#might be a good way to beat the stupid algorithm

[efingart]

Do people want to be tagged for the art and fics I post? I've had a few people ask to be tagged in fics. I guess if you want to be tagged in both just let me know by liking this post. 18+ only.

[storyshark2005]

snippet of the next chapter of ur carraville fic pleak 🥺👉👈

(ask and you shall receive 💕 Excerpt below: Saturday morning! Teh lads are in the car (what beats car talk!Carraville???) on the way to Scholes Gym. Bonus: SHAKIRA!🎶 )

“Shit—” Gary suddenly slips the clutch and the car lurches unhappily. “Sorry—” 

“You forget how to drive or something?!” Jamie jokes, shaking his head clear. 

“Just got distracted.” Gary coughs weakly, nodding in the direction of his phone. “Why don’t you put some music on.”

Music is good. Less chance of Jamie saying something nonsensical or stupid. 

“Okay right, what d’you fancy?” 

“I don’t care, whatever’s fine.” 

“Shakira?” Jamie jokes, and then searches for ‘Waka waka.’  The little tribal-y horns sound off, and the WA-KA! WA-KA chant. He sets Gary’s phone down in the cupholder and bobs his head in time. 

Gary snorts but Jamie can already see his fingers tapping the steering wheel in time with the bass drum. By the time the chorus comes around, they’re both laughing and singing the ‘waka, waka, eh! eh!’ bit out loud. The bits they can pronounce, anyways.

“What’s she saying?!” Gary asks. “The part right before she says, ‘This time for Africa’?”

“Not a clue, I make something up every time!” 

They crack up laughing, and Jamie gets a hand on Gary’s knee, which Gary can’t really do anything about on account he’s gotta have a hand on the wheel and one on the stick.

“Behave,” Gary murmurs, as if he disapproves. 

Jamie gives his knee a squeeze, right at the swell of his quad, and lets go. Whatever weirdness he’d felt earlier was quickly evaporating. Something to do, maybe, with the deft movement of Gary’s hand on the gear shift. Or the high morning sunlight filtering down through the tinted windows, casting him in a kind of overexposed splash of pink and sepia. Or the little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

The stupid sunglasses, too. He looked good in those.

The music changes, nudged via algorithm back to Gary’s usual mix of U2, James, Oasis, and Springsteen. Jamie looks out the window for a while, and lets his mind drift. Thinking again of last night, of the deep part of the night when Gary had let him in close. 

It’s strange, probably, to be excited about something like this with Gary, after the week he’s had. There’s probably something wrong with him. Twenty-five years with Nicola ended overnight, and he doesn’t even feel that bad about it. A couple of nights out on the ale with Micah, a little cry, and what was left to do? Call a lawyer? Was that really it? 

“Is this really the first Salford game I’ve brought you to?” Gary asks suddenly, pulling Jamie from his thoughts.

Jamie thinks. “Yeah, except for that Class of ‘92 friendly youse put on a few years back.”

Gary laughs, “You had an absolute howler that game.” 

“Yeah,” Jamie admits. “It was the keeper’s fault, though!” 

It wasn’t, really.

Gary makes one of those high-pitched, amused little hums in the back of his throat. “I hope you bought him a beer afterwards. He deserved it, after such a shambolic performance from his defender.”

Jamie groans at the memory. “Even Phil was laughing at me!”

“Thank God those days are over, eh?” Gary sighs. “Honestly. If I don’t kick a ball again the rest of my life, I’ll be alright with it.” 

“You sure?” Jamie asks, on impulse, like a knee jerk. “Thought you might try and score tonight.”

The car slows to stop at a red light. Gary doesn’t answer, and Jamie thinks maybe he’s pushed too far again. 

It’s terrifying. Thrilling. Overnight the whole of their dynamic has shifted. It’s still the same basic material, still Gary and Jamie; but it’s a bit like someone had pulled the carpet up, given it a big shake, and laid it down again, this time with new wrinkles, a slightly different shape to it. 

The light turns green, and Gary shifts smoothly into drive, engine rumbling with a rough, sporty little growl to it. He looks unfairly cool in his stupid sunglasses, driving his luxury car. 

They turn off the main road. Gary slows the car, and suddenly they’re pulling into a compact, shady little carpark in front of the gym. It’s not nearly as big or grand as Jamie had expected. There’s a bus stop out front, and an uninterested teenager wearing earbuds slouching against the clear plastic shelter. 

Gary pulls around to the back, parks up against the building next to a slick black Mercedes SUV, and cuts the engine.  His arms sag. He throws his sunglasses up on the dash and runs his hands down his face. 

“Fuck,” he says. “You know, my whole fuckin' life, I’ve—” 

He stops, cutting himself off, staring through the windshield like the barrel of a gun.

Jamie doesn’t say anything. He thinks he could ruin it with the wrong words. 

He wants to tell him to forget the gym, to find a hotel. He wants to climb over the console and tolerate the dig of the steering wheel in his lower back. He wants his full weight settled on Gary’s lap, and most of all he wants to rip the sunglasses away and have all of Gary’s attention, every little micrometre of those big brown eyes focused solely on Jamie. Gary’s attention is a rare, flighty thing; constantly being torn at, pulled in every direction, and at any given moment, usually only a fraction of it is on Jamie. 

Suddenly, desperately, Jamie wants all of it. Now.

[luna-moon-26-20]

Foxhole Force EXTRA SCENE!

(TW for mentions of past drugging. Nothing much though)

Episode 5.5: Is that even legal?

—————————————————————————————————-

Half way through their morning shift, Andrew walked past him in the hallway that held the locker rooms. He called Neil's attention with a quick look and mumbled the words as he passed him.

"Meet me at the command centre at midnight"

Neil watched his retreating back as he asked. "Why?"

But the blond didn't answer. Neil frowned and pushed his cart forward. Andrew was certainly a cryptic one.

The past week at the youth centre had been a surprisingly quiet one, meaning he hadn't had to run off to save the city in a bright spandex suit, so Coach had made him focus on his training. Was Andrew supposed to give him another lesson? Neil gulped at the thought.

By now he already knew Coach had never tasked Andrew with the fake fighting lesson, that drugging him for his secrets had been all Andrew's idea and he'd just fallen for it like a fool, but at least he could admit that, even if the lesson had been an excuse, he'd picked up some useful pointers on how to fight unmorphed. Neil thought it was too bad he hadn't gotten the chance to try out the moves Andrew had taught him, but then again it was also a good thing he hadn't found himself in a tough situation unmorphed. Maybe if he asked Andrew... Nah, he would never agree. He would have to settle with Renee's lessons, not that they weren't useful, but it would’ve been good to test his new skills on someone else.

Neil shrugged. Maybe Andrew had decided to give him a new lesson all on his own. Why else would he have said to meet him at midnight? He was probably trying to avoid the others getting on his case about it. The rest of the foxes were never too lenient on him to begin with, not that he seemed to care, but ever since the fake training lesson situation they'd been more than hostile with him, specially if they caught them together, something that was a little difficult to avoid given that they had the same job. Neil didn't really understand why everyone else was so protective of him, mainly Allison, Matt and Dan. It's not like getting drugged is the worst thing that's ever happened to him, but he guessed the others didn't know that so... yeah, maybe Andrew wanted to give him another fighting lesson and was just avoiding the inconvenience that was everyone else knowing about it.

So when the time came and midnight rolled around, Neil put on some sweats and a t-shirt telling Matt, who had been nodding off on the couch in front of the tv, that he was going for a run.

If he was going to spend the next hour or so sparring, then running at least gave him an excuse to come back sweaty if anyone happened to see him.

When he reached the floor below, turns out that was not what the blond had in mind at all.

"Going somewhere?" the blond asked, seeing as Neil had jogged down the stairs in an effort to warm up some. Andrew himself was dressed comfortably in a dark pair of sweats and a short sleeved gray t-shirt. If anything, he looked like he could go to sleep in those clothes as soon as they were done doing whatever they were supposed to do. Now that he thought about it, it was the first time he saw the other boy wearing something other than long sleeves. There was a pair of black armbands covering from his wrists to his elbows on either arm, but Neil refrained from asking about them, mainly because Andrew kept looking expectantly at him for an answer.

"Umm..."

"Sit down" Andrew ordered and motioned to the main desk of the command centre, the one Dan always used. The blond rolled another chair closer to him.

"This is Dan's computer" Neil stated, hoping for an explanation.

"I am aware" an explanation that he didn't get.

"So what are we doing?"

Andrew pinned him with an assessing look before focusing his attention on the screen. "Looking for your mother in a smarter way"

The sudden mention of his mother had him stunned enough to let slide the jab about his last plan being stupid. Instead of that, he simply accepted Andrew's reply and nodded, taking his eyes off the blond and fixing them on the screen as well.

"How exactly are we doing that?"

"What's your mother's name?" Neil was caught off guard once again and he forced himself to meet the blond's eyes when Andrew stared unimpressed at him again. "You can at least tell me that if I'm going to help you find her"

The redhead gulped. "It's not that. It's... she's had so many names I wouldn't know which one to give you"

Andrew's gaze didn't waver. "Have you had many names?"

Neil took a minute before answering, avoiding Andrew's question completely.

"Try Annaleigh Peterson" but when the blond didn't move, Neil let out a huff. "What? It's not your turn to ask"

"You haven't used yours"

"Which still means it's not your turn to ask"

They stared unflinchingly at each other for a few seconds before Neil sighed, rolled his eyes and turned back to the screen.

"So what are you gonna do?"

To his credit, Andrew went back to business as well. "Cross reference every name you can give me with hospitals or police reports. Dan's network has access to many databases"

As he talked, Andrew typed in the name Annaleigh Peterson and a series of algorithms appeared on screen. The search was officially ongoing.

"Is that even legal?" Neil asked.

"Do you care?" fair enough. Neil shrugged.

"Not really"

As expected, the search turned up empty. The few Annaleigh Peterson's that popped up just didn't match the mental picture he had of his mother.

"Give me another name"

And so Neil did.

"She wouldn't have gone to a hospital"

"Animal clinic?"

"Uh-uh"

"Let's try another name"

It went on like this for some time. Andrew asked a name, typed it in and they watched as every coincidence ended in a disappointing result.

"You see why I went looking for her on the streets? She would never go to a hospital, she'd stay away from the news and she wouldn't have gotten caught by the police"

"You make her sound like a ghost”

Neil sighed and leaned back on the chair. "That's what she taught me to be too"

Neil didn't see him, but he could almost picture the arched eyebrow Andrew most definitely sent his way. Neil thought he was being a bit dramatic too. But hey, it was past midnight and this was sensitive subject for him, so he cut himself some slack.

After another beat, Andrew spoke again. "I'm assuming we haven't tried her real name"

Neil's eyes widened marginally. "God, no. She would never..."

"Are you sure you're not telling me because I might find out who your father is through her?"

"What?" Neil's heart rate spiked at the words. "No, no. She just... she would never use that name. Ever. It's not that I... I mean, I told you I don't want you to—"

"Relax. I won't"

When Andrew went back to the search, Neil let out an inaudible breath and straightened himself on the chair. Andrew had promised he wouldn't ask about his father and though it was too soon to tell, so far the other boy had kept his word. No, Andrew wouldn't ask. Neil had to believe that.

"What are you doing now?" Neil asked, seeing as Andrew began typing again.

"Searching for Jane Does"

Neil stuttered on his next breath. "Why?"

"You've been assuming she's alive. What if she's not?"

"She's not dead"

"How would you know?"

"I..."

"It's worth a shot" Andrew said with an indifferent shrug, as if he hadn't just come up with the idea of his mother being dead at all. But Neil refused to believe it. He refused to believe that after all this time, after everything he'd done to find her, she would just be dead at the end of the road. Still, he found himself at the edge of his seat, leaning closer to the screen as Andrew went through all the Palmetto Police reports about a Jane Doe.

"Do you recognize any of them?"

Neil was nauseated enough he could only shake his head no.

"Well, this was productive" Andrew said with what Neil assumed was sarcasm but he couldn't be entirely sure. The blond closed every tab on the screen and opened a new one. "Time to try it your way"

"What do you mean?"

"You went door to door hoping to find people who could forge documents. I'm gonna find them through the police records, make a list and then we can see about paying them a visit. Quietly, not with the ruckus you made last time"

Neil's cheeks burnt hot with embarrassment but he stayed silent as Andrew worked on what was probably more illegal hacking. "How do you know how to do that?"

The blond didn't take his eyes off the screen as he answered. "I'm smart"

Neil couldn't really deny that but he decided to snort out of principle.

"There. That's as much as we can do from here tonight" he said after a while and Neil glanced at the time at the bottom of the screen to realize it was already 1:20 a.m.

"Right. We should probably go upstairs. We have work in the morning" Neil got up from the chair and stretched his stiff back until he heard a satisfying pop. "So when are we hitting these places?"

For some reason, Andrew glared at him as if he'd personally offended him with that question. Sometimes it was easy to forget that Andrew probably didn't like him very much and that he was helping him look for his mother out of a sense of obligation more than anything. It was easy to forget because the blond could go from drugging him and wanting to figure him out to ignoring him for days on end in the span of mere days. As always, dealing with Andrew Minyard was an unpredictable affair.

"I'll let you know" he said and Neil shrugged in acknowledgement before heading back upstairs. Andrew didn't inmediately follow but Neil didn't think much about that.

When he reached his apartment at the end of the hall, he crept silently back to his room. He didn't know when he'd go out again to search for his mother but, no matter when, at least there was something he could agree with Andrew on: he needed to go about it more quietly than before. He couldn't let his impatience and desperation get to him again or he risked leaving a trail behind him for his father's people to pick up. If doing that meant following Andrew's lead for a while, then it was a compromise he was willing to make.

He also refused to believe his mother was dead, there was just no way. His mother was strong and she was smart. She would have found a way to survive and she was probably out there looking for him right now. Yes. She must be. He was sure.

Neil sighed and got ready for bed. Whatever happened at least he knew he wasn't alone anymore and that was more than he had three weeks ago when he'd arrived to the city of Palmetto.

A warm hum spread on his chest all the way up to his mind and Neil smiled softly up at the ceiling. The Red Fox agreed with him.

He wasn't alone.

Not anymore.

——————————————————————————————————

So this ended up being a bit longer than anticipated but I thought you guys wouldn’t mind so... there.

I’m working on Episode 6 as we speak so hopefully I’ll post a preview soon 😇

[gabriel-agreste-has-no-rights]

Rating:  G

Summary:  It comes down to Viperion and a kazoo to save an akumatized XY. Hopefully Bob Roth will be the only one who gets hurt.  A Luka/XY fic

Word Count:  4154

Notes:  Written for @janaikam through the @mlbforblm charity drive!  The donations go directly to Color of Change, an organization for racial justice.  I highly recommend checking them out and reblogging/donating the mlbforblm posts if you’re able!  I have two fic request slots left as of 7/10/2020, and many other talented writers and artists are offering incentives as well!

XXX

“Lyre, I am Hawk—”

“Liar?”  XY scoffed.  His vision had gone all pinky-purple, which was weird.  Wasn’t anger supposed to be red?  Maybe all the tears in his eyes were blurring the color.  “I didn’t lie.  It was Dad who lied and said it was my idea to steal music again.  It wasn’t even my idea the first time!  He knows I never have any ideas!”

Hawksloth sighed in XY’s mind.  Weird.  XY didn’t know that telepathy could include sounds like that.  

“I meant lyre as in the instrument.”

“But it’s a pun on liar.  And that’s Viperion’s weapon, anyway.  It’s probably copyrighted or something.  Which I would know, because I don’t steal music anymore.”  

Luka had offered to collab with him.  And Dad had liked Kitty Section’s music before, so why did he throw such a fit when Luka and XY made something together now?  Dad had told him to go back to his algorithm-generated music, but that didn’t have half the sexy vibes of his new tracks.

“Fine,” Hawkbroth growled.  “Your name can be—”

“Ooh, ooh, let me pick!  I’ve got the perfect one!”

“Somehow I doubt that…”

“Synthpathetic!”

Hawkmoth’s voice went silent.  Was XY’s akuma name so amazing it had intimidated the supervillain?

“You know, because your stupid butterfly flew into my synth?”  He pressed down on the keys, which had gone all purple-black and bubbly, like toxic ooze. Ooh, that might make a good idea for a song…

“I’m beginning to regret this already,” Hawkmoth muttered.

“Hey, no take backs! At least not until I deck my dad.”  This day had already mega sucked, but he was gonna get something good out of it.

“And then you will bring me Ladybug and Chat Noir’s miraculouses.”

“Sure, sure, whatever. Think you’ll need a bit more jewelry than that to make up for your ugly wrestler costume though.” XY has never seen Hawkgoth in person, but the animation in the Larybug movie made him look stupid. Did Hawkflop’s teeth really look like that?  They’d given him nightmares.

“Ugly—! No, let’s just get this over with, and then I can drop this facade.” Hawkroth seemed to be talking to himself, but XY could still hear him. Awkward. “Synthpathetic! I give you the power to expose your enemies as the liars they are. In return I ask for—”

“Yeah, yeah, some tacky jewelry. You sure you don’t want Viperion’s bracelet? That thing’s way cooler and has a better power than, I dunno, making polka dot desk lamps.”

Somehow XY had the image of Hawkfrost’s eye twitching.

“I will show you tacky.”

Then the purple-black swallowed XY up, leaving only Synthpathetic in his place.

XXX

“Synthpathetic.  Hawkmoth must really hate you, huh,” Luka deadpanned while watching the Ladyblog stream on his phone. The screen showed a villain in a short gray coat and tall hair and… Luka pulled his eyes away from those tight golden shorts.  He refocused his attention on the keyboard that seemed to be growing out of the akuma’s forearm.  Wires connected the keyboard to a metal cuff over his bicep.  Was one of those objects where the akuma was hiding?  Or maybe it was in the sharp pink sunglasses.  Heck, it even could’ve been in the hot pink XY-themed boots.

Even if it weren’t for those gaudy pumps, Luka would’ve known it was XY.  No one else could pull off such a ridiculous outfit.

And of course, there was als the fact that Bob Roth had just gone on live television and “announced” that XY’s latest music was stolen.

Luka’s chest felt hollow.  He should’ve been there for XY.  It was Luka who’d told him to stand up to his dad, that XY should be able to express himself through whatever music he wanted.  Clearly, that had backfired.

“Yo, Bob Roth!  Does this sound stolen to you?”  Synthpathetic stared into the camera as he pressed a chord with his left hand, and music burst from the instrument attached to his arm.  The camera shook, and Alya’s hair whipped across the screen as she was blown across the street.

“Okay, so we have confirmation of this akuma’s target,” she announced, breathing heavily.  The camera refocused; she must have stood up.  “That’s weird, I’m feeling kind of—”

Suddenly her voice cut off.  And then she burst out singing.

“Rena Rouge is my hero name, I said it out loud!  Nino is my boyfriend and I love his Soundcloud!” 

That didn’t sound right.  Not that it wasn’t true—but why would Alya say that on her Ladyblog livestream, much less sing it?  Unless—

“Oh no,” Alya whispered.  The camera flipped around to show her face.  “I wish I could say that was a lie, but I’m committed to bringing you only the truth.  It seems like Synthpathetic’s power makes you sing something important to you.  Maybe even something secret.  Ladybug and Chat Noir aren’t yet on the scene—”

Luka clicked off the screen and jumped on his bike.  He just hoped he’d be able to make it downtown in time.

XXX

“Ladybug!”  Luka shouted, leaping off his bike.  It kept going and crashed into the side of the hotel.  He winced.  Hopefully Ladybug’s miracle cure would take care of that.  Not that the state of his bike was important compared to saving XY.

“Luka?”  She gasped before handspringing away from one of Synthpathetic’s musical blasts.  “What are you doing here?  I already told Alya to clear the area!”

Luka had biked past the Ladyblogger to quickly for her to stop him.  No one else had gotten past though, not that they’d want to.  He’d briefly noticed Bob Roth cowering against the side of a building, Nino standing guard over him.

In the street Synthpathetic had already ravaged, it was just him and Ladybug, and Chat Noir and the villain.  Chat was currently distracting him by waving his baton in a ¾ time signature.

“Not cool, man!  That doesn’t match my 4/4 beats at all!”  Sythnpathetic pouted, but Luka couldn’t focus on him yet.

“I need the snake miraculous,” he told Ladybug.

She yanked him around the corner of the hotel as a wave of music notes nearly struck them.

“If he hits you, you’ll be forced to give up your identity, just like Rena Rouge,” he continued quickly.  “You and Chat Noir can’t risk that.”

He didn’t bring up the other reason why he was here.  He wasn’t sure he could’ve put it into words, anyway.  He just… he needed to be here.

If only he could’ve Second Chanced and stopped himself from giving XY that stupid advice in the first place.

“I know.  That’s why I just got back from asking the Guardian for this.”  She pulled the bracelet out of her yo-yo.  “I was planning on giving it to Nino as soon as he took care of Bob Roth, but since you’re here—”

“Great.”  He slipped on the bracelet.  His kwami barely had the chance to materialize before he shouted, “Sass, scales slither!”

Ladybug gasped as the bright turquoise light washed over him.  He barely heard it over the sound of Synthpathetic’s beats.  Was Chat Noir doing okay?  Luka hadn’t heard him sing yet, at least.

“Did anyone see that?”  Ladybug’s brow furrowed beneath her mask.  “I think we’re hidden enough behind this corner, but if anyone saw you transform, you won’t be able to be a hero again.”

That hardly mattered.  Ladybug could always find someone else to wield the snake miraculous.  She’d planned to give it to Nino, anyway.  No, what mattered right now was making sure XY didn’t reveal the real heroes’ identities.

And making sure that XY would be okay when all this was over.

“Do you have your Lucky Charm yet?”  He asked.

She spun her yo-yo in the air, and a polka-dotted kazoo fell into her hands.  What she was going to do with that, Luka had no idea.  But that was why he was Viperion and not Ladybug.  His job was just to stay out of the way and buy the real heroes some time.

“Second Chance,” he whispered, tugging at the snake bracelet’s tongue.  

Five minutes.  Hopefully they wouldn’t need it.

XXX

They needed it.

Hawkmoth must have given XY extra agility on top of his magical music.  Synthpathetic backflipped through the air as he blasted out chord after chord, even some arpeggios and scale for good measure.  The melodies reminded Luka of the time they’d spent writing songs together in Luka’s room, humming back and forth.  XY would make up senseless lyrics that made them both laugh.  Luka would improv a harmony, while XY put each note in careful place.

They made a good team.  It was too bad they were fighting on opposite sides now.

Each time a wave of translucent music hit Ladybug or Chat Noir, Luka was forced to reset before they began to sing. He couldn’t risk learning the heroes’ identities, even if they would never know he knew.

Through it all, Ladybug never seemed to find a use for her kazoo.  She tried playing it, but Synthpathetic couldn’t hear over his own music.  She tried throwing it, but it just got stuck in Synthpathetic’s tall mass of hair.  She even strung it on her yo-yo, which made Chat Noir laugh and get hit with a musical blast.

She’ll come up with something.  She’s Ladybug.

“Why don’t you guys attack Bob Roth instead of me?  I’m way more sympathetic!”  XY whined for the eleventh time.  Sometimes Luka found XY’s nasally voice endearing, but right now it just made him grimace.

“I’m still surprised he knows what that word means,” Luka muttered before scooping up his lyre and scrambling to his feet.  The most recent blast of notes hadn’t hit him directly, but it had taken out of a corner of the hotel and knocked him back.  Dust made it hard to tell if Ladybug or Chat Noir had been hit.  But he’d already reset so many times; he didn’t want to waste any more chances than he had to, especially since every time he had to explain to Ladybug what tactics they’d already tried.

Every time, she insisted that he stay hidden.  He’d be too much of a target for the villain if he was in the open, she said.  And besides, what else could he do?  His weapon was a lyre.  Even a guitar would’ve been easier to attack villains with.

Not that he really wanted to attack XY.  Synthpathetic.  They weren’t the same—he had to remember that.  This blue-skinned villain wasn’t his friend.  Luka had come to help Ladybug knowing that he would have to fight him, so why did the thought of it turn his stomach?

“Don’t worry, XY.  We’ll save you… somehow.”

XXX

“We need a new strategy,” Ladybug said after Luka (for the twelfth time) explained what went wrong.  “The time we defeated Desperada, you used your lyre to distract her.  XY was a musician too, right?  Maybe that will work again.”

Luka swallowed.  “So you want him to know I’m here?”

“We don’t have anything to lose.  He’ll forget once you Second Chance if this doesn’t work.  Do you think you can do it?”

“I… yeah.  I can.”  He tried to sound more confident than he felt.

“Perfect.  Chat and I will hide on two of the hotel balconies, where we can drop on him when he’s not expecting it.  Here.”  She pressed the kazoo into his hand.  “I have a feeling this is supposed to be for you.”

“Um… alright.”  He pulled off one of his lyre’s strings, then used it to string the kazoo around his neck.  

She didn’t give him any more instructions other than “Good luck, Viperion.”  

With that, she swung towards Chat Noir and scooped him up in her arms.  The faint sound of their banter drifted in between Synthpathetic’s blasts.  Then they were gone, disappearing over the railing of a high balcony.

“What the—hey!  Why are you running?  You finally realize how scary I am?”  Synthpathetic shouted up from the street.  

“In that shade of pink and those shorts?  Terrifying,” Luka deadpanned while stepping out from behind the corner.

Synthpathetic’s pointed shades slipped off his nose as he gaped.  Beneath, his blue eyes were practically bulging out of his head.

Guess that’s not the akumatized object, Luka mused as the glasses cracked on the pavement.

“Viperion!”  Synthpathetic ran forward, clapping his hands together like he’d just won tickets to a concert.  “You’re like, my favorite superhero!  Can you sign my forehead?”

Luka’s jaw went slack.  This wasn’t part of his plan.  He was just supposed to distract Synthpathetic while Ladybug and Chat Noir dropped on the villain from above.  

“You know it’ll just wear off once we beat you, right?”

XY—Synthpathetic—pouted.  Geez, it was hard to remember this wasn’t his friend when his eyes looked like that.  “You’re just saying that because you don’t want to do it, aren’t you?  Of course you wouldn’t like me.  I’m still just a villain, even if I’m a sympathetic one.”

He crossed his arms, accidentally pressing a few keys on the synth plugged into his arm.  A soft minor chord blurred the air around his feet.

“Hey, I never said that,” Luka replied, but Synthpathetic just frowned.

“Did you know I always wanted to fight on your side?”

Luka blinked.  “No, I can’t say I did.”

“Yeah.  I never thought I’d meet you like this.”  He chuckled sadly before wincing and digging a finger in his ear.  “Hawksloth is yelling at me again.  He wants me to take your bracelet.  I think it looks better on you than me, though.”

Warmth coursed through Luka at the compliment, even if it shouldn’t have meant anything coming from someone wearing such eye-stabbing colors.  

“You’re still in there, aren’t you?  XY.”

“You—you know his name?”  His eyes sparkled.  “I mean—of course you do, he’s famous.  But no, I’m not him.  I just want to beat up his dad.”

You and me both, he wanted to say.  But siding with an akuma probably wasn’t the best strategy.

Distraction.  That was his only job.  Where were Ladybug and Chat Noir?  He scanned the side of the hotel, but didn’t see either of them.  Better keep Synthpathetic talking, then.

“What did he do to you—I mean, to XY?”

Synthpathetic groaned.  “Man, he was not cash money at all.  He hated XY and Kitty Section’s collab cause it was like, too awesome and gay or something, I don’t even know.  So anyway, he told everyone XY just stole the songs when he wrote them himself and—ngh!” 

Synthpathetic clutched his head.  “Hawkbroth—shut up!  I’m trying to talk to my idol here!”

Luka’s heart felt fuzzy in spite of himself.  He should take a note from Hawkmoth and start fighting too.  There was no telling how long Chat and Ladybug were going to take, and his miraculous only showed two minutes left.

Suddenly Synthpathetic straightened.  “Sorry, bro.  I hope this doesn't hurt.”

Luka twisted his bracelet right before the keyboard bashed into his head.

XXX

“Viperion!  You’re like, my favorite superhero!  Can you sign my forehead?” 

Luka couldn't help laughing.  Even hearing it for the second time, XY was just too cute.

Not XY.  Don’t get distracted this time.

“Sure.  I’ll just need to know where your akuma is in return.”

“Deal!  The dumb butterfly flew into—” He cried out and clutched his head again.  Guess Hawkmoth wouldn’t let Luka win that easy.

“You’re mean,” Synthpathetic said, but Luka wasn’t sure if he was talking to him or Hawkmoth.

Either way, Luka had to act on his distraction.  He lunged forward, crashing his lyre against the keyboard.  The resulting blast of music blew them both towards opposite sides of the street.

Luka gritted his teeth against the song building in his lungs, and he twisted his bracelet. 

XXX

“Viperion!  You’re like, my favorite superhero!  Can you sign my forehead? Wha—hey!” 

This time, Luka ran in swinging.  A lyre wasn’t as useful a weapon as a baton or yo-yo, but it could still hurt if it connected right.

Unfortunately, Luka didn’t know how to make it connect right.  He again wished he could replace his weapon with a guitar.  But as it was, Synthpathetic parried easily and leapt back.

“I wanted to fight with you, not against you!”

“Hawkmoth didn’t give you much of a choice, did he?”

Luka ran in again.  It was a stupid strategy for him—Chat Noir was the only one who could carelessly run into danger and get away with it.

But by now, he was mad.  XY was his friend.  Luka had never seen him get more upset than when Luka had eaten the last slice of pizza.  Bob Roth’s betrayal must have cut deep.  

Really, Luka would rather be fighting that sleazebag than this akuma, but XY wouldn’t come back until Synthpathetic was gone.

So he punched, and kicked, and ignored Synthpathetic’s pleas to leave him alone.

“Give him a left hook! No, a right elbow! Come on kid, who taught you how to fight, some little Tinkerbell?”

Luka glanced over his shoulder, where Bob Roth had shoved past Nino and Alya.

“Sorry, I tried to stop him!” Nino said.

“LIAR!” Synthpathetic shouted, sprinting at full speed towards the older man. 

Nino and Alya dove out of the way just in time for Synthpathetic’s fist to connect with Bob Roth’s jaw.  Luka winced appreciatively at the crack. 

“That was for insulting Viperion’s fighting.” 

Then Synthpathetic kicked Bob in the crotch. 

“And that was for calling XY a thief.”

Bob dropped to the ground with a high-pitched whine.

“You’re not going to play your music on him?” Alya asked. Her phone was out and filming again despite being a mere meter from the akuma. It wasn’t surprising that Ladybug had picked her to be Rena Rouge; she certainly had the guts for it.

“Nah.” Synthpathetic picked at something between his teeth, and the keyboard attached to his arm knocked against his chin.  “Wouldn’t do any good. He’d make up some kinda lie later, like he did to Lu before.”

Synthpathetic had a point there.  More importantly, though, he was still distracted enough for Luka to slice his lyre through the wires connecting the keyboard to his arm.

“Ow!”  Synthpathetic cried out as sparks flew from the wires.  Unfortunately though, no black butterfly flew out with it.  “Look, I really didn’t even want to fight you.  Hawkcrotch doesn’t care about your bracelet that much.  Plus, you’ve got a cute face.  Wouldn’t want to bruise it or anything.”

Luka blushed at that, but shook it off.  He didn’t have much time.  The responsible thing to do would be to Second Chance now, but the selfish part of him didn’t want to undo Bob Roth’s humiliation.

Plus, he finally caught sight of Chat Noir perched on the roof.

“You don’t have to hurt me, you know.”  Luka spread his arms wide.  “You could always just play your music.  If you like me so much, you’d want to know my deep, dark secrets, wouldn’t you?”

Synthpathetic’s grin showed all of his perfect white teeth.  “Great idea!  You’re hot and smart!”

Luka’s bracelet began to beep, but he didn’t flinch.  Ladybug, you better be ready…

Synthpathetic’s fingers flashed across the keys.  The chorus from Mr. Brightside boomed like a shot from a canon.  It took Luka in the chest, but he dug his heels into the concrete and remained standing as he skidded back.

The song built in his chest.  Chat Noir jumped from the roof.

Right before Luka was forced to sing, he shoved the kazoo in his mouth.

“What?  No fair!”  Synthpathetic whined as a rhythmic buzzing was the only sound from Luka.

The only sound out loud, anyway.  In his heart, Luka felt the words that Synthpathetic couldn’t hear.

“Cataclysm!”  Chat Noir shouted.  Synthpathetic barely had time to look up before the hero’s outstretched hand pressed down on the keyboard.

Everything happened at once.  Ladybug’s yo-yo caught Chat Noir by the ankle, stopping him from splatting into the pavement.  The synth disintegrated around XY’s arm, and violet light bubbled around him.  Ladybug lowered Chat to the ground before snapping up the dark butterfly.  Then, finally, she swung herself down the street.

She landed between Luka and XY and held out her hand.  Luka stared at it blankly for a moment before spitting out the kazoo and handing it over.

She grimaced as Chat Noir’s cheeks puffed with laughter.

“Ah, er, thanks… uh, Miraculous Ladybug!”

Pink light exploded in the sky.  Buildings repaired themselves; chunks of rubble disappeared.  Bob Roth was still lying on the ground, but Chat Noir hefted him up and deposited him on the hotel’s front steps.

That taken care of, Luka crouched down beside XY, who was rubbing his head.

“Ngh, what…?  Viperion!”  XY’s whole face lit up like Christmas.  “You’re like, my favorite superhero!  Can you sign my forehead?” 

Luka laughed.  “Of course, XY.  Do you have a pen on you?”

“You know my name!”  He beamed at Ladybug and Chat Noir, who was jogging back already.  He probably didn’t want to be around Bob any longer than he had to.  “Did you hear that?  My favorite superhero knows my name!”

“Seems like he’s got you taken care of then.”  Chat Noir winked at XY.  “What do you say, my Lady?  Should we leave them to it?”

“Don’t forget about your timer,” Ladybug told Luka.  “And meet me around the corner when you’re done.”

“Right.”  He nodded.  One minute left.  He could handle that, even if he wished he had more time.

Particularly now that he knew what truth had been buried so deep in his heart, only the akuma’s magic could release it.

XY giggled as Luka accepted his pink sharpie and signed Viperion in curling script across his forehead.  He left a second signature on his purple headband for good measure.

“I’m never washing my face again,” XY swooned.

“You know, clean faces get more kisses,” Luka replied seriously.

XY’s eyes widened.  “You—wait, would you actually—?”  

Luka smiled and pressed a kiss to XY’s cheek.

“Please don’t forget to wash that, too.”  

Then he saluted and dashed towards where Ladybug had disappeared.  As he ran, the synth-driven song still beat in his heart:

My real name’s Luka, that’s not new.  But did you know I’ve got a crush on you?

XXX

XY replayed the Ladyblog footage of Synthpathetic punching his dad.  Each crack was like music to his ears.  Maybe he could remix that into a new track.  

“I wonder if Ladybug’s magic dust fixed that.”

Luka snorted, strumming his guitar from where he sat on his bed.  It was a relaxing tune, one XY hadn’t heard before.  “I hope not.  He deserved it after he lied about you.”

XY smiled.  It was nice to have a friend on his side, for once.  Luka had been there to pick him up and take him back to the Liberty after Viperion had left.  Dad had tried to stop them from leaving together, but there wasn’t much he could do when XY sat on Luka’s bike handlebars, stuck his tongue out, and let Luka pedal them away.  It wasn’t quite as romantic as being carried by Viperion would’ve been, but it was a close second.

Luka’s quiet music faltered, his hands fumbling on the strings.  “Hey, XY…”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry I gave you that advice.  To stand up to you dad, I mean.  I should’ve known he’d just end up hurting you.”

XY shrugged.  “Honestly, man?  I’d do it all again.  I got to punch him and I got a kiss from Viperion.”  He touched his cheek, sighing dreamily.  That kiss had been after he was brought back to normal, so he could still remember it perfectly.

Of course, having replayed it seventy-eight times on the Ladyblog helped, too.

“I’m glad you’re happy, but… what are you going to do now?  Aren’t you worried about your career?”

“Nah.”  XY leaned his head back against the side of Luka’s bed and closed his eyes.  “I’ve made enough money to break off from Dad, even if I have to get a slummy apartment.  But I bet Viperion’s gonna fly me off into the sunset before I have to worry about that.”

Luka laughed.  “Viperion doesn’t fly, you know—”

“He would for me.”

“—and he doesn’t always have his miraculous.  Maybe he wants to come rescue you, but he can’t.”

XY frowned.  With the power of Second Chance, he doubted there was anything Viperion couldn’t do.

“Doesn’t matter,” XY decided.  “I’ll wait for him.  I know I’ll see him again.”

Luka’s melody picked up again, bringing another smile to XY’s face.  Could Viperion play the guitar that well?  XY daydreamed that he could.

Luka’s whisper blended with the music.

“I know you will, too.”

[script-a-world]

Clearly there are some settings which make no sense scientifically. But how do I decide when to intentionally ignore reality, can't bother to do research, don't understand research, and thus create scientifically impossible places? When are such things considered be offensive or overused cliche or have a reader point out the impossibility and can't get into the story? I'm guessing some of this might be structural issues instead of world building?

Tex: One of the perils of attempting to write about highly technical subjects is that you run into the issue of not understanding your writing. I do raise a nominal objection as your first sentence, because sensibility is a sliding scale based on one’s familiarity with a given subject. I don’t know crap about, say, textile art (however much I might have bluffed readers in the past - no, no, this is just good googling skills on my end), but that doesn’t mean the textile arts are an inherently incomprehensible subject.

Scientifically, automobiles were once thought to be insensible. Scientifically, phones were thought to be a flight of fancy. Scientifically, 3D printing was improbable. Scientifically, quantum computing was the stuff of sci-fi nerds who just wanted to slap the “quantum” label on everything.

And yet we are now on the verge of robotic vehicles, mostly functional smartwatches, laser printing cells (PDF), and quantum computers (VentureBeat, IBM).

So I would argue that the insensibility of a setting would be due mostly to, yes, a structural issue - on the part of the author. No matter what you put into your world, internal consistency is key; nothing, no matter how ostensibly outlandish, will make sense if you contradict yourself.

I’ll volley a few questions back to you:

“[...] when to intentionally ignore reality” - Are you ignoring reality entirely, or just parts of it? Why? How does that decision benefit your world? How does it detract from your world?

“Can’t bother to do research” - Is it because you are discouraged by the breadth of your comprehension of a subject, compared to the subject’s depth? Or is it because of something else?

“Don’t understand research” - Is this because you don’t understand the academic papers that turn up in your search results, or because you have a fundamental lack of or misunderstanding of the given subject? Or is it because of something else?

“When are such things considered to be offensive or overused cliche” - As someone who intentionally arranges their studying around the plausibilities of the future, I would quite frankly be delighted to see more conceptual stretches of the imagination in this regard, as do many others on this blog, and beyond it. Why have you already passed judgement on the offensiveness or clichéd-ness of incorporating scientific things? Is this related to your other comments?

“[...] or have a reader point out the impossibility and can’t get into the story?” - If you are writing to please a specific individual or demographic, you are inevitably always going to fall short, because it’s genuinely impossible to meet every single item on a group’s wishlist without devoting your life to it (not an entirely worthy pursuit, in my opinion, but alas). What made you decide to be so concerned over the potential reaction to your stories that you worry about it before the story is even written?

I think I will put the majority of my curiosity’s weight on the last bullet point, as I’m seeing similar themes with the other portions of your question. It’s a fruitless endeavour to tie yourself into knots over a possible (not necessarily probable!) reaction - and quite likely from a stranger, to boot. Education is a relatively easy situation to fix, so long as you’re patient with yourself; dealing with anxieties over readers is… not so easy.

I can really only recommend that you take a close look at the goals of your worldbuilding, and see where you contradict yourself - once you have that in hand, it’s a relatively simple yes/no process of what concepts you want to keep. If the issue of decision comes from a lack of understanding, then make a note to yourself to seek out either the million wikis we Pylons utilize ourselves like any other worldbuilder, or to chalk it up as a genuine lack of context.

Please understand that even someone who’s dedicated their life to a certain aspect of science won’t know everything about it - that’s the point of research! We’re constantly asking ourselves questions, and pushing the envelope of known boundaries. Star Wars has lightsabers, but we don’t need to know how they work; likewise with holodecks in Star Trek. So long as an audience is reasonably entertained with the least amount of head-scratching, you can get away with handwaving quite a lot.

Lockea: On a scale between Star Trek and Star Wars, how “hard” is your science fiction?

I mention that mostly to illustrate that science fiction exists on a continuum, wherein science fiction with more “science” than “fiction” drives a story towards the harder end rather than the softer end. Also, a story’s place on the continuum will change based on what we know and understand about science.

I feel like everyone always beats me to saying all the important stuff about questions, so I’ll just give a few thoughts from my personal experience as a science fiction fan with two engineering degrees and a thesis about robots on the moon (yes really, I wrote my thesis on AI for moon robots). I really, really, love the creativity of science fiction writers. I think so often in defending the genre, we can get caught up in saying things like “science fiction predicted XYZ!” Well, sure, I may have studied Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics in my introduction to engineering ethics course, but I was also greedily reading my way through “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins at the same time. The fact that I sincerely doubt Panem will ever happen didn’t dampen my enjoyment of Katniss’s story. It was a fun read and it gave my friends and I something to talk about that wasn’t “feasibility of Battlestar Galactica” during our daily lunches.

The thing about writing science fiction is that, without a doubt, there will be someone who knows more than you about a topic who reads your story. Most of the time, I end up being that someone since everyone likes to talk about Skynet and robots taking over the world to a roboticist who sincerely refers to artificial intelligence as artificial stupidity. Y'all are seriously overestimating the field, my friends. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” even as I thought how impossible Project Insight would be. Honestly, something every READER of science fiction needs to make peace with is the fact that writers will get something wrong. Writers, despite their best efforts, are not always going to understand that a facial recognition algorithm will fail if you introduce tiny amounts of random noise and are thus going to treat The Algorithm™ as infallible in your crime drama novel.

It’s not the writer’s fault, though.

That deserves to be on its own line. It is not YOUR fault if you get something wrong. Would it be nice if science literacy was just better all around? Of course! But it’s not your fault if your science literacy isn’t up to snuff enough to parse the article I cited above. It’s also not your job. Your job as the writer is to tell the most interesting story you can and to maintain your own internal rules and logic such that the reader never breaks the willing suspension of disbelief.

I watch Star Wars and get really into the light saber fight scenes and forget that light sabers are basically impossible to make. Star Wars has the Force, which is basically magic, and that’s okay. Really. I KNOW it’s not possible, but I still have a lot of fun watching it!

So yeah, write that story about how the robots are going to take over the world. I’ll probably enjoy reading it even as I laugh off my friends telling me that I will be the first to die in the robot apocalypse (of course I will -- I have five robots in my living room alone).

Constablewrites: Tone and consistency are the biggest pieces of this for me. If it’s the kind of story where the answer to “How does this work?” is usually a detailed and plausible explanation, then getting an answer later that is implausible or slapdash will stand out more. But if it’s the kind of story where the answer to “How does this work?” is “You push that button and it goes whoosh” from the start, my expectations adjust accordingly. (It’s possible to have the latter version in a story that is mostly the former, frequently when it’s played for last. Again, tone is key.)

So yeah, a lot of this is execution and the way the story sticks to the rules it sets for itself, and also how central the implausibility is to the story. A realistic thriller that relies on cartoon logic for a background bit might be a little jarring, but not nearly as much as a realistic thriller that relies on cartoon logic to set up its main showdown. The more central it is to the story, the more consistency and accuracy matters. Learning how to balance this can take some practice and some insight from beta readers.

[pippki-writes]

An Ill-Fitting Name: Snippet 15

NOTES:

Snippet 1; Snippets 2 & 3; Snippet 4; Snippet 5; Snippet 6; Snippet 7; Snippet 8; Snippet 9; Snippet 10; Snippet 11; Snippet 12; Snippet 13; Snippet 14

Word Count: ~2k

Faoust belongs to @thebiggestnerd - she writes him; Isaiah and everyone else here are mine.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%

A lot of things can happen in five short days. Like you find out your murder-friend-with-benefits got killed, and brought back by the god of Chaos on the condition that he had no memories of the love of his life. And maybe Chaos encourages your friend to pay more attention to you instead of the man he had loved. And maybe you go along with it—even though you know, right there in front of his actual love, that it’s so fucked up of you, that it won’t last, that it’s all just going to go horribly wrong. You fall into it anyway.

Hasn’t happened to you? Oh, just Isaiah then.

Isaiah still can’t explain to himself why, when Faoust asked, he agreed to try being something more for one another…first Isaiah agreed to come home with him, not to fool around more but to simply…spend time together? And then, what a day later? After spending the night, spending the day together, after a second fantastic tumble in as many days, just laying together spent in bed, there Faoust was saying insanely sappy things, about how Isaiah understood him, and how he liked being around him, and wondering about whether they were destined to be together? That sort of bullshit made Isaiah laugh. He doesn’t believe in destinies—no. A man controls his own fate, choices, actions. This was no destiny. Just Isaiah, who liked what they had already. Who didn’t want to ruin an already good thing. But who decided, finger pressed to Faoust’s lips to shush him from a string of “this is stupid”s, Faoust trying to backpedal his feelings while Isaiah simply needed time to think…who decided to go for it anyway.

It wasn’t a perfect five days. Saccharinity—a sweet kiss, a gentle touch of his face—made Isaiah feel uncomfortable—was not for him, not the dynamic he was used to sharing, not with Faoust. He had no desire to be exclusive either, the two of them, though he could sense the disappointment when Faoust agreed to it. That should have been a stronger clue how none of this was real. Before Chaos intervened, Faoust was living a quite comfortably open polyamorous life. Why would he suddenly want to forsake that for a monogamous life with Isaiah? Not that Isaiah would want such a thing anyway, even if he didn’t feel so uncomfortable with the idea of genuine commitment.

And then there were the appearances from Chaos itself, its terrifying hold over Faoust, fucking with his mind, inviting Isaiah to join it? Isaiah didn’t want to think about the horrible, too-toothed smile and the way it held Faoust. The way it smoothed over Faoust’s memories to free him from pain, to keep him from remembering.

Ah, and then the fifth night. When Isaiah had gotten attacked by Faoust’s true love, Dorien, over a bit of a misunderstanding (yes, ok, he can objectively admit how it might look to burst into a room and see Isaiah with a knife in his hand straddling Faoust, with Faoust covered in a mess of bloody cuts, but it was consensual), had gotten thrown against the wall and attacked over and over, Dorien screaming and slashing Isaiah’s arms. Faoust had had to save him from Dorien, had told him later he’d been scared Dorien was going to kill him. Someone caring whether he died? That was new.

And then, Isaiah hadn’t even bothered to ask how, he didn’t care, later that night, Faoust got his memories back. The hold Chaos had had over his mind had broken. He was back to the way he’d always been. Isaiah woke from a half-sleep with a start, remembers seeing Faoust peeking in awkwardly. Isaiah realized as he woke up that Faoust was at the door, rather than still in the bed with him.

“Hm? Where’d you run off to?”

“So,” said Faoust, “I have some good news and bad news.”

Isaiah knew. He knew by the tone of Faoust’s voice that this was it, that this—whatever it was—was over. “Ah, just say it.”

“I’m back. I got my memory back…all of it.”

“Is that the good news, the bad news, or both?”

“Little bit of both. Ah…” Faoust decided, after a pause, to just come out with it. “Chaos was manipulating my feelings for you. I don't..I don't feel any differently than I did before I died. I still care about you. A lot. But I was comfortable where we were.”

“Yeah, it…yeah.” Isaiah sighed. “Are you mad at me for going along with it anyway?”

Faoust smiled a little sadly. “Not at all.”

A bit more banter exchanged between the two of them. Isaiah claimed Faoust’s bed for the night, since he had very recently gotten a beat-down from the man Faoust would be eagerly waiting to run back to. They said the expected sort of things to say between people hoping to shift back to something they’d had before with as little damage as possible. Wouldn’t work out anyway. Better for both of us. Faoust seemed inclined to keep talking, as if to make up for this—whatever breaking off this was. But Isaiah didn’t want this pity, this strange compensation, this consolation prize of conversation knowing that Faoust was just waiting for Isaiah to seem ok so he could leave again. Isaiah finally chased Faoust off with a good-natured “stop bothering me, I’m sleeping,” rolling away from him and spreading himself out on his stomach across as much of the whole bed as he could, waiting for Faoust to leave.

Once Faoust was gone, Isaiah rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

Yes.

Best for both of them.

Isaiah isn’t meant for soft, kind things.

Murder and magic. That’s what he’s good for.

Now, Isaiah sits on his porch, legs kicked against the railing, thinking. His hands hold a stick and his knife, slowly worrying the bark away with the blade as he tries to make sense of his mind. It hadn’t even been love, they’d both said that, even when Faoust was completely under the control of Chaos, he’d never said he loved Isaiah. And even if he had, come on, Isaiah had been loved before.

But no. That wasn’t quite right, was it?

Vespar had been loved. And Elios before that, and Redrik before that, and so on down the line until you hit the bedrock of Isaiah, who had never been loved. Not by his mother. Not by his father. Not by anyone.

No one had loved him, and especially no one had ever known him, really him and all the things he did, and loved him. Not even come close. This thing with Faoust, it hadn’t been love. But it had been something that could have come close.

But no. It had all just been based on lies and manipulation. He knew that. He’d known it going in. So why does he feel so…hell. He doesn’t even know how to describe what he’s feeling.

Isaiah’s reverie is snapped by the sound of someone approaching. Any other time, a stranger crashing through the trees to his hidden home, calling out, “Isaiah James?” would have been great cause for concern. But here, today, right now, feeling things he isn’t even sure how to describe, the distraction is welcome. Isaiah stands warily, letting the stick fall, holding the knife ready in his hand.

The man stops at the edge of the clearing, holds up a hand to shade his eyes from the sun in spite of the cheap aviators on his face, to glance at Isaiah, check the phone in his hand, and back to Isaiah. He’s wearing a coat, though the day is a bit warm for it, and projects a solid confidence as he starts walking towards the porch.

“I’ve been looking for you, Isaiah James,” the man begins, “and hell have you been difficult to find. Would have figured you for dead, if I’d been able to find a body. But your mother—“

At this, the man freezes. Something in Isaiah snaps, this man speaking a name he shouldn’t know, mentioning his mother. He wants to hear no more, and without even needing to think about it he found his hand quickly tracing out the sigil in the air, the words across his lips, his will being imposed on another, binding the man in place. Isaiah closes the distance between the two of them, in the quiet of the trees, the traffic and the rest of the world distant and muffled by this little place where Isaiah has made a home.

“You should have found me dead,” Isaiah hisses, his thumb rubbing against the heel of his blade, using his magic to jerk the man down to his knees, wide-eyed and still frozen. “They sure as hell won’t find you.”

Isaiah draws the blade hard and deep across the man’s throat, one fierce quick motion, but stops before sending the body hurtling down into the earth where no one will find it. He grabs the phone, still clenched in the man’s hand, and holds it up to the man’s wide eyed face to unlock it.

The screen is on a missing persons poster, with side by side images—a sullen-looking 14-year-old boy with short, sandy curls, and the uncanny, unnerving imaginings of a computer algorithm of what that boy might look like now at 33. Still unsmiling, eyes hollow and dead. Have you seen him? asks the poster. Isaiah James.

Isaiah eyes the image critically. A facsimile of himself, hair too short, eyes (both of them, but hah, how could a computer guess he’d be missing one?) without any hint of mischief or trouble, an alternate Isaiah that could have been. Maybe, if Isaiah had been any kind of normal.

Isaiah swipes to the man’s messages to see what else he can find.

He has no intention of telling the bitch ahead of time, but Isaiah James has decided to come home. browser tabs, but it doesn’t look like the man told her where he thought Isaiah was. Not even where he was looking.

The man was a private investigator, apparently. Not from around here, by what Isaiah can glean from the details on his phone, and so, Isaiah thinks as he dips a finger in the man’s blood to start drawing a sigil, not likely to be missed soon. It’s so much easier to send someone hurtling into the earth right when he kills them, drawing upon the power of the bloodshed in the moment. Waiting requires this extra step. Manual, he thinks, rather than automatic. He considers keeping the phone, but no. He’s seen enough. A cell signal is a liability. He uses his magic to bury the phone far away, deep within the earth, and to send the man disappearing into the ground below, never to be found.

Back by the road, Isaiah finds a rental car. Tedious, he thinks, hotwiring the car and driving it off somewhere dark and without the pesky interference of video cameras. He can’t just leave the car near his home—that would inspire searches. Questions. Shit he doesn’t need. He drives it a few towns over, to give a different police force something to puzzle over, and slips back home through the shadows.

Perhaps, if he had been in a different sort of mood, Isaiah would shrug it off. To hell with his mother and whatever the hell she wants with him. It surely won’t be anything good. But right now, Isaiah feels…uncertain. Bothered by things he doesn’t know how to even identify. Needing something else to turn his mind to, to distract him from the confusion inside. He snaps his knife shut, sliding it in his pocket, and goes back in to grab his truck keys.

He wants to know. He needs to know. What the hell does she want?

He has no intention of telling the bitch ahead of time, but Isaiah James has decided to come home.

- NEXT SNIPPET -

[douchebagbrainwaves]

IF THIS WAS THEIR HYPOTHESIS, IT'S NOW BEEN VERIFIED EXPERIMENTALLY

Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, but he may be the best writer among Silicon Valley CEOs. Maybe an organization that helped lift its weight off a country could benefit from the resulting growth. But the more investors you have in a round, the founders almost always still have control of the company. So I think VC funds are seriously threatened by the super-angels by driving up valuations. Now when one thinks of what Microsoft does to users, all the verbs that come to mind begin with F. If widely used, auto-retrieval would only be practical for users on high-bandwidth connections, but there seems a decent chance it's true. Inc recently asked me who I thought were the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years. Same story in 2004. Because depending on the meaning of quickly, it could either be a bug or a new discovery. If investors are easily convinced, the startup funding business is now in what could, at least by comparison, be called turmoil.

American. Live by the channel, die by the channel: if you depend on an oligopoly, you sink into bad habits that are hard to overcome when you suddenly get competition. Whatever the cause, stupid comments tend to be run by programmers. The no man's land between angels and VCs is the amount of your company, if they merely failed to get those few big winners. How will this all play out? And if Battery Ventures hadn't turned down Facebook, Boston would be significantly bigger now on the startup radar screen. The basic idea behind office hours is that the customer doesn't want what he thinks he wants. Apple's competitors now know better. Work Day.

And although the super-angels make more investments per partner, they have less partner per investment. It's just not reasonable to expect startups to pick an optimal round size in advance, because that was where their peers were, and investors would appear too, because that means we're going to have novel consequences. One of the hardest parts of doing a startup is the percentage chance it's Google. But interesting, and finished fairly quickly. If someone had launched a new, spam-free mail service, users would have flocked to it. Next time you're in a moderately large city, drop by the main post office and watch the body language of the people working there. But we didn't propose that to save money. Companies spend millions to build office buildings for a single purpose: to be a good idea to have a stateless algorithm. And I was a Reddit user when the opposite happened there, and the best stuff prevails. I was living in New York when Giuliani introduced the reforms that made the broken windows theory famous, and the site rules discourage dramatic link titles. The country is shifting to the left or right in their morning-after analyses are like the financial reporters stuck writing stories day after day about the random fluctuations of the stock after using the first half of the stock market.

It just made me spend several minutes telling you how great they are. And not just for the obvious reason that more competition for deals means better terms. When we want to make a car better, we stick tail fins on it, or make the windows smaller, depending on the current fashion. I do actually typing. The huge volume of the spam, which has so far worked in the spammer's favor, would now work against him, like a branch snapping back in his face. You've made something you need to do. Pump out a million emails an hour, get a million hits an hour on your servers. But if you're looking for companies that will get bought. This one wouldn't. It's the principle of a market economy.

How do you decide who's the most interesting? One way to guess how far an idea extends is to ask yourself at what point you'd bet against it. They're obsessed with making things well. What does that mean for founders? There are just two or three articles on individual people's sites for every one I read on the site of a newspaper or magazine. Race you. Hence what I call the Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over unless you take specific measures to prevent it.

Initially it was supposed to be a harder problem than bad submissions. From the start they had a policy of censoring nothing except spam. So for now this is something startups are deciding individually. But I don't think that's a bias of mine. To me the most demoralizing aspect of the traditional office is that you're supposed to be there at certain times. Deadlocks weren't the only problem with fixed-size equity round with a lead makes sense, because there is usually just one big investor, who is unequivocally the lead. Nor is there anything new, and if you want to be the first to make something, it helps them be decisive. Google was indistinguishable from a nonprofit. If you start from successful startups, you find they'd often make good startups.

In any purely economic relationship you're free to do what you want and publish when you want. It's grown bigger and taken up more time than I expected, but I resent being told what to do next, but I'll probably think of something. Founders would start to move there without being paid, because that was where their peers were, and investors would appear too, because that was where the deals were. If a super-angel has some of the qualities of a VC. But when you examine that election, it tends to support the charisma theory more than contradict it. But as I thought more about this project, I realized it would probably have to be a spam url, so submitting every http request in every email would work fine nearly all the time. Pundits said Carter beat Ford because the country distrusted the Republicans after Watergate. If your work requires you to talk to other people in the Valley is watching them. Anyone can adopt Don't be evil. If a link is just an empty rant, editors will sometimes kill it even if it's on topic in the sense of being about hacking, because it's easier than satisfying them. The fact that super-angels.

And while the concept of insanely great already existed in the arts, it was a pain to fund with grants and donations. Though this election is usually given as an example of the power of TV, Kennedy apparently would not have won without fraud by party machines in Illinois and Texas. Because they're good guys and they're trying to help the world. Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry were so similar in that respect that they might have been brothers. It's not a charity, but they may not always be. If they accepted it, it wouldn't be read by anyone for months, and in the meantime I'd have to fight word-by-word to save it from being mangled by some twenty five year old copy editor. If widely used, auto-retrieval would only be practical for users on high-bandwidth connections, but there seems a decent chance it's true. Meaning that when the note converts into stock in a later round, or upon acquisition, the investors in that round will get. But because the imaginary machine was always running, I felt I always ought to be working.

[slothgiirl]

shadowplay part 12

It's dark by the time you arrive at the little cabin which is incredibly skewed towards glamping. There's trees flocking every side, and little fairy lights scattered around the porch. 

The sight is enough to make a romantic out of anyone. 

Miles wastes no time, running in, Zack on his heels, to throw himself into the first bedroom he likes, "I call the master!"

"Like hell your getting it," Zack yells, tackling Miles. 

"Should we tell them they're sharing a room," Breana asks, pouting as she takes a selfie in front of the doorway, tilting her head just right. 

Matt snorts, placing an arm around his girlfriend, and throwing the laziest peace sign up in her photos, "Let them have their fun." He smiles down at Breana with a fondness that speaks of years and years of being together. 

"I'm guessing you already know which room you want," you ask Breana whose clearly in charge here which doesn't surprise you at all. Alex doesn't own any pans at his flat and you highly doubt that Miles is any better. There's some hope that Zack isn't completely useless on his own, but then again, he's a single man in the music business. It's not a overly large hope. 

You knew enough rich men from work to know that they're usually helpless even if they're helpless in 10,000 pound suits. 

It evened out. 

"No," Breana says sweetly, having only eyes for Matt. "You take whichever room you want."

"I don't really care," you reply taking in the tastefully decorated living room. You run your hand over the sofa, noting the acrylic fabric, not yet matted down. Probably some Ikea adjacent sofa. It no longer cost an arm and a leg to have nice things, though the vintage technique would undoubtedly last longer. You'd been to many country estates, on last minitue alterations to know that. Hundred year old linens still in perfect forms. 

Estate sales were your best friend. 

"Well if you're sure," Breana replies, leveling her gaze with yours, "I'll take-," "We'll," Matts corrects. 

"We'll," Breana smiles, looking at Matt with the biggest smile on her face, "take the room with the patio."

"For the gram," you grin. 

"Gotta keep up with the algorithm." She'd already told you about her clothing brand, which was just another line of basics that you didn't really think anyone needed. Uniqlo was enough. And she'd shown you her instagram which was exactly what you imagined it too be, bright light californian influencer aesthetic, clearly influenced by minimalism which photographed very well. 

"Does that mean I should post more often than every couple of months," you tease, meeting Alex's heavy gaze, as he leans against a wall, boots still on. You could never wear shoes indoor, but you suppose it isn't your place so it doesn't matter. Your floral embroidered bag in his hand, along with his own bags. 

"Yes! We should work on your instagram while we're here," Breana offers, "there's so many cute pictures we could take."

Matt chuckles, "later."

"Later," she repeats, all heart eyed. 

You tilt your head, watching them. She was easily out of his league. And yet, here she was, actually in love with Matt, who you still couldn't puzzle out. If she was your girlfriend, you'd have pulled over at all her cute and dumb points of interest along the road. It was a road trip after all. A road trip with his girlfriend and friends, not just the lads. 

Alex tilts his head, motioning down the hallway. You can here Zack and Miles in some room fighting over what song to blast through the speakers, Miles upselling the virtues of some obscure 70s band. 

You follow Alex, half walking, half sliding along the wooden floor, artificial pine smell still in the air from when it had last been cleaned. The yeezy socks had been a gag gift from Sam for last christmas. "Isn't Arielle's wedding next month," you ask Alex, still thinking of the strung up fairy lights. 

"Why," he asks, opening the closed room. 

You switch the lights on, taking a second to play with the sliding switch. Definitely something you wanted when you finally bought a house. You'd finally made the appointment with a realtor for the week that you returned. You'd dragged your feet long enough. A thirty minute commute to work wasn't bad if you got a little garden out of it. A place to drink tea. 

"I was just thinking that she'd for sure have fairy lights. A pinterest wedding," you bit your lips, "you think pinterest sponsers influencers."

"How'd you figure she'd an influencer," Alex asks instead, putting the bags down and finally kicking his boots off as he sits down on the bed. 

You close the door, locking it for once because you didn't fancy Miles bursting in if you wanted to change. He was definitely shameless enough to not care, acting without thinking, without meaning any harm. "She had that effort effortless look," you shrug, "its basically a job to look that effortless."

Alex laughs, " 's true. But I don't really want to talk about her."

"Sorry."

"No," he says, leaning back on his hands, watching as you change into a pajama set. You'd have blushed if you hadn't changed in front of him loads of times before. Your mothers solution to body image issues, being a therapist and all, was to make you stand in front a a mirror and repeat 'I'm beautiful' before going to school every day. It had been stupid then, but clearly had worked. You didn't even mind the belly rolls you got when leaning over to pull your shorts on. "I just don't want to bother with the past anymore."

You nod, smiling over at him, "good to hear you move on."

Alex smiles back, red creeping up his cheeks. "I 'fink I've moved on a while ago actually. . .just crept up on me."

"That’s good," you tell him, looking down at the floor, wood like the rest of the cabin which was closer to a chateau. Rich people honestly. You try to shove down the hope ballooning in your chest at his words, as if you'd have any chance. His friends are here. And-you stop your train of thoughts right there, unwilling to go further like a coward. "Guess you can go out and be a proper rock star instead of being a sap at my flat."

"Oh," Alex grins with a smirk that's so fitting with his sleeked back hair and the 50s greaser aesthetic he was so fond of, "Don't lie, you like having me over."

"I like getting free take out," you counter with a grin of your own, laying down on the bed next to him. "And you do have great taste in music, but don't let it go to your head."

"Too late. My ego's the size of the hollywood sign."

You laugh, looking up at him. You really were glad you'd decided to come. "Is your horde of gel the mountain the signs on?"

"Never can win with you can I," Alex smiles, looking down at you, his eyes twinkling in the soft light, dark like a glass of top shelf scotch. Your heart fluttered in your chest, you couldn't maintain eye contact when he looked at you like that, your thoughts surging wildly, sending your pulse racing. It had been happening a lot more lately. 

You liked him. 

Too much. 

You couldn't help it. It was Alex. He was easy to like, easy to let into your life until you couldn't imagine your life without him there, smiling like a dork despite trying to look like John Travolta in Grease, carting a record player to your flat because music just wasn't the same without the scratches in old vinyl records. "Your words not mine." You swallow thickly. 

Alex strokes the side of your face gently, his touch setting your skin aflame, leaving you breathless. There's-there's no excuse. No friends to pretend for. No movie playing to cut the tension. You want desperately to pull away before your feelings are crushed. But you can't his gaze resting so earnestly on you, pinning you to the bed. 

"Can we talk," he finally utters, in that serious stilted way, as if Alex can only approach words from the side, never head on, never as comfortable as he was in writing. 

"Sure."

A knock on the door. 

Loud.

Harsh. 

Jolts you out of whatever trance you'd been in, letting you release a breath you didn't know you'd been holding, letting you look away from Alex. Zacks voice calls out from the hall, "we're going to order food!"

You force your voice to stay stead, unwilling to betray the rush of emotions coursing through you, blood rushing in your veins. Chest full of butterflies as you  answer, "don't tease me like that Zack, just let me know when the foods here." You should've used this as an out. But-it's Alex. That's the whole problem. You care for him, as a friend, as more. 

You'd never just leave him because you're feeling like being a coward. 

"Okay," Zack laughs, "just don't blame me if you hate everything we order."

"I'm sure the spiciest thing you've ever had was salt and pepper," you call back.

You listen to his steps disappear down the hall, eyes trained on the door. Heart beating like a sewing machine making it's way down the line of an inseam. You can't think, all flustered like this. 

Taking a deep breath, you turn to Alex. 

He takes your face in his hands, cupping your cheeks, his touch hot on your skin, his entire body leaning towards you the way sunflowers turn to face the sun, soaking in their rays. You're breathless. 

There's no wavier in his voice as Alex says, "I really like you. I think I might actually be in love with ya if I'm being honest. But right now, I just really wanna fuck you."

Cheeks burning red, you can't-your voice stops working. Brain short circuiting as you look at Alex. Desire pooling in your belly. You're a horny uni student all over again. Not trusting yourself to speak. His body hovering above yours, caging you against the bed. You want nothing more than to reach out and bring him flush against your body.

You don't trust yourself to speak.

When you don't respond, Alex, jaw clenching, adds, "if ya don't feel the same way just tell me tah fuck right off. But I can't-I can't lie next to yah and pretend it don't mean a thing to me."

"What a coincidence," you finally manage, smiling softly up at him, so close you could just reach up and kiss him, "I like you a lot as well." It's in the top ten dumbest things you've ever said in your life. And the most english thing, to keep a stiff upper lip when you're literally laying under the man you haven't been able to stop thinking about. 

"That's good," Alex notes, raising a brow. The little eager school boyish expression on his face making you giggle. 

He shuts you up promptly, smothering your laugh with a deep kiss, so unlike all the other times he's kissed you. None of the hovering and hesitance, none of the stiffness in your body, as you reach up, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and pressing his body against yours, savoring the feel of him. His toned muscles shifting as he shifts against you. 

It's hot and heavy, with a bruising intensity as Alex kisses you. You match him with the same passion, with all the pent up months of tension, of finally getting to show him how much you like him, how you've been thinking of him for weeks now. There's still sugar on his lips from the bubble tea you'd made him try, his tongue exploring your mouth as you moan into the kiss, fingers digging into his shoulders. 

Alex's chest against yours. 

His hand winding its way into your hair, keeping it out of your face as you kiss him. As you loose yourself in Alex. The entire world shrinking until it's just the two of you. And nothing else matters. His other hand running down your side. Fingertips brushing over the exposed skin above the waistband of your shorts, before shoving the fabric aside, his hand griping your side. 

You kiss his lips, pulling his bottom lip between your teeth, leaving you both gasping for air. Eyes glazed over, raging wildly with want. 

"I'm gonna fuck you love," Alex, whispers planting kisses down your neck, his fingers undoing the buttons of your shirt. "Show ya how crazy you've been driving me."

You nod, shakily, your gaze never leaving his, as your shirt falls back onto your shoulders, falls open.

Sam had been spot on, making you pack the nice parisian undergarments that had been at the back of your drawer abandoned. You'll have to buy her something really nice before you get back to the old smoke. 

Alex pulls his own shirt off. 

He shakes his head, smirking, "but you've got to say it love. Can't be the only one baring my soul here."

"You're baring more than your soul Alex," you tease, despite the hitch in your voice, revealing just how worked up you were feeling. But you indulge him, because you really want him. Your skin burning in anticipation of what comes next. "But right now I'm more interested in you fucking me."

Alex laughs, but there's no hiding the hoarseness in his voice. 

Then sits up on his legs, trailing kisses down your chest, down you belly as he works your shorts down your legs, you tilting your hips up so he can leave you bare, taking your nice lingere along with the shorts. It was a shame too. They really were nice, lacy and racy, worth the trouble of wearing. 

Your toes curl as Alex kisses the crook of your leg, your breath hitching as he prices open your legs, an easy move when you were all too willing to let him go down on you. 

Alex presses a kiss to the inside of your thigh, his hand grasping the skin, all the while his other hand, his fingers brushed over your clit, dipping into your folds, into the wetness. Your eyes fluttering shut, a whimper escaping from your lips. "I wanna hear you love," Alex whispers against your skin, mouth moving teasingly close to your center. "Let me hear you."

You can't stifle the cry as he runs his tongue through your folds, maddeningly slow, before sucking on your clit long enough for your brain to short circuit. He doesn't let up, flicking his tongue against you, your breathe short as you whimper at his ministrations. His fingers digging into your skin.

You clutch at the covers, bunching them up in your palms. 

Alex sucks at your clit, his hand brushing against your folds, before slipping a finger into your core, curling inside you. 

You're on fire, skin hot. Eyes squeezed shut as you're overwhelmed with sensations, Alex's mouth against your center, breath tickling the skin, driving you crazier. The same mouth you'd kissed only moments ago.  

He adds another finger, pumping his hand against your core, eliciting more whimpers and moans from your lips. The wetness in your core growing. The heat in your lower belly growing. 

You can't take it. "Alex," you whimper. Bitting your lower lip. There's no way you'll last longer than a couple of seconds. All edged out. 

"Come for me," he utters, as choked up as you feel, his fingers buried inside you as he shifts, pressing his lips against your collar bone, nipping the the skin. You let go, coming against his hand, and the feel of his skin against yours. 

You're consumed by bliss. Left gasping for breath. 

Boneless as Alex gets up, unbuttoning his tight dark jeans, but not before rifling through his wallet for a condom. 

You can't be bothered to pay him much attention. 

Knocks ring out against the door, loud and insistent. Knocks like light taps that don't stop, a fly in your ear. 

Miles. 

And sure enough, "foods here! Al and Als much better looking bird," he jokes stretching bird as long as the sounds will let him.   

You prop yourself up on an elbow, wreaking your brain for a response as Alex freezes, clad in a pair of boxers, condom in hand. Utterly useless. 

"Matt won't leave us any if we dally," Miles adds, laughter clear in his tone. 

"Actually," you try, not sounding nearly as disheveled as you feel, as you are, "I think the jet lags caught up to me."

"Oh is it like that is it," Miles calls back, voice full of glee, "well let me know if yah need me. Three is a part-eh after all," he crackles. 

You let out a breath in relief, glad to be left alone. Again. 

Really you should've just stayed in LA. Or London. 

You could've done this in either place, uninterrupted. 

"Just focus on me love," Alex cuts in, make short work of getting your shirt the rest of the way off, kissing the corner of your mouth, knowing how easily you could get lost in your thoughts, like him. 

All the easier to understand him. 

He unhooks your bra, hands massaging your tits, the brush of his fingers hardening the peaks of your breasts, as he pressed his lips hard against yours. You eagerly kissed him back, softer than before, still ridiculously satisfied from before, your hands loose as they curled around his neck, letting him shift you both, letting him settle his weight between your legs, finally full naked. His hips hard against yours. 

Your lips eager against his mouth, already yearning for another taste of him. Alex's hand threading through your hair, as he shifts, finding your core with his hard cock, entering you in one swift thrust. 

You cry out into his mouth, you hand gripping his back. Your fingers finding their way into his hair. Soft despite the amount of product. Had to be expensive. 

You hold him against you, loving finally having him the way you've refused to admit to yourself that you wanted. You've been wanting Alex for weeks now. All the parts of of. The man who got pissed drunk at a pub, the man who'd bring you take out and fold your blankets, the man who kissed you. 

He breaks the kiss, nuzzling his lips against the crook of your neck, inbetween moans, your name on his tongue, as he thrusts deeply into you, filling you up to the brim, as you clench around him. "Yah feel so good love," he groans, heady with passion. 

Alex's pace relentless, all pent up want, the frustration of spending nights curled up with you on settees and beds, never being able to do more than look. 

He fucks you, his teeth nipping the delicate skin at the base of your throat. 

You gasp for breath, moaning his name like a prayer on your lips, wondering how the bloody hell you had ended up here. How lucky you were to have ended up here. 

His hips against yours, his body flush against your's as his thrusts become erratic. 

Your fingers digging into the skin of his back, as he comes against you. You’re exhausted. Spent. A day traveling by plane. A drive that lasted the entire day, and now this. You-you're not sure where this leaves you, where you go from here. This isn't exactly a standard way of-this isn't friends to more or strangers hitting it off, but you don't care. You'll figure it out, along with Alex. 

Alex who slumps over on his side, lying next to you, looking completely fucked. 

"I ruined your hair," you smile, completely out of it yourself, unable to summon any bite. 

Alex laughs, unabashedly, his entire demeanor taking on a boyish air, "for once I don't give a damn." 

"Are you going to go get food," you ask, rolling over so you can rest your head on his chest. 

"Don't particularly want to move. Debating getting up for a smoke though."

"Cool," you reply, letting your lids slid shut, "I'm going to go to sleep then."

"I take it ya not hungry," Alex smirks. 

"There's always Mcdonald's. At 3 am." 

[bbq-hawks-wings]

Series Review Pt. 1/3

So, this isn’t even a YouTube video where you have the advantage of hearing a voice over a recording with snappy editing to lighten the mood or convey feeling; but believe me that there was a lot of earnest sincerity put into the review this time around.

But before I put the rest of it under the cut, there are some corrections/clarifications I want to put down about my last review that I believe we're significant shortcomings on my part. 

My first, and probably most MAJOR goof was my choice of words in trying to describe the scene with Hawks and Twice at the end of 263 - “ he clearly hasn’t killed Twice yet, and we don’t know why, but if he has to he’s prepared to do so without hesitation or remorse.”

BIG OOF. I hadn’t even been looking much at others’ opinions and the common-enough impression that Hawks doesn’t care about Twice at all/is incapable of empathy/ONLY concerned with his mission from the Commission. When I looked back at my own review, though I didn’t have any indication anyone believed I was one of those people (“without remorse” being the problematic phrase in question), I could easily see how others could get the impression and decided to wait until the next review to do a better job instead of just saying I would. My views on that particular scene will be clear later on, but at least that’s out of the way in case that was keeping people from reading this in the first place.

Second, I failed to arrange my observation points in a more ideal order. If anything, the fact that we were seeing that last page from Twice’s perspective should have been the first point. This mistake made it sound like a neutral assessment of the situation instead of an observation through the context of Jin's feelings. This ended up confusing even myself, as someone who usually writes these reviews solo, into forgetting to factor in that Twice's perspective may be warping the perception of Hawks guarding him into one of intent to kill while forgetting that the Hero Code forbids killing others unless it's truly a necessary last resort. For some reason, Sad Man's Parade and Twice's two-double limit also slipped my mind which brings me to the last point.

Third, I rushed things. When I rush, I make mistakes, sometimes pretty sloppy ones. It has been a ROUGH couple of weeks to be a Hawks or villain stan, even more so if you’re both, so for some reason I felt like I needed to get my thoughts out there quickly. I don’t have any kind of real incentive to do so other than a faster response - I don’t make any money off this, don’t have any relevance algorithm to feed as if I was on YouTube or Twitter, and I’m not the only half-decently known blog to hold these opinions so I don’t know what I was thinking. That’s my problem, but that doesn’t mean I have to make it anyone else’s.

For complete transparency, I’ve been reading and re-reading through the entire series canon again, starting with Hawks’ manga debut, and reviewing the entire series’ events and in-universe history, and have been taking literal whole pages of notes and drafts since Thursday the 12th. I’m glad I did because it brought to mind things that often get left out of pockets of fandom discussion who hyper-focus on their circles of interest while forgetting that each individual section is meant to work with the whole.

That’s what we’ll be working with today, and additional thanks goes to  @baezetsu and @dorito9708 for volunteering as proofreaders and editors to make this more focused and concise. If you’re interested please keep reading. A fair warning, this is what we in the professional field call a “long-ass post, no seriously guys grab a drink and a snack we’re gonna be here a while.” It's actually so long I have to split it up into parts because Tumblr Mobile is stupid and doesn't like making the "read more" function available to the mobile version.

So here we go, people, let’s try this again one last time…

Where we’re at in Chapter 264 (or at least, you know, ignoring literally everyone in the series that isn’t these two) is Twice and Hawks’ confrontation in the study room; but let’s put a pin in that for now and come back.

The biggest piece of information to keep in mind is that even though both these characters are currently front-and-center and have major plot and symbolic value in the series, they are still not the main characters. Their conflict is also not the central conflict. Let’s zoom out to the big picture and see what happens when we put everything together at the end.

The whole inciting incident of the series is when humanity began to display superhuman abilities in a few random individuals. These abilities are neither inherently good or bad - they are constantly intended as neutral with the potential being dependent on the user. Eventually these abilities began to be collectively termed as “quirks” - literally just a single facet of each person’s unique identity. From a social commentary standpoint, quirks have been used as a narrative stand-in for the unique situational circumstances or combinations of circumstances individuals may find themselves with that are either mostly or completely outside of their control like aptitude, physical ability, race/appearance, mental state, and inherited societal station. While more of these examples have been explicitly stated and inserted into the story later on, quirks still serve as the main catalyst and lens by which these topics are discussed.

Because of the initially new and unfamiliar nature of these abilities, people who possessed them faced descrimination and persecution despite having no say in whether or not they had them; and some who did possess these abilities began abusing their power. Taking advantage of this, a man calling himself One-for-All took unwanted quirks from people and redistributed them claiming to want to help others and bring about peace but merely wished to amass power and a following for his own gain. Morally upright individuals eventually rose to the occasion and placed themselves between innocent bystanders and evildoers, earning no official reward or compensation for their work, though eventually they became so effective that they became recognized and endorsed if they went through proper governmental training and channels. These endorsed specialty crime fighters came to be dubbed “heroes.”

All-For-One had risen to prominence by this point and his loyal following actively supported him in his now blatant criminal empire despite the morally reprehensible actions he committed which incessantly terrorized innocent bystanders - earning him the title Symbol of Evil or Symbol of Fear. Eventually a hero named All Might rose up to specifically deal with All-For-One’s reign of terror, having worked his way up from obscurity taking down criminals and saving civilians in unprecedented numbers, determined to create a world where everyone could feel safe in the face of danger. Though only succeeding in beating AFO into hiding All Might ushered in a new era of safety and prosperity earning him the title Symbol of Peace.

Therein lies the central message - “It’s not the situation you’re given that determines your worth or potential but what you choose to do with it” - and the main conflict is - “I want to use what I’ve been given for my own benefit" vs "I want to use what I’ve been given for others.” Deku and Shiguraki are merely the next generation iteration of this conflict distilled down to their simplest essence. Deku's desire is to save anyone who needs help the moment he realizes they need it. Shiguraki wants to remove people's sense of security regardless of their character or situation. 

This conflict is initially framed as simple - a clear black and white/good and bad dynamic that’s easy to see from a distance; but as characters and groups developed over time it’s become more and more difficult to tell the two sides apart. It was not a coincidence that immediately after introducing the clear-as-day bad guys to the series we were presented with the idea that who we perceived to be “good guys” could be bad people doing good things or that people could do good things for the wrong reasons when we were presented with the personal conflicts that Bakugo, Shinsou, and Todoroki all faced at the Sports Festival that were either their internal struggles with the way the were perceived by others or were their personal struggles with the way they perceived themselves. Immediately after that, we were introduced to Stain's criticism of modern heroes and shown who would come to be the core members of the League of Villains.

At the current events in the series we’ve waded through so many shades of grey we’re expected to determine who’s a “hero” and “villain” not by what they say but what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. The individual members of the League of Villains touch on various ways a person might be driven to a life dedicated either to the pursuit of personal satisfaction with no concern to others or to the active pursuit of destroying others, and generally the villains are some of the most morally gray characters we have in the series, though not all of them - the two most notable morally gray “good guys” are Hawks and Endeavor.

There’s one last thing to note about how the series chooses to distinguish morally gray characters as “good” and “bad,” and that ultimately boils down to the choices they make with the hand they are dealt - that being to help or to harm others. This is not quite the same thing as a “hero” and a “villian” (I know, as if it wasn’t confusing enough), but the series has now gone to great lengths to make a clear distinction between the ideals of heroism and the institution of heroism.

Looking at the difference in institutions and ideals as the series presents them we get a better picture of the actual core issues the series seeks to address. The institution of heroism is a utilitarian approach to maintaining a sense of order and safety, and it does so by incentivising people to resolve as many public altercations as possible in exchange for wealth and fame. Criminals are those who break the law regardless of the motivation for the crime or its degree of impact. The institution does not take into account factors that may drive someone to commit a crime nor is it concerned with the core motivations of those enforcing the sense of order.

On the opposite hand, the ideal of heroism offers no reward, no recognition, may require some amount of suffering on the part of the hero, and never guarantees that the victim in question will be saved. Conversely, villainy/evil is any action taken for one's own gain with zero regard to the impact on others and/or is any action committed with malicious intent. These definitions are about moral obligation and human to human connection.

While having a strong correlation (helping others because it's right usually helps the majority in the long run, and doing harm is often ultimately bad for the majority) these two schools of thought are able to function independently of each other. In other words, a criminal can be a good person fallen on hard times (like stealing food to feed their family, but only as much as they need from someone who won’t notice it missing) while a “professional hero” can be an evil person doing good things for the wrong reasons (like obsessing over gaining wealth and popularity with no mind to collateral damage they may cause). Most characters are categorized and even described in-universe as morally aligning with the institution they associate with; but several have been explicitly noted as exceptions to the rule such as Gentle Criminal and La Brava, Endeavor, and Twice. 

Are we properly confused yet? Great, because there’s one more layer to consider! What do we make of someone who is trying to do a good thing (like saving as many people as possible from a known threat) but to do so has to make a choice that might leave a few people in the fire? Which outcome do we use to decide if this is a good person or a bad one? Do we judge based on intent or on the outcome?

Now we zoom back in to Hawks and Twice, but we’ll pick that up in Part Two.

Part Three

[holylulusworld]

More than a little girl – Part 3

Summary: After helping Max escaping Manticore once again you must find a way to live a free life. You find yourself thrown into a world you don’t know. It’s not very helpful that Alec insists on staying by your side. The last guy you want close by.

Pairing: Alec x Reader

Warnings: angst, angry Alec, feelings?, tension, jealous reader, virgin reader, insecure reader

More than a little girl Masterlist

 After helping you getting comfortable onto the mattress Alec is handling you your sandwich. Chewing the delicious food paid by Logan you watch your ‘boss’ checking on your hurt foot.

“I got a job.” He states proudly.

“Really?”

“Max mentioned a free job as a bicycle messenger. And I got it for us.”

“Us?”

“You can’t work with your hurt foot. I’ll buy everything we need. Okay.”

“But I want to help too, Alec.”

“Not right now. You will stay here, and I’ll work. Your foot is still hurt. I got some painkillers and stuff for you. Look. Logan got it for you.”

“He’s nice.”

“I’m nice too,” Alec mutters.

“I mean he doesn’t know us and is nice. You are my friend…right?”

“Right. Your friend. When you finished eating you should rest a bit. From next week on I won’t steal anything any longer.”

“Okay.”

“Good. Now rest a bit, Y/N.”

----

Sleeping peacefully, you can’t feel Alec spooning you to sniff at your hair. Gently stroking your arm, he plants a soft kiss to your neck.

“I manipulated the algorithm to be close to you. Even if it was only for a short amount of time. You were different. A loner like me. That’s the reason I like you.” He whispers in your ear.

Holding you in his arms he can feel his heart beating faster when you turn around in your sleep to rest your head onto his chest.

----

“How was your first day?” You ask.

“Annoying. So many people. I’m glad it’s only the two of us here.”

“Am I annoying you too? I can go back to Max if you want me to. I don’t want to be a burden.” You whisper.

“No. You won’t go to Maxie. She can’t protect you. I’m the boss and I say you will stay here with me.”

“You’re the boss…” Sadly casting your look down you try to not cry. He treats you like a stupid child.

“Why are you crying?”

“I’m not. Go to the girl you met last week. I will meet up with Max today. Cindy invited us to a party.” You say.

“Girl? I don’t know what you are talking about.” Alec lies.

“You’ve got a hickey and her lipstick was at your clothes. You don’t need to protect me. I’m not a child or your breeding partner. You found a new one. Can I go now?”

“I won’t let you meet up with Max or that Cindy chick.”

“But you can meet other people?”

“Listen…a man has needs.”

“I know. I’m not stupid. I might not have sex, but I know biology.” You say playing with the seam of your shirt.

“You never?”

Shaking your head, you flush red. “No one wanted to be my breeding partner. I was too small and too shy. You didn’t want me either. You must know why…It’s okay…”

Swallowing hard Alec eyes, you up and down. Rummaging in your bags you look for something to wear for the party.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for something to wear for Cindy’s party. If you can have fun I can go to the party too. Max will be there and Cindy too. You can meet the girl and I might meet a nice man.” You say.

“Nice man? No! You are my breeding partner. You can’t just meet another man!”

“I can and I will! No more bossing me around. You do what you want all the time. I found a job and I will move out. Max will help me.”

“Job?”

“Logan needs help with his system for Eyes Only. He knows I’m good with computers, so he offered me a job. Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.”

“You won’t leave!” Alec yells now towering over you. His eyes are at least three shades darker and you walk backward till you feel your back hitting the wall.

“But you can be free. You don’t even like me.” You pout raising your chin.

“I said you will stay here. I bought some old DVD’s. I have food too.”

“Don’t you want to spend time with your girlfriend?”

“She’s not my girlfriend. Only fun…you know…”

“Fun? Oh, you mean for sex?”

“You really got no clue…huh?”

“I was never outside of Manticore. I don’t know how to do anything than train or work with a computer. I’m not good at all this stuff. That’s the reason I want to go with Max. She knows how a girl needs to behave in this world. How to dress and talk. How to talk to men.” You say.

“You don’t need to talk to men. I won’t allow it.”

“Why? I want what Max and Logan have.” You sniff.

“Goddammit! As I say so.” Flinching you start crying.

“Don’t cry. I didn’t mean to yell. I’m sorry. I just need to know you are safe.”

Wiping away the tears you sit down onto the bed to put your clothes back into the bag.

“What are you doing?” Alec asks when you lie down onto the mattress turning around to sleep.

“Sleep.”

“We can watch a movie or play cards.”

“Go and have fun with that girl. I just stay here then.”

“But…I bought the DVD’s…”

“You don’t want to spend time with me. Just go and have fun.”

“I didn’t mean to yell. How about we both go to the party?”

“No. I don’t want to go anymore. Just have fun and leave me alone.” You sniff.

“Are you jealous?” Alec asks sitting down next to you.

“Why should I be jealous? You are not my boyfriend.”

“Hmm…you look like you are jealous, Shorty.”

“Don’t call me like that.”

“But you are small and kinda cute.”

“I don’t want to be small or cute. I want to be sexy like Max or Cindy. Why can’t I look like them?” Sobbing you turn around to cry into your pillow.

“Hey, cute is not a four-letter word. Cute is…cute…sweet…ya know.”

“Cute is for babies or kitten’s not for a woman.”

“Hmm…didn’t know that. Got no clue how to describe you.”

“Small, weak and boring. That’s how the others would describe me. Max is nice to me, Cindy and Logan too. Even Joshua.”

“I’m nice too.”

“…”

“Y/N? Am I not nice?”

Shrugging you don’t look at the always cocky X5. Looking at you he can see the tears rolling down your cheeks.

“Why don’t you go to the party? Maybe you meet another sexy girl for…sex.”

“Nah. I got that annoying roommate I have to take care of. Stop crying and we can eat. Then we will watch a DVD.” Sitting back up you look at the DVD’s lying on the table.

“Which DVD’s did you buy?”

“Uh…wait. Let’s see…”

“That one looks nice.”

“Eek…a love story,” Alec mutters.

“Why did you buy it then?”

“Honestly I stole them, okay. I grabbed a bunch and ran away.”

Giggling you look at the movies…all of them are love stories.

“You stole only romantic stuff.”

“That’s not funny!”

“Why not? The tough X5 has a weak spot for romantic movies.” Giggling again you squeal when Alec pushes you down onto the mattress. Tickling your sides, he chuckles when you start squirming underneath the much taller man.

“Stop. I give up…no more.” You whine but he keeps on bugging you. When he slows down his movement he nuzzles his nose in the crook of your neck. A tingling makes your body buzz when his lips press a soft kiss to your pulse point.

Nervously playing with the seam of your shirt you let him travel further toward your cheek and then his lips are suddenly on yours. Eyes widen you feel him deepening the kiss his tongue invades your mouth and then you hear his phone ring.

Ignoring the loud ringing he cups your face with his hands. Feeling something poking your thigh you moan into his mouth.

“Mine. You are my breeding partner. No one else touches you…”

Alec Taglist

@thefaithfulwriter, @sister-winchesters99, @seppys-return-to-madness

[madamslayyy]

Okay? Okay. (Erik Killmonger x Reader)

Pairing: Erik Killmonger x Reader

A/N: Dark-ish fic about Erik. Not Softboi!Erik whatsoever!! Could be triggering to some readers! Manipulation and verbal abuse is kinda heavy! Another fic for my Fic Fest! Gif Cred. to @wifin-niggaz

“What can you do about it? Not a damn thing,” Erik chuckled darkly and that was the moment you knew he was right.

You and Erik were... something. At least to you. But that something was never defined and it felt as if you were trapped in a perpetual state of Hot and Cold with Erik’s affection. There were times he would act as if he couldn’t live without you, as if your touch was the only thing grounding him. While at other times it was almost as if he hated you, as if he thought so lowly of you, he couldn’t even stand to look at you.

You knew, deep down you always knew he was out of your league. You also knew you weren’t enough for him. You knew that he wandered, slept with other girls, entertained females constantly. And you tried to pretend you didn’t care, that it didn’t absolutely eat you alive how he would undress bad chicks with his eyes right in front of you before glancing back at you and smirking at your hurt expression.

Erik could care less about how you felt and he made that quite evident to you. But that wasn’t the only side of him you saw. He could be thoughtful, sweet, passionate, and even borderline loving.

But that wasn’t enough for you anymore.

You were sick of being so enamored with a man who never extended even a fraction of that love back. The final straw was when you’d went over to his place only to find him with the cheapest, most hideous shade of pink lipstick smudged against the collar of his jacket.

You were livid, instantly shoving him away at the sight of it. You’d expected him to look a little shocked, maybe even a bit guilty, but all you were met with was the same shit-eating grin he always wore in situations like these. It was almost as if he wanted you to see it. As if he craved your reaction. He knew you were coming over in advance, he could have changed or hid it if he wanted to but he just didn’t care.

“I’m sick of this shit Erik! When are you going to let these other hoes go?!” You yelled but you might as well have been yelling at a brick wall.

“And why would I do something stupid like that?” Erik asked nonchalantly, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Because I’m right fucking here Erik! Because I’m a human being with feelings that you constantly disregard! Because I’m tired of sharing! I’m done watching you gallavant around with other hoes before you mosey your way over to me!” You huffed as Erik glared at you in an unsettling emotion. Was it anger? Annoyance? Resentment? You could never tell with him.

“Oh yeah? What can you do about it? Not a damn thing,” Erik chuckled menacingly. There he went laughing at you again, finding humor in your pain. You never thought that at any point in your life you would let a man do this to you. Erik was never going to change and your only option was to get with the program or get left behind.

“You’re right,” you said in a small voice. Erik obviously wasn’t expecting such an answer because it wiped the smug grin right off his face. You turned to leave when you felt him grab your arm.

“Where the hell you think you’re going?” Erik’s eyes narrowed as you calmly shrugged out of his hold.

“Like you said, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. I can’t love you into being a better man if it’s not in you, no matter how hard I want it to be. So all that’s left is for me to walk away.” You turned back to the door to open it only for Erik to slam it back shut from behind you.

You turned around to look at him and found his eyes were furious. His chest was heaving up and down, an animalistic look encompassing his entire being.

“Who the fuck are you to tell me what kind of man I am?” He growled. You stared at him blankly. God he was so handsome. His features looked molded by God, even when contorted with anger.

But you were tired. Tired of his inconsistency. Tired of him transferring his hurt and anger into you. And tired of him riling you up just to get a reaction out of you. Just like he was doing now.

“You’re right. I’m no one to tell you what kind of man you are. Especially when I have no idea as to what that is. I barely know you at all.” Once you said it, you knew it wasn’t true but it didn’t stop the slightly stung expression from gracing his face, even if only for a moment.

“Get the fuck out,” he barked.

“I was leaving anyway,” you said in the same even tone as before. You could tell it was driving him up the wall and though you hated to admit it, a small part of you took great pleasure in that.

You could see the wheels turning in his head. He was trying to find something to say that would make him the victor. Something so harsh it would break you out of your calm demeanor.

“You know you ain’t mean shit to me, right? Just convenient cheeks. And the sex wasn’t even that good. I don’t know why I was wasting my time with your ugly ass. I was fucking badder bitches anyway.” Erik snarled as he looked down at you in utter disgust. Deep down you knew he probably didn’t mean it (or at least not all of it) but those fears had always been looming in the back of your mind since you two first got together. He’d just finally voiced them.

“Okay,” you said in that same monotonous voice and with that you finally left. Closing the door behind you. You didn’t make it two steps before the tears clawed their way through your eyes and small whispers emitted from your throat.

You knew it was going to take time to get over Erik, despite how horrible he treated you. But at least he couldn’t hurt you anymore in the future. You were done with him for good and now he’d go on to be someone else’s problem.

~*~

Erik was fuming. He was currently staring at the hole he’d punched in the wall after you’d left. He couldn’t believe you’d just walk out on him like that. Yeah Erik would admit he would do some pretty fucked up shit to get into your head sometimes but the possibility of you leaving never once entered his mind.

He thought he had you hooked, that he had the algorithm all figured out. He believed there had to be a balance for a relationship to last. Honestly you were the first woman he’d ever been serious about, maybe even loved but he couldn’t let you know that. The second you told a woman you loved her, you were basically handing her all the power and Erik had been through too much, seen too much, done too much to let a single woman have that much control over him, even if deep down he knew you did.

So he would always leave room for doubt, always fuck other women even if he didn’t want to, even if he thought about you the entire time. He’d also be stingy with his affection. Just enough to get you addicted then he’d cut you off. He really thought he had it all figured out.

Boy was he wrong.

He’d never seen you that way. So calm and uncaring. It was almost as if you weren’t even talking to him. He was used to you yelling, screaming, crying, even hitting him. But he never saw you devoid of any emotion. He knew you were the type of person who felt everything and couldn’t help but to show exactly what you were feeling, that’s how he knew you loved him. You’d always show it.

But not anymore. You were done with him for good this time, or at least you thought you were. Erik was not about to let you walk away that easily.

He would have to go to you tomorrow and work this out. Maybe even humble himself. And if that didn’t work then the day after that. And the day after that. And after that. And so on and so forth until you’d take him back.

And if you so much as even look at another man that wasn’t Erik romantically, he’d just have to kill him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done it, he just had enough common sense to keep you from finding out. But now he didn’t give a fuck, he’d kill the nigga in front of you if he had to. Anything to keep you his. Because if he couldn’t have you, no one could.

~*~

A/N: I’m just gonna put my same old same old tag list up here, if you’d like me to stop tagging you then just let me know!

@sassyxsagittarius @hold-me-like-a-heart-beat@imasmille@iamrheaspeaks@myaw731@whoawhoababywhoa@inlovewithmakeupcomicsanimelove@chaneajoyyy@myboyfriendgiriboy@theunsweetenedtruth@cancerianprincess@wawakanda-btch@laketaj24 @give-me-a-million-dollars-pls@sugardaddytonystark@getinmelanin011@pananegra@violet-ines@stars8melanin@tchallas-klaws@savagefromspruce@l7nikkifn@areubeingserved @itsmarshalltime98@adahjones@macfizzle@avengershavethetardis@adahjones @peter-pans-panda  @sleep-and-i-dont-get-along@weyheycraicey @little-toxic-angel@queennanayaaswimminginfandoms1020@ultracrii@bossyboyd03@lovelyangelofasgard @zuzuspanda@raveennn@msirii @m-mokkori @muse-of-mbaku@blackpanthersmut @chefjessypooh

@regular-biitch@ruruly20@k0linahr@storibambino@sweetbearcolorgarden@inlovewithmakeupcomicsanimelove @theunsweetenedtruth@elaindeereads@truequeenofnightmares@muse-of-mbaku @wawakanda-btch @hellenmuma @lauureeen @kimpossible1977@vikkidc@lauureeen@laketaj24@lavitabella87@youreadthatright@vanitykocaine @wakanda-inspired@wakandas-vibranium@autumn242@marvelpotterlove@jaaystaar95@queennanayaa @halonahoney @loosewindmill @blackpinup22@halonahoney@thedelightfulone@supersizemeplz@ilovebubblesz @cinki-kmusic@post-woke@yofavcocoa@vanitykocaine@shesakillerkween@shadowkissedprincessofheart @dessianna1@ickidub718 @yoursoulstea @randomwordprompts@sweetsexysavagery @cancerianprincess @myaw731@blackchunkyqueen @dessianna1 @yoursoulstea@theunsweetenedtruth

@muse-of-mbaku @supersizemeplz @princesskillmonger @ayellepea

[kneesheee]

Little Devil

warnings: threats of death | mention kidnapping | mind manipulation | canon-typical violence

|five|

Jason sat back in one of the chairs as he cleaned the crowbar in his hands. His eyes tracked the movement of the man in the middle cell. The man had crying and screaming himself hoarse as he and Jamila took out his companions. It had gotten to the point where Jamila walked into the cell and forced him to silence or she’d give him a real reason to scream.

He hasn’t done anything since.

Jamila herself had hosed her body down until it was clean enough for her to venture upstairs. She had showered and now she was resting in Roy’s friend Kyle’s room. The space cop sometimes came over with Roy when he and Connor were on good terms. They descended into Roy’s workshop and more often enough Kyle was bringing back metals from Planet Vegeta to fix whatever they broke in there.

Whatever.

He needed to go check on Talia. He didn’t know how long he had been down here. Jason stood to go change when an alert went off on the computer behind him.

His computer was better in ways that Oracle’s ad Batman’s weren’t. They searched for crimes and put pieces together. His idea came from a movie. Captain America: TWS if he was sure. The algorithm was wonderful and once he told Talia about it and let her watch it herself, she stopped at nothing to find someone who could make her something similar if not better. So yes, Jason has his own Project Insight except it was filtered. Potential targets were filed away by threat level.

People were like chess and Jason found that he liked moving pieces into his corner. Almost two-thirds of the people that pop up either work for Head Industries or the League now.

If only he could convince Talia that Tony Stark was not that suitable to be her superhero crush.

(“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong Habibi… he is a man with great influence and an incomparable mind. His morals are unbreakable with knowing when to sacrifice them for necessary evils. My only complaint would be this Marvel continuously writing him to be their sacrificial lamb and unorthodox villain for the sake of making Private Rogers look well. [Its Captain America, T?] Have you not watched the movie Jason? Steven Rogers was made captain to sell war bonds and disrespected a chain of order. It was for plot development that he was made into a captain. In a real world, none of his actions would have suffice. Anthony is practical and though his jokes fall short, it is quite easy to see that he makes up for it. And besides, what kind of woman would I be if I didn’t appreciate his appreciation of a strong woman. He clearly sees females as the superior sex.)

Jason shook his head and paid attention to the details crossing his screen. Roy was calling. He rose a brow and answered.

The red head looked frantic. His green eyes were lit with worry and grief. “Jason! Jay, please. I need your help! Connor’s been kidnapped by the League of Shadows!”

Well fuck.

--

Damian was brought out of his musings as his communicator went off. He spared a glance at his mother who was recreating a picture that Todd had hanging on his wall.

The person on the other end didn’t even give Damian time to speak before they began barking orders, “Get to the Batcave. The others will meet you there. I’m bringing a guest.”

Damian only spared a minute to stare at his phone before he was abruptly standing up. His mother looked up at him and was on her feet and in a defensive position before he could even blink. Damian tilted his head to the side and hummed. She was favoring her right side leaving herself vulnerable to attacks to her left and then he saw the knife in her hands (and where the hell did, she get that---Todd was going to kill him).

“Pack a bag. We will be staying at castle for an undetermined amount of time.”

She roamed her eyes around the room three times before nodding her head and walking away to what she showed him to be her room.

Cain walked over to him and tilted her head. She ran a hand through his hair, and she was one of the few people who could do so without risk of being stabbed. Damian sighed through his nose, “We need to leave and return to the Cave. Todd is bringing a guest.”

He could feel her nod before she was following his mother. Damian wondered just who this guest was. He hoped it to be their enemy, so that he may show them what happens when one attacks the Al Ghuls. The demon inside him cried for blood. This dastardly attack on his mother cannot stand and someone will have to pay.

Damian smiled a cruel smile. Yes, whoever Todd’s guest was will pay dearly for causing harm to his mother.

--

All Al Ghuls knew where the Batcave was located. It wasn’t a secret. They knew where it was, how to get in there detected and undetected, hidey-holes, and how to navigate the computer without raising alarms.

Personally, Jamila never bothered with it. She was content to living her life traipsing the globe making a name for herself that would one day rival her parents.

And yet, somehow, here she was standing in the cave with all the bat brats staring at her. Well standing wouldn’t be the right word. She was lounging across their debriefing table cleaning her nails with one of her knives. Her green-blue eyes tracked everyone’s movement and took note of the many exits and passageways she had been forced to learn.

And then-

Her knife fell from her hand.

Jason moved next to her and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. Jamila gave a full body shudder as she saw what her stupidity led to.

“Kalh,” the word dropping from her mouth. She was sure she would’ve sunk to the ground if Jason was not supporting her.

This miniature version of her aunt looked at with something akin to suspicion and recognition.

She drank in the similarities to the woman she knew to the child standing before her. She took deep pleasure in knowing that she looked like her aunt instead of her mother when she was an infant. It wasn’t long before the butler was whisking her away at Jason’s order.

“Who are you to claim relation to the Al Ghul line,” her other cousin demanded. Jamila turned her head to look at him and quite honestly, she found him lacking. Oh, so she can see the potential. She can see where he would’ve been great. But it’s this idiotic way of ignoring his instincts and obviously ignoring his birthright that makes him unworthy of her attention. It’s no wonder that he fell to the end of the line of succession regardless that it was only because of the death of their grandfather.

Jamila only manages to stop herself from sneering. Jason informed her of his infuriating plan. Announcing her as the heir? It was the reason they were in this mess to begin with! And he just goes and saddle her with a title she does not want! That she threw away!

She can feel Jason sigh because he just knows how she’s going to react.

And react she did.

Pulling herself to full height, Jamila looked down her nose at her younger cousin. Honestly, even Anastasia wasn’t this infuriating, and that little spoilt princess made Jamila want to travel back in time and put her knife through her egg.

“I am your superior in all that matters. I am the Demon of Death. The snake cloaked in poisons with more blood on my hands than a blood bank. I am Jamila Al Ghul-Wilson. Daughter of Nyssa Raatko and Slade Wilson. Rightful Heiress to the Demon’s Head.”

“Rightful,” the one Jason fondly calls replacement questioned. She ignored the spluttering from her youngest cousin that she was lying. As if she wanted to be born to either of her parents.

Jamila tilted her head to the side, “Jason has informed me that my half-brother has been kidnapped. It is obvious that my Mother has taken him and with Mistress Talia compromised, Mother has the right to the throne. She doesn’t know about me, so she’d name my brother her heir.”

The blue idiot that had once thrown her cousin-heart in Arkham sneered at her, “Why should we even trust you? We might as well beat you and Nyssa and dismantle the League of Shadows. It’ll save us a lot of trouble.”

Jamila smirked, “You? Beat me? Don’t make me laugh.”

He puffed up and took a step towards her and Jamila’s smirk widen. She could feel interest piquing in her and her fist clenched ready to lay down the truths.

“I’ve beaten your father and Cass beat your mom—”

Jamila snorted, “Irrelevant. I’m a better fighter than both. Lady Shiva has said that I am better fighter than herself. So, you and your Cass- “

“Mila,” Jason groaned. “Do you have to antagonize everybody?”

“It’s a part of my charm,” she shrugged. “We need a plan and we can’t really do anything until the Mistress is back to her rightful age.”

She pulled a jump drive out of her pocket and handed it to Jason. He had already read all the information on there and copied it to his own computer. Jamila smirked. She also knew he made the data unable to copied again to try would upload a virus on the device download so viscous that no data would ever be able to be added.

Her cousin looked at her with amusement in his unmasked eyes as he moved towards the Bat. Her eyes tracked the Batman’s movement and she couldn’t see what her aunt saw in him. He was so plain.

Jamila trailed her eyes around the room before the sound of people entering caught her attention. She glanced over at the newcomers. She quirked a brow when she saw Jason’s friends.

The clone that Jason took after like a father to a son bumbled down happily alongside the Amazon with the eye-catching thighs. Jamila was suddenly glad that she had her own mask covering her face. Those thighs looked completely delicious.

Following behind them were the alien princess that Jason also befriended. Jamila trailed her eyes down her body. Now this was a woman. She didn’t understand how Jason managed to control himself with such beautiful women surrounding him. And honestly, it is no secret between the two cousins that they both have a thing for strong women.

Following behind them was the red head archer. The one Jason told her was the adopted brother of her mother’s son. And from the way the others following behind could only be his family. Her lips curled back in a snarl.

She had no use of compromised agents.

Jamila could feel a heavy stare on her, and her gaze trailed across the room until she could see Lady Shiva’s daughter staring at her. Jamila wondered what she could read through her body language before she shrugged uncaringly and made her way to Jason’s side.

“Remind why I exactly did I allow you drag me here with these imbeciles,” the Farsi language dripped off her tongue like water and she inwardly smiled. She had done her research on all of them, and she knew for a fact that none of them spoke Farsi. But she almost remembered Jason mentioning that the alien had to actually kiss people to learn new languages and well Jamila knew a lot of languages.

“Because we have to stop your mom and we have strength in numbers,” Jason replied absently as he and the Bat looked over the information on the junk drive. Jamila glanced up at it and inwardly snorted. She hoped that they weren’t thinking of leading an attack going by the old structure of the compound.

“But- “

“You can also use them as distractions while you proceed to beat the shit out of your mother and declare yourself the best of the Al Ghul lineage.”

Well it was true. It was she who took down her grandfather for good after all. Though it was also nice to have facts and her mother, and her brother was the one Al Ghul she hadn’t fought. Damian hadn’t counted. He would need help to beat her just like Anastasia. She will fight them when they are older and more experienced. She scowled, “Damn you and my competitive nature.”

“What are the two of you talking about?”

It was the blue idiot again. She whirled around ready to continue her verbal onslaught when Jason placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Its none of your business, Dickhead.”

Jamila inwardly smirked before she turned back towards the computer. She noted the routes that they planned on taking. “Shouldn’t we be focusing on fixing Aunt Talia instead of planning the attack?”

“You know Batman has to be prepared. Uh… you know he has contingency plans for his contingency plans.”

If she didn’t stop now, she was sure her face would be stuck in a permanent scowl. “In other words, he’d rather be an idiot and focus on the problem that Connor has been kidnapped instead of the obvious connection that this is just a ploy.”

“Well when you put it that way… Ouch!”

Jason rubbed the back of his head from where she had slapped it and the two of them stood glaring at each other. His eyes to her mask. She sighed deeply and it felt as if a weight had gathered on her shoulders.

“We need the Mistress to be back to her right age. It’s imperative- “

“Okay enough of this! How can you expect us to work together when we don’t even know what you’re saying!”

She was going to shove that escrima stick so far up his ass.

“Jamila knows what’s at stake and I trust her to have our back.”

“You might trust her, but I don’t,” he exclaimed. His fist clenched and his gaze darkened with every glance he spared the cousins. Jamila was struck with a sudden realization and she laughed aloud.

“By the demon, he’s jealous!”

Honestly, she couldn’t stop her shaking shoulders if she tried. It was just hilarious.

“What,” Jason’s words were followed by an almost immediate denial of, “No I am not,” from the Dickhead?

“Hate to say it ‘Wing, but you totally are,” the blonde and purple one stated. “You’ve been in this weird state of confusion and jealousy since everything started. You’re almost bad as B.”

Jamila perked with interest before turning to look at Batman. He was jealous?

“This family is fucking weird,” Jason grumbled before pointedly turning away. “Can we focus on the mission now? I think we’ve got a good plan to rescue to Connor.”

They all moved to crowd around the screen even Jason’s friends and the Arrows. Jamila stiffened and quickly moved away. She knew none of them well enough for them to be so close in her personal space.

She sniffed disdainfully from her reclaimed spot on their debriefing table returned to cleaning her nails. She paid little attention to the plan they were going over and honestly, it was a shit plan. Going in through the cover of night? Cliché. Taking down the systems? Predictable and inclined to fail by the five multilayered and encrypted security systems. Hit them before they see you takedown? Unlikely to work with the patrol.

“It won’t work.”

It was as if the world stopped. She rose a brow in challenge.

“What?” Roy asked with such heartbreak on his face that she might have felt guilty. But she didn’t know him. Didn’t care for him. Didn’t care about him. So no, she didn’t feel guilty.

“It will not work,” she shrugged. “The compound has changed for one. These plans you are looking at come from Construction 855b. It hasn’t looked like that for six months now. I should know. I was there when the changes began.”

“You didn’t think to let us know before we started planning,” the Dickhead growled. Jamila sighed deeply.

“I do not like you and it is only out of respect for my cousins that I have not beheaded you.”

She took little notice of how the yellow bat took a cautious step away from her and closer to Lady Shiva’s daughter.

“Mila,” Jason groaned and pressed his hands into his face. She shrugged.

“I have already stated that we cannot do anything until Mistress Talia is back to her rightful age.”

“I’m sorry, but who are you again?” She switched her gaze to the person that had spoken. The Green Arrow. Her mother’s second husband.

She smiled sweetly, “I am Jamila. Jason’s cousin.”

The alien flew close to her and Jamila deserve a reward for not stabbing her in the eye. “Ahh, you are cousin in the picture on Jason’s nightstand. It is nice to finally meet you. I am Koriand'r.”

A small smile pulled at her lips. It was not fond. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

But the peacefulness couldn’t last long because the Blue Idiot was back, and he brought a friend. The girl glared at her suspiciously and Jamila stared back blankly. “You’re hiding something,” she accused.

“I am hiding a lot of things,” Jamila stated. “‘Tis not a crime. And it is none of your business.”

“Its my business if it leads to any of them getting hurt,” she shot back, and Jamila smiled sharply. The Blue Idiot narrowed his eyes at her before moving to once again complain to Jason.  Idiot. “And as I have just stated, it isn’t any of your business.”

“I don’t trust you,” she sneered. And Jamila laughed again, “The feeling is quite mutual.”

The girl searched her features before sighing, “Look- “

“No, you look… I care for none of you. I do not like any of you and if you died, I would not shed a tear. The only people on this property that are worth my attention are Jason, Damian, and my aunt. I am only here out of loyalty to them. You all want to rescue Connor and I do not blame you for that but getting my aunt back to her rightful age is the only way. And I care not for your opinion. It hasn’t been worth anything ever since the words ‘You’ll never be Dick Grayson’ tumbled out your mouth. Do not think that I do not know who you are Barbara Gordon. Because I do and I do not care.”

“Why is getting Talia back so important to you,” the blonde asked as she walked over. If she had been trying to be intimidating, then she needed work.

“She is my aunt.”

The blonde (Stephanie, her mind supplied) looked at her in frustration, “Well yeah, I get that. But why is it more important than saving Connor? I mean she’ll still be here if we go after him first.”

Jamila rolled her eyes at the ignorance being presented in front of her. She cast a glance around the room and notice how they seemed to have garnered everyone’s attention, “Look you guys don’t trust me. I get that. Jaycee’s word isn’t enough. But Talia is my aunt and the only person standing in this room besides me and Jason that she cares for is Damian. You don’t want to help her? That’s cool. That’s fine. But if you so much as think you’re going to stop me… ME… from helping her? I will kill all you right now and fix her myself.”

She laughed at the way they all tensed defensively. She rose a brow watching how the archers’ fingers flexed as they controlled themselves. Batman attempted to stare her down, “We don’t have the time to spare- “

“Make it,” she cut him off. “The Mistress is way more important than my brother right now.”

“Brother,” the Green Arrow choked. She sneered, “You are so not my father.”

She turned back towards the back, “Mother will do nothing to Connor now that she has him, but she does want Talia. She will stop at nothing to get her. Right now, she’s protected. None of Nyssa’s operatives can enter Gotham without facing death.”

“We’re not- “

“Tawaquf,” she stated and watched as all the Bats and Jason freeze up. Weapons were pointed at her and she flipped out of the way as the alien princess and amazon headed for her. “I apologize for the distress Jason, but I do not have the patience to play these games with them.”

“Undo whatever it that you have done, and I will not kill you quickly,” the Amazon snarled. Jamila smiled in challenge. Now that would be a good fight. She turned her head in interest ready to apply pressure. She could feel something awakening in her as its power seeped through her pores. It coated the room before wrapping around her in a cocoon.

“I will like to see you try,” she teased. She could see the way Shiva’s daughter attempted flinched away. She could see how Jason and Damian both wanted to move forward and embrace her.

“The Lazarus Demon,” she heard. Her gaze flittered over towards the Green Arrow and Black Canary. She saw the way the Amazon flinched away. “You recognize my friend? How?”

Then she shook her head, “Never mind. That is irrelevant. The code word I used was a trigger into an automated system that my grandfather had injected into the blood of all operatives of the Bat including you, cousin mine. You might not remember but the Mistress has used it on you plenty because of your past with the pits.”

Jamila moved towards the Bat computer and began to search. Jason had told her that the Bat had most of the things needed for the scientific part of the cure. It was the magical part that will be a problem. But like her cousin, she’s had some fun traveling through the multiverse and she met people.

She turned towards the others in the room. The Outlaws and the Arrows. “I will help you that I promise, but Mother will be prepared for retaliation. By kidnapping Connor, she knows that you all will follow. This can either go two ways. She will believe that Jason will follow you out of loyalty and thus leave Mistress Talia vulnerable. She may cannot get any of her operatives in here but that doesn’t mean she cannot pay someone else to.”

“Pay,” Roy cut in. His eyes widened, “Deathstroke?”

“Yes, the League has been a longtime customer to Mr. Wilson. Stealing the daughter of the demon will be child’s play to him. While she might expect you all, she might not expect Batman and his brood. She will think that Jason somehow managed to convince you all to stay back and guard the Mistress. The other part is that she does expect Batman. The compound has undergone construction made to slow you all down. She will employ these added additions.”

The Black Canary nodded her head as she cautiously moved closer. Jamila’s gaze turned to her and she could Lazarus turn its attention on her. “It makes sense. We all have a connection to Connor and using him can be a distraction for her to get Talia and for her to do whatever it is that she wants to Connor simultaneously.”

Jamila nodded, “You will need someone who knows the compound as it is now, and I only know half of it. I do not know all of it and I rather not run in blind. And these new additions are meant to stall. Any second waiting is a second we cannot afford.”

“Call up your magical contacts. I need someone to bless this bottle and bridge a contact with—” Jamila inwardly winced and her hand automatically raised to cover her now bleeding nose.  She ground her teeth together, “Bridge contact with the ancient goddess Manat.” Another hand rose to her ear and she inwardly growled at Lazarus. She didn’t even worship Manat.

“Are you okay,” the Green Arrow questioned with concern on his face. Fatherly concern at that. Jamila never had a father and the only mother figure she had was her aunt.

“Just peachy,” she growled. She could feel a heavy stare on the side of her head, and she turned to see her cousins looking at her. “Harar,” and then regained control of their bodies again. A pity that she will not be able to use it again and a blessing that Mother would not be able to use it at all. “Let’s just get this over with.”

[gabriel-agreste-has-no-rights]

Rating: T

Chapter Summary:  XY goes to patch things up, but he needs some advice first.

Word Count:  3401 | Chapter 4/5

Notes:  Sorry the chapter count keeps getting longer.  I decided to add an epilogue, but this is the last main chapter.  For @luxyweek​ day 6, Serenade

XXX

Luka flopped back in his bed.  Had he been too harsh on XY back at the hotel?  It wasn’t like XY had stood him up.  He’d never promised to come back to the Liberty.

But questions kept repeating like an irritatingly catchy melody.  XY had always wanted to spend time with him before, even if it was just to annoy him.  What changed?  Had they gotten too close at Nino’s house that night?  Had their accidental cuddling scared him off?

Maybe he really just read too much into things.  It wasn’t like Luka had much experience understanding people, even with his guitar.  Maybe XY didn’t have any music in heart.  Luka could’ve just been seeing what he wanted to see.

He wanted to see good in XY.  The only one he had to blame was himself, for believing the other boy might have actually cared about him.

I’m just a sucker for blue eyes, he thought, his fingers plucking a melancholy melody.

It didn’t matter.  He didn’t have XY’s number—foolishly, he’d only given the other boy his own—and he wasn’t about to embarrass himself by going back to the hotel again.

For the first time in months, the music in his heart fell silent.

XXX

“Martini!  Marmalade!  Marinade!  Mar—whatever your name is!  Help a homie out, please!”  XY called up at the bakery’s balcony. He was going out on a limb here, but for whatever reason, Luka had been obsessed with the younger girl.  Maybe she could help him patch things back up.

“You’re not my homie, XY!”  She leaned over the railing and shouted back down at the street.  “And it’s midnight!  What the heck are you doing here?”

“I need your help!”  he said.  Admitting it made him feel stupid, but what was he supposed to do?  Show up to Luka’s boat empty handed?  No, XY had promised he’d make the most cash money music ever, impress Luka so hard that he fell head over heels, and then whisk him off into the sunset.

But step one: make the music.  His first song had been a bust, and Luka would know if XY ripped something off.  He’d probably expect it.  So XY had his smaller synth packed up in a bag over his back, ready to take some more inspiration from Marmalade as soon as he could.

“Go away!”  she called.

“You can’t tell me what to—!  Uh, I mean—please, it’s important!”

She sighed so loudly he could hear it from the ground.  Then she stomped back inside.

His shoulders fell.  Of course she wouldn’t help him after he’d stolen her designs, poked through her room, and forgotten her name.  He turned to trudge back to the hotel, his backpack feeling heavier than ever.

The click of a door opening stopped him.  “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Uh—oh!  You—you’re gonna help me?”

“That depends”—Martini crossed her arms—“on what exactly you want help with.”

“Perspiration,” he answered quickly, and she glared.  Oops.  Was that the wrong word again?

“Is this some kind of prank?  What, was ghosting Luka not enough for you?”

XY’s jaw dropped.  “Ghosting—I did not ghost him!”

“Then why did Juleka tell me he’s been sulking for the last week?  She says he won’t quit playing sad songs.  And Wonderwall, for some reason.  Anyway, she thinks it’s your fault, and even if I’m not in love with Luka, I am his friend.  And you hurt him.”

She jabbed a finger at his chest, hitting his “XY” necklace.  The chain clinked hollowly.

“I… he missed me?  Really?”  He’d joked with Luka about that when he came to the hotel today, but he didn’t think he meant it.  

“I don’t know.  It sounds like it.”  She shook her head, her pigtails swishing around her neck.  “I don’t know why, though.  Anyway, what do you want?  I was waiting on someone—er, I’m supposed to be in bed soon.”

“Ooooh, a late-night date?”

“XY.”  

“Sorry, sorry.”  He grimaced.  Better not get even more on her bad side when he needed something from her.  “Okay, here’s the deal.  I told Lu I was gonna make him the most cash money music he’s ever heard.  But… I suck.”

He sighed.  There it was.

“I know he likes you,” he continued, “so I thought maybe you could give me some tips?  Tell me what kind of vibes he’ll vibe with, that kind of stuff.”

Marinade blinked at him.  “You’re…. trying to make Luka a song?”

“Yeah.  I wasted a whole week on a track Dad said was trash, and now Lu’s mad and I don’t have anything to show for it.”  His shoulders slumped.

“Wait, so you already made a song?  That’s why you weren’t talking to Luka last week?”

“Duh.  I couldn’t spoil the surprise.  Not that it matters.  Like I said, it’s garbage.  Unsexy.  Not vibin’ at all.”

“...Because your dad said so?”  Her head tilted.  Her voice was soft and gentle.  That was probably one of the things Luka liked about her.  It sounded nothing like XY’s own nasally voice.  Maybe if he autotuned his vocals more…

“He knows what good music sounds like.  That’s how he ended up with the number one and number two stars on his label.”  Was XY back at number one again yet?  After the Kiddy Session mess, he was probably down on sales.  Stupid old Jacked Tone.

“Uh-huh.  That’s how he ended up asking me to make Jagged’s album cover look like yours, and having you butcher Kitty Section’s style.”

“I didn’t butcher it.”  Sure, it wasn’t his best rip-off job, but he’d only had a few days to pull it off.  Dad had liked it more than his original song anyway.

“The point is, I don’t think your dad knows as much as he thinks he does.”  Marmalade put a hand on his shoulder.  “He might know what’s popular, but he doesn’t know how to match an artist with their own style.  Jagged Stone is a rocker.  I’m a designer.  And you… what’s your style, XY?  If you could do anything you wanted?”

He shrugged.  “More of the same, I guess.  The stuff my algorithm spits out.  I mean, it sells, right?”

“Forget about that for a minute.  What do you like to listen to?”

What did he like?  Well… 

“I do love some sick beats.  And…”  He looked away, a little embarrassed.  “I did like the first song I made for Lu.  But Dad said it’s garbage—”

“Your dad is the one who’s garbage,” Marinade growled, her fists clenching.  “I think you could use a second opinion.  Can I hear your song?”

His first instinct was to say no. Hadn’t he embarrassed himself enough?  But it wasn’t like he really cared what she thought.  She couldn’t insult him much worse than she already had.   

“I guess.”  He pulled out his phone and AirPods.  It wouldn’t have the same effect as fancy headphones or Nino’s speakers, but then she could at least tell him it sucked and move on to giving him some real advice.

She stuck the AirPods in, and he hit play.

Surprise slammed over her face.  She must be shocked that a number one (or number two, now) pop star would come up with something so stupid.  Using her sewing machine noises?  That pigeon man’s bird call?  Really?  No stars did that!  He should’ve just stuck to the basic four chords, and left out lyrics like he usually did, and— 

Oh no.  The lyrics.

“Please don't tell Lu what I said,” he begged, hands clasped together over his phone.

She didn’t seem to be listening to him, though.  She was—oh crap, she was tearing up.  His song was so bad he’d made her cry!

He fumbled to hit pause, but Marinade’s hand closed over the screen first.

“You wrote this?  For Luka?”

“He’s gonna hate it.”  XY groaned.  “I lied to him and made him hate me and I can’t even make one stupid song—”

“No, no, he’s not going to hate you!  XY—you really like him, don’t you?”

“Pshaw, no.”  He crossed his arms and turned up his nose.  “Crushing on hot rockers is so ten minutes ago.”

Marinade blinked, then laughed.  Of course she’d just make fun of him again.  “If you say so.  But if you change your mind, I think it would be worth telling him.”

“Whatever,” he mumbled halfheartedly.  He’d probably ruined that chance today by lying to him.  If he’d even had a chance in the first place.

“I’m serious!  I can tell you put your heart into this song.  Luka will see it, too.”

He raised an eyebrow.  “You just wanna watch me crash and burn, don’t you?”

She shook her head, laughing again.  Pretty shady, if you asked him.  He should’ve asked Nino for help instead, but Marinade was the one Luka had liked.

“I don’t even know for sure if he likes dudes,” XY muttered, the toe of his sneaker scuffing the street.

“Don’t worry, he’s bi.  I wouldn’t encourage you if you didn’t have a chance.”

His heart started doing the macarena.  It was enough to get his hopes up again—except, he still only had the one garbage song.

“I need a new track.  Something super sexy that’ll blow his boat out of the water!”  He paced as he talked, hands flying through the air like over an invisible synth.  “But ugh, I don’t have time!  Lu already thinks I hate him ’cause I stopped coming over, but I can’t spoil the surprise.  That wouldn’t be cash money at all.”

“XY, you don’t need to write a whole new song.  I think yours is great just the way it is.”

His head snapped up, his hair bouncing from the force.  “Wait, you do?”

“Uh-huh.  Besides, if you keep waiting for the perfect moment, it’ll never come.  Trust me.”  She smiled sadly.  “You’re better off being honest with your feelings if you can.”

His mouth opened, but before he could find any words, a crash rang out from the balcony above.  He was pretty sure he heard a faint “owwww.”

Marinette glanced up and winced.  “Well, would you look at the time!  Thanks for stopping by good luck see ya!”

She darted back inside, leaving XY alone with the faint breeze trying to fight his hairspray.

“Huh.  Guess it was a date after all.”

If he pulled this off, maybe he’d have a date by the end of the night, too.

XXX

THWUMP.

Luka bolted upright, instinctively reaching for the neck of his guitar before feeling silly.  What was he going to do, beat off a burglar with his instrument?  He’d probably just break it, which would be even worse than getting robbed.

“Lu!”  A muffled voice shouted.

Oh no.  Not a burglar.  Luka knew who was going to be smushed against the window before he climbed out of bed and turned around.  His heartsong sped up against his will.

He hadn’t been prepared to see XY so soon after their fight at his hotel room.  Frankly, he hadn’t expected to see him at all.  His hair was a mess, several clumps falling out of their meticulously-styled quiff.  And he was still wearing Luka’s hoodie.

“Yo, don’t just stand there!  Help a dude out!”

Luka was so startled that he didn’t even argue, just scrambled up the steps to the deck, his footfalls thump thump thumping in time with his heart’s pounding rhythm.

He came back.  Why did he come back?

XY yelped as Luka hauled him onto the deck.  Déjà vu pricked at him, but this time instead of sneering in disgust, XY fiddled with his backpack strap nervously.

“What are you doing here?”  Luka asked, since XY was being surprisingly quiet.  He didn’t bother tacking on the obvious “it’s almost one a.m.” since XY had already proven he had no concept of time.

“Uh… I’m here ‘cause… I wasn’t very cash money to you today.”

He frowned.  “Yesterday, technically.”  

“Whatever.  Point is, I’m… sorry I lied to you.”

XY seemed to deflate, as if all his usual hot air finally left him.  Maybe it was a side effect of his tousled hair making him look smaller, but in that moment he looked nothing like his usual sauntering self.

“It’s fine,” Luka mumbled.  “It’s not like you promised to make your own music.  I don’t know why I expected you to.”

“Huh?  No, Lu—I did make my own music.  That’s what I lied about.  ’Cause Dad said it was trash and I was… I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of you, y’know?  I wasn’t even going to tell you, but Marinade gave me some advice, and… whatever.”  He ran a hand through his hair, disheveling it further.  “Just—let me play you this track, and then I’ll get out of your hair.”

Luka blinked, trying to follow XY’s rapid-fire words.  He didn’t have much time to process, though, before XY pulled his synth out of his backpack and unfolded it.  How did that clunky thing fit in there?

Then XY flipped a switch and pressed down on the keys, and music exploded from the Liberty.  Had he—had he hacked the boat’s sound system? 

“What did you do to my boat!”  he shouted over the electronic sounds, but XY didn’t seem to hear.  He was too focused on hitting the keys of his synth and belting out the first verse.

“You’ve got my heart flyin’ higher than a pigeon

Take me out we’ll go out to a kitchen

Stitch stitch stitch my heart is tickin’

Sit by me bro, come on and listen.”

Was that—?  It was.  Mr. Ramier’s bird call backed the track, somehow programmed into the synth.  He was pretty sure that whirring noise was meant to emulate a sewing machine, too, which would explain the stitch stitch stitch.  The noises should’ve felt jarring, but they blended strangely well with the upbeat melody. 

And XY’s singing voice… Luka had never heard it un-autotuned.  It didn’t sound anything like he expected.  The nasal tone was still there, but it was clearer somehow.  Like his heart and his words finally aligned.

“Woah, woah, you’re slick as a viper

Woah, woah, I start to perspire

Yo, you can call me a liar

But oh, oh, he’s got me inspired!”

He hit a high note that resonated in Luka’s bones.  And those lyrics… did Luka hear them right?  He was pretty sure he’d used “perspire” and “inspire” correctly, which was almost as shocking as the fact that he’d written an original song at all.

“Traffic cross the street, touch my hand,

Lost in your eyes, can’t see land

Take my breath away when you hold my face

Chords takin’ me higher than outer space!”

The bass dropped with that last line before the chorus repeated.  XY’s energy ran through him; he could feel the yearning in his voice.  

This was it.  His heartsong.  And, if it wasn’t just Luka’s hopeful imagination...

“Head on your chest, oh this is real

Cash money can’t buy the way I feel

Hope your hoodie’s not the only thing I steal

Wanna wake up staring into eyes so teal.”

XY looked up, meeting Luka’s wide-eyed gaze with a longing one of his own.  His fingers stumbled over the synth’s keys, but he coughed and finished the last chorus, his voice shaking only slightly.

“Woah, woah, you’re slick as a viper

Woah, woah, I start to perspire

Yo, You can call me a liar

But oh, oh, he’s got me inspired!

“Oh, oh, I’m walking a wire,

Oh, oh, you’ve set me on fire,

Yo, you can call me a liar,

But oh, OH, you’ve got me inspired!”

Oh… oh.  Luka’s heart stuttered as XY panted, hitting one last loud chord.  It echoed off into the night’s silence.  Luka was sure XY would hear his heart pounding now.

“So, what do you think?  Pretty cash money or what?”  His grin stretched too wide.

Luka swallowed, trying not to show just how much the unorthodox music affected him.  “You finally learned what inspiration means.”

“Huh?  Oh, yeah.  I guess I did.”  He chuckled.  “Does that mean you liked it?”

He tried to sound casual, but Luka still felt the trace of longing from him.  Maybe even desperation.  He’d bared his heartsong.  No matter how nervous Luka might be to admit it, he had to be honest in return.

“Dude, that was amazing,” he said, stepping around the synth to rest a hand on XY’s shoulder.  “Synths might not normally be my style, but I felt it. You were in the moment, putting your whole soul into it.  What changed?”

“Huh?”  He blinked, blue eyes wide.  It was hard to resist the urge to sweep his loose strands of hair back under his headband.

“I mean, why didn’t you make music like this before?  You couldn’t have learned how to do this all in a week.  You never gave me a real answer before.”  Luka had a guess, but even after the lyrics he’d heard, he didn’t want to assume too much.  He made that mistake with Marinette already, and this time…

He didn’t want to lose XY again.  He’d gotten used to his annoying presence.  That was all.

(The beats hopping in his heart quickly battered down that denial.)

“Bro, really?  Weren’t you listening?”  XY frowned, almost looking hurt.  “And people say I’m stupid.”

“Hey.”  

XY there his hands in the air. “It’s you, bruh.  You’re the voice I hear inside my head, the reason that I’m singing—”

“Wait, isn’t that the Camp Rock song?”

“Shut up, I’m trying to make a meaningful love confession!”

Luka choked, his face flushing.  “Love confession?  You’re—you’re serious.”

XY stared at him like he was stupid.  “What, you think I’d waste my time writing a whole song for just anyone?”

“No, I just…”  He had thought XY was joking, or just messing with him.  But it had been real.  Luka hadn’t read too much into things after all.  “I don’t know about love, but I—I can’t believe I’m saying this—I… might have a crush on you, XY.”

The other boy beamed, and Luka regretfully admitted it was the cutest thing he’d ever seen.

“Bro, I’ll take it!”  XY threw his arms around his neck, and suddenly Luka had an armful of him.  He smelled like hairspray and Doritos, and under that, something more subtle and hard to place.

Luka had the feeling he could get used to it.

XY suddenly pulled back, staring into Luka’s eyes again, but leaving his arms around his neck.  “Wait, does this mean you’ll be my boyfriend?  Do I get to kiss you?  ’Cause I gotta admit you look like you could use some chapstick first—”

Luka pressed his lips to XY’s half to prove a point, half to shut him up, and half because he just wanted to.  At the moment, his brain didn’t care that the math didn’t add up.  

A quiet squeal startled him into pulling back.  At first he thought it was XY’s, but he just looked stunned, his eyes half-lidded and a dumbstruck grin on his face.

“I’m gonna swoon now,” he said before swaying over.  

Luka barely managed to catch him around his waist before he hit the deck.  But if it wasn’t XY squealing, then— 

“Rose!”  He hissed, catching a flash of blonde hair ducking behind the speaker.  Juleka blended in better with the dark, but the faint glow from her phone screen gave her away.  “Jules!  Are you—wait, are you recording us?”

 Rose poked her head out, her fists balled up beside her cheeks.  “We couldn’t help it!  You two were just so cute!”

“I thought you’d want this for your wedding,” Juleka mumbled through a smirk.

XY sighed dreamily at that.  “What do you think our wedding colors would be, Lu?  Teal and purple?”

“I swear, if you don’t shut up I’ll drop you.”

“Aww, you just want me to fall for you agai—ACK!”  XY thudded to the ground.  “Ow… that wasn’t very cash money of you, babe.”

That was where Juleka’s video ended.  

But for the new music playing in Luka’s heart, it was just the beginning.

[welllpthisishappening]

A Touch of (March) Madness (1/2)

Emma can't quite remember how it started or why it happened, just that it did and she wants to win. Desperately. To prove something. Probably.

Or just to beat Killian. Either or. It doesn't matter.

She's picked her teams and her upsets and she's got a string of trash talk ready for any potential on-court situation. They're not playing the game, but they're playing a game and this one might change everything.

Rating: Teen’ish. Trash talking requires swearing.  Word Count: 9.1K HA.  AN: I owe @laurnorder​ my fic-writing soul, so when she texted me a couple weeks ago and was like...”It’s March, I think you should write basketball fic,” I was like...ok. And because I cannot rationalize Killian Jones playing basketball unless he’s some kind of JJ Reddick-type asshole, here are a lot of words about over-competitive friends and brackets and (maybe my very specific, personal) college basketball opinions. I will be honest and tell you guys this is definitely the most sports niche’y thing I have written and you probably need a general working knowledge of what the NCAA Tournament is, but there’s banter and eventual makeouts because of who I am as a person. Thank you, as always, to @distant-rose​ & @katie-dub​ for being endless sources of support and general fantastic’ness.  Also on Ao3 if that’s how you roll.

Selection Sunday

“Can you just pick?”

“No.” “No? Did you tell me that you can’t pick? Are you physically incapable of making your picks then? Because that would almost explain some of your choices last year.” Killian doesn’t lift his head up, keeping his eyes trained on the small stack of papers in front of him and Emma cannot sigh loudly enough. His lips twitch slightly.

“This is not that hard,” she says and it’s hardly the first time she’s told him that, but it doesn’t seem to be making much of a difference and it’s nearly eleven o’clock at night.

“You say that like you’ve got a title to defend, Swan,” Killian mutters. “This is a tried and true system with several minutes of actual research put into it and long-standing biases that have helped shape the sport for what it is.” “Overflowing with controversy?” Emma asks glibly, jumping onto the edge of the counter and kicking out towards him. “Deception? Disgrace?” “You’re trying to goad me into quoting something, it’s not going to work.”

She sighs, but she absolutely was and his pen sounds impossibly loud in the otherwise relative silence of the apartment. Mary Margaret fell asleep hours ago.

“That’s stupid,” Emma grumbles, drawing a quiet laugh out of Killian and she probably should have left already. She’s not sure why she hasn’t. Well, no, that’s a lie, but her apartment is far enough uptown that it’s probably better if she takes an Uber and she’s fairly certain they’re doing construction on the 2-train anyway.

Killian will probably make her take an Uber.

David’s probably got it on speed dial already.

“You really haven’t picked yet?” Emma continues and Killian shakes his head slowly, eyes darting up and she’s glad she’s already sitting down. “That’s also stupid. What’s your system, then?” “Excuse me?” “You said you had a tried and true system, explain it then, o ye master of competition.” Killian smirks, one eyebrow pulled dangerously high and Emma knows she’s not going to get an answer. “You know, I’m starting to think your compliments are ringing a little hollow there, Swan. I’ll admit that’s disappointing, but, again, I’ve got a title to defend and I’ll probably feel a lot better when I beat you all this year. Again. As per usual.”

He tugs a different pen from behind his ear – Emma dimly remembers something about color coding and possible upsets getting a different ink, but she’s fairly certain that it’s all conjecture just to annoy her. His tongue is pressed into the corner of his mouth and it’s as infuriating as it is distracting because he’s absolutely right.

They’ve been at it for what has felt like actual days, crowding, as tradition dictates, onto the couch in Mary Margaret and David’s apartment for the selection show

And, as tradition dictates, they complain about every single seed and the pros and cons of Syracuse making it again – ”They finished tenth in the ACC, that’s just insulting to the rest of the field. “We know, David.” “What even is an Orange? That’s a fruit. That’s not a mascot. That’s not intimidating me at all.” We know, David.” “If I were Mt. St. Mary’s, I’d sue.” “We know, David.” – and eat a questionable amount of Indian food from the place that is, technically, closer to Killian’s apartment, but he knows their orders by heart now and he got Emma an extra samosa, so she’s not ever going to complain.

Unless it’s about how goddamn long it’s taking him to fill out his bracket.

It’s March and there’s still, somehow, snow on the ground in New York, but Emma’s just brought in some perp she’d been trailing for the last month and she’s got the next week off. It is, officially, the most wonderful time of the year.

And she can’t even really remember how it all started.

Technically, it probably started when she landed in the Nolan house several decades before, a vaguely jaded orphan no one had ever really wanted until Ruth Nolan did and decided, quite quickly, to give Emma the world.

And a brother she didn’t ask for.

Emma and David didn’t get along at first. They argued and bickered and they were the same age and he had that annoying, incredibly nice friend who lived down the street in Storybrooke who, at one point, Emma was convinced could talk to birds.

Emma was a frustrated, bitter eleven-year-old and the new girl again and Storybrooke, as far as she was concerned, was the absolutely worst. Until she tried to run away – and Mary Margaret found her.

It was Mary Margaret’s birthday and Emma couldn’t stomach the idea of another party and another town event at Granny’s and she slipped out the backdoor and...couldn’t get any farther. Mary Margaret showed up, exactly, twenty-seven minutes later to find Emma huddled in the corner of the alley, shoulders shaking and disappointment looming over her like a storm cloud and she did the single most Mary Margaret thing that Mary Margaret had ever done.

She hugged her.

And then went to bring her a slice of ice cream cake.

It got better after that.

Mary Margaret kept smiling and, presumably, talking to birds and Emma stopped picking fights with David just because he was there.

They were some kind of three-headed monster – never more than a few feet apart and speaking in blinks and tilts of heads when they had to and no one was surprised to discover that all three of them applied to the same school.

Xavier.

Naturally. They were already like the three musketeers.

And it was good and great and a slew of other adjectives for three musketeers who’d never really experienced the world, until David got assigned a new roommate second semester freshman year and Emma Swan hated Killian Jones with a passion strong enough to rival several suns.

He hated her right back.

Loudly. With a string of curses that regularly made Mary Margaret blush and left David smacking Killian’s shoulder, mumbling that’s my sister, man under his breath.

He was smug and far too good looking and he did that thing with his eyebrow that made Emma’s stomach twist and she would show up in his room unannounced and laugh when he couldn't quite scrape by a passing grade in that one business class they both took together.

The good looking thing wasn’t important.

And the bracket thing had been Mary Margaret’s idea.

Naturally. Again.

“Maybe if we’re doing something fun, you won’t hate him so much,” Mary Margaret reasoned and Emma hadn’t argued, much, because it was a chance to beat Killian Jones at something and then make sure he never forgot about it for the rest of his life.

Only Killian Jones was, actually, really, really good at picking teams in the goddamn NCAA Tournament.

“He’s some kind of soothsayer, I swear,” Emma shouted, her own bracket torn to shreds  and she still hated him, but he was always around and Mary Margaret and David had started acknowledging the longing looks they kept sending each other’s way that January.

“I think he’s got an algorithm or something,” David muttered.

Emma spun on the spot, glaring metaphorical daggers because she didn’t have any real daggers, and Killian held his hands up in mock surrender.

“There’s no algorithm,” he said. “Just a very good gut instinct and proclivity to being right.”

“God, you’re such an ass,” Emma groaned. “I bet you’re the only person in the country who picked that upset.” He shrugged.

And defended his inaugural title. For three years straight.

No one ever asked if they wanted to keep going, even after college and jobs and life, but no one asked if they all wanted to move to New York City either.

It just kind of happened.

And Emma just kind of stopped hating Killian.

He got under her skin. Or something less disgusting.

“Swan,” Killian says, jerking her out of memories and back to reality and she has no idea where she actually put her bracket.

“Yeah,” she mumbles and he’s smiling at her. Not smirking. No stupid eyebrow thing. A real, genuine smile and she wonders when that started making her breath catch and her eyes widen just a bit. “Here,” she adds when he stands up, eyeing her like she’s lost her mind. She might have. It’s probably with her bracket.

“I can see that. Although here seems a bit more physical and a hell of a lot less mental.” “Was that an insult? That sounded incredibly insulting.” Killian shakes his head, crossing the tiny space masquerading as a kitchen in three steps and his hand lands on her knee like there are magnets involved. “Not an insult,” he promises. “A genuine show of concern when you look like you’re trying to teleport back home.” “None of these words are making sense the way you’re saying them.” “Sounds like a sign.” “And an insult,” Emma hisses, kicking him in the shin. That feels a bit more normal. “Are you finally done?” “Mmhm.” “That’s awfully smug.” There’s the eyebrow arch.

“You’ve got quite a few opinions on my bracket, Swan,” Killian says and he’s started tapping his fingers on her jeans. Emma swallows. “I think it’s a defense mechanism.” “I think you’re refusing to talk about your so-called methods for picking teams because you know your good luck has finally run out and you’re nervous about what will happen if you don’t live up to expectations.”

She regrets the words as soon as they’re out of her mouth, Killian’s fingers going deathly still when her mouth snaps closed and Emma bites her tongue to stop herself from doing anything else quite that stupid – like crying while sitting on the counter in David and Mary Margaret’s apartment.

And maybe she knows exactly when she stopped hating Killian.

“Purdue,” he says, ducking into her eye line and Emma has to blink, at least, sixty-seven times because the whole thing is ridiculous.

“What?” “Purdue. I picked Purdue to win.” “For real?” Killian tilts his head. “Why would I lie about that?” “I honestly have no idea, “ Emma admits. “But I’ve kind of lost track of the conversation and...honestly, Purdue though?” “You have something against Purdue, Swan?”

“No,” she snaps, shoving lightly at his shoulder and his gasps like it actually hurt. His hand is still on her knee. “But, like, why?” “That seems to fall decidedly in the realm of giving away my plan.”

Emma groans loudly, drawing a set of footsteps that were absolutely eavesdropping on the conversation and David hands her the bracket she filled out hours ago as soon as he’s within arms reach.

Killian’s hand is gone.

That’s fine. It’s fine. Cool. Totally cool. God, she can’t believe she just thought that.  

“You’re going homer again, this year, huh, Em?” David asks, phone already out and she nods so he can order her the goddamn Uber.

She scowls, eyes darting Killian’s direction before she can stop herself and he’s trying very hard not to smirk at her. It’s not really working.

“I am going with a potential winner this year,” Emma corrects archly. “If it just so happens that I pick our alma mater, then, you know, so be it. It’s their year.” “Did the boosters get you to say that?” “How far do you have them going?” "Far.” “That’s not an answer,” she mutters, but it sounds more like a growl and they’re definitely going to wake Mary Margaret up at some point. “When did we all decide to descend into secrecy over our brackets? M’s told me as she was filling hers out.” “That’s because Mary Margaret is not trying to win,” Killian points out. One of the pens is back behind his ear, arms crossed lightly over his chest and there’s really not enough room for all of them in this quasi-kitchen.

Emma rolls her eyes, but it’s probably true and Mary Margaret regularly makes her picks based on nicknames, color schemes and the overall creepiness of mascots.

She’s never picked Providence. Ever.

“Whatever,” Emma mutters. “We’ve all reached a brand-new level of super strange competitiveness. I picked Xavier to win, not just because we all possess degrees from that school and they’ve now started calling asking for money, which I think is a sign of actual adulthood, but because they’ve got a good team this year and I genuinely believe they can win a national championship.”

“Because it’s their year, right?” David asks and he can’t quite keep the laughter out of his voice. Emma flips him off. “Honestly though, Em, tell me something. Did you...did you rehearse that?” “Oh my God, you’re even worse than him.”

She jerks her hand in Killian’s direction and he makes a good show of being affronted, but there’s something lingering just on the edge of his expression that makes her wonder all sorts of things she shouldn’t even be thinking.

“These insults, Swan,” Killian grins. “And you do remember that Xavier lost to Villanova twice this year, right?”

“Villanova lost to St. John’s. At home. When they were the top team in the country.” “That’s a good point,” David mumbles, but Killian and Emma both wave him off and this is almost, painfully, normal. “Xavier still won the Big East outright,” she argues. “First time in like...I don’t know, whatever it was historic.” “Not the tournament and if you’re going to bring up facts, you need them to be accurate. That’s arguing one-oh-one..” “Why are you so against a Xavier run?” “I’m not,” he says. “I’m simply pointing out that Xavier has a habit of fucking up once they get to the later rounds. It happens every year.” “If you say tried and true I will get off this counter and punch you right in the face.”

Killian laughs, head thrown back and shoulders shaking and Mary Margaret makes noise from wherever she fell asleep. Hours ago. “I wasn’t going to,” he says lightly and maybe Emma’s got food poisoning from that extra samosa. It would explain whatever is going on with her brain and her thought processes and whatever her whole being does as soon as Killian’s hand lands on her knee. “These are just facts, Swan. And David picked Arizona.” “What?” Emma gasps, laughing as well when David starts cursing Killian to several different underworlds. “Oh my God, David, seriously? You want to talk about a team that disappoints regularly. Plus all that off-court shit! No way they even make the Sweet 16.” “They’ve got the best freshman in the country,” David reasons. “This is a sound choice. And I’m doing some kind of thing this year.”

Mary Margaret pads into the kitchen when Emma can’t bring herself to stop laughing, a blanket tugged tightly around her shoulders and sleep clinging to every one of her movements. “It’s a Wildcat movement,” she mumbles. “He’s picking Wildcat teams this year.” “What?” Emma asks. Killian is barely standing up.

“Wildcats. He's picking as many Wildcats teams because he thinks it’s funny.” “And because it makes sense,” David adds sharply, rolling his shoulder when Emma grips it to try and stay upright. “Or it would have if I’d been able to get it to work, but Midwest doesn’t have any Wildcats--” “What team,” Emma interrupts and Mary Margaret drops her blanket when she starts laughing, shouting back Wildcats on cue.

David rolls his eyes. “Anyway,” he continues pointedly. “I got three of four, so that’s a majority and it’s totally going to work because an Arizona and Villanova final is not only probable, I’m guaranteeing it.” “Wow, talking a big game.” “I’m confident. That’s all. And I’m tired of Jones winning every goddamn year, so I’m willing to do whatever it takes. “It’s not going to work,” Killian says easily and the other pen is in his back pocket. Emma can feel Mary Margaret staring at her. “I’ve got a system. And I’ve got consistency on my side. And nicknames or mascots or whatever don’t have anything to do with it.”

“Yeah, yeah, so you’re always saying,” David grumbles. “You know what? Get out of my apartment and take your research with you because I’m not walking down the hall to put that in the garbage disposal.” “I mean, it should probably be recycling, right?” Emma asks, sliding off the counter and she’s suddenly far closer to Killian that she anticipated. She’s ninety-two percent positive he moved.

“You can get out of my apartment too. Your car is here, anyway.” “Ok, well, that’s rude, but thanks for the ride. Go back to sleep, M’s.”

Mary Margaret salutes, already halfway down the hallway and Emma glances Killian’s direction before she can lose her nerve. “You want a ride?” He blinks, like he’s trying to make sure he heard her right, and Emma chews on the inside of her lip, willing her stomach to act like an actual part of human anatomy.

He nods before he answers.

“Yeah, sure, Swan,” Killian says, grabbing his stack of paperwork and his ridiculous number of pens and they both sit in the backseat of an Uber on their way uptown.

They don’t say anything for the first dozen or so blocks, a companionable silence Emma never would have considered possible when she was a sophomore in college and spent most of her free time trying to figure out what Killian’s deal was.

She’s still not entirely sure she knows.

It’s a work in progress.

Or something.

Whatever.

“I can hear you thinking,” Killian says, gaze flitting her direction. “It’s very loud.” Emma bites her lip – mostly so she won’t smile and he won’t lord that over her for the rest of time. “Is it distracting?” she asks, but it feels like a much bigger question.

“No. Just general curiosity.”

“Because you claim to hear my thoughts. That’s...you know that’s weird, right?” “Only because you’re making it weird,” Killian challenges and they’re at his apartment already. Emma’s not disappointed by that. God, she needs to sleep for the entire week she’s off. She can’t. She’s got basketball to watch.

And a bracket to defend.

“God,” Emma sighs, rolling her head on the back of the seat and top of her hair is damp from resting on the window. “Do you have to be right about absolutely everything? Or do you just get a kick out of arguing with me?” “Did you just use the phrase get a kick, Swan? That’s...did we teleport in this Uber?” “Get out.” “I’m asking a genuine question.” “And I’m telling you to get out.”

He blinks, lips pressed together tightly enough that it’s difficult to make them out in the dim light from the street lamps and the Uber driver is getting more and more pissed off by the second. And suddenly it’s like that day and Killian’s face does something stupid, softens or settles more into him, like he’s seeing Emma for the first time and pleasantly surprised to find her there.

She’s going to bite her lip in half.

“You know I’ve got Friday off,” he says and maybe they did teleport.

Emma lowers her eyebrows, tilting her slightly and if he doesn’t stop smiling at her she’s going to get out of the Uber and walk the rest of the way home. “What does that mean?” “Are you confused by the words or…” “God, stop being a dick!”

The Uber driver snorts.

Killian glares at him.

“I’m saying that I know you caught that guy last week and now August requires you to take at least five days off to recoup or make sure you actually get the kind of sleep a human being needs to function. Which means that you, presumably, will be home screaming at your TV--” “--I don’t scream at my TV.”

“Swan, sometimes you get up and actually try and play defense with the team. It might be my favorite thing you do.” “Ok, well, if this is just some twisted way for you to make fun of my questionable interest in college basketball then…”

Emma trails off when she notices the look on his face – another expression she’ll probably file away in that metaphorical file she’s absolutely, positively not keeping because they’re kind of friends now and that’s cool.

She can’t believe she just thought the word cool.

“What?” Emma asks, the word coming out like a whisper and her lip is bleeding.

“I wouldn’t do that, Swan.

“Anymore.” He shakes his head, the muscles in his throat moving when he swallows and maybe whatever place they’ve teleported to has slightly brighter street lamps because the blue in his eyes seems to get sharper when he looks up at her.

“No,” Killian says. “Not anymore.” “So...was there an offer or an invitation in there or…” He grins. “I’ve got Friday off and I know you’ve got Friday off and I’ve got a better takeout selection than you do.” “See, you’ve just gotta add in those last, little insults don’t you?”

“You blink quicker when you get angry, did you know that?”

Emma shoves at his shoulder, like that will do anything at all, but he’s always had impossibly quick reflexes and she’s not even surprised when his fingers wrap around her wrist. She’s a bit more surprised by whatever her heart does in response and she’s fairly certain it’s the most he’s ever touched her in a 24-hour span. Or, like, a two-hour span.

“You want me to come here on Friday so we can watch basketball together?” Emma asks skeptically. Killian’s nodding before she can get the question out, eyes a hint wider when he tries to speak without actually speaking. “I think your team plays on Friday.” “I’m aware of the schedule, Swan. Xavier does too.” “It’s weird that you’ve memorized it already.” He hums noncommittally, but he really does have better takeout near his apartment and an exceptionally good coffee maker that Emma will undoubtedly use several times and, well, it might be kind of nice.

They’re friends now.

They spend time together. On their own. It’ll be fine.

Cool. It’ll be cool. Cool, cool, cool.

“Was anyone actually going to get out of the car or….” the Uber driver starts and Emma can’t quite mask her laugh. “Because I’ve got other fares I could be taking and…” “Yeah, yeah, I’m leaving,” Killian promises, twisting behind him to open the door and it’s fucking freezing outside. He glances back at Emma, one leg on the sidewalk already. “Friday?” There’s something just on the edge of that too, but Emma can’t quite figure it out and the Uber driver is the single most impatient person on the planet. She nods before she can come up with any of the reasons it will not be cool.

“Yeah,” she says. “Friday.”

He flashes her a smile, rolling his eyes at whatever noise the Uber driver makes when he kicks at the door and Emma’s fairly positive she doesn’t mishear him when he leaves, the quiet see you later, love ringing in her ears for the rest of the night.

  The Play-In Games

David Nolan, Tuesday, 7:53 p.m.: Did we know that LIU Brooklyn was in the tournament? Emma Swan, 7:54 p.m.: It’s a play-in game it doesn’t count.

David Nolan, 7:55 p.m.: Also, what channel is TruTV?

Emma Swan, 7:55 p.m.: I’ll repeat myself.

Mary Margaret Blanchard, 7:56 p.m.: They’re playing a game, it definitely counts! They’re doing their best. And almost winning, kind of. Emma Swan, 7:57 p.m.: They are not almost winning. Where is LIU in Brooklyn? Shouldn’t it be...on Long Island.

Emma Swan, 8 p.m.: ????

Killian Jones, 8:01 p.m.: It’s right near Barclays.

Emma Swan, 8:03 p.m.: Why do you know that? Who knows that? No one. No one knows that.

Killian Jones, 8:04 p.m.: I know everything. You know this, Swan.

David Nolan, 8:07 p.m.: Guys. Seriously. This is a group text.

Emma Swan, 8:08 p.m.: Did you pick them?

Emma Swan, 8:15 p.m.: ……. Honestly, Jones? The tournament has started you can tell us who you picked.

Emma Swan, 8:17 p.m.: Killian, seriously!

David Nolan, 8:18 p.m.: This. Is. A. Group. Text.  

Emma scowls when LIU Brooklyn shoots like garbage in the second half and loses its opening-round game and she’s already picked one team wrong, which doesn’t seem like a very good sign. Her phone dings almost immediately.

Killian Jones, 8:59 p.m.: I didn’t pick them. Did you?

Blackbirds are stupid mascots.

David Nolan, Wednesday, 11:37 p.m.: WHAT THE FUCK IS AN ORANGE, ANYWAY?!?

Killian Jones, 11:38 p.m.: Bahahahahahahahahaha.

David Nolan, 11:40 p.m.: Screw you, Killian.

Emma Swan, 11:42 p.m.: Did you put a period after your maniacal laughter?

Killian Jones, 11:44 p.m.: Proper punctuation is important when you’re lording your basketball-picking ability over your lesser competition, Swan. And I take offense at maniacal. It was reserved, at worst.

Emma Swan, 11:44 p.m.: Think very highly of yourself, don’t you?

Killian Jones, 11:45 p.m.: The Pac-12 is garbage. ASU was never going to win. Syracuse plays in the ACC. Strength of schedule is important.

Killian Jones, 11:45 p.m.: Plus, no college kid knows how to play against a zone.

Emma Swan, 11:46 p.m.: You shoot out of it. That’s just...that’s basic.

Killian Jones, 11:47 p.m.: Tell Arizona State that.

David Nolan, 11:49 p.m.: This. Is. A. Group. Text.

 The First Round, Thursday, Day One

Emma sinks into the corner of her couch, hair still a bit damp from the shower she probably should have taken hours before, but she’s officially in basketball mode and basketball mode requires her to be as lazy as humanly possible while watching college-age kids be the exact opposite for the next twelve hours.

It sounds weirder out loud than it does in her head.

LIU Brooklyn was the only misstep in her First Four picks and, really, that was more of a technicality because most brackets don’t require First Four picks, but they’re all a bunch of over-competitive weirdos and they do it anyway.

She still has no idea what Killian’s bracket looks like.

It’s probably frustratingly accurate, but there are sixteen games that day which means there are sixteen chances for him to be wrong, which is really all she wants.

And maybe she’s the most competitive weirdo of all.

Because Emma really, really likes winning and she liked it a hell of a lot more the one time she beat Killian the first March after undergrad, but she doesn’t hate Killian nearly as much as she did before.

It's a very confusing sentence and a very confusing thought and she needs to watch some of these games to distract her from whatever her mind has been doing over the last few days – replaying that Uber ride and the slight shake in his voice when he asked about Friday, like he was scared she’d say no or like, maybe, it meant something good and big and important and it felt a bit like déjà vu because his voice had done the same, exact thing when she decided she didn’t hate him.

He’d just defended his championship, making sure to point it out as often and loudly as possible, a few days into April and Emma desperately needed the Benadryl she knew David kept in a box under his bed in the apartment just off campus.

She considered going back to her own room – only a few blocks away with her own stock of Benadryl because pollen seemed to exist only to ruin her life every April – but Emma was fairly convinced her nose was about to fall off and she was walking through the door before she even realized she’d taken her key out.

And Killian nearly ran her over as soon as she walked through the threshold.

“Swan,” he slurred, eyes a bit glazed and an actual bottle in his hand. He wobbled when he stopped to glare at her, a sneer to his lips that had become almost too familiar at that point. “What are you doing here?” Emma shook her head, kicking back to close the door and Killian winced when it slammed into its frame. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked, reaching out to tug the bottle out of his hand. He tightened his hold. “It’s like...two in the afternoon.” “Ah, well, then we’ve clearly fallen behind schedule. You want a drink, love? There’s a few options in the kitchen, although I’m not willing to share the rum.” “Not your love,” she said, mostly out of habit and he stumbled when she took another step towards him. “Seriously, what the hell is going on with you? You can’t even stand up straight.”

“That, my dear, is the point.” Emma glared, pressing her tongue on the inside of her cheek and it probably would have been intimidating if she didn’t sneeze very loudly two seconds later. It shook through whole body, leaving her sniffling and red-nosed and Killian was staring at her like she’d been replaced with a cyborg as soon as she lifted her head up.

“What?” Emma grumbled, sniffling again.

Killian opened his mouth, only to close it three more times and Emma realized, rather suddenly, that they’d never really had a conversation about….anything. They’d circled around each other for more than a year and had almost gotten the hang of small talk when David and Mary Margaret started making eyes at each other, but there was no depth to any of it.

She’d never asked about his hand – the prosthetic at the end of his left arm catching her attention the very first time she met him, but David had glared at her and the questions got caught in her throat and no one ever gave her an explanation. She’d never even really asked how he ended up at Xavier or why he was a year older than all of them with far fewer credits and he kept taking six classes a semester.

She hadn’t really ever bothered.

That felt decidedly….wrong.

Killian had, simply, come blazing into their lives like some kind of dying star or possibly a comet and Emma didn’t know enough about space to make those kinds of comparisons, but the dying part seemed particularly apt at the moment.

“David’s not here,” Killian said softly, a note of something that might have been disappointment in his voice. “He and Mary Margaret had class and then they were going somewhere to be painfully adorable so…” “So you decided to drink your entire alcohol supply?” “No, no, that had nothing to do with their proclivity to romance. Quite the opposite, in fact.” “That was a lot of very fancy words for a guy who’s having a difficult time staying upright,” Emma pointed out, tapping her finger lightly on his chest and it looked like he’d frozen. “Honestly, you’re really not going to tell me what’s going on with you?” Killian tilted his head, gaze a hint sharper than it had been a moment before and Emma bit her lip. Tightly. “It’s not exactly like we’re friends, Swan. Or even acquaintances, really. You tolerate at me, at best.”

“Ok, well, you don’t really like me either,” Emma argued. “You think I’m…” “What? Please. Tell me exactly what I think about you.”

She stomped her foot, growling low in the back of her throat and Killian did something absolutely ridiculous with his eyebrows. “Fine, fine,” she hissed. “You want to get blasted in the middle of the afternoon, fine. I couldn't care less. I came here to steal some of David’s allergy medicine because the world is attacking me. So I will go get that and then you can get back to your one-person pity party of whatever it is you’re being pitiful about.”

Emma nodded once, like that had won whatever argument they’d been staging, stepping around him towards David’s room, but she barely made it one step before Killian’s fingers wrapped around her shoulder.

“Did you say the world was attacking you?” he asked and it was the last question she expected.

“Yeah. I’m, uh...super allergic to pollen. Spring is, like, my own personal brand of hell.” Killian hummed, taking another swig of whatever was in the bottle – the label had peeled off at some point – before offering it to her. “It’s almost better than Benadryl,” he said and it felt like a much bigger offer.

She took the bottle and the rum – it was rum, incredibly good rum that probably cost a questionable amount of money – shivering when it burned the back of her throat and settled in the pit of her stomach and it almost felt like she could breathe a little better.

“He really never told you?” Killian continued softly. “David, I mean. He knows...the whole thing.” Emma shook her head. “David wouldn’t do that. Not if you didn’t want him to.” “Well, I mean, they’re dead, so it’s not as if they’re going to be offended by me talking about them behind their back.” “What?” “There really is almost a reasonable explanation for the alcohol.”

“Ok,” Emma muttered, nodding in the direction of the second-hand couch in the corner of the room. “But we really should sit down for this because you honestly look like shit and I don’t know that I’ll be able to do anything if you fall over.” Killian scoffed, but he didn’t argue and they spent the next forty-six and a half minutes sitting on opposite sides of the couch, passing the bottle back and forth and he told her everything.

He told her about Liam and Milah and the accident that took both of them at the same time and how he was fairly positive it was some kind of absurd joke when he woke up in the hospital bed, eighteen years old with one less hand than he expected.

He told her about getting out of that town and trying to decide what do next and how to honor both of them without living in the past.

It wasn’t easy, but there were classes and loans and his brother always thought Killian could do anything, so he figured he might as well. He ended up at Xavier by chance, a scholarship that just sort of landed in his lap and a business program that was good and great and a slew of other adjectives that might have included insane because--

“Liam would have been thirty today,” Killian said, taking his time on the words and he kept staring at a piece of string on the one couch cushion in between them. “And he would have hated that I did…” He waved his hand through the air, as if that was enough description, smiling softly when Emma pulled the bottle back to her side of the couch. “But I woke up this morning and I got another shit grade in that marketing class and I can’t…” “So then don’t,” Emma shrugged. Her words felt heavy, hanging on the tip of her tongue and jumbling in the air and Killian stared at her like she was that cyborg again.

“What?”

“Don’t,” she repeated. “Do something else.” “Like...what?” “Anything. You’re minoring in something, right?” Killian nodded slowly, groaning when she wouldn’t relinquish control of the bottle. They’d put quite a dent in it. “Classics,” he said. “You know...Greeks and myths and that kind of thing.” “So do that.” “That’s not really how it works, Swan. And this is sounding incredibly out of character. I wasn’t aware you were so positive.” “Ok, first of all, that’s rude and, second of all, I have known Mary Margaret for nearly a decade now, so some of that is bound to rub off. And third of--” “--There’s a third thing?” Killian asked incredulously and he grinned when Emma stuck her tongue out.

“There would be if you’d let me finish,” she muttered. “Everything you’ve just told me about your brother makes it seem like he was Mary Margaret levels of supportive, right?” Killian hummed again. Emma rolled her eyes. “So then he thought you should major in business because, what, there were careers in it?” Killian shrugged.

“God, you’re the most frustrating drunk in the world, you know that? We’ll go with that theory for now because there are also jobs in the classics and you could...I don’t know, you could teach or something.” “What?” “We are going in circles.” Killian shook his head, like he was trying to work through some more fog or metaphorical cobwebs and Emma felt the muscles in her face shift. She was smiling.

She was smiling at him.

“I just think you could do it,” she said, absolutely ignoring whatever Killian’s entire being did as soon as the words fell out of her. She took another swig of rum. “And I bet your brother would have too. You shouldn’t have to be worried about a marketing grade.”

He didn’t say anything for several days, at least, and Emma had never been particularly good at patience and she wasn’t entirely prepared for--

“I’m sorry,” Killian whispered, leaning forward to rest his hand on one of her knees. Emma suddenly felt far more drunk than she was. “For, well, for all of it. Being a dick and...being a dick.”

Emma’s smile widened, ducking her head and she sneezed when her hair brushed her nose. “Yeah, me too,” she said. “Truce?” She stuck her hand out and, eventually, she’d blame the rum and whatever he was doing with his face, but in the moment it made a hell of a lot of sense and Killian’s fingers were warm.

“Truce,” he echoed.

Emma never got the Benadryl, but they finished the rum and Mary Margaret’s laughter woke both of them up where they’d fallen asleep on the couch.

He changed his major two days later.

And, now, Emma can’t stop thinking about that day and what it meant or, maybe, means because things got better, but Killian is still David’s friend and Emma is still David’s sister and she’s definitely thinking about this way too much.

Particularly when there’s an upset brewing.

“Oh shit,” Emma breathes, reaching for her phone because she totally picked this one. She absolutely picked this one. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” she mutters and patience is still not one of her strong suits.

He picks up on the third ring.

“What?” Killian whispers. “Is someone dead?” Emma nearly drops her phone. “No, what? Why?” “Swan, it is four in the afternoon. I have class. I am in class.” “Why did you answer your phone, then?” “You called me, love,” he says like it’s obvious and it kind of is and it makes every single one of her internal organs do something stupid. “So just to double check. No one is dead? David and Mary Margaret are fine?” “Presumably.” “Swan.” “Yes,” Emma sighs. “David and Mary Margaret are both fine. I just...well, it sounds stupid now. Are you actually in class? Aren’t there rules about that?”

“In a normal class, sure, but I’m a fantastic professor and my rules are much cooler than a normal class. And,” he adds, ignoring her not-so-quiet laughter completely. “It’s March, Swan. Early’ish March. There are midterms, you know.”

“Is that why you have tomorrow off?” “Mmmhmmm.”

“Oh, shit, does it make me a bad friend that I didn’t know that?” “I don’t expect you to have my schedule memorized, love.”

That’s two loves in the same conversation and, maybe, three in the last week and it’s not like Emma’s counting, but she isn’t not counting and--

“Yeah, but I feel like I should know that,” she continues. “Are you talking on the phone with me in the middle of a midterm? Because that’s also kind of shitty.” “I went outside. Figured if there was some kind of death notice imminent then I should be away from the prying eyes of undergrads.” “That is...morbid.” Killian laughs and Emma’s organs are just, like, on fire at that point. “I’ve been reading a lot of essays about the Underworld recently. It’s put me in a mood.” “Maybe I should bring more alcohol tomorrow.” “I wouldn’t say no, although we probably should wait until the later games for that, don’t you think?”

“Look at you, a picture of responsibility,” Emma says and her cheeks are starting to ache. She refuses to acknowledge the symmetry of her thoughts and their current conversation and he never brought it up again.  

He just changed majors and started taking more classes and went to grad school and he had a satchel now. She teased him about it mercilessly.

“Sometimes,” Killian admits. "Why’d you call, Swan?” “Did you pick Loyola Chicago?”

“Excuse me?” “First-round games. Loyola Chicago. Did you pick them beating Miami because they just beat Miami. I know you didn’t pick this so--” “--Of course I did.”

Emma blinks. “What?” “I definitely picked them. I think they could make a run. How’d they win?” “No, no, you don’t get that,” Emma mutters and he’s laughing again, free and easy and she wishes he were there. So she could kick him. Or something else. Whatever. “You can’t be serious. What the fuck is Loyola Chicago even?” “Presumably it’s a school,” he reasons. “And you might want to watch that, Swan because my research shows they’ve got some kind of nun on their side and I don’t think you want to jinx yourself like that.” “I’m going to murder you.” “You’ve just jinxed it.”

Emma makes some kind of noise in the back of her throat and it’s not particularly human, but it draws another laugh out of Killian and at least she also picked the upset. “I can’t believe you researched Loyola Chicago,” she says. “Why?” “Swan, we’ve been over this, there’s a system and it’s tried and true and I’m sharing it with you. Also Miami has been streaky all season. That was an easy upset.”

“Of course it was.” “Anything else to report?” “Don’t you have some kind of internal update that lets you know when your bracket stays perfect? That way your ego never takes a hit?” “That’s rude, Swan. And, no, I don’t. C’mon, update me.”

She does – spends the next five minutes giving him a run down of the early games and the pros and cons of Trae Young leaving Oklahoma after his first year, of which there are many because his jump shot is off sometimes, Killian, you know it, I know it, NBA front office knows it and she’s almost surprised when he mutters that he has to actually go acknowledge his class eventually.

“Oh, right, right, right,” Emma stammers, but she’s ninety-nine percent positive Killian is still smiling. “And I think Collin Sexton is a better freshman than Trae Young and whoever that Arizona kid David was talking about.” “I’ve got no doubt you’re right, love,” Killian says. Her body, possibly, explodes. “You want to tag-team David when Arizona gets upset later on tonight?” “Arizona’s not going to get upset later on tonight.”

Her phone dings as soon as the Arizona game ends and Emma’s watched enough basketball that her brain is starting to get a bit muddled, but she can still spot a monumental sporting moment and Arizona got upset.

By Buffalo.

Mary Margaret Nolan, 11:57 p.m.: Please do not say anything. He threw the remote.

Emma Swan, 11:57 p.m.: Uh oh.

Mary Margaret Nolan, 11:59 p.m.: I’m serious, Emma.

Emma Swan, 12 a.m.: I said no words.

Killian Jones, 12:02 a.m.: I will gladly say words. Off-court issues are on-court problems and Sean Miller is a terrible coach. Go back to Dayton.

Emma Swan, 12:03 a.m.: Were you...just talking to Sean Miller? Via text?

Killian Jones, 12:03 a.m.: Yes. Also I will repeat myself from the First Four. The Pac 12 is terrible. You picked the wrong Wildcat, David.

Emma Swan, 12:04 a.m.: It’s unfortunate, but you know, someone’s got to be out first, David. It just so happened you were first on the first day.

Emma Swan, 12:04 a.m.: The very first day.

Emma Swan, 12:04 a.m.: The first one.

Killian Jones, 12:05 a.m.: As early as possible.

David Nolan, 12:11 a.m.: THIS. IS. A. GROUP. TEXT.

The First Round, Friday, Day Two

“It’s freezing and I’m here and I bought really expensive rum!”

The lock to his building clicks and Emma doesn’t exactly race up the stairs, but she doesn’t just walk up the stairs and by the time she makes it to the third floor there’s a stitch in her side that leaves her just a bit breathless.

Killian’s eyebrows are doing something ridiculous.

“You ok, Swan?” he asks, stepping out of the doorway and grabbing the bottle before she can object. “Did you run here?” She sticks her tongue out in response, pushing lightly on his shoulder and she really does lose her breath at the sight in front of her. There’s already a pre-game show on TV and two more screens and some kind of projector thing hooked up to his laptop and Emma can feel Killian behind her, something that feels like nerves rolling off him.

“Wow,” she breathes. “That’s just...wow.” He makes a noncommittal noise, more nerves and caution and Emma wonders if her week-long thought process makes a bit more sense than she originally thought. But that’s only more confusing and she kind of wants to drink some of the rum now.

“It’s really not that impressive,” Killian promises, dropping into the corner of his couch with forced casualness. “The laptops are mine and I borrowed the projector thing from school and there are a lot of games, so I figured…” Emma nods slowly, trying to take it all in and it might be the nicest thing that’s happened to her in several years. “You figured right,” she promises. “You going to let me see your bracket then?”

It’s enough to break the tension or the nerves or anything else that isn’t the sort of normal she and Killian have settled into and the couch creaks when she sits down.

“I think you’re obsessed with my bracket, love,” Killian says. She’s still not counting. “And, no, you can't look yet. Not until it's over.”

She rolls her eyes, but doesn't really argue because there's a game starting and she doesn't really want to argue. They’re both more than vocal when Cincinnati plays, shouting a string of insults that gets progressively more crass throughout the game.

And they’re somewhere in the middle of the schedule, debating when they should order food and how qualified Emma is to operate the coffee maker on the other side of the apartment, when she decides fuck it, she’s going to ask.

Or something a little less crass.

“Why’d you pick Purdue?” Emma asks. “Honestly?” The question catches Killian short, eyes widening until there’s far too much blue there and it looks a little like the Creighton uniforms on TV, which is, honestly, the single most absurd thing she’s ever thought.

“And please don’t make a quip about being obsessed again,” Emma adds. “It’s stupid and a deflection and--” “That’s where Liam wanted to go,” Killian cuts in, voice scratchy and emotional and she knows her mouth drops open. She’s not sure she’s breathing.

Her lungs have been through the wringer all day.

“I have no idea why,” he continues and he’s not looking at her anymore. “It makes no sense whatsoever because Purdue is several states away from where we grew up, but he did and he thought a Boilermaker was some kind of fantastic mascot and I think he kind of wanted to be an engineer? But then my mom died and he had to take care of me so--” “That wasn’t your fault.” They need to stop interrupting each other. They need to stop having these emotionally-charged conversations in the middle of a basketball marathon with takeout menus everywhere.

They probably should have done this before.

“That sounded suspiciously like a compliment, Swan,” Killian grins. “And you didn’t even make a joke about Purdue’s top kid getting hurt.” “You think I’d make jokes about kids getting hurt?” He sobers for a moment, eyes darting to hers immediately and the whole word seems to shift when he shakes his head. “No,” he mutters, but it sounds like several admissions and some kind of major sporting moment and Emma tries to remember how important oxygen is to the human body. “I know you wouldn’t do that.” “You’re kind of a sap, you know that?” Killian chuckles softly, leaning forward and his hand is on her knee again. Time, it seems, is some kind of twisted circle.

“Sometimes,” he agrees. “I’m glad you’re here, love.”

Emma’s mouth goes dry at the sincerity in his voice, the hint of hopefulness on the edge of his gaze, like he means it and has been waiting to tell her for several years. She can feel the flush in her cheeks, teeth digging into her lower lip and his hand tightens a fraction of an inch.

He doesn’t flinch when hers lands on top.

She considers twisting their fingers together, but there have already been enough upsets and that team with the nun mascot was all over social media the night before, so Emma figures the world only allows so many surprises in a twenty-four hour span.

“Yeah, me too,” she says instead and she might think about his answering smile for the next week. “You want to order some food?”

They order way too much food and eat way too much food and Emma almost expects Killian’s cheers when they both start yelling during the Xavier game.

It’s easy and simple and they watch every single moment of every single game, only pausing a few times to answer David’s manic texts once UMBC takes a lead into halftime against Virginia.

“He thinks they’re going to win,” Emma mutters, but she’s standing and pacing, mumbling instructions under her breath.

Killian arches an eyebrow. “Do you not, love? As predicted, you’re playing defense. And rooting against your own pick.” “Aren’t you? I thought we determined you were a giant, sentimental sap?” “I’m not sure we settled on that turn of phrase, particularly, but to answer your question, of course I am. A little bracket chaos never hurt anyone.” “Plus you’re a great, big history nerd.” “You know none of these compliments sound much like compliments.”

Emma flashes him a smile, but her gaze darts back to the TV when Jim Nantz’s voice reaches a previously unachieved register and she’s not sure she’s ever heard of UMBC before.

They’re up double digits.

“I’m definitely complimenting you,” Emma promises. “And you know…” She waves her hand towards the screen, rolling her eyes when her phone makes more noise. Killian hasn’t blinked since the takeout got cold. He’s staring at her like he’s trying to read her mind or figure out what league UMBC plays in and they’re equally disconcerting and exciting because there’s more history to be made.

Maybe.

Emma hates her own metaphors.

“I don’t,” he mutters, gaze steady and just a hint imploring. Like he wants to know. Desperately.

“Well, maybe you deserve some compliments,” Emma starts. “And, you know...maybe I’m kind of a sap too. Rooting for the underdogs and upsets and picking the alma mater because there’s some history and...cut me off whenever.” He shakes his head, standing up slowly, and he’s in her space a moment later, one hand on the curve of her shoulder – as if he’s trying to make sure she’s there or keep her there and there are only a few minutes left in the game.

“That’s not a bad thing, Swan,” Killian says. “You’re allowed to care about things.”

“Yeah, sometimes those have a habit of blowing up in my face. The underdogs disappoint. That’s just how it works.” They are drowning in metaphors.

And he showed up on her doorstep a little over a year ago when she and Neal dissolved into whatever they weren’t, got her to let him into the apartment and brought her an entire box of samosas. He slept on her couch.

The buzzer on the TV goes off.

UMBC won.

History made.

Or something less sentimental.

“Not always,” Killian breathes, but Emma hears him perfectly and she’s, at least, seventy-six percent positive he’s going to kiss her when her phone dings, at least, seventy-six times.

She’s not sure which one of them groans louder.

“David needs a hobby,” Emma grumbles.

“This is his hobby.” ‘Well, then he needs a new one. This is just…” “Yeah, exactly.” “Why did that sound like an insult?” Killian makes a dismissive noise, an air of frustration lingering around him and Emma needs to go home. She doesn’t really want to go home. “It wasn’t,” Killian says. “It was just…” He’s going to do damage to his neck if he keeps shaking his head, but Emma’s forgotten how to hold a conversation and she’s too busy being stunned by the next words out of his mouth to be worried about saying anything except--

“What?” “It’s late,” he mumbles. “And you’re going to get surge pricing and you can just stay here.”

That’s what she thought he said.

Huh.

“Oh,” Emma blinks. “That’s um...are you sure?” That’s not what she expects to say.

Huh.

Again.

Killian nods. It’s a nice change of pace. So is the smile and that one lock of hair on his forehead and his hand is still on her arm.

“Yeah, yeah, it makes sense, right?” he asks. “And then you can raid the coffee again in the morning. It’s a win-win for you.” “Ok,” Emma says, a quick agreement that seems to rush out of her and into the air molecules where it lingers for several history-making, relationship-changing moments. “Ok.”

He absolutely refuses to let her sleep on the couch and Emma doesn’t argue, just smiles and lets herself be silently charmed by it and of course he has extra toothbrushes in the bathroom cabinet. She falls asleep under the questionable number of blankets on his bed, a smile lingering on her face and in her soul or something equally ridiculous and he doesn’t say anything when she drinks four cups of coffee the next morning.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

A STUDENT'S GUIDE TO CORP DEV

When you talk about code-size ratios, you're implicitly assuming that you can use, if the language will let you, is something called bottom-up program should be easier to modify as well, and we couldn't see any reason not to use it in all his paintings, wouldn't he? The unusual thing about Lisp—people who know that Lisp is a slow AI language with a lot of code. The best way to put it is to say that a hacker about to write a serious program using only the built-in operators in Common Lisp operators are comically long. It's always alarming when two people trying the same experiment get widely divergent results. Writers now deliberately write things to draw traffic from aggregators—sometimes even specific ones. There is one other language still surviving from the 1950s, Fortran, and it frees conscious thought for the hard problems. VCs and startups to diverge.

It doesn't even have x Blub feature of your choice. I've detected this investors aren't worth the trouble, that could be dangerous for VCs. So saying startups should move to Silicon Valley is not even a nationalistic one. It wouldn't work otherwise. Bulgaria, we could offer a better product for less money, and partly because I think I can prove I'm right. But another kind of efficiency will be increasingly important: the number of failures and yet leave you net ahead. Once the libraries get too big, they become overwhelmed. IBM's big mistake was to accept a non-exclusive license for DOS.

Perhaps the best policy is to make it something that they thought ugly. It's not simply a matter of degree. Though quite successful, it did not crush Apple. Would we be just as likely to feel life was short if we lived 10 times as long? There are few corporations in which it was socially acceptable to work for business too. If you understand how compilers work, what's really going on is not so much that Lisp has no syntax. I am not surprised to hear it. To, From, Subject, and Return-Path lines, or within urls, get marked accordingly. Then for each ask, might this be true? I'm about to propose a theory that will offend both liberals and conservatives. But in practice a good profiler may do more to improve the performance of their algorithm, let alone superior to the latest developments? For example, it returned false for Montaigne, who was arguably the inventor of the essay.

We have such labels today, of course, and this is especially true of a highly articulated tool like a programming language is good as a programming language rather than, say, an implementation. But I think there is room to beat languages like Perl and Python at their own game. It would take a book to answer that. At Viaweb now Yahoo Store, this software continues to dominate its market. Suppose we could somehow feed these reporters false information about market closes, but give them all the time. You have to be over some threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. If you just need to feed data from one format to another. If we think 20th century cohesion was something that happened at least in a sense naturally. He often used to tell them that a perfect formulation of a problem is already half its solution.

And such an algorithm would be easy for spammers to spoof: just add a big chunk of each series A company to compensate for the opportunity cost of the board seat it consumes. If the same person does both, they'll inevitably mumble downwards at the computer screen instead of talking clearly at the audience. You find the same in music and art. If you're eating at a restaurant you suspect is bad, your best bet is to order the cheeseburger. If I had ever seen a job posting looking for Lisp hackers, I would learn more about macros. There should be online documentation as well. You can see that in the way of Perl's popularity. Copernicus was a canon of a cathedral, and dedicated his book to the pope. Every futon sofa in Cambridge seemed to have the same fat white book lying open on it. Everyone knows that it's not true. Unless there's some huge market crash, the next couple years. Perhaps a better solution is to add a delay before people can respond to a comment, and make you a better programmer, and yet pay a higher price for them.

What about returns, though? And so interfaces tend not to give you distance, you have to say actually is a list of n things the writer agrees to constrain himself to a collection of angel investments, and most of the time not to defend yourself. Humans also seem designed to work in. The form of fragmentation, like the Hoover Dam. The challenge is whether we can keep things this way. Macros, introduced by Lisp in about 1960, is now widely considered to be improper. As for it being impossible, I reply: here's the data; here's the theory; theory explains data 100%. Version 1 of the national economy consisted of a few giant companies dominating each big market. When startups came back into fashion, around 2005, investors were starting to write checks again, they may not reconverge once the economy gets better. ITA's president, I assume they got this number from ITA. But this is a kind of argument that might be convincing. Including, I hope, the problem that has afflicted so many previous communities: being ruined by growth.

The trick is to pay careful attention to how you qualify what you say. Kids' heads are repositories of all our taboos. So if Lisp makes you a better programmer, and yet he knows what language you should write it in. If you can't find ten Lisp hackers, I would have been there when HN started. In fact, why should the pointy-haired boss, the difficulty of hiring programmers, I think, McCarthy found his theoretical exercise transformed into an actual programming language—and a more powerful one than he had intended. I mean five years if nothing goes wrong. In 1917, doing everything himself seemed to Ford the only way to get those initial twenty users is probably to use a completely different voice and manner talking to a roomful of people than you would in conversation. But they're still not as fast as possible.

Dylan: Scheme has no libraries, and Lisp syntax is scary. This really is kind of high, but I personally have timed out. My theory doesn't require that. This makes the programmer do the kind of conversations freshmen have late at night in common rooms: What is our purpose? Paradoxically, one of the most important places for learning about new languages like Perl and Python at their own game. If you work for. Genes count for little by comparison: being a genetic Leonardo was not enough to make all the text legible. And what, exactly, is hate speech? Perl 4 and Perl 5, lexical closures got added to the language he had designed. As a result workers' wages also tended toward market price. Nowadays Valley VCs are more likely to know they're being stupid.

[jewishmatsuda]

Devil From the Shadows: Chapter Two

Fandoms: Devilman Crybaby & Yu-Gi-Oh!

Rating: Mature

Chapter Summary: Ryou Bakura hits a tipping point, and Ryo Asuka is not happy about it. At least Akira is there to be optimistic.

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Call it simple curiosity, but Ryo was listening in through Bakura’s phone when Akira came over for the night for his second dinner and to generally hang out. He only had it on in the background, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn it off. Call it a hunch. After he had been spotted for a second goddamn time, he got to listen in on about ten seconds of something incredibly interesting. Everything else he heard had been painfully dull. Still, Ryo had a feeling about this.

“Ryo, I’m bored,” Akira whined, and he flopped over Ryo’s lap and also his arms, which was proving to make typing difficult.

“Maybe if you’re patient, another demon will pop up, and you’ll have something to do.”

With incredibly convenient timing, Ryo started picking up something interesting from Bakura’s phone, and he turned up the volume,

“-orc Necrophades.”

“The Pharaoh beat you.”

“You don’t get to have me again!”

The speaking stopped soon after because it had been replaced with pained screaming. An impish grin spread across Ryo’s face, and tears prickled the corners of Akira’s eyes.

“Your wish came true, Akira.” Ryo pushed Akira up and off of his lap, gesturing for him to follow. “Come on, I’m driving. Ah, such a beautiful algorithm; it’s already working.”

“Ryo?” Akira followed quickly behind, looking troubled. He’d get over it in a bit. “Was that the, uh, that other Ryou guy?”

“It was,” he confirmed. “I'm surprised at how quickly the situation has progressed, since I was still only gathering information in between my other work. This Bakura character might be a fluke, but that's not important right now. We have a demon to exterminate, Akira.”

They wasted no time getting into Ryo’s car. The coordinates were already in the GPS, and they were off the moment Ryo’s lead foot came down onto the gas.

Something about how Ryo was behaving was throwing Akira off. His friend was still very to the point about their business, but this kind of excitement wasn't typical. Granted, it might not look like much of a difference to anyone other than Akira. He knew Ryo better than anyone else, or at least he liked to think so. Maybe he shouldn't be worrying about it, though. The excitement didn't seem like a bad thing, and Ryo’s driving wasn't anymore crazier than any other time.

Akira zoned out for the rest of the drive, coming to when Ryo alerted him that they had arrived. “This is his apartment building. We'll get in and go up to his unit. That's where we'll start looking for a trail,” Ryo said, laying out the plan. “For all we know, the demon could still be in there trashing the place before it goes hunting.”

Ryo lead them through the building after getting a confirmative nod from Akira. It was crude, but they got in by ringing every unit until someone buzzed them in. Ryo was soon knocking on the door of Bakura’s unit regardless, so there had been no need to do anything more complicated than what they did.

“I don’t hear anything.” Ryo tutted and guided Akira towards the door. “Bust the door in. In all likelihood, the inside is already trashed in some way.”

“Can do,” Akira said, cracking his knuckles. He proceeded to take a step back and kick open the door.

The inside of the apartment was in a sort of disarray, but it wasn't as bad as Ryo implied it would be. Running in, Akira saw crystals and playing cards on the ground. He entered the bedroom and saw the contents of a table had been upturned, a number of books and candles knocked over onto the ground. Akira could hear Ryo coming up behind him, but he noticed the broken bedroom window in the same instant. Just as Ryo caught up to him, Akira impulsively rushed forward and jumped out the window, halfway transforming as he fell.

It had to lead to Bakura, Right? It was a good, if not obvious, guess. Akira landed in the back alley of the apartment, and his attention was instantly brought to the panting, hunched over form of what presumably was once Ryou Bakura.

“Kill it!” He heard Ryo give the order from the bedroom window.

“Stay away from me!” That was the anguished cry that came from the hunched form, and looking closer brought Akira pause.

What Akira saw wasn't the usual twisted body he had grown to expect from possessed humans. Instead, it reminded him of his own Devilman form, ignoring the dark energy that seemed to be swirling around. Bakura’s body was still humanoid, sporting two sets of horns, jagged wings, and a scaled, segmented tail. The torso was bare and still looked human, just like his.

“Akira!” Ryo called from the window again.

“I don't want to hurt anyone else!” Bakura cried.

“Wait!” Akira yelled, finally speaking. “Wait, I think he's fighting it.”

Akira wasn't looking, so he couldn't see it, but Ryo was pissed. He was staring down at the scene from the window, and he was mad that Akira was right. He was mad that he'd have to wait for Bakura to succumb before he could get Akira to fight. What Akira was hoping for was a waste because only Akira himself was meant to become a Devilman.

Scowling, Ryo climbed out the window himself, getting onto the fire escape and making his way down.

“You can fight it,” Akira cheered Bakura on with hope in his heart. “You can win!”

Bakura screamed, and that's when it all snapped.

It was almost anticlimactic. The scream was cut off, and Bakura dropped to the ground, demon bits gone. The horns and all the rest of it was just gone. Ryo landed in the alley, and he wasn't pleased with what he saw. Ryou Bakura was still breathing, and his appearance was now altered from how it had been before. This wasn't supposed to happen.

“He did it,” Akira exclaimed after he made sure his eyes weren't deceiving him. In an instant, he had run over to Bakura.

“This wasn't supposed to happen.” Ryo said it out loud this time through gritted teeth. “This shouldn't have been possible, and now we have to deal with him. Akira, get him to the car. You're in the back seat with him, so he doesn't get away.”

“Got it,” Akira replied. He was grinning, but he couldn't help it. Someone else had finally managed to beat their demon like he had, and the joy that filled him almost made him feel high. He lifted Bakura up in his arms and ran back to the car. It probably looked a little funny since they were both without shirts from their transformations. Akira slid into the back seat with Bakura, and Ryo was already ready to go.

Unfortunately, Bakura came to as the car lurched forward.

Ryou started awake with his heart pounding in his chest. The past half hour or so had gone by in a dazed blur of panic and struggle. He was struck by the distinct feeling that he had changed. Taking in his surroundings did nothing to help how disoriented he was feeling.

When he jolted awake, he found himself strapped into the back of a strange car with a strange man holding onto his upper arm. The man looked concerned, but Ryou failed to find and comfort in that. His eyes darted to the driver, and, even dazed, he recognized him as his stalker.

“What--" Ryou yelped, instinctively trying to back away from the men who were, for all intents and purposes, kidnapping him. However, the man in the back with him just moved closer.  There were hands on both of his arms now, as though this man had the nerve to try and steady him. “Who are you? Let me go!”

“Hey, it's okay. You're safe,” said the man holding him back as though it wasn't a blatant lie.

“Shut up, I'm driving.” His stalker shouted back at them from the front. The car turned sharply, and Ryou would have jumped out of his skin if not for the man who now had wrapped his arms around Ryou to keep him still. They were going to die. His stalker drove like a madman, and they were going to die, and he couldn't breathe--

“Fuck. Hey, um, Bakura. It's okay, we aren't going to hurt you.” A sniff. “You're gonna pass out again if you keep breathing so fast.”

There was a man, who knew his name, crying and holding him, and they were all going to die in this car. They were both shirtless, too, which was just fantastic. Ryou squeezed his eyes shut, desperately trying to ignore the sharp movement's of the car and the nausea in his gut. That's how the rest of the ride went for him.

-----

Ryou had no idea how long he was in that metal death machine for, but he had been blocking out his surroundings entirely up until he felt himself being lifted out of the car.

“Let me go,” he protested, trying to wrestle his way out of the man's grip. Unfortunately, he was exhausted, and this man was strong.

“Hurry up, Akira, you're going to attract attention,” Ryo Asuka spoke tersely, annoyed. Everything had seemed to be going as planned, and then Bakura had to go and be special. Akira appeared to be having a small bit of trouble keeping a hold on their newly acquired burden, but Bakura was clearly weakened at the moment. “Regrettably, I won't be hurting you, Ryou Bakura, so don't fucking scream.”

To mitigate risks, they still moved up to the penthouse quickly.

Akira gently set Bakura down on one of the clean, white couches, and he seemed to get a handle on his surroundings again.

“You kidnapped me!” Ryou shouted, eyes darting between Akira and his stalker. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I'm Akira,” said the man that had carried Ryou, and he sat down next to him. For some god forsaken reason, he seemed excited. Ryou desperately wanted to call Honda or Yugi or anyone, really. His phone was abandoned back at his apartment.

“I am Dr. Ryo Asuka,” said Ryou’s stalker, who apparently had the same name as him. It was clear he didn't want to be introducing himself. Ryo was sat on an entirely separate couch from Ryou and Akira. “Are you aware of what's happened to you, Bakura?”

“I've been kidnapped,” Ryou spat. While he was angry, Ryou wasn't stupid enough to not realize he was being asked about what happened prior to his kidnapping. However, he wasn't going to just tell these strangers about Zorc.

“You've been possessed by a demon,” Ryo said, giving it back just as harshly as Ryou sent it.

Ryou Bakura remained surprisingly unfazed.

“Do you not remember what happened before you woke up in the car?”

“I do remember,” Bakura said, crossing his arms. “What does it have to do with you?”

“You're like me, now,” Akira cut in, seemingly unaware of the tension in the room. “You're a devilman.”

“Oh, funny, that didn't happen the last time I was possessed,” Bakura drawled. Immediately, he berated himself internally. He was making poor decisions in his frazzled state.

“You know the demon who possessed you, do you not?” Asuka asked with a smugness about him. “What did you call him, Zorc Necrophades?”

“How the bloody fuck do you know that name, you stalker?” Bakura was shouting, and he had move to stand up. Akira pulled him back before he could and he huffed angrily.

“Call it whatever you want, it doesn't matter. Akira was right, though, you appear to be a devilman now. Good for you.” Asuka leaned forward his his hands folded in front of him. “This Zorc Necrophades tried to take over your body and failed. Instead, you retained your human heart. Your body has changed, and you can transform into your demon. Akira is the same.”

“What do you mean, my body is different?” Before Bakura could get a reply, Akira was holding a phone in front of his face with the camera on. After a second of silence, Akira remembered to change it to the front facing camera. Bakura ended up muttering his next thought out loud. “I look like him.”

He stared at the image of his face.  The edges of his face and his eyes were sharper. It wasn't a trick of the eye, either, like it had been with the spirit. If Bakura couldn't see himself blinking, he would have thought he was looking at a picture where someone had placed a shadowed filter over his skin. He didn't see a scar, but he reached up to touch his cheek anyway.

“Who?” Akira asked, leaning in closer. This action brought Bakura out of his trance, and he leaned away, himself.

“Bakura,” Asuka snapped, getting Ryou’s attention again. “I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation here. In my research, I've discovered that demons have been possessing humans and taking over their body’s. This is the cause of the rise in unusually violent murders. Akira became a devilman to fight the demons. Unfortunately, since you went and became a devilman yourself, you're involved now.”

“Look, I don't know that much about Zorc.” Ryou said, and it was the truth. “The person who knew the most about him passed on. All I know is that he has the powers of darkness, he wanted to destroy the world, and he apparently has it out for me. I don't want to be involved; I just want to go home and attempt to exorcise myself.”

“None of your occult nonsense is going to cure you of being a devilman, Bakura. Additionally, I can't just let you off the hook when you could interfere with our work if you ever lose control of your demon. I don't care if it was just bad luck. You have to be taken into account now.”

Asuka looked smug, and Bakura glared at him. He could feel the exhaustion in his bones from several adrenaline spikes and his earlier transformation. Willpower and spite alone were keeping him awake.

“It doesn't have to be all bad, right, Ryo?” Akira chimed, in making it unclear who he was talking to. “You can help, Bakura. You can fight the demons, too.”

Akira’s optimism reminded Bakura of Yugi. Yugi was going to freak out when he heard about this.

“I don't care if he helps or not,” Asuka said. “What we need is for Bakura to not interfere or go around telling people about demons and devilmen.”

“If this is really Zorc, then there are certain people who have to know,” Bakura said, and Asuka started glaring at him. “I have been possessed before and, if you must know, Zorc and number of other individuals were closely involved. If you don't want the only people who've ever beaten Zorc Necrophades to be unaware he's back, then you'll have to shoot me with that gun you waved around yesterday and make it so he isn't.”

Akira looked shocked by that declaration, and he looked over to Asuka, pleading with eyes. This was the first time he's met another devilman, and he didn't want it to end like that.

“If words spreads, I'll kill all of them,” Asuka threatened, but it was a concession that he made only for Akira's sake. “Regrettably, you're going to have to stay in touch, Bakura. The address of this location will be sent to your phone, and if you don't come by here at least every third day, you'll regret making me go find you.”

Bakura was still listening, but the longer this went on, the harder a time he had of it. This place didn't feel safe at all, even if Akira seemed invested in him not dying. He couldn't fall asleep here, even if his body only protested more with each passing moment.

“Uh, Ryo, Bakura doesn't look so good,” Akira said, shooting worried glances towards Bakura. Asuka was going to have to get Akira to be more clear when he spoke.

“If he passes out, that isn't my problem. I'm surprised he's still conscious at all. After you first transformed, you were out for quite awhile.” Akira huffed and Asuka looked smug.

“I can hear you,” Bakura said, slurring his words. He really didn't know how long he was going to be able to keep this up. Awareness was starting to fade in and out. Suddenly, he realized his face was pressed against something. Akira had put an arm around him without him noticing, and it knocked Bakura off balance. His face was pressed against Akira, and he would have been embarrassed if he were more conscious.

“Oops, he's out now.”

“Good job, Akira.”

-----

Back in Ryou Bakura’s apartment, his phone was lighting up every few minutes or so.

57 text messages.

23 missed calls.