#flesh lockup

[cosmixsaystoast]

i made some stuff guys

ok bye

[spinji]

Sometimes I wonder how many marbles Compress still has on hand. Like, did they get confiscated? Is there a timelimit to how long they stay like that or is Snatch's severed torso just sitting in an evidence lockup? Is there any kind of preservation in the marbles? Imagine he gets out and tosses a piece of his own flesh that he ripped out of himself months ago at you.

[hatigave]

@timelovcd send 🕯️to hear Noël's thoughts about Luis.

i. Morning light breaks through the crack between the curtains of their bedroom. Roslyn has left, Noël knows this by the empty spot at her side of the bed. The indent she's left is still warm when he reaches over to confirm her absence ( cursed be mandatory zoomcalls in the early mornings. ) Children run around in the other room, this he also knows by the sound of havoc drifting in through the gap underneath the door. Retired driver turns around ; takes up space in a house that is bursting at the seams from love until his arm finds the familiar comfort of husband's face. Yes he could have easily moved it an inch or two higher, no, he won't do it now. ❝ Idiot —❞ he thinks when Luis makes a grumbling noise in his sleep. ❝ — you could have had this so much sooner if only you weren't so stubborn and too afraid to be loved. ❞ He leans in, nuzzles his face in the crook of lover's neck. His arm remains draped across the other's face, even when Luis bites into the flesh of it.

ii. Neither one has gotten a good night's sleep in ages. Bas has come down with a cold, and in true youngest child fashion he is keeping everyone up. Camille and Noelle join the choir of cries at the crips time of fifteen minutes past three am. THEIR HEALTH COACHES ARE GOING TO BE SO MAD AT THEM for missing another eight hours tonight. It becomes bearable when Roslyn soothes Bas by rocking him ; for three pairs of hands handle three sick children in the same way they handle cars on slippery tyres in the wet ( poorly, but with trust in a good outcome that does not include a sudden stop against a wall. ) There is a twin for each husband, and when Noël rests his head against Luis' shoulder as they fall down on the couch when the girls have finally decided to call it quits for the day he cannot help but feel peace. ❝ I don't know what I would do without you. ❞

iii. ❝ You are such a sack of shit. ❞ His helmet is tossed in the direction of his husband. A sharp turn into Eau Rouge and a lockup of wheels saw them both out of the race and in the medical centre about to be checked over by FIA-appointed doctors. ❝ Are you happy now, now that you've cost me the race ? ❞ A sharp intake of breath. A STERN GLANCE IN THE OTHER DIRECTION. Speaks not of the thundering heart in his rib cage. ❝ Fuck, I'm so happy you're alive and unharmed. Don't even scare me like that again... if you do I will strangle you myself. ❞

[stagnantmako]

cats adopt you. you don't adopt the cat

nero's changed, and not for the better.

this time the hand gripping cloud's chin is iron. the flesh and blood ones are bound to his chest, restricted from any movement. and the metal is sharp, leaving the sable with no means to interact softly with the world. the fingers cut whatever flesh they come into contact with. his powers erode. isolation has never been more personified than in the lonely sable, apart even in a crowd of monsters.

and it has surely taken its toll.

"you..." he says slowly, the words slurring slightly together. nero's eyes are not nearly so bright, dimmed by the heavy sedatives that shinra pumps into him (and his brother, and would-be sister were there room in their hearts or in her mind for that anymore) but there is no mistaking the flash of recognition.

a little too late. as he'd already thrown the blonde head first into the wall, clearly intent on destroying him for daring to raise a weapon against him. nero leans in close, filthy, matted hair tumbling down his too narrow shoulders as it dawns upon him.

"ahhh.... that's right, the traitor SOLDIER..." a smile lights his face, but fails to reach his eyes. they're still glittering maliciously, cold and empty as the now too-distant stars. "so you did live... wonderful. that means all our training was not wasted."

nero drops his face and straightens up. the moment he does so, another recruit makes a move - any blood spilled is blood to your name, and nero knows the tactic all too well. a cheap move of the desperate and weak to move up the leaderboards.

he doesn't get far.

that same hands shoots out lightning quick, spearing through the man's chest. nero turns his head slowly, lifting his arm and watching as the man chokes and splutters as his metal talon's crush his heart.

"this one is mine," nero says to the open room, gaze dropping to each terrified, uncovered face. "you would do well to remember that."

the cloaked restrictor takes a step forward, and only then does something in nero's expression change. a little too sharp to be the sedated lunatic he's playing. but it's gone in a flash, as though it were never there at all.

"unless he is spoken for. is he, restrictor?" nero's iron hand drops to cloud again, petting him like one would a dog. the joints of his fingers catch in golden strands, but he does not relent. whatever suspicion the man possesses appears to abate.

"if it keeps you out of lockup, i don't care where, what, or who you do," the man grunts, stomping past. nero watches him go, continuing to stroke cloud's hair.

then the hand turns to a fist, yanking his head back and drawing cloud into a sit as nero bends down.

"how fortunate. you were to be food for azul, little soldier, and now you are given a chance at redemption."

[mark-londin]

guo's life and death will disappear. 

If one plan fails, another plan can be made. Guo Wengui "expressed both emotions" in the live broadcast room, saying that those who do not sell happy coins are real comrades-in- arms. "Brother Bully" was deeply moved, and naturally he wanted to protect his comrades when he was moved. Then the conversation changed, saying that Xibi would now be given an additional deadline, which would be locked for three years. "Three years" is such a familiar word. After a little recollection, I found that the word three years is simply a special term for Guo Wengui. Everyone should remember that Guo Wengui swore to "destroy the CCP in three years, or jump off the building." Three years later, the Communist Party is still in power, and Guo Wengui did not jump off the building. When the Rule of Law Fund was first established, Guo Wengui promised to "provide protection and selfless help to comrades-in-arms within three years." Three years have passed, and Guo Wengui has not obtained his own political asylum, let alone providing security and protection for his comrades. As for "selfless help", CNBC has confirmed that it is a fraud, and the donations from the ants have disappeared. Therefore, Guo Wengui's words are not as good as farts. Now, Guo Wengui proposed another three-year deadline, and he still forcibly locked the three-year deadline. Those who don’t want to lock the deadline and don’t contact the farm (you still have to lock it after contacting), sorry, you have to take back your Xibi. Listen, what arrogant words. In the past, Guo Wengui cheated money and "still held the pipa and half-hidden his face", but now he directly changed it to robbing. In order to survive, Guo Wengui finally tore off the painted skin, revealing the ferocious face of a jackal, and opened his bloody mouth to bite the ants. It's really "Once the mouth of the pot is as deep as the sea, from then on the ants are lambs." Three years is not long or short, but now Guo Wengui is under the relentless investigation of the US judicial department, and he may be imprisoned that day, and his life and death will disappear. Three years later, Guo Wengui himself didn't know where he was, and the ants who wanted to get their hard-earned money would be tantamount to nonsense. It's nothing more than a three-year lockup. What's more, Guo Wengui not only eats the little ants who have been deceived, but also swallows the ants' relatives and friends alive. All kinds of coercion and lure methods emerge in endlessly, forcing the ants to actively develop offline and deceive more victims. This can no longer be described as devoid of conscience. The ants in the past were Guo Wengui's delicious leeks. At least the leaves were cut and the perennial roots were left, so that they could be cut again in the future. Today's ants are like lambs waiting to be slaughtered in front of the vicious Guo Wengui. They need both fur, flesh and blood, and even bones to make soup. In the past few years, whether it is the rule of law fund, GTV, Jifanshen or Xibi, Guo Wengui's promises of "attractive money and scenery" to ants have been one after another, and the ethereal and beautiful pancakes are stacked one after another. But which of these promises and pies have been fulfilled and realized? On the contrary, the real losses of the ants became worse and worse. And those who came forward to testify that Guo Wengui is a liar, little ants, were beaten by Guo Wengui into fakes and traitors one after another. Therefore, it is said that the ants are "Guo Wengui's people in life, and Guo Wengui's ghost in death." They will never make it to the top, unless they quickly report the case to the FBI, SEC and other departments to recover their losses and get out of the sea of suffering.

[keilemlucent]

half-day

hawks | takami keigo x reader 

word count: ~3k

absence helps the heart grow wounds 

warnings: reader takes medication, angst, sad uwu 

beta’ed: @hawnks

a/n: so in the middle of all the horny, here’s some angsty, SFW, hurt/comfort i wrote as a vent. enjoy 💗

...

“Did you take your meds yet?”

You paused on the edge of the bed, rubbing at your eyes with the inside of your wrist.

“No, I forgot. Sorry.”

You kicked yourself for how weak your voice came out.

Keigo’s wings drooped, though you could only tell by the wide shadow they cast on the wall of your shared bedroom.

It was late, far too late for you to be awake, but you’d forced yourself to stay lucid and somewhat lively to wait for Keigo to arrive home after patrol. It wasn’t something you did often, as he so often was kept past his scheduled hours.

This night was no different.

He’d come through the balcony door in the early hours of the morning, sighing harshly and kicking off his boots with a huff before even noticing you blinking at him from the couch.

And with a single look, his heart sank.

Keigo wasn’t an idiot.

You looked so tired.

Your eyes were shadowed, punched with sleepless bags and the corners of your pretty lips pulled down and taut. You worried your hands, picking at your cuticles and fingernails.

You mustered up a smile, and fuck, if it wasn’t one of the weakest things he’d seen in a long time.

He’d been quick to whisk the two of you off to bed after that. A short shower later, he slung on some sweats and draped a towel over his shoulders. He tried to keep his look casual, despite his own exhaustion, aches and anxiety.

Because you looked shitty.  

Not that you ever looked bad, Keigo had seen you in any number of states. Fucked up, fucked out, bright and shining like the sun itself and tear-streaked—

But none hurt in the same way or as much as he’d been seeing you lately.

When he crept into the bedroom, your gaze was vacant, trained on the floor as you picked at a hangnail on your thumb.

So he asked about your meds, just probing, seeing where you were at.

Truthfully, Keigo’s work had been keeping him from home, though he wasn’t actively avoiding you like this.

But, he did have the undeniable knowledge that his absence was hurting you.

Guilt.

“You don’t need to be sorry, dove,” Keigo slipped next to you on the sheets, letting his wings stretch out and back over the thrown back covers. “Do you want some fresh water?”

You shook your head, silent, as you grabbed your pill organizer from your nightstand.

Keigo eyed the old glass of water, frowning. He could practically see the dust settling on the surface of the stale liquid.

“Are you sure—”

“It’s fine, Kei’, let’s just go to bed,” Your voice was so hollow, half-broken and swallowed up by the gulp of water you took down with your meds.

Keigo managed to keep a grin on his face, but it was hard.

He couldn’t restrain himself from taking your cheeks in his hands, worrying your undereyes with his thumbs the moment you set the murky glass down.

You didn’t say anything, just sagged into his grip, brow creasing.

There was a tension in the air, but nothing that could be cut or the kind that could easily immolate. This was the kind of sluggish frustration that pulled on your muscles and ligaments like gummy syrup.

It dragged the two of you down.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” You spoke without thinking, your hands inching towards his knees.

Why was he?

“Lots of reasons, the first being that I love you,” Keigo reminded you, softly, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

It was all the touch you needed to fall into his shoulders, pressing your face into the wet towel around his neck.

It would’ve been cumbersome, a deterrent from fully touching him, but in that moment, it soaked up the budding tears at the corners of your eyes.

He didn’t need to know how poorly you were doing.

Why did his little affections send you spiraling?

Why did each of his touches feel like aloe to a wound that was deep and tarry, impossibly endless and nothing that could be tackled in a night?

Why did it hurt so good?

“I don’t want to hear the others,” you told him, squeezing his covered knee. “I think I know. I’m sad, not dumb.”

Your quip earned you a half-hearted chuckle, Keigo smoothing a hand up and down your spine.

“Can you lay with me?”

You gave a wordless answer, slipping into the sheets with him while feebly rubbing at your eyes.

Keigo sends a few feathers to click off the bedside lamps, keeping on a small light atop the dresser, the kind that throws pinpricks of faux stars onto the ceiling in oscillating little rings.

It was a false comfort, but you’d both take it.

You laid facing each other, naked in mind and body by then.

With your cheek squished into your pillow, it was even easier to see the tear tracks and worry that you carried.

Keigo had to be careful, he knew he had to, if he pushed you too hard for your words or feelings, you could just lockup, deflect and drift off into fitless sleep yet again.

You didn’t make him reach for too long, didn’t let him worry himself for very long, before you spoke up, weakly, and interrupted his thoughts.

“We’re okay, right, Kei’?”

The question sent splinters of worry into the tender flesh of his heart.

Keigo responded instantly, dragging your body into his as his feathers twitched and ruffled, “Yes, yes, we’re completely okay, better than, I love— “

“I know,” You pressed your face into his sternum, locking an arm over his lower back. “I know you love me.”

You still sounded so empty.

Keigo didn’t know what to do, fuck, he was grasping for even what to say.

“How can I make it better?”

He had to try, right?

Maybe that was the reason why he’d been rushing off so often and for so long lately, without rest, no matter how he felt.

He was a hero, his job was to make things better. He wanted to fix things, mend and stitch the ills and pains of others.

Yet, the person closest to him was splitting at the seams.

Work had been busy, busier than normal, and it just gave him the excuse to avoid his personal problems, like any sane, normal person.

Maybe, he was justified in shoving off the weight of everything, maybe, but only because every time he asked how he could help, you’d just say—

“You can’t, Kei’. It’s okay.”

Just like you did then.

Except, in the past, your voice would just echo from your lips as you gave him a sad smile.

This time?

Your voice broke and your breath hitched as you tried to tug him closer.

He can feel your tears wet his chest.

You tried to fight for so long.

You still were, notably. Against the loneliness and against the odds of your odd relationship, you smiled and mused your way through the struggles of it. You loved Keigo, and the burdens were bearable. They were never from him, they were from the fucked circumstances of his employment and the conditions around it.

You had a deep, heartfelt understanding of this. It was communicated about since the beginning of your partnership, and you had learned, quite well, how to deal with Keigo’s job as a hero. You’d peace with it, mostly.

A lot of the time, contending with this reality was hardly difficult.

But, it was distinctly entirely unmanageable during times when your own mental health started to spiral downward.

So, here you were, beginning to weep into your partner’s chest over all of the weight that was bearing over your mind.

Each moment, your mind sparked with a new poison, until one slipped out amid your muffled tears.

“I can’t even fix m-me— “

You snapped.

And you damn near shrieked into his chest.

Keigo hadn’t seen you do this poorly in a long time.

It hurt, all of it did, but like fuck he was going to push off the responsibility any longer. You’d never admit it, but his absence had to be doing some damage.

“You don’t need to,” Keigo promised, shifting to straddle your hips.

Maybe, on a different night, things would’ve gone a different direction.

Not that night though.

Keigo pressed his weight over your chest, tucking your face into his neck as his feathers settled up and over the two of you. A scarlet shield that read black in the witching hour of the evening.

You didn’t really notice, but you could feel Keigo’s breath and body over the top of yours. He was like some sort of barrier towards the outside world and god did you need it.

You tried to reply, but your words came out as blubberings, broken by tears and ragged breath as you buried yourself into Keigo.

Despite the fact that Keigo was over you, it was the unseen, soul-crushing weight of you that bore down on him.

How did you let it get this bad?

You choked on another sob, your thighs squeezing around his hips.

Your nails raked down his back, an accident borne from your own frustration. Keigo didn’t react to the pain, even when it tread so close to the sensitive roots of his wings. He could bear it— if you had to, he would as well.

This is the least he could do, right?

Be there, though he definitely should’ve been there sooner.

He nuzzled his nose into your temple, brushing his lips over the sweat and tears gathering.

“Cry, dove, I’ve got you now.”

And god, did you.

You sputtered and wept against him, whatever hollow sheen you’d been carrying falling away to a flood of pent up pain.

Keigo had his own mess of emotions about being complicit in letting you get to this point, and what that said about him as a partner, but he swallowed those feelings down to the pit of his stomach and busied himself with comforting you.

He wiped the tears from your cheeks, kissing away the stray ones that dripped down to your jaw and neck. His fingers and nails scratched and massaged your scalp, part of him prayed that the little circles he drew would pull some of the tension and stress from inside your skull, but that was just fantasy.

Ultimately, the only thing to do was nothing, and that was probably why Keigo avoided it for so long.

Powerlessness was not something he was used to, nor did he want to become familiar with it. He was the number two hero in the nation, for fuck’s sake. The last thing he ever felt was helpless, sans a few choice feelings about his arrangements with the Commission.

But with you?

He felt so useless in moments like these.  

But, that was the nature of these things, and he knew this, the two of you had been over that, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel himself getting choked up.

And as much as he wanted to suppress his own feelings, he just fucking couldn’t.

And everything spilt over at once, as things tend to.

Keigo scooped you up, pressing your front to his, pressing your cheek into his own, a few of his own tear tracks forming.

The feeling of Keigo’s own sadness tugged you from your own panic.

You swallowed thickly, your dry tongue sticking in your mouth as you tried to speak coherently.

“H-hey, Kei’?” You asked, trying to rub away at his tears. “C-could you take a h-alf day tomorrow? You don’t need to, but— “

Keigo shushed you with a kiss, sagging over top of you a moment later.

“Yeah, y-eah, of course,” Quietly, Keigo added, muffled into the crook of your shoulder. “You shouldn’t have to ask.”

“It’s okay, but it’s how i-it is,” Your voice shook as you coaxed Keigo to meet your gaze.

And oh, to bear souls with another is quite an intimate thing, don’t you think?

Especially when there was so much raw between the two of you, things that weren’t quite right, and things that hurt a bit too much.

Yet, at the same time, as you searched Keigo’s pretty ambers, more vibrant next to his reddened eye whites, you held nothing against him. There was both implicit and explicit understanding swimming in the air between you.

The unavoidable harshness of your arrangement with the truth that both of you cared so much, even if you didn’t know how to chew of your chunks of reality. It was comforting, seeing Keigo give you a broken little smile as you rubbed his tears away, and he yours.

“I love you,” Keigo's wings fluttered with his words. “I’m sorry for not being here like I should’ve been.”

“It’s okay,” It was, mostly. “I’m sorry for pushing you away.”

You both needed to be better, but being ‘better’ was a process in and of itself.

Carefully, you rose, your hands finding Keigo’s bare hips while his helped prop up your back.

You swallowed around your fat tongue, grimacing and reaching for the stale glass of water.

Just before you could grab it, Keigo reached past you, stopping your hand from closing around it.

“Let’s start small,” Keigo gave you a weak smile. “Can I grab you some fresh water?”

You nodded, the warmth and care of the gesture immediately relaxing you. Quirking a brow, you managed a small grin, “Yes, thank you.”

And you let him.

And all that you’d been carrying with you didn’t dissolve, but it maybe felt lighter.

...

You spent the rest of the night twisted up in each other.

Truthfully, Keigo felt greedy. He’d been too absent and that had made him needy for you and your touch, even if it was just idle and soft.

He craved you in other ways, but you were more than enough.

By the sun rose came, he was hardly sated, but he had calls to make and things to arrange.

...

The next morning, you awoke alone, though the sheets were warm.

A few feathers laid around you, snuggling up to your cheeks and under the covers, fluttering every so often against your bare skin.

As you drew back to lucidity, you could hear Keigo’s muffled voice from the kitchen.

Your body ached, but in a necessary way. It reminded you of the night prior, along with your scratchy eyes and raw throat.

You threw on one of his shirts and padded towards his voice.

Despite your state, and the rawness of the air, Keigo still managed to stun you speechless, as he so often did.

He stood in the kitchen, hip popped against the counter with a pair of sweats hanging dangerously low on his hips. His phone was tucked between his shoulder and ear as he spoke low, hushed and hurried, his hands and a handful of feathers helping prepare two steaming mugs of coffee.

You didn’t eavesdrop, only approaching when Keigo breathed a sigh of relief and the phone was set down on the counter.

Somehow, you were able to surprise him.

Your arms looped around his waist from behind, circling and squeezing.

“I’m guessing you’ve gotta run?” You mumbled into his spine with a weak laugh. “I should say fly, huh?”

Keigo clicked his tongue, turning to drape his arms over your shoulders, “Nope, neither, dove. Two days.”

“… Two days?” You scrunch your brow, though Keigo was quick to smooth out the wrinkles with a quick kiss.

“Two days off a month, barring emergencies, not counting today. Fully off and all yours. And that’s not counting today,” Keigo’s smile warmed his voice. “Sound good?”

Your scrambled psyche rushed to catch up with the revelation that ‘holy fuck, Keigo actually had real, scheduled time off.’

“I can see how hard you’re thinking, chickpea,” Keigo tsked, somehow wrangling you onto the counter top, slotting himself between your parted thighs. “I’ve got this one, okay? I want to be around more.”

You bit your lip, gaze pointed towards the ground.

“For me or for you?”

“Why can’t it be both?”

You swallowed your tongue, still frowning.

It easily could.

Keigo needed the rest, even if he had trouble admitting it. As much as he claimed to be lazy, he was more so a workaholic due to his background. It was difficult for him to ever stop working for any considerable length of time.

Perhaps it wasn’t in his nature, just his training.

All the same, the idea of having Keigo around and mostly to yourself for a few days a month seemed goddamn fantastic.

“... Can it?”

Keigo softened visibly, rubbing at your side, just below the bottom hem of your sleep shirt. Maybe, he was a bit sheepish in those moments, but he’d had to be pretty stern making the calls he had that morning.

Speaking to the right people to allow him to get that time off had been a pain, but seeing the slow way you were deflating and melting into his arms made it worth it.

Not to mention he needed some lazy days as well.

“Of course it can,” Keigo gave a soft little smile. “Both of us getting a bit of extra rest, don’t you think?”

You flickered your gaze to his, where the gooeyness of his amber eyes caught and held you.

A part of you, one that had been particularly loud lately, screamed to ask for more reassurance. That in some way, Keigo was lying and you had to know.

But, with a deep breath, and a press of your forehead to his, you relaxed a bit.

Not enough, but it was a sure start.

“Alright, but only if you promise to let me help you relax too, and that includes today,” You silenced any retort he might have with a gentle kiss.

The moment you tried to pull away, Keigo’s hand was on the back of your neck, holding you steady and close.

“I dunno dove, it is my half-day,” He hummed with a raise of his eyebrows, the dark circles under his eyes hardly detracting from how luminous he so constantly was, “I think I’ll do whatever I’d like.”

You gave your own little grin, “That’s alright too, I guess. As long as you get some rest today.”

“So, a lazy day, that’s what I’m hearing?” Keigo’s wings fluttered at the concept.

With a nod and one more stolen kiss, you hummed, “A lazy day it is.”

[lizmindpalace]

Blood and Crime

Summary: A new and unusual murderer will make Sherlock change in ways he would have never expected.

Warnings: In this work there will be eventual explicit content, graphic depictions of violence, there may be a lot of triggers such as anxiety, depression, paranoid, mental illness, murder, suicidal tendencies, horror, very toxic relationships, manipulation, sexual innuendoes, gore, lots of blood, nightmares, fantasy and vampires.

You can find it also on AO3.

Chapter 2- Home

He had woken up when it was getting late, obviously, he thought. At a slow pace but gradually, his senses were going back to normal, albeit the weakness kept preventing him from a full recovery, thus  his brain and senses were working again as they used to, using the methods he knew and had developed, yet at a slower pace. 

Night and gloom had lashed the world when he was able to leave the lockup that had kept him caught; he was injured and his legs trembled due to the coldness, usual of the season that devastated London during the small hours, therefore, his legs didn't respond to his thoughts naturally and he had to make big efforts to make them follow his orders, it seemed he had lost a bit of control over his limbs and he felt like floating. Stumbling as if he were the kind of man who had consumed more alcohol  than he should have, finally, through the hidings of homeless and junkies that opposite to his situation had completely fallen into the addiction, and eluding the imposing buildings, reminders of old times attempting to stand against time; he recognised Baker Street, a few steps later, he was standing in front of the 221 B. He admired the black door with golden details that seemed to steady glow that night, regardless the fact the moon had hidden, which had also made his journey home more dangerous and difficult.

"Sherlock?"  The voice that the man would always find familiar under any circumstance no matter how much unsettling and harrowing it was, called from the other side of the street. The aforementioned doubted what his next move should be, he was  afraid to turn around and find out the mas he was expecting to see was not a human in flesh and blood and just another character from his world of shadows and hallucinations, some sort of resource created by his brain as a mechanism for preventing him to fall into the kind of madness from which there is no return for mortals. 

A determined hand touched his shoulder from behind whilst he still hesitated about looking at the owner whose voice called him with so much excitement, he was afraid of getting involved in his dreams and his dystopian world turned out being truth. 

"Sherlock! Oh my god!" the man, shorter than he remembered wrapped him in his arms, for a portion of time than looked like an eternity for the one who hadn't said a single word yet. "You don't have a single idea of... you're freezing, come on".

The door that a couple of minutes ago he had been admiring, opened before him and instead of setting foot in the house, he stood there perplexed, as though something prevented him from walking inside, an idea product of the anxiety due to the events and isolation from the last days, as an invisible shield that protected the door against stranger entities with bad intentions. 

"Come on, go in" the doctor's voice broke the reviere he had fallen into, and at a slow and insecure pace he went inside the building and went upstairs, he contemplated the living room where the stairs had led him to, he doubted about what was before his eyes, he tried to remember if he had been there before, now everything looked like a dream.

Once the door was closed behind his back for a couple of seconds he kept motionless in a corner trying to blend in on the aged tapestries, an astonished look was his only response at everything enclosed by the walls as if he were a foreign in that world, eventually, he sat down as John had indicated from the kitchen, assuring him he would be back with him within some minutes with a cup of tea to make him feel warm and check his state. A minute later, the detective had drunk the hot beverage, with no results, since the coldness in his body didn't leave him, not even a bit, he started to wonder if that would ever happen, he thought he would never get used to that sensation that made his bones tremble and stunned him. 

"You're as weak as I foresaw. No matter what you say, you will not leave this flat until you're fully recovered" John Watson talked with resignation in his voice, he had had time to think about it, to let it got, ever since he had heard the insane plan of his colleague, who knew well he had to let him know it this time or worse consequences could be expected.

His brief examination let him know that Sherlock's respiratory system was hardly working; his pale colour was a result of the lack of food and water, reason of the reduction of the bloodstream and sugar levels and therefore had brought dizziness and coldness to the man, nevertheless, all of the symptoms would disappear soon with the adequate treatment. It was not the first and it looked like it would not be the last time his best friend, the detective with massive intellect that no one was able to compete with, acted in such an unintelligent way putting his life at risk and faked his death, all for a stupid case, as the doctor would argue every time the situation allowed him. "Now, it's time to sleep".

John took the except for the gestures he had used to communicate and the emotions reflected in his languid eyes, speechless detective by the forearm. He was compeled to sit on his bed; John impelled him to eat a boiling soup that Mrs. Hudson had been so kind to prepare for him as the doctor had affirmed, tucked him as a mother would do with his little child and left him rest after giving him a sincere smile from the door frame, after reminding himself that the smell of damp would not do any good and so, he would have to take care of it, later. The only important thing now was Sherlock was back home, safe and sound, he had missed him.

Sherlock was stuck in dullness once again and surmised it was becoming his worst ordeal, and notwithstanding the fact weakness was still there, his body didn't do as it was told and he was unable to sleep, he had to make a big effort to fight his mad deliriums and to be an appropriate companion for blackness.

-

Previous Chapter.

Next Chapter.

You can read the finished work in Spanish on Wattpad.

[aartifex-a]

In his first year of vampirism, James McGuinty took a trip to his hometown. 

He hadn’t seen his mother since Christmas 2004. It was October 2006, when he finally made another pilgrimage home. He had moved all the way from Timmins to Montreal, another province over, and the drive was almost 10 hours. He had plenty of excuses prepared about why he hadn’t been visiting: he had been working two jobs then transitioned to a full time position that demanded a lot of his time, the drive was far and gas was expensive, he had been sick for a period of time just before Christmas 2005, etc etc. His mother didn’t love hearing him rattle off explanations for why he hadn’t visited or called in so long. All that mattered was that he came back. When he did, though, he was... different. He was pale, cold all the time, and slept all day. Still, he was in good spirits; he was the happiest he had been in quite some time. 

He spent three weeks at home before making a sudden rush back to Montreal. But before he left, someone else did too: Charlie Fletcher, failed minor league hockey player and highschool bully. Charlie had fallen from grace in the years before his disappearance. Once the most promising athlete in his highschool, Charlie had gotten into a pretty bad car accident just after graduation. The townsfolk rumoured that there was alcohol involved, but Charlie wouldn’t talk about it. His plans to go to Carleton University and play for the Ravens were squandered. Instead he stayed in Timmins, bought a gym, and eventually married his high school girlfriend. His failure to live out his dreams turned to bitterness and resentment, and his bully tactics got worse. With a few arrests under his belt by Thanksgiving of ‘06, mostly DUIs, a few bar fights, and a couple of domestic “disturbance” charges, Charlie was well on his way to becoming a mostly forgotten footnote in Timmins history and remembered as a frequent visitor to the local police lockup.

All of that changed a few days after Thanksgiving 2006. It was a mild October night, a Wednesday. October 11th, 2006. Rain and fog enveloped the town. James had gone to meet a few friends at a bar that night to catch up; to tell them how Montreal was, to tell them how his mom had been doing, to ask them how their families were, to ask how things had been since he’d seen them last. It was going well until Charlie walked into the bar, already belligerent. When he saw James and his friends, he had to hurl a few insults their way. It was a tradition that brought back some of the most painful memories of adolescence for the fledgling vampire: memories of a broken tooth, a broken arm, black eyes, heads shoved in toilets, bodies shoved in lockers, 4 years of torture and a hell of a lot of ice packs. It brought up a rage in him, and an idea, one he hadn’t considered until he realized that now he could take him. Now, he was strong enough to fight back. Now, he was devious enough to pretend to leave early, and lie in wait in the alley beside the bar until the moment was right. A few friends left with him, and told him how Charlie Fletcher had fared since high school. They told him of his bride Chantal and her broken, her black eyes, the ones she hid in the summer behind sunglasses and in the winter with cakey concealer. That sealed the decision for him; Charlie Fletcher had to die. So James walked off, far enough that everyone would think he left. Then, slowly, he made his way back to the bar. There, in the alley, he waited.

Just before closing time, Charlie Fletcher wandered out of the bar, drunk. It wasn’t hard to grab him from behind and drag him behind the bar. James wanted to draw things out, make him suffer, but he didn’t want to get caught. Charlie’s death was quick, but vicious. He tried to fight back. When the long sharp fangs in James’s mouth plunged into his neck, he thrashed. The teeth ripped through his skin, his veins. The scene was gruesome. Blood poured out of open wounds, chunks of flesh sat on the pavement, and James drank as much blood as he could manage in one sitting. When he was done, he dragged the body to a dumpster and shoved it inside. He snuck through the dark, as fast as he could manage, to the banks of the Mattagami River. He took a book of matches from his pocket and burned his clothes (save for his underwear) and dumped the remains in the water before rinsing the blood off of his skin. He headed home, lucky not to be spotted. It was quiet, and he knew the town well. He snuck in through the back door of his mother’s house, took a shower, and retired to bed as if nothing had occurred.

By the time Charlie’s body was found two days later, the cause of death was hard to determine. Nobody figured that a human could’ve done such damage. It looked like he had been attacked by an animal, and in the intervening days had been snacked on by rats and maggots, further complicating matters. Although everyone in town had suspicions about who or what killed Charlie Fletcher, he was buried without anyone ever knowing the truth.

James left town a few days later so as to not leave too quickly and raise suspicions. After all, his friends saw him leave. They walked with him down the street. He was never brought in for questioning, nor was James, inches shorter and many pounds lighter than Charlie, ever a suspect.

For a while, the guilt bothered him. But this was the life he had chosen. It wasn’t pointless, either; he had feasted on his blood. He needed blood to keep on living, and Charlie had proven himself to be a real waste of space. A bully. An abuser. Still, a life had been taken, and with it a sense of peace and innocence.

James McGuinty continued to carry that burden. Gerard de Noailles did not.

[what-am-i-which-am-i]

Character Rant: Jotaro Kujo

I think Jotaro is a really complex character, just like any other human. Being a fictional character, a lot of defining moments in his life or the emotions behind certain actions are left up to the speculation of the viewer. This is my speculative rant based on the Anime and OVA. Because I self-project a lot okay? Shut up.

Why did his personality change?

We see that Jotaro was actually an emotional, sweet and kind person before he got rabies. Yes I'm talking about dating simulator Jotaro . However, during Stardust Crusaders he is rude, cold and abrasive in his attitude towards people. His behaviour towards people is questionable but his actions often display that he cares about people.

First, I'd like to start off by the fact that he's half American-Italian and half Japanese. For those who are not aware: Japan, being a largely homogeneous region, is prejudiced against foreigners. A few decades ago, this prejudice was very strong. This indicates towards the fact that Jotaro got bullied as a kid by other Japanese people for being biracial.

Do you know what bullying causes among other things? Major personality changes (in my experience.)

So, my speculation is that Jotaro became rude, cold and abrasive because of the fact that he was bullied. He seems to be like the person who'd not tell people about how he feels. He must have become more and more guarded. So, over time, his personality changed to what we see in Stardust Crusaders.

He changed like the way he did because he might have wanted everyone to see him as someone who is unafraid of protecting himself or harming others. He probably wanted to prevent himself from getting hurt again.

Why does he seem to act like he doesn't care?

However, although he gave off a cold aura and acted as if he didn't care about anyone, he evidently cared about a lot of people.

He willingly remained in a lockup because of 'the evil spirit' A.KA Star Platinum. It's obvious that he stayed inside the lockup because he didn't want to unknowingly hurt anyone because he saw how much damage Star Platinum can cause. (See: The guys who picked a fight with him.)

He acts irritated when his mom shows him affection. However, he doesn't push her away or sprint away. As shown, when Holly fell sick, she failed to give Jotaro his good morning kiss. This caused Jotaro to sense a disturbance in the force that something was wrong.

One day, Holy couldn't be affectionate and Jotaro just:

That.

Then there's him saving Kakyoin.

Imagine, this guy just tried to kill you and you beat him with some difficulty after which you take him to your house and potentially remove his shoes before entering. Then as calmly as possible, you remove a parasitic flesh bud from his brain that would have killed him over time as the flesh bud tries to enter you own brain. You save the guy who tried to kill you a few hours ago by risking your life for him.

Jotaro has time and time again, risked his life to save others. He expects nothing in return and he doesn't need a reason to save someone.

He saved Polnareff and Joseph from D'Arby. He saved Kakyoin from the other D'Arby. He saved Anne from the Creepy Orangutan.

He could have just left Kakyoin and Anne to die because he didn't know them but he didn't! I know I probably wouldn't have done anything as good-hearted as that.

He's cool like that. He does give a fuck.

Why is he an Angry Teen™

A lot of people are under the impression that people only show sadness through tears and general sadness. There are different ways of showing one's sadness. A lot of people, like me, avoid crying and being vulnerable by inadvertently displaying their sadness in other forms.

For example: Instead of crying, you bottle up your feelings. Those bottled up feelings eventually bubble up in the form of irritation and anger. You snap at innocent people without any provocation and have been told repeatedly that you should control your emotions more.

According to my speculation, Jotaro does the same thing. Almost all his negative emotions are shown in form of irritation. He does not want to show sadness and he's guarded so that's why it seems like he's always irritated.

In the OVA, we see that when Jotaro is fighting Dio, he says that Dio made him truly angry. If you listen closely, Jotaro's voice sounds deathly calm. He sounds calm while telling Dio about what he's done to the people Jotaro cared about.

This led me to believe that Jotaro's anger is this deathly calm whereas his irritation is his other emotions that he bottles up.

Man Needs Rest

Jotaro is someone on whom everyone feels like they can rely on. They trust him to solve problems they can't solve and they expect him to ne the best of the best. He is one of the best and that's canon. However, to have so much pressure on himself, Jotaro may have felt lonely for the rest of his life.

He probably didn't have any friends before he was close with all the Crusaders. The only person of his age with whom he seemed close died. He had Polnareff as a friend but they stayed apart after some time.

This shows that he was a loner for the most part. There wasn't anyone who didn't rely on him for something. He trusted the Duwang Gang but I don't think he was as close to them as he was to the Crusaders. This leads me to think that he didn't have an actual friend after SDC other than Polnareff and the Duwang Gang.

Conclusion

Jotaro needs some fucking rest. Please. This guy probably has depression.

He's also probably autistic. However, since I'm not diagnosed I will leave the Autistic Jotaro explanation to people who are acquainted with neurodivergence personally.

I found this really good explanation of the Autistic Jotaro headcannon on this post. Feel free to read!

[stolethekey]

i woke up just in time, now i wake up by your side

hello! this is for the (final!) @b99fandomevents—i can’t believe how far these two (and this show) have come, and i’m gonna miss them so much. i got to write this for @amydancepants-peralta, who wanted a fic where jake and amy have a disatrous first date, and then amy decides to transfer to chicago—jake has three days to convince her to stay.

enjoy! (you can also read this on ao3.)

It’s their first date, and it’s a disaster.

Neither of them has said anything in the ten minutes since they’ve sat down. Jake buries his nose into the menu, hoping that he looks occupied enough with choosing an entrée to excuse the heavy silence that has settled over the table. A few feet away, in the other side of the booth, Amy does the same thing.

A young man in a pressed suit and tie approaches their table, a small, nervous smile on his face. “Are you all ready to order?”

“Yes!” Amy nearly leaps at the chance to talk to someone who is not Jake. Jake tries not to feel too hurt by the desperate excitement in her voice. “I’ll take the chicken piccata, please.”

Jake lingers around the chicken parmesan but ends up going with a steak, because he’s determined to show Amy and maybe himself that he can eat like an adult. They pass their silk-embossed menus to the waiter, sip their waters, and suddenly it’s too quiet again.

“You got a haircut,” Jake notices, wringing his hands nervously under the table.

“It looks nice.”

“Thanks.”

There is a beat of silence that stretches just a little too long, and then Jake says, “This is awkward.”

Amy chokes out a laugh. “Yeah.”

Another moment passes. Jake swallows the non-existent saliva in his mouth. Their waiter, mercifully, returns with their food a few minutes later. Jake doesn’t want him to leave. He does, of course, and then they’re left in that terrible silence again.

Jake makes it through half his steak before speaking again. “Should we, um, just get really drunk?”

Amy grimaces, reaching for her water. “I don’t think so.” Her voice is quiet, almost defeated. “If we can’t do this sober, what’s the point?”

Something twists uncomfortably in Jake’s stomach, but he stabs his fork into his a piece of broccoli anyway. - It’s the day after their first date, and Amy asks for a transfer.

Jake learns about this through a wail from the evidence lockup that he hears from a good twenty yards away. He bursts through the door, frantic, to find Charles curled in a ball on the ground, rocking back and forth.

Charles gets out the details in between sobs, or at least enough details that Jake gets most of the picture. Amy put in a transfer to Chicago, it’s been granted on account of an emergency vacancy that needs to be filled, and she has three days left at the Nine-Nine.

“Three days,” Charles gasps, tears streaming out of his eyes. “Three days, you have to convince her to stay, Jake, you have to—”

“Hold on,” Jake says desperately, watching Charles dab at his face with a completely saturated tissue. “Let me get you another box of Kleenex.”

He opens the door to leave and runs straight into the source of Charles’s despair, in the flesh.

“Oh,” says Amy.

Jake closes the door behind him before Charles can see her and have a heart attack, then crosses his arms. “Is it true? Are you leaving?”

Amy has the grace to look self-conscious, shuffling her feet and shoving her hands in her pockets. She nods, and Jake feels strangely like the walls are swimming around him.

It just makes sense, she says. She has family there, and New York is too crowded, too expensive, and maybe Chicago is a better place to live anyway.

“Is this because of me?” Jake demands. “Because of…you know…our date?”

“No, of course not.” She doesn’t look at him as she says it.

Jake scoffs before stalking past her into the bullpen, ignoring her half-hearted call of his name. He blinks back the hot, furious tears forming in his eyes, and internally he starts a calendar. - On Day One, Jake calls in sick to work.

He responds to the “r u ok??” texts from Charles, Rosa, Gina, and Terry with a copy-and-pasted “I’m ok. Just feeling gross.” He ignores the ones that mention Amy. He also pretends like he doesn’t notice that Amy hasn’t sent him anything.

The morning is spent mindlessly scrolling through his social media beneath his blankets, with no regard for time or his grumbling stomach.

At noon, Charles posts a picture of the squad from Halloween with the caption “Gonna miss my favorite Halloween-hater. #SayonaraSantiago.” Jake decides he’s had enough Instagram for the day and finally hauls himself out of bed.

He orders a pizza, then turns his phone off and the TV on. Inadvertently, the pizza becomes both lunch and dinner and one Die Hard movie becomes a marathon—and before he knows it, the sky outside his apartment is dark.

“Well, that was productive,” Jake mutters, brushing the pizza crumbs off his lap before standing up to toss his trash into the garbage.

On Day Two, they aren’t talking to each other.

Amy looks up almost timidly as he walks out of the elevator, then waits until he reached his desk to let out a small, hesitant “Hi.”

Jake grabs the file waiting for him on his desk and walks out of the bullpen without looking at her.

So, strictly speaking, this is mostly his fault.

That fact does not do anything to quell the mixture of anger and hurt writhing in his stomach. He spends the day furiously completing paperwork in an empty interrogation room, jabbing his pen so furiously into the paper that he rips a hole in an I-918 and has to start over.

At noon, Rosa stops by with a turkey sub, which she drops wordlessly on the desk in front of him before sliding back out the door.

At five, he has completed more paperwork than he has in the last month combined. He drops the stack of files on Terry’s desk, forces a smile, and says, “Finally caught up on all those forms you’ve been hounding me about.”

Terry, his eyes piercing and slightly concerned, does not laugh. “Dismissed.”

It’s Day Three, and Holt has had enough.

He assigns Jake and Amy to label evidence in the lockup together, much to Jake’s chagrin. Amy turns and speeds off without a word. Jake turns towards Holt with a big, reproachful protest on the tip of his tongue but is cut off by Holt’s raised eyebrows and stern expression.

“Peralta, you need to get over yourself.”

“What?”

“You need to get over yourself,” Holt repeats. “Your partner of six years is leaving tomorrow, and you haven’t spoken to her in three days.”

Jake snorts, crossing his arms defensively. “Yeah, well, she’s leaving because of me, so—”

“I’m not sure that matters,” Holt says, not unkindly. “If you let her leave like this, you might never get the chance to talk to her again.”

Jake stares at the ground, furiously attempting to dig a hole in the ground with his toe.

“I know you don’t want this to be the way things end.” Holt’s voice is gentle, and Jake can’t bring himself to look up. “It would be unwise to let your pride get in the way of your last chance to save your friendship.”

“Whatever,” Jake mutters irritably, but something uncomfortable has begun to form in his gut. “Gimme that Sharpie so I can go write case numbers on a bunch of ziplock bags.”

Jake does not, in fact, get over himself—at least not for the first few hours. He chooses to instead label evidence in the same furious silence that has occupied his past three days, pretending he doesn’t see the furtive, almost timid glances Amy throws his way every few minutes.

Then he walks to a bodega for lunch and realizes mid-chew that this is Amy’s last lunch at the Nine-Nine, and the uncomfortable thing in his stomach grows a lot bigger.

He finally swallows his pride on his walk back to the precinct, and when he re-enters the evidence lockup the thing in his stomach has started feeling a lot more like guilt.

Amy walks in a few minutes after him, tossing a balled-up sandwich wrapper into the trash, and notices that he’s watching her. “You have something to say to me?”

“Yeah, actually,” Jake says quickly. “I do.”

She crosses her arms and narrows her eyes, and Jake’s heart sinks a little.

“I—uh—I’m sorry,” Jake says. “For how I reacted, and for icing you out the past few days. It was immature of me, and stupid, and I should’ve been an adult about it, but—well, I guess we both know I suck at that sometimes.”

Amy snorts, but her expression has softened slightly. “Thank you.”

“And I’m gonna make it up to you,” Jake continues, almost determinedly. “We’re gonna make this the best day you’ve ever had at the Nine-Nine.”

Amy laughs slightly. “I don’t think that’s possible, given the amount of work we have left.”

“Who cares?” Jake shrugs. “The best part of work has always been the people anyway.”

And for all the organizational skills Jake may lack, he sure knows how to delegate. All it takes is a couple text messages to a new, Amy-less precinct group chat and the rest of the Nine-Nine is off. Gina cashes in on a favor and gets Shaw’s to close its doors for the evening. Rosa makes a last-minute motorcycle trip to a local party store and uses a sizable amount of cash and her surprising aesthetic skill to acquire a large box of decorations. Charles says, “leave the food to me,” and no one is brave enough to question him about it.

Jake stays with Amy on the floor of the evidence lockup. They talk and laugh as they work, reminiscing about their years at the Nine-Nine and the particularly memorable perps they’ve brought in.

There’s also a supercut of the stuff that wasn’t work at all—the precinct parties, Charles saving Thanksgiving, the Boyle-Linetti wedding. There are the Halloween heists, the Jimmy Jabs, and there’s the Bet, with a capital B. Neither of them mentions the last one, but Jake is definitely thinking about it.

“Remember that time Terry tried to do the full bullpen and almost knocked a tooth out?” Amy asks, grinning widely. “I thought Sharon was gonna pull him out of the force immediately.”

“You have no faith,” Jake says, shaking his head. “I knew she’d let him stay.”

“You did not.” Amy points at him, narrowing her eyes. “You were so scared when she came to pick him up.”

“I was not—”

“So scared. I’ve never seen a grown man visibly tremble like that, but—”

“God, shut up.” Jake throws a balled-up piece of tape at her, and she laughs. It’s a real one, this time, one that’s bright and infectious.

They let it fade into a gentle silence, one that’s more comfortable than the ones of the past few days.

There’s a beat, and then Jake says, “Don’t go to Chicago.”

He expects Amy to be surprised by this change of subject—to recoil and give an affronted, “what?”

Instead, she sighs, long and slow, and closes the manila folder in front of her. “Jake—”

“I mean, I know it’s your decision, and I respect that,” Jake says quickly. “And if you truly meant what you said to me earlier, about how it’s important to be near your family and it’s a better place for you to live and you’ve grown out of New York—if that’s really the reason you’re leaving, then that’s fine. Just tell me, and I’ll shut up about it and we can just have a big blowout goodbye party and you can leave.”

Amy picks at the edge of her boot and says nothing.

“But if it’s not—if you’re leaving because of what happened on our date—I don’t want to be the reason you give this up, Amy. I know how much you love it here, and this place loves you too. Captain Holt is a phenomenal mentor to you, we both know that, and you might not get that in Chicago—you’ve done so much good work here that I know you’re proud of, and I can’t be the reason you don’t have that anymore.”

Amy looks at him, her eyes a stormy mix of unreadable emotions, but still doesn’t say anything.

“Look,” Jake says, splaying out his hands in front of him. “That date was kind of a disaster, we both know that. And I think it’s because we were both trying too hard, because we cared too much. Because we’re friends, Amy, and that’s what’s most important to me.”

He takes a deep breath, then says, “I don’t care if we never date. I don’t care if I never get to hug you, or kiss you, or do any of the things I’ve so desperately wanted to do. I just can’t lose your friendship. You’re the best partner I’ve ever had, and an even better friend, and I would be more than happy to just be friends with you for the rest of my life. God knows it’s more than I deserve.”

“You deserve plenty,” Amy says softly.

Jake swallows the way that makes his chest flutter. “I’m just saying—I’m laying my cards all out on the table, here. I want you to stay, and I respect it if you don’t want that. But please don’t let me be the reason for you leaving.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Amy gives him a small, wistful smile that says everything Jake needs to hear.

“Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath and wiping his hands on his jeans. “Party at Shaw’s it is, then.”

Amy slaps the last label on a duffle bag, checks her watch, and stands. “I’m actually taking off early—I need to clear up some stuff at City Hall before I leave. I’ll meet you there?”

“Oh,” Jake says, a little dumbfounded.

Amy notices his expression and shakes her head quickly. “No, it’s not—I mean, this has been settled for days, Holt knows, I was always leaving at three today. So it’s not, like, spontaneous, you know. I would’ve told you earlier, but—"

“I was being an ass. Yeah.”

Amy gives him that little sad smile again, and Jake wants to kick a wall. “I’ll see you at the bar,” she says, almost gently.

Jake forces a smile and nods. “Yeah. Looking forward to it.” - When he pushes through the doors of his favorite bar a few hours later, Jake is expecting loud music, streamers, and—if Gina’s Instagram stories were credible—possibly Mario Lopez. Instead, the bar is completely empty.

There are no balloons, no decorations—the only set table is in the middle of the floor, and on it sits a pizza, two salads, and two glasses of water.

“What—what is this?” Jake mutters, mostly to himself.

“A dinner between two friends,” Amy says, emerging from behind the bar. She gives him a small, slightly nervous smile. “And if it goes well, a second date.”

Jake blinks.

“You were right,” Amy tells him, carrying a bottle of wine and two wine glasses to the table. “Our friendship is the most important thing, here, and it means a lot to both of us. I mean, that’s why we were trying so hard in the first place, right? Neither of us wanted it to fail.”

Jake nods in silent assent, not trusting whatever his mouth would say if he let it.

“But it did fail. Miserably.”

“Uh-huh,” Jake says, somewhat stupidly.

“So the worst thing that could happen has already happened, and we’ve gotten through it. And I think—I think, now, having gone through the past few days, we know enough to give it another shot. As long as we set very clear boundaries.”

“Boundaries,” Jake repeats. “Boundaries are good.”

“Yeah,” says Amy with a slightly amused smile. “So, we’re friends. Really good friends. And that’s what we have to protect, above anything. So this is not necessarily a date. It’s a dinner, and we’re a pair of very good friends who are gonna eat it. And if we want to, afterwards, we can decide to call it a date.”

“Can you do that?” Jake asks. “Label something a date after it’s already happened?”

“Who cares?” Amy smirks. “Since when have you followed rules?”

Jake swallows and shrugs.

“Anyway, if it’s awkward, or weird, then we move past it. It’s a slightly awkward moment between friends that doesn’t have to mean anything. No more silent treatment, no more rash decisions, just two friends who are still friends afterwards. Got it?”

“Afterwards,” Jake says slowly. “So—Chicago—”

“Yeah, I’m not going,” Amy says, her eyes sparkling. “That was a dumb thing I did to avoid this guy I went on a terrible date with.”

A broad grin starts to make its way across Jake’s face. “He sounds like he sucks.”

Amy laughs, then pulls out a chair and points at it. “So—pizza?”

The grin on Jake’s face softens into something smaller, something gentler. “Definitely.”

They each take a slice, then a bite, and Jake will never admit it—but it’s the best Meat Supreme he’s ever tasted.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael in the Mainstream: WandaVision

I love Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch. I’m not sure how apparent that is, but just in general I love comic book characters who use magic, and Wanda is probably my favorite (or at least tied with DC’s Zatanna). Sadly, I never really felt like the MCU did her any justice. She debuted in the worst Avengers movie, her brother was killed before they could showcase a meaningful relationship, and then her next appearances had her speedrunning a relationship with Vision. She definitely got some great moments in Infinity War and Endgame, but she felt woefully underutilized. The same could be said of her boyfriend Vision, who had it even worse than her, because he gets killed in Infinity War and is basically forgotten about after that, with nary a mention in Endgame. These are two fantastic characters, and the MCU just didn’t handle them well at all, and they felt like a complete waste that it was really hard to care about.

Thank god for WandaVision.

This show really did something incredible. It made me care so much about two characters I wished I could have cared about before, and become incredibly invested in their relationship. Wanda and Vision get much-needed spotlight and character development and end up becoming two of the best and most fleshed-out characters in the whole franchise, and it’s amazing they waited so long to do this. Wouldn’t it have been better if we cared so much about them before?

The show has three core elements that help make it great: its characters, its themes, and its presentation. The characters are the big one; Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany really get their time to shine, and both of them manage to do great things with their characters, characters who until now felt more like background characters than actual Avengers. Their relationship is so cute, so wholesome, but with an undercurrent of something a bit sadder that ties in with the show’s themes, and then when they have children things become even more sweet with that dark undercurrent still running strong. Aside from them, the standout of the cast would have to be nosy neighbor Agnes played by Kathryn Hahn… or I should say, the show’s villain, Agatha Harkness, a magic-siphoning witch who’s exploiting Wanda’s fragile emotional state to gain the ultimate power. She’s an actual well-executed twist villain, which is quite a feat for modern Disney, and she’s just as fun and campy as you’d hope an evil witch would be, complete with her very own ridiculous villain song that has her winking at the camera and proudly gloating about killing puppies. It’s delightfully cartoonish. Other standouts include Evan Peters as ‘Pietro,’ in a hilarious and clever bit of meta casting that leads to a dick joke (which might be one of the funniest twists in the MCU) and the return of the greatest Ant-Man supporting character Jimmy Woo. Even Darcy, the absolute worst part of the first two Thor films, manages to return and be tolerable.

The presentation is a big selling point, and what helps the story feel so fresh and unique. Each episode is an affectionate take on a different decade’s sitcoms, starting really oldschool and eventually working all the way up to more modern fare. Interspersed throughout these episodes are some rather entertaining fake commercials which harken to elements of Wanda’s life, and a couple of later ones even act as some heavy foreshadowing for future revelations. The different camera techniques, colors, and whatnot really help sell this fantastical sitcom world Wanda created, though I have to say it is a bit of a shame they couldn’t integrate this style more into the climax, even if there are story reasons for it. It was just such a cool and fun concept, it’s a shame it had to be resolved before the climactic finale.

The themes, though, are what really make this show shine. This show is essentially about a woman dealing with grief. Wanda has lost the man she loves, she has lost her brother, and she’s struggling to find her way in the world. As a coping mechanism, she creates a fantasy world and refuses to face reality, burying her emotions and refusing to move on, instead clinging to the happy concepts that might have been. It really is fantastic as a character study of Wanda, giving her a remarkable amount of depth. I found myself relating to a lot of the themes on display; as someone with depression who has had my fair share of painful experiences, I could empathize with Wanda to a degree. Sure, the person I loved was never murdered by Thanos, but I’ve experienced with grief before. It’s really great stuff they’re working with here.

Unfortunately, as good as all these things are, the show isn’t 100% perfect. The biggest issue is when the show switches focus from the interesting stuff inside of Wanda’s sitcom world to more standard MCU stuff outside. Sure, it’s fun to hang out with Jimmy Woo, the greatest character ever, but a lot of the stuff out there just isn’t engaging and some things just aren’t really elaborated on too much. It’s certainly not awful, but between some really confusing twists with Monica Rambeau (who is a good character otherwise and one I want to see more of) and the extremely boring, 2/10 on Psycho Analysis villain Hayward, there’s really not much here that can even hope to compare to the events unfolding in Wanda’s life. The best things from the outside are flashbacks, such as when Monica returned from being snapped or when we get to see Wanda visiting Vision’s corpse in government lockup, which is one of the most tearjerking moments in the show.

There’s also how the swerve into the standard “Big Marvel action” isn’t exactly graceful. After a great episode where Agatha goes back through Wanda’s life, giving even more insight to Wanda as a character and showing us a lot of fascinating moments, we get into the grand finale which feels like what you’d see in a movie theater, for better or for worse. Now I’m a real slut for crazy witch duels between hot women, and this certainly delivers on that front, but there’s so much other crap going on and it really is weird to think how this show about a superhero woman learning to handle her grief somehow became a big, epic showdown that wouldn’t look out of place in a Harry Potter film. I don’t hate this finale as much as some people do, but it definitely feels like the weakest episode overall (which isn’t too bad, since it’s still good, just not really what I would have liked to see).

WandaVision is the sort of thing I want to see more from the MCU going forward. It’s fresh, it’s interesting, it doesn’t take a standard route for the most part, and it utilizes characters who never got a fair shake in interesting and creative ways. Most importantly, it’s very weird and very comic booky, which is something the MCU was lacking for much of its first ten years (save for the films Gunn and Waititi made). I’m sure not everyone is going to find this to be their cup of tea, and it’s easy to grow bored of the cuts away from Wanda to the more cliché affairs outside of her sitcom bubble, but this is definitely a rich and rewarding show that engages with some heavier topics in an easy-to-digest and enjoyable way. Hopefully we’ll see more creativity like this going forward.

[toonqueen]

Darkwing OC Month Day 15 JFC Negaverse Counterpart Ahaha! JFC.

Katessa Feathington-

I never really fully fleshed out an idea for her Negaversion. Basic idea is her Negaversion is a baddie but is possessed by a good past life spirit instead. So being forced to do good things lol. And Nga Katessa hasn’t defeated ‘The Witch’ in her universe so that good little voice is still with her haaa.

Ornithopter McQuack- 

Also not completely fleshed out but while his prime version is calm and collected his Negaversion would be way more emotional, for better or for worse. Wears his emotions on his sleeve type. He has the same job as his prime counterpart of dealing with stopping magical creatures and people and artifacts that might destroy the world. Even though Nega-Orn is the ‘bad’ version, he still doesn’t want his world destroyed.

Jett McQuack-

She’s just vaguely mentioned as living in the middle of nowhere and anyone that knows of her existence knows to avoid her. SWEATS.

Author Phoenix-

He doesn’t have a Negaverse version because of reasons. I had a Posiversion storyline for him and Ornithopter. I originally headcanoned as the Posiversion as being too perfect and a bit of the movie ‘Minority Report’ vibes. Posi-Author is imprisoned in a status sleep because statistically he could become a villain so some pre-lockup. Though, he is able to communicate in dreams to Posi-Orn who is a very shy quiet shut-in that doesn’t hardly leave his home. Author encourages him to do some heroic things to help free other innocent people that are imprisoned. Author doesn’t send him after himself because he is in a too high security area. Though eventually as Orn’s confidence is built up the ultimate goal is he free’s Author without Author asking him to. . Yay. That is totally successful and nothing goes wrong. AHHH.

 I would have to find my old ipod and charge it for Author x Orn’s playlist but I do know I had two songs on it for the posi versions which was Placebo’s “Battle for the Sun” and “Sweet Prince.”

[cyclesprefectpress]

Smirke’s 14 Broadsides:

the Buried : the Corruption : the Dark : the Desolation : the End : the Flesh : the Hunt : the Lonely : the Slaughter : the Spiral : the Stranger : the Vast : the Web : the Extinction

blue Stonehenge & Palatino for The Sick Village—

not going to lie, struggled a bit on this one! didn’t end up using any of the vertical typesetting i started with, for one thing, but that’s fine, it’s good for the ego probably. i had a more complicated idea that just wasn’t necessary, so it’s really very straightforward typesetting in the end, but the lockup was sort of a nightmare for some reason? and i will never get to know why i had to compensate 1/2 pt. in the leading of the right side to make them align properly. my math was GOOD >:(

But! i like it very much now, so worth even the time i didn’t use at my most efficient. stonehenge is SO nice to print on, im glad wedding season last year left me with a whole bunch of offcuts.

wip 1 : wip 2 : wip 3 : wip 4

[shirtlesssammy]

15x08 Bullet Point Rambles

Chuck is an utter asshole and killed everybody in a casino except the terrified bar server. Like, recognize you’re angry about your sister and don’t take it out on casino employees, man

OMG Sam followed Eileen on a hunt to protect her. Sam bby

Ah, Donatello is back. It IS Buckleming, after all

Sam and Cas are hanging out together, Dean is notably on the opposite side of the room from Cas. DUDES PLZ

Dean accuses Michael of being a real daddy’s boy which….pot, kettle, black? (I realize that’s the point.)

Oh EW Chuck is speaking to them through Donatello. GROSS CHUCK

Oh wow hey surprising, Chuck threatens all the women they know

Boris and I are demanding the return of Ghost Kevin!

CAS looks so SAD and now I’m sad damn it

Hey who else saw the gritted teeth Cas made when he healed Dean? Who else is concerned. GUH

They do a spell to head down to Hell. (Boris: Why aren’t these idiots just taking the stairs down to Hell?)

IT’S ROWENA!!!!!!!! She’s leading Hell. I seriously just threw my hands up in the air and shouted YESSSSSSS

Okay, so Rowena’s dead. But she also seized the throne in Hell which is some mad fucking props, okay? LOOK at her entourage of buff hot dudes! LOOK at her ensemble! Rowena is living her best afterlife, and I’m so proud

Eileen gets a phone call from a hunting buddy…potential hunt ahoy!

Rowena misses “flesh on flesh sex” and Amazon which…fair

Rowena orders Dean and Cas to fix their shit while Sam’s off fetching a drink for her. She’s so smart! We love her so much! 

!!!!

Adam isn’t in Hell but he IS hanging out at a diner with Michael eating burgers and fries and pizza

I love seeing “Adam" and “Michael" facing each other. This is lovely work

Dean asks about Eileen in pointed terms. Sam says they have an “agreement.” OMG Sam

Sam’s quick to say family stuff isn’t for them. Sam BBY. But Dean gives his approval of Sam+Eileen, and that seems important to Sam? 

Lilith shows up to hang out with Michael and both of us hiss like angry cats. She’s arrived to bring Michael to see Chuck. Lilith, humorously, is still sporting her nature girl outfit. But Michael disintegrates Lilith sooooo….problem solved?

OOF Cas prays to Michael to get him to head to the bunker. Yikes. Cas prays next to a chess set, alone. “I’m not your enemy anymore.” God is.

Michael remembers the whole, uh, assbutt incident. Sorry, dude?

Fucking Speight delivers a DAMN good introduction to Dean and Sam striding in on a suddenly trapped Michael. MMMMM yes good

Michael’s in an angel-stabbing mood, which does not bode well for the “Cas survives this episode” notion

They brought Michael back to the bunker in cuffs. Super idea. TBH Michael does a pretty good job of laying out his grudge against these three yahoos

I love the look on Sam and Dean’s faces when they see Adam speaking for himself. And, like, OMG it’s revelatory. Adam suggests they start by apologizing, but Michael has considerably less patience

“He’s having a mid-eternity crisis. Or maybe you don’t know your dad as well as you think you do. Parents keep secrets.” (Me: thinks about Santa Claus and slinks off guiltily)

Sam and Eileen race off to help her friend on the vamp case. e e k

Cas goes in to talk to Michael. He used to hate snobby Michael, but now Cas finds him pitiable as Chuck’s puppet. Ooo Cas this is some damn thin ice you’re skating here

Cas zaps his thoughts into Adam/Michael and we get a brief Chuck manipulation clip show from all the way back to season five

Boris and I talk over the break about how great this show is and how great it is that Dabb has clear love for this show’s story and these characters. The show underwent interruptions and network changes and through it all it’s found a way to spin a compelling story that calls back on its past while crafting an intriguing future. It’s also so amazing to have had a lot of the same core cast over such a long period of time

And now we get to the kitchen scene. The KITCHEN SCENE. Does this mean Cas is gonna leave instead of die? Maybe he storms out? Maybe my feelings have congealed into a cold, black pudding of angst!?

The bunker rattles and the angry husbands answer Michael’s call. Michael gets it…Chuck’s a problem.

Eileen is driving the Impala, glory glory (Boris: They really don’t trust Jared with that car)

Sam senses a trap and it’s….FUCKING CHUCK pretending to be Eileen’s friend. OH DAMN

Michael’s on board and he knows how to lock Chuck up just like he locked up the Darkness/Amara

They need a leviathan flower for their lockup spell. Michael opens up a door to Purgatory - open for 12 hours only. AAAAAAH [insert picture of elmo on fire]

Dean apologizes to Adam. It’s very heartfelt. o u c h

“Since when do we get what we deserve?” Adam asks. VALID

Dean and Cas are…heading to Purgatory to revisit their honeymoon? W H A T is happening

Boris: It would make more sense to only send Dean because he’s a human and can pass through that ol’ portal. But Cas? We don’t know! He only got freed from Purgatory because of angels??? What will happen???

Coming up next week in 8 billion years: Chuck tortures Sam! We probably feel too many emotions! HELP US

[churchyardgrim]

#2 from the d&d ask meme? it is a fantastic question

before they met their party, what was their main goal?

oooo excellent opportunity to plug my boy’s four page backstory that i just realized i never posted here!

tldr Silas wants to study a perfect immortal in order to defeat death, bc death insulted him once and he never got over it hghdfg

Silas Edelhart has a problem. That problem is death.

He was born to minor nobility, old money making use of their hereditary ambition to generate new money on the merchant routes, and he was lucky enough to not be his father’s preferred heir; he was allowed to take to academia, or else join some priesthood and curry favor with the lesser sons of other noble houses. He chose academia.

He was enamored with it. The libraries! The minds to learn from. The men. The women! The men. The only disappointment was that apprentice physicians did not get invited to many parties, something Silas was hard at work remedying when he was presented with an unwittingly significant patient.

A farm hand from outside the city had been delayed in reaching them for medical care, and his injuries - an accident with a plow, they were told - had gone gangrenous. He was insensible with fever, and would have lost the leg even if his people hadn't taken so long in getting him to the medics; as it was, despite amputation and efficient treatment for blood poisoning, he expired overnight, in Silas's care.

Silas was crushed. He had done everything right, double and triple checked his protocols, and still the man had died. “No one blames you, of course,” one of the senior physicians said to him, “these things simply happen.”

Maybe they ‘simply happened’ to other people, Silas thought bitterly, but he was better than that. He had decided the man would live, and his performance had been flawless! The terminity of a mere natural law to stand in the way of his will was intolerable. Incensed, Silas threw himself at his studies, dead set that it should never happen again.

Resurrection magic wasn't what he was after initially; he only wanted to keep the living where they were. But he found quickly that the popular consensus was that healing magic could only do so much, and most simply accepted its failures as they did any other misfortune. So he hunted out spells to wrench the dead back, hidden and fragmented in books his instructors only grudgingly let him read. Time would tell if they would be enough, however; none of the accounts of their use he had read gave any indication of the effects being permanent. It would be so embarrassing, to put so much work into defying death only to have his prize killed in a careless accident! He would not settle for anything less than complete immunity from death.

His practice only pushed him deeper into this conviction; plenty of his patients lived, much improved from treatment, but a few still died despite his efforts, reigniting his rage at death every time. He began to get a reputation for it, and some of his peers started tactfully funneling away those patients that seemed likely to die with or without medical care, to spare themselves his rants. Many of them thought his anger came from an insult to his skills, but this was all wrong; he knew his skills were exceptional, the failure was not his.

It is the gods’ fault, Silas decided. The gods had set this wretched law in place, to kettle and humble mortal creatures. But... no, the gods themselves are yet subject to death, have died in scores. So, death is a greater power than even them.

But in one book, ill-used and forgotten, Silas found mention of a god returning from death. A resurrection on a divine scale. And once that possibility had revealed itself, the hints between the lines of other books made themselves apparent; someone had performed that resurrection, exercised mastery over death in such a way that it left Silas’s mouth watering. How? How had it been done?

The next few months of frantic research and evasion - the concern from his tutors was enough to warn him that no one wanted him to go looking for this - led him eventually into the university’s vaults. To a broken-legged construct, dormant, containing a withered, desiccated hand. Not the hand of the godly resurrectionist, no, but the hand of someone who, certain books implied, might have been a devotee of that individual. A relic of a necromantic saint.

Silas stole it, of course he did. Made use of a debt owed by an engineer of the local guilds to repair the construct housing, and treated it as a treasured prize. Such mysteries, opening to him now with the artifact’s communion; he graduated quickly from books to practice, retreating into his own rooms to make frogs twitch and test ancient ideas on the animation of flesh. He took on fewer and fewer patients, withdrew from the society of his peers… for the most part.

Sera Mournleaf was brilliant. Sera Mournleaf was intense. And some days, Sera Mournleaf was the only thing that could distract him from his work. An elf with connections, she did him many favors in getting him subjects to work on, meat with which to test his theories, and had an insightful and sparkling mind with which to discuss the less publicly acceptable aspects of spitting in the face of death. So what if she stayed up later than him some nights, reading and rereading his notes. So what if every time she visited her aging human father she came back slumping with worry. He cannot expect things to be about him all the time!

Besides, he had little focus to spare for things not his research, now. He had been forced to take up the shovel himself, more than once, to find fresh bodies that would be more difficult to trace back to him - they keep a close eye on the university morgue, he learned better than to try that more than once. And he had had no small success, stripping corpses of their unnecessaries and stitching the most promising parts to one another, speaking to his prized relic with equal parts demand and prayer.

The results infuriated him at first. Lurching, wretched things, no better than flesh constructs, most of them had to be destroyed; that shriveled hand granted Silas holy fire as easily as it had clues to the resurrectionist arts. But he persisted, and grew to view them as necessary stepping stones towards a greater perfection. He grew more bold, more reckless, and felt himself forever on the verge of a cataclysmic revelation.

It was not to be. He was found out. The right word in the right ear brought the law crashing down on his shoulders, and he watched them burn his experiments with a guardsman kneeling on his back. It was broken, all of it, his research carted away in boxes (fewer boxes, maybe, then he thought there should have been), and Silas himself thrown in prison to scream his rage at the uncaring stone.

The trial was a farce. Somehow, Silas's family managed to find reason enough to pull half the lawyers in the city to his defense, while at the same time making it very clear that under no circumstances was he to darken their doorstep ever again. In the same two hour span his prospects went from life imprisonment to a mere slap on the wrist of exile, and then summarily informed that he had been neatly removed from the last will and testament of his every living family member. It was a very trying day.

At the end of it he was stripped of his qualifications, most of his wealth confiscated, and ejected from the city with his mouth sewn shut with wire; an archaic punishment for heresy, invoked here merely as sorry consolation on the part of the law that they couldn’t execute him outright. In the proper spirit of the thing, he should have left the stitches in place and let himself starve, and in deference to the bare truth of his crimes Silas endured it for three days before getting sick of the whole thing and cutting himself loose.

He had managed to keep his precious relic in its construct housing, the only thing worth bribing a minor official to sneak out of evidence lockup, and he quickly put distance between himself and wretched Misthaven, thinking nothing but bitter thoughts towards his betrayer. Selfish, horrible Sera; she had gotten cold feet, most likely. Come over all moral about what he had been doing, let slip to the magistrate that perhaps she knew who had been plundering the city's burial grounds at night. Well! She will just have to wait and see, won't she. Wait until he can begin his work again, reach as yet unseen heights of resurrection. Then he would return to Misthaven and enact some fitting revenge, on her and all those who had a hand in ruining him.

(Miss Mournleaf could have argued, the better part of a year later, that his unwitting parting gift was revenge enough. Babies scream like they’re being murdered, and the damn thing looks just like him. She left it with the nuns and got on with the business of saving her father.)

And so he wandered, working as a physician in small towns and middling cities, trying his damndest to reestablish his research in some capacity. But his funds never stretched that far, and neither did the patience of his neighbors; more than once he had to flee under cover of night, for misdeeds real or imagined. Most of these were unmemorable affairs, and only irritated him. Once, the mercenary paid to kill him proved a delightful match, in combat and energy, and the man made an affair of running away with Silas, and Silas ended up growing remarkably fond of Cassian Hellier, for all his unrefined brutishness. They still keep in touch, whenever either of them is in civilization long enough to hire a messenger to carry letters.

A decade passed in this fashion before Silas began to hear rumors. Travelers between worlds, fading in and out of unearthly mist, serving a genuine immortal. He seized upon these threads, passion alight again; a near perfect undead, far superior to the wretched things he had managed to raise back in Misthaven, yes. He would follow the travelers, seek out their master, see what, if anything, of the rumors were true. If they are... he would study, and learn, and replicate the results. And if not? Well, the corpse of even a lesser undead would be a beautiful thing.

[elsaclack]

I wish you would write a fic in the Jake-can-feel-Amy’s-emotions universe that entails the warehouse raid and their first kiss that occurs after because I AM TRASH

HI THIS IS LIKE 8 MONTHS LATE BUT!!!! BETTER LATE THAN NEVER OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT

i did have something posted once upon a time in the original iteration of this universe butttttt i rewrote/repurposed parts of it to this, bc i like this one better but the first one had good bones

also this is a reference to two one-shots i posted a million years ago from a soulmate au i…developed? created? something like that lmao. you don’t necessarily have to have read either one of them but here they are just in case you want to: one and two

in the event that you don’t want to read them, the only thing you need to know is that in this au, soulmates can feel each other’s emotions. prior to their first kiss as soulmates, only one can feel the other - after the first kiss, they can both feel each other. so. in this setting, jake could feel amy, but amy couldn’t feel jake, and then they kissed, and now amy can feel jake. clear as mud :-)

So here’s the thing: it’s two o’clock in the morning, Jake’s smells like trash, and he’s about two-and-a-half minutes away from completely losing his mind. It should be noted, of course, that his teetering on the precipice of madness is entirely unrelated to the ungodly hour and his ungodly stench (though, to be fair, neither are helping) except by the furthest, narrowest of circumstances - that is to say, he could be fresh out of the shower at nine in the morning and still feel the tendrils of panic squeezing ever tighter round his heart.

So, here’s the thing: he’s panicking, and panicking some more, because for all of his feelings of panic stifling each inhale, Amy’s poorly-restrained anxiety rears up tenfold from the deepest dredges of his chest. It’s just his luck, he supposes, that his soulmate is such an anxious person by nature; normally it’s nothing he can’t handle, but with his current state of mind and his inherent inability to regulate his own emotions, Amy’s pretty much on her own.

Except that isn’t entirely true, is it, because here’s the thing: he’s panicking, and she can feel it. She can exactly how piss-poor he truly is at managing his panic, so it’s really no wonder that she’s panicking, because she always seems more panicky when he seems panicky and now she can feel exactly how panicky he is and god, who thought of this whole sharing-emotions-with-your-soulmate bullshit?

He didn’t ask for this, for the record. He was perfectly happy keeping their connection a secret and carrying it all the way to his grave, probably. Amy kissed him, not the other way around, thank you very much.

(He was probably going to tell her soon, anyways, because it’s been eating away at him like a virus and he’s pretty sure there’s science to prove that being around your soulmate without telling them they’re your soulmate for as long as he has been around Amy has physical side-effects in addition to being, like, a massive bummer.)

It seems wherever she is (somewhere in the back of the precinct in this very floor, he’s pretty sure, like either the evidence lockup or the bathroom or something) she’s at least partially aware of the effect her anxiety is having on Jake - he can feel her familiar attempts at tamping it all down, probably the result of her doing a breathing exercise he’s coached her through in the past. It works, if only a little; he can feel his own head clearing, his racing thoughts slowing, until the blurriness to his vision sharpens and he can hear himself breathe over the blood pounding in his ears.

He’s not even fully aware of his own thankfulness until he feels Amy’s bewilderment - and of course she’s bewildered, why wouldn’t she be bewildered at his thankfulness invading her mind like alien baby chest-bursters.

His newly-cleared vision lands on a slightly crumpled post-it taped to the bottom of his computer monitor - get a grip tonto, it tells him in Rosa’s scrawl - and he inhales deeply through his nose, letting the words reverberate around his skull. Get a grip, get a grip, get a grip.

It’s probably more of a reflection on him than it is on her that, despite his somewhat-diminished sense of world-ending panic, he can’t quite get the unevolved caveman part of his brain to stop replaying their first kiss. It’s not his fault - Amy Santiago is a good kisser, even under all the duress and pressure of an undercover mission seconds away from going sideways. She’s a good kisser when she’s sporting a gruesome black eye, a good kisser when she’s out of breath, a good kisser when she’s falling, a good kisser at the bottom of one of the nastiest dumpsters Jake’s ever had the misfortune of smelling in his life. Even if nothing else ever happens and he spends the rest of his life replaying this one memory on a loop, he’ll get it tattooed to his forehead:

Amy Santiago is a good, good kisser.

But, the fact still remains: he never asked for this.

He definitely hoped for this, but he never asked for it.

He kind of asked for it.

It’s not his fault.

It was a natural reaction - anyone who was in his place would have done the same thing, dammit! She’s his partner and she was in danger - and, okay, maybe the only reason he knew that in the moment was because he felt her sudden spike of shock and fear more than he heard knuckles connecting with flesh and her responding gasp of pain in the room he’d just crept out of. But the fact still stands - he would have gone and thrown that jerk off of any of his fellow detectives.

He would have gotten just as much savage, feral pleasure at punching that perp’s lights out. He would have yanked any of his fellow detectives into a bone-crushing hug. Just as Amy would have pulled any of the other detectives into a panic undercover kiss upon hearing their other perps coming back toward them at the commotion.

Right.

Amy Santiago is a good kisser, even when she’s unwittingly establishing their soulmate connection and feeling every last ounce of his emotion flood her nervous system for the very first time.

(He tries not to think about the fact that she’d gasped into his mouth or that she’d gone stiff as a board in his arms for all of one-second - tries to chalk it up to the sound of their perps storming in somewhere behind them and wolf-whistling at their display, too distracted by them to notice their companion out cold on the floor at their feet.)

And he really tries not to think about his stupid, fumbling attempts at leading them out the back door into the alley behind the warehouse before the perps caught on - about how he’d misjudged the distance, sending them both toppling over the edge of the loading dock and straight into the open dumpster below.

(And the weight of her settling over them even as they’d both grunted on impact - how she’d pulled back for a second, eyes blown wide, before leaning back in - how he’s still not sure if the desperation he’d seen in her eyes was case-related or them-related.)

It was messy, and stupid, and so completely and utterly them - and the fact that they managed to make all of their arrests gives him hope that someday, they might be able to laugh about this.

Of course, the fact that she did not speak one word directly to him and studiously avoided his gaze the whole way back to the precinct gives him severe anxiety.

It’s two-o’clock in the morning and his connection to Amy is a living, breathing entity - what was a soothing glimmer as delicate as spider’s silk glows bright an overwhelming now, rearing up and glittering like ocean waves beneath a setting sun. She’s everywhere, she’s everything, and he’s certain now that he won’t be able to live without her, and maybe that’s not the best thing to be thinking at two o’clock in the morning when he smells like a dumpster and there are half-finished arrest reports strewn about his desk, but it doesn’t matter.

Because the hailstorm of emotions originating from Amy suddenly taper off into a quiet and firm kind of resolution - and Jake’s stomach bottoms out at the feeling. He can’t tell around his own stupid anxiety if she’s happy or sad or angry or anything other than calm - it’s the exact opposite of the way he feels, only more so when his phone buzzes with a new text.

Will you please meet me in the evidence lockup?

She doesn’t have to ask if he’s still at the precinct, he notes with a certain amount of trepidation as he pockets his phone and slowly stands from his desk. She’s only felt his emotions for a matter of hours, now, and already she can read them well enough to deduce that he’s been paralyzed at his desk since they got back.

It would be comforting, if he wasn’t so freaked out.

She’s tucked toward the back of the evidence lockup when he slowly edges inside, leaned back against the shelves, arms crossed loosely over her chest. She straightens a little when the door squeaks on its hinges; he winces, both at the sound and at the fact that her face is entirely unreadable. She’s pulled her hair up into a low, loose bun in the time that has passed since he last saw her - a move he recognizes from her previous panic attacks, a half-conscious effort to allow cool air to touch the back of her neck. He forces himself to keep moving toward her for as long as he can stand it - all in, he stops about five feet short from where she’s standing, hands jammed so deep in his pockets he’s at risk of ripping holes through the seams.

Amy stares at him for a long moment, the only sound in the room the quiet mechanical whir of the precinct’s computer servers against the wall to his left. He tries to hold her gaze, really - it proves to be too much, the way the blinking server lights reflect off the molten brown chocolate of her irises, seconds away from piercing the very foundation of his soul. He focuses instead of her hands - on the way her fingers twist around her grandmother’s ring, knotting together in a way that reminds him of the knots in his own stomach. He inhales through his nose, holds it for a beat, and slowly releases it through barely-parted lips.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice is soft, curious; not an ounce of accusation colors her words. His heart leaps unbidden at the sound of her voice and her eyes practically double in circumference. “Jake, I…” she trails, her fingers pressing briefly over her heart. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He rocks back on his heels, fighting his flight instinct urging him to shrug. “I don’t, um…I just, I didn’t want you to, y’know, feel…obligated.”

Her swell of affection is undeniable; he peers up at her through his lashes to find her gaze soft and a little bit sad.

Boldness sweeps through him.

“I mean, you were right about all of this - the choice part of it, I mean. I knew you were my soulmate the day I met you, but -”

He’s nearly knocked breathless at the sudden punch of disbelief from Amy. “Eight years?” she whispers, and he bites the inside of his cheek. “You’ve known for eight years?”

“Uh-huh,” he curls his fingers inside his pockets, twisting the fabric of his jacket between his nails. “I mean, it was rough at first - we weren’t exactly best friends, remember? And I thought I was wrong for a while, too, but I - I wasn’t. And, I dunno, I was starting to come around to the idea of telling you about it when -”

He stops, drops his chin, stares at the fraying seams of his sneakers. “When, what?” Amy prompts him after a moment.

“You were right that morning in the break room,” he says quietly. “When you were talking about, uh, the nature of free will. I didn’t realize how important it was to me until after we talked, but -”

“The morning my brother found his soulmate,” she interrupts suddenly, understanding washing through her. “Oh, Jake,” she says softly, “I was such an ass about it -”

“No, you were right,” he insists. “I had never really thought about it that way. It made me rethink a lot of things, actually. I realized I had been planning my whole life around - well, around you. But I didn’t even know you. It’s like you said, some cosmic force just decided that that’s how things were gonna be for me, and I never questioned it. But after we talked that morning, I realized that I wanted to want this. I wanted to want you. Not because someone else said I should, but because I chose to. And I - I wanted you to, uh, choose me. So…” he sucks in a deep breath, and Amy’s chin ticks up a degree. “You don’t have any obligation to me, Ames.” he says, pleasantly surprised to find his voice unwavering. “If this isn’t what you want, I…I get it. Really.” He tries to ignore the sharp ache in his chest as the words leave his lips, but based on the way her face crumbles he’s certain he’s done a terrible job. “Okay, eventually. I’ll get it eventually.” A half-smile quirks the corner of her mouth upward, and he feels himself steadying. “But if…if this is something you want…I’m yours. I want you. I choose you.”

It’s strange - up until now, he thought he’d felt every single one of Amy Santiago’s emotions. This one - this swelling, morphing mass of something - is entirely new to him, though. It’s bubbling up and folding in on itself, growing faster than he can comprehend, intensifying tenfold with each slow, tentative step Amy takes closer to him, and now her molten gaze has him pinned in place all the moisture in his mouth evaporating in an instant -

Her hands are warm and steady where they brush against his jaw and curl around the back of his neck, firm when they tug him down two inches, soft where they gently skate up into his hair. Her lips are pliant against his, coaxing and inviting, moving with him in perfect synchronization.

Amy Santiago is an excellent kisser.

But above everything else, Jake feels radiant acceptance swelling like a warm hug around his tripping heart. She wants him, too, it’s in her hands and her lips and her steady, steady heartbeat. He all but melts against her, releasing an involuntary hum as the tension leaks from his joints and his hands slide up the gentle slope of her spine. She lets out a little hum of her own when his fingers spread and flex over the space between her shoulder blades, and he tucks the sound away, fully intent on figuring out exactly how to make her do it again.

She pulls away first, pressing a hand to the side of his face when he momentarily strains to follow, and for a long moment they stand foreheads flush together, trying to catch their breaths. Her left arm flexes where it’s wrapped around his neck and he slowly curls his fingers around the curve of her waist, smiling at her quiet, breathless laugh.

“You really meant that, didn’t you?” she whispers.

He swallows thickly, reveling in the warmth of her skin seeping through his shirt, ignoring the now-distant ache in his chest at the thought of her not wanting this. “Yeah,” he breathes, and it’s the strangest thing - it’s like his conviction is echoing back to him.

She pulls away to look him in the eye, though her grip around his neck never falters; he bites back a smile at the feeling of her fingers curling into the material of his hoodie. “This is - it’s - a lot,” she mumbles, eyes briefly squeezing shut. “Like, a lot to process - is it usually this intense?”

“Never,” he says quickly. “I mean, like, sometimes if emotions were running high - like if you were really pissed off about something, or, like, having a panic attack - but that was before you could - I mean, that was when it was just me. I don’t - I don’t really know what happens now.”

She nods slowly, eyes darting down to his lips for the barest second before meeting his gaze again. “I…really want to find out,” she whispers.

It takes all of one nanosecond before the joy comes blazing in - a tsunami of it, all-encompassing and all-consuming. He yanks her back to him sharply, her responding laughter little more than a muffled buzz against his lips and a pleasant simmer in his belly. Fear and dread and panic are nothing more than distant memories now, and through it all Jake finds himself wondering why on earth he didn’t do this sooner.

“Jake -” he cuts her off with another kiss, earning yet another muffled laugh, pressing against her over and over again until he’s effectively smothering her. “Jake - Jake, let’s - Jake!”

He’s laughing when he pulls away, biting his lip, reaching up to touch the tendrils of hair fallen from her bun. “Sorry,” he mumbles, not sorry at all, “I’ve just been waiting for a really long time to do that -”

“I’m not saying we have to stop,” she says, “just - let’s go somewhere, anywhere else. I don’t even care where, just - together.”

“I smell like a dumpster, so -”

“Me too.”

“- shower? And then somewhere? I can pick you up at your apartment -”

“Or we could just…both go somewhere that has a shower.”

There’s mischief in her eyes and excitement in her veins and he can’t tamp down the grin on his face if he tried. “I think I know a place,” he says pseudo-thoughtfully, and this time it’s Amy pressing her lips to his to smother his laughter.

“Let’s go together,” she says when she pulls away too soon. “We can come back for the other car tomorrow, but let’s go together.”

“Yeah,” he says, an absurd hitch in his voice. “Together.”

She steps back and the loss of her heat against him is jarring until her fingers lace through his and gently squeeze; her affection and adoration is an undeniable hearth in his heart glowing in her eyes. “Together,” she whispers, chin briefly touching his shoulder.

There’s an urge somewhere deep to tack something stupid like ‘forever’ on the end, but he ignores it in favor of a broad, blinding grin.

(That hearth has grown to a wildfire still raging by morning, when he emerges from his bedroom dazed from sleep and everything else to find Amy padding around his kitchen, hair tousled, grin soft with the same affection he feels in her stuttering heart.)