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hermannsthumb · 3 years

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Town council Hermann vs Alien Conspiracy Newt please!!!

THIS WAS FUN!!! inspired both by this tweet and conversations abt a newt/herm AU of that tweet with @k-sci-janitor (who also thought of the funniest sign newt made in this fic, aka the cheekbones one, and what his tats should look like). this is long sorry :/ gets a little spicy towards the end but nothing worse than a high pg13/light M

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The evening of the weekly town council meeting, it pours like nothing else. Which Hermann figures is really quite appropriate. Loathe as he is to soak his trouser legs, trudge through the mud that used to be his front walk, and hold his umbrella for so long his arm aches (for the community center is a mere half-mile walk away that Hermann can't justify substituting with a bus), he can't imagine council meetings happening in any other sort of weather. In fact, they rarely tend to; their dreariness seems to be a necessity, part of the preparation, as if to put everyone in as miserable a mood as possible.

Hermann hates council meetings. He supposes he'd be more sympathetic towards the plights of his constituents—if one can call one's neighbors constituents—if he'd wanted the damned job in the first place. As it is, he feels a bit like he was conned into it. Hermann had been a lowly physics professor at the local community college, passionate about public education and funding for public education and all those proper sorts of things an educator ought to be concerned about, when he suddenly found himself seized with the idea of making a difference. So he ran for a head position on the council. And he won it. Only no one told him that the council deals a lot less with public education and a lot more with noise complaints, cul-de-sac bake sales, and raccoons in dustbins, which makes why he ran completely unopposed all the more obvious.

A fat raindrop explodes against the edge of Hermann's umbrella and splashes his glasses. Hermann grits his teeth and wipes them dry with the cuff of his sweater. Bloody meeting; bloody rain; Hermann just wants to go back home, and fix up a nice pot of herbal tea, and set a blanket in the dryer for ten minutes, and...

"Dr. Gottlieb! Hey, Dr. Gottlieb, wait—!"

A blur in an oversized yellow raincoat hurdles itself at Hermann from the stairs of the community center. Hermann considers pretending he is a different Dr. Gottlieb, one who certainly has no reason to know maniacs in raincoats, or maybe high-tailing it in the other direction. This is the other reason why Hermann loathes council meetings: Newton Geiszler.

The unfortunate thing is that Newton Geiszler was, at one point, a respectable academic type, and in fact one of Hermann's own colleagues at the community college. (Hermann only found this out after the fact—he does not make a habit of intermingling much with the biology department.) And Hermann does mean was. Around a year ago, Geiszler was asked to temporarily step down from his position after he suddenly and unexpectedly went off the deep end. He has not been asked to come back yet. And not without reason. "Dr. Geiszler," Hermann sighs. "I've asked you not to lurk about here like that. It's...unsettling."

"Sorry, man, sorry," Geiszler shouts. He stomps over and makes himself at home under Hermann's umbrella. Hermann's not sure how he's been managing to see anything, let alone Hermann approaching down the sidewalk: his glasses are completely fogged-up and rain-splattered. "Do you mind if—thanks, dude."

Geiszler flips his hood down. He’s short, only coming up to Hermann's nose, with stubble nearly overgrown to a full beard and a mess of wet brown hair. He shakes that hair now, like a dog, soaking Hermann in the process. Hermann growls. "I beg your pardon,” he says.

"Oops,” Geiszler says. “Sorry. Anyway, Dr. Gottlieb, I'm really glad I caught you, there are—there are some things I wanted to tell you about. Before the meeting. They're—hold on." He rummages around in the deep pockets of his raincoat and produces a damp notebook, which he begins to flip through frantically. "It's about—"

"I know what it's about," Hermann says. Geiszler fumbles to push his glasses back up his nose. "In fact, there are some things I need to speak with you about as well."

"You've seen them?" Geiszler says in a hushed tone.

Hermann scowls. "I certainly have.”

They first started cropping up in the forest around the little cabin Geiszler calls home. Then, like dandelions or bamboo, they spread fast and far—to the town commons, in the front lawn of the coffee shop Hermann frequents, in front of his house. Whenever Hermann dashes one down with his cane or hauls one off to a rubbish bin, two more only crop up in its place. It's annoying, frankly. As if Hermann doesn't have to deal with enough already.

3 ALIEN ABDUCTIONS IN ONE WEEK - WHEN IS THE COUNCIL GOING TO DO SOMETHING?, the new one sitting in front of the community center says.

It's better than last week's sign, Hermann supposes. THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE - AND HERMANN GOTTLIEB IS BLIND TO IT.

"You know you need a permit for those, Dr. Geiszler," Hermann says. "Or, at the very least, the council's permission. They're a public nuisance."

"My signs are a public nuisance?" Geiszler shouts. Hermann flinches back. Geiszler may be compact, but if he doesn't have the shrillest voice on the whole damned planet. "Open your eyes, dude! A dozen people went missing last month! The only public nuisance is whatever's coming from—" He bites his lip and jabs his finger at the sky, as if saying anything remotely akin to outer space would suddenly send fleets of UFOs pouring down from above. "And you're just letting them walk right fucking in."

“I thought they were flying in?" Hermann says. He raps Geiszler’s shin with the end of his cane. "Do get out of my way, Dr. Geiszler. The meeting starts in ten minutes, and you're welcome to air all of your grievances then."

Geiszler is silent as Hermann ducks around him and ascends the community center ramp. For a moment, Hermann thinks he may have won this small victory, and then he hears the wet slaps of Geiszler's rain boots against the pavement behind him. "Really funny," Newton says. "Real fucking funny, dude. I bet it'll be just as funny when they come for you next!"

Hermann unlocks the door. Geiszler waves a stack of black-and-white polaroids beneath his nose. "I took these last week," Geiszler says, and begins flipping through them as frantically as he had his notepad. Each one is blurry and indistinct, like Geiszler snapped them through a gauzy curtain with shaking hands. Hermann's not sure what he's meant to be looking at. "The day that waitress went missing from the bus stop. And two nights after that—your neighbor, the one who went outside to let his cat in and never came b—"

"Enough," Hermann says. He pushes the polaroids away, knocking two to the ground, and Geiszler scrambles to pick them up before they're ruined. "Dr. Geiszler, it is undoubtedly tragic that these people have—er—vanished, as they have, but continuously insisting extraterrestrials had something to do with it, and furthermore—" Geiszler opens his mouth as if to argue, but Hermann raises his voice and pushes on. "—furthermore, that I'm meant to do something about it, is completely—well, it's unhinged, frankly. I'm not law enforcement. Or the mayor. Or bloody—NASA. What do you want from me?"

Geiszler stares at him for a long time. He pockets his photographs. "They're gonna come for you," he says, ominously. "Just like they did for me."

The meeting goes off as expected, which is to say, badly. Hermann gets shouted at by nearly everyone in town, many of whom blame Hermann and his presumed negligence for the disappearances over the past year as well (blessedly, they don't also blame aliens), though many more of them blame him for more trivial things such as the broken water fountain in the commons or the library's slow wireless internet. Hermann can't decide which is worse.

As it is, when the clock strikes eight, he's more than ready to go home. "Right," he announces, standing up and making a show of tidying his meeting notes. They're already tidy: Hermann's notes are always meticulous. He continues—rather quickly, in case someone gets bold and attempts to interrupt him, "Thank you all very much for such a, er, productive meeting. I'll make sure to pass along everything you've said to the appropriate people. If there's nothing else..."

Geiszler jumps to his feet. A few people groan; Hermann has a feeling they're just about as sick of him as Hermann is. "Um, yeah, actually, I want to add something."

"No," Hermann says. “Dr. Geiszler, please, we can talk—”

"When we were outside," Geiszler continues anyway, raising his voice, "you asked me what I wanted you to do. Well, I just want you to listen to me! That's all! I have so much proof—so much I can show you—and you won't even—!"

"Proof?" Hermann says. "Your rubbish photographs?”

"It's not just the photographs! It's other stuff, too! Like—" Geiszler lets out a long, angry huff of air, and actually balls his fists up at his sides. Hermann has never seen him so incensed, not even when he accused Hermann of being an alien himself during a council meeting last summer. "Look, just come to my house and I'll fuckin' show you. Or are you that afraid of being—I don’t know, proven wrong?"

Part of Hermann is convinced that if he follows Geiszler out to his isolated cabin in the middle of the woods, it'll be the last thing he ever does. At the very least, he certainly has no desire to spend more time with Geiszler than he's already forced to. Yet—on the other hand—Hermann does not appreciate the challenge, nor does he appreciate being made to look like a fool by the man who chairs the local paranormal society. "Fine," he snaps, and Geiszler startles in obvious surprise. "Fine, you wretched little man. I’ll let you show me whatever proof you think you may have, so long as you take every single one of those signs down."

"Um," Geiszler squeaks. He clears his throat. "D—deal?"

Hermann seizes his cane and thrusts his chair back under his table roughly. "Well?" he says to the rest of the hall, none of whom have budged since Geiszler began shouting his head off. He scowls at the lot of them. "The meeting is over. You can leave."

It's Hermann's job to shut down the building each week, so he waits for the very last stragglers to toss out their paper water cups, shrug on their raincoats, and file outside before switching off the lights and locking up. He finds Geiszler lurking by a rather worse-for-wear green VW Beetle at the curb, the hood of his raincoat flipped back up over his hair. Hermann desperately hopes that the car isn't Geiszler’s. He is Hermann’s ride home tonight, after all. "I took the signs down," Geiszler says in a rush. "All of the ones around here, anyway. I'll have to do the rest tomorrow." He jerks his thumb at the backseat of the Beetle, where Hermann sees a haphazard pile of some of the 3 ALIEN ABDUCTIONS signs. His heart sinks. The X-Files bumper stickers should've been a dead giveaway, really.

"Thank you," Hermann sighs. "Well, let's get this over with."

"The heat is busted, so you might wanna leave your coat on," Geiszler says apologetically when Hermann manages to squish himself into the passenger's seat. The floor is a sea of empty Dunkin' Donuts cups, stacks of pulp science (or, if Hermann were to be less kind, pseudoscientific) magazines spanning back at least half a decade, and a pin-littered linen tote bag filled to the brim with boxed Annie's macaroni and cheese.

"Uh, sorry," Geiszler says. "I had to run some errands earlier. You can just—toss that in the back. Yeah."

The ride is short but bumpy, and though the removal of Geiszler's shopping bag offers Hermann more leg room, there is nothing that can make up for his tragically awful driving and his tragically awful CD collection. Hermann almost bolts from the car when they finally pull up at Geiszler's ivy-shrouded cabin, so relieved to have made it there in one piece that he's all but forgotten that he must now spend the rest of the evening with Geiszler, too. He remembers soon enough: another duo of aggressive signs have been pounded into Geiszler's mossy front path, TURN BACK NOW - ALIEN ABDUCTION ZONE, and a rather good sketch of Hermann beneath WHAT ARE THOSE CHEEKBONES HIDING? "That one's from the summer," Geiszler says sheepishly, kicking down the latter with the toe of his boot. "I keep forgetting to take it down. I don't still think you're an alien, by the way."

"Er, thank you," Hermann says. "I suppose?"

"They wouldn't be that obvious," Geiszler says, emphasizing the they with a meaningful glance up at the night sky.

"Of course not," Hermann says.

He's not quite sure what he expected Geiszler's house to look like. Some sort of—conspiracy nutter's den, perhaps, with aluminum foil hats and deconstructed radios and elaborate photoboards full of thumbtacks and red string. Or the interior of his car on a larger scale, with empty takeout containers and crumpled up papers on every surface. He's...sort of right. There's a noticeable lack of tinhats, but there are plenty of (modestly-sized) corkboards on the walls and multiple coffee cups peeking out of a recycling bin. The rest is merely precisely what Hermann would expect from an academic in his 30s: books, and mis-matching furniture, and a sink of dishes begging to be washed. It's...a bit disappointing, frankly. Though Hermann is rather impressed with the sleek telescope angled in front of the back slider door. Impressed, and envious. It's a very nice model.

"Make yourself at home," Geiszler says, unzipping his voluminous raincoat and tossing it, along with Hermann's, over the back of a worn armchair. He's wearing a pair of torn skinny jeans and a band t-shirt that reveals his heavily tattooed, and deceptively shapely, arms. Hermann tears his eyes away and forces himself to sit down at one end of Geiszler's couch. "I'm gonna make us some coffee. Do you want any sugar or non-dairy creamer?"

"No, thank you," Hermann says. "I don't drink coffee this late. It'll keep me up all night."

"Well, I hope so, that's kinda the plan,” Geiszler says. He rolls his eyes. “The aliens never come before at least midnight. Soy milk or almond milk?"

Hermann thinks, briefly and longingly, of his nice warm bed, the blanket he intended to toss in the dryer, and the herbal tea he won't be having after all. "Almond milk?" he hazards.

Geiszler stares at him in evident disgust. "Dude, I was kidding. You know how bad that shit is for the environment? It takes, like, a fuckin' thousand gallons of water or something like that for one carton of almond milk. It's insane. I mean, I guess it's still less water than what dairy needs, but there are plenty of better options."

"Oh," Hermann says. Hermann drinks skim milk. "I'm sorry. Er. Soy milk?"

As Geiszler fixes them mugs, Hermann begins to poke around some papers scattered across the coffee table. One is a list of names and dates, seemingly random, Hermann thinks, until he recognizes (scrawled in purple ink at the very bottom of the page) that of the gentleman who disappeared from his back porch just down Hermann's street. When he recognizes another—a teenager who worked as a barista at Hermann’s favorite coffee shop—he realizes it must be everyone who's vanished from town in the past year. Another paper has the same dates repeated, though not alongside any names—rather, bizarre little phrases like circling lights and that sound again. "You found my notes," Geiszler says cryptically, and then thrusts a mug out to Hermann.

Hermann takes the mug. A logo on the side tells Hermann it was from some academic conference in California ten years ago. "What are they supposed to mean?" he says.

Geiszler snorts. "Uh, I thought it was kind of obvious. Look—" He sits next to Hermann, far too close, and points at the column of numbers on the first page. "These are the dates when people have been reported missing," he says, and then scans his finger over to the second page, "and these are the dates when I've observed extraterrestrial—or at least, unexplainable—activity overhead. See how they match up almost perfectly?

"Mm," Hermann says. He does not. "So—if I am to understand you correctly—you believe that a, ah," he takes the page back from Geiszler, "a 'weird swoopy sound' from overhead had something to do with that poor young woman disappearing from a bus stop last week?”

"It wasn't just a weird noise!" Geiszler exclaims. "I showed you the pictures. I ran outside when I heard it, and thank fuck I had my camera, because I caught those lights just as they were leaving. And then what do I find out the next morning? There was another abduction, at almost the exact same time I saw the lights!"

"Ten miles from here," Hermann reminds him. "It would've had to have been a bloody fast ship."

"Yeah, no shit, Hermann," Geiszler says. "They're, like, fucking—mega-advanced lifeforms. They probably have the tech to vaporize the entire Earth if they wanted. Of course it was a fast ship.”

Geiszler is still sitting awfully close to Hermann. He runs very warm, unlike Hermann, warm enough to make Hermann warm too—like a scruffy, tattooed, freckled furnace. Yes, freckled, for Geiszler has the lightest dusting of freckles across his round chipmunk-like cheeks that Hermann finds inexplicably charming. He wonders if Geiszler would notice him loosen his collar a bit, perhaps take off his sweater. He really is getting quite warm. "So, I was saying," Geiszler continues, and though he speaks almost directly into Hermann's ear, he sounds as if he's a mile away from him. "Waitress at bus stop—weird lights over my cabin—waitress gone from bus stop. The proof is, like, undeniable!"

"Indeed," Hermann says.

He undoes the top button of his collar. He hasn't touched his coffee yet—he wonders if Geiszler even cares. The tattoo on Geiszler’s bicep, some sort of space tentacle monster, stares back at Hermann. "I'm telling you, man," Geiszler says, "this is no joke. They're taking people, maybe even for good."

They're gonna come for you, just like they did for me. When Geiszler began spouting nonsense about aliens last year, he was not booted from the biology department right away. Mostly everyone at the college, Hermann knows, tolerated his eccentricities on account of his admittedly brilliant mind and popularity among the students. The final straw came when Geiszler's extraterrestrial delusions (for what else could they be?) reached a new level: he showed up to campus in his pajamas one morning, raving that the aliens were not only zooming about over his house, but had actually abducted him the previous evening. "You seemed to fare alright, though, didn't you?" Hermann says. "When you were—ah—taken? They even dropped you back off in time for work. Quite courteous, I should think."

"That's—" Geiszler begins to shake his leg up and down, nervous energy radiating up his body and through Hermann's. He spills some of his coffee on the carpet. "That was—that was dumb. I got lucky. I think I was one of the first ones, you know? Because the disappearances didn't really get bad until, like, a month after that? I was in bed—and, and it wasn't like how it is in movies, I wasn't sucked up in a giant beam of light or anything like that, one minute I was there and then the next I wasn't, I was somewhere...else. And—uh. I don't really remember what they looked like. I tried to—sketch them out, but it was like trying to remember a dream, all the specific details about them just faded once it was over. But, um." He rubs the back of his neck, and Hermann is surprised to see him blushing. "Well, if I'm being honest, I think I kinda freaked them out."

Hermann can't help but snort. "You what?"

"I'm serious!" Geiszler shrieks. "I freaked them out. I was just really excited about it all. Like, dude, come on, I was abducted by aliens. How fucking cool is that? I just kept asking a bunch of questions, like, are you gonna probe me? are you gonna take me back to Mars or Jupiter or, like, I don't know, fucking Gallifrey? do you even understand what I'm saying, how do you communicate? and then the next thing I knew, I was landing on my ass in the school parking lot. They must've been observing me like I was observing them, like, they maybe knew I worked there? Anyway—" He shakes his head. "I tell you what, I'm real glad I decided to not just wear boxers like usual to bed that night. That would've been really embarrassing."

Bombarded with the sudden mental image of what Geiszler usually looks like in bed, Hermann (feeling rather warm again) tugs at his collar and clears his throat. He has certainly seen more than enough for the night, and if his mind is straying to something as prosaic as what does Dr. Geiszler look like half-naked?, it likely means it’s time for bed. "Er, right. Dr. Geiszler—"

"Just call me Newt, man," Geiszler says.

"Newton," Hermann concedes. It gives him a private little thrill. No one calls Newton Newton; it’s always either Newt or Dr. Geiszler. "Newton,” he says again, “this has been a very—illuminating—evening, but it's getting rather late, and I think you ought to drive me home before—"

And then Newton begins to take off his shirt.

Yes, a small part of Hermann's brain whispers traitorously, yes, yes, yes, even as Hermann recoils and stammers out, "Newton, what—?!"

"Oh, calm down, I'm not coming onto you," Newton says. He drops his t-shirt on the floor and jabs a thumb at his chest. His bare chest. "See, look. Proof."

Hermann's not sure what he's meant to be looking at. The giant Godzilla tattooed over Newton's pectorals? The flying saucer tattooed above Newton’s belly button? Newton’s nipple piercings? Hermann thinks he understands what an overheating computer feels like, an influx of too much information with processors unequipped to handle it. "I," he says. Newton’s belly button is not pierced. Hermann’s not sure why he thought it would be.

"Look at my chest, dude!" Newton says, tapping his skin insistently.

It takes Hermann a great deal of effort to pull his eyes away from the nipple piercings. In the dead center of Newton's chest, spaced perfectly between his pectorals and right over the nostrils of Godzilla, is a strange, almost luminescent glyph of a language Hermann can't begin to recognize. It's raised from Newton's skin, more like a brand than a tattoo. And...well, when Hermann says luminescent, he really means it. The squiggle seems to glow blue. "This was on me the next morning," Newton says. "I think they marked me. Like you'd tag a lab rat?”

Hermann can't help himself: he reaches out and touches the mark. "Strange," he murmurs. Compared to the heat of Newton’s body, the glyph is quite cool. Frigid, in fact, like metal, and yet as soft as the rest of his skin.

He's close enough to Newton to hear the hitch in his breath when they make contact, and as he traces his fingertips over the glyph, he can feel Newton's heart pounding beneath them. Strange, indeed; Newton has been such a thorn in his side for so many months, and yet all Hermann wants to do now is touch even more of him. He trails his hand lower, down to the flying saucer on Newton's soft abdomen. Newton inhales sharply. "Um," he says. "Should—should I put my shirt back on?"

"Do you want to?" Hermann says.

"Not really," Newton says.

He stares at Hermann, eyebrows knit together behind his glasses, like he can't seem to make sense of him. His confusion is very much warranted; Hermann can’t seem to make sense of himself right now, either. Then, to Hermann's supreme annoyance, the pieces seem to click into place in Newton's mind, and he grins. "Oh, duh," he says. "No wonder. You wanna fuck me, don't you? That’s why you’re so obsessed with me.”

That would certainly explain the strange warm feeling that comes over Hermann sometimes when he thinks about Newton in the dead of night that he has, up until this very moment, attributed to bouts of temporary insanity and/or a latent murderous desire. Nothing so dramatic as all that, then—just regular human biology. Urgh. How disgusting. And for Newton, of all people. “Obsessed with you?” Hermann sniffs, desperate to retain some element of propriety even while he begins to tug at Newton’s button fly. “Newton, you have spent thousands of dollars on yard signs just to invite me over for a coffee.”

“Uh, yeah, and it worked,” Newton says.

He curls his fingers in the front of Hermann's sweater, thumbing over one of the buttons.

“Even when I thought you were an alien,” Newton says, “I still kiiiiinda wanted to fuck you.”

Delusional or not, Newton looks terrifically good with a beard.

"Wait," Hermann gasps some time later. "Newton, stop a moment—"

Newton pulls away from him, frowning. He pushes his glasses back up on his nose. "What is it?" he says. "Did I hurt—?"

But Hermann pats at his shoulder frantically, pointing beyond him at the back slider and the dark of the forest beyond that. Newton cranes his neck around. "Only I'm sure I saw something. Lights, or…” Hermann feels a small twinge of embarrassment. The night is dead silent, and dead still. “Well, now I'm not sure."

“You probably imagined it," Newton says. He slips back down to press a kiss at Hermann's jaw. “It’s too early to be them.”

Not even ten yet. Newton kisses behind Hermann’s ear. It feels very nice. "Yes," Hermann agrees slowly, his eyelids flickering shut. He smooths his hand up and down Newton’s back. "Yes, I suppose you're right." Newton’s stories must have left him on edge. Which is of course ridiculous, because they’re all a load of rubbish—there may be extraterrestrials somewhere out there in the great wide universe, but they’re certainly not swooping down and plucking up hapless test subjects from Earth, let alone their small town, every other day. Hermann has much more important things to concern himself with right now, like how it feels when he threads his fingers in the soft strands of Newton’s hair, or the sound Newton makes when Hermann digs his nails into his skin, or how wonderful kissing Newton is...

And, unobserved by both of them, the three lights hovering above Newton's cabin blink away as quickly as they'd come.

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag

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benevolentbirdgal · 4 years

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“Thirteen″ Tips for Writing About Synagogues / Jewish Writing Advice / Advice for Visiting Synagogues

So your story includes a Jew (or two) and you’ve a got a scene in a synagogue. Maybe there’s a bar mitzvah, maybe your gentile protagonist is visiting their partner’s synagogue. Maybe there’s a wedding or a community meeting being held there. For whatever reason, you want a scene in a shul. I’m here as your friendly (virtual) neighborhood Jewish professional to help you not sound like a gentile who thinks a synagogue is just a church with a Star of David instead of a cross.

Quick note: The are lots of synagogues around the world, with different specific cultural, local, and denominational practices. The Jewish community is made up of roughly 14 million people worldwide with all sorts of backgrounds, practices, life circumstances, and beliefs. I’m just one American Jew, but I’ve had exposure to Jewishness in many forms after living in 3.5 states (at several different population densities/layouts), attending Jewish day school and youth groups, doing Jewish college stuff, and landing a job at a Jewish non-profit. I’m speaking specifically in an American or Americanish context, though some of this will apply elsewhere as well. I’m also writing from the view of Before Times when gatherings and food and human contact was okay.

Bear in mind as well, in this discussion, the sliding scale of traditional observance to secular/liberal observance in modern denominations: Ultraorthodox (strict tradition), Modern Orthodox (Jewish law matters but we live in a modern world), Conservative (no relation to conservative politics, brands itself middle ground Judaism), Reconstructionist (start with Jewish law and then drop/add bits to choose your own adventure), and Reform (true build your own adventure, start at basically zero and incorporate only as you actively choose).

Synagogue = shul = temple. Mikvah (ritual bath) is its own thing and usually not attached to the shul. Jewish cemeteries are also typically nowhere near the shul, because dead bodies are considered impure.

A Bar/Bat/Bnai Mitzvah is the Jewish coming of age ceremony. Bar (“son”) for boys at 13+, Bat (“daughter”) at 12+, and Bnai (“children”) for multiples (i.e. twins/triplets/siblings) or non-binary kids (although the use of the phrase “Bnai Mitzvah” this way is pretty new). 12/13 is the minimum, 12-14 the norm but very Reform will sometimes allow 11 and anybody above 12/13 can have theirs. Probably a dedicated post for another time. Generally, however, the following will happen: the kid will lead some parts of services, read from and/or carry the Torah, and make a couple of speeches.

Attire: think Sunday Best (in this case Saturday), not come as you are. Even at very liberal reconstructionist/reform synagogues you wouldn’t show up in jeans and a t-shirt or work overalls. Unless they are seriously disconnected from their culture, your Jewish character is not coming to Saturday morning services in sneakers and jeans (their gentile guest, however, might come too casual and that’d be awkward). 1a. The more traditional the denomination, the more modest the attire. Outside of orthodoxy woman may wear pants, but dresses/skirts are more common. Tights for anything above knee common for Conservative/Reform/Recon, common for even below knee for orthodox shuls. Men will typically be wearing suits or close to it, except in very Reform spaces. 1b. Really, think business casual or nice dinner is the level of dressiness here for regular services. Some minor holidays or smaller events more casual is fine. Social events and classes casual is fine too. 1c. Even in reform synagogues, modesty is a thing. Get to the knee or close to it. No shoulders (this an obsession in many Jewish religious spaces for whatever reason), midriffs, or excessive cleavage (as I imagine to be the norm in most houses of worship).

Gendered clothing: 3a. Men and boys wear kippahs (alt kippot, yarmulkes) in synagogues, regardless of whether they’re Jewish or not out of respect to the space. Outside of Jewish spaces it’s saying “I’m a Jew” but inside of Jewish spaces it’s saying “I’m a Jew or a gentile dude who respects the Jewish space.” Outside of very Reform shuls, it’s a major faux pass to be a dude not wearing one. 3b. There are little buckets of loaner kippahs if you don’t bring your own and commemorative kippahs are given away at events (bar mitzvah, weddings). Your Jewish dude character not bringing or grabbing one is basically shouting “I’m new here.” 3c. Women are permitted to wear kippahs, but the adoption of a the traditionally masculine accessory will likely be interpreted by other Jews as LGBTQ+ presentation, intense feminism, and/or intense but nontraditional devoutness. Nobody will clutch their pearls (outside of ultraorthodoxy) but your character is sending a message. 3d. Tefillin are leather boxes and wrappings with prayers inside them that some Jewish men wrap around their arms (no under bar mitzvah or gentiles). Like with the kippah, a woman doing this is sending a message of feminism and/or nontraditional religious fervor. 3e. Additionally, prayer shawls, known as tallit, are encouraged/lightly expected of Jewish males (over 13) but not as much as Kippahs are. It is more common to have a personal set of tallit than tefillin. Blue and white is traditional, but they come in all sorts of fun colors and patterns now. Mine is purple and pink. It is much more common for women to have tallit and carries much fewer implications about their relationship to Judaism than wearing a kippah does. 3f. Married woman usually cover their hair in synagogues. Orthodox women will have wigs or full hair covers, but most Jewish woman will put a token scarf or doily on their head in the synagogue that doesn’t actually cover their hair. The shul will also have a doily loaner bucket.

Jewish services are long (like 3-4 hours on a Saturday morning), but most people don’t get there until about the 1-1.5 hour mark. Your disconnected Jewish character or their gentile partner might not know that though.

Although an active and traditional synagogue will have brief prayers three times every day, Torah services thrice a week, holiday programming, and weekly Friday night and Saturday morning services, the latter is the thing your Jewish character is most likely attending on the reg. A typical Saturday morning service will start with Shacharit (morning prayers) at 8:30-9, your genre savvy not-rabbi not-Bnai mitzvah kid Jewish character will get there around 9:30-10:15. 10:15-10:30 is the Torah service, which is followed by additional prayers. Depending on the day of the Jewish year (holidays, first day of new month, special shabbats), they’ll be done by 12:30 or 1 p.m. Usually. After that is the oneg, a communal meal. Onegs start with wine and challah, and commence with a full meal. No waiting 4-8 hours to have a covered-dish supper after services. The oneg, outside of very, very, very Reform spaces will be kosher meat or kosher dairy.

To conduct certain prayers (including the mourner’s prayers and the Torah service) you need a Minyan, which at least 10 Jewish “adults” must be present, defined as post Bar/Bat/Bnai Mitzvah. In Conservative/Reform/Recon, men and women are counted equally. In Ultraorthodox women are not counted. In Modern Orthodox it depends on the congregation, and some congregations will hold women’s-only services as well with at least ten “adult” Jewish women present.

In Conservative and Orthodox shuls, very little English is used outside of speeches and sermons. Prayers are in Hebrew, which many Jews can read the script of but not understand. Transliterations are also a thing. In Reform synagogues, there’s heavy reliance on the lingua franca (usually English in American congregations). Reconstructionist really varies, but is generally more Hebrew-based than Reform.

We’re a very inquisitive people. If your character is new to the synagogue, there will be lots of questions at the post-services oneg (meal, typically brunch/lunch). Are you new in town? Have you been here before? Where did you come from? Are you related to my friend from there? How was parking? Do you know my cousin? Are you single? What is your mother’s name? What do you think of the oneg - was there enough cream cheese? What summer camp did you go to? Can you read Hebrew? Have you joined? A disconnected Jew or gentile might find it overwhelming, but many connected Jews who are used to it would be like “home sweet chaos” because it’s OUR chaos.

In Orthodox synagogues, men and women have separate seating sections. There may be a balcony or back section, or there may be a divider known as a mechitzah in the middle. Children under 12/13 are permitted on either side, but over 12/13 folks have to stay one section or the other. Yes, this is a problem/challenge for trans and nonbinary Jews. Mechitzahs are not a thing outside of orthodoxy. Some older Conservative synagogues will have women’s sections, but no longer expect or enforce this arrangement.

Money. Is. Not. Handled. On. Shabbat. Or. Holidays. Especially. Not. In. The. Synagogue. Seriously, nothing says “goy writing Jews” more than a collection plate in shul. No money plate, no checks being passed around, even over calls for money (as opposed to just talking about all the great stuff they do and upcoming projects) are tacky and forbidden on Shabbat. Synagogues rely on donations and dues, and will solicit from members, but don’t outright request money on holidays and Shabbat.

Outside of Reform and very nontraditional Conservative spaces, no instruments on Shabbat or holidays. No clapping either. Same goes for phones, cameras, and other electronics outside of microphones (which aren’t permitted in Orthodox services either). 11a. In the now-times an increasing number of shuls have set up cameras ahead of time pre-programmed to record, so they don’t have to actively “make fire” which is “work” (this is the relevant commandment/mitzvah) on Shabbat, so services can be live-streamed. 11b. After someone has completed an honor (reading from the Torah, carrying the Torah, opening the ark, etc), the appropriate response is a handshake after and the words “Yasher Koach” (again, Before-Times).

Jewish services involve a lot of movement. Get up, sit down. Look behind you, look in front of you. Twist left, twist right. A disconnected Jew or gentile visitor would be best off just trying to follow along with what an exchange student we had once termed “Jewish choreography.” Some prayers are standing prayers (if able), some are sitting prayers. It’s just how it is, although a handful of prayers have variations on who stands.

#jumlbr #jewblr #jewish #jewish writing help #jewish writing #jewish characters #writing jewish characters #jewish representation #writing advice #writeblr #writing jewish spaces #how to write synagogues #another long one sorry not sorry

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nyaagolor · 3 years

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may we please get the mirror world headcanons?

heck yes u may

Most of it will be under the cut bc I talk a lot

I like to think the Mirror World is a reflection of the regular world (I call it Prime World for convenience's sake), and by reflection I mean opposite. It's not opposite in a "good v evil" way, just in the sense that a mirror world counterpart is the inverse of their prime world self, for better or for worse. For example, Noddies in Prime World sleep for most of their lives, while Mirror Noddies barely ever sleep and are constantly alert. Instead of a Sleep Ability, they give Panic, aka the Kirby equivalent of slurping down 15 espresso shots in a row. The mirror world counterparts are no better or worse than the prime world, just different!

Headcanons for all the mirror world counterparts of the Star Allies (or at least the ones I've thought abt) are under the cut :3c

Shadow Kirby (Skirby): Where Prime Kirby is reckless, bold, and overconfident, Skirby is reserved, cautious, and kinda pessimistic. They're no weaker or meaner than Prime Kirby, but seem a bit shy and non-confrontational because they always want to scope out the scene before they launch into anything. Some might call it cowardly, but Skirby thinks it's pragmatic. Much like prime Kirby, though, he's the hero of Popstar and is usually the planet's last defense against whatever eldritch horror comes their way. He deserves a break, though, since unlike Prime Kirby he's not surrounded by friends to help him out

Shadow Dedede (SDDD): He started off as a good king, always being diligent, professional, and responsible in contrast to Prime DDD's self-serving, goofy ways. He wanted what was best for the mirror world, but life didn’t make it easy. The mirror dees, rather than the loyal helpers we know from the prime world, were backstabbing jerks who were loyal to no one but themselves. SDDD tried so hard to be a good king, but had no one to help, no one to pull him out of a slump, so he just slipped through the cracks and got worse. Bitterness and anger consumed him until he started looking out for himself and himself only. He became a tyrant, turning into an iron-fisted, merciless ruler whose laws were enforced through violence. DDD got better with the help of his friends, but SDDD got much, MUCH worse as a result of his isolation and loneliness. Also he has a battle axe instead of a hammer bc I think it's cool

Dark Meta Knight (DMK): He's basically the antithesis of a knight: he's willing to work for anyone no matter how rotten they are; he always plans on backstabbing them later, cares about no one but himself, never plays fair, and is a lazy, rude jerk. He likes spicy foods instead of sweets, challenges children to duels WITHOUT offering them a sword first, and is deathly afraid of heights, despite having wings. He was in the process of creating a land-razing tank called the Halberd, but his crew betrayed him and cut up his wings and mask so now he isolates himself out of anger and fear. After being with the Star Allies, he's made some friends and realized the value of teamwork-- also he likes teaching Adeleine swears. With Dark Mind gone and the Mirror World still a bit of a dump, DMK would much rather hang out in the prime world and get on Meta Knight's nerves. He tries his best to protect the two (2) people in the mirror world he does tolerate, though (it's skirby and sddd).

Mirror Bandee: Hates SDDD with a passion. In fact, he's attempted to assassinate the king at least 26 times, but fails both because SDDD is way smarter than him and also Mirror Bandee is a sniveling coward who runs at the first sign of danger. His repeated failures have made him more of a scaredy cat, so no one takes him seriously anymore. He has a knife and ties his bandana around his "mouth" like a scarf, but it doesn't help to make him more intimidating. His repeated attempts to kill the king (and more recently Skirby and DMK, who hang out with SDDD) have become a constant in their lives and weirdly enough they don't mind his company.

Mirror Marx: I always assumed that Prime Marx was a noddy with Mirror instead of sleep. Well Mirror Marx is the opposite-- instead of having Panic like the regular hyperactive Mirror Noddies, he has sleep. He didn't show up for the events of Amazing Mirror bc he was snoozin. Because of this, he never got the Nova's powers, never tricked skirby, and never did anything evil. In fact, unlike Prime Marx, Mirror Marx cares too much about everyone's feelings, is always kind, and doesn't have a mean bone in his body. He's the glue holding the mirror world together bc not even the worst of villains want to hurt him. He's just so darn CUTE

Mirror Animal Friends: Imagine the animal friends. Give them angry expressions and sunglasses. Now make them part of a gang. Yeah that's it. The Animals are no friend of skirby's and would sooner maul the poor kid than ever lend him a paw (or flipper or wing). The forest bows to their whims and they rule it like your typical mafia boss. They're jerks.

Mirror Daroach: See these posts.

Dark Taranza: Hoo BOY he's bad. He's real bad. He rules over Mirror Floralia (Sporalia?) which is underground and filled with nasty creepy crawlies. He hates getting his hands dirty and will do anything it takes to get more power and luxury so long as he doesn't have to put himself in danger. He only cares about one thing, and that's himself. What about Queen Sectonia, you ask? She was the original queen of Mirror Floralia, but Dark Taranza mind-controlled her into his puppet to do his bidding. When the people finally snapped and declared war on the tyrannical queen, it was her they shattered, being none the wiser that Dark Taranza was the one pulling the strings. He still has a box of her shards in his castle, just in case he needs a new puppet to play with. He loves jewels and machines, all things inorganic. The imperfections of flowers? Not his style.

Mirror Magolor: Quick tangent here: Mirror Lor Starcutter, rather than being a ship to BRING people to paradise, is a sort of pocket paradise, a little virtual reality magic... thing. It can also be easily modified to only open from the outside. That's important for later. Anyway, Mirror Magolor is brutally honest, but also rude, unfriendly, impulsive, and incredibly violent. He hates machines and will start punching a lamppost if he accidentally walks into it. Scrappy little dude. He would actually rather claw his ears off than be friends with another living being. He just likes brawling and destroying ancient artifacts and that's it. Well one day he tells the mirror crew he wants to go get this thing called the Master Crown so he can destroy it. SDDD, Skirby, Mirror Bandee and DMK realize hey, that'd be nice for us to have, let's join him and then betray him at the last minute. As soon as they get there, though, the crown ends up choosing Mirror Mags as a host before anyone can do anything. Oops! The others manage to shatter him... but then the crown pulls his shards back together and attacks them again. Realizing he's both totally lost it and also immortal, the others lock Mirror Mags inside the Lor as the crown erodes the last of his humanity. Consumed by blind rage and the crown's power, Mirror Magolor just lashes out at anything that moves, biting and clawing at whatever he can reach like a feral cat. There's like a 80% chance he has rabies.

Sorry to Susie, Gooey, Adeleine, and all the non-Star Allies crew, I haven't thought abt them yet

#THANK U FOR THE ASK #i love sharing headcanons #kirby #dark meta knight #shadow dedede #shadow kirby #dark taranza #mirror world #amazing mirror #mirror marx #mirror magolor #mirror daroach #mirror animal friends #Headcanon #mod vex

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imagining-in-the-margins · 5 years

Text

Here to Misbehave (Pt. 5 | S.R.)

Summary: Reader (accidentally) blows off a text from Spencer for another guy. Later, Spencer takes her for a second date. A/N: By the way, when you get to the adorable dance scene, the two songs that inspired me most were “Stardust” by Lyambiko and “We Might as Well Dance” by Madeleine Peyroux (Try not to read into the lyrics, I dare you). Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader Category: Smut (NSFW 18+) Content Warning: Unprotected sex, dirty talk, jealousy, degradation, penetrative sex Word Count: 10k

MASTERLIST | Series Masterlist

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I had never envisioned that my life would end up quite like this. That wasn't to say that it was disappointing or regrettable, although in that moment it felt like I had miscalculated a number of things. There was no other way to describe a Saturday night spent laying on the couch, staring at the ceiling of my friend's apartment as if I could manipulate myself into believing it was Spencer's.

It wasn't anyone's fault that it couldn't be his, instead. The stupid, gorgeous bastard wasn't ignoring me; he was just out of town for the weekend.

Truthfully, I should have been a little more considerate. It wasn't his fault he had to work. But I also couldn't help but be disappointed that he was always working. I hadn't seen him in almost two weeks and it was killing me. The last time I'd seen him was the morning after our first 'date,' and it was a brief enough interaction that I had already run out of ways to overthink it.

Spencer had gotten a restful night of sleep that night. Despite his little impromptu confession, he slept as though he'd never been more peaceful in his life. I had not. I'd had the pleasure of staying up for hours, playing his words through my head on loop and trying to figure out what the fuck had happened.

It didn't amount to anything though. The morning came, and he had long forgotten the words half mumbled through a sleepy daze. I'd told him that he had been mumbling in his sleep, and he asked me if he'd said anything embarrassing. I told him no. He hadn't pressed any further, simply stating that he must've been dreaming.

I almost thought it had been a challenge; a way to test if I'd gotten too close. But then I realized that I was probably just an idiot, and I was wanting it to mean more than it actually did.

So much for having run out of ways to overthink it.

Regardless, his aloofness had returned my heart to the broken, hurting mess it had been before he uttered the words that forever altered my universe.

That wasn't his fault, either. I was the one who'd set myself up for failure by ever imagining that we could be something more. I'd known he wasn't the most emotionally available suitor since the moment I met him. At least, not for me. I'd never actually seen him anyone else.

I didn't really want to think about that, though. I really didn't want to think about that.

"Hey, get your lazy ass up so I can sit down."

The order drew me from my reverie — rather unpleasantly, might I add. Because when I turned to face my friend standing in front of me, I came face to face with his crotch.

"Dude, I don't want any of that in my face," I laughed to the unfortunately familiar sight. "Back up before I punch you in the dick."

Somewhat surprisingly, he obeyed. He took a step back and waited patiently for me to sit up and scoot over to give him room beside me on the couch. Completely unsuprisingly, however, he did not take advantage of any of the space available. He chose to sit close enough to touch me.

"Some women would do anything to have that privilege," he lied through his teeth.

"Who are these women? And how can I help them avoid this tragic fate?"

He smiled back, having already grown used to me rebuffing all of his advances years before. We had known each other for what felt like forever, but he still tried every chance he'd gotten. That moment was no exception, and it took him very little time to stretch his arm behind me on the couch. I leaned forward, glancing back at the arm that I would continue to avoid despite his best efforts.

I narrowed my eyes in a challenge when he did nothing to remedy the situation. He did not take the humble way out, so my only other option was to do the humbling for him.

"There are three whole couches in this room and you pick the seat directly next to me?"

"You're warm and it's 50 degrees in here," he joked while lifting his other hand to poke me on the nose.

I recoiled in disgust, grabbing the pillow beside me and hitting him in the face with it as hard as humanly possible.

"Then turn up the heat or grab a blanket, jackass," I grumbled, "I'm not giving you my precious body heat."

Once again, he conceded immediately. He held his hands in defeat and scooted just a few inches further away from me. I watched him for a second until he got far enough away, and then returned my attention to my phone, which I had been religiously checking for any news about the vastly more interesting man in my life.

"What are you looking at?"

"My friend. He's supposed to have landed a couple hours ago..."

Seeing that I had no new messages, though, I slumped over onto myself and rested my elbow on my knee. Continuing to ignore the boy trying to get my attention, I favored the one that was possibly ignoring me and endlessly scrolled through our previous conversations.

"Is that the cop? Your boyfriend?" he teased.

"He's not a cop," I corrected with a roll of the eyes.

Although not keen about the thought of the two of them meeting, I did wonder what kind of rant Spencer would've gone into to describe the different types of law enforcement agents. He would learn so much about government job descriptions. But that wasn't the part of the sentence that my friend had stressed, and I felt compelled to answer.

Didn't mean I had to be loud or excited about it, though.

"And he's not my boyfriend," I mumbled into my palm. I hated how pathetic it felt; how forlorn I could be over a man not giving me enough attention. He was still just a man.

A very cute, sweet, and drop-dead gorgeous one. But a man, nonetheless. Destined to be disappointing. During my daydreams and hopeful, lovesick thoughts, my friend had come to another, different conclusion about the type of man Spencer was.

"He carries a gun and can arrest people. He's a cop."

"Whatever," I said with a heavy sigh. Wasn't worth it to fight, so I admitted to my childish infatuation with an equally pitiful, "Yeah, it's Spencer. I was hoping he'd want to see me."

I turned the volume on my phone before finally setting it down, but continued to eye the screen until it went dark.

"It's not like you to chase after a dude," he so helpfully commented.

To his credit, he was right. It wasn't like me. But Spencer wasn't like other guys I'd met, and while it was true that Spencer was ten years older than me, I could tell that age wasn't the only thing setting him apart. It wasn't even necessarily something about him in particular, although he certainly was extraordinary.

It was more like... the way he looked at me. The way I never felt like anything even remotely close to lackluster. He looked at me like the stares shone through my eyes, and the blindness was worth witnessing the unfiltered eclipse.

"I'm not chasing him. We just like spending time with each other," I explained before sitting up straighter and placing a gentle hand to my chest in feigned pride. "I'm a very interesting person."

But then he responded with the last question I wanted to hear, or even think about potentially considering in that moment. The one that had been weighing on my mind no matter how hard I tried to suppress it.

"So... why isn't he your boyfriend, then?"

I hadn't wanted to hear it because I didn't have an answer. And no matter how hard I inspected my cuticles, they likewise produced no excuse worth saying.

The man to my right was twisting his body as he settled into the seat. He kept his chest open to me in some display of fragile masculinity that was very easy to ignore.

"Is he like, ashamed of you or something?" he suggested.

That was less easy to ignore.

"No..." I wanted it to sound more certain than it did. As it stood, it was downright pathetic. Especially compared to his much more confident reply of, "Then what's his excuse?"

I sighed again, that time pulling my legs up on the couch in my unending quest to find some semblance of comfort while being interrogated on the most irritating subject of all time.

"He doesn't need an excuse. We both agreed it's better to just be friends."

He moved closer to me again, and I didn't have the energy to tell him to stop. Not like he would have listened, anyway. Egotistical prick with absolutely nothing to substantiate his inflated sense of self.

"You deserve better than that, (y/n)."

While his words were soft in volume, everything else about him remained gruff and uninviting. Nothing at all like the way Spencer could shift and turn into something completely different. My friend could act like his feigned tenderness was meaningful, but I knew that he liked the thought of me more than who I actually was.

"Yeah, right. With who? You?" I droned, wishing that my words could actually be laced with venom. Maybe then he'd have abandoned this foolhardy quest to win my affections.

"I mean I'm not gonna turn you down if you're offering," he joked.

It was that lightness that was his main redeeming feature; the reason I could keep him around even when his fingers tapped against my opposite shoulder. I laughed at both the sensation and suggestion, refusing by lifting his arm off my shoulders before excusing myself from the couch altogether.

"Piss off. I'm running down to the basement. You want anything?"

"Just for you to come back quick," was his immediate, not-at-all charming reply.

"You're a fucking idiot," was mine.

It wasn't until I was already on my way back up after grabbing a blanket and a drink that I had actually managed to forget about my phone for at least a few minutes.

Then, the terror came. The worry that Spencer had called me, and I'd failed to answer. The possibility that he might've hit my number on a list and already moved on to the next. It had only been like five minutes but still. He talked so damn fast, he could've torn through 5 phone calls in that time.

A little faster, I made my way back to the living room, shouting from down the hall, "Hey, did I leave my phone up here?"

He didn't answer immediately, but then eventually slurred, "Uhh. Yep. Sure did."

When I rounded the corner, I found the gremlin going through my phone. As I already started to plan the new pass code now that he'd gone and figured it out, I ran over, half-tackling him on the couch as I screeched, "Give it back, you dick!"

It was no use. He held it just outside my reach, laughing at the way I scrambled over him to try and grab it.

"Not unless you promise not to check it until after the movie."

Sighing with resignation, I plopped down next to him, my arms crossed and eyes rolled as I convinced myself it was unlikely Spencer would text me within the next hour and a half if he hadn't already.

It was pretty late. Maybe he had already gone to bed and just forgotten to let me know he got home. Besides, I owed my friend as much for managing to get me to forget to check it for this long, no?

"Fine. I promise," I groaned.

I tried not to let the thought ruin my night. The next two hours were like they usually were. He kept trying to cuddle with me, and I kept pushing him away until I eventually didn't. I gave into the general familiarity with the guy I'd known for basically half of all my memories, stopping every few seconds to wonder if I should have felt guilty.

Then I felt guilty for having asked myself at all.

Once the credits began to roll, I held my hand out with zero hesitation. I (im)patiently for him to deposit my phone, which he did, to his credit. However, what I found struck me to my core. My hands immediately began to shake hard enough that the LED blurred in my vision.

"Uhhh, what the fuck is this?"

"What?"

I held up my phone, displaying a text message that had been sent from my phone a couple hours earlier. On the screen, clear as day, me and him from earlier in the day. A painfully domestic snapshot of the two of us running errands together.

The picture shown, though, was one that I swore I'd deleted from my phone. It was him with his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his chest while I laughed. It wasn't a bad picture, but the context was entirely absent. For example, the fact that I'd almost bruised his chest hitting him right after the photo was taken.

"Why did you send this picture?!" I yelled, desperately swiping at the time stamp. "Two hours ago?!"

He was much too quiet for what was happening. In my haste, I hadn't even notice the accompanying text above the picture, which read 'Sorry man, she's all mine tonight.' Spencer didn't reply.

"Why didn't you tell me that he texted me?!"

My frustration had peaked, and I stood up, pacing somewhat unproductively as I tried to collect my things.

"Because I knew you'd try to leave, and I haven't seen you in fucking ages," he whined, as if I was overreacting.

But I wasn't. This contrived bullshit was entirely his fault, and entirely fucking ridiculous.

"Are you fucking kidding me, dude?" I shouted, finally finding my bag and shoving my stuff inside of it angrily. I didn't even finish, with a few loose coins angrily clambering to the floor as the soundtrack to my farewell.

"Well, now I'm definitely leaving, so kiss my ass!"

Before I could actually leave, I held up my middle finger in the furthest thing from a joke.

"Wait, (y/n), it was a joke!" he called back but didn't try to follow me.

He'd known it wouldn't work. I was too mad.

"You're not fucking funny!"

I slammed the door to my car loud enough to wake the neighbors, but I couldn't care even a little bit. My hands were shaking so hard, that it was a struggle just to click my phone. But I did, fervently pressing Spencer's name until the stupid, traitorous phone could figure out what I wanted it to do.

It rang for 15 whole seconds before I grieved the reality that he wasn't going to pick up. I sighed, lowering my phone to hang up before he could ignore the call or I was given the choice to leave a voicemail. It had been my own fault, anyway.

But just before I hit the button, I heard a tired, crackly voice coming from the other side of the line.

"(Y/n)?"

Oh my god, he picked up.

Then, all at once, the words poured out of me.

"Spencer? I'm so sorry I didn't text you back! Please ignore my friend. He's a fucking idiot."

I could tell from the silence that Spencer was replaying them in his head to try to make sense of the frantic, slurred speech in his own sleepy state. Once he had gotten the gist of my panic, he started to laugh through a yawn.

"It's fine. You looked like you were having fun."

I couldn't tell if it was jealousy in his voice or something else. Either way, it felt terrible. My insecurities crept through my throat and came out with dramatic overcompensation.

"Yeah right. He held my phone hostage. I was waiting to hear from you and he got jealous or something."

There was an awkward silence on the other side of the phone, and so I continued with only a little tremor in my voice, "I'm glad to see that you got home alright."

Another few seconds of silence followed, but then it was the Spencer I was used to again.

"Yeah. It's less fun without you here, though."

That wasn't supposed to be as romantic as it seemed, I reminded myself. He was just flirting. Typical fuckboy nonsense, uttered to get a rise out of me one way or another. He didn't actually mean to imply that he'd already considered what it might be like for me to have joined him.

Right?

"I can still come if you want," I rushed, looking down at the clock in my car for the first time and grimacing at the revelation that the 'something else' in his tone had, in fact, been exhaustion.

"Although... I'm just now realizing its 2am and I definitely woke you up..."

"Typical," he joked, "you being out late, trying to make me jealous with age-appropriate boys."

My laugh bounced back at me from the walls of the car, and I covered my mouth once I remembered that I was still in a public area.

It was weird to me how whenever I talked to Spencer, it felt like we were the only two people in the world. I'd never felt that way with another person before. Those cheesy romcoms were all starting to make sense, and I hated how powerless that made me feel.

"I was not! Trust me, if I wanted to make you jealous, I could do much better," I humbly stated. It was only a little bit of a threat. "I just don't know why he did that. And of course, that picture, which I had deleted, by the way. He seriously had to get it from another folder. He just likes to torture me, I guess."

Spencer cleared his throat from the other side of the phone, readjusting before he clearly enunciated, "He likes you."

The statement wasn't shocking. Anyone who'd spent more than five minutes with the two of us knew that he probably liked me. I'd even considered exploring it at one point before smacking myself in the face and reminding myself of my standards.

But still, to have Spencer know that felt a little bit weird. After all, most 20-something boys would do anything to torture their friends. Even the girl ones. Especially the girl ones.

Then something else began to brew in my chest; a twisted sort of pleasure derived from the sharpness that had formed on Spencer's tongue. The jealousy creeping through the crackling static and wrapping its talons around my heart.

"... I don't know," I absently said.

He sensed the hesitancy in my voice, and asked back with a strange inflection, "Do you like him?"

I chewed on my bottom lip, closing my eyes as I dropped my head back against the headrest. I didn't want to answer that question honestly. I felt like nothing I said could be right. So, I just chose the closest thing to the truth.

"No, not really."

We were back in one of those awkward silences. The kind where we both wanted to say something, but nothing came out. I turned my car on when the stale, stagnant air became too suffocating. The sound alerted him to enough information for him to speak again.

"Are you heading home?"

I switched my phone to the other hand, trying to delay giving my answer by sounding busy. I didn't really have a reason, I just hadn't wanted to hang up yet.I wanted to stall him and selfishly keep him around just a little bit longer.

"Yeah, I guess."

Super smooth. I could still salvage it though.

"...Unless you've changed your mind and would like a personal space heater in bed with you."

Spencer's laughter would have been offensive if it wasn't so adorable.

"Yeah right, your feet are freezing. I don't even know how you still have toes."

That checked out, and also gave me an escape from the terrifying prospect of ending the call.

"I'll wear socks!" I offered with the utmost enthusiasm, "I actually own thigh highs, you know. If you're into that, Professor."

It had been a few weeks since our tryst, but I had hardly ever stopped thinking about it. Every time I looked at myself in the mirror, I'd traced the marks he'd left behind with an ungodly powerful nostalgia.

His laughter turned to frustrated groans as he mumbled, "Are you trying to torture me?"

Once our ruckus died back down, the silence was more serious than strange. I felt the urge to apologize again. I needed him to hear the sincerity behind what were so often empty words.

"I'm really sorry I missed your message, Spencer."

My voice was quiet, unsure, and scared. I didn't want to lose him, and I knew an extreme on either side of the emotional spectrum would let him slip away so easily.

It was exhausting being emotionally lukewarm, but some part of me wanted to believe that it would be worth it with him. That patience was all it would take to show him why he had nothing to be afraid of.

But where I showed mercy, he showed himself to lack it in any sense of the word.

"It's fine, (y/n). I'm not your boyfriend. If I really want the company, I can find it."

That wasn't why I was sorry, and what he'd said only made it worse. The ugly, resentful part of myself was convinced that was why he'd said it at all.

We both knew I didn't want him to find it with someone else. That was the entire reason I was sorry I missed it. If I missed his call, nothing was stopping him from making another one. I hadn't ever asked if there were other girls in his life, but I definitely didn't want to find out like that.

"I missed you the past couple weeks. I still do."

The genuineness in my voice scared me. I hated being vulnerable; especially when he was already so apprehensive about me. I wished I knew why he was. But at that moment, he was being his usual playful self, not willing to give me any hint of an answer in exchange for my candor.

No, just: "You're so good at whining."

I pouted like he would be able to see it.

"I just want some cuddles. Is that too much to ask?"

"Go ask your boyfriend, I'm sure he would be more than happy to oblige," he quipped.

"He's not as good at it as you are," I deflected, playing off the suddenly obvious jealousy in his tone. Before I could rub my quick wit in his face, however, Spencer raised a white flag that I'd never seen coming.

"Fine. I'll wait up."

That was when I realized that he had been more jealous than I'd thought, and I still had a startling amount of power to play with.

But I was still unable to comprehend it, and with a graceless gasp, I chirped, "Wait really? I can come over?"

An unsure laugh and an almost audible shrug later, he responded, "Sure, I figure it'll get me to bed faster somehow, as opposed to staying on this call."

I didn't hesitate to start to pull my car out of the spot, happily singing into the phone, "Okay! I'm on my way! Bye Spencer!"

"See you soon."

—————————————————

As I was old enough to be able to tell time, and aware enough to recognize that it was incredibly too late to be knocking on an apartment door, I tried to do so softly. I halfway succeeded, stifling the noise enough that he could still hear it, but his neighbors wouldn't. They would remain unaware of the girl bouncing on her toes outside of his door, squealing the second she heard shuffling feet on the other side.

Jesus Christ, I sound like a teenager, the more sensible side of me noted.

I might've felt shame, had he not opened the door in that very moment to reveal himself, with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and pajamas on that were big enough they his half his hands.

He was... in a word, adorable.

"Hey sleepyhead," I cooed.

Spencer remained silent, but offered his arm in a halfhearted invitation for a hug. The blanket hung like a wing that I very much wanted to wrap myself in, and he was all too happy to allow. I actually giggled as I lunged towards him. I wrapped both arms around him and breathed in the clean scent of laundry detergent and soap.

"I'm sleepy, too," I said with a relieved sigh. The air was quickly replaced with that which smelled of him. So, too, the silence filled with a soft chuckle as he pulled me close to him and rested his chin on the top of my head.

Like a man from a fairy tale, he started to sway, slowly turning us around until we were headed in the right direction. The right one, of course being the one that would lead to us falling in bed together again.

"Alright, little girl, you can come crawl into bed with me tonight."

The words were like music to my ears, and I felt like I was floating. I was glowing, my skin flushed with warmth like a wood fire on a cold Winter night, and my eyes fell half lidded from some mixture of tired and pleased.

"Thank you, sir," I slurred through a smile. It grew wider as he took my hands, prying me away from him to lead me back to his room with more purpose.

Once we finally padded over, I dropped my overnight bag on the floor and began to strip off my shirt. He eyed the bag on the floor with a feeling I could almost place.

"Were you planning on staying with him?"

I felt a pain through my chest as he asked, because I knew the answer. I had been, but only because I'd done it so many times before. Our mutual friend wasn't in the house, so I knew I could use his bed. But saying I was planning on staying there alone sounded even more suspicious.

"Yeah. I've stayed there before. Always in a different room. We've been friends a long time."

There was something about the way he looked at me that made my stomach flip in a delicious way. A feeling that could only be described as dangerous and exhilarating. But then it was gone, replaced by the apathy he usually tried to display. I continued to strip, nonetheless, slowly peeling my leggings down and stepping out of them. I could feel his eyes on me.

I twisted by body in the hope that the movement would distract him from the conversation I hadn't really wanted to have. Jealousy, while a fun tool for the consenting, had a tendency to grow old quickly. It was a beast that did not like to be controlled; especially when taken by surprise.

But he had no reason to be jealous. I had all but begged him to come over, and I was currently naked in his bedroom. I didn't even look up at him before sliding under the covers. I was too scared for what I might find, and opted for enjoying the lingering body heat and smell of Spencer on the sheet, instead.

"I don't want to know how good you are when you're trying," he warned.

I looked up at him with guilty eyes, recognizing this was his gentle way of telling me he was jealous. But he'd said it himself... He wasn't my boyfriend.

"Come here," I pleaded while running my arms along the empty space where he belonged. "I'll show you why you shouldn't be jealous."

Spencer licked his lips as he looked at my exposed chest, pulling off his pajamas and slinking under the covers with me. Facing each other, my hands quickly found his erection, pumping it softly as he immediately rewarded me with a soft moan.

"I missed this," I whispered, closing the gap between our faces.

He responded in kind, taking his time to lay a lazy kiss against my mouth while he groaned, "I missed your hands. Among other parts."

As he spoke, his hand was traveling down my side to my center. My breathing picked up as he got closer, but he diverted, running his fingers up and down my arms that continued to work his length. The soft whimper that escaped my mouth entertained him, and he brought his hand back down.

"Say please, (y/n)."

I couldn't talk though. I was biting down on my lip to stop myself from telling him I fucking hated him for teasing me. With big puppy dog eyes, I watched him while I chewed on my bottom lip.

"Stop biting on that lip or I'll do it for you. I don't care how cute you are."

His hand now ghosted over exactly where I wanted them, and he used the very tip of his finger to collect the wetness forming there. My hands stopped as he made contact, my grip tightening for a second.

"Say please."

He wanted me to beg for him to touch me, but I didn't want his hand. It was almost 3 AM and I was exhausted and needed him. All of him, immediately. Badly enough that

"Fuck me, sir," the words spilled out of my mouth. "Please, fuck me."

A content humming came from him as he brought a hand to my hair. But the pleased sound lulled me into a false sense of security, which was shattered seconds later when he pulled my head back to look him in the eyes.

From there, I could see that look in his eyes again. That dark, possessive stare that made me long for the shadows to consume me if it meant more time with him.

"I p-promise," I stuttered as one of his fingers teased at my folds.

He raised his eyebrows as he waited for me to finish my thought.

With a cruel, sadistic smile, I continued, "I promise I won't think of anyone else."

That playful characteristic snark that has originally driven him to me had returned, and he pretended to be disappointed. He liked it, though. He wouldn't admit it, but the way I read the secret, hidden thoughts in his mind like he could read one of his book clearly drove him insane.

He guided me by his hold on my hair, lifting me off the pillow and not taking a minute to consider the repercussions before growling in my ear, "Turn around."

I obeyed, happily pressing up against his crotch as I settled into my position as his little spoon. I noticed a distinct lack of a pause this time, and gears began to click together as I felt him rub the bare head of his cock in the slickness pooling around my thighs.

"I have some questions for you, little girl."

He was pissed.

"When was the last time you got tested?"

I could hardly think straight as I realized where this was going. I tried to gather my thoughts and enough control to stutter back, "L-last week. I-I haven't... haven't slept with anyone else. Not since you."

My answer earned me a tender kiss on the neck, but it wasn't enough. I was trying to still my hips from knocking back against him. I couldn't completely stop myself, though, and I knew it made him feel even more confident about his decision.

"Good. Me neither," he replied.

I sighed with relief, happy to at least answer that question. I'd barely had any time to recover, though, before he continued, "Is there any way you could get pregnant right now?"

I shook my head no. He stopped my head with one hand on my chin from behind.

"Use your words."

"No!" I half shouted, realizing I just sounded like a brat. "No, no I can't. I'm on birth control. I won't get pregnant. Promise. You can..."

My breath matched pace with my heart, and I swore I was already lightheaded. Still, I forced the last few words through the heavy panting to earn my next, far more enticing prize. The magic words he had been waiting for:

"You can do whatever you want to me."

When he released my hair, my head fell forward just for a second, because soon my entire back arched in response to the way he began to push inside of me.

"Good," was all he'd said.

With that, he fully sheathed himself inside of me, and I cried out as I felt the way he stretched me. His hand swiftly covered my mouth before he began to pound into me from behind. One of my hands tried to keep me in place on the bed, while the other flew up to his hand over my mouth, holding it without trying to remove it.

I was calling his name underneath him, and he responded by making shorter, deeper thrusts.

Through it all, he chuckled in my ear, "It's always funny how fast you stop acting like a brat after I put it in you."

My eyes rolled back at his words, breath shuddering against his hand. He slid all the way out of me, and then applied enough force to push me up in the bed.

"Have you ever had someone finish inside you before?" he asked too sweetly for the provocative words. He moved his hand from my mouth and dragged it to move the hair that had fallen in front of my face.

I went to shake my head but remembered his instruction. Instead, I cried, "N-no."

"Good," he responded again, and my toes curled at the pride he felt in claiming this body as his own. He took my hand in his, pulling it down to feel the small bump forming in my abdomen each time he slammed into me. The next time it appeared, he halted, holding me in position against him. "I'm going to fuck you so hard that the next time anyone even thinks about touching you, all they'll taste on you is me."

He pulled out slowly before pounding into me again. With more violence in his motions and venom on his tongue, he spat, "and if you want them you can explain to them how you begged for me to come inside your tight little cunt."

I was in a state of shock, unable to comprehend how he was capable of making such cruel, licentious words. Each one made my body shake, and he kept himself inside me longer with each motion to extend the feeling. I ached at the way he filled me, desperately clinging to my own stomach where I could feel him.

"Good luck thinking about anyone else while I run down your thighs," he said before punctuating it with a firm, unforgiving, "you fucking bitch."

With that, he finally moved his hand, but it was not a merciful action. His fingers rubbed in the mess of our bodies, then dragged the wetness back to my clit, pressing harder than he ever had before. My head was still swimming from his language, and I thankfully didn't have to use my words. He was very capable of figuring out my body language himself.

I could feel the way the heat coiled in my stomach, the tension building as his mouth ran along my neck. Once he attached himself to one spot, driving into me at a brutal pace, I felt the energy shift and begin to blossom. Feeling the way my muscles quivered around him, he stopped his kisses, groaning loudly in my ear.

"Fuck, little girl," he continued to moan, his thrusts faltering as I tried to coax his orgasm out of him. It seemed to be what he was waiting for. Unable to contain the shrill cry that tore from my chest as his arousal filled me, I tried to pull away from him. But I couldn't, his hands holding me down and his hips rocking as deep as they could possibly move inside of me.

Exhausted, I tried to move away from him once his movements stilled. However, in another surprising move he slid out just to slam back into me again.

I whimpered from the overstimulation, doubling forward as he gave a few more deep, rough thrusts before pulling out entirely.

I had no idea how, but Spencer immediately got out of bed. He left me a sweaty, desperate mess on his bed. Thankfully, he tossed me a towel to help me clean up so I wouldn't have to sleep in the puddle dripping slowly down my legs. Shaky but satisfied, I somehow managed to make it to the bathroom and clean up.

When I returned, he was still awake. He was silent, sitting up in the bed with his eyes closed and contemplative. As I shut the door, he finally noticed my presence. He turned to look at me with an awkward smile until he pat my spot on the bed.

"Come here, little girl."

A little too excited, I shuffled over with a bounce in my step. Not satisfied with simply lying next to him, I curled into his side, wrapping my arm around his waist and nuzzling my face to his chest. From there, I listened to the way his heartbeat seemed to slow down with my touch. How his muscles relaxed under me, like he had been anxiously awaiting my return the same way I had been waiting to return to him.

"You're not really a bitch," he mumbled in a quiet, sleepy voice.

I couldn't help but laugh, tilting my head up to glance at him from my position on his chest.

"I mean, I am a little bit. But I know what you mean."

He wrapped a tight arm around me, using his hand to run softly through my hair. Leaning down, he gave the top of my head a small peck. I smiled against his skin, loving the way it felt to be surrounded by him. To be safe and cared for despite all else.

"Thank you for coming here with me tonight," he said in a low volume, like the words might spook me. "You're a very special girl. I hope you know that."

I didn't know how to respond, so I stayed frozen in place. I waited to hear the rest of what he wanted to say. People have always said we're most honest at night. I wanted it to be true, to give more meaning to loaded words.

"I'm really glad I met you," was what he said.

I closed my eyes, breathing in the words that felt like a balm on my aching soul. Unable to come up with a response that wasn't terrifying, though, I sat up and crawled to him. It was my turn to return a tender kiss, this time to his lips. As we pulled apart, he still looked at me like the answers to the universe were written on my skin.

I went to kiss him again, but he stopped me with a hand on my face.

"Don't..." he instructed, breaking my heart with just one command.

But I saw the fear reflected in our eyes, the kind that was deeper than a simple rejection. It was not the fear that we might not love one another. It was the fear that we very well might one day.

Spencer said none of that, though. He left me to forever wonder if it was just me who felt it. Instead, he surrendered with a simpler, safer explanation.

"If you kiss me like that again, I won't be able to stop myself."

I didn't ask what he was stopping himself from doing. No matter how badly I wanted to. Instead, I ran the back of my fingers against his cheek and whispered in the space between us, "Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again."

My desired outcome came true, but not quite how I wanted. He didn't kiss me deep or passionately. He kissed me soft, like my lips were made of glass. He kissed me like he was protecting me from the terrors of his mind.

"Go to sleep, little girl," he instructed gently, coaxing me back to my position on his chest as we both sunk down to lay flat on the bed. "Picard can wait."

Laying there, next to what I was convinced was an actual human angel, I gave myself permission to drift off into sleep, hoping that my dreams could be half as good as reality.

That didn't happen.

I wasn't sure what time it was when I woke up, but it was still dark outside, so it couldn't have been too long after we'd fallen asleep. Spencer had turned away from me at some point. That wasn't strange or entirely surprising, but I noticed a strange sound from his side of the bed that made my hair stand on edge and my stomach churn.

It was... crying.

"Spencer?" I asked as quiet as I could. When he didn't respond, I placed a gentle hand on his shoulder in the hope that it would be an easier transition to the waking word.

But his body still jerked under my touch, and he sat up much too quickly before grabbing his face in both hands. It wasn't until then that he noticed, drawing his hands back slowly and inspecting the wetness he found on his fingertips.

"Hey, Spencer, are you okay?"

He didn't answer.

Suddenly extremely worried, I brought both of my hands to his arms and pulled him closer to me.

He still didn't answer.

"Were you having a nightmare?"

So many red flags were burning through my brain, and I didn't know what to do with the information in front of me. I just wanted to help him.

"I... I must have been. I'm sorry," he said when he finally spoke. He wiped at his tears like he could erase what I had already seen. Moving his hands away, careful to keep my touch as non-threatening as possible, I wiped his still falling tears away with my thumb.

"Why are you sorry, Spencer?"

"I... don't know."

It was an honest, but terrifying answer. A quickly completed checklist of a horror I was deeply familiar with. A reality that I wouldn't wish it on anyone in the world. Especially not him.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," he replied with a force so strong I thought the word was physically painful for him to say.

"Okay," I reassured him, "We don't have to."

He wasn't laying back down. He wasn't moving at all. It was like he was somewhere else entirely.

I moved closer to him, placing a hand on his back to gently rub circles and another on his lap. I offered the only thing I could think to help him in that moment.

"Do you want me to hold you?"

His eyes were fixated on my hand on his lap, his breathing slowly regulating the longer we sat like this.

Still, he halfway refused, "It's okay."

Raising my hand again, I ran it through his hair before guiding him to look at me with a tentative smile.

"You're not a burden, Spencer. I want to."

The tears were falling again, albeit slower and with his mouth curved ever so slightly. I tried to give him the calmest reassurance I could. A soft glow in my eyes that burned with the affection and comfort I desperately wanted to provide.

"Come here, love," I said as I motioned to me.

Spencer dutifully followed. Soon his head was on my chest, my hand curling his hair around my fingers. He hugged my waist like I was the only thing keeping him here.

And I laid there with him, trying not to think about the way his tears wet my skin. Hoping that, for now, it would be enough for him to get some sleep.

A mop of curly brown hair was the first thing I saw when I woke up to the shine of the sun through the curtains. I smiled, but only until I remembered why he was on my chest.

It was obvious that he had barely slept, his muscles continuing to persistently twitch in their paranoid state. When I went to pet his head again, he stirred under me, pulling himself closer to me the same way he had before.

I didn't want to think about what had happened, but I knew I had to. Normal people don't wake up crying from a nightmare, and they certainly don't get painfully defensive when it happens.

I hadn't known practically anything about his life before. What he had been through, or whether he'd told anyone at all. I hadn't even known if he'd anyone to tell.

I was painfully reminded that he was not the superhero I made him out to be in my head. He was just a man, trying his hardest to do more good in the world than all the evil combined. That was an impossible task, though. He was doomed to fail.

His ears must have been burning, because the longer I thought about it, the more he woke up. Eventually he was entirely alert, sitting up and removing himself from the position we'd assumed for the past several hours.

I was surprised to remember what it felt like to be able to breathe without the weight of him on top of me. I was even more surprised to feel my chest felt heavier in his absence.

"Good morning," I mumbled, watching as he effortlessly got out of bed and began to get ready.

He seemed embarrassed, but he really shouldn't have been.

"Did you get any sleep?"I asked.

Spencer ran his hands through his hair before he turned back to me, a smile on his face like nothing was wrong.

"No," he sighed, "This brat woke me up at 2 AM and insisted I sleep with her."

It was nice to know he was still capable of joking but concerning to see that he was so good at compartmentalizing. I laughed along with him, nonetheless, sliding out of the bed to join him in getting dressed.

"What a bitch," I said with a smirk.

As hard as it was to pretend like the night before hadn't happened, I knew that he wasn't ready to talk about it. Heaven knew it would have been much worse to burn the bridge then. At least if I built the trust now, he might be willing to talk about it later.

"You know, I wasn't actually going to tell you to come over last night," Spencer announced.

The 360 of the conversation took me by surprise, and I blinked rapidly to try and reorient myself.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I mean, I'm glad you did. But I was actually going to ask you if you're free tonight."

Spencer was nothing if not an emotional rollercoaster demanding passengers before 10AM. Ready to roll bright and fuckin' early.

"Yeah, I am. If you're still wondering," I answered in place of the multitude of questions I hadn't been ready to ask yet. Questions like, why was he wondering? Why did he need to schedule this? Was this another 'not-a-date' date?

"I wanted to take you somewhere," he mentioned casually, finally fully dressed while I still struggled to put on my clothes.

"Where?"

"It's a surprise," he said with raised eyebrows, like he was so very proud of himself.

I'd let him have that one, but only because he was so damn cute.

"Fine. That means I have to go home to get cleaned up first, then."

He seemed only a little disappointed by that, but overall acquiesced. I was a little sad about it, too, but remained confident in the old adage that distance makes the heart grow fonder.

Besides, I wanted to look cute for my surprise.

We hadn't talked much before I left. I could tell he was still struggling with coming to terms with what he'd accidentally revealed to me in the middle of the night.

Honestly, it was a good thing I left. The desire to talk about it was overwhelming, and some things are better left unsaid...

For now, I promised myself. Just for now.

—————————————————

Spencer came to pick me up without a hitch. When I climbed into his car, I fully expected him to not tell me where we were going. I was right; he didn't. Of course, after about 30 minutes I recognized the route we were going. When I'd graciously pointed it out to him with increasingly less subtle suggestions, he still refused to give me a single hint.

That was, until we pulled into Observatory parking lot.

"I've never been here before!" I squeaked. My excitement had been obvious enough with the embarrassing crack, and Spencer's interest in my enthusiasm only grew.

He was looking at me with that soft, slightly saccharine smile.

"I figured. You aren't nerdy enough to go by yourself," he chuckled. The genuineness behind the sound made the already excited butterflies in my stomach begin to swarm.

"Hey, I can be cultured too, you know," I still corrected with the worst posh accent you've ever heard.

With a teasing smile on his face, the stupid man chose to look away rather than to admit his honest reaction to the statement.

Asshole, I thought, only to be proven wrong seconds later. Forever a gentleman, Spencer joined me on my side of the car and took utmost care and attention to help me out from my seat.

It felt strange, to adorn his arm like something beautiful as we gazed at the stars together. I tried not to think about it, but wondered just how far he was willing to risk being seen with me in an undoubtedly romantic setting.

"Isn't this place usually closed to the public? I know they have limited general admission days," I asked, despite already knowing the answer. I just wanted to see if my hunch was correct.

"Yeah, I might have called in a favor or two."

Fuck, was my first thought. The next twelve thoughts, however, were all reiterations of 'Don't get your hopes up.'

My grip on his arm tightened, but he didn't seem to mind. I'd guessed that his nonchalance was entirely due to the private nature of the excursion, but I wasn't going to ask, and I certainly wouldn't complain. I was happy enough that he'd brought me, even if he wasn't ready to admit why. I could be patient. Sometimes.

Once inside, Spencer knew exactly where to go. I watched in awe at how many people knew who he was, and how much they looked up to him. While I had also always been impressed by him, it'd become easy to forget just how impressive he was when all the time we'd spent together was so far away from the rest of the world.

But Spencer's quiet humility certainly wasn't an issue that night. He spent nearly two hours walking me through what ended up being essentially all the stars in the sky. Much like the museum, it consisted of me adoring both the content of his words and the man himself.

He told me the story of the vain Queen Cassiopeia and her doting husband Cepheus, still holding each other in the stars millennia later. He spoke enthusiastically and with no sense of pacing. Half the time my eyes left the telescope, turning instead to marvel at the way he moved his hands and fidgeted with his hair as his voice tumbled out of him like it couldn't be contained.

It was just the two of us in the room when he finished, the dim lights and quiet ambiance catching up with me as I stared at him with all the reverence in the universe above us. He eventually finished his thoughts on Perseus and Andromeda, and I could tell by the look on his face that their love story meant something to him.

"You're quite the romantic, Dr. Reid."

He seemed surprised by the sentiment, like it was something he'd never heard before, and now he wasn't quite sure what to do with it. So, he simply laughed awkwardly and moved closer to peer into the telescope.

Whether it was because he felt a stronger connection to the extraterrestrial, or because he simply didn't want me to see that he was blushing, I didn't mind either way. A few less seconds under the scrutiny of his gaze would do my heart well.

"Not sure many people would use that word," he said under his breath when he worked up the courage to speak.

"Well, I did," I replied much more confidently.

He was smiling but trying to hide it the same as the pink hue to his cheeks.

"You said you were 14 when you went to college, right?" I said with narrow eyes, trying to read him from under the large machine.

"Yeah," he responded with an equal dose of caution, "... why?"

"Probably didn't go to prom then, huh?"

His answer was obvious from the way his entire body jumped. Knocking his head on the telescope as he rushed to give an answer, all his mouth would produced was a long, dumb, "Uhhh."

I knew he was about to try to run away. Before he could, I stopped him. With both hands on his arm, I kept him close. Eventually, his muscles gave in and accepted my embrace.

"Come on; dance with me," I begged.

He looked around the room for an excuse. There was no one there, just the two of us on arguably the most heartwarming date I've ever been on in my life.

"There's no music," he scrambled, eventually admitting, "aaand I can't dance."

Ignoring the pitter-pattering of a childish, lovesick heart, I laughed.

"I can teach you, Dr. Reid."

We both knew he wasn't getting out of this one. As I hopped down from the stool, I revealed my secret weapon from my pocket. I pulled up a playlist that I knew would suit him and the setting, and I held out my hand in an invitation that couldn't be refused.

"I have all the world of music at my fingertips. Now I just need you. "

Spencer groaned, but behind it all I saw an undeniable happiness. When he put his hand in mine, it too felt like warmth and safety. I took it with an even brighter grin, immediately bringing him closer to sway slowly to the music coming from my phone now seated on the stool.

The acoustics of the room let the music flow through, and within moments we had fallen into a comfortable rhythm. My cheek rested against his chest and I couldn't help but laugh.

"You lied to me, Dr. Reid. You definitely know how to dance."

"Okay, but does it really count if you've only ever done it with your mom?" he asked.

I threw my head back as I laughed, and he joined me. The two of us shamelessly filled the large room with a warmth not entirely unlike a far away star.

"Don't laugh at me!" he pouted, but I think he actually enjoyed the sound.

"I'm sorry," I whined, "you're just so fucking cute I don't know how to handle it."

Finally able to stifle the joyous sounds, I looked up at him with even more fascination than I'd showed the stars. I'm not sure what I had expected, but it wasn't what I'd found. Because Spencer's eyes were like mirrors facing the sun; reflecting the passions I spewed so carelessly right back at me.

"There are over a million words in the English language, and I still can't think of a single combination to explain how I feel about you."

Just like that, he'd stolen my breath and my sense. My smile fell into a look of smitten shock, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't convince my heart to fall back into its rhythm.

"I-I'm surprised you don't know the exact number," I said with an awkward chuckle.

"Well, some estimate that it's 1,025,109, but new words are created constantly, and it would depend on what actually counts as a new word. Not to mention the different dialects, words that have fallen out of common use, or words that may be used for entirely different purposes despite being the same."

I raised my eyebrows, not at all surprised that he had an answer, but excited to hear it, nonetheless.

"But it doesn't matter," he whispered, impervious to just how much he was breaking my heart. "Because no matter the number, I know it won't be enough."

My eyes lit up like the stars we had just spent hours staring at, and I wondered if he could tell. He must have. Because his hand on my hip pulled me closer, and our hands intertwined as our pace slowed to a stop. Our breath was unsteady as he came closer to me, pausing just before our lips touched.

We shared the oxygen between us, daring the other to do what we both know we shouldn't.

So I did, leaning up to kiss him as my hand slid up his arm and around his neck. His hesitation melted into the embrace, our tongues gently sharing space in an entirely new way.

I thought to the millions of stars in the sky, realizing that I shared Spencer's skepticism of an unknown number. Because no matter how many stars there were, I knew there would never be enough to outshine that moment between the two of us.

It was not a hurried or excited kiss. It was an amorous, amazing promise of a kiss. It was the kind of kiss that they wrote about in Corinthians. It was patient and kind. It was not proud nor self-seeking. Spencer's free hand held my face against his; the way they wrote that love always protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres.

Did he feel the way he was kissing me? Because I had.

I felt it like a storm, the breeze blowing the air from my lungs and breaking down the walls around me. I held onto him and this moment, scared of what this meant for us. How could I pretend like we were just friends when I shook for days at his touch?

That was why I was the one to end the kiss, looking down away from him as I did. A soft, defeated chuckle as I took a deep breath. When our eyes met again, I lowered my arms to his chest, listening to the soft tunes still floating through the room.

"We should go home now," I whispered.

He was reading my reactions; I could feel it. And in doing so, he had lowered his own walls too far. I could see them behind his eyes.

My voice shook as I continued, "... before you do something else to try and make me fall in love with you."

Spencer didn't look scared as he replied with a cheeky little grin, "Why, is it working?"

I almost passed out at the way his eyes softened at my goofy smile.

"I'm kidding," he immediately followed.

I rolled my eyes at the absolute bullshit of a lie. I tried to play it off like it was nothing, but my heart felt like it would fall out of my chest. I tried not to think about it too hard as we made our way back to the car.

As he helped me in, I realized that we were really going to continue acting like none of that just happened. I tried to think of how that kiss we shared could be written off, but I couldn't. That was not the kind of kiss between friends. It was not the kind of kiss between strangers.

It was a kiss of the kind we both implicitly promised not to talk about.

Once the trip home had begun, I gathered the courage to tread lightly.

"So, what was the fantasy for tonight?" I innocently asked.

A little confused, he glanced over at me, careful not to take his eyes off the road.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I've found each time we're together there's some sexual component," I chuckled. "This is pretty far from home, and you seemed very into it. I was just wondering what inspired this trip."

I was trying to avoid obviously ogling his reactions by shifting my eyes from him every few seconds. I had leaned against the door, surprised by just how tired I really was. He was doing that thing where he weighed his words again.

Eventually, he shrugged. That softness returning to his features from before, he began, "To be honest, (y/n)..."

Please, don't break my heart, I begged to that beautiful man.

Actually turning his head entirely to me, he spoke through a delicate smile, "I just wanted to look at the stars with you."

Goddammit.

The stars returned to my eyes, and I could see them reflected in his. My heart sped up to prepare for the panic as I realized that it was definitely too late for us. Because his efforts were working. They had been working all along, and I never tried to stop them.

As I drifted off to sleep in the comfortable silence of our company, I couldn't ignore the obvious:

I think I'm in love with Spencer Reid and I think he's starting to love me, too.

But we couldn't just love each other in isolation, and I wasn't sure he was ready to make that leap with me. In fact, I knew he wasn't. I still knew basically nothing about him, and he knew virtually nothing about me. How could it be then, that our souls felt so at home with each other?

Which would hurt more? Finding out he didn't love me, or that he did... and just wishes he didn't?

—————————————————

| Part 6 |

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid smut #spencer reid imagine #criminal minds imagine #h2m #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #smut

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time-to-cause-chaos · 3 years

Text

catch me to infinity

5 times Wanda catches Peter, and 1 time she doesn't know if she can. (Reblogs appreciated <3) (st*rk*r shippers, pls DNI) (also this is PLATONIC, not slash so yeah, pls don’t read this as slash)

AO3 link WC: 5,738

1. Accidentally, off a couch

“Wanda” Peter says, laying across his chair, feet dangling idly in the air.

“Wandaaa”, Peter whines again. His half-finished hot cocoa sits abandoned on the coffee table while Wanda sips hers quietly.

Wanda pauses the tv, raising an eyebrow and looking over to Peter with an unimpressed look.

The guy on the screen is leaning against a wall, mouth half-open, caught in the middle of a joke.

“We’ve watched this episode like a million times. I can probably tell you every single line and scene by heart at this point.”

Wanda sighs, “Which one should we watch then?”

A quick glance at the window says they’re still stuck inside, if the storming winds and downpour mean anything. They didn’t have a problem with some light rain, in fact, if Tony and Steve hadn’t expressly told them they couldn’t go outside, they would already be soaked and muddy. The last day they’d gone outside in the cold though, the next day was full of fevers and snotty napkins so it was decided they’d actually listen this time. That rainy day had still been awesome though and there were absolutely no regrets, even when Peter was delirious and giggling everywhere in a haze.

The sitcom playing in front of them was one of Wanda’s favorites - probably why Peter had put up with watching it for the millionth time - but at this point, she was barely making it through the episode without wanting to rip her hair out.

She was bored.

Peter came around her and sat on the back of the couch, his feet planted on the cushions. Flipping through the shows was a waste, they’d also gone through nearly every episode they could and starting a new show right now sounded exhausting.

Wanda slumped and Peter got up, standing on the sofa, “There are so many things we could do, we’re in the Avengers Compound, there can’t be nothing to do.”

“We could go swimming?” Peter asks.

Wanda groans, “Then you’ll be the one explaining why we got sick again”

“Wanda, it’s indoors”

“N-o” she spells out, “No swimming”

“Well what about-”, Wanda doesn’t figure out what Peter was going to say because his balancing act comes toppling down, maybe balancing on his heels and pacing on the headrest of the couch hadn’t been one of his best ideas.

Peter yelps and his arms come over his head as he crashes to the floor.

...Except the crash never comes.

Instead when Peter opens his eyes, his nose is one inch from touching the floorboards and his limbs are covered in bright red ripples of light.

“Whoa”, he breathes, uncurling himself and spreading his arms out, as if he was floating.

Wanda scoffs and with a flick of her fingers, let’s go of her hold on the mist and helps him close the gap between himself and the floor, dropping him harmlessly on the floor.

He picks himself up and looks at her, mouth agape, “Wands, you have powers!” he shouts in glee.

She rolls her eyes and snorts, “Really, Peter? That is news to me.”

“No, no I mean imagine all the fun things we could do with this”, Peter’s hands flail wildly to emphasize his point, “we could prank the others, for one”

She smirks up at him, “That’s actually not a bad idea”

“When have I ever had a bad idea”

Wanda’s eyebrows pinch together in exasperation, “The swimming idea?”

“Okay, fine moment of weakness but anyways,” he grins, “We need supplies, I’m going to get supplies”

He snaps his fingers and is out the door before he can hear Wanda yell, “If Tony grounds you, it’s not my fault!”

2. Mysteriously, for the suspense and drama

Peter laughed into the comms as he kicked one of the bad guys down, “Was that a dad joke, Mr.Stark?”

“It was a pun, there’s a difference Spidey” Tony grunts, blasting up into the air and firing another guy down a stairwell.

Clint pops on the comm link, crackling into their ears, “I’m pretty sure that was a dad joke Tony”

Peter shoots a web onto the ceiling and swings around, webbing up the last few people in the room, “Mr.Stark, just make sure to give us a warning before you go full dad-mode and start playing golf and bringing us our lunches”

“I actually think I did bring your lunch to your school that one time”, Peter doesn’t have to see Mr.Stark’s face to know he’s smirking.

“Nope, nuh-uh, no I definitely don’t remember that”

“Oh yes you do,” Tony laughs, “Your face was red the entire time”

Peter grimaces,”No idea what you’re talking about”. Oh he definitely did, it had been embarrassing, god and Ned’s jaw was practically on the floor while MJ watched unimpressed as the entire class’s eyes bulged.

“I think I saw some dudes slip up to the roof, I’m going to go grab them” Peter says, changing the subject and looking for Tony for confirmation.

“Go ahead, Underoos. I’ll be right behind, just going to make sure law enforcement have a hold of these guys, first.”

Peter nods and slips out of the room, already running up the fire escape.

He bursts out onto the roof and immediately has a gun trained on him.

“Make one move, Spiderman, I dare you”

“Well, I do love a good dare”

Peter ducks behind a potted plant just as the guy fires a bullet. Spinning out from his hiding place he yells, “I’m going to call you Boots!”

The man was wearing heavy black combat boots with large wedges, a short person’s true love, Peter thinks.

He had thick wedges too on most of his sneakers, but he assured himself Tony he only wore them because they were fun to wear.

Speaking of, he was pretty sure Mr.Stark made his shoes with wedges in them too-

Peter yelps and ducks as the gun fires again, missing him by a foot this time.

Anyways, he was average height, thank you very much. Anyone who said otherwise could eat his webs and dirt.

Peter notices a slight hesitation in his opponent’s movement and immediately shoots a web out, yanking his gun arm down.

He flips behind him and punches him down right before the man flips back up, nailing Peter on his nose and forcing him back.

Peter yelps and realizes their fight is nearing the edge of the roof, which had a good 8-story drop behind it.

He tries to push his punches in another direction, trying to redirect them both before one of them goes over but the man stays strong pushing them closer and closer to the edge.

Wanda’s voice comes in through the comms, “Peter, where are you?”

“Roof” Peter barely gets out through his grunts.

“I’m under you” she says.

Ironman comes out through the roof access door and watches as Peter stumbles, barely inches from tipping over the side.

He raises a metal hand, ready to shoot but Peter stops him, “Just trust me”

He would’ve let Tony handle it, but the blast could knock him off too, not just the other guy, and if he was going to plummet off a building today, he wanted to do it on his own terms.

Balancing on the small wall, the only thing keeping him from falling off, Peter jumps sideways just as the man raises a leg to kick him down.

Peter smirks, using two fingers to salute, “Sayonara, sucker” he laughs as he pushes off and starts free-falling backwards, wind and gravity pushing on him.

That was so cool, he thinks. It was a perfect reenactment of those scenes in movies where a character will dramatically fall off a roof narrowly escaping their nemesis and then gets caught by like, a dragon or a flying pirate ship.

It’s called a fashionable exit, to all the uncultured misfortunes who think it’s stupid.

Mr.Stark was probably pretty confused about what just happened though.

He plunges through the air for a full three seconds before he’s caught by Wanda’s magic, floating mid-air.

He catches a glimpse of her pursed lips and smiles, “You’re so dramatic” she tells him, concealing her amused eyes.

Wanda takes them both up to the roof where Mr.Stark already has the man Peter was fighting, tied down.

Tony groans in exasperation when he sees them both, already having figured out their little magic act.

They just laugh.

3. To annoy, off the counter

It’s a Friday and the essay sitting on the table next to Wanda has already been long abandoned. He was not going to waste another minute trying to figure out what personal connection he could make the short story they’d been assigned to read during class.

He related to it because he’d been in a similar situation maybe?

But anyways, he wasn’t going to waste time trying to find a way to spread that over 8 detailed sentences and supporting textual evidence.

He’s sitting on the counter and watching Wanda and Vision read books next to each other on the chairs. Wanda’s legs are resting on Vision’s lap and as fun as it was watching them both, he was still exhausted and not in the mood to face the dangers of his other homework for tonight.

Didn’t Mr.Stark say not to risk his life unnecessarily? This should definitely count because just looking as the textbook took away two hours of his energy, at this rate he’d be on his death-bed by nightfall.

Munching on a protein bar, he looks up at the ceiling.

The only one in the building right now, besides Vision and Wanda, was Steve - well technically Mr.Stark too, but he was in a board meeting that Pepper begged him not to bail on so he was off-limits.

He glares at Wanda, trying to get her to notice him bored out of his mind, but she stubbornly stays focused on the page.

She’s actually reading Harry Potter, the result of Peter’s pestering, and she loved it. The plan to get Wanda to do something with him was interfering with the joy he would usually feel though.

Like yay, my pseudo big sister is finally catching up on all the books and movies she’s missed while working with evil people but also please please please notice me before i throw my stupid homework into the sink disposal-

His alarming train of thought still didn’t catch her attention so he slumps before getting up and deciding to walk all over the counters and ceiling. You know if that mark on the wall from when someone - ahem Clint ahem - had thrown a pen on the ceiling, acted like a mark he could pretend he was doing an obstacle course.

Yes, he could see it now, he’d do a cartwheel over the pen mark on the ceiling, then run on the wall, then he’d jump over the couch, and jump back onto the counter, the living room was plenty big enough.

Wow, this is a sorry excuse for fun.

He did the course three times and was skittering across the ceiling when Steve walked in and immediately shook his head at him.

Peter freezes in surprise and looks guiltily at Steve.

“I’m guessing the homework didn’t get done”, Steve says.

Peter sits criss-cross on the ceiling, if he gets down, he’s probably going to be guilt-tripped into doing his homework and no thank you.

Steve sighs and looks at him, “At least get down, you’re going to fall and get hurt.”

“No I won’t. I’m part-spider, this is like my natural territory”, Peter says.

“You have the traits of a spider”

Why did he always have to pull out the school detention PSA voice?

“But look! I can do a cartwheel on here, I’ve been doing them and I’m fine”

He’ll get down, as soon as he does just one, little cartwheel to annoy Steve.

Of course, that’s when his body decides to betray him and he slips, losing his grip on the ceiling.

He wasn’t worried about falling and smashing his nose at all, he knew Wanda would catch him every single time, in fact he’s already crossing his arms over his chest and scowling as he hovers on his back 3 feet above the ground.

Steve walks by him, still suspended in the air, and ruffles his hair, “Homework now”, then probably feeling bad for Peter, he adds, “Tony said you can use the lab later if you finish early”

Peter groans, “Fine”

Wanda puts him on the couch and he walks over to her and drops in the chair next to her on the table. She hasn’t looked up once this entire time, not even when she’d caught him in the air, only unlatching her fingers from Vision’s and stopping his fall with her powers.

Now she looks up and smiles at him, poking his forehead and pushing his computer towards him.

He groans again.

4. To spite and win, off the balcony

Peter licks his lips, running through the plan again.

There’s someone coming down this hall, he can hear their soft footsteps padding on the floor. Peter’s going to jump out and get the offending person out of the game, it’ll be easy as long as he times it right.

He jumps out from where he’s hiding behind the door frame and pulls up the gun aiming it at the unsuspecting form.

His paintball gun chooses right then to stall and dang it, that means that he has no defense or attack.

He looks up to find Clint grinning at him coyly, gun already trained on him and finger poised on the trigger.

He yelps and jumps out of the way just in time, the purple paintball splattering against the counter.

Peter runs back through the hallway, getting away from Clint and his treacherous smile (it was the smile of a deranged man who would do anything it takes to win paintball) and finds a cleaning closet to hide in while he fixes his gun.

Did the plastic pieces just have to jam right then? Talk about shitty luck.

He picks at the inside of the barrel with a toothpick and grins as a faint click ensures that the machine is functioning again. The paintball that had gotten stuck shoots out and Peter ducks out of the way as pink splatters against the dark wall.

He knows Clint’s prowling the halls for him right now and he prays the man didn’t just hear the shotgun go off.

Slowly creaking the door open and making sure there’s no one there, he tip-toes out and runs to the balcony, it’s the perfect place to hide out and wait for his next victim. The second anyone enters the living room, he has the perfect view on them and nobody looks at the balcony until it’s too late, which means more wins for him.

He underestimated Clint though.

The older man jumps out (umm where did he come from??) and kicks Peter’s gun away from him with a triumphant laugh. Peter backs up against the cool metal railing and looks at him imploringly, “Can we talk this out?” he offers weakly.

He really regretted voting for the no superpowers rule now.

“Any last words, Parker”

Peter turns his head around, looking for a way out. It was too high to jump from without his webs and it won’t be possible to run around Clint without getting hit by a paintball.

Right before he decides to accept his inevitable defeat he sees a flash of bright red hair hiding in the branches of one of the thick, green trees below them.

“You know what, you got me Clint” he smirks, letting Clint bask in his moment of victory for a second, “Just kidding” and he flips himself back off over the railing.

He really wishes he could’ve seen Clint’s face at that moment, sadly success came with a price.

Right on schedule, the sharp red crackles of electricity catch him a couple of feet from the ground and he plants his feet on the ground, turning around to face Wanda.

“Thanks Wands”

“Oh I didn’t do it for you”

It takes him a second too long to figure out what she means but by the time he does it’s already too late, a dark red paintball slams into his protective vest.

“You’re a traitor, Wanda” Peter sulked, wow and here he thought he could actually win - or at least come second to Nat.

“All is fair in love and paintball”

5. Unwillingly, off a stage

Wanda had decided to pick Peter up from his Decathlon practice, it was always Happy who did it but he was sick and plus, they could grab some ice cream and talk before they had to head back.

She tapped her fingers idly on the steering wheel, rapping out a misplaced tune and glances again at the school gates.

She fixes the rearview mirror and frowns, Peter should have come skipping out 15 minutes ago.

Wanda steps out of the car and smooths her wrinkled hoodie, running her fingers through hair once in the window before walking towards the school.

Her sneakers squeak, echoing loudly through the empty hallways and she has to wrinkle her nose at the spitballs stuck to the walls and lockers. Someone’s book report flits around in the air and suddenly, she’s incredibly grateful she never had to go to a real high school.

There’s a piece of paper with a handwritten “Academic Decathlon” scribbled on it taped loosely on heavy, wooden doors and she pushes them open, shivering at the rush of cold air that bursts out.

Peering in, Wanda sees Peter on the stage but he’s not alone. There’s another high-schooler gripping hard at his shoulders and sneering at him, speaking words Wanda’s not close enough to hear. It doesn’t take any amount of genius to know the two boys weren’t friends/

She doesn’t even have time to intervene because Peter’s pushed off the stage, it’s barely a 2 foot fall but Wanda doesn’t care, she’s angry.

Peter looks at her in surprise with dark red cheeks once she puts him, gently, on the floor. He practically curls in on himself and she honestly wouldn’t be surprised if her skin was a similar shade as his, just not for the same reason.

She stomps up to the other boy who’s looking at her in alarm and pokes a harsh finger at his chest, “You. bastard.” she accentuates each word by pushing her finger even harder against his t-shirt, “What’s wrong with you?!”

She may not have gone to high school but she definitely knows what a bully is. She’s had plenty of her own in the past, even if she hadn’t realized it at first.

It wasn’t fair Peter had to go through the same thing, school wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was where you were supposed to goof off with your friends and learn, not get pushed around by kids because they think they’re better than you.

A hand tugs at her wrist and she’s so wound up nearly forgets to soften her face when Peter tugs again, silently asking her to just drop it.

She looks back at the bully who’s gone pale and pushes him, sending him stumbling back a few feet.

“Don’t touch my little brother again, asshole” she snarls before whipping around and dragging Peter out the doors by his backpack.

By the time they get to the car, Peter still hasn’t said a word and instead opts to look out the window, not even sparing Wanda a small glance.

Her face is still aflame and her hands are still clenched around the wheel as she pulls to the side of the road and parks, looking over at Peter. His eyes are tinged red.

“I’m sorry” he whispers, the second they’re parked.

“Don’t say sorry, it wasn’t your fault, but why didn’t you fight back? Just one shove”. It doesn’t make sense, Peter is strong enough to take on super-soldiers, he practically is one himself with all his advancements, so why doesn’t he just push back? He doesn’t have to get hurt like this, he doesn’t deserve to.

“I’m just Peter Parker. I’m not Spiderman at school so it wouldn’t make sense, I can’t just do that”, his fingers dig into his thighs and he kicks lightly at his backpack.

“Then you could’ve said something to us,” she’s looking up at him, eyes almost crazed. It’s not okay, it’s not even close alright, it’s awful that this happens to him.

And she knows it’s not just a one-time thing.

Not when bullying at Midtown has been discussed far too many times for comfort, not when he’s come back with bruises and marks even when he hasn’t patrolled in days, and definitely not when Peter just tried to subtly wipe a tear from his cheek.

She feels tired all of a sudden, as her raging wave of anger reaches a crescendo and plummets to the ground, scattering, dropping her intentions to take care of anyone who even comes close to hurting Peter with some well-placed punches and kicks.

Wanda sighs and squeezes her eyes shut, blindly, she grabs Peter’s hand and asks, “Was that the Flash guy?”

“No, Flash never gets physical, he’s not too bad. This is someone else”

“So you’ve been getting bullied by multiple people?”, it’s not a question, she already knows. “Peter, you’re Spiderman, you know this isn’t right so please, please the next time this happens just” she exhales, “Just please, promise you’ll tell someone, anyone and they’ll take care of it”

“Promise” Peter breathes from next to her.

“Okay” she pulls back into the traffic, “I’m getting cookie dough ice cream, which one do you want?”

+1. This one was definitely not supposed to happen, shit, shitshit

It’s getting really hard to breathe.

Which should probably not be happening, but in Peter’s defense, he hadn’t even wanted to skip class. MJ had told him to, quote, “Get out of here before your dumbass throws up on someone’s shoes” and for once he’d actually listened, deciding going home and sleeping his fever off was better than being stuck in a stuffy old classroom, doing schoolwork.

The heater of the apartment sounded like heaven and sunshine right about then.

He was just going to take the subway when one of the tv’s turned on, flashing a news report about the Avengers fighting the group of people near the tower.

According to the news channel, they had a whole lot of advanced technology, from ray guns to shapeless contraptions you couldn’t tell heads or tails of.

And there were a lot of them.

So of course, Peter had immediately donned his warm hoodie and jeans and switched into his suit, already swinging towards to get there, it made his stomach queasy and his head spin, but it was fine, he was already almost there.

“Peter, you’re not doing this right now, stop it and go home”, Tony’s voice is playing through Karen the second he’s in range.

“Technically, I’m supposed to be in school right now, Mr.Stark”, Peter swings onto a roof and crashes against someone, knocking them down before looking at the metal cube object they had abandoned.

It was glowing a light purple, which should probably not be happening.

He walked cautiously around it and his eyes widened as the glow got brighter and spread more, covering the entire cube now.

“Shit!”

Peter manages to scramble back before it explodes, leaving a black scorch mark on the floor and the smell of smoke in the air.

“Peter!?”

Oops, he’d forgotten Mr.Stark was there.

“Yeah I’m fine, just where did these people get all this stuff?”

“No idea, but Pete, I swear to god get out of here, or else I’m calling your aunt”, there’s a strangled grunt and the comms go silent.

“Mr.Stark??”, there’s no answer, “Karen, take me to Mr.Stark”

He swings two buildings away and lands on the 9th floor balcony, entering and running towards the signal. When he enters the room, Tony’s being held up against the wall by someone who’s wearing heavy metal body armor, it could pass for an Iron Man cosplay if you squint really hard.

He jumps over, kicking them down and ducking a punch. Grabbing the wrist of the armor, Peter twists their arm and slams them on their back before immediately looking back at Tony and helping him up.

“You okay?”, Peter questions.

“Yup, something she used fried the comm link though, I can’t get to to anyone else”

Peter nods and they both run through the halls, racing to get to the top of the building.

“What do they want?”

“I don’t know, but right now I think they’re just trying to blow stuff up”

Bursting onto the roof, there’s only one person there with some weird silver spear, which honestly looks pretty harmless compared to everything else.

The man there, sees them and immediately backs off, dropping everything and stumbling away with a forced smile.

Tony still closes in on him and Peter webs his wrists and legs to the floor, just in case.

They’re both looking down onto the other rooftops for trouble when the headache Peter has been ignoring grows, and he stumbles back feeling his fever spike.

Tony approaches him and kneels down next to him where he’s sprawled on the floor waiting for the dizzy spell to pass.

“Kid, you have a fever”, Tony says after asking Karen for his vitals.

Peter swallows and fights the urge to keel over and vomit, “I’m fine”

“If I had a penny for every time I heard that” he jokes, voice unbearably soft, “Listen, you stay here and I’ll come and get you when this is over, ‘kay?”

Peter’s about to nod when someone flies onto the roof, they’re wearing goggles and using mechanical wings to help them fly.

Peter’s too dizzy to do anything so he watches as Tony raises a gauntlet and fires it up with a low whine that resonates in Peter’s keyed-up ears.

“Back off”, Tony says as a warning.

The girl smiles and takes off the goggles, slipping them up on her head with a puckish smirk, folding her wings in.

“Pleasure to meet you Iron Man, as well as you Spider”, she has a lilting accent that Peter can’t place.

The gauntlet doesn’t falter, even as Tony shifts so Peter is stuck in his shadow, “What do you want?”

“I want one of your inventions. I may not be in charge of all these idiots, but my best friend is our leader and if you get me what I want, this can all be called off.”

“Best I can do are scraps from the intern labs, sorry.” he says, before firing a repulsor as she ducks out of the way.

“I wasn’t going to this the hard way but I suppose I’ll have to”, her curly, brown hair whips in her face as she puts it up into a ponytail, still dodging Tony’s blasts.

Peter’s spidey sense flares just as her wings do and she’s coming at him at full speed, lifting him up and flying up, past the buildings. Oh he really has to hurl now.

Tony swears and tries to blast up, only to realize the girl had stuck a small square chip on him and his suit’s shutting down, his breathing clips and he looks up to where Peter’s being flown up.

He gets out of the suit and runs to the edge of the roof, “Wilson!” he calls, signaling Sam over from where he’s hauling debris out of the street for a car to get through.

Sam flies up to him and without a word, grabs him and flies him over to where Clint, Natasha, and Wanda are a few buildings away. The whole 30 seconds he hasn’t taken his eyes off the Peter-shaped speck in the sky that’s getting harder and harder to see.

He stumbles over to Clint who’s looking at Wanda in concern, arms braced behind her to catch her if she falls.

Tony briefly wonders what’s going on, before looking up at the collapsing building in front of them, the scarlet circling her wrists, and the sheen of sweat covering her forehead.

Clint looks over to him, swallowing, “Steve’s in there trying to get the rest of the people out, we can’t get in though, it’s too unstable. The second Wanda lets go, the entire place is coming crashing down”

Tony can’t hide his panic anymore and he points up the sky, “Clint, it’s Peter”

Clint follows his finger and he jerks, seeing the red and blue suit in the distance, “Oh god”

The comms finally crackle back online and Tony swears his heart skips a beat when he realizes the bird lady just dropped Peter, oh my god.

They’re well over 4,000 feet up and his heart is in his throat as Peter’s screaming floods through the comms.

Wanda hears it too and her hold on the building falters as she falls to her knees, eyes squeezed shut. Clint moves to hold her but hovers around her instead, glancing back up at Peter when Wanda has a semi-stable grip again.

Natasha kneels on the ground next to Wanda, “You’re going to have to catch him”

Wanda’s voice teeters on a cry, “I’m trying”

Tony holds back his own cry and desperately tries to speak into the comms, if Peter realizes Tony’s trying to get through to him he doesn’t acknowledge it.

The comms are filled with wheezing and rushing wind and Tony’s gripping his arm so tight because that’s his kid dammit, and he can’t do anything.

Wanda’s attempts at catching him are proving futile, she can’t handle anything else without dropping the building which she can’t do, not when Steve and a whole lot of people are depending on her not to let it go.

“Sam, can’t you take your wings up and get him?”. He doesn't care how panicked his voice sounds right now.

“One of the guys stuck a chip on it, the thing’s dead-weight now” Sam says, voice filled with sorrow.

Tony gulps in a breath and falls on his knees next to Wanda, “You have to catch him, Wanda” there’s a grim undertone in his voice hiding the waver and pure terror flooding through his veins.

Wanda grunts, tears are shining in her eyes, if it’s because of the strain or Peter, he has no idea.

“GUYS! Guys, guys, I’m falling!” Peter screams into their earpieces, voice cutting out, hot tears squeeze at his eyes.

Wanda looks up with a new sense of determination and her eyes flash, Tony suddenly knows that anyone going toe-to-toe with her would probably run first chance instead of fight.

“You can do it Wanda, come on” Tony pleads.

Peter’s form is getting bigger every second, little by little.

At around 500 feet, a faint glimmer of red runs over his body but it’s not enough, it slows Peter’s fall the tiniest bit before he’s hurtling through the air again.

‘Tony, Tony, Tony” Peter says his name like a prayer in the comms and Tony clenches his fist again, switching between looking at Wanda and Peter so fast, he wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up with whiplash.

The strain on Wanda’s forehead grows and her eyes squeeze shut as she tears at her limits.

Tony stands beside where she’s kneeled on the ground, trying to see if he’d be able to catch Peter if this didn’t work. He really hoped it didn’t come to that though, he didn’t have his suit and with the speed Peter was falling at, he didn’t know what would happen.

Eyes focused on Peter, Tony realizes a thin, flickering layer of red is very slowly growing over his body. Relief bubbles in his throat and Wanda is able to slow Peter enough so that he and Sam can grab onto him, they all fall to the ground in a pile of limbs.

Tony grabs Peter under his shoulders and holds him upright as he gags and chokes on nothing, taking off his mask and brushing his curls off of his sweaty face.

Tony’s ears ring with the lingering screams of Wanda and Peter, his throat feels raw and he realizes that in his panic, he had been screaming too. And it wasn’t just his ears that were buzzing, it seemed like everything was still ringing, the air vibrating with panic.

Peter was held close to Tony’s chest as he shook with heaving gasps and suppressed sobs, dried tear tracks streak the sides of his face and Tony tries to comb his fingers through the knots in Peter’s hair.

Looking around, Tony took everything in, everyone’s faces were pale and Wanda was barely holding herself up on her elbows, her heavy pants were forced through clenched teeth.

She’d let go of her hold on the building as Steve had come running out, waiting till he was out of the damage zone before sending it all crashing down. All of that had happened just seconds after she had managed to gradually slow Peter down and get him to the ground in one piece.

A sigh of exhaustion huffs through Tony’s nose and the team sits in silence for a few minutes, trying to process all the chaos that had just happened.

Clint was helping Wanda, shakily, sit up and Peter crawled out of Tony’s arms to her before wrapping his trembling arms around her shoulders and whispering something to her.

Tony doesn’t know what was said but Peter was safe, everyone was safe. They were all alright and his breaths started to come easier.

Natasha sat next to him giving him a small, reassuring smile. He leaned back and shut his eyes, making a mental note to add a parachute to Peter’s suit, among many other things. Also to thank Wanda, because if she hadn’t been here...Tony didn’t want to think about it.

That was done now though. Tony’s chest feels much lighter when Peter smiles at him over Wanda’s shoulder, the type of smile that conveys a million emotions, with nothing else.

He gives a shaky grin back.

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nymphigeon · 4 years

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From me, to you || 01

♤ Pairing: Taehyung x Reader

♤ Genre: fluff, angst, romance, hybrid au, hybrid!Taehyung, detective!reader

♤ Words: 2.1k

♤ Rating: PG-13

♤ Warnings (for this chapter): swearing, crime, a sex club, mentions of murder, blood, mentions of hybrid abuse, mentions of drugs, mentions of the mafia.

Synopsis: A story in which he has never known love, so you'll give it to him.

Series masterlist

01 02

The weather has been terrible lately. The summer heat has been replaced by cold days full of rain and wind. The sky is constantly grey with now and then a flash of light caused by the thunderbolt that decided to say hi. Leaves have turned brown, dying as the trees don’t have the resources to take care of them anymore.

The flock of people on the streets has all but disappeared, giving shops an opportunity to adjust their opening times. Animals feel the need to hide away more and leave to their homes underground or high up. Some even completely move to places where the sun shines brighter. Of course, because where the sun shines there is warmth.

Now sometimes autumn is associated with warm chocolate milk in front of the fire place wrapped up in a blanket. A slow song is playing in the background on low volume while you’re playing cards on the floor, or well most likely on a rug. Seated comfortably, your back against the sofa and your knees raised, nicely cuddled up into yourself, or perhaps someone else.

The sound of rain hitting the windows acts as a lullaby during your time inside. And if you do forcefully need to get out for a short time, the pleasant petrichor will softly welcome you. Or maybe this sounds more like winter? What does it matter, both seasons are cold.

At the time mother nature decided to shift it’s warmth to other places on earth, a thick layer of unease seemed to settle over the city. Like all the fun the sunrays brought were traded for despair. Awfully noticeable in how the amount of cases for the local police have risen dramatically.

People are staying at home so everyone who was hired during the busy summer has to be fired. There is too much staff otherwise. People in this particular town already aren’t the richest in the world, imagine what happens when employment rates drop.

Crimes have been a regular subject for the news. The few that did go outside, now stay at home out of fear. Curtains closed, lights out, please don’t enter my house. Or curtains opened, lights on, there is someone at home.

Most offenders have yet to been caught. Everyone is your enemy now. Don’t trust the neighbour who came home late last night. The sound of your glass falling is the window being broken. I’m calling the police.

While jewellery is being stolen at one side, someone will use the opportunity of the police being busy to kill the innocent. Or maybe they didn’t pay back the money they got from some sketchy dude in an alleyway down the street. Not so innocent anymore.

The only workers making bank at the moment are those with a career in law enforcement. Oh and those criminals were talking about. That includes hybrid dealers and unlicensed sex clubs.

When my boss called me to work, I didn’t expect to hear about a hybrid deal gone wrong inside said unlicensed sex club. Just for your information, treating hybrids like slaves has been long forbidden. You can own them, show off your wealth all you want, but the instant you hurt the half-animal you can see your money out the door. In return, you can expect expensive fines and imprisonment. At least that’s what is supposed to happen.

Still a blind eye is often turned to incidents involving hybrids by both the general public and law enforcements. You can also be fined for not turning in the information you have of a possible abuser, but say that’s also ignored, there is no other law backing the poor hybrid up.

The laws were originally established because the half-animals are also half-humans, created by some crazy scientist who perished years ago. Some rogue failed experiment turned on him. A warning for humans not to take in wild animal hybrids, not that anyone listened. Those wild animal hybrids are sometimes worth more money than the diamond necklace your mafia-boss husband got you.

The second I agreed to meet my colleagues at the crime scene I was hung up on, the beeping tone at my ear notifying me. I love the work I need to do, but I hate the people involved. It pays the bills though, so you won’t see me complaining. I get my stuff together and head out the house. It’s dark outside, raining too. The darkness might be explained by the fact that it’s 11 pm at night. Not the greatest time to be out. Luckily my job has provided me with a car, so you won’t see me walking.

During the ride the radio plays reports of different crimes throughout the city. Some happened at the exact same time, others had no connection whatsoever, yet they ended up being executed by the same group. Tv shows like CSI have been stuffing these sinners with the confidence to rob a place. The average criminal is luckily stupid enough not to know these shows don’t show the entire picture. However, that didn’t make them any easier to catch according to this radio report. On the other hand, what radio stations don’t know is that police won’t show them the entire picture either. Well they’re just there to spread panic, fact checking isn’t a job requirement.

The rain makes the view basically non-existent. Coming down like the angels are just throwing buckets of water over our heads, everything in the distance is blurry. Or maybe they just drank a lot, who knows. Weather reports have been warning for slippery roads, albeit I think they forgot to mention anything about nature made swimming pools outside of our houses.

Seeing as there is nothing good to report on the news they might as well downplay everything to give viewers their daily dose of good news. There is no good news though, and pretending that there is, is dangerous. Hope will only crush future expectations of being safe. Not that they care, they just need high ratings.

Seeing blurry blue and red lights in the distance is my indication that I’m getting close. I’ve never been to this part of town, if I had this so called sex club would’ve already been long gone. Don’t underestimate me, I can sense law breaking acts from a mile away. The fact that I don’t live too far away from addresses where everyone looks to be a drug addict just makes me better at my job.

I park my car next to the others at the side of the road and uncomfortably bend myself to take my bag from the backseat. I do not want to stand in this rain for longer than needed. I mentally prepare myself to get inside as fast as possible. I won’t worry about the sight inside too much, I’m used to it.

I get out of the car and lock it, before walking over to the barricade tape. The outside of the club looks the same as any other sexual fantasy indulging club. Pink lights and posters of men and women in nothing but flimsy underwear plaster the windows. If it wasn’t for the bunch of officers behind the barricade tape, nobody would’ve known there was somebody murdered inside.

Reporters collect themselves in front of officers close to the tape, trying to get any kind of information out of them. They’re not getting any, so they keep trying, foolishly believing we know any more than they do. Well maybe a little more.

Anyways, without proper investigation we are just as clueless as they are. I’ll applaud their dedication though, as not all reporters have brought an umbrella with them. Imagine getting soaking wet just to ask a few questions. They might not have a raincoat, but they’re all somehow protecting their camera’s one way or another.

As I get closer to the tape blocking outsiders from entering, reporters notice me approaching. If it wasn’t for my uniform they wouldn’t even have batted a lash in my direction. Right now apparently, I’m the most interesting human being on earth. Remembering my trainings I keep my head low and ignore every question thrown my way, until I reach the officer waiting for me.

“Ah, detective Y/F/N Y/L/N, we have been expecting you.” He allows me to duck under the tape, fore shaking my hand and placing a gentle hand on my lower back. The umbrella he’s holding protects me from arriving inside looking like I just had a shower with my clothes on. Like this, I get escorted inside, leaving the flashing camera’s behind me.

“Good evening, Miss Y/L/N.” Another female detective greets me immediately once I step inside. The male officer gives me a nod ere disappearing back into the front garden of the club. Probably going to spend his time listening to silly questions and being blinded by light. At least he might make in on the front page of tomorrow’s newspapers. Maybe he’ll get scouted by some modelling agency just to appear on more front pages.

“David Brown, mid-thirties, and an employee at the club, Mia Labell, 23, both got killed after Brown tried to buy a hybrid of another man we can’t identify from the security footage. Both the hybrid and man wore a hood. We don’t know what went down inside the room as there are no camera’s inside and the walls are soundproof.” The woman, whose name is apparently Blair Miller as shown on the name badge on her chest, explains the situation while she leads me to the room.

“For an illegal sex club they are awfully professional.” I note, having paid close attention to her words. “Well if you don’t want to get outed by a customer I guess that’s the right thing to do. People value anonymity.” I add as the other female holds up a key card against a control panel to the right of a metal door.

The door slides open after a beep of confirmation. A young girl laying on the large bed in the middle is the first thing I lay my eyes on. The bed sheets are tainted completely red with her blood. Next to the bed lies a man, drowning in a puddle of his own blood. The bodies of the two still look like they could stand up at any moment. “Time of death?”

I walk further into the room, looking around for any other clues I should note. “Approximately 10.38 pm for both of them.” Blair answers, meekly standing in the door opening. “How did they rent the room?” I put on a pair of white latex gloves, before gently expecting the girl on the bed, without moving her from her position. Her hands are tied together, thick ropes cutting into her skin. A gag in her mouth, a blindfold covering her eyes and some lingerie complete the look.

“They wanted one girl for the three of them, paid, then took this room as any other customer would.” Dangerous, there is no way to keep these girls safe. No camera’s, just selling them off to multiple men at the same time. Is there any security around here? The two bodies contain multiple stab marks in their chest and stomach area. There are no signs of any strangling or poisoning. Cause of death for now is bleeding to death, but we’ll have to wait for the autopsy.

“Three?” I don’t look at Blair as I voice my questions. I’m good at multitasking, no need to focus on one thing only. “Mister Brown, the unnamed man and the hybrid.” They rented the girl as normal, then tied her up and proceeded to use the room for their business. Seeing as both died around the same time, the girl was alive during their exchange. We can’t exactly ask her anything right now though.

“How did the culprit leave?” You take a swab from under the fingernails of both bodies, hoping they might have scratched whoever did this. “Leisurely strolled outside the front door with the hybrid on a leash.” The poor hybrid must have witnessed everything. There was never a reason for this to happen. “These two were found by a cleaner going in not even a minute or two later.” It’s not my job to care. It’s not my job to ask either, but I’m not heartless, I am able to feel sympathetic.

“How are they doing?” I look at Blair for this one. Maybe because it’s a different type of question. “Shocked at first of course. They’ve calmed down now.” That makes me feel better. I’ve been doing this for over 2 years, and never will I be able to understand how someone could do this. Then again, the reason for becoming a criminal investigator was not to understand anyway, but to serve, to protect. And protect I will.

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365days365movies · 4 years

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January 15, 2021: Casino Royale (2006) (Part 1)

So...we meet again, Bond. What’ve you been doing for the past few years?

...What. Not who, James, WHAT. Jeez.

Whatever. BrosBond had 3 movies after GoldenEye, and they were...not great, from what I’ve heard. Remember, I wasn’t as big of a fan of GoldenEye as many critics and fans were; so, I can’t imagine what I’d think of the latter three. Maybe one day, but not today!

Today, I’m focusing my sights on the revitalization of the brand. See, in 2002, Die Another Day came out, and that movie was apparently crazy. TOO crazy. So crazy, in fact, that audiences and critics accused it of losing the plot, and the production studio in charge (Eon Productions) had a yearning to change direction. And their inspiration came from...a surprising place.

See, Joel Schumacher’s campy, over-the-top Batman films were basically wiped out by Christopher Nolan’s 2005 reinvention of the character in Batman Begins. Which is, in my opinion, a highly underrated classic, Seriously. And in 2005, this film was absolutely a smash-hit. Batman was cool again, which a lot of people never thought would happen in film. Eon saw this, and thought...how can we apply that to Bond?

Out with Brosnan...in with Craig.

The first of the new, darker, reinvented Bond films is planned for release in 2006, starring Daniel Craig as the suave, sophisticated spy. And the director of the film was selected to be...Martin Campbell? From GoldenEye? The guy who kinda sorta started the modern over-the-top Bond? Really? I mean, OK. The writers this time are different...except for one. I didn’t talk about the writers last time because I don’t like putting people on blast if I don’t gotta. This time...maybe. We’ll see.

If this Casino Royale is basically Bond Begins, I’m definitely interested. Maybe this’ll revitalize that Bond-love from the Connery days. Let’s find out! We’re also gonna look at the Bond checklist again!

Gadgets: better have more cool gadgets than GoldenEye, I swear...

Bond Girl: GoldenEye’s Natalya wasn’t bad, to be honest; let’s see who his Inevitable Love Interest is this time.

Villain: Alec Trevelyan had so much potential. I need my dastardly villain, let’s do this. Oh, and let’s throw the henchman in here, too. Xenia Onatopp was...a lot...but she was a memorable henchman, at least.

Music: Of course. GoldenEye’s theme was good, and we’ll see how 2006 does.

OK, movie time. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

We start at an office building in Prague, where a man makes his way up to his office. Waiting there for him is, of course, James Bond (Daniel Craig). The man is Dryden, section chief at the British Embassy in Prague, whom M has accused of selling secrets, a big no-no. But Bond...isn’t a double-0 agent. Huh. You got me interested.

Apparently, agents get the two zeroes once they’ve killed two people on file. James hadn’t killed anyone...until recently. Which is when we get this.

OH SHIT

This is an absolutely BRUTAL fight. It’s not choreographed flashily, it’s not pretty...it’s rough. It’s intense. And it’s...oh my God, wow. Made me feel it. And what’s astonishing is that it’s SO short.

On learning this, Dryden tells him not to worry, the second one is...

...YOU GOT ME. I’M IN FOR THE FUCKIN’ RIDE

HOW??? How is it that in 3 minutes of screentime, I’m already more satisfied by Craig’s Bond than I was for the ENTIRETY of GoldenEye? That is masterfully done, right off the bat. WOW. We even get a smooth-as-silk segue into the classic bullet turret sequence, and that takes us right into the song and opening credits. And...wow.

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Here’s the thing about Bond openings, as I mentioned last time: they were all directed by one guy up until GoldenEye, and were basically all silhouetted women with themes and scenes from the movie projected around them. The Brosnan movies followed suit, always having silhouetted women in one way or another. Die Another Day used CGI women and...a really bad Madonna song. It was...it is NOT GOOD, guys. Look it up, it’s the most 2002 thing I’ve ever heard.

But here’s the fin bit about Casino Royale. This is the first Bond movie opening with no women in it. Yeah. It’s the first one. And the song is Chris Cornell’s You Know My Name, and it’s good! Not sure it’s going in my soundtrack, though.

Finally, the opening credits sequence itself: it’s once again Daniel Kleinman doing it, and it’s actually inspired by the first James Bond book Casino Royale, which had already had a TV special and unofficial Bond movie made from it! The cover had a playing card motif, and the opening carries over that motif creatively. I really dig it, if I’m honest! Definitely a welcome break from the 44 years of Bond films preceding it.

Uganda! And we meet the villain of this film: Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen). And GODDAMN if that isn’t a Bond villain! He’s a banker, making a deal with a rebel leader, Steven Obanno (Isaach de Bankole), via their liason Mr. White (Jesper Christiensen). Setting up an attack by supplying Obanno with money, he sells his stocks of a company called Skyfleet, knowing that they’re about to fail.

Meanwhile, a ferret’s fighting an Asian species of cobra. In Madagascar. My zoology senses are EXPLODING, OH my God. So much wrong there. Anyway, there’s a bombmaker in the crowd watching the fight. He’s being tailed by Bond and another agent, Carter, who tips off the guy by being a bad spy. Bond chases him to a construction yard. What now, James?

Awesome. Why is this awesome when I said that the tank was dumb? Because at least it makes sense for a bulldozer to go haywire in a construction yard, just sayin’. Plus, this dude clearly isn’t the best, as he fires on construction workers and cops.

Eventually, this chase sequence brings us to the top of a crane, where this exchange happens.

I, uh...I love this movie already. That’s goddamn great.

The chase scene as a whole is also fantastic, as it continues off the bridge and into an abandoned building, then escalates into the streets, brings in law enforcement, and eventually ends with Bond at an embassy, facing down both the military and the bomb maker. He kills the guy, shoots some gas tanks, grabs the bomb, and then gets the hell out of there.

...Y’know what, that was fucking amazing, but he also almost certainly caused an international incident there. And I should be annoyed about that, but guess what! It makes sense! This is an inexperienced Bond, one who’s JUST been promoted to 00 status as 007, as the prologue explained. So, y’know what? I’m into it!

Cut to a yacht, like you do in a Martin Campbell Bond film. There, we have our villain, Le Chiffre, playing a card game. Also, he weeps blood. Yeah. HE WEEPS BLOOD.

OK, if that isn’t some Bond villain shit, I don’t know WHAT is. He’s also asthmatic, because I love it. I love it so much. He’s a mathematically-brilliant asthmatic that weeps blood. More, please.

He’s also a person aware of what Bond did at the embassy, as it’s already become an international incident! Thank you for showing consequences, movie! Damn! I love it! This has two additional consequences. One, Le Chiffre notes that the code “Ellipsis” used by the bomber may be soon to expire, indicating a connection between the two. And the second consequence? M’s pissed.

M! DAME JUDI DENCH! One of my favorite things about GoldenEye was bringing in Judi Dench as M, and she made it through the reboot! And she’s still as entertaining as she was before, calling Bond out for his stupidity, and explaining that she misses the Cold War.

In her apartment, M does her normal exposition schtick, and her interactions with Bond are fantastic here. She’s understandably angry at him, and gives him what for, but she’s also clearly impressed that he FIGURED OUT WHERE SHE LIVES, as well as her REAL NAME. Shows her opinion of Bond and aspects of Bond’s character in a single, masterful stroke.

Well. Goddamn. Done.

The Bahamas! Bond’s here to find Alex Dimitrios (Simon Abkarian), a Greek businessman who’s believed to have a connection with Le Chiffre himself. And, as James Bond is wont to do, he finds him at a party, playing cards. And here’s where the reinvention of Bond comes full circle.

See, Bond’s doing all the typical Bond things, yeah. But there are some differences present here, as well as some neat nuances. Bond isn’t wearing the suit, first of all. He actually hasn’t worn a suit the whole movie, which makes perfect sense for a spy. Suits aren’t exactly the least conspicuous thing in the world; bound to get you noticed if you don’t want to be.

And then, there’s the girl. This is Solange Dimitrios (Catherina Murino), the wife of Alex who was treated BADLY by him at the party. That gives her a reason to take Bond’s offer for a ride to his place, outside of just his raw animalistic charm that he seems to have in some of these movies. Look at that, already more chemistry than he had with Natalya in GoldenEye.

And yes, this results in her cheating on Alex. Is her cheating justified from a moral standpoint? No, of course it isn’t. And of course, this leads to the typical Bond-handsome-sex-GOOD sequence, but again, some nuance here! First of all, he doesn’t win her over with corny clever lines, like what we saw in GoldenEye multiple ties. Second, this is actually all an attempt to get some infomation from her about her husband. Bond might be enjoying it, but his womanizing here actually has a purpose. And that’s rare!

That’s further punctuated by the fact that he STRAIGHT UP LEAVES BEFORE ANYTHING HAPPENS. Yeah, she tells him that Alex just made his way to Miami, and he leaves! Dick move, yeah, but it makes sense! James isn’t here for pleasure, he’s here for work!

He follows Alex to a Bodies at Work exhibit (you know, the preserved and skinned cadavers put into poses that used to tour around the USA? I saw it in Times Square at the end of its popularity. A little ghoulish, maybe, but I think it’s pretty cool), where the two of them get in a very tense close-up knife fight in public.

Alex is dead, but not before passing off a package to someone else at the exhibition. Bond tails the guy to Miami International Airport, where the largest airplane in the world is set to be unveiled. Using the code sent to the bombers, Bond gets into the back, and goes to intercept the disguised bomber who’s set to blow up the SkyChonk (I mean it, that giant airplane is THICCC).

Time for another cool chase sequence! Some luggage is destroyed, along with a bus, the cops join in on the chase, an airplane is prevented from landing (making someone on that plane probably very upset), and Bond somehow manages to prevent the plane from blowing up. And it’s by the SKIN of his teeth, lemme tell you. Also, he blows up a dude with his own flashlight bomb.

Nice. Somehow, Bond isn’t arrested, and makes his way back to the Bahamas. And it looks like Solange isn’t the Bond girl after all. Because she was thought to be the information leak (which she was, to an extent), she was tortured to death. Whoof.

M’s in the Bahamas now, and the exposition continues. She’s done with Bond’s bullshit, and she plants a tracker under his skin. She explains that with the big boi plane destroyed, somebody stood a lot to gain financially from the stock crash to come. Except that the plane wasn’t destroyed, and that person lost $100 million by “betting the wrong way.”

That person, of course, was Le Chiffre, a manthematical genius and chess prodigy, who plays poker for fun, and plays the stock market with his clients’ money. Bond’s the best poker player in MI6 (a good addition that we already saw foreshadowed earlier! See what I mean?), and she’s sending him to a high stakes poker game that Le Chiffre’s looking to regain his money from.

Bond FINALLY dons his suit, and gets on a train in Montenegro, where he meets...

Vesper Lynd (Eva Green). THERE’S our Bond girl! Although, there’s a reference to Miss Moneypenny in their introduction, which is interesting. But Vesper is an agent for the British Treasury, supplying the money for the buy-in for the tournament. And their conversation on the train...wow. Now THIS is chemistry, seriously.

Vesper’s a great character, and she gives Bond NO quarter. She reads his character, and calls him out very accurately. They also explain why both Bond and Vesper are good at poker: it’s all about reading people. I’m genuinely impressed by how this movie is put together, and how well-thought out Bond is as a character. And this is the dimension I love to see in a Bond girl as well!

GODDAMN, I am in love with this movie. More coming in Part 2!

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thequietmanno1 · 4 years

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Thelreads, Vigilantes 18.5, Replies Part 1

1) “Oh, its going to be about the heroes then…”- Yep, though sadly with a little too much focus on midnight end endeavour, and not enough on the heroes you’d actually prefer to see more of, like Tensei. Aizawa’s secondary focus should be a good consolation prize though.

2) “Oh- oh okay, I think I recall what was going on. It was when the heroes made a parade down the street to beat the shit out of the recently-transformed civilians, right?”-Can’t imagine it sat well with a lot of them, finding out they’d pummelled the hell out of a bunch of innocent victims. We mainly focus on Current-Asshole endeavour’s POV on events and his two cents, but I’d have liked to see the reactions of a few more people to realising they just enforced police brutality- Jeanist and Manuel must have had at least a sad look on their faces at the news. Of course, they are professionals, so they’re not going to let this mistake trip them up again, but they’re also generally an empathetic bunch when the job allows them to be, so that’s gotta sting for them.

3) “OH HEY LOOK, ITS EVEN-MORE-OF-A-BASTARD-THAN-USUAL ENDEAVOR. ALSO QUITE SOME TIME SINCE I LAST SAW YOUR FACE

NOW, WHICH OTHER HERO WILL BE PRESENT FOR THIS MEETING, BECAUSE THOSE WERE SOME UNEXPECTED FACES I SAW AROUND HERE”- At least several future UA teachers as well, which makes me wonder where 13’s hero agency was located, if they’re currently working as a freelance hero before Joining UA. But yeah, at this point, Endeavour’s not had the reality wake-up call that is Kamino ward, as he’s very firmly in asshole territory by this point in the story. In fact, given how the timelines shake out, it could be around this point that the abuse with Rei and Shoto was going on, though it’s unclear yet.

Regardless, Endeavour’s presence here is mainly to show that, whilst the vigilantes have gotten lucky with the heroes they’ve worked alongside thus far, coming to the full attention of the law, and heroes like Endeavour, is still very much not a thing they should do, as there are hardliners who won’t give them the benefit of the doubt and will treat them the same as villains. Pop’s first-aid skills won’t mean jack against the 3rd degree burns Endeavour would give them in the process of taking them down.

4) “Oh boy, we’re going to see endeavor burst into flames today, aren’t we? That dude is just digging himself deeper with each word he says, I’m betting on Endeavor losing his shit. He’s already on the edge of it anyway, just a little push…”- Ironically, despite his explosive temper and the emotion-based connection it has to his flames, the actual explosive threat to the building and the safety of everybody in it comes from elsewhere, though Endeavour is still the metaphorical spark that could ignite the whole mess.

5) “IT WAS TENSEI, I KNEW IT. ALSO MIDNIGHT, I DIDN’T REALIZED IT WAS HER IN THAT OTHER PANEL, NICE TO SEE YOU AS WELL, AND WITHOUT THE WHIP”- In fairness, a business-like getup really does wonders to disguise her well- I literally could not have guessed she was the same person without the handy reminder note- though fear not, the whip is doubtless folded neatly at the bottom of her bag, ready to come out at a moment’s notice. Look, you can even see that her wardrobe is designed with clip buttons to easily come apart and expose her skin- and generous chest- to the world. Midnight’s literally designed her civilians clothing with stripper properties so she can still use her quirk at a moment’s notice- and for no other reason….

6) “Oh, that’s nice, you guys have some images from the event, that resemble soooo much the panels on that chapter… How convenient, I wonder who was taking pictures or recording that.”- What I’m getting is that All Might’s attacks are so hard-core silver age that they literally summon Onomatopoeia to accompany his smashes like comic book lettering.

7) “Yeah see? Didn’t even bat an eye to the fact he beat the snout out of passersby, he is, ironacly, dealing with it in a cold and calculating manner. Endeavor doesn’t care, Endeavor has to go brood over being inferior to All Might and act like a bastard to his family, you know, the usual stuff.”- From his POV, he’s not wrong either. Sure, there were extenuating circumstances, but those people were still using their quirks in a manner that was likely to hurt others around them, which broke the laws, even if they were pushed to it, and they needed to be stopped. Looking at just the facts of events, Endeavour didn’t do the wrong thing here by stopping people who were a danger to themselves and others, and from his perspective he’s certainly irked by the fact that he’s getting rebuked for following the job description of his role as a hero.

He’s unapologetic, precisely because he did what needed to be done to make people safer, not yet at the stage where he starts to realise that it takes more than just solving problems with rapid judgement and swift action to be a hero- it involves having a heart that cares about the well-being of others around him, and at this early stage of his character, the only person endeavour truly cares about is himself- an attitude he’ll later come to regret when he fully processes what it cost him, but not a concern for an endeavour who’s focused 100% on overcoming All Might, failing to realise that every attempt he makes to compare himself to him just drives him further away from becoming the ideal hero a man in his position should be.

8) “Oh boy, here we go, time for Endeavor to lose his shit over the idea that he should identify the threats instead of jumping and punching everyone in front of him.”- well, if somebody’s rampaging around and tossing cars like toys down the main street, threatening violence and collateral damage to civilians, then it is indeed moronic to hold off taking them down until you’ve ascertained whether or not their current situation is something that’s their own fault, or the influence of another person in the shadows. Heroes must deal with hundreds of villain cases over the course of a single year, and that’s not counting the competitive aspect that comes from them trying to kill-steal villains to increase their reputation, necessitating speed over judging the circumstances behind a villain’s appearance.

These trigger cases were one case of the usual snap-judgement backfiring on heroes, but the trigger drug itself isn’t capable of mass production yet, and with increased police interest in it following this mass civilian assault, the trigger ring must further turtle up and slow down production and testing to deflect scrutiny of their shady dealings. Endeavour’s not wrong to ask if the police honestly expect him and all the other heroes to hold back from fighting every villain they see running amok until they’re certain that they’re actually villains or drugged-up civilians, since that could be seen as them being irresponsible to their duty of protecting the public to outside eyes. Plus, Endeavour himself has more personal reasons not to hold back when trying to out-do All Might’s arrest record.

Granted, were he less hot-headed and gung-ho, Endeavour could probably go for submission holds and such to try and non-violently restrain villains if he’s uncertain if they’re genuine villains, but on the other hand, he’s also quite likely not strong enough to do that. Endeavour’s quirk doesn’t increase his strength, beyond letting him use his flames for propulsion, so against strong villains or tough fighters he can’t actually hold back if he wants to take them down- not to mention holding back would slow him down and make him look ineffectual compared to All Might.

All Might’s sheer strength make him restraining others or incapacitating them easy, but for somebody like Endeavour, who has top-class quirk control and usage, but not much else to work with, it’s harder for him to take on the same villains with the effort and care OFA lets All Might exercise mid-fight towards his opponents. Like, we’ve seen what All Might can do when he’s not holding back, so if anything, it must be rare for him to come across opponents he can’t subdue without using his full strength by this point in his career.

9) “Oh, that’s nice. Endeavor would’ve knocked Koichi unconscious with a left hook and dragged him to jail back in chapter 1 if he had seen him moving around with his quirk. Yeah, a black-and-white morality here like we already expected, but, not surprisingly, in the most violent way possible.”- Whereas Phelps seems like the kind of lawman who would be firm and unyielding with Koichi, should he catch him at vigilante work, he’d merely punish him within the limits of the law, arresting him and marking him down with a permanent mark on his record, maybe a few months in juvie hall.

Endeavour, meanwhile, will treat Koichi and the rest with the exact same attitude he treated the nomus with- beating and roasting them until they’re unconscious enough to be dragged in for ‘unlawful activity’, if not dead-perhaps even a bit more forceful than would be necessitated by the scale of the crime. If Phelps would be the inspector Javert to Koichi, Endeavour would be the Judge Dredd- equally firm and unyielding in enforcing the law according to his interpretation of it, but much more willing to enact bodily harm when forcing the ‘criminal’ to comply with his judgement.

10) “Also, nice to know that in order to keep his “ideals” here, Endeavor would be unable to even lift a finger to stop Knuckleduster, since, as he said Villains are those that unlawfully use quirks, and that man has nothing of sorts.”- On the other hand, he might have just roasted Knuckleduster and moved on before he had to chance to verify that knuckleduster was actually quirkless upon seeing him threatening violence against civilians in searching for trigger.

It took Aizawa several minutes of fighting him with his own quirk being uniquely suited to identifying knuckleduster’s quirkless state before he put the pieces together, and ironically, given his later partnership with ‘speed freak’ hero Hawks, Endeavour’s all about speed and efficiency right now. The faster he takes down villains, the more he’ll show up All Might in the process, so he really wouldn’t have given knuckleduster the benefit of proving he was quirkless before vaporising his bandanna, and most of his face with it.

11) “Oh look at that, Endeavor is purposefully ignoring part of the law that doesn’t fit on the way he prefers to act, oh how interesting t- 13, ARE YOU TAKING NOTES RIGHT NOW? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! OH MY GOD”- All Might is not the only UA teacher to take handy notes when at information briefings. Granted, in his case, they were mostly so he could givesaid information out, whereas 13 seems to be jotting down notes on both sides of the argument to make their mind up later on how they’ll conduct themselves with this new information, but it’s a neat touch. Even adults can still learn new things.

12) “Endeavor, can you please stop bitching about All Might for five minutes, please? Good lord man, you’re putting some strain on the AC back there, that is giving its best to keep the room cold while you lose your shit, without even caring about the damn topic of the meeting.”- Endeavour must almost literally burn money when he lets his temper flare up, given how much AC cooling his hero offices must possess to make the temperature pleasant for all his sidekicks and interns. Nobody would want to work in a hero office that’s even more hell-like than regular office work, now would they?

13)“HA, AS EXPECTED OF ALL MIGHT, RIGHT? DON’T WORRY ENDEAVOR, THE INSURANCE WILL COVER THAT BUR HOLE YOU LEFT IN THE CHAIR. AND THE FLOOR. AND THE CEILING… JESUS CHRIST MAN, IF YOU WANT TO BE BETTER THAN HIM, THEN WHY DON’T YOU START BY ACTING LIKE HIM?!”- well, he does try that out a little following kamino, but it doesn’t really work out so well for him, after he made charisma his dump Stat. But yeah, this…probably wasn’t a good showcase of how All Might really felt about the surprise twist that his inherited powers, meant to be wielded for the sake of justice and protecting the innocent, had in fact been used by himself to painfully brutalise those self-same innocents in distressing circumstances.

We’ve seen before how All Might put on a façade around others to appear to be larger than life and the perfect hero, at the cost of extreme personal and mental strain to his well-being. Behind closed doors, he was probably extremely distraught by what he’d done, but he couldn’t let anybody see that side of himself, lest it undermine the faith in the concept of heroics he was literally killing himself to uphold.

14) “And it was Bayonetta, alright. And the formal Bayonetta, not the usual whips-and-chains-and-uncomfortable-comments Bayonetta. A nice change of pace, I’m already enjoying it.”- I certainly hope you savoured the moment, cause it sure as hell didn’t last long. @thelreads

#bnha vigilantes #bnha #my hero academia #thelreads #vigilantes 18.5 #chapter replies

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danetobelieve · 4 years

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The Case Of The Invisible Man || Agatha and Winston

When: late september Who: @detective-keen & @danetobelieve Where: WCPD Summary: Winston and Agatha work on a confusing break in together. Warnings: n/a

The smell of cold Luigi’s Pizzas wafted up into Winston’s nose as their slender fingers reached beneath the lenses of their spectacles and rubbed their eyes. Reaching out, Winston collected the mug of semi warm coffee from their desk and watched the triple speed CCTV footage roll by. They were working a homicide case with Agatha. Which was good. Out of so many of their colleagues, Agatha was a safe person to work with. She didn’t have anything to do with the supernatural, not as far as Winston could tell. Not to mention that she was really good at their job and generally just pretty excellent company. Yawning, Winston grabbed a piece of pizza and was about to bite into it when they spotted something on the screen and paused, squinting at it. “Am I imagining things or does that guy kind of look like our perp?” Winston wasn’t convinced all of a sudden. They were pretty sure that their perp wasn’t blonde. “I think if I have to look at these screens for any longer I might put my face through them.”

An obnoxiously loud yawn followed Winston’s. The detective grimaced as she pictured her mother frowning about it. Agatha remembered, ever since she was a kid, her mom being hellbent on having her daughter and husband follow some rules of etiquette, and she and her father completely ignoring most of those rules, much to her great displeasure. “Mmmh?” She stretched her arms above her head, glancing at them, then at the screen. “You need new glasses, dude” she had to admit that they kinda looked similar to the perp, but was she really going to miss an opportunity to mess with Winston? She reached over to grab pizza, unpausing the video in the process. Which would be when a particularly ugly dressed person showed up on camera. “Wow Winston, you could have told me you were on the tape,” cackling, she grimaced at the taste of cold pizza. Ugh. Ew. “Or is this what you meant by putting your face through the screen?”

Doing their best to keep a straight face, Winston failed pretty fundamentally. With coffee dribbling out of their nose, Winston had to reach for a tissue. They’d laughed so hard at Agatha’s jest that they had all but ejected the coffee from their nose all over the desk surface. Quickly cleaning up their mess and wiping their face clear of coffee, Winston grinned. “Hey, I had my prescription checked like a year ago and it was fine, I don’t know about you but I don’t make enough to constantly be checking my glasses and making sure they’re perfect.” They were joking, well, not really, they weren’t exactly paid much at all. “Hey, I know that I have a bad sense of fashion, but even I’m not THAT bad.” Winston flicked the speed of the tape up by another notch and watched several people file past the camera, still nothing. They had hours of footage to work through from multiple vantage points, but they’d also been doing this for a while and it was getting tedious. “Had I known that I was going to be judged for my poor decisions in dress sense then I would’ve maybe made more of an effort to look less sloppy, but we can’t all dress as well as you can Nancy Drew.”

“Dude, nooooo,” Agatha moved away her things to make sure they wouldn’t get coffee-d courtesy of Winston. “I mean, that’s on me for being so hilarious,” she held her palm to her chest, and with a shit-eating grin on her face, she said : “my bad.” Agatha reached for napkins next, and helped them clean up the desk, shaking her head as Winston spoke of their salary. She couldn’t hold back her grimace as she tried to imagine what this station could be paying them. “Clearly whoever decides your paycheck never saw what happened when Dennis Nedry didn’t get paid enough : people died.” Okay, they were eaten by dinosaurs, but Agatha was pretty sure that any IT worker could hurt a lot with just a computer. She doubted that someone sweet like Winston would ever do that, but she was convinced that if they wanted to, they could. Her eyes were on the video, but her mind was elsewhere. She hated being stuck here staring at a screen, even if it was part of the job. “Why thank you. Just to be clear I was not comparing you to Dennis Nedry, you’re more like Q, or that guy from WatchDogs, what was his name again?” She brushed a wrinkle off her pantsuits and blew a raspberry. “Uuuuuuuuugh. Come on.”

“Hey hey hey, if you’re going to say funny shit then I’m going to shoot coffee out of my nose, I don’t make the rules I just play the game.” Winston couldn’t help their grin as they wiped the dribble of coffee from their nose. “That is definitely on you, definitely your bad.” Winston loved working with Agatha, she was one of the few people in the station who seemed to actually get them and she was good at her job. “It’s fine, I’ve only just started, we’ll see if I still think it’s fine later on, but for now, it’s fine. Luckily I don’t have any evil plans to take dinosaur embryos illegally but you never know, if I find some I might change my mind.” Pausing for a moment, Winston thought back to their days playing Watchdogs and grinned. “Do you mean Raymond Kenney?” they asked curiously. “I don’t know if I truly have the hair to rival Raymond but I appreciate the comparison. I do like to think of myself as a literal Doctor Who, just general all around genius but that’s a comparison I would happily take.”

“You know what’s worse than coffee? Coca Cola. You don’t want to snort that out of your nose, it’s the worst,” she advised. Clearly, this was something she had to learn the hard way, but she was not about to give those juicy details. Agatha cleared her throat and put down the cold slice of pizza. “Speaking of frozen embryos, I think I have some ice cream in the freezer here?” Obviously she was not dumb enough to leave a tub of Ben&Jerry’s in the precinct’s fridge looking like one, and when she came back with the thing in her hand, it was stored in a tomato stained Tupperware marked “Codfish brandade.” Handing a spoon to Winston, she sat down in her chair and slumped a little, getting comfortable. “YES, him. And you know, I’m sure you could get the same hair with a little bit of perseverance,” she smiled as Winston mentioned the Doctor. “Can I please be your companion? They are always nicely dressed. Check. And they work well with them. Check. We get in the Tardis, and arrest this douchebag right as he walks out of the store. Deal?”

“Coca cola or cocaine?” Winston asked with a grin. Of course they were joking. Winston was not a hardcore party person and they definitely weren’t into drugs. Working in law enforcement meant that it was pretty hard to be into drugs. “I don’t really want to be snorting anything in or out of my nose.” Grinning Winston took a spoon off of Agatha and scooped up as much ice cream as they could, stuffing it directly into their mouth as they watched the footage trawl by before their eyes. “You can definitely be my companion because I’m pretty convinced that most of the time it is the companions that do all of the hard work. Besides you are very well dressed most of the time and you’ve got a good work ethic. I think if anything I’m maybe not the one who is qualified to be a timelord, I haven’t got the whole travelling in time thing down at all. But, I’ll get there.” Winston wished that they could travel in time. There was already a lot that they would change. “So, deal.” They scrolled through the footage, pausing and squinting at the screen. “For real though, does that guy not look a little …” Winston didn’t have a better word for it, “... weird?” The cameras opposite Miriam’s shop might well have picked up on something.

“I’m gonna pretend I did not hear this,” Agatha jokingly glared at them, but her smile couldn’t stay away for that long. “You… drug… person… you,” yes, linguistics were her passion. “Me neither. Preach. Noses are for smelling pretty flowers and burritos,” she agreed, picking some ice cream from the tupperware as well. Falling silent, Agatha simply listened to Winston as they spoke of Doctor Who. “The Doctor would be nothing without their dear companions, let’s be real,” pushing a strand of hair behind her ear, she grinned as Winston explained that he would eventually manage to time travel. “I’m sure you will. And when you do, we’re paying Amelia Eahart a visit. She was too cool for us all,” her cheerful demeanor vanished, however, the moment they spotted a strange man wandering past Myriam’s shop. “That guy is… well weird, but…” What the fuck was he doing? Either he was drunk, either he was searching for evidence that the place was empty. “... What the hell?”

Giggling, Winston had to admit that they were glad they were getting to work with Agatha on this. They didn’t love all of their colleagues. “... please continue to pretend you didn’t hear anything because of course there is nothing for you to have heard, there’s no way I’d ever do drugs working here, I don’t think that I could deal with the look of disappointment in the Sarge’s eyes.” Grinning once more, Winston’s eyes darted back to the bank of monitors that they were sat in front of. “Nothing at all and I don’t think that I would get very far into this investigation without my own faithful companion.” Winston’s eyes moved to the guy moving past Miriam’s store, he seemed to be peering inside and then a second later he disappeared. Winston blinked a few times and rewound the tape, watching it over and over as the man seemingly vanished. Winston had seen Marley do that before, when the cultists had been a problem. “Surely he can’t have disappeared,” Winston wasn’t sure how much of this Agatha would believe, she wasn’t exactly the most open minded in regards to the supernatural.

“Oooooh, so you would do drugs if you worked elsewhere, is what you’re saying?” Was she always this nitpicky, or was this something she picked up from interrogating perps? Who knew. She did have a history of being a pain in the ass when she wanted to, either way. “Only a monster could deal with that kind of look,” she agreed. Of course she would agree. Agatha spent a lot of time making sure her case files were perfect, her solved case percentage never too low, and her global appearance spotless. “I don’t know. I’m sure you could be a great addition to the detective team if you wanted to,” and went to the Police academy, which she doubted would be their jam. “Either way I’m glad you work with us pumpkin,” she smiled brightly at them, smooching them on the shoulder. All that wholesomeness was gone however, as she watched the guy appear and vanish again with each rewind. “What the actual fuck.” She checked the timer and frowned. It did not look like it had been cut, but she did not trust that. “Someone tampered with the camera,” she sighed. They were not looking for one guy, but two. “Someone tampered with the camera,” she repeated, in disbelief. Ughhhh, just when things were getting easier. “Anyway, let’s ID that motherfucker, then we can find whoever’s making the camera flick like that.”

“Oh 100%, if it hadn’t always been my dream to fix all the cases that you worked by working out how the technology is implicated in their murder then I would be a drug lord, snorting massive piles of weed and smoking cocaine cigarettes, that’s how it works right? You chew on Meth?” Winston was obviously joking. They were a stickler for the rules and they weren’t about to start doing a multitude of chemicals that could fundamentally alter their perception of reality. At least not willingly. Besides, Agatha didn’t need Winston’s help solving cases. She was very capable. “I- working in the field isn’t something that I’ve ever wanted to do and besides, I’m good with technology, I feel like I can do more from behind the keyboard then behind the wheel of a patrol car or behind the handle of a glock.” Winston wasn’t about to point out that there was literally no way that the footage could’ve been looped or anything like that, it wouldn’t help. Something that they had learned in their time working with the WCPD was that there was some people who were intent and determined to believe that things didn’t exist, even when they clearly did. It was like the opposite of religion. “I mean, maybe someone tampered with the camera but we can definitely run facial recognition on him.” Winston began the process, “hopefully he’s in some databases somewhere.”

Cackling, Agatha managed to shake her head left and right at Winston’s obvious nonsense. “Alright, we finish this and then we can smoke coke,” although considering what they had just seen, it would probably not be for a little while. She nodded as Winston explained that they did not plan to actually work as a police officer, and that was absolutely fine by her. That life was not meant for a lot of people. “It’s good to know your strengths and what you really want in life,” she gave him a small smile, even though what she was seeing didn’t make her one bit happy. “I hope he is, because we did not find one single fingerprint in there,” which suggested that this fella knew what he was doing. Now only time would tell if he was robbing Ms.Flemming for personal reasons. The facial recognition software could take time however, and it was not long before she started to sing and chant : “Winston, catching the bad guys, Winston, justice for the good guys,” in loop. Clearly, she would never be a rapper, and maybe that was a good thing.

“Oh Aggie you’re too good to me, I’m going to smoke a whole bottle!” Winston grinned at their tomfoolery, it was good to be able to work casually with someone, refreshing compared to some of the boomers that worked in this station. Not to mention all of the weirdos too. “I mean, it’s possible that he could just be wearing gloves that the cameras aren’t sensitive enough to pick up, you can see that everything here is kind of grainy, I don’t think the resolution is all that good…” Winston wondered what this guy could be. There were a dozen things that could’ve done this. Glamours, charms, magic spells and god knows what else Winston had yet to come across. As the facial recognition search began to tick through, Winston wondered if there was something else going on here. Had Miriam upset someone that she shouldn’t have? Honestly, Winston was more concerned for the person they were trying to catch than Miriam, they were very aware of what she was capable of. “Don’t quit your day job Aggie.” Winston was about to make another hurtful comment when the database pinged.

“A whole bottle? That’s going to cost us so much,” Agatha gasped, dramatically putting her hand to her chest. “A whole bottle, Winston, you are the most criminal. The criminalest,” she started laughing again. How they managed to get work done despite this, she did not understand, but they did get work done, and it was a lot more fun than having to work with some people. Yes, she did mean the critics. “I mean, we’re lucky we even have footage. What I don’t understand is…” She blew a raspberry, obviously exasperated. “If he vanished like that, then he knew about the camera, and looped it before it could let us see him get in the shop. But why not loop it before he even appears on tape?” And who could mess with an ATMs camera like that? Not a lot of people. Now she was not expecting a lot from the database. “Oh piss off…” She trailed off, having heard the familiar ping. Let us be lucky, she thought to herself. “Huh? Not the guy’s first theft,” she crossed her arms over her chest for a second, uncrossing them to get a better look at the file. This was odd. The database recognized this guy, but it looked like all records of his wrong doings had been erased. “Oh, fuck me,” she hit her desk with her palm, and took a deep, long breath. “Fuck,” she whispered. Well now, her best bet was to call the station who was the first to arrest that guy.

Grinning gently, Winston chuckled gently and turned back to their work. They couldn’t keep contributing to this joke and getting work done because if they did then they would be here all night. “Maybe you’re right, maybe only half a bottle.” Adjusting their glasses a little, Winston blinked a few times and tried to think of a way that could be explainable in Agatha’s head. They weren’t about to try and suggest the supernatural to her now. That wouldn’t help, but it might be worth letting Miriam or someone else in the know … well know that this wasn’t completely mundane. “I guess it could just be a glitch, that sometimes happens with old hardware that has been in place for too long, it starts a feedback loop where it draws previous data into the footage, but I wouldn’t have thought that this ATM camera would struggle from that.” Scratching their chin thoughtfully, Winston sighed. “If they knew about all of this and they did all of this, and that is a very very very big IF, then it just means that they want us to be seeing this and they want us to know about this, which doesn’t seem to make any sense either. This was a dead end with Agatha here. Winston wasn’t sure how they could truly investigate this “I guess if this isn’t his first theft then maybe he would have some experience of how he could do this, is there any information about what his previous MO’s have looked like or what he’s doing or why he’s doing it?” But then it became clear that there was no information on it. “I can try and go through the logs and work out why the database has been wiped, or if it is just blocked from our clearance level and access, but it’s going to take me some time to work it all out.”

Leaning on her hand, Agatha shook her head and sighed. “That makes sense, I suppose,” yawning, she looked at her watch and blew a raspberry again. It was getting late, and while she enjoyed company, they probably wanted to get back home as much as she did, although she didn’t doubt that Winston could do some of their magic and surprise her too. “But why?” She rubbed at the back of her neck, feeling a headache coming : the more she thought about this, the less she felt like she was getting closer to the end of the case. “Maybe she knows that guy,” pursing her lips, she zoomed in as best as she could on the recorded footage and printed that picture along with the joke that was this guy’s criminal record file. Maybe she could visit the shop owner and see if she knew whoever was on that video. “I don’t know, it feels like he’s taunting someone,” either he was taunting the police, or he was taunting Myriam. Either way, there was a good reason he allowed himself to be seen. “I’ll pay her a visit,” wouldn’t be going home quite yet. “Do you mind doing… your thing while I’m gone? If you want to wait until I’m back for her shop that’s fine too.” She would hate for them to stay here and have Myriam tell her all she needed to know about this guy after all. It didn’t sound fair, at all.

“I don’t know why yet, but we’ll work it out. There’s always an answer, you just have to dig deep enough to find it.” It was late and Winston was ready to leave. They assumed that the same could be said for Agatha. After all they had been working for a while and the sweet embrace of their bed was beckoning them. But they knew that sometimes work simply had to come first and they would always prioritise their job. “I think that you should definitely pay her a visit, and I can definitely keep working on this while you’re gone.” Without Agatha here Winston was sure that they could find some spell that would help them get more information on this Mara and where he was from. Maybe they could check with some of the more in the loop members of the team to see if they had come across anything or they could access some information that had been wiped. Nothing that had been on a hard drive was actually permanently gone. Winston knew that as well as any other computer geek, the only difference was that Winston had a whole other way to get things off of hard drives. “Hopefully I will have something when you're back.”

#wickedswriting #the case of the invisible man #para #chatzy para #chatzy #p: agatha

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blackfreethinkers · 4 years

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By Elie Mystal

This Saturday, September 12, 2020, still image taken from video released by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department shows Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva taking questions at a late-night news conference about the condition of two sheriff's deputies in Compton, Calif. (Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department via AP)

Video released over the weekend captures an unknown assailant firing indiscriminately into a police cruiser in an attempt to murder the two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies sitting inside. Thankfully, the officers appear to have survived the attempt on their lives. A manhunt is underway for the suspect, and police have offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

As I sit down to write this, it is tempting to give in to my complete disgust with how the police usually frame and the media then cover a more common situation—police shootings of unarmed Black people—by offering some of my own “just presenting both sides” coverage. When a cop fires indiscriminately into a car, killing a man as his girlfriend sits beside him and her baby in the back seat—which is precisely what happened to Philando Castile—the media bends over backward to present the murderer’s side of the story. There’s no manhunt; the killer is allowed to turn himself in peacefully, at his convenience. Later, he gets cleared of all charges. The cops who kill us almost always go free.

I could write that piece, but I’m not going to, because, while such a piece would be righteous and justified, it would also be wrong. I hope they catch the guy seen in the video shooting those cops, I really do. I hope they take him alive and that he stands trial for his suspected crimes. I’d rather not use the attempted murder of two police officers as a Matthew McConaughey opportunity to say, “Now imagine the shooter was white.”

I just wish that the rest of the media could restrain itself from turning the attempted murder of police officers into an indictment of the protests against the police who murder Black people. As it is, the police stenographers employed by many mainstream media outlets are falling into that trap. Reporters are already republishing police narratives about why the shooting happened, without verifying the police stories or calling police speculation about why the shooting took place just that: speculation, in the absence of any evidence.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the official Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Twitter account tweeted out the following: “To the protesters blocking the entrance & exit of the HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM yelling ‘We hope they die’ referring to 2 LA Sheriff’s ambushed today in #Compton: DO NOT BLOCK EMERGENCY ENTRIES & EXITS TO THE HOSPITAL. People’s lives are at stake when ambulances can’t get through.”

That tweet gave the impression that some kind of street uprising had sprung up at the hospital, and that the many people clearly involved had attempted in some way to deny injured police officers medical care. The narrative that protesters “blocked” the hospital entrance was then picked up by the press, so I heard MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson repeating it on her show when I turned on the television Monday morning.

After hearing the charge, I went to the Internet to look for the video of this alleged protest. Here is what the LA County sheriffs were apparently talking about. As you can see in the video, the “protest” appears to be about four guys hovering around the emergency entrance, shouting invectives. It wasn’t a protest, and they weren’t preventing any medical vehicles from entering or exiting the hospital. It was a few people who gave into the justified-yet-wrong anger I myself overcame this morning through the grace of coffee and the backspace key.

To call this group of individuals “protesters who blocked the entrance,” as the police did, is misleading at best. To repeat the disinformation, as journalists did, simply because it was on a police Twitter account, is bad journalism.

As the police were arresting one of the men shouting at the cops, an NPR radio reporter, Josie Huang, stepped forward to get a better look. Police tackled and injured her. Police claimed that Huang didn’t identify herself as a reporter and refused to leave the area when asked. Over the weekend, the media again reflexively reprinted this police narrative.

Then Huang released her own video of the event. It shows that she immediately “backed up” when told to do so and identified herself as a reporter even as police were throwing her to the ground.

Reporters who reprint or rebroadcast the official story for why police tackled a reporter, without first talking to the reporter tackled, deserve to be tackled by other, better reporters.

As nearly every Black person has been trying to tell the media since the invention of “police”: Cops lie. They lie, mislead, or issue untruthful statements all the time. White journalists must stop repeating police lies, uncritically, without demanding evidence to back up police claims or even doing a bare-minimum Google search to see if there is video that directly contradicts police statements.

Skepticism of police statements should be a basic requirement of competent journalism, but it is particularly critical in times like this, when police have a reason to lie. The police are angry at the attempted murder of two officers, and they want other people to be angry, so they are not even trying to provide an accurate account of events. Instead, they are trying to build a case against Black Lives Matter.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva (whose office tweeted out the misleading story about “protesters” at the hospital) could barely contain his contempt for BLM protesters in his statement about the shooting. “This is just a somber reminder that this is a dangerous job, and actions and words have consequences. Our job does not get any easier because people do not like law enforcement,” Villanueva said. “It pisses me off. It dismays me at the same time.”

In this statement, Villanueva is trying to draw a direct line between the “actions and words” of protesters to the attempted murder of police officers. He seems less interested in drawing a line from police brutality and the murder of Black people to the attempted murder of police officers.

The reality is that we don’t know why the suspect tried to kill those two officers, but we can see with our own eyes that his actions were wrong and dangerously misguided. Speculation into his motives is irresponsible absent evidence. It’s wrong for journalists to speculate, and it’s wrong for journalists to repeat the unverified, potentially unhinged speculations of the LA County sheriff without any evidence whatsoever.

It’s not like the social justice organization ambushed two police officers in a parked car. It’s not like social justice organizations have a history of targeting police officers for murder. But the person who did target and ambush police officers appears to be Black and thus, apparently, it’s all our faults. That’s how racial profiling works, don’t you know.

So the police already have their villain, and they are enacting their retribution. On Sunday, LA County sheriff’s deputies shut down a “protest encampment” across from LA City Hall. The holdouts had been there for months, living peacefully, but cops cleared it mere hours after the shooting. Cops claim it was taken down because of “deteriorating conditions,” but nobody is required to be addled enough to believe them.

The inability and unwillingness of the media to accurately report on police lies and sensationalism will have the effect of excusing additional acts of police brutality. The police will point to the one guy who shot police officers (for reasons not yet known) and the one dude who shouted “I hope y’all die” as justification for cops to go out on the street tonight and violate the constitutional rights of Black people, or beat Black people, or kill Black people. And by refusing to call out police hysteria, the media will make that hysteria seem reasonable.

Given the stakes, it’s not too much to ask the media to do its job. It’s not too much to ask journalists to act like journalists instead of stenographers. If I can restrain myself from being a snarky, irresponsible axe-grinder when it comes to “blue lives,” it’s not too much to ask mainstream sources to think before retweeting or republishing the latest round of blue lies.

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did-he-just-hiss-at-me · 5 years

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i present to you, another f***ing sanders sides swap au cuz there can never be enough of them

i'm gonna call this corruptive switch cuz the dark sides are arguably worse than in canon

Patton is Dark!Creativity

also known as Intrusive Thoughts

Aside from the usual I.T. things, he seems to suggest a lot of good things but with bad intentions, which slowly turn into completely bad things

"You should offer to house-sit for them, that way you can take the opportunity to steal and use their house for parties! Oh, or even better, steal from them!"

instead of The Duke, he is The Painter(no dukey-esque jokes, sorry)

his Dark Side animal theme is the Fear Mongrel(disguised as a cat. look up what the fear mongrel is)

makes alot of crafts that are either made of gross things or resemble gross things

i chose the fear mongrel because it poison's peoples minds and it has no set form so i can do whatever with patton's animal traits

Constantly stealing things from the other sides

Roman: Patton, why do you have my cloak?! I need it back!

Patton, wrapped in the cloak like a burrito: No.

Logan is Light!Creativity

also known as Logical Creativity

Everything he comes up with has reasoning behind it

"Just because a Manticore and a Chimera are already combinations of other animals doesn't mean they can't be combined; That just makes it a more powerful & threatening enemy to fight! So many more animal parts to contribute to the danger!"

instead of The Prince, he is The Author

doesn't always wear his coat

has a dislike for "cartoon logic", unless that logic actually has a good explanation

does not hate the laws of fiction, as long as he can see it as a possible irl event

sneaks memes into his writing

Roman is Anxiety

also known as Uncontrollable Anxiety

All the anxiety he gives Thomas is based off of wildly improbable ideas, and Thomas can picture the scenarios too(not just hear Roman say them)

"But Thomas, if you go to this party with your friends, your DD might get drunk and still try to drive you home, and you could either end up arrested or in a car crash! And probably die afterwards!

his Dark Side animal theme is a Nian(look it up)

due to the Nian's hatred of the color red he hides from all mirrors and reflective surfaces

only Ethan can combat his abilities

likes to get up close to people when spreading his anxious thoughts

hyper, like, all the time

i chose the Nian because it's pretty creepy to me and it's immortal(comparable to how difficult it can be to get rid of deep-set fears) and people fear it and what it can do(of course)

dark circles around his eyes cuz ironically he keeps himself awake at night with his fears

meme king

Virgil is Deceit

also known as Manipulative Self-Preservation

Makes things sound scarier than they actually are, solely to get Thomas to stay on track with his life

"If you tell him why you ducked out of the project, he may never ask you to partner up with him again; which will inevitably lead to him never talking to you at all, forever!"

his Dark Side animal theme is a Firefox

Unlike Canon Deceit, he does not care for Thomas' mental health

anti-villain. thinks he's doing good but he's just flat out evil

only reason I chose a firefox is because i wanted him to have something on his face, so i chose burns and scars, which brought me to the firefox, and foxes are cunning, stealthy manipulators

likes to sing villain/dark songs, to Ethan's dismay

Deceit is Logic

also known as Self-Protecting Logic

name in this AU is Ethan, just to prevent confusion with Virgil

Will do whatever it takes to keep Thomas safe. Will only resort to whatever is circumstantially necessary.

"I know you don't like the sound of it Thomas, but doing this will lead to the safest result. You could ruin this friendship otherwise."

glasses are actually just empty frames

cares way more about thomas's mental health than Canon Logic, CS!Logan, Canon Deceit and CS!Virgil combined

instead of scales, he has scars that look like vitiligo. he gets more of these spots as thomas goes through more and more things that negatively effects his mental health. they don't hurt Ethan physically, but they're constant reminders of his failures

only looks at memes that don't encourage negative feelings

huge freaking emphasis on positivity like ffs dude chill out

Remus is Morality

also known as Moral Ambivalence

Does the right thing but his morals are, quite obviously, a bit misguided

"Stabbing isn't wrong if they consent to it! He said he wanted to be stabbed!"

please don't let him near strong-heat-producing objects... like stoves... Virgil convinced him they're ok to touch

admires Patton's works but will never admit it to him. also admires Logan's but will admit it, and even give him some inspiration

likes to pretend to be a detective for some reason

yes, he still has his mustache, his dark circles(?) around his eyes are there too, but they're not as noticeable tho.

does not get memes

There are minor differences to the episodes that still keep a roughly similar plotline,, these are what i could think of

Like in The Dark Side of Disney, they're talking about Pixar movies in specific(Cuz Logan would be a firm believer in the Pixar Theory due to how interesting and plausible it is) and Roman's always suggesting sh** like "Wall-e killed all the other robots cleaning up earth" and "Toys can die and their owners wouldn't know they'd just be playing with a dead corpse" and Logan's like "cAN YOU NOT" the entire time cuz he knows it's probable and he hates it

In Can Lying Be Good? Virgil pretends to be Logic instead of Morality, because he can't keep up with Remus's energy and his points will make more sense coming from Ethan's mouth... or so he thinks. yeah by the end he's exposed. Ethan was tied up in a closet the entire time.

In Learning New Things About Ourselves, Ethan isn't the one against the puppet shenanigans like you would suspect, it's Logan... again. Since he's Logical Creativity he doesn't see how playing around with puppets and singing songs will fix Thomas's problem. It's still illogical.

In Selfishness vs. Selflessness, Virgil has(more or less) the same goal as Deceit does in canon(to get Thomas to realize he's not a perfectly good person) except instead of doing it in a regular courtroom, he does it in a nightmarish one in Patton's part of the imagination(who is in the background, manipulating the room during the trial)

just some other facts

Thomas is only a complete wreck when his dark sides are kept out of check(my writer abilities have peaked. i made a rhyme unintentionally.)

out of the dark sides, not even anxiety is TRULY "accepted" in this au. the dark sides are just tolerated. the only reason they're allowed to exist and interact with thomas like the light sides is because Ethan realizes how important they are and enforces a rule preventing them from being banned

speaking of which, the darks and lights do interact like normal friends but that doesn't mean they're happy with their opposite's roles

Somebody: You and Logan have a good brotherly relationship, right Patton?

Patton: Absolutely not. He is a sworn enemy to Thomas's well being.

Somebody: But I saw you two geeking out over something earli-

Patton: I would sell him to satan for one corn chip. I don't even like corn chips.

dark sides are based on fictional animals/monsters instead of real animals

everyone keeps their little quirks(Logan likes crofters, Patton likes cats, etc.) unless they are tied to their canon role(Deceit's emphasis on the letter "s" when speaking, Roman caring about his appearance, etc.)

don't let the dark sides combine their powers, ever. that's when they're truely strong

Roman and Remus are no longer brothers, it's Patton and Logan instead

yeahh that's all i've got. i'm working on character refs now, in fact right after this post goes up i'm posting logan's. here's hoping people like this concept hdgdjdhds

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jess-rewatches-prodigalson · 4 years

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Episode 17: Stranger Beside You

SPOILERS and thoughts ahead.

0:13 - How freaking creepy is this? She just pops up from the floor. Did Malcolm not see her there as he was approaching? Why didn’t he acknowledge her presence as he approached? ALSO - he’s excited about muffins? Does that mean muffins are one of the only foods he eats? I find this surprising. ALSO - last episode we learned that Malcolm can’t cook…why does he have a muffin tin? I know this is a dream but still.

0:45 - Ok. Story time. I watched this episode when it premiered. It was the first week I had moved home from university since the whole COVID-19 stuff. My younger brother (20) and my mom (45) who have never seen this show decided to watch it with me. Ugh. Our family dynamic is generally a lot of sarcasm and teasing. I’m the only one in the family interested in crime shows/whump. When Malcolm said “This is when the scary thing usually happens.” both of my family members started cackling like buffoons. For the next week my brother quoted that line to me. They both now tease me for loving this show so much…so that happened.

1:18 - This is kind of sweet. I don’t like Eve but I like seeing Malcolm this happy.

1:56 - This is such a good sibling conversation. Ainsley is setting Malcolm straight. I know Malcolm is right but honestly - Ainsley has a point. Malcolm has a tendency to accidentally sabotage his own relationships because he can’t trust people and he doesn’t believe that he’s worthy of love.

3:15 - Look at this. Just. Look. JT is happy to see Malcolm. They’re bantering like brothers. This relationship has blossomed and I’m so happy…also I google “sip and see” because I really wanted them to be fake. They sound ridiculous, but they’re real. IDK. I don’t have kids but it seems crazy to organize a big fancy party right after you give birth. Invite friends and family over - sure. Order a pizza and a cake. But hang out in something comfy and keep it casual. Maybe that’s just me. IDK.

3:42 - Malcolm’s projecting again. “Perfect can be an allusion.” Honestly. Is he even aware that he does this?! Also, is he projecting about his childhood or his relationship with Eve. Either way, I’m concerned for him….though I do like how happy he’s looking right now.

3:47 - hahaha OMG. “With the stiff!” Gil is so done.

4:30 - I thought this was interesting. 1) Do dead bodies actually do that? Compress? Huh. Cool. 2) I like the way that Edrisa and Malcolm are so totally absorbed in how cool/weird the cause of death was that neither of them notice Edrisa’s hand on Malcolm’s chest. 3) Gil pointing out Edrisa’s hand makes things a little awkward - but honestly I see it as a gentle warning. He knows that Edrisa is socially awkward. She’s not in trouble and he’s not mad. He’s just reminding her that stuff like that isn’t appropriate.

5:04 - Watching this after realizing that Tally is pregnant brings a whole new weight to all of JT’s comments. Every time he mentions babies, baby swag, moms - he looks either scared, stressed (because money), or excited. It’s freaking precious.

6:15 - “It’s a cloud of love. Nothing to be ashamed of.” Again. More proof that Malcolm is an A+ adult male. Who speaks like that?

7:05 - Do I need to be scared about Dani now too? I do not like the way that Martin says her name. Wait. Is Martin going to go after every person that takes Malcolm’s time away from visiting him? I can totally see it. Martin escaping - killing Gil for replacing him as Malcolm’s Dad. Killing Jessica for trying to keep Malcolm from him. Killing JT, Dani, and Edrisa for being his friends. Can’t decide if he’d kill Ainsley…

7:41 - HOW is this show so dark and yet so funny?!?!

8:20 - I know that Malcolm knows that Tally is pregnant…but after the pizza roll comment there’s no way Gil and Dani don’t suspect. Look at their faces!!! And the way JT looks down way too quickly. He’s clearly hiding something.

8:55 - Look at Gil’s face. He’s concerned and a little scared. I am too. What the hell does Malcolm mean by “Mom’s love me”?!?! Is this some weird sex thing?

9:05 - Dani is a queen. We stan. She is the friend Malcolm deserves. I especially love the fact that later we find out that she told JT about this conversation. As though she thought Malcolm needed “guy advice”.

10:00 - Yo. People like this shouldn’t be allowed to have children. Kids are not a fashion statement - they are human beings who need to be nurtured and loved.

11:10 - So, I don’t usually like it when Ainsley snoops around for a story and gets all determined - but this time I do.

12:00 - Does Ainsley really not understand that what she did was a total invasion of privacy?!? She doesn’t look sorry. At all. The fact that Ainsley actually talks to Eve about it is kind of awful too? Like it’s one thing to do a background check on someone - it’s another thing to talk to them, unprovoked, about what you found.

12:12 - Poor Jessica. She looks upset. Between her two “socially bizarre” children ( lol ) she really has a hard time making friends. Although…..I will admit. It’s a little weird that Jessica is making friends with a woman young enough to date her son.

12:32 - Soooo this means that Malcolm has an instagram account (at least a fake one for work anyways). I feel like Malcolm is one of the people who don’t have a personal instagram account. Because a) he has like 3 friends and b) he doesn’t strike me as the type of person to take pictures of food, people, events, or himself.

12:40 - So Malcolm’s sitting at that desk again…..forget about the gitb… I want to solve the desk mystery (and the mystery of JT’s name).

12:57 - Damn it JT! We were about to get a super awesome father/son moment. Ugh. When I said I wanted the writers to give JT more screen time I didn’t mean this.

13:13 - Aww…look at how proud Dani is of herself. Girl made a cool discovery and she’s proud/excited about it. <3

13:22 - ARE YOU KIDDING ME. We finally get a good look at the desk from the front. No name plate in view?!? UGH. This is killing me.

13:33 - hahaha look at these faces! JT looks confused/freaked out that Malcolm knows so much about babies feeding habits. Dani looks so annoyed that she’s been put on Malcolm babysitting duty again. I don’t blame her. Gil is always making her babysit Malcolm. JT never has to take a turn.

13:55 - The most annoying thing about this episode is that we never find out how Alessa cut her arm. It’s a weird place on your arm to get a cut and I’m curious about it.

14:35 - I respect Malcolm a LOT in this scene. He’s asking some tough (but necessary) questions. He’s calm, kind, and respectful. He’s not minimizing Alessa’s stress, her loss, or her devotion to her daughter.

16:30 - Soooo if Christine’s (ex) husband lives in Canada - does that mean he’s Canadian (or dual citizen)? Or does he just have a work permit? I’m curious about what that means for Christine’s citizen status. I find this odd though - even if Christine isn’t Canadian - if she was last seen in Canada and her husband reported her missing - the RCMP would’ve been looking for her. They NYPD would know that. Although - she is using a fake name. Huh. There’s a reason I’m not in law enforcement. People are too crafty. I’ll stick to math.

17:55 - Look how mad JT looks that Christine tried to abduct Nina….he’s going to be such an overprotective, good dad. <3

18:25 - This is a really cool moment. This scene is the first since 1x9 when JT and Malcolm have a heart-to-heart. JT also gives Malcolm some really good relationship advice. Damn. No wonder JT’s been married for 7 years. He gets it.

18:55 - I love how manic Malcolm looks and how concerned JT looks when Malcolm goes off on his little rant about being a suspicious person. I wonder if JT is wondering why Malcolm trusts Gil, Dani, Edrisa, and himself? They are, by all means, good things in Malcolm’s life. Is he suspicious of them?

19:25 - Does Martin know about Malcolm’s sensitive stomach? I’m really curious.

19:44 - This scene is awesome. Malcolm is sad, upset, a little anxious, and angry (at Martin) throughout the scene. Martin, even though he is a crazy serial killer, actually gives Malcolm some good relationship advice. I guess it makes sense. Martin could never have tricked Jessica into marrying him unless he acted like a perfect, good dude with good relationship skills.

20:04 - Martin actually believes he was a perfect father? Nope. I can’t. Any parent who genuinely believes that should have a psych eval. No one is perfect. Parents aren’t excluded from this rule.

20:56 - This is such a powerful moment. You can see how pleased Martin is because he got through the Malcolm. You can see how desperately Malcolm wants to love his father and how painfully aware Malcolm is of who his father is and how much he despises it. Malcolm shouldn’t have to remind himself to hate his father. No one should. Watching Malcolm grapple with that (through his facial expressions) is heart-wrenching. He actually looks close to tears for a moment. ALSO screw Martin for still trying to manipulate Malcolm into loving him.

22:10 - I’ll just say it. We’re all thinking it anyways. Malcolm’s soft voice when he’s confused is so freaking cute.

23:08 - Look at JT’s face during this scene. He just about had a freaking heart attack. I feel soooo bad for him. I can only imagine how bad he feels. Gil gave him one (1) job: protect the baby. JT’s probably thinking, “If I can’t even protect this stranger’s baby - how will I ever protect my baby? Will I be a bad father?” Someone give this man a hug for me.

23:25 - Look at the way JT touches the infant to make sure she’s real. That is a man who is on the verge of a panic attack.

24:00 - AND now JT is worrying about Tally’s health throughout her impending pregnancy. Good Lord. What a rollercoaster he’s on tonight.

25:25 - Concerned!Gil for the win! Gil hasn’t been around Malcolm much this episode. Yes - Malcolm is obviously upset right now, but it makes me wonder if Jessica and/or Ainsley have called Gil because they’re concerned about Malcolm right now. Did they call Gil and ask him to send Malcolm home?

26:25 - Look at that. Malcolm looks crushed. Not surprised just disappointed. He truly believes that he’s not worthy of love. Eve just confirmed it for him. I honestly don’t know how this dude will ever trust any romantic partner ever again. My heart is shattered.

26:43 - Look at how brave he’s being. He’s trying to mask his pain with a smile and a self-deprecating joke as usual. Problem is - his eyes look tortured and he’s trying to lie to the two women who know him best. They see through his mask and they’re concerned for him.

27:00 - Ainsley is such a strange character to me. Right now as she tells Malcolm about Eve, she is looking at Malcolm with dread, concern, and determination. In 1x7/1x10 she publicly embarrassed him and revealed his personal, private details with the world - without remorse. I know that Ainsley is really obsessed with the progression of her career. However, it shouldn’t blind her to the emotions of her big brother. Ainsley needs therapy.

27:08 - soooo Eve has a key to Malcolm’s place? After two(ish) weeks? For a dude who doesn’t trust easily this seems like a stretch. I’m choosing to believe that Malcolm left the door open when he saw Ainsley and Jessica.

27:15 - THIS is so important. Jessica’s “How could you?”. See her face? She’s devastated. The first female friend she’s had in probably 20 years just stabbed her in the back. To make matters worse, this woman also just broke the heart of Jessica’s very emotionally vulnerable son - thereby also breaking Jessica’s heart. Furthermore - Jessica is definitely already paying rent in the self-loathing hotel because she traumatized her children because she married a serial killer. NOW she’s also dealing with the guilt of knowing that she’s the one who brought Eve into Malcolm’s life. That look hurt or devastation on Jessica’s face which later transforms into rage and hatred is haunting. Props to Bellamy Young.

27:26 - This. Look at Malcolm’s face. Eve looks like she’s close to tears. Malcolm is looking at her with compassion. Yes - you can tell that Malcolm is devastated and hurt by Eve. However, he also clearly empathizes with her. Again. Malcolm. Bright. Is. An. A+. Dude. Fight me.

27:40 - Can we all just pause for a second and praise Tom Payne’s acting in this scene? He captured the raw emotion of a trauma induced panic attack perfectly. Look at how utterly broken Malcolm is. Hands shaking on his head. Tears in his eyes. Ragged breathing. Followed by a brief angry outburst which leads to more shaky, anxious breathing and eyes on the verge of tears. The end result is physical and emotional exhaustion.

27:45 - Ainsley looks shocked and a little scared by Malcolm’s outburst. Has she (HIS SISTER) never seen him have a panic attack? They grew up together. I refuse to believe it. Ainsley shouldn’t look shocked - she should look sad and resigned to it.

28:06 - This is heartbreaking. Malcolm genuinely thinks that there is something about him that makes him unlovable. I know he’s already in therapy - but they need to stop focusing on his trauma for a hot second and focus on his self-worth issues. I aM nOt OkAy.

28:22 - Can we all just take a minute to appreciate Dani Powell. She has been such a good friend to Malcolm. Probably the first true friend Malcolm’s had since he was 10 years old. Even in the midst of extreme emotional turmoil a work-related text from Dani makes Malcolm smile. Because Malcolm knows that Dani - a woman who isn’t related to him and has no obvious crush on him - doesn’t hate him. In fact - she likes him enough to be his friend. Right now that’s enough. That’s a big comfort to Malcolm.

28:36 - This is sheer panic on Jessica’s part. Check out those eyes. She just saw pure self-loathing and anger in her son’s eyes. She’s terrified for him. Maybe this look is reminding her of a look he got as a teenager when he became suicidal (it’s my headcanon that Malcolm had a period of active suicidal ideation as a teenager)?

28:40 - “I can’t solve this.” Is Malcolm referring to himself here? I mean - he clearly thinks that he is the problem; despite the fact that Eve came into his family’s life with the intention of getting information on his serial killing father. Ugh. His sad eyes and messy hair (that tends to indicate Malcolm is in severe emotional distress) is breaking my heart.

28:54 - Ok. So - who is this woman? How did Christine find her? Why did Christine go to her? It doesn’t look like a women’s shelter - it looks like a random lady’s residential home.

29:00 - Again. Let’s all praise Queen Dani. The bestest friend this dude has ever had. She just goes out and asks him what’s wrong. She’s concerned about him BECAUSE she knows he’s upset about something.

29:20 - I love that Malcolm is comfortable enough around Dani to be honest with her about the really hard stuff in his life. Look at how sad Malcolm looks here. Look at Dani’s reaction. She isn’t judging him or pitying him. She isn’t pushing him to talk. She’s just supporting him. She’s a little shocked, a lot upset on his behalf, but mostly she’s just concerned. She’s being a good friend and I love her for it.

29:36 - Lucas is a scum. Anyone who abuses a spouse, child, or family member has a special spot reserved in hell.

29:52 - Look at Dani as Christine tells her story. She’s sympathetic, respectful, and concerned. Either this isn’t the first time Dani’s been around a battered woman on the job or Dani has personal experience with abuse. Maybe a friend/family member was abused? Hell - maybe Dani had an abusive boyfriend or something?

30:20 - I really respect Malcolm in this scene. He knows that women who are fresh out of an abusive relationship (or still in one) with a male are weary of men. Usually, when Malcolm gets this type of information about a case he starts speaking quickly, loudly, and intensely. He starts gesturing a lot with his hands. IN THIS SCENE - Malcolm reigns himself in. He stays relatively calm and still as he speaks. He knows that his usual hand-gesturing and loud voice would terrify a woman who was just beaten by a man who was supposed to love her. This. Is. A. Good. Dude.

31:10 - Malcolm just shows Dani his cracked phone screen. I’m curious - does she ever ask about it? I’d like to hear that conversation.

33:05 - I LOVE THIS. Gil is terrified for a) Malcolm but b) Alessa and Nina too. This is a side of Gil I’d like to see more often. ALSO notice that the second that JT realizes that Gil is suffering from a parental panic attack he floors it. JT is going to be a good Dad. <3 He knows how to love and he has a big heart. That’s the most important thing.

34:34 - Again. Malcolm is currently displaying empathy and sympathy for a murderer. This dude has the biggest heart in the world.

35:45 - Alessa is a badass. Nina is a lucky little girl.

36:04 - I love this scene. Gil looks so relieved that Malcolm is in one (mostly unharmed) piece. He’s so proud of Malcolm for keeping Alessa and Nina safe. I’m certain that Jessica and/or Ainsley called Gil about Malcolm’s panic attack which exacerbated Gil’s worry over Malcolm.

37:07 - THE SCENE. The scene. This scene is easily my favourite of the episode. I love watching JT and Malcolm’s friendship in real time. Look right here this is two guys chatting about how cool someone is. <3 Look at how happy and proud JT is of a woman he just met. I promise you he’s thinking about how awesome and badass of a mother his wife is going to be.

37:28 - JT’s scared face coupled with his softly spoken “Dude.” stops my heart. It’s as though talking to someone other than his wife makes the baby seem like more of a scary, real responsibility. You can tell that he’s excited but still terrified about fatherhood. He’s not quite ready to tell people yet.

37:37 - “The thing’s the size of a peanut.” - I googled it: Tally is about 9 weeks pregnant. ALSO how freaking cute is it that JT is so excited about his unborn child that he knows how big it is. <3 I can just see him panic researching about pregnancy and caring for infants in the middle of the night while Tally sleeps. <3

37:44 - He doesn’t want to jinx it? Does that mean he and Tally have had trouble getting pregnant in the past? Miscarriages? Infertility? Or is JT just scared from everything he’s been researching about pregnancy? Either way - if Tally looses this child I will riot.

37:50 - “You don’t do happy.” - Malcolm’s face twists into a look of hurt and sadness. He genuinely believes JT’s words - even though JT meant them as a joke. JT sees that too because he immediately starts teasing Bright. JT is concerned about Malcolm.

38:39 - So Eve does have a key. Nope. Not cool. Not in-line with Malcolm’s trust issues. I refuse to believe it.

39:11 - I hate watching Malcolm be this sad. Look at his nose. It’s just a little red - he’s been crying. His fragile ability to trust has been shattered again and Eve’s apology is quite honestly not very good.

39:45 - Can we all just pause on Malcolm’s shirt? It looks like the orange sweater Gil wore in 1x13. Did they go shopping together? Did Malcolm buy the shirt because it reminded him of Gil? Does he only wear it when he feels sad because the fact that it reminds him of Gil comforts him

40:35 - What’s the story of Eve’s Dad? What’s his deal?

41:40 - I’m really proud of Malcolm for being brave enough to face the truth and have this really difficult conversation with Eve.

43:09 - Ok. I’ll say it. Malcolm is too nice. This woman shattered his heart last night and now he’s hugging her? Bro - you don’t have to do that. You’re allowed to be upset. You’re letting her walk all over you.

Thanks for hanging out Prodigies.

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spnfanficpond · 5 years

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October 2019 Pond LiveChat Recap

We had a great time chatting with @evansrogerskitten tonight! Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your wisdom!

Today, we got together and talked about writing smut! We discussed the legalities around sharing smut on the internet, vocabulary choices, created a spreadsheet of terms we can all share and use, and encouraged each other to not be afraid to just write. A rundown of the chat, as well as general Pond news, is below the cut. Due to the nature of the chat, there may be some parts of this recap that might be considered NSFW.

To start us off, @mrswhozeewhatsiswrites shared some research into the legalities of posting erotica on the internet as it relates to minors. (We are not legal experts. This information was obtained through Google searches. If anyone can provide links to sources that contradict these, we will add them to this post to ensure the most correct information is provided here.)

Michelle: To try and keep it short and sweet, from everything I read, if a minor reads smut online, it's not the writer's, poster's, or web site's responsibility to keep it from them. It is the parent's, or the school's/library's responsibility. (Basically, whoever is providing the internet connection to the minor is responsible for filtering out content that might be harmful to that minor, not the parties creating or disseminating that content online.) Schools and libraries and other institutions that get government funds are usually required to have some sort of filter in place to prevent minors from accessing porn and erotica.

What makes this so difficult to research is that written erotica is not mentioned very often in obscenity laws. Most laws focus on images or videos, not the written word.

No matter what it is, though, to be prosecuted under obscenity laws, the material must first be ruled to be obscene. Legally, there is a difference between obscenity and erotica. Obscenity is generally illegal, and erotica is protected speech. There are many different sets of rules and guidelines that have been used to determine if something is considered obscene or not. The most widely used current set of guidelines is the Miller test. From my research, most (if not all) erotic fan fiction would not be considered obscene because of its ‘literary, artistic, political, or scientific value’.

Some interesting links in relation to this subject that go into detail:

Wikipedia - US Obscenity Law - About halfway down, there is a section on non image-based obscenity cases in the US. The first part of this section, which deals with the written word, is very enlightening about the differences between obscenity and erotica. Further down is a section about criticism of the laws which shows some of the gaps in the law where free speech lives. Continuing on, the section about censorship in schools and libraries explains the part CIPA (Children’s Internet Protection Act) plays in protecting minors from material that could be considered harmful to them.

Online Art Rights - Sexual Content - This site details the many attempts at limiting indecent material on the internet through the years. (Scroll down and click on the plus signs in the black bars to expand each section.) In each case cited, the court ruled that to ban all objectionable material would interfere with free speech because it would reduce all content to a level appropriate for children. They also concluded that since less restrictive means exist, such as user-controlled filters and the like, those tools can be used without reducing all discourse on the internet. The section on Child Pornography at the bottom might be of interest to anyone who writes Weecest smut, though.

The only possible exception that I think would affect the SPN fandom would be those who write Weecest smut. Child pornography seems to be the exception to every rule that protects free speech. Where every other depiction of a sex act might have a ‘but’ that makes it erotica (and therefore legal) instead of obscenity, child pornography in any medium is considered obscenity. Anything that even just looks like child porn is considered child porn, even if no children were a part of the making of it. This includes cartoons and CGI and adults made up to look like kids. If it’s advertised as children in a sexual situation, it’s child porn. So, I imagine it could extend to written erotica IF someone were to decide to push it.

Now, that’s a huge if. Someone would have to read it, object to it, and insist on prosecution for it. I think if that were going to happen, given 15 years of SPN fan fiction, it would have happened by now. But I would still keep my Weecest smut-free, or implied, or at least over the age of consent (which varies, so 18 is just easiest to use).

Also, AO3 complies with the laws regarding filtering for minors. If you do not have an account, you are required to click through a step that tells you that you are about to view something explicit. That's really all that sites and such are required to do. Hence, Tumblr making you click through and view on dash blogs they mark as explicit.

@emilyshurley I think there might also be a sorta solution just to play it safe. I saw that people who make mods for games like Sims 4 and stuff have a page for terms of download. What that is is that if you click their masterlist it will take you to a post where they list their conditions and have the words "I agree" and link the actual masterlist to that. Now this might take a little effort but we could add something similar before our masterlists.

This is all legal stuff, not site-specific rules. Each site can implement their own decency rules and enforce them how they see fit. For example, Tumblr, as a company, can decide to delete your blog. (They’ve stopped doing this since The Purge, now just marking each blog explicit and making you click on a couple things to get to those blogs they deem explicit.) Should they choose to do this, it does not mean that you’re in trouble with the law.

Now, onto the fun stuff!

Q: What is the first thing you think of when someone asks you for advice about writing smut?

Ash: Word choice- don't make the reader cringe. It's easy to fall into that because smut can be graceful and tasteful if it's done right. And that starts with thinking through word choice and how the scene is flowing. It's not easy to write smut! I think a lot of non-writer readers do not realize that.

Note: During the chat, we created a Google Sheets spreadsheet, with two sheets in it, with lists of words to use to refer to different things when you’re writing smut. The first sheet is Good Words, and the second sheet is Bad Words. Everyone can enter words they like and don’t like on both sheets, and we’ll crowd-source this problem! Check it out and add your favorites!

Michelle:��A smut scene takes ten times as long for me to write as anything else. Just keeping track of limbs is difficult! And clothing....sometimes, I just make them dry hump so I don't have to deal with removing all the clothing! Other times, it's just, "Somehow, you suddenly found yourself naked." Like, there's a million great ways to get characters naked, but if I'm tired, angels snap.

@fictionalabyss (Mel): I've read stuff where a position makes no sense and it ruins the whole thing for me. Michelle: I actually bought a couple of those posable dolls from IKEA. (IKEA - GESTALTA, Artist’s figure) @babypieandwhiskey (Cam): I’ll have to use my daughter’s old Barbie dolls! I can keep track of both limbs and clothing!

Q: Ash, what are a few of the words that turn you off when you're reading smut?

Ash: It's usually words that sound so "romance novel"-ish to me. So "turgid member" is a good example. Please no one ever write that. Mel: Sometimes, keeping it simple is the safest and best bet. Ash: Absolutely, Mel! Sometimes we don't need all the extra words if we're showing the heat that's already there between them.

[What followed was a long discussion of various terms you definitely should not use in serious smut. They’ve all been added to the spreadsheet linked above, so fee free to check it out.]

Michelle: EVERYONE has those words that squick them, and it's damn near impossible to write a smut scene that doesn't include a word that will squick someone out there. So, don't stress about what words you do or don't use, cuz there's always gonna be someone out there who doesn't like something. Just make sure YOU think what you're writing is hot. If you don't get warm under the collar from it, no one else will, either. Ash: I highly recommend everyone is reading their fics out loud to see how it all flows. You'll catch errors and weird words there too.

Q: Ash, how do you get in the frame of mind to write something you personally have never experienced? For example, certain kinks.

Ash: Whiskey? LOL No, I do a lot of research- google, porn, erotica. Trying something out in person helps too! But we're writing fiction. You can make a kink work for your scenario too.I mean, I've written a reader squirting after 5 minutes to move things along but we all know it takes longer usually. And that's the fun! I've never actually been with 2 dudes but I f-ing love writing it. @atc74 (Angelina): I've always said I don't need to kill someone to write a murder scene. Ash: Smut is all about having an open mind. It lets us and the readers be someone else.

Question submitted earlier by @erins-culinary-service: I've wanted to try writing smut but never known exactly how to start and what words to use to describe everything. I've had sex so I know the sensations, positions, etc I'm just not sure how to write it all down any advice?

Ash: So sometimes I can't just start from "they kissed..." I start wherever I can see it best. So is it oral sex, or already doing it, I just jump in. And then I come back and fill it in. And I just write, no stopping once I get going. So the "cock into her hole" can be fixed later on my next edit. I just gotta get the idea out and then go back and make it hot. My smut is never hot in my first draft. Michelle: I think that's what stops a lot of writers, is thinking they have to publish their first draft. Editing is totally a thing. Just get the ideas on paper, and then make them hot later. Ash: Oh yeah, I go through at least 3 drafts per fic. Plus my beta version. Yeah, no one is ever going to see your drafts so don't worry about starting somewhere, anywhere. Michelle: And remember, practice practice practice - As with any writing, the more you write it, the easier it becomes. I wrote Third Wheel as a way to challenge myself with writing smut. Do a kink bingo or alphabet challenge. Just remember, you’re gonna write crap at the start, but crap makes good compost. Ash: Taking some time between edits is important too. It'll help you see different ways, AND you'll start having breakthroughs during the time away. Bingos are a great challenge that will help a writer grow. Cam: Writing smut is like sex, you're first time is going to be awkward and things won't be perfect, but with practice it gets better. Mel: I have a series that shows even the millionth time having sex isn't perfect and can be all laughs 🤣. But yeah.

Question submitted earlier by @focusonspn: i wanted to know about ways and words to describe orgasms and how to approach the moment after it without being awkward or forced. some people say those are the easiest things to write, but somehow i always have a hard moment trying to write them.

Ash: Hmmmm, as for the moments after- that's understandable, it is hard because its a transition. I think it's doesn't have to be an extended part of it- unless they're about to have a talk or aftercare needs a scene, it can be as simple as "we drifted off to sleep." Michelle: As always, my advice is to read smut that other people write that you like, and take note of what they do. Mel: Someone can get up and get dressed and leave. They can play in the fluids. They can lay there catching their breaths for a moment. It can be simple. Sometimes it doesn't need a flourish and that flourish can make it seem forced. Michelle: I think it depends on what type of smut fic you're writing. Is it fluffy smut where they're all in LOVE and kissy and stuff? Or is it Soulless Sam and Demon Dean just getting down and dirty and claiming you for themselves? Or, Soulless Sam or Demon Dean just getting their rocks off and they don't give a shit? @emilyshurley (Emily): Also this might be my f*cked up brain but I think if someone is not comfortable with a lot of fluffy buildup to smut trying soulless!Sam or Demon!Dean could be a great start. You also have a little room to do a little out of character. Michelle: We are blessed with a world that includes all types of characters and all types of situations, from curses (sex pollen, love potions, etc) to supernatural beings, to inspire and give us chances to write all kinds of smut. There are no limits to what you can do in Supernatural, so there are no limits to what we can write. Ash: Yeah we can really make most kinks work in some way in the SPN worlds. Emily: Also again with going out of character I read a captain America fic where it could have been a little out of character how he jumped straight to sex (someone commented that) but sex pollen made it work. So basically these tropes/kinks can also be good devices for writing NSFW fics to if you struggle to get the characters write in the beginning.