#just decided to post each trick separately because i felt that made the most sense idk

[zackcollins]

The Great Heineman: Palm Cards || Team PR || 03/03/19

[blinder-secrets]

False Employment

tommy shelby x maid!reader, 5,900 words

warnings: power play, dominance, nsfw

ao3 link

a/n: this is essentially the second piece in a maid series i’ve accidentally started, read michael’s here <3

When you were eight, you’d told your mother that you were going to be a dancer. Then a dressmaker, a poet, a horse-groomer. As a teen, you’d decided that you’d be a wife, just a wife, who’d raise the kids while your husband was away making fortunes, no doubt. Your mother had been happy enough with that idea, but it had soured on you. After all, you thought, why spend your time looking after others and not yourself?

In the end, though, you’d found work as a maid. A house-servant in black and white, cursed to parole the hallways of an estate that’d never feel homely, or private. The irony of it was not lost on you. Employed to look after people that weren’t even yours to look after, half the reasoning but triple the pay. At least this way, the work you did was profitable, and the money you made was saved in your own name. The catch, however, was that you hated it. And you hated it because you were frustratingly terrible at it. No matter how many times Frances taught you to fold the sheets, you got it wrong. Somehow. No matter how carefully you swept, or cleaned, or shined the child’s shoes, you missed a spot. You always missed a fucking spot. It’s like you were cursed, destined to be the worst possible maid in the Midlands, and there was nothing you could do about it.

The strangest part, of course, was that you hadn’t been fired yet. You’d hardly even been chastised. The most unbecoming maid in the history of housekeeping, and you still had your job. You were still paid more than the industry standard. Despite all you knew about him, it seemed Mr. Shelby, unlike most employers, was endlessly forgiving of his staff; it was only when you started to question why, that you realised that wasn’t entirely the case.

On the Friday, you’d been called to bring tea to the front sitting-room. You’d say it’s one of your least favourite tasks but, honestly, they all sit equally on the list of things that you hate to do. The dishes always clatter on the tray, rattling wildly as you take the stairs from the kitchen. The china is scolding to touch each time you go to pour it. The spout is short, the saucers fragile and ill-fitting. Really, there’s a lot less grace in serving tea, than there is in drinking it, and that day was no different.

‘Your tea, Mr. Shelby,’ you announced, once you’d wobbled through the doorway. The milk had spilt onto the metal, but the cups and teapot had stayed strong, thank God. ‘Where would you like it?’

He wasn’t alone, the aunt and his cousin were waiting with him, but only your cold-faced boss had acknowledged the arrival. He was stood by the window, picking a cigarette from his case, and had paused to give instruction that no-one else would offer. His gaze flicked to you briefly, then over to the low coffee table in the centre. ‘There.’

You obliged with a nod, before crossing the room to set the tray and its precarious contents down. ‘Should I pour you some, sir?’ you asked the cousin, hoping he’d say no, hoping he’d let you return to some other, more menial job. One that at least let you work without an audience. Instead, he nodded, and leant forward to hold one of the tea-cups up. Why he couldn’t just leave it there, on the flat surface, where no spills could do any damage, you didn’t know. He probably thought he was being helpful; tragically, he failed to take into account that you were the clumsiest tea-maid in the house.

The handle stung, as expected, the moment you took hold of it, but you were interrupted before you could even begin to pour.

‘Shouldn’t milk go first?’ he asked, continuing once you looked at him like he was wild. ‘In china, to stop it from cracking?’

‘Oh.’ You stuttered, straightening from your bend with the burning teapot in your hand still. ‘Of course,’ you answered. Of course there was some rule you had forgotten, some high-class superstition about breaking the bone china they could replace so easily. You wanted to roll your eyes, but instead you smiled, and set the tea down again. ‘Sorry, sir.’

When his cup was filled with an inch of the obviously critically important milk, you tried again to pour his tea. The aunt and Mr. Shelby were talking around you, but you were so focused on the act that their words fell away into rubble, just birds chattering between the trees. You lifted the pot again and poured as steadily as your arm would allow.

From the sudden hiss of breath between his teeth, it hadn’t been steady at all. You’d poured scolding tea onto the rim, the saucer, and finally, unfortunately, onto the pinstripe-stretch of his knee.

‘Fuck,’ you burst, ‘sorry.’ The pot went back to the tray quickly, your hands into the pocket of your apron. You hadn’t realised you’d sworn until it was too late to correct it. Another X against your name, surely. ‘Forgive me,’ you told him, pulling a cloth free to offer it, ‘it’s clean.’ At least, for your sake, you’d remembered that dabbing the stain yourself would be inexcusable.

He took it, sighing, and his mother rolled her eyes so plainly that you couldn’t have ignored it if you tried. ‘It’s alright,’ he said, though his scowl didn’t agree. ‘That’s enough anyway.’

You nodded, leaving him to pat awkwardly at the stain, balancing the cup and saucer in his free hand. What Mr. Shelby thought of the ordeal, you didn’t know. He was behind you, quiet, and impossible to see without turning entirely. The embarrassed heat that lingered in your ears was enough to keep you from trying. The last thing you needed, was another unimpressed look sent your way; you got enough of them from Frances.

When you shifted to face the aunt, she spoke before you could, insisting, ‘I can pour my own.’

You smiled before she’d even finished. ‘Course, ma’am,’ you offered with a shallow curtsey. Anything to get out sooner was welcome, even if it was a dig at your serving expertise.

Straightening fully, you smoothed the back of your dress and spun, facing the windows and the silhouette before them. ‘Will that be all, sir?’ you asked as you met his gaze —which had already been there, waiting. Taking account. He’d been watching you fuck up, yet again, probably wondering how you got the job in the first place. You chewed your lip as he deliberated.  

‘Yes,’ he said after a moment, speaking through the cloud of his cigarette, ‘that’ll be all.’

Why you got off so lightly, made no fucking sense, but you weren’t about to stand there and argue with him. Instead, you dipped your knees again and left. It had felt like he’d watched you until you’d gone out of sight, through the doorway, but that was more likely to be a symptom of your over-thinking. Just jumping to paranoid conclusions like you always did, assuming his eyes had clung to your back until the door had shut them away.

By the next week, you were starting to think you weren’t paranoid at all.

Frances had caught you in the hallway between your room and her own, just as you were heading down for something to eat. ‘Mr. Shelby will be home soon,’ she said, stopping in front of you with a sure knot between her brows.

You watched her undo the tie of her pinafore. ‘Okay?’

‘He’ll need his coat taking, and offer him a drink, not supper.’

You balked. Why was she telling you this? ‘Isn’t that your job?’ you asked, feeling dread settle into your stomach. She was top of the hierarchy, the one he trusted most, you were a scullery maid at best. It’d make more sense for his boy to greet him, over you.

She sighed like you were at fault, and folded the pinafore over her arm. ‘He’s asked for you.’

‘He has?’

‘And don’t speak more than you should,’ she continued, ignoring your obvious alarm. ‘Just, just do as I would.’

But you didn’t know what she did. You never paid attention to what she did. ‘Do you think he wants to speak to me?’ you asked, following as she started towards her room. ‘Am I in trouble?’ Was it finally the chopping block for you?

She turned sharply, causing you to stumble to a halt. ‘I think,’ she stressed, ‘that he wants his coat taking.’ Then her door opened and she shut herself inside, leaving you to stand aimlessly in the hallway.

With little else to do, you made your way downstairs to wait within hearing distance of the front door. It didn’t take Mr. Shelby long to require your services, but it did take just long enough for you to think yourself into a panic. No, not a panic, it was more of a steady confidence. A certainty that he had asked for you, specifically, so that he could tell you to work harder. Better. So that he could get you alone, and threaten a cut to your wages if you didn’t stop pouring tea onto his guest’s laps. It was the only plausible reasoning you could settle on.

When he stepped into the entry-way, your heart was beating hard enough to trick your mind into labelling it as excitement. A twisted bout of adrenaline at the thought of being fired. You’d have laughed if you weren’t trying so hard to be professional, instead, you kept your face serious. ‘Good evening, Mr. Shelby,’ you started, moving from your post to meet him. ‘Can I take your coat?’

You thought you saw his lip twitch upwards, but it was redirected into a short nod. ‘Frances changed the rota,’ he said, though it was obvious. He turned, showing you his back, and you pulled the collar from his shoulders before you could overthink the motion.

‘She did, sir,’ you agreed. Don’t talk too much. Don’t talk too much. ‘Have you had your hair cut?’ you asked, unable to stop once you’d noticed the close shave at the back of his head.

He faced you again, letting the coat peel from his arms until he was separate, and you were left to wrangle the heavy fabric alone. To no surprise, he didn’t answer your question. He didn’t even remove his cap. Instead, he stared, squinting slightly, then held the briefcase out for you to take.

You were running out of hands to be useful with. The folded coat was thick enough to render one arm useless, and now his case occupied the other. ‘Would you like something to eat, sir?’

‘No,’ he answered, too quick to have really considered it. Then he looked down, eyes on the leather gloves he was removing, and asked, ‘What’s your name?’

‘[Y/n], sir.’

He repeated it once. Rolled it over his tongue and out again like he was testing for its flavour. Analysing its worth, though he had surely heard it a hundred times before.

Your adrenaline had finally been replaced by fragile nerves. The silence felt like an open invite for critique, and you’d rather have it filled with the forbidden small talk than let it begin. ‘Would you like me to fetch Char—‘

‘Have you lit the fire in my office?’ he asked blankly, interrupting you as he lifted his eyes to yours. The blue alone was enough to quiet you. His stare was more intimidating than luxurious; if he had been watching you as you thought he had, you weren’t sure that was a good thing anymore.

‘No,’ you stammered. ‘Should I have?’ It was dark already, but you hadn’t noticed the cold yourself. ‘Should I do it now, Mr. Shelby?’ you corrected, playing catch up on your responsibilities. ‘I’ll put these down.’

He shook his head and put the gloves, together, on top of his coat. Piled it all on you like you were a walking hat-stand. ‘Make sure you have next time,’ he said. ‘It’s winter.’

‘Yes, sir. Sorry.’

It didn’t look like the apology meant anything to him, probably because you had rushed it out nervously, rather than sincerely. You didn’t often know what you were apologising for after all, just that you should be, and that you were normally at fault in the first place. So you said sorry quickly, before he could leave. And then, once he had done, turning from you after a final clinging-look, you said sorry again into the absent space he had left behind. Sorry, Mr. Shelby, don’t fire me, Mr. Shelby. I know I’m a terrible fucking servant, Mr. Shelby. He didn’t look back, nor did he ask for you again that evening. From your perspective, that was a win. It meant he hadn’t planned to stage an intervention, or to tell you off like a scorned school master. He had simply wanted you to do your job, well, Frances’ job, and somehow, you hadn’t massively disappointed. A few mis-placed questions hadn’t caused your downfall, and you found yourself hanging his coat with an easy smile. Perhaps you were valuable to him then, or at least acceptable. Perhaps you were employed for a reason.

When he next went away, you made sure to light the fire before he returned. Clever, you thought, well remembered indeed. What you failed to do, however, was time it well enough that it would be lit, burning strong and heating the room, before you had to meet him at the door. You were still knelt by the hearth when he arrived.

He cleared his throat once, from the doorway, and the noise was loud enough to startle you over the snaps of the fire. You sprang from the floor in one panicked burst of energy, turning in almost the same motion, moving faster than you felt you ever had.

‘Oh, Mr. Shelby,’ you panted. ‘Sorry, sorry, I was just finishing the fire.’

He was fully dressed still. Obviously, because you hadn’t been there to pull the outer layers from him as you should have. It wasn’t even a difficult task and you’d seemingly failed on your second try.

‘Have you been there long?’ you asked, hoping that if you kept him talking, and kept his eyes on yours, he would fail to notice the ash on your knees. The grey powdering of your tights and the hem of your dress, dirtied from kneeling too close to the bricks. It could be brushed away easily, but you hardly wanted more attention drawn to it. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

He shrugged, not bothering with a real answer. The nonchalance made you nervous. He could’ve been standing there for seconds, or he could’ve been there for minutes, watching you bent in half, folded in front of the fire as you worked. Whether someone could even be judged on their fire-making skills, you didn’t know. But he seemed the type to be able to judge anyone for anything.

‘Sorry, I should take your coat,’ you started, crossing the room with your hands out.

‘It’s alright.’ He walked past you before you could even reach him, moulding into the study like he was a part of it. ‘I have to go out again, anyway.’

You nodded. He didn’t offer any other instruction, so you just stood there, dirty like a chimney-sweep, gormless like a fucking goose in the river. ‘Should I go, sir?’ you asked.

His case went on top of the desk, his body dropped into the seat behind it. He didn’t look at you, or answer you, he just pulled a cigarette from his inside pocket and lit it. You watched him inhale and exhale once before growing tired.

‘There are things I should be doing, sir,’ you said, hoping to sound more apologetic than rude. In truth, you were just bored. Uncomfortable. You couldn’t stop thinking about the ash on your knees.

It definitely wasn’t paranoia that time. His eyes finally found you, in the middle of the room, and drank you in like you were one of his racehorses. The flashy ones that he bought for the sake of money and money alone. You fidgeted under the weight of them, knowing the crystal irises were skimming every part of you that should’ve been ignored. Especially for a maid, for one of his house-servants. Your body should’ve been nothing beneath the rigidity of your uniform, and yet he scooped it out from between the seams, looked at the curves that you were sure had been hidden.

‘Do you live at the house,’ he started, voice low and catching, ‘or at home?’

‘The house, sir.’ You threaded your fingers together, kept them clutched over your pinafore. ‘I share the room next to Frances.’

The smoke pooled from his lips again, trailing after him as he leant back into his seat. He was looking at you down his nose, through his lashes, holding the silence just long enough for it become taut. Sharp enough to make your cheeks warm.

‘And when she hears the bell at night, do you hear it too?’

You frowned, but nodded. The service bells were mounted on the wall between the doors.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘next time it goes, I want you to see to it.’

His gaze was unmoving. Yours had been charmed into the same fate, unable to pull away from him. ‘Sir?’ you said, understanding his meaning, but not believing it in the slightest. There was no innocent reason for him to switch orders like that. The older woman had always covered the night work, as infrequent as it was.

He cocked his head, and narrowed his eyes in one quick pulse of intent. ‘Let Frances have her rest, eh?’

It was either a promotion, or a proposition. You had neither the gall or the desire to ask which. ‘Of course, Mr. Shelby.’

After that, your encounters with him had remained short and indifferent. You took his coat, brought him tea, whiskey, followed orders when he gave them. You’d watched him, watching you, every time, and thought nothing more of it. Or at least tried not to. You never saw him interact with other staff, so you couldn’t dispel the idea that he treated you any different from them; he could’ve held all of his employees under the same searing gaze and you wouldn’t have known. Frances had commented on his favouring of you, claiming ‘he’d ask for you over anyone else’, but she had seemed relieved all the same. She liked her work, but she liked free time just as much. His request to switch you to the night-calls, however, had been a dormant one, an almost pointless one, because he’d never rang. Never asked anything of you once he’d taken supper.

At least, he hadn’t before now, right now. This very moment. You’d been dragged from your sleep by the dull clanging of the service bell, and now you’re hot-footing down the stairs with your pinafore barely fastened. What the allowed time for dressing is, you have no idea. You’re trying to rush, but there’s no way of knowing how long it has been, or how presentable you are. The only comfort is that he’s yet to ring the bell again, so you obviously haven’t been long enough to make him impatient.

The door to his study is shut, but there’s nowhere else he’d be, so you knock once you’re stood in front of it. You hear him cough from the other side, before saying, ‘Come in.’

Right then. Here you go. You take a few steps into the room, just enough to be present, but not intrusive, and force a quiet breath before speaking. ‘What can I do for you, Mr. Shelby?’ you ask, starting as he shows no sign of doing it on your behalf. He hasn’t even looked up to acknowledge you.

He’s leaning on the end of his desk, staring into the embers of the once lit fire, with a half-filled tumbler in his hand. His jacket’s off, shirt sleeves rolled and shoved to sit above the elbow. If it weren’t for the waistcoat, still fastened and adorned with the chain of his pocket-watch, he’d look almost scruffy. Off-guard. ‘So,’ he says, ‘you heard the bell, then.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you don’t mind the disturbance?’

‘No.’ Though, if he’d brought you down just to test the mechanism, you would hardly be happy about it. ‘Is that all, sir?’

He snorts, following it with a sip of whiskey. The motion causes the gold band around his bicep to catch in the lamplight, glinting at you. A lighthouse through the dark. ‘You don’t get bored of saying sir?’ he asks, finally flicking his eyes in your direction. ‘You say it more than the others.’

Your brows sink together, frowning before you can help it. You weren’t aware there was any other thing to call him, or that sir had a quota, one that you were seemingly well over. ‘Am I wrong to address you as that, Mr. Shelby?’

Quietly, he stands from his lean and tips his head back to finish the final portion of his drink. You watch his neck against the light, follow the whiskey as it travels down his throat. Once it’s empty, he turns to face you with his arm limp by his side, glass dangling in his palm. ‘No,’ he says, shaking his head half-way, ‘call me what you like.’

You catch a whim in the dim-setting, a spark of courage from the fireplace. It’s like the quiet of the house, the certainty of your solitude together, is daring you to test the bounds of your employee-boss relationship. His lingering pause gives the same effect, his blank stare waits to be challenged.

‘Not Tommy, though, sir?’ you ask, wanting to smirk with it, but missing the moment. Or rather, losing the courage as soon as the name’s left your lips.

His chin lifts a fraction. ‘No, not that.’

Tommy is too personal, too close to him. The faint hope you had, that he’d allow you to say it, is squashed into the rug beneath his feet. Without asking, he holds the glass up, arm straight and pointed toward you. You understand his meaning well enough and cross the room to take it from him.

‘Do you often wake a maid, just to pour your whiskey?’ you ask from beside the drinks cabinet. The decanter is there, ready, un-topped and waiting. You fill his glass a quarter, and then a quarter more after a pause of consideration. It doesn’t seem like an evening for single measures.

He doesn’t answer until you’re back in front of him. ‘No,’ he admits shamelessly, leaving you yet another silence to fill.

‘Just me then, sir?’

He nods. ‘Yep, just you.’

He takes the glass and lifts it for a drink. By the time he’s swallowed, and set it down again, you’re two steps back, waiting in the middle of the rug. Anxious for the next order. You’d hoped that the late hour would’ve made him more accessible, more willing to drop the formalities and pretence of your relationship. Instead, it’s made you all the more aware of them. All the more sensitive to the ladder of power between the two of you, and the way he manoeuvres it. He seems so easy, so comfortable, unapologetic of his status and the benefits that it gives him. He can walk the line without risk of misstepping, because he’s the one who sets it.

‘Do you like your job, [y/n]?’ he asks, sounding as if he knows the answer already.

You chew the reply over in your head. As lucky as you’ve been so far, the outright truth might finally throw you into the cold. ‘I like the company,’ you answer, ‘the people.’

He pushes a laugh through his nose, amused but barely smiling still. ‘Didn’t ask you that.’

No, but you won’t lie to him. ‘I’m terrible at my job, sir,’ you say. He surely knows that as well as you do, maybe that’s the reason for him calling on you. It’s time for the meeting you’ve been dreading. The conversation was here at last. ‘In all honesty,’ you tell him, ‘I don’t know why you’ve kept me on.’

Sighing, he half-sits on the desk again, arms folding across his chest. ‘You think you’re that bad?’

‘Awful, sir.’ The added responsibilities have done nothing to improve your prowess. His extra requests have just given you more things to misplace, more damages to cause. ‘Why have you never said anything?’ you ask, adding a ‘sir’ at the raise of his brow. ‘Most people would’ve docked my wages by now.’

He blinks once. ‘Do you want me to punish you?’

The heat it sends up your neck is scorching, embarrassing. For a moment, you forget that he could mean it plainly, that he could speak as an employer and an employer alone. If he had any other expression, you’d be able to validate that, but he’s stoney as ever, waiting for a response like he’d simply asked for the time. ‘No, sir,’ you manage. ‘I just wondered why.’

He takes a sip before answering, hissing the whiskey between the set of his teeth. ‘You know why,’ he says, watching his hands for once, giving you respite from his stare. ‘You look at me just the same.’

‘I do?’

You don’t know why you’re asking, because you’re already in agreement. The self-indulgent glances you’ve taken of him were for the exact same reason you had hoped he looked at you. It wasn’t judgement, but hunger. You had thought it silly to imagine he felt that way too. Maybe men were men after all, easy to read regardless of status, free to want as they liked, but not without the worry of consequence.

‘I don’t want to misunderstand you, Mr. Shelby,’ you say carefully, speaking slow enough to set your thoughts straight. ‘Why do you employ me still?’

You’d expected bravado in reply, but his eyes are on the glass and his voice is taut. ‘I can’t,’ he states. He knows the reasons as well as you do. The chains that bind him, the ones that keep both of your roles in place. There are rules in this house, things that can’t be changed for desire’s sake and he’s counting on you to respect them; the sheer fact that you’re here, alone with him in the middle of the night, proves that his willpower is faltering. He expects you to make up for what he lacks.

The irony, of course, is that you’ve never been any good at meeting expectations. You feel your heartbeat in your skull, right behind your ears, as you take a step forward. ‘Can’t say,’ you challenge, ‘or can’t act on it?’

Another step and you’re an arm’s length away from him.

He puts the glass down and faces you steadily, like he’s flicked the switch back into place, like he’s got cold, iced water in his veins again. ‘You’ll tempt me in my own house, eh?’ he chides, pushing it through a smirk. ‘So quick to be a whore.’

‘I’m not a whore,’ you answer, ‘I’m a maid.’ You chance it and put a hand to his waistcoat, pinching the edge of it between your fingers. He doesn’t stop you. You’re invincible then, you could do anything in the world, and he still wouldn’t think it reason enough to fire you. ‘You don’t seem like a man to ignore his wants, Mr. Shelby.’ Indulge while you can, taste what you’ve been thinking about for so long. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help,’ you purr, ‘then it’s surely my job to do it.’

He doesn’t say anything, but maybe he’s ran out of words. Maybe they’d just take him further from what it is that he wants. Now that you both know it, there’s no reason to discuss. You may be terrible at housework, but men have never been a challenge, you could never fail at something you enjoyed so thoroughly.

Standing, he takes you by the wrist and pulls your fingers free of the waistcoat. He holds your hand in front of your face like you’re a caught criminal. ‘Go back to bed,’ he says, bluntly enough that you almost turn and run. But you were so close to the impossible, so close to tipping over the line, that adrenaline catches you instead.

‘Why?’ Your brows pinch, your manners forget themselves in the disappointment. ‘You suddenly have morals?’ you ask, teetering on laughter. ‘Shame?’ He could kill a man, but fucking his maid is where his ethics hardened. Where they steeled to a stop.  

His jaw sets. For someone so familiar with staff, and giving orders, he’s struggling to put you in your place. You know it’s coming though, you can see the threat behind his eyes.

‘Are you scared, Tommy?’ you taunt. ‘Worried we’ll be found out?’

It was a risk, but it paid off, and he switches the play so easily into his favour, that the wind is knocked out of you before you can piece together what’s happened. He’d pulled you forward, then past him, so that your thighs are against the edge of the desk and his chest is pressed along the length of your back. His arms are either side of you, palms flat on the wooden top. ‘Is that how you want it?’ he bites, putting the question to your neck. Down the collar of your uniform. ‘Ay? Against the boss’s desk?’

‘If that’s what suits you.’

He puts a knee between yours, pushing your legs just far enough apart to feel like he’s predator and you’re prey. Like your body is his to bend, to set in place and enjoy. ‘What?’ he asks, breath hot and liquored by your ear. ‘I didn’t hear you.’

You clear your throat, willing your voice to strengthen. This was what you’d initiated, after all. This is the side you’d asked to see. ‘If that’s what suits, sir,’ you say again, stressing the ‘sir’ like it’s the key to it all, the fuel under the fire. By the way his breath shudders against you, you’re starting to think it is.

He exhales again. ‘We shouldn’t.’ He’s quiet with it, like the thought had escaped without him realising.

‘I want to,’ you insist. You lean forwards slightly, curving your lower back upwards and into him. ‘You want to, sir.’ It was obvious enough. The extra work, the lingering stares, the hardness growing against the back of your thigh —it all lead to one thing, to wanting, lusting. To favouring desire over anything else.

His hands lift from the desk-top to your waist. Taking the bait, then, making it his.

You turn between them, not caring that the motion has skewed your uniform, twisting the skirt beneath his hands until it’s sat, bunched, at your hips. It would have to be moved eventually, taken off entirely if he had the time. ‘If you take any longer,’ you say, ‘the house’ll wake up, Mr. Shelby.’

‘Yeah?’ He lifts you as he answers, putting you onto the desk, and himself between the spread of your legs. ‘And you’ll have duties to attend,’ he says, looking over you, rather than at you. His gaze is foggy from the need. You hum in agreement, playing the game, following his lead as you’re paid to. When his nose finds the space beneath your earlobe, his lips ghosting the edge of your jaw, you melt. You pour into him like scorching gold. ‘I’ll have to have you now,’ he decides, ‘while you’re off the clock.’ The words rumble out of him, low and careless, shouldered by a kiss.

You close your eyes, holding his biceps to keep you upright. ‘If I’m off duty, should I call you sir, or Tommy?’ you ask, barely managing a hoarse whisper.

His mouth opens against your neck, hot and possessive. His lips drag down to the base of your throat before he replies. ‘Are you a maid,’ he asks, panting into the skin, ‘or a whore?’

A whore, you think. He’d never kiss his wife this way, would never have relations like this with any other member of staff. You purl against him as his hand goes between your thighs. ‘Whatever, sir,’ you breathe, ‘I’m whatever you want.’ Right now, you’re a torched flame, you’re a white hot coal, split apart by the heat. His fingers move like he’s known you before. ‘There,’ you tell him, sighing as he finds that tight bundle of nerves through the cotton. ‘There, sir.’

When he kisses you on the mouth, you’re almost surprised enough to reject it. You had wrongly assumed he would avoid kissing you like a lover, but his tongue swept between your lips, pushing in to find yours, and then the thought had gone entirely. You kiss back like you’ve been starved of it, your arms around his neck to ensure that he’ll stay.

‘I imagined it like this,’ he pants, pulling back to say it into your cheek. ‘From the start.’

Really, you want to ask, right from the beginning? But instead, you moan and curl into him, spine mirroring the path his thumb had taken across your clit. ‘I didn’t,’ you breathe, humming as he repeats the motion. ‘I imagined more fucking.’

His hand pulls away fast enough that you regret saying it, but he speaks so urgently that you don’t have time to mourn the loss. ‘Take them off,’ he says, already starting on the fastening of his trousers. ‘Now.’

You do as you’re told, unclipping the garters from your tights, so that you can push your underwear down and over your knees. He’s back against you before you can shake them from your ankles.

‘It’s just a fuck,’ he says, with one hand on himself, and the other on the bare bone of your hip. ‘Alright?’

You nod, meeting his gaze with the same rushed sincerity. ‘I know.’ You hadn’t doubted that for a second. You’re after the same thing he is: relief. A purge of the tension that he had been building between you, a break from the questioning of ‘what if?’.

‘Just a fuck,’ you repeat, desperate now the heartbeat pulses from your head to your toes. Now it thumps from you, to him. You’re sure he can feel it as he presses into you.

He groans, savouring the sensation, and lets his hands stray to grip your thighs. ‘That’s what you wanted?’ he pants, rocking his hips forward again. ‘That answer your question?’

You lie back, over the newspapers and the letters. Let him fuck you like you’re just another object on the desk. ‘Yes,’ you sigh. ‘Yes.’

‘Yes, what?’

‘Yes, Mr. Shelby.’ It not only answered your question, but clarified another that you had yet to consider. You knew now, why he employed you still, but you’d discovered why you worked for him, too. Why you kept the job you hated, why you hadn’t quit after failing so many times. ‘It’s this,’ you tell him, ‘it’s for this.’

[smallblueandloud]

some leverage: redemption reactions

i finished leverage redemption today! and i don't have anyone to talk to about it so, here we have my reactions for all eight episodes, both positive and negative. please feel free to reblog/comment -- discussions are what i'm here for! (under a cut because spoilers and also this ended up being 2k. whoops!)

EPISODE 1: the too many rembrandts job

the "aww, this guy is trying to pull his first heist! how cute" job

what they chose to do with nate was... interesting. it might just be that i read too many of those cracky "here's how they should explain nate's absence" posts, but i was expecting something funny. the grief permeating this episode -- it makes SENSE, but it was still weird. leverage doesn't usually have sadness like this. pain, yes, rage, certainly, but sadness? not usually

the way sophie immediately spots the signs of a con and slips into a character? phenomenal. i'm here for EXPERTS BEING EXPERTS and this show does NOT disappoint

harry wilson is a really solid character! most impressively, he's not flynn, which is impressive enough that i'm making a whole bullet point about it. i was worried that noah wyle was kinda a one-trick pony, but it appears not! good for him tbh

i'm LIVING for the ot3 moments in this episode. "what happened?" "we happened" YESSSSS!!! i wish we'd had more domesticity, but i know they did what they could

"he gets it from his father" FUCK!!!!!

the discussion about redemption in this episode is FANTASTIC but personally i am still delirious with excitement about "my nana leads a multi-denominational household" so expect those thoughts in 3-5 business days

EPISODE 2: the panamanian monkey job

the "flash electropop concert" job

BREANNA INTRODUCTION! i love her so MUCH, y'all. we only got to see her dynamic with hardison in this one episode, but man, it manages to be one of her best dynamics anyway. i just! i love her! i love the way the team works with her!

"in our field, you're one of the best. but there, you're the only one." god we have ELIOT/HARDISON rights and i am NOT OKAY. just!! them!!!!!! being supportive!!!!!! they have learned how to be sweet with each other! they work together so much better (in part because we're seeing them from harry's outsider pov instead of nate's insider pov, but STILL)

midway through this episode, i thought "huh, leverage always focuses on specific people, when really the problem is systematic, and pretending it's anything different is just an excuse to not fight for change". and then at the end harry talks about how the system itself is broken! i love knowing that john rogers and i were reading the same tweets last summer. it's a good feeling to trust the people making a piece of media

who let noah wyle speak spanish. whoever it was, they need to rescind their permission

god, the parker/hardison in this episode. THE PARKER/HARDISON IN THIS EPISODE! they KILL me friends they KILL ME!

also just like, hardison in this episode in general. he made a star trek reference! he made a doctor who reference! he decides there are other people who need him more! the way they wrote around gina bellman's maternity leave in s2 was good but this was phenomenal.

also i'm here for ot3 crumbs so "is this like the time when eliot wanted us to say no" is going on my ot3-is-canon conspiracy board

this is a tiny detail but eliot taking out the drone with a goddamn ORANGE was so good. he's so good at his job!! they're all so good at their jobs!! i know i literally just talked about this but AAA

EPISODE 3: the rollin' on the river job

the "sometimes you just want to rob a vault wearing a floofy dress, and that's valid" job

i did... not. like. how the villain in this one was an immigrant whose exploitable weakness was a "desperation" to be included in the upper crust. and the fact that they beat him with a literal southern belle who explicitly beats him BECAUSE her family has been in the area for "hundreds of years"? it just feels Iffy.

also iffy about this episode was breanna's characterization. it felt inconsistent. she feels inconsistent across the whole season, but this episode in particular... she tells harry she's only with the team because she's desperate, that she doesn't believe in hope, and then at the end of the episode she tells parker she wants to be there to change the world. and like, even in the first place, she's not here out of desperation! SHE asked to join the team! like, i can see how it all kinda fits together, but it just feels... inconsistent. idk. i think these scripts all could've benefited from an extra round or two of editing.

anyway! i loved the way they tied hardison into these episodes, even though aldis hodge couldn't be there. he has binders! breanna doesn't want to read them! parker did! he put in big letters, "when in doubt, trust the person in the van". i'm just so !!! about how much i love him and how much he loves his team and how much his team loves him. FOUND FAMILY, BABY!

all inconsistencies in breanna's characterization aside, i really liked her speech at the end. i know how she feels! it's really nice to have someone on the team who's from -- not my world, really, but a lot closer than any of the others. it's a nice feeling! i love her a lot. i hope her writing gets more consistent

lol, parker ate eliot's carrot cake. i love the parker/eliot rights we get in this show, they're so domestic and it's wonderful.

EPISODE 4: the tower job

the "hardison made his partners learn klingon" job

watching this episode was what made me go "they're not going to make us sit through a harry/sophie romance... right? right?"

i'm still not sure they're gonna let us avoid it but it COULD work so... i've decided to just not worry about it for now

i liked the number of ways the con goes wrong! it was fun to watch them work on the fly like that. i think them not having a dedicated Mastermind(tm) is a good watsonian explanation for their plans being pretty haphazard in general, but it's good, they think well on their feet

nate was a chessmaster. he had the whole situation in his mind from the beginning, accounting for every possible outcome. parker and sophie are much more adaptive, and it's cool to see. they can rely on their respective skillsets a lot more than nate could

a really solid episode! probably one of the strongest ones in the season. i liked it a lot.

(ALSO as mentioned above the klingon lines were fantastic and not just because they were a star trek reference -- every time eliot and parker both mentioned hardison, together, it added a year to my lifespan)

EPISODE 5: the paranormal hacktivity job

the "sophie was worryingly prepared to fake her death" job

i know why they characterized the client as a skeptic, i really do, and i loved the format of this episode, but also. But Also. she should've been a love interest for breanna and I'm Right.

having a girl's episode was the CORRECT choice. they do crimes in their free time! they fleece newbie, cruel criminals! it's so good!

it would've been cool to have eliot around for the assassin guy, but it was also cool to see the others take him out without having eliot to rely on. it's like getting to see how they'd take out eliot, if they were ever on opposing sides.

PARKER CANONICALLY USES SCRIPTS IT'S THE BEST THING EVER

breanna bristling about letting the criminal into the theater's electric system was so good god i love her so much. she knows hardware! i bet she likes to work with her hands. i bet she stims. i bet she has adhd

actually, sidenote, but i LOVE these headquarters. they look so nice! the stage is so nice! i loved having an episode set in and around it, it was such a good choice.

EPISODE 6: the card game job

the "FINALLY AN EXPLICITLY QUEER LEVERAGE CHARACTER" job

QUEER BREANNA QUEER BREANNA QUEER BREANNA QUEER BR

UNFOLLOW ME NOW THIS IS GONNA BE THE ONLY THING I POST ABOUT FOR THE REST OF TIME

GOD, what a good way to reveal it. it's fully about her! i love queer romances, of course i do, but i don't think i've ever seen a character come out without a romance being their reason for doing so (however indirectly). i still think she should've gotten a date with the client from 1x05, but i really liked this too.

this episode just felt like a love letter to fandom, and i love that. i love how much it shone through. i'm used to writers specifically going out of their way to make fun of fans and laugh at them, so it was just. really nice to have someone stand up and go, no, this is important for a reason! people love this for a reason! it MEANS something!

very fun to watch eliot swordfight. very fun to watch sophie recite a sonnet in her classic fashion. very fun to watch parker work at being a good mentor. breanna was so excited about the card game! they're all so good!

oh, and i guess harry's here too.

EPISODE 7: the double-edged sword job

the "harry is addicted to mobile games, which is a mood" job

hot take alert! i think this is the weakest episode of the season by a LOT. it needed so much more editing. it felt so disjointed, so all over the place. the plot was haphazard but in a muffled way, where you had no idea why they were doing what they were doing. the climax was sudden and didn't make any sense. it was just weird.

i'm not the person to comment on this but it feels kind of lazy to cast an east asian guy to play a socially-awkward tech genius. just a thought.

oh, of course jonathan frakes directed this episode. sometimes his stuff is really good but other times (ahem, ds9 3x02) it's disjointed and all over the place. i'm not even surprised it was him.

idk if i have anything else to say about this. oh! some of the team moments were great -- mostly involving eliot. i loved the moment of him recognizing the headshot, i LOVED the ten seconds of everyone teasing him. he and parker talked about the wellbeing of their friend, the woman whose ex tracked her down!

separate bulletpoint to say how much i LOVED his conversation with breanna outside the house. he's so good at reassuring! he could go deeper there, talking about being better than your worst day, but he knew when not to push! it was so good.

"first off, this guy can't TOUCH hardison" deserves its own bulletpoint because like. y'all. Y'ALL.

EPISODE 8: the mastermind job

the "eliot is more than just a pretty face" job

oh man this post is so much longer than i thought it would be. okay just one more episode and then i'm done.

the callbacks to original leverage were SO well done and made me feel emotions without feeling overbearing.

i didn't like the central premise -- that nate would share so many details with a random insurance agent -- in the first place, but i did like how it allowed them to bring back nate without actually hiring timerty mcasshole.

i liked eliot's insistence that he's more than just the muscle! he is, and it's really good to know, textually, that the writers do too!

me, watching the resolution of the episode: ah, yeah, insurance fraud. a classic!

harry bonding with his guard had "they don't even have dental!" energy and i am SUCH a fan. i know it was all for the con but also give me harry, unable to stop advising people, even when they're actively holding him hostage

parker! on the phone with hardison!!!! ADORABLE

is it just me or was someone else expecting the accountant's name to be something significant? with the way they led up to it, i was waiting for a "sterling" or something else. my sensors were pinging for another tara reveal. i'm still convinced we're gonna get this guy dramatically revealed in the season finale.

a really nice episode! i had a lot of fun with it. and now i want to rewatch the rashamon job, but tbh i ALWAYS want to rewatch the rashamon job.

and that's a wrap! overall, a fun season, i enjoyed it a lot. not as solid as original leverage, but it's the very beginning, and it was put together during a global pandemic, so i'm cutting them some slack. also levar burton is gonna show up at some point. that's a big reason of why i'm cutting them so much slack.

my personal ranking of the episodes is 1x04, 1x06, 1x08, 1x01, 1x02, 1x03, and finally last (and least), 1x07.

what did you guys think of the new season? what was your favorite episode? do you agree with any of my opinions? disagree with any? let me know, please, i'd love to discuss!

[harrylee94]

Log Entry XXXXXX - Chapter 5

Summary: A new space station, complete with the most high spec and up to date technology there is to offer, has been set up at the edge of the known universe, a new way point for explorers to keep in contact with the rest of the human race. It has been carefully designed by the best scientists and engineers Earth could offer, and now 7 brave souls are being sent out to ensure everything works perfectly.

However, when Logan wakes from cryosleep from the journey, he is informed that several things are now in need of repair, though everything had been in perfect working condition when the station had been reconstructed before he and his crew had arrived. They will have to solve the problems they’ve been left with before the station is up and running, and yet Logan can’t help but feel he’s done this before…

Relationships: Intrulogical (Remus/Logan)

Warnings: Blood, Gore, Parasites, Remus having an overactive imagination, It’s an Among Us crossover so there will be bad stuff afoot.

A/N: The ending was heavily inspired by this post, which I loved so much I had to include it!

For those of you who don’t know, this story is based off of a comic by @fangirltothefullest which I HIGHLY recommend you check them out on the link above! Their art is AMAZING.

Note to everyone before we begin; there will be graphic descriptions of gore, dismemberment, possibly torture, and any other awful things that come with the territory of writing a story in an Among Us universe.

Link to; Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

To read it on AO3 please click here.

Chapter 5: Log Entry #59

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 6:17 AM

Logan was tired. He’d lived the same six hours over fifty times now, give or take an hour or so each time, and not once had he been given a chance to rest. Though his body might have been able to handle the strain this time loop was creating due to its very nature, his mind could not. He had snapped at Remus for the first time today, had pushed him away before Remus pushed past his defences and held him close until he told him what was going on with the briefest of explanations.

Remus had become a Host to one of the parasites no more than five times, the lowest number of all the others barring himself, mostly because Logan had been with him almost all the time save for those four instances when they'd been separated, and yet, despite knowing that time had been reset, making the last run essentially non-existent, Logan still couldn’t bring himself to trust the man he loved most in the world until those arms were around him. He felt disgusted with himself for ever doing so, and the guilt still riddled him for being so frozen when it had happened that first time, but the experience took its toll.

The worst time had been when they had been forced to vent him, sending the feral creature in Remus’s form shooting into space. Logan had watched as he’d drifted slowly away, his body expanding, a small splatter of blood escaping his lips as the oxygen was pulled from his lungs, rupturing them, until he grew still. Waking up after that, despite knowing that the real Remus had been dead long before that moment, Logan had hovered over Remus as he recovered from falling out of his cryotube until, after that initial contact, he clung to his partner and sobbed into his shirt for a long time.

It was a similar situation to the one he was in now actually, sitting in Remus’s lap as the man hummed, swaying back and forth and rubbing at his back. He wanted to sleep here, to just drift off and forget all of this was happening. He needed to recharge, but he couldn't.

“I can tell them that the cryosleep messed you up,” Remus suggested softly, pressing a kiss to his hair. “We can say that you need time to recover and you can stay here and sleep.”

Logan shook his head. “But then everyone will die.”

“Sounds like we do anyway,” Remus said. It was supposed to be comforting, or at least reassuring that taking a break would be okay, but Logan couldn’t help but to flinch. “Okay, not the right thing to say, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re burning yourself out.”

“I can’t stop.”

“You have to.” Remus held his face softly in his hands. “Why don’t you go back to sleep? Rest. Recuperate. Even I know I have to stop every so often or I’ll crash worse than the Hindenburg.”

“I can’t leave you to face this alone,” Logan said, leaning into his hand.

“You’re not. You’ve told me what’s happening and where to find the information I need to prepare.”

“That’s not the same.”

“Well I’m not letting you leave this room.”

Logan scowled at his boyfriend. “They will kill you. They will pull you apart, shred you from within, vent you into space, turn you inside out-”

Remus stopped his words with his lips. Logan hated how he still couldn’t resist this, that he would still kiss him back with desperation when he knew it was a distraction, but he couldn’t resist. These moments were sometimes few and far between, and he clung to them like a man starved of affection.

“I would die for you a million times if I had to,” Remus said against his mouth as he pulled a little away, even as Logan followed him. “I can see how tired you are. Sleep.”

Logan shook his head. “I can’t. I won’t.”

“You have to, or you’ll collapse.”

“Then I’ll collapse.”

“Logan!”

He huffed. “I won’t be able to anyway. My body is well rested.”

“That’s what drugs are for,” Remus said with a roll of his eyes.

Drugs? “You mean sedatives?”

“That’s what I said.”

Even though Remus was giving him one of his many smirks, undoubtedly a little proud of himself, Logan could see the worry etched into the faint lines by his eyes and the edges of his mouth, even in the way his fingers were still holding onto his face a little harder than usual. Remus was scared for him and that was just about enough to convince him.

“Janus is in charge of the mission,” he said after deflating with a sigh. “Patton and Virgil are usually the targets of the parasites, though I haven’t been able to figure out why yet, just that they have been most frequently chosen as the hosts. Orange is usually the first victim, probably because he is the one with the most advanced knowledge of the reactor and the engines. And work with Roman when you can; I know you can be a formidable team when you get past your differences.”

Remus nodded to each point, even if he looked disappointed at not being chosen to be the new leader, and rubbed his thumb over Logan’s cheek. “You’re making the right decision.”

“The only right decision I’ve made since this started was telling you,” Logan said and turned his head to kiss Remus’s palm. “I could never regret you.”

“I love you too, Lo,” Remus said, pressing a kiss to his lips again. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“I know,” Logan replied, unable to keep his sadness from tainting his words. “You always are.”

_______________________________

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 6:00 AM

Logan woke with the rising light of the fake dawn. The sting of the needle from the sedative had vanished, and the tingle of the cryosleep still sat in his muscles. He sighed, closing his eyes as he remembered his last conscious moments and smiled to himself when he heard the familiar thump of Remus falling out of the cryotube. The sound was more comforting than he thought could be possible, especially considering Remus was getting hurt every time, but it was a confirmation that Remus was there, that even though all these horrible things were happening, he was still able to have these moments with the love of his life.

He did feel more rested now, even if not recovered completely (though he doubted there would be much that would help him recover from what he was experiencing), and he heaved his still aching body up to look down at the one that was groaning on the floor with a fond smile.

“You’re supposed to wait for your blood flow to return to normal,” he said, voice gravelly as it always was just after waking.

Remus groaned again and looked up with a squint and a blink before he rolled over and grinned up at him. “Hey, beautiful,” he said, his voice sending shivers up Logan’s spine. “Did they make a mistake at the gates of heaven, because I’m pretty sure I’m meant to be roasting with a spit up my butt right now and not looking at a beautiful angel.”

Logan grinned, blushing a little. “Are you sure I’m not some sort of demon here to trick you into Hell?”

“I’d follow you anywhere; heaven or hell” Remus said, and Logan hummed at the sound of awe the man made.

“I know you would,” Logan said, only for his smile to fall a fraction. “I’ve already led you to your death.”

Remus blinked at him again. “Huh?”

_______________________________

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 7:06 AM

“How many of those notes have you made?” Remus asked as Logan walked with him towards the storage room, having decided to start his journey there this time.

“Fifty-two,” Logan replied, waiting for the bar to finish loading while absently picking up the empty fuel container to set Orange up for refuelling later. “I have, unfortunately, been unable to make notes in some instances, though I have made up for some of those delays in future loops.”

“And you’ve relived this day…?”

“This will be my fifty-ninth time,” Logan replied, setting his tablet aside so he could fill up the container.

Remus whistled. “And you don’t even know how many times we’d gone through the loop before!”

Before? Oh, he should have thought of that. It was entirely possible that the first time he could recall living through this ‘cursed’ day (if he was using the expression correctly) was not in fact the first time he had lived it. No one else could remember after all, and he had not made any notes the first time, so there would have been no proof left behind.

“It’s getting kinda full there, Logie.”

Logan flinched and quickly turned off the tap before the container could spill. “I… had not considered that.”

“Well it kinda makes sense, doesn’t it?” Remus said, screwing the cap onto the container and pulling Logan’s hand into his. “Do you think anyone else will remember? One of the aliens maybe!”

“Please, don’t even suggest that!”

“Sorry.”

Logan took a deep breath to calm himself and banish the thought of an even more challenging experience, and nodded. “It’s possible.”

Remus hummed and gave his hand a squeeze. “Can I look at the notes?”

“Of course.” He reached for his tablet and handed it over without looking at the screen, prying his fingers away so he could go in search of the next container.

“Um, how many notes did you say you’ve made?” Remus asked, the light of the screen reflecting on the surface of his visor.

“Fifty-two,” Logan replied, finding the container behind a box. “Why?”

“Because there’s fifty-three.”

Logan paused. “... What does the last one say?”

“It doesn’t say anything,” Remus said. “It’s a video, but it says I have to access it in Communications.”

A video? “You must have made it. I was asleep all of… yesterday.”

“Should we watch it?”

“I think we all should.”

_______________________________

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 7:18 AM

“I don’t see why you couldn’t have done this earlier,” Orange said as he leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest. “We’ve only been here for fifteen minutes. I haven’t had the chance to do anything yet.”

“Fifteen minutes is plenty of time to set up a deep space communications network,” Janus chipped in. “It’s not like we’ll need it or anything.”

“I am well aware that I am causing a great frustration to all of you, but I must insist on everyone watching this,” Logan said, still searching the system for the file.

“Haven’t we got more important things to be doing?” Virgil said. “Fixing the Station, maybe?”

“This is important,” Remus said, and Logan smiled. He’d stationed himself next to him, keeping watch on their team to make sure none of them would leave without making them feel trapped.

“Why?” Roman asked, suspicious.

“Because it is.”

His skills in defending this argument needed a little work though. At least now he’d found the file, and he opened it. A video file opened on the main screen as a black box, the play button waiting to be clicked.

“What’s the video about?” Patton asked as Logan stood up from his chair to allow everyone to see.

“I don’t know,” he replied softly and, taking Remus’s hand, pressed play.

For a few seconds the screen remained blank, only a timestamp in the corner counting the seconds giving any real indication of time passing as heavy breathing could be heard.

“Twelve thirty?” Janus said, looking at the numbers. “But the system-”

Whatever the man in yellow was about to say was lost as there was some rustling and the camera was uncovered. It was the Communications room from the perspective of the screen; the lights were off, but the screen was giving off enough light to reveal the mess the room had become. They couldn’t see the floor, but they could see that the door was closed, and there were streaks of what had to be blood across the wall.

And then there was the figure. Remus’s fingers tightened in Logan’s as they watched him haul Janus’s torso from the desk to set him down on the ground, the eyes already milking over. The body left a stain on his green suit, and when he looked back at the camera, it revealed that the visor on his helmet had been broken, a chunk of it missing entirely. He huffed and quickly removed it, tossing it aside.

He looked pale, his eyes holding an edge of mania, and his entire right ear and a section of his hair was missing dripping blood down his chin, which they saw with more clarity when Remus turned his head, his eyes on where the screen must have been. He laughed.

“Oh man, they got me good,” they said with a cracking voice, and Logan noticed a few side-glances towards them, but he was more focused on how the Remus on the screen was trembling ever so slightly. “Shit. I’m not going to have time to start this again, so uh, I’m sorry you had to see... “ He looked down at where he’d just put Janus’s body and swallowed. “They’ll be here any minute. I’ll be torn to shreds for sure.”

This laugh was broken and he sounded so close to snapping. “You told me! Patton and Virgil, you said. I kept an eye on them, but then Orange…” He shook his head. “Fuck. Fuck! Why did I let him leave?”

There was a bang on the door behind him and he spun around, but quickly turned back. “Rambling. Shit. They’ll get through-- I read all your notes. All of them. You’ve been through some fucked up shit, Logie! I mean, I believed you when you told me, but when I read it… This loop is fucked up.”

There was another bang.

“Oh Re~mus!” It was Patton’s voice, still so familiar and joyful, and yet punctuated with another hit to the door. “Come out and play!”

Remus had shut his eyes, leaning against the desk. “I watched them pull Roman’s heart out of his chest,” he said, a tear dripping from his cheek. “Janus is… Well, you saw that. Orange is scattered across one of the Engine rooms and they…  they found you. They took you and they made me watch as they put you in the trash shoot and--” He cut himself off as another bang rattled the door and looked up into the camera, eyes filled with tears.

“You had to do that to me once. I don’t know how you survived. It felt like my soul was being torn out of my chest when I watched you die.” He wiped at his cheeks, wincing as he caught the torn flesh, but otherwise he didn’t seem to care. He looked down again, his face hidden by his hair. “I don’t know if this will even work, but I wanted to leave a note, like you do.” When he looked up again his face was scarily blank.

“Log Entry number fifty-three. The parasites have taken Patton and Virgil as hosts again. It was in the Medbay. They went after Janus first, as he was alone. There’s evidence they played with him before they pulled him in two.”

“Who are you talking to, Remus?” came Virgil’s voice from beyond the door. “We’re the only ones left.”

Remus stalwartly ignored them, eyes fixed on the camera. “Orange and I found the body. He left to fetch the fuel so we could try to burn whatever they are. I heard his screams when I found Virgil, or the thing he’d become, with Roman. My brother had been pinned to the wall by its tentacles, and it ripped his heart out as he begged for mercy.”

Another thud, this one louder than the others before it, and Remus flinched.

“They must have run out of energy or something, because they only captured me and dragged me into Storage. The Thing with Patton’s face had dragged your body off the shuttle. You were still asleep when they stuffed you in the trash shoot. I… I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I must have screamed myself hoarse.”

He looked over his shoulder as the metal of the door groaned with the next hit, then turned quickly back.

“I somehow managed to escape, though not before they did this.” He motioned to his missing ear. “I ran everywhere. I think I must have slipped in Orange’s blood when I found what was left of him in that Engine room, because I left footprints. This is the first room I could find without vents. You mentioned vents a lot.”

The door groaned again and bent a little behind Remus, but he didn’t look this time. He just smiled.

“I wish I could have done more. I wish I could have saved you, but… I know I’ll see you again. I’ll wake up and fall out of the cryotube and I’ll make you pesto pasta for breakfast just to try to make you smile. You’ll tell me about this fucking time loop and I’ll believe you, because I know you. I know you would never lie to me about this. And I will tell you I love you. I’ll tell you that you mean more to me than life itself. I’ll-”

The door behind him tore open, the metal shredding like cardboard, and the figures of Virgil and Patton stepped through. Remus tried desperately to reach something on the desk but he was pulled away by Patton, who had barely moved, before he was given the chance. Remus’s helmet flew at Patton before Janus’s followed, and the wheely chair started to move across the screen as Remus yelled profanities at the creatures.

Virgil and Patton, meanwhile, had begun to unfurl, their tentacles escaping and their bodies splitting into gaping maws.

“Now that wasn’t very nice,” Not-Patton said as he pulled a struggling Remus up into the air by his foot, even as he continued to try and fight. A second, third and fourth tentacle stretched out to hold him still, and still he struggled.

“Fuck you! Fuck both of you! You dickasses both deserve to-” Remus’s shouts became muffled as Not-Virgil covered his mouth and gave the struggling man a considering look.

“You know, you’ve always been so fond of medieval torture,” it said. “Why don’t we try that, what was it? Ah yes, being hung, drawn and quartered.”

“That sounds like fun!” Not-Patton said. “Let’s do it in the cafeteria. The tables are better there.”

Not-Virgil nodded with a double grin and helped drag the screaming Remus from the room.

It took Logan a few seconds to remember how to breathe, staring at the screen as the silence around him threatened to engulf him, but then Remus pulled him closer and gave him the best hug he could while they were still in their suits. Logan clutched back at him, turning away from the screen as Remus continued to stare at it over his shoulder, and his entire body flinched when his own agonised screams came from the speakers.

“So-someone turn it off,” Remus said, shaken but still standing strong somehow.

There was some shuffling and the screams suddenly cut off, making the silence somehow even more unbearable. Remus gave Logan another squeeze.

“That… that can’t be real,” Virgil said after a few more moments, the edges of panic staining his words. “I’m not… Patton and I…”

“Remus?” Roman said, and Logan pulled away from his partner enough so they could both turn towards the rest.

They were all in various states of shock or disbelief; Patton had tears streaming down his cheeks, Virgil was clutching at his body, Janus looked to be trying to figure out if it had been an elaborate joke or not, and Roman looked blank. Orange, however, was the only one to look somewhat angry, which Logan thought was fair considering the circumstances.

“It’s real,” Remus said, his eyes still on the screen as he spoke but they landed on his brother soon after. “Everything I… he said is true.”

“You can’t expect me to believe that,” Orange said with a snort. “It’s very clever though. Did you set it up before we left Earth?”

“He can’t have.” Janus said hesitantly. “The plans for the Station were kept confidential, to be released to the public after we’d already left, and no one else would have helped him gain access.”

Orange frowned. “That… That can’t be right. If it was then…”

“Is everybody okay?” Patton asked beyond the tears.

“Oh yes,” Janus drawled. “I absolutely love watching one of my best friends get dragged away to be tortured and killed. It hasn’t affected me at all. Especially not the part where he had to drag my own lifeless body away from the camera.”

“... Yeah, me too,” Patton said softly, and he leaned into the hand Roman had set on his shoulder. “How is this possible?”

“Remus was talking to Logan in the video,” Roman pointed out.

“I don’t know,” Logan said. “I… I haven’t been able to find an answer. There must be some sort of… rift or something. A black hole near our orbit that’s distorting the flow of time. There is so much we don’t know about them after all, and it’s possible, but I haven’t seen any that would be close enough to cause any real changes to the environment. Perhaps it’s the parasites themselves, but that doesn’t make any sense or they would remember as well, and that hasn’t happened. Not yet at least, and I hope it never does.”

“It won’t,” Remus said, and Logan graced him with a brief smile.

“Believe us or not, this is still a problem,” he continued. “The parasites only take a host after 9:30am, though I cannot tell you the exact time as it changes depending on a variety of variables, but it is always near the Medbay or the Reactor. I suspect they might be found in the vents but I cannot be certain.”

“Oh. Great,” Virgil said, Orange having to step to his side to guide him into the chair, He immediately ducked his head between his knees and Logan could hear him trying to control his breathing. Patton was at his side a moment later to hold his hand and help guide him through his breathing techniques.

“Perhaps we should have a codeword!” Roman suggested with forced charm. “Something to say to each other so we know if anyone’s… you know.”

Logan shook his head. “It wouldn’t work. The parasite essentially becomes us once it’s in our system. The host knows that it’s a host, that it was once human, they just don’t care anymore.”

“And how would you know that?” Janus asked.

“I’ve… been one, once,” Logan replied quietly, looking away as Remus’s hand squeezed him in comfort. It was really a miracle that he hadn't been caught again, and it had been a close call on a few occasions, but somehow that first time had remained the only time.

“What do you propose we do then?” Orange asked.

“We stick together, get through as many tasks as we can to get the Station back to full operation before the creatures emerge, and find a way to get them off the Station.”

_______________________________

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 10:35 AM

There had been no sign of the aliens. It had been an hour since they should have appeared, and yet there had been nothing but a growing sense of dread and, in Orange's case, annoyance. It was becoming increasingly clear that the engineer was growing impatient, and that his belief in the credibility of the video was tenuous at best. The further notes on what Logan had been able to assess from his observation of the creatures had not helped either, though the others had been enough to keep him satisfied for a time. However, it seemed that his patience had finally run its course.

"Look, you guys can all huddle together like scared little bunnies," he said, as they waited for Virgil to finish sorting out the medical supplies, "but we have a job to do, and we can't do it if we're doing everything one bit at a time!"

"Kiddo, we're trying to-" Patton started, but Orange huffed and started walking towards the door.

"Spare me," he spat. "I'll be in the engine rooms if anyone needs me, doing my job."

With that he stormed out of the Medbay, heading out of sight around the corner. Logan, who had been taking notes about their situation on his pad on the bed nearest the door, looked after him and didn't even blink when the door shut immediately after. He wouldn't have been able to reach him in time either way. He turned back around and gave Remus a look.

"That… that was you, right, Sherlock?" Roman asked as his brother heaved the mattress he'd been lying on off the bed frame. The lights went out a moment later and Patton squeaked in alarm as the room plunged into a pitch darkness.

"No," Logan replied, glancing up at the fading glow in the bulbs. "No it wasn't." He turned back to his pad and started to hack into the door to open it again.

The mattress hit the floor.

"Shit, where's the vent?" Remus cursed, and Logan could hear him dragging the mattress around.

"Over here." Janus.

"Get away from it," Remus growled, even as he dragged the mattress closer.

"Be careful," Patton said from next to Virgil, the two of whom were the only people visible thanks to the faint light of the isolated test lab.

Remus grunted and, after some sounds of shuffling, the mattress flopped down heavily again, this time with a slight echo.

"Got it," Remus said after a little more shuffling. "How are the doors, Lo?"

Logan tapped a few more keys and had the door ready to open. "I'll open it when you get here. We don't know if they're waiting for us out there."

"You mean Orange might be-?" Roman asked, but couldn't bring himself to finish.

"I believe it is all but certain," Logan confirmed, and he heard someone -- probably Patton or Virgil -- whimper.

There was some more shuffling and Logan turned his screen around to shed some light on the room. From the shadows cast and the sight his suit could offer him, he could just about see Roman coming slowly closer, his arms outstretched so he wouldn't go into anything. Janus, Remus, Patton and Virgil were all clustered as a group, Remus keeping his hand on Janus's shoulder as he glanced back at where the mattress (and therefore the vent) must have been while Virgil seemed to twitch at every sound.

Once everyone had reached him Logan slid off the bed and joined the cluster. "Let's go."

_______________________________

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 10:52 AM

Walking around so close together was not only cumbersome but also a little claustrophobic. Logan could hear every breath, every footstep, feel each unexpected touch and each slide of shoes against his own. Patton and Roman would occasionally whisper the breathing exercises to Virgil to keep him from panicking too much, but otherwise it was a slow walk in near silence.

They had walked through both engine rooms on their journey to Electrical, and while it was dark, there had been no sound of Orange on the entire journey. It was all but certain that he was now a Host. Now, however, they had all stopped to look into the ominous darkness of the room before.

"This doesn't feel like a trap at all," Janus said.

"Do you think Orange might be in there?" Patton asked.

"Either that, or the second parasite is lying in wait," Logan replied, squeezing Remus's hand. "Either way, something has to be in there."

"So someone's either going to end up becoming a big tentacle monster with a mouth that tears their body in two, or they're going to end up as a kebab," Remus said with a nod. "I think I'd prefer kebab myself."

"I would prefer it if neither situation happened," Roman said, Virgil making a noise of agreement.

There were a few seconds where nothing happened, but then Logan sighed and released Remus's hand to step forward; or at least he tried to.

"What are you doing?" he asked, Remus's hold having only grown stronger.

"I'm not letting you go in there alone."

"Who said I was doing that?"

"You did." Remus caught his shoulder and turned in to face him. "You're never silent in group projects."

Logan clenched his jaw. "You know me too well."

"You know me better," Remus said with a slow grin.

Logan huffed in annoyance but turned back to the others. "The fuse box is at the back, next to a vent," he said. "If we stick together and keep an eye on it then we should be able to get through this easily enough."

"And if Orange is in there?" Virgil asked.

Logan shared a look with Remus (as much as he could in the almost complete darkness anyway). "We will have to… take action."

"... Oh," Virgil said, sounding a little queasy.

In a way Logan envied their naivety. He envied their ability to hope for a better solution, their expectations of getting out of this alive, but his own experiences had worn that away. He had always been defined by the truths and facts that had become his life, but now even that was being worn away, and he knew he was becoming more jaded in each loop.

"Let's get this over with," Roman said, bringing Logan out from his thoughts.

The scientist nodded and pulled Remus after him into Electrical. "The fuse  box is just around-"

The door slammed shut, cutting the couple off from everyone else.

“-... the corner.”

Remus stepped closer as a few bangs came from the door. “We’re dead, aren’t we.”

Logan swallowed. “Yes.”

Remus hummed. “These aliens; they take on our memories when they take us for a host?”

“I… yes, that’s right.”

“And we just want to kill everyone in sight.”

“Yes,” Logan replied, trying to block out the noises that were coming from outside the door. He needed all of his senses if he was going to get them both through this, though every calculation he was making was only leading them towards one bloody and awful end. “You’re just… angry, and there’s this hunger, and you crave it. Nothing from before matters. You simply loath humanity.”

Remus hummed again, and they both froze when they saw something moving in the dark. Logan was so focused on it that he barely registered the click-hiss that came from beside him, from Remus, and he only understood that he had removed his helmet when he was shoved back into the wall behind them.

“No!”

He could see it happening, the lights of the Medbay blinding in his memory as Remus threw himself forwards, but this time he would not be frozen. There was shouting coming from the other side of the door as he pushed himself off the wall, chasing Remus into the dark, but when the love of his stopped short and Logan crashed into his back, he knew he was too late.

“Remus,” he breathed, catching him as his knees gave out and holding him close as he choked on his own blood. “Oh God, what did you do?”

Remus grinned. “Saved… you.”

There was no time to argue, and the smile fell quickly to a cough as the parasite ravaged his body, making its home inside him. “Yes. You saved me, Remus,” he said, all but tearing his own helmet from his head. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

He kissed Remus’s blood spattered lips and carded his fingers through his hair as the door opened, ten seconds too late.

“L-Love… yo-you,” Remus stuttered, only to choke, his body stiffening as the shaking began.

“I love you too,” Logan said, vaguely aware that the others were talking, that someone was moving, and a second later the lights were on again.

There were tears streaming down Remus’s cheeks, and tears running down his own. He could see the patches of red where the parasite was chewing away at Remus’s body, seeping into the fibres of the suit, and Remus struggled with himself until he roared in pain. Logan watched as it clouded his eyes, his gaze only briefly leaving his partner’s when Roman tried to come to their side, but was mercifully held back by Virgil and Patton.

“It’s okay,” he muttered as Remus’s body slowly went limp in his arms. “I love you, Remus. I love you. It’s going to be okay.”

The dark threads he had seen before started to seep from each blood-soaked spot, crawling out to start encompassing Remus’s body, and he choked on a sob, holding Remus closer. All too soon the body was completely encompassed, and the shape in his arms congealed with the pressure he was exerting with his arms. Someone tried to pull him away but he shook them off.

“I’ll distract him,” he said, though the tears threatened to choke him.

“Logan-”

“Go!”

There was only a brief hesitation before they left. He tried not to think of the anguish in Roman’s eyes.

As the mass in his arms solidified back into the shape of his lover, his strands of hair growing back between Logan’s fingers, he looked into those eyes that he had grown to love and saw the brief flash of recognition.

“Logan…” Remus said, the pain gone but the fear he had seen before still hanging onto its last threads, but then even that was snuffed out, and all that was left was a growing hunger. The grin that stretched Remus’s lips grew inhumanly wide as sharp tendrils extended out from him to puncture Logan in every way possible. He gasped as he clung to Remus’s form, vowing to never let this happen again.

“You smell delicious.”

_______________________________

Stardate: October 17th XX20. 6:00 AM

Logan woke with wet cheeks. The light of the cyrodeck had never felt so cold.

[unfortunatelyilikebnha]

I say the sports festival arc is my favorite but in reality we all know that just means “‘it’s your quirk not his!’/‘it’s your power Todoroki!’ lives in my head rent free” I don’t even necessarily like the other parts that much.

I mean don’t get me wrong the other Midoriya-centric parts? Love those. Him strategizing his way to first place in the first round without ever using his quirk? So fucking cool I’m proud so proud of him. Him in the second round choosing his team, specifically picking some people and having some people come to him and then figuring out the most effective way to use all their skills (and Iida having his moment to shine on Todoroki’s team)?! Incredible thank you. Midoriya inspiring so many characters to do their best to beat him including Iida, Uraraka, and Todoroki?! Amazing 10/10. Him fighting Shinsou and sympathizing with him but being unable to reveal he understood how he felt and the fact that what provoked Midoriya to get brainwashed wasn’t an insult about him but one about his classmate/friend? Super interesting (though how he broke out of Shinsou’s control was weird & kinda unsatisfying & confusing but whatever I wanted him to win sorry Shinsou)!!!

But like,,, if it’s not about Midoriya, chances are I didn’t like that part of the arc (and I swear this isn’t just me being a Midoriya stan, the parts that didn’t involve Midoriya were just generally disappointing to me) like,,, Midnight???? She’s “the R rated heroine”, who decided it was a good idea for her to work at a school for children? She made a comment that a student’s decision “turned her on” like wtf they’re 15 that’s nasty and illegal? Why can’t Horikoshi write female characters right wtf. I don’t have a problem with her being sexual but her being sexual in an environment with kids and especially towards the kids is gross af!! Even if her comments are just part of her hero persona (which is something I’ve seen people argue), that’s not acceptable in an environment where there are children and she needs to be replaced (also not relevant but her costume is ugly af and horikoshi apparently doesn’t know how boobs work).

The fact that class 1B actually had a really good plan and effectively used their teamwork skills was really cool but of course since they decided to go against Bakugou, they had to fail despite their extensive pre planning. Yes I know that Bakugou is really strong and super determined, but Monoma had figured out almost to the exact number how many students would make it to the next round and analyzed 1A’s quirks and specifically chose his team to be the most effective so I think it would be so interesting if they could’ve made it to the next round (and I’m not even saying Bakugou shouldn’t have made it to the next round, there’s four spots available. Could’ve had him run into Shinsou during the cavalry battle which I think would actually be super interesting considering how easily provoked he is, and if he won against Shinsou it would’ve been interesting to see him go against Monoma in the tournament, if he didn’t win against Shinsou he would’ve gotten the learning experience of actually losing and realizing he can’t just assume he’s better than everyone and can automatically beat them).

Also the Bakugou vs. Uraraka fight? She should’ve won. Bakugou had been using his quirk a LOT throughout the sports festival and he SUPPOSEDLY gets backlash on his hands when he uses his quirk too much. Uraraka was smart and had a solid strategy, one that nobody predicted, and she utilized a LOT of rubble, yet Bakugou, after using his quirk numerous times to explode her, was apparently able to summon a giant explosion which he seemingly received no backlash for at the time. It just doesn’t seem right, and I personally think it would’ve been much more interesting for Bakugou “I’m gonna win” Katsuki to suffer an actual loss & start to realize that he can’t just look down on everybody and assume he’s better than them. Also I hate that people use this fight to be like “omg feminist king Bakugou!” as if he didn’t 1) change his entire fighting strategy (mostly staying on the defensive, only exploding when Uraraka got near, letting her rush him vs. his usual charging at other people, explosions blazing) for his fight with Uraraka, something he didn’t do for any of his male opponents, and 2) assume Midoriya gave her her strategy, not that she was smart enough to come up with it herself.

While we’re talking about unsatisfying fights involving girls, the whole last part of the sports festival deserves a mention. Yeah Shiozaki and Ashido easily got through round one, but then they were pretty much immediately picked off after that so what’s the point? Shiozaki beat Kaminari easily, but then was pushed out of the ring by Iida (no hate to Iida, love him & he deserved his third place win, but it just seemed a bit too easy for him to beat an opponent who had almost effortlessly beaten Kaminari the round before). Ashido won against Aoyama, but similar to Shiozaki, Tokoyami beats her easily. Momo, who up to this point had been pretty confident and sure of herself and her abilities, and had been shown to be pretty adept at using her quirk and thinking on the spot, was suddenly overcome with self doubt and was beaten by Tokoyami in the first round in like 8 seconds like wtf. Mei, who it would’ve been interesting to see what she did if she advanced in the tournament, voluntarily stepped down in the first round because she was only interested in showing off her support items. I know the series isn’t focused on the girls but seriously none of them made it past the second round of the tournament (not to mention the fact that way fewer of them qualified for the third round than the boys)?

Since I’m talking about the girls in conjunction with the sports festival, I feel like I’ve got to briefly mention the cheerleading outfit scene, which I obviously hate for multiple reasons (m*neta being gross, kaminari going along with m*neta despite the fact that he’s actually FRIENDS with the girls and in doing so he is betraying their trust - I could write a whole separate post about kaminari and why he interests and frustrates me but in not gonna do that here cause this post is already too fucking long -, some of the girls being uncomfortable in the outfits, especially after realizing they’d been tricked, etc) but I feel like those r obvious problems so I’m not gonna spend time unpacking that cause it’ll just make me angry. Neways.

The Bakugou vs. Tokoyami fight was kinda disappointing in that he had been such a tough opponent for the girls but is easily defeated by Bakugou (and yeah I know it’s cause Bakugou’s quirk was a bad matchup for Tokoyami but how convenient it was that Bakugou’s quirk just HAPPENED to be Tokoyami’s one weakness (and how come Dark Shadow was that strong earlier, it was really bright out and he even fended off Bakugou, explosions and all? But I digress)).

In the Bakugou vs. Todoroki fight I don’t necessarily disagree with Bakugou winning since it made sense for Todoroki to use only half of his power bc you don’t magically get through trauma in a day (although tbh I think if Todoroki was completely on his game and not distracted trying to start processing the fact that his fire is his he could’ve won against Bakugou, fire or no fire, BECAUSE they’ve both been using their quirks all day, BUT while Bakugou’s quirk had a physical drawback that should’ve weakened him, aka the aforementioned joint pain or w/e - and reminder that Bakugou used his quirk a LOT in the first and second tests, as well as a LOT against Uraraka, and a LOT/for a long time against Kirishima and some against Dark Shadow, so even with resting periods in between matches, unless he got healed by recovery girl which I find unlikely both because I think he would’ve seen it as an insult implying he couldn’t win in his current state and because UA and recovery girl both have a concerning attitude towards healing children, his hands should be in a LOT of pain and he should be over his limit - whereas Todoroki, while also having used his quirk a lot, had the advantage that the drawbacks of his quirk cancel each other out, and even if he wasn’t using his fire DURING matches, he obviously used it some in between - for example, to melt sero out - so he doesn’t have lasting drawbacks in the same way that Bakugou does, AND he trained for 10 years with the number 2 hero, which while end//vor is an absolutely awful person he’s obviously good at fighting meanwhile Bakugou’s only “training” that we know of prior to UA was using his quirk to bully people and even if he HAD trained I don’t think his training would match end//vor’s training so yeah that was a really fucking long winded way of saying I think Todoroki would win if he wasn’t distracted) and it made sense for Bakugou to not think of his win as a win because Todoroki wasn’t trying his best (and had brought out his full power against MIDORIYA, who Bakugou hates).

That being said I obviously have problems with how Bakugou treated Todoroki cause like,,, what the fuck he overheard him telling Midoriya about his trauma and then was a complete and absolute dick about it. Granted Midoriya didn’t handle it quite right either, but he was mostly doing it to help Todoroki rather than prove himself by beating him (don’t get me wrong Midoriya absolutely wanted to win, but once he found out Todoroki’s story he deemed helping Todoroki was more important than winning whereas Bakugou’s first priority was obviously still proving himself) so I still don’t really like that fight (and another thing: it’s really hard to watch Bakugou be so aggressive towards Todoroki after he decides not to use his fire like ik he’s mad bc he thinks Todoroki insulted him by not trying his hardest but that’s uhh none of his fucking business he even fucking KNOWS why Todoroki has such hang ups about using his fire and still!! Registers it as an insult!! He’s smart he should be able to see that some of the reason Todoroki used fire against Midoriya is Midoriya fucking SURPRISED HIM. Even if the people in the stands/watching the broadcast couldn’t hear what they were saying - I don’t remember if they could or not - it should’ve been obvious that Midoriya said SOMETHING that impacted Todoroki enough to get him to use his fire. Bakugou’s approach of yelling at him about it obviously wasn’t gonna work like it worked for Midoriya because Todoroki had already been thrown off too much by Midoriya and hadn’t had time to process it, and nothing that Bakugou said to him was a new emotional revelation. Todoroki himself later states the reason he used the fire at all in the Midoriya fight was that he forgot all about end//vor) and anyways I think the final shoudve been Todoroki vs. Uraraka.

Finally, though I’m obviously not a Bakugou stan, the fact that they fucking muzzled and restrained him just so they could force him to accept a medal he didn’t want? That’s fucked up like I know UA does a really bad job of caring for its students but who thought that was a good idea. Who?!?! It’s probably pretty fucking traumatizing to be muzzled like an animal in front of a crowd of LITERALLY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE and have that played off as a joke, not to mention the fact that I seriously doubt being restrained is a good experience for him after the sludge villain. If he doesn’t want the medal he doesn’t want the damn medal, either give the gold to Todoroki and the silver and bronze to Iida and Tokoyami or just don’t hand out the gold medal your ceremony isn’t more important than the well-being of your students!

(Also while I’m talking about the well being of UA students uhh why the fuck did UA think HAVING the sports festival was a good idea in the first place? They hype it up so much that students are willing to seriously injure themselves over a fucking sporting event in the name of “plus ultra”, not to even mention the fact that it SHOWCASES THE QUIRKS AND BY DESIGN DISPLAYS THE WEAKNESSES OF THESE STUDENTS WHO ARE TRAINING TO BE HEROES WHICH IS A HIGHLY DANGEROUS JOB ON LIVE FUCKING TELEVISION SO THAT ANYONE COULD EXPLOIT THEM - something literally every other school takes advantage of at the provisional license exams! Like,, literally Who thought this was a good idea???)

In conclusion, I hate love hate the sports festival arc and the writing really annoys me

[yuumi0035]

Yuumi’s art process (with pics!)

This is how I go about doing the art palettes, and generally how I do art (specially on lose, not so long pieces such as these). I’ll breakdown the process under the cut so I don’t spam people’s timelines (´･ω･`)

I was going to put these final advises at the very end but someone else might make use of these instead of going through the whole thing so here:

Important things to keep in mind in case you’re learning and actually think I’m worth being listened:

References are GOOD. No one is perfect and no one knows how to draw stuff from their memory so go google weird things, Google-sensei won’t judge. Hopefully. (else set your navigation on private).

Brushes and whatnot don’t make the artist, but it sure as hell help you feel like you’re doing what you like or not. I can’t stress enough how many times I’ve just not finished works because my brushes felt “off”.

Posemaniacs is very good for both anatomy and speed practise (I’m aware I’m really fast compared to my fellow artist friends but by no means it’s a standard, I just got used to work fast uwu)

Be careful with your wrist!!! use your whole arm when drawing!! and also T a k e · b r e a k s.

Art block is a bitch and strikes anyone. I’m usually artblocked but if you find something you’re passionate about go draw that, whatever it is. (I hadn’t consistently drawn in p much 5 years after college and thanks to MLB season 3 here I am LOL)

And now for the actual breakdown:

Step 1: Sketch

My first step is the sketch, which some of you might think “but it’s SO CLEAN!!”, yes, sometimes I leave my sketches as lines and polish them a bit. Anyways, these is what my sketch looks like and next an important thing:

...which is the 2/3 rule! Photoshop blabbery ahead, tl:dr how i made the grid

I’ve been doing this small trick by filling a layer of any color, lowering the opacity to 50% and transforming it to 33,33% it’s height duplicate and place on each side of the canvas and then merge, and then another layer doing the same but doing 33,33% width instead of height. Then I merge both layers, set the opacity to 30% and the result is that perfect 2/3 rule. 

If you don’t really know what the rule is, I kindly suggest this instead of my explanation bc words are not my forte. 

Step 2: Lineart! 

Nothing to say here other than cleaning the lines from earlier with a different (or the same in this case) brush as the sketch one. Opacity varies from day to day.

I have several styles of lineart and they all come with the mood I feel on that day, so don’t be afraid of experimenting and finding what you like most! I personally like thin lines a lot but also thick lines too! i’m constantly looking for the perfect line™ and to give an idea this is what my brushes look like:

in summary, practise with as many tools you can find around and see which ones you like most uwu

Step 3: Base Color

This is probably the part where I give up the most bc it boooooores me LOL. I try to spend as little time as possible in order to overcome this step. These are usually colors I use in 99% of my pics, since... idk years. If you look in my old arts in twitter you’ll see them haha.

Something important I’d like to mention here is ✨LAYERS✨:

This is how my layers look like in the base color part. I tend to do 1 for skin color, 2 for hair / eyes, 3+ for clothes and stuff. I tend to separate them in colors so they don’t merge! I go with numbers because... I think it’s faster to type and I’ve been using this way of naming for years so it works for me, what matters is that you group your layers and keep them organized uwu (specially if someone else has to look at your psd files >>)

Step 4: Shading!

Normally, I shade every single layer with a proper shade but on the case of the palette challenge I’m doing just the skin because I want to stress the light mood. Liiiike if I want to go with a softer light I’d use lighter shades or a stronger light = stronger shades. To pick colors, I usually go with that brown from Chat Noir and Marinette’s jacket as my universal black (I don’t like working with black, I’m weird), and most of the colors I just eye pick from the Color Picker on Photoshop. In the right you can see my swatches:

To choose the shade tone (in this example we’ll use Chat Noir’s hair), I picked a Yellow -Adrien’s hair is specially hard to color ugh- And then with that same tone I’d choose its shade going diagonally looking for a darker tone. This way you can find interesting colors! On this pic I did that for Adrien’s hair and... the rest I did the following:

I did my lazy shading™ : which consists in a layer set to Multiply with 50% opacity (this varies depending on the light, again), and I shade everything with the same tone (my to go is purple, but sometimes I use other colors too). This gives a sense of uniformity and the resulting shades are way nicer in my opinion.

Step 5: But Yuumi... where are the palettes???

I take that people straight handpick the palettes and use them to shade all the way and I respect them for that. I instead decided to do whatever floats my boat so I color regularly but add the palettes over the whole thing to change the overall mood and colors of the illustration. I randomly use the Gradient Tool and use the palettes’ colors around and then set that layer to Screen, Multiply, Focal Light, Overlay... etc etc, whatever I feel like doing in that moment, and so the magic happens! :’D 

I don’t usually do this on my works but this is a new way to experiment for me and I’m having fun with it!

Step 6: Finishing Touches

Here is where I use the palettes the most, adding random highlights in whatever way I feel like. Yep, I pretty much Ladybug my whole coloring process: Wing it and go with the flow™. I’m still learning about lighting and whatnots but I really don’t care at this point LOL

To which you’ll say: But Yuumi?? In art school they told me that---

To which I say: shhhhhhhhhhhhh assigntments are over for me. go watch some Bob Ross (I am serious). Do whatever you feel like. Be happy. No one is going to judge you, and if they wanna judge they better be paying for your work first. so. whatever you do: BE HAPPY. or don’t do it. unless it’s a school assignment, in that case go do it or i’ll kick your ass.

✦ Finishing Notes ✦

So yea, that’s my art process in how I’ve been doing these Miraculous Color Palettes and generally how I go about my illustrations most of the time. For more complex illustrations, I need to remember how I did those (oops). And actually, do them. These illustrations usually take up 2 or 3 hours to make, on other pieces i’ve been working on them for up to 8 hours, it really varies from piece to piece, but I hope this was helpful! 

Please let me know if you have any questions, commenting in this very post will help me -and others?- keep track of things and learn together! My asks are also open and I’ll reply as fast as I can uwu (my requests are still waiting there, don’t worry).

aaaaand that’s all, folks. Stay Peachy! 

[kamwritesshit]

Velvet Violet.

Whoop, starting over again. I’ll just post whatever I want this time, lmao. Here’s something I wrote for a challenge on Amino, inspired by All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven.

Trigger mention: Suicide mention, strong language, anxiety mention

Word count: 2,156 words

Your irises were velvet violet.

That was my initial thought when I saw you on the other side, the school bell an enourmous barrier separating the two of us. Your figure was a bit small, but I could see you clearly. Your eyes were filled with uncertainty and fear as you looked down from above. I looked down too. As expected, a crowd had gathered and they're all glancing up at us, rumours already floating amongst the sea of strangers.

It was strange, seeing you there with me on the ledge of the school's roof that can crumble at any time. Mostly because you're the most popular guy at school — and also a pretty famous actor in Japan. Sumeragi Tenma, I wondered, what brought you here? Your life's as perfect as it should be; famous, rich, popular, what more could you possibly want or need?

"You come up here often?"

I rhetorically asked, knowing damn well I'm the roof's regular customer; only customer, in fact. Pretty sure this ancient roof wasn't expecting any other visitors, let alone Sumeragi Tenma. How did you get up here, I kept wondering. I locked the door to the bell tower when I climbed up here; maybe you had some tricks up your sleeves. Wouldn't bet on that though.

I still remember how you looked to me with those wide eyes, the violet violent yet scared. Probably because it's Hyodo Juza who's calling out to you on a crumbling roof during the calm before the storm. People think I'm cynical, stoic, which I am — kinda. I've grown tired of that so I usually try to entertain myself whenever I'm up here. I thought that maybe I could've entertained you too, even if our sense of humour might differ.

You ignored my question and looked down on the others again. I sighed and inched backwards, not wanting to see or hear whatever the others were spouting about, especially because you were here with me. I could hear my classmates and homeroom teacher yelling insults at the top of their lungs while the counsellor just wanted the both of us to come down.

"Fucking Hyodo at it again!"

"Just jump off, you freak!"

"You two, please come down! It's dangerous up there!"

I flinched at every words thrown up here, as if they were bricks that could finally break the roof and grind it into dust. I, feeling tired, absentmindedly got up and went over to where you sat, jumping all over the roof to which the crowd roared. You jumped at my sudden presence as I sat down beside you. I looked down this time.

I was just that to them — a freak, a monster, a ghost and most importantly, a loner. My appearance has always been scary and everyone avoided me in the hallways but when I'm up here, unreachable, that's when they launch their missiles. I've grown to get used to it, even bored by it at times, depending on my mood. And sometimes, I'm severely affected by it.

It prompted me to actually jump off once or twice. Almost.

I only shook my head and turned my gaze to the grey horizon, searching for the answer for one simple question: what were you doing here, a territory I never meant to mark and rule? You were obviously scared; what good would it be to run up here, especially knowing damn well that Hyodo "Freak" Juza would be up here, talking to himself and occasionally looking down on students with such intense neutrality? Why—

"No."

You mumbled, to my surprise. What surprised me more was the fact that you mumbled the answer to my question. I even chuckled because we both obviously knew the answer to that question. You immediately glanced at me as if I was crazy. And according to almost everyone at school, that pretty much sums up my whole character, apparently. If they think I'm crazy, then you must be weirded out by the fact that I'm not in a mental asylum.

"Of course not. I'm the only one who comes up here."

I replied, adding another chuckle. I could see that you were resisting the urge to smile too but I made no comment. You nodded in agreement and looked down again as I lied down despite the protests from my back. The sky was grey, just how I liked it. But instead of continuing to look at the sky, I looked at you and how your body shivered, whether it was from the pre-storm chill or fear. I wanted to offer you my jacket but 1) you probably wouldn't want it and 2) that's probably gay.

Still, your body sagged and you seemed...lifeless, which was a rare sight. What happened to the high and mighty Sumeragi Tenma everyone knows and loves? Something was definitely up; the only reason I could say that for certain was because I've always observed people from afar rather than engaging in a conversation with them, like a normal person would. Unfortunately, I'm a freak.

"What happened?"

It was a simple question. You turned to stare at me and I hear you mumble a "Huh?". I only sighed and sat up, my eyes and attention fully on you. I wasn't trying to look intimidating — I was just patiently waiting for you to answer my question, seeming how simple it is. You avoided making eye contact with me by staring at your feet. I sighed for the umpteenth time that morning.

"Look, I may be a freak, but I ain't no dunce."

I continued. You shifted a bit, uncomfortable with my words and unsure whether you should retort. Probably because I can throw a mean punch if I want to. Thing is, I didn't feel like raising a single muscle, except maybe to smile so you wouldn't actually jump off. Finally, you slightly raised your head to look straight ahead at a few skyscrapers.

"...One of my close friends died recently and I...just feel weird."

I didn't hesitate to reply.

"Weird as in you feel like going up here and look down on people, wondering whether you should jump or not?"

You fell completely silent and still. I supposed I hit the nail on the head; I wanted to comment on you having close friends since it seemed like you were close friends with everyone you met, excluding those who hate how you're so confident in yourself which could easily be perceived as being egotistical. Even if you were, you had the right to strut the hallways of this god-forsaken school.

I opened my mouth to say something but the bell beside us rang and almost deafened us, but definitely reminding us that we should get our asses to class. Despite that, we both sat still, as the stagnant air mingled with the grayness of the sky. Looks like the storm won't be coming any time soon; still, the calm was alarming. The crowd had dispersed, giving up on us just like how I gave up on myself a long time ago.

"You should get to class."

I spoke up and waited for you to leave. Instead, you shuddered and brought your legs to your chest, your head sulking into the space between your knees like clouds drifting among mountains. I reached out a hand to console you but I had a feeling that you'd freak out more at that and accidentally jump off and I'd be the accidental murderer, as if being a freak wasn't enough. I was half-hoping you'd stay, half-hoping you'd leave my territory, but you chose both.

"...I'm not going unless you're tagging along."

I was genuinely shocked, I felt my eyes widening for more than just a second. But at the same time, I was kinda pissed.

"What, you want me to waltz to class with you so people can praise you and call you the hero who saved the freak of the school? Even when you're this big shot actor and shit? Like I said, I may be a freak but I ain't no dunce."

At this, you raised your head and gazed intensely at me for the first time in forever. Your eyes were violent again but they're just that. Violent and mad, just like the scowl on your face. For the first time in my life, I felt slightly terrified by someone with a smaller figure than me.

"I don't mean it like that. I just don't want to mingle with all those fake people in the halls wanting to get close to me just for money or fame or love or any of that bullshit. My close friend who died...he was the only one who knew the real me. Igawa. I fucking miss him," you rambled. I wanted to reply but you cut me off, continuing.

"So what if you're a freak? At least you're genuine and honest to yourself. To everyone. I spent my whole living lies people had told me. You're allowed to hate someone. I can't. You tell yourself every day that you want to die but you don’t. I was confused. And that's why...that's why I came up here. I wanted to see you."

You stopped venting, breathless. And then, finally, you broke into tears. You cried and cried and cried. I didn't hesitate to give you my jacket as you were shaking more than ever. You wrapped yourself up with it and held on tight to it for dear life. I even rubbed your back which made more tears leak out unapologetically. You even blowed your nose on my jacket. And it was completely fine. Looked like the storm didn't even need to come and ruin your day any more.

After you've done crying, we just leaned against each other. You closed your eyes, but you're wide awake and still so afraid. We spent a few minutes just like that and it was comforting in a way. Having someone lean on you like that; I've never felt such...warmth pulse through me. It felt really, really nice. For what felt like hours, I broke the silence.

"You wanted to see me because I wanna die but don't?"

You nodded, eyes still closed shut, ignorant of the still-grey skies and ugliness of everything. In spite of that, I smiled to myself for no reason and lied down again, completely comfortable this time. I waited for you to talk; I kinda like the way you talk when you're not boasting about your latest role in a movie or some shit. Soft and reassuring. Humble, even. But since you were silent for a while, I decided I should lighten up the mood.

"It's just that...jumping off this roof would be a real boring way to die. Some days I just wait for lightning to strike me or some shit."

Do you remember what you did next? You laughed. A breathy laugh, not the usual one echoing in the school corridors. But I like that too. That whole side of you was pretty refreshing to watch. And to know that I, Hyodo Juza, made you, Sumeragi Tenma, laugh made my chest pound harder than it should. Probably the anxiety of me having potential to make an actual friend. Even after you laughed, you finally smiled. And best yet, my humour spread over to you.

"I don't think you'll die. You'll probably turn into a superhuman. Like Thor or Ultraman..."

Then it was my turn to laugh, not just because I was feeling giggly and playful — he's also very, very wrong. Man, for an actor, he's surprisingly ignorant of famous movie characters.

"You do know that Thor is an actual god, right?"

He denied not knowing, like the tsundere everyone keeps saying he is. And to be honest, I started liking every side of you. Flawed or flawless, I liked each and every one of it. Because you were my first friend. You did that to me. I couldn't even do that to myself. For once in my life, I'm not talking to myself or an imaginary person at school. I'm always talking to you and it's surreal how you make me feel like me, whoever me is supposed to be.

I actually looked forward to school, just to see and talk to you. The best thing is you never grew tired of me. You even dragged me into acting, which I've grown so, so dearly fond of. We're real friends; we talk at school, hang out on weekends, all that stuff. I couldn't ask for more; this was too much of a miracle. Every time I see a glimpse of your bright, orange hair in the hallways, I'd rush over to you and tease how you look like a "fucking tangerine". But most importantly, I'd gaze into your eyes and think of the day I was on the bell tower with you.

Falling in love with your velvet violet irises again and again.

[cosmicmoved]

HEADCANON for SUMI

actually, this is a headcanon for karam too but this specific post is more sumi-centric so maybe i’ll talk about the karam end of things later. for now, though, it’s sumi’s turn bc i don’t talk about her enough (:

Okay, so I’ve decided to drag Sumi into Karam’s plotline for no reason besides that...I Wanted To but it also helps his plotline make more sense if he has a sort-of go-between character like Sumi in there somewhere. This post will explain what that means and why I’ve come to this decision! Until now, Sumi was kind of just her own character and she wasn’t really tied to any plot besides her own but I didn’t really know what to do with her beyond her backstory. I think this was definitely limiting her as a character so I’d like to use this chance to give her more direction! So, from hereon out, she’s going to be part of the Karam plotline! She’s still her own character but I like making my muses know each other bc,,,idk,...it feels like a more complete universe in my head. Anyway, with that out of the way, I’ll get on to explaining the story behind this connection! Full disclosure though, I’m sticking it under a Read More because it got kind of lengthy. I did TRY to be more succinct but maybe it’s about time I just accept that I’m not capable of that /:

First off, a lot of stuff might be setting or verse-dependent. I guess I’ve written stuff where these muses aren’t strictly based in one country and there’s always the chance of one of them moving somewhere else for the sake of a certain plotline? But the fun thing about rp is its fluidity so I’m going to try and stop getting overly concerned about details that don’t really matter too much. Sumi travels a lot. Maybe Karam tags along sometimes. Shit gets vague. It’s fine. ASDFGHGFDS......

To keep things simple, Sumi is the one who first found Karam when he wound up in the city after his forest was destroyed -- or, rather, she was the first person to try and help him. Other people had likely found/seen him but ignored him one reason or other (he would’ve been pretty dishevelled and tbh,,,probably naked bc what the fuck is he gonna wear clothes in the forest for). As I’ve said before, Sumi can tell when people aren’t human. Her senses aren’t especially strong so she can’t always place what somebody actually is, only if they’re a human or a ghost; she doesn’t have an inherently ability to sense what somebody is but, because she’s spent so much time learning to separate living humans from the spirits of the dead, she’s developed the ability to tell when somebody is neither, even if she can’t say for certain What they are. Because it’s a feat of applied knowledge and not a natural ability, mistakes happen. Now, Karam is a spirit. Not remotely human, despite his appearance. Still, long story short, Sumi mistook him for a ghost and, despite her charging humans for help with their ghostly issues, she’s often willing to help a ghost in need free of charge (because um...ghosts don’t have money). When she found Karam, he was in a state of obvious distress so she assumed he must have been a pretty new ghost, the sort who haven’t at all come to terms with the fact that they are, y’know, dead. Much to her shock, he wasn’t dead and was instead very much alive and tangible but still very much in need of help. More in need of help than she’d expected, in fact.

Sumi has always been the sisterly type so it felt natural to reach out a hand to somebody in need, mostly out of the goodness for heart and because she felt bad for him but also partly because Karam reminds her a little bit of Chulsoo, her late brother (despite being much much older, Karam looks about the age Chulsoo would be if he were still alive) with whom she is in no longer contact despite his being a ghost because he decided to use the afterlife to See The World until he was ready for Sumi to exorcise him. Yikes. That’s another story for another post. She was able to offer Karam a place to stay, a spare room in her apartment (where he’d start this new experience by staying in his room for a fortnight straight, only leaving to slink his way in and out of the bathroom), and help him make sense of a new and confusing world. First, she would offer him her brother’s old clothes to wear and then she would eventually resign herself to the reality of the situation and agree to buy Karam his own clothes, letting him pick out what he liked but also giving him tips wherever possible (financially speaking, this wasn’t her smartest move but she has a guilty pleasure in clothes shopping and the knowledge that she was doing it to help somebody else made her feel better about the whole thing).

In fact, she helped him get tidied up in general. Let him pick out a hairstyle from a pile of magazine and used her experience with hairdressing to replicate it for him. Maybe it’s because Sumi’s rather vain herself (and proud of it, mind you) but she’d fully believed a good start for Karam was to help him discover his own image and use that to regain confidence. Well...that, and the fact he’d looked an absolute state when she found him and she was of the firm belief that it was a shame for him to be wasting his pretty face on dishevelled hair and ill-fitting clothes that hung off him. But, really, Sumi sees her image as the ultimate form of self-expression. The way she styles herself is her way of telling the world who she is --- and, for someone who spends so much time with ghosts, looking as bright and lively as possible means a lot to her --- so she believed that helping Karam with that sort of thing might help him with this strange transition into a new world and come into his own. Yes, she was aware that this plan might fail and Karam might have been distinctly uninterested in his own looks but it ended up working out well. Karam is slow to warm to most very human things but he picked up on this quite quickly and was very willing to engage with it. For Karam, it was a matter of everything changing too fast and those changes being so overwhelming that making these dramatic changes over which he had full control, changes that he made himself and that weren’t forced on him, helped him to process the situation --- but I’ll talk about that in more detail another time, this is Sumi’s post.

Karam is very distrustful of humans and, although he trusts Sumi more than most on account of her having helped him so much, there’s a part of him that is paranoid it’s some kind of trick. Because of this, he tends to keep Sumi at an emotional distance. After all, despite her abilities, she’s still essentially just human and he’s been forced to regretting humans in the past (that is also another story for another time because, again, this is not Karam’s post so I won’t be going into details here). Although it’s frustrating, Sumi understands this and lets Karam keep his distance. She understands that he’s grateful regardless and she doesn’t want to cause any unnecessary discomfort. But, even besides that, their relationship is a little odd simply because they butt heads a lot. She kind of just lets him away with shit because she finds him endearing. Often, Karam won’t even stick around at her place. He’ll just disappear for days on end and resurface when he feels like it but it’s more about the choice to have somewhere he can return. Y’know, the illusion of home. 

Perhaps it’s because of that initial comparison she made between him and Chulsoo or perhaps it’s because he has such a young appearance but, despite the large age gap (wherein Karam is just under 240 years older than her), Karam brings out the big sister in Sumi. Maybe this is also why Karam doesn’t like her that much LMAO...............actually, he kinds of HATES it but asdfghgfd. In the time since she’s met him, she’s seen him struggle with things; she’s seen that he does have good moments and that he’s not intentionally rude in any way so much as he just has a hard time with certain social rules. She’s grown fond of him and feels that she has to try and help him out. Again, it’s hard to say if this is because of the time she spends helping ghosts or if it’s because he ignites the part of her that feels guilty for not being able to protect Chulsoo. It could just be that she’s sincerely worried about Karam. Maybe it’s a combination of them all, Sumi can’t quite tell for herself.

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

Some Disappointments I had about the “His Dark Materials” show

So I loved the HDM show, I did. I can’t wait to see The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass adapted, since I’ve been wanting to see that since I first got into HDM/TGC.

Having said that, whilst I enjoyed it, there’s still parts that disappointed me? I don’t know if that makes sense, but I’ll try to explain anyway.

This post ended up being far longer than I wanted it to, because I ramble and don’t edit, so it’s under a “keep reading”/”read more” just so it doesn’t bother anyone or clog up the dashboards! I’m also interested to hear what any other fans have to say, so please feel free to add/disagree with anything!

Firstly, dæmons. I know that TV budget is significantly less than movie budget, so I understand why it was not possible to show every single person on-screen having a dæmon. When the dæmons ARE there, especially Pan, they’re done extremely well - such as seeing him shift forms, for example, and the fight between the Pan and the monkey. However, there are moments where there’s maybe two people on-screen, such as Ma Costa (who has a hawk dæmon) and Lyra, and they’re indoors (eg. On the boat), and their dæmons are nowhere in sight - I think I saw Ma Costa’s dæmon once in the course of eight episodes. It really put me off because for 60% of the show, there were no dæmons - saying “maybe these people ALL have tiny dæmons in their pockets” can only go so far. Dæmons can also only travel a short distance from their humans, and going too far physically hurts them both.

The worst part is when it comes to a) Billy Costa and b) the parts in Bolvanger, where we’re supposed to feel horror because these children are having their dæmons - literally their souls - cut away and they’re becoming sickly zombie-like beings, barely even human. In the book AND the movie, it always made me feel sick and scared seeing Tony/Billy because it’s this child without a dæmon, clutching a dead rotting fish “as Lyra would clutch Pantalaimon” - it is literally a barbaric and sickening sight. Tony/Billy (depending on whether we’re discussing book or movie/tv) is awake, asking for their dæmon, unable to say anything but “where’s my Ratter? I want Ratter” - in the show, Billy is passed out and says nothing, he just sort of let’s Lyra help him into Iorek so they can go back to the camp. Because the point of dæmons being your soul, something EVERY person has, wasn’t exactly driven in properly in the series, it’s just kind of like “oh. Okay. Well, that sucks I guess”. Imagine the horror you’d feel at seeing someone walk around with half of their head missing - that’s the same horror you’re supposed to feel here.

Then you have Bolvanger. At first I was like “okay actually this is super creepy and messed up, good job”, but then it got to the part where Lyra and Pan are about to be separated, and...I don’t know. I respect that the series was trying to develop the human relationships, I get that, but parts of that whole scene didn’t work. Lyra is about to he separated from her soul, her lifetime companion who knows her better than literally anybody else, and in the book/movie, they cry out for each other and are distressed about it. Whilst Lyra was kind of animalistic like in the book, she doesn’t even spare a look at Pan the entire scene. Even when she and Pan are let out of their cages, she doesn’t look at him - where was the hugging? The “never, never, they’ll never separate us”? Maybe it’s a budget thing, the reason they didn’t hug, but would it have killed them to have her just so much as look at Pan? For them to check on each other? Instead we got her and Mrs Coulter staring at each other coolly for some reason? At least in the movie, after they wake up (because they passed out before Mrs Coulter saved them), she sees him and immediately hugs him tight, burying her face into his fur.

My other major gripe is the bear fight; the 2007 film did a way better job at showing that damn bear fight, despite the fact the film was a PG extremely watered down for families, and the show is a supposedly more adult one - and on BBC, the bear fight episode was shown a whole hour later at night, which is usually what happens when an episode has more violence/adult content. First of all, why were Iorek and Iofur NOT wearing armour?? The panserbjørne are ARMOURED BEARS. Part of the satisfaction in seeing Iofur being killed by Iorek is that under Iofur’s rule, the bears were forced to turn from their ways, using prettier/fancier but weaker metal for their armour, whilst Iorek - the rightful bear king - represents how the bears SHOULD be, using armour he made himself from Sky Iron that fell from the sky. Iofur tried to be a human so bad, allowing himself to be manipulated by Mrs Coulter, and he was able to be tricked - Iorek says that you cannot trick a bear, and the reason Lyra is able to trick Iofur is because he doesn’t behave like a bear, doesn’t think like one, because he’s not as a bear should be. I went off on a tangent there, but what I was trying to show is that having two ARMOURED bears fight WITHOUT armour is literally stupid, especially since every other bear was wearing armour during the scene.

Secondly, even in the PG film, we got to see the two bears fight and claw at each other - AND we saw Iorek smack Iofur/Ragnar’s lower jaw clean off before grabbing him by the throat and disposing of him. In the show, it mostly happens behind Lyra as she cowers and doesn’t watch - fucking excuse me?? Why is Lyra NOT watching her dear Iorek - who she loves fiercely and more than her own parents (not that that’s difficult, mind you) - fight in a life or death battle? Why is she NOT watching two bears fight when that is exactly the kind of thing Lyra WOULD watch? Lyra Silvertongue does NOT turn away and cower. She would especially not be hiding and refusing to watch because the outcome of this battle literally decides if she lives or dies too - she’s told Iofur that she’s Iorek’s dæmon, and that if he kills Iorek then she will become his dæmon instead. She does this because otherwise, Iorek will be killed by the fire-hurlers/guards before he can even get close to the palace - it’s the only way she can stop that from happening. If Iorek IS killed in the one-on-one battle, Iofur will know right away by a) her heartbroken reaction and b) the fact that they’re not connected that she was lying, and he would kill her instantly. So yeah, if I were Lyra, I would not be closing my eyes and turning away.

It’s just overall a disappointing battle, even more so because it’s one of the most exciting and thrilling parts of the book. I was also lowkey hoping that we’d finally get to see Iorek tear open Iofur’s chest and eat his heart, but I guess not.

I do have a minor gripe about the way Mrs Coulter is shown as well - I love Ruth Wilson. I absolutely do, and she’s an incredible actress; she’s incredible in this series too. Having said that, I always personally envisaged Mrs Coulter as being very cool, calculated, collected, etc. She knows how to wield the power she has, she knows how to manipulate people into doing what she wants, and she’s nearly always wearing a mask - her dæmon being a Golden Monkey shows that while, like the Monkey, she’s very beautiful and sleek and pretty to look at, her exterior hides a darker and more violent side. I’m rereading the first book again, and in the first two or three chapters (before the Cocktail Party) where we see Mrs Coulter, she puts on the front of being very kind, very wonderful, and an absolute dream come true for Lyra, who has never had any kind of maternal figure in her life. It’s so easy to see why Lyra trusts her at first, because she’s soft with her, charming, and genuinely seems to be absolutely perfect. I personally felt that Nicole Kidman did a pretty good job at conveying that, though I may be somewhat biased because it was the film that made me even know the books existed (hence why I tend to be nicer about the film than most); the first few scenes before the fight between Pan and the monkey, you get that same sense of Mrs Coulter being a loving motherly figure to Lyra, such as taking her out to lunches, getting their hair done together, etc.

However, in the film, there’s a moment I love during the first dinner scene where a) Mrs Coulter goes from soft to slightly threatening in 0.05 seconds, and b) where her monkey dæmon is grooming Pantalaimon under the table whilst he tries to escape, all while she’s carefully manipulating Lyra into trusting her. You also know that Mrs Coulter is probably bad news in the scene after when we see her dæmon straight up attack Roger and Billy + their dæmons, and then next thing you know both are missing...that kind of makes it a little more sinister.

In the show, Mrs Coulter from episode 3(?) onwards always seems like she’s constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown. In a way, it’s an interesting take on the character, and I thought the way certain behaviors or mannerisms directly paralleled the Monkey dæmon’s was brilliant (eg. The way she repeatedly hit Benjamin when tackling him, the way she crouched on a table after leaving the vent in Bolvanger). It’s also interesting to see a new side of her, and it’s unsettling as well, which makes her a fantastic villain because you just don’t know what’s going through her mind or when she’ll snap. However, in this interpretation, it also kind of means that we don’t see the carefully maintained and calm front that she puts on, and it makes you wonder why on Earth Lyra trusts her in the first place because the whole time we see her, even at Jordan College, you can tell that something is not right. Like that moment where she says “sometimes children can just...disappear” while snapping her fingers...yikes. I would NOT trust her at all. This is not me trying to insult Ruth Wilson, because her performance was absolutely incredible and she did a great job with it.

It’s not just Mrs Coulter, to be fair - I love James McAvoy so much, I truly do, but the moment at the end of Episode 7 when Asriel starts to creepily smile at Roger and say “I’m so glad you’re here, Roger Parslow” is WAY too on the nose. I know this scene wasn’t in the film, but you can see it somewhat in the cut-scenes of the console game, and Daniel Craig’s reaction is way more believable; he sees Roger, slowly calms down because before he was yelling at Lyra, and then tells Thorold to run the children a bath - he gains control over himself, and you can sort of tell that something’s not right but it’s not “alarm bells blaring” kind of off putting. Other than that moment, however, I do love McAvoy in the series, especially since he was actually cast very last minute apparently.

Even Lyra comes across differently in the show. I don’t know know what it is about show!Lyra, but she seemed for the most part sort of subdued and less like how she is in the book. Maybe some of that is due to what I said before about the dæmons/Bolvanger issue, but she seemed overall more subdued and less wild. Lyra is supposed to be, as Pullman wrote in Northern Lights, “a brutal little savage”; before any of these events happened, she was this girl who led warfare against the town kids and Gyptian children, she tried to steal the Costas boat, she was constantly dirty and filthy, never listened to any of the Scholars to the point where it was disrespectful, and she was always lying or exaggerating - she had the background to act like she was better than the servant kids, like she was somewhat more noble, because of her “uncle” and his wealth, whilst also being savvy and street smart enough to be absolutely savage and wild. In the show, there were moments where I felt that, “yes, this is the Lyra we know and love”, but overall it just seemed like she was extremely toned down and not as fiery or fierce as she should be. Maybe that’s just what happens when you adapt such a huge scale trilogy like HDM, I don’t know. Again, I have nothing against Dafne Keen, she’s incredible at what she does, especially at her age.

Finally... While I loved seeing Will, I do feel like seeing him and seeing Boreal in our world was kind of just filler. It made for a beautiful ending scene in the final episode, where we see the parallel of him and Lyra both entering windows into different worlds, but for the most part I felt like it was unnecessary and slowed the episodes to a grinding halt. Like, we’d be seeing exciting battle, scary child-cutters, and then suddenly switch to Will watching interviews of his missing dad on his laptop, or to Boreal talking to a contact or whatever. It just feels like that time could have been used to develop the characters (in Lyra’s world) better, because I watched the series with my sister, she has never read the books, and I had to explain to her that it was a different world, why is this important etc., and I have to wonder if people who haven’t read the books felt the same.

I don’t think it’s the actors’ faults - I do think it’s the way it’s been written/adapted by Jack Thorne. I mean, come on, we’ve seen what his work on Cursed Child looked like, for goodness sake (yes, I know he was one of three credited writers on Cursed Child, but still). I feel like he didn’t quite grasp the importance of dæmons, or how to write some of the characters...hell, I don’t think he even wrote LYRA properly, for that matter, and she’s the main character.

Having said all of this, I am looking forward to the next series, as well as (hopefully) seeing the entire trilogy FINALLY adapted to completion (unlike the film, which didn’t even give us the final part even though it was filmed), and I’m excited to see how it’s all done! I know it sounds like I’m totally trashing the television series, but I did love the first season of the show, I truly did, and I would love to make a post about everything I loved or thought was well-done, but that’s for another post! It would also be a FAR longer post, or else episode-by-episode separate posts, but perhaps another day!

^For the record, this is absolutely the Lyra we know and love, and she said this in the book, so yay!

[twdeadfanfic]

It’s a dog’s life Pt.1

*Summary: The reader is new and alone at the quarry’s camp, the only one she has is her dog, who seems to be best friends with Daryl Dixon, a not so friendly man, but that friendship will bring the reader closer to Daryl, finding that there’s more to Daryl than what you can see at first glance…besides, he’s pretty hot at first glance, isn’t him?

 *Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader

*Tags/Warnings: Slow burn, violence and language twd style, both reader and Daryl’s pov. Follows the events of season 1 and 2.

Chapters: 1/14

Link to my masterlist with my other works can be found on the description of this blog. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but tumblr doesn’t show posts with links in the tags.

My new series! I loved writing it, the reader is a bit diferent from what I wrote in my previous two series and I had so much fun, I had a great time writing this and I hope you’ll enjoy it too. Let me know your thoughts!

------

You yawned as you looked around at the camp, people going about with their morning activities. Carol was collecting clothes to do some laundry, Andrea and Amy were getting ready to go fishing, Dale was scouting the horizon on top of his RV, Shane and Glenn were talking as they looked at a map of what you guessed was Atlanta…

You, though, had just woken up. You should be getting ready and rush to help Carol or do anything that needed to be done, but your growling stomach reminded you to better have breakfast first, you barely had dinner yesterday. You were in need of a run for more supplies, that was probably the reason why Shane and Glenn were studying the map.

You took an almost empty can of peaches and sat down at the outside of your tent, busying yourself with your not so healthy breakfast. Your dog, Cole, began munching on the leftovers of his dinner, some squirrel’s innards.

When you heard footsteps approaching, you didn’t need to look up to see who was coming, the way in which your dog sat up like a flash, tail waggling like crazy, told you enough. Besides the kids, there was only one person he was so excited about seeing.

Daryl Dixon.

Cole had always been a friendly dog so it was no surprise he got along with almost everyone in the camp, but you still couldn’t make sense of his unrestrained love for Daryl. He wasn’t the friendliest one to be around, after all, but Cole adored him.

What surprised you even more was how Daryl seemed to reciprocate the feelings. You wouldn’t say he adored your dog, but he was always asking you to lend him Cole whenever he went to the woods, sneaking him food and snuggling him when he thought none was looking. Considering how Daryl was with the humans that lived in the camp, it was quite surprising.

With a bark, Cole launched himself at Daryl, his mouth open with his tongue out, almost looking like he was smiling.

“Hey, dog.” There it was, you wouldn’t catch Daryl smiling at anyone in the camp, yet he was grinning as he scratched Cole behind the ears.

Honestly, it was kind of cute, and more often than not you found yourself smiling at the sight of them. You had been confused at first and it had taken you a little bit to actually develop a friendship with Daryl. Although you weren’t sure if Daryl saw you as a friend or just a woman with a dog he liked, and certainly he didn’t seem to like you as much as he seemed to like your dog, but you couldn’t complain, he was nicer to you than to anyone else in that camp.

“Good morning to you, Daryl.” You greeted, it wasn’t the first time Daryl said hello to Cole and ignored you.

“Yeah, morning.” Daryl didn’t even look at you. “I’m going hunting, can I take the dog?”

“Sure…I’ve told you a thousand times he’s not a hunting dog, though.”

You hadn’t let him take your dog at first, and the first times Cole had actually gone hunting with Daryl, you had gone with them too, until you saw how skillful Daryl was and you trusted he wouldn’t let anything happen to the dog. He’d promised you he’d keep Cole safe of walkers and any other threats.

Besides, just in a few days after meeting Daryl it was evident how much Daryl and Cole liked each other, it was obvious Daryl would never hurt your dog and wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him, so you trusted him. And Cole loved to be with Daryl.

“Yeah I know, he’s shit at hunting,” Daryl replied, his words at odds with the way in which he was looking at your dog.

“So why do you take him with you then?” You asked, and Daryl just shrugged, making you smirk. You knew he would never admit he loved your dog and his company.

“He tells me if there are walkers close.”

“And how exactly does he do that? By barking and bringing every walker around to you?”

“Yeah, I have to teach him another way…” Daryl replied, biting his thumbnail and frowning.

“Good luck with that.” You joked, Cole had never been fond of learning tricks or things like that…but by now you were sure if someone could teach him, that was Daryl. “Anyway, you told me you wouldn’t let Cole get close to walkers…”

“I don’t.” Daryl rushed to assure you. “I shoot them before they can get close or we leave, I ain’t letting them get your dog, told you I wouldn’t.”

You weren’t sure if he was telling you that to reassure you and calm you down, or just because he was afraid you might not lend him Cole anymore if you thought he was putting him in danger. Which you wouldn’t, but you believed Daryl, if he told you he’d keep your dog safe, then he would. And honestly, if Daryl asked Cole to go with him, you weren’t sure you’d be able to stop your dog from following him, considering how he adored Daryl. You always joked saying he was stealing Cole’s love from you, but sometimes you got actually jealous. Not that you’d ever say it aloud, though.

“Alright, come on, go hunt us dinner,” you said. “But if something were to happen to my dog-”

“You put one of my arrows up my ass and tie me to a tree to be walker’s food, yeah, I know, you told me plenty of times,” Daryl smirked. “Like you could do it anyway…”

“You’re saying I can’t beat your ass?” You teased. “Don’t make me do it.”

“Yeah, sure. Come on, dog.” Daryl began walking to the woods, Cole behind him, happily wagging his tail. “Ain’t letting nothing hurt your dog,” Daryl told you without looking back.

You knew he wouldn’t, Daryl was the most skillful person that you knew, the best at surviving. Your dog wasn’t safer with anyone else, not even you.

If you thought about it, you had kind of trusted Daryl since the beginning, after all, he was the one who had found you and Cole in the woods, starving. He had been hunting nearby but you hadn't noticed him until Cole had begun barking like crazy. You had turned around expecting to see one of those monsters but found yourself face to face with Daryl and his crossbow. “Hush, you'll bring every dead asshole to us!" It was kind of fun that the first sentence you had heard from Daryl was to your dog. Quite fitting. Daryl had seemed almost as surprised as you to find someone else but he had taken you to his camp at the quarry, telling you he and his brother hadn't been there for long but that the people weren't too bad and you'd be safe enough from the monsters. You had been taken in and introduced to everyone, it had been a bit overwhelming but you had been grateful nonetheless and the kids of the camp had been exultant to find you had a dog. That night you had dined at the fire in the middle of the camp, stew made from rabbits Daryl had hunted. Daryl wasn't there, though, he was making dinner for him and his brother at his own fire in front of their tents, which were slightly away from the others.  There had been another small fire next to an also separated tent. It was from a man neither you nor your dog liked and his lovely wife, the mother of one of the kids. You had noticed Daryl giving her some of the rabbit meat so she could have dinner even if his husband didn't want to join the others. You had shared your dinner with Cole, he had been starving as much as you but you felt bad about asking those people to give you a bit more of stew for your dog, they were already feeding you their scarce food and they didn't know you. However, your dog had his way of finding his own dinner... Then... You'd finished getting a spare tent that Dale had lent you ready for the night when you realized your dog was missing. You panicked slightly, Cole was usually never far from you, what if something had happened to him? What if for some reason he had decided to go back to the woods and a monster had gotten him? “Cole?" you called quietly, not wanting to bother anyone. "Where are you?" To your relief, there were a couple barks that you followed until you found Cole, though that relief was short lived when you saw he was munching on something. "What I told you about eating anything you find on the ground?!" It wasn’t like someone there might want to poison him, but still you didn't like your dog eating something he had found and you didn't know what was. "He didn't find it on the ground."  You were startled to hear a voice close but when you looked around in the dark you noticed you were next to the Dixon's tents, their fire already dead. You made the silhouette of Daryl sat down on a log outside his tent. “It's rabbit, I gave it to him, it ain't poisoned or nothing." “Thank you." You were taken aback. “You didn't have to.” "He gotta eat too." "I gave him half my dinner already...seems he didn't think about sharing his with me..."

Since that day, Daryl gave you and Cole part of whatever he cooked for his brother and himself. He always said it was for the dog, but you knew he made sure there was always enough for Cole and you. His brother didn’t like it at first, claiming he was wasting food. Then he suggested some ways in which you could pay back for the food they gave to Cole and for Daryl rescuing you. Both Daryl and your growling dog put an end to that, though. And since then, Daryl and Cole's big friendship began. A few days later, Daryl asked you if he could take your dog hunting with him. You didn’t agree until a week later, and only if you could go with them. Daryl had been complaining all the time... 

“You are just gonna be slowing me down all the time” He grumbled. “If you trip on a root or something and break an ankle I ain’t carrying you ass back to camp.”

“It’s not my first time in the woods you know?!” You spat back. “I worked in it, I know what I’m doing, so shut up!”

“You shut up, you’re scaring the game.”

You decided not to reply to that, just rolling your eyes at him, and followed him in silence for hours, watching as he managed to hunt a couple of squirrels, until he decided to stop to eat something. You had been tired and were grateful to stop for a bit, but in no way you were going to tell that to Daryl. He got some dried meat out of his bag, passing you some. As he began to eat his portion, he also started giving little pieces to Cole.

“You’re buying my dog with food.”

“I ain’t buying anyone.”

Truth be told, for some reason Cole loved Daryl no matter if he sneaked him food or not, always looking for him when he was on the camp or going to happily greet him when he came back from hunting. And there was no doubt Cole had been all excited about going hunting with Daryl for once. You wondered if you were starting to feel jealous…

“You said you worked in the forest,” Daryl said, taking you out of your thoughts. “Wasn’t a bluff?”

“Of course it wasn’t!” It was a bit of lie…but you didn’t want to back down now. “I worked in my parent’s business and I did most of my job in the woods.” You were stretching the truth a bit, but you wanted Daryl to respect you.

“Yeah? And what business was that?” Daryl arched an eyebrow at you.

“Are you gonna tell me what was your family’s business too?” You retorted, evasively.

It made Daryl go dead silent, his expression changing, making you wonder briefly if you had said something wrong.

“Come on,” He said as he got up. “I have to keep hunting, can’t feed everyone with just a couple squirrels.”

By the time you made your way back to the camp, he had hunted a couple more of squirrels and a rabbit too and was complaining about how he could have hunted more if he hadn’t had to take you along with him but you were ignoring him.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” You asked after a while of silence.

“You’re gonna ask anyway, aren’t you?” He replied, making you smirk.

“Yep. Can you let me try your crossbow?”

Daryl turned to look at you like if you were crazy or had insulted him.

“You wanna strain a muscle, shoot yourself, or what?”

“I’m not shooting myself!” You rolled your eyes. “I can shoot a bow, so it can’t be much different.”

“You can shoot a bow? Really?” Daryl frowned at you, he didn’t seem to believe you, but it was true. “For your family business too?”

“Kind of…”

“Now you’ll tell me you hunted too.” He snorted.

“No, no I didn’t.”

“That was pretty obvious after today.”

“Are you letting me try the crossbow or what?”

“No.”

“Okay, fine, great, I bet it’s a thousand times easier than the bow anyway.” You huffed. “I bet you couldn’t shoot a bow even if you tried.”

Daryl glared at you at that, taking off his crossbow to throw it to you. It was heavier than you had expected, heavier than a bow.

“Fine, sunshine, come on, shot us another squirrel.” He growled at you.

“Can’t see any squirrel.”

You began charging the crossbow, it took a lot of your strength to tense the string but you tried not to show it. Once it was ready, you aimed at a tree, finding a darker point in the bark that you decided was your target. You shoot at it, the crossbow shifting unexpectedly in your hands, different than a bow, and you failed miserably.

“Shit…” You grumbled, glaring at Daryl when he snorted.

“Come on, it’ll be dark before you can hit the nearest tree.” He said, taking the crossbow and shouldering it again.

“Shut up.”

 Now…

As always, Daryl came back before the sunset. He made his way to his tent and Cole turned to ran to you. "At least you have the decency to come to greet me after begin all day away." You had no shame about talking with your dog. "Thought that by now you'd have moved with Daryl, uh?" Cole barked and you wished you knew what it meant. You looked towards Daryl's tent and saw him sitting down outside, skinning a rabbit. You decided to go help him, you weren't too good at helping him get his kills ready yet, and sometimes it still turned your stomach, but you were learning.  You sat down beside him and he tossed you another rabbit. Cole soon grew bored of watching you two working and he went to play with the kids. Daryl was silent and surly, even more than usual, and you knew something was bothering him but you weren't going to push him or he would snap. If he wanted to then he would tell you. If not, then he could be angry by himself. “Two rabbits ain't gonna feed all of us for shit." He grumbled when you were finished.  “We still have some of those cans of tomato soup that Glenn brought from Atlanta." You said matter of factly. "We’ll make a stew with them and the rabbits." “There gotta be more deer around."  A few days after you joined the camp, Daryl had come back from hunting with a deer over his shoulders but since then it seemed he hadn't found any other. You guessed the deer had run away scared by the smells and sounds coming from your camp and by the walkers around.  "I think I'm going to go further into the woods, stay the night maybe, see if I can find something." "Are you sure?" You frowned, staying the night in the woods didn't sound that safe.  “I'm used to, and there's barely any walkers around, I told you." "Alright." Suddenly you thought on something.  "And are you going to want to take Cole with you?" You didn't like the idea of getting separated from your dog for so long and him getting further into the woods and staying the night.  Daryl shrugged, biting his thumbnail.  "Maybe... But I know you don't want your dog to be out of here for two days." You didn't, you knew you would be all the time worried sick about him. Neither did you want Daryl to be gone for that long, and alone... Maybe Merle could go with him or something.   "I was thinking..." Daryl began again, shifting awkwardly. "That maybe you could come. If you want to, with the dog..." You hadn't expected that and you blinked at Daryl, taken aback. He never asked anyone to go hunting with him and the couple of times you had gone with him, back at the beginning, he hadn't seemed too happy about it.  "Or don't, I don't need your dog or nothing..." He began to backtrack.  "You really want me to go?" You asked and Daryl just shrugged without looking at you. "Okay, okay, I'd really like to." "Alright."

"Are you going to be complaining all the time again about me slowing you or scaring the game again?" You teased. 

“If you do it..." You noticed a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. 

You didn't know why you were so excited about going to the woods for almost two days, you ought to be scared, you should have said no, but you were happy Daryl had asked you, no matter it probably was because he wanted your dog's company, not yours, but still, he didn't ask everyone to go hunting with him. 

"Deal, then." You grinned and whistled at Cole so he'd come. "You know what, boy?" You said, scratching your dog behind the ears. "I'm going hunting with you and Daryl! Are you happy I’m going with you two? You better are."

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

We’re going on a run with Daryl! Are you excited?!

Thank you all for reading! I hope you liked it! If you have a moment, please let me know your thoughts in the comments, your feedback makes my day!

As always, English is not my first language so sorry if there are mistakes.

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[lokisasylum]

Forever, You Said | Chap 04-06 re-cap

The following is a complete breakdown/re-cap of everything that’s happened so far during the following chapters of Forever, You Said.

Chapter 04:  A Masked Ball (A Fated Reunion)

Chapter 05:  Forever and Never, pt 01

Chapter 06:  Forever and Never, pt 02

You can read the first re-cap HERE which covers Chapters 01-03

Since Chapter 07 and 08 are halfway done, I figured I’d better just post the recaps now.

Chapter 04: A Masked Ball (The fated reunion)

 In the previous chapter (A Blackened Soul) we got a glimpse of everyone’s past through various change of scenes and POVs.

 Namjoon and Jungkook

 Hoseok and Jin

 Jimin and Taehyung

 And in the end we were left with the much anticipated event:

 The Vampire Ball.

Chapter 04 opens up where Chapter 03 ended, with Namjoon and Junkook arriving to Paju and awaiting among the thousands of guests to get into the venue.

 Once inside and briefly getting sidetracked by the activities around them they are greeted by Seokjin personally. The older vampire wastes no time in secretly measuring Jungkook’s worth and intentions with Jimin, but finding no malice in his heart he lets it slide as he and Namjoon have a small reunion between “old lovers”.

 Ever impatient and slightly annoyed, Jungkook has to tear his eyes away from the scene when his eyes quickly take note of a familiar shade of blue among the sea of guests and barely makes a coherent sentence towards Namjoon before hurrying through the crowd in search of this person believing in his heart to be Jimin.

 But when he finally catches up to the person and reaches out to stop them he find out (to his dismay) that its not Jimin, but Taehyung. The werewolf had decided to play a trick on Jungkook by acting as an obstacle to furthermore stall his reunion with Jimin.

 Now at the very end of his patience, Jungkook was just about ready to blow a gasket when he remembered Namjoon’s warning for the night:

 “If you want to get to Jimin you must first go through Kim Taehyung—“

 With that thought in mind, Jungkook decides to first try to get on everyone’s good side instead of rushing everything and screwing up the only chance he has. Starting with his peace treaty with Taehyung by offering a birthday gift to him, much like Namjoon had done with Seokjin earlier.

 Meanwhile, Jimin along with others are going over the last minute preparations for the night’s presentation. There’s a moment where he takes a peak from behind the curtains of the main stage trying to find the others by sensing their auras and scents. All seems to be going in order until a familiar scent makes him loose focus and begin to despair, but he quickly snaps out of it thanks to Hoseok’s concern.

 Brushing it aside Jimin takes a moment before the show to check his phone and finds a few new messages which turn out to be one from Taehyung wishing him luck for the performance. And another message, but this time from someone in Malta wondering when he’s coming back.

 This seems to disrupt his focus a second time as Jimin hesitates on whether to answer the message or not. Knowing very well that he shouldn’t be second-guessing his choices at this moment when he had already planned on leaving quietly after the performance. So for now he decides to ignore everything and just focus on the task at hand before Hoseok gets suspicious.

 Back with the others, Jungkook has gradually relaxed and opened up to Seokjin, Taehyung and Namjoon throughout the night, while at the same time learning a bit more from each one. But a moment from friendly banter between Jin and Taehyung has him making a quick escape from the table with Taehyung to avoid the older vampire’s wrath.

 A few minutes before the main show begins, Taehyung suddenly turns on Jungkook discarding all pretenses from before to give him a stern warning.

 “If you so much as allow a single tear to fall from his (Jimin) eyes, know that I will not hesitate to reach into your ribcage and rip out your still beating heart as I watch your drown in your own blood!”

 The music in the venue gets cut off as the main event is about to begin and Jungkook is grateful for the distraction. But what really captures his attention is that two of the main attractions are none other than Hoseok and Jimin themselves. Jungkook is absolutely captivated (for the second time since they met) by the blue haired vampire’s voice and stunning performance, but just as quickly as it began it ends. And Jungkook is once again running after someone until he makes it back stage where the others are congratulating Jimin.

 It doesn’t take long for him to sense Jungkook’s presence, however, and approach the other in disbelief until the latter takes off his mask to reveal himself. Leading Jimin to go through a whirlwind of mixed emotions as, one by one, the others confess to knowing that JK was coming to the ball all along and how badly he had been wanting to see him again.

 Guilt washes over Jimin for being angry at his family despite the fact that he himself was keeping secrets from them all along. But seeing there’s no escape from neither the past or the present he agrees to speak with Jungkook in private and the two exit the venue into the parking lot where they eventually take refuge in Jimin’s car from the cold weather.

 A few hours of silence pass between them in the car, save for the sound of Jimin’s phone vibrating insistently and Jungkook can see that something’s not right with the smaller male as he eventually confesses to planning on leaving without a trace but now feels trapped by duty and loyalty.

 Surprised by the news, Jungkook tries to persuade Jimin to stay in order to give them both a chance to get to know each other better, still clinging to the believe that nothing about their initial meeting had been a coincidence and now their fates had been sealed like their matching tattoos.

 Jimin although still heavily skeptical decides to momentarily set his doubts and fears aside and kisses Jungkook.

  ------

  Chapter 05: “Forever and Never, pt. I”

  Chapter five opens up with Jungkook now in Jimin’s apartment a few hours after they left the ball. The two had agreed to spent the night together and while they freshened up separately, Jungkook still can’t believe everything that’s happened and the strange turn of events that led to them meeting again.

 ‘I’m really here—HE’s here.’

 But more surprising was knowing that Jimin’s present-day-persona is a cop. A fact Jungkook tries to poke fun at later on when he reunites with Jimin in the livingroom, only to be chastised by the older male for snooping around his stuff.

 A light discussion that ends in the kitchen when Jungkook notices that Jimin had been drinking blood or feeding only moments prior and seems to freeze at the realization. More so because the empty blood pint he finds on the counter shows its his blood type (A).

 Sensing Jungkook’s distress and fearing this night could take a turn for the worse, Jimin has no choice but to lower his own defenses and make himself as open and vulnerable as possible for Jungkook to feel comfortable enough to sit and speak so that they could clear up whatever doubts they have between them.

 Jimin tells him the best way that he can what he is, how vampire society really works unlike popular lore or fiction. Also debunking most myths.

 But what really changes Jungkook’s perspective is hearing and seeing the misery in Jimin’s entire being and how lonely he must’ve felt all this time.

 “I know you’re afraid, Jungkook-ah... And I won’t hold it against you if you decide to walk away right now.”

 But Jungkook is quick to deny having such intentions, stating that it was thanks to Jimin that he was able to open his eyes and realize he was slowly wasting his life away and now that he had finally found Jimin, he had no intentions of letting the vampire out of his sight ever again.

 Jimin attempts to give him an ultimatum as to what he was agreeing and getting himself into, and only when he receives full verbal consent from his human counterpart does he seal their pact with a kiss.

 The two eventually make it back to the bedroom where they have passionate sex, but while they lay in each other’s arms coming down from their high, something triggers Jimin’s desire to claim and turn Jungkook. And though he tries to fight against it, Jungkook’s tender gestures remind him too much of Yoongi, making Jimin feel weak and way too vulnerable. So he has no choice but to use his dark gift to put Jungkook to sleep again so that he can have time to regain his bearings enough to think straight.

 The chapter ends with dawn quickly approaching and Jimin making up his to seek out advice from a close friend.

  ------

  Chapter 06: “Forever and Never, pt. II”

  This chapter is divided by Two Acts (Act 01: [Scarred Hearts] & Act 02: [A Heart Without Color]) and

  Act 01: [Scarred Hearts]

  The first one opens up with Jimin and Taehyung sitting in a café after the vampire requested to meet with his lifelong friend and soulmate alone.

 After teasing one another about their individual nightly activities and respective lovers. Taehyung, being in tune with Jimin’s true feelings, didn’t take long to gear the conversation towards the true reason for their meeting. Wanting to know what could be bothering the smaller vampire to such a scale when the night before he sounded like he was finally in good spirits and in complete control of the situation.

 Jimin admits to feeling confused, lost and full of doubts now that Jungkook had somehow made it back to his life and although the two had wordlessly agreed to leave the past at the door once they made it to Jimin’s apartment in Hannam. To start over anew. But something changed, causing Jimin to internally panic thinking that the story would repeat itself.  

 Taehyung quickly reassures him otherwise, and that Jungkook was a good man who risked a lot just to be with him again even after knowing that Jimin was a vampire and therefore was worth a shot.

 “I don’t know what to tell him.”

 "Just tell him who you are, plain and simple. Leave nothing out just like you’ve always done in the past and let him decide in the end”

 Jimin is grateful for the advice and words of encouragement though deep down he still feels guilty for not being completely honest with Taehyung about wanting to leave them all the night prior had it not been for Jungkook’s arrival. A fact that is shown to us through a memory of the night before and the mysterious person Jimin had been talking to on the phone when Jungkook found him in the living room.

 Turns out the mystery person was none other than Jimin’s police partner in Malta, Maxwell. Who was worried about Jimin’s whereabouts since he was scheduled to fly back to Malta that very night, but then never did.

 Jimin informs that there’s been a change of plans and he might need a few extra days to decide what to do.

 Maxwell warns him that he doesn’t think he can continue to stall for him before their boss decides to suspend him if he doesn’t either return to Malta soon or offer a much more detailed explanation.

 Jimin tells him that he doesn’t expect the man to and to just look out for him until he can decide in the following days.

  Act 02: [A Heart Without Color]

 Back to the present and opening up with Act Two, we find Jungkook finally awake in Jimin’s apartment. And though at first he’s mildly disoriented, he slowly regains some memory of what happened the night before and how he got there.

 But for some reason he can’t explain, Jimin’s words begin to haunt and fill him with a sense of abandonment that has him sprinting out of the bedroom only to crash into the vampire on the hallway as he was coming over to wake him up so he could eat. Ending with the two toppling on to the ground.

 Now relieved that Jimin is still there and everything before that was all in his head. Jungkook embraces Jimin tightly and they share a proper “morning kiss”.

 After a brief flirting/lover’s quarrel session, Jungkook can’t help but notice a shift in the vampire’s semblance as Jimin hands him clean clothes for him to change into after he bathes. The same abrupt shift in emotions from the night prior before loosing consciousness. Causing Jungkook’s anxiety to fly off the roof thinking that Jimin was having a change of heart by trying to get rid of him after all.

 Jimin calmly instructs him to take a long bath, eat and replenish his strength and that only when he feels ready to face him should he come looking for him so that they two can sit and properly talk. A task that Jungkook fulfills without further protests.

 Soon it was late in the afternoon when the two lovers are sitting side by side in a silence that stretches for a while longer with both simply basking in each other’s company.

 Jimin is the first to break it when he asks Jungkook if he’s truly ready to hear “the whole truth”, to which Jungkook asserts right away knowing that this was the moment he had been waiting for all along.

 And so Jimin begins his story of how he was born in Busan during the late 17th Century in the Joseon era. A mother and father whom he honored, a younger brother which he loved dearly and a life of duty as a young soldier in the militia. Though his perfect world was violently shaken when a vampire attacked him and his brother as the two made the journey home to see off their dying father.

 In a desperate attempt to protect his little brother, Jimin stays behind to fight the vampire while his brother escapes. But the vampire proves to be too strong and in a matter of minutes Jimin is pinned to the ground and despite still putting up a fight, the vampire drains him of all his blood. Leaving him hanging on to his life by a thread.

 Rather than killing him right away, the vampire makes a bargain with him. To surrender himself in exchange for his life and the safety of his family. But Jimin never gets the chance to make that choice as he is turned against his will.

 When Jimin awakens the following morning he finds out the horrible news that not only is he now a vampire, but that his entire family has been slaughtered.

 Jungkook can only feel pity for Jimin this early into the story and how he had to literally forsake his humanity in order to embrace his new life as a newborn vampire whose sole survival depended mainly on human blood.

 But as the story progresses, Jungkook will learn that the friend from Daegu Jimin had mentioned during their first meeting was indeed Taehyung. The two had met after Jimin saved Tae from a midnight carnival that specialized in exhibiting “human oddities”, when a group of vampires attacked and killed his entire pack before selling him to the carnival where he was mistreated daily.

 After a rough start, the two began traveling together out of safety and gradually evolving into a close friendship that made them inseparable for centuries to come.

 The chapter ends with Jimin beginning the second half of his story on how they eventually met Seokjin. Marking the beginning of the cataclysm for things to come...  

[cooltrainererika]

Hetalia Emblem: Once Upon A Hallowed Night (pt. 1)

(Note: This was originally posted yesterday, October 20th, but due to typos, I have reposted it. It is still probably a bit rough, but hopefully there’s less glaring errors. I was also intending to release fic 2 yesterday, though it will be released later today, the third one probably won’t see the light of day for a while)

Hello! This is my entry for this year’s #hetaween #hetaween19/20! The prompt is 10/20; “Crossover”. And I have delivered! At least part of it!

However, this requires some explanation; this takes place in my Samuraiverse/Flagverse AU, or “Hetalia Emblem”, a theoretical Hetalia x World Flags (if you don’t know, it’s this: world-flags.org) x Fire Emblem crossover game. Basically, it’s Hetalia characters, World Flags outfits and weapons (as well as certain character elements; they will become apparent as you read along), and Fire Emblem gameplay, story elements, and lore elements. Unlike “Alt-talia”, the AU I usually write in, I’m thinking I might use characterizations closer to canon instead. Though they still may be slightly different.

So I saw the prompt, and thought this was a perfect place to spread my AU more. Basically, this is a human AU taking place in a Japanese medieval setting with international elements. A summary can be found here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DarthWiki/HetaliaEmblem (Or in my post on the subject)

Now, this requires minimal knowledge of Fire Emblem, though some spell names and skills (basically things that can enhance a unit on the battlefield) and such might be referenced. (Also, if anyone wants to use this AU, go ahead! Please!)

And tonight, I have for you not one fic, but a batch of three! First, a spiritual tale. Second, a fun trick-or-treat story with a twist. And third, an action story (hopefully)!

Also these are being released separately so I can hope to get one out the door by the end of today. Though oh well, it’s the 20th in most of the rest of the world.

Also, this is an idea for a support conversation somewhat modified to fit the holiday. If you don’t know what a support conversation is, they’re conversations that you can unlock between two characters to make them bond more, making them perform better around each other in battle. As such, it was the one I was most sure about. This is based on their C to B conversations, I think (since D conversations are a thing in this game).

I also haven’t decided fully on some names, or whether to use different names than Alt-talia, for those who were never given names or have inaccurate ones. However, I have decided to use the ones here for the time being. And Matthew keeps getting called by his full name because everyone’s name is spelled out in kanji in-universe, and in Japanese “Matt” doesn’t make much sense as a nickname for “Matthew”. Also, while a character mentioned in this fic has a name in Alt-talia, here I decided to keep him unnamed. It is kind of debatable if they’re the same character after all…

I’ll also say that many of the characters here, especially the focus characters, don’t have a set costume design or weapons, but will be assumed to be sword users for the time being until further notice, since it’s most likely they are.

And since these were kind of rushed, they may not be best written. So yeah… sorry about that. The second one in particular may kind of meander a bit.

A final note: this IS NOT shipping! Almost no shipping happens in Hetalia Emblem (so no S conversations in this game), as such pretty much all interactions are platonic by default.

Without further ado… Trick-or-Treat!

……….

On the night of the last day of the tenth lunar cycle, when the harvest is ripe and the harsh winter is nearing, the realms of the mystical and spiritual and this realm are at their nearest point, so close the barrier between them almost nonexistent; it is this one night of the year which is prime time for the departed to see those they had left behind, and for the mystical to give us a visit…

Closure

He had found her some ways away from the camp, bathed in the smoky aroma of incense, her pale hair seemingly glowing in the moonlight.

“Ms. Natallia?”

She turned, the ghouls departing.

“What do you want?”

The boy flinched a bit, but then continued to move towards her, revealing his face. Not that it mattered; his white kimono had made that quite obvious.

Yong-Soo hesitated, his face flushed a shade of pink, sputtering.

“H-hey, Ms. Natallia! Erm… it’s me again.”

“What do you want? Don’t waste my time again.”

Her voice was curt, cold.

The boy straightened himself out, shook his head, and cleared his throat.

“I won’t. You can talk to dead people, right? I mean, I heard that you have powers like that, despite not being a mage or anything, and…”

She could see exactly when his face turned uncharacteristically serious, she observed. Somewhat perplexing.

“Yes? And?”

“…I need your help.”

Natallia simply blinked.

Yong-Soo took a deep breath and continued.

“I need to tell you something.”

“…”

“…Hyung Yao isn’t my real brother. I used to have a biological brother. A twin brother, actually…”

A brother?

His normally cheerful, jolly voice had a tinge of pain behind it that was small, but as apparent as the luminous moon above. For whatever reason - though she knew why deep down - she felt her heart being tugged at.

“…But one day, he just disappeared. He was gone. I don’t know what happened to him. …I spent a year looking for him, but… I never found him.”

“…”

“I want closure. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. But, if he is dead… I want to at least say goodbye to him.”

No response.

She turned.

“Please… please…”

The teenager’s voice was starting to break, but he didn’t care. He briskly bowed, his head down low.

“Please… Please, I only-“

“Come with me.”

The dancer lifted his head immediately, just as the woman was starting to walk away.

His face lit up, his eyes becoming misty from the shock and joy at her words.

“Thank you! Thank you!”

———

The air inside her tent was heavy with incense, the ominous glow emitted from the small fire in front of Yong-Soo and the sticks of incense giving the dim tent a warm glow.

“What is his name?”

“It is-“

Once she had heard it, she simply nodded, calling upon it thrice in a hushed whisper.

Nothing.

“…He isn’t here.”

“What does that mean?”

“Even if he is dead, he hasn’t visited you. Yet. Now, quiet.”

The boy immediately straightened himself again, nodding

“Yes ma’am.”

————

Natallia had been silent, deathly silent. Even he wouldn’t dare raise a sound. It had felt like time had stopped. Despite the warm glow of the flames and incense, he felt chills; not just any, but a strange chill from within and without. He could have even sworn he saw glowing, fire-like orbs flicker around her.

————

Ion felt the spiritual energy; what kind of dark mage would be if he weren’t. It drifted ambiently in the air, but radiated from a certain, definite place.

It seemed Huong Lien felt it as well, the mage having poked her head out of her tent, her two familiars floating around her frantically, apparently either in distress or hyper-energized by the high concentration of mystical energy.

Somewhere on the other side of camp, Arthur could be heard loudly complaining about a headache.

Ion felt he now had a good idea as to why Yong-Soo seemed so excited when he had heard from him she could see ghosts…

————-

Connecting with the spiritual realm was a strange experience that was unlike any other. It was like being in one place but everyone, trancelike but alert.

On this day, when the other realm was the closest, however, the process was made easier; relatively, at least.

Neither she nor Yong knew how long she had been there, but in time, she found herself fully back in their realm.

Yong’s anticipation reached a boiling point. He couldn’t take it anymore. He had to know.

“…So? Did you find him? Was he-“

“He wasn’t.”

His face started to light up, but with a hint of hesitation, as if barely holding himself back from hoping just yet.

“So… so he’s so alive? He’s still out there somewhere?”

“Yes.”

Tears pricked the dancer’s eyes, as the information fully soaked into the teen’s brain.

Natallia hadn’t noticed herself make a rare, small smile at the sight, though not that he noticed - he finally broke down into tears of joy, repeating “He’s alive! Gods, he’s alive!” to himself.

“Congratulations.”

“Damn it, why did he leave me for so long?! That dastard!”

———-

By the time Yong had left, thanking her profusely of course, she had finally realized she had been smiling.

Natallia couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this… happy for someone outside her family.

But it was as if she saw some of herself in this annoying dancer boy.

Some of that scared, lonely girl and her sister as they called out into the cruel, unforgiving howls of a certain snowstorm.

[emotional-support-demon-crowley]

I can’t stop thinking about Good Omens...

SPOILERS AHEAD. This is mostly based on the show though I’ve read the book many times over the years. Though it’s not the point or the purpose of what follows, you could boil this whole theory down to ‘god shipped an angel and a demon so hard she made the earth and humanity so they could meet and fall in love and then she created an ineffable plan in which they also managed to save it’.

So here goes. Both Aziraphale and Crowley are very different from their respective counterparts. 

Aziraphale is genuinely nice and agonizes over being good and doing the right thing when all of the others of his ilk that we meet really don’t. 

There’s a lot of evidence that Crowley is basically the same. Sure, he rolls his eyes at the other demons methods because they aren’t thinking big enough, but really, I think he just can’t stomach targeting evil towards a single individual. In truth, he’s pretty appalled when he encounters the evils dreamed up by humanity. And yeah, he’s stylish af and full of bravado, but that just makes the rest of the demons resent even him more.

So one day, bam! god creates the earth and both heaven and hell have the same thought. They both independently seem to have said to these misfits, “We have a very important job for you. The humans must be monitored. Go very far away from us and keep tabs on that. For 6000 years.”

So Aziraphale and Crowley show up on earth and I think in general they’re thrilled to be away from the repressive, toxic environments they came from. But they’re still fundamentally lonely.

From this perspective, their first conversation in the garden is so perfect. They are both adorable cinnamon rolls that are starved for attention and desperate for camaraderie, so Crowley decides to just strike up a conversation. What has he got to lose? And they both seem sort of excited/amused that they have a pleasant interaction. It’s probably the best conversation they’ve had maybe ever based on all the other angels and demons we meet. 

I think it’s very telling that Aziraphale never admits to anyone else that he gave the sword away. He tells Crowley, one of his mortal enemies, after like half a minute of nice chit chat. And he gets all happily flustered when Crowley, despite the light sarcasm, says that he doesn’t think Aziraphale could do the wrong thing. This is in stark contrast to how he’s treated by everyone in heaven who constantly reinforce that he’s not measuring up to angel standards at every turn.

This scenario would explain why neither side really seems to check up on them. They’re reporting back, sure, but no one is bothering to verify facts on either side. Crowley does make the presentation about the highway, but honestly, that really looks more like hell’s monthly mandatory torture luncheon than an actual exchange of information. Everyone in attendance looks like their soul is being crushed, their brain is about to dribble out their ear, and they are keenly aware that they are currently in actual hell.

So Crowley and Aziraphale progress through all of human history and they just keep meeting up. And sure, maybe they disagree a little on their fundamental view points, but the interactions are always respectful and pleasant. Before long, they begin to do a series of increasingly large favors for each other.

In the church, Crowley set the rescue into motion, but he relied on Aziraphale to actually keep him from being discorperated. We know demons don’t trust each other, but Crowley has perfect faith that his angel will go against what heaven would expect him to do and save them both. And while we’re here, I’ve seen a few posts implying that Aziraphale might struggle if forced to chose between books and Crowley, but when the literal bombs were literally falling from the sky, we all saw where his priorities were.

I’ve also seen posts that propose the theory that Crowley didn’t realize he loved Aziraphale until he lost him, but I don’t think that can possible be the case. In my mind, Crowley realized what Armageddon would actually cost him well in advance. When he’s gently prodding about no more old book shops or classical music, he’s actually trying to get his angel to think about what else he might never see again. When he’s talking about how horrible eternity in heaven will be, the worst detail is who it will be spent with or in this case, without. Crowley isn’t trying to manipulate or trick Aziraphale into saving the world, he’s trying to get him to realized that the end of the world is the end of their relationship. That might feel like a stretch at first until you consider that as soon as Crowley accepts that saving the world might not be possible, he immediately goes into panic mode and suggests they run away together. Crowley has realized that Armageddon is going to rip them apart and take away the only place they’ve ever been happy. No matter which side wins, they’ll both be facing their own version of hell - spending all of eternity suffering because they can’t spend it together.

This explains why Crowley is so set on convincing Aziraphale that the two of them have to reject their origins and chose each other. When he says Our Side, he isn’t talking about their arrangement, or rebelling, it’s about the fact that all of heaven and hell put together does not deserve either of them. And that’s why he becomes so agitated when he gets shut down. Aziraphale has that moment where his voice catches when he tells him “You can’t leave Crowley” like he felt a pang of that same sense of loss, but he still hasn’t thought through the larger implications because he’s still so sure there must be a way to stop it.

And then Crowley tries again and fails again and responds in anger again. And before he can try a third time, he loses Aziraphale.

I agree with the theory that Crowley has some supernatural method to kept track of Aziraphale. His frequent last minute appearances are too timely to be pure luck. So when he gets discorperated, for the first time in centuries, if not millennia, there’s silence. 

This explains why Crowley gives up. Because Crowley wasn’t fighting to save the world. Crowley was fighting for a safe place where he and his angel to continue to exist together. Without Aziraphale, there’s no point, the thing he feared most has already happened.

Which also means that everything he does once his hope is restored, he does for love. He sacrifices the Bentley for love, because deep down some part of him had to know the car would never be the same after what he was about to put it through. And yeah, he mourns it, but he doesn’t go to a bar and give up on stopping the end of the world because it’s gone.

And he recognizes Aziraphale instantly, even in a different body. Initially I assumed angels and demons could just see and identify soul, but based on how they resolve things in both heaven and hell no other angels or demons posses this ability. And Crowley compliments the outfit! Considering this is probably the first time Aziraphale has worn anything that isn’t a shade of white since the French revolution, it’s just a terrific example of positive feedback and support.

And then somehow, they manage to succeed. Apocalypse averted. And when Gabriel angrily asserts that everyone knows who is responsible, Crowley grins like a silly, love struck idiot. Did he just save the world just so he could stay with his angel? Hell yeah! He’s proud as fuck.

But then he feels something gut wrenching and he realizes that they saved the world, but they won’t survive to enjoy it, and Crowley gives up again. I imagine somewhere deep down he had the horrible, tragic thought that at least this time he wouldn’t be left alone - they would both die, but his suffering would be brief. And then Aziraphale threatens to never speak to him again. And Crowley’s brain does some math: 

Dying together = We are FUCKED! 

Dying together while Aziraphale is refuses to speak to me = No, fuck that noise!

Crowley is inspired and the world is well and saved, for now anyway, He FINALLY gets Aziraphale to agree they truly are on their own side, so they prepare to face the combined wrath of heaven and hell. During the proceedings, they both have a moment and it looks like fear, like they’re gathering themselves for the grisly end they’re about to face - until you know about the switch. When you consider they are both fully aware they aren’t facing any danger, I think that moment is actually both of them processing not only the fact that this could have been how they lost the other, but also that this is the shitty way that the person they love and cherish more than the entire world itself has been treated since the beginning of time. I’ve re-watched it a few times and I like to think I see anger and that sort of hopeless empathy feeling you get when you wish you could undo the pains someone you care about has already felt.

So yeah, I think the ineffable plan was that god decided all those ass-hat angels and demons who only wanted a war deserved to be disappointed in the biggest way possible, all except for these two lovable cream puffs who decided to chose love instead. Also, Crowley could have avoided a lot of wasted time, heartache, and shenanigans if he’d just said “I love you, angel, and the thought of being separated from you is more painful than anything I ever experienced in  hell.” But honestly, I kind of love that everything they do whenever they’re together basically screams how much they love and care for one another without them ever actually saying it. 

[ashrelfury]

One More by AkemiAsh AO3

“Stefan.”  

Haziness clouded Neil’s mind as he tried to pull himself out of sleep. He recognized the feeling enough. After a night at Eden’s, with Andrew watching over him, he’d allow himself to actually get drunk and he’d woken up feeling just like this. Disoriented and sick to his stomach. But something was different this time. Something didn’t feel right. His senses struggled with the bitter edge of threat around him. He needed to wake up.

“Stefan?”

That voice, it wasn’t Andrew. It was female and familiar, but in the same way a knife felt familiar in his hand. In the same way his scars felt familiar when he’d accidently skim over one of them during his post-game showers. What was it about that voice?

“Stefan!”

Neil bolted up at the yell, his right arm flying out in search of a weapon on his nightstand, but it crashed against the glass window beside him.

“Shit!” He cursed as his head whipped in the direction of the voice, only to be met with a ghost.

“Stefan! Are you alright, you were muttering in your sleep.”

Her voice was harsh, her worry dangerous, but her eyes weren’t on him. Instead, his mother looked ahead, and behind, and around, constantly in search of followers, constantly looking out for his father’s men.

Neil couldn’t breathe.

“Mom?” God, his own voice made him jump. It was so small and young, so unlike the one he was used to that it startled him, nearly as much as the ghost woman sitting in the driver’s seat of an old beat up Sudan. He remembered this car. Vividly.

“Stefan, talk to me. Are you okay?” There was an edge to her voice that promised him pain, but Neil was too caught up to take the warning.

What the hell was going on?

His dead mother was sitting beside him, in a car driving down a long stretch of deserted high way. What the hell was going on?

His eyes flew down to his own hands, and he nearly choked on his tongue.

No scars.

The knife wounds, the cigarette lighter burns Lola had given him nearly six years ago, were gone.

Wonderingly, he ran his right hand over the back of his left, testing the skin there. Faint scars marred his skin, but nothing deep. These scars were the ones he’d gotten as a child, practicing the knives with Lola, scars he’d acquired from his mother’s nails as she gripped his hand and dragged him out of another danger.

Unable to process any of what was happening, Neil’s hand reached under his own shirt.

He almost sighed in a strange sort of relief when his fingers caught on the jagged edges of the deep and fading scars from one of his father’s attempts to gut him when he was 8. He ran his hand up his chest, categorizing the numerous scars cutting criss-crosses into his torso, some curving onto his back.

“Abram!” His mother snapped, finally catching his attention, and his eye.

Neil is suddenly struck with her image.

There’s a manic light in her eyes that he hadn’t seen since Andrew had been taken off his meds. Since his last confrontation with Lola. Since he’d last seen his father threatening to break his ankles. To cut off his feet so he would never run away again.

“Mom.” He manages, sounding much calmer than he felt.

A cold sense of dread was filling his gut and making his brain race, but he schooled his face like Andrew had taught him.

Andrew…

What happened to Andrew?

“Abram, what’s going on with you.” It wasn’t a question, it was a demand. ‘Do not lie to me.’ She’d always say. ‘It’s the only way we’ll survive.’

“Nothing. I was just startled when I woke up. I had a nightmare.” He couldn’t quite make his voice do the emotionless apathy that Andrew had perfected, but it was pretty close. It didn’t reassure his mother any.

“Why do you sound like that?” She looked at him like he was a stranger, weary of him suddenly in a way she’d never been before.

With a start, Neil knew why.

As a kid on a run, he was always scared, especially when his mother was nearby. He always sounded either scared or in pain and that was what his mother was used to. He’d spoken about it to Andrew sometimes, when the nightmares woke them both. In the late hours of the mornings, while the dark and quiet blanketed the world outside, they would share mutual truths and stories. It was never pleasant and Neil always hated it, but Andrew would always grip his hand, dig his nails into Neil’s palm and say ‘Just because it’s in the past, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Tell me, or don’t, it makes no difference, but if you wake me up again, I’m going to toss you and your fucking cats out the window.’ So, Neil would talk.

And now, with some more insight into his time as a runaway, and the distance separating him from the events, he’d gotten a clearer picture of his mother and himself than he probably ever wanted.

Now was the time to use the knowledge.

“I’m fine. Just cold.” His hand pressed against his upper chest, afflicting his voice with the dread he really felt, making it shake with very real emotion despite the lie in his words.

Apparently, it was enough for his mother. Looking more reassured now, her eyes went back to the road, the review mirrors, and the side windows. Once again taking up her vigil.

With her attention averted, Neil was left to panic silently in peace.

His mind raced as he tried to get a grip on what was happening. He spent a moment assessing his body. Moving his joints silently and slowly as to not gain his mother’s notice.

His body was his own, of that he was sure of. It felt like his body, like an echo of what he was used to. He was thinner, no longer packing the same amount of muscle as he remembered. His skin was tight around his bones and aches were blooming around his shin, his right cheek, his left side and his lower back. Injuries from an escape he could guess.

Despite his best effort to trick himself into believing he was dreaming, he knew it was untrue. He knew, intimately what nightmares felt like. The blurry edges of dreams who’s only goal was to make him relive the most dire, painful moments of his past. He knew the dull throb of once remembered pain. He knew what awakening from one felt like, and he knew what to look for in Andrew to know when his blond partner was also trapped in one.

This didn’t feel like that. This felt real. Like the hot iron brand of Andrew’s hand on the back of his neck. Like the comfortable weight of King on his feet as he laid his head on Andrew’s lap and sat with him watching game show re-runs while the rain and thunder shredded the atmosphere outside. Like the spike of pleasure lodged deep in his gut when Andrew sank dull teeth into his neck, leaving a dark purple bruise just under the collar of his usual shirts.

Andrew…

Fuck, he wanted Andrew.

He spent the entire long drive sitting next to his silent mother, running through everything he could remember.

The attack that left her mortally injured.

Burning her body inside the car they’d been riding in.

Burying her bones on a beach in California.

Making it to San Francisco where he changed his name one last time, before making it to Millport.

Meeting Wymack, Andrew, Kevin.

The Foxes. His Foxes.

They were vivid and real in his mind. Memories, not dreams because he knew the feel of dreams, of wishes. They were real. He was real. And he was here.

Where was here?

Neil got his answer in moments as he passed the sign saying ‘Welcome to Seattle’.

Seattle. Where his father’s people found his mother for the last time.

That would put him at 16 years old. The year would be 2003.

The last date he remembers is November 4th, 2011, Andrew’s birthday. They’d been going out somewhere.

Why couldn’t he remember past that?

“Abram!” His mother barked and Neil was knocked out of his own thoughts, coming face to face with his mother.

He couldn’t help the spike of fear he felt as he looked at her face. Her hard expression, her unforgiving eyes and the ugly twist to her mouth. When she lifted her hand to strike him, he caught it. An old instinct he’d learned from the boxing practices with Matt and even some of the hand-to-hand he picked up from Andrew when the blond had decided to start teaching Robin during his 5thyear.

He and his mother stared at each other, both shocked as Neil’s hand wrapped around her thin, fragile wrist.

He was used to grabbing Andrew like this when they sparred. The pale thick wrist, always either covered in black fabric or bare and sliced with scars Neil was still able to feel despite how faint they were.

“What are you doing!” His mother screamed and went to strike at him again. This time he took it, moving his head with the impact of the blow to minimize the damage and disorientation. Another instinct Andrew gave him.

She didn’t stop though. Her fear at a new high with the sudden change in her son. She grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, making him meet her furious eyes.

“I don’t know what your problem is, but you better snap out of it, Abram. We don’t have much time!”

Well…She didn’t. She’d die soon. Neil knew that much.

“O-okay.” He choked out, cowed for now. He needed to get to one of his burner phones. He needed to call Andrew. Needed to make sure he wasn’t just going completely crazy.

“Good!” She yanked hard once before letting him go and turning, getting away from him as quickly as she could. It’s then that Neil noticed that they were in the parking lot of a non-descript, pay by the night motel. So, the usual.

Turning on his heel back to the car, Neil reached into his bag and pulled out one of the 4 phones stashed between his 4 shirts and pulled it open. 27 contacts, and only one of them was worth anything, the others just throw away numbers there to make the phone seem legitimate.

As quickly as he could, he wracked his mind for Andrew’s number. The number he’d had when they were still in Palmetto.

He remembered opening his phone multiple times before, remembered staring endlessly at Andrew’s number sitting there on his phone, waiting for him to use it. Back when Andrew had gotten them matching phones. Back when Andrew had put himself as Neil’s number 1 speed dial.

He remembered it like he remembered the weight of a set of keys pressed into his hand by long nimble fingers. Typing the number from memory and pressing call before he thought better of it.

It only rang twice.

“Hello?”

“Andrew.” Neil breathed, relieved almost to the point of tears at the sound of the other man’s familiar voice.

“Neil?”

He hadn’t been sure what to expect. He hadn’t even been sure why he’d done it. He was left adrift in too tight skin, sitting for hours next to the ghost of his mother in what was apparently a jaunt into the past, but it was ingrained in him to run back to Andrew. Always he orbited around the man who stood between him and any threat. Always he found his way to the man’s side. Now was no exception.

He hadn’t really expected for Andrew to know who he was, though.

As he heard Andrew’s voice say his name, he realized that he’d been expecting a ‘Who is this?’, not a ‘Neil?’. Somehow, the relief he’d felt at hearing it was short lived. He was panicking.

“Neil!” Andrew barked, suddenly sounding so very much like he should that Neil wanted to laugh. Everything was thrown out of whack, but this, this was the only thing familiar he actually wanted to hang onto.

“Oh god, Andrew.” Neil choked out, head snapping up to look around him.

Yeah, he was still in the parking lot of a strange motel in Seattle.

“Where the fuck are you. I woke up six hours ago in the house in Colombia with Nicky and Aaron. It’s fucking April 22nd, 2003 Neil.” Andrew’s usually emotionless voice had taken an angry turn. But this, Neil was used to. Andrew hated being confused, scared, or desperate and he reacted to those emotions with an intense anger and violence. This, Neil could work with.

“I’m outside a motel in Seattle. Andrew…I don’t know what’s going on, but my mom is here. I’m in Seattle with my mom, Andrew.” God, he sounded much more scared than he’d wanted to.

“Fuck!” was Andrew’s only answer.

“He’s going to find us here. She’s going to die here. I’m going to burn and bury her.” Neil found himself saying as he once again looked around.

“No. You’re not. Get your ass to Colombia right now, or I’m coming to get you.” Andrew growled, his anger suddenly cooling in the face of a plan.

“I…I can’t, she-”

“Can’t do shit to you. You said they found you because you stopped at a motel on your way to San Francisco. So, shut the fuck up. Get in the car and leave or I’m coming there right now and we’ll see who finds you first.”

Neil knew that he would, too. Andrew didn’t threaten something like that, he promised, and Andrew always kept his promises.

“Okay.” He breathed into the phone. “Okay…I need to find a car. My mom’s in the hotel right now but she isn’t going to let me go that easy. I’ll have to wait till night falls. She’ll take a shower and I’ll be able to leave before she can grab me.”

“Neil.”

“No. I can’t just…Andrew I can’t just leave her. He’ll kill her. I…I have a plan, just wait for me, okay. I’ll be there in three, maybe four days.”

There was silence on the line. Heavy and weighed down with doubt and worry, but in the end, they’d built up too much trust for the doubt to win.

“You have three days Josten. If I have to come after you, I’ll kill you myself.” Andrew said, once again returning to the apathy and threat Neil was so very much missing. He couldn’t help his smile.

“Yes, baby.” He mocked before ending the call, not even waiting for the reply.

Carefully, looking at the door of the motel room to make sure his mother wouldn’t be coming out, Neil dialed a very familiar, very dangerous number.

His Uncle Stuart picked up on the first ring.

“Hullo?”

The British accent was soothing and new all at once. He’d only ever heard his Uncle’s voice or saw his face that night Nathan and his men captured him, but that had been jaded to such a degree that Neil tried really fucking hard not to think about it. Now, faced with that memory again, he found himself floundering.

“Uncle Stuart?”

“Nathaniel?” His uncle sounded surprised and worried in equal measure. He also sounded like he was suddenly in the middle of a storm as commotion started chattering in the back ground. “Nathaniel, where are you?!”

“Me and mom are at a motel just inside Seattle. Uncle Stuart, he’s going to find us tomorrow, he’s going to hurt her so bad, and she’s going to die. You need to get here before he does.” Neil forced himself to sound calm, to sound emotionless, and he almost managed it.

“Nathaniel, I don’t understand, but I’m coming. Please, Nathaniel, stay where you are.” He sounded frantic now as the chatter picked up on the other end of the line.

“You better hurry. I don’t know how long she’ll still be here after I leave.”

“No! No, Nathaniel do not move, do not go anywhere. I’m coming, I can protect you, please, please stay there.”

“Bye, Uncle.” Neil says as he hangs up.

His mother opens the door of the motel room and scowls at him, the promise of pain there in her eyes as she stalks to the car, still suspicious and weary of him.

“What the fuck are you doing?! Get inside now!” She orders, wrapping her hand in the collar of his shirt and pulling him out of the car, choking him a little in the process. Neil goes with it, grabbing at the straps of the duffle bag belonging to him as he’s dragged out.

He knows what’s inside. He’d memorized too much for time to make a difference. Eight full outfits, four burner phones, the binder locating all of the rest of their money, a set of knives his mother insisted he keep using, a small gun, extra ammo, emergency IDs, and passports for Germany, France, Canada, and Switzerland.

He holds it against his chest as he is marched into the motel room.

His mother doesn’t hit him. She’s too on edge, too jittery with panic and paranoia, but Neil can feel a terrible sort of calm in his gut. Calm that came from having a plan and a destination. Andrew still knew him, Andrew was still his Andrew and he needed to find his way back to the short blond goalkeeper as soon as he could. That was all he could focus on as he spent the next three hours sitting quietly as his mother secured the door and cased out the room for anything of use. There was nothing, but it never mattered, she always did it anyways.

“Go shower. I picked up the new dye and the new contacts for when we get to San Francisco. We’ll have to do it tomorrow.” She told him sharply.

Neil found himself wondering if there had ever been warmth in her voice before. He was sure that the answer to that was ‘no’.

Without a word, he went to the bathroom, taking the duffle with him. Knowing his mother, Mary would go through his things to see if she could figure out what he was doing in the car by himself when she was checking to see if the room was good enough to secure.

He couldn’t let her find the phone he’d used to call Andrew and Stuart. She’d probably kill him if she knew.

Carefully, he turned on the shower and stripped, taking the phone into the shower with him.

He pried it open as the water fell listlessly onto his back. He let the water soak into the phone’s systems. The battery, and circuit board inside dying a silent death before he put the phone back together and stowed it back into his bag, wetting the clothes still inside. He didn’t care.

He rushed through his shower and dressed in the plain clean clothes he’d left out. Taking the bag back out into the room with him, he told his mother he was tired and laid down.

“Keep the knife under your pillow.” She instructed as she sat in a chair by the window, peering out between the shades. It was getting dark, and Neil knew she’d head into take her own shower the second she thought he was asleep.

He closed his eyes as he laid down, allowing himself to fall into one of the meditation trances Bee had helped him with back when he’d gone through his own 5th year without Andrew, Aaron, or Nicky. It hadn’t been an easy year, but with Robin, Abby, and Bee, he’d gotten through it okay. Despite his reluctance to talk to the therapist, he’d actually learned to get along with Bee fairly well, thanks to Andrew. He still didn’t talk to her about what mattered, but he found himself confiding in her about his relationship with Andrew and the other Foxes. At least that much, he was able to give her freely.

The second he heard the bathroom door lock and the shower turn on, Neil knew he wouldn’t have long.

Creeping out of bed silently, he slipped on his shoes and grabbed the strap of his duffle.

He needed to get as far away as possible before she got out of the shower, or she’d just be after him in the car.

He remembered Seattle well, a side effect to the traumatic events, so he knew there was a garage not too far from the motel. He’d find his way there first and steal one of the cars.

With any luck, he’d be on the road within half an hour, and his mother wouldn’t be right on his tail.

As he made his way to the garage though, he paused for just a moment to send her a text on one of his three remaining phones.

I’m okay. Keep going. Don’t look back.

It wouldn’t keep her from worrying, but it would trap her in the motel room hopefully until morning. The text was a message to her. Their own personal code. He’s here. I escaped. We’ll meet later.

Coldly, he wondered if doing this would still get her killed, but he didn’t care enough to dive into the thought. Like he’d told Bee once before, “I’m glad she’s gone. If she were still here, I wouldn’t have any of the things I have now. I wouldn’t trade any of this for her.”

He still won’t.

He found a car easily enough. It wasn’t anything fancy like Andrew’s Maserati. It was an old, rusted, and functional pickup truck. That’s all he needed.

He was on the road headed to Colombia, South Carolina before he got his mother’s reply.

Don’t do this. Please come back.

Well then…looks like she didn’t believe him after all.

When morning came, Neil stopped for gas and called Andrew.

“What the fuck is wrong with you. I called you four hours ago.” Andrew sounded on edge and angry. Behind his voice, Neil could hear Nicky asking who Andrew was talking to.

“I had to kill the burner. This one’s the third. I have two more. I’m okay, by the way. I’m at a gas station on I-90. I’m in an old pickup right now, but I’ll have to switch out somewhere in Wyoming. There are a few stashes I can get to on the way there. I’ll grab them quick.” Neil explained calmly. He’d nearly had a panic attack at some point during the drive. He’d calmed himself with the thought that he was going to Andrew. Reaching Andrew was the only thing he was allowing himself to think about.

The line was quiet for a moment as Andrew took in the information.

“You have two days and a half to get here, Josten. I don’t care how you do it. Leave the stashes if you have to. We’ll take care of it together later.” Andrew said, sounding much more in control.

Neil spared a moment’s thought on how tired he felt. He’d need to sleep at some point, but he didn’t think he’d be able to rest until he’d gotten to Colombia. He wouldn’t be able to sleep safely until he had Andrew at his back.

“I’ll make it.” Neil said faintly.

“Seriously, Andrew, who are you talking to? Do you have a girlfriend we don’t know about? Did you meet him at Eden’s?!” Nicky’s voice flooded the phone line and Neil snorted. He sounded so young and frantic. Maybe being married to Erik actually did mellow Nicky out a bit.

“Shut up. Go bother Aaron.” Andrew intoned, obviously not talking to Neil.

“What? But Aaron’s not doing anything interesting. You’re the one taking secret-” Nicky’s voice cut out with a sharp yelp of pain.

“Get the fuck away from me, Nicky.” Andrew sounded threatening and Neil couldn’t help but smile.

No matter what was going on with them. No matter that they had apparently traveled to the past out of absolutely nowhere, Neil felt glad that at least he wasn’t in this alone. Andrew, his Andrew, had come to this weird roller coaster with him. That thought, at least, was enough to keep him calm when nothing else would have.

“I’ll be there soon, ‘Drew. Find out what you’re going to tell them when I get there, because I’m not sleeping in another motel.” Neil teased, loving the huff he got in response.

“It’s still our room, Idiot. Whatever is going on, you’re still one of mine. Now get in the fucking car and drive.”

“Yes, baby.”

--

The next time he stopped was in Wyoming. He was quick to find a retirement home, j-rig a car, and take off. A small, compact Ford. Stick shift and oddly fast, which Neil hadn’t been expecting. He’d gassed up quickly before pulling out his third burner and calling Andrew again. Using the same burner twice was dangerous, but with him on the road he could afford it.

“You better be more than half-way here Josten, or I’m going to feed you your balls.”

“I just got to Wyoming, picked up what was left here. I slept for a little bit in the truck stop in the pickup. I’m in a black Ford crossing into Iowa on I-29. There’s more there too. I should be there tomorrow ‘Drew.” Neil said, calmly focusing on the highway in front of him. He was tired and haggard, and desperate to reach some sort of safety. The little sleep he managed to get while crossing Montana had been plagued with dreams of his mother’s face. Of fire and blood and his father’s cleaver.

He still had a long way to go, and he’d likely only arrive late into the day tomorrow, but he wasn’t going to sleep anyways. He’d been through worse.

“I got a visitor in school today.” Andrew starts after his report, almost conversationally if it hadn’t been for the pure apathy in his voice.

Neil didn’t need Andrew to say it. He knew who it was and a cold sort of terror sank it’s claws into his stomach. He’d nearly forgotten.

If they were both in the past, then his father wasn’t the only one still alive.

“Riko and Kevin came to recruit you for the Ravens.” Neil didn’t ask, he stated.

“Yes.” Was all Andrew responded with.

“You turned them down.”

“Yes.”

“They’re going to send those guys after Nicky.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to kill them?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

They were both silent as they thought about it. About how events were dominos lined together and one little action can send it all crashing down in a series of inevitable patterns.

“Andrew-” Neil starts, but it’s cut off.

“I know what the cost is now. I’m not 17 anymore, Neil, no matter how fucking old I look.”

“Have you told Nicky? Or Aaron?”

“And you seriously think they’d believe me?”

No…no he didn’t think they would. They would both think that Andrew had finally gone off the deep end. Neil knew that, and still.

“Are all of you still working at Eden’s?”

“Yes.”

“Are you still seeing Roland.”

Pause.

Neil bit his lip nervously, not actually sure why he’d asked that question. He usually wasn’t a jealous person. He’d never actually felt jealous of Roland because when he and Andrew started their relationship, Roland was no longer part of the picture. He had Andrew’s full attention, just like Andrew had his. Now though, they weren’t exactly even in a relationship, or were they? Did it count when they were the only two to come back to the past; to a time when they didn’t even know each other? Were there rules for this?

“No. I’m not seeing Roland.” The bored tone didn’t dampen Neil’s relief at hearing the words from Andrew.

“Not pretty enough for you?” Neil found himself saying, wanting the normalcy of their banter.

“Not mouthy enough. I’m too used to having to shove my fingers in your mouth when I fuck you.”

And oh…

His body burned with sudden arousal at the suddenly low tone of Andrew’s voice. The deep gravel Andrew used just to see him shiver.

“Give me another 30-something hours, ‘Drew.” Neil replied thickly, memories coming up from the depth of his mind. Navy blue sheets on a king-sized bed, lubed fingers pressing pleasure into his body, sweat soaked blond hair sticking to flushed pale skin and molten hot hazel eyes staring down at him impassively, despite the desperate way pink lips and white teeth teased at his skin.

Andrew snorted before the line went dead in his hands.

He definitely wasn’t going to get any sleep now. Just keep driving.

--

He stopped in Tennessee to jack another car for the final hours of his drive. He ended up nicking an old Toyota outside a pool hall near the gas station he left the Ford in.

He was crossing into North Carolina when he called Andrew again.

“You’ve got 12 hours, and then I’m coming after you.” Andrew said as soon as he picked up.

“I’m crossing into North Carolina now. I should be there in less than 6 or so hours.”

“Did you pick up a new car?”

“Yeah, an old Toyota, drives like shit, but it’ll get me there. I’m going to drive it out into the junk yard and walk to Eden’s. It’ll be around 7 at night, can you pick me up.”

“Are you stupid?”

“Is the answer yes?” Neil grinned a bit.

“Yes, the answers yes.” Andrew sighed.

“Did you think of a lie for Nicky and Aaron.”

“Fuck no, what do I care what they think.”

“Are you going to make me sleep on the couch?”

“Fuck no, what do I care what they think.”

Neil sighed. Taking comfort in the predictability of Andrew despite the dread he felt at meeting a Nicky and an Aaron who don’t know, nor remember him. He’d never really been a fan of Aaron, but they had settled into a stalemate by the time the cousins had graduated. Nicky on the other hand, had always had a good relationship with Neil. Despite the turbulence of Neil’s lies and subsequently his relationships with Andrew and Aaron, Nicky had always been an ice-breaker. Now, Neil’s relationship with Andrew was already settled and sure, but how would that change the way Nicky reacted to him. How would things be different? Did Nicky and Aaron even know Andrew was gay yet? Neil remembered suddenly that Andrew had never told the two of them about his hook-ups with Roland. And now Neil was just going to show up acting like someone important and that was bound to get weird for everyone involved.

“Stop wasting time, Neil. I’ll see you at Eden’s.”

Neil spent a good five minutes listening to the dial tone as he drove.

His father was alive and after him. Riko was alive. Kevin was still under Riko’s thumb. Nobody but Andrew knew who Neil was. He’d called his Uncle Stuart to save his mother. The date was April 24th, 2003. He’d collected enough cash from Montana, Nebraska, and Iowa to gather up a million and a half in US dollars. He had bonds in the binder for another million, and stashed in Texas, Massachusetts, Maine, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada were another million all together if his mother didn’t go collecting them herself, which he doubted she’d do.

He knew everything that would happen for the next 7 or 8 years.

And he was starting to think that maybe, he could avoid the worst of it. With Andrew’s help, of course.

Chapter Two: Settle Into This

[i-am-loki-and-now-i-speak-up]

In the Place of Kindred Souls

(Inspired by this blessed post  by @lyasmind. Written under author permission. Thank you so much!)

I saw him. We were in that place with no name where kindred souls meet. A place where time does not exist and what happens have a sense and a belonging. The Gods know that place, so a strange, indomitable instinct had led me there, ... but I didn’t expected I could find in it him too. Waiting for me.

With his kind, almost shy gaze. We remained silent, a silence that said everything, a sweet, light, yet painfully sad silence. And I was tired of suffering.

In that steady and subtle air, in that transparent light, images took shape. I forced myself to look at them even if they hurt. They were hurt terribly. I knew how much they blew those who, on Midgard, had taken me and my story, to heart. I heard their every outburst, their every cry. I felt their anger, seeing their tears, felt their pain, ... cursing myself for not being able to help them.

Those images hurt so much. They had been a punch in the stomach for whoever looked at them. Meaningless brutality. A gratuitous violence.

I’d liked to show myself, shout to everyone not to despair: I am a God, I live and I will live forever, and what they had seen was only mere fiction. Yet that mere fiction, that fate so violent and undeserved that "they" had reserved for me, had shocked and outraged everyone. Those whom now praised my name, clamoring for my return. Without knowing that, in any case, I will be there forever.

Anyway, here it is. Here I am. Thor, my beloved and hated adoptive brother, crying and despairing over my still body. My sacrifice for him. I wonder if it was worth it ...

I hid my every emotion. Loki God of Mischief shows no weakness and does not flaunt his feelings. A lesson learned almost immediately ...

I took a deep breath and straightened my shoulders. I knew he was behind me: he had seen those very disturbing images too, and now he waited for me to be the first to speak. A difficult, hard to deal with, and above all to accept.

"So ..." I said trying to keep my voice steady "...I guess this is where we have to say goodbye, you knew it was gonna end like that, right?"

"Yes ..." a soft voice answered behind me "Yeah, and ..."

I turned to look at him, finally, and once again I found myself amazed at how much he resembled me ... as if a powerful magic, unknown even to me, had created my Midgardian twin.

"... I just suddenly I recalled the first time i met you."

I smiled. I remembered it too. I could not remember it.

It had been amazing to meet him, to see him become me. I had decided I liked it, and seeing my face on someone else was tremendously fun.

His name was Tom, and at the time he looked like a little boy who had fallen into the clothes of an adult: the thin face, the sharp cheekbones, blue eyes like the cloudless sky of Asgard. And a laugh that I would soon learn to know, ... and recognize among a thousand others.

He was good, damn good. At first I thought to give him a breath of my magic, then I realized with amazement that he didn't need it. Because in a moment he understood me more than anyone else, and his whole soul became mine when he had to wear my clothes and talk like me.

I laughed softly, approaching me.

"I remember it too, my friend ..." the air stirred, flickered in front of him, and when it stopped, I looked once again as if it all began. Short hair, angry and sad eyes, the face of a lost teenager, broken forever.

"When I looked like this ..." I murmured "It seems centuries ago, don’t you find? When it all began and I was nothing but a fist of anger, resentment and broken bones." i smiled bitterly "You've been good, my friend ... I’ll never forget those days. "

I watched him. I had followed his life in silence and with attention, while he was weaving reality and fiction. He played me, I watched him with curiosity and finally with affection. I had seen him become popular, I had seen masses of people cheering his name, ... I had seen his face of eternal boy blush with happiness and embarrassment.

I had seen him having fun, laughing, doing silly things and making fun of himself. And also being tremendously serious.

I liked Tom. He spoke of me in the right terms, he was able to do me justice, he understood me. Which does not mean that he justified me. He understood my emotions, and it was important.

He put a hand on my shoulder, in a gesture of sincere affection.

"It's ... it's an emotional moment ... I mean, if you want you could have my shoulder for ..."

I interrupted him. No, Loki does not show his emotions. Loki must hide. Loki must go beyond suffering and sadness. I'm not used to showing my most emotional part, but it was useless to hide it, ... yes, that moment also deeply touched me. I was about to lose my best friend.

But instinct prevailed and I behaved with composure, as I had always done.

"No, ...i don't shed tears before any Midgardian ..."

For a moment I was ashamed of myself, swearing to myself the coldness I had learned to erect between myself and others. A nice "gift" from my father.

But Tom showed sympathy once again to me, confirming in my eyes the good person he was, and that would always be: sympathetic, gentle, kind, polite.

"Okay ..." he simply said, smiling.

I looked away for a moment, biting my lip. I always get nervous when I have to say or do something serious, involving feelings. Mine or others'.

"Actually..." I began to say, but my voice overlapped his, with the same word. I wasn’t surprised: we were two parts of the same soul, it was obvious that we could feel each other's thoughts.

Tom nodded.

"You go first, Loki ..."

I stood in silence for a moment, looking for the right words. I, a master of eloquence, images modeler, Silvertongue, ... at that moment I looked like an idiot with a knotted tongue.

"I ... I made this ... what do you call it? Pudding? Is this his name on Midgard? I made a pudding, for you."

In front of his amazed eyes, a small golden vase appeared in my hands. I handed it to him.

"Most of the time I really don't get you, people on Earth, but ... I think this would make you happy. I put blessings in. The good ones."

He seemed happy. He held the jar as if it were the most precious treasure in the world, his blue eyes sparkling with joy.

"Thank you!" he exclaimed like a child on his birthday.

I hadn't finished. The worst part was coming...sadness.

"Hide, Loki, ... hide, do not let him know ..."

No, enough hide, stop pretend! Not with Tom ...

"Because ... because after me you're going meet a lot of people on your journey, and I want ... I would ..."

The air shone around me, and I went back to assume my most recent appearance: the long black hair on the shoulders, the petrol-blue leather suit, the high dark armguards.

A shadow of pain had to appear on my face, because Tom approached me reassuringly.

"That's right, Loki, but ..."

He looked me straight in the eyes and for the first time, in all that time, I realized how much he had changed, grown, matured.

He no longer had a smooth boyish face, he was no longer so much thin. His hair was longer, now, and thick waves of a reddish blonde curls framed a man's face. He wore a beard, glasses with a black frame and his body was the same as always, only more defined.

As Tom and I intertwined our lives, and he told my tragedy, I had remained an immortal God and he had become a grown man. Under my eyes.

An adult man, thoughtful, calm, but with that smile that enchanted the world and the sweet gaze of a good-hearted person.

Lost in my considerations I did not realize that he was continuing to speak.

"What you say is true, but ... but I'll not be able to thank you enough for all the fantastic, unforgettable years we went through ... So, listen to me, Loki, I want you to keep these words in your mind, when we're apart. "

He put his hands on his shoulders, his voice became a soft whisper, his words a caress to my already aching soul. I had lost so much, I had lost everything, ... now I was going to lose him too.

"You deserve to be loved, Loki, you deserve to be loved by everyone, and yes, you're right ... I might meet other people but none of them replaces you."

A shiver ran through my back at hearing that phrase. Was it true? Or was it rather a phrase of circumstance, of those that are said only to make a good impression?

I knew Tom ... and he was not the guy who managed it with empty sentences.

It was true, then.

Smiles slightly.

Suddenly I found myself clutching something small and cold. I looked, and to my surprise I realized that I was holding a key in my hand. A small golden key: it had a round handle like a coin, and on it was engraved a small smiley face with a satisfied and sarcastic grin. As if he had just played a terrible trick and was having a good time. He wore a helmet with long curved horns.

"Keep it, it's yours." Tom said "Whenever you miss me, you just come to the door."

He pointed his index finger at his chest and suddenly, the unpredictable magic of that place out of Time and Space, showed me a soft light, ... there, where Tom held his forefinger, ... on his chest. A soft, warm and pulsating light. Reassuring. Of a soft pink color.

Watching her made me feel safe as if I saw a familiar and familiar place. A place where I had been happy.

"You know the way ..."

Tom's heart.

Yes, I already knew the way.

I knew that Tom's heart was a big heart full of love, and it was enough to give it to me too. Tom had loved me from the beginning, he had taken me, kept me tight, made me grow, he had given me the light that everyone had wanted to deny me. He had loved and defended me.

Yes, I knew her well, the way to Tom's heart. At that moment I understood that I would never lose him, that I would always have a place to belong to.

That Tom and I would never have separated, actually, nor would we ever really say goodbye.

Because two parts of the same soul can not separate, they can only look at each other and know that nothing ends forever.

I looked at the grinning facet on the key and laughed.

"I didn't know you do magic as well, Tom ..."

The grinning face. Loki, God of Mischief. Sarcastic and sharp ... arrogant, full of charm and charisma. Beautiful and shiny. Denigrated and crazily loved. Diminished and yet able to obscure so many blatantly good and perfect heroes. Loki.

I recognized him, that sneer, made with a few simple traits. Effective and funny like a child's drawing. Tom ...

"And is this thing me?" I exclaimed, trying to appear dismayed.

He chuckled. He knew perfectly that I was pretending, with him my tricks were not working. Never.

Then I laughed too: with Tom I could let myself go and smile. I took a deep breath.

"Thank you, Tom."

He knew what I meant, what was inside that "thank you". It was a "thank you" for all that he had been for me, for what he had said and what he had done.

Thanks Tom.

I found myself tight in a hug full of warmth, Tom's arms held me as if they no longer wanted to leave me. As if he wanted somehow to absorb a breath of my spirit for as long as possible.

The embrace of a brother.

Of the only person, beyond my mother, who had understood and wanted me. Really wanted.

"No ..." I heard him whisper quietly, his voice broken by tears "Thanks to you, Loki."

Then I hugged him too, ... strong and tight. Instinctively I leaned my forehead on his shoulder, and something veiled my sight so I let myself go. Tom hugged me even closer.

Because there is no time, in the Place of the Kindred Souls, there are no farewells or separations. Only souls who find themselves and back to belong to each other, forever.

Because Loki belongs to Tom.

And Tom is part of me.

"Thanks, Tom."

"No, thanks to you, Loki ..."

[thetravellingvagrant]

Day 16- Brno/Salzburg: In Which I Have A Bewildering Experience In A Lidl

My train to Salzburg was at a nice, relaxed 11:30am, thus I thought I would treat myself to the vagrant equivalent to a lie-in. I thought I would, but I didn't. This was due, entirely, to the Chinese girl, who not only had failed to turn her phone down during the night but had also thought it entirely acceptable behaviour to to get up at quarter to nine in the morning and carry out a phone conversation at full volume in a crowded room full of sleeping people, despite our dorm having a separate, unoccupied common room, just outside. Okay, whatever. It's fine. I'd just re-swap my earplugs for headphones and work on my blog. It's fine. It was fine.

I did just that for a while and  ended up leaving in surprising and uncharacteristically good time to catch my train. But like, super good time. Like I was was the station for an hour and a half before it arrived. Still, at least I wasn't in a room with those people any more, so I couldn't really complain.

I bibbled around on the platform, filling my time feeding pigeons and taking photos

sometimes taking photos OF pigeons.

and soon my train pulled in. I hopped on board and took a seat. This vagranting thing is easy.

This particular train would take me to Vienna, where I would need to change services in order to head to Salzburg, my final destination of the day. I had spotted on my ticket, not long after buying it that the window to make this connection was three minutes long. The train I was currently on had arrived five minutes late to Brno. I was not confident that I would make this connection. Fortunately, I happened to know that trains from Vienna to Salzburg run every hour, so, at absolute worst, I figured I would just have to kill some time in Wien; the worst place in europe.

When I arrived there, though, my vagrant sense went crazy. I stepped off the first train and had all but resigned myself to chilling for an hour when something beeped, loudly in my brain.

“That's your train on the platform across from you, that is.”

Tiny brain vagrant, that's really unlikely; the chances of just stumbling onto the right train, which just so happens to be directly across from the one I was just on, on the same platform a full minute after it was supposed to depart is really, really unlikely.

“...That's your train, that is” the voice repeated, but more passive aggressively

Jesus, okay, calm down, mate... I'll check. The voice in my head made a contented gurgle, which I'll be honest struck even me as quite odd.

I hopped over to the opposing platform and checked the destination of the tr- oh, it is the right train... I darted on board literally as the doors were closing and took a seat while tiny brain vagrant sung a little song about how right he was. No one likes a smart-ass, TBV.

I pulled into Salzburg some hours afterwards and marched manfully towards my accommodation, the amusingly named, and even more amusingly pronounced in an Austrian accent, Yoho hostel.

The Yoho hostel was one of these big, faceless, trendy places that tend to pop up a lot more frequently the further west into europe you go. The sort of places I really hate staying in, though unfortunately I had no choice in this instance, given that it was literally the only hostel with any free rooms in the entire city. I approached the front desk, it was manned by a chap that I would charitably call a preening tosser.  He bumbled through the typical hostel schpiel, stopping no less than twice to take phone calls in the middle of our brief conversation and handed me a check-in card to fill out. I was a little confused- isn't filling in these things like...one of your two jobs as a hostel receptionist? Okay, fine, whatever, I'll do it...

I filled the card in, including entering my own passport number, which I am one hundred percent certain is not something I am meant to do and handed it back to him. In return, he handed me the keycard to my room, while slicking his hair back. Cool.

I dumped my stuff on my bed (the lower bunk for once!) and headed straight back out to get some food, given that I had eaten one small sandwich throughout my day thus far. I decided to not faff around with getting anything fancy and to once again check out the Christmas markets, which, I had been told, were pretty effing delightful in Salzburg.

I strolled around finding many, many little mini markets dotted throughout the city, though each of them more concerned with selling small wooden trinkets in the shapes of angels and Gluhwine than they were with selling food. After a quick google, I discovered that the main-event of christmas markets took place in the cathedral square in old town and so, walked there immediately.

I think I must have still been in Czechia mode when I decided that eating at the market would be cost effective, because it just wasn't. Much more used to seeing prices along the lines of £2/3 for more food than my body could handle, it came as a shock to see prices increase to nearly £10 for rather paltry plates of knackerbrod or boxes of calamari (truly the most Christmassy of all foods.)

“I could have a full, sit-down meal for these prices...” I mused in horrified awe.

I decided to do just that and turned to leave. As I did, a magazine was thrust into my hands. I glanced down at it, it had some weird photoshopped picture of a plane dropping bombs or something on its cover along with some German, which I didn't understand, though seemed political in nature. I looked up at the person that had given me it. A rather dishevelled, middle eastern looking man.

“uhh?” I babbled.

He spoke to me in German and held out a little pot, which he presumably wanted me to put money in.

“No, sorry” I said, legitimately having no change, not wanting his awful magazine which I couldn't even read and fully resenting the obvious scam of putting the thing in my hands and refusing to take it back when I offered it to him, so I'd feel awkward and just pay him for it anyway.

He repeated the same thing, except more pleading. Rule of thumb for any tramps reading; if you want my money, be nice and don't try and scam me, because I'm sharp, I'm paranoid and I'm one hundred percent willing to throw your shitty magazine or plastic flower on the ground and walk away, if I feel like you're trying to trick me.

I tried to hand the magazine back to the man. He would not take it, obviously. He held his little cup up to me and repeated the German phrase one more time

“I do not want this.” I said to him, my eyes fixed on his.

He tried one more time and I told him no, again. All the warmth vanished from his face, he called me something which I'm sure I would find very offensive if I understood the language and snatched the magazine out of my hands. Because I'm a dick, I held on to it when he did, for just a split second. Just long enough to make it awkward. Any guilt I had felt for not giving this man money had immediately dissipated and I left the Christmas market in a bad mood.

I bought myself a burrito, which was...fairly bland, though not unpleasant and soon cheered up, though. Afterwards, I wasn't quite ready to return to my hostel and fancied getting myself something a little sweet. I made the decision then, to walk to Lidl.

Lidl was some distance away, though I was confident it would have them good Lidl doughnuts so I decided to go anyway. At the very least, walking through the city for forty five minutes would give me a nice overview of the place. Or at least it would have, if google had planned my route to go through the old town or along the river or something and not, as it did, through Salzburgian suburbia and along yet more not-quite-ringroads (resolution still in tact).

As it turned out, Lidl didn't actually even have that great a selection of doughnuts, making me wonder if it was worth the lengthy trek, there. Regardless I got myself a thing that translated into English as a “nut snail” and stood in line to pay. While in this line (which was for a long time, owing to the fact that there was only one man on the tills and most of his attention was taken up by an irate customer), there was an incredibly loud, almost deafening bang and immediately after it, three people in the queue behind me, without speaking, calmly abandoned their shopping and just walked out...I had no idea what was going on, but damned if I was walking all this way to leave without a nut snail, so I stuck it out, paid for my crap and left speedily, to face the thirty minute walk back to my hostel. I still have no idea what happened in that shop.

By the time I had arrived back, my feet had begin to blister quite badly. I'm not sure why they had decided to do this now; perhaps my sock was wet or bunched up or something, but it was really getting pretty bad. At the point of writing this I have still yet to put any significant pressure on my food and so can't tell how well it has healed overnight (at the time of posting this, I since have, and it was fine. Spoilers), though I worry I may be in for an uncomfortable day... (I wasn't.)

I limped back into my dorm and flumped onto my bed. Soon, I was joined by an Asian man, of which, there are just an incredible amount in this neck of the woods. He came in, said hello to me and asked if I had any water he could have. Not overjoyed at the prospect of sharing my precious water- this hostel not really having anything approaching a kitchen in which I could refill the bottle- but unable to tell him no as it was sitting in plain view, right next to me, I allowed him to decant some of it into his bottle. He thanked me and handed my bottle back.

“So, where you from?” he asked

“Oh, uh, Scotland.” I replied, not really expecting any more conversation.

“Ah, Scotlan...” he mused. “I heard about that.”

...He...heard about that? I wondered if he meant something specific that he had heard had happened, concerning Scotland, or that he had just heard about the country in general. Either answer seemed a bit weird.

“oh, right. Cool!” I offered as a stock reply.

“Ye, it like...England, right?”

“...it's next to England, sure”

“yeah, like...” he mimed a map of the British isles with his hands and pointed to the Scottish bit “England-lite, yes?”

...No the fuck you didn't. I scanned his face to see if he was teasing. It didn't appear so. Disappointing.

“Uh...” I laughed “Not...REALLY, no.”

He laughed too, though I sensed more because I was laughing and less because he thought he had made a joke.

“How about you?” I asked in return

“I'm from South Korea.”

“Ah, I've heard about that, too” I replied, perhaps slightly cheekily, though he didn't notice.

“Oh, you heard about it?”

“yeah....” I drifted off as I attempted to control the screaming desire that every fibre in my body felt to refer to it as North-Korea-Lite. Apparently I was doing this for longer than I thought and by the time I had swallowed these urges down and returned my mind to actual conversation mode, he had already clambered into his bunk and gone to sleep.

I fucked around for a few more hours, lackadaisically switching between procrastinating and Christmas shopping before finally, following suite and also turning in for the evening.