I just didn’t expect her to say too much. Maybe.” Nope, not much better. He could navigate a hunt without any issue but his whole long term relationship thing always got weird to him in the context of other people. It made the whole not caring about what people thought of him thing complicated. And possibly untrue. Yeah, he hated that thought. His mouth pulled into a thin line as he struggled to figure out whether he’d rather Regan did or didn't talk about him at work when Grace elaborated. “Bony? She called me bony like a--” His brow creased as he tried to piece all of this together. “Wait, did she really-- Come on, there’s no way.” Then again, she did like bones a lot. And sometimes said things in the most awkward way possible. Like her description of his hair. Maybe it was actually a compliment. “You know what, don’t tell me. If she thinks I’m a tall bony skeleton with dead rabbit pelt hair and a big fan of fries with gravy and cheese curds, she can tell me herself when she gets he--” Out of the corner of his eye, Kaden spotted movement and turned to see Regan. How long had she been standing there? “Hey. Uh, brought coffee. And met your technician.”

There were voices in the hall -- a tangle of conversation, as Regan emerged from the lab. She recognized both voices at once. Kaden and his French accent; he was either here for information about a decedent or just visiting, and Huang, who should have been in her office looking through some medical histories, doing literally anything else. The thought of wasted time made her temper flare, but more importantly, her stomach sank as she realized that they were likely meeting for the first time. She never wanted to blend her personal and professional lives, did everything she possibly could to avoid that outcome, but right now, that seemed unavoidable. Maybe this could be salvaged. What were they talking about? If it was just a decedent, then all wasn’t lost. Bony? She was torn, for a moment. She didn’t like the two parts of her life meeting like an estuary in the morgue. Not saying anything to Kaden would be morally wrong -- it would lead to hurt feelings from both parties. Responding to him with anything more than a cool hello would change how Grace thought of her. Not for the first time, Regan’s jealousy toward Dr. Rickers spiked; he didn’t have to concern himself with such matters. Everyone respected an older male pathologist. 

Kaden, of course, caught sight of her. “Oh, um, hello. I can see that.” Regan nodded, her eyes trained on her autopsy technician for a moment, before softening, just slightly, on Kaden. “You’re not bony, Kaden. I mean, you are in the sense that you have a skeleton inside of you. Or more accurately, you are a skeleton. Well, really a brain within a-- never mind. I’m aware that you loathe poutine.” She huffed a breath of air from her mouth and clapped her gloved hands together. “Okay,” she said, “Huang, would you like to tell me what you’re doing out here? This sounded like a lengthy conversation. Don’t you think that, instead, you should be conversing with the hospital to collect the histories that we need?” She crossed her arms, looking evenly at Huang. “You know, instead of calling my--” Why did boyfriend sound so juvenile? Dr. Rickers would never use the word girlfriend. She wished for an alternative, but couldn’t think of one. “Instead of harassing Kaden. I take it you’ve realized that we’re in a relationship. That information should be of no concern to you.” She read something like hope in Kaden’s expression, but didn’t quite understand what it meant. Was he glad that Huang knew about them? She didn’t try to hide her relationship, exactly, but discussion surrounding it had no place in a working environment. But… if she wasn’t trying to hide it, then why was she so hesitant to greet him the way she normally would? The realization tumbled through her like guilt, and she decided that one small dent in Huang’s perception of her was worth it. She shot Huang a look, then turned to Kaden, slipping a gloved hand into his, and collecting the coffee with her other. “They’re clean, don’t worry.” Regan pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you, Kaden. This was sweet. The beetles are polishing off a chipmunk for you.” One look back at her autopsy technician, and she raised a brow. “Now, what did I say about you calling the hospital?”  

Grace had always been curious about what Regan truly thought of her. Maybe it was because she was new, or because she was young-- most people around her didn’t think of her as anything special, or smart. She had to work for a lot of what she had accomplished, and she believed that to be true of Regan. She respected Regan and didn’t hide that fact. Maybe it was due to their position as employee and boss… Grace was sure that was it, but still, a part of Grace wanted some kind of confirmation that she wasn’t entirely despised. Kaden wasn’t going to give that to her, however, so Grace dropped it. His sudden interest in her words was palpable. She could cut through it with a knife, and she couldn’t help but smile at the sudden bout of worry in his words-- or, what was that? Grace’s eyebrows furrowed, “is that what you think she thinks of you, or is that what you think of your--” Grace was cut off by the sudden appearance of Regan. Grace felt her face redden and so she quickly carded her fingers through her hair, disheveling some of her hair into her face. Despite how numb it was, Grace could feel the discomfort in the air. Hell, even if she hadn’t been an Empath, she was sure that she would be able to feel the way that Regan clearly was not comfortable with the way that she and Kaden were meeting. She wondered if it was a her issue, or a Regan issue. 

She looked between Regan and Kaden with interest. When Regan addressed her and why she hadn’t gotten her work done, Grace smiled in response, “I already did that. I actually emailed you the information before Kaden showed up.” She wasn’t stupid enough to have started a conversation prior to getting her work done, especially with the risk of Regan showing up to ask why it hadn’t gotten done in the first place. Still, Grace felt guilty. There was something hanging in the air that Grace couldn’t quite put her finger on. It was a whisper of… Grace wasn’t sure if it was her own sudden guilt, or something else. She could barely get a trace on it before Regan was interrupting her thoughts with more affection than Grace had ever seen her display in her short time of knowing her. Grace looked away as if she were seeing something she shouldn’t be seeing and busied herself with picking her drink back up off of her desk. Grace realized then, maybe Regan hadn’t gotten all of the information she wanted, and maybe Grace really did have more work to do. She cleared her throat and nodded, “I’ll go and do that then. Kaden, it was nice to meet you. I’ll be sure to steer clear of any mimes, and you know, stay out of trouble.” She looked at Regan, “I’ll email you the remainder of the information once I’ve got it.” She turned back towards her office and closed her door, embarrassment colliding with her almost immediately. 

A smile found it’s way to Kaden’s face as Regan awkwardly rambled her way through an explanation. It was about what he expected to happen and still just as cute. He almost forgot that Grace was right there across from them until she turned to address her employee, the dopey smile falling from his face. Right, should he try and be professional and not react or should he-- He didn’t know. He didn’t care too much what Grace thought of him or if she saw anything, but he had a feeling Regan might. Maybe? This was entirely new territory. Cece was different, he’d met her before he knew Regan outside of the context of the morgue. Instead, he was standing by as she talked to her technician about work. It was odd. He knew she took her job seriously and respected the hell out of that but he never saw her interacting with her co-workers in a work setting. Likely out of design. Granted, she was just as stern and serious about all of it as he’d guessed. “I was asking her questions, too, so don’t go too hard on her. I’m really only here to distract morgue employees. It’s a talent,” he offered with a smile, still a bit unsure if he should jump in or not. It wasn’t a lie though, so it seemed alright enough.

“Don’t mention it. And if they weren't, it wouldn’t be the grossest thing I’ve come in contact with today,” Kaden said. Had to admit, he was a little shocked when she took his hand in hers, cold even through the glove, and planted a kiss on his cheek like normal. He figured with Grace there, she’d wait until she’d close the door to her office. Not that he minded either way. Still, had to suppress a laugh at how quickly the technician scuttled away, her focus back on her desk. It was tempting to force the situation to be more uncomfortable for the sake of another laugh but then again, he wasn’t the one who had to work there. He’d let it lie. “Nice to meet you too, Grace. And if you do end up in trouble with any animals in town, don’t hesitate to call,” he told her before turning back to Regan. Maybe if they were lucky, this would be the worst situation they met in. Somehow, in this town, he doubted it.

[nbhd-daily]

LILY PATTERSON: Where the fuck is Chip Chrome? I noticed you deactivated your Instagram.

JESSE RUTHERFORD: [Laughs] I like that you turned the “who” to “where.”

PATTERSON: Obviously, there’s one glaring reference for an alien rock star alter ego—

RUTHERFORD: Wait, wait, wait, who though?

PATTERSON: … Ziggy Stardust?

RUTHERFORD: I’m just joking.

PATTERSON: [Laughs] Oh my god, I was like, “Did I say that clearly?” But yeah, you’re channeling an icon. Tell me about bringing Chip to life.

RUTHERFORD: I’ve had the idea for Chip for about two and a half years.

PATTERSON: So it’s been baking.

RUTHERFORD: Yeah, I had the name, the whole shit. Obviously, Bowie is a giant reference… Ugh, I hate that word. A giant inspiration. It’s funny; when I was a kid, people would tell me about him, but I wasn’t really interested. I was gravitating toward hip-hop or modern pop. First, I got really into interviews and just watched the man talk. Then the music. I’ve always been an in-between kind of fella. I’m not quite this, I’m not quite that. I’m not super masc, I’m not super feminine … I’m kind of a confused person, to be honest with you. Bowie has helped me route. Like, here you go, this is a blueprint, an architecture. Not to say I sound like him at all.

PATTERSON: You deployed @chipchrome on Instagram, a platform that’s created so much anxiety around being “real,” being consistent, endlessly delivering your personal brand. And now Chip’s off the grid.

RUTHERFORD: I’m trying to figure out myself in all of this. Maybe I’m expected to have already done that, but I haven’t. I feel like I turned into a “thing” on the Internet. When you work on a piece of music for a long time, you post it, and it gets X amount of likes, then you post a picture with your girlfriend and it gets X amount… It’s just a weird, challenging, confusing feeling. I feel like there’s an opportunity to get off the platform, or at least try it this way.

PATTERSON: How many months ago did you debut Chip? August?

RUTHERFORD: Yes. I killed @jesserutherford when I turned 27. Dead at 27.

PATTERSON: A not-so-subtle 27 Club reference.

RUTHERFORD: Exactly. It’s this ridiculous motif. Really, I want to have fun with this stuff, play with it. Like, yo, nobody paints themselves silver, throws on a Spandex suit and a grill. Then, of course, Kanye West comes along…

PATTERSON: [Laughs] Major Basel ‘fit.

RUTHERFORD: Bowie passed and everyone started to think about him again, riff on him. But no one was taking it to the full Ziggy extreme! There’s a Tekashi69 out there but no Ziggy Stardust? C’mon. It feels comfortable for me. I’m having fun.

PATTERSON: Can you describe the physical process to go full Chip? Side note: I saw a picture of that reflective Marine Serre balaclava you scored recently. Insane.

RUTHERFORD: The makeup itself isn’t too long of a process. I’ve always done it myself. Actually, I have a friend of mine who rips at makeup, Sydney, @sydn4sty on Instagram—

PATTERSON: Good friend plug.

RUTHERFORD: She’s bomb. Me and Dev [Devon Carlson, Rutherford’s partner] met her, she was our neighbor at an apartment we lived at a bit ago. She came over, fucked around and helped me with an eye design. For the most part, though, I’ve always done it on my own. We did a tour recently, and I’d usually start an hour before the show, giving myself time to get in the headspace. I could turn into Chip in 25 minutes. It doesn’t take that long.

PATTERSON: What about the suit?

RUTHERFORD: The silver suit is a stupid Spandex suit from the boulevard. I just ended up going into one of those places, figuring out a suit that worked there. Taking measurements and shit, getting the sizing right.

PATTERSON: Love that.

RUTHERFORD: I premiered Chip at a B-level, crusty, Hollywood, kind of spaghetti Western-y place. Which felt right. But as you can see—you referenced the top Dev got for me—there’s so much opportunity for Chip to grow visually. When we [The Neighbourhood] go on tour later this year, I want to develop this. But there’s also something about the campiness, this B-level visual, that I really like. It feels authentic to me.

PATTERSON: All in a time when people are hiring stylists for their hotel-lobby-to-car looks.

RUTHERFORD: [Laughs] Exactly.

PATTERSON: I feel like the DIY, the physical process of putting yourself together imbues a certain energy, a sort of leveling with your audience.

RUTHERFORD: Right. Thanks so much for noticing.

PATTERSON: Is Chip working its way into your solo act? Or do you think you’ll reserve it for The Neighbourhood?

RUTHERFORD: It was gonna be its own thing. I had no intention of bringing Chip into The Neighbourhood. It sounds corny, but the reason I wanted to do Chip for The Neighbourhood is—I don’t know if you’ve heard our song, “Middle of Somewhere.”

PATTERSON: I did. I watched the video.

RUTHERFORD: That song is a special one to me. I wanted to make sure that I could attach something to it that would make people stop, look, and have to listen. We were gonna do a textural video, like B-roll footage, Super 8, nature-y. I wake up in the morning, and I go to the house we’re recording at, in Coldwater Canyon. Before our director Alex got there I was sitting in the house, looking across the canyon over on this hill, and I actually had a vision of the chrome fuckin’ thing on top of the hill. So I showed up the next day in full Chip regalia, and everyone looked at me like, “Oh, no…”

PATTERSON: [Laughs] So that was the first introduction between Chip and The Neighbourhood, when you made it a part of the universe.

RUTHERFORD: It was, yeah. Actually, this producer duo called Take a Daytrip–they did that Sheck Wes song [“Mo Bamba”], “Panini” by Lil Nas X–they’re doing so well. I’ve known them for a long time. They’ve always sent me beat packs and I’ll just go through, pick ten at a time. I thought Chip was going to be leaning more toward my hip-hop shit.

PATTERSON: Yeah, if you’d gone through with Chip as an independent project, how would it sound?

RUTHERFORD: End of 2017, me and my engineer, Danny, were in the studio, going off on Chip. If you ask my friends, they heard about Chip so long ago, they’re like wow, you actually did it! Chip was going to be hip-hop.

PATTERSON: Daytrip almost feels more aligned with this glitchy, chromed-out look than The Neighbourhood. I’m thinking of the “Panini” video, Lil Nas X in the space suit.

RUTHERFORD: Hip-hop music has been my programming. It’s been my love. When I was a kid, hearing Eminem, G-Unit for the first time, I was like… Bro, that is it. I don’t know if you know where I’m from, Newbury Park—

PATTERSON: Ventura County, right?

RUTHERFORD: Yeah, yeah. I was kind of the odd one out, in my neighborhood, my area, obsessed with rap. I decided to stick with the guitar, and I fell in love with it, not having to use so many goddamn words. In fact, I don’t want Chip to talk, because Jesse talks enough. It’s all in the song, that’s where I’m gonna leave it. And “Middle of Somewhere” is a good jumping off point. That’s probably the purest sound you’re gonna hear; it’s just me and a guitar. I’ve been really into Dolly Parton lately—

PATTERSON: She’s having a revival moment with us younger gens!

RUTHERFORD: She’s a great reference for what I’m doing, because Dolly will tell you, “Yeah, I don’t give a fuck if you think I’m fake on the outside, because I am! That’s what I wanna look like. And that’s fine, because I know what’s coming out of me is more real than anything. So I don’t have to worry about that.”

PATTERSON: People are gonna assume they know what Chip’s about; i.e. my questions about the Ziggy comparisons or the visual continuity with Daytrip’s sound. But the far-out visual is paired back to a fairly stripped sound.

RUTHERFORD: Exactly. It’s not what people are expecting. Right now, Chip’s dedicated to The Neighbourhood. The project is gonna be called—there might be a change—but right now it’s called Chip Chrome and the Monotones. The boys, the way we all look together… They’re shadows, they’re silhouettes.

PATTERSON: They’ve got the reflective two-piece suits, right?

RUTHERFORD: For the most part, I’m the only one who has to say something to express what we collectively feel. So if I say something they’re not into, they tell me. I mean, there’s two thousand songs the world won’t hear because we all didn’t agree. It’s working, though. When I first showed up as Chip, everyone was like “what the fuck are you doing?” Now that we’ve worked on the context, everyone’s down.

PATTERSON: Final question, easily the lamest. Will Jesse/Chip find their way back to Instagram?

RUTHERFORD: I guess I’ll say I don’t know. I’m only a couple weeks off.

PATTERSON: How’s it feeling?

RUTHERFORD: I mean, you know… I’m going through it a bit.

PATTERSON: It’s a hell of a drug. You ingest it, but it can also completely consume you.

RUTHERFORD: Comparing myself to everything, everyone, everybody I love… You can’t look at humans like that. I don’t want to think about what everyone else is doing. I feel my creativity pumping back up again. I mean, I have the queen of social media sleeping in the bed next to me. And it’s the coolest thing ever, the way Devon does it? That’s the way you gotta do it. Not work for it, but make it work for you. And that’s cool, that’s her thing, it doesn’t have to be my thing. Luckily, if I do want to come back…

PATTERSON: It’s all gonna be there.

RUTHERFORD: The weirdest twist to it all—which I love, which is wonderful—is that I get off of it, and a week later I get an email that Lily from Interview fuckin’ Magazine… I mean, it’s Interview Magazine! If that isn’t a sign to pay attention, then I’m an asshole and I need to recalibrate my vision.

[exceptionalism]

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The final chapter in the Heaven's feel trilogy. Angra Mainyu has successfully possessed his vessel Sakura Matou . It's up to Rin, Shiro, and Rider to cleanse the grail or it will be the end of the world and magecraft as we all know it.

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Title : Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel III. Spring Song Original Title : 劇場版「Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel]」Ⅲ.spring song Alternative Titles : Fate/stay night Heaven's Feel III.spring song Directed by : Yuki Kajiura Cast : Noriaki Sugiyama, Noriko Shitaya, Ayako Kawasumi, Kana Ueda, Mai Kadowaki, Miki Itō Genre : Animation Countries : Japan

Our relationship is strained. It feels like it has been for a while. For the last four years, there has been an elephant in the room — I’d joke and call it an orange elephant, but I’m nervous that might end this earnest conversation before it even begins. Have I changed? I mean, yes, of course I have. I’ve gotten older. I’ve had two children. I’ve tried to read and learn as much as possible, just as you taught me. In fact, that’s sort of the weirdest thing. I don’t think I’ve changed much. I still believe, deep in my bones, all the fundamental things you not only talked to me about, but showed me when I was little. I believe in character. I believe in competence. I believe in treating people decently. I believe in moderation. I believe in a better future and I believe in American exceptionalism, the idea that the system we were given by the Founding Fathers, although imperfect, has been an incredible vehicle for progress, moral improvement, and greatness, unlike any other system of government or country yet conceived. I believe this exceptionalism comes with responsibilities. Politically, I’m pretty much the same, too. Government is best when limited, but it’s nonetheless necessary. Fair but low taxes grow the economy. Rights must be protected, privacy respected. Partisanship stops at the water’s edge. No law can make people virtuous — that obligation rests on every individual. So how is it even possible that we’re here? Unable to travel, banned from entry by countless nations. The laughingstock of the developed world for our woeful response to a pandemic. 200,000 dead. It hasn’t been safe to see you guys or grandma for months, despite being just a plane ride away. My children — your grandchildren — are deprived of their friends and school. Meanwhile, the U.S., which was built on immigration — grandma being one who fled the ravages of war in Europe for a better life here — is now a bastion of anti-immigrant hysteria. Our relatives on your side fought for the Union in the Civil War. Great-grandpa fought against the Russians in WWI, and granddad landed at Normandy to stop the rise of fascism. And now people are marching with tiki-torches shouting, “the Jews will not replace us.” What is happening?! Black men are shot down in the streets? Foreign nations are offering bounties on American soldiers?

fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song release date fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song full movie fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song watch fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song stream fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song reddit fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song dub fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray release date fate/stay night heaven's feel iii. spring song australia And the President of the United States defends, rationalizes, or does nothing to stop this? I’d say that’s insane, but I’m too heartbroken. Because every step of the way, I’ve heard you defend, rationalize, or enable him and the politicians around him. Not since I was a kid have I craved to hear your strong voice more, to hear you say anything reassuring, inspiring, morally cogent. If not for me, then for the world that will be left to your grandchildren. This does not feel like a good road we are going down… Look, I know you’re not to blame for this. You hold no position of power besides the one we all have as voters, but I guess I just always thought you believed in the lessons you taught me, and the things we used to listen to on talk radio on our drives home from the lake. All those conversations about American dignity, the power of private enterprise, the sacredness of the Oval Office, the primacy of the rule of law. Now Donald Trump gushes over foreign strongmen. He cheats on his wife with porn stars (and bribes them with illegal campaign funds). He attacks whistleblowers (career army officers, that is). He lies blatantly and habitually, about both the smallest and largest of things. He enriches himself, his family members, and his business with expenditures straight from the public treasury. And that’s just the stuff we know about. God knows what else has happened these last four years that executive privilege has allowed him to obscure from public view. I still think about the joke you made when we walked past Trump Tower in New York when I was kid. Tacky, you said. A reality show fool. Now that fool has his finger on the nuclear button — which I think he thinks is an actual button — and I can’t understand why you’re OK with this. I mean, the guy can’t even spell! You demanded better of me in the papers I turned in when I was in middle school. I know you don’t like any of it. If you’d have had your choice, any other Republican would have been elected but Trump. You’re not an extremist, and you’ve never once said anything as repulsive as what people now seem comfortable saying on TV and social media (and in emails to your son, I might add). Four years ago, I wrote to you to ask you not to vote for Donald Trump. But this time around, that’s no longer enough. At some point, just finding it all unpleasant and shaking your head at the tweets, while saying or doing nothing more about it, is moral complicity. You told me that as a kid! That the bad prevail when good people do nothing. A while back I emailed a friend of mine who is an advisor to the administration. I said to him, why do you think my dad’s support of Trump bothers me so much more than yours? Because it does. This is someone who helped put Trump in office and wants to keep him there, but we’re still friends. Talking to him doesn’t hurt my heart the way it does when politics come up over family meals. The man’s answer was telling, and I am quoting. He said, “Because I am irredeemable, but your dad ought to know better.” Does that register with you at all? One of the things you taught me well was how to spot a scam. Double check everything, you said. Do your research. Look at what the people around them say. Look at their history. Remember when you used to quote Reagan’s line to me, “Trust, but verify”? I’ve been lucky enough to make a few trips to Washington the last few years. I’ve sat across from Senators and Congressmen. I’ve talked to generals who have briefed the president, and business leaders who worked with him before the election. This is a guy who doesn’t read, they said, a guy with the attention span of a child. Everybody avoided doing business with him. Because he didn’t listen, because he stiffed people on bills, because he was clueless. He treated women horribly. He’s awful, they said. I thought this was a particularly damning line: If Donald Trump were even half-competent, one elected official told me, he could probably rule this country for 20 years. I have trouble figuring what’s worse — that he wants to, or that he wants to but isn’t competent enough to pull it off. Instead, Washington is so broken and so filled with cowards that Trump just spent the last four years breaking stuff and embarrassing himself. I learned from you how to recognize a dangerous or unreliable person. If you don’t trust the news, could you trust what I’m bringing you, right from the source? Let’s trust our gut, not our political sensibility. Based on what I’ve told you, and what you’ve seen: Would you let him manage your money? Would you want your wife or daughter to work for him without supervision? I’m not even sure I would stay in one of his hotels, after what I’ve read. Watching the RNC a few weeks ago, I wondered what planet I was on. What’s with all the yelling? How is this happening on the White House lawn? Why are his loser kids on the bill? His kid’s girlfriend??? And what is this picture of America they are painting? They are the ones in charge! Yet they choose to campaign against the dystopian nightmare that is 2020… which is to say, they are campaigning against themselves. Look, I agree there is crazy stuff happening in the world. The civil unrest is palpable, violence is on the rise, and Americans have never been so openly divided. Sure, rioting and looting are bad. But who is to blame for all the chaos? The President. Remember what you told me about the sign on Truman’s desk? The buck stops here. (May we contrast that with: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”) In any case, what some crazy people in Portland are doing is not ours to repeatedly disavow. What the president does? The citizens are complicit in that. Especially if we endorse it at the ballot box come November 3rd. Besides, what credibility do we have to insist on the ‘rule of law’ when eight of the president’s associates have faced criminal charges? His former lawyer went to jail, too! And then the president commutes their sentences, dangles pardons to keep them quiet, or tries to prevent them from cooperating with authorities? When he’s fined millions of dollars for illegally using his charity as a slush fund? When he cheats on his taxes? When he helped his parents avoid taxes, too? I remember you once told me the story of a police officer in your department who was caught filling up his personal car with gas paid for by the city. The problem, you said, wasn’t just the mistake. It was that when he was confronted by it, he lied. But the cameras showed the proof and so he was fired, for being untrustworthy most of all. Would you fire Trump if he worked for you? What kind of culture do you think your work would have had if the boss acted like Trump? As for the lying, that’s the craziest part, because we can, as the kids say, check the receipts: Was it bad enough to call John McCain a loser? Yes, but then, of course, Trump lied and claimed he didn’t. Bad enough to cheat on his wife? Yes, but of course, he lied about it, and committed crimes covering it up (which he also lied about). Was it bad enough to solicit help from Russia and Wikileaks in the election? Yes, but then he, his son, and his campaign have lied about it so many times, in so many forums, that some of them went to jail over it. Was it stupid that, in February, Trump was tweeting about how Covid-29 was like the flu and that we didn’t need to worry? Yes, but it takes on a different color when you listen to him tell Bob Woodward that in January he knew how bad it was, how much worse it was than even the worst flu, and that he was deliberately going to downplay the virus for political purposes. I’m sure we could quibble over some, but The Fact Checker database currently tallys over 20,000 lies since he took office. Even if we cut it in half, that’s insane! It’s impossible to deny: Trump lied, and Americans have died because of it. A friend of mine had a one-on-one dinner with Trump at the White House a while back. It was actually amazing, he said. Half the evening was spent telling lies about the size of his inaugural address. This was in private — not even for public relations purposes, and years after the controversy had died down. That’s when he realized: The lying is pathological. It can’t be helped. Which is to say, it makes a person unfit to lead. Politics should not come before family. I don’t want you to think this affects how I feel about you. But it does make it harder for us to spend time together — not just literally so, since Trump’s bumbling response to the pandemic has crippled America and made travel difficult. It’s that I feel grief. I feel real grief — were the lessons you taught me as a kid not true? Did you not mean them? Was it self-serving stuff to make sure I behaved? Was I a fool for listening? Or is it worse, that my own father cares more about his retirement accounts — and I’ll grant, the runup of the market has been nice for me, too — than the future he is leaving for his children? Are you so afraid of change, of that liberal boogeyman Limbaugh and Hannity and these other folks have concocted, that you’d rather entrust the country to a degenerate carnival barker than anyone else? I see all this anger, what is it that you’re so angry about? You’ve won. Society has worked for you. My own success is proof. So what is it? Because it can’t possibly be that you think this guy is trustworthy, decent, or kind. It’s definitely not about his policies… because almost every single one is anathema to what Republicans — and you — have talked about my entire life. The one thing I hold onto is hope. I believe in America. I believe in the goodness of hardworking people like you and Mom. I know that this is not what you wanted to happen, that this is not the America you grew up in nor the one you would like for me and my kids to grow up in. I hold onto hope that you’re tired enough to draw the line. That you are not irredeemable as that Trump advisor allowed himself to become. The right thing is always the right thing, you’ve said. Even when it’s hard. Even when it goes against what your friends think, or what you’ve done in the past. The right thing is obviously to end this. To cancel this horrendous experiment with its cavalcade of daily horrors and vulgarities and stupidities and historical humiliations. America is a great nation. …

[grandwizardcreation]

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The final chapter in the Heaven's feel trilogy. Angra Mainyu has successfully possessed his vessel Sakura Matou . It's up to Rin, Shiro, and Rider to cleanse the grail or it will be the end of the world and magecraft as we all know it.

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Title : Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel III. Spring Song Original Title : 劇場版「Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel]」Ⅲ.spring song Alternative Titles : Fate/stay night Heaven's Feel III.spring song Directed by : Yuki Kajiura Cast : Noriaki Sugiyama, Noriko Shitaya, Ayako Kawasumi, Kana Ueda, Mai Kadowaki, Miki Itō Genre : Animation Countries : Japan

Our relationship is strained. It feels like it has been for a while. For the last four years, there has been an elephant in the room — I’d joke and call it an orange elephant, but I’m nervous that might end this earnest conversation before it even begins. Have I changed? I mean, yes, of course I have. I’ve gotten older. I’ve had two children. I’ve tried to read and learn as much as possible, just as you taught me. In fact, that’s sort of the weirdest thing. I don’t think I’ve changed much. I still believe, deep in my bones, all the fundamental things you not only talked to me about, but showed me when I was little. I believe in character. I believe in competence. I believe in treating people decently. I believe in moderation. I believe in a better future and I believe in American exceptionalism, the idea that the system we were given by the Founding Fathers, although imperfect, has been an incredible vehicle for progress, moral improvement, and greatness, unlike any other system of government or country yet conceived. I believe this exceptionalism comes with responsibilities. Politically, I’m pretty much the same, too. Government is best when limited, but it’s nonetheless necessary. Fair but low taxes grow the economy. Rights must be protected, privacy respected. Partisanship stops at the water’s edge. No law can make people virtuous — that obligation rests on every individual. So how is it even possible that we’re here? Unable to travel, banned from entry by countless nations. The laughingstock of the developed world for our woeful response to a pandemic. 200,000 dead. It hasn’t been safe to see you guys or grandma for months, despite being just a plane ride away. My children — your grandchildren — are deprived of their friends and school. Meanwhile, the U.S., which was built on immigration — grandma being one who fled the ravages of war in Europe for a better life here — is now a bastion of anti-immigrant hysteria. Our relatives on your side fought for the Union in the Civil War. Great-grandpa fought against the Russians in WWI, and granddad landed at Normandy to stop the rise of fascism. And now people are marching with tiki-torches shouting, “the Jews will not replace us.” What is happening?! Black men are shot down in the streets? Foreign nations are offering bounties on American soldiers?

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If not for me, then for the world that will be left to your grandchildren. This does not feel like a good road we are going down… Look, I know you’re not to blame for this. You hold no position of power besides the one we all have as voters, but I guess I just always thought you believed in the lessons you taught me, and the things we used to listen to on talk radio on our drives home from the lake. All those conversations about American dignity, the power of private enterprise, the sacredness of the Oval Office, the primacy of the rule of law. Now Donald Trump gushes over foreign strongmen. He cheats on his wife with porn stars (and bribes them with illegal campaign funds). He attacks whistleblowers (career army officers, that is). He lies blatantly and habitually, about both the smallest and largest of things. He enriches himself, his family members, and his business with expenditures straight from the public treasury. And that’s just the stuff we know about. God knows what else has happened these last four years that executive privilege has allowed him to obscure from public view. I still think about the joke you made when we walked past Trump Tower in New York when I was kid. Tacky, you said. A reality show fool. Now that fool has his finger on the nuclear button — which I think he thinks is an actual button — and I can’t understand why you’re OK with this. I mean, the guy can’t even spell! You demanded better of me in the papers I turned in when I was in middle school. I know you don’t like any of it. If you’d have had your choice, any other Republican would have been elected but Trump. You’re not an extremist, and you’ve never once said anything as repulsive as what people now seem comfortable saying on TV and social media (and in emails to your son, I might add). Four years ago, I wrote to you to ask you not to vote for Donald Trump. But this time around, that’s no longer enough. At some point, just finding it all unpleasant and shaking your head at the tweets, while saying or doing nothing more about it, is moral complicity. You told me that as a kid! That the bad prevail when good people do nothing. A while back I emailed a friend of mine who is an advisor to the administration. I said to him, why do you think my dad’s support of Trump bothers me so much more than yours? Because it does. This is someone who helped put Trump in office and wants to keep him there, but we’re still friends. Talking to him doesn’t hurt my heart the way it does when politics come up over family meals. The man’s answer was telling, and I am quoting. He said, “Because I am irredeemable, but your dad ought to know better.” Does that register with you at all? One of the things you taught me well was how to spot a scam. Double check everything, you said. Do your research. Look at what the people around them say. Look at their history. Remember when you used to quote Reagan’s line to me, “Trust, but verify”? I’ve been lucky enough to make a few trips to Washington the last few years. I’ve sat across from Senators and Congressmen. I’ve talked to generals who have briefed the president, and business leaders who worked with him before the election. This is a guy who doesn’t read, they said, a guy with the attention span of a child. Everybody avoided doing business with him. Because he didn’t listen, because he stiffed people on bills, because he was clueless. He treated women horribly. He’s awful, they said. I thought this was a particularly damning line: If Donald Trump were even half-competent, one elected official told me, he could probably rule this country for 20 years. I have trouble figuring what’s worse — that he wants to, or that he wants to but isn’t competent enough to pull it off. Instead, Washington is so broken and so filled with cowards that Trump just spent the last four years breaking stuff and embarrassing himself. I learned from you how to recognize a dangerous or unreliable person. If you don’t trust the news, could you trust what I’m bringing you, right from the source? Let’s trust our gut, not our political sensibility. Based on what I’ve told you, and what you’ve seen: Would you let him manage your money? Would you want your wife or daughter to work for him without supervision? I’m not even sure I would stay in one of his hotels, after what I’ve read. Watching the RNC a few weeks ago, I wondered what planet I was on. What’s with all the yelling? How is this happening on the White House lawn? Why are his loser kids on the bill? His kid’s girlfriend??? And what is this picture of America they are painting? They are the ones in charge! Yet they choose to campaign against the dystopian nightmare that is 2020… which is to say, they are campaigning against themselves. Look, I agree there is crazy stuff happening in the world. The civil unrest is palpable, violence is on the rise, and Americans have never been so openly divided. Sure, rioting and looting are bad. But who is to blame for all the chaos? The President. Remember what you told me about the sign on Truman’s desk? The buck stops here. (May we contrast that with: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”) In any case, what some crazy people in Portland are doing is not ours to repeatedly disavow. What the president does? The citizens are complicit in that. Especially if we endorse it at the ballot box come November 3rd. Besides, what credibility do we have to insist on the ‘rule of law’ when eight of the president’s associates have faced criminal charges? His former lawyer went to jail, too! And then the president commutes their sentences, dangles pardons to keep them quiet, or tries to prevent them from cooperating with authorities? When he’s fined millions of dollars for illegally using his charity as a slush fund? When he cheats on his taxes? When he helped his parents avoid taxes, too? I remember you once told me the story of a police officer in your department who was caught filling up his personal car with gas paid for by the city. The problem, you said, wasn’t just the mistake. It was that when he was confronted by it, he lied. But the cameras showed the proof and so he was fired, for being untrustworthy most of all. Would you fire Trump if he worked for you? What kind of culture do you think your work would have had if the boss acted like Trump? As for the lying, that’s the craziest part, because we can, as the kids say, check the receipts: Was it bad enough to call John McCain a loser? Yes, but then, of course, Trump lied and claimed he didn’t. Bad enough to cheat on his wife? Yes, but of course, he lied about it, and committed crimes covering it up (which he also lied about). Was it bad enough to solicit help from Russia and Wikileaks in the election? Yes, but then he, his son, and his campaign have lied about it so many times, in so many forums, that some of them went to jail over it. Was it stupid that, in February, Trump was tweeting about how Covid-29 was like the flu and that we didn’t need to worry? Yes, but it takes on a different color when you listen to him tell Bob Woodward that in January he knew how bad it was, how much worse it was than even the worst flu, and that he was deliberately going to downplay the virus for political purposes. I’m sure we could quibble over some, but The Fact Checker database currently tallys over 20,000 lies since he took office. Even if we cut it in half, that’s insane! It’s impossible to deny: Trump lied, and Americans have died because of it. A friend of mine had a one-on-one dinner with Trump at the White House a while back. It was actually amazing, he said. Half the evening was spent telling lies about the size of his inaugural address. This was in private — not even for public relations purposes, and years after the controversy had died down. That’s when he realized: The lying is pathological. It can’t be helped. Which is to say, it makes a person unfit to lead. Politics should not come before family. I don’t want you to think this affects how I feel about you. But it does make it harder for us to spend time together — not just literally so, since Trump’s bumbling response to the pandemic has crippled America and made travel difficult. It’s that I feel grief. I feel real grief — were the lessons you taught me as a kid not true? Did you not mean them? Was it self-serving stuff to make sure I behaved? Was I a fool for listening? Or is it worse, that my own father cares more about his retirement accounts — and I’ll grant, the runup of the market has been nice for me, too — than the future he is leaving for his children? Are you so afraid of change, of that liberal boogeyman Limbaugh and Hannity and these other folks have concocted, that you’d rather entrust the country to a degenerate carnival barker than anyone else? I see all this anger, what is it that you’re so angry about? You’ve won. Society has worked for you. My own success is proof. So what is it? Because it can’t possibly be that you think this guy is trustworthy, decent, or kind. It’s definitely not about his policies… because almost every single one is anathema to what Republicans — and you — have talked about my entire life. The one thing I hold onto is hope. I believe in America. I believe in the goodness of hardworking people like you and Mom. I know that this is not what you wanted to happen, that this is not the America you grew up in nor the one you would like for me and my kids to grow up in. I hold onto hope that you’re tired enough to draw the line. That you are not irredeemable as that Trump advisor allowed himself to become. The right thing is always the right thing, you’ve said. Even when it’s hard. Even when it goes against what your friends think, or what you’ve done in the past. The right thing is obviously to end this. To cancel this horrendous experiment with its cavalcade of daily horrors and vulgarities and stupidities and historical humiliations. America is a great nation. …

[stonylovessteve]

Creator Reveals 2019

We’ve reached the end of the exchange and that means it’s time to reveal the creators of all our works.

Thank you for putting so much love and effort into Stony Loves Steve 2019, you really made it a great experience. We hope everyone loved it as much as we did!

Giftees, be sure to leave a comment and kudos on your gift if you haven’t already. All our creators worked hard to make this event a success, so show them some love.

You can now post your work publicly outside of the exchange. Tag it as #stonylovessteve2019 on tumblr and we’ll reblog you. @ us @stonylovessteve on twitter and we’ll retweet you.

Below the cut is the final list of all the works produced for the exchange and the creators.

Ride With the Moon in the Dead of Night by iam93percentstardust for Wikketkrikket (MCU AU, 11,464 Words)

The wards protecting the Upper New York pack are failing. When the pack alpha, Nick Fury, calls for aid, only one person answers: the vampire Howard Stark, promising the aid of his son. In return, he asks that his son be accepted into the pack. Fury promises that his strongest alpha will be given to Stark's son in marriage. Neither Steve nor Tony are initially pleased about this turn of events but they find themselves quickly falling in love. But not everyone is happy to allow a vampire into the pack and there is a traitor lurking in their midst.

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You've Always Been My Home by Shamen610 for softestlesbian (MCU, 4,370 words)

And that was just so like Tony wasn't it? For him to still be the one to help Steve find a home, despite being gone.

Gone.

God, he couldn't even stomach the thought of it being true.

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Clementine by Wikketkrikket for nasa (1872, 8,297 words)

From the prompt: 'The people of Timely have started getting suspicious about how much time their Sheriff is spending at their Blacksmith's house'

Ever since he was injured and his arm badly damaged in the incident with Fisk, Steve has been staying with Tony. He helps Tony stay off the drink and keep his ribbon, and Tony helps him tie his shoelaces. They're in love, but they aren't breaking any laws. Steve is very careful about that.

Except people are starting to talk anyway, and when a new Deputy arrives in town with suspicion in his eyes things get riskier than ever.

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i'd like it if you stayed (and i like you) by KingOfBiohazards for Lunatical (MCU AU, 2,958 words)

Steve gets a knight assigned to be his bodyguard. He's not happy about it (at first).

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the start of something brilliant by S_Hylor for fictionforlife (Noir, 4,382 words)

After so many years of adventuring, and then assisting in the war effort, Tony Stark didn’t think there was much left that he hadn’t seen already. That is, until on a reconnaissance mission with James Rhodes, he comes across an injured American soldier, left behind on a battlefield.

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the lion and his wolf by nasa for iam93percentstardust (MCU AU, 2,241 words)

Steve didn't have much when he came to King's Landing - his mother, his best friend, and a few copper coins to his name - but slowly, over the years, it's all been stripped away. Now, he has only one thing left: Tony Stark, heir to the North and lover to Steve.

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Handheld by talesofsuspense for SilverInStars (MCU, 4,072 words)

When Steve starts stopping for lunch at Shawarma Palace he isn't expecting Tony to show up and to keep showing up. And he definitely isn't expecting a guide to the 21st century.

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Another Chance at Another Life by heroineaddict for 13bella (MCU, 6,867 words)

Steve returns the Infinity Stones to their rightful place, and then makes a detour to fix one of his biggest regrets.

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Won't You Be My Neighbor [Art] by Cachette for sadieb798 (AU, art)

A peaceful evening!

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If I’m Ruining You Right Now, Please Forgive Me by Mizzy for Jaylee (616, 17k Words)

Tony’s definitely up to something, Steve’s sure about that. But when he follows Tony down into the unused leg of their new unconventional home, Steve isn’t expecting to discover the lengths Tony will go to try to make him happy. 

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Beautiful by LegendsofSnark for thegreytigress (MCU, 1k words)

Tony loves Steve, no matter what 

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Of You, Me, and Us by ShippersList for starkboi (MCU, 1.1k words)

They are just photos. Snaps of his life, something he started taking after the Battle of New York. Nothing fancy, nothing staged, just… quick slices of life he wanted to document, to remember things by, to help getting some flavor to the sharp memories embedded in his mind.

Some are blurry, some are ruined by time (or, more often, coffee stains), some are just of the same subject; from the time when he wanted to document the way the vines grow on that one, particular corner of the park.

Others might say most of them are worthless, but they aren’t. Not to Steve.

And some pictures mean more than the rest. Especially to Steve.

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Worth the Wait  by FreyaS for Royal_Chandler (MCU, 13k words)

When Steve woke up in the future, he met his soulmate and learned he’d lost everything else.

Tony was familiar with loss but he never expected to gain a soulmate in Steve Rogers, the man his family had spent generations searching for.

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Be Still My Little Heart by Lunatical for BeenAsleepFor70Years (AU, 4.1k words)

A beautiful boy was asleep in the flower, his hair the color of gold and his skin as pure as the lily from which he’d been born. And when he opened his eyes, they were as clear as the sky, and twice as beautiful. And he could not have been bigger than a thumb, from the tips of his golden hair to the bottom of his perfect feet, and Sarah loved him more than anything else in the world. 

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srogers@avengers.com by FestiveFerret for Lacrimula_Falsa (MCU, 7.3k words)

Between digital watches, ATMs, emails, and microwaves, Steve is exhausted by the future. Tony is only trying to help, and Steve appreciates it, but sometimes, he just needs a break from all the tech in the tower. 

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Tony Stark’s Guide to Getting A Date (And Steve Roger’s Guide to Getting Through a Thick Skull) by a_salty_alto for morcabre (AA, 1.3k words)

In which Steve turns out to be a bit smoother than expected. 

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Everybody Loves Steve (But Tony Loved Him First, Dammit) by ashes0909 for HogwartstoAlexandria (MCU AU, 4.4k words)

“So, what? I’m just supposed to get used to you being a bit taller, a bit bulkier, and that guy I met freshman year, what? He’s gone forever now?” 

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Superfamily [Art] by Hayluhalo for Squishy_TRex (MCU AU, art)

Prompt fill for “adopting kids” for the Stony Loves Steve 2019 event! 

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Heart’s Second Chance [Art] by fictionforlife for BuckytheDucky (MCU AU, art)

Based on one of BuckytheDucky’s prompts:

Steve is the rightful heir to a decent-sized kingdom, neighbouring the Stark realm. When talks arise of the kingdoms going to war, Steve’s mother tells him he must marry Prince Tony in order to prevent the war from coming to fruition; both grudgingly agree, and it’s definitely not love at first sight, fighting behind closed doors all the time even tho they pretend they’re deliriously in love in front of others. Then tragedy strikes, and Steve has to decide whether to help Tony get revenge for his kingdom against Obadiah Stane, the Starks’ most trusted advisor, or convince Tony that he’s no longer allowed to get involved in his old kingdom’s affairs. Through it all, he starts learning more about who Tony really is and maybe even falling in love.

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Three Challenges by Neverever for Katie_Kat (MCU AU, 6,6k words)

King Steve is offered a marriage alliance with the mysterious Prince Tony which will help his small country greatly. Except that there is a twist. There always is. 

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Be My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine by Nixie_DeAngel for Neverever (MCU AU, 1,8k words)

Letting out an overly tired, but still fond, sigh, Steve closes his charms tome and caps his inkwell before pushing it back towards the center of the table and places his quill next to it. “Okay, Tony, you have exactly twenty minutes before I really do need to get back to studying. Why do you need me to be your pretend boyfriend?”

Or, even as wizards Tony and Steve still can only find there way to each other through the muggle trope of fake dating while fighting their real feelings.

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a date with disaster (or, the time steve essentially whored himself out on national tv to pay his rent) by quellthefire for Serinah (MCU AU, 3,6k words)

Steve’s been having a hard time finding freelance work, so Bucky signs him up for a reality dating show to earn some extra cash. Little does Steve know that this is going to be the worst date he could possibly imagine, on purpose. 

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To have and to hold by daisybelle for LegendsofSnark (MCU, 1.4k words)

Written for the prompt: Parents!Stony: Steve has somehow gotten sick and Tony is freaking out because Steve always takes care of him and Peter. Cue Peter and Tony frantically trying to do everything in their power to get Steve better. And Steve smiling at his little family. 

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You’re Always Worth It by Nixie_DeAngel for Hayluhalo (EMH, 1.6k words)

Tony sees it in the way Steve’s shoulders grow tenser, the way his answers become shorter and snappier. Sees it in the way his eyes grow colder and harder. He sees it in the extra hours put in to training and working out, the way Steve goes through combat bots and reinforced punching bags.

Or, Tony takes Steve on a mini vacation and helps his partner unwind.

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when you’re gone by talktothesky for ishipallthings (MCU, 25.6k words)

Steve’s had to get used to many things in the 21st century but falling in love with Tony Stark might be the weirdest one yet.

Especially because the man’s dead.

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The shadow of men by Bill_Longbow for silversoul_snow (MCU AU, 6.8k words)

When Steve sinks his teeth into bringing Tony Stark to justice he shouldn’t be surprised the mob boss takes a mutual interest. He ìs suprised the mobster does this by kidnapping him, but the most confusing thing is that Steve doesn’t really mind…

In a world where soulmates are only rumours and myths, what chance do a cop and a crook have together?

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time doesn’t love you anymore (like i love you) by armoredsoftie for jayjayverse (MCU, 3.1k words)

Steve returned the Stones to their respective places, and it’s time to go back home. But after an accident with the time traveling bracelet, he’s stuck in 1993, where he tries to find the help of a young Tony Stark. After a few drinks in the most popular gay bar in town, things might take a different direction. 

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Breakfast [Art] by SpanglesandSass (Fidella) for SirSapling (Ultimates, Art)

For the prompt:

1. Stressed out Steve gets pampered

If anyone needed a lazy day and breakfast in bed, it’s probably Steve.

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On the Road We Find the Journey Home by navaan for Missy_dee811 (Marvel 616, 5.7k words)

In the Aftermath of Secret Empire, Steve goes on his Road Trip to find out who Captain America can be after Hyda!Cap put fear into the hearts’ of the people who used to cheer for him. His thoughts trail back to Tony. 

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For A Good Time Call by BeenAsleepFor70Years for mariana_oconnor (Avengers Assemble, 8.7k words)

Steve explores his sexuality by trying out a phone sex service. He may just leave the situation crushing on the guy at the other end of the phone. He already had feelings for his teammate Iron Man, now a new crush gets thrown into the mix. What ever shall he do? 

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And I Owe It All To You by starkboi for muchmoremajestic (MCU AU, 2.8k words)

Steve volunteers to participate in a dance marathon for charity. He’s got a final project looming over his head and needs a break from reality, it’s there that he gets playfully competitive with a certain snarky brown haired boy from MIT. 

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The Ring of Fire or The One Where Steve is Young and Confused by Serinah for One and Five Nines (Obani) (MCU AU, 15.9k words)

What you read on the tin. Steve is 19 and has only had one girlfriend. He doesn’t like men, never has, so why the hell does Professor Stark make him feel this way?

A story with a ridiculous amount of anger, internalized homophobia, sexual exploration, self-discovery and pining. In short: it’s about how student Steve tries, fails and then tries again to understand what going on with him while dealing with his crush on a professor.

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An Old Friend by Katie_Kat for Evanna_Adams (MCU, 1.2k words)

Steve is packing up and getting ready to move from the Tower to the new compound when Peter finds something interesting hiding in the closet.

For the Stony Loves Steve 2019 Fic Exchange.

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certain as the sun by ohmyloki for ShippersList (MCU, 3.8k words)

Steve doesn’t know how to dance. Tony says he doesn’t dance. Natasha wonders what’s the point of living in a mansion if no one is ever going to use the ballroom? 

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Don’t Ask by dirigibleplumbing for SpellWolf (Avengers Academy, 3.6k words)

Steve has a secret.

Steve also plays a lot of truth or dare.

Tony notices that Steve always picks “dare,” and starts daring him to pick “truth” instead.

What will Tony think if he finds out what Steve’s hiding? 

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Silicone Rings by kenshincha for picturecat (The Avengers - All Media Types, 1.1k words)

Steve contemplates their long engagement. 

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Almost Perfect [Art] by One and Five Nines (Obani) for farawatt (MCU, Art)

A powerful enemy invades from an alternate reality, but the only thing he really seems interested in is Steve Rogers

EXTREMELY DISTURBING CONTENT, MIND THE TAGS 

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In Your Shadow by magicasen for talesofsuspense (Marvel 616, 2.9k words)

Tony thinks the mansion might be haunted. Steve’s not so sure about that.

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A Beautiful Thing by thegraytigress for FestiveFerret (MCU, 62.5k words)

Steve charges into a crashed alien ship to save survivors, and he comes out with a newfound power: telepathy. The fact that he can read minds isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, though. It’s pretty amusing to the team, really annoying to Steve, and generally not as cool as it sounds. It especially sucks that it’s driven a wedge between him and Tony, not that Steve can figure out why. Still, all in all, it’s something he can try to live with.

Until he can’t.

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Stuck by Neverever for PjCole (MCU AU, 2.9k words)

Hairstylist Tony Stark itches to cut Steve’s messy hair. But Steve has other issues on his mind.

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Loving You 3000 by athletiger for armoredsoftie (MCU AU, 1.5k words)

He stared. On his chest, above his palpitating heart, was the number 3000. Steve’s fingers lifted, unbidden, and he brushed over the numbers, which only stared back at him.

His chest constricted, then swelled.

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Previously Thought to be Impossible by Impala_Chick for navaan (MCU, 2.8k words)

In 1970, SHIELD HQ was working on a powerful aphrodisiac prototype. Tony Stark from 2023 happens to cut open the wrong box at the wrong time, and Steve Rogers from 2023 doesn’t know how to feel about it.

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A Coincidence called Fate. by SilverinStars for kenshincha (MCU AU, 2.7k words)

The first time Potts met Stevens, the man had come limping into the infirmary. His face was pale, but he held himself upright.

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Moments in Time by Squishy_TRex for talktothesky (MCU, 3k words)

A shared life, over the years.

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Does the sun shine (during lock down)? by HogwartstoAlexandria for Nixie_DeAngel (MCU, 9.6k words)

The last thing Tony expects when he wakes up that day is the very thing he finds in Pepper’s office, or rather, the very person.

Old flames do they ever really die down? Maybe not, but does Tony have the luxury to find out when he has to think about Peter’s well-being first and foremost?

Or when Pepper is worried, makes a decision, and Tony’s life spins on its axis, once again.

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[art fill] on read by Priestly for KingOfBiohazards (MCU, Art)

Texting Tony Stark is sometimes easier than talking to him face to face. Mini-comic!

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good old-fashioned lover boy by nanasekei for Cachette (MCU, 7k words) 

Tony is thrilled about his new relationship with Steve. He’s on cloud nine, in fact. It’s so amazing he can believe it’s real. He just wishes they could… Uh. Touch a little. Just a little

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Here’s Looking at You by mariana_oconnor for SpanglesandSass (MCU, 12.6k words)

Captain America’s disapproving stare watched over most of Tony’s childhood. It only makes sense that when Steve Rogers walks into Tony’s life, that he return the favour and stare right back. But what he sees when Steve doesn’t know he’s watching doesn’t match up with what he thinks he knows, and he comes to realise that maybe the man under the cowl isn’t quite as untouchable as he thought.

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Write and Draw by SpellWolf for Shamen610 (MCU, 2.7k words)

games night and plotting ends with two idiots finally getting together

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Loose Ends by muchmoremajestic for riodesal (MCU, 8.9k words)

Steve Rogers was found in late 2007 after being on ice for over sixty years. In trying to find closure with his past, a few months later he comes across Tony - at the moment a charismatic billionaire responsible for the world’s most lucrative weapons manufacturing company while the country is at war fighting terrorist cells in Afghanistan. When Steve reaches out to Tony to get closure on his friendship with Tony’s father Howard, how will Tony react? Can Steve find the closure that he’s looking for?

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running into the sun by kiden for ohmyloki (MCU, 8.2k words) 

There are other people Steve could ask. Sam or Nat. Even Clint would make more sense. It’s not that they aren’t friends - they are, they’re good friends, hard won, fought for, worked on - it’s just weird. They can live together and fight together, but Tony’s not so sure a few weeks with just the two of them in a car is a good idea. It’s definitely not a smart idea. “Can you repeat that, please?” or: tony and steve go on a nice, soft road trip that brings them closer together.

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Vienna Waits For You by Evanna_Adams for quellthefire (MCU, 13.4k words) 

Steve Rogers was desperate. Not in the general sense of the word but the deadline for his college art project seemed to be looming and damnit, he should have been done already. But it had taken a bit of Barton and Wilson madness to leave his final project in pieces. Natasha, Bucky and the guilt-ridden duo had tried to help him, but the project was lost to him. They had even tried to offer their own college acquired expertise to help. Of course, he had to refuse.

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posing up a storm by picturecat for Mizzy (MCU, 5.2k words) 

“I have an idea. Can we just pretend the day ended with that really badass Superfriends pose we did?”

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Letters To My Lover by Missy_dee811 for XtaticPearl (MCU, 3.5 words)

*Avengers: Endgame spoilers* On the day of the funeral, Steve hears a phone ringing that shouldn’t be. No one had that number. No one except Tony.

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Taking a chance by DepressingGreenie for Bill Longbow (MCU, 746 words/art) 

Steve likes the Science Professor who lives across the hall.

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Yes to heaven by jayjayverse for magicasen (616, 1.1k words/art) 

All started with a clear change of smell, it was subtle, slow in a way that if Janet had not told him he would not have noticed, but after that he just could not help noticing every little sign.

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Eleven Years by One and Five Nines (Obani) for Impala Chick (MCU, 2.2k words) 

*ENDGAME SPOILERS* After the final battle, Steve comes around to Tony’s house. He’s not sure how things stand with Tony, but at least Morgan likes him.

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Frostbite by FestiveFerret for DepressingGreenie (MCU, 5.4k words) 

They’ve found where Steve is being kept - he has to be in this building - but JARVIS can’t find a heat signature, and Tony knows what that means.

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[art fill] second chances by Priestly for kiden (MCU, art) 

“Regret is corrosive. And I hate it.” 

“Me too.” 

Together, Steve and Tony can save half of all life on Earth. And if they’re lucky enough, maybe they can even save their relationship. Art fill!

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We’re Going Off Script by ishipallthings for FreyaS (MCU, 5.2k words) 

“Or, maybe you just need practice?” Steve blinks at Tony’s question, confused. Maybe Tony needs more sleep than he thought. He’ll have to check with JARVIS. 

“Practice - at dating?”

(Steve needs help in the dating department. Tony is happy to help out, because he’s a very good friend. That’s definitely the only reason.)

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One Throw of the Dice by Wikketkrikket for dirigibleplumbing (616/Ults/3490/1872, 5.7k words) 

Steve shrugged, pulling on his shirt. ‘It’s not like it’s Jane or no-one. Everyone gets more than one throw of the dice, Tony.’ 

He only realised his mistake when Tony didn’t say anything, turning away too quickly when Steve turned to look at him. It didn’t take too much thought to connect the dots. Tony did think you only got one throw of the dice. Tony thought he, Steve, was that one. The One. 

In which they realise Tony loves Steve more than Steve loves him. But it’s kind of hard to work through it when the Skrulls interfere, and scatter your sense of self to the multiverse.

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Hands Out In The Dark by XtaticPearl for ashes0909 (MCU, 44.4k words) 

When Thanos died the first time, it was anybody’s guess that the end of the journey had been reached. Sometimes though, a bad end becomes the opening to an unexpected but good beginning, and a tired Steve Rogers learns that in the five years it takes for him to get back to a battlefield. The years after that, well that was a story he hadn’t considered until life gave him the chance to try. What he ended up writing, whom he wrote it with, and why it all ended on a bench in New York - there were stories even a Time Stone hadn’t expected.

sun in an empty room by farawatt for nanasekei (MCU/Ults/616, 2.3k words) 

Melancholy is dangerous.

It’s funny how you forgive the past to try and revive it.

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A Long Road To Share by SirSapling for daisybelle (Ults, art) 

After 50 years in the ice and a couple exhausting years leading the Ultimates, Steve realises he isn’t quite sure he knows anything about the new modern America he’s supposed to represent. Luckily, Tony has an idea how to show him.

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Dare I Say Forever by royal_chandler for herioneaddict (MCU, 4.2k words) 

Naive and young, Steve had thought about it. He’d allowed himself to dream of post-war, matching gold bands and a white picket fence penning in a rambunctious pair of children. 

However, there’s no such thing as post-war.

[profiler-in-training]

A Better Idea

Request: “So reader is new to the team. Like a few weeks. But Ziva is still there. But reader isn’t as welcomed as well as she thought she might be. So on a case where the perp knows about her, he gets to her by saying that she isn’t welcome in the Gibbs team family then she freaks in like a panic attack kind of way and the team goes looking for her only to tell her different.”  Requested by: @scarlettestitch 

A/N: I changed the circumstances but the main plot was the same. I hope you like it, it’s been a while since I’ve published any work! 

You were struggling to find your place on the team now that you had finally made it into NCIS. The team had such a strong dynamic, and you weren’t sure what you needed to do half the time. McGee and Ziva took care of the pictures and interviews, DiNozzo took care of sketches, Dr. Mallard and Palmer took care of the bodies, and Gibbs took care of pretty much everything else. Including scaring you half to death. 

This case was getting out of hand. The person was now targeting the team directly. A video from an encrypted file showed up on McGee’s computer this morning. The suspect knew everything about each of you. He knew that Gibbs built boats in his basement. He knew about McGee’s book and DiNozzo’s really nice apartment. He knew about Ziva being a Mossad officer. And he knew that you were new to the team. You had been on the team for three weeks and already you had some creep trying to get inside your head. If you were being honest with yourself, it was working. 

“Y/N, whatcha got,” Gibbs said, walking into the bull pen. You hopped up. 

“Um, well...this is David Austen, 23, dishonorably discharged from the navy three years ago for hacking into secure and confidential databases. He was suspected of having a connection with a rebel group in Afghanistan. They thought he might be trying to send it to them.” 

“She’s right, boss. The computer skills required to hack into that kind of database would match the same kind of skills required to hack our database and send that file over,” McGee continued, seeming to back you up. You felt relieved. “But,” he continued, causing your heart to sink, “he isn’t our guy. He’s still doing time at a federal prison in Arkansas.” Your face fell. You should’ve followed up with the lead. Gibbs turned to you.

“You didn’t think to check that, y/l/n?” You swallowed hard.

“Sorry, Gibbs,” you said and scurried back to your desk. The rest of the day was pretty unsuccessful and you found yourself the only one left in the office. The rest of them had left and you were feeling pretty crappy about yourself. You always seemed to be a step behind the rest of the team. An email came through and you clicked on it. You felt frozen when you realized...it was another video. You clicked play and the video started, only showing a guy sitting at a desk with a hood up, shading most of his face besides his mouth, same as the last video.

“Hello, Agent y/l/n,” he started, making your skin crawl as he spoke directly to you. You stared at the screen, waiting for it to continue. “It’s not nice to stare at people, y/n.” Your eyes grew wide as saucers. This wasn’t a regular video. This was a live video chat. This bastard was actually talking to you. 

“Who are you?”

“Tsk tsk. Patience is a virtue, y/n. Now, tell me. How has this first month on Agent Gibbs’ team been? From what i’ve seen, it hasn’t been very good for you. Has it.”

“What do you want?” You tried to keep him talking as you located the call. He chuckled darkly.

“Agent Gibbs never wanted you on that team. He tried to talk to Director Vance just last week about getting you transferred.” Your fingers seemed to stop working, your voice sounding broken, even though you knew that’s just what he wanted. 

“What?”

“Oh, yes. And Agent McGee? He only sticks up for you because he feels sorry for you. DiNozzo picks on you all the time because you suck at your job. With Agent David’s new place on the team, they didn’t want anyone else to join. They were a happy family. And you ruined it. You ruin everything, y/n.” Hot tears were streaming down your face.

“Shut up. Shut up right now. Tell me where you are. I’d love nothing more than to shoot you.” He only laughed. “What, and give Agent Gibbs another reason to fire you? I’ll tell you what. I’m going to the Main Street Cafe. Come meet me in 10 minutes. Don’t contact your team. You come alone and unarmed. Pull any tricks, and i’ll kill every agent on your team. All at the push of a button.” “You’re bluffing.”

“Ah, but do you really want to risk that?” He grinned a wicked grin, cutting off the connection. Your heart sank. You couldn’t let him hurt anyone. You grabbed your stuff and ran out of the office. 

DiNozzo stomped back into the bullpen, huffing. “I can’t believe I forgot my house key and-” he paused when he saw a video pulled up on your computer, your desk lamp still on. He clicked play and watched the recorded conversation that you and the suspect had just had. There was no time stamp on it, but your seat at the desk was still warm. He had to have just missed you. He called Gibbs immediately. “Boss, we have a problem.”

You walked into the cafe, sitting down at one of the booths, looking around constantly. A tall man walked in wearing a black zip up jacket and spotted you. He came over to you, sitting down, grinning. “Hello, y/n.” You simply glared at him. 

“What do you want.” “Only to leave you with this. You never should have joined NCIS. And you’ll pay dearly for it.” Your eyebrows furrowed. “Why do you care whether I’m at NCIS or not. You don’t even know me.” He grinned, pulling down his hood and your heart stopped. You hadn’t even realized. It was Jason Lannen. You had almost put this bastard away when you were with Miami P.D. He was a notorious military database hacker and constantly escaped from law enforcement and successfully sent thousands of files to the enemies overseas. He’d also had it in for you since you discovered his true identity.

“Oh, y/n. I hate to leave things this way, but i’m afraid you won’t be making it out of here alive tonight,” he said, smirking as he stood up, gun pointed right at you. “Your team won’t care, though. Just like everybody else in your life.” You heard a gunshot and tensed up, waiting for the pain, but it never came.  “Y/n!” You heard Gibbs call, moving to you. You looked over and saw Jason Lannen dead on the floor of the cafe. Gibbs pulled you up out of the booth and looked you over. You swore there was anger in his eyes. You barely whispered out an “i’m sorry, Gibbs”, breaking rule 6, before you bolted out of there. You couldn’t stand to look at any of them. Was Jason right? Did they really want you gone? This was too much for you. You made it around the corner, sobbing hard. Arms wrapped around you tightly and you looked up, startled.  “Gibbs?” You croaked out, tears staining your cheeks. “What...what are you...” “He was wrong.” You blinked.

“What?” “Jason. He was wrong. About you, about the team.” “But, Gibbs...I’m not...I don’t...I can’t....” “You’re a damn good agent, y/n. I asked for you to be transferred to my team. And there’s a reason for that.” You were staring at him, surprised. You hadn’t heard him speak that much since you were hired. He hugged you tightly and then slapped the back of your head. “And if you ever go to meet with a suspect unarmed and without my knowledge again, i’ll send you back to Miami.” You nodded quickly, following him back to the cafe. You looked up to see the whole team standing there, even Abby. You cleared your throat.

“Ah...so none of it was true?” 

“Of course not!” Abby exclaimed, running to you, hugging you tightly. You returned it, peeking at the others who shook their head in response. You relaxed into Abby’s hug. 

“I think I’m just going to go back to the office and finish up some work.” You were unsure of how to deal with the whole situation at the moment. “I have a better idea,” Abby said, pulling you to the car. “Drinks are on Gibbs tonight!” She yelled, getting into the SUV with you. You peeked out of the window to see everyone, even Gibbs, laughing and getting in. You found yourself joining them, finally feeling like you had found your place. 

[mysamcedesmadness]

So, Let’s Just Enjoy the Time We Have

How many days did they have left together?

Henry's time as Kid Danger had been the most enjoyable when he wasn't someone's serious boyfriend. With that new responsibility, he was always mindful that he needed to come home safe, especially after Thanksgiving.

Charlotte gave him a scrapbook for Thanksgiving. He was a little bit salty about it, because he didn't know that they were giving each other stuff for Thanksgiving. While she said that they weren't, but she just wanted him to have this - what "this" was; it was something that he would always be grateful for.

She had used her research and interviewing skills to find articles and stories about Kid Danger and to ask people around Swellview, "Why are you thankful to have Kid Danger?" Their answers were quotes that she included in this scrapbook and the last page was "Why am I thankful to have Kid Danger?"

She went on to give this long detailed report of how she felt about Kid Danger and how Swellview would never have been as safe without him. She had him all choked up and he kept that thing in a lockbox and looked at it every single night since she gave it to him.

Then, they had Christmas together. She spent the morning and afternoon with her parents, but met him at the Man Cave at 4. Everybody did gift exchanges, but Henry told her that hers were at his house, so she opened what she had from the rest of their friends and gave him his gift.

He laughed and asked, "What do you think that you can even give me at this point, after what you did for my birthday and for Thanksgiving?" But, whenever he opened it, he almost started crying. "Is this what I think it is?"

"Do you think that I made an award winning gizmo for the gizmo fair and gave you the improved version so that whenever you're killin' it at Swellview U, you won't have to worry about your spelling?"

He smiled brightly and bragged as he pulled it from the box, "Hey, Guys! Charlotte made me a Pocket Dyslexicon!"

"Actually, it's called the Communiclicker, because it helps you to make things click."

Schwoz wondered, "What does it do?"

Henry began to show him, "It has a voice to text feature that pretty much never gets your words wrong. You can record and save all of your reports or whatever and send them to documents to print… or email or whatever. And she has a feature where I can write a sample onto the screen and it can even create files in my handwriting, from my voice."

"Until more people are empathetic about how difficult reading and writing can be for him, he needs a little boost," Charlotte said, humbly.

"You are always making his life easier and better," Schwoz said. Henry smiled. That much was true. Everything about her was pure and true, to him. He just wanted to give her everything.

Then, whenever they went back to his house, she confessed, "I got you something else."

"What???"

"Because that one was more functional. I wanted to also give you something nice."

"This IS nice. It's one of the nicest gifts ever."

"Yeah, but open this one," she said and gave him a small box.

Henry opened the box and there was a kinda gaudy, but he actually still loved it, pinky ring. It was white gold with November birthstones topaz and citrine, and clear crystals to look like diamonds. "I have been wanting a badass pinky ring for ages!"

"I know!" He gave her a hug and put it on, then took her hand.

Charlotte's gifts were plentiful. Henry figured he could do one good quality one and supplement it with a quantity of others. So, for her quality present, he got her this personalized surfboard, because the school she was going to was near the beach and she said that she would want to learn to surf. They were good at listening to each other. And she loved it, even if she wasn't sure if she would actually have the time to learn to surf.

He got her several articles of jewelry, a naturalista holiday gift basket, and the new Captain Man and Kid Danger talking figurines with 20 rhyming lines. "In case you miss us."

"I'm gonna be in communication with you. But, I love these. I was gonna buy them myself, but Jasper told me not to. Now I see why. Wow. In a few blinks, it'll be months from now and I'll be heading off…"

"I don't want to think about that."

And he didn't speak of it, but he certainly did think about it.

Valentine's Day was epic. Henry planned a VDay Weekend Staycation for them. He cooked, pampered and loved on her for three straight days. It was excellent. She had found the most traditionally romantic gifts that she could think of for this day, since it was really her first real one and simultaneously probably their last one for a while.

He got a huge platter of chocolate covered berries from her, a gigantic teddy bear, roses, a jumbo sized card, and she wore shirts the entire weekend that said, "Henry's Girl" on them. And Henry ate it up.

The Airbnb was in town, but he made sure that they didn't have to leave by providing everything that they needed, along with all the candles and rose petals and stuff he used to woo her for days.

Plus, he bought her a ring, too. "Is this a Pulse Promise ring?" She asked, taking it out of the box. "Henry… these cost A LOT of money…"

"I had it," he said. "Remember whenever you said that you'd rather know as soon as possible if anything ever happened to me?"

"Yeah, but that didn't mean get me a ring with your ding dang pulse attached to it!" But, as she fussed, she slipped it onto her hand. She could feel his pulse in it and she placed her hand over his heart, to feel them in tandem. "It works." She said, then sadly added, "And if God forbid something terrible happens, I'll know right away…"

"I always do my best to come back to you safely," he said. It's basically to confirm for you that I'm okay when you're too far away to really see for yourself."

"Just a couple of months…" she said.

"Shhhhh. We've got all weekend to enjoy. Don't bring it down."

.

It wasn't that he was avoiding the inevitable, but he really didn't want to dwell on it. Spring Break was litty. He and Jasper hung out while she checked out spaces near her college. She only had two days to actually chill with them, so they made the most of it without her.

For her birthday, since she hadn't allowed them to do anything last time, Henry told her that she'd BETTER BELIEVE that they were doing something this time. This time, she had a party with Jasper, Henry, Schwoz, Ray and Piper. They put her on a throne that Henry decorated, in a crown that he bought her and did a gift presentation. "This is really extra," Charlotte observed. "But I'm enjoying it."

Ray came up, patted himself down and pulled out a folded envelope, "Happy Birthday!"

She accepted it, looked at it and told him, "This is my paycheck."

"Hand delivered to you. You're welcome."

"I mean… I earned it, so it isn't a gift…"

"The gift is that I hand delivered it to you. You are welcome."

She rolled her eyes and waved him away, excited for whatever Henry's gift would be, though at this point, she was positive that they had been spending WAY MORE than they should have this close to their independence. Henry told her, "Don't freak out. Your gift isn't something that you can take with you…"

" Why would I freak ou…?"

He showed off his collarbone and revealed to her a tattoo that made her not only gasp but almost choke on her own saliva. "It's an infinity symbol with our names scripted into it." Everybody but Jasper gasped too.

Piper said, "Mom is going to kill you! I'm texting her right now!"

"I'm 18, Piper!" He reminded her, then asked Charlotte, "What do you think?"

"I think that's a serious and permanent decision!"

"That you love?" She was stunned. Ray pulled him aside before she could respond and she was glad, because that was SO overboard, in her personal opinion. She would NEVER get a boy's name tattooed on her. Not even Henry.

Ray whispered, angrily, "You put an identifying mark on Kid Danger's body???"

"I put it on MY body. My body, my rules."

"Your rules are being VERY reckless right now."

"Dude, if ever someone gets Kid Danger naked, I doubt they'd have left the mask on and if I die or something like that, I'll be dead. Chill out." He patted him on the back and returned to the Queen of the Day.

She came off of her throne and spoke quietly. "Why did you do that? Henry, have you ever once considered that this might not BE a forever thing?"

"Of course I've considered it. I consider it all the time. But, I know how I feel, what you mean to me, and who we are. Even if "this" isn't a forever thing, these are forever feelings for me. Besides, you're my best friend." She sighed. It was done now. "You hate it."

"I don't hate it, it's just… scary. Do you know how close we are to our lives and relationship changing drastically?"

"I'm not concerned about it…"

"Less than two months and our world shifts. We have no idea what the future holds."

"Okay, but that means you don't know if after you're done with school, we'll be inseparable again. So… I'm confident in my decision."

"If you like it, I love it."

"THAT is all I wanted to hear!"

But, she was right. Less than two months. How many days did they have left together?

"Not enough," he said to himself.

[thebibliomancer]

50 More Days of Comics! 43/50: Justice League Europe #19 (1990)

More Justice League Europe!

But, wuh? You may ask, if you’re invested in the minutiae of my mystery box. Didn’t you say the box was roughly sectioned and didn’t you already get through the DC section?

Yes. Yes I did.

But somehow I skipped three comics? I was counting up how many comics I had left and found it didn’t add up to 50 so went through the box and found that I couldn’t find posts for three comics. I know I wrote them up. I found them in my email. But I can’t find the posts. So I’ll have a very easy three days of 50 More Days of Comics by posting them.

So yes. More Justice League Europe!

This time following in the finest of comic book traditions: thinly veiled knockoffs of the competitor’s IP.

Marvel is more known for this because they get a lot of coverage out of their thinly veiled knockoffs. The Squadron Supreme (basically the Justice League) have become an important part of Avengers lore and even have their own well-regarded miniseries that is basically every Batman v Superman ever. And the League of Super-Heroes homage in the Shi’ar Imperial Guard has become a huge part of Cosmic Marvel and X-Men lore.

DC is no stranger to this either. It just doesn’t get folded into the lore quite the same way. A group of very Fantastic Four esque astronauts were mutated by cosmic radiation and then died, except for the faux Reed Richards who later becomes Cyborg Superman.

And as the Avengers fought the Squadron Supreme, so the Justice League fought the Champions of Angor with expies of Scarlet Witch in Silver Sorceress, Yellowjacket in Blue Jay, and Thor in Wandjina.

These Notvengers were from an alien world destroyed in nuclear holocaust by the Extremists, themselves expies of prominent Marvel villains.

Lord Havok for Doctor Doom, Dreamslayer for Dormammu, Gorgon for Doctor Octopus, Tracer for Sabretooth, and Doctor Diehard for Magneto.

You may recognize that these people have never been on a team together because it would be massive overkill and also there’d be so much clash of ego and personality and goals that they wouldn’t get one foot out the door before they all simultaneously backstabbed each other.

I give you all this exposition because this issue of Justice League Europe concerns the Extremists, or robot theme park versions of them, and also the two surviving Champions of Angor who have after a long time in the woods, either literal or metaphorical, found their way back to a Justice League book and have joined the team this time.

Fair is fair though. One of the many Hyperions (basically Superman) flapping around the Marvel U joined the Avengers for a while. And a Nighthawk (basically Batman) was on the Defenders for a whiiiile.

In previous issues, the Extremists have come to the Earth-1 and had Doctor Diehard/Magneto steal all the nuclear warheads in the world and threaten to detonate them. Due to reasons, most of the Justice League Europe end up on Angor where they find a broken down amusement park and a man cryogenically frozen?

To summarize down a bit: this is Uncle Mitch Wacky, a spoof on Disney, who had himself cryogenically frozen when he came down with an incurable disease. INFLUENZA!

This is a bafflement to Crimson Fox because on Earth influenza is well treatable but Uncle Mitch cuts her off before she can explain this.

Oh. So Crimson Fox is a later recruit to the team. She’s secretly two people and has pheromone powers because those are always anything but sketchy. She’s also exceptionally French. And is neither crimson nor wearing a very fox like costume.

Also here is the aforementioned Silver Sorceress who helpfully gives worldbuilding exposition about Angor. Also also, the Champions of Angor are apparently also known as the Assemblers?

Back on Earth, Martian Manhunter and Maxwell Lord discuss the UN unanimously agreeing to turn the world over to the Extremists because the alternative is nuclear annihilation. Its to buy time for the heroes to figure something out and in hopes that the Extremists are playing by their own rules and won’t just keep the missiles hanging overhead.

Back on Angor, they saved Carny’s brain. Or decapitated robo-head. Carny (apparently an expy of Arcade insofar as dangerous theme parks go) explains some more exposition.

After Uncle Mitch put himself on ice, the incredibly advanced robots of the park kept things running in hopes that Mitch would return to them as he promised. Very messianic King Arthur king under the mountain type feel.

So they even kept the park running smoothly during the nuclear annihilation of all life because dangit, that’s what Uncle Mitch would have wanted. Even when it became clear that there would be no more visitors because everybody dead.

They decided that they’d recreate the world inside the park. So they made a ride that would feature the Assemblers and Extremists and made them able to think and act on their own.

But whoopsie the Extremist robots killed the Assemblers robots and took over the park. Carny joined them because “it seemed like the happy, wacky thing to do.”

The robo-Extremists got restless, craving new worlds to conquer and eventually ditched Carny and the park for Earth.

At this point, Captain Atom (thankfully sporting a short haircut instead of a mullet despite it being the 90s now) has an idea.

Elseworld, the UN surrenders the world to the Extremists. So Doctor Diehard puts the nukes down in their silos thankful that he doesn’t have to be constantly focusing on that! But he can still detonate them in their silos so, y’know, don’t mess.

On Angor, Wacky Mitch reveals that he has a universal shutdown switch to his robots keyed to his neurological impulses. So now they have a trump card against the Extremists if they can only get back to Earth.

‘Oh hey I can totally get us back to Earth,’ says Silver Sorceress at this time. And she transports them back to Earth right in front of Blue Jay just when he’s being a pessimistic ass and driving Sue to distraction.

Mitch’s influenza hits him hard and he collapses, Captain Atom calling for super cool doctor Dr Light. No, not that one. The good one.

A quick time skip and Mitch is back on his feet and pumped full of antiobiotics. He’s not cured, obviously. He needs bed rest and an IV but he should be able to participate in a battle for the fate of the Earth as long as it doesn’t take too long.

Later, the Extremists base and they’re sitting around enjoying ruling the world but not really doing any ruling. Just snacking on some donuts, really. Pretty life like these theme park robots. Lord Havok considers that this was all too easy maybe but he doesn’t get much chance to muse on it because the ceiling suddenly explodes.

The Justice League Europe flies in and starts beating them up with specific focus on keeping Doctor Diehard confused and off-balance so he can’t use his powers to destroy the world.

The fighting is just time filler until Mitch Wacky can appear dramatically on a sand dune.

Uncle Mitch Wacky: “Hello, Tracer. Are you having a wacky day?”

The Extremists all instantly fixate on him and kneel in the sand before their creator-god.

Lord Havok: “Speak to us, Uncle Mitch! Are we wacky enough for you? Are we happy enough for you?”

Uncle Mitch: Uncle Mitch knows when you’ve been naughty and nice… and you, my boys… you have been very, very naughty!”

And all the Extremists switch off and collapse to the ground.

Y’know, I know they were going to destroy the world but they were really slaves to their programming. They were created to imitate the Extremists and the Extremists were world destroying monsters. In their robot hearts, they were fulfilling their purpose to make the creator-god-on-ice proud of them. The moral of the story is that the three laws of robotics exist for a damn reason. And maybe program your supervillain robots to be more wacky silver age stealing 40 cakes and less explode every nuke, hm?

Oh and then Uncle Mitch explodes.

Turns out that Dreamslayer (Dormammu) wasn’t a robot like the others. He’s the real deal. And he was trapped for five years in the Dimension of Terrors when the Extremists (the real ones) nuked Angor. By the time he got free he discovered that there was nothing left to terrorize and nothing to amuse him. So he hooked up with the Extremists robots to find a new world to conquer.

But now that the Justice League has ruined the fun game he was having hanging out with robots of his dead friends, now he’s just going to kill them all because this isn’t fun anymore.

Some legit cool visuals here. Bart Sears, Randy Elliott and Gene D’Angelo do stuff with intersecting pink lines here that makes pasting a spellcircle from google image search look like crap.

Crimson Fox intercepts the magical attack and blasts it right back at Dreamslayer. Turns out that Crimson Fox was really Silver Sorceress under an illusion. I don’t mean all the time, just this specific instance. Because Scarlet Witches beat Dormammus, fact.

Oh and Uncle Mitch is alive even though the last we see of him in this issue would seem to indicate otherwise. Dreamslayer has bad aim. Having helped save the day now he’s on bed rest getting over the deadly INFLUENZA. And yes, I do know that influenza really is deadly.

The Extremist robots are repurposed for Madame Clouseau’s Wax Museum and Flash and JLE bureau chief Catherine are visiting the museum wrapping up some final plot exposition as the comic wraps. Donating the deactivated robots to the museum being Catherine’s idea of a PR move.

It would later backfire horribly when Dreamslayer returned possessing Maxwell Lord and reactivated them. They’d be thwarted again but it would lead to the death of Silver Sorceress.

But comics be like that sometimes.

[meowloudly15]

Stranded: Day 8 - RELATIVE CHAOS

First | Previous | Next

Gwen, Mrs. Parker, and the rest of the spiders sat around the kitchen table, finishing off their pulled pork sandwiches. (Strangely, Ham didn’t have a problem with eating them.)

“Do you guys have any good stories from your time in the field?” asked Mrs. Parker.

“Oh, I got some!” Gwen brightened up. “You wanna hear a funny one or a cool one?”

“Either or,” said Ham.

“All right, so this happened like a year and a half ago. I was fighting this one guy who was basically an animal trafficker, and he’s super fast and strong and stuff. I won, but it was a tough fight, and he cut me across the face right here.” Gwen drew an invisible line across her forehead. “So, I went back home, and I’m back in my room, and I’ve gotten ready for bed and stuff, and I figured, I’ve gotta clean up this cut. So I headed to the bathroom and ran into my dad. He looked at me funny and asked, ‘What did you do to yourself?’ I panicked and said, ‘It’s ketchup!’”

Peni laughed. Peter B. and Mrs. Parker both cracked a smile. Noir remained as impassive as ever. Ham had vanished for no apparent reason.

Gwen chuckled to herself. “Yeah, I suck at cover stories.”

Peter B. commented, “You sure do. May, did your Peter do anything stupid? Or was he just too perfect for mistakes?”

Mrs. Parker chuckled. “Oh, not at all! Everybody makes mistakes! I’ll tell you how I found out about his secret identity. He was a senior in high school, and I was out of town on business for Alchemax.”

“Wait, you work for Alchemax? The place where they built the collider?” asked Noir.

“Used to. I quit because first of all, I found out that they were battling my nephew, and also because this upstart, Liv, decided she’d try and take over my position. She could have it, for all I cared.” Mrs. Parker rolled her eyes.

“Back to the point. I ended up coming home a day early, and I called Peter to tell him that the business trip had been terminated early. He didn’t pick up. I walked back into the house and saw Peter, sitting on the ceiling of the kitchen in his underwear, halfway through a bowl of mac and cheese. We both screamed.”

Everybody at the table cracked up, even Noir.

ATOMIC DISJUNCTION

Gwen spazzed out and fell through her chair. Noir yanked the chair out of her before her atoms rejoined.

“Thanks, Noir.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Ham poked his head out of the head of the faucet and said, “You have some wonderful storm drains, May, I gotta say. I just had to take a second look.” He pulled the rest of his body out and sat on the counter next to the cookie jar.

Everybody else exchanged concerned glances.

“So, what do you all do for work?” asked Ham.

Noir raised his hand. “I’m a dick.”

Mrs. Parker grimaced, trying to disguise a laugh. Peter B. instinctively covered Peni’s ears. She reached up and removed his hands, saying, “I’ve heard worse.”

Noir cocked his head to the side. “What’s the problem? I’m a dick! You know, a gumshoe? Is something wrong with that?”

Peni and Gwen exchanged confused yet amused looks.

“Oh, for Chrissake, I mean I’m a private eye! Why, what’s-”

“Don’t ask,” said Peter B., cutting him off.

Ham peered over the edge of the ceiling-mounted lamp. “You can cuss in this dimension?”

“No, Peni’s-” Peter B. started to say.

Peni cut him off with an eager grin. “Yes.”

“You guys are so lucky! I can’t cuss! I can only say symbols!”

“You wh-” began Noir.

“#%€@&%¢*§¿&%!” yelled Ham.

The table went silent. Peter B. instinctively covered Peni’s ears. Gwen tried to figure out how he had managed to say those symbols out loud.

Ham continued, “¢*§¿! ¶@~€! +¶¶@+€!”

Mrs. Parker said, “Okay, enough of that.”

“But I’m not actually cussing!”

“Yes, but you’re using a cipher. And you have the intent to swear.”

Under his breath, Ham muttered, “>%ππ+##~€.” He vanished back into the light fixture.

Peter B. glitched out for a couple of seconds.

Gwen tried not to laugh. She had no idea what he’d said, but it was still funny, maybe more so because she didn’t understand it. She did want to know what Mrs. Parker had meant by saying that Ham was using a cipher.

“So, uh, Mrs. Parker…” began Gwen.

Mrs. Parker chuckled. “Oh, please. Call me May. Or Aunt May, if you prefer.”

Gwen furrowed her brow. “But… we’re not related. That’d be weird.”

“You don’t have to share blood with someone to consider them your family.”

Gwen blinked. That was an unexpectedly philosophical answer.

She loved her dad and missed her mother. They were her family, first and foremost. Could somebody have other families besides just those to whom they’re related? Did that count as a family? Technically, it wouldn’t, at least not by the literal definition of one. But was it possible to become close enough with somebody that you might consider him a brother, even if he wasn’t? Or an aunt, even if she wasn’t?

Maybe it was, but it wasn’t anything that Gwen had seriously considered until now. She was lucky to have a caring father who supported her heroic endeavours and to have had a wonderful mother who had raised her pretty well. But other people might have had to think about this more so than she would ever need to.

“Gwen? You all right?” Peni waved a hand in front of her face.

Gwen blinked and returned to earth. “Oh, uh, yeah, sorry, I’m fine. Just spaced out, that’s all.”

“Like I asked,” said Noir, “you play the drums, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Splendid. See, I play tenor sax part-time in a jazz ensemble, and our drummer was… well, he’s now an ex-drummer. We need a replacement.”

“As much as I’d love to help, I can’t visit your dimension without putting my life on the line. Also, I’ve got school.”

“Ah, school.” Noir balanced his chair on two legs and folded his arms behind his head. “When I was your age, I walked five miles to school. Uphill.”

“Both ways?”

“Yes, I walked back from school, too.”

“Uh, I mean, did you walk uphill both ways?”

“No, that wouldn’t make sense.”

Peter B. chuckled. “I take it you didn’t have buses back in your day?”

Noir replied, “They existed, but they weren’t for carting kids around. They’re starting to make them for schools, but they’re pretty rare, at least as far as I know.”

Gwen recalled that Noir was from 1933. He had an air of seniority about him, too, which confused her.

“Uh, how old are you?” she asked him.

“Older than you are.”

Ham glitched out briefly.

May stood up. “Who wants dessert? I have fudge.”

Everybody raised their hands eagerly. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want fudge?

May walked into the kitchen.

RELATIVE CHAOS

“Oh man, fudge is the best!” exclaimed Ham. “I normally only get it at Christmastime!”

“You have Christmas in your dimension?” asked Gwen.

“Yeah, who wouldn’t celebrate it?”

Peter B. raised his hand. “There’s Christmas in my dimension, but I celebrate Hanukkah.”

“I promise to punch thirty extra Nazis for you,” said Noir. “And yeah, my dimension has Christmas, too.”

“Thanks for that.”

“There’s still Christmas in my dimension, despite the Creeds!” said Peni. “Is Santa real in your dimensions, too?”

“I don’t think he’s real in any dimension,” replied Noir.

Peni’s eyes widened. “He’s not?”

How old was this kid? Ten? Definitely no older than thirteen. Somewhere in the preteen range. Somewhere in the “you-should-have-figured-out-about-Santa-Claus-already” range, which doubles as the “you-probably-haven’t-learned-about-Santa-Claus-yet-and-that’s-a-problem-for-all-us-folks-in-the-know” range.

There was no way in which this conversation would end well.

“Uh, he is! Definitely! For sure! I know it! Yeah, he is!” stammered out Peter B.

Now Gwen was annoyed. “Come on, don’t lie to her!”

“Well, we can’t just stamp on Peni’s innocence like that!”

“But she deserves to know the truth!”

“Maybe the truth is something different in her dimension! How would we know?”

Peni looked thoroughly heartbroken. “You mean he’s… not real?”

Noir appeared stunned. “Uhhh…”

Ham butted in. “Uh, yeah, Noir was just kidding around! He wouldn’t know! Go ask your parents!”

“But my dad’s dead!”

“Then, uh, go ask your mom!”

Peter B. interjected. “Please, Peni, don’t worry about it too much. It’s okay to believe.”

Everyone started talking at once, trying to make themselves heard.

“In something obviously false?”

“I mean, the tech is different in her world. Maybe it’s possible?”

“But who would wanna do that?”

“Can we just… stop talking about this?”

“I wanna know the truth! Is Santa real or isn’t he? You’re confusing me!”

May cleared her throat and silenced the hubbub. “Stop arguing. I have fudge.”

Everybody quieted down and took some fudge. It was the perfect distraction.

“So, uh, what was that about making an online dating profile?” asked Peter B. after a couple of awkwardly silent minutes.

May chuckled. “I’ve been single for long enough, I think.”

“Do you need, like, technical help or something?”

May shook her head. “No, I know my way around a computer.”

“You sure?” butted in Gwen.

“Yes, I’m sure. I programmed a neural net two years ago that identifies phishing scams, tracks the IP address of the original sender, installs upside-down-ternet on the device to screw with the UI, and whitelists any phone numbers connected with the email account on seventy-two different telemarketer call lists.”

Gwen’s mouth hung agape.

“Huh?”

“You lost me after neural net,” said Peter B.

May folded her arms over her chest and smirked. “I lose most people after neural net.”

Noir said, “You lost me at program.”

“I understood that. It’s child’s play,” said Peni. “But I can imagine that for you, in as archaic of a society as you are, that’s quite an achievement.”

“Archaic society?” muttered Peter B.

“Then why on earth would you need our help?” asked Ham.

“Because I don’t know what sixty-something-year-old males are looking for in a woman. I mean, what do I put on the profile? What do I leave off? How do I embellish it? How do I get more clicks? Should I tell them I was widowed ten years ago? Should I mention that Spiderman was my nephew?”

Peter’s uncle was dead in this universe? Huh. Gwen was starting to get accustomed to the weird differences between worlds. Of course, she’d thought she’d seen everything until Peni and Ham showed up.

JAMMED FINGERS

Oh, right! Good idea, spider-sense! Thanks for actually being useful for once!

Gwen asked May, “Uh, if you’re so good with tech, could you fix up my webshooters? They keep jamming.”

May grinned. “Of course! Give them to me, and I’ll take a look at them tonight. Now, why don’t you all head off to bed? It’s getting late.”

“And not go on patrol?” asked Noir.

“May’s right,” said Gwen, handing over her gloves. “Not sleeping actually makes our atomic disjunctions worse.”

Everybody at the table gave her a blank look.

“Atomic… what?” asked Peter B.

“The glitching thing.”

“Oh. Gotcha.”

“Where will we sleep?” asked Peni.

That was a good question.

May slipped Gwen’s gloves into her back pocket and thought for a minute. “Uh, there are three rooms and six of us. Hmm… Peter and Peter can take Peter’s old room, and I have a sleeping bag for one of you… Gwen and Peni can take the guest room, since there’s a pull-out cot… I’ll be in my own room… what about Peter?”

“Which one?” asked Peter B., Ham, and Noir simultaneously.

“Uh, I mean the Peter in sweatpants and the Peter in a fedora will share a room. How about you?” May directed the last question to Ham.

He replied, “I can sleep on the couch.”

“Okay, that works. Is everybody okay with that?”

Gwen had no qualms about the setup. Neither did anyone else.

Thirty minutes later, she found herself lying in the cot in the guest room. It was comfortable, as far as pull-out cots go. Peni was half-asleep on the bed, and her spider was on the dresser.

Suddenly, Ham burst through the door. Well, not completely literally, nor did he open the door, but he did appear through the keyhole in a rather sudden fashion. Gwen and Peni both yelled.

“Why do you keep doing that!” exclaimed Gwen.

Ham shrugged. “I’m used to getting places this way. Just wanted to say goodnight to you guys before we all turn in.”

“But, how do you do that? How can you get through tiny gaps like that?” asked Peni.

“I’m, uh, I’m 2.5-dimensional. I think that’s how you’d put it in your worlds. I look and for all purposes am two-dimensional, but I can still move in 3D space and interact with 3D things. Like this picture, for instance.” Ham leaped up and spun around a sepia-tinted photo from the wall, settling it back into place.

“But that doesn’t explain how you can defy gravity,” said Peni.

“That’s toon physics for you.” Ham pulled a pair of spectacles and a graduation cap out of thin air and donned them. He flipped through a comically thick textbook, laid his finger on a paragraph, and began to read. “‘Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its condition.’ -Paco, 1994.”

“And… you operate by the laws of... toon physics? Even though you’re not in a world with toon physics?” asked Peni.

“Yeah, sure. We operate by the principles of the world that we’re from. I mean, look at Peni. She can summon anime backdrops out of thin air and jump forty feet in the air to land in the cockpit of her robot. And Noir’s still in black-and-white. And Gwen still follows the laws of physics from her universe, which happen to be exactly the same as those here. If there was a spider here from a universe with two extra quarks, he’d use the rules of physics of a universe with two extra quarks.”

Gwen blinked. Ham knew a surprising amount.

“How do you know all of this? I mean, you’re a-”

“A cartoon character, I know,” finished Ham. “I get that a lot. But I’ve been Spider-Ham for 35 years. I know my stuff.”

Gwen made a mental note not to underestimate Ham in the future.

“You, uh, don’t look a day over 35,” she said.

“Yeah that’s another thing. I don’t age. Pretty convenient, if you ask me. Well, good night, folks!” Ham gave a wave, then vanished under the door.

Gwen tried to comprehend everything that had just happened. Ham was really weird. At the same time, he was kind of cool.

“How old are you?” Peni asked after a few moments of silence.

“Uh, take a guess.”

“Fourteen?”

Why did everybody think Gwen was so young?

“Nah, sixteen. How about you?”

“Guess!”

“Uh, you’re like ten?”

“I’m eleven and three quarters.”

Okay, so she was close.

“How many people have you killed?” asked Peni, sounding as chipper as ever.

Gwen blinked. “Uh, one. No, two. Both were accidents.”

“In... two years?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s lame.”

“Why, how about you? And, uh, how long have you been doing this for?”

“Twenty-three people. Over the past five and a half months. And none of them were accidents.”

Peni sounded both completely serious and entirely proud of herself. Best not to dwell on that.

All of a sudden, Gwen burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” asked Peni.

“It’s, well, I was early in getting to this dimension, and Miles made a joke about him being on time and everyone else being late because of relativity, and… never mind. You wouldn’t get it.”

Peni asked, “Could you explain it to me? Maybe then I’d get it.”

“Never mind. It’s a moot point. Go to bed.”

“Aww, come on!”

“Good night!”

Gwen rolled over and faced the wall, ignoring Peni’s pleas. After a couple minutes, she drifted off to sleep.

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