#ive been struggling with this idea for. WEEKS. i CANNOT find a way to make a comic out of it and its making me loco and mad

[todayisafridaynight]

uhhh something something 'the only time a yakuza should laugh with his teeth is when he's with family or in trouble' something something arakawa gradually doing so more and more when hanging around jo something something Uh Oh™️

[bbyquokka]

☁️ — comfort with ot8

➥ pairing: ot8 x GN!reader

➥ genre: fluff | angst

➥ synopsis: how skz would comfort you

➥ warnings: insecurities | mention of exercise in changbin's section | feeling 'under the weather' | off days | self doubt | pet names

➥ words: 3.1k

➥ a/n: ive been feeling a little meh lately. writing this gave me some comfort and i hope you also find comfort in it

Feedback and reblogs are highly advised and appreciated!

➥ m.list – ➥ you can also read it on my ao3

̥۪͙۪◌- ', Chan꒱ ↷

Concerned. He hadn't heard from you in a while, which is odd considering you two are glued to the hip. You've been ignoring his calls and texts, which only lead him to worry even more.

he thought you needed time alone, for what, he doesn't know. He wishes he knew but unless you tell him, he has no idea

he'd be led to think that he did something wrong. Did he say or do something to upset you? the poor man would be worried out of his mind.

After a week of no contact, he would have the courage to stop by your place, but first, he would shop for a bunch of snacks. Once he saw how drained you looked, he would drop everything and wrap his arms around you. "Chan. I haven't bathed for a week, I smell." you'd protest, weakly trying to escape his grip.

He wouldn't care. seeing you so drained and energy less broke his heart. He'd softly scold you for not contacting him, saying it's important that you don't struggle alone whilst rocking you from side to side.

You'd break down. Broken sobs and hiccups shaking your body. His warmth and scent got the better of you, breaking you down. He'd allow you to cry into his chest, not caring you was getting his clothing wet with tears all the while, soothing you softly.

after your little breakdown, you'd feel better. Chan would wipe away your tears and snot with his hands, making you pull a face. Chan would roll his eyes and laugh saying it's nothing.

"I have some snacks. let's shower and watch a movie together. I'm not leaving until I know you're a million percent okay."

̥۪͙۪◌- ', Minho ꒱ ↷

He has his own love language. it's subtle. He doesn't buy you chocolates or roses and you're okay with that. Sometimes, he finds it a little challenging to show that he loves you, feeling worried that you might not feel it.

but you do. Minho knows you well, too well. He knows you better than anyone else, which is scary but also good. He caught the signs way before you did.

your irritation. sudden outbursts. low moods. no motivation – he recognised it all before you even realized, which is why he came prepared.

"I really don't want to go out, lino. I cannot be bothered."  Minho would protest, whining softly. you didn't have energy to go out in public and be social, it's hard enough to get out off bed in the mornings.

You became suspicious when Minho drove you to the countryside, nothing but trees and hills could be seen as well as small cottages. You'd question Minho but only receive a "you will see when we get there. be patient kitten." 

Soon, you'd stop by a small farm, a small bubble of excitement bubbling in your stomach. So this is why Minho told you to wear your Welly boots! 

Minho knows you adorable animals so he surprised you with a trip to the local farm, which was run by a family. You spent the day petting the cows, feeding lambs and holding chickens. You bought some local groceries, supporting the business. 

Your eyes lit up, a smile never leaving your lips the whole time. This is what Minho loved, he felt proud knowing that he was able to cheer you up again – even if it was just something small.

"I knew you were feeling a little under the weather, so I thought I'd surprise you to help cheer you up again. I hope you loved it, kitten." 

̥۪͙۪◌- ', Changbin ꒱ ↷

You're a fresh couple, dating for only 2 months, however, you have known him for 4 years. Changbin is your workout partner, you both never skip leg day.

However, when you message Changbin out of the blue, claiming you didn't want to exercise, he became concerned. He stopped by your place to be greeted by a sullen looking you. 

"off day?"  Changbin just knew. He's observant, he knows and remembers the littlest details about you. Your cute habits he adores and he can spot when your moods change so it's not much of a surprise to him when he learnt you're feeling under the weather.

He'd wrap his strong arms around you, squeezing you gently. Oddly, his chest would feel soft and squishy despite the fact he works out a lot, but you love it. You have extra pillows in the form of changbin's chest.

"I'm sorry for skipping today. I really want to do something though." a soft, sad mumble. Changbin would shake his head, exclaiming it's okay. As a suggestion, he would say you could take a walk instead.

You'd smile weakly, agreeing before getting changed into something warmer. You'd take a walk up the mountains, Changbin's warm hands always holding yours, fingers interlocked.

He wouldn't want you to leave his side. You'd take cute selfies together, pick some fresh berries whilst talking about this and that. You'd explain how you were feeling and why you were feeling that way. Changbin is a good listener so he would be listening very carefully whilst also giving you advice.

Feeling your fingers turning ice cold, he'd shove his hand and yours into his pocket, a small giggle escaping your lips. Changbin would smile at the blissful sounds, kissing your lips softly.

"That's my love. I'm always with you, babe. Don't be afraid to call me when you feel like this, no matter what time of day it is." 

̥۪͙۪◌- ', Hyunjin ꒱ ↷

You miss Hyunjin. He was away for some art convention, showcasing his works. Of course, you're insanely proud of him for his accomplishments, but you couldn't help but feel a little insecure.

Hyunjin has talent and you felt like you didn't have any. You didn't understand why Hyunjin loves someone like you. You're a simple person, liking the simplest and smallest of things. The littlest of things brings you the most happiness.

you work a standard job, money isn't great but it'll do. Feeling like there are better people out there for Hyunjin left you dwelling on your thoughts which only forced you deeper and deeper into the dark hole of despair.

Sadly, Hyunjin would be away for a few days meaning he would be sleeping at a hotel. a few days is typically nothing, but when you need him, it feels like forever.

you would facetime on the daily, mainly at night when everything was done for the day. You faked being happy, smiling and putting on a show for Hyunjin. You didn't want him to worry about you, he's so busy that you didn't want to add an extra load on top.

he would show you the artwork he planned on showing next, and whilst you felt incredibly proud of him, you couldn't help but also feel jealous and insecure. you started questioning his choice of picking you and your own abilities. So deep in thought, Hyunjin became a distant sound, his words sounding fuzzy.

Your vision blurred with tears. Hyunjin would call your name several times, concerned and worried about you after noticing the way you looked so sad 

"Am i– Am I good enough..?"   the barrier you formed around yourself – cracked. Tears streaming down your cheeks, broken sobs shook your figure. Hyunjin was speechless at first. He'd compose himself, soothing you through your phone screen.

You'd tell him everything that had been playing on your mind, ultimately getting everything off your chest. Hyunjin would sit and listen, nodding slowly, his own heart breaking at the sight of you. He'd do anything to be by your side right now but he can't.

You'd calm down with the help of Hyunjin, snot and tears coating your skin. Hyunjin would spend hours convincing you that you're more than enough for him, telling you that you're capable of anything and everything.

he'd tell you to never doubt yourself, you're perfect the way you are. He'd ask you where Kkami is. you'd point your phone down, Kkami curled up on your lap as you sniffled.

"Whenever I'm away, hug Kkami. That way, I will always be with you, no matter the distance." 

̥۪͙۪◌- ', Jisung ꒱ ↷

Stressed. Your part time job was getting to you, your work colleagues and customers constantly screaming in your face, telling you what you should and shouldn't do – you always managed to do something wrong, even when it was right.

On top of work, you were swamped in your studies. Deadlines after deadlines after deadlines. The teachers assumed you just don't like having spare time or have a life at all. You barely had enough time for yourself. You couldn't indulge in your hobbies, Indulge in self care because you were either too stressed or too tired.

You hated how jisung had a carefree life, how he was able to do the things he loves. You love him more than anything in this world, however, seeing him sitting on the wood floor, controller in hand and his tongue sticking out for concentrating – you hated his carefree lifestyle.

Jisung knew you were stressed and exhausted, he just didn't know how to approach you. He has thought of things that he thinks would make you stress free but once he thought back to it, it seemed like a terrible idea.

He looked back over his shoulder into the office room, seeing you stressed, your eyes darting around your laptop screen. He paused his game, standing up and leaning against the door frame.

"I don't have time to play your silly games, Jisung! can't you see I'm swamped in work! Not everyone can have a stress-free life like you!!" 

your eyes widen in shock, mouth opening and closing as nothing but splutters come out. You couldn't speak, you were too shocked. Jisung didn't say a word. He gave you a single nod of his head and walked away. You'd call for him but he never looked back.

Once alone, your anger would bubble to the surface once again, hot tears streaming down your face and blurring your vision. Surprisingly, you no longer wanted to study. Instead, you burst into silent sobs. You didn't want Jisung to hear you, so you'd muffle your cries with your hand.

Snot, tears and saliva ruining your face. Cheeks and eye puffy, calling yourself an idiot. It's not Jisung's fault you're so stressed but he was just there. He, unfortunately, became the target of your outburst and you hated that. 

It wasn't until you heard the sounds of things falling and crashing as well as a frustrated Jisung muttering "fuck" that you decided to go see what was going on. You were stopped in your tracks when your eyes fell onto a makeshift den, a projector showing stars on the walls and ceiling. 

TV and games console inside the den along with a range of pillows and soft blankets, snacks, drinks, fairy lights, plushies. You would be reduced to tears once again, but this time, tears of joy.

Jisung stood next to the den, gaming controller in hand, loving smile on his lips and wearing nothing but sweatpants (he knows how much you love skin ship). He'd walk to you, wiping away your tears and kiss you softly. You'd go to apologize for your outburst earlier but he would have none of it – he understands you're under a lot of stress

"I know you're under a lot of stress lately. I thought we could spend the time gaming and eating whilst cuddling. Maybe it will help you wind down a little." 

̥۪͙۪◌- ', Felix ꒱ ↷

Sunshine Felix. He is warm and comforting. He has a way with words that instantly makes you feel better, but sometimes, it doesn't always work.

Stuck in a rut. Same routine day in, day out. You didn't know how to break this cycle. Eat, sleep, work, repeat. It's draining to you to the point where you don't have energy anymore

everything you loved, your hobbies, favourite things such as movies, food, etc, became dull and boring to you. You couldn't be bothered to get out off bed, simply because you knew what the day was going to hold.

Felix knew something was wrong. He hasn't seen or heard from you for a while. He knew something was wrong when you sent him a blank text with no kiss at the end. "im fine lix." 

He'd take it upon himself to go to your apartment and let himself in.

He'd walk to your bedroom, gently shaking your figure. You'd sigh softly, explaining you didn't want to leave you bed. Felix furrowed his brows, before disappearing to the bathroom to run you a hot bath. He'd pick out some clean clothing for you before picking you up bridal style and placing you in the tub

He'd wash your hair, giving you a massage in the process, whilst you wash your body. He'd help you dry, put on your clothing and help you with your beauty routine. He'd clean your apartment for you before deciding that it's time to bake.

You'd spend the entire afternoon together, baking an array of sweet treats. Your apartment smelt and looked like a bakery by the time you were both done. Later on, you'd both be curled up on the sofa, Felix holding you close to him.

Sweet treats in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. A fluffy blanket covering you both, skin on skin. His warmth radiates onto you, making you feel at home. Felix is your home. You'd soon fall asleep in his arms, feeling happy and content at long last.

"sleep well, my love. I'll be here in the morning. I love you for eternity." 

̥۪͙۪◌- ', Seungmin ꒱ ↷

He seems like the type to not understand nor like skin ship, however, he is smart. He clicks on and understands instantly. He knows your patterns in behaviour and as soon as he notices a blip, he's quick to catch on.

however, he doesn't press you about it. he has learnt not to. He has learnt that you will come to him when the time is right – when you need him – and he will always be there for you, with open arms. And that day finally came.

Seungmin decided to take you out on a little trip, nothing too fancy, just a nice, casual day out together. You visited bookstores, sports shops and more. You soon both had handfuls of shopping bags, with Seungmin carrying most of yours.

You both decided to stop by the local café. It was small, but cosy. They have the best coffee and desserts in your town, plus, you both preferred going to smaller café chains – you like to support those smaller, feeling like Starbucks and Costa drown out the smaller businesses.

Seungmin and you got talking and it wasn't until you started talking about your week that you realised how lonely you had been feeling. With the days being shorter and nights getting colder, all you wanted was Seungmin. You wanted his warmth, his arms wrapped around you. To see his goofy smile and hear his adorable laugh.

You missed him and you had been ignoring it, drowning it out by overworking yourself. The more you spoke about how you felt, the more real it became. It wasn't until Seungmin reached across the table and took your hand in his, that you realised you were crying.

You would laugh softly, wiping away your tears and apologies to which Seungmin would shake his head at you and say it's all okay. He'd stand up and walk to you, gently lifting you up by your hand and pull you into his chest.

His scent, that warm, cinnamon scent would make you whimper, cling onto him and bury your face into his chest. He didn't care where you both were, he knew you needed him there and then. He couldn't wait to get home and hold you – not yet at least. He'd sway with you slowly, kissing the top of your head as you would let out gently and soft sobs 

"Shh, my darling. I'm here now. you won't ever feel alone every again. I promise to stay by your side, no matter what."

̥۪͙۪◌- ', Jeongin꒱ ↷

Sweet Jeongin. Skin ship is not his favourite thing in the world – at least when it comes to his members. You knew he wasn't keen on skin ship and that was okay with you, however, sometimes, you wish he was.

Sometimes, you wish he would be the one to initiate a hug or hold your hand or just a simple peck on the cheek. You love him and you knew from the start he didn't like skin ship, however you couldn't help but feel agitated and annoyed.

"Why is it always me that's has to be the one to initiate it? why can't you??" you'd snap. You'd have a rough day wanting nothing more than to come home and melt into your partner's arms – but you knew that wasn't going to happen.

As soon as you saw him chewing his bottom lip, nervously, you'd insistently feel guilty, stupid. This is Jeongin, your boyfriend. You love him no matter what, he is perfect to you! You'd apologise deeply and Jeongin being a kind soul, would accept your apology and move on.

Months later, the same situation happened. It was like déjà vu all over again. However, Jeongin was prepared this time. He saw how you came home in a huff, brows pinched together, frustration noticeable on your face.

You noticed he wanted to do something, you could tell by the way he was nervously hanging around you. You brushed it off as nothing – he would have done it by now if it was important.

By the time it was bed time, your frustrations were still apparent. They hadn't subsided like you hoped they would, you even took a shower in hopes it would help relax you – but it didn't. You had your back to Jeongin, trying to fall asleep. Jeongin felt anxious. It's not like he doesn't like skin ship, it's just, he doesn't know how to approach you when it comes to it.

He wants to hold you, to kiss you and have you melt into him, he's just shy. He's never done this before, he's never had a long term partner before so all this – is new to him. You'd feel him shifting around, his arm slowly sliding  and draping over your side. You'd be shocked, blushing softly when you feel him pulling you flush against his chest, crotch against your ass, back against his chest.

He'd hold you tight, his warmth surrounding you. He'd take your hand in his, stroke it slowly as he gains confidence. Soft kisses on the back of your neck, hums of contentment. You liked this and so did he. You felt all your frustrations melt away.

"Its not a case of me not liking skin ship, I do, especially with you. It's just, I'm shy. All this is new to me but I promise you, I will hold you and never let you go." 

[kookdbean]

unbothered

a/n: another addition to so it goes! just little snippets of acts of service between jungkook and oc. this takes place over the first school year together. also, if you guys have any ideas for more drabbles, pls send them in! enjoy! warnings: mentions of food consumption, coffee consumption, hints at students family life.

series masterlist

i.

It's Friday, the end of the second week of school.

The past three days, Jungkook and you have been arriving at the same time. You'd wait for one another, catching up from the day before since you parted. He'd crack a joke about how he wasn't sure what tires him out more, his roommate's stupid shit or waking up early five days in a row.

Today, you're running twenty minutes behind; twenty-five minutes before school started.

Teeth brushed and face washed were your first two priorities this morning. You were able to throw your hair up into a messy updo; not having enough time for the full routine, only patting moisturizer into your skin. It would be enough to make it seem like you put some effort, right?

It's after you've parked, backpack hanging over your shoulder, tote bag hanging low from your hand, that you spot Jungkook's car and freeze.

Did you leave him waiting?

Clocked in, you make your way to drop off your belongings in your room as fast as you can. No one stops you in the hall, a small sigh of relief leaves you. Who knows how long Ms. Lee Ji-Wan, a second grade teacher who literally beams sunshine, would have kept you if she spotted you.

A moment, just a small moment you allow yourself. A moment where you're not rushing yourself, worried about being somewhere, in the comfort and stillness of your classroom. Hand rubbing your nape, head slowly rolling out to the side. Just a moment.

And it's not ruined, not when you hear three soft knocks on your door before sliding open.

Jungkook's head is poking in, his wide eyes searching the room before settling on you. His eyes quickly look you over before he allows himself in, door closing behind him.

"You didn't wait, did you?" is the first thing that comes out of your mouth, your hand moving down to rub your fingers against your collarbone.

"Not long, no," Jungkook reassures you, not staying still.

"Jungkook," you frown, reaching over to your desk for your coffee, that you realize you forgot when your fingers wrap around nothing, balling up into a loose fist.

"Here," Jungkook laughs, moving his hand from behind his back. An iced coffee.

Hands instantly clasping against your chest, big eyes and a hopeful tug of your eyebrows; your facial expression reading, "is that for me?" Jungkook laughs, holding the coffee out to you, shaking it to show you that it's real, and it's for you.

"I got here just before you, actually. I was in the mood for some expensive coffee and figured you'd like one, too," Jungkook explains, that smile never leaving his lips.

ii.

The end of a meeting is always such a relief.

The quiet, exciting buzz that comes with the meeting being called to it's end, almost like an exhale that relieves your body from the weights of the world for just that moment; weightless and carefree.

The chairs being pushed away so teachers could stand, the sound of shuffling paper and occasional crumple, quiet chatter while some people gathered together, others just making their way of the room. Talk of lunch plans, upcoming events (personal and 'professional').

That was feeling is what you look forward to at the start of every meeting.

It's the feeling you relish this moment. Tae-yeon rubs your forearm, telling you she'll see you after the day ends before rushing off to join Jae-eon, physical education teacher. You look after her, standing up, watching as the pair makes their way out of the room.

You turn back towards the center of the room, eyes scanning the room until you spot Jungkook.

Jungkook's not in the spot he deemed as his unassigned assigned seat during meetings, but at the front of the room, talking to the principal. His body language is animated; his papers on the chair closest to him, hands moving regardless of close they are to his body. You could see how his eyes widened and his tone came off as serious, passionate.

You can't help but watch. You can't help but wonder what he was so passionate about, what he was sharing with the principal.

You can't take your eyes away, not until they bow to each other and the principal is turning towards you, to make his way to the exit behind you. Quickly, you duck your head and a quiet wish leaves your lips, "have a good day, sir."

"You waited," Jungkook simply says, your head turning upwards and eyes automatically moving to his face.

"Yeah," you hum.

"You didn't have to," Jungkook reassures with a small smile, folding his small stack of papers in half and tucking it under his arm. He makes his way towards you, hand gesturing towards the door.

"Yeah, but I wanted to. We always go to lunch afterwards," you state.

"Oh," Jungkook falters behind you. He watches you make your way to the door, turning midway when you don't feel his presence.

"You wait for me," you shot back, a teasing look on your face.

"Yeah, because I haven't been sucked into a teacher's clique," Jungkook defends jokingly.

iii.

You're looking over the math worksheets from this morning, red pen in one hand, chopsticks handling japchae in other.

"This is DEAN" playlist on Spotify plays softly from your computer. You hum, in tune to the music and to the taste of the japchae that your roommate, Sana, made last night.

You don't hear the door open, your face down towards the container of noodles. Cheeks full and puffed out, you throw your head back, a quiet moan, eyes closed. God, you loved noodles.

"You okay?" Jungkook laughs, taking you by surprise.

Head lowering to look at him, your eyes are wide and don't bother chewing, just watching as Jungkook gets closer.

"I thought you had lunch plans," you struggled, slowly chewing and swallowing, repeating the process until your mouth becomes empty again.

Jungkook laughs again, reaching over to twist the cap off your bottle of juice open before handing it to you.

"Take it slow."

You wave him off, taking a sip, eyes looking him up and down.

"You didn't met up with your friend... Seokjin?" you ask curiously, hoping you got the name right.

"I did," Jungkook nods and taps his finger against your desk, "but Jin-hyung had something come up."

Your lips pout, brows furrowing, "Sorry. I know you were looking forward to it."

"It's fine, I know where he lives," Jungkook cackles, placing a small container in front of you, "but just as I promised..."

"Is this the cake he made last time?" You gasp hopefully, pulling yourself closer.

There's a glimmer in your eyes, it makes Jungkook laugh quietly, shoulders shaking and nose scrunching up as he nods.

"He gave me some extra after I mentioned that I shared it with a friend from work," Jungkook smiles, popping the lid open.

What you didn't know about Jungkook that his hyung(s) did was that Jungkook only shared food with people he really cared about.

iv.

Since the days Jungkook and you used to just magically show up at the same time to school and wait for each other so that you could enter the building together (neither you or Jungkook know that the other peeked at the time when they realized that arrive at that time, thus the new addition to their daily routines), you've both had the other's phone number.

First, texts were exchanged when one of you decided to go for a coffee run, always asking the other if they wanted something.

Then came the texts to tell the other that you were running late (you showed up ten minutes before the school day started just to find that someone turned on your computer).

Following that were the texts that came in the evening. The "what was the name of the website that you those pens?," "what was the dish you mentioned Namjoon made for dinner?," the "I have roommate cake and coffee tomorrow morning!!!"

You remember the first time Jungkook took a sick day, after the winter break, after you'd deemed yourselves friends and not just coworkers.

You're in the teacher's lounge, lips hovering over your water bottle. You're pretending to pay attention to your phone, thumb scrolling against the screen as if you're on social media, but in reality, you had your conversation with Jungkook opened. Subtly trying to type out everything you were hearing in the teacher's lounge.

"before you call me a child, I just have to say... you chose the wrong day to be absent, mr. jeon."

Jeon Jungkook: what is this? are we fourteen? are you trying to get me to wonder what the day is like without me?

You scoff to yourself, trying to bite back a smile.

Jeon Jungkook: when I woke up again this morning, it was already 10am, and the first thing that popped into my head was that it was two hours into the school day and math is almost over.

A laugh leaves your lips, the noise from the nearby teachers becoming quiet as they looked over at you.

Eventually, your texts ranged throughout the entire day. From the morning texts asking if the other wants coffee, texts swapping recipes in the late afternoon, to just asking about weekend plans and just...talking to one another.

v.

"I'll have you know, Jeon Jungkook, that my Saturdays are sacred," you gushed, waggling your finger jokingly.

Jungkook snorts, pushing the cart past you, leaving you standing there. He throws a quick glance over his shoulder at you, rolling his eyes with a smile on his face.

"No one forced you to tag along," Jungkook points out.

"You're right. But, you also know that I cannot and will not turn down a lunch invitation," you sigh dramatically.

"Ah, so when you see my face, you see a money bag?"

"Didn't you hear? The way to someone's heart is through their stomach," you sigh, hand over your chest, walking closer to where Jungkook's stopped.

Jungkook's looking at things that he can gift the students in the after school art club. You both had already gotten little gifts for your respective classes, but Jungkook had told you that he wanted to give his art kids some supplies so that they'd be encouraged to keep doing art; supplies that parents couldn't afford or in some cases, didn't want to purchase.

"I have three students who go to high school next year," Jungkook murmurs to himself, scratching the back of his neck, "but I don't want the rest of them to think I don't care about them."

"What were you planning on getting for them?" you ask gingerly, hands running over the different sketchbook covers.

"Taehyung was able to get some good quality mixed media sketch books from the art museum. They hold workshops every week and he found some extras," Jungkook turns to look at you, a hint of a soft smile, "so I was thinking a basic watercolor set, some pencils, color pencils?"

"Mmm, maybe leave the water colors for the ones going to high school? Not that you don't trust the younger ones, but water colors seems like some more responsibility," you comment.

Jungkook hums back in acknowledgement, moving to stand next to you. The hairs on the back of your neck stand at his proximity, your heart racing when you catch his scent.

"You added erasers and sharpeners?"

"Pencil set."

"Hmm," your eyes scanning down the aisle. You spot chalk hanging at the end of the aisle, hand reaching out to pat Jungkook's bicep before quickly moving down the aisle. Adjusting your bag onto your shoulder, you dramatically gesture towards the various packs of chalk.

"Not only can they make art in their sketch books, but out in the neighborhood," you try telling it to him like a salesman at a car dealership, "art that can be remade, reworked. Sidewalks, driveways, whatever!"

Jungkook can't fight off the laugh as he doubles over, his laugh echoing around him.

His laugh is contagious, it might be your favorite sound. It has you breaking character, your laugh joining his; a symphony that could bring crowds together, one that people never wanted to stop hearing.

"What? It's not good?" you defend yourself through giggles.

"Did I say something?" Jungkook chuckles, pushing the cart towards you, carefully placing several packs of chalk in.

"Did I win myself some dessert?" you turn away to peek at the other aisles.

"That already came included with the lunch offer. You, my friend, have won yourself something even better."

You realize Jungkook's movement until you hear his voice right in your ear.

"You get to pick one thing from the store and I'll buy it for you."

You shiver, stepping away from him, overwhelmed. You try to brush off the way the back your neck heats up, your heart beats a little faster, your hands get a little clammy. Just a moment to compose yourself, yet, a moment becomes too long when the hairs on the back of your neck fall back down and his scent is no longer surrounding you.

You look up with wide eyes, watching Jungkook make his way into the aisle that had "acrylic and oil points" written at the top.

"Wait!" You call out, trying to catch up to him, "you can't judge what I pick!"

tagging: @yslkook

[courtney-deserved-better]

whats ur writing schedule/process like! not in a “write faster” way, but i think once you mentioned writing in script form? and i like the way you wrote ur most recent fic! just curious bc ur works are just really good :)

this is a great question!!

if its not slippery slopes, ill usually get an idea for something and periodically jot down notes when they come to me until I feel like i have enough information to start writing (or if im just motivated), that's what i did for my horror challenge rewrite. and for stuff that's like... rewrites of an episode that aren't as character-focused as slippery slopes, i usually read the episode transcripts and try to replicate that total drama style with my own writing

for shorter oneshots, i usually just get a vague idea and run with it until i find a good ending spot, then i go back and clean it up a bit so the structure works

slippery slopes is an... interesting cycle. chapters are getting long enough that i cant just write them in one sitting any more (i think ch5 was the last chapter i did that for) and instead ill agonize over the beginning (always the hardest part to write for me) but once i get going with that i usually finish the chapter within a few days. then i reread the previous chapter to make sure it flows ok (and there aren't any contradictions) and then ill give myself a break where i dont do anything total drama related before coming back to edit and post. though before I do all that I type up notes and rough dialogue bits

and then once i post it it's like... a weight off my chest? like ive been purged or something?? idk its a weird sensation but im just like i Physically Cannot Write Anything For This Right Now and i don't start on the next chapter until that goes away. and then i either start the beginning and do nothing for a week before going back and finishing the chapter or i go into a manic state and write nonstop for a few days. right now i haven't reached a point where im ready to begin writing chapter 10 but i have a lot of notes for it.

(also as soon as i finish posting a chapter i try not to go on my laptop for like 12 hours so i don't obsessively refresh my email for comments. i love reading comments so much holy shit. please comment guys it makes fic authors feel so happy we will love you for it)

as for scripts: i am working on being a writer professionally, but specifically a playwright. writing in a script format comes more naturally to me than writing prose. funnily enough, i started posting fanfic just to practice my prose (and fix stuff in cobra kai that i didnt like) but things sort of... ended up here? idk man but im enjoying it.

right, so because writing in a script format is easier when im really struggling with a section in a fic ill usually scrap whatever i had and write it like a script, then translate that into prose. i was very excited to write the family videos for chapter 9 of slippery slopes, but i was Having Issues, so i redid it as a script and then rewrote that as prose. ill put the script version under the cut if you're interested in that.

but thank you so much for the question!! i do think my writing process is a bit unconventional but hey i think things are turning out well! if you have any more questions feel free to send them in!!

ok here is the last scene of ch 9 of slippery slopes in script format:

[SIERRA]

MOM: Hi honey! Omigosh this is so exciting! I bet you’re having such a great time! Especially since Chris is there! Is Chris watching this? Hi Chris! You know, I loooved you on that ice skating show. Your hair was fantastic! Well, it always is, haha. Do you really make your own hair gel? I’ve been trying to perfect the recipe but you’re just so hard to track down! Oh, you’re such a funny guy! I laughed sooo hard when you made all those jokes about marrying Chef.

Chef: hey!

Chris: ok just for the record, I wasn’t joking, we are married, Sierra tell your mom we’re married

Sierra: …can we just turn it off please

[COURTNEY]

DAD: Courtney, sayang, I know you’ve been going through a lot right now—

MOM: So you’d BETTER make it count. You’ve made it this far before, I want to see you getting all the way to the finale this time. And winning it. Enough moping about those hideous, good-for-nothing slackers! That’s what you get for hanging around freaks like them. You’re doing this for the million, now get the million. Is that clear?

ZARINA: And kick ass!

DAD: Zarina!

Video cuts out.

Alejandro: courtney you good?

Courtney: no, she’s right. Mama didn’t raise no quitter

Alejandro: [knows she’s still upset about duncan and gwen]

[ALEJANDRO]

MOM: Hola, Alejandro. We hope you are doing well, especially in such unsavory conditions. I’m glad to see you’ve made it to the final four— we expected nothing less, of course.

DAD: You have been utilizing your skills quite well. Though I wish you hadn’t been so… blatant about it. You’ll have to work twice as hard once this is over to convince people you’re trustworthy. But surely you were aware of that going into this… odd endeavor. That’s just politics. Reputation is everything.

JOSE: [snorts] Oh, and what a reputation you have, Al. I could easily compile hours of footage of your failures, but I, unlike you, do not waste my time on the frivolities of reality television. Though you always have been lacking in taste. Especially with that bratty girlfriend of yours— oh, my mistake, aren’t you dating the whiny weakling? It’s so hard to keep track! [laughs]

Alejandro: callate!

MOM: I’m sure Alejandro is just working an angle on them.

DAD: Whatever the case is, do not disappoint us.

[NOAH]

MOM: Hi Noah, I’m sorry, I don’t have time to record a full video, but I’m proud of you! Here are your sisters!

ISWARI: A million dollars? A million [bleep] dollars? Win it, Noah! Win it!

RUTH: Dude!! This is crazy! I know you can do this— good luck! Ark misses you! [holds up Ark who barks]

MARA: Are you insane? Why aren’t you dating Alejandro already?

Noah: shut up, mara, just because you can’t keep a boyfriend—

ANYA: Don’t let ‘em trick you! No mercy! Crush their skulls if you have to— no, wait, you’re not strong enough for that. We’ll get there!

LIYA: I say this as your sister, someone who loves you but is constantly annoyed by you— for someone who is quite literally a genius, you sure can be an idiot sometimes.

BALLARI: Okay, I literally have no idea how you’ve made it this far without an athletic bone in your body— are we sure you aren’t adopted? I’m kidding

ABS: You’re stubborn as hell when it comes to me, so you better be stubborn as hell when it comes to winning! And when you do win, get me a frozen yogurt machine, will you? I promise I won’t make you rock climb again!

JAEL: If you lose this, I’ll kill you with this racket. And then use your guts to make myself a new racket. So don’t fuck it up. Again.

Noah: [frozen, ashamed]

Sierra: well that was a mess

Courtney: ok show of hands, who felt better after hearing that? [no one raises hands]

Chris: yeah I was expecting this to be a lot more heartwarming…

Chef: chris just look at them. If they had stable home lives they wouldn’t be doing reality tv

Alejandro: can we please stop talking about this. Also aren’t you supposed to be flying the plane

Chef: oh fuck

Chris: yeah sure. I think im gonna call my mom

Everyone: …

Noah: ok so that was really shitty. Why dont we all go to first class and try and ignore our problems

Everyone: yeah ok sounds good

***

Courtney: so that sucked

Alejandro: at least your dad seems ok

Courtney: true. What are your guys dads like

Noah and Sierra: bold of you to assume I know my dad. Jinx

***

Alejandro: that last girl… you mentioned a sister who does tennis and hates you

Noah: yep

Alejandro: why?

Noah: none of your business. but… it is pretty justified

[organabanana]

Leaves of three, let it be [1/?] || harlivy

Chapters: 1/?

Fandom: DCU (Comics)DCUHarley Quinn (Comics)Harley Quinn (Cartoon 2019)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence

Relationships: Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel

Characters: Pamela Isley, Harleen Quinzel, Selina Kyle

Additional Tags: Mentions of alcohol, mentions of batman fucking bats, most of this is straight up idiocy tbh, i just finished watching the cartoon so everyone swears like a sailor i'm sorry, rated for (ahem) happenings later on, ivy/harley/catwoman frenemies

Series: Part 1 of the Cliché a Week 2021 series

Summary:

Aided by a terrible hangover and a severe lack of impulse control, Harley accidentally drinks an unknown substance at Ivy's apartment and suddenly remembers why Ivy goes by Poison Ivy in her professional life. Luckily for Harley, she's immune to Ivy's toxins. Unluckily for Harley, she may not be immune to her love pheromones, and turning into a human-plant hybrid is not her idea of a good time.

Telling Ivy so she can give her an antidote may seem like the obvious course of action, but there are very few things Harley hates more than disappointing Ivy with her poor decision-making skills. Besides, like Selina said, if she'd drunk pheromones she'd be in love with Ivy by now, right?

And Harley Quinn is absolutely not in love with her best friend.

Notes:

This was (loosely) inspired by Prompt #1104 by @promptsforthestrugglingauthor: “Hey, do you know if potions expire?” “I think it depends on the potion. Why?” “Well, I was really hungover this morning and grabbed the wrong glass and I feel super weird right now.” And "Everyone knows they’re dating except them” from the Cliché A Week Challenge by @montocalypse. The plan is for this to be 4-5 chapters at most BUT I'm not ready to commit to a number just yet so we'll see how that goes!

[ao3 link]

Harley wakes up with a pounding headache that makes her wonder if someone stole her bat and tried to crack her skull with it last night. 

"Ughhh..." she groans, squeezing her eyes shut. Her mouth feels like sandpaper. Her throat feels like... like sandpaper. Listen: she's not in any kind of mood for elaborate, imaginative similes right now. Everything is pain and/or sandpaper. Deal with it.

"Fuck me." It comes out in a whiny, pathetic little voice, and Harley is almost more pissed off about that than about the hangover itself. Where is she, anyway? She forces herself to sort of... perceive  the world around her without moving a muscle or opening her eyes, which may not be the best approach but it works anyway because she totally knows Ive's apartment by smell.

As friends do.

Once that's settled, and she knows she's in fact safe (how could she not be? She's at Ivy's!) Harley moves her right hand and feels around for the bedside table, but apparently she didn't climb into her usual side of the bed (friends have sides of their friends' beds, obviously) because what she feels on her right side is soft and warm and definitely not a bedside table.

"Sorry." She mumbles, affectionately patting Ivy's ass before turning over to the other side and trying again. She does find a table this time, and she nearly cries in relief when she finds a little water bottle waiting for her parched lips to drink.

Score.

It's only when she's downed the whole thing that she realizes two things:

One, that did not  taste like water.

And two, there is a reason Pam goes professionally by Poison  Ivy.

"Shit," Harley stage-whispers, blue eyes now wide open as she stares at the empty bottle in her hand, "shit, shit, shit."

Harley knows she's not dying. She knows she's immune to toxins, and she's cuddled the fuck out of Ivy (as friends do) on enough occasions to know she doesn't break out in hives at Ivy's touch. But the thing about Ivy is, she's kind of an overachiever. There aren't just toxins to worry about. Harley could be about to turn into a fern or something, and nobody could do anything to prevent it.

Well, except Pam.

But you know what? Considering the kind of mood Ivy gets in when Harley makes a less than stellar choice, she's gonna risk turning into a plant rather than waking her up.

"Morning, sunshine." Selina walks -- nay, prances  -- into the bedroom looking flawless as always, which is pretty fucking unfair considering her presence at Ivy's can only mean she was there for whatever hangover-causing shenanigans they all happened to get into last night. But of course, Selina Kyle is above looking like shit while hungover. 

" Selina ," Harley all but hisses (which is fitting, considering Selina's... you know), showing her the empty bottle, "I fucked up."

"When do you not  fuck up, Harley?" It comes off as both smug and somehow charming, which is, again, pretty fucking unfair. "What did you do this time?"

Harley shows her the empty bottle once again, shaking it slightly like she cannot  believe Selina isn't getting the gravity of the situation right away.

"What? I don't get it-- ohh ." Selina lets out a quiet chuckle that sounds almost like a purr. "Yeah, you fucked up."

"Dammit, Selina! What if I turn into a fucking succulent?"

"Oh come on, don't be dramatic. What color was it?"

Harley stares at her. "Don't you think I'd have known not to drink it if I'd looked at it?"

"I mean, I tend to assume people look at things  before putting them in their mouth. But you did  fuck Joker, so..."

"Hurtful." A beat. "Fair, yes, but still. Hurtful."

As if on cue, Ivy rolls over in her sleep, draping her arm across Harley's lap. Harley smiles, momentarily forgetting the bottle and its contents and the potential result of her having drunk them, because Ivy is just such a good friend. Protecting her from Selina's... well. Selina-ness even in her sleep.

"You guys need some privacy?"

Harley doesn't stop gently tracing the vines on the back of Ivy's hand, but she does look away from soft green skin to shoot Selina a teasing look. "Aw, does someone need scritches? Here, pussy pussy..."

Selina rolls her eyes. "Fine. Turn into a fucking sequoia for all I care. At least you'll be good for climbing."

The soft movements of Harley's fingers stop as Selina's words fully sink in. "Wh- what?" Harley's voice sounds a bit deflated, like one of those sad clown balloons after a sad balloon fart.

"I'm just saying. Pheromones and chill forever as a human-tree abomination? Kind of her signature move."

Harley just stares at Selina, horrified at the prospect of spending the rest of her life as a brain-dead tree and trying (and failing) to come up with a plausible reason why there is no way Ivy's pheromones were in that bottle.

"Anyway!" Selina sighs, stretching her arms up over her head. "I should get going. I have cats to feed."

"Wait. Wait!" Harley stage-whispers, and she's suddenly extremely thankful for Ivy sleeping like a log.

Heh. Like a log .

"You can't leave me, Selina! What if you're right?"

"Oh, come on, kitten," Selina says over her shoulder, already on the way to the door, "if it was pheromones you'd be in love with her by now."

The sound of the door slamming shut behind Selina is enough to finally wake Ivy, and Harley feels her best friend's arms tighten around her as Ivy stretches awake.

"Mmmhey, Harls." Ivy mumbles, voice rough and heavy with sleep as she moves even closer to Harley. 

Normally, Harley would've just sunk back into the most comfortable bed ever (there's a reason she rarely sleeps in her own!) and gone in for a round of lazy morning cuddles. She'd have basked in the smell of Ivy in the morning (freshly cut grass sparkling with dew drops) which is so different from the floral notes of Ivy at any other time of the day. She'd have pressed a kiss or two to Ivy's warm skin, felt her lips tingle with the sweet taste of a poison she's very much immune to, and maybe even fallen back to sleep listening to Ivy's heartbeat and the soft rhythm of her breaths.

You know. As friends do.

But today, thanks to Selina (the fact that nobody forced Harley to drink that stupid bottle is irrelevant, of course), Harley can't relax. She stiffens, even, becoming virtually un-snuggable and making Ivy fully open her eyes to give her a questioning look.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, of course, Ive!" The enthusiasm is as fake as her smile, and the way Ivy's eyes narrow tells her it's been very much noticed. "Bit hungover, that's all."

It takes a couple of seconds for Ivy to speak. Like she's pondering whether to mention there's never been a hangover bad enough to keep Harley from getting her cuddle on or to just let it go for now. Harley's delighted to see the second option win in the end.

"Want me to give you something for the headache?"

"Nope!" Harley's on her feet in two seconds flat, practically jumping away from Ivy's warm body and her warm eyes and the warm offer of some nice natural drugs. "Thanks, though. You're sweet as pie, butter...fly."

"Butterfly." Ivy deadpans from the bed, looking more and more like she's mere seconds away from researching actual mental health facilities in Gotham (Arkham does not  count).

"Buttercup doesn't rhyme with pie. Listen, I should go. I have so much to do. There are-- well, you know! Havoc won't wreak itself, right? Gotham needs me."

"To... wreak havoc."

" Pre cisely. Gonna wreak it real good. You know me! Won't settle for a half-wroken havoc." 

"Wro... ken?"

"Oh, for sure, for sure!" What is she even saying? Harley grabs her bat and swings it a little like she's holding a purse and not a weapon, but thankfully she doesn't break anything in Ivy's room, which is great. "Text ya later, yeah?"

Ivy looks like she's struggling to even begin to process everything that's happened in the five minutes she's been awake. And honestly, Harley's grateful for it. She hasn't noticed the missing bottle, and she's not forcing Harley to stay and answer questions, so it's a win/win/win situation if you ask her. You know... other than the potential mutant tree issue.

"Okay!" Harley grins. "Good talk. Bye, Red. Love ya!"

Shit . 

Harley freezes for a moment. She's told Ivy she loves her before. Of course she has! She loves Ive, and Ivy loves her. They're pretty vocal about that. But today isn't just any other day. She always loves Ivy as a friend, of course. As her best friend she adores and would absolutely kill and die for. The most important person in her life. The one person who's ever made Harley feel safe and loved and appreciated unconditionally. She loves Ivy in a way that makes her feel like her heart is a bit too big for her ribcage and sometimes it gets so crowded in there she's afraid she may pop a rib out of its socket or something, but then Ivy holds her and everything settles again.

You know. A friendly kind of love.

But does she love  Ivy? Harley looks at her hands like she's expecting a few leaves to have sprouted there already. 

"Harley. Seriously, are you okay?"

Ivy's voice snaps her out of her funk, and Harley knows she needs to get out before she's forced into a whole conversation about this thing. 

"Peachy keen, Pam-a-lamb." Harley forces herself to walk towards the door without looking back, just in case. Just in case suddenly Ivy's surrounded by a pink fog of love, or whatever the fuck people see when they look at her while under the influence of her pheromones. I mean, she can't look even more  beautiful than she does normally, right? That's not even possible. So it must be like... a heart emoji filter or something. She really  doesn't want to find out. "Talk later!"

***

Harley looks at the melting cheese on her third egg sandwich like she's expecting it to hold the meaning of life. Or, at the very least, an answer to today's big conundrum. Is she or is she not turning into a tree?

And sure. Sure! She could ask Pam. This would be solved immediately, she knows. She could just ask Pam what was in the bottle and confess she's drunk it and just... put up with her mood for a while. No big deal! Except she really fucking hates disappointing Ivy, you know? When she gets all... cold and detached, and feels more like lettuce than lush tropical foliage. 

Listen, trust her, okay? Sad salad buffet lettuce Ivy is just the fucking worst.

So she takes a bite of her sandwich and tells herself whatever she drank can't have been anything too dangerous. It's been a couple hours now, so she should've felt some kind of effect, right? She should be feeling a bit plant-y, at the very least. Maybe a bit nauseous or something. But she feels fine. 

Well-- not fine , fine. She's still kinda rattled, but that's Selina's fault.

She's fine.

***

"Are you sure you're up for this?"

Ivy lets Selina handle the entry point (you'd think Gotham millionaires would've given up on skylights by now) and looks at Harley with a mixture of concern and distrust in her eyes. She clearly hasn't forgotten about their conversation in the morning.

"I'm fine!" Harley swings her bat around just to loosen up her bat-swinging muscles. She's fine. Not a plant, not in a love fog, not in any way dying. Totally fine. And , most importantly, not dealing with limp lettuce Ive. "It was just a hangover."

Ivy's eyes narrow just enough to make it crystal clear how little she trusts Harley right now, but for once Selina Kyle makes Harley's life easier instead of harder when she speaks.

"Ladies. This is a truly riveting conversation, but I have shit to do.”

“Like fucking a bat-fucking bat?” It may be a cheap shot, but it makes Ivy stiffle a laugh, and Harley kinda thinks that makes it the best joke ever.

But Selina simply cocks an eyebrow at Harley. “Are you sure you want to discuss regrettable sexual partners?”

Ouch. “Fair enough,” Harley concedes, already jumping through the hole Selina’s cut in the glass, “come on, we have an oil tycoon to kill.”

“Not an oil tycoon, Harls.” Ivy glides down on a vine, looking all majestic like some kind of forest nymph, and Harley simply has to stare and smile because how can she not? Look at her friend! “He’s been using an experimental fuel that causes—“

“Does it matter?” Selina sighs like even interrupting Ivy is exhausting, plucking a shiny gold ornament from a nearby table and making Harley wonder (honestly, not for the first time) if she just keeps shiny trinkets hidden in her catsuit like a magician to make it seem like she’s finding them everywhere. “Guy’s loaded.”

“It matters to me, Selina. Not all of us have the moral compass of a magpie.”

Harley giggles at Ivy’s joke. You know what? It may not even have been a real joke, because Ivy’s sense of humor is not exactly her best quality. But it was funny anyway.

“And if it matters to Ive, it matters to moi .” Harley points at herself with her bat and winks at her best friend, and honestly, who the hell cares what this guy does, exactly? Maybe he’s single-handedly destroying the Amazon, or maybe he just happens to walk through the grass instead of using the little paths when making his way across the park. Whatever it is, it’s important to Ivy. And if it’s important to Ivy, it’s important to Harley. And if it’s important to Ivy in a way that makes her smile like she does when Harley winks at her? Well, then this is absolutely Harley’s top fucking priority.

Things get interesting as soon as they turn a corner and step onto the plush carpet of the experimental fuel (hey, she actually listens when Ivy speaks) tycoon's private wing. And you know what? Harley's delighted to hear the alarms go off and a bunch of goons crawl out from their hidey holes like buff armed cockroaches. She knows Ivy and Selina prefer the whole... well, you know. In and out, clean and easy kind of approach to murder and robbery, respectively. But Harley's an action gal. She has the energy to burn and a bat to swing, and most of all, she has shit to not think about.

So she's delighted when this guy's goons happen to be relatively okayish at fighting, which is much more than can be said for most men she fights in this city. 

"I'll go deal with him before he can escape," Ivy says, already walking towards the door to his office. "You guys all right out here?" 

"We're great ." Selina says in that tone she has where she pretends she's annoyed but you can tell she's having a blast. 

Honestly. Who wouldn't  be having a blast? It's like whack-a-goon!

"So," Selina says as soon as Ivy's out of earshot, which Harley can appreciate as an act of friendship, "no pheromones, I take it?"

"Nope!" Harley punctuates the word by slamming her bat into some guy's face. "None at all."

"Huh."

"What?" She's distracted enough by Selina's reply that she actually takes a punch to the face, which only manages to piss her off. She turns to look at the guy who delivered the blow just so he can see the look in her eyes before she completely obliterates his face. "Holy shit, dude. Can't you see we're having a fucking CONVERSATION !?"

For the next few minutes, Harley focuses on getting rid of the last few men around them so they can finish talking. Sure, beating up idiots is fun, but that little 'huh' was just mysterious enough to grab Harley's interest. What could possibly be so huh-worthy about her being fine? 

By the time they're done, there are a number of unconscious goons scattered all over the place. Harley pants, using her hand to wipe blood (mostly not hers) and sweat (mostly hers) off her face as she catches her breath.

"Whew. That was fun, right?"

Selina, as usual, manages to look spotless even if Harley saw her deal with several men with her own two eyes. Is Selina Kyle secretly magic? 

Could be.

"I've had better." Selina uses one of her claws to unlock an ornate little box and gather the jewels inside. Can she smell  expensive stuff? "Come on, let's go get Ivy."

"No, no, wait." Harley lowers her voice like she's scared Ivy may hear them somehow. "What did you mean earlier?"

"What do you mean, what did I mean?"

"You know," Harley motions in the general direction of the spot where Selina was when they were talking before, "with the huh."

"The what ." 

"The huh, Selina! The huh!" Dark olive eyes narrow in confusion (and annoyance), and Harley groans because she can't believe Selina Kyle is being this thick. "I said no pheromones. And you said huh."

"Oh, that." Selina uses a polished silver platter as a mirror to reapply a lipstick Harley is frankly not sure where one would even carry in a skin-tight leather jumpsuit. The more time she spends with Selina, the more convinced she is she just doesn't abide by the laws of physics. 

And the more time she waits for Selina to elaborate, the more Harley realizes she just... isn't going to, apparently.

"Uughhh!" Harley groans and uses her bat to smash a nearby sculpture. "You're killing me, Selina! What the fuck did you mean!?"

Selina cocks one perfectly manicured eyebrow (Harley can tell it's happening under the mask) and gives Harley a look like she can't believe she'd have the audacity to speak to her in that tone. 

"I meant," Selina's tone is a warning, like she wants to make it clear she could have made Harley suffer more if she wanted, but she's choosing not to, "I found it surprising. You looked a bit loved up to me."

"What? Pffft." Harley lets out a chuckle and nudges one of the pieces of the sculpture with her foot. "Cut back on the catnip, Selina."

Loved up. Ridiculous. Does she love Ivy? Of course. Is she loved up? Of course not . There's no heart emoji fog. None at all.

"If you say so." Selina gives her A Look. The kind of look says she doesn't believe Harley, and she wants Harley to know that even if she won't engage in an argument about it right now. Selina Kyle can say a lot with one look. 

For a moment, Harley considers pushing the issue. She could insist. She could give her a list of reasons why she's absolutely not loved up at all whatsoever. She could tell Selina how what she shares with Ivy is actually true friendship, and Selina would know if she was capable of bonding with anything other than cats and jewelry. She could tell her how there's nothing even remotely mind-foggy about her feelings for Ive (she could bring up she's seen that mind fog in action the many times Ive's put Batman under her spell, even). Harley could tell Selina how her brain always feels a bit foggy in a vague kind of way -- just foggy enough to keep Harleen quiet and let Harley take the wheel -- but being with Ivy makes her feel more lucid, more real , than anything else in the world. How when Ive says she loves her Harley feels it right in her bones, in the very marrow of them, in the deepest, darkest, longest-forgotten parts of her brain where no other feeling can ever reach.

She could tell her how wildly different all that is from a silly potion-induced love fog. But she doesn't think Selina would understand their friendship even if Harley actually spelled it out. So she doesn't.

Instead, she silently follows Selina towards the office where Pam's been doing her thing. Where Pam's still doing her thing, actually, and Harley can't help but smile and lean against the doorframe to watch her best friend doing what she loves most (after Harley) in the world: eco-conscious murder.

"I fucking swear ," Ivy hasn't realized they're there, so she must be talking to what Harley can only assume is the tycoon himself even though only one of his legs can be seen outside the enormous mouth of a very happy-looking carnivorous plant, "how hard is it to not print out e-mails? Look at all this shit. Do you know how many trees had to be killed so you could print out your shitty... whatever the fuck this is?" 

Ivy groans like she's frustrated she can't use her powers to just will all the papers scattered everywhere to turn back into trees. There are vines everywhere -- like nature reclaiming the furniture and the walls and the floors and really every surface of his office. There's a strange beauty to it, Harley thinks. Haunting, like those pictures of abandoned buildings covered in grass and moss and weeds. Even when she's angry -- and oh, she's angry  right now -- Ivy really can't help but make the world a more beautiful place, can she?

Even when she was on the other side of the reinforced glass, wearing her glasses and her white coat, Harley never fully understood why Poison Ivy was lumped in with the rest of the psychos in Gotham.

Harley doesn't know how long she stays there. Selina's happily working on the safe next to the carnivorous plant, and Harley's more than content to just watch Ivy in her element for a while.

And then, it happens. 

Ivy's going on a rant about a bunch of single-use coffee cups she's found in the trashcan by the desk when she suddenly stops in her tracks. Harley can't see what she's looking at until Ivy turns around with a small flower pot in her hand, a sad-looking, mostly dry plant limply hanging off its side.

"Fuck him."

Ivy touches the plant and her brow furrows, and Harley knows she's feeling the thirst and the pain in the little plant as if it was her own. "You're okay now," Ivy says as the plant starts to recover, and her voice is so soft -- so full of love for a dry, nearly dead plant -- that Harley swears she feels her heart grow at least a couple sizes. She watches her best friend breathe life into a little plant, watches it turn from brown to green, brighter and taller, watches it sprout new leaves that make it look like it's stretching after a long sleep. And then she watches a bright yellow flower bloom, and when Harley finally manages to tear her eyes away from the flower to look at Ivy instead, she swears she feels her heart stop dead in its tracks.

Ive's always beautiful. Always, without fail, no matter what time of day or night, lounging at home or brooding in an Arkham cell. Pam is beautiful always. But Harley doesn't think she's ever seen her look more beautiful than she does right now, with her hair slightly disheveled after a fight and some blood (not at all hers) splattered on her face and clothes. It's the way she's smiling at that little plant. The way her smile grows and softens when she notices Harley looking at her. Harley's so enthralled by Ivy that she doesn't realize what she's thinking until it's been running through her mind for a while.

God , Harley's in love with her.

And that's when she realizes. That's when she hears the proverbial record scratch in her brain and her eyes widen in horror because there it is. There's the pink fog before the botanical mutation, right? I mean she can't exactly see a literal pink fog, but she may as well. She can feel her heartbeat all over the place. The butterflies in her stomach. The nearly all-consuming need to grab Ivy and kiss her until neither of them can breathe. 

"Shit. Shit, Red, shit, shitshit shit ."

Ivy's no longer smiling. At all.

"Oh God, Pammy. I fucked up." Harley feels her eyes well up with tears as she rushes towards her best friend because this is no longer a hypothetical: this is happening. She did  drink something dangerous. And suddenly keeping Ivy from finding out and getting mad at her feels less important than fucking surviving. "I fucked up, Ive, I drank a potion and now I'm turning into a fucking plant, please  tell me you have an antidote."

"Harley. Harl, look at me." Ivy looks so genuinely concerned Harley's sure the ridiculous amount of love she can see in green eyes must be part of the potion's effects. She's hallucinating, isn't she? "What potion? You're immune, Harley, you know that. Calm down."

"No, no! Not poison, I mean--" Harley shakes her head but has to stop when Ivy places her hands on Harley's cheeks to hold her head steady and look into her eyes like she's wondering if Harley's on drugs or something. "I mean a love potion, Ive! Shit, I thought it was water and I just drank the whole thing and I thought maybe it was nothing because I felt fine but now I know for sure  I fucked up because I'm so in love with you like-- just feel this!" Harley grabs one of Ivy's hands and moves it from her cheek down to her chest, pressing it right where her heart is still skipping all over itself. "Right?"

"I-- I don't-- Harl, what potion ? You're immune to all of my--"

"The pheromones! I don't know what it was! God I'm such a fucking fuck-up and now I'm just-- shit I hope I at least turn into a rhododendron bush or something because I don't want to be a succulent, Ive. Don't let me turn into a succulent." Harley's really crying now, black mascara running down her cheeks and staining Pam's hand as she struggles to breathe through her words. "I know I should've told you but I didn't want you to be disappointed and now I'm in love and it's just-- Selina, you tell her!"

"Selina?" Ivy turns around like she's just realized Selina is still in the mansion, let alone in the room with them. "What's going on?"

Harley was expecting Selina to tell Ivy exactly what happened that morning. She was expecting Selina to tell Ivy all about Harley being an idiot who drinks things without looking first, about the pheromones and chill, about Harley's refusal to tell Ivy right away. Instead, Selina looks... almost like she's the one who's been caught in a lie.

"Selina, what the fuck did you do?" Ivy's voice sounds like she's mere seconds away from feeding Selina to the plant, too. Harley can feel the anger like tingles where Ivy's hands are still pressed against her skin. "What did you give her?"

Selina lets out a sigh. "Margarita mix."

"What?" Harley feels a lightbulb go off inside her brain. That  was the weird taste when she drank whatever was in that bottle. Fucking margarita mix. But just.. "Why? What the fuck, Selina? Why would you let me think it was pheromones? I know Batman doesn't actually fuck bats, probably. Come on, it was a joke! Mostly!" 

"Will you relax?" Selina sounds like she can't believe Harley may be a bit agitated after spending a whole day thinking she's going to die and/or mutate into a plant. "I'm sick of watching you two idiots pretend that ," she points in the general direction of Harley and Ivy, "is just a couple of gals being pals. Figured I'd help you out."

"Help!?" Harley could just-- God , she could just smash Selina's face in with her bat. But she suddenly realizes there's a much more pressing issue to handle before revenge can even begin to be considered. "Shit, Red," Harley takes one step back to look at Ivy, and for the first time ever she's surprised to see she can't read the look in her eyes, "I didn't mean-- you know I didn't mean any of it, right?" For a split second Harley swears something like pain flashes behind green eyes, but it's gone as quickly as it appeared. "I was just worried and I-- I got in my head about it. But you know I didn't mean it. You know , right? Pammy?"

It takes Ivy a few seconds to answer, and when she does she sounds... different. "Yeah. Yeah, I know."

For some reason, it doesn't sound as reassuring as Harley though it would.

"Come on, Ive--" Selina tries to keep talking, but Ivy cuts her off.

"Listen, we're done here. So I'm just gonna..." Ivy shakes her head like she's trying to physically clear it of thoughts and feelings and general clutter, "I'm just gonna go home."

Harley feels like she's stuck to the floor. She just stands there, silent and frozen in place as she watches Ivy leave. She knows this isn't right. She knows something  just happened -- something she can't quite wrap her brain around right now. All she knows is Ivy's leaving, and she wants her to stay but she doesn't know how to make her body move or make any noises until her gaze drops to the desk and she sees the little plant right there.

"Ive!" Harley grabs the pot and runs out just in time to see Ivy's vines lifting her up through the same skyline they used to get in. "Ivy, you forgot the plant!"

But Ivy doesn't come back.

[gaveherhearttotheliontattoo]

Title: Wrong Winchester Turned Right (Part X)

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader (Female)

Word Count: 2506

Warnings: None that I know of

Prompt: So not really a prompt, I was on Pinterest and I looked up fanfiction prompts and this popped up from a user who I can’t find the account of… Anyways reader jumps on the back of who she thought was her best friend in public but ends up quickly realizing her mistake.

Note: Shoutout to my beta reader for keeping me going

(Read Part I Here, Part II Here, Part III Here, Part IV Here, Part V Here, Part VI Here, Part VII Here, Part VIII Here, Part IX Here)

Taglist: @vicmc624

--

“70 years?” The shock you were feeling clearly shown across your face. “But then how is she here now?” You searched your brain, the depths of your memories to try to recall if there was anything you didn’t tell them. You’d spent so much time researching, you weren’t sure it was possible that you could have messed up on a detail as large as the resurfacing of this creature.

Dean watched you pace. He didn’t think you even recognized when you stood up to start walking. “It’s okay, (Y/L/N).”

You stopped walking, when did you start doing that, and stared at Dean. You had begun to associate his use of your last name with the intimate moments you’d shared. “I can’t explain this, how is that okay?”

“(Y/N/N), it is okay. You shared what you knew and we just have to do a little more digging.” Sam watched you, he’d seen the look in your eyes several times when you reached a stopping point in a case. “Maybe we should get some food.”

“You cannot make me calm down with food me with food Samuel Winchester.”

“Look, I know you. You’re hungry, hangry even. Let’s get some food and spend a little time just thinking about what could possibly explain the return. Any holidays, anniversaries, or similarities to another creature.”

You looked between the boys. “Fine, but we need to figure this out fast before she finds someone else to ensnare.”

------

After returning to the motel room you all secured a spot and opened up your laptops to do some research. You refused to give Sam the satisfaction that he had been right about food helping you, instead you continued to glare at your screen. It was like a scavenger hunt, picking through various clues to lead you to the reasoning she could possibly be awake 70 years earlier than she should.

You started by searching holidays that fell around that time that could have impacted this arrival. You’d hoped it would be as simple as All Hallow’s Eve but the timing didn’t make sense. You searched through the holidays but the only one that caught any attention was Litha, also known as the summer solstice. It was the longest day of the year but it was also the day that indicated the dark was taking back over. Considering the creature’s nature it wouldn’t be far off but there had to be something more. You switched to anniversaries.

You researched old cases that seemed similar. Disappearances of multiple girls, bodies never found, but a trail of men left in the wake of their disappearances. You spotted the trend of years between the appearances start to dwindle. What could have changed to cause this?

Dean spoke up, breaking your train of thought. “According to legend she is supposed to appear once a year, some Scottish folklore, but Sam found something saying she’s not supposed to appear for another 70 years.” 

“The American folklore mentioned that she was far more efficient when she would come out so she didn’t need to come out as much.”

“Folklore is just that boys, we need to remember that just because it’s what someone believes, it doesn’t mean it’s completely factual. Once upon a time the cases that resembled her activity were sparse but over the last 500 years it seems they’ve gotten closer and closer.”

“How did you research that far back already?” Dean stared in amazement. He drained the last of his beer, a small drop trailing down his chin.

You watch the drop of beer and your brain thinks of how nice it would be to lick it off of him. Well, that is going to be distracting. “Been doing it for a long time and I already had some prior knowledge. Her pattern is becoming more predictable though. Perhaps her investments aren’t lasting as long or the blood isn’t as rich as it used to be. Hunters do like to drink.”

Dean shared a wry glance with his brother as he popped the cap off his next beer. “Cheers to that. So, anyways, how do we know when she’s going to disappear?”

“We don’t, the dates of disappearance are the only thing that were ever inconsistent throughout time. Which is why we need to act fast.” You knew it was coming, the food break could only stall the conversation of you being used to lure her out for so long. “I say we take two days to prep and plan, and then Friday evening is the night we go through with it.”

Dean reminded himself this was the right thing to do and bunched his hands into tight fists. “What do you believe is the best course of action?”

You’d chosen the bed as your place of study but wished you were closer to Dean in this moment. You shifted your laptop to the bed and moved to the edge of Sam’s bed, close enough to rest your hands on top of Dean’s white-knuckled fists. “We go on a date.”

“A date? How will that get her attention?”

“I’ll be all dressed up and so happy to be out with you but you’ll go on and break my heart. My appearance should attract her because she has a thing for shiny objects and a mean man who deserves to die would be the icing on the cake she needs.”

“Doesn’t sound like we have to wait until Friday.” Dean adjusted, his muscles loosening at the fact that he would be with you during this scheme.

“We should wait though. Friday night is date night for most people. We need to round out the image and appearances too. Plus we can’t stop our search, especially with the interaction I had today. She’ll know we’re onto her and if we were to just go for it the next day it would look suspicious. Waiting provides us time to make it look like we are struggling, giving up, weakening.”

Dean released the fists he held and gripped your hands with his. “Weak is one thing we are not.”

“We know that, she won’t, especially if we can pull the fight off.”

Sam, who’d been patiently biding his time finally spoke up. “You two should investigate together tomorrow. You haven’t quite appeared as a couple in public and it will seem odd if the two of you just go out Friday. I’m going to take a shower while you figure out what you think you can fight about.”

You waited until the water was running, unable to pull away from Dean. You’d agreed to start something, but now the thought of ending it, even faking ending it, seemed too real too soon. “Can we pull this off?”

“Oh, I think I can manage to get upset with you about something.” Dean chuckled when you snarled. “See, we’re already ready to argue.”

“What about Sam?” Dean just stared at you, waiting for further explanation. “We could fight about Sam. I’ve been hunting and investigating with him over you so it wouldn’t be far fetched to think that there was something going on there.”

Dean flinched. “I don’t want that imagery, again.” Dean pulled you onto his lap, linking his fingers behind your back. “Does this mean we have to go shopping?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly pack going out clothes for a hunting trip.”

Dean resigned himself to the idea of spending hours looking for clothes with you, but reminded himself it was just more time he got to spend with you, something he was enjoying probably far too much. “We’re doing it together. I think it’ll help with the appearance, plus I want as much time with you before this all goes down.” Dean planted a kiss to your neck.

“It hasn’t even been three weeks that I’ve known you, the real you, but it feels like so much longer.” You hooked one arm around Dean’s neck, leaning back so you could look into his eyes. This next part wasn’t going to make him happy. “Promise me one thing, if this turns south and she lures me in, you won’t let her keep me. Trap me up until you can figure out a way to get me back or end it.” You felt yourself hit the bed before you had time to process what was happening.

“End it?” Dean was stomping the length of the room, thrusting his fingers through his hair. “We just talked about how we aren’t weak. There is no way anything is going to happen to you.” Dean stopped and looked at you. “I’m going to walk around outside for a bit, I need some space to think over the fact you want me to just end it.”

You flinched as the door slammed behind Dean. Maybe it was callous to say end it but if it was necessary so be it. To hell with him. Who did he think he was getting upset when he said he would go with the plan. To. Hell. With. Him.

You stood, prepared to just change and go to bed, but found yourself seeking out the man who continued to push your buttons.

“This is my choice!” You yelled to his shadow. “I can ask Sam to do it if you don’t think you can but I refuse to live a life with this creature where I’m luring and killing men for sport. You’re either with me or you’re not.” Satisfied you got that off your chest you turned to reenter the motel room but found yourself scooped into Dean’s arms. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Don’t you dare ask Sam.” Dean carried you to the hood of Baby and set you down, standing between your legs. “Of course I would do it but did you think the concept would be easy for me to think about? What if I told you to end it for me if she managed to get her claws in me and I was fighting to hold on? How would you respond?”

You bristled, the thought quite unpleasant. “I get it, and I’m sorry, but it is part of the job, the life.” You leaned forward and linked your hands behind his neck, drawing him closer. “This should get her attention.”

“I’m not doing this for her attention,” Dean mumbled, dropping a featherlight kiss to your lips. “I like you, and I don’t like people lightly. Giving me time to wrap my head around losing you before we go through with this plan is probably for the best and it will probably help my anger during our faux argument.”

“It’s not going to be easy for me either. I may have been indifferent to you at first but I like you too.”

“Indifferent?” Dean chuckled. “You couldn’t have cared less about me at the start if you tried.”

“You’re wrong,” You said, recalling the day you jumped on his back. “I would say I found you annoyingly attractive but we just started off on the wrong foot.”

“Does that mean we are on the right foot?”

You answered by sealing your lips to his. You crossed your ankles behind his legs, pulling yourself as tight against him as you could. You didn’t even recognize your own behavior anymore, but you were about to put your life on the line in a way that you never had before. Not just yourself though, someone who had quickly become an important piece in your life. It should have shook you how much you cared about Dean but instead you felt comfort in his arms. 

“You’ve really gotta stop thinking while I’m kissing you,” Dean interrupted your train of thoughts.

Sighing you moved your hands to cup his face. “I was just thinking about how comfortable I am in your arms.”

“Oh,” Dean said, squeezing you tighter. “Well, in that case, could you think out loud?”

“Let’s go back in before we draw too much attention to ourselves.”

Dean scooped you off the hood of the car. “Don’t wanna scratch the hood.”

You rolled your eyes. “Okay, you didn’t scratch the hood, now put me down.”

Dean continued to carry you, dropping you on the bed, ignoring the look Sam was giving him. He turned to his duffle bag, deciding he needed to take a very long shower. He lifted the duffle bag onto his shoulder and winked at you before walking into the bathroom. He wanted you to join him but this case needed to be over before he could think about going any further with you.

He stripped out of his clothes and turned the water on, not as hot as he normally would but he needed to cool down, which would normally work if you hadn’t knocked on the door. “What?”

“I need to change.”

“Couldn’t you just ask Sammy to step outside?”

“Oh, don’t be a baby.”

Dean pictured you changing, easily done since you’d showered together just that morning. How had it only been since that morning when it felt like it had been days if not weeks since that had occurred. “(Y/L/N), you’re killing me.”

“When you first started using my last name I hated it but now I find it endearing, kind of a turn on.” You heard Dean groan, bringing a smile to your lips. 

“Could you just change and go so I can get on with my shower.”

You slipped your night shirt over your head. “Right, I’m sure that’s all you need to get on with.” When Dean’s head whipped around the shower curtain to glare at you the laughter bubbled from deep within before you could stop it. “I’m going.” You walked out still laughing, catching a curious eye from a lounging Sam. “Just teasing your brother.”

You curled onto your side under the blanket, keeping room for Dean since you knew that was where he was going to sleep. You thought about how you woke up with him and the events that had transpired to his black eye, followed by the entire day you had. You were overwhelmed and the exhaustion soon took you under.

Dean attempted to get under the covers without waking you. Sam was out and the only light was from the moon shining through the curtains. He sucked in a deep breath when you rolled against him, nervous.

“What time is it?” You mumbled.

“Just close your eyes and go back to sleep.” Dean wrapped an arm around you, pulling you close so your head rested on his chest. As soon as Dean could feel your chest rising and falling at a slower rate he relaxed and felt himself begin to fall asleep. He knew the next two days were going to be long as the preparations to face the creature who inadvertently brought you together unfolded so he took the time to enjoy the feel of you in his arms. Running his fingers and up and down your arm he let the pattern lull himself to sleep.

[jenovahh]

The Honey Pot - Ch. 26 - Irrational

“Oh thank the Twelve, you’re coming to.”

Blinking your eyes, you feel like you’ve been floating in space and have finally come down to earth, your limbs feeling heavy after being suspended in zero-gravity. You’ve been passing out too much lately you think, circumstances be damned.

Milky eyes that belong to a powdery face come into focus, Merlwyb the picture of worry as she calls for a doctor to check on your condition.

“Chief Merlwyb?” you cough, a glass of water held in front of you before you can even ask, Merlwyb slipping a straw inside and gently holding it towards your face. Mumbling a word of thanks, you take a sip, the water refreshing and quenching as you nearly down the whole cup until Merlwyb draws it away.

“I think you should slow it down. From what I understand, they were having to reintroduce you to food.” Merlwyb murmurs, setting the cup down on a nearby nightstand. Taking a look around you’re back in the same makeshift sick room within Cid’s mansion, IV hooked up to your arm as it pumps you full of whatever is in the bag attached to it. The doctor shows up soon enough, giving you a quick once over as she makes sure you’re on the mend.

As the doctor asks you a few questions, you notice Merlwyb looking incredibly guilty, wondering if she really feels so bad you had gotten captured. Surely she can’t be beating herself up over that?

“And if I may ask,” the doctor begins but Merlwyb holds up a hand gently.

“If it is alright with you doctor, I would like to speak to my officer about this alone.” Merlwyb interrupts, the doctor giving a nod of understanding, saying nothing more as she exits the room. Turning to you, Merlwyb’s fists are clenched tightly in her lap, and you get too worried to keep your peace.

“Is everything okay?” you ask with a broken laugh. “I mean, I know it was scary, Varis locking me up, but I’m okay. I’m okay.” You grin, reaching out to try to console her but she jerks away. “Chief,”

“Do not call me that.” She bites out, the harshness of her voice shocking you. A little hurt, you begin to question what you could’ve done to warrant such a flip in her attitude, until you see she is shaking with unshed tears, liquid pooling in the corners of her eyes as she finally gains the will to meet you eye to eye. “Do not refer to me with such respect after I’ve failed you so catastrophically.”

Confused, you shift to try and sit up a little better. “Chief Merlwyb, what do you mean? I thought we went over all the risks at the start! We knew that this would be a dangerous job,”

“The job would be dangerous, yes! But never would I have made you become pregnant with that bastard’s child!” She cries, tears finally running down her face. You sit in perfect stillness, unsure what to say. Faced with the reality of having to explain that you were not only pregnant with Zenos’ child, but that you didn’t even feel bad about it. When Varis had revealed that same fact to you, you didn’t even care.

“We sent you to simply try and catch his son in the act. To give us any kind of proof of illegal activity. Only to realize too late we had put you in that monster’s hands!” Merlwyb sobs, clutching your hands within her own. “When I had said that you must protect the mission at any cost, I never meant that you had to bear Varis’ child. That you would have to accept him forcing himself upon you.”

Eyes widening as you see the cause of her grief, you fumble to try and find your right words. “Chief, I...did the doctor,”

“The only one that knows is myself and Cid. Cid is busy preparing other avenues to try and handle Varis.” Merlwyb grumbles, over the worst of her crying. “He was appalled to learn of this, he had--”

“Please, please, stop right there.” You groan, sick at the thought of if things really had gotten to where they assumed they had. Taking a deep breath, you fix Merlwyb with a guilty look of your own. “Never would I have guessed the famed Annihilator to be a crier.” You joke weakly, watching as she seems to lighten the tiniest bit.

“Strong I may be, but I am not immune to the suffering of my officers.” She sniffs, rubbing your hands with her larger ones.

Looking at your hands joined together in your lap, you struggle on what to say next. “While I’m...glad you feel such concern with me...things didn’t get that far. Not with Varis.”

Brows furrowing, Merlwyb shifts closer to you in her seat. “What do you mean?”

Breathing deeply, you try to get everything out in one breath. “I will not deny it. What led to me being locked away was actually due to Varis trying to force himself on me.” Saying it nearly makes you throw up, tilting your head back as you take calming breaths. “He had drugged me with a substance mixed with aether rendering me unable to move. If his right hand man hadn’t shown up when he did...then he would have--” You nearly throw up again, having to keep the bile down as your body breaks out in a cold sweat.

“You don’t have to talk about this.” Merlwyb consoles, rubbing your back gently.

“No. Because I need to...I need to explain.” You sigh, feeling weary already. “What I’m trying to say is, Varis only tried to force himself on me before he locked me away. And...if my math is right, I should be a month or two along.” Placing a hand on your stomach, you rub it gently. “It’s not his.”

A mix of relief and worry passes through Merlwyb’s face, standing to her feet. “Thank the Twelve it isn’t so. I must tell Cid,”

“It’s Zenos’.” you cut off before she can even leave your side.

She stops in place immediately, shocked by your words as much as you are having said them. To put out in the universe you are carrying the child of someone you once thought a monster.

“Honey…” she whispers, sitting by your side once more. “Honey, did he,”

Shaking your head furiously, you refuse to meet her surely judgemental gaze. “No. I...it was consensual. Multiple times. I…” swallowing your fear, you press on. “I was so stressed from working for Varis, my health suffered. I stopped taking supplements, vitamins, and my birth control. I had met with Zenos that day when Raubahn died and one thing led to another.”

As tears leak from your eyes as you finally give voice to your shame, you still cannot bear to face her scorn. “I tried to hate him. I tried to hate him for so long, but he…” you sob, wiping furiously at your tears, “he’s the only one that understands me. The only one who’s strong enough, the only one who makes me happy. I didn’t even blink when Varis told me I was pregnant with his kid, I didn’t even feel sad. How fucked up am I for falling for him?!” You laugh, the sound broken and mangled. “I’m a failure to the mission, Raubahn would be ashamed--”

Merlwyb crushes you in her arms, ceasing your downward spiral. She says nothing, merely holding you tightly as your tears catch in her shirt, clutching you tight as she buries her face in your hair. “Honey...no matter what I better not hear such self deprecating language from you ever again.” She whispers, stroking your head softly. “Raubahn would be proud. You’ve survived. You are alive. And that’s all we ever wanted. For you to come home.”

“But I--”

“No ‘buts’.” She interjects, pulling away to give you the stern look you had known her for. “Not to throw him under the bus, but Cid had already filled me in on your entanglement with his bodyguard and Zenos respectively. I can’t lie that at first I was alarmed, but when he recounted all the trauma he had known you had gone through, how he could see you warp and change...I could not think to hold it against you. And neither would Raubahn.”

You weep thankful tears at her words, a weight lifted from your shoulders at her comfort. You embrace each other once more, wrapping yourself in the comfort of simply being held, knowing you both have been through the wringer these past few days.

Merlwyb notices your eyes begin to droop, promising to see you again when you wake up next. She would go off to find Cid and relay what you had told her in a calmer, less emotional fashion, sparing you the risk of potentially triggering yourself. You allow yourself a few more hours rest, drifting thoughtlessly as you have the most restful sleep you had in what had apparently been weeks.

Two weeks had Varis managed to stow you away, Cid and Merlwyb knowing something was wrong when they hadn’t heard hide or hair of you in two days. The phone Cid had given you had been confiscated and destroyed, giving them no idea on how to find you. They had been sick with worry with no way to find out what happened until Zenos had showed up on Cid’s doorstep in the dead of night, demanding that you be saved. Cid had immediately called for his personal doctor to begin treating you, bringing you to the present.

Even while you rest, your thoughts are too tumultuous to let you sleep long, the steady drip of your IV and the light buzz of the alarm clock on your nightstand your only companions when you wake. It is a few hours past midnight, the mansion quiet, but in a good way unlike the Galvus estate. There’s just enough white noise in the halls that gives a comfortable ambience, a home that is lived in, prompting you to drag yourself out of bed and into some slippers to walk a bit to maybe tire your mind a bit to go back to sleep.

Forced to drag your IV pump around with you, you shuffle down the hall, enjoying the peace as you let your feet aimlessly wander. Though you know Cid was prone to all nighters if he was knee deep in a project, something tells you he’s fast asleep. Making your way downstairs you enjoy the calm of his mansion at night, slipping past the many doors as you struggle to not bump your shin into any unsuspecting furniture.

As you pass through the living room, you hear grunting, looking through one of the many floor to ceiling windows to spot Zenos outside, running through his practice routines. His golden hair now looks to be made of spun ivory under the moonlight, muscles flexing with every movement as he swings his sword through the air. Each strike is precise, measured as he hones his skill, a fierce determination on his face as he snarls his frustration.

Heading to the sliding door, you gently push it open, the warm night air soothing you instantly as you stand in the doorway, watching him quietly. You’re surprised he’s yet to notice your presence, too focused on whatever he’s thinking about to catch you watching him. Leaning against the doorframe, you’re content to watch how his body flows effortlessly through each stance, dressed in his usual workout attire, clinging to him like a second skin.

It is only when he spins does he take note of you at the door, uncharacteristically startled before a shadow of guilt darkens his features. Frowning, you move to join him in the yard only for him to give you a look that promises retribution if you move from your spot at the door. “What are you doing here?”

Tutting, you stand up straight. “From what I heard, you brought me here.”

“That’s not what I,” he pauses, turning away from you for a moment. “I meant what are you doing outside? You should be inside, resting.”

“I was trying,” you grumble, stepping out onto the manicured grass, dragging the IV pump along uneven ground. He turns to you once more, unable to meet your eyes. “I couldn’t sleep, probably because I had spent the past two weeks being made to sleep. My body’s quite sick of it, I think.” You joke lightly, coming to stand before him.

He still won’t meet your gaze, which is strange in and of itself. Creeping closer, he shifts away and you frown, trying to peek under his fringe of hair. “Zenos? What’s the matter?” you ask, reaching out for his hand but he jerks it away.

“What do you want?” he snarls, eyes furious. Though you begin to get angry, you take a step back and look at the situation. Though your memories are hazy, you can remember his desperation to get you out of that facility. His worry at seeing you look so frail and weak. The guilt you had seen once he had realized you were there--

He was scared.

Lowering yourself to the ground, you can’t help but laugh a little at how he casts his sword to the ground while reaching to catch you in the same motion, uncaring of where his blade ends up. “I’m not dying, Zenos. I’m not falling apart.” you sigh wistfully, motioning to the ground for him to sit next to you.

Pursing his lips, he seems to debate between picking you up and carrying you back inside, versus giving into your whims. “You’ve not seen the horrors of my father’s experiments.” He answers instead, lowering himself to the cool grass to your side, one knee bent with the other leg extended before him. You relish in his slight intake of breath as you shuffle to be closer to him, leaning upon his warmth. It’s not too cool out, but the furnace that is his body isn’t unpleasant. “But I suppose for that, I am thankful.”

“I’ve not. And I’m glad I didn’t.” you murmur, relaxing immediately from his presence alone.

The two of you are quiet, Zenos stiff as if he does not know what to do with this nearness from you. “I...I’m glad I had found you in the condition I had. I had feared the worst.” he admits, which coming from him, is no small feat.

Gazing up at the moon, you rest your weight fully upon him, his arm naturally coming to support you and hold you close, almost as if on instinct. His hand seems unsure where to place itself, so you help by gently coaxing it to sling around your waist, linking your fingers with his. “He had told me so many horrible things. He told me how awfully he would treat you.” you murmur, satisfied to stay just like this.

“What did he tell you?”

His voice is guarded, cornered. Scared.

“He told me...that he forced himself on your mother.” You answer, unable to look him in the face.

He tenses then, skin heating before you tighten your grip on his hand, hearing his deep breaths behind you as he calms himself down. “The story the public knows is that my mother passed away due to sickness. Only a select few know the truth.” His voice is far away, distant, as if lost within a nightmare. “After all, it’s not really palatable to have it leak out that your father had threatened to have your mother killed if she tried to run. That when she felt she had no option left, she had killed herself.”

Gasping, you turn in his arms to look at him, finding nothing but an emotionless gaze staring back. You can see the truth in his eyes, a pain so guarded and so deep that you wonder if this is the first time he’s told anyone else. “Zenos,”

“After all, wouldn’t you do the same? Would you not burst into hysterics upon looking at the child you not only had forced upon you, but were also forced to bear?” he laughs humorlessly, as if the joke is tired and worn out, the punchline having lost its kick.

You wonder if he can hear your heart breaking.

“Zenos,” you whisper carefully, reaching with both hands to cup his face, feeling its warmth but a cold expression is all you get in return.

“I do not need your pity.” he snips, though he makes no move to push you away. “I’ve had my share of it. And for what? It would not bring my mother back. Not that she would want to stay anyway. Not when she gave birth to a monster.”

Tears pool in your eyes at his words, wondering how much he had of this locked up inside, and for how long?

How long had he not known love?

One of his hands reaches up to dab at a tear trailing down your cheek, frowning as he does so. “Why do you cry? I told you I didn’t want your pity.”

“I’m crying for you.” You murmur, turning in his hold to be on your knees, crowding closer to where he parts his legs more to give you room to sit between them. “Because you’ve not had the chance to do it for yourself.”

His lips part at that, emotions of all kinds warring on his face before he settles on anger. “You are a fool if you think that would change things.”

“I’m not trying to change things you idiot!” you whisper harshly, not wanting to yell and potentially wake anyone up. “You come and save me from being experimented upon by your father until I die and you don’t want me to show you I’m at least a little grateful? When I had started to believe that no one would come for me and you carried me out in your arms?”

“Sweet words won’t excuse your cowardice.” he growls, trying to pull away. “That even after you apologized, you had gone running back into my father’s arms.”

“For you!” You snap, clutching his face desperately.

Confused, he shakes his head. “What do you--”

“You think I would go back to the asshole willingly?” you seethe, begging him to understand. “That me, a cop, would want anything to do with his desire to be a dictator? To remember the good ole days of imperial rule?” Despite your earlier reservations, you raise your voice with every question. “Do you know how much it hurt to be apart from you? To see the betrayal in your eyes as I left your side for no other reason than to try and take your father down so you would be free from his influence? To fall for you--”

Your words catch in your throat, unable to take them back. The two of you only stare at one another, wide eyed and frozen as your unsaid words hang between you, wishing you could simply disappear. Zenos is solid as a board and your heart sinks, releasing his face as you begin to stand. “I should get back inside,”

He pulls you back to him forcefully, not letting you flee back to the safety of your room. You try to tug away but you’re still too weak to fight against his might, huffing and puffing for him to release you as you try to run from the shame of your actions. “Let go of me,” you whine, resisting his touch as he wraps his arm around you like a vice, refusing to let you go anywhere.

The rough pads of his fingers urge you to face him as you squirm in his arms, not wanting to face him, to face your feelings. “Honey.” He breathes, finally getting you at a suitable angle to press his lips to yours, ashamed at how easily you melt in his arms. He deepens the kiss, full of all the passion, the emotion you now know he’s capable of, threading his fingers into your hair as you rest your hands upon his chest before looping around his shoulders.

The kiss is all passion, all affection, all possession as your tongues dance together, as teeth nibble each other's lips, as you breathe each other's air. You fall into him just as easily as you did the first time, wondering how on earth did you get here? It is only when he feels you crying again does he pull apart, dabbing gently at your tears with an indescribable emotion upon his angelic features.

“You would run because you’re afraid of what you feel for me?” he asks, holding you as if you were made of the most delicate glass. The same man who had no problem flipping you over his back, grappling you like a wrestler, was now cradling you as if you were the most important thing in the world to him. “I have never run from how I feel for you, even if I cannot understand it. I have only wanted you. It can only be you.”

“You don’t get it!” You sob, pounding your fists on his chest. “I love you, you idiot! I was sent to try and take you and your father down and look where I am! I fell for you instead, I’m having your ch--” you stop yourself once again, afraid of what he would possibly think.

“I do not know love but I do know I would have no other. Is that not good enough?” he asks, desperate to understand, and Twelve above you wish he did. Perhaps he loves you in his own way, but there’s so much of him that needs healing, so many bad habits he needs to break before you could truly be by his side. It occurs to you only now that you looked at him through rose-tinted glasses, seeing nothing but the happiness he brought you, and you alone.

A child brings new questions into the mix.

Would he treat the child the same way he treated you? Would he fall into the bad habits of his father, having no good example of how to be a parent? Continuing a cycle of abuse because he had never known love? Would he train that child for the sole purpose of becoming stronger, unsatisfied until either of them fell in battle?

Deep down you knew you were being foolish, but fear overcame reason as you kept your eyes shut tight, crying against his chest as he held you. It was such an irrational fear, one you were completely self aware of, but that did not stop you from crying, nor did it stop you from falling into his embrace as he kissed you once more.

You are no stranger to Zenos’ touch, though you are a stranger to how gently he treats you as you recover from being detained by Varis. Only with your permission do you allow him to visit, except visitation is not satisfactory. He all but moves into your room, seeing to your needs during the day until he goes about his own business before returning to you at night. He’s always there to bring you your meals, sitting in comfortable silence or making light conversation, making you remember just how much you loved him, until he reminded you just how much you needed to run away when this was all over.

You only wish he knew how hard he was making it for you.

There wasn’t a need of yours that wasn’t seen to by Zenos personally. Whatever you wanted to eat, he went and got it. If you wanted to walk around, he was the one to pull your IV pump along, leaving you free to simply stretch your legs. From fluffing your pillow to simply being a warm body to hold at night, there was nothing he would not do for your sake.

This wasn’t going to be easy.

As you recuperated and strength once again flowed through your limbs, he turned into your physical therapist, helping you stretch your muscles and make you limber enough to fight again. He would only spar lightly at your request, making you feign exhaustion so he didn’t feel angry for making himself hold back. Naturally you made sure to avoid all blows to your abdominal area, flowing like water around his strikes, taking a more defensive approach, which you thought would make him angry.

It had the opposite effect. It seemed to only make him want you more, pursuing you like a man possessed, fucking you into the floor until your voice was hoarse from crying out his name.

This is how I got here in the first place, you grumble to yourself, walking with him to meet up with Cid and Merlwyb on another part of the estate. There was hardly a day he was not by your side, something you did not mind after spending so long apart, but you began to think it strange considering the circumstances. Varis had to be wondering where he was. But if Zenos was not worried, you figured you shouldn’t be either.

Reaching the conference room turned “briefing room”, you give a small wave to Cid and Merlwyb who greet you in return. “You’re looking better by the day, Honey. I’m glad to see you’re making a recovery.” Cid welcomes, standing from his chair to come give you a hug. You return it with equal measure, glad to have people on your side. “Please sit. We haven’t been waiting long.”

Nodding, you pull a chair out from the table, not at all surprised as Zenos takes a seat in the one directly next to you. “I’m sorry to delay everything for so long.”

“Your recovery was paramount, Honey.” Merlwyb speaks up, giving you a serious look. “You have shouldered so much of this upon your back. There is no way we could ask you to put your life on the line anymore than we already have.”

“But I want to. I want to take him down.” You insist, refusing to take no for an answer. Merlwyb looks ready to argue but Cid quickly interjects, physically leaning between the two of you.

“Easy there, ladies. We’ve got a common goal, and let’s just look at the facts before we start making plans.” Cid offers in the interest of neutrality, slowly sitting back down in his chair. “We’ve got quite a bit of information to catch Honey up on anyway.” He sighs, reaching for a remote and turning on the mounted TV. The screen is paused with Varis’ face on it, a news ticker reading “Varis Unveils Revolutionary Technology”, your heart immediately sinking.

“This has been on the news for nearly two weeks. Yes, it’s exactly what you’re thinking. Varis has revealed his ‘discovery’ of aether upon your capture.” Cid grounds out, clicking on the remote to start the clip. It is silent, but the clip continues to play, allowing Cid to speak. “It’s been a nightmare since. I’ve been called by more news outlets than I care to remember asking for my response.”

Sadness creeps into his features as he watches the TV with a forlorn expression. “As I had told you, my father’s laboratory had burned down, leaving me with no physical proof that it was he who originally discovered aether. All I have is my word against his ‘proof’.” Banging his fist against the table, he runs his hands through his hair. “It’s infuriating.”

Clicking the remote a different press conference plays on the TV, Varis showing off different bits of technology powered by aether. "He's got the public in the palm of his hand. Everyone's dazzled by the power of aether, but of course only we know the truth. We know that aether is not to be messed with, that it is dangerous and more powerful than we could possibly comprehend." Cid explains, tapping his fingers against the table. "I've considered trying to make my own sample, to show what a volatile resource it is…"

"We already discussed this Cid. Absolutely not." Merlwyb interjects. Their interaction comes as a slight surprise. Merlwyb was Cid’s senior by barely a decade, but within the past month they became fast friends. "Varis has already tried to take your life once and is already so sure of his victory that he's content to leave you alone for now. Let's not give him reason to try and take you out."

Nodding grimly, Cid turns back to you. "As you can see, we've got our hands tied. Varis is, if anything thorough, making it hard to plan any sort of move. We're running out of time."

Gnawing your lip, you find yourself focusing on what Merlwyb had said. "If...do you think he would try and target Lord Hien?" The room is completely silent, and you don’t know if it’s because they find the notion preposterous, or they wonder how the thought has never crossed their mind. “I mean, clearly Varis has to think he’s nigh untouchable now. He’s attempted to kill Cid once without facing any consequences. He successfully killed Raubahn and forced Merlwyb into hiding. Don’t you think…?”

Cid drags his hands over his face, heaving out a dry laugh. “Nymeia save me, I think you might be onto something.”

“But Cid, why would he need to kill Hien? The election is so close, he’s already done so much to make himself look like the ideal candidate. What more could killing Hien do for him?” Merlwyb questions, posing some good points.

“An easy win.”

The three of you turn to Zenos who has remained uncharacteristically quiet this entire exchange. “Honey has been around my father long enough by now to understand how he thinks. However, as his son,” he grounds out, “I have intimate knowledge of how his mind works.” Shifting in his seat, he sighs. “Before he had stopped telling me of his plans, he thought himself untouchable; he had evaded you all for decades.” He explains, looking pointedly at Merlwyb before his gaze shifts to Cid. “And the only one who could ever bring any evidence against him had no physical proof, nor the courage to say anything.”

Giving a frustrated sigh, Cid turns once again to the TV. “I can’t deny that. My own cowardice has allowed this to go on for as long as it has.” Cid murmurs, fidgeting with the remote in his hand.

“And if he were to kill Hien, who could stop him?” Zenos asks, glancing around the table. “The Chief has been killed, and the only other ‘good cop’ remains hidden for her own safety. Who is next in command to take Raubahn Aldynn’s place?”

You gasp, turning to Zenos. “Ilberd.”

Shrugging, the heir goes back to looking bored once again. “With his longtime supporter at the head of police, it would be no problem to have Hien’s death look like nothing more than an accident even if he shot him point blank on national television.”

“Twelve above…” Merlwyb whispers, burying her face in her hand. “Decades worth of planning. Decades worth of moves. I had always suspected Ilberd, but on this large a scale…” Gasping, her eyes widened in horror. “By the Twelve, he has the entire police force under his control. If he wins the seat, he would have an entire army--”

The room is silent once again, the three of you processing the scope of Varis’ plans. When he boasted of his intellect, you had thought little of it, knowing that like any businessman he was educated, but to be so thorough, to make the right connections, to plan this far ahead…

Clenching your fist, you stand to your feet. “We have to save Lord Hien.”

“I don’t disagree, but--”

“But what, Chief Merlwyb? I refuse to have another person die because of that bastard!” Your chest is heaving, Cid looking surprised at your outburst while Merlwyb maintains her composure, giving you a knowing look.

“Honey, please calm down.” She urges, reaching across the table to place her hand atop of your own. Something silent passes between the two of you and you take a few calming breaths, sitting back in your seat. “If you will allow me to finish, what I was trying to say is that this is not something we can go into guns blazing. We are dealing with a man who knows how to run circles around the law; this I know well. We will have to make a plan that is fool proof and draws no attention to us.” Her eyes turn to the heir sitting by your side. “Especially now that we’ve got his son on our side.”

At that Zenos fixes Merlwyb with a hot glare. “And where did you get the notion that I would be assisting you in any way, shape, or form?” Zenos asks, his voice even and neutral, but you can see the rage within his eyes.

“If you are not helping us, then why have you stayed here, Zenos?” Cid asks sternly.

“Is it not obvious?” Zenos scoffs, eyes upon you. “My only focus has been, and always will be Honey. But even then…” Something haunting passes through his eyes, seeming far away before coming back to the present. “...even then I could not aid you. I cannot go against my father, but I will no longer aid him either.” Standing to his feet, he prepares to leave but you snag his hand, giving him a pleading look.

“Zenos...I,” you begin, unsure what to say. “We could use your help.”

Shaking his head, he tugs his hand free and continues on his way, saying nothing else. Your heart breaks that much more to see him go.

Stewing in your thoughts a bit, you find yourself a bit hurt at Zenos’ refusal to take down his father, but try to think about it calmly. Given what he revealed to you, that his own mother did not want him, saw him as a monster, who knows what psychological damage had been done to him to make him unwilling to raise a hand against his father?

You’d make a point to ask him about it later, but for the time being, you needed to make a plan. “We’ll have to carry on without Zenos. He’s not against us, which is almost the same as being on our side. Trust me...if Zenos did truly serve his father and Varis had kept me hidden, the only being who can take Zenos down, Varis truly would be unstoppable.” Cid and Merlwyb nod grimly at your words, having no other choice. “Do we have any way of contacting Lord Hien?”

“I have his number due to working with him for the...rally. The only problem is he’s surely seen my funeral and thinks me dead.” Merlwyb answers, flipping through her phone.

“In that case, perhaps Cid can give a call, especially since he has the technology to make sure it isn’t tampered with.” You direct, having taken the lead. “We’ll call Lord Hien and apprise him of as much information as we can. If I have to go in and make the rescue myself, then so be it.”

“Absolutely not.” Cid interjects, eyebrows pinched together. “I will not have you shouldering this entire operation again. Besides, if you’re not familiar with Lord Hien, he’s got an excellent shadow of his own I hear. Yugiri, I believe her name is. What she lacks in your sheer strength she more than makes up for in stealth. In fact, she just might be our ticket to get Lord Hien to safety.”

Unfortunately, Lord Hien has other plans.

Cid contacts Hien as promised, relaying as much information in as little time as possible. Lord Hien expresses his concern and guilt for the recent happenings, and due to the credibility of your accusations, hears you out.

However, he will not escape.

“But Lord Hien,”

The three of you are seated in the same conference room, staring at the TV screen where current Kugane Prime Minister, Lord Hien sits staring back.

“I understand your concern, Mr. Garlond,” Hien pauses, handsome face deadly serious. “But this would be a terrible time to abandon the public. I would go as far to say that my sudden disappearance would only usher Varis into his seat faster.”

Biting your lip, you can’t deny he’s right, but still you worry. “But we can’t let him get to you either!”

“Do not worry for me, my friends.” Hien smiles, as if all will be well. “I did not say I won’t take safety measures. I will remain out of the public eye, and stay hidden with those who I know are loyal to me. These past few years as Prime Minister have allowed me the opportunity to gain many allies.” Hien explains calmly, pausing to take a sip of water. “This will also allow me to help you behind the scenes as well.”

“While we appreciate your aid, Lord Hien, this entire operation is contingent on you living. Will you not reconsider coming into our custody where we know we can protect you?” Merlwyb asks, sounding as strong as ever.

“The operation does not revolve around me, my friends. It revolves around Varis atoning for the crimes he has committed against the people.” Hien frowns, threading his hands together. “He has murdered civilians he is desperate to rule over. Lied and stolen from his constituents. While Kugane needs a good leader, yes, it does not have to be me.” Smiling, something about him makes you wish you knew that kind of calm. “While I appreciate that you want me to remain in my seat, what matters most is his crimes coming to light and being locked away for what he’s done.”

Unable to argue against that kind of logic, you merely stand from your seat. “I understand. I need a moment of rest, so if you will excuse me.”

Not stopping to hear what anyone has to say, you flee from the room, allowing your feet to carry you anywhere within the estate.

Lord Hien either put too much faith in you, or he was a fool.

His certainty that all would be well, that things would work out, where did it come from? You could see his appeal, a confident, easy going charisma backed by an unwavering sense of justice, of doing right by the people. All the things that Varis lacked, that would make Hien the ideal candidate for Kugane.

But he was right. No matter how ideal he was, what mattered most was making sure Varis did not come into power. Even if it meant Hien somehow died in the process.

It was a tough pill to swallow, that Lord Hien was so okay with being a willing target so long as Varis was brought to justice. It made you feel as if his life was in your hands, a deeper part of you whispering to trust in his words, that he would do his best to keep himself safe.

Coming to a stop to a door leading outside, you step out into warm, summer air, feeling the grass between your toes. Days like these did wonder for your mood, making sure you made a point to keep as much stress off of you as possible. With everything going on, it was hard to do, but Merlwyb had aided in that department, making sure you kept your temper in check for the sake of the child growing inside of you.

The thought of getting rid of it had occurred to you more than once, to simply rid yourself of all the “what ifs” and “maybes” and be done with it. But each time you did, you found yourself weakened by the thought of being able to give your child everything you didn’t have. To raise her with the same love and adoration in which Minfilia had raised you.

When this was all said and done, you would have plenty of time to make your escape. Perhaps you would flee to Eorzea, make a new life and name for yourself there. You doubt Zenos would care enough to spend time to track you down on another continent, making it the ideal place to start anew. You could get a new home. You could find a new job.

You could continue running away from the best thing to ever happen to you.

[theroyalmile]

Body by Chemo

Last weekend I went for a 9-mile bike ride to downtown Boston and back.  I was admittedly nervous and skeptical about this ride beforehand for a couple of reasons.  First, it has been years since I rode a bike, and I know there’s that whole expression “It’s like riding a bike” but I’m not sure that expression is all that accurate.  Second, I have never ridden a bike in Boston.  Third, I get winded these days going up and down my stairs, so I was not sure I quite “had it in me.”  But, my whole household was going, it was a beautiful day, and I had been promising myself I would make an effort to be more active.  So off we went.  Oh, and there was a promise of breakfast sandwiches and coffee and donuts once we made it downtown- nobody could say no to that.

The beginning of the ride was rocky.  The original bike I borrowed was just a little too tall for me, and because of that I felt incredibly unsteady.  I traded bikes with one of my roommates and that bike ended up being a better fit for me- a few loops around a parking lot and I thought, “Hey, it really is like riding a bike.” With my confidence reasserted, we hit the bike path.  

The bike ride was, overall, beautiful.  I did find myself getting winded and had to stop a couple of times.  My roommates had been prepared to take it easy with me, and were very supportive.  Eventually we made it the 4.5 miles downtown and I felt so incredibly proud for conquering my first time back on a bike and first time biking downtown, all while dealing with the fatigue, shortness of breath and other goodies that come with my chemo treatment.  I felt empowered and heartened, which made me feel optimistic about the ride back home.

That optimism was short lived; almost immediately after we took off it became apparent that my body simply could not handle it.  I told myself we just had to get out of downtown and back on the bike trail and then I would ask to stop.  We made it and I signaled everyone for a quick break.  I thought maybe if I caught my breath and had some water it would be okay.  One of our bike squad members offered for me to try their bike to see if that made a difference.  I hopped on bikes a block or so, and then hopped off almost immediately- it just wasn’t going to work.  As I hopped off, right after we had crossed an intersection, I heard two men yelling from a car about some girl having a fat ass, or something to that effect.  Regardless of whether they were talking about me or someone else who had crossed the street with us, that was the final kick for me.  Any experienced fat girl understands that you will always think those comments are about you, even when they are not.  (Disclaimer: I do not mean “fat” as something negative, and I am definitely not looking for people to tell me I’m not fat, I’m simply stating a fact about my body).  Anyways, it was at this point I felt the tears of frustration welling up and knew my ride was done.  I told the crew I couldn’t go any further and would walk while they biked on.

There is a certain trauma that comes with being fat and exercising.  It’s almost like you never want someone to see you fail at any kind of physical activity because it feels like you're reinforcing the stereotype, like, oh of course the fat girl can’t finish the bike ride.  My roommate had offered, very kindly, to come back and pick me up in the car.  That was an indignancy I couldn’t bear- it was one thing to fail to finish the ride; it was another to have to be driven home.  No, I said stubbornly, I would walk my bike home.  Caleb of course insisted on walking his bike with me.  

As we walked our bikes I became more and more upset.  Part of it was the embarrassment of being a fat girl walking a bike home.  I almost want to scream at passers by “It’s not because I’m fat- I have cancer!” But another, bigger part of it was the reality of admitting to myself that chemo had changed my body, and it simply wasn’t up to the tasks it might normally have been.  Eventually I became upset enough that I had to stop and let myself have a small breakdown.  Caleb hugged me while I cried and tried to keep me in perspective. “You’re going through chemo” he reminded me, and tried to help me realize that having made it as far as I had was a feat in itself.  He walked across the street to grab me tissues and a gatorade so I could cry, rehydrate, cry, and rehydrate some more. 

****

Here’s the thing about chemo- it has made me feel incredibly betrayed by my body.  I have always been overweight, since my teenage years or even earlier.  Different versions of overweight, but overweight.  That was just the way it was, and I had reached a certain level of acceptance of that.  But I had always prided myself on how active I could be.  Pre-pandemic I could run 4-5 miles no problem.  I would hit the gym three times a week, I would get the steps in.  I was still fat, I was active, and I felt good about myself.  

Because of chemo, I am now fat, inactive, and feel terrible all the time.  I get winded walking up stairs, I am exhausted by my five minute walk from the T to my office downtown, and I find a short walk will tire me out for an afternoon.  And it’s not just my stamina.  It is absolutely everything.

The skin around my mouth had begun peeling and reddening.  My cuticles are dry and peeling and hurt.  My hands and feet are dry and cracked.  My arms are bruised up and down from frequent IVs. I oftentimes cannot open my medicine bottles or jars without help.  My hair, of course, is completely gone, not just on my head, but my nostrils too, leaving me with an almost constant runny nose.  My eyebrows are thinning, along with my eyelashes, and I pray to whoever is listening to please not take those away from me too.  My hands shake, and have turned dark brown from the cytoxan (which thankfully I am done with).  My memory is terrible.  I am breaking out like I’m back and middle school. My joints hurt, my muscles ache, despite me doing nothing all day. AND I get hot flashes now! Oh and I am hungry all the time.  Honestly ALL THE TIME.  

Here’s the thing- my body and I have been in a constant battle since I was 12 years old.  It took me 10-15 years to learn to love my body for what it was, with the understanding I was never going to have the same body as my friends, was never going to fit their clothes, and was never going to be the traditional idea of “in shape.”  But we had come to truce, my body and I.  I had found acceptance, and even joy in my body.  I had even got to a point where I wore a bikini for the first time since I was a child the summer before the pandemic and it felt amazing, liberating.  I followed plus size models like Ashley Graham and Tess Holiday on Instagram and thought heck yeah, if they can do it so can I.  

My cancer treatment has taken the pride I had in my body and the control I had over my activity levels and appearance and destroyed every last piece of it.  When I was having my worst struggles with my body in college, therapists used to ask me to list my favorite things about my appearance.  My top two on that list were always the same: 1) My hair and 2) My boobs.  Well, cancer has taken one of those things from me already and will have taken the other by the end of this summer.  Like I said, my body has betrayed me now in more ways that I can count.  And that betrayal is likely not going to end for a long time.  Honestly not until there is no cancer in my body any more.  Because let’s be real- that’s the biggest betrayal of all.

Whenever I catch myself in the mirror these days it has the potential to ruin my whole day.  There are few outfits that make me feel comfortable and attractive.  My face feels round, rounder without hair to frame it. I try not to look too long, lest I find more things to hate.  I am terrified of upcoming social gatherings, and wonder how on earth will I be able to feel remotely happy about my appearance for them.  

Chemo has reshaped my body in so many ways, some that I am only starting to realize.  It is hard, fitting into this new body and becoming accustomed to it.  It is even harder learning to love it.  Indescribably hard.  I think I can get there but sometimes it’s difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Moments like the complete few minutes of despair I felt during our bike ride sometimes make that light seem even further.  But it’s important to remember those moments are often fleeting, and can change with a little perspective.  

****

After I cried it out on the bike path, I checked the time and realized we really needed to start heading home.  Caleb had a vaccine appointment to make and I was an hour away from committing murder of some poor bystander out of sheer frustration.  I looked on Google maps and found the walk home would be 48 minutes, probably more pushing a bike and with my sad little chemo lungs.  The bike ride home? 12 minutes.  So back on the bike I went, and it took every muscle in my body to pedal that 12 minutes home.  Fueled by my anger and embarrassment, and the residual tears, we eventually made it all the way home.  

I originally found little pride and satisfaction in our trip.  All I could think about was how I couldn’t bike the whole thing, and about how those guys in the car had yelled, and how much I hated my biking outfit, and how defeated and mortified I was feeling.  

Sometimes perspective takes time, but eventually I found some.  I owe a lot of the perspective to Caleb’s support and encouragement both during and after the bike ride, and to my parents pride and excitement as I was telling them about my biking adventure.  I also owe a lot of it to a nap, a much needed shower, and a new day.  With perspective I rediscovered some of that pride I had lost.  Nine miles there and back?  I did that shit.  And yeah, maybe I didn’t bike the whole thing, but I sure as hell did the whole thing, and did the whole thing while in the midst of chemotherapy treatment.  While in the midst of poisoning my body beyond recognition.  I am a freaking badass. 

And what did I do that evening?  Ate my body weight in sushi because I wanted to.  

I know there are going to be a lot more ups and downs like this.  That bike ride was filled with some very high highs and some very low lows.  This is going to happen.  And while I don’t know exactly what to expect from my body in the months to come, I do know that whatever happens I’ll see y’all at the beach in July- I’ll be the fat girl with the bald head in a bikini eating an ice cream cone.

[theheartsmistakes]

The Last Night Part XII

(Author’s Notes: Sup guys! I hope you had a fantastic Fourth of July (for the American readers) and celebrated safely. If you are not American, I hope you had a fantastic weekend! Thank you for your patience while I worked through some writer’s block. I think I’m getting back into a swing though. I started reading a book that is set in the Edwardian period and it has helped me find the dialect and voice that I started with. I’ve been reading a lot of contemporary literature as of late and I think it’s influenced my writing a little, which is fine, but I’m fighting to remain consistent. I’m working on a novel of my own and it’s also based in the Edwardian period, but in a fantasy world, and I’ve been struggling to stay in the same dialect with that too. Anyhoo... I’m rambling... here is part 12. I hope that you enjoy it. Please hit the like, reblog, leave me a comment to cry happily over, and follow along for updates. Be safe! Be kind! Stay healthy.)

Here is Part I

Here is Part II

Here is Part III

Here is Part IV

Here is Part V

Here is Part VI

Here is Part VII

Here is Part VIII

Here is Part IX

Here is Part X

Here is Part XI

Part XII

The following morning, James was settled in a wing chair in the game room, nominally enthralled by a short collection of poetry by Keats. It’d been a comfort to read Keats’ poetry when he would be feeling out of sorts. Perhaps because his father insisted on reading it to him as a child before bed. It seemed even in his adolescent and young adulthood, after weeks of sleepless nights cramming for examinations, going through drills during the day, and shivering through countless patrols in the chilly streets of London, he always enjoyed dozing in the warmth of a well-made fire, with Keats’ heart bleeding through the pages of his collection.

This naturally led to his considering what Keats would do in a situation like his. As his mind wandered into his thoughts, he was aware of the scent of late-blooming climbing rose coming in the window on a puff of air and he noted that the scent might have prompted the thought and he wondered whether Matthew would still be Matthew if he smelled of diesel and boot polish instead of bay rum, and what Cordelia, who smelled of roses and lime blossom to him, would be doing at this time of the day if she weren’t lying in her sick bed.

A swift clatter of boots on the stairs heralded Matthew’s arrival, and he closed the book, without the relief he’d been searching for, for even Keats couldn’t keep his mind from wandering.

“The Silent Brothers have gone,” said Matthew, his tone composed with his usual preferred demeanor of bored indifference.

“Gone where?” asked James.

“Back to the Citadel, I’m assuming,” said Matthew. He tugged at his starched shirt collar, and James could see he was warm with sweat about the neck, as if he had run all the way here. “Brother Zachariah remains and another, but I cannot recall his name, they all look the same to me.”

“Any word on Cordelia or Alastair?”

“Unfortunately not and the adults want a word with us in the dining room post haste. I assume they want a detailed description of our knowledge concerning the events of the night.” Matthew slumped in the other wing chair and covered his face with his arm. “

“Well, that’s certainly a blow to my afternoon plans,” said James, keeping his tone light in the hope that he could convince his parents and friends that he was calm enough to stand outside the bedroom that Cordelia had been moved into. They moved her in the night while he slept and no one would tell him the location due to his sudden outbursts. “If the other Brothers have left, that’s surely a good sign that Cordelia and Alastair are healing and are no longer in need of their attention.”

“It’s possible,” said Matthew from under his sleeve. “My parents are here, as are Kit’s and Thomas’s.” He groaned and added, “Charles insisted on coming as well. My life is over.”

James cursed. “What does he want?”

“‘To get to the bottom of this most unfortunate disaster’,” said Matthew, “his words, not mine. He’ll insist on lecturing us about how insubordinate we’ve all been, and how, seeing as we are underage, we have no business going out after the Carstairs siblings without briefing the adults with the situation first. He’ll make me file his paperwork for a month.”

“You’re being a bit dramatic,” said James.

Even as James spoke he felt the hypocrisy of offering comfort instead of truth. But what truth could he speak to his parabatai? Remembering the whispered conversations between his own parents after James had returned from near death by demon poisoning, James knew with a sinking feeling that his own investigation towards his grandfather would need to be done in absolute secrecy.

“Charles has been wanting to get me behind a desk since we were children,” said Matthew. “My mother will surely not object now that Shadowhunters are being plucked from their carriages in the streets.”

“Well, lucky for Charles, you’ve the best penmanship of all of us,” said James.

“So glad to hear that your humor has returned,”groaned Matthew, hanging his head so that his face was hidden beneath the fall of his hair. “Even if it is at my expense.”

“Pull yourself together, Math,” said James. He stood and tugged the edges of his jacket down as if to reinforce his words. “It will not serve to allow the entire household to hear such agitation. We have faced our parent’s fury before, this will be no different, I’m sure.” There was a pause, and James gazed out the window to allow Matthew a moment to compose himself. While he envied Matthew’s free and easy, passionate nature, his capacity for intense friendships, he always felt squeamish in the face of Matthew’s occasional display of emotion. He was accustomed to his own emotional outburst and Matthew insisting on James to calm down.

“You are right, of course,” said Matthew at last. He pulled a large silk handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead. “Good to see you back to your more rational nature.”

“Thank you,” said James, fully aware that Matthew did not altogether mean it as a compliment. It was hardly fair that Matthew should provoke him into a purse-lipped rigidity and then insult him for it, but James’s first concern was to protect his friend from his own self-indulgence. “Now why don’t we make a suitable plan?” he added. “I’ve learned long ago that it’s best to just nod in the presence of angered adults.”

Matthew nodded as if to show his ability to follow direction. “Perhaps we should share what we know about Belial.”

“I think not,” said James. “My parent’s have already made it quite clear that they don’t want us involved in the investigation any further. We will have to continue it without their knowing.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” said Matthew. “He nearly possessed you and tried to kill Cordelia twice.”

“Which is why we must continue the investigation on how to properly kill him because it can be sure that he will not stop until he has what he wants,” said James. “There has to be a way to kill him properly.”

“I hope it’s something obvious,” said Matthew, “like spritzing him with water or feeding him chocolate.”

A sound of voices in the hallway outside the game room was followed by a light knocking on the door and Thomas’s voice saying, “Of course I’ve forgotten the secret knock, it was far too complex to begin with.”

“They’re here to fetch us,” said Matthew urgently. James noticed that he did have a strange, pale look about his face, but perhaps, he thought, this was the properly deserved effect of too much rough cider.

“By the angel, it’s only Christopher and Thomas,” he said. “You and Thomas can look pale and interesting together. Of course, he’s only just lost his sister. Perhaps his situation will help your sense of perspective.”

“Your sarcasm lacks the delicacy that would render it amusing,” said Matthew. “But thank you for your reason. Your permanent frown always brings me to my senses.”

“I do not have a permanent frown,” said James. He took a brief look into the mirror over the mantle and consciously adjusted his features to a half smile, which only seemed to make him look as if he were in pain.

“Hello gentleman,” said Matthew,  “do come in. It’s mercifully clear of authority in here.”

Christopher and Thomas came through the door, and James found himself slightly relieved that they were alone. Both of them were neatly dressed in tweed trousers, buttoned up shirts with suspenders. Christophers glasses rested on the end of his nose while Thomas' shirt strained heavily around the illustrious girth of his arms. Neither of them seemed to wear any hint of the previous night’s grievances.

“Welcome,” he said. “Is it time then?”

“Just about,” said Thomas and folded his arms across his chest. “I’ve only just arrived with mum and dad and only convinced Christopher’s parents to allow him to leave their side by promising that we were only going as far as to fetch the two of you.”

“It’s already begun,” Matthew blurted out. “Behold men, your last minutes of freedom.”

“What’s he on about?” asked Thomas.

“Pay him no mind,” said James. “He’s consumed with the notion that due to the events of the last few nights our parents are going to handcuff us to desks until we come of age.”

“My mother suggested it,” said Christopher, “but I think my father has made progress against the idea.”

“See,” said James, gesturing to Christopher. “If my aunt Cecily can be brought to sense then so will your parents. Let’s just do what they ask of us and resume our investigation without their knowledge.”

“So not much different from what we’ve been doing for the past seventeen years?” said Matthew, shooting James a look. James could only roll his eyes as Christopher and Thomas drifted to the two wing chairs, where they sat and continued, for some minutes, to turn over the circumstances of the secret Belial investigation in a low and urgent manner.

“Any word on Cordelia and Alastair?” asked James.

Thomas nose flared as he met James’s gaze with an expression of frankness. “No,” he said. “Not that I’ve heard.”

James leaned against the wall and felt an echo of the agony that he had felt the night before and had to quell an urge to run out of the room and demand that someone give him information on the state of his fiance, seeing as far as everyone knew they were still engaged.

“I overheard our mother’s talking,” said Christopher to Matthew. “Alastair woke for a moment last night and was able to communicate with the Silent Brothers, but he is instructed to rest without visitors so that the injuries to his brain can continue to heal.” Matthew grumbled something under his breath. “Cordelia has been placed into an induced coma that she is unable to wake up from on her own. When her injuries have had some time to heal they’ll attempt to wake her up. The good news however is that the cure for her demon poisoning has allowed the runes to take a more immediate effect so she is healing.”

Christopher offered James a reassuring smile, which he appreciated more than he could properly express.

“Forget being tied to a desk,” muttered Matthew. “My mother will probably request having me put into an induced coma instead.”

Tessa Gray sat in the plush velvet couch in the front drawing room with her legs crossed at the ankles and her husband’s hand gently pressed against her shoulder while he sipped brandy from a glass tumbler in his free hand. Aunt Cecily was seated in a wing chair beside the fire with her husband Gabriel a respectful six feet away from Will. Aunt Sophie sat at the other end of the couch with Tessa, her hand held softly in the clutches of Gideon, both of them still carrying the misery of the loss of their eldest daughter Barbara. Charlotte Fairchild stood behind her husband’s wheelchair and beside her eldest son Charles. James knocked on the door and went in followed by Matthew, Christopher, and Thomas.

“Gentlemen,” said Will. “I hope that you all slept well and are prepared for punishment and ridicule.”

“William,” warned Tessa. “We simply want you to recount your details from the night the Carstair’s were attacked.

Matthew shifted beside James.

It had only just occurred to him that he hadn’t seen Lucie since they arrived at the Institute with Cordelia and she wasn’t in the room now. “Where is Lucie? She would have more to tell than any of us would.”

“Lucie has already recounted her experience,” said Tessa, one eyebrow raised. “She’s resting now. It’s the four of you that we wish to speak to now.”

“We are enacting an investigation on this prince of hell Belial,” said Charles, as he moved forward into the center of the room. “If we’re to be successful in locating him and effectively killing him then we need all of the information that you have concerning him.”

“I’ve already told my parents everything that I know about Belial,” said James. Both Will and Tessa turned him a look. James exhaled and began his recount of his experiences with Belial.

“And you believe Belial to be the one to have taken Miss Carstairs?” asked Charles when James was finished.

“I never saw him myself,” said James. “That would be a question for Lucie.”

“She claimed not to have seen him either,” said Charles, removing a pocket watch and checking the time before slipping it back into his trousers. “She said that she found Cordelia in the fog badly injured. She said that she lost you, but once the fog rolled away, you appeared again. Is this not the truth?”

James wasn’t sure what would compel his sister to lie about the events of Cordelia’s rescue, but he had to assume that there was a good reason and one that he would explore later when he could speak to his sister himself.

“It’s the truth,” said James. “As I told you before Lucie disappeared into the fog and I ran after her. We lost each other for some time, and when the fog moved off, she was there again with Cordelia.”

Charles stroked his chin. “It’s been unanimously agreed upon that the four of you, including Lucie and Anna, will be restricted to local patrols during daylight hours and are to report in detail any and all demon activity. If you so choose to break your restrictions then your punishment will be as sever as I see warranted.”

“What exactly would you see warranted?” asked James.

“You’ll be sent to Alicante,” said Charles, his eyes marked on Matthew, “where you’ll remain until you come of age and if you continue to disobey direct orders then the punishment will be as severe as stripping you of your marks.”

“Charles,” Charlotte hissed from beside her husband. “We never mentioned—“

“It is for their own safety, mother,” said Charles, squaring his shoulders. “I do hope it doesn’t come to such extremes, but in this case, the safety of one is the safety of them all. I do hope this will encourage them to keep each other accountable.”

Though it pained James that these new founded restrictions would limit his personal research on finding a way to kill Belial, it did not discourage him in the least. In fact, he was even more excited about the prospect of an opportunity to infuriate Charles. If one of them were to be sent to Alicante, he was sure the rest would follow, and he couldn’t strip them all of their marks. What with Shadowhunters being down in numbers as it were. Charles tactics were classic: infiltrate fear into the army without ever enacting punishment. Not that Charles would ever find out if they were going against him. Charles was too busy building his castle out of sand to see what goes on around him.

“I think Charles has allowed power to go to his head,” said Will, under his breath. He’d been in something of high spirits since Jem had arrived at the Institute and been ordered to stay to help the Carstairs siblings mend. “Don’t fret, Jamie boy, if you are stripped of your marks, Coleridge lived a life of poverty and had to be sustained by charitable friends and he turned out fine.”

“William,” Tessa hissed. “Do be serious for a moment. Jamie, as much as we regret taking away your personal freedoms, it is of the utmost importance that you heed the restrictions put in place for you. Even if he is being a power hungry, conniving, son of a--”

“What your mother is trying to convey,” said Will, moving in front of her, “is that you should be careful and mindful of your action.”

“I could always become a postman like Trollope?” said James. “I’ll begin to work on my beard.”

Will bellowed and clapped James on the shoulder just as the doors to the drawing room were opened by the footman and in walked Brother Zachariah with Sona beside him. Her graying hair has come loose and spilled down her back in an array of perfect waves that mirrored the texture of her daughters. Her expression was somber; deep circles sat under her eyes and her lips were impossibly dry.

Her arm was entwined with Jem’s as they shuffled into the room.

James, followed by Tessa and Will, hurried across the room to meet them.

“Mrs. Carstairs is in need of some rest,” said Brother Zachariah. “She would like to request that James remain with Miss Cordelia while she is away.”

James took her free hand and offered it a reassuring squeeze.

“She is lost in there,” said Sona, her voice rough and weathered. “I can feel it. It helps if you read to her. Let her hear the sound of your voice so she has something to walk towards in all of that darkness.”

“I can show you to a room,” said Tessa, a note of emotion in her voice that she quickly cleared away.

“That would be lovely thank you,” said Sona and removed her arm from Jem’s for Tessa’s.

“Perhaps some light broth,” said Brother Zachariah. “She hasn’t eaten much and I worry for the child.”

Tessa nodded and led Sona from the room.

Brother Zachariah turned his attention to James. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better after some sleep,” said James. “I can go to Cordelia now if you wish.”

“She is having a bath,” said Jem, “but in the next hour. Prepare to make yourself comfortable, perhaps bring some literature. As Sona said before, it is of the utmost importance that you continue to speak to her, give her something to walk towards, or the Cordelia that you know can become lost in her thoughts forever.”

James' voice became bitter. “Why is she in a coma if it means she could become lost inside of her mind? Can’t you wake her up?”

“The injuries that she has sustained would be too terrible to be conscious during,” said Jem. “The body is able to heal much quicker if the mind is asleep to the pain.”

James drew himself into as stiff of a column as he could and clamped his teeth down on a small quiver of his jaw. He resolved himself in that moment to give Cordelia whatever she needed; if he had to read to her for days, weeks, even months then that was what he would do.

(Next update is going to be Sunday 7/12... maybe)

[presumenothing]

Would you ever write uhhhhh Wrath!Riza AU?

your brain, anon. i like it

-

aqua regia (for destruction, ice) // AO3

Not all that burns is fire. 

(Or: Riza becomes Wrath.)

-

i. 

In another world Riza Hawkeye might have asked the Flame Alchemist to burn away the circle on her back, might have looked at those scars in the mirror and pretended they could lift any of the weight from her shoulders.

In this world that is the least dangerous of everything Wrath carries: a stone at her core red as her eye behind the rifle scope, as hands complicit in plans to burn up this country tearing the heavens from their sky.

She cannot walk away from death as easily as Lust or Envy can, but when the elixir had slid into her veins Riza had burned from the inside and Wrath had walked away with that fire still in her veins, always searing beneath skin that she doubts mortal flame can scar.

(“Now hold still, dear girl,” the scientist had said, gold tooth gleaming dull in lab-light, “it’ll hurt worse if you struggle,” and Riza had remembered Berthold Hawkeye saying the same thing to Wrath at ten and fifteen and eighteen, red on her skin red underneath red burning its way into her heart, and it had been a lie then too.)

.

ii.

Wrath is angry at everyone and everything at once; furious at the ones who had found a cadet with steady hands and steadier soul and saw fit to unmake that, at herself, at those who knew how blood-drenched this country was and kept painting it anyway. The first time she had seen Roy Mustang again she would have snapped his neck clean in half if not for the knowledge of how valuable State Alchemists were in the chessboard of this country.

(That, and her own distaste for the heat of blood over her own hands. Riza has heard enough from Father and the other homunculi to surmise that the previous incarnations of Wrath had loved blood like the edge of a blade freshly sharpened on diamond.

But she is a sniper – the best markswoman Amestris has ever seen, even before they gave her an eye that could see through anything. Why else would they have chosen her?)

She is the Hawk’s Eye, the Fury of Ishval, hell and its woman scorned all in one, and she makes it known in constellations of bullets and impossible shots, precise and deadly as any alchemist’s array.

Riza had been angry too, when she had let herself be, but hers is a cold ire, locked beneath glaciers and the burn of frostbite.

Wrath makes no such pretences. Wrath answers to a dead woman’s name, and Officer – Lieutenant – Major Hawkeye holds her anger boiling right under the surface, scalds her hands in it and fires the next shot.

.

iii.

Roy Mustang holds her at a careful arm’s length.

It might’ve been offensive if it weren’t so ironic. He of all humans should know what it means to hold flame in your hands: let one weakness slip and fire would burn it right through like so much dry grass.

Then again, maybe it’s that same familiarity that breeds wariness. Riza would hardly know. Fury is not the absence of fear, but in her case it’s fairly close anyway.

Either way, it’s the same distance that prevents Mustang from recognising Wrath’s work in doctoring the Elric brothers’ documents a whole two decades older. 

He decides to take Havoc with him, citing something about the persuasion of fellow Easterners; Riza remains in East Command and doesn’t wonder how he will react to finding out that the alchemists he is looking to enlist as human weapons are just barely a third his age.

Not even half of hers, unless you counted the several years since she had become Wrath. 

Company for you, Riza thinks none too quietly, and Wrath bristles, shoving her away to wrest back control.

(Riza lets her. This is exactly the duty she’d been assigned – locating potential sacrifices among the State Alchemists and beyond, so there’s not even any insubordination for Wrath to report, even if she won’t realise until much later how spot on she’d been to find one who’d already been through the Gate.

For now she listens to the Flame Alchemist’s empty-handed return from Resembool, hears him say with seemingly unwarranted certainty I saw the fire in his eyes, and this time she does wonder how he can notice that yet miss the same thing in hers.

Riza knows what she sees in the mirror, after all, even if she always has one eye hidden behind a false lens and swept fringe.)

.

iv.

Wrath, unsurprisingly, finds the Fullmetal Alchemist an absolute riot. 

Eight pints of unrefined rage wrapped in red with the volume cranked up to fifty percent past maximum, and if you had asked anyone at all to name one person in this room who might be the personification of fury itself – well.

Edward Elric gets angry in a way that neither of them know how to be. Riza runs cold where Wrath veers hot, but it’s always controlled, the reins another line in the delicate balance between them; in contrast Edward is an explosion, angry and incandescent with it, and sometimes Riza almost wishes they were like that too.

(No you don’t, Wrath mutters over the scratch of a pen.

Riza blinks and sighs, blacking out a line of expletives about Hakuro and the latest shitshow he’d thrown at them; homunculi weren’t much for paperwork. It’d make some things easier, you have to admit. He gets things done.

Like getting himself nearly killed three separate times in a week, ooh, aren’t you supposed to be babysitting the sacrifices, Wrath? I’d like to see them doing it–

Riza doesn’t sigh again, but it’s close.)

Neither of them feel particularly bad about keeping silent over the Elrics’ search when she’s sitting right here, but on Riza’s part it’s mostly because she’s seen enough to be certain that Edward at least would never use a Philosopher’s Stone if he learned what had gone into its making.

Wrath is just looking forward to the day he does find out. Now that’ll be something to watch.

.

v.

She meets Greed walking down a hallway one afternoon, nodding cordially at the flurry of salutes as he passes each of his people.

Wrath doesn’t miss a beat with her own salute. “Your Excellency.”

“At ease, Major,” the Fuhrer replies with a wave of his hand, but he slows down anyway. “I hear young Elric has made some – acquaintances, shall we say, from Xing with exceptional sensing capabilities. He does collect the most interesting people. I’m impressed.”

“Fullmetal doesn’t take kindly to being called young, sir,” Riza says. “I did hear the same, but I haven’t had the chance of meeting them yet.”

(Not for the first time, she wonders why they had thought it a good idea to put Amestris and all that it represents in Greed’s hands. If humans are possessions to be had, what stopped him from deciding that he’d rather keep it all for himself in the end?)

The Fuhrer smiles, benign as any lethal poison. “Let me know if you’d like some time back in the East, I’m sure your grandfather would enjoy a visit too.”

“I have my duties here, and I’m afraid I’m not much of a chess player. It would only bore General Grumman.”

Wrath’s hands do not tense at her sides, but only because they’re both too disciplined for that. Her aim is every bit as true as his swords, and she might not be able to die and walk away unscathed but neither can Greed; how dare he, Riza thinks.

How dare he, Wrath seethes in agreement, and perhaps it’s time to let some things slip to the Elrics after all.

(She is angry at them, for taking this entire plan one-and-a-half steps closer to fruition, but Riza is angry at everyone; this is just par for the course.

The difference is that she is even angrier for them. Riza barely remembers her mother, and if Berthold had still been alive Wrath would have killed him anyway, so she cannot honestly say that she understands the Elrics in that regard.

But Edward rages at the universe demanding equivalency from it while Alphonse aims cuttingly sharp remarks and wonders about his humanity in the next breath. They would be furious if they knew, anger burning hot and frigid cold, and she is Wrath and Riza Hawkeye and both and neither – this, she understands.)

.

.

+1.

“There was something I’d wanted to ask of you, after Ishval, if – things had been different,” Mustang finishes blindly in more ways than the literal, and it’s irritating what a production he can make out of not saying if I hadn’t mistrusted you.

Riza’s fringe is properly out of her eyes for the first time in years, not that he can see it, and she’d walked away from the Promised Day essentially unscathed but the Philosopher’s Stone is gone now along with Wrath; if she did ask the Flame Alchemist to burn away the circle after regaining his eyesight it would even scar over properly.

She won’t. She knows she won’t. 

Wrath had known it too. Riza still hasn’t quite parsed the jumbled impressions of those last moments, but above all of it there had been mirth. Amusement, because they had both looked at Riza’s soul unfolding around them and recognised the anger there that was hers. Had always been, only shut away and sunk deep in ice. 

If she has any fire in her veins now it is only proverbial, but she is still the Hawk’s Eye, the Fury of Ishval, and there’s more than enough left to burn the next person who tries to lay hands on her.

She looks at Roy Mustang now and continues to not snap his neck because he might be the best hope for this sorry excuse of a country, and anyway if she strangled an injured man in his hospital bed Wrath would laugh at her from another plane and say told you so, he had it coming.

“I’d rather you continue not asking it, Colonel,” Riza says, controlled as ever, but the anger is her own and she relishes the cold-hot burn of it. “I was Wrath, sir, consider yourself lucky that I didn’t let my finger slip on the trigger anytime during Ishval.”

Mustang winces, like he’d managed to avoid consciously putting it together until this point. “I suppose that, ah, rather answers it anyway. So that’s a no to supporting my bid for presidency?”

“That depends on your plans. Which you can tell me about after I’ve returned from my month’s worth of personal leave,” she adds pointedly, and turns to go instead of adding that Greed’s not exactly a high bar to beat anyway. “Have a speedy recovery, sir. Good day.”

Mustang’s expression as the door closes suggests that he’s actually okay with having a second-in-command that has been angry at him for years, and she’s… not sure what to do with that, really, but maybe she can work with it. Maybe.

(Fury is not the absence of fear, nor a dearth of kindness; the Elrics are proof enough of that. Riza knows what she saw in the mirror this morning, familiar and foreign all at once, and she’ll just have to figure out the rest from there.

Perhaps she’ll drop by Resembool and stay for a bit. She’s not angry at anyone there, not anymore – it might be a nice change of pace for once.)

.

.

.

EDIT: NOW WITH ART FROM ART

(more fics here)

oh boy. this was literally stream of consciousness on my part with even less planning than usual, impossible as that sounds – all i knew i wanted was for wrath!riza to be much more like greed!ling than wrath!bradley, because otherwise what would be the point. 

but then even as i was writing i realised how many people riza would have reason to be angry at, justified or otherwise: roy for the whole flame alchemy thing, the elrics for getting into this mess, even grumman for leaving her with berthold if he’d even suspected what was going on (and for the record, wrath would 100% killed berthold on riza’s behalf if he hadn’t already been dead)

and then i dithered on how to finish this (and indeed whether to finish it at all, i was tempted to throw hands after the second to third sections) but then my three brain cells summarily went GIVE RIZA HAWKEYE AGENCY GIVE IT BACK TO HER and fuck yeah i agreed. so here we are. in this verse roy never asks her the whole “guard my back but also shoot me if i go wrong” thing, because it’d just be… utterly ridiculous, in context, and also it’s possible that riza ends up leaving the military entirely or goes to support olivier for fuhrer instead. wrath would certainly appreciate the hell outta that

anyway this is a mess and probably the most ooc riza i have ever written but i hope y’all enjoyed it anyway

title notes: aqua regia aka regal water, a nitric/hydrochloric acide mixture so named by alchemists for dissolving noble metals like gold + a bit cribbed straight off robert frost

[therainbowwillow]

https://therainbowwillow.tumblr.com/post/639917088173113344/alright-its-been-a-hot-second-since-ive-written -Part 1

Okay, Hadestown Fanfic With Crossovers Where Orpheus’s Terms are Different and Also ✨Olympus Drama✨Part 2/???

I think my greatest struggle in writing is... posting it. And deciding on a consistent plot. That too. Expect changes. Edit: Well, well, well, there’s a draft feature on this website? I might just migrate to Tumblr.

I may make an overview post at some point so you don’t actually have to read this. A long TL;DR probably, because it is written by Miss What-Is-Concise. My TL;DRs need TL;DRs of their own. Anyway, I’m rambling, so let me actually get started.

Preemptive:

-Orpheus is Apollo’s kid in this version, as he is in many retellings. He is raised by Hermes.

-Hermes works for Hades, bringing souls to the underworld. He resides away from Olympus to fulfill said duties.

-Dionysus’ parentage is by Persephone and Hades. (Because there’s no way Persephone’s screwing Zeus in the other room. Also this is his more underworld-connected family ties.)

-You drink from the River Lethe, according to some ancient authors, to forget your past life. And if Virgil can blatantly rip off Homer, I’m stealing ideas too.

-Would you look at that? This “short” AU fic is expanding by the minute. Hades and Persephone’s are true to the musical and that’s about it at this point.

Eurydice drags Orpheus to his feet. He leans against her. “Eurydice...” he mumbles. “I... I’m so sorry.”

“I signed my life away. That wasn’t up to you. We need to get going.”

Orpheus nods. “Why’s he letting us go? I don’t remember... anything really. I sang. Then I...” he turns away. “It felt like I was sitting in a fire. I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t think. It was unbearable.”

“I’ll never let them lay a finger on you again.”

“You didn’t answer me. Why’s he letting us go?” he asks, softly.

“He’s not,” Persephone mutters. “He wants you to fail. Then he’ll have a canary for his mines.”

Orpheus shudders at the thought. “My song... I thought... Persephone, I think I rewrote every note a hundred times. I lost the love of my life for that melody. And... it failed.”

“Just walk, okay? Please. Once we’re out of here, none of it matters,” Eurydice pleads.

“H-how far?” He’s almost afraid to ask. The original walk had been a grueling task. This one, he thinks, might be a hundred times harder. Whatever Hades had done to him... the effects hadn’t faded. Eurydice must already think he’s a selfish, naive, worthless idiot, he’s certain, so he plans to stay quiet. Unless it gets bad. Only if he needs to tell her, he decides.

“A mile, maybe a little more,” Persephone replies. “We’ll rest in my old greenhouse. It’ll be a roof over our heads at least. Don’t look back,” she warns. “Hades’ servants will follow us. Don’t give them a reason to think we’re afraid.”

Eurydice wraps and arm around Orpheus’s waist. “Tell me if you need a break.” He nods.

———————————

Hades sinks into his office chair. A painting of his wife hangs on the wall. He’s posing at her side. They’re smiling. She’s holding a bouquet of flowers. He rises and storms over to the portrait. He rips it of the wall and it crumples to the ground, torn in two.

He glances out the window. He’s viewing his realm from the highest point in Hadestown. The landscape is as flat as a sheet of paper. No hills, no mountains, only rivers, flowing by some force that is not the gravity of the overworld. His tower is the only peak. And the smokestacks of his factories.

This is his realm. All of it is his. Every inch of dirt, every scrap of metal and gemstone beneath the ground. Every sullen face of every tortured worker who’d sold his soul away. The wall is his too. And the Styx, which wraps it 7 times over. He’s a king and his castle is protected by the highest of palisades and yet... that boy... that son of Apollo had taken it all from him. What is a king without his iron fists? Now he had shown softness, now he’d shown weakness. A crack in the wall will bring the whole structure down, he thinks to himself. But what else can he do? Persephone is his wife. She is *his*. To imagine a thousand winters and springs and summers without her...

The underworld is lonely. He cannot lose her. But he cannot let the boy escape. Nor his lover, nor his traitorous workers. If he shows them an inch, they’ll take a mile. Worse, the traitors were right. Orpheus is alive. Orpheus is not his. That poet is all that stands in the way of his kingdom. And like any barrier, he will fall. How? Hades wonders. How can he kill the boy, break his spirit and punish him without losing Persephone? What blinds his wife? he asks himself. That silly little song had manipulated him, taken hold of his heart like alcohol. And Persephone loves it. She believes, truly believes, that Orpheus deserves to live for the very reason he must die.

Hades slams his fists against the window. Perhaps she was right. He ought to follow in his brothers’ footsteps. Forget his wife. That simple action would be enough to fix everything. If he let her go, she’d have nothing to hold over him. He wouldn’t be her puppet. He’d kill Orpheus, chain up the boy’s foolish lover and send Achilles and Patroclus to the darkest mines, and force them to work day and night apart from each other. Sure, the bunch of them would whine like kenneled puppies, but he could take their cries. They’d forget everything if he could get them to drink from the Lethe. Orpheus would be easy. Threaten his pretty little muse and he’d be scrambling to his knees. Eurydice would be nothing without her poet. Achilles would resist. He’d fight a millennia before he or his lover bowed before their king. But they too would fall.

Only Persephone stands in the way, he knows. He likes to imagine he has her under his control. But he knows it’s a lie. The food of the underworld she’d eaten, it didn’t confine her as well as he’d hoped. Sure, her time above ground would be made unbearable, but she would still be out of his grasp. She could leave. She would leave. He knows her threats aren’t empty. So he’ll find a way around her. He needs her to come back. Without Persephone’s warmth, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.

He watches the crowd of shades begin to disperse and it dawns on him. Orpheus gives them hope, but he makes them afraid. How many deceased reside in Hadestown? It’d take a hundred thousand mortal lifetimes to count. And how many had stepped forward to help the poet boy? Two. Among that crowd, he knew, were great heroes. Heroes who once resided in Elysium. And still, only two shades had betrayed him. Two out of a trillion. Hades smiles. He won’t need to kill Orpheus. One of his workers can take the fall. Even Achilles won’t succeed in standing against an army the size of his. And Hades will win. His wife will see that some dead man has killed the singer to appease his king. She’ll suspect, but without proof, what does she have on him? Eurydice will see she has no choice. Once the boy belongs to him, Orpheus is his to manipulate. She’ll be trapped. Achilles, for all of his strength, is nothing alone. Without his dear Patroclus, he’ll give in. And so Hades plots.

————————————

Hermes, god of roads and messages, receives word of his adoptive son’s predicament with astounding speed. And he fears for Orpheus. But Hermes guides souls to the underworld, to Hades. To betray the king of Hadestown by helping the boy would be to lose his work and by extension, his freedom to live on the railroad. Without an excuse, he’d be back on Olympus, listening to Zeus and Hera’s endless bickering, watching Ares and Aphrodite humiliate themselves, and helping Dionysus comfort Apollo over the death of the mortal pretty boy of the week. And they wonder why Artemis avoids the damn place at all costs. In fact, he’s stuck on Olympus right now, called to the counsel by Zeus? Athena? He can’t remember. Some mortal breaking some rule.

Orpheus is more important than the meeting. His messenger had interrupted the counsel meeting to bring him word of the poor boy’s situation. He’s not sure how to cover this one up. No one was meant to interrupt important matters as this. Plus, he’d given the kid directions straight into Hadestown, which was the opposite of what his contract with Hades had said. He wasn’t allowed to barter for the return of mortal souls and he wasn’t allowed to assist mortals in doing the same.

“Hermes!” Zeus booms. “What is the meaning of this?”

He rolls his eyes. “Begone, messenger.” He slips a note into the man’s hands: ‘Tell Orpheus I’m coming.’ “Nothing, father. Just... matters of work. You know how Hades is. And don’t get me started on Thanatos! I’m late by half a second and-“

“Enough! I’ve half a mind to banish you from this counsel.” Hermes smiles. His excuses have succeeded.

Dionysus laughs, considerably beyond tipsy on his own wine. “You mind if I go too? I’m sick of this awful alcohol and I’ve got something far better back home.”

“Dionysus, wasn’t there an agreement we made?” Athena inquires, icily. “You cannot come to our meetings drunk.”

He smiles. “Well, you see,” he snaps his fingers and shakes his head, washing away his intoxication. “I didn’t come drunk. I *got* drunk while here.” He raises a flask and shakes it, refilling the canteen instantly. “There’s a difference.”

Athena grits her teeth. “Father, one more of these counsels and I swear...”

“And husband,” Hera pipes up, “We were going to address that nymph girl you’re always hanging around?”

Zeus flushes a deep shade of red. “Out. All of you. We’re done here.”

Hermes rises, forcing himself to keep his composure, at least until he’s out of sight. He steps into the sunlight that dazzles Olympus, treks the road to the edge of the mortal realm and... “Hermes?”

“Gods have mercy,” he mutters. He turns. “Apollo.” The god is puffy-eyed, probably from crying. Even Hermes had to agree, his latest lover had been gorgeous. Hyacinthus, was his name, if he remembered correctly. Apollo himself had called the counsel to beg for mortality when the boy had died and he hadn’t found another for what? Seventeen years? Spare for Orpheus’s muse mother, of course. Still, this was unusual, even for Apollo’s mellow dramatic self.

“You’re afraid.”

“Don’t... don’t do that, would you?” Hermes snaps, recoiling. “Yeah, yeah, medicine and all, but I don’t want you telling me what I’m thinking.”

Apollo dips his head in acknowledgment. “It’s my son, isn’t it?”

Hermes shakes his head. One word to Zeus and... all Prometheus did was hand over a spark. This was treason. “No, just work.”

Apollo tilts his head. “You’re lying.”

“What cause would I have for lies? I cannot keep Hades waiting, now.” He whirls away from Apollo’s gaze.

“Perhaps... treason?” Apollo inquires. Hermes’s eyes widen.

“Strong accusations.” He forces his voice not to shake.

“I won’t turn you in.” Liar, Hermes thinks. He wants to get on Zeus’s good side. A chance at getting his lover boy back.

“Correct. You wouldn’t have anything to turn me in for,” he tells the son of Leto.

“Orpheus’s wife... no, fiancée. No... I don’t know! The girl. She’s dead. Orpheus’s song is a failure. I heard it from Olympus. Lovely, really. But not nearly enough to convince Hades to let her go. Nothing is.”

Hermes turns again to face his half-brother. “Keep your voice down, would you? If Zeus hears a word of this-“

Apollo cuts him off. “And you helped him. You broke your contract and you know Hades better than anyone, other than Persephone, if they still talk these days. He’s crueler than he once was. They say Elysium itself is no more, that there’s only Tartarus now. You’re afraid of his wrath. And you’re afraid of Zeus. He’ll punish you too. You saw what he did to Asclepius. Struck by lightning for treason against Hades. And that was before this... winter,” he says, softer now.

“I don’t want a lecture, Apollo. What do you want?” Hermes glares at the god.

“I want a deal.”

Hermes narrows his eyes. “What kind of deal?”

“You break me in to the underworld-“

“No. I’m in enough danger as is.”

“Hear me out.”

“I said no!” Hermes steps back onto the road. Apollo grabs his wrist.

“I can get you out of trouble. Dionysus!” The wine god steps out of the woods.

“I’m due to visit my mother. Hades won’t prevent me from entering his realm, I’m his son,” Dionysus explains. “You and Apollo are there on Demeter’s ask to learn why Persephone is late. You, because you’re the god of messages and Apollo because he was available, on leave from his duties to mourn.”

Hermes groans. “The walk is far. Even if you’re me. Days on end of moping and drunken ramblings for a plan almost certain to backfire? I said no.”

Apollo smiles. “Then I’ll turn you in,” he says simply.

“You won’t. Orpheus is your blood. You’d put him in more danger. He knew of my contract and he let me break it. You’d add a charge against him. And it’s me. You cared once, didn’t you?”

“You know I would. You said so yourself. I visited the poet boy twice, maybe. And you? Ask yourself: when was the last time you optionally visited Olympus? But Hyacinthus, I loved for years. If I turn you in, I’m one step closer to him. On Zeus’s good side again.” Hermes shifts on his feet. “It’ll be good to have a doctor at the boy’s side too, seeing as your instructions just about starved him to death.”

Hermes glares at him. “Don’t.”

“You know it’s true. So? Let’s go or you trade places with Prometheus.”

“Fine,” he mutters, through a clenched jaw.

“Good. Now, this is on our terms, Hermes. I will aid your son because you’ve always been good to me and because he is my blood. If he gets in my way, he belongs to Hades.”

[brycelahelas]

take care

rating: mature

book: open heart

summary: God. God. It was a bad idea going here. You want nothing more than to head to the bathroom and crawl out the window and just fucking run wherever the hell your legs take you. You want to run until the ache in your legs makes you forget all of your memories tainted with Rafael, until your lungs constrict to the point that you forget what it felt like to have Rafael’s lips on yours.

Maybe Landry had it right. Maybe emotions do hold us back. And maybe that’s your fatal flaw: you feel and care and love too much to the point that it bites you in the ass. It always did, in the end.

word count: 8000+

notes: THIS TOOK SO LONG FOR NO REASON....literally took me four weeks to complete bc i cannot finish anything in a timely manner. but i hope you all enjoy this 8k+ piece. i love to see interaction so pls reblog and like if you enjoyed! and let me know what you think of it! you can also read this on ao3 here.

dedicated to my lover my wife my shawty my life miss jade... happy birthday!!!

tagging: @zadiechoi @zigtheeortega @senatorraines @bigtoughswordboy​ (if you would like to be added to the list let me know!)

Of all the emotions you could be feeling right now, you find that, at the core of it all, you feel nothing.

This feeling isn’t indifference. Because if it were, you wouldn’t have this ache reverberating all over your body. And although you have a heightened sense of the blood coursing through your veins, of your heart pulsating against your chest, you bite your tongue, shake Sora’s hand, and say nothing when she kisses Rafael goodbye.

When she leaves, you look him in the eyes, sharply inhaling as you struggle to say, “You two are cute together.”

“You think so?” he answers, careful with his words as he eyes Bryce warily. When Bryce gets the message and leaves to greet Ethan, Rafael looks at you once again, eyes almost apologetic. You’re suddenly aware of the distance between you two and the tension that has settled in the air. As he moves closer towards you, you instinctively step forward, but upon realizing what you’re doing, you move back, away from the arms that you know so well, away from the man who once loved you.

He notices this and frowns, only slightly. “Listen,” he starts, voice so low you could mistake it for silence. “About us...I want you to know I still—”

You raise your hand, cutting him off. With your eyes squeezed shut, you take slow breaths and hope that the tears would go away if you didn’t look at him anymore. “Don’t worry, Raf,” you say softly, defeat resound in your voice. “You don’t owe me an explanation. I get it. She’s your childhood sweetheart.”

Just as you turn away from him to go into the hospital, you hear him say, tone just above a whisper, “...Okay.”

The defeat in his voice sounds exactly as it did in yours.

“Are you okay?”

You’ve never heard Esme sound so panicked. As you snap out of your daze, you find that you’ve been standing next to a patient, hands shaking as you hold a needle next to a protruding vein. Thankfully, the patient’s eyes are squeezed shut, looking away in hopes that you would insert their IV quickly.

You insert it in one fluid movement, leaving the plastic tube in and pulling the needle out. Once you let the nurses take over, you grab your clipboard and walk out of the room with Esme trailing close behind you.

“How long was I just standing there?” you finally say once you both enter the elevator and you press the button for the ICU. The silence is palpable, as it usually is with Esme, but her eyes betray a sense of concern.

“Too long,” she answers. “Look, really, are you okay? You’ve been out of it all day.”

“I’m fine,” you say, although visibly the opposite. Esme, being Esme, doesn’t push further.

Silent devastation.

Nothing comes close to accurately describing how you feel about this Rafael situation, but that’s what you settle on. There are no painkillers strong enough to dull the ache in your heart, no way of relieving you from the reality that Rafael isn’t yours anymore. But you live with it, day by day, and it’s apparently starting to show.

After shift change, Bryce bumps into you in the atrium and announces that it’s a Donahue’s night. “My treat,” he tells you, smiling wide as he wraps an arm around your shoulders. “You need it. And you can’t say no because it’s doctor’s orders.”

That elicits a small chuckle from you. “And if I do end up saying no?”

“Then you’ll have to sign an AMA form. But, as you know, it’s not recommended to go against medical advice.”

“Well, I guess I have no choice,” you tell him, grinning softly. “To Donahue’s it is.”

He flashes you that thousand kilowatt smile again and steers you out of Edenbrook and into Donahue’s.

On Fridays, Reggie always makes sure to decorate Donahue’s in a specific theme. Tonight is Samba Night, according to the flyer by the door. Mainly Edenbrook employees crowd Donahue’s, but the vibe is jovial as always, with more five dollar margaritas scattered around the place than usual. You spot your friends in their usual booth, joined by a few of the interns, and they wave you over excitedly.

“Over here!” Sienna calls out as she spots you and Bryce at the entrance. She’s sidled up next to Danny but makes space for you to sit next to her.

As you settle into your seat, all your friends suddenly blast you with questions about your day. How was your shift? Did you have any codes? Did you hear about the rapid response in ICU? Did you hear about the code grey in ED? It’s a dizzying array of questions, and something feels off about it, as if they’re saying so many things at once to startle you. You don’t realize what it is they’re doing until you follow Sienna’s line of sight.

When Rafael walks in with his arm around Sora’s waist, you fall incredibly still. Beside you, Jackie scoffs.

“What is he thinking bringing her here? God, I’m gonna need another shot.”

“I’m right there with you,” you say, suddenly feeling a heaviness in your chest. You turn sharply towards Bryce. “Bryce? Your treat, right?”

Bryce looks at you worriedly but stands right away. “On it,” he says and heads towards the bar.

God. God. It was a bad idea going here. You want nothing more than to head to the bathroom and crawl out the window and just fucking run wherever the hell your legs take you. You want to run until the ache in your legs makes you forget all of your memories tainted with Rafael, until your lungs constrict to the point that you forget what it felt like to have Rafael’s lips on yours.

Maybe Landry had it right. Maybe emotions do hold us back. And maybe that’s your fatal flaw: you feel and care and love too much to the point that it bites you in the ass. It always did, in the end.

Either way, you couldn’t bring yourself to care anymore. Rafael made his choice, and it wasn't you. Fucking deal with it. Huffing, you grab Elijah’s margarita (much to his dismay) and down it all in a few sips. You needed all the alcohol you can get in your system in order to survive the inevitable interaction between you and Sora and Rafael. Dr. Yoeun, Elijah’s intern, watches with wide eyes as you slam the completely empty glass on the table.

It’s Sora who spots you first. Eyes bright and lips pulled into a smile, she basically drags Rafael to your table in order to greet you. You feel yourself tense up as the both of them get to your table, but you feel a hand slip into yours and squeeze. It’s a presence that feels reassuring and familiar. As you look down and realize it’s Sienna’s hand, you can’t help but smile at the interaction and squeeze her hand back.

“Hey! Long time no see!” Sora says, diving into your arms and wrapping you in a tight hug. With your free hand, you give her a soft pat on the back, and she pulls away, grinning. “This is such a nice bar! I’ve never been here before.”

Rafael pipes up from next to her, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. “I just got off a shift and wanted to show her Donahue’s. Hope that’s okay.”

“Come on, Raf, you know we don’t own Donahue’s!” Elijah jokes. His tone offsets the tension at the table, which helps Rafael ease up a bit. “You’re welcome here anytime. You don’t need our permission.”

Rafael nods, looking away from the table. “Well,” he finally says, exhaling a bated breath, “I hope you guys have a good one.” Sora quickly waves goodbye, and the two head off to another part of the bar, most likely in an effort to avoid you.

When Bryce returns to the table with the drinks, you immediately down your whole shot. And another. Then another. It’s probably a good thing that you’re off tomorrow because tonight you’re just going to drink to your heart’s content and cease to think.

The thing is, you can’t bring yourself to hate Sora. She always leaves nice comments on your Instagram posts, and she always makes it a point to greet you whenever you run into each other at Donahue’s. There isn’t anything to hate besides the fact that she’s your ex’s new girlfriend. (Or is it old girlfriend? New-old girlfriend? Rekindled flame?)

Well, whatever she is to Rafael, she’s nice to you. And she’s wonderful to him, which is all you can ask for, really. No matter how desperately you want to hate her, you can’t. She’s given you no reason to.

There you go again. Feeling and caring and loving too much. It really will be the death of you.

You don’t see Rafael for a few months after that. At this point, it isn’t him avoiding you; it’s just that your jobs don’t make you cross paths, as is expected. Whatever Rafael-sized ache you had in your heart is gone. It’s just the thought of what could have been that bothers you occasionally.

And you do think of him, occasionally. It’s hard not to. You’re always wondering how he’s doing—if he’s eating enough, if he’s sleeping well, if he’s staying safe. Rafael’s always been such a selfless person, someone who lives by the philosophy that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. That worries you. For someone who is always taking care of other people, he doesn’t take quite good care of himself, and one day that’s going to bite him in the ass.

Well, in any case, it’s out of your hands now. At least, that’s what you tell yourself. You have your own patients to deal with and a grizzled senior resident to report to.

A low, menacing voice snaps you out of your thoughts. “You.”

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. When you turn around, you see Zaid beckoning you towards him. “Emergency Department. Now.”

As you fall into step with Zaid, rushing towards the Emergency Department, you ask, “What’s the situation down there? Do we have to run triage?”

“Not necessarily,” he answers. “It’s just high census there right now. Lots of virus scares, among other things. The ED physicians are getting overwhelmed so they enlisted our help.”

You nod silently. You were never too fond of the Emergency Department as an intern. Too much panic and frenzy down there with not enough space to think. You worked better on floors like the ICU or Medical Surgical, where you can take time to actually speak to the patients and work on a diagnosis. At the very least, the ED presented a challenge to you that could potentially be useful in building your diagnostician skills.

When you step through the doors of the ED, you see what Zaid means about high census. All the rooms, including the overflow beds, are filled with people, and every room presents a different case. While you definitely wanted to start in the rooms whose patients likely had an infectious disease, your eyes are drawn to an overflow patient who is wearing a very familiar paramedic uniform. As you draw closer to the patient, your walk quickly turns into a sprint when your suspicions about who it is are confirmed.

“Rafael, what happened?” you ask him, panicked. He’s clutching his side, face grimacing in pain. When you inspect him closer, you see that blood has seeped into his blue uniform.

A nurse approaches the two of you with the suture cart and stops right beside you. “The patient got stabbed during a call, but it’s only a surface wound. No pulmonary or great vessel trauma. A suture is needed though.”

The second she finishes, a call light goes off in ED Room 1, and you notice that she eyes it with a sigh. “ED Room 1 is your patient?” you ask her.

“Yes,” she answers. “Sweet old lady. She’s needed water for the past five minutes, but I haven’t been able to get her because of the craziness going on.”

“Go,” you tell her, waving her off. “I’ll take care of this suture for you.”

The nurse thanks you and walks off, leaving you and Rafael alone. After gathering your supplies for the suture, you sit next to him, aseptically clean the area, and get to work. Neither of you say anything until you rub numbing cream around the stab wound. It’s then that he lets out a hiss.

“You need to stop getting yourself into these situations, Raf,” you murmur softly as you finish the preparations for the suture. When you move to change your gloves, you hear a soft, restrained laugh coming from him.

“You, of all people, should know that I can’t do that,” he mumbles, shutting his eyes as you proceed to prepare the needle. “It’s my job to protect people—to rescue people. I’ll keep getting into these situations if it means I save someone’s life.”

“And if it costs your own?”

He answers without hesitation. “Then so be it.”

“We’re stitching in three...two...one...” You enter the needle into his skin, but he doesn’t react due to the numbing cream effectively desensitizing the area. As you stitch his wound together, you say, “Well, for now, let’s make sure you keep yourself safe, okay? You can’t exactly help people if your body is banged up like this.”

He laughs, this time a bit louder, that sound of familiarity returning to his voice. “It sounds like someone’s worried about me.”

Without missing a beat, you answer softly, “You know I am. I always am.”

It’s the first time you’re really seeing him in months, and he is beautiful. His hair has grown a little longer now, with curly brown wisps covering the nape of his neck. But besides that, he looks the exact same. When your eyes meet, it’s difficult for you to look away, but you find that it’s the same for him

“How...how have you been?” he asks you, snapping out of a daze. He gets up with significant effort but manages to sit upright to look at you properly. “It’s been a few months.”

“Yeah,” you tell him. “You know I’m always busy. No new stories to tell.”

He smiles that goddamn smile that made you fall for him all those months ago. It’s just as soft as you remember. But as you admire him, that small voice in your head just repeats over and over that he didn’t choose you, he chose Sora, and suddenly you’re the first look away.

As you put away the items you used to stitch Rafael up, your mouth seems to run faster than your brain, and you blurt out, “How’s Sora?”

Rafael looks confused. And rightfully so. You don’t even know why you asked that question when you weren’t prepared to hear the answer.

“She’s fine,” he answers, mindlessly. “At least, last time I saw her she was.”

“...last time you saw her?”

“Yeah. We’ve been broken up for a while now.”

“Broken up,” you echo. The words sound so bittersweet in your mouth. “What happened?”

He looks you straight in the eyes, thoughtfully regarding you for a second. “A certain doctor was always on my mind,” he answers nonchalantly. “And it wasn’t fair for Sora to stay in a relationship with me if I obviously liked someone else.”

Wait. “Wait. Hold on. What?” you sputter, watching him as he attempts to stand up.

“Huh, good job on these stitches,” he says, admiring your handiwork. “They’ll heal up nicely.”

“Rafael,” you say exasperatedly, but he holds his hand up to silence you.

“Considering the amount of patients you have, it might not be the best time to have this conversation,” he answers you, a mischievous grin on his face. “Let’s expand on this during dinner tonight.”

Dinner? With him? Tonight? Holy fuck, everything is moving so fast that you’re overwhelmed. Before he leaves, he pauses next to your shell shocked body and leans in, placing a soft kiss on your cheek. “It’s great to see you again.”

And he leaves. Just like that. As you watch him walk out of the Emergency Department and link up with his other paramedic buddies, you stand still in the spot he left you, trying to figure out what the hell just happened. In your periphery, Zaid’s shrill whistle alerts you to his presence, and he marches his way towards you in his usual Zaid way—overzealously angry.

“What the hell are you doing just standing there? Get that suture cart out of the way and get in ED 5!”

It isn’t until Zaid basically bulldozes you into a patient’s room that you remember you still have a job to do. As he grits his teeth at you, he grunts, “Why are you so smiley all of a sudden?”

You don’t answer, instead logging into the computer to pull up the patient’s chart. As Zaid sighs heavily and gets on with his initial assessment of the patient, you see your reflection in the screen and find that you can’t bite back your smile, no matter how hard you try.

Whenever you’re tangled in Rafael’s arms, you wrap your hand around his curls and just memorize. You memorize the way he feels so that there’s never a chance you’ll forget. The way his hair feels under your fingertips, the musky notes of his scent, the corded muscles on his back—everything, anything, you touch and feel and memorize.

After all, you lost him once, and once was enough for you to learn your lesson. Now, every time Rafael finds himself in your arms, you take in his warmth, his curls, his lips, his eyes, his touch. Clinging onto him as if he’ll go away one day, as if he’ll disappear despite his promises of forever.

Forever isn’t guaranteed. You’re a doctor. You know this. In all your years working in the hospital, from the very first time you set foot in one as a high school volunteer, you’ve seen enough death and destruction and despair to know that life is finite. But you’ll believe Rafael anyway, foolishly. A more rational person would question this way of thinking because it’s stupid, perhaps even irresponsible, for you to hold Rafael’s promises to such high standards.

But your mother once told you that if two people were meant to be, the universe will let it happen. And the universe, for all your faults and flaws, gave you a second chance with Rafael. While you’d like to believe that he is your forever, you definitely aren’t going to take your chances. For now, you memorize and memorize.

Rinse and repeat.

Since the moment you two got back together, officially, Rafael has made it a habit to bring you to the street market near his neighborhood at least once a week.

He says it’s a tradition at this point. The amount of times you beg him to bring you back to your favorite taco place, just so you can buy yourself your favorite carne asada taco as a treat, almost warrants the street market becoming a tradition for you two. Not that you’re complaining about it at all. Any excuse to get your hands on a soft, doughy flour tortilla filled to the brim with carne asada and cebolla y cilantro makes you a happy camper.

Today is no different. After rounding the market to see what each vendor has, you two decide on what to get: unsurprisingly, three carne asada tacos for you, and two chicken tamales for him. He likes the way this vendor makes their masa, and you like the way they make their salsa verde. So, not so secretly, you stash four sauce containers of it while he orders, just so you have enough to completely douse your tacos and his tamales.

“Maybe you should get a fifth cup,” Rafael says, voice oozing with faux concern. “I’m sure Delia didn’t notice you taking her entire stash of salsa verde.”

You give him a pointed look. “If Delia didn’t want me to take her entire stash, maybe she shouldn’t have made it so good? Checkmate, Aveiro.”

“Touché,” he says as you two take a seat at one of the empty tables near the tamale stand. Taking the lid off the container, you excitedly drench your tacos in salsa verde, the green sheen of it reflecting against the fluorescent lights above you. Nothing in the world is more mouthwatering than these tacos. Doesn’t matter if you see them every week. You’d eat them every day if you could, and you just know you won’t get sick of them. Rafael’s eyes crinkle as he laughs, and he coats his own food with the salsa. “God, you really love Delia’s salsa, huh?”

“More than anything,” you answer quickly. “Even you. I’m sorry, babe.”

“Guess we’ll have to ask Delia to cater our wedding, huh?”

“Oh my god, can we really?” you ask, taking a bite out of your food. “Man! Have her work with Oscar from the taco stand because these two together are just perfection. Absolute perfection. I don’t care if the people who come to our wedding hate tacos. They’re going to eat tacos. Period.”

Rafael looks at you thoughtfully, with so much affection in his eyes that you can feel butterflies in your stomach. It almost makes you stop eating. Almost. But your food tastes too good, and you’re too hungry to stop, and it doesn’t matter how he looks at you. You’re digging in.

By the time you finish with your first taco, he still hasn’t touched his food. You quirk your eyebrow and ask him, “Why are you just staring at me? Not hungry?”

“What if we got married? For real?”

He asks it so suddenly that you’re caught incredibly off guard. You make a choked sound, almost spilling the salsa verde all over your clothes.

“W...what?” you ask him, embarrassed at the way you reacted, wiping away the sliver of salsa drooling from your mouth. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to get married. In fact, you’ve thought about this very much, to the point where it was almost obsessive. It’s just that you don’t understand how you stuffing a taco in your mouth brought up a genuine conversation about marriage and what that meant for your futures.

“We’re coming up on two years now. We’ve been through a lot of things, tough things, that we’ve survived through together, and we’ve been living together for a while. Marriage is the next logical step, I think.” He licks his lips, looking down as if he’s nervous to continue. “I know how you feel about marriage—how it's an institution that perpetuates gender roles and how couples don’t need to be married to show that they’re committed to each other. But I’d like to marry you, very much. I truly do.”

“Oh, Raf,” you say, but he immediately cuts you off, sounding panicked.

“And I don’t mean to bring this all up to you so fast. My words sound so garbled because I’m so nervous. I don’t even know why. Just know that I don’t expect an answer immediately and that you don’t have to take my last name. Your last name is on the medical degree that you earned, and I don’t want you to think about changing it for me. We can even take your last name. Or hyphenate. I don’t care. As long as I can marry you and be with you for the rest of my life.”

You’re quiet for a while, taking in everything that he’s said. The man really is wordy when he’s nervous, and he looks like he’s sweating bullets. As you take his hand, you notice how clammy he is, and he looks at you expectantly.

“I can’t imagine marrying anyone but you, Rafael,” you answer, genuinely. The words sound so right coming out from your mouth, and that’s how you know it’s true. Rafael’s always been the one for you. You’ve known ever since the day you met him. Doesn’t matter the speed bumps along the way. All that matters is that you’re here now, together, finally deciding what the future holds for the two of you.

You expect him to look relieved. Instead, he looks exasperated. “God, it took you that long to say that? Can’t you feel how nervous I am?”

You grin and squeeze his hand tightly. “I can. And I’m enjoying it.”

He shakes your hand off his and finally stuffs a forkful of tamale into his mouth. “You’re a riot,” he says, low and steady, shaking his head. Although he tries not to smile, it spills out anyway.

A low hum reverberates in your throat. “A riot that you want to spend the rest of your life with.”

“If you keep that up, I’ll uninvite Delia and Oscar to the wedding.”

“Please don’t. If you do that, they might not give me the recipes for their salsa and tacos!”

“Somehow, I doubt they were going to do that anyways,” he answers, finishing the last of his tamale. “Now let’s hurry up so I can buy you the cream puffs you like.”

As you watch Rafael dig into his second tamale, you think back on the things he mentioned about your opinions on marriage. Marriage was something you didn’t believe in, partly due to your gender studies professor in undergrad and partly due to your parents’ failed marriage. People just get married too young, too fast, and divorce is an ugly, expensive thing. As much as you wanted to believe that true love exists, you couldn’t bear to relive through the hell that was your parents’ relationship, which is why you’ve always abstained from the thought of contractually binding yourself to another person. Images of your parents fighting—the passive aggressiveness, the bad mouthing of the other in hopes that you’d take their side—flit in your mind, a constant reminder that keeps you away from readily admitting that marriage was for you. But you are not your parents. And you will not make the same mistakes they did.

You’re glad your parents got divorced. Separately, they’re wonderful people, but they just didn’t fit. And maybe that’s the key to it all. People are like puzzles: their nooks and crannies have to fit just right in order for you to see the whole picture. So maybe that’s why your parents never worked out. Instead of falling in love with the whole person, they fell in love with fragments, only loving the parts they chose to see. To love a person, you must love them whole. And that’s what’s so different about your relationship with Rafael.

As someone who keeps herself guarded due to the trauma of parental divorce, the idea of soulmates didn’t particularly strike you as reality, but perhaps you’re beginning to think that they are real. Because as you sit here across from Rafael, you finally feel as if you’ve found yours.

The birds are chirping today.

It’s pleasant. Especially since you don’t have an alarm blaring into your left ear every thirty minutes. As you roll over, you sling your arm over a sleeping figure, who snuggles closer to you at the first sense of your touch.

“Mmm...five more minutes...” Rafael’s voice is low and scratchy in the morning. It reminds you of how sandpaper feels. You fling your leg over him, and now your whole body is cuddling him. Kind of like a sloth.

“No one’s asking you to get out of bed, silly,” you murmur, giving him a soft kiss at the top of his head.

“Good,” he says, craning his neck upwards to return a kiss to your lips. “Don’t wanna get up. This weighted blanket you bought was a good investment.”

“If it keeps you in bed with me, then I’d say it’s a pretty good investment too.”

He chuckles at that, opening his eyes a peek. His eyes are just so brown that it makes your heart ache. They’re so beautiful, especially in the sunlight, and it’s so surprising that he doesn’t think they’re anything special. As you push the bits of his bangs covering his eyes, you two stare at each other for a moment and share a knowing smile.

You think it’s fair to say that you’ve never truly known love until now.

“You gotta stop buying things that’ll keep me in bed, babe,” he grumbles, closing his eyes for a moment. “I won’t be able to get up for work.”

“Here’s an idea, then,” you begin, closing your eyes too. You listen to his breathing, so soft to the point of silence, and wrap your arms around him more tightly than before. “You and I both call in sick today. We stay in bed. Maybe even kiss a little.”

“Tempting,” he says, a smile dancing on his lips. “But as much as I’d like to kiss you all day, I gotta pay for my half of rent.”

“Alright, alright.” You throw the weighted blanket off you but leave his side intact. “You stay in bed for now, and because I love you so much, I’m going to cook you breakfast.”

Once you slide off the bed and put on your fuzzy slippers, you trudge towards the kitchen in a sleep-deprived haze. But before you can reach the door, you hear Rafael say, “Wait.”

You turn around to find him sitting up on the bed, body leaning languidly as he eyes you. “You know that I love you, right? And that I don’t know what the hell I did to deserve someone like you?”

Bemused, you lean against the doorway with a smirk on your face. “And this is suddenly coming up because?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. I know that I tell you I love you every day, but today feels different. Might be a special day for us.”

“You sound like my Co-Star app,” you tell him. He laughs at that and waves you off, pulling your weighted blanket over his head. As you make your way into the kitchen, you look at your phone.

5:49 am.

Today will be a special day. You just know it.

“What’s going on?” Sienna asks, frantic.

As Zaid and Ines lead a group towards the Emergency Department, you feel a chill going through your spine. There’s no reason to have this many residents working in the ED, unless—

“We’re running triage,” Zaid says, more solemnly than you’ve ever heard him in your life. “Huge fire downtown. It’s chaos in the ED, and we need all hands on deck.”

“Why are they coming here?” asks Jackie. “Mass Kenmore is a Level I Trauma Center. Are there really that many patients that they had to bring some to Edenbrook?”

“I’m afraid so,” Ines answers her, voice trembling a bit too much for comfort. “According to reports, the fire spread so quickly that it was almost impossible to get people out.”

That does not sound good. At all. As Zaid and Ines rattle on about the specifics of the situation, you can’t help but worry about Rafael. Your mind always wanders to him, instinctively. There’s no doubt in your mind that he’s on scene, helping as many people as he can, because he’s always been one to go above and beyond for people in situations like these, even if that meant endangering himself. Rafael won’t let you change that, won’t let you stop him from doing his job, and so you don’t. All you can do right now is hope that he’s safe wherever the hell he is.

The second you fly through the doors of the Emergency Department, a breath gets caught in your throat. Zaid wasn’t kidding when he was saying ED was in a state of chaos. You’ve never seen so many burn patients in your life. As you start giving out tags, you worry that the endless flurry of patients will never end but worry more that the flurry will end with people you know.

Walking into ED 13, you find that your patient is conscious but barely. His oxygen saturation is dangerously low, and the nurses have already put him on oxygen to stabilize his vitals. You take note of his wheezing and the red tinge on his skin. Must have been a terrible, terrible fire for all of this to happen to so many people. You can’t count how many patients you’ve seen today that look like the one right in front of you.

To your relief, he starts perking up the second he sees you. As you approach him, you see a few second-degree burns you didn’t notice before and make a mental note to chart that the second you get a chance to. “Mr. Huston, I’m your doctor for this afternoon. How are you feeling right now?”

“Honestly, I’ve been better.” The man can still joke, but a violent wave of coughs soon takes over him. “Have...have you seen my wife? I been...askin’ around, but...none of the nurses...”

“Take it easy, Jamal,” you caution him. “Breathe in and out of that mask for me, will you?”

He listens. Now, with more oxygen in his system, he takes the mask off and continues. “My wife was in the building when the fire started. Went there to visit her...then one thing led to another...and...”

“Fire broke out?”

Mr. Huston wheezes as he nods.

“Did you breathe in a ton of smoke while you were in the building?”

“Not as much as other people thanks to this nice young paramedic that pulled me out.”

You try to bite back a smile as Mr. Huston tells the story of the nice young paramedic’s heroics. Of course, Rafael’s out there doing his thing, rescuing people from burning buildings, performing CPR on victims without pulses, and being an all-around good fucking human being. From what Mr. Huston tells you, Rafael is doing things that are way above his pay grade, but you didn’t expect any less. He’s always been so selfless.

“Mr. Huston, where did this paramedic go after he pulled you out from the building?”

“I thought he came with me...did he not?”

Huh. You swore you haven’t seen Rafael around. As giant as Edenbrook’s Emergency Department was, you would have seen him at least once, considering that you’ve been rounding the entire unit like crazy. He must have been in and out of the ED to go back to the building site, or he was in the bathroom taking a break.

Either way, you don’t think anything of it. If anything, Mr. Huston’s story is a confirmation that Rafael is safe and alive, and in a day as crazy as today, that’s all you need. As you finish your assessment of Mr. Huston, you move over to the nurse’s station, logging into a computer to chart Mr. Huston’s signs and symptoms.

A bell chimes to notify all ED staff that the next wave of ambulances are arriving in T minus one minute. The paramedics arrive earlier than that, quickly surging through the ambulance bay doors, transporting patients to the very little overflow beds the ED has. One of the paramedics in particular catches your eye, and a look of recognition flashes over his face. It then quickly turns into a look of sympathy.

When you look closer, you realize that it’s Rafael’s partner, Max. He’s got several second-degree burns all over his arms, and his typically freshly-pressed uniform looks disheveled and charred.

That chills that runs down your spine? It returns. Stronger, this time. But you don’t understand why.

It isn’t until you look down onto the gurney he’s pushing that you realize what it is he’s so sympathetic about.

“Raf?”

You hear yourself scream but don’t remember commanding your body to do so. Somehow, your body drags itself from your spot at the nurse’s station, and you try to get to him before several nurses stop you. “Doctor, doctor,” one of the nurses says, eyes flashing in panic, “you need to calm down. We can’t help him if you can’t calm down.”

Despite her pleas, you rip past everyone trying to hold you back, lashing out at them to stay away.

You rush towards him, fat tears beginning to roll down your cheeks in waves. “Raf? Raf, can you hear me?” As you get to his side, you immediately begin to assess, your heart beating so heavily that you feel as if it’s going to explode.

You listen to his breathing, and it’s labored, as if he’s struggling to fill his lungs. His eyes, the very same ones you were just admiring this morning, are dull and lifeless. His skin is crackled, like a burning log, dark flakes peeling off with the slightest puff of air.

All you can do is freeze.

Time slows down when the world feels like it’s ending. This you know because right here, right now, as you stand beside the unconscious body of the love of your life, the world truly seems like it’s about to end.

You can’t even touch his fucking face. You can’t touch his hands, his arms, or even his waist because everything seems so fragile. His mouth is agape, and in it, you can see how dry his tongue is and how soot from the fire has dried on his lips. You can’t bear to look at him, not like this, in this condition. So, as you grip the railing of the gurney, your knuckles paling at the sheer force of it, your eyes flash towards his partner.

You can’t even see Max clearly because your tears blind your sight. This is just so pathetic.

“What happened?” you ask quietly. When he doesn’t answer, you ask louder. “What happened?”

“He...he went inside the building,” Max says, on the verge of tears. “After he pulled out the man in ED 13, we heard a woman yelling for help deep inside. She barely got out before the ceiling collapsed on him.” A beat passes before the tears start flowing down his cheeks, and his voice starts to crack. “I...I promise, I told him not to go, I told him—”

“Doesn’t matter what you told him, he was never going to listen,” you cut him off, bitterly wallowing in the fact that Rafael was too selfless for his own good.

Your own tears have streaked your face a dozen times over, and you can taste nothing but salt. It’s difficult to look down at the body lying on the gurney in front of you. All the parts of Rafael that made him Rafael were dimmed, if not gone completely. There were no more silly grins that you always saw even when you weren’t doing anything inherently funny, no more warm, strong arms to fall into when you found yourself crying over the littlest things, and no more big brown eyes to admire in the morning. As you look down at those brown eyes, hoping to see them once more, you find that, rather than seeing them glazed over, they’re transfixed directly on you.

“Raf, oh my god,” you wail, getting as close to him as you possibly can. His mouth, as dry as it is, twitches into a smile, and he reaches out to cup your chin in his palm.

“My love,” he answers, voice so weak that you can mistake it for silence.

“Raf, what did you do?” you sob.

“What I had to do,” is all he rasps out.

“You’re hurt,” you say, voice quivering. “You’re hurt, and you have so many burns...we...we need to order skin grafts...your lungs are damaged due to smoke inhalation...I just...I can’t do this, Raf, I can’t do this without you.”

More tears stream down your face, all the way to his hands. Although you want to believe otherwise, the damage to his body is severe, and you know he’s not going to make it. Somewhere in his eyes, you can sense that he knows too.

“Let me hold your hand,” he says, after a moment of silence between you both. He grasps your hand tightly, as tightly as he can, and shuts his eyes. Between labored breaths, he manages to say, “You are my forever.”

This is his goodbye. There are no grand exits for Rafael Aveiro. Just simple ones. And of all the things he could have said, he chose to remind you that he will be with you for as long as you live.

At the end of the day, that was the best thing about Raf. He died as he lived—feeling and caring and loving too much. And you’ll take that with you, into forever.

“You’re mine too, Raf,” you answer back, bringing his hand to your cheek.

He smiles one last time. As minutes pass, his grip lessens and his chest stops rising. When a nurse silently walks up next to you, you continue to hold his hand tightly, silent tears rolling down your face.

In all your years working in the hospital, you’ve seen enough death and destruction and despair to know that life is finite, but the finality of life has never felt so painful as it does right now. As you exhale a shaky breath, you open your eyes and say the words you wish you never had to say about someone you loved so much.

“Time of death: 2:34 pm.”

Rafael’s grandmother asked you to speak at the funeral. It was a difficult speech to prepare, considering the circumstances. While you wish nothing more than to send Rafael a proper goodbye, you were in no state to prepare any arrangements of any kind. Just typing “good afternoon” on the Word document brought you to tears.

But you did it anyways. If not for Rafael’s grandmother, for Rafael himself. He, of all people, deserved it.

When you stand up on the podium, you scan the crowd to see familiar faces. Everyone you know is there, including Chief Banerji and Dr. Ramsey. You’re even surprised to see that Sora is in attendance, sitting all the way in the back row with misty eyes and a sympathetic smile on her face.

Clearing your throat, you start to speak. “Good afternoon, family and friends. I want to start off this speech by saying Rafael would not have wanted us to mourn him. That is why I wrote this speech as a celebration of life because we should celebrate the life of someone as beautiful as Rafael Aveiro.

“The first time I met Raf was when we were both on call. He had just saved someone, which is always the way we met up during the first year of our relationship. When I asked him if he really went into a burning inferno to save someone, he answered, matter-of-factly: ‘Well yeah...wouldn’t you?’ And that interaction tells you everything you really need to know about Raf. He cared so much about others, even if it put him in danger. He loved his job, he loved his patients, and he loved pushing himself beyond the boundaries of his job description.

“I think that’s what drew us so closely together, what bound us together for life. Healthcare is a field where you’re fully devoted to strangers, where you’re constantly pushing yourself to be better so you can treat your patients to the best of your ability. And Rafael was so damn good at it, so damn good at his job. He loved people. He loved others. At the expense of himself. But I’ll never fault him for that. Raf’s sacrifice meant that someone else’s family member got to live, and at the end of the day, that’s what he lived for.

“The woman he saved that day was the wife of one of my patients. The two got separated in the fire, and Raf made sure that she would be able to get out and see to live another day. He was so selfless, so worthy of a long, fulfilling life. And while it’ll never get easier to refer to him as the past, I hope he knows that he will always be a big part of my future, wherever it’ll take me. Take care, Rafael, and may you rest in peace.”

As you finish your speech with a shaky breath, an applause erupts from the audience. Rafael’s grandmother is the most visibly shaken by your speech, and when you take your seat, she grabs your hand and squeezes it tightly, not letting go until the end of the service.

The service itself was a long and arduous process. You looked away at certain parts, hoping that Rafael’s grandmother didn’t see just how much you were sobbing. After all, it’s never easy to see the cremated remains of the love of your life. Looking away doesn’t make you forget that he’s gone, but it saved you from seeing another reminder of your reality.

Afterwards, once everyone gives their condolences, his grandmother comes up to you again. She looks at you, sad and mournful, and that’s all it takes for you to burst into tears. Bringing her hand up to wipe your tears away, she hushes you gently and takes you into her arms.

“You know he loved you, right?” she asks you, softly. All you do is nod because you can’t seem to croak any words out. “He loved you so much. I’ve never seen that boy so head over heels for a girl. Even asked me for our family ring so he can ask you to marry him.”

You pull back, surprised. “He did?”

“He did,” grandmother says, nodding to confirm. “He even went to the jeweler to resize it for you, just so it’ll fit on your finger when he proposed.” She steps back to appraise you with a sorrowful smile on her lips. “I wouldn’t have given it to him just for any girl, you know. The universe wanted you two together. I just knew.”

You nod, smiling through the tears. You know it did. Just not in this timeline.

Sure enough, when you finally have the strength to look through his drawers, you find that there’s an engagement ring nestled inside a small box deep within his underwear drawer. It’s beautiful—all jade-colored with gold details. And just as his grandmother said to you, it was a perfect fit.

More often than not, you think back on that day. You think of things you could have done better. Maybe if you got him on fluids, maybe if you ordered a skin graft as soon as you saw him, maybe if you just convinced him to stay home that day, he would still be alive.

But some things are just out of your control. Even if you got him to stay home, he would have hopped in the car the second he heard about the emergency. Even if you ordered a skin graft on time, there was too much surface area on his body to cover. Even if you had gotten him on fluids, he was already at the point of no return by the time you got to his body.

Too many things going wrong, too little time.

Medicine is all quantifiable data and qualitative research. As powerful as that is, it couldn’t go against death, and it couldn’t go against fate. There is nothing that is humanly designed that can go against the universe.

While that may seem terrible, it is what it is. Life is cruel. It is selfish and impatient. It takes as it gives, and it is unremorseful.

But life is also beautiful. It still gave you Rafael. It gave you his warmth in the morning and in the night, his soft kisses, and his comforting hugs. It gave you his empathy for others, his love for Caribbean food, and his dedication to his patients. It gave you a chance at knowing what true love feels like, despite believing your entire life that you’ll never find it.

Life may be fleeting, but that’s why you’ll decide to live it day by day. Because that's what Rafael would have wanted.

And you wouldn’t want to live life any other way.

[sargentr]

my fave drarry fics of all time, part one

so, after discovering i’ve officially been reading drarry fanfic for 4 years now, i decided to show my (quite big) list of favorite drarry fics. there are 46 in total, but i’ve listed 10 down below. the first three are my absolute favorites but the rest are equally as good

most of my notes are fresh from when i wrote them post-reading. i’ve changed some, seeming less like a crazy unstable bitch, but fuck these were all emotional as fuck. enjoy

ps: i dont really know how to tag people i dont follow. i cant try and tag the authors later. soz!!

pps: most of these i read when i was really into a bottom!draco phase, so most of them contain that, some are switch tho (as it should be, yikes past me)

1. Everything That Happen is From Now On / ~43K 

After surviving a brutal assault, Draco tries to navigate the tumultuous waters of his mind, and embrace a bit of love and trust in his life. After all, the smallest steps forward can begin to heal the most fractured of souls

okay so before i get in to how beautiful this story is, i wanna say that it does touch on rape quite explicitly. i cried like an idiot reading the entire thing, because draco’s pain is navigated in the most beautiful and realistic way. it touches on a subject very risky for me, very personal, and i still can’t think of a better drarry story. draco’s very draco about it all, and harry is very harry about it all. it’s just perfect, and messy, and tender, and sad. i’ve reread it more than any other fic, and it doesn’t disappoint. 

2. Pocket Full of Starlight / ~46K

When Scorpius Malfoy and Jamie Potter meet at Quidditch camp, they take an instant dislike to each other. Then they discover their lives are more connected than they could possibly imagine.

ah yes. the magic of kid fics. the TASTE

parent trap au. i read this one recently, like 3 months back, and absolutely fell in love with everything about it, partially because the parent trap is legit one of my top 10 favorite movies of all time. its just. the essence, the IDEA, is soooo mf beautiful. i cant get enough of reading when harry or draco finally meet the other twin, or how they cant stop loving each other even after 11 years. my heart clenched throughout the whole thing. 

3. Temptations on the Warfront / ~180K

Draco Malfoy is forced into hiding with the Golden Trio and dragged into their search for horcruxes. What ensues is a journey of redemption, unexpected friendships and an unwanted, turbulent romance with Harry Potter. Warnings for swearing, sexual content, and dark themes. 

this was the first drarry fic ive ever read, and before this mf i HATEDDD this pairing. so you can imagine how much it took to convince me otherwise, bc i was 100% scorbus before this.

to be fair, horcrux hunting with draco involved is, possibly, my favorite trope ever. its unique. theres tension, both sexual and life threatening. in some ways it romanticizes the war, but fuck it it aint a real war. 

slowest of burns. amazing. life changing. long as hell. nothing else to be said except read it right now i demand it.

4. Clouding the Senses / ~58K

As everyone returns to Hogwarts for a final eighth year, some people are coping better with the aftermath of the war than others. After encountering a very drunk Draco Malfoy one night, Harry realises that maybe those that lost loved ones aren’t the only ones trying to escape the war. Blaise Zabini seems to think Harry can help Malfoy, that the Slytherin might actually listen to him. Harry is not so sure. Dependence is a tricky thing, and one addiction can quickly shift to another.

everyone that reads drarry loves 8th year fics, but this ones just kinda different from all those normal (yet entertaining) ones. draco’s an alcoholic in this, and one night harry tries to help him and whoops, one thing leads to the other and they start having casual sex. its really, really amazing how both draco and harry navigate the addiction, i really cant say it has any flaws. 

i know the author got a lot of hate on their fics and thats why they took them down, but they’re truly one of the best drarry authors out there. i’ve reread this a couple of times, and the tenderness, the love and confusion is all very on character. a+

5. Restraint / ~153K

Someone casts the Imperius curse on Draco Malfoy, and whatever the instructions may be, Harry finds himself an unwilling target. The encounter leaves him torn between pleasure and revulsion. As they fight in the aftermath, a tense game begins. Harry fights to convince Malfoy, and himself, that he was not affected by that initial encounter, or any of those following it.

Faced with a series of escalating encounters, Harry must come to terms with desiring things he never thought he could, things he wishes he didn’t respond to. They each use signs of arousal as weapons against each other in a mad struggle to finally shame the other into backing down for good. 

But it’s only after the game is over that Harry starts to understand.

this is by the same author of clouding the senses, and i read this just this week. at first, it’s shocking, because it plays around with consent in a very unsettling way. when communication comes in, and its starts getting healthier, you can really understand where the author found the idea of playing with consent. it is, in my opinion, 100% characteristic of how they would behave post-war, with that grief and confusion. it’s also dom/sub in some parts, and that’s mf hot. 

it also has my favorite tropes in it, but it’s a spoiler to say which one. i’ll probably mention the trope in the list along with a bunch others, but when u finish reading you’ll know which one ;)

6. Humbug / ~30K

Draco has been taking his casual relationship with Harry for granted. Visits from four key ghosts the night before Christmas just might shake up his priorities in life.

(felt like it was valid to just paste what i wrote in my notes app after reading this)

(FUCKKKKKK HOW TO EVEN START?!!!?? just a fucking bonus, draco is THE best bottom o ever exist i love my bottom son so much. this story isnt only amazing it’s excruciatingly painful to read, harry and draco have been sleeping together but harry is completely in love with him. draco doesnt see how much harry cares for him or how much hes hurting harry by treating their fling like its just that, a FLING. with that, draco is haunted by three ghosts. one of the past, the present and the future, AND THEY SET THAT IDIOT STRAIGHTTTT 1800000/10. the gays DO KEEP MF WINNING!!!

7. in your arms, rests my world / ~24K

Harry presses his mouth to Malfoy's forehead; he wants to tell him that he’ll never leave, that he wouldn’t dream of it.

“You make me feel safe, Potter” Malfoy whispers. “You keep me safe.”

the friends with benefits trope doesnt ever disappoint, top 5 tropes fr, especially if its also 8th year. harry and draco get into their little thing, but of course nothing ever is simple between them. by the preview, you can clearly see how much draco likes harry (also another 10/10 trope, the ‘i’ve been in love with harry potter since i was 11′ one). my only tiny issue with this is that harry fucks it up just a tad, but it of course adds up to the drama of it all, which i absolutely love.

noting it also touches on non-con/rape and, and all in all, is extremely angsty. one i was tense from beginning to end. but i am gonna say it ends amazingly and v happily.

8. Playing the Hero / ~29K

Nobody kissed me like Harry did. He kissed like he flew; he kissed like he duelled - with his whole being, not caring about anything else. I had never felt as vulnerable as I did when he kissed me, seizing all and any control I had over myself. But when Harry kissed me, I felt free...

so the thing about angst is that it ignites that mf feeling side u that even tho it hurts you cannot get enough of. this fic was EVERYTHINGGG. it made cry and laugh and smile. also another trope i absolutely adore is them breaking up and not being 100% ok with that, bc ding ding!! YALL STILL LOVE EACH OTHER!! 

i cant describe how i felt, honestly. i would just paste my notes (i wont bc spoilers) but it looks like i went thru sum shit. deadass

9. fine i’ll hold my breath / till i forget it’s complicated  / ~ 15K with the two parts

Harry and Draco become friends with benefits, and Harry thinks it's more complicated than it actually is.

u know, fluff is a drug. i dont know if its beucase 90% of drarry fics are about angsty get-togethers, but i had butterflies in my stomach when i read this. its adorable. draco is so clearly in love, he jusT SMILES A LOT I CANTTT. 

its cute. i love it to death. have some fluff before starting your day.

10. Un Noël très parisien / ~14K

When Draco crossed paths with Auror Potter at a political function in Paris, he was not expecting their former animosity to change into something rather more intriguing. But he could be certain their casual flirtation would not last more than the night, couldn't he?

look. i know i named a lot of my favorite tropes here, but i cant end this without mentioning how much single dad draco affects me. i love scorpius and how much he changes draco in every fic he appears. i love parent draco and i shant be silent about it (especially when scorpius is legit just a year old in this. i died)

as it states, harry and draco have a one night stand but draco thinks thats it, that it was all he was ever gonna have. he’s wrong of course, and the path it takes, with both scorpius and harry there, just melted my mf heart.

well kids that’s all i have for now. imma work on a part two with 10 other fics i really love!1

[theholycovenantrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, JADE! YOU’VE BEEN ACCEPTED FOR THE ROLE OF JUDAS.

Admin Jen: There aren’t enough words to capture the sheer magnitude of your portrayal, but I would say your writing definitely gets the job and speaks for itself, Jade. You have such keen insight into Judas and the various intricacies that play into his character, and you explored it all so beautifully in your app. My favorite part was certainly the plots and the limitless possibilities they posed for Judas, but every other portion of the app only added onto it and propelled your vision further. It was so compelling to read through, and it left me so unbelievably excited to see Judas prowling and scheming on the dash! Please create and send in your account, review the information on our CHECKLIST, and follow everyone on the FOLLOW LIST. Welcome to the Holy Land!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Jade

Age | 27

Preferred Pronouns | She/her

Activity Level | My schedule is nothing if not predictable these days! Covid has me almost exclusively sitting at home on the couch, so barring the time that I spend with my husband, I’m usually around. I don’t always have it in me to write every day, but I think it would be reasonable to expect me on the dash multiple days per week.

Timezone | PST

Triggers | REMOVED

How did you find the rp?  |  Through Rosey’s grapevine!

IN CHARACTER

Character | The infamous, the great betrayer himself — Judas (ju-da-ah-ahhhhh!!)

What future plots do you have in mind for the character? | Where do you see this character developing, and what kind of actions would you have them take to get there? 3 future plot ideas would be preferable.

I | KING OF EVERYTHING

Judas’s ultimate goal, once the last wars have been waged, is to claim the Holy Land for himself. Sorry, for demonkind — but, ruled by and submitting to, himself. He formed Infernum’s government with intention, hiding the monopoly of his power amongst a consortium of others who allegedly hold sway as well, allowing Damien to be the face of the revolution while his hand guided from the shadows. For some time, it has served him well, but contentedness is a poison he cannot swallow. He looks towards the Holy Land and greed takes his reins yet again, his hollowed stomach in knots thinking about a world in which the people bow to a power he does not hold firmly between his teeth. There are a multitude of ways he might go about it, and I’d be eager to plot out the possible angles with other writers, but I do believe that Judas will, at some point, make a play to claim the Holy Land. That might be through political division — sewing lies amongst the people, breeding distrust in the Tridium and their current way of being. It might be through betrayal, tried and ever true — to sell the Tridium out to a rogue set of Heretics, an insurgent with a grudge.. whoever might be interested, really. Or, if all else fails, perhaps by declaration of war.

II | COLLECTING FROM CONQUEST

He’s no fool. He knows the value of a blank check with Dmitri’s name on it, and he’s been waiting patiently for the right time to cash it. While Judas doesn’t yet have his exact ask envisioned, he knows one thing for certain — when he calls upon the favor he’d earned by saving old Conquest, it won’t be for something as small as a discounted price on a hit. No, it’ll be saved for the moment he makes his play towards the Holy Land — war times, when he’s sure to benefit most from the protection of the healing horseman. Until then, he finds such a wicked joy in taunting Dmitri with his silence on the matter.

III | GRASPING THE STARS

I imagine Judas carries a heavy interest in just who is going to be selected as the Stars, and will be doing what he can to sway mortal perception in favor of whoever he feels will best represent the demons’ interests. Azazel plays her part, but a loyal mortal amongst the Tridium would serve Infernum well, particularly in keeping Gabriel at bay. He’ll do what he can to put the right person in the position — and if that fails, he’ll be sure to slither up alongside who is elected and make their close acquaintance.

IV | CONSPIRING WITH THE HERETICS

Should Judas decide that sewing distrust in the Tridium’s ability to maintain peace and safety is the best move, I imagine he may try to use the world’s hatred of the Heretics to his benefit. I could see him providing rogue groups of Heretics or Heretic sympathizers with information about or access to gatherings, parties, political events, what have you. Surely, a resurgence of the Heretics would cause a panic — one that may make the populus question whether their leaders are the best leaders. Who might he set them on, though? Maybe he’d give them an opportunity to assassinate an angel, or even one of his own. Maybe he’d sick them on innocents. The precise move would depend on what’s happening in-game, but this type of betrayal is surely possible!

V | PUPPETEERING THE TRIDIUM

There was a reason he’d reached his hand up to Azazel from the pits of hell, pulled her down into his kingdom and taught her all he could. He’d seen what could be forged from a thing like her — the way she could enchant, the way she inspired adoration. She made for a Moon both palatable and unthreatening — a beauty that begged to be worshipped by the masses, and a mind that cared not for the politics of it all. While she wears the crown, Judas sees the strings as his to pull. I imagine him very much attempting to use Azazel as a means of enacting his particular will amongst the Tridium. He trusts that she’ll continue to represent the interests he instructs her to, so long as the praise keeps coming — and oh, he’s aware of just how key praise is in getting anywhere with Azazel. I see Judas showering Azazel in attention and blessings, all the time, even when there isn’t something he’d like her to get done in the Holy Land. It makes it far more likely she’ll be agreeable when there is.

VI | BETRAYAL OF AZAZEL

Should all mentioned above work without a hitch, I don’t see Judas finding a reason to betray Azazel aside from sheer boredom — though, don’t discount that as a very, very real possibility. I think Judas keeps a particular watch on Azazel, most notably on where her interests lie. If he begins to notice her prioritizing the Tridium before Infernum, things change. If she’s no longer a use to him, she’s a target, and there are plenty of ways I can see Judas trying to target her. As a prominent political figure in the Holy Land, something bad happening to Azazel would cause some sort of political uprising that Judas could surely take advantage of — maybe he arranges her kidnapping, maybe her death. Maybe he just sets her up to look incompetent and make a fool of herself. It would all depend!

VII | WAR ALONGSIDE DAMIEN

From the moment he saw Damien, he’d had a plan for him — to guide the child towards his destiny and his father’s demise. He’d needed Damien as the face of his revolution against Lucifer, but more importantly, he’d needed Damien’s powers for war on earth. Through whisper and trial, Judas had crafted the Antichrist into the weapon that would destroy the Morning Star. Though peace has persisted for years, Judas sees another war ahead of them — one in which the demons stake their claim on the Holy Land, and in that war, he needs Damien’s power of devastation more than ever before. I see Judas subtly preparing Damien for another war, planting seeds of anger and fight in him, winding him up and preparing to unleash him on the world yet again. But, this time, when a new order is established, I don’t imagine Judas sees Damien as any sort of king. No, when the Holy Land is conquered, it will be with Damien as a war general, and Judas on the throne.

VIII | BETRAYAL OF DAMIEN

As time ticks on, Judas grows more and more resentful about the invisible crown Damien seems to be growing a bit too comfortable underneath. While he views Damien as an instrumental piece in his eventual takeover of the Holy Land, and one of his most cherished weapons, Judas’s patience could easily be tested if Damien begins to grow a bit too power-hungry. I could see a legitimate rift building in Infernum, in which some sort of civil war erupts between Judas and his protege for the true crown.

IX | MINDING THE CELLS

In Abaddon, he sees something almost resembling an equal. He trusts her with the keeping of the Cells, he trusts she’ll allow him the kind of access and influence over the prisoners that he needs, while never aspiring to threaten his rule and supporting all his endeavours. Ever an opportunist, I think Judas uses Abaddon to keep a close eye on who’s currently in lock-up, and how they might prove useful. I imagine him either prowling the cells alongside Abaddon, looking for abilities or gifts that he could weaponize, or unfortunate souls he can use as scapegoats in various plots, or heretic sympathizers to manipulate, conspire with, and unleash. While he’d never say it explicitly, I imagine Judas is silently keeping an eye out for some sort of being with a power he could one day weaponize against the Antichrist himself, should the need ever arise to deliver Damien his ruination.

X | BETRAYAL OF ABADDON

As Abaddon struggles with the duality of her nature, wrestling with her angelic remains, I’m curious to see how Judas responds. I imagine he might view any further exploration into her angelic nature as a threat to her loyalty, and if he fears she’s disloyal, he’s not above throwing her to the wolves — perhaps locking her in her own cells if he suspects her of holding interests elsewhere, or unlocking a few doors and setting on her a legion of prisoners hungry for vengeance. You know, just an idea.

XI | BETRAYAL OF JUDAS

The one we’ve all been waiting for — the plot in which the tables finally turn, and it’s Judas who’s blindly turned on by someone he’d made the mistake of trusting. While the details of this would be entirely up to other players and what they might have in mind, I would gladly offer him up to learn what it feels like on the pointy end of betrayal.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Should the circumstance be right, and I could still find a way to be a part of the group post-mortem as another character, I could be convinced!

Driving Character Motivation | What motivates your character’s actions? How does it define them? Where does this motivation stem from?

IN DEPTH

In a word, himself — more specifically, the advancement of the self, full utilization of every opportunity he’s given to climb ever higher. Within Judas lives an insatiable thirst for power, a desire to devour and rebuild in his name and image. No matter how many lives he holds firmly in his palm, there are always more to seize. A master strategist, with moves planned to be executed as early as tonight’s dusk and as far-away as the new era he’ll one day reign over uncontested, he sees the path of greatness he’s laid out for himself, and it propels him ever forward. His selfish, greedy, hungry soul has never rested, never waved a flag of white. He cast the Son of God out from the earth, and Lucifer himself from the pits of hell — and yet still, he craves more.. More power, more leverage, more shadowed spiderweb strings with which to puppeteer his ever-growing consortium of underlings. It’s not enough. Nothing will ever be enough. 

Both his most rudimentary nature, down to his rotting marrow, and God’s wicked predestiny may share accountability in equal parts.

We’ll first address what comes from within. Something dark and nebulous has always festered in the pits of him — an emptiness that knew only how to want. That blackness, rumbling hollow and empty, is sin itself, as entwined with his being as the ligaments and cartilage that held his human bones together. Amongst the reasons his eventual rise led him to the Conclave rather than an anointment as one of Damien’s vices, his most favored is that he simply cannot be reduced to a single manifestation of sin. A gluttonous appetite that the body and blood of Christ himself could not sate. A deep-rooted greed able to mistake the glint of silver for salvation. A silent pride so resounding he bathes himself in absolution, while wicked wrath condemns the rest. Even as he followed the Son of God and recited his teachings, the devil perched himself comfortably on his shoulder, whispering of selfishness, of indulgence, of power, and Judas drank each word until their voices became one.

The thing about sin is, it is inherently unsatisfied. It is the lacking of something, of glory itself — a hunger that wants to be fed, an envy that wants to seize. Sin is desire, and thus, he, sin incarnate, is desire perpetual. It’s a curse of his unholy nature that he’ll never truly be content. What is contentment, what is happiness, but a surrender? An abandonment of progress? The enemy of greatness? The end? He cannot simply allow dust to settle, nor allow the light peeking from behind the horizon to cast itself against his back and force upon him a life no longer concealed by shadows. He won’t have it. With each iteration of the universe, he’ll pick utopia apart bone by bone until he finds a reason to loathe it, foraging for discontentment, because it is his only way forward. What a cruel trick on God’s part, that He sculpted a creature who cannot stomach the taste of sweetness. He spits it back into the dirt, dissatisfied, and instead chews on the bitter, the propulsion of his own vileness, the most indulgent, comforting flavor he’s come to know.

Now, allow us to return to Him for a moment. All predispositions for blasphemy, Judas can blame on Him. Judas Iscariot had been born a man — human, fallible, like every waking creature of the Lord. And, as it did to all other humans, sin had crept its way into his veins and claimed him. He’d done what the man he’d betrayed had taught him to do — in his momentary guilt, he’d sought absolution, repentance, for having allowed the devil to take hold. Still, he remained damned on arrival, a pawn in God’s game with a fate predestined for ruin. Had God not sculpted Judas Himself? And He dared punish Judas for personifying His own design? All of it, pre-orchestrated back when the cosmos were but babes — and thus, all of it, exhaustive and fruitless to fight. If he was to be damned, then let him be damned. That damnation wouldn’t rule him. He’d rule it. Even now that God has been vanquished, and Lucifer alongside him, Judas is ever driven by his resentment and anger towards the paradox his maker cursed him with. That anger manifests in Judas’s unquenchable thirst to build himself an empire greater than any God ever could, to build himself into an entity more powerful, more feared. It’s the only way to prove himself bigger than God’s alleged all-encompassing predestiny, greater than a handful of verses written by men who would be but footnotes underneath his gospel.

Character Traits | OPTIONAL. Please list 3 positive traits and 3 negative traits that you identify in the character you’re applying for. 

+ | PATIENT  (see also: steadfast)

To blaspheme one of His virtues by wielding it as a weapon is simply in Judas’s gospel. Finding an innate way to corrupt even the most holy of traits, his patience has put time itself to the test. With an eternity to burn, and God to thank for that, he’s learned to control human impulses and embrace the power of ensuring things unfold at the right time. Ever with an end vividly envisioned for the selection of foes currently at odds against him, he strikes at the time of heaviest impact. Never too early. Never too late. 

+ | DIPLOMATIC (see also: persuasive)

He can convince anyone of anything. Including himself. His tongue can twist the vile and thorny, disguise it as something candied, dripping in nectar. It makes him an excellent representative, able to keep his head about him for the sake of maintaining relationships. He understands the importance of people, of connections — in the hands of one who knows how to properly wield them, they’re a far more powerful weapon than any sword or spell.

+ | STRATEGIC (see also: cunning, clever, perceptive)

He always has a plan — for everyone, for everything, at all times. One of two questions can be asked of everyone in his life — what value do you provide me, or alternatively, how might I destroy you? It’s only ever one of those two, and he’s often got a fully fleshed out strategy plotted either way. He thinks in terms of the war, not just the battle, planning moves that might not come to fruition for millennia. Once one goal has been reached, he finds another, and begins again.

+ | STRONG (see also: formidable)

Not one to be easily intimidated, he does not back down when challenged or threatened. In fact, he’s more likely to actively seek out a fight or rivalry, simply to demonstrate his fortitude.

+ | COMPOSED (see also: controlled, intentional)

If you can read the emotion on his face, it’s simply because he wants you to. He has a commanding sort of control over his composure, one that demonstrates discipline and demands respect. Not to say he can’t hurl insults and roar — but that when he does, it’s because he chooses to; because that’s what his analysis has decided will serve him best in the moment.

- | SELFISH (see also: disloyal, corrupt)

He’d drive a knife into anyone’s back if it would get him a single step further — he wouldn’t even hesitate. Ultimately, looking down another soul’s path does him no good, he’s decided. There is only him — his own glory, his own road to revolution. There are guests along the way, some he favors more than others, but he is the only thing that will persist and endure. The center of his world, that will always be his core — but he’s mastered the art of pretending otherwise. Despite the way he’ll swear his allegiance to a millennia-old friend, there isn’t a soul he wouldn’t sell. For those he has yet to, it’s simply because it’s not yet the right time, the right place, or the right price.

- | VENGEFUL (see also: ruthless, resentful, begrudging)

His anger is a quiet one, one that’s hidden in dark places, growing thorns, festering and rotting until a grudge grows so old its stench simply demands attention. He does not forget a single transgression, a curse for an immortal. His rage is cycled into revenge, and he enacts it gleefully. Perhaps not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but if you’ve wronged him, whether you know it or not, you can be assured he’ll strike — but not until it benefits him the most, and cuts you the deepest.

- | INSATIABLE (see also: power-hungry, greedy, indulgent)

He’s always been a bit of a magpie, shiny silver things calling to him — and everything celestial simply glows. He is a being made of wanting, hungry to devour lands and stomp his boot on the wreckage. No matter what he achieves, which luxuries he tastes, how much power he is truly able to seize, his curse is that none of it will ever satisfy.

- | MANIPULATIVE (see also: conniving, duplicitous)

While he may have a handful if favored pawns, everyone in his life is a pawn nonetheless. He’s prepared to scheme against and sacrifice any and everyone that stands between he and his ends, keeping his cards close to his chest, most often with true intentions known to himself and him alone. Oh, and he’s an excellent liar.

- | DESTRUCTIVE (see also: implosive)

Judas is not the kind that will ever find happiness in peace. In fact, he is not the kind that will ever accept true happiness at all. In his quest for ever more, he’s always striving for something, always needing to rip something content apart so he can sculpt something of his own in its place. I believe this translates to people, as well. He’s never known how to accept love; he actively rejects it. How could he not? Had God Himself not told him he was never destined for love? In time, his response to comfort and acceptance is always the same — to turn his back on it, to crush the heart offered to him. He did it to Christ, who welcomed him as his disciple. He did it to Lucifer, who loved him like a son. Should another make the mistake of loving him, he’ll do it again.

In-Character Para Sample | There is no minimum or maximum word count to this para sample, but we do encourage that you highlight your character’s VOICE and MANNERISMS within it.

THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS: A STUDY IN SILVER

ACT I | PIECES

It begins with a glint, a wash of light caught against the body of silver that’s piled neatly in three stacks of ten, blindingly beautiful. Then, a proposition — to surrender the one he calls teacher, Rabbi, friend.

Should they have negotiated in whispers in the dark, offering only empty promises of treasures to come, perhaps Judas Iscariot may have remained faithful to his so-called Lord’s teachings of honor and conviction. Alas, they don’t. No, he offers to betray his God under warm, bright lights, before a pile of riches that shine so bright he can’t see the blood that taints them. 

“The one I kiss,” he commands the lawmen. “He’s the one.” His head nods in slow, stern affirmation. His eyes remain locked with that bewitching stack of silver. What a transfixing, all-consuming thing greed can be, making itself at home in him once again like an old friend. Bewitched fingers snake around a single piece, the silver’s ice a delightful chill as he slides it into a pocket; one now, as a deposit. The rest later, once the deed is done.

As he throws heavy garden doors open, police following in hordes and numbers, he bears a smile that shines as bright as the piece that sits with comfortable, reassuring weight in his pocket. “Greetings, Rabbi!” he bellows, and as he steps boldly forwards, he places the Son of God’s face in his hands, pulls his lips into his, and is irrevocably damned. Mouth pressed firm against that of Christ, he does not taste divinity; it turns to ash on his tongue as he seals the fate God himself had promised.

He watches, proud, as the Lord is dragged away, as Christ’s disciples turn their swords towards the soldiers in retaliation and heartbreak, all the while, his hand in his pocket, twirling that single piece of silver between his fingertips.

Some present will come to say in their recountings that this is the day Satan entered Judas Iscariot, pierced him with sharp talons and claimed him for the hellions. These men lie. To give the Morning Star credit would be blasphemous to his gospel, for the greatest devil the world will know is not perched upon a throne in the fires of hell. He is born of the organic rot found only in the pits of fallible man.

ACT II | TONGUE

In the forges of hell, riches take a new shape. The wealth he’d condemned himself for? Worthless in death, reduced to a river of shapeless molten sterling. He has no choice but to adapt. He allows that silver to coat his tongue instead, and in their union they both evolve and yet remain entirely unchanged. 

Infernal wings sprout from his shoulders and the devil himself casts his favor upon him, and Judas is acutely aware of just how unique he is amongst his new brethren — dare he say, simply, better? What feat is it to have manifested from nothing, to wield powers that were gifted rather than earned? Is the true mark of a demon not in his will? His ability to rely not on divinity to bring ruination, but on merely the curve of his lips and the void in his chest? 

The thought tastes poisonous each time it simmers to the surface — his dissatisfaction with Lucifer’s status quo, though it remains to be seen whether it’s hell’s regime in particular that he loathes, or the existence of any regime whose reins he does not hold. It’s not important, not as he gathers demons eternal and fledgling alike in crooked, cavernous shadows, whispering curated falsehoods to them in the dark until they claim his anger and hunger as their own.

“A kiss — that’s the signal,” he repeats to each of them, his words carbon. “Only then, is it time.” 

It will not be time for quite some time, though Judas lives every day as if it might be — sowing ever deeper his seeds of doubt in their liege, parsing Lucifer’s each breath, examining his hallmark overconfidence, watching the hellish love with which he showers his kin as he demonstrates he knows nothing of the revolution that his most wicked ward brews in the dark.

He wakes that day not yet aware that the day has come — not until he hears Lucifer beckon for him from his altar. “My Lord?”Judas asks, the word silken as it slides over his lips, wrapping all disdain in luxe and warmth. 

“I can sense it, Judas,” the devil smiles. “A soul on earth has proven themselves. Go to them, and drag them home with you.”

Judas pauses, and when he listens, he registers not the words Lucifer says. What he hears is: the day is now. It’s a straw as small as any that breaks Judas’s back — the most rudimentary form of disrespect, to task hell’s crown jewel with a hound’s fetch-and-retrieve mission. He cares not to see the love in Satan’s request; what is spoken in between the words of Lucifer’s decree is Judas’s value, his Lord’s pride in his work, his trust in him over all the rest. It is in loving him, that the devil gives Judas the power to destroy him.

“Yes, my Lord. I’ll set out at once.” He nods along with his empty assurance, and with a look upwards, he meets his maker’s eyes with finality, casting him a last glistening smile before laying palms on either of the devil’s cheeks. “Goodbye, my Morning Star,” he wishes, and he means it, pressing his lips to Lucifer’s and savoring the taste of sin.

He pulls away, and the devil’s eyes open to the same sight that had brought the ruin of the Christ child — Judas Iscariot’s beaming, prideful smile, an army at his back, swords drawn, but this time, led not by the Sanhedrin. It is the antichrist that carries the charge, his own menacing grin drawing nearer, as hell’s usurpers claim their new order.

The devil is dead. Long live the devil.

ACT III | CROWN

“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” he hums, allowing the thick iron door of the Conclave’s court to close loudly behind him. “We reconvene soon. I don’t have long.”

Lie. It is he who called the recess, and it is he who will decide when it ends. He shares none of this with Damien, who stands impatiently in the adorned hallway. “Then divulge,” the Antichrist itches. 

The echoes of both their tones resonate loudly, as deep and heavy as the invisible crowns each of their heads hold high — though, one brow seems to far better suit regality. He does not wonder which of them will topple beneath the weight of theirs first; he already knows. Everything when the time is right, and until then, he walks a delicate, intentional line as he addresses his pseudo-son, simultaneously wanting to stroke the boy’s drive and shatter his independence. He must feel powerful — to a limit.

“The Conclave has requested you assemble the Vices.” Judas, even-toned and composed, presents it as an ask; it is not. It’s a directive. They both know it. “Sources suggest a siege of insurgent Heretic sympathizers are gaining on the Palace walls, possibly with intention to break their own out of the Black Cells.” He can hear the way Damien begins to laugh midway through, but he does not stop speaking. 

“A handful of Heretics?” Damien sputters. “And you believe that calls for the Vices? Abaddon has kept larger threats at bay single handedly.”

Judas scoffs. “So you suggest we do nothing?” he deigns. “Wait until they claw at our gates? Leave Abaddon to face them alone?” In pause, his brows knit together, though he contemplates nothing. “Gather them, boy,” he states loudly, and this time, it is an order explicit. The moment of sharpness passes quickly, and a familiar grin toys against his jaw. Once again, suddenly, they are friends. “What use is the devastation you hold in your fingertips if not to defend what majesty you and I have built here?”

He feels resentment, bitter and cold, steaming in wafts off of the young halfling — but then, an acceptance just as cold. “I suppose it’s been some time since we’ve been out to play,” he concedes.

“I knew you’d make the right decision,” Judas smiles, placing a large, strong hand on Damien’s shoulder. “I’ll need you out the gates as quickly as possible. Do have some fun with it, won’t you?” And just as quickly as his smile had appeared, he rescinds it and turns on his heels back towards the court’s wrought iron doors. 

With a slow turn of his head, he locks eyes with his pupil, and arrogance claims him. “The Conclave wishes you the best of luck,” he bolsters, proud and booming — one last signifier that, in their clash of crowns, it will always be his that blinds brightest.

Extras | OPTIONAL. If you have anything else you’d like to include (further headcanons, an inspo tag, a mock blog, etc), feel free to share it here!

I’ve compiled some inspiration posts on this blog! Additionally, here’s a small selection of headcanons:

HEADCANON: WINGS

Judas’s wings are of feather and bone — raven-black feathers, some that are tipped in brilliant silver. In some places, feathers have been charred or cut during battle, and the bone beneath is visible. He prefers it this way. Bone, sprouting from his shoulders, is human, as he once was before he ascended past those demons who manifested from nothing. 

HEADCANON: SWORDPLAY

Judas’s greatest strengths lie in diplomacy, delegation, and manipulation. While he can wield a sword well in battle, it’s only because an eternity has given him time to practice. Truthfully, his skills as a swordsman are far below most of his fellows. Where he makes up for it is in waiting in the shadows for the right time to strike, rather than aimlessly wailing at a target out in the open.

HEADCANON: RESENTMENT

He made it to Hell before Salome did, and yet her wings sprouted before his? He’s never forgotten it, and never will. His anger towards not having been the first of humankind to join the hellions is projected in its entirety onto Salome, and though he has yet to enact his wrath, he remains plotting.

[syekick-powers]

rambling about emotions and self-control

i think one of the things that pisses me off the most when family members criticize me is when they say that i’m “bad at controlling my emotions”. first of all, I have ADHD and bipolar simultaneously, my emotions are a hundred times fucking stronger than yours. secondly, i am actually excellent at controlling my emotions. i am the kind of person where if i am having a panic attack, you might not have any fucking clue that i’m even having anxiety unless i state directly that im having a panic attack. ive had PAs so bad where i legit thought i was about to die and not a single shred of that world-ending panic touched my external affect for a second. part of my fucking trauma revolves around having to hide my distress to avoid freaking out other people, which means that i learned to develop a diamond fucking grip on my external signs of distress. it’s deeply maladaptive in some situations, but in other situations it’s equally as useful. and yet because i am very animated and exaggerated in my persona, people assume that i just let my emotions fountain everywhere uncontrollably and that i’m just a waterfall of feelings.

incorrect. every bit of exaggeration in my affect is deliberate. i am not acting like a clown because i can’t control myself, i am purposefully choosing to exaggerate to convey my feelings more effectively. if i don’t want you to know what i’m feeling, you will never ever ever find out. there are some people i interact with on a regular basis whomst i fucking loathe deeply, and yet any time i interact with them i am completely personable and friendly. when im streaming video games on a high difficulty and get frustrated from having to do the same part over and over and over again, i never get tilted on stream. i dont yell or rage, and in fact the more frustrated i become the more blank and expressionless my affect turns. when i was playing dead space 2 on zealot difficulty on stream recently, all of my viewers were complimenting the fact that i spent at least two collective hours on trying to beat the final boss and yet still did not get visibly upset or pissed off once.

yes, my emotions are strong. i have two separate disorders that both have “emotional dysregulation” as some of their biggest negative side effects. my bad moods feel like a fucking firestorm most of the time and strong emotions are very difficult to handle and control. sometimes, my emotions get the better of me and i snap or get irritable. but the only time i’m irritable is when i feel physically and emotionally like utter dogshit and the bad mood impacts my ability to hold back my emotions. the truth is that in my day to day life there are dozens of fucking things that irritate the living hell out of me and i choose to discard my frustration rather than stay mad about something trivial--either that, or i feel the frustration intensely, but bite it back and don’t say anything because i’m not in the mood to pick a fight. if i’m being pissy with you, it’s because i’m completely fuck-out of all mental and physical energy that i would otherwise use to hold back my irritation. there is nothing left to burn. there aren’t even fumes in the tank. this bitch empty, so prepare for the yeet.

the problem that i run into with my family members is that this internal struggle to contain my emotions is completely invisible to any external viewers. they’re not me, of course they can’t see what’s going on in my head. what makes that an issue is that they don’t see the twenty fucking times i got irritated and managed to control my temper through the frustration, they only see the five or so times i lose control. my efforts are invisible to everyone around me, so when i finally do get fed up and make a snippy comment or complain, it seems like i just let my emotions get the better of me all the time.

to be fuckening honest, if the people who criticized me lived one fucking day in my shoes, the extremity of my emotions would exhaust them within hours. the thing is, i’m 25 fucking years old, which means i’ve lived with this shit for over two fucking decades. i have learned to control myself to an extent, and, being honest with yall? it fucking exhausts the living shit out of me all the goddamn time. it’s like my brain expends all my mental fuel reserves on overclocking my emotions as hard as possible while leaving no fuel left over for activities in the day that i actually need to do. it’s part of the reason i’m so fuckdamn tired all the fuckdamn time. but i’m not bad at controlling my emotions when i actually have the energy to do so. in fact, i’m so good at suppressing them that half the time, people don’t know i’m upset at all. to a certain extent, i’ve gotten used to how extreme my emotions are, and have started learning to predict what sets me off so i can make an effort to avoid the negative stimulus and save myself the frustration. i’m just really fucking tired of people accusing me of not controlling my emotions well enough when god fucking damnit you have no idea how hard i’m actually fucking trying!!! it feels like i’ve gotten so good at hiding my distress in my day-to-day life that now people have no fucking idea how shitty i actually feel until they poke me one too many times and i fucking bite their finger off, and then assume that i just randomly blew up on them with no reason or justification. that i’m just behaving like this to spite them personally.

i promise you im not fucking behaving randomly. in fact, my frustration triggers are actually pretty fucking consistent. the same bullshit behaviors will always piss me off; what changes on a day-to-day basis is how well i control the extremity of my reaction. if i’m having a good day, i have enough fuel stores to go “meh, whatever” and brush it off without being too bothered for very long. if i feel like shit, my ability to control my response is hampered and it becomes much harder to bite back a snippy comment. i’m not lashing out to be malicious or spiteful. i’m lashing out because you’ve been doing this shit every day for the past two fucking weeks and today i’m just too tired to deal with this fucking bullshit anymore. my reaction is not a sudden unprovoked blowing up of a bomb. it’s “you poked the caged animal one too many times and now it’s going to fucking bite you to make you stop because it has no other way to express its frustration”.

i try to be clear and concise with my boundaries, and frankly i don’t think they’re all that unreasonable. i like to be able to decide when and how i do a task on my own time rather than being pushed and pulled and jabbed and pressured every step of the way. i like to be able to have my own space where people have to get my permission before entering suddenly so that i feel like i have a safe place to hide when i’m overstimulated. i like to decide when and where i want to engage in socialization, and for how long. i like being able to decide when i’m ready to do a task, rather than having a task suddenly shoved on me with no warning or being pressured to do it before i’m ready. i do not like being gifted objects i did not request (and often actively requested not to get) and then being expected to be grateful for something i didnt even want in the first place. i don’t like gifts coming with invisible price tags and obligations that can change whenever the gifter decides they want more out of me. and i absolutely cannot. fucking. stand. passive aggression. all of these things do not really seem all that unreasonable to me, yet time and time again people treat me like i’m just asking for so much more than they can possibly give. and you know what? 75% of the fucking time when someone crosses one of these boundaries all i do is Make A Note Of It and go along with the boundary violator’s wishes anyway, because i actively decided that making a big deal out of them crossing my boundaries is not worth the effort of asking them to change their behavior, because throughout my entire fucking life i’ve been constantly treated as the irrational, unrealistic, crazy bitch for trying to set those boundaries. i’ve been taught time and time and fucking time again that defining my boundaries is too much to fucking ask. so when someone does violate my boundaries, there’s a little “Sye will remember that“ popup and absolutely zero expression or reaction. which means that yes. when i finally get tired and can’t bite back my frustration any longer, it’s because you’ve done the exact same thing to me two hundred fucking times previous and i don’t have the fucking patience to suck it up and deal with it anymore. im done with your shit.

so yeah. i’m a little bit fucking sick of people telling me that i have poor self-control. the fact that you think i have no self-control is an indicator of how good it actually is, because i’m so fucking good at hiding my distress that you don’t even have any idea how absolutely like a fetid mound of horse shit i feel like until my fuse finally burns all the way up. i can contain a 10-out-of-10 ‘i’m imminently about to die’ panic attack so well that not a scrap of that panic shows up in my external affect for even a second. i can suppress my pain on stream when it’s at a 7 out of 10 intensity or higher and be fucking on stream playing video games and commentating and show almost no sign of discomfort except for an intense concentrating face. don’t you fucking ever tell me that i’m bad at controlling myself. i’m a goddamn adult. i’ve learned how to control 90% of my fucking emotions so well that i could be holding a conversation with you imagining myself breaking your fucking nose and show absolutely zero sign of external hostility. i am good at controlling my fucking emotions. the problem is that my emotions are so world-endingly, apocalyptically intense that sometimes i just get too fucking tired to hold back, and then that’s when i bite. i’ m not just lashing out randomly with no provocation. i’ve been tread on a million fucking times and took it with a smile and you had no fucking idea. just because i bit you doesn’t mean i did it because i have no self-control. self-control? self-control???? don’t you fucking talk to me about self-control you headass bitch. i have a fucking supernova coming out of my brain and you’re telling me im weak for not being able to bite it back when your emotions have about as much intensity as a bowl of lukewarm porridge. don’t ever fucking criticize me for not being able to control myself when you’re playing life on easy mode and i’ve been stuck on expert all my fucking life. self-control. don’t you fucking talk to me about self-control ever again. you have no idea what the fuck you’re even talking about. fuck off.

[wiener-soldiers]

hallelujah (iii) - steve trevor

summary: after your partner, steve trevor, washes up on some mysterious island, you can’t help but worry endlessly. an ocean away, steve can’t help but think about you in the company of a certain amazonian warrior-princess.

words: 2000ish

warnings: none, this is cute

parts: part i, part ii, part iii, part iv

 But Baby I’ve been here before

I've seen this room and I've walked this floor

You know, I used to live alone before I knew ya.

And I've seen your flag on the marble arch

And love is not a victory march

It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.

It seems like worrying was all you have been doing nowadays. You worried about your family: your mother who was struggling to make ends meet, your outspoken father who was most likely advocating for the entry and acceptance of refugees displaced by the fighting, and your brother who was slowly reaching the age where he could disguise himself as an eighteen-year-old and volunteer for the army. You worried about Etta, who gave herself a tremendously heavy workload and pretended that everything was chipper. You worried about your friends, Charlie, Sameer, and Chief, all suffering from emotional and physical scars from the war.

Most of all, you worried about Steve. He has not returned for weeks from his solo mission to gather intel on Dr. Poison.

He was supposed to be back eight days ago. But no one knows where he is.

The weeks without Steve were unbearably grim. You were normally sent out on missions together, but solo missions for the two of you were somewhat common. However, this mission had felt a little off to you: you had reason to be correct.

The weeks without him followed a routine: wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast if you are lucky, go to work, pretend not to worry about your partner as Etta’s chipper personality is in front of you, go home, eat some food, sleep, and repeat. You did not leave the house early with a smile on your face to meet Steve for breakfast anymore, or throw crumpled paper at him as he sits in the desk across from you at work, or debate on which deli makes the best sandwiches as you take a stroll through London for lunch, or console him through the aftermath of a terrible breakup with his fiancée after dinner.

You wondered if Steve felt the same longing for you while you were away.

You focused on that thought over a more terrifying one: if Steve was still alive.

Of course, he was alive. At least he thought he was. Washing up on a mysterious island full of women who seemed to be stuck in Ancient Greece was confusing, to the say the least.

Maybe this is all some crazy lucid dream that I’ll tell (Y/N) when I wake up, he thinks to himself.

Instead, he finds himself on a sailboat, making a makeshift bed out of sheets for Princess Diana. Princess of what, Steve still isn’t so sure.

“What are you doing?” Diana asks from behind him.

“Oh! Uh—” Steve’s mind scrambles for something to say. He will not deny that Diana is one of the most beautiful people’s he’s seen, but with his mind on (Y/N), he finds that she is more of a distraction from getting back home to her. If Steve couldn’t see you, he damn well would like to be left alone with pleasant memories of you. “I thought you’d maybe wanna get some sleep,” he finishes sheepishly, turning around to face her.

He averts his gaze downwards and shuffles out of the way as Diana makes her way to the makeshift bed. “What about you,” she asks, “Are you not sleeping? Does the average man not sleep?”

He stammers over his words a bit, still confused about how to have a conversation with her. “No, it’s just I—,” he pauses and inhales. “Yes, we sleep. But we don’t sleep with…” he finishes, gesturing towards her.

“You don’t sleep with women?”

“No! No, I do sleep with...” he retorts in a flustered manner, letting out an awkward chuckle. He shakes his head again, “Yes, yes I do. But out of the, uh, confines of marriage. It’s just, I don’t—it’s not polite to assume, you know?”

His mind wanders back to you and how you helped guide him through his horrendous breakup with his fiancée. He still doesn’t truly understand how you were able to stay by his side when on some nights, all the two of you would do is sits on his couch and stare. He was grateful, nonetheless.

He remembers one night in particular: the two had stayed at the office late, clocking in late hours to do paperwork and write reports. It was nearing ten in the evening when Steve looked up at you. You sat in the desk across from him with your eyes drooping as you tried not to fall asleep on your hand as you finished a report. He smiles softly before standing up, the legs of the chair scratching the wooden floor.

“You’re done. We’re done. We’re going home,” he declares, packing his stuff into a briefcase. You had just enough energy to look up.

“What do you mean ‘we’re done’? Steve, these reports were due a week ago and we started them at five today.”

“Well, our bosses are gonna have to get them later.”

“Steve—“

“Would you rather them read a late and crappy report or a little more late but extremely thorough report? Besides, this report isn’t even important.”

Your silence gives him his answer.

He walks over to you and begins packing your stuff as you let out an exasperated sigh, mumbling about how he was a bad influence and how the report was never going to be ‘extremely thorough’ anyways.

The two of you lock up the office and walk through the lobby, the marble floors echoing your footsteps in the empty building. As soon as the two of you step outside, you stop at the curb as Steve crosses the street.

As soon as he realizes the click in your heel and the warmth you radiated from standing beside him went away, he turned around an called back at you, “What are you doing?”

“Waiting for a cab,” you say as if it is the most obvious thing in the world.

“Sweetheart, it’s late and I know you can take care of yourself, but I don’t want you waiting out here this late,” he rants, not caring that the term of endearment escaped him. He cared about your wellbeing more than he did his pride.

You roll your eyes at him as you pull the trench coat you have on tighter around your body, “Do you propose that I walk home then?”

He scoffs and walks towards his car, opening the passenger door for you, “Just get in the damn car.”

You were never really one to deny a request from Steve, so you slid into his car.

Though you want to keep a conversation with him, the cool air and his smooth driving are enough to make you fall asleep against the leather passenger seat. Every now and then, Steve finds himself sneaking glances at you, then at himself in the reflection of the window mirror.

What am I doing? he thinks to himself as he watches you, lovestruck. Though he just got out of a messy relationship, he didn’t fear loving you. He didn’t fear getting close to you because he knew that you were different from his ex and would never hurt him.

He parks his car in front of your apartment building and helps you out of the car and up the stairs. It is a struggle trying to open your apartment door while bearing most of your weight as you nuzzle your face into his chest, too tired to care if you are being embarrassed.

Steve helps you inside and helps you change out of your jacket and shoes. He helps you remove your formal wear so just the slip dress underneath covers your body. You are too tired to feel uncomfortable and Steve has too much respect for you to look anywhere but your face. He helps you to bed and spends a few minutes sitting beside your head stroking you hair until he is sure you have fallen asleep, just as you had done to him when you had found him drinking away his sorrows and helping him get home safely.

Somewhere in between, you falling asleep and the morning, Steve had also fallen asleep in your bed. He woke up and the break of dawn with his arms wrapped around your waist and your head on his chest. Though he knows that it is best for everyone if he leaves, he lets himself enjoy this moment of tranquility. For a moment, everything else washes away and it is just you and him, basking in the morning light. He places a soft kiss on your head before hesitantly climbing out of bed and driving home.

When he arrives to work that morning, changed and showered, you are already sitting at your desk finishing your report. You smile at him as he sits down but immediately continue working.

Steve lets out a sigh (of relief or disappointment, he can’t tell). You didn’t know that he fell asleep in your bed last night.

Maybe it’s best for everyone if she doesn’t know, he thinks to himself. He never brings it up.

“Marriage?” Diana asks him, and he is snapped back to reality.

“Marriage. Do you not have that on…,” he sighs, remembering Patricia, his ex-fiancée. “You go before a judge and you swear to love, honour and cherish each other until death does you part,” he mutters quickly.

“And do they? Love each other until death?”

He wants to laugh, cry, and scream. But instead, he answers, “Not very often, no.”

“Then why do they do it?”

Steve finds himself speechless. He was once hopelessly in love with a woman who did not love him to propose, only to have his heart and emotions served back to him in a casket with her signature all over it. “I…have no idea,” he finds himself saying, chuckling at the end as he hopes to relieve his own discomfort.

“So, you cannot sleep with me unless a marry you,” Diana states.

“I will sleep with you if you want!” he finally answers with a joking tone, hoping to appease her. “I will sleep right there.”

“There’s plenty of room.”

“Then, fine, if you don’t mind…”

“No, it’s up to you.”

“I know it’s up to me, I’m making the choice. I will come to sleep with you.”

Diana chuckles softly in slight confusing at Steve’s sudden edge at the topic of marriage, “Okay.”

Steve stands up to lay down beside her but is certain to keep a respectable amount of distance between them. He lies rigidly and awkwardly beside her as Diana shift to face him, resting her chin on her hands.

He suddenly feels embarrassed by how he behaved when Diana mentioned marriage, and how easily distracted he was when his mind drifted to (Y/N). “You know where I come from, I’m not considered average,” he starts, already cringing at his own need to protect his pride. “You know, being a spy, you have to show a certain amount of…vigor,” he finishes lamely.

“Are there no women spies, where you come from?”

His heart skips a beat, “There’s not a lot, to be honest, almost none. There’s uh—well there’s my partner.”

“Your partner? As in your partner in marriage?” she pegs on.

“No! I uh, no. No just my, uh…partner. In spy work. My spy partner,” he stutters. He hopes that Diana is poor at picking up social cues, as his answer was blatantly showcasing his true feelings.

“Will I meet her? When we go to the mainland,” she asks after a beat.

“Yeah, I mean—I hope you will. Unless she went off on an assignment or something.”

“Tell me about her.”

Steve clears his throat, suddenly feeling warm. “She’s smart. Kind. Loves her family, would do anything for them, really. Trustworthy, she always has my back. Caring, forgiving, reliable. An excellent listener…”

Diana listened as Steve continued to list things off about his partner. The way his face lit up and his eyes sparkled was a reflection of how her mother looked at her. This is love, Diana concluded, Maybe, this is the reason why people get married.

taglist: @sebastianstanfoundmymixtape, @accio-rogers, @lionheo04, @stupendoussciencenaturepanda