#literally hopped on a plane and haunted their house so. like.

[vs-redemption]

May I please have BNHA scenarios of how any characters you think would fit would dealing with a haunting with their paranormal loving partner? Thank you

A/N: I had so much fun writing these! I decided to do three characters: Twice, Mirko, and Todoroki. They’re all under the cut since it’s three different stories. I hope you enjoy!

Dealing with a Haunting (Twice, Mirko, and Todoroki x Paranormal Loving!Reader)

Warning: Mentions of scary Halloween themes like death and murder related to the huantings.

Twice (Jin Bubaigawara)

“Hey Jin!” You skip up to your boyfriend with an innocent smile on your face. It was always the best way to get his guard down if you had to ask him for something. Not that it was hard to get him to go along with your ideas anyway. He could never resist doing things for the people he cared about. “I finally decided what I want for my birthday.”

“Really? What is it?” He perks up at your words, eager to find out what it was that would make you happy. “Took you long enough!”

You smile, knowing there was no reason to be offended by the second comment. He pulls you into a hug as you reach up to put a hand on each side of his face. Your touch reminds him that he has no reason to fear splitting apart. “I want to spend the night in a haunted hotel,” you tell him, causing him to go bug eyed for a moment.

“Uh uh! No Way!” he shakes his head before leaning in close, “anything for you, baby!” You smile victoriously. He would need no further convincing. He knew you loved anything paranormal, and there was no way he was going to let you go somewhere potentially dangerous by yourself.

--

An alarm on your phone alerts you once it is 3am on the night of your birthday. You hop off the hotel bed which was still perfectly made since you had no intention of sleeping. Your boyfriend, however, had drifted off in the room’s armchair in the middle of the movie you’d put on a few hours before.

“Jin, wake up!” You shake his shoulder and he wakes up with a startle. “It’s dead time! Let’s go!” You don’t wait for him to reply as you open up your suitcase to grab your flashlight and camera. You remember to hand Jin a mask to wear over his head so that he’d feel a little more confident.

“Are you sure about this?” He whispers as you both tiptoe out into the darkened hallway.

“Of course!” You assure him. “I’ve been wanting to come here for years! Thank you so much for doing this with me.” You lean toward him to give him a peck on the cheek before making your way down to the first floor of the hotel. Your footsteps echo around the stairwell and you feel Jin slip his hand into yours.

“Are you scared already?” you ask him in amusement.

“Oh course not!” He defends himself before puffing out his chest, “I’m your brave protector!” You laugh at his false bravado as you lead him toward the empty swimming pool.

“They say a pair of twins died in this pool,” you tell your boyfriend as you flick on your flashlight and let it illuminate the calm water in front of you. “Every year, on the same day as their death, people claim to hear the sound of children laughing and running around this area.” You turn around and give him your best creepy smile, “tonight is the 10 year anniversary.”

“Stop it,” Jin was definitely getting spooked now, “I don’t believe you.”

As soon as he muttered those words, you felt a small breeze brush past you both with the faint sound of a giggle floating through the air. You quickly reach for your camera, hoping to capture some evidence of what was happening, but Jin completely freaked out. He scoops you into his arms and runs as fast as he can from the pool area. Once you’re far enough away, he sets you down and takes your hand again. “Your story was real!” He gasps, “Let’s get out of here!” Jin takes you back to your room to get the rest of your stuff before checking out as fast as humanly possible.

 Mirko (Rumi Usagiyama)

You had been a fan of everything and anything paranormal since before you could remember. You had grown up watching all the different ghost hunting programs on TV and always found yourself watching live ghost cams in your free time. Over the years, you’d collected all sorts of gadgets like EMF readers, thermal cameras, and digital voice recorders. Recently, you had even started your own paranormal investigation website where you posted videos of your own ghost hunting adventures. It was the hobby you were most passionate about. When the Halloween season finally came around, you decided to a special vlog including your pro hero girlfriend, Mirko.

“Sorry, I know you’re into all the spooky stuff, but it’s not really my thing,” She flips her long silver hair over her shoulder before pointing a confident thumb to her chest. “I’ve literally made it my job not to be afraid of anything.” You let out a laugh at her predictable response.

“You don’t have to be scared,” you tell her. “I just thought it was something fun we could do to get into the Halloween spirit!” The rabbit hero puts a hand to her chin in thought before shrugging her shoulders.

“All right, I don’t see any harm in it,” she gives in quickly since, if nothing else, it was a chance to spend more time with you. She knew she’d made the right decision by the way your face had lit up with excitement. You both were thrill seekers, which is what had brought you two together in the first place.

What she hadn’t predicted at all, was that you would be dragging her to a graveyard on the night of Halloween. You’d set up some cameras around the area during the day, then went back with Mirko after the sun had set.

“What am I supposed to be looking for?” Mirko had the EMF reader in her hand as she followed you through the rows of headstones. It was a little chilly outside and she looked really cute bundled up in her fluffy coat and gloves.

“Supposedly, ghosts are able to effect magnetic frequencies,” you explain excitedly while scanning the area with your thermal camera. “The device you’re holding will let us know if there are any disturbances in the electromagnetic energy around here.”

“Right,” her intense red eyes glanced around the graveyard as if daring something to come set off the device.

“You know you can’t take down a spirit with brute force, right Rumi?” You ask her in amusement while continuing your walk among the headstones. A slight mist had started to form over the ground and the temperature of the air seemed to drop suddenly. The tiny machine in Mirko’s hand began emitting a high pitched whine that made the hero tense up and go on alert.

“What’s happening?” she asks urgently. She didn’t sound scared, just ready to go toe to toe with anything dangerous that might appear.

“Shhh,” you put a finger to your lips before grabbing your voice recorder. You hit the record button and start asking questions like “Is anyone there?” and “If there’s a spirit present, give us a sign.” The EMF reader goes silent again and you glance over at Mirko. Her eyes are wide and her fluffy rabbit ears are straight up in the air.

“Something just moved past me and touched my hair,” she whispers as a smirk grows on her face. Abruptly, she snatches the recorder out of your hand. “All right ghost!” She challenges, “You wanna play? You don’t know who you’re messing with!”

“Rumi!” You can’t help but laugh even though the things you were suddenly experiencing were really quite extraordinary.

“Point the camera over there,” Mirko suddenly points across the graveyard. “By that tree.”

“Oh!” You gasp when the thermal camera picks up on a patch of cold in the exact spot Mirko had indicated. How had she known? “There’s something over there!” Mirko looked victorious before bouncing off in that direction, going too fast for you to keep up thanks to her large bunny feet.

“This is going to be great for your website!” she calls out behind her but the cold spot on the camera disappeared before reached the tree. You shake your head in amusement, wondering if bringing your girlfriend had been a good idea after all. She was going to scare all the ghosts away.

“It’s gone now,” you call over to her. The disappointment in your voice brought Mirko back to your side in a flash.

“Don’t worry!” She promises while putting an arm around you, “We’re going to track down every single ghost in this graveyard, even if we have to stay out here all night!” For someone who’d said ghosts weren’t her thing, Mirko was sure getting into it.

Shoto Todoroki

Getting a pro hero to take a vacation was borderline impossible. You’d been begging your boyfriend, Shoto Todoroki, to take some time off for years, but he was always reluctant to leave his job for more than a day or two at a time. You understood his need to be on standby in case of a major villain attack or big natural disaster. He hated the thought of not being there to save an innocent life or have the back of one of his fellow heroes. He still made sure to spend time with you every day, and you were content with taking small weekend trips with him when you could.

The routine had become familiar and comfortable, so it came as a huge shock to you when Todoroki showed up after work one day with two plane tickets in his hand. Not only were you going on an extended vacation with your boyfriend for the first time, but he’d also chosen New Orleans as the destination. You’d been dreaming of going there since you were a child. It was a city with a history full of vampires, witches, ghosts, and plenty of other supernatural entities. You were happy that your boyfriend had remembered, and surprised that he’d be willing to go along for the journey.

“I booked us a private tour at a haunted house tonight,” Shoto says causally as you unpack your bags at the first hotel. You look over at him in surprise. He was intently reading a brochure about the best ghost tours in the city.

“Are you sure you want to do that, Shoto?” You ask and he turns to look at you. “It might be really scary.”

“The ghosts don’t really exist,” he comes over and sits next to you on the bed. “But I think it’s an interesting way to learn about the history here.” If he was so sure, you weren’t going to try to change his mind. You were just happy that he was doing all this for you.

Once the tour started, you found yourself thankful that your boyfriend had paid for the private walkthrough. Some of the effect would have been lost if there’d been a huge group of people trying to squeeze through the dimly lit rooms and hallways. The tour guide was fantastic at setting the mood as well, explaining the stories of each haunting with just enough suspenseful flair.

“The previous owners of this house have reported repeatedly seeing a woman in a white dress standing by that window,” he explains. “They say she matches the description of a woman who died here, murdered by her lover who’d gone crazy after coming home from the war.”

At the beginning of the tour, Todoroki had curiously wandered around each room, investigating different items and asking questions. Now that you were deeper into the house though, he seemed less willing to stray too far from your side. You noticed he kept looking over his shoulder.

“Sometimes,” The tour guide continues, “When I’m closing up at night, I hear footsteps following me down this hallway even though I’m the only one here.”

“Really?” You ask, fascinated. “Have you ever seen anything?” You feel Shoto come up right behind you and put a hand on your waist.

“Yes!” The tour guide says dramatically, “I’ve often caught glimpses of a man’s face looking at me through mirrors or around corners.” The grip on your waist gets a little tighter.

“Are you okay, Shoto?” You ask, not understanding why he was being so clingy. It wasn’t like him at all.

“I’m fine,” he says but doesn’t let go of you.

“Oh!” The tour guide’s eyes suddenly go wide and he puts up his hands to ask for quiet. “Do you hear that?” You strain your ears and cover your mouth when the faint sound of a piano could be heard from somewhere nearby. The tour guide beckons you to follow him until you reach the room that was the source of the sound. You peek in the doorway and gasp when you see the keys of a grand piano playing by themselves.

“Look over there,” The tour guide suddenly whispers and you and Todoroki glance over to the corner of the room where a dark figure stood, barely visible in the shadows.

“Wow!” you were amazed but the grip your boyfriend had on you was almost getting uncomfortable now. You look up at him to see poorly concealed terror all over his face. You felt bad that he was reacting so badly so you took his hand into your own. “Most of it is tricks set up to excite the tourists,” you tell him to try and ease his fears.

The guide continues the tour after a moment but the sound of heavy footsteps suddenly come stomping down the hallway and move right past your small group. Todoroki’s eyes follow the sound as it fades out behind him. He actually starts to push you forward after that. “Please walk faster,” he tells you firmly.

You both were relieved when the tour was over. You’d enjoyed all the spooky experiences, but your poor boyfriend had not enjoyed even a moment of it. It was safe to say you wouldn’t be doing any more private haunted tours with him for the rest of the trip.

[cadenlucca]

                          JUNE 2020 // task 009

caden lucca is not a planner.  really, he only has one goal in mind before the internship begins :   do not go home to see his parents.  considering he has literally no interest in being lied to and berated, it’s not a hard goal.

he does, however, want to see family – especially family he’s never met.  so he more or less invites himself to his cousin sage’s  ( @burnthesagc )  home out in malibu   ( technically she invites him, but only after he had to ask ) .  though caden would never admit it, he’s a little NERVOUS meeting them ;   up until six months ago, he had no idea his mother’s side of the family even existed, let alone were a group of spies.  but he’s surprised at how boisterous they all are.  it’s nothing like sage, and DEFINITELY nothing like his own family, which is all the more reason he warms up to them so quickly. there’s never a lack of embarrassing stories about sage as a kid, and her mother is so good at impressions that caden always ends up howling with laughter, and sage sulking out of the room.

caden only plans on spending the weekend, but ends up sticking around for almost a week.  the blythes set up a guest room for him, and he’s greeted with good mornings at the start of his day and good nights at the end of it, and it’s the closest thing to a real family caden’s felt in a long time.  he waits a few days before bringing up the topic of his mother, and it’s clear from the way the attitude shifts in the room that it’s not an easy conversation.  his mother’s mother  ( GRANDMA, he knows, but it feels weird calling a stranger that )   paints him a picture of a woman with beautiful golden hair and a fiery temper and big dreams, who gave all of that up for the love of a smooth-talking politician. the woman she talks about is a stranger to caden, but he wishes he could’ve known her, and can’t help but wonder if he has something to do with her transformation.

he’d stay there the entire month of june if he could, but caden knows better than to a burden.  but he promises to keep in touch and they invite him over for the holidays, which he wouldn’t miss for the world.  at the airport he stares at his mom’s phone number in his contacts, wondering if it was time to reach out, but ultimately decides against it.

he travels from the west coast to the east, meeting levi   ( @levimadden )  in the great city of new york. levi’s in a foul mood when he arrives, of course because of his own father.  so they drive out to the hamptons and spend the week getting beautifully drunk, both out on the town and in the comfort of levi’s giant beach house. it’s new for them to get drunk and not try to pick up women, but it’s pretty obvious neither of their hearts are in it. but it’s the BRO TIME caden needs, and after meeting a slew of new family members and uncovering completely new information about this mother, it’s the lighthearted vacation he needs.

after new york, caden meets mary  ( @swiiftbladcs )  in dublin, ireland.  he hadn’t realized how much he had missed her until she’s talking his ear off as they sightsee around the city. day drinking quickly turns to night drinking, and their time in ireland truly goes by in a blink of an eye.  they have lots of beers, seafood, late night cuddles, and many, MANY stupid drunk moments – not to mention enough blackmail to hold over each other’s heads for years to come.

it’s weird touring the country of ireland again, because it’s impossible for caden to forget that he had done this drive once before, with a certain irish girl that continues to haunt him.  she’s not brought up once on the trip, but caden knows mary feels the weight of her ghost as heavy as he does.  so on their last day, they decide to visit amelia taylor’s hometown, and visit her final resting place.

he had never been to a cemetery outside of funerals and touring ancient ones in foreign cities, so it’s a strange feeling kneeling down next to a plot with amelia’s name on it, the tombstone still shiny and new.  he knew he needed to do this – he owed it to mary, if not to amelia or himself.  but the longer they sit there, and the more mary talks to the stone as if amelia was actually there and listening, rather than six feet under…  

caden lasts only ten minutes before getting up and giving mary alone time.  if she notices his red eyes and glistening cheeks when she returns to the car, she doesn’t say anything.  their last night in ireland is spent holding onto each other tightly in the comfort of their airbnb, and for the first time since coming to gallagher, caden second guesses if he’s strong enough to be in this line of work.  after all, he couldn’t even hold it together seeing a dead girl’s grave.

he had spent the past week never leaving mary’s side, and yet as soon as she leaves caden is hit with an overwhelming feeling of LONELINESS that he’s unable to shake.  with no plans on how to spend his last week before berlin, he does the first thing he can think of :   remembering his conversation with imogen   ( @oofimogen )  during casino night, he hops on a plane to london.  it’s not until he arrives in the city and goes to text her that he realizes how stupid this plan had been.  he’d be lying if he said he didn’t miss her, but caden second guesses if she’d even want to see him, and whether it’d be totally healthy for either of them.  so instead he takes out his phone and sends a text to the first person at the top of his messages, nearly begging for their company.

caden’s so happy that she says yes that he lets noah  ( @noahwxrd )  pick where she wants to go, and buys her the ticket to get there from florida.  he arrives in geneva, switzerland to meet her only twenty-four hours after arriving in london.  the sight of the redhead is such a breath of fresh air that the weight on his chest after the HEAVINESS of that last night in ireland slowly disappears.  they explore geneva for a day before renting a car and taking their time driving to berlin, stopping whenever they feel like it.  noah takes a ton of pictures that caden has to approve before she posts, and they stay in some pretty seedy areas that prince caden wouldn’t normally step foot in, and they laugh, a lot. 

by the time they arrive in berlin, the previous school year and past month feel like nothing but a distant memory.  the day before the internship starts, caden receives an incoming phone call from his mother, the first attempt either of his parents have made to reach out since christmas.  he hesitates for a moment, then hits ignore.  there’s only one way to move, and that’s forward.

[hellyeahomeland]

“Fucker Shot Me”: an HYH recap

A day after Haqqani turns himself over to the Americans, the Americans are turning him over to G’ulom. Saul and Haqqani pull up to Ghazi Stadium, where G’ulom has been holding the Taliban fighters.

G’ulom is standing outside, in a cape, like he’s Andre Leon Fucking Talley (to be clear, we stan). Haqqani says he’s ready and Saul gets out of the car to give another speech that G’ulom is definitely not listening to about Justice and Due Process and Integrity. G’ulom fulfills his end of the bargain, releasing the prisoners, who all make a beeline for Haqqani because, well, he’s the Emir! Saul warns G’ulom that if he doesn’t treat Haqqani with respect, “your world will explode.” So that’s coming. 

Saul goes back to Kabul station and Mike and Jenna have something to tell him.

Jenna: Remember how yesterday I had one job, which was to get Carrie on the plane to Germany? Saul: Yeah… Jenna: Well, I fucked that up. Mike: Carrie was photographed at the airport getting in a car with everyone’s favorite Russian hunk. Yevgeny Gromov! Can you believe it? Saul: Yes. I mean, no! How surprising. Mike: They could be halfway to Moscow by now. Saul: First, chill. Second, doubtful. Carrie is all about saving her friend Max. She’s probably somewhere in Pakistan. Mike: This is an outrage. Rules! I must follow them! I’m referring this to the FBI. Saul: Whatever. Send me a text or something when you find her ok byeeeeee

Carrie and Yevgeny are somewhere in Pakistan, it turns out. They’re listening to the radio, which is such a quaint thing for two lovers frenemies to do together. The radio report is about Haqqani turning himself in, and they get to talking about the CIA’s working theory that Carrie is a traitor who told her Russian handler—Yevgeny—about the president’s helicopter so that he could alert Haqqani who could fire an RPG! Phew. That’s a lot. They’re both like “yeah that didn’t happen” but also realize the, like, component of weirdness of the situation since they’re off on this road trip together and look extra double super suspicious now. “Ironic,” Carrie says while gazing out the window.

They pull up to a checkpoint. Yevgeny gets out of the car because he is In Charge. He approaches two guys, who are actually his homies, inquiring about where “the American” (Max) is. They have a line on him.

Carrie and Yevgeny’s next stop is a small Pakistani village. Again Yevgeny gets out of the car and instructs Carrie to stay. But we all know (and he should too by now!) that if you tell Carrie not to do something, she turns into a four-year-old child who instantly must do that thing. Plus her spidey senses are tingling. Maybe she recognizes some of these structures? She hops out of the car and ends up at a gravesite. Rows upon rows of graves with the year “2014” etched across the bottom. Uh oh. A few split-second flashbacks later and… yep, these are the graves of the people she dropped a bomb on in “The Drone Queen.”

Carrie: Quit fucking with me. Yevgeny: Heh? Carrie: Quit 👏 fucking 👏 with 👏 me  Yevgeny: I’m not fucking with you. Carrie: Coolio, so we just happened to end up at the village I decimated four years ago in the event that probably more than any other haunts my waking nights? Yevgeny: What do you think happens after you decimate a village with a bomb, Carrie? We come in, help them rebuild the mosque, and develop contacts. It’s not a coincidence we’re here. But I’m not fucking with you. Carrie: I’m changing the subject now. What did the imam say? Yevgeny: He knows where Max is. Come on.

Saul, resident hottie Scott Ryan, and Not Martha Boyd are gathered around a conference table in Kabul station, talking to Linus and his homies back at the White House. They’re all very concerned that Haqqani’s trial will be a sham, he’ll be put up against a wall and shot, and that will mean more violence and more instability, and certainly not an end to “The Forever War.” Not Martha mentions that the lead judge is a woman she knows from some embassy events and she’s fair and independent so they can probably influence her (umm… what?)! Their meeting is interrupted by Hayes, who’s apparently just wandering the halls of the West Wing searching for something to do. He’s generally displeased this is all taking place behind his back, but no one thinks he can do anything, so it’s understandable. He flatly denies Saul’s request to declassify some intelligence that could prove Haqqani is innocent, asks again for the “action plan” to kill more brown people, and storms out.

Back in Carrie/Yevgeny land, Yevgeny continues to pry about the drone strike. He says again he didn’t put two and two together, then proceeds to ask actual personal questions like, “so is that why you left the CIA?” Carrie explains her mental state in season four, which is not something she’s ever done, but it’s interesting nonetheless. She catches herself at the end again questioning whether he’s being truthful or not, because if he is, she doesn’t know why. Poor Carrie has no concept of a personal relationship that’s not transactional.

They eventually arrive at the house where Max is being kept. Again, Yevgeny does all the talking. Carrie storms in to find Max, sprawled out on a mattress, one arm still handcuffed to the bed frame. Immediately she springs into nurturing, concerned Carrie, which is not a hat she wears often (side note: when will Carrie wear another hat?). Max says he’s fine but the narsty wound they show in close-up confirms otherwise. He explains that he doesn’t have the flight recorder anymore but he didn’t want to make a big deal about it, lest it suggest the flight recorder was not just some random red boxy thing. “You did good,” Carrie assures him.

Unfortunately, their touching moment ends right there because a few trucks full of Taliban soldiers pull up to the house. They uncuff Max and then cart him off. Yevgeny looks on helpless. Carrie tells Max she will find him. Then she goes off on the dude who let them in. Yevgeny has to physically restrain her. He looks in her eyes, tells her he’ll take care of this while Carrie attempts to calm her breathing. Did anyone else get the indication he has definitely done this before? He was too effective for that to be a rookie attempt. Anyhoozles, Yevgeny finally gets the location where they took Max, so it’s off to stop #3.

At Dover Air Force Base, Hayes is asking Linus for his unconditional loyalty, which is always something you want a president to be asking for. He’s really miffed that people are going behind his back but Linus says something like “we gotta be in the information flow, man.” Hayes repeats the phrase back, and you definitely get the indication he’s the type of person who uses words and phrases wrong all the time without realizing. Again, he’s the president! Don’t you feel safe?

Oh, the reason they’re at the base is because Hayes had an empty casket shipped back on Air Force One for a photo op. And surprise, surprise! G’ulom came over too. I’m sure they’ll have tons to talk about.

Elsewhere in Pakistan, Saul is grasping at straws and goes to Bunny’s home. Tasneem is there, because they have no secrets between them. Saul pleads for their help coming up with a way to help Haqqani. If they don’t, there will be another war, right at their border, and that’s not great for America, but they’re 7000 miles away. It’s really not great for Pakistan, because it’ll be right on their doorstep. Bunny is having none of it. The Americans play hot and cold with Pakistan, asking for their help whenever it suits them and in the interim killing their citizens, withholding aid, and generally being massive dicks. Enough already!

Saul sees himself out, but Tasneem surprisingly comes knocking on his car window. She’ll help him. Why? She doesn’t want to watch the world burn. This is a surprise because I thought that was Tasneem’s defining quality.

Carrie and Yevgeny arrive at stop #3, which is a field just above where Max is being kept. Carrie scopes out the house. It’s barely being guarded, but who knows how long that’ll last. She decides to phone a friend, but Saul never answers his damn phone. So she decides to phone a Single White Female.

Jenna: Carrie? What the hell? You made me look like an idiot. Carrie: Made you? Lol ok. Anyway, please listen. Mike: What are you doing, Carrie? Carrie: Oh, great, you again. I found Max. Y’know, that thing you guys were doing anything in your power to accomplish? I did it in like 12 hours. Mike: Who are you with? Carrie: ...Breezing by that question. Anyway, here are the coordinates. Will you call special ops? Max is in critical condition, I don’t know how much longer he can make it.  Mike: Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in? Carrie: Do you have any idea how much I don’t give a fuck? Just call special ops. Bye. [click] Mike: You are now a fugitive, your case is with the FBI, Carrie…? CARRIE?

In the Oval Office, Hayes and G’ulom meet for an “unofficial summit.” Hayes reads a headline on his iPad that declares “The Two Presidents,” which… is certainly a true thing about them. Hayes hems and haws about going back to war with the Taliban, and G’ulom says some manipulative stuff about the US being all-powerful fighters who could totally put them away in two to three weeks. Hayes doesn’t even know he’s being manipulated though and plays right into G’ulom’s hand. He eats this shit up! He loves hearing about American dominance and how he could be the steward of it. If it means murdering even more brown people, that’s just a bonus!

Saul and his new BFF Tasneem arrive at the home of the lead judge for Haqqani’s trial and plead with her that he’s innocent. She asks for literally any evidence and their response is “just trust us, two perfect strangers who barged into your house late at night.” She’s highly skeptical until Tasneem pulls up a news article about the RPG that hit one of the Taliban caravans back in episode two. That was meant for Haqqani, because he wanted peace and the ISI didn’t, and he still agreed to the peace deal. This is apparently enough to sway her, so she agrees to a continuance for one week while Saul and Tasneem figure out what to do.

Carrie is taking a light nap in the back seat of Yevgeny’s truck when he wakes her. Some more cars have arrived at the house where Max is. She peers through the binoculars to see Jalal Haqqani rolling up with his crew. Shit. Jalal enters the room where Max is being held and asks him who shot down the helicopters. “What helicopters?” Max cooly replies. Max 4 President!

Above, Carrie is panicked and phones Mike again. Mike admits that no, special ops isn’t coming. It’s too risky, they haven’t scouted the site, etc. Carrie, totally missing the point, offers to scout the site herself. The issue, of course, isn’t with the site, it’s with Carrie herself. She’s a rogue agent, calling from a Russian sat phone. Who else is even listening in on this call? Carrie says, verbatim, “I don’t underestimate the difficulty.” Whenever Carrie goes searching for euphemisms (“That is a mischaracterization!”) you know she’s in deep shit and that she knows she’s in deep shit. She pleads with Mike that Max is one of ours and we can’t just abandon him. He says they’re doing all they can, which is of course a lie. This must all feel eerily reminiscent of Brody and Tehran for her, a slow-motion car crash she’s powerless to stop.

In need of something, anything, to do, Carrie asks Yevgeny for his gun. She’s going to scout the site herself, at least see if Max is still alive. Yevgeny reluctantly agrees but vows to book it if she gets in trouble, which is also of course a lie.

In Kabul, Saul visits Haqqani in his cell, which is also eerily reminiscent of the cage they kept Brody in in season three. He tells him of the continuance he secured and Haqqani is like, “bro, why are you doing all this?” Saul says it’s because he’s innocent. Haqqani knows the truth though: after forty of years of war, none of them are still innocent.

In the court room, one by one the judges file in. The last and presiding one, however, is not the woman Tasneem and Saul met the night prior. That’s right, G’ulom pulled the ol’ trial judge switcheroo! This new guy is definitely not ordering a continuance. He gives a speech about the pain and suffering Haqqani has inflicted on thousands of people. How he killed both presidents. He sentences him to death. Saul looks on horrified. He calls Linus, who informs him that Hayes has asked for new perspectives on Afghanistan, and John Zabel is in the Oval Office meeting with him as they speak. They are extremely disgusted, so we know John Zabel must suck. Outside the courthouse, crowds have gathered in celebration of the announcement of Haqqani’s inevitable execution.

In the Oval Office, Linus interrupts the meeting between Hayes and John Zab—oh my god, it’s Hugh Dancy! Ok, ok, we all knew it would be Hugh Dancy, but it’s still exciting! He has a terrible haircut, awful facial hair, and gives off general vibes of hot evilness. He makes a few incredibly racist remarks, praises Hayes’ quick action in avenging Beau Bridge’s death, and talks about next steps. Linus comes thisclose to doing a Jim Halpert on The Office impression.

A few Taliban soldiers come into Max’s room and drag him up. He groans and yells. Outside, Carrie, gun in hand, makes her way to the perimeter of the house. They’ve carried Max into the courtyard and are pulling an orange jumpsuit on him. He screams in protest, doing everything he can to resist. Jalal stands in front, camera and tripod at the ready. Carrie watches in horror, beginning to put the pieces together. They pull Max’s glasses off and she pulls her pistol up, ready to shoot.

Suddenly, Yevgeny grabs her from behind, his hand over her mouth, muzzling her cries. He puts her against a wall (why is this so sexual??) and stares into her eyes. “No,” he whipsers. For once, she listens.

[euphoriarps]

❊ ◜SOUTH ORLANDO .// demographics

population //. ~350k median age //. 39.1 median household income //. 70k languages spoken //. english, spanish, hatian creole

❊ ◜SOUTH ORLANDO .// kissimmee 

population //. 68k median age //. 33.8 median household income //. 38k careers of residents (most popular) //. server, food service, bartender, cook, hospitality, personal care, construction, management, healthcare, administrative  about kissimmee;; exit the walt disney world resort coming from animal kingdom and you will enter into kissimmee. towns like kissimmee are the reason that walt disney bought up so much land to make up the walt disney world resort, wanting to avoid his guests from being able to see the low end hotels and kitschy souvenir shops you find in kissimmee. kissimmee is a popular destination for cast members and team members alike to reside in (even though it’s requires a drive on I4 to get to universal) because rent is moderately affordable and because it is very easy to access things. 192/irlo bronson memorial highway runs through kissimmee and connects the town to haines city, davenport, four corners, and if followed for long enough can take you straight to I-95 to allow access to southern florida. kissimmee is where you’ll also find old town, which houses a 365 day a year carnival, an old-timey photo studio, and a year-round haunted house. old town is kind of on the questionable side, but orlando residents still frequent it nonetheless. rent in kissimmee averages about $1300 a month for a decent sized apartment. it’s a little bit more affordable, but that’s the benefit to living in a giant fucking tourist trap. 

❊ ◜SOUTH ORLANDO .// celebration 

population //. 8536 median age //. 41.1 median household income //. 83k careers of residents (most popular) //. arts/entertainment/recreation, art/design/sports/media, management, business/finance, sales about celebration;; celebration is land that was quite literally bought by disney for the sole purpose of housing executives and playing home to the corporate offices. everything in celebration gives off the vibe of wealth, from the neatly manicured lawns to the white picket fence lifestyle the residents aim to portray. a great many of the long-term residents in celebration carry some level of importance to the walt disney company, but other affluent and wealthy residents have found homes here in the years following its establishment. it’s a mind boggling transition turning off 192 from kissimmee and pulling into celebration, but it is a fun place to drive around and admire the houses. property value averages around $500k and a standard apartment averages about $1500 a month. 

❊ ◜SOUTH ORLANDO .// lake buena vista/williamsburg

population //. ~8,259  median age //. 43.6  median household income //. 51k careers of residents (most popular) //. management, education, office & administrative, sales, arts/entertainment, transportation about lake buena vista & williamsburg;; lake buena vista is ... a weird animal to talk about. technically speaking, it’s not a neighborhood where people live at all, being dominated by 25,000 acre walt disney world resort. however, housed in the walt disney world resort is golden oak ... a high-end, disney designed community housing florida elite, disney executives, retired imagineers, and even a few celebrities. you have to be willing to sacrifice a couple million and maybe an internal organ or two in order to say you live in golden oak, it being incredibly exclusive and difficult to get property in. if you do succeed in nabbing a home, however, you do get free disney admission for life. so that is pretty cool. outside the bounds of disney, there are apartment complexes that attach “lake buena vista” at the end of their mailing address, but disney will claim that is “simply orlando.” the population of lake buena vista is truly hard to estimate, many of the apartment complexes being inhabited by young adults partaking in the disney college program, the international college program, or the cultural representative program. essentially, underpaid college age students come to florida ... hoping for opportunity, and instead they serve as cheap labor for a rat. there are a select few apartment complexes that house non college program residents, nameless cumberland park and discovery palms ... but they’re pretty much 90% cast member dominated ... so what is even the difference? hop onto the start of international drive, however, and you will be taken directly to williamsburg towards seaworld. cast member, team member, and seaworld ambassador dominated ... williamsburg is an odd mix of luxury, resort-style apartments and more affordable apartment homes. williamsburg is so built up at this point that there are very few housing neighborhoods in this area ... but a ton of apartment complex. and seaworld. and restaurants. and hotels. and general international drive nonsense. essentially, think of lake buena vista and williamsburg on the same level as kissimmee ... a tourist trap, only classier. 

❊ ◜SOUTH ORLANDO .// doctor phillips 

population //. 12k median age //. 44.8k median household income //. 78k careers of residents (most popular) //. management, education, healthcare, sales, administrative, architecture/engineering, arts/media/entertainment  about doctor phillips;; doctor phillips the community in orlando is not to be confused with the doctor phillips performing art center, located in downtown. it’ll take you about twenty to thirty minutes via I4 to get from one to the other if you make that mistake. doctor phillips is the area surrounding universal, spanning the first chunk of sandlake road, a part of international drive, and a portion of turkey lake road. doctor phillips is where you’ll find the rialto, an apartment complex located directly above a shopping center with small retailers and popular restaurants. bento cafe is a particularly popular restaurant among the universal team members that work just down the street. take turkey lake to universal boulevard and it’s a straight shot into the universal orlando resort and citywalk. you can follow universal boulevard to kirkman road and that’ll essentially take you to west orlando and metrowest / millenia / oakridge. doctor phillips leans on the more upper-middle class to upper class side of things, though it does have its parts that are slightly less affluent. a home in doctor phillips will run you about $300k on average. you’ll find the orlando florida temple in the doctor phillips / lake butler area, an ostentatious religious institution of white marble, the second largest church of jesus christ of the latter day saints in the eastern united states (following washington dc). 

❊ ◜SOUTH ORLANDO .// lake nona/hunters creek

population //. 23k median age //. 36.4 years median household income //. 65k careers of residents (most popular) //. management, education, computer science, sales, office/administrative, food service, transportation, healthcare  about lake nona & hunters creek;; there are large residential areas surrounding the orlando international airport; two such residential areas located near the airport coming in the form of lake nona and hunters creek. from hunters creek it’s only fourteen minutes to the airport, and from lake nona it’s only ten. . . residents of both areas able to observe the planes coming in to land at the airport. populations in both of these areas, particularly hunters creek, having been skyrocketing in recent years and hunters creek has been expanding and developing at a rapid pace. it seems as if you can blink and a new housing development or apartment complex is springing up, followed shortly thereafter by shopping centers and restaurants to serve the growing amounts of residents. lake nona is primarily inhabited by small families, neighborhoods ranging from middle class to on the wealthier side depending on what part of the community you’re driving through. houses average around 400k, but can skyrocket to the multi-millions if you’re not careful. hunters creek is a little bit more on the affordable side, dominated by theme park employees and members of the service industry. houses go for an average of $200k, but the rapid growth has skyrocketed rent prices to an average of $1500 a month. 

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep 4: Pegasus and His Unlimited Moxie

So, I’m finally back after that long--time--when I was sick, then busy, etc etc. Long story, I peaced out from social media for the large part, and my method for finding solace mostly involved watching so much  “big living in a tiny house.”

Those houses are so damn tiny.

And now I feel better, so lets get back to business.

Just FYI, this is a midweek post because this weekend I’ll be exploring a part of California I didn’t know existed before my friend was like “Napa’s booked, so we’re going South to do our wedding in the other wine country” and it’s like “the hell are you talking about other wine country?????”

So I might be driving to a large cardboard cutout of a winery, and me and 400 guests are going to just stand in front of it and pretend that it’s real for a couple days. This means that I will probably make only like maybe three updates this month and I’m just going to have to come to terms with that.

And in case you are wondering (you’re not) the bye bye bye mashup dance we’re doing for the wedding is going great. It’s really freakin great that the Seahawks decided to choose this week to steal our thunder, so now everyone at this wedding will think we’re just all really into Football. (I’m just telling you that because I feel a need to complain so thank you for listening.)

But anyway, it was a nice surprise amongst all this *stuff* I didn’t really want to do, that this particular episode of Yugioh is pretty great. Like...guys we get Pegasus, we get Kaiba having a meltdown, we get PEGASUS. Like I forgot how much I like Pegasus.

So first off, Yugi and friends decided to watch the news about the whole shpeal from last episode, probably because each and every one of them was certain they all shared the same collective fever dream.

Something to note about Yugioh is they use a lot of near future tech, and I don’t know how much of that sci-fi goes completely over the heads of kids nowadays since this has become so normal. But yo, people in 2002 were still using AOL.

A lot has changed in 10 years. Just let that sink in, babies in the back.

(read more under the cut)

Also, please turn your entire attention over to this

Man.

the weird orange cookie on this painting is what really gets to me. It looks like a handmade soap. Because in order to soothe my soul during this stressful month I also watched a lot of cold-process soap making videos.

*quickly looks up to see if there’s Yugioh Soap*

Yeah that doesn’t exist. Hey do you think that if I sent in a Yugioh soap design into Royalty Soaps she’d actually make it? I mean, she did Studio Ghibli. This is just Studio Ghibli but on fire and with terrible hair and actually very different.

(And yes, I did, just now, in fact, make a soap design that I’m absolutely mailing to Royalty Soaps. I’ll put it at the end. No idea what it should smell like, mostly because the last thing I want to do when watching Yugioh is think about how ANY of this smells.)

See, tangents like this are why I don’t have more time.

Anyway, Yugi recalls that he was supposed to *do a thing* but also recalls that he was given really no instructions at all.

When something absolutely wonderful happens.

Y’all I was like shouting at the screen “BE A TAPE BE A TAPE BE A TAPE” and lo and behold:

Dude. Pegasus is such freakin mastermind. Remember that this show started out with them streaming video on a computer, and what did he decide to do? He sent them a tape. Pegasus knows FULL WELL how much they want to see this tape but at the same time...don’t want to watch this tape, and what follows is everyone deciding if they should or should not open Pandora’s box. A Pandora’s box they opened once before and then murdered Grandpa entirely by accident.

I can’t believe they sat on this joke for four seasons. It’s such a freakin good joke.

So of course it’s the same kid who once decided it would be a great idea to put together a puzzle that came in a box that said “WARNING THIS GODAWFUL THING KILLS PEOPLE” who decided to just stick this in the VCR when everyone else was fighting and no one was looking.

And, this is not a joke, this is literally how Pegasus decided to open this tape by scolding him for not keeping in touch when Pegasus tried to kill them not once but multiple times back on murder island. Pegasus thinks this deserves him at least a Christmas card.

Something that’s also very Pegasus is that he um--doesn’t even bother wearing an eyepatch nowadays. He’s just got...one eye now...just an empty socket that he covers with bangs and is like “ya I dare you not look at it.”

And then on, this kid’s show, they basically go through the checklist of things that are “things a child abductor would ask you to do”

And that’s it. That’s the whole tape. It’s the end of the world and Pegasus wants to get one last good prank in before it all goes belly up.

And it worked really good on Joey. But unfortunately, did not seem to phase Yugi.

And then after this, the show gets very sidetracked by some side characters that are...they still exist.

First of all, how much did Weevil spend on a bug drone? Like...what’s this guy’s day job?

Second of all, Rex and Weevil live on some weird brain plane, where they’re pretty sure that the upper echelon of card people are all in love with eachother (which, I don’t blame them, I’ve seen tumblr, it does give that impression if you’ve never watched this show). What they don’t realize is how badly each of the upper echelon of card people want to murder the Hell out of eachother, wipe eachother’s brains, and blow eachother up on a 6000 ft tower on an abandoned island.

so I guess...Unfortunately...Rex and Weevil are...still with us. Their reasoning is kind of weird--they want super good cards--but like...what’s the point of having super good cards if you’re still Rex and Weevil? Rex is so bad at cards we didn’t even get to see him lose in S2.

Also, the biker gang is back, and I still don't know their font color because they’re in dim lighting in this scene so I’ll just use these temporary font colors for now.

So, having done his one last good Joke (and maybe the only good joke that Pegasus has ever made) Pegasus decided to sit and wait for someone to do a murder on him. I mean he’s not psychic anymore, but he’s figured he’s screwed enough people that this was how he was going to go out anyway.

Mai....Valentine....

So I guess she’s back for another season? It’s weird, she made one cameo and then that was it for this episode, but it was very clearly Mai Valentine. Bro brought up that they had to make her a villain again, because she’s literally their only girl villain and I was like “no that’s, not right they’ve got...” and then I kinda sat there for a couple of seconds and I realized “oh dude there’s only been one girl villain so far in all of Yugioh!” and he was like “YEP.”

Because both of us completely forgot about Rebecca until I wrote this in this post and he was double checking it just now. My apologies to the Rebecca stans.

And then Yugi decided to let us know something extremely disturbing about his curse. The showed played it off like this was a cute thing you would want to have happen. But no. No one would ever want this.

Ho boy! They share FEELINGS?

So like...

...bear with me here--when Yugi is scared, Pharaoh gets scared. When Yugi is tired, Pharaoh feels tired. When Yugi has a complete meltdown basically every single day, Pharaoh reaches for his Tums. So um...I have to ask the question...

So who’s dating Tea? Yes, I know the real answer is neither of them, but who is the one that keeps bringing forth this ship that this show is supposed to be shipping? Both of them??? I mean they have the same feelings, and before I was like, well, I’m sure Pharaoh just kinda turns around and watches brain TV when Yugi and Tea talk about...deadlifting, or whatever she’s into, but nah he’s like...he’s got the same feelings as Yugi.

Does that just...never bother them? Like...they never get jealous? Ever?

It’s so freakin weird.

This whole sequence was Yugi being like “You can’t keep a secret from me Pharaoh, I will instantly know since I can feel you lying to me” and it’s like hot damn that’s a big lore drop that they just hop and skip away from.

So the next day they go to the airport and just go unsupervised to a foreign country.

This makes complete sense on Gramps’ part, because he was exploring Egyptian caves most of his life, so in comparison, California is baby town and Yugi would be fine. Clearly Gramps doesn’t know enough about Oakland.

Then again, Grandpa spent a very long and mysterious time in the Middle East raiding so many tombs and stealing an entire artifact that contains the whole history of a lost age of Egypt and an actual Pharaoh’s soul so like...probably wouldn’t get you past TSA in 2002. He’d send off like every red flag warning in the airport.

Give me an Air Joey spinoff this instant, Yugioh, you cowards.

It’ll be just like Wings, except all the pilots are very bad at their job and haunted by multiple ghosts.

There’s a very long pissing segment where there was no piss, but Rex begging Weevil to let him piss in the airplane. It’s about as much as you can expect out of a Rex and Weevil segment. And like, basically at this point, Rex and Weevil are married, yet this ship is never, not once, ever surfaced in my feed of fanart I see out of y’all.

And I don't blame you.

Now, when we get to California, we find out that Croquet either went completely gray or was replaced with an identical twin and also...

GUYS IT’S MY HOMESLICE.

Which doesn’t really look like this, PS.

So bro has already told me that they’re going to San Fransisco next episode or so (OMG I’m so excited to talk about it), so this is absolutely supposed to be SFO in the show. (maaaybe Oakland Airport? But I super doubt it)

Most people outside of CA don’t know the vast scale of Bay Area and that the San Fransisco Airport is not very well named since it is...not close to San Fransisco at all.

So, I’m going to guess that the show thinks they landed directly in the heart of SF. With the way this vista looks, I think they basically just painted the view from north of Downtown. Which is especially fun because that is a pretty bougie community and the thought of having just a major airport smack in the middle of it makes my heart warm and fuzzy because they have voted out an affordable housing community SO many more times than is morally acceptable. Serves you right, here’s your international airport across the street.

But Bro has warned me ahead of time that this season makes absolutely no sense geography wise...and I’m pretty stoked for that.

And then, as if reading my mind, Tea removes Rex and Weevil from the show, yet again.

Incredible that they got through customs like that, but they did arrive on a private plane, and maybe customs are different for them? I...don’t think it would be, even for a private plane, everyone has to go through customs. But, it’s a kids show, so Rex and Weevil snuck into America in a luggage bag, just like how Fox News warned us about.

Then again, I imagine that the customs agent was like “yo there’s two human bodies stuffed in here!????” and was like “ohhhhh wait, it’s a Pegasus’ plane. That adds up. Ya.” and just let it through.

Time for a classic Kaiba meltdown sequence, where he puts on a show of being really competent but is in reality acting like a stack of screaming cats in a purple trench coat.

Mokuba just working overtime to keep this ship afloat because man.

And then this next part isn’t a joke I made up--Kaiba only took as long as it took to monologue for five seconds about his reputation before doing this:

It’s more than possible that the translators have no idea who Roland is, and unlike me, isn’t keeping tabs on Roland every second that green haired fourthKaiba is on screen.

So Pegasus decides to give Kaiba a call on his video phone--because again he only saves the Panasonic Camcorder for spooking Yugi.

Pegasus could have just *called* Yugi the entire time, lol.

Anyway, without the camcorder, Pegasus now has room to stretch out his legs and stick his feet directly in the screen like the end of the world wasn’t less than 2 days ago.

And the show isn’t telling us why or how this is happening after the whole Mai thing that happened. But it’s nice to know that even when Pegasus may be absolutely held up against his will, he still freakin slays.

Youknow, Pegasus does more in this one episode to remind me that “oh yeah, Pegasus was my favorite character this whole time” than anyone else and he did in like two calls, sitting in a chair behind his desk, just screwing with people to screw with them.

And what I enjoy about Pegasus is that, although he had his eyeball removed--he’s still a freakin asshole. He still super sucks. I had a lot of questions about “how much of Pegasus being the worst was the eyeball?” And apparently the answer was “VERY little, this guy is just the freakin worst. Didn’t need to be cursed at all.”

And so, Yugioh doesn’t really do transformation sequences--unless you count when Yugi sometimes goes “yugiohhhhhh” and then to everyone else looks virtually the same. Instead Yugioh does gear up sequences.

Where we find out that Seto promised Mokuba he wouldn’t play cards anymore until he was done building all those theme parks.

I guess it’s unfortunate for Mokuba that this whole Pegasus end of the world thing happened out of nowhere and also unfortunate for Mokuba that Kaiba can build card-themed theme parks Really Quickly. I think Mokuba was banking on it taking an entire lifetime to build a park but youknow, looking at how many sequels of Yugioh there are...eh, Mokuba should have instead dared Seto to give up dueling until he finished a single semester of public school. Then those cards would have stayed buried.

Hey um...did Kaiba add hip spikes on this purple coat since Season 2? I don’t remember him having those.

Good thing I write a blog and I can check. Time for some time travel to Season 2.

Ah, yes, the hip spikes were not there in Season 2. So, at some point in between then and now, Kaiba looked at this old ass coat hanging in his closet and was like “Not Enough Butt Spikes!” and just glued em on there.

But anyway, back to Season 4...

I’m pretty sure this is one of the doors from Evangelion.

And so, off they go, straight to their death, in the world’s most un-aerodynamic vehicle.

Really glad that Dragon Plane seems to have become a permanent character, as it would if you spent 10 million dollars building a dragon plane that can’t possibly fly using real world physics.

So, Yugi and Co are going to California, and Seto is going to Season One.

And I guess Bakura was like “Oi! Loves! Is every body ready for me to murder them?” and Gramps was like “sorry, they’re getting murdered by Pegasus today” and he was like “bloody hell, every time.”

Anyway, if you just got here, this is a link to read all these recaps from the beginning, in chrono order--it’s a lot of content, and I can’t believe I spent this much time doing this.

And because you’re curious, here’s the soap design that will get absolutely rejected by Royalty Soaps because they say they like to watch anime but they also pronounced “Ghibli” wrong like over 20 times on that one video so I have a strong feeling this is not their brand.

[klanstability]

Updated Fic Recs!

It’s been literally a thousand years since I last updated my fic rec page (as always), but I’ve finally gotten my shit together. These go all the way back to mid-August, and I was really bad at keeping track of what I read and I don’t use bookmarks on AO3 like an idiot, so I’m definitely missing a few good ones, but I’ll get to that some other day.

"Fractal Glances Beyond a Shattered Plane" by 2towels

Teen | 30k

“Our containment study of that magic isn’t giving us a lot of information but what we can tell is that it was nasty, and it targets. You remembering stuff that didn’t seem important enough to erase—like Clarabelle Cow, or how to milk Kaltenecker, or simple stuff—is normal because it never reached the husk stage Coran keeps talking about.” Distantly, Lance echoes, “Husk stage.” -- All he has is a cow, a ship, and a rockin' tattoo, but boy howdy if he's going to let that keep him from getting his memories in order.

"meteoric" by zukos

Teen | 7k

It doesn't matter how good-looking the son of Aphrodite thinks he is. Keith isn't going to sleep with Lance. Ever.

"best friends?" by Lynn1998

Explicit | 9k

Lance and Keith have been friends for a long time, but what happens when hormones start to get in the mix?

"Hang the DJ" by Ehlihr (Elihaha)

Teen | 13k

“Lance can't get along with someone who likes the Smiths, he tells himself, after Allura rejects him and his Michael-Jackson-esque proposal for a date because she "prefers the Smiths".

Then, Keith (the boy who Lance does nothing but compete with in gym class) gives him a mixtape of his 'favourite Smiths' songs', to which Lance promises he won't listen to any of them. Proceeded by Lance listening to the tape on repeat for an entire weekend.

[Inspired by 80s music, high school life, and riddled with their awful slang.]

"life after death" by taylortot

Teen | 40k

Fear clambers into his mouth and tastes bitter on his tongue. “Who are you?” It takes him a moment to register the sound of his own voice. She stares at him. Blinks. “Lance, please, this isn’t time for one of your jokes--” He furrows his eyebrows and struggles to sit up, to stop leaning into the cradle of her arms. “I’m not--I’m not...joking.” * After sacrificing himself to save Allura, Lance wakes up in a strange new world where the only thing he knows is a deep connection to a boy he doesn't remember.

"The Futures Full of Clones" by jilliancares

Explicit | 20k

Keith accidentally winds up in his future self’s body, who he then has to pretend to actually be because apparently the future is full of clones who will say or do anything to trick Team Voltron. In the future, anyone acting out of the ordinary is a suspect, and Keith can't afford to get his future-self killed by being incompetent. This is only made harder by the fact that he has to pretend to know what it’s like to be a boyfriend, because in the future, he and Lance are dating.

"To Catch A Thief" by orphan_account

Teen | 5k

“You’re him,” said Keith, hardly able to believe it himself. “The Collector.” He laughed, grin wide. “That’s what you guys call me? Classic.” Eyeing Keith up and down, the man leaned against the gallery wall, next to Van Gogh’s Blossoming Almond Tree, with a coy grin. “That’s too formal, though, so call me Lance.”

"baby, you're a haunted house" by seabear 

Teen | 6k

The thing is? Lance doesn’t even really like Halloween.

"dynamic" by kagshina

Teen | 17k

“So, uh,” Keith starts, and Lance notices the way he shifts, like he’s not quite sure how to say what he wants to say. “How are we gonna...do this?” Before answering the question, Lance makes a quick list in his head of things he should never do: 1. Ask the boy he has a huge crush on to be his fake boyfriend for the sake of proving a point (even if Lance thinks he’s going to say no, because apparently he might actually say yes!)

"I just wanna make love to you" by DairyFarmer

Explicit | 26k

Both Paladin and Blade stood in silence for almost a full minute, staring at each other with indiscernible expressions (or at least Lance thinks the latter is, can’t really tell with the identity protecting mask adorning their face.) Before he can stop himself, he opens his mouth with a smirk curling at his lips. “You come here often?” Lance asks, tilting his head coyly. XxX In which Lance hooks up with a masked Marmora member, unaware he might know the person a little better than he thinks.

"Jealousy Thy Name is Lance" by RandyDowager

Teen | 8k

“I heard that you like someone,” he admitted. Wow, it hurt to say it out loud.

"when the lights go out" by dimpleforyourthoughts

Teen | 18k

Date and a Fifth: a type of party in which everyone must come with a date and a 750 ML bottle of hard alcohol (fifth). However, you must stay zip tied to your date until the two of you finish the entire bottle together. // (In which Lance needs a date, Keith needs cash, and maybe they fall in love along the way.)

"Feel me, I'm running through your veins" by Queerklancing

Explicit | 2k

“Hunk?” Lance pulls a face at the hoarse sound of his voice. “What’s this smell?” “Uh, yeah,” Hunk says and rubs the back of his neck. “Keith … asked me to give this to you.” He takes a few more steps towards Lance’s bed and hands him a dark cloth. Lance can feel how his body reacts the moment he realizes what he’s holding in his hands. It’s Keith’s shirt.

"three minutes to closing" by Yuisaki

General | 1.5k

“So you don’t know his name,” Pidge says slowly. “And he says meme-y things. And he always comes in three minutes before closing, and—” “Always leaves on the dot,” Keith adds. “And uh, he never orders the same thing twice in a row.” Pidge’s face is blank. “A customer who leaves at nine on the dot and never orders the same thing twice in a row,” she repeats. She opens her mouth, closes it, and taps at the screen of her tablet, hopping off the counter. “I’ll just tell everyone I didn’t get the answer out of you.” “Pidge,” Keith protests. “I mean it.” “And I think you have a cryptid customer,” Pidge says. (or: eccentricities in a small coffee shop where a cuban boy with cute dimples only exists three minutes to closing.)

"sweep him off his feet" by hcneylesbian

Teen | 25k

“I win.” Lance’s rapid breath hit his face, and that’s when Keith realized how close he was. He was close enough to see small freckles dotting across Lance’s cheeks, and to see his eyes taking him in. After a moment, he was just surprised Lance hadn’t pushed him away. “What were you down here for in the first place?” Lance’s face was red—Keith presumed he was flushed from the workout. “Hunk made lunch, I thought you might be hungry. Plus, I hadn’t really seen you all day.” And Keith was pissed that something in that sentence made his face fall of all cockiness, replaced with surprise. “Oh,” he said simply. Lance’s breath was finally evening out, but he still hadn’t shoved Keith off his waist. -- In which Keith and Lance keep having bonding moments until it's almost too late.

"i don't wanna let you love somebody else but me" by ericawrites, killproof

Teen | 16k

A stellar collision is the coming together of two stars caused by gravity, gravitational radiation, or other mechanisms not well understood. Any stars in the universe can collide. Keith and Lance do.

"Cereal Sweepstakes and Other Bad Ideas ft. Lance McClain" by ruralfishingcat

Teen | 50k

After winning a free session from a cereal contest, Lance decides to visit Voltron Skydiving. Unfortunately, there's only one employee working at the time and he has a stupid mullet. And to make matters worse, Lance seemingly can't escape interactions with him.

"flesh and blood (you deserved to be loved)" by rosedvst

Teen | 12k

Lance is melting under the intensity of Keith’s words, the sincerity of his voice, the softness of his heart. Falling for him all over again, but in different ways--not just for his smiles and his hands and his iridescent eyes, but for his heart and his voice and the way he makes Lance feel--tender and warm and deeply, deeply in love. Keith is like the ocean, Lance thinks, in that he is incredibly deep and beautiful and dangerous and dark. And when you get too close, he pulls you in like the sinking tides. Whether or not you embrace him is up to you. ☆ﾟ. * ･ ｡ﾟ Or, Lance dreams of Earth's oceans to put out the fire raging within him. Falling in love with Keith happens somewhere along the way.

"put the stars in our eyes" by keithkin

Teen | 7k

Keith turns his body and brings his legs onto his bed, sitting criss cross with his shoulders hunched up near his ears. He wants to say something, and he can tell that Lance is waiting patiently for him to find the words, but he isn’t sure that it’s possible to form something eloquent. So, he says, “are you disappointed?” He doesn’t look at Lance when he speaks. He doesn’t know that he’d like what he would find on the other’s face. “Well, I’d rather not be glowing right now.” Lance responds. or: after years of Keith not having a soulmate, something changes.

"Nightmares" by Trashness

Teen | 15k

Lance's nightmares are getting out of control. It's effecting his and the team's performance, but he's at a loss for how to fix this. Apparently sleeping next to a warm body helps.

"fit the crown to my head" by aknightley

Teen | 76k

“What’s the fun in a masquerade if you don’t flirt outrageously with the prettiest person in the room?” the young man says flippantly, and then winks at Keith. Keith huffs a laugh, amused. “You keep saying things like that, but you haven’t seen my face,” he says, gesturing to his mask. “I could have warts under here. I could have spots, or scars.” “You’d be lovely even with all of those,” the young man says, and he suddenly sounds serious. It takes Keith by surprise, makes his heart twist along with his stomach. “Your eyes,” he continues, tilting his head. “I’ve never seen eyes like yours before.”

"Everybody's Got a Hungry Heart" by 2towels

Teen | 3k

“I’m Lance! Nice to meet you! Can I ask you something? Just fielding here, no funny business!” No, Keith wants to say as he glances at Pidge’s circle again and sees her throw her head back and scream something victorious at the ceiling. He doesn’t even think they’re playing flip-cup anymore. “Shoot.” He says instead, peering mysteriously into his drink as he moves his hand from over the lip of it. It’s just water, but clearly something has afflicted him if he’s going to indulge the guy. Maybe Pidge’s enthusiasm is infectious from across the way. Lance’s lips quirk very wide before he seems to be able to calm his expression. “Well, I am a sharpshooter!” He blurts, blinking when Keith blinks in turn at him. His shoulders bunch, then, and he barrels on, “Nevermind. Anyway, uh, would you ever date a zombie? Quick survey.”

[letswritefuriously]

Episode 1x1 of My Nameless WIP

Part one

(I still need a name for this WIP btw if anybody has some ideas.) Now, I know that this post is gonna be long, but don’t be daunted! Please just check it out, see what you think! There’s gonna be three parts to this episode, so if you wanna keep reading, ask to be tagged/follow me! (Preferably both). Remember to give me feedback!

Scene 1

It’s late at night; probably about 10pm. It’s a full moon, so the night is bright and the sky is full of stars. An old, abandoned house sits under the milky way, two stories high with faded white paint, one of those triangular pointed roof above a window thingies. The leaves of a low hanging tree blow in the wind, brushing a tall, spiky fence.

Running very fast, two people vault over the fence, making it rattle, and then continue to run towards the house.

Scene 2

There is a shot from the inside of the two people entering the house. They flick torches on, and reveal themselves to be ALICIA (African America, 19, short, stylish) and ETHAN (African American, 19, tall, nerdy but sill cool TM). ALICIA pulls out a phone and begins to record.

A shot from the camera’s point of view; it focuses on Ethan, who waves. The expression on his face is almost condescending; as if he is playing with a small child.

ALICIA (turning the camera to selfie mode): Haunted house number 8.

ETHAN (off screen): I’m really beginning to think this is a waste of a gap year.

ALICIA (smacking him): Shut up. (Turns back to the camera). Up the stairs?

ETHAN (off screen): This isn’t a freaking vidchat!

ALICIA (ignoring him): Up the stairs! (She wags a finger at the camera). If I fall through some floorboards, you’re paying for my not-so-free healthcare.

ETHAN (Muttering from some distance away): She got no money.

ALICIA flips the bird at him, and then flips the camera back around so that we can see him walking up the stairs, which creak ominously. He is clearly oblivious of the profanity.

Scene 3

ALICIA is receiving a boost from ETHAN up through the pointy window thingy (oh god someone tell me what they’re called please). She clambers onto the roof, and then offers her hand to ETHAN, who ignores it and pulls himself up.

ALICIA: I can do that. Just so you know. I’m just smart, and didn’t want to fall.

ETHAN (snorting): Sure you could.

ALICIA: Just because I don’t have to go around displaying my fragile masculinity-

ETHAN: You must have VERY fragile masculinity, as it’s not there at all.

ALICIA shoves him, and he nearly falls off the roof.

ETHAN (after he has recovered): If I fell, you wouldn’t be able to blame it on Tahlia, and you’d be the one paying.

ALICIA: Yeah, ye- Oh! Tahlia! She pulls her phone back out, and hits record. (To ETHAN). Scooch, you gotta be in the picture. (She turns to the camera). Hey Tahlia! We’re back!

ETHAN: ‘Sup.

ALICIA: It’s confirmed! She opens her mouth, and then looks at ETHAN expectantly.

ETHAN: Do we have to do this is every time?

ALICIA: Yes!

TOGETHER: Not haunted!

ETHAN: Just go to sleep, trash monkey. If this wreck ain’t haunted, I’m sure your bedroom isn’t either.

ALICIA: What he said. Love ya! I miss you so much!

ETHAN (half-heartedly): Bye!

ALICIA finishes the recording.

ALICIA: I’ll send it in the morning, she’ll be asleep by now.

ETHAN: For God’s sake, she’s 10, if she’s NOT awake she’s a freaking wimp.

ALICIA: Hey, you know how strict Mom’s rules are.

ETHAN mutters something that sounds suspiciously like ‘sleep before you see her drunk and sobbing’. If ALICIA hears him, she pretends not to.

ALICIA (sighing): I do wish I could see her again.

ETHAN: You could just say sorry, you know.

ALICIA: I meant Tahlia, not Mom.

ETHAN: My point still stands.

ALICIA (as if she hadn’t even heard him): I don’t even remember what we were fighting about now.

ETHAN: ‘Course ya don’t.

ALICIA: I’m not gonna be the first to apologise, though.

There’s a long pause. After a few moments, ALICIA leans her head on ETHAN’s shoulder.

ALICIA (yawning): It’s only like eight years until she graduates, anyway... Her eyes drift shut.

There is a very, very long pause.

ETHAN: Yeah. Only eight years.

And we cut to black.

Scene 4

Title card.

Scene 5

The screen is suddenly split open by bright rays of bold sunlight. The camera catches on what appears to be a military base; multiple chain-link fences, a big lot of khaki jeeps and black SUVs, plane hangars and large, threatening buildings.

It seems to be abandoned; empty plane hangars, no patrols, the cars are covered in layers of dust.

The camera refocuses on a small figure, lying on a hill about two-hundred metres back. The figure is wearing dust-coloured clothing over what appears to be a black wetsuit.

Looking closer at their face, we can see that it is ARI (androgyne, 19, badass). His eyes are completely focused on the facility ahead of him. At his waist hang two boomerangs, unadorned and wooden. He raises a pair of binoculars and scans the facility.

ARI (speaking into a UHF radio): Agent queer, reporting nothing at 1400. Over.

VOICE (crackling over the UHF): Ari, cut the s***. What’s up?

ARI: What I said; literally nothing. There is literally nothing going on here. Over.

VOICE: Quit it with the overs. Please tell me you haven’t been staring at the bloody clouds for eight hours.

ARI looks over at a half-empty pack of marshmallows and a lighter next to him.

ARI: Uh... not exactly.

VOICE: Goddammit Ari, this is exactly why you lost you squad.

ARI (innocently): I thought I lost my squad because I was ‘a danger to everyone around me.’

VOICE: Same difference.

There is a pause.

ARI (bringing the UHF very close to his face): You gotta say f***ing over, man. How else am I supposed to know if you’re done?

VOICE: You just wait until I f***ing pause. Like I did just then; you didn’t say over.

ARI: Well, s***.

VOICE: Moooooood. You can hear somebody yelling at the VOICE from the other end of the UHF. Once it’s over, VOICE begins to giggle a bit, but manages to hold most of it back. So your point is there’s nothing.

ARI: Yep.

VOICE: Great, that’s you done for today. The next shift’ll be there in about half-an-hour-

ARI: About that.

VOICE: Oh goddammit, here we go.

ARI: It’s empty. I’m going in.

VOICE: S***. Indistinctly, you can hear him calling for his superiors. Ari, you know what happened last time-

ARI: Yup. And I literally see no downside-

VOICE: You got demoted-

ARI: Aaaand now I don’t have to work with anyone else. He begins to take off his khaki shirt.

VOICE: Look, you little s***, we’ve got another team on the way-

ARI: That other team isn’t going to get here for an hour. There is literally nothing you can do to stop me, so, you might as well just not tell anyone at your end.

Indistinctly you can hear VOICE talking to people on the other end.

ARI: I hate you. He is now wearing only the black wetsuit. He chucks the UHF into the dirt next to him. He grabs one last marshmallow, stuffing it in his mouth, and then army rolls forward. Almost immediately, his body begins to shake, and then shrink. Before he has completed the first complete roll, he is a desert mouse. He quickly scampers down the hill.

The camera comes to focus on the abandoned UHF.

VOICE: Ari? Ari!

Scene 6

The wind blow dust through the deserted military base as ARI hops through the chain link in the form of a mouse. He rests for a moment, and then continues to hop along.

There is a shot of an empty hangar, which ARI hops through. He comes to a door. With a nervous glance around, he becomes himself again, and then jiggles the handle. It’s locked.

ARI reaches into his-

ARI: S***. No pockets.

He drops his hands and turns to slowly look around the hangar. The camera catches on a toolbox on the other side.

There’s a pause.

Scene 7

ARI is now holding a piece of wire and a small metal tool. He picks the lock. A second later, he jiggles the handle again. The door opens this time, and he slips inside. The door closes behind him, and for a few seconds, all you can hear is the wind, as the camera gets further and further away.

Scene 8

A perfectly sterile, completely white hallway stretches away from the camera, until it intersects with another corridor.  The corridor is lined with doors, and the top half is separated from the bottom half by a long silver line across the wall. There is complete and utter silence, for a very long moment.

A fly buzzes across the corridor.

Silence.

It buzzes back. The moment it reaches the other side, there is a sound similar to that of an electric fence zapping you, and ARI tumbles onto the floor. As he stand up, he shakes himself and shudders. Apparently being a fly is not too pleasant.

He looks around and then raises a hand to sliver line on the wall. With a stifled yelp, he withdraws it; a close-up on his knuckles shows them to be an angry red.

ARI: Daaaaammn. They thought this out. He closes his eyes and concentrates, but nothing happens. Kill me now.

He walks down the corridor, making no attempt to sneak; with the black of his wetsuit like clothing jarring against the white walls, he’d be spotted immediately, and nobody is here anyway.

He tries the first door he comes across. It’s unlocked, and he steps inside.

Scene 9

Inside is a white room just like the last, except for the fact that in the centre, it has a table filled with people. They all look up at ARI.

ARI (immediately adopting a serious face): Oh! Sorry I didn’t realise a meeting was in session, I’ve got an urgent message for the-

Twenty guns aim at his face.

ARI: Oh... He laughs nervously. ...I wasn’t aware that you were in the business of killing your employEES-

His voice rises to a yell as twenty safeties click off and manages to shut the door just as bullets slam into it.

Scene 10

ARI sprints down the hallway, and all the EXECUTIVES pour into the corridor and take aim. ARI turns down a corridor to the sound of reports.

ARI: Come on, shift dammit!

He does not shift. The camera cuts to a tracking shot of the EXECUTIVES running after him, trying unsuccessfully to shoot and run. One speaks rapidly into their phone.

EXECUTIVE 1: We got a security threat, Building 3, Sector 5-

Cut back to mid shot of ARI bursting through a door.

Scene 11

ARI bursts into the sunlight of the Hangar he came into originally, only now, it’s filled with at least fifty SOLDIERS. They haven’t looked in his direction yet though, and mid-leap, he shifts into a fly again.

The EXECUTIVES burst through the door he came through a few seconds ago, EXECUTIVE 1 still babbling on the phone. All the SOLDIERS guns train on them, and they put their hands up.

EXECUTIVE 2: Don’t shoot! Our spy is here somewhere.

EXECUTIVE 1 (still on the phone): ...orders to kill on sight...

EXECUTIVE 2 (to EXECUTIVE 1): This is a suspected C-O-N, give the lockdown code.

As EXECUTIVE 1 begins to rattle off numbers, the camera cuts to a close up of ARI as a fly, listening avidly.

EXECUTIVE 1: Two-three-oh, six-five-two-

ARI’s fly-face contorts in horror as he realises what is happening, and he buzzes off-

EXECUTIVE 1: Six-three-one, two-seven-five.

A fine, glittering silver and grey powder sprays explosively from the ceiling, and there is another zapping sound, as, with a yelp, ARI sprawls onto the tarmac near the opening of the hangar.

ARI (squeaking): Hi! Bullets begin to fly and he ducks around the corner. As he runs, he curses. Oh-crap-I’m-screwed-ohnoohno-I’mgonnadie- The camera cuts to the chain-link fence rapidly approaching. OH S***! He squeezes his eyes shut and jumps-

And slow motion, bird’s eye, low angle, mid shot, high angle, extreme close-up on his foot-

Right as it shifts into a jaguar’s paw.

The shot speeds back up to normal motion as ARI’s paws leave the ground, propelling him into the air and over the fence in one, graceful leap, the SOLDIERS slowing down before they run into the fence. EXECUTIVE 2 presses his face to the chain-link, curling his hands around the wires with a feral snarl, baring some very inhuman teeth. His face, inexplicably, is covered in fresh blisters.

Scene 12

SOLDIERS from a different section of the base stream through the gates, but the jaguar that is ARI is already at the crest of the hill where he was staking out the base earlier. He grabs his cloths and backpack in his teeth, and, with one last, longing look at the pack of marshmallows, continues his sprint.

A fleet of jeeps peels out of the base’s front gates, their trailers filled with SOLDIERS.

ARI stops running and shifts back to human form, looking desperately over his shoulder at the rapidly approaching jeeps. He slings his bag over his shoulders and reaches down, pulling the camouflage cover off a motorbike.

The fleet of jeeps appear, roaring, over the top of the hill, churning up dust.

ARI kicks the bike to life, shoots one last look over his shoulder, and guns the engine, speeding off.

The SOLDIERS aim the sights of their guns around the side of the jeeps and take aim, but he has too much of head-start. He speeds out of sight down the side of hill, and he’s away.

There’s a close-up of ARI’s face; he’s smiling.

ARI (under his breath): Ha, suckers. Then, no longer under his breath; Ha! Suckers! HE grins and pumps a fist in the air-

Scene 13

ARI flops onto tiny bed in a cruddy motel room.

ARI: Stupid, stupid, stupid! He balls his fists over his eyes and then tears them through his hair. This is why nobody likes you. Tears begin to stream from his eyes, but he doesn’t make any sound. You’re so – I’m so stupid.

He pulls a pillow over his eyes and shakes with silent tears. The camera slowly zooms out.

And we cut to black.

ARI (VO): I’ll find a way to fix this.

Scene 14

ALICIA is sitting on her laptop at the kitchen table in a log cabin, completely motionless, except for her fingers, deftly moving over the trackpad.

An extreme close-up on her face show that she’s frowning, chewing her lip with urgency. Her eyes look like they’re about to flood with tears, but she sniffs violently and blinks several times, tilting her head back. She sits like that for a moment, but is interrupted by her phone chiming.

She starts and immediately picks it up, her whole face lighting up with joy. It’s only a new alert though, and her shoulders slump. She chucks it back down on the table, and then flinches at the thump it makes, quickly picking it back up to make sure the screen isn’t cracked.

She sighs and looks back at her screen, slouching back in her chair.

ALICIA (barely audible): Come on, you know this.

ETHAN walks into the room, leaning over her shoulder. She swats him away and tilts the screen so he can’t see.

ALICIA (sort of playfully, but not really): Hey! Don’t look over my shoulder!

ETHAN: You’re literally just doing your mojo stuff, what’s the big-

ALICIA (irritably): It’s psychology, not mojo.

ETHAN (holding his hands up): Okay, okay. I thought you said you were going out...?

ALICIA: I AM, okay? Just get off my back, I gotta finish this.

ETHAN (backing off): I’m not on your back. Calm down, you’re already a few days ahead of the course.

ALICIA: I just need to-

ETHAN reaches over her shoulder and closes the laptop.

ALICIA (practically apoplectic): Hey! No, no no, you can’t do that, it hasn’t saved my progress-

ETHAN: You were on question one.

ALICIA: I had work to do! I NEEDED to-

ETHAN: Hey, calm down. No you didn’t. Go relax or something.

ALICIA (eyes practically popping out with rage): What, be like YOU?! Just never do anything and never get anywhere? ETHAN flinches, and ALICIA’s face falls as she realises what she’s said. I didn’t mean it-

ETHAN (eyes on the ground, muttering): It’s okay. It is clearly not okay. Just... He hands her his wallet. ...Go nightclubbing or something. Take a break.

ALICIA smiles nervously.

ALICIA: I’m really sorry, I’ll just-

ETHAN: It’s fine.

ALICIA: I feel really bad though... You know I didn’t mean it, right? How can I make it up?

ETHAN: Just go and have some fun. He folds her fingers around his wallet.

ALICIA: Um... ETHAN shoots her a glare. Fine. Let’s make a deal. If I ‘have some fun’, you finish up your college applications.

ETHAN: You drive a hard bargain. He thinks. Fine. (Playfully) Just get out.

ALICIA (walking to the door): Going, going!

ETHAN: And don’t drink!

ALICIA: You told me to have some fun!

ETHAN: Non-drug-involved fun!

ALICIA shuts the door behind her, and the smile on ETHAN’s face immediately falls. He collapses onto the chair that ALICIA was sitting in, and stays there for a long moment.

A second later, he reaches over the table and grabs himself a bag of chips. He shakes his head and grimaces, opening the laptop again.

Scene 15

ARI walks into a shop, with a sign above it dubbing it ‘face the rainbow’. Once inside, it is clear that it is a gay bar – people sitting in couples, fairly dark, with a drag queen singing in the back.

ARI immediately takes a seat at the bar.

ARI: Cheapest thing you sell, thanks.

THE BARTENDER nods at him, and turns around to get it. STRANGER, clearly drunk, flops down on a seat next to ARI.

STRANGER: Hey, handsome. My buddies bet me I wouldn’t be able to make conversation with the finest guy in the bar. Wanna buy some drinks with their money?

ARI: Great, I’ve been running off cheap beer for a month. (To THE BARTENDER) Make that the most expensive thing, thanks! (Back to STRANGER) So you know, though, I’ve only agreed to conversation. Don’t get any ideas.

STRANGER (putting his hand on ARI’s thigh): So what... what are your plans for tonight?

ARI: Nothing, although I might commit a felony if you don’t remove your hand from my leg right now.

STRANGER: Come on... don’t be like that... Tonight’ll be better if you re-

ARI: I’m not into that. Move your hand.

STRANGER: Come on, why would you be at a bar if you didn’t want to?

ARI: To have a freaking drink. This is your last chance, mate; Move. Your. Goddamn. Hand.

STRANGER: I’m sure you’ll want me once I-

Quick as a flash, ARI grabs his middle finger, jerking it back suddenly to the sound of a large crack. STRANGER yelps. THE BARTENDER looks up suddenly.

ARI: What? He wouldn’t move his hand.

STRANGER staggers off. THE BARTENDER continues to look back and forth between them.

ARI: Can I please just have a drink?

THE BARTENDER shrugs and continues to make the cocktail.

ARI: Oh, he even left his wallet here. How nice. (To THE BARTENDER) Make that two of those, thanks!

Scene 16

ALICIA is riding her bike out of the camping ground where the log cabin they were renting was. It’s twilight, and she’s going to have to ride fast if she wants to get to her destination before dark.

The bike’s wheels squeak on the road; it’s the only sound that cuts through the evening air. A bird gives a single warning, and everything is quiet. And then-

There is a crash from a little way into the woods, nearly making ALICIA fall off her bike. She puts her foot down to steady herself, and there’s another crash. Then silence.

ALICIA: ...H-Hello? The silence continues. Hello? A strange music comes from the woods, halfway between moaning and screaming, causing her to yelp and drop her bike, crashing, to the ground. The music stops. ALICIA takes a step forward. Who’s there?!

She takes another step off the side of the road, but then pauses.

ALICIA (berating herself): You’re not a white kid, Alicia. She picks up her bike, and shoots a longing glance at the woods-

A deer comes springing out of woods and misses her by a few metres. ALICIA shrieks, and then stops, looking around to make sure nobody heard. The silence presses in once again.

ALICIA (under her breath): If an abandoned house isn’t haunted, then a... She looks around. ...Deserted, creepy-ass road isn’t haunted. She gets back on her bike and continues to ride.

With her back turned to the woods, ALICIA doesn’t notice that the trees have been lit up a strange, eerie green.

Scene 17

ALICIA padlocks her bike to the bike-rack, humming ‘We will rock you’ by Queen, and occasionally singing a lyric or two under her breath.

ALICIA (half-humming, half-singing): Buddy... big noise... blood on your face... big disgrace...

She walks along the street for about enters the bar; a different drag queen is singing, and she waves hello. She walks up to the bar.

FEMALE BARTENDER (the shift has changed it’s been two hours do you really expect the BARTENDER to stay there that long?!) (Flirtatiously btw): Aren’t you a little young to be in here?

ALICIA (also flirtatiously): Who’s checking? She leans in. Who says I’m here to drink, anyway?

FEMALE BARTENDER wags a finger.

FEMALE BARTENDER: Don’t pretend you have any clue how to flirt. But she’s already getting her a drink. Just sit over there – she motions to the back – so that nobody... important sees you.

ALICIA: I think the most important person already has seen me.

FEMALE BARTENDER: I mean cops, you jackass. Sit your ass down.

ALICIA winks and walks away with her drink.

Scene 18

Camera cuts to ARI, who is practically asleep on the bar top. He arrived at ‘Face the Rainbow’ at 6pm for the tail end of the happy hour. It’s now 8pm, and THE STRANGER had a fair amount of money in his wallet.

To say the least; ARI is as drunk as a skunk.

He’s getting some pretty strange looks from onlookers. There are about three empty glasses next to him; clearly, FEMALE BARTENDER stopped bothering a little while ago.

FEMALE BARTENDER (coming over): Are you meeting someone, or are you just depressed?

ARI (raising his head): Ugh... He blinks multiple times... I think I might be meeting... someone?

FEMALE BARTENDER: Dude... I stopped giving you drinks like an half-an-hour ago, why the f*** are you still here? She thinks for a moment, and then becomes concerned. Do you have a way to get home?

ARI doesn’t move from where he put his head back on the counter, except to raise his thumb. FEMALE BARTENDER sighs.

FEMALE BARTENDER: So... you ARE meeting someone... have you even looked to see if they’re here?

ARI raises his head to give her a look with the most sarcasm it is possible to fit onto a human’s facial features. After a moment, he realises he hasn’t, and then looks around the room slowly, like a turtle.

ARI: ...Nope... They said they’d be here at... He taps his fingers on the bar top. Six hours? He frowns. What time is it now?

FEMALE BARTENDER (chuckling): It’s 8. Go home.

ARI nods slowly, and looks around the bar again. He’s just about to stand up, when he whips around again, nearly falling over. The camera catches on ALICIA, sitting the corner.

Thanks for reading! Follow me and ask to be tagged for more content! All feedback is appreciated!

[bonebreakjack]

Red Boy Shadow World        Chapter:Daisy

Judai hibiki is starting his first year at Duel Academy, while he knew he wasn't the most normal person in the world, this school is whole other league of weirdness! Judai with his friends are gonna have to battle against teachers, fellow students, and even people who really shouldn't be on school property but here they are nonetheless.

Wait they have to fight Shadow duelists, vengeful duel monsters, an the forces of evil on top of that?!?!?! Sheesh these kids wont be able to catch a break! This can also be red on fanfiction and AO3 under the same names!

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

“Judai!”

A never ending void of bright soft colors surround him once more, is this what it felt like to be in a kaleidoscope? His body light, like swimming in zero gravity; a weightless feeling that made him feel as if he was nothing but dust in the air. He was literally at the mercy of the forces around him.

It was amazing!

 He kicked his foot out and let out a huff of joy as he was sent spinning in place.  Moving his body as if he was swimming in a pool, he careened across the space. This would be more fun if he had someone with hi- a pair of shadowed wings sailed passed him in a series of quick sharp motions. His eyes trying to keep up with the wings, they never strayed far from him but not getting close to him either, as if teasing him to try and catch them. 

“Oi Judai!”

A wide smile spread across his face as he kicked off after the shadowy wings laughing as they kept putting themselves in his reach. Just close enough for him to touch, and then pulling away at the last second. A long game of tag that seemed to have no end in sight, a distorted warm laughter filling his ears making his heart feel full and feather light.

“Judai it’s time to wake up!”

And then darkness.

Judai hit the ground hard, coughing as sand and dust filled his lungs. He rubbed at his eyes to get the tiny grains of particles irritating them out. He kept quickly turning his head looking for the wings from earlier hoping for some help.  But there was no light here to help him, none at all―it smelled musty and felt cold like being in a haunted house during the school festivals. The weightlessness  gone making his body feels heavy instead as he walked across rough stone and sand. 

Chills shook his body and fear choked his voice, unable to call out for the wings. He continued walking in hopes he either finds them or a way out of here. It felt suffocating being here, a disgusting feeling of being watched quickening his pace but the area felt endless. How long was he gonna be here in the dark? Is anyone coming to get him? No, No one is coming to get him, there is no one left to find him anymore. He’s trapped, trapped, trapped, and has been trapped for so long.

Damn those priests, damn the Pharaoh! For taking his home, for taking his body, for taking his heart! Damn the feathered wings which kept him from being whole!

LET ME OUT!!!! I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE IN THIS DARKNESS ANYMORE.

Judai collapse as feelings of hatred, and malice filled him; making him ill from how it seemed to oozed into him slowly like slow running lava. He wanted to cry, he wanted to scream!

He wanted to hurt somebody…..He wanted to be WHOLE.

 A horrid scream of pain rang in his head as a blinding light burned itself into his vision.

“JUDAI WE’RE GONNA BE LATE!”

A scream trapped in his throat as he ungracefully fell out of bed. His face planting into the ground, his brain rebooting from the sensation of smooth hardwood floor. He bumped straight into his desk and his blaring alarm clock hit him on the way down from the initial hit. Well if he wasn’t already awake. 

The nausea that had filled him seem to vanish, what was that strange dream? He never felt like that before.  So trapped, so hurt, so angry. He curled the blanket around him tighter hoping it could ward away the chills of fear that still seem to have a hold on him. A soft touch like wings seem to shake his hair and caress his cheek and he leaned into it, thankful for the distraction. Glimpsing at concerned orange and teal as well as gold, his body finally started to relax.

Wanting a distraction he took his surprisingly still ringing alarm into his hand, confused as to WHY, it was ringing. 7:30? Why the heck would he set his alarm so early? He graduated….already…..

…….

“SHIT”

“Judai get up we’re late! We’re super late for the airport! Why did we set the clocks this late!?!? FUCK”

Judai ran out of the bedroom like dragons were nipping at his heels, his clothes and luggage in hand. Chucking the suitcase and duffel bag over the staircase to land on the couch, he sprinted to the bathroom to get ready. A blur of dark red and black passed him out of said bathroom ruffling his hair, muttering dark curses and slamming into their own room. 

Frantically he pulled off his pajamas and into his clothes he was going to wear on the plane. His toothbrush nearly choking him as he forgot to take it out as he was changing.  A duo of laughter reached his ears but he ignored them in favor of rinsing out his mouth.  

He practically flew downstairs and caught the bread aimed at him from his frantic elder sister. Her appearance a little frazzled from the stress of having to plan how they were gonna make it to their flight with their very late wake up call. It would have been comical, if he also wasn’t in the same boat! Adjusting his backpack and checking one last time to see his decks are secured, he hopped over to her putting on his socks and trying not to choke on his breakfast.

“Mihori wha tha heck arrr wey goin cu do?!*GULP* Are we even gonna make it?” Quickly checking over to see if all their suitcases were accounted for. Judai decided to make sure everything in the house was ready for their departure. He doesn’t know how long it will be before he can come back home with his sisters schedule and work at the campus. 

“*Gulp* I think so if we break like every speeding law to get there, problem is Miho isn’t here yet and is. Not. Answering. Her. Phone!!” Gritting her teeth in frustration  she pulled on her long black locks of hair as if the slight pain would give her a solution. She shoved another piece of bread in her mouth huffing. Judai bit his lip as she saw her cheeks puff like a chipmunk from the way she kept stuffing her mouth. Unable to help himself he started laughing, her confused expression only making it worse. He hands her water to ensure she doesn’t choke, she drained it in relief. Midori’s lips quirked some of the frustration slipping out knowing she must be a sight. 

It was so normal, he felt like they were getting better at that as of late. Since Koyo’s not- shaking his hair and biting his lip pretending he was just making fun of Midori, he didn’t want her to see his face knowing the good mood will be ruined.

Judai wished he didn’t feel the lack of presence of a third person who should be there too.

The doorbell rang through the house causing them to freeze their necks nearly snapping as their faces swivel to the door, a young woman with periwinkle hair and a small carefree smile gracing her face walked through the door humming. 

“Good morning Little Judai, Mi-chan!” 

“MIHO!” ripped out of Midori’s mouth as she launched herself at her friend nearly running Judai over in her haste to either hug or murder the other woman.

“Miho is happy to see you both ready! Miho has drinks and snacks for you to take on your trip!” The casual nonchalant way she was talking to them only made their previous stress returned. This was not the time to chit-chat, didn’t she know the time?!? Judai stopped himself short though as he and Midori looked outside the door that was still open to see the barely peeking light of dawn hitting the street. Miho, bless her, finally took note of their confused tired faces and took pity on them.

“OH that is right! Miho had forgotten to tell you but Miho didn’t want to deal with you you both waking up late again. That really is a terrible habit, Miho recommends breaking it. So she set your clocks back two hours so we could leave on time~” Clasping her hands together in apology she smiled brightly at them as Judai felt himself slide to the floor, at the corner of his eyes Midori ended on her knees as she stared at her friend the look on her face clearly contemplating murder as the cheery woman’s explanation finally hit them.

They stressed for nothing. They were actually on time. Will make their plane trip with snacks too boot, all it did was cost them some sleep and maybe a few years shaved off their lives.

“Pfffttt!”

Judai couldn’t help it! He ended up falling backwards he was laughing so hard; his sister following once the relief finally took hold of her. Miho started to laugh too but he got the feeling she didn’t know why they were laughing, that was fine. Miho got them up and hurried them into the car, repeating that they need to get a move on. 

Pushing the last case into the car he turned back to his house, the one he’s nearly been in his whole life and couldn’t help but feel a little sad. It’s gonna be a long while before he can come home….a long while before he gets to visit his brother too. Feeling phantom hands on his shoulders and a slow growing chorus of voices encouraging him, he smiles and enters the car ready to take the next step in his life.

And then come back home to show how much he’s grown as a duelist to Koyo.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This story is something I've been thinking of for a while and is mostly fueled by me wanting more focus on the friendship and bonds all these kids share, as well as the various side and minor characters we see in cannon(I fuckin love em okay they're all good kids) as well as connect various plots together and put some head cannons in X3. I appreciate feedback on how to improve its been a while since I wrote and I'm a bit rusty! This series is also a mash up of both the manga and the anime's worlds/plots!Also nearly every character here is from either the manga or animes, I try to avoid OC's as much as I can as I am not confident enough to incorporate them as more than background characters yet.I don't own anything! I just like playing with these worlds~

[castcharmperson]

Taakitz: Fashion Disaster

My first published taz fic and I’m so excited it’s for @taakitzweek​! Here’s day one, a rather loose interpretation of the prompt, featuring Fantasy Halloween, cats, and the crime of eating frozen pizza. No content warning for this one.

The autumn festivals were hard to describe. Well, describing them was easy- harvest festivals early in the season, several days dedicated to Pan and other deities, and everything concluded with The Haunting of the Last Leaves. It would be more accurate to say it was hard for Kravitz to determine how he felt about the autumn festivals. They were usually beautifully, with most of Faerun turning various shades of orange and red. The wind was crisp and refreshing but not biting; not that temperature really mattered to Kravitz, but it was nice to go home and not wait thirty minutes in front of the fire before Taako would come within five feet of him. The harvests were wonderful family events, even Merle’s Pan-preaching felt a little more tolerable this time of year.

It was The Haunting that Kravitz mostly took trouble with. Taako said there had been something on his home plane that was similar - All Hallow’s Eve.

“Going door to door for treats, throwing eggs at the wagons of people you hate, bats, ghosts, black cats,” Taako had been holding Poe, their cat, as he spoke, lifting the small bundle of black fur as he talked. “Yeah, it’s like Lup and Barry’s favorite festival.”

Taako was hard to read, even after five years of living together after The Day of Story and Song (which now had a festival of its own during the early days of summer), but it was clear to see that The Haunting, or All Hallow’s Eve, was one of his favorite festivals too.

Kravitz tried to get into the spirit, he really did, but in the weeks leading up to The Haunting of the Last Leaves, his job always kept him busier than usual. Necromancers loved the early twilight, loved donning masks and taking whatever they needed to perform their crimes. After he and Taako had talked, he already worked out with the Raven Queen to make sure Barry and Lup had the day off, but that meant Kravitz would be pulling double shifts. Which he didn’t mind, but the closer they got to the date of the festival, the more Kravitz found himself wanting to celebrate with Taako.

Every doorway, arch, and awning of their home was lined with orange glowing charms. Several illusion spells had been set up around the lawn and there was a permanent state of fog. Taako had already crafted a perfect Caleb Cleveland costume for Angus, had taken to wearing sweaters and skirts with skulls on them. The smell of spiced apple cider was a new constant that Kravitz had grown fond of.

They still had a week before The Haunting, but Kravitz figured it wasn’t too late to contribute to the festivities.

“No. Oh my gods, no. Absolutely unacceptable.”

“Bluebelle, sweetie, just stay still.”

“Kravitz Queen, our daughter is named Blueberry Scone and you know that.”

Kravitz let go of the kitten with a sigh. She shook off the flower crown he’d placed around her ears and ran off. “You know the Raven Queen isn’t actually my mother, right?”

“One, yes she is, you take a Candlenights card photo with her and Istus literally every year. And two, what exactly are you doing to our cats?” Taako’s hands were on his hips. He’d maybe be a little less intimidating if Kravitz wasn’t sitting on the floor, but right now, the usually slight elf seemed rather imposing.

“Cats? Plural? Babe, I’m pretty sure I only had Blueberry with me.”

Taako laughed, loud and dangerous, tilting backwards slightly before the motion rebounded him forward and he was right in Kravitz’s face. “You’re shit at accents and you’re shit at lying.”

“I know at least five thousand former necromancers who would disagree.” Through the faux anger, Taako was still adorable. His nose scrunched up and his eyes were alight, and Kravitz found himself smiling.

Then he had a lap full of Taako and that smile became a grin.

“Ugh,” Taako sprawled himself out, lamenting against whatever strive Kravitz had apparently put them through. “I found tiny costumes all over the house. And Half Baked was crying at me because you put socks on him.”

“Sergeant Pepper liked the socks when I first put them on.”

“No!” Taako whacked Kravitz’s shoulder with the back of his palm. Even if Kravitz wasn’t a construct, it would hardly feel like anything. “You named Poe and Tchaikovsky after your favorite nerd shit and I respect that. You will call Half Baked and Blueberry Scone by their actual names.”

Kravitz was tempted to point out that Taako frequently referred to their skeletal cat as Baby Bones, Deluxe Gay, and Xylophone. “Okay, you caught me,” he said instead. “I wanted to get into the festival spirit.”

He dissipated his skin for a second, showing his skull, and Taako whacked his shoulder again as he laughed. “That is your worst joke. That joke is illegal.”

When the laughter died down, Kravitz spoke again. “You know The Haunting isn’t my favorite festival, but you seemed excited about it and now I… well I’m a bit disappointed I won't be here to celebrate with you. I thought getting costumes for the cats would be a nice surprise.”

“Sap,” Taako was still smiling and Kravitz would tell all the illegal jokes in the world in order to keep seeing that smile. “But okay, nice surprise except for you picked the worst costumes for our children.”

“That’s what you’re upset about?”

“Of course that’s what I’m upset about! Was Blueberry going to be a druid?”

“Yes, I thought the crowns they sold a Fantasy Petco matched her fur nicely.” Kravitz picked up the fallen string of flowers, toying with it.

Taako snatched it out of his hands and tossed it down the hall. “No! Who does she hate more than anyone in the world? Merle. And she is a smart girl, she knows what Merle does with plants. No way, not for my Blueberry.”

Kravitz sighed. “Okay, then Blueberry can go as a mummy and Sarg- Half Baked can go as a druid.”

“You were going to dress Half Baked as a mummy?? Kravitz! You work with the dead, you have to know that insensitive.”

“He’s a cat. And he’s not even undead - he’s just hairless.”

“Ugh!” Taako rolled out of his lap, crossing his legs to sit across from Kravitz. “What other horrors did you inflict on my babies?”

“Oh, so they’re your babies now, but they’re mine when they want to be fed at three in the morning?”

“Kravitz,” but even his sharp tone was softened as he tried and failed to hold back a grin.

“Okay, Blueberry was going as a druid, Half Baked as a mummy. I was going to give Poe little raven wings and Tchaikovsky was going to get a wizard hat.”

“Oh hun.” Taako rolled to his feet and offered a hand to Kravitz. “You are so lucky you have me. Leave you alone for five minutes and you are a complete fashion disaster.”

Kravitz took the hand, letting Taako pull him up and take them both into the kitchen. He started on dinner, pulling out different pots and pans and grabbing a thawed ham from the fantasy refrigerator. Kravitz found counter space that was far enough out of Taako’s wide work range and hopped up to sit on it.

“Okay, here’s why all those ideas are terrible. Blueberry Scone, nothing plant related. Half Baked will probably overheat if you put too much on him, which is probably why he was crying. More importantly, he cuddles with Baby Bones more than anyone else and Baby Bones will be sad if Half Baked isn’t all fleshy. The two of them hate blankets, so fabric that’s attached to Half Baked will make both of them cry. And for a cat without lungs, Baby Bones is loud.”

“His name is Tchaikovsky,” Kravitz pouted, not ready to surrender that Taako had a good point.

“Summon a book because you better take notes.” He started whisking something, bowl on his hip. Kravitz actually did summon a notebook and a quill as Taako continued. “Let Blueberry be a mummy, the socks will keep her from slipping into her ghost form. Half Baked should be painted with some hypoallergenic makeup to look like a pumpkin.

“Now Poe as a raven is clever but it’s boring. Black cat, black bird. Come on, babe, you’re better than that. Plus, the little gremlin will wriggle out of whatever you put him in. Drop him in some flour, I’ll transmute it blue, and stick a single Pom Pom on his head. Then Poe is a blueberry and it’s funny because we have a different cat named Blueberry.”

Kravitz laughed softly at that and Taako beamed. “And of course Tch’gay-sky should be illusioned with a black cloak and scythe and go as you for All Hallow’s.”

“Me?”

“Well yeah, he’s not a wizard. He’s clearly a baby reaper. Plus, if his costume is an illusion, he can’t accidentally eat it and have it fall through his bones.” Whatever Taako was whisking was poured into a pan and put in the oven. He was starting on the ham when Kravitz hopped off the counter and wrapped his arms around Taako’s waist.

“You’re so smart.”

“I know.”

Kravitz grinned, pressing his lips against Taako’s neck before taking a step back. “Alright, I guess I better return some things to Fantasy Petco.”

“You do that. Dinner will be ready in an hour.”

“And actually, now that I think about it, I’ve got so much reaper work. You know how this season is.” Kravitz started inching out of the kitchen. And Taako froze.

“What did you do.”

“Did I mention you’re the smartest, most incredible man I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, in life and undeath?”

“Yes, and you can say it a million more times to make up for whatever other crime you’ve committed.” Taako narrowed his eyes, trying to piece together what Kravitz could have possibly done that he needed to skip out on dinner. It wasn’t really a big deal, Kravitz did usually work through dinner. But he wasn’t usually so skittish about it. Acting on a hunch, Taako opened the fantasy refrigerator again.

“Kravitz Queen, you did not!”

“I did.” At least he had the decency to look sheepish.

“That was for Angus. You know, a child, who won't eat anything other than trash food if he’s in a particular mood.”

“Maybe I was in a particular mood?”

“At least tell me you burned a spellslot on reheating it. Kravitz, I swear to Istus…”

“It was cold pizza and it was delicious. Iloveyousomuchbye!” There was a rip in the fabric of reality and Kravitz made his escape.

“No! Oh my gods, no, absolutely unacceptable! Kravitz!!”

Thanks for reading! Check out my charmedwords tag for more taz fics!

[poeticsandaliens]

Worn Out Souls

Genre: William-centric, post MS IV

Rating: M. For Will’s potty mouth.

Summary: An introspective ficlet in which William is all of us. It’s both my take and William’s take on the last twent-five years of the X-files. What Mulder and Scully are and what Mulder and Scully should have been. I promise I’m not just using Will to bitch about Chris Carter; this has a purpose. Also Scully gets to meet her son in person here, undisguised. Fuck you Chris.

Title taken from "Goodbye John Smith” by Barns Courtney. All of you go listen to it; it’s lovely.

Tagging @today-in-fic. 

What a fucking night. He shouldn’t have come back to Virginia so soon. God knows that sullen motherfucker rotting in the Potomac can’t catch him now, but leave it to Lady Luck to screw up his day. One flat tire, two angry rednecks, three close calls with law enforcement. Four different identities. He’s tired of the road.

(Scratch that. He’s not tired of the road; he’s tired of driving it underground. He wants blast MCR and stick his head out the window, his own head, with his own face and not the face of some guy he met in the gas station.)

He speaks to Dana sporadically, offering her snippets of his travels. In return, she answers his practical questions—laundry, cooking, navigation with no cell service. He picks around her thoughts sometimes. If she notices, she doesn’t say anything. He checks up on the creepy-looking blob she’ll give birth to in November. He is related to it, after all.

The Motel 8 in Reston has a selection of static and shit porn, so he binge-watches her memories instead, skipping the part where she’s abducted and stopping before Mulder is. Dana’s life plays like an exceptionally weird series of student films, and it feels wrong to love them.

He didn’t know it was possible to be nostalgic for things that happened before he was born. Long before he was born—the cramped basement office, the coming of age of his parents, the b-movie adventures that quietly led up to his conception. He misses the good old days, when she bickered high pitched and fiery, not weathered by sorrow after sorrow. He misses the good old days maybe more than she does. It’s a strange feeling, to love something long after it ends. But he does, he loves their batshit twenty-something silhouettes in the woods, and he wonders—when did the job they once enjoyed become a lifelong burden? Who decided to saddle them with back-breaking conspiracy and a literal galaxy of problems? Fuck him, whoever he is. (He’s only seen the guy once, dead as a fucking doornail at the river bottom. He feels guilty because he can’t feel sorry for him.)

Dana and Mulder didn’t deserve this shit. They deserved Sasquatch and Loch Ness and blurry polaroids in the forest. They deserved a chance to chase something happier than the magic murder-baby they were forced to give up. They didn’t deserve to live in mourning. None of us did.

It’s bullshit. He hops into the bed with his vape mod, stretches his legs, and spews a fog of raspberry steam into the room. Why couldn’t they live like those nutcases on the Discovery Channel? Tracking monsters in bumfuck nowhere, whacking trees and barbecuing ribs and screaming into the mountains for Bigfoot. It could be fun; it could have been fun; it was fun, but he arrived too late for it.

That’s really the kicker—he wants to be a part of their lives, he really does. But he doesn’t want to be the third grief-stricken, dysfunctional semi-genius sulking about their house. He wants to be a part of their lives before they gave birth to him. It saddens him to see them embrace the mundane, after the wild explorers they used to be. The only people who leave behind the good old days have been traumatized by them. Mulder and Dana aren’t your typical neighborhood couple; even in their utter domesticity, they slice themselves off from the world. They finally get out of the damned car, but only because the car is filled with ghosts.

They wouldn’t want to be normal, if the alternative wasn’t so soul-breaking.

It’s bullshit, he thinks again. It’s the only word that seems to sum it all up. He breathes into his vape mod and on a whim, changes the flavor to blueberry—convenience-store magic, his favorite kind. He closes his eyes.

Dana is standing in the Pacific Northwest rainforest in the ugliest goddamn coat he’s ever seen. Puffy fluorescent blue and fuschia, swallowing her whole.

Mulder has injured himself like an asshat for the umpteenth time. He still kisses her when the clock strikes midnight.

She is dying of cancer. He is dying of a mysterious brain illness. They are dying on the floor of an antique mansion, bleeding into the linoleum. She is dying. He is dying. One of them is always dying.

They’re a pain to keep an eye on, but someone has to do it.

A knock on the door rouses him, and it takes him a second to realize who it is. He’s been so busy unwrapping her past that he hasn’t bothered to check up on her present. Oops. He gets up off the bed, flings open the door—

And there she is. Her hands are shoved into the pockets of her coat (some things never change). Her hair is cropped to her neck, left mussed and untamed. She looks at him with those seen-some-shit blue eyes, wider now that the razor’s edges of her face have smoothed. Her baby belly pokes softly out her coat in a taut grey t-shirt. The kid is the size of a grapefruit. He Googled it yesterday. It unnerves him, how silently babies grow. Amoebic little creatures developing into people—and in his case, back into creatures again.

“You shouldn’t say that about yourself, Will.”

So she speaks, doesn’t just stare desperately at things with that haunted look in her eye. Who knew. She cocks her eyebrow at him.

“I speak what’s on my mind,” she says. It probably comes out sharper than she intended, because a sigh escapes her lips. She takes in the plane his face. He lets her. Her eyes settles on the vape mod in his hand. She snorts, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t judge him.

“Can I hug you, Will?” She asks breathlessly.

He nods dumbly, and she wraps her arms around him, a foot shorter than he is. She is warm, fragile and kevlar-tough at the same time. She is a comfort. She smells of citrus shampoo. Her rounded abdomen presses against his side, his sister, and it’s the singular weirdest thing he’s ever felt.

“I’m fine,” he assures her, because he’s not sure what else to say. “I knew you were coming.”

“I heard you in my head all morning, what did you expect?” She’s right—he’s living in her brain, and his sister is living in her womb, and he can’t help but feel like neither of them have earned a right to be there. They have the privilege to be. That’s what he’ll tell the kid when she gets older, that it’s a privilege to be. A privilege to love. It’s a pain, and it’s a privilege, because it’s a miracle any of them lived long enough to love at all.

Allowing himself a slight smile, he gestures to the crappy motel room she has seen a thousand of before. “Come inside.”

[rarestereocats]

rundown of the impromptu session!

for awhile,  we’re without the charisma of this team (Industria),  so the rest of us head off to the monastery to have a chat with Xaren.  we need details if we’re gonna be fighting a goddess,  especially a very nasty one,  so after our discussion;  we decide we need Industria’s dad’s help.  problem is,  Tacitus lives in heaven and you know,  you can’t just go to heaven.  unless you die of course,  but the bad news there is even that’s not a guarantee.

Xaren is still adamant that he doesn’t want us chasing him into the Underdark cuz it’s pretty fucking dangerous and before Rikius can agree with that,  i make sure to let Xaren know that i am not leaving his ass down there.  and like a good pussy whipped boyfriend,  Rikius can’t say shit.  he could,  but like i said,  #whipped.

Elathera says her grandpa has a very powerful staff (please calm yourselves) he used to carry around that could help us.  a staff that when broken,  will give us one way into heaven,  but no way out;  but whatever.  we’ll find a way.  problem is,  she doesn’t know where the staff is,  but her family might know so we go and pick up Elliot and head out.  he’s pretty excited about meeting his new girlfriend’s family,  so like the absolute sweetheart he is,  he bakes them cookies.

upon arrival and being ushered inside,  Elathera gets to tell the news that she’s finally off the market.  her mom can stop trying to bribe random men to sweep her off her feet and her mother is absolutely enamored with Elliot.  his is,  after all,  the Perfect Boyfriend.  kind,  does charity work,  bakes;  he’s the whole package.  talks of marriage and grandkids are had and Elathera was dying on the inside the entire time,  but manages to grin and bear it.

after dinner,  Elathera searches the house and her grandpa’s shed for the staff,  but all she finds is a ring of keys.  she pulls her mother aside to talk about it in her room and finds out that her mother had the staff buried alongside her grandpa in their old town.  wanting to know why we need it,  Elathera explains it and while her mother’s concerned,  she understands.  after,  she rushes down to alert Elliot that his girlfriend’s ready for him while the rest of us laugh our asses off.

he gets to see the blindingly pink bedroom and points out how her summoning circle looks super out of place.  Elathera summons up a bunny to show him and he just showers that bunny in affection.  another Good Boyfriend point to him.  He mentions how nice her family is and then pulls her in for a kiss.  with the power of mage hand on her side,  Elathera has it... lock the door and fade to black cuz they totally got it on.  you guys thought i was gonna say she did something dirty with that mage hand,  didn’t you?

by night,  i head out onto the pier for some fresh air and Xaren joins me.  we have a nice heart-to-heart and i tell him that i’d die for him.  apparently not the right words to say when he absolutely does not want us dying for him.  i pull back the layers of Xaren’s Tragic Backstory like an onion (there’s a lot of onion unraveling lately) and learn that his mother killed his brothers and stuck him in a sensory deprivation chamber as punishment,  also pinning their deaths on him.

it’s there that he met Miss McNasty,  Velevana,  and after giving so much of himself to her;  she took notice and gave him a wish.  so he wished to get out of the Underdark and Velevana was pissed,  but also impressed.  Rikius walks up on this all,  but quickly excuses himself when he realizes this is a private moment.  i decide to lighten the mood and boop Xaren’s nose and he boops mine back and we decide to gossip about our relationships.

we talk about our men and then Xaren says Samuel is his first boyfriend ever.  Rikius is also my first boyfriend ever cuz i used to be all about the ladies,  so now he’s wondering why i’d pick Rikius of all people.  and insert me saying something embarrassing about how he looks like he was chiseled out of marble by the gods and boy,  can’t wait for somebody to use that against me.

next morning,  Elathera goes and helps her little brother in his eidolon pursuit.  she takes him to their grandpa’s shed and walks him through the process,  summoning a very confused Tenin.  knowing what’s going on though,  he hops in to coach Altaura through this and this kid is fucking pumped.  he does the ritual and for a few seconds,  an angelic woman who looks vaguely like Elathera is staring back at them before she flickers out.  progress!  so now he’s even more excited.

we have a nice breakfast and then head back to Florence to pick up Industria and Ilyana and head out to Elathera’s old hometown to do a little grave robbing.  it takes some convincing for Industria to be okay with what’s a little morally questionable and before we head out,  she communes with Sabella to ask if it’s alright if we decide to show up in heaven,  which Sabella is totally cool with.  she also finds out that Tacitus is forbidden from coming back to the material plane cuz the dude just loves mortals too much.

we head out and reach the old town!  because of a street vendor who has just invented corndogs and set Tenin off,  we have to think of a new codeword.  again.  we settle on “Dungeon Master”.  sounds pretty kinky,  right?  shouldn’t be a problem so long as we keep Tenin out of certain clubs.  we make it to Elathera’s old house which is surprisingly occupied.  we ask the current owner for entry and she says it’s fine,  but be careful,  the place is haunted.

Industria goes on ghost hunter on us and leads us up to a locked door.  Elathera and her cool new set of keys gets the door open and it’s her grandpa’s old room.  the room’s cold as shit and Industria calls out and immediately a voice calls out to Elathera.  we’re shocked and in fear,  i take shelter behind Rikius cuz hey,  he’s like...two feet taller than me.  nobody will see me.

Elathera gets to catch up with her grandpa and he gets to see Tenin again too.  apparently his memories are on the fritz though because he’s pretty sure his soul is incomplete and scattered across the planes.  Elathera explains our current situation and asks if it’s okay to dig up his staff and he gives her permission.  he also gives our greedy asses permission to loot his room,  to which we do.  the most notable things being a book of enchantments,  a sweet ass ice crown,  and some summoning salts.

with Rikius watching over Ilyana in the carriage,  the rest of us hit the graveyard and dig up Elathera’s grandpa.  inside the casket with him is his big,  black staff (seriously,  calm yourselves) and we put everything back in place before making haste out of there.  thankfully,  Industria distracted the guards long enough for us to struggle with grave robbing.  the staff is beautiful.  obsidian and twinkles like the night sky.  shame we have to break it.

we quickly find a spot to open the portal and with the staff and Elathera’s dreams shattered,  we go to heaven.  at the gate,  two archons guard it and basically look us over to make sure we’re right and fit to be walking around literal fucking heaven.  Xaren and Rikius garner some attention though and are to be escorted by angels as a just in case.  we’re pointed to where we can find Tacitus and also get to learn where some of our departed loved ones are.

heaven is a very beautiful place.  maybe too beautiful to have our walking disasters parading through the streets,  but we make it to Tacitus’s tower and are brought up to his office.  Tenin gets to have another existential crisis as an angel refers to him as Little Tenin,  meaning there is indeed another Tenin,  so unfortunately,  Elathera has to desummon him.  introductions are had and Tacitus and Industria are both nervous and awkward as fuck.  understandable as that is literally the first time she’s seen her dad in person.

we ask for his aid in the Velevana situation and he tells us he’ll see what he can do.  unfortunately,  there isn’t much he can do after he gave us “the mythic” and realizing some of us don’t have it,  he corrects that.  so now Rikius,  Ilyana,  and even Elliot have it.  poor Elliot who is probably confused as fuck,  but he’s handling it well.  we also learn that our material plane isn’t the only one and apparently the folks up here have a problem and were constantly resetting it until now.  we’re allegedly the last material plane to exist and will be the longest thriving one.

with Tacitus eager to answer questions cuz he’s so excited to have mortals visiting,  i ask about Asri and Lucky and he says he’ll ask Sabella about it and get back to me.  Elathera asks what the fuck happened to her grandpa’s soul and he tells her that his soul has been dispersed between planes because someone up here deemed him too powerful to keep in one place.  She also asks if she can meet OG Tenin and Tacitus says he can arrange that.

Xaren asks if he can see his brothers,  so Tacitus takes him over to his telescope,  aiming it at Elysium and Xaren breaks down as he watches his brothers talking and laughing with other souls.  they’re watching the sunrise together over there and unable to move himself,  Samuel stays back to comfort him as the rest of us leave to do our thing.

we head to the library first,  but Industria decides to check out (library pun) early to go find Ilyana’s parents and ask them if it’s cool that she adopts their daughter.  they’re surprisingly okay with it cuz they know they’re dead and gone and Ilyana needs a better life.  they have plans to go join the void at some point,  so they won’t be around heaven much longer.  Elathera also decides to peace out cuz she’s taking Elliot,  Ilyana,  Xaren,  and Samuel to meet OG Tenin.  which leaves Rikius,  an absolute nerd,  in a library of vast knowledge.  and me,  passed out on his lap cuz everything is too much in this moment.

Elathera is fucking excited to meet OG Tenin.  his office is a gym,  guys.  if that is not the most Tenin thing ever,  then i don’t know what is.  OG Tenin is super fucking tall with six wings,  fiery hair,  and is all about that sleeveless game (relatable).  he is also a fucking nerd apparently and loves music and reading.  he’s very proud of Elathera and her spirit that died when she broke that staff is resurrected and before she can ask,  he reads her mind and says that he’s more than happy to train her.

come next day,  we get a whole lots of answers from Tacitus.  including how the world and the gods came to be.  so Little Tenin is not the only one here having an existential crisis.  our minds are blown six ways fucking sideways as he talks about how the Teme-rasadar are the void and everything came from them.  deities also need constant worship otherwise they just...fade away.  

we learn that Velevan’s paired herself with a god of undeath,  so her weakness will be anything anti-undead,  but as for breaking the claim she has on Xaren’s soul,  it unfortunately can’t be done.  so i guess it’s confirmed that we’ll be literally punching her in the face.  he also drops the bomb on us that Lucky is a fucking lich,  which explains their fascination with the temple of the dead,  and right now;  they’re out there.  he says they’re not harming anyone currently,  but they’re very powerful.

he tells me that Asri is in the country,  but can’t give me exact deets.  he knows that she visited the Underdark awhile ago and also that Xaren’s dad is on the surface now.  literal goddess Sabella shows up in elven form to come speak with us and our minds are fucking blown again.

i ask her if my blood’s tainted cuz the whole lich thing and she says there’s nothing...lichy (loud booing)...in my blood,  but the Kociak bloodline is cursed.  prone to insatiable wanderlust and something more,  though she can’t say what.  the curse was a trade-off for Lucky’s lichdom,  so thanks,  asshole.  i ask her why Asri was in the Underdark and she says it’s a part of the curse.  she was seeking someone out,  though she can’t say who.  possible drow/catfolk combo striking again??  just a Game Theory.  

i’m worried that the curse is the reason Asri was a piece of shit,  but Sabella reassures me that it has nothing to do with the curse as i’m cursed too,  but a decent person.  we ask of Remy’s fate and learn that Lucky used them as a sacrifice and the reason Remy is reaching out to Xaren is to tell him something important or perhaps to even tell him that Lucky is near.

after that ominous shit,  Sabella allows Xaren to see his brothers and he gets a touching reunion.  he catches them up on some things and slowly realizes that he desperately doesn’t wanna accept whatever Velevana has for him now.  as we all watch,  i think about hugging Sabella,  but restrain myself cuz hey,  that’s a goddess.  much to my surprise,  she turns around and hugs me and my soul has transcended every possible plane and i may be in love.  Sabella hands out some more hugs to everyone like a goddamn pez dispenser and once we’re back in Tacitus’s office,  she’s gone.

we say our farewells to heaven and he kindly teleports us back to the material plane.

[dontstopyurinow]

Thought your Blurry 🤓drabble was fluffy and cute. Although was left imagining the hot dog competition 🌭Yuri did and still winning gold in Skate America. Perhaps your next drabble.😊📖🖋❤

Perhaps :)

read on AO3 - 2200 words - Otayuri fluff.

Yuri hardlymanages to hide his excitement. He does not want to ruin his carefully studiedjaded attitude, but the fair is so loud and colorful, at twenty-four he feelslike a little kid again. The crowd moves slowly between the booths, the childrenlaugh cheerfully and the rides blink with bright lights. Otabek walking at hisside completes the picture pleasantly.

It is theday before Yuri’s short program at Skate America. Otabek retired two years agoand has the time to follow him around the world. They are friends. Sometimesthey hold hands and sometimes they kiss, but just sometimes. Without a doubtthey will go back to their apartment in St Petersburg when the competition isover, they are roommates. They share the bed, and sometimes the same pillow,but only because the flat is small and it is convenient. It has been threeyears since Otabek came over for the summer and cancelled his flight back home.They adopted a cat together, and maybe they fight to know who was supposed todo the dishes and who will take the trash out.

Yuri had always been terrified by the idea ofsettling down and living a life of domesticity and insignificant house chores. Hewanted to keep skating forever, to travel the world for gold medals until hewas seventy, to feel the excitement of the podium every year of his life. And yetsomehow, he has eventually managed to come to term with his future retirement. Hehas realized that he was alright with waking up to the same face every day, andthat he would happily trade the bliss of a victory for a cozy night in strong andwarm arms. Yuri had always thought Victor and Yuuri were old and boring, he nowknows there were simply in love.

“Are youhungry?” Otabek asks as they get out of the haunted house. He is smooth enoughnot to complain about the marks Yuri’s nails have dug in his forearm during theride.

“Notreally, a bit maybe.”

“How aboutcotton candy?”

Yuri shrugsin disinterest but his eyes sparkle when Otabek hands him a fluffy pink cloudon a stick. There is barely a minute before Yuri gets sugar strings in hisblond hair and his fingers are wet and sticky. He tries to use a small paper napkinbut it tears apart and worsen the mess. Otabek looks at him with his usualimpassive expression and Yuri blushes in shame as he struggles to peel the bitsof napkin off his fingers. He feels like a three-year-old unable to eatproperly. Otabek takes the stick from his hand and rubs his palms to cleanthem. When there is no trace of paper anymore Yuri brings his hand to his mouthto lick off the remaining pink sugar. Otabek watches him suck his fingers cleanwithout blinking. Yuri catches him and winks playfully. Otabek leans to lick asugar crystal on his bottom lip.

“Hey youtwo! Get a room!”

They bothflinch and turn to see Jean-Jacques, holding Isabel by the waist and looking assmug as ever.

“When thefuck are you gonna retire?” Yuri spits bitterly.

“Next yearmaybe, so watch me carefully, it’s your last chance to learn from the king!”

“I’d payyou to retire right now.”

“No amountof money could deprive my fans of the pleasure of watching me win!”

It is funnyhow Yuri has grown older and taller but barely wiser, and he still tries tothrow his heel at JJ’s chin almost every time the other skater opens his mouth.Of course Otabek holds him back, he always does. He does not want Yuri to getin trouble and will not tolerate a bruise on his pretty face. The day JJcrosses the line, his jaw will meet Otabek’s fist first.

Yuri isboiling but his blistering answer is cut by Isabel.

“Come on JJwe’ll miss the contest,” she says as she pulls on his sleeve.

JJ givesher a peck on the cheek and purrs: “Don’t worry sweetheart, I’ll get you thatfirst prize.”

Yuri andOtabek look at each other blankly. The loudspeakers of the fair have been announcingthe hot dog eating contest all afternoon, the grand prize being two gold-rowsall event tickets for the Skate America figure skating competition, valued at500$.

“Gettingfront row tickets for your own performance, congratulations that’s a whole newlevel of douchebaggery,” Yuri deadpans.

“It’s obviouslynot for the tickets,” JJ chuckles with a condescending smile, “I promised BellaI’d get her the giant bear.” And he points at a nearby post where a posterpromoting the contest shows a large teddy bear with a bow. The fluffy toy looksalmost as tall as an adult and at least four times as wide, and is given withthe tickets to the winner of the contest.

“What can Isay, some of us have other talent than skating, like taking care of their lovedones…” JJ boasts, “I’m sorry you’re left with a whiny child off the ice,Otabek.”

This timeYuri holds Otabek back. He digs his heels in the ground and pulls Otabek’s armto force him to face him.

“Beka,”Yuri says seriously, “I need to win that bear.”

Otabek’s furiousglare fades and he seems slightly embarrassed.

“Yuri, I’dlove to win it for you but you know how slowly I eat, I wouldn’t stand a chance.I can buy you one if you want.”

Yuri’straits soften in a fond expression for half a second, so short that no one elsethan Otabek could have seen it.

“No,” hesays, “I mean I’ll win it myself. For you.”

“I’ve neverseen you eat that much,” Otabek says with a concerned frown.

“I can eat4 piroshkys in the 10-minute break we have during morning practice.”

“I don’tknow Yura…”

“4 katsudonpiroshkys,” Yuri clarifies, “the ones filled with rice, egg and fried pork.”

“That’s reallyimpressive but come on, your short program is tomorrow.”

“So what? I’lljust skip dinner.”

“Victor isgonna kill me if I let you do that.”

“He’llnever know if you don’t tell him. Beka pleaaase,” Yuri begs, “imagine the lookon JJ’s face.”

“You won’tchange your mind, will you?”

Yuri smilesa large grin that makes his eyes twinkle and his cheeks blush with innocentjoy. Otabek sighs. He is weak.

“Hurry up, it’sstarting soon.”

The crowdwatches the unknown skinny blond man eat one, two, four, seven, twelve hot dogsin five minutes in silent astonishment. When the bell rings the contestantslook at the scores and they all turn to glare at Yuri, who delicately dabs hismouth with a napkin and looks more satisfied than the time he won his firstOlympic gold medal.

JJ makes adisgusting comment about Yuri being used to repressing his gag reflex toswallow sausages and Yuri is sorry, because he could not hear him behind thegiant teddy bear. Otabek politely refuses the event tickets when a man handsthem to him.

“Sir, theseare front row tickets and the men’s short program event is sold out.”

“He’salready got a ticket,” Yuri cuts, “it’s so VIP he sits in the gold medalist’sbed.”

Both Otabekand the man open a gaping mouth. Yuri grabs the tickets and looks around. Hespots a woman holding a young girl by the hand and give them the tickets. “Ihope you enjoy!”

“Beka, ifit’s a girl I wanna call her Evgenia.”

“What?”

“My foodbaby, it’s a girl, I know it,” Yuri says from the couch of their Airbnb wherehe’s been lying for the last hour.

Otabekwalks up to him and sees him with his T-shirt pulled up under his arms and hishands flat on his slightly swollen belly. Otabek shrugs and smiles softly atthe ridiculous scene.

“No but seriouslyit fucking hurts,” Yuri whines, “I think my stomach is going to explode.”

“What exactlywere you expecting?”

“But JJ…”

“JJ’s anidiot, you’ve got to learn to ignore him.”

Yuri poutsand has a painful moan as he turns to lie on his side. Otabek gets him pain killersand a glass of water. Yuri sits up, guzzles it and lies back down. His eyes widensuddenly, and he pales and presses his stomach before jumping up and running tothe bathroom.

Otabek isjust like everyone else, if he can avoid dealing with vomit he does. But it isYuri, and so he follows him to the toilet and holds his hair back quietly. Whenhis tiny body is done spasming and he rests against the bathtub, Otabek sitsbeside him.

“I heard itgets better after the first trimester.”

“Fuck you,”Yuri whispers faintly as he feebly wipes the corner of his lips with the backof his hand.

Yuri feels noticeablybetter once he has emptied the content of his stomach, and Otabek finds gingertea in a kitchen cabinet. Yuri suspects that he bought it after he got sick onthe plane. Yuri nests on the couch in the cushions, his knees drawn up tosoothe his tummy, and he drinks his tea slowly. Otabek watches him carefully tosee if he can keep the beverage down. They do not speak as they watch cartoonstogether, and when the night falls Otabek realizes that Yuri has already dozedoff, exhausted by his day and his upset belly. Yuri pretends to protest whenOtabek carries him to bed but he quickly curls up under the blanket like asleepy kitten. “I’m sorry Beka,” he mumbles in the pillow. “Goodnight Yura,” hehears as he falls back asleep.

When Yuriwakes up the next day it is already noon.

“Beka whatthe fuck?” he shouts as he hops on one foot to pull up his jeans. “The morningpractice! Victor will go full Yakov!”

“It’s ok,”Otabek says calmly, “I called him and said you didn’t sleep well last night andyou would nap before the beginning of the competition.”

“How didyou know he would fall for that?”

“I saw himnap when I was at the Worlds with him. He literally slept through the programsof the first three skaters and woke up five minutes before his turn.”

Yuri letshimself fall back on the bed with only one leg in his pants.

“How do youfeel?” Otabek asks.

“Good. Icould do with some eggs and toasts.”

Yuri knowsthat Victor can see how weak he is on his skates during warm up, but his coachdoes not say anything and repeats his usual advices as he hands him his jacketwhen he steps off the ice. His turn comes and it takes everything he has tofollow his program. He feels like each of his legs weighs several tons and heis light-headed just thinking about a spin. He gets one of his worst scores,and yet it is still above the average of the other skaters. Victor pinches hislips but does not comment.

Yuri sleepsthrough the whole evening and the night again. Otabek wakes him up for his freeskate with a substantial breakfast and a steaming cup of ginger tea. Yuri canstill feel the pinch in his stomach but he can stand up without risking tofaint or having his legs buckle under his weight. The warm up session goesnormally and the frown on Victor’s wide forehead softens slightly.

Thecompetition starts and as they walk by the kiss and cry to reach the door ofthe barrier, Yuri hears JJ talk to the journalists.

“Yeah, Iknow Plisetsky wasn’t at the morning practice yesterday, I heard he wasn’tfeeling good and spent his night on the toilet. I had no doubt I could beat himbut with the score he got for his short program it’ll just be a piece of cake.”

SomehowYuri forgets about is fragile stomach. He does not remember his shaking kneesand his poor balance. If there is an emotion he knows how to use as fuel, itsure is anger. He steps on the ice and skates aggressively. His blades are loudagainst the ice when he lands his jumps and his spins are quicker than ever.What he loses in grace he gains in violent passion, and his fiery dance captivatethe audience.

Yuri isstill fired up when he sits at the kiss and cry and Victor is visibly confusedwhen his student yells “Happy fucking retirement JJ!” after seeing the perfectscore that grants him the gold medal.

Yuri andOtabek stay a week in the United States after the competition. Yuri will neveradmit it but they are true tourists. They take lots of pictures, they buy cheapsouvenirs, and they queue for ages to visit monuments.

They arewalking in an nth park when Yuri stops dead and Otabek has to stop as wellsince they are holding hands. Yuri is looking up, his eyes glimmer and hisbottom lip quivers. A bright poster is stapled to an old tree. Otabek sighs inresignation.

“PIE EATINGCONTEST – WIN A VIP ZOO EXPERIENCE WITH THE TIGERS”

[lady-divine-writes]

Kurtbastian fic - “More than a Tease” (Rated T)

When Quinn takes Kurt to a theme Halloween party, he gets the chance to "face his fear". Since he can't think of one, he writes that his fear is spending an evening alone with Sebastian Smythe. It's a safe thing to say. No one has seen Sebastian since graduation, so there's no fear for Kurt to face.

Kurt has no clue that they'd actually be able to find him. (6481 words)

Written for the @kurtoberfest prompt ‘nightmare’. Warning for mention of B*laine, angst, anxiety, mention of sexual situations, and not particularly Quinn or Rachel friendly.

Read on AO3.

“Soooo, where are we going?” Kurt asks, speed-walking beside Quinn as she leads him past a handful of frat parties already in progress. It’s only going on nine o’clock in the evening, but a bunch of these parties look like they’ve gotten out of hand. Kurt and Quinn have walked by houses with one or more people hanging out of windows, one where a young man was attempting to ski off the roof, and another where a handful of drunk sorority sisters were targeting passersby with shaving cream filled balloons. Seeing as Kurt has personal experience with a variation of one of those – an experience that still haunts him - the further down the line they go, the more anxious he becomes.

“You’ll see,” she says with a self-satisfied quirk to her prim lips. She’s been keeping her answers short and sweet, not giving away a thing.

And it’s peeving Kurt off big time.

When Kurt had decided to accept Quinn’s invitation for a visit to Yale, Halloween weekend was the only time he could get off work. And that was fine. Aside from the prospect of attending the annual costume contest at Callbacks, then getting pelted by eggs on the way home, he had nothing exciting planned. Actually, considering everything that had been going on in his life lately, he’d hoped the change of pace would do him good. He knew that Quinn lived on campus, and that campus life was an alternate universe compared to what he had going for him right now – sharing a loft in Bushwick with Rachel and commuting daily to NYADA – but he definitely had a different idea of what they would be doing. As far as he knew, the students at Yale were the “cream of the crop”. The way his high school guidance counselor talked about Yale, Kurt got the impression that the school teemed with the blue blooded teenagers of America. He figured they’d spend the night handing out candy to the tiny hobgoblins of the New England elite, then maybe go to some upscale party, probably masquerade in nature, where lavish costumes a la the movie Dangerous Liaisons were required.

He didn’t think that what they’d actually be doing was crashing a kegger.

“Well, you didn’t have us get dressed in costume,” Kurt points out, his comment laced with disappointment, “so … oh please tell me we’re not going to one of those Christian redemption house things! Where they try to scare you straight with re-enactments of abortions and drug overdoses!”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” she says, having the nerve to laugh. “Who do you think I am?”

“But is it a haunted house?” Kurt asks, because he isn’t too keen on those either. He never understood the appeal of going somewhere just to get scared out of your wits. Plus, a lot of the more adult aimed haunted houses tend to be “interactive”. He swears, if someone dressed as a ghoul or a zombie gropes him in the dark, he’s reaching for his pepper spray. He doesn’t care what kind of trouble he gets into. But more worrying than that, he doesn’t want to risk getting fake blood on his jeans. That stuff never comes out.

“It’s going to be scary,” Quinn reveals, “just on a different scale.”

“Oh, God,” Kurt groans. “We’re going to do math homework. Or physics. That’s how you smart kids get your kicks, isn’t it? There’s a reason why I didn’t apply to Yale, Quinn!”

“Come along, Kurt.” She grabs his arm and pulls him along, and ow! How did he not realize before now how remarkably strong she is for her stature? “Keep moving. You’re going to enjoy yourself, I promise. And besides, it’s for charity.”

She sings that last part like it’s some huge selling point, but now that Kurt’s out of high school and no longer needs to find ways to pad his college application, he’s become a little less charitable, especially when he needs to pay rent and feed himself on a waiter’s salary.

They make their way to the end of the block, to a house that isn’t as gorily decorated as the others, and where the music is being blasted at a surprisingly reasonable level. There’s no one hanging out of the windows, no couples going at it on the front lawn, no one chucking stuff at them from off the roof.

Kurt approves.

Well, this seems okay, Kurt says to himself, thinking that maybe he should have put more trust in Quinn. This party does look to be more his speed.

“Hey, Peg!” Quinn waves at the smiling strawberry blonde standing by the open front door, greeting guests as they enter.

“Hey, Quinn!” The girl’s green eyes light up when she sees them. “I’m so glad you could make it! Who’s your friend?”

“This” - Quinn shoves Kurt forward one-handed. When did she switch from cheerleading to wrestling? - “is Kurt Hummel. He’s a friend of mine from Lima.”

“Hey.” Kurt waves uncomfortable, almost nose to nose with the girl at the door when Quinn pushes him ahead.

“Hey, Kurt.” Peg giggles, bouncing on her feet. She can’t seem to stand still for longer than three seconds at a time. She’s either really excited about the party, Kurt decides, or she’s dipped into the bowl of candy by her side one too many times.

“Why don’t you tell us what’s going on here tonight?” Quinn prompts Peg to give them a “spiel”, and Kurt gets the vague suspicion that he’s been set-up. From a quick glimpse inside, Kurt doesn’t see anyone dressed as ghouls or zombies. It doesn’t even look like anyone’s getting drunk, so that only leaves one other possibility.

They are doing something educational! Quinn! You fiend!

“Okay!” Peg claps her hands together and plants herself on her heels, and Kurt figures out the reason for her undying perkiness.

She’s a cheerleader.

“Well, the theme of tonight’s party is Face Your Fears.” Peg introduces it in a spooky voice and using spirit fingers, as if that’s going to terrify him. This girl is five foot nothing and probably 100 pounds soaking wet. “So, we’re inviting our guests to face their fears.” She thrusts specially printed name tags their way. They’re white with a bloody outline dripping in to the writing space. On the top, printed in black letters (Comic Sans, Kurt notices, and quietly judges), are the words, “My nightmare is …”

“We ask that people keep them small, you know,” Peg says. “Things you can work on locally, and tonight, if possible. Though if you’re afraid of bugs, we have a gentleman here all the way from the Museum of Natural History who’s offered to take four lucky students to the Entomology department to try and work on that. And if you’re afraid of heights, we’re having a drawing later to win a bungee jump adventure for two hosted by Luxergy.”

“Wow.” Kurt’s moderately impressed. “That’s kind of awesome. But, I’m not afraid of bugs. Or heights.”

Her left shoulder pops up in a shrug. “I’m sure you can come up with something.”

“Come on.” Quinn elbows Kurt in the side. “You came all this way. Give it a go. Write something down.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright.” Kurt bats her arm away. “Keep your angular elbows to yourself.”

Kurt looks at the bloody paper, the space inside blank as his mind has gone. He has no idea what to write. He’s only had a handful of fears. A lot of the ones he lived with growing up, he’s conquered – not having the courage to be himself, not having the strength to stand up to bullies, not getting into the college of his choice, not being able to make it on his own.

But his real fears aren’t things he can work on here, at a frat party. They’re things he may never be able to overcome.

That he could have done something to keep his mom from dying, even though he can’t imagine how.

That he’ll never make it on Broadway, no matter how hard he tries.

That Santana was right and Blaine really did move on with Dave because he was tired of him.

Everything else isn’t exactly a fear, per se. Not of nightmare proportions. More like a series of mild apprehensions, daunting though they are. But he isn’t going to open up about them, not at a Halloween party, so he puts down the first stupid thing that pops into his head. Under the heading, “My nightmare is …” Kurt writes, “spending an evening alone with Sebastian Smythe.”

Yeah, Kurt thinks, that works. Not only is it kind of true (he had once or twice wondered what might happen if the two of them ever found themselves at The Lima Bean alone together, or in the bathroom at Scandals), but good luck tracking him down. Last Kurt heard, after Sebastian graduated from Dalton, an hour later, he hopped on the first plane to Paris.

Goodbye, good riddance.

Kurt peels his name tag off its backing and carefully places it on his shirt. He watches Quinn deliberate over her own name tag, ready to poke fun at her for taking too long, when a voice in the crowd calls out, “Quinny! Hey! Quinny!”

“Quinny?” Kurt jeers, but Quinn doesn’t seem to mind the nickname. Kurt watches her pensive expression completely transform. She bites her lower lip, her cheeks pink, and a grin the size of the Holland Tunnel spreads across her face, and Kurt begins to suspect why they’re really here.

Charity, his ass!

“Hey, Quinny!” The man bounds out from the mass of people - literally jumps out of the crowd - landing so close to Kurt, he has to take a step back so as not to get tackled to the ground.

“Hey, Glenn,” Quinn says with a bat of her eyes, putting the man, panting like a puppy, out of his misery. “What’s up?”

“Not much. I’m glad you could make it. I was afraid you weren’t going to show.”

“Well, we had a few other things to do, but we managed to find time to fit you guys in.”

A few other things? Kurt scoffs silently. They’d been sitting in her room watching old show choir videos before they decided to head out, and then came straight here!

“So, have you guys had a chance to finish your name tags?”

“I haven’t,” Quinn says. “But Kurt has.”

“Oh, yeah?” Glenn’s blue eyes zero in on Kurt, glaring for a second, but he seems to determine that Kurt is no threat to him getting with Quinn, and he smiles. “Let me see!”

Glenn reaches for Kurt. Kurt nearly slaps Glenn when he grabs his shirt to take a look at his tag.

“My nightmare is spending an evening alone with Sebastian Smythe.” Glenn chuckles, but his brow wrinkles. “Wait a minute?” Kurt sees Glenn mouth the sentence, trying to put something together. “Aren’t you guys from Ohio?”

“Yeah …” Kurt looks at Quinn, who looks back at him with a confused look on her face.

“Oh, ho!” Glenn crows. “You can’t mean … yo!” Glenn turns to the crowd, cupping a hand to the side of his mouth to help his voice carry. “Seb! Sebastian Smythe! Come here, man!”

“What!?” Kurt’s heart slams to a stop. He feels his insides frost over like the Auglaize River in the dead of winter. “Wait, wait, wait ...” Kurt grabs Glenn by the arm. “No. You don’t mean … Sebastian Smythe goes to Yale?”

“Duh. He’s one of my best bros.” Glenn smiles like a jackal, the way any close friend of Sebastian’s would by default.

Kurt releases Glenn’s arm as if it had suddenly burst into flames and turns on his friend.

“Lucy Quinn Fabray!” Kurt growls. “You did not tell me that Sebastian Smythe attends Yale!”

“I didn’t know!” She laughs nervously. “It’s a big school. You could have been going here and I probably wouldn’t have known unless you outright told me.”

“What is it, Glenn?” a familiar voice - a voice Kurt had never planned on hearing again - calls above the crowd. As it comes closer, Kurt considers ducking into the group of men playing beer pong to the left of them, but he doesn’t commit to that decision quick enough. A pair of green eyes hones in on him. The smile that follows is sly, but surprisingly less predatory than Glenn’s. “Hey! Princess Hummel!” When Kurt finally sees Sebastian’s face, he looks the same as the Sebastian that Kurt remembers, minus the mile-high hair and the overly confident, conniving grin. This Sebastian has a semi-shaved head, and a more mellow demeanor. Whether it’s because he’s slightly tipsy or just slightly changed, Kurt doesn’t know. “You go here?”

“No,” Kurt replies sharply. He decides to stick to one word answers. It seems safer that way.

“Oh, yeah. That’s right. You’re going to that performing arts school. Uh …” Sebastian snaps his fingers, trying to remember the name.

“NYADA,” Kurt supplies when Sebastian’s absently snapping fingers creep closer to his face.

“That’s right. NYADA.” He points, signifying the end of his guessing with his fingernail dangerously close to Kurt’s nose. Sebastian looks around. He peeks over Kurt’s shoulder, then looks questioningly at Quinn. He scrunches his nose. “Aren’t you light about a buck sixty?”

“What?” Kurt glances down his body and puts a hand to his belly, assuming Sebastian is commenting on Kurt finally shedding his baby fat. It would be like Sebastian to pinpoint one of Kurt’s insecurities and find the need to remark about it.

“I think he’s talking about Blaine,” Quinn says helpfully.

“Oh,” Kurt says flatly, relieved, but then immediately offended again. Same diff. And of course Sebastian would be looking for Blaine. Blaine was a large part of Sebastian’s reason for loathing Kurt. Kurt wasn’t good enough for Blaine according to Sebastian, but Sebastian thought he was. “No. We’re not together anymore. I broke up with him.” Kurt adds that last part mainly so that Sebastian doesn’t get the idea that Blaine did the dumping, thus adding credibility to Sebastian’s previously held belief.

Sebastian makes an unexpectedly impressed face. “Good for you.” He punches Kurt lightly on the shoulder as if they’re friends. “I know that I kind of had the hots for him back in high school, but he really was kind of a one-trick pony. I always thought you could do so much better.”

Kurt’s jaw drops unceremoniously to his knees, but before Kurt has the chance to ask what Sebastian means by that, if he’s trying to be nice for once or if this is some new form of torment, Glenn cuts in.

“Hey, Smythe. Check out his name tag. Apparently his biggest fear is spending an evening alone with you.”

Kurt’s eyes bug out of his skull. He raises a hand to cover the tag. He had forgotten for a split second that he’d been wearing the damn thing. That the whole reason he was having this conversation with Sebastian was because of it. Jesus Christ! Couldn’t Kurt have thought up something else? Like Scottish fold kittens? Or cheesecake? If they were going to assault him with something they thought he was afraid of, he should have had the sense to pick something that would have worked in his favor.

“Is that so?” Sebastian coos at Kurt as if he’s fluffy and adorable, like the Scottish fold kitten Kurt should have said he’s afraid of. “Who knew I’d have such a lasting affect?” His eyes sparkle, too reminiscent of the way they did back in high school when he’d come up with some devious plan to manipulate the New Directions into doing whatever he wanted. But instead of getting angry at Sebastian the way Sebastian deserved, Kurt just wanted to get the hell out of there.

“It’s---it’s not that,” Kurt stammers while he considers burrowing into the floor beneath him. With the help of adrenaline, he’s pretty sure he can make it through the wood boards using brute hand strength. It’s the concrete foundation of the house that might prove a bit tricky. “It’s just …”

“So, Sebastian. You gonna help this poor guy out?” Glenn continues the conversation without the go ahead from Kurt, as if he’s on some sort of mission to get Kurt and Sebastian together.

“No!” Kurt yells before Sebastian can answer. “I don’t want to spend the night with him!”

Glenn shoots a look at Sebastian as if Kurt’s reaction just proved the existence of Kurt’s own made-up fear. Kurt wishes Quinn had taken them to a regular old haunted house. Being groped by zombies sounds much more fun than what’s going on presently. He turns pleading eyes on her, hoping for help, but he should have already guessed that he’d have no such luck.

“Come on, Kurt,” she prods with another elbow to his side. But she’s not looking at him. She’s trading goo-goo eyes with Glenn. “It’s for charity.”

But Kurt’s not buying it, and he’s insulted at being used as a flirtation device. “And how does that work exactly? You didn’t tell me to bring my wallet.”

“We operate through a special program called Fraternities for Change,” Glenn explains. “We turn our social status on campus into a power for good. For every person who participates …”

“A dude bro gets their wings?” Kurt finishes, unmoved by their efforts, no matter how sincere, as long as the outcome equals spend an evening alone with Sebastian Smythe.

“No. Our parent organization and the alumni have pledged a donation to the charity of our choice,” Sebastian pitches in. “My parents have promised to match what we make here tonight. A lot of the guys’ folks have.”

“And which charity is that?” Quinn asks, as if she doesn’t already know. Kurt crosses his arms, preparing to remain immune. He doesn’t care what tree-hugging, whale protecting, children feeding, grass roots organization this frat is cutting a check to, Kurt refuses to be a part of it.

“The ACLU.”

Kurt opens his mouth to object sarcastically, but he can’t since the ACLU is one of his all-time favorite organizations. If he was ever going to part with any of his own hard-earned cash in support of a cause, the ACLU would definitely be among his top 5, tied somewhere between the Born this Way Foundation and The Trevor Project.

Damn it.

Kurt sighs. How did a promising Halloween-slash-vacation turn into such a disaster?

Kurt looks from Glenn’s eager face, to Quinn’s superior smile, then finally to Sebastian’s amused but unassuming grin. So, this is what between a rock and a hard place looks like? Kurt thought he’d visited there many times before, but obviously not.

Strange that Sebastian’s expression should be the most sympathetic of the three. He’s the only person staring at Kurt who doesn’t seem to have a hidden agenda.

“Fine,” Kurt concedes. “I’ll do it.”

“Excellent.” Glenn rubs his hands together like an old timey villain. “So, whaddya say, Seb? Ready to help this nice young man conquer his biggest fear?”

“Absolutely.” Sebastian slaps a hand down on Kurt’s shoulder, fixing him with a devilish look to match Glenn’s. “Kurt Hummel? For one whole night, you are mine.”

“Great.” Kurt quickly makes a mental note to re-write his will … and scratch Quinn out of it. “I can’t wait.”

***

Kurt and Sebastian agree to meet at eight o’clock the following evening in Quinn’s room. She has a fairly large suite with a flat screen TV and its own kitchenette, enviable by dorm room standards. If NYADA offered rooms like this one at a price he could afford, Kurt would jump at it in a minute. Living in the loft, even with its massive amount of space, has begun to wear on him. It’s drafty in the winter, hot in the summer, the walls cry when it rains, and the neighborhood keeps him on edge. Besides, it would be nice to live closer to Vogue and to school. He could participate more with the happenings on campus, delve deeper into the college experience, make a few more friends than he has now.

Then maybe he’d have something better to do during his free time than to nurse Rachel’s ego.

Kurt has the room to himself since Quinn doesn’t have a roommate this semester. But also, to smooth the process along, Glenn asked Quinn out on a date, and Quinn accepted, solely for the purpose of helping Kurt out, of course. Kurt was astounded by Quinn’s behavior at the party. She seemed more than happy to toss Kurt to the wolves in an effort to get a date with this man.

What in the heck happened to her between high school and college? Where had their strong, independent, ex-Cheerio who didn’t need a man in her life go?

Well, whatever. One thing’s for certain - see if Kurt ever accepts one of her invitations to Connecticut again.  

The entire day, Kurt considers calling off his and Sebastian’s “date” (if it can be termed that; Kurt is hard pressed to give their arrangement a name), which would be difficult considering he told Sebastian where he was staying, but they didn’t exchange phone numbers or any other contact information. Maybe Kurt should consider not opening the door when Sebastian shows up. Or Kurt could just not be there. He could go down to the dining hall, take a trip to the mall.

Pack up his things and hop on the first train he can find back to New York.

But then there’s the fact that this is a golden (well, more like gold-plated) opportunity to get to know the man who made it his pastime to declare open season on Kurt’s self-esteem for half a year. Kurt had always wanted to know - out of sheer, morbid curiosity – what made Sebastian tick. It didn’t strike Kurt until he went from being apprehensive about Sebastian’s visit to nearly panic stricken that he didn’t know anything about the man other than he’s an ass.

The student body at Dalton spread numerous rumors about Sebastian (far and wide enough that they’d reached Kurt’s ears all the way in Lima) and what he’d been doing in France, including tales of bizarre sexual fetishes, orgies, drinking, and drugs. Then there were the stories of the heartbroken boys he’d conned out of their virginities, one who they claim Sebastian had won in a game of cards - because that kind of thing happens in France.

Kurt had also heard several stories concerning Sebastian’s father, that the man was controlling to the point of being emotionally abusive; that, as a state’s attorney, he was a heartless bastard, grooming his son to be a heartless bastard just like him in the hopes that Sebastian would someday follow in his footsteps.

Kurt had also heard somewhere that Sebastian’s father didn’t care one way or another what his son did as long as he got good grades and didn’t get arrested.

Kurt didn’t know if any of that was true, but here was his chance to get the scoop right from the horse’s mouth.

But did Kurt want it?

Sebastian had never given Kurt any indication that he was anything other than a self-centered asshole, and as Maya Angelou said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." Kurt knows Sebastian apologized, and that everything should be water under the bridge. Blaine had accepted Sebastian’s apology with practically no convincing whatsoever, regardless of the incident with the rock salt Slushie and the damage to his eye, but it’s not that simple for Kurt.

Because Blaine wasn’t the one constantly being told he wasn’t good enough for his boyfriend.

Kurt was.

And Blaine wasn’t the one biting his tongue while his boyfriend texted someone who wasn’t only openly belligerent towards him, but vying for his boyfriend’s affection behind his back.

Kurt was.

Would Kurt be a hypocrite for not giving Sebastian a second chance? Kurt was willing to give Dave another chance, and Dave had physically abused him - tossed him into dumpsters, slammed him into lockers, threw Slushies in his face, threatened his life. Sebastian had never done anything along those lines to Kurt. Scheming and blackmailing shouldn’t be counted on the same level as physical assault. Technically, what Dave Karofsky did to Kurt was worse.

Still, there was something a bit more sinister to the way Sebastian bullied Kurt as opposed to the way Dave did. Dave went after Kurt daily, ruthlessly, and for years, but Kurt wasn’t Dave’s real issue. Kurt was an outlet.

Dave hated Kurt as an extension of hating himself. Dave needed help. He needed to be educated.

Sebastian, an out and proud gay teenager who had no problem revealing his sexual orientation to anyone, simply hated Kurt – period.

Kurt sighs. How did he let himself get stuck in this situation? He didn’t have to agree to their terms. He could just as easily have written them a check for $25 and called it a day. Why did he let himself get shoehorned into an evening with Sebastian? If Sebastian was the reformed guy he claimed to be, he would have accepted no for an answer.

Wouldn’t he have?

As the clock ticks closer to eight, Kurt clutches on to the only hope he has - Sebastian could decide not to show up. That’s an option. It could happen. Kurt was never Sebastian’s type anyway. Sebastian could have agreed to this to save face in front of a friend who put him on the spot, with no intention of ever following thru. It’s reasonable. It makes sense. And Kurt wouldn’t hold it against him.

Shave-and-a-haircut tapping on the door at the stroke of eight blows that hope out of the water.

Opening the door and seeing Sebastian standing in the hallway, carrying a backpack over one shoulder, finishes it off, driving it straight into its grave.

Kurt’s stomach drops to his knees.

“Hey,” Sebastian says.

“Hey.”

“Well. I’m here.” Sebastian rolls to the balls of his feet. He looks nervous. It’s kind of … dare Kurt think … cute?

“Yes, you are,” Kurt confirms, but he doesn’t move aside to let Sebastian in. Kurt’s not convinced that Sebastian means to stay. He never struck Kurt as a guy who’d keep his word in a situation that doesn’t directly benefit him.

Sebastian would get nothing out of coming here tonight, unless …

Sebastian doesn’t expect Kurt to sleep with him, does he?

Shit! Kurt hadn’t considered that. But if there is any truth to those Dalton rumors about Sebastian and his infamous one-night stands, it would fit his m.o. Kurt normally doesn’t give weight to rumors. He’s surrounded by too many. But if interning at Vogue has taught him anything about gossip, it’s that if different people repeatedly spread the same rumor, there might be a shred of truth to it.

And Kurt has heard the rumors about Sebastian’s sex-tracurricular activities from a variety of sources.

Including Blaine.

“So …” Sebastian says, waiting patiently for Kurt to do something – either let him in or slam the door in his face.

Kurt does neither.

He looks perpetually confused.

“So … what do we do now?” Kurt asks. He assumes Sebastian will say something like, “Nothing. I showed up. I fulfilled my end of this bargain. It’s been swell, but I have to jet.”

But he doesn’t.

“We agreed that you’re mine for one night.” Sebastian pulls his backpack off his shoulder and unzips it. “So I get to choose.” He opens his bag - a bag Kurt can only imagine is filled with ropes, handcuffs, and painful sex toys.

(Yup, Kurt’s imagination might be running away from him a tad.)

When Sebastian pulls out a fistful of jewel cases, Kurt rolls his eyes. Porn. Great. Couldn’t they stream that off the Internet and save Sebastian the trouble of lugging it around? Or are these vintage?

“Okay. Movie marathon time. I brought over Star Wars, Winter Soldier, The Matrix, and District 9.”

Kurt’s eyebrows shoot up at Sebastian’s movie selection. “Come again?”

“You heard me,” Sebastian says, weeding his way into the room. “Though I kind of have you pegged for a Winter Soldier man. I figure the whole Sebastian Stan smoky eye thing really gets you going.” Sebastian drops his backpack on the floor by Quinn’s futon and starts making himself at home, toeing off his sneakers and tossing off his jacket. The top of Sebastian’s backpack unzipped and hanging open, Kurt tries to sneak a peek at what else might be in there, what instruments of torture. The movies are a prelude, right? A vanilla, false sense of security before the salvo begins? “So, should I make some popcorn or something?”

“Oh, uh … I don’t think Quinn has any …”

“No probs. I brought some.” Sebastian swings back around and grabs his bag, making Kurt, who’d been concentrating on it a little too hard, jump. “I’ll pop it in the microwave, no pun intended, put on a movie … oh, and we can play cards.”

“Cards!?”

“Yeah. I brought an UNO deck. You do know how to play UNO, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do, but …”

“Great!” Sebastian tosses the deck Kurt’s way, chuckling when Kurt flails to catch it. “Let the fun begin!”

Four hours they spend watching movies and playing UNO, but they don’t really carry on a conversation. Sebastian tries. He talks about what he’s been doing since high school, his major in college, the last vacation he took, the last movie he saw. And Kurt listens, but he doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t offer any insights into his own life thus far. Kurt is sort of stunned by this, by him. He’ll acknowledge that, whatever Sebastian believes is going on between them, he’s making a concerted effort to be friendly, but Kurt can’t seem to reciprocate. Then Sebastian says something about Blaine, and Kurt tunes him out the way he usually does at the mention of that name.

Kurt can’t seem to get comfortable with the idea of Sebastian being there, of Sebastian being nice to him, of him and Sebastian having anything in common, which they do. Ironically, they do. Kurt can’t help seeing this whole evening as the precursor to something else, some insidious plot.

He’s waiting for the anvil to drop, because there has to be one hanging overhead somewhere where Sebastian is involved.

The credits roll on District 9 and Sebastian yawns. He rolls his shoulders back, which realigns his spine (evidenced by the loud cracking in his back). He glances down at his phone sitting by his right knee and honestly looks surprised. “Wow! It’s after midnight. Who would have guessed, huh?”

“Yeah,” Kurt agrees, nodding like a bobble head on the dash of a moving car. “I thought Quinn would be back by now, but …”

Sebastian mirrors Kurt’s space-filler nod, but when Kurt doesn’t complete his sentence, Sebastian sighs. It’s a sigh that sounds like Sebastian expected something more, but he’s come to the realization that he’s not going to get it. “Well, it’s getting late. I think I’m going to head out, if that’s alright by you.”

Kurt watches Sebastian collect his stuff, bewildered at how this night is ending. Kurt should feel relieved, right? He expected the worst case scenario, but he has to admit, he got one of the best.

Why does he feel so disappointed?

Maybe because the great Sebastian Smythe didn’t live up to Kurt’s adolescent expectations. He didn’t show up spewing vitriol, but he didn’t ply Kurt with lame pick-up lines or try to force himself on him, either.

What did Kurt want from Sebastian anyway?

“Wait …” Kurt follows Sebastian off the futon. “That’s … that’s it?”

“Yeah,” Sebastian says, buttoning up his jacket. “Why? What were you expecting?”

“I … I don’t know,” Kurt lies, because he sure as hell had a few ideas, some that almost had him searching Quinn’s medicine cabinet, praying he’d stumble across a prescription bottle of valium. Right before Sebastian showed up, some of those ideas involved whips, handcuffs, and cell phone videos Kurt would be paying his entire life not to have uploaded to the Internet. “I didn’t expect you to be a tremendous nerd, for one.”

“Hey” - Sebastian throws his backpack strap over his shoulder - “I’m a geek. Not a nerd. Learn your terminology before you try to insult me. Though ...” He waves a hand in front of his nose “… that cologne you seem to spray on everything did that first. And you said I bathe in CW.”

“Hold---hold on a second. I don’t …”

Sebastian stops at the door with Kurt trailing behind. “Don’t what? Don’t want me to leave. Awww, shucks. I didn’t think you’d be such a softie.”

“No, no, it’s not that. It’s just that I thought …”

“Yeah?” Sebastian raises an eyebrow. A hesitation passes between them. It starts with the expression on Sebastian’s face that stops Kurt’s confession in its tracks, because the way Sebastian is looking at Kurt leads Kurt to believe that the next sentence out of his mouth may hurt Sebastian’s feelings.

“Well, I thought … you were … going to make me have sex with you or something.”

From the way Sebastian’s smile dips, then slides up again, but only in one corner, Kurt knows he was right about hurting Sebastian’s feelings. That smirk is Sebastian’s first line of defense. He’s constructing a wall, and like a master brick layer, he’s had plenty of practice. “You thought I was going to come to your room and perpetrate sexual assault?”

“No,” Kurt answers quickly, horrified with himself for how terrible it sounds because, yes, that’s kind of exactly what he pictured. “I just thought … well, you kind of have a reputation.”

Sebastian’s smirk carves itself deeper into his face. “How do you know my reputation? You didn’t even know I was here.”

“But, that whole thing in high school with Blaine, constantly trying to tear us apart and stuff ...”

“That was high school, and I was kind of an insecure jerk. I’m big enough to admit that. I thought that maybe, of all people, you’d get that.” Sebastian looks down at his shoes, his eyes burning holes in the toes. “Do you think I don’t know how much of a bastard I was to you in high school?” Sebastian runs a hand through his hair, sorting through his thoughts for a better apology. “Well, I do. And I had no idea how in the world I’d be able to make that up to you. I thought you’d never really forgive me.”

“I did forgive you,” Kurt says, but it sounds about as believable as the time he tried to convince everybody that he was straight.

“No, you didn’t,” Sebastian says. “Blaine did, but not you. But after I found out that you forgave that hulking behemoth Dave after everything he did to you, I thought you’d be able to forgive me, too. That maybe we could start at the beginning and become friends, leave the drama of high school behind.” Sebastian sighs. He shakes his head. “You have no idea how hard I’ve tried to get away from Dalton, those rumors, and … and everything.”

Kurt feels like dirt because he does know. He knows exactly what it’s like to try and leave something behind you just to have it show up at your front door when you least expect it. Try as he might to leave Lima and McKinley to the past, they always seem to find a way to drop in on him and scramble his life around, usually in the form of a person that he’d thought he’d never see again.

Santana.

Sue Sylvester.

And now Sebastian.

But where the first two he could do without, he’s finding that he should have given consideration to the third, especially compared to how Sebastian re-entered his life as opposed to the others.

Santana and Sue barged into Kurt’s world, declared residency, then went back to business as usual as if they had never left Ohio.

Sebastian, on the other hand, approached Kurt with a smile on his face and a compliment in his mouth. And yet Kurt accommodated the other two and remained suspicious of Sebastian. Why? Why did he do that?

“I’m sorry,” Kurt says. “I---I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“No,” Sebastian says, raising his eyes to look at Kurt, his face solemn, “you shouldn’t have. Because then you might have enjoyed yourself tonight. But I guess that’s why you were afraid of me, huh?”

“I wasn’t really afraid of you,” Kurt admits. “I just wrote that because I couldn’t think of anything else to write. And I never thought they’d be able to find you.”

“Fair enough. But let me ask you an honest question …”

Kurt braces himself for Sebastian to ask him if he wants to be his friend. Does he want to start at the beginning and get to know him? Because after that confession, his answer is yes. Absolutely.

But, in what’s becoming true Sebastian form, throwing Kurt a curve ball when he’s expecting a fast ball, that’s not what Sebastian asks.

“Do you want to have sex with me?”

Kurt sucks in a breath, but he doesn’t answer right away. Yes? No? How does he answer that question? Has he ever thought about it? Yes, he has. Would he ever act on it? Even for a one-night stand? Possibly. He’s not sure. He never thought he’d ever be confronted with the option, so he never thought it through well enough to come up with an answer.

The one he does come up with sucks ass, and not in a good way.

“I guess. I mean, I was kind of curious what all the fuss was about.”

Sebastian nods, tight jaw tightening more, and inside Kurt’s chest, his lungs freeze, trying its best to strangle him before he says anything else offensive. Because not until that moment does it dawn on Kurt that Sebastian’s question wasn’t meant as an offer. It was a test, Sebastian trying to find out which camp Kurt belongs in – the one with people who want to be his friends, or the one where people get with him on reputation alone.

And, thoughtlessly, Kurt failed that test.

“Ask a stupid question,” Sebastian mutters, opening the front door. “Goodbye, Kurt. I’ll see you around.” Sebastian walks through the door and shuts it behind him, leaving Kurt at a loss for words, especially since Kurt doesn’t go to Yale.

So no, Sebastian won’t be seeing him around.

[foamingkitty]

Weekend Getaway: Istanbul

Born and bred in London, Alara Hindle studied Islamic Art and Archaeology at Oxford, and was then sent to work in the magnificent Topkapi Palace in Turkey. Once there,  she met and fell in love with her husband, and has been living in Istanbul ever since! Two daughters (eight and three-years-old) and a beloved art space/shop/café for children (called LOLA) later, they are now contemplating moving back to the UK to set out on some new adventures as a family in the British countryside! Alana kindly offered to share her insider tips for Istanbul and I just got really excited to receive them. Istanbul just hopped up many notches on our list of places we want to visit. It sounds so wonderfully kid-friendly, cultural… and delicious! Here is Alara’s guide:

A family-friendly guide to Istanbul:

Istanbul is a bridge between East and West, literally and culturally. I have lived here for 17 years now and it pulls you in daily with all its contradictions, with its noises and smells, its traffic and the beautiful Bosphorus, its modern shopping malls and Ottoman mosques, its exciting nightlife and historical hamams. Since having children, it has also shown another face: the kindness people always show to little ones, their hospitality, the wonderful fresh food, the cultural and artistic options, the four seasons (from snow storms in January to scorching heat in August!). It is an easy short plane ride from most European cities, and a long weekend is enough to get the feel of this special place… Late Spring, when the weather is still mild, yet skies are sparkling blue and the Judas trees and magnolias blossom along the Bosphorus, is my favourite time, and there are fewer tourists around. Here are my tips:

DO:

For me, with a background in the History of Art, Istanbul offers some fabulous historical sites to visit with the kids, from Hagia Sophia to the Topkapi Palace, from the Blue Mosque to Rumeli Castle. Some of our favourites though are lesser-known, smaller places which are much more accessible for children and less overwhelming. Chora, an old Byzantine Greek Church, has some stunning frescoes and mosaics, and my little girls never cease to enjoy looking up at the gilded painted ceilings and making up stories about the golden characters around them! The Basilica Cistern, a big underground water reservoir built for the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, is just stunning, and the hauntingly romantic watery construction filled with marble columns has both children and adults alike mesmerized! Don’t forget to check out the Medusa’s head.

Istanbul also has some great museums. One of our favourites is definitely Istanbul Modern, situated in the cool area of Karakoy. Right on the Bosphorus and with stupendous views of the old city, it’s a perfect example of the juxtaposition of Modern and Ancient in Istanbul. With great programmes for children, a fantastic restaurant, and a brilliant ceiling of hanging books on the lower floor, we are regulars! Another of our haunts is Sakip Sabanci Museum, located in a less central area of the city, a neighbourhood where many expats and families with children live. This old ‘Yali’ surrounded by beautiful gardens, has hosted exhibitions from Picasso to Anish Kapoor, from Miro to Monet (check their site for information on current exhibitions).

Istanbul has some wonderful old districts which are fun to walk around with children. Cukurcuma is one of our favourites, with a host of galleries, small designer shops and antique stores, as well as cafes and bars. We love Ayse Orberk, a tastefully cluttered antique shop (as soon as you walk in you feel like you have walked into someone’s (very) elegant and tasteful home!), and Muz, which sells beautiful little terrariums and plants, woven wall hangings and other special little objects. Our favorite café here is Cuma, which has a fantastic menu to please all, as well as a little room with toys and books to entertain the kids! Balat is also a new and upcoming old area which is being fast gentrified… It is lovely to walk around its narrow streets and look at all the beautiful old buildings, as well as the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and High School (keep in mind this is also close to Chora). We love to have Turkish pizza or ‘Lahmacun’ at Forno, and coffee and cake at the fabulous Coffee Department.

With the Bosphorus playing such an essential part in the story of this beautiful city, a must do is to take some sort of boat tour along its shores. We love the little boat from Emirgan to Kanlica where we eat traditional Turkish yogurt sprinkled with lashings of sugar. As well as being the location of the above-mentioned Sabanci Museum, Emirgan also has a nice park, one of the larger ones in the city, with great play spaces for kids, as well as a fantastic pizza restaurant on the shore called Pizza Emirgan. It is also nice to take a small ferry from Bebek, another pretty little area with a small park, great restaurants and cafes, and some fantastic boutiques. (Mangerie is a lovely little restaurant with great food and a lovely view.  Midnight Express has a wonderful collection of designer clothes such as Masscob and Gul Hurgel, jewellery from Kismet and home wares from Santimetre Studio).

The Princes islands are also a lovely day out, just a ferry away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Buyukada is our favourite, a place I used to visit every summer as a kid! Children love the fact that there are no cars and you go everywhere by horse and carriage, and the calls of the ‘dondurmaci’ (ice cream man who moves around the island in the afternoons calling out to the local children). I would recommend a visit to the Splendid hotel for tea for the adults!

EAT:

Turkey is a wonderful place for fresh, healthy vegetable-based dishes, but also dishes that children love! From fresh fish to ‘Borek’ pastry dishes, from street ‘Simit’ (a sort of sesame bagel) in the afternoon to Manti (Turkish ravioli with yogurt) and Meze, there is far too much choice, and we seem to spend most of our time eating!!

Fish restaurants are a culture in themselves in Istanbul and there are many to choose from, but our favourites are Kiyi, and Rumeli Hisar Iskelesi. The latter is right on the shore of the Bosphorus and the children watch the boats sail by as they munch on their meze, salad and fresh grilled fish. It is always nice to have something sweet after your fish and we absolutely love Girandola ice cream shops! (You can find one close to each of these fish restaurants.).

Turkish/Anatolian modern fusion has become a fabulous new cuisine and there are some great options in Istanbul. The best (and completely un-child friendly, but maybe good for a date night!) is Mikla, owned by chef Mehmet Gurs. We also love Kantin in the bustling shopping neighbourhood of Nisantasi, and Amanda Bravo, situated close to Emirgan Park. Right next to Amanda is the newly opened Misk, a café-cum-flower shop with amazing blueberry pancakes, banana bread and avocado toast, when you want something a little bit less Turkish!

For a night out, Kilimanjaro is a great option. Set in the old Bomonti Beer Factory, and part of the Babylon Music group, it has a great menu, but also a good outdoor space for the kids to scooter around in. There are also concerts, mini markets and exhibitions happening regularly in this Babylon location, so check out their site for updated info.

SHOP:

The most famous and historical of Istanbul’s shopping options would have to be the Grand Bazaar (Kapali Carsi), an absolute treasure trove of goodies and an Aladdin’s cave for kids! Try to go early in the morning before the crowds, and pick up some fabulous Hamam towels, beautiful Ikat bowls and fabrics, and carpets coming out of your ears!

On the weekends we also sometimes love to pop into Minoa bookstore (between Besiktas and Nisantasi) and browse the beautiful books for both adults and kids, and then have a little coffee in their café. Simple Life in Bebek is great for beautiful home wares to take back as souvenirs, and Maezae in Karakoy is a quirky boutique with a bit of everything, and workshops too!

For children Kidslivingetc has just opened up a little boutique on the Asian side, selling all sorts of Scandinavian decoration pieces, toys and some great Turkish labels including Minimom and Figg Official.

STAY:

As I’ve already mentioned, in Istanbul it is nice to be close to the water! The Four Seasons at the Bosphorus is a good top-dollar hotel with all the amenities, and friends with kids have been happy here. But we also love the more boutique option of Sumahan on the Water with its grassy area in front of Bosphorus, perfect for kids to play on!

In the old city Soho House is spectacular, housed in a 19th century Palazzo, and close to many tourist attractions and nightlife. The Vault, part of the wonderful House Hotel group is in Karakoy, a great location to be based in, and close to Istanbul Modern, the tram, and once again, the Bosphorus!!

Hotel Momscierge is a great service in the city for families who come to visit, with babysitting options, equipment rental and tips on what to do and where to go. The Guide Istanbul is also a lovely and useful magazine and online source for all up-to-date information on what’s going on in Istanbul right now!

  Thank you so much, Alara, for sharing with us.  And thank you to Ceren Semerci for the beautiful photos.

The post Weekend Getaway: Istanbul appeared first on Babyccino Kids: Daily tips, Children's products, Craft ideas, Recipes & More.

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Weekend Getaway: Istanbul

Born and bred in London, Alara Hindle studied Islamic Art and Archaeology at Oxford, and was then sent to work in the magnificent Topkapi Palace in Turkey. Once there,  she met and fell in love with her husband, and has been living in Istanbul ever since! Two daughters (eight and three-years-old) and a beloved art space/shop/café for children (called LOLA) later, they are now contemplating moving back to the UK to set out on some new adventures as a family in the British countryside! Alana kindly offered to share her insider tips for Istanbul and I just got really excited to receive them. Istanbul just hopped up many notches on our list of places we want to visit. It sounds so wonderfully kid-friendly, cultural… and delicious! Here is Alara’s guide:

A family-friendly guide to Istanbul:

Istanbul is a bridge between East and West, literally and culturally. I have lived here for 17 years now and it pulls you in daily with all its contradictions, with its noises and smells, its traffic and the beautiful Bosphorus, its modern shopping malls and Ottoman mosques, its exciting nightlife and historical hamams. Since having children, it has also shown another face: the kindness people always show to little ones, their hospitality, the wonderful fresh food, the cultural and artistic options, the four seasons (from snow storms in January to scorching heat in August!). It is an easy short plane ride from most European cities, and a long weekend is enough to get the feel of this special place… Late Spring, when the weather is still mild, yet skies are sparkling blue and the Judas trees and magnolias blossom along the Bosphorus, is my favourite time, and there are fewer tourists around. Here are my tips:

DO:

For me, with a background in the History of Art, Istanbul offers some fabulous historical sites to visit with the kids, from Hagia Sophia to the Topkapi Palace, from the Blue Mosque to Rumeli Castle. Some of our favourites though are lesser-known, smaller places which are much more accessible for children and less overwhelming. Chora, an old Byzantine Greek Church, has some stunning frescoes and mosaics, and my little girls never cease to enjoy looking up at the gilded painted ceilings and making up stories about the golden characters around them! The Basilica Cistern, a big underground water reservoir built for the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, is just stunning, and the hauntingly romantic watery construction filled with marble columns has both children and adults alike mesmerized! Don’t forget to check out the Medusa’s head.

Istanbul also has some great museums. One of our favourites is definitely Istanbul Modern, situated in the cool area of Karakoy. Right on the Bosphorus and with stupendous views of the old city, it’s a perfect example of the juxtaposition of Modern and Ancient in Istanbul. With great programmes for children, a fantastic restaurant, and a brilliant ceiling of hanging books on the lower floor, we are regulars! Another of our haunts is Sakip Sabanci Museum, located in a less central area of the city, a neighbourhood where many expats and families with children live. This old ‘Yali’ surrounded by beautiful gardens, has hosted exhibitions from Picasso to Anish Kapoor, from Miro to Monet (check their site for information on current exhibitions).

Istanbul has some wonderful old districts which are fun to walk around with children. Cukurcuma is one of our favourites, with a host of galleries, small designer shops and antique stores, as well as cafes and bars. We love Ayse Orberk, a tastefully cluttered antique shop (as soon as you walk in you feel like you have walked into someone’s (very) elegant and tasteful home!), and Muz, which sells beautiful little terrariums and plants, woven wall hangings and other special little objects. Our favorite café here is Cuma, which has a fantastic menu to please all, as well as a little room with toys and books to entertain the kids! Balat is also a new and upcoming old area which is being fast gentrified… It is lovely to walk around its narrow streets and look at all the beautiful old buildings, as well as the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and High School (keep in mind this is also close to Chora). We love to have Turkish pizza or ‘Lahmacun’ at Forno, and coffee and cake at the fabulous Coffee Department.

With the Bosphorus playing such an essential part in the story of this beautiful city, a must do is to take some sort of boat tour along its shores. We love the little boat from Emirgan to Kanlica where we eat traditional Turkish yogurt sprinkled with lashings of sugar. As well as being the location of the above-mentioned Sabanci Museum, Emirgan also has a nice park, one of the larger ones in the city, with great play spaces for kids, as well as a fantastic pizza restaurant on the shore called Pizza Emirgan. It is also nice to take a small ferry from Bebek, another pretty little area with a small park, great restaurants and cafes, and some fantastic boutiques. (Mangerie is a lovely little restaurant with great food and a lovely view.  Midnight Express has a wonderful collection of designer clothes such as Masscob and Gul Hurgel, jewellery from Kismet and home wares from Santimetre Studio).

The Princes islands are also a lovely day out, just a ferry away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Buyukada is our favourite, a place I used to visit every summer as a kid! Children love the fact that there are no cars and you go everywhere by horse and carriage, and the calls of the ‘dondurmaci’ (ice cream man who moves around the island in the afternoons calling out to the local children). I would recommend a visit to the Splendid hotel for tea for the adults!

EAT:

Turkey is a wonderful place for fresh, healthy vegetable-based dishes, but also dishes that children love! From fresh fish to ‘Borek’ pastry dishes, from street ‘Simit’ (a sort of sesame bagel) in the afternoon to Manti (Turkish ravioli with yogurt) and Meze, there is far too much choice, and we seem to spend most of our time eating!!

Fish restaurants are a culture in themselves in Istanbul and there are many to choose from, but our favourites are Kiyi, and Rumeli Hisar Iskelesi. The latter is right on the shore of the Bosphorus and the children watch the boats sail by as they munch on their meze, salad and fresh grilled fish. It is always nice to have something sweet after your fish and we absolutely love Girandola ice cream shops! (You can find one close to each of these fish restaurants.).

Turkish/Anatolian modern fusion has become a fabulous new cuisine and there are some great options in Istanbul. The best (and completely un-child friendly, but maybe good for a date night!) is Mikla, owned by chef Mehmet Gurs. We also love Kantin in the bustling shopping neighbourhood of Nisantasi, and Amanda Bravo, situated close to Emirgan Park. Right next to Amanda is the newly opened Misk, a café-cum-flower shop with amazing blueberry pancakes, banana bread and avocado toast, when you want something a little bit less Turkish!

For a night out, Kilimanjaro is a great option. Set in the old Bomonti Beer Factory, and part of the Babylon Music group, it has a great menu, but also a good outdoor space for the kids to scooter around in. There are also concerts, mini markets and exhibitions happening regularly in this Babylon location, so check out their site for updated info.

SHOP:

The most famous and historical of Istanbul’s shopping options would have to be the Grand Bazaar (Kapali Carsi), an absolute treasure trove of goodies and an Aladdin’s cave for kids! Try to go early in the morning before the crowds, and pick up some fabulous Hamam towels, beautiful Ikat bowls and fabrics, and carpets coming out of your ears!

On the weekends we also sometimes love to pop into Minoa bookstore (between Besiktas and Nisantasi) and browse the beautiful books for both adults and kids, and then have a little coffee in their café. Simple Life in Bebek is great for beautiful home wares to take back as souvenirs, and Maezae in Karakoy is a quirky boutique with a bit of everything, and workshops too!

For children Kidslivingetc has just opened up a little boutique on the Asian side, selling all sorts of Scandinavian decoration pieces, toys and some great Turkish labels including Minimom and Figg Official.

STAY:

As I’ve already mentioned, in Istanbul it is nice to be close to the water! The Four Seasons at the Bosphorus is a good top-dollar hotel with all the amenities, and friends with kids have been happy here. But we also love the more boutique option of Sumahan on the Water with its grassy area in front of Bosphorus, perfect for kids to play on!

In the old city Soho House is spectacular, housed in a 19th century Palazzo, and close to many tourist attractions and nightlife. The Vault, part of the wonderful House Hotel group is in Karakoy, a great location to be based in, and close to Istanbul Modern, the tram, and once again, the Bosphorus!!

Hotel Momscierge is a great service in the city for families who come to visit, with babysitting options, equipment rental and tips on what to do and where to go. The Guide Istanbul is also a lovely and useful magazine and online source for all up-to-date information on what’s going on in Istanbul right now!

  Thank you so much, Alara, for sharing with us.  And thank you to Ceren Semerci for the beautiful photos.

The post Weekend Getaway: Istanbul appeared first on Babyccino Kids: Daily tips, Children's products, Craft ideas, Recipes & More.

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