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mrpenguinpants · 4 years

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Genshin: University AU [V1]

I love modern au. Or any “everything is fine, no one died, it’s just a fever dream” au. Half of me is thinking, damn maybe I should answer this serious- LOL HAHA no. That’s not happening. Time to crack my knuckles and let my brainworms take over again.

Once again, this is 90% crack 10% content. I want to switch up my characters from the last brainworm post but I included Kaeya and Diluc.

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Today’s appreciation post goes to twistedwishes. Hey! I’ve been seeing you pop up a lot lately and thanks for the support 💕💕 I hope things are going better for you and you’re doing alright^^ I feel kinda bad for making appreciation posts on crack fics but hopefully this is somewhat funny haha.

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Genshin: Holding Hands [V1]

Genshin: When you’re cold [V1]

Genshin: Roommate [V1]

Genshin: Royalty AU [V1]

[Masterlist]

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[taglist] <- if you want to be added, please read this first.

�� @mikeysbike @hanniejji@unionwitch @musekala @twistedsunnshiii @stanzastic @akaasea @xoneaboveallx @adoring-ghost @asheseiler @childelover @dilucsz @dai-tsukki-desu @thicmitten @youaskedfurret @diaxfeliz @wintergreen-aix @dandelily @thegayrubberducky @lovelykittycatmeow @yuunoagivesmelife @dokidokisama @simpygrimoire @minakohasmanyhusbandos @strwbrry-lia @tigerpriestess @yuu-yuukurotsuki

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Diluc

Absolute pretty boy who has braincells, but only if Kaeya is not there. In his mind, Kaeya’s presence makes his room loose 40% of their common sense. He can’t prove it just yet but he’s working on it. He majors in accounting but also has a minor in marketing, logistics’ management, fia- he majors everything business related. He’s going to become the next Elon Musk through smarts or by getting the competition drunk. There can be no contest if he’s the only candidate. He’s actually a hard working guy that overworks and stresses way too much. You have daily “Diluc recharge” evenings where he just hangs onto you while you go through your day.

“Don’t fucking talk to me until I’ve had my coffee,” except there is no coffee - he drinks grape juice out of juice boxes and his only energy boost is when he meets up with you - and that’s his constant mood. So he usually only hangs around you and Jean, since she has childhood friend status and is actually an angel. By default, Lisa is added and Diluc doesn’t mind her but if he see’s Kaeya, it’s full on war paint mode. If he's not busy with work or studies, he's usually with you either in your dorm or his apartment.

He has a fanclub and he seriously hates it and tries to do everything in his power to get Ningguang to take it down. Shouldn’t this be against his rights? But she refuses for whatever reason and makes a whole speech about free will. No matter what he does, someone manages to take a picture and it get’s printed in the university’s newspaper. The only bonding time he has with Kaeya is every Monday, where they collect and burn all the universities newspapers before anyone can get their hands on it. You always bring marshmallows to make smores during their arson activities.

“When I graduate I’m going to burn this school down to the ground. That’s not a threat it’s a promise.”

Ningguang

Is secretly the leader of the Diluc fanclub - not that she likes Diluc, she’s in a questionable platonic poly marriage with you and Beidou - but it was the easiest way to gain funds for the student council. Which she is the president of, so rip Diluc the fanclub stays. Ruthless business woman I tell you. But she can run in heels so her danger factor rises by at least 20%.

Majors in social sciences and law but more specifically the political science & government. She saw the Imperial State Crown that the Queen of England wears and says yes, that’s mine now. If she’s not with Beidou and you planning on “how to infiltrate the state government just for lols”, then she’s with Keqing, Ganyu, and Zhongli discussing student council things. Should they or should they not tell the student body that they can see everyone’s search results? Sit back and relax as the school goes into chaos.

She’s probably the scariest person on campus No, she is the scariest person on campus. She’s the scariest person on campus. But secretly she’s popping 20 aspirins just to make it through a night. She has the digestive system of steel. She still holds the title of "seriously do not try and beat her in a drinking game it's never going to happen" and that's her proudest achievement in life but sadly she can’t put it on her resume. Kaeya is still trying to beat her out of spite but so far it hasn't been working. You’re seriously concerned for her when she get’s challenged but Beidou gives you a way-to-hard slap on the back and cheers her on. If Ninngguang somehow get’s alcohol poisonings she’ll somehow find away to make a profit out of it.

"I'll let him die, I'll get the insurance money."

Kaeya

One day he chugged too much mouth wash, passed out, and somehow woke up in university majoring in law. His idea is that if he is apart of the law, he can therefore stand above it. To be fair, his only goal in life is to say “I am the manager” and he can go live the rest of his life in bliss or as a hermit. He’s secret best friends with you but wouldn't be caught dead beside you. He will stab a bitch if you ever get hurt but will still trip you on the way home. Seriously, you have no idea why people find him attractive. Your guess is it’s the eye patch or the clap of his ass cheeks that keeps alerting everyone.

He’s apart of the newspaper club and if anyone asks: No, he has no idea who keeps taking all the newspapers and burns them in the back of the campus. Originally, he joined because he was nosy and needed to join some type of club for his resume. He sometimes feels bad for his junior assistant Amber because he keeps tricking her and says that Diluc is secretly a demon that is trying to steal all the jobs and is apart of the lizard government hell bent on eradicating the human race. He even brought out a whiteboard for this joke, he’s dedicated to his job ok?

The type of guy to try and be humble and say his work is “okay” but will choke a bitch if anyone agrees. He tends to leave everything last minute and says that it’s his drug since actual drugs could land you one year in prison and a maximum penalty of $2,000. You have to awkwardly hold in your concerned mother head shake when you see him speed running his assignment literally right when the professor is walking around to check if students finished.

“I was taught how to lead not to read.”

Mona

Broke wallet #2. Zhongli is broke wallet #1 but Childe simps for him so is he really a broke wallet at this point? In this essay, I Mona Megistus, will explain why I have the rights to the title “Broke Wallet #1″...

Believes that astrology should be an actual career path but refuses to take astronomy as her major. I can read the stars not a textbook that tells me how to calculate the mass of the sun divided by the fucks I give. Instead she went into Philosophy and cries to Albedo, who is an actual prodigy genius- sir lend some braincells to everyone else please?, that her professor keep turning her paper down because “star reading” is not an academic source.

Fischl wants her to join the occult club because, surprisingly, Mona is very good at telling people’s fates through her crayon sketch ouija board. She thinks first year Fischl is cute but is put off by the cosplay roleplay that she has going on. She would join except that stupid hat wearing gremlin in her lit class would make fun of her if he found out.

You gave her half your lunch one day and bought her a doughnut "because she seemed upset" and "out of the goodness of your heart" whatever the hell that means. She thinks you pensioned it but once that thought comes she takes a bite. Poison from a doughnut is not the worst way to go out, classes are hard enough. She’s waiting for the lord to strike her down anyways.

“Its not about passing, its about doing better than everyone else.”

Venti

Slept through most of highschool and people question how he got into university. He’s a music major (wow how fucking original is that), and if anyone asks him to serenade someone or just do anything, he’ll do it for the right price. Or if you buy him alcohol because he still keeps getting ID checked. He’s banking on Kaeya actually becoming a lawyer or being on good terms with Diluc so he can finally stop being arrested for looking like a toddler.

Takes one step into classes and quickly nopes out and goes back to bed. Professors have no idea how he hasn't dropped out or failed. He just has some god given talent. He does whine at you to pretty pretty please with a cherry on top tutor him because you're such an angel and would never leave your poor but awesome best friend hanging right? He needs to get this essay down but how he is suppose to explain how the number 10 is symbolic and connects to the universe or the meaning of life. Do you think he can just say it’s apart of his culture and make up some random myth to pretend it looks like he knows what he’s doing?

He’s honestly going with the flow and put his brain on the back burner all of highschool and only now realizes wait, I actually have to use my brain?

He’s been banned from most club chats since Venti has the no chill card. Someone says “lol I look ugly today.” and he’ll respond "yup, you look like a cow." and he get’s banned. Zhongli keeps a speed run timer on his phone just to document these occasions.

"Sad spelled backwards is das and das how it be sometimes."

Childe

An actual dumbass that somehow does well. He eats sandwiches with the crust off, this heathen. Surprisingly he’s studying to become a physical therapist but most of his experience has come from breaking his own bones. You’re scared how he's going to be if he actually becomes a therapist. If he'll make bets with his patients or try to one up whatever crazy injury they get into. Everything is a challenge to him that sometimes the best way to deal with Childe is to knock him out.

This man really knows the way to a Zhongli’s woman's heart. Through micro transactions. Mona saw him accidently drop $20 and just shrugged and walked off. She has never been both spiritually and physically offended in her life. She did take the $20 though. As much as you hate leeching on Chile when he’s basically a walking wallet that probably uses bills as tissue paper, you can’t help but give him puppy eyes while planning on how to get into his will. If he even plans on having one, he might honestly write “whoever wins in a gladiator style duel in my funeral’s tournament, they will get my fortune.”.

Any sport the university offers Childe is probably in it. Which is how he met Zhongli, challenged him to a fight, proceeded to have his ass handed to him, got a backhanded compliment, and screamed to you he was in love and how he found his soulmate. He's secretly very sappy and has cried and watched every Disney and Pixar movie at least 28 times.

"IM NOT TOO SPICY! I’M A TINY BIT ABOVE MILD IF ANYTHING!”

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God if it isn’t Scaramouche, it’s Childe that ruins the aesthetic. This is why I hate you. Why do you people enable me like this, it isn’t even good. This is pretty much a @ yourself moment and I vibe hard with Venti. This entire post was just to make a joke about the clap of Kaeya’s ass cheeks alerting the guards.

This week might slow down since I have classes and assignments. My reply’s are gonna be late too, sorry;; (oh and thank you to everyone that was so supportive and nice when I mentioned it. All of you. Beautiful 💕💕 )

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dottiechan · 3 years

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ICEBREAKER Pt. 1

Read on AO3 (link in bio)

Pairing: Crosshair x Reader x Hunter; Tech x Reader (platonic)

Wordcount: 2389

Summary: Tech watches on helplessly as his brothers' affection for you threaten to ruin the squad.

Warnings: cursing, yearning

You’re just as cold on the inside as the ice is under your boots. It crunches with every step you take, and your heart seems to beat along with the fall of your boots, aching. You feel unsteady, almost enough to miss the tracks running in the snow right in front of you. You pause and crutch down, gloved fingers dipping into the indentations as you grumble to yourself. It’s not even your turn to scope out the area where you’re setting up camp, and besides, there is a literal tracking genius in your squad - it really shouldn’t be you who’s out here in the snow and ice, eyes straining against the blinding white of the planet, fingers freezing off as you set up perimeter alarms. And yet you just volunteered for the less than ideal task without explanation, not understanding your own decision either.

At least Tech offered to tag along, but you suspect he’s simply had enough of his brothers for a while. Not that you can blame him.

“Fascinating.”

You sigh, internally begging him to stop talking as you stand, abandoning the tracks after deciding they most likely belong to a lone whitefang. You have enough on your plate right now, with Hunter still being pissy and Crosshair avoiding you like the plague, and silence would be much more preferable right now to listening to one of Tech’s rambles.

“Did you know that this moon’s surface is almost entirely composed of water?”

“No.”

“Despite the subzero surface temperature, there are subsurface oceans underneath the ice that are warmed by the moon’s internal heat.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I wish we could stay long enough for me to study the subsurface flora and fauna. There might be plants underneath the ice that-”

“Tech.”

“-that use chemosynthesis-”

“Tech!”

“What?”

He has the decency to look flustered, one hand gripping the datapad tightly, the other flying up to adjust his goggles as he peers up at you. You didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but sometimes you just can’t help it. Sometimes, the confinement of the Marauder is enough to turn you into a ticking time bomb, irritated by the slightest seemingly innocent things. And you’ve had more than just mere sparks to flare your temper as of late.

...

His rifle is spotless, and yet he’s still scrubbing it as if his life depended on it.

Maybe it does, because if he jumps up and lowers his guard for a second, he’s out the ship and off to find you and Tech. Maybe you’re a fool sometimes, a god damn nuisance, a person he still couldn’t grow used to, but you belong with them now, you’re theirs, you’re his, and that means something to him. You frustrate him beyond reason, and he often grows callous and agitated because he refuses to allow himself to feel the emotions you elicit from him whenever you’re near him.

Even now, on an ice planet, the mere thought of you infects him with a sweet, sweet jungle fever that knocks him off his feet.

And he’s supposed to be angry now, Crosshair reminds himself. After all, you almost gotten yourself killed on Bracca, and almost broke him in the process.

“They’ve been gone for too long,” Hunter grumbles as he paces up and down like a caged nexu craving to run free. But lately Crosshair began to suspect that he craves something else, someone else, and the thought has his throat tightening in jealousy. He’s been watching, and he convinced himself that he’d misread the signs until he saw the same agitation reflect in his brother’s eyes that he himself has to wrestle with every day.

If it ever came down to your choice, he knows he wouldn’t be it, and he hates living with this knowledge.

Hunter has all the things you seem to like - unlimited kindness, longing looks, smirks that turn a little too soft when directed at you, broad shoulders he caught you staring at more times than he can count. Deep down, he’s still hoping it will never come to you having to choose, but it’s impossible not to wish to be in the centre of your attention. You drive him insane, but you also make him want to commit and stop fighting and lay down his weapons for once in his god damn life.

“Relax. They’re probably fine.”

The screen to their left lights up, and Hunter rushes across the ship in long strides before exhaling in relief. “The proximity alarms are online. They should be heading back soon.”

Crosshair sucks in a breath, worried about seeing his own emotions sitting behind Hunter’s eyes as well.

...

You were assigned to assist the Bad Batch for an unspecified period of time some months ago. You’re a versatile field agent, specialising in both stealth and combat casualty care, one of the few volunteers who were qualified enough to join the GAR. Oh, and you’re also clearly mistrusted by your new squad as they flip out the very moment you risk yourself in the line of duty. You’re not stupid, you weighed the risks carefully, and you trusted your abilities to see you through the job unharmed.

But ever since the incident on Bracca, you’re given the cold shoulder by most on the squad, and for once, the scenery matches your mood.

And yet Tech deserves better than to be cut off like that. He deserves to be listened to, and appreciated as the good man he is. You’re friends, but in moments like these, you think you don’t deserve his friendship.

“Look, I’m... I’m sorry, okay? But right now, I have too much on my mind to think about, umm, chemo...”

“Chemosynthesis?”

“Yeah, that.”

“I think I understand,” he nods, satisfied with your half-assed apology for the time being as he goes back to scanning the vast icy desert stretching as far as the eye can see. The Marauder’s lights blink in the background, orange against the dark blue of the growing darkness that surrounds you. It’s like a beacon, a sign that promises warmth, and you gaze at it longingly until you remember that you’ll have to go back to Crosshair’s scowl and Hunter’s disapproving frown and Wrecker’s awkward little smiles. Somehow, the ice is preferable once more, and the snow that just began to fall in soft flakes is little more than a mild annoyance.

“Well, aside from a few distant life forms-”

“Whitefangs.”

“Yes, most likely whitefangs - aside from those, we should be quite safe inside the ship for tonight.”

“Yeah,” you sigh. “You might be. I’m not the most popular with the squad right now, remember?”

“You are a valued addition,” Tech declares, and the certainty in his voice releases inside you the emotional equivalent of a sucker punch. All you can do is stand, and fight the sting of tears in your eyes. You’re confident, but you never in your wildest dreams imagined how difficult it would be to live up to the expectations of a special unit. You also know your worth, but it’s hard to keep on believing in yourself steadfastly when the rest of your squad doubts your every move. “Which is why the prospect of losing you elicits a rather severe emotional reaction in us. It is rare for regs to warm up to us as well as you have, let alone volunteers. Aside from the obvious tactical disadvantage losing you would mean, I believe it is a little more personal than that.”

...

Hunter knows something is off even before one of the alarms is triggered - whatever it is, it is within five clicks of the ship, making you and Tech plenty exposed before he could do anything. He was straining his ear simply to keep you all safe - so what if he accidentally heard your muffled voice, or the soft crunch of snow underneath your boots?

But now is not the time to be idle, and he knows it. He would never forgive himself if something happened to his squad. And to you, he corrects himself almost softly as he grabs his helmet and checks his weapons quickly. Despite the fact that he’s still angry about your previous carelessness, he cannot deny the forbidden yearning coiling in his stomach whenever you’re on his mind, making him just as nervous as hopeful. And to be fair, it happens more and more often as of late, which is both alarming and exciting as he never thought he’d ever have the luxury to feel this way about someone else. Sure, he knows love, he loves his brothers with all his heart even if he isn’t very vocal about it, but this is different. New, scary, exciting different, an effervescent and persevering tingling blinding all his senses.

Crosshair is beside him in less than a second, rifle in hand, silent, and they share a nod before lowering the ramp and rushing out into the freezing dusk.

When he picks up on your muffled voice, he seems to ignore everything as he breaks into a sprint towards you, hoping to reach you in time before you’re in danger. He almost misses the way Crosshair’s heartbeat picks up, the usually stoic man reeking with genuine worry as he looks through the scope of his rifle.

He can deal with this later, Hunter promises himself as he pushes down this uncomfortable feeling. But then he sees you and Tech, and he seems to forget about anything and everything - you have that unfortunate and awfully distracting effect on him.

...

“But Hunter yelled at me for being reckless for a solid hour. And Crosshair said he didn’t care if I wanted to get myself killed, but I should do it in a way that didn’t interfere with the mission. Seriously, what an asshole.”

“Nevermind what they actually say,” Tech waves his hand in mild annoyance. “Hunter was worried sick. Crosshair almost went after you. And they’re both too pigheaded to admit the real reason why they’re so worked up.”

“Which is?”

“Obviously they both view you as a potential romantic partner.”

There’s a moment of pause as you two stare back at one another before you snort and chuckle, shaking your head and crossing your arms over your chest as a futile attempt at staying warm. “Tech, you need to work on your sense of humour.”

“And you need to work on your observational skills and situational awareness.”

“My observational skills are exceptional,” you defend yourself, a finger held up in the air defiantly. “And my situational awareness is-”

“Lacking, as you didn’t seem to notice the whitefang return. I suggest we head back to the safety of the Marauder.”

Sure enough, the wild cat is there lurking amongst the ice dunes, its eyes glowing in the dark as they reflect the light of the ship. It shouldn’t pose a threat to you as it is alone, and relatively small, but you still consider wrestling with it instead of returning to the ship and facing the rest of the squad - somehow, even that feels like a fight more fair than the ones that await you upon your return. So you hold its gaze as it curiously inspects you, wishing to swap bodies and run away and avoid any more conflict. Before you can even think of returning to the ship, you hear quiet footsteps catching up to you.

“I thought I heard something.”

“It’s probably more curious than anything.”

Hunter unsheaths his vibroblade and twirls it in his hand so theatrically it makes you roll your eyes. He glances at you, shoulders all tense, ready to pounce at the slightest sign of danger, and even though his face is obscured by his helmet, you can almost see the disappointed frown sitting on his features. “You want to test that theory?”

“My money would be on the whitefang winning.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Tech.”

“Any time.”

“Relax.” The distorted rasp of your commlink is not enough to drown out the smugness of the sniper. The stand-off ends when a single well-placed shot right before the big cat sends it sprinting away into the darkness. You all turn to find Crosshair standing by the ship, his rifle still aimed at the retreating form of the whitefang.

“Well, there goes my opportunity to finally have an interesting patrol,” you mutter to yourself as you all make it back to the Marauder.

“Do all of your patrols end in you staring down carnivores?” Crosshair snorts, clearly unamused.

“Only the good ones,” you fire back, deciding not to wait for any of them as you head inside. Crosshair is hot on your heels, another string of mockery sitting on the tip of his tongue, because fuck, you’re stubborn, but he’s not going to cave in and tell you how it makes him feel to see you in danger. He can’t, however, put up with being away from you either.

Hunter lingers a little outside. He has to set himself straight, to contain all the things he wants to say you that have nothing to do with scolding you about Bracca, to kill all the feelings that suddenly demand to be felt so desperately. He clenches and unclenches his fists by his side, pretending to survey the surroundings of the Marauder. Tech moves in the periphery of his vision, but instead of following you and Crosshair, he steps closer to Hunter.

“I believe the threat’s been averted.”

“Yeah. Good job on setting up those alarms, Tech.”

“No problem. Is there anything else you need?”

“No. You should head back inside. The last thing I want is for you to keel over with hypothermia.”

“That’s not how hypothermia works,” Tech mutters, his voice trailing off, eyes uncertain behind his goggles. He suddenly places a gentle hand on Hunter’s shoulder, making the sergeant glance at him.

“Hunter, I’m only asking this because I care about you all, but... how long do you think this can go on before one of you gets hurt?”

Tech’s words echo in his mind long after he’s rejoined the squad on the ship. And Hunter just stands outside in the snowfall, watching the last rays of light disappear on the horizon, wondering which one of you he’ll have to hurt when the push comes to shove.

#dottiechan writes #hunter x reader x crosshair #hunter x reader #crosshair x reader #the bad batch #the bad batch x you #the bad batch x reader #tbb x reader #tbb x you #crosshair #tbb hunter #tbb fanfiction #star wars #tbb tech x reader #tech x reader

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areiton · 4 years

Text

look at me with storm-cloud sky eyes (Winteriron)

I shared a tumblr post and @verdantmoth nudged (so did @somanyofthekids) so here we are.

Read on AO3

~*~

In the end, it’s not the Widow or even the lonely best friend, not the US government or Ross’ dogs, who bring the Winter Soldier out from the cold.

In the end, it’s a man with too much money and too much rage, and he crashes into Barnes’ squat with a whine of repulsars and his mother’s choked cries echoing in his ears.

They stare at each other, and Winter says, “Are you here to kill me?”

His voice is thin and broken and resigned. Tony hates it. Hates him. Still--he thinks of Steve’s sad eyes and Natasha’s quiet desperation and Rhodey--

Rhodey would be so disappointed.

He lowers his hand, and some of the tension in Winter’s shoulders leaks out.

“Not today,” he says.

~*~

Tony brings him back to the tower, dumps him in Steve’s startled lap, and retreats because that whole brainwashed amnesiac shattered psyche is someone else’s problem to fix.

He gets very, very drunk.

~*~

It works, mostly.

They avoid each other. Barnes avoids everyone so it’s not like he’s special or like Barnes hates him.

The team thinks he hates Barnes, which--he doesn’t do anything to change that impression. He knows Natasha and Steve know HYDRA used the Winter Soldier to kill his parents, knows that if they do, everyone does, but it’s not like he’s going to talk about it to them--he’s barely able to get through telling Rhodey, and it’s Rhodey. So they have their reasons to think Tony hates Barnes, and he’s got no reason to disabuse them of that and--it works.

They avoid each other.

It works.

~*~

Sometimes, as the months pass and Winter gives way to Bucky, he catches himself looking.

Bucky is haunted and beautiful, with wide eyes and a crooked smile and an arm that he shyly lets Tony fix.

Sometimes, as the months pass and Winter gives way to Bucky, he catches Bucky looking back, gaze wistful and sad, like he wants something he won’t let himself ask for, because Tony knows Bucky doesn’t ask for anything, takes whatever Steve and Nat and the others will give but he never asks, HYDRA still too ingrained to let him.

Sometimes, as the months pass and Winter gives way to Bucky, he catches something feral and dark and deadly looking at him, and he shivers, because he wants.

~*~

There’s a fight. Barnes is fine now, the triggers dug out of his head and the bombs--a few quite literal--in his arm have been cleared away, and he’s safe or as safe as the world’s deadliest assassin can be.

He adopts a cat, and Tony thinks anyone who is actually afraid of the Winter Solider should come camp out in the common room at three am, because there’s not a damn thing terrifying about Bucky in an oversized sweater with Alpine curled around his neck, knitting an exceptionally soft looking scarf.

Still. There’s a fight. He’s cleared to join the team, now and Tony shoves back against it, when Steve brings it up, snarls and spits and gets a little bit rude with it, but there’s this too:

Barnes is watching with wide, scared eyes.

Winter is watching with cold, feral eyes.

Neither of them belong in the field, and he thinks maybe neither of them want it either.

“Ask him,” Tony shouts, when Steve starts digging his heels in, when they’re getting close to too far, when the insults dig deep and sting and Rhodey’s hand on his elbow is tight and the only thing keeping him from spinning into pieces--Rhodey’s hand and Winter’s ice cold eyes.

“Ask him what he wants,” he snaps and shoves out of the room, and the silence is broken by Steve’s broken, “Buck?”

~*~

“You didn’t have to do that,” Bucky or Winter or both say, late that night. Alpine is sitting primly next to him while Bucky slowly strokes her back, and there’s going to be cat hair in the arm, Tony should do something about that.

“You wouldn’t,” he says, and Bucky goes still, Winter watching him, until his coffee finishes and he can flee.

~*~

Things change, and nothing changes.

Barnes still avoids him and Winter still watches him, storm cloud skies eyes fixed on him unerringly.

Steve apologizes and Tony makes him a new suit and that’s that, done and dusted, and everyone is happy.

~*~

Sometimes, when he’s sitting in the common room at three am and Bucky is rumbling in Russian to Alpine while he mutters notes to JARVIS, he thinks that maybe--maybe they aren’t friends--but they aren’t not friends, either.

It’s a startling and sobering realization.

~*~

Winter hides, is the thing. Bucky smiles, lets Winter slide back, hide behind a charming grin and a mother hen routine, behind Brooklyn boys banter and a teasing drawl for Natasha and competitive rivalry for Clint. He hides, and he never truly engages with Tony directly--which is maybe why Tony can see the Soldier lurking behind Bucky.

He’s safe, now--but he’s not, not truly.

Tony thinks maybe he never will be, maybe can’t be.

It doesn’t bother him, as much as it probably should.

~*~

They don’t get along, and they don’t talk much, but Barnes watches him, and he watches back and Rhodey sighs, and Natasha smiles, thin-lipped and pleased, and life turns around them.

~*~

He comes home and his lip is throbbing and his whole body hurts, and it’s late, late enough it shouldn’t be an issue, a bag of ice--

Alpine makes a noise, and his head jerks up, but Winter is moving, and there’s no hiding here, no safe declawed Barnes smiling at him.

Winter prowls across the kitchen, all sleek and deadly and it reminds him, disorientingly, of a snow covered road and familiar voices, and then he blinks and it’s the kitchen again, just the two of them and Alpine eating chicken unconcerned on the counter.

He’s standing too close, radiating danger and barely leashed violence, but his hand--cool metal--is infinitely gentle as it comes up, tilts Tony’s head up.

There’s blood still there, Tony can taste it.

“Who did this?” Winter whispers, and Tony shivers.

“It doesn’t--”

“Who, Antoshka?” he asks, and it’s hard, demanding, furious. His hands are gentle, spun glass delicate on his skin, leaving trails of fire where he brushes a thumb over his busted lip.

“You don’t do that anymore,” Tony breathes, and something feral and deadly flares behind WInter’s eyes, and it’s WInter and Barnes both, staring at him now.

“I would,” he says, “For you, I would.”

Tony makes a noise, something breathless and wordless and wanting and Winter brushes a kiss, impossibly soft, against his forehead, burning briefly, and slips away.

~*~

“Sergeant Barnes has asked to escort you to your future charity dinners and galas, sir,” JARVIS tells him, later, when the sun is up and his lip throbs but the kitchen and what happened there feels like a fever dream and the realest thing that’s ever happened to him.

Tony doesn’t respond, only smiles, small and secret, but Steve and Rhodey both watch him in startled shock.

~*~

Two nights later, a scarf, impossibly soft and the color of storm cloud skies, is left in his workshop, with a note. It says, simply, He won’t touch you again.

Tony smiles, and loops the scarf around his throat.

His lip will be healed soon, he thinks, and can feel, still, the burning press of lips against his forehead.

#arei writes fic #winteriron fic #winteriron #bucky barnes #tony stark #i miss writing tiny things omg this was fun

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daughterofluthien · 3 years

Note

“decisions were respected” Sorry but didn’t Scott violently throw Isaac against a wall more than once just because Isaac liked his ex girlfriend in canon? That’s the literal opposite of healthy...

Hey, anon!

This is in reference to this post about Scallison for the shipping meme, where I said that one of my favorite things about Scallison is that the show lets them have a healthy breakup, and even date other people while still remaining friends. The scenes you are referring to are a pair of scenes in 3x13 Anchors.

So lets’s take a look.

(under a cut bc it turns out that when you try to be comprehensive, things get v long v quickly 😅)

The Scenes

I’m actually gonna copy/paste the dialogue of both scenes (along with minimal action/inflection notation for context) so that we can really make sure we know what we’re talking about here, so bear with me:

The first of these scenes occurs as Scott and Isaac are getting ready to head to school in the morning. After some initial ‘hey, what’re you doing, are you heading to school’ dialogue—during which both boys seem a bit awkward—we get the following:

ISAAC: [anxiously] Can I ask you a question? SCOTT: Okay... ISAAC: Are you angry with me? SCOTT: No! ISAAC: Are you sure? SCOTT: ...No. ISAAC: [awkwardly] What's that mean? SCOTT: I guess I'm not really sure how I'm feeling... ISAAC: [nodding] Okay. ...Do you hate me? SCOTT: [sighing] No, of course not. ISAAC: Do you want to hit me? SCOTT: [taken aback] No. ISAAC: I think you should hit me. SCOTT: I don't want to hit you. ISAAC: Are you sure? SCOTT: Why would I want to hit you? You didn't do anything, did you? ISAAC: [stammering] No. I mean, um... What do you mean? SCOTT: I mean, like, you didn't kiss her or anything, right? ISAAC: No! Absolutely not. No. SCOTT: ...Did you want to? ISAAC: Oh, yeah. Totally. [scene cuts to hallway outside the room. Isaac flies through the doorway and hits the wall] MELISSA: Hey! You two teenage boys? Don't test my entirely un-supernatural level of patience! ISAAC: ...Feel better?

The scene then ends, and we cut to subsequent scenes of Stiles and then Allison also getting ready for school.

The second scene is much shorter and happens later in the episode, after Isaac saves Lydia from an arrow that Allison fired while hallucinating. He and Scott are in Scott’s room again, and he’s telling him about the incident:

SCOTT: Right at her head? ISAAC: Almost right through it. And she keeps saying the same thing-- that she keeps seeing her aunt. Whatever's happening to you guys is getting worse. If I hadn't been there, then Lydia would be dead. SCOTT: ...What were you doing there? ISAAC: Uh... [scene cuts to hallway outside the room. Isaac flies through the doorway and hits the wall] MELISSA: [groaning] Oh, you guys, come on! This house does not have a supernatural ability to heal! So, stop it!

But of course just the text of the scene isn’t enough to accurately convey everything in even a tiny portion of a larger narrative, because nothing happens in a vacuum. With that in mind, let’s look at...

The Context

The first of these scenes occurs immediately after the opening credits, and is the first time we see either Scott or Isaac this season. (Assuming you consider 3B a separate season, of course, which is a whole ‘nother can of worms. This tv show we all choose to enjoy sure is Something.)

Often, the opening of a season is used to reintroduce the audience to the main characters—letting us know where their characters arcs are starting, and what they’ll be struggling with this season. Teen Wolf did this previously (and did it well, imo) in 3x01 Tattoo. Act 2 of that episode begins with a series of four scenes showing our main characters getting ready for school in the morning, highlighting where everyone currently is, and setting up where their arcs are going to go.

Scene order taken by itself would seem to indicate that they were trying to do something similar in this episode. It starts off with the hook of Stiles’ extended nightmare sequence. He can’t tell dreams apart from reality anymore, and wakes up screaming. Cut to black, cue opening credit sequence.

Immediately after the first ad break, we get a sequence of three scenes. The first is the longer of the two Scott and Isaac scenes (which, as previously mentioned, occurs as they’re getting ready to head out to school). The second is of Stiles. He’s packing for school, and the audience learns that he’s been struggling to read when he’s awake as well. Finally, we see Allison leaving her and her dad’s apartment. She seems like she’s doing fine, if a little over-focused. But then she gets into the elevator, and has an extended hallucination/flashback of Kate.

We learn soon after this that all three of them (Scott, Stiles, and Allison) are suffering from the aftereffects of their sacrifice in the previous season. According to the explanations we get both from Kira and, later, from Deaton, they’re slipping into bardo, or the space between life and death, and there’s a door open in their minds.

Okay, problem established.

It stands to reason, then, that all three of those opening scenes are supposed to serve to set up this problem. We’re shown, in three successive scenes, that all three of our sacrificees are, as the kids say, Not Doing So Hot.

(yes I know the kids don’t say that, let me be an increasingly out-of-touch millennial in peace)

This is all well and good, and honestly makes sense! Under this paradigm, the Scott and Isaac scene should be highlighting that Scott is Losing Control. Bardo is affecting him, and it’s causing him to be more aggressive. Giving in to violence in a way that he generally holds himself back from. Heck, the scene even starts with Scott flexing his fingers, and we (and Scott) see the shadow of a clawed hand against the door.

In the context of the narrative, it makes sense.

Except.

eXCEPT—

The Framing

The thing about the medium of television is that, when we’re talking about a scene, we can’t just look at the narrative structure. We also have to look at the scene itself: how it’s shot and directed, how it’s edited, even what music is paired with the scenes.

In the Stiles and Allison sequences, the scenes are very clearly shot for tension and horror. Long lingering shots on the things that Just Aren’t Right. Music that heightens the tension. Stiles gets some nice lil scare chords over the shot of the book that he can’t read, and there’s a very quiet droning in the background of the Allison nightmare sequence that slowly grows into some classic horror soundtrack music.

Okay. So far that tracks with the narrative thesis.

Now let’s take look at the Scott and Isaac scene.

We start out with some of those lingering shots I was talking about, as Scott is halted in his tracks when he notices the shadow of the clawed hand. We see his own hand is human and unshifted. There’s quiet, percussion heavy music over this portion of the scene that increases in tension at this point. Shaken, Scott closes his hand into a fist, and when he opens it, both the shadow and his own hand are smooth and human. The tense music fades out to silence, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

Scott opens the door to reveal Isaac, which startles him. There’s a short musical sting to underline this moment, and then the background music cuts out completely, leaving us (and them) in the awkwardness of this moment.

And OH BOY. IS IT AWKWARD. 😬

You can kinda see the Awkwardness Inherent in the System in the dialogue that I pasted up at the top—it’s a lot of back-and-forth, short statements, trailing off... And both Posey and Sharman are playing up the awkwardness as well. Neither boy looks like they really want to be there, and that includes Isaac, who initiated this entire conversation.

But here’s the thing.

The thing that really frustrates me about this scene.

It’s not the sort of awkwardness that exists to increase the tension. The sort that builds and builds until it reaches a fever pitch and you know something just has to give. You know, the sort of tension that you would want to build if you were showing how the protagonist of your show is no longer fully in control, and is on a knife’s edge of lashing out at his friend and beta.

Instead, it’s played for comedy.

And once again, a lot of this is down to the music.

Before the dialogue that I quoted at the top even begins, the music starts back up, and this time the tense percussion has been replaced by light, pizzicato strings. (That may not be the exact right term, fyi, I only really know enough about music theory to be dangerous.) But you know, the playful, plucked strings that often accompanies comedic or otherwise not-serious scenes.

Background music tells the viewer how they’re supposed to feel about the events in a particular scene, and the music here is saying that we’re not supposed to find this whole confrontation that dramatic. In fact, we’re supposed to find it funny.

But it’s not just the music that that frames this scene as comedic. It’s also the fact that we don’t actually see Scott shoving Isaac. Instead, the scene cuts to the hallway, and all we see is Isaac flying through the doorway.

Now, obviously I don’t have a direct line to the director and editors’ minds here. But I would bet money that those particular shots were chosen 1). because it’s so much easier to do a wire pull stunt when you don’t have to show what it’s in reaction to, and 2). because it’s kinda difficult to show your main character directly doing a violence and make it funny.

But show someone yeeted into frame, and that’s funny. Right?

(Spoiler alert: not in this context, it isn’t)

Now, I know I’ve been focusing on the first scene a lot—partially because it’s longer and partially because it’s really the only reason that the second scene exists—but I do want to take a look at the second scene really quickly as well. It’s much shorter and generally adopts a more serious tone than the first one, mostly due to fact that we’re smack dab in the middle of the action at this point. The weird visions that the sacrificees have been having all episode have started endangering lives, and they can’t just wait for it to resolve on its own.

But then the focused, intent exposition is broken by Scott’s question of “why were you there.” Then smash cut to a near identical shot of the hallway,and Isaac yeeting into frame.

The thing is, this scene is entirely dependent on the previous one. It only “works”—and I use this term loosely—as a call back to the scene at the beginning of the ep. Heck, both even have the stinger of a frustrated Melissa at the end of both scenes, frustrated at all the boys-will-be-boys roughhousing going on in her house.

Much like the first scene, this one is also set up and framed for Comedy.

Which is um. A Choice.

But What Does It All Mean

What frustrates me about these scenes, at the end of the day, is that the narrative intention and the directing/editing seem to be fundamentally at odds.

On the one hand, it makes narrative sense to say that the purpose of the scenes is to show that Scott is losing control. That he’s being affected by bardo and the open door in his mind, and it’s putting the people close to him in danger. But then on the other, the way the scenes are actually used are as comic relief. As a way to release tension between very tense, dramatic scenes.

I don’t think it works, as I don’t personally find it funny at all. But that really does seem to be the intention.

Once again, absolutely wILD choices were made on the part of tptb, and I really wish anyone had thought for two seconds about the implications of all of this, but nO

Ahem.

So now (literally 2K words later I’m so sorry 😅) what does this tell us about the characters? Certainly no one here is arguing that shoving someone is a good or defensible choice, whether it’s due to forces outside the character’s control or not. But even taking the influence of bardo in mind, is it even in character for Scott in the first place?

Because canon can also be written inconsistently/out of character, especially when we’re talking about a long-running show like tw.

One’s an Incident, Two is Coincidence...

Well, we all know the end of that saying.

So let’s end by looking at a few patterns.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this, once again, eXCEEDINGLY long post, this is reference to a post I made about scallison. I said the following in that post:

And I also really like that they [Scott and Allison] didn’t get back together. That they were allowed to be friends. That even though sometimes it hurt to watch someone you love loved love become romantically close to another person, decisions were respected, and no friendships were broken over it.

The first pattern we need to look at, then, is this:

What’s Scott’s pattern of behavior toward Allison and Isaac’s relationship?

And does Scott’s behavior toward Isaac in these two scenes match the pattern, or is it an outlier?

3x11 Alpha Pact: Sacrifice Prep The revelation that Allison and Isaac have grown close enough for him to act as emotional tether for her is very visibly a blow to Scott. He looks like the rug has been pulled out from under him, but he doesn’t look angry or upset, just.... sad. In fact, it looks like he’s swallowing back tears. But he nods towards the two of them and just says, “It’s okay.”

3x12 Lunar Ellipse: “I look for my friends” This is the epilogue of the season. Scott walks into the hallway at all of his friends in turn. Satisfied. Happy. First at Lydia and Aiden, then at Danny and Ethan. Then he turns and watches as Isaac and Allison walk down the stairs, and they’re laughing, and so obviously happy, and Scott’s small smile grows. He isn’t jealous here—he’s happy for them.

3x14 Illuminated: Mutual Recognition Scott and Allison are both at Danny’s halloween party, but they’re not here together. He sees her from across a crowded room, just like he did at the winter formal, so many months ago. But so much has happened, and they’re different people now. Allison’s with Isaac, and he’s starting to having feelings for Kira, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, and that he doesn’t miss the relationship he and Allison had. For a moment, his fingers slip away from Kira’s, and he and Allison share a sad smile.

Believe it or not, these are actually the only other examples I could find of Scott reacting to Isaac and Allison’s relationship. And uniformly across them, he’s sad, yes—after all, he loved her, and that relationship is very definitively over now. But he never seems jealous, and he isn’t angry.

So, if the Scott and Isaac scenes in Anchors don’t fit the pattern of Scott’s behavior towards the new couple, what pattern do they fit?

“Hit me.”

The teen wolf writers have a... really upsetting habit, honestly, of “resolving” interpersonal conflict between two characters by having the “wronged” party hit the other. Afterwards, the tension is almost completely broken between them, as if letting the person act aggressively in a way consensual to both parties has somehow solved the problem.

2x11 Battlefield: Derek and Peter After Peter comes back from the dead, he confronts the now pack-less Derek and offers to help him. Derek, likely remembering that Peter killed Laura and was responsible for most of the events of S1, attacks him instead. After taking a beating, Peter says the following:

PETER: Okay, go ahead! Come on, do it! Hit me. Hit me. I can see that it's cathartic for you! You're letting go of all the anger, self-loathing, and hatred that comes with total and complete failure. I may be the one taking the beating, Derek, but you've already been beaten. So, go ahead. Hit me if that will make you feel better. After all, I did say that I wanted to help.

3x13 Anchors: Scott and Isaac We’ve already discussed this scene in uh. Detail. So I don’t think we need to go into the specifics again. But just a reminder that this dialogue exists:

ISAAC: Do you want to hit me? SCOTT: No. ISAAC: I think you should hit me.

5x15 Amplification: Scott and Liam During the previous supermoon, Liam—swayed by grief, the full moon, and Theo’s manipulations—tried to kill Scott and take his power. They’ve since rediscovered an equilibrium in their relationship, and Liam’s back in Scott’s pack, but they’re both still dealing with the implications of that event. In this episode, they’re attempting to break Lydia out of Eichen, but they’re not as strong as they should be, due to the mountain ash laced through the building, and are having difficulty breaking down a door. Then, the following exchange occurs:

LIAM: Hit me. SCOTT: What? LIAM: Hit me! I'll get angry, then I'll get stronger. STILES: Hit him. Hit him! LIAM: I tried to take your powers. I tried to kill you. Hit me! STILES: He also left you for dead. LIAM: I wanted you dead!

6x16 Triggers: Liam and Theo No one actually directly says “hit me” in this one, due to the circumstances, but the sentiment’s there. In this sequence, Liam and Theo are trying to convince Gerard and the hunters that the whole pack is hiding out in the zoo, so Theo goads Liam into hitting him, in order to stage a very audible fight.

THEO: Okay... Then they have to believe us.[shouts] Isn't that right? LIAM: [whispers] Why are you yelling? THEO: [shouts] You got a problem? Oh, that's right, you always have a problem! LIAM: [whispers] What the hell are you doing? THEO: [shouts] Shut up! [punches Liam] Yeah, you see that, Scott? Your little Beta can't even take a punch. And what do you think, Malia?

While there’s a variety of primary textual reasons here, all of them deal with personal issues between the pair, and all of them involve some level of catharsis for the person doing the punching. Taken all together, it’s honestly a pretty troubling pattern, especially given the inclusion of an actual canonical abuse victim initiating and receiving the violence.

TL;DR

This is a writer issue, not a character issue. The serious narrative context conflicts with the comedic framing in a way that is honestly baffling to me, and it doesn’t fit the established pattern of Scott’s character and actions. Moreover, it’s an example of the writers’ apparent belief that interpersonal conflict can and should be solved through consensual violence.

The pattern we do see, is that the Scott is saddened by the knowledge that Allison has moved on, but he’s glad that she and Isaac are happy. Similarly, Allison is saddened that Scott is moving on as well, because she does still care for him deeply. Despite their conflicted feelings, neither tries to disrupt the other’s new relationship.

On other shows, that would be a season-long, drama-filled plotline. Here, nothing.

And I legitimately love that so much.

#asks #anonymous #scott mccall #teen wolf #als;dkjlfkjf i'm so sorry that this turned out so long y'all #but it turns out that I have Thoughts #my meta

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1zashreena1 · 3 years

Text

Comfort Food

Taco/Female oc (plus size)

Please have this addled fever dream drabble

No porn, only soft. I can't breathe deeply enough to pant thru smut rn.

Gif credit @girlpornparadise

The knock wakes you up. You blink blearily around the little efficiency apartment while trying to remember which way is up. The tv is still on, it's just the little smart tv menu, so whatever voice you're hearing is definitely outside.

It's also definitely male.

Undeniably male. A soft rasp. Not so low as to be intimidating, but certainly intriguing.

Come to think of it, the grandma that you rented this teeny over-the-garage apartment from did say that she had a son who worked entirely too much. His own business. Or something.

Your pajama pants aren't exactly clean, per se, but you're clothed, so it counts. He knocks again just as you get to the lock and slide the chained bolt back. The door swings open with its distinctive creeeeeeeeee-yip and…

Yeah.

That is.

That is A MAN.

Holy jesus fuckin christ, Mary, and Abraham, too. What in the actual fuck.

First off, he's wearing flip flops. That should not be attractive. And plaid pajama pants. Also, categorically not sexy. A dark colored t shirt, the v-neck is displaying an impressive amount of ink in the form of neck tats that you have never before wanted to lick on a man. But above that is an absolutely gorgeous face with a chiseled jaw, full lips, salt and pepper stubble, high cheekbones, a long, straight nose, dark, bottomless eyes, and naturally perfect eyebrows. All set within tan skin and fetching laugh lines under a riot of black curls.

I am so fucked.

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

"Hey, uh, I'm, I'm Taco, Marguerite's son. She said she hasn't seen you in a few days, thought you might be sick, so I made some soup." That delicious rasp sounds about as confused as you are. He thrusts the tupperware container at you with a gentle sloshing (Good grief, that must be original '70s) and you stare rudely.

His hands are fucking huge.

Your brain immediately supplies thoughts of finally meeting a man whose hands are big enough to cup your boobs. No! The nails are really short, but it's obvious he does manual labor. Taco's forearms are rippling with muscle and your fever addled libido is fascinated. Beyond that are stupidly broad shoulders--

And we're right back to the neck tats.

"Hi," you croak unpleasantly with a wince. Hell, even Taco winces. Gamely, you push onward, "Sorry, I sound like shit. Not the best way to meet someone."

Taco takes in your bedraggled hair and baggy pajamas with a not so suppressed smirk, although compassion shimmers in those chocolate eyes. Oh no, please not with the bottomless brown eyes. He rumbles soothingly, "Nah, you're fine. Everybody gets sick, right?"

The soup is still hot and it feels good enough that you clutch it to your chest. It also feels good to have someone care for you. As if he can read your mind, Taco asks, "You alone out here? Mama said you moved here from way out east."

Coming from virtually anyone else this question would be highly suspect. Despite his hulking presence and intimidating ink, Taco feels oddly safe. Oh, he could definitely fuck somebody up, but it wouldn't be you. You're nodding before you realize it, "Yeah. I had to get away. Like, really far away."

Anything else is cut off by a coughing fit that doubles you over. Tears drip onto your tie dyed pants while you gasp for air. Taco takes the container back with his left hand while the right lands on your back. The lack of oxygen results in the floor magically elevating itself toward your face, until a strong arm wraps around your middle.

"Hey, easy there. I got you." The reassurance is growled directly into your ear and how the hell can your nipples be so alert when you're, like, dying? Taco proceeds to pick you up and gently drop your limp form on the loveseat about five feet to the left. The old furniture sags when he sits, too, but the massive hand rubbing your back is a great distraction from worrying about if the flowered monstrosity might collapse.

"Sorry," your voice sounds like you just survived a horror movie, two hours of screaming included. Taco is still rubbing your back and it feels really nice. He smells nice, too, like coffee and fabric softener. Are you snuggled into that mysteriously broad chest? Yep.

"While I certainly don't mind holding a beautiful woman," His chuckle vibrates beneath your palms (When did you start groping him? Why the fuck does he have such magnificent pecs?) Taco continues, "I don't wanna make you uncomfortable. I mean, we literally just met."

Oh shit, he's a gentleman, too?? You are so screwed.

"Uh, yeah, true. Sorry. And thank you. For the soup, and, you know, the whole picking me up." Looking up proves nearly fatal, those brown eyes are soft and warm. The laugh lines and sprinkling of silver at his temples only make him all the more handsome. You feel like he could be legitimately dangerous, but only in a fierce protector way.

"So, um. Look, I'm just downstairs, round the back if you need anything. More soup, tissues, another hug from a virtual stranger, whatevs." He shoots you a wink and then stands to go to the door. You can't help but laugh, he's not wrong.

"I might just take you up on that." Are you seriously flirting with a nasty head cold? But, those shoulders…

His voice is soft as he steps outside and closes the door behind him, "Get some rest, chiquita."

----------

The soup is really fucking good.

#maurice compte #Taco #born a champion #does this man understand how much we love him??#plaid #neck tats #THIS ONE CAN COOK #zash writes

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shiftytracts · 4 years

Text

Stop Wanting More, part 1 of 2 (T/M/A fic)

In which season-four Jon tries to quiet his hunger for live statements by gorging himself on paper ones, and Daisy tells him what she used to do when she got shaky between hunts. Part two here.

…For almost ten thousand words (~5.1k in this half, ~4.3 in the other), beeeecause of course I did.

Content warnings:

Disordered eating (mainly of the statement variety, but mentions also the literal kind)

Nausea, and brief descriptions of prior vomiting

Brief but not-ungraphic description of Jon’s (canon) Boneturning incident—so, injury, very mild body horror

Vague discussion of Daisy’s passive suicidality (in part two)

Animal cruelty and death: Daisy talks about hunting rats for sport (in part two)

—

Jon paused the tape recorder, closed his eyes, and tried to breathe. A statement’s second-to-last page was the hardest to get down. The dull ache that had begun under his ribs twenty minutes before now stretched down far enough to converge with the one in his stiff hips. His pulse throbbed in his stomach; he could feel it swell and recede beneath his hand with every beat. Nausea boomeranged up from somewhere under his navel. He reminded himself he could stop for now, finish this later—and, as always, that thought made him feel even colder than the sludge of other people’s fear pooling in his stomach. With his free hand Jon pressed Record again, and turned to 0101702’s final page. Oh, god, there was barely anything on it. Just the rest of this paragraph and then one more. He kept his eyes on the page, didn’t stop speaking its words, but fumbled blindly for another statement with his fingers.

“Knock knock,” Daisy said as she entered. “Christ—you’re still recording?”

In a flash Jon folded his hands on the table, sat up a little straighter, tried to suck in his gut. “Er—”

“Thought you said you were gonna do one more.”

“I’m almost done.”

“You’ve got another one right there.”

“I…” he considered I’m sorry, but then she’d say For what. “I don’t know what to tell you. It is my office.”

“Yeah, and your home,” Daisy scoffed—“and mine. Sort of.”

“D—did you want…? You’re welcome, to. Sit down, or….”

She did, on the arm of his couch. “I know, Jon. That’s not what I meant.”

“Okay.” To show he’d meant his welcome, Jon pushed his chair back from his desk and turned in it to face Daisy. Hopefully she’d remember he couldn’t ask What did you mean.

“I mean, don’t pretend this is work. How many statements have you had today? You don’t think that one can wait til tomorrow?”

Seven? Or would this one be eight. Jon forced himself to exhale out the portion of gut he’d been holding back since she arrived; it hurt too much to keep sucking in anyway. “A lot. I’m just.”

“Hungry, yeah.”

“Even when I’m stuffed I’m hungry.” He snarled a laugh, and set a rueful hand over his stomach like a fig leaf.

At first he’d tried sating the hunger with garden-variety food. That didn’t help much. Way back when he’d first transferred to the Archives Jon had fallen back into the old habit of forgetting to eat—which, yeah, not great, but, it did mean he remembered well how amazing it used to feel to cram down even a stale biscuit after too many hours’ inanition. All the hidden notes he’d found in yogurt and dry toast. He even remembered tearing up once at the taste of a banana, early in 2016. Before that he’d been sure he didn’t like bananas; afterward, for a short while he’d eaten one nearly every day, hoping vainly to recapture the ecstasy of banana after 14-hour fast. No luck, of course. After a few weeks he’d concluded he still didn’t much like banana as final course of healthy lunch. He’d especially disliked peeling them: how sometimes the stems bent without breaking, and the more times you tried the warmer, softer, more flexible they got. How little strings of peel still clung to the banana after you peeled off its main body, like static when you pull off a jumper. Or like the lint it leaves behind on your shirt. And the way bananas bruise, like people do. All these vestiges of its previous life—reminders it had lived to feed itself rather than him.

Since the coma, all people food—er. That was, all food intended for human consumption—tasted like that chase after a faded spark. Cloying and mushy and… organic, reminding him too much of the garden it came from. And the way it landed in his stomach was far worse. The original banana, the one Martin had pressed on him in the Archives in April 2016, had gone down like nectar, ambrosia, manna from heaven, &c.; the ones afterward, like an unwanted dessert always does. (Cloying. Mushy. A biology lesson mildly tapping its watch.) These days, though, eating regular dinner on a stomach empty of other people’s trauma felt like trying to fill up on cake. Not like cake after fourteen hours of nothing; Jon was pretty sure his 2016 stomach would have welcomed that. But like cake at dinner time. When you’re expecting, you know. Dinner. It gave him the brief, fake-seeming energy of a sugar high, and made him sick before it made him full.

Especially when he was otherwise ailing, for some reason? After Hopworth he’d treated himself to a lie down and a sandwich. The rest had helped, but he’d squandered most of the energy it gave him on the effort to keep the sandwich down. At that moment nothing, not even the coffin, had scared him so much as the thought of what it would feel like to throw up when you had only ten ribs on one side. He hadn’t expected losing them to hurt, at least not for long—had expected the rib to flow out of his skin into Jared Hopworth’s hand like an ice cube through water, which in retrospect was stupid given the testimony of Mr. Pryor in statement 0081103, but he hadn’t had time to reread that one beforehand and at the time Jon remembered only that Hopworth didn’t break his victims’ skin when he pulled out their bones. Turned out that wasn’t much comfort: he’d still had to break the ligaments attaching Jon’s ribs to his spine and chest. It had felt like a bad dislocation (four of them, technically), only instead of the feeling of bone pressing on things it shouldn’t there was an equally violating sense of tissue wallowing in holes that shouldn’t be there. He’d had this horror that if he were sick the flesh would crumple and pop where his ribs used to be, like when you try to suck the remaining water out of a near-empty bottle.

A few months after that he’d caught cold. (A point in the still-human column, Daisy had called it.) You know the first day or two of a cold, before the encroaching mucus takes out your ability to smell or taste properly, how innocuous olfactory phenomena like cheddar and laundry soap suddenly become Bad Smells, on par with the olive bar at a posh supermarket? Well, in a similar way, this one seemed to sharpen the dichotomy in his body’s opinions of people food and monster food. His lack-of-ribs had mostly healed by then though, so either vomiting with only ten ribs on one side did not cause the anomaly he’d feared, or, if it did, it hadn’t hurt enough for him to notice it in the cacophony (pucophony?) of other sensations.

(Daisy liked to play on words, so he’d been doing it more lately. This project the Eye seemed happy to help with, though in this case the suggestion arrived in his mind at the exact same moment as a reminder that, technically, the word cacophony can apply to sensations other than sound only by synecdoche.)

And then, a few weeks ago, when the whole Archives went down with norovirus… well, it wasn’t a fun time. He’d at first mistook the lethargy, weakness, trouble concentrating for signs of hunger—the new kind of hunger. Ms. Mullen-Jones’ statement about the Divine Chains cult hadn’t seemed all that bad, when he’d first recorded it. Scarier than if he’d read its events in a novel, of course; that was just how statements worked. He experienced them more vividly than stories, though less so than the events of his own life. (Because the people they happened to thought they were real! he’d told himself when he first took this job. It’s empathy, that’s all. Nope, sorry—evil magic.) When he read a paper statement these days, though, the knowledge it wouldn’t give him nightmares never quite left him. And he’d thought he was growing desensitized to the kinds of horror most people came to the Institute to report. Coming back up, though—maybe it was the fever, but god, the visions he got on that statement’s way out, of Agape and the soft, sticky hivecorpse of Claude Vilakazi’s followers—the way it made the donut he’d shoved down that morning (in a show of team spirit, god help him) come back up tasting like rotten rice wine—it was worse than the dreams. Worse, he could have sworn, than even the first time he ever dreamt Naomi Herne’s empty graveyard.

While hanging over the bowl of the Archives’ toilet waiting to see if he’d got it all up or if there was still more to come, Jon remembered thinking again of the banana Martin had given him. A few days earlier Daisy had made him watch the video of the I don’t understand this meme and at this point I’m too afraid to ask man vore-ing a banana; Jon had confessed to her, in a conspiratorial whisper-laugh, that for him vore itself had been one such meme until that very second, when the Eye had seen fit to inform him. But when applied to a banana, the term apparently just meant eating it peel and all. In 2016 Martin had broken the banana’s stem and pulled back a section of peel before handing it to Jon, so as to brook no argument. Was it really the banana itself he’d cried over? Not the gesture of friendship, when Jon deserved it so little? The thought of someone caring for him enough that when he got hangry at them they handed him a snack. Martin had been living in the Archives then, like Jon did now. Sleeping in Document Storage—a guest in a room owned by pieces of paper. Those bananas may have been the only thing that felt like his.

A Guest for Mr. Spider was about vore, technically. Not an uncommon topic in children’s literature. Some surmised that was where the fetish came from, though others maintained kinks like that were inborn, and the stories merely alerted their hosts to them for the first time. Red riding hood, three little pigs, little old lady who swallowed a fly. The Leitner touch was only the part where he drew you to his real-life lair and real-life ate you.

Looking back, that was probably the first thing he’d ever admired about Martin—how easy he’d made it look to skin a fruit. Not at the time admired, of course, but in those weeks afterward, when every banana Jon ate made him claw at the peel til his finger joints throbbed.

That stomach bug had struck the Archives with serendipitous timing, though. If he’d not found out how thin abstinence from the Hunt had made Daisy on the same day he’d barfed up a statement, Jon might not have pieced together what their combined evidence meant. Until then he’d put down his own post-coma weight loss to the fact he rarely ate more people food than a donut in twenty-four hours. Lots of avatars were scrawny, after all. Jane Prentiss, Mike Crew, Justin Gough, Annabelle Cane, John Amherst, Simon Fairchild. Jude Perry and Jared Hopworth could mold their respective fleshes however they wanted, so he didn’t count them as exceptions. True, Trevor Herbert’s bulk had struck him as odd; surely a homeless man wouldn’t waste cash on food his body no longer wanted. And what about Breekon and Hope? Did butterflies and a quartermaster’s pen and tongue sustain them? But maybe, Jon had told himself, it was like with alcohol. Maybe the avatars with more flesh on their bones had worked to develop a tolerance for (air quotes, heavy sarcasm) people food, for the sake of their physiques, or. So they could, he didn't know, eat socially? Without feeling sick, like Jon did whenever one of the others brought donuts.

Preposterously stupid, this theory seemed in retrospect. The truth was much simpler. It was like Jude Perry’d told him. She was strong and he was weak, because she fed her god with her actions, while Jon’s had had to resort to eating his flesh.

He wasn’t going back to live statements! That wasn’t an option; he knew that. He couldn’t feed his god with his actions. But he could have more paper ones. Maybe they were like the candles poor Eugene Vanderstock used to bring Agnes—the ones she’d sat over for hours. Hours and hours, inhaling the suffering that made them. They’d kept her strong enough, right? At least in body. All those people in charge of her care, all so much in her thrall—if she’d looked hungry one of them would’ve mentioned it in a statement.

During Jon’s school days, back when he was still trying to learn how to be a girl, this brief window had opened up right around age thirteen where the girls around him had enough self-consciousness to start developing eating disorders? But not enough to keep them secret. Thirteen had been this phase of, like, I’m a teenager now, see? I’ve got the teen angst now—SEE?! Where after they’d finished the day’s maths assignment, or while setting up microscope slides, one could overhear girls swapping self-harm anecdotes and tips for how best not to eat. Anne, whom he’d been almost friends with, went through two packs of chewing gum a day for a while. She would shove three or four sticks at a time in her mouth, then spit them back out into their wrappers as soon as they lost their flavor. Eventually they made her sick, and she switched to chain-sucking butterscotch discs. (Most artificial sweeteners, as the Eye now informed him, had mild laxative properties—including those used in gum.) Other acquaintances had brought comically large thermoses of coffee to school every day, and scurried to the toilet between classes. But it was another polyurious crowd that Jon kept thinking of, these days—the kids who would chug water every time they felt hungry. Trying to fill up on paper statements felt just like that.

He’d never understood that urge until now. Hunger was already a bad sensation; why would it help to add the further bad sensations of nausea and stomachache and cold? But now it made sense: feeling better was not the point. The point was to stop wanting more. He couldn’t get rid of the hunger, exactly—not in a way that mattered. Not the shards of glass in his belly, not the itch in his esophagus like a finger tapping behind his gag reflex, not the way simple motions like soaping his hands made his whole body ache. Not the sharpening of his senses to such a fine point that he jumped whenever Thérèse in the office above him shut her desk’s sticky drawer. (He hadn’t known that was what made the squeaky noise until a few weeks ago when the Eye decided he might like some office gossip. Even now he didn’t know which of the faces he sometimes passed up there belonged to Thérèse. She had no statements to make.) Nor the fog in his mind, though he tried sometimes to blame that on the Lonely. He couldn’t sate his hunger with paper statements—couldn’t make himself full, in the rosy way we usually connote that word. All warm and carefree and pleasantly sleepy. But he could cram the hole inside him with enough stale horrors that the temptation to chase down a fresh one momentarily left him.

And that was the new plan—to stuff himself with paper statements.

Tomorrow would mark two weeks since the day he’d first tried it. Brian from Artefact Storage had a statement to give him, Jon could feel—either Stranger or Spiral, it was hard to tell quite which. Something that caused paranoia. Not a great fit for that department. Good fit for a temple of the Eye, Jon supposed, remembering Tim and Michael Shelley. But Artefact Storage? God help him. He wondered if Elias had done it on purpose, hiring a paranoid man to work in a room full of objects that wanted him hurt. If so it must’ve been this one—this purpose. And on Wednesday mornings Brian manned the place all alone. Poor soul was already clinging to this job by a thread, though (so, Web…? That could cause paranoia too, as Jon well knew). Surely if Jon made him relive his trauma that would break it. Though perhaps that’d be a mercy. And but besides, two weeks ago Melanie had still lived here, and sat all morning between Jon’s office and Artefact Storage. Until she went to lunch. But by that time the woman whose laugh Jon could sometimes hear through the walls (Pooja, the Eye had since told him her name was) would have joined Brian. And it’d just be too weird, too risky, to go in and ask him about it with a third person in the room. Even if it wasn’t also evil.

So he’d read 0132210—the statement of Sierra Talbot, regarding a swimming pool whose depth changed every time she entered it—in hopes that’d make him quit thinking about the paranoid man down the hall. It didn’t, not really; paper statements didn’t take up as much of his attention as they used to. But he couldn’t get up and walk to Artefact Storage in the middle of one. When he finished and still couldn’t think of anything but Brian, he dug out another statement (this one from 1938, regarding a bad penny). Just to keep himself chained to his desk til lunch. And then a third (Liza Ho, attack of the killer seagulls). And by the end of that one he felt too heavy and cold inside to want to go anywhere but the couch. It made his stomach swell until it hurt to sit up straight, and the thought of shoving anything more inside made him feel sick—exactly like chugging water every time he felt hungry.

Basira had said maybe the Web just wanted to keep them so afraid of their own impulses they sat and did nothing so they couldn’t be puppeted. Maybe she was right. He’d never felt more like a spider, with his weak, skinny limbs and bloated stomach. Lying on the couch massaging other people’s horrors into more comfortable shapes inside him. Thank god he’d already given up tucking in his shirts, when he came back after the coma. Jon had worn the same trousers for three days in a row, now—shucked them off at the end of the day, hoping if he left them on the floor that’d convince him they were too dirty to wear again, and then slipped them back on over clean boxers in the morning. They were the only trousers he had that stayed up with the button left unfastened.

(Technically, the noun bloat refers to the feeling of weight or tightness in the abdomen. To describe a belly which has expanded beyond its typical size, one should use the word distended. Though these phenomena can occur separately, most people conflate them under the single word bloated. This trivia had seemed worthless when Beholding told him of it. But now he knew better. Every morning he woke up feeling like he’d had his whole torso replaced with the aching void of space, empty but for silver glints of pain that were the stars. And then he’d look down and find his belly still distended.)

Melanie and Basira didn’t know—at least not officially. They both seemed to have noticed how much more often lately they’d walked in on him recording, but Jon was pretty sure they suspected him less of bingeing on statements, more of pretending to record so as to avoid talking to them. He welcomed this misapprehension.

It was also possible they knew but declined to comment, since. Well, it was kind of a pathetic habit? Physically, a bit pathetic. Morally, though, such a big improvement over compelling statements by force that maybe they figured they ought to let him have it. If so he should be grateful, he reminded himself. Their pity, after all, was humiliating only in principle; Daisy’s teasing and concerned questions embarrassed him in practice.

“Enough navelgazing,” Daisy scoffed, but when Jon looked over at her he could see a smile creeping its way onto her face. “Look—finish the one you’re on, then come over here and I’ll. Tell you a story.”

“I—what?”

“Don’t know if it’ll count as a ‘statement,’” she said, with air quotes; “not much fear in it, more just.” She looked at the floor, then shrugged. “But it seems worth a try, yeah? Might make you feel better.”

“I-I, er. I really shouldn’t?” He meant in case it had a taste of human blood effect, but set his hand on his stomach again in hopes she’d think he meant he was too full.

“Yeah, you should. I want you to hear it.” Daisy shrugged again. “Think it might do you good to know.”

Jon turned back to his desk, unpaused the recording and wrapped up the statement. He’d quit bothering to record end notes on most of these—told himself he could add them in later, like he used to when he’d first taken this job. How proud 2016 Jon would have been to see how many statements the 2018 Archivist got through in a week.

He paused for a moment before standing up, to take as deep a breath as he could manage when stuffed full of paper. The end of that statement had gone down easier, since he’d had that few minutes’ break talking to Daisy, but he still didn’t love the idea of standing and walking. Especially since he knew once he got to the couch he’d be glued there by fatigue. If he didn’t pee now, he’d spend most of the night far enough into sleep to be paralyzed, but not far enough to numb his bladder. He excused himself to Daisy, promising to come right back. Then hauled himself up, with help from his cane and one arm of his chair.

Six limbs it took to maneuver this body now. Two more and he’d’ve gone full spider.

Three quarters of the way to the bathroom—that’s how long it took before the ache in his legs outpaced that in his stomach. He arrived on the toilet seat shaky and out of breath, as always. Months ago he’d given up standing to pee. When you sat you could rock back and forth, and cross your arms tight over waves of quease.

Not much came out, as was also usual lately. As far as Jon could tell, his body now required only enough water to keep his mouth from drying out while recording. Dehydration no longer made his head hurt, so, why bother. Good thing, too, he supposed—the last two weeks he hadn’t needed much non-metaphorical water inside for his body to parse that as needing to pee.

He let his trousers stay pooled around his ankles until after he’d washed and dried his hands. Then pulled up his shirt, to judge from his reflection whether they’d stay up with the fly undone. If he kept his hands in his pockets, yeah. Could you tell the difference, visually, once he put his shirt tails back down? Not for such a short distance. They wouldn’t have time to get disarranged.

It didn’t matter; Basira didn’t even glance at him on his way back, and all Institute staff who didn’t live here had gone home.

Jon opened the door to his office, said hello to Daisy but didn’t manage to look at her, and sat himself down on the other side of the couch. From the corner of his eye (or someone’s anyway) he saw her rise to her feet. “I’m gonna pee too,” she told him, picking her way toward the door; “get yourself comfortable, like you’re going to bed.”

“Where will you sit.”

“I’ll squeeze in.”

“I don’t mind leaving room for—?” Finally he made himself look up at her, in time to see her shake her head. Daisy hadn’t been strong on her feet either, since the Buried; she held herself up now with a hand on the doorjamb, elbow bent so her shoulder leant against that wrist. He regretted quibbling. “Never mind; I’ll just.”

“Really? You’re comfortable like that? You look like a sheep in clover.”

The knowledge came to him before he could ask her what that meant—complete with a nasty visual of what happens in cases acute enough to require rumenotomy. Jon swore he could feel himself swelling to accommodate this tidbit. His eye twitched in discomfort.

“Think I prefer ‘windbag,’ if it’s all the same to you.”

She made a face like that was grosser than what she had said. “You ruined my joke. I was gonna say I won’t let you have any more leaves til you look less like you might explode.”

“Sheep in clover suffocate,” Jon frowned; “they don’t explode. You must be thinking of how they cure them when—”

“Leaves. In. A. Book, Jon. That joke.”

“Oh. Yes, I see.” He made himself chuckle.

Daisy sighed and shifted on her feet. “I’ll be right back. Just lie down, alright? Like you’re going to bed.”

Jon agreed to lie down, but couldn’t decide whether to face the wall (as he would to sleep), leaving her to slide in between him and the back of the couch the way she had a few times before when she’d walked in on him catnapping, or whether he should lie on his back, where he could see her as soon as she opened the door. It was important to make sure she knew he appreciated her offer to give him a statement. Or, no—to tell him her story, he meant.

Ultimately he picked the latter course.

“You sleep like that?”

“Sometimes."

“I’ve never seen you sleep like that. You always face the wall.” Daisy crossed her arms, blew hair out of her face. “That for the tummy ache, or for me?”

“Uh….”

“Would it hurt you to face the wall.”

“No, I just.”

“Turn around, then. I’ll squeeze in,” she said again.

“I-if you’re sure.”

He rolled onto his side, gritting his teeth as the cramps in his stomach swirled in new directions. What made it slosh like that, he wondered. While he fought to regain his breath Jon watched Daisy climb up onto the back of the couch on shaking elbows and knees, then avalanche down hands- and feet-first so she fit between him and its cushions. He’d never watched her do this before—always either startled out of a doze at the sound of her thumping down next to him, or simply woken up to find her there.

“You’re just like the Admiral,” he informed her.

“True words spoken in jest,” muttered Daisy. Too quietly for him to hear what she said over the couch’s tortured creaks, but half a second after she finished speaking the words appeared before his mind, in white, all-capital letters with a black background like closed captions on the news. “That’s Georgie’s cat, right?” she said aloud.

“Yes.”

Her knee jostled the cap of his; when it made him gasp she snarled under her breath. “Sorry. Can you move your leg?”

“Yes, it’s fine, just—”

“I mean would you move your leg.”

“Oh.” He did so.

“Thanks. Ugh—you’re cold,” Daisy accused him; “where’s that blanket.” He pointed behind her to the arm of the couch where it lay folded. She shook it out, and draped it over both of them. Reached around behind him to make sure it covered his whole back. Jon tried to ignore the way his stomach lurched every time Daisy’s weight shifted against the cushions. Finally she settled next to him to catch her breath. Their foreheads touched; her stomach pressed into his, though not as tightly as the last time they’d lain like this. “Can you breathe or am I crushing you?”

“Not at all, you’re fine—in fact, if the couch cushions are chafing you too much you can—”

Daisy huffed, and scooted herself in closer to him. “That better?” She set her warm hand down right where his belly diverged from pelvis. Jon tried to keep both voice and tremor out of his exhale. Since the coffin, Daisy’s hands and feet suffered at night and after any exertion from the same excess of heat his sometimes did. So the cold inside him probably felt nice on her hand, if not to the rest of her.

(Like snuggling up to a hotel mattress, she’d described it, after the first time she joined him for a nap when he’d just had a statement. Cold, hard, covered in lumps and dents, and creaks when you roll over on it. “I’d prefer you didn’t,” he’d replied, while praying her elbow wouldn’t come any closer to the crevasse where his ribs used to be.)

“Christ you’re stuffed,” commented Daisy. For emphasis she lifted her fingers, then set them back down on his gut.

“I don’t know what you expected.”

“You won’t pop if I tell you a story?”

“Not literally,” Jon said, blinking.

“Of course not literally,” she scoffed; “you know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

“Will it make you sick. Don’t want you throwing up on me; this is Melanie’s shirt. If you ruin it she’ll hit us with her cane, and I don’t trust you to hit as hard back with yours.”

“Mine’s shorter and thicker,” he mused. “I don’t have to hit as hard.”

“Stop. Avoiding. The question.”

Jon sighed to show her he capitulated. Then thought about it. He felt cold and sick, but the idea of saying no to a statement made those feelings worse, not better. And the sharp clusters of pain in his belly were harder to sleep through than quease.

“I’ll be fine,” he decided. “It’ll help.”

“Alright. When you’re ready, ask me what I used to do when I got shaky between hunts.”

Read part two here.

#stuffing #nausea #stomachache #hunger kink #a shifty tract #nonsearchable tma tag #other titles i. jocoseriously considered include 'divine chains' (like the cult from 153 get it?);#'too much information' and 'a movable-type feast'.#also for a long time the file on my computer was called 'statement eating: the moive' because alas i was a teenage h/omes/tuck

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cammmerrroniii · 4 years

Text

Fever Dream

The night air is crisp and cool as usual at the Jorhouse. The mighty Nein have recently returned from Eissel Cross and were recovering from the events that had unfolded there.

Caduceus, in an attempt to comfort everyone but mostly himself, immediately busied himself in the kitchen making some of his special tea. The Willinghams, he thought to himself, they should make the perfect brew to settle these rascals. He looked back through the door leading into the foyer and saw Jester, so excited to see Essik tomorrow, bouncing around the room adding her own touches to the house to make it feel more homey since they’d be here a while.

Caleb sat in the corner pouring over a book, as usual, but every now and then you could see his eyes just glazing over the top of his worn and slightly yellowed pages to watch this little blue teifling work her “magic”. Veth was in her room, preparing little presents for Yeza, apparently their anniversary was coming up soon and of course Fjord was up there teasing her as he does.

Meanwhile, Yasha was sitting cross-legged on the second story balcony looking over the street, processing everything that had happened. The things that had occurred that she never thought possible. Seeing that coat had brought back so many memories; memories that she’d tried so desperately to bury with the others. She knew blaming herself never helped anything but she couldn’t help it. And then there was Beau. Oh Beau. Beau, Beau. What have you done to me, she thought while watching the neighbor’s peeking out their windows at their house for the fifth time.

She let out a sigh and thought about why she had acted the way she did around Beauregard. She felt that itch begin to rise once more inside of her. It always started this way, her toes would tingle and make her legs ache to run. The sensation would travel through her muscles like a ripple, until she found herself clenching and unclenching her fists and looking around for an exit. But Beau, with her captivating blue eyes and crooked smile, had complicated things.

Unbeknownst to Yasha, Beau was up on the roof staring down at the Aasimar woman. She knew she needed to talk to her about the poem, but she also knew that she sucks with feelings. She’d been watching her from afar for a while now, and, thinking about it, she thought about how stalkerish she probably seems. She took a deep inhale and deftly got to her feet without making a sound.

“Hey Yasha! I was wondering where you were hiding” she called out acting like she had just stumbled upon her.

“Oh!” Yasha jumped slightly in surprise, “Hallo, Beau. I’m sorry. I thought I had told everyone I’d be up here. Were you looking for me?” She had said where she would be. They all heard her.

“Yeah! I mean, no, well I mean not for like a long time or anything I mean, don’t worry about it, aha!” Gods why is she so weird all the time. Beau parkoured down to the balcony and leaned awkwardly against the rails for a second. “So, Yash....” Fuck, why didn’t she think of something to say first?!

Yasha looked up at Beauregard through her lashes expectantly. “What is it, Beau?”

Beau swallowed hard. “Um, ah. So that, ah, poem.. I uh gave it a read”, quite a few times, though she neglected to mention that part. A surprised look that was a mix of nervousness and horror spread across Yasha’s face. With everything going on, she had forgotten about that silly little poem.

“Oh, uh, that’s.. good. Yeah I, um, Jester gave me the idea and um she thought... I mean, uh, I-I thought that you know I,” she chewed on her words for a second. “I have been thinking about you- I mean, thinking about telling you how I feel, that is. So.. what did you think?” She bit her last few words off sharply and held her breath.

Beau knew that something had changed in Yasha since she had gotten her wings back. She saw it more and more as the barbarian woman continued to slowly open herself up to the group. She looked her over for a second and did, in fact, notice just the faintest bit of white at her roots and her skin held a light shine to it. She was literally glowing, and radiating beauty. Beau shook herself for a moment and realized she had been staring at Yasha awkwardly for a few seconds while she was clearly anxiously awaiting her reply.

“Um,” she cleared her throat and sat down beside Yasha, their knees brushing against each other as she did so; the slight intake of breath Yasha did at the contact did not go unnoticed. “I think that you definitely have a way with words that is unique. And I wanted to tell you that, if I understood your poem correctly, I’ve felt the same way since the first day I saw you.” She told her honestly and unabashedly, though her heart was hammering into her ribcage.

Yasha stared back at Beau, looking a bit stunned. They sat in silence for a few moments, though it wasn’t as awkward now that they’ve both discussed somethings out loud.

“Beauregard,” Yasha started slowly. “I care very deeply for you. And I don’t want you to end up hurt again because of me.” Beau looked like she was going to say something but Yasha cut her off. “I’ve been going through big changes recently and accepting everything has been a big part of that. And I forgive myself. For Zuala, and Molly, and you most of all. I-I need to go for a little while, not very long, I promised you I wouldn’t leave and I’m going to keep that promise but I just need to go and commune with the Storm Lord. He sent me these visions in my dreams and I know I must go there in order to complete my change and prove myself worthy. I didn’t want to tell anyone, old habits die hard I guess. But, I cannot hide things from you. Not anymore.” She opened her eyes that she wasn’t aware she had closed and looked back over to Beau. She was thinking. Yasha could tell because of the way the tip of her tongue just slightly glazed over the corner of her mouth repeatedly.

She’s going to feel betrayed, that I’ve lied to her. She’ll never forgive me, Yasha let herself think.

“I understand,” Beau finally said. Yasha looked at her in surprise. Of course she understood. As blind as Yasha is, even she could tell that underneath all of that bravado - and abs, oh gods so many abs - Beauregard understood Yasha on a far deeper level than anyone ever had. Beau connected eyes with Yasha and grinned. “But I’ll be expecting a kiss when you come back to me.” Yasha heart did a back flip just thinking about kissing Beau. She couldn’t form words as her brain got all goopy, so she simply nodded.

They both got to their feet slowly and stood facing one another. Yasha leaned down and gently laid her lips onto Beaus forehead. Beau was grinning like an idiot when Yasha pulled back.

“One for now, and the other when I come back. I promise.”

“Good luck.”

And with that, Yasha hopped the railing and landed perfectly on her feet. She began walking to her destination, already planning the kiss. She looked back one last time just in time to see Beau fist pump the air and do a little happy shimmy before she saw Yasha looking and froze, sheepishly waving goodbye to her before ducking into the house.

—————-

It was late, Beau would guess around 3AM. The witching hour, she thought to herself. Yasha had left some two or three weeks ago and Beau hadn’t been able to sleep very well after about the first week of her absence. They were still at the Jorhouse and everyone was fast asleep.

She quietly crawled out of bed and slid out onto the balcony, looking out in the direction Yasha had left.

The group did not take the news of her leaving well at first, mainly because they were concerned for Yasha’s safety. But, they all understood and came to the resounding conclusion that she could take care of herself.

“Who in their right mind would mess with Yasha,” Fjord had said. “She could bench press all of us with one arm if she wanted to.” Beau let some dirty thoughts of Yasha bench pressing her seep into her gutter of a mind and Fjord had scoffed at her while Jester wiggled her eyebrows and cackled at Beau’s expression.

“Ja, our Aasimar friend will be fine. She has a new belt that I’m sure she’s itching to add some notches to.” Caleb had remarked.

“And I can send her a message!!” Jester squealed, about to do just that. Beau had grasped her blue friend gently and advised against it.

“Yasha just needs some time alone, I think. Just her and the Storm Lord. She’ll be back soon.” Beau gave a small smile to Jester, who grinned knowingly back and gave her a small nod in understanding.

Looking out over the cool and quiet streets thinking back to the day Yasha had left and the conversation they had had, Beau couldn’t help but feel like she was being watched. She heard a thud and spun around to see a tall figure standing over her. Long white hair, glowing eyes boring through her, and though covered in dirt her skin shone through dimly.

“Yasha!” Beau startled out. She didn’t have much time to process before Yasha enveloped Beau with her arms, pulling her into a warm hug. They stood like this for a few moments, just basking in each other’s embrace.

“I missed you Beau. I mean, I missed all of you. But, you know what I mean.” Her voice sounded faintly of angelic chimes and hums. They pulled apart though staying very close as Beau looked up in awe.

“You look.. different. Still very beautiful, though.” She blushed at the fact that she just straight up said Yasha was beautiful to her face which was literally only a few inches away, oh my gods. “I’ve never seen someone after a change like this before.”

Yasha just smiled softly, and gazed at Beau for a moment. “You’re beautiful, too.” And then she leaned down and captured Beauregard in a mind blowing kiss. For both of them, it felt as if this were the first time they have ever kissed another person. It was electrifying.

As Yasha was welcomed back into the Nein, her family, there was something there in the back of her head that was just overwhelmed with joy and love that she had finally found her soulmate. And as she connected eyes with Beau across the living room of the Jorhouse surrounded by their family and friends, she knew that Beau felt it too.

I know this is super long and I’m so sorry. But this is the dream I had and was told to write so I wrote it for you guys. I hope it’s okay, like I said, I’ve never written fan fiction before. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. If it’s terrible, also please feel free to DM me, I always accept criticism so long as you’re not being, like, a huge dick. :)

#beauregard lionett #yasha nydoorin #beauyasha #critical role #fanfic #fan fiction #it’s a lot longer than I thought it would be #that’s what she said #I’m so sorry #hope you like it #fluff?#just soft things

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sleepykittypaws · 3 years

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Celebrate the Olympic Spirit

Sure, the Olympics aren’t a holiday, per se, but the every-four-year, or two if you count both Summer and Winter editions separately, massive international sporting events sure seems like a reason to celebrate, especially given their recent, unprecedented delay. And what better way to get into the Games mood, than by watching a sports movie?

Here are my favorite motivating, inspirational, and aspirational tales of athletic derring do…

Favorite Sports Movies

The Cutting Edge (1992) - This figure skating romance was released around the 1992 Olympics, and actually name-checks that year's winter host city, Albertville, more than once. It's not good in the traditional sense of great storytelling or athletic veracity, but I loved it so very much I saw it three times in the theater as a teen. Watching it at some point during every Winter Games is a tradition for me so, yeah, I can’t help it, I love this silly sports movie/romance, which also features a bit of holiday feels.

Wimbledon (2004) - It's a rom-com. It's a sports movie. It's a rom-com sports movie that really should be better known. Notting Hill but set at tennis' best-known event. Paul Bettany and Kristen Dunst have surprisingly great chemistry, and there's more sports-related tension than you'd think.

Friday Night Lights (2004) - A football movie for people who don't really like football. a.k.a. 🙋‍♀️. The TV series it spawned is also brilliant (”Clear Eyes, Full Hearts,” indeed), and well worth a watch, but the original movie, starring Billy Bob Thornton, is, honestly, a masterpiece. Definitely Peter Berg's best work and the original book, written by Berg's cousin, Buzz Bissinger, is a great read.

Muriel's Wedding (1994) - You mean you forgot this Australian export, which made Toni Collette a star, was a sports movie? Yep, one of my all-time favorite movies, of any genre, this absolutely brilliant, ABBA-soaked comedy is not only a girls-night go-to, but also a stealth Olympic sport classic.

Remember the Titans (2000) - OK, football isn't in the Olympics, but it sure does make for a good sports movie setting. Even if this early 1970s-set story is most definitely Disney-fied, Denzel Washington, Will Patton, Ryan Gosling and a baby Hayden Panettiere really sell this sort-of true story.

Invictus (2009)-Rugby isn't an Olympic sport, or even one most Americans know much about, but this Matt Damon-led, Clint Eastwood-directed, based-on-a-true-story tale made me care about a sport I'd only tangentially knew even existed before watching.

Hoosiers (1986)-I grew up in Indiana so, by law, I have to include this basketball classic on any "best of" sports movie lists. Also, it actually is really very good.

Rudy (1993)-Ditto the above. But, again, it's hard not to root for Sean Astin (and Jon Favreau!) in this love letter to the Fighting Irish. Plus, there’s no better scavenger hunt task or TikTok challenge than going into a bar and convincing a patron to allow you to put them on your shoulders and march around chanting, 'Rudy, Rudy, Rudy.'

Miracle (2004) - Given how much more popular the Summer Olympics are, it's weird that the Winter Games seem to get all the good movies made about them, but this Kurt Russell-led true tale is another Disney sports movie classic.

McFarland, USA (2015) - Disney, and Kevin Costner, just really know how to make a sports movie, damn it! This movie made me care about cross country for which it, too, could have carried the title Miracle.

A League of Their Own (1992)-The best baseball movie ever. Yeah, I said what I said. Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Lori Petty—even Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell are making it work. 1992 was a weirdly great year for sports movies.

Moneyball (2011) - A movie about baseball, and math, and yet it's also great, I swear. In addition to all of the above, it's also a stealth Christmas movie and maybe Chris Pratt's best non-Marvel, movie role.

Creed (2015) - This surprisingly effective Rocky reboot starring Michael B Jordan as Apollo Creed's illegitimate son has spawned its own movie series which, in many ways, exceeds the original Rocky franchise.

Rocky Balboa (2006) - Maybe it's because I was a toddler when the original Rocky came out, so only saw the ever-worse sequels as a kid, but this mid-aughts return to the character for Sylvester Stallone, as both writer and actor, is a triumph.

Eddie the Eagle (2016) - That Hugh Jackman features in as many movies (spoiler alert) on this list as Kevin Costner surprised me, too. This story of the English ski jumper who became infamous for being, well, less than golden, is one of those non-Olympic triumph stories that really works. If you're going to watch one underdog-at-the-Games movie, I definitely prefer this this to the more ubiquitous Cool Runnings.

Love & Basketball (2000) - Only because I'm an anglophile is this great, chemistry-filled Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps college basketball romance not my favorite sports-movie-meets-rom-com.

I, Tonya (2017) - Margot Robbie and a nearly unrecognizable Sebastian Stan are perfectly cast in this sarcastic, highly stylized look at the Tonya Harding scandal.

Pride (2007) - Apparently I like this swimming movie, which I think almost no one saw, better than critics, but I found this 1970s-set, Terrence Howard-Bernie Mac-starring story of inner city kids excelling in the pool emotional and entertaining.

Field of Dreams (1989) - This Kevin Costner magical realism baseball classic is often goofy and imminently tease-worthy and yet…It also works. Maybe it's no surprise that someone who loves cheesy Christmas movies as much as I do would have a soft spot for Field of Dreams.

42 (2013) - Chadwick Boseman is absolutely fantastic as legend Jackie Robinson. One of those movies that's ostensibly about baseball, but is really about so much more, except not in a pretentious way.

Race (2016) - Before Jason Sudeikis was Ted Lasso, he was famed track coach Larry Synder in this Jesse Owens biopic that is far from perfect, but still important. Plus, I honestly don't think Stephan James got enough credit for his relatively nuanced portrayal of Owens.

Goon (2011) - This overlooked gem starring Sean William Scott as a semi-pro hockey player whose main skill is his ability to take, and dole out, a beating, is surprisingly great.

Real Steel (2011) - This is a robot-boxing movie starring Hugh Jackman that is basically Rocky meets Over the Top—and yet it's actually really good. Yeah, I was surprised, too.

Forget Paris (1995) - OK, so maybe Billy Crystal playing an NBA referee doesn't really make this a sports movie, but it does begin and end (spoiler alert) at real NBA games, and I will die on the hill that this rom-com co-starring Debra Winger is wildly under-rated.

Bend it like Beckham (2002) - This girl-power sports movie has some highly questionable romantic dynamics (the coach is their love interest???) but this Parminder Nagra-Keira Knightley movie is also a heckuva sports movie and an inspiring immigrant story.

Bonus Pick: The Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso is one of the best things I watched in 2020, and I'm sure of that, because I watched it twice since, just to be sure. Jason Sudekis is absolutely perfect as an American college football coach taking over a UK Premier League team. This sweet show with a heart of gold is smart, funny, and absolutely impossible not to love—even for a cynic such as myself.

More Sports Movies Worth Watching

For someone not very into sports, I am, apparently, into watching movies about sports, so while not a comprehensive listing of the entire, vast genre, here are a few more suggestions I personally think are worth watching.

The Miracle Season (2018) - This movie about high school volleyball champs whose star player dies suddenly stars Helen Hunt and is a lot better than you'd think based on its tiny budget and, honestly, fairly small story. Just missed making my Top 25.

The Way Back (2020) - This Ben Affleck as a drunken high school basketball coach movie is a lot better than expected. Released just as the pandemic kicked into high gear, it was overlooked last year, but worth seeking out.

Fighting with My Family (2019) - Does it count if it's a show, not a sport? Either way (but that's why this isn't in my Top 25), this stealth Christmas movie/love letter to the WWE is a lot better than it ever needed to be thanks to some really great performances from Florence Pugh, Lena Headey and directer Stephen Merchant. Even The Rock reins it in.

Warrior (2011) - You couldn't pay me to watch an actual UFC bout, but this Tom Hardy story of (literally) battling brothers is incredibly compelling and well done.

Win Win (2011) - This movie isn't really enough about wrestling, even though its ostensibly centered around the sport, to make it into my Top 25, but it's still really good, and Amy Ryan gives an outstanding performance.

Fever Pitch (2005) - Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon star in this remake of a UK film whose ending they had to shift when the Red Sox unexpectedly won the World Series.

Fever Pitch (1997) - This Colin Firth-starring, Arsenal-centered original is much smaller, more realistic and arguably better than the big budget Barrymore-Fallon redux.

We are Marshall (2006) - A real-life sports tragedy made into a sports-movie tearjerker starring Matthew McConaughy. And my tears were very much jerked by the end.

Coach Carter (2005) - Samuel L Jackson plays real-life basketball coach Ken Carter and, because it's a Disney movie, doesn't use the F-word even once. Now that's a feat worthy of its own sports movie.

Invincible (2006) - Yes, it's Mark Wahlberg, and another based-on-a-true-story, Disney sports movie that hits all the cliches, but dang it, that works on me. It just does.

Glory Road (2006) - If you're sensing a theme with me and Disney sports movies…Well, you're not wrong. This look at the first all-Black starting lineup at the 1966 NCAA Final Four does, unfortunately, center white coach Don Haskins, played by Josh Lucas (though I always mis-remember it as Josh Charles), making the important story it tells less than what it should be, but it still mostly works.

Million Dollar Arm (2014) - Admittedly one of the lesser Disney sports movie entries, and another that centers a white guy in a film mostly about people of color (not a great look), this Jon Hamm movie about a scout seeking an Indian cricket star who can make it in the Major Leagues still mostly worked for me.

The Mighty Ducks (1992) - One of the few movies on this list aimed directly at kids, this beloved peewee hockey saga actually is cute, and mostly does hold up.

Cool Runnings (1993) - Kind of shocked this movie that is part White Savior-movie and part-wacky kids movie essentially making fun of a real group of athletes of color came out in 1993 and not 1973, but the earnest charm of John Candy and a general Disney gloss keep this from being totally unwatchable and mostly just mildly, rather than extremely, offensive. Not really recommending, but feels like it belongs on an Olympic movie list.

Nadia (1984) - This made-for-TV, mostly true biopic, starring Talia Balsam as Nadia Comaneci, was a Disney Channel staple in that network’s early days.

Munich (2005) - It's a movie with the Olympics very much at its heart—namely the 1972 Israeli athlete hostage tragedy—that isn't really about the Olympics at all, but this Steven Spielberg-directed movie about national revenge is compelling, if problematic if you think about it for too long.

American Anthem (1986) - Is this Mitch Gaylord-Mrs. Wayne Gretzky (a.k.a Janet Jones) starring movie good, realistic and/or well-written? No, no and none of the above. But did I still watch it 8,000 times as a kid on HBO? Yes. Yes, I did.

Men with Brooms (2002) - Once, on a business trip to Canada, my husband was stuck in a hotel that only got three channels, and one of them always seemed to be showing curling, which actually got him weirdly into this obscure sport. This movie wasn't quite as fun as I hoped, but it's still a mostly charming, if slight, Canadian classic.

Unbroken (2014) - The harrowing and incredible real-life story of Louis Zamperini deserved better than this Angelina Jolie-directed movie delivered, but it's still a serviceable version of a worthy tale.

Chariots of Fire (1981) - I remember being bored out of my mind by this movie trying to watch this movie on cable as a kid, but no denying that, if nothing else, the score is iconic and indelibly linked to sports-movie magic.

Without Limits (1998) - Jared Leto’s Prefontaine beat this one to the theaters, but this Billy Crudup-starring film is the better of the two movies about the life of running pioneer Steve Prefontaine. There’s also a 1995 documentary, Fire on the Track: The Steve Prefontaine Story.

Personal Best (1982) - Mariel Hemingway’s story of ambition at odds with love, is a sports and LGTBQ+ classic.

Olympic Dreams (2019) - The story of how this small, meandering movie was made during the 2018 Winter Games is, unfortunately, more interesting than the movie itself, but there is some charm in watching Nick Kroll as an Olympic dentist making his way through the real Village, while interacting with real athletes.

Foxcatcher (2015) - This excellently-acted story is more true crime than sports inspiration, but if you're seeking a look at the dark side of the Games—and don’t want to turn on a doc like Athlete A—this is very dark tale indeed.

Seabiscuit (2003) - Every great athlete deserves to have their story told.

Any Given Sunday (1999) - Oliver Stone and Al Pacino take on pro Football. 'Nuff said.

The Replacements (2000) - I mean, the movie isn't amazing, but Keanu Reeves is super charming and Gene Hackman is always worth a watch.

The Program (1993) - Another bit of a dark-side-of-football take, worth it if only for the fantastic cast: James Caan, Halle Berry, Omar Eps, Joey Lauren Adams.

Everbody’s All-American (1988) - Not a movie I particularly love, but this Dennis Quaid-Jessica Lange football story that spans decades has always stuck in my memory.

Bull Durham (1988) - Just let Kevin Costner play actual baseball already.

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burningdarkfire · 3 years

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for fanfic end of the year asks: how about two questions you really want to answer? (or if that is too broad, 14 and 25?)

hello anon!! i'll give you all of the above because i love to talk, thank u 💖

questions are from here - please send me an end-of-year fanfic ask!

14: a fic you didn't expect to write

i cannot explain enough what it feels like to write league of legends fanfiction 😂 i've played for 8+ years and it's changed my life in SO many ways but until this year it was so separate and far away from fandom as a hobby. then arcane happened!! i wasn't even that excited because those weren't the characters i cared about from the game but then jayvik seized me by the fucking throat lmao it still feels like a fever dream

25: a fic you read this year you would recommend everyone read

narrowing it down to one fic is really hard but it's probably proof by contradiction by @catalists. it hits every axis for me of being deeply personally enjoyable, incredibly well-written, and it does something new and interesting (the pairing of dairon and essek, in this case).

as a bonus, most of its merit is not rooted in a particular ship so it is a good recommendation for "everyone"

i'll put my dealer's choice answers under the cut!

1: favourite fic you wrote this year

i love let's pick the truth we believe in so much. in many ways it was my last true cr2 fanfic, the last fic that i went into really intending to do work with the concept, and i did. i made my peace with canon with that fic and everything since then has just been gravy. it was fun to write and i think it's well-written too - there's not a single segment that reads as weak to me even six months later

21: most memorable comment/review

i had someone read a fic, leave a comment, and then return six months later to leave an even longer comment that detailed like everything they liked and picked out like every single thorough line i had written and like, oh my god. the amount of joy and peace and validation that gave me was just off the fucking charts. i didn’t know and still don’t know how to put into words what that meant to me??

i also got a couple of asks inquiring about my nier fics which surprised me! it literally makes me so happy when ppl comment on them because i love them personally all so much and it just makes me so happy that people still care about them years later!!

#my posts #replies #writing blogging

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fizzingwizard · 4 years

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So............ Episode 39 is a fever dream xD I think the writers were high. It’s probably better enjoyed while high as well, if you’re not eight years old. Bahahaha.

But HEY they really went for it. They were like, this is the concept, we are not backing down, YOU’RE GONNA LIKE IT OR ELSE. Man. Ballsy.

I can’t say whether this episode was Good or Not Good - I think it’s more in the liminal zone of “you wish you could forget but never can” memedome. Lol

It’s a Jou ep and we can say, for sure, that the episode certainly embodies Jou’s potential *cackles*

Note: Episode 40 won’t air until 3/21.

Pic of the Day is Taichi because, as usual, I capped him too much.

Taichi: Pretty sure we all just ate hallucinogenic mushrooms by accident but just gonna smile through it

More below!

First Tailmon lectures the kids on the importance of taking a break to rest. Basically, Tailmon is me. Hey, writers, are you reading my blog? Lol.

They pull up to what turns out to be a Digimon burger restaurant. The fact that Palmon didn’t know what burgers until they went to the simulated human world is dealt with pretty much by saying she just doesn’t get around much lol.

They find many Digimon enjoying burgers made by the Digimon after my heart, Burgermon.

The Squirtle Squad is there too.

Taichi also is me.

Sora comments on how this place reminds her of a place from home, to which Mimi responds that she’s never been there as she usually travels by plane ??????????????????????

I know she’s rich but does she take a plane to the grocery store xD

The kids st down to enjoy some burgers, all except for Yamato, Koushirou, and Hikari, who didn’t listen to Tailmon’s lecture and are still working. Even Tailmon doesn’t take her own advice.

Jou suddenly notices something strange. He stands, glasses shining.

Jou: Why is no one eating the fries!

Taichi: I’m eating them.

Jou: i dON’T MEAN YOU!!!!!

His blood pressure skyrockets. Fries are the main reason to go to a burger joint. Why is no one eating the fries??

Taichi: Like I said, I’m eating them.

Jou: NOT EVERYTHING’S ABOUT YOU!

Meanwhile, Yamato’s group realizes Komondomon is very dirty when he accidentally creates a small sandstorm out of his fur. They meet another Komondomon who is sparkly and bishie and find out there’s a car wash service by Lunamon nearby, so they take Komondomon to get washed.

HEY WRITERS, YOU’RE READING MY BLOG RIGHT??? I asked for this before. Bahahaha. BATHE KOMONDOMON 2021

Lunamon also tries to bathe Gabumon, but he’s not interested.

Gabumon: I don’t need a bath!

Yamato: Uh, are you sure?

Jou’s indignation over the not eating of the fries turns out to be because, sometimes after cram school he sneaks off to a burger restaurant and eats fries and just has a moment for himself before he goes home. His special time with fries keeps him sane in a cold, cruel world.

Then this abomination appears. Potemon. He both is a potato and loves eating potatoes. Uh. That’s. That’s kinda wack

Jou instantly clicks with Potemon due to their mutual love for potatoes. I thought we’d get an explanation like “no one here eats fries because we save them all for Potemon” or something, but it seems like... Potemon is really the only one who likes them... idk man this episode makes no sense

Then Burgermon makes a sad announcement... They’re going to discontinue the fries!

Burgermon: Selling fries is a net loss for us because no one eats them.

Taichi: But you don’t sell anything, it’s all free.

Burgermon: Yes but if we DID sell them it WOULD be a net loss because no one eats them

Then Hikari’s like “quit being so lazy!” and the others are like “you literally told us it’s important to rest” and Hikari’s group is like “KOMONDOMON NEEDS A BATH ALL PLAY AND NO WORK MAKES JACK A DULL BOY” and Taichi’s like “but my name is not Jack”

Gomamon tries to help Jou cheer up by reminding him of his image as a leader. Tailmon is surprised... but accepts her new leader lmao.

I mean, how could you not admire his authoritative figure?

There’s a running joke from this point about the word suberu (滑る) which means both to slip like in the tub and to flunk an exam. So, for Jou, it’s the equivalent of a curse word lol. Mimi is the number one offender, the little witch bahaha.

Potemon has gone to cry over not being able to be a cannibal anymore, until he is consumed by potato rage. His eyes glow red and he evolves to...

... Jagamon, another potato Digimon, but larger. He is a Perfect level WHAT. Does that mean Potemon was Adult level??? Or he was so upset he just jumped two levels in single go without any extra help from Millenniumon?? i think this guy might be the real Big Bad y’all

Jagamon throws potato bombs around and stuff starts to get wrecked.

Taichi: This seems like an overreaction!

Agumon: To be honest I get it. I’d probably act the same if I couldn’t have my favorite food anymore.

Taichi: But your favorite food is every food.

Burgermon and Lunamon bravely rush out to stop Jagamon, but then, when rescued by Taichi, instantly agree to turn tail and run bahaha.

Not to be outdone, Yamato rushes in to save this little guy, Pusurimon, who looks up at his hero with eyes full of wonder.

Taichi then asks Yamato to lead the evacuation which pretty much means “stop stealing my fans”

Meanwhile Birdramon... helps???... Blimpmon...

I didn’t even know there was a Blimpmon...

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised...

....

Jou realizes that Jagamon is Potemon and begs the others to help him save the little potato head.

Taichi notices that Lunamon’s bubbles are peculiarly strong for bubbles and stop the potato bombs from exploding. I mean, he and everyone else figures it out just by using their eyes. Jou then instantly takes over and starts giving orders like he’s a got a shrewd plan.

Jou: I have a plan!

Mimi: What is it?

Jou: Use the bubbles to stop the potato bombs from exploding!

Mimi: Funny, that was my plan too!

Jou... What a coincidence!

Tailmon receives Captain Jou’s orders and promptly evolves to Angewomon. She shoots her arrow into Zudomon’s hammer and tells Jou to infuse it with his strong feelings.

(A quick not funny aside - now we know Angewomon can do this. It makes perfect sense for both her abilities in 99 Adventure and the abilities we’ve seen from the holy Digimon thus far this season. Bit of a strange way to have it confirmed but xD)

Jou does just that, infusing Zudomon’s hammer with his passion for fries and the deep connection he felt with Potemon as potetomo “potato friends.” Then he freaking picks it up, leaps into the sky which has suddenly become dark and stormy even though it was blue five seconds ago, and slams it into Jagamon’s skull.

Jou: I AM THOR, SON OF ODIN, AND THIS IS MJOLNIR! YOU WILL RESPECT THE HAMMER!

Mimi: I THINK THIS MIGHT BE OVERKILL!

But it works. A swift blow to the head and Jagamon is back to his normal potato-loving self. We all just accept this.

They now have a surplus of potatoes, thanks to Jagamon’s power to spontaneously generate them. Never mind that they also EXPLODE. Apparently that does not affect how delicious they are to eat.

I figured at some point someone would say the reason the fries were being discontinued was due to lack of potatoes, and the arrival of Jagamon would solve all their problems. But if they ever did say anything that, I missed it. Was a bit odd.

The end!

So, YEAH, bonkers episode. But Jou is the hero we all want to be in our hearts. And everyone loves fries. Which makes this the most relatable episode yet lol.

Did I like it? No, not really. But I think that’s because I am not eight years old xD I do appreciate the Jou-related humor though. Def can’t say this episode was boring! And, among other things, nearly everyone got to talk do stuff - only Koushirou and Takeru didn’t have much of a role this time. And the joke with Tailmon accepting Jou as her leader was pretty funny and cute and I hope it sticks. And I really did love the way Jou relied on Mimi at the end - it was just silly, not meaningful in any way, but it was funny and my Joumi heart enjoyed it :P

Next episode, again, won’t air till 3/21, and it looks to be a Sora episode. (Last week I surmised that ep 40 would kick off the next big arc, but I had totally forgotten Sora hasn’t had “her episode” yet. Sorry Sora ;_;)

The preview looks light-hearted, though perhaps not quite as silly as this week.

First they will go to Jurassic Park!

Where Sora and Taichi will impress the dino bird kingdom with their soccer prowess!

And Mimi will continue to relax.

Jou: What happened to all play and no work makes Jack a dull boy?

Mimi: Um, excuse me, I’m a GIRL.

Koushirou: You all know you’re using that phrase the wrong way, right?

#fizz watches digimon 2020 #digimon adventure:#digimon reboot #digimon adventure 2020 #digi spoilers #digimon

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crossdressingdeath · 4 years

Note

Yeah there’s quite a few people who haven’t read the novel that seem to judge the sex scenes. I found this online post about the missing scenes from CQL that were in the novel, and it mentioned the incense burner & their first kiss and people in the comments were so mad. They were like “wtf that barely sounds like the LWJ on the show” and “I don’t think i like novel LWJ” and wtf, they’re literally the same character. Drama LWJ isn’t even that different personality wise.

Also so many people have been calling donghua/novel WWX annoying and I don’t see how he’s that different from the WWX in the drama? I think out of all the characters in the drama, WWX is probably closest to his novel counterpart in terms of personality 😂 seriously these are all adaptions based on the same source material, why is there so much disagreement 😂

(Assuming these go together)

They are. the same character. CQL LWJ is maybe slightly more expressive than he’s supposed to be because WYB is the King of Microexpressions, but it’s like... it’s the same character? LWJ can’t kiss WWX up a mountain or have filthy dream sex with him because of censorship and that isn’t something that should be treated like a good thing because censorship is bad oh my god can we please stop acting like these changes were based on what they thought was best for the characters. And don’t even get me started on the difference between having a rape fantasy when you know your partner is into that sort of thing (or just having a rape fantasy in general, that’s very common and doesn’t make the person having the fantasy a rapist) and Actually Wanting To Rape Someone, the incense burner extras are one long fever dream but they don’t make LWJ a bad person. And frankly? Novel/donghua WWX can be a bit annoying at first! CQL WWX is also a bit annoying in places! He doesn’t know how else to be! It’s a part of his character, because he doesn’t know how else to interact with people other than playfully pushing their buttons! He grows out of it as he begins to realise he doesn’t have to make everything a joke so that people will like him! This is growth! Your leads should have some bad points that they can grow out of as the story progresses!

Also frankly I think their first kiss is important because LWJ shouldn’t have done it, and because he regretted it instantly. I feel like it’s important to show a love interest going too far in their affections and recognizing that they went too far and regretting it! I’ve seen too many romances where the love interest does something like that and isn’t at all apologetic, so seeing LWJ kiss WWX in the spur of the moment then freak out because he knew it was wrong and he shouldn’t have done it is important to me. Also LWJ is in fact every bit as dumb about this sort of thing as WWX can be and it’s fully in character for him to do something stupid on impulse and then have Regrets immediately after once the impulse wears off, can we please acknowledge that he’s not all Untouchable Jade Statue Who Is Soft In Places.

#mdzs #cql #anon #asks

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takerfoxx · 4 years

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Now I'm wondering how the Walpurgis Nights girls would react to watching the Rebellion Story. ESPECIALLY Charlotte.

You...really need to stop putting ideas in my head that I can’t stop thinking about.

Fine. Okay. Here’s a rough draft of that very scenario, but mostly unedited and only up through the opening. I’ll hit up the rest when I have the time.

Note that this takes place some time after the story’s wrapped up, so the Hitomi arc is canon.

G=Gretchen

H=Homulilly

Op=Ophelia

Ok=Oktavia

Ca=Candeloro/Mami

Ch=Charlotte

...

Ch: Okay, this is basically us if we didn’t turn into witches and die, am I getting that right?

Ca: That does seem to be the case.

Op: So worst possible scenario.

G: Oh, I think it’ll be okay. I’m actually really excited about this!

Ok: I hope we get to see our outfits. I’ve always wondered about those.

…

Ok: Who’s narrating?

Ch: Sounds like a really grumpy Homulilly.

H: I don’t sound like that. Do I sound like that?

Ch: A little…

Op: Oooh, ominous!

Ok: “Disappear…” Do they mean turn into witches?

Ca, reading the description: No, apparently this take place in an alternate world where magical girls just…disappear instead of turning into witches.

Everyone: What?

Op: Who let that happen?

Ca: Um, Gretchen, apparently.

G: I did what? How?

Ch: I’m sure it’ll explain things. Eventually.

…

Ok: That sure is a lot of bubbles.

Op: Sounding a little cynical there, Lilly-Billy. Something you want to tell the rest of the class?

H: It’s not me!

Ok: Familiar smile…Oh, I know who she’s talking about!

Op: No matter the world, Homulilly stays loyal!

G: Why can’t she see me though? Am I dead?

H: Seriously, we don’t know if that’s even me.

…

Ch: Nice city.

Ok: I feel like I’m watching a tourism ad.

G: Is that where we lived?

…

Op: Uh, okay. This is new.

Ch: As far as we know.

G: I thought there weren’t any witches in this version.

…

Ch: City’s leaking.

Ok: That’s what happens if you don’t housetrain your skyscrapers.

Op: Looks like cum.

=Homulilly has to cover her mouth and turn away to keep from laughing=

Ca: Ophelia!

Op: Well, it does.

Ok: And now it turned into a ballerina. Okay.

Op: Cumberlina.

Ca: Stop saying cum!

…

Ch: These animators were on drugs.

Ok: Music’s nice, though.

H: “Welcome to cinema”?

…

Ok: Okay, what the hell is this fever dream? What’s with the demon teddy bear?

H: Maybe it’s a witch?

G: There aren’t supposed to be witches though!

Ch: What are we supposed to fight then?

Op: Maybe each other?

G: Oh, I really hope not.

Op: Gang war! Gang war!

Ok: Who is this thing even performing for?

…

Ca: Are those…teddy bear bombs?

Ok: Looks like.

Ca: And are those…are those marshmallows or pillows?

Op: Okay, following a clumsy dance recital with indiscriminate acts of terrorism. You know what? I get it. I’ve been there.

…

Ok: Holy crap, that’s Gretchen!

H: What? Where?

Ok: There! To the left with the cumberlinas!

Ca: Stop! Saying! Cumberlina!

H: Pause it! Pause it!

G: Is that what I looked like? I’m so…

Op: Pink!

Ch: Honestly, it’s kind of adorable.

G: Why am I with the cumberlinas though?

Ca: =indistinct noises of irritation and defeat=

…

Ch: What, is it judging them now?

Op, to the TV: Oh, like you could do better! Asshole…

Ch: You okay?

Op: I’m fine. It just reminded me of someone I know.

Ca: Oh, that’s Gretchen all right!

Ok: So many frills!

H: You’re so cute!

G: It’s not that…WHOA!

Op: Holy shit, Gretch is packing!

Ok: Death from above!

Ch: Maybe you should have cleared out first.

G: Whoops.

…

Ok: Oh my God, it’s me!

Op: Hell yeah!

Ca: Holy shit, it is you!

G: Look at that outfit! It’s so cool!

Ca: There’s even a cape!

Ok: Forget the cape, I’ve got legs!

G: “Madoka.” Still sounds weird to me.

Op: Heh. “Bingo.”

…

Op: AAAAHHHH! THAT’S ME!

Ok: Okay, I was sort of worried, but c’mon. Our outfits look totally badass.

H: Look at that hair.

Op: I know, right?!

Ok: And we’re working together!

Op: Damn right! Tag team that musty bitch!

=high five=

Ca: Where are we, though? We’re in this, right?

Ch: Movie’s just started. I guess we show up later.

…

Ch: Uh…okay.

G: That was a lot of windows.

H: Was this sort of thing…normal?

Ok: Did anyone else see the bleeding goat?

…

=stunned silence=

Ch: Well, this is happening now.

Op: What the hell is going on?

G: Well, we obviously invited the monster teddy bear over for dinner!

Ok: As one does.

H: Is this a musical?

Ok: Oh, that would be so awesome.

…

Op: See? There you are, Candy!

Ca: Wow.

Ok: Oh, my God. That outfit is so hot.

Ch: Where am I, though? Am I even…What hell is that thing?

G: Um, Charlotte? I think that’s you.

Ch: What?!

Op: And the obligatory tit shot…

Ca: Yeah, they really did zoom right in on them, didn’t they?

H: Dead center.

Ch: I’m not really that creepy doll thing, am I?

H: Maybe you’re the teddy bear.

…

Ok: Building’s on fire.

Op: Not my fault.

Ok: It’s at least one-fourth your fault.

G: Is no one going to bring up the skyscrapers that the teddy bear blew up?

Ok: Guess not.

G: But what if there were people in there?

Ok: Yeah, we’re kind of lousy at the whole “save the city” thing, aren’t we?

H: Why haven’t I shown up yet?

Ok: Maybe you’re the teddy bear!

…

Ok: And she’s awake!

G: Oh, we’re following me! Am I the main character?

Ca: It did kind of lead with you.

Ok: Homulilly was narrating, though.

Op: Maybe she’s the wise old mentor that gets killed off in a flashback.

H: =belabored sigh=

Ch: WHY AM I A CREEPY DOLL THING?!

…

Op: Wait, is that a fucking Incubator?

Ok: Well, this just got dark.

G: Why am I petting…Oh! Is that my mom?

Ok: Close!

G: It’s my dad! That’s my dad!

Ok: Oh, wow.

Op: Gretch, you gonna be okay?

G: Tatsuya…

=Homulilly hugs her=

Ok: That is a lot of chairs.

…

Ch: Looks like it runs in the family.

G: What does.

Ch: Being a sweetheart.

G, blushing: Oh, uh, thank you.

Ok: Hey, Candy. Did you ever meet Gretch’s family?

Ca: No, I didn’t. Actually, the only parents I was introduced to were Ophelia’s, and, well…

Op: Say no more.

Ca: Thank you.

…

Ch: And the classic schoolgirl, off to class with toast in her mouth and an alien abomination on her shoulder.

Ok: As one does.

Op: Why is it always toast? They’re not hard to eat. Just eat it with the rest of breakfast!

H: Does anyone else feel a strange, almost irresistible desire to strangle that little white rodent every time it shows up on screen?

Everyone: Yup!

Op: If someone doesn’t shoot that thing at least once before the end of the film, then I’m going to be very disappointed.

…

Ch: I guess this is the opening.

G: I thought the song where we were all feeding the creepy teddy bear until it blew up was the opening.

Ch: I don’t think that was an anything. That was just…there.

Ca: I really like the animation though.

Ok: Song’s pretty.

G: Oh, look! I am the main character!

Op: Oh, look! Look! There we are!

Ok: Yes! Spin that teacup!

H: Oh!

Ok: Hey, there you are!

Op: Looking all depressed and dramatic in that spotlight, but there you are.

H: Am I like…the rival or something?

Ch: Honestly, the rival is always the best character.

…

Ca: I like this part.

Op: Look at us all go! This is pretty adorable.

Ok: Candy, was it actually like that when we were, well, alive?

Ca: Actually, it’s not too far off.

Op: Neat.

H: Oh, that stupid clock. I’m always stuck in a clock!

…

Ok: Heh. Hip bump.

Op: See? Even Gretchen wants the old you to cheer up.

=Gretchen playfully bumps Homulilly with her hip, who smiles=

Ok: I don’t think you’re the rival. More of Gretchen’s mopey girlfriend. You know, to balance out her ray of sunshine vibes!

Ch: So…basically like it is now.

H: I’m not that mopey.

Ok: Well, this is teenage you.

H: True...

…

H: Again with the clocks, and-WHOA!

Ok: What’s up with the wings?

H: Could I fly? Was that something I could do?

Ca: No, the wings are new.

…

Op: Okay, this part rules.

Ok: Dance break! Come on, Homulilly! Join in!

G: What’s with all the close-ups of our hips?

Op: Well, they’re cute!

Ok: Hey, did we really break out into dance whenever Homulilly needed cheering up?

Ca: No, the dancing is new too. And I wouldn’t say that she was really all that mopey, just very…serious-minded and focused. Very mysterious too.

H: I wonder why.

G: Because it’s sexy.

Op: Can’t really argue with that.

…

Ch: Well, there’s some foreshadowing if I’ve ever seen it.

G: Why did I turn into sand?

Ok: It’s probably symbolic for something.

H: And why was it focusing so much on me? Am I the main character? I haven’t even shown up yet!

Ch: At least you got to be in the opening and mostly looked like yourself. Me? I get to be a creepy doll thing!

Op: At least you’re merchandisable.

Ch: Oh, like a bunch of cute girls in showy outfits can’t be merchandised. There’s probably like hundreds of little figurines and…uh…

G: What are you…oh.

Ch: Probably best not to think about it.

Op: Speak for yourself. I find a swimsuit version of us, I’m getting the whole set.

Ch: I will literally break your arms.

Ok: What if they have one of you? But, the doll version?

Ch: Oh, God! I just pictured it, and oh God! No!

Ok: Personally I’m hoping for body pillows.

Op: Oh, those they definitely have. You have to go to some shady places to get the nudy kind though.

Ok: Charlotte’s are probably sold official.

Ch: Stop! I am begging you to stop!

#WN Rebellion MST

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andsmile · 4 years

Text

okay here are my two cents, not everyone’s cup of tea but here we go

the article is real. yes, it’s not well written. yes, everything sounds like a fever dream. but this show has been a clusterfuck for years and now they managed to touch the one good thing they had going on (their solid core four ships) that are about to become a clusterfuck too.

however, the reviewer who wrote that seems to be VERY b*rchie biased and literally gushed over the ship happening all over the recap, not stopping to actually talk about what it means for bughead and varchie, or veronica and jughead. they ignored the glances that we know from the stills the core four shares (bughead and varchie), and only said “veronica looks at archie” / “jughead looks at betty” and enhanced b*rchie glances again. whoever wrote it likes the idea of b*rchie so we can’t trust it completely.

cheating SUCKS. sucks, sucks, sucks. however, it’s not the first time it’s used as a plot device to shake things up in a teen show. it won’t be the last. riverdale thrived on the stability of their core ships but they probably wanted to shake things up while simultaneously catering to another part of the fandom, so there you go.

i understand if you’re a thrown off by cheating but (and that might be controversial) i don’t think this invalidates bughead’s or varchie’s journey. the writers have failed to show us why b*rchie would be “confused” to a point that they’d cheat on their significant others (and that’s where the story diverts from other triangles/quadrangles from other better written shows) but this is just another storyline they’re pulling out of their asses too quickly. either way, it doesn’t change what happened so far for varchie and bughead. it’s “the darkest storyline” that you can and should ignore.

this is not real life so if you feel like “forgiving” archie or betty for doing this, it’s okay, it doesn’t mean that you’d be a cheater on real life or that you’d condone this attitude. also, when in doubt, go with the characters reaction: if jug and veronica do forgive them, and you still like the ship, why wouldn’t you?

it’s also okay if you want to jump ships or to leave the fandom. do what’s best for you!

what matters more to me right now is: how will they follow this up? what will happen afterwards? are b*rchie going to honest? are they engaging on an affair (sounds crack but)? are they honestly just going to choose jug and veronica and that’s it? does it mean anything for real, or is it just a thing that happens in the musical, a “showmance”?

we can only expect bad writing, so i don’t think we can expect archie or betty to tell their secret to jughead and veronica. with the tapes thing going on, i feel like they will go back to their relationships and ignore this ever happened, when someone leaks a tape that blows up the core four. and we initiate season 5 with the core four all split up. with a time jump, many things can be forgiven and it’s a set up for angst.

it’s a weird thing that this episode is using ALL of the b*rchie cards and trumphs wrapped into one. flashbacks for kiddie stuff? pilot reminiscing with a song about mistakes and goodbyes? window scenes? “longing”? er... if i was a b*rchie shipper i’d be wary. it’s a huge b*rchie sandwich and it could literally be giving all possible content so they never visit that again. also, i, for one, am glad that these flashbacks are happening now and not in episode 18. maybe they want us to believe b*rchie have been waiting for each other but we just won’t believe it and the writers are on crack but they know their audience, don’t think they don’t.

let’s not blame the cast, reviewers, or even the characters that have existed for 78 years on this bullshit story line.

maybe i am too detached from canon, or maybe i have seen enough shit (that always, inevitably, hits the fan on the fourth season) with my other ships to feel really upset. thing is, i have always been on the loser side of the cw shows before, but that was always the smallest fanbase (with brucas, stelena, dair, etc) and i’ve always watched the big fanbase win over the small fanbase regardless of the writing or continuity. this time we, the bughead and varchies, are the big fanbase. we can boycott, be heard, let them know we hate it, that we won’t watch, and they will listen. the cw has fired producers for that before, and riverdale is the cw’s cash cow. let them know that you hate and don’t watch, especially if you live in the USA.

i know it’s hard to even think about your ship in a good way right now but remember that the archie comics characters have been around for decades and that this isn’t their only universe. which means, you can still love your ship and ship them in the comics or, especially if you want the riverdale timeline, content fans create for you. it’s really the time to support your fanfic writers, fanartists, gif makers, video makers, etc. this is the time we come together as a big community and support each other until this is over.

the fanfics you read, keep reading them. they don’t have any relation to the source material. the arts and gifsets you reblog, keep reblogging them. keep stanning your version of your ship, this is what’s going to matter in a few years from now when the show is over and there’s nothing more to “feed” from.

be respectful to your fellow bughead and varchie shippers now. i guess this is crucial. we can win this war TOGETHER, but not apart. it doesn’t matter that you think archie is the fuckboy that should die - don’t say it to a varchie shipper. it doesn’t matter if it pisses you off that betty always gets excused - don’t say it to a bughead shipper. let’s be friends, let’s stick together, this is the writers fault, and archie and betty as characters also deserve better.

#bughead #varchie #riverdale #i won't tag this as negativity because it's not?#anyway

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vexedtonightmares · 4 years

Note

Hi. I hope you have an amazing day/night. I had an idea for a fic. That Elliott saves lucas from a monster. Elliott is a demigod and tells lucas he is too and has to go to camp halfblood (percy Jackson au)

ok i’m gonna start by saying that i’m literally so sorry for taking MONTHS to answer this, but i loved this prompt so much i wanted to give it the attention it deserved 🥺now, that attention went from a small 1k fic to a roughly 20k three part fic because i have No Chill and accidentally came up with an entire plot, but at least i’m sharing it now!! i hope you enjoy!!

you can read part 1 here on ao3 or down below the cut 💖

love and other divine interventions

part i. identity (8.4k)

Look, Lucas didn’t want to be a half-blood. What the hell was that even supposed to mean? It sounded like a disease, the more he thought about it. Not that he thought about it often, he really tried not to, because most of all he didn’t care what it meant. Hadn’t killed him yet, had it?

Lucas had first been told that he was a half-blood by his mother when he was twelve. She said she was worried for his safety, and that she might have to send him to summer camp in America. He didn’t know what any of that meant, but he also knew that his mother wasn’t well sometimes, so he never thought too much about what she’d said and whether or not it meant more than he took it as.

A few years later, his mother had been put into an institution to help with her mental health, and Lucas had been sent from Paris to the states to live with an aunt and uncle he hardly knew. That was the second time someone called him a half-blood. He’d been minding his own business, walking home from school, and some kid who looked both older and younger than he was at the time had gasped, saying that Lucas was a half-blood and had to come with him if he wanted to be safe.

Lucas had learned about stranger danger, though, so instead he ran away and told his aunt and uncle what happened. Without any room for argument, his aunt and uncle packed up and moved halfway across the country. It was a bit of an excessive response, but Lucas was fourteen, he didn’t really have any say in the matter.

Something similar had happened again when he was sixteen, then seventeen, and each time his aunt and uncle packed up and moved at even the slightest hint of trouble. He knew that they were just worried about him, they’d lost their daughter, his cousin, back when she was about twelve years old, and they never found out what happened to her. Or so they told Lucas, when he asked.

He asked them what a half-blood was once, and they’d both told him to never say that word again. So, he hadn’t. He did write a letter to his mother, though, asking if she could explain what she’d meant. Everyone just thought she was crazy, but Lucas had never thought so. If she’d thought it was important for Lucas to know, it must have been.

When Lucas was eighteen, he went to university in New York. His aunt and uncle hadn’t wanted him to, but they wouldn’t let him go back to Paris, so this was the option they’d reluctantly agreed to.

Strange things had always seemed to follow him wherever he went, but those occurrences happened far more often once he was in New York. He chalked it up to the weirdness of the city itself. Like this: the man on the street who’d told him he smelled like death— which was more rude than strange, actually— or the time that he could have sworn some sort of winged demon had been following him as he walked to class.

Generally, he chalked his experiences up to a lack of sleep, because the life of a college student was quite the busy one. Even if it hadn’t been, he probably wouldn’t have slept anyways. All his life he’d been plagued by dreams so haunting and wild that he’d felt that they were real, regardless of the fact that he knew that couldn’t have been the case.

It was after a night tossing and turning in bed, visions of a pale skinned man on a throne of bones trying desperately to tell him something, that Lucas decided he needed to get some fresh air.

Lucas loved the city, he really did. Of all the places he’d lived in his life, New York was a close second to Paris. He didn’t let himself think of Paris too often, though, lest he be swept up in thoughts of his mother and how much he missed her. It was hard to keep in contact with all the moving, but he called the home that she was in every now and again to make sure she was alright. She never responded to the questions he’d written to her, but he’d more or less put all of that out of his mind.

It became clear to Lucas while he was walking through the city that someone was following him. Every time he looked back, he could have sworn he saw someone dart out of sight. So, he picked up his pace. If it came down to it, he’d throw some punches, sure, but he wasn’t the best fighter there ever was.

He kept walking, no direction in mind, and started to think that maybe he’d been overreacting, or maybe the sleep deprivation had gotten him at last. He walked so long that he made it somewhere there weren’t many people around, and even though he turned over his shoulder once more, whoever was following him seemed to have gotten bored and left him be. Finally, he thought, and paused to check his phone, blinking in surprise when he realized he’d been walking for nearly two hours. He had a tendency to get lost in his own head like that.

Lucas took a deep breath, started to turn around to walk back where he’d come from, and saw a light flash at the corner of his eye, something a bright and beautiful shade of bronze. Before he had time to react, he was pinned up against the side of an alleyway with a knife to his throat and a hand over his mouth.

By the time Lucas was able to assess the situation and look at his assailant’s face, he groaned internally to himself. Oh, fuck, he’s hot.

The assailant in question didn’t look to be all that much older than Lucas himself, his skin was pale and golden, dotted with moles like constellations. He was wearing a bright orange shirt, which Lucas didn’t know how he hadn’t seen before, and had a leather necklace with a bunch of clay beads on it, each with a different design. Six if, Lucas was counting properly.

The last thing Lucas looked at were his attacker’s eyes. A clear, bluish grayish color so intense, it made Lucas a little weak in the knees. Get a hold of yourself Lallemant, this guy is literally trying to kill you.

Lucas opened his mouth under the guy’s hold and in return the guy pressed his hand in even tighter. His luminescent eyes raked Lucas’ face up and down a moment until his attention was caught by something else, off to Lucas’ left.

“Stay here,” the boy said, loosening his grip on Lucas’ mouth, “And stay quiet, if you want to survive.”

Now, Lucas may not have been trained in combat, but he did know a few moves, one of which he employed the second it looked like this guy’s guard was down.

“OW! What the fuck?” the guy said in a strained voice as he fell to his knees. “Did you just knee me in the balls?”

Lucas didn’t spare the breath on answering, he just ran to the opposite end of the alley as fast as he could. He was almost away when he heard another voice join the fray. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” said a girl’s voice, “I think you should go back to where Eliott told you to stay.”

Suddenly, Lucas felt his legs moving of their own accord. He agreed with this girl, he should listen to everything she said.

The boy— Eliott— lifted his head to glare at the girl. “Lola, stop that.”

In his haze, Lucas could barely hear her mumble something about never being allowed to have any fun before he suddenly felt like he’d been dunked in a bucket of ice cold water. He looked around, wondering how he’d gotten back to where he’d run from.

“What did you— wha—” he stammered, trying to regain sense of himself, when Eliott sighed and stood up, grimacing a bit.

“I’ll explain everything,” Eliott promised, “We’re here to help you, not hurt you, you just have to please, for the love of the gods, stay where you are and shut up.”

For the love of the gods? Were these people in some sort of cult?

Lucas was nothing if not stubborn. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and frowned. “What makes you think I’ll do what you say?”

Eliott threw an exasperated glance at Lola, who simply raised her eyebrows back as if to say, should have listened to me. Eliott sighed and came back to stand in front of Lucas, holding the knife he’d very recently pressed against Lucas' neck out to Lucas to grab. “Does this make you feel better?”

“I could stab you,” Lucas said, taking it.

Eliott flashed a quick grin, holding out a hand as Lola tossed him a bow and arrows. “You won’t.”

Lucas narrowed his eyes. “Oh yeah? And what makes you say th— AHHH!”

Lucas liked horror movies, he prided himself on being hard to scare. He’d laughed nearly the entire time he’d seen the most recent It movie, and he’d chalked up all the strange things that had happened in his life to fever dreams at best, tragically large amounts of bad luck at worst. Maybe he hadn’t been scared because he either knew it wasn’t real, or refused to believe it was real. This, though, this massive beast looking moments away from eating him alive, this was real.

“Gods dammit,” Lola murmured under her breath, pulling a sword from nowhere. Lucas glanced down at the knife in his hands. Eliott and Lola weren’t paying any attention to him anymore, he could make a run for it, but his fear was that this thing in front of him would kill him if he did.

“Excuse me? What the hell is that thing?” Lucas shouted, drawing the beast’s head in his direction. Fuck. Maybe drawing attention to himself by shouting wasn’t the best move.

Neither Lola nor Eliott answered him, assuming fighting stances. Lucas tried to emulate what they were doing, but his knees felt too weak and his head felt too dizzy. He hoped to whoever might listen that this was all just a very convoluted nightmare. He pressed the blade into his hand, just to see if it hurt, wishing that it wouldn’t. It did.

There was a moment of silence where Lucas could have heard a pin drop, but then the thing made a horrifying, guttural sort of sound, and lunged. Lola charged forward, swinging her sword with the precision of a seasoned professional, but the thing was fast. It evaded her attacks, reaching out to slash her with its long claws. Lucas didn’t think, just knew that even if he didn’t trust these people, they didn’t deserve to die. He threw the knife Eliott had given him with all his might, and let out a startled breath as it embedded itself right between the thing’s eyes.

Eliott, who’d had an arrow ready to fly, lowered his weapon and stared at Lucas with a dumbfounded expression as the thing crumbled to dust, leaving only the bronze knife in its wake.

“How did you do that?” Eliott asked, searching Lucas’ face up and down. From his other side, Lola was looking at Lucas apprehensively. Lucas opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Eliott’s expression went from shocked to worried, and that was the last thing Lucas saw before he passed out cold.

***

Lucas shot up in bed in a cold sweat, breathing heavily. Of course it was all a dream; sure it had felt realistic, but why would he be in bed if everything that had just happened in his mind happened in real life? Then again…

Lucas surveyed his surroundings and groaned, before flopping back onto what he now realized was not his bed. Great, he’d been kidnapped. By a boy with eyes like the center of a storm and a girl younger than he was.

“Lucas?”

He turned his head to the voice in the doorway, not knowing what to expect. To his displeasure, it was the kidnapper himself. Eliott, was it? He didn’t look like a kidnapper, in that same offensively bright orange t-shirt and distressed jeans, light streaks in his wild hair from too much time out in the sun. Camp Half-Blood, read his t-shirt, and upon realizing this, Lucas felt like he was going to be sick.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Eliott said as he raced to Lucas’ bed, shoving a glass of an indeterminate liquid into his hands. “Drink this, you’ll feel better.”

Lucas was definitely not going to drink it, obviously. Eliott noticed this, rolled his eyes, and took a small sip from the side of the cup. “There, will you drink it now?”

“Where did you take me, and how do you know who I am?” Lucas asked instead. He could only hope that Eliott was kind of stupid, so he’d be able to outsmart him and escape.

“I’m not telling you anything until you drink that,” Eliott said stubbornly, sitting on the edge of Lucas’ bed. The more Lucas looked at the room, the more it looked like some sort of infirmary, which made even less sense. Maybe Eliott had some weird doctor-patient kink or something.

Lucas looked at the drink in his hands, then back up at Eliott, who was smiling bright as the sun. He rolled his eyes and took a sip, figuring that if the drink was safe, he’d do what Eliott said to get more information and get the hell out of there. The moment the liquid hit his tongue, he flinched back in surprise. It tasted just like his favorite meal that his mother made him when he was little. How was that even possible? Forgetting all about Eliott, he gulped down most of the rest of the drink until he started feeling a bit hot and Eliott grabbed the glass from his hands.

“Woah there, don’t want you burning up on us, not when it’s taken so much work for us to get you here at all,” Eliott said with a smile, which Lucas decided is something a psychopath would do.

He did feel better though, now that the heat had subsided. A lot better actually, better than he’d felt in a long time. He felt healthy and well rested, which was especially great if he needed to take Eliott out in order to escape. First, though, he needed answers.

“Where am I?”

“Long Island,” Eliott supplied.

Lucas glowered at him. “Where exactly am I? Why did you kidnap me?”

Eliott coughed in surprise, eyebrows shooting up and then furrowing deeply. “Kidnap? Lucas, I didn’t kidnap you!”

“Why were you following me, then? How do you know my name?”

Eliott sighed and gazed at Lucas for a second that stretched to a minute. “I know your name because I saw it on your student ID. Your wallet was in your pocket. Don’t give me that look, I didn’t steal anything, you can have your two dollars and campus card back when you’re ready to head out into camp, not that you’ll be needing either of those things anytime soon.”

Aha, Lucas had caught him. “Because you kidnapped me.”

“No I did not—” Eliott broke off, shaking his head exasperatedly. “You’re difficult, you know that?”

Lucas shrugged. “So I’ve been told.”

“You won’t be here a long time because I’ve kidnapped you, you’ll be here a long time because it’s one of the only places in the world safe for people like you. Like us,” Eliott continued, looking like he was gauging each of Lucas’ reactions. “No offense, but I’m truly and honestly surprised that you’re not already dead. Unless you’re secretly ten years old or something.”

“And who, pray tell, are we?” Lucas asked sarcastically, ignoring the latter half of what Eliott had said. The look in Eliott’s eyes went deadly serious.

“Half-bloods.”

“I think that’s, like, a slur of some sort..”

The more jovial light came back into Eliott’s eyes. “I’m sorry, what?”

“My aunt and uncle told me never to say that, because people used to call me that sometimes when I was younger. My mom did too, but when she said it, it didn’t sound like a bad thing…” Lucas trailed off, not even realizing it, consumed in thoughts of his mother, as well as his aunt and uncle, who would think him dead. Or lost, just like their daughter. He only came back to himself when he heard Eliott swear under his breath. “Excuse me?”

Eliott went red. “Sorry, it’s just… we had a bet going, about who your parent was. If your mom is mortal, that means I lose.”

“Are you going to tell me what the hell you’re talking about, or am I going to have to kick you in the balls and make a run for it again?” Lucas asked dejectedly. Eliott laughed like he was joking.

“Sorry, sorry,” he apologized, “You mean… you truly don’t know, then? What you are? Who you are?”

Lucas stared at him blankly, shrugging.

Eliott continued, “You’re a half-blood— which isn’t a slur, by the way— which means you’re half human, half something else, something that might not make much sense to you right now, or you might not want to believe, but I promise you that it’s true.”

“Ok.” What else was Lucas going to say? He was back to wondering if Eliott was a part of some weird cult.

“You’re half human, half god. Your father, whoever he is, is one of the gods of Ancient Greece. Or Rome, I suppose, but I have a feeling if you ended up here, you’re more on the Greek side of things,” Eliott concluded hesitantly, like he was waiting for Lucas to laugh in his face. Lucas sort of wanted to, but then again, if this was some weird cult thing, maybe it would be best to play along until he went under the radar and could escape.

So, instead of laughing or asking a million more questions like he wanted to, Lucas said, “Oh, is that all?”

Eliott blinked at him. “Is that a— you mean you believe me?”

“Of course, why wouldn’t I?” Lucas asked. Yeah, this was definitely a cult thing. “Who’s my dad, then?”

“If you don’t know, we don’t know,” Eliott said apologetically. There was a look in his eyes that made Lucas doubt, for a moment, that this was all some big cosmic joke the universe was playing on him, that there might have been some truth to what Eliott was saying. But that was ridiculous, he couldn’t let them get to him.

Instead of dwelling on it, Lucas tried to divert the conversation, “Hence the bet.”

The corner of Eliott’s mouth quirked up and he averted his eyes, giving a shrug of acknowledgement. “Hence the bet,” he agreed.

The two of them stared at each other a beat longer, then Eliott hopped up and held out his hand. “Let’s give you a camp tour then, hm? Hopefully you’ll be claimed by tonight, but Cabin Eleven always welcomes unclaimed campers, even if we haven’t had one in a while.”

“Um, ok,” Lucas said, getting out of bed without taking Eliott’s hand. In all honesty, it was more for his own sake than anything. Cultist or not, Eliott was very, very attractive, and Lucas was very, very gay.

Eliott walked with a little bit of a bounce in his step, like he couldn’t help it, and even though it sort of made Lucas want to roll his eyes, another part of him was endeared. Eliott picked up a bow and quiver full of arrows by the door and strung them over his back. Lucas had no idea what use that would be, but he was wary to find out.

Outside of the infirmary was nothing like what Lucas expected. Eliott grinned at Lucas’ face over his shoulder and said, “Welcome to Camp Half-Blood.”

It was beautiful, that was the only word for it. There was a four story mansion in front of what looked to be some sort of dining pavilion, and on the opposite side there were massive strawberry fields, an archery range, and was that a rock climbing wall with lava pouring down it? It was hard to process everything he was seeing, and even harder when he looked a bit further and saw what Eliott must have meant by ‘cabins’. Cabin was an understatement, surely. There were many massive buildings, each decorated so wildly Lucas couldn’t even imagine the purpose of them. If this was a cult, at least the leaders seemed to treat the members well, everyone looked like they were having the time of their life, even the people sword fighting to the death.

Lucas looked back at the mansion on what seemed to be some sort of front lawn, and suddenly felt like he was about to faint again. “That man has a horse body.”

Eliott followed his gaze, laughed lightly. “Yeah, that’s Chiron, he’s a centaur.”

When Lucas didn’t respond, Eliott stopped him, imploring him with his intoxicating eyes. “Wait a second. You didn’t really believe me did you, you little shit?” he laughed, again, like it was funny. “Why would I lie about your father being a Greek god? Mine is too.”

“No,” Lucas said numbly. There had to be some other explanation, maybe he was on drugs. He started to feel a bit feverish and breathless as he took in his surroundings again. A man with the legs of a goat trotted past him and his vision dotted. Great, a panic attack was exactly what he needed right now. He didn’t even realize he’d fallen to his knees until Eliott knelt beside him, looking concerned.

“Hey, Lucas, breathe for me, can you do that?” Eliott asked. Lucas tried to answer, but he couldn’t, tried to breathe, but he couldn’t. Eliott’s face in front of him was a bit blurry now, and Lucas felt numb all over, like he was outside of his body. Then, suddenly, his vision cleared, his breathing regulated, and he felt like himself again.

“What—” he began, looking at Eliott, who looked guilty.

“I’m sorry,” Eliott said, helping Lucas to his feet. “My godly parent? Apollo, the god of music, prophecy, the sun,” he paused, biting his lip. “Medicine.”

“And you’re being one hundred percent serious?” Lucas asked. “You’re not part of a cult trying to brainwash me?”

Eliott nodded. “I swear it on the River Styx.”

Lucas didn’t know what that meant, but thunder boomed in the distance, so it sounded serious. His resolve crumbled, and he had no choice but to believe this crazy story he’d been told. In some ways, it made some of the weird things in his life seem not so weird after all.

“Ok,” he conceded, “I believe you. For real this time.”

Eliott smiled, but it was shallow, and Lucas thought about what he’d just said about his own father. “So you… you stopped my panic attack, then? With godly superpowers, or whatever?”

Eliott’s face went a bit dark, “I wouldn’t call it that, necessarily. I… I differ from most of my siblings in this way. Usually Apollo’s children are more inclined towards medicine, that much is true, but we don’t necessarily have healing powers of our own.”

“But you do,” Lucas inferred, and Eliott nodded grimly.

“It helps out a lot in battle, or with physical ailments, but I—” he faltered, and looked out at the water. “I hate using it this way, for mental ailments. Treating it like it's something that needs to be fixed— which I can’t do by the way. I can get rid of your panic attack, but not your anxiety, if that makes sense. The same way I could heal a broken leg, but not make sure that leg is never broken again. It seems like a cruel joke, sometimes, considering…” he trailed off, turning red, like he’d said something he shouldn’t have.

Lucas waited for him to continue, but when he did, he didn’t pick up his last train of thought. “Point is, we all have our things, from our parents, no matter how big or small they might be. Maybe finding out what yours is will lead us to find out who your dad is.”

“Maybe my dad’s also Apollo,” Lucas wondered aloud, and Eliott let out an oddly strangled noise.

“Let’s hope not,” he said, and before Lucas could ask why, he took off across the green towards the cabins. “Come on, let’s get you acquainted with some of the campers.”

And Lucas, well, he had no choice but to follow.

Every camper they passed seemed to be a little bit enamoured with Eliott, smiling, waving, and greeting him with blushes and laughter. Once Lucas caught up to Eliott, he asked, “Why are they doing that? Aren’t we all technically related, or whatever?”

Eliott furrowed his brows. “Doing what?” he asked, just as a camper on the volleyball court blew him a kiss. Lucas raised his eyebrows and watched as Eliott’s face turned bright red.

“Oh that’s not— we’re not— The godly side of the family doesn’t count,” he explained, “There’s no DNA there, so you’re not really related in any real way to anyone, aside from your siblings. Like, a child of Poseidon and a child of Athena could date with no problem, but two children of Athena? That’s weird.”

“Oh,” Lucas said, taking it all in. It seemed he had quite a bit to learn. “Who are you dating, then?” he asked, wishing he hadn’t the minute he said it.

To his surprise, Eliott just looked over at him with one eyebrow raised and a small smirk. “No one,” he said, coming to a stop in front of what looked like a Barbie house. “Yet.”

Lucas opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted by a girl with blonde hair and big green eyes bounding down the stairs in their direction. Instead of running to Eliott, like he expected, she ran right towards Lucas, smiling at him widely.

“You must be Lucas!” she said excitedly.

“Uh…” Lucas said intelligently.

“This is Daphné,” Eliott said, “Daughter of Aphrodite.”

Aphrodite. Right. Which one was she again? The one naked in a seashell? Thankfully, Daphné filled in the blanks. “Goddess of love, beauty, all that good stuff. Someone had a lot of money betting that you were one of us,” she confided in him.

Lucas tried to look at Eliott for help in this interaction, but he was looking away pointedly. “My mom is normal,” he said instead, “Mortal.”

Daphné bit her lip, like she was holding back a grin. “That’s what my sister Lola guessed, too.”

Why did that name sound familiar? “Lola…?”

“Me.” Another voice joined them. It was the girl he’d seen with Eliott, who he’d saved from being eaten by that monster. She looked at him with a bored expression.

“You’re welcome,” Lucas said, watching as her eyes narrowed, “You know, for saving your life.”

She grimaced at him, hand on the sword at her side. She started to say something, but Daphné glared at her, and she rolled her eyes, going back inside where she’d come from.

“Your sister seems nice,” Lucas observed.

Daphné waved a hand airily. “She’ll come around. You didn’t have to be a dick, either.”

“Sorry,” he said, though he wasn’t, and Daphné looked like she knew it.

Eliott jumped in, likely to diffuse some tension, “Daphné here is a master of disguise. Her skill with beauty work can really transform anyone into anything, though more in an illusion way, not a shapeshifting way. Also, her love advice rarely goes amiss.”

That all sounded fine, but not really as cool as having actual superpowers, like Eliott, Lucas thought. As if sensing what he was thinking, Eliott continued, “Some children of Aphrodite have the power of charmspeak, too. They can make anyone do anything, just by telling them to.”

Lucas thought of the weird disconnected feeling that had come over him when Lola had made him stop running away. “Lola can charmspeak?” he asked, already knowing the answer as Eliott and Daphné nodded. “Well that’s just great.”

“It is,” Daphné said defensively, “It’s saved a lot of lives.”

“Anyway,” Eliott cut in again, smiled a bit tense around the edges, “I brought you to Daph because she knows everything and everyone. She can give you the rundown on some campers and their godly parents, if you want.”

Lucas didn’t see a problem with that, especially because he was severely lacking in mythological knowledge. Before he could do so much as nod, Daphné launched into a wild spiel, pointing to people as she did.

“Well, let’s see… over there is Alexia, daughter of Iris, goddess of the rainbow, ugh she’s with Arthur again— son of Hermes, you’ll meet him soon enough if you remain unclaimed— I told her not to go down that road again, but she never learns that my love advice is to be listened to, not ignored. There’s Yann, son of Hephaestus, god of blacksmiths and fire, he’s chill, you’ll like him, and he’s with Basile, as per usual, son of Ares, god of war— which everyone is still confused by, Baz doesn’t have a warlike bone in his body— we used to date, actually, a while back, but I suppose you don’t care about that. Emma and Imane, daughters of Dionysus, god of wine, and Nike, goddess of victory, respectively. Hmm… who else… Sofiane, Imane’s boyfriend and Eliott’s brother, another son of Apollo, Idriss, another son of Nike— he and Imane actually have the same father as well, which is rare but not unheard of. Oh! There’s Maya, Lola’s girlfriend, daughter of Demeter, goddess of agriculture…”

“You seem very well informed of people’s love lives,” Lucas observed, though he supposed that made sense, with who her mom was.

Daphné glowed in response. “I mean, it’s my job as the head counselor for the Aphrodite cabin. I have a feeling love is closer than you think, by the way, for yourself.”

Lucas blinked. “Excuse me?”

Daphné shrugged, sparing a glance at Eliott, then back at Lucas. “Just a hunch. Speaking of love, I wonder where Manon is… I think she’d like you. She’s a daughter of Zeus. Maybe she’s in her cabin…”

Manon. A name Lucas hadn’t heard in years. It could be a coincidence, of course, but at the same time… “Manon Demissy?” he asked. Daphné frowned at him.

“How do you know that?”

Lucas couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “She’s my cousin. She went missing when we were twelve…” he trailed off. Had she been here the whole time? Why didn’t his aunt and uncle know that? Did they have the same godly parent?

Daphné and Eliott exchanged a glance, before Daphné took a hold of his arm and dragged him after her, Eliott stumbling along behind them trying to keep up, towards the towering cabin at the end of the path, which looked more like a mausoleum than a cabin.

“Manon!” Daphné yelled once they were outside the door. “You’d better be in there, and you’d better open up, because your cousin—”

She was cut off by the door opening, and Lucas stared into a face he only had the barest memories of. She was a lot older now, sure, but still, Lucas knew exactly who she was. Her face blanched considerably when she saw Lucas.

“Lulu?” she asked, stepping all the way outside.

Lucas shifted uncomfortably at the nickname. “Uh, no one really calls me that anymo—”

Manon pulled him into a tight hug, and Lucas melted into it. His missing cousin, apparently, was just like him. When she pulled back she searched his face. “But how are you— Are you a half-blood?”

Lucas shrugged. “I guess so.”

“Who’s your father, then?” she asked, looking to Daphné and Eliott both.

“We don’t know,” Eliott said, “He’s unclaimed.”

“At eighteen?” Manon seemed confused by his age more than anything, even though they were only about a month apart in age.

Eliott and Daphné seemed to be thinking the same thing. “How did you survive this long? Most demigods don’t make it on their own past twelve out there, and the gods are supposed to claim us all by the time we’re thirteen,” Eliott said.

“He could be the son of a minor god,” Daphné offered, “Alexia was out there until she was fifteen.”

They were all looking at him expectantly, so Lucas launched into the story of his childhood, to when he’d been sent to live with Manon’s parents, how they’d moved around any time anything strange happened, and how everything had only been able to catch up with him now that he was on his own in New York.

Manon shook her head. “It still doesn’t make sense, though.”

“Your parents think you’re dead, by the way,” he said, wondering why that wasn’t bothering her.

She looked apprehensive for a moment, then said, “Lu, my mother and her husband died when I was twelve. That’s why I came to camp. I don’t have any family out there, other than you.”

“What are you talking about? Who the hell have I been living with for years, then?” Lucas demanded, but Manon looked confused as ever.

“We need to talk to Jo,” Eliott said, and Daphné nodded. “Her mother is Hecate, the goddess of magic, if anyone can peel back the Mist on this one, it’s her.”

“Why do I have a feeling you’re not talking about actual mist?” Lucas asked as he followed the three of them across the green once again. None of them answered him, which was answer enough.

“Jo!” Eliott yelled as they came across a purple cabin with a strange energy surrounding it. “We need your expertise!”

Hardly a moment later, a girl that seemed to be a bit younger than Lucas was at the door, breathless and smiling widely. She looked at Eliott with what was either severe infatuation or admiration. “Anything for my favorite camper,” she said, looking at all of them in turn, until her eyes rested on Lucas. “You must be the newbie! You’re a lot older than I thought you’d be, how the hell did you make it out there that long?”

“That’s what we need your help with,” Manon said, explaining the rest of the situation. Jo’s expression hardened as she did so, and she nodded seriously at the end.

“I’ll see what I can do.” Then, her expression was bright again. “Come inside Lucas! I don’t bite, I promise! Unless you want me to.”

“Jo,” Eliott said, exasperatedly, like he’d had to do this a lot.

She put her hands up. “Alright, alright. Come on, let’s see if we can figure out your story.”

Lucas tried to protest as she pulled him inside, door shutting behind her, leaving Eliott, Manon, and Daphné on the outside. She looked at him sympathetically. “I know it's overwhelming, but I promise you don’t have to be scared. Your job is easy, you just have to sit there while I work my magic. Literally.”

He was led to an entirely dark room and shoved unceremoniously into a chair. Jo waved her hand and a bunch of purple orbs filled the room, glowing with light. “Just close your eyes, and think about your family— your mortal family. I’ll do the rest.”

Lucas did as he was told, first thinking about his mother, and Manon, meeting his extended family when he was young. Only… that was odd, his aunt, Manon’s mother, looked quite a bit different than she did now, though maybe that was just because she was younger. There were weird, fuzzy gaps in his brain, from when he’d had to leave Paris and come to live with his aunt and uncle, which seemed strange. There were a lot of weird, fuzzy gaps, actually, the more he thought about it. Jo gasped, and Lucas opened his eyes.

Jo sighed, looking at Lucas like she’d seen something she wished she hadn’t. “It really is a curse, being able to do the things that I do,” she said simply, holding out a hand. “Come on, we have lots to share.”

Eliott, Daphné, and Manon were all bickering when Jo opened the door to let them both out of the cabin. They looked up at Jo expectantly. Well, actually, Manon and Daphné did, Eliott looked at Lucas, searching his face with his eyes, almost like he was asking if Lucas was ok. Lucas nodded, giving him a hint of a smile, which Eliott returned with one of his own.

“I’m not sure y’all will like what I have to say,” Jo warned them all, then turned to Manon. “Can we go to your cabin? I don’t want to talk about it with a bunch of people around.”

Manon frowned, but they all followed her back to the massive cabin at the end of the row once again. While they walked, Lucas couldn’t stop thinking of what all this secrecy and worry might lead to. Bad enough he’d just found out that the people he’d been living with weren’t actually related to him, did he really need to learn that he was the son of the god of, like, toilets, or something?

When they walked in Lucas noticed that the cabin was more or less set up like a museum, not a livable space. There was a massive statue of a god that Lucas assumed was Zeus, because he was carrying a lightning bolt (hey, he didn’t know much, but he knew that much), but it was a bit unnerving, because it felt like his eyes were following them as they walked across the room.

“Where are your siblings?” Lucas asked, looking around. All of the other cabins seemed to have a great number of campers living in them.

“I don’t have any,” Manon said, opening a compartment in the wall just outside statue Zeus’ eyeline. Daphné followed like she’d been there a million times, and Eliott and Jo didn’t seem to have any hesitation, so Lucas went after them, closing the compartment behind him.

“Zeus is one of the Big Three, which includes Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades,” Manon continued as they followed her, “And a long time ago, there was this big pact between the Big Three to never sire any more demigods, because of some prophecy nonsense, or something. I don’t know, it was before our time. There was this big war, and then they decided to do away with that rule, but the children of the Big Three are more powerful than most demigods. Which makes them more dangerous, more of a liability. There were a lot of us, for a time, but then the gods decided to get rid of us in case we’d cause too much trouble. As if it was our fault for existing. Each of the Big Three was supposed to choose one child to live, and I happened to be the luckiest of the bunch, because I was just a baby. I think I technically have a sister, but she’s a Hunter of Artemis, so she was exempt from this new rule. Poseidon chose this guy who’s an adult now, living in New Rome, because he pretty much saved them from destruction a number of times and he also hadn’t had anymore demigod children after him. Hades refused to choose, and the gods banished him to Tartarus. He only had two kids, both of whom pretty much saved the gods asses a million times over, and he didn’t think they deserved to be punished for existing, rightfully so.”

They were now in a chamber that Lucas definitely thought hadn’t existed previously. It was decorated in a way that seemed somewhat recent and it looked like more of a secret hideout than a bedroom. Everyone took a seat on various furniture, Daphné and Manon’s hands tangling together as they sat beside one another on the bed. Lucas was still trying his best to take in all the information, but he got lost at Tartarus. “So… Zeus killed a bunch of his kids, is the moral of the story?”

Daphné scoffed. “It was Hera who did it. She hates all children of Zeus, because she’s the goddess of marriage. Really, she just wanted to punish him, and all those innocent kids got caught in the crossfire. She only roped Poseidon and Hades into it so the other gods would agree. Everyone knew Poseidon only had one demigod child, and no one cared enough about Hades or his kids to intervene in that regard.”

“But if they all hate Hades, why is he one of the Big Three?” Lucas asked.

“I mean, the whole concept of the Big Three is inherently sexist to begin with, because it only recognizes the male children of Kronos,” Manon said. “But that’s basically why. He’s also much more powerful than anyone gives him credit for, he could wipe us all out if he wanted to. I think Zeus knows that, which is part of why he had him banished.”

“So what’s Tartarus, then?” Lucas asked, catching on, but still hopelessly lost.

It was Eliott who chimed in this time, voice cold and somewhat afraid. “There’s the Underworld, and then there’s Tartarus, which is like the hell of all hells. Worse than the Fields of Punishment tenfold. It’s the home of all the monsters, where they go to regenerate when we kill them, and is a prison or a home for the nastiest immortal beings in the universe. The only thing deeper than Tartarus is Chaos, from which everything was borne. The good, the bad, all of it. Only three demigods have ever been inside Tartarus, and they all barely survived it. Hades is being punished there, because he refused to kill one of his children.”

Lucas looked at each of them with wide eyes. “But that’s awful!”

Manon nodded grimly. “Hades isn’t the nicest of the gods, not by a longshot, but he’s a million times better than my own father, and he definitely doesn’t deserve what’s happening to him right now.”

“Zeus isn’t my dad, is he?” Lucas asked warily.

Manon smiled sadly. “You’d be dead if he was. Hera killed my mother and my stepfather, you know, as retribution for the fact that I’m alive, even though she agreed to letting one of his children live. Don’t worry about this all too much, though, you’re probably just a child of a minor god and you’ll get some sick powers out of the deal.”

Jo sat up in her beanbag chair. “Actually… that’s what we have to talk about.”

Oh, right. Lucas had almost forgotten about her magic, and what they were trying to find out about his past. Daphné encouraged her, “Well? Spill.”

Jo sighed. “So, I was able to see through the Mist on his memories, and I’m not sure you’ll like what I found. His aunt and uncle, the ones who’ve been hiding him all these years, they’re two of the Kindly Ones.”

“Kindly Ones?” Lucas asked, but he saw everyone else’s faces had paled.

“I’d wondered why they never came after us anymore… I thought it was because of Hades…” Manon mumbled to herself, but Lucas still didn’t follow.

“The Kindly Ones, better known as the Furies, are monsters that serve Hades. They come after us, sometimes, but they mostly stick by his side and do his bidding,” Eliott explained. “If they’ve been protecting you all these years…”

“You must be a child of Hades,” Manon said, finishing both Eliott’s thought and her own.

Lucas laughed loudly, sure they were just joking around with him. Hades? No way, he was just some minor demigod, not someone who should, for all intents and purposes, be dead. These people were all crazy after all, he’d been right all along. He forced another laugh and shook his head. “Come on, guys, you can’t be serious.”

But they weren’t looking at him, they were looking just above him.

“Unfortunately, it seems that we are,” Daphné said gravely, and Lucas looked above his head just in time to see a glowing symbol disappearing.

“What was that?” he asked.

“You’ve just been claimed,” Eliott said, “By the god of the dead. Lucas, you are a son of Hades.”

And wasn’t that just fan-fucking-tastic.

Not only was he half god, he was half of a god who should have had him killed when he was a baby. He supposed that was a point in his father’s favor that he wasn’t dead, but couldn’t he have done more to keep him hidden from this world? He was a god, that should have been in his power.

“The good news for you is that you have four eyewitnesses,” Manon said, and Lucas could nearly see the wheels spinning in her head. He didn’t know how that helped anything, now there were just four other people who knew a secret that could get him killed the moment he stepped back outside into camp.

Daphné, though, seemed to understand what Manon was saying. “Four eyewitnesses who saw you claimed by any god other than Hades,” she said, and Lucas understood.

“I can’t ask you guys to do that for me,” he argued, “What if something happens to you as a result?” He didn’t even know any of them, really, he couldn’t ask them to risk themselves like this.

“If it’s a choice between seeing you live or seeing you die, I’m going to go with the former, no matter who you are,” Jo said simply, and the other three nodded beside her. Lucas appreciated this level of blind faith in him, even if he didn’t know if he deserved it. Obviously, he didn’t want to die, and it meant a lot that these four people he barely knew cared enough to make sure he didn’t. They could very well do the same with every other demigod, but every other demigod wasn’t there right now, so Lucas let himself feel this unearned love, just a little bit.

A thought struck him, then, that may put a crimp in their plan. “But how will I pretend to be the child of another god?”

Jo winked at him. “Leave that to me. My siblings are great and all, but if you really want magic done right, you come to me. I can make it look like one of the other gods has claimed you.”

“But which one?” Manon inquired, tilting her head to one side like she was working through every god in her mind. “It has to be one of the male gods, because his mother is mortal and that’s easy to prove, but it can’t be one of the ones that has obvious, testable, powers.”

“He could be Apollo,” Daphné suggested, “Apollo has a lot of different skills, so Lucas must fit into one of them.”

“No,” Eliott interjected, voice sounding a bit hoarse, like he hadn’t meant to say anything. Everyone’s heads shot in his direction and he blushed, pretending that the floor was very interesting all of a sudden. He mumbled, “Children of Apollo have certain traits that are too easy to prove Lucas doesn’t have.”

Lucas didn’t know whether to take offense to that, and he was a little bit hurt that Eliott didn’t think him worthy enough to be a son of the sun god, but he supposed that’s what he got when he was a child of a death god.

Manon snapped, taking everyone’s attention off of Eliott, for which he seemed grateful. “What about Hypnos, god of sleep? I’m fairly good friends with Lisa, their head counselor, and the only real requirement for that one is the ability to sleep.”

“I, uh, have insomnia,” Lucas admitted. Of course, he couldn’t even fit in with the sleeping god. Eliott snorted into his hand, and tried to cover it up with a cough, which weirdly made Lucas feel better.

“Ares?” Manon offered.

Lucas squinted. “The war guy?”

“What about Dionysus?” Jo chimed in, only to be cut off by Daphné.

“Mr. D literally works at this camp, Jo, absent as he is at the moment. I think he’d know who his children are.”

“Right…”

“What about Hermes?” Eliott suggested. He looked a bit uncomfortable with everyone’s attention on him again, but he continued, “I mean, he’s sort of a jack of all trades, so his kids don’t usually have any particularly defining characteristics, aside from the occasional theft.”

“I’ve stolen things,” Lucas supplied, in a way that he hoped was helpful.

Eliott smiled widely, gesturing to him. “He’s stolen things!”

“That just might work,” Daphné said with a nod, starting to smile. “And Arthur would have our back on this, should the truth come out in any way. I mean, I think we should keep it between the five of us, but we know Arthur’s trustworthy, is all. Plus, no one would question it, Hermes has lots of kids.”

“It would also make sense as to why you’ve gone this long without coming to camp. Hermes is powerful enough that some of his kids have issues in the real world, but a lot of them can make it without any problems,” Manon added.

“Well?” Eliott asked him, smile still just as bright as a second ago. “What do you say, Lucas, son of Hermes?”

Lucas nodded slowly. “I think I could do that. And you guys are sure that— that you can help me with this?” He didn’t want to ask for too much, but if they were willing, it would be nice to not be alone.

Each of them nodded in turn. “We’re a team now,” Manon promised, daring the others to disagree. They didn’t, which was a relief.

When Lucas thought about all the ways he’d thought his life would have gone, and this was so far out of anything he’d ever considered that he was still having a hard time processing it all, but it really struck him, in that moment, that it was all real, that this was his life now.

He looked at Eliott, who looked back at him with curiosity in his eyes, and it felt like a wave of understanding passed between the two of them. Lucas didn’t entirely know what that understanding was, but it comforted him. Maybe, just maybe, this would turn out all right.

#skam france #elu #elu fic #pjo au

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