#from the cricket field for 13 months

[whatyadrawin]

The Fruit After The Flesh 18+ -Chapter 13

Minors DNI!

Masterlist

Approximately 4,979 words

Pairing: Thomas Hewitt (Headcanon) x AFAB reader

This chapters Warnings:  Sexual language and depiction of sexual acts, foul language, Image with blood (no gore). This is Slasher smut, be mindful of that and use your discretion.

A/n: I had an extremely stressful two months, very busy and not doing well. I apologize for the massive delay for this chapter, the stress gave me a massive writers block and made it exceedingly difficult to make this chapter. The censored image can be viewed raw on my google doc (By clicking that link you are consenting to seeing graphic adult imagery and you are over 18). Let me know if you want to be in the tag list. I update chapter progress on the masterlist whenever something changes.

Please enjoy this chapter! I worked very hard on it so reblogs, comments, and likes are appreciated very much.

Tag List: @fan-goddess , @artxasa , @baybaybear1 , @amour-tae , @dij-ology

Chapter 13

                The chirps of crickets echoed across a golden wheat field that swayed as it followed the winds beckoning, you slowly inhaled the fresh air and kicked your dangling feet as you sat on the fence beside the silo watching as eagles circled the sky. It was a cool day which was a nice break from the constant heat waves beating down the land; you squinted as you focused in on some menacing grey clouds in the distance, they were bloated with rain and began to roll over the horizon, a storm was sure to follow them. You hear some footsteps behind you and a long sigh followed, Luda Mae came up next to you and leaned over the fence, a dirt-stained rag in her hands.

“Looks like we better get them cows and chickens inside the barn soon, or they’ll wander off.” She looks up at you and wrinkles her eyebrows upward,

“You alright hun?” she asks.

You look down next to her and push a weak smile, “I’m still a bit shaken up but, I think I’ll be ok.”

She rubs your back and looks towards the dark clouds, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” She steps away and walks off towards the chicken pen.

You smirk at Luda Mae’s seemingly random religious quote, -are we the righteous ones in this situation? I don’t feel very righteous- You hop off the fence and follow her to see if she needs help with the chickens. As you look inside you see Charlie opening up the gates to the cow stalls, he looks up at you and smiles, saying,

“Hey girly, how’s your face feelin’ ?”

You press your hand to your cheek, it’s been 6 days since Dover’s attack on the family and your face was strangely doing well, though it was still somewhat sore.

You shrug your shoulders, “Physically better… at least.”

He chuckles to himself and pulls the last gate open, “You still bothered by that shit stain dyin?”

You nod, “Well, a little… I didn’t want anybody getting hurt and… poor Thomas”. You actually felt worse about Tommy experiencing a traumatic event, and seeing him act so animalistically after didn’t help ease your mind.

Charlie walked up to you, “Dover had it comin’ kid, was nothin’ but self-defense that’s all, ain’t nothin’ to get all soft about.” He puts his hand on his hips and points at you with his other hand,

“And don’tchu worry none ‘bout Tommy, he heals up real fast, ain’t nothin’ gon take him out ‘cept maybe a got’damn freight train, n’ even then…that boy ain’t right.” Charlie looked off into the distance as he got lost in his thoughts.

But it wasn’t Tommy’s physical wellbeing you worried about, it was his mind. Charlie shook his head to snap himself out of his trance and gave your shoulder three pats,

“S’gon’ be alright sweetheart, with you ‘round, that big sentient chunk o’ meat’ll never suffer.” He smirked then walked out the other side of the barn towards the meadow.

Luda Mae came in the barn, her hair all out of place,

“Lord, those chickens are heathens. They give me such a hard time whenever I herd ‘em in the coop.” she was breathing heavily and slouched over to hold her knees in an attempt to catch her breath,

“Was Charlie in here? He needs to go help Thomas with them cows.”

You nod and tell her he went out towards the meadow just now, she stands up straight and reaches her hand out to you,

“C’mon dear, let’s get inside then, get some rest before supper. The boys’ll come in when their done.”

You take her hand and she walks with you up to the kitchen entrance, you hear some rolling thunder in the distance and the sky was already a deep grey. You stand on the porch and look out towards the meadow; you see Tommy and Charlie guiding the cows as they slowly lumbered closer to the meadow gate. Tommy looks up and see’s you, he waves and continues moving the cattle to safety. The wind was stronger now, you could see the large trees near the house tossing their branches around. As soon as you see the last cow pushed into the barn you go inside the kitchen, you shiver from the cold wind stealing your heat.

Luda Mae calls to you from the parlor, when you get there, you see her flopped lazily onto one of the armchairs,

“Come n’ take a rest hun, the boys’ll join us when they get in.” she spoke without opening her eyes, her head was leaning back and her arms dangling off the sides of the arm rests.

You sit on the love seat and slump down a bit, you felt a little cold and looked around for a throw blanket to put over your shoulders, you say to Luda Mae,

“I can’t believe how cold it’s become, I never thought I would finally feel chilly.” You were usually used to sub-zero weather back home but your body was climatizing to the heat quickly which made you feel the drop in temperature more intensely.

Luda Mae laughs, “Oh yes, sometimes it gets real cold out here. Theres a blanket behind that there pillow.” She points to the large pillow on the seat next to you.

You scoot over and find a rolled up blanket made of cotton, it was soft to the touch but had a musty smell from living behind the pillow and unused for so long -well, it’s the best I have for now I guess.- you unfurl it and drape it over your body.

Just as you started warming up, Charlie and Tommy entered the house, they both kicked off their boots haphazardly while Luda Mae rolled her eyes at their carelessness. Charlie came and sat in the other empty armchair, he let out a long groan as he bent his knees to sit. Tommy came and sat gently next to you, he lifted his arms and rested them on the back of the loveseat, you felt his hand reach down to tickle your shoulder which made you blush, he looked at you and winked then looked back at Luda Mae who sat up and began to fix her hair.

“Well seems we got a bit of a storm headin’ our way huh.” She glances at Charlie who just grunts in agreement, he lifts his head and looks at you,

“Y’cold or somethin’?” he smirks.

You nod quietly, Tommy looks down at you and tilts his head to the side as he inspects the blanket you have on, Charlie continues to speak,

“Well look what’s next to you.” He points at Tommy, “He’s a walkin’ heater, best use his warmth up.” He meets eyes with Tommy and nods in your direction, “Boy, don’t be shy now, warm the girl up fer fucks sake.”

Tommy sits up straight and grabs you, hoisting your body effortlessly onto his lap. He was so quick you didn’t even have time to react, you just sat there looking up at him as he held you in his arms; Tommy’s body heat was warming you up quickly, you wanted to curl up and purr like a cat with how comfortable you were. He placed the blanket over you and relaxed his muscles a bit, you leaned your head on his chest and closed your eyes, it was too comfortable to stay awake.

You fell asleep quickly but were still able to hear bits of conversation from the Hewitts as you dreamt, the slow heaving of Tommys chest was lulling you into a deep sleep. You mind created a scene of peace, you and the Hewitts were all gathered around a large table, your old, passed friend was there and so was Tilly. There was a large breadth of food stacked onto the table and fairy lights surrounded you all as the sun set. You watched as they all laughed and chatted together, then Charlie stood up and clinked his glass. He said some things that you didn’t hear, you turned and saw Tommy in a grooms suit, he watched Charlie and listened to the mumbled words.

You looked down at yourself and saw that you were in a wedding dress, Tommy took your hand and kissed it. He got up from his chair and wandered off into the woods, you got up and followed him calling out for him to come back. You finally caught up to him, he turns to look at you but his eyes are white and he is covered in blood breathing heavily, his mask was off revealing a mutation of large teeth sharp like a wolf.

You scream and run away from him, as he chases you, the sound of growling and rumbling could be heard. You trip on your dress and you are grabbed and roughly flipped over, its Dover, he is growling at you making you scream.

You feel shaking and wake up, still in Tommys arms, the sounds of rolling thunder coming into the house from the storm. Tommy looks at you with a worried expression, Luda Mae calls over to you,

“Were you havin’ a bad dream hun?” she is sitting upright and holding her glasses close to her eyes to see you clearly.

You rub your eyes and reply,

“Yeah, sorry, I guess I’m still getting over the Dover situation…”

Luda Mae adds, “That’s gon’ take some time to heal dear. I’m so sorry we didn’t get him dealt with sooner. We shoulda been more careful.”

You see her look down at the floor, visibly upset at your mental pain. Charlie gets up from his chair and says,

“You just need to get more confident sweetheart.” He stops and rubs his chin then adds, “You know what? Tommy should show you how t’fight! If you can learn somethin’ ‘bout fightin’ back, then you won’t be feelin’ like a victim so bad.”

You didn’t appreciate the ignorant statement about ‘feeling like a victim’ since you literally were being victimized by Dover, but you thought to yourself -he does have a point, I really don’t know how to protect myself, maybe it will give me a sense of safety- You look up at Tommy who is still looking down at you as he held you close,

“It couldn’t hurt to try. Would you be willing to teach me?”

He shifts his eyes, he was unsure about how effective he could be, and he was also crestfallen at the fact that you would even need to learn such things. He wanted to be the thing stopping any and all danger, he wanted to be a protective barrier for you. He looked back at you and nodded, despite him wanting to be your guard, he knew he wouldn’t always be around you 24/7 and that you should be able to experience strength for yourself.

Luda Mae got up off her chair and spoke,

“Now’s the perfect time to do it, what with the storm goin’ on outside, you two might as well go downstairs and practice while I start on dinner.” She walked up to Tommy and spoke under her breath, “Now you watch your strength, Thomas. Teach her good n’ fair.”

Tommy nodded to her and gently placed you off his lap and onto the seat beside him, he got up and held his hand out to you while giving a directional nod towards the basement door. You got up and took his hand, the both of you walked down to the basement together.

-

Tommy brought you into the room next to the bathroom on the right side after you get to the bottom of the stairs. This room had that creepy big furnace in it and weeds covering the small windows which made it exceptionally dark. Tommy found the light switch and flipped it on revealing the mess of junk and old furniture with storage boxes clamored around. The floor was made from old wood planks where you could see the foundation underneath, you watched as Tommy pushed away a bunch of junk to make room for you both. He unfurled a thick rug to act as a wrestling mat so you wouldn’t get hurt from the floor.

He looked at you and said,

“I dunno much, but, ah could teach ya how t’get out of some holds I s’pose” you nod and wait for instruction.

He gently puts one of his arms around your neck and holds one of your arms behind your back with his free hand. He instructs you on how to get out of it by dropping your body weight downwards to slip out of the hold. You successfully get out of the hold and he helps you up to try again. Each time you succeeded he tightened his grip. You couldn’t help but feel giddy about his massive bicep hugging your head, if it were anyone else you would be terrified but because you trusted him, it was an oddly erotic experience.

After a few more types of holds were shown to you, he then instructed you on a proper way to make a fist and how to punch with good technique. As you make a fist, he inspects the placement of your fingers and gently moves them into the correct position, you make a new fist which he inspects then gives a thumbs up.

“Now, I want ya t’punch me as hard as y’can” he gives you a serious look. You were taken aback by the request, you say,

“No way, I don’t want to hurt you!”

He starts laughing, you feel confused,

“Why are you laughing? I don’t wanna make you feel pain, even if it’s just practice.”

He looks at you, his eyes still squished upward from smiling,

“No offense er nothin’ but, I don’t think yer strong enough t’give my body pain. Which’s why I need ya t’punch me hard as ya can, so I can see what I’m workin’ with.”

You forgot how unbelievably strong this beast before you really was. You realized how silly it may have come off thinking you could even scratch him. Feeling less powerful than Tommy didn’t make you feel as scared or helpless as when you were made to feel weak from regular men, every time you mentioned to men you knew that you wanted to try self-defense, they would bombard you with demeaning words, saying ‘no woman is stronger than a man, self-defense is useless’.

Tommy was different than them, instead of trying to tear you down for trying to protect yourself, he encouraged you and helps out. He wanted you to feel powerful like him, but most importantly, he wanted you to feel safe and confident on your own.

Tommy stood up straight, rising to his full height, his head almost hitting the ceiling. He pointed at the center of his stomach and said,

“Hit here as hard as ya can.”

You widen your stance and pull back your fist then thrusting it forward using all of your muscle, the hit connected but Tommy didn’t even flinch or budge. It was like punching steel covered in a thick layer of rubber, he was built so solid it was no wonder he didn’t care how hard you hit.

He relaxed himself a little bit and put his hand to his chin,

“That was, a real good hit. If I were anyone else, that might’ve hurt. Good Job”

Tommy then tells you he wants you to try some floor holds. He moves to the floor and you follow, he mounts over your back and gently holds your arm and neck. Once again you feel excitement at his body being so close to yours, he instructs you on how to escape the hold and you succeed with each try.

The final hold you were to get out of managed to land you on top of Tommys chest, he leaned his head back and said,

“I think that’s enough learnin’ for today.”

You laugh and steady yourself on him, your legs had to spread wide to be able to straddle him for stability though your knees were still unable to reach the floor. You smile as you look into his eyes, their deep blue penetrates through the dim light of the basement. He lets out a relaxed sigh and runs his hands up your thighs to reach your hips were he gently holds onto you; You remained silent, there was nothing you could say, the trance he had over you was intoxicating.

He let out a deep hum and traced his eyes all over your form just drinking in your magnetic beauty, his mind was running rampant with primal thoughts of desire, he did well to control himself under the overwhelming pressure. Tommy felt a deep burning for you, a longing, he cherished spending time alone with you. To him, you were an oasis in a desert of torment and trauma, a glimmer of light in the dark pit of hell that is his mind.

When he tries to sit up, you press your hands into his chest and push him back down, his laugh muffled by his mask. You grin, knowing he is receptive to being a bit playful now, so you take the opportunity to make him squirm. He is holding his torso up with his arms pushing off the floor, looking up at you, it was an interesting sight to take in, you have this massive giant pinned down waiting for you to control the next move; You could feel your core heating up with the anticipation of what comes next. In an effort to torment him, you moved your hips further back so your groin lay on top of his.

His eyes changed expression, they were now half lidded and dilated, his eyebrows rolled up toward his forehead as if he were worried, but this was not worry, this was a begging plea for you to further push your salacious antics. You let your body weight press into him and sat comfortably on a dangerous area, as you gently rolled your hips in a subtle attempt to arouse him, his breath hitched and he leaned his head back closing his eyes. You looked on as he exposed his trunk-like neck, the pulsation of his heart beat was visible through his muscle; You grind your hips on him, it was a playful way to tell him what you wanted without asking, but he was too cautious and didn’t add in his own movements despite desperately wanting to.

His body couldn’t hide his desire and you quickly felt your tenderness being pressed into by a stone-like presence. He was erect to the fullest extent and you didn’t need to look down to see the pipelines length that you were seated on, you could feel it. He let out a strained sigh that ended with a barely audible whimper, you knew he was enjoying the suffering, he wanted to badly to get inside the enigma of a woman that was you, he wanted to make the walls of your femininity flitter with release. He grabbed the sides of your hips and pushed your body to continue making the wave-like motions he craved so badly, you complied and enhanced the movements to see how far you could walk the line.

He was breathing heavy and was so focused on your expression to make sure he didn’t see any winces of pain or reluctance. He could feel the intense heat from between your legs which only fueled his actions further, he watched as your face reddened with blush, he was taken with the vision in front of him; A woman so kind and unique, so perfect, was seated on top of him, his bulging manhood was a pitiful three layers of cloth away from ecstasy. He could feel himself bubbling up inside, he knew what was coming so he stopped movement, he didn’t want to let his fluid touch you unless you told him you wanted it.

You feel his hands release your hips, and he remained still, his chest still heaving and a mist of sweat formed on his skin. It was jarring to have the fun stop so abruptly but you knew there was a reason, you just didn’t know what it was.

“Everything ok?” you asked.

He lay there with his hands to his side, staring up at the ceiling, he replied,

“It’s t’much fer me. Ah feel ready t’splode.”

You suppress a grin and lean over him, resting your torso on his chest and lay your head down on him with your hands folded in front of your face, you say,

“We don’t have to go further if you aren’t ready. I’m in no rush.”

He felt badly for seemingly ruining the fun, but he didn’t know how much more he could handle, he looks up at you and adds,

“Ah dunno if I can keep m’self held down when y’mess with me”

You smile at him and run your hand through his hair, you give him some gentle words,

“When the time is right, we’ll know, and when it comes, I want you to let loose.”

You knew he was trying to warn you about what he thinks he will do, but he didn’t know you were ready and willing to experience whatever may come, even if it could put you in danger, you didn’t care, you just wanted to let go and be free and wild with him. He put his arms around you and squeezed your body into his, if this was a bear hug it could have been mistaken for a grizzly.

“I care ‘bout ya, y’know that?” his voice was deep and serious.

You put both your hands on the sides of his head and pull his face in, and say,

“I hope you know I feel the same about you.”

His eyes light up with joy and he sits up, lifting you with him, your legs still tight around his hips. Your body slid down right onto his erection which pressed into your mound with force as you sank,

“Ay Woah!“ you wince in pain.

he quickly lifted your body up off his stiffness and lowered you down behind it so you could sit on his lap.

“Ah dang sorry! Didn’t mean t’hurt y’there” he was full of concern, he briefly forgot how long he kept firm for.

You blush and let out a laugh,

“It’s ok, guess I’m gonna have to prepare for that.”

He was surprised at your reaction, he thought for sure you would be put off by his size and hardness, he was told by Charlie on numerous occasions that women were scared of ‘big dicks’ and that he’d be lucky to even graze up against a ‘kitty’. No matter what you may say to him, he was still so sure that when the time came, you would not even attempt, so he kept his hopes low and chose to just enjoy the fun while it lasted.

You look down at the thing that poked your lower region, you could see a massive bulge shooting up into his jeans. The length of it shocked you but the real surprise was how strong it was, it seemed like his pants would rip open from pressure. You couldn’t help but reach out to touch it, you place your hand on the tip and slide downward to feel its entirety. Thomas gasped but didn’t stop you, he just watched wondering what would come next.

You smirk to yourself, it felt like you were touching a metal pipe, you traversed his length again to feel how thick it was, you weren’t able to fully gauge its circumference so you put your hands on his pant zipper but stopped abruptly,

“Can I… look?” you spoke in a breathy tone.

Thomas nods slowly, you unbutton the top of his jeans and unzip the crotch, his penis bounces upward, still covered by his black boxer briefs. You gently pull him out of confinement, it was emitting a lot of heat and warms your hand as you wrap your fingers around it. The width is beyond what your single hand could grasp, your fingers had almost 3 inches of space between fingertips.

You got off his lap and sat in a kneeling position in front of him so you could better see what you were dealing with. Tommy was breathing heavily, every touch from your hands made him inhale sharply and his penis twitched with anticipation. You used both hands to feel all over his manhood, large veins trailed around the base, he had a large glans, the ‘neck’ protected by a short layer of skin which pulled back revealing the bright pink tip. You saw a bead of pre-cum already forming at the opening, with a gentle tap, you touched it and pulled back with it stretching and leaving a glimmering trail from tip to finger.

To your surprise, he didn’t have a smell, most men you interacted with had some sort of musk or skin smell to them, but he had an earthy scent to him like he was working with plants all day. This just made you want to taste him badly, you had to know what flavor his desire was, so you started to lean down towards it, you saw his eyes widen quickly but he didn’t move an inch.

You gave it a soft lick on the tip, he let out a stifled moan and his cock twitched so forcefully that you lost grip of it.

“Is this ok?” you ask earnestly.

He nods enthusiastically, so you continue your torturous licks making sure to hold firmly so he wouldn’t slip away again. The head of his penis was large and had a pronounced lip, the kind of shape capable of friction that your G-spot would feel so intensely. His shaft was almost as long as your forearm and had a hefty underside which would have weighed it down if he didn’t seem to have such strong pelvic muscles.

You felt desperate to have him inside you, his dick was not only impressive but curved slightly upwards and the curiosity of how it would feel in you was driving you wild. You could feel a slick form in your folds causing your hole to twitch in anticipation. Your licks became more aggressive until you decided to put your mouth around the tip of his cock, Tommy let out a whimper then groaned as you began to suck. The expression in his eyes was glorious, you saw his eyes roll upwards before he closed them and leaned his head back exposing his gorgeous thick neck.

You began to slowly bob your head up and down, getting as much of him inside your mouth as you could handle, you positioned your tongue underneath the base of his head to accept more inside. Tommy was now a moaning mess, every flick of your tongue or squeeze of your mouth made him louder. You could feel he was ready to cum because his penis began to pulsate and his legs tensed up.

You removed his dick from your mouth and rubbed with your hands quickly, you were excited to see how much he was capable of making. With a few more movements he clenched his teeth and grunted loudly; a bright white liquid came shooting out of him. You gasped as you watched the cum explode out of him in thick ropes, you never seen someone cum so much and so hard in your life, he quickly grabbed his cock and aimed it away from you while still groaning with his orgasm.

You were surprised how much was still flowing out, it shimmered as it seeped into the rug beneath you both, he was panting heavily as the last few spurts pushed out onto the ground before him. Once the ejaculate stopped, he flopped onto his back trying to catch his breath. You crawled up to him and lay next to him, he put his arm around you and lifted you up towards his face.

“Yer a real vixen, gettin’ me bent outta shape.”

You laugh, “You’re fun to play with”

He places you next to him and sits up putting his dick back in his pants, he turns to look at you,

“I didn’t… make a mess on ya did I?”

You shake your head and smile, he continues,

“Good. I never had no one do that t’me” he stands up, “I hope it didn’t scare ya none”

He held out his hand to help you up, you reply,

“Nope. Now I just want more”

You both hear Luda Mae call out for you both that dinner was ready, Tommy walks with you out to the stairwell leading up to the main floor. He stops you with both hands, he bends down to look you in the eyes,

“I’m gon start messin’ with y’now. Ya had yer fun, now I’m gon’ show you how it feels” His voice was a deep whisper, he kept his hands firmly on your arms and stood up straight, you give a devilish smirk,

“Ive been waiting for you to say that”

He releases his grip, and watched as you walked up the stairs with a smug swagger. He was excited to play this erotic cat and mouse game with you, now he was going to have some real fun giving you the ache of desire with nothing to do about it.

He spoke quietly to himself,

“She’s gon’ kill me”

He grins and follows up the stairs after you.

Next chapter-

[foxilayde]

Collisions in Entropy [Peter Roiter x Fem!Reader]

Summary: You were drawn to him like gravity. Like the only two bodies of mass on a lattice field, dipping in the center like marbles, stretching the fabric of time with the weight of yourselves and converging at the center into a singular point.

Length: 5.5k

Warnings: 18+ MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. Romantic smut. Oral: f receiving. PiV.

Author’s Note: I couldn’t stop thinking about Peter making it to Rome and then confining himself to wait out his remaining days like an invisible stranger, careful not to disturb this timeline. I like to think his curiosity couldn’t keep him away from a special event he never got to see firsthand. Enjoy!

The wedding of Callum Roiter to Rebecca Bradley took place at Creeksea Place in the Essex countryside on Saturday September 30th 2023. Is taking place, rather. Currently taking place. Peter Roiter arrives in a rented grey suit and gate crashes his own parent’s wedding, 13 months before his birth.

They’re taking the photographs now, the photographs that will adorn the walls of his childhood home. The same photograph he will accidentally shatter In 2032 while playing cricket in the house. He recognizes the angle of the pink jaunty bouquets up in the air, the collection of color in a joyous line on the red brick footbridge beside the white gazebo, a bridal party draped in lavender taffeta posed in what looks like “a silly one” where they lovingly encircle the blushing bride—Rebecca Roiter née Bradley.

The camera flashes weakly against the midday light and at the same instant a bridesmaid looks in Peter’s direction and smiles.

He’d cut his palm on that picture frame—the shattered one—the bridal party laid in fragments in that parallel future time. He looks down at his hand and the thick scar is still there. He wonders if the Peter Roiter who will be born 13 months from tomorrow will get the same cut. If he will hit the cricket ball in the same exact angle, turning his head to the same exact call of his mother’s voice from the other room. “Peter!” Crash. A vortex.

That’s what had ruined the photo in the end. Not the shattered glass, but the blood. Will this timeline’s Peter Roiter grow up and do what he’s done? Do it exactly the same? Blood and shattered glass in the parlor. Blood and shattered glass in the terminal 4 bathroom.

He’s never been to a wedding like this before. Never even heard of one with so many people, unrestrained smiles, photographs, laughter, dancing… nowhere outside of a movie, that is. His own wedding to Helen was private, as most weddings in 2050 were. Out of necessity. Sweet and civil. She held peonies and they danced to Marvin Berry in the backyard, underneath the stars and the patio lights. He has an insane urge to make a toast to the people of 2023 and tell them, “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

They’re so unaware. Unbothered. It’s beautiful to see. Like the carefree cheers-ing that must’ve been happening on the Titanic cruiseliner 10 minutes before they collided with an iceberg.

He doesn’t feel sorry for them. He is jealous. They’re feting in the last roaring moments of civilization, right before the interminable lockdowns will begin. He conservatively guesses that half of them will be dead within the next ten years.

He stays as invisible as he can, observing his parent’s tender happy moments from afar. They’re so young. He’s nearly old enough to be their father.

During the ceremony he sees both sets of grandparents for the first time in his life in person. Maybe that should be his alibi instead of “cousin of the bride”, he’s much more believable as “colleague of the father of the groom”. If only he could remember what Grandfather Roiter did for a living… insurance, maybe?

He won’t stick around long enough for anyone to ask just how he knows the lovely couple anyway. He’ll stay invisible for now, just another speck in this world that doesn’t belong to him.

This timeline might be defunct anyway, he may very well be cautiously tip-toeing around what he only assumes is a sleeping beast, but may in fact be nothing more than a carcass. Peter errs on the side of caution anyway and sips champagne from the further-most table.

Callum Roiter, looking everything like the father of his childhood, stands from the center of the high table and clinks his crystal glass. His cheeks look hurt and shiny from smiling, he holds his new wife’s hand and makes his toast, he thanks the guests for coming and makes a joke about how more guests might’ve showed up had they hosted the ceremony on the Boleyn Ground. He’s so young. So untroubled. The trip to Essex was worth every potential risk to the balance to see the joy in his parent’s eyes in real time. He feels supremely lucky to be a product of such an astounding love.

And then Callum raises his glass higher, winks to Rebecca and announces, “and lastly, a great big thank you to American psychologist Doctor Eliza Knight,” There is a knowing laugh amongst the wedding party who are privy to the story of the bizarre phone call from a Dr. Knight. “Without whom, I would have never met my beautiful bride. Wherever you are, love, cheers.”

“Cheers” the crowd responds. Peter downs the rest of his glass, “to Beatrix,” he mutters.

“You know what that’s about, don’t you?”

It’s the first time anyone has addressed him all day. He hadn’t seen her approach. The young woman from the bridal party. The one who smiled at him as the flashbulb went off. Pink roses, purple gown, shards of glass, blood, and a cricket ball.

“What’s about?” His voice slips into the Essex dialect like it’s nothing. He wonders how much of that is the chip and how much of it is his real voice— the one his mother and father taught him to use. He looks down at his lap when the woman sits beside him.

“The American doctor story.”

Oh he knows. He’s heard the tale his whole life, moreover he’s overturned timelines and sold out the souls of billions for the American doctor in question. “No,” he says to the pretty bridesmaid. “Would you let me in on it?”

*******

“Can’t believe you haven’t heard it before,” you smile, “would have thought Cal and Bex told damn near everyone in England by now.”

“Must be a good one.” He says with almost no defensiveness. Almost.

He’s cute. Older than you. A little scruffy, but in a very pleasing way—slightly overgrown at the nape of his neck and shadowed in the roughness of his sharp jaw. His eyes are kind though. So hopeful, sweet, and terribly familiar.

“Come outside with me and I’ll tell you, it’s getting warm in here.”

He glances to the high table, there’s a line forming of folks offering their congratulations along with envelopes of money to the young couple. He nods to you, leaving his grey rented coat on the back of the chair. He offers you his arm and you take it with a “thank you”, leading him to the French doors and stepping out onto the grounds.

The air is late summer. Warm and green. A million twinkle lights glow along the pathway to the pond, the place where you’d first laid eyes on him this afternoon.

“What’s your name?” You ask, trodding slowly towards the gazebo, your arm still in his. His forearm is warm under the white cotton dress shirt.

“Oliver.”

“Hmm.” You smile.

“What?” Defensive.

“Could have sworn it was something else.” You goad.

You can feel his pulse pick up from your fingertips on the crook of his elbow.

“What’s your name?” He counters.

You ignore him. “I didn’t bring you out here to tell you my name, I brought you out here to tell you a story, remember? Do you want to hear it or not?”

Peter breathes deep as if he’s winding up to tell you something but all he does with the breath is exhale and nod, “Please.”

“Last year, November the 23rd, 2022, to be exact, both Callum and Rebecca got a mysterious phone call from a Doctor Eliza Knight, a psychoanalyst from America, telling them that she knew their son. That he was a 39 year old time traveler sent from the year 2062 named Peter Roiter and he claimed to be on a mission to save the world. What do you think of that, Oliver?”

His grin is tight, dismissive, “sounds like a nut job.”

“The odd thing is, Callum and Rebecca had never met each other before. Doctor Knight gave each the other’s information and told them it was crucial that they meet and fall in love and have this child. Peter.”

Peter says nothing.

“So they do get together. Because of the absurdity. They go out for a drink, out of curiosity, to laugh about the madwoman who told them they were going to raise the messiah of the twenty first century.”

Peter leans against the railing of the gazebo and glances back to the house where the party is winding down. “And the rest is history.” He nods toward the red bricked abode.

“That’s not all,” you smile conspiratorially.

“No?”

“No. See, I looked into it, just to check to see if there was a Doctor Eliza Knight, and there is… or there was.”

He remains silent and surreptitiously fingers the raised scar on the inside of his hand while you talk. Nervous habit.

“See, the very next day after she made the phone calls, Doctor Knight walked into an airport bathroom in New York City and disappeared… disappeared! They checked all the security footage. She walks into the restroom and never walked out. They did find her clothes, and a shattered syringe full of blood that wasn’t her own, a tape recorder in a trash can. But her? Nowhere to be found. Can you believe it? The very next day after calling Bex and Cal. That’s insane, right?”

He nods, lost in thought across the lake.

“It’s funny, most people get a real kick out of that anecdote. I was excited to tell you. Brought you out to the dim ambiance and everything.”

“It’s a great story. Really. I’m just tired is all.” He folds his arms across his chest and looks at you with a believable amount of sleepiness.

“You’ve heard it before, haven’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“That would be one explanation for your boredom— you know the story by heart… How do you know the bride and groom, Oliver?” You nearly whisper, stepping closer to him.

“Who are you?” He backs away a step, bumping into the rim of the gazebo and catching himself on a polished beam.

“Peter, you’re about to upset a very fragile ecosystem that we’ve been curating. I had to get you out of that party, I hope you understand.”

“We?”

“Peter, if you care about the future, you need to kiss me right now, in the next five seconds, it’s our only chance.”

Peter doesn’t hesitate. With a look of solid determination he takes two steps towards you, cradles your head in his hands and presses his lips to yours, kissing you with reserved lips that didn’t match the committed blaze in his eyes. You break the kiss in near disbelief and regret.

“That was mean, I’m sorry.”

Peter’s face scrunches and he takes half a step back, letting you fall out of his grasp.

“What? Wait, tell me who you are, what’s going on? Did the W.H.O send you? Do you have a message for me? Did the project work? Any word on Beatrix?”

You press your fingertips to your lips and your eyes widen.

“Are you fucking with me?” You accuse.

His face drops from hopeful to incredulous and the two of you stare at each other with mutual suspicion for a beat.

He licks his bottom lip. “Why did I need to kiss you? Who are you?”

“I’m… I’m a friend of Rebecca’s. I… hang on, are you— is your name really Peter? I just called you that because… because of what the doctor told Bex…” you can hear your heart hammering in your ears.

Peter’s eyes narrow, “you were teasing me?”

“Holy shit. The… the doctor? The story? Peter Roiter?”

Peter remains stock still, his back rigid, gritting his teeth.

You clap your hand over your mouth and laugh. “Oh my god! Bex is going to murder me if she finds out I snogged her son. This is so weird.”

“How did you know?”

“I didn’t! I mean, god, no one actually believes that story about the doctor, do they? it’s insane! something straight out of a movie! I figured they met each other on tinder and wanted a cuter “how’d you meet?” Story and made this one up for clout or something, but… then we were taking photos today and you were lurking in the back of the setting up, lurking the back of the ceremony, sitting all by yourself in the back of the reception— not talking to anybody… which is exactly what someone who isn’t trying to alter a timeline might do. What am I saying? And god you do really look like half Bex and half Cal… it’s uncanny.”

“You can’t tell anyone about this, you understand?”

“Tell anyone? No one would believe me if I did! I don’t even know if I believe me! Besides, I’m not joking about the whole ‘Bex would kill me’ thing, I’m kind of skeeving myself out right now. I mean they’re both fit and well obviously,” You gesture to Peter up and down before slapping your forehead, “oh my god, I need—I need to shut up.”

“Wait, wait, wait, just calm down. Okay. I need to—look, if this isn’t a dead timeline, I can’t have you treating Cal and Bex’s son any differently than you would had you not learned that.. that I’m him. So—“

“Hang on, dead timeline? What the hell does that mean?”

“Is the name not obvious enough for you?” Peter begins to pace around the pergola, the valley between his brows growing deeper by the minute.

Your eyebrows shoot up, “well excuse me for not understanding your sci-fi speak, Mr. Coherence.”

“Dead timeline. It means the statistical likelihood of salvaging the future of this particular timeline is… astronomically low. If this is a dead timeline, then there is a near 100 chance humanity will be destroyed within the next 40 years.”

“Oh god.”

“It might not be. There’s no way of knowing right now.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“It could be a loop timeline, in which case, it’s important for you to—“

“Not treat the forthcoming baby Peter Roiter any differently.”

“Exactly.” He breathes with relief.

“Even though he will apparently grow up to be a man who potentially puts me and everything and everyone I know and love into a dead future or whatever you called it.”

“That’s not—“

“It’s fine, Peter, the less I know the better, right?” You shift in your heels and lean against the polished railing. “Might make it difficult to take him out for ice cream knowing that I snogged him at his mum’s wedding. Bleeding Christ, I really am sorry about that.”

“You’re surprisingly easy to convince. And you’re taking this extremely well. I’m not used to that— people believing me. And it’s fine, its my fault for being here, for following you outside. I promised I wouldn’t interact with anyone and now we’re getting… inextricable.”

“I don’t know why I believe you. I mean I know it’s crazy, it’s the least likely explanation for all of this, but I just feel like, I have to believe you. I just… have to. Now that sounds crazy.”

He shakes his head. “I really thought I was being stealthy coming here today. It was probably a mistake.”

“Well, if we are in a loop timeline, as you called it, I don’t think there can be any mistakes. And if we are in a dead end, then the mistakes don’t matter, right?”

“Who are you?”

You tell him your name. He shakes his head with that same worried valley between his brows.

“I don’t remember you at all from my childhood. Or hearing about you from my mother. I’m not even sure you were in the photo that I broke.”

“The photo that you broke? What photo?”

There’s a sudden cacophony from the French doors where you exited the reception with Peter. A group of groomsmen stagger out, each with a champagne bottle in their hand, singing what you can only assume is a fight song from Cal’s alma mater.

Peter runs his thumb and forefinger over the stubble surrounding his lips. Those lips that you made him kiss you with. God, what is happening?

“C’mon,” he mutters placing a hand at your lower back and guides you to the path by the pond, further away from the celebration. “Just being cautious.”

There’s a bench aglow with twinkle lights near the pond, out of view of the estate house. It feels good to sit and take some pressure off the silk heels you bought special for this evening. You slip them off and let your feet rest on the cool grass.

“What photo were you talking about?” You ask.

“The bridesmaid photos with the bouquets on the bridge. I grew up with that photo in my house. But one day I was playing football— no, it was… it was cricket. I was playing cricket in the house and the photo shattered. I cut my hand trying to hide it from my mum, look.”

You take his hand, inspecting his palm and turning it over. He continues. “But I don’t recognize you. From the photo. I don’t think you were there. You weren’t looking at the camera. You were looking at me.”

“I don’t see a scar.”

“What?”

Peter pulls back his hand.

“It is kind of dark out, so that could be why.”

“Wha…” Peter holds his hands up to the twinkle lights in the willow branches above the bench. He shakes his head. “This doesn’t make sense.”

“Deja vu.” You whisper.

Peter’s hands fall from inspection, he rubs his fingers together at his sides. “What did you say? Did you say Deja vu?”

“Yeah. I’ve— I’ve been here before. This has happened before. With you. What’s happening?”

Peter sits back down next to you on the bench, grabbing your upper arms with insistence. “Are you messing with me again? Are you screwing with my head?” He’s breathing fast. He looks scared.

“No! No, I swear Peter. This just… feels so familiar. Do you feel it? The smell in the air, the champagne bottles popping, you checking your hands in the light, the kiss in the gazebo… what’s happening? What does it mean that I’ve felt this before?”

Peter lets go of your arms and runs his thumbs across the smooth insides of his knuckles. “It means… it means it’s elastic. This timeline is still alive. I’m not in a loop, I’m not in a dead end. Something is happening… or something will happen. Either way, we’re all still breathing…” Peter laughs quietly for a few moments before silencing himself with his own hand. “Somewhere, somehow, in the past 20 minutes or so, a vortex was formed— a shift in the timeline.”

“What does that mean? Is that good or bad?”

Peter shakes his head. “I don’t know. We—us in the future—don’t even fully understand it. It’s a technology we discovered from elsewhere in the universe. I’ve been thinking lately that we don’t have the receptive capacity to understand the dimensionality. Like trying to conceptualize a tesseract.”

“What are you doing here? Still trying to save the world?”

“No. That window closed. Or at least, I thought it had.”

“So your window is closed. You didn’t succeed?”

He stares into your eyes for several beats. He thinks about December 31st in Rome. How he waited on platform 23 at the piazza di Spagna until the last train came it at near midnight. And how he walked around the Villa Borghese alone when security shooed him away from the station, he walked back to the red tiled hotel alone. A doomed mission. He must’ve passed at least a dozen kissing couples that night ringing in the new year.

“No. I didn’t. I’m sorry.” His apology feels personal.

“It’s okay.” You say with a small voice, placing a hand on his knee. “So, now what? Do you go back, to your original time, the future?”

“Can’t go back. Can’t go anywhere. Even if I could, there’s no one to retrieve me.”

“So you just live out the rest of your days here in 2023 onward?”

Peter bites his lip and looks out over the pond. “Yeah.”

“What happens when baby Peter Roiter is born?”

“You’re too quick, you know that?” Peter snorts and shakes his head.

“I watch a lot of sci-fi movies,” you smile, shouldering off your lavender shawl and pointing out your tattoo. “See. It’s a—“

“DeLorean.” He traces his finger over the small line drawing tattoo.

“A 1981 DeLorean DMC-12 to be exact.” You grin proudly.

Peter swallows and traces his finger down your bare arm, making your hairs raise.

“You got it the day of your 18th birthday. You had a fight with your father and you got it on a whim. You were so angry at your father that you cried when you got it and when the tattoo artist asked if you needed a break from the pain you said—“

“How do you know this, Peter, you’re scaring me.”

“You said, I’ve had worse.”

“Peter—“

“I know you. We’ve been here before. This bench. The lights, the way they glow on your skin.” He swipes the side of your face lightly with the back of his unblemished hand.” He gulps. “I kiss you on the gazebo by the pond, I kiss you under a willow tree far away from the house, I—“ he shifts closer, his forehead nearly touching your own. “I carry you like a bride up the stairs and I kiss you in a room with golden leaves on the ceiling.”

You shift closer to him, your noses touching.

“Don’t you remember?” He asks, cupping your cheek. “No matter where I go. There you are. Entanglement.”

“I remember.” You nod. “Tell me, Peter. Tell me what happens when you’re born.”

Peter cradles your face in both of his hands and pulls back a fraction of an inch, eyes flickering between your own before he sighs and shuts them in a near grimace.

“I die.” He kisses you. And its so different from the kiss on the gazebo. Your little lie, your little trick in back there that got him to kiss you the first time. A lie— or so you thought at the time. Something made you say it to him you’re sure of that now. The deception was compulsory. It wasn’t why you led him out at the time. But now it its.

As sure as he knows the date of his own birth, he knows he will die. In almost exactly 13 months. Or sometime before; but never after. They didn’t teach him every facet at The Project, mainly due to their own ignorance; and he wouldn’t have to face his demise if he had only taken himself to the extraction point… but that had been out of the question. And what is he doing now? With you on this bench? 100 yards from his newlywed parents. This is a new dream he is fulfilling, the erasure of his scar, these new-old memories, the fulfillment of a loop.

Your silk shoes abandoned in the grass, he scoops up your knees onto his lap, he holds your face so tenderly and kisses you, and kisses you, and kisses you beneath the willow tree.

He carries you like a bride to your bedroom at the top of the stairs. If any party stragglers notice you, you aren’t aware. You cling to Peter with your face buried in his neck, holding to his broad shoulders, your bare toes make brushing contact with the walls of the stairwell as you ascend. You don’t need to tell him which room is yours, he’s been here before hasn’t he? You certainly have. In a dream. In another life.

He lays you gently on the bed, kissing up your ankles, sliding the satin of your sheath dress up your legs as he goes, crawling up and up and up you, his lips trailing over the rise of your knees with abject devotion. His strong hands splay and scoop under your dress, under your hips, to grab your lace panties. He looks into your eyes from where he kisses the crest of your thigh when he slides the material down your legs and tosses them to the floor.

“How could I have forgotten you?” He whispers with a longing against your skin, pushing your dress up until it pools in a satin puddle at your middle. He kisses the tip of your hipbone before he settles between your thighs, his stubble scratches pleasantly at the sensitive flesh when he runs his nose along the junction of your hip and thigh.

Cradling your hips in his palms, he shrugs your legs over his shoulders. He’s still fully dressed, the only disrobing he did of himself was the grey jacket abandoned on the the back of the far-table chair in the reception hall downstairs, and the blue tie he loosened and discarded somewhere near your panties. His disguise.

He crawls up further onto the bed to fully press his face into your sex. He latches onto your puffy cunt with his kiss-swollen lips and licks you open with messy, savoring swirls of his tongue. His mouth hot and slick, chin and nose pressing into you with a rocking hungry motion. You don’t intend to cry out at the sensation but he’s making love to you with his mouth like it isn’t the first time and you have no choice but to strangle your own keen of pleasure and fully and gracelessly recline on the bed, the prop of your elbows unable to hold you up through the slick furnace of pleasure that is Peter Roiter’s mouth.

You scrunch your eyes closed and bite your bottom lip when his tongue focuses in on your clit, hot mouth still sealed around your pussy, he lathes you with stern and steady lashings to your point of pleasure. Your hands fist in the pool, of silk at your belly. He sighs hotly into you and works his own fingers through yours, loosening your grasping hands from your dress. He laces all his fingers flush with yours, soothing the sides of your palms with his thumbs.

He never stops the hot assault of your spread sex with his tongue. Your grass stained heels rest lightly on the taut warm linen of his dress shirt. You can feel the way the muscles back there flex, your feet sliding every so slightly when his hips buck gently into the mattress. You don’t open your eyes until you’re desperately close to cumming in his mouth and when you look up all you can see are flashes of gold.

Your hips lift off the mattress with the arch of your back and the contraction of your thighs. You let out a long low keen and his face tilts up to follow your clit, sucking you lovingly, his hands gripping more tightly to your own than ever before.

“Peter,” your lips tremble, you slowly open your clamped shut eyes.

There it is. The gold leaf ceiling glinting in warm yellow light. Just as he said. Just as your remember. You stare dazedly at it and you know in less than a moment Peter will crawl up your shaking sweating body and place a kiss on your lips. He does. You grab him by his thick curls and push and pull and twist him in a debauched kiss till he’s flat on his back and you’re on top. His mouth is hot and sticky and so, so giving.

He runs his hands lightly over the open back of your dress. You only unbuckle him enough, and shimmy his trousers midway down his thighs, to get him inside of you. When you sink down on him he holds your forehead against his and gasps in disbelief.

“I—“ He chokes, catching his breath and fighting his eyes rolling back so he can get a good look at you when you take him all the way down.

“What?” You smile, stroking his cheek.

“I— I’ve missed you. Ahh.” He grabs you hard then, sitting up slightly and clawing your dress strap down so he can bite and suck the softest parts of your chest.

You cradle his head there, grinding into his lap slowly, gasping softly at the feel of him inside you.

“You won’t disappear, will you?” You whisper in a daze of pleasure.

No, he chants against your breast.

“No, no, no. I can’t lose you.” He holds you tight to him like he means it.

Peter has pulled the top of your dress down to your waist now and his hands roam freely over your back, plotting the elevated terrain of your shoulders, the valley between your breasts, and the maps of rivers at your wrists.

He lays fully back down and takes you with him. You smile against his kiss.

“Getting tired, old man?”

“Mmm, I’m younger than you—technically— negative one years old next month.” He bites your ear. You laugh. He thrusts up into you. You moan and clutch him by his clothed shoulders.

Peter cups your cheek in his hand. The one with the missing scar. You turn your face to kiss his unblemished palm. You rock on him slowly, his mouth parts in bliss.

“Does this mean anything can change at any time?” You ask, glancing at the inside of his hand.

“Yes but that’s always been a given.” Cheeky.

“No, I don’t mean just anything. I’m not talking about normal changes, I concerned about—“

“Dissolving out of a photograph? Ceasing to exist?” He teases, flicking your tattoo.

“Or Chuck Berry never writing Johnny B. Goode?”

“Who?” Peter delivers in convincing deadpan curiosity before breaking out into a beautiful grin.

You pinch his side. “Rat.” You can feel the intensity of his jerking response to the pinch where he’s buried warmly inside you.

Peter nods, “I don’t know. I hate saying that I don’t know and I hate that worried little look on your face, but I promise that it doesn’t change anything. We are here and like it or not the only thing certain is change.”

“The mortal agreement.”

“There is one thing I do know. No matter what I change, no matter where I go. I find you. Even when I send you away, you bounce back. Right back into my arms. A less scientifically minded man might think that love has it’s own special inter-dimensional set of physics. We just… keep extracting entropy from a closed system. No matter how hard I break the billiards they fly right back to the center of the table in formation. Not always in the same order, but… still… accounted for. I thought it was fragile, like butterfly wings, you know? But I’m learning it’s durable. It’s elastic, alive. And you always bounce back.”

“Sounds less like time travel and more like pattern reconfiguration.”

Peter tucks your hair behind your ear and drinks in your face, nodding thoughtfully. “Everything you say. Everything you’ve said. It’s all like something that’s on the tip of my tongue.”

You grin, bending over him, taking his pretty face in your hands, you kiss him and suck his tongue into your mouth, bobbing your mouth on the tip of it suggestively, “is it?” You smile. He’s still hard in you. You hope he never stops. This is how you should have every conversation about everything from here on out. Joined together, the beast with two backs as Shakespeare would say.

“I don’t want to cum.” He groans into your mouth, “when I cum I’ll have to stop being inside you, and I don’t want that, I want to live inside you.”

Call it the contrarian in you, but the admission only makes you want to force it out of him against his will. To make him fall apart precisely because he said he was trying his best to keep it together.

You clench, ride him, and moan into his ear until he’s nearly tapping out from ecstasy and when he comes he calls your name.

“Oh no.” You gasp, looking around worriedly.

“What? What is it?” Peter halfway sits up, adrenaline opening his eyes fully.

“Do you think your parents heard us?” You grin teasingly.

Peter sighs with relief and shakes his head, kissing your cheek and crushing you against his chest in a hug.

You don’t worry about tonight, the shoes you left outside, the rented jacket in the reception hall, or what will transpire in the next 13 months. Everything will bounce back in the end.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

Tagging everyone who interacted with the post asking who was interested in this Peter Roiter fic:

@ozarkthedog @toracainz @mundivagantsoul @ominoose @astroboots @orestesimp @spacecowboyhotch @steven-grants-world @convrsation16 @onefinnedwonder-fm @grumpyeagleandfriends @miguellohara @winchestershiresauce @user215sstuff @greg-drunk @poeedameronn @piptoost @danilovesyarn @toracainz @red-hydra @motleyfolk @ladywillowgrey @munasolid @karoblaer @theaterm @howellatme @mistaknight @dailyreverie @guruan @lunar-ghoulie

Usernames that have been crossed out, I was unable to tag, check your tumblr settings to receive tag alerts.

[kato-neimoidia]

15 questions for 15 friends

Thanks @willameena and @somethingsteff for the tags!

1. Are you named after anyone?

No

2. When was the last time you cried?

About an hour ago! Just a little cry, my parents and brother have been visiting me over the weekend as it's my birthday soon and they'd just left so I'm back to being here on my own!

3. Do you have kids?

No, and I don't see that in my future, but am honorary auntie to my friends children

4. What sports do you play/ have you played?

Currently playing field hockey. I've been playing for 11 years now. I absolutely love it, playing in defense and in goal, and also coach and umpire (umpiring only when they reeeeally need me to though!).

Have played - would be easier to list what I haven't 😂 I've played football, cricket, basketball, netball, volleyball, to name a few.

While being able bodied myself, a friend of mine who works with local charities for disabilities organised some wheelchair basketball tournaments that I'd been invited to play in. Quite an experience! Don't think I embarrassed myself too much, but a bunch of us from my hockey team put a team together, and we had fun and a laugh with the other teams involved.

5. Do you use sarcasm?

Yes, to my detriment. I once sarcastically agreed to be a hockey team captain one year, the sarcasm wasn't picked up and a couple of months later I see a facebook post advertising me as one of the captains :| I followed through and did the year, but never again!

6. What's the first thing you notice about people?

Eyes, mouth, facial expression, gauging their interest in the current situation

7. What's your eye colour?

Blue and brown - brown around the pupils, kinda starbursting out into blue towards the edges (central heterochromia o.O)

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

Scary movies usually, I'm a bit cynical and like it when there's a twist at the end where the bad guy wins!

9. Any talents?

Not especially, I'm reasonably good at as sports and crafty things. My 'weird' talent would be that my fingers are hypermobile, so my fingers bend a bit backwards at the knuckles, and I can bent the finger tip joints while keeping the rest of the finger straight

10. Where were you born?

Oxfordshire, UK. Moved to Bedfordshire/Hertfordshire area before I was 1 and have stayed here since

11. What are your hobbies?

Playing hockey, video games, reading, crafting and making little things, such as reconfiguring and painting funko pops, and recently made myself a Sabine Wren mando armour costume for halloween

12. Do you have any pets?

No

13. How tall are you?

5' 1.5"

14. Favourite subject in school?

I was quite partial to maths, biology, and PE

15. Dream job?

Not really sure.. I was always interested in computing and ended up with a job in the IT industry, but it's more in the 'business' side than computing. I've gone vegan and got an electric car over the last 2 years, and have been trying to be more 'green' in general. So it would be cool to be able to do something in that realm, making steps in that direction more accessible and financially viable for businesses and the general public. If money wasn't an object I used to want to work in Game or HMV so I could just play games all day and mess about with merch, while somehow not getting fired

No pressure tags (sorry if you've already been tagged, but enjoy another if so!) @briliantlymad, @isthisfree, @lesbianakins, @underacalicosky, @grapenehifics, @starwalkertales, @piecesofeden11, @trannakinskywalker, @sashkalive, @billowypantss, @mars-attacking, @bolshoiromanova, @vaderborn, @veloursdor, @tideswept

And anyone else who fancies doing this, open invite!

[twofrontteethstillcrooked]

Suptober 13 Oct.: Morning after

The morning after the rehearsal, Dean realized with something akin to banked panic, was technically the morning of the wedding. Shit. 

deancas, mild horror + fluff, trippy evil mushroom au 

note: since today is 10/13, this snippetfic is also an homage to The X-Files s6 episode “Field Trip”

(1013 is the XF production company. yes, this is very geeky lol) 

(fyi that ep has a guest star in none other than Mr. Bobby Singer-- uh, Jim Beaver. Highly recommended 👽)

The morning after the rehearsal, Dean realized with something akin to banked panic, was technically the morning of the wedding. Shit. Extremely early morning at present. 1:07 a.m. according to his wristwatch. He should go take a nap.

The rehearsal went well, didn't it? He scrubbed at the back of his neck. All these new shirts for the occasion were itchy as hell. He was about to scratch himself out of his skin about five times an hour. 

Now that most of the crowd had cleared out, he supposed he should lock up. Seemed weird it was his responsibility – where was Sam, anyway? Some best man he was – but all right. The caterers would be back at 8 a.m. to switch out the tablecloths and reset the hall; Father Whatshisname (Christopher?) said he'd let them in. Kickoff: noon. Be there or be square. Jo'd murder him if he was late. Literally, with her hands around his throat and not in the fun, sexy way.

The sidewalk buckled under his feet a little and his stomach lurched. New shoes, still stiff with too-slick soles. Find the car. He detoured through the cathedral yard and skidded to a halt before he could trip into a bed planted with purple mums.

Cas was still here? On one of the stone benches by the memorial wall. Just sitting by himself in the dark. Head bowed.

Praying, Dean thought, and thinking it seemed to turn up the volume. The yard that had been silent – no cars passing or crickets chirping or wind, no late night television wah-wahs coming from the nearby homes – amplified Cas's quiet voice. 

Dean knew he should leave, or cough, something to announce his presence. But he stood, transfixed, and somehow heard every word Cas spoke.

"Please keep them safe," Cas said. "They both deserve safety more than anyone."

Say something, Dean told himself.

"Please." Cas's voice broke on the word; Dean felt it splinter something beneath his own ribs. "Please let them always be a home to each other."

No, Dean thought, this is… Wrong. He looked down at his hands in the dimly green, slanted light – a strange hue, like before a storm – and saw they were trembling. Cassie was going to fuss at him if he was coming down with the flu.

Cas had kept praying, more and more quietly, until on a sharp swerve of unnerving breeze Dean heard him say, "Please help me let him go."

Dean shouldn't have been able to hear him. He was too far away. 

Him who? Dean thought, desperately. Who is he letting go? He was wracked as though with a high fever, all chills and burned eyes.

Cas, he tried to say. Wait.

The bench was empty.

The streetlights along the road to Cas's house were all flickering, like fireflies. Really must be some sort of weather brewing. Dean wiped his eyes for the fourth or fifth time and kept driving. His throat ached and his chest hurt and shit, what if it was the flu? Cassie– Jo. She'd been pestering him to get a flu shot before everything but he'd just run out of time. Not like he'd known October was such a big month for weddings and everything would be a hundred times more tedious and more expensive, and that he'd wake up every day like he'd slept crushed in a vise the whole time.

He couldn't remember what Jo was wearing at the dinner mere hours ago. A sage green dress with long sleeves. No. Cassie always wore harvest gold yellow when she wanted to feel comfortable.

He missed the driveway and slammed on the brakes. Backed up and drove up to the door. Behind the house, the lake shimmered with moonlight. He couldn't hear it lapping at the dock; the sound was more like water dripping from a leaky faucet. His hands were almost translucent. When he looked again the sky seemed too near, filled with roiling clouds. He knocked on the front door and the sound boomed, echoed somewhere far away like thunder.

"Dean?" Cas said, expression full of worry. 

He looks so tired, Dean thought. 

"It's very late. Are you all right?" Cas asked, stepping aside to let Dean pass as he came in.

Dean smiled feebly. "Hey. Yeah, I think so." 

"Is something wrong with Lisa?" Cas's eyes were… 

"Lisa?" Dean exhaled, shook his head quickly. The room clicked, as though a clock was nearby, or a metronome, neither keeping good time. His vision blurred and he sat down on the couch as his legs weakened. "Why would– I haven't seen Lisa in years."

Cas sat facing him on a heavy wooden footstool. He'd gone pale, making the circles under his eyes darker. "Dean, what are you talking about? You're marrying Lisa in fewer than twelve hours."

Dean swallowed. "No." All he wanted to do was touch the vulnerable pulse he saw fluttering at the base of Cas's throat. "I'm not."

Cas went very still, his eyes boring into Dean's. "Why not."

Dean's head hurt. "Your prayer was the kindest thing I've ever heard someone ask for," he said, squeezing his eyes shut for a second against the room's glare. When he opened them again Cas was watching him, so much sorrow and regret in his face it almost made Dean sob. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop." 

"I don't understand how– You'd gone, with Sam, your mom, Lisa, Ben. I saw you all drive away in the Impala. Did you come back to the church for something?" Cas wrung his hands.

"No, they must've gone on without me." A single drop of cold sweat scored its way down Dean's spine. "They, uh… I had to find my suit jacket after Jo– It was on the back of the kitchen door?" But he wasn't wearing a suit jacket.

A look of pure horror crossed Cas's face. "Dean, Jo's dead."

"I meant Cassie," Dean corrected, and a blinding pain crack across his skull. 

"You're engaged to Lisa," Cas said, voice quivering with fear. "We– I fixed it. I undid the–" He stood up and paced. "She remembered you and you reconciled; you're in love and you'll be a family." He was having to speak more loudly; tree branches clawed at the windows in a ferocious wind. He ran to bolt the lock. The door rattled like it was wrapped in chains and being kicked in by a hurricane. 

Dean stabbed his thumb in the middle of his forehead, hard, and the pain subsided enough that he could breathe again. Something flashed in his vision – slimy coils like innards strung everywhere, and a cocoon binding him and Cas with unnatural ropes – and the look Cas gave him then told him he'd seen it too.

"What's the last thing you truly remember clearly?" Dean asked, clutching at Cas's arms.

"Thursday," Cas said, concentrating. "It's Thursday after lunch. We're going on a hike to see if the kid's story about the cave checks out." Dark, almost black blood was smeared in his hair and down the side of his face. He reached up, ran his fingertip along Dean's temple. "You're injured," he said, voice shaking.

"We're still in the cave," Dean said, feeling the blood oozing from where he'd been hit. "None of this is real."

Cas pressed his hand to Dean's jaw; Dean could feel the angelic healing begin but it was nothing like the instantaneous spark of heat Cas could usually command. This was a thick needle being pulled through torn skin, slow as torture. Blood trickled from Cas's nose and Dean was suddenly terrified for him.

"Stop," he said, tipping his forehead to Cas's. "Stop."

Cas rested, breathing heavily, in the cradle of Dean's arms. They swayed for a moment and collectively decided to sit down on the floor. Darkness poured in around them; the lake flooded into the house. They were dry, because the cocoon floated – but they couldn't escape it either. 

"They'll find us," Dean whispered. He tried not to think about how being held by Cas was the first thing that had felt right in a long time; how if this was his end, he was dying right where he wanted to be. He held on as tightly as he dared.

Just before he lost consciousness, someone yelled, "Over here," and the world burst open with light.

-

Dean came to in the back of Donna's pickup. She and Sam and Jody and whoever else had been roped into the search party were milling around in the headlights of a half dozen other trucks. Fire poured out of the mouth of the cave like a dragon lived there. He could see Sam's towering silhouette as he helped a guy in a haphazard hazmat suit do…something. 

"They're sealing the cave," Cas said. He tightened his arms around Dean. "They excavated the bones we tripped over going into that largest cavern, but it was deemed too dangerous to search for others."

"Sam?" Dean asked. He felt Cas smile.

"The GPS on your phone was glitchy, and Nathanial wasn't sure which cave his brother had been in. I guess that makes sense since he's seven. All the caves on this side of the park were checked. Apparently the other caves only have bats living in them."

"So what was living in ours?"

"Sam's theory is, some kind of malevolent fungi-networked forest spirit." Cas shrugged when Dean raised his eyebrows. "Iron dipped in sheep’s blood cut through the cocoon. Salt, fire, then filling in with rocks, then lead-lined concrete, maybe. Sam says he's staying a few more days to help figure it out."

Dean turned just enough to be able to really look at Cas. Cas still looked exhausted and bloodied. And wonderful. 

"You doing okay?" Dean asked.

"Better." Cas looked away. "When I was trying to heal you in there – it rebounded or something. Cracked the outer cave wall and pulled down a few trees. That's how they found us."

"It trapped us like a djinn, huh. Tapping into our subconscious somehow?" Dean's eyes started to burn again. "But both of us at once. And all screwed up." He laughed a dry little laugh. "Monsters always think they've got a bead on me and they are always fucking wrong."

Cas was also trying not to cry; Dean could tell by the way he blinked and clutched Dean more fiercely. 

"In case you didn't know." Dean leaned in as close as he could, to speak as softly as he could. "You're already my home."

Cas tasted like salt the first time Dean kissed him. Dean was pretty sure he tasted like salt too.

[thatshuffle]

15 Questions Mutuals

Thank you for the tag @poorschilpad 

1. Are you named after anyone?

No, ut my parents got my name from one of their neighbours in the place they lived before I was conceived

2. When was the last time you cried?

Last month, having finished read Saga Volume 9

3. Do you have kids?

God no, much too young

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

No, never. I have no idea where anyone could get that idea from.

Seriously, I use it probably too often, and its accidently masked in a way that people who don’t know me well mistake for being genuine.

5. What sports have you / are you playing?

I did field hockey, football, sailing, cricket, Australian football, tennis, and badminton at various points during school. Was never particurly good at any of them.

6. What’s the first thing you notice about someone?

Hair and cheeks, for some reason

7. What’s your eye color?

Blue, with a mild hint of grey

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

Both

9. Any special talents?

None I can think of, most of my effort is put into academics.

10. Where were you born?

Kalgoorlie Hospital. My heart apparently stopped three times during birth

11. What are your hobbies?

None at the moment, but I’ve been meaning to do more reading.

12. Do you have pets?

Right now, a golden retriever. But I’ve also had three cats and another dog at various points along my life

13. How tall are you?

Roughly 177 cm

14. Favorite subject in school?

Physic, by far. Probably helped that my class was two people, including me

15. Dream job?

Quantum engineer, it’s the perfect blend of what I love about engineering, while also applying physics in a new way

If any other mutuals want to do this, tagging @pancake-sea-slug @phantomband and @kooldewd123

[cricketbazar]

Rishabh Pant Enjoys First Nets Session In Indian jersey After 16 Months, Gears Up For T20 WC

Star Indian wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant had his first nets session for Team India after at least 16 months, ahead of the ICC T20 World Cup opener against Ireland, scheduled for June 5.

The ICC T20 World Cup will be played in the West Indies and the USA from June 1 to 29. The Men in Blue will also play Bangladesh in their only warm-up game on June 1 at Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York.

Pant, who returned to competitive cricket during the Indian Premier League (IPL) this year following a life-threatening road accident in December 2022, will be making his much-awaited return to the blue colours of the Indian jersey.

In the recently concluded IPL 2024, Rishabh's team Delhi Capitals finished in the sixth spot with seven wins, seven losses and 14 points and failed to move to playoffs. He scored 446 runs in 13 matches at a strike rate of over 155 with three half-centuries and emerged as the team's top run-getter.

Pant looked in great shape while practicing, having lost a lot of weight, and sported a much leaner look ahead of the tournament.

In a video posted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), Pant said, "This is one thing I missed a lot (practicing with the Indian team and playing for them). Getting back on the field with the Indian jersey on, it is a different feel altogether and this is something I missed a lot. I think seeing the teammates and meeting them again, spending time, having fun with them, enjoying having conversations, really enjoying it."

Pant said that playing in the USA is a different prospect and it has opened a whole new channel for the sport.

"We are used to playing in certain countries but this is a different prospect. It has opened up a different channel for sport because I feel cricket is growing around the world and getting in a country like the US and getting the exposure here would be nice for cricket as well as USA cricket I guess," he said.

He said he is getting used to the conditions and the sun shines a little brighter here in the US and there are new pitches.

"So just getting used to conditions over here and let us see how it goes. Hopefully, I make it count and make it more better from here," he concluded.

In seven T20 WC matches and five innings, he has scored 87 runs at an average of 21.75 across 2021 and 2022 editions, with the best score of 39.

India will start their T20 World Cup campaign on June 5 against Ireland at the newly constructed Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York.

Meanwhile, the most-awaited blockbuster clash between India and Pakistan will take place on June 9. They will later play tournament co-hosts USA (June 12) and Canada (June 15) to wrap up their Group A matches.

In the tournament, India will be aiming to end their ICC trophy drought, having last won the ICC Champions Trophy in 2013. Since then, India has reached the 50-over World Cup final in 2023, semifinal in 2015 and 2019, the title clash of the ICC World Test Championship in 2021 and 2023, T20 WC final in 2014, semifinals in 2016 and 2022 but failed to secure a big ICC trophy.

India will be aiming to win their first T20 WC title since they won the inaugural edition of the tournament back in 2007 in South Africa. In the last edition held in Australia in 2022, India lost to England by 10 wickets in the semifinals.

India squad: Rohit Sharma (c), Hardik Pandya (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Siraj

[razorblogz]

Asia Cup: India thrash Pakistan by 228 runs after Kohli, Rahul tons and Kuldeep fifer

Rahul makes a memorable century, along with Kohli, on comeback helping India rout Pakistan by 228 runs.

COLOMBO: Had it not been for the last-minute injury to Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul would not have found a place in the playing XI against Pakistan in their Super Four match here at the R Premadasa Stadium, Colombo. The team sheet shared by India captain Rohit Sharma at the toss at least suggested so. The №4 position, where Rahul eventually came out to bat, was marked for Iyer while the former was at №13 on the team sheet with Suryakumar Yadav being the 12th man.

As if that uncertainty was not enough, inclement weather further prohibited Rahul from expressing himself despite taking the field after a gap of four months. When he was unbeaten on 17, skies opened up forcing match officials to suspend the game on Sunday. India was 147/2 after 24.1 overs with Virat Kohli also not out on 8.

The only solace was the fact that the contest had a reserve day as announced by the Asian Cricket Council a few days ago giving Rahul hope to carry on from where he had left on Sunday evening. The rain god, however, attempted to spoil his and Team India’s plan as it poured heavily minutes before the resumption, forcing the ground staff to cover the entire ground. The cloudy sky and consistent drizzling might have again made Rahul and other Indian batters restless but unlike Sunday, the weather showed mercy allowing the play to resume at 4:40 PM.

Once Rahul and Virat took the field, they showed no mercy as the duo sent Pakistan bowlers on a leather hunt. While openers Rohit (56) and Shubman Gill (58) had added 121 for the first wicket, Rahul and Virat remained unconquered. They stitched together a 233-run partnership for the third wicket. Kohli was unbeaten on 122 off 94 while Rahul was not out on 111 off 106 as India posted 356/2. Virat also became the quickest to reach 13,000 runs in ODIs. The century was also his 47th in the ODIs, only two behind the legendary Sachin Tendulkar.

Injury to Haris Rauf didn’t help Pakistan’s cause either as the pacer, who bowled five overs on Sunday, didn’t take the field on Monday. “He was subsequently taken for a precautionary MRI, which revealed no tear. He is under the observation of the team’s medical panel,” a statement from the Pakistan Cricket Board read. Babar Azam and Co suffered another injury scare when pacer Naseem Shah left the field holding his wrist. He could not complete the penultimate over of the Indian innings and Iftikhar Ahmed had to bowl the remaining four deliveries. The target proved too big for Pakistan to chase down as they managed 128/8 in 32 overs. Rauf and Naseem didn’t come out to bat as India won by a huge margin of 228 runs. Wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav claimed a five-for (5/25) while Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya and Shardul Thakur claimed a wicket each.

Earlier, returning after a long injury lay-off and a subsequent thigh surgery, 31-year-old Rahul did find a place in the 17-member squad for the Asia Cup but was left back at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), Bengaluru even as the team flew for Sri Lanka for the continental tournament. The reason as stated by the chairman of selectors, Ajit Agarkar, was a fresh niggle. After missing two matches, the wicketkeeper-batter joined the squad in Colombo. He was also named in the Indian squad of 15 for the 2023 ODI World Cup.

Given his long absence from the field, questions were raised on his return to the team right before the World Cup. This is despite the fact that his performance in the 50-over format has been good in the recent past before injury sidelined him. This year he didn’t exactly dazzle with the willow but scored two half-centuries in the previous six ODIs before the match against Pakistan to stay in the hunt for a place in the World Cup squad.

But something was missing and even Rahul knew it. For a batter, who had made his ODI debut with a century, not reaching the three-figure mark for more than two years would have been frustrating. He last hit a century on March 26, 2021, when he made 108 against England in Pune. Since then he had played 17 ODIs scoring four half-centuries but the ton was looking elusive before it came against the arch-rivals.

Though Rahul has played maximum matches as an opener it’s №4 or №5 where he has scored the most runs with an impressive batting average so far. At №4, where he batted on Monday, his numbers are the most impressive. In 10 matches he batted in that position, he has scored 352 runs including two centuries at an average of 58.66. He is also equally good at No 5 where he has scored 742 runs from 18 matches including a century with an average of 53.

The recent show by the Karnataka batter might relieve Indian team management of a few worries, especially the injury concerns that have given it sleepless nights over the past few months. With Ishan Kishan looking in good touch and Iyer apparently having only back spasm, Rahul’s form may also lead to a healthy competition among batters giving the management plenty of options in the middle order.

[xtruss]

How To Improve Your Trash Talk

Disrespect on the sports field can be effective—but carries risks

— May 12th 2023 |Culture | The sports page

Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺 — February 10: Australia leg spinner Shane Keith Warne (Born: 13 September 1969 – Died: 4 March 2022) celebrates the wicket of Nasser Hussain during the First Final of the Carlton & United One Day Series at Sydney Cricket Ground on February 10th, 1999 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Stu Forster/Allsport/Getty Images/Hulton Archive)

Two young pretenders recently learned the value of keeping schtum. In America’s National Basketball Association Dillon Brooks, a player for the Memphis Grizzlies, labelled LeBron James, one of the sport’s greatest players, “old” after a playoff match against the Los Angeles Lakers. The 38-year-old Mr James proceeded to score 25 points in the next game of the series; Mr Brooks was ejected from the court for striking the older man’s groin. In the snooker world Hossein Vafaei, an up-and-coming Iranian player, described Ronnie O’Sullivan, a British seven-time world champion, as a nice person “when he’s asleep”. Mr O’Sullivan remained wide awake to thrash Mr Vafaei in their subsequent world-championship match.

The episodes highlight the potential pitfalls of “trash talk”—insulting or taunting opponents in an effort to throw them off their game. The trash-talkers’ failure to lift their performances to the level of their rhetoric looked foolish, especially because their humiliation came at the hands of elder statesmen. The cases seemed to provide an additional argument to people who think that displays of disrespect denigrate principles of sportsmanship. Indeed, last month a disrespectful gesture made towards an opponent, Caitlin Clark, by Angel Reese, a college-level basketball player in America, had pious pundits fulminating—and seemingly ignoring the fact that Ms Clark had made a similar gesture earlier in the season.

The flinging of jibes at sporting rivals has a long history. Cricketers call it “sledging”; football managers employ “mind games”. Basketball legends like Larry Bird and Michael Jordan excelled at it. In a match between the Chicago Bulls and the Denver Nuggets in the early 1990s, for instance, Mr Jordan won a free-throw with seconds remaining on the clock. He eyeballed Dikembe Mutombo, a Nuggets player, and quipped, “Hey Mutombo, this one’s for you, baby,” before closing his eyes and making the shot. Mr Mutombo is still asked about the moment.

Displays of bravado enhance sporting legends. But do they achieve results? Proponents of smack talk argue that it plays a crucial role in winning the mental battle inherent in competition. Shane Warne, an Australian spin-bowler and famous sledger, called it a way to gain the “psychological edge” on the cricket field. The practice was commonly misunderstood, he noted: the idea was not to be nasty, but to find a clever way to unsettle or distract. If deployed appropriately, he claimed, mind games help to tip the balance in professional sport, where differences of skill between athletes can be very small.

The science suggests that badgering opponents can be effective, but only up to a point. Research led by Karen McDermott from the University of Connecticut found that participants were distracted by trash talk from opponents they did not know. It heightened emotions like anger and shame, affecting their performance. But a study led by Jeremy Yip of Georgetown University observed that, in general, the targets of trashing felt motivated to do better. Thus, taunts carry both opportunity and risk. You may put your opponents off, but you may also provoke them to give you a hiding.

For trash-talkers-in-training, a few pointers might help. First, consider the game at hand. Studies show that smack talk is especially effective in distracting players who are engaged in actions that require creativity or fine motor skills. So it may prove more effective in games demanding high levels of concentration than in sports that require mainly strength. Cricket meets those criteria nicely, especially when the batsman is fending off a world-class spin-bowler.

Next, it is worth thinking about the timing of your comments. In some sports, particularly combat ones, athletes swear by pre-match jibes. In 2015, for example, Joanna Jedrzejczyk, a Polish mixed-martial arts fighter, claimed that pre-fight taunts laid the foundations for her victory over Carla Esparza, her American opponent, in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. And who could forget Muhammad Ali’s suggestion in 1964 that Sonny Liston was “too ugly” to be boxing’s heavyweight world champion? Ali won a celebrated victory in the subsequent fight.

But unless you can credibly claim to be “The Greatest”, it may be a bad idea to give opponents time to stew over a taunt. Take a recent example from rugby union. In 2022 Australia’s men’s team hosted their English counterparts in a three-match series. After two games, the sides were drawn. Then Suliasi Vunivalu, one of Australia’s players, promised that his team would “shut the Pommies up” in the decider. The Australians went on to lose. Courtney Lawes, England’s then captain, said Mr Vunivalu’s cockiness had been “good fuel” for his team’s preparations.

Of course, trash talk can go too far. Critics say that cricket’s sledging culture, for example, can be racist. Last year a report on the Scottish game found that on-field chat could be racially abusive. Athletes who stoop to bigotry when they insult their opponents besmirch the not-so-fine art of trash talk. As Warne implied, it should be bracing but never boorish. It is, after all, supposed to be part of the fun. ■

[neevan07]

MS DHONI

Barring Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni is probably the most popular and definitely the most scrutinised cricketer from India. He has got to this point coming from the cricketing backwaters, the mining state of Jharkhand, and through a home-made batting and wicketkeeping technique, and a style of captaincy that scales the highs and lows of both conservatism and unorthodoxy. Under Dhoni's captaincy, India have won the top prize in all formats: topping the Test rankings for 18 months starting December 2009, the 50-over World Cup in 2011 and the World T20 on his captaincy debut in 2007.

Dhoni, then a ticket inspector with the Indian Railways, had escaped all attention bar the odd whisper among the followers of club cricket in Kolkata until he was 23, when he blasted two centuries in a triangular 50-over tournament for India A in Nairobi. Long-haired and fearless, he soon swaggered into international cricket, and became an instant darling of the crowds with ODI innings of 148 and 183 within a year of his debut.

Dhoni demonstrated all that was right with the new middle-class India. He didn't respect reputations, but never disrespected either. He improvised, he learned, but didn't apologise for his batting style, which was not the most elegant. He became a multi-faceted ODI batsman, one who could accumulate, one who could rebuild, and one who could still unleash those big sixes.

Along the way Dhoni showed leadership skills, which were recognised when Rahul Dravid gave up the captaincy in 2007. Just before that announcement from Dravid, Dhoni had taken a bunch of kids to South Africa and was leading India to a World Cup win in a format the country didn't even take seriously. The ODI captaincy was natural progression, and Anil Kumble just kept the seat warm in Tests for a year.

Dhoni brought to captaincy a thick skin and relative indifference to results that an Indian captain needs to keep the job for long. Along with coach Gary Kirsten, he put his senior performers in a comfortable place, and they returned the favour with some of their best years in international cricket. His calmness on the field helped and worked like a charm in the shorter formats, although tactically he sometimes sat back for too long in Tests. All that can't argue with the fact that India had some of their best years in Test cricket, in terms of tangible achievement, under Dhoni.

However, post the 50-over World Cup win in 2011, which Dhoni sealed with a timely 91 and his patented helicopter shot, an ageing team kept losing in unfamiliar conditions. After eight straight Test losses away from home, Dhoni the captain came under immense pressure, which was accentuated by a 2-1 home series loss to England in 2012-13, the first time India had lost at home in more than eight years. This brought out a new chapter in Dhoni's career wherein he seemed more assertive as a captain, started building a new team, played his best Test innings on a turner to win India the Chennai Test against Australia, and became the first captain to lead India to four wins in a series.

Away from home in the winter of 2013-14, India lost Test series in South Africa and New Zealand by 1-0 margins that did not reflect how close they came close to wins on both tours. The England tour of 2014 began promisingly, with a drawn first Test followed by a historic win at Lord's, but India crashed to earth immediately afterwards to lose the series 3-1. At Old Trafford and The Oval, with the batting crumbling around him, Dhoni played a couple of his bravest innings in Tests, dealing with the seam movement and bounce by stepping down the pitch and taking blows on his body.

Wins once again proved elusive on the tour of Australia that followed, though India competed ferociously thanks to a young batting core led by Kohli.

Kohli had captained the side in the first Test, with Dhoni injured, and he would lead them in the fourth Test too, with Dhoni making a surprise announcement after the third Test in Melbourne that he was retiring from the longest format.

Though his game was not as suited to Tests as it was to limited-overs cricket, Dhoni ended his career in whites with a proud record for a wicketkeeper: 4876 runs at an average of just over 38, and six hundreds. He had also captained India to more Test wins - 27 - than anyone else.

Dhoni continued to lead India in the shorter formats, and they shrugged off a win-less tour of Australia by reaching the semi-finals of the 2015 World Cup. A year later, they won the Asia Cup T20 in Bangladesh but exited the World T20 in the semi-finals, at home. Dhoni enjoyed a good tournament as a finisher, scoring 89 runs while only being dismissed once in five innings; he showed electric reflexes while keeping to the spinners, eventually playing on till the 2019 World Cup, though he gave up the limited-overs captaincy in January 2017.

India's defeat to New Zealand in the semi-final of the 2019 World Cup turned out to be Dhoni's final international match, although that wasn't officially confirmed till more than a year later. In the immediate aftermath of that result, there was lots of speculation about whether Dhoni would call it quits. He didn't, but he did opt out of India's series for the rest of 2019 and early 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic then brought all sporting action to a halt. Just as players' preparations for the delayed IPL began, in August, on India's Independence Day, Dhoni made the big announcement - on Instagram. He was retiring from all international cricket.

In the IPL, Dhoni has been the face of the Chennai Super Kings franchise. He became so deeply associated with the city that he even became a co-owner of a Chennai-based football franchise. But in 2016, with Super Kings suspended for two seasons over issues stemming from the spot-fixing scandal of 2013, he was part of the IPL's new franchise Rising Pune Supergiants. Super Kings were reinstated in 2018 and Dhoni was back at the helm, leading the team to a fairytale third title. He almost repeated the feat in 2019, losing a thrilling final against Mumbai Indians by just 1 run. Sidharth Monga

[heaven3131]

If Gaming is an Instinct, It Can be Well Controlled with a Strong Will

It's hard to believe that most people without the ability to lie can't resist the sound of the dice. A few days ago, I got a call from a respected friend who also happened to be from Kashmir and was working for a living in a Multinational company in Noida asking for legal advice. What he revealed shocked me and I thought it was worth sharing. My friend took out a huge loan of Rs 1.3 Lakhs and lost bit by bit in gambling, not in the traditional way but with the new online gambling norms, in ShubBet casino. The fact that my friend didn't have any other source or shoulder to repay or share the responsibility with, introduced him to the world of depression.

ShubBet is an Indian fantasy sports platform that allows users to play fantasy cricket, hockey, football, kabaddi, and basketball. Gambling is an instinct that is present in all human beings. Most individuals and fields agree that if gambling is properly regulated and organized, it will benefit the country's economic development.

Whether or not gambling should be legalized has been an ongoing debate for decades. Gambling activities have been legalized in many countries, such as the UK (where gambling is legal for UK residents under the Gambling Act 2005). China imposes heavy taxes on these activities to use the income from said activities to boost the economy. Proponents of legalized gambling argue that gambling has many rewards beyond economic development. For example, it will prevent gambling from becoming a source of crime or disorder, protect children and other vulnerable groups from gambling harm or exploitation, and, most importantly, will curb the generation of black money.

In many countries, new legislation has been drawn up and enacted to regulate and legalize gambling activities, both online and offline. However, in India, the area is still considered a gray area and has not been passed through a new central Legislation to regulate or legalize gambling activities.

In India, gambling is still governed by rusty pre-independence legislation passed during British rule, known as the Public Gambling Act of 1867. Gambling and betting are national subjects under Item 34 of List II of the Seventh Schedule. Each state can make laws on gambling activities within its state or follow legislation passed by the central government.

Gambling is not defined in India under any gambling-related legislation. But the three things that are excluded from gambling are horse racing betting (subject to laws and regulations), games of skill (excluded under the Gambling Act and court decisions), and lotteries (regulated under the Indian Lottery Act). Duty to declare that certain online gambling activities/games are within the scope of games of skill in the chain of judgment and are allowed to continue these activities like ShubBet. There is a difference between games of skill and games of chance, and the former falls outside the scope of gambling as skill is still the main factor in this type of activity/game and success depends on the knowledge and experience of the performer. The latter is all about luck, and the game’s result is unpredictable, which is why Game of Chance is banned in most Indian states.

In India, gambling is allowed in Daman and Diu, Sikkim, and Goa, while online or offline lotteries have been legalized in 13 states including Maharashtra, West Bengal, Meghalaya, Punjab, etc.

The fantasy sports business is growing at lightning speed. In the past 12 months, it has witnessed a three-fold increase in revenue of more than Rs 2,400 crore compared to last year's 9.2 crores, all thanks to smartphones and free high-speed internet. That might be good for economic growth, but what about people like my friend?

Their only way out is that if gambling is an instinct, it can be well controlled through self-motivation and a strong will. If dice were soothing music, one could turn a deaf ear to it.

[irvinenewshq]

De Kocks very good salvo Hobarts merciless rain: Takeaways from Proteas World Cup opener

The Proteas have been unlucky to be robbed by the rain after they could not procure a consequence in opposition to Zimbabwe in Hobart on Monday. South Africa did all it might to get a consequence, however the rain received in the way in which, they usually might solely get a degree. Such was SA’s climate’s curse, it was the primary sport in Hobart out of 9 to be impacted by the aspect. The Proteas have been robbed of what was a deserved win in opposition to Zimbabwe in Hobart, however there have been a number of issues that went proper for them regardless of the truncated nature of the sport. Listed below are 5 speaking factors from Monday’s washed-out sport: When De Kock fires, SA fires South Africa’s final failure ultimately 12 months’s T20 World Cup was their lack of intent after they chased down small totals in opposition to the West Indies and Bangladesh. That lesson was clearly heeded and remembered by Quinton de Kock, who took the sport by the scruff of the neck and chased the rain deadline. His 18-ball 47 noticed him drive SA’s 51/0 in three overs they usually solely wanted 13 extra to seal the sport, however the rain intervened. There will likely be sterner bowling assaults within the type of India and Pakistan, however De Kock has set out a batting stall the Proteas should depend on for the remainder of the match. READ | Boucher responds to Proteas’ rain-induced World Cup heartbreak: ‘We needed to play’ The template of attacking laborious on the high performed an important function in New Zealand’s huge win in opposition to Australia the place Finn Allen’s 42 off 16 received the ball rolling for the guests. South Africa’s geared up with energy hitters who can take SA to greater batting ranges. Lungi Ngidi is SA’s most adaptable T20 bowler Lungi Ngidi’s first ball was caned for 4, however he bounced again with scrumptious varieties that lopped two wickets and stopped Zimbabwe from dreaming of a complete of 100, which might have been difficult for SA to chase in 9 overs. Ngidi first eliminated Regis Chakabva, then claimed the important thing scalp of Sikhander Raza.  The nine-over allotment meant Ngidi might solely bowl two overs, however he once more showcased his capability to learn situations sooner than most of his teammates. Fielding made the distinction De Kock’s catch off Ngidi and David Miller’s run-out might seem like regulation moments, however with the fluctuating nature of SA’s fielding, such moments cannot be taken with no consideration. Proteas pacer Lungi Ngidi News24 Isuru Sameera/Gallo Pictures There was a tricky dropped catch that went Ngidi’s manner, however De Kock took an excellent catch to do away with Raza. Then there was Miller’s run-out of Sean Williams that robbed Zimbabwe of any momentum they sought by their top-order. On an outfield saturated by rain, these sorts of fielding efforts can’t be seemed down on. Hobart saves its rain for the Proteas Hobart is about to suffer from rain for the remainder of the week, which is sweet for the town, however devastating for cricket if video games have been to be performed there. READ | Hobart rain cruelly denies Proteas important factors over Zimbabwe in farcical circumstances It so occurred that the neighbourly derby between South Africa and Zimbabwe was the Bellerive Oval’s final sport of the match. The bottom hosted 9 video games and just one, that of South Africa’s, was rain affected. It is true that because the third southernmost cricket floor forward of Christchurch’s Hagley Oval and Dunedin’s College Oval, the Bellerive is on the mercy of the Southern Ocean’s climate whims. It is simply unhappy that the climate held simply lengthy sufficient to proceed SA’s ICC match climate curse. Originally published at Irvine News HQ

[sounmashnews]

[ad_1] Cricket South Africa (CSA) Director of Cricket Enoch Nkwe has confirmed that they are trying to cut up the top coach position into two after Mark Boucher's tenure ends at this month's T20 World Cup in Australia.Boucher will step away from his put up after practically three years to take cost of Indian Premier League (IPL) giants Mumbai Indians on the shut of the T20 World Cup, which ends 13 November.Under the previous Proteas wicketkeeper's steering since his appointment in 2019, South Africa have received 11 in 20 Tests, 12 out of 25 ODIs and 23 out of 44 T20Is.Nkwe says it was troublesome to simply accept Boucher's resignation, however he understands the IPL alternative.He then pointed to the potential for two head coach positions - one for the Test aspect and the opposite for white-ball cricket.This is not a international idea as it is a determination that has seen World Cup champions England turn out to be a pressure over the previous couple of years with the split-coaching position, which sees Brendon McCullum teaching the Test aspect and Matthew Mott as white-ball coach."We have to move forward and we have the idea of splitting the roles to have a bit more focus on red-ball and white-ball cricket," Nkwe instructed News24 Sport on Monday on the T20 Women's World Cup launch at Newlands."We have to look at the reality of where world cricket is going. We still want to play Test cricket and want to revive it so we want to put a bit more investment in that."There's quite a lot of white-ball cricket within the subsequent eight years. If you have a look at the FTP, there's an ICC occasion yearly so that you're that and nonetheless need give attention to Test cricket."So we're looking at splitting that role and once it's approved, we can move onto the next thing and that is who are the two to help lead our team moving forward."Nkwe says that the method ought to "hopefully start very soon" and that CSA will promote the 2 positions."We won't be in a rush, we need to make sure we find a fitting individual and candidate in terms of where our red and white-ball teams should go and how they will take things forward," he stated.Boucher steered the Proteas by way of a tumultuous interval within the workforce's and CSA's historical past with the Black Lives Matter motion, Covid-19 and off-field issues making life on the sphere difficult."You can understand where he has come from, it's been a heavy last couple of years and he has done amazing work with the team through time toughs," Nkwe stated."It hasn't been an easy journey and he has done well, and you can see where the team is at now. "We would've clearly cherished to have him transfer with the workforce ahead as he has grown with the workforce has been incredible."Nkwe, who was once Boucher's assistant coach before stepping down, says CSA has had to ask some tough questions after losing Boucher. "It's by no means simple when somebody resigns and also you ask quite a lot of questions, however I'm glad he bought the IPL gig," he said. "And I do know he'll continue to grow as a coach and it is thrilling for him. We know he'll give extra of his expertise and alternatives to future generations on the IPL, however I hope he does properly."READ | Boucher replacement job: Who fits the bill and can they take the Proteas forward?The Proteas have already surrendered the T20 sequence to India, having gone 2-0 down forward of Tuesday's ultimate recreation in Indore (15:30 SA time).South Africa will then play three ODIs earlier than embarking to Australia for the T20 World Cup, beginning on 16 October. [ad_2] Source link

[softspeirs]

lost your head (inside your heart): speirs x reader one-shot

Pairing: Eventual Ron Speirs x Female Combat Medic!Reader, other platonic relationships. Rating: PG-13 to be safe - mentions of war-typical violence and PTSD. Summary: Post-war Easy officers reunion + you. Disclaimer: Absolutely no offense or disrespect intended to the real men of Easy Company. The characters here are based on the HBO miniseries and the actors’ portrayal. Author’s Note: This is my first BoB story! Please note this isn’t an accurate timeline of any of the Easy officers’ lives after they came back to the States. Additionally, to my knowledge, there were no American female combat medics during World War II, but there were field nurses close to the front lines in some theaters, so that’s where I came up with the idea for our reader’s story. I did some research to make this as realistic as possible, but as for the reader’s role with Easy, please suspend your disbelief briefly!

Spring, 1946

Heart racing, you sit upright in bed, the sound of crickets from the half-opened window filling your ears.

It’s too quiet.

You shake off the remnants of your nightmare - faces and voices you haven’t seen in years swimming behind your closed eyelids.

You’re not sure how much longer you can go on like this.

A creak in the hallway has you freezing, snapping to alertness before you remember there’s nothing to be scared of anymore. Not anymore. Even though the shadows look like enemy soldiers, even though your worst days and nights of the war return to you in your dreams, you force yourself to calm down.

“You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay…” You repeat it over and over again until you start to believe it.

You know it was your father in the hallway. He never comes in, never knocks on the door and asks if you’re okay. He knows you’re not, but he keeps it quiet.

You’ve never felt this kind of hopelessness before.

When will it end? When will the nightmares stop? When will you stop reaching for the arm of someone next to you, only to remember that you’re not in a foxhole in Bastogne anymore? When will you get used to the quiet and stillness of the nights instead of spending every night anticipating the next shell or missing the mindless chatter of your brothers?

Giving up on sleep, you straighten your nightgown and tug on the silk robe hanging from your bedpost and head to the kitchen.

A cup of tea might help.

Sitting at the kitchen table, you force your breath to get back to normal. The mug is warm in your palms, and it calms you slightly.

Another creak.

“It’s late,” your father says as he sits across from you.

“Can’t sleep.”

He watches you carefully. “It will get better.”

You meet his eyes, wary. You see the recognition there, and you have to remind yourself that he’s been through this, too.

“I miss them.” You don’t specify who. Take your pick, you think bitterly. You miss the men. You miss your friends, the ones who gave you rough but affectionate goodbyes before you came home, the ones who didn’t come home at all.

“I know,” he says softly. “Perhaps it’s time for a visit?”

You sit up straight. It never even crossed your mind. Your mind immediately flashes to Bill and Joe and Babe - Philly wasn’t too far away, but then you feel guilty thinking of the other guys you’d be missing.

“I’ll make a call tomorrow,” you tell your father. The prospect of seeing your friends again, whoever you could manage to contact, had you feeling lighter than you had in months.

.

.

.

“How did you get this number?” A joyous voice says in your ear, “I know I didn’t give it to you.”

“You’re not the only one with Intelligence experience, Nix.” You reply dryly. “Plus, your name is on the building. It wasn’t hard to look you up.”

He laughs. “Fair enough. How are you doing?” His voice softens, concerned. You hate that even over the phone, he can read you so well.

“How are you doing?” You retort, but there’s no heat behind it. “Staying out of trouble?”

“Not a bit.” A few beats pass, “Need to get out of town?”

Embarrassingly, you feel your throat get tight as tears well in your eyes. The prospect of seeing someone, anyone from your unit again has relief sweeping through you. “Nix…” You choke out, and he tuts over the phone.

“I know. You’re okay,” he says, as if he knows your own mantra, “Hang in there and get on the next train to New Jersey. I’ll pick you up.”

You can’t even speak. You’re so-- you don’t even know what you’re feeling. Relief, anticipation, grief, loneliness. It’s all too much.

“Try to get some sleep tonight, okay? I’ll see you soon.”

.

.

.

The last time you’d been on a train, you’d been in your uniform, pressed and starched to within an inch of its life, your hair neatly curled and pinned. The smile on your face had been forced, as had the calm you tried to exude as the train car was packed with people, all of them rejoicing in their sons and brothers and husbands coming home.

No one looked twice at the nurse, no one had any idea that she was moved from the aid station to being a combat medic when numbers grew thin. No one had any idea that she trained in Toccoa with paratroopers and could keep up with the best of them.

No, you were just another face in the crowd when you came home, and that was fine with you. You just never felt so isolated as you did then.

It feels similar, now, but you feel the anxiousness swell when the conductor announces your stop.

Gaze frantically scanning the platform, you see a familiar head of dark hair, though it’s still a shock to see him in civilian clothing. Your heart rate speeds up when he spots you through the window, a relieved smile spreading on his face.

You don’t remember getting your bag and being helped down off the train.

The next thing you know, you’re dropping your bag and being swept off your feet in the tightest, most comforting hug you’ve felt in months.

You start to cry.

“Jesus Christ, it’s good to see you.” He mumbles, and you release him so you can see his face. He looks a little emotional himself, though you know if you pointed it out he’d glare at you. “You alright?”

“Just-- I’m happy to see you, too.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

His arm loops around your shoulder as he picks up your suitcase and directs you towards a car. The ride back to his house is quiet, just the two of you enjoying being in each other’s company again. He points out a few sights, and you relish in hearing him talk.

“Got a surprise,” he says after he parks in front of the Nixon family home. “Come on.”

Instead of going inside the house, he leads you down the gravel driveway and into the backyard. “You hate surprises,” you say, and he snorts.

“It’s not for me, short stuff.”

You’re stopped dead in your tracks by familiar silhouettes lounging on the back porch. Winters, Welsh, Lipton, and Speirs. They’re here -- laughing at something Harry has just said, and you round on Nixon.

“I swear if this is just some ploy to get me to cry for an entire day--”

He holds his hands up in surrender. “I know better than to get you mad at me. Look, you sounded-- I just thought you’d be happy to have some friends around. They’ve been badgering me to get together anyway.” He watches as you take a deep breath. “Go on.” He nudges you. “They’re waiting for you.”

Narrowing your eyes at him, you pull yourself together and will yourself not to cry in front of the men you respect and care for more than anyone else in the world.

You take a few cautious steps forward until Harry sees you, and he’s on his feet before you can say anything, the others following close behind.

“Hot damn, look at you,” Harry says, and then you’re swept into another bone crushing hug.

You’re passed around, even hugged by a smiling Ron Speirs, the sight so unfamiliar it almost brings you to tears all over again.

Lip’s hand gripping yours, you meet Winters’ eye.

“I can’t believe you’re all here.”

“Someone had to make sure Nix wasn’t drinking himself to death,” Harry says dryly, avoiding the punch Nix sends to his shoulder.

“We’ve got food and drinks,” Lip says quietly so you can hear. “Let’s go catch up.”

Inside, you’re momentarily shocked by the state of the house - it’s nothing like what you thought it would be when Nixon invited you to stay with him for a few days.

“How are things at home?” Winters asks, kind eyes meeting yours.

You shrug. “Fine, I suppose.”

He gives you that look that says he knows you’re lying.

You resist the urge to roll your eyes. Even though he’s not your commanding officer anymore, you still feel like you can’t be totally candid with him. “My mother-- she doesn’t understand. My brother doesn’t really, either.”

You feel the others’ eyes on you.

“My brother got pushed through by our grandfather. Went to officer’s school straight away and was promoted before he even got overseas. He never spent any time in combat. Just one close call during troop transport. I know he had-- he had other experiences that have stuck with him, but how do I explain…” you trail off.

Lip’s hand has found yours again, giving it a comforting squeeze. “We’re all dealing with that,” he says quietly. “No one really knows what to say or do.”

You nod. “I know. It’s just-- hard.” You huff, “my mother can’t understand why I don’t want to go to parties and get married.” You spit the last word, and the men all laugh, save for Ron, whose face shutters a little.

It goes unnoticed by you, but not by Nixon. His job is to be observant, after all.

You sigh. “Let’s not talk about this anymore. Please. Let’s talk about something else.”

Harry ushers you into a chair, drinks are poured, and there’s food - for the first time in weeks you actually have an appetite.

They tell you about their jobs, about their girls, about adjusting to life now. You mention you went to San Francisco to visit Joe Liebgott almost immediately when you got back - he was back in the States before you and had a letter waiting for you at your family home before you even got in the door.

At some point, Ron excuses himself to smoke, and with a nudge from Nixon when Harry and Dick are distracted, you follow, a frown on your face when you realize how quiet he’s been since you showed up.

Maybe he counted on this just being an officer’s reunion? Maybe he was tired of you hanging around. You doubt it though, because you’ve been with this group since Toccoa. The officers were the first group of men in Easy to accept you when you started your training, and you suspect Lip was a big part of getting most of the company on side for you being their combat medic when you were transferred after Easy shipped out to Aldbourne.

Opening the creaky back door, you notice Ron startle from where he sits on the top step.

“Sorry,” you say, “can I sit?”

He gestures to the spot next to him, and you settle there, tucking your skirt underneath you.

He offers you a cigarette and you take one from him, leaning closer so he can light it.

“Everything alright?”

He meets your eyes, his as dark and mysterious as they’ve always been. “I’m always alright.”

You nod. “I know.” A sigh. “You’re going back to Easy after your leave?”

“That’s the plan.”

“That’s good.” You wince, the conversation so stilted and awkward. You never even considered that you might have nothing to talk about with your friends when there wasn’t a war to fight anymore.

“Nixon said you were having a rough time.”

“Like I said in there—“

“Not just with your family.” He interrupts, “Though they should shape up and start respecting you.” His eyes are intense, but they soften upon seeing your surprise. “Besides that, though.” He takes another drag. “Nightmares?”

You roll your eyes. “God, you all are such gossips.”

A smirk. “It’s not gossip if it’s the truth.”

You’re silent for a few minutes until you figure out how to answer him. You can feel his eyes on the side of your face. “I have nightmares almost every night. I don’t sleep anymore.”

You’re surprised when Ron’s free hand settles over yours. It’s hesitant, like he doesn’t want to spook you.

“There’s…” he trails off like he’s still figuring out what to say, “... there’s nothing wrong with having nightmares. Trying to make sense of all the shit we went through…” he shakes his head. “No one would blame you for not being able to sleep.” He squeezes your hand once before letting go.

“And you? How are you holding up?”

His chuckle is hollow. “I’m fine. I told you—“

“You’re always fine. Right.”

You get to your feet, ready to go back inside. You straighten the pleats on your skirt and take a step before his hand closes on your wrist again.

“You did what you had to do to stay alive and keep everyone else alive,” he says, firm. A pause, and then, “Your mother shouldn’t be trying to marry you off to someone who doesn’t understand that.”

He lets go of your wrist, and you’re left puzzled about what that has to do with anything.

.

.

.

“... and then she takes off, her helmet practically flying off her head, and starts screaming at Dike to keep the attack moving. Heard it clear as day through Luz’s radio.”

“You didn’t need a radio to hear it,” Winters adds dryly, and you giggle, feeling warm and content thanks to the wine in your belly and the warmth of your friends at your side.

You take your empty glass to the sink and elbow Nix lightly as he washes a pan - he smiles down at you. “Okay?”

“I never knew you could cook.”

His sleeves are rolled up as he refocuses on his task. “Not really answering my question, kid.”

You roll your eyes, “You’re not that much older than me.”

“A whole year.” He confirms, winking. “You talked to Ron earlier?”

“We had a cigarette outside. What’s up with him?”

“Thought maybe you would know.”

“What’re we whispering about?” Harry says into your ear, and you jump, almost dropping the glass in your hand. He laughs and you glare at him. “Sorry.”

“You are not.”

He grins. “You’re right.” His arm goes over your shoulder in a way that takes you back to cold nights in Bastogne. “Are you sticking around tonight?”

You nod. “Too late to catch a train. Nix was kind enough to give me the guest room.”

Harry looks affronted. “You mean the rest of us have to sleep on the floor?”

You level your gaze, eyes narrowed but amusement lacing your voice, “Somehow I think you’ll manage.”

Lipton comes in, chuckling at your antics. “I have to get going. Gotta work tomorrow.” He pulls you into a hug, his voice soft in your ear. “Anytime you need to get away or need someone to talk to, you call me. Got it?”

“You got it. Same for you, Lip.” You whisper, squeezing him tight.

Lip says his goodbyes and it’s bittersweet. You’re so happy to see him happy and at ease, but sad to see him go. You know it’ll be awhile before you see him again, despite his invitation. You can’t stand being a burden to these men anymore, even though they’re offering their company out of the kindness of their hearts. You still feel in the back of your mind that they were roped into this by Nixon.

Harry and Ron bicker over who gets the couch in the living room while Dick shakes his head, grabbing a pillow and stretching his lanky form out on the floor. You grin at the three of them and say goodnight, following Nix upstairs where he shows you the guestroom.

As soon as you’re alone, you worry about nightmares. You’re hoping the full meal and alcohol from the night is enough to send you to a worry-free sleep.

.

.

.

You’re under heavy fire.

The trees are exploding, the men around you are screaming, and the calls for a medic over and over are deafening.

Under it all, you hear your name. It’s a voice you recognize, a voice you want to open your eyes for, but you’re too scared. You don’t want to see the damage around you.

A shake to your shoulder brings you back to awareness and you bolt upright, nearly knocking into someone.

“You’re okay, you’re safe,” they’re saying, over and over, and in the dim light of the room you see Ron there, eyes intense as he holds you steady.

The door clicks shut and you realize with embarrassment that you probably woke the entire house.

You groan pitifully, pulling yourself up to a more stable seated position. Ron moves to the end of the bed, hands hovering near you like he’s worried you might panic again. “I’m sorry--”

“Don’t apologize.” It’s an order; you recognize that tone of his. He meets your eyes and deflates a little. “You scared the hell out of me.”

You can’t look at him anymore and see the disappointment there. You remember this feeling from when he took over as Easy’s CO - you have always admired him, and couldn’t bear the thought of letting him down.

“Hey.” His hand settles over yours again. “You don’t have anything to be ashamed about.”

You’re finally able to meet his eyes, and you don’t see the judgment there that you assumed you would.

The tears come too easily, and you don’t even shrink away from him this time when he moves so you’re side-by-side, his arm going tentatively around your shoulders and pulling you against his chest.

“How long am I going to feel like this?” You ask, your voice cracking through your tears. “I can’t sleep, I can barely eat… I can’t do this anymore.”

His eyes are fierce when he looks down at you. “Stop talking like that.” He shifts you in his hold so you’re face to face, only inches apart. “You have people who care about you. Even if they can’t understand what you did, what you’ve seen, the person you are--” He ducks his head a little, forcing you to meet his eyes again. “-- I can. We can,” he adds, gesturing towards the door. “Every single man you saved, every single man who was fortunate enough to know you knows the type of person you are.”

As you stare at him, trying to comprehend what he’s telling you, something in his eyes shifts. His face is more open than you can ever remember it being, and his lips part as his own gaze slides to your mouth.

A wave of heat washes over you and for the first time, you really really look at Ron Speirs. You flash back to a hundred moments in Toccoa, in England, in France, and Holland-- a hundred times when you noticed a look on his face, a clenching of his jaw when one of the men were making a joke to you -- you assumed it was the same way Winters and Nixon were with you. Protective. Brotherly.

Now? Now things look different.

Almost like he can read your mind, he says your name. His voice is so low it sends shivers down your spine. You don’t remember him ever calling you by your first name.

Despite its impropriety, you find yourself leaning into him closer, not really giving a damn about what anyone else might think. After everything the two of you have been through, you find your sense of decorum has gone out the window.

A creak of the floorboards outside the bedroom has you practically springing apart, Ron rising to his feet swiftly, the door opening to reveal a sheepish looking Lewis Nixon, a mug of steaming liquid in his hand.

“Sorry…” he says slowly, glancing back and forth between the two of you. “Thought a cup of tea might help.”

“You’ll be alright?” Ron asks you, and you nod, unable to find your voice.

He nods and leaves you alone with Nix, shutting the door softly behind him.

.

.

.

You take the chipped mug from Nixon when he sits down on the edge of the bed, ignoring the way his eyes study you.

“I have to ask--”

“Please don’t.”

He grins. “As your honorary big brother--”

“You’re 12 months older than me!”

“Do I need to be worried about that?” He finishes as if you never spoke.

“Worried about what?”

He tilts his head towards the closed door. “Ron.”

You frown. “Why would you need to be worried about him?”

He shakes his head, shrugging. “Was hoping you’d tell me. How long has that been going on?”

You’re incredulous. “There’s nothing going on.”

He’s quiet for a minute. “You-- you screamed. In your sleep.” He fiddles with a loose thread on the bedspread. “Before I could even get out of my bedroom, he was already up the stairs to help you.”

“So?” You take a sip of tea.

“Christ,” Nix mutters, “You’re both as bad as each other.”

You glare. “You’re confusing-- camaraderie with romance.” You stutter, hating him more and more for the laugh he’s trying -- and failing -- to smother.

“I don’t get confused.” He leans over, plucking your mug from your hand and setting it down on the nightstand. “There was a night in Haguenau. I saw you two.”

Flustered, you glare at him. “We were just talking.”

“He never sought anyone else out. Everyone from that whole patrol-- after how bad it went, and he only tried to find you afterwards.”

“He would never abandon the men after a mission.”

Nixon looks frustrated. “I’m not saying he did. I’m trying to tell you that when you demanded to go on the patrol in case anyone got hurt, I’ve never seen him so angry, or worried. And when you all got back, after Jackson, after all the shit that happened after… it was still you he wanted to talk to.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

He leans in, voice quiet and soothing. “I’m just pointing out that he’s not your CO anymore. You don’t have to be afraid of hiding what you feel. Now, sleep. In you go,” he says, standing and pulling back the blankets so you can slide into bed.

“Tell him how you feel before his leave ends.” Nix whispers, pressing a firm kiss to your temple before leaving the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

In the morning, you have to work up the courage to go downstairs and face them. You’re embarrassed, and you haven’t been able to stop thinking about what Nix told you last night.

When you get to the kitchen, you’re met with the back of Dick Winters as he fusses over something on the stove.

“What, your best friend makes you do the cooking?” You ask, and he turns.

“I owed him one.”

You enjoy companionable silence while he cooks, even when he turns and places a hot cup of coffee in front of you on the oak table.

“What are you going to do now?” He asks eventually, and you find yourself weighing your words carefully.

“I-- I don’t know. I want to work, or do something productive. I can’t go back to society parties and charity.”

He nods, thoughtful. “You’re close to Philadelphia; have you ever thought of asking Bill or Joe Toye if they have any connections?”

You shrug. “My mother would never let me move to the city. Not before I get married.”

A cleared throat from the doorway makes you look up, meeting Harry and Nixon’s eyes.

“Morning,” Harry drawls. “Tired this morning?”

A laugh escapes you in a breath. “With all due respect, fuck off, sir.”

Harry and Nixon laugh, and you sheepishly look over at Winters, who shrugs.

You notice Ron is nowhere to be found but you don’t say anything. You still haven’t come to terms with whatever the hell Nixon was trying to tell you the night before. It’s all you can do not to flush with embarrassment all over again.

Breakfast is a rowdy affair, you and Winters sharing amused glances over your coffee while Harry and Nix argue over the validity of stories you’ve all heard a hundred times.

After a while, the front door opens and closes, and then Ron comes in, hands deep in his pockets. He actually smiles a little as he gets some good-natured ribbing from the other guys, and then he’s pulling up a chair between you and Winters, grabbing a plate for himself.

“What time’s your train today, kiddo?” Harry asks after awhile, and while you glare at the nickname, you sigh, not ready for this weekend to be over.

“Two in the afternoon.”

“I’ll drive you,” Nix offers, coffee halfway to his mouth, but he freezes when Ron interrupts.

“I’ve got a train to catch around then anyway. We can share a cab.” He glances over, “If that’s alright with you.”

You nod, suddenly unable to look away from your mug. A kick to your foot has you glancing up, meeting Nixon’s smug face across the table.

The five of you pass the early afternoon in the backyard of the Nixon estate, mostly lounging about and revelling in the freedom of a sunny afternoon. An hour before you need to leave for the train station, Winters pulls you aside and asks if you want to go for a walk.

You agree, happy to spend a little more time with him. You have no idea when you’ll be seeing him next, though you hope it’ll be soon (and you suspect it will be, if Nix has anything to say about it).

The two of you walk slowly.

“Are you going to be alright when you go home?” He asks eventually, face turned up as you come to a stop, soaking up the sunlight.

You sigh, frustrated. “I guess so. Sir, I--”

He holds up his hand, “How long have we known each other?” He smiles. “You don’t have to call me sir.”

You laugh. “Old habits die hard.” You compose yourself, “It’s been two years since we all came home, and I still feel like I’m back there. Every night, I relive it.”

“I do too.” He admits. “It doesn’t make you weak, or a burden. Every one of us has nightmares.”

“I have to pretend I haven’t seen what I’ve seen. Done the things I’ve done. No one else understands. I go to these parties, and people there just want to talk about--” You sigh, “It’s just all so trivial.”

His hand falls heavily on your shoulder, but the comforting touch is welcome. “Whenever you need someone to talk to, you can talk to me.” His head tilts back towards the farm, “Any of the men, really.”

“Thank you,” you reply softly, feeling tears well up in your eyes. You still don’t know how you got lucky enough to be placed with Easy, let alone make the friendships you had during your time in Europe.

“We better get back.”

Back at the house, you catch the tail end of Harry badgering Ron about something, Nixon laying on the lawn, sunglasses perched on his nose.

“-- all I know is you better stop being such a chickenshit--”

“Harry!”

He spins around to face you, grin firmly in place. “Nothing to see here, just giving our Captain a friendly kick in the ass--”

“Alright, alright.” Ron says, glaring. He turns to you, “We should get going soon.”

You’re fighting back tears as you change your clothes and get your back packed, meeting the men downstairs.

“Oh,” Nix groans, “Please don’t cry.” He embraces you tightly. “You’re going to be okay. If you need anything, you call me and I’ll be on the next train.”

You swallow hard. “I know.”

Harry is next, his face stern when he looks at you. “Don’t even think about crying right now, kiddo, or I’m going to get upset.” He smiles softly at you, pulling you into his arms. “Same goes for me, sweetheart. One phone call.”

“Thank you.” You whisper.

You meet Winters’ eyes last. Dick, you force yourself to call him in your head, even though you think you might never be able to do it out loud. “You should talk to your mother,” he says quietly, “Tell her about what you did, if you can.” He hugs you next, a softer hug than the others gave you, but still the balm you need. “I don’t need to tell you I’m a phone call away, too, do I?”

.

.

.

The train station is loud. Your pulse is hammering again as you struggle to navigate the crowd. You’ve got your eyes on Ron’s large form in front of you, his stride sure as he checks over his shoulder to make sure you’re still behind him.

It’s quieter on the platform, and you breathe out a sigh of relief once you’re relatively alone.

“Better?” Ron asks, and you look at him sideways. He sighs, “It was loud in there.” He pulls a cigarette out of his uniform pocket. “It bothers me too.”

You don’t say anything, but take a minute to study him. He’s in his dress uniform, still enlisted, and when he tugs his garrison cap on, the glint of his Captains’ bars in the light draw your eye, and the eye of several others on the platform.

Suddenly you’re struck by how handsome he is. You’ve always recognized it, but forced yourself to ignore it, to get you through the war unscathed. There was no room for romance in war, especially not if you wanted to be accepted and taken seriously.

“How long do you have left?” You ask.

He glances down at you. “I’ve got a week left of leave. Then I’m reporting to start training new recruits.” He looks down at his feet. “What about you? What are you going to do now?”

You shrug. “I have no idea.”

To your surprise, he smiles. “That’s kind of nice, isn’t it?” He meets your eyes with his, “To have no idea what comes next.”

Despite yourself, you smile back. “Those Privates are going to love you.”

He rolls his eyes fondly. “They need discipline.”

Saluting, you laugh. “Yes, sir.”

His smile fades the longer he looks at you. Just like the night before, something shifts in his gaze. “Don’t let your parents marry you off to the first guy who asks.” He says, his voice tight.

“You act like I’m just going to let them--”

“I know you might not have much say in the matter.” He says firmly. He steps closer, inches away, the height difference between you never more obvious than it is now. “You deserve someone who respects you, who knows what you volunteered to do. Who cares about you--” He stops himself, swallowing hard.

“Captain--”

“Don’t--” His jaw is clenched before he speaks again, “You don’t need to do that anymore. You can say my name.” He exhales like he’s just run a marathon. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

You’re surprised by how well you can read what he’s feeling on his face. He was always so stoic and stern, except in private moments that he only allowed a handful of people to see. You know, though, under it all, he’s more vulnerable than he pretends to be. He carries the weight of all the men he’s lost and his own personal hell on his shoulders.

“Ron.”

His eyes close briefly at the sound of his name on your lips. It lights something up inside you.

“Don’t get married.” He repeats, his voice low.

You don’t know why you’re so nervous - you’ve dodged bullets -- but on an impulse, you reach for his hand. “For Christ’s sake,” you mutter to yourself, before speaking to Ron, “Do you want to come with me?”

He looks surprised. You think you can count on one hand the number of times you’ve seen Ron Speirs look surprised. “What?”

You can’t help it, you smother a laugh, but can’t hide the smile. “You have a week, right? Come with me. I could use some company.”

“You could have asked Nixon or Welsh.”

“I didn’t ask them. I’m asking you.”

He looks like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Please don’t misunderstand me--”

“Don’t misunderstand me.” You interrupt. “I heard what you said. And what you didn’t say.”

He shakes his head, his lips quirking upwards. “You’re--

“Crazy? Too forward?”

“Extraordinary.” He takes a step closer, his eyes burning. “Beautiful. One of the bravest people I’ve ever met.”

All your bravado vanishes. “My parents are going to interrogate you. When they find out you were my CO--”

“I don’t care. If you want me to go with you, then I’m coming with you. I’ll go buy another train ticket right now, if that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want.” You don’t allow yourself to hesitate, even though you’re scared to death.

His hand comes forward to cradle your face almost in slow motion. “I’ll be right back,” He whispers, and then he’s leaving his bag at your feet, taking a few quick strides back towards the station. He stops when he gets to the doorway, and then jogs back over to you, taking your face in his hands quickly.

He presses a hard, fast kiss to your mouth that has you both reeling from the shock and laughing from happiness, and when he pulls away, he points at you, “Don’t go anywhere.”

“I’ll be right here.”

He slows down, then, his eyes dark and expression vulnerable again. His eyes run over your face like he’s trying to memorize it. Slowly this time, he kisses you again, stealing your breath and working his mouth against yours in a way that has you practically seeing stars. “I should have done that two years ago.” He says quietly. “Got a lot of lost time to make up for.”

.

.

.

Epilogue

You’re balancing a tray of pastries in one hand and your overnight bag in your other hand as you walk up the long gravel drive, and you can hear your husband muttering behind you about you being too stubborn to accept his help.

“We’re already late--”

“There you are!” A loud voice from the porch calls, “I thought we were going to have to send a search party--” He stops, taking off his sunglasses as you get closer. “Holy shit.” His eyes are fixed on your swollen belly. A mischievous glint in his eye, he takes your bag from you while Ron grabs the dessert tray. “Do I need to kick his ass?”

Ron rolls his eyes.

“He made an honest woman out of me already, Nix.” You say playfully.

“Yeah, I remember that.” He tugs you closer, giving you a tight hug. “I’m happy for you, kid.”

There’s more of Easy at this reunion than the last time you were here, and you brace yourself for the onslaught of congratulations and mock threats. It’s amazing to see how good natured Ron is being about the whole thing, considering a few years ago these same men were all terrified of him.

You’re content to sit in a comfortable chair with a pillow supporting your back, watching as the men start up a baseball game and laughing at their antics, feeling more at home than you have in years.

A clink of a cane next to you and then Bill is there in the chair to your left, grinning at you. “Do you need anything?”

“I’m okay, Bill. You?”

“Better now I don’t have to be worried about you every day.” He eyes you carefully. “Nightmares?”

You shrug. “Still have a few. Probably always will.” You glance over at Ron, who’s talking with Harry and Dick. “But I don’t suffer through them alone anymore.”

“You’ve never been alone,” he points out, “But I know what you mean.” His gaze is drawn to a dark-haired woman across the yard, laughing at something Babe is saying.

By the end of the day, you’re exhausted, but so, so deliriously happy. You’ve got the man you love at your side, your friends are here and alive, and you can finally see your future.

[watarigarasu]

October 28th – Spell Book

13 Days of Spooky Writing Event

Pairing: Thorin x Reader

Word count: 2,080

Warnings: Slight violence

Author’s note: None

Deadly silence fell upon the Company of Dwarves sitting around the campfire. In that moment, even the forest around them seemed to suddenly grow mute as the unexpected confession was made, the one nobody could predict. Every pair of curious eyes was now glued to the woman sitting with her legs crossed on the ground and nervously playing with her fingers, the intense nervousness hanging heavy in the air.

It was not the first time when the Company was interested in the newest member, one of the race of Men, so young comparing to their long lifespans yet no less motivated to help them with their mission. The task to reclaim the homeland of Erebor was of a great importance, after all, and you were taking it seriously from the very first day your roads met. The leader, Thorin Oakenshield, was apparently the only one suspicious about your so-called good will and clear intentions, never allowing himself to sleep peacefully whenever you were keeping a guard at night. During the days of the journey, he kept watching you discreetly, looking for any signs of betrayal—something which could finally give him a valuable answer for the same questions flowing through his head over and over again.

Why? Why were you trying so hard to help them? Why were you risking your life, when they promised you nothing but danger and creatures of the night creeping behind every corner? Why did you leave your home to join a band of infamous Dwarves? And how, for Mahal’s sake, were you supposed to be any way useful in that case?

For the first few weeks, you were fun to be around, you knew stories they were not familiar with and your sense of humour seemed to fit the one of Thorin’s nephews. You showed interest in Dwalin’s ways of fighting and your eyes grew huge whenever Balin was sharing one of his wisdoms. Still, when it came to any dangerous encounters, you were no more useful than the hobbit, or maybe even lesser. You grew tired way too soon, your long legs not used to wandering for so long, you could barely hold a sword and your aim was poor when it came to using a bow and arrow. The only thing Thorin considered as odd after spending a month with you among the rest of the Company was that he had never caught a glimpse of what were you so fiercely hiding in your bag, the one you carried with yourself everywhere you go.

It was a serene evening at the edge of a meadow, full of now closed flowers. The moon did not peek from behind the heavy clouds but it was not raining at least and so, Thorin considered it as a good time and place to take a rest. Tonight it was supposed to be your turn to take the watch, that is why he quickly decided to take an advantage of the loudly snoring comrades and ask you few questions face to face.

You surprised him, though, when he approached you and sat heavily by your side.

“You rarely rest, sir,” you noticed and observed the spark of puzzlement in his eyes. In the dark of the night, they seemed almost completely black, so much unlike the bright blue whenever sunlight fell upon them.

“I will rest once we reach our destination.”

“You don’t trust me, do you?”

The way you looked at him expectantly, and with a hint of sadness beneath the mask of daily exhaustion caused him to lick his lips, the taste of ale still present between the thick hair of his beard and moustache. You seemed to be honest and Thorin lived for long enough to be able to point at those who were trying to wrong him.

“Does that surprise you?” he answered your question with another.

“No. When I think about it, not in the slightest.” You shrugged. “I just thought I managed to prove my loyalty.”

“How so?”

“By staying there with you and helping when needed.”

Thorin shushed you with a single raise of his hand. It was much bigger than yours, apparently capable of fitting yours in completely—a perfect solution for the upcoming cool, autumn days. You quickly dismissed the thought.

“Do not get me wrong but the mere fact that you are still here does not prove anything. On the contrary.”

“Do you believe I’m a spy then?”

“I said no such thing.”

“That’s what you insinuated, sir.”

“I simply do not understand you…” He paused for a while, listening to the crickets in the grass. “Your motives, your goals. You said you wanted to help but how do you intend to do it without an ability to protect yourself? If not for Dwalin’s reflexes, you would be long dead.”

You remained silent and involuntarily squeezed the fabric of your bag, which was now resting against your leg. Suddenly, it seemed to grow heavy, just like your head, full of worries and wonders. Thorin’s words hurt you, that was true, but you could also understand him and his point of view.

If only the reality was so easy to explain.

“How do you want to prove yourself worthy, human?” His tone was authoritative and you could no longer bear the intensity of his gaze upon you.

Loud snoring did not fog your mind, the chaos of thoughts making it almost impossible to think straight. You did not have an answer for that question and you were still afraid to reveal the truth, however, you knew that you could not hide it forever. Not from the clever sight of Thorin.

Hesitantly, you reached to your bag and grabbed the hard cover of the book you were carrying but in the exact same moment when you took it out and the dim light of the fireplace fell upon it, there was a loud, ominous blowing in the horns echoing from behind your back.

Thorin quickly stood up, just like the rest of the Company was immediately rushing to grab their weapons, as if they were never asleep in the first place. Whatever kind of enemy you were going to face now, they surely outnumbered you. The book was still resting in your hand when everyone prepared for the battle and when you opened it on the page marked with a bird’s feather, you knew that it was the end of the secrets.

The group of orcs which attacked you was not as countless as you were afraid of and apparently the brave Dwarves knew how to handle them, even after being abruptly awakened. The lack of daylight did not make it easier for you to avoid the arrows and blows from the axes, just like the high grasses and roots peeking from the ground did not create a very comfortable field for a fight. This time, however, you decided not to flee nor to hide your doings from the rest of the Company members who happened to be around you in the same time and so, you quickly recalled the spells from the book to shield yourself and them if necessary.

However, when you heard Ori’s desperate cry for Thorin from afar, your focus was lost and you almost lost the balance in your legs when the orc’s axe hit the magical shield you hid under. You managed to stand your ground and used all your force to push him away, enough to give you space to run to the direction where you believed Thorin must have been, most likely fighting one of the strongest opponents, as he always did.

When you ran to the edge of the forest, you noticed him clashing swords with an enormous and particularly horrifying looking orc. They were both moving fast and aiming to kill—certainly not a place for you to interrupt. Quickly, you looked into the book to find a perfect spell, something which could stop the creature before Thorin would get seriously injured, anything which could help you save him… Whatever it takes.

Thorin fell down on his back after a heavy blow was aimed at him and the groan of pain he let out was like a bucket of cold water thrown on your head. You could no longer wait and simply watch, you had to do something right now and so, you muttered the first spell which seemed to be the most suitable in this situation—the one you have never used before.

Dark smoke fell from your fingertips and glided right above the ground to the orc who lifted his weapon ready to attack, but before he managed to swing the sword, dense fog blinded him and bound his limbs until you could no longer recognize his shape from behind the thick mist. Then, you heard a bloodcurdling shriek, the one which almost made you cower in fear of what have you just done, if not the constantly repeating thought that you had to help Thorin, that you had to save him.

Eventually, it was Thorin who stood on his legs, grabbed the sword and blindly stabbed the orc, finishing his agonizing moans with a single cut. Only then, the smoke seemed to thin and withdrew, coming back to you in a blink of an eye and disappearing in our hand, the one still held above the open spell book.

Thorin looked at you with wide open eyes and unreadable expression, the corpse of an orc motionless by his feet and bloody sword in his hand.

Sitting around the campfire, members of the Company were tending their wounds and exchanging some of the most interesting moments of the battle they have just won. Naturally, the most excited were Fíli and Kíli, bragging about how many orcs did they slaughter tonight. Thorin was silent and although his gaze was directed at the fire, you were the only one who occupied his thoughts at that moment.

“What was that?” he asked suddenly and the heroic stories quieted down, the Company looking at him first before realizing that his question was directed toward you, sitting at the opposite side of the campfire.

You were speechless, not knowing where to start and the haughty tone of his voice not making it easier for you.

“What was that?” he hissed. “For how long were you able to make this tricks?”

This time you managed to take the book out of the bag, feeling the weight of every pair of eyes upon you. You showed it to Thorin in the light of the fire; the heavy cover and engraved symbols at the front.

“Since I bought this spell book,” you confessed. “At first I didn’t know what’s what. There was a wandering merchant in my town and he offered me a low price for that book. I thought it was interesting, it seemed antique and I believed it may contain some interesting stories but apparently…”

“Apparently it was a book full of black magic spells,” Thorin finished for you and you lowered your head in shame. “How could you be so reckless?” He spat. “How could you be so near-sighed and ignorant? Do you have any idea of all the calamities you could bring upon us with that foul thing?”

You felt like a scolded child now, tears picking at the corners of your eyes. Perhaps Thorin was right, you should have never bought it, just like you should have never jeopardize the Company during their journey.

“Nevertheless…” Thorin’s voice was much more calm now, causing you to look up at him and his stoic face. To your relief, there was no signs of disgust toward you, as you previously expected. “The truth is that you saved my life and therefore I owe you.”

“I didn’t want to hurt anybody, I swear,” you added. “I know it’s black magic but I thought that maybe (even though it sounds quite stupid right now) I could use it for good purposes. To help the others. Maybe black magic is only black when the heart of the user is such but under right circumstances it can be different.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Thorin nodded. “Yet you still have to learn a lot, little witch.”

“But we are willing to help!” Kíli interrupted suddenly.

“Not as a punching bags, of course, but still,” added Fíli.

You giggled at their excitement and thought that surprisingly, purchasing the spell book was not as bad decision as you worried about.

[kinetic-elaboration]

First Lines Meme

I was tagged by @hopskipaway​. Thank you! I love dong this sort of thing!

rules: list the first line of your last 20 stories (if you have less, list them all.) see if you can find any patterns and choose your favorite opening. tag your favorite authors.

I’m doing this in reverse order, newest first, just looking at my AO3 profile (so not counting stuff on tumblr, collab chapters, anon works, etc.)

1. Marcus Kane's body shows up again in June, skeletal and rotting, six months after his disappearance at the turn of the year. -- Mountain Lion Mean, Gen, 6,000 words

2. Nightmares are not re-creations. -- Night Watch, Bellarke, 3,000 words

3. Recently declassified Earth Space Probe Agency file for the United States Star Ship Arkadia:  - A Documentary History of the U.S.S.S. Arkadia, Braven, 1,600 words

4. The sky has turned a bruised yellow, like the inside of a plum, by the time Bellamy starts seeing the robots in the fields. - A Different Kind of Ghost, Braven, 3,000 words

5. At noon on the third-to-last day before Christmas, Murphy leaves the cafe, with a single peppermint mocha and a small paper bag, and heads right, walking parallel to the ocean.  -- Merry Christmas, Lovebirds, Murven, 4,700 words

6. The traveler arrives on the first night of the annual Christmas bazaar. --The Ice Princess / Turn the Radiator On, Bellarke, 5,700 words

7. The wind is not playing around today. -- Safe Harbor, Bellarke, 7,000 words

8. Octavia doesn't mean to get in trouble, but somehow it happens again and again, and no one ever wants to hear the explanation. -- The Wanheda Tape, Gen, 8,600 words

9. Day four-hundred-twenty-three in the bleak, eternal nothingness of space. -- Mad Women, Gen, 7,000 words

10. High above, forceful winds blow through the tops of the trees, but on the ground the night air is still and calm and Clarke is alone. -- Monarchs, Bellarke, 2,700 words

11. Twenty-two, weightless in the season of the in-between, barely buoyed into adulthood: she spent the summer in a house with long white curtains and a view of the beach.  -- Or Anyone Like You, Bellarke, 6,600 words

12. The later the evening, the louder the chirping of the crickets, the more insistent the insect-buzz. -- Summer of the Not-Quite-Seen, Octavia & Jasper & Monty, 2,500 words

13. They set out early, the sky still edged in pink from sunrise, the neighborhood quiet and empty and still.  -- The Road Leads West, Briller, 1,500 words

14. The weekly soccer game is cancelled, because no one wants to play in this breathless, humid heat. -- At Heart, Murven, 1,400 words

15. The car has stalled out on the side of the road. -- Fifteen Miles, Clarke/Raven, 1,300 words

16. Murphy pulls away first, with an abrupt and jerking movement, but doesn’t break eye contact or step back. -- Taste Test, Murven, 700 words

17. Clarke insists that they wait until morning to set out, a plan to which Bellamy only reluctantly agrees. -- Time to Play B-Sides, Bellarke, 19,000 words

18. "Just remember to keep your eyes open," Raven's new boss tells her, as he throws a set of silver keys over the counter. -- Never-Contented Things!, Ocaven, 7,000 words

19. At the turn of the season, as the last frost breaks and the first cold rains turn the ground to mud, Octavia sets off on a trading expedition, and takes Jasper with her. -- What Beautiful Things, Jonty, 4,000 words

20. Clarke hears the rumor at dinner: newcomers have arrived in the Mountain. -- The End of the Story, Clarke/Maya, 13,300 words

(Bonus, because I feel like Taste Test is too short to count)

21. Raven's taxi drops her off at the end of the dirt road, where the forest opens up onto a grassy, lakefront campground, strewn with tents.  -- Hands That Burn, Clarke/Raven, 5,000 words

So I don’t know if there’s any pattern really... I don’t like starting with dialogue, and that’s a conscious decision, though I made one exception for it in Never-Contented Things! In general, I try to start out with a strong image that gives a sense of the setting/mood/tone of the story and, hopefully, draws people in, setting up questions the reader will want answered.

My favorites are Mountain Lion Mean and A Different Kind of Ghost.

Not sure who’s done this/done it recently so just consider this a hello at the least: @thelittlefanpire @marauders-groupie @justbecauseyoubelievesomething @easilydistractedbyfanfic @carrieeve @she-who-the-river-could-not-hold

[hypnoticwinter]

Down the Rabbit Hole part 13

“Okay,” Makado says, straightening my lapels. “Your name is Roan Merriweather. You’re in Admin but I pulled you because you know how to work a camera and you’ve always wanted to take a trip down into the Pit. Sounds good?”

“This is my cover story?” I ask, giving her a dubious glance.

“Something like that,” she shrugs. “Just play it cool.”

“You still haven’t told me what I’m doing here,” I tell her, trying not to let her hear a note of panic in my voice. We’ve been waiting outside the door of the barracks for a solid five minutes now, while Makado checks her phone periodically and texts Peter. We’d dropped him off at a different barracks earlier; neither of them would tell me why. Finally Makado rolls her eyes and shoves her phone back into her pocket.

“Don’t worry about it,” she tells me. “Just be cool, and we’ll get you into the Pit.”

I can hear rollicking conversation from within the barracks, sounding like a solid six or seven people all having a decent time. “Showtime,” she murmurs to me, and then Makado knocks briefly and saunters in, leaving me to trail along in her wake, the conversation stilling so suddenly that I imagine I can hear crickets.

Inside there are about seven or eight people, all in various states of undress or relaxation; there’s a dartboard on the wall, cots pressed against the sides, an attached bathroom and a general air of levity. I imagine I can smell it, like walking into what I imagined a field barracks somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq might have been like, the same lazy air of general superiority, the same sense of cagey, feigned easiness that at the first sign of trouble could evaporate into a coordinated machine, each of its members greasing together like fitted gears.

Makado clears her throat and silence falls, with a last subtle clink as someone nudges a bottle somewhere out of sight with their foot. Eight pairs of eyes swing around to meet ours, gazing with mixed curiosity and indifference. I shift uncomfortably, not knowing where to look.

“Gentlemen,” Makado says, voice colored with what sounds to me like a suppressed grin, “I have a couple of late additions to the team.”

“And lady,” someone calls out from the back in a low-pitched but identifiably female voice, and the silence breaks like an ice sheet and everyone laughs, and even Makado rolled her eye, an expression of tolerant levity rising on her face.

“Alright, Elena,” she sas. “And lady. Ladies, I should say, now,” twisting around to nod at me. I don’t understand what she wants for a moment but then I realize and I take a step forward and peer out at the faces peering out at me then raise my hand in a perfunctory greeting.

“Uh, hi.”

Dead silence. My eyes scan over rugged faces, bearded and beardless, all seemingly male. Whoever Elena is she must be all the way at the back. There are grins and chuckles and nudges but I expected that somehow, it doesn’t surprise me. I’m an intruder; this is a team.

Someone wolf-whistles and even though I nearly burst out laughing, from next to me I hear Makado suck in her breath, I could practically feel her temperature shift from tolerably warm to unbearably frosty, and then the woman who’d called out before, Elena, stands up and grins at me.

“About damn time!” she crows, looking around at the rest of the guys. “Too much of a damn sausage party in this team!”

And then everyone laughs again and I’m smiling in spite of myself, I can’t help it. Elena motions to me and I look over at Makado, feeling a little like I‘m a new kid at a playground asking my mom if I could go play with all of these weird kids I’d never seen before. She grins at me, openly then, and again I think I see what Peter saw four years ago. Something in me aches and I think Makado must have seen it as well because her smile lost a couple of molars; she looks at me cautiously for a moment before clapping her hands to regain the room’s attention.

“Everybody,” she says, “this is Roan, uh, Merriweather. She’s from Admin, she’s going to be accompanying you on your expedition.”

Somebody groans and makes a face at me, and someone else from the back yells out “Admin sucks!”

Back to playing a role, I think to myself. Then, a second later, I shrug. Everybody loves an Uncle Tom.

“Yeah, Admin sucks,” I call back. “That’s why I’m here!”

Cheers and scattered whooping. I nudge Makado, lean in towards her. “Thanks,” I murmur. She gives me a friendly squeeze on the upper arm, and then pushes me away gently.

“Don’t fuck it up,” she tells me.

I make my way through the ranks over to Elena, flash a hesitant smile at her, and she grins and makes a space for me next to her on the bunk. She’s talk and slender and very pretty, a messy shock of bleached-blonde hair over a fine-featured face. “Christ,” she says, “it’s been way too fucking long since we’ve had another girl in this outfit. How many trips you done?”

“Sorry?”

“You know,” she says, giving me a look. “How many times you’ve been down?”

I take my eyes off of Makado, now speaking to a tall, shirtless, blonde-haired man with muscles so rippling his chest looks like the start of an ocean, and glance over at Elena. “Uh, this’ll be my first.”

Over on the other side of the barracks the game of darts is starting back up again, and on the bunk next to us a wiry black man with a goatee is reaching down under the cot and taking out a bottle of liquor surreptitiously, his eyes still on Makado. He sees me watching and grins, then reaches out his hand for me to shake.

“Ellis,” he says. “Ellis Hughes. I’m the resident nerd.”

His palm is very warm but also very dry.

“Roan,” I tell him. “I’m the camerawoman.”

“You want some?”

“Maybe later, I don’t drink much –“

“This is your first trip?” Elena interrupts, her voice serious. Ellis leans over, frowning.

“Say what now?”

“What’s the big deal?” I ask. “I’m just there to –“

“What’s the big deal!” Elena laughs, a rough edge of anger lurking beneath it. “Are you serious? This is going to be your first trip?”

“Well, yeah,” I say, feeling myself flushing. “Is there something wrong - ?”

Elena gets up in a hurry and storms over to Makado, pushing the blonde man out of the way, who rolls his eyes and makes a face at her before sauntering over to the dart game and throwing his arms over the shoulders of the two others who were waiting to play. I look over at Ellis. “Did I say something wrong?”

He licks his lips and thinks about it for a moment, clearly trying to decide how best to put it. “Let’s just say that this isn’t going to be a picnic.”

Something in me bristles at that. “I can assure you I’m more than capable –“

“And I’m sure you are too,” he says quickly, flashing another bright grin at me. “But like I said, this ain’t a picnic. Just being ‘capable’ might not cut it. I mean, do you know how to use a personal stent? Or a laser cutter? Or –“

“Oh, give it a rest, Ellis,” someone groans from the floor on the other side of Elena’s cot, and then the speaker sits up and a shaggy head rises into view. He tosses his head, knocking some of the hair out of his eyes, and looks me up and down. “She’s gonna be fine.”

Over near the door Makado’s eyes flick over to mine and then back to Elena, still speaking to her animatedly, talking, I now feel sure, about how unsuited I was for whatever expedition they’re going on. I feel a hard little knot writhing in my stomach but I do my best to quash it; instead I look over at the man on the floor. “So what’s your thing?” I ask him.

“Eh?” he grunts.

“You know,” I shrug, cutting my eyes over at Ellis. “He says he’s the nerd. What do you do?”

“Fumi does maps,” Ellis says. “We get lost, it’s his fault.”

“It isn’t my fault if you lot don’t understand how to read a three-d projection,” Fumi says. “When we got lost in the Village two months ago –“

“See,” Ellis says to me, “Fumi talks a lot of shit, but –“

The door creaked open again and we all quiet, staring over to see who it is, and then Peter walks in and the barracks explode. Even Fumi, who I had initially taken to be the reserved, laid-back type, bursts out a quiet profanity and bolts to his feet to join the crowd gathering around Peter, shaking his hand and clapping him on the back and asking him where the hell he’s been, man, we all thought he was dead!

Mixed feelings. On one hand, good to have attention taken off me, especially if I’m going to have to pretend to be someone else.

I cast a weather eye over at the crowd. Peter’s smiling harder than I’d ever seen him smile before and I feel happy for him. I’d had no idea that he was so loved here. He must have really made friends during the period he worked for the company, after the disaster. And then there’s Makado, standing then, moving closely to Peter’s side and grinning broadly, unable to even pretend to be reserved. They stand side to side there for a long while and while I can’t see through the crowd surrounding them I would like to believe that they’re holding hands.

Eventually everybody crowds out; I think there was some talk of a trip to a pub or bar or something. Either way, I’m left alone in the barracks. I feel distinctly forgotten. I pick out one of the unused cots and lay on it for a long while thinking, until finally sleep comes to me. Later on, when everyone comes back in, loud and drunk and merry, I wake but pretend not to. I watch through slitted eyes as Elena, smelling a little of alcohol, comes and crawls into the cot next to mine.

She watches me for a long while, laying there on her side, staring, her pretty little face knotted in a frown, but just as soon as I decide to open my eyes fully and ask her what she’s staring at, she rolls over and lets out a little huffing sigh and falls asleep.

 * * *

 The next punch whips out low and fast and I just barely twist out of the way in time. I purse my lips, glare at Elena. “You know,” I tell her, “I thought we were supposed to be boxing.”

“We are boxing,” she says, tossing her head to flick an errant curl of bleached-blonde hair out of her slate eyes, waggling one gloved fist at me.

“You don’t sucker-punch in boxing.”

“Yeah, well,” she says, trailing off. I can see a shift in her movement, see her eyes flick downwards at me, and I know instinctively that she’s going to try something. I let myself roll onto the balls of my feet, let my knees bend slightly. “I’ve never been good at following the rules,” she grunts, snapping out another punch right at my gut. This time I’m ready for it.

The four years of Karate I took in college had never really served me very well, but there was one advantage I’d had that I think Elena wasn’t expecting from me – I went to a hardcore dojo, not a belt factory. Sparring three days a week, stretches and warmups intense enough that I barely was able to stumble my way through the material afterwards…but I adapted after enough time pushing myself and then it wasn’t so bad, once I was able to rely on my body’s newfound strength.

I’d hated it at the time. I don’t know why I bothered to keep up with it once I’d completed that first-year PE credit, but something kept bringing me back. Maybe it was the way one of the instructors, a tall, swarthy man named Ali, would grin at me after he’d cajoled me into dipping down a couple of inches deeper into a straddle split, or raising my leg a couple of inches higher in a kick hold, maybe it was the way that I went from not being able to break a single board, even if I really tried, to being able to break three with a punch and not even feel it afterwards. Something about the tangible improvement tickled some sort of progress-happy funny bone in my psyche and from then on I was hooked.

I made it halfway to a blue belt before I’d graduated and had to move away from Oklahoma. In Karate terms that’s still a little baby, really, but if Elena thinks I’ve never learned to dance she’s going to have another think coming.

I push my arm down and block the blow, deflecting it downwards. Her fist skids off the flat of my thigh and I barely feel it. Then I take a step to the side and spin, whipping out a roundhouse and halting it just next to the side of her head. To her credit she barely flinches, just flicks her eyes over and considers my foot as though it’s something mildly repulsive. The tendon in my groin down the inner base of my thigh is throbbing a little and I know I’ll regret the maneuver later but for the moment I’m alright.

“Didn’t realize you knew MMA,” she snarls, clamping onto my leg before I can react, twisting it and sending us both to the ground. I fall awkwardly and feel the sting as the hard foam mat slaps me in the palms and the chest. Then she clambers over me before I can roll back up onto my hands and knees, getting me into an impromptu sleeper choke. I know how to get out of one while I’m standing but from the ground is a different matter entirely. I squirm a little, trying to work my hands back around behind her, but she tightens her forearm around my neck and I stop.

“You gonna tap?” she purrs into my ear, sounding angry. She smells hot and spicy and aggressive, sweat mingled with a vaguely floral underlying arona. I struggle a little, try and find the weakness in her grip, but there isn’t one, she has me dead to rights.

I reach out slowly ahead of me and tap the mat three times. Elena squeezes a little harder for a moment and then slowly disengages from me and rolls away. I flop onto my back and glance over at her. “You realize I’m just here to work a camera, right? You guys are going to handle all the fighting.”

“I’m not even going to tell you why that’s a fucking stupid sentiment,” she says. “What if something grabs you down there and nobody else is around to help?”

“What, I’m supposed to get it in a sleeper choke?”

“No,” she says slowly, as though I’m stupid, “you’re supposed to fight back however you can.”

“I don’t think I –“

She offers me her hand, the glove hanging loosely from the strap, and pulls me up. “Take initiative,” she suggests. “Be proactive,” she says, and then before I can react she reaches up with the other hand, still gloved, and pops me lightly in the face. It’s clearly not designed to injure, she hits about as lightly as she can, but something about the physics of it tweaks something in my nose and I feel a twinge and then a trickle of fluid down the front of my face. She stares, incredulous, at the blood on her glove, and then shakes her head and gives me a helpless, resigned grin.

“Look at you,” she says. “I didn’t even mean to do that. I’m so sorry, here, let me -“

And then she reaches up and wipes the blood from my lip with the back of her hand. I see it staining her skin red. My heart is pounding in my throat. What if she doesn’t wash her hands before she eats something? What if she rubs her eye, or scratches herself, or -

When I act it feels like time compresses and it seems as though I’m moving a million miles an hour. I step forward and grab her by the wrist and tug her along towards me, or at least I intend to. I was going to drag her off to the bathroom and make sure she scrubbed every last speck of blood off of her skin, make sure that she was safe, but instead she jerks her hand away from me and stands there staring, her fingers half-curled into a fist.

“What the hell is your problem?” she barks at me, and I realize that everyone in the training room is staring at us, squared off again across the mat, my hand trembling slightly. I look down at the bloodstain on her palm and then, not knowing what else to do, I wipe my nose hurriedly, contaminating my own hands. My eyes sweep the floor frantically but I can’t see any telltale carmine drops anywhere.

“Elena, please, please -“ I start, but she spins on her heel and stalks away to the showers, giving me a withering look over her shoulder.

“Fuck off,” she tells me. “Don’t you ever grab me like that –“

Then she’s gone. I can feel my cheeks burning. I avoid a forest of stares and scramble after her, trying not to feel like I’m scurrying off with my tail between my legs.

As I round the corner, trailing my fingers along the inlaid tile, the faint coarse griminess gathering reassuringly at my touch, I realize that the shower isn’t running and I have a brief moment of despair, guessing that Elena’s already been and left, before I turn the corner and I’m staring at her naked back, long and muscular, a curving v-taper nudging downward into the swell of her hips and a whole heap of emotions flutter around me. Before I can tear my eyes away she looks back at me and our eyes meet for just a moment, her sharp-eyed predator’s gaze boring into me, and then I snap mine away and hurry over to my locker and start to change. I can feel her looking at me but I keep my face forwards, don’t meet her gaze.

“You bitch,” she hisses, and I jump, I cringe.

“Elena,” I mutter, cutting my gaze sideways at her, “don’t.”

I can see her hands, the red of my blood deepening as it dries. She hasn’t washed her hands yet.

She gets up, pads past me, the force of her anger practically slamming me into my locker as she passes. She’s naked, heading for the showers, a towel thrown over her shoulder. She doesn’t spare even a glance at me.

“I’m sorry,” I blurt, just before she turns the corner. “I didn’t want to - I didn’t mean to - I’m sorry.”

She stops, looks back at me. Her eyes are very hard but they soften gradually, and she heaves out a sigh, leans her long lithe body against the corner of the tiled wall.

“Is your nose okay?” she asks. I haven’t even thought about it. I reach up and pat at it gently.

“Yeah, it’s still there,” I tell her, and I can see her crack an unwilling smile before she hides it, glances down.

“I’m sorry I gave you a bloody nose,” she tells me. “I didn’t mean to. I was just going to bop you.”

I swallow hard. “Elena, you have to wash your hand. Like, scrub it, I mean.”

She frowns at me. “What’s eating you?” she asks. “It’s just blood. It isn’t like I’m licking it up,” she laughs, miming it, but her eyes sharpen as she sees me practically jump out of my skin. I make it a few steps towards her before I stop myself and try to turn it into some casual gesture or movement, but there’s no way to disguise it. I can see her eyes narrow with the same intensity as my cheeks flush.

“Roan,” she says, “what’s going on? Why are you acting like this?”

“I can’t - look, just make sure you scrub your hand, okay?” I ask her. She shakes her head.

“Tell me why,” she says. “Why’s it so important?”

I stare at her and hope the anguish writ large in my expression is enough to convince her. And perhaps it works, for she shakes her head and pads around the corner. I listen as she takes a shower, while I dab at my face and clean myself off, and she looks mildly surprised to see me when she comes back out again. Her hair is fluffy and unkempt and she has the towel wrapped around her waist and something about the way her messy curls fall over her face makes me want to smile. She holds the hand out to me, turns it over for my inspection.

“Clean enough for you?” she asks, and I nod. We stand there in silence for a while, effectively side by side, rummaging in our lockers, while Elena gets dressed and I change back into my regular clothes.

“Cat got your tongue?” Elena asks me and I grunt, look over at her, then shut my locker.

“Sorry,” I say. “I was just thinking.”

“What if you didn’t come with?” Elena says, and I process that for a moment, and I shake my head.

“I don’t understand you,” I tell her. “First you’re happy to see me cause there’ll be another woman in the group, and I can understand that. Then you’re concerned because I’m not a crack special ops Green Beret motherfucker –“

“That isn’t –“

“And now when I’m justifiably worried about goddam blood-borne –“

“Jesus Christ,” she groans. “I wasn’t going to actually lick my hand. I didn’t even mean to give you a nosebleed! I just…” she trails off. “Look,” she says. “You should back out. Reconsider coming on this damn-fool errand we’re stuck with. You can tell Veret no, you know that, right? She’s Sec, you’re Admin, she has zero jurisdiction over you. You can tell her where to fucking stick it and she can’t say shit.”

It takes me a moment to realize that she’s talking about Makado. “What if I want to go?” I ask.

Elena looks me dead in the eyes. Hers are very grey, the same color as a cloudy day. “You’re going to die down there,” she assures me.

I blow an exasperated breath out. “You care that much?” I ask her. “Seriously? You’ve barely spoken a word to me since the day we met. It’s like you’re mad at me for – for just having the misfortune to be here. You think I have control over this? They need someone to run the camera, I’ve got the experience. Between, well, everyone gradually realizing how useless I’m going to be down there and my pathetic performance the other day at the range –“ I wince to myself at the memory of it - “I’ve had a goddam miserable time here and I don’t want this entire expedition to be like that. Do you have a problem with me?”

“No,” Elena says firmly.

“Then what the hell are you treating me like this for?”

She thinks about it for a moment then shrugs. “Trying to scare you off, I guess,” she explains. “If nothing else you’ve got guts. I just don’t want you to get killed because of overconfidence –“

“Oh, trust me, I’m far from overconfident.”

“No,” Elena says, “I suppose you aren’t. There’s some sort of angle you’re working, isn’t there? Did Miller put you up to something? Spying on Veret, or on –“

“Who’s – “ I start, and then stop myself. Clearly this Miller is someone I ought to know. “No,” I tell her. “There’s no angle. I just want to go down there, see what it’s like. I’ve seen videos,” I say, thinking quickly, “I’ve seen footage, but that’s not even close to what it’s really like. Isn’t it?”

“You’re right,” Elena laughs, “it isn’t.”

And then she turns away, sits down on the bench to do up her shoes and I stand there staring at her for a moment before I shake my head and gather my things and turn to leave. I almost make it to the door before she calls after me.

“I don’t hate you,” she says, and I turn and look at her, meet the gaze she’s flinging at me with what I hope is stoniness, trying not to feel like a lonely puppy. I’m tired, I’m fatigued, part of me wants to go the hell back home and get out of Gumption but another part of me wants to see what the hell is down there in the Pit. I’ve barely seen Peter since that first day and I haven’t seen Makado at all, and I haven’t had the guts to pull out my phone and call anybody from work, or any of my friends. I can feel my heart practically flipping over onto its back and begging for belly-rubs no matter how hard I try to stomp down on it.

And then, of course, there’s the little voice in the back of my mind that keeps whispering about whether or not I might be able to get my hands on some ballast…

No, it’s stupid. It isn’t an option. They’ve probably got it locked down so tightly –

Focus, Roan. One thing at a time. Don’t be such a goddam nitrogen queen.

“I know you don’t hate me,” I tell her, taking a step back towards the door. “But you’ve sure been doing your best to make it seem like you do.”

She offers me a slow smile, and as she rises I once again take the chance to admire the wiry strength of her arms, the sloping incline of her thighs, the taper of her stomach. She’s very pretty, after all; I don’t know what it is but I was expecting something more like Vasquez from Aliens, a wiry woman constantly on-edge, not willing to take any shit at all, but Elena is much more –

“You checking me out, Merriweather?”

I blush instantly and reluctantly drag my eyes back up to meet hers. She looks smug. “No,” I tell her, but even to my own ears it sounds like a lie. Was I checking her out? Of course I wasn’t. That’d be ridiculous.

“Riiight,” she says, nodding at me. I think she is looking at me a little differently afterwards, but I can’t tell whether it’s in a good way or a bad way. Then Elena tells me she wants to show me something and we leave the gym together, and she takes me not towards the barracks but out the other way, into the scrub grass and clear wind.

 * * *

 “What about…” I squint. “Eleanor Kovacs?”

“It’s pronounced Kovacs.”

“Oh. What happened to her?”

“Cratered when a BFR she thought was bomb-proof wasn’t so bomb-proof after all.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

Elena laughs. “A BFR is a Big Fucking Rock. Down in the Pit it’s mostly calcium deposits that that refers to, so they’re not really rocks. It’s just old caving slang left-over from the guys in the 70s that explored the place for the first time. ‘Bomb-proof’ means that it’s secure, if you tie a line to it and let yourself down it won’t drop you.”

“And ‘cratered?’”

“I’m sure you can guess what that one means.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah. I liked Eleanor, she was nice, but you never trust a BFR.”

Down here, around the bend and down a ways, over the tiny trickle of a stream that bubbles over dusty rocks and down into a drainage ditch and from there beyond the fence, past another thicket of brush, there is a small cemetery with about eight headstones in it, and green grass, and a few still fairly intact wreaths that look like they’re only a couple of days old.

“How long ago did that happen?”

Elena thinks for a moment. “About a year ago. So probably a little before or after you got hired, right? I think you said you’d been here for a year.”

I did say that. I’d debating going a little shorter, maybe six months or so, but I felt like if I pretended I’d been here for much shorter than a year it’d be suspicious as to why Makado had picked me out specifically instead of someone with more seniority.

“That’s right,” I said. “I think I might have heard something about it? I think it was like a month before I joined.”

“You said you were a photographer before this?”

“Um,” I grunt. I want rather much to get away from talking about my fake history, especially because it’d be fairly easy for me to give away that I don’t actually work here and not even know it. “That’s not entirely accurate, but close enough.”

She looks at me for a moment then shrugs. “Alright, miss mysterious, be that way.”

“What about this one?” I ask, pointing to one of the more weathered headstones. Elena peers at it then shakes her head.

“I don’t know, that was before my time.”

“When did you join?”

“Three years ago. Got out of the Coast Guard and didn’t really know what else to do, somebody here had heard about me and sent an offer my way and I said ‘what the hell’ and signed on.”

“You were in the Coast Guard?”

“Yeah, I was a cave diver.”

I look at Elena, really look at her, thoughtfully this time. She’s staring at the headstone, she hasn’t drawn the long aquiline arch of her neck back up. She’s thinking about something, some inward private musing that, even if I asked her and even if she wanted to tell me, I would never be able to know the length and breadth and depth of.

A sudden crazy impulse makes me want to reach out and touch her hand and hold it in mine but I restrain myself. Her eyes flick over to me and she frowns. “What?” she asks.

“I was just thinking.”

“You do a lot of thinking while you’re just staring at people?”

I shrug diffidently. “It’s a bad habit of mine.”

I can see her trying not to smile.

The radio clipped to Elena’s belt bleeps at her and the moment is instantly shattered. She tugs it out, muttering a muffled curse, and clicks it on. “Yeah?”

“Elena, it’s Fumi. We’re finally getting briefed in ten, where are you?”

“At the gym,” she says quickly. “Just leaving now.”

“You are? I’m at the gym.”

Elena closes her eyes and makes a face at me; I clap a hand over my mouth so I don’t laugh. “Must have just missed you,” she tells him.

“Have you seen that girl from Admin, too? They told me to call everybody but I can’t get ahold of her.”

“She probably left her radio with her stuff,” Elena says, flashing me a little smirk. “Fucking Admin.”

I feign affront. Over the radio Fumi laughs.

“Fucking Admin,” he agrees. “Still, though, Admin or not, have you seen her body? I wouldn’t mind –“

“Oh, shut up,” she snaps. “Keep it in your pants,” she tells him. “Out.”

“Out,” he laughs.

I laugh but it sounds wrong, I sound nervous. Or maybe just awkward.

“Don’t let it get to you,” Elena tells me. “Just guy talk.”

“Mm,” I grunt, then look down at myself. “Not sure what he meant, to be honest.”

“Eh?”

“Well, if he likes skinny little skeletons, I guess…”

Elena laughs again. She has a low, slow laugh, like waves, like granite. “I don’t think that’s how I’d put it.”

“Oh yeah?” I say. I use the upcoming prospect of having to leave for the briefing as a pretense to pat myself down, make sure I have all of my effects (none of which I took out, of course, but even so). I see Elena’s eyes narrow fractionally but in an even-tempered way. “How would you put it?” I ask her.

She looms over me and something about the weight of her presence makes my breath catch.

We’re very close now. I can smell her, something vague and salty and fresh-smelling, like how I imagine a particularly clean crocodile might smell. I can hear her lips draw back in a smile.

“How I would put it?”

“Yeah,” I breathe. I swallow hard and try to think, but the way she smells is making it hard to.

The radio squawks again and I jump slightly. Elena sighs and then turns around and walks away, very deliberately not looking back at me. I stare after her, and then pretend I wasn’t when she turns, radio near her chin. “Yeah,” she says into it, “I found her. Tell them we’ll be there in five.”

“Ack,” the radio crackles, and then falls silent.

“Ack?” I ask.

“Acknowledged.”

“Oh.”

Then there is nothing more to say and we walk back together and I use the time to wonder what the hell I’m doing and how deep a hole I’m digging myself into.

 * * *

 “This is what we’re after,” Makado says, clicking to the next slide. I frown.

“What the hell is that?” someone asks from up near the front row – I think it might be Crookshank, the heavy-set, bear-faced man that Ellis had introduced to me as the team’s resident medic.

“That, Mr. Crookshank,” Makado says, her eye flashing, “is a resonating pressure crystal.”

“What the hell is a resonating pressure crystal?” he asks, and I hear a few chuckles from the middle rows. Makado grins at him.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “It’s need to know, and…”

“And we don’t need to know,” a half-dozen voices intone simultaneously, prompting more titters afterwards. Some sort of in-joke.

“How big is this thing?” Ellis asks.

“The team that initially discovered it down near Blue Matter reported that it was roughly two hundred kilograms or so. Dimensions are…I don’t know, a dresser? Chest of drawers? Something like that.”

“Are those bits sharp?” someone asks.

“I don’t know,” Makado says, a thin whisper of impatience lurking in the back of her voice. “Probably.”

“Where is this crystal now?” Fumi asks. Next to me Elena uncrosses and recrosses her legs.

“This is the part you probably aren’t going to like,” Makado says. “The team that had found it called for help retrieving it, and one of the cargo IAVs was dispatched down to assist. We lost radio contact with the team halfway down, and when the IAV got there, the team and the crystal were gone.”

“Whose team was it?” Elena asks. Whatever levity might have been fluttering around the room before is long gone by now.

“It was a science team,” Makado says. “Nobody you all would know, most likely. I believe the leader was Nguyen, he’s a researcher.”

“And this crystal is important enough to send us down after it, even if we don’t know what the hell happened or where it is?”

“Yes,” Peter says, squinting against the light of the projector as he looks over from the computer desk up at the front. “It’s that important.”

“But you can’t tell us why?” I call out. I don’t know what makes me do it. Just wanting to be part of the team. Makado gives me a look but a very subdued one.

“No,” she says, “I can’t. You all know me,” she says, her eye lingering on me. “You know if I could I would, if I could bend the rules, even, and tell you, but I can’t. And, the point I was going to make before we got sidetracked, we actually do know exactly where the crystal is. The science team managed to fit it with a tracker before whatever happened happened.”

She takes a breath, blows it out. “We found copepod castings at the site, and the tracker shows the crystal is currently in the barrows.”

It’s Greek to me but everybody else reacts hard. Elena leans forward and puts her head in her hands and half of the rest of them get to their feet, gesticulating, Ellis and Fumi among them.

“Hell no,” Ellis says.

“That’s a goddam suicide mission,” Fumi tells Makado, and when I flick my eyes over to her to judge her reaction I can see that she thinks so too; it’s there in the cast of her face, just for a moment, before she composes herself.

“Everybody relax,” Peter says, and, miraculously, almost everyone does.

“Look,” Crookshank says, still on his feet, pointing at the crystal still on the screen, “even if this thing is so goddam important that we die getting it back, even if we manage to beat off the hundreds of fucking copepods down there in the barrows, how the hell are we going to get it up here? Another IAV? They can’t fit into the barrows, the passages are too tight and twisting. We can’t carry 200 kilograms up here, we can’t –“

“Crookshank,” Makado says, voice icy, “sit down.”

He wavers for a moment but sits. Makado clears her throat.

“You aren’t going to carry it.”

I frown. The crystal on the screen looks damn near impossible to carry anyway. A wicked constellation of dagger-sharp jade barbs and spikes and serrations surrounding a gnarled, crenellated core. Even if it were smaller and lighter I don’t know how you could pick it up without hurting either it, yourself, or both. Elena looks over at me frowning and I shrug; I don’t know where the hell Makado is going with this.

“He is,” she says, pointing over at the door.

As we all turn, it opens softly, and with careful, hissing, precise steps, a machine walking upright on two pistoning, powerful, articulated legs steps inside, one of its immense blocky arms reaching backward and catching the door by the handle and shutting it very softly behind it. Its head is a cube with a few careful angled shavings taking out of it, and in the recesses they create lights blink, but there is nothing so crude as a camera lens to show that it looks at us as it swings its face back and forth, like a lizard tasting the air.

The room has gone so silent that the only sound I can hear is the whine of servos as it steps further in, and a clenching fist of terror closes around my heart and squeezes, the ancient timbre of fight-or-flight peaking in my brain as this animate, impossible thing stomps towards us.

Continue with Part 14

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