#i only like the heat-activating curious cat mug

[oddlyhale]

I'm dropping the link to the tweet because the fans in the replies are not happy with how stinky this merch is.

Also that Weiss screenshot shirt is ASS.

[kushamikaitou]

A dusty attic

Akechi hadn't fully deduced what he hoped to accomplish by spending time with Akira Kurusu.  In truth, it was a puzzle he actively avoided because his train of thought tended to veer into uncomfortable territory when he examined it too closely. Certainly there were plenty of valid reasons to maintain a relationship with Kurusu - information gathering, enemy infiltration, calculated flirting as a means to distract. Sure, he never hesitated to let Kurusu know how much he enjoyed their little dates, but that was for Kurusu's benefit of course. And yet a niggling little voice at the back of his mind reminded him that those reasons were justification rather than cause, a bud of concern that there was too much truth to his words and the primary reason he chose to spend time with Kurusu was that he simply did enjoy the other boy's company.  

These were the thoughts Akechi tried to force out of his mind on the walk from Yongen-jaya station to Cafe Leblanc one cloudy Saturday afternoon in early November.  It had taken him all of twenty seconds to accept an invitation to join Kurusu in his bedroom for a horror movie marathon, and it wasn't until after he had agreed that he considered what he'd committed to, or why he'd been so eager.  It was something in the wording of the text he'd realized, as if there was an implication that the selected films might be too frightening for him to handle.  Akechi was no coward, and he made that perfectly clear in his response. "Cool, I'll make popcorn," Kurusu had replied.

He exhaled sharply and pushed open the door to the cafe.  Sakura gave him a curt nod from behind the counter.  "Kid's upstairs, waiting for you."

"Ah... thank you.  Excuse me."  He heard Sakura chuckle softly behind him and grumble something about youth as he headed to the back of the shop.

He knocked softly on the banister and Kurusu all but leapt from where he was lounging on the couch.  "Hey, you made it," he said with a cheeky grin.  On the table beside him was a large bowl of popcorn and two mugs of coffee.  "Ready for some nightmare fuel?"

"I hardly think a few blockbuster films will reduce me to nightmares, but I'm happy to indulge nonetheless. Will your cat not be joining us today?"

"Nah, he's not into horror and gore. I think he's off sneaking into a rom-com in Shibuya with Ann." Akira glanced over his shoulder as if expecting Morgana to yowl in protest and Akechi stifled a chuckle as he removed his coat and draped it neatly over the railing.

"So." Akira began casually, strolling toward the back of the room. "We can sit on the couch if you want, but... the bed might be more comfy.  I got some pillows I can prop up."  

"This is your home after all, so I will defer to you." He gave Kurusu a quick wink and didn't miss the dusting of pink on the other boy's cheeks.

"Right this way, then." He gestured toward the mattress laid atop several old milk crates.  

Akechi placed his coffee on the shelf next to the bed and sat down carefully, not wanting to crack the altogether precarious arrangement of the "bed." Akira fell beside him in a haphazard flop, and in his wake a cloud of dust billowed from the mattress. On an inhale, Akechi felt a sharp prickle in his sinuses. The room typically had a fair amount of dust floating through it, he had noticed the few times he'd joined the Phantom Thieves there for a meeting, but he'd never been quite so close to the source of it. He wondered for a moment how Kurusu was able to sleep at all in such conditions.

Not wanting to derail the plans or make things uncomfortable, he willed his nose to cease its itching and his eyes not to water.  Kurusu, meanwhile, grabbed the bowl of popcorn from where he'd set it on the chair next to the bed and sidled up next to him.  "Alrighty, we're starting with Pach Saw. Here we go, last chance to chicken out."

"Of course not. Unless that is what you desi-hh..." His eyes fluttered, the sneeze refused to be held back any longer and exploded with a grunt of breath into his arm. "My apologies. What you desire?"

"Um... bless you.  Nope, I'm good.  Popcorn?"  Akira pressed play on the remote and shifted the bowl a bit to his left but refused to look Akechi in the eye, flushed a bashful shade of red. Akechi gave him a discerning look, contemplating the curious reaction before returning his attention to the movie.

He grabbed a handful of popcorn and settled into Akira's side, toeing the line of flirtation as always. The exposition was nearly complete when he was overcome by three more desperate rapid-fire sneezes, each more violent than the last, his body curling in on itself in an attempt to absorb the shock.

"Wow, are you OK?" Akira touched his arm lightly, rigidly, his face now crimson. "Here, I'll grab you some tissues." He shifted off the bed and reached for the workbench to his right.

"Oh, don't mind me. Though... yes, actually tissues would be rather helpful." Akechi sniffed, arm still covering his nose, trying to ward off the next set until the tissues were in his hand. Kurusu certainly was acting strangely. They'd become bolder and bolder over the past few months with their lighthearted competitive flirting, and in each incident the boy had seemed nearly unflappable.  Yet he'd barely touched Kurusu today and here he was coming apart at the seams.  Why was his composure suddenly eluding him?

"Of course."  Akira handed him a customized tissue box with a black and white cat on the side that looked suspiciously like Morgana, still observing him with judgement even when miles away.

Akechi muttered a quick thanks and yanked one from the box just in time to double over with a renewed fit, breath hitching wildly in between violent bursts.  Tears prickled at the corners of his eyes and he finished the set with a loud blow as the first victim fell to a bloody chainsaw on the screen behind them. "Whew, excuse me for interrupting the movie you were looking forward to.  I believe this mattress is a bit dustier than what I'm ah-hh accustomed to. One moment." He held up the index finger of his right hand and sneezed once more into his left elbow. Through tears he eyed the cloud of dust in the air, which seemed to never settle but circled above them like fish in a tank, and then blew again sharply into the tissue and dabbed his eyes. He sensed the pressure of grey eyes staring in his direction, but when he turned his attention to Akira the other boy was turning his gaze toward the remote.

"No problem, we can rewind.  Sorry about the dust..." Akira's voice was barely above a mumble, eyes fixed on his hands in his lap and face flushed a deep shade of vermillion. Akechi's curiosity got the better of him. He narrowed his eyes toward the boy next to him and placed a delicate hand on his shoulder.

"Kurusu, are you alright? You seem to be quite troubled by the effect the dust is having on me. I assure you it's not a problem I can't manage." He scrubbed his crinkling nose with the back of his wrist and gave a wet sniff.

Akechi could barely see Akira's grey eyes turn toward him behind the light reflecting on his glasses, hand at the back of his neck, as Akechi held him in checkmate. Terrified, caught and with nowhere to run. The thrill of the upper hand thrummed through Akechi's spine, even if he wasn't sure why it belonged to him. "Uh... well... yeah. You're cute is all."

Akechi stared back, unsatisfied with the explanation. Certainly that much had been established already. In fact, Kurusu had told him explicitly that he was cute months ago when he fluffed his hair in public and forced him to wear those stupid fake glasses and plenty of times since. He moved the hand from Akira to his chin in contemplation.  This sheepishness was new and the reason for it remained a mystery.

Sensing his confusion, Akira explained further. "It's just... um... seeing you lose control. There's something really... nice about it."

The pieces started to fit into place. Akechi's expression clicked a few degrees toward mischief as he twirled a lock of hair around his index finger. "Pardon if I'm off base, but it seems you're the one who's lost control. Humor me in elaborating exactly what it is you enjoy?" he requested sweetly. Akira was practically malfunctioning at the request, and Akechi was practically giddy with how handily he was winning the exchange, still he wanted to make Kurusu say it out loud. He watched as the other boy located his resolve and pulled the shattered pieces of his composure together in an instant, effectively turning the tables with a hint of Joker's smirk. He removed his glasses and set them gently on the ledge behind him without breaking eye contact.

"I like watching you sneeze."

Akechi's eyes widened slightly as he processed the confession. The confidence was a stark shift from the sputtering from moments earlier, but not entirely unexpected. Now, though, Akechi needed to do something bold to stay ahead. He looked at the boy next to him and set his mind on his next move. "Hmm. A bit strange, but I can work with it."

In a swift motion, he leaned forward and pressed his lips firmly against Akira's, one hand to Akira's shoulder and the other reaching around the back of his neck, pulling him close. Akira took to the kiss like a duck to water, wrapping his arms around Akechi and threading his hands through the detective's soft tangle of hair, grabbing Akechi's lower lip with his teeth and then releasing it to slide their tongues together. Several soft moans escaped both of their lips, lost in the heat of one another as electricity surged between them.

Akechi felt an itch begin to blossom, tensed and barely broke the kiss in time with a mumbled "sorry" before quickly lifting his arm and muffling a pair of sneezes to the side.

"Mmm, don't apologize." Akira growled low, hunger in his eyes as they met Akechi's. "And don't break away next time."

Next time was nearly immediate, and Akechi heeded the command and only barely turned, this time directing his fit into the dip above Akira's collarbone.  Akira ran his hands up and down Akechi's back, feeling his muscles tense with every release as he shuddered against him.  As soon as Akechi had a moment to catch his breath, Akira lifted his face toward him and, despite the fact that he was now congested and sniffly, kissed him deeply and desperately, and then peppered the corners of his mouth and his cheeks and his nose with little nibbles.

He leaned backward, one arm still firmly holding Akechi, to snag a few tissues. "Bless you, honey."  His voice was too full of affection. It sent a shock of panic through Akechi's core and his mind flashed to the job he'd have to complete in a few short weeks.

A blood-curdling scream erupted in the room and both boys jumped. The latest chainsaw massacre victim collapsed in the screen behind them.  A shared laugh, and then Akechi blew into the tissue.  Akira leaned in and nuzzled his hair as he did.

Akechi didn't have time to analyze his concerns with this latest show of affection because an instant later they were on one another again. Akira shifted his weight and pushed Akechi's shoulders down, laying him flat on the dusty bed. Akechi slid his hands under Akira's tshirt and ran them along the smooth, taut muscle of his torso. Akira leaned down onto his forearms and worked both of his hands into Akechi's hair, dragging his nails along his scalp as their eyes locked.

The next sneeze snuck up on him and as he jerked forward, it tugged sharply at Akira's grip on his hair, forcing a sharp, keening noise from his throat. Kurusu looked shocked and apologetic for about half a second and made a move to extricate himself but a look at Akechi's face told him that the moan had been one of pleasure. A half smirk broke across his face and he silenced the sound from Akechi's lips with his own, lowered his body to press him hard into the mattress. Akira shifted his head and whispered mischief into Akechi's ear.

"Like that, huh? Maybe I can help."

His lips brushed feather light against the tip of Akechi's nose, then minty breath ghosted over his face, intensifying the tickle. Akira watched his nose as it scrunched and twitched, reacting to the attention, and once he was certain they were at the point of no return he turned his head to the side and kissed Akechi on the cheek as he bent forward, leashed by his hair. The release of the sneeze, the pin-prick on his scalp from the tug, his growing excitement rutting against Akira's hips. It was too much. Another. More pulling. More rutting. Akira's lips, warm and pressed to his own. Again and again.

Akira pulled his head back to look at him. "God, you're beautiful," he whispered and Akechi whined softly as he gazed into his rival's eyes, tears pricking the corners of his own, from the allergy or the pain or the affection - he wasn't sure.

Abruptly, Akira pulled away, carefully untangling his hands from Akechi's hair, and rolled himself into a seated position.  He leaned for the tissues and handed one over. Akechi felt a surge of frustration from the whiplash.

"Sorry. I realized where this is going, and the shop is open and Sojiro's right downstairs and..."

"It's fine. You're right, we shouldn't, it would complicate too much."

"Haha, it's not too complicated already?"

"I suppose it is."

A thick silence hung in the air for a moment, both burning to continue, but sobering to the reality. Akechi blew his nose again and then reached for the shelf and took a languid sip of his coffee, which was fully cooled but still bursting with nuanced flavors, just like every cup he'd had at Leblanc. If only his life could be as simple as this - room-temperature coffee, secretly ignoring stupid movies in the bedroom of his rival. If only their relationship's hurdles were limited to societal expectations and monotony. If only they'd met a few years earlier, before Akechi was whisked into a dangerous world of shadows and committed to a job that stripped him of his humanity.

Warm fingers threaded through his own and squeezed, and he looked up to see Akira's face contorted into a somber expression of concern. "Maybe it doesn't have to be so complicated. You don't have to do everything alone, you know."

A surge of hatred for Kurusu burned behind his eyes. Naive, trusting, hero-of-the-masses Kurusu who thinks that the power of friendship will solve all of life's problems. Whose rolodex is filled to the brim with a gaggle of adoring followers who he truly considers friends. Whose affection would evaporate in an instant if he knew what kind of a monster Akechi really was. What can he do, but do his best to win? He can't prove that he's deserving so he has to prove that he's better. He didn't need Kurusu, he'd never needed anyone's help to scrounge his way up from the dregs and come out on top, sparkling and polished.

Gently but swiftly, he freed his fingers from Kurusu's hold and flashed a muted media smile. "Not to worry, Kurusu. As I told you before, we can't simply deviate from the paths we follow, but as long as we're working together you'll have my strength." He combed and smoothed his fingers through his hair, feeling it return to its typical relaxed state.

"Hmm." Akira turned away and nodded, expression suddenly blank. Akechi understood that the rejection must sting, but he felt another thrum of pleasure from having regained control of his emotions and the upper hand. The rest of his body seemed to follow suit as well - he sniffled a bit, but the itch had settled into a dull, pounding headache. Preferable, he thought, pain was easier to mask, after all.

They sat in silence for the remainder of the movie, close but not touching, not bothering to rewind through the parts they'd missed. By the time Akechi had finished the last of his coffee and the murderer was brutally disemboweled with his own chainsaw he found himself relieved that it was only Kurusu who had witnessed his lapse in judgement. He felt confident that given his embarrassment over his kink, he wouldn't go sharing the events of the afternoon with all of his friends. No, this secret would die with Kurusu within the month.

The credits rolled, and Akechi smoothed the evidence of their earlier activities from his shirt.

"Well. Many thanks for the invitation, Kurusu. I must be getting back to the station now, a detective's work never ends I'm afraid."

Kurusu's face remained infuriatingly passive, no doubt retreated behind his own mask of indifference. He turned to gather the empty coffee mugs.

"I'm certain you understand why we can't continue. We are on opposite sides of the law after all."

"Sure." Kurusu nodded reasonably.

"Although."  Akechi tilted his head, searching Kurusu's still-bare face for the eagerness he'd seen earlier but came away empty. "It was rather enjoyable. One more for the road perhaps?" He leaned in and planted one last soft, chaste kiss on Kurusu's lips. The other boy kissed back, but made no other motion to pull Akechi in. Smart, he knows when to stop reaching.

"See you later, Akechi." Kurusu waved nonchalantly with the ghost of a smile and strolled back toward his workbench.

"Goodbye, Kurusu."

Akechi donned his jacket and as he descended the attic stairs, waving politely to Sakura before stepping back out into the November chill, he contemplated how utterly baffling Kurusu continued to be. The two of them had fallen into a pattern - revealing intimate pieces of themselves and disappearing into smoke and mirrors in turn.

No matter, no use in spending too much time and energy there. Perhaps Kurusu would be good for a few more battles, but Akechi had already won the war. His head still throbbed and he could still taste Kurusu on his lips, but he smirked to himself as he walked toward the station.

[naitiaclo960writings]

Day 17 - Autumn Invading

When Sam and Dean officially moved into the bunker, it was in the early fall. Even in Kansas, the wind was cold and biting at that time of year and, although he would never admit it even on his deathbed, Dean had always been of a chilly nature. In the innumerable motels they had traveled throughout their lives, Dean systematically arranged to keep several layers of clothing on him or to ask for extra blankets at the reception. When they had established their base at the bunker and each had inherited a room, it was not long for Dean before finding slippers, a warm bathrobe and the thickest blankets of their fortress.

Sam had noticed his little game a long time ago already, but never said anything. Despite his tough guy looks that Dean wanted to give himself for a reason that escaped him, Sam knew that his brother had a weakness, especially for the rare days when their daily life turned out to be calm and domestic. While he was ruthless with the monsters who gave them a hard time, Dean was also the most inclined to make hot chocolates in front of a wood fire while watching a nice movie. Sam called it his "cocooning period" and Dean, who thought it sounded too much like "a chick word”, just said he liked the simple things of life.

However, although he had so far moderated those moments of lounging to prevent Sam from laughing at him anymore, Dean had always dreamed of being able to spend whole days literally doing nothing. Don’t get him wrong, he was a man of action and he needed his quota of monsters and adventure within a week. Nevertheless, he certainly wouldn’t say no to weekends holed up in the bunker to worry about nothing but eating and sleeping from time to time.

Fortunately for him, the opportunity had almost presented itself when Castiel came to live with them. Definitely, of course.

Currently, Dean was buried under several fluffy blankets in his memory foam bed. He stretched out slowly, feeling each of his muscles deliciously distends before falling back against his pillows in the most satisfied sigh. Despite his blanket fortress and the heating on in his room, Dean was practically naked in his bed, wearing only a large pair of boxers with pizza patterns that he only wore when he wanted to relax. The underwear was so loose that he hardly felt it around his waist. On the other hand, feeling the cotton of the blankets on his freshly washed skin had the talent of putting him in a good mood.

His feet—which had kept cooling on contact with the bunker tiles despite his wool slippers—were now pleasantly warm at the end of the bed, sending delightful waves of tingling in his legs. He felt like he was floating in a cloud of comfort and, for God’s sake, he would like to feel that way for the rest of his life. Dean barely wanted to get up to get food or go to the bathroom. If he had to die here, then so be it. He told himself that he would pass away happily, with a little soft smile. Dean retreated to his comfort nest, his hair pointing in all directions as he tightened his favorite blanket around his shoulders.

The arm that did not hold the blanket, for its part, went on a wander in search of a very different source of heat. When his fingers finally came into contact with warm and familiar skin in front of him, he smiled a little more. Castiel was sitting next to him, leaning on a pile of pillows against the headboard and staring at the computer between them. He was not much more dressed than Dean, but unlike his companion, he did not feel the need to cover up. Angels were not affected by temperature like humans. Also, Castiel was always temperate and, when Dean felt too chilly, he would snuggle to him in search of a human — or almost — radiator. Although, of course, Dean did not always wait to be cold to cuddle with Castiel.

Castiel smiled while feeling Dean’s hand gently caressing his bare and finely muscled belly, his blue eyes leaving the screen to come and rest on Dean’s loving face. He loved to see this expression so open and relaxed on his partner’s face and made it a point to make it appear as often as possible. Since the beginning of fall, he and Dean had multiplied the afternoons in bed to laze undisturbed in the warmth of their room. It was needless to say that Castiel had never experienced such a situation, it seemed to him to be a purely human activity to which he would have lent no use not so long before. But now that he shared his daily life and more with Dean, he had quickly learned to cherish those kinds of shared moments together. It was beyond words. Dean called it "having a good run together" and Castiel loved the sound of that sentence, because he already knew that he wanted to explore every possible and imaginable existence with Dean until the end of his very long life. It would probably be a bit silly if he confessed it aloud to his companion, but he would not hesitate to let Dean know it just to see him blush and mumble two or three swear words under his breath before kissing him gently on the lips.

Castiel cut his thoughts short to get progressively closer to Dean, sinking into the blankets too. He turned on the mattress to face him, placing a warm hand on one of his cheeks and feeling Dean’s zygomatic tends more into a soft smile.

"Are you cold?" Castiel inquired, raising a curious eyebrow while the computer played a series, forgotten between them.

Dean shrugged but nevertheless got closer, planting a wet kiss on Castiel’s nose. They were now so close to each other that they shared the same air.

"That’s alright. Unless you want to give me a little sport to warm me up…" Dean teased while continuing to touch the Angel’s abs, a playful smile on his face.

Castiel hummed gently to the attention before extending an arm towards Dean. He embraced him slowly before drawing Dean to him and share another kiss, deeper this time. Dean let out an amused exclamation in the embrace and then retreated after a while. He smiled.

"Besides, I thought you really wanted to know the end of Breaking Bad before deigning to touch me." He joked before he kissed Castiel again, gently.

Castiel raised an arrogant eyebrow and this time it was his turn to break the contact.

"Maybe my human’s needs come first this time. Well, so I believe." Castiel replied in a teasing tone, easily entering Dean’s game now that he had learned the subtlety of sarcasm and seduction.

Dean shook his head and smiled. He knew that such a dynamic between them would never have been possible before, even in his wildest dreams. Dean had resigned to his unspoken feelings by persuading himself for years that he and Castiel were a relationship doomed to failure and suffering. That they were too different and that their lives would never allow them any semblance of normalcy or comfort. That he shouldn’t be distracted when he was trying to save the world or taking care of his little brother. That it just wouldn’t work, because it wasn’t reciprocal and he’d make a fool of himself, he’d lose his best friend, he’d still hurt someone he cared about.

He had been happy to have decided not to listen to this voice the day he opened himself up to Castiel. Although this was greatly encouraged by alcohol, it was all but unimportant.

"Oh, I see. Well, the human is infinitely grateful to you for honoring him with your luminous presence." Dean answered with exaggeration, rolling his eyes and pretending to be annoyed.

"You don’t complain about it, though." Castiel remarked.

Castiel tried to kiss him again after that, but Dean backed away and gave him a finger. Castiel grumbled and pushed him a little further while Dean laughed softly, not even offended when the blanket slipped from his shoulders. He loved the simplicity that animated their relationship, the fact that he could act freely without worrying about the reaction of the other. Castiel knew him so well now and it had taken more than a few months for Dean to accept the fact that his best friend loved him for what he was and not for what he was supposed to be every day. It was refreshing and oh so restful for Dean. In all these previous serious relationships, although they were not numerous, he had had to keep a part of mystery or even a lie that had systematically left a bitter taste in his mouth. With Castiel, the major difference was that he knew immediately what he was signing up for and accepted it as is.

Still smiling, Dean straightened up to grab the cup of hot chocolate he had left to cool down until then. He took the drink with a comfortable sigh and wrapped his fingers around the still warm ceramic. A marshmallow floated lazily in the center of the chocolate and Dean melted a little more in the mattress when the liquid touched his lips. He knew that in normal times and with anyone else at his side, he would disown hot chocolate for something stronger. Probably coffee, or whiskey. Or both at the same time. But now, he was too deeply immersed in his trance of total relaxation to care about it and this chocolate was the most delicious there was right now. He let the sweet taste come and tease his taste buds before swallowing it with delight, feeling the still burning liquid slipping down his throat.

When Dean opened his eyes that he did not remember closing, he watched his computer continue broadcasting Breaking Bad in front of them. They remained in silence for many minutes, Dean finishing his cup of chocolate while Castiel played distractingly with the fingers of Dean’s unoccupied hand. When his cup was empty and he felt warmed from the inside, Dean rested his mug on his nightstand and stretched out like a cat again. He was pretty sure that Castiel paid as much attention as he did to their series—that is to say, very little—so he was not surprised when his companion straightened up to hug him on his side and bury his nose in his neck. Dean smiles as he feels Castiel’s warm breath in the hollow of his skin.

"If you keep going, we both know perfectly well that we will never finish the episode…" Dean growled gently while leaning into the embrace.

Time seemed suspended between them in this bubble of happiness that constituted their room, slowed down. Dean sighed quietly, softly sliding towards that version of him that only very few people on this Earth had the right to see. The relaxed and gentle, funny Dean. A little needy, but nevertheless light and easy… The Dean is the exact opposite of this emotionless killing machine that he had to interpret too often to survive. Here, the only weapon he needed was the puppy eyes that he sometimes threw at Castiel to order him another head massage among his tangled hair.

The hours elapsed deliciously between them as the episodes followed one another. Dean felt a little more filled with that warm feeling every time Castiel paid attention to him, whether it was when he rolled the blankets up on a piece of his bare skin or when he pressed a tender kiss down his neck just to feel it shivering. In those days, Dean wanted to do everything and do nothing at the same time. He felt powerful, important, alive.

The sun was certainly declining outside to give way to the long night of winter, but both dared hardly look at the hour for fear of breaking this tacit agreement of total tranquility. Of course, Dean got up at one point to quickly go to cook something before coming back to eat it in bed, and Castiel took the opportunity to take out the controllers of the game console located in Dean’s room after they had finished their series. Castiel won the game, as he always did, because he seemed to be just good at everything he did, and Dean mumbled for form in the face of his traditional forfeit of the loser before indulging in a back massage for his companion.

He savored every trembling muscle under his fingers, every scar that he began to know by heart, and paid special attention to these two reddish marks among the scapula reminiscent of deep cuts. But Dean knew these marks well, and he loved them even more since he knew how to exploit them. Sitting softly on Castiel’s buttocks, he pressed his fingers against the spine of his angel before slowly pulling up each vertebra. He massaged, caressed, brushed and massaged again until he felt Castiel trembling beneath him. Dean leaned a little further forward, so that his breath now came to warm the skin of his lover’s back. He smiles, concentrating his movements on the shoulder blades, teasing the hollows and bumps of his companion’s anatomy while detailing his pale, muscular skin.

"Never have I ever… lost in a video game on purpose to massage you." Dean suddenly said before he came to kiss Cas’s upper back.

Castiel sighed and a fine smile appeared on his relaxed face. It was their game, their way of saying "I love you" without really expressing it… They had developed it at the turn of a drink-fueled evening that had undeniably ended with very few clothes, but their trick had remained and everything was a pretext to reuse it now. It was simple and stupid and simply stupid, everything they needed to know and say what they thought about each other. One said a perfectly obvious fact by beginning his sentence with "never have I ever", to which the other had to answer with a kiss if it were true. To date, no one has stated facts that do not require a positive response. Normally, the game was played in turn, but, engaged in the roll, Dean continued.

"Never have I ever loved the touch of your wings more than anything in this world…"

Another kiss, on one of the marks this time, as if to contradict himself. An umpteenth happy sigh. Castiel did not complain about this brief change of rules.

"Never have I ever…" A kiss. "Loved as much…" Then another. " As with you…"

Castiel practically purred under the attention before Dean slowly retreated and lowered his hands. Like a perfectly repeated choreography, Castiel took the opportunity to take a deep inspiration before a loud "whoosh" filled the air and two huge black wings invaded the space of the room. Dean smiled tenderly, a wide smile full of teeth that wrinkled the corner of his eyes as he leaned forward again to kiss the base of the wings. No feather escaped his attention as he stroked and kissed every bit of plumage offered to him, and Castiel seemed to melt on the mattress.

Seeing the wings of an angel was a true honor considering how intimate the gesture was for the angel concerned. Castiel literally laid bare before him, revealing his purest primal form and putting his life in his hands. The wings of an angel were so fragile, so sensitive and yet so powerful and majestic. Even among them, it was not common for this heavenly race to show their wings, let alone in a moment as intimate as the one Castiel and Dean were living. But the months had accumulated between them and from this love a solid trust was born. Dean would never thank his angel enough for offering him such proof of love, but he could nevertheless try to love him so much in return.

"Cas…" Dean whispered against the heat of a large dark feather.

"I’m here." Castiel immediately replied. Always.

As a result, the words were lost, the gestures became feverish to make room only for the language of the bodies. Although Dean was woefully bad at expressing his emotions, he certainly knew how to show them and Castiel undeniably liked to receive. Nevertheless, of all the means they used to warm up on the cold autumn days, this was their favorite.

* * * @winchester-reload

Hiya! First of all, I’m sorry for the delay in publication. I had several personal things to deal with, a writing block and, among other things, the now imminent end of the show that is beginning to weigh on morale. However, I repeat that I intend to finish this collection on the 31 days of the Suptober! I’m not going to pick up the pace of "one work a day", but things will continue to move forward, hoping you’ll stay tuned for it!

You can find the whole series on Ao3

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[moonlightchess]

On Lesser Ghosts, my perpetually in-progress novel, a cast of current characters:

Brandon Graham: 30 years old, police investigator for the Dorset Police Department of Dorset, Vermont. The sole survivor of serial killer Seth Morgan, active throughout the bulk of the 90s and all the way through 2003, when he was captured shortly after a 15-year-old Brandon escaped his nightmarish year of captivity in the Morgan house. Casually alcoholic, gay, entirely jaded and weary of the world, but stronger than he appears at first glance. Recently assigned to the case of Cora Tycho, a promising young physics student from the Lower Prince area of Vermont who has gone missing.

Dr. Casey Tycho: 30 years old, and Dorset PD’s newest medical examiner. A British expatriate originally hailing from north London, Casey is the antithesis to the human disaster of Brandon. Sharp, extensively educated, responsible and diligent, he wears silk-lined suit vests and ties to work and has been sleeping with Brandon for six months in an arrangement that Brandon refuses to acknowledge as any sort of relationship. He’s quietly accepted this, both out of respect for Brandon’s boundaries and because being black and openly gay in a small Vermont town may not be the most desirable situation. His sister Cora has gone missing, and he hates how little he wants Brandon on the case, but he knows better than anyone how unstable the man can be.

Sara Graham: Brandon’s younger sister at 27 years old, a folk musician and “crafty mess” by her own admission. Bright, curious, extroverted and warm, much of her life has been dedicated to worrying about her brother. She makes beaded jewelry and pottery on the weekends, collects coffee mugs, and is a driving force in Brandon’s life, though he occasionally wonders if she doesn’t resent him at least a little for the way his kidnapping and subsequent fame as Seth Morgan’s sole surviving victim dominated her younger years. The two are very close, and she’s determined to not allow him to lie down and give up on the Cora Tycho case, no matter how much tension and distance it’s created between he and Casey.

Sasha Prescott: Brandon’s boss, police chief of the DPD. Tough as nails, but she harbors a soft spot for Brandon in spite of his sporadic displays of instability and recklessness in the past. Especially protective of Casey, having long since come to the conclusion that Dorset’s black community is small at best and they have to stick together - the disappearance of Cora, a young black woman in her town, has been keeping her up at night. Her hawk’s stare and firm hand keep the entire department in line, but this also means that she has a constant target on her back.

Kris Alden: A mystery. Was with Cora Tycho on the night she went missing during a camping trip in the woods. Claims he went home early, a result of stomach problems. Not much intel on him yet.

Audrey and Stephen: The forensic lab techs, working directly under Casey. Odd, dreamy types, ensconced in their own little world much of the time. May know more than they’re letting on.

Read the first few pages below!

                                                   🔍🔍🔍

09.12.19:

A burning and industrious early-morning sun insisted upon bullying the pleasant warmth of Casey’s skin into something too harsh to ignore as Brandon groaned, rolling over onto his stomach in bed.  Beside him, Casey stretched, languid as an enormous cat, his sleep likely having been far more restful. Still, his smile was tender as he reached for him, and the scent of coffee brewing from the kitchen suggested that he’d already been up once to make it for him. The sweetness of the gesture hurt, and he curled away from his touch. “Too fucking hot.”

“It’s only going to be about seventy today.” Because of course Casey knew the day’s predicted weather already, of course he was as on top of it as he was everything else in his life. Casey, with his autumn-brown skin and gentle, fox-gold eyes like candlelit amber, of course he was ready with coffee brewing and the forecast on his phone. They were the same age, thirty, but Casey was one of those rare people who had been an adult since twelve. He’d probably delighted in collecting school supplies for a new year when none of his friends gave a shit, he was the type of person who always knew where his keys were. He had a set-in-stone laundry day, which had blown Brandon’s mind when he’d first learned of it. Even now, at six AM, he smelled like fresh fucking bread. Literally the worst human, Brandon had long since concluded, but the sex was fantastic.

Wordlessly, he rolled over for his first cigarette of the day, ignoring Casey’s softly disapproving sound behind him. He briefly considered reminding him of his total lack of access into his personal life, that whatever happened between them sexually meant ten kinds of nothing outside the bedroom, but Casey had never pushed or questioned his boundaries. He kept his distance as Brandon rolled naked out of bed, ambling to the window to shove it open before disappearing into the bathroom without further comment. He gave him time to shower before following, tapping his fingertips against the glass shower door with a quiet, “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“Want company?”

“Oh, uh. No.”

There was a pause, and then Casey’s silhouette nodding silently, turning to go. He was unique in that Brandon never felt so much as a semblance of guilt about bluntly rejecting the affections of anyone but him, and now it felt sharp. The hot spray of water went needle-harsh against his skin, but he still ignored the coffee Casey had left on the counter for him, as well as the text blinking on his phone. Eat something. Don’t be too late for work, Sasha will have your ass. Even now, he did his best to take care of him as much as Brandon would allow, but he rationalized that he’d never promised the man a damn thing. In fact, he’d made his limitations abundantly clear on the first night they’d tumbled, panting, into bed together, roughly six months ago. The problem was, there was another man. He was persistent and jealous, and he was always around. He was sitting on the edge of his bed right now, in fact. Late forties, moon-pale skin and sleek, ink-black hair, his deceptive youthfulness undercut by the coldness lingering in his dark eyes.

Seth waited, silent, watching Brandon dress. The most attention he ever paid to his honey-blonde mess of hair was a quick tugging of his brush, and the woodsmoke cologne his sister had given him for Christmas last year was left mostly unused on the dresser. His morning routine had long since boiled down to a quick shower, shave, and brushing of teeth and hair before throwing on whatever happened to be clean regardless of its fashionable implications. Today, Seth watched him button up a loose black Oxford over a pair of battered jeans, before embarking upon a ten-minute search for his keys because he wasn’t Casey and never would be.

A light drizzle began to dissolve the heat of the day like sugar in warm coffee once he was on the road, clouds going dense and dark with the sweet threat of a proper rain. Sasha had already texted him - 9:10, Graham. Late again. Casey had tried to warn him, but then he always did, and Brandon never listened. Elgar helped to swallow Sasha’s nearly tangible contempt for his time management skills as he drove, and beside him, Seth settled into the passenger’s seat to stare thoughtfully out at the increasingly heavy rain.

10.4.2003:

This far north into Vermont, where Seth’s house teetered on the border into Canada, winters descended early and lingered long. The ceiling-to-floor steel and rebar support pipe Brandon had been handcuffed to by the wrists for the past two weeks had absorbed the seeping chill, and Seth had only dressed him in a filthy, tattered wifebeater and a pair of old blue flannel pajama pants that smelled suffocatingly of mothballs. He woke every few hours with numb, stinging toes, shivering and dripping. The handcuffs Seth had restrained him with had to have been ordered from somewhere - there was no soft pink fur lining to suggest an intended use of foreplay, and instead they were solid in a deadly way, a way that thunked every time he slid them locked with a firm sense of finality. 

A fever burned through his bones overnight near the middle of October, and finally some part of Seth seemed to awaken to his basic human needs. He was provided a deeply itchy wool blanket that felt woven from canvas and sandpaper, but it did the job of keeping him warm. Every few nights, his worn boots would thud down the basement steps to offer him a plate of cold, congealed noodles that he’d clearly been keeping in the fridge. His wrists went raw and scabbed with the endless scrape of the cuffs, his knees cramping in their bent position. Stretching his legs was possible, but uncomfortable. The days began to melt together, the constant darkness of the basement transforming time into a static thing. He slept when the wave of exhaustion became too much to fight, he woke and watched the shadows when sleep eluded him. He lost all sense of night or day, the passage of hours.

Three weeks deep, the frantic hope that he’d be found began to fade. The basement began to feel like his place, and he began to forget what it felt like to not fall asleep hugging a metal pipe. Seth was strangely reassuring, an exponential effect that seemed to correlate with his slow acceptance of his situation. As time dissolved and desperation waned, Seth’s approval bloomed. Sometimes, now, the noodles were warm and slick from boiling water, fresh. His blanket was replaced with a less abrasive one, albeit filthy. At fourteen years old, Brandon learned that life began and ended here in his cold, dark basement. The memory of the day he’d been taken seemed irrelevant now, the faces of his parents to whom he’d clung so desperately in those early days.

“I know that you don’t understand.” Seth’s voice was soft, gentle more often than not, sedately erudite like a classics professor on vacation in the woods for the holidays. He was quite articulate, expressing himself fairly eloquently whenever he came into the basement to speak to him. “It sounds trite, like something Keats might have written, but believe me when I say that this is your chrysalis phase, Brandon. It’s tight and uncomfortable and emerging will be a painful struggle, but I want you to trust me. I know it’s asking a lot of you right now, but I also know that your eyes are open and you’ll get there. I trust you already.”

He wore a lot of high-collared fleece sweaters in earth tones and he kept his silky hair longish, framing his face in a soft sort of way that left him mild and relaxed to the eye. Brandon learned to crave him, the only human voice, presence, that he’d experienced in a month as the end of October approached. He couldn’t express this yet, but Seth would smile down at him, bending at the knees to wrap him in a new blanket or to offer him the day’s plate of noodles. Sometimes the blankets were splattered with fresh bloodstains and sometimes the noodles were wrapped around bullets of sausage that tasted blandly wrong, but he was there.

Once, shortly before Halloween, the burgeoning bond between them inspired him to blurt, “I wouldn’t say anything, you know. You could just let me go, you wouldn’t even have to drive me home. I’d never tell anyone, I understand your work here--” because Seth had often referenced his cryptic “work” without elaborating. “I won’t try to stop you, you could just--”

Seth’s open hand slammed into the side of his head, smacking his skull into the metal pipe with a gut-churning clang. The world exploded into white fire, his vision briefly going dark as his brain struggled to retain consciousness. A thick, hot ooze of dark blood began to gush from his nostrils, but he was too resigned at that point to so much as scream. Instead, he moaned softly, sagging forward as his head began to throb in time with his heartbeat. The agony was blinding, but he didn’t pass out, which came as something of a disappointment.

A month and a week passed.

09.12.19:

Dorset’s PD’s station was one of the lingering bastions of old-school police architecture, all museum-high ceilings and wooden desks arranged in rows. Brandon wove his way between them on his way to Sasha’s office, set high above the ground floor grunts and their ancient desktop computers. He’d always respected the way she’d left the glass panels that made up the front wall of her office intact, leaving her visible to her officers and techs alike. She was typing on her own laptop when he tapped his fingers against said glass, waving him inside. A still-steaming paper cup of Two Brews sat on her desk, littered with loose papers that themselves were littered with her scribbled notes. My office, whenever you decide to show up, she’d texted him.

Sasha Prescott was forty-four years old with dense, dark curls clipped short and precise. With her high cheekbones, full lips and velvet-dark skin, she could easily have been a model even in her middle age, dominating an industry obsessed with youth. And dominate it she would have - there was a carefully cultivated air of laser focus that she wore like armor wrapped around her, her narrow, jewel-black eyes piercing through lies and alibis like a hot knife through butter. She and Brandon’s mutual respect had led to a highly efficient and successful working relationship over the years, and they both appreciated that neither was in any way interested in developing any sort of personal friendship outside of work.

Now, he dropped into the Quaker chair in front of her desk and considered making an attempt for her coffee, which she didn’t appear to have started drinking yet. Her signature plum lipstick had not yet stained the rim, but she zeroed in on his intent with her standard razor perception and shook her head. “I will literally stab you,” she said casually, and he let his hand fall to his knee instead.

“What’s up?”

“First off, roll in here late again and I’ll write your ass up. Secondly, we have a delicate situation in our laps right now and I want some input on how to deal with it.”

Arching an eyebrow, Brandon kept his tone as nonplussed as possible. Too much visible interest might have convinced Sasha to change her mind, one of her stranger quirks. “I’m listening.”

“Cora Tycho is missing, as of somewhere around midnight last night.”

He nearly rose to his feet despite his resolve, an icy fist punching straight through his ribcage to seize his heart. “Casey’s sister?”

Sasha confirmed this with a short nod, her lips pressed tight. “She was out camping with a friend near the Lower Prince quarry. Her friend, Kris Alden, fell ill shortly after they ate dinner and decided to go home. Cora wanted to drive him, but there was no one available to take her back once he was home and he claims he felt guilty about making her miss some super-moon or whatever the hell it is, told her he could make it home on his own. She never came back from the woods, the Alden kid shared a class with her that she skipped this morning and no one has been able to reach her via call or text. It’s not enough to assume that she’s officially a ten-fifty-seven just yet, but people are starting to worry. She’s never been someone to just bail on everything like this, Kris described her as very thoughtful and responsible.”

“You’ve already sent someone out to talk to him? Does Casey know?”

“Not yet. That’s actually what I wanted your input on - obviously he’s not getting anywhere near this case, but given the personal nature of your relationship with him what are your thoughts on his capability to handle the work environment in general as it’s investigated? Should I just send him on a vacation until this is cleared, or is he frosty enough to stay professional here at the station while his sister is missing? You know him better than any of us.”

Brandon’s brain reeled. “Personal nature? I don’t know what sort of relationship any of you are under the impression that we--not that any of you should have any impression of our relationship, I mean. Shit. We’re not in a relationship! I barely know him!” His voice was raising in pitch while he remained completely unaware, his knuckles going white around the armrests of the Quaker chair. Sasha exhaled sharply through her nose.

“Jesus. Do I need to send you on a vacation too? Get your shit together.”

“Fuck. Okay.” Pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, he exhaled. “Casey is one hundred percent able to handle working while this is being solved, but that doesn’t mean he should. I doubt he’ll let you send him on a vacation, but try anyway. He doesn’t deserve to be here all day, trying to focus on other shit while half of Dorset is trying to figure out if his sister’s body is rotting in the woods somewhere. He should be with his family.”

“I’ll do my best. I’m giving this girl until tonight to turn up, and then I’m issuing a gloves-off ten-fifty-seven.” Sasha’s voice went to iron, and it occurred to Brandon that she cared for Casey as much as anyone at the DPD did. He was the lifeblood of the forensics labs, their unflappable new medical examiner whose lingering British accent left over from a youth spent in west London had a way of soothing even the most panicked and horrified relative of one of his corpses. 

“I need you to go into far more detail about the supposed “nature” of my relationship with Casey, up to and including just how the hell you even knew about it at all. Not that it’s anything. At all.”

“Would you kindly climb off my dick, Graham? I’ve got enough shit on my plate right now.”

“Sasha.”

“Settle down. No one else knows anything, even though according to you there’s nothing to know. It’s just that a lifetime of police investigation have left me a highly observant person--”

“A lifetime? You’re in your forties, don’t start writing your memoirs yet you drama queen.”

“...And as such, I’ve noticed you two leaving work together occasionally, showing up around the same time in very deliberately separate cars but sometimes accidentally wearing each other’s shirts, things like that. Things only I would ever notice, I promise. No one else has mentioned anything to me, and you know they would if the rumor mill was running about it.”

“Fine. Whatever. Any more intel on Cora?”

Wordlessly, Sasha slid a manila envelope across her stately desk. Opening it, Brandon was confronted with a glossy photo of a beautiful young woman, all sparkling honey eyes and rich dark skin like a sunset’s sweet glow, thick black hair meticulously oiled and wrapped and beaded into immaculate dreadlocks that she’d pulled back with a sky-blue silk scarf for her senior high school photo, Cora wore her brother’s beauty as elegantly as he did. They shared the same royally rounded nose and high cheekbones, full lips and dimples. His chest ached, and he brushed his fingertips against the photo thoughtfully without realizing he was doing it. Sasha had compiled everything - her academic records, notes on her hobbies and habits, her generally expected whereabouts on any given day. She had no legal record to speak of, her profile speaking to a bright, clean-cut girl with a gleaming future in physics.

“She was a student at NVU,” Sasha supplied. “Is a student. Solid grades, a quiet type, well-liked by her peers but not known to be a partier. Close with her family, especially our Casey. Loved to cook, according to reports. She entered several baking competitions last year, even won a couple. Played the violin all throughout high school, but turned down a suggested spot on NVU’s student orchestra. Said she didn’t want it to interfere with her study time, according to the orchestra leader I called. She seemed laser-focused on her goal of working for NASA someday, had a whole vision board about it on Pinterest.”

“I’ll start with Kris Alden. I’ll head out to his place today.”

“Start with Casey. I don’t want him to hear about this on the news, and my official statement on the case is going live tomorrow morning.”

“Shit. Okay.” Scooping the file up under his arm, he rose to his feet. “I’ll go talk to him, he down in the forensics lab?”

“With Audrey and Stephen. See if you can get him alone, he won’t like his techs seeing him break down in front of them if he reacts poorly.”

“How the hell else do you expect him to react to the news that his sister is missing?”

“I’m just saying, let’s be conscious of how difficult this is going to be for him. You’re not exactly known for your tact, but you have the best shot at holding him together here. You know as well as I do that the longer we go without finding this girl, the less of a chance we have.”

Brandon paused at her office door. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Took me a year to get out of that basement.”

He hated the way her gaze softened, and so he made his way out without a goodbye to make a point, ignoring the irritating hiss of her compressed-air door mechanism that refused to let him leave with a satisfying slam. The forensics lab and department morgue was located in the basement of the station for obvious reasons, a narrow elevator depositing him into the DPD’s underground two minutes later. The temperature dropped by a few degrees once the doors slid open, the stone all around them cooling the air. He couldn’t hear the rain anymore, down here, and he found Audrey and Stephen hunched over a severed hand on a sleek chrome examination tray in the lab.

Audrey was tall and willowy, twenty-six with ice-blonde hair wound into a messy braid that she’d draped over one shoulder, so pale and slim that there was something ghostly about her, especially when taking into consideration her gray eyes so light and translucent they were nearly colorless, like a mirror or a deep-sea creature. She wore a white lab coat over a pair of black jeans and a loose, baggy gray sweater - she wore a lot of gray, black and white, and she always looked like a spectre, an overcast ocean. The selkies would have accepted her as one of theirs upon sight. Stephen was only barely as tall as her, with a much friendlier face, soft freckled cheeks and tanned skin suggesting a childhood spent outdoors working off baby fat. He had peanut-brown curls tumbling over his forehead and round, intelligent hazel eyes, a sharply defined mouth and an easily cheery demeanor. Oddly enough, he and Audrey were quite close.

“Hey guys. Anyone seen Casey?”

“Down in the morgue.” Audrey pointed to her feet, indicating the sub-level beneath them. “He left this hand with us and told us to collect data samples and disappeared. He’s been down there all morning.”

“Do you know whose hand it is?”

“Pretty sure it belongs to that wheat farmer who turned up in the hospital last week missing one. I mean, how many hands could there be unaccounted for in Vermont right now?” Stephen grinned, snapping his gum. He took a kind of morbid glee in his work, something Brandon had always suspected Audrey shared with him.

“Left hands, to boot,” Audrey added, shrugging. “How are you, Brandon?”

“I’m fine. I’d love to stay and um, look at the hand with you guys, but I’ve got to talk to Casey. Have...fun?”

Stephen’s grin widened. “Oh, we will, friend.”

“I hate the way you say things.”

Stephen’s laughter followed him back into the elevator, which delivered him to the bottomost floor of the DPD headquarters. Casey was there, bent over his own work, having forgone his stiff lab coat in favor of his neatly tucked-in dove-gray button-down, black silk tie, charcoal dress vest and matching creased slacks. His leftover British sensibilities were evident in his crisply classic style, always semi-formal and expensive even when he dressed “down” in Burberry cashmere sweaters and custom-tailored jeans. He looked so unflappable that Brandon’s faith in him was stirred anew, and he approached with more tenderness than was normal for him. His aura alerted Casey to something amiss upon impact, and he narrowed his eyes at him before saying a word. “Don’t see you down here often, love.” The last word slipped out before he could stop it, and Brandon watched him flinch minutely, almost imperceptibly.

[necromantic13]

[2] Moira O’Deorain - Digging

Part 2 of my blisteringly vindictive Sombra vs. Moira Widowmaker revenge fiction. I guess that’s the official tagline now.

You can read Part 1 here. Realistically, this is probably Part 0, although likely unnecessary aside from keeping my own headcanon straight.

Science babes dance.

“What did you need?”

“Azúcar.”

“It’s here,” Widowmaker said, nonchalantly sipping her coffee with one hand while holding the cup of sugar out of Sombra’s reach with the other. Seeming to just notice Sombra struggling to grab it, she feigned concern. “I’m sorry, cherie - is it too high for you?”

“Araña, why are you being so mean? Gimme some sugar,” Sombra whined, her halfhearted attempt at reaching for the sugar ending in a gentle kiss on the spider’s lips. “Got it,” she smirked.

“Your puns are terrible,” Widow replied through a small smile. Relenting at last, she handed Sombra the ceramic dish. It was filled to the brim with miniature brown crystals - some “natural” sweetener Akande, for whatever reason, insisted they use. Sombra wasn’t picky so long as she could turn her coffee into a candy bar.

Sombra took it and set it on the table next to them, pressing her forehead against the spider’s chest for a moment. It was so rare that she joked, she didn’t even mind being the one abused in the process.

“Couch date? You can read dumb books while I infect Gabriel’s computer with malware?” Sombra asked, looking up. Widowmaker raised an eyebrow, reaching a hand out to brush her hair behind her ear when they were distracted by the sound of another body entering their space.

“Good morning,” Moira said, stepping into the kitchen. Sombra pushed herself out of Widowmaker’s embrace, swiping the sugar from the counter and dumping a solid two spoonfuls into her mug in an effort to avoid the woman’s penetrating stare.

“Hey,” Sombra said, stirring her drink and leaning against the counter. “There’s coffee.”

“Mmm, none for me, thank you,” Moira replied, instead reaching for a bag of loose leaf tea. “A jittery hand with a scalpel often ends poorly.”

A joke, clearly, but a passing glance at Widowmaker showed her face blank and drawn in a way Sombra recognized as uncomfortable. She took another long sip of her drink. “I hack faster when I’m shaking.”

Moira made a soft sound of disapproval, filling up the old silver teapot they kept on the stove and setting it over one of the burners. “We all have our methods, I suppose.”

Sombra rolled her eyes. She was going to choke on all that pretentiousness eventually.

“How are you feeling, Amélie?” Moira asked, turning her attention to the sniper as her water boiled. She was the only one Widowmaker didn’t correct in regards to her name. It annoyed Sombra deeply, and made her even more curious as to the nature of their preexisting relationship.

“I don’t feel, Moira,” the spider replied, stirring her coffee and sending a fleeting look toward Sombra. “That’s the point, isn’t it?” Mug in hand, she exited the room a bit more quickly than usual, brushing past Moira on her way and leaving Sombra alone with the red-headed woman.

“I wonder what bug’s in her bonnet?” Moira chuckled, the look on her face suggesting she knew exactly what manner of discomfort Widowmaker was suffering.

“She doesn’t like being called Amélie,” Sombra replied cooly, wondering if picking a fight was wise. It was rare she listened to her voice of reason, but it persisted in offering advice regardless.

“My dear,” Moira said, chuckling as she eyed Sombra like one might a precocious child, “Amélie doesn’t like anything. She doesn’t dislike anything. Any emotional response she may have can be chalked up to random happenstance and electrical impulses.” The teapot began to whistle, and she switched off the heat to quiet it. Raising an eyebrow at Sombra’s cybernetics, Moira made a small sound of interest. “You understand the nature of technobiology, yes?” she asked, lifting the pot off the burner.

“Un poquito,” Sombra answered, her hold on the anger welling within her loosening by the second.

“Then you must know she’s a blank slate. An empty data chip, if you will.” Laughing, she waved a hand flippantly in the air. “It’s up to people us to write the code. Scientists; those with a clear vision of the future and the sacrifices that must be made in order to achieve it.” Her words were callous in a way that indicated malicious intent; a desire to needle past Sombra’s skin and elicit some sort of reaction to her words.

Sombra said nothing.

“Come,” she said, and to Sombra's dismay, gestured for her to sit down as she poured her tea and walked toward the dining room table.

I've danced with worse, she thought to herself, sitting across from her at the kitchen table. Besides - far be it for her to decline an invitation at picking the brain of someone whose life history she fully intended on tearing from Talon’s database. The more she knew of a person’s motives, the easier it was to ascribe context and intent to their past actions.

“You have impressive cybernetics,” Moira said, keen eyes expressing a level of interest that made Sombra feel like she was being dissected on a cold slab.

“You too,” she replied, tossing the compliment back at the geneticist while explicitly avoiding offering any details as to their nature. Eyeing the silver strands embedded in the scientist’s right hand, she extrapolated on the use for someone in Moira’s field. “Dexterity support?”

Moira chuckled, sipping her jasmine green. “Cinnte, they are, at least in part. My work is more involved than slicing up frogs and dead cats.” Leaning forward, she looked at Sombra closely. “Have you had any genetic alterations done?” Her eyes traveled down the implants in her wrists and along her skull. “I can help you increase your kinetic output; maximize the impact of your investment.”

“I do fine on my own,” Sombra replied, ignoring the faint twinge of curiosity at the woman's words. Moira was a Venus fly trap, and she wasn’t about to walk into her poison maw to satisfy her love of innovative tech. Not this time, at least.

She wondered if Gabriel had been given a choice.

Moira nodded, canting her head in curiosity. “I don't know you well, Sombra, but I can tell you're no fool. I don't know what the others have told you,” she said, standing with her mug in hand. “But I'm not the enemy.”

Holding out an olive branch in the form of an extended hand, she waited for the hacker’s response. It was slow in coming, but eventually she stood up and accepted. Her grip was firm and authoritative, and Sombra met it with her own unspoken challenge.

“I look forward to learning from you,” Sombra said, smiling through false deference.

“And I look forward to learning what makes you tick.”

She met Widowmaker upstairs by one of the many sunlit alcoves, curled against a nest of pillows on a patterned couch, eyes scanning the words of the page she was reading.

“Good?” Sombra asked, peering at the back of the book for context. There was none to be found in the plain, olive drab cover, faint lines of text scrawled too small for her to see without effort she wasn’t willing to spend.

The spider seemed distant, but she nodded in affirmation. “As good as any of Camus’s works,” she replied, making space for Sombra to sit next to her. “Do you have work to do?” she asked as the hacker summoned her hard light interface before her.

“Work?” she replied quizzically, contemplating her response. A row of neon binary raced across the lines of her palm, her cybernetics quickly translating it to readable text as she activated the wireless upload she’d hacked into Moira’s hand when they’d parted ways in the kitchen. “Sure,” she said, a slow grin crossing her face. “I think we can call it that.”

Want more? Head over to Part Three. If you like this, maybe check out Glitch in the System for more spiderbyte!

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam! I'm curious about your magical time management skills: you have a full-time job, are super active in fandom, answer countless asks, write fanfiction and books, and still have time for jogging and many other stuffs. How do you organize yourself? I feel super overwhelmed due to lack of time and end up not doing what I want do. Do you allot time to do stuff? How does your typical day looks like? And any useful tips for us slackers.

I dunno how helpful it’ll be – I mean, some of it is time management, and some of it is that I have spent a long time working on arranging my life so that I have as much free time to pursue my own interests as possible. This hasn’t consciously meant giving up things like close brickspace friends and romantic relationships but in some ways it has kind of worked out that way. (Not that I couldn’t have those things if I chose to work towards them, in other words, but they don’t come naturally to me and I don’t mind the lack.) 

So, I will give you a rundown of my average day, but before we begin, I will also give you some context! And this will be long so I’ll put it under a readmore. 

I have at present no romantic partner, no children, no pets. This sounds sad, but I’m not complaining; I could work towards those things and choose not to, for a variety of reasons, some good, some not. I would like to have a partner, but honestly at this point in my life it’s as much because it’s cheaper to cohabitate; I am very independent and not, I suspect, built for the kind of daily intimacy that romantic cohabitation requires. 

If I were to get a pet it would probably not be a dog, since when I was dogsitting for R I had real trouble with the concept of properly caring for a creature whose life was so scheduled, who required specific attentions at specific times – I have owned dogs before and love them deeply, but never in an apartment or as a solitary person. I would probably get a cat or an axolotl (axolotls: like being alone, require very specific but easy-to-procure stimulus, look like tiny water dragons, sound like fantasy aliens). 

I have very few close brickspace friends, not by design but just because I’m kind of a private homebody, and my extensive network of online friendships is satisfying in that regard. But online friendships, while not LESS of a time commitment, are a different kind of commitment – you can multitask while hanging out with online friends, you don’t have travel times, if they’re running late you’re not stuck waiting and vice versa. 

I also am not in school, which is much more life-consuming than many jobs. School is a way of life; work can be, but doesn’t have to be. And I am very fortunate (in the literal sense of “it is luck that brought me here”) to have a job where I spend the vast majority of my time a) on a computer and b) in self-directed, non-public-facing work. For most of my day, every day, I guide my own workflow, I choose what to work on and when. Of course I have deadlines, but within the strictures of those deadlines I am free to triage my time as appropriate, and because I’m on a computer with unrestricted internet access, I can take ten minutes to log onto tumblr, read some things, respond to some things, and then go back to my work. 

So I am starting from an advantageous position: few personal commitments, unstructured time throughout the day, and a job where when I leave for the day, work stays at work. 

So here’s what a normal day is like for me. Bear in mind this is for comparison purposes rather than because I think it’s particularly ideal.

I wake up around 4am; if I haven’t slept well or feel like I need it, I may go back to sleep for about an hour. Normally when I get up I either work out from 4-5 (weights, running) or I sit on the couch with my laptop and check out what’s been going on while I was asleep. We’ll circle back to this, but I go to bed quite early, so at this point I have generally had at least seven hours of sleep. Also, I am a morning person, so I go straight from zero to lucid, which is nice. 

I answer email, check tumblr, check my RSS feeds (podcasts, news, fanfic, a couple of NSFW blogs that I can’t have on my tumblr feed because I read it at work). I look at my calendar so that I know what’s on offer for the day – my calendar doesn’t cover work stuff, but primarily anything I want to or need to do after work. My family has a mutual Google Calendar that we all use to schedule stuff the others should see, like whenever I take a vacation, and my parents also use it as their central calendar, so I can see what they’ll be up to on any given day. I’ve been thinking of switching over to a private Google Calendar, but out of habit for years I’ve used a custom-built spreadsheet, now in Google Sheets, that looks like a calendar: 

That’s July. This kind of layout works well for me because it’s easy to go in and change things, and I get a good “high level” view of the month. As you can see I’m traveling quite a bit; I’m tracking new TV shows, peoples’ birthdays, events I may attend (I will probably not be at everything happening in evenings on the week of the 10th), baseball games I have tickets for, and possible plans for camping. Google Calendar would work as well and would have some significant advantages, I just haven’t got off my ass to switch over. 

Around five, I usually get up and fix breakfast; often I’ll put on something to listen to while I cook and/or eat. If I’ve been working out, all the stuff I did – checking email, tumblr, etc – is pushed forward, and I do a bit less of it. But essentially from 4-6 I’m working out, eating breakfast, and getting a start on the personal-life aspect of my day. In terms of social media, this is the time I’m most likely to like something or save it to drafts to deal with later; I don’t spend brainpower on responding this early in the morning, usually. 

I have some fairly…prescriptive routines for the rest of the day, and that works for me, I like structure. Other people may find this sort of thing doesn’t work for them, and that’s okay. This is, again, for comparison purposes, not to dictate how your life should be. 

At six o’clock my alarm goes off, warning me that I have nine minutes before I need to stop what I’m doing and start getting ready for work. This is by design, so that I have a buffer zone in which to shift my mental attitudes from morning routine to something more focused. I hit snooze on the alarm and then at 6:09 I turn the alarm off and get in the shower. I shower, brush my teeth, and get dressed in clothes I laid out over a rail the night before (I have an electric heated towel rail, one of the best random-ass things my mother ever gave me, and in winter I turn the heat on so I come out of the shower and into warm undies; in summer it’s just a convenient place to hang clothes). I dress, grab my bag, take my keys off the doorknob and put them in a pocket of the bag, and I’m out the door around 6:25. I catch the 6:40 express bus to work. I usually read on my tablet on the bus (currently reading The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier after remembering how much I loved her prose in Girl With A Pearl Earring) and I get to work around 7. 

At work I have routines too: I set down my bag, hang up my jacket, and before I do anything else I get my 32oz mug and go to the kitchen to get ice water to sip on throughout the morning. I come back to my desk, turn on my monitors, and log into my computer. 

I check my work email first, to make sure nothing is on fire from yesterday, since I leave work quite a bit earlier than most of my colleagues. If nothing is urgent I delete anything irrelevant to me, respond to anything that needs immediate response, and move on to a quick glance at email and tumblr, then I open my “daily bookmarks” folder. My daily bookmarks folder is mostly stuff that either I can’t or don’t want to put in my RSS reader: a couple of messageboards, a few real estate sites I’m watching for my dream home to show up, a couple of tumblr tags (I don’t follow tags on tumblr because I don’t like seeing shit recur constantly on my dash), and some activism facebook pages because I despise facebook but it’s the only site some of these organizations use. If it’s Monday, I also open my Monday bookmark folder, which is a combination of sites that rarely update and “event” sites (the cinema I’m a member of so I can see what new movies are coming, the calendar of a local band I like, the events page of various cultural centers). I review these quickly, closing most tabs and setting aside anything I need to look at more indepth like an event I’d like to attend. Usually basically I fuck around on the internet until about 8, unless work has something urgent for me. 

The one scheduled task I have daily at work is news clipping, where I read several news sites and save off articles of interest to our staff, which need to be turned in by mid-morning. Realistically this could take 15 minutes of focused work, but I like to read the news, too, so from eight to eight forty-five or nine, I’m usually reading a very specifically aimed sort of news, saving off articles, and archiving them appropriately. 

After that, the day is, in many ways, mine to do with as I please.

I organize my life by using Google Tasks, which is a little pop-up to-do list in gmail. I have a to-do list for every day, and anything that doesn’t get done one day gets moved to another day, depending on how urgent it is. So at nine or so, I open Google Tasks and start moving each task around based on how urgent it is or how quickly I can do it. Urgent work and fast tasks go at the top; less urgent work, stuff I’m less enthused about, and stuff I can’t do at my desk (buying a card for Father’s Day, picking up groceries after work, etc) goes at the bottom. Some tasks are recurring – every Monday, for example, Radio Free Monday is at the top of the list because it’s time-sensitive. 

You can see RFM there at the top; I have to email some information about a 5K to a friend, but I need to get his email from another friend first; I have some registration and hotel issues to attend to for an upcoming conference; I have to write up some evaluations, and do some reading for a presentation I’m giving. I should stop by my PO Box after work. Other stuff will no doubt be added when I check my work email (documents to be prepared, research requests) but this is where I start the day. You can also see I have stuff with pushed out deadlines – Credit Cards is a monthly reconciliation for my corporate card, which I will do ON the 26th rather than BEFORE it, and quarterly I check my 401K, so I won’t need to do that until August 7th.

“PRESENTATION: Reading” will probably get pushed to another day, because by the time I get down that far on the list, I won’t have a ton of brainpower left to do a lot of reading and analysis. It’s ok, my presentation’s not due until the 30th.

And then I just work through my to-do list. Some days I’m really good at getting it done. Some (rare) days I spend most of my time reading tumblr and fucking around because I’m not having a good focus day. But again: this is a job in which I have the luxury to do that, and I’m very lucky. 

Rather than take a traditional lunch, I usually eat two small meals, at 11am and 2pm. Usually I bring most of my lunch for the week on Monday and just reheat tupperwares as I go, augmenting them with cheese and crackers; sometimes I’ll throw in a protein bar from a stash I keep in a little box on my desk. Most of my lunches are cooked on the weekends, when my time is a lot less structured. You’ve probably seen my COOKING DAY posts; sometimes I just set aside a day to cook and rest.

I’m gonna tackle fandom and social media here because truthfully my job has enough spare time built into it that this is when I do the majority of my fannish activity, at work, in small chunks. And yes I am very active in fandom but occasionally in very limited ways.

I don’t read a ton of fannish blogs. I have a limit on my tumblr of following 99 people, and I choose those people very carefully. Some are friends, but those who aren’t personally known to me are people who post both low-volume and things that are of interest to me. I do not follow people who flood dashes not because I disapprove but because I don’t have time to wade through ten million gifsets of things that I’m not concerned with. I also follow a few artist or writers, but again, only if they’re of relevance to me. I follow Skottie Young because I really like his art and think he’s a cool dude, and most of what he posts is his art. I don’t follow Matt Fraction because while I think he is also a cool dude and I enjoy his writing, his tumblr wasn’t generally speaking about his writing or him, it was aesthetic stuff I didn’t care for and it was A LOT OF IT. 

I don’t read a ton of fanfic. I have a couple of tags fed to my RSS reader and I subscribe to a couple of fics and fic writers, but even then I skim for interesting summaries and tag combinations I don’t find offputting. I don’t read fanfic at work, full stop; when I find one I want to read, I set it aside for a time when I’m at home and feel like reading fanfic.

Throughout the day I will check in on tumblr, in a very systematic manner: I read my dash, only the posts, and like or queue anything I want to reblog or examine later. I read my inbox and try to respond, but some asks don’t get answers for a really long time, because they require more focus or time or whatnot. I read my Activity page and open any reblogs with commentary; I set comments aside to be responded to en mass. I check my likes and try to clean out anything I’ve liked that could go in drafts or queue; I check my drafts and try to move just one draft into my queue (I constantly have a draft backlog). This all takes about ten minutes, then I go back to work.

I get AO3 comment notifications throughout the week, but generally I set aside a block of time either on Friday (if work is slow) or on Sunday to “clear out” my comments; every week I go through my comments, re-read each one, and either delete it or respond to it and then delete it. I don’t reply to a vast majority of them simply because I don’t have the time to respond to each one (I have tried, it was very stressful) and also because most of them don’t really a require a response. For everyone’s patience in this, I thank you.

So work is a long series of multitasking, breaks, deadline work, procrastination. It’s about average, I’d say, with anyone else in my situation. If I’m doing something after work, I check to make sure I know how to get there and what’s going on; if I don’t have all the info I need, I prepare a “brief” that has maps and directions and anything else I need, print that out, and toss it in my messenger bag. And then around 3:45 I pack up my bag, make sure I have my phone, and I head out to either (usually) catch the 4pm express bus home, or catch transit of my choice to whatever I’m doing after work. 

If I don’t have something I’m doing after work, I come home, take my keys out of the bag pocket, hang them up on the doorknob once I’m inside, and set my bag down. I’m very specific about my keys here, as I was up above, as a way of demonstrating that I live a very habitual life. Stuff like keys, phone, wallet always has a specific place it goes, and it stays there if I’m not using it. I used to lose shit a lot, and rigidly adhering to “if this is not in your hand, it should be in X pocket” is what saves me. 

I change into more comfortable clothes, usually yoga pants and a t-shirt. I make something for dinner and eat it, I unpack anything that needs to come out of my bag and pack anything that needs to go into it, and then usually these days I fuck around on the ukulele for a while. I don’t set a time limit on it, so sometimes I do it for half an hour, sometimes for ninety minutes. It’s a way of unwinding and finding stress relief, so it’s entirely voluntary and anything I do during this time is being done because I want to do it. I think it’s the only thing in my life where there are no external pressures anywhere and I have set no goals for myself. 

I don’t think external pressures and goals are inherently bad. The goals I set for myself in my other hobbies, like writing and running, being in fandom, going to movies and such, are good goals and they help me do well. External pressure is something that exists in every human interaction; that’s just the nature of being a person in society, and likewise isn’t a terrible thing. And not everyone needs a release from those things, or finds that release in the same way. I like a lot of my life; I wouldn’t do things if I didn’t like them. But I have found that it helps to have one thing which only belongs to you and which has no goals or benchmarks. For me that’s currently the ukulele. 

In the later evening – and let’s be clear, I get home at like 4:30 so “later” to me is 6ish – I’ll hop back on tumblr, maybe do a little writing, or attend or host a stream. I’ll chatter with people, respond to emails and posts, read things I had set aside for reading earlier in the day; it’s probably my most socially active time.

When I was in my twenties I did perfectly fine on five hours of sleep a night, but as I got older that stopped being comfortable, and also I started realizing that after a certain point in the day, I not only wasn’t doing anything useful or interesting, I wasn’t having a good time. I was being awake for the sake of not going to bed. So I adjusted my life to going to bed at nine, and when I started getting up earlier to run, I adjusted again. In order to do that, I created an evening routine, because going to bed is easier if you start out by doing other shit BEFORE going to bed. 

Now, generally, I log off between 7 and 7:30. Sometimes I go to bed that early, but that’s when I close down social interaction. Not necessarily turning off the computer, but just gently shutting down on being “around” other people. I log off chats, I stop responding to emails and tumblr posts. I set them aside for the morning. I might continue to read my dash or listen to podcasts or whatnot until eight or so. 

I change into pyjamas, wash my face, brush my teeth, lay out my clothes for tomorrow, and get into bed, usually with my tablet to do a little reading. It’s a very rare evening I go to bed any time past 8:30.  And that’s my day.

I have actually some reasoning about why I go to bed so early, but I think it’s the most important part of a post that is REALLY LONG and otherwise devoted to the boring details of my day, so I’m going to make it a separate post. 

I hope this has helped, Anon! As you can see, what helps me organize and sort out all my time commitments is schedules, lists, and an adherence to several fairly rigid habits – this may not work for you, and I don’t recommend it for everyone. But for me, it’s really the only way I can stay on top of everything, especially in cases where I’m dealing with some particularly intense depression. I’m happy to answer questions, though if people have commentary about the post they should remember to reblog or comment, since I don’t repost asks sent to me about other asks. 

[sae-you-sae-me]

Just read through your masterlist and goodness gracious! the feels!! Awesome writing 👏🏻 Sooo how about an imagine, where RFA+V & Saeran come across MC somewhere without recognizing her? And maybe developing a lil crush on her? (Let's assume her avatar is a pony lol and she's can go out of the flat to live her life) Hope it's possible to do. Thank you so so much :)

This was so cute! We changed it up a little for Saeran, just because of the whole Mint Eye thing, but hope you like them!

General Scenario: The RFA party is planned much later than one week after MC joins. MC knows who the RFA are because of their profile pics, etc. But overthinks security reasons so doesn’t say anything.

Zen:

You got a side job in a grocery store since you were tired of being cooped up in the apartment

Also, you thought you could use the extra bucks since RFA wasn’t paying

Only you didn’t realize it was the store near Zen’s house

He’s buying a pack of cigs and you’re his cashier

“Aww, you wouldn’t want to smoke too much and ruin that voice of yours,” you say casually

He chuckles at the comment thinking you’re just a concerned fan and goes on his way

But for some reason your words stick with him…no, maybe it was your voice? Your face?

He bumps into you several times at the store

He even finds himself trying to get you as a cashier

You notice too…but you’re kind of enjoying it

A  few weeks later, he buys a candy bar just because he was having a rough day

And he realized it was an excuse because he just wanted to see you

He kind of accidentally admits in the process that you’re one of the only people who can make him shy

Lowkey realizes his crush on you then

Then the party rolls around

He sees you he thinks you’re one of the guests until you reveal yourself

He gets a little more bold in his advances after that

Yoosung:

You’re in the coffee club with him

You’re partnered up one week and you him to taste your coffee before the professor found the final batch

He really likes it but more than that you got really up in his face when you gave the mug to him

His heart does a little thing

He denies that he likes you at first when some of his friends ask why he keeps requesting to be partnered with you for group activities

He does come to terms with it after awhile

The admission makes him both bold and flustered

He tries to be more forward with you but he keeps messing up

He even texts you in the chatroom (but he doesn’t realize it’s you) and asks for advice

You’re blushing but you try your best to give him “advice” to woo you

You have to keep yourself from laughing because he always subtly messes it up oh no this is only making you like him more

Then all of a sudden, he stops coming to the club

Worried, you ask him subtly what happened with his crush

He says that he gave up because he didn’t think she was interested because he kept goofing up

You feel so horrible

When it gets to the party and he finally realizes who you are, saying that you like him is the first thing that flies out of your mouth

Jaehee:

She had been stressed with all the new projects at work

So she visits a coffee shop in town

You happen to be the new barista there at the same time she visits daily

It’s not a very busy time, so you two always end up talking a little

After some time, she just kind of blurts out her struggles and insecurities

You set some time aside from your shift to listen and give your advice

You already know her job situation, but you try to give some vague advice about her passions and following her dreams

In that moment, she knows she really admires you

She finds she’s stopping by more frequently and staying longer

One day, the cafe is about to close early but there’s no customers but her

You invite her behind the counter and ask if she wants to learn some things

She realizes she’s never had this much fun in her life…nor met someone like you

She starts crying right then and there, both from being touched and realizing her own unhappiness in her situation

You almost revealed yourself in this moment, because you just felt so bad and knew everything going on behind the scenes and wanted to give her a hug

Still you manage to comfort her without saying too much

When the party comes, she sees you there and she’s in shock

Uncharacteristically, she nearly tackles you in a hug

She didn’t expect that the two most supportive people in her life were the same person

Jumin:

Work had been stressful again, so what does he do? 

He goes to the newest pet store in town to hand pick some new toys for Elizabeth the 3rd

It also happens to be the pet store you work at

When you saw him enter the store, there was no mistaking it was none other than Han Jumin

So, you ask politely if he needs help

Jumin is kind of stunned at first when he sees you…and he doesn’t know why

He ignores the feeling and continues shopping with some of your suggestions

You’re actually pick out the best things for Elizabeth…also, he enjoys even the small talk

After a few more weeks, he finds that this attraction doesn’t go away

He keeps on visiting, trying to figure out his own feelings

His time is limited because how many cat toys can he buy

Meanwhile, you’re dying to let him know who you are, especially when things with his father get a bit rough in the background

You drop subtle hints of who you might be

It works, and he puts the pieces together

He stops by one day, not to buy anything, but to ask if you two can talk when your shift is over

You think it’s just casual, but next thing you know he’s confessing his feelings and asking if he can personally escort you to the next RFA party

Of course, you say some confessions of your own and agree

Seven:

He’s on another undercover mission which requires him to “work” at a restaurant as a server

You work there too, as it happens

You were so excited to see him there, so you just go up to him and start chatting him up

As it so happened, the background check he did on you was weeks ago…and with everything that happened at work, he sort of had forgotten what you looked like and where you worked

So, he just thinks you’re just a random co-worker who happens to be extra bold

But he finds you get his jokes, and even will play along when he does some stupid prank on the other serves

He realizes he’s forgetting this is a mission and he’s actually enjoying working with you

He catches himself glancing at you too often, staring too long, and wanting to be with you when work is over

When he realizes he might actually like you, he panics and finishes up his work as quickly as possible tsundere mode activated

One day, you’re told he quit, but you still talked to him in the chatroom so it was okay

But you couldn’t help but notice he was more mellow and seemed to beat himself up a lot

Turns out he was guilty, because being so open with you on the last mission could’ve put you in danger

The party drew closer and the security system gets hacked, etc.

When he runs over to protect you, he finally realizes who you are when he sees your face

This only makes the next few days at the apartment even worse

But of course, everything works out in the end, and you two even joke about it

“I can never forget a face like yours!”

“As I remember, Saeyoung, you did…”

“….It was one time.”

Saeran:

Just because he’s plotting the demise of the RFA doesn’t mean he doesn’t stop for some froyo

It was also your favorite ice cream place, so you visited often when things got stressful in the RFA

He recognized you immediately, but you still had never met him

He was really curious about how you acted on normal days, since he only ever knew by how much Seven seemed to hack more or less

He stayed in the back and watched as you did whatever you were doing

As time passed, he found your presence calming

He didn’t seem frazzled or worried or angry

Your presence became an addiction

He stopped by day and after day, getting a little disgruntled if you didn’t show

There were some points he even felt guilty for using someone like you for his plan

Then one day, he finds you plop yourself right in front of him

You had noticed he also seemed to visit every day, so you thought you two could get acquainted

For the first time in his life, he was stumbling over his words and what was this heat in his face?

He thought it was a one time thing, but you started doing it every day

You were actually talking to him, and he was finding out parts of you he couldn’t just see from a distance

He both loved it and hated it

The part of you he found so peacable was now tearing at his conscience, making him more aware of his deeds and his own brokenness

Finally, he just felt too guilty to face you again

So, he satisfied himself to just watching you from a distance once more from the CCTV

V:

You were the secretary for one of his new clients

He arrives at the place for a photoshoot one day, but your boss is running late

He dismisses it politely and just waits

He seems familiar to you, but you’re unsure of he’s the same V from the RFA so you say nothing

He takes the time to talk to you a little

He’s surprised at some of the statements you make which are sometimes very deep or introspective

He’s actually glad when the client asks for a long term contract

He arrives to work earlier, and he even brings you a coffee

Whenever he talks to you, he can’t stop smiling for the next few hours

He knows exactly what’s happening when his heart flutters after you call his name one morning

He’s very hesitant in proceeding, because he’s still recovering from the last relationship

But then he recognizes your voice at the party, and you explain who you are

He smiles and believes it’s a sign from God or something

So he asks you on a date after the party 

Check out our other headcanons~ Masterlist

[ravenvsfox]

could you do 52 "i don't think he loves me anymore" with some angst? + andreil

Dan gets home late from her coaching gig on Tuesday night, and they eat thai takeaway over styrofoam containers and cheap wine.

The TV’s the only light in the room, and it’s almost like the flicker of a fireplace, if they don’t look at it directly. Dan’s laughing and smooching stray noodle off of Matt’s cheek when there’s a knock on the door.

They make faces at each other. “It’s 10 pm,” Dan says. “This had better be life or death.”

Matt groans. “Don’t tempt fate.” He struggles out of the couch and passes his ginger beef off to Dan. “5 bucks says it’s Allison back from Guadala-whatever. Timezones mean nothing to her.”

“Bet denied. You know gambling isn’t the same when we have a joint bank account,” Dan complains and Matt laughs, dodging their side table and heading for the front door. He busily cracks open all of their locks and rattles the door until it unsticks.

“Hey!” he says, surprised. Neil’s scuffing their doormat with the toe of his shoe, dressed in old PSU colours. “A house call from Neil Josten, what an honour,” he jokes. Half-jokes. A visit from Neil is a confession that he missed you enough to actually do something about it.

Neil looks up at him blankly, and something is so obviously wrong that it shakes Matt. He takes silent note of the bag slung over his shoulder, the mottled redness of his eyes and face.

“Allison?” Dan calls, and Matt shakes his head without thinking.

“Neil,” he replies softly.

“Get out of town,” Dan says, voice getting louder as she floats towards them. She appears at Matt’s shoulder and grins. “Well if it isn’t our favourite competition.”

Neil usually says something obnoxious about Matt’s team not even counting as competition, but this time his mouth stays thin and snapped shut. Matt and Dan exchange a loaded glance.

“I need to ask you a favour,” Neil says finally.

“Anything,” Matt says.

“I need to stay somewhere,” Neil says, and Matt watches him gather himself like he’s finding his balance on a slick of ice.

“Where’s Andrew,” Dan says slowly. Neil looks at her, and then at Matt. He hasn’t seemed quite this small since he first showed up at the foxhole court with all his lies clenched between his teeth.

“I can find somewhere else,” Neil says, already turning to go. Matt catches him by the strap of his duffel.

“Oh no you don’t. We’ve got a couch with your name on it.”

“If Matt hasn’t destroyed it with peanut sauce,” Dan chirps. Neil looks back and forth between them again, his face in knots. Matt bodily pulls him over the threshold.

“You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to. We get how it is.” He looks over at Dan and she’s already nodding.

“Thanks,” Neil says, and he drops his bag heavily just inside the door. He eyes the TV. “What were you watching?”

“Not exy,” Dan replies. “You might have heard of it.” She flops back onto her side of the couch and tucks her feet under herself. Matt settles down opposite and watches Neil perch on the armchair like it’s made of something sharp.

“We can change it?”

Neil shakes his head, and his eyes drop. Matt feels metaphorical eggshells crunching under his heels. It’s never been this uneasy with Neil, even when they first met.

Neil picks at his armbands until he seems to realize what he’s doing, and he reaches under the sleeves of his hoodie to peel them off altogether. Dan shoots Matt a frantic look.

“Not to pry,” Dan starts, “but do you need us to call anyone?”

He looks up. “Like who?”

“Like…” she looks at Matt. “Your coach? Nicky, maybe? Kevin?”

“How would they help me?” Neil says flatly.

“Man, your Andrew impression is killer,” Matt grits, nerves pricking with frustration. Neil’s expression goes tight, distorted like canvas stretched to fit an oversized frame.

“I don’t need anyone.”

“Since when?” Dan says, her eyes sharp with concern. “You just. Showed up at our door like you’re still on the run. You get that that freaks us out, right?”

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I can’t talk about it.”

Matt’s phone goes off, and he scoops it off the floor. 

“Is he there?” Matt reads out loud. He looks at Neil to find him shaking, looking straight through the TV.

“Don’t answer.”

“Is it Andrew?” Dan asks and Neil stands up abruptly, armbands slithering off his lap as he does.

“Don’t answer.”

Matt drops the phone, hands up in surrender. “Not answering. Jesus Christ Neil.”

“I can’t talk about it,” he reiterates. “I can’t go home, and I can’t talk about it. I don’t want to make things difficult for you, but if you can’t handle not knowing then I will go to someone who can.”

“We handled not knowing a whole fucking lot in your freshman year, Neil. I think we can manage,” Matt says, and Neil’s face twitches.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.” The fight whips out of him, and he crumples back into his chair. “Switch to 189,” Neil says, nodding at the TV. “Highlights should be on by now.” He puts the heels of his hands in his eyes and breathes.

“God, don’t you ever get enough,” Dan says, but she dutifully reaches for the remote.

Matt watches Neil’s detached expression all the way through the exy commentary, his sleeves sagging over wrecked arms, his fucking heartbreaking eyes.

He gives him too many pillows and their good sheets, and tries not to check up on him like a nervous first time parent.

____

Neil stays for a week.

He leaves their couch early in the morning to go for his usual ass o’clock run. He comes back obliterated by the summer heat and his obvious attempts to forget whatever’s hurting him by pushing too hard.

Matt starts pouring him a glass of water with his morning coffee, leaving the chair across from him conspicuously open in case Neil chooses to sit and talk. He doesn’t on Wednesday or Thursday or Friday, but Saturday morning finds Neil already in the kitchen with his glass drained and his eyebrows knit.

Matt sits down with his coffee and kicks lightly at Neil’s feet. “‘sup?”

Neil’s eyes snap to his and it’s a little unnerving how focused they are after all this time drifting to the clock and out the window and over the long-dead screen of his phone. “I don’t think he loves me anymore.”

Matt’s mug slips and he catches it on the lip of the table so that it sloshes all over his hand. “Shit. What?”

Neil’s jaw works, and he settles back into the chair. “I don’t think he wants this. With me.”

“Neil…” Matt says. His chest feels overly full of air, like it’s pushing everything else out.

“Don’t— don’t tell me he does. You’ve never known anything about us.”

That stings a little, but Matt swallows it. He’d never had the opportunity to understand them. Never prodded what looked like an actively healing wound. “I mean. It’s Andrew,” he says, helpless.

“Observant,” Neil sneers.

“Okay smartass, how about you tell me what happened to you two?”

Neil looks away. “I—can’t.”

“Then don’t bring it up,” Matt says, exasperated. “I’m out of my mind curious, you know. The group text hasn’t stopped betting on you since Wednesday morning. I’m trying not to push.”

Neil chews viciously at his lip. The table lapses into agitated silence, and Matt waits.

“We used all our secrets up. We’ve run out of things we can give. He can’t let me in any further, and I have to… get that. I’ve always known it was a possibility.”

“But…” Matt prompts, watching Neil grapple with something much older than his and Andrew’s relationship. “You love him.”

Neil doesn’t reply. His armbands are back. Whatever he’s wearing smells strongly enough of cigarettes that Matt noticed when he walked in. His mouth is bloody where he’s been chewing it. His answer is obvious.

It’s also obvious that Neil’s done talking, so Matt pats his arm and trudges past him to the bedroom. He slips his phone out of his shorts pocket and looks at that is he there for so long that the screen starts blurring.

He texts a simple yes back, and puts his face in his hands like it’ll hold in the guilt.

____

Andrew shows up before the sun goes down on Saturday night. He looks too pale to be real, his dark shirt tucked up to his neck, a bag hiked up over his shoulder. The deja vu simmers in Matt, and he almost regrets getting involved.

Neil’s already standing when they turn into the living room, looking distraught, eyes not even glancing over Matt on their way to Andrew.

“Who told you?”

“I already knew,” Andrew says simply.

“I’ll just…” Matt says. Neither of them react. He shrugs and walks to the kitchen where the air feels breathable.

He feels unsettled, like he’s trying to ignore a bomb being defused next door.

He hears quiet voices, more hissed than whispered, the plunk of pebbles into water rather than the float of something on top.

“You told me you were done,” Matt hears Neil say, voice climbing.

“Done making things easy for you.”

Neil laughs, ugly, and Matt hears some unidentifiable movement.

“You told me,” Andrew says lowly, “that you wanted me to be honest. It’s not my fault that you didn’t like it.”

“I never thought you’d really give this up,” Neil admits miserably. Matt heads for the door to intervene, but then Andrew speaks again.

“I wasn’t,” Andrew says. “You assumed.”

“Then what were you doing?” Neil asks, bewildered.

“Fighting,” Andrew says. “With you.” There’s nothing for a second, and Matt strains to hear. “Not everything is as dramatic as you make it out to be.”

“You said you were done with me,” Neil says, breathless.

“I was.”

“And now?”

“You are on thin ice.”

“Fuck, Andrew,” he half laughs half sobs. “I thought I was going to have to transfer to a different team.”

“I would have quit first.”

“I’m pretending you didn’t just say that.”

Matt creeps forward and pops his head in. They’re not touching but they’re easily close enough that they could be. Neil looks more human than he has in days. Andrew’s face is blank but his hands go up to Neil’s sides as Matt watches.

“I thought I was going to have to fight for visitation rights to the fucking cats,” Neil continues.

“They don’t care.”

“I’ve heard that one before,” Neil says, smile tipping over like an overfull glass. “I’m sorry I ran.”

He reaches for Andrew, who lets him wind his hands in his hair.

“You were in the first place I checked,” Andrew says, “You’re losing your touch.”

“Maybe I’m getting comfortable,” Neil retorts. Matt doesn’t know if they’re aware of the way they’re winding together like neighbouring tree branches.

“Everything okay?” Matt asks, and Andrew’s arms drop.

“Yeah,” Neil says, dragging his eyes from Andrew. “Thanks.” He says it so that Matt knows he means it, with his smile up in his eyes.

“I’m gonna go for a walk,” Matt says pointedly. “Don’t even think about using our room.”

Neil frowns and Matt laughs, grabbing his keys.

“I’ll be back in an hour.”

He shuts the door behind him before Neil can respond, and he pulls up his text conversation with Dan on his way down the hall.

Beauty and Beast reunited. just u & me tonight, he sends.

Dan replies FINALLY 10 seconds later, and Matt grins.

When he gets back that evening, the pillows and sheets are washed and put away, and Neil’s duffel is sitting on the couch, empty. There’s a scrap of lined paper on top of it, and Matt picks it up.

Harder to run away without this.

If I didn’t already have a home, you and Dan would be it.

Thank you.