#if this is explained in any capacity pls ignore this

[person25]

i find i difficult to believe that Padme just, what? accepts that Anakin kills children in aotc but it’s just sooo much worse in rots bc they’re jedi? or human?

something’s not adding up…

[magnoliamyrrh]

i was sexually abused as a child, it happened in kindergarten and because of the culture of silence and fear that was instilled in 5yo me and not wanting to bother my dad lest he would want to spend even less time with me, i had no brains to protect myself. when the abuse became known to my teacher, they did little to protect me and my mother had to go through hell to change things for me. in my memory the culprit was a classmate of mine, who would also get other boys to watch, but for the longest time i have the blurry memory that there was an adult there, a cook lady also involved in different capacities, laughing, telling him what to do and staying with me afterwards, opening the closet door for him, even holding me touching me, its all so blurry. she also would not let me go piss to the point where i pissed myself and sat in my soils for hours. it has made me disgusted with myself for remembering and for forgetting at the same time, and the fact that my whole family knew for the longest time and dismissed it as something small that i won't even remember and leaving it to my poor mother who had to deal with my wounds and trauma and nightmares and screams and detachment... imagining your 5yo having utis constantly and having to explain the situation to doctors makes me scream and i am still so angry and fearfull. i don't know how people have children

the boy who did it kept reminding me any time i would encounter him later in life, we went to the same school for two years when i was 7-8 and he would leave notes for me. and therapists have encouraged me to forgive and recognise he was also a child dealing with his own trauma and he did have to change groups because of what he did but i the pride he displayed is something i can't forget and it makes me lose faith in people any time my brain recalls it.

huge part of it is how mind-blowingly poor my country was in 2000s. our kindergarten group was 50 people with 2 teachers changing shifts, the cook had to take care of kids. and i feel this was largely preventable and i hate my family for putting me in that situation. and this is the first time im saying it, but i do, i do hate them. worse happened to me in the years after which was also ignored and minimized. i will never feel clean i will never feel normal i ran away so far and cringe at the thought of going back home and facing these buildings, the backdrop of my abuse.

i agree with you, we have so normalised sexualising children in the balkans, to the point where adults don't recognise sexual abuse as such. i grew up wanting to be ugly, wanting to be undesirable, i would fall on purpose so my legs scar, and keep my arms and pits hairy, i hid my face under my hair and cried for days when they forcefully cut it. i was glad when i broke my nose and even when I chipped my tooth because it made my smile all crooked. my mum was not talking to me, and sadly proclaimed it made me ugly. and i know it did, i knew it undercut my value but was that really so bad?my dad had always commented on my looks so much and how fat my ass is and how undesirable i am but from him it felt different. i had to walk that line my whole life and am completely exhausted.

tbh, ive never said it all so firmly and coherently, i am just dropping it here because i know you will understand and pray for me in your own way, the same i do when i experience your writing. i feel like all concrete that we have to walk on in this wretched world is seeing each other. nothing is unknowable and noone is invisible. and only thing that has helped me in my life has been knowing and seeing others, and letting their pain mark my soul in a prayer.

hey anon <3 i published this bc i wanted to give an answer and i think it can b helpful and a little less lonely at times for other ppl to hear other ppls experiences, but pls send me a message and let me know if you want me to delete this and i will

im really sorry for all that u went through. its just horrible and i wish you hadnt and im sorry and i wish i could give you a hug, but thank u for opening up to me. i do very much get it. im glad my rambelings have been of some comfort, thats part of why i keep this blog as a public diary and im rather unfiltered, bc id hope ppl who have been through similar things would find some solace in knowing theyre not. alone w it.... i thought i was alone w a lot of things for a such a long time.. i didnt say anything about anything for such a long time. youre right, you said it well. the world is so often such a cruel and cold, vile deranged nightmare and i think one of the only things that really matters is caring about other people and not letting all the bullshit kill your soul...one of the only things thats kept me sane is knowing other people who fucking get it. i hope finally being able to write it out has been of some help. i will v much keep u in my prayers <3 and feel free to reach out or vent anytime

... and yes the povery is in general a rly big issue in a lot of this and issues related to it i feel. growing up at my kindergarten it wasnt quite as bad, but we had two teachers to watch... 40+ kids at least and things would often get out of hand and yea, with us the cook or other random facility would often have to watch us too. as the years went on the school had less money and it got worse. i remember during naptime there wouldnt b enough teachers to watch us or theyd just fuck off and not care so this group of mean,, particularly girls but some boys would literally step on us and jump on us and say mean shit etc etc. and i remember for so many years going to the bathroom as girls was just a nightmare - wed all go together bc going alone was too dangerous and when we tried some of us ended up w boys trying to barge into the stalls and pulling at our underwear and trying to get their hands in more than once and we got sick of it,, so some girls would always have to stay in the door and try to keep it shut bc boys were so vehement on barging in. gross af, and it was scary, even at that age they were like demons and sex pests, and the teachers that were there far from did a good job at keeping that shit under control.... and im really sorry again. any adult who does that sort of shit is just deranged - the sort who work around kids only to have access to them and feel power. if it makes you feel a lil better, in kindergarten there was this woman who was particularly,,, cold, who just would not let me go to the bathroom during naptime for what seemed like no other reason than her being a cruel controlling bitch - which, having a bad bladder and utis and never being able to fall asleep, and being afraid to go to the bathroom at a normal time bc of the boys, i almost always needed to. and she wouldn't let me and shed insult me and threathen to beat me if i asked, i think one time at least she did actually beat me, so id either spend that time trying not to go which really fucking hurt, or not being able to help it and having to deal w the aftermath. and of course shed get mad at me for that too. gross and frustrating and i really hated her

.... but yea. i think the poverty and things being normalized in the balkans and children being more vulnerable are connected. like to an extent its an education and poverty issue bc not only is it normalized in society but many ppl have no idea what the signs of sa on a kid are, so they dont know what to look out for even if they cared, and they're not educated on ,, basic child psychology. or theyre so overworked they dont have the time, or they emigrate to another country to work and leave their kids with extended family who also dont know.... even the huge trafficking issue we have. so much of that has to do w poverty and desperation and taking advantage of vulnerable poor kids and teens. even the teen pregnancy and high infant mortality rate we have,, lack of education, poverty, and the normalization of adult men sleeping w teenage girls.....most of the women in my family think 12-14 year old girls can consent to adult men its absolutely fucking wack, but i guess considering we had child marriages and bridal kidnappings barely any time ago, thats bound to b the case........ youre right. what you went through and what i went through could have absolutely been preventable if things werent so overcrowded and there was proper supervision and facilities and education around this sort of stuff

....

im sorry the adults near you failed to protect you, and im sorry your family failed to protect you. youre totally right to be angry and pissed off, i get why u blame them and hate them. it was indeed their responsability, and all they did was minimize and diminish your pain... im glad to hear your mother stuck up for you though... it really is painful. so many balkan adults seem to think they can do basically anything they want to children and it wont matter - like theyre some sort of toys or things or property idk - this idea that they're too young or its not that bad is so stupid when infact children are so much more impacted by things than adults are. you deserved better than them. and on the flip side it just. sucks to hear them defend this sort of behavior. i remember id complain abt boys being sex pests but it was always dismissed as Me not being nice to them or some stupid bullshit abt how thats how they show affection or theyre just stupid or theyre just cute or whatever, ive heard it all. it was maddening. in elementary school we had this boy in our class who was particularly bad. i think he must have been watching pornography already. hed make the grossest sexual comments twoards us, hed grope us, etc. i think it took like two bloody years for him to finally be switched out of the classroom, noone rly cared for the longest time and kept making excuses until finally my friends mom had enough .... it really is insane to think of the sheer amount of shit thats been normalized in the balkans. treating your kids like property, beating them, insulting them, sexualizing or groping or molesting them, letting other kids do that to them, letting adult men have relations w teenage girls??? - and if you speak out against any of it, youre in the wrong. seven fucking hells, for gods sake i keep just sitting around wondering what the hell is wrong with us

.. also thats also always a thought that drove me insane. i cant imagine having a child and finding out she went through the things i did. it already freaks me out to b around little kids bc i always just remember what i went through and hope to god theyre ok and safe... i think i would actually lose it and start killing. i have no damn idea how so many others can just b so careless abt a childs pain

and also.. you dont. have to forgive him... i think you have to forgive yourself, you know? even in this message - you didnt have the brains to protect yourself.. girl, you didnt need to have the brains to protect yourself, you didnt fail at protecting yourself and that's why this happened.... its not your fault. you were five for gods sake, dont put that on yourself please <3 ....personally ive never liked when therapists say shit like that. you and i have been molested and yet we havent molested any kids, so whats their fucking excuse, huh? for all the shit ive been through ive never taken it out on anyone like that, so whats theyre excuse? there isnt one.... and especially the shit w reminding you afterwords is just so cruel, its outright sadistic... i know what you mean abt recalling it and losing faith in humanity, its hard not to when youve seen some of its worst and cruelest and sickest sides.... it always makes me lose faith when its in partical kids being.. borderline fucking evil, like this shit, or the increse in boys raping younger girls. this species has an inclination twoards sadism and cruelty, and particularly men and boys seem to. its bone chilling and vile. but. but.... for all of the cruelty and depravity of humankind, there has most certainly been a moving level of empathy, care, and beauty, and i do think... most ppl.. want to be good and strive to b good. i think most people are born good idk

.... but many of us sure as fuck have seen a lot of the bad. i know it only helps so much to hear, because i know the skin crawling disgust that all this breeds. it feels like being fucking cursed or banded or marked or diseased or something, like something is just instrinsically wrong and unclean with you... i never feel like ill be some sort of near normal either. never have been and never will be - but i try to just live with that.. it is what it is. but.. youre no more disgusting, or gross, or dirty or pathetic than i am,.. you know? youre not. those things can only be said abt those who did this to you. im sorry it all turned out like this, but.. idk. im glad that it sounds like you're away from your family. i hope youre safe and in a better place where you can heal from all this. sorry i kinda rambeled on, but im sending you hugs and may some peace and rest from all this come your way soon <3

[thetaoofbetty]

anons under the cut:

okay i took a nap so my brain is at half capacity but here i go anyways

i just think it's weird to have them do tbh. because it's intentional. also, they're putting these scenes in an episode that everyone is describing as spooky? seems off to me.

that's wild tho because the writing is definitely not good and bughead has still gotten multiple major i love you moments (their first being only like 7 eps after they started dating?). they don't think it's odd that if they always planned this ship and their story that they wouldn't get sweeter moments like we did?

i got told i was selectively watching today (i laughed, i admit) but i'm not the one who ignored how they might have kissed one another but they sure didn't pick each other now did they?

i mean, i don't know what's going to happen with this episode but i will say that i don't think this season is the season i'd want my ships to get together in.

now if b/a reminds me of a less crazy hal and alice, does this mean i can still get a beronica long con ending? 👀 for real tho, if they want b/a to give off hal and alice vibes, i'm going to need the fp (3) of it all to show up earlier than expected, haha.

hey man, do you, doll. 💜

yeah, you'd think someone would have noticed that in high school, it was only ever used as drama for bughead (and varchie to a lesser extent) by now.

i think the focus on the childhood thing is weird af. not gonna lie, it comes off like a cop out for the show who refuses to give them content as adults. we know they said that they (b/j/a) were the three musketeers but they never relied on any of that for bughead.🤷‍♀️

the only emotional stakes that whole plot had (and was meant to have going by the fact that they didn't pick each other) was for bughead and varchie. the people who declared their love over that whole thing? was not betty and archie to each other.

they made it clear betty was ignoring things by sleeping with people in s5. every time she could have been vulnerable she chose not to. and when archie could have helped, he was shown talking about how it wasn't good. and segued into talking about veronica.

same tbh. do we really think that jughead wasn't emotionally shown at a certain point to get us to the book signing and aftermath?

it feels like convenience to me.

it feels like the show turned them all into their parents in a way (pls stop dressing betty like alice, it's a crime, i will be suing) and the ships they're in almost make sense for that. which should be a red flag to anyone but hey, there are still people who tell me consistently that the genre switch in the 6th season is totally normal and logical for a show who has always explained the weird away. so. there's that.

[egcdeath]

strangers again

summary: “hiiii sweetie!! can i request a steve x reader where he left yn for peggy. but he always felt guilty and missed yn. he would always stare at her pic. when he came back he bumped into yn while she was dropping a kid to daycare. and steve realized it was his son. kinda sad but fluff at the end pls!!!! and oh i super love your works!!! tysm 🌼🥺💕”

pairing: steve rogers x reader

warnings: decent angst, brief mention of a depressive episode, abandonment, somewhat unrealistic behavior

word count: 3.8k

author’s note:  i really hope that this lives up to your expectations but it is a little cheesy. i’d also like to warn that i have not interacted with a child in several years, so.. sorry. (there’s also a lot of exposition so double sorry if that’s not your thing!)

You’d never forget the moment Steve left to return the stones, with the promise to be back in only a matter of moments.

Maybe your definition of a matter of moments was different from his.

You seemed to be the only one without a clue of what Steve truly planned to do, with Bucky only telling you after the matter that Steve was leaving for the past and for Peggy, and probably not coming back.

After finding out, something deep within you broke. You could barely leave your bed for days, you struggled to eat, sleep, even drink water. Every task that used to seem like muscle memory, began to feel like it carried the weight of the world behind it. Every hobby that you once enjoyed becoming empty and bleak.

You constantly felt inadequate. How could you love someone so much, and be told you were loved so much while always being second to someone else?

The simple sentiment of it had left you feeling miserable, and sick to your stomach. Literally. Nearly every morning, and occasionally if you smelled something too strong, you found the contents of your stomach emptied.

You attempted to ignore it at first. Meshed with every other unpleasant symptom you were going through, you’d figured that it was just one more bullet point on the list of things that had been plaguing you. But when your friends insisted that you go check up with your doctor, you had a hard time saying no.

Once you received the results from your blood test, you were completely taken aback by the fact that you were pregnant. You couldn't believe that you hadn’t considered the possibility of pregnancy earlier.

Yet,  after a long and hard period of pondering, you managed to surprise yourself once again after you realized you wanted to keep it.

After all, that could be the only piece of Steve you had left.

----

You began to tell yourself that Steve was dead. That was somehow less painful than the idea that he left you for someone that he barely knew, yet had fallen so hard for nearly 70 years ago. You refused to let yourself fall for anyone else romantically, now that you were aware that anyone had the capacity to leave you at any time, no matter how deep you perceived your relationship to be.

You guarded your heart, and made sure to only let in those that you knew you could trust for a fact. For the remainder of your pregnancy, only your closest family members and friends stood by your side.

About 8 months later, you brought a small, but healthy infant into the world. From that moment on, you promised yourself to become the best version of yourself that you could be. No dwelling on the past, and no yearning for what could’ve been. Your only duty now was to provide the best life possible for your offspring.

So you did.

----

You stood in the kitchen, peeling an orange for your son before he bounded into the room. You turned and gave him a big grin, and he grinned back to you.

“Did you get dressed all by yourself?” You asked him excitedly, receiving a nod in return before he ran up to your leg, and hugged it.

“I did, Mommy!” He looked up at you with his soulful eyes, and you couldn’t help but to feel bombarded with emotion.

Even at the tender age of five, Grant seemed to become a bit more like his father every day. The shape of his eyes, the slope of his nose, the sound of his giggle. To the average onlooker, he came across as the same as any other child, but to you, your son was the splitting image of Steve.

“Good work, little man. Now go sit at the table so mommy can finish breakfast, okay?” He didn’t even bother confirming with you before more or less sprinting to the table. You couldn’t help but to ask yourself if your son had obtained all of that energy and speed from his father as well.

Breakfast was over almost as soon as it started, and before you knew it, you were warming up your car after you’d assisted Grant with brushing his teeth.

You were in an oddly nostalgic mood that day, playing music from a time period before you’d even imagined bringing another life into the world. You glanced up at the rearview mirror and watched your son happily bop his head to the beat. You thought in passing about how much of a gift he truly was.

After arriving at his school, you hopped out of the car and over to the furthest seat in the back, where he’d insisted on sitting that day.

“You ready, big guy?” You questioned while reaching out to grab him from the car seat.

“Born ready,” he agreed. You chuckled and shook your head fondly at that while getting him out of the car.

“Who taught you that?”

Grant shrugged, “I came up with it myself.”

“I’m sure. Can you hold my hand while we’re out please?” You reached out for him, and he gladly obliged.

You soon became distracted by a large man across the street, his built figure and light blonde hair making you recall the father of your child. You gave Grant’s hand a light squeeze and continued to approach the door, not being able to help yourself, and glancing over at the man one last time.

Except this time was different. Your eyes locked with the blonde man outside of the coffee shop across the street unexpectedly. Where you once thought casually to yourself that it looked like Steve, you now had confirmation that it was in fact the man who you’d fallen in love with, and found yourself pregnant by.

You audibly gasped, receiving a bit of a questioning look from your child. Your heart dropped as a metric ton of emotions hit you all at once, anger, sadness, confusion. Everything you told yourself you needed to repress, had suddenly come back to you all at once.

Even from a distance, you swore you could see his eyes flit from you to Grant, and the next thing you knew, he was approaching your direction. Looking for an easy out, and a distraction from your rather observant child, you quickly caused a misdirection.

“Grant, is that Stacey over on the playground? You should totally go show her that new version of tag that you were telling me about!”

Your son, ever the speedster, booked it towards the playground, and you let out a sigh of relief. Although, the relief didn’t last long, as just moments later, Steve was almost all the way up to you. As you turned to try to escape, you felt a hand on your arm.

“Y/N?” He asked, almost timidly.

You weren’t even sure what to say. In fact, you didn’t feel like you had control of your own body at this point. “Steve? I-“ You ran a hand through your hair and bit the inside of your lip. “You need to go.” The pain that was rushing through you was too much for you to bare, especially considering the man who caused the hurt had suddenly decided to reappear in your life after giving you a world of self doubt and abandonment issues.

Steve seemed hurt by your statement, but you weren’t sure how much longer you could stand to even look at his face. “Please, Y/N, let me explain,” he begged.

“No, Steve. You don’t get that luxury. You left me for someone else, and I guess you got to live a nice, long life with her. You don’t get to just show back up in my life when you get bored, okay? I can’t afford to play those types of games anymore. Now if you’d let me go-“ You attempted to get to your car, but Steve side stepped you.

“It wasn’t like that. You know it isn’t like that.”

“Just fucking leave! You have no idea what this has all been like for me. You had your opportunity to leave, and you gladly took it. Stay the fuck out of my life, and the hell away from my son.” You grabbed the handle of your car door and got in, reeling as you watched a dejected Steve walk away.

Your heart pounded in your chest as you rested your head against the steering wheel. You were feeling way too many emotions to pinpoint exactly how you felt, but you knew that this couldn’t be good.

——

You put a brave face on for your son that day, picking him up from school in a daze, and only half listening to whatever it was that he was telling you.

You felt bad for only being able to nod along to whatever he was saying, and did he just ask you if he could get a dog? Did you just say yes?

You felt like a stranger watching yourself from the outside in. The ghost of the person you’d developed into over the years watching the past version of yourself slip right back into your body, and take over your daily routine through the next few days of your life.

You had an obscene amount of anger that soon dissolved into a deep sadness, and that sadness shorty developed into a morbid curiosity.

You spent an unreasonable, and certainly unhealthy amount of time searching your old lover’s name on tabloid websites and social media, just to see if he’d given a statement on his whereabouts, or a statement about anything at all.

After about day three of your minor internet stalking, you’d had an epiphany while sitting in your office.

You still have Steve’s number saved on your phone.

That was, of course, if it hadn’t changed between now and the years that he’d been off living in the past.

Something about knowing that you were just one text away from him made your heart race with a mixture of nerves and interest. Just one impulsive decision, and you could change the whole trajectory of the rest of your life.

If you got back in contact with Steve, you might not ever be willing to leave him. You refused to make that mistake again.

Until you did.

After reading Grant his nightly bedtime story, then wrapping him tightly in his little bed, you’d decided to treat yourself to a glass of Chardonnay.

It’d been a weird past couple of days. Your time traveling ex had randomly appeared back into your life, your coworkers seemed to get on your nerves a little more every moment you were around them, and Grant had a temper tantrum in the grocery store that afternoon over a chocolate bar, which gained judging stares from customers, and may have made you feel the slightest bit inadequate.

At least that’s what you told yourself as you filled your glass again, because two glasses can’t hurt, and again, since I kinda deserve this extra one, don’t I? The next thing you knew, the bottle was empty, and you were texting Steve for the first time in years.

Y: Is this Steve?

You watched as three white dots hovered on your screen for a moment, disappeared, then came back once again.

S: Is this Y/N?

Y: Yes.

Y: We should tlak

Y: *talk

S: I agree.

Y: So lets

Y: talk

S: I don’t think this is a conversation for texts.

Y: Then call me???????????????????

S: We should talk in person.

Y: Im not gonna do that sober

S: You’re not sober?

Y: do you think id text u sober u big fuckni asshole

S: I guess you’re right

S: So are we gonna talk?

Y: no ur gonna meet me at b cup cafe tomorrow at 10

S: AM or PM?

Y: AM I’m off

S: Are you sure you want to do this?

Y: Say yes before i change my mind

S: I’ll see you there

Y: Bye babydaddy

S: ????

You promptly deleted the messages, tossed your phone somewhere on the sofa, and sunk into the seat. Even in your not-completely-sober state, you already felt the all too familiar sense regret. You dragged the blanket that hung over the top of the sofa over your exhausted body, and closed your eyes, wishing that this was somehow all a dream.

----

It was not all just a dream.

You woke up with dried drool on your chin, and a deep pit of bad feelings and regret in your chest. Of course, you ignored the bad feelings and got ready, business as usual. You successfully dropped Grant off at school with little complications, and found yourself perking up a bit more.

Yet, something still felt slightly off. You reached into the passenger seat for your phone, and as you looked down on it, saw the familiar notification of a calendar event.  

10:00 AM b cup coff w Steeb

You groaned out loud at this. There was no obligation for you to go meet with him, but perhaps going and talking to Steve would bring you some sort of closure. Maybe then you could move on with your life, get with a nice guy who would mean it when he tells you he won't leave you, who loves Grant like he’s his own biological offspring, and to take care of the both of you through thick and thin.

You gladly daydreamed of this fantasy man while driving to the shop, but you couldn’t help but to see Steve’s face doing all of the aforementioned things. Before you even fell pregnant, that’s what you’d truly wanted with Steve. To be a family. To have your definition of home be with your people, rather than a place.

Entering the coffee shop, you briefly ordered your drink before looking around and find Steve sitting alone in a booth, mindlessly stirring around the liquid in his cup.

Timidly, you approached the booth, before setting your purse down and sitting across from him.

“You... you came?” He looked up to you with almost watery eyes.

“Of course I did,” you tried to hold yourself back from mentioning something about following through on your word. You wanted this to be as civil as possible. To build bridges rather than burn them.

“I just didn’t expect to see you in person again. And, you know, you were running a little late,” he added.

“Well, you try waking a five year old up and getting him ready for school every day,” you expelled a humorless chuckle to deflect from the slight agitation you were feeling.

“While you’re hungover?” Steve asked with a bit of a smirk, trying to lighten up the mood.

“While you’re hungover,” You confirmed, genuinely laughing now. It felt good, natural even. You’d kind of forgotten just how pleasant things used to be with Steve.

“Did you mean it last night?” he interrupted the laughter with a serious look.

“I honestly cannot remember anything I said last night. Elaborate, please?”

“That he’s mine. Your son.” He watched you silently nod, then began to speak again, “Wow, I just didn’t realize… How did that happen?” He looked down into his drink nervously.

“Well, it’s kind of hard to recall the exact details, but when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much...” You trailed off, and looked up as a barista called a butchered version of your name.

You were glad to have an excuse to get up and leave for a moment. Adrenaline was racing through your body, and you weren’t sure how much longer you could keep your composure before you erupted into tears, or had some sort of angry outburst.

Bringing your cup back to the booth, you sat down and took a sip of the scalding drink, “Where did we leave off?”

“I believe you were giving me the birds and the bees?”

“Right! Well, I think you know the rest. I’ll tell you more about Grant later. Right now, I want to know why you left and suddenly decided to come back.” You genuinely felt proud of your delivery. This was the moment you’d practiced in front of the mirror for years, and you didn’t even butcher it.

Steve shook his head and looked into his drink once again. It was so hard to look at you, let alone make eye contact with you, when he knew that he’d been the one to give you an ocean of grief. Yet, he was somewhat intrigued by hearing that his son’s name was his middle name.  

“It’s kind of a long story,” Steve began.

“Good thing we have time,” you crossed your arms as you spoke.

“Well, waking up in a whole new time period isn’t exactly the easiest thing ever. You and me both know I missed it there, and it’s always been more than just nostalgia for me. I truly believed that I belonged back there.”

Of course, you had an idea of this, but hearing Steve confirm what you’d already thought made your insides twist.

“But I was so wrong. More than anything, I guess I was in love with a romanticized version of the past. Of Peggy.”

Hearing her name, especially from Steve, made you bristle. You wanted to interrupt him at this point, but it wouldn’t do you or him any good to become hostile while he explained himself.

“By the time I realized, it was too late. I figured you’d already moved on and found someone else to take care of you, and the world, this world, didn’t really need me anymore. But something possessed me to come back.”

“So you’re telling me that if you stopped being an idiot that just assumes things, we could’ve worked this out before? That you could’ve been an active participant in your son’s life?”

“I guess that’s a good way to interpret that story. I know I haven’t been in his life, but is there any way that I can still meet him?” Steve asked hopefully.

“Yeah, of course. He’s just like,” you sighed a bit to yourself. “He’s like a carbon copy of you. Especially his personality, but like, down to his mannerisms. I always struggled to understand how he could be so much like his dad, and never even had met him. You’ll love him.”

“Even if I didn't like him, I’d still love him.”

“How do you still manage to be such a cheeseball all the damn time? You think you’d be able to make it to dinner tonight?”

----

At exactly 6:30 on the dot, your doorbell rang, and before you even had the chance to think about opening it, Grant already was at the door, and opening it. You cringed on the inside, and made a mental note to have another conversation about stranger danger with him.

“Do I know you? Who are you?” you heard your child question from the other room as you set down the last of the plates in your dining room.  

“I’m Steve, your mom’s friend... and…” Steve nearly spilled the beans to his son, but didn’t want to cause any more damage than he’d already done. “Her friend.”

“That’s so cool! I have friends too, like Nick, and Stacey, and,” you’d rushed up to the door and wiped your brow, internally hoping that you hadn’t just smudged the makeup you’d put on for the occasion.

“Hi, Steve, come on in,” You beckoned him in, and pulled Grant to the side, quietly scolding him before leading Steve into the dining room. “Grant! This is the last time I’m telling you about opening doors, okay?” He nodded obediently, then followed you and Steve.

“Can I sit next to your friend, Mommy?”

“Is that alright with you, Steve?”

“More than fine.”

Grant sat down next to him, and scooted a bit closer than necessary, while you sat across from the two of them.

“I have to in… enter a gate you now. Because Mommy never brings any over her friends over. I didn’t know she had any friends.”

You blushed a bit at this, at your son’s overdramatic behavior, and his admission that you’d become a bit of a loner.

“Go ahead, pal,” Steve chuckled heartily.

“When did you meet my mom?”

“Before you were even born.”

“Wow! That’s a long time. You’re really old. What’s your favorite dinosaur?”

“I’ve heard T-Rexes are pretty cool.”

“Have you met any?”

You nearly spat out your drink at this. If only your son had known.

“Nope, never. Have you?”

“Hmm, not yet. But they’re my favorite dino too. Now your ‘gating is over.”

You couldn’t help but to burst out into laughter at the bizarre exchange, but you were glad that your son and Steve were getting along so well.

The rest of dinner went pretty similarly, with Grant bantering with Steve, and Steve indulging him. You could tell that the relationship between the two of them was something that came both naturally and easily. You couldn’t help but to grin as Grant began to ramble about how cool Steve was, and how he swore he was better friends with Steve than you were.

“Mommy, isn’t Steve the best? You guys should totally get married so he can have dinner with us every day!” he swooned. “He even kinda looks like me, right?!”

That’s why you couldn’t help what came out of your mouth next.

“Grant, Steve is… He’s your dad,” you said quietly.

Grant nodded, then slurped up a noodle, “That’s why he’s so cool! He gets it from me, right Mom?”

“That sounds right to me,” You glanced up at Steve, and noticed his surprised expression. You mouthed something along the lines to ‘He’ll process it later,’ and waved a dismissive hand, before going in for another bite of food.

----

After putting Grant to bed, You and Steve stood at your kitchen sink, bumping elbows occasionally as the two of you silently worked together to wash and dry dishes.

The domesticity and familiarity of the action brought you an obscene amount of comfort. You remembered how you once believed that this is what your future would look like. Your thoughts were interrupted by Steve beginning to talk.

“Doesn’t this remind you of life after the first snap?” He asked, breaking the silence.

“Kind of. You’re not off the hook yet, by the way. You still have plenty of explaining and proving you’ve changed to do.” You set the last cup in the cupboard, then dried your hands off.

“I know, I know,” Steve began.

“We don’t even know if you’re ready for fatherhood. But right now, I kinda don’t care. I really just want you to kiss me.” You reached up to Steve’s cheek, and he pulled you in for a soft and chaste kiss.

You’d never felt more at home.

——

me with this fic:

[worldwidemochiguy]

Sweets (Soft Yandere! Jungkook)

You keep being visited by the most peculiar thief…

➵ in which jungkook steals your lip balm and perfume instead of talking to you, you leave a post-it note with your number on it for the strange thief who only seems to take the most inexplicable items and has a strange sense of responsibility for your wellbeing, and the cute boy in your photography class with the fluffy hair and the oversized sweater keeps getting more and more endearing…

➵ Warnings: Soft Yandere Jungkook, Breaking & Entering but without the Breaking, Reader is a bit of a ditz (lol sorry guys) 

➵ Word Count: 4.2K

➵ Masterlist

“Hello, uh, I’d like to… report a crime?” 

Your statement, which had always sounded suitably firm and assertive when you practised it in front of the bathroom mirror, ended with an unplanned upturn, making it sound more like a question than you would like. 

“Please state your name and address, ma’am.”

You did so, listening anxiously to the tap of a keyboard as your information was filed away. The undoubtedly over-worked police officer on the other end of the line sounded like he was two seconds from falling asleep, and you questioned yourself for the millionth time over whether you really needed to report this or not.

“What is the nature of the crime you are reporting, ma’am?”

“Um… well…” 

You twisted your hand into the fabric of your shirt self-consciously, trying to decide the best way to explain the strange little occurrences that had been surrounding your apartment over the last few months. You had not yet found a way to put it without sounding ridiculous, but you supposed there was a first time for everything. 

“I, uh, I think someone’s breaking into my apartment and stealing things.”

“You have an intruder?”

“Uh huh,”

“…Are they currently in your residence?”

“No, I think… they come and take things when I’m not here and then they’re gone by the time I get back.” 

“What items have been stolen?”

You bit your lip. 

“I know it sounds silly, but…”

“No crime is too small to report, ma’am. We are committed to making the lives of everyday citizens safer.”

“Well… they’ve stolen my lip balm like… several times. I keep buying new ones and they keep being stolen after a week or so. And my perfume. And my hairbrush one time, and-”

“Ma’am,” The officer cut you off with the impatience you had been both anticipating and dreading ever since you decided to call the police, “Listen, we don’t have the capacity to deal with prank callers-”

“It’s not a prank call!” You blurted, a momentary burst of desperation overtaking you, “I- um, sorry for interrupting, officer, but this isn’t a prank call. Things have been going missing. I can’t afford to keep replacing my lip balm.” 

A sigh crackled across the line, and you pictured the officer maybe taking off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose like those people in movies always seemed to do when they got frustrated. Personally, you had never found that it helped. 

“Are you sure you aren’t just… misplacing them?”

You gasped, offended that even a stranger could think you so stupid. “No! I remember exactly where I leave things and then they just vanish! I swear!”

“Has anything of value ever been taken from your apartment?”

“Yes!” You exclaimed, excited to be able to prove the officer wrong, “My bunny plushy! Mr Snuggles is extremely valuable to me!”

“…Monetary value, I meant. Has anything expensive ever been taken from your apartment?” 

There was an embarrassing silence. The officer sighed again, with a little more exasperation colouring his tone. 

“If anything significant is stolen, call us back. For now, just… be a bit more careful with your possessions.” 

He hung up. You pressed your forehead against the wall and wished your strange thief had taken your phone in one of his little visits. Maybe then you would’ve avoided making that agonising call. 

The next morning as you were leaving to go to class, you noticed a pile of discarded post-it notes on your desk — the remnants of a redbull-fuelled late night study session. Your newly purchased lip balm lay next to it. Impulsively, you grabbed a pen and scrawled a message on one of the post-its, sticking it horizontally to the curved surface of the lip balm tube. 

it reads: 

pls don’t take this i just bought it and this brand is actually v expensive and i am only a struggling college student with loans and chapped lips (。•́︿•̀。)

It might have been a little too polite considering it’s intended recipient was someone who had stolen multiple items from your apartment, but you figured there was no point in being rude. They probably wouldn’t even read it anyway. 

You strolled out of your apartment, planning to pick up a smoothie on the way to your lecture, and promptly forgot all about it.

 When you returned home to find a pile of newly bought lip balms on your desk — all embossed with the logo of your favourite brand — you were slightly puzzled. But, once you remembered the note you had left- well, the confusion didn’t exactly vanish, but at least you were given some context. 

The note had disappeared, along with the lip balm you had used a scant few times. But, you didn’t understand what the thief’s aim was. Why on earth would they steal small things like lip balm and perfume? And why would they buy you new copies of the product? Wasn’t that counterproductive?

you’re very bad at your job

Your next note read, stuck to your fridge as you left to grab coffee with your study group. It remained there for a few days, and you couldn’t ignore the way your heart sank a little each time you saw it hadn’t been taken. 

After six days, when it finally vanished, you felt an odd sense of happiness bubble up within you. Yes, there was someone routinely breaking into your apartment, but at least now you had an open channel of communication with them. They had left a brand new bottle of your preferred perfume — which had been stolen at least twice before you stopped bothering to buy it because perfume is pricy — resting on your kitchen counter, beside a box of your favourite chocolates. 

As you dug into the box later, snuggled in a blanket and having a Studio Ghibli film marathon, you didn’t even consider the fact that the sweets might be tampered with. If they wanted to kill me, they would’ve killed me already, you reasoned to yourself, sucking the icing sugar off your fingers. Nor did you question how they knew your favourite chocolate. If they broke into your apartment as much as you assumed they did, they probably knew you better than your own parents by now. 

You were the very definition of a broke college student. As far as you were concerned, if this random stranger wanted to buy you things and sometimes clean up your apartment — you had definitely come back to a home tidier than you had left it more than once — then you certainly weren’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it was a little naïve of you, but… you had already called the police, and they hadn’t cared.

thank you for the perfume and chocolate <3

You wrote next morning, hesitating slightly before putting the heart. Before you could convince yourself not to, you scribbled another line underneath. 

i wish you’d write back someday…

As you walked to class, you scolded yourself for the butterflies swooping in your stomach. They’re literally a criminal, you told yourself, Stop getting crushes on anyone who shows you the slightest bit of attention. You don’t even know their name. 

Despite the small amount of common sense that you did have mocking you all day, you sat in classes and daydreamed about your mystery home intruder. Would they read the note? Would they be happy about your appreciation? Would they — you bit your lip — would they write back? 

You felt like a dumb schoolgirl, excited by the prospect of a badly written love note shoved in her locker. And, like a school girl, you trudged back home with your arms weighed down by class work, a billion essays and quizzes that had to be completed overnight. Did your professors not realise you had a life outside of college? Not that you did, of course, but like… in principle. 

You were so preoccupied with the coursework that you didn’t even notice the note stuck to your bedroom door. After an hour of studying, you rose wearily to start fixing yourself something to eat, and your eyes snagged on a flash of yellow. 

You squeaked, almost falling over yourself in your rush to get to the door and read the note. 

i’m glad you liked them. i’m sorry i took your things, that was mean of me. i tried to only take things you wouldn’t miss, but i guess that backfired… i just wanted to feel close to you. and these notes… are the closest i’ve ever been. i know that must sound weird, but… well. i’m a weird guy, i guess. i just liked hearing from you. that’s all. 

~ koo <3

You didn’t stop freaking out for a full five minutes. After that, you poured over every detail of the letter, eager to extricate any fragment of knowledge possible. You ended up with a list which you scribbled down in your diary, above which you pasted the note. 

The list went as follows:

They want to feel close to you

They have not talked to you before, since the notes are the closest they’ve ever been, but they must have seen you in person at least once 

They are a he 

(you adamantly did not get flustered about that)

and

     4. He calls himself Koo

When you left your apartment the next morning, you placed your note on the exact same spot he had left his. An indirect touch. 

hi koo !!!!!!!!

i was so excited to see you had written something!! you know, if you want to talk to me more often, there is an easier way…

Underneath you had scrawled your phone number, hastily and not allowing for regret before you flounced out of the apartment. The reason why you were in such a rush was because you were about to go to your favourite class: Photography 101. 

You had taken it as an extra credit, something that interested you but not enough that you wanted to pursue it as a career. You had expected it to be fun, something artistic to break up the monotony of classes. What you had not expected was the dreamy boy who sat in the first row and had full possession of your heart. 

You didn’t even know his name, but you were pretty sure you were half in love with him. With fluffy brown hair that fell over his forehead whenever he leaned over to scribble down notes, and cute bunny teeth that stuck out in a flustered smile whenever the professor praised his work in class, he was perhaps the cutest boy you had ever seen. 

Though you were sure he had many girls sighing after him, he seemed to be really shy, only ever speaking in class when called on, and even then it was in a quiet, soft voice. He was kind of like you in that respect. But that was where your similarities ended. 

Yes, you thought, sighing as you watched him pay avid attention to the professor’s lecture on the composition of frames, his cute doe eyes wide and twinkling like stars were embedded in the pupils, He is way out of my league. 

It took three days for you to lose hope. You hadn’t received a text, nor had you found any notes left for you. You tried not to be disappointed, even as your traitorous sub-conscience mocked you for being able to scare away the one person who arguably paid you the most attention. 

You didn’t really have many friends, and the ones you did have preferred each other over you, and often left you out of activities because of your shy nature. You guessed this whole thing had just been a way to feel like you actually mattered to someone, like, for once, someone cared about you, but-

You were pulled out of your musings as your phone chimed. 

From: Unknown Number

[6:48 PM]

hi

this is koo

The two of you texted every day, and soon enough you were hiding your phone underneath your desk in order to chat to him, keeping your phone on your person at all times in case koo wanted to talk. Of course, the only class you didn’t do this in was Photography, so you could spend a blissful forty-five minutes staring at the boy who played the role of your husband in all of your favourite daydreams. 

Koo still broke into your house occasionally, and he still left you sweet, considerate gifts. Often, you would receive texts like this:

From: koo ✨

[3:24 PM]

sweets i’ve been checking your groceries and your vegetables are not being eaten as often as they should be 

i know you have a sweet tooth and that’s cute but please try to stay healthy

To: koo ✨

[3:25 PM]

but i can’t cook all i know how to make is microwaveable mac n cheese :///////

You came back home that day to discover a bunch of Tupperwares full of pre-made healthy meals and a note stuck to the top of them. 

try microwaving these :)

To: koo ✨

[3:01 AM]

koo are you awake?

From: koo ✨

[3:01 AM]

i am now

what’s wrong?

To: koo ✨

[3:02 AM]

i can’t sleep :////////

From: koo ✨

[3:02 AM]

sweets you need to go to bed

you have an early morning class

To: koo ✨

[3:02 AM]

i knowwwwww

i just… i can’t sleep without mr snuggles :((

From: koo ✨

[3:03 AM]

Mr Snuggles??

???

To: koo ✨

[3:03 AM]

my cuddly bunny :((((

i think you took him a while ago

could i maybe have him back…?

From: koo ✨

[3:03 AM]

Shit

i didn’t know you couldn’t sleep without him 

[3:04 AM]

sweets im so sorry

To: koo ✨

[3:04 AM]

its okay koo

From: koo ✨

[3:04 AM]

no it isn’t

you’re loosing sleep because of me

fuck

i could… bring him to you?

To: koo ✨

[3:05 AM]

you’d do that?

…i could see you?

From: koo ✨

[3:05 AM]

no i’d leave him outside

you’d have to promise not to come out until i text you saying i’ve left

To: koo ✨

[3:06 AM]

but kooooo :(((((

From: koo ✨

[3:07 AM]

sweets 

To: koo ✨

[3:07 AM]

okay :((((((((((

but i expect you to leave a big box of chocolates on my pillow for me to come home to tomorrow evening!!

From: koo ✨

[3:08 AM]

of course sweets <3

im gonna get going now

don’t look outside your apartment

To: koo ✨

[3:08 AM]

okay

From: koo ✨

[3:34 AM]

im gone and mr snuggles is waiting outside for you

he might have a little gift with him

You trudged outside your apartment, rubbing your eyes blearily, and looked down to see your beloved plushie clutching a single rose in its paws. You gasped, leaning down to pick up the flower gently, and you noticed all the thorns had been taken off. Koo must’ve removed them so that you didn’t accidentally hurt yourself. 

You felt warmth flood you, drowning the butterflies in your stomach and replacing them with something much less fleeting, much less shallow. 

It sunk into your bones, into your heart, into your breath as you sighed, squeezing your long-lost Mr Snuggles close to your face. He carried the familiar scent of nostalgia, but also something different, something sharper. You realised with a jolt that you were smelling Koo’s cologne. 

You went back to bed, nuzzled your face into the plushy’s furry belly, and dreamed of fluffy brown hair and bunny smiles. 

Though with Mr Snuggles’ help you were able to sleep wonderfully, you were only able to do so for four hours before your alarm jolted you back into early reality. Honestly, you were sorely tempted to just ditch class, but it was Photography, and if you missed your regular dose of the cute boy in the front row then you thought you might just crumble into dust. 

You dragged yourself out of bed, pulling on your softest oversized hoodie — a gift from Koo which, now that you thought about it, smelled like the same cologne that Mr Snuggles did. You flushed at the thought of him giving you one of his hoodies to wear, though you couldn’t say exactly why that image charmed you. 

You stumbled into the lecture, arms full of textbooks because you knew you wouldn’t have the energy to return back to your apartment to retrieve the relevant materials for your next class later in the day. Your excellent plan was to crash in the library directly after this, have a two hour power-nap, and then make yourself get up in time for Calculus. 

You barely had the energy to listen to the professor droning on and on about… the perfect lense, or whatever. You allowed yourself the indulgence of tuning out, resting your chin on your palm and gazing dreamily at the boy in the front row. He was taking notes, as per usual. What a good student! You praised him in your head. I bet he has the best handwriting. 

Despite your best efforts, you fell asleep within ten minutes. You were woken as the class concluded by the clamour of students grabbing their materials and the scrape of chairs as your classmates stood up, leaving you behind — the only one half-splayed across the desk in front of you. 

You jerked upright, grabbing your stuff in one hand as you tried to tug on your bag, eventually succeeding with much struggle, only to drop it all again as soon as you stood up. You whimpered, watching helplessly as your textbooks fanned across the floor. You saw one of them split along the spine as it landed on an open page. 

That cost me two hundred dollars, you thought absently, and I just chucked it down like a bouncy ball.  

Suddenly, you glimpsed someone crouching down and gathering them all up into a sturdy pile. As he stood up, your vision was full of fluffy brown hair, errant strands falling into star-filled doe eyes. 

Oh. Oh no. 

“H-Here you are,” He murmured, passing you the pile gently, making sure you were able to take the weight before leaving them in your arms. When he leaned close to you, you breathed in a scent that was oddly familiar, and yet new at the same time. As his hands receded, his skin brushed against yours for a second and you swear your vision blanked out. 

“Thanks,” You whispered, your gaze so firmly focused on the floor that you didn’t notice his flushed cheeks. 

As soon as you got to the library, you whipped out your phone, all tiredness banished from your system by that momentous experience. You had talked to him. 

To: koo ✨

[8:47 AM]

koo i think im in love

From: koo ✨

[8:47 AM]

what

with who

To: koo ✨

[8:47 AM]

this boy in my photography class 

he’s just so- 

[8:48 AM]

i can’t even explain it

i dropped my textbooks and he picked them up for me and i stg i almost cried

From: koo ✨

[8:48 AM]

wait

seriously??

To: koo ✨

[8:49 AM]

yeah i cry at like the drop of a hat 

From: koo ✨

[8:49 AM]

no-

cute 

but i mean

that’s who you’re in love with?

To: koo ✨

[8:49 AM]

yeah?

From: koo ✨

[8:49 AM]

gray sweater

[8:50 AM]

big eyes

tall-ish

that’s him???

To: koo ✨

[8:50 AM]

OMG YOU’RE IN MY PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS AREN’T YOU

From: koo ✨

[8:50 AM]

WHAT

NO

IM NOT

To: koo ✨

[8:50 AM]

OMGGGGGGG

YOU SAW HIM HELP ME SO YOU MUST BE IN MY CLASSSS

[8:51]

okay!

are you the frat guy who always comes in hungover???

no judgement

From: koo ✨

[8:51 AM]

NO

To: koo ✨

[8:52 AM]

are you the guy who only ever wears knitwear???

From: koo ✨

[8:52 AM]

NO

To: koo ✨

[8:53 AM]

…are you the professor?

From: koo ✨

[8:53 AM]

NO!!!!!

oh my god lets just meet up or something before i explode

To: koo ✨

[8:53 AM]

WAIT

ARE YOU SERIOUS????

From: koo ✨

[8:54 AM]

…you’re that excited to meet me?

To: koo ✨

[8:54 AM]

OF COURSE I AM

OH MY GODDDD

WHEN?

From: koo ✨

[8:54 AM]

now?

i can meet you at the campus coffee shop in like five minutes?

To: koo ✨

[8:55 AM]

five minutes???

that’s not enough time koo i have to go home and pick out something pretty to wear !!

From: koo ✨

[8:55 AM]

it doesn’t matter what you wear, you’re always beautiful to me

To: koo ✨

[8:56 AM]

you

you think im

b-beautiful 

: ’ ))))))))))

From: koo ✨

[8:57 AM]

…

haha see you there!! 

To: koo ✨

[8:57 AM]

GET BACK HERE WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THIS-

You sat on an empty table, fiddling with the tea bag tag which hung over the side of your mug. You had bought Green Tea as an effort to calm yourself down so you weren’t too anxious to meet Koo, but it hadn’t worked because you were impatient and sipped it too soon so now you were sat there nursing a burnt tongue like an idiot. 

You knew it was irrational to be self-conscious. He already knew who you were, and seemed to like you, it was just you that was in the dark. You went over the possible people Koo could be, mentally cycling through the boys in your photography class. It was an annoyingly large class, which meant he would be anyone from the guy who smelled like Funyuns to-

Fluffy-haired boy strolled into the coffee shop and you let out an involuntary sigh. He seemed to be cheerful, a smile exposing his bunny teeth and making his cheeks bunch up adorably, with like,  five different sets of dimples poked into them. You had never agreed more with the saying that dimples were caused by an angel’s kiss. 

Well, at least I’ll have something nice to look at while I wait, you thought, just before all your thoughts suddenly tipped out of your head when you realised he was walking towards your table. 

“Is this seat taken?” He grinned, before sliding into the seat across from you. 

You whimpered, and his smile grew devastatingly wider.

“Hi,” He breathed, before his gaze flickered down to your mug of tea, clutched so tightly in your hands that you worried the ceramic might shatter. “You didn’t get hot chocolate? I thought you had a sweet tooth?”

“Uhm-” You choked, before forcing yourself to get a grip. How would Koo feel if he walked in here and saw you sitting with another guy? “I’m actually- I’m waiting for someone. Sorry.”

If it was possible — and it certainly seemed to be — the boy’s grin broadened even more, his eyes crinkling into adorable half-moons.

“Is that so? Is he your boyfriend?”

“No!” You blurted, before flushing profusely. The boy across from you seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the display. “I mean- uhm, I don’t know. Maybe? This is our- this is our first actual meeting.”

“Oh?” The boy tilted his head, “Really? How exciting.”

You hummed in agreement, eyes fixed on your slowly cooling beverage. You raised it to your mouth to take a hesitant sip and- nope,  still too hot. You whined quietly, rubbing your sore tongue against the inside of your cheek to try and soothe it. 

“Oh, sweets,” The boy murmured across from you, and you were too distracted to notice the nickname. He plucked the mug out of your hands and placed it on the other side of the table, as if he was trying to make sure it couldn’t hurt you anymore. “Are you okay? Do you want me to take you to the campus infirmary?”

“Wha- no, it’s okay,” You mumbled, lisping slightly on your burnt tongue and blushing when he cooed over you, “It’s- I’m waiting here for someone, and- I mean, I don’t even know your name-”

“It’s Jungkook,” He interrupted cheekily, deliberately ignoring the rest of your statement, “Some people call me Kookie, and really special people call me… Koo.” 

Oh. Oh.

Fuck.

“Really special people?” You asked, your voice small, and not because of the burn. 

“Well, people…” Jungkook- Koo paraphrased, tilting his head slightly, “I guess it would be more accurate to say… one really special person.”

“Really?” You breathed, and Jungkook leaned over the table, close enough that you could smell his cologne, the same scent embedded in the fabric of your hoodie- his hoodie. 

“The most special person.” He murmured, the fervent emotion packed in each word speaking louder than any increase of volume could.

You had never been anyone’s most special person before, but, as you looked into Jungkook’s chocolate eyes, you started to believe you could almost taste it, sticky sweet on your lips. And when Jungkook eventually, finally coaxed your lips in a gentle kiss, you let him in, and found out that happiness tastes reassuringly honey-sweet. 

[stevesharrlngtons]

28 with Steve? :) 💛💛

you’re still mad.

(thank you to the amazing @harringtonhq for helping me when i was stuck! (: )

you love him. you love him. you love him.

you chant to try and cool your boiling nerves. you love steve harrington, you really do, but sometimes he could be so stupid, you wanted to scream (and often did).

so much about him was endearing, there was so much about him to love. he had a kind heart, a great capacity for love, always wanted the best for others, was eager to learn, had a wonderful sense of humor, the list when on. but, everyone has their flaws, and steve was definitely was not exempt.

he was stubborn, vain at times. he gave horrible advice and could often be too proud for his own good.

somehow along the way of dating steve, you had been roped in to hanging out with a group of thirteen year olds. at first, you would just sit quietly next to steve as he talked to them, praying for it to be over soon. you weren’t necessarily jumping up and down to hang out with children in your limited free time. though as time went on, and you got to know each kid better, you started to like the time spent with them. you now enjoyed all the kids that your boyfriend was friends with, which can still be an uncomfortable sentence to say. you generally got along with all of them, but with max and el, you were bonded to them in a much deeper way. they were floundering for any positive female energy by the time you showed up, and you happily took them under your wing.

so, when steve was off with the boys, you migrated towards the girls. you enjoyed them deeply as friends, but you also enjoyed feeling looked up too. you relished in your new role as the cool older girl in their eyes. you loved that they trusted you, that they would come to you with questions and concerns about the world, and would take your advice seriously.

you had developed a strong protective instinct with the girls over the past year, and that was why you had sped over to max’s house as soon as you received a hysterical call from el. when you arrived you fled your car and went to knock loudly on the hargrove’s door. to your dismay, billy answered it with a smarmy grin.

“finally ready to give in to what we both want, (y/l/n)?” he leaned his bare shoulder against the doorframe.

“ugh, in your dreams, hargrove.” you gagged, and pushed past him into the house.

“every night princess! lemme know when you’re gonna allow me to make all yours come true!” he called after you.

you rolled your eyes, and thankfully got to max’s bedroom before he could say anything else.

“your brother is so gross.” you scowled as you entered.

“i know.” and your head snapped up to where max and el were sitting on her duvet.

max’s face was flushed pink, her eyes were glossy and her cheeks painted with tears. el had a comforting arm around her.

you went into immediate lioness mode, “what happened? who hurt you?”

you rushed forward and pried max from el and into your arms.

“lucas.” el stated simply.

“my god, what did he do? i’ll kill him!” you pythoned the redhead closer.

“he was being so rude. so rude and just ignoring everything i said. and, and he was just so…”

“rude.” el chimed in.

“yes! god!” max wailed into your t-shirt.

“what exactly happened, honey?” you murmured, stroking her hair calmly.

“I was just trying to talk to him, to have a conversation! but nothing, and i really needed to talk to him about all this stuff with neil and my mom and i got nothing. when i pointed out that he was being an ass he told me to stop being so crazy.”

“he what?” you gasped, still trying to console her.

“yeah, so then i told him that he was a dick and that we were over.”

“again.” el said, mostly in observation. she wasn’t wrong, lucas and max broke up all the time.

“i just can’t believe him!” max sobbed.

“it’s like he just didn’t care.”

and then it clicked.

didn’t care.

“son of a bitch!” your tone had changed so drastically from sweet and reassuring to anger and frustration, it caused both girls to jump.

“what, what is it?” max pulled away to look up at you.

“do you know where he is now?”

“at the mall. he, dustin and mike are gonna sneak into stupid top gun again.” max wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“perfect, let’s go. get your shit.” you released max and started towards the door.

“what are you gonna do?” el asked, scrambling off the bed with max as they searched for their shoes and jackets.

“i’m gonna rip my boyfriend a new one for giving that dumbass advice to her boyfriend.”

“wait steve told him to do that?” max questioned as she followed you.

you lead the girls to your car, and whipped out the hargrove driveway and toward the mall, grinding your teeth. chanting away in your head to remind yourself to not follow max’s lead when you saw steve.

meanwhile, el and max were beside themselves with excitement. they loved you for so many reasons. you were smart, intelligent, compassionate and always ready and willing to stand up for yourself and others. you were a badass. a badass who lent them your copy of the feminine mystique and preached the gospel of angela davis. they just thought you were cool.

when you all arrived at starcount, you were a woman on a mission. you knew that you were probably overreacting, but if you let your boyfriend continue to think for one more minute that ignoring women and what they have to say will someone get them to desire you more, you’d be failing yourself.

so, you with your two little ducklings in tow marched toward scoops ahoy, where luckily, dustin and lucas already were waiting. no doubt your boyfriend was nearby.

“hey, tweedle dee and tweedle dumbass, where’s the ring leader?” you jeered when you entered scoops.

“oh, so you’re still mad…” lucas spoke first, glancing back to max whose face soured.

he knew that if you were showing up this mad looking for steve, there was no doubt max tattled to you.

before you could respond, the man himself stepped out from the backroom.

“hey baby, wasn’t expecting you.” steve smiled affectionately at you, not processing your anger.

“you!” you moved and pointed an accusatory finger toward him.

“me?”  

“yes, you! god, dammit steve! what exactly did you tell lucas?”

you watched steve go through a facial journey. of being confused by your anger, to looking at max looming behind you, to lucas, back to max then back to you, and finally understanding.

“nothing. i said nothing.” he shook his head.

“nothing? huh, really? so, you didn’t give any advice that might simmer down to being a dickbag to a girl to make her like you more?” you hissed.

“he actually said-”

“lucas! shut up!”

“too late, he just sold you out, harrington. now, what did you say?”

steve looked to both boys for support, but they averted their gazes.

“i didn’t say anything! why would i say anything like that? he clearly thought of that himself.”

“excuse me?” lucas chimed in.

“wanna play dirty? fine, let’s do this,” lucas turned to you, “steve told me and i quote, “you gotta act like you could take it or leave it. that if you didn’t talk to her today it wouldn’t matter.” end quote.”

your eyes widened and you turned back to your boyfriend for now, “are you crazy! who gives advice like that? to a child no less?”

“hey, i’m fourteen!”

“eh, eh, eh, i don’t care.” you said impatiently back at lucas.

“i just… look, ok, it works! how do you think i got you? who is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, by the way. have i mentioned that lately?” steve batted his eyes at you.

“how you got me? seriously? i only started liking you after you cut out all that pompous dick behavior! but y’know that? maybe i acted to soon, maybe i was wrong.” you crossed your arms over your chest.

“(y/n/n), come on, ok, listen! it’s just standard advice, my dad gave it to me and i’m sure his did to him. i’m only passing on the legacy.” steve tried to explain.

“the first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn, gloria steinem.” max chimed in, causing everyone to look back to her.

“see! that!” you gestured to her.  

“baby-”

“do not baby me, steve harrington.”

“sweetheart-”

“you don’t actually believe that works, do you?”

steve made an unsure sound, and racked a hand through his hair.

“i cannot believe you! if you ever give that advice to anyone again, impressionable child or not- i swear on my life i will lose my mind.” you clenched your fists.

“this isn’t you losing your mind?” lucas asked.

“not the time, not the time. abort, abort.” dustin said under his breath to his friend.

lucas immediately clammed up and looked away from you.

“forget about coming over tonight, harrington.” you sneeded, and turned on your heel to leave.

max and el looked between each other with huge grins, then followed after you, rife with giggles and praise.

“oh man, you’re so fucked.” dustin chuckled with a shake of his head.

“nah, nah. this is fine, this is cool. it’s all good. it’ll be fine.” steve muttered, placing his hands on his hips as he watched your figure become smaller in the distance.

“go after her.” dustin advised.

“what? no, we’re…”

“go after her.” he reiterated, and steve was already fleeing his post behind the counter to run after you.

“baby, i’m sorry! i’m an idiot, what’s new? i love you!” both boys watched steve catch up with you and start to apologize. he placed on hand on your cheek, and seemed to pouring on the amends thick.

“he was kinda right?” lucas mused.

“excuse me?” dustin asked aghast.

“i mean she just left like she could care less and steve was tripping over himself to follow her.” he shrugged.

“if you let (y/n) hear you say that, i won’t stop her from kicking your ass.” dustin snorted.

“she couldn’t-” dustin gave lucas a pointed looked, “ok fine, yeah she could.”  

feedback is greatly appreciated pls & thnk u!

[cetaceans-pls]

Fandom: Batman - All Media Types Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne

What are two good men meant to do when faced with an epidemic within a pandemic?

Bruce and Dick take to the steppes and ride across Inner Mongolia, bringing justice, mare's milk, and help in their wake.

Or, how Bruce and Dick try to show mutual care and respect in spite of: terrible communication skills; a global health crisis; a regional health crisis; tetchy horses; eyebrow gel; and coal-mining, set in endless, glorious Inner Mongolia.

I have never not been a horse girl, and that’s the extent of my justification for writing this. Pls enjoy, and if you hit me up with a good prompt I might once again end up with 15 tabs wide open in my quest to figure out what a cool Mongolian lady might be named ;9

 Usually, Bruce is happy to delegate external work to external workers. He’s a one-man force for justice, full of vim and spite, but he’s also stuffed to the brim with barely-healed bones and a chronic shortage of sleep. Staking a claim to Gotham is so important exactly because it’s the only claim he can actually defend, and so he does it whole-heartedly. That’s the purpose of the Justice League, after all. It’s only by the grace of some god that he isn’t a meta-human, or he’d have the whole world under his sharp purview.

 Bruce has toppled his fair share of terrible dictators, and looking at them is a little like looking in a mirror sometimes, so if there is a God maybe she’s got the right of it.

 The thing with all the superpowers that make up the League is that while it’s brilliant in times of intergalactic or even international trouble, when a pandemic’s up and about, the Flash being able to run through every city on Earth in under a minute means that he’s potentially the world’s most super spreader, and Superman evacuating buildings needs to make damn sure he sanitises between rescues. Wonder Woman’s all lasso nowadays, because happily divine products are extremely anti-viral, but right now the things that make the strong strong also make them oddly, sharply weak.

 They’re living in interesting times, all right.

 So when a call comes through that there’s been a horrifying spike in pneumonia-like symptoms in children in Inner Mongolia, everyone's a little… stressed. Flyers are already up and about delivering things that need delivering, anyone with anything approaching healing powers have been dispatched to hotspots, and Bruce is pretty sure the last time he had a full night’s sleep was sometime in January. Here lies yet another problem with an uncertain cause, one that can’t be defeated with a punch or a meeting, and they’re already strung out to capacity.

 When needs must, Bruce tries to rise to the occasion. He’s had pneumonia dozens of times before, he speaks Mandarin and Mongolian, and he’s the only one who has and knows how to run a one-man research lab in the middle of a field mission. He’s been trialling a bunch of vaccines on himself too, and he’s still up and kicking, so obviously he’s the best choice.

 There’s the opposite of sound agreement during the League conference call.

 “You tried how many what-nows?” somebody’s shouting, but Bruce hopes they know him well enough by now to know that when they’re on the BatZoom he blocks all their videos.

 “Vaccines. Who else would I try them on? A sample size of one isn’t encouraging, but barring reinfection I do seem to have produced the antibodies, so obviously I am the best choice.”

 There’s more raucous shouting that he ignores, but he doesn’t hang up because he knows that everyone on this call also likely had their last full night’s sleep in January.

 “Hang on, B, we’re not letting you go into the wilds of Inner Mongolia to identify a new, potentially lethal disease by yourself.” That’s Clark, because he’s the only one who can be cajoling and gently condescending all at once. “I’ll admit the numbers are alarming, but the WHO are going to look into it-”

 “Superman, if any organisation could manage the current health crisis, you wouldn’t be up to your shoulders in parts assembling ventilators in Brazil. This is just a courtesy call, not a debate. I’ll be departing ASAP with my equipment once I finish collating the health data.”

 They all start arguing again, all at once, and they all make valid points. Bruce doesn’t actually know what he is and isn’t immune to at this point, and if it’s something new then that’s even more of an issue. By virtue of his relative uselessness, though, Bruce is the one in the best position to run recon for an extended period, as well as the one most likely to be able to self-quarantine without leaving thousands to die by his absence. Gotham’s in a good place, because the Bat coming after irresponsible citizens and lawmakers alike and Bruce Wayne coming after unfair labour practices are about 5000 times more effective than the federal government, so he can step up. He should step up.

 He will step up.

 So it’s a no-brainer.

 All the voices shut out all of a sudden, which means one of the administrators has put everyone on mute. He didn’t do it, and Clark would likely sooner eat a bright red Super boot than be that rude to people, which leaves them only with the worrisome woman.

 “All right, Batman, we’ll respect your wishes. I have informed Nightwing of your plans, as he’s requested that I share your more exotic missions with him. I’m sure he would love to discuss the situation with you.” Lord, her smug smile is excruciatingly evident in her tone.

 Bruce mutes his own mic to groan long and loud and hard, and tries to will away the near-Pavlovian headache that tends to manifest when he finds himself saddled with one of his children for an awful case.

 He unmutes his mic.

 “Noted. Thank you for your concern, Wonder Woman. Batman over and out.”

 If Dick has to travel up from Bludhaven, there’s a chance Bruce can be off and away before he gets here. That’s fine; a quick getaway is a skill he’s honed over a great many years. He just needs the time-lapse of the distribution of the illness to finish getting mapped against urban areas in the computer, and he can go-

 The lights suddenly dim, down to the faint yellow that indicates that the main power and generators 2 through to 5 have been cut off, with just 6 up to keep the computer and general equipment working.

 Generator 6 is not linked to the hangar doors, though, so there’s….that.

 The desire to scream is almost overwhelming. He knows Diana keeps in contact with more people than his soft human mind can even comprehend, but to even recruit Alfred to her devilish ways…

 Bruce groans again, and irritatedly starts packing the equipment he’ll need as he waits for the arrival of (one of) his prodigal son(s).

-

 The lights come back on to full just as Dick launches himself over the handrail and down a 30-foot drop, because dramatics, if not genes, run in this entire damn family. He’s not even dressed as Nightwing, just as a devastating young man. This many years on, Bruce’s heart still stutters in that instant before Dick hits the ground, because what if this is the time he doesn’t stick the landing?

 The Graysons’ terrible death sure did hit them both differently.

 “Hey, B,” and it’s just Dick whole and complete, smiling brightly.

 “Where’s your mask?” Bruce asks brusquely.

 Dick looks startled, before he looks down at his jeans and sweatshirt. “I was going for a more casual look?”

 Bruce rolls his eyes. “Not that mask.”

 The implication lands, and Dick rolls his eyes like a late echo. “Already off and away in Alfred’s washer, ‘course. Not like I took the crowded way over, anyways. Roads are empty as all hell, and rooftops even emptier. But Bruce, don’t try to irritate me to distraction.” Dick wags his finger at him.

 It’s a little sweet, because Dick clearly had been distracted before he’d pulled himself back into focus.

 “What’s this I hear from Wonder Woman that you’re running off to Mongolia to try and miracle-cure a mystery sickness?”

 Bruce is already hauling up the last rucksack he needs for the trip, though he doesn’t bother to pull up the cowl. “Likely exactly what Diana told you. She was wrong about my needing you or your support, though. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

 Bruce brushes by him and heads towards the fully-loaded BatWing, banking on being enough of an unpleasant son-of-a-bitch that Dick sighs and gives up on him and goes home where an at least marginally better known disease is running rampant. It’s a technique that’s worked before, enough to have Dick rage at him and storm off and avoid him, and it’s unpleasant every time, but needs just really must sometimes.

 The thing about Dick, though, specifically Dick more so than every other person Bruce has had the pleasure and displeasure to have ever met, is his unbelievable knack of having an endless capacity to forgive Bruce without taking any of his shit.

 So Dick will be upset and he might leave, but he always finds it within himself to come back, and when he does, he always lets Bruce know all the places where he failed, and inadvertently explains all the ways Bruce could be just a little bit better. He will forgive and it damn well seems like he even forgets all these little injustices, and it’s maddening.

 The concept of endangering one of the world’s best men on a dodgy medical mission out in the steppes? A goddamn laughable concept. Bruce would be delighted to bear a spot of wrath when he comes back instead.

 Sometimes, though, the full arc of Dick’s mood after being brushed off goes from anger to acceptance so quickly that Bruce doesn’t get enough time to go off and do the damn-fool thing he’s about to do. Sometimes, like tonight, Bruce sweeps past Dick dramatically, and gets pulled up short by Dick grabbing the back of his cape and tugging.

 He comes to a not-very-graceful halt, choked a little around the neck, and looks over his shoulder at Dick with tremendous affront. “Dick, what are you doing?”

 Dick just smiles sharply, clearly out through the other side of the angry cycle. “I’m ignoring you being a complete asshole out of some misguided sense of heroism, B, and I’m letting you know that I know you’re trying to get me so annoyed I just leave you. Alfred’s got me full-up with good cheer, and I’m in a good mood, so you’re just shit out of luck.” His voice softens, goes a little sad and round in the edges. “Let me help, Bruce. None of us want you out there alone. You would never let any of us take a case like this alone, so just give in. Okay?”

 Bruce knows there are ways out of this. Dick in his infinite trustingness would not expect a sedative dart to the neck, and Bruce could always fall back on his standard operating procedure from years long past and nuke this tentative moment by doubling down on how he doesn’t need anyone and how he doesn’t answer to Dick, who is still little more than a child. There’re a dozen ways Bruce could disentangle himself from this, and they both know this.

 Dick still chooses to trust and believe, the way he inevitably always does, and Bruce is short on 3 months’ worth of sleep. All he wants is to take care of the people he needs to take care of.

 Plus, vaccine trial #8 is giving him the sweats, and he feels uncharacteristically desperate to just… relent.

 “Get your stuff and get in the Wing. I’m not waiting.”

 Of course Dick takes so much longer than is reasonable to grab gear from his room, and of course Bruce sits in the Wing with the engine idling, like all beleaguered parents waiting in their vehicles worldwide.

 With a final hurrah from Alfred who appears with enough packed food to have them camping in luxury for a week, they are finally, finally off.

-

 Air traffic’s the quietest it’s been in decades. There’s something surreal about not needing to push the Wing to her upper height limits to stay invisible, instead cruising along like some, ah, passenger plane. They see geese, which is the highlight of their trip, before they finally go up and up and up to evade any hot nonsense Eastern Europe or Russia may be in the mood to throw at them.

 At least, that’s Dick’s explanation of their trajectory, after Bruce wakes up from a drugged-scone-induced nap (courtesy of the enormously traitorous Alfred) just in time for them to discuss where to land. Still groggy but decidedly better rested than he was 6 hours ago, Bruce licks the cottonmouth out and intrepidly takes a sip of what he’s hoping isn’t knock-out tea as he looks at the map Dick’s pulled up on the windscreen.

 Poison pastry or no, Bruce accepts that the reason why he’d actually stayed asleep is because his eldest is by far the best, most trustworthy driver in the family. It’s been so long since he’s been in a situation where Dick drove that he had forgotten that absolute fact.

 “The most cases registered of an unconfirmed respiratory illness is in the capital, but accounting for population density, the pandemic, and the usual rates of pneumonia, it’s not where we need to focus on.” Bruce pulls up a map of the region, and the capital of Inner Mongolia lights up in glowing orange, ‘Hohhot’ written in Papyrus because Tim cannot be trusted with software updates.

 At least it’s not Wing-dings.

 “We should split up,” Bruce continues after glaring a touch too long at the hideous writing. “You try to get a read on how things are in the hospitals in Hohhot, and I’ll head out into the steppes to touch base with the more rural communities.”

 He doesn’t sound excited with the plan, because he already knows he’s not getting away with it.

 Dick doesn’t even have the decency to pretend to agree and defer, laughing instead as he starts plotting the course for a landing on a patch of grassland exactly like any other patch of grassland a ways’ way away from the bright city lights. “Yep, B, I definitely broke 15 different traffic laws to get to the Manor in time to stop you from going solo, just to let you ride off into the desert like the lone ranger.” There’s a gentle beep to warn them of some military surveillance equipment in their vicinity, and Dick smoothly drops the Wing into a pretty banked turn that takes them away with a gentleness that wouldn’t have turned even the most hungover tummy. “I took a look at your maps while you were out, and I figure if this thing’s worse for kids and we don’t know where to start, we should just go be pretend doctors and make a circuit of all the little community schools.”

 “That’s a good idea.”

 That has Dick turning in the pilot’s seat to look at Bruce, clearly shocked. “Wait, what were you planning on doing?”

 “Break into the peoples’ homes at night and take samples from as many children I could get. If I get caught, I would be in costume, and therefore very likely to be mistaken as a nightmare, or potentially a demon.”

 There’s peace and quiet for a few moments, and then Dick’s laughing again. It’s an insulting delight.

 “Bruce!” Dick pleads, struggling for breath. “ Please say psyche. You cannot have seriously been planning to give every kid in Inner Mongolia nightmares while you steal blood from them!”

 Time was short, and what Bruce had was the Batman costume and the general ability to be misconstrued as a demonic entity at first glance. “I would have needed more than just blood samples, to be thorough.”

 The ground spreads out endlessly below them, the sky endlessly above. The grass is blown gently out of the way as the Wing drops into a perfect vertical landing, which is amazing considering Dick is actively wheezing at this point. “Wait till Alfie hears that this was your great plan.” The landing gear hits ground, and they have now made contact with gorgeous, gorgeous Inner Mongolia. “Seems pretty, uhm, intense even for you, B.”

 Neither of them move to get up and get out; they’re both just slumped in the admittedly comfortable pilot seats of the Wing, looking out at the rolling hills and more stars than Gotham’s ever, ever seen.

 “It’s been an intense time.”

 Dick’s laughter softens, peters out as they just keep on sitting and looking out. The swaying grass and endless blank horizon is hugely different to the chaos and stale fear that’s blanketed Gotham and much of the world the past few months, and it’s such a helpless pleasure to not need to think about all of that, right now.

 Eventually, Dick gets up and squeezes Bruce’s shoulder. “We’re still hours away from sunrise, B. C’mon, let’s get some sleep, we can start fresh and early.”

 Bruce touches the hand on his shoulder, doesn’t dislodge it and doesn’t squeeze it. Just a touch on a touch. “You go first. I’ll be along in a minute.”

 Dick relents and wishes him a good night. Bruce just sits there and stares and stares and stares.

-

 Bruce is woken up by the smell of fresh coffee, and it’s a gentler wake-up call than an emergency klaxon or Alfred running down the steps shouting “Master Bruce!” on the 4 occasions they have prevented the apocalypse since February. It’s as disorientating as a slap to his face, and he blinks to a still starry sky as Dick comes up from behind him bearing gifts.

 The thermos breathes out steam like a caffeinated dragon, and Bruce is also bestowed with a breakfast sandwich. Double-egg, buttered English muffin, and it’s a touch of classic Alfred magic that it tastes and feels this good after 12 hours and a blitz in the Wing’s ‘microwave’ that’s really a radiation vent for the nuclear engine.

 He makes a happy little sound, and it’s echoed by Dick with his bowl of cereal and milk, matching mug of coffee wedged between folded calf and thigh. “Alfred packed like 8 types of cereal, and there’re like boxes and boxes of all sorts of food.” With his unencumbered leg, Dick prods Bruce’s arm with a socked foot. “Have you been up to no good again? This is classic stress cooking Alfred.”

 It really is. Bruce knows with the force of religious fervour that if he digs around, he will find white chocolate and raspberry cookies. “It’s been a busy time with the League.” And the world. “I told him he didn’t need to worry.”

 Dick snorts as he gulps down the disgusting dregs of cereal milk. “He worries when you worry and you’re always worrying so he’s always worried. It’s a cycle of whole-ass adults not knowing how to tell each other when you’re freaking out.” Dick prods his side again. “It’s sweet, but you also seriously need to keep him and us more updated, y’know.” The prodding escalates. “You can’t keep doing these things to yourself by yourself, B.”

 Bruce catches an ankle, squeezes it lightly, and puts it aside. “It’s my job.”

 Dick, when he snorts, can get awfully loud exclusively because when he decides to be undignified he goes extremely all out. Bruce’s ears might be ringing , and Dick doesn’t even look apologetic. “You don’t have a job, B, you’re a billionaire bachelor man. Everything you do in your life is an extracurricular activity. Batmanning, the Justice League, picking up orphans left and right, none of it’s your responsibility.” The long leg retracts, Dick now curled up like a half-measure spider, sipping his coffee like he hasn’t said anything insane at all. “So, y’know, just take it easy, let the rest of us carry our own weight.”

 It’s madness. Bruce has been shot and been less shocked. Bruce has been proposed to by aliens on intergalactic missions and been less taken aback. “Dick, what do you mean , it isn’t my responsibility?” It’s been nothing less than an absolute honour, a literal privilege, to have been able to raise Dick, to give his children a home. Can one’s reason for living really be called an extra-curricular activity?

 It’s the whole curricular, surely.

 An alert pings! on the dashboard, and Dick doesn’t bother with a response for a point he feels he’s made plenty clear. “That’s our queue, big guy. The school by here opens in 3 hours, and it serves the entire district so we need to get there early if we want to get our cover story straight.”

 “There’s a herdsman I made arrangements with already, 2 miles out form here. He’ll have horses ready for us.” Bruce polishes off the last of his breakfast and coffee, and neatly puts aside what Dick thinks he should and shouldn’t do for a more thorough look-over later. “How’s your Mongolian?”

 “Horrible, I’m sure no Damian,” Dick says cheerfully. “But my Mandarin’s not too bad. You wanna be the local guide and I can be the cool doctor from a big city?”

 It’s as good an idea as any; Bruce hadn’t exactly been worried about cover stories with his night terror plans. He gets to his feet, and tries to avoid brushing crumbs to the floor. “We’re going to need actual disguises.”

 In a terrifying show of skill and disdain for normal human conduct, Dick just vaults over the back of his chair, cereal bowl in one hand and empty mug in the crook of an elbow. “I’ve heard the stories, B. Time to whip out the beard-wig?”

 Walking like a much more reasonable person towards the kit he’d brought with him, Bruce rolls his eyes. “Beards prevent the correct application of a face mask, Dick.” He presses a button, and a 57-piece sfx makeup collection tailored for (literally) every occasion pops out of a locked chest. “And it’s culturally uncommon to have full beards here, so I’ll just make do.”

 Dick doesn’t need much of a disguise; he’s a little ambiguous-looking at the best of times, and the force of his personality is such that generally people’s impression of him are just soft floppy hair and a killer smile.

 Bruce, meanwhile, would need a full face of prosthetics just to stay under the radar. What he has is fake tan and eyebrow gel and dark brown contact lenses, but he’s done more with less, so.

 At least by the time they reach the herder’s campsite and are welcomed by a smiling man built so strong and compactly that even with his affected stoop Bruce towers over him, Dick’s gotten used enough to the patched-together look to stop bursting into laughter every time Bruce turns to look at him.

 Gantulga bullies them into his home for some tea when they arrive, provides a wonderful opportunity for Bruce to relearn the sounds he’s forgotten in his Mongolian, and cheerfully accepts that Bruce is an oddball guide originally from a nomadic tribe close to the Mongolian-Russian border, who found himself here of all places because he fell in love with a woman from Hohhot.

 “It’s the same for me,” the man had said, grinning widely when his wife lightly smacks his shoulder. “And the land here knows no borders. Thank you for coming to look after our children.”

 Dick is left out of the loop, because a shared language is a terribly powerful bond against present and conceptual oppressors, and Bruce tells Gantulga with as much seriousness as he can that, “It is my job to take care of you.”

 They leave just a little past dawn on two horses, with two more carrying their equipment, and Gantulga waves them off with well wishes for both them and his horses before he returns to his herd and his work and his family. As the testy gelding picks a gait that means the wooden saddle will eventually physically castrate him, Bruce sets their course for the little wooden school building set close to the blossom of summer tents of nomadic herders, and thinks about the duty of care he imposes on himself.

 In the fresh air, with his son whipping about on a stallion that has taken a liking to a kindred spirit, Bruce figures that for all his usual angst, protecting people that need protecting isn’t a burden that will ever get heavy enough to put down.

 They ride.

-

 Arriving at the school unannounced would ordinarily be a big problem, but these are unusual times. With some official-looking documents printed on the Wing and Dick’s ability to charm absolutely anything breathing, the stressed-out headmaster gives them his blessing to collect samples from all the children. The reach of a global pandemic has struggled to get out this far away from dense cities, but whatever’s in the air right now is doing a number on his kids and it’s clear the man needs a nap and a solution.

 They can’t exactly provide him with either right now, but part of the reason the horses’ saddles are so heavy is because Bruce has brought along all the equipment and medication that he thought even had a chance of helping. Dropping cutting-edge miniaturised air filters in Inner Mongolia is a big risk given a government that’s infamous for loathing external intervention, but the equipment is designed to look cheap as all hell and break down irretrievably if a remote kill switch is tripped, so Batman’s covered his bases as best he can.

 Even if he couldn’t, it wouldn’t exactly be the first or even the hundredth time he goes against the wishes of the authorities. If push came to shove and tomorrow he had to do a fly-by in a helicopter dropping nebulizers for 100,000 people, then that’s what he would do.

 He’s startled out of his thoughts by Dick gently tapping him on the back. “C’mon, B, let’s get the kit set up. Kids are gonna be coming in soon, you don’t want to scare ‘em with your brooding.”

 The little classroom doesn’t have an electrical outlet, and has no furniture that suits anybody over 5’5, but Dick still looks like he belongs in his neatly-pressed white coat and nitrile gloves. The plan is simple: get as many samples as possible. Dick’s already looking picture-perfect as a doctor literally anybody would trust, energetic and dependable.

 Bruce is prepping the ‘gift bags’ full of therapeutic medication, bits of tech, and hyper-nutritious candy, ready to be given out to every patient. “Even fully dressed up I have never managed to scare a child, so I’m not worried,” he says, drawing wonky teddy bears and butterflies on the plastic wrapping with a BatSharpie. Honestly, Dick’s plan is genius. When he had been determined to go in as nightmare fuel, he had just planned to leave the care boxes at the front door with some official-looking stamp from the government and hope that people wouldn’t throw it away. Instead all the children who come to them get to go away with chocolate ration bars that only barely can’t resuscitate the dead and air filtration systems that NASA would fight bears for.

 The testing equipment they left on the ship, because while it isn’t hard to look under-funded and hard-done-by when all you have on you is some cotton swabs and bits of tack, the PCR machine running on solar power would stand out significantly more. Dick’s disinfecting the ever-loving hell out of the chairs and tables when he hears Bruce’s response, and he’s quick to flash a smile. “It’s your BDE, I guess. It’s kinda amazing that it was switched on so strong even when I first saw you.”

 Unwilling to admit that he has no idea what in the hell a BDE is, Bruce does a furtive Google search while pretending to go through the school registration list. It’s a strange revelation.

 “What does the size of a dick have to do with anything?” He’s trying to sound normal while he wonders if he’d done anything inappropriate that night at the circus to deserve this.

 “Close, B, but not quite. I meant Big Dad Energy.” In the distance, the sound of horses’ hooves comes closer and closer, heralding the arrival of the children. It’s almost time to start, and Dick takes a seat by his stash of needles. “It’s weird to think ‘bout it now, but I know that when kids see Batman they see somebody who’ll take care of them no matter what.”

There’s a slam! as the front door to the little wooden schoolhouse swings open, and the excited chatter of children filters through. Dick, however, is not done dealing body blows to the state of Bruce’s head, even if he sounds absent-minded as he does it. “I think I saw it too, that first time, even out of uniform. Funny, huh?”

 The door to the classroom is pulled open by the harried headmaster while a gaggle of children stare curiously at them, and Bruce goes straight to one knee to address them at face level about what’ll be happening today. He doesn’t get to ask what’s so funny about Dick saying the single most inhumanly complimentary thing Bruce has ever heard, nor does he get to ask if Dick still sees the same thing now.

 It’s yet another thing to ponder over later; for now, he just tells the children that he is Bat-Erdene (of course), and that he will help the doctor help them.

 Getting stuck with a needle and losing a bit of blood is a novel experience for many of the kids, so Bruce lets them hold his hand while Dick does quick, neat work, and takes special care to wince or go ‘Ow!’ dramatically whenever a child squeezes him hard.

 It ends up with the children (and Dick) laughing at him, and telling him kindly that Bat(-Erdene) is not a strong man but that’s all right because he gives them treats.

 By the time they’re herded outside to have lunch along with the kids, they have 25 samples, and Dick has no less than 3 kids sitting on his lap as they draw horses and people in the dirt, babbling at each other in mutually-unintelligible languages through thin barriers of surgical masks.

 Going by just temperature, nobody here has a fever, but half the kids complained furtively to Bat-Erdene that they cough a lot a lot in the early mornings, and their parents worry because something unpleasant is spreading across the world and what if it has spread to them?

 It’s a lot to think about, but the absence of any signs of infection is… encouraging. Somewhat. There’s a lot that he can do if it’s an environmental hazard, after all.

 For example,

 “Doctor! That’s dangerous!”

 Dick has the gall to just wink at him as he walks around on his hands, a horde of children screaming and laughing as they hang on to his fluttering legs. In the near distance, the loud, tired sigh of the headmaster is a feeling that Bruce can very deeply relate to.

 The headmaster and five separate sets of parents offer them dinner and lodging for the night, and they beg off all of them with the excuse that they needed to ride hard to get to the next little school which is over a day’s riding away. They nevertheless are sent on their way with bottles and bottles of mare’s milk and a gentle lecture on how to brush down their horses properly, the whole school wishing them a safe journey as they disappear into the endless rolling hills that lie between them and their next destination.

 Once they’re far away enough that a quick scan reveals them to be sufficiently isolated in the twilight, Bruce and Dick abruptly drop the mannerisms and postures that marked the Doctor and Bat-Erdene, with Dick unbuttoning the high collar of his jacket and Bruce coming out of his slouch. Camp is another hour’s ride away, where the BatWing will be waiting and the horses can be settled down for the night. So far, so successful, and Bruce is willing to admit to himself if to no one else that having company for this mission has made it actually, genuinely pleasant.

 Dick breaks the silence first when he whistles at the moon rising from the open horizon, massive and solitary and quietly terrifying. “You don’t get a view like that in Gotham, do you?”

 It is, indeed, a hell of a sight. With grasslands stretching out every which way, there’s nothing for the human eye to use for scale and context. It’s just this giant glowing thing that could be a mile or an eternity away, rising like a lamp under the blanket of night.

 At the crest of a gentle hill they draw to a stop to let the sight sink in, two men and their four horses and this one mission. Dick looks over at Bruce, all aglow with a healthy tan developed after an afternoon’s worth of running after children while shouting in cheerful broken Mongolian, and he looks more like the embodiment of hope than any superhuman Bruce has ever met. “I’m glad you let me talk you into taking me along, B.”

 The words are the wrong way around! Bruce is the one who’s glad that on the worst day of Dick’s life, he looked at Bruce and saw someone worth believing in! That just yesterday he looked into the depths of Bruce’s obstinacy and still decided to help!

 Those words are old and awkward and heavy, though, so Bruce just slumps in his astonishingly uncomfortable saddle and tries not to smile too obviously. “There’s no one I’d rather have with me here, Dick,” he says quietly.

 And then, less quietly because this is urgent and an ever-present danger for every parent with more than one child, “Don’t tell the others.”

 Dick rolls his eyes, and nudges his horse into a quick trot. “I know, B, can’t let your favorite find out you just said that.”

 He’s off, rolling into a hard full-out gallop as the pack horses clatter and bang after him with their lighter saddle bags, a wild thing into the moonlight, leaving Bruce to ponder over yet another mystery: who the hell is meant to be his favourite, and though he fundamentally does not have one, why would Dick assume it wasn’t him?

 The mystery respiratory sickness had better be easier to uncover than whatever has Dick feeling like this, because Bruce is only one man and he’s not even a good one.

-

 By the fourth school they get to, tales of their exploits have spread ahead of them on the wings of traveling herdsmen. This school’s in a proper town, with half a dozen summer gers dotting the grasslands just past the little road that has a grocery store and the one post office. There’s even a bit of a welcoming committee, kids on horseback racing out to meet them the minute they come within view.

 Dick and their pack horses are pretty happy with the attention, breaking into little races, sprinting off this way and that while Bruce’s decidedly more stand-offish horse ignores all the cheer to keep stolidly plodding towards town. He spots yet more people on horseback, adults this time in bright dress, and rides up to meet them and introduce himself as the ‘local guide’.

 Some of the faces even look familiar, which means that even with them both going at maximum speed, a bunch of people casually outraced them to get here and apparently organised this warm, warm welcome.

There’s a fearsome woman who stands on the ground but somehow manages to look about three times as imposing as the men on their horses around her, and at first sight Bruce’s brain registers matriarch as loudly as a scream in the ear. He’s willing to put money on ��headmistress’, given the look of awe and trepidation of the younger horsemen around her, and makes haste to greet her.

 Her name is Narantsetseg, tall and proud as the sunflower she’s named after, enduring like the fields and fields of the stuff that they’ve ridden through to get here, and she tells him that while he and the Doctor are greatly welcomed to their little town, they would need to do a little more than just test the children.

 Bruce doesn’t let the unease show on his face, but he does move back slightly to maintain a sightline on Dick, who’s glancing over with false casualness. Is she connected to the government in some way, and she knows that they’ve been falsifying their credentials? Luckily, looking gruff and unmoved is his specialty as far as expressions go, and he just asks her to explain.

 At an imperious wave of her hand the wall of horses part, and there is a line of red-cheeked young women in all their finery. As one, they all surreptitiously sneak a glance at Dick who is a juggling three water bottles while going at a fast trot, much to the delight of the children.

 “We have heard that the Doctor is single, and in need of a wife,” Narantsetseg tells him. “You won’t find better women anywhere else, and none harder working.”

 Somebody in the back pipes up, and his face is vaguely familiar to Bruce. “The Doctor doesn’t speak Mongolian, but he’s good with children! Askaa took a needle and he didn’t even cry afterwards!”

 There’s a lot of impressed murmuring, and Bruce is left to wonder how badly dear Askaa usually takes to getting jabs, and how his father got to this town so quickly.

 “I cannot speak for the Doctor,” he tells them, trying to barter for peace. “He’s from the city; I don’t know what he wants in his women. You know how these city-types are.”

 Askaa’s father will not be stopped, though, and Bruce wants to smack him. “He also helped fix the engine of my truck, along with you, Bat-Erdene. His doctor hands got dirty, and he didn’t even mind! And he’s strong .” The man is really hitting his stride, and sounds alarmingly starry-eyed. “He lifted two of my sheep without blinking.”

 The impressed murmuring gets louder, and while Bruce agrees with the sentiment (Dick is, indeed, a very good boy), he’s less fond of how much attention they’re getting. “I would be happy to translate for all of you, but he is on his doctoring mission and he can’t stay around for long-”

 He’s cut off by a sharp scream that has him spinning around and dropping into a ready crouch, just in time to see a girl get unseated when her horse startles at a rabbit leaping out of its burrow. It’s not a long way to the ground, and Bruce already sees her righting herself to take the fall well, but that’s not what happens.

 What happens is: Dick leaps off his stallion onto her horse in the blink of an eye, holding on to the bucking horse by thigh strength alone as he pivots in the saddle till he’s sticking out at a right angle, catching the girl by her waist in a brilliant show of skill and instinctive heroism.

 The timing is wild; the chatter amongst the adults is at a fever-pitch, with some outright cheering and applauding, and Bruce is pretty sure that any hope of keeping a low profile here is now extremely low.

 Narantsetseg steps towards Bruce, and a hush falls over the assembled adults. She touches him on the arm, expression serious and serene. “Bat-Erdene,” she calls him.

 “Yes?” he answers helplessly.

 “Let the Doctor know that I am a widow, and that I would be happy to welcome him into my home.”

 And that is that on that.

-

 The days progress in much the same chaotic, fond way; sometimes the distance they have to cross takes days by horse, and they can’t just use the Wing to zip around the whole time because the horses tend to spook if they had to fly for more than just a couple of hours. Fortunately, between the fresh air, ceaseless good company, and the frighteningly invigorating experience of being on a semi-wild horse that on a whim can and will try to kill you, time out in the steppes gives them plenty of opportunities to work out what they know so far.

 Over 200 samples taken from a huge transect stretching from just outside of Hohhot to the actual literal godforsaken Gobi desert, and the picture’s become somewhat clearer. Two weeks in and they find that the bulk of the worst cases are focused in the Ordos desert, over a hundred miles away from where they first touched down. By this point both Dick and Bruce have ridden the most they ever have in their lives, their thighs might well have been cast from steel, and the sensation of a non-aching groin is a distant, distant dream.

 Dick can literally snipe a rabbit from horseback with his stallion going at full gallop; he swears that he can do it while standing on the saddle, and for one crazed moment Bruce was extremely tempted to let Dick try. Common sense that sounds like Alfred stays his stupid tongue, but there’s plenty to be impressed with by the way Dick is on a horse and on a mission.

 It doesn’t really remind Bruce of days long gone when it was just him and Alfred and the first Robin, because Dick isn’t a child anymore, has just grown better and better with time and it drives home again and again that whatever Bruce’s doubts about everything he has ever done in his entire life, Dick did become a spectacular adult and Bruce got the pleasure of being there and seeing it happen.

 They’re riding towards the Wing now, with the last batch of another 15 samples from the last schoolhouse in Bruce’s saddlebag and another dozen bottles of mare’s milk clickety-clacketing on Black Thunder, their small pack horse who has never met a man he would not bite. His name is courtesy of the first time the small black horse had bitten Bruce’s knee, going for it so hard that Bruce’s pained cursing had thundered across the plains. Black Thunder is a blight on what would otherwise have been a very pleasant series of rides, and is the only one they have officially named because Bruce’s horse responds to ‘horse’, Dick’s responds to ‘baby’, and their other pack horse would sweetly come trotting up to them at ‘the nice one’.

 Bruce is maneuvering closer to Dick to share the latest update on the air composition breakdown from all 200 odd filters, but he has to hold the data pad high up in the air when Black Thunder comes by for fear of losing yet another piece of him to the cursed thing. Fortunately, instead of almost-murder the terrible beast appears to just want some head scratches from Dick this time.

 “B, if you keep scowling at him of course lil B’s gonna feel antagonised,” Dick tells him jovially as he leans down to pet the demon.

 If Bruce had tried a similar move he would have lost all his fingers and maybe even a few toes, but he’s got too much dignity to do more than be a bit huffy about it. “I know a crazed villain when I see one, Dick,” is all he will say on that , thank you very much. “As I was saying, the sickness is pretty constrained to just the Ordos. Your bacterial and viral cultures didn’t yield any results, so I cross-referenced the early instances of respiratory distress against any recent human activity in the area; a new supermassive coal mine opened up just before the first cases started cropping up, and it’s our most likely culprit.”

 Dick lets go of Black Thunder despite the sad little whinny, and pulls out a notepad from his breast pocket. His police training means that no amount of technology Bruce throws at him can stop Dick from writing down his thoughts, but fortunately Dick’s handwriting and concept of ‘helpful notes’ are literally illegible and indecipherable to anyone except for him, so it doesn’t leave much of a paper trail. The bigger question is how he manages to write at all while horseback-riding, but Bruce is a man who's learned how to accept miracles at face value.

 “This area’s rich as hell in coal, what makes you think this specific mine’s the problem?” The fwip-fwip-fwip of pages on a spiral-bound notebook match the pace of his horse’s trot. “The filters haven’t logged a dangerously high level of carbon monoxide or coal waste products, and there’s been no record of increased smog.” He winces. “And B, you know I’m not exactly a Tim-level lab tech. Maybe you can re-do the cultures to double-check.”

 “I would stake my life on the work you’ve done,” Bruce says sharply, as he’s found himself more and more wont to do every time Dick says anything that even slightly indicates that he regards himself as lacking in some wildly incorrect way. “Also, Oracle did some digging into this new company. It’s half a dozen shell companies away from Lex Corp, so it’s questionable that they’re actually mining coal, and even more questionable that they’re doing it with a care for the people living here.”

 Aerosolised mystery kryptonite is clogging the air, potentially, and Bruce is so thankful that his general predisposition for lone-working and paranoia meant that it isn’t Superman or Kara who came zooming by to help in the area. He already wants to slap a mask on Dick and tell him to breathe less, and Dick’s absolutely built to last through worse things. They would need to do more testing to know for sure, but the air filters they’ve been handing out like candy are designed to extract any particulate matter so there’s hope yet that the things will help.

 Pick up of the equipments' just become a lot more important though, if they have hundreds of traps out catching idle Kryptonite. Maybe this will be the perfect occasion for a ghoulish Bat to just burst into and out of gers, hmm.

 In the distance, the shielding rolls off of the Wing because they’ve breached her perimeter and been recognised as themselves, glinting in the sunset as night overtakes day with startling quickness out here in the desert. In what has become tradition by now, Dick takes the last couple hundred yards at a dead gallop, Baby becoming a blur of glossy brown, and Bruce compels Horse to run after him, because at this point in their adventure few things ring as fundamentally true in the head as the sheer exhilarating joy of being a man on a horse with all six legs off the ground.

 It’s a time for thoughts to rapidly arrange themselves, and by the time they come up to a halt right by the ship, Dick’s got his notebook tucked away and a look of sublime thoughtfulness on his face. “What’s the relationship like between Wayne Enterprise and the Chinese government, B?”

 Bruce dismounts as soon as Horse comes to a halt, because he’ll never stop feeling faintly apologetic for being so heavy a man on so small a beast, and he’s just left to look up at Dick with the moon at his back. “You know I’ve always had a problem with authoritarian figures,” Bruce says with a bitchy little grin. The steppes encourage a type of wildness in him that’s very different to the stoops and cornices of Gotham; he feels a lot more teeth than shadow here.

 Dick’s at home here in the grasslands the way he’s at home on the trapeze and at the Manor and at Bludhaven PD, along with the dozen little niches he’s sprouted roots in and made better. Dick’s always been all teeth, and it’s only usually a smile. “What do you say, up for a bit of breaking and entering, Mister Bat-Erdene?”

 Bruce is already heading for the open loading bay, excited to get the sand out of his hair and cold cream on his thighs and Batman on him. “Thought you’d never ask, Doctor.”

-

 The thigh guards barely fit now on Bruce, and the fabric stretching across Nightwing’s legs are pulled so taut over new muscle that it looks even more, ah, provocative than usual.

 Bruce tries to convince Dick to wear Bruce’s larger under armour instead, but Dick ignores him as he takes a dozen pictures of his new-and-improved legs to share on the family group chat.

 They leave the horses at their campsite, and over the duration of the flight to the facility, Bruce forcibly ignores no less than 15 pictures from both Jason and Damian doing squats with increasingly heavy weights in an effort to not be shown up.

 Everyone comes together and admits that Cass probably takes it, when there’s a short video of her having Alfred on one shoulder and Steph on the other going down and coming back up without breaking into even the littlest bit of sweat.

 It’s a weird but exceedingly pleasant reminder of the home to look forward to once they wrap up here, and it takes more will than it should’ve to not just send a bunch of missiles screaming into the accursed mine run by the accursed men. Instead, they land well before the perimeter alarms, and run over the plan.

 “We’re going to verify what it is they’re mining, and then reconvene and plan our next step.” This is exclusively a recon mission, despite his personal feelings. Bruce doesn’t have the jurisdiction to wreck merry hell here, and if there is some important mineral vein down there, even if they shut down this mine they would just have to deal with another one. He can’t even just buy up all the land, because losing land to foreign entities isn’t the Done thing in these parts, and Bruce just has to unfortunately admit that his hands are extremely tied here.

 Dick doesn’t seem so eager to go along with the plan. “If we just leave it as is, what’s going to stop them from ramping up production and taking out more kids, B? No, I say we just shut things down right here, right now.”

 All teeth.

 Bruce tries not to lose his stupid temper, but it’s hard going. “If we blow up the mine now, what stops them from coming back? What stops them from bringing in mercenaries and weapons and making the area a war zone to protect whatever it is they’re mining?” He scowls, but tries to keep his voice even. “Not doing anything means short-term losses and long-term gains. You need to listen to me, Nightwing.”

 It’s not a popular opinion. Dick has got a scowl that looks out of place on his face, a snarl to the edge of a lip. “No, B, you need to listen to me . With everything else that’s going on in the world right now, no one’s got any resources to spare to check this place out. The only thing capping production is going to be Luthor’s goodwill, and there’s nothing good about that.”

 They glare at each other, on the cusp of a fight, before Nightwing exhales and holds both hands up in a plea for some calm. “Look, I know I’m not exactly the genius strategist type or like, even in the top half of most-skilled-Bat-associates, but I’ve got a plan and can you just listen to it before you shoot me down and insult me?”

 The kryptonite’s gone to Dick’s brain, that’s the only explanation. “There’s no ‘top half’, Nightwing,” Bruce says, voice rougher than he means it to be but it’s been gnawing at the back of his brain for weeks and weeks now that Dick somehow thinks he��s lesser. “You’re not less smart, you’re not less capable, you’re not less skilled; you are the one I trust the most.” It’s just tonnes of trust in Dick for all things, ranging from driving the BatWing responsibly to being the final word on decisions that need making while Bruce is indisposed.

 Dick just smiles, but he doesn’t look particularly happy. “You say all these things to make a man feel good ‘bout himself, B, but if you trust me so much why the hell won’t you listen to what I have to say?”

 Ah.

 It comes with unpleasant clarity, squatting in a rock outcropping with the shadow of the mining facility looming in the distance, that if Dick has doubts in himself, how much of a hand did Bruce have in putting them there and letting the rot propagate?

 He swallows, and chokes back that sense of perpetual righteousness that comes part and parcel with the cowl. It's one thing to be a controlling asshole in the League when he's the only unpowered human in a room of well-meaning dumbasses who could destroy the world if they woke up in a Mood one morning.

 It’s another to be a controlling asshole to his son, who is twice the man he’ll ever be, whose primary character trait is a fundamental goodness that would put Superman to shame.

 Dick’s not perfect, but he is damn, damn good, and Bruce won’t lose out to just listen.

 He’s been doing a lot of that as Bat-Erdene and neither he nor the children of Inner Mongolia have been led astray, so out in the prairie maybe he can afford to put his money where his mouth is and more aggressively demonstrate how much he believes in Dick.

 So Bruce leans back a little, makes an effort to lower his hackles, and breathes deeply.

 “I’m sorry,” he says and he means it for many, many things. “I’m listening.”

-

 The plan is chaotic and flashy and buck-fucking-wild, which Bruce has come to realise is quite the done thing with a mission with Dick at the helm. Nightwing can go undercover with the best of them, but given an endless arsenal of makeshift weapons, Bruce would go for a needle, Jason would go for a hammer, and Dick would set fire to the barrel of firecrackers and laugh in the aftermath.

 This is that. Late on a mid-pandemic night, the mine is empty of all but the barest security team on the surface. Sneaking past them and down the shaft into where the green veins glow like a ghastly dream isn’t particularly difficult, nor is planting the special bomb charges they’ve cobbled together from BatWing parts. This deep underground his communicator struggles to keep a line to Dick who’s working in the main office, but an emergency would be accompanied by dramatic explosions so things are going to plan, probably.

 He sets up the 4th charge at the east side of the mineshaft, and starts making his way back up. He would feel a lot better about this if they had more charges, or just more resources in general, but on a shoestring budget Dick sure knows how to make a little plan look like a big one.

 They’ve taken out as much from the energy cell of the Wing that they can while still having enough juice to get them home, and when life only gives you four radioactive bombs, you make do. They’re lucky to have caught on Luthor so quick; the mine’s still new enough and small enough to make a two-man operation feasible, but if they hadn’t caught wind of this when they did…

 It doesn’t bear thinking about, so he puts it aside and scales the steep sides of the mine. With the black earth all around he’s more spectral than usual, so thoroughly a shadow that he even gets the drop on Dick when he climbs into the office, face smudged with dirt.

 “Jesus, B, you look 175% more wraith-like than usual,” Dick says, hands flying across the keyboard. Trying to leave a fake digital trail of corporate espionage and malpractice stretching over several months over the course of a night is a steep ask, but it’s the same with the bombs and Bruce’s darkened eyebrows and ambiguous twang.

 They only need the look of the thing to hold out just enough.

 “I’ve planted the charges. Ready when you are.”

 With a dramatic flourish Dick signs off on the final incriminating e-mail, and sends it off with a dramatic slam of the enter key. “All the guards have been sent off, and there's nobody here except for you and me. Give it to me straight, big guy; on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely is this gonna work out for us?”

 Bruce pulls out the remote detonator he’d cobbled together using a spare burner phone and the gate key fob for the Manor, and hands it to Dick to do the honours. “Wherever we land on the scale, we can work with it.” It’s like the idea of a doctor-y masquerade; sometimes being out and loud is the best way to stay hidden, and it’s somehow a new lesson for this old Bat. “It’s a crazy plan, but it’s a good one.”

 Dick beams at him, and even in the full Nightwing get-out, it’s easy to tell he’s genuinely pleased. “Then let’s go go go before we let this place blow baby, blow!”

 Sometimes Dick opens his mouth and what comes out is a ghost of a leer, a popped collar, and gelled-back hair, a Cool Guy caricature who’s so earnest he goes from Cool to Uncool and then right back to Cool just by sheer force of personality.

 Bruce can’t help snorting in slight amusement; by a deep pit in the ground, who’ll judge him?

 They get back to the Wing, get the engines running nice and warm, and from a perch high up in the air, they watch things go ka-boom!

-

 An explosive(!) story spreads at a speed significantly greater than one plane, two men, and four horses, and by the time they’ve done their final round of checks and have arrived at Gantulga’s ger to return his horses, even the herdsman is keen to let them in on the news.

 At this point they’ve turned down dinner every single time they’ve been offered it, so when Gantulga insists that he wants to celebrate their safe return with some roast lamb and arkhi , the alcoholic version of thin, clear liquid cheese, they can't and don't want to say no. They sit around the fireplace, the air filter humming happily in the background as they all tuck into a spectacular dinner, while the man shares the news.

 “I’m sure you have already heard, but a big coal mine in Muu-us exploded a few days ago. Natural gas accumulation, apparently, but my friend who lives there said the new mine was built on land it shouldn’t have been built on, so…” Gantulga shrugs, as though the outcome is obvious. Maybe it is. Mongolian spirits couldn’t be fans of Luthor if he was pumping out particles that were killing their children, after all.

 Bruce nods politely, knocking back the liquor and telling himself that he enjoys the taste of powerful rancid yoghurt. “We were already heading back here, but we heard about it. Did anyone get hurt?”

 Gantulga shakes his head. “No, no locals were hurt. Apparently the company in charge of it was a big foreign one, and the government found radiation there so now there’s a big international fight because the foreigners were secretly mining for things they shouldn't have.” The man cackles as he grabs a piece of lamb, peruses it and finds it to be of above-average quality, and drops it in his wife’s plate. “Good riddance to them. We have enough problems without outsiders interfering, eh, Bat-Erdene?”

 “We certainly do have a lot of problems, but now at least there’s one less,” Bruce concedes diplomatically.

 Most of the way through the meal, little Idree coughs a little, and as one all four adults turn to look at the toddler in alarm. Gantulga’s wife gently rubs her back, frowning lightly. “She has been a lot better since you and the Doctor came to see her,” Zayaa says, then looks a little surprised when Dick asks for Idree in pretty good Mongolian.

 While Dick looks over the girl, listening to her breathing with the stethoscope that has had pride of place around his neck these past few weeks, Gantulga looks at Bruce with some surprise. “The Doctor speaks our language now?”

 Dick tells Zayaa in atrocious grammar but a passable accent that the girl appears to have just choked on a little chunk of vegetable, calming down the tiny toddler with hands that have looked after many a younger brother and Mongolian child.

 Gantulga grins at Bruce, smacks him heartily on the back. “Looks like the Doctor has learned the right words!”

 Bruce doesn’t get a chance to reply, because Dick has turned and is beaming a million-watt smile directly into Gantulga’s face. “Of course,” Dick says, looking as at home in this warm, warm ger in the plains as he does in his police officer's uniform, as he does in a tux at the Manor, as he does leaping off a building to apprehend a bad man. He reaches over, and smacks Bruce even harder on the back. “I had a good, good teacher.”

 And that, well beyond the alcohol and the company and the wellness of thousands of children and the thorn they’ve shoved right into Lex’s side, is what goes straight to Bruce’s head, and he goes bright bright red much to the absolute delight of absolutely everyone.

 Dick raises his glass of arkhi, a shit-eating grin on his face. “To good health and Bat-Erdene!”

 Bruce can’t have that, so he raises his glass and says with resolute calmness,

 “To good health and better children.”

 And that’s that on that, thank you very much.

--- 

T/N: I think a lot about what it’s like for Dick to grow up and gradually feel outclassed by increasingly outlandishly overpowered younger siblings and father figure, missing how the world runs less on existential angst and violence, and more on the willingness to be kind in the face of a lot of unkindness.

[be-ca-lm]

pls ignore just gotta get thoughts out of my brain

tw rape and sexual assault ok so i think it started very young when i couldn’t understand why the hell boys and men seemed more important to god and that god was always presented male - i was very young, like elementary aged when i reasoned: he made us in his own image, in order to create female he has to BE equally female, he has to have female image. i was told no no that is wrong and bad and heresy.

then i ALWAYS chafed at the idea of women being helpmeets to men, created as servants to them, their sole reason for existing being in service to better, stronger, smarter males (who cause all the problems like wtf) and that doesn’t seem right or just. the garden was perfect the world god created was perfect so why create anything as lesser than? do you hate women? but men came first - then woman to help, woman as decoration, as slave, as child bearer, as comforter, as mother, as scapegoat. woman as weaker. she fell for temptation in the garden, where was adam? See? Women are stupid, need protecting, incapable of rational thought, logic, reason. look how gullible. look how dangerous to be left unsupervised. all of humanity condemned to fiery torment because of woman. no responsibility of man. hate woman, blame woman, hurt woman, you have every justification to do so. she is trapped, hobbled, shackled, tied to you for her protection, existence, safety. she is prize, she is bounty, she is spoils of war. daughters are property. a woman who does not produce children is worthless, sons are currency for power, social capital, strength. daughters serve you. woman is there as punching bag, as masturbatory relief, as house slave, as decoration, worthless but worth stealing, dirty but rapeable, stupid but cunning, pure but deceptive, ruined but redeemable through birthing. a portal, a tool, woman as commodity, woman as vehicle of corruption and vehicle of salvation, simultaneously and never, all at once and at the same time, wretched and woman. not equal to, but a compliment. a complement. you are no equal to god’s masterpiece, the man. do not kid yourself.

god’s grand plan! look at his design. how perfect. how freeing. how it was meant to be. he created woman who would ruin it, but he is not to blame, it is his creation’s fault, but not the man who he likes better, no not his fault. she is saved through childbirth? she is worthy as ALWAYS depending on her proximity to a MAN to a husband father brother rapist captor buyer slaver son stoner judge jury executioner savior.

so why? why condemn me to this torturous existence, why give me the capacity to KNOW that I am intended to be Less Than, that I am the Weaker Vessel, that I am Not A Man but give me no comfort in that, no recourse, no ability to appeal this existence. Make me a man! I could do so much more for you! I could do your pillaging and raping, I could do your genocide, I could carry out your orders, sacrifice my children, I could spread your Gospel and praise your name, I could earn my place in your heaven by your side because you commanded that I Love You, I could invade your earth, slaughter your animals, impregnate your weaker washy women and fulfill your great commission, i could be the mulitiplier, the glorifier, the pastor preacher whitewasher brainwasher tombfiller father soldier conqueror profiteer leader ruler dictator sin hater. PICK ME CHOOSE ME all I wanted was to be LOVED by you to be told WELL DONE MY GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT am i not enough for you and since i so clearly am not, why did you create me this way. 

find peace in your role. you have purpose. then why does that not feel natural as young as five years old? at 10? at 14? at 18? at 27? at 33? jesus knows your sorrows he knows you- JESUS CANNOT RELATE TO ME. he was born a man. he was not asked to make himself small. he submitted to dying. no one asked me if i wanted to volunteer. could i come back a man? I do not want to be a man. I want to be a woman in an existence where that is not automatically a Bad Thing, automatically a disadvantage. I am born guilty of the fall of humanity on my shoulders and told my shoulders can never be strong enough to carry that weight. a man will save me. be submissive. men are leaders, you are not naturally a leader. 

men are logical. they can compartmentalize. women are emotional. they cannot compartmentalize, they are ruled by their emotions. men are waffles. women are spaghetti. men are from mars. women are from venus. pop psychology will explain why men are Better. they are better at math, geometry, women cannot visualize things in their brains like that. women are not good engineers. women are soft and kind and nurturing. THIS IS WHAT WAS TOLD TO MY FACE AS A CHILD. i nodded. ok this must be so, i do not see it, it is not true for me, it is not true of any of the women i know, but my dad is saying this IT MUST BE TRUE. how does he know how my brain is wired? 

an escape. i learned about biblical singleness. i do not have to marry, i do not have to trade one household bondage for another, one male protector for a new one. i have an option? I can be single, nay, a single MISSIONARY. i can escape america, the bible belt, i can really and truly help people. i can share my burdens with them so i do not have to carry them alone. it will please god. it will make up for my being born a useless woman. if i do not marry, i do not have to submit to a man. i can be free. i can find some type of comfort in this lifetime.

somewhere along the way, i put aside my ever-growing frustrations toward the treatment of women and the hypocrisy. husbands lead the wife, they are the Head of the Household. I never saw that enacted. Pastor’s wives planned events, spoke at bible studies, sat on committees - it was limited to women only events, yes, but they led? they spoke? they taught and preached and sang and witnessed? the cognitive dissonance was too much. they budgeted, they shopped, they wore clothes i wasn’t allowed to, they were showy. but not allowed to speak in church, not allowed to preach, to pastor, to shepherd. they could mentor. Oh! Perfect. call it a different name and then you can do it. You’re not a pastor, a mentor. Not a preacher, a Bible teacher. The pastor husbands walked around domineering their families and making all the decisions? No - their families would have imploded. They preached submission but in function they were a team. everyone’s parents were. so i guess we can get away with it, and that makes it ok. label it differently and suddenly the bible has nothing to say on that particular matter. they are playing theological gymnastics, but if they can, i can too. i can sleep at night now, i do not have to be angry at god. i can ignore it.

A thought. I believe it grew in the garden of my own mind, but it’s possible a wayward seed blew in from elsewhere but I don’t remember. I was all-in, I silenced my doubts, I screwed my courage to the sticking place, I said yes I believe this, yes I am a dirty sinner, yes I do not deserve grace or mercy or forgiveness, yes I believe that god can give me that anyway in return for my life, my love, my thoughts, my actions, my deeds, my affiliations, my comfort, my pride, my complete and total surrender of my Self, my personality, my person, my autonomy, my desires, my entire existence. I was fervent. I learned the most, I delved in deep, it was theology, soteriology, epistemology, apologetics, baptisms and trinities and divine mysteries. i knew nothing of secular science, i learned nothing of sex. I knew dead men - Calvin, Luther, Arminius, Aquinas, Origen, Augustine, Spurgeon, Bonhoeffer, Wycliff, Niemoller, Lewis, Piper, Paul, James, I knew creeds, doctrines, catechisms, doxology, councils, heresies. 

And I thought. I am all in. I accept all this. I evoke the proper response in myself when I learn these things. If I were born in any other time, any other place, into any other religion - I would accept those things just as eagerly and honestly. Would I not? How could I not? I earned the praise of adults, the admiration of youth group peers, I could exercise my intellect in a way not too offensive for a female to do, because it was always good to learn the bible, right? I was special, smart, serious. A student of the bible, i committed HUNDREDS of verses to memory, i competed in competitions that tested my knowledge of scripture against my peers, I was dominant. It nagged at me. I would have been the best anything, the best Muslim, the best Mormon, the best Hindu, the best Orthodox Jew (especially Orthodox Jew - there are so many RULES and ways to do it BETTER), I was completely lost in the swirl of religiosity that was my life. I did Christian ballet, Christian theater, watched Christian entertainment, listened to Christian music, went to Christian summer camp, had Christian friends, was in a Christian home school group, read Christian books, did Christian mission trips, and eventually chose to go to a Christian college. Not to brag, to sound so insanely arrogant - any religion would be happy to have me. I would give your cult a great name. I’ve got the resume and CV to join any believing army, just give me my marching orders. I swallowed my Self in the belly of the whale of god. My whole life and personality were these things and activities.

then - purity culture hit. and it brought back all the female trauma. the trauma of existing as a woman who THINKS in the subculture of christianity insanity.

[thorsstorms]

Hey y’all I feel weird and I’ve never felt like this before. I know my blog is not my diary but I can post what I want bc... it’s my blog. Any way.

I’m bored. I’m over being lonely, I think I’ve moved past that and accepted that, but I’m just bored. I don’t have the mental capacity or energy to do things that were fun. Read fics, write fics, play with makeup, shop. I LOVE fashion. Always have. I like looking pretty but I’m just so bored of everything. Like I need a new hobby but I tried sketching. Not gonna lie, I sketched a portrait (of whom I don’t know) but was really good, but I don’t WANT to draw. I don’t do anything but homework bc I’m good at school. I’m in my third year and have a 4.0 (I’m not even that smart I just put ALOT of work into it) . But as a result I have no social life anymore.

I don’t keep up with friends, don’t even want to see my family all that much. There’s no other way to explain it but bored and I don’t know how to react to it. I clean all the time (anxiety makes me do it). I have nanny family to keep me busy but other wise I’m bored.

You can ignore this obvi, but, help pls

[wearetakingthehobbitstogallifrey]

MONICA YOU LOVED MANIC TOO??!?!? I'm overjoyed because I've only spoken to one (1) other person who really loved it & I feel so relieved, somehow, that you love it since you're the BEST OF US and what YOU love always gets right to the heart of a thing or a story. ANYWAY. Finally // and I Hate Everybody are my absolute favorites, and don't you think this album is like Ashley's version of Lover??? it's her most honest, and maybe lowest but also sweetest and steadiest album. I'M IN LOVE

YES YES YES YES YES I AM SOOO EXCITED YOU LOVE IT WILL YOU BE MY MANIC BUDDY *SINGS IT’S NICE TO HAVE A FRIEND WHO LOVES HALSEY*

also thank you sincerely and seriously so much for the glowing shoutout

#WONDER WOMAN SPEAKS MY HEART AND ALSO THIS IS SURPRISINGLY (?) RELEVANT TO THE ONCOMING STORM OF AN ESSAY

before I go any further I want to inform you I am drinking hot chocolate and Bailey’s out of my Batman/Catwoman mug and I still have Christmas lights up. This is not relevant to the following essay but I just thought you should know

I should start the essay shouldn’t I

First of all, I LOVE what you say about this being Ashley’s version of Lover. Both are a...finding of self, more or less complete. This isn’t to say that Taylor’s journey is over—she still has a lot of life and song left to fight through and to enjoy—but by the last words of “Daylight,” it seems to me that through all her struggles, she has finally discovered how to be gentle with herself and how to light her world.

I want to be defined by the things I love,

Not the things I hate

Not the things I am afraid of, I’m afraid of,

The things that haunt me in the middle of the

night, I

I just think that you are what you love.

In Lover, through Lover, by Lover, Taylor is whole again in her soul, and being thus whole and free, her future is quietly hopeful—even in the reality of the sorrowful “Soon You’ll Get Better” (which I still cannot listen to because it wounds my heart). I cannot imagine what she will do next, for she has the most expansive possibilities ahead of her.

Going back to Ashley, or Halsey, well, I can say nothing so clear about Manic other than that it aches. It aches because the whole thing is a confession. It is a spilling out of herself, all her hurts and frustrations and failures and most importantly the confusion of it all that lasts till this day and may last many more. Somehow, somewhere, in all this mess, I feel that by the end of the album, Ashley has found a grain of peace. She is still searching, still longing for things she maybe doesn’t even understand, but she understands herself, and, I hope, understands in a small way that it is okay to be in a state of longing and aching and messing up and trying again.

I’m sleepy so I’m not sure I am being coherent or cohesive, forgive me. I’m just going to say a few things about my favorite songs!

“Ashley.” So this wasn’t the first song I listened to, because of the singles released earlier. But how powerful is it that Halsey opens up with her name? There is nothing I like better than an album that tells a story (surprise!) and the instant I saw the track listing, I was shook.

Seems like now it's impossible to work this outI'm so committed to an old ghost townIs it really that strange if I always wanna change?And if only the time and space between us wasn't lonelyI'd disintegrate into a thousand piecesI think I'm making a mistakeBut if I decide to break, who will fill the empty space?

This verse—I don’t know if it is just where I am in my own life, but really, who hasn’t felt this strange rending of desires in some capacity. Cling to the past? Leap toward the unknown? I want to live near my parents forever, and see my mom every Sunday like I have for years now. I want to live in a foreign country, or even out near my old college, or heck even live in a city for year or six months, just because it would be an Experience. (Couldn’t live there indefinitely, not this girl who loves endless trees and hills and warm summer night country roads and rustling corn.)

How do we know what to do? How do we decide? What if we get left alone, with no one to comfort and support us? What if we cannot handle the consequences of our choices?

Apart from my beating heartIt's a muscle but it's still not strong enoughTo carry the weight of the choices I've madeI told you I'd ride this outIt's getting harder every day somehowI'm bursting out of myself

LOOK AT THIS! LOOK AT IT! I DARE YOU TO SAY THIS IS NOT A UNIVERSAL EMOTION. THIS IS WHAT THE ALBUM WILL BE ABOUT SO IF YOU CANNOT OPEN YOUR HEART AND BE PREPARED TO FEEL EMPATHY AND COMPASSION FOR THE YOUNG WOMAN WHO IS ABOUT TO SPILL HER GUTS TO YOU THEN GET OUT OF MY HOUSE

Ahem, I’m sorry, please stay, I don’t actually want you to go. Just sit down and I’ll give you your own hot chocolate. But listen. Ashley is, before anything, a human being. Therefore, she is going to mess up, just the same as any of us, maybe more, maybe less, but that is never going to take away a speck of her intrinsic worth, or the way that God loves her. Her struggles will not obliterate her humanity, but if I ignore her sorrows, her need for something more, her brilliance and strength and longing to love, then I would nigh obliterate my own.

Also, can I just say she has gone through some REALLY hard things in her life, things I couldn’t imagine, and for her to be where she is now—I just want the best for her. Do I agree with everything she does or believes? No. Is my life at all similar to hers? Not really. But I still feel a kinship with her, and it bleeds through in her music.

This is getting away from me isn’t it. I’m just trying to say that Manic struck a chord in my heart that has been reverberating ever since I first perceived it.

Oh gosh it is 12:30, I have to be up at 6. I’m going to fly through a few other songs and then you can message me about the rest or something 😊

“Clementine” has such color, doesn’t it? Also the line about her wondering what it’s like to be the blood in her veins—I love it!

“Graveyard” with the thing you love the most being the detriment—not going to lie, this is a story song for me, it fits into the Gold Rush Silmarillion AU I am co-authoring. Feanor and his own pride, Maedhros and half the people he loves, Fingon and Maedhros—the list could go on.

“You should be sad” and “More” gutted me because I had only just learned she has endometriosis, and has experienced a miscarriage before.

“Forever...(is a long time)”:

It's a nice surprise knowing six feet highWould reach and grab the moon if I should ask

Or just imply that I want you to be more lightSo I could look inside his eyesAnd get the colors just right

And

What am I thinking? What does this mean?How could somebody ever love me?

Self-doubt and questioning one’s ability to be loved ☹

“Without Me” gets stuck in my head and I LOVE IT I SING IT.

Found you when your heart was brokeI filled your cup until it overflowedTook it so far to keep you close (Keep you close)I was afraid to leave you on your own

 Is there anything more painful than giving all of yourself to someone, loving them so much that you do anything to help them heal—and then all they do is hurt you.

“Finally// beautiful stranger” I’m ashamed to say the first time I listened to it I wasn’t paying attention and so I was like eh it’s fine. THEN I LISTENED TO IT AGAIN. WHY IS THIS SONG HALSEY’S “ENCHANTED” (I can probably explain this, but just after I’ve had sleep)

“killing boys” there are a lot of things I could say about this song but the main thing I want to say is if there was a song that is ME regarding the sound of it only, it is this one. When she sings “you don’t need me anymore” and “I don’t need you anymore” OOH IT GETS ME IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL

Also

Told me pick my battles and be picking 'em wiseBut I wanna pick 'em all and I don't want to decideNo more, no more, anymore

THIS IS THAT TUMBLR THING  “MY MOM LIKES TO TELL ME ‘YOU HAVE TO PICK YOUR BATTLES’ WELL I’M FULL OF RAGE AND I’M PICKING ALL OF THEM”

ALSO ALSO GETTING INTO THE LYRICS THIS IS HER MOVING ON, THIS IS HER DECISIVELY SAYING NO THIS NOT RIGHT THIS IS HARMFUL TO ME I AM DONE. AND FOR SOMEONE WHO HAS EXPRESSED UNCERTAINTY AND DIFFICULTY MAKING DECISIONS, IT SO GOOD TO SEE HER MAKE A HEALTHY CHOICE FOR HERSELF

“Suga’s Interlude:” LOOK YOU LOVE BTS TOO SO I’M SURE YOU KNOW THE STORY OF HOW IT CAME TO BE AND YOU KNOW ALL ABOUT BTS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH HALSEY BUT FOR THE SAKE OF THE READERS LET ME SUM UP

Halsey did a collaboration with BTS called “Boy with Luv” and it shook the charts and is wonderful and I love it. Not only did they create that song though, but she flew out to South Korea and learned the dance choreography so that she could sing and dance in the song’s music video. This was the beginning of a beautiful, cross-language, cross-cultural friendship that has involved friendship bracelets, churros, a personalized microphone, and mutual teasing.

Anyway, Halsey had been really impressed with BTS member Suga, saying “Yoongi is really introspective and has this really intelligent perspective on where we are and what we are doing in our unique lifestyles.” She also was moved by the hard work and sacrifices he (and his fellow band members) have made. Anyway, she asked Suga to write and sing a song with her. He was initially surprised, saying that he can’t rap in English. Halsey, gem that she is, was like bro, pls rap in Korean, that would be awesome. Pardon me for copying half the lyrics for this song but to me it is pivotal in Manic as a whole:

I’ve been trying all my lifeTo separate the timeIn between the having it allAnd giving it up, yeah...

Here is the conflict and strife that Halsey has dealt with all her life—there is fear of loss there, and also fear of what one has. The power it has over you. The way things might go wrong.

I believe your faith, efforts, beliefs, and greed,are not hideous...Although the dawn right before the sun rises is the darkest,Never forget that the stars that you wish for,can only rise within the dark...

Suga reminding himself, Halsey, and us to cling to hope, ragged and worn, even in the most difficult of times. Also—in the face of our insecurities and self-recrimination for the goals we set—he tell us that our deepest parts are valid

If I run endlessly towards the end of the tunnel,what will there beIt’s true, it’s honestly differentfrom the future that I had hoped forBut it doesn’t matter, now it’s a matter of living/survivingIt doesn’t matter what happenedYeah yeah it might bedifferent from the things that you expectedYour living and your loving might changeThat’s true That’s true That’s trueYeah so are you gonna moveWe’re still too youthful and young to hesitateLet’s face it (our lives)...

This, this verse is so important. Look back at the song “Ashley”, particularly the lines I already quoted. Indecision because the fear of what might be, of what failure could do, wrecking her worse than ever, with no one to help her. Indecision because of a nostalgia that might be bitter or softly sad, what was past was at least known. It was good perhaps, it was awful more likely. But it was gotten through. There is no guarantee that Halsey will be able to get through whatever the future holds. But Suga comes in here, having faced struggles similar at their core, and he embodies the Nike slogan. Just DO IT. Don’t hold yourself back. Don’t let yourself drown, stuck in sinking mud. Embrace the unknown. If you let fear hold you back, you are as good as dead. There will be no growth, no hope battling through the dark for something better. You have to MOVE! And maybe you were right, things will never be the same, or the way you want it to be, but MAYBE THE DIFFERENT WILL BE BETTER!!!

Anyway, this section really should have been its own essay, because I’m still not done with it. You may have noticed I have been calling them Halsey and Suga, and the song is indeed called “Suga’s Interlude” but this song is so deep and personal to them both, it feels wrong to use their stage names. This is Ashley speaking, this is Yoongi speaking. Halsey posted a cute, stick figure drawing as artwork for the song, and the two singers are pictured there—and named as Ashley and Yoongi. This song is not just a collaboration by two talented artists, this is a look into the souls of a woman and a man who’ve shed blood, sweat, and tears to become the people they are. This intimacy fits the whole theme of the album so well, I LITERALLY CANNOT

I am so sorry I will move on now. It is 2:00 am. I need to go to bed. I am not. I need to talk about 929.

Well first let me say that “Still Learning” is also super important to the theme of the album.

I know that I've done some wrongBut I'm trying to make it rightDid the one I love do me wrong?Give me up right now

I know that I love you but I'm still learningTo love myself (to love my, to love my, to love my)I'm still learning to love myself (to love my, to love my, to love my)

She has made confessions and declarations and sung her frustration, and now she is moving forward. The road may be long and hard, but she is moving forward. I had something else to say but I forgot it sorry.

And NOW

929!!!!

This song miiiiight be my favorite on the album, not sure. My heart trembles and I get chills listening to it, because the music and her voice are so gentle and soothing but the lyrics are essentially a list of moments that have been needles and knives to Ashley, all her fears revealed, that she wasn’t enough then and she isn’t enough now, that the girl with the pink hair lied when she said that everyone needed Ashley. It’s a soft confession, a stream of consciousness, so it was written and so I hear it. And in this moment, how can I not love her? How can I not cry for her, for me, for anyone and everyone who struggles with self-worth, with being wanted, with being loved, with loving, with forgiving self and others?Halsey is flawed, and I just want to give her extra love because of that.

But you know what? I think she is going to be ok.

This is where I want to go back and compare Manic to Lover. There is this knowledge of the self, a kind of peace with who one is. I don’t mean that either Taylor or Ashley have reached their pinnacle of self, but they see themselves a little more clearly, and are not suppressing that knowledge.

929 sounds like water gently pouring out of a pitcher into a basin, and water, properly placed, does not drown but gives life. There is hope by the end of this song, hope despite her difficult life, hope despite the fact that she was never even telling the truth about her time of birth. (That story could be a despairing one, the “I’m a fucking liar” could be the miniscule mistake that breaks her after all the rest of her mistakes, but instead...I don’t know she just sounds kind of amused, like even if she is disappointed or upset about it, there is still this “oh well, whatever, can’t believe that happened lol” to her voice and laughter. She knows who she is now, and there is a better woman she might be, but she is not angry with herself for being who she is, and she will move forward, letting go of her ghost towns and all her fears.

Let me end with a quote about 929: “I just start spilling all of my thoughts about myself and my fans and my family, and I admit so many faults and flaws all in one go. It’s forgiving, however, it ends with the acknowledgment that I am learning and growing, minute by minute.”

Ashley, like Taylor, is making a new start. They have both found a sort of daylight, and though there may always be shadows, I really really hope that they will know mostly sun, and spread it around for others.

ALSO I JUST REALIZED I COULD NOW BE SOMEONE’S MANIC PIXIE DREAMGIRL :D 

*Disclaimer: I AM SO FREAKING TIRED I AM GOING TO BED, THIS WHOLE THING IS ENTIRELY UNEDITED, ALSO I LEFT SOME SONGS OUT OOPS WELL TWO OF THEM I DON’T CARE FOR AS MUCH BUT I THINK I FORGOT 3 AM WHICH I DO  LIKE BUT I AM NOT GOING BACK TO WRITE ABOUT IT NOW. I APOLOGIZE FOR THE RAMBLING MESS AND LACK OF ELOQUENCE BUT HERE WE BE THIS IS WHAT YOU GET HOPE IT MADE YOU SMILE

[exyjunkies]

pls continue the did andreil fic :)

that smiley tho… are y’all mad at me lmao anyway SINCE I’M FEELING IT TODAY!!! here’s part four. a long-ish entry yay

a/n: i’m not going to continue this on the blog anytime soon, but hopefully i’ll do a complete rewrite (with the parts already up on tumblr worked into it) and upload a beast of a fic on my ao3 hehe just tell me if you guys would like that!

i’m also about to hit 1.3k followers on this blog so thank you thank you thank you all so much for sticking around, i love you guys!

part one | part two | part three 

Neil hated coming back to himself.

Or that’s what Andrew seemed to see, judging from his view outside the hospital room. That’s all he saw, anyway, before the doctors had to block his way and send him away.

Ever since Natha/Neil got to the hospital, the doctors have had a hard enough time keeping Andrew out of the room whenever there was an episode, and Andrew has had a hard enough time trying to explain himself along with the fact that he was their best shot at keeping Natha/Neil down. Well, as well-behaved as he could manage himself to be. 

Instead, Andrew made himself comfortable a floor below, beside the vending machine. He’s mastered the art of ignoring the innocents that went up to the machine and purchased consumables enough for their visit. Undoubtedly, they’ve all heard of Neil’s case - famous Exy player plus identity crisis plus teammate with anger issues for a boyfriend? Who wouldn’t be intrigued?

Long gone were the days that a bunch of homophobic assholes was Andrew’s biggest problem. He now had to deal with the judgement that came from hospital regulars, families who knew of the Foxes and didn’t equate them to sickly or dying or damaged. 

For all they knew, Andrew supposed he couldn’t expect some shitheads to ever understand, so he just kept it in. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was having an easier time to deal with the situation.

A book landed with a thud on a seat two seats away from Andrew. A Place of Greater Safety, the hardcover book shouted at Andrew. Kevin sat down on Andrew’s left, setting his coffee on top of his book and handing Andrew his.

“Did they say anything?” Andrew grumbled, not looking up from his Rubiks cube. He twisted the sides around, the algorithm making the insides of his head whir. The 3x3 toy was one of the few things that helped keep him at bay. His eidetic memory was both a blessing and a curse - he remembered the day Neil got it for him, as if it were just yesterday. 

Here, Andrew, catch. The plastic cube had just barely reached Andrew’s hands. Neil had stifled a laugh at Andrew’s blinks.

What is this, Josten? He replied, sitting up and turning it around. It’s not as if he hasn’t seen the damned contraption before - just that it never occurred to him that it would be this complicated. The unmatched sides and edges seemed to be mocking him. The cube had been shuffled. The bright colors made Andrew’s head pound. A lot, Andrew had noted, like Neil did.

Something a lot less complicated than the both of us are. Thought you’d like it.

This is lame, Andrew had answered back, annoyance apparent in his tone. 

A few hours later, he was busy frowning at Neil’s smirk — the cube solved and on the bed. Mentally, he had registered 764% as he left the room and slammed the door shut.

“Doctors are keeping their mouth shut,” Kevin replied, sipping from his coffee cup and making a grimace. “Something about security purposes. Damn. Just because Neil’s a Fox—”

Andrew moved the top layer on his cube with his pinky. “Wasting my time is not enjoyable, Day.” 

Wrinkling his nose, Kevin reached for his coffee and book. “I’m not happy either, don’t worry.” He grabbed his book and replaced it with his coffee, leaning forward as he began to read. 

The second layer on Andrew’s cube was close to being solved. Up. Right. Up again. Back down. Middle layer back right.

Briefly, he registered the television above them, a weather program on the screen.

“We’re seeing some rainy skies today, folks,” the weatherman said. Behind him was a chart explaining the temperatures for today and the next few days. A map of America was shaded in different colors. 

A man in a white doctors’ coat appeared around their corner and seemed to be looking for someone.

“Is an Andrew Minyard here?” The doctor inquired, clipboard in hand and a stethoscope around his neck.

Andrew looked up and put two fingers up, and beside him, Kevin put down his book.

“We’re sorry we kept you waiting,” the doctor continued, a concerned look on his face. “I know we called you over here because Mr. Josten was in pain, and Mr. Minyard’s name was mentioned one too many times, but when a patient is in his critical stages, we don’t want anyone suffering the consequences. Hence, we do our best to control the situation as best as we could before moving forward.

“Now, as you’re both probably aware,” at this, the doctor looked at a paper on his clipboard, “Mr. Josten has dissociative identity disorder, so he might not remember calling out for you, or, quite possibly, who you are at all. I just wanted to give you both a heads up before coming in. Do you have any other concerns?”

Andrew merely stared back at the doctor. He put his Rubiks cube in Kevin’s messenger bag. Kevin put a hand on his arm and replied, “No. We’re alright.”

“I see. This way, please.”

They both stood up, and made their way to Neil’s room. 

“Do you, um,” Kevin started, then paused to reconsider his words. They passed by an old woman in a wheelchair, being wheeled by a nurse. “Would you know who he is today?”

The doctor held his clipboard to his chest. They ascended the stairs of the hospital, the cool air conditioning evident on the railings.

“As Mr. Minyard was mentioned, I’d like to guess he’s Neil today,” the doctor replied. They went up to Natha/Neil’s hospital room, and Andrew stilled, his entire body rigid.

“If you guys have any questions or problems, just page. There are buttons by his bed.” And just like that, the doctor was gone.

The both of them stayed outside for long enough that Andrew started to wonder if they were ever going to muster the courage to go in. If it was ever going to be worth seeing Neil again. His last encounter with Nathaniel still burned in the back of his mind.

A light tap on his shoulder shook him out of it. “I’m going in,” Kevin murmured. “If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”

And then with the open and close of the door, Andrew was alone.

Peering at Kevin through the window, Andrew checked if there were any unusual reactions, if the person on the hospital bed would recognize Kevin. If the person on the hospital bed would even matter.

He remembered how things were back when he wanted nothing. He had made that so evident in everything that he did, in all that he said, in all his attitudes.

Inside the room, Andrew saw Kevin’s arm grip the side of the bed, and a hand on his arm. Kevin was shaking, his head bowed down.

Was he crying? Andrew didn’t know what to make of that. Kevin Day, in all the years they’ve known each other, had never once cried. Or at least, he never showed it.

Something still tugged at Andrew’s heart. As hard as he tried to not feel anything, to not get angry at the world because it was directionless, useless, and it would not change anything, he really can’t help it. Exhaling, he put his hand on the door handle, and opened the door.

The beeping machine was the first thing he heard. The second was the unmistakable yelling of a crowd on the overhead television. Andrew walked in, and looked up.

It was an Exy game. The Bluebadge Bears v.s.the Eastside Warriors.

“The Warriors have always been one of those teams with potential,” Neil was saying to Kevin, a sparkle in his eyes that Andrew hadn’t seen for so long. Fuck. He hadn’t seen those eyes in particular in so goddamn long.

Neil stopped speaking when he saw Andrew, and sat up a little straighter instead. Andrew felt so much tension around his body. He was unsure if that was a good thing or not.

Between the both of them, Kevin quickly brought a hand up to his eyes, and said hurriedly, “I’ll go get some sandwiches from the cafeteria.”

Then, to Neil, he said, “I’m glad you’re still an Exy addict. Wouldn’t know what to do if you weren’t.”

Neil smiled, and waved as Kevin exited the room.

As the door closed, Andrew went up to Neil, and gripped the edge of the bed with one of his hands. 

“I didn’t think you’d visit,” Neil muttered, gripping Andrew’s arm through his hoodie. Andrew hated that he still had the capacity to mind Andrew’s personal space, even though he was fucking hospitalized.

“I didn’t think Day would cry, but I guess we’re wrong on both counts,” Andrew replied, putting his other hand up to Neil’s cheek, to his jaw.

He felt Neil’s laughter through the side of his throat. “Heh. Yeah. What a drama queen.”

And the both of them stayed there, just like that, staring into each other’s eyes.

Neil had gotten a little thinner, a little paler, but he was still the same annoying man Andrew had gotten to know. Andrew’s eyes followed all the wires attached to Neil, trailed across the restraint marks on his arms.

When Neil saw where Andrew had been looking, he put a hand to his opposite arm. “I woke up from some nightmare, some… some thing that my stupid mind cooked up. I don’t remember much of it. Apparently I went wild and needed to be sedated. It’s been one or two days since that episode, though.”

Andrew knew the episode only happened six or seven hours ago. “It’s over now.”

Neil nodded. “Yeah. Kiss me?”

Leaning forward, Andrew kept staring into Neil’s eyes. He briefly heard the drone of the Exy game above them, the beeping of the machines, the flat sound of the room’s air-conditioning. 

“Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

And then Andrew kissed him, starting out light, mostly out of consideration for the fact that Neil was hospitalized. A simple peck, to satisfy Neil’s primary request. Later on, if he was asked to explain, he would say it only deepened because Neil pulled him in, held him still with a hand on the back of his neck, and opened his mouth enough to draw more of Andrew in.

And then in the heat of the moment, Andrew was suddenly straddling Neil, who sat up straighter to meet Andrew’s eyes.

“You know, Kevin’s not going to be back for an hour or two, at most,” Neil said, waggling his eyebrows and sensually running his hands up and down Andrew’s arms.

Andrew practically growled. “Junkie. This was supposed to be a quick hospital visit.”

“So what. We have time.” Neil rubbed his crotch up against Andrew, who groaned because damn, these hospital gowns aren’t subtle. Neil was already half-hard at this point, and with enough time, they would both be fully hard.

“Mmm. Fine. But only you.”

And then they were kissing again, with Neil’s hands on Andrew’s thighs and Andrew’s hands holding Neil’s face up. Andrew was thrusting, his thigh going up and down Neil’s erection. Pre-come already stained his hospital gown. He lowered Neil back towards the bed and went down his neck, biting and licking at the spot where he knew Neil liked it most.

“Ugh. Andrew, don’t stop,” Neil gasped into his ear, and Andrew bit his neck, eliciting a loud moan.

Neil hadn’t been under him like this for such a long time that Andrew’s mind almost short-circuited. He pulled up Neil’s hospital gown and took him in his hand, making Neil’s breath hitch.

Stroking Neil slowly, Andrew growled into his ear, “I missed this. You.”

Neil groaned and met his every stroke with an upwards thrust. It was slow, and hard, and evident that they both wanted this to last.

”Andrew, you do not know how much,” Neil got out, in between heavy breaths, “How much. God. I have thought of you. Of you— ugfh. Doing this to me.”

Andrew was going to have to jack off later after hearing that. ”Mmm. Neil—”

”Fuck, yes.”

As Andrew quickened the pace a bit, Neil leaned up to suck on Andrew’s neck. Andrew grunted - this was even better than he remembered.

”Where— fuuuck. Where can I touch you?”

It felt really good, good enough that Andrew didn’t have time to think. He looked down at Neil’s dick in his hand, hard and slick. 

”Ugh— anywhere. For now.” Neil responded by reaching down and palming Andrew through his crotch, which made Andrew grit his teeth. The pleasure was so overwhelming.

They spent the next half hour like that: Andrew jacking Neil off, and Neil with his mouth on Andrew’s neck and his hand down Andrew’s jeans. It was full of panting and groaning and the bed was creaking, but there seemed to be no concern coming from either of them if they would break it. He heard the loud slip and slide of his hand against Neil’s dick.

Andrew ran his thumb across Neil’s slit, and Neil groaned into Andrew’s neck. “Yes, fuckfuckfuck.” He thrust up faster, and Andrew, breathing hard, matched his pace.

”I’m close, fuck, yes, yes, yes—“

”Come on, Neil. Come on.”

”Andrew.” It almost sounded like a prayer. 

With a deep moan, Neil came, his mouth open, his cum spilling all over his gown and Andrew’s clothes. Andrew kept going until he was done. Then, with a swift motion, he sat back, pulled down his fly, and grabbed his dick. He was close to coming himself.

”Hey,” Neil panted, holding onto Andrew’s wrist. “Let me?”

Andrew nodded. “Yes.”

Then Neil’s hand wrapped around his dick, and Neil was kissing him, and stroking him, and there was so much of Neil everywhere. It felt so good. It only took a few more minutes before Andrew was coming, his groan stifled by Neil’s neck.

After a few minutes of just coming down from the orgasm, Andrew pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the both of them down. He checked if Kevin was outside, and was relieved to see that no one was outside the door. The game on the television was done, and a commercial was playing. Neil was looking at him, both his hands back on the bed.

“Andrew,” Neil whispered, and Andrew looked at him. Neil’s eyes were full of that– that thing, and Andrew hated it so much.

He hated Neil so much.

“I hate you,” Andrew replied, and leaned forward to kiss Neil again. The kiss was slow, deep, and filthy. Neil wrapped an arm around his waist, and pulled Andrew closer to his body. Andrew took note of the way Neil kissed him, with such passion and meaning.

It was a moment he never wanted to end.

[unicyclehippo]

could you please explain to me who is who in critical role? i want to start the journey into that but i want a heads up first... if you don't mind obviously :)

i don’t mind at all, i love talking abt it & i hope u have so much fun !! (warning: ignore anyone in fandom who hates any of the girl characters they cannot be trusted ). pls let me know if this isn’t what u meant by this question

campaign one & two: matt mercer!!!!! he’s the man at the point of the table, the man of many faces (& voices), the puller of threads, the weaver of stories, the man with lovely hair, the dungeon master himself. he puts together the story arcs, plays the npcs, does worldbuilding & directs the game during the sessions. he’s very cool (& married to marisha ray!!! & often says rly cute shit like “that’s my wife!” or “i love that woman!”)

campaign one: (link to episode one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i-p9lWIhcLQ)

laura bailey : appearing as the wonderful, the brilliant, the sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued VEX (vex’ahlia) a half-elf ranger, whose constant companion is a massive bear called trinket, im not 100% certain of the time line but she spent her childhood with her human mum & then her elf dad took them to the elven city of syngorn (spelling? not sure) & they learned a bunch of stuff but eventually left. vex disappeared into the forests to improve her skills at tracking & archery & to find/make a place for herself. also, she likes gold.

liam o’brien : appearing as the twin brother of vex, liam o’brien voices VAX (vax’ildan) a thief & rogue who would do anything to keep his sister safe (a trait that is returned by her), he’s a sneaky dramatic bi boy & a wee bit depressed. when vex went into the woods, vax went to the cities. he became a shadow of a man (see what i did there? im very funny) but for real he became a thief & learned how to sneak & hide & steal.

marisha ray : the voice of the sweet, talented, magical, painfully awkward KEYLETH, she’s a half elf from the ashari tribe of druids (air tribe). the daughter of the headmaster of the tribe, she is on a journey to each of the tribes to learn elemental magic & to form a new connection between the tribes. she has a good heart & a wicked sense of humour that the whole group brings out of her as well as the most hilarious innocent streak the group just. destroys. she also is a fucking badass & is training to be the headmaster one day so she definitely feels responsibility for the things they do & the choices they make

sam rigel : how does one describe SCANLAN shorthalt? are there words enough? scanlan is a gnome of considerable experience & charisma, who appears to have spent his life singing & sleeping around. i am on episode 60-smth & that’s just abt all i know about him. he’s a mystery, he’s a wonder, he’s a delight. he’s a brilliant singer & frequently makes me laugh so hard i cry. also, he’s in love with pike so,,,,,mood.

taliesin jaffe : percival fredrickstein von musel klossowski de rolo the third of whitestone, but his friends call him PERCY. at the start of the campaign i thought he was a real prat but he grew on me rly quickly & i kind of love him a lot. he’s a gunslinger, a genius inventor who created the very first gun(?) in this world & a wicked sense of humour

travis willingham : GROG. he can count to four, i think. barbarian who got beat up & abandoned by his herd when he refused to kill a gnome, he was healed by pike & became her brother & he’s BRILLIANT. he’s strong as FUCK & i love him to pieces

ashley johnson : last but not least in any aspect & certainly not my love for her, ashley plays the incredible gnome cleric PIKE. grog’s sister, cleric to the goddess of (????) saranwrap, who governs like forgiveness & healing or smth fuckin dope like that, she’s a BADASS & she CLANKS in her ARMOUR & i LOVE HER. she’s the heart & soul of the group everyone adores her & bc her actress (ashley) is away for filming for a bunch of time, u can see how much they all adore her when she joins them, they brighten up so much & they love her i love ONE (1) BIG GROUP OF FRIENDS

campaign two: (link to episode one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=byva0hOj8CU )

laura bailey : JESTER LAVORRE, a blue tiefling who is super strong & mischievous & flirty & funny & a cleric for a mysterious entity called only “the traveller”. beau & fjords travelling companion when the campaign starts

marisha ray : BEAUREGARD, a monk. originally from a small town called kamordah, she was in zardash at the cobalt sol, the centre for the monks of the cobalt sol, where she was being taught to fight & discipline. but since she ran away, she only learned to fight & she’s great. also, hopefully very gay the way marisha plays it . jester & fjords travelling companion when the campaign starts

liam o’brien : scruffy dirty fire wizard CALEB WIDOWGHAST who has two holsters with books which is just the coolest fucking aesthetic & a magic cat called Frumpkin. tortured soul, dark past, German accent. notts travelling companion when the campaign starts

sam rigel : a fucking GOBLIN. a goblin girl, NOTT, THE BRAVE who is a rogue, steals stuff, has a never ending flask. she’s Caleb’s travelling companion when the campaign begins. minus 3 charisma, which is Hilarious after being scanlan for so many years

taliesin jaffe : a rather colourful character, he plays MOLLYMAUK, a lavender teifling decorated in jewels & dazzling tattoos. he wears a colourful coat & has two scimitars as well as a deck of cards he uses to tell fortunes. at the start of the campaign he is travelling with a circus & with yasha . queer???? Hopefully!!!!

travis willingham : FJORD, a seaman. he’s a half orc warlock & used to be a sailor. a man of many voices, he’s a mysterious & very handsome man & has a wicked falchion. at the start of the campaign he is jester & beaus travelling companion

ashley johnson : YASHA. strong hghhjnngbbghgnnh . but more seriously, she’s this fuckin jacked aasmir barbarian with a great sword & she still has to disappear to film sometimes so she has a fuckin dope backstory i can’t wait to find out more abt it. also, hopefully queer in some capacity

[sp4c3-0ddity]

HEY (41) "Damn auto-correct..." With Plance pls?

listen. man, dude, my friend. i know you like fluff and fun fluff is like your specialty but this fic turned into angst and for that i would like to apologize…but i hope you like it anyway??

canon-verse, ~4000 words, not proofread because i shouldn’t be awake now

warning for slight ableism?? 

Pidge couldn’t believe her luck, stranded on a huge,isolated asteroid with almost no gravitational field and no ships in sight.

(Though,of course, space was so empty that she naturally had to suffer the probabilityof getting stuck in it.)

Sheclung to a crevice on the asteroid’s surface with one hand and her feet, herhead still spinning from when the Red Lion expelled her into space. With theother hand, she fiddled with the comm in her armor, seeking a signal strongenough to contact someone - anyone- nearby, or at least within a few light-years of her position.

Stupid Lance, stupid so-called ‘valor’, stupid misguided attempt at being ‘heroic’,I’m going to kill him the next time I see him…

Pidgescowled when all she found with her comm was static, but it faltered the tickshe thought of Lance.

Quiznak, I hope he’s okay…

Herheart sank into her stomach, heavy with dread and worry. She tried to push itout of her mind - she had herself to fear for right now - but every time shereturned her attention to the task at hand, her thoughts drifted back to Lance. 

We both would’vestood a better chance if I’d stayed with you, dammit.

Pidgechecked her biometrics with her armor’s systems, and when she found nothingamiss - her life support still at full capacity thanks to the wonder of tenthousand-year-old Altean technology - she sagged, resting her forehead againstthe asteroid.

Castle on the other side of a wormhole,Galra ship blocking communications, nothing to amplify a signal or detect onethat isn’twithin range…

Empty-handedand alone, Pidge searched again.

Afterwhat felt like vargas - after her stomach growled and her throat turned parchedand her eyes drooped with exhaustion and the air her life support recycled grewstale - she found something.

Staticcrackled, louder than any other instant, and Pidge straightened her backagainst the asteroid with a start.

“Hello?” Pidge said, her voice hoarse. “Isthere anyone there? Come in, this is—”

What if they’rean enemy?

Pidgeswallowed and said, “I’m stranded alone in the middle of an asteroid field without aship. You’re the first vessel I’ve been able to hail. Can you please rescue me?”

Thestatic quieted, and Pidge’s heartbeat echoed in her ears as sweatslid down her face. She pinched her eyes shut, preparing herself to hear thesignal go dead, until:

“Give us your approximate position, lana, and we’ll be there in doboshes.”

“Well…” Pidge scanned as much of hersurroundings as she could with her cuff, letting it view the stars as she sawthem, then sent them through the same signal. “Is that enough information?”

“Oh, it’s perfect, lana!” her savior said. “Hold on.”

Theconnection clicked off - her heart skipped a beat at the sudden silence - andPidge wondered, “Whatthe quiznak does lanamean?”

Pirates.

Theship that picked her up belonged to pirates.

Theycuffed Pidge’swrists behind her back before she could so much as thank them for their rescue,before she could take off her helmet and inhale the breathable air inside.

Atleast she could savor the gravity dragging her down when her knees hit thefloor.

“You didn’t tell us you’re a Paladin ofVoltron, lana,” a humanoid alien with one eye at thecenter of his forehead said. He crossed his arms and clicked his tongue in aneerily human expression of disappointment.

“This is why,” Pidge grumbled. She tried towrench her shoulder from the grip of the part-Galra pirate that held her down,but her only reaction was to squeeze her hard enough she could feel it throughher armor.

“Well, then to the brig you go!” announcedthe cyclops alien with an unfriendly smirk. “At least give us the next varga todecide your fate.” His single eye glinted while the other pirates jeered andhonked and crowed.

Pidgestared at him with wide eyes, fear churning in her stomach and making her heartthreaten to burst its way through her ribcage. “I—”

“Save your threats and promises, GreenPaladin,” the Galra pirate said. She grabbed her arm and tugged her upright,and without waiting for Pidge to find her footing, dragged her away from thecrew.

Theyconfiscated her armor and left her only with the insulated black suit she woreunderneath, though not before Pidge slid her bayard under the thin mattress inher tiny, square cell. She tried to keep a wrist cuff too, but the pirate thatcame to collect was smart enough to count the pieces.

Shewas relieved she had the foresight and the timeto hide the bayard in a different place.

Butmuch good it did her while she was locked in a cell.

Heroptions for escape lay heavily on her mind, but the prospects were thin. She’dseen so little of the ship - not even the bridge - since coming aboard, sounless she could talk a crew member into giving her a tour…

Shecould talk a crew member into giving her a tour!

(Sheavoided thinking that it was exactly the sort of thing Lance would do.)

Pidgecould scarcely believe how straightforward it was to convince the pirate thatbrought her meals to show her around the ship.

Theship’smain engineer was a woman with unseeing blind eyes, but she compensated for thedisability with long, bat-like ears that spun towards the slightest hint ofnoise. Tall and willowy with an easy smile, she was exactlythe type Lance would go for, Pidge observed. 

(Sheignored the flare of jealousy that rose within her; now was not the time.)

Sheintroduced herself as Mara and grinned at Pidge. “You’re lucky it was Heli’s turn to cookyour first meal. If it had been my turn, you would’ve spent the next few vargaskneeling next to the toilet.”

Pidgenarrowed her eyes at the bowl of…some kind of stew, made from a starchypotato-like plant, a vegetable that looked and tastedas pungent as an onion, and a meat that she suspected was the alien equivalentof “mysterymeat”. “That’s a…relief to hear,” Pidge said.

Thistime when she spooned the bite into her mouth, she didn’tgrimace, though Mara wouldn’t have seen it either way.

Sheset aside her bowl after finishing only half of it, the scent emanating from itturning her stomach, and mused that she even preferred Coran’s cooking to this stew.

“Say,” Mara said, still lingering beyondher cell door, “are you really theGreen Paladin?”

“The one and only,” Pidge said withouthumor. “What gave it away?”

“The green armor, of course!” Mararetorted, chuckling.

Pidgeraised an eyebrow, unsure what she found funny…until she recalled that she was blind. Shefidgeted with the hem of her sleeve and muttered, “I guess it would’ve…”

“I did have a question, though,” Mara said.“Are those all the real Paladins in The Voltron Show?”

Pidgeturned her head so fast she almost gave herself whiplash. “What?”

“The Voltron Show.” Mara clasped her hands together,twiddling her thumbs. “I wondered if those were all of you or if they were justactors.”

Pidge’sjaw dropped, but she cleared her throat and wondered, “Why do you want to know?”

Marasmiled. “Iwas curious. I ama fan, by the way, and wanted to know if there would be more shows to lookforward to.”

Pidge,stunned, could only stutter, “Uh, w-well, Voltron has other things toworry about at the moment.” Like finding me…and Lance.

Herface fell, and she said, “Oh, then, maybe you could tell me moreabout everyone?”

“I…”

Pidgedecided to seize her chance.

Shesmirked - working to keep the smugness from her voice - and said, “I’dlove to tell you everything, but why don’t you give me a tour?”

Marashowed Pidge some of the inner workings of the ship - which she learned wasnamed Outlaw Heart. She gestured toevery bit and bob, every nook and cranny, with easy, pinpointing each by sound(or so Pidge assumed).

Sheobserved it all with curiosity, wondering where, exactly, her salvation lay.Sabotaging the mechanisms of the OutlawHeart and holding them hostage?

”You remind me of Hunk,” Pidge said whenMara clasped her hands together while explaining something.

“The Yellow Paladin?” Mara wrinkled hernose.

“He’s not really like he is in the show!”Pidge reassured her. “He’s actually a genius and“—she flinched when Mara hither forehead against a low air duct—”not nearlyas clumsy as you are.”

Abeat later she heard the offense Mara could take from her words, but before shecould stammer an apology, Mara grinned. “Oh, I knewI wouldn’tregret asking you!”

Hijackingthe ship for long enough to find an entity allied with Voltron and theCoalition?

”Tell me about Keith!”

“He’s grumpy and passionate and…” Pidgesighed and admitted, “He’s…not around so much anymore.”

Marafrowned. “Isthat not him in the show?”

Pidgelaughed. “That’sthe thing; Princess Allura actually played him in The Voltron Show.”

Or,perhaps, communicate with the Castle by sending a transmission from the Outlaw Heart’sbridge?

”What about the Blue Paladin? He seemsinteresting!”

“Every other fan has a crush on Shiro, butyou choose Lance?” Pidge rolled her eyes while she inspectedthe ship’s navigation and communication systems as covertly as she couldmanage. Any tick, someone else could walk in and catch taking advantage of theengineer’s blindness…

Maraheld her hands behind her back and said, “I never mentioned anything about a crush.”

“Really?” Pidge raised an eyebrow, barelylifting her attention from the comm station. Could she send a distress signalstrong enough it would reach the Castle? “Too bad, though. He would’ve loved tohear that.”

(Maybefrom anyone but her…)

“I’m sure,” Mara said doubtfully. “Are youready for the next part of the tour?”

“Oh, just a tick,” Pidge said.

Shereached for the comm, mentally running through the steps that would project adistress—

“Mara!” a new voice bellowed.

Pidgejumped backwards - and straight into the waiting arms of the part-Galra crewmember responsible for manhandling her.

“Oh, First Mate Yorik!” Mara said,straightening her posture. “I—”

“Let our prisoner onto the bridge?” The crew member - First Mate Yorik -picked Pidge up as easily as she would a pillow and threw her over hisshoulder.

Shescowled, lashing out with fists and kicks while anger made her clumsy andcareless about where they landed. But her blows proved ineffectual, the firstmate ignoring them as he leveled a furious gaze at Mara. 

“Did you not see that she was trying tosend a signal to her allies?” First Mate Yorik demanded.

“I-I didn’t—”

“Of course you didn’t!” Yorik stormed outof the bridge, Pidge bouncing in his grip. “Why Captain Nubo took on a blind engineer…”

Pidgesmacked his back and glared at the ground, blood rushing to her head. But sheyelled, “Letme go, you bastard! Let me—”

Shegasped when Yorik jerked her around and dropped her unceremoniously onto thebunk in her cell. She pinched her eyes shut and clutched her head, onlydistantly hearing the cell door slamming shut as Yorik locked her in.

“I don’t know what you said to Mara toconvince her to let you out,” he growled, “but rest assured if anything like ithappens again, you’ll regret it.”

Pidgepeeked out from between her fingers in time to see him storm away. Then shesighed and lay down on the bunk to consider her next plan.

Thecyclops alien - who introduced himself as Captain Nubo - visited her within acouple vargas of Yorik “escorting” her back, standing just outsideher cell. “I would like to apologize for my first mate’s behavior,” he said. “I’mafraid he sees you as an enemy more than most aboard the Outlaw’s Heart.”

“I wonder why…” Pidge grumbled.

“Oh, it’s not what you think, lana,” Captain Nubo said, chuckling. “He’s nevermuch liked the legitimate side of the law, Galra or not, but his mother did,and, well…”

Pidgebit her lip and guessed, “She died in the war.”

CaptainNubo hummed, not quite validating her suspicion, then wondered, “Asidefrom that, are you enjoying your stay, lana?”

“It’s better than a five-star hotel,” Pidgereplied icily. “Theywould’vemade me keep the handcuffs.”

CaptainNubo laughed, a sound that burst out from deep within his belly, and said, “Oh,if we weren’t natural enemies I might’ve asked you to join my crew.”

Pidgenarrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “Why?”

“We know enough about Voltron to have anidea of your skills.” The captain curled his dark green goatee around a finger.“We find our tech in need of update, every…legitimate party far outstripping our capabilities.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Pidge asked.“Aren’t you worried I’ll exploit that?”

“Because you haven’t already tried?” Nuboshrugged and admitted, “Perhaps I’m hoping that you’ll abandon Voltron and joinus before this is done.”

“Not a chance,” Pidge said. She stood andpaced to the cell door and met his eyes with a glare. “Voltron needs me, and I—”Ineed them too.

Butshe wouldn’tconfess to that, not to a man intent on making himself her enemy.

“Very well,” Nubo said. “I’m sorry to hearthat, lana, but I suppose I should tell you what the crew and I have decided about your fate.”

“What?” Pidge snapped when he paused fortoo long. “Spit it out.”

“It’s simple, really. For now you remainhere.”

“What the quiznak do you mean by fornow?” Pidge demanded.

“Lana,you’rea valuable commodity on this side of the universe.” Nubo smiled. “On most sides of the universe, in fact.”

Pidgeignored the sweat dampening her palms and hoped that her shock didn’tshow on her face. “All right,” she said, somehow keeping her voice fromtrembling. “Explain.”

“My crew is divided, you see,” Nubo said. “Halfwish to ransom you to some fragment of the Galra Empire, and the other halfwould prefer to ransom you to Voltron. Each has their reasons for choosing whothey will, but neither option is desirable.” 

Ransom me to Voltron…

“What about me?” Pidge said, wrapping hersweaty hands around the bars to her cell and standing on her toes. “Does myopinion matter?”

“What do you think?”

Herheart plummeted, a rock falling through the air from a great height. “I—”

“What benefits the Empire’s factions oreven what benefits Voltron can scarcely benefit my crew,” Nubo explained, hiscordial tone evaporating. “So you see what I must do? And until we decide, aprisoner you remain.”

Pidgestared at him, unable to formulate a proper response.

I could kill Lance…if he wasn’t someone’s prisoner too.

“What’s the matter, lana?” Nubo inquired, his single eye blinkingslowly. “You look like you wish to ask me something.”

Many somethings, Pidge thought, but aloud she said, “Whatdoes lana mean?”

Nubosmirked. “It’san affectionate name you would call a child.”

Theretort rose automatically to her lips, “I’m nota child, I’m—”

“A Paladin of Voltron,” Nubo conceded, “butdon’t you agree that it’s a childish thing to be stranded in space without aship or much means of communicating with your own allies?”

Pidgeblushed, averting her eyes out of embarrassment. “It wasn’t my fault,” she muttered. She curledher hands into fists as a tear rolled down her cheek.

They’llfind him first, she told herself.They have to.

“I will leave you to mourn your lot,”Captain Nubo said, “and I hope you won’t risk leaving your cell again.”

Ashis footsteps retreated down the hall, Pidge leaned against the wall. She sliddown, hugging her legs to her chest and pressing her forehead to her knees.

She’dattempt another escape soon, she promised, but first she’d cry.

Shewas ready the next time Mara opened her cell door to deliver her a meal. 

Pidgeactivated her bayard.

Itmorphed into the grapple, so silently Mara’s bat-like ears didn’t pick up on it.

Pidgeswallowed her shame, heart pounding in anticipation, and stepped behind Mara,holding the blade to her throat.

“I’m reallysorry about this, Mara,” Pidge admitted, “but I have to get back to my team. They need me.” 

Marastiffened, her ear twitching. “I understand, Green Paladin.”

“Then take me to the bridge again.”

“No.”

Pidge’seyes widened, her breath catching in shock. “What?”

“I admire your loyalty to your team,” Marasaid, “but you think you’re not the only one loyal to a crew?”

“I—”

“I don’t think you’ll kill me to make apoint,” Mara continued. “I have no doubt you’re capable if the situationdemands it, but I’m not Voltron’s enemy.”

“Y-you don’t know what I’d do!” Pidgeretorted, blood boiling with anger and her back rigid. “You don’t know what Idid to rescue my family, and you don’t know what I’d do for my team if theywere in the same danger!”

“I’m not your enemy—”

“You’re not,” Pidge conceded. She swallowedaround a sudden lump in her throat and blinked hot tears from her eyes and quiznak why wasn’t she done crying? “B-but one of myteammates is in danger and I have to go save him! What about that d-don’tyou understand?”

Marasagged. “I’msorry, Pidge,” she whispered, “but I can’t let you.”

Pidgeclosed her eyes. “You haveto, Mara. I need to see my team - all my family. I need—”She sniffed when she tasted salt on her lips. “I-I need to t-tell him I—” Shelowered her bayard and whispered, “It wasn’t his fault.”

Herbayard slipped out of her sweaty hand as she choked on her first sob.

Somethingwarm engulfed her, arms wrapped securely around her and rocking her back andforth while she cried.

Stop, shetold herself. Stop crying in front ofstrangers.

“I’ll talk to Captain Nubo,” Mara promised.“I’ll tell him you need to rescue your friend.”

Pidgebit her lip, struggling to get her sobs under control. She trembled, but Marastill held her.

“Tell me more about him,” she said, voicesoothing. “Which Paladin is he?”

“I-I don’t know anymore,” Pidge admittedwith a shaky laugh. She rubbed her itchy eyes and added, “But h-he’s more thanhe seems…”

“Captain Nubo wants you brought to thebridge.”

Pidgeopened her eyes. She’d been trying to sleep since Mara left, but between the promiseand her fear for Lance, she hadn’t managed more than a restless doze.

Soshe sat up and faced First Mate Yorik.

Heunlocked and opened her cell door with a creak of metal hinges. “Whatare you waiting for, Paladin?” he demanded when she just looked at him. “Thecaptain wishes to speak with you.”

Pidgeblinked, her brain sluggish and exhausted, but as she processed Yorik’swords her breath caught in her throat.

Hopereignited.

Pidgeshot to her feet and skipped to the door. She tried to slip past the firstmate, but he caught her arm and pulled her back.

“What’s your rush?” he asked, narrowing hiseyes.

“The sooner I return to my team, thesooner—”

“Nothing’s decided,” he reminded her. “AndI never said anythingabout your return.”

(Well,it was obvious where he stood…)

Pidgeglared at him but accepted his escort up to the bridge.

“What changed?” she demanded, her gazemeeting Captain Nubo’s. “Was it just what Mara said?”

CaptainNubo grinned, a mischievous glint in his eye. “We are not so different, you and I, yourteam and my crew. And to hear the rumors, even one of yours is part-Galra.” Heblinked - or maybe winked; Pidge couldn’t quite tell when he only had one pairof eyelids - and said, “Or, if you wish to believe I was moved by yours tearsand had a crisis of conscious, I won’t stop you.

“So…how would you like to make a deal withus, lana?”

Herheart sank; of course it couldn’tbe so easy…

“That depends,” Pidge said, though a partof her desperately wanted to accept whatever deal he offered, if only it meantfinding Lance and the rest of her team safe. “What do you want?”

Nubosighed. “Perhapsyou can guess.”

“A…ransom? I’m sure that can be arranged.”

“All right.” To her amazement, he agreedeasily, but… “I will send a transmission telling we have the Green Paladin.”

“Wait, I need to reassure them that I’msafe and that this isn’t a trap, Captain,” Pidge said.

CaptainNubo considered her, frowning slightly. “They must pay your ransom before wedeliver you then.”

“Great!” Pidge grinned, her heart alreadypounding and the words she would say rushing through her head.

“In GAC.”

Pidgeslumped. “Wedon’t…the Coalition doesn’t deal in GAC.”

“Then I’m afraid—”

“Wait!” Pidge said before Nubo could domore than turn his back. She wrenched her arm from First Mate Yorik’s firm gripand stepped towards the captain at the comm station. “I-I can upgrade your ship’ssystems instead, and maybe even convince Princess Allura to give your crewamnesty - or, well, maybe convince her to try to convince the Coalition to giveyou amnesty because frankly I hatepolitics and I have no—”

Yorikcleared his throat, cutting her off.

Pidgesmiled sheepishly at the captain. “I can’t promise more than to talk to her.”

“Well, that is as much as Mara promised you…andif you do fix our systems that would be enough.”

“AfterI contact the Castle of Lions,” Pidge insisted.

“Very well.” Captain Nubo made quick work -quick enough that Pidge suspected he’d already prepared it - setting up atransmission. “I’m afraid it’ll be text-based correspondence in the Galrascript. Can you manage?”

Pidgebit her lip. It was scarcely ideal, but… “Fine,” she said. “They can translate it.”

UnderCaptain Nubo’ssingle watchful eye, Pidge composed her first message:

Allura, it’sPidge. I was captured by pirates and they want to make a trade. Ask me toverify.

Pidgetapped her foot, her hands sweating while she waited for a reply that camefaster than she dared to expect:

Pidge! Verify:  what did you name the Galra droid youreprogrammed?

Pidgesighed, freed of a burden, as she wrote back:

I named him Rover. Allura, is everyonesafe? Do you know what happened to Lance?

Everyone is safe, Pidge. And we recoveredLance. He’snow recovering in a healing pod. The first thing he asked when we found him wasif we’d found you, so I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you once you return to us.

Pidgecovered her face in her hands and muffled a laugh, but not before irritationtook hold again when she remembered how, exactly, she and Lance got separated:

Good, because when he’s awake I’m going to kiss him.

Do you want me to tell him that if he wakesup before you get back?

Bloodrushed to her face when she reread the message she sent. “I—what—no—”She hurriedly corrected:

Wait no don’tI meant that I’m going to kill him! Damn auto-correct…

Herheart pounded wildly - quiznak, it neverbeat this fast even when she was in danger! - while she waited for Allura toreply again:

I asked Hunk what auto-correct is. He’s not convinced your statement was amistake.

Pidgelonged to return to her cell and bury her face in a pillow, where no one couldsee her red cheeks or hear her frustrated scream.

[laurelsalexis]

Your writing is great, can I request 3 for falice, pls?

send me a pairing and a number and i’ll write you a drabble

#3. Please don’t leave | read on ao3

The sound of the gunshot isn’t as foreign as F.P. would like. His biggest fear in getting Fangs out of there and it came true, all too easily. He can only huff as the sound of yelling is all around him, eyes on Archie and Reggie with the gun, turning to see the blood pooling in Fangs stomach. Jughead is yelling and Sweet Pea looks like he’s about to kill someone, Toni up at Fangs’ head with a fury and worry all her own.  

His hand winds up on Fangs’ stomach, putting pressure on the wound, attempting to stop the blood. They need to get him to the hospital and worry about everything else later. He’s sure that Hiram’s appointed Sheriff won’t do anything and the only ones that actually seem concerned with Fangs are those wearing Serpent jackets.  

God, he’s hated the mob mentality in that fucking town since he was their age, before that even. Coming from the Southside has never done him any favors. It hasn’t changed and now he’s got a bleeding kid who looked scared before the gunshot even hit him. A kid that is his responsibility and look how far that gets him.

“Dad.” Jughead pleads, sharp yet frightened. Still a kid no matter how he might have seemed with the Serpents since the mess began. 

It’s a sound that pulls him completely. “We have to take him to the hospital.” He stands, instructing the boys to help him. One arm ends up around him, pushing Fangs’ weight onto him, and letting Jughead stand on the other side.  

There’s no mistaking the looks between Sweet Pea and Toni, that silent conversation that he’s been able to read since he met them. He grabs Sweet Pea’s wrist as he tries to move away.  

“Don’t.” It’s a command.  

“He shot Fangs. I’m not gonna stand here.” Sweet Pea stares at him, the anger impossible to miss, yanking his arm back.

F.P. knows that without a doubt and he hear the moan that Fangs make. He leans towards him and places his hand on stomach and can feel the way the blood just pools in his hand. He doesn’t have time to police Sweet Pea and most of him doesn’t even want to. Not after everything. “Don’t kill him and don’t get yourself arrested. I’m not having this happen to you, too.” 

“You got it.“  

Sweet Pea disappears into the crowd of people as he and Jughead struggle to actually get Fangs out of there. Luckily, for once in the past few months, the hospital isn’t that far and they can get him there. The crowds have dispersed ever since the gunshot went off and a few of the deputies who aren’t corrupt as fuck are actually managing to do something. It’s not on his mind as he and Jughead struggle to move through the door and to someone who knows what they’re actually doing.  

“What happened?” One of the nurses asks. 

“He was shot.” Jughead replies, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.  

“In the stomach.” F.P. adds. 

“Name?” 

“Fangs Forgarty.“  

The nurse nods as she calls one of the other nurses over so they can take Fangs from them. 

“You're gonna be alright.” F.P. whispers into Fangs’ ear before he’s gone and takes a step back.  

The waiting room is filled with people and their Serpent jackets aren’t exactly gaining them any sympathy. Everyone thinks they know what Fangs did but he didn’t kill Midge. F.P. knows it without even needing to ask it. Not Fangs. He knows a few within the gang who would be capable of murder, but Fangs isn’t one of them.

He takes a seat one of the dumb plastic chairs, letting out a breath, closing his eyes. He has blood all over him. His hands, his shirt, even his jacket that he’ll need to make sure to scrub out eventually. The jacket has seen worse and really, he isn’t even complaining. Not when everything went so far to shit so quickly. He’s worried about everything.

It’s war. 

It was war the moment they arrested Fangs but it’s even worse now. That bullet sealed the deal and he should have forced Sweet Pea and Toni to come with them, but he didn’t. Rather he allowed them to go off and he’s worried. Worried about them like he’s worried about Fangs. At least Jughead is there. He’s not losing his son, another son, even.

Jughead takes a seat next to him, twirling his phone in his hand, letting out a heavy breath. 

“You going to call Betty?” 

“I don’t know.“  

“Call her.” F.P. suggests, knowing that it’ll make him feel better. “Let her know you’re okay.” 

“Yeah, okay.” Jughead gets up and walks to where there is some semblance of privacy and calls Betty. 

F.P. leans his head against the wall and settles his hands on his lap. He’s tired. That’s the only way to describe it. He hasn’t really allowed himself to process or breathe. He feels like he’s holding his breath ever since he saw Alice. He hasn’t spoken to her. She doesn’t reach out to him so he doesn’t reach out to her. He’s seen less of Betty as Jughead focuses more on the Serpents so it all feels as if it’s the way it’s meant to be.  

There are no excuses he can make to seek her out without things crossing into territories it shouldn’t. It’s something he can accept given how long he’d went prior without speaking to her. It won’t be another twenty-five years and that’s about as much comfort as he has.

Comfort he needs when he hurts so much more than he can even explain. He’s struggling to process everything. Fangs is only the latest casualty and he’s angry. So angry. He’s having trouble controlling it and knows it’s a slippery slope but he hasn’t had a drink so he’s made it that far. He really wishes he had a fucking drink in his hand. 

Jughead plops down next to him once again. “She didn’t answer.” 

F.P. nods, looking over at his son. He looks a little worse for wear but he’s alive. 

“What are we going to do?” Jughead whispers, putting his phone in his pocket.

“Call her back later.” 

“Dad.” 

He doesn’t have a good answer. Not when he doesn’t know if Fangs is even going to make it through the next hour. “We’re going to sit here for a bit.” He tells him. He just needs to sit and process for a moment before they make any grand plans. The wheels in his son’s head are probably already turning but those plans are ran on emotion. Like whatever Sweet Pea is doing is on emotion.

He can’t afford that. He needs to think logically and try to get themselves out of the mess they are in. Such a damn mess. 

That lasts twenty minutes before Jughead needs to do something. That something involves pacing that ends up driving F.P. up the damn wall. He punches the bridge of his nose as he tries his best to not scold his worried son.  

“I’m going to go walk around. Get something to eat.” 

“Good idea.” 

F.P. folds his arms across his chest. He should at least wash the blood off of him but he doesn’t bother. Rather, he just finds himself comfortable. As comfortable as he can be within the hospital waiting room. He’s going to wait for an update and decide what to do from there. 

It’s only when the sound of heels on the tile that fill the room that he even bothers to open his eyes. 

Alice.  

She’s a sight for sore eyes but it doesn’t make him feel better. She had recently. Seeing her was a highlight for him, but as he sits in the chair he isn’t happy. He’s upset and resentful, but understanding. It’s a complicated mix of emotions that he doesn’t know what to do with and doesn’t even want to do anything with them.  

“F.P.” She greets in the Alice tone that is definitely the one married to Hal.  

“Alice.” He looks up at her but doesn’t move from where he is. “And what do I owe the pleasure?” 

“I am here in a reporter capacity.” 

F.P. scoffs. “Bullshit.“  

“Don’t make this difficult.” It’s a softer plead, the pain clear in her voice. Not even Alice can mask everything.

F.P. doesn’t look at her and rather, he shakes his head. He unfolds his arms as he sits up a little more proper in the chair. 

“You’re covered in blood.” Alice murmurs with a frown. Her purse rests on a chair and she sits down next to him, a little too close, angling her body towards him. 

He turns to look at her, features soft, unable to help himself. Something about Alice just makes him melt. It annoys him but he would not have it any other way. “It’s not mine.” 

She reaches out and takes his hand in her own, inspecting him, from face to hands, before looking at him in the eyes. “It could have been.” 

“It could have been any of us.” F.P. shrugs and is just glad it wasn’t worse. Not yet, at least. “It still might be."  

"Where’s Jughead?” 

“Stress eating."  

Her hand raises up to his cheek, brushing against him. He flinches in pain he didn’t know was there. "How bad?” 

“You’ll live.” She tells him, not letting go of the small contact. Even if people there can definitely see them. 

“Everything is shit.” F.P. says after a few moments of just staring at her. He needs to break the silence and not fall into something neither of them are capable of handling at the moment. 

Alice pulls back and settles her hands in her lap. She focuses on everything but him. “I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be.” There’s an instinct in him to comfort her. He wants to. There is so much he wants to say and ignore the own way his heart aches. He wants to hold her and tell her it’s okay. Everything will be okay. That some actions do not define them. He does not of that. Rather he keeps to himself, looking down at his bloodied hands. They’ll talk when the time is right but that’s not now, not when everything around them is chaos. From the Serpents to the Black Hood. “Things good with Hal?” 

“Yeah.” She nods, still not looking at him. “My family is back together.” 

“Good.” He means it but doesn’t mean it. “I’m happy for you Alice.” 

They fall into a silence that is heavy. It’s loaded with so much that is unspoken but neither move to break it. Rather they sit next to each other in a waiting room that only empties further. It’s them with a few other people. Mostly it’s just nurses walking in and out. Never having an update on Fangs. 

It’s causes the anxiety and tension in F.P. to only rise. 

“So, can I get a quote?” 

“So you can trash the Serpents in the Register? When did you even go back?” F.P. tries not to sound as accusatory as he does. Clearly showing how much he fails.

“It was Betty’s idea.” Alice replies simply. “I won’t trash you. I am on your side, F.P.” 

“No, you’re not.” He whispers, turning to her, shaking his head. “You’re not. Publish your article, do what you want, write what you want, and stay in that miserable excuse of a marriage. You can’t be half a Serpent and you have always made your choice.” He swallows, pausing for just a moment. “I don’t mean it to be cruel but you made your choice. You went back to Hal. I can’t have you here.”

“Are we really going to do this now?”

F.P. stands, straightening his jacket, looking down at her. Deep down he knows he’ll do anything for her but right now, he can’t. Not when everything is spiraling out of control. He doesn’t have time to sit there and worry about her, them. “No, we’re not.” He turns to leave. Not that he actually takes a step, rather he swallows back all his emotion. He does his best to breath, running his hands over his face, biting down on his lip. 

“Please,” she whispers, “don’t leave.” 

It’s the words he has wanted to hear for so long. He turns, enough so he can look at her. “You’re quote. Uh,” he pauses, taking his gaze off of her, “I don’t know. The Northside is the true problem in this town and has been since it’s creation. If Fangs dies it’s on them.” 

“F.P.” She stands and takes a step towards him. “Please.” 

“Goodbye, Alice.” It takes everything in him to say that. He turns around and pulls is phone out of his pocket to call Joaquin as he walks away just so he doesn’t let himself go back to her.

[svt-energyskincare]

my first and last with lucas pls 💓

this week had been a bit of a downer. 

well…. not a bit.

try….. a lot? way too much of a downer that words couldn’t explain? yeah, that’s more like it.

you and your boyfriend lucas had gotten into a big argument recently, and now you haven’t spoken to each other in almost two weeks. and by this point, you can’t remember who was right, who was wrong, what any of you said… it all got pushed into the back of your head as the thoughts of how much you missed him flowed in and empowered the capacity of your brain. 

lucas wasn’t only your boyfriend, but he was your best friend. he was your best friend long before he became your boyfriend, he’d always been your other half. but in any relationship, sometimes there can be problems. you and lucas were like a dream team, the perfect couple who always managed to make light of everything, to always have a great time no matter what they were doing, the life of the parties. you were two dorks in love, and anybody who saw you could tell that too. since you’d been friends long before you started dating, you had your fair share of disagreements, and you did annoy each other from time to time, but you always got past it because you loved each other. things started to change as you started dating. of course, with the schedule of such a busy idol like himself, it was hard to even find time to even watch an episode of his favorite tv series. and with a college student like yourself, always busy with school and internships, you too found it hard to even sit down for an episode. 

needless to say, you both underestimated your abilities to efficiently manage your time, you both got caught up so quickly with everything that sometimes.. you’d forget to check in with each other. which really affected the other when they had free time and wanted to talk finally, but the other never responded in time. this was the root of your big argument. but really… it was made up of pent up frustration. not at each other although it may have seemed like it, but at the schedules. all you wanted was to be able to spend time together. you hadn’t in such a while, and at times when the emotions got the better of you two, sometimes you’d think they were ignoring you on purpose. but of course, you knew that wasn’t true. it’d just been a stressful and busy month in both of your individual schedules, and it was all piling up. you loved each other, but you felt you should just give each other some space to sort out each other’s thoughts. 

it wasn’t until the dreamies show, that you two saw each other again. there wasn’t a set date on when your break was over, you just made an estimate, which made you anxious because you found comfort in solidification. lucas felt the exact same way too, and because you were both anxious during the break, the rest of nct always offered you both a shoulder to cry on, and invited you both separately out with them whenever they were going to the movies, or in this case, had a show. yes. you heard that right. the dreamies invited you BOTH to their performance…. but you guys didn’t know that yet, and the dreamies made sure that you wouldn’t find out until the day of. 

you didn’t hesitate at the offer and decided to go, because even more than your sorrow, you had always wanted to see the dreamies perform! you hadn’t had the chance to see them perform yet, and now that you’ve finally gotten one, you just had to be their to see you little son’s perform. but of course, even as you got ready and even as you arrived, you couldn’t help but think about how this is what you and lucas had planned to do. 

you both were, quite possibly, the dreamies biggest supporters, their #1 fans. it was evident that lucas actually wanted to be a member of nct dream, but because he was too old, they couldn’t. and with you, you were literally like a mom cheering them on whenever they rehearsed, or whenever you a heard a song of theirs on the radio. they appreciated and adored you both, and they even joked around calling you their parents lol. so when they heard about your guys’ fight… they were sad, needless to say. they hated seeing you guys moping around, and they could easily sense your guys’ longing to be back with each other. so… the dreamies being the clever dreamies, they decided to plan something.

what is this something you ask? what? you’re asking me if they each strategically made sure that you and lucas would go to their first performance of go?? and that they all conveniently had to get their makeup ready once you two “accidentally” ran into each other, when they clearly already had their makeup done, and clearly divided into 2 groups to get you guys closer to each other. but there wasn’t anytime to question them, before you both knew it, they were rushing back to their booths, or to decode that, they were really just hiding behind the posts and spying on you to see if you guys would talk to each other like they’d hoped you would. 

and to their avail, you guys actually did! but it wasn’t at all as smoothly as both you had hoped your next time talking would be.

“hey-”

“hi-” you both interrupted each other, ending in a small, awkward laughing session. you’d be lying if you said your heart didn’t immediately melt at that, it’d been so long since you’d heard his deep, adorable laughter. and little did you know, his heart had already melted the second he laid eyes on you. there was a moment of silence between you two 

“look i’m-”

“i’m sorr-”

you both interrupted each other again, resulting in another nervous, now blushy laughing session.

“you go first”

“no you!”

“no, please y/n!”

“no, please yo-”

“y/n!”

“babe!”

it went silent again between you two, now lucas was giving you that look. you know that look, where his eyebrows are all raised and wiggling, and his eyes are all smirky-like, yeah, just like that one emoji.

“babe??”  he wiggled his eyebrows again. you rarely ever called him that, all because pet names sort of weren’t your thing.

“i know, i know…”“you never call me that!”

“i missed you a lot okay! let me call you babe” you pouted at him, playfully nudging him in the chest, which elicited that big, goofy smile you’ve been longing to see for the past few weeks. and just like that, it was like you two were back to how you used to be, before this argument happened. exchanging soft smiles to each other, blushy cheeks whenever you locked eyes, joking around like you usually do. 

and as you were about to say something, the lights suddenly flickered off, soon  being replaced with the fluorescent flashing of bright neon lights and the beat to a certain song started playing.

“oh my gosh it’s… it’s!”

“our song!!” you could hear lucas yell over the crowd as the dreamies started to perform your guys’ favorite song, “my first and last.” and next thing you know, you and lucas are hand in hand, dancing with each other on the side-stage like the dorks you are again. as the dreamies performed, they glanced at you guys from time to time, and shot you a smile as they were happy their little plan worked.

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Migrating user-defined types from Oracle to PostgreSQL

Migrating from commercial databases to open source is a multistage process with different technologies, starting from assessment, data migration, data validation, and cutover. One of the key aspects for any heterogenous database migration is data type conversion. In this post, we show you a step-by-step approach to migrate user-defined types (UDT) from Oracle to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL or Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. We also provide an overview of custom operators to use in SQL queries to access tables with UDT in PostgreSQL. Migrating UDT from Oracle to Aurora PostgreSQL or Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL isn’t always straightforward, especially with UDT member functions. UDT defined in Oracle and PostgreSQL store structured business data in its natural form and work efficiently with applications using object-oriented programming techniques. UDT in Oracle can have both the data structure and the methods that operate on that data within the relational model. Though similar, the approaches to implement UDT in Oracle and PostgreSQL with member functions have subtle differences. Overview At a high level, migrating tables with UDT from Oracle to PostgreSQL involves following steps: Converting UDT – You can use the AWS Schema Conversion Tool (AWS SCT) to convert your existing database schema from one database engine to another. Unlike PostgreSQL, user-defined types in Oracle allow PL/SQL-based member functions to be a part of UDT. Because PostgreSQL doesn’t support member functions in UDT, you need to handle them separately during UDT conversion. Migrating data from tables with UDT – AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) helps you migrate data from Oracle databases to Aurora PostgreSQL and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. However, as of this writing, AWS DMS doesn’t support UDT. This post explains using the open-source tool Ora2pg to migrate tables with UDT from Oracle to PostgreSQL. Prerequisites Before getting started, you must have the following prerequisites: The AWS SCT installed on a local desktop or an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance. For instructions, see Installing, verifying, and updating the AWS SCT. Ora2pg installed and set up on an EC2 instance. For instructions, see the Ora2pg installation guide. Ora2pg is an open-source tool distributed via GPLv3 license. EC2 instances used for Ora2pg and the AWS SCT should have connectivity to the Oracle source and PostgreSQL target databases.  Dataset This post uses a sample dataset of a sporting event ticket management system. For this use case, the table DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS with event location seating details has been modified to include location_t as a UDT. location_t has information of sporting event locations and seating capacity. Oracle UDT location_t The UDT location_t has attributes describing sporting event location details, including an argument-based member function to compare current seating capacity of the location with expected occupancy for a sporting event. The function takes expected occupancy for the event as an argument and compares it to current seating capacity of the event location. It returns t if the sporting event location has enough seating capacity for the event, and f otherwise. See the following code: create or replace type location_t as object ( LOCATION_NAME VARCHAR2 (60 ) , LOCATION_CITY VARCHAR2 (60 ), LOCATION_SEATING_CAPACITY NUMBER (7) , LOCATION_LEVELS NUMBER (1) , LOCATION_SECTIONS NUMBER (4) , MEMBER FUNCTION COMPARE_SEATING_CAPACITY(capacity in number) RETURN VARCHAR2 ); / create or replace type body location_t is MEMBER FUNCTION COMPARE_SEATING_CAPACITY(capacity in number) RETURN VARCHAR2 is seat_capacity_1 number ; seat_capacity_2 number ; begin if ( LOCATION_SEATING_CAPACITY is null ) then seat_capacity_1 := 0; else seat_capacity_1 := LOCATION_SEATING_CAPACITY; end if; if ( capacity is null ) then seat_capacity_2 := 0; else seat_capacity_2 := capacity; end if; if seat_capacity_1 >= seat_capacity_2 then return 't'; else return 'f'; end if; end COMPARE_SEATING_CAPACITY; end; / Oracle table DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS The following code shows the DDL for DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS table with UDT location_t in Oracle: CREATE TABLE DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS ( SPORT_LOCATION_SEAT_ID NUMBER NOT NULL , SPORT_LOCATION_ID NUMBER (3) NOT NULL , LOCATION location_t, SEAT_LEVEL NUMBER (1) NOT NULL , SEAT_SECTION VARCHAR2 (15) NOT NULL , SEAT_ROW VARCHAR2 (10 BYTE) NOT NULL , SEAT_NO VARCHAR2 (10 BYTE) NOT NULL , SEAT_TYPE VARCHAR2 (15 BYTE) , SEAT_TYPE_DESCRIPTION VARCHAR2 (120 BYTE) , RELATIVE_QUANTITY NUMBER (2) ) ; Converting UDT Let’s start with the DDL conversion of location_t and the table DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS from Oracle to PostgreSQL. You can use the AWS SCT to convert your existing database schema from Oracle to PostgreSQL. Because the target PostgreSQL database doesn’t support member functions in UDT, the AWS SCT ignores the member function during UDT conversion from Oracle to PostgreSQL. In PostgreSQL, we can create functions in PL/pgSQL with operators to have similar functionality as Oracle UDT does with member functions. For this sample dataset, we can convert location_t, to PostgreSQL using the AWS SCT. The AWS SCT doesn’t convert the DDL of member functions for location_t from Oracle to PostgreSQL. The following screenshot shows our SQL code. PostgreSQL UDT location_t The AWS SCT converts LOCATION_LEVELS and LOCATION_SECTIONS from the location_t UDT to SMALLINT for Postgres optimizations based on schema mapping rules. See the following code: create TYPE location_t as ( LOCATION_NAME CHARACTER VARYING(60) , LOCATION_CITY CHARACTER VARYING(60) , LOCATION_SEATING_CAPACITY INTEGER , LOCATION_LEVELS SMALLINT , LOCATION_SECTIONS SMALLINT ); For more information about schema mappings, see Creating mapping rules in the AWS SCT. Because PostgreSQL doesn’t support member functions in UDT, the AWS SCT ignores them while converting the DDL from Oracle to PostgreSQL. You need to write a PL/pgSQL function separately. In order to write a separate entity, you may need to add additional UDT object parameters to the member function. For our use case, the member function compare_seating_capacity is rewritten as a separate PL/pgSQL function. The return data type for this function is bool instead of varchar2 (in Oracle), because PostgreSQL provides a bool data type for true or false. See the following code: CREATE or REPLACE FUNCTION COMPARE_SEATING_CAPACITY (event_loc_1 location_t,event_loc_2 integer) RETURNS bool AS $$ declare seat_capacity_1 integer; seat_capacity_2 integer ; begin if ( event_loc_1.LOCATION_SEATING_CAPACITY is null ) then seat_capacity_1 = 0 ; else seat_capacity_1 = event_loc_1.LOCATION_SEATING_CAPACITY; end if; if ( event_loc_2 is null ) then seat_capacity_2 = 0 ; else seat_capacity_2 = event_loc_2 ; end if; if seat_capacity_1 >= seat_capacity_2 then return true; else return false; end if; end; $$ LANGUAGE plpgsql; The UDT conversion is complete yielding the PL/pgSQL function and the UDT in PostgreSQL. You can now create the DDL for tables using this UDT in the PostgreSQL target database using the AWS SCT, as shown in the following screenshot. In the next section, we dive into migrating data from tables containing UDT from Oracle to PostgreSQL. Migrating data from tables with UDT In this section, we use the open-source tool Ora2pg to perform a full load of the DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS table with UDT from Oracle to PostgreSQL. To install and set up Ora2pg on an EC2 instance, see the Ora2pg installation guide. After installing Ora2pg, you can test connectivity with the Oracle source and PostgreSQL target databases. To test the Oracle connection, see the following code: -bash-4.2$ cd $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin -bash-4.2$ echo "oratest=(DESCRIPTION =(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = oratest.xxxxxxx.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com )(PORT =1526))(CONNECT_DATA =(SERVER = DEDICATED) (SERVICE_NAME = UDTTEST)))" >> tnsnames.ora -bash-4.2$ sqlplus username/password@oratest SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.4.0 Production on Fri Aug 7 05:05:35 2020 Copyright (c) 1982, 2013, Oracle. All rights reserved. Connected to: Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production SQL> To test the Aurora PG connection, see the following code: -bash-4.2$ psql -h pgtest.xxxxxxxx.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com -p 5436 -d postgres master Password for user master: psql (9.2.24, server 11.6) WARNING: psql version 9.2, server version 11.0. Some psql features might not work. SSL connection (cipher: ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384, bits: 256) Type "help" for help. postgres=> You use a configuration file to migrate data from Oracle to PostgreSQL with Ora2pg. The following is the configuration file used for this sample dataset. Ora2pg has many options to copy and export different object types. In this example, we use COPY to migrate tables with UDT: -bash-4.2$ cat ora2pg_for_copy.conf ORACLE_HOME /usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64 ORACLE_DSN dbi:Oracle:sid=oratest ORACLE_USER master ORACLE_PWD xxxxxxx DEBUG 1 EXPORT_SCHEMA 1 SCHEMA dms_sample CREATE_SCHEMA 0 COMPILE_SCHEMA 0 PG_SCHEMA TYPE COPY PG_DSN dbi:Pg:dbname=postgres;host=pgtest.xxxxxxxxx.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com;port=5436 PG_USER master PG_PWD xxxxxxxx ALLOW DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS BZIP2 DATA_LIMIT 400 BLOB_LIMIT 100 LONGREADLEN6285312 LOG_ON_ERROR PARALLEL_TABLES 1 DROP_INDEXES 1 WITH_OID 1 FILE_PER_TABLE The configuration file has the following notable settings: SCHEMA – Sets the list of schemas to be exported as part of data migration. ALLOW – Provides a list of objects to migrate. Object names could be space- or comma-separated. You can also use regex like DIM_* to include all objects starting with DIM_ in the dms_sample schema. DROP_INDEXES – Improves data migration performance by dropping indexes before data load and recreating them in the target database post-data migration. TYPE – Provides an export type for data migration. For our use case, we’re migrating data to the target table using COPY statements. This parameter can only have a single value. For more information about the available options in Ora2pg to migrate data from Oracle to PostgreSQL, see the Ora2pg documentation. In the following code, we migrate the DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS table from Oracle to PostgreSQL using the configuration file created previously: -bash-4.2$ ora2pg -c ora2pg_for_copy.conf -d Ora2Pg version: 18.1 Trying to connect to database: dbi:Oracle:sid=oratest Isolation level: SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE Retrieving table information... [1] Scanning table DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS (2 rows)... Trying to connect to database: dbi:Oracle:sid=oratest Isolation level: SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE Retrieving partitions information... Dropping indexes of table DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS... Looking how to retrieve data from DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS... Data type LOCATION_T is not native, searching on custom types. Found Type: LOCATION_T Looking inside custom type LOCATION_T to extract values... Fetching all data from DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS tuples... Dumping data from table DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS into PostgreSQL... Setting client_encoding to UTF8... Disabling synchronous commit when writing to PostgreSQL... DEBUG: Formatting bulk of 400 data for PostgreSQL. DEBUG: Creating output for 400 tuples DEBUG: Sending COPY bulk output directly to PostgreSQL backend Extracted records from table DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS: total_records = 2 (avg: 2 recs/sec) [========================>] 2/2 total rows (100.0%) - (1 sec., avg: 2 recs/sec). Restoring indexes of table DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS... Restarting sequences The data from the DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS table with UDT is now migrated to PostgreSQL. Setting search_path in PostgreSQL allows dms_sample to be the schema searched for objects referenced in SQL statements in this database session, without qualifying them with the schema name. See the following code: postgres=> set search_path=dms_sample; SET postgres=> select sport_location_seat_id,location,seat_level,seat_section,seat_row,seat_no from DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS; sport_location_seat_id | location | seat_level | seat_section | seat_row | seat_no ------------------------+----------------------------+------------+--------------+----------+--------- 1 | (Germany,Munich,75024,2,3) | 3 | S | 2 | S-8 1 | (Germany,Berlin,74475,2,3) | 3 | S | 2 | S-8 (2 rows) Querying UDT in PostgreSQL Now that both the DDL and data for the table DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS are migrated to PostgreSQL, we can query the UDT using the newly created PL/pgSQL functions. Querying Oracle with the UDT member function The following code is an example of a SQL query to determine if any stadiums in Germany have a seating capacity of more than 75,000 people. The dataset provides seating capacity information of stadiums in Berlin and Munich: SQL> select t.location.LOCATION_CITY CITY,t.LOCATION.COMPARE_SEATING_CAPACITY(75000) SEATS_AVAILABLE from DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS t where t.location.LOCATION_NAME='Germany'; CITY SEATS_AVAILABLE --------------------------------- ---------------- Munich t Berlin f The result of this SQL query shows that a stadium in Munich has sufficient seating capacity. However, the event location in Berlin doesn’t have enough seating capacity to host a sporting event of 75,000 people. Querying PG with the PL/pgSQL function The following code is the rewritten query in PostgreSQL, which uses the PL/pgSQL function COMPARE_SEATING_CAPACITY to show the same results: postgres=> select (location).LOCATION_CITY,COMPARE_SEATING_CAPACITY(location,75000) from DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS where (location).LOCATION_NAME='Germany'; location_city | compare_seating_capacity ---------------+-------------------------- Munich | t Berlin | f (2 rows) Using operators You can also use PostgreSQL operators to simplify the previous query. Every operator is a call to an underlying function. PostgreSQL provides a large number of built-in operators for system types. For example, the built-in integer = operator has the underlying function as int4eq(int,int) for two integers. You can invoke built-in operators using the operator name or its underlying function. The following queries get sport location IDs with only two levels using the = operator and its built-in function int4eq: postgres=> select sport_location_id,(location).location_levels from DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS where (location).location_levels = 2; sport_location_id | location_levels -------------------+----------------- 2 | 2 3 | 2 (2 rows) postgres=> select sport_location_id,(location).location_levels from DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS where int4eq((location).location_levels,2); sport_location_id | location_levels -------------------+----------------- 2 | 2 3 | 2 (2 rows) You can use operators to simplify the SQL query that finds stadiums in Germany with a seating capacity of more than 75,000 people. As shown in the following code, the operator >= takes the UDT location_t as the left argument and integer as the right argument to call the compare_seating_capacity function. The COMMUTATOR clause, if provided, names an operator that is the commutator of the operator being defined. Operator X is the commutator of operator Y if (a X b) equals (b Y a) for all possible input values of a and b. In this case, =. It’s critical to provide commutator information for operators that are used in indexes and join clauses because this allows the query optimizer to flip such a clause for different plan types. CREATE OPERATOR >= ( LEFTARG = location_t, RIGHTARG = integer, PROCEDURE = COMPARE_SEATING_CAPACITY, COMMUTATOR = select (location).LOCATION_CITY CITY,(location).LOCATION_SEATING_CAPACITY >=75000 from DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS where (location).LOCATION_NAME='Germany'; city | ?column? --------+---------- Munich | t Berlin | f (2 rows) You can also use the operator >= in the where clause with UDT location_t, just like any other comparison operator. With the help of the user-defined operator >= defined earlier, the SQL query takes the location_t data type as the left argument and integer as the right argument. The following SQL query returns cities in Germany where seating capacity is more than 75,000. postgres=> select (location).LOCATION_CITY from DIM_SPORT_LOCATION_SEATS where (location).LOCATION_NAME='Germany' and location >=75000; location_city --------------- Munich (1 row) Conclusion This post showed you a solution to convert and migrate UDT with member functions from Oracle to PostgreSQL and how to use operators in queries with UDT in PostgreSQL. We hope that you find this post helpful. For more information about moving your Oracle workload to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL or Aurora PostgreSQL, see Oracle Database 11g/12c To Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility (9.6.x) Migration Playbook. As always, AWS welcomes feedback. If you have any comments or questions on this post, please share them in the comments. About the Authors Manuj Malik is a Senior Data Lab Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services. Manuj helps customers architect and build databases and data analytics solutions to accelerate their path to production as part of AWS Data Lab. He has an expertise in database migration projects and works with customers to provide guidance and technical assistance on database services, helping them improve the value of their solutions when using AWS.     Devika Singh is a Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services. Devika has expertise in database migrations to AWS and as part of AWS Data Lab, works with customers to design and build solutions in databases, data and analytics platforms. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/migrating-user-defined-types-from-oracle-to-postgresql/