#i need to make some minor tweaks to him but he's like mostly done

[simstoyourdismay]

baby august do NOT look at me like that you demonic fuck

[splendidissimus]

2004 - I haven't slept in days, but who's counting?

((Content warning: brief mentions of SA / nsfwhump / incest / sexual situations, imprisonment, emotional abuse, captivity, sleep deprivation, starvation (minor) ))

((Promptspiration: @whumptober 2023: day 12: I haven't slept in days, but who's counting? / Insomnia @whumpitlikeyoumeanit: "Whumpee tied up alone in a bare room... by Caretaker." (Hey, I'm allowed to use my own prompts, right?) ))

Description I feel is necessary: Draco is going insane from lack of sleep from a new potion, and his family have to confine him until it wears off, and Draco goes Full Malfoy in trying to get out. It's frankly hard to tell who is keeping whom hostage. He is brutal. This has Big Rough Draft Energy. It should probably break 10k words when done properly, but there is some yadda-yaddaing to hit the highlights.

Genre: whump

Romance level: some

Angst level: 4/5

Draco's headspace: vicious / irrational

((words: ~8500))

------------------------------------

Draco's previous record for going without sleep was five days. And then he had started hallucinating a little bit, which, yeah, obviously wasn't ideal. He had solved that, though. Now he was on day eighteen and he was fine — beyond fine. He had solved everything. Sleep was no longer a necessity, and it was glorious.

But they didn't understand. Or they were jealous. They were trying to make him sleep. They didn't know he'd already anticipated that, too. Theo had been watching him take his sleeping potions for three days now, and he obediently took it and made a show of being 'sleepy'. But what he didn't know was that Draco had developed — well, bought the formula for and then tweaked — the perfect antidote. He was now completely immune to sleeping potions, spells, hexes, curses, potions, poisons, and magical effects. Let them try. 

-

Theo stood in front of Lucius' excruciatingly neat desk with his hands behind his back, weathering his silently judgmental gaze and the more oblique inspection of the Elizabethan portrait behind him. Time was, that would have made him feel like he was a naughty student pulled up in front of McGonagall again; now he couldn't be bothered. "I need help getting Draco to Saint Mungo's." 

"Why?"

He sighed through his nose. "He hasn't slept in…" He shook his head. "I don't know how long, but I'm betting it's a lot longer than it should be. At least a week."

"It's your job to be keeping an eye on these things."

"Hey," he said firmly, rejecting the blame. "I'm doing the best I can. Do you forget how sneaky he is? I'm not the one who raised him to be a perfect liar who thinks he needs to hide stuff like this." Lucius raised one eyebrow, but Theo declined to be intimidated. "He's not just been avoiding sleep, he's been actively faking it. I knew something was up so I've sat there and watched him take his potions, watched him apparently fall asleep. I think he's developed or bought a new potion that nullifies sleep magic, so he just waits 'til I've gone. Hours, if he has to." 

"I was under the impression you were the one managing his potions."

"It's not like he's not got the use of his arms!" He threw up his hands in exasperation. "If he wants to go brew potions whilst my back is turned, there's nothing going to stop him. Unless you're going to hire in two more nurses and a house elf to physically hold onto him every hour of the day, he's going to be doing some stuff on his own, and some of it's going to be wrong, with the ideas he gets in his head and chases. And frankly, two nurses, a house elf, and me wouldn't be enough to stop him doing something he really wanted to, because you know there's only one thing that can even mostly control him."

"And, unfortunately, he can control her in turn," Lucius distantly agreed, tapping a quill on the blotter and looking thoughtful. 

The caught Theo a little off guard, because he was pretty sure he'd never heard Lucius agree with him so casually before, without couching it in insult or begrudging or some manner of sneer. Wait. Was the secret to getting Lucius Malfoy to interact with you like a human being just… standing up to him? Wow, that would have been nice to know years ago. 

"How is he functioning?"

"Weirdly well." Theo sat down in one of the chairs this side of the desk. "I want to be clear that I'm pretty sure he's off his nut, but at a casual interaction, you don't notice it. He seems energetic and in a good mood. A little volatile, but that's not really unusual."

"Is it actually a problem, then?" Lucius pointed out. "If he's found a way to be able to function without sleep, he might benefit from it."

"I did say he was off his nut, didn't I?" he pointed out. "But that's the problem, it's so subtle it doesn't look like a problem. Doesn't even sound like a problem when I try to explain it. But it's like… Okay, you know how when he's drunk, you can have whole hours of conversation, and it seems fine because he's all confident and charismatic, but if you really pay attention you notice he's not actually really responding to what you said at all? It's like that. His confidence and charm are carrying him, but I think he's actually starting to make really questionable decisions. For the moment it's mild enough that it looks like brilliance or eccentricity, but it won't last. And I want to point out that he's interacting with the public, just, constantly. He's going in front of the Wizengamot next week. Do you want him to do that in this state?"

Lucius made an acknowledging noise without actual words, continuing his pensive look.

"Plus," Theo said, slowly, trying to choose his words to phrase this with both the proper respect for Draco but also acknowledgment of the problem, "right now, he's in a good mood. He's basically treating everything as a game. Even me trying to sedate him, it's just a competition to him. That's fine, it's a good look for him. But I'm… kind of concerned… about what happens when that changes. If someone pisses him off, you know, with his,"  accidental, "magic and no impulse control? Or if something scares him, how'll he react?"

"It's a concern," Lucius allowed. 

Draco was naturally emotional; most of his moods were brief, but intense, turning like the weather. He was naturally cheerful and bright, and when he was up he was incandescent. But when he was down, he was brutal. 

—

((yadda-yadda-ing over the cat-and-mouse of actually capturing him))

—

Lucius brought Narcissa to the drawing room. "Take us off the floo network."

"What?"

"I'll get it repermitted, we can live without it for a month."

"Tell me what is going on."

"Draco hasn't slept in weeks. We can't let him leave." 

"That's absurd, if he truly hasn't slept he clearly should be in the hospital—"

"He just set fire to the house for a distraction, and Confounded you." That made her stop abruptly. "In the middle of a conversation, wandless and wordless. That is dangerous." It was impressive and could be beyond useful, but in this situation, uncontrolled… "And that's what he did to you. He can't be exposed to people he has no reason to care about." 

"That's hardly our concern. It's the healers' jobs to handle situations like this."

While her focus on Draco's wellbeing at the expense of everyone else was admirable, she was perhaps overconfident in their social stability. She thought that any repercussions for what Draco did would be easy to brush off — that everyone else must give him as much leeway as she did and forgive him as easily. 

"They can't hold him," he said flatly. "Putting him in the hospital will only give him more people to, at best, talk into releasing him — and more likely Confound or outright Imperius. Once he extracts himself from the hospital, he will be at large and increasingly more erratic. This may be our last chance to contain the situation."

"Draco does not need to be 'contained'. He has made it clear he has no intention of using the Imperius or of harming anyone." 

"When he's in his right mind," he pointed out. "In his right mind he would not be Confounding you to control a conversation. He has proven that he is still perfectly capable of using the Imperius, wand or no." She looked flatly displeased with his analysis, but didn't argue with it. "The best case scenario, should he make it out of the house now, whether to the hospital or of his own accord, is that his madness becomes public knowledge and his reputation is irreversibly undermined. The more likely outcome is that he destroys everything he's built and is eventually locked away, first in Saint Mungo's and eventually in Azkaban when nothing else can hold him."

"They would not."

"What else is there to do with a wizard who can control anyone he talks to and has no hesitation using it? They've no compunction imprisoning lunatics alongside criminals." 

Her lips pressed into a flat line. 

"Disconnect us," he repeated, stepping away. "I have Nott and the elf watching the doors so he can't Disapparate. I'll find him." 

She considered the fireplace thoughtfully as he left. 

—

When she went to her parlour, she wasn't surprised to find Draco there; he knew his father was looking for him and knew Lucius wouldn't come here, at least not until he exhausted everywhere else. He looked up from the book in his lap, chin resting on his fingers, a little smirk playing about his lips.

She allowed that she could believe Lucius' assessment that he wasn't entirely in his right mind. Lucius only ever saw the worst possible outcomes, though. 

"Is your father right, that you haven't been sleeping?"

Draco shrugged a little bit without changing expression. He seemed only mildly amused. "He might be."

"He considers this a problem worth solving." She studied him, the edge of smugness with which he was regarding her. "So do I," she added. "I need you to go to the hospital." 

He looked at her for several seconds without changing expression, but turning his ring around his finger with his thumb, then shrugged a little and set his book aside to stand. "Very well." 

Good — that would end this absurd situation with the least amount of drama possible. She nodded and led him out of her room, back to the floo fireplace in the drawing room. 

She was reaching for the floo powder when she heard a scuffle behind her and, turning, found the house elf latched onto Draco, just before they disappeared. 

—

Tolly Apparated with a struggling Draco down into a small room in the cellar where the wine had been moved out, leaving bare stone walls and ancient wooden cross-racks built into them. There was one solitary chair in the centre of the room. 

The very moment they appeared, Nott cast Incarcerus and caught Draco in magical ropes that bound his limbs and wrapped around his chest. Draco threw a wandless curse at him that deflected off a shield that Lucius raised just in the nick of time, and in the same moment, the elf took his wand from his robes and vanished. 

In the brief moment when Draco was disoriented by the loss of his wand, Lucius cast a different binding spell on him to replace the Incarcerus, because Draco would end that easily: the Living Rope curse, a Darker spell that needed the counter to be broken and would tighten as the subject struggled. It bound his wrists together and tied his arms behind him to the back of the chair, forcing him to sit. He also Silenced Draco, knowing that wouldn't hold long.

"I'll give you a moment to calm down," he said, pointed for Nott to leave behind him, and then stepped out of the room without turning his back, closed the heavy door firmly between them, and locked Draco in. 

Nott let out a heavy breath. "We got him."

"Yes. Now you have to identify and counter whatever he's been taking that allowed this to happen."

Nott nodded. "I have a sample of it. I can take it to Saint Mungo's and work it out with them."

"Horace Slughorn," he corrected.

"Ugh."

"Invoke Draco's name, and pay him whatever he's looking for." Lucius trusted people he was paying far more than those whose loyalties were split up between institutions and ideals that were hopefully encouraging them to do what he wanted. 

"I repeat: ugh. But fine. I'll work with Slughorn, for Draco."

"Master?" He looked down to see the elf at his feet, gingerly holding Draco's wand, and he immediately took it from her and set it on a high shelf that was now over-filled with disorganised wine bottles.

"You are not to free Draco," he told her, "tell anyone about this, or obey any of his orders until I tell you otherwise."

"Yes, Master…" She looked fearfully toward Draco's prison. 

His eyes narrowed slightly at her expression. That could be a problem. She obeyed him out of fear, propriety, and magic — but she actually liked Draco. A willful house elf had options. She might find a way to twist his words to allow her to help Draco, or manage to disobey his orders long enough to do so and then take the punishment. He needed to head that off. 

"This is for his good. He is unwell. He may sound reasonable, but he is not. Don't be fooled."

"Yes, Master." Her voice was more firm this time. "Mistress is coming," she added.

That wasn't surprising, but promised to be difficult.

Narcissa ran down to the cellar. "Lucius!" She was openly furious. The house elf cringed and disappeared, and Nott took one look at her and hurried up the stairs, managing to make his gangly frame scurry.

Lucius didn't move. "We have him," he said evenly. 

"You lied to me!"

"He can read you too easily. If you'd known the plan it wouldn't have worked." 

"You have no right to use me against my son!"

"Our son," he corrected patiently. "It isn't just you; he can read all of us. Whoever acted the bait would have been lied to. But you are the only one he would completely believe was trying to help him, so it had to be you leading him into the trap. I gambled that, it being for his sake, you would eventually forgive me." 

If she would eventually, she hadn't yet. Her expression only grew colder. "Where is he?" she demanded. 

He lifted his wand and drew a rectangle on the wall in front of him. The other side of the wall had been previously prepared, so his rectangle became semi-transparent, a greyish "window" into the room that was now Draco's cell. He was generally facing their direction, still bound to the chair, head hanging onto his chest. The light was coming from one torch beside the door, and there was a portrait on the side wall, the same Elizabethan Lucius Malfoy who hung in Lucius' study, currently looking fairly bored as he toyed with his walking stick and watched over Draco.

"What are you doing to him?" Her voice had risen, somewhere between fury and fear. Though she can't have thought he would actually harm him. It was likely just a shock to see him that way. 

"Ideally, I am stopping him from hurting anyone." 

"Lucius, this is mad!"

"Trust me." 

Nott's heavy step came down the stairs again, and hesitated, so Lucius glanced back at him to get him to speak. "He's still got his potions," Nott said. "I just thought about that. That might not be a good idea." 

He nodded toward the window again. "Relieve him of them."

"Right." He went around them and unlocked the door.

Draco lifted his head when he came in, and his eyes were wide. "Theo." His voice was breathy and relieved. "Thank Merlin, get me out of here…"

He knew better than to look him in the eyes, since that seemed to be helpful to Draco Confounding people, but it was hard. It was hard to see him like this at all. "I can't," he told him quietly, and came up to him, and started searching his pockets. 

"What? What do you mean, 'you can't'?" Draco squirmed to try to stop his search, but tied as he was it was only a little inconvenient. "Please!" 

"I'm sorry, Draco." He didn't find anything but Draco's potions bag and wallet in his pockets, and he cleaned them out quickly.

"Theo, Theo why are you doing this to me?" Draco pleaded, breath hitching. "Please look at me… please… Is it because I didn't want to suck your dick? I'm sorry, I just didn't feel good, but I will, I'll do whatever you want, just let me out. Please, I'll… you can fuck me, just please, please let me out," he sobbed.

Theo fled out of the room and slammed the door. He could still hear Draco sobbing with the occasional 'please' from the other side. Narcissa was staring at him coldly, while Lucius continued to look through the window at Draco.

"I didn't." His words tumbled over each other. "It's not— I wouldn't—"

"It's fine," Lucius observed clinically. "He's opening strong." 

"This is not a game!" Narcissa snapped. 

"We'll see. Nott, stay here a few minutes."

Theo hung around, trying not to look at Draco. Instead he unshrunk the potions bag and started setting them out on the wine shelf beside his wand, labels facing out, so they could be grabbed if they needed them.

Draco's sobbing eventually faded away to silence, and then, in a few minutes, he dropped his head across the back of the chair so that he was looking at the ceiling. A few minutes after that, he started pushing the chair up on its back legs, balancing there. 

"Go back in," Lucius instructed.

Theo glanced at him, and at Draco, and then silently did as he was told. 

Draco dropped his chair down when the door opened, and raised his eyebrows very slightly when Theo came in. "Oh, you're still here." Both face and voice were completely normal. "I actually thought that might work. They are watching, aren't they?"

"More like might get me killed! Why would you say something like that? You know I'd never hurt you."

"Technically, I never said you did. I suggested that you were leveraging your power over me for sex, which, let's be honest…"

"I never have done!"

Draco shrugged a little and leaned his chair back again, going back to looking at the ceiling. "If that's what you really think." 

"Draco…"

"No hard feelings, right? I mean, you are keeping me prisoner." 

"Draco, we're just trying to help you. You need to sleep." 

"With friends and family like you, one hardly needs enemies."

"I'm sorry." Theo backed out of the room again, and this time he locked the door.

When he looked at Draco's parents, his mother was staring blankly through the window with her arms crossed, and his father had his hands clasped behind his back. 

"If either of you doesn't have the stomach for this," Lucius said, "it would be best you leave now."

Neither of them answered, but neither of them left, either. 

—

Near the top of the first hour, Draco began calling for his mother, and after a few minutes she gave in and went to him. He leaned forward as much as he could, bound to his chair, when she came in. "Mother, please…"

She felt his forehead with the back of her hand and summoned the elf to bring her a blanket. 

"Mother." He was looking up at her with wide eyes, vulnerable in his drawn face. "Mother, look what he's doing." There was a quaver of fear in his voice. "This is insane."

"It is for your good." She put the blanket around his shoulders. "It won't be for long. Once you sleep, this will all be over." 

"That's crazy, Mother. Look at this…" He twisted to try to show his bound wrists. "This isn't for sleep, it's for torture!" 

"No one is here to torture you." She ran her hand down his hair. "You only need to sleep."

"I can't, not like this. Who could?" 

She stood with him for a while, but it wasn't really sustainable. Eventually she made a minor adjustment to the blanket to make sure it was tucked around him to keep him warm. "I have to go, but you are not being abandoned," she promised. "I'll be right outside." 

"You're going to leave me here?" His voice was getting shrill with fear. 

"Only for now." 

She was almost out the door when he called out to her again, voice cracking on the edge of tears. "Why are you letting him do this to me?"

She didn't allow herself to look back and quickly left, closing the door between them, only then clenching her hand into a quiet fist. 

"He's trying to drive a wedge between us," Lucius said.

"I know." She still didn't want to look at him. She silently took herself back upstairs. 

—

When Theo got back from meeting with Slughorn in Hogsmeade, he found Draco still tied to that same chair, in that same position. "We can't at least let him walk around, or lay down, or something…?" 

"It isn't possible," Lucius said flatly. "We only barely caught him the first time. To give him back his hands is to give him back a dangerous amount of magic. He's dangerous enough as it is. Without being able to Stun him, this is what controlling him looks like."

Theo looked at Draco again with an uneasy feeling. He didn't really disagree… He'd seen, he'd been on the receiving end of, what Draco could do without a wand. But this didn't feel right…

"He's also willing to hurt himself to manipulate us," Lucius said distantly. 

Theo glanced at him quickly, then looked back into the cell. There was a smudged back mark on the stone wall, that spread toward the ceiling, and he realised Draco's blanket was gone. He'd set another fire, he surmised. Trying to force them to send him to the hospital by breathing smoke? Trying to scare them? 

"At least this way, his options are limited." 

"I understand…"

—

"I'm bored of you," Draco commented to the portrait. "Go away," 

"Would that I could," the portrait sighed. "But you're such a scintillating conversationalist I find myself rapt." 

"Of course," Draco said. "It's my conversation, not your orders to spy upon me that keep you here." 

"Of course it is." He yawned delicately behind his sleeve. 

Draco silently considered the painting for a minute or two, then narrowed his eyes to focus. "Diffindo," he snapped, and a great slice raked it way across the canvas. The portrait's inhabitant yelled and ran for safety in a different frame.

"And that's what I think about your spies, Lucius!" he called out to the empty room, and smirked toward the ceiling. 

It was hours before anyone came to deal with that, and in that time Draco's smirk soured into a cold glare. He glowered and shoved the chair back, scraping over the floor, ramming it against the wall to try to break it, to no avail, although it did make his hands hurt. Then he started ripping out the shelves with his magic, littering the ground with broken shards of ancient wood, occasionally grabbing them and throwing them around the air with a yell. Those bastards! They just left him there to suffer…

When the door unlocked, he jerked his head up, and just as it opened he yanked his head to the side, and with that motion the ruined portrait frame flew off the wall and slammed into the floor right at his father's feet, spraying him with splinters and forcing him to cover his face. 

"Oops," Draco said blandly. "I must be doing accidental magic. Seems someone's taken my wand." 

His father gave him an unimpressed look and shook splinters out of his sleeve. "You know that was meant to keep you from being alone." 

"You know what else keeps me from being alone? People. Like the kind that I can be around by not being locked in this room." 

"That is true," his father said mildly. "You should have a nap and then go find some." 

Draco raised his chin with a sniff and glared. 

"Elf," Lucius said, looking over the room, and Tolly appeared at the doorway. "Clean up this mess before you bring Draco's breakfast." He looked back at Draco. "Next time you feel like throwing a tantrum and destroying your only company, perhaps wait until it isn't the middle of the night so someone will be there to deal with it." 

"You know, that is the one thing you have over Rowle," Draco noted. "When he had me locked away, I could still see hints of daylight. Not with you, though. Your torture is much more effective. This deprivation really goes nicely with my warped sense of time. I can't tell if it's been an hour or a week I've been here. Bravo."

"Well, I would give you a clock," Lucius said, using his wand to draw up another chair by the door and taking a seat, legs crossed amidst the detritus of Draco's night, to look at him. "But clearly it wouldn't be long for this world." 

"Well, at least the gears would be more interesting to throw around than this junk." Draco looked at a large chunk of wine shelf meaningfully and it flew across the room, making the house elf yelp.

His father didn't respond to that, just fastidiously cleaned under his fingernails, and Draco glared at him with mounting resentment. He was so smug… 

"When Rowle had me prisoner," he abruptly snapped, "he made me suck his dick. You know, because that's what fairies do. Is that where we're going here?"

His father's eyes shot up. "Disgusting," he said icily. 

But it gave him a reaction, that soothing balm that gave him back the feeling of control, and, satisfied, he leaned back in the chair. "I know," he agreed. "But I'm not the one who has me tied up in a cellar, just like the last guy. Forgive me if I can't help but notice some unflattering parallels." 

"It doesn't have to be like this." 

"Oh, no, of course not. Let me guess: I made you do this. Or Voldemort made you do this. Or your father made you do this. You didn't make any choices that led to this situation. Poor Lucius, just swept around on the currents of circumstance." 

His father's eyes remained cold, but his voice turned steady and calm. Patient. "Stop this, Draco."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" 

"Very much," he sighed. "Your only enemy here is whatever demon inside your head is making you behave this way." 

"Not from where I'm sitting."

His father didn't answer, and his resentment began mounting again. In a while, he rocked the chair back into the wall, then again, testing how hard it hit his head each time. 

After the third, his father summoned the chair back, scraping, to the centre of the floor, and then cast a sticking charm to hold it in place, so Draco couldn't even rock it back on its legs now. Draco twisted around in the chair, feeling the ropes tighten, and couldn't keep from yelling out his frustration. "Just fuck off already and leave me alone!" 

"I will not." 

—

Because he'd destroyed the portrait, it now fell on the three of them and the house elf to keep watch over Draco at all times. It wasn't safe to leave him alone, and if he was alone they wouldn't know if he actually did start giving in to sleep. 

But the real reason was that Draco simply couldn't handle being alone. Isolation was far crueller to him than to most people, as had been demonstrated repeatedly in the last several years, and the point genuinely wasn't to torture him. If there were any real way to simply hold Draco in a warm, comfortable bedroom where he could chat with his friends and play games until he fell asleep, that would have been far preferable. 

But no. His wandless magic — wandless but mostly assuredly not accidental, every single attempted Confounding and thrown teacup and fire set was under his complete and calculated control — turned every every small luxury into a weapon or an instrument of self-harm, so that he could have nothing but bare stone walls even he couldn't hurt himself with. He turned every attempt at care into a new gauntlet of emotional sadism as he probed for a crack in their defences to exploit, so that his mother had to steel himself before she entered the room and whatever fresh hell of accusation or pathos he was going to heap on her, and Nott threw himself into the analysis of his potion so that he had something more productive to do than weather another storm of Draco's guilting and debasement.

It was hardest to handle because probably very little of what Draco said was an outright lie. That was what made him such an excellent manipulator — he had a real gift for weaponising the truth. It was quite possible the pitiable things he was saying were his real thoughts, or had a kernel of his real thoughts at the core of them, merely now laid bare in the way calculated to elicit the most sympathy, or, if that failed, to hurt them the most. Every cruel observation wasn't merely a cutting insult but a blow to the heart of genuine insecurities he had gleaned. All of his accusations had either crossed his mind, perhaps not what he believed, but things he had at some point felt, or were things he knew they were afraid of. And he knew exactly how to turn every one of those feelings into a deadly curse. 

The house elf was largely immune to Draco's attacks because he knew it was pointless to manipulate her, knowing it was impossible to get her to do anything for him against her master's orders, but she couldn't watch him at all times; aside from the needs of the house itself, which were being neglected, when Draco grew too bored he would still attack her just for amusement. 

Lucius took most of the time the house elf did not. It was as much his role to keep Narcissa and Nott from being bewitched by him and giving in to him as it was to keep him bound there, and the best way to do that was to minimise their time with him. 

He was the most suited to bearing Draco's attacks… and the only one who managed to turn Draco's mind elsewhere for any length of time. He was able, temporarily, to distract Draco and keep him calm by challenging him to mental chess, or directing him into debate or diatribe where his vitriol could have free rein without turning personal.

But it wasn't safe. Draco was always looking for an opening. He once used chess, of all things, as a cover to Confound him, and the elf pulled him out of the room before he could free him; Draco's laughter after that episode was still haunting. His attention could turn in an instant, and the moment Lucius let his guard down the vitriol did turn personal and he found a way to turn the words against him. 

Even he could not hold up under Draco's attention indefinitely. He didn't let Draco be alone for more than a half hour at a time, but he did have to retreat to the other side of the door for respite every few hours. He stood in the same spot whenever Narcissa or Nott took his place, on guard for Draco's influence, and left the room only when the house elf took over the duty. 

This was not sustainable.

—

"Damn it, Draco!" Theo was this close to throwing the toast in his face. He probably hadn't been eating enough during all that time the potion was keeping him awake, and now he was refusing food entirely. He hadn't had more than water and a few cups of tea since he'd been imprisoned, and his body was showing it. He was quickly going from thin to skeletal, with his clothes hanging off of sharp shoulders and the ropes biting into the knobs of his wrists. It was like the potion keeping him awake was eating him alive from the inside to do it. "This isn't about control!"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I must have got confused by the ropes and the locked door."

"I'm trying to save your life!"

"Of course you are; if I weren't here you'd have to go out and find yourself an actual personality. Could you be any more pathetic?" 

Theo let out a helpless groan and dropped onto his knees, with his arms on Draco's lap, holding his head. "Draco… Please, just fucking don't die…" 

"If I do, Theo, it's not going to be my fault." 

—

Draco was crying. Not sobbing, but almost silently, shoulders shaking like he was trying to suppress it, head bowed into his chest so no one could see. 

"This has gone far enough," Narcissa said sharply, going for the door.

"Stop."

"You're the one who needs to stop! Look at what you're doing!"

"He's manipulating you."

"It's not fake," Theo said quietly, staring through the window at Draco. "I've seen him cry enough… that's real."

He flicked that away. "So it's not false. It's still intentional. He's been making and allowing himself to cry to manipulate you since he was two years old; this is not a new tactic. If you let it work this time you're dooming him."

She ignored him and pushed her way into the cell. Draco looked up, eyes wide and startled, then ducked his head, embarrassed, to wipe away his tears against his shoulders. 

"Mother…" 

She came and wiped tears off his cheeks. He resisted at first, then gave in and leaned into her hands with a sigh, eyes closing. Maybe this would relax him. Maybe that was what he actually needed to sleep.

"Why don't you ever protect me from him…?" he asked in a faint, flat voice. 

She drew a sharp breath through her nose and gently lifted his chin to search his face. His eyes flinched away from hers in quiet shame and looked away to the corner of the floor. 

"I know what you're trying to do," she said quietly, and ran her hand over his hair. "It isn't going to work." 

He didn't look up, or give up the act. 

She ran her hand over his hair again, and stepped back out of the room. Lucius started to move, but she made a sharp gesture at him with one finger and carried on up the stairs.

Because she knew that Lucius had harmed Draco. Maybe even hurt him. She had laid ultimata when Draco was young to keep Lucius' darkness and violence away from him. She had intervened when his discipline became too harsh. But they were both prone to operating in shadows, to hiding and secrets. What did she not know? Had she been too distant? Placed too much trust in him? Should she have stood between them more? Had she failed Draco? 

She knew she had, on some level. But not this badly… 

—

"I'm cold," Draco said quietly. His voice was submissive, almost broken. Tired of fighting. 

"Then you shouldn't have set your blanket on fire." 

"You're right. I was just… scared, I guess. I thought you'd have to let me go. I wasn't thinking clearly. May I have another?"

"No."

"…I understand," he said in a small voice, and let his chin hang onto his chest. He was quiet for a little bit before he spoke up again. 

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "For everything. I should have been better. You deserve better. I'm trying, I try so damn hard, I just keep… fucking everything up…"

He didn't respond. Maybe, if he'd thought Draco were actually saying something he meant, he would have, but as it was, it was better for it to just be noise.

Draco was quiet for almost long enough that he thought he meant to stay that way. When he did speak, his voice was low, but without a trace of submission or meekness. "You have to sleep eventually," he said in a quiet, nearly casual voice, and then lifted his head just enough to meet his eyes. His eyes were piercing and cold as any blade. "I don't." 

Lucius was not intimidated — Draco interpreting the fact that he stood that way would be a mistake. But he was a realist, and he knew when wariness was appropriate; if there were any one of them Draco would actually try to harm, it would be him, and it would be best to change the situation before he started getting ideas. "You will, eventually," he promised, and left the room. 

—

The quality of Draco's breathing changed.

Lucius looked up and studied him. He was leaning forward, gasping quietly, eyes on the floor. "Draco?" He stood warily.

"...heart..." Draco gasped out.

Damn it, he'd been afraid of this. He stepped behind him to look, but he saw exactly what he expected to: on his wrist, above the ropes biting into him, the wrist cuff that measured his heartbeat was flashing in rapid alarm. Between the fact that he couldn't take his daily heart regulating potion and the stress...

He stepped out of the room without a word, leaving the door ajar to listen to Draco and looking over the shelf of his potions. He had medications for all of this. There was an emergency sedative precisely for the times his heart ran out of control.

The problem was, they couldn't use them. Nott had brought up a good point: in Draco's mindset of subterfuge and paranoia, they had no way to know which of his medications he had laced with the problematic anti-sleep concoction, but every reason to believe he had done so.

They also had every reason to believe the specific heart medication for this situation would be completely ineffective, at best. It was a sedative. It slowed his heart, for sure, but it also put him to sleep. The chances that his anti-sleep potion would nullify the sleep effect but leave the heart effect intact were slim. It was a carefully balanced blend custom formulated for him, and mixing it with this effect would be reckless and dangerous, even if it weren't laced.

He touched the bottle of sedative, still considering it, for a moment. What was the alternative? Sit back and stonily watch him have a heart attack?

Inside the cell, Draco groaned weakly.

He supposed the real only option was to bring him to the hospital. Maybe he was weak enough or distracted enough they would be able to control him. The risks of what he might do were real, but it would keep him alive...

"Wait!" Nott's voice came from the stairs, and his tromping steps brought him into sight soon thereafter. "Hold on, Tolly got me..."

He narrowed his eyes slightly. Hadn't he been with Slughorn, presumably in Hogsmeade? Willful elf...

"You haven't given him anything, right?"

"No." He dropped his hand from the potions. "There's nothing safe to give him."

"I'll see if there's anything I can do." He hurried past into the cell.

Lucius watched from the doorway as Nott inspected Draco, crouching in front of him, taking his pulse, taking a reading with his wand... Draco weakly twisted to get away from him.

In a minute, Nott stood again, face stony. "Draco, you..." His wand hand clenched tight as he turned away. "He did it to himself," he said in a flat voice.

"What are you talking about?"

"He hyperventilated to speed up his heart to set off the alarm so we'd give him his tainted potions, or send him to the hospital where he could escape, or... fuck it, just to watch us panic, probably. Who knows. It's already slowing down because he can't keep that up."

"Then he was never in any danger," he realised coldly, staring at Draco.

"No, that's the fucking stupid part! It's so bloody dangerous! When that alarm goes off it means his heart's going a hundred and forty times a minute or more, and just because he did it on purpose doesn't magically make it all right! It's still damaging his heart, still wearing out the spells holding it together, he's still going to throw himself into shock or a heart attack, and fucking die, and he doesn't care!"

Draco could obviously hear them; they were still standing there in his cell and Nott's voice was raised nearly to a yell now. But he didn't seem to care. He took a deeper breath and leaned back in the chair.

"He's just..."

"If it's any consolation," Draco said behind him, "it feels rather unpleasant."

Nott whirled on him, wand clenched, then stormed out of the room. "You want these bloody things so badly?" He yanked a potion off the shelf on the other side of the door and threw it. It exploded like a bomb at Draco's feet, spraying shards of glass and muddy red liquid that looked like old blood. "Have them!" Another flew past his head -- Draco flinched away from it -- and exploded against the back wall. A third one hit the floor beside the leg of his chair and didn't break, but skittered away toward the corner. "Fucking choke on them."

Draco looked up without a word, and Nott stomped away. In a second he was back in the door, though. "I just really want you to know that I was aiming for you," he said. "I just fucking missed." Then he was gone. They could hear the door at the top of the stairs slam distantly.

"You don't have anything to say?" Draco shook his head, leaning forward, to make sure there was no glass in his hair.

Lucius summoned the stray potion to hand before it could be forgotten and give Draco the chance to get it. "I applaud his restraint."

—

"You're the reason I tried to kill myself," Draco said in a casual, intimate voice, too quiet for anyone outside the room to overhear even if they were watching. "The thought of living with you a moment more was unbearable. Of being beaten down by you, pushed around by you, of trying to be made to live like you. The only way I could see to get away from you was to take all my potions and never wake up." He leaned back, gaze seeming wistful. "Even afterward, I still wished it had worked. I wished that she'd been a few minutes later and hadn't saved me. Shall we tell her that?" He dropped unblinking eyes down to watch him. "I think she deserves to know that, don't you?"

Lucius watched him expressionlessly, unmoving. 

"Or are you going to let me out?"

"You can say whatever you feel you need to," Lucius said evenly. "You are still not leaving this room." 

"She will never forgive you."

"So be it."

—

"I've got it." Tolly was the one spending the hour with Draco, and so Theo managed to find his parents both in the room outside the cell. They could have been using this time to rest, but instead they were still using it to watch Draco, compulsively, just out of reach of his abuse. 

"The antidote. Slughorn wanted credit for Draco's anti-sleep potion and I told him he was welcome to it, since it apparently drives people fucking crackers. But I've got it." He showed off a phial the size of a large finger. "Now we just need to get him to take it." 

"Asking nicely seems to be out of the question," Lucius said dryly. "Will it be effective diluted in his food?" Well, tea, which was all Draco really ate. 

"It would be, but I don't think he'd take it. He's so paranoid, so vigilant, he'd know something was up." Theo put the potion and his hand back into his pocket, watching Draco with them. "What about acting like it's a sleeping potion? Then he'd think he was immune to it and drink it out of arrogance, to rub it in."

"Maybe two days ago," Lucius said. "He's more likely to destroy it out of spite, now. It's useless to try to Bind him or similar, a wandless Protego is almost signature…"

"Imperius," Narcissa said.

They were both quiet. 

"He wouldn't forgive you," Theo said after a long minute. "He already feels like we control him too much. The moment he got better, he'd leave and we'd never see him again. …If he got better at all, instead of having a breakdown and being locked up in Saint Mungo's."

Lucius nodded. "I would rather not, anyway," he admitted. 

"…Do we have to just physically hold him down and pour it down his throat…?" Theo wondered. 

"A better question is if we can."

"I have four doses. If he breaks a couple…"

Lucius glanced over at met his eyes, considering, then looked at Narcissa, and Theo followed his train of thought with a moment of realisation. It might work. He took out all four potions and held them out to Draco's parents, keeping one for himself and giving her two of them; she blinked at it and at him, then noticed they were looking at her. She looked back at Draco, and nodded as she took them. 

—

On the fourth day, less than twelve hours after being fed the antidote, the quality of Draco's manipulations had changed. When Narcissa came to give him his breakfast, relieving the elf of its vigil, he jerked his head up to look. His eyes were red and sunken into dark circles. "Mother… I give in, all right? Just tell me what you want." 

She studied his face as she finished up his tea. Whatever Lucius believed, she knew Draco, and she wasn't blind to his manipulations, even if she, perhaps, found them difficult to resist; she could see there was something else there now. An edge of desperation, a genuine franticness. Perhaps he was such a master manipulator he could have faked trying-and-barely-failing to cover up his desperation, but he wasn't, not now. "We don't want anything from you."

She helped him to drink his tea, but he turned his face away, and she touched his hair to urge him back toward it. "I only want you to sleep and get better," she said.

"There's got to be something else!" He whipped his head away from her, and the teacup ripped out of her hand and shattered against the wall. "Let me go!" 

When he flipped the tea tray on her, she left the room and sent the elf to get Lucius. Theodore arrived swiftly as well, but Lucius kept anyone from going back into the room. It was cruel, but it was necessary; Draco was becoming more erratic in his desperation. For the first time, the flashes of his magic throwing things around the room did actually seem accidental. It was probably more dangerous than it ever had been; manipulative, he would be cruel, but erratic, he could truly hurt someone from fear or rage and regret it in the next instant, when it was too late.

They could watch the crumbling of his will as the treatment faded, quickly now that the first cracks had formed. His chin sank toward his chest and then jerked up seconds later, over and over. He lolled his head and squirmed in the chair, trying to keep himself alert. He muttered to himself, nothing really sensible, and then broke out into a scream. "Don't make me sleep! Please, I'm sorry, just don't make me!" He broke down into brittle sobs. "Please… please don't…"

He continued begging for some time, growing more incoherent, the words slurring into an exhausted mumble that faded into wordless sobs as he lost the energy even to voice his futile pleading, knowing it would do no good, no one was coming. His sobs trailed away into hitching wet breaths, and those evened out as he finally cried himself to sleep. 

Narcissa closed her eyes in quiet relief once she realised he was actually, finally asleep, and Theodore actually sagged against the wall with his head in his arms. Her arms ached from gripping them so tightly. "Elf," she summoned. She heard an acknowledging squeak and, looking down, realised that it had been there watching from the corner as well. 

"Wait," Lucius said grimly, staring into the other room. "It may be a ploy."

She nearly snapped at him, for caring so little about their son that he could watch even that and only see an enemy, but then she noticed his face. He looked tired. Maybe not physically, or not only physically, but from bearing most of the weight of keeping Draco imprisoned, of having to remain hard-hearted because someone must. Yet he still had to make sure that it was safe before he allowed himself to relax. While they gave in to relief, he didn't let himself feel it yet.

He was starting to move, but she touched his arm. "I'll check." She unlocked the door to Draco's cell. His wariness was contagious, and she wasn't entirely unguarded as she approached the lonely figure bound to the chair. She still didn't believe that Draco would hurt her, even now, but if he was making some last desperate effort for his freedom, he could lash out wildly…

"Draco?" She crouched in front of the chair, looking up into his face. He looked… if not peaceful, then at any rate unaware. He didn't move at her approach, and the quality of his breathing didn't change. After a moment, she reached up and lightly cupped his cheek, pulling her fingertips through his hair for a moment. Then she looked back to the window and nodded.

Theodore entered with the potion bag, taking out a Dreamless Sleep. "To keep him down," he said unnecessarily, and she held Draco's head to help him feed it to him. Draco stirred and tried to wake, alarming her, and she stroked his hair, settling him back into his sleep. She kept him until the potion had time to take effect.

He stood up, hesitating, watching Draco. "I do have some Draught of the Living Death left," he quietly, leaving the decision to them.

She glanced at him and at Lucius, looked into Draco's face, and in a moment nodded. The idea of him waking up again anytime soon was… unbearable. She held him while he fed him that, and Draco's breathing slowed to imperceptibility. Compared to the last few days, it was still a relief. 

Lucius released Draco from his bindings and caught him as he collapsed. Blood dripped from Draco's fingertip, a thin line winding from the deep, raw circles that showed how he had struggled against the ropes over the last few days, and especially the last few hours. 

"Put him to bed," she instructed the elf. "I'll be there shortly."

"I'll go," Theodore volunteered. "He needs healing… He might still need the hospital…"

"I'll be there regardless," she said firmly. The elf disappeared with Draco's limp body, and Theodore hurried after them. 

She touched Lucius' back. "You did well."

"There is no guarantee he will be in his right mind even after sleeping," he warned, looking distantly at the now-empty chair. 

"If not, we will handle it then. Rest."

[mithrilhearts]

heyy girl. i'm poppin ur ur asks to see if there's more info on the pirate wip!!! (also so excited to read the newest chapter of dragonhearted tonight!)

Yessss, the good ol' pirate au!! I actually do have some important information on this one, and I'll also toss in a snip from the next chapter!! (Also I am very glad you're excited!!! I'm happy I could finally post something for it lolol)

Check out "As The Tide Turns" here, but keep in mind the info below.

⚠️ This fic is undergoing some MINOR edits - I've decided to keep the original races (minus some fun developments for later), so I am working on making those little tweaks in the prior two chapters and will post when the tweaks are done in case people want a refresher/reread. It does not impact the story whatsoever, just my little brain has to edit it to tie in a bit better. Once that is done, look for the next chapter (which I am finishing editing!!).

Now....a snippet from chapter three!!

The excited sounds from the young dwarves were enough to plop a small smile upon Bilbo’s lips as he adjusted his coat, but his eyes kept drifting to Thorin. Thorin who was rolling barrels off the ship with Dwalin, as others were dumping the gross fishy substances within them back into the water. Though something about the way Thorin moved looked uncomfortable, like the muscles in his back were so tightly wound for whatever reason. It brought Bilbo a little pause as he leaned against the side of the ship and looked at a few unsavory looking characters seated on crates. One was sharpening a dagger, the other was peeling a questionable looking apple, but their mouths continued to move as their eyes were locked onto The Ravenheart’s Captain.

“Mercenaries, and wearing the brand of The Defiler, too,” Fili scoffed lowly, standing at Bilbo’s side and leaning against the ship as well. “Their captain may not be present, but I don’t trust them.”

“Just as many don’t trust us,” Kili tacked on, slouching at Bilbo’s other side. “Tis the way of things, but Thorin seems to be holding his own just fine against these trolls.”

Watching Thorin continue about his business without uttering a single word, Bilbo’s head gave a sharp tilt. “He’s not saying anything though…?”

“Exactly,” both dwarves answered and nodded in unison.

Wiggling his toes a bit in anxious anticipation, Bilbo watched how Thorin’s lips turned downward in a wince, and that spurred something unpleasant in him. He knew that look. It was one that came with great control of one’s emotions, but the dwarf captain had to be tearing at the seams by now. “Let’s head to the market then, there’s no time to waste.” It was mostly an excuse to get closer, and Bilbo was treating this as a way to prove his worth, but it was also a means to see what was bothering Thorin so much. It wasn’t that he felt the captain needed protecting, but a verbal spar? That right there was Bilbo’s specialty.

He didn’t grow up dealing with Lobelia on a daily basis to walk away without some form of a sharp witted tongue.

ask me about my wips!

[proxylynn]

[Something that consumed my mind (and my attention) the last couple days is my love of FNAF's Daycare Attendant. So, with my creative drive hyped after mostly writing for a year, I dipped into my fave AU to give form to an idea that's been in my head. The Animatronic Handler AU by @get-rammed. I'll likely simplify the designs if I dabble in doddles with them, altering from the base Sun/Moon when I can think of things, though I do like my glow idea (based on the bots' cut emission glow that Eclipse then got, also the eye colors are based on in-game material like their plushies).]

The lore for the world that this version of Lynn in the AU involves mixing some things from the books, such as the DCA's origin as a theater animatronic that was then repurposed into working as a child caretaker. Something I'm adding is that during this time of implementation, Fazbear Entertainment being the cut corners wherever it can to save a buck scummy business tested this program on the children of employees. One such child was Lynsie. Now, the company being so lazy and cheap, they added the generators as a way to deal with the "Moon gimmick" without really dealing with it.

"The Sun robot was an old stage animatronic. Part of its theatrical schtick was to turn evil when the stage lights went off. When it was reprogrammed to be the day care attendant, the performance functions were taken out, but the darkness trigger couldn’t be removed. That, combined with the occasional blackouts in the day care, created the Moon side of the attendant, which results in several undesirable behaviors. Apparently, they had meetings about what to do, and they decided that fixing Sun was more trouble than it was worth. It’s cheaper to just make sure the lights stay on." - Abe, Bobbiedots, Part 1

Such behavior in this early state caused a now expunged incident that resulted in much hush money being made out to the families as compensation, good thing for their lawyers and NDAs, though the waking nightmares and physiological scarring that befell the kids is something that even bribes aren't going to cover for long. And as the years passed with only minor tweaks being done to their programming, these issues were prone to happening still.

"CUSTOMER COMPLAINT - My son never had sleeping problems. But after spending an evening in the daycare, he refuses to sleep with the lights out anymore! He just cries and cries. And then when I do let him keep the lights on, he wets the bed!" - Night Terrors, Duffel Bag collectable

Granted, these were getting to be rarer moments and Moon seemed to mainly traumatize "naughty" kids, though Sun was no better when it came to "rule breakers" that pushed his patience too far.

"I used to have so much fun in the daycare." "I never slept better than I did in the daycare." - Cassie

It was clear to Fazbear Entertainment that if they were to keep the Daycare in the Mega Pizzaplex and not lose on this investment (as most employees with families used the Daycare so as to not cut into their work or have to hire a babysitter, example being Cassie who's dad worked for the company as a Technician) a Handler would be needed to keep Moon and Sun in line.

An animatronic handler is quite a few things in one. A manager. An assistant. A mechanic. And a wrangler. These were some of the few human jobs that remained in the Pizzaplex after the implementation of the S.T.A.F.F. bots which replaced most of the human staff with automated ones. Handlers ensure everything goes accordingly, much like trainers and their animals, because while the bots are designed to perform their tasks like the well-oiled machines they are, the guests are random factors that can throw things out of whack. So when it comes to assigning handlers to main attractions like the Daycare Attendant, this proved to be easier said than done when compared to the Glamrocks. While both work with kids, Sun/Moon deal with them for longer more direct periods of time and the kids tend to be in that age range where they can be pure chaos. This is usually what breaks would-be Handlers due to their attention mostly being driven to the bot and the kids would be an annoying hassle to juggle. It would take a strong yet strange soul to handle this.

Then she applied for the job.

While originally rejected quite a few times due to being one of the kids from the proto-daycare testing, background checks into her life since then had been mostly brand positive and records indicated she was a regular to the Pizzaplex since her double digits. With little to make in excuses not to, they gave her a 5-day trial hire where she was shadowed to ensure no repeats were to trigger. Reports indicate that there was a slight oddity that occurred upon introducing them to each other. It appears despite data scrubbing, Sun recognized her. This likely is what allowed her to gain Moon's attention during lights out. As for her behavior around the kids, her childish nature and creative improvisation was well received.

Lynsie is a calm and charismatic woman that aids Sun and Moon with interacting with the kids. Her skill in keeping Moon calm when lights would help in restarting naptime as a normal thing that shouldn't be feared. The story time addition also helped. She wasn't a pushover either, the kindness she showed could easily becomes ominous when then moment called for it. Further instilling this was a small carabiner latch on her waist harness which let her use Moon's hook to move around the daycare like an overseeing hawk. Yet still not everything was sunshine and rainbows, but the clouds were shady and with not a drop of rain in sight. This brought a time of better reviews of the Daycare. Some negative experiences still occurred but now they were less frequent and less problematic.

Until...

“MANAGEMENT REPORT - With Bonnie out of commision, we are making Monty the new bass player. Parts and Service has already done the proper adjustments. This could be a good thing. Monty could be even more popular than Bonnie.” — Understudy, Duffel Bag collectable

“ATTENTION KITCHEN STAFF - All food materials must be securely stored at closing. Chica has been caught eating from the kitchen garbage after hours. The maintenance repairs are costly and will come out of kitchen staff paychecks. - MANAGEMENT” — Food Storage, Duffel Bag collectable

“ERRANT BEHAVIOR REPORT - Monty didn't show up for the main stage performance again. We found him in the same place we always do, the catwalks over Monty Golf. We can't have a repeat of last month. Someone hit the hole in one and the hurricane bucket knocked him down. Both legs were broken and required emergency parts and service work.” — Monty Mischief, Duffel Bag collectable

“ERRANT BEHAVIOR REPORT - Chica's personality chip has always been a bit 'quirky', but the new Pizza Flavored Monty Mystery Mix Slushy Syrup has adverse effects on her programming. She has attacked patrons, employees and S.T.A.F.F. for it. It is recommended that Monty Mystery Mix should be recalled before we're inundated with lawsuits.” — CHICA REPORT, Duffel Bag collectable

“ERRANT BEHAVIOR REPORT - Roxy never misses a race. She must be frying her circuits waiting for the raceway to reopen. Every time there is a test run on the track she gets in the way. If she keeps getting in the way, the track will never get fixed.” — Chasing cars, Duffel Bag collectable

“MAINT LOG: Chica - Don't let her sing! Messes with the navigation of the other bots. Horrible results when she sang during live performance. S.T.A.F.F. bots dropping serving trays, chaos, guest injuries, 12 lawsuits. Experimental voice box test failed. Replacement advised.” — CHICA UPGRADE, Duffel Bag collectable

“MAINT LOG: ROXY - Roxy sees things differently than the others. This upgrade was meant to help her win races. However, there are some side effects. Sometimes she will stare and talk to the other bots through walls.” — ROXY UPGRADE, Duffel Bag collectable

“MAINT LOG: MONTY - Montgomery's Claw upgrades allow him to play the bass. Following performances, he mostly uses them to cause damage. The fence repairs are getting costly.” — MONTY UPGRADE, Duffel Bag collectable

“Roxy did it again. Another braindead S.T.A.F.F. bot decapitated because it got in her way on the racetrack. I'm getting real sick of trudging over to West Arcade to fix these things. Why isn't there a S.T.A.F.F. repair station any closer? At least I have an extra Dance Pass so I won't get locked out again.” — SORE WINNER, Duffel Bag collectable

“Congratulations on your installation of the new and improved DJMM. The DJMM features eons of musical enjoyment using a patented technique called 'improv' (royalty free!). No two songs are ever the same. Save a fortune on cleanup! Using a series of connected tubes, the DJMM can run cleaning routines between set lists. If the need ever arises, activate the new "bouncer mode". (Warning: Bouncer mode still under development. Use of the bouncer mode will void your warranty.)” — ULTIMATE PARTY HOST, Duffel Bag collectable

“CUSTOMER COMPLAINT - Why did you reopen? Everyone remembers what happened to those kids.” — IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN, Duffel Bag collectable

“CUSTOMER COMPLAINT - We paid for the Glam Freddy Mega Deluxe Party Package and Freddy broke down as soon as he got on stage. We paid to have him at the table and sing happy birthday. He was supposed to give her the cake! My daughter's birthday has been ruined. I demand a refund.” — Party Foul, Duffel Bag collectable

Something was happening to the bots. Programming was going haywire, strange upgrades that seemed okay brought new behavior kinks that, personality duality that made it more apparent the "robots" were more like "evolving artificial intelligence" with human-like traits. Roxy is labeled as "the best" and cool but now displays insecurities and struggles to uphold this imposed image standard. Chica is presented as sweet and promotes healthiness but now displays hard-to-control impulsiveness and a "hunger" that makes no sense for a nonbiological being. Monty is the laid-back and chill dude in the band but now he displays territorial bouts of anger and constant destructive impulses that result in needless property damage. Freddy seemed to be the only one immune to this as he lacked any upgrades, but his systems did receive a minor bug fix that has been causing random twitching from flashing lights and his charge logs appear to be alerted with him disappearing for hours unknown. However, while there's no evidence of this, rumors point to Moon being the first to experience this weird "virus" as he went from being somewhat scary to downright malevolent at times. This caused Sun to get more neurotic and pushed "keeping the lights on" more heavily to prevent Moon from appearing.

This growing distress didn't help the handlers, who were now scrambling to adapt and understand what the hell is going on with not just these animatronics but their best friends. You can't just work with someone, human or animal or even machine, and not get attached when they too share their lives with yours. And for the handlers, seeing the Animatronics they've spent years with slowly devolve into shadows of themselves was painful because...Hell...No one knew what to do. What was causing it? Why was this happening?!

All of this would come to a devastating head on March 9th.

This would be the day the Pizzaplex died and would fall to ruin.

[gibbingtonwibbington]

Multiple story time:

Listening to your music made me super duper sad when I was sick cuz I couldn’t breathe and probably because I couldn’t sing along. I can mimic your voice probably the best out of any mimic singing I do. It’s just THAT WAY. I don’t know why, sometimes it’s kinda creepy. I’m not about to sing along in like…. Opera style. Unless you had some opera type music of course lol. Lyyyyyke, I wouldn’t sing like Frank Sinatra if I was singing along to a Britney Spears song ya kno. Hmm… that actually sounds like a super fuckn awesome combo though. 🧐 hm…

I was actually getting REALLY fuckin pissed after my natural, bored, monotone, robotic-sounding speaking voice came back. Yes I am aware that when I am bored, it is annoyingly obvious. Haha. BUT still, !GONE! was my loud and beloved shrill-squeak “Gibby voice”. The Gibby voice is just an adjustment of my ‘Courtney is really excited’ voice. Going further back, as I’ve said before (because I definitely repeat myself on here for the purpose of releasing repetitive, maddening energies)…the Gibby voice is originally a toned down derivative of *THE* Penny voice. However, not NEARLY as loud. Penny was VERY loud. Penny was definitely my loudest character voice EVER…and that’s pretty fuckin loud, man. I gta show you Penny. I can’t believe I haven’t taken a photo of her and shown you yet. Wow. My entire family, especially my aunt Nancy and my mom, STILL fkn talk about Penny and how gdamn loud she was. When I was a kid, doing my pretend Penny talking, they would say things like “Penny is quite loud for this time of night. I think Penny needs to go to bed.” Hahaha. I just drooled cranberry juice laughing. I got cranberry juice on my favorite white comforter!!! Nooo!!! Fuck, hold on a sec…

Okay I’m back. They also STILL use a bunch of funny quotes from things that I or Penny said in all seriousness, when I was just a kid. I’ll have to ask them which ones they remember and write them down. There are many..& they are more adult-sounding than something that came from the mouth of a five year old. I’ve always been crazy. Who cares.

They also still laugh about the time at Watercountry, when I started with some huge, fat-muscled, bald, biker dude w a Hell’s Angels tattoo. Started w him at the lazy river, over an inner tube that I was reaching for first. That dirty, dirty , kid piss-filled place. Ugh. Anyway, I mean, this guy SAW that I almost had it. Plus, I was super young and wanted to be with my cousin, not ALONE sitting in a huge fuckin tube that I could barely move in, in order to catch up w her. Like wtf dude. So I got pissed when he just grabbed it and didn’t give it to me. I even remember that this guy was fuckin by himself. Like ..DA FUK?! So I grabbed the tube out of his hands and gave him a “really dude?” kind of child mean mug. My mom said that he looked at her and my aunt like “Yo, your fucking kid has some nerve to do that to ME.” So they look at each other n then looked at him like “🤷🏻‍♀️ I don’t know man, I didn’t do it…I didn’t birth her.” haha.

“I didn’t birth her, I just bought her.” Bahahaha. 😏 N I was candidly, off and relaxing in MYYY goddamn inner tube.

😎

Rewind for a second, I hate the spelling of the word squeak too.. remember my minor bitch fit over the word “tweak” not having two Es? Same animal here. Even Jillian Jigz HATED tweak not having two es and she’s a grammar tyrant. She even spelled it with two Es. Mostly because that word for us meant something on a whole other level, kind of making it a whole different word. I suck at spelling sometimes. Most words I have misspelled were either done on purpose… or I was braindead at the moment. My entire self likes to fly around in the atmosphere by myself sometimes. Oh yeah, or if I’m using speak type, it likes to use the wrong word entirely. The new download for my shit iPhone, my spell check and my speaky typey was absolutely at a disconnect with life…& my soul. It’s getting much better now. Definitely learning my way of talking muuuuuch better. If my speak type was a real human, it would have already hung itself from a rafter.

Speaking of my flying around in the atmosphere and day dreaming. Once at the end of the year, one of my teachers told us all to stand at the blackboard (yes it was actually still a blackboard) …actually it was a super vintage green board. Yup, chalk. I don’t know why it was green but that specific section of the school was complete with fantastically-rusted 60s hardware and appliances. So, standing in front of our decked out 60’s style accommodated classroom, this teacher went and sat at every person’s desk, mocking aka doing his best impression of each person in the class. IAs soon as I knew what his plan was I was thinking… oh no….😬. But when he got to me, he just sat there and stared out the window. I would always just sit there and stare out the window at the two huge maple trees that blew so pretty pretty in the wind. The school was on top of a huge hill, so they were always dancing. Wachusett was HUGE and now, it’s even bigger. Sometimes you couldn’t even get to class in time because five minutes wasn’t long enough to beat the traffic to your next class. This fucking math teacher that used to drool and spit and have fun with the sides of her mouth had menopause and would open the windows in winter. She was such a bitch about it and said if we didn’t bring a jacket then tough cookies we wouldn’t be able to go get it. Nobody was able to go get their jacket in between classes, it was impossible. She probably knew this and did it on purpose and said that on purpose because she was a fucking client I’ve been looking for her online for years to send her awful messages and I can’t find her ass. I’m not even joking. I already sent one of my math teachers messages about how much he’s basically a piece of shit. Everyone hated her. She drooled on one of my homework pieces one time and I circled it and I wrote Mrs. Tolis drooled on this” and purposely passed it in. This is the same teacher that grabbed Julian‘s homework off of my desk that I was making for her and crumbled it up and threw it in the trash because on the back of it I was drawing a picture of her being rabbit and drooling like a dog. I don’t know if she saw it or not but I hope she did. Before she could walk away I grabbed it back and then the whole classroom gasped and then she grabbed it back from me. It’s like bitch that’s someone’s homework.. TF?! She almost got fired one year cuz, funny enough Meredith, the nose flarer’s sister told us she taught the wrong material for a complete semester. Good times. They ripped outcthe best parts of the school and made it ugly and boring. There was this huge glass staircase at the front of the school. A shit load of people fell down that thing many times but who cares it was so cool. Now it’s gone the year after we graduated in 2003 they ripped out everything and redid the parts they ripped out. Now it looks stupid. my other favorite part of the school was the incredibly creepy gymnasium in the back. There were two gymnasiums in the front and then one down a really narrow creepy hallway which had other hallways that led to it that were never lit. The downstairs bathroom was creepy too.. because you had to use another long narrow creepy hallway that was never lit to get to it. Then there was a few really weird classrooms down in the basement where that lone bathroom was, that had tables and desks and chairs all toppled all over each other in it and they didn’t use either of them. They could’ve totally used that for so much stuff but for some odd reason they didn’t use it. I bet somebody got killed in there or something and they didn’t want to use it. So they kept throwing old broken shit on top of the last old broken shit that they threw in there. It looks like a wood bonfire except it was old metal chairs and desks. Shit’s probably haunted or something. Lol. It looked like a perfect place for a haunted, abandoned school horror movie or somethin. It was awesome. They bulldozed ALL of that away. That’s some despicable bs I tell you. We were the last year students to use it which was weird.

Even in middle school we had this really old hallway for the seventh and eighth grade wing. We were the last grade to use that old shit too, so they let us draw pictures and write all over it. Of course a ton of people just wrote a bunch of shit about other people and people got in trouble. My friend Joe had the most pink slips out of anybody in our grade & probably out of any grade that has ever been there. It was over 40 I think it was like 45 or something actually I’m gonna ask him because it might’ve even been in the 50s. At one point in time he didn’t give a shit and he purposely kept trying to get pink slips to see how many he could get by the end of 8th grade, the last year we were there. Eighth grade isn’t always the last year out of school. West Boylston school had the middle school wings connected to the high school wings..because it was so small. They never gave homework and it was the easiest shit ever it was like retard school. Anyway I love to change subjects it’s fine. Anyway, A lot of his pink slips were for really stupid shit. Like, talking. “Oh no! He spoke again! Send him down to the principal!”

There was this one time in 8th grade Spanish class when I said something funny outloud, I don’t remember what I said but he could not stop laughing and had to go in the hallway. Every time he came back in after he was done laughing, I would look at him and he would just start laughing n had to go back in the hallway. Fuckin Joe, good times man, gooooood, good fuckin times.

Speaking of that specific Spanish class…the teacher, Mrs. Scarcella, would always say “AAAAHORA!” aka “Noooow…” At LEAST ten times before moving on to the next subject during EVERY freaking class. She’d flare out her nostrils and would say it the exact same way every damn time, unnecessarily. So the one time when she actually had us do something remotely interesting for a project grade, Jigz & I got a bunch of the girls we could tolerate, together to do this Spanish skit. We had to make a fake weather report or some shit and do the whole thing in Spanish (obviously) and every person had to do something different, but it all had to be weather reports. Fuckin stupid idea, there’s only one weather report during the news. 🤷🏻‍♀️ We all thought it was stupid so we basically just used the skit for the purpose of mocking our obnoxious and bitchy teacher. So before everyone’s skit we all said “AAAAHORA!” . I already felt disgusting about how I looked at the time so I refused to flare my nostrils like the teacher. I’m laughing this is funny, but this girl Meredith flared her nostrils like I’ve never seen before in my life and I’m still fuckn happy about it.

Fuck I just erased a whole paragraph. Anyway…For my skit I chose to mock that new twister movie at the time. So I was on crutches and pretended I got hit by the cow that was flying through the air.. I was sitting in Jill’s basement on a very old push-up type of work out table. I don’t know what it’s fucking called but you know those tables that people lay down on and push the weights up and then it comes down on those little forks or whatever. I was sitting on one of those things with crutches and laughing my ass off because Jill was being insane behind the camera. It was all so frickin insane that I literally fucking pissed my pants cuz I was laughing that hard. I legit pissed myself at the end of my skit so I was hobbling out of the scene when I was done…to get away, because I basically pissed myself on camera. Oh my god.  my cousin used to make me laugh so hard when I was a kid I always had to bring changes of underwear when I went over her house because it was just insane. But as I got older that happened much less, mostly because life sucked way more as it usually does when we get older. But yeah that time I absolutely pissed myself laughing and I couldn’t believe it which made me laugh even harder. So, we kept it…we kept it in the skit… because I didn’t wanna do it again. So there is a VHS tape somewhere where I am legit pissing my pants and fake hobbling away on crutches, while barely being able to breathe. Good times.

No, not done. Jillian chose rain. So I had a hose and I was trying to spray it up, putting my thumb over the hole to make it spray outwards, but it ended up spraying her directly in the face. She used liquid eyeliner at the time, so she had blackness just dripping everywhere down her face. The whole scene was of her outside in her driveway screaming “Está lloviendo!” over and over again. She couldn’t breathe either, due to me spraying her directly in the face. It was far away enough where it didn’t hurt her, but it was completely right in her face. We also kept that take, we didn’t redo that either.

Now, aka AAHORA! The most glorious part of the entire skit…the metronome. Jill had this antique metronome on top of her antique piano, that we set to a very slow tempo to put in a scene between every person’s skit. But it wasn’t just the metronome-meeheeeeee-we all were standing in a line, in the back of her living room table, while the metronome was in the forefront, slowly ticking away, as our heads and our pigtails bounced slowly from side to side matching the metronome lever. We did that EVERY time, in between every person’s skit. I believe there were seven of us. Jillian, myself, Melissa(cunt) Michelle (got pregnant at 15, has five kids and still is w the same guy. Fuckin BRAvO to her man. She gets some serious Courtney brownie points), Christina (cried at the roller rink because she couldn’t skate and we didn’t skate with her. But to be fair it was physically impossible for us to skate that slow)……and last but surely not least, wonderful Meredith, the professional nose flarer. So when we passed in the VHS tape, with the written version of it, we got it back with the grade and a comment which said “Very awkward.” We also watched ALL skits during class one day. We had a bunch of nutjobs in that class. I remember some kid Cody I was crushing on, in his skit he was pretending to be Yoda and had a big sweatshirt over his knees and was like walking around on his knees at Andrew (hotdogcunt’s) house. Nope, not done….The most awkward skit of all, wasn’t meant to be awkward. It was some really bizarre skit made by this other Andrew kid, just wrestling other boys in our grade and had the most obvious boner happening throughout the entire skit. The sweatpants he was always free-balled in made it ten times more obvious. I remember everyone was laughing at all the ridiculous skits until we got to his. Then, fuckin dead silence and looks around the room like…what-the-fuck Andrew#2?! Everybody was looking at everybody else however none of us could look him in the fucking face.  some of us couldn’t look at him ever again, like myself for one. It’s like… “hmm, hey Andrew #2, Did you forget to uhmm.. proof-watch this shit before passing it in?” He was always a weird kid though. Not the fun or funny type of weird either. Just the corny yet pretentious loser type of weird. I will throw him a bone though (no pun intended) and will say, maybe he had a crush on the teacher and knew about it the whole time. Passing it in not knowing the whole class would ALSO be watching it. Really though, I have no idea, maybe he thought the teacher would be impressed with his boner and his wrestling skills. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[griffinsmith]

fiddled around with my old jackerita au a little! mostly just updated Mr Hound's involvement in the au. not sure if this really interests anyone but here it is and i also needed to write the words somewhere before i forgot lmao

Ok hi I havent written any notes for this au in over a year. Incredible how neurodivergency can allow you to experience things with vigor for a second time

So just to clarify this is for my jackerita au where jackall and margherita escape newgate together and eventually get together, its more fleshed out in these two posts here. This is not related to the jackall & hound au, and the only similarity it shares with that au is the design of mr hound that I use in it – I’m using the same redesigned hound design that you can find under this tag. Hopefully that makes enough sense. also this is all completely head canon and me being silly

Im mostly leaving the au the same, just tweaking some of the backstory of Jackall creating Hound, why he decided to kidnap the queen and use her crown’s jewels to become Hound permanently, and adding a little bit of stuff after he gets his ass thrown into jail. Im also slightly changing Jackall’s relationship to Hound in this au ok with that being said lets go

I previously mentioned that before stealing the queen, Jackall worked as the mechanical engineer for Barkingham, being specifically interested in defending the castle from outsiders, and that he proposed to the queen’s council that tapping into moon magic would allow them to transform guards into stronger versions of themselves. Jackall’s proposal got rejected, and this part is remaining the same

For the new lore, I am replacing Jackall not having the potion entirely ready when he presented his idea to the council. Instead, Jackall is done with the thing, but he hasn’t gotten a chance to try it out yet. He asks for support from the Queen’s council so he can have someone to try it out on. Because the Marleybonian society knows little to nothing about moon magic, and trying something unheard of like this is extremely frowned upon, Jackall did not get his proposal accepted.

Also for more details on that potion - Jackall engineered the potion to flip one’s magical alignment, meaning those who performed storm spells would instead be proficient in myth, and so forth. Additionally, one would have access to higher level spells than one would normally have. The potion, while focusing mostly on battling benefits, was also supposed to heighten one’s ability to physically fight and make one slightly less interested in morals and rules in order to achieve this (emphasis on * slightly *). Or at least Jackall thought as much - he did not spend as much time perfecting this ability as he did working on the other aspects of the potion. He just hoped that once he got funding, he’d be able to work any kinks out of it, but he suspected everything would be fine.

Jackall, after getting screamed at by the council, returns home saddened. He wanted to do something to defend the queen, perhaps even revolutionize how battles are fought in Marleybone! Who wouldn’t want to tap into stronger powers in duels? If he just had some funding, someone to try it out on, he could fully tap into moon magic and science and fully utilize his groundbreaking concoction that would allow users to keep a transformation in and out of fights, something no one had ever done before in the Marleybonian corner of the spiral.

After moping around for a few days, Jackall decided he no longer would wait for the council to come to their senses, and decided he would try out the potion on himself. Then, from there he could figure out how to perfect any minor flaws, and once it was finished, present it to the council again. He was sure future history books would hold him as a hero if he could get that potion to in front of the council. Surely if they saw the positive effects it could bring, they’d give him their support.

And so, at midnight one night, he took a swig of the potion, eager to see what it would do to him. Immediately after ingesting it, he noticed a wave of euphoria rushing through him, deciding that this was the part of the potion lessening his hold on morals a bit. He noted this as a success.

Upon attempting a spell, he was ecstatic to see that his magic had changed from Ice to Fire. After messing around a second or two with spellcasting, he was equally ecstatic to see he could perform higher level fire spells, outranking the normal ice spells he could usually perform. This was also noted as a success.

The potion seemed to work perfectly – his magic had changed appropriately, now a different school and stronger, and he felt more like he could win both duels and normal fights. He wrote the potion up as a great success, and would make sure to visit the Queen’s Council again in the morning to show off what it could do.

And then came a sharp pang of pain in Jackall’s chest that quickly spread through his entire body. As Jackall writhed and convulsed around on the floor for a bit, the true colors of the potion’s “losing your morals and rules” aspect shown through, and after a minute of painful transformation, Dr Jackall became Mr Hound.

What Jackall had hoped to achieve with his concoction was something that would temporarily allow the user to mostly forget about the consequences of hurting someone, while still understanding not to go absolutely hog wild and really hurt people in duels and physical fights. What Jackall ended up achieving was creating an uncaring and self-indulgent alter ego for whomever was foolish enough to drink it. Not to mention, said alter ego now had powerful spells and enough adrenaline in their system to take out an entire clock tower’s worth of thugs. Jackall had accidentally created a monster, but he wouldn’t find that out yet – Hound was still in charge for a few hours.

The potion was also not supposed to change appearances, but for Jackall, the potion turned his gray fur blue, and said fur and hair became rougher, pointier even. Hound, a being concerned only with himself, decided to wreck the shit out of the clothes he had just spawned into and gleefully ran amok along the streets of Marylebone wearing only a tattered overcoat and pants.

The potion’s effects only lasted for a few hours (which is already longer than the 30 minutes or so that Jackall intended it to last for – good work Jackall really knew what you were doing with this potion), but that was more than enough time for Hound to terrorize a few guards at Barkingham and some poor random citizens just trying to get somewhere.

When the potion did wear off, Jackall was dazed but … he was also a little thrilled. A normal person would probably be horrified that they just werewolf transformed into some horrible version of themselves that they had no control over, but Jackall felt refreshed. He’s spent so long stuck under the thumb of Barkingham, not getting to do what he wants – why not indulge every now and then and play into his vices? And so he continues, with Jackall downing a few swigs of the potion every few days and allowing himself to become Hound to do whatever he wants.

Quick note here – while I’ve taken some inspiration from both the Jek/yll Hy/de musical from the 90’s and the original book from the late 19th century, im going to be stepping away from how they portray Hyde slowly becoming like . actually violent and . killing people . so that this au makes a bit more sense for Jackall’s backstory in canon where he genuinely wants to become hound forever. We’ll save that darker side to hound for the other au.

Jackall spends about a month transforming into Hound on and off before deciding he’s tired of being himself, and he wants to permanently become Hound. So far, Hound hasn’t done anything really bad yet (Hound steals from people and attacks people in and out of battles but he hasn’t *really* hurt anyone yet. It’s fine it’s fine) so Jackall thinks it would be fine if he was Hound 100% of the time. A great plan.

In this state of excitement, and also wanting to stick it the Queen’s Council who denied him funding on the project, Jackall decides he’s going to get the jewels off of the Queen’s crown by kidnapping her and further use those jewels to perfect his alchemical solution and become Hound forever. He'll be able to indulge in whatever he wants and no one will be able to stop him - It’s the perfect plan. Jackall still works in Barkingham and sees the staff literally every day and they’re wondering why he’s been acting a little weird lately and yet he still thinks it’s the perfect plan.

And from there, the au remains mostly the same. Jackall breaks into Barkingham the same way I wrote that he did a year ago, and gets sent to Newgate and escapes with margherita and they become the owners of the shopping district jewel shop, all the same as before. However, there are a couple of minor added details.

Jackall stops taking swigs of his potion once he’s in jail. He can’t drink it anymore since its not on him, and he can’t make it anymore there. At first, he misses the freedom that Hound gave him, but as time goes on, he realizes how unsustainable and dangerous that behavior and Hound was, and he no longer misses being Hound. He finally realizes he had created a monster, and he resolves to never again transform into him.

Hound, on the other hand, did not get this memo. Hound frequently appears in Jackall’s nightmares, starting to show up in them about a week into Jackall’s jail stay. Jackall brushes the visits off, but they slowly become more and more vivid, with Hound seemingly threatening taking him over involuntarily. Hound clearly misses the freedom - the embodiment of Jackall's selfish and evil traits does not want to be caged any longer, and this terrifies Jackall. Jackall fears for what could happen if he does manage to take over again - Since Hound has had his urges repressed for so long, surely he would do something really bad if he gets his way again.

The nightmares cease for a bit when Jackall and Margarita break out of Newgate and adjust to their new lives in Wizard city. Jackall never once mentions the nightmares to Margherita, and hopes they’ve stopped for good. But like clockwork, once Jackall’s gotten accustomed to everything, Hound begins frequenting his dreams again, just as strong as before. So far, Jackall’s been able to rouse himself from his nightmares when they start to get dire, but there have been a few instances where he swears he sees Hound’s shadow on the wall when he awakens, even if only for a second.

Alongside with the fear of getting found out for the ex-convict he is, Jackall now has to worry for his alter ego growing stronger and gaining control permanently. It’s not like hiding from the cops is already stressful enough - no, now he has to worry that he’ll involuntarily become an impulsive and careless version of himself who could easily draw attention to his hiding spot on top of all that.

Ok that’s it bada bing bada boom I hope that was cohesive enough thank you for reading if you did!!!! Jackall you idiot you wanted to be hound forever and once you came to your senses you dont anymore. make up your mind boy

[hatboyproject]

Now here, we have some pretty significant advances, I think you will agree!

More of the custom lines have had their lip-sync worked into now, though only a few are what I will consider complete at this stage. Most need tweaking, but several are passable even with minimal editing, I feel. ME3′s phonemes are pretty forgiving. There is also something I have twigged onto in the editor that, if it works, may revolutionise the process? But, that’s if it works like I suspect it does, and that particular if is big enough to squash Harbinger. I’ll be experimenting with it though.

Many thanks to the legendary Exkywor for doing these camera edits and showing me the process behind them so it will be easier for me to do them in future myself as well!

Stuff-You’ll-Actually-See To Do:

 Finish lipflaps, RIP me

 Smooth out animation transitions (The “I don’t have much experience with this” line has him snapping into position a little bit and I don’t like it)

A few new dialogue nodes containing things to help set the mood a bit more?

Adjust where Jeff is standing a little bit

Adjust Shepard’s eye placement in the final shot

Under-the-Hood To Do:

Completely overhaul all existing nodes to use custom TLK numbers so the subtitles show up in the editor as well as in-game. If others are going to be helping me with this, legibility is a concern now so it’s time to get off my ass and sort that out

PlotBools/Conditionals, RIP me

Once that’s done... then this is 1/2 major scenes. Everything else is minor by comparison. Mostly bridge dialogues, ambient dialogues, tweaking existing lines, and some other low-impact ideas I have that should serve to really sell the whole thing. I figure Jeff might very occasionally say something to you via the earpiece if you are dating him and you are on an away mission. I like this idea a lot, but I don’t want it to be annoying or overbearing, so I need to pick where it happens carefully. I would have a lot of freedom to make those lines very “intelligent,” as he could have something to say about pretty much any variant of a situation vis checks and conditionals. It’d “cost me” a lot less to implement those as well because no lipflaps, so, it’s an idea to consider.

[sailorspazz]

10 Dance Vol. 6 Special Edition overview

Volume 6 of the 10 Dance manga was released in Japan on March 18th, 2021. As with volumes 4 and 5, there are both regular and special editions available. In this post, I will provide an overview of the release, including observations on changes that were made to the chapters compared to how they were printed in the magazine, plus summaries and select scans of content from the special edition booklet.

It is often the case that when chapters come out in the manga magazines, they aren't always fully polished, and since I became highly familiar with this run of chapters from the summaries I made, several things immediately jumped out at me as I went through the book. First of all, though chapter 29 was split into two parts and released in subsequent months in the magazine, these two halves were combined into one chapter, with no indication they had ever been separate. I assume that they were always intended to be one chapter, but since the full chapter was not completed before the deadline (and it was a month when 10 Dance was being given the cover image, so not possible to delay its release), it was simply split over two months instead.

For visual changes, the most common alteration was scenes that originally had little or no screentone having it added in:

There were also some instances of either slight panel redraws, or complete replacements with new panels. None of these were from particularly important scenes, so it could just be Inouesatoh or someone on her team didn't like the look of the original panels and wanted to change them. The following example has a bit of both, with Suzuki in the upper left corner being replaced, and his eyes being redrawn in the lower panel:

Personally, the most amusing addition I noticed was when Max was thinking about throwing a party. Originally, we didn't see what he was envisioning, but in the volume, an addition has been made in the background: the New Year's piece Inouesatoh drew with sexy men dressed as cows, except now they're bunnies!

As for dialogue, it appeared to be almost the same in both versions throughout. Some minor exceptions include a spot I found where the dialogue was put in a different order, swapping Sugiki’s lines between this panel and his first line on the following page (in addition to another altered panel example):

As well as in this shot of Suzuki describing how they tug at the thread that connects them through their dance. Whereas before it put the word “dance” next to the part about tugging on the thread to specify what was meant by that, it was deleted in the volume. And while it was originally described as “affirming that we’re connected”, this was also tweaked a bit to be, “affirming our connection”.

There were a couple instances of character names being different from when they appeared earlier in the story. In this volume, two characters who were last mentioned back in volume 2 (Lucas Calvo, one of the champions at the table in Blackpool, and Deeks, who Ernie said hated Sugiki because he "stole" his girlfriend), either from typos or intentional changes, weren't the same as before. Lucas' last name was written with a 'g' sound (ガルボ) instead of a 'c' (カルボ), and this change carried over to the volume. On the other hand, Deeks' (ディクス) name got transposed as Disc (ディスク) in the magazine, but was fixed in the volume.

There was a typo that unfortunately made it through to the volume (but could perhaps be fixed in future printings). In chapter 34, when Norman is testing Suzuki's skills, he flashes back to Sugiki taking the national title from him several years earlier. The text in this scene, written in English, incorrectly states that Suzuki won the championship, rather than Sugiki.

The volume also includes the usual additions that are not present in the magazine, such as the under the cover flap comic, and Inouesatoh’s notes about each chapter.

The cover flap comic (which looks very much like a sketch, compared to previous ones that have had more complete art), features the Shinyas during a practice session earlier on in the series in December, where Suzuki complains that Sugiki’s Latin just isn’t sexy. Sugiki suggests that he can practice being sexy by wiggling his butt around to write a message in the air. Suzuki worries that if he starts writing out “love” or something, he’ll have to run away and escape. Sugiki gets started, and Suzuki calls out each letter that he can make out from his elegant butt bouncing. After figuring out he’s written “M-E-R-R-Y”, Suzuki guesses that he’s writing “Merry Christmas”. Sugiki gets mad that he said it aloud before he finished writing his message, and says he’s going to leave. Suzuki says, “Wait, I love you,” as narrative text says that this somehow turned into a love story in one panel.

And here are some tidbits I found interesting/amusing from the chapter notes:

She thinks readers who are fans of pecs will like Saichi.

She’s not sure if readers will love Max or hate him, but she personally likes him (sorry Sensei, I kinda hate him lol)

As of chapter 32, a portion of the art is now done digitally.

The epic “last dance” scene from 33 was something that she had planned since the beginning of the series, and it ended up being 8 times the cost for a typical chapter.

Special edition booklet:

The special edition comes with a 48 page hardcover booklet that includes a variety of different extras, divided into 8 sections called “heats”.

Heat 1 is a newly drawn, 12 page parody manga. Back in September 2020, Inouesatoh put out a request on Twitter for fans to send in their suggestions for an erotic side story. Putting the characters in a high school setting was the most requested scenario, so she chose this idea as the basis for the story. The title is “And All That Jazz” (the premise makes this somewhat confusing to summarize, so keep in mind that I’ll mostly be describing their actions based on the soul rather than the body, but will use quotation marks if it’s about other characters and who they think they’re addressing. It’ll all make sense, I promise...I think :P)

(The title page actually depicts the ending of the story, so I’ll come back to it later). It starts with Suzuki narrating his introduction, saying that he’s a transfer student to the Standard Academy. He really doesn’t get along with a guy named Sugiki, but for some reason, the two have now switched bodies with each other. Sugiki opens his shirt and inspects his new physique in front of other students, as Suzuki yells out asking what the hell he’s doing to his body. They look at themselves wearing each other’s expressions, Sugiki seeming surprised his mouth can gape open like that, and Suzuki wondering what happened to his body’s facial expression muscles. The bell rings and Sugiki heads off to class, as Suzuki is baffled that he can act so calm about this.

Sugiki perfectly reads a passage aloud in English class, something everyone (including the teacher, who looks like Norman) find unusual coming from “Suzuki”, as they wonder where his usual hearts are. Suzuki makes the decision to enjoy living as Sugiki for a bit, and is shown getting flirty with several girls. He notes that the more serious personality in his regular body is also strangely popular, though with a very different crowd.

A student named Alberko (Alberto in a girl’s uniform) shows up and says that “Sugiki” was supposed to have lunch with her(?) today. Suzuki says that he thought Alberko was going out with Dorou (a masculine alteration to Dolores’ name). Ernie and Suzuki watch as his harem falls apart with Alberko running amok. Ernie comments that both “Sugiki” and that transfer student have been acting weird all week, and he asks if something happened. Suzuki internally reflects back to one week earlier, when he was relaxing in bed in the infirmary. Sugiki comes in and accuses him of skipping class, and Suzuki tells him to mind his own business. He thought this would turn into one of their usual fights, but he can’t believe that actually happened instead...

After school, Sugiki asks Suzuki if they can go home together today. As they’re walking, Suzuki asks if Sugiki realizes what it was that made them switch places, and Sugiki says he does. Suzuki says that in that case, they know how they need to fix it, and they should go over to his house. Sugiki asks for clarification of whose house exactly he means by that.

As they start to get undressed, Suzuki says that he always thought his mom and sisters were annoying, but after a week apart he really misses them. Sugiki promises that he’ll make sure he can see them soon. Suzuki claims that he’ll be the one making Sugiki come, and Sugiki asks how he can talk like that when he was the one who looked like he was about to cry when Sugiki first touched him in the infirmary.

Sugiki peeks into Suzuki’s pants and wonders if he won’t get hard unless he touches him. Suzuki thinks it’d be weirder if he could get hard while looking at his own face, and wonders if Sugiki has AI in his crotch or something (Sugiki contends that it’s not his body). They fool around with each other until they finish, and Suzuki wonders why they didn’t change back yet. Sugiki suggests that maybe it needs to be just like the last time to count as a complete set, when they went at it until they fell off the bed, so both agree that they need to go for one more round. This then ties back to the title page, where they’ve finally managed to get back into their old bodies, but have now sprouted cat ears and tails.

Heat 2 of the booklet is 8 pages long, and contains short comics and illustrations that were not previously included in the volume releases. The comics include “How to 10 Dance”, a one-page comic with the Shinyas demonstrating the tango. Their privates end up touching, and Sugiki seems highly amused, gleefully asking Suzuki how it feels. Suzuki says that he was the one who got all bent out of shape over that back in volume 1, and tells him to lay off the sadist mode since they’re not dancing Latin right now. The second comic is “2nd Step”, and shows a glimpse of how the Shinyas were with each other after Suzuki gave the go-ahead for kissing. In fact, Sugiki ends up kissing him so much that Suzuki’s lips get sore and swollen. Sugiki then tries to kiss his neck as an alternative, but Suzuki’s not having it. The third comic depicts Suzuki’s first time in a public bath, where he realizes that Japanese people aren’t fully shaved everywhere like he is. Some of the old guys talk to him and slap their balls with their towels, and Suzuki, seeming a bit confused, gives his own balls a slap, too. After the comics are a selection of illustrations that were never used in the volumes, including this one from a Real 10 Dance event in 2018:

Heat 3 is 18 pages, and contains a variety of colored versions of both chapter covers and scenes from the manga, a couple of which I’ll share below:

Heat 4 includes 3 pages of insight from the professional dancers who consult for the manga, in which they explain the moves shown in specific panels.

Heat 5 is a single page look at Inouesatoh’s work space.

Heat 6 is 3 pages worth of advertisements that have been used to promote the series, including things like ads that were posted in subway stations:

Heat 7 is a single page look at the storyboard for chapter 1 of the manga.

Heat 8 is a single page showing the covers for foreign editions of the manga (Taiwanese, Korean, North American, and French).

Finally, there’s one last page with a thank you message from Inouesatoh, including an absolutely precious illustration of the Shinyas in happier times.

And that’s that! This really is an incredible release, and I’d definitely recommend picking up the special edition if you can. CD Japan offers direct international shipping, and I’ve also seen that Kinokuniya lists it as “available to order” currently (though they don’t appear to have stock on hand, so might take longer).

[mallowstep]

DUDE I DIDN'T KNOW YOU HAD A TUMBLR OMG!! I've read basically all of your fics and let me tell you, they are exquisite!! Question: do you think you'll ever write an AU fic where Swiftpaw or Snowkit or Gorsepaw lived? I've always felt extremely bitter over their deaths. I also want to know how you feel about their deaths, too!

kjdf welcome to my Brainrot

<3 thank you so much!! <3 i'm glad you're enjoying them!

okay i've answered swiftpaw and snowkit before but not gorsepaw, so i'll just answer 'em all again and add this to the faq.if you want to read my swiftpaw and snowkit au thoughts, i expand more on it in this ask.

but in general, i think all three deaths are painful for a reason, and while i appreciate the fix-it fics where they live, my motto for stories is "different, not better." the shrewpaw lives au is the biggest exception, but that was mostly because i love squirrelflight.

i'm not really interested in a swiftpaw lives au, because if swiftpaw lives and brightpaw lives, then like. the tension/threat of the dogs is cut a lot. and i don't want to kill brightpaw. i love cloudtail/brightheart too much for that.

anyway, even if i was okay with letting the tension from the dogs fade a little, since you know we all know how serious the threat is, i still don't think there's a story i would be interested in telling there. i love minor tweaks to canon (heck, in saccharine tithes of love and glory, i basically went ahead and said, "canon continues in the background unless i Explicitly Say otherwise"), but i need some interesting hook.

if i want to write a trauma and recovery fic, i could just write about brightpaw. i don't think keeping swiftpaw alive adds very much to the story. or, like, yeah! you could do a lot with it, you could play with bramblekit and tawnykit, but it's just not the type of thing i'm interested in doing. the closest i'll probably get is relativistic, from the night circus au, where like. swift rescues bright from a burning house. so they both live and they both date cloud.

as for snowkit, while i don't have any plans to write a snowkit lives au, if i did, it would be about brackenfur, not snowkit.

why? well, i don't particularly have a ton of interest in snowkit's pov. it's not that there's nothing interesting in it (there is), but a combo of a) being an extremely auditory person who struggles with visual processing and b) not being interested in writing extended kit pov.

not saying i'll never do it from his pov, but my plan (if i ever write it) would be to write from brackenfur's pov, because brackenfur has a lot of potential to be a really nuanced character, and i want to mess with that. plus, his sister is disabled, so i think that would be an interesting thread to pull.

either that or do something similar to "i'll believe the wind is calling me" where we get a variety of povs, but the story is still focused around deadfoot and cinderpaw. i think this is less likely, but again, this is all speculative. any snowkit lives au i'll write hasn't even made it to my things to write list yet.

as for gorsepaw, while i've never thought about a gorsepaw lives au, i do have a couple of aus where it might be a background feature?

it's probably the hardest au to write because his death is a deliberate and specific action. unlike swiftpaw and snowkit, which are some amount of chance, gorsepaw is murdered to make a point.

and i love that.

obviously i hate it, but tigerclaw is such a fantastic villain, and we don't see one who's so...dark on a personal scale until darktail. like, po3 and oots are both very big picture, but darktail is the one who doesn't let mistystar bury the bodies. very dark. i like it.

anyway.

much like swiftpaw, gorsepaw's death serves an important narrative function, but unlike swiftpaw, there's no amount of chance that can realistically save him.

don't get me wrong, i want him to live, i just. don't know what to do about it.

so a gorsepaw lives au, for me, has to be set in the new prophecy, because then i can handwave the fact that he survives and not think about why and how he survives.

with that in mind, i've got another shrewsquirrel au where i think. gorsepaw is just going to live. in the background. it's not going to be explained, it's just going to be there. maybe i'll write something from his pov.

it's frustrating for me because! while gorsepaw's death is really hard to avoid from a storytelling perspective, allowing him to live does create new and interesting stories. he's onewhisker's apprentice and.

well morningflower and ashfoot are sisters and we haven't talked about kinship in a while here, but recall that makes them brothers.

anyway. my point is. there's a lot of interesting stuff that can be done with this. windclan ends up being a victim for thunderclan to save repeatedly in tpb, and it's something i love thinking about and writing about and exploring, so like. a lot of potential.

maybe i'll have crowkit&co. be born earlier so tigerclaw can kill crowkit instead. no crowfeather. only mothpool.

also as a bonus i assume you came here from the mothwing fic in stolag ("in a faith-forgotten land") so let me say. it was Very Hard to resist the urge to make mothwing's name mothpool. if it wasn't literally leafpool and mothwing's ship name, i would've done it.

(leafpool's name would probably be leafshine. i like -shine, as a suffix. it's pretty. or leafbreeze. not 100% sure.)

<3

[authoressofdarkness]

Guide Me Safely To Shore (Chapter 3)

Peter’s on the floor in a pile of broken glass, wearing the Spider-Man suit, blood leaking from cuts and various injuries on his body. His eyes are drawn to a particularly nasty looking split on his leg, and for a moment he sees red. Rhodey’s hand on his shoulder steadies him, giving it a gentle squeeze that snaps him back into reality. “Bad,” he completes, finishing his thought from the table. “I told you it was going to be bad.”

Notes: So it’s come to my attention that I’m a dumb bitch, and I haven’t updated this here in ages. So. Uh. Yeah. Doing that now. Happy New Year to all my fellow people that follow the general calendar; congrats to everyone for surviving this long. Hopefully it’s all going up from here. 

If you missed the first two chapters, here you go: 1 2 

It is more than a few days, but not by much.

To say that he’d mostly put their meeting out of his mind would be… well, a flat out lie, if he’s being honest. Frankly, he’s spent every free moment practically stalking Peter from a distance. Having men assigned to follow and protect him, watching him himself through the cameras as he goes about the city and during his patrols.

Because of course he’s still patrolling. He wasn’t lying when he told Peter his suit would be waiting for him at home; he’d repaired and done some minor tweaks to it before having it deposited by a drone on the young omega’s bed, but he’d made sure it was returned, all the same. He’s a man of his word, after all, if nothing else. And he hadn’t interfered with his patrols at all, besides monitoring them closely now. Even when the boy interfered with some of his operations. Even if it was pretty irritating.

He’d also began making some basic changes around the tower. Peter is his soulmate; whether they like it or not, nothing either of them will do can change that. So he may as well start reflecting it. He doesn’t want him finally deciding to come after him and being shot down by one of his numerous security measures.

So he inputs Peter’s name and DNA into all of the security, and decreases the safety measures around his personal floors of the tower from above, just in case he decides to come swinging in randomly instead of taking the more normal way up. And on the off chance he actually does decide to take the normal way, he makes sure his name is added to his list of personal contacts, people that are allowed to see him without an appointment and have access to his private elevator to his floors whether he’s there or not.

On his actual floor, he starts setting up a room for him, making sure he has a place to go if he needs it. He doesn’t want to discourage him from showing up by thinking that they have to be sleeping in the same bed immediately; and frankly, he thinks that’s probably a bad idea. He only has so much self control, for starters. But there’s also his night terrors to consider, and he hasn’t slept regularly beside anyone in years, and… yeah, until they’ve gotten to talk in some detail, that’s probably not a fantastic idea. Besides, he wants him to have his own space, to some extent, even if it is where he can keep an eye on him. And he’s still young yet; he may want to have friends over, or at least a personal space to keep the stuff for his hobbies. Tony doesn’t have to be seeing him every second of every day, after all. He just needs to know that he’s safe and taken care of. Preferably in his space, where he’s sure it’s secure, and he’s not much more than a flight of stairs away if something were to happen.

As it turns out, maybe he needn’t have worried so much about the first part.

He hadn’t really considered, admittedly, even for all his genius, that meeting his soulmate might have some physical effects on the young omega. Some… very physical effects. At least, he doesn’t until Peter comes crashing in through his window.

He might have had more of a heads up if he was still stalking him quite as intensively. But the need started to fade a little after the first few days, when he started to figure out more about Peter’s routine: who he was with, what he was doing, whether his family and friends were trustworthy, the area he was living was safe, that he was eating, that he had everything he needed. And for the most part, everything checked out. His friends were clean; his aunt was busy but seemed like a good woman; he lived in a safe enough neighborhood… So by the weekend, he’d backed off, just a little, starting to mainly check in on him at different intervals, and only really watching actively when he went on patrol.

That was his first mistake, probably.

The second was abandoning his normal post watching him almost altogether on Saturday night, when he had company show up unexpectedly.

It’s his own fault, of course. He has precious few people he trusts in the world, and most of them have almost equal access to his security, his information, that he does. So of course, one of them was bound to notice the changes he’d made to his security.

The third was letting that company stay long enough to notice something was seriously up.

He’d say the fourth was having a drink, but the thing is, alcohol doesn’t really affect him anymore, not since the serum. He still occasionally finds himself drinking socially, or reaching for a glass of something strong when he’s particularly stressed or emotionally in turmoil about something, but it’s more of a placebo than anything now. The motion and familiarity of it soothes him more than the alcohol ever could, especially now.

So yeah, he has a drink in his hand when he opens the balcony door, and blinks in surprise when he sees Rhodey, his suit melting away as he takes the invitation to come inside. “I thought you were in California.”

“And I thought alcohol didn’t do anything for you anymore.”

Tony shrugs, taking a long drink of the whiskey in his hand, heading back to the kitchen to refill it. “It doesn’t. I just like the taste.”

“Bullshit. You drink when you have something on your mind.” Rhodey follows him back inside, tilting his head and watching him fiddle with the bottle. “This have anything to do with the kid you added to the security system?”

Tony glances up at him, surprised for just a moment before he shrugs. “Am I getting so easy to read?”

“It’s not a far leap to make. Though the alcohol indicates it’s something bigger than I thought.” Rhodey watches him. “You know I prefer you only set up dangerous traps like this with backup on hand. Why are you trying to make my job harder?”

“Maybe I just like inspiring you to randomly drop in on me. Making your job harder is the only way I get to see you, honey bear. You know I get lonely,” Tony deadpans, deflecting. On the inside, his mind races. He trusts Rhodey with his life, that’s for certain. But is he ready to reveal his hand so soon? He could, but where’s the fun in that?

Rhodes scowls at him. “Tony… really. Come on. Who is he?”

He shrugs and sips his whiskey. “He’s Spider-Man.”

Rhodey’s eyeshadows shoot up on his forehead. “Really. So you thought the best course of action now that you’ve figured out his identity was to make it easier for him to break into your building?”

“Well, he’s also my soulmate, so.” Tony quirks a shoulder again. “Yeah.”

“That’s all well and good, Tony, but you know how I feel about-... wait. What?” The words seem to take a long moment to fully register, and he’s halfway through beginning to lecture Tony about stupid, unnecessary risks just to make captures with a flair when he realizes exactly what he’d said. “He’s your soulmate?”

“Yep.”

“He’s barely an adult.”

“It’s not like I chose it, Rhodey.” Tony sighs, setting his glass down and folding up his sleeve just enough to expose his wrist, the tender skin where the previously ghostly words are now etched in stark black. “Look.”

Rhodey carefully takes his arm to get a better look, then lets out a low whistle as he releases it and leans back. “Damn. I can only assume it didn’t go well?”

“Well, I almost killed him before he said it, so you could say that.”

Rhodey settles down on one of the stools and motions for a glass, apparently deciding that he needed alcohol to continue this conversation. Tony doesn’t blame him. He slides a tumbler across to him and continues as Rhodey pours himself a glass, telling him the full story of the hunt and chase and the revelation as they drink.

“He’s afraid of me now, of course,” Tony murmurs. “But then, who isn’t, really.” He sighs. “I don’t know what to do, Rhodey.”

“Yeah, that’s kinda a shitty situation, Tones. I don’t know.” He shakes his head, swirling the remains of his whiskey around the glass with a thoughtful look. “Is he here, then?”

“No. I released him Sunday.”

Rhodey looks surprised. “ Why would you do that?”

“He didn’t want to be here, Rhodey. He wanted to go home.”

“This is his home now.”

“Maybe legally. But that’s not exactly the way to gain his trust, is it?”

“So? He's your soulmate. Legally, you’re responsible for him now. As his alpha and his elder, concern for his safety should come before anything else. Besides, he’s a liability in about twelve different ways out there. Did you ever consider that?”

“Of course I did! But keeping him prisoner here isn’t going to solve anything. He has to come to me on his own, Rhodey. It doesn’t mean anything if he doesn’t want it. And right now I just want to give him enough time for him to realize I’m not going to murder him outright. He’s already scared of me; any kind of pushing on my part is going to make that worse instead of better, and that’s not what I want.”

Rhodey exhales a long breath, rubbing his forehead. “Yeah, alright. Whatever you say. You’re a reckless, romantic fool at heart, you know that? Just watch yourself, Tony. And you might have to consider the possibility that keeping this... arrangement isn’t going to benefit either of you, let alone both of you.”

Tony shakes his head. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Believe me, my tender heart already hurts,” he deadpans, joking to cover up the fact that it’s not that far from the truth. The bond has a serious pull, even unconsummated, and were he a lesser man in terms of strength of will, things might be looking very different right now. He doesn’t want to acknowledge how close he is to doing something irrational anyway.

“I’m serious, Tony. You know horrible things can happen if you’re apart for too long, especially since you haven’t solidified the bond in any permanent way, yet. You’re supposed to be together more than ever at the beginning, not separate again within hours. The recoil of that is going to be-”

Glass shatters.

They both jump to their feet. Rhodey’s suit reappears in an instant, but while Tony gets up, he doesn’t summon his armor. There was no alarm before the glass broke, which means…

Tony jogs out to the living area with Rhodey hot on his heels. They both stop at the sight.

It’s Peter — of course it’s Peter, no one else would have been able to get so close or so high up without the alarms going off. And the sight of him makes Tony’s instincts scream.

He’s on the floor in a pile of broken glass, wearing the Spider-Man suit, blood leaking from cuts and various injuries on his body. His eyes are drawn to a particularly nasty looking split on his leg, and for a moment he sees red.

Rhodey’s hand on his shoulder steadies him, giving it a gentle squeeze that snaps him back into reality. “Bad,” he completes, finishing his thought from the table. “I told you it was going to be bad.” He heaves a sigh. “I’ll start on cleanup. You take care of your boy.” And with that, he flies out.

Tony spends another moment just staring, unsure how to respond to that for a moment. Peter actually is his boy. Weird.

Then he jumps into action, crossing the floor to him. He’s not wearing shoes, having been in the tower for hours and not intending to go back out, so he lets the suit form just around his feet and ankles, so he can walk on the shattered glass without worry as he approaches him. “Peter? Are you alright?”

The younger man’s head snaps up. “Mr. Stark?” he asks, sounding almost tentative, lenses on the suit indicating his eyes are wide. He’s almost glad he can’t see them, knowing those Bambi eyes would ensnare and distract him in a second.

He wants to tell him to drop the formalities, but it seems like there’s bigger problems at hand right now. “That’s me,” he says instead, forcing a light little half-smile so he doesn’t scare him, furious as he feels. “C’mon, let’s get you out of all this glass, yeah?”

He almost expects the boy to resist, but instead his body practically melts into Tony’s as soon as he reaches for him. He’s surprised, for a moment, and has to readjust his grip to actually take his full body weight instead of just helping him up. He scoops him up, carrying him out of the mess and back into his bathroom. He needs a place to set him where he can get him cleaned up and assess his injuries, and in the middle of the room with all the broken glass seems like a bad idea.

Peter doesn’t move except to curl a little tighter into his chest, and he suddenly realizes the boy is shivering against him. That cold fury rises up in his chest again, but he forces it down, forcing himself not to focus on it, because if he feeds it right now it’ll grow until he can’t hide it and even a hint of it might terrify his young soulmate even more than he already has. And right now he needs him not to be afraid as much as possible, so he can get him taken care of with minimal fighting.

Not that Peter is fighting. In fact, he’s frighteningly pliable in his hands. He sits him on the bathroom counter, gently, tilting his head back to him and watching the lenses widen and close like his eyes are flickering open and closed, in and out of focus. That’s not good.

“Peter.” The lenses flare and fix on him. “I gotta take the suit off to check these injuries out, alright?”

The little whimper that comes from his throat goes straight through him in more ways than one. “Don’t… can’t take it…”

He isn’t sure what he means for a minute, but when he understands, it makes his chest ache. “I’m not taking it. Did I take it from you last time?” Peter shakes his head. “I just want to make sure you’re okay. I can’t do that like this, alright?” The lenses flicker again. “Peter?”

Too late. The boy slumps forward into his arms with a little groan. Tony jumps to catch him, pulling off the mask and frowning when he realizes he’s passed out. Great.

Well, at least it makes his job easier, if not happier.

He moves him to the floor, knowing he won’t be able to effectively hold him up and check him over. Carefully, he gets the suit off again, draping it over the hamper for him to deal with later. It’s going to need cleaning, and a whole list of repairs again. Does he deal with that level of damage to his suit and bodily injuries every time he goes out as Spider-Man? No wonder it takes him so long between patrols sometimes.

From there, he fishes out a first aid kit from somewhere, too focused now to pay much attention to anything besides the unconscious omega on his floor, and sets to work. He has Jarvis scan him so he’s sure he doesn’t miss anything and that he’s not in immediate danger. He’d take him to the hospital wing if necessary, though he’d rather not do that again.

It doesn’t seem to be. There’s a lot of blood and embedded, little shards of glass, but overall the injuries are superficial. Only the cut on his leg looks particularly bad. He probably won’t be able to walk properly until it heals, but Tony isn’t worried about his ability to clean it, so he sets to work.

It’s a tedious process, carefully picking out all the little shards of glass in his skin and then delicately as possible cleaning all his wounds. First with peroxide, sanitizing them, and then getting a warm rag from the tub and effectively sponge-bathing him. He was covered in blood, sweat, and probably some other things Tony didn’t want to acknowledge. He leaves his underwear on — a pretty little pair of panties that don’t leave much to the imagination, though he can hardly focus on that right now with bigger problems obviously at hand — but otherwise cleans him thoroughly before taking off his shirt and draping him in it. It’s huge, goes down to the omega’s knees nearly, but it’s got to be warm and it’s clean and it satisfies that little possessive rumbling inside him, seeing him in his clothes, smelling the way their scents mix. Peter’s is just so soft and sweet — like warm vanilla, with a hint of something that might be strawberries, maybe his shampoo, and something else distinctly omega and Peter that calls to him, though he wouldn’t dream of doing anything about it while Peter is asleep.

He washes his hands and makes quick work of cleaning up most of his mess before returning to scoop the omega up. He’s suddenly extremely thankful for his foresight when he realizes he has a place to take him that isn’t his room, and that he’s actually going to get to put it to good use.

He carries Peter to the room he’d began setting up for him, depositing him on the bed and watching him for a moment. He’s just moving to tuck him in when there’s a quiet tap on the doorframe.

“How is he?” Rhodey asks, quietly, seeming to realize he’s not awake.

“He passed out before we could talk at all,” Tony admits. “So I have no idea what happened to him or how he’s feeling. But I cleaned him up and took care of his wounds. He’s not in any immediate danger.”

Rhodey nods. “I finished cleaning up the mess and blocked off the hole. It’s not gonna be good, of course, you’ll need it professionally fixed, but it’s not a gaping hole now.”

“Thanks, Rhodey.” Exhaustion suddenly slams into him, and he sighs, putting a hand to his head.

Rhodey senses it immediately. “I think it’s time for you to get some rest, man. I know you’re superhuman now and all, but you need sleep still.”

“I know. I just…” Hardly ever sleep. Hardly did in the first place. He does even less, now that his body actually requires less of it, but these past few days… well. Rhodey is right; the recoil effects of this are nothing to scoff at.

“I know.” He claps him on the shoulder. “I’m going down to my room for the night. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Tony just nods. He waits for him to disappear, the door closed behind him, before turning back to the bed. He reaches down to tuck Peter in, and is surprised when a hand closes around his wrist, stronger than he had expected.

He tries to pry his hand off as gently as he can, but the omega is having none of it, apparently, grip tightening to the point he can feel the finger-shaped bruises starting to form. A quick glance at his face is enough to confirm that Peter isn’t actually awake. He’s just instinctively seeking him, whether for his heat or by scent or maybe their bond.

It doesn’t really matter. Awake or not, if he wants him to stay, then he’s not going anywhere.

Getting into bed with Peter is probably his final mistake, but it feels too damn right to regret it.

At least until one of them wakes up screaming, and things begin to spiral again.

[draugsresurrection]

Sprite Attrition IV & Whiterock Updates

While some work was done on the ceaseless load of attack sprites needed, most of last month was mostly spent on fixing up issues with Whiterock and adding visible numbers directly to the battlefield, as shown below.

It, like a lotta things in DR, probably looks a lot better to see it in action than to just see a tepid screenshot with a number lazily floating in the sky. Regardless, like attack animations in general, this is probably something that should've been added decades ago. While this information was already provided in the toptext, nor was it particularly demanding to get it work, I think it adds a bit more impact and immediate feedback to attacks. It displays exact numbers for Beams/Walls and Multihits, so those especially are improved.

Back to Whiterock, the big change is allowing Oliver to be recruited while still on Whiterock, if you go early enough. There's four separate ways to get him to join, and he has something to say about essentially every event on Whiterock, so there's a fair bit of content added there. Alongside that, there's a few minor tweaks to make an extremely early Whiterock more palatable. It's still not really recommended to do extremely early, unless you really know what you're doing, and Chizuru cusses you out much more clearly if she doesn't think you're ready (based mostly on playtime, money, and potion count).

Lastly, while it's limited to only four characters right now, Third animations now exist. These are used (for player characters only, probably) whenever a specific spell or skill needs some extra flair. Marcia's obviously has some personal significance to me. In addition, I changed the way the normal 'Physical/Magical' animations are determined. Previously, it was strictly based on damage typing, but after seeing too many fringe cases (most Direct Magicals and Indirect Physicals, like Lunar Blade or Rock Barrage), it's become its own variable, giving me more freedom on how moves are displayed.

I'm sorely tempted to say that I'll be releasing Version 0.9.7 on August 16th, regardless of if I've finished an attack animation for every single enemy or not. If it comes to that, I sincerely doubt anyone’ll realistically see those missing enemies, and those that do are already 20+ hours in, so are gonna be a lot more forgiving. All in all, there's already a fair bit of content added, beyond what the massive quality-of-life the attack frames and damage numbers add to combat, and hopefully setting a date in stone will get me to stop getting sidetracked.

[gone-series-orchid]

i was re-reading your fics and i'm honestly amazed at how in character they all are! maybe strange question, but what one emotion do you think drives the gone characters the most (any you want to talk about of course!)? and what is their defining trait to you? thanks so much, i really enjoy your content!! -anon who's sent more than i'd like to admit 😂 maybe "🎀" anon if you do that kind of thing? :)))

omg, anon, thank you so much!!!! (and yes, i love the idea of the emoji; i christen thee “🎀” anon!) i love getting feedback on my fics; they’re so fun to write! i’m glad you think all the characters are true to how they are in the books—i’d beg to differ, as i think i’m admittedly still trying to get a handle on them, even after all these years! i have a sneaking tendency i tweak the characters a bit in favor of making the admittedly non-canonical events work, but i guess that’s typical of fanfic writers as a whole. i make it difficult for myself, though, as it’s been too long since i read the books. i i should really pick them up again.... still, thank you so much, anon, your words mean a lot to me!!

as for what drives the characters in “gone” the most? that’s a good question! i think all the characters throughout the series are all driven by the need to survive, obviously—but i think there’s also the prevailing need, at least in the “good” characters like sam and co., to believe that they’re doing the right thing. but in a world where all the authority figures and guiding influences have poofed, how can they be sure? 

that’s why, for over half of the series, astrid clings to her faith and intelligence, and why sam tries to live up to his nickname of “schoolbus sam.” as young teenagers, the kids in the fayz haven’t properly developed their sense of self yet, so they latch onto things like the bible, or the belief that they’re meant to be king, or the belief that they’re a “bad girl”; they try to make themselves live up to symbolic representations. that steadily breaks down over the course of the series as the kids mature—diana seeks redemption through motherhood, realizing she can change and become good, astrid loses her faith but finds her own sense of agency, sam realizes he isn’t fit for leadership and steps down to make way for edilio, who alone is level-headed and mature enough to set his ego aside and perform his role as needed.

i think it’s interesting how all the “gone” characters (except for caine, drake, and maybe minor characters like brianna), morality is very important. even diana, an antagonist who’d be well within her right to say she’s doing good by staying with caine, knows that by some standard of morality she’s internalized that she’s “bad.” sam is terrified of being found out by an invisible jury of adults that he’s “bad,” that he’s been witness to countless deaths and trauma, and suffers survivor’s guilt because of that. astrid is sure that she is “good,” only to, in plague, recognize her folly and spiral into the same pit of self-loathing and doubt that sam and diana are trapped in (and eventually climb out of).

i think what drives a character like orc, mostly, is insecurity. that’s what makes him a sort of live wire. he’s insecure about his lack of intelligence, his father, his mother, his self-worth, everything. that’s why astrid’s kindness towards him affects him so much—she treats him like a person while he sees himself as a monster. she’s the one who inadvertently makes him realize that he deserves better. he has a powerful attraction to her because she’s the only one who makes him feel like a person worthy of respect. that’s what makes his attitude toward her during the coates scene in plague so frightening, because he’s essentially deciding to forgo any pretense of humanity and give into his worst self-destructive urges—putting him alongside the likes of the id-driven, pseudo-sexually sadistic drake—in the process of trying to kill himself. not only is he trying to kill himself physically, but he’s also trying to kill astrid’s image of him, the image that he’s previously tried and failed to live up to, by attacking her.

sorry, 🎀 anon, i think i went off track a little bit! nonetheless, i hope this sort of answers your questions. 

speaking of fics! i’m currently writing one that attempts to disentangle astrid and sam’s relationship in fear. it also puts sam and diana together, though to what extent I don’t know. it might be unrequited…. also astrid is there, trying to sort out her spirituality and her feelings toward sam and diana, and also trying to help orc find god and also sorting out her feelings about THAT…astrid has a lot of inner conflict in this one, lol. hopefully i’ll get it done sometime soon!

feel free to send more asks, 🎀 anon!! you know I love them!!

[nicnacsnonsense]

Frozen 2. I have notes. (Spoilers)

In general I did enjoy seeing Frozen 2. If a friend wanted to see it, I would go see it again. But there is definitely room for improvement. There are three major areas that stood out to me that could use some reworking.

The first is Kristoff’s whole subplot. Him proposing to Anna is good and tripping over his words while doing so is in character, but other than that. Why would he be trying to propose to Anna while they’re busy trying to solve a crisis? Why would he run off to spend all night gathering reindeer and butterflies for an elaborate proposal when he knows they have an important mission the next morning in potentially dangerous territory. And Anna’s consistent misunderstanding of his bumbling in the worst way possible leading to snappish and angry responses from her is out of character for Anna and makes their relationship look unhealthy.

The second two are both related to Elsa. The first is that her character arc is narratively redundant. The first Frozen movie Elsa’s arc was one of self-discovery and self-acceptance related to her powers. In Frozen 2 her arc is one of self-discovery and self-acceptance related to her powers. Obviously self-acceptance is not a one a done proposition, but this doesn’t really feel like a continuation of her issues from the last movie; it’s a brand new issue that happens to be thematically identical to the ones from the last movie, making it redundant rather than a continuation. And my other issue with her arc is the way it ended. In Frozen Elsa is born different from everyone else and spends most of her life hiding that for fear of hatred and rejection from those around her if they knew. Over the course of the movie she learns to accept herself and the people around her come to accept and love her regardless and even because of her differences. In Frozen 2 Elsa is born different than everyone else, and her arc involves her accepting herself and moving to somewhere new where the people are all like her. Which if Elsa were a real person I would totally support if that was what made her happy, but as story being told by a company run by a bunch of old rich white guys starts to give vibes of “well of course all of us normal people here in Arendelle like magic users; we just think they’d be happier if they stuck to their own kind. We don’t have a problem with them. We just wouldn’t want any living in our neighborhood.” Which is a bit... not good.

So how do we fix this? We make it Anna’s story.

To be clear I’m not talking a full overhaul of the plot here. Actually very little is going to change in that regard. The plot of the movie will still be driven by Elsa’s journey, but the emotional core of the movie will be Anna’s character arc. Which, hey, actually makes a nice parallel to Frozen, where the plot was driven by Anna running around, but the emotional core was Elsa’s arc. The upside of this is obviously there’s a lot less work to do to fix things up. Downside is we still keep that same ending for Elsa; however I hope by shifting the emotional narrative around that ending we can minimize the impact of the unfortunate implications.

The movie opens with the prologue and after that we get the song “Some Things Never Change” that, with perhaps a few minor tweaks to Elsa’s somber part, can stay. (In fact most of the songs get to stay. Yay! Except “Lost in the Woods.” Sorry Kristoff; we’ll add a cute duet for you and Anna instead.) This song is going to set up Anna’s core emotional conflict for the movie as well as Elsa’s complementary conflict. Anna tells Oalf she’s not afraid of change because she’s not alone anymore. But that’s the catch; she’s terrified of change that might result in her losing her loved ones in any capacity. She spent most of her formative years feeling isolated and it’s made her clingy and needy as an adult (see her accepting Hans’ proposal after knowing him for a few hours). She can function fine on a day-to-day basis, it’s just when she feels her relationships with her loved ones are threatened that she begins to fall apart. She was alone for so long and she is convinced she cannot - not refuses to, physical and emotionally can not - do it again. Meanwhile we see Elsa who is restless and yearning for something unknown, but holding herself back for Anna’s sake, because she promised Anna she’d be there for her from now on.

Family game night happens, but Kristoff successfully proposes to Anna and everyone is happy. This is our high point for both the movie and Anna’s character from which everything is going to come slowly crashing down (until it picks up again at the end, obviously). The celebration is interrupted by Elsa hearing the voice calling her. She excuses herself, saying she’s tired, and encourages everyone else to keep having fun. Anna tries to, but Kristoff can tell she’s worried about Elsa and tells her to go check on her; he’s not going anywhere.

The next scene, “Into the Unknown,” and the evacuation occur mostly as canon, with again perhaps a few small changes in the lyrics to the song to emphasize Elsa is not holding back out of her own fear, but for Anna’s sake. Our next big change is the conversation after the evacuation about going to the Enchanted Forest. Rather than Anna having to push to come, Elsa invites everyone to come with her, but warns them it could be dangerous and they need to follow her lead. Everyone agrees and they set off.

Plot wise most of what happens next will be more or less the same as canon, but with a different tenor to the conversations between Anna and Kristoff and Anna and Elsa. Anna and Kristoff are actually engaged so their conversations are either positive and excited about that (we can replace the disastrous second proposal attempt with that cute duet I mentioned earlier) or Kristoff being comforting and supportive of Anna as she worries about her sister. For Elsa and Anna the feeling of a lot of their conversations in canon is that Elsa is falling back on old habits and being closed off and reckless while Anna is the sensible one. Instead here Elsa is confident and in her element while Anna is reckless and even clingy.

They make it to the village and are planning on spending the night when the rock giants show up. Because Anna and Kristoff are already engaged, he hasn’t run off to put together a dumb proposal, and is there when they have to leave. We get another action sequence here and at one point all of them are running along a cliff. The edge of the cliff sheers off, and Kristoff and Sven go tumbling down. Anna screams and for a second it looks like she’s going to throw herself off the cliff after him. Elsa drags her away to safety at which point Anna has a mini breakdown. Elsa tries to reassure her that the other two are probably fine — though we can tell that not even she totally believes it — and reminds Anna that she still has her and Olaf. They continue on.

They reach the ship and find out what happened to their parents. Elsa freaks out but not because she thinks it’s her fault their parents died. She freaks out because she sees now that what comes next is too dangerous for Anna to come. She swore to Anna that she’d always be there for her, but now Elsa needs to go and Anna needs to stay. This moment is the culmination of Elsa’s arc, where she’s realizing that she can’t actually always be there for Anna. Sometimes life is going to pull them in different directions and that’s okay. She has to let it happen rather than always fighting and holding herself back.

Anna wants no part of this. She protests strongly and Elsa has to trick her to send her and Olaf away. Anna and Olaf are both upset, but Olaf recognizes that Elsa might have had a point, and reassures Anna that at least they still have each other.

From this point everything goes pretty much as canon, so I just want to reflect on how this earlier changes impact the meaning of the things that happen.

Anna and Olaf are in the cave, Elsa’s message comes through, and Olaf dissolves away. Cue “The Next Right Thing.” This song is perfect and is now the thesis statement of the movie, as it rightly deserves to be. Anna started off terrified of losing her loved ones, and now one-by-one that’s what’s happened. She’s all alone and it hurts; it hurts worse than she ever imagined. But. But. But she can keep going. She can take one more step, just one more. And after she takes that step she can maybe take just one more. And one more. It’s not okay, it may never be okay again. But she can take one more step.

Having learned this lesson things begin to turn around. She’s disturbed the rock giants and as they’re gaining on her Kristoff (and Sven) ride in to the rescue. Kristoff is back, and he’s back from the supposed dead this time, which is far more triumphant than being back from wandering off to catch butterflies. They destroy the dam, and then Anna and Kristoff get a moment to reunite. Then just as Anna is breaking the news about Elsa, they spot her riding up on her water horse. Anna and Elsa also get a chance to reunite. Then Elsa brings Olaf back to life and their whole family is together again. We get a moment to bask in this before Elsa breaks the news to Anna that she’s going away. Not forever, but she has other things she needs to do with her life. And Anna is sad to see her sister go, but she’s going to be okay.

We redefined this ending so now instead of Elsa leaving being the result of her journey of self-discovery and realizing she really belongs off in the woods somewhere, it’s a result of the lessons both Elsa and Anna have learned. Elsa knows now that while it’s important to be there for your loved ones, you can’t do it at the expense of yourself. And Anna has learned how to rely on her loved ones without being dependent on them. Frozen was about them coming together and Frozen 2 is about them growing apart without letting it break their relationship. Our stories now reflect and complete each other.

[grisdidthis]

So, things are progressing slooooooooooooooowly, but at this point I have the main hood developed enough that it feels lived in and more like a cozy, grunge-y mini-world than a field with some houses scattered throughout. I still need to release most of the sims I’ve spent the last few days creating in TBS (and make up some more; I’m nearly done with the Mad Science crew, now I need “normal” townies) but gameplay is no longer the same bunch of ten people interacting. Yay!

I’ve also, after a TON of tweaking, settled on final looks for every playable character (except the Strange Isle sub-hood sims, who I’ve been neglecting) and updated the character entries for everyone over at the P42 side-blog. I’ve also changed the layout of the blog itself to make it easier to find stuff. So on the story-I’m-sharing-with-people side of things, everything is also starting to look a ton more organized. 

Aside from the cosmetic changes I’ve been harping about already for the past week, here’s what’s I’ve been doing to everyone’s face:

Juniper and Cory have nicer hair. There were some styles that I liked a lot but didn’t use for them because of how crappy they looked in screenshots, because I STILL haven’t figured out how to get the “enable smooth edges” function to work and am by now resigned to the fact that I probably won’t.  But then I made BFFs with the Photoshop blur tool, and all is well in the world now.

The Madhavis all got very tiny adjustments that aren’t really worth going into. Except Izza, who I made more visibly aged, since before she almost looked younger than her adult children.

Philemon got re-done from scratch and doesn’t look like an aged Tenth Doctor anymore, since that ended up being too weird for me to handle.

Eilis Cartaine got a hat, and all the sisters got character descriptions. 

Winifred gets to have normal green eyes. The demonic yellow was a bit too on the nose. The rest of the Govender/Marais household got given a complete overhaul, since I put 0 effort into the kids and Joko the first time around. (Because kids, and because Joko was meant to get fridged. But then I decided to spare him, and if he’s going to stick around I’ll be damned if he won’t be conventionally handsome.) I’ve also amended character descriptions to reflect the aforementioned sparing-of-Joko. 

AS FOR THE STORY ENTRIES. I think I’ve settled on a text/dialogue format that is not too painful to read (one of my main problems re: some sims stories I like but can’t follow consistently is that they use small, multicolored fonts that are hell on the eyes for anyone who checks tumblr mostly on the phone. So I’m trying to avoid that issue in my own.) I’ve also gotten somewhat better at wrangling the scene-setting, screen-capping and image editing aspects in the last week, so hopefully it won’t take an age and a half for the next entries to appear.  On that note: Episode 1 of The Survivors (Formely Rita’s Story) has been redone and re-uploaded, because I can work my way around a lot of things, but not the fact that the main character looks completely different down to the eye color. I toyed with the idea of doing the same for the Madhavi entry, but that one doesn’t need a remake that badly since the changes in the characters were minor enough that they mayyyyyy sneak through. I am fixing the text formatting and doing some color adjustments, however. 

At this rate I may even be able to set an update schedule for story entries soon-ish! Much excite! 

[game-boy-pocket]

My Mario Romhack is done. I’ve played through all the levels, and finally got all of the issues that are within my power to get rid of at the moment. If you want to play it... download the patch [HERE] and see the readme for instructions ( sorry, i’m not gonna risk distributing the rom itself )

The aim was, at first, to make my own ideal version of Super Mario World by just altering Mario’s colors and giving him a few new abilities, but I got inspired by a few other hacks and learned how to do other things like adding music and altering graphics so I thought I’d really stretch it out.

I don’t know if i’ll do anything else to the game. Maybe I’ll edit it a little further after I learn a thing or two, I’m going to take a break from romhacking for now, maybe i’ll make something else next time. 

What’s New

Mario & Luigi’s colors are altered to better match their artwork

Luigi has his own sprite

Yoshi’s Arms are the correct color

Bowser’s Color’s are tweaked to better match his artwork, and his face is altered slightly

Dino Torch’s eyes match Dino Rino

Some levels have new graphics or altered color pallets

Iggy’s hair is no longer a copy of Larry’s

Collecting 5 Dragon Coins will display “All” on your HUD, you will no longer need to collect Dragon Coins after this.

New HUD on Overworld indicates coins, score, and if you’ve collected all the Dragon Coins in a level or not

Mario can Wall Jump like modern games

Mario can arc fireballs up if he holds up when throwing them

Every level and most sub levels have a different song, mostly from other Mario games or Mario spinoffs, but some are from other sources. The original Songs are still in the game somewhere

Cheep Cheeps swimming horizontally will bob up and down

Enemies no longer yield coins when killed with fire ( personally always thought that was dumb )

Bowser’s battle theme now plays continuously until he’s beaten, a necessary change to keep the game from hitching up during the battle

Choco Mountain 2 no longer has the coin gimmick, as hacking this level with it enabled will cause a crash. There is now a new location for the secret exit.

Known Bugs

Sound effects will occasionally cut off or change pitch

Minor black flicker on overworld map

Game briefly hitches up during the cutscene where Mario destroys a Koopaling Castle

Sometimes powerups are invisible as they spawn

If Yoshi eats a powerup as it’s spawning he’ll sometimes appear to be eating the block along with it

Yoshi’s Arms in the ending sequence are not fixed

[timeisacephalopod]

Together

Have a cute little TonyRhdoey AU in which I have no idea what’s happening but its cute so who cares! Also, some minor SamSteve.

Natasha walks up to Rhodey looking determined. “How’d you know Tony was the one for you?” she asks, surprising him with her question. That’s not the kind of thing he’d expect out of Natasha on account of her not dating anyone at the moment. Or ever, if Rhodey’s memory is serving him well these days. Which it is. Natasha raises an eyebrow after a few moments of him not answering and he sighs.

“When we were in college my mom died. By that time my dad had already passed and I was pretty devastated about it. Anyway, I knew I had a bunch of things to do but I put it off for the day because at that moment I just couldn’t handle it. When I woke up the next day Tony had already sorted everything out for me and mostly just told me what I needed to do.” Rhodey functioned for weeks like that, with Tony telling him what he needed to do that day and he’d float through it with Tony at his side making sure he got everything done. Tony says it took him longer than a few weeks to come back to himself, but Rhodey remembers taking some control back around the month mark.

Either way Tony taking the stress of his mother’s funeral, her will, all the other business that comes with a dead relative- Rhodey can’t repay him for that. Especially since he’d still been dealing with his own parents unexpected deaths, and then there was everything that came after that. Tony’s help was invaluable, and Rhodey needed that time. Its probably one of the first times Rhodey had actually gone out of his way to lean on Tony too. Before that Rhodey was the older one, the more mature one, the one who knew more about how to move around in the world. Tony had been following him around and then suddenly the roles were reversed and Tony did more than his fair share to pull his weight.

That pretty much sums up their relationship too. Tony has always needed more work than him given his generally volatile state of emotions, impulsive nature, and guilt over every single thing he's ever done wrong. Rhodey is more pragmatic, practical. He doesn’t need as much of Tony’s support as Tony does with him. But occasionally Rhodey gets himself into a jam, of something happens, and he needs that extra help and Tony is always there, always doing more than he needs to until Rhodey is better able to handle whatever it is by himself.

Natasha doesn’t look impressed with his answer and he frowns, unsure how the hell that managed to not be satisfactory until she speaks. “I was hoping for something simpler than that. You know. Like Tony’s super cute and he’s the best, not like...” she trails off, searching for the right words.

“An actual emotional connection?” he suggests and she nods.

“Exactly!”

Rhodey rolls his eyes at her.

*

Tony is attempting to upgrade a piece of Rhodey’s suit when Natasha walks in. “Hey,” she says, shoving a bunch of his tools aside to sit on his desk. “What made you realize Rhodey was the one for you?” she asks.

He gives his tools a forlorn look for a moment and sighs. “He’s a good lay,” he says and Natasha blinks, baffled.

“That’s it?” she asks. He shrugs, letting her believe that’s his real answer. Its not, but Tony doesn’t know how to explain that he’s always known Rhodey was the person he was going to end up with. As soon as they met it was like Rhodey came with a built in ‘how to deal with Tony Stark’ handbook and Tony knows he’s a lot but Rhodey has never complained, never made him feel like he’s too much to handle. No one else has ever made him feel like that, like he’s normal. Its a hard sell when he grew up a famous child genius but Rhodey always makes him feel more grounded and he needs that.

“You need anything else?” he asks, eyes flicking up from his design for a moment. Rhodey made a few suggestions and drew out some schematics for him that he’s been working off of. He’d had to tweak a few things here and there but Rhodey’s getting better at designing suit parts. At first he’d been a bit lost but he’s not surprised that to date only Rhodey has caught up with him technologically. If he weren’t a colonel he’d make one hell of an inventor.

Then there’s Shuri but honestly its not fair to put someone so ahead in the same competition as him and Rhodey. She’s her own class of intelligent. So’s T’Challa, but Tony at least understands what he says when he talks and he’s not as good as his sister either.

“No I don’t need anything else, you’re useless,” Natasha tells him, stomping off to go pout elsewhere.

He goes back to working, not paying much attention to the time until he feels a hand settle on his shoulder. “You’ve been at that all day. Come to bed,” Rhodey says to him and Tony sighs, straightening his back and wincing as it cracks. Sounds painful but its a relief once he gets past the cracking noises.

“Nat ask you any weird shit today?” he asks, looking up at him.

Rhodey frowns, “how I knew you were the one for me, why? She ask you the same thing?” Tony nods and Rhodey grins, “what’d you say?”

“That you’re a good lay,” he says and Rhodey snorts and starts laughing.

“Bullshit, Stark. Okay, not total bullshit, that’s true technically but that’s not your real reason. I know you like that I make you feel normal, like you’re not a celebrity or a genius. The genius thing is because I am too though- can’t hold a conversation with you about tech and make it seem like you’re not insanely smart without also being insanely smart.”

Yeah, so Tony knows but its nice nonetheless. “I know baby, but she doesn’t need to know that.”

*

Natasha glares at Sam and Steve because these dumb fucks keep circling each other like vultures looking for a fuck instead of communicating. And she’s asked everyone she knows that’s in a relationship how they knew the other was a good match and not a single one gave a decent answer. Though even Clint’s ‘she makes good grilled cheese’ isn’t worse than Tony’s ‘he’s a good lay.’ She honestly can’t believe she’s been forced to give Clint credit.

“You two should date,” she tells them, leaning forward in interest.

Steve and Sam pause and frown, exchanging a look with each other. “What kind of super spy is she if she doesn’t even know we’re married?” Sam asks Steve, who sighs.

“She’s not so good at detecting romance. I think that’s why she hasn’t noticed that Pepper has been hitting on her for months.”

Natasha sits straight up because what? “When did this happen? You two stop with those faces I could have had Pepper Potts in my bed and I didn’t even notice? You know what, I hate the Red Room for a lot of reasons but the way they destroyed my ability to notice normal sexual and romantic interactions that aren’t just to get something really pisses me off these days. Excuse me,” she says, sliding off the stool so she can go deal with the Pepper situation.

Fucking Tony should have known about this and she’s not likely to forgive him anytime soon because she knows he didn’t say anything to entertain himself. Steve? Who knows what his motivation for his silence was but she’s not going to forgive him anytime soon either.