#goes into his own sordid past as an alcoholic

[lord-radish]

I don't talk about this openly because it's a touchy subject, but I've really gotta get out of the drinking game. I've got issues with alcohol, and I've had these issues for years at this point, but I can't seem to escape it due to both mental problems and general proximity.

Like I have a friend who frequents a bar next door to where I live. I'll be passing through as a shortcut and say hello, and he'll like. repeatedly prompt me to get a beer. Like genuinely badger me until I give in and have a beer with him. Same thing on Sundays, he pushes me to drink repeatedly even if I clearly and repeatedly state that I don't want a beer. My family is full of alcoholics, and being drunk lets me be more social with them, so when I see family I can't escape it.

But I'm also really insecure and have a lot of trouble being around people when I'm sober, and alcohol loosens me up. It helps to be around other people and to get on their level when I get drunk, when my sober self is clearly running at a diminished capacity on that front. I stutter, I don't have timely comebacks and it's hard to maintain conversation. I was bullied for years and have reduced social skills because of that.

But I'm at a point where I have to stop. I drank two bottles of bourbon this weekend. It was a fun time and a good weekend, but it makes me feel so sick for days and I get caught in this loop of binge-drinking that eats up all my time and money. It's having an effect on my physical and mental health too, and I'm just flat-out less productive when I'm drunk and subsequently hungover. I feel sick all the time. I want to get out of this.

I vent a lot about my former best friend - and that's a situation where I acted extremely shittily, but the hatred for that guy is just sort of in me now. There was a point right at the end of our friendship where I had just been sober for three and a half months due to a health issue, and due to an ongoing mental health episode and a growing sense of isolation and detachment from my friends, I gave in and began drinking again.

In that moment I needed alcohol. It was a bad choice but it was a dark, dark time. But in hindsight, one of the most disturbing parts was the morning after. I felt fantastic, I was full of energy, and I gladly left the house after breaking my sobriety and went to hang out with my former best friend. We'd been growing apart because while I was sober, I began to notice how uncomfortable and hypervigilant of myself I was around him, and that led to avoidance and a few tense moments between us - but hungover and rushing on endorphins, I went to hang out with him.

And he told me that I seemed "like myself" again.

I've thought about this, and one reason I began binge-drinking the way I do was to pacify myself and be more pliable to my surroundings, where everyone else is calling the shots and I'm just along for the ride. A lot of that came back to my former best friend - he always took the passenger seat when we went driving with friends, he always had the aux cord, it was always about him. The decision to binge-drink to cope with my negative emotions was a personal decision that I made, and the negativity encompassed more than just our friendship, but I was having a prolonged negative experience with my best friend of the time, and that didn't help.

The disturbing part, in hindsight, is that alcohol abuse made me more agreeable. When I stopped drinking, things got tense between us. When I began drinking again, I was "like myself" again. Granted, I was happier after a mental health crisis and a growing sense of agitation and dissatisfaction. But I was wallpapering over my unhappiness and dissatisfaction with that friend by binge-drinking, and maybe that tenseness was justified considering how hard our friendship imploded just two months later.

Now I have a job and my own place to live. My personal issues are more general than they used to be - I was living in an actively hostile environment, and I was friends with someone who made me feel like I was always walking a tightrope. I have my own space, and I've made new friends - one of which actively drives me to drink when I don't actually want to, but things are just outright better, warts and all.

But it all comes back to alcohol. I'm not drinking as hard as I was during the pandemic - that's what gave me the health problem that I went sober for - but I am drinking a LOT. I drank two bottles of bourbon this weekend. I'm taking the day off work and losing money because I just need one day to myself to sort my shit out. Alcohol is ruining my life. It helps with my social issues, but it is ruining my life in so many other ways. And I'm not going to mention just how deep this all goes, but it's bad.

I don't really know what to do. I can't just announce it publically, because I'm almost certainly going to backslide on it at some point. I think quitting drinking is going to alienate me from some of my current friends, and I genuinely like them. Even the guy who badgers me to drink is a good guy who's treated me very well in the aftermath of losing my previous friends. I like spending time with him. But the writing is very clearly on the wall; I need to stop.

The issue is support. My entire world is built on the back of alcohol. My family and friends are both strong links to alcohol. I was seeing a counsellor for a long time who didn't think I needed to quit, I just needed to learn to moderate - that's been out of the question for years, I know what this is. I had another one before her who made me feel really judged for my issues with alcohol. And I've had very intense codependent internet friendships before that I don't want to even risk slipping back into, so this isn't a cry for help in the sense that I'm looking for a sober buddy on Tumblr to try and help me. I'm not putting any of you through that. I'm not.

Mostly this is just me getting my thoughts in order and expressing myself. It helped to get this all off my chest. I don't know where to go from here, but talking about it was a big first step. Like just as a disclaimer, I'm going to be fine going forward and I feel a lot better having spoken about this, so don't feel too concerned or alarmed - in the immediate sense, removed from the broader issues I discussed in this post, I'm fine. But yeah I just really needed to talk about my issues with alcohol, because my continued alcohol abuse is really bad for me in a lot of ways and it's really hard to take any sort of first step y'know. Hoping I can leverage this post into something more productive for the long term. Sorry for trauma-dumping on main.

[blueberryraindrops]

Blueberry’s Ultimate TUA Masterlist

KEY

Fics are organised alphabetically (articles e.g. ‘the’ will not count) 

mostly gen and fiego fics 

Download links are EPUB files only 

authors can feel free to send me a msg if they want their fics’ download link taken down

Links are now unavailable on PC due to a Tumblr link limit (I also had no idea this was a thing, but apparently it is?)

Regular updates can be expected as long as I remain in the fandom

Last Update: 15/10/2020

FANFICTION

☁︎ actions are worth a thousand words by achilleees { E }

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“I think it would be best if we keep up the ruse for a short while longer,” Five said. “For the sake of time-space continuity.”

“Oh, so Klaus was right before, huh?” Diego said. “The fabric of the universe unravels if my hairdresser knows we’re not boning?”

☁︎ Adventures In Childhood [Series] by just_a_sunflower_girl { G / Partially WIP }

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Five really should have guessed that something would go wrong. The universe hated him, it was an abject fact. And right now, Five hated the universe right back.

The commission turns Five into a four year old, hoping it will make him easier to kill.

☁︎ all dressed up and naked by cathect { E }

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The skirt hanging off of it is pleated and pale pink, with two white stripes near the hem— like a cheerleader might wear, Diego thinks wildly— and Five looks almost awed. Diego doesn’t want to assume anything by an expression alone, but he can’t quite help it.

Before he can stop himself, the words are tumbling out. “That would look good on you.”

Or, the one where diego fucks five while he's wearing a skirt.

☁︎ another cog in the murder machine by Ford_Ye_Fiji { T }

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Five finally gets the breakdown he deserves

☁︎ As I Want You to Hear Me by karcheri { E }

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“It’s hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

Five sighs.

“I’m trying to prove that our current timeline has branched off from it’s initial trajectory by such a large margin that it could only have been caused by the existence of unknown variables interrupting the timeline at non-linear points throughout history. I believe that we are living in...let’s call it timeline 2.0.”

“I don’t understand,” Diego says. Nutcase, he thinks. Insanely hot nutcase.

This time Five smirks at him, looking bratty and arrogant and entirely too sharp; “I know you don’t.”

Or: What I like to imagine alternate/Sparrow Academy timeline 2019 Five and Diego are up to

☁︎ Bizarre For You Is Normal For Us by pupeez4eva { G }

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“I think he’s talking to himself again,” Ashley said, leaning forward. “Okay yeah he is — oh my god, is that kid talking to the mannequin?”

Maggie shot a glance behind her. Yes, the boy was talking to the top half of a mannequin.

“I love working here,” Ashley breathed.

Wherein Klaus, Dave, Five and Dolores go on a double date, and people are confused and very concerned.

☁︎ Blink by Lady_Origami { G }

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When Five blinks, sometimes he's back in the world of ash and embers. It's hard to remember how to breathe when that happens. In which Klaus tries to play the role of supportive brother with Ben's help, and Five struggles more than he lets on.

☁︎ Blood like Lemonade by Ford_Ye_Fiji { T }

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Hunting high and low to seek revenge, Brand new moral code, got made reluctant renegade. Leaving empty souls when he avenged, Evil spirits flowed he drank the blood like lemonade.

Five's sordid past comes to light in, quite possibly, the most unpleasant way

☁︎ Bloom by jenpix { E }

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The first thing he noticed was the heat. A sudden, overwhelming heat. It started by his neck, his throat tightening, cutting off oxygen to his brain. The heat spread lower, permeating throughout his chest and abdomen, focusing and growing in his groin. Every inch of his skin was on fire. He couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t think. He needed something- anything- to relieve the ache that had abruptly settled in his bones. Lust utterly consumed him.

“Something’s wrong.” Diego concluded.

☁︎ Call Me Wild Thing by Electra_XT { E }

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“Diego’s been screwing guys who look exactly like you,” Klaus said.

“True,” Five said.

“He acts embarrassed when you encounter him with one of these lookalikes,” Klaus said.

“True,” Five said.

“You want to bang him,” Klaus said.

Five hesitated.

☁︎ Comes And Goes (In Waves) [Series] by hujwernoo { M }

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The apocalypse happens, Five arrives in the rubble, and his entire family is dead.

However, one of them has power over ghosts. And even if being dead seriously sucks sometimes, Klaus is going to be there for his brother.

☁︎ Dead Aren't Good Company, The by RosyPages { G }

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They’d been back in time for less than a month when their father forced Klaus back into the mausoleum.

But maybe this time his family can do the right thing.

☁︎ Details [Series] by VeteranKlaus { T }

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The last time Klaus saw his siblings was at Allison and Patrick's wedding. A lot had changed since then; including the not-so-accidental, irreversible loss of his sight.

There's no time to tell them that, though. Not with the return of their long-presumed-dead brother and the impending apocalypse. Plus, it doesn't matter. He's got Ben as a good seeing-eye ghost.

☁︎ Digging Up The Past by FiveUmbrellaAcademy { E / WIP }

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"You want to roleplay me being raped." Five muses, stirring his margarita. He plucks out the tiny umbrella and leaves it abandoned on the edge of the table.

Diego splutters, before glancing wildly over his shoulders.

Five and Diego are in a busy bar, and Diego had absentmindedly suggested Five looking particularly hot, especially when he's pliant, almost as if he's being -

"What the fuck? Shut up, Five." Diego hisses, eyes darting around. "Anyone can hear you."

Five says nothing.

Or: Unfortunately, the roleplay triggers a memory Five desperately wishes he'd forget.

☁︎ do androids dream of electric sheep? by the_crownless_queen { T }

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Number Four is crying, and Grace was made to care for those children.

In which Grace was created to protect the children of the Academy. Even, as it turns out, from their father.

☁︎ don't waste your time (or time will waste you) by rosewitchx { T }

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He was an old man. He is sixteen. Ben dies next week. How does he know that?

“I think I broke it,” Five stutters, and for the first time in her short life Vanya sees absolute terror in his eyes.

Or, Five travels back again. Something goes wrong.

☁︎ Dulce Periculum (Danger Is Sweet) by Anonymous { E }

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Klaus swallows heavily.

He brings up the hand that says “Goodbye” on the palm up to Five's hair and rakes his fingers through the strands. When Klaus is blessed with a high pitched whine, he knows he's done for.

or: Five wants something stronger than alcohol.

☁︎ Fighting (Pre)Determinism by chibi_tantei { T / WIP }

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They go back in time, determined to rewrite their own family history. Only problem is, only one of them looks the proper age to get near their younger selves.

Or, six months after Five stormed out, determined to time travel, he returns home. His siblings are happy to have him back, but he's acting differently...

(Or, Five goes undercover as himself. Twice the siblings should make saving the world easier, right? Yet somehow, he's only now realizing how many issues his family has to fix.)

☁︎ Five and Dave's Life Changing (Life Saving) Field Trip by neuronary { T }

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The little boy, who Dave could now see was not as little as he’d first thought, shoved a tin mug at him. “Drink this.”

Dave drank. It tasted sickly sweet and slightly citrus-y. “Who are you?”

“Five.” The boy’s scowl deepened at Dave’s confusion. “Klaus’ brother.”

Or, Five saves Dave's life to stop Klaus from moping. From Dave's perspective, a very grouchy, sleep-deprived twelve-year-old kidnaps him and he finds it much more entertaining than he should.

☁︎ Five And Diego Take Ukraine by yawarakai { G }

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It’s definitely her. She's around fifty, and striking – Diego can see where his brother gets his features. Light skin, grey eyes, hair dark and straight, slim. She’s a carbon copy of the boy standing before her.

“Da?” Five’s mother asks warily.

☁︎ Forward Trajectory by karcheri { M }

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“Ha ha,” the cop replies,” How’s your little troupe of nerds today anyways?”

His Professor groans, burying his face in the man’s neck and Nick winces. He should’ve anticipated that answer.

“That bad, huh?”

Or: Every semester students work themselves to the bone to score the highest mark on Professor Five's final project.

☁︎ Ghost Math by pinstripedJackalope { G }

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Number Five needs a new hobby now that the apocalypse is off. He decides to help Klaus--and in turn maybe he'll help himself.

☁︎ game of waiting, a by sky_blue_hightops { G }

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He was always the fastest. He always beat the others up the stairs, down the halls, through time and space. If there's one lesson he's learned, it's that there's always a finish line. A stopping place. Blood bubbles from between his fingers, and suddenly there's no air in his lungs.

Five jumps in front of a bullet. He calls it quick reflexes. Diego calls it stupidity.

☁︎ Gift-Wrapped by punk_rock_yuppie { E }

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Diego discovers Five's secret.

☁︎ god-intoxicated by chrysostomos (nantes) { E }

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Of all the things Diego expected to get dragged into this month, meeting a mythological witch, finding out Five is married, and rescuing him from his unwanted sun god husband were not on the list.

☁︎ handling myself by achilleees { E }

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Five pressed his lips together. “I advise against… touching them with your bare hands,” he said, taking the pills out of his pocket and dropping them into Diego’s gloved palm. “It would be unwise.”

In the light streaming from the Academy windows, Diego could see the sheen of sweat on his skin, trickling down his temple.

“Oh my god,” Diego said, starting to laugh.

☁︎ Happy Accidents by Starrstruck_64 { G }

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You’re making a mess, is what Diego wants to snap back. Instead he hears his mom’s voice clear as day say ‘boys will be boys’ and without thinking he’s moving on autopilot.

Diego can feel his hands clenching rhythmically at his sides before he’s moving forward to take the bowl from Klaus and ripping the apron off in one smooth motion. Discarding the bowl to the side he works on getting the strings untangled and slips the apron over his own clothes.

“Out.”

He has so much work to do. The pancake is beyond salvaging, the kitchen is a mess, and he’s fairly certain the batter is inedible.

Aka: the fic where Diego’s mothering instincts go wild

☁︎ haven't you heard of meditation? by rosesareredvioletsareblue { T }

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"Klaus, you have a piece of glass sticking out of your neck!"

Klaus felt for the glass, wincing as he found it.

"Oh yeah. Fun." It took all of Five's willpower not to throttle him.

☁︎ Hidden Variables Theory, The by siriuspiggyback { T }

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Something has disturbed the space-time continuum, and it's up to Five to figure out what it is.

With a bit of luck, and a lot of alcohol, he might even manage to do it before he snaps and murders his siblings.

☁︎ Honey and Vinegar by JayTRobot { M }

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The Handler sends Five on a mission only he can complete - to seduce a known pedophile for information. Then kill him.

Five doesn't appreciate playing the honeypot.

☁︎ I Want It (I Got It) by Electra_XT { E }

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“Oh, Christ,” Five said, starting to grin. “Diego, no. Don’t tell me you’re actually into being called—”

“Shut up,” Diego muttered.

“It’s not sexy,” Five said. “It’s cliche and corny and macho and self-aggrandizing, and I’m disappointed in you.” He waited a beat. “Daddy.”

☁︎ i'm gonna be here til i'm nothing (but bones in the ground) by iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid { T }

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Someone definitely just punched him in the chest, right? That’s the reason for that feeling? Or that last batch of pills had something seriously off-label mixed into them. Because there’s no way. There’s no fucking way.

He squeezes his eyes shut until dots burst behind his eyelids, but when he opens them, the hallucination doesn’t go away.

“… Five?”

☁︎ I'm The Daddy? by TUA (IAMS) { G / WIP }

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Five spends fifteen years in the apocalypse and two years working for the Temps Commission before breaking his contract and time traveling back to the year 2003; just a year after he originally went missing.

According to his calculations, wiping Reginald's existence from the timeline means the apocalypse never occurs. But of course, this leaves several newly orphaned fourteen year olds in his care.

Let the family bonding and therapy ensue.

☁︎ if the sky comes falling down by synchronicities { T }

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The equations are still wrong.

In 2002, Number Seven wonders why her siblings are acting odd.

(Or, the post-finale “Vanya doesn’t remember the time travel” fic)

☁︎ If You're Different And You Know It (you're not alone) by M3zzaTh3M3z { T }

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Five was different. He’d always known. Different from most people, what with his freakish birth, powers and unconventional upbringing, all that old news. And different from his siblings. He was smarter. His powers were stronger. And he’d never picked a name. All that was old news too. But there was something else that separated him from the rest, something he didn’t know how to put a finger on, how to categorize, analyse, understand. Five didn’t like not understanding. It was probably Klaus that made him first notice something was off.

☁︎ Is the sadness everlasting? (love, I think it is) by ArmedWithMyComputer { T }

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A look into what Klaus' newly discovered ability could mean for the siblings.

Diego could feel his whole body trembling as he faced the ghosts, only able to take shallow breaths as he struggled to process the true horror of what he was seeing.

And then they started howling.

The sound pierced though his stupor and forced him to his knees instantly. It was like nothing Diego had ever experienced before, and he was consumed with the intensity and overwhelmed by a deep chilling fear. It felt as though his mind had been taken over and all he could hear was the shrieks of grief, more intense than any emotion he had ever felt.

☁︎ It Does(n't) Matter by MYSTERYstew { T }

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It’s a familiar feeling, being lifted up by Luther and tossed around like he weighs nothing (to Luther he certainly does), it was a favorite move of Luther’s as a child. Nostalgia is not what Five feels, he’s too busy flailing as Luther throws him over the railing.

or, Five fails a jump

☁︎ Jealousy Sucks by FiveUmbrellaAcademy { E / WIP }

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"God, Diego." Five rubbed his temples, sounding exasperated. "He's our brother."

"I'm your brother, too." Diego blurts out. Fuck, now he's sounding like an insecure, whiny boyfriend. Perfect.

Five just stares back at Diego, his eyebrows burrowing.

At the physical age of seventeen, Five has, in Klaus' words, grown up hot.

☁︎ Just One Minute by willowhisperer { T }

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Five holds up his end of the deal, soaked in blood. The Handler decides to toy with him a little while longer.

Maybe it's revenge, maybe she's riding the high of her shiny new position as head of the Commission.

Really, she just wants to win, once and for all.

☁︎ Kinktober Day 12 - Crossdressing by Multifangirl69 { E }

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The Umbrella Academy Kinktober Fest//Day 12

☁︎ Kitten Socks by sky_blue_hightops { G }

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Klaus's lost his favorite pair of socks (again) (Ben shut up) and finds them in an unexpected place.

☁︎ Lessons 'verse [Series] by Soulykins { T }

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Five was maybe four years old when he figured out that he was pretty much ride or die for his siblings. He was also four when he figured out that in the Umbrella Academy, you could never let Reginald Hargreeves figure out what you loved lest he use it against you. There was safety in aloof indifference, more than could be found anywhere else under their roof.

Five times Five Hargreeves protected his siblings the best ways he could, and the one time he failed.

☁︎ Lethe by shoelaces { T }

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Le·the | A river in Hades whose waters cause drinkers to forget their past.

Or: Five loses his memories instead of Vanya, and it falls to his siblings to raise a superpowered teenager in the 1960s, all whilst preserving their own new lives and preventing yet another apocalypse.

☁︎ Like an abyss by fridayyy { T }

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For the second time, Five has to (gets to?) grow up.

☁︎ Like Oxygen by sevansa { T }

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Klaus's powers may be a bit more extensive than just seeing the dead, he's not sure what to do about that.

OR

The one where Klaus's power is not ghosts, but souls and that makes a hell of a difference.

☁︎ master of my domain by achilleees { E }

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“You’re asking five 13-year-old boys not to jerk off for – it can’t be done,” Luther says. “Now that we’re older, it would be different, but back then –”

“Excuse me, I could do it,” Five says. “I could certainly outlast all of you.”

They all look at each other.

“Oh, no,” says Allison.

☁︎ Meet the Hargreeves Siblings by AmyR { G }

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Klaus is found passed out by a confused Patch and Beaman. When Diego comes to get him, refusing to divulge who the unconcious man was, things get weird. At least the first time. The second time, it was a different person. And then the third. Then the fourth.

Until finally, explanations are demanded.

☁︎ Mellow Rays of a Departing Sun [Series] by Emotionally_Detached (Yeah_Toast) { T }

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He makes it. He time travels and makes it through another apocalypse. He makes it, but his siblings don't.

His siblings don't make it, except he's in his own childhood and they're still here, alive and thirteen and he can fix things.

He will fix things

☁︎ Midmorning Coffees and Therapy Sessions by wereworm { G }

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Local woman working at coffeeshop accidentally adopts a child and gives advice with a focus on getting closer to siblings when she, herself, has a sub-optimal relationship with her sister.

Or the time Five went to get a good cup of coffee and ended up slowly befriending the barista while trying to reconnect with the siblings he hasn't seen since his childhood without the looming threat of the apocalypse anymore.

☁︎ most dangerous place in the world, the [Series] by Princess_Sarcastia { T }

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"Grace is the third model in a series created by and for Sir Reginald.  She has access to the knowledge obtained by her predecessors in their time assisting Sir Reginald in his many endeavors.

All three of them were primarily designed as protectors.  Do no harm, just as Mr. Asimov said!

But Grace is slightly different."

[priority one: protect the children]

☁︎ Need a Vacation by Electra_XT { E }

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“You ready for a relaxing weekend at the beach?” Diego said.

“Thrilled,” Five said, looking down at the map in his hands. “A relaxing weekend of hunting down a hired killer and pretending I’m dating my brother.”

☁︎ New Life, A by BirdInTheCave { T }

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Allison had convinced Ray to come back to 2019 with her and her family and after a month of being cooped up in the house with the other Hargreeves plus their own unconventional guests, Ray suggests they spend some time alone. He's still struggling to fully comprehend the new world he's stepped into but he's determined that with Allison at his side he can get used to anything. Allison can't find a reason to say no. She should have said no.

Luckily for her, Five will always be there for his family, now that he's back.

☁︎ Next time, hire a nanny by TheArchaeologist { M }

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While the rest of his family go out to Vanya’s concert for the evening, Five, still recovering from the remains of a lingering chest infection, agrees to watch Claire. He is fifty-nine, he can handle a little girl for the night.

Everything goes fine.

Until it very much doesn't.

☁︎ Not my body, not my life (But I am here) by Panonnymous_Bloom { G }

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He wasn't going to explain to Diego why exactly he was following Allison's every move with his eyes because he didn't own anybody any explanations, especially not his simpleton of a brother who seemed to think that every Alpha was going to pounce on Allison at the first sign of any heat.

Allison's decision to spend her heat in the house leads Five to a small realization - and even smaller desire - but he will kill a thousand men before admitting to it.

☁︎ Not with me by ClaraCivry (Kat_Of_Dresden) { T }

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They never asked if any of that blood was his. Five is bleeding, and he is also giving up.

AU to 2X07, with hurt Five because after all that boy has been through...

☁︎ Number Five | And The Things that Make Him Tick [Series] by Kraeyola { T }

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It's only been two weeks for him.

AKA: Five succumbs to two weeks worth of badly cared for (physical and emotional) injuries, and ends up extremely feverish.

☁︎ On My Terms by CivilBores { T }

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“I did what you asked,” he tells her. “Now, the briefcase.”

Her eyebrows raise in mock-surprise, red lips curling up her face in a sadistic smile.

“You didn’t think that was all, did you?” she asks.

AU: The Handler gives Five a slightly different deal.

☁︎ On This Day In History by telm_393 { M }

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Five had a...special relationship with the Handler during his time at the Commission, or maybe he didn’t. After the apocalypse doesn’t happen, he tries to order his memories of the last few years while also actively suppressing them. It goes badly.

His siblings are worried, and genuinely want to help. They are not unsuccessful.

☁︎ Out of My Mind by Electra_XT { E }

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“What happened?” Diego said. He looked down at himself. “Am I hurt?”

What happened? echoed a voice from the back of his head.

☁︎ Outside, For the First Time by Trees_Frogs_andPotentially_Treefrogs { G }

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Grace is torn between her programming to obey the rules set by Mr. Hargreeves, and her duty to the children, and decides that being a person is self determined.

☁︎ Partners, Parents, or None of the Above by DarkFairytale { T }

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Kenny's mom assuming that Diego and Klaus were A) a couple and B) Number Five’s parents was both bemusing and amusing at the time. But that was because it was the only time it had ever happened. Now though? Now they just can't understand why these misunderstandings keep happening.

☁︎ Raising the Bar by Electra_XT { E }

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Five looked ten years older. He was still youthful, early twenties, but he had suddenly and visibly become an adult. Diego had braced himself for… something, but not this. He was dressed heartbreakingly preppy— neatly tailored slacks, a shirt that fit him like it was made for him, and a casual blazer. Diego hadn’t known a blazer could be casual before, but the way Five wore the linen jacket made it seem genuinely effortless.

Of all the ways this new body thing could have gone, Diego didn’t expect him to be hot.

☁︎ rude awakening by Soulykins { T / WIP }

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When Five wakes up, he just knows someone is in the room with him. Of course, even he didn't except to come face to face with the Handler who he'd thought to be very very dead. And he especially didn't expect her to break into his room and watch him sleep while waiting for him to wake up.

It's very fortunate that Diego and Klaus show up to wake him up and take offense to some random lady in the same room as their very uncomfortable, very thirteen-year-old brother.

☁︎ Screaming in the Face of Communication by papayaromantic { T }

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It's not that he doesn't want to pay attention to Five, just that he seriously can't hear what the boy is saying past the wailing of the torn apart woman in front of him.

☁︎ Second First Time by venDi { E }

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Five spent his early years learning about Alpha biology -- and he knows, recognizes the sudden shift in his family's scent, that his heat has sent them all into a very, very early rut.

☁︎ Servus by Anonymous { E }

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"They had been given a chance to start over, all of them, together. At least, that’s what Five intended, when he pulled he and his siblings from imminent death...He had watched his siblings be swept back to their collective childhood, armed with the knowledge of what was to come, and how to prevent it. He, on the other hand, had ended up somewhere entirely different."

Five receives one, final business proposal from the Handler, and her methods of persuasion are far from conventional.

☁︎ Shadow Elixir, The by Phantom_Vidar { E / WIP }

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With the apocalypse averted the Hargreeves attempt to rebuild their lives and transition into something that resembles a fraction of normalcy. A year later and strange visions start appearing to Klaus, of a dark space contaminated by souls bygone and a voice who aches to be free; especially Ben's. The apocalypse has passed but now another disaster awaits— one that Diego and Five might have accidentally walked into.

Alternatively: Diego and Five have sex and coincidentally start the next stage of the end of the world.

☁︎ shaking like I shook before by Anonymous { T }

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Five tries to deal with it alone, until he learns that he doesn’t have to.

☁︎ skirts and sweaters by slightlyworriedhuman { T }

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"I don't want to be a ‘cute little schoolboy’ anymore, alright?” Five snapped. For some reason, the thought of himself as a schoolboy was enough to make his skin prickle. Was it the implication that he was younger than the rest of them, less mature despite his life?

...Yeah, it was definitely that. Absolutely.Five wants a change in wardrobe. His siblings are more than happy to help.

☁︎ small changes by calypso42 { T }

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“I need to ask you something.” He set down the large stack of books he was carrying beside him. Klaus glanced at a few of the titles - Consciousness in the Brain - Memory & the Role of the Hippocampus - Soul vs. Matter: A Comprehensive Look at the Origins of Sentience - and grimaced.

“Are you… having an existential crisis, or something? Because I am possibly the worst person you could go to for that.”

...

When Five goes to Klaus to ask him something about his powers, Klaus doesn’t think much of it. At least, until he realizes that what he thought was simple curiosity was actually deeper than that, leading to a revelation about Five himself.

☁︎ Snacktime. [Series] by HotCocoaaa { G }

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There was a wolf spider, just, chilling on the table that morning when Diego came down for breakfast. A...a really big wolf spider. Just...a real hunk of a thing.

(“You...you just….you just ate a spider.” He murmured.)

It didn't end well.

☁︎ Special punishment by Anonymous { M }

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Five was the only one with a tattoo on his rib

☁︎ sweater weather by KittenAnarchy { G }

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Number Five, a dryer, and his first blink.

☁︎ take shelter by aloneintherain { T }

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AU where the apocalypse doesn’t follow the Hargreeves to the 1960s. Without the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over their heads, the siblings can take the time to be a family again.

Until they find out that the Handler has been blackmailing Five.

☁︎ There are Stones in my Stomach and Worms on my Plate by TheArchaeologist { M }

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If you ever need a crash diet, try the apocalypse. It is fat free, dairy free, lacking in all the vital vitamins and minerals, and totally organic.

After all, look at Five. Weeks after stopping the apocalypse and he still can’t finish a plate of food.

☁︎ there is simply nothing worse than knowing how it ends by Drhair76 { G }

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"What's this?" He said pointing a finger at the bread and peanut butter that was laid across the table top.

Five rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. "What do you think. It's a sandwich."

"Oh?" Klaus reached out a hand to brush the sleeve of his beloved hoodie. "And what's this?"

or, the one where Klaus 'loses' a hoodie, Five gets a hug and Ben is proud.

☁︎ they could care less (as long as someone'll bleed) by Ford_Ye_Fiji { M }

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Number Five is cornered once again by commission agents, but this time with his family.

Diego and Klaus learn something about their littlest-oldest brother.

☁︎ this is a bad town (for such a pretty face) by luciimariiellii { T }

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Five’s gone. (How the Hargreeves cope, and how they reunite.)

☁︎ time on my hands by achilleees { E }

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“If you orgasm, you’ll die,” Five said with a grimace.

Diego’s eyes went wide.

“Bet you wish you’d just been sterilized now,” Five said.

☁︎ Timelines 1-2.1 [Series] by dgalerab { M / Partially WIP }

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As the world ends, Five takes his siblings back into their child bodies on the day he originally left. With the knowledge of how the world ends fresh in their minds, the Hargreeves siblings do what they can to leave clues for their past selves on how to grow up a little less fucked up before returning to the present.

A present where they all have different lives they can't remember, there's a fun new apocalypse on the way, and Reginald Hargreeves remembers the day where all his children suddenly and inexplicably lost their minds and all respect for him at once a little too well.

☁︎ to unexplain the unforgivable by darkviverna { T }

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Ability to see the dead and having a temporal assassin for a brother don’t mix well.

☁︎ Too Much Too Little by 1spideyson { T }

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Five says nothing on the ride back, just gently presses the tips of thin fingers to his eyes and temples like his head is a new instrument he’s learning to play. Like he’s searching for the right notes.

Diego tries not to cast too many worried glances the boy’s way, but when Five crawls into Diego’s bed, shaking and grey, he can’t stop himself from speaking up.

A look at Five and Diego's relationship through a h/c lens.

☁︎ Too Old To Be So Young by KaseyBeth { T }

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Five winced loudly, pushing his head off the floor to see bright red smeared across his chest and stomach; crimson soaked into his shorts, running down his leg. His head fell back against the ground dizzyingly, and he groaned as someone touched the wound, biting his bottom lip as he tried to stay conscious. The end of life, of everything, was in three days; they didn’t have time for this, he didn’t have time for this. A bullet wound, a stupid bullet wound and all that stupid concern and worry, was just going to slow them down. There wasn’t time for mistakes, or hiccups, or rest and recovery. It was the end of the fucking world. 

☁︎ trans diego & child five [Series] by iamnotalizard { G }

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eudora and beaman are surprised to find out diego has a kid; they're more surprised when they see what their relationship is like

☁︎ traumaversary by WeWalkADifferentPath { T }

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It follows him like an unscratched itch. Under his skin, over his body, around his energy, like a mosquito that won’t leave him the fuck alone.

April 1st. April 1st. April 1st.

(A character study of Five, with some inevitable family feels, in honour of March 24th).

☁︎ two can be as bad as one by myeyesarenotblue { M }

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“Five, sweet little Five” Klaus says, from where he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, next to one of the living room’s couches, instead of sitting on it like a normal person. “We love you but what the fuck”

Five growls, like he’s a dog or something. “It should correct itself”

☁︎ Uncle Five PT1 by glitched-coffee { G }

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Allison has to take care of Claire without warning the others but its all fine and dandy until Claire thinks she’s old enough to hear everything about Five. She’s seven.

☁︎ Unexpected Future, An by aseies { T / WIP }

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“I’m sure you’re looking forward to finding a way back to your own time as soon as possible,” Nedzu said. “I want you to know that U.A. will do everything in its power to help you achieve that goal. Time travel is a complicated equation to solve, but I’m sure if we put our heads together we’ll come up with something!”

Five raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And you’re just going to do that out of the goodness of your heart? I’m not even old enough for high school yet.”

“Well, we’re all heroes for a reason, no? What good are we if we can’t help a single child in need?” Nedzu pointed out with a pleasantly neutral smile as he sipped his tea.

OR: Instead of time traveling into the apocalypse, thirteen-year-old Five Hargreeves teleports in the middle of the USJ fight.

He gets a couple of new dads out of it.

☁︎ Vital Signs by aye_of_newt { M } 

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Sometimes, it's difficult for Klaus to tell if someone is alive or dead.When Five shows up, covered in blood after killing the Board, Klaus panics.

☁︎ walls kept tumbling down, the by Ingu { T }

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It started small.

There was a nagging ache in his chest, phantom pain from where the bullets had pierced his flesh, in the overwritten timeline that never will be.

(the one where rewinding time doesn't miraculously resolve mortal gunshot wounds)

☁︎ We All Deserve Second Chances (but don't repeat your mistakes) by justarandomword, wolvesandnovas { T }

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Time-travelling gave Ben a second chance at life. He's not about to let Reginald Hargreeves ruin that for him and Klaus.

(a.k.a. Reginald takes Klaus' dog tags and the aftermath.)

☁︎ we didn't choose this life, we're just (kind of) living it [Series] by noodlerdoodler { T / Partially WIP }

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Five couldn’t move, standing by and watching complacently, as his younger brother grabbed him roughly by the front of his sweater. It was like he was watching a play he wasn't apart of, yet that was definitely his small body being tossed over the balcony. No doubt, Luther thought that he would just jump out of the way. He'd always jumped out of the way, sometimes without even meaning to, but now visions of a world on fire flashed through his head as his body plummeted towards the ground. Seemingly, he was tumbling through the air in slow motion and absentmindedly, Five wondered if this was his life flashing before his eyes. All he saw was the desolate world he’d left behind weeks ago.

When Five hit the ground, it was with a sickening cracking noise.

“Oh my god, Luther, what have you done?”

☁︎ with two arms by karcheri { T }

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What it comes down to, really, is that Five had been too eager for results. Once it became clear to him that there was a connection between his powers and his energy level the obvious course of action, as he saw it, was to test this information. The hypothesis was this: higher energy levels = stronger powers and the easiest way to get more energy is to eat more. Pretty simple stuff. Too simple. 

or Five times that Five starves himself and one time that he gets called out on it.

☁︎ world of options, a by achilleees { E }

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“So did you ask Five about me?” Klaus asked.

“Was I supposed to do that?” Diego said.

“You are the worst fucking wingman,” Klaus said.

☁︎ year that wasn't, the by achilleees { E }

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Diego turned to Five. “I’ve already, uh, lived today. This has already happened.”

Everyone went still.

“Ooh, that’s a mind-fuck,” said Klaus.

☁︎ you from yesterday by questors (sieges) { T }

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The difference between who his siblings once were and who they are now.

☁︎ You Put Your Head In My Hands by shadowsapiens { M }

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“I need a favor.” Five scrambles to his feet, fluffy dark tail lashing behind him. “Don’t worry, it’s not the apocalypse.”

☁︎ You Shook Me All Night Long by Persephxneeee { M }

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Diego was right, Five thinking too much sometimes.

☁︎ zero to sixty by achilleees { E }

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“Man, have you seen me?” said Diego. “Are you really that surprised?”

Oh, Five thought.

“Seems right,” said Klaus, pleased. “Other than the turtlenecks. Very hard to take you seriously as a Dom in the turtlenecks.”

[goofygoldengirl]

Ok Everyone I’m On A Roll Today

I’m gonna give you a proper explanation as to why we’ll never get a Led Zeppelin movie.

Buckle up cause this is gonna get long. 

We, as classic rock fans live in an age of reminiscence. We take out our records, cds, mp3s and sit back, relax, and think of the glory days that we’ve never experienced if we’re under the age of 50. Even though we’re decently mainstream, The Queen movie Bohemian Rhapsody took interest in classic rock to new heights. It was critically acclaimed, Rami Malek won an oscar, and fans of other bands of the 60s-80s stirred with anticipation for the day they would get their band in the limelight. A fan, like myself, and many others, knowing that 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of Led Zeppelin’s (also referred here as LZ) creation (although they officially got together in 1968) perhaps are wondering if they are going to get a surprise biopic announcement in the near future.

However, I have come to crush everybody’s dreams. The answer is never as long as the remaining band members are still alive. Now before y’all get out your pitchforks, let’s focus our attention to the most important member of this debate: guitarist James Patrick Page, also known as Jimmy Page, Pagey, and Jimmurs back in the deviantart LZ community in 2010.

Although Led Zeppelin arose from the planning and careful selection of the higher ups at Atlantic Records (mostly manager Peter Grant although Jimmy was the one who went out to find members) Led Zeppelin, is Jimmy Page’s masterpiece, his opus magnum, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought of his band to be like one of his children, perhaps his favorite. Understandably, he was devastated when the band broke up after drummer John Bonham’s death from alcohol poisoning, and everybody knows he wants the band to be back together in some shape or form. This of course sparked a feud with singer Robert Plant, who also understandably was doing well in his solo career and wanted to move on. Depending on who you talk to, it’s never really been officially resolved despite the 2007 concert and Robert’s final declaration that he will never do anything Led Zeppelin related ever again, Jimmy has focused on other matters such as remixing LZ albums and releasing concert dvds. In addition to that, there are several other matters worth pointing out. In the past, and even to this day, it was extremely difficult to get ahold of LZ songs to use in tv and movie soundtracks because Jimmy, unofficially “in charge” of LZ music distribution is overprotective of how his music is used (probably stemming from LZ’s hatred of concert bootleggers but that’s a different story). We also have a long history of lawsuits that accuse LZ of plagiarism and ripoffs stemming from the 70s, that have taken a hit to LZ’s musical reputation. Looking at Jimmy’s defensive stance over the band’s music and public image, we segway to our next question.

Can a Led Zeppelin movie give an authentic and enjoyable experience for audiences?

We know from the nearly ten year saga to create a Queen movie that there was a lot of contention between the remaining band members and directors over portrayal of the members’ personal lives within Queen, and Queen pushing for a more family friendly image. In the end, the movie earned a PG 13 rating, an acceptable negotiation for both parties, and a good rating to draw in an audience. Assuming that using this model will bring in the most amount of money and recognition for future biopic movies, we shall apply it to the band Led Zeppelin.

A PG 13 rated Led Zeppelin movie would be impossible to do. No offense to Queen (they’re my second favorite band behind Zep so I’m allowed to say this) but they are tame compared to the antics that Led Zeppelin got up to back in their heyday. We’re talking about what you imagine when you think of the rock n roll lifestyle. Loud music, jet setting, partying all night, sex, drugs, trashing hotel rooms, groupies, more drugs, more sex, getting trashed at the club, pump it up baby a whole hecka lotta YOW times10! Led Zeppelin were a bunch of party animal freaks (Bassist John Paul Jones is debatable but there was New Orleans)and well you could attempt to focus directly on the music, but a lot of the music in the later years ties into that crazy rock n roll lifestyle (Sick Again from Physical Graffiti and For Your Life from Presence) and Jimmy Page’s descent into heroin addiction and John Bonham’s gradual and tragic deterioration from years of alcohol abuse had a profound affect on how the band members got along during the In Through The Outdoor sessions and is the reason why it still has a very mixed reception and is ranked low on favorite LZ albums.

A rated R movie could work, you may say. I mean look at the Doors movie. Yeah but even though The Doors got trippy and Jim Morrison was a character man, a Led Zeppelin rated R movie would be a very hard rated R. Again, this goes back to all the tour commotion, where especially in the early years, a lot of sordid stuff happened. And I know you’re thinking, I can live watching a couple of sex scenes. Oh sweet summer child who has not gone through the threshold of transitioning from a Led Zeppelin fan who strictly listens to their music to searching out their history, inspiration, stories from the countless biographies out there, we are talking about some fucked up stuff that I am not gonna even talk about in this post for fear of invoking the wrath of the tumblr flag gods, and that the more sensitive leaning people might consider to be NC17 stuff. And there is a difference between detailing this information in a niche book that only diehard fans will pick up, and putting it in a movie intended for everybody and no shit sherlock you will get controversy. 

And you may ask, who are the subjects of such controversial tales? Basically everybody, although as we said JPJ falls into bassists are usually boring category, Robert Plant had a pretty good amount of moments because no shit he was hot back then and who wouldn’t go wild over him. And our main offenders of depravity and strife? John Bonham, Jimmy Page, and special mention to tour manager (and subject of much controversy within the Led Zeppelin fandom itself) Richard Cole. And if based on director’s tendencies to capture the authentic even if it involves shock content, the depictions of these three men will garner a lot of attention. While John Bonham is dead and cannot speak for himself, the other two can. Based on Richard Cole’s tell all contributions to the classic 1980s publication that detailed LZ’s rise and fall, Hammer of The Gods, he’ll probably just pop up out of the woodworks and bask in the next 15 minutes of fame. But Jimmy? James Patrick I will do anything to keep Led Zeppelin’s reputation in a good light Page? Oh he’ll have a field day alright. And it’s not just bracing ourselves for the inevitable telling directors what they can and cannot put in, it’s also opening the huge, sticky, labeled with a giant TRIGGER WARNING can of worms what exactly Jimmy was doing that would be so controversial both then and now. Now, I know that everyone in the Led Zeppelin fandom knows what I’m about to say, probably some in the classic rock fandom in general who knows things here and there, too, but this is for everybody who doesn’t know. Jimmy Page in the 1970s dated teenage girls. And to clarify, I’m not talking about that gray line that people debate about of 18 technically signaling adult years, yet is still a vulnerable age, I’m talking about girls, minors, who were14-16 when he was nearly or in his 30s. And the relationship that is the most documented (Lori Maddox for the LZ fans reading) oh my god, it is just messed up. Like basically stalked and kidnapped her so they could meet, and in the relationship locked her up in hotel rooms while he was in concerts messed up. You might say it was the 70s, they just turned a blind eye well honey it’s 2019, and a topic as dicey as a grown ass man going after children is not gonna be ignored in this day and age where people are starting to pay more attention to issues like these. I know that if a director decides to devote a segment of that movie to that part of Jimmy’s past (and present if you think about him going out with 20 something year old women when he’s in his 70s) it will basically destroy his own reputation. Which is very, very much intertwined with Led Zeppelin’s. So if he takes a hit, LZ does too, and he cannot afford to let that happen. And if this means having to decline an offer for a biopic in order to preserve a sliver of integrity that is just dangling by a thread as old news becomes common knowledge, so be it. 

Oh yeah the christians will probably get wound up again about LZ being satanic or some shit due to Alestier Crowley and the whole playing Stairway to Heaven backwards thing but hey they’re irrelevant to this discussion

So the TLDR: We’re never getting a Led Zeppelin movie. Reputation is everything to Jimmy Page and a movie that goes into some hardcore detail about band “shenanigans” will serve us a whopping discourse for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that will get the movie, and the band slammed hard. 

[achangeinpriorities]

Prompt: Len betrayed Barry with Sara during his journey with the Legends. Barry and Leonard had been married for a year. One night Mick is drunk he says this phrase "Snart, how was sex with Sara?", Unfortunately Barry was there and he heard everything. They quarrel and divorce. In the end they try to start over and be a couple again ... but Barry will hate Sara Lance forever!

Hullo anon! I don’t think I’ve ever done a cheating fic before, so I’m sorry if this is a bit rubbish. Once again, cross-posted to AO3 for anyone who prefers it there (link here). Here you go:

Len hasn’t felt this kind of excitement—this kind of challenge—since first meeting the Flash. He’s intrigued, of course he is, and that’s his downfall. The fact that Sara flirts as readily with him as he does with her only makes matters worse.

They have one night—one wild, mildly painful, exquisite night that starts with sparring and ends with Leonard pinned down on his bed. When all is done, Sara curls on top of him like a cat and falls asleep. Leonard lets her, mostly because he doesn’t want to be beaten up for waking her.

He sleeps poorly. Sometime around one in the morning, the full impact of what he’s done hits him and he has to restrain himself from shoving Sara off the bed in disgust. (He’s not upset with her, not truly. He’s disgusted with himself.)

“Shouldn’t have put a ring on me,” he whispers into the darkness.

The next day, he freezes Sara out as effectively as he’s ever frozen out anyone who’s gotten too close. Mick notices, because unfortunately Mick notices a lot more than he admits, but the others take it for his customary rudeness. Well, Leonard amends, Rip might know. He’s nosy that way, and Leonard wouldn’t put it past him to have Gideon report on illicit goings-on.

This suspicion is confirmed partway through the day when Rip takes him aside, folds his arms, and demands, “Is this going to be a problem?”

“No.” Leonard feigns interest in an old map to avoid having to meet Rip’s eyes. “I need to make it clear to Sara that it won’t happen again. Beyond that, no, it won’t impact our working relationship.”

Rip raises an eyebrow. “There aren’t rules against fraternization on my ship. Lord knows it makes everything easier if there are, but that seems hypocritical, given how I fared when faced with such restrictions.”

Leonard glares at him. “I thought you knew everything about everyone you brought on board. I’m married.”

Rip’s eyes widen and his mouth drops into a comical ‘o’ of surprise. “Oh,” he murmurs. “No. That’s…not in any records.”

“Well, no, it wasn’t.” At Leonard’s insistence, and somewhat reluctantly, Stein had performed the ceremony. Beyond that, they took no legal steps; Leonard hadn’t wanted to jeopardize his husband’s future. (Being married to a thief tends to close otherwise promising doors.)

“Gideon,” Rip appeals to the computer, “did you know about this?”

Leonard has never heard Gideon sound so disapproving. “I did,” she replies, “given that he married my creator, Barry Allen.”

Rip gapes at him in a mix of shock and horror. Leonard has never felt smaller or more repulsive. He does what he always does in such situations: he lashes out. “That’s right. I just cheated on the Flash. What kind of monster does that make me?”

“Human,” Rip says simply.

Leonard leaves without a backwards glance. He lied to Rip. He’s not repulsive for cheating on the Flash, although by most people’s standards that of itself is an unforgivable crime; he’s the lowest kind of scum for cheating on Barry, the relentless optimist who forced him to be a better person and who, should he ever find out, will probably try to convince him that they can recover from this, too. He vows then that the kid can never know. He can’t face his earnest attempts to make it right.

 ***

After defeating Vandal Savage and the Time Masters with some help from an ex-Time Master and his daughter, the Legends return to their own time victorious. The others celebrate. Alone of them, Leonard dreads the return. What exactly is he going to tell Barry?

As soon as the Wave Rider touches down, the others bolt for the door. Leonard lingers, trying to find the courage to face the excited speedster he knows will be waiting for him. Then a cool voice speaks from behind him.

“Mr. Snart, I do not usually stoop to threats, but if you hurt my creator and you ever step foot onto my ship again, I will make your life hell.”

Threats from a computer program. This is what Leonard’s life has come to. “Duly noted, Gideon.”

By the time he leaves the Wave Rider, their welcome party has turned into a real party. He spots Sara reuniting with her sister and Oliver, Stein embracing Clarissa, Jax and Ronnie clasping hands, and Cisco batting Mick away from a vial of disturbingly crimson liquid. His observations are cut short by a familiar blur of scarlet that speeds into his arms. “Len!”

“Barry.” Leonard feels so thoroughly disgusting that he can barely bring himself to hug his husband. Barry notices, of course, but he takes it the wrong way.

“You’re tired, of course you are, you’ve been jumping all through time and Sara said you almost got blown up and do you want me to run you home? Or do you wanna stay? Do you want cuddles or should I back off?”

They should go home. The longer they’re around the rest of the Legends, the greater the probability someone will let something slip. Leonard is about to say so when Cisco calls, “Barry, bring your…Snart…and get down here!”

Against his will, Leonard finds himself coaxed down the walkway and led into the middle of the party. Barry cuddles him insistently, although Leonard doubts he’s aware of it; he’s simply too tactile not to. He forces himself not to pull away. Barry wants to be touched, to be held close, to be loved. After what Leonard has done, fulfilling these wishes seems like the least he can do.

They’re in the middle of a fascinating exchange with Thea when Mick wanders over, reeking of alcohol. “Hey Snart,” he rumbles. “Just overheard Sara and her sister. When were you gonna tell me you slept with her?”

The room goes still and breathless. Barry turns to him, a question in his eyes, desperate to be told that Mick is confused. Leonard can’t give him that.

“No,” Barry says when the silence has stretched too long. “No, no, no, no, no, Len, say something, say he misheard…”

Every guilt-induced nightmare Leonard has had to this point pales in comparison to the look of abject horror on Barry’s face. He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to watch the impact of his words. “He didn’t, Barry. I slept with Sara during the mission.”

Barry makes a wounded sound as though Leonard has struck him. When Leonard glances at him, he’s leaning against Thea for support. She’s glaring daggers at him, and he braces himself for a well-deserved reprimand when unexpected trumpets sound from their right.

“Ah!” Cisco jumps, scrabbles at his pocket, and mutes his phone. Every eye turns to him. He stares at the ground, gives a sheepish mutter of “I have to…I’m just gonna…go, now,” and skulks away. As he passes Leonard, he mutters, “By the way, I’m going to kill you.”

Leonard nods in curt acknowledgment of the threat but doesn’t turn his attention from Barry. “There’s nothing I can say,” he murmurs.

Barry draws in a shaky breath. “We’re not doing this here.”

That’s Leonard’s only warning before he finds himself at home. The world spins around him and he lurches violently to the left. Before, Barry has always steadied him with a hand on his arm or his waist. This time, he watches impassively as Leonard leans against the counter for balance.

“I’m sorry,” Leonard manages. “I know it’s not nearly enough…”

“No, it’s not!” Barry bursts out. He looks up at the ceiling. Leonard can’t tell whether he’s on the verge of tears or simply too frustrated to look anywhere else. When he speaks, his voice breaks. “You cheated on me?”

Leonard feels obligated to say, “Don’t blame Sara. It was my fault.”

“I know that!” Barry’s voice hitches on a sob. Before Leonard can apologize again (and oh, God, how he wants to), he clears his throat and tries again. “I don’t blame Sara, she didn’t know, it’s on you for saying yes—oh no, no, wait, you said yes, didn’t you?”

Leonard scoffs. Even now, faced with indisputable evidence of how self-centered and cold he is, Barry can’t help trying to give him an out. “She didn’t force me, Scarlet. I said yes and I kept saying yes.” Admitting as much aloud is rubbing salt into both of their wounds. Leonard nonetheless feels he owes it to Barry to lay the whole sordid affair bare.

“Why?” Barry bursts out. He drops his gaze from the ceiling to Leonard’s face, and Leonard sees tears shining on his lashes. “Are you that desperate that you couldn’t wait for me? Am I not enough? What did I do wrong that made you not want to wait for me?”

Leonard’s heart shatters. No, Barry can’t think this is his fault. “It wasn’t you. I’m selfish and shortsighted and Sara was there, and I didn’t think about how it would hurt you until it was done.” His instinct is to push until Barry snaps, because he can handle anger and it’ll be better for the kid to realize that there’s nothing to fix. He’s just not strong enough to be cruel when faced with Barry’s heartbroken pleading. “I don’t have a defense. What I did was cruel and it hurt you and it hurt her, and all I can say is that I’ve hated myself so fucking much since it happened.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” Barry says in a broken whisper. Leonard reaches out to him out of habit, desperate to hold him. He shies away. “I can’t, I can’t. I need to just…I need to not be here right now.”

Leonard doesn’t stop him. After what he’s done, how can he?

***

Miraculously, Leonard manages to avoid the STAR Labs crew and the rest of the Legends for a week. On the eighth day, he returns to his house and finds Barry standing uneasily in the kitchen.

“Barry,” he says in surprise. He hadn’t thought, after what he did, that Barry would want anything to do with him.

“Don’t, don’t talk.” Barry holds up both hands. “I scripted for this all week and I’ve got to say it or I’m gonna lose my nerve. Okay.” He draws a deep breath and relaxes into a not-quite-easy stance. “I’m really, really upset that you slept with Sara knowing that I was here waiting for you. I’m not so upset that I can’t forgive you, but I’m going to need time—and no jokes about time travel from you because that’ll just piss me off more. I wanna move back in and I want things to go back to normal but I don’t…” The determination drains from him. He looks small and weary and hopelessly lost. “I don’t know how to trust you again. That’s something you have to earn back.”

It’s more than Leonard had hoped for, and more levelheaded than the emotional pleas of “Let me try to fix this” that he’d envisioned on the Wave Rider. The request for boundaries and time is something he can respect. “I won’t push you, Scarlet.”

Barry squares his shoulders. “I’m going to ask you not to call me that,” he says firmly. “Not until I say you can.”

Leonard nods. He can respect that, too. ‘Scarlet’ is a pet name; it’s more than fair that Barry wouldn’t want a reminder of the easy intimacy between them when he’s so thoroughly destroyed it. “I can do that.”

Once again, Barry’s determination melts away. Leonard gets a glimpse of deep, aching pain that cuts him like a shard of glass; then the kid tucks it away into a look of weary defeat. “Then, yeah,” he says. “I guess we give this another try.”

[khunvegas]

Malec Fanfic Rec: 3rd Edition

I’m back with another long list of works that deserve some recognition and the writers that deserve validation. You guys are the real MVPs, keeping this ship forever alive.

"I'll make IT fit." by @katychan666

Jace walks by Alec's room and hears Alec saying "It won't fit," followed by Magnus' "I'll make it fit." And when he hears the two of them groaning and the bed creaking... his mind is going places.

or

Jace thinks he hears Malec fucking, but he misunderstands the situation completely.

Cue a very embarrassed Jace and very amused Malec.

“I’m so cute, I don’t see why you aren’t dating me.” by @shadow-bellum

Alec really doesn't understand why Magnus isn't dating him, like he would spoil him because he really loves him.

50 First Dates by @la-muerta

Magnus Bane and Alec Lightwood are lawyers from rival law firms, and they can't stand the sight of each other.

Now, if only the universe would get the memo and stop conspiring to bring them together, goddamnit!

A Moment Alone by mansikka

“That’s it. Just like that.”

A State of Undress by Accal1a

Alec might have just had the best orgasm of his life; but he's not going to take that lying down (so to speak).

It's payback time.

And for a breath of ecstasy by @poemsfromthealley

Nearly to the bed, they'd stopped to kiss with a decadent purpose that, if you asked Magnus, fit this ill-gotten hour. It was the pilfered fruit that tasted the sweetest, after all.

Magnus and Alec steal an afternoon for themselves. (Or, "Is it really an OTP until you've written them fucking against a wall?")

Away Too Long by mansikka

Magnus has been away too long for work. Alec is unhappy about it when Magnus eventually shows up at the Institute.

Bitter Sweet Symphony by DownworldShadow

When young, up-and-coming cellist Alexander Lightwood heads to Aspen, Colorado to attend the prestigious Aspen Music Festival he has no idea what destiny awaits him there. This is an alternate universe Malec love story full of twists and turns, triumphs and tragedies. Asking one of life's most difficult questions... does true love really conquer all?

Blue jeans and blue sky by Evil­_Keshi

Magnus was seven years old when he arrived in Colorado to start his new life - with new parents, a new language, a new everything. Making friends would have helped him, except that his first encounter with the neighbours' kids didn't go too well, and Magnus vowed to hate the Lightwoods forever.

Forever. No matter what.

Bounty by flying_pupitre

“What is it that you think we’re doing here? You have always made it abundantly clear to me that this was nothing more than a delightfully sordid but mutual dalliance."

Can you keep me close? (can you love me most?) by @maia-isabelle

Alec has made his choice a long time ago, though he has trouble putting his finger on the when. Maybe when he had rushed out that first, desperate 'I love you' or when he had realized after those painful days apart that he couldn't live without Magnus; when he had let Magnus take his hand and drag him back to the only place he ever called home. Or maybe it had been some other moment, some everyday feeling in the morning light or kitchen or settled on the balcony. However, it takes a demon wound and a day of sleep for him to finally say it.

Confessions of an 'Alcoholic' by @chairmancatsby

Alec never liked drinking. He especially hated the aftermath of it the next morning when he felt like there was a boom box in his mind. But what Alec disliked the most was when the alcohol made his mouth filter magically disappear.

Or 5 times Alec drunkenly confessed to Magnus + 1 time he wasn't drunk.

Conquest by bumblebeesknees

When it comes down to it, the only real mistake Magnus made was letting his guard down during the first round because he had thought Alec believed it when Magnus had said that he was a little out of practice. -

This beautiful, infuriating asshole thinks he’s got the upper hand, marvels Magnus, irritation and inexplicable arousal warring inside him at the sight of the smirk that’s started to take form on Alec’s face.

Magnus can’t let him get away with thinking that for too long.

Dearly Beloved by @evillittlebirdie

Anonymous asked: How about for the Malec Prompts: a continuation of that 1x13 scene where Magnus asks Alec if he regrets the kiss and Alec reassures him that he doesn't in his own, cute way? I feel like they should have included that somewhere in the episode <3

Don't break my faded heart by @firstaudrina

It's not entirely unheard of for a Shadowhunter to be in Pandemonium, but it is unusual for one to be here alone. Magnus will have to deal with that, but not yet. He's having too good a time.

Ever Mine (Series) by Infinity (malecfeels)

Malec Human AU Dominant Alec and Submissive Magnus And their own quirky love story

Evidence of the heart by @kindaresilient

"Hey."

Magnus hears the greeting as soon as he takes the noise canceling headphones off and can't help but smile in recognition. He turns around and sees Alec standing by the door, leaning on the frame.

"Well hello there. If it isn't my favorite criminalist."

Alec can't help but smile fondly as he straightens up and walks in. "You tell that to every man and woman on this Department."

Forever and Always by @magnusbicon

malec + domestic trailer scene fluff

Fuck Fate by @dontblinkamelia

When Magnus woke up on this one fateful day his tongue felt like it was made out of sandpaper, his head like someone had used it as a hammer and his stomach like he’d swallowed a gallon of soap. He barely had the energy to get up but as it turned out the universe didn’t care that he had a hangover to nurse because it still sent him spiraling down a mess of misunderstandings, lies, and confusion. And honestly? He really didn’t have the nerve to deal with it all. So fuck social media, fuck trying to help others and fuck being in love. The only thing that doesn’t seem to work is him fucking Alexander because apparently the whole universe hates him and fate is set against him. Well, you know what? Fuck fate.

Get You Where You Wanna Go by @royaltybane

Alec is a big fan of mundane driving when Magnus is the one in the driver's seat

aka Alec calls Magnus by a pet name for the first time

Goldenrod by kinkymagnus

Most people present their second gender around the age of 21. Some, however, never present- these people are called Betas.

Alec Lightwood had thought he was Beta, up until this moment.

Turns out he's just a late bloomer.

Or: Alec's having sex with his hot boyfriend when he suddenly presents and suddenly things get a lot more... heated between them.

Or: Turns out knotting someone can make them go into heat, even if you weren't previously aware said person was an omega. Who knew?

Gotcha by @robinowich

There's nothing like waking up to the sound of your husband comforting your child.

Unless it's two am and your husband is sleeping next to you.

Graphite eyes by @thealmostrhetoricalquestion

Alec doesn’t know why he’s taking the damn class in the first place, but he sure as hell knows why he’s staying. The Life Model, a man called Magnus, is absolutely stunning.

Happy shiny people everywhere by Fatale (femme)

Alec emerges from one of the bathroom stalls already fully dressed in a gray suit, plain white dress shirt, and hair neatly combed.

He looks like he always does, which is to say: painfully handsome and angry at the world.

A week into his new living arrangements and Magnus has realized that no matter where Izzy goes, she wears towering stilettos that hurt Magnus just to look at them, Jace is a mostly harmless douchebag, and Alec is a big mystery, their very own Phantom of the Loft.

Heat of the Moment by binksybane

Alec stared into Magnus' eyes. He had a choice to make... for once in his life, for the first time in his life, he needed to decide whether to take a risk and take something for himself or to go on as he'd always done - and let chances pass him by.

I need you (do you need me?) by @disc0veries

“I am your ex, you are a cop, and I just got arrested for being drunk and disorderly."

I Promise I'll Knock Next Time by @octoberdecemberwrites

Alec Lightwood is in the closet.

No, like, he's literally in the closet.

Magnus Bane finds out Alec is gay, by stumbling across Alec in a janitor supply closet at Alicante High...

The good news? Magnus has had a crush on Alec since the 9th grade, and Alec playing for The Other Team means that Magnus might just have a chance.

The bad news? Alec isn't really ready to come out of the closet just yet, and as his relationship with Magnus quickly progresses from complete strangers to friends-with-benefits, it seems like Alec might not be ready to come out of the closet at all...

Goddammit.

♥ (Shadowhunters Normal-High-School AU with bits of canon sprinkled here and there) ♥

In nomine Patris et Filii by @magnusbaene

The thing Magnus resented the most was the resemblance, the way their relation was an unmistakable fact. Even now he could see himself in the way Asmodeus leaned on his cane, his magic transforming the room with a lazy wave of his fingers.

“Magnus Bane,” Asmodeus drawled, slight grin on his face, “welcome home.” — Magnus negotiates with his father. It doesn't go as planned.

Journey To The Past by @mermaidmaiabelle

Magnus has spent his whole life in an orphanage. He has no memories of his childhood, and no clues to what happened to his family other than a single necklace wrapped around his neck, and three little words - 'Together In Paris'. On leaving the orphanage, it will take a leap of courage to go and chase down his dreams - and a little help from a kitchen boy turned forger called Alec.

aka anastasia au

Just today by @kindaresilient

"There's just no way, Alexander," he begins, ready to reason with him and show him how dangerous this procedure is. "Doctors Roberts and Lewis both agree with me tha--"

Alec interrupts him. "I put you in a little box," he starts. He closes his eyes and buries his face in his hands, taking a deep breath before continuing. "I put you in a little box, and I put that box far away from me, so I could deal with our breakup. I couldn't think-- I couldn't focus with you on my mind every damn second. It hurt so much."

Lay It All on Me by blasphemous

Alec offers Asmodeus a corporate marriage after he realises how much Isabelle loves her boyfriend. Magnus has a girlfriend who he loves with all his heart and tries to fight his feelings for Alec, his arranged husband.

Aka

The Arranged Marriage AU where Magnus wants nothing to do with Alec. Camille's a bitch, Alec sasses her to death. And they live happily ever after.

Let Me Show You by @mattdaddorkio

Alec teaches Magnus how to shoot an arrow, and flirtiness ensues.

Life's a Pudding Full of Plums by candidshot

Love is a feeling you feel when you feel you are going to feel the feeling you’ve never felt before.

Life's a Pudding Full of Plums - Snippets of a world in which Magnus begs for some couple's privacy but Alec is just a proud loudmouth in love... and Magnus keeps falling in love with him - but won't tell him so. Yet.

Sorta office AU

Looks good on you by Fatale (femme)

From his vantage point on the bed, Alec hesitates, then asks, “Magnus, am I boring?”

Magnus turns around and blinks heavily-outlined eyes at him. “Certainly not! You’re dependable, responsible, unwavering.”

Alec frowns. “Those all kind of sound like synonyms for boring.”

Magnus crosses the room and sits down next to Alec. “They’re not, and that’s not all you are. To describe everything you are would take a lifetime.”

“A really steady and dependable lifetime, huh?” To Alec, it sounds more like what someone would find desirable in a warranty for tires than a boyfriend.

Lovely Sort of Déjà Vu by @alecfancywood

“This is going to sound terribly rude, especially after all this flirting we’ve had going on. And believe me, I am interested. But I can’t figure out who you are.”

or. Magnus and Alec meet again at their high school reunion

Loyalty is Hard to Find; Trust is Easy to Lose by @astudyinfic

Overhearing his parabatai giving a shovel talk to his boyfriend on the balcony of Magnus' own loft, Alec sees red. He and Jace need to have a chat about boundaries and trust. Now.

Magnus has his reasons by candidshot

When Alec very casually suggested that he officially moved in, Magnus took a pause, the wires in his brain suddenly going haywire imagining Alec 24/7 with him.

prompted by S03ep05 sneak peek also bits from S03ep03

Muted by Jld71

Magnus casts a spell

Never Again by darkangel86

Alec groaned as he slumped back against the loft door. His head ached like he'd gone ten rounds with a group of Shax demons by himself. Why in the angels name did he drink so much? If this was what it felt like to be drunk, then Alec swore to himself he'd never touch another drop of the vile stuff again for as long as he lived.

No Receipt, No Return by @nancyloumm

Alec works late and Magnus gets drunk.

Ours by werewolfsaz

Magnus gasped as his back hit the cabinet, fingers instantly sinking into inky black tresses to pull Alec in for a scorching kiss, hips hitching forward to grind deliciously against his long, hard body. Alec, not to be outdone, wrapped his arms around Magnus' lean waist and lifted him up, a deep thrill zapping through him when the smaller man's legs locked around his waist.

Paparazzi by @imawriteriwrite

Magnus Bane is a pop star best known for his break up songs and wicked dance sequences. Alec Lightwood is an actor best known for being the object of Magnus' songs.

When Alec’s new tv show gets picked up, a series of events throws Magnus back into his life, bringing up a mess of memories and confusion. Forced to spend more and more time together, will they ever figure their feelings out?

Paper Love by @thealmostrhetoricalquestion

Alec was well aware that he was being creepy. He was well aware that the sight of a tall, built man in all black, standing near the kids section of the local library without a child would send a thrill of suspicion through most people’s minds. He was well aware that he hadn’t turned a page of the cookbook in his hands in the past ten minutes, and he was well aware that he was outright staring.

He was aware of all of this, and yet he couldn’t seem to stop doing any of it, and quite frankly, it was all Magnus Bane’s fault.

Past lives by @firstaudrina

“Alexander?” he tries again, and again there’s a disgruntled noise, but this time it draws Magnus’ gaze down to the space between couch and coffee table, where Alec appears to be laying. Magnus crosses the room and looks down at him, one eyebrow quirked. “Was happy hour very happy, then?”

Quick, Kiss Me by @carmenlire

Alec throws back the rest of his drink, feeling pleasantly buzzed. He has no intention of getting drunk, he doesn’t want to miss a moment-- is trying to sear every second of this day on his memory-- but he’s feeling good and this drink is delicious.

He’s about to turn around and order another, planning on taking it with him as he looks for his errant husband, when a hand wraps around his arm.

“Quick, kiss me! I’ll explain later--”

Alec’s smiling as he mutters, “Wha--”

Magnus’s lips meet his before he gets the word all the way out and then he’s not thinking at all.

Rain and Roses by MidnightAmethyst

When it all comes down to it, Alec chooses Jace.  

Set Me In Motion by @lemonoclefox

“Is that your way of asking me to cook for you sometime?” Alec says. “'Cause I will.” The moment the words escape his mouth, Alec finds himself slightly panicking. Because he does not talk like that, ever―in a way that might even be considered flirting―and he still doesn’t understand what it is about Magnus that brings stuff like that out of him. More importantly, he has a boyfriend. Magnus, however, just looks mildly surprised as their eyes meet. “My, my. Master chef, good family name, and charming?” Magnus tilts his head ever so slightly. “Careful, Mr. Lightwood,” he says in a low, teasing voice, mouth curving up in a smile. “You’re gonna make me swoon.” ---

One night, Magnus spots a handsome stranger in the elevator of his apartment building – which wouldn’t be a big deal if said stranger didn’t turn out to be dating Magnus’s neighbor. The stranger soon becomes Alec, and their paths end up crossing more than once. A tentative friendship develops as they slowly get to know each other, and they both find that it’s effortless in a way neither of them has ever known. It's only when other kinds of feelings start getting involved that things become a bit more complicated.

Sleeping beauty by kinky_bird

Magnus looked beautiful like this.

Slow down by broken_fannibal

Magnus leaned over the back of the armchair and slid his hands down Alec’s chest.

Alec smiled. “What is it?”

“I was just thinking... I’ve been putting up complex wards all day. You’re home. And I could use some... distraction.” He grinned at the last word and waggled his eyebrows.

Alec blushed a little. “O-Oh. Do you have something in mind?” He put his phone down on the table.

Magnus straddled Alec’s lap. “Tie me up. Touch me. Don’t be afraid to get a little rough.”

Strange Situations by @insiemes

When Alec's best friend and her husband die in a horrible accident, their daughter is left to his care. She is also left to her other godparent Magnus Bane, Alec's blind date gone horribly wrong from years before.

or a 'Life As we Know It' AU

Subtextually Speaking by Fatale (femme)

Later, when Alec’s getting ready for bed, pulling on cotton sweatpants and a slouchy green top, pilled and nubby from repeated washings, he gets a message from Magnus that he’s home, he’s ok, and Alec should get some rest. It’s generic and impersonal, and not like Magnus at all.

Alec’s stomach clenches in reflexive fear.

It’s just nerves, he’s acting crazy.

Sway by @lemonoclefox

Alec's small shop has everything the modern witch needs -- and more than Magnus personally ever expected to find there.

Take It Off by @katychan666

Magnus wants to get Alec's shirt off at all costs, because in his humble opinion, Shirtless Alec is the best Alec.

The accident by @kindaresilient

He can't finish his sentence though, as Mrs. Johnson turns around and quickly fires 4 consecutive shots to his chest, point blank. He feels everything in slow motion as he falls down. He hears everything too: the shots fired to Mrs. Johnson, his fellow criminalist cries for help.

The Bed We Made by @carmenlire

His glamour is down like it always is when it’s just the two of them in their space and Alec gets lost for a minute as he watches the last rays of the evening play over Magnus’s face. It only takes a minute, though, for him to realize that something is wrong. While Magnus seems as comfortable as ever straddling Alec, there’s a line of tension running through him that Alec can’t help but notice.

He lays his hands on Magnus’s hips, pulling him just a touch closer and Magnus smiles, faintly.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

The Neon Light of Us by alittlebriton

At some point, Magnus and Alec have to talk. It's just, Alec doesn't quite know how.

 “I’m nervous,” Magnus admitted eventually. Alec reached down and found his hands and squeezed them.

“I’m not.” He waited until Magnus looked at him again, and shook his head. “I’m not nervous, Magnus. Not about us. Never about us.”

The look on Magnus’ face was almost awestruck, his dark eyes contemplating Alec’s until he shook his head, brushing Alec’s hair off his forehead.

“You’re so sure,” he marveled. “So sure. And it’s not like I’m not sure, about us, about you, don’t get me wrong, but. I sometimes can’t believe you’re this sure about me.”

The Proof is in the Pollen by @triggeringnotworthit

Sex pollen is injected into Alec and Magnus is the only one who can help.

The Touch That He Planted, The Garden He Left by @royaltybane

set just after the events of 2x10

As soon as the door to Magnus’ loft was opened, Alec was pushing them through it and pinning Magnus to the wall so he could press his body flush against him. He needed to feel Magnus everywhere—needed to positively drown in him.

“You’re alive,” Alec murmured against Magnus’ cheek reverently. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Magnus assured, holding Alec’s arms tenderly.

Third time's the charm by @laughingmagnus

“I did dream about it,” Alec finally answers slowly. “For a long time. But –” Maryse hears him swallow, hears the crackle of him switching the phone to his other hand. “It’s not my dream now. I want to stay in New York. I’m happy here, and he can’t – I can’t be anywhere else.”

(or a series of coda ficlets from shadowhunters s3)

This is our world and this is our time by Madalena

“I don’t want to stop.” Alec said simply, pressing his hand into Magnus’ hip. “I… I didn’t exactly plan what I wanted to happen this evening, but I do want to feel you. With me. This is something I am definitely ready for.”

“You’re sure?” Magnus asked, running his thumb over Alec’s bottom lip. Alec nodded wordlessly.

“I want you. I want this. I want us.” He swiped a thumb over Magnus’ cheek, just below his unglamoured eye. “I hope this is something that you want too.”

Timeless treasures by @thealmostrhetoricalquestion

“It’s not what you think,” Magnus says, his heart giving a painful squeeze. “A spell of mine went a little haywire, and it hit you. You’ve – you’ve forgotten me. I promise, Alexander, you do know me.”

Alec simply stares at him suspiciously. He lowers his hand and his gaze darts around the loft, fixing on little things, like the potted plant on the windowsill, or the coffee machine still gurgling away. It’s still early morning, the first rays of sunlight stirring the clouds into soft peaks, visible through the open window. Alec is bathed in a white glow, and even sleepy-eyed and bleeding, he looks beautiful. Magnus feels the same indescribable ache he’s always felt whenever he looks at Alec, but this time it hurts a little more, because when Alec looks at him, he doesn’t feel the same way.

Wanna Go for a Ride? By DarkAliceLilith

“Off, off,” Magnus mumbled between kisses. “Take it off. Take it all off.”

Weightless by @octoberdecemberwrites

“Here ya go. Appetizers on the house.” The bartender turned his focus towards Magnus, his face changing into a slight pout. “You’re cute as hell, babe, but you have to do better. I once saw Alec dump a guy for wearing an out-of-season Patek.”

“What’s a Patek?” Magnus’ question came out genuine, as he peered over at the bar’s menu.

The bartender loudly chucked, while slapping his hand against the counter-top. “Oh my God! Alec, he’s so funny! I get it now. It’s okay that he dresses like that, because he makes you laugh.”

The bartender nodded in understanding, as he made his way to the other end of the bar.

Magnus’ expression was now stoic, as he considered making a beeline for the exit...

This wasn’t going to work out.

Alec Lightwood was out of Magnus’ league. Even with actual magic at Magnus’ fingertips, he couldn’t magically develop a sense of effortless style, and he could never match Alec’s natural charisma.

They were just way too different…

With a kiss by @thesorrowoflizards

Magnus summons a demon for a client and gets a little more than he bargained for. . "It's a mutually beneficial arrangement," the demon purred. "And what do you get from it?" Magnus challenged. "Why do you want to have sex with me?" Alexander smirked. "Because you're ridiculously hot, that's why," he said.

With bones unbuttoned by @ohfreckle

Alec may still be figuring out the day-to-day aspects of their relationship, they both are, but this, here—Alec Lightwood was born to fuck.

You are worthy by stupidnephlim 

On a child's twelfth birthday a blood test is taken to find out what their second gender is. Omega's are seen as slaves, and are sold at a young age. Their purpose in life is to please their owners in any way they can.

Magnus has been taught that he is nothing but a thing that is made for being used.

That is until he meets a certain Alpha...

Your Voice by isobel_smy

"He opened his eyes, and stared at the ceiling. Like the day before, and the day before that, and probably tomorrow, the slightly peeling plaster still hung there, desperately hanging onto the little part of it keeping it attached to the ceiling. It hung there, swaying in the harsh breeze from the open window, staring back at him."

-Camille had saved his life, Magnus knew that. Magnus also knew he owed Camille everything- which was why he'd never complain. Not when Camille came home late, not when Camille forced him to make his cat live in a cattery, not when Camille told him he should probably go on a diet. After all, she was just looking after him.

Until something happened- something terrible happened. Something that changed everything, leaving Magnus feeling trapped in a life he never realized he'd been forced into. And Alexander, a complete stranger, might just be the one to save him.

For this time only, I want to take the opportunity to promote my own works  because I don’t think there’s nothing wrong with a little self-promotion :)

[tes-trash-blog]

Ushnar will never say it, but he does fear, and of all things, it’s rejection. So long as he rejects everyone first, he can continue on in peace. More than anything, he fears that even Malacath would spurn him. This is settled when the Spurned Prince himself gifts Voldendrung and says, “Go crush some transphobes, fam.”

Varulv fears his clan from Solstheim will find him, expose him, and all the College will kick him out in a very literal fashion. He knows that at least Savos knew of his sordid past, but you can’t reason with fear. Also Colette. That girl is hiding something.

Amayn doesn’t fear death, per se, but she’s afraid of dying in a humiliating way. She never goes on a mission with even a drop of alcohol in her blood, but that doesn’t help the tongue tied way she gets on seeing a handsome face.

Walks-Among-Adders knows that Cra’Shova is older than them, but they dread the day when she no longer wakes. They sometimes stay up late, just to hear the gentle purr of the Alfiq beside them, and thank the Hist they know this crazy, wild, wonderful Khajiit.

Cra’Shova has lived a long life and accepts that, sooner rather than later, she will walk the Sands Behind The Stars, but fears dear Adders would never move on. After reflecting on her past mates, she realizes that while she misses them and always will, there was always room in her heart for a new love.

Rulan lives in fear of being exposed as a fraud, even though he’s lied only once in his life and immediately confessed to it. He’s afraid of bringing shame to his mother, of dying in the same country that took his father. Also an irrational fear of the number 4. He’s not sure why and can’t quite articulate it.

Valano doesn’t fear anything, least of all the precarious state of the Thalmor, the risk of his own rank and reputation being torn from him, and having all his efforts be for nothing. Silly goose.

All Imerae feared has already happened, and then some. Her hated enemies have spread like a plague, and her people wallow below. Grief and rage are the emotions of war, but another nameless feeling creeps into her as the sun rises and paints the sky.

[ziggory]

Riverdale Liveblogs 3x07 - 3x13

Instead of making you all suffer through six separate liveblogs as I was catching up, have them all in on post!

3x07, “The Man in Black”

Remember when Jughead was the biggest woobie ever with a bunch of sad shit happening to him. Fun times. Honestly, Jughead’s just really taking advantage of finally being on the roadtrip he was denied

Justice for Jingle Jangle. Why did we need a new drug? Or I’d be fine with it complementing the other but NOooOooOOOO. It’s trying to shove JJ out of the spotlight!

Elvis’ granddaughter could’ve just drugged the eggs but instead she chose to nearly give Archie a concussion. Hiram might chop her head off if his Archiekins gets permanent brain damage

Let Archie kill a man!! Jughead got to skin someone who was fucking up his life. Why can’t he let Archie take his shot!? I can’t hear you about consequences

Your business is failing because trading away the final piece of the Soutshide to open a vanity project in the form of a dry speakeasy was not a great idea. Also, gamers can give you business. I’ve seen it!

The show can make Veronica say all these supposedly empowering lines, but I’m never going to forget that she supported a for-profit prison

MAYBE MY DAD’S NOT SO BAD!!?!?

This voiceover was completely unnecessary. Honestly, it’s sort of a slap in the face to Lili’s acting as if they didn’t think she could convey certain things without some hand holding

I’ve seen movies. They make you swallow that shit on the spot

So many negative thoughts being awkwardly confirmed

Honestly, this is what happens when you keep exploiting the place for abuses to help your investigations but never fucking shut it down

3x08, “Outbreak”

Does Moose need drugs to get it up? He said Midge liked to get wild, but methinks he liked it of his own volition as well. And just what I wanted. Shadowy makeouts while high on drug laced childhood candy

Kevin needs to find out who put a curse on his dick. ANOTHER hookup interrupted by bodies in danger

I don’t know why a group of high school boys acting like typical jackass high school boys with loud laughing is cause for thinking they’re all high.

“good people like Archie” 

Gladys being a Jarchie shipper is pure. I will not stand for this no homoing

Wait, Cheryl did actually get to be Student Body President? I thought they were just going to let that circle the drain and disappear

MY FAVORITE INCOMPETENT EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATOR

THE PRISON WAS A FUCKING COVER?!?!? So all of S2 was just…oh my fucking god, I’m going to do drown myself

“good looking shortsatck” Love it. Goddamn, I love Gladys

Do they know that the way they write Hiram and Veronica feels like it’s been dipped in ten layers of incest? He talks to her like she’s the mistress he wants to bed

The affection the Jones women have for Archie is cute

The Gargoyle King being a hallucination is the most disappointing thing

TABLETOP RPGS ARE NOT FUCKING BORN OF MADNESS. Ugh, my inner geek is angry with rage

Oh, now you care about the kids in conversion therapy

So I guess they didn’t go to Toledo for Christmas??

Lili should get a raise for this Griffin Queen shit

I’m more emotional than I would usually be over these Fred scenes given Luke Perry’s recent condition

PROTECT THAT FUCKING DOG WITH YOUR FUCKING LIFE!! THROW YOURSELF IN FRONT OF A BEAR

I missed alcoholic Hermione. And lmao this Watchmen realness

I love Silent!Kevin getting nothing to say in that office! Just fucking great

we need to know more about this fucking Governor. Racist piece of shit who gets upset about vandalized statues of genocidal war criminals, AND he’s under Hiram’s thumb.

3x09, “No Exit”

Will someone get bit by a monkey? I can only hope

Oh fuck off with the Star Wars reference. IT DOESN’T FIT

Stealing from the rich to give to the rich. How very one percenter. And Toni, all your friends are living in tents by the river

KEVIN. WHY THE FUCK DO YOU ALWAYS JOIN THE WORST GROUPS

While the implication of Jughead sleeping over is nice, what the fuck was the point of last episode’s cliffhanger. This timeline makes no sense

I’M GETTING FIREWATCH VIBES

They’re so fucking low budget that they couldn’t even show the bear, LMAO

I forgot what Fangs sounded like. Didn’t FP retire? ARE THERE EVEN ANY ADULTS LEFT IN THIS FUCKING JOKE OF A GANG. But Damn, Fangs is good at crying. So pretty

Aww, I actually missed the hammy ass warden

Every time Joaquin’s name is mentioned, another dagger in my heart

The fact that the sisters have been fake nuns this whole time is just…what the fuck. AND THE FUCKING SOCIAL WORKER KNEW AND JUST LET THEM KEEP OPERATING!?!? LET THIS WHOLE FUCKING TOWN FALL INTO A HELLMOUTH

Remember when Jughead was outraged about the Serpents being paid security at the Pickens festival thing? Time is a flat circle

CHERYL, WHY DON’T YOU JSUT KILL HIRAM THEN

“SAVED”!??! REALLY NANA ROSE!?! IS THAT WHAT YOU CALL THE CHILD GROOMING YOU DID!? And uh, Fred and Sierra should know about that sordid piece of Penelope’s past

Damn, Veggie is hot as fuck

You know who else could’ve gone undercover for the Serpents to infiltrate the Gargoyle gang?!????? I HATE YOU FOREVER, RAS. ANOTHER AU FOR THE DRAWER

3x10, “The Stranger”

LMAO that they tried to make us think Archie died

Being attacked by a bear in Canada means not having to suffer through crippling debt because of the hospital bill for the rest of your life

Sidenote, but I really thought the painting of Veronica would have a bug or something. The fact that she just kept the painting instead of burning it says something

Oh so the core four are THOSE type of friends

Betty’s money >> those kids

Claudius just doesn’t want to do actual work

They let a kid pass the first grade when he couldn’t read? So the educational system has always been rather shit

Hey there, Silent!Kevin! Just sitting silently with your slowly developing biceps

Does Reggie know what PTSD is

I spy with my little eyes Kevin in the corner putting his PE clothes away! Once again robbed of a shirtless scene

FUCKING TALL BOY!?!? Lol, this is really good for my drawer fic actually. Keep sounding like a spiteful man! It’s semi feeding me

Wow, they really crammed in two Varchie sex scenes

Hiram deserved this and every agonizing second of pain he felt

Raw milk, huh? Yeah, that’s all you need to bait Kevin into this cult

Bye Claudius, no one will miss you

I want Hermione/FP to fuck

Jughead throwing a party to make things better is the biggest twist this series has ever done

Archie the alcoholic, eh. If this lasts more than one episode, that’d sure be something

3x11, “The Red Dahlia”

This is the noir episode, isn’t it. I’m…really bad with noir so an episode from THIS team is going to be…very trying

Awww, FP mentioning Joaquin is an extra pang. I wanted to know more about their relationship

I’d love to see the notes on this draft when Jughead tries submitting it to a publisher. Unless he goes the self pub route

Who even runs the newspaper now?

Betty, you’re like the last person to talk about black and white morality

Archie sounds like the protagonist of Office Space at the end when he finds his calling in construction

ELIO HAS SPOKEN MORE THAN MELODY EVER DID. EAT SHIT, RAS

I still need Jughead and Veronica arguing about classic cinema

I wonder where Penelope learned those crocodile tears, Nana. Like I never need a scene of her criticizing her ADOPTED DAUGHTER again

Cheryl is pretty forgiving of the uncle who sort of helped with her institutionalization

Have these boys never watched an episode of Breaking Bad? Put that body in a barrel

So has Veronica had a change of heart about Daddykins? I’m so confused

SMITHERS!?!? YOu’RE STILL ALIVE!? Protect this man

Remember when Betty was a camgirl for ten seconds and watched all of her fake brother’s porn videos

Josie’s voice is pure butter, and the show needs to stop pretending that we want to hear anyone else sing

Why doesn’t Toni have a job at Veronica’s dry speakeasy? She used to be an actual bartender!

“Kevin’s dad boxes at the gym” being a line from Josie is the most beautiful line in this episode

Well at least they explained the seizures.

YYYAAAAAASSSS, KELLY RIPPA!!

What is even the point of Minetta having faked his death just to be Hermione’s kept man

Well, damn, I really didn’t see this FP reveal coming. I wish he was the sheriff Hermione was fucking. And given all the things Jughead used to say and aim at Keller, it’s interesting to see him have to deal with his dad being somewhat in Hermione’s pocket

PULL THE FUCKING TRIGGER, ARCHIE

Lmao at this Bad Boys line. I see you, synergy

Honestly, how dare Archie shoot the person who was going to kill Hiram. I guess that’s one way to bury the Archie/Hiram grudge

Hermione’s trigger finger is life goals

3x12, “Bizarrodale”

So first off, fuck that title and everything it implies.

Second, this is the episode where I’m supposed to finally get fed, eh? FINGERS CROSSED

I forgot what Kevin sounded like after not talking for four episodes

WHEN CAN WE MEET KEVIN’S MOM!?!? I HAVE MANY FANCASTS

Veronica watches Netflix confirmed, and yet I guess she just scrolls past Orange is the New Black every time it’s recommended to her

Why are Kevoose makeouts always in shadow? Is it to disguise the fact that when they makeout it’s with their lips sealed shut

The actor who plays Major Mason followed me back on my burner instagram

Awww, Sweet Pea is a relationship guy with a gooey little heart!

Sierra pegs Tom confirmed. Love these two kinky fuckers

The way Tom says “Gargoyle King” goes straight to my nether regions

So does Britta have a kink for people outing others against their will? I swear this is a plot point in Ship It too

I feel like these issues are something they should’ve talked about way more. Making Moose’s coming out be an ultimatum is pretty gross

How DARE they not let us hear Josie sing?!??! Ohhhh, if we’d heard Josie sing then we would sent death threats to the fake Juilliard board. I never want to hear Josie’s teary little voice again because it hurts my feelings

Lmao, this is the second time a parent has been judgmental of how the Lodges involve Veronica in their business

Remember that time Moose and Cheryl made out? I’m forever traumatized by that

Hiram and Hermione strolling in like a fucked up Gomez and Morticia

I’m sure that Dilton would approve of his friend from another lifetime using his secret bunker to pop his cherry. But only Moose. Yes, I ship comics Dilton/Moose

Oh, HeeEYEEEEEEE, IT’S LIKE A BUNCH OF MY FIC DREAMS COME TO LIFE. Wow, I finally got pandered to. Kevin being in dagner is like…the basis of the majority of my drawer fics

I’M FUCKING PSYCHIC X2!!!! Well huh, this puts that earlier diner scene in a new light

Yesss, please keep calling him Tommy and talking about how Kevin looks like your old friend with that sad, wistful tone. Please feed my fic bunnies

Christ, Ashleigh has such a fucking amazing voice. I can actually bear KJ’s singing

Moose having to leave makes sense. ALSO MAKE SURE YOU WATCH CODY”S SHOW ON NETFLIX TO MAKE THIS WORTH IT

I never want to see Kevin cry again. Fucking Maramaduke

Gladys can step on me, and I’d apologize

3x13, REQUEIM FOR A WELTERWEIGHT

I’M FINALLY ALL FUCKING CAUGHT UP

I don’t think that bacon is fully cooked

So Veronica just decided to not move back out because the path of least resistance?? And she’s back in her Daddy’s clutches because....he got shot???

The Serpent with the awesome dreads is still there! Can he be an actual character with a name? He deserves it

Between last episode and this one, I am being fucking BLESSED with Daddy Keller content. 

VERONICA IS a FUCKING REPUBLICAN CONFIRMED. I guess we all know who scrolled right past 13th on Netflix! 

They’re really trying to sweep up their awkward plot mistakes from last season, eh

I need a flashback of young Alice in this ugly fucking wedding dress

This is some Rocky and Mickey shit. Hopefully Keller doesn’t have a heart attack while confronting Mr. T

YES, GLADYS!!! CALL OUT THAT LEADERSHIP!

San Junipero water, huh. 

Why is Archosie so perfect

Ehhhh, the last time they talked was eight episodes ago. Will this scene be about how Kevin’s recovering post-Moose?? Of course not. My hopes for investigative Kevin are once again yanked away. Though of course remember that time she got him to catfish a murderer without telling him that Chic had killed someone?? Fun times

“cute gay farmies”

Veronica is the opposite intimidating ESPECIALLY in the face of Gladys who we all know has actually fucked up a bitch

The monstrous Freeform ate Malachai, eh. Ghoulie jackets are still the best jackets

I’ve never watched Apocalypse Now so this scene is wasted on me

THUNDERDOME!!?!?

Keller looks like he gives good hugs

How the fuck did Jason learn about The Farm?

This is Polly’s revenge for being sent to the Sisters

It’s awkward how Choni just sort of disappeared from the episode

Damn, Archosie has everything going on

Hermione, you should’ve just killed Hiram when you had the chance

PROTECTIVE BIG BROTHER JUGHEAD!

Gladys doling out gang advice is just everything I wanted from her

[dinoswrites]

The Chariot, Reversed

The Arcana, Role Reversal AU. Asra x Apprentice.

Based off this post by @cedarmoons.

[Previous |  Masterpost | A03 | Next]

Reversed, the Chariot suggests that you are feeling as if you have very little control over your life. You may have lost steering power over the opposing forces and you are now at their mercy... The Chariot reversed also suggests that you are collapsing under pressure and losing your self-control. Your aggression is being channeled in the wrong direction, wildly at other people, at fate, at external circumstances. [x]

Julian knows Asra is in town. He has heard all the rumours—and has certainly put up with more of Lucio’s spitting rages on the subject of that magician than usual.

To be more specific, Portia told him all the rumours while he chugged a pint of beer. And then he wandered into her community garden, turned right back around again, and pointed at the apple tree while yelling how did this happen Pasha what did you do and such, not stopping until someone threw a bottle at his head.

“Someone is going to come and burn it down,” he’d told her, trying to use a tankard full of beer as a cold compress and only sort of succeeding.

She had shrugged, with that eye roll he’s only ever seen her use in his direction. “Then I’ll have better soil for the next round,” she had quipped. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, over there is a customer who actually pays his damn tab.”

“I’m your brother,” Julian had griped, but she was already gone.

So yes, he knows Asra’s back in town. He can’t help that his feelings are a tad mixed on the subject of Vesuvia’s Most Wanted—but even with all their sordid history, Julian can’t believe for a second that Asra killed the countess. After all, Julian’s only known Asra to be cruel to two people.

So yes, he’s more than a little worried, and more than a little… off-center, as he always is when he stops for thirty seconds and just thinks of every single thing that could possibly go wrong in this city.

Why did Asra come back after all this time?

Why hasn’t he sought out Julian yet?

Why would he seek out Julian, anyway?

What happens if Asra gets caught?

What happens if Asra never gets caught?

Which is worse?

What happens to Kai at the end of all this?

His head is buzzing with alcohol and sombre thoughts as he unlocks the door to his clinic late in the evening. He breezes through the clinic itself, heading immediately to the small, meagre living area at the back. He means only to grab some of Kai’s extra clothes, and maybe some things to ease her headaches, before heading back to the palace to check on her.

And, you know. Make sure Lucio hasn’t gotten bored and killed her on a whim or something.

It shows how used he is to Kai and her cat being here that he… forgets the cat isn’t there. He’s so busy looking for telltale glowing eyes hiding among the high shelves, and waiting for Kai’s miserable demon cat to jump on his head, even though the cat is not even present, that he almost doesn’t register the door closing behind him. Or the lock turning—and that makes his steps falter, and the hair on the back of his neck rise as he turns—

And comes face to face with Vesuvia’s Most Wanted. His soft purple eyes wide, his expression panicked.

“Ilya,” Asra says, “I need your help.”

Julian sputters. He can feel his cheeks start to warm, and he backpedals a few steps, rapidly putting distance between Asra and himself, before straightening, and doing his level best to scowl down at Asra from his superior height.

“Oh really?” he says. “Let me guess, someone caught onto you running around the city and making shrubbery grow five feet overnight?”

Asra rolls his eyes. “I don’t have time for your dramatics, Ilya—”

“Oh, but you have time to wander around the docks and bless the fishermen’s nets to catch double the fish?”

“Ilya would you just listen—”

“In case you were wondering, this morning Lucio ordered every damn fishing net left in this miserable city to be burned, and you’re damn lucky it wasn’t any of the fishermen or I’d be strangling you where you stand—”

“He’s got Muriel,” Asra blurts.

“Who?” Julian waves a hand and turns on his heel. “He’s got everyone here exactly where he wants them, Asra, you can’t expect me to run out the door and break into the dungeons with you every time he arrests someone.”

As Julian storms into Kai’s room, Asra follows hot on his heels. “I can’t—I can’t get to him by myself. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Julian throws open Kai’s dresser drawers—finding it full of things for her miserable cat, like a chewed up ball of twine… and Julian’s favourite shirt that he lost two months ago. He holds it up, finding it shredded to ribbons and held together only by the collar.

He sighs, deeply, before tossing the offending item onto Kai’s bed and closing the drawer. “You, unable to do something on your own? I can’t imagine that for a moment.”

“I’m being serious, Ilya.”

“And I’m—”

There is a loud, panicked banging at the clinic’s front door, followed by the sound of someone yelling.

Julian groans. Asra automatically steps aside, his head is titled as if he recognises the voice.

Once Julian opens the door that separates the clinic from the living space, however, he can hear the shouting clearly.

“Dr. Devorak! Dr. Devorak! Oh god, please be here—Dr. Devorak?”

Behind him, Asra suddenly goes very still.

It takes him a moment to put a name to that voice—right, a few months back, the one with the sister… “Trevor?” Julian calls back. “Stop—stop yelling, I’ll be right there—”

He swings open the door, and Trevor stands on the other side in full, if slightly charred, city guard attire, holding Kai prone in his arms.

“She won’t snap out of it,” Trevor says, as Julian feels his heart drop in his chest. “She’s—she’s not—I don’t know what to—”

Julian hears a short, irritated spat, and glances down to see a streak of black tear between their legs and into the clinic. The streak becomes cat-shaped again in the middle room, and the cat’s back arches and all his fur stands on end as it begins to growl at Asra, standing with the far door hanging open.

His lips hang slack, his eyes are impossibly wide, as he stares right past Julian at Kai.

“There was—it was a riot, and I was supposed to—I’m supposed to protect her it’s my job but there was so much fire and—and—”

Julian turns back to Trevor. “Don’t just stand there,” he snaps, as if he hasn’t just been blocking the door. “Get her inside! Quickly!”

Trevor’s mouth slams shut, and though he looks to be on the verge of tears he manages to hold it together with a nod.

As Julian breezes through the clinic, he hears Trevor scramble inside and towards the first open door. “Not there,” Julian says without looking, breezing right past the demon cat and the dumbstruck Asra.

He directs Trevor to sit her on the couch, and gives her a quick once-over. Her eyes are open, but her expression is vacant as she stares at nothing in particular. There is a streak of dried blood trailing from her nose, but her pulse is steady, her breathing slow but even.

Julian can hear the sound of dented and ill-fitting armour scraping against itself as Trevor shifts uselessly behind him. “Is she gonna…”

“She’s through the worst of it,” Julian says, standing. He goes to the tiny kitchen and begins looking through cabinets—ignoring the hiss from the cat and the responding yelp from Trevor as the poor boy makes the unfortunate mistake of getting between the cat and the only person who can stand him.

“Trevor? Tell me what happened,” he calls, arm-deep in a cabinet as he reaches around some medical supplies that have made their way back here. Apparently Kai had given up on filling the cabinets with actual food and he hadn’t even noticed. “Everything you can remember. Alright?”

Trevor stammers a little in reply. “I uh—there was a—um. Is that. Should he be…?”

Julian’s hand grasps the jar he’s been looking for, and he hits his head on the cabinet as he turns around.

Asra is kneeling in front of Kai, holding her hands in his, and looking up into her eyes with the single most pained expression Julian has ever seen on his face.

As Julian watches, Asra brings one shaking hand up to cup her face. He runs his thumb along her cheekbone, while the other rubs circles on the back of her hand. Faust has slithered out of his clothes, and has coiled herself loosely around Kai’s neck. He’s not sure but he thinks the snake is trembling a little.

Asra’s saying something to Kai. So, so softly that Julian can’t hear it.

Of course, she does not respond. But Julian hesitates a moment anyway. He watches magic flare in Asra’s hands, watches Asra’s face twist with determination, and watches as he presses his forehead to hers, closes his eyes, and Julian doesn’t have a prayer of understanding what Asra tries to do but he tries it anyway. Magic pulsing from his hands in waves, pouring over Kai like mist through trees.

She stares at nothing, her expression vacant and unchanging. Julian watches Asra’s expression fall, watches his eyes open, and watches him withdraw from Kai, Faust slithering back up his arm and around his neck.

“What happened?” he asks without even glancing back. His tone flat and his eyes dark.

Trevor looks uncertainly between Julian and Asra. He straightens, then swallows.

“There was—” He pauses to take a series of long, deep breaths, clearly trying to calm down. “We had dropped off some food on the wharf. I’m—I promised I wouldn’t report it, and I won’t, it was fruit and berries and… and I know people need it. And we were supposed to go right back to the castle after—and I was, I was paying attention, I was watching the crowd like I’m supposed to, like I’m told, but—”

“Alright,” Julian says, crossing the room. “Trevor, we don’t blame you.”

Asra’s eyes narrow.

Julian rolls his eyes. He awkwardly leans around Asra to take Kai’s hands, and he moves them until she holds the jar he’s brought from the kitchen.

Cinis, hovering on the back of the couch, hisses until Julian backs away, and then crawls into her lap and begins to knead her legs. Julian tries to unscrew the jar, but Cinis growls at him, so he yanks his hand out of the way before the cat decides to claw him.

Glancing back over his shoulder, he sees Trevor looking for all the world like he’s about to burst into tears. “Just… maybe the focus on the important details, hm?”

Trevor nods. “I don’t know what happened,” he says, a little more calmly now. “I—one minute, everything was fine, and the next… The next, people were throwing bottles, and shouting at Miss Kai, and I was trying to keep everyone away from her but there were so many, pressing in, and someone had a sword—”

Julian frowns. “A knife, maybe? Trevor, the average person hasn’t been allowed to even own a sword for a year.”

That only makes him nod more furiously, though. “It was a sword, a real one. One of the ones the guards use, like—like mine.” He goes to pull his from his scabbard to show them, but hisses in pain the moment his palm grazes the pommel.

When he pulls his hand back, Julian finally gets a good look at it. Red all along the palm and his fingers, his skin flaking off in angry broken blisters.

“I thought—I thought for sure he was going to get her. There were so many people, I couldn’t move her in time… But then, it’s like the air around her lit on fire.”

Trevor looks down at his charred armour, at his wounded hand. “The man dropped his sword, and I tried to pick it up so I could—so I could figure out who he was, from it. Maybe. But it was so hot…”

“I imagine the crowd scattered after that,” Julian drawls, when Trevor’s silence stretches a little too long.

“Not until she started screaming,” Trevor says, softly.

Asra’s eyes flare wide in surprise and open horror.

“And she was—the fire was all around her, and I tried my best to put it out, I did. And her—her cat was crying at her, but it took… a good long while, before she stopped burning. And then she was just… standing there. Staring off at nothing, like that, and she just—I couldn’t—”

Trevor does start crying then, and he’s clearly embarrassed about it because he tries to wipe at his face with his wounded hand. Which only makes him wince, and then start to really cry, then—big, ugly, pained sobs that have been held in too long.

Abruptly, Asra stands. He crosses the distance between himself and the crying boy, who is so startled that he actually stops sobbing for a moment, looking at Asra with wide, watery eyes.

Asra takes the boy’s hand in his own, and they begin to glow the soft silver of the moon on a clear night. It takes little time at all—there is a sound like a nighttime breeze moving through summer trees, and then the glow fades, and Asra drops his hands.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” he asks. It sounds, Julian thinks, like an apology.

Trevor looks at his hand—good as new—with open awe.

“Uh,” he manages to say, opening and closing his hand.

Asra hesitates a moment. “Thank you for bringing her here,” he says, finally.

Trevor blinks at Asra a few times. “It’s my job. I… I guess.”

Behind Julian, Cinis meows, like a perfectly normal cat who isn’t secretly a ball of death and terror.

“Oh, is she ready now?” Julian asks, turning to scrutinize the cat.

The cat in question is glaring up at Julian, his ears flat against his skull.

Julian sighs, then leans down and unscrews the lid of the jar.

The smell that wafts out is… not pleasant. He actually thinks it’s worse than he remembered—maybe Mazelinka was lying and whatever the hell was in there actually is festering, after all this time. It smells like that jar of leeches he’d forgotten about on top of a high shelf—until Cinis knocked it off said shelf and onto Julian’s head one day, the miserable creature. Maybe if those leeches were wrapped up in a particularly smelly sock…

Whatever it is, it’s the best way to snap Kai out of… wherever she goes, when she spaces out like this.

When she inhales it, her eyes widen, and then she blinks rapidly until she just keeps them closed, her nose scrunching up as her grip tightens so hard around the jar it looks like she might break it—but she simply holds it out, and Julian takes it.

Cinis proceeds to purr as loud as he can, and crawl all over her while she pets him with shaking hands, her eyes still closed.

On Asra’s shoulders, Faust is nearly bolt upright, wavering back and forth with visible excitement, but the presence of the cat seems to be deterring her from going over to Kai.

“How are you feeling?” Julian asks, standing as close as he dares.

“Fuck off,” Kai replies, her voice rough and cracking.

He can’t help a little smile. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Fuck. Off.” She inhales, slow and deliberate, and sinks a little into the couch as Julian screws the lid back on the jar. “Kai,” she replies, finally.

“Who am I?”

“The asshole who makes me smell that shit.” Another deep breath. “Dr. Julian Devorak.”

The cat meows, kneading her collarbone while he tucks his head into the crook of her neck, and she hums a little. “Cinis,” she says to him, softly, as if answering his question.

“Do you know where you are?”

With an air of reluctance, she cracks one eye open. She seems to relax a little when she sees their home, but then her gaze turns to Asra and Trevor, and she opens both eyes as she stares at them, looking a little confused.

“Asra?” she asks. “Trevor? What—Asra, what are you doing here? And—Trevor, what happened to your—”

She tries to stand up, clearly alarmed as she sees the scorch marks on Trevor’s armour, only for the cat to let out a high, whining complaint of a meow until she settles on the couch again.

She closes her eyes, and brings a hand to her forehead. “I’m fine,” she says, to no one in particular. “I’m…”

“Going to get some rest while I make you some coffee,” Julian finishes for her when she trails off. “Trevor, would you help her to her room, please? It’s that door, there.”

Trevor stands to attention. “Yes, Dr. Devorak, sir,” he says, and actually half-attempts a salute before he seems to remember where he is, and sort of flails a little in the air. He does, after a moment of standing there awkwardly, go and offer a hand up to Kai, but she waves him off.

“I’m fine,” she repeats. She squints up at Julian, and then at Asra, at whom her gaze softens just a little. “Is this how you hide from the city guard?” she croaks, with a strained attempt at a half smile.

Asra exhales. He reaches out to Kai, and runs his fingertips across her forehead. There is that familiar moonlight glow, Kai’s eyes flutter closed, and Faust slithers back over to Kai as Asra’s touch lingers even after his magic fades.

“Better?” he asks, his voice tight.

She hums low in her throat. Her eyes open again, and it’s hard to miss the  wonder in her eyes as she looks up at Asra. “A little.”

Thinking of all the times he looked at Asra like that, Julian feels his stomach twist, and has to resist the urge to grab Asra by the shoulder and drag him out into the street.

The cat growls at Faust, who takes up residence on Kai’s opposite shoulder and rubs her head against Kai’s jaw.

Asra exhales. He runs the backs of his knuckles across her forehead, before finally, and with great reluctance, withdrawing his touch.

“You really should rest,” he says, no longer quite looking at her.

Asra, turning away, doesn’t see Kai deflate. He doesn’t see the hurt in her eyes, or the way she tightens her jaw when he leaves her.

Julian does.

And he can’t help but remember, months ago, her sitting on that couch and that screaming cat in her lap, tears streaming down her face—Don’t send me away! I didn’t mean to use magic, I don’t even remember doing it! Please Julian, please don’t make me leave.

Julian runs a hand over his face.

Kai finally allows Trevor to lead her to her room, and then Julian suggests the young man sit down in his own room, and collect himself a moment. Maybe clean his armour a bit, though Julian supposes the kid will probably just have a good private cry where no one can see him.

Once the door closes, Julian and Asra are alone in the living area once again.

Asra sits on the couch and looks down at his hands, silent.

Julian’s stomach twists into knots as he tries to figure out what to say. As he tries to figure out how to ask what he thinks, or what to accuse Asra of.

Stay away from Kai? She’s certainly old enough to make her own choices. Even if Asra is probably the worst choice Julian ever made.

Care to tell me how you know my friend? Or why you seem to worried she’s using fire magic? She lost all her memories a year ago, by the way, care to help her out with that?

There are too many questions, and he knows himself enough to admit he’s too on edge to ask them without making it a fight. So he busies himself with the press, and the pot, and then there’s the whole system he’s set up to filter the boiled water so it’s not literally poison but he seems to be out of filters…

Before Julian’s eyes, the kettle is filled with clean, clear water, without so much as a word from Asra.

Julian exhales. He tries to put the lid back on the kettle, but his hands are shaking too much. He leans on the counter, instead, and yes, his heart is racing, and his breath is ragged and uneven but there is so much history in this room that he just wants to scream.

So he says, at length, “How long have you known Kai?”

Asra exhales, that single breath a heavy, potent thing. “I came here three days ago—”

He slams his hands on the counter. “For fuck’s sake, Asra.” He whirls on his feet, and when Asra is still looking down at his hands, Julian throws his own up in the air. “For once in your miserable life can you just… be level with me! Pretend for a minute that you respect me, and my  intelligence, and explain to me why you are looking at the woman I have been housing for a year like… Shit, Asra, I don’t know, like she actually matters to you? Though it’s not like I’d know what that looks like, would I?”

Asra buries his face in his hands, and takes a single, shuddering breath. And then another, and another, and Julian stands there like an idiot as Asra sits on his terrible couch and…

Asra falls apart. Asra sits there on that couch and weeps into his hands, and Julian just watches him, stunned, his heart in his throat.

“I left her,” Asra says into his hands. “She—she needed me, Ilya, and I left her. I left her to—”

He chokes on a sob.

“This is all my fault,” he says, so softly that Julian can barely hear it. “All of it. I—”

Julian watches Asra go to pieces on his couch, listens as he stutters through two more failed explanations. And all of his anger deflates, in the face of so much emotion. So much misery.

After all, he was always trying to pick up the pieces of the magician named Asra.

So, after a time, he sits next to Asra. Asra stiffens like he will flinch away—but in spite of their history, Julian doesn’t press it. He offers nothing but a sympathetic hand on Asra’s shoulder, not sitting close enough to touch anywhere else.

Julian isn’t expecting anything, really. Except maybe to be shoved off. Though he doesn’t want what he used to from Asra anymore, he thinks. It’s been a long and difficult year since he saw Asra last, even if he hadn’t seen the way Kai looked up at the magician just a few minutes ago. And he has his own reservations on that—but he knows Asra. And the things Julian admired in him once, he thinks the magician might have in him still.

“I don’t think the city being plunged into a hellstate is entirely your fault, Asra,” he says with a crooked smile. “Pretty sure Lucio’s to blame for that.”

Asra lets out a surprised half-sob half-laugh. He leans into Julian’s touch a little—just a little.

Julian squeezes his shoulder.

Asra collects himself, wiping at his tear-flushed face with embarrassment, while Julian finishes with the coffee. Eventually, Asra joins him at the counter, helping him find enough cup-like objects in the cupboards for everyone.

As the final drop is poured, Asra says, “Thank you, Ilya. For looking after Kai.”

Julian shrugs. “Hey, what can I say. Kept life interesting,”

“I’m serious, Ilya.” Asra exhales—and Julian is forced to meet his gaze, his eyelids still puffy, his brows furrowed. “It’s not the first time she’s done that, is it. Used magic.”

Julian swallows. “No,” he answers. “No. She… she never remembers it.”

“Is it always fire?”

There’s a flash of fear in Asra’s eyes. Julian hardly even sees it—barely even catches it, Asra hides it sl.o well.

“Yeah,” he answers. “Yeah. It’s happened… before. There’s not always magic, but when there is… she screams, and there’s fire.”

Asra’s jaw tightens. He looks for a moment like he’s about to cry again, but seems to compose himself by looking away.

Don’t send me away, Kai always begged him, those early times she spaced out. Even when she hadn’t used magic, and it was only over a broken jar, or getting lost in a crowd, or burnt food. You and Portia and Mazelinka and Cinis—you’re all I have. Please. I don’t want to leave.

Julian’s hands tremble, and he puts his cup down.

“I’ll help your friend,” he says. “But I need something from you in return.”

Asra looks back up at him, startled.

“First, you need to get Kai out of this city, and away from Lucio.”

“Of course,” Asra says, without hesitating. “She’s—the further she is from him, the better.”

Julian nods. And then keeps nodding, because—because—

“Ilya?”

He breathes out. “Promise me you won’t let her come back.”

Asra frowns. “Ilya—”

“I don’t care what she says, or how many things she throws at your head, or if she sics her damn cat on you. Just… promise me you will get her far away, and keep her safe. Promise me.”

Asra looks like he’s about to say more—but he must read something in Julian’s expression, because he only sighs, and shakes his head a little.

“I will,” he says. “If you tell me what you have planned.”

Julian takes a deep, steadying breath. “Alright,” he says. “Alright.”

Asra tries to smile, but it does not quite reach his eyes.

[gimmesumsuga]

Just Once - Yoongi/Suga one-shot

Warning: graphic descriptions of drug use and heavy angst. 

Words:  2,733

It was your mother who’d provided you with first taste of heroin.  You were fourteen then and she’d been a junkie for as long as you could remember, a habit left to her by your absentee of a father, and it hadn’t taken long for you to become addicted too.   It was odd, but sharing that nasty had actually served to bring you and your mother closer together. It’d given you a common ground you’d never had before, and it’d taken both of you working together to ensure you got your next fix, working crummy part-time jobs that just about paid the rent and secured  your drug of choice with not much left for anything else.  You wasted away years like that, lost to oblivion, ashamed but unable to find the will the stop.  Take the heroin away and what were you?  A high school dropout with no prospects, no dreams and a bad reputation.  

It was your mother who’d gotten clean first, too.  She’d fallen in love with a man from your local church; a stranger who’d shown her rare kindness and compassion, a better way to live.  With his encouragement, a whole lot of help and her fair share of relapses, she’d finally rid herself of it.  After that, she’d dedicated herself to getting you clean too.  You’d resisted, at first, despite wanting nothing more than to return to that sweet, innocent girl you were once before.   You were so convinced that you’d fail, that you’d only let her down, that it took months for you to even try, and years to actually manage abstain for more than a few months at a time.  

Now, four years on, you’ve been clean for three, and life has never been better.  You’ve got a steady job, and though the pay cheque isn’t the biggest it’s more than enough to make do after so many years of living on nothing.  Your mother is still clean, and married now, too.   You’ve got a small handful of very good friends and  your own  little apartment complete with a sweet, albeit slightly  aloof, feline friend.  The best of it all, though, is your boyfriend; Yoongi.  

You’d met him two years ago as a customer in the restaurant where you work, and soon became friends.  He liked your dry, sarcastic sense of humour, and you liked his grumpy, old man attitude.  Together you made quite the pair, grumbling and griping at one another but knowing there was affection lurking underneath.  Eventually, that affection spilled over into something more and you’d been together ever since, inseparable most of the time.   

It’d taken you a little while to open up to Yoongi about your past and tell him all the sordid little details about that darkest of times.  You were terrified that it’d change the way he saw you or the way he treated you, but if there was one thing you know about Yoongi, it’s that he’s full of surprises.  Behind that distant, slightly cold exterior is a heart warmer than anyone else’s you’ve ever known, someone so loving and compassionate that he’d barely even blinked when you’d spilled it all.  All he’d done was stroke your cheek, telling you how proud he was of you for ridding yourself of those demons, and how you trusting him enough to tell him had only made him love you all the more.  

You’re convinced that you don’t deserve him - not at all - but he seems to think you’re some kind of perfect, always complimenting and praising you.  It’s a stark, unsettling contrast to the years you spent feeling so worthless, to the way you still feel and think about yourself even now.   You know that Yoongi would think the same, too, if he knew how weak you really are, if he knew the way you still long for a hit every single hour of every single day.   

Today is a particularly bad day.  There’s no reason for it; your boss gave you very little hassle, the customers were polite.  Even the weather’s nice, promising a warm summer’s evening for you to spend with Yoongi on your date tonight.  There’s no reason for you to want it, none at all, but God, you do.  It’s like an itch you can’t scratch, a constant craving that’s had you biting at at your pencils and pens all day and forgetting people’s orders, and no matter how you try to fight it you can’t silence that little wayward voice in your head.  It whispers reassurances and lies, telling you that just one hit won’t hurt, that no one would have to know.  And it’s not like just one time would get you addicted again.  People don’t become alcoholics from just one glass of wine, right?  

Before you know it, you’re seeking it out midway through your walk home.  Contrary to popular belief it’s really not that hard to find, especially for someone like you who knows exactly who and what to look for.  It’s not even always the people you’d expect, either, and when you finally spot a likely looking dealer it takes you less than five minutes and even fewer spoken words to score and be on your way again, a little packet of brown powder in one pocket and a syringe and needle in the other.  

It seems to take forever for you to get home after that.  It’d been too easy and now you’re too eager, fiddling with the packet inside your pocket with shaking fingers, biting your lip in anticipation.  You practically run up the stairs of your apartment when you get there,  flinging off your coat as you shut the door and retrieving the paraphernalia as you check the clock.  Yoongi said he’d pick you up at seven; that gives you six hours to get high and come down again.  Plenty of time.  

Grabbing a spoon from the kitchen and a lighter from the drawer you rush into your bedroom, breathing rapidly as you spread it all out on your bedspread and begin the little ritual of preparation.  It comes back to you far too quickly, like it’s been no time at all, and within minutes you’ve melted the powder into a liquid and drawn it up, a pair of your pantyhose tied around your upper arm to get at your veins.  

You’re just about to slide the needle into your arm when your phone vibrates, making you pause with the bevel of the needle poised ready to slide through your paper-thin skin.  You glance over at where it rests on the bedside table to see Yoongi’s name flashing on the screen, and for a moment you almost come to your senses, hesitating for a minute more until your phone goes dark again.  You missed his call, and now it’s just you, the needle, and the brown murky liquid inside which promises such ecstasy.  

No one will ever know.

Just this once.  

A sharp scratch, your finger pressing on the plunger of the syringe and then the warmth of it entering your veins as you exhale.  You place the needle and syringe on the table, untangling the pantyhouse from your arm and managing to sink back into your pillows with a blissful sigh as it hits.  It’s instant euphoria, a feeling of weightlessness that you’d forgotten how much you missed, and once that initial high has gone the drowsiness comes next, your eyes and limbs heavy, your mouth dry.  You vaguely think that you should’ve set an alarm as your eyelids slide closed, sleep pulling you under deep and swift. 

     Yoongi knocks at your door, a small smile on his lips and rocking on his heels as he waits for you to answer.  He knows he looks like a schmuck stood there with a posy in his hand, but he also knows they’re your favourite and he knows the way your face lights up whenever he brings you flowers, so stand there like a schmuck he does.    

After a couple of minutes he starts getting impatient - you’re usually really quick to answer to door, practically throwing yourself into his arms - but tonight he can’t even hear you moving around inside when he leans closer to the door.  He knocks once more but doesn’t give it long before experimentally trying the handle.  It’s unlocked, which is odd in itself, and Yoongi can feel the hairs on the back of his neck starting to rise as he steps into your silent apartment.  He’s not sure what it is but something doesn’t feel right, and when he calls out your name to no reply that feeling only gets stronger.

Yoongi pads through your living room, abandoning your flowers on the coffee table and almost jumping out of his skin when your cat suddenly rubs around his ankles.   Hopefully you’ve just gone out and forgotten to lock your door - that way you won’t have heard the girly way he just screamed.  Still, he’s not sure if it’s just his imagination but he could swear even your tabby looks concerned, eyes wider than usual as she turns her back to him and slinks off towards your bedroom, pausing at the door to cast a glance back at Yoongi before slipping inside.  

Instinctively, he follows, trying to fight the panic he can feel rising in his chest.  Your bedroom is dim when he walks inside, your curtains drawn and the lights off.   Your cat jumps up onto the bed, meowing quietly, and it’s then that he notices the  shape of your body underneath the covers.  Yoongi chuckles, the tension from his shoulders disappearing as relief floods through him.   Of course you’re just napping; you’re always napping, and he has come over earlier than you’d originally both planned. Yoongi sits himself gingerly on the edge of your bed, placing a hand on your shoulder and squeezing gently, calling your name.

“Wake up, sleepy head.”  He keeps his voice soft and playful, jiggling you a little more as you fail to respond, smiling down at your sleeping face.  “Time to wake up.”   Again, he gives you a little shake - one that gradually gets harder and more urgent the longer you say nothing.  Your eyelids don’t even twitch, not even when he touches your face, brushing his thumb across your cheek.  In fact, now that he looks closer… are you even breathing?  

Fear’s gripping his chest so tight that Yoongi can barely shout your name as he yanks back the covers, his voice coming out tight and strained.  He grabs at each of your limbs, climbing onto the bed and shaking you as he kneels beside you, brushing your cat out of the way.    

“Wake up, c’mon,” he growls through gritted teeth, taking hold of your chin and turning your head from the side to the ceiling to frantically scan for any signs of life, but when he lets go your head just lolls to the side again, your beautiful hair falling across your face.   His fingers fumble at your neck, groping around to try and find your pulse, his own thundering in his ears, so loud that it’s almost deafening.  Eventually he finds it, and when he does he has to choke back a sob.   

You’re alive, thank god you’re still alive, but by the thready feel of your pulse under Yoongi’s fingertips he’s not sure it’s for long.  It’s so slow and weak, your breathing just as slow and shallow - you need an ambulance, and you need it now.  He gropes for his phone in his pockets and then curses when he realises he left it in the car, both of his hands raking through his hair as his eyes scan your room to finally land on your phone where it lies on the bedside table.  

Yoongi makes a grab for it, hands shaking, already dialling when he notices what else was sat surrounding your phone before he so hastily snatched it up.   A spoon, a needle, a syringe, and a packet holding the remnants of a brown powder he doesn’t recognise.   Oh, he can guess what it is though, he knows all too well.  

“I think… I think my girlfriend has taken an overdose,” he states to the operator, gazing down at you and taking your hand in his.  His voice is suddenly entirely emotionless, as though he’s in a daze, momentarily detached from the situation.  Your skin… it’s so clammy.  

“Heroin.”  

The operator asks him a series of questions which he manages to answer even though he’s only half listening, his eyes fixed on your chest, obsessed with watching the shallow rise and fall of your chest.  It’s stupid, but Yoongi feels like if lets his gaze shift even for a second the next time he looks it won’t move at all, and that sends a chill down his spine so potent that it freezes his insides, making him physically shudder.   

The kind, softly spoken woman on the end of the line tells him to stay with you - as if he’d go anywhere else - and that an ambulance is only minutes away from the address he’d croaked out.   She asks him to stay on the phone, too, just in case anything changes, and though Yoongi keeps the line open he places the it back on the table so that he’s free to touch you with both his hands.  He rolls you onto your back and lies himself down next to you, placing his head on your chest  as he repeats your name again at again, the dull thud of your heartbeat in his ear the only thing keeping him from keeping him from breaking down completely.  

Or so he thought.  On the other end of the phone the operator hears a man begin to sob, and lying there at your side Yoongi’s whole body begins to heave; great, wracking cries ripping through him as he clutches at your body.  He wraps you up in his arms as he has so many times before, his tears soaking through your shirt and turning it transparent, begging you to wake up so many times that his throat becomes hoarse.  

“You can’t,” he tells you fiercely, clutching the fabric of your pants in his fist and roughly tugging at it, punctuating every word.  “You can’t leave me, you can’t, please.”   Yoongi presses his face into you, inhaling your scent and filling his lungs till he can no longer, a broken wail falling from his lips to be smothered by the soft swell of your stomach.  

“I can’t do this without you, baby… I just… I can’t.”

“Please… you can’t leave me here all on my own.”  

“Nothing makes any sense without you.”

“Just… don’t.  I need you.”

“I love you.  Please.”

“Please, baby.”   

When the ambulance crew mercifully arrives, only minutes later, it’s to a harrowing sight.   A girl lying prone on her bed, pale and barely breathing, limbs limp and unresponsive - a boy curled around her sobbing his heart out, rocking the both of them as he pleads over and over for anyone, someone to listen and not to take her away.   They almost have to wrestle you from Yoongi’s arms, so desperate is he not to be separated from you, uncaring that so many strangers are witnessing him cry and scream, tearing at his hair.  

One of them stays with him as they wheel you into the ambulance, standing together on the pavement watching on as you disappear inside, an oxygen mask covering your pretty face.   It’s silent tears that streak Yoongi’s pale face now, an unfamiliar man’s arm placed comfortingly around his shoulder.  The sirens start and then they’re speeding away, taking you with them, and Yoongi can no longer watch.  He closes his eyes, pressing his lips together as he says a silent prayer that that won’t be the last memory he ever has of holding you in his arms.   

He gives himself barely a minute before climbing into his own car and starting the engine, roughly wiping his tears on the sleeve of his jacket and taking hold of the steering wheel, clenching his jaw. Yoongi makes himself a silent promise as he chases after you through the busy streets, driving way too fast but barely hearing the protesting car horns around him.  

Where you go, he’ll follow; whether it be hospital, rehab or something more lasting, more permanent… as long as he’s by your side.

Where you go, he’ll follow.  

Gifs are not mine - credit to owners.

[emmaswanchoosesyou]

CSBB: Part of the Narrative (11/17)

Emma Swan just wants to write the follow-up to her bestselling debut novel, that’s all. But when she gets off to a rough start with her new editor, Killian Jones, she knows it’s not going according to plan. Then, an unexpected figure from Emma’s past reappears and life begins to mirror the crime thriller she’s penning. Suspicion and secrets abound–but love might too. A writer/editor AU with a thriller twist.

Rated E. Includes sexual content, kidnapping, some gore, mild violence, and minor character death–not to mention salty language! On Ao3 here.

Chapter warnings: Confrontations, one main character striking another, corporate espionage.

THINGS ARE HAPPENING, FRIENDS. So thank you so much to all of you who have been reading and commenting and waiting for things to get here, and to all of you who helped me get here. Thank you to all the wonderful ladies at @captainswanbigbang for all you’ve done to make this possible, and all the support you’ve given. Sophie @shady-swan-jones made the delightful banner and another photoset that I adore. Kayla @bleebug did some incredible art for the first and sixth chapters, which you can check out here and here. And all the love and thanks to Kris @sambethe for beta-ing this and making it a ton better. Like seriously, she’s the best.

[Ch. 1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

Chapter 11

Emma goes to Killian, and he has to deal with the fall-out of her discovering his subterfuge. That's not the only thing that goes pear-shaped in his life as things heat up at Mills & Booth.

Killian

Killian hadn't precisely slept well the night before, but it hadn't been the worst night's sleep. He and Emma had argued, but he was willing to chalk it up to strong personalities and the adjustment period that tended to happen early in relationships.

He'd been restless all day as a result, and trying not to sit beside his phone and wait for a text or call from her. He was convinced, though, that she'd call as soon as he walked away from the infernal thing.

But morning had come and gone, as had the afternoon. It was early in the evening by the time he finally accepted he'd have to do something to feed his growling stomach, and that he and Emma likely wouldn't be making up just yet.

Maybe she just needed a little more time to cool off.

Killian had always run hot and his anger turned to grudges, but it didn't seem like Emma was the type to hold onto grievances. Especially, the petty part of him insisted, when he was right and that she was behaving a little irrationally and blowing things out of proportion. He shushed that small voice, looking in his cupboards for something he could throw together for dinner.

He found the necessary items for his favorite recipe of pasta primavera, knowing the act of preparing a meal would provide some solace and a much-needed distraction. He wanted to pour himself a generous snifter of rum, but he was still holding onto hope that Emma might call and they could put their disagreement behind them. Then there could be pasta, kisses, and maybe even shagging.

He had just pulled the pasta off the range and was grating Parmesan when a knock came at the door. His heart leapt when he saw Emma through the peephole. Killian opened the door, trying to temper the wide smile on his face.

"Swan, I'm so glad to see you. Come on i--"

She cut him off abruptly with a stinging slap to his cheek.

Well, that answered the question of whether she was willing to put their tiff behind them.

"Love, stop," he said, grabbing her wrist and halting another strike. "What happened? I'm sorry we disagreed, but it's hardly a reason to turn violent."

He was flummoxed by this sudden turn from her coldness the night before. The ice had clearly melted off, leaving behind a molten rage that was clear in her eyes and the way she was very nearly shaking.

Emma twisted her wrist from his grasp, and he dropped his hold on her and stepped back. She walked inside and he took the opportunity to close the door, not wanting his neighbors to use their fight as the evening's entertainment.

Standing a good five feet away from him, Emma finally broke her stony silence. "You were spying on me? What the hell, Killian? For August? What the actual fuck?"

The color draining from Killian’s face and his stomach dropped to his feet. No, more like below his feet. If it were possible, his stomach felt as though it had dropped through the earth's many layers and into hell.

He certainly wasn't hungry anymore.

"I--wha--how did you find out?" he asked, realizing there was no reason to continue to lie, that it wouldn't help him at all anymore. Not that it ever would have, he knew.

"That's really what you want to know? How I found out?" She was glowing, nay, vibrating with rage. She was still achingly, heartbreakingly beautiful, with her eyes flashing and her expression fierce. He wanted to hold her, to pull her close and bring her comfort, but when he reached out to touch her shoulder, she pushed his hand away. Not with the force with which she'd slapped him earlier, but it certainly wasn't gentle.

He sighed. "I suppose that's not what matters now. I am sorry, though, I want you to know. I quit, I told August before our first date that I wouldn't continue to spy on you."

He watched as she stepped back and crossed her arms. "Just...why? Why would you do that? Betray my trust like that?" Her voice broke, and so did his heart with it.

"I...it was selfish, and wrong. I was trying to get away from a bad situation in London, and August offered me an out in exchange for my work and information on you. I didn't ask why, and he never volunteered a reason."

Her eyes welled with tears, and he fought away some of his own. She didn't speak, so he continued. "I stopped early on. I--I didn't count on you, Emma, when I agreed. You should know that. You swept through my life. You captivated me, mind, soul, and heart. I wouldn't--I can't begin to convey how sorry I am, but I also promise that I'd never hurt you or betray you again."

"Too late," she said, her voice rough, harsh. "I--I can't trust you anymore. You lied to me, and that--that's it for me."

“What are you saying, love?” His voice was more frantic than he was proud of, and he cringed at the sound of it.

“You don't get to call me that anymore. We--we’re done, Killian.”

“Emma, please--” He pleaded with her and moved toward her, stopping just short of reaching for her.

“No. Don't...just stop. We still have to work together, so I'll be professional. But I don't want you to talk to me about anything outside of work,” she said, her shoulders slumped. She sounded resigned, defeated.

And he felt utterly deflated.

Killian didn't reply to her soft “goodbye” as she walked out of his flat, out of his life.

&&&

He sobered himself up enough to attend work that week, but he moved about in a fog for a full five days after Emma broke up with him. Each night, he drowned his sorrows in rum, trying to numb the pain that his cock-ups, and her resulting departure, had caused. He got one brief email from her with a couple notes about an upcoming chapter, but he couldn’t even bring himself to respond.

Finally, on Thursday, Robin called him. He sounded tentative as he asked, “Hey mate, your text sounded a bit off. Want to grab a pint?”

Killian didn’t remember texting Robin, but he quickly scrolled through his recent texts. He winced, seeing the numerous errors and misspellings. “Yeah, I could go for a pint. Rough week, you know.”

“Aye. Cornwall’s?”

“I can swing that.”

“There aren’t usually too many tourists on Thursdays, so we should be fine,” Robin said.

Killian managed a small smile and joked, “You don’t think we count?”

Robin laughed and Killian continued, “I’ll see you there at eight or so, if that gives you time to find a sitter for Roland.”

“It’s not an issue--I’ve a friend who looks after him while I work, and he was already planning on taking him for the night.”

“I’m not messing with plans or anything, am I?” asked Killian.

Robin laughed. “No, I originally had a date, but I cancelled. She made some comment about puppies that seemed rather...off. So, for the record, you’re a rather large project that came up at work.”

Later that evening as they slowly drank their pints of ale, Killian found himself amused in spite of his continued glumness. Robin was animatedly recounting the story of one of his arrests from last week and the hijinks that had ensued as he and his partner had tried to track him down. The evening was almost enough to make him forget the ache in his chest, the hole left by Emma.

Eventually, though, Robin grew serious. “Now, if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine, but...are you all right?”

Killian stared down into the amber liquid in his glass, swirling it around. “Well enough, I suppose, for having just been chucked by the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”

“This is your writer lass? The famous one?” he asked, sitting up and listening intently.

“Aye,” Killian said, nodding. “She’s the first woman since Milah who I really connected with, and I fucked it up.”

“Oh, how so?”

Killian hesitated a moment, realizing his friend was in fact law enforcement. Then he realized how much he needed to get it off his chest, how much he needed to tell someone. Somehow, over the last couple months, Emma had become so much more than a love interest--she’d become his closest friend, the person he chatted with about everything. And now he didn’t have that, couldn’t tell her about the weird ship in a bottle he saw or listen to her laugh about what one of the regulars at Granny’s Diner had done.

So he warned Robin that some of his behavior might not have been strictly legal. When he reassured him that as long as no one was being physically hurt it would stay between them, Killian told him the whole sordid tale, from the first time August contacted him to the alcohol-fueled stupor of the previous few days.

“Shit,” said Robin when Killian had finished. “That’s…”

“A disaster?”

“To put it mildly.”

Killian sighed.

As soon as he ordered them another pint (the final one, Robin insisted), he said, “Well, if you need a listening ear or any such rot, I’m here. D’you think there’s a chance Emma could give you another shot?”

“Doubtful, mate.”

&&&

On Monday morning he strolled into the office miraculously free of a hangover. Since his chat with Robin, he’d worked on cutting back on his drinking. Not eliminating it entirely, but he made a marked improvement over the previous week’s constant queasiness and malaise.

He settled into the chair behind his desk, intent on picking up on the work he'd slacked on last week. God, but he'd been a wreck. Today, he promised himself, he would accomplish things. Maybe even get to Emma's chapter, if he could work up the nerve.

He had opened his email and was looking over some of the other projects that had crossed his desk when he heard a knock at the door. He yelled out, "Come on in!"

Killian was surprised to see Ariel, and a rather frantic-looking Ariel at that. Her eyes were wide as she stumbled into the room, arms flailing. He didn't know the lass terribly well, but she seemed like the calm and cheerful sort. He had yet to see her looking harried, or entering his office. Today appeared to be the exception.

"Uh, Killian? I mean, Mr. Jones?"

"Killian is fine, Ariel," he said, frowning at her obvious discomfort and worry. "What seems to be the problem?"

She bit her lip, worrying it between her teeth. "Well, I just got a letter from the, uh, Immigration Services  about your work visa. It says they found that a bunch of things are out of compliance and that, uh, you need to stop working for wages immediately, return what you've earned, and that they'll be launching an investigation. And maybe deporting , you," she finished with a squeak.

Shit fucking damn.

This was...beyond bad. This was catastrophic. He had to admit, he hadn't paid much attention to the particulars of his visa, had let August--

August.

August had to be the one responsible for this. He had initially arranged the visa and Killian's immigration, had sped it along with his contact. And he had been the one disappointed when Killian stopped providing him information about Emma.

Well, it clearly hadn't taken him too long to undo the permissions he'd obtained for Killian. (God, had it even been on the up-and-up to begin with?)

He was reeling, nearly hyperventilating when he sucked in a long breath. Realizing he hadn't actually replied to Ariel, he tried to find the words. Coming up blank, dropped his head into his hands and groaned.

He felt a light pat on his shoulder and glanced up to find Ariel attempting to provide him with the awkward solace she felt capable of. He also caught sight of a glass of water, which he downed in one gulp. "Thank you, Ariel."

"Are...are you going to be okay?"

He shrugged and sighed. "I don't know, do I? But I should leave today, shouldn't I? I don't want to endanger anything or cause problems for anyone."

She twisted her hands together, clearly concerned. "Well, I'd talk to Cleo. She handles a lot of HR stuff and has some contacts of her own, so that might be the best route."

"Erm, I'm not sure she's all that fond of me," he replied.

"I don't think that will matter to her if she feels like you're a worthy cause," Ariel said, nodding and exiting his office.

Well, then.

&&&

Fuck, he was nervous. He wasn't sure what it was about Cleo, but something put him on the defensive and reminded him of the nuns at the Catholic school he'd attended as a wee lad, strict and disapproving of whatever she thought he was up to. (Truthfully, though, he hadn't been all that mischievous as a boy, not unless it involved Liam or one of the other boys insulting someone in his family.)

But here he stood, next to Cleo's open office door, hoping she wouldn't notice him dithering about in the hallway deciding whether or not to go in.

"Mr. Jones? Why are you still standing outside? Come in here and close the door," he heard in Cleo's authoritative, strong voice.

Ah well, no such luck then. He followed her bidding, entering the room quickly and closing the door behind him before sitting in the chair across from her.

How different this was from their first interview--he couldn't summon any of his trademark charm (smarm, an internal voice sounding suspiciously like Emma’s said) to hide behind. He didn't have the promise of so much as a flirtation with Emma to look forward to. Instead, all he had was an official-looking document telling him to stop working and threatening him with deportation. He had to say, the trade-off was not ideal.

"Well?" she said, an eyebrow raised rather imperiously.

Wordlessly, he handed her the letter Ariel had given him. He watched an array of emotions dance across her face as she read it--surprise, shock, dismay, something that looked a little like guilt, and finally, determination.

"Shit, Jones," she said.

He nodded in agreement. "I couldn't sum it up better myself."

"So...why bring this to me?" She tossed the letter onto her desk between them and crossed her arms as she stared at him expectantly.

"Ariel brought me this rather ghastly piece of communication and stopped me before I left. She said you're occasionally good at handling tricky situations like this," he said.

"You're looking for a quick fix, then?"

He shook his head. "As lovely as that would be, I'd be happy with an explanation and maybe a couple of possibilities about what I can do now."

Grudging respect was how he'd later describe the look on her face. She looked at him for nearly a full minute, seeming to weighing and considering him. He didn't look away from her. Finally, her face cleared and she nodded, apparently satisfied with whatever she'd found in their stare-down. "Honestly,” she said, “I'm not entirely sure what has happened to bring this about, but do you mind telling me a little about your perception of the situation?"

Killian gave her his rundown of the previous months, from August contacting him to how quickly he'd gotten leave to come over to Boston. He briefly mentioned that they'd had a falling-out, and that while it was not exactly personal, it wasn't entirely professional either.

Cleo listened impassively. "I know a lawyer who works in immigration, and she could probably help you get a stay on this, if that's what you want. It's not a permanent fix, but that'll probably take a while. We should also talk to Regina, she will want to know what’s happened and there might be something she can do to help. In the meantime, where are you in your projects?"

He offered her a grateful smile, feeling the tension in his shoulders dissipate some. "Well, my largest project is obviously editing Emma's new book. She's made some excellent progress, but we may have also had a row. And a complete end to our...more personal communication, actually."

That furtive, guilty look appeared again on Cleo’s face. "I might have heard something about that. I'll see what we can do, if you all decide you want to continue to work together professionally. We could probably get you a tourist visa and make you a contractor..."

He nodded at her, willing to follow any of her suggestions. She might intimidate the hell out of him, but there was something trustworthy and knowledgeable about her. "Whatever you think will work. And Cleo?"

"Hmm?" She was lost in thought, typing notes out quickly.

He smiled, a tiny shred of hope blooming in his chest. "Thank you."

&&&

He'd gone home at the end of his meeting with Cleo, called Robin, and started looking into his options for an attorney. Robin had been at work, but he'd offered his support, even if he couldn't do much. "Don't worry, mate, I won't arrest you...and fine, I'll see what I can do in terms of helping you out."

It was a couple more days before he received a summons from Regina. She wanted to meet with him along with August and Cleo. Cleo had texted him after he received the calendar request, told him he really had no way of proving August's involvement without making his life much more difficult, so they’d have to find another approach.

And he knew she had a point. So he went in for the meeting, on his guard and having absolutely zero clue about what to expect.

You could have knocked him over with a feather when he entered Regina's office to find her at her desk, with Cleo and August sitting together with Emma. Regina waved him in and Killian joined them on the couch.

"Er, hello," he said with a brief nod.

Regina rolled her eyes. "This isn't Alcoholic's Anonymous, Mr. Jones. Now that we're all here, we can discuss how to proceed with this immigration dilemma you've found yourself in."

A retort was hot on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back, especially when he saw the smug look on August's face and the cautionary one on Cleo's. Emma looked blank, uninterested. Her presence both bolstered him up and was like a vise squeezing his heart. She was so close, but she'd never seemed farther away.

He simply nodded again. "Well, shall we begin, then?"

A business-like façade fell over Regina's face again.  "Indeed. So, thanks to Cleo, it looks like we were able to get a stay of proceedings that would lead to your deportation while officials look over your documents and figure out if everything has been done properly," she said, nodding at Cleo.

Killian was extremely gratified to see the smirk fall off August's face. Emma looked up, clearly surprised.

Cleo just gave one single nod. "Yep. There's been a stay of that, and we got you a tourist visa. So, officially you're just here visiting, and we were able to get that to start from the date of issuance, fortunately, instead of it being retroactive. So we have about six months to figure this out."

"...but things do tend to move slowly when in comes to customs and immigration," Regina interjected, "so I'd like to get started today."

"First, I think we should really take a look at why Killian is here, and what he brings to the table," August said. "It might be easier to help you find a job back in the UK and just go with an American editor, or at least someone whose papers are in order."

"No!" Everyone turned, surprised to find Emma was the one to respond so vehemently.

Killian was honestly just surprised Emma had spoken at all, let alone in defense of him.

He tried very hard not to read into it.

Emma clenched her jaw and stared down everyone but him, her gaze lingering on August. "No. Killian isn't replaceable. He's been a great editor, and his help and input have been invaluable. Changing editors at this juncture would have a very negative effect on the quality of my book, which I think we can all agree would be a bad thing."

"Are you sure you're not allowing your personal attachments to cloud your judgment, Miss Swan?" asked Regina.

"I am," she said levelly, "given that we've ended our personal association."

Surprise shone in Regina's eyes, and then respect. "Very well. So we can all agree that Mr. Jones is important for this novel--"

"--but we need to figure out whether his work on other projects is up to par. Otherwise, why bother with anything other than telecommuting?"

Killian could swear he saw every woman in the room roll their eyes.

"Thank you for your interruption, Mr. Booth, and we'll take your input into account. I am rather curious as to why you suddenly seem so keen on shipping Mr. Jones back to London, when you're the one who advocated for bringing him on," said Regina with a sardonic lift of an eyebrow.

August had the decency to looked a little embarrassed, but he recovered quickly. "I'm just trying to do what's best for Mills & Booth, and that includes maintaining a team that can work smoothly together. Is that really happening?"

"Yes," Emma said fiercely, lying through the skin of her teeth.

Killian shot her a grateful look, which she acknowledged with a slight dip of her head. "Now that we've all established that we're professional adults, can we get on with some of the practicalities of the issue?" he asked.

Cleo snorted. "Agreed," she said.

Regina's mouth twisted into a smile. "That does seem to be the most efficient use of our time."

If August was bothered by this turn of events, he didn't show it. In fact, he looked beyond pleased, especially when the door to Regina's office burst open.

Even Regina looked shocked to see Cora Mills striding through the door, Ariel trailing behind her muttering her objections to the intrusion.

Cora Mills. She was a legend within the publishing world, having married the heir of a small publishing house and turning it into the juggernaut that was Royal Hearts publishing. It was primarily known for romance novels, but its forays into literary fiction were well-respected. She couldn't seem to step a foot wrong when it came to books, and most authors would kill for a chance to meet her.

She was also Regina's mother.

Killian wasn't entirely sure when the schism between the Mills women had happened, but it was common knowledge within the publishing world that they didn't get along. Regina had started her own competing publishing house, after all.

There was a long, tense silence before Cora finally spoke. "Hello, Regina. Your office is lovely, even if this is quite the collection of...professionals in it. Between the one in trouble with Immigration, the glorified beat cop, and the felon, I'm actually impressed Mills & Booth hasn't imploded already."

Emma moved quickly, but Killian was able to stop her before she took a swing at Cora Mills.

"I'd expect nothing less from an orphan of unknown parentage with a rap sheet," Cora sneered, brushing at her clothes where Emma had come close to grazing her.

At that point, Cleo had to hold back both him and Emma.

Regina stood and made her way over to the center of the room, her face grim and mouth in a line. "Mother, what do you want? Or did you just come here to insult me and mine?"

"No, I came here with a proposition."

"Ah," Regina said, giving nothing away.

"Regina--and August--you both know very well I have plenty of contacts that could help fix Mr. Jones' little tiff with the authorities. And I'd gladly help promote Miss Swan's novel, if that's something you think is a worthy cause," she said.

Regina's mouth tightened. "But what do get out of it? I've never known you to do a damn thing for free."

Cora's eyes gleamed. "I don't want anything but time with you, Regina. I've loathed being so cut off from my only child."

She snorted. "How sentimental of you, and it might be more believable if I hadn't just seen a plan Mr. Booth drew up granting you shares in Mills & Booth."

There was an audible gasp that came from either Emma or himself, he wasn't sure.

Cora's face twisted briefly before melting into a look of motherly concern. "That's just because I know how much an investment could help, and I'd get to see so much more of you."

Uncertainty crossed her face, but Regina crossed her arms. "Get out," she said. "And if you would kindly refrain from insulting my colleagues or bullying my assistant while you're on your way out, I'd appreciate it."

Cora schooled her features and nodded imperiously. "Very well. But just know your mother is here for you whenever you need me," she said.

She swept out, and silence reigned.

Finally, Regina cleared her throat. "Well, if that's done, can we just agree that we'll work on figuring out Mr. Jones' visa situation, while hiring him as a contractor to work exclusively on Miss Swan's project for now?"

Cleo, Emma, and Killian all nodded, none of them missing the distrustful glare Regina directed at August.

[resbangmod]

Resbang 2015 Throwbacks, Week 2

Time to get hype for this year’s Resbang, and what better way to do so than to check out the ghosts of Resbangs Past!

Come say hi to this year’s participants and mods on Discord!

This year’s schedule can be found here: beep

Check out these entries from resbang 2015!

[M] The Write Stuff [Soul/Maka, minor Jackie/Kim, minor Tsubaki/Liz, minor Free/Eruka, Wes/Leather Pants]

Soul Evans is an uninspired musician trying to run away from his embarrassing and sordid boy band past. Maka Albarn is a writer who would sell her soul to escape the shadow of her famous author father. Together they form an unlikely team to compose a hit song for pop goddess Kim Diehl, but with Soul’s secretive nature, Maka’s distrust of men, and a hearty helping of meddling from well meaning older brother and manager Wes Evans, will they make beautiful music together or fall completely flat? [Loosely based off of the Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore romcom “Music & Lyrics”].

Warnings: Mild, non-graphic sexual content, language, alcohol use/mention

by author: Earthshines, dead link

with artist: @sojustifiable​

and artist: Bbykrib

Read it here: [FF.net]

Listen here: [Sojustifiable: tumblr 1, 2] [Bbykrib: tumblr (some images may be NSFW), dead link]

[T] St( r )ay [Jackie/Harvar, Ox/Kim]

All they’ve known, all they’ve ever been devoted to, was their meisters. While Ox and Kim are off doing who knows what, the last place Jacqueline once thought she’d find camaraderie was with Harvar. After Baba Yaga, after Spartoi, after the calamity of the moon, their friendship was slow - tentative; yet from there, it grew into something even bigger, more than she could’ve ever bargained for. A love story featuring the slow burn, blossoming between two people who will never be able to put each other first.

Warnings: none

by author: Jaaaaaks 

with artist: Theoneandonlyrei42 

Read it here: [ff.net][ao3]

View it here: [tumblr, dead link][dA 1, 2 (.gif)]

[T] From Blue to Red [Soul/Maka, minor Black Star/Tsubaki]

Morte University sits in a small port town with a strange legend: a giant white shark that haunts its coves. Maka’s barely been a college student for twenty-four hours when a wrong turn brings her face-to-face with the shark itself, flipping her life upside-down. However, nothing in the stories had suggested that the shark would be a man, or that witches might be involved. Reality is questioned and enchantments abound as a world of magical cats, cursed sharks, and ageless witches is brought to light. But underneath the wonder lies dark secrets and deadly desires, and Maka quickly realizes that life is much more magical, and dangerous, than what most people would lead you to believe.

Warnings: Child abuse between Medusa and Crona, shark attacks, female Crona.

by author: Cronashy Absentia 

and artist: Phfsiiing (@haleyhams)

Read it here: [ff.net][ao3][tumblr]

View it here: [tumblr]

[T] Prone [Stein/Marie]

He should have left her well enough alone. If he did, she wouldn’t have been left so tired and worn from blaring her healing wavelength at all times to prevent his nightmares. If he did, she wouldn’t have raced in front of him, fought alone. If he did, she wouldn’t have leaked blood into the dust of Deadwood, California. The mission wasn’t supposed to go belly up, but it did, and he holds so tightly to his stability, so tightly to her. He doesn’t know what face he’s wearing that day, but he hopes to Death it’s the one that can keep her alive.

Warnings: Canon Typical Violence, Mentions of Mental Illness, Minor Gore

by author: @dollypopup​

with artist: @olishia​

Read it here: [ff.net][ao3]

View it here: [tumblr]

[T] We Nightmare You [Death the Kid/Crona, Stein/Medusa, minor Free/Eruka, Stein/Marie, Maka/Soul, Black Star/Tsubaki]

Maka, Soul, Black*Star, Tsubaki, Kid, Liz and Patti are sent by Lord Death to try and enter the Book of Eibon, recovered from the wreckage of Baba Yaga castle. When their attempt goes catastrophically wrong, they find themselves now stranded in a strange and horrible alternate universe. The Witches are the last resistance against Death’s lust for power and weapons are the mere tools of their meisters. To get home the group must now seek aid from an old enemy and try to survive their own nightmare selves.

Warnings: Language, vague elements of body horror, some graphic descriptions of fighting, blood, and torture, non-explicit sexual violence, character death, Crona is continually referred to in this as they/them/their’s, plot relevant OOC-ness.

by author: Jcrycolr3wradc

and artist: Chaoticlivi

and artist: Bluestarii

Read it here: [ff.net][ao3]

View it here:[Chaoticlivi: [tumblr]] [Bluestarii: [tumblr][dA]]

Some of the art and writing are no longer at the links provided. If any of the artists, authors, or their partners see their resbang team is missing art, and they want to be included to the throwbacks, please shoot us​ a message!

[blueberryraindrops]

Blueberry’s Ultimate T-Rated TUA Masterlist

KEY

Fics are organised alphabetically (articles e.g. ‘the’ will not count)

Download links are EPUB files only

authors can feel free to send me a msg if they want their fics’ download link taken down

Regular updates can be expected as long as I remain in the fandom

Last Update: 14/10/2020

Other Masterlists: All Fics; G-Rated; M-Rated; E-Rated

FANFICTION

☁︎ another cog in the murder machine by Ford_Ye_Fiji { T }

→ Download Here

Five finally gets the breakdown he deserves

☁︎ Blood like Lemonade by Ford_Ye_Fiji { T }

→ Download Here

Hunting high and low to seek revenge, Brand new moral code, got made reluctant renegade. Leaving empty souls when he avenged, Evil spirits flowed he drank the blood like lemonade.

Five's sordid past comes to light in, quite possibly, the most unpleasant way

☁︎ Details [Series] by VeteranKlaus { T }

→ Download Here

The last time Klaus saw his siblings was at Allison and Patrick's wedding. A lot had changed since then; including the not-so-accidental, irreversible loss of his sight.

There's no time to tell them that, though. Not with the return of their long-presumed-dead brother and the impending apocalypse. Plus, it doesn't matter. He's got Ben as a good seeing-eye ghost.

☁︎ do androids dream of electric sheep? by the_crownless_queen { T }

→ Download Here

Number Four is crying, and Grace was made to care for those children.

In which Grace was created to protect the children of the Academy. Even, as it turns out, from their father.

☁︎ don't waste your time (or time will waste you) by rosewitchx { T }

→ Download Here

He was an old man. He is sixteen. Ben dies next week. How does he know that? “I think I broke it,” Five stutters, and for the first time in her short life Vanya sees absolute terror in his eyes.

Or, Five travels back again. Something goes wrong.

☁︎ Fighting (Pre)Determinism by chibi_tantei { T / WIP }

→ Download Here

They go back in time, determined to rewrite their own family history. Only problem is, only one of them looks the proper age to get near their younger selves.

Or, six months after Five stormed out, determined to time travel, he returns home. His siblings are happy to have him back, but he's acting differently...

(Or, Five goes undercover as himself. Twice the siblings should make saving the world easier, right? Yet somehow, he's only now realizing how many issues his family has to fix.)

☁︎ Five and Dave's Life Changing (Life Saving) Field Trip by neuronary { T }

→ Download Here

The little boy, who Dave could now see was not as little as he’d first thought, shoved a tin mug at him. “Drink this.”

Dave drank. It tasted sickly sweet and slightly citrus-y. “Who are you?”

“Five.” The boy’s scowl deepened at Dave’s confusion. “Klaus’ brother.”

Or, Five saves Dave's life to stop Klaus from moping. From Dave's perspective, a very grouchy, sleep-deprived twelve-year-old kidnaps him and he finds it much more entertaining than he should.

☁︎ haven't you heard of meditation? by rosesareredvioletsareblue { T }

→ Download Here

"Klaus, you have a piece of glass sticking out of your neck!"

Klaus felt for the glass, wincing as he found it.

"Oh yeah. Fun." It took all of Five's willpower not to throttle him.

☁︎ Hidden Variables Theory, The by siriuspiggyback { T }

→ Download Here

Something has disturbed the space-time continuum, and it's up to Five to figure out what it is.

With a bit of luck, and a lot of alcohol, he might even manage to do it before he snaps and murders his siblings.

☁︎ haven't you heard of meditation? by rosesareredvioletsareblue { T }

→ Download Here

"Klaus, you have a piece of glass sticking out of your neck!"

Klaus felt for the glass, wincing as he found it.

"Oh yeah. Fun." It took all of Five's willpower not to throttle him.

☁︎ Hidden Variables Theory, The by siriuspiggyback { T }

→ Download Here

Something has disturbed the space-time continuum, and it's up to Five to figure out what it is.

With a bit of luck, and a lot of alcohol, he might even manage to do it before he snaps and murders his siblings.

☁︎ i'm gonna be here til i'm nothing (but bones in the ground) by iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid { T }

→ Download Here

Someone definitely just punched him in the chest, right? That’s the reason for that feeling? Or that last batch of pills had something seriously off-label mixed into them. Because there’s no way. There’s no fucking way.

He squeezes his eyes shut until dots burst behind his eyelids, but when he opens them, the hallucination doesn’t go away.

“… Five?”

☁︎ if the sky comes falling down by synchronicities { T }

→ Download Here

The equations are still wrong.

In 2002, Number Seven wonders why her siblings are acting odd.

(Or, the post-finale “Vanya doesn’t remember the time travel” fic)

☁︎ If You're Different And You Know It (you're not alone) by M3zzaTh3M3z { T }

→ Download Here

Five was different. He’d always known. Different from most people, what with his freakish birth, powers and unconventional upbringing, all that old news. And different from his siblings. He was smarter. His powers were stronger. And he’d never picked a name. All that was old news too. But there was something else that separated him from the rest, something he didn’t know how to put a finger on, how to categorize, analyse, understand. Five didn’t like not understanding. It was probably Klaus that made him first notice something was off.

☁︎ Is the sadness everlasting? (love, I think it is) by ArmedWithMyComputer { T }

→ Download Here

A look into what Klaus' newly discovered ability could mean for the siblings.

Diego could feel his whole body trembling as he faced the ghosts, only able to take shallow breaths as he struggled to process the true horror of what he was seeing.

And then they started howling.

The sound pierced though his stupor and forced him to his knees instantly. It was like nothing Diego had ever experienced before, and he was consumed with the intensity and overwhelmed by a deep chilling fear. It felt as though his mind had been taken over and all he could hear was the shrieks of grief, more intense than any emotion he had ever felt.

☁︎ It Does(n't) Matter by MYSTERYstew { T }

→ Download Here

It’s a familiar feeling, being lifted up by Luther and tossed around like he weighs nothing (to Luther he certainly does), it was a favorite move of Luther’s as a child. Nostalgia is not what Five feels, he’s too busy flailing as Luther throws him over the railing.

or, Five fails a jump

☁︎ Just One Minute by willowhisperer { T }

→ Download Here

Five holds up his end of the deal, soaked in blood. The Handler decides to toy with him a little while longer.

Maybe it's revenge, maybe she's riding the high of her shiny new position as head of the Commission.

Really, she just wants to win, once and for all.

☁︎ Lessons 'verse [Series] by Soulykins { T }

→ Download Here

Five was maybe four years old when he figured out that he was pretty much ride or die for his siblings. He was also four when he figured out that in the Umbrella Academy, you could never let Reginald Hargreeves figure out what you loved lest he use it against you. There was safety in aloof indifference, more than could be found anywhere else under their roof.

Five times Five Hargreeves protected his siblings the best ways he could, and the one time he failed.

☁︎ Lethe by shoelaces { T / WIP }

→ Download Here

Le·the | A river in Hades whose waters cause drinkers to forget their past.

Or: Five loses his memories instead of Vanya, and it falls to his siblings to raise a superpowered teenager in the 1960s, all whilst preserving their own new lives and preventing yet another apocalypse.

☁︎ Like an abyss by fridayyy { T }

→ Download Here

For the second time, Five has to (gets to?) grow up.

☁︎ Like Oxygen by sevansa { T }

→ Download Here

Klaus's powers may be a bit more extensive than just seeing the dead, he's not sure what to do about that.

OR

The one where Klaus's power is not ghosts, but souls and that makes a hell of a difference.

☁︎ Mellow Rays of a Departing Sun [Series] by Emotionally_Detached (Yeah_Toast) { T }

→ Download Here

He makes it. He time travels and makes it through another apocalypse. He makes it, but his siblings don't.

His siblings don't make it, except he's in his own childhood and they're still here, alive and thirteen and he can fix things.

He will fix things

☁︎ most dangerous place in the world, the [Series] by Princess_Sarcastia { T }

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"Grace is the third model in a series created by and for Sir Reginald.  She has access to the knowledge obtained by her predecessors in their time assisting Sir Reginald in his many endeavors.

All three of them were primarily designed as protectors.  Do no harm, just as Mr. Asimov said!

But Grace is slightly different."

[priority one: protect the children]

☁︎ New Life, A by BirdInTheCave { T }

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Allison had convinced Ray to come back to 2019 with her and her family and after a month of being cooped up in the house with the other Hargreeves plus their own unconventional guests, Ray suggests they spend some time alone. He's still struggling to fully comprehend the new world he's stepped into but he's determined that with Allison at his side he can get used to anything. Allison can't find a reason to say no. She should have said no.

Luckily for her, Five will always be there for his family, now that he's back.

☁︎ Not with me by ClaraCivry (Kat_Of_Dresden) { T }

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They never asked if any of that blood was his. Five is bleeding, and he is also giving up.

AU to 2X07, with hurt Five because after all that boy has been through...

☁︎ Number Five | And The Things that Make Him Tick [Series] by Kraeyola { T }

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It's only been two weeks for him.

AKA: Five succumbs to two weeks worth of badly cared for (physical and emotional) injuries, and ends up extremely feverish.

☁︎ On My Terms by CivilBores { T }

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“I did what you asked,” he tells her. “Now, the briefcase.”

Her eyebrows raise in mock-surprise, red lips curling up her face in a sadistic smile.

“You didn’t think that was all, did you?” she asks.

AU: The Handler gives Five a slightly different deal.

☁︎ Partners, Parents, or None of the Above by DarkFairytale { T }

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Kenny's mom assuming that Diego and Klaus were A) a couple and B) Number Five’s parents was both bemusing and amusing at the time. But that was because it was the only time it had ever happened. Now though? Now they just can't understand why these misunderstandings keep happening.

☁︎ rude awakening by Soulykins { T / WIP }

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When Five wakes up, he just knows someone is in the room with him. Of course, even he didn't except to come face to face with the Handler who he'd thought to be very very dead. And he especially didn't expect her to break into his room and watch him sleep while waiting for him to wake up.

It's very fortunate that Diego and Klaus show up to wake him up and take offense to some random lady in the same room as their very uncomfortable, very thirteen-year-old brother.

☁︎ Screaming in the Face of Communication by papayaromantic { T }

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It's not that he doesn't want to pay attention to Five, just that he seriously can't hear what the boy is saying past the wailing of the torn apart woman in front of him.

☁︎ shaking like I shook before by Anonymous { T }

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Five tries to deal with it alone, until he learns that he doesn’t have to.

☁︎ skirts and sweaters by slightlyworriedhuman { T }

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"I don't want to be a ‘cute little schoolboy’ anymore, alright?” Five snapped. For some reason, the thought of himself as a schoolboy was enough to make his skin prickle. Was it the implication that he was younger than the rest of them, less mature despite his life?

...Yeah, it was definitely that. Absolutely.Five wants a change in wardrobe. His siblings are more than happy to help.

☁︎ small changes by calypso42 { T }

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“I need to ask you something.” He set down the large stack of books he was carrying beside him. Klaus glanced at a few of the titles - Consciousness in the Brain - Memory & the Role of the Hippocampus - Soul vs. Matter: A Comprehensive Look at the Origins of Sentience - and grimaced.

“Are you… having an existential crisis, or something? Because I am possibly the worst person you could go to for that.”

...

When Five goes to Klaus to ask him something about his powers, Klaus doesn’t think much of it. At least, until he realizes that what he thought was simple curiosity was actually deeper than that, leading to a revelation about Five himself.

☁︎ take shelter by aloneintherain { T }

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AU where the apocalypse doesn’t follow the Hargreeves to the 1960s. Without the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over their heads, the siblings can take the time to be a family again.

Until they find out that the Handler has been blackmailing Five.

☁︎ this is a bad town (for such a pretty face) by luciimariiellii { T }

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Five’s gone. (How the Hargreeves cope, and how they reunite.)

☁︎ to unexplain the unforgivable by darkviverna { T }

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Ability to see the dead and having a temporal assassin for a brother don’t mix well.

☁︎ Too Much Too Little by 1spideyson { T }

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Five says nothing on the ride back, just gently presses the tips of thin fingers to his eyes and temples like his head is a new instrument he’s learning to play. Like he’s searching for the right notes.

Diego tries not to cast too many worried glances the boy’s way, but when Five crawls into Diego’s bed, shaking and grey, he can’t stop himself from speaking up.

A look at Five and Diego's relationship through a h/c lens.

☁︎ Too Old To Be So Young by KaseyBeth { T }

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Five winced loudly, pushing his head off the floor to see bright red smeared across his chest and stomach; crimson soaked into his shorts, running down his leg. His head fell back against the ground dizzyingly, and he groaned as someone touched the wound, biting his bottom lip as he tried to stay conscious. The end of life, of everything, was in three days; they didn’t have time for this, he didn’t have time for this. A bullet wound, a stupid bullet wound and all that stupid concern and worry, was just going to slow them down. There wasn’t time for mistakes, or hiccups, or rest and recovery. It was the end of the fucking world.

☁︎ traumaversary by WeWalkADifferentPath { T }

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It follows him like an unscratched itch. Under his skin, over his body, around his energy, like a mosquito that won’t leave him the fuck alone.

April 1st. April 1st. April 1st.

(A character study of Five, with some inevitable family feels, in honour of March 24th).

☁︎ Unexpected Future, An by aseies { T / WIP }

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“I’m sure you’re looking forward to finding a way back to your own time as soon as possible,” Nedzu said. “I want you to know that U.A. will do everything in its power to help you achieve that goal. Time travel is a complicated equation to solve, but I’m sure if we put our heads together we’ll come up with something!”

Five raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And you’re just going to do that out of the goodness of your heart? I’m not even old enough for high school yet.”

“Well, we’re all heroes for a reason, no? What good are we if we can’t help a single child in need?” Nedzu pointed out with a pleasantly neutral smile as he sipped his tea.

OR: Instead of time traveling into the apocalypse, thirteen-year-old Five Hargreeves teleports in the middle of the USJ fight.

He gets a couple of new dads out of it.

☁︎ walls kept tumbling down, the by Ingu { T }

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It started small.

There was a nagging ache in his chest, phantom pain from where the bullets had pierced his flesh, in the overwritten timeline that never will be.

(the one where rewinding time doesn't miraculously resolve mortal gunshot wounds)

☁︎ We All Deserve Second Chances (but don't repeat your mistakes) by justarandomword, wolvesandnovas { T }

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Time-travelling gave Ben a second chance at life. He's not about to let Reginald Hargreeves ruin that for him and Klaus.

(a.k.a. Reginald takes Klaus' dog tags and the aftermath.)

☁︎ we didn't choose this life, we're just (kind of) living it [Series] by noodlerdoodler { T / Partially WIP }

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Five couldn’t move, standing by and watching complacently, as his younger brother grabbed him roughly by the front of his sweater. It was like he was watching a play he wasn't apart of, yet that was definitely his small body being tossed over the balcony. No doubt, Luther thought that he would just jump out of the way. He'd always jumped out of the way, sometimes without even meaning to, but now visions of a world on fire flashed through his head as his body plummeted towards the ground. Seemingly, he was tumbling through the air in slow motion and absentmindedly, Five wondered if this was his life flashing before his eyes. All he saw was the desolate world he’d left behind weeks ago.

When Five hit the ground, it was with a sickening cracking noise.

“Oh my god, Luther, what have you done?”

☁︎ with two arms by karcheri { T }

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What it comes down to, really, is that Five had been too eager for results. Once it became clear to him that there was a connection between his powers and his energy level the obvious course of action, as he saw it, was to test this information. The hypothesis was this: higher energy levels = stronger powers and the easiest way to get more energy is to eat more. Pretty simple stuff. Too simple.

or Five times that Five starves himself and one time that he gets called out on it.

☁︎ you from yesterday by questors (sieges) { T }

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The difference between who his siblings once were and who they are now.

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: Kiss It All Better (1/2)

Summary: And it’s true; there’s something about her life, stuck here in this sordid night time world that makes her rankle at the world’s injustices even more, be they her own or someone else’s. Still, she has Gold, and sometimes just snuggly cuddling like this is enough to make her feel better and calm the rage inside.

There's a stag party at the club, and after a particularly trying shift, Gold decides to make Belle feel better in the best way he can. Part two of the Bouncers and Shakers series.

Written for the @a-monthly-rumbelling prompts: "bad day, drink, cuddling" and "stilletos/high heels, party, dirty talk". The fic straddles both prompts with elements of both in each chapter. 

Rated: This chapter is rated T and has no smut. Chapter 2 will have smut. 

=====

Kiss It All Better

The club is at peak capacity, definitely the busiest that Belle’s ever seen it, and she’s rushed off her feet, no chance of respite for the foreseeable future. There’s a stag party in and they’re a rowdy disruptive bunch, already half-cut before they arrived. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Dove and Tiny patrolling the stage area. It’s not just the bar staff who’ve had their work cut out for them tonight. She hasn’t seen Gold, but she knows he’s around, quietly masterminding proceedings and keeping an eye on the situation like he always does.

A young man, already deep in his cups, staggers over to the bar from the nearest stage where Dorothy has just finished her dance. Belle shakes her head. No more for him tonight. From the way he and his friends were acting earlier when Ruby was giving him a lap dance, he’s the groom to be. She raises an eyebrow as he slumps slightly, beckoning her over frantically. She wonders what his fiancée would say if she were here.

“Sir, you’re drunk,” she says as she comes over.

“Yes,” he slurs enthusiastically. “Very drunk. Rum please.”

Belle shakes her head. “No. I’m not serving you any more tonight.”

“But why not! I’m perfectly ok!” he protests, then lets out a wolf whistle as Ariel drops her panties on the main stage.

“I’m not serving you any more,” Belle repeats.

“But I’ve got money!” The man waves bills at her, and a glint comes into his hazy eyes. “Hey, maybe you could take it.” A leery wink follows. “Show off what’s under those cute little booty shorts of yours.”

Belle rolls her eyes. It’s not the first time she’s been offered money to get on the bar and strip, and it won’t be the last. She leaves the drunkard and goes over to serve another, slightly more sober group.

“Hey!” The guy keeps trying to get her attention even though Mulan is reiterating that he won’t be served any more alcohol. “Hey, sweetcheeks!”

Belle sees him out of the corner of her eye as he grabs the remnants of someone else’s drink and tosses at her back before Mulan can grab his hand and slam it flat on the bar. The groom is unperturbed and just laughs, starting up a chant of ‘take it off, take it off!’ as Belle plucks at her vodka soaked top. To be honest, it’s actually quite nice to have the cold from the ice against her skin where she’s overheating in the stifling club, but the shock of the sudden attack has her frozen to the spot. The dunkard’s cronies have joined in the mantra and half the club’s attention is now focussed on the bar.

“Belle, poppet?” Jefferson’s hands steer her away from the bar towards the back. On his way, he grabs the walkie talkie from it position next to the gin bottles and barks into it.

“Gold, get that stag do out of here now.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m doing it with pleasure,” Gold’s voice growls over the connection.

“Are you all right, poppet?” Jefferson asks once they’re in the locker room.

Belle nods. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. It’s just the suddenness, you know?”

Jefferson never fails to make her feel better simply by dint of his appearance. He’s the only male shaker in the joint and when he was told that the uniform for the girls was hot pants and high heels but he’d be wearing jeans and sneakers, he promptly turned said jeans into his own hot pants, reasoning that if the girls got to show off their beautiful legs, then he should too. “I thought that the best way to fight the rampant sexism was to show them quite how ridiculous it was.” But management still hasn’t changed the dress code and Jefferson continues to wear his hot pants in solidarity with his fellow shakers. Sometimes he even wears the heels as well, if he really wants to make the aggressively masculine patrons uncomfortable, but given his inability to walk very far in stilettos, that only happens on special occasions.

There’s a huge commotion from the bar, and Belle surmises that the stag party is taking umbrage at being told to leave. Jefferson catches her eye.

“Want to watch?” he asks.

Belle nods and quickly pulls a dry top out of her locker, changing and following Jeff back out into the bar.

Gold is looking absolutely glorious to behold and it’s almost enough to make the bad day worth it. The entirety of the club is now watching him, the music still pounding out but no-one dancing. Ariel’s halfway up her pole, mesmerised, and Ruby’s sat down on her client’s lap, arms crossed over her breasts and a ferocious expression on her face. Ruby is Belle’s best friend among the dancers and they look out for each other.

“I will not tell you again,” Gold says, and the menace in his voice sends a shiver down Belle’s spine. “Get out of this club or I will call the police.”

“But I didn’t do anything!” the groom is protesting, and his mates are egging him on.

“You assaulted a member of staff and you’re drunk and disorderly,” Gold continues coolly. One of the stag party seems to have come to his senses and is tugging on the groom’s sleeve, urging him to leave, because Gold’s fingers are flexing on his cane handle and Dove and Tiny have come over and are standing behind the group looking menacing, as if they’re about to pick them up bodily under the arms and toss them out of the window. Belle wouldn’t put it past them; they’re certainly strong enough and they’d protect the girls with their lives. The groom, unfortunately, does not take heed of his slightly more sober friend’s warning, and decides that obviously, the most sensible course of action is to take a swing at Gold. His reaction is like lightning, bringing one hand up to block the blow and knocking the drunkard’s feet out from under him with his cane.

The suddenness of the action shocks everyone into silence, even the DJ, who is so stunned by the scene that he forgets to put the next song on. Gold nods to Dove and Tiny, and they take care of things from there as he comes over to Belle.

“You ok?” he asks, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pressing a soft kiss to her cheek. The tenderness is so at odds with his previous demeanour, and Belle smile,s because whilst working in this place can bring out the worst in them, they can always bring out the best in each other.

“Do you want to go home?” Jeff asks. “I’ll clock you out, no-one need ever know.”

Belle shakes her head. She’s seen worse than having a drink thrown at her and if she goes home then she’ll only be waiting around for Gold.

“No, I’ll be fine,” she assures Jefferson, but she glances across at Gold. “Maybe a five minute break though?”

Jefferson catches the look between them and raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure five minutes will be long enough?”

Belle rolls her eyes. “Very sure, Jeff.” She takes Gold by the hand, leading him off into the locker room. Once they’re alone, Gold slips his arms around her and she buries her face in his shoulder with a contented sigh, feeling safe and loved and ready to conquer the world if her feet didn’t ache so much.

“You’re so resilient and remarkable,” Gold murmurs, stroking her hair.

“Not really,” Belle replies. “I’m always an angry little thing on the inside.” And it’s true; there’s something about her life, stuck here in this sordid night time world that makes her rankle at the world’s injustices even more, be they her own or someone else’s. Still, she has Gold, and sometimes just snuggly cuddling like this is enough to make her feel better and calm the rage inside.

“We should probably get back out there,” she says eventually, although she really doesn’t want to move.

“We probably should,” Gold agrees, but he makes no move to release her, and Belle giggles against his shoulder. The music has long since started up again outside, and they sway a little in time to the thumping beat, completely at odds with the tone of the music.

“What are you thinking about?” Belle asks presently, once they’ve been silent for another minute or so.

“Mmm.” Gold addresses himself to her hair, kissing her scalp above her ear. “I’m just thinking about all the naughty things I’d like to do to you to try and make up for the bad day you’re having.”

Belle looks up at him and she can see the little twinkle of desire in his eyes.

“Hold that thought,” she says, bringing her arms up to hook around his neck and pull him in for a long kiss. “Store them all up and tell them to me on the way home.”

“As you wish.” Gold pecks a soft kiss to her lips and lets her go, and together they return to the front of house. The club is back to normal now, as if the stand-off with the stag party never occurred – the bar is booming with business and the dancers are performing their acts. Belle returns to her position behind the bar, Mulan and Jefferson both shooting her questioning looks. She smiles in reassurance. She’s fine, and if Gold is to be believed, then she’s going to be feeling even better soon.

[larryland]

by Barbara Waldinger

What a pleasure to attend the appealing and comfortable McConnell Theatre at Daniel Arts Center, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where Barrington Public Theater makes its debut—Breakwater by Jim Frangione.  Facing the audience is a deep, wide proscenium stage, depicting beige sand dunes in Hyannis circa 1990, where a stunning blue backdrop beckons us to rush into the water.  Beautifully directed by Kelly Galvin and performed by a top-notch cast, this is an auspicious beginning for the new theatre company.

Barrington Public Theater’s founders are Deann Simmons Halper (Executive Director/actor), Anne Undeland (Artistic Associate/playwright/actor) and Jim Frangione (Artistic Director/director/playwright/actor).  The mission of their Wet Ink series of readings is to “nurture and develop new work,” written by local playwrights. The aim is ultimately to offer year-round full productions using local actors and directors.

Breakwater centers on Bobbi Herring (the dynamic Raya Malcom), an angry young woman in her late twenties, who drives a taxi, still lives with her Mom, and deduces, based upon obtaining a copy of her birth certificate, that the deceased, abusive man she thought was her father is not—the name of her biological father is left blank.  Thus begins a search for her parent, who her mother confesses, could be either of two unnamed men.  The twist in this story is that one of them might be John F. Kennedy (Ryan Winkles, nailing that unique accent), whose ghost weaves in and out of the play.

According to Frangione, the script has not yet undergone a rigorous process of revision, so this production, professional though it is, is a sort of workshop.  That may explain some of the problematical aspects of the piece.  What is this play really about?  The search for a biological parent? But Bobbi’s quest seems to have a random origin—a chance omission on her birth certificate.  And in the all too brief scene in which she confronts her mother, Joanne (Anne Undeland) with the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother’s husband, Joanne’s weak apology and Bobbi’s muted acceptance of it, seems unbelievable.  It’s as though the play has other concerns, like Bobbi’s attempt to escape from her sordid past and find her way into a brighter future that is more satisfying than driving a cab.  She makes a passing reference to the time she spent in a “looney bin” and refuses to accede to her mother’s demand that she continue to see a therapist.  Determined to make it on her own—to move out of her mother’s home and get an apartment—she endeavors to sell her lovingly restored 1960 Lincoln, which she claims to be worth a fortune, having belonged to JFK.  She even plans to go back to school (which is why she needs that birth certificate).  Frangione thus provides valuable details about the personality and struggles of this young woman.  But if the play is about Bobbi’s journey from darkness to light, why the emphasis on Kennedy? Bobbi’s mother is still consumed with her love for him all those years ago, believing that he was the father of her child. When Kennedy’s ghost appears however, he reminisces philosophically about his life, quoting from his favorite poets: Alan Seeger (“Rendez-vous with Death”), and Robert Frost (“Birches”), but touches only sparingly on his relationship with Joanne and not at all with the paternity of Bobbi.

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One of the exciting aspects of attending theatre in the Berkshires is the chance to see new work, with its highs and lows.  In many cases, the talent of the director, actors and artistic teams can go far to overcome the weaknesses of the script.  Raya Malcolm’s Bobbi is so animated onstage, even when she is sitting in her cab, that her incandescence reaches every corner of the theatre.  The best scenes, both written and performed, are the ones between Bobbi and Eben Crocker/Taylor Hallett (both played by the versatile David Joseph using a working class Boston accent).  Eben is Bobbi’s boss, the taxi dispatcher, who trades insults with her and threatens her job, but ultimately cares for her.  The minor character Taylor, in what he thinks is a date with the mercurial Bobbi, switches from macho, to scared, to seduced by her in just a few minutes.  Ryan Winkles goes a long way to convince us that JFK has come back to life, with his slow walk and musical accent, parted hair, and smiling delivery, though none of the icon’s imitators can ever recreate his magic.  Anne Undeland, a lovely actress, is unfortunately not given the lines that would establish a realistic relationship with her daughter.  Finally, Leigh Strimbeck deftly creates the dual characters of the town clerk and an alcoholic neighbor who shows a fondness for Bobbi.

Director Kelly Galvin takes advantage of the large stage to create the many different locations in this production.  However, the scenery would have been less intrusive if set designer Carl Sprague had used simple indications of place, left onstage throughout the play, rather than wheeling large pieces of furniture in and out to define each area.  John Musall provides us with glorious colored lighting and Brittney Belz’s costumes suit each character perfectly.  Kudos to Jason Brown, whose soundscape brings Cape Cod to life in every scene.

New theatre companies are always welcome in the Berkshires and we look forward to hearing more from the Barrington Public Theater and its talented troupe in the near future.

  Breakwater runs from June 13-23.  Tickets may be purchased online at barringtonpublic@gmail.com or call 413-579-8088.

Barrington Public Theater presents Breakwater by Jim Frangione.  Directed by Kelly Galvin.  Cast: Raya Malcolm (Bobbi Herring), Leigh Strimbeck (Tippy Dempsey/Town Clerk), David Joseph (Eben Crocker/Taylor Hallett, Ryan Winkles (JFK), Anne Undeland (Joanne Herring).  Lighting Design:  John Musall; Set Design:  Carl Sprague; Costume Design:  Brittany Belz; Sound Design:  Jason Brown; Stage Manager:  Fran Rubenstein.

Running Time:  75 minutes, no intermission.  Barrington Public Theater, Daniel Arts Center, Bard College at Simon’s Rock,  84 Alford Road, Great Barrington, MA., closing June 23. https://www.barringtonpublictheater.org/

REVIEW: “Breakwater” at Barrington Public Theater by Barbara Waldinger What a pleasure to attend the appealing and comfortable McConnell Theatre at Daniel Arts Center, …

[omegawizardposting]

[pt 1] Okay for oc shipping night I’m gonna throw you my oc Ambrosia. I know most of your ocs are gay men so Ambrosia might be a bit hard to ship as she mostly commonly presents as a woman. However, she is technically a sexless shapeshifter who doesn’t really strongly identify as female but uses she/her pronouns for simplicity. What Ambrosia is is somewhat complicated. In short, she is the being who will eventually bring out the apocalypse. She’s ancient. She has many names but no one true name.

Pt 2 Ambrosia is something she picked out herself a long time ago and the one she most commonly goes by. She is completely immortal but along with her shapeshifting abilities, that’s really her only power. She used to be straight out chaotic evil. In the past she enjoyed causing as much chaos as possible and delighted in human suffering but through several centuries of character development she’s become more or less a chaotic neutral character. She fucks around as she sees fit.

Pt 3 She’s kind of a “wine aunt” type and enjoys making other people uncomfortable. She’s very loud and has adapted very well to the modern age. Also despite being a horrible role model and not exactly the most outwardly maternal person, she has accidentally adopted several children over her lifetime. She will deny her fondness for children if asked.

Final Pt 4 Being immortal, she doesn’t often let people close to her emotionally. Most other’s life spans are very short compared to her own and she’s honestly gotten sick of the grief. She’s a shapeshifter so her appearance is not really set in stone but in order to be recognizable she usually keeps her hair blonde and her eyes lightening blue.

(Her and my own shape-shifter, Absolon, would probably get along lol)

I guess my major worry with a character like Ambrosia is that, since pretty much all of my OCs are exclusively male-attracted men (because, GOD, am I gay), she’d end up not being able to express herself in the ways she wanted, in relation to gender presentation. As a trans person, that’s a very touchy subject for me, and so I tend to be wary of putting fictional characters into that sort of situation.

(I’m a little too empathetic toward fictional characters sometimes.)

That being said, I do have some bi OCs, but most of them are single dads, and I ‘dunno how she’d feel about that. The most obvious choice, to me, is Bihet, who I originally made as a joke to spite biphobes, but who sort of developed into his own character. He’s had loads of wives, loads of kids with those wives, but he has trouble settling down for good.

He gets along with most people, but he’d especially get along with the wine aunt type, because, honestly, he can also be a bit of a wine aunt. Plus, he has a long and sordid past as well, once making meals of human beings, so they can bond over that.

Generally speaking, he’s a good guy, but he enjoys some mischief now and then, especially if it involves copious amounts of alcohol. I feel like they’d get together, get smashed, and complain about things loudly in Bihet’s parlor.

[thedancemostofall]

(Reading Kenyon review at midnight on a Saturday night)

Every alcoholic is also a poet, even if, as the childish rhyme goes, they don’t know it. In essence, they take metaphor too seriously: they drink their feelings. Sobriety, too, begins with substitution, at least as Alcoholics Anonymous has it: the first steps in their famous twelve-step program require acknowledging alcohol as a higher power and then trading it for another, whether that thing is called God or nature or something else.

A number of poets over the years have made alcoholism a major subject—Franz Wright, with his lacerating lines, comes to mind, as does John Berryman and his theatrical derangements. But few have written about this exchange I’m describing—spirituality for spirits, and vice versa—with as much beauty or generosity as Kaveh Akbar. His debut collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, out this past fall from Alice James, is about addiction and its particularities but also touches something larger and harder to point to, to talk about—existential emptiness and the ways substances often offer respite from our spiritual hunger.

Which is not to say that Akbar shies away from the sordid details of alcoholism or avoids identifying with the disease. Indeed, the backbone of the book is a series of poems whose titles explicitly foreground the subject. “Portrait of the Alcoholic with Craving,” for example, even addresses alcohol directly: “What I was building was a church. / You were the preacher and I the congregation.” But each offers a complex picture of addiction, full of acute and often unsparing observations about its psychology. Another, “Portrait of the Alcoholic Floating in Space with Severed Umbilicus,” opens in a more typical confessional mode, with the speaker admitting some nostalgia for his old adventures: “In Fort Wayne I drank the seniors,” Akbar writes, “now I regret / every drink I never took.” But it also ties addiction to gender, sexuality, and race, with its speaker recalling formative moments, such when he secretly tries a bra on and “the underwire grew / into me like a strangler fig.”

As the titles in this series suggest, Akbar is a sumptuous, remarkably painterly poet. But his style is often more expressionist or surrealist than realist or scenic. One poem describes keeping a housefly on a leash and being stabbed while asleep. Another figures the poet as a “trap-caught fox” who “knew enough to chew away its leg.” In “The New World,” Akbar speaks through another woodland creature: “The soul,” he writes, “is a thirsty / antelope nervously lapping up / water from a pool / in the hunter’s backyard.”

If such imagery is striking, it’s also distancing, serving as a metaphoric scrim between the poem and its subject. The book offers several reasons for Akbar’s obliquity. “Soot,” its opening poem, worries about the costs of venturing into such painful territory, about the ways in which recalling the past anchors us in it:

Regarding loss, I’m afraid

to keep it in the story,

worried what I might bring back to life,

like the marble angel who woke to find

his innards scattered around his feet.

“Loss” can’t be left out of stories about addiction, but trauma can be approached more indirectly, Akbar is suggesting, with a shield of figurative language.

Such an approach also introduces another challenge, one that the book is also concerned with: authenticity. How do you write about addiction without reducing your experience to tropes, to cliché, to spectacle? “Soot” also considers this, thinking about how pain can become commodified, routine, performed for others: “I keep dreaming I’m a creature pulling out my claws // one by one to sell in a market stall next to stacks / of pomegranates and garden tools.” Sometimes Calling a Wolf a Wolf is oblique because Akbar is struggling with the problem of performativity, working to invent a more personal language for his experience.

Even his boldest figurations, however, are not always enough. Certain things, Akbar suggests, might be too ineffable for language to access. “When they asked where it hurt,” he writes in “Portrait of the Alcoholic with Moths and River,” “you motioned in / a circle to the ground under your feet.” For a book that is, in many ways, about finding the right words for an experience, its title poem is surprisingly candid about the limitations of doing so. “I’ve given this coldness many names,” Akbar writes, “thinking if it had a name it would have a solution.” But, as the speaker realizes, “calling a wolf a wolf” does not, ultimately, “dull its fangs.” Naming or renaming can only do so much. A prayer, for instance, does not necessarily summon God, nor does calling oneself an alcoholic cure one of the disease or even make one sober.

Indeed, Akbar identifies this problem of language as one of the underlying sources of his grief. In “Do You Speak Persian?” he connects his particular form of alienation from language to addiction:

I don’t remember how to say home

in my first language, or lonely, or light.

I remember only

delam barat tang shodeh, I miss you,

and shab bekheir, goodnight.

How is school going, Kaveh-joon?

Delam barat tang shodeh.

Are you still drinking?

Shab bekheir.

For so long every step I’ve taken

has been from one tongue to another.

To order the world:

I need, you need, he/she/it needs.

The rest, left to a hungry jackal

in the back of my brain.

Words are tools we rely on to “order the world.” Especially for those who move between languages, their imperfections leave us with a sense of loss, with holes we can’t fill. If one “tongue” (Persian) fails us, we often cope with others—English, say, or a lover’s tongue, or the pleasure of alcohol on our tongues.

But notice, too, the tone of this passage: there’s deep sadness and longing but also gentleness in the back-and-forth here, even a sense of play. Akbar’s replies make their own kind of sense. Even if words fail us, even if they can’t alone solve our problems, they can name their own inadequacy, gain new uses, and maybe, when artfully arranged, even offer what Akbar says we “all want,” that thing we might name poetry—“to walk in sincere wonder, / like the first man to hear a parrot speak.”

Language, especially verse, offers us a starting place, a point of both return and departure, where even the “wrong” words can belong. “Today I’m finding problems in areas where I didn’t have areas before,” Akbar writes in “Portrait of the Alcoholic Three Weeks Sober.” Some of the work of sobriety is noticing and identifying these “areas,” which is the same work, not coincidentally, as being a person. As the book’s final lines suggest, such labor is without end: “The boat I am building / will never be done.” Language may be inadequate, but it’s also infinite—indeed, as infinite as us. For someone whose hunger is deep, such infinity is a boon. If poetry is not a higher power, exactly, then it is what we can use to paint its picture, again and again.