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songmingisthighs · 3 years

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[9.45] yeosang × single mom!reader

⇀ being a single mom, you'd obviously be worried about your child's wellbeing. In this case though? Your child's relationship with your boyfriend. But honestly, this is Kang Yeosang we're talking about, what could possibly go wrong?

When you got home that afternoon, the last thing you expected to see was your apartment being so quiet.

You've raised a beautiful baby girl on your own so it's only natural for you to experience chaos every day and ever since little Jueun started kindergarten, her social skills had progressed slightly.

Jueun, the light of your life, is a shy little girl, having only several constant people in her life which made her not so easily open to other people that she had just met. While other children would run off to make friends on the first day of kindergarten, Jueun went straight to the book collection about dinosaurs.

Yes, dinosaurs.

She's a little quirky like that.

Ask her what she wanna be when she grows up, she'll tell you she wants to be a princess with a pet ankylosaurus.

Knowing her introversion, you had hesitated on letting your boyfriend, Yeosang, and her to meet. It's not because you're afraid that they won't like each other or that Jueun would feel that you'd force him as her new daddy, but simply because you're afraid that they won't have anything to talk about.

You initially introduced them to each other when you had been in a relationship with Yeosang for 3 months, before that you had only told both of them stories about the other, buttering them up to like the other.

Not so surprisingly though, Yeosang had told you that he likes Jueun even before meeting her. Which was a relief to say the least. So when they met, Yeosang tried so hard to make Jueun like him. This effort doesn't go unnoticed by the little girl, but she didn't immediately take a liking to him. You've always been there to mediate between the two even though they had known each other for well over half a year now.

Today however, you had no other choice but to ask Yeosang for help picking Jueun up from kindergarten as you were swamped with a project at work.

Yeosang was more than happy to provide aid, but the notion that he'd be alone with the kid whom he doesn't know whether or not she likes him almost made him puke.

But he sucked it up.

He walk up to the gates of the kindergarten, approaching the teacher on standby, "I'm Kang Yeosang, I'm here to pick Jueun (Y/L/N) from class A-3," he said, smiling awkwardly. The teacher smiled brightly at him while nodding, "of course! Ms. (Y/L/N) called in earlier and told us that you'll be picking her up, I'll go get her," then she walked into the building to get Jueun.

Whilst waiting, Yeosang could feel himself sweating a little, nervous about how Jueun would react when seeing him instead of her mom.

When he saw Jueun came out with her backpack strapped on, looking cuter than a bunny with marshmallows stuffed into its cheeks, he smiled brightly at her.

Jueun's eyes wide when she saw Yeosang, having been familiar with him but never really surpasses any significant level with him.

"Hey, Jueun-ie," Yeosang greeted, crouching down to her height. She smiled shyly at him, making his insides clench at the effortless adorableness. "Your mommy need to work a little longer, would it be alright if I take you home?" Honestly, Yeosang didn't know why he asked that in the first place, but knowing that this particular little kid is smarter than most kids her age, he felt like the question was appropriate.

A sudden look of determination appeared on Jueun's face as she nodded eagerly. She knew how important she and Yeosang is to you. Knowing how much you love and provide for her, she's beyond willing to try and let Yeosang in.

Yeosang stood up and was about to walk but Jueun raised her right hand up at him, "safety, mommy said I have to hold her hand at all times, so I should hold yours," she said.

Hearing that, Yeosang smack his forehead dramatically, "ugh! Of course! How bad of me to be so careless!" He said as he grab Jueuen's hand as she giggled at how silly he sounded.

During the walk, Yeosang tried asked her questions about what she did at kindergarten that day. Surprisingly, Jueun blabbered long about what she did, what she ate, who did what, and when was that.

As they walk home, Jueun suddenly stopped her steps in front of the convenience store right outside your apartment. When her steps halt, Yeosang's too.

Yeosang was about to ask her why she stopped walking but Jueun was already looking at him with her best puppy eyes. He crouched down in front of her, "what's wrong Jueun-ie? Why did you stop?" he asked to which Jueun pouted and pointed at the convenience store, "I want ice cream," she said sadly.

Her eyes alone rendered him defenseless. But he was hesitant because he knows that this is not his kid and he doesn't know whether or not you'd let her eat ice cream.

"I don't know, Jueun," he muttered, scratching the back of his head with his free hand. Realizing he's not outwardly saying no, Jueun pulled out the big guns, "pleeeeeease," she whined, wrapping her tiny arms around Yeosang's neck, "please, daddy, please," she pleaded as her pout deepens.

The use of the 'd' word-

No, not THAT 'd' word.

The use of said 'd' word made Yeosang's eyes widen to its maximum extent.

"D-d-did you j-just called m-me..." he trailed off, not really able to said the word himself. Whether or not Jueun realizes how much the word affect Yeosang was unclear, but she definitely knows, based on Yeosang's expression that she's getting what she wants.

"Please, daddy?" she asked one more time.

And true to her prediction, Yeosang scooped her in his arms and walked into the convenience store, letting her pick any ice cream she wants.

Jueun now knows that she has Yeosang in the palm of her hands by simply uttering the word 'daddy' to him.

Which is why as you got home at 7.30, you were greeted with the sight of Yeosang and Jueun in her little tea party table, wearing a tiara and pretending to sip some pretend tea.

Oh, and best part is. Yeosang is also wearing a tiara and a pink feather boa around his neck.

"Wow, you guys seem to be having a lot of fun together," you smirked, breaking their conversation as the little girl jumps up and run to hug your legs.

Yeosang stood up as well, pulling the feather boa from around his neck to set it on the table. He walked closer and peck your lips, "welcome home, love, how was work?" you sighed and shook your head at his question, "disastrous, but I don't wanna talk about it, I wouldn't want to ruin the fun that you're both having right now," you grinned down at Jueun, "how did you manage to get Yeosang to wear a tiara, baby?"

Jueun shook her head excitedly, "I didn't, mommy! Daddy put it himself!" your eyes widened at her choice of pronoun, snapping your head towards Yeosang who had a big, proud grin on his face, "yeah... I guess I'm her daddy now," he chuckled as Jueun decided to run out of the room.

"Yeosang, we never talked about this," you said to him lowly, not really wanting Jueun to hear your worries. Yeosang's grin dropped to a frown as he steps closer to you, taking both of your hands in his, "why? Do you not want her to see me as a father figure?" "It's not that, it's just," you paused, thinking of the right words before continuing, "I don't want her to be attached to someone she considered her dad only for that someone to leave her,"

Hearing that from you made Yeosang realize that it wasn't just you worrying over Jueun, but you're also worrying about yourself too and how it would affect you and Jueun if he leaves.

Smiling gently at you, Yeosang leaned his forehead against yours, "you don't have to worry about me leaving because I'm not gonna, I'm gonna stay with you both until you all get sick of me and kick me to the curb," he joked, making you laugh, "so please, can we celebrate the fact that Jueun called me dad and that I'm moving in with you two?"

You raised an eyebrow at him, "who said you're moving in with us?" "I did, yeah, Jueun's convinced there's an evil sorcerer living in her closet and I promised her that I'll shoo him away every night before bedtime,"

It warms your heart knowing that your two favorite person got along so well. Had you known that leaving them both alone together would end up like this, you would've done it months ago.

You were about to comment on him moving in again when suddenly Jueun's voice was heard from the kitchen, "daddy! I can't- I can't reach the ice cream!"

As soon as you both heard that, you narrowed your eyes at Yeosang, "you bought my kid ice cream?" to which he rolled his eyes at you, "well she's my kid now too," he defended. You couldn't believe that you'd ever hear him say that but hearing that he's Jueun's dad seems so natural to you.

Giggling, you pushed him out of Jueun's room, "well then, please go and handle your daughter,". He blushed slightly as he tried to suppress the grin that was threatening to form on his face. So he opted to ran to Jueun.

But before he could walk too far, you grab his hand to say something.

"By the way, congrats on being a dad,"

#ateez #ateez scenario #ateez imagine #yeosang #kang yeosang #ateez yeosang #ateez scenarios #ateez imagines #ateez au #au #kpop scenario #kpop imagine #kpop au #yeosang au #smt #timestamp #ateez timestamp #kpop timestamp #smt timestamp

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whump-a-la-mode · 3 years

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Signal - Pincushion

Hey uhh this is a bit of a weird one! Thanks to @suspicious-whumping-egg (aka blue fren) for helping me come up with a fun way to torture my poor lab whumpee. Also, tagging @shiningstarofwinter !

Previous entries to this story can be found in my pinned infopost (no pun intended.)

CW//Injury, mentioned amputation, blood, pins, needles, torture, dehumanization

Upon the table, Signal shook like a pinned butterfly. And, in a way, that was exactly what they were.

After all, how else could they be described, in that moment?

“Stop-” They were begging. When the experiment had started, they had tried to stop themself from doing so. Tried to keep their dignity about themself. But how could they really have something even resembling dignity when they spent their life eating out of a dog bowl in a cage? “Stop- Please please please- No, no, no!”

Their last ‘no’ resembled an anguished howl more than anything that could be described as human language. But, it didn’t stop the next pin from going in.

“Stop squirming.” The sharp voice of the one and only Dr. Crane barked, piercing Signal’s ears as though it were an airhorn. They flinched in the same manner. “I said, stop squirming!”

How could they stop squirming when their wings, no, their whole body may as well have been on fire?

“You’re okay, Signal.” Dr. Sampson’s far softer tone coaxed. “We’re almost done.”

“We’ve barely started.” The other researcher commented sharply.

They’d only just started?! If anything, that reignited Signal’s writhing. When the next pin went in, they couldn’t help but feel that Dr. Crane had placed it as harshly as she could manage, simply to make a point.

Every piece of them was in agony. Their wings were so burdened by pain that the weight was disturbed, too, to their other limbs, their chest, their skull.

But they could not move, and there was quite a paramount reason for that.

Signal should have known, as soon as they were laid out, upon the table. They knew that table. Sure, in its default state, it held no different intentions than the metal exam tables they were so often forced upon.

But, this table in particular had something very unique about it. A pair of metal flaps, able to extend from either side of its surface. The perfect size for fixing in place a pair of wings.

Most of the doctors’ tortures, they’d learned to handle. That did not mean that they cared for them in any way, shape, or form, of course. But, they knew what to expect. They understood the pain that awaited for them.

Procedures upon the wings, however? They could never get used to those. They’d always found it stupid, found it unfair, the fact that their oversized, unwieldy, feathered appendages contained the most easily-ignited nerve endings on their whole body. A single brush upon a single feather was enough to set the hairs on the back of their neck on end.

Their wings had been tortured plenty of times, of course. But this?

This was horrid. More than that, this was new.

‘We’re only measuring muscle activity in your wings.’ Sampson had spoken, oh so terribly innocently. ‘It’s only sensors. You know sensors.’

She had, of course, forgotten to mention the fact that the sensors were located upon the ends of pins, nearly three inches in length. No, Signal hadn’t found that out until they had been stretched out upon the restraint table, and the first pin had forced its way into their flesh.

How many had gone in, now? A dozen? Two dozen? They couldn’t tell, but they couldn’t stop their wings from shivering. The only thing stopping them from sobbing was the fact that they had run out of tears to cry half an hour ago.

“There. All done.” Dr. Sampson sighed, at long last.

“A-All done?” Agony alone rendered Signal nigh-speechless.

“Putting the sensors in.” Dr. Crane spoke with a laugh. “Though, maybe it would go a little faster if you would stop flopping like a fish.”

“You’re doing fine, Signal.” The lab rat could do nothing to resist as the kinder of their two torturers gave them a horribly degrading pat upon the head. “But it’ll go a lot easier if you would just relax.”

Relax? When they were being treated like a pincushion?!

“The machine’s ready, as soon as you’re done talking to the rat.” Dr. Crane interrupted.

“Yes, yes. I apologize.” Her colleague hummed. “Go ahead.”

Somewhere, a switch was flipped.

Somewhere, Dr. Crane sentenced Signal to the worst agony of their life.

Upon the table, the winged person howled. So it felt, a million and a half lightning bolts lurched through their feathered appendages and back again. A ceaseless feedback loop of agony.

They had been staying still, before. Their wings hadn’t been restrained-- there was no need, after all. The pins had caused enough discomfort to still them.

Now, however? Signal wasn’t thinking. If anything, they did not so much as have control over their movements.

They flapped their wings.

It’s hard to tell what was worse-- the pain Signal experienced in that moment, or the view that the pair of doctors had as they did so. The prior was agonizing, certainly. But the latter? The sheer amount of blood? The way that pins pierced feathered flesh, twisting and stabbing at any and all angles?

Perhaps that was even worse.

The only mercy that Signal received was that of unconsciousness. It was shock that sent them, after only a few moments, leaving their doctors to clean up their mess.

“Oh, god...”

“Are they ever going to fly again?”

“Fly? Are they going to live?!”

“That is a lot of blood.”

“The Facility. Now. It’s their only chance of keeping the wings.”

#whump #whumpblr #lab whumpee #whumpee #whumper #doctor whumper #signal #dr crane #dr sampson #i need a tag for this series huh #wing whump #winged whumpee #medical whump

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maybedefinitely404 · 4 years

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Day 11: Intruloceit (pt 2)

@tsshipmonth2020

The sequel y’all were waiting for! (@hoppe-ideas)

Day 11: ‘Choose your own adventure’ day! I chose to continue from Day 9, since I couldn’t very well leave it there.

Content warning: allusions to abuse, Remus being Remus (need I elaborate?), implied past panic attack, mention of bipolar disorder, and of course, Janus’ crippling insecurities. Angst with a happy ending.

Word count: 4k

*READ DAY 9 FIRST*

Blue: What time are you available?

Green: What is this, a doctor’s office? I’m free after lunch

Blue: I was merely tr

Green: I know, I know. I’m just teasing you. It’s endearing, my little mocking-nerd. Bring your textbook, I’ll meet you in the cafeteria. It’s octopus learning time!

Blue: I will never understand you.

Green: Good

He drew a crude rendering of the devil emoji, then a heart, and the conversation ended as quickly as it began.

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Green: What would happen if you injected coca cola into your bloodstream

Blue: No.

Green: It’s just a question!

Blue: I’m assuming you would die.

Green: Damn. Can we try anyways?

Blue: No!

Green: C’mon, for science?

Blue: NO! Why did this question even arise?!

Janus hid a small chuckle, before immediately slapping a hand over his mouth. Even if the writing was as much on his arm as it was theirs, it still felt wrong to read it. Felt wrong to admit that he was starting to enjoy their shenanigans.

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Green: Hey

Blue: Hello, my dear. What is so important that you couldn’t text me?

Green: my mom broke my phone and I’m having an attack

Janus sat straight up, his calligraphy pen clattering to the floor, effectively ruining the large swooping letters he was working on with a splattered gold streak. This was the first message the two had shared that wasn’t either Blue’s notes about homework or Green’s odd creative ideas, or cheesy conversations between the two that Janus tended not to read. It felt like intruding on someone’s life. He hadn’t learned their names yet, and while they always stuck to the same color scheme, he knew at this point he’d be able to distinguish their handwriting with no hesitation. It was his version of hearing their voices, and he’d started growing attached to them. He turned his full attention to the conversation on the back of his arm, feeling a surge of worry.

Blue: I’m on my way, be at the curb in ten minutes?

Green: thanks

Blue: Remember those breathing exercises. Try to stay calm.

Green: please hurry

Blue: I’m driving as fast as I can, love.

The messages ended there, and Janus didn’t sleep that night.

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Blue: Happy birthday, Remus. I hope you have an amazing day.

Remus: Are we still good to go for tonight?

Blue: Of course. I had Roman and Patton help plan most of the date, so I hope you enjoy it.

Remus: Logan, if it’s with you, I will~

Logan: You’re a sap.

Remus: And you love it

Logan: Guilty.

Never had Janus felt so alone. It was one thing to have anonymous messages scribbled on your arm, little doodles and good luck wishes, but to know their names? That brought on a whole new round of tears that he hated himself for. Remus and Logan. The names of his so-called soulmates, the labels he could finally put to the personalities. As much as he hated to admit it, waking up had become a whole lot easier since they’d started appearing on his skin. It was something little to look forward to.

It also hurt, just a little bit more. Before he was eighteen, he’d been able to imagine his situation like his parent’s, with a soulmate who would end up hating and hurting him, and it was easy to decide to never communicate when the time arrived. And even if they seemed like genuinely good people, every time he lifted a pen to respond, to announce his presence, he stopped himself, as his father’s words rang through his head.

Why would anyone want you, Janus?

You’re a mistake, and they’ll see that instantly.

Honestly, what good do you even have to offer a soulmate?

He didn’t want them to be true, but it wasn’t like anyone had ever told him differently. His mother avoided his eyes and was silent, his peers treated him like a disease, so those words were the ones he started to believe. So he capped the pen, pulled his sleeve down, and ignored the small feather light tickles as they spread across his arms.

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Of course, it wasn’t avoidable forever.

It was writing on skin, did he think that was something he would never do accidentally? Was he really that stupid? They were going to be so pissed when they found out how long he’d been snooping on their conversations. They’d hate him. They’d never be open to the idea that he was somehow meant to be in their lives. He was done. He was such an idiot.

These were the thoughts raging through his mind as he looked down over himself in shock, spilled amber ink shimmering on his skin. It was an accident; an opening of an ink pod combined with over enthusiastic dancing to the Chicago soundtrack, leading to a faltering concentration and skin covered in staining gold. He’d been sitting cross legged on his chair when the cartridge exploded, and he’d bounded to his bathroom to try and wash it off, but it had only been partially successful. There was no doubt in his mind that they would see it. It had covered a good majority of today’s messages on his arms, smeared across his shins from hurriedly trying to wipe it away, and speckled across his face like the world’s most unfortunate freckles.

He dropped back into his chair, his music now turned off, and laid his head on the cool wood of his desk. The ticking on his clock was the only sound in the room and he counted each one, mentally marking the minutes as they passed by. Waiting. Five minutes of silent fear had passed before a new anxiety began to rise in him. What if they were his soulmates, but he wasn’t theirs? He’d heard of it happening, ever so rarely, that soulmarks weren’t reciprocated. If that was true for him, and he was starting to become sure it was, they wouldn’t see the ink. They never would. He would be forced to live the rest of his life on the outside, reading their life on his skin but never able to take part. Somehow that seemed a lot worse now that it wasn’t his choice.

Just as he was starting to spiral, a familiar tickle on his arm snapped him back to the present. His head jerked up, hair falling into his heterochromatic eyes as he followed the dark blue script, starting just under the largest golden spill.

Hello?

And how should he respond to that? He couldn’t think of a fun one liner, a sassy quip, to introduce himself. For the first time in his life, lying wasn’t an option, and he hated that. He grabbed the first pen he could grab, a black ballpoint, with shaking fingers.

Hi. Well, that was lame.

You’re our soulmate. It was less of a question, more of a statement. Janus took a deep breath, bringing the pen down again.

Yes.

I’m sorry. What he was apologizing for, he couldn’t quite put a finger on. But it felt right. Apologizing was simply second nature to him.

Whatever for?

He didn’t know how to answer that time, so he did what he always did best, and watched. Waited again, hoping that Blue (Logan, he remembered vaguely), would just drop the subject. This was the most conversation he’d had with someone in a while.

My name’s Remus. The other dork is Logan.

The green ink appeared under the blue, and Janus’ heart dropped painfully in his chest. As if he didn’t already know their names. It’s not as if he could say that, though.

You seem kinda shy. It’s cute

Let them speak, Remus.

Both of them went silent, offering time to allow Janus to write. But he didn’t know what to say, how to explain…

So he didn’t. He yanked down the sleeves of his pajama top, pulling the edges over his hands to hide the now dried golden ink, and collapsed onto his bed, dooming himself to another night of restless sleep.

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If Janus had the choice, he wouldn’t have gone to school the next day. He would have laid curled up under his blanket, struggling to tune out the sound of his parents arguing, letting the world pass him by like an old camera reel. Janus didn’t have the choice though, not when he remembered it was nearing the end of the year and exam season was drawing closer, and then the bickering downstairs became motivation. Good grades would equal an out-of-state college, which would mean getting away from thrown dishes and slamming doors.

Even so, that didn’t mean that Janus didn’t regret the entire day of school. It seemed like a breath of fresh air when the lunch bell rang and the students shuffled out of the class in a lump, leaving just him and Mr. Sanders behind, as per usual. Just as he reached down to pull his lunch out of his bag (just a handful of cold scrambled eggs he had set aside from his already meager breakfast), the teacher spoke.

“I actually have a meeting today, Jay. You’re gonna have to find a different place to have lunch.”

“What?” Janus recoiled as he spoke, his own voice sounding foreign to him. He hadn’t meant to talk back, half expecting a lecture, and was surprised when the teacher’s expression morphed into one of sympathy.

“Sorry, bud. It’s a staff meeting, and I couldn’t find a TA to watch the room over the break. It’s only for today. Cafeteria is open though, I’m sure you can find an empty table there. Or better yet,” He smiled softly, lifting his laptop bag onto his shoulder, “Sit with someone. I’m sure it’ll be okay.”

Janus picked up his bag as well, rushing from the room without a second glance. He didn’t feel like explaining that the reason he sat alone wasn’t his choice, and he couldn’t help it. He was just tired of being pushed away, so why not make the first move himself.

The path to the cafeteria was hardly trodden by him, and he tried to take in the pictures of past grad classes on the wall for as long as possible before his time was up. The security guard marching the halls gave him a pointed look, reminding him that he couldn’t stay in the hallways during lunch, so he hunched his shoulders and walked into the lunch room. He cursed the weather under his breath for being so damn hot today; he would melt in his hoodie and gloves to cover the ink. Luckily the splatters on his face blended in enough with the skin tone to be unnoticeable.

The first thing he noticed is that it was loud. People shouted, trays clattered, and Janus wanted nothing more than to curl up in his hoodie. Social interaction. Gross. The second was that Mr. Sanders had been right, there was a line of empty tables at the back that people seemed to avoid in favor of grouping together in the center. The third and final thing was the overwhelming sense of loneliness that flooded Janus as soon as he walked in. Sitting alone in an empty room was one thing, choosing to sit alone in a crowded room was another.

For a split second, the teacher’s words ran through his mind, and he wondered briefly if he should join a group, only for his anxiety to immediately shut the idea down with a shriek of are you crazy?!

He chose the closest table to the door that was untouched and sat hesitantly, appetite lost. All he had to do was get through an hour of this, he thought painfully. If he paid close enough attention, he could tune into other people’s conversations, and if he closed his eyes and drifted far enough, he might actually imagine that he was a part of them.

“Hi!”

Janus’ eyes shot open and he shrunk back as if he’d been slapped. Standing in front of him was a guy he recognized from his math class, bouncing on his heels enough to make his blonde curls fall into his eyes. He was grinning from ear to ear, gleaming teeth matching the white collar that stood out from under his blue sweater.

“Do you want to sit with us?”

His critical glare didn’t deter the overly joyful guy as he gestured over Janus’ shoulder, encouraging him to look. He did, albeit reluctantly. Four people were sitting at the table behind him, three caught up in a spirited conversation. The last one was staring back at him owlishly through thick square glasses, and surprisingly, Janus wasn’t unsettled by the look.

“Come sit with us!” The happy guy said again, looking like he was refraining himself from just grabbing Janus and pulling him over. His round glasses had started edging down his nose as he hopped from foot to foot.

“Are you sure?”

“Yep! Please?” He drew out the word for several seconds. Janus couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at his lips, nodding mutely and gathering his backpack. His anxiety started again, pelting him with ‘they’re going to hate you’s and ‘this changes nothing’s, but he pushed them down resolutely. It was just the one meal. Tomorrow would be back to normal, eating lunch by himself in Mr. Sanders’ room. And he really couldn’t say no to that hopeful face.

“Yay! Okay,” He led Janus to the table, dropping into one of the two empty seats and pointing to the one next to him. He took a deep breath before gushing on, “Sit! Okay, okay, okay, so I’m Patton, purple-hair is Virgil but they hate the name so you can just call them V. We all call them V. That’s Logan, and the twins are Roman and Remus. Remus has the white streak, but it’s actually really easy to tell them apart once you get to know them.”

Janus’ blood froze in the middle of Patton’s gleeful rant. Those names… those were all the names that kept popping up over the five months of secret soulmate snooping. That wasn’t a coincidence, right? Most of those names weren’t exactly common.

His eyes shifted to the two Patton had introduced as Remus and Logan, sitting shoulder to shoulder across from him. Remus had halted whatever he was talking so animatedly about in favor of greeting the newcomer, but Janus couldn’t get himself to wave back. Instead he dropped his gaze to their loosely intertwined hands on the table, feeling somewhat lightheaded at the identical golden stains covering both of them.

So... he ran. He wasn’t proud of it, and he was somewhat certain that he’d made a scene, but he couldn’t do it. His own self doubt was crippling, all his fears rushing him full forced and reminding him just how little he mattered, how messed up his life had made him, how he would only ruin any possible relationship. This was all too real now. They fit so well to the picture he had unintentionally made of them in his mind; navy blue button up tops and slicked back hair, green bomber jackets and mussed up shoulder length curls. Eyes that glinted with barely concealed mirth, a dimpled grin revealing almost razor sharp canines. Two polar opposites, so perfectly built for each other, soulmates. He would just come along and ruin it.

Screw the sun, he thought, as he sat on the scalding hot bleachers by the football field. To his extreme annoyance, tears had started drifting down his cheeks, and he hurriedly wiped them away from sheer habit. His dad didn’t like tears almost as much as he didn’t like Janus. It wasn’t like they would know it was him, right? All they knew was a stranger had been invited to their table and had booked it before they even got his name. So he could stay a mystery, a fly on the wall, for the rest of his days.

The all too familiar feeling on his arm was more of a curse now than it ever had been. Resigned to his fate, he rolled the sleeve up to read whatever the two were no doubt talking about.

Hi.

He looked around frantically despite his better judgment, his eyes landing on a figure standing at the end of the bench, uncapped pen in one hand and one blue sleeve rolled up. Logan regarded him with a careful look, locked in a staring contest that neither wanted to look away from. The other broke first, turning his focus to his steps across the rickety surface as he approached Janus. He took a seat, mumbling something about how hot it was, before scribbling something else onto his arm and capping the pen. Janus tried to fight the urge to look down at his own still-bare arm, but he couldn’t resist a quick peak.

I found him. Bleachers in the north field.

“Why don’t you take off the gloves, at least. It’s almost ninety degrees out.”

Welp. Apparently this was happening. “How did you know?” He whispered, not touching his gloves.

“Remus and I both felt naturally drawn to you as soon as you walked into the cafeteria. We could not and still can not explain it. When Patton followed our gaze, he was more than eager to invite you over. Not that he needed the prompting, I am certain he would have invited you over regardless of Remus’ and my feelings the moment you sat alone,” Logan stopped briefly, taking note of the new green smiley face under his last message, “Your reaction to our names and hands in rapid succession was enough to solidify our previous suspicions. That-” He pointed to the shared messages on their skin, “-was the final proof I needed.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, Janus at a complete loss for words, until a loud clang to their right grabbed both of their attentions. Remus was clinging to the railing like a vine, having climbed all the way from the bottom, he realized with a start. The older man crawled over the top and landed solidly, rattling the seats, before bouncing over to them.

“Hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi!” He plopped onto the bench in front of Janus, sitting backwards to face them. Consequently, he was slightly lower than the other two, and could see Janus’ usually ducked face for the first time. “Oooh, I like your birthmark! Is it a birthmark? Or a burn? Either way, I don’t care. I like it.”

“Gee, thanks,” Janus snarked before he could stop himself, his self protective tendency rising to the surface. Remus only giggled in response, manspreading a tad more and leaning forward on his elbows.

“I like him, Logan. He’s feisty.”

“I’m so glad I have your approval.” He was on guard now, he couldn’t help it.

“Remus, stop pestering him. He just met us.”

Remus grumbled under his breath but held his tongue. Logan could silence him, he’d have to remember that for the future. If they had a future. He couldn’t help the sliver of hope since they had actually come to find him… but maybe it was to let him down easy. No clue.

“When did you turn eighteen?” The question shouldn’t have shocked him the way it did; it was a valid thought.

“Five months ago.”

And he waited, expecting the worst at the sharp intakes of breath from both of them. Expected them to stand up and leave. Expected them to call him a creep. Expected them to… anything, really.

Well, anything except take his hands. Which they both did.

It was like they could speak telepathically, the way they seemed to be so in sync. Maybe that was a soulmate thing. Remus reached forward and weaved their fingers together at the same time that Logan placed his hand over Janus’ left one, squeezing it gently. They were both calming gestures in their own ways, and admittedly the most contact Janus had felt in maybe years. If that wasn’t enough to bring back his tears, Logan’s next words certainly were.

“Why didn’t you write right away?”

“That’s so much missed time we could have spent together,” Remus chipped in, eyes surprisingly soft.

“I…” Oh, for fuck’s sake. Better let them see how messed up he is now so they can walk away before he gets attached. More attached. “My parents are soulmates and they ended up hating each other. He’s a jerk, he hurts her and me and I didn’t want that to happen to me and my soulmate. Soulmates, I guess. Then the first thing I saw was you guys talking, and I realized, there’s two of you,” He laughed humorlessly, shrugging nonchalantly, “You wouldn’t be missing out if I never made myself known, and what kind of asshole would I be if I intruded on your relationship anyways? It’s not like I can add anything worthwhile. I’m not… that great of a person. I never have been. I have too much baggage and I’m pretty boring and I only scare people away so if I were you I’d get out while I had the chance.” His cracking voice gave away how he actually felt, and he despised himself for it. In all honesty, there was nothing he wanted more than to be held and loved and wanted. He’d never had that before in his life, was it a crime to not want to be pushed aside forever?

To his utter confusion, neither of them pulled away. He’d just vented to two strangers, and they were still as attentive as before.

“Now, we don’t have time to unpack all of that,” Remus hummed in a decent impression of John Mulaney, letting his thumb glide over Janus’.

“So if I’m correct,” Logan stated in a tone that implied he usually was correct, “You didn’t contact us because you didn’t want to burden us, or get yourself hurt.”

“I mean… yeah.”

“I’m going to kill your dad,” Remus chirped all too brightly, “For hurting you. And for ever making you think that we would hurt you.”

“Remus!”

“It’s true!”

Logan sighed heavily, “Remus is a little extreme, sometimes, but he is harmless. Look, I can assure you that your presumptions are entirely false. We would never harm you, and anything you’ve gone through in your past, what you call baggage, is not a deterrent to us in the slightest.”

“I have bipolar disorder, and a whole wacky past that we’ll get into another time,” Remus added, waving away Logan’s ‘shut up’ face, “And in the fifteen years I’ve known this nerd, he’s always stood by me.”

Janus knew it was supposed to feel better, but learning that the two have known each other since long before they knew they were soulmates suddenly made Janus feel that much more like he was intruding. Remus must have noticed his expression, because he quickly kept going.

“All I mean is that we have our fair share of baggage, my multicolored friend-”

“Remus!”

“Both of us do. So you won’t be hurting us in any way, shape, or form. And we won’t hurt you either.”

Janus’ own doubts were still raging inside him, but each word they said was adding splashes of water, slowly dousing the flames, much to his dismay. Even Remus’ attempts at humor were delighting him in ways he wasn’t used to.

“For some reason, the universe wants us together somehow. We’re meant to be in each other’s lives. Aw gross, that sounds like something Roman would-”

“Trusting us will be a slow process, and we understand that,” Logan interrupted smoothly, “You don’t need to believe our words, because we’ll prove it to you. Alright?”

It took a second until Janus nodded, but he did. He could hardly understand it himself.

“Can you start by telling us your name?”

“Janus.” It was a near whisper, a confession of the name he’d disliked since he was old enough to get bullied by his peers.

“The two faced Roman god of decisions, doorways, and new beginnings,” Logan spouted as if on instinct.

“Janus,” Remus repeated slowly, before a huge grin stretched across his face, “I love it.”

#lywrites #tsshipmonth2020 #intruloceit #janus sanders #logan sanders #remus sanders #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #ts soulmate au

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trashyswitch · 4 years

Text

The Repair Man's Reward

Chris is a full time repair man who works with the Animatronics. But a regular night of routine housekeeping for the next morning, would turn into so much more than he expected. And frankly, he's not complaining!

This prompt was suggested by a close friend of mine, who has been having dreams of being tickled by Chica (a FNAF representation of me as a ler, basically). So Chris, buddy, I hope this fanfic lives up to your expectations and puts you into a lee mood for a while!

Chris walked himself into the newer-looking pizzeria and looked around the place. The custodian must’ve just finished cleaning and re-setting up the party room, because it wasn’t dirty or cluttered with kids stuff. It was completely put together with table covers, banners, party hats and napkins on the tables, and little party bags to go with it. Chris smiled as he walked past the dining hall/game room, and looked up at the stage with Toy Freddy Fazbear and the bright-looking band members.

He walked up the stage’s stairs, and walked up to the new animatronics. “Good morning guys. Are you ready for another day of entertainment?” He asked rhetorically. He knew that the animatronics wouldn’t reply, so he got started on Toy Bonnie first. He took a moment to make sure the animatronics were properly shut down, and started removing the eyes. “Let’s get that guitar of yours tuned, shall we?” He said to himself.

Chris placed the eyes into the box to be cleaned, and moved onto the two bottom buttons. He clicked both of them one at a time, and smiled as Bonnie’s faceplate opened. “Perfect.” he declared. Next, Chris touched the flashing light button on the throat pipe to make the guitar play. Quickly, the guitar started playing each string individually from up to down. He listened carefully for any strings out of place and to Chris’s surprise, the strings were fine!

“Huh...looks like you’re learning how to carry a tune without breaking a string! Good job, Bon.” He reacted.

Then, he carried the eyes to the cleaning boxes, and dropped them in. It took only a couple seconds for the eyes to be cleaned and spat out. Chris grabbed them, walked back to the animatronic and placed the eyes in. Lastly: Chris closed the faceplate. “There ya go! And now onto Chica.”

Chris walked up to Chica with a smile. “Hello Chica! Good to see ya.” He greeted as he looked at her body. “Having fun making pizza for the kids?” He asked, seeing at least 4 separate slices of pizza on her. “Let’s get that removed.” He put some blue gloves on and started removing the pizza from her body. “Eugh...What is up with you and your obsession with pizza? I mean I totally get it, but this is just…wrong.” Chris threw the pizzas away one at a time and threw away the gloves into the same garbage. “And now…”

Chris clicked the two buttons on Chica’s head, and waited to see if there were cockroaches or other bugs. And sure enough, a few cockroaches started climbing around on there. “Oh no. Not again. Seriously! Where do these cockroaches come from? Do we need to call an exterminator?” He asked. “I’m gonna write that down for Mr. Afton to see.” He decided. He grabbed a notebook out of his box of parts and wrote a note to Afton about the cockroach issue. Then, Chris put a dust mask on and goggles, and sprayed some chemi-spray onto the animatronic. Quickly, Chris watched with relief as the cockroaches died and fell onto the ground.

Finally, Chris adjusted Chica’s arm, and placed the cupcake onto her hand. “There! Now onto Freddy.”

Chris had walked himself up to Freddy and right away, he could see a kid’s toy stuck in the mouth. Carefully, Chris started to open the mouth to remove the kid’s toy. He managed to successfully remove it and placed it into the lost and found bin. Giving his bowtie a light tug, Freddy’s chestplate opened and revealed no other toys or anything else worthy of the lost and found bin. So, Chris booped Freddy’s snoot and kept Freddy the way he was.

“Alright. And Foxy is still out of commission and-” Chris paused what he was saying when he saw that Chica was looking at him. “Heeeeee’s…” Chris walked closer to Chica and slowly started walking backwards. He watched as Chica’s head moved with his body, while his big green eyes stayed staring right back at his own dark brown eyes.

“W-What are you looking at?” He asked.

Suddenly, the yellow toy animatronic’s eyes went black. Chris didn’t even have a chance to think another coherent thought before the animatronic had dropped the cupcake and leaped right off the stage! Chris had immediately dropped his box of spare parts and had taken off in a terrified sprint down the main hall. He could hear stomps and clanging sounds of the yellow toy robot following right behind him.

While he ran for his life, Chris tried looking behind him to see just how much space was between-

OH GOD CHICA IS RIGHT BEHIND HIM!

The robot was literally neck and neck with the tiny human that had repaired her. It was like a human trying to outrun a raging lion! So impossible you shouldn’t even TRY to attempt it! Even though it would’ve been easier to just give up, Chris didn’t. But that determination only lasted another second before he was quickly captured by the speedy robot. Chris shouted and kicked, and wiggled as much as he could to get out of her grip. But it was impossible. Now that he was captured, there was no getting out.

“Help! HELP! HELP! AAAA-” All of Chris’s breath was squeezed right out of him as Chica tried to give him a big hug. Though it didn’t hurt him per say, it did render him unable to breath for a couple seconds. When the robot had stopped tightening her arms, Chris managed to adjust himself slightly so he could still breath. He took in a big breath, and exhaled in relief. Though he was able to breathe okay, he was still stuck in Chica’s grip.

Chica had wrapped her arms around Chris’s upper arms, rendering his shoulders immobile for a while. He was still able to bend his elbows and reach his lower arms out, but he couldn’t extend them like he would with free shoulders. “Ch-Chica! Please!” Chris begged.

Chica ignored his begs to be let go, and rested her head against Chris’s shoulder and neck, like a touch-starved mother. Chris blinked in surprise and still worried for his safety thanks to the fear that still lingered in his system.

But then, Chris felt one of Chica’s arms loosen and watched as the big hand rose above his head. Chris gasped and braced himself for skull-crushing impact…

But the only thing he felt was a light pat. A light pat from a big palm, and a ruffle of his big head of hair from the robot’s fingers. Chris opened his eyes and...didn’t know how to react. Were the animatronics supposed to hug people like this? If not, then why was Chica hugging him? Chris looked up at the hand and attempted to shake her hand off his head. But Chica removed her hand herself and resumed her tight hug.

Chris blinked in more surprise, but slowly seemed to calm down. It seemed like Chica was not planning on killing him and instead, was only planning to give hugs and cuddles to the guy. If that was true, then he’ll take them. Anything’s better than being killed.

But the comfy hug soon grew loose as Chica lifted Chris back up in front of her. Chris looked at her with genuine confusion and slight curiosity. Chica’s eyes were no longer dark black and had reverted back to the light green color. The toy version of Chica looked so much more friendly and approachable compared to the first Chica. It was somewhat deceiving. Chris watched as Chica wrapped one full hand under his armpits and around the man’s upper chest. The left hand was now securely but gently holding onto Chris, while the right hand started reaching down to his belly.

Noticing the shirt had risen up, Chica lifted the shirt up more and gazed at the skin underneath. Chica’s head tilted to the side while her jaw dropped a little in surprise. Chris looked at her eyes and quickly widened his own when he saw something adrenaline-inducing in Chica’s pupils:

A white feather had appeared in both eyes.

“Oooooh no. Ch-Chica...Let’s not do that-”

Chris was quickly interrupted by a single thick yellow finger, scratching at his belly. Chris immediately went silent and tensed, almost nervous to let his laugh out. Maybe if he held his breath and waited it out, Chica would assume he’s not ticklish and move on. But unfortunately, it was a lot easier said than actually done.

Chica was moving the single finger around the different spots on his belly and adding little extra scratches here and there. The extra scratches were already almost breaking him. What made matters worse was that his belly was one of his absolute worst spots! It didn’t take much for anyone to break him just from some scratches on his belly.

Chris let out a strained grunting sound as he tried to keep his giggles from escaping his lungs. But then: Chica pulled an EVIL move by adding another finger to the scratching! And if that wasn’t enough, Chica had started ‘walking’ her fingers around his belly! OH NO! Chris accidentally let out a strained titter as his lips quivered into a wobbly, silly-looking smile.

Much to Chris’s dismay, Chica heard the tittering sound and quickly took it as a sign that the guy was ticklish! So Chica added her third finger and her thumb to the mix. The moment she started clawing and scratching, Chris threw his head back and broke out in laughter. “AAAAHAHAAAhahahahaha! EEEeehehehehehehe!” Chris laughed, wiggling around and kicking his feet.

Chica’s eyes appeared to dilate, making the pair feather images appear bigger in her eyes as she moved her hand to squeeze his bottom ribs. Chris took the few seconds to breath a little and quickly started giggling more high-pitched the moment she started squeezing. “Hahahahahahahaha! Chihihihicahahahahaha! Cuhuhuhut ihihihit ohohohouhuhut!” Chris reacted, squeezing Chica’s fingers as he giggled.

Chica removed her right hand and put her three fingers into a fist. Staring at her thumb, Chica lowered it towards the side of Chris’s chest and started digging and worming her thumb into the middle ribs and the spaces between. “HeheheheHEHEHEEEEEE! NOHOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAHA! STAHAHAHAHAHAP!” Chris tried desperately to reach down and grab the hand or thumb, but couldn’t even reach high enough thanks to Chica’s thick arms. And even if he could, he wouldn’t have been able to pull her off anyway.

Then, Chica stretched out her hands, and moved her hand curiously to his belly again. “IHIhihi...Whahahat ahahare…” He struggled to properly see where she was gonna go next thanks to her fingers taking up so much of his view. But Chris quickly figured it out thanks to one poke to the bell button.

Chris widened his eyes in horror. She’d better not be!

Chica poked his belly button again, causing Chris to jump and squeak like a loud mouse.

It was at this moment that Chris had realized: he was toast.

Chica immediately started poking and scratching her finger into his belly button, leaving him in hysterics. “AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! STAHAHAHAP! STAHAHAP IHIHIHIT! IHIHIHIT’S TOOHOHOHOHO MUHUHUHUHUCH!” Chris begged.

Chica didn’t have any of those words in her code. But truth be told, none of the words in her code included laughter in between. That was a command flaw that had been around for a while, sadly. Usually, there would be a parent there to give the command. But this time, it was just one person! Chris was all alone; so Chris would have to work super hard to properly plead for her to actually stop.

Chris had sadly realized this and mentally cursed the complicated technology. If they had just come up with suits instead of robots...it would’ve been so much easier. But nope! He’s stuck with a robot chicken that was currently tickling him to bits.

“CHIHIHIHICAHAHAHA! IHIHI CAHAHAHAHAN’T BREHEHEHEHEAHAHATHE!” Chris yelled at her.

Just as one would figure, Chica didn’t understand this as a proper command. So, she continue to tickle the belly button for a little longer before resuming to the generally belly area. “HAHAHahahahahaha! Ohohohokahahahay, thahahahank yohohou. Thahahahank yohohohou Chihihicaha.” Chris told her.

Chica didn’t really understand that command. but she did notice that Chris’s laughter was more giggly and happy, than high-pitched and hysterical. So, Chica seemed to be able to learn the type of attention that Chris liked. Chica’s whole hand scratching soon moved back to 1 finger scratching again. When that happened, Chris started to calm down more and more. “Hehehehehehe! Yohohou...Yohohou’re ahamahahazing. Wooohohow.” Chris muttered.

Chica tilted her head as she gently lifted up Chris’s chin. Chris had a cute little dopey smile on his face. Under his longer hair, hid his sparkling dark eyes. Chica tilted her head as the feather image in both her eyes, switched to white hearts. Chris looked at the hearts in her eyes and dropped his smile. Not because he was sad, but because he was curious. Why were there hearts in her eyes? Was...Was Chica in love with her? Or was this more like a motherly kind of love?

Chica moved her finger around under his chin, and started gently scratching under his chin. Chris’s smile seemed to grow right back onto his face but this time, it was followed up by...almost a loving reaction to the scratching. He was closing his eyes and tilting his head to the side while sporting a soft, comfortable smile on his face. Whatever kind of loving reaction this was, Chica was loving it! Her eyes dilated in wonder and excitement as she scratched under his chin with two fingers this time.

Chris appeared to be loving the chin scratches. Whenever Chica would move towards the upper chin, Chris would follow her and lift his chin up like a touch-starved cat. It was like he had just learned about the wonders of being touched. He didn’t want it to stop!

Next, Chica moved her ears towards his ears and started lightly scratching there. To Chica’s surprise, Chris started leaning into that touch as well! His face showed signs of enjoyment, and he even started...vibrating?

Wait...there was a sound to this vibration! It sounded strange. In fact, it sounded similar to a finger fluttering through all the pages of a book. It sounded...pleasurable? Was it a sound of enjoyment to go along with his face? Chica wasn’t entirely sure. But she could understand that whatever the sound was...it was connected to the ear scratching.

Whenever Chica would stop scratching his ears, Chris would stop doing the flutter sound and would look at him with sadness and hurt. Silent pleas for more? It seemed so. Chica would continue the ear scratches, and the pleasurable face, along with the flutter sound, would return.

Chica kept up this interesting sound-making action for a little longer. And the moment she finally stopped, Chris looked at her with a smile. “Thank you Chica. That felt amazing.” Chris opened his arms out, reaching for a hug. Chica, surprised but happy to agree, gently brought Chris into a hug. Chris wrapped his arms around her neck and snuggled his face into her shoulder.

While Chris snuggled into the chick, Chica started to draw little scribbles on his back with her loving finger. Chris, much to her surprise, started giggling and wiggling a little. “Hehehehehehehe! Thahahat tihihihicklehehes!” He giggled. Happy to hear his laughter more up close, Chica kept it up. “Hehehehehehehe! Hehehehehahahahahahaha!” He kept on giggling.

Chris wasn’t even trying to protest at this point! He was just happy to be in her arms! Chris’s viewpoint on Chica had changed drastically from when he got there, to at this moment. Toy Chica was programmed to be a little like a mother hen to the little children she likely saw as baby chicks. It was an underappreciated code idea that deserved a lot more positive reviews.

Chris stayed in Chica’s hug for a long while and enjoyed every ticking second of his cuddle session with her. It had been years since he had been cuddled like this. He never, ever expected to get such a warm cuddle session from a metallic, chicken-looking robot! But, gifts can come at the strangest of times.

Chris would later go back to the Pizzeria with more than just a daily repair job to do. He would come back, fix up the animatronics, and cuddle Chica for a while. Everytime he had a shift, Chris would happily cuddle with Chica. And amazingly, Chica’s faulty facial scanning seemed to work just enough so that she recognized who he was! It was the fixing man who loves to cuddle!

Now despite Chris’s attempts to hide this secret, he did manage to get caught. But Chris was actually surprised with who, out of all the staff, had caught him during a cuddle session. It was Henry Emily himself.

Henry had originally come into the restaurant to reminisce over the robots he had created and sadly, handed over to Afton once he left the team. But he ended up finding a lot more than just a repair man and the animatronics.

While the sight of a grown man cuddling a robot was super confusing and almost worrying at first, Mr. Emily seemed to understand just what was actually happening. Not only that, but Emily even had some answers for Chris’s questions such as: What did the hearts mean?

As it would turn out, the hearts meant that Chica had grown a special connection to someone, similar to a mother with their child! He had originally set it up with white hearts to represent purity in the love rather than the traditional red heart, which would represent a more intimate love.

So Chris smiled in delight when he realized his personal guess was almost spot on!

But then, more and more things started to finally click when Chica’s feathers appeared in her eyes again while looking at Henry. And of course; before the engineer could think to run, Chica had grabbed him and started tickling him! And even when Emily begged and pleaded for Chris to stop her, Chris just crossed his arms and enjoyed the strangely endearing scene.

Looks like Chris isn’t the only one who likes getting tickles from the pizza-loving chicken...

#original fnaf character #fluff #platonic cuddling #toy chica is a mother hen #ticklefic #ler!chica #lee!chris #mentioned henry emily at the end #slight lee!henry

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aloysiavirgata · 4 years

Text

Xenia

Title: Xenia By: Aloysia Virgata Rating: PG Category: MSR Timeline: X Cops Summary: Brunch in WIllow Park Notes: For @perplexistan, who came up with this amazing idea.

***

He’s staring out the window into the grungy hotel courtyard when he hears the knock at the door. Mulder frowns and, against all recommendation, tucks his gun into the waistband of his boxers. He approaches the door as though it may be on fire. “Hello?” he calls.

“Mulder, it’s me.”

He puts his gun on top of the microwave, unfastens the three locks to admit Scully. “What’s up, buttercup?”

She’s snapping a pink card against her palm, scowling as she passes beneath his arm. “Brunch,” she says.

Mulder shuts the door before following her to the bed. She’s hunched there like a tiny storm cell, glowering, gathering steam. He decides against a romantic overture, though it’s been a week since she last spent the night and he wants to...to lick her.

“Brunch?” he repeats.

She holds the card out. “Sergeant Duthie has accepted an invitation on our behalf.”

Mulder, baffled, takes it from her. The card is flamingo pink, ornamented with two palm trees and two gold-rimmed champagne glasses. In careful gold calligraphy, it invites them to join Steve and Edy for BRUNCH AND BUBBLY! at 10:30.

His jaw drops. “You cannot possibly be serious.”

She snatches it back from him. “Serious as hantavirus. I hope you brought something in a nice madras.”

He sits next to her on the bed, stunned. “Why has Sergeant Duthie done this to us? We were helpful, Scully. You rendered medical aid. You did a late night autopsy out of the goodness of your heart.”

Scully, prim, tucks the card into her jacket pocket. “I did a late night autopsy because you’re bossy and demanding, but that isn’t the point.”

“Do we have to go?” he asks, like she’s his mother.

Scully glares at him. “’Do we have to go?’” she mimics in a falsetto. “Of course we have to go, we’ll look awful if we don’t. The tabloid headlines will practically write themselves. FBI SNUBS LOCAL NEIGHBORHOOD COUPLE. You wanted to go charging around on camera talking about fear monsters for the noble cause of cryptozoology and look where it got us.”

He sighs. “Well, of everyone we encountered on that little goose chase, they’re not awful. I wouldn’t want to have brunch at the crack house.”

She chews the inside of her cheek, stewing. “I can’t believe this.”

Mulder thumps her back in a comradely manner. “The food will probably be decent, right? Probably good coffee, too. Not to mention the bubbly!”

Scully scrunches her nose, pressing her hand to her eyes. “Mulder, I swear to God…”

The event begins to take shape in his mind, Steve and Edy’s tidy home with little morsels on trays. He tries to remember the campy snacks his mother ordered for her bridge club. Lots of puff pastry and ornamental parsley.

Scully gets to her feet. “Well, shower and iron your seersucker suit,” she says gloomily. “I’ll call a cab.”

“It’ll be fun,” he says, excited as always by any novel experience. He considers too that Scully needs to be socialized more often, and it’s not like he takes her on real dates. This will be good for her. He will make her enjoy herself, he decides.

“Oh, I can’t wait for you to get halfway through your third mimosa and start dispensing relationship advice,” Scully says. “Between Edy and Hollman, maybe you should quit the FBI and start a romance column.”

“I get no kick from champaaaaaagne,” he croons.

“Mulder.”

“Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all…”

“MULDER.”

“So tell me why should it be true, that I get a kick out of you?”

His gun falls off the microwave when she slams the door.

***

The driver takes them to a decrepit looking stucco building to procure a hostess gift from what he assures them is the best bakery within 20 miles. Dubious, Mulder and Scully follow him inside. Behind the ancient formica counter, a withered old woman brandishing an immense wooden spoon speaks loudly with the cabbie for several moments in an unknown tongue. He points at his fares, gesturing broadly.

Mulder tries to look respectable, the kind of person who deserves only the finest. He nudges Scully, who offers a vague wave at the proprietress.

The old woman considers them for a moment, then chooses several items from her display case. She secures them in a tidy parcel, which she passes to Scully, who accepts it like an IED.

The woman beckons Mulder down to her and when he obliges, bent nearly double, she pinches his cheek and whacks his arm in a loving manner with the spoon.

Scully, delighted, pays and tips her generously before they get back on their way.

***

The cab stops in front of Steve and Edy’s house. Mulder, who feels this is all becoming a splendid adventure, praises the cabbie for his excellent service. He leaves an extra five on the front seat before they get out.

Scully holds the bakery box with a mournful air. “Well,” she says. “Here we are.”

Mulder opens the gate in the chain link fence, striding along the walkway to the house. He is already on the porch, examining the empty birdcage, when she trudges up.

He chucks her under the chin. “Smile pretty.”

Her nostrils flare, but there is no other response.

Mulder knocks at the door, and is greeted almost immediately by Edy. She is wearing tropical print harem pants, a purple tunic, and a white turban ornamented with a tremendous topaz brooch and a single peacock feather. She squeals delightedly and flings her arms around him.

“AY-gent Mulder,” Edy gushes. “Well don’t you look mighty handsome. And Agent Scully, child, you did NOT have to bring a GIFT.”

Mulder extricates himself from Edy’s grasp. “Thanks, uh, for having us. It wasn’t necessary.”

“No,” Scully pipes up. “It really wasn’t.”

Edy waves her elegant hand. “It is absolutely our pleasure. Now come on in.” She swans into the kitchen, leaving them stranded in the living room. The house smells gloriously of food.

Scully shuts the door with her hip. “Um,” she says.

Mulder directs his attention to a collection of ceramic animals on a shelf. A little seal balances a ball on its snout, so shiny it looks like hard candy.

Steve emerges from the hallway, dapper in a crisp button down. “I heard her fussing from the bathroom,” he says. “She changed her outfit five times.”

“Well, it’s certainly nice to feel wanted,” Mulder observes. He looks at the vase of flowers on the table, the bright cloth beneath it. The sweet domesticity tugs at him.

“We brought this,” Scully says, nearly shoving the box into Steve’s hands.

Steve takes it, smiling. “Well, isn’t that mighty nice of you? You went to Sofia, that place is real good. Bulgarian.” He places the box on the table. “Go on and take a seat, just going to help out in the kitchen.”

They sit across from one another at the table after he disappears from view. Mulder rubs his arm. “I think the bakery lady left a mark.”

“You’re probably betrothed now.” Scully toys with a crystal salt shaker. “Some old Bulgarian custom.”

“Jealous?”

She offers a moue of disdain.

Edy emerges from the kitchen with a bar cart. As predicted, there are flutes of mimosas on the top of it, and a whole pitcher besides. The rest is loaded with food. “TaDAAAAA!” Edy sings, with a grand flourish.

“Edy, this is too much,” Mulder says, rubbing his hands together. Even Scully looks impressed.

“She’s been busy all morning,” Steve says proudly, hands on her shoulders.

Edy beams, hands them each a plate of Eggs Benedict. “I make that Hollandaise myself,” she says, taking her seat as the peacock feather sways. “Grow the lemons out back, too. All this out back.” She surveys her table, a presiding empress.

Steve unloads the rest of the cart, plates of fruit and tiny tomato sandwiches and cheese straws. A mound of home fries glossy with butter and fragrant with browned onions.

“Don’t forget the bubbly,” Edy says, scandalized. “We need a toast.”

Steve dutifully passes them each a mimosa before sitting down.

Edy lifts her glass. “Well, I will just say thank you to our new friends from the FBI who are doing their best to keep us safe even with a bunch of skanky-ass crackheads running around, may they rest in peace. Amen.”

Scully is staring at the table, chewing hard on her bottom lip to keep from laughing.

Mulder doesn’t dare try to catch her eye. “Uh, amen,” he says, and takes a sip of his drink. He blinks; Edy has a heavy pour.

“I squeezed that juice myself too,” Edy says.

Steve rolls his eyes. “You sound like the Little Red Hen, you gonna let us eat or what?”

“I told you he disrespects me,” she mutters into her glass.

Scully has recovered herself and is cutting into her egg, which spills golden yolk onto her plate. She removes a wedge of the sandwich with surgical precision and puts it into her mouth, wary. Her face brightens as she chews. “Edy, this is delicious.”

Mulder is proud of Edy.

“My Granny Minerva taught me to cook,” she says. “I grew up with her mostly, in the Lowcountry.”

Mulder perks up. “Oh, did you? My grandparents had a place in Hilton Head.”

Edy snorts. “Mmmhmmm, I bet they did. I bet you’re a trust fund baby to the cradle, you have pretty hands.”

Scully laughs around a chunk of watermelon, sputters and coughs. She presses a cloth napkin to her mouth, blushing pink as the fruit.

“You okay?” Steve asks, his brow furrowed. “You need a drink?”

Scully, still magenta, shakes her head and gulps half of her mimosa. “I’m fine,” she manages. Mouths “pretty hands” to Mulder.

Mulder scowls at her.

“ANNNyway,” Edy continues. “I lived with Granny and I learned all her secrets.” She gestures at the tomato sandwich on Mulder’s plate. “The trick is you pat the tomatoes dry first, did you know that, Hilton Head?”

Steve refills his glass. “She lived with Granny Minerva because her mama was a runaround.”

Edy whips her head around. “I have TOLD you not to disrespect my mama.”

Steve purses his lips but says no more.

Mulder applies himself to his Eggs Benedict, which is rich and delicious and speaks highly of Granny Minerva. Scully is nibbling a cheese straw with interest.

Edy props her chin in her palm, tapping her cheek with her fingers. “The FBI, now what is that like to do? It seems real scary to me.” She looks at Mulder through her extravagant lashes.”Real daaaangerous,” she purrs.

Scully’s lower lip is back between her teeth.

Mulder chases a potato around his plate with his fork. “Well, uh, it depends, I guess. I mean sometimes, sure, it’s pretty dangerous I guess, depending, but we have a lot of training and all and there’s paperwork mostly too, which is only dangerous if you get the math wrong and there’s an audit, haha, so…” he trails off.

“Agent Mulder just doesn’t want you to feel concerned,” Scully interjects smoothly. “Situations like the one you experienced are exactly what we’ve been trained to do, so there’s no need to be worried. We go through a pretty extensive program in the Academy.” She spears a slice of kiwi and pops it into her mouth.

Mulder could kiss her, right in front of Steve and Edy and God and everybody. Haul the camera crew back for all he cares. But he knows better. She’ll get there on her own.

Edy fans herself. “I just can’t imagine. We are too glad you were here.”

“Baby, they brought dessert from Sofia,” Steve says. “Wasn’t that nice?”

She claps her hands happily. “Ooohhh, that little old Bulgarian lady runs that place.”

“She hit me with a spoon,” Mulder says, pointing at his arm. “About took my cheek off too.”

“That means she likes you,” Steve tells him.

“Giiirrrl, you better watch out,” Edy warns Scully, with a knowing expression. “She’ll snap him right up.”

Scully looks alarmed. “Pardon?”

Edy smirks. “You may have trained at the A-cad-emy, but I studied theater and I can read all kinds of things in people.”

Scully’s face has gone from alarm to panic, and Mulder knows she is trying to recall every word, every movement the cameramen may have captured.

“Theater?” he asks, to divert her. “You’re an actress, Edy?”

Steve puts his head in his hands. “Lord help us.”

She gets to her feet, arms held out like a goddess on a Grecian urn. “My sister Veronica and I did this double act and my husband, Charlie, traveled around with us. Now for the last number - “

“Chicago!” Mulder exclaims, then is embarrassed.

They all look at him in surprise.

“You like musicals, Agent Mulder?” Edy asks, practically glowing. “What’s your favorite?”

“Yes, Agent Mulder, what’s your favorite?” Scully asks, eyes dancing.

He draws little squiggles in the remains of his Hollandaise sauce. “Oh, just, my mom used to take us to shows, you know, when I was a kid.”

“But your favorite,” Scully insists, because she is mean.

“Chicago’s good,” he mumbles. He will never tell her the real answer, which is My Fair Lady.

“Honey, Chicago is the BEST.” Edy goes to a bookshelf and removes a large album.

“Ohhhh, no!” Steve asserts. “Didn’t I already tell you nobody wants to see your ass? Now go on and put that back.”

Edy glides back haughtily, places the book on the table, oriented towards Mulder. She opens it to a page with a glossy 8x10 of her as Velma Kelly, in all her black sequined bodysuited glory.

“Wow,” Mulder says, feeling sympathetic pain as he looks at the bodysuit.

“Virgin Indian hair on that wig,” Edy says, tapping the photo. She stares at Scully.

Scully leans forward to examine the photo. “You look really nice.”

Edy turns a few pages to another picture. She is luxuriating in a claw foot tub, one leg draped over the edge. The bubbly water is at a strategic depth between her legs. Mulder feels as though he should avert his eyes, but gazes on.

“Now these,” Edy says, “are from some modeling I did for a boudoir photographer.”

Steve groans. “Baby, why?”

“It is called art,” she snaps. “Now Agent Scully, girl to girl, you understand this. Sometimes you just want a record of you at your best, you want to share that with your man.”

Scully smiles blankly. “Mm.”

Mulder studies the picture with renewed interest. “A boudoir photographer?” he asks.

Edy favors Scully with a sly glance. “See that’s what I thought. It’s very tasteful, isn’t it?” She turns the page, displaying herself in a ruffled white corset, heeled white ankle boots, and a lace parasol. “It’s very elegant.”

It is, strangely enough. Mulder assumes there must be boudoir photographers in DC. He can import one, if necessary. From the edge of his peripheral vision, he sees Scully studiously peeling a grape.

“I think it’s time for dessert,” Steve says. “Honey, go put those pictures back so they don’t get ruined.”

Edy, looking triumphant, gives Mulder a saucy wink before sashaying back to the bookshelf.

“Lord,” Steve mumbles. He opens the bakery box, then smiles. “You tell her you were coming here?” he asks. “You got all my favorites.”

“I think the cabbie must have,” Scully says, abandoning her grape. “They were talking for a bit, but we didn’t know what they were saying. We never even mentioned your names, I guess he knew the address.”

“Musta been Anzhelo,” Edy says, settling on Steve’s lap. “That’s her grandson, he helps me with my garden a little bit. That boy is always hustling.”

Steve puts a golden pastry oozing honey onto his plate. He cuts off a morsel with his fork and feeds it to his lady, who giggles.

Mulder smiles at them. “This, uh, this has been really wonderful, but we have to go get our stuff together for the flight home.”

Edy pouts. “Well, that’s a shame. You oughtta stay another day or so, we could show you around town. We know everybody.”

Steve moves on to a dense wedge of chocolate cake. “Lots of walnuts in this, you got any allergies?”

Scully holds up a hand. “No, thank you, I’m qui-“

“She’s gotta keep her cute figure for that boudoir photographer,” Edy says. She licks honey off of her fingers.

“Can we help you tidy up?” Scully asks, as though Edy hasn’t spoken.

“I got it,” Steve says. “That’s our system. You go on back to your hotel, I’ll call Anzhelo.” He pats Edy on the side, and she gets up so he can head to the phone.

“Where’s the restroom, please?” Scully asks.

Steve sprawls on the red velvet sofa, pointing her down the hall. He picks up the receiver and starts dialing.

Mulder watches Scully disappear around the corner, wondering if he would like to thank Edy or strangle her.

“He'll be here in just a few,” Steve says from the couch. “I called him on his cell phone, how times change.”

“You tell her not to worry,” Edy says with a wink, resting her hand on Mulder’s shoulder. “The cameras don’t get everything.”

Mulder adopts what he hopes is a confused expression and shrugs. He busies himself stacking plates, pausing to take a swipe of chocolate frosting with his finger. He downs the rest of his second mimosa, considers a third.

Scully emerges then, her hair smoothed and her lipstick freshened. “Again, thank you both for the hospitality.”

“You better call us when you’re in town again,” Edy says, wagging a stern finger. “I will hold you to that, Agents.”

There is a honk outside. “Oh, that’s our cue,” Mulder says, rising. He reaches for the small of Scully’s back but it feels conspicuous now. He converts the motion to a wave.

Edy follows them to the door, blowing kisses all the way.

They climb into the waiting cab. “You like my grandmother's baking?” Anzhelo asks, peeling away from the curb.

“Phenomenal,” Scully says, because she is kind. “We’re stuffed.”

Anzhelo smiles proudly in the rear view.

Mulder slumps against the door. “I feel like one of those big snakes after it eats a whole wildebeest. I need to sleep off all that food.”

“I was a little ambitious myself,” Scully says. She sits up straighter, eyes wide. “Oh, Mulder. Oh shit. You know Bill watches Cops?”

Of course he does, of course. Mulder makes a noise of dismay, unable to address this news on so full a stomach and so heavy a head.

“Mulder, he’s going to see every terrible minute and just snap,” she moans. “Werewolves!”

Mulder, buzzy, imagines Bill and Tara on the couch, eating Corn Nuts, when his sister appears onscreen. He imagines Bill leaping to his feet in outrage, scattering a plate of Li’l Smokies cooked in grape jelly. He starts laughing.

Scully punches him in the arm. “It’s not funny, Mulder!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he pleads, holding up his hands in defense. He is still laughing.

“Oh my god, the Wasp Man! Mulder did you say anything awful when you were unattended?”

Tears are running down his face at this point. It’s all so ridiculous. Bill in his base housing, finding out that his sister was two hours away chasing invisible monsters and crackheads without even calling. Mulder thinks he may, if suitably provoked, let him know what else his sister has been doing.

He smiles darkly to himself.

Scully punches his arm again, harder, and he stops laughing.

“Ow,” he says, sulky. “It’s nothing he doesn’t know.”

She hides her face in her hands. “I could just die.”

Mulder draws her onto her side, curled with her glossy head in his lap. He strokes her smooth pixie cap of hair, the color of autumn in New England.

“I hate you,” she mumbles into his thigh.

He traces her ear. “I know,” he soothes.

“So much.”

“Yes.”

“And you can stop thinking about boudoir photographers, because it’s not happening.” She traces little shapes on his knees.

“Mmm,” he says, non-committal. Mulder pets her until they pull up at the hotel, and he has to get to his wallet. He pays Anzhelo and sends regards to his grandmother, to Steve and Edy.

They clamber out, Scully blinking in the vivid sunlight. Anzhelo waves from the window as he drives off.

“You ready to go home?” Mulder asks.

She looks up at him. “No photographer,” she says again. “But.”

He’s intrigued. “But?”

“My room has a corner tub. It’s not, uh, a claw foot or anything, but it’s pretty roomy.” Scully looks shy as she takes his hand. “This is still weird,” she confesses.

“Yeah. But it’s, I think it’s good weird, right?”

“Yeah.” She smiles, squeezes his fingers.

He kisses her in the bright LA sunshine, in front of the bellhop and the taxis and God and everybody. She doesn’t pull away, puts her arms around him in fact, and still the world turns and turns and turns.

#my fic #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #x cops #steve and edy

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bird-in-a-cage · 4 years

Text

Cocktober Prompt #3 - Freaky Friday

The plaid walls were a dead giveaway something was wrong. The soft sheets and too many pillows were another. Billy blinked at the ceiling a few times, tried to place where he’d woken up this time. It wasn’t anywhere he recognised. And he hadn’t had more than a beer the night before so couldn’t blame alcohol.

Things just felt, weird.

Usually when he woke the first thing he craved was a cigarette, to get out of the house as fast as possible, hopefully before Neil was up so he couldn’t be dragged into another one sided lecture about being a model citizen. But this morning he didn’t. His mouth tasted different too. Both toothpaste and mouthwash still lingering around. Not a trace of nicotine.

It was only when he looked at his hands getting out of this strange new bed did the panic set in.

They weren’t his hands. Not by a long shot. Far too slender and femanine almost. No rings. No bruised knuckles. Skin smooth and pale. He tripped over his feet finding a mirror in the closet and just stared wide eyed at what was in front of him. Moved arms and jumped and blinked to check the releflection was real.

The person staring back was Harrington. Every inch of him. Billy pinched this body he was in and it hurt, kicked his shin against the edge of the door hard enough to leave a bright red mark and that hurt too. So this was definitely real. Billy was frozen, looking at himself trapped in another form. Internally he was panicking. Of course he was, he’d just woken up in, presumably, Harrington’s house in his damn body like it was a Halloween costume. Logical thoughts weren’t exactly easy to make happen.

He was 100% certain he wasn’t going to work today though.

Billy ran his hands over his new body, walking his fingers over moles that dotted the skin, across his new stomach and over his hips and chest. Stretched his arms out in front of his new self. Nothing felt as thick as before, but there wasn’t a lot of weight difference. It wasn’t as if Billy felt he’d now be able to jump higher or dance or whatever. He feathered his fingers through his new hair and okay, it was soft. So so soft. Like touching through a cloud even first thing in the morning. No wonder Harrington always looked like he took so much time on it.

There was one other thing he needed to check. Just out of curiosity. Hidden under the boxers on his hips. Billy had seen it before in the showers but this was the literal sense of up close and personal. And if this was all the weirdest fever dream then it wouldn’t matter anyway, he’d wake up at some point and be back to his regular old self. And really, what else do you do when you wake up in someone else’s body? It's practically a step in the body swap handbook.

With a new grin Billy kicked the shorts off and stood naked before the mirror, turning slowly from side to side on the balls of his feet. He knew Harrington was hung but having it attached was something else. For a laugh he spread his feet a little in the shag carpeting and worked his hips, his new cock swinging back and forth like a damn bell. It wasn’t that Steve was bigger, Billy definitely had the girth, Harrington was just longer. And liked to keep his bush trimmed from the looks of it. Least that part made sense. The boy was so meticulous with his look everywhere else. The panic that had been bubbling up inside melted away as Billy moved back to the bed, licked over the new teeth in his mouth, and settled up amongst the pillows.

Let’s see what makes Stevie boy tick…

Billy spat on his palm before taking a hold of his new dick, slowly spreading the slickness up and down. It felt nice to hold, not as good as his own but still, nice. It responded in kind, quickly getting hard with the attention and every drag of foreskin down over the blush pink head and back. Billy hoped this wasn’t a dream anymore, he couldn’t go back to now knowing this was how Harrington felt when he jacked off in bed, how he looked. How he somehow still had space to grow until it was downright not fair. How his thigh muscles got tight when Billy stopped stroking long enough to give the balls some attention. He couldn’t help but grin around a moan that sounded so forgien but Billy would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit he sometimes thought about hearing it. Of course Harrington liked his balls being played with. How very middle class. Every tug and squeeze sent pleasure rocketing through his spine and down to his feet. It quickly became a two handed operation, slipping down the bed until Billy was flat on his back, pumping his fist in earnest over his cock.

Steve was fucking sensative that was for sure. It felt like barely any time at all before Billy was right on the edge, that feeling never changing in theory but Harrington’s felt different. Starting down in his toes and creeping up inch by inch, making Billy’s brain foggy and his mouth slack as the room became engulfed in the sounds of heavy breathing and slickness from both spit and precome that was beading at the slit. Billy only really paused to look down, to watch Harrington’s cock weep and twitch and push out another wet pearl, practically begging for release. To be swallowed. Shit, oh he’d have to convince Harrington to do this again. If he ever got back into his own body. He needed to know what it was like to do this to Steve, now he knew some of his soft points. Places to give the most attention too. Bet the guy would fucking scream getting his balls sucked on.

Three more pumps and Billy came. Hard. it crashed through him like a tidal wave, taking over every inch, rendering everything else in that moment utterly pointless and unimportant. Yeah, he would definitely need to find a way to make Harrington feel that under his regular body. Somehow. Billy panted in the bed, his chest splattered with cum. He licked at a drop that landed near his lips. Steve didn’t taste too different, maybe a little sweeter from all that ice cream.

He had done Harrington a favour and cleaned himself up in the bathroom, which was about the size of Billy’s living room, put pants on, and was busy just looking at Steve’s face staring back in a mirror. Poking and prodding at cheeks, thumbing around the shells of new ears, tonguing over his gums, when the door suddenly popped open. Buckley was stood there, that girl Steve worked with in the mall, looking beyond stressed out and panting, holding onto the doorframe like she’d sprinted all the way across town to get here. It also appeared she’d gotten dressed in the dark. Mismatched shoes, almost comically high waisted jeans and a bright neon sweater that was definitely too big.

“Are you Billy?!” She demanded, cheeks red but eyes on fire.

Okay well this day just, somehow, got even weirder.

Billy just blinked at her reflection. Apparently that was enough of a confirmation for her to disappear down the hall and come back not even moments later and toss a shirt at Billy’s head.

“Put that on! We’ve gotta go!”

“Go where?” Billy asked, putting the shirt on as he was dragged out of Harrington’s mansion of a house he didn’t even have time to properly explore yet. There were so many cabinets and cupboards unrifled. He didn’t even have time to think about searching through Mrs Harrington’s jewelry box...

Parked out haphazardly on the driveway was Billy’s camaro. He froze seeing himself sat in the front seat, hands gripping the wheel so tight they were white. Buckley tugged at Harrington’s arm to get Billy to move but he stayed stock still.

“What the fuck is happening?” Billy demanded. “Talk Buckley or I’m not leaving. How am I in my car?”

Buckley’s eyes darted around. She started biting at her thumb. Even though Billy had only been to Scoops when she was there a couple of times, neither of those things seemed like anything she would do. Billy took a moment to really look at her. Past the weird fashion choices and bird’s nest of hair. Past the no makeup and desperation plastered all over her face.

“Look, I… I kinda fucked up. I can explain everything just, can we do it in the car please?” She spoke in more hushed tones, still tugging at Billy’s arm to get him to move even another step. It wasn’t going to work like that though. Billy needed to know exactly what the hell was happening before he was about to be kidnapped by himself. He glared down at Buckley, or whatever his glare looked like now. Apparently it didn’t do the trick.

“God I look dumb doing that…” she muttered under her breath.

That’s when it all clicked. The penny dropped and shattered through the glass ceiling.

“Holy shit… Harrington?”

Buckley blushed. It was clear even through the redness already on her face. Steve was stuck as Buckley. Billy was stuck as Harrington. Then by the process of elimination…

Oh shit, this would be fun.

Billy smirked and walked calmly over to his baby, engine still purring, leant down to look at himself sat behind the wheel. Fury was clear over his features, just staring straight ahead at the end of the culdesac and the turning spot to get out of Harrington’s fancy neighbourhood.

“Well, well, well...” Billy started. “The chick has a dick.”

“Get in this fucking car before I kill us all. Dingus is already hanging on by a thread, don’t think I won’t do it,” she spat out through gritted teeth. Apparently she didn’t know how to dress either, clearly just grabbing what had been on Billy’s bedroom floor before probably racing out of that house.

Billy couldn’t exactly blame her on that one.

With a shrug he climbed into the back over the passenger seat, Buckley got in the front, knees pulled tight together, hands not knowing what to do with themselves. The car had barely set off again before Billy couldn’t hold it back any longer.

“Either of you two wanna tell me what the fuck is happening?”

Buckley went to open her mouth, his mouth?, but it was Hargrove that spoke. Practically roared over the sound of the engine working overtime because it was in the wrong gear. It was painful to Billy’s ears.

“This asshole found one of my mom’s spell books and thought oh wouldn’t it be such a fucking great idea to go saying incantations without knowing what the fuck he was doing?! So now I’m stuck as you, Steve is stuck as me and you’re stuck as him until we can get to my aunt’s place in Indy to fix all of this! And once she does I never want to see either of you ever again!”

Billy blinked a few times just trying to process all that information. It sounded weird being said in his voice for a start but, spell books and incantations? God the midwest was full of weird bitches.

“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t think this would happen, did I?” Buckley spat back, peeling away from being pressed up against the door in shame for the first time.

“You didn’t think at all Steven! You never do love spells on a full moon without knowing what you’re doing. God if you weren’t me I’d punch you!”

The grin that grew on Billy’s face was palpable. A love spell huh. Maybe when they were all back in the right bodies that could be something to be worked on. For now they were pulling onto the highway towards Indianapolis, finally in the right gear. Billy just sat back and listened to them bicker like an old married couple. He’d enjoyed being Harrington for a few hours. And if it was true he was stuck like this because maybe Harrington had feelings well, Billy maybe wouldn’t say no to giving that a try too. After this, anything was possible.

#cocktober #harringrove #billy x steve #my writings #im not gonna do all of these but this one was a total must #enjoy penny!

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acequeenking · 4 years

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Hadestober #13

13) Take My Hand - Persephone goes down to the Underworld for the first time after Orpheus manages to get it right. (T, Hermes & Persephone, Hades/Persephone)

Persephone drinks the summer away. Doesn’t trust the man to hold to his own promises, not anymore, not after having been burned so many times. She drinks away a good half of May, June, and even July.

“Might want to slow down, green thang,” Hermes says, gives her a weak little smile. She gives him a sharp-eyed glare.

“Sooner or later, he’s likely to ruin it.” She sips down her whiskey, good and burning. He’d introduced her to whiskey long ago: ‘fore that, she was more liable to get drunk with something out of her mama’s wares, a little wine, a little potash. “Always does. Kinda his job, you know, ruinin’ things. Entropy’s a bit of a bitch.”

“Your man don’t seem to have ruined everything.” He flicks his head over at Orpheus and Eurydice, his little boy and their runaway-now-staying-put, giggling over at the bar. Persephone remembers being that much in love. Eurydice thumbs Orpheus’ suspenders, and Persephone’s heart cracks a little bit at a familiarity she can just barely remember feeling.

“A stopped clock is right, once or twice.” She shoots back, then swallows down her liquor.

“All I’m saying is…” Hermes waves his hand, with a weariness she doesn’t think man has any right to feel. Isn’t like they’ve been in circumstances such as this before. “Nothing will change if you don’t try.”

“I’ll try,” she says, after guzzling down the last of her whiskey. “When and what I feel like.”

“Alright,” Hermes’ says, and says it a bit sad, and there’s a twinge in her chest there, knowing as always that he is her closest brother, and she is somehow fucking this summer all up despite his caring. Mama always said there’d be days like this. “Just think about it, for me? For him?”

His eyes gravitate toward the young couple: Orpheus holds out his hand, and Eurydice takes it, smiling like she ain’t just had to walk out of hell not two months ago. Persephone wonders, idly, what Eurydice did with those old worker’s clothes. Probably burned them.

She would.

“I’ll think about it,” she says. “Best I can do.”

“That’s enough,” Hermes says, but the tone says it plain: no, it ain’t.

Persephone drinks her way through a variety of infrequently sampled delights through September. Been rare, right rare, for her to be up so late, thanks to Mr. Lover-I-Was-Lonely, Mr. Lover-I-Was-Despairing no longer showing up so early, by some miracle, well, she has some time to burn and preferably burn down some of her gullet with it. Hard cider ain’t never been her favorite, but it’s a good novelty and she sips her cup while she mulls Mr. Hermes’ words right up til it’s time ot wait for Mr. Hades clarion-bell.

Because the thing is: Hermes is not half-right. Persephone doesn’t owe her old ball and chain much; ask anybody downstairs, and they would tell you – well, after you pour a little firewater in’em – that their lady has been the one dealing with most of his bullshit, not the other way around. Her problem is one that they keep dancing around, because she can’t bend herself down to get out of it, no matter how much he wants her to: six months up, six months down. Holy route, and they’ve all seen what happens when she doesn’t keep to schedule.

Man might as well ask brother Paulie not to make the sun shine. Some things just ain’t – ain’t malleable. Fixed. And her husband just isn’t built to be able to accept it for long.

Except, of course, that he seems to be awful quiet. So mayhaps he finally has.

“What’s he doing down there?” She asks, half-fearing the answer, because there are a lot of desperate women and now she is well aware that he’s willing to look for replacements if pushed far enough. Asks it casual of Hermes, asks it over her gin and tonic, fizzy with hope. “My old husband.”

Hermes raises an eyebrow at her. “Think he’s waitin’ for you.”

“And how, pray tell is he waiting?” She takes a drink, presses the subject.

Hermes just shakes his head. Refusing to give up the goods, and odds are good the reason is that Mr. Hads himself is holding him to such. But it isn’t out of nature for Hermes to play coy.

“Waiting alone,” Hermes says, quiet. “I’ll say that much.”

She gives him a sour look and he just laughs, won’t say more.

“Just wait and see, green thang. Wait and see.” She sips at her drink, but she doesn’t feel like drinking. Lousy old Hermes just seems to suck the fun out of it all.

“I don’t do well anymore,” she says, quiet. “Not with his surprises.”

“Maybe it’s not a surprise,” Hermes says. He reaches out, holds her hand for a good long moment, squeezes it, drops it. “Maybe it’s just what it is, sunshine-sister.”

They don’t talk a long while after that; Seph spends her time watching Orpheus tend bar, Miss Eurydice helping him out by serving the patrons. But, since Hermes gets relatively few customers, well, it’s mostly Persephone playing looky-loo and watching the kids make eyes at one another. She wonders: were they ever like that? Himself and herself? Were they ever quite so innocent? She doesn’t think so. Himself was jaded from the beginning, and well…she weren’t far behind. Always been the type to just cling to what she could take and not expect much more than that. Cup half-empty kind of girl, you know? Kind who always has to fill her cup, least she think too much about herself.

She stares at Eurydice, perhaps a bit overlong; girl blushes at the attention and moves next to Orpheus, who holds her so easily, and for a moment, Persephone feels a bright jealousy take ahold her heart; been many a year since her husband has done more than hold her hand in public. Was a time when she made that mountain of a man bend to kiss her.

Hermes must see the despair on her face because he tuts and grabs her hand once more.

“You know how rare it is, for a man to know how good he’s got?” Hermes says, in a low voice. “Even the kids, simple as they are, can’t tell a good thing too often til they lose it. Trust me. I been around. I know.”

“Your point?” Persephone might be almost as old as time, but it ain’t necessarily made her patient. Critical flaw that seems to flow through most of her kind.

But not Hermes.

“It’s a miracle, ain’t it?” He smiles, a little too pointedly, old Hermes. “To love someone so much you fear the second they ain’t in your sight.”

“Starts off feeling romantic,” Persephone says dryly. “But trust me, Hermes, it gets old, being appreciated like that.”

He looks at her; nods twice more. She looks at the serious look on his face and notices, for the first time, how his suit is looking a little bit more threadbare than it used to. Didn’t he used to have some feathers round that jacket? Seems a time she could recall him being proud of such.

“Can’t tell you that your reasons against him ain’t good ones,” Hermes says. “Lord knows, you two have had your ups and your downs. More downs than ups, I know. But take it from a man who ain’t never – never felt that urge to tie myself down—”

She rolls her eyes; only thing to do, with such an uncomfortable speech. Never liked these big emotional speeches; give her a moment’s tic or tell. The unsaid, brother, sometimes says it a lot more comfortably.

“Well…” Hermes cleared his throat. “Seems to me that it’s rare enough, two people finding one another like that, falling out and then in love, over and over again. Almost miraculous, right?”

“We’re gods, if you believe in miracles at this age…” He cuts her off, with one elegant hand.

“I believe in optimism. Always got a chance of turning better, sister.” His eyes glitter. “If, perhaps, someone gives such a chance…”

She bats her hand away. “Maybe I’ll consider it,” she says, finally. She stares down at Orpheus and Eurydice: Orpheus holds out his hand, and there’s the girl, grinning, taking that hand, so easy, so easy. Maybe that’s youth, she thinks, that slip of hand in hand, so easy, not weighed down by history. Or maybe it’s love, where you ignore the weight of it all because you believe, for one moment, that weight shared is weight eased.

And as she tries to think of a return, a bonmot, a repartee to Hermes’ great big speech, well, she don’t get the chance. She’s silenced as a high train whistle roars.

Hermes flips back his fancy sleeve, checks his watch. “Right on time, sister,” he says. He rises. “Best be goin’.”

And Persephone, well, she thinks: suppose it’s time. She grabs her coat, and it feels heavy on her shoulders, if smaller than the gordian knot in her belly. Hermes offers her his arm, ever the gentleman, but she shakes her head, not in the mood to share.

She’s a bit drunk, and she doesn’t need any distraction besides her husband himself.

“Orpheus,” Hermes says, too casual: “Watch the bar.”

She looks behind, sees the kids smiling at the bar. Doesn’t seem like they’ve heard at all, and for a brief, bitter moment, she envies them. Then she’s out, and she’s walking.

And the train door is there all too quickly.

And a man steps out all too fast.

There’s nothing different about him in particular: same white hair, same dark eyes, same Cheshire smile, same obnoxious glasses. He thinks they make him look young, but they don’t. She stares at him carefully, neutrally: he smiles, flicks off the hated glasses.

And she sees in that moment how his eyes tick, the nervousness that is evident in them; sees the redness of his ears and cheeks, the heavy breath that tells her that he’s been thinking of this moment for dozens of hours. And it’s that, more than any speech of Hermes’ or any glimpses of the young ones, that renders her heart softer towards the man: the way that hand shakes just a lil’ bit when he reaches for her, because he’s nervous. Mr. Hades is a mighty king, but she reduced him to a man once. Seems liable she might be able to again.

“Hey,” he says, the most neutral of all openings. She’d critique it but she, too, struggles to find words, the snappish openings of so many years having erased the old kindliness.

“Hey,” she says. Disgusting neutral, careful in a way they’ve never been. But neutral is safe, and maybe she takes his hand and grips it, and maybe he doesn’t mention the alcohol on her breath, and maybe when he pulls her toward her, well, maybe his hand doesn’t feel heavy after all.

Maybe she’s a fool for thinking that, but she does, and when he leans close to give her a kiss on her cheek after how-long, well: she believes, she believes.

“Let’s go home,” she says. And she holds him tight, and she steps on that train, and they go together to parts simultaneously too-well-known and too-unknown all at once.

But at least they go together.

#Hadestown #Hades/Persephone #Hades #Hadestober #Hermes #Persephone #Persephone (Hadestown)#Hades (Hadestown)#Hermes (Hadestown)#So somehow I am 10 days? Behind? Sigh #Stupid school and work #it will be the end of me #anyway #I'm going to keep trying to update until I fulfill all 30 though clearly its gonna take me more than october gdi

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buirbaby · 3 years

Text

The Wardens: The First Trial

Rating : M + Mature content, language, and violence

Masterlist | First | Next

The only thing that had been instant in this world was her rebirth alongside Balerion. Otherwise, learning anything was an atrocious, long winded affair. Tabitha knew a few things, like how to tell differences between plants and combine them into salves, but there were a plethora of other flora that Fang warned her about, vegetation that didn't exist in her world. Additionally, given their sub-zero location within a mountain, there were little to no plants that grew amongst the permafrost. Thus, one of her skills was rendered nearly useless, paled in comparison to all that she didn't know, in addition to the fact that she'd lived a rather lofty life after leaving her job in the military. She'd been decent with a rifle, but there were no guns here and a bow could only get her so far. The weapon chosen for her was Fate, the Valyrian steel legacy sword of the Wardens.

Now, Tabitha wasn't out of shape. She climbed and hiked mountains for fun, her muscles honed from suspending herself on cliffaces, her tactile grip strength surpassing most humans. However, given that she now had a griffin, climbing wasn't particularly necessary unless she had to keep Balerion at a distance. Still, the fact she was athletic and tall for a woman did aid in the training that Fang billeted her with. She had to learn how to use the sword or she'd die with it in her inexperienced palm.

Never had she thought there'd be so much to surviving in a medieval world, taking for granted everything she had back home. From the gross pit she had to utilize to go to the bathroom-which froze her ass off when she did pull down her pants-to the fact that they didn't have food readily available, she had to relearn everything. How to hunt, how to track, how to map topography, how to tell the time by the position of the sun in the sky which was also dependent on where she was and what time of year it was. There was so much. Riding Balerion was no easy feat either. While her partner had a perfect nook to slide into to ride between his shoulder blades, the lack of a saddle meant that she rode bareback. Only, unlike a horse, a griffin was a much more perilous ride. By the end of their first ride, her legs were throbbing from being clenched so tightly, Fang bemused by her harrowed expression and near fainting from when Balerion had turned 90 degrees to sail up a current in the wind flanking the mountain.

The north was cold. There had been placed where Tabitha had been nearly frostbitten, but she'd never embarked on a journey into the tundra, which was basically what she'd compare the Frostfangs. Unironically, there was more territory to the North East that hadn't been officially mapped by men, but Tabitha knew what laid there: a desolate icescape with few living creatures roaming the white, featureless plains. She wondered if the Night King would come from there or further north, descending from the Thenn. Either way, she suspected she had time, but the wind continued to nip at her in a reminder that it could become much colder.

She remembered a rough quote about the place that had become her home, that there were giants, wargs, and worse things in the Frostfangs. That's what she was, wasn't it? Warden was a fancy title, but truthfully, she was a warg.

The abilities seemed complicated at first and she drew upon her knowledge from the books and chapters in Bran's perspective. Even with that as a guideline, she found her expectations were a mere shadow of what it truly meant to be bonded to an animal. She had known Balerion since he had been a kitten, raising him, taking him everywhere with her until their paths became this and he was no longer just feline in nature. There was an innate bond, the ability to sense each other's emotions without making much effort, their beings interlaced together like fingers holding one another. She always could sense how he felt, just as in turn, he could sense her disquiet or a ripple of emotion.

Sometimes, she would dream of his midnight hunts, viewing the world from above as he went in search of large game to sate his hunger. Under the cover of night, his dark feathers and fur made him a shadow against the sky, nearly impossible to see when the stars were blotted out by clouds.

Under Fang's guidance, there had been a few instances where she had forced the switch, taking control of Balerion. However, she found that she did not like the feeling, thrusting his own sentience to the side, when she trusted the griffin's judgement just as much as her own. While there would undoubtedly be benefits to this ability, she found no use in it now.

Days bled into one another, becoming weeks and months under the tutelage of Fang. Daily sword practice, bi-weekly hunts and trapping, lessons in the True Language and of the intricacies of the Others, Fang knew not where she would be needed first, but he wanted to be certain that she would not get herself killed and could survive even in the most inhospitable of environments.

"I've been to a lot of places," Tabitha told him, savoring the fresh venison from the successful hunt that morning. Dressing the beast had become second nature and the rest had been preserved, some being smoked now to turn to jerky. Thankfully, given the frigid temperatures, she could utilize it to save the meat for later. "Mountains, oceans, jungles, deserts. Of course, I had more supplies and equipment than I do here, but I did manage to survive out there."

"If you can survive in the two extremes the world has to throw at you, you're well off," Fang commented.

"Mm, but I'll need to go into cities, mingle with people..." It had been a long time since Tabitha had any company aside from just Fang and Balerion. The idea of trying not to stick out like a sore thumb in a major city made her heart flutter, stomach churning as she thought of high society and how ill prepared she was to face any sort of nobility or royalty. She had a callous mouth, cursed worse than a sailor, and knew that while she had a sharp enough tongue to elicit chuckles at her quips, that might as well get her killed for being impudent with the wrong person.

"That was always a possibility," Fang shrugged, wrapped in a thick shadowskin where he sat against the wall. "But at least you can carry that sword well enough now to fend for yourself. A couple of years ago?" He let her oafish swinging come back to the forefront.

"Hey, I didn't know how to use those muscles. I told you I'd never lifted a sword in my life," Tabitha snorted indignantly, jabbing a gloved finger in his direction. "And for as good as I 'might' be with it, I've yet to fight anyone other than you, pipsqueak. If I were to come face to face with someone like Jaime Lannister, I know I'm like to get myself killed. A few years of steadfast practice doesn't make a master."

"At least you're not arrogant enough to think so," Fang pointed out.

"Yeah, well, I'd like to not die," she huffed. Not die, again. With her luck, she'd go on the first task laid out before her and get murdered. She had a rather cynical outlook on life, given that her second chance was albeit shoddy, riddled with clauses, and was forcing her to play a role she'd rather neglect. Honestly, she could've flown out to Essos and found a city to explore and enjoy or other natural features she could witness with Balerion beside her, but somehow she knew that the magic that had brought her here wouldn't allow it. She was bound by it, a fiery contract that she had not willingly signed. She knew not the details of the contract, only that Fang insisted that she had to do what she was told to.

A good soldier could take orders, but Tabitha had left those years in the army behind her, and it wasn't as if she had great rapport with her commander--which she was beginning to suspect more and more was somehow tied with the Lord of Light.

A west wind blew, biting through the layers that she wore. Despite the thick bundles in which she was swaddled in, there were some chills she could not chase. Groaning, Tabitha drew her cloak in and continued to trudge through the snow. A new blanket had fallen, making it a bit more difficult to traverse through the woods to check her snares. Better to be overprepared with food in the case there was a dry spell of hunting, but she hated leaving the warmth of the forge behind. She hoped her first task was someplace south and warm, not amongst the ice and stone.

Throwing back her cloak as she dug through the snow to check the snare, she heard a soft scittering beneath the white blanket. Had a scavenger gotten to whatever had been frozen beneath? Sighing, she removed her dagger and began to peel away the layers. What she hadn't been expecting was the rabbit to still be alive.

No, it was not alive, but it continued to move. Lashing at the rope snare that had snapped its neck, the head cocked at an unnatural angle as it twisted around. The eyes were a piercing blue, burning around the edges of the fur as it set those blazing irises on her and tried to pounce on her. This was the first creature she'd seen that had been turned into a wight and the implications disturbed her. Didn't an Other need to be within a certain proximity for the wighting to happen? They were coming and still, she had yet to be given a task. What had already occurred in the books that she could have prevented?

She drew her sword, killing the undead rabbit a second time, aware that the steel would stop it from rising again. No longer would traps suffice if they'd just rise again and she wasn't keen on trying wight meat or discovering its side effects. There was enough meat back in the Roost for her to wait for another big hunt. With Balerion to take it back up into the mountain, she wouldn't need to worry about it coming back to life, especially if she finished it with her sword.

The Haunted Forest was a bit of a flight from the mountains where the Roost was situated, but it was the biggest range for food. The Frostfangs had more shadowcats than worthy game. Laden with snow and icicles, the trees were depressed beneath the weight of the world around them. Daylight was fading and she knew she ought to call Balerion to head back to the safety of their home. But she was drawn in by the winter wonderland around her, to include a white mist, her steaming breath more noticable behind the thick fold of her fabric of her scarf that helped keep her face warm.

A warning flag raised in her head, recalling Fang's warnings, in tandem with the rabbit she'd found. It was time to go. It was time to-

"Who goes there?" A gruff voice asked, the audible crunching of noise taking her aback.

She swung toward the nearest tree, pinning her back to it, fingers grazing the hilt of her sword. Straining, she could hear men nearby, but couldn't say if they were wildling or Crows, she hadn't seen them. Of course there might be rangers. Thus far she'd not crossed anyone, but nor had she been exceptionally careful aside from being wary of the Others. Regardless of who it was, they probably wouldn't care for her.

Two, three, four... five? No, there were more. Call Balerion and risk him getting hurt or make a dash for it?

"You!"

But the voice that called wasn't gesturing toward her, she saw the mangled furs bundling up a figure and wondered what a lone wildling was doing. From their lumbering gait, she didn't have to puzzle for long. Just as there had been an undead rabbit, the wildling was definitely not alive. Rooted to her spot, metal sang out of scabbards.

"They don't look right," a different voice commented.

"There's another over there."

"And there. What's with their eyes?"

Crows. They learn the hard way that these bastards wouldn't go down easy, but it was not her job to help them. Until this point, she'd not been given any guidance on what to do. Hopefully, they'd survive and escape back toward the Wall. Time to go. While they were distracted she could escape whence she had come and pretend this had never happened.

Yet, as Tabitha rounded, her stomach dropped and she noticed that there were many wights lumbering from out of the fog that had thickened to a dense wall that was nearly impenetrable. They cared naught if she was a brother of the Watch of a wildling. She was alive and thus, a target. Her movement caught their attention and she had no choice but to rip her own sword out from where she'd sheathed it.

"Fine, bout time I killed a few wights," Tabitha commented to no one in particular. Originally, she had thought they'd be slow, but the ice zombies were feral and quick if their limbs were intact. Despite the encumbering snow, they lurched forward like a pack of wild dogs and she raised Fate to cut down the first attacker. The vibrant blue eyes flickered like a light switch being turned on and off, before fading entirely. There was no time to admire the success of her blow as she turned the sword, taking a step back and rooting herself before parrying the next and hacking down upon the neck, severing the head clean off. "Fuck," there were too many. She was forced back, step by step, toward the Night's Watch men that she did not want to encounter.

If they cared who she was, they did not voice it, because she was another sword amongst the horde and her sword seemed to be putting them down. Tabitha suspected it had to do with how she was dressed, in midnight blue and grey, obviously not a wildling. Perhaps they even mistook her for one of their own, her face obscured so they could not see she was a woman. Given her lean, tall stature, she could have easily passed for a man if she did not speak.

"First Ranger, what do we do? There's no end to them-ERG!" Beside her, one of the Crows was staked through with a roughly hewn spear, the undead wildling twisting the stone deeper, blood frothing to the man's lips.

Tabitha hissed and darted forward, but it was no use. Even as she killed the wight, the man would die from the wound in his chest. The light was fading and she knew that he too would turn. Rather, she spared him a pitiful glance before taking her sword and driving it down to deliver him quick mercy.

"What are you doing?!" A hand gripped her bicep, tightening painfully, as she was forced to gaze up into slate grey eyes.

"He'll turn! He was dead anyways," she snarled, ripping her arm away and glancing amidst the crowd drawing in.

"A woman-"

She'd betrayed herself, but didn't care at that moment. Two of the seven Crows were dead, but the strangest bit was that the wights had paused, forming a semi-circle around them where they panted, steaming hot breath in front of them. With the pause in the slaughter, two of the men exchanged tremulous glances and before anyone had so much as lowered their weapons, they turned heel and ran, cutting through the small gap between the wights and plunging into the wilderness to abandon the other three of their brothers that had survived.

The man that he gripped her snarled, his brows furrowing in frustration, but he did not call after them, too preoccupied with what was going on.

"Why have they stopped?" The question hung open in the air and Tabitha had a very bad feeling, her stomach nearly in her toes as she licked her lips.

"They were commanded to," she answered, the only logical explanation as to why the mindless hive would relent their assault.

"By what?" Tension was high, a stodgier Crow snapping at her, his eyes wide with terror.

"What do you think, chuckle-fuck? What controls wights?" Tabitha snapped back.

"The Others," the ranger beside him was quiet, voice barely above a whisper as the four of them contemplated their options.

"We need to get out of here. We can't fight them," Tabitha told them, her hands shaking. The Others were expert swordsmen, where she was just a novice. Even with three years beneath her belt, she didn't think she was even close to a match for them. "They had the right idea. We need to run-"

But the horses they'd come with had fled and the gap that once existed had closed. Tabitha knew she could flee, but not without condemning these men. Despite owing them nothing, she couldn't help but think 'no soldier left behind'. She was not their friend, perhaps they would have simply killed her had the wights not interrupted, but in this moment they were temporary allies.

Before them, the wights parted and an ethereal figure stepped out. Tabitha was shocked, finding not the zombie-esc being depicted in the show, but a strangely elegant, alien creature. He was made entirely of ice, glistening in the low light of dusk from the greyed sky. Eyes brilliantly, devilishly blue, another flaming pair dancing amongst the crowd that followed him. Each step refracted off his armor, which picked up the images around it, appearing see through. Gripped fast in its hand was a pale, wicked sword of crystal that would shatter any steel aside from that forged by dragon fire.

There was no moment for her to warn them, to say not to attack, but all logic had been tossed out the window. The stout ranger roared and charged forward before she could open her mouth. If they killed the Other, then the wights would stop, wouldn't they? No, not unless this was the Night King. But he did not know this and Tabitha's words were lost amongst the screeching of the crystal sword as it collided effortlessly with the ranger's. Her ears balked, the high pitched wailing of crystal to steel sounding like an animal being tortured. Then it stopped, all time ceasing as the steel shattered into a rain of silver fragments and the ranger's eyes widened in astonishment.

All of them stared in horror as the Other spoke, no one could comprehend the noises, akin to the cracking of ice in a winter lake. Even Tabitha, who knew the True Tongue, had no idea what he said. Given the mocking tone of it, she suspected he was condemning them all to death or challenging them to be as foolish as the first.

"Will killing it save us?" the man who'd grabbed her earlier asked.

"If we can kill it? No, probably not," she conceded.

The moment the sinewy ranger heard this, his fingers tightened on his sword and he spun on his heel, cloak flapping like a bird's wing as he tried to run toward the largest gap he could find. But they had all closed, thus he tried to force his way through, hacking and slashing, until the wights stirred and fought back. The flurry of activity halted, the man falling to his knees as he was punched through the stomach with an axe, cold hands tearing him apart.

"What's your name?" the man asked her, expecting that these fleeting moments might very well be their last.

"Tabitha Flores," she answered, calling for Balerion, wondering if they could escape into the sky without him being injured.

"I wish I could say it's an honor to meet you, but at least it was an honor to fight beside you. I am Benjen Stark, First Ranger to Castle Black of the Night's Watch," he introduced, a sad, but whimsical edge to his tone.

"Hey, don't be counting the daisies you'll be pushing before you've stopped breathing," Tabitha muttered, realizing now what she'd ignored at first. First Ranger. This was where Benjen disappeared and never returned. He was supposed to die here. Or maybe he wasn't. "Who knows, maybe killing this fucker will solve our problems." Hopeful thinking, but she was the one with the Valyrian steel. She needed to at least distract him enough that Balerion could sweep in unimpeded.

Her body screamed against it, instinct telling her to turn tail and run, dash herself to death into the wights just as the other ranger had done. Instead, she leveled her sword and prepared herself. A few minutes. If she could survive just a few minutes.

The chilling laughter of the Other ripped through her, clenching her heart, as he entertained her. Until this point, she'd not traded blades with anyone other than Fang. The wights were clumsy and unskilled, despite how fast they could be. But the Other was fluid, graceful, and did not strike without fully intending on killing. The first blow jarred her shoulder, her nerves twinging as she wondered if her sword would break beneath the crystal, but it held true. The Other noticed this, gaunt face drawing pensively, as her muscles quivered from holding the parry.

He shoved off, sending her a few feet back. Catching her balance, Tabitha raised her sword in the nick of time, struggling to keep up with the relentless hail of blows. Until she couldn't. Her slowing down had left an opening, the crystal blade cutting as true as any steel would, slicing into the meat of her left hand. She jerked back, her spasming hand tossing the sword behind her and into the snow, droplets of crimson splattering in the white to create a blooming of tiny bloody buds. He raised the sword, intending on spearing her through, but she had enough energy to roll out of the way, panting as she clutched her injured hand.

The sword had plunged into the earth where she had once been, her eyes widening as she scrambled back trying to find her feet and the only sword that would protect them against the Other. Rounding on her again, Tabitha still scrambled, unable to get back up as she pressed her palm to her chest and tried to stand. Again, he aimed for her and this time she knew she had nowhere to roll, lest she wanted to tuck right into a throng of wights.

Her eyes scrunched shut, but there was no pain, only the high pitched wailing of steel against crystal. When she peeked from out of her narrowed eyes, she saw that Benjen stood above her with Fate in his hands, holding back the swing that should have killed her. He forced the Other back, the harkening of Balerion above the trees reminding her that they needed to flee. Her hand was throbbing, blood staining her doublet as she managed to finally get up and whip her head towards the sky. Her eyes came back down and she saw Benjen continue to fight the Other, his own skill with the sword out matching her own as he was a more formidable match for the creature.

But it would not be an easy victory. The Valyrian steel bit against the Other's arm, hissing as it marred the brittle flesh. For that, he snaked past Benjen's defenses and caught him hard along his left side before he could turn the blade.

" No !" Tabitha knew that it had cut deep, even if the black fabric betrayed nothing.

He still stood, parrying the next and staggering back as he clutched at his flank. The Other was smug in his supposed victory, snatched only when Balerion bellowed again and nose dived between the branches, seeping from the night sky like a shadowed hellion. Talons outstretched, he caught the Other by its armor and flung it across the field and into a tree. It was not dead, but stunned, leaving them with a few fleeting seconds as Benjen crumpled to his knees, leaning upon the pommel of Fate as he panted.

Tabitha ran, the griffin encircling them and expressing his dismay loudly and with reproach, as if to challenge her. Why hadn't she called him sooner? "Get up, we need to go," Tabitha told Benjen, uncertain if Balerion could fly the entire distance back to the Roost with the both of them. She had to hope that he could. Her own injury seemed trivial in light of the Stark's, her hand flying to the gash to apply additional pressure.

Balerion knelt as she helped her charge onto his back, mounting behind him and keeping her arm pressed into his wound. No words needed to be spoken between them, onyx wings beating as he launched them off the forest floor and into the sky. He was dead weight, sagging slightly in front of her, threatening to slide right off. Balerion steadied himself, trying to keep as even as possible as Tabitha fought to keep him up.

"Stay awake. Stark!"

#game of thrones fanfiction #game of thrones fanfic #a song of ice and fire fanfic #asoiaf fanfiction #asoiaf fanfic #reincarnation insert #added lore #freeform #the ability to change the future but with a twist #romance is not the main theme #BAMF female OC #benjen stark #buirbaby writes #the wardens

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writingfromkitchenator · 4 years

Text

The Hunter, The Demon, And The Halfblood

Masterlist

Crowley x Original Female Character

Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four

Series Warnings: A/B/O series, some Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics, Alpha x Omega, obligatory smut warning here (as usual, no under 18′s please, specifics will be within chapter warnings as needed), violence, blood, fluff, angst, major character death, possession, swearing

Chapter 5

Words: 2,556

Crowley was glad to finally get Madelyn alone properly for a moment, knowing that none of them would come upstairs in a hurry. He was still wishing it hadn't come to this, but neither of them had a choice now.

It was clear Madelyn was relieved to be alone as well, holding tightly to him as he led her to the bedroom door.

“You are far from alright,” Crowley said softly, allowing her to rest against the wall so he can get a proper look at her. “Whatever am I going to do with you?”

Madelyn, despite the pain, grinned. “I can think of several things.”

Crowley returned it, stepping in close so he can rest his forehead against hers. “Don't let your brothers hear that, they're high strung enough about this as it is.”

“They'll get over it,” Madelyn closed her eyes, just allowing the two of them to be still. “Besides, once they find out the next part, they won't have a choice in the matter anyway.”

“They don't have a choice now,” Crowley growled, his hand hovering over the wound in her side. “Nor, do I believe, did they ever have a choice.”

Madelyn sighs, her arms looping around his neck. “I'm glad you're okay Crowley.”

Crowley relaxes and dips his head, placing a chaste kiss to her lips. “I'm glad you're okay too love.”

She nudges his nose slightly with hers. “You probably shouldn't stay up here too long, they'll start to wonder what happened.”

“Let them wonder,” Crowley's lips hovered over hers. “There's something I have to do first.”

Madelyn hums as he pressed his lips back to hers, pressing her a little firmly against the wall, one hand just over the wound on her stomach. The kiss is deep and slow, but it had more purpose than to just rile the other up.

A small trickle of blood ran down the corner of Madelyn’s lips, a small shudder going through her, her hands bunching in his jacket, trying to keep him close.

She had to break off, allowing herself to breath, both their lips stained red.

Crowley kissed her softly. “Does that feel better?”

“A little,” She breathes, her tongue sweeping over his bottom lip. “You know they aren't going to like this.”

His thumb cleans the blood that had trickled down and presses it against her lips, allowing her to take it into her mouth. “It doesn't have to come up.”

“They'll figure it out,” Madelyn said softly. “And they are upset enough as it is without trying to hide that too. Not to mention, if there is an…incident.”

Crowley thinks for a moment, clearly concerned, but sighs, pressing another soft kiss to her lips. “Go and get some rest love, I'm sure I can manage for a little while, as much as they probably don’t want me to.”

Madelyn smiles softly. “At least Casey won't come down, she loves curling up next to me still.”

“Something I hope she never grows out of.” Crowley opened the door quietly for her, Casey still fast asleep in the bed. “At least she seems to be resting easily.”

There was no hiding the worry in Madelyn's expression. “I hope we've done what's right for her Crowley, I really do.”

Crowley nods and gently leads her in. “Get some rest love.”

Madelyn blows him a kiss, letting Crowley smile as he closes the door.

She quietly gets herself comfortable on the bed, a soft smile coming to her as Casey stirs a little and instinctively curls into her side. Madelyn couldn't tell her brothers yet, but she wouldn't trade Casey in for anything in the world, no matter what had happened in between all that.

Downstairs, Crowley had taken up Madelyn’s seat, aware, but ignoring, the three slightly impatient and uncomfortable glares from the three other men in the room.

“You're lucky you're getting this much,” Crowley said lightly. “If I had it my way, details would be kept far more to a minimum.”

“Come on Crowley,” Dean growled. “Just get on with it.”

Crowley shoots Dean a grin. “Well, as I was saying, your sister was far more intelligent than you two, and actually managed to finally track me down in all that pre-purgatory mess. I wasn't too pleased about it, but I have to give credit where it’s due.”

Madelyn glared at Crowley, her arms folded across her chest. “A compliment? That's really what you're offering me?”

Crowley shrugs easily. “What would you prefer? A blade to your throat? A gun to your head? A compliment is far more entertaining.”

He wasn't a fool, he knew that she could reach for her gun quickly, and he also knew that there was a chance she could've learnt a new trick or two. Madelyn was incredibly, and infuriatingly, resourceful.

For what it was worth though, Madelyn didn't seem to be there to fight.

She rolled her eyes, doing her best to hide her irritation. “Right. Look, you're the one in charge downstairs now, right? So can you do anything about Sam's soul or not?”

“Why? Is he having performance issues?”

“Cut the shit Crowley,” Her eyes flashed dangerously at him. “I'm not in the mood. I know full well that you know what’s going on with those two.”

Crowley chuckled. “Always straight to it, makes a nice change. To answer you honestly, no, I can't do anything for little Moose’s soul. It's trapped in a little cage with a big bad Lucifer, and I have very little interest in that being opened again. I'm sure you can understand why.”

Madelyn observes him, her mind thinking. “And here I was thinking that the King of Hell would have access to all the perks.”

He knew her well enough by now to know that she was now just buying herself time, trying to get the information she needed. “Don’t underestimate me darling, it wouldn’t be a wise decision considering just how vulnerable you are here. Considering what you were going through last time as well…”

“Vulnerable?” She raises an eyebrow, ignoring the second comment. “And here I was thinking that we’d built up enough of a rapport with each other to discuss things civilly. Or did I actually make an error on that?”

Crowley chuckles, unable to help it. “Oh, you are far too interesting for that Madelyn, unlike those brothers of yours, but if you actually stay here much longer, then I will have to take action.”

Madelyn’s eyes narrow on him, her eyes doing a quick scan of the room. “What are you up to Crowley? You’re being far too cautious and calm for your own good. Especially around me.”

He smirks. “Would you care to handle this one Feathers?”

The sigh from Castiel made her jump, quickly taking several steps back from the angel, eyeing between the two of them cautiously.

“I warned you not to go looking,” Castiel said, a little firmly to her. “To stay with Sam and Dean. It would’ve been far safer.”

“Like I’m going to listen to you, I barely listen to them.” She said flatly. “And the fact that you’re working with him, really doesn’t improve my opinion of you.”

Castiel sighed. “This is an awkward enough situation as it is Crowley, why did you call me here? Sam and Dean will be on us quicker than anything if something happens to her.”

“Have you currently seen Sam?” Madelyn asked bitterly, cutting off Crowley. “He’s just a little bit of an arsehole, which is the only reason I even ended up here. Discovering you two are up to something, however, is far more interesting, as here I thought not long having one apocalypse would’ve been more than enough for both of you, or am I reading that wrong?”

Castiel flinched, but Crowley held her gaze, amused. “You’re acting like it’s not going to be beneficial.”

“And you’re acting like I’m going to trust the word of a demon and a renegade angel,” She replied. “Why don’t you both just cut the shit? Surely it must be tiring?”

Crowley smirks and his gaze moves to Castiel. “I’m sure we can keep her out of the way somewhere, at least enough so the boy wonders won’t worry?”

Castiel sighed. “It’s bad enough lying to them, let alone doing that as well.”

“What’s a few more lies?” Crowley shrugs. “Besides, it’s one less hunter to work around. A rather painful one at that.”

“Oh, I don’t think-” Madelyn collapses, a simple touch from Castiel rendering her unconscious.

Dean stares at Crowley. “So who the hell was texting us throughout all that?”

Crowley smirks. “Who do you think Dean? Feathers lacked the imagination and I have to admit, it was a lot of fun.”

Dean pursed his lips, looking less than impressed.

Sam was frowning. “So what, you just kept her aside somewhere? I can’t imagine Maddie standing for that, nor do I remember her ever mentioning it.”

There was no missing the slight unease in Crowley’s expression. “Well, there may have been a good reason for that, and before you all start saying something, it was unintentional on both our parts.”

They stared at him, Bobby sighing heavily. “Let me guess, you underestimated her.”

“A little,” He admitted. “I wasn’t quite expecting the determination she would have in trying to get herself out of the situation, no matter how comfortable I made it for her.”

“Comfortable?” Dean growled. “Like you would ever make something comfortable for one of us.”

“You need to understand,” Crowley said. “At that time, I was still intending to get her onside. One can hardly do that through torture, especially to a Winchester, not to mention Feathers was more than determined to keep her whole. So yes, we tried to make her comfortable, as much as I’m sure that seems strange to you.”

“But you both forgot that it was Mads,” Bobby shook his head. “The only time she is comfortable is out on the road hunting.”

“Yes, or at least making my life a living hell,” Crowley said. “Which is exactly what she did once she learnt the…routine of things. See, Castiel and I were hardly going to let anyone else near her, and as Castiel was usually strongly invested in keeping you three occupied, especially after Sam got his soul back, then it left me to keep things as civil and normal as possible.”

“Unfortunately,” He continued. “She quickly made other plans. Managed to construct herself a devils trap for me. I thought we could’ve avoided the whole situation by not giving her anything to write or hurt herself with, however, as usual with you Winchester’s, you are more resourceful than that. She crafted herself a small weapon, one that would go unnoticed, and slowly, I would imagine quiet painfully, constructed herself a devils trap out of her own blood.”

Sam sighed. “Of course she did, and judging by the way this is going, you walked straight into it?”

Crowley looks less than pleased. “It wasn’t my finest moment. I had gotten…complacent…with her. I had figured that I had her exactly where I wanted her.”

“Just another wonderful day in paradise,” Crowley said as he enters the room, barely even glancing at Madelyn, who was leaning against the headboard of a large, bare bed, glaring at him. “Don’t worry, I’m sure your brothers will notice you missing eventually. Although, their returning messages give zero indication of suspecting anything.”

“Funny,” She said thickly, not moving from the bed. “I wasn’t aware that I had to rely on them for rescue.”

He places some food and drink down at the table, casting her a smirk. “I never said you did darling, but you do seem to be taking this all rather well, all things considered.”

If he’d been paying proper attention, he would’ve seen the small makeshift blade she was spinning in her hand.

“Like I’ve had much of a choice,” She clipped. “But don’t worry, I promise I’m coming up with all sorts of plans for you.”

Crowley chuckles. “Now that I like to hear. Only good plans I hope?”

Her eyes flash. “You’ll just have to wait and find out.”

To Crowley, the interaction had been no different to normal, however, as he went to leave, still chuckling, he found himself suddenly frozen in his steps, unable to move any further.

He glances down and discovers that it hadn’t been the carpet he’d been walking on, that the sheets from the bed were covering what was clearly made beneath it.

Madelyn smirks. “Getting a little out of touch, are we?”

Crowley glares at her. “And just what is it you intend to do here, darling? You still can’t leave this room, and if you keep me locked up like this, then there’s going to be no more food and drink coming in.”

“Guess we’re at a bit of an impasse then,” She said lightly. “Because you’re not getting out of that trap unless I say so.”

“It’s on carpet-”

“And I’ve been here for a while now,” She said. “Don’t think I haven’t thought this through Crowley, you’ve given me more than enough for that. I would’ve thought you’d know by now, never let a woman, especially a hunter, think too long, you never know what she’s going to come up with.”

He grits his teeth. “So, what is your suggestion then?”

Madelyn shrugs. “Honestly, at the moment, this is more than amusing for me. The oh so powerful King of Hell, trapped and powerless, and the only one that can come and save him is off somewhere, more than likely, looking after my brothers.” She grins. “Who’s the damsel in distress now?”

Crowley wasn’t impressed, although he could applaud her tenacity. His eyes narrowed her for a moment, a sudden thought occurring to him, a slow grin coming to him, one she doesn’t notice, preoccupied with the blade in her hand. “Oh darling, I do believe that that is still you.”

“Oh?” She said, only half interested. “And what makes you come to that conclusion?”

“Your heat,” He said casually, making the knife stop in her hand as she glances at him. “Just how many tablets do you have left? No doubt you got a stern warning from the doctors about it after our last encounter.”

Madelyn scoffs and keeps spinning the knife, but her voice wasn’t as convincing as she wanted it to be. “Keep dreaming. I have myself well and truly within control.”

“We’ll see,” Crowley said lightly, deciding to play her game pulling up a chair and sitting down. “I seem to remember the last time I found you that you were almost wild with it. This time, I can promise, I won’t be so generous as to get you to a hospital.”

She makes an indignant noise as she gets up from the bed. “Hoping to put me in my place Crowley? Fat chance.”

He shrugs. “I won’t have to do anything. You’re going to beg me for it.”

Madelyn makes a disgusted noise and strides past him, heading to the bathroom. “Good luck winning this one. We’ll see who cracks first.”

Crowley smirks as the door closes behind her. “Oh, we’ll definitely see love, but it’s not going to go the way you want it too.”

#supernatural #the demon the hunter and the halfblood #crowley #crowley x original female character #long fic #fic series #crowley fridays #sister winchester #alpha x omega #a/b/o

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script-a-world · 4 years

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Got a question about building maps. There are always roads and streets that change, as well as buildings. How do I easily create maps of different times but easily seen on top of each other without it being confusing or all clogged up. The only way I think even,possible is handdrawing on trace paper so we can see underneath but it's still messy. How about when it's also important where sewer, telephone, electrical lines etc are located on a map? My maps are all muddled up.

Feral: So, for real, as I was reading your ask, I was like “oh, that’s easy: trace!” And then I got to the part where you said you tried trace, but it’s all muddled. And honestly? I’m still like “trace!” I work in the interior design industry, and I go for hand drafting and rendering as much as I possibly can.

I know some of my colleagues are going to have digital resources for you to try out (it’s all about layers!), but I’m going to walk you through how I would do this on trace (within the limits of what I would expect someone who doesn’t do this sort of thing professionally would have) in case that ends up being the best option for you.

Create a legend. Color coordination, thick lines, thin lines, dashed lines, dotted lines, squares, circles, triangles etc, etc. Have a sheet of paper to the side at all times while you’re working on your map to reference and add to as new symbols become needed. Think of the symbols you would normally see on a map - a train track is visually distinct from a street. Which exact symbols you’ll need to use will depend on where your map falls in the realistic to iconic representation spectrum.

Use graph paper for your base layer. Personally, I would use the base layer as the most modern version of the city you want to create, as this will probably be the largest map, and then the maps on trace will work backwards to the oldest version of the city, but do what makes sense in your mind. Orient your graph along the axes that make the most sense to you - most likely this will be cardinal directions with x as North-South and y as East-West. You will tape this down, and then tape the trace down over as needed. Once the graph paper is taped down, do not move it until you’ve finished all the maps! Unless you have a drafting table with a parallel bar or t-square (in which case you probably don’t need this lesson from me), moving the base layer could create differences in orientation of your lines on your tracing paper maps. If you don’t have drafting dots/strips/rolls available, masking tape will do; just give yourself a little more paper than you’ll need to fit the map on, so you can tear the tape off if necessary.

A bold border will be your friend. Outline a border on your graph paper, and every time you lay down a new sheet of trace, trace that border. This will ensure that you are lining up your maps every time.

Use the right drawing implements. If you want to use pencil so that you can erase, (first of all, erasing on trace paper is not a fun time, but second of all) you have to find a pencil that is hard enough to not easily smear (H at the softest) but is soft enough to not tear through the trace and to create a line dark enough to read. 2H is my standard, but most “regular” pencils are HB (“B” means soft and “H” means hard, so an HB is the middle between a hard and a soft), so the yellow pencil or .07 mechanical pencil that you have is 2 steps softer than that and will not be a great option. Colored pencils, which usually require more than an accidental brush of the hand to smudge, also work great if you want to color-code. If you want to use pen, don’t use a gel, which stays wet too long, or anything that feathers and/or bleeds - a technical pen will be best; lower cost Staedler or Sakura Micron work fine. You also must, must, must have a straight edge! Even though you’ll be drawing over a grid, if you want neat lines, you gotta have at least one straight edge. Personally, if I could only have one, I would use my 30/60 triangle, but that might be an unnecessary expense for you, so… pretty much anything that is flat, hard, and straight can be used as a straight edge. A ruler without notch marks right on the edge will work, but personally, if I’m making light enough lines over graph paper, I’m usually fine using a plain piece of paper. I’ve been told even a credit card can be an option, but I would actually stay away from that because of the rounded corners - a sharp right corner will work better for you.

Layers! So, clearly, each era would have it’s own map on trace, but I would also do things like the sewers, electrical lines, etc each on their own separate pieces of trace, possibly as overlays for each era depending on your needs.

Labels! Label your layers! It’s that simple. What the time period is and whether it’s depicting the streets or the sewers or what have you. Use the same format every time (e.g. “1950s - Sewers” or “1560s - Streets”). Put your label outside the bold border you’re drawing on each sheet, and put it in the same place on each sheet - I would do it in the lower right-hand corner; to me, it’s the most obvious place to look while thumbing through pages for a native English speaker/reader.

Scale vs. Proportion. Most maps that you’ll get at AAA or wherever, will be “to scale.” If you want your maps to be to scale, that means you have to measure as you draw, and you have to know exactly the size of each street, building, etc that you will be including on your map. This will take a lot of research and a lot of time being very deliberate. Your other option is to focus on approximate proportion. The largest buildings are the largest on the map, and the narrowest streets are the thinnest on the map, without having to worry about exact size. Which you choose to do will be dependent on how realistic (scale) vs. iconic (proportion) the representation on your map will be.

Remember not to create more work for yourself than you need. Always keep in mind why you are creating these maps. What purpose will they serve? This is going to be directly reflected in how detailed you need to make your maps. Most worldbuilding applications I can think of do not need every street of a city for its entire existence mapped out in as realistic a representation as possible, and whenever we get asks that are about this level of detail on this large a scale, I get concerned that the worldbuilder is never going to be satisfied enough with their world-building to write their story or run their tabletop RPG or whatever it is you’re worldbuilding for - unless of course, this is worldbuilding for the sake of worldbuilding, which… go for it!

Wootzel: Feral has a fantastic breakdown on hand-drafting, but I would like to suggest some digital alternatives in case that ends up being more the route you’d like to go. If you haven’t used a digital art or design program before, they can feel overwhelming or impossible, and some of them have very high price tags. Never fear! There are options that are free and pretty simple, and it’s just a matter of finding one that works for you.

If you’re just starting out, I’d recommend trying a program called Firealpaca. It’s free, has a nice set of tools but is still simple enough to pick up mostly by playing with it, and it has enough of a userbase for there to be easy-to-find tutorials around the internet. I actually don’t use it often as my favorite art program is a paid program, but I have had a lot of fun with it when I messed with it in the past.

So, why is digital a good option for your project? The simple answer: Layers. Just like Feral’s breakdown on making different layers using tracing paper, digital layers will allow you to separate the different elements of your map and easily show/hide them as needed, edit one aspect at a time, and generally move/remove/manipulate them in relation to each other. You can put your electrical lines on a different layer from the sewer lines and turn them on and off at will, color them differently, and generally differentiate them from each other. You can use layer groups/folders to make your maps of different times stay separate from each other. And you can use little visual tricks to make them stand out--for example, using crisp lines on a modern map and using a brush with some jitter on your older map.

Firealpaca also has some nice snap modes built in--basically like having a straightedge on the computer. Want to only draw on a grid for a while? Turn on the grid snapping, and suddenly the only directions you can draw are horizontal or vertical. There are similar, easily accessible modes for parallel lines, vanishing point, radial, etc. Almost all the digital art programs I have used also have a built in function to quickly make a straight line--hold shift while using a standard brush tool and click where you want the line to start and end.

One final note--if you end up putting in a lot of time and effort into digital drawing programs, even if you aren’t freehanding much, having a basic tablet can make things so much easier and quicker. Drawing tablets have gotten very cheap in recent years, and for a purpose like this, you would do just fine with one of the tiny, basic ones.

#pylons #mapmaking #maps #Anonymous

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fericita-s · 4 years

Text

Counselor Talent Show

Thank you @broadwaybaggins for creating this Mercy Street Summer Camp AU, letting me come join the fun and giving this an encouraging preview, and as always to @the-spastic-fantastic for beta-ing!

Henry peeked his head around the door, hands over his eyes. “Everyone decent?”

“It’s just me! And yes!”

Henry entered the small dressing room to find Emma, two pens stuck into a messy bun on the top of her head, surrounded by racks of clothes labeled by act for the Counselor Talent Show. He tried not to let his eyes linger, but he liked when she wore her hair like that. Her neck was beautiful. He cleared his throat.

“Just came to see if you needed any help. It’s raining again, so Byron has the boys parked in front of some VHS copy of The Parent Trap. I think the sheer novelty of the primitive technology has them captivated.” Henry bent down to pick up a stretchy piece of black fabric and then straightened, handing it to Emma. “Here. Looks like your…” he puzzled over it, “Headband?”

Emma took it grimacing. “Alice’s skirt actually. For playing Sandy. She and Frank lip sync the number from the end of Grease every year. Though this is the first year she sent me a YouTube tutorial on how to apply eyeliner, subject line ‘Practice on yourself so it’s perfect for me.’”

Henry laughed, relinquishing the smallest skirt he had ever seen with a flourish to Emma’s outstretched hand. He tried not to be obviously thrilled when their fingers touched. “I understand now why Byron was trying to convince Sam, Jed, and me that doing a Magic Mike routine wouldn’t have been inappropriate.”

Emma looked for the right hanger for the Sandy skirt and smiled at him over her shoulder. “You could have put those feather boas to use!”

He laughed again, picturing it. “Sounds fun, but it might not be the best choice for a divinity student to dance half-naked in a room full of minors.”

“I think you were wise to choose the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Though I don’t know how well you’ll be able to play-fight in these turtle shells. We should probably do a run-through before next week. And since you’re here, let me fit you for it now.” She ran her hand over the papier-mâché turtle shell, a project he’d seen her working on in the arts cabin with a roomful of second graders who had more fun painting themselves green than the shell-shaped lumps. He looked at her fingers – were they green from the paint?

Her eyes went to her hands and he internally kicked himself for being so obvious in staring. “They stained the undersides of my fingernails green so I painted the rest to match, just to hide the stubborn paint, but now I feel like people are giving me pitying glances for having a little too much camp spirit – Emma Green, Theater and Arts Director at Camp Green Wood, with the green nail polish. Maybe tomorrow I’ll dye my hair green too.”

“I’m sure no one thinks that. Maybe the four turtles should paint our nails too. Do you still have the polish?”

They exchanged a laugh and Henry examined the shells and the colorful masks pinned to each one. “I’m not sure Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are still cool. The boys seem to mostly talk about Super Smash Brothers and Minecraft.”

“Which one are you? Michelangelo? Donatello? Actually, that won’t help me. I just need to know if you’re orange, blue, red, or purple.”

“Orange. Nunchucks. I think that’s Michelangelo.”

Emma took the orange mask and the accompanying shell off of the hanger.

“Ready?”

“Yes ma’am.” Henry turned around and she gently lowered the shell over his head. The fit was like wearing a sandwich board and Henry wondered if he’d feel as ridiculous play fighting as a turtle as he had while advertising for his youth group’s car wash with a car-shaped sandwich board enticing passing motorists to pull into the Boston Market parking lot and let a bunch of teenagers clean their luxury vehicles. Emma pulled at the straps on the side and lifted his arms up and down.

“The fit’s good. Looks like you can move in it, definitely should be able to defeat…whoever it is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles defeat. Here, let me try the mask next.”

She stood behind him and he could feel her breath on his neck,then the orange mask covered his eyes and he adjusted it until the eye holes lined up.

“Does that work?” She turned him toward herself and he wished he could have felt her hands on his chest rather than having several layers of cardboard between them.

“Yes, I can see out of it.” He slid the mask down and undid the knot, passing it back to Emma to be hung up again. She was meticulous about organizing. You would have thought the costumes were of life-saving importance the way she logged and inventoried them. It was impressive. He loosened the side straps on the shell and lifted it over his head, handing it back to Emma.

“The fourth-grade boys will love it anyway. At least the part where we bring pizza into the audience. I hope. What are you performing in the show?”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Anne informed Mary and me that we’re doing the Single Ladies dance, and as soon as I had a written promise that we wouldn’t be wearing a version of her Union Jack bikini, I agreed. Mary had the brilliant idea that we do it in pajamas like we’re being silly at a sleepover, so that’s the plan.”

“That sounds great. I hear you were on the dance team – I’m sure you three will actually bring some talent to this talent show.”

“Maybe, but Sam and Charlotte are going to sing Unforgettable, and that will definitely be the best of the evening. I’m not sure that song has ever been done on a guitar before but if anyone can turn it acoustic and absolutely render us all speechless with their musicality, it’s them.”

Byron barged in just then, eyes frantic. “Henry! They’ve mutinied. They’re calling it a girls’ movie. We’ve got to find something else to do with them.”

Emma raised an eyebrow. “I think we have the 1990 version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on VHS too. Want me to look?”

Byron groaned. “Hasn’t anything at this camp been purchased this century?”

Henry put his arm around Byron and led him to the door. “We can do a rain hike. There’s no thunder, we’ll be fine.” He turned to look at Emma as they left, waving to her, and wishing that Anne’s desire for a bikini had won out over Mary’s plan for pajamas.

#mercy street #summer camp AU #emmry #emmry fluff and longing

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logansanderslove · 5 years

Text

Logan 3.0 (1/?)

CO-AUTHOR: @demented-dukey

Summary: Remus is an incorrigible flirt, and Logan can only bear the innuendo for so long until something has to give. Passions erupt, but there are more lasting repercussions than either could have predicted, including a significant transformation to Logan himself! How will these new changes affect the delicate balance of Thomas's mental state? When a new dark side threatens the lives of several of the other sides, will Logan and Remus's love be strong enough to save everyone, including Thomas?

Ships: INTRULOGICAL

Sanders Sides: Logan, Remus, Thomas, Roman, Virgil, Patton, Deceit

Fic type: Drama, Romantic, Action, Flirty

Trigger Warnings: No character deaths, but a lot of very close calls. Consensual knife play and bloodplay, and lots of bloody fighting and monster attacks. If you’re sensitive to unsympathetic characters, some parts flirt pretty close to that, but there’s also a lot of extenuating circumstances to explain the situation, and there’s a happy ending once you get through the angst and misunderstandings. Self-harm and references to such, and suicidal tendencies.

MASTERLIST

Chapter 1: Witty Banter

Logic and Bad Creativity had been disputing all day, and as late as it was now, it didn't seem like they were going to stop any time soon.

Logan crossed his arms as he leaned against the stairs in the common area, staring nonchalantly at the Dark Side before him. “You don’t get to me in the slightest, Remus. You never have. Object impermanence renders you pretty unintimidating.”

Remus smirked in his regular cocky way, suggestively stroking the ninja star that he held in his hands. “Is that so, Nerdy Wolverine?” His voice was smooth and unbothered.

Logan nodded. “Yes, it IS, you foul and infatuated goat.” He spat, but Remus just smiled.

“Ooh, thank you for the metaphorical regards! ‘Foul’ and ‘goat-like’ is what I’m going for!” he said, clapping his hands excitedly. “I thought it might be a fun change from the pickled poo logs.”

Logan frowned, rather frustrated that his attempted insult had backfired. “Ah. I see. Would it bother you then if I were to call you nice and harmless? Cherubic? How about spritely? Were I to call you caring and loving, especially towards your brother, would that bother you, Remus?” He remarked, but Remus just shrugged off the innuendo and giggled.

“I love how hard you try, it’s so cute!” he cooed. He then approached the logical side, letting his fingertips slide down Logan’s tie suggestively. “If you’re interested, I’d be happy to provide you a personal show of just how loving I can be?” He said with a wink and a dirty grin.

Logan forced a smile as he ignored Remus' suggestive actions. “Well, while that offer is certainly tempting, Remus, I am going to have to decline. I’m not exactly sure how I would put up with your lunacy, and I also doubt that the others would find this offer very… acceptable.” He stated, bringing a scoff from Remus.

“Those spoilsports would never have to know,” he winked at Logan. “I can be covert if you’d like.”

Logan gave him a dead-eyed stare. “Can you? Well, Remus, as I said before, all I would ever do is figuratively dress you down. That is all.”

Remus’ eyes lit up. “OH! Well, if that’s what you wanted, Logan,” he unzipped his pants. “You could’ve just said so!”

Logan shook his head, holding up his hand. “AH AH AH AH. I said, FIGURATIVELY. And that is why I say it. That. Is. Why. I. Say. It!” He clapped his hands with each word. He let out a deep breath. "I don't just spout random words without meaning!! I say things for a reason!"

Remus’s expression fell into a frown, and he slowly zipped his pants back up. “Poopy...” he muttered sadly.

Logan groaned. "Oh, stop pouting. It’s not a good look for a royal man. Even if that man is you.”

Remus perked up, mood swinging as wildly as a pendulum, “Aw, Logan, you notice my looks? I’m flattered!” He said joyously.

Logan’s ears flushed a bit, realizing his mistake all too late. “No, I don’t. I just don’t exactly see a grown man whining and pouting as a productive thing to be doing.” He restated.

“It can be very productive to make a grown man whine if you’re doing it right,” Remus smirked, leering at him.

Logan’s face immediately went red. “That is not what I meant and you KNOW IT.” He defended quickly.

Remus shrugged, hands held up defensively, a big smile across his face. “Perhaps. Much like your lascivious thoughts, I just love showing up where I’m not invited,” he punctuated his words with a quick shimmy.

Logan’s eyes shot open. “WHA-” His flustered mind tried to find the words. “‘Lascivious’?! What on Earth would ever lead you to say that I, the VOICE OF REASON, would ever have such provocative thoughts?!” He spluttered, then he took a long breath, managing to calm himself. “And in all honesty, I believe that we are used to you showing up where you’re not invited by now, Remus. In fact, you just showing up is exactly that, because no one ever wants to invite you.” He snarked.

Remus tilted his head. “Deny it all you want, Neil deGrASS Tyson. You can’t block out all the juicy stuff.” He cooed with a little dance of sexual innuendo.

Logan put a hand to his face, groaning. “Please do not say ‘juicy’ in that context ever again.”

Remus opened his mouth, held up his finger, then clicked his tongue. “...Juicy butthole?” He questioned, to which Logan just froze, then let out an exasperated breath.

“REMUS. THAT IS WORSE.”

Remus frowned. “Did...did I say something wrong? Are you...are you gonna punish me, Teach?” He wondered, just bringing another sigh from Logan.

“Remus, why do you insist on trying to bother me?”

Remus ran his fingers over his mustache. “It’s no bother, I assure you! I’m only trying to help, you seem so tense, my dear disciplinarian.”

Logan adjusted his glasses with a breath. “I am told that I always seem that way. Whilst, in fact, I am very relaxed.”

Remus flicked his eyebrows up. "Like the eye of a storm? You should let the tempest rage sometimes…” He slunk closer. “And I don’t mind getting a little wet.”

Logan rolled his eyes. “You, sir, are despicable.”

Remus stuck his tongue out. “I like to call myself de-lickable.”

Logan pinched the bridge of his nose. “NO.” He said sternly.

Remus put a finger to his chin in a suggestive manner. “Ooh, I love it when you raise your voice. Please, sir, what are your demands?” He drawled out.

Logan’s face sported the most unamused expression. “That you stop flirting with me. Don’t assume that I’m not aware of what you’re trying to do.”

Remus licked his lips. “Skip the appetizer and jump straight into the main course? As you wish!” He tore off his shirt as easily as lifting a feather. Logan’s eyes went wide and he waved his hands frantically.

“NO. NO, NO, NO. PUT YOUR SHIRT BACK ON RIGHT NOW, REMUS, OR I WILL SUMMON DECEIT TO REIGN YOU IN.” He ordered.

“Kinky! If you wanted a threesome, count me in! I LOVE being given two D’s at once!” Remus winked at him again, a seemingly regular occurrence. “My safe word is ‘apples’.” He then laughed. “I’m just kidding! I don’t have a safe word!”

Logan grabbed at his hair with an aggravated groan. “NO! REMUS, STOP! STOP THIS INCESSANT MADNESS!” He exclaimed desperately, to which Remus drew back a bit.

“Careful, Teach. Your calm is wearing a bit thin. I’d be happy to ruffle more than your feathers if you know what I mean…” He flirted.

The intellectual let out a deep breath. “I-” He couldn’t even make a sound other than angry flustered noises. “Please stop…” He finally got out, spinning away as he shook his head.

Remus hesitated, then he shrugged. “I changed my mind. I’m unpredictable like that, I don’t think you could handle all this,” he said as he shimmied. He then pulled his shirt back over his head gracefully. “Free show’s over. Wasted on you, anyways. You’re obviously too much of a brainiac to appreciate more physical pleasures.”

Logan rubbed his face with his hands. “Remus, please…” His voice was exasperated.

Remus’ voice became skeptical. “Had a change of heart? Doesn’t seem like that’s in your purview.”

Logan shook his head with a sigh. “No, Remus, that is not what I am trying to say.” He whirled around, his tolerance almost worn through. “Why are you so fascinated with ME? Why not go bother your brother or something? Why are you flirting with me?” He questioned, a tired tone to his voice.

Remus was quiet for a moment, eyeing Logan slowly. “You don’t give yourself enough credit. You’re a smart boy, Logan. Brilliant, even. Is it any wonder that I can’t look away from your brilliance?” A kind smile was offered. “You shine so brightly. You can hardly blame a moth for being attracted to the flame.”

Logan blinked in surprise, trying to process what he had just heard. “Wh-...You truly think of me so highly? I…” He didn’t know what to say.

Remus shrugged. “The others make it quite clear that they consider me below you all. How else could a lowly creature such as myself look upon you, but as if atop a pedestal?” He wondered.

Logan was still struggling to process this, but when he heard Remus’ statement, he suddenly realized something. “Remus, I… I have never considered you lower than anyone. I know that we all play our own parts, and no one is below anyone else.” He bit his lip. “As much as I sometimes despise your thinking, you are still an imperative part of our existence. You are Roman’s other half. If you were neglected, Roman would suffer. I have always valued your input, as odd as it can be. It is creativity in your own, unique way.”

He glanced to the side. “You… you shouldn’t feel like you have to annoy us all the time just to get noticed and to make you feel like a part of the group. I…I’ll always…” Logan hesitated, thinking on his words.

“Remus, I’ll always acknowledge you. As I said before, you don’t really affect me as much as the others. Granted, you can still irritate me, but I won’t ignore you. I just...want you to know that.” He said softly, finally raising his head.

Remus blinked a few times, twitching a bit, then he rubbed the back of his head, brushing his sleeves down as he tried to play it off that he wasn’t completely stunned by the words of the Logical side. “No need to pity me, Professor Plum-pbottom. I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than below you, where you can really value my input.” He said, a smirk crossing his face.

Logan sighed in slight disappointment. “Remus, it was starting to become a nice moment.” He said with a frown.

Remus sent him a brittle grin. “Yeah, well. My brother’s the nice one, not me. That should be obvious enough for you to see it, even without those glasses.” He spat, a bit of pain lingering.

Logan nodded, closing his eyes. “Apologies. I just thought for a moment that you had started to act...well...decent.” He admitted.

Remus laughed, the sound a bit too high-pitched to be casual. “Bite your tongue! I’m as indecent as they come!”

Logan raised an eyebrow, rubbing his chin with his hand as a small smirk appeared across his face. “Am I making you nervous, Remus?” He asked.

Remus seemed to tense up. “Nervous? Me?” He ran his hand through his hair with a flourish, bringing an even higher eyebrow from Logan. “Surely, you jest.”

Logan flicked his eyebrows up. “Well, the reason I asked is due to the fact that your entire demeanor just changed. You are now exhibiting tics that one will make when feeling a bit nervous, including unnecessary fiddling, forcefully laughing or laughing nervously, your eyes seem to have a spark of uncertainty to them, and I can hear the quake in your voice, however almost incoherent it may be.” He flicked his hand at Remus’ wide eyes. “I am LOGIC, Remus. Don’t think that I don’t notice these things.”

Remus blinked his wide eyes, then took a very small unconscious step back. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but hardly any noise came out. “I…”

Logan shook his head. “Remus, it’s okay,” his voice was soft and comforting. “Why are you nervous?”

The Duke bit his lip and turned his gaze away from Logan, who was oddly curious at the Dark Side’s behavior. “Remus? Are you okay?”

Remus finally mustered the will to form words, fiddling with the cuff of his sleeve as he frowned. “M’not worth it. You’re...you’re better than me, Lo. I’m not fit to lick your shoes.” He offered a half-hearted dirty grin. “I’d still lick ‘em, though.”

He took a shaky breath. “But, you deserve…” He swallowed hard. “You deserve better. And I…” He tore his eyes away, his voice breaking. “I can’t be that for you. Any goodness I had? That all went to Roman. I’m just…”

A hard and shaky breath escaped his lips. “I’m just what’s left behind.”

Logan’s eyes had gone wide, then he reached out to put his hand on the other’s arm. “Remus…”

The Duke flinched from the touch as Logan held his arm. “Listen to me. That is no way to think. Please. Just...give yourself some credit. I can see what good there is in you that you may not even know you have. But I know it’s there.” He pressed his finger to the center of Remus’ chest, poking him. “It’s right there.”

Remus sighed, then shook his head. “For somebody so good at calling out falsehoods, you seem awfully fond of telling them to yourself.” He put a hand to his chest, shaking his head again. “There’s nothing here, Lo. Nothing but filth and trash, the impure dregs of Creativity that not even Thomas could accept.” He closed his eyes. “You said it yourself, ‘no one ever wants to invite you’. There’s nothing in me that any of you want around, and if Thomas could get rid of me without hurting Roman, I would have been destroyed long ago. As it was, I was exiled to the darkest parts of Thomas’ subconscious… not exactly something you would do to someone who was ‘good’, now would you?” He bit his lip hard. “It’s only logical, after all. If you’re thrown away, you must be trash.” He muttered under his breath.

Logan stood frozen to the spot, his heart stopped after realizing what he’d done. “Remus, I’m so sorry… What I said before… you didn’t deserve that. You don’t deserve any of this… any of how we’ve treated you.” He squeezed Remus’ arm. “We-... I am so sorry.” He then turned his head aside, hanging low. “This is probably my fault…”

Remus scrubbed his eyes roughly. “But whatever, right? It doesn't matter. I don't care. I'm fine. Better than fine, actually. With all those goody-good traits sent to Roman, I'm fucking free. I can do whatever the hell I want to, and you losers can't stop me anymore.” His voice cracked as much as he tried to stop it.

A strike of pain crossed Logan’s face. “R-Remus, I never meant to hurt you…” He took Remus’ hand in his own. “I never meant for you to feel this way.” Logan sighed. “I know you may think you’re ‘free’ now, but isn’t it better to be tied to friends than be free and lonely?” Asked the scholar.

Remus took a deep breath, struggling with the urge to flinch, to rip his hand away. “How…” He closed his eyes. “How the hell would I know, Logan? I don’t…” He swallowed hard before speaking again. “I don’t remember what it was like ...before. Before me. And me? I’ve never had friends. So...how would I know the difference?”

Logan blinked, then he lifted his eyebrow. “What about Deceit? I thought he was your friend?” He then shook his head “But that’s not what I’m trying to say. Remus, I care about you.” His voice cracked as he squeezed Remus’ hand tighter, not letting him slip away. “I just don’t want you to be alone.”

Remus scoffed. “Deceit's a lot of things. A confidant. A co-conspirator. A companion. But he's... not a friend.” He squeezed Logan’s hand back, his knuckles turning white. “Please... please don't, Lo. I... I can't. I can't hope. It hurts too much. I've lost so much already, I'm not strong enough to lose anything else.”

Logan gritted his teeth then threw himself onto Remus with a tight embrace, hugging him close. “YOU'RE NOT LOSING ANYTHING, REMUS. YOU'RE GAINING. I PROMISE.” He let out a small breath. “I'll always be here for you…”

Remus shuddered, then crumpled bonelessly into the embrace, clinging to Logan like an octopus. He buried his face in Logan's shoulder, shaking as he cried. “You can't... you can't promise that. The Others... they wouldn't approve. You said.”

Logan leaned his head atop Remus', rubbing his back comfortingly. “I don't give a damn what the others think anymore. If they don't approve, then I'll make them understand.” He held Remus tighter. “You won't be alone. I won't let you be alone. I do promise you that.”

Remus continued to cry, pressing his face into the crook of Logan’s neck. “But Thomas…” He hiccupped from his sobs. “Even if the Others don't... if Thomas... it won't work. It can't work.”

Logan sighed. “Yes, it can. I'm positive it can. We just all need to work together to figure this all out.” He comforted Remus, hushing him softly. “Look, Remus. When I tell you that I will do anything to make you feel happy, I am not leading you falsely. I...I just want...to see you...smiling.” A small grin crept onto his face. “I love your smile…”

Remus sniffled, looking up. “If you're lying... I'll slit my own throat.” He whispered. He thought about it for a moment, the kiss of metal as it slides across his throat, the blood achingly warm as it spills out, and smiled at the mental image, grin sharp as a blade. “It may not kill me for long, but I'll do it.” He gently touched his own throat, where faint scars were visible. “I've done it before, after all…”

Logan’s eyes went wide. “What?! Why would you ever do such a thing, Remus?” He cried out, concerned. “And why do you seem so content about doing it?!”

Remus blinked as his smile faded. “Why? I... I don't… It's not... it's just object impermanence. Like you said. It doesn't matter what I do. It all goes away eventually.” He said simply.

Logan shook his head. “But...why would you do it?”

Remus shrugged with a sigh. “I just... I just wanted to see. The first time. I thought... maybe it would be better. If I could take myself out of the equation. But, it didn't work, not for long. I came back.” He rubbed the back of his head. “After that... well. you're the scientist. You should know. Any hypothesis demands repeated trials to confirm that the data is sound. And I figured... why not keep trying? Maybe eventually it'd stick. Whatever oblivion is like, it couldn't be worse than this.”

Logan’s eyes widened. “Couldn't be worse than this?! Remus, I CARE ABOUT YOU!! Ple-” His voice cracked. “Please! Why can't you see that?”

Remus flinched. “...That's what I've been trying to tell you. This is why it won't work. I'm wrong. I'm not the kind of broken that you can fix. You can't mend a shattered mirror just by caring about it, and you're only going to cut yourself trying. The things that I do, the things that I like... they're illogical. There's no rhyme or reason to what I do, I just do.” He sighed. “And what I do is wreak havoc. You should stay away from me, for your own good.

Logan stood his ground, his eyes serious. “NO.”

“Logan, please…”

Logan’s voice was strong, meeting Remus' eyes as tears formed in his own. “No, Remus. I AM NOT STAYING AWAY FROM YOU. I DON'T CARE IF YOU THINK YOU CAN’T BE MENDED. I KNOW YOU CAN BE!!!” His shoulders began to shake as he leaned his head on Remus'. “Please… I love you…”

Remus' eyes went wide. "But...all that you've been saying...you kept telling me not to flirt with you-"

"Because I thought it was too good to be true!" Logan exclaimed, shaking his head. "I...I thought I wouldn't ever be lucky enough to have someone actually flirt with me. But you did. And I just didn't know what to do." He admitted, and the Duke sighed with understanding.

Remus held Logan, cradling him, stroking his hair. Gently, he murmured, “I’m not a project or one of your experiments. You might…” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “You might love me now, but it’s better to nip this in the bud. You have such high expectations of me, and I'm just going to disappoint you. You'll get frustrated, and your feelings will sour... it's better this way. Better to stop while we still can, to shut it down before the Others find out.”

Logan finally let his emotions fully break down the wall he had put up. Pushing his face into Remus' neck, tears and sobs wracked his body. “N-No...I know y-you're not an experiment, R-Remus, b-but I just w-want to have you with me... d-damn the others... I love you!”

He grasped the cloth of Remus' shirt. “Why do you think I've always stood up for you? Or been the one to acknowledge what you're saying as NOT hurtful! I know it may seem like I haven't been fond of you in the past, but I LOVE YOU, Remus! Nothing will change that!”

He tilted his head up, his eyes wide behind his smudged glasses, and his expression made him seem like a wounded puppy or a lost child. “Remus, please…” He sniffed back his tears, feeling more vulnerable than ever in his life. "What I said was true! I'd never imagined that I'd be blessed to find someone I liked, and then of all the things that could happen, I get flirted on by the one man I'm completely smitten with!!! How am I supposed to react to that? All I'm able to do is just blurt out 'I love you' again and again because that is the only thought my mind is processing right now. That I love you."

Remus opened his mouth, his lip quivering. “I…” His voice began to break. “I love you too, Lo.” He hugged him hard, holding him tight against the shaking. “I love you so damn much. I've loved you as long as I can remember.” He rubbed the back of Logan’s head gently. “I've always been yours.” He closed his eyes. “That's why... that's why I kept teasing you, kept taunting you. I was desperate for any scrap of attention you'd toss my way.”

Logan chuckled softly. “You did all that, and all this time I thought it was just false flirting. I thought it was wishful thinking…” He looked up at Remus, a smile growing on his face. “Will you...will you stay? With me? We could be together.” A hint of hope crossed his voice as he leaned his head on Remus' shoulder. “We could be together…” The whispered echo resonated between the two.

Remus was weak, and his thoughts were running a marathon. He was weak, and he was selfish, and he was impulsive, and he couldn't keep resisting that when he was holding everything he'd ever wanted in his arms. He still thought it was going to end badly, but for the first time, he hoped that maybe, just maybe, he was wrong. He had nothing left to lose, and everything to win. And besides, even if it did end badly, at least he'd have it while it lasted. “Okay. Yeah, Lo, I'll stay. I'll stay with you as long as you'll have me, and they'll have to break every one of my fingers to tear me away.”

Logan's smile could have blinded anyone else with its brightness, so caring and happy. Petting Remus' hair, he met his eyes with happy tears. “I'll be here for you the whole way, and they'd have to pry me away with the strongest bar to take me away from you.” His smile grew. “I love you.”

Hooking his arms around Remus' neck, he pulled him close, smiling as he finally had everything he wanted. The man who he had secretly loved for years was in his arms, in a kiss, and there was nothing that could possibly make Logan happier.

Offhandedly, Remus wondered if he was dead, if one of his suicide attempts had finally worked - because surely this was heaven. Logan was warm in his arms, his mouth soft and sweet, and Remus drank in Logan's affection like a sponge, gorging himself on it. “You're such a dork,” he murmured between kisses, “and I love you so fucking much.”

Logan smirked as he ran his fingers through Remus' hair as their lips connected again and again. “I think this officially makes us boyfriends, Rem.” He closed his eyes as his mouth was filled with a taste that was uniquely Remus, loving the longed-for affection. “I love you too, my own mischievous troublemaker. I wouldn’t ask for you any other way.”

#sanders sides #logan sanders #remus sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #deceit sanders #thomas sanders #intrulogical #blood #gay #cursing #pain #angst #love

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schalaasha · 5 years

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Favourite Games of 2019

I don’t like making ranked lists anymore. So here’s a bunch of games old and new I played in 2019 because I was busy catching up due to not playing FFXIV as much as in previous years.

Ciconia When They Cry Phase 1: For You, The Replaceable Ones

I think going in, and even starting to play it, I felt like maybe the game would abandon the WTC mystery game conventions. It ended up not doing that, because the game leaves you with far more questions than answers at the end. The A3W World (“after World War III”) is still trying to deal with political issues and social issues that existed prior to World War III. A global stalemate exists due to the military implementation of the Gauntlet weapon. Eventually things happen where different countries need to deal with a shortage of resources, territorial conflicts, etc which sets off a chain reaction to World War IV. However, the children who grew up in the A3W era, settled into new ideologies and views of how society currently works are at odds with what the older generation wants and requires of them. Along the way, they need to deal with other groups and conspiracies in order to maintain the Walls of Peace.

So in essence, R07 still crafts a mystery for readers to figure out, but it isn’t a murder mystery. It’s an international conspiracy mystery and I am more than okay with that. I think this chapter required a lot of worldbuilding to set that kind of story up and coming out of Phase 1, I understood why the first chapter wasn’t exactly like Umineko’s. I thought that it was handled well, despite some of the purple prose (but if you’ve played a R07 game before, you’re likely used to it). I also thought he really tried to introduce and incorporate themes including gender, generational differences, societal tiers, geopolitics disguised as sports events (possibly mirroring the 2020 Olympics in Japan), etc. as well as he could throughout the story through the game’s cast. Even if the game meanders a bit (and it definitely feels that way towards the start), when it actually starts to roll, I felt compelled to keep reading.

And truly, the game has an incredibly large cast of characters. The TIPS section handles introductions well, and while some cast members don’t have as much time in the spotlight as others, I can see them getting their time eventually in subsequent chapters. Clearly Phase 1 exists to focus more on the children from the Arctic Ocean Union (the “AOU”) as evidenced by the additional stories unlocked at the end of the game so hopefully other chapters have the same amount of character backstory for the other factions. I also genuinely enjoyed that the big international cast of characters allowed for many different types of designs with characters with different types of hairstyles and hair texture or characters wearing hijabs and still managed to make them retain adorableness or a sense of style. I do not recall seeing it as often in Japanese media and I’m very happy to see it here.

I think Ciconia Phase 1 is a very good start to this subseries’ planned four episodes and I hope to see more sociopolitical commentary. It feels as though R07 looked at everything happening in Japan and social media/how news is consumed and decided to write a four-part SFF series about it. I’m eagerly looking forward to the next chapter.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

I backed Bloodstained when it got put on Kickstarter a few years ago. It was shipped to me at… possibly the worst time since Shadowbringers was coming out very shortly after. My fiancé and I played ours for a short bit, felt very positive about the game, then dropped it to play Shadowbringers. We didn’t return to it until maybe September/October? Both of us ended up getting our Platinum Trophies for it so we both played through everything the game had to offer.

Bloodstained is a good experience, but not without its issues. I played on PS4 and I’ve had a few outright crashes or some glitching into walls early enough that I couldn’t come out of them again due to not having the required skill to try to get out of it. I also felt like the game meandered or had a bit of padding in its earlier stages). Later on, you realise you have to put in the farming work to have a better and faster time not unlike its Igavania counterparts, but I did feel like the drop rates prior to actually working towards higher luck stats/drop shards were low enough almost to the point of unfair or deliberately wasting my time. I also felt as though there were too many weapon types; with adequate shard use and shard grinding eventually you can settle into one weapon type that suits your playstyle or eventually use the gun for everything when you get the special hat quest reward).

However, I’m speaking about this game as someone who platinumed it which requires a lot of farming and synthesis. As a player going through the main campaign, I think the maps are adequate. The backgrounds are very lovingly crafted, and the music is absolutely one of the best of the year. Boss design is also fun and rewarding, requiring the player to learn how all the different weapon types work, adequate backstepping and closing in, and boss patterns. If you suck, the game will show you that you suck very quickly and deliberately. Essentially towards the end, I felt as though Bloodstained tried very hard to cater to fans of the metroidvania style of game, and the classicvania style of game. I personally don’t think it completely succeeded but for a first time experience of trying to combine the two into one, it did its job with preparation for another game.

I also feel like some criticism was lobbed towards the game’s narrative for being told in library/book entries, and while I understand that (I actually couldn’t open all of the books for fear of my game crashing), I don’t think elaborate cutscenes and continuous dialogue would work well with this game’s flow. Bloodstained prioritizes gameplay elements and player exploration over anything else, and to be honest, I’d rather it happen that way than with long elaborate cutscenes. I also felt as though I got more out of the game because I’d played the 8-bit prequel as well.

Overall, Bloodstained is a passable experience. I’m glad I played it, and I’m glad I put the work in to try to make the game a better experience. I got what I wanted out of the game for as much as I backed it and I hope they try again with a similar formula because this is a very good first step.

The Touryst

Sometimes when I see a game with voxel graphics, I feel pretty compelled to pick it up because it looks so darn lovingly rendered and it usually ends up being fun. The Touryst does a good job with its graphical style and visiting new islands is a complete delight because of it. It looks like a game with style, and performs super-well on the Switch. It’s also one of the freshest games I’ve played in a while.

Basically you’re playing a blocky dude with a moustache who just wants to have a good time but when he gets to TOWA Monument, he’s told he has to find monument cores to unlock the world’s secrets. And then you can do whatever you want. The different islands have their own little personalities: there’s an island called Fijy which is volcanic, there’s Ybiza with a bunch of dudes chilling on the beach and passed out on their chairs, there’s Santoryn which is just Greece, and a few other places that are essentially recreations of real-world places.

As you explore, there’s a lot of stuff to do. A variety of things to do. There are puzzles and mechanics that don’t necessarily overstay their welcome, you can play footy, you can play spelunker, you can take helicopter rides, you can take pictures, get stuff for a museum, surf, play rhythm games…. It’s your vacation, do what you want. It’s a little like Vegas. Unlike Vegas, you can use your ever-increasing money and diamonds to get new moves for your moustached character to reach new objects.

As a little game where you can do whatever you want little by little, and makes for a smooth experience, I’m glad I picked up the Touryst after asking another person what they thought of it. It has great puzzles, lots of stuff to do and explore and see, and ton of minigames for whatever mood you feel like you’re in. The game is fairly short, but I’m very glad the holiday doesn’t overstay its welcome.

A Short Hike

A Short Hike places you in the shoes of a bird who is utterly determined to walk to the top of Hawk Peak to get signal for her phone. I totally understand; sometimes you’ve gotta do what you gotta do.

But the game allows you to undertake that journey however you want to. You can go right away and finish up and get that darn signal. Or you can take your time and we’ll build that bridge when we get there. There are different types of terrains to explore if you opt to take the scenic route… and it’s rewarding to do so. You can find treasure, you can water a flower, you can talk to the Animal Crossing-esque characters to do some sidequests, you can do whatever you want.

I’m sorry to say that when the game introduced fishing, I spent a lot of my time doing that. Fishing ruins me. The completionist in me wanted to fish. But the whole thing is that you don’t have to do any of this. If you want to finish the game, you can absolutely positively focus on that and the game doesn’t pressure you for it.

And that’s one of the things I like about it. It’s just whatever about the whole ordeal. I don’t feel like I’m completely and utterly missing out if I don’t decide to do something. Even the task of getting Golden Feathers to progress is fine since you only need eight for it, and the game easily gives you enough rewards to get four or five before sidequests or exploration is factored in.

Sometimes you just need to take a walk and kind of think of nothing just to clear your head. And A Short Hike accomplishes that very well.

Worldend Syndrome

In my effort to try to find other games to play in 2019 because I’d fallen a little out of love with FFXIV, I realised that taking baby steps with visual novels and bite-sized games would be the best idea to try to get back into traditional games (particularly since I was, and am, still questioning whether I like games as a hobby or not). On a whim, I decided to download a boatload of visual novel demos one night and tried a bunch of them out. Worldend Syndrome’s demo didn’t exactly grab me until perhaps halfway through the demo when I a) realised that this demo was long af, and b) nothing appeared what it had seemed as I kept going through it and the characters were enjoyable.

So I decided to get the game and dragged my fiancé along for the ride. It’s one of those standard decision-making/pick which girl you want and go down her route VNs but it didn’t really feel skeezy or ecchi other than one particular point in each girl’s story where you get confessed to. You go through the VN as an unnamed protagonist who is visiting his cousin over the summer, and you and your friends get dragged into a school club whose focus revolves around folklore. The town the protagonist finds himself in is haunted by the Yomibito, spirits of the undead who look exactly like regular people but are eventually driven mad enough to kill.

One of the things that drew me to this visual novel was its assortment of animated backgrounds. They colourful and gorgeous. Every CG looks nice and coloured well, and the backgrounds for each area you visit are so beautiful and makes every single location easy to settle into. The cast is also surprisingly decent, where I expected to hate a few people but I ended up being okay with them because they were written well and weren’t as tropey as I had expected. I was also very pleased that the character that you were roleplaying as wasn’t skeezy when put into situations where he could have been, and that he treated the girls very well (though I won’t deny that there are some spots where behaviour was questionable but it doesn’t happen as often). Because the characters were written adequately enough, the game’s true ending route comes together very well and very naturally to a point where I could seriously believe that every character got along with one another to make sure the emotional impact of the mystery was satisfying.

In order to finish Worldend Syndrome, you have to do each route. A few characters’ routes don’t get unlocked until halfway through the game or even until the very end. The game also remembers everything you’ve done when it autosaves the system data on the world map, so if you need to reload a save to figure out someone’s schedule or if you mess up, it’s relatively easy to come back to something you’ve missed. I’ve played a lot of multiple route VNs before and Worldend Syndrome is easily one of the better VNs that allows the player to skip through to something they’ve missed or skip through previously-viewed text for another route.

As it is, Worldend Syndrome doesn’t really try to do anything spectacular, nor does it try to stand out like other visual novels of 2019 have (ie: Ciconia, presumably AI but I only tried the demo and I hated parts of the script, sorry). It does its job and tells its story which has a very good payoff in the end.

Judgement

I bought my fiancé Judgement earlier this year, as I had retired from playing Ryu ga Gotoku after Dead Souls/Ishin, and he was still playing the series religiously. I watched him play through part of it and I felt compelled to get my own copy because the combat looked nice, and the characters were compelling enough that I felt comfortable picking it up.

Judgement follows former lawyer Takayuki Yagami who is now a detective. His tale is one of redemption and conspiracies, reminiscent of some Phoenix Wright games (which this game gives clever nods to when the protagonist is in the courtroom). Yagami is more serious and down-to-earth than Kiryu is so the tone of the game feels quite different than other RGG games (or at least the ones I’ve played).

It still feels like a regular RGG game where you’re still wandering through Kamurocho, you’re still getting into fights with randos and Yakuza dudes, you date girls, you go to buy food, you play minigames, etc. But it isn’t as big as a standard RGG game; because you stay only in the one area, the cast is smaller, you get a job board to get your sidequests from, and the story itself is fairly short and sweet. I actually prefer that as a lapsed RGG player since it’s easier to get back into the games this way.

Judgement, however, disappointed me just a little in how little you spend in the courtroom. You’re given opportunities to present evidence, do some suspect tailing, use your smartphone to catch a cheating husband, or use a drone to search for evidence. I felt like when you had to use the drone to search for evidence, it ruined the pacing a little. The tailing missions are also reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed, and no that isn’t a good thing! Due to this, I felt like Judgement was not necessarily a great detective game but it did a decent job of trying to mold the RGG experience to a different main character.

Yagami can… fight… for some reason so he can beat up whatever randos come up to him on the streets. He’s actually more acrobatic than I remember Kiryu being in previous RGG games. He can kick off objects, he’s hard to back into a corner, he can do wall-flips, etc. It’s also much easier to earn XP where it’s all in one bar so you can do whatever you want to fill it up like play darts and just put stuff into his lockpicking. As a lapsed fan, the streamlining feels okay. The streamlining for combat also feels good because if you fights go on too long, the popo can come for you and you’d get fined, so emphasis is on finishing fights cleanly and quickly.

Overall, as a lapsed RGG fan, the way Judgement looks and feels and wraps up its twists and turns was really exciting for me. It may not have as many things to do as other RGG games, but honestly I think being a leaner experience was better and thus didn’t make the game overstay its welcome. I also am eagerly awaiting RGG7 since I enjoyed the demo a lot and I think the new protagonist can carry the series the way Yagami carried Judgement.

Cadence of Hyrule

Sometimes, after my fiancé and I bought our Switch, I’d wake up, go brush my teeth, and return to bed just to see my fiancé awake and playing Cadence of Hyrule. I was perplexed as it’s been ages since he’d willingly played a Zelda game, and his hands are super-huge for the joycons so he doesn’t like using them much.

You can easily say that Cadence of Hyrule is just a Crypt of the Necrodancer reskin with Zelda stuff all over it, but feels pretty clever in that it uses stuff from roguelikes and a rhythm game and makes the A Link to the Past world feel incredibly fresh. Bosses, especially, feel very fresh. Enemies move according to the rhythm and have a unique pattern that’s easily memorized so you can fall into the rhythm and take advantage of. If you’ve played Necrodancer, you’ll probably feel at home in this aspect, especially since the maps are also randomised (which leads different playthroughs feeling fresh).

The Zelda feels comes from recreating tunes from older Zelda games in puzzles, the magnificent sprite art, the great Zelda remixes, a simple-enough story, and a standard set of things to find in each procedurally generated dungeon. You also find a variety of traditional items like the bow, the bombs, boomerang… and a spear? It’s a nice blend of Zelda and Necrodancer.

The caveat is that it takes a little getting used to, since you’re not exactly used to not being able to freely move in a Zelda game. But when you do get used to it, it feels good. Everything is pretty expendable and if you die, you don’t feel like you necessarily lose a lot since you can accrue it all easily enough again. It’s unpredictable and that random roguelike nature is something that makes the Zelda experience feel fresh.

Spirit Hunter: Death Mark

My fiancé and I were trying to find spooky games to play for Halloween that wouldn’t make me squeamish because despite my profession dealing with analysis of body parts and human body fluids, I can’t see that kind of stuff on TV or in games in a realistic sense. It grosses me out. At least when it’s in front of me, it’s already out and off someone’s body and in a fume hood/biosafety cabinet and I didn’t have to see how it happened. My fiancé picked up Spirit Hunter: Death Mark on a sale we went through it together.

Death Mark is a tale about horror-themed urban legends and a curse that needs to be broken. People get marked with a crimson bite mark in the game’s H City and they eventually develop amnesia and die. A group of people live and gather at a spirit medium’s mansion (who is dead upon arrival). The only hint to break the curse in this mansion is a little talking doll named Mary. The protagonist eventually goes through several mysteries in an effort to break his curse and stop others from dying.

Death Mark does some surprisingly well-crafted worldbuilding. Each spirit you deal with has a well-told backstory, sometimes especially ghoulish (particularly the bonus post-game episode, the first episode, and the one episode with the telephone booth). The game excels with psychological horror and the enemies involved in each boss battle assist in making the player feel that way as well. The backgrounds also lend well to this as while they are simplistic, the shading and colours used help to execute a sense of dread. One particular chapter harkens back to Japan’s Aokigahara, and the backgrounds used connect very well to that particular location so that it feels super-eerie.

Regardless, Death Mark relies a lot on its text to establish its atmosphere and as someone who reads stuff like R07 VNs and other regular VNs with a lot of text, I was okay with that. The localization was well-done, albeit with some issues that would have been caught in editing but overall it carried the story very well.

There are boss battles prior to the end of each chapter, where you must use each item you find in your exploration segments. You need to use specific items in a specific order (even with the correct party setup) in order to achieve a good ending for that particular chapter (and thus eventually the game). I thought this was an interesting mechanic and while it got a little tired depending on the spirit, it showcased how creepy some of them can be on your screen.

Unfortunately, Death Mark does not have a variety for its soundtrack and it’s almost disappointing that the same piano tunes and boss themes played repeatedly as I felt it detracted from the experience.

Otherwise, I felt like Death Mark was a short and sweet horror experience that played into urban legends and folklore experiences. I loved the little vignettes that eventually ramped up to a central story point. I hope the sequel is good when we get around to it.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

So my fiancé and I are doing this thing where we’ve started buying one copy of a game so we’d both own it together and go through it together. Sekiro and Man of Medan were two of those games this year.

Sekiro isn’t really like Souls. Eventually you’ll come to learn that very quickly when the game throws a boss at you and if you try to play like Souls, you’re not going to get the job done. It will show you that you never learned how to parry properly and you’re going to have to go back and learn it. Or if you didn’t grab a prosthetic that will make the job easier, you’re gonna have to do that too.

The game is interesting in that you aren’t exactly whittling down health bars all the time; you’re striking properly so you can overwhelm their posture bars, find an opening, and go in for the kill. Enemy health bars are essentially secondary to that posture bar. You have your own posture bar so you’ve got to learn how to parry properly. Sometimes you need to parry complete combos in order to deliver posture damage back to an enemy. It’s all about getting into the flow and rhythm of combat. And you must beat bosses in order for you to get a stat boost, so being able to beat a boss lies in your skill, and not necessarily your level/equipment.

Sekiro is Souls-like in its storytelling and worldbuilding. You can run around rooftops and areas to find secrets off the beaten path. You go back and forth between areas and speak to different NPCs to find out their backstories. The plot is also told via NPC conversations with the main characters. At first it’s a little dry but the story opens up eventually. It also has some great voiced NPCs for quests (one quest in particular had voicework that made me feel so sorry for the character that I was like “we need to get the proper item for this guy please don’t make him suffer”).

It feels rewarding to put in the work in order to beat the bosses, make it so you don’t resurrect as often to make people sick, and meet whatever standard Sekiro is throwing at you. It lets the player know that they’ve met that standard, and then throws another boss phase at them so you have to get even better.

Owl I’m looking at you.

Super Kirby Clash

My fiancé and I bought a Switch together this year (which, outside of dinner and movies and clothes, etc. was one of our major purchases together). We downloaded a few demos to try the control scheme out, including Super Kirby Clash. I am aware that this game is probably old, but hey it’s still going and it’s still being supported and I’m catching up.

I’m probably putting it here due to bias, but I think It’s really cute and the hats are super-adorable. I love getting new hats and new weapons for my little Kirby. It’s fairly standard as far as a “mobile experience” is concerned and playing it a little when I have the time to and hacking away at it little by little is rewarding when I get a new hat or new gear. My fiancé and I played it in multiplayer as well, which felt a lot like Kirby’s Return to Dream Land.

It’s pretty inoffensive and I haven’t paid real-life money for anything in it, and I still feel like I’m progressing. So as a Kirby game with light RPG elements (ie: something I’ve wanted for years and years), it’s nice to finally see realised.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom

An artist I commission very often from convinced me to move this game further up in queue than I originally had it when we were talking about games we were playing after finishing Shadowbringers’ main campaign.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is the spiritual successor inspired by Wonder Boy III, with the formula being modernized for a new era. It feels fast, and it looks soooooooo pretty. The tracks are bumpin’ too. It’s also a little tough but with every difficult section successfully platformed through, you feel really good about it.

You play as a plucky boy named Jin whose uncle is an insano who turns everyone in the kingdom into animals. After you experience sweet freedom as a human boy platforming across things easily for like 15 minutes, Jin’s uncle turns him into a pig. Whoops. From there the platforming gets a little harder and you need to learn how to manipulate different forms and different spells in order to get across various sections.

Different animal forms give you different skills. Pig form allows you to sniff out secrets literally, snake form lets you cling to walls and go through tiny passages, frog has a sticky tongue for swinging, and lion form lets you go through obstacles. You need to use these forms well to platform well enough to get through each area and finish the game. Being successful at platforming in this game feels good and fulfilling and satisfying. As you unlock more, platforming experiences get more and more complex with more obstacles put in your way, so in essence it feels like the opposite of a standard metroidvania. Playing both Bloodstained and this in one year felt like playing polar opposites. That said, the checkpointing in Monster Boy is really good. Game Atelier knew what they were doing.

The bosses by contrast were really easy and it’s nice to take the time to look at the art for each boss. All of the effects are also super-nice. Playing Monster Boy on a 4K TV is quite a visual treat for its boss sections, its town section, and its platforming sections. The colours are off-the-charts. Each animal sprite has its own set of unique animations: the piggy farts and looks like >_>, froggy looking at flies, etc. And the music is so good. If this game were a 2019 game I’d definitely put its soundtrack on my list, but it isn’t. It’s a nice blend of new and old stuff and it’s a delight to hear in-context as encouragement to keep going when you fail a platforming section.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is a faithful representation and homage of the old Wonder Boy games. It’s filled with references and secrets and awesome art, and I’m glad to have been convinced to move it up my queue for this year.

Most Disappointing Game: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

I love Final Fantasy XIV. It’s brought me closer to so many people in recent years and I’ve met so many more through it. Playing this game means so much to me and I want the best for it for years to come. It’s one of the reasons why I’m so critical about it. If I hated this game, I would stop playing and honestly, I wouldn’t care about its future. I will say this before getting started: I like Shadowbringers’ story so far (we aren’t going to be finished with its story until 5.3). I don’t think It’s necessarily as consistent as Heavensward, but I think Shadowbringers’ story is the most Final Fantasy story we’ve gotten since perhaps FF10. Truly, it’s the best we’ve seen for the series this decade.

I had a lot of hopes and hype for Shadowbringers. I hated Stormblood, for a myriad of reasons: social reasons, gameplay reasons, and narrative reasons. The direction Shadowbringers was going and all the trailers made it seem like it was going to be fresh and exciting and new. My fiancé and I (and a few others) swapped servers+data centers in advance of the expansion for a fresh start, to boot. I watched the Job Actions trailer over and over and tried to decide what I was going to eventually main and gear up because I didn’t really have a main in Stormblood due to the combat changes and how easy things became for certain things.

During a live letter, they mentioned that they’re changing how things work in battle, and that’s when I became a little cautious. I was hoping for the best leading up to release and then I saw the scholar/healer changes and got very worried. I changed mains in Stormblood because playing Scholar was freaking horrible at the start of Stormblood.

I eventually had to change mains at the start of Shadowbringers because I was not having fun playing Scholar. For people who didn’t bother to level a healer at all, the writing was on the wall for healers during Stormblood. Essentially, it introduced an age of healing where you barely ever used your GCDs to heal. You mostly used OGCDs and preplanned shields. 90% of the time if you wanted to be a good healer, you’d mostly DPS. I don’t think I’ve cast a GCD heal at all in SB and ShB content unless things were going super-wrong.

The healing changes introduced in Shadowbringers made us think that things were going to change, that things were going to be harder to heal. I had my doubts, however, because all fights are scripted and if they were to introduce a substantial change to incoming damage, they would have to make it so most people (casual, midcore, hardcore, less experienced newbies, experienced folks) would be used to It and could handle it. There was no way they were going to introduce more difficulty given that subscription numbers were increasing.

And so, healers during Shadowbringers got some damage skills taken away, but in their place, they were given more tools to heal with:

- White Mage came away from this as a very well-rounded healer at launch. It had its damage spells, it had a damage spell with a stun, it finally had long-standing and easily useable mitigation, it has substantial MP recovery, and it has a damage spell that rewards you for using three GCD heals to make up for damage lost. White Mage still making out like a bandit in 5.1.

- Scholar felt dramatically different and didn’t feel as solid as it used to be. It had most of its damage tools taken away, the usefulness of its fairy was decreased because let’s be honest it was super-overpowered, it got one of its fairies and its AoE esuna taken away, and it was given its PvP move to act as an AoE that doesn’t have another effect. I had to completely unlearn everything I did as scholar in the last 5-6 years in order to play current scholar. Current 5.1 scholar is overpowered as heck and I don’t feel as satisfied to play it in SB/ShB content.

- AST LOL. All the cards are balance. MP regen is what. Heals are what. Everything is just what. Other fun skills were removed. That said, I really like AST just because it feels like I have to work twice as hard to achieve the same effect the other healers bring to the table.

So eventually with all of these changes, we had assumed that healing was going to be harder. It wasn’t. It’s the same experience and all we’re doing is pressing one single button all the time. I barely have to heal in dungeons. I barely have to heal in raid unless my party members step in stupid. I just can’t bring myself to play healer every single day anymore, and I love healing in this game. Or I loved it back when it was more dynamic. I just press one button over and over and over and over and over and maybe sometimes another but I just press one button a lot. It’s really sad and it makes me miss old Cleric Stance of all things.

I like Shadowbringers’ story. I felt rewarded playing through it as someone who’s played the game for years and did everything when it was in-content. So for me, it was like a good reunion. There were a lot of points where the story dragged or felt rocky. I felt like the start of the 5.0 campaign was utterly boring and poorly paced. It picked up again, then slowed down again, then picked up again, then got REALLY BAD, then picked up again for a good finish. I don’t think it’s as consistent as Heavensward’s 3.0 campaign, but it was very solid and made up for the 4.0 campaign.

However, story is only 20% of the experience for me. The rest of the time, I need to actually play the game. I actually liked the levelling and crafting changes and new skills they brought in during 5.0 because leveling a crafter never felt easier. I felt like I still had to work hard but the payoff came quickly and my macros still worked as well as they did from during Stormblood. I also used my Stormblood melds and Stormblood equipment for the entire levelling experience and had to make concessions for some of my macros as time went on. I still had to know what my skills did, basically. The 5.1 crafting/gathering changes kind of make me want to craft less since I don’t feel like I have to solve a puzzle anymore and to be honest, everyone crafts now so you make far less money than you previously did. The desynth changes also made it so that most of my markets tanked since what’s the point of gathering half the materials when desynth makes those materials easily accessible. I’m not saying to gatekeep at all, but I feel like the experience should have been a little harder (ie: like the Ixali experience where you had to learn what your skills did or desynth shouldn’t be this easy to keep the market fairly balanced). My server is a crafting server so I am more impacted in general from this. That said, I don’t have anything to spend gil on so it doesn’t matter, I guess. I just feel far less inclined to participate in what was one of my favourite pastimes in XIV.

I mained Ninja which got killed in 5.0. I was already dealing with the servers moving from East Coast to West Coast, so adding a bunch of stuff to squeeze into your TA window in 10 seconds in Shadowbringers utterly killed the job for me. 5.1 Ninja throws me off as someone who played this game since the time Ninja was introduced, and I can’t make myself play it. The current opener is the Doton opener (which is something I didn’t like in SB at all) and I can’t always rely on my tank to bring the thing to my Doton. That, and making it so you do different things per every other or every third TA just makes the job a little unpalatable for me at 80. I’m one of those people who wants TA to go. I don’t like that Ninja’s become the TA bot in recent years. I can still do well with it. People still throw buffs at me, but I don’t find enjoyment in the job anymore and I hope we get a proper retool in 6.0.

I switched back to ranged. Thankfully Bard hasn’t changed as much since SB (though I still prefer HW Bard like a weirdo), and Dancer is one of those “I worked too damn long today and I just wanna do the mindless brainless rotation” jobs. I miss old Machinist oddly enough. It felt really good when you played it well and pulled off a decent wildfire. Now it’s a little easier and I don’t feel as fulfilled playing it. That said, it’s probably the best incarnation of the job since it’s sad little introduction in 3.0.

Even tanking is substantially easier and that’s a mostly good thing. It sucked going into a low level dungeon and having trouble keeping aggro due to the level syncing and your DPS’ stats. Now you can just turn your stance on and go to town without losing any damage potency like you used to. I kind of miss swapping stances after I’ve established aggro though, because you could tell the difference between a good tank and a bad/less practiced tank if they didn’t bother to swap stances in a fight. Tanks came out of this expansion very balanced, though. They might need some work here and there (warrior I’m looking at you), but overall, they came out the best out of the three roles.

Other than that, you have monks not knowing what they should be, samurai continuously getting buffed and nerfed, black mage staying consistent, red mage being lol, summoner getting changed to the point where now it’s overpowered, among other DPS changes. DPS overall don’t have as much synergy so you can take any job you want to into raid and it’ll get the job done. That said if you want to do as much damage as possible, you’re generally going to take the same few classes into the raid if you’re less educated about them. And I feel like the lack of synergy or utility between classes or even the loss of something like mana shift makes the whole experience a little boring. It’s very “f you, I got mine” or the onus is on the player for their own personal burdens and no one’s really helping each other unless you’re a dancer, trick attack bot, dragoon or bard.

I really hope the other pieces of content are substantial but what I’ve seen aren’t exactly what I had in mind. Boss refights with an alternate version is really neat but I didn’t really want that for this raid tier. I wanted something more original given what we had to deal with in Omega. I don’t really care for the Nier Automata crossover because, again, I wanted something original to the XIV lore and the First. I think doubling down on Blue Mage is a bad idea and while some folks like its party-based content now, I can’t bring myself to keep doing the content given that it’s clear they don’t know what to do with it (or didn’t know what to do with it). With one dungeon coming per patch I have to question what’s happening internally or what they’re working on. I know SE is weird internally and I really hope that the kind of stuff I’ve read in previous postmortem articles isn’t happening.

Either way, I’m really disappointed that I want to stop playing XIV so much when it’s the most popular among my friends and followers because it’s so dissatisfying to me and it’s the most accessible that it’s ever been. I hope things get better eventually but going by what I think they have in store and their old reliable formula, I don’t have hope. I’m tired of the formula and I feel like it needs a shakeup. Overall, I’ve been less happy playing FFXIV than I’ve ever been and it makes me feel really sad.

#goty 2019 #ciconia when they cry #bloodstained #the touryst #a short hike #worldend syndrome #judgment #cadence of hyrule #spirit hunter death mark #sekiro #super kirby clash #shadowbringers

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