#i messed up the pattern really obviously and decided hell i may as well learn how to do it

[flecks-of-stardust]

fixing cables is annoying. i just spent 30 minutes on five rows : D

[thusspoketrish]

Showers in the Malfoy-Potter Household

Domestic, tooth-rotting, fluffy Married Drarry!!! Written for the prompt Fresh over at @drarrymicrofic. 2.3K words. Thank you to @curlyy-hair-dont-care for the thorough beta xx

I. That One Time with the Gloves…

“Bugger, I need to shower!” Harry shouts to the empty sitting room as he steps through the Floo, shoulders tense as he kicks off his muddy shoes, waving his wand to send them to the hamper and clearing the residual mess on his and Draco’s Brazilian Macchiato Pecan hardwood floors. On socked feet, Harry dashes up the stairs towards their ensuite, disrobing along the way as the charmed grandfather clock in the downstairs hallway strikes 14:00.

Any minute now, Draco will Floo back in from brunch with Narcissa and Lucius—the very brunch Harry said he couldn’t attend because he pulled Sunday rotation at the Ministry. In truth, he had actually signed up for THE GREATEST WEEKEND QUIDDITCH MATCH EVER!!! between the Department of Mysteries and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Harry had been surprised to learn that the DoM swots were a bunch of dirty playing wankers—their self-important swagger causing a stir on the ground and a gloriously brutal match in the air. Harry’s pretty sure he bruised his ribs when he struck the muddy ground at the end of the match. But even with his injury, Harry couldn’t help the wicked grin that crossed his face when Timmons, the DoM’s Seeker, watched in horror as Harry staggered to his feet, punching his Snitch-full fist triumphantly into the air.

The glory. The power. Harry feels like a warrior—he feels like a bloody beast!

The little white lie and a skipped brunch with the in-laws were worth it!

Once in the bathroom, Harry uses his wand to send his scattered muddy clothes to the hamper downstairs and turns the water on scorching hot. Stepping under the spray, his sore muscles relax. It’s absolutely blissful, and he can’t help the happy moans that escape him as the water sluices away the mud and sweat from his highly earned, brutal win. He chuckles darkly to himself. Those wankers from the DoM will be sucking on this one for months to come.

The shower curtain is pulled to the side, starling Harry so badly that he nearly slips, his head whipping around to face his smirking husband.

Draco sticks his head into the shower, making sure to avoid the stream, his eyes flashing. “Well, well, well. Look who’s getting so fresh and so clean after a hard day’s work.”

Harry huffs, covering his nipples with both hands as he says, scandalised, “Merlin! You scared the bloody hell out of me!”

“I’m sorry,” Draco says, sounding far from it. “I was so eager to see my husband after a lengthy morning away from him that all I could think about coming up the stairs was giving him the best shower blowie he’s ever had in his entire life…”

Harry grins. “Babe, I’ve missed you so much,” he says eagerly, stepping back under the spray. “Come on, get undressed and join me.” When Draco doesn’t move, Harry gestures inward. “Come on...come now…”

“Yeah, okay. Let me just…” Draco pulls from behind his back Harry’s dirty Quidditch gloves, dropping them into the shower as Harry gasps. The fresh dirt mingles with the water, swirling down the drain. Harry could’ve sworn he sent those gloves flying into the hamper.

Draco’s smile is shark-like, eager, and ready for blood. “Imagine my surprise when these came flying into my chest on my way up the stairs. I was so curious, I decided to have a quick search of the laundry room hamper, and lo and behold, I found all of your Quidditch gear, sweaty and smelling of fresh mud and grass, darling. Must’ve been one hell of a rotation this morning, huh?”

Harry holds up his hands. “I can explain—”

“Oh, really?”

“Er, yes…” Harry starts, running a hand through his soaked hair. “Babe, it’s those wankers from the DoM’s fault! They’re a bunch of posturing arseholes and someone had to put them in their place.”

Draco crosses his arms against his chest. “Ah, right. And that someone had to be you?”

Harry smiles sheepishly, shrugging. “Well…you know I’m the best Seeker in the Corps.”

Draco harrumphs, tilting his chin up and leaning against the wall next to the shower. “So, you know what this means, right?”

Harry bows his head. “Yeah…” he says sadly, shaking his head.

“What?”

Harry sighs. “No more Mimosa Sundays at Malfoy Manor?” he asks hopefully, peeking up at Draco through his wet, shaggy hair.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You know the mimosas at my parents' are bar none.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know…so, no blowie for me?”

“You’re damn right,” Draco says, yanking his head back and sharply pulling the shower curtain shut.

Harry grumbles to himself, turning back to the shower to rinse his hair. A minute or two passes before the shower curtain opens up again, a fully naked Draco stepping inside.

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t start grovelling the proper way: by sucking my cock,” Draco says with a smirk.

Harry laughs, wrapping his arms around Draco’s waist. “How did I land such a deeply compassionate, forgiving husband?”

“With that sinful mouth of yours, obviously,” Draco drawls, placing his hands on Harry’s shoulders to slowly push him down onto his knees.

II. That One Time Draco Was Trying to be Seductive...

Harry’s entering their bedroom, half an egg mayo sandwich in hand, when he notices Draco standing before the wardrobe mirror. “What are you doing?” he asks, pausing near the door.

Draco turns around, his arms spreading wide as he pops one narrow hip outward. He’s draped in an intricate floral-patterned gold bathrobe. “Do you like it? It’s new, darling. Just arrived from Italy. Rocco-inspired, heavy-weight close-knit silk lined with black satin…isn’t it gorgeous?” Draco purrs.

“Er…it’s quite something,” Harry says, biting into his sandwich.

“Neanderthal,” Draco tuts with a scowl before turning back to the mirror. He slides his hands reverently down the sides of his body as he tilts his head to the side. “It feels like fucking sex,” Draco whispers, his eyelids drooping.

Harry chokes on a bit of egg. Draco grins, ferally, as he faces Harry again.

“I have a surprise for you. Get undressed and meet me in the bathroom,” Draco says imperiously.

“Right now?” Harry asks around his sandwich, his eyebrows shooting up towards his hairline. “Why?”

Draco runs his hands down the front of his bathrobe, his eyes fluttering shut. “The things I’m going to do to you the moment you slip this robe off my body…”

That’s all Harry needs to hear as he sets his sandwich down on the nightstand to pull his shirt over his head, tossing it to the floor before levelling Draco with a heated stare and a wolfish grin. “Is that right? Well, go on, then. I’ll meet you there in a minute,” Harry says, now unbuttoning his trousers. When Draco heads towards the bathroom, Harry picks his sandwich back up and shoves the rest of it in his mouth before getting undressed.

When he’s fully naked, he opens the bathroom door, the entire room filled with fragrant steam so thick he can barely see Draco.

“Er?” Harry says, stepping into the bathroom. Draco stumbles forward, wand in hand.

“I think I may have overdone the steam a bit,” Draco says before promptly pitching forward. Harry misses him by just an inch because he can’t bloody see, and Draco lands face first on their tiled floor.

“I thought it would be sexy,” Draco whines from his position on the floor in Harry’s lap after Harry Rennervates him. There’s a red patch on his forehead and a trickle of blood coming out of his left nostril that Harry cleans up immediately.

“You were! You were so sexy,” Harry urges softly.

“But there was no arse groping. No kissing. No fucking. It was all so unpleasant!” Draco cries.

“Aw, babe. I’m sorry. I think we should take you to St Mungo’s just in case…”

Draco sighs, sitting up but swaying slightly. “Fine. Alright. But let’s not tell them the visit is due to my failed attempt at seduction.”

Harry stifles a laugh. “Of course not. C’mere,” he says, helping Draco to his feet. “You can seduce me after the Healer has ruled out a concussion, okay?”

“Okay. But only if you promise to take my new bathrobe off with your teeth later…”

III. That One Time with the Mongrel…

Draco’s writing out a pros and cons list to determine if they’ll be purchasing a cottage in Cornwall this summer when Harry appears in front of him, a black towel cradled against his chest that’s moving.

Draco quirks an eyebrow. “What in the fresh hell is wrong with that towel?”

Harry chuckles and pulls the towel back. Pressed against his chest is a tiny, muddy little Beagle.

“No,” Draco says firmly, setting his quill down.

“Wait! Don’t be so quick about it! C’mon, babe, she was all alone in the alley by the Ministry! No mum or dad in sight. I couldn’t leave her there!”

Draco closes his eyes against the utterly heartbroken look in Harry’s eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. Of course, Harry would bring home an orphan, Draco had been preparing himself for this day since they married four years ago, only, he thought said orphan would be a wee babe, not a filthy mongrel. He exhales, nods, and opens his eyes, hand dropping away from his face. “Okay. Well. I refuse to have this mongrel in our house looking and smelling the way it does.”

Harry’s face lights up as if Draco has promised him the moon, and the stars, and all the love in his entire being. All over again.

“So, can we keep her?” Harry asks excitedly.

“Yes, Harry. We can keep her.”

Harry surges forward to press a kiss against Draco’s mouth, taking Draco off guard but aiming perfectly, nonetheless. Draco can’t help the laugh that bubbles up his throat as Harry begins to litter kisses all over his face, the mongrel caught between them. “You’re going to love her, I promise. Just look at her! She’s bloody adorable, isn’t she?” Harry says, holding the beast out to Draco.

Draco’s nose scrunches up as the dark-eyed creature stares up at him. She’s so small she could fit in Draco’s cupped hands, but her smell is atrocious. “Sure…” Draco says slowly, leaning away.

Harry hums happily. “I think we should name her—”

“—Beasty,” Draco interrupts, gaze flickering up to Harry. Harry rolls his eyes.

“No, silly! We should name her Pepper. Because she sorta smells like black pepper.”

Draco wants to suggest to Harry that perhaps they need to visit St Mungo’s to get his nose examined, because the last time Draco checked, black pepper smelled absolutely nothing like faeces. But he refrains, the joyous look on Harry’s face well worth going along with the madness.

“Sure, darling, whatever you want. Pepper it is. But she’s going to need a bath.”

Harry nods. “Right, yes, let’s take her upstairs to our bathroom.”

Draco smiles tightly. “Ah, no. I just had that tub put in. I don’t want this mong—Pepper staining the porcelain.”

“Oh, right, right. Okay, well, we can bathe her in the tub down here.”

Draco links his fingers together over his list. “Yes, excellent idea. So,” he starts, eyeing the now droopy-eyed, stinky monster. “Should we use a Petrificus Totalus or—?”

“DRACO!” Harry gasps, looking completely horrified. “We can’t put Pepper in a full body bind, are you insane? She’s a puppy!”

Draco frowns, his eyebrows knitting together. “She’s covered in grime and you expect me to manoeuvre this beast into the tub with its full cooperation?”

Harry glares at him. “She’s the sweetest thing, and I’m sure we won’t have any problems getting her into the bath, okay? Just follow my lead.”

Draco shrugs. Harry hasn’t led him astray yet.

When they finally enter the downstairs bathroom, tub now full of water at the perfect temperature and a mild soap, Draco suddenly gets an armful of Pepper as Harry begins to shed his jacket and jumper.

Draco stares down at her.

She is quite cute, with her large, bulbous black eyes, long, floppy ears, and wee-frowny mouth. Draco believes he can actually come to love this gross little beasty.

“Let’s get you all fresh and clean, sweetie,” Harry says, taking her back from Draco to place her in the water.

That’s when all hell breaks loose.

As Harry struggles to keep a hold on her, Pepper lifts her paws away from the water as if it’s fire, wild yelps escaping her as she struggles out of Harry’s grasp, dropping into the water first before lunging straight at Draco.

Draco catches her, her tiny little body soaking through his very nice, very clean jumper.

“Fucking fuck, fuck…” Draco mutters, staring down at Pepper, warmth exploding in his chest. She’s shivering against him and the anger and shock immediately leave his body as he cradles her, a defeated groan escaping him as a section of his heart unlocks and opens up to this little beasty.

Harry laughs. “Merlin, you are just so bloody adorable,” he says.

Draco scoffs, even as he stares down fondly at her, rocking her in his arms. “She’s a menace, that’s what she is.”

“No…I mean you,” Harry says, his eyes twinkling behind his glasses, cheeks dimpled. Draco can feel the heat of a blush spilling across his cheeks as Harry leans forward to kiss him. When they part, Harry glances down at Pepper before meeting Draco’s eyes.

“We’re building our little family,” Harry says proudly.

Draco opens his mouth to say something mocking, but can’t, not with the ball of emotion that’s suddenly lodged in his throat. Instead, he blinks several times, glancing down at Pepper who’s staring up at him with her large eyes, tail wagging.

“Oh,” Draco says softly. “I suppose we are.” He sniffs. “I think it’s best if we get Beasty Pepper to the vet instead, maybe they can help us give her a proper bath. Shall we?”

Draco smiles as Harry drapes an arm around his shoulders. “Yes, let’s do it, babe,” Harry responds tenderly.

[shoichee]

Oblivious!reader as Aomine’s Crush

May I request for an HC or Fic, you can choose, of like…Aomine’s crush is like the MOST OBLIVIOUS person and at least the same year as sakurai. Daiki teases them to be flirty but they think he hates them so they go to basketball practice crying looking for ryo because aomine “hates” them but daiki just butts in and tells them in frustraition? If only you’re okay with it though hahahaha

@thirsthourdemon hi!! sorry it took so long woooo thank you for stopping by this blog and sorry it took so long D:

Oblivious!reader x Aomine Daiki

[Headcanons]

Note: as much as my head is FILLED with the urge to write a fic, my uni classes said “hell no.”

so you can be a bit dense and while Aomine finds it really really cute at first…

endearing and cute… only for the first few weeks he’s tried to make a somewhat attempt to hit on you ever since he saw you smiling at your class president in the hallways

but after that,,,, well,,,,,,,,

you were very close friends with Sakurai, his mild, but responsible personality meshing perfectly well with your slightly airheaded personality

what does that mean? well, you would sit on the benches to watch Sakurai practice while you were either A.) doing your homework and being absolutely oblivious to the curious (or less than decent) stares or B.) eating Sakurai’s extra bentos he would sometimes pack that day because you would sometimes forget your own

this doesn’t bode well for Aomine, especially since he ditches practice 24/7 and every time he tries to look for you after school, he could never find you for some reason

until he showed up to practice that one time to steal an octo-dog from Sakurai’s bento when he saw you talking with the coach, trying to earnestly learn more about the sport

ohohohoho, his smirk grew and he’s having the wildest ideas in trying to get your attention

*proceeds to rip off the entire backboard and glances to your figure to see you wide-eyed*

*also waits outside the gym with a confused Momoi until everyone except you and Sakurai leave*

Aomine also tells Momoi to scram, also subtly glares at Sakurai

both leave but both give each other the look before they both hide behind the bushes to eavesdrop

there was no way in hell Sakurai would leave you alone to Aomine, even if he was someone who wasn’t confrontational

Momoi, on the other hand, even if she was pissed he name-called her, didn’t trust him to be on his own devices, especially with someone as sweet as you

“So you’re the one Wakamatsu has been ranting about,” you said tilting your head up as you took in Aomine’s appearances for the first time

“Huh? Yeah I guess,” he flippantly grumbled, scratching the back of his head as he averted his gaze away

you gasped, bringing Aomine’s (and the eavesdroppers’) attention back to you

“Wha…? Where’s Ryo?”

“…” - everyone right now

as you cluelessly look around your surroundings, Aomine steps forward to clasp your wrist and slightly tug you towards him to get your attention back on him

“Tch, forget about him for a second.” Aomine makes a harsh frown before remembering that he was supposed to make a good impression

your eyes curiously dropped to his hand on your wrist

“Aomine-san… Is there something wrong with my wrist?”

“Huh?? No, obviously not you idi—(y/n)—” he coughs out in an attempt to cover up his mishap but you don’t seem to notice

“Wahhhh, I have to look for Ryo!” you said, your brows furrowing. “He’s probably waiting for me right now! Ah, I’ll see you later, Aomine-san!”

and you dash from Aomine, breaking free from his loose clutch on you

Aomine just stands there dumbly, watching you until you leave his sight before he kicks the dirt in irritation

meanwhile, Sakurai leaves the bushes to chase after you and Momoi huffs as she stomps to him, pushing Aomine from behind

“Ow—what the hell?”

“Mou—I can’t believe it! You can’t just treat everyone like that!”

“Hah? You never nagged me about this before. Besides, don’t you people like that kinda stuff?”

“Ugh, Aho-mine! You lack delicacy! You have to be romantic and sweet if you like the person—!”

“Who says I like (y/n)?”

“It was as clear as day, stupid!”

meanwhile…

Sakurai is gently scolding you for getting yourself into a “possibly scary” situation although you don’t really get it

“What’s scary about Aomine?”

“E-e-eh?? Lots, (f/n)!! Did you not see him beat up Wakamatsu-san and rip off the hoop??”

“Well, I dunno, Ryo…” you started. “He seems out there, but I think he’s a nice guy.”

“That’s what you say to every person you meet.”

“Hmpf! Not everyone,” you pouted

“Just… just be careful, okay?… I worry for you…”

…

for the two weeks, it was a pattern of Aomine waiting for you outside the gym after every practice, while Momoi and Sakurai begrudgingly hiding to eavesdrop, ready to intervene if needed

that said, both are inwardly cringing at Aomine’s attempts at “flirting” while everything just seems to fly over your head as you blink and politely smile

“You’re not half-bad looking, y’know?”

“So who’s the other ‘half-bad’?”

“What?”

“What?”

You would tilt your head innocently at a flustered but frustrated Aomine

if you listen hard enough, you could hear a loud worried sigh and an “Ahomine!” from a distance

or another day:

“So there’s a movie at 5 tomorrow, and I got an extra ticket. Wanna go?”

“Don’t you have Momoi?”

“She has practice.”

“Don’t you have practice, too?”

“….”

or another day:

he decided to take Momoi’s advice in being more “forward” but showing enough romantic gestures to get the point across… but the only thing he could settle on without getting too sappy was the kabedon

“A-Aomine-san! What’s wrong? Can you stand properly? Do you need to go to the—”

“Shut up already, (y/n),” he drawled, before he tried to lean in closer to your face…

but then you slapped your hand to his forehead and leaned even closer to his face to try to feel his temperature

oh, but your lips—too close—too close—help—

“Oh no! You are burning up!”

Aomine was ready to faint right there and then

…

“You need to tell her and be honest, Dai-chan!”

“Shut up, Satsuki. Non’ya business.”

“It is, Aho-mine!” she huffed. “(y/n)-chan is my friend too!”

he groans as he sits up from his napping position at the rooftop before he stretches his limbs and walks to the gym

…

“Aomine-san! You’re coming to practice today?” you turned to the blue-haired ace at the doorway in surprise

“Nope, I’m sleeping.”

“Huh?”

he languidly walks to your side to steal your onigiri

“Wha—?”

“Thanks for the food, shortie.”

“Ah?”

and he gives your head a few firm taps before he leaves the gym before a Momoi unceremoniously bursts into the room, wheezing

“Is Dai-chan here?…”

you shake your head “no” in response, still in a stupor at processing what just happened, and Momoi just dashes back outside to track him down

…

“A-Aomine-san!” your fingers barely grazed the pencil as he held it up way above his own head. “Could you please… give that back?”

“You can get it back if you manage to get it,” he said, with a mischievous smirk on his face

“Wh-why meee?” you whined, as your breath shortens out of exertion

“You’re the only one who could cure my boredom.”

“Aho-mine! Give it back to (y/n)-chan!”

“Tch, fine…”

…

yeah, he’s just been calling you various names, stealing things and taunting you to get it back by running FULL SPEED IN THE HALLWAYS, knowing FULL WELL YOU COULD NEVER CATCH UP

“Dai-chan, can you stop messing with (y/n)-chan? You’re so childish, sheesh!”

“Didn’t you say to be honest? They’re short, right? And I’m just playing with (y/n). You know that.”

Momoi wants to kill him right there and then

“Ugh! I swear, you’re so dumb! We might know you don’t mean these things, but does (y/n)-chan know? Besides, you’re not being honest with your feelings to them at all! Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

…

“Ryo,” you sniffled to him one day. “Do you think Aomine hates me?”

“W-well, as much as I stay away from him… If he hated anyone he would make sure they know it…”

“I knew it! Was it something I said?” you gasped. “Maybe I’m the reason why he never went to practice. Maybe my presence annoys him—”

and you’re ready to break down in the middle of the hallways at the possibility of having someone hate you because of your obliviousness to your own insensitivity

“N-no! (f/n)-san, it’s not that!” Sakurai uncharacteristically firmly says. “Why don’t you talk to him to sort it out?… I’ll walk you to him but…”

despite your reluctance, you figured it was the best course of action, and you were determined to at least apologize to him

well, you were until you turned around and walked smack dab into the touou ace

as you rub your nose to ease the pain and look up to the person, ready to apologize, you freeze

uh oh, did he hear the entire thing?

you mad dashed to the opposite direction but he immediately chases after you, leaving a concerned Sakurai in the dust

of course, you were no match for his long legs his agility and you were soon tackled by him when you were both outside the classroom buildings

as he tackled you, he cradled you into his arms as he twisted his body to take the brunt of the fall

“Ah! I’m so sorry, I’ll get off right no—”

he fully locked his lips onto yours

“Shut up, already.” he frowns before continuing, “I never hated you, stupid.”

“You… don’t?”

“Tch,” he clicks his tongue in irritation but he still pulled your cheek affectionately

“O-ow! Why don’t you go… to practice then?”

in response, he sighs and says, “it’s a long story, but I’ll tell you at Maji Burger… how’s that sound?”

“O-oh! I didn’t bring money today!”

“I meant as a date. You, me. Between us. As a romantic thing.”

“R-r-romantic!?”

“Do I have to spell it out?” he sighs loudly. “I like you, shortie.”

“H-hey!”

[ihatetaxes99]

A Brief Retrospective Look At MVA (In The Anime)

Well. Here we are. Every end of the time is another begun. After what has felt like years of anticipation (mostly because it actually has been years), My Villain Academia has been fully animated. Well, "fully" may be the wrong word here, but that's something I'll get into later.

To honour the end of the arc, I decided to do two things: One, I re-read the entirety of the arc in the manga all in one sitting; Two, I rewatched all five episodes of the anime's adaptation back to back once again. My life is pain and I know not of sleep. Anyway, the reason I did this is because of a little project I proposed to myself back just before the first episode aired; Once MVA was done and dusted, I would go back and give my own retrospective on the whole thing. Because why the hell not, sounds like fun. This will also hopefully be less emotional than my thoughts I shared as the episodes were still airing, but who knows?

So, let's begin. And I wish to start by stating that My Villain Academia is my absolute favourite arc in the manga. It did a lot of things right. It focused entirely on my favourite faction, the villains. It offers a glimpse into their lives and goes a long way in humanising them, particularly Spinner and Shigaraki. It sets up key points for others too, such as Mr. Compress' habit of thinking more about the bigger picture than the others, which would factor into his major reveal during the Paranormal Liberation War and of course the formation of the Front itself. It introduced us to Rikiya Yotsubashi, one of my favourite characters in the manga, even if he honestly peaked in this arc and was never as good again. And it gave us a large-scale, grueling fight for supremacy in which I found myself actively rooting for the League. It is, in my mind, the very best of BNHA, the only arc I would want them to do well in the anime. They could screw up literally everything else and I would be happy if MVA was even just as good as the manga, it didn't even need to be better. I would have been delighted to have an excuse to experience the arc all over again, seeing my favourite moments with the sublime soundtrack and voice acting.

Yeah… 

But before I get to that, let us take a little trip of sorts down memory lane to see the road to MVA, what led to it. So, 2021 rolls around. What a fun year. It's just 2020 without the excitement of everything being so uncertain, and frankly it's been really fucking boring as a year. However, BNHA Season Five was announced. In February, we get the first trailer for the upcoming season. It's... It's fine. Obviously, it focuses heavily on the Joint Training Arc (in fact, that is all it shows) and although I despise that arc with a passion, it's not too bad. I had not watched the anime since Overhaul ended, so my plan was I just wouldn't watch JTA and would wait until the big attraction, MVA. And so, Joint Training starts. And it goes on. And on. And on. I checked back almost two months later to discover it still wasn't over yet. Now I found this odd. Joint Training Arc was horrible for many reasons, but the big one was that it dragged on for so long as a result of Horikoshi's health complications, which is by no means his fault. But, surely the anime, which would consistently release on a weekly basis, wouldn't have the issues associated with this. Episodes of BNHA have always encompassed around three to five chapters, and Joint Training's were shorter than usual, so why was it taking more than ten episodes to adapt it? 

Very strange, but I didn't question it much. Then, the key visuals released, confirming that MVA was at the very least happening. Great, wonderful. I love it. We've got the whole gang there, seeming like they're in Deika, looks pretty good.

Wait, did I say whole gang? Yeah, my bad, there was someone missing. Spinner. Now, I am not the biggest Spinner fan so I wasn't prepared to riot over his exclusion like I would have been if Compress wasn't in it. But this was starting to get strange. Spinner was the main narrator of MVA. Even if his importance was not on the level of Shigaraki, Twice and Toga, it was certainly more than Dabi and Compress, who did both appear in the art. Why was he excluded? Obviously, I bet you're all having a good old chuckle to yourselves right now because in retrospect, this makes perfect sense now.

Alright, then. I heard from a friend around June time that Joint Training was finally over. Awesome, great, time for the good stuff- why is there a Christmas episode here?

Yes, this was probably what really started to get the alarm bells in my mind going. The Christmas episode- in June. Very, very strange. Also, absolutely no mention of Rikiya, which even if they were reshuffling things, I would have expected him to appear in the episode of Bakugo and Todoroki getting their licenses, since it directly ties in. Concern levels rising, I shrugged it off and waited for next week.

Bam. Major reshuffling. Now, Endeavour Agency comes first, fuck you if you want context for who the hell the PLF are or the significance of Destro's memoirs. This was really starting to worry me now. I told myself that the key visual meant that MVA had to be happening, but it was starting to seem like the villains were being shafted. A fact not helped by the new OP.

Look, I'm sorry. I don't mean to complain or whine, but season five's second OP is just bad. The music is fine, I have no problem there. But the visuals are just awful. Not only is there an extended focus on that stupid bloody trio of Midoriya, Bakugo and Todoroki, not only is there more screentime given to characters who don't appear in MVA or EA than the main cast of the former, but the animation itself is just so stiff and lacking. It had potential, but the visuals are the worst out of any recent anime opening I've seen in a good few years and this was what got me really panicking.

Boom, a beach episode smack in the middle of Endeavour Agency to promote the upcoming movie. Boom, adapting two chapters per episode during EA. Boom, the Shirakumo episode, which I always thought was part of the War Arc and not EA. But finally, mercifully, the title leaks came and it was revealed that episode 20 of season five would be the start of MVA.

20. Out of 25. And it was pretty obvious that they weren't going to end the season with MVA, so really, up to 24. Ohhh no…

But hey, I'm an optimist sometimes. I was excited to just finally be clear of all this nonsense and get to the real good stuff. Hell, in preparation, I watched the entirety of the season up to that point. I finally realised why JTA took so long and it's one of the most depressing things I've ever learned, in a bad way. Were all those flashbacks really necessary? EA was okay, as someone who as a manga reader, already had the necessary context for the PLF stuff. The beach episode, I watched half of, got too bored and skipped the rest of. And you know what, I liked the Shirakumo chapters. They weren't as good in the anime, but it was nice to see.

And then, finally, in comes episode one of My Villain Academia, on a cold, dark August morning. I even bought Crunchyroll Premium to watch it as soon as possible, I was excited. All the messing around, all the crap, it was finally over and the time had come to enjoy what this season was really all about.

I can now safely say why Bones kept pushing back MVA, because if I was them, I would be embarrassed to show this.

No, that's not fair. I promised I wouldn't get too snarky, so let's reek things back in. As a whole, MVA has been… fine. Just fine. Not good enough to justify the bullshit, but not horrendous (mostly.) In fact, right now, I'll give a ranking of the episodes, my worst to best:

5) Episode One 

4) Episode Two

3) Episode Three

2) Episode Five

1) Episode Four

Yeah. So, there's a clear pattern here, that things more or less got better as time went on. From just straight up bad, to still not great, to alright, to the final two episodes being what I would comfortably call good. This is not a good look. I'm sorry, but Episode One, an episode that I just called bad, is still one of the season's best in spite of that. That spells out awful things for this season as a whole. But what exactly made this such a disaster?

Well, cut content is the big thing. MVA in the anime cuts out:

The League's battle with the CRC

Their struggle with poverty

The sushi joke setup

All of Spinner's character

All of Rikiya's character, including most mentions of Detnerat and Miyashita

Fairly integral pieces of Skeptic's character

Most of Giran's integrity and bravery

This doesn't look too bad at first. It could be far worse. We got basically everything else from the arc, so what? Well, I would already be annoyed about all of these cuts, but the issue is that they cause a knock on effect. Without the establishment of the League's poverty, the payoff of Toga's duffle coat now makes no sense. Without the setup of Spinner's characterisation, his battle with Hanabata now feels hollow. Rikiya's surrender to the League now makes even less sense, as his love of human life and desire to cause no more death is completely non-existent. The first time Rikiya being a CEO is mentioned is in the closing minutes of the arc. The sushi scene is hamfisted into a two second flashback just so that the payoff makes some sort of sense, but again, it is hollow without it being at the start (this is also the first mention of the League's poverty and it literally happens just as they are freed from it.) Can you see how these little seemingly unimportant cuts spiral into bigger problems? I would have been pissed even if they hadn't caused some tremendous cascades, but the fact that they did just makes this from a subjective issue to an objective one.

Yes. They did some things well. Toga's backstory is mostly intact, SMP is just as satisfying as the manga, Tenko's backstory is one of the best things the anime has ever done, the awakening is very well done, I adore the PLF formation as much as I did in the manga. Everything important is intact, but as I keep saying, you cannot just keep the bare minimum and expect it to work. How about in the next arc, they decide to cut everything involving Bakugo out, and only keep him jumping in front of Midoriya because it's the only absolutely necessary thing he does in the arc? People would be pissed, and it's the same thing that's happening here. It's a problem, it's not just a bad adaptation, it leads to bad storytelling in general.

The animation. Now, I do not believe this is a be all, end all. BNHA's anime is never going to look as gorgeous as Horikoshi's art, that is a fact and I do not begrudge them for that. They have a week to draw hundreds upon hundreds of frames, it's not a process that lends itself well to good looks and the animators and artists do their best with what they have. This does not change the fact that it is extremely hit or miss. Some things, Tenko's backstory in particular, look fantastic. Other things, mostly every action scene, make me laugh at how bad they can look and some things, particularly Twice and Re-Destro's hideous designs in the anime, make me cringe. The lighting is also an issue. Garaki's lab looked fantastic, but every other scene is just boring mid-afternoon with dull, basic lighting. I don't expect huge detail, but sometimes, it fails to achieve competency and as an extremely popular show, I don't think that's okay. I don't blame the animators, I blame the higher ups. And while I wouldn't mind the poor animation and art in an MVA that at least has all the story content, this does not have that and so I am even harsher than I would have been.

MVA was rushed. That's not up for debate. It took forever to get to it and once it came, things moved so quickly that they gave me whiplash, with no time to think or lament. Now, this could be attributed to the story structure of the arc, which is essentially a series of big fights, and it just isn't as bad in the manga because I can stop at any time to catch my breath. But I think it's worth noting that the anime at least highlights these issues. Curious dies in the same episode where she first appears, really driving home how pointless she was in the end. Episode Two alone tries to cover everything from the journey to Deika up until Jin finding Toga's body. That's a lot of content to fit in one twenty minute period and it was bound to feel messy in the end. I will say that, much like everything aside from the animation, this did get better as time went on, with episodes three, four and five adapting more reasonable amounts of content, compared to one giving us almost nothing and two giving us too much.

At the end of the day, that was it. The show's over. MVA has been closed in the anime. It will never be given a chance to improve, to go from just fine to anything even close to the manga. Why did this happen? I don't think we'll ever truly know. Some blame the new movie, others the studio's lack of faith in the villains, and there are those who say that it's just how fate turned out. I personally think it's a combination of all of these things. Without the movie, that beach episode wouldn't exist, giving more time to MVA, without the studio's hesitation, we'd perhaps get stuff like an actual good OP and perhaps some more general hype for it (I mean, MVA didn't even get a trailer.) Whatever the reason is, we got what we got. My verdict is something that's very overplayed as of late, but seriously, just read the manga with the fantastic soundtrack playing in the background. The anime's adaptation of MVA is not worth the time investment, when you could read the manga in roughly the same length of time and get more content, a more coherent plot and beautiful artwork.

So, what may come next for Season Six? I don't know. Season Five has definitely been one of the most unpopular seasons in the anime, with a lot of people speaking out against it, but this mostly seems to come from the Western fanbase, so it's up in the air if Bones will learn from their mistakes. Since they'll have a full season to do presumably the War and Rouge Deku arcs, then I feel like they'll put on a better show. But we just don't know. Spinner had his spotlight stolen this time around, will Compress suffer the same fate in Season Six? Dabi and Toga will probably be handled well, since they have inexplicably high amounts of popularity, but with his own lack of recognition rivalling Spinner's, I can see Sako ending up much the same way. Time will tell, I suppose.

[thisdreamplace]

I had a nasty fight with my former bff. This was long ago. She did the whole 'boycotting me' thing at school and afterwards had a mutual friend pass her msg to me, saying "tell her [me] to get it into her skull that she's not the center of the world, who does she think she is? Stop acting like a #" Im simplifying the words, her actual words were nastier

I got thinking today abt this fight, and her comment abt me that is still way too fresh in my mind even tho I hadn't recalled it in 2-3 yrs!, and I actually decided to use the law to revise my friendship to feel better as what happened after the fight was shameful on my part. But before I knew it, I started rmmbring my relationship with her. How I became a total victim. Got so stuck on her validation, begged her to be friends with me (after I got the degrading msg. 🤕 silly me w/o a backbone lol) and stayed her 'bestie' for way too long. Only after it's all over im noticing smth messed up abt out 'feiendship'. It wasnf that normal I think. She would get so pissed if I did anything that went against her thoughts/beliefs/way (which is why she called me a selfish # that major fight). It was so subtle the way she showed her disapproval. To her, if I did anything not aligned with her, or even makih decisions on my own which didn't involve her, it was wrong. And had consequences like her beinf distant for days etc, or getting angry if I didn't mind read her bla bla, I just had to keep her at the top 24/7 and she expected everyone else to do the same... which I thought was normal... It wasnt. And what would be even more crazy is she never realized how that meant she always wanted the attention. That she always wanted it her way! It just makes me feel... Sad.... When I look back. How couldn't I have notived it before? I used to be strong headed, opinionated before I became 'besties' with her.. That all has changed. I wonder why -_-

It may be dumb on my part but with the weak mind and insecurity I had then, I took that fight/her reaction to the heart and internalisef this stupidiy (DENY MYSELF if the other alternative was denying HER. I didn't think it was wrong. For the oldme, it really wasn't wrong smh). Aaah I'm so sorry old me :(

This fight started bcoz she asked me for smth and I refused, instead of relenting like I always would, and I see now that her reaction (to me not being an obedient # to her ig?🤢) was basically her setting rules. It was wrong of me to refuse, yes, but why did she react that way? Why did this pattern continue? That everyone was selfish if they didn't think of her ;_; like how do u deal with this? And the icing is when I too started to defend her and make excuses for her all the time. And ik I'm making her out to be so strong, don't worry... I accept the strong only rule when the weak submit. And I was weak as hell, so its understandable this whole thing. I think 😅

Idk. I seen your posts abt eyipo with other anons so i hope u can tell me figure out what this was. Its clear to me she was projecting smth about me, and mb throughout our whole friendship she was projecting me. And I would think it was her hurting me, that she was right and I was wrong or maybe I did smth wrong. Mb I thought I deserved being punished that way?!

Today I suddenly had an aha moment and I realised... this is how a victim thinks. I didn't know I was a victim when I was living that stoey aka thought I was powerless. When in fact I really wasn't?! Haha still accepting I 555% created ALL that. The law can knock you out haha

Enough old story I just want to ask, what du u think the msg she sent to me was? Did I really deserve such a reaction (did I mention she included other girls in the boycot? 🤢) just for standing up for myself? What about the whole 'fight' aka showcase of power? And the entire yrs of being friends why did I never realize I was only hurting myself so much by putting her before me? And also, with the everyone pushed out thing, how did it fit in? Like why the hell did I give her too much power in validating me by giving in after the fight in the first place?, and while I did have some fun times (saying this so anyone else who reads this doesn't think it was pure torture lol. We had some common interests tyat no one else in the class shared when we first became 'friends'), deep down I was so unhappy so why didn't this reflect on her? I mean why didn't she ever sense just how much she'd hurt me, why didn't she see how much I put on the back burner coz of her?! Was it as she saw it as her right? I'm just so confused

This is still a bitter pill to swallow tbh but I have to face this in order to move on. This person and my life with her has left me wit many scars and I got to understand how I did this so I never attract such a person in my life again. Its not even abt bejnf a victim. As I said, these victimy things were subtle and I only noted them when it was too late and I was a shell, like she getting super pissed and disapproving if I had a differing opinion and me blowijg it out of proportion and tailoring my views or not expressing them so as to not feel the disapproval...thanks boycott conditioning ig? 😭 Aaaah even talking agaunst her rn is making me uncomfortable. Which makes me think I still am scared of her subconsciously even tho she's no longer in my life. Like, what in me made me choose her? I haven't healed, obviously by this ask as u can tell, but idk what is it in my self concept that had this whole thing in my past even happen

My friend, I also want to say I think you're a beautiful soul 🥺. And im sorry for the long ask lol. And I pray you'll always have all your desires. And plz, was it hard for u at first when u learned about u creating everything? The good, the bad, and the repulsive (like this story)? How did u get over old stories? Ty ty ty 😭

To begin with you're being really harsh on yourself. Like, I know it's hard, but it's never that serious. And trust me, this is something I have to remind myself of regularly. Because there have definitely been moments in life where I look back on myself in that moment, and I feel like I was pathetic and would slap myself if I could. But the truth is, there's just no need for any of that. We always did the best we could. We always did, period. We couldn't have done anything differently and this will continue to be true our entire lives. Looking back on the past with such overwhelming feelings, is really not needed. I get looking back to learn from it, but practice coming from a place of love and acceptance instead. It will help you grow, rather than get stuck back in this cycle of self-hate and confusion. Plus, you actually never need to analyze the past to grow but that's beyond the point right now.

To me, by reading your ask, the message she sent to you was clear. You feel you deserve less in life, you feel you're not good enough, you feel like a victim to life and others, you feel like you're not empowered or the operant power of your reality. It's not about her being wrong and you being right, and I get this is one of the hardest pills to swallow. Everyone is you pushed out. Therefore, there's simply no such thing as who is right and who is wrong anymore. It was only ever you.

When it comes to everyone is you pushed out, you have to understand this person isn't this way because that's who they are. They were that way because that's who you were. Inside of you, you brought their character to life. Therefore, the same way you are not stuck to such an undesirable self concept, neither is that person. It's not that you chose her and attracted her in. You were just dealing with yourself. That's what I hope you walk away from this response understanding. Because by thinking she was outside of you, you're missing the mark. And this is such an important concept to understand when it comes to the law of assumption, because it's really at the forefront of everything. People play such a huge role in our lives, whether it's relationships, jobs, opportunities, etc etc. So understanding how everyone is you pushed out actually works is extremely important.

So instead of putting all this blame on her or even putting the blame on yourself, all these memories really do is give you a glimpse into who you were at the time. It shows you the beliefs you held about yourself. It shows you what your self concept was. That's all it's doing. So in that way, there's actually no one to blame at all. I know it feels good to put blame, even when it's on yourself, but the truth is there's no room for blame when you learn about the law. You simply take responsibility and become empowered by the power you have held this entire time. And you practice making it work in your favor.

If you want to see how something was apart of your self concept, all you have to do is pay attention to what you are thinking/feeling. Shame, not being good enough, etc etc is all just stories you once held onto. Now you don't have to hold onto those stories anymore. Now that you know the power you hold, you get to make a new decision for yourself. Rather than ruminating of the painful past, allow it to be and know how that's not your story anymore.

Was it difficult for me to accept how I created everything? Yes and no. It's been a journey. While I could accept it logically, emotionally it was still very painful. Many times I wanted to cry and lash out when I felt alone and felt upset that no one was there for me. Although, I knew deep down it appeared that way because of my own concept of self. So yeah, it's been a journey. And it's honestly not always delightful. But this is the journey we have to take for the rest of our lives, so we might as well get used to practicing and applying these concepts. Instead of continuing to hold ourselves in such painful lights. I got through old stories, and I continue to get through old stories, by feeling all the pain that came up. By allowing myself to cry and feel however I felt like during those times. And in the back of my mind I knew I was getting stronger in my power. I knew how I would keep persisting once the pain subsided. And little by little, old stories fade more and more. That persistence to continue choosing better for yourself, is truly more powerful than it may seem in a difficult moment. Have trust in how it's all working out for you regardless.

Hopefully this is helpful! Thank you for your kind words. 💖

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Cadmus’ Revenge

WARNING FOR THEMES OF SELF-HARM, SUICIDAL IDEATION, PARANOIA, NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE.

A/N: This story is not a character death, and ends on a happy note.

----

Cadmus is resurrected, and abducts Lena. She's missing for over a year when they finally find her, in a facility packed with guards but devoid of any trace of Lillian. They find Lena pale and thin but alive in a small windowless cell. Down the hall and around the corner, they find a chilling lab, complete with a chair that looks like it belongs in a dentist’s office, if not for the manacles bolted to the arms and legs, and the macabre net of needled probes haloing the headrest.

Lena sleeps for days when they get her to the DEO. They clean the smears of blood from her forehead, examine her from head to toe, but when she wakes Lena is hale and whole and remarkably cogent. She doesn't seem surprised by her rescue, and is neither scared nor thrilled to be back. 

She's a little distant, but otherwise well-adjusted-- unnervingly so. The Superfriends are all massively concerned, but Lena goes to therapy, she follows the doctors' instructions, and they don't want to make it worse so they just... let her be. 

Until the day that Kara walks into Lena's L-Corp office as Supergirl, and finds her building a bomb. 

A big one.

"Is that...?"

"A bomb?" Lena replies coolly. "Yep. I'm surprised it took you this long."

"Lena..."

"Don't come any closer," comes an off-hand warning, along with a head tilt towards a new arrangement of wall-mounted rail guns suddenly aimed at Kara. 

"Those are loaded with kryptonite bullets. Not sure if kryptonite is needed against a construct, but just in case you're following the usual rules... even if it doesn’t kill you, it'll hurt like hell."

Kara swallows thickly. "I don't know what's happening, but I do know that this isn't you. Step away from the desk, and we can talk about what's going on with you, okay?"

"Nope. No more talking. No more interrogations, no more debriefing. No more scenarios."

Scenarios? "Lena, what--"

"I'm a little surprised to be honest. You usually catch on to my escape attempts a lot sooner. But that was my mistake, wasn’t it? Escape." 

Finally, Lena straightens and turns, pressing a button that sets a countdown in red lights. 

"Tell me, mother," Lena smirks, folding her arms against her chest. "Do you believe what they say about the Matrix?"

Kara doesn't understand what's going on, but she does understand that Lena is not well, and she understands that Lena is fully intent on blowing them both up. And the whole city block, if the size of the bomb and Lena's acumen are any indication.

"Lena, please..."

Green eyes regard her coolly. "You really do look like her. Its the closest you come yet. Fitting that it'll also be your last."

"What do you mean?"

"Scorched earth. There's nothing to reset if this explosion fries every neuron in my skull. So whatever you're looking for, better ask now before I'm brain dead."

"Lena--"

"Oh, and before you decide to blip out on me, I should probably mention that this room is equipped with an electromagnetic barrier. Again, not totally sure it works against what amounts to an online avatar, but I figured I might as well do my best to rid the world of both us Luthors."

"I am not your mother..." 

"Obviously."

Kara's gaze flickers to the timer, ticking down. Less than twenty seconds.

"Lena, I am not Lillian, I am not here to hurt you, but I need you to let me get that bomb out of here--!"

"Ooh, the tears are a nice touch. For a heartless bitch I'm impressed--"

"I am not your mother!"

"You're not Supergirl, either--"

Without thinking, Kara surges forward, pressing her lips against Lena's. She can almost feel the surprised stutter of her heartbeat underneath the panicked roar in her own ears.

She pulls away, maintaining her grip on Lena's face to stare deep into her eyes. Shocked green stares at her, her calm confidence flickering in confusion.

"Would your mother have done that?!"

Lena's mouth works wordlessly, finally returning something human to her. Finally, she looks at the room around her as though seeing it for the first time. Too late.

The timer flickers from two seconds to one.

"LENA!”

She only has time to wrap her arms and her cape around Lena before the bomb detonates. The force of the shock wave throws them through the office wall, followed by a bellow of flame and debris.

Heat engulfs them both, swallowing them in a blazing inferno that seems to last hours. Kara's entire focus narrows to funneling cold air from her lungs to the hollow of her cape, cooling the air within before the superheated gust could sear Lena's lungs. 

For an interminable moment, her world is fire and ice, and the desperate, panicked prayer that when it abates, Lena's heart will still be beating.

As soon as she can spare an ounce of focus she propels them both through the nearest window. The blaze chases at their heels, hungry for the oxygen accessible through the broken pane. Kara doesn't stop. Not until she's skidding against the floor of the DEO lobby, Lena cradled against her chest.

"Supergirl!" Alex calls, cutting through the blur of Kara's shock. "We just got the alert about--"

She cuts off abruptly as Kara peels back her cape to reveal the bruised and ashen features of an unconscious Lena. Her hair is dry and singed, soot staining every inch of her, blackening the raw, weeping burns the cape couldn't protect against.

Kara looks up at her sister, tears cutting twin tracks down her cheeks.

"Lena's not okay."

---

Lena wakes in the infirmary, bandaged, medicated, and under constant guard. Kara remains at her side, and straightens when she sees her friend's eyes flutter open.

"Lena?”

At the sound of her voice, Lena's eyes pinch shut. Gritting her teeth, her hands fist in the blankets.

"Are you in pain? Alex! Lena, it's all right, you're safe--"

"Shut up!" Lena cries. For the first time, something besides ready acceptance colors her voice-- despair. "Just shut up! You're not real. You're not real!"

Kara stares, helpless. Alex materializes at her side, watching with wide eyes. 

"It should have worked, why didn't it work... You're not real. Not real..."

"Lena..."

"You're not real!"

---

The chair, Brainy deduces, was a means to run a series of simulations. From the data he's able to mine, Lena has spent most of her captivity in that chair, trapped in an ever evolving construct of her own mind, where it learned her patterns and expectations until it could render even the most realistic and intricate scenarios. 

For what purpose, they don't know.

"Information, perhaps," Brainy suggests, his anxiety betrayed by his habitual twisting of the Legion ring on his finger. "Something they anticipated Lena would only share with a familiar figure."

"Or maybe to mine her intellect?" Alex theorizes. "If they had a problem, Lena would be the one to solve it."

"Whatever the reason," Kara concludes, her voice low, "Lena caught on. She learned to doubt everything she saw. Us included."

"So how do we snap her out of it?" Nia asks. 

They all exchange glances, hoping another has an answer.

None of them do.

---

Reason gets them nowhere. 

Footage of Lena’s discovery and rescue is met with disinterest. Detailing the ongoing search for Cadmus and her mother puts Lena to sleep.

They take her to L-Corp to show her the aftermath of her bomb. Thankfully, they'd been the only ones in the building, but the damage was substantial even weeks later, and it seems that none of the prior simulations ever displayed such continuity. For a moment, her mask cracks.

They try to capitalize on their opportunity by immediately following up with a game night. Lena loses soundly, seemingly another distinct change. Lena's features soften further, enough for the tiniest of smiles to creep over her, and for a moment they can believe that they've finally gotten through. 

Twenty minutes later, Alex finds Lena in Kara's bathroom, carving a long, deep line into her forearm with a razor.

Chaos reigns, and a hopeless fear creeps into Kara's heart as she cradles Lena in her lap. Alex wraps a hand towel tightly around the wound, lifting it above Lena's head while Brainy notifies the DEO.

"Lena... please," Kara whispers. "I don't know how to help you. Tell me what I need to do."

Hazy green eyes gaze up at her.

"Let me go..."

"No, Lena--"

"Please, Mom…" Lena's voice cracks. A tear squeezes from the corner of her eye, coursing down her temple to pool against Kara's hand. "Let me go."

It's worse than the moments before the bomb went off. This time, it isn't a triumph of spite.

This time, it's surrender.

---

It's a surrender none of them accept. 

When Lena is stitched up and resting under sedation in the infirmary of the DEO, the rest of them gather to discuss a new plan of action.

"There is likely no way to convince Lena that this is the true physical world," Brainy delivers crisply. "The nature of the machine allows it to perfect mimic the world she expects to see, but any aberration to that effect is merely a glitch, or an instance of learning."

Alex shakes her head, hands propped on her hips. "I refuse to believe there's nothing we can do. There must be something we're missing."

Silence stretches between them, until Kara rocks back in her seat. 

"If we can't convince her out here, maybe we can convince her in there."

Nia blinks. "In... where?"

Turning to Brainy, Kara takes a deep breath. "Brainy, you've found mind-palaces for both me and James. Do you think you could find Lena's?"

"You think we might connect with her there," James fills in. "Like Kelly did with me."

Kara shrugs. "It's worth a shot."

"It would be exceedingly difficult," Brainy warns. "Even before this recent trauma, Lena has relied heavily on compartmentalization, which I now know is not a healthy mode by which to operate. Her mind is bound to be in chaos-- if there are any boxes left, it may be wise to leave them unopened."

"Could you build a new one?" Alex asks. 

Nia shakes her head. "Isn't that what got us into this mess in the first place?"

"I don't know what else we can do!" Kara snaps. "I am not going to just sit here and watch her kill herself! I won't! We--" Her voice cracks. "We just got her back..."

The others stare at her in stunned silence. Kara swallows her rising sobs, and looks omce more to Brainy.

Brainy shifts uncomfortably.

"I will try."

---

It takes days, but with Nia's help, Brainy succeeds. He finds the one quiet corner of Lena's mind, and with the aid of Nia's psychic powers manages to tethers Lena's consciousness to it. The moment he gives the signal, Kara puts white diode to her forehead and closes her eyes.

When she opens them again, she finds herself standing on the rocky shore of a wide flat lake, the water so still it turns the surface to mirrored glass.

On the shore stands a familiar figure, looking out across the water with an air of peaceful serenity.

"Lena?"

Lena turns, and when she lays eyes on Kara her features spread into a soft, sweet smile. "Kara..."

The next thing Kara knows, she's wrapped up in all she remembers Lena to be-- her warmth; the smell of her shampoo; the press of broad hands against her back, pulling her close. 

"I've missed you," Lena murmurs. Kara hiccups a sob, half of a laugh. If only Lena knew... "But I think I've finally done it. It worked."

Kara's purpose catches up to her like a knife to the heart. She grips Lena tighter. 

"You're not dead, Lena."

Lena pulls back, resting her hands on Kara's shoulders. "It's okay," she says calmly. "It means it's finally over."

"No, Lena. We saved your life. This place isn't real, Brainy made it so we could talk to you."

Kara braces for Lena's reaction, but it comes in the form of lines crinkling at the corners of Lena's eyes. 

"It is real. Real enough, at least." She turns to look out across the water. Though she pulls out of Kara's embrace to do so, their fingers lace together in a gentle grip. "My mother died here."

Kara's heart pounds against her ribs. This isn't a construct of Brainy's design. It was something else. 

Lena turns to look at her, giving their joined hands a squeeze. "I'm glad I got to see you again."

Absurdly, Kara's reminded of The Deathly Hallows, and Dumbledore's final scene in a quiet, sterile version of Kings Cross Station. That's what this place feels like: a waystation. A platform to say goodbye.

"No."

Her voice cuts through the quiet, sharp and incisive. She pulls Lena back around to face her, and gets a startled pair of green eyes staring back.

"Four months ago, we found you and rescued you from a Cadmus facility. In that same facility, we found a chair."

Alarm sharpens Lena's gaze. She tries to pull free, but Kara tightens her grip. "No, no, I won't--"

"You're not there anymore," Kara promises, rubbing her thumbs against Lena's hands in comfort. "We brought you home. We thought you were fine, but-- six weeks ago, you built a bomb in your office. And then you tried to stop eating. And then..."

"Stop," Lena said. "Let me go--"

"I don't know what Lillian wanted from you--"

"LET ME GO!"

Lena tore free, stumbling backwards from the force of it. Suddenly, the placid aura of the lake shattered with the sharp, heaving sobs of Lena sitting among the rocks, hands pressed tight to either side of her head. 

"It wasn't enough... it's never enough! Why won't you let me go?! Please! Please just let me go..."

Kara sits on the pebbled beach in front of Lena. When she reaches for Lena, it's to place one hand on a pale ankle, exposed by a denim cuff. 

"I don't know what she wanted from you," Kara says again, more gently. "And I'm not going to ask."

Rocking, hands pressed tight to her head, Lena says nothing.

"I don't know how to convince you the real world is out there," Kara continues. "I don't know if I can. Maybe... maybe you just have to choose to believe that it is."

"I won't give you anything--"

"The only thing we're asking for is you, Lena."

Lena opens her eyes, meeting Kara's gaze for a brief moment before the anguish returns, and Lena rocks backwards once more, breath quickening with anxiety as her features pinch in distress.

"We won't ask you any questions except what you want to have for lunch," Kara continues, desperate, "or what movie you want to watch on Friday night. We don't even have to stay in National City. We can go up to the mountains-- find you a lake just like this one, where no one can find you."

Lena stills. Her eyes stay closed, her body continues to tremble, but the rocking stops, and Kara hears the steadying breath that cuts through it all.

When Lena makes no move to speak, Kara tries one last time.

"I know it won't be easy. I know how tempting it is to just let go. And I know I can't stop you." Her hand firms on Lena's ankle. "This is your crossroads, Lena. Whatever happens next, you have to choose. All I'm asking, right here, right now, is that you choose us."

Kara's breath catches in her chest. 

"All I'm asking is for one more day with you. So that tomorrow I can have one more chance to ask you to stay. However many times it takes."

Lena sags, exhaling into a sob. She reaches for Kara's hand. 

"I'm so tired, Kara," she whispers.

Nodding, Kara blinks back her tears. "I know... I know."

They sit together for long minutes, until Kara senses that her time here is down. Whatever happens next, comes from Lena, and no one else. 

"If you do choose to let go," she croaks. "Please know how sorry I am that I didn't find you sooner. And know that we don't blame you. We love you, and we'll miss you every day."

With a final squeeze, Kara climbs to her feet, letting Lena's hand slip from her fingers.

"Kara--!"

"I love you, Lena. With all my heart."

Kara blinks open to the sight of the med bay ceiling, and the weight of Alex's hand in hers. 

"Kara?"

Brainy and Nia both exhale, turning to face her.

"It worked," Kara croaks. She pulls the sensor from her forehead and sits up, scrubbing the tears from her cheeks. "I saw her."

"What happened? Did she believe you--?"

"She needs to choose," is all Kara can say. "She has to choose."

Together, they wait.

---

Kara stays at Lena's bedside as she sleeps, long after the sedative wears off. As the minutes and hours tick by, Kara waits for the ever growing expectation that the only change in Lena's condition will be the flatline of the heart monitor.

Which is why she jumps a foot in the air when Lena's hand tightens on hers, well into the next morning. 

"Lena?" 

The room wakes around them: Nia bolts upright from where she'd slumped against Brainy's shoulder; Alex pushes off the wall, crossing towards the bed; James jolts awake, blinking and bleary-eyed.

Lena flinches when her eyes open to find shadows looming over her, as her heart monitor jumps alarmingly. Kara motions them back with her free hand, the other still locked around Lena's.

"Lena, can you hear me?"

After a long moment, Lena manages to turn her head, focusing a blurry gaze on Kara.

"Kara...?"

"It's me." Kara coughs out a smile. "It's us."

Lena blinks sluggishly against the hairs sticking to her forehead with sweat, jutting out over her eyes. Kara reaches up to smooth them away, then lets her hand linger against Lena's skin. Lena breathes softly, turning her face into Kara's touch. 

"I choose you."

[terresdebrumestories]

One night only

FANDOM: DCEU, but I guess more specifically BVS. SERIES: - RATING: Explicit for safety. WORDCOUNT: 7 333 words PAIRING(S): Superbat CHARACTER(S): Bruce Wayne & Kal-El GENRE: Brief encounters of the sexy kind. One night stands. TRIGGER WARNING(S): None that I’m aware of, but it does contain sex and the vaaaaguest hint of strength kink. Also touch!starved Bruce. SUMMARY:

Bruce crashes on an unknown planet as he returns from a League-related mission. Fortunately for him, he manages to survive the accident with nothing more than big bruises to show for it. Even more fortunately, he finds himself rescued by the hottest alien he's met so far.

OR: Bruce Wayne rescued by beefy alien.

DEDICATION(S): To  obviously, who provided the very sexy prompt for this fic, and also to @lorata​, who handled the SPAG betaing of this. I, sleep deprived and unused to GDocs on mobile, may have clicked on the “refuse” button on a couple of corrections so assume any typo left is my fault :P NOTE(S): I don’t know why I was convinced my posting date was July 18th, but I was, which means that the final version of it got finished at 11pm on the 17th, which was a bit of a cardio workout. Thank fuck for timezones giving Lora enough time to hunt my typos without too much pressure :P

ALSO AVAILABLE ON AO3

The cockpit almost looks like a Christmas tree: it blinks in increasingly bright and urgent colors, the high-pitched beep of panicking instruments loud enough to drown Bruce’s thoughts as the jet plummets toward the ground. There are interminable seconds of falling, Bruce’s soul scrambling to think of Alfred, Dick Jason MomDad—

Lead on his eyelids, a ton each at the very least. When he finally maneuvers them to half-mast the light around him is loud enough to hurt. He closes his eyes. Tries again. The bright gold echoes like a bellow between his ears. Wince. Persevere. The world around is too much and too little, loud light and bright noises. He blinks and blinks and blinks until something warm licks at him, and then another noise, salt in the air and oh, Alfred, I really messed it up this—

Blue, blue, blue, blue, the world moving—a voice above, deep and tense, dark fringe over a frown…Jas—

When Bruce wakes up for the third time, there is something floating above him. An oblong shape, dark against the light, and close enough to touch if Bruce’s arm had any strength left in it. It remains there for a while, trembling until Bruce’s eyes finally shape it back into a face. It seems calm for now, not attacking or moving in a suspicious way, but it does stay where looking at it makes Bruce’s eyes water, so it’s probably best not to discount the risk of hosni—hossi—ill intent. Bruce blinks, slow and sluggish, while the head moves and melts into some kind of silhouette.

Bit by bit, the light grows quieter, and Bruce sighs, squinting to make out limb-like shapes—only four, thank fuck—as the presumed-head leans down—and then recoils as Bruce’s hand strikes at it...or, well. Tries to. It gets stopped halfway through, easy as breathing—Bruce winces, breathes in. Blinks until the shape moves around him, the hold on his wrist firm but not painful. Once it’s out of the backlight, the head looks human enough: curly black hair, eyes just a shade too blue to feel real. The kind of jawline you could sharpen a battarang with.

Bruce blinks harder and, in a bout of stupidity barely excusable even in his state, he glances down—wool-like garment, reminiscent of a sweater, but close-fitting enough to let him know he wouldn’t blush at having abs like that—and says:

“I always thought I’d go to Hell.”

The world fades again.

*

The fourth time Bruce wakes up feels like it’s the one that’s going to stick. He’s healed up enough to remember what he said last, for one, and while that’s embarrassing enough to make him groan—religion, really Bruce?—it’s at least a sign of progress. For two: fucking ouch.

It’s a good thing that he can feel the hurt. Bodies that don’t feel it are either traumatized or permanently damaged, or both. Still, if there is a superior entity somewhere, Bruce is determined to make them pay for the fucking nervous system. Aside from his feet, pretty much everything hurts right now—nothing Bruce isn’t used to, though. Healing bruises, decades-old stab wound acting up in humid weather...all in a day’s work for Batman, really, so much as he dislikes the sensation it really isn’t that hard to find a semi vertical surface to prop himself against. The move makes his head swim, predictably, but at least now he can see the person-shaped thing move around when it comes back to the currently-empty cave. If it comes back.

Rather than sit and wait for an answer on that question, which could keep him there a long time, Bruce gives his nausea enough time to subside—he is pushing fifty there, and surprisingly interested on keeping going—swallows around his cardboard-thick tongue, and sets about slowly taking stock of his surroundings.

He can feel rough stone behind his back. There’s another natural wall at his front. Stalactites line the stone ceiling and, to Bruce’s right, slope down until they meet the ground with only a narrow conduit squirreling away under the bedrock. No exit there. Turning back to the left, Bruce discovers the cave widens for about fifteen, maybe twenty feet—depth perception: still AWOL—until wet-dark stone gives way to the sun-bleached gray of fist-sized pebbles and the ruckus of them rolling through the waves. The sea beyond offers a dull brown color tinged with silver, shining under the sleek pewter of the sky.

Bruce thinks, unhelpfully, of Gotham.

He doesn’t dwell on it too much: he’s unbound and, as far as he can tell, alone in the cave. If he’s going to figure a way out of here, now is the ideal moment, though he knows better than to make it too obvious he knows that, just in case there’s some surveillance he hasn’t found yet. There’s no fire, but the air isn’t cold, and when he looks down at himself he realizes there’s a blanket draped over the Kevlar that means he won’t be catching a cold just yet. It also means that whatever found him either has no malicious intent towards him or is very interested in pretending it doesn’t.

Obviously, he doesn’t trust the thing—person? Alien, definitely—that got him here. He’s lived through more than his fair share of people treating him exceedingly well for nefarious reasons, both as Batman and as Bruce; he’s not about to fall for it. Every second he pretends to, however, is more time to recover and plan his escape. It is with that certitude in mind that Bruce leans back against the stone and, keeping his ears focused on the sounds around him, closes his eyes to fake sleep.

He nearly curses when he wakes up to the sound of footsteps on rocks. Obviously, he’s well trained enough to reign the impulse in, but he’s got more than enough brainpower to recriminate himself while he checks out the entrance of the cave. It’s dark by now, which, assuming the days here are roughly the same as Earth’s, means several hours have passed, during which anything could have happened. Fuck. If Alfred learns about this, Bruce will never hear the end of it… At least he’s still up against the wall. Nothing’s coming at him from behind.

The alien doesn’t attack, though. It walks into the cave, familiarly bipedal, dressed disturbingly like the upscale version of a Hollywood fisherman—the sweater even sports a pattern reminiscent of a cable-knit. When it’s done setting up a rough circle of stone near Bruce—with its back to him! If he were at full capacity, that alien wouldn’t stand a chance—and dumping wood into it, it busies itself lighting a fire. Only when it’s done and the first licks of warmth reach Bruce does it turn around.

Bruce, shamefully caught with his eyes open, allows himself to swear internally. An alien it might be, but if Bruce weren’t profoundly aware of this fact it could have passed for a human easily: aside from the too-blue eyes, there’s nothing to make the alien stand out in a crowd. Or, well. There is, but GQ models aren’t generally considered dangers to the general population...although judging from the way his guts twist when the alien smiles at him, right now Bruce is rather inclined to review that particular assessment.

 Come on, Batman. Get a grip.

The alien, blatantly oblivious to Bruce’s internal battle against his...heart...approaches him with an easy smile and a soft voice, moving slowly, like it’s trying to calm a spooked animal. It makes Bruce want to show his teeth, but considering he’s not exactly in a state to follow up on the threat if the alien reacts aggressively, he decides against it. He does grunt though, just enough to show his displeasure at his current predicament, low enough that it doesn’t fall into outright aggression. Not that it matters: genuine or faked, the alien’s current persona seems too cheerful to mind, and it smiles as it speaks.

At least, it sounds like there are words in its voice. Bruce’s Green Lanterns-issued translator is on the fritz, though: all he can do is assume the emotion projected actually is relief, closely followed by concern. It’s...not often, that Bruce is confronted with something like that after an injury. Neither Dick nor—Dick has always been the type to joke, and English blood means Alfred’s physical expressions of concern come in the form of tea and a duster served with the stiffest upper lip on the planet. To be the focus of eyes that blue, with that sincere-looking an expression on that face with that jawline is...Bruce swallows. Hard.

The alien says something else that Bruce, of course, doesn’t understand, and then it turns away to reach inside its bag and produce something round, purple and leathery looking. It might be a gourd or a fruit, Bruce has no way to know. He is parched though, and so he tries to dip down for a drink.

What happens instead is a hand on his shoulder, the pressure dulled by the suit, but there enough to realize he couldn’t easily get out from under it. Slowly, gently, Bruce is pushed back against the rock, intense blue eyes crinkling with a smile that, on a human, Bruce would almost describe as apologetic. One of the alien’s hands comes up to tip Bruce’s head back, fingertips lighting long lines of fire against his throat, catching his breath right in the middle of his chest until he’s tensing without meaning to. Bruce can still feel the path of those fingers against his skin, the phantom sensation pulling at his attention even as the alien’s other hand raises the purple sphere above his head. Bruce’s hand snaps up, catching on a wrist. There is a pause, as if the alien had sensed Bruce’s brief burst of fear through his touch—what if the liquid inside is acid? What if he’s about to be bludgeoned to death? —until their eyes meet. Something shifts in the alien’s face, and he stands up straighter somehow, resumes his movement with a slow grace that somehow makes Bruce want to get up on his knees. He allows the grip of his fingers to soften, thumb resting on the alien’s pulse point—it feels fast, under the thin skin—and watches the purple thing rise above his head.

It pauses right above Bruce’s face, the alien looking at him with something almost like a question in his eyes. Bruce meets his eyes head on, wishing he could think of it as defiance. Then, with his chest heaving and his body straining in the confines of his suit, Bruce tips his head back and opens his mouth.

The alien gasps when the juice—it’s too sweet to be water, despite the clear color—falls into Bruce’s mouth, the blood in his wrist speeding up. Lowering his head a fraction, Bruce meets his gaze again—or tries to. A few drops made their way past Bruce’s lower lips, dribbling down his chin and along his throat, and the alien is clearly too caught in tracking their path to meet Bruce’s gaze. He licks his lips, making Bruce shiver, and just when Bruce is starting to consider releasing the moan bubbling inside his chest, the alien takes the purple thing—the fruit? —away.

Juice splashes on the bridge of Bruce’s nose and he splutters, moment broken and yet still out of breath, fingers still clasped around a wide wrist. He takes his hand away, acutely aware of all the places where it’s not touching skin anymore, and breathes in deep, trying to calm his heart rate as fast as possible while the alien clears his throat and tosses the empty fruit shell away into the water.

He speaks again then, motioning upward with his hand, and although he’s clearly trying to look casual there is a faint dusting of pink over his cheekbones. Given the circumstances, Bruce decides to go ahead and provisionally interpret it as having the same meaning as on Earth. Once that’s done, he tries to follow the other man’s request: he barely makes it to his knees before he topples over, legs reduced to jelly despite his clear mind. For a moment, his rescuer—for lack of a better word—seems almost disappointed. Then he speaks again, slow and soothing, as he steps closer with his arms extended.

Bruce is caught in a bride’s carry before he can even attempt to protest.

For one hysterical second, Bruce’s mind provides an image of Alfred’s—or anyone from the league’s—face should he find out about this. It is mortifying and he vows to take the incident to his grave—but the thought only lasts for that: one second. Right after that, Bruce finally catches up with the fact that his companion is showing no strain whatsoever while carrying him and his thirty pounds of armor and— oh come on Batman, get a grip.

Batman does not get a grip. In fact Batman, who is feeling decidedly less Batmany than usual, slowly unravels as his companion carries him out of the cave and into the open air, the smell of clean seafoam assaulting Bruce’s nostrils while a gentle breeze blows the occasional droplets onto his cheeks. For lack of a more dignified solution Bruce lets himself be carried out to the beach, the view swiftly blocked by a tall cliff of white stone fringed with green at the top, fist-sized gravel crunching under the alien’s feet. There’s a short climb up a gentle slope to a wooden platform, and then Bruce watches as the beach grows smaller under them. The ocean, of course, is endless, but a look to their left reveals a badly damaged piece of rock, deep gouges in the ground leading the eyes to a short stripe of bent metal. There go Bruce’s hope of refurbishing the ship and using it to get off planet. Sure, Bruce is extremely lucky to even be alive right now, let alone as unscathed as he is, but even Batman is allowed a bit of hope now and then. As a treat.

Well, no use crying over spilt milk—or sulking about being stuck on an alien planet without a reasonable means of transportation. Bruce keeps looking. To the right, as far as he can see, is a forest. It rises from the ground in bushes and tall grasses at first, quickly shooting to the sky with ever taller trees that, aside from the height, wouldn’t look all that out of place in the English countryside.

Behind him—under him? Bruce is going to have to figure the logistics of this at some point—Bruce’s companion takes a turn toward the forest as soon as they reach the top of the cliff, and as they come close Bruce finally notices it. It being a tall dome-like structure made of wood and what he can only assume is something similar to glass. It rises out of the ground as if grown there, slender limbs turned to the sky in elaborate latticework, a band of colored windows circling the dome about halfway through.

The whole thing looks airy, the kind of place designed to create refreshing breezes and cool shades, which makes it look entirely incongruous in an environment where cold and damp seems to be the motto. Still, odd choices or no, there’s something appealing about the building. It feels...well, structurally, it is leaning more into something like the Taj-Mahal, which is impressive considering a touch reveals it is made of live wood. Yet as Bruce is carried outside and discovers the furniture—rich embroidered carpets of wool thick enough he could fall asleep there, luxurious piles of cushions in red and blues with the occasional gold accent—he can’t help but feel a little like he’s just entered a large, very elaborate treehouse. Everything, from the sitting space to what seems to be a cooking area to the central staircase—and how did Bruce not see any of that through the windows? He’d love to ask some technical questions about it—feels like it wants Bruce to lie back and relax, maybe even fall asleep. God, this house could probably have entire conversations on this very topic with Alfred—and Bruce is just about exhausted enough to let it.

The air inside is warm but not stifling, like a windy summer day: it chases the chill out of Bruce’s limbs, warms him up from the inside as he’s settled down on a cushion even he has to describe as ridiculously large. Bruce...kind of wants to lean into it. Sure, there’s still a chance he’s about to be hurt, but also it’s not like his host is lacking in strength. Why bother waiting when all the power is on your side? It seems probable that the alien is either genuinely uninterested in hurting Bruce, or playing the long con. Either way, there’s no reason for Bruce not to take the opportunity to rest a little.

“You can lean back, you know.”

Bruce blinks as the gentle golden glow fades from the windows, the seaside landscape once more unobstructed as he looks ahead of himself. It takes some effort to twist around enough to see his host, but when he does it’s—well. It’s worth it. The man has changed out of his Englishman costume and into a pale gold tunic that hugs both his arms and his chest before loosening just a little around the waist and falling past his hips down to his knees. Bruce notices the bottom of fitted crimson pants hugging absolutely lovely calves, and swallows before he asks:

“Is the house translating?”

“Yes,” the alien says with a wide grin. “I am quite relieved that it could do anything for us: you do not seem to hail from a well-known region of the universe.”

“You sound extremely formal,” Bruce remarks without thinking, and swallows again when his host laughs:

“Not to my ears, I assure you. I suppose, however, that where outdated technology is concerned, we had better be grateful we understand each other at all.”

Bruce inclines his head in acquiescence. Sure, he’d like the comfort of his usual translator better than having to deal with the whole house filling with his host’s words—if not his voice—but the perceptible delay between his host’s voice and the house’s isn’t enough to make him wish for the alternative of not being able to communicate at all. Even if going back to that after using the Lanterns’ translators feels a bit like trying to stream a movie with a poor internet connection.

“I guess you’re right,” he agrees. Then, because his mask was already lost in the sea and this is an alien, anyway, he adds: “I’m B.”

“Bee?” his host answers, evidently testing the sound. “That is an unexpected name. Still, I suppose different worlds have different tastes. You may call me Kal.”

Bruce pauses, eyes narrowing.

“Oh,” Kal says, as if guessing what Bruce is thinking, “I was not—names where I’m from are quite...long. Much longer than yours. ‘Kal’ is only a diminutive.”

“How long is ‘long’?” Bruce asks, eyebrows raised.

In front of him, Kal blushes, and Bruce refuses to admit it’s not exactly an unappealing sight.

“Well, they build up with our history,” Kal explains, still tinged pink but relaxing enough to step closer and sit next to Bruce on his humongous, satiny cushion. “As a man of thirty-five who has not been idle, mine has grown quite long… I am not reluctant to share it, Bee. I am merely aware that many cultures do not share our patience for it.”

“Mmmh,” Bruce says.

It sounds fair enough.

“Now that is sorted out,” Kal asks after watching Bruce’s lips a few seconds too long, “may I interest you in a change of clothing? I assume your uniform is meant to protect you, but it hardly looks comfortable and it seems to me like your body could use something softer to rest in.”

“I have to get off this planet,” Bruce replies.

Kal nods, accommodating, and leans back against the cushions. It’s Bruce’s imagination that provides the sensation of their arms brushing, the warmth of skin on skin—the batsuit won’t allow for anything less than a full punch to be felt. That knowledge doesn’t change anything to the sensation, though, and Bruce shivers with it, all his senses focusing on the area entirely against his will. His brain, for some reason, reminds him that it’s been at least ten years since he stopped playing the incorrigible playboy and sex-enthusiast.

“This is a vacation moon,” Kal says, voice perfectly even despite the heat creeping up Bruce’s neck. “There are daily shuttles for arrival and departures. When the next one arrives tomorrow morning, I can ask them to send you to the nearest Green Lanterns’ outpost, and from there you should have very little trouble going back to….”

“Earth,” Bruce supplies, and winces when that causes Kal’s eyes to widen.

“I have heard of this planet! Some of the more famous Green Lanterns hailed from your world and—ah. Forgive me, I can see you do not wish to be questioned. That is fair, you must still be quite tired from your ordeal.”

Bruce nods, careful not to look too relieved at the prospect. He is tired though. Not as much as he should be by any right, but enough that the prospect of having to balance and measure what he said about Earth to guard it against potentially hostile aliens sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.

“Well, then,” Kal says, still smiling, like nothing Bruce says can possibly alter his good mood. “Shall I renew my offer of clean clothes then? I promise not to touch or alter your belongings in any way. And after that, perhaps a light supper, and then to bed.”

Bruce swallows. Kal, it’s already been established, is not hard on the eyes. At all. He’s tall and broad shouldered, and in a human he’d be pretty much exactly Bruce’s preferred type. As an alien, he still is, but then there’s also the strength, and the entirely unembarrassed curiosity, and the possibilities provided with potentially different anatomies that Bruce has never considered before in his life but now...now Bruce is wondering if it’s a good idea to dress himself in loose fabric.

Then Kal’s eyes catch his, and Bruce decides if he’s only going to spend one night here and never see the guy again, he might as well enjoy it. He says yes, and keeps a very close eye on the way Kal’s ass pushes against his tunic as he gets up, and then retreats toward the stairs.

Of course, Bruce should know better than to let himself get distracted, let alone so easily. He’s still technically on a mission—well, on his way back from a mission—and if anyone on Earth realizes what transpired here, even if nothing else happens, he will absolutely never ever hear the end of it. Ever. And yet….

Well, frankly, maybe Bruce is just getting old, but he thinks he’s allowed to indulge himself here. He’s recovering from injuries that are frankly ridiculously light for the kind of accident he was in, he’s on an unknown planet light years away from home, his transportation is most likely assured—unless he’s really losing it and missing red flags in Kal’s behavior—and he hasn’t had sex in over eight years. He gets to indulge a little. It’s only one night.

“I took the liberty of picking night clothing as well,” Kal calls after a few moments, appearing at the top of the spiral stairs. From below, it looked like the bedroom was empty the whole time, which Bruce must admit is a neat trick. “I figured you would wish to change before retiring for the night.”

Bruce, clinging to the last of his fraying dignity—he’s indulging, that doesn’t mean he has to be proud about it—manages to hum instead of saying something that could be misconstrued as flirting, but Kal doesn’t seem to mind. He says something about preparing the meal while Bruce changes and ‘do not worry, I shan’t be looking your way’, and then leaves Bruce alone.

Peeling himself out of the suit takes more effort than Bruce would like, but it’s also far from the hardest he’s had it, and he gets re-dressed in a decent amount of time. By then, his legs feel less like jelly, and he’s actually able to sit up and scoot on the ground to gather his things in a manageable pile and set them aside in a corner where they should, hopefully, not be disturbed.

After a while, Kal reemerges from the cooking area with a large tray filled with over a dozen bowls of colorful meats and fruits, several things that look like root vegetables, and even a bowl of something that could be a sort of love-child of wheat and rice. It looks both perplexing—Bruce has never had a purple savory dish before—and familiar, which is probably why his hands twitch toward the food before he can remember to ask:

“Anything in particular to eat with?”

“Merely your fingers,” Kal says, rinsing his hands in a silver dish of lightly fragranced water. “Do clean them beforehand, however.”

Bruce makes sure to give him a “duh” look as he reaches for the dish and rinses his own fingers.

“According to the available information, these should be safe for you to consume,” Kal says, grabbing what looks like a grape but turns out, upon tasting, to be a piece of meat.

“Unlike that purple thing before?” Bruce asks, the back of his neck heating up when he thinks back on their interactions in the cave.

“The shell is dangerous,” Kal agrees, “and I didn’t have any way to explain. Doing the pouring myself seemed to be the safest option.”

“I assume you won’t be feeding me for this meal then,” Bruce says.

Then gives himself a mental slap in the face because, really? For anyone else, that would be one thing, but Bruce is, without false modesty, one of the best martial artists on Earth, an honors graduate from the best university the USA have to offer, and the fucking Batman...and there he is, making an ass out of himself just because it’s been a while since he got sexed up and he just happened to fall in the backyard of the most fuckable alien in the universe. Un-fucking-believable.

Kal, either oblivious or going for coy, gives him an amused smile and nothing else, although he does readjust his position until one of his knees points to Bruce, the other leg extended on the other side in a way that must stretch the crotch of his pants under the pooling fabric of his tunic. Bruce is kind of glad for his own, vivid-red flap of fabric at the moment.

“So,” he asks after he’s eaten enough to settle the growl of his stomach, “where are we exactly? You mentioned this was a vacation moon.”

“Indeed. Cidaris orbits around an uninhabitable planet, yet somehow retained an atmosphere for an extremely long amount of time. Kryptonian architects started thinking of kryptoforming it a few centuries ago… It has been a favored vacation post for several decades, now.”

“Are you Kryptonian?”

“I am,” Kal replies, a piece of the grape-like meat resting against his lower lip and staining it purple. “Although I don’t suppose someone whose family possesses as much as mine does can fairly call himself an ordinary one.”

Oh god. He’s a rich alien—for all Bruce knows, he could be a real life, genuine Brucie Wayne with the wits to match, and he sounds like he’s just escaped a Ren Faire. And the worst of it all is, none of that has any dampening effect on the burst of heat that goes through Bruce when their knees brush. There are times when Bruce hardly even recognizes himself.

“What is your home like?”

Bruce throws Kal a look, but he neither looks nor feels like he’s trying to wriggle information out of Bruce...and even if he were, it’s not like he can’t answer without giving away vital information about Earth. He takes a look around before he answers though: the tall, organic and yet intricately carved arches of smooth wood, the invisible shields that leave the eyes free to roam over the infinity of the ocean and a truly spectacular sunset. The quiet, the scent of salt in the air—the kind of atmosphere that makes you want to breathe deeper but quieter, as if it stole all the stress from your lungs and replaced it with a good mouthful of rest.

“Not like this,” Bruce says to start with. “It’s a lot more angular. The buildings aren’t see-through, and you can’t see the stars at night. It’s...an old city. A wounded city. Frankly, with all the terrible things people do to it and in it, it’s probably a miracle it’s still standing.”

That’s...a staggering understatement, Bruce knows. But on the other hand: how do you even begin to explain Gotham to an alien? People who live less than fifty miles outside of it have enough of a hard time trying to grasp its essence as it is—they think it’s a blight on an otherwise very fine state...which, to be fair, it is. In some ways. That’s the easy part, though.

The hard part is trying to explain all the good side, like diamonds in the mud. The way so many people try to turn things around still, in little ways—insignificant ways, but also in the ways that matter most. How do you explain the dirty alleys with their gang fights and their kids laughing around firecrackers in summer? There are no words to convey all of that in a way that even begins to scratch the surface of what the city is—of what it means to Bruce. He knows: he’s tried. Even Dick never quite seemed to get it though—not enough to stay, at any rate. The only one who came close was—Bruce doesn’t have the words to explain it.

And yet, something must show on his face: by his side, still sprawling over the cushion like a particularly content cat, Kal smiles.

“And yet, you would not leave it behind.”

“Never in my life,” Bruce replies.

There’s something trying to creep in his throat as he speaks, and he manages to tamp it down but not before it pokes at his chest in a way he’s wholly unfamiliar with. it’s such a simple statement, and yet somehow, it’s something even his closest friends—inasmuch as he has any—have rarely heard from him, if at all. It’s an unexpected thing to find himself saying to a one-night stand, and Bruce would sigh if he hadn’t accepted the most likely outcome of the evening already.

“If this is a vacation moon,” he asks in a bit to shift the attention, “how come you’re here alone?”

Kal stiffens, and Bruce...deliberately doesn’t wince. He can’t truthfully claim that he hadn’t expected a sensitive topic, but Kal was more than polite about Gotham when, Bruce is very aware, it would have been easy for him to be less than polite about it. It seems...petty, in retrospect, to answer that with a barb.

“In the interest of not spoiling the good mood,” Kal replies with forced levity, “I will say that I was in need of some personal space, and ask that you allow me to stop there.”

Bruce nods. Even if he disagreed, he’s got a sneaking suspicion it wouldn’t be all that hard for Kal to overpower him. The thought may leave him a little warmer in the neck than he’s ready to admit, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to get rude about it. The real surprise, however, comes when Bruce hears himself ask:

“Would you like me to give you some?”

“Space?” Kal asks. He laughs, incredulous, when Bruce nods; the shift of his body making them sink closer into the dip of the cushion. “And waste all the good works of physics when I could just as easily have brought you to a bench?”

Bruce snorts, but it comes out short, almost surprised. He hadn’t realized he’d leaned in too, hadn’t realized how close they were to touching, and now his elbow is resting against Kal’s shoulder and even through the fabric it feels like that’s setting his entire torso on fire, the warmth of it slowly baking up his arm, his shoulder, his neck, until every breath of air on exposed skin feels like a caress. Bruce breathes in, deliberately slow, and then allows himself to sink back, just a little. He does, after all, know how to do this.

“You’re right,” he says, faux-nonchalant, “let’s not be rude.”

Kal smiles, bright and brilliant in a way Bruce has only ever seen on Diana before—it’s the kind of smile you don’t often see on adults, and it’s all the more precious for it. Not that Bruce would ever admit it. Still, combined with Kal’s jawline, the blue of his eyes, the circumstances...Bruce leans in closer, half expecting another witty exchange. Kal responds in kind instead and, after a heartbeat’s pause, presses their mouths together. Part of Bruce, up until then, had been expecting something a little different from the usual, but Kal’s mouth has a regular mouth taste, with a thin echo of that purple meat hidden in the flavor. Other than that, and the acute awareness of the damage he could inflict with those teeth of his, it’s no different from kissing a nice, smiley, really good looking human.

It has been roughly a decade since the last time Bruce indulged, though, and he is begrudgingly forced to admit that maybe that’s what makes it so intense, lips so sensitive they almost hurt with it, his chest heaving just from that one point of contact, the rest of his body tensing not to go overboard right away. Around them the lights dim a little, highlighting the transparency of the walls, and the heat spreads from Bruce’s head to his chest, to his groin, and every other extremity he has.

With a sigh, he goes back to kissing Kal, one hand coming up to push at his shoulder...and be met with resistance. He pulls back, body cooling fast enough to feel cold, and asks:

“Did I misinterpret?”

“Not at all,” Kal replies with a satisfied smile and a shrug. “I merely had a different image of the proceedings and failed to consider you might have your own opinion on the matter.”

“I can’t fucking believe I’m about to sleep with a guy who speaks like he’s in a Jane Austen space novel,” Bruce mutters.

If it wasn’t enough to stop him before, though, it’s certainly not enough to stop him now.

“What did you have in mind?”

Kal’s grin turns impish and, in the blink of an eye, he’s on his knees and hovering over Bruce’s lap.

“Do feel free to stop me at any time,” he says. “Things are so much better when both parties feel properly enthusiastic.”

Bruce kisses Kal again as a way to make him stop talking—he does have limits—and it works perfectly except for the part where it sets his skin ablaze again. He doesn’t complain about it though: he may be sensitive to the point of near pain, but he has no intention of giving up on the feeling, and revels in the intensity of it, the feather-light feel of Kal’s fingers against his wrists, Kal’s lips on his neck, Kal’s knees around his thighs.

Bruce sighs when he’s pushed down on the bed, and pushes his hips and erection up against Kal’s ass when he is given a few seconds to object. From there, the heavy weight of another body settles over him, and he pushes up again—the friction against Kal’s clad crotch sends sparks flying all through Bruce’s nervous system, pulling every hair on his body to stand as goosebumps overtake him before there’s even been a move made towards removing his shirt. Bruce really needs to do this more often.

He’s distracted from the thought when, after some awkward maneuvering that almost has them toppling to the side, Kal finally manages to get his hands under Bruce’s tunic and on his waist, barely waiting long enough to get consent before he pulls it off Bruce’s shoulders—Bruce is fairly sure he catches a smug look in his Suit’s direction and...well. Fair. He still reaches up to worry at a nipple in retaliation, satisfied with the reaction he gets right up until he receives the same treatment. Evidently, the days when he was perfectly capable of ignoring his own body until he was sure to leave his partner satisfied are long gone.

He can’t say that he minds too much.

It feels like an eternity before Kal’s mouth finally moves past his pectorals, kissing and caressing his belly, his arms, until it feels like Bruce could come just from that and he makes an impatient noise and pushes down on Kal’s shoulder. It feels a bit like pushing a brick wall, which turns out to be an extremely pleasant sensation, and so Bruce doesn’t even bother with performative annoyance when Kal lifts his hips off the mattress and slides the back of his pants over his ass.

“Oh,” he starts, pleased when he finds bare skin there, “I must say I find this detail very—what is that?”

It’s a good thing no one is here to witness Bruce blink dumbly at the transparent ceiling, or turn around to look past the furniture into the night, where there’s nothing but trees and grass to look at him. Eventually though, he does turn back to Kal and finds him staring at his crotch with a perplexed face. Bruce looks down at where his erection is flagging under the jockstrap he favors with the special fabric of his undersuit. Back up at Kal.

“Problem?”

“Where I am from,” Kal replies with the slow diction of someone trying not to offend, “one may go with underwear or without. This seems like a...an interesting in-between.”

“Do you want me to keep it on?” Bruce asks.

He’s done far more adventurous during one-night stands, and with people he found far less pleasant than Kal. It wouldn’t even be that big a deal. After a moment of consideration, though, Kal asks:

“Is your species capable of climaxing more than once during the night?”

“Yes.”

Given how his body has been reacting so far, Bruce is even cautiously optimistic about attempting a third round, should they be inclined.

“In that case, I should like to admire you in full just now, if you are amenable.”

Bruce has to roll his eyes at that, otherwise he runs the risk of getting caught in the moment and finding this way of talking sexy when it’s anything but. He does dispose of the jockstrap, though, and makes sure to leave it on a nearby cushion where it’ll be easy to retrieve. After that he lies back down on the cushion and gestures for Kal to proceed.

He’s half expecting Kal to take him in his mouth, the break having diminished but not destroyed his erection, but instead the man dives straight for Bruce’s balls—he licks and sucks at them, makes them roll over the bridge of his nose in a way that leaves searing burns over the skin, fills him with heat like a cup in long, slow licks until finally, with one long pull of mouth around his length, he tips over and comes with a silent shudder.

He stays in place for a while, lying down and breathing hard while Kal massages his muscles into a more relaxed state. Eventually—a shorter length of time for him than for most men his age—Bruce’s heartbeat is back to normal, or close enough. Only then does he allow himself to sigh again, and sink even further into the giant pillow.

“Am I to understand you are—”

“Do not say ‘amenable’,” Bruce warns, and Kal chuckles. “But yes.”

“Oh, good. Would you like to proceed as you first intended?”

“Not if you want a third round.”

Kal smiles like a kid at Christmas, and Bruce tries very hard not to groan, even though he knows he’ll get there at some point of the night. He might as well fight for what little dignity he has left, right? Right.

Somehow, he gets even less sleep that night than he’d anticipated.

Bruce wakes up well past sunrise the next morning, the sound of waves in his ears and the smell of salt on his tongue. He still aches in a myriad of different ways, but a lot of them have turned pleasant, and his legs aren’t made of jelly anymore. He takes advantage of the fact to get up and walk to where Kal is seated at a small table turned toward the ocean. The shields, or windows—whichever it is—are gone from between the wooden arches, allowing Bruce to spy the hints of a very large net in the platformed bedroom above before he steps up to Kal. The young alien hasn’t noticed Bruce’s presence, yet, which gives Bruce time to notice he looks extremely pleased with himself.

To be fair, Bruce would be too if he’d managed to bring a near-fifty-year-old, injured man off four times in one night. Not that he’s told Kal about the exceptional aspect of it, but it is possible he was a little too well fucked to hide his own surprise entirely… Either way, Kal is very satisfied, breakfast is still waiting for Bruce, and the mist is only just clearing from around the trees. The air around them is crisp, bracing in a way that makes Bruce half-heartedly wish for Kal’s ridiculous sweater. At the table, Kal still looks entirely oblivious to Bruce’s presence.

Bruce clears his throat, and laughs when that surprises Kal enough to send him sprawling down onto the wooden deck.

“Good morning,” he deadpans while Kal throws a napkin at his head.

“Is that how people on Earth court one another?” Kal asks in mock outrage. “Mind-shattering sex and then heart attacks?”

Bruce doesn’t smile at that, too aware of where he’s going and who he will need to be soon, but he does allow his lips to quirk up.

“Maybe I didn’t think you’d be so affected by something so...inconsequential.”

“Oh, it was plenty consequential enough,” Kal replies without missing a beat with a saucy glance at Bruce’s crotch. “I might even consider letting you know if I ever visit Earth, someday.”

“You can do that?” Bruce asks, satisfied when his sudden spike of stress remains inaudible.

“I do work with the Green Lanterns,” Kal shrugs. “I wouldn’t call it probable, but I suppose it isn’t entirely impossible.”

Bruce hums and, to his relief, Kal doesn’t take offense to it. They share a peaceful breakfast instead, with fruits, fresh water and some kind of crackers that Kal dips into what must be a Kryptonian equivalent to coffee. Bruce tries to get some of it, the house encyclopedia informs them that it might not be safe for humans, and between one thing and the next the time for Bruce to get dressed and follow Kal to the shuttle.

He’s not reluctant about it by far, but if he’s being honest with himself—which he usually tries not to be—Bruce has to admit he’s also not quite as impatient to leave as he thought he’d be.

It was an excellent night, after all.

[liw-the-melancholic-apple]

How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

A fic taking place in the marauders era. While the political climate seems to head to a conflict, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter are still just teenagers. Dealing with typical teenage problems.

But this year their little group grows. Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Six: The Christmas Party II

With only an hour left we sprinted back to our dorm. While Nica and Chloe started folding up their clothes and throwing them into the trunks, Milla and Blair went through their nightstands and I tidied up the bathroom. Over the course of the last four months we had collected all kind of trash in that room and we had spread our shower gels, shampoo bottles, potions and make-up kits all through it. I went into both of the shower cabins to organise the bottles and viles there according to their owners, making one extra pile for all the stuff I couldn’t place.

Next I looked at the five sinks and the big mirror. One hell of a mess. To make a plan for the sinks I started by cleaning up the mirror and the little shelves in front of it. Organising the make-up and brushes per owner I filled the shelves with them, cleaned the sinks themselves and then repositioned the toothbrushes and –pastes.

“Bathroom is done!”, I chirped when I entered the dorm.

“Wardrobes are all empty!”, Blair replied, her hair standing up in every direction.

“Milla and I are done and Nica and Chloe are just now moving on to the nightstands. How late is it?”

“Quarter to eleven. You better hurry up!”, I suggested as I threw myself on my bed and took out my thriller from my backpack. I had just gotten back into the action and could have bitten my nails at the scene that was described – the heroine entering an old and abandoned asylum – when Chloe sat down next to me and made me shriek.

“Don’t do that! Mer-lin. You wanna give me a heart attack?”

“Sorry. We’re done, though. Want to go downstairs?”

We all put on an extra jumper and stuffed our coats with scarves, gloves and hats. Then we headed to the foyer. And waited. And waited. And waited. At twenty past eleven I got aggrevated. “It would be very much like them to just let us wait here. They haven’t pranked us at all since we’ve become friends”, I said tapping my foot on the first step.

“I’m not saying it wouldn’t be them, but they should be smarter than to piss us off hours before two of us are being their dates”, Chloe answered.

Half an hour late the boys sprinted down the stairs and nearly ran into us, profusely apologising to all of us.

“All my fault, I ran into Lily!”, was one of the first things I could hear.

“We got carried away teasing him”, it came from Remus.

“Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry”, Pettigrew kept going on while Black smirked to himself remarking that we had seriously waited for them.

“Shush! Shut up!”, Chloe ordered them to silence.

“Did you at least get a smile out of Lily?”, she then asked Potter. “She didn’t say I was an arrogant pest. Which is nearly as good, right?”

“Sure, Potter, sure.”

Five o’ clock came rather quickly. I had not expected the day to fly by as it did. The snowball fight had been epic. The teams had been determined by our birthdates: First six months of the year against last six months of the year, which meant that Remus, James, Chloe and I had to take on the other five. It also meant that we had completely missed Black’s birthday on third of November which we all felt terrible for. He assured us that it wasn’t a big deal since we had basically known him for only six days at the time but we all felt that we should have given him something for his birthday.

After lunch we went back outside to play three rounds of quidditch and then we warmed up while being introduced to a couple of very helpful secret passages. One led from our common room up to the seventh floor on which the Gryffindor common room was located and we all were convinced that that passage would be used a lot. Another one was a short cut to the dungeons and then there was a secret room behind a statue of a three headed lion, that the boys usually used when they were pursued by Filch.

They wouldn’t tell us how long it took them to find all of these secrets but they did hint that there was an arsenal of hidden passages that they didn’t show us.

We had so much fun that none of us really wanted to get ready for Slughorn’s party although it had been everything any of us had talked about in the last week.

“Guys it’s five! We’re supposed to be at Slughorn’s by six thirty.”

“Relax. You have forever”, Potter tried to calm Nica down.

“If we would all not care about our hair, like you, maybe”, she answered with a smirk. “But we have five girls and two showers, need to dry our hair, put on our dresses and jewellery and make up our faces. Ninety minutes hardly seems enough.”

“I’m sure none of you actually need the make-up”, Black commented absendmindedly.

“That’s how you make all the girls fall for you”, Chloe slapped him against the shoulder.

“What? I mean that.”

“Well, thanks.”

We walked them to their common room and learned that the portrait of the fat lady with a Milla-pink coloured dress was actually the entrance to the famous red and gold den. We rushed down to our common room via the newly discovered secret passage.

“Shower’s free!”, Chloe yelled while rushing past me in her towel.

“Finally!” I grabbed my house-crested towel and headed in. After the snow and the quidditch I needed a shower. It was a quick one, though, since my lengthy hair always needed a lot of time to be dried. Even with the drying charm I had learned from my mum. I used it on the bathroom and mirrors first, so nobody would melt while doing their make-up and then put on my rings, necklace and earrings while an invisible hair dryer blew at my hair, making it stand up like I’ve been electrocuted.

Milla already wore her lilac mini dress that made her look several years older than she was and went into the bathroom to do her makeup; Nica was trying to get her afro into perfect shape, while still in her underwear; Blair wore that awesome midnight-blue dress and put on her new blue heels, her hair already done; Chloe had started with the make-up and needed me to help her zip up her dress.

Once she was zipped in my hair was dry and I brushed it out in the bathroom. Instead of my typical topknot I braided it into one thick strand and rolled that up at the back of my head. As soon as I was done with that I ran back to my desk and put on my lovely charcoal grey dress with the burgundy pattern. Blair who was done first did up the buttons on the back before I slipped into my burgundy pumps that I had bought especially for this party. The little bolero jacket that matched my dress I left hanging for now. Back in the bathroom I went in heavy with the eyeliner and grey eye-shadow – both things that I didn’t do on a day to day – and found a wonderful dark red lipstick.

Nica was the last one to put on her dress – in the end she had decided on a mustardyellow numbers with a white paisley pattern  that barely covered her bum – and a little stressed we stumbled down the stairs into the common room. Crick and Magnus were already waiting there for us, talking to Felix who was fidgeting with his tie.

“I’m the luckiest man alive”, Magnus uttered when he kissed Chloe and made her twirl.

“That. Dress. Is. The. Bomb”, Crick stretched every word as he kissed Blair on the cheek. She blushed and thanked him. “You don’t look bad yourself.” The boys all wore dressrobes, all black with yellow ties. I suspected that Felix had asked Crick for advice.

“Toby’s already gone and Sian said not to wait for her. Shall we go?”

“I told Siobhan to meet me on the third floor. I think she’ll tag along with Potter”, Felix bumbled along still fidgeting with his tie as we climbed the stairs.

“Are you nervous, kid?”, I asked smiling up at him as he had had the nerve to outgrow me at only thirteen.

“No…I mean…a little?”

“Don’t you worry. It’s gonna be great. I promise. These parties are amazing.”

“What do I talk to her about?”

“What do you usually say to her?”

“We mainly talk about potions. I tutor her after all.”

“She’s a quidditch keeper and you’re a quidditch fan. You’ll figure something out.” I padded him on the back as we rounded the corner to the statue of Avery the Antisocial where the boys and Siobhan waited.

I watched Felix hug her and compliment her black dress with a smile before I acknowledged my own date.

“Pettigrew! Don’t you clean up nicely!” His dress robes were a dark grey, as if we had planned it and his golden tie matched the buttons. He had obviously done his hair and levelled himself up in the process.

“I thought I was supposed to say that to you”, he grinned.

“Did you buy the dress after finding out which robes I’d wear?”

“Sure, all carefully planned.”

“For real, though, you look great.” He offered me his arm and I took it.

Potter was folding himself over complimenting Nica on her little nothing of a dress, while Black stared at Blair.

“Oh my god. You look like one of those pin-up girls.” He realised her insecure look. “In the best way possible. Hottest girl of the night! Well done, Cricket.”

“Thanks, Black.” Crick didn’t like Black, I knew it but his smile was genuine. I couldn’t help but feel like those two boys understood each other in that moment. They understood that Blair did look great in her dress and that she needed to hear it. They both earned an enormous amount of points in my book for knowing her so well and caring enough to build her up.

“I’m lost for words.” Remus mouth was half opened as Milla turned around in front of him.

“Is that good or bad?”, she asked with a rosy face.

“Good. You look…so good.”

Black who had stopped complimenting Blair notched me in the side. “This is going to be so great”, he whispered, earning a knowing look from Pettigrew.

“Is that what you two always whisper about when you have your little one-on-ones?”, he asked me as we made our way to Slughorn’s office.

“Which that do you mean?”

“That that”, he nodded at Remus who now offered Milla his arm, still obviously in awe.

“Ehm… yeah. We’ve been trying to get them to admit that they like each other.”

“Seems like Sirius is right, then. Even a blind man could see that they do. You should have a splendid night.”

“I expect to have a splendid night whatever they do”, I replied. “And I’m making you responsible for that!” He gave me a heartfelt smile and nodded. “I’ll do my very best.”

In our fairly big group we rolled up to Slughorn’s  Office and were allowed in by one of the houseelves. As every year the room looked stunning. It was even bigger than at the dinner and the pretty big four round tables had disappeared. In their place were little bar tables and sofas in one corner and an impressive dance floor in the other. From a central point in the ceiling panels of golden satin and purple velvet draped down into every last corner of the room, giving the impression that it was a giant tent outside rather than just another office in the castle. The floor was covered in tiles of black marble with golden accents. Somewhere out of sight a band was playing Christmas tunes and instead of candles the room was lit by tiny perfectly round glasses with yellow and red flames in them. It was a sight to behold.

Pettigrew had a hard time closing his mouth as it fell open whenever he spotted a new absurdity. Slughorn made a point of inviting old members of the club to his Christmas parties as well as other important people he knew. While we were slowly making our way to the buffet to finally eat some dinner, I was fairly certain that I saw two famous quidditch players and big head from the ministry. The first person who spoke to me, though, was somebody I didn’t expect at all.

“Miss de Witt, long time no see. At first I wasn’t sure if it was you.” A stocky man in his sixties, with a receding hairline and square jaw reached out to shake my hand. It took me a moment to recognise him. It had indeed been forever ago.

“Mr Armstrong?”, I eventually said shaking the man’s hand after I had imagined him without the giant glasses, more maroon hair and a beard.

“The very same, the very same. How are your parents?”

“Doing well, I hear. I have to admit it’s usually Felix who writes them. He’s here, too. Have you already run into him?”

“Not yet, but I’ll make sure to do so.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. This is Peter Pettigrew, a six year from Gryffindor, very gifted prankster. And Peter, this is Healer Lawrence Armstrong, he used to be my father’s superior at St. Mungo’s.”

“ Pleasure to meet you, Sir.”

“And you, Mr Pettigrew, and you. Is it your excellent pranking that got you invited to the party, then?”

“ To be honest, Sir, I wasn’t invited at all. De...Jette offered to take me since all my friends got to go. I’m afraid Professor Slughorn is anything but impressed with me.”

“Oversight on his part”, I assured Mr Armstrong. “Peter, as I said, is very analytical.”

“Just not a potion’s master, I suppose. Horace can be a little small minded”, Mr Armstrong smiled at Pettigrew who  in turn smiled at me.

“But do I understand that you managed to impress Horace, Miss de Witt.”

“Partially, I suppose. I am a prefect this year, that always makes it easier to get invited. But Professor Horton seems to have mentioned that I don’t have a lot of problems in Defence against the Dark Arts.”

“I hear she’s brilliant!”, Pettigrew chimed in.

“He will be pushing you for Auror, I reckon.”

“Occasionally. Do you mind my asking how you know him, Sir?”

“Not at all, not at all. I used to go to school with Horace. We always were friendly and remained in contact. When I can make it I always come to find new healers for the hospital. Retired or not. As a matter of fact your mother was at these parties, when she was younger. I got her to consider the career.”  I had heard that story only about a million times but still nodded my head and “ooh”ed.

“If I remember correctly you never wanted to take after your parents, right?”

“I’m not that good with broken bones, I’m afraid. The blood I could do but broken bones and vomit make me shriek. I don’t think I’d be a lot of help to anybody.”

“Fair enough. What about you, Mr Pettigrew, ever considered the noble profession of healing others?”

“Ehm… Truth be told, Mr Armstrong, I think I’m not good enough at Potions to get into the program.”

“So, you have thought about it?”

“I’ve entertained the thought, Sir, yes.”

“Well, with a clever and trusted girl as Miss de Witt in your corner, I’m sure you’d manage to get in. Just you write me if you should want to apply.”

“Are you serious, Sir?”

“Absolutely. Have a good night, kids.”

“And you, Mr Armstrong.”

Once the former healer had left us Pettigrew fell into my arms and thanked me over and over again for having introduced him. He apparently had always wanted to become a healer and was rather crushed when he found out what the required NEWT in Potions was. Beaming with pride and joy he filled his plate with snacks and fingerfood and dragged me over to his friends.

“Guess what de Witt just did!” In every detail he described the conversation we had just had while I wondered where Remus and Milla were off to. Blair caught my look and grinned. She whipped her chin to dance floor.

“T’is the season”, a hoarse voice whispered into my ear when I had just found Milla and Remus shaking their every limb to the rather boring music. It wasn’t over the top romantic yet, but they were clearly too busy with each other to notice that we weren’t around or that I was watching them.

“T’is”, I answered. While I chatted to Black about our dreams for our two best friends a six year girl who I thought was in Gryffindor ran into me, spilling her drink over my brand new dress. She neither stopped nor said sorry and just went on.

“Pardon me!”, I yelled after her but she ignored me. “What’s her deal?”

Potter came towards us with a raised wand and rescued my dress form being ruined. “This is what happens when you speak to Sirius for too long at an event like this. People will think that he’s into you and then the girls get all catty.”

“I talk to Sirius all the time! What’s different now.”

“You usually don’t look like that when you talk to him”, Pettigrew grinned.

“Aren’t you full of compliments today. Thanks doe the cleanup, Potter.”

We spent about an hour just watching Remus and Milla getting more and more comfortable with each other before we decided to join them on the dance floor. I spotted Felix and Siobhan a couple of times both seeming rather unimpressed with one another. Shame. They looked cute together.

While we were mainly hopping around in a big circle every now and again, when the band played a particularly classic song, Potter, Black and Chloe showed off their pure blood upbringing by forcing the rest of us to formally dance with them. The first one who got me was Black who knew exactly what he was doing despite usually neglecting everything he was taught by his parents. Especially when it came to etiquette of any form. When I asked him about it he just shrugged and said that he liked dancing.

At some point Milla and Remus joined us again, a lot less nervous or flustered than at the beginning of the night, which had all of us others grinning knowingly. Although only Black and I had really talked about what those two were blossoming into the rest was fully aware of it as well.

After my round with Black I did two more with Potter, while Pettigrew was taught by Chloe and Blair – who let go of her shyness halfway through the night and revealed that she, too, had been tortured by her parents with dancing lessons. When Pettigrew and I attempted one of the marvellously complicated dances together we even looked half decent. Mag and Chloe snuck off at some point to enjoy each other and remained missing for the entire night. Felix waved me goodbye around midnight leaving Siobhan to giggle with some fourth year Ravenclaw and looking very relieved. His date had gone a lot worse than mine.

I thoroughly enjoyed my night with Pettigrew. Just like Nica and Potter and Crick and Blair did. We were all fully aware that we were here as friends and that it was good fun that we were all together. The awkwardness of having to find something to say or jumping at accidently touching each other was absent all night – if you exclude Remus and Milla who got less and less awkward as time went on. All of us girls got hit with disapproving looks and elbows in the sides when we were talking to Black, who apologised to all of us and explained to me that this was the reason he didn’t want to take Nica.

“So, this happens regularly?”, Blair laughed with red cheeks from the spiked punch.

“Three years ago I came with Mary MacDonald, she’s a friend of Evans’. I asked her because James wanted to ask out Lily and we thought his chances would increase if her friend was glued to me. Mary actually liked the idea but she was treated like a leper for a month. She still scolds me for that…”

“Speaking of Evans…” Potter dashed away and managed to convince Lily to dance with him. It took him a good five minutes and it looked like she was leaving him to stand by himself at least three times but in the end she took his hand. He taught her the same dance Black had taught me. The easiest one. And coincidentally the one that had both partners stand the closest to each other. He wasn’t dumb, our Potter.

As soon as the song ended Potter indicated a bow, said about two sentences and came back to us where he was met with applause.

“How on earth?”, gasped Remus while high-fiving Potter.

“I took Blair’s advice. Not too over the top. Polite. Genuine. And I told her that I thought I deserved one dance after four years of let downs. Besides, I think she wanted to learn how to dance. Seemed into it.”

“Well done, mate!”, Nica screamed. Then she leaned into him and whispered something that had him smirk and blush at the same time.

“Well, of course I’ll show you that again.” They both disappeared into the mass of people on the dancefloor and – just like Mag and Chloe – weren’t seen or heard from again. Nica, it seemed, had accomplished her mission.

Us girls exchanged looks that ranged from impressed to shocked but ultimately forgot about the whole thing as we had too much fun.

Professor Slughorn had to force us out when the dark of night turned into dusty grey of dawn. Apart from us there was a drunk and sleeping vampire left, who Black had decorated with garlic stickers and two snogging couples. We thanked him for the splendid party and walked into the corridor.

“Last smoke together?”, Pettigrew suggested and we all agreed. The courtyard was still really dark as the trees and walls blocked out the slowly rising sun.

“Would it be proper mental to suggest to go up to the astronomy tower and watch the sunrise?”, Blair asked just before we were done smoking.

“No! I love it!” Nica was in. So were I and Crick.

“Little romantic for my taste, but fine” Black nonchalantly snipped away his fag. Pettigrew was game for anything.

“I think I’m gonna go to bed”, Milla said. “I’m knackered.”

“I’ll escort you to your common room then, make sure you don’t get lost.” Remus managed to ignore our grins and didn’t even blush. “Meet you lot up there?”, he asked over his shoulder when he lead Milla back to the foyer.

“Oh. My. God!”, Black chirped when the two were out of earshot.

“Such a sap”, I commented while we slowly walked towards the door and made our way up the stairs.

After a spectacular sunrise in the bitter cold we bid our Potter-less Potter-posse goodnight and went to our dorm. I just wanted to sleep. It had been a really long day. But when I saw the look on Milla’s face I knew that the night wasn’t over yet.

“He didn’t kiss me!” A tear rolled down her cheek, painting a small blackish-grey line on her face. It wouldn’t be the last one.

[the-only-straight-fander]

Volleyball AU

A super niche fanfiction about the sides on a volleyball team. What can I say, I’m a sucker for Sanders sides and volleyball.

[excerpt from the latest edition of the Daily Post newspaper] 

And in other news, the star setter of the Oakheights High School men's volleyball team has signed with Long Beach State. Drew Amsterdam is the projected favorite for the next year of college volleyball thanks to both his remarkably clean hands and his devilish good looks. He leaves behind him in Oakheights a sea of equally disappointed and admiring faces. Without his astounding assists, it is rumored that Oakheights may drop as low as class 3A or 2A within the following years without their key setter. However, despite his acceptance to Long Beach, it is rumored that Amsterdam may not be the main setter quite yet… (more on page three).

[end excerpt]

Roman le Roi lets out a contemptuous snort as he disdainfully throws the newspaper back down onto the floor by his feet. Not looking up from wrapping his foot, Remy asks passively from his seat on the floor, "Was I right, or was I right?" 

Letting out an obnoxious sigh that whooshes his wavy chestnut hair out of his face, Roman mutters unwillingly, "You were right."

Still not looking up, Remy reaches his hand out in a "give me” gesture. Roman makes a face at the hand, but moves to his bag after Remy snaps once. He carefully counts out five dollars and sets it in the waiting hand. It's out of sight in an instant. Thus further shamed, Roman expels another heavy breath and leans his head in his hands. At this moment, Emile prances in, his usual floaty, dreamy self. "It's finally time for volleyball! I'm so excited to see everyone! I haven't played in so long!" he sing-songs as he skips further into the still mostly deserted locker room. The bubbly smile on his face becomes slightly more wry when he catches sight of Roman. "Ohhhh. You saw the article didn't you?"

Roman gives a muffled grunt of affirmation.

"He paid me already, too," Remy adds in, finally looking up as he leans back on his arms, pushing his sunglasses up to wink at the newcomer. "Long time no see, babes."

Emile gives a soft giggle. "Already winning money off the young ones I see. You really shouldn't do that you know; it's not fair: they don't know any better."

Remy snorts, but is still smiling sweetly. "Then they should learn. And who better to learn from than yours truly." Saying this, he promptly lies down, replacing the ever present sunglasses.

Emile shakes his head fondly and steps over his splayed form with practiced ease.

Emile takes several minutes to pull on his knee pads and is tying his shoes before he is struck by a thought. Confused by the silence, he directs a question at Roman. "Hey, where's your brother? I haven't heard any screaming, so he can't be here right now."

The pitiable Roman lets out another groan and seems to melt even further. "He's currently grounded. No volleyball allowed."

Making a sympathetic face, Emile goes over and pats him on the shoulder. "Maybe he'll learn his lesson."

"HA. NO. He has been a terror! He's cooped up with no way to let off steam other than pester and torture and harass me! I'm in hell! I can't wait until school starts and I only have to see him a few times a day!"

A soft chuckle comes from the floor, and Roman finally lifts his head in order to glare at the offender. As though sensing the dirty look, Remy offers a middle finger, but quickly lowers it at the displeased noise that comes from Emile. 

The three wait in the locker room for roughly ten more minutes, and in that time are joined by several other returning players. Finally, Remy sits up and removes his sunglasses. He stretches and yawns. Grabbing his water bottle, he stands, placing his hands on his hips. "Alright ladies, let's go get down to business." 

"To defeat, the Huns!" chimes in Emile excitedly. "Sure," follows Remy's reply. It comes across cool and monotone, but the smile on his face speaks of barely contained excitement.

On the way out of the locker room, Roman looks all around him and counts heads. "Five, six, and Remus is missing, seven. Someone isn't here." Remy spins around and, walking backwards, takes a glance at the faces before whirling back to face forward and offering his findings. "Patton isn't here." 

Roman freezes mid-step. Whirling around to check for himself and finding Remy to be right, he shouts in alarm: "Where is he?! He's our libero! We're doomed for sure without him!"

Pulling a face at the volume, Remy takes a gulp from his water bottle before saying, "Chill. It's the first summer practice. He could be busy or, more likely, late. Fashionably late entrances are his specialty after all."

Somewhat mollified, Roman nods, but his brow is still furrowed. Seeing his distress, Zay -- another sophomore -- claps him on the back. "It'll be ok dude. This year will be great, you'll see." But no one was so sure about that. 

Patton did show up -- to Roman's immense relief, but late. He does indeed give a grand entrance, although not on purpose. While the others are in the middle of warming up, the gym doors suddenly slam open, hitting the walls behind them with a crash. In flies their libero -- Patton Clover -- glasses askew and hair mussed. “I’m so sorry I’m late I forgot we had practice and then I went the wrong way and then I got caught at three stop lights in a row and-” 

“It’s ok Pat,” reassures Coach Sanders, trying to hold back his laughter at the unnecessarily flustered boy.

“Oh. Ok.” The freckled boy gives a sheepish little smile. “I am sorry though, and-” Whatever Patton had planned on saying is cut off as he is tackled to the ground by a blur.

“Patton! I’ve missed you so much! We were worried you weren’t coming!” says the blur -- who is one desperate Roman le Roi.

“You mean you were worried,” Remy shouts over his shoulder wryly.

With a pout, Roman stands and helps his friend up. “Fine. Yes. I was worried. But, I’m not anymore, because now,” Roman announces dramatically, spreading one arm wide with the other wrapped around Patton’s shoulders, “practice can truly begin.”

The first practice was, as foretold by both Remy and the newspaper, a travesty. 

Roman's passing was rusty, Emile was nervous to be head setter for the first time, Remy moved as though sleepwalking, Patton's glasses prescription wasn't up to date so he could barely see, Zay kept blocking wrong, Lee couldn't seem to hit it in, and the others were just brought down by everyone else: all in all, a colossal mess. So much so that Coach Sanders called it early. As everyone gathered into the huddle, he pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to decide what to say. 

Settling for the truth, Thomas Sanders runs a hand through his hair. “Alright guys, we obviously have a lot of work to do. But, this doesn’t mean we’re doomed. You’re all somewhat out of practice and we’ve lost several core players, with very few incoming freshmen to replace them and bolster our numbers. All this simply means that you’ll all have to fight harder than ever this year. We have a legacy to uphold, and I know you’re capable of not only meeting these expectations, but exceeding them. That said, I’m going to let you go now, but come ready tomorrow. I’ll send out a school-wide email and see if there are any fresh players we could snag.”

The pattern of depressing practices continues. However, they do improve slowly. But, there are so many hiccups that the improvement is hard to notice. Having graduated their best middle and head setter, there are gaps to fill. The decision is made to place Roman in the middle. This doesn’t work well due to Roman’s lack of experience in said position. Used to playing outside, Roman has created a certain approach and swing to maximize his power. However, he has less room to build up speed while in the middle, and his arm swing constantly ends with him in the net -- an automatic loss of the point. He stays, day after day, and practices quicks with Emile, but he misses almost every single time. After the third day of staying late, he lands for the sixth time, the ball falling to his left, untouched. “Arghhhhh!” he yells, fluffing his hair vigorously with his hands in frustration. After his outburst, he stands staring at his hands before clenching them into fists and turning to Emile desperately. 

“Can we take a break? Set me a 4? Just once? Please?” The hint of hopelessness and pleading in his voice cause Emile to give his consent (ever the bleeding heart). Roman sets up and tosses the ball to Emile. As it leaves the setter’s hands, he begins the approach. He flows smoothly, leaps, snaps his arm, and BANG. The ball collides with the ground with incredible force in front of the ten foot line. Rising from the crouched position where he landed, Roman rolls his shoulders and shoots Emile a smile.

“That’s the stuff.” The sheer volume of the ball hitting the floor caught the attention of most people in the gym. Thomas, not for the first time, wonders whether he made the right decision placing Roman in the middle. The new assistant coach -- Joan, a friend of Thomas’ -- has never seen Roman hit, really hit, and is standing, open-mouthed. They turn to Thomas, dumbfounded.

“You’re telling me that’s how he normally hits? And you moved him to the MIDDLE? You’re giving that up!?”

Thomas sighs again, watching as Roman hits a vicious cut shot to the outside on the opposite side of the net. “He’s a superb blocker and could be an incredible weapon in the middle if he could just figure it out. I’m hoping time and practice will bring out his potential.” 

But it doesn’t get better. After innumerable failed attempts at hitting middle quicks, the pair begin to practice twos. These Roman can actually hit, but not with the incredible power and accuracy that he is capable of on the outside. In addition, his pride suffers a serious blow. As one who rarely gives up, the shift to twos feels to Roman like he’s admitting defeat. Consequently, the normally upbeat player can never bring himself to be as encouraging as usual, which is unfortunate, as he’s usually the one that brings the hype.

Everyone has a brief glimmer of hope upon the return of Roman’s twin brother -- Remus. During the third week of practice, he rolls in an hour late and walks onto the court in a pair of tattered sneakers and jeans. When asked where his shoes and knee pads are, he replies with a shrug. He takes his outside position and is his usual powerhouse hitter self, but having lost his usual back row counter part, he is forced to rotate to the back row and pass. This… is not good. At all. During the first drill in which he is rotated to the back, the whole team holds its breath, and winces collectively as the first ball ricochets wildly off his arms. 

See, Remus is… interesting. Roman would call him a “menace” and a “terror,” which honestly may not be far off. He’s known for his explosive and unpredictable temper. Thus, after the first failure, the majority of the team exchanges glances as Remus lets out an angry, animalistic growl, and settles into a crouch once again. The second time, Remus doesn’t even try to pass it; he attempts to hit the serve back over. He makes contact, but it sails clear out of bounds and smacks into the wall with a loud thud. This show of aggression prompts Roman to begin yelling: “What was that? It was coming right to you! If you’d just stood there with your arms together you would have passed it!” 

“At least I can touch the ball, middle hitter,” retorts Remus. 

“At least people can stand to have me around!”

“Oh please, your pretentious attitude pisses everyone off.”

“I don’t disgust everyone who knows me!”

Remus gives a malicious sneer. “They just lack taste and imagination. Or they’re cowards.” Here he gives a fake gasp, as though he realizes something, and points at Roman. “Like you! You’re afraid of failing! So now you hit easy balls because you’re scared!”

This time, Roman is the one who growls and advances angrily toward his brother. “I am not! You’re just jealous you can’t hit as well as I can.”

An ugly look crosses Remus’ face; he starts toward Roman. “Whatever will father think when he sees your failure, I wonder,” he spits. They both approach each other quickly and meet in the middle, Roman throwing the first punch at Remus’ lopsided grin. They each get in a few more blows before Remus is grabbed by Thomas and Emile and Roman by Remy and Patton. Remus offers a bloody smile and spits a glob of blood onto the floor before snapping his teeth in Roman’s direction while giggling. “Your punches are weak too! You must really be letting yourself go!”

Unsurprisingly, fights are not uncommon between the twins. Or rather, fights between Remus and anyone are common. He’s taken to tripping other players or purposefully running into and knocking over or elbowing anyone he blocks with. Even in the back row he's like a juggernaut, bowling over everyone in his path. He tends to ignore people calling the ball and just goes after it himself. He made several other freshman quit last year due to his aggression. This is partially why Thomas put Roman in the middle: he isn’t afraid to block with his brother and will give as good as he gets. If the pair come away from practice with matching black eyes and bloody noses and a multitude of new bruises, this comes as a surprise to none. 

True to his word, Thomas sends out a notice a few weeks later that volleyball practice has begun and that anyone interested is welcome. Due to his effort, several new faces appear in the gym. Two are freshman and one is a new sophomore. The freshman are Declan Edge (who simply goes by D) and Alex Taylor. Alex shows up first by joining in on a practice. Declan’s debut is slightly more dramatic. The same day that Roman is hitting on the outside after practice in order to relax, in walks D, quiet as can be. He eyes Roman’s hit with a gleam in his eye. Roman’s next swing never hits the floor. The ball flies perfectly to the setter spot from where D is crouched on the floor, arms still together and face perfectly impassive. He straightens up and fixes his shirt in the silence that follows his feat. “Nice hit,” he offers and walks out of the gym. Everyone left in the gym stands stock still. Remy -- who is lounging on the bleachers -- eventually breaks the silence. "Who the fuck was that and what do I have to do to get him on the team?"

Apparently that sentiment is shared by Emile, because the next day the senior arrives with the incredibly short freshman in tow. "Ow, geez, don't yank my arm off, muscles," intones the new boy sarcastically, rolling his mismatched eyes as Emile drags him forcibly through the door, hand gripping the younger’s arm tightly. From outside the gym a yell is heard from Remus: "Feel free to yank me anytime Pixie!" A growl is heard and a loud thunk quickly follows. A pouting Remus walks in, rubbing his head, Remy close on his heels, one hand in the pocket of his black jacket and the other nonchalantly holding his ever present water bottle, his face impassive.

Remus' spite is quickly forgotten as he catches sight of the newcomer. "Holy shit!" he yells, pointing, "It looks like you have-" 

This time every one can watch Remy smack him on the back of his head. "Don't scare off the new recruit, asshole," Remy chides.

"My name is Declan, but everyone calls me D. And none of you look that scary to be honest." To back up his statement, D puts his hands on his hips and surveys the gym, examining all its occupants. He nods once after he's scanned the whole room and then points to Remy. "He's the scariest one here, but everyone knows he's too lazy to do anything." Remus puffs himself up to respond, but is forestalled by Coach Thomas walking up to D. Instead, he fixes an icy glare on his back. Most of the team is worried for the newbie.

Turns out, D passing Roman's spike from the outside was no fluke; he's just that good. All through the next week, the shortest boy rapidly makes a spot for himself on the team. To everyone's relief, it is decided that he'll play back row for Remus. Patton is afraid that D might take his spot for a while, but apparently he has issues with passing soft balls, whereas Patton is steady and consistent both when people bring the heat and when they barely touch it.

Now, the final newcomer -- the only one who is not a freshman -- was something of a mystery. An incoming sophomore, Logan Decker misses the first few practices and shows up only a few days after D has officially joined. The first anyone sees of him is at the beginning of practice when they all notice him sitting on the bleachers speaking to Thomas. 

“He’s so tall!” mutters Patton to Roman. The latter snorts. “Yeah, well, so am I.”

“What do you think he plays, babe?” mumbles Remy to Emile as he helps him stretch his arm. Emile shoots a thoughtful glance to the bleachers and hums softly. 

“Well, he looks like he’s got some height so maybe something in the front row? If I had to guess I’d say middle, but I’m not sure.” Dropping his voice to a whisper he continues, “He looks kinda scary, doncha think?”

Remy shrugs. “He ain’t got nothin on Remus. Or me for that matter. But don’t worry honey,” he says cheerfully, releasing Emile’s arm only to pull him in for a side hug, “I’ll protect you from the new string bean!” 

“My hero!” the other giggles happily, any worry forgotten.

Similar conversations are being held all over the gym up until coach Thomas calls them over. They all dutifully jog over, somewhat faster than normal due to their curiosity. 

“Guys,” their coach pronounces, “this is Logan. He transferred recently and wants to join up so you’ll have to show him how we do things around here. Logan-” here he turns to the boy who is still sitting down on the bleachers and gestures for him to stand up- “that’s Roman, Remus, D…” The only one who actually manages to respond when their name is called is Emile, as the remainder of the boys are all too busy staring. At Thomas’ gesture, Logan had indeed stood up… and up… and up. Playing volleyball, the boys had come in contact with a multitude of players of varying heights, more often on the higher end of the spectrum. However, they were unprepared for this much height. After Thomas finishes introducing the team, he claps his hands and smiles at them all. “So, any questions?”

D’s hand shoots into the air. “Yes?” replies Thomas patiently.

“How tall-” 

“Exactly how fucking tall are you ya damn tree?” Remus interrupts, weaseling his way past his brother who had valiantly attempted to keep him quiet for the majority of the introductions. Remus then shoves his way into the newcomer’s personal space, leaving literally no room between their chests as he stands on his tiptoes and measures the top of his head against the other’s face. Obviously disgruntled at the proximity, Logan quickly takes several steps back, Remus following delightedly. “I would guess six foot five. Am I close?” he purrs into Logan’s carefully blank face.

“Extremely,” the other says dryly, shoving the shorter (still tall but it’s all relative) man away. Logan adjusts his glasses as he answers the question: “I’m actually six foot six.”

Remy lets out a low whistle and D snorts. “You’re actually over a foot taller than me. That is so excessive.”

Logan glares down at the other player. “I can’t control my height, you imbecile.”

D snorts again. “You might not want to be tossing around insults so soon. You’re not even officially on the team yet.”

“That is where you’re wrong,” Logan replies, somewhat smugly, adjusting his glasses. “Coach Thomas just accepted me onto your team. And let me just say-” Here, he pauses and takes a moment to look around at the circle of faces staring at him. “I haven’t decided whether or not it’s nice to meet any of you yet.” With that somewhat cold greeting, the newest member of the team hefts his bag up onto his shoulder, and makes his way to the locker room, the others staring after him. 

“Well, that was rude,” Roman states with a sniff, before turning back to practice. One by one the others begin to drift back to warmups, leaving only Remus staring excitedly after their new recruit. He finally turns away, giggling to himself. “This should be fuuun,” he singsongs to himself as he turns away. He’s quickly distracted after seeing an opportunity to body slam his brother midair.

[let-it-raines]

Not Your (soul)Mate {1/?}

Killian Jones doesn’t like the idea of soulmates. He sees how happy his friends are with theirs, but he still doesn’t like the idea, not when he’s found love and lost it time and time again only to still not know his sign. He has no markings on his skin, no voices in his head, but then one day he meets Emma Swan and everything changes. Because, well, he may not have ink on his skin to tell him who to love, but the very first time that he hears Emma’s voice he knows that she’s the one for him. Then again, that could simply be his desire talking. After all, for every word she speaks, he becomes aroused. 

It’s not the worst thing in the world to be incredibly attracted to a beautiful woman, but things aren’t that simple when she doesn’t have any interest in being his soulmate. 

He’s screwed. And not in the good way. 

Rating: Mature (mostly for jokes now and for...other things later)

A/N: Hello, friends! It’s me coming at you with more words! This time they’re of the supernatural variety for @cssns with *gasp* a soulmate fic. It’s a fun one guys. Seriously. It’s an absolutely ridiculous concept (soulmates + aroused by each other’s voices), but I’m having fun writing it! I’ve got eight chapters written so far, and I’m itching to share them with you! 

A special shoutout to @captainsjedi for her incredible artwork and for being my number one cheerleader as these words were dragged out of me. I feel super honored for her to have made this art for my story! And thank you to the organizers for doing such great work! So, everybody ready? 😁

Found on AO3 | Here |

Tag list (let me know if you want to be added/removed): @dreameronarooftop15 @searchingwardrobes @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke @tiganasummertree @wellhellotragic @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @mayquita @captainsjedi @teamhook @kmomof4 @ekr032-blog-blog @superchocovian @ultraluckycatnd @artistic-writer @cs-forlife @andiirivera @qualitycoffeethings @thejollyroger-writer @jonirobinson64 @mariakov81@thejollyroger-writer @xellewoods @cssns

-/-

One.

Two.

Three.

It’s the pattern he keeps tapping against his thigh as he sits at his desk, the clock on the wall ticking loud enough for him to hear. If he’s busy enough, it’s silent. But when he has time to idle and not focus on something in particular, when he’s anxious to get to go home, he can hear each individual tick as the seconds and minutes pass by. He’s always been sensitive to sounds, the quietest of whispers sometimes equivalent to yelling directly in his ear, but over the years, he’s learned to block the sounds out, to control how voices and taps and screeches affect him.

His clock is driving him insane.

He wants to go home.

And it’s not because he hates his job or anything. Sure, some days it’s like actual torture, nails on a chalkboard multiplied by at least seventeen, especially with the sensitivity of his ears, but most of the time he enjoys designing boats, ships, and the like. He enjoys working with Liam every single day and getting to draw up someone’s dream vessel like he often did as a child when he had nothing more than a pencil and a notebook of battered paper. Really, his job is a way to make his childhood dreams become a reality but in a financially responsible way.

For him. Not for the people who buy custom boats.

He likely wouldn’t enjoy it if he didn’t make any money. Designing boats is a hell of a lot of fun, but he does so enjoy having an apartment (some of the American terms have integrated into his vocabulary by now it seems) to go home to and food to eat. Honestly, he likes tea far too much to not be able to afford it.

How stereotypically British is he?

It doesn’t even matter. He likes tea, and he won’t let anyone try to convince him otherwise. His cabinet in his kitchen keeps him supplied with caffeine, and if it’s all arranged by size of bag and flavor, no one has to know that. He doesn’t live with anyone, so it’s completely fine.

Liam would make fun of him for ages if he knew of all of Killian’s little tendencies and specificities on how to run his life. Liam already has too much fun teasing him about the binders and books on his shelves in his office, but really, of all of the places to be organized, why not in the office? It’s not his fault that Liam lives in a disorganized mess.

Once a Navy man, always a Navy man doesn’t quite hold true when it comes to one half of the team at The Jewel: A Boating Design Company. He was never sold on the name, but it was Liam’s idea so he went along with it. And the odd name hasn’t seemed to keep any clients away, so it’s obviously worked out.

He still wants to go home.

And technically he could. Technically he’s a boss here and could go home whenever he wants, but he doesn’t like to leave before six. It’s bad business, and it’s never a bad thing to keep his mind focused on work. He’s always got a million thoughts whirling around in his head, and focusing on work keeps him grounded.

But today is a different day. Today is difficult for him. It’s an anniversary of sorts, but it’s not the good kind. It’s not roses (or sunflowers because in his opinion, roses are overrated) and wine and beautiful jewelry over a nice dinner with small servings when all people really want is to sit at home and eat pizza on the couch. No, it’s an anniversary of loss.

Of loss that’s not as final as death, and yet it still has its own particular sting that tends to linger. It’s a loss in his life that he’s felt many a time, but this one, this particular woman, well, her loss stung the most.

Her loss stings the most.

And it’s all because of the universe and its twisted sense of fate. He doesn’t mean that in a “weird shit happens” kind of way. He means that in the universe is a piece of shit that has lives decided before the people who live them are even born. It doesn’t matter what you do or how you live. The universe is always standing at the plate ready to throw a curveball and strike you out.

One strike.

Two strikes.

Three strikes.

You’re out.

Soulmate.

Or soul mate with two words. The universe has everything predestined, but apparently, they couldn’t decide on words in dictionaries and whether or not it was one combined word or two separate words. And that’s just scratching the surface of language and grammar, and he only speaks English and a tiny bit of French. Things just get more complicated when you move beyond that.

But that’s not the point. He can worry about grammar on another day. Right now he’s thinking about the unfortunateness of soulmates (soul mates…nope, he’s just going to decide it’s one word for him) and just how completely screwed up it all is.

No one really knows how the human race figured out that there are two people who are perfectly matched up in every single way. It doesn’t mean there aren’t fights and arguments and petty squabbles over who did the dishes or turning the air conditioner up too high. It simply means that somewhere out there, there’s a person who, when it counts, matches up to you so well that the universe has decided to they are your person.

They are the Christina Yang to your Meredith Grey.

(Yes, he’s watched Grey’s Anatomy, and no, he is not ashamed...of seasons one through six. It gets a little murky after that.)

But what happens if your soulmate dies? What happens if you never meet them? What happens if you fall in love with someone only to find out that their sign or their mark or their soul doesn’t at all match up with yours? What happens if you love someone so deeply that you don’t think your heart can take it anymore, and they leave you because the words written across their ankle are not also written across yours?

What happens if you don’t have words written at all?

He doesn’t. He doesn’t have the words. He doesn’t have any kind of indication as to how to find this so-called perfect match of his. He has no idea.

And he doesn’t need to ask the question of what happens when you love someone who is not your soulmate because he knows. He knows that the love can be real and deep and true, and yet the moment that person finds their matching mark, suddenly things start to crumble and fall apart. Questions begin to be asked, and there are no answers. There are no answers that are correct anyhow. It’s as if you’re taking one of those standardized tests where all four answers are correct, but you have to choose the one that’s the most correct.

Bullocks.

That’s the most ridiculous thing in the world, and yet he’s taken the standardized tests. He had to, but that’s really not the point.

(Also, he wonders if soulmate magic is real, are other types of magic real? Is Harry Potter based off of something true? Could he have gone to Hogwarts?)

Milah found her soulmate, and it wasn’t him. She loved him, but she let him go. And he cannot begrudge her for it. No, she’s doing what will truly make her happy, and he wants her to be happy. She deserves it.

He just wishes that it had been him.

The universe apparently had other ideas.

And four years later, he still doesn’t know his mark.

Four years later, he still loves her even if he shouldn’t, even if he knows he should have moved on.

Liam could hear Elsa’s thoughts at night when he was lying down to sleep. It wasn’t in his dreams, though he has heard of those, but simply once the darkness fell outside. They’d known each other in their thoughts since they were children, a love predestined and predetermined that found its way to life despite the countries that were spread out between them. He’s always been jealous of his older brother for a lot of things, but knowing who his love is and getting to know her for his entire life, that may be the thing which fills him with the most envy.

He’s not even sure that he wants to know who his soulmate is, but when he thinks of his brother and the happiness of his life with his wife and his children, he wonders how two people so genetically similar could have such different paths in life.

Robin’s had been a simple tattoo on his forearm. He knew that all he needed was to find his match, and even though it took into his mid-thirties, he did.

Mid-thirties are truly not old – especially since he himself just turned thirty five – but in a society that is obsessed with love and procreation, Robin might as well have been a lonely elderly man with no chance at love…and Robin’s a man. It’s much worse for women, which is fundamentally unfair. But he’s a designer of boats, not a designer of the universe, so he can’t exactly fix that.

Will, well, Will’s soulmate sign is one that Killian is rather fond of if he’s honest. He found Belle because he’d started spending time in a library, and whenever he would touch certain books, fingerprints would start glowing. They were small, dainty things, so he knew that they weren’t his. But the prints glowed, and as he moved throughout the library, he noticed that every book had fingerprints that glowed. And thus he found Belle, the librarian, and even though they don’t seem to match up, they do.

Everyone he knows is living life with someone they’re supposed to be with, happiness and issues all combined, and he’s…not.

He doesn’t think his life will suddenly become perfect if he were to meet this mystery woman. He doesn’t. His life is wonderful. He loves his friends and family. He loves his job and his hobbies. He loves his life.

Today is simply a hard day.

Today is simply a day of loss.

But tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow he’ll go back to normal, and he won’t feel the loss of his love so much.

As much.

“Hey, did you get the Santos order?”

“Shit,” he mumbles, jumping in his seat at Ariel’s voice. He knows that she likely spoke at a normal volume, but he wasn’t focusing and had zoned out. Her voice startled him. It doesn’t help that she takes pleasure in annoying him. “Sorry, love. You surprised me.”

“I knocked three times there, Jones,” she sighs, walking into his office and dropping a note down on his desk. “I know it’s late in the day and all, but you’re really zoning out.”

“That is the pot calling the kettle black, A,” he laughs, rolling forward in his chair to look at the note she has, her chicken scratch written across the notecard. “You zone out at lunch thinking about how someone invented the fork.”

“It’s true. You’ve got to think about things like that. You okay though? You’ve got that pensive, brooding look all over your face.”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes before looking up at her and stretching his hands up behind his head, the small ache pleasant. “I’m going to fire you for someone who doesn’t know me as well.”

“My severance package would be fantastic, so you can go ahead and do that. But I also know you’d be lost without me, so that’s not going to happen. No one else in the world knows which pens of yours not to use.”

“That can be taught.”

“Yeah, but no one else is going to accept your weirdness.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. Anyways,” she sighs, sitting down in the chair across from his desk and crossing her leg over her knee, “Eric and I are having a dinner at our house on Friday night, and you’re coming.”

He raises an eyebrow while he tries to keep his lips from curling up into a smile because he knows exactly why they’re having a dinner. She’s been his assistant for three years, and somewhere along the way she became one of his closest friends. She also drives him mad with how she doesn’t listen to him at all.

“Are you not even asking? Just demanding?”

She shrugs and flicks a speck off of her pants. “I’m telling you. It’s at seven, lots of our friends are coming, and you will be there if I have to drag you kicking and screaming.”

He hums and taps his fingers against the desk, the sound of his clock no longer in his earshot. “Fine. I think maybe I can be persuaded by some free food that I know is really a dinner party to announce your pregnancy.”

Her lips part, jaw nearly dropping, before she snaps it shut and gets up, walking over to him and knocking him upside the head. “You’re an asshole. That’s supposed to be a secret. How the hell did you know?”

“This note that you just gave me has baby names and a gynecologist appointment on it and not the Santos order.”

“Pregnancy brain is a real thing,” she huffs before slapping his head again and walking out of the room.

“Congratulations,” he shouts, leaning forward in his chair and smiling to himself. It’s a day of loss, but not everything is bad. It’s also a day of life.

He does spend the night drowning himself in a glass of rum, but it’s just the one filled a little too close to the brim. And he doesn’t spend entirely too much time thinking about Milah and all of the women and heartbreak that have come before her. He only spends what he would consider an acceptable amount of time, and if it was most of the night, no one has to know that but him.

Those are the perks of living alone.

Well, that and eating food in nothing but his boxers while watching reruns of whatever the hell he wants.

The Office.

It was The Office. He spends far too much time watching The Office and also…in his office. But that’s something else. That’s work, and it’s not filled with quite the same amount of comedy. Though he is thinking about putting Liam’s stapler in some jello. That’s not as funny in real life, but he’s not exactly sure if he’s desperate enough to wrap up Liam’s entire office in wrapping paper.

It’d have to be some birthday paper or something. It’s April, so Christmas paper likely wouldn’t work. Of course, it’s April, so Christmas paper would likely be on sale. This is sounding better and better, but he’s not going to do it. He’s going to keep on going with his life and make sure that Ariel isn’t setting him up on a date at this dinner party he’s been at for thirty minutes like he’s pretty sure she’s doing with her friend Jane.

Amazingly enough, the existence of soulmates does not keep people from setting him up on blind dates.

You’d think there would be at least one perk.

Besides the whole perfect match thing and all.

That’s supposedly a perk.

“Would you excuse me for just one minute, love?” he asks Jane, flashing her his most sincere smile and squeezing her shoulder before walking toward his brother who is talking to Will and Robin in the corner of the backyard.

“BJ,” Will greets, grinning from ear to ear as Killian shakes his head.

“You cannot call me that, Scarlett,” he groans. His protests don’t matter at all, but he can hope. He can hope that one day one of his friends will listen to him.

It’s a pipe dream.

“Well, baby Jones isn’t quite as funny as BJ.”

“You have the humor of a fifteen-year-old lad.”

“At least I’m not boring like you,” he scoffs before he takes another sip of his beer. “How’s your little date going over there?”

“So you can tell that it’s a set up?”

“Little brother,” Liam sighs, clapping his hand down on his shoulder, “you scratched your ear enough times for us to know you were nervous. Plus Ariel told us. She was practically jumping out of her skin with excitement.”

“Younger. I’m younger, and of course she did. Jane is…she’s a nice woman, but I’m not really in the mood for another date.”

Suddenly his head starts pounding, sounds muting for a moment before he hones in on a laugh, a laugh that has his skin heating and gooseflesh rising over his arms as he only focuses in on it before all of the other sounds come back to him, the laugh fading into the background. He doesn’t know what the hell just happened, but he’s not going to focus on it when he’s got to deal with his brother and his best mates being undeniable assholes.

Tuning things out has always kind of been his thing anyways.

“It doesn’t have to be a date,” Robin helpfully supplies, “but I think the lass likes you, so I’d turn her down easy.”

“There’s nothing to turn down.”

“She might not know that.”

“Anyways,” he sighs, crossing his arms over his chest, “how long do you think A is going to drag this along until we get to eat dinner?”

“I’d say until she finishes talking to her friends over there.” Liam points to a group of women standing on the other side of the deck. He recognizes Ariel and her friend Mary Margaret. He’s been to her house and met her husband. David? He thinks his name is David and that he’s a detective. And obviously he recognizes his sister-in-law, but he doesn’t recognize two of them. One of them is tall, her legs stretching on for miles, and she’s got straight brunette hair that falls down her back with the tips of it covered in red. The other woman is shorter, but not necessarily short, and her blonde hair is pulled up into a ponytail so that he can see the openness of her dress as it dips down her bare back and rests just above the curve of her waist. He doesn’t know her at all, and he wonders how. Ariel may simply work with him, but she’s made him such a part of her personal life that he feels like he knows all of her friends.

Then again, he didn’t know Jane, so obviously she has several friends she wants to announce her pregnancy to that he’s never met. They’re all ships passing in the night.

Of course, it’s not quite night yet and they’re definitely not ships, but his point still stands.

Or sails.

He can design a ship that would work for this purpose.

He has too much time on his hands.

All of the sounds mute again before the same laugh as before comes back, but this time he knows exactly where the sound is coming from. It’s coming from the blonde who’s talking to Ariel, and he can feel his skin heating up again, the flesh pricking and hair rising across his body as a shiver runs through him. He knows this feeling. He knows it well. It’s the start of something that he usually finds pleasant, but it’s not something that he finds pleasant while standing in a public place with all of his friends around.

Will may have the humor of a teenager, but apparently Killian has the uncontrollable sex drive of one.

Shit.

This is not good.

He needs to think of the government or his grandmother or people who think Hawaiian shirts can be worn to the office as casual wear when they live in Maine because his jeans are rather tight and he’s afraid that nothing can be hidden when he’s feeling a little excited.

Or a lot excited.

When he should not be excited at all.

Oh hell. He’s aroused. He’s not excited. He’s aroused, and there is absolutely no reason for it. Does he even need a reason? Probably not. Still though. This is a problem he doesn’t really want to have right now at his assistant’s barbecue to announce that she’s created a spawn of her loins.

Those are the only loins he should be thinking about.

Not Ariel’s loins, though. That is…this is all too much for him.

“Hey, lover boy,” Will whistles, and suddenly the laughter is fading away so that he can focus on the sound of Will’s whistle and the wind that’s causing the leaves on trees to rustle and mix in with all of the conversations that are happening, “you’ve got to stop staring at Emma or she will kick your ass all the way back to England.”

Emma.

“Who is that?” he ponders, reaching to scratch his beard. He should have shaved this morning, but he didn’t have time to clean his scruff up. “Emma? You said her name was Emma?”

“Aye,” Will confirms, his fingers tapping along the glass of his bottle and picking up the condensation. “Emma Swan. She lives with Belle. I’m bloody terrified of her sometimes, but she’s fun.”

“Why are you terrified of her?”

“Because she’s a cop. A detective, I think, and I’ve seen first hand just how good she is at kickboxing.”

“Why? Did you beat your ass for saying something dumb?”

Will rolls his eyes as both Robin and Liam chuckle, even if they try to muffle the sound. “I may have said something a bit unsavory one night, and she may have literally kicked my ass for it. But I’m on the straight and narrow path now.”

“Huh. So she did what we’ve all been wanting to do for years now. I like her.”

“Why don’t you go talk to her?” Liam prods, wrapping his arm around Killian’s shoulder and slapping him harder than he should. “Are you scared to talk to another girl? Is this going to be like teenage Killian who can’t flirt with more than one woman in a day without being terrified of having to do it again?”

“Sod off.”

“I’m telling you,” Liam starts, but Killian moves out from under his arm and walks away from the group of them so that he can go inside and get a glass of water, not really interested in hearing Liam teasing him about his childhood. It doesn’t bother him, but he’s heard it all before and doesn’t really need to hear about it again. It’s still been A Week, and there’s only so much teasing about his relationships that he can take when he’s still mourning the loss of one.

Once he gets into the kitchen, he grabs a cup off the counter and fills it with ice and water from the fridge, the sound of the ice machine drowning everything out so that he doesn’t hear someone come in behind him. He doesn’t hear her, so he’s got no idea that she’s within a foot of him when he turns around and hits her shoulder, the cup of ice cold water in his hand spilling all over the front of her dress.

Of Emma’s dress.

Of Emma’s white dress.

Because it’s the woman who he was just admiring who he spilled a drink on.

“Holy shirt-balls that’s cold.”

He wants to laugh at her words, at her The Good Place reference, but then it’s happening again. His skin is heating, his temperature rising by several noticeable degrees, and he can feel the hair on his body begin to rise while his jeans tighten. How are his jeans still tightening? His erection can’t get any worse.

Holy shirt-balls indeed.

What the hell is happening to him?

“I’m sorry, love,” he stutters, trying to focus his hearing so that everything won’t be so heightened, but then his eyes glance down at the way that the material of her dress is clinging to her skin, the edges molding to her breasts, and everything gets worse. So, so much worse. He loves women. He’s never denied that. But hell, he should not be having this kind of reaction. This is not some kind of bad porn movie.

This is not some kind of raunchy romantic comedy either.

This is his life.

She’s got fantastic breasts.

Nope. Nope. Nope. He can’t be thinking that. He shouldn’t be thinking that. Something is happening to him, and he needs it to stop.

“I mean, I would say it’s not your fault, but you did spill the water on me,” she laughs, grabbing onto her dress and squeezing the water out a bit as she makes her way further into the kitchen to grab a towel and wipe herself down.

“Yeah, sorry about that. Again. You’re Emma, right?”

She’s still dabbing at her dress when she looks up at him and raises an eyebrow. Her cheeks are flushed red, and he’s not sure if it’s from spending the evening outside or from the embarrassment of him spilling water on her. But she’s got these beautifully flushed cheeks and light emerald eyes that can’t seem to focus on him, her gaze constantly changing.

With how uncomfortable his jeans are right now, he’s honestly kind of wishing that he had ice water dumped on him.

Seriously. What the hell is happening to him?

“Um, yeah. How do you know that?”

“Will told me. I’m…we’re old friends. Killian. Killian Jones.”

“Emma Swan,” she sighs, continuing to dab at her dress while he looks away. He has to look away or he’s going to do something inappropriate by anyone’s standards. Something is happening to him, to his mind and his body, and he needs it to stop right now. “You know, if you wanted to talk to me, all you had to do was introduce yourself, no spilled water involved. And if you wanted to see my tits, well, I should warn you that I carry around a gun for a living, and I don’t take too kindly to things like that.”

“I can promise you that wasn’t my intention.”

“Then why aren’t you looking at me right now?”

“Swan, if I’m honest, it’s because I can see both through and down your dress, and it’s not proper to look no matter how much I want to.”

Holy shit. Why did he just say that?

“Is it hot in here?” Emma asks, changing the subject, and he has never been more thankful for anything in his entire life. Though, really, if she could stop talking, he would be thankful for that too. Her voice is focused in his ears, every word reverberating and spinning around so that he can focus on nothing but her. It’s like her laughter earlier. His body instinctively tuned into it, focused on it, and it caused this same feeling of arousal to base itself at his spine.

And every word she says, makes it worse.

Fuck.

He somehow knows what’s happening, his brain instantly making the connections, and if he could walk out the front door and have never come to this party, he probably would.

Emma Swan is mostly likely his soulmate if the way his senses are picking up are any indication, and every word she says gives him the most inappropriate erection.

Her voice arouses him, and it’s not in a normal way.

Of all the soulmate signs, why this?

Couldn’t he have gotten a damn butterfly tattoo right above his ass instead?

[calleo-bricriu]

"Why are you like this?"

(( I’d apologise for him, @absintheabsence but we both know that’d be an entire lie. A continuation of 1986. ))

Grindelwald had asked him that question more than once in the past few weeks, and it hadn't escaped Calleo that he'd asked the same thing a good forty-ish years ago as it was difficult not to. Half the time, the things Grindelwald had said or done, even with explanation, were things Calleo hadn't been able to ever fully wrap his head around.

Then again, wrapping one's head around someone else's madness is often difficult.

This time, he decided to answer what held a good chance of being a rhetorical question.

"Do you have any idea," Calleo briefly glanced up from a stack of papers he'd been going through, if only to gauge the general mood of the room, "when the last time I had any time at all away from work was?"

"1945. Early May," back to the papers, "and even now, I'm still working. It's impossible to get away from it entirely; I'm not sure what I'd do if I could at this point. Director Yandle retired, you know." The topmost piece of paper was signed and disappeared.

"Not dead retired, retired retired. 1976, about the time Voldemort was finally starting to be taken seriously as some sort of threat. Said he didn't want to deal with that sort of thing again and I ended up with his job." The way he was talking sounded more like a narration than a conversation in which another person was involved, likely on account of Calleo's main focus being clearly on the stack of papers he was still looking at. "Out of the three he hired to replace the three of yours he sacked, two of them fucked right off when told it would be their only opportunity to do so if they were leaning that way. Pity, really; if they'd stuck around a bit longer they might have realised--"

Dry laughter stopped him momentarily, even if it was more than a little inappropriate. "I told them if I found out they were, they'd find out how much worse I could be, which they took to mean they were free to leave unharmed; I forwarded their information up to Crouch who, I might add, ended up being demoted to a useless paper pushing job after that war for how over the top vicious he was in his belated response to Voldemort. A lot of executions and life terms in Azkaban without trials or with trials but without any evidence."

"So, that takes up a lot of time, all the overhead of running even a small department and doing the job I was doing prior because I'm not inclined to get the three I have now killed by handing it off entirely." Three more papers disappeared. "After that was over--it wasn't."

"I don't know how much you've heard over the past few decades, but there were a handful of things about Voldemort's death that didn't seem to alarm anyone, really; well," for the moment, Calleo did stop working on whatever he was working on and looked up, "not anyone who should have been alarmed--no, no, that's not accurate either. Nobody in a position that should have been alarmed was alarmed."

"I was alarmed; they never found a body, and that kid had the cast pattern of a killing curse burned onto his face. That's not supposed to happen. There are very, very few ways that could happen, even if it had backfired, it should have burned HIM, not his target. Anyway, it was less of a backfire and more of a 'Despite the high probability that I've done some extremely detailed and high level blood magic to make sure it's incredibly difficult to actually kill me, I never learned the basics and didn't even consider the possibility of protective blood magic stopping me from killing a child in front of his mother' sort of thing most likely."

He smiled brightly, "But, really, who would listen to the Librarian of Obscure and Terrible Things? Why would you even bother to ask someone like that if they might have some sort of idea there when it's so much easier to go with 'well, he's clearly dead because there were four people in the house and only three bodies, living or otherwise, nothing strange here.'" Whether he was being sarcastic or not wasn't immediately clear.

"Albus Dumbledore (( @everyheartbesure is 100% not allowed to lecture Calleo on his choice of vacation spots. :) )) noticed though, and I know he noticed because he wrote me in the immediate aftermath all but asking me to tell him he was being irrational and a bit insane for thinking that Voldemort wasn't merely or most sincerely dead,” Any seriousness or weight what he’d said to that point might have carried was dampened by the fact that he sung that last bit of phrasing, “which I couldn't do on account of what I said just prior to--" Calleo stopped and blinked at nothing a few times before laughing, "You know, I don't think I ever mentioned that we've been friends since about 1930! First and only person in my entire career to write me telling me he'd read some of my papers and followed that up with Transfiguration and not Dark Arts! You have no idea how tired I was and still am of people only ever having read THOSE papers and never the much less horrible, much more interesting ones I've done on Transfiguration!"

"At any rate, it was an invitation to collaborate on research if I wanted to. Which I did, obviously, and it turned out we got along exceptionally well! Well enough that Fawkes was trying and succeeding to preen my hair within thirty seconds of meeting him as well. Still does, which is odd, most animals avoid me," Calleo shrugged and part of his attention drifted back to the dwindling stack of papers in his lap, "Anyway, he wrote me about it primarily because he's always known where I work and what my work's primary focus has been, it'd just never really been a topic of discussion because it wasn't of interest to him and I don't care to push that sort of thing on people; he's still managed to never even look into the things I'm more well known for writing and by that point I'd asked him not to, at least, not while I wasn't around for a whole hell of a lot of reasons, chief of which being that it's all rather horrible and I would absolutely feel the need to explain myself through every terrible thing I've had published."

"But, the point is, he knew it was my area of expertise and the likely reality was--because of that expertise--likely a lot worse than he'd imagined, and he's not really wrong, I'm just so desensitised to it that it hardly registers as anything other than textbook knowledge half the time which meant it wasn't all that difficult to convince him to let me handle that side of the whole mess."

Another couple papers disappeared, "And it is a mess, make no mistake about that; the Ministry is adamant Voldemort is dead and any mention of the contrary all but gets a coordinated campaign of discreditation started against whoever won't toe the line. Unfortunately for them, the general view is that anyone working in the Archives is already a little bit to moderately mad, so it has no effect on me and I know a lot of people who either owe me a whole hell of a lot of favours or who have a vested interest in not letting another slightly genocidal Dark Lord get a foothold in continental Europe again. Goblins, mostly," Calleo grinned at his papers, "you didn't get them all, you know, I had three left by the end and only rebuilt from there. I still work just as closely with Lagraff, Koggot, and Aldig and they'd already started before Albus asked when I could GET started!"

"But, the most interesting thing I'd caught was while Voldemort was still counted among the living: The scraps of your little empire, the ones who hadn't been locked away for life or executed, they initially watched Voldemort with mild interest that quickly turned to open, hostile disdain as he kept flailing against an already ineffective, disorganised, panicked government and made no substantial public or political progress while trying to sell himself as something--better--to them. An odd number of them also hold positions in various governments and have either worked with me for years now which is, in some cases, exactly as awkward for them as you might imagine, or owe me a substantial number of favours or debt."

"And this?" Calleo twirled a finger at the ceiling of the dreary, depressing, and rather dim tower cell, "This is the closest thing to a holiday I've had in over forty years, and even then, even you have to have noticed that I routinely have to hop outside that window and away from the magic smothering nonsense of this building because if I'm muted or 'fuzzy' for too long, too many people notice and get a tiny bit alarmed."

"That's why I'm 'like this'! I haven't had a day off in forty six years and the last time I had any time away from work it was STILL up a tower locked in a room with you! Now that I think about it, every single time I've been away from the Ministry for any extended period of time, it's always ended with me somehow being stuck somewhere with you! You're the human equivalent of one of these things!" Calleo dug around in his pockets while he wrapped up that minor rant and pulled out--something--that was whipped across the room, aimed directly for Grindelwald's forehead.

It was--sticky and soft and a thin thread of it led back to Calleo's hand. The end that wound up on the side of the cell Grindelwald was on looked a bit gummy and a lot hand shaped.

[asteria-rainbow]

Ascension Diary 1

I decided to keep a diary online to everything that's happening to me spiritually speaking during my ascension.

1. To keep some track

2. To express my emotions

3. To share it with whoever reads it

Going through the ascension and a spiritual awakening in general is a big deal, a lot of things gets stirred up and I think it's nice to talk about it and to be honest, I need it because I have too much to say.

Since october, as I was going about my ascension journey in a pretty fast pace but normal way, things got completely out of control.

I developped clairaudience/telepathy and clairsentience from last Mai and started using it on a daily basis. I already have clairvoyance but not as developped, I can see the astral realm, the energy floating around, I can get flashes, images, I can see lights of being floating around but I've never tried to open my third eye more specifically for clairvoyancd because I think it's a natural process and to rush it would be reckless.

But I focused a lot more on clairaudience (I will call it telepathy from now on) for a while and started communicating with guides and lightbeings and earth elementals and all sorts of energies, it was awesome !

However things got pretty messed up after a while.

I was attacked by many beings at once.

The thing is, I think for all those months the beings I was talking to that I considered my guides weren't all guides at all.

I was tricked. A classic.

I believed in a very naive way that I you have the "right" vibration, loving and open and light that what would come in return would be the same, if you have good intentions then it's alright. I tried not to be scared of the unknown too much even if I knew there were terrible stories but I tried not to think about them at all and start my ascension journey with an open mind.

I held on to my beliefs.

Yet it wasn't enough.

You see my body held karmic stuff that I didn't know about.

Actually in a parallel life (not past as I consider them simultaneous) I was tricked by a witch to do sex magic to turn into a portal to help very very low density beings to come into this dimension.

You fucking read it right.

I am not even kidding.

So the thing is, it was happening in let's say in the X life, and I am in the R life.

That life where the "main event" was happening had a ripple effect on my current life like a rock thrown in water.

So I relieved the same event at the same time.

Except, the witch in my present was actually my twinflame, a witch not incarnated from the 6th dimension that was living inside my own energy field.

(Did I think I would be discovering such things when I started meditating a year ago ? Fuck no.)

So the "story" repeated itself (more happened at the same time) where I got tricked by "guides" I don't know who the fuck they are to perform some "sex magic". (I don't even do real magic, never done a ritual or anything or maybe one when I was 13 but I always tried to stay away from magic because it doesn't interest me).

But I didn't even do real magic. And it was my own idea I once in july tried to use kundalini energy (sexual) to manifest something but it was like a try to see, and I did it ONCE. I followed a normal spiritual tutorial on how to do it I had no idea it would be considered sex magic and it wasn't weird or didn't include other beings.

ANYWAY.

My clairsentience got wild in october I started feeling my own auric field. I could feel my chakras and connect to energies of pretty much anything to get a feel of it I thought it was cool and tried to learn how to live with this. I could feel energy flowing in and out of me, from the crown to the bottom of my feet. My chakras rotating and opening.

I lived in the mountains and meditated 1-2 hours a day doing all sorts of fun things. I felt I was training since I wanted to become professional in spirituality I really wanted to get into it. I'm a very focused person when I want to be so when I have a goal you know.. I didn't know in which field yet so I wanted to experiment. I precise that I was doing things intuitively from my higher self and with some advices of my guides. (hum)

So here comes october.

First I started hearing my ancestors and feel them in my teeth energically and I started talking with them, it was weird but fun and I didn't know what to do with it.

I understood that some clairaudience things I heard and some repetitive thoughts pattern came in fact from them and not me. So that was interesting.

Then one day out of the blue, around halloween, a lot of deceased people came around me and were starting to use my field as portal to pass on to the other side.

Guides and beings around me were talking with them for the procedure and all and I was like ???????????? Ok so I tried helping but you know nobody gave me a manual ? And I had to control my thoughts because everything was happening telepatically but I never properly learn so I let things slip up like "I'm sorry you are dead" to people who didn't even know they were dead so they got distressed and I was ? Fuckkkk. Honestly it was a mess and too much for me for a first time so after a while I said stop to all of it I said I didn't want to do it right now maybe take it one step at the time but then things got messy.

Low dimensional beings followed me around for weeks and started harassing me about responsabilities and I tried not to be scared but didn't know how to deal with it on a daily basis ?

So I went to a friend of mine who teaches all sort of spiritual fields who knows a lot about beings (he wrote books and all) and asked him for advice.

So he told me that I couldn't fight it and that I had to "take them" one by one to see what each had to show me about myself to work through. He told me to be firm.

Except there were 15 of them. I was like ok I can TRY I mean what choice do I have ?

So I was at my house sitting by my kitchen table and I asked them to get in line and to patiently WAIT for me to see them one by one.

(oh yes because each of them were eating bits of my energy and I could feel it the 15 at the same time so that was a ride)

So at first they got in line but some of them were terribly angry (I may have said some words at some point I mean they were fucking hurting me who can stay still and say nothing ?)

So I tried. When the third came the others lost their tempers and they all came at me at once.

In the mess my witch twinflame came in the mix (and she was pretty terrifying) so what did I do ? Obviously ? I started fighting. All of them.

How ? I don't even know. I did everything I could think of. Salt baths, prayers, mantras, I went to a guy who sends them off somewhere, I tried lightlanguage (SO VERY BAD IDEA NEVER EVER DO IT) because I thought it was coming from my heart so like a disney movie everything would be alright again. (I promise I really believed that haha I didn't know what to do) but in fact it was like an incantation but I didn't even know. So it was like magic. So I messed up without realizing what I was doing.

I wanna laugh know.

Sooooooo when I realized it wouldn't work I went back to my friend and he managed to get "rid of them".

For a moment.

But no it wasn't the end at all it was only the beginning.

I got a day or two to breathe and then well I don't know who the fuck came (the witch was there) but there were it seemed like many, MANY beings coming.

What did I do ? Well fight obviously because I never learn.

Ok so picture hell right now (I don't even believe in hell ffs) well it felt like I was there.

They talked all at once saying terrible things about me. They knew EVERYTHING I once believed or thought or wanted to do. They were doing a sort of game of fighting with me when every other minutes another being would pop up and come fight me.

My auric field ? My chakras ? A mess. I FELT PHYSICAL PAIN. How just how I didn't know it was possible, is it because I believed it ? Perhaps.

Anyway that's when I lost touch with reality completely.

Completely. It turned in some sort of psychosis schizophrenia you name it but it wasn't regular spiritual stuff I was completely off touch with the ground.

So much that I felt my auric field kind of leave ? LEAVE ? Like go up into the sky.

I tried to stay here I tried. I stayed one entire day near a tree to try to stay grounded but it wasn't enough it was SO INTENSE.

Like a bad bad spiritual fever.

Obviously in my stupid fight I tried once to raise my frequency ? Because why not ? Idk. But it attracted MORE beings but high frequency this time (with some ETs that weren't nice AT ALL)

Ok so began weeks of torture of all kinds. All kinds. Mind games. Physical pain. Delirium.

They indeed used me as portal to make enter bad things into this dimension. And I couldn't even control it. They were using my emotions.

When I had an emotion like sadness, some terrible being entered through my own field (how is this even possible I don't know). So they were torturing me but I was trying not to feel not to make enter anything, and I had to control my thoughts because at the same time they were all tricking me to make contracts.

Yeah contracts. I didn't know but apparently that's a thing in some realm. Soul contract.

Apparently they got to use me as portal because of a contract. Ok ok so WHY NO ONE TELLS US THAT WE MADE CONTRACTS BEFORE ENTERING THIS EARTH AND WHICH AND WHY NO ONE TELLS HOW WE MAKE THEM (apparently a single thought was like "I sign !!! " when ??? No ???)

So I made so many contracts without knowing that some contradicted each other. It made absolutely zero sense at the end.

Anyway.

So the one of the most terrible thing was that one being.

Because I actually saw with my two eyes it's shadow on the wall falling down from the ceiling (he passed through me). Then, he began torturing me. Like it felt like it was eating my brain. A real life horror movie.

But he did that you know how ? In a time loop.

I REPEAT, IN A TIME LOOP.

You must think I'm mental lmao but I'm not joking.

I experimented a real life time loop.

It's real, it exists. It's like in the movies.

I relieved the same torture scene over and over again for... How don't know how long ? It's even difficult for my brain to comprehend. There was no time.

I got off the time loop when I realised there was one. I got out of my room the second I realise there was one.

To this day I have no words. No words.

???!!!!!!!!???????!!!!!!

WHAT THE MOTHERFUCKING HELL WAS THAT.

Ok so the concept of time we understand and then when you ascend there is no time because you are always in the now moment that's something you can grasp in your mind but THIS. This was some next level bullshit us humans shouldn't experience. This should not happen. This is ?? Not ?? ok ?? Not natural. We're not in a sci-fi movie ffs but apparently yes I got stuck in a torture time loop thanks.

Jesus CHRIST I still can't believe it. Did I hallucinate ? It sure didn't feel like it.

Anyway so that was a thing.

So as you can see it got way too much, waaaay too much and I decided to got to the hospital because I was having chest pain and so much stress I was about to faint ?

But they couldn't find anything. So they advised I go to psy. I went out of despair ? I did 29377382 holistic therapy that helped a bit but seriously the beings were still torturing me and being in my head 24/7 so I thought I had nothing to lose.

What a terrible mistake.

I was locked up in a room with nothing but myself and this nightmare.

Those 4 days were interesting to say the least.

I got spiritually raped multiples times stopped praying after a while.

I begged. I asked for help. I prayed everyone and everything I could think of. I tried protection stuff.

Nothing really worked there were too many of them and I was like a little lamb unknowingly giving away my light and serving as portal for those creatures.

Joy.

I couldn't even cry because another terrible being was coming everytime.

They broke my mind. I broke my mind. I lost touch so much I couldn't recognize myself in the mirror.

They brainwashed me, reprogrammed me. Used the subconscious for reprogramming so yeah apparently that's another thing.

You know when you are trying to reprogramm yourself for manifesting for example well reminder that other consciousnesses can do it to you too so you have to be EXTREMELY aware of what's yours and what's not.

It was a huge thing to make me do all sorts of stuff but since I could tell the difference it didn't work because it's something I learned beforehand.

The key is not believing it and it's even easier when you know it's not from you.

Their programms are still in me today they pop up from my subconscious mind sometimes but since I know they are not mine I live with it for now.

So they were trying to get me to say yes to something (I think it was for posession) but I kept saying no over and over again.

ET's/lightbeings did stuff in within my brain (and I never would have thought I would see the day when I would be saying this, so this is my life now apparently ok)

Anyway. I'm not describing in details because it's too long and honestly I don't want to relive it again once was enough for a lifetime.

I was broken so was my mind and my heart and everything.

I had no options for it to stop, I wasn't even fighting anymore I was just trying to make less damage and not let enter anything else. But it was no use I didn't control anything. My field was a mess everything was blocked there were leaking all over and well I didn't sleep for days and my energy was very low I made 22927354 contracts, was raped, reprogrammed, experimented on and all of this within a single fucking month.

I didn't see any other choice than to take meds.

To numb the clairaudience and clairsentience.

I knew it wasn't a solution and that it wouldn't make them "go away" but at least I didn't have to feel or hear anything consciously.

It's difficult to write about it honestly but it makes me a bit happy to be able to share and not keep it all to myself.

So I took meds for 2-3 weeks and it numbed the clairs but I could still feel it and hear it a tiny bit I knew it wasn't gone. But I got time to heal a bit and get my mind clear again.

I did a quantum healing session with a wonderful lady who saw everything that happened, knew about my with sister and everything she did a tremedous work where she got rid of all the contracts, removed the ties with some entities, spoke to me about the time loop (so yeah apparently that's a real thing for real ? Wow) and did some work about my twinflame witch sister (she cut the cord we had where we needed to reincarnate together and she left my field to go back to be incarnated if she wanted). I had a sigil of magic on me I didn't even know about. Probably from a past life or from my witch sister. Oh and apparently those beings put me implants. Etheric implants yeah apparently that's a thing. Because everything that I was feeling in my clairs felt real but I KNEW that something was off. Something felt.. Like unnatural.

I was right.

Idk who but someone put me an implant to modify my perceptions, so my clairs ! What I was feeling/hearing/seeing may have not been the actual truth of what was happening. AND I KNEW IT. I KNEW IT WAS OFF. But still IT'S MAD THEY CAN DO THIS. They can implant things to modify perceptions ??? Who the fuck did I attract ?? What kind of lightbeings ? It's INSANE.

So the lady got rid of some of them but not all, we scheduled another appointment on friday but this woman gets month of waiting list because she's the real deal I'm thinking of taking a class with her but anyway. We managed to close me as portal. I am not a portal anymore, yaye ! 😐

Things got a bit quieter afterwards.

That was super nice.

I got to breathe but I was still heavily traumatized like someone coming back from war, always stressed than anything will happen you know it took me a week or two to let my body relax for a second.

I quit the meds a week ago.

I don't want to put my head into the sand and not face anything. I knew my clairs would be coming back but I have a new approach now that I have my head a lot clearer and I am slowly getting back to myself.

I decided first not to fight no matter what I hear or what I feel. I know not all the implants are gone so my stategy is to remain calm. I still feel some weird things over my head energically since I quit my meds beings came back to taunt me a bit but I didn't response.

I learned that with all that I became some kind of medium actually. It wasn't intended but ok. So my new techique, instead of meditating to get to higher states of consciousness or other realm or inside myself I meditate to stay right here right now. I use mindfullness to stay in the now moment. It allows me to hear less since my attention is on the touch or my real eyesight.

Staying present. Staying present. Staying present.

I have no other choice. Otherwise the minute my mind goes somewhere else I have thoughts and people answer my thoughts. I am never alone in my head anymore and I honestly don't know how to deal.

I still have the repetitive thoughts of the programming. But it's getting quieter when I don't think.

So I don't think and I don't listen.

It's extremely difficult but with training I believe I can do it.

I can't really apply the ascension process anymore in the way people put it because for me it's a bit more complicated now I can't even really think.

So Imma try to stay right here right now and see how it goes.

Get rid of the remaining implants. That's it.

Proctecting yourself is useless. If you take a hit you take a hit. The bubble of light isn't enough.

There are things out there more complex than we think. I almost killed myself but I am still alive so I guess what doesn't kill you makes you stronger ? They can't kill anyone unless you let it happen.

The trauma is there but I'll get over it.

I was a victim but I won't take this from a victim pov, I attracted this when I blindly trusted any being passing because they seemed nice and from the light.

I did everything from the book, never did anything weird, always stayed in the light, controled my thoughts to remain as much as possible positive, did the protocoles of protection and what did I create ?

Chaos. And pain and suffering.

So guess what I think there's nothing to control if stuff happens it happens. This much pain was hard to accept at the time but I will get there for it not to get stuck I don't want to repeat this again I think I learned my lesson.

Now I'm enjoying the sensation of my couch under my fingers and listening to the radio and looking by the window to the plants outside. I feel a weird thing over my head but try to focus on the sunlight outside not on this thing and focus my consciousness on the ground under my feet.

I think it's my life now but it's ok. I still get to see what's right in front of me. It's often nice especially when there's sunlight.

Thank you if you read, you are even madder than me.

I'll see how it goes after the implants are removed.

Maybe I will feel less weird stuff ?

Meditate they say, go beyond the veil they say.

Maybe what's already there is perfect enough and it's ok if we don't do it and we go slow and we don't unlock everything and not open every chakra ? And not try to connect somewhere and just stay right here ? Being fully present ?

I think it's ok. Let's enjoy the sunlight for a while.

✨

[kieren-fucking-walker]

DGHDA fucked me up (in the best way)

Okay, so there’s been something I wanted to say for a little while now in regards to DGHDA that I’ve struggled to put into words. I’m still struggling with that part so I’m hoping this makes sense in some kind of way but I want to say it because it’s something that’s important to me. You all know I’m great at dodging the emotional stuff, but here I am and you’re going to have to bear with me while I try to get this in order, (also I’m going to use too many commas, sorry). I’ll start with this:

Dirk Gently has changed the way I think about things, particularly about myself and the road I’m on right now.

My early twenties have been the time that my brain has decided to dredge up a ton of shit that I have been shoving away into a box in my head for years, and when I say years I mean like, going on eighteen years, maybe even longer, but young children don’t really have the ability to compartmentalise the way I’ve been doing. As you can imagine, the kind of stuff that you start shoving into mental boxes as a kid isn’t fun and I’m not going into any of that right now but I’m sure you all get the idea. It wasn’t good, it was systematic and it really fucked me up. Now, I’ve been to therapy for a lot of things regarding my mental health, anxiety being a major player there, I even trained as a therapist to see if it would help (it didn’t), but whenever someone even vaguely brings up the notion of PTSD I run in the other direction as fast as I can. Mentally, I’m not that fast physically because I haven’t been on a run since I was last made to in High School, it’s whatever. Point is that I’ve been dealing with trauma for a long, long time and I’ve been doing that by ignoring it, bad idea in case you were wondering, because my brain has had enough and has decided to shove me into that space that, quite frankly, terrifies me. I’m a methodical person, I like explanations and dealing with things in a logical way and when I can’t do that I freak the hell out and usually end up sabotaging myself. It’s cyclical behaviour that I’m trying to break.

What does this have to do with Dirk Gently? Here’s where I think you’re all going to start thinking I’m a bit weird, but hang in there. It’s less as what it has to do with Dirk Gently the show, but Dirk Gently the character, because let's face it, Dirk has a shit ton of issues he’s not dealing with very well at all. It’s something I latched on to in S1, but more so in S2 which if you’ve seen it you’ll understand why. One thing that becomes pretty impossible to ignore is that Dirk is dealing with trauma. Terrible things have happened to him and it obviously is something that’s difficult to deal with, but what strikes me most about Dirk is that while awful things have happened to him, he’s good and he’s kind and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone else. This is important.

This is important because for the longest time I didn’t even want to admit the trauma was there, let alone make a move to deal with it, all because of one simple message that you may not even know is consistently hammered home unless it affects you. That message is that trauma makes you a bad person. We hear it over and over again, that if you’re hurt you become a person who hurts others. It’s in the people who will excuse their own abuse because they were abused, like repeating a pattern of behaviour is something you can’t fight and having hands turned to you will inevitably turn your hand to someone else. It’s in every villains backstory that they had a sad and tragic childhood which explains and even sometimes excuses their behaviour. It’s in the way anger at what happened to you is seen as a bad thing, as proof that you’re going to do bad things. It’s in this constant ongoing rhetoric that anyone who has been traumatised will come out the other side spitting acid and wanting to watch the world burn, or that they’ll lock themselves away from anything and everyone and just live in their trauma forever. The options you’re given are violence, tragedy or death. Like one, multiple or ongoing traumatic incidents aren’t enough for you to have to live with but now it will take everything from you instead and you will become a person who incites trauma. I don’t want to be a bad person. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Every time I say or do something I have to run it over in my head to make sure I’m not being that trauma survivor who is hurting people without realising. I’m scared of being forced into hurting other people by this box of things I shoved away and filled to bursting over the years.

But Dirk Gently is none of those things. He isn’t bad and he isn’t violent, he isn’t out to hurt others even though some people would argue he has reason to. More important than that even is that this is the way he’s chosen to be. He may not have had a choice as to how that trauma affected him but he has a choice in how he responds to it, how much control it has over him as a person. It made him kind.

I want to be kind.

I want to have a choice as to what kind of person I’ll be despite the shit. Because trauma is shit, and it continues to be shit long after the events themselves have been left behind. It’s raw and cruel and unflinching, it hurts you and messes with your head and lies to you, it’s unrelenting and exhausting and violent. It makes you think that no matter what you do, you’ll be all of those things as well. But you won’t. You don’t have to be. Nobody has ever told me that before now, I’ve never seen it in a way I can relate to before.

“But he’s a fictional character!” Does it matter? Does it really matter where that message comes from? We’ve used stories to convey messages since before we even had a recognisable spoken language. We’ve used them for morals and fear and comfort, laughter and strength and hope, we’ve been doing that literally forever and I don’t see why the impact of that message would be taken away because now it isn’t told around an open fire as an epic poem, or discussed in some high brow literature class. The medium doesn’t matter, that’s kind of the beauty of art, you can send a message and tell a story with just about anything if you do it right. The characters may be fictional, but the messages aren’t, the impact isn’t. That shit is real, and it’s the kind of thing that people may not even know they’re doing when they make these things but that doesn’t lessen the impact of it at all.

I had a breakdown the other day, a good one, one I needed to have. The realisation that I can be traumatised and good, hurt and kind, that I don’t have to let any of that take away my choice as to who I want to be and who I can be may have been a long time coming, but this was the last push to get me to recognise that it isn’t just true for other people, it’s true for me too. It made me cry and I’m not a crier, but I felt a lot better for it.

Dirk Gently may not be real, but I am. He’s taught me to be brave, to not let any of the shit that comes before stop you from doing things in the present. That you can carry trauma with you but not let it weigh you down. I know that to some of you this will sound stupid, trust me I’ve heard “it’s just a story” since I learned how to read books and would constantly be found sobbing over the pages in the corner of the library, but anything can change you if you open yourself up to it. I had been desperate for something to make me feel like I wasn’t destined to be the next person who turns their own pain into violence, and I found it.

There’s a strength to being kind that you’ll never understand unless you’ve had to fight so hard to be that way. If you want to be the full stop in that cycle then you can be if you choose it. I’m choosing it. I’m really, really, really fucking scared by that, but I’m doing it anyway. Dirk Gently taught me that.

It’s okay to be changed by things that aren’t real. When you are, you make them real. That’s really the top and bottom of it.

You get to choose to be a good person. You get to fight for that. It doesn’t matter where the drive for that comes from, just that you let it in.

So I guess I’m going to go to therapy and start talking about my emotions with a stranger while I’m trapped in a room with them for an hour or so. I’m about as enthralled by that idea as Farah Black would be, but you know. I can do this. I can at least try to do this. Eff the ineffable and all that, right? Maybe I’ll start a jacket collection. Who am I kidding? I’m gay as fuck, I already have a jacket collection.

It’s going to be interesting, but it’s going to be good. 

I’m going to be good.

(PS. My eternal thanks to Samuel Barnett for playing this character with such depth and integrity. I don’t know if this realisation would have struck me so hard in anybody else’s hands, but since I’m never going to know if that’s true or not I’m saying it is and in that case the credit is yours.)

(PPS. Don’t let this emotional outpouring fool you, I maintain my reputation as an irresponsible emotionless fool. Please humour me by pretending you don’t know I cry every time I see a cat.)

[hannahindie]

Country Roads, Take Me Home: Chapter 1

Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Reader Word Count: 2,083 Warnings: Not much for this chapter, mostly homesickness. A/N: Although I’ve not had to move away from my home state, I tend to feel drawn to our more mountainous areas, and I wanted to share that love with all of you. Also, I think most people can relate to missing home, or whatever you consider as home. I am also writing this for @ravengirl94′s 1.5 follower challenge, although the the prompt won’t show up until part 3. (This got out of control real quick; whoops. lol) I also made the aesthetic for this, so I’m working on those skills too. lol

This was beta’d by @trexrambling - “I sense shenanigans.” And also @pinknerdpanda - “I love the slow reveal of what happened. You're like rationing out the information and I love it.”

Thank you, my lovelies. You’re the best and help my words make sense.

As always, tags are at the bottom and if you’d like to be added, please let me know. Feedback is always welcome.

Country roads, take me home To the place I belong West Virginia, mountain momma Take me home, country roads

There’s a saying back home, “You can take the girl out of the mountains, but you can’t take the mountains out of the girl.”  Truer words have never been spoken, and as I’m standing on the roof of the bunker and looking out over the mostly flat landscape of Lebanon, my heart aches for the rolling hills and deep hollers of West Virginia. I’ve been gone for years, and it’s usually something I can ignore, but this time of year it is especially hard.

One of my favorite parts of growing up in Appalachia, surrounded by mountains, was when September hit. Depending on where you lived the time frame differed, but between September and October the leaves would change and the mountains were painted with bright yellows and burnt oranges and deep crimsons. You could start in the northern part of the state and move south and you’d never see the same patterns twice. One day everything would be green, and the next you’d start seeing the different colors begin to leak through. West Virginia is a painter’s dream. I wish I could describe exactly how it felt to overlook the New River Gorge during peak leaf changing time, but it was breathtaking. Between the white water rapids flowing quickly beneath the bridge, that at one time was the world’s longest single-span arch bridge, and the mountains surrounding the area, it was breathtaking even during the summer months. But fall...it was transformed into a dream.

But I wasn’t in West Virginia anymore. I hadn’t been home for a long time. I never really said that I would never go back; I still spoke to a couple of friends that had remained there, but the opportunity never really showed itself. If I was being honest with myself, I was purposely avoiding it. Since Sam and Dean had found me half dead and alone in the home I’d grown up in, I’d stayed with them. I didn’t have much to go back to, and I’m not exactly the best at confronting my problems head on. But then fall rolls around and my heart yearns for dirt roads and trees the color of flames, and cool, crystal clear streams flowing over smooth, mossy stones.

I took a sip of coffee and savored the bitter liquid as it rolled across my taste buds and spread warmth through me. I have never liked coffee, but after living with Sam for awhile I found that 5 a.m. came early, and if I ever hoped to survive such torture I was going to need the caffeine.

“Y/N?” Sam’s low voice startled me from my thoughts, and I glanced over at him standing in the doorway to the roof.

“Hey, Sam.”

He slowly walked over to join me, “Why are you up here so early?”

I shrugged and looked back towards the sunrise that was painting the landscape in beautiful reds and oranges, “Couldn’t sleep. Might as well get my day started, we’ve got a lot of researching to do.”

I could feel him staring at me as he waited for the real answer, but when it didn’t come I saw him lean his elbows against the high wall of the roof and sigh. “You know you can talk to me, right? You don’t always have to be so….stoic.”

I laughed quietly, “Stoic? I’m not Dean. I just...you guys have enough to worry about, and there’s nothing wrong. Really.”

Sam looked over at me, his hazel eyes dark. It was hard not to just spill out all my feelings and secrets when he looked at me like that. “You need to learn how to lie better, Y/N. Because from where I’m standing, that’s a shitty reason and you know it.”

I sighed. As much as I tried to hide myself from both Winchesters, I had obviously failed. They were too smart for that and well versed in denial and hidden feelings. They could write a book on the subject. I took another sip of coffee, then sat the mug on the wall and wrapped my arms around myself. “I miss home.”

Sam straightened and turned to face me, “Home? I’ve not heard you mention it since we brought you here… Do you miss it that much?”

“I don’t know, Sam. Yes and no.” I sat down on one of the lawn chairs I had dragged up to the roof a long time ago and leaned my head in my hand, “I don’t miss everything, you know? I’ve got a couple of friends that I still talk to back east...I don’t really miss home so much. I miss the mountains, I miss how they look like they’re on fire when the leaves change, I miss walking barefoot in rivers and creeks. I miss having bonfires whose sole purpose isn’t to burn the people we love. I miss things not being so...flat.”

I looked up at the sky as I forced back tears. I’m not sure why talking about it was making it worse, but it suddenly felt like my chest was about to burst. All I truly wanted was to walk the boardwalk through Cranberry Glades or carefully navigate the wooden walkways through Beartown. “I’m sorry...it’s not usually this bad. It’s just this time of year...fall was my favorite thing when I was home.” I laughed, “Haunted houses, especially. How ironic, right?”

Sam smiled and gently put a hand on my knee, “You could have just told us, Y/N. I mean, I doubt we would have done much about the haunted houses, but we could have taken you home.” He paused, his eyebrows furrowed, and took a deep breath, “Do you….do you want to leave? We never really asked you. You know you can go whenever, right?”

I put my hand over his and gave it a soft squeeze, “Sam, I wouldn’t trade living here with you guys for anything in this world. I just think...maybe it’s time I go back for a visit. I’ve avoided it for a long time and I think my heart knows it’s time.” I stood up and pulled Sam with me, “You know, it’s weird...I’ve heard people say that they can feel the sea calling, that it’s just something they feel in their bones, like an ache or an itch that can’t be scratched. I always thought it was kind of silly, but I think I get what they mean.”

Sam shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at me carefully, “When are you leaving?”

“I think I should probably go soon. It’s a long way home. If I leave today, then I can take my time once I’m there.” Sam looked down at his shoes and my heart ached for a different reason. “I’ll come back, Sam. How would you and Dean make it without me, anyway? He irons with beer instead of water, for God’s sake.”

Sam laughed, “Yea…we’re kind of a mess when we’re left alone. We’ll miss you, you know.”

I smiled, “I know. I’ll miss you too. Now come on, I’ll fix us some breakfast before I pack up and head out. Sound good?” He nodded and led the way from the roof, and I realized just how much I was going to miss them both...especially Sam.

I stood and looked around my room, searching for anything that I may have missed that I would have needed. After making sure that I had packed all the essentials, I grabbed my bag and wandered down the hall and into the library. It was empty and eerily silent, especially since that was usually where I found Sam. I sat my bag down on the table and walked up the steps and into the war room; no Sam or Dean. I made my way into the kitchen, “Sam? Dean?” The dishes from breakfast had already been washed and were sitting in the drying rack, the towel neatly folded next to them, but the room was empty. Where the hell were they?

I went back to the library and grabbed my bag, then slowly made my way to the garage. When I’d arrived at the bunker, I had wandered into the garage one day while I was exploring and found an old motorcycle that had clearly been well taken care of and then abandoned when the Men of Letters were no more. I had never ridden a motorcycle before, had no idea how they worked or how to fix them, but I’d immediately been drawn to it. I hadn’t had much to say to Sam and Dean back then; I hadn’t had much to say to anyone. So instead of talking to the people who had rescued me or making myself useful, I had gone online and ordered a book about motorcycles and how to repair them. I had spent the next two months reading and going through diagrams and fixing things as they came up. Once it was up and running again, I had taken it out and taught myself to ride.

I lost count of how many times I came home bloody and bruised, but Sam and Dean never said a word. On occasion, one of them would have to patch me up if I couldn’t reach it, but that was the extent of it. For months I didn’t speak to them; it was just me and my motorcycle. Eventually, I began to open up. We started to have conversations, and I started to tag along on hunts. Rather than always riding my motorcycle, I joined them in the Impala. I still loved that motorcycle, though, and would sometimes take off on my own. Which was why, when I realized that I had to leave, I decided to take the motorcycle. I immediately made a beeline for it when I hit the entrance to the garage and jumped when I heard a voice behind me.

“Just going to leave without saying anything?”

I turned around and glared at Dean, who was leaning against Baby, “That wasn’t my plan, but you and your brother just disappeared. Afraid I was going to steal the Impala?”

Dean laughed, “Nah, nothing like that.” He pushed himself away from the car and walked over to where I stood, my bag balanced precariously on the bike. “Really going, huh?” I nodded but didn’t say anything. “I get it, you know. Back when we were looking for Dad and Sam was having his visions...he said we had to go home. Difference was, I didn’t want to. It didn’t stop that feeling of needing to go, though. I hadn’t spent a lot of time there either, so it’s not like I felt like I was missing anything...mine was more of a ‘confront my demons’ kind of thing. Literally.” He crossed his arms as he stared at me, “You don't have to go alone, you know. It's not like anything is happening around here.”

I shook my head, “Dean, I couldn't ask you guys to do that. It's a long trip, and you'd be bored out of your mind. What if something came up?”

He shrugged, “We aren't the only hunters. The best, yes. The only ones, no.” He grabbed my bag and began walking back towards the Impala, “Sammy and I already discussed it, so it wasn't a question. More of a statement, really. Now come on. You said it, we've got a hell of a drive.”

I watched him throw my bag into the back seat and walk around to the driver’s side just as Sam ran up the steps to the garage. He looked at me and smiled, “I brought snacks, and I found this awesome podcast-”

I heard Dean groan from the car, “Come on! And also, no podcasts. Driver picks the music, remember? I'm not listening to some boring dude talk about the ancient Greeks and how they were responsible for how we raise crops in present day, or some shit.”

Sam looked at me and rolled his eyes, then tossed his bag in the trunk, slammed it shut, and climbed into the front seat where he immediately began to explain to Dean why his podcast choices were so important.

Although I couldn't help but smile and thank whatever fate brought me these two selfless men, I knew that the next couple of days were probably going to be the longest of my life. Thank goodness for headphones.

Read Chapter 2 HERE.

Forever Tags: @trexrambling @pinknerdpanda  @wheresthekillswitch @emilywritesaboutdean @arryn-nyxx @emptywithout @escabell @charliebradbury1104 @jarpadandjensenaremyheroes  @deanssweetheart23  @canadianjelly @super-not-naturall @aubreyreadsstuff @dean-winchesters-baby @melissaj616 @fandomismyspiritanimal @keepcalmandcarryondean @assbutt-still-in-hell @owllover123 @rosie-winchester @amionthetumbler @duubaduu @hiimaprofessionalfangirl @goldenolaf25 @authoressskr @nanie5 @mrssamfuckingwinchester @zincomms @kathaswings @crazynerdandproud @barbedwireandbubblegum

[rontra]

Hey Rontra. Sorry is this is too personal, but I was recently diagnosed with autism (high functioning) and even though it didn't tell me anything new per se, I've been trying to wrap my mind around it. Do you have any tips for getting through the transition period?

Hi there friend!Omg yeah getting th diagnosis can be super weird even if it’s not necessarily new information, I totally get what you mean lmao

Even tho it’s personal I don’t rly mind talking about it at all; just remember that this is a suuuuper individual experience and you might not relate to my thoughts on it at all–and that’s okay! I’m happy that you decided to ask for advice, but if mine doesn’t apply to you, that’s okay–and I’m sure there’s other posts out there that can add to this you might relate to more (but I’m on mobile so sadly can’t help much there djfhshs sorry). This kind of advice is hard because everyone’s so different xD ahhhhSpoilers: my tips are very mushy and sentimental ;9

But this DID get long so I’m gonna cut the post fbdbdhdhhs I’m very chatty ;v;

So for context’s sake: I was also diagnosed with autism relatively recently–at 20 years old (am 21 now). While I don’t know how old you are, I’ll assume that you’re an adult or close to it as well–which to me made the diagnosis feel really weird and time-displaced! Like I wasn’t “supposed” to be diagnosed so late, bc it’s “supposed” to be noticed in childhood and thus I’m somehow not “allowed” to relate with other autistic people (obviously, that’s not a correct line of thinking). I felt like, even though it totally makes sense and it’s def the appropriate diagnosis for me, it was weird–definitely difficult to sort of keep up and get my head around it. Everything in hindsight of my life makes 100% sense through this lens, and yet, it felt surreal. Not WRONG; but it was complex.

I think a lot of that stemmed from those two decades of suppressing the traits associated with my autism; things like downplaying or ignoring hypo- and hypersensitive sensory experiences, actively suppressing stims, and expending 90% of my day-to-day energy on just trying to slip “under the radar” in social interaction(let alone do well at it, God forbid). It wasn’t something I did out of conscious self loathing or anything like that; I actually assumed everyone grew up this way, and the world was just supposed to be a fuckin incomprehensible mess of unpleasant sounds and obscure subliminal social cues that people drop just for fun and sometimes things just swirl together into a big mess and you can’t focus and you can’t talk and this is just how the world IS. That we all grow up feeling like aliens and we’re all just pretending. That specific feeling wore off as I grew older and more prone to feeling directly isolated (so now IM the only alien), but the idea that “the world just Is Like This” stuck. It was HUGE to me when I realized that neurotypical people don’t usually relate to that mess. And, more importantly, that all this time-and-energy-consuming self-discipline was suddenly unnecessary, because those things had a reason and they had a meaning and they were mine. That’s weird. It’s good but it’s weird. To take in that those things have patterns and explanations and other people feel them too is overwhelming and beautiful and weird.

It’s weird as hell to feel like some kind of spy in a foreign country trying to blend in with a culture you don’t understand for 20 years, or some kinda alien, an animal in a cage doing tricks for a faceless crowd, only to have that moment where–it’s OKAY and things MAKE SENSE. It’s mine and it’s good and i don’t have to work so hard to be “like them” because I’m not. I can’t be.

I can’t be! Even when people call me (and you) things like “high functioning” it’s measuring my ability to be “like them”–which is something I can’t be. It’s measuring how I function compared to a neurotypical person, and it feels moot, because I’m NOT. It’s a measure of how good I am at pretending to be neurotypical. And guess what: after 20 years, I’m pretty damn good at it! :p

It makes sense, but it’s scary. Because I can finally get to know me, the autistic person–the person I’ve been subconsciously smothering for 20 years. That’s scary, and exciting, and comforting, all at once.

So after all that rambling, here’s one tip: lean into that. Hard. Indulge in something that makes you go “wow, this is pretty autistic” (whatever that might entail for YOU; I get really into obnoxiously elaborate organization systems for my hobby supplies, as one example) and just…let yourself enjoy it. Try a bunch of stim toys if you haven’t had the chance. Find a friend who has an hour or five to spare and tell them about your special interest, if you have one. Explore how you feel when you’re treating yourself to this kind of thing. Feel it all the way through. Take your time to get to know it.

I didn’t really go out and do research and look up more than I already knew–I focused way more on what I was feeling and how this new set of facts interwove with that, that it all made sense and for the first time I was in control of that and could indulge it consciously in a very pleasant way. I am more at peace than I have been in a long time because I’m expending less energy suppressing myself, while simultaneously spending more time being gentle to myself and indulging those autistic traits to bring an overall soothing. I think reviewing your own history and figuring out what makes your autism tick is super helpful in making you comfortable with it–finding what things appeal to you and utilizing those tools fully with the “armor” of your diagnosis. Before, I was often worried because “other people don’t do this” or “doing that is weird”–now, I do these things (stimming, accommodating for my sensory needs, etc) without feeling as bashful about it, because I know now that this is part of my experience with autism. I have that word, I have this diagnosis, and I can use that as my shield against those 20 years of pressure and shame. And if someone thinks my stim or my avoidance of certain touch IS weird–well, that’s their problem, lmfao. I spent 20 years suffering; I’m going to take full advantage of this new flourishing beauty.

To me, this experience isn’t about learning something new (as you said; it’s not new information)–but leaning into it and embracing what was there from the start. If you’re like me and have spent most of your life suppressing these things, indulging them may help you transition through the “whoa” into the “this is good” :p leaning into it HARD was def one of the best things I did hahahaha

another thing I did a lot was just reflection–I’ve spent a lot of time going over my own behaviors, reflecting on the past through this new lens, that kind of thing. I’ve been exploring my own mindset and how my brain works all over again, and connecting the dots to my diagnosis like some huge constellation chart, and it’s one of the most soothing things I’ve ever done. Maybe it’s because I’m big on organization :p Just kind of training myself to apply this new sexy word to it was important to me. To be able to say “oh, I do this thing because autism” or “hey I’m autistic too” and use these terms in a real way helped make the diagnosis and how it applies to me “real” to me as well.

People (neurotypical people, that is) talk to me about “acceptance” and “coming to terms with” and such–and they’re saying the right words but they don’t mean the right thing. They say it like I feel bad about autism. They’re saying it like autism is bad. It’s not. This wasn’t a difficult diagnosis to get–its not really one i struggled to cope with receiving. But they’re right that it is about acceptance, and it is about coming to terms–it’s just a far gentler thing with a different emotional starting point. I was learning from scratch how to take care of myself, with a whole new box of tools and terms to help me; it was flourishing, it was thriving. It was not a scary new disease or some threatening Autism $peaks rhetoric; it was merely understanding, and accepting, and giving myself positive things I’ve been keeping away for too many years.

Step 1 to managing my difficulties is understanding them. Step 2 is being kind.

Upon receiving this diagnosis, things may simply seem to make a lot of sense. Maybe you don’t really feel like it’s a “big deal” the way people around you seem to. It might just be that perfect moment when a puzzle piece clicks into place and it was always meant to be there. That dissonance between other people’s behavior and how you feel might be confusing too (I had this!).

Now, you probably understand things in a new light. It’s a good thing to become closer with yourself. Be nice to yourself and explore your experience of the world with a new light–you don’t necessarily have to do anything huge with that new info, but acknowledging it and naming its root and learning to use it to be kind to yourself in the future is cool. Don’t pretend like it isn’t there; name it, in your head, when you notice a trait in yourself that stems from it. Let yourself know what those things are and what they come from, and make adjustments where necessary to accommodate them. Be kind to yourself and don’t worry.

It’s good. You are good. You have always been good. Thank you.

[topicprinter]

I have a confession to make: I’m a podcast addict.Every day when I wake up, I sit down to a podcast with my cup of coffee. When I drive, walk my dog, do chores, or work out — podcasts are always there.Every month I listen to about 120 hours of podcasts. I have been a podcast addict for about 2 years.I don’t know about you, but I’m hooked on having the ability to be a fly on the wall in a room with some of the most amazing, exclusive, and successful people in the world.Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, James Altucher, Pat Flynn, John Lee Dumas, Ramit Sethi, Ray Edwards, John Carlton, Tim Ferriss, Noah Kagan, and on and on…Podcasting gives me access to people, every day, who I could never hope to afford to see once. (Especially one on one, if at all.)These giants have SO MUCH to teach, that of course I come away from every interview with countless takeaways…But for every trick here, or hack there that I have been able to take away from these podcasts — there is an even more important single lesson that I have heard repeated over, and over, and over.A lesson that is present in almost every one of these people’s stories.Your expectations for success, are messed up.I think we can all see that the social media “influencer” culture has definitely taken over the conversation about entrepreneurship.Search “entrepreneur” on Instagram or Twitter and you’ll find literally thousands of messages being projected about what a successful business owner has to look like.You start a business, “just hustle” and “grind it out” for a year, and boom: Huge mansions, yachts, fancy cars, Rolexes, stacks of cash…Except the people making these messages are renting boats to take pictures of and photoshop quotes over. They’re renting expensive watches and clothes to pose with. They’re hiring models to pose with them. They withdraw money to take pictures with and then put it right back in the bank just to create the illusion of the lifestyle they’re trying to sell you.The people creating these messages are also lying to you, they are also trying to hide all the effort that people who actually own the Porches, the Mercedes, the boats, the mansions actually went through to get that stuff.The one lesson that keeps coming back in every single podcast I’ve EVER listened to is this:Except to WORK for 4 or 5 years before you see ANY REWARD from your business.In a moment, we’re going to explore some examples together. I am going to prove this to you to be true by looking at the stories of famous, successful, experienced people like Joe Pulizzi, and Pat Flynn, and Gary Vaynerchuk who still took 3, 4, 5 or more years to build their business.Most of the people you are looking at today as “overnight successes” have been working on their businesses since at least the early 2000’s. It’s 2017.Building a business is NOT working on a company for a year, and then being able to afford to go skiing in Aspen whenever you want on your private jet.Across thousands of hours of interviews with entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed that the consistent pattern of success (aside from having multiple failures — because pretty much nobody works in the first business they started anymore, even if that first business got them some acclaim) is taking all profits and reinvesting them back into the business for, usually, at least 3 years. 3–5 years was the range I heard the most often for these HUGELY SUCCESSFUL people to take one business to the level of “success” we see them at now.You’re not going to build the next Facebook. You’re not going to work for 6 months or one year and then be set. You’re not going to be able to put in 4 hours of work per week and materialize Rolexes out of thin air (sorry, Tim! Although the point of his book title was missed! It’s not about doing 4 hours of work per week total, it’s more about doing 4 hours of work per week that you don’t like). You’re not going to be able to afford to buy yourself expensive things for a VERY LONG TIME.The truth about being an entrepreneur is that it’s not sexy.That’s what I’ve learned from these interviews. We’ll go into the individual ways being an entrepreneur was unsexy for each of the following examples, but they all have their own version of “entrepreneur hell” that they had to go through (for 3, 4, or 5+ years!!!) BEFORE achieving anything resembling the concept of “success” on Instagram, or in your own mind.When you look at Pat today and see he is generating $100k monthly revenue, it can seem crazy intimidating.For anybody who doesn’t know Pat’s story, he went to college and graduated with a degree in architecture around the early 2000’s. To become an architect, you take a special certification test called the LEED exam.Pat got his start in 2007/2008 by creating a website for the LEED exam. It was a studying website where he would upload his notes, blog about his own journey studying for the exam, and eventually he started selling study-aids for the LEED exam.He was able to build that niche website into a good source of revenue for him, and that was his first experience with online marketing. Jump to today and he is one of the most well known business podcasters, has grown his original niche site even larger, and has a few other projects that he generates his income from.But when you’re looking at people today, you are not seeing who they are when they started.“Um okay, he’s still making $8k per month there…”Yeah I know. But here’s what you need to remember: Pat is not saying that he made $8,000 right out of the gate.He’s saying that he makes $8,000 with that website at that point in time, and that is marking him starting his new (at the time) blog “Smart Passive Income” about that topic (online marketing).He posted about making that over one year after creating the website.“Okay kind of against your 4 year narrative..” HANG ON.Ahem, so what did that year look like while he was trying to build the site?Did he just create the website in a week, slap it up online, and have Google send him droves of people who loved his study guide so much that it rocketed him to the top of the dog pile?NO!Creating the site took 2 months. Initially, because it looked nice but there was hardly any content on it.Pat was spending about 2 hours every night for 2 months studying for this LEED exam, creating the website on Wordpress (he said about 80% of his effort in this time period was learning Wordpress), and packaging up LEED information for his posts.But then he had a rude awakening when he took a practice LEED exam with his coworkers and failed miserably…So, what did he do?He tripled the time spent on this.He then transitioned to spending 4, 5, or more hours per day on this project around June of 2007. Either studying LEED information, or learning more about Wordpress to create extremely detailed charts, tables, reference sheets, for him to look back on. He even created his own sample questions, acronyms, and other lessons.He was working on this during work (lunch break), after work, on the weekends, in the morning, late at night — all the time.I know that some of his time spent was studying, but you need to realize that all of his time spent is towards the creation of this LEED Exam site that generated him $8k/month by October of 2008.How could he make such helpful information without the hours and hours he spent studying for the LEED exam, right?When he wasn’t working on studying or creating the website, he spent a lot of time doing something else that helped his LEED exam site…He would socialize on architect forums online. He was asking his own questions, answering other people’s questions by linking them back to his website, and overall spending a lot of time building relationships with his market.Pat Flynn does not even quantify these hours (he does mention them, but obviously can’t tally them up and account for how much of his time was spent doing just this — which is the main factor in ALL of the traffic that goes to his LEED exam site, the main factor in his SEO ranking for the site) when talking about the time spent building his LEED exam niche site.Well, 2008 rolls around and in March Pat passed his LEED exam with flying colors! He got a promotion, a raise from ~$36k to $60k, until…In May of 2008, when he was downsized from his firm.After calling around to other local architecture firms and being unable to find a job (even an entry level job), he decided to take another path…That’s when he decided to turn down the path of online entrepreneur full time.And on the surface, it appears that between May of 2008 and October of 2008 that Pat Flynn was able to build his website to a point where it generated $8,000 in one month.But in May of 2008, Pat already had hundreds if not thousands of visitors (on some days) already going to his website. This was extremely targeted traffic coming from almost ONE YEAR of backlinking allllllllllll over niche architecture forums (and remember, he doesn’t count any of the time spent doing that, like numerically, really at all in his coming up story).And while he does mention that he “read some books and took some courses to streamline the learning process”, he glosses over the fact that he spent literally thousands of dollars on his education. It could have been $500, but I find it hard to believe that Pat didn’t opt to go for the more expensive ~$3,000 package that comes with coaching, templates, and other things…And you know what? That doesn’t take anything away from his success.I am also not trying to imply that he hides this to be deceptive, or anything like that. I love Pat and he is an amazing resource!My point is that a LOT of people leave out these details in their success stories. When you are successful, it seems like the first thing you forget the insane quantity of time it took you to get there.Then look at his journey from then to now. He’s been working on Smart Passive Income for over eight years to grow it to this level.I know that it’s so, so easy to go to Smart Passive Income and say to yourself “Wow he’s doing $100k/m now, and he started at $8k — why aren’t my results like that?” And reading his blog while extremely helpful, unfortunately still doesn’t give you the full idea of the work you’re going to have to put it “behind the scenes” because how could it?Joe Pulizzi is the granddaddy of content marketing.In 2001 he developed one of the first done-for-you content marketing services for Penton available for sale.In addition to literally inventing the term “content marketing” (previously called “custom publishing”), he’s written 4 incredible books on the subject (with a 5th on the way) and has been the recipient of MANY marketing awards in his life.In April of 2007, Joe founded the Content Marketing Institute — the biggest content marketing conference for enterprise firms, marketers, and SMBs which is now valued at $17.6m.Did he go out and buy himself a Rolex after year 1? 2?How long did it take this industry TITIAN to build Content Marketing Institute to a level where it could support himself and his family?Joe says it took him 3 ½ years before he knew he wouldn’t need a job.Building a Million(s) dollar revenue business does not happen in 6 months, or one year, or two. For most people it doesn’t even happen in 3 years.For most people, it doesn’t happen at all. Adjust your expectations to this.Gary Vaynerchuk was brought into his dad’s liquor store at 14 years old as a shelf stocker for under $8/hr. He worked there from the ages of 14–18.He hated it.He was in the basement for hours and hours, refilling ice, schlepping heavy crates around the store.He would have much rather been out selling baseball cards, his side hustle back in the day.One day Gary realized that some people collect wine, just like his friends (and customers) collect baseball cards — and that marks the first time Gary was actually interested in his dad’s business.Gary is the master as far as scaling is concerned. Outside of his pillars about self-awareness, daytrading attention — his biggest messages are around using the websites people are paying attention to so you can build relationships with them.His two main claims to fame are growing his father’s company (WineLibrary) to a $65m business and taking his own company (VaynerMedia) to $100m.So Gary was still working at WineLibrary with his father at 18. When he was 18, he used the internet for the first time in his friend’s dorm room at Mount Ida College.At 20, he created the first Ecommerce wine business in America for $15,000 (in 1996). WineLibrary was a $3m business at that point (it also had a different name).So Gary attributes the majority of WineLibrary’s growth to 2 events: Launching the .com, and launching WineLibraryTV.How many years did it take for Gary to launch WineLibrary.com, until he scaled the business to $65m?Two years? Three years?Try five years.How was Gary able to build his dad’s company to $65m?Five years of not buying new things. Never taking a vacation. Working every single weekend until… Well, still! Working 10, 12, 16 hour days. Not buying himself a new car (he drove a Jeep Cherokee well into growing the second company, VaynerMedia).“You don’t know a single person who is successful and hasn’t worked hard for it” — Gary VaynerchukHow about VaynerMedia? Surely that was a faster home-run…You’re right. It IS amazing that he built a $100m company from scratch.You know Gary has been building his personal brand for a VERY long time. Well before there was a VaynerMedia, there was just an AskGaryVee show. Where his personality and charisma — mixed with literally thousands of hours of giving free advice (there are thousands of hours of footage, and if you watch DailyVee you know how long it takes to make these videos and this content) — allowed him to grow a following of millions.He’s also written 4 New York Times best-selling books, the first being released in 2009.So surely the journey to a $100m business was quick and easy with THAT huge of a foundation to start with. Right?Do you think it took him three years? Four years? Five?Try eight.Building a business is not easy. Even with millions of followers, and several NYT best selling books it takes 4, 5, or more years to build a mature business.There are two other entrepreneur's stories here (and it looks prettier too). If you enjoy my writing, I would appreciate a share :) If you want to get updates on when my articles come out, there is also an email form at the bottom of the article!