#offing myself i have gone too far w this one

[gayfilmbro]

romeo + juliet (1996)//the leather boys wikipedia page//the leather boys (1964)

[seyaryminamoto]

Matching Heartbeats: Sokkla Saturdays 2020

Day 6: Making a deal

On FF.net//On AO3

If only someone other than Aang had claimed to have been warned in their dreams that some dangerous threat lurked in the shadows of Ba Sing Se's Palace, tailing the king and his family, Sokka would have never taken a break in his duties as a White Lotus agent to investigate it. It wasn't that he dismissed spiritual matters the way he had in his younger years… but something as vague as "threat lurking in the shadows" didn't sound as serious to him as a confirmed, verified menace would…

But here he was, paying a home visit to King Kuei, smiling awkwardly as him and his wife talked his ear off about the baby they were expecting, who would arrive any day now. They had the highest hopes for the baby, and couldn't seem to consider that maybe their bright enthusiasm was a hazard, a beacon that attracted unwanted attention: countless dignitaries, envoys from noble families of Ba Sing Se and other cities, even representatives of other nations, had been arriving across the weeks leading up to the birth, all be it to congratulate the king before and after his child was born.

And that meant the threat, whatever it might be, could be anywhere. It could be part of any of those retinues, whether a highly-ranked official or a mere servant, even someone within Kuei's own people, hiding in plain sight for years, gaining his trust, until the right moment to strike arrived. It wouldn't be any surprise, would it? The trusting fool had reinstated the Dai Li after they turned on him, no less…

Thus, Sokka was to work in subtle secrecy, without the king's awareness. He would unearth the threat somehow, before Kuei could come any closer to unraveling there was one at all: it had taken forever for the man to ease up on his antagonism towards the Fire Nation, and Aang's grand project to establish a United Republic hadn't helped matters in the least… too much rode on keeping the damn king safe. They could be on the verge of yet another war if either him or his loved ones were harmed by this problem.

He smiled as enthusiastically as he could while Kuei recited his genealogy for the umpteenth time, eating his dinner while trying his best to attune his other senses to their surroundings. What was the best place where a killer might hide? Where would he hide, if he were an assassin? What would he use to do away with Kuei or his wife…? Or maybe both? It could be an attempt to treasonously kill every member of the royal family, come to think of it… while Kuei and his wife appeared to look forward to having a huge family, this one would be their very first child. Without these three, the Earth Kingdom's royal bloodline would be gone for good.

If so… the closest way to stealthily strike at them would be from their side. But would this threat have waited this long to act, if they had been in the king's employ for all this time? The pregnancy had only been announced officially to the whole world two months ago: anyone who had intended to kill Kuei and do away with his child would have likely acted sooner than this. That Aang had only gotten that warning after the pregnancy was announced could only mean that, whatever this threat was, it had found out about the truth when everyone else had… it was an outsider. And what would an outsider do to get closer to Kuei, enough to kill him or his child…?

Sokka's eyes raked the servants in the room slowly, assessing each of the maids with careful regard. All appeared perfectly Earth Kingdom, clad in elegant yet humble robes of palace servants… nothing stood out amongst them. Not the maids, then? Perhaps the soldiers?

Just then, he glimpsed one shadow at the threshold of the door behind Kuei. Sokka's eyes narrowed as he glanced in that direction: he couldn't identify it right away. He gritted his teeth before setting down his chopsticks and excused himself, saying he'd have to go to the bathroom because he'd eaten too fast. Used to such antics on his part, Kuei dismissed him with a laugh, and he lingered in the room with his beloved wife while Sokka walked through the opposite door… and then turned sharply on the next corner, slipping through the corridors he had learned by heart during his brief stay in the Palace back in the years of the war. He had to move slowly, as cautiously as possible, if he hoped to catch this lurker…

He glanced past the corner warily, and from this new angle it was far easier to spot the dark shape hidden in the corridor: even if he hadn't been warned that there would be danger, he would have been alarmed by it.

Slowly he made his way towards that shadow, knowing there was a pretty good chance he'd be heard… knowing it could mean trouble if he was. The whole idea was to resolve this problem without Kuei finding out there was a problem at all. If he even knew anyone was trying to assassinate him, every bit of progress made for the harmony of nations would come to an abrupt end, and they couldn't have that, not at all…

The shape was so focused on the dinner scene, apparently, that they hadn't sensed him yet. One more careful step, then he could sprint towards it and disarm them before questioning them thoroughly, perhaps…?

The shape turned sharply towards him and launched a potent kick at his face.

Sokka lost his balance but regained it quickly just before the other person tackled him: he was larger, stronger physically, and he planted his feet firmly just before the opponent collided with him: the feeling of that body against his own… those were breasts. It was a woman.

Ugh, that was no reason to hold back if she was here to kill Kuei anyhow.

He clasped the enemy by her shirt and pinned her to the nearest wall, perhaps a little more violently than he should have: the next thing he knew, the dark corridor was lit up by an eerie blue light that came from the enemy's fingertips…

An eerie blue light that allowed them both to see each other's faces, and recognize one another immediately.

"Sokka…?!"

"A-Azula?!"

She hadn't intended to be discovered at any point in time, but if anyone tried to attack her, she wouldn't hold back if they were strong enough to withstand her non-bending combat abilities. She had conjured her fire with the intent of putting a rather final conclusion to this sudden setback… but just before she could strike in a violent, lethal way, she found herself recognizing the man as someone she absolutely couldn't kill if she truly hoped to get out of this mess unscathed. The very fool she had been surveilling a moment ago, as he excused himself from the meal he had been sharing with the king…

"Guess you didn't need the bathroom that much, huh?" Azula said, with a dry grin. Sokka gasped, staring at her in anguish.

"You're… you're kidding. Zuko said you'd changed, that you'd proven yourself…!" Sokka said, keeping his voice down despite his outrage threatened to change that. "I believed him! And yet now you're trying to kill the king?!"

"You… ugh, you utter imbecile," Azula sighed, closing her eyes and dropping her head against the wall. "I'm not trying to kill anyone… well, not anymore, I did think I'd have to kill you just now, until I recognized you. But I'm not here to kill that fool of a king, I'm here to save his sorry hide. Same as you."

"You… you are?" Sokka said, blinking blankly. Azula smiled dryly again and nodded in the most sarcastic manner possible. "W-wait, but why? How? You know that someone's going to try to…?"

"I don't know it, my stupid brother knows it, apparently," Azula growled. "He says he had a dream, some damn vision said King Kuei would be in mortal peril, and I suggested I could come here and deal with the matter myself."

"He… he dreamt that too?" Sokka asked. Azula raised her eyebrows.

"What, so did you?"

"No, Aang did," Sokka answered, biting his lip. "That… still doesn't explain why you weren't sent as an official dignitary, though. You're dressed like a servant, aren't you? Why…?"

"Why else?" Azula hissed. "I can't expect to play nice with the king the way you did. Technically, I'm still largely despised in this damn city, and even though I'm no longer public enemy number one, I'm not exactly far from that position either. If Kuei ever realized I'm the very same girl who aimed a fire dagger at his throat and stole his throne? He'll likely either sentence me to death right then and there, or eject me from the Palace, and his damn assassin will have a free path to doing away with him."

"And you're helping out… why?" Sokka asked again, blinking blankly. "Just because Zuko had a vision…?"

"More because I'd really like to come to this damn city whenever I so please without needing Zuzu making a thousand diplomatic agreements to allow it," Azula hissed. "You don't know it yet, do you? I'm his top intelligence advisor: his spymaster. I've been doing his dirty work for the past years. Why do you think he's faced next to no rebellions as of late? Because he's doing a fantastic job, and all the people indoctrinated into Fire Nation supremacy for the past five generations have changed their beliefs immediately thanks to his preachy speeches?"

"Uh… no. I guess that wouldn't make too much sense, not when it's only been a decade since the war ended, but…" Sokka admitted, before sighing. "And well, if he's going to have an intelligence advisor it makes sense it'd be you. You're far smarter than anyone else in that nation, as far as I know…"

"Flattering… though you're an idiot," she said, smiling a little. Sokka grinned too, despite himself. "That's not the sense of 'intelligence' I was referring to, and you know it."

"Still true," he smirked. "But… you do swear you're here under his orders? You promise you're not just messing with me for your benefit?"

"Ugh, and why on earth would I do that?" Azula sighed, rolling her eyes. "If I were here to kill them myself, I would've offed you immediately, whether I recognized you or not."

"I suppose…" Sokka pouted. "Though I thought we were getting along better, you know…?"

"That's no reason not to kill a guy who's pinning you to a wall like he likes it, you see…"

Her words echoed in Sokka's head for a long moment, throughout which he stared at Azula in utter disbelief. She raised her eyebrows meaningfully, before glancing down at the contact between their bodies: his hands on her shoulders kept her pressed to the wall, as did one of the legs that held down hers. By the time her eyes returned to his, Sokka's face was deeply flushed, even under the blue light of her bending.

"S-sorry… I didn't mean to… sorry," he said, pulling away and releasing her from his grip. Well, his heart was racing now… and not the same way it had when he had thought he'd caught the assassin.

"You didn't?" Azula asked, smirking still. "And here I thought you were doing it deliberately because you somehow adore being in close quarters with me… it's happened an awful lot of times, hasn't it?"

"U-uh…" Sokka blinked blankly as Azula lowered her fire, extinguishing it after a few moments, leaving them in the perfect shroud of darkness once more. "Yeah, well, that was then, this is now. I didn't really want to cause you trouble, Azula, it's just…"

"You were sent here for the same reasons I was" Azula said "And that means… that as much as I'd rather work alone, we may be better served by cooperating with each other going forward."

"Cooperating?" Sokka repeated. Azula nodded promptly.

"I'm on the inside. I will keep Kuei and his family safe because, so far, I've been posing as a maid in their household for five days and they still haven't noticed something's off. Odd, you'd think, but they're royals of the careless kind, much like my father was: they don't pay that much attention to the help so long as the help knows how to pass unnoticed."

"And you've learned how to go unnoticed over the years, huh?" Sokka asked. Azula nodded.

"You, though, can investigate by talking with all those dignitaries who poured into the damn Palace in droves. Assess them, figure out which one is the likeliest to strike against the royal family, and keep watch over them. I can't quite perform background checks here as easily as I would have in the Fire Nation… but fishing out any Earth Kingdom loyalists who believe Kuei's latest policies are an insult to their great nation will, hopefully, yield results soon."

"You're quite confident, huh?" Sokka asked, raising an eyebrow that he knew she wouldn't see, not while they stood in such a dark corridor. "Do you have any leads on anyone in particular so far, or is it you haven't been able to investigate much on your own?"

"I've looked up only a few people, but they appear to be irrelevant," Azula admitted. "I'll keep an eye on the other servants, even the Dai Li and every soldier, for whoever's behind this could've had the same idea I did to disguise themselves in the palace's own staff… eventually, something's bound to pop out as suspicious."

"Alright… alright," Sokka said, biting his lip. "Then I guess… we have a deal?"

"We might," Azula said, enigmatically. Sokka smiled before stretching a hand towards her. "But only if you pull your weight. I'm not slowing down just to wait for you to catch up with me."

"Same here," Sokka said, haughtily. "We, uh, should meet at least once a day? To discuss anything we've discovered for now?"

"Good idea," Azula nodded, clasping his hand in hers gently: her warmth shouldn't have been any surprise, and yet Sokka felt a thrill rushing under his skin upon their contact. "There's some unused rooms in the basement, choose one of those and I'll meet you there at midnight, I suppose. No one should be keeping tabs on a maid at those hours."

"Alright," Sokka said, breathing out slowly. "I'll, uh, go back now then. Sorry for scaring you…"

"Oh, I'm sure I'm the one who scared you," Azula smirked. Sokka scoffed.

"Just because you kicked me? You really think that scares me?" he smiled. "I've been through worse than that many times, Princess."

"I bet you have," Azula said, raising her eyebrows as Sokka walked away, raising his hand in farewell towards her.

"See you tomorrow," he said… though he had a feeling it wouldn't be quite so long before he saw her again.

He was right to guess as much: she appeared frequently wherever the king was, always keeping her head uncharacteristically low, walking at the same hurried, nervous pace as the other servants, shyly complying with every order and command. She appeared the picture of humility and perfect obedience… except for whenever she locked eyes with him. By then, she'd send him a quick glare, as good as commanding him wordlessly to stop staring at her. Sokka would obey quickly, again bothered by how his heartrate quickened upon being in her presence. Something was definitely wrong with him…

He had continued his research, though, and he had tried to make his acquaintance with the many visitors Kuei had received. He'd shared drinks with some, helped others heave in their large gifts for the king, offered directions to those who couldn't seem to find their way in the large palace… in the end, he always found a way to coax enough information from each person about who they were, and what they were doing in the palace.

He would share that information with Azula at midnight: despite he should know better, it had startled him to find her wearing her palace-acquired nightgown – a full-body, near translucent white outfit – upon their first nighttime encounter. She had made fun of him for how flustered he was, and he had tried his best to ignore her jabs as he conveyed what he'd discovered. Even though it'd been a week of this procedure already, he could never seem to hold back from admiring how those simple clothes hugged her womanly figure perfectly… but he wasn't here to swoon over beautiful women, he was here to work. And work he would. Even if she was making it rather difficult by stealing away his attention when he should have known better.

So far, not much progress had been made: everything seemed perfectly harmless. They were growing slightly frustrated over their assignment, even spending the latest midnight meeting drinking together while dissing their respective employers, Aang and Zuko, for having ridiculous dreams that they'd forced them to act upon… Azula was rather interesting with her inhibitions lowered, Sokka thought, but he hadn't dared act on his damn impulses even then. She had given no sign of reciprocity, so as far as he could tell, he was the only fool whose loins seemed to soar whenever they were near each other. This was work, too: he couldn't lose control and had to focus on the duty, the situation at hand. It wouldn't do to fail to protect Kuei because he was too busy gazing at Azula's cleavage, wondering just when she had filled out that much and how he hadn't noticed until then…

And if they kept up at this rate, he might have just failed to read the signs of danger when they finally arrived at their doorstep: a week after Sokka's arrival, another lordling, landowner in the western Earth Kingdom, had appeared in the Palace with as much pomp as any other noble had… and yet he immediately stood out as a menace to Azula and Sokka, as they watched him in his encounter with Kuei.

"So much has changed in the Earth Kingdom for the past years, my king… it has been difficult to keep up," the man had said, sipping his tea quietly upon each pause. Kuei eyed him remorsefully. "But this child of yours…! It will be the very first good change in a long time, won't it? A strong boy, I'm sure, who will uphold every ideal our nation ought to strive towards…"

"I am hoping so, yes," Kuei smiled. "I do regret that there has been very little to be done about the United Republic's demands, though, Lord Yao… it has taken me so long to accept the Avatar's project because I had no intentions of hindering my own people. It all boils down to that spoiled Fire Lord, really…"

"Oh, but he's just the spitting image of his father, only, with a damn scar across his face," said Lord Yao. Sokka's eyes flickered towards Azula, and he was impressed to see she hadn't reacted, not even once, upon hearing either the king or his lordling badmouthing her brother. "His colonial pursuits cannot be denied. He knows it's more convenient for him to keep a foothold in our continent, that's why he can't be reasoned with, why he's been so adamant about keeping Yu Dao as it is. I'm sure he'll start demanding for his other colonies to be reinstated too…"

"I do hope not…" Kuei said, though his eyes flickered towards Sokka then, and he smiled awkwardly. "I know you're personal friends with the Fire Lord, but surely you understand…"

"Oh, I understand completely," Sokka nodded, tightening his lips into a line. "I thought I was lucky to be born in a place with next to no resources anyone else would want to exploit, but ever since they found oil… the North has been pestering us nonstop, you know? I used to think it was fine, they were only giving us a hand, but by now I'm starting to wonder if maybe the rebels who didn't want this were in the right, instead… even Fire Lord Zuko has economic interests in the area now. He may be my friend, but he's still a Fire Lord. And Fire Lords… sadly, they can't be trusted."

It impressed Azula that he would sound so sincere… that he would speak ill of Zuko without missing a beat, with such believable naturality that both Kuei and Yao appeared perfectly, blissfully happy to hear him. While she had schooled herself into becoming the best spy she could possibly be, it didn't escape her notice that Sokka had, in all likelihood, spent his latest years perfecting his own skills on the matter all the same, in the White Lotus's ranks. And this way, he had gained Kuei's sympathy… and perhaps Yao would go to him for support, if he needed it.

Yet… Yao seemed to be ambitious, and he seemed to already have a plan, Azula realized. He wanted Kuei on his side, he wanted the king's support… he wanted the Fire Nation gone. He wanted the Earth King to father a boy, too…

Slowly, the pieces of the puzzle started to make sense in Azula's head. She gritted her teeth as she tuned back into the conversation, only to find that they were now boasting about the greatness of their respective nations and how they were the truly superior ones to the Fire Nation – a matter that she found utterly stupid to discuss, though to her relief, Sokka had enough sense not to pretend to be a pushover in every regard, claiming the Water Tribe was the greatest of all nations playfully while the other two laughed and declared otherwise.

She didn't wait until midnight this time: she waited only ten minutes after the meeting was done to slip away from the other maids unnoticed, rushing to the room she had long identified as Sokka's. She knocked on his door quickly, urgently, glancing anxiously around herself – no one should notice her here, not when the rounds of cleaning guest rooms were long finished, and when she should be down at the kitchens, working to ensure dinner would be served safe and soundly…

The door finally opened, and she would have rushed inside quickly, locking the door behind herself immediately… if only she hadn't been greeted by the sight of a shirtless, soaked Sokka with only a towel around his waist.

"A-Az…" he started, as she gasped at the sight of him. "W-what are you…?"

She snarled and rushed in anyway, bumping lightly into his body before closing the door in a rush. Curses, no. This wasn't fair. This wasn't right. She had been keeping herself in check, doing her best to disguise her body's reactions to his proximity for as long as they had encountered each other in that dark corridor… as, of course, no hot-blooded woman could be at the opposite end of those intense blue eyes, pinned against a wall by him as she had been, and not feel her very soul shudder with the urge to be kissed by him… but she was no fool. She had no intentions of acting on attraction, not when she was here for very serious, professional reasons…

But that glistening body, and that loose, wet hair, certainly seemed to taunt her into doing the exact opposite of what she had intended to. She had nearly damn forgotten why she was here, outright, as she stared at Sokka with what she hoped he'd interpret as outrage… rather than the arousal it truly was.

"I had no idea you'd drop by, sorry!" Sokka grimaced. "I was cleaning up before dinner, I thought…"

"Well, that's too bad because you'll be skipping dinner," Azula determined. Sokka's confused stare only made his train of thought obvious to the Princess after a short moment of tense silence. "B-because we have to investigate something, damn you! Not for any other reason!"

"Oh. Hah, here I thought you'd… haha, never mind," Sokka grinned awkwardly, scratching the back of his head as he made his way to his temporary closet. Azula gritted her teeth, watching his strong back, her gaze shifting lower, to the rear so tightly marked by that towel… no, no, no, she wasn't that stupid, she didn't think with her loins, no she didn't… "Why do you want me to skip dinner, though? Is it Yao? I did think he sounded fishy, but did you catch anything suspicious enough about him already?"

"No strong evidence yet, no, but I'm sure I know what his plan is," Azula said, tearing her eyes off him once he turned towards her, putting on a shirt slowly as he gazed at her. "He wants to be in Kuei's good graces like any other noble, but by incensing him further against the Fire Nation. He'll have Kuei killed, frame the Fire Nation for it, detonate another war and position himself as the ideal leader to carry forward this new conflict…"

"Wait, wait, wait… he'll have Kuei killed?" Sokka repeated, frowning as he put on a set of trousers: had he put on any underwear? Azula hadn't seen him do so. Oh hell, was he going to wander the damn palace without any on? That… didn't help. Not in the least. "You mean… he'll hire someone Fire Nation to kill the king?"

"And then, in all likelihood, he'll take down the material assassin himself, turn him in to the authorities, endear himself to the queen, all in a bid to become her next husband," Azula declared, staring pointedly at the wall. That certainly made it much easier to focus, yes. "He'll pin the murder on the Fire Nation, and raise the child himself to make sure he will hate our people. It's a perfectly stupid plan, and yet one that would likely work smoothly if only some weird spirits hadn't sent messages to my brother and your Avatar about what was going to happen…"

"That's distressing to even think about," Sokka sighed. "Okay, but then… what will we do? Without solid evidence there's not much we can present to Kuei, and Aang doesn't want me to present anything to him anyhow. He thinks that if Kuei finds out there's anything going on, he'll lose his shit and turn against the nation coalition all over again…"

"Zuko told me the same thing," Azula said, releasing a breath and turning towards Sokka anew: he had fastened his sash, and tied up his still wet hair, and surely still had no underwear on. Ugh, she HAD to stop thinking about that… "We'll look for the evidence now. Once dinnertime arrives, Yao will surely either eat with Kuei or take a group of lords out into the city, attempting to gather more supporters for his cause once he sets his plan in motion. He shouldn't be in the palace for a while, and that gives us enough time to search through his room to find any signs of communication between himself and his likely hitman."

"I'm not sure," Sokka frowned. "We'll both go? Not that I mind investigating with you, Azula, but we need to keep Kuei alive too, remember? One of us should…"

"There's literally no way the queen's water will break and she'll deliver a child, all within the next three hours," Azula said, skeptically. "Yao won't act until the child is born, and worse yet, he seemed to be quite certain it would be a boy: it's entirely possible that, if it's a girl, he might not act at all."

"Or that he might kill the child," Sokka suggested. Azula's eyes widened. "It's… sickening. But he could have his hitman killing Kuei's daughter. There's no better way to ensure Kuei sees red and doesn't stop until he immolates his entire nation in a war against the Fire Nation, if need be, than by killing his child… or is there?"

"I hadn't even thought of that." Azula admitted, frowning. "But it's a perfectly logical way to proceed, even if…"

"If utterly appalling? Yes," Sokka growled. "Just the thought that someone would want to kill a newborn makes me want to bash in their heads with my club, that they want to do it for a political reason makes me want to… to bash in their heads multiple times with my club."

"A valid feeling," Azula said, breathing out slowly. "But it means we have a short window of time to act. Once the queen's water breaks…"

"We'll have to be there. To protect her, for sure," Sokka said, gritting his teeth. "But if we can stop this beforehand, all the better."

"Indeed," Azula sighed, gesturing at the door. "Let's go. I know where Yao's room is."

Sokka obeyed promptly, slipping his knife inconspicuously inside his pocket, unwilling to bring any larger weapons than that. He followed Azula dutifully, urging his foolish heart not to overreact about Azula's flustered behavior earlier: she wouldn't have necessarily reacted any differently to any other guy she had seen like that, would she? It wasn't an indicator for anything serious, not really… no matter how he wished it were. It was stupid, a really bad idea, to see Azula in this light as of late, he knew as much, but why couldn't he seem to stop doing it…?

The undercover Princess led him to one of the topmost rooms in the Palace: most of them were occupied by now, and the newest arrivals were often given the least comfortable rooms of all, even as far as seven floors up. However luxurious it was, many of them had already complained about knee pain climbing so many stairs… fortunately, neither of the stealthy investigators were quite as quick to exhaustion as nobles were. They reached Yao's assigned room as quietly as possible, constantly hiding in corridors whenever anyone came close to them, switching stairs frequently to throw off anyone who might see them… until finally they arrived, and Azula produced a handful of servant keys with which she unlocked the suite quickly.

It was, naturally, empty: her guess about what Yao would do during dinner had been spot on. Sokka locked the door again behind them, and they analyzed the place cautiously. Yao hadn't been here for long, so he evidently hadn't unpacked much so far. They'd be able to search his bags, then, of which he had plenty, stacked on one side of the bed.

"Seems like he does intend to move in, huh?" Sokka asked, reaching for the first of the bags.

"You'd think, but most these nobles brought similar amounts of luggage," Azula said. Sokka flinched.

"Must be awful for you to clean after all those people," he said. Azula scoffed. "I'm surprised you've put up with it for so long without a hitch…"

"'Put up with it' is the right phrase, yes," Azula admitted, opening another bag: clothes, apparently. Many changes of them. She still stuck her hand inside for good measure, in case she found anything other than fabrics within, be it paper or a weapon or just anything…

"I'd have never expected you to deal with this. Serving others… doesn't really suit you," Sokka said. Azula smiled and shrugged.

"It's a pretense. And Zuko pays well, at least," Azula said. "That being said, I lived like most these pretentious fools long ago. I had their same complaints, saw the same faults in everything servants did, which means… I know exactly what they want to see, exactly how to clean to their satisfaction, exactly how to respond so they'll ignore my very existence. A double-edged blade, you could say."

"Wow," Sokka smiled. "Sounds like you should hate this job, but maybe it works well for you…"

"Oh, I hate pretending to be a servant, don't get me wrong," Azula said. Sokka chuckled. "But I don't hate being a spy. I don't hate investigating, and putting up a front… I masqueraded as your ex once before, remember? In this very palace…"

"Ah… I never did see you in the Kyoshi Warrior outfit, though," Sokka smiled. "Just in the Dai Li uniform."

"Your sister did. She was so fearful, telling me all about how Zuzu was in the city…" she said, smiling mischievously. "I know I shouldn't take joy in any of those events these days, but it was highly ironic that she'd beg the worse of two evils to save her from the other one."

"I'll say, in retrospect? You pulled off something incredible with that coup," Sokka smiled. "It was wrong, yes, but… I wish I'd ever come up with a plan as big as that. The scope of it, the way you had everything working smoothly, exactly as you needed it to…? It sure was something…"

"It's the main reason I managed to sabotage your big plan, too," Azula said, glancing at Sokka almost remorsefully. "Kuei himself blurted out that your people would attack the Fire Nation on the day of the eclipse. Obviously, I asked him to keep talking and the fool did…"

"Ugh. So, I could've impressed you that day with my strategic abilities, just as you blew me away with the coup, and he sabotaged it?" Sokka asked. Azula, despite herself, laughed at his outrage. "Damn him. Maybe I shouldn't be helping him at all. I'll leave and tell Aang to send someone else in my stead, now I'm angry…"

"If it makes you feel any better, you weren't half bad a strategist," Azula said. "Still aren't. But… I'm better."

"Heh! I'll get you yet, Princess," Sokka hissed playfully. She smiled as she set aside the fourth bag and started with the next one.

Sokka had been looking through a rather big bag, one carrying a few more implements rather than clothes. Hygiene implements, as far as he could tell, in general… but then he felt a small scroll at the very bottom, squashed against the rest of the items. He shifted the contents of the bag, fishing out the scroll with difficulty… when Azula suddenly whipped her head around to the door and urged him to be quiet by pressing her finger to her lips.

Sokka froze in place… just in time to hear footsteps. Footsteps, approaching.

Azula grimaced, closing the bag she had been searching and piling them together at haste. Sokka followed suit, tucking away the small scroll inside his pocket… but where to now? They were on the seventh floor, there was no way they'd be able to get out through the window, and the front door was ruled out, for if this was Yao, it was evident he'd enter through it in a matter of seconds. Under the bed? The frame was solid, there was no way they could hide there…

Azula clasped his forearm suddenly and dragged him to a corner of the room: Sokka had very little time to process what was happening before the Princess pulled the closet door open and tossed him inside. She closed the door quickly, its creaking sound matching the one of the front door, that was opened at the same time.

It was a small closet, and Sokka's head scraped its ceiling if he tried to stand at his full height. It resulted in him crouching lightly over Azula's frame… while she, in turn, was pressed fully into his chest, her face against his quick-paced heart.

Both breathed heavily, but as quietly as they possibly could, too. They heard footsteps out in the room, but no voices, nothing to ascertain this was Yao other than strong footsteps… then a sigh.

And then the sound of the mattress being pressed: he was sitting down, or laying down altogether. Why? How come? Wasn't he supposed to be going to dinner?

Sokka glanced at Azula – or at least tried to, for it was hard to see her in the dark. She raised her head towards him too, and when he tried to mouth some thoughts towards her, in a desperate and fruitless attempt to communicate, Azula pressed a hand to his lips before leaning into his ear.

"Be quiet," she whispered breathily, so softly Sokka almost missed the meaning of her words. Yes, well, being quiet went without saying, but what were they going to do next? How would they get rid of this problem? How would they get out of this damn closet?

It wasn't the first time Azula was in a complicated position in the middle of her espionage. She had been forced to hide behind bookshelves covered in dust and cobwebs, she even had to conceal herself in garbage one time, and the damn stench had taken forever to rinse off. But this time around she was stuck in a rather cramped space… and worse than that, she wasn't alone.

Try as though either of them might to be as professional and steady as they did, their bodies were in full contact as they held each other safely. What to do? How to ever excuse this, if they were caught? Even if they played this as some sort of twisted situation where they had developed a fancy for each other and taken to making out in dark corners, why would anyone choose to hide in a closet of the Palace's seventh floor to make out? They had no choice but to stay hidden indeed… for however long as possible, until whoever was outside left the room again, or fell deeply asleep and they were free to slip away unnoticed.

Sokka leaned closer, his lips grazing Azula's ear. She shivered, again trying not to let her damn system misunderstand what was happening… but then he spoke as she had, in that hushed, husky whisper, and his breath tickled her neck, sending tingles up and down her spine, as good as tickling the private places she knew she shouldn't be responding to him with…

"What do we do?" he had asked, and he lingered right where he was. Azula shivered involuntary, clinging to his waist, her long nails scraping his skin lightly.

"We… wait," she decided, in the same voice tone. "Just… stay put. Like this."

Sokka swallowed dryly: he would do his best, yes… but holding this beautiful woman so closely, feeling her breasts pressed against his body, inhaling her light perfume, would make it far more difficult not to move than any other challenge he could think of right now. The closet was so small, he had no idea how any nobleman would be granted such a small clothing storage… surely Yao would have complained nonstop about it to Kuei if he didn't have an agenda to push forward.

That being said… the man could easily climb out of bed and decide to tuck away his things sooner than later. If that happened… well, he'd punch the lights out of him, before Azula could do anything more final. While it seemed she used her abilities for better purposes these days, it was clear the Princess had become even more lethal in recent years and wouldn't hold back from executing anyone who might have caught her in a compromising situation… and that wouldn't work for their purposes either. If she killed anyone in this Palace, and it was discovered that any firebender was responsible, the precarious peace would shatter all over again…

His grip on her arms tightened, as though to keep her right where she was. To ensure she wouldn't do anything too dangerous, to ask her nonverbally to leave this to him, if need be. The man outside rustled in the mattress, and Azula's head whipped quickly towards the sound only for Sokka to lean closer yet, their cheeks colliding.

"Don't… do anything," he whispered. "Leave it to me."

Azula gritted her teeth, again tickled pleasantly by his voice. Again, stirred in a way she hadn't intended to be by him. She turned her face towards his… and in that darkness, she could sense him less than an inch away. She could feel his breathing against her own skin… just as he could feel hers, no doubt.

"How…" Azula mouthed softly, "… how do we always… end up in close quarters like this…?"

Her words rang true, and stirred further confusion and excitement inside Sokka's body: without needing a light source, he could imagine the way her eyes would glisten upon meeting his own. Her breaths brushed against him… breaths she released through her mouth. Her lips were parted… those full lips he couldn't help but want to kiss since their arrangement had begun – most powerfully once their midnight encounters had started.

The chance of being caught was terrifying. That had to be why his heart was racing… why hers was, too – he could feel hers against his chest, drumming through her breast… oh, he wanted to touch her. He wanted to kiss her, to pin her to another wall and show her the best of times by doing so. An unwise course of action, he guessed, for as much as they had gotten along for the last years of the decade, he hardly knew her that well… let alone did he know her well enough to jump into any wild dalliances without looking back, did he?

Oh, but she was so tempting, and she shivered in his arms, and he heard as her tongue slipped out of her mouth, licking her lips… he wanted to lick them, too. He could have done that for her…

No, no, no, he couldn't, he shouldn't, this was stupid, his brain had stopped working, that was the only explanation for the slowly surging erection that bulged inside his trousers… free from the trappings of underwear he had neglected to wear merely because the situation sounded quite urgent.

The man outside rustled in bed again, and Azula shuddered, leaning forward again… pressing further into Sokka. He flinched, she noticed… and that was when she grew aware of the dangerous problem that hung between his legs. She lowered her head, despite knowing she wouldn't be able to see anything… had he been turned on earlier, for some other reason, and the situation wasn't helping? Or… was it because of her?

Well, he was a man. No doubt, having a girl's bosom pressed into his body could have triggered a rather hormone-driven, impulsive response in his system… and yet that realization amused Azula, somewhat. She had teased him a few times by now, by saying he had a crush on her, somehow… but that his manhood would rise up to a challenge no one had posed for it certainly spoke for itself.

She raised a hand and then froze in place, once it was mere inches from his shaft: what on earth was she doing? That wasn't something she should touch, was she insane? That wasn't teasing, that was harassment. Sokka would report her to Zuko as soon as they got out of this damn closet, tell her brother she was some sort of horny nymphomaniac who had dragged him into a closet and had her way with him there… eh, maybe she really should be one. It would be more fun than standing here, raising her head towards his, merely chasing after those soft breaths he released, while she inhaled that delectable, masculine scent of his body… there was something breezy to his natural musk, as though he had only just been rolling in waves in the sea: that same sensation brushed through her senses, much as her own scent, akin to a spicy incense with a dash of saffron bittersweetness, was slowly overwhelming him. She seemed to embody a fireplace, burning steadily, but ever ready to take a wilder surge and burn everything in her wake, if need be… and he longed for it. He wanted to be burned, just as she wanted his waves to roll across her. Maybe if they both did it together, as one, neither one would get hurt…

His hands slid lower over her arms. Hers rose to his strong chest, the one she had been so enraptured by earlier. Any moment now, the other would pull away, somehow, despite they couldn't possibly put much distance between them in such cramped space. Any moment they'd snap out of the intoxicating daze they were in. Any moment, that bastard right outside would pull the door open and find them, flustered and undeniably excited, gazing into each other's eyes with unabashed lust…

A second ticked by.

And then another.

And nothing happened. Nothing changed.

Sokka swallowed hard: Azula could imagine the sight of his throat's movements, despite being unable to see it for herself, only to hear it. He was growing bolder, once his hands trailed down the sides of her elbows… and fell upon her waist. Azula shivered, and her own fingers probed the muscles of Sokka's chest, slipping lower, between their bodies… yet with no intent to push him off, he realized, for those fingertips caressed his abdomen… caressed it with greed.

Her irregular breathing soon accompanied his: what was the other thinking? What on earth were they doing? Azula raised her head again, intending to ask just how far those hands of his would go…

Her lips grazed his by sheer accident.

And the next thing she knew, his hands had clasped each of her ass cheeks as he kissed her hard, powerfully, overloading her already thrilled senses by finally caving in to the temptations they had failed to resist.

Azula didn't have a chance to reason with the situation: he had succumbed, though he had fought it longer than she had expected, but he had succumbed nonetheless… and as those willful lips collided with hers, she found herself completely forgetting all about professionalism. What did it matter to anyone if she made out with her associate in closets if she so wished? His lips tasted heavenly, and his tongue darted out to seek hers… her whole body shuddered as she leaned further into him, her hands touching him with now unmistakable erotic intent. She needed this, whatever it was. She wanted him, no matter the risks. And she'd get him, if not now, later…

Sokka nearly yelped when her hand slipped recklessly, quickly down his chiseled abdomen to tug off the sash that held his clothes together: undoing it proved enough for his trousers to drop, for his shirt to spread open… for his manhood to spring up, uncontested and free, and she caught it in her hand without the slightest hesitation, shivering with anticipation instead. Her hungry kisses rivaled his own perfectly, and while one of his hands lingered on her rear, the other ventured forward, cupping her left breast even over her clothes. Oh, he was bold, just as she was reckless, and she simply loved it.

She wasn't sure whether she was lucky or unlucky when it came to her servant's uniform: there were far more layers to it than to Sokka's simple apparel. He struggled to find her skin underneath the clothes, hiking up her outer tunic to find a long-sleeved shirt underneath, and beneath it, at last, her underwear. Ugh, but pulling off her clothes would be near impossible in this damn closet, so cramped, with the constant menace of that man outside, who would catch them if they made any noise they shouldn't…

Their kiss broke apart with a sweaty gasp: they breathed hotly against each other for just a moment, yet that Azula refused to let go of his erect cock convinced Sokka to cast the rest of his reservations to hell: he raked up the clothes of her upper body, slipping his hand through the hem of her trousers. And when Azula gasped, whether out of sheer pleasure, outrage or disbelief, Sokka pushed her back against the closet's wall and caught her sound with his own mouth, kissing her voraciously once again… and the whole world was fading in blissful wonder as those fingers prodded her clit delectably, stirring so much wet heat inside her Azula could barely hold her own against his touch. It was too good, he was too good… and by the soft, purr-like sounds that poured from his throat, perhaps she was good too, as she massaged his shaft, rubbing her whole hand over it, pressing her palm to his tip and prompting his breath to hitch for it.

She wanted to see his face… to know what he was thinking. Her other senses took control as it was, for she could barely make out his silhouette, even when kissing him with her eyes narrowly open… weird that she'd feel even more excited about trying to see him as they kissed, when his fingers were already doing a brilliant job at riling up her arousal: just how embarrassing would it be, in any other circumstances, for a man to dip his fingers over her folds to find them sopping wet right away? She knew she had no excuse for that kind of reaction… but to be fair, Sokka had no excuse for the massive erection she was still stirring further. Unable to see it, she dared caress it from hilt to tip, basking in how strong and potent it felt… she wanted it. She really wanted it inside her… whether it fit or not, she simply wanted it.

He groaned softly when he started thrusting into her hand, and Azula moaned back, their heavy breathing and intimate caresses paired in perfect synch. Their free hands traveled across the other's body, teasing and testing the waters by touching everything they dared: it was Azula's turn to wrap her hand around his rear… she wanted to spank him rather irrationally upon caressing the soft, round mound. Meanwhile, his own hand slipped under her clothes, struggling to push so many layers out of the way, all be it to find her nipples. He could have settled for her thighs, but he went further… Azula's lips wouldn't leave his anymore, and to his delight, the two were thrusting into each other's hands together, moaning, panting sweating, needing more than just these caresses to find full satisfaction… but, to be fair, the caresses were doing a damn good job at pushing them to the edge all the same.

Sokka's lips trapped Azula's tongue briefly, just as a surge of pleasure nearly caused her to pull away from their kiss: there was something impossibly erotic to being kissed this way… almost as though he were claiming her for himself. As if he was deciding she'd be his, from now on… and as she shivered violently under the fingers that dipped inside her entrance, while the thumb continued to toy with the clit, Azula found that notion perfectly agreeable. Yes… yes, she wanted to be his. She wanted more of this, whatever the hell it was, because it certainly felt like more than just impossibly hot sex to her…

He tensed up: he was close as well. He released her from the capture of his lips so he could pant heavily against her, but Azula stole another wild kiss from his open mouth: her hand jerked his organ faster than before, and by the groans that left his lips, that was exactly what he needed right now…

He came in spurts, shooting his load mere instants before her own lower body seemed to catch fire: they melted into each other's hands, moaning with more abandon than they should've risked. And again, they devoured each other's lips with savage kisses as they rode the last of their climaxes together, aided by the other in climbing down from the heights of pleasure.

They still breathed heavily when their releases were finished… and he still stole another kiss from her lips. And another. And yet another. Azula moaned, wondering if he'd want to take her in this stupid, cramped closet… she wouldn't mind one bit, if he did…

And then another sound, outside their tight, ever-heating closet, reminded them that they weren't alone in the damn room… and that a wild tryst was NOT the reason they were here.

"W-what…?" Sokka pulled away, turning his head towards the closet's door, his ear sharp and keen… Azula's crumpled clothes rolled down again as Sokka released her from his grip, though she had to tug everything properly back into place anyway…

And then that sound again.

A snore.

The bastard outside had entered the room to take a nap.

The two of them released louder breaths than they should have, at the same time. Oh, this was absurd. It was stupid. Either they had the best luck in the world or the worst, and it was near impossible to tell which it was.

Sokka leaned down, searching blindly around the floor to collect his sash. Azula shook her head, reaching a hand towards the door.

"We… are going to move very carefully, and quietly," she said. Sokka nodded. "If that bastard wakes up…"

"I'll stab him," Sokka said, bluntly. Azula smirked.

"Sounds good," she decided.

His hand found hers on the closet's door once he was ready, by sheer chance. Azula swallowed hard, but together they pushed it open as quietly as they could, hoping it wouldn't creak if they were careful…

She slid out of the narrow opening first, walking so silently across the room Sokka grimaced, while closing the closet behind himself: he could never be that stealthy. But he'd try anyways, even if he couldn't walk that lightly. He followed her as she reached the door, opening it just as quietly, and she urged him to move faster: he was still halfway across the room, walking cautiously while keeping an eye on the man snoring…

A rather large, bulky man with shaggy hair and beard. Sokka frowned as he studied his appearance: that wasn't the perfectly groomed Lord Yao he'd met earlier. He gritted his teeth as he slid out of the room, and Azula closed the door silently once more… before clasping his forearm and guiding him to the nearest flight of stairs.

He only followed blindly, carelessly, his heart racing so bad over the tension and adrenaline he didn't even think twice about whatever their destination might be. He only came back to his senses when Azula tossed him inside another dark room… a room he soon recognized as his own. She closed the door behind herself, locking it quickly before releasing a long, tense breath.

"That… was so close. Way too close," Azula said. Sokka nodded, finally finding his voice again to ask:

"You okay…?"

"Okay?" Azula said, turning to look at him in disbelief: the sunset's glow fell upon the room through the windows, and now she could see Sokka's face clearly… his reddened lips beckoned her yet again. She wondered if hers did the same to him…

"I-I mean… that was… intense," Sokka decided, swallowing hard. "That guy… that wasn't Yao."

"Yeah… I noticed when I was waiting for you to get out," Azula said, nodding. "The… the hitman, then?"

"Maybe. Could be… oh!" Sokka gasped, reaching into his trousers' pocket, fishing hastily past his knife for the small scroll he'd put away just before the stranger had showed up.

Azula stepped closer upon noticing he was holding what might be their only useful lead so far. She swallowed hard and stopped a little closer to him than she should have… close enough to smell her own perfume on him. Even to smell a certain, rather intimate scent that still clung to his hand… oh, she was insane. She really was insane. Getting fingered on the job and growing so utterly excited over it… what was the matter with her?

"It's… encrypted somehow," Sokka grimaced. "Feels like they purposefully broke the ideograms into nonsense so no one could intercept the message."

"That so…?" Azula asked, reaching for the scroll: her hand brushed against his. Sokka didn't even flinch as she angled the paper towards herself.

Sokka let go of the scroll once Azula walked away with it, towards his desk. Watching her body sway with each movement sent jolts of excitement through his body… threatening to reawaken his shaft after it should have been, by all logic, calmed after she had relieved him earlier… curses, how on earth had he scored a handjob out of Princess Azula, of all people? He swallowed dryly at the thought… too dryly. There was water in the jug, he could drink that. And he could offer her some too, why not? It was just the gallant thing to do… especially after having jerked off each other in a closet.

Azula had already gotten started deciphering the confusing code when Sokka deposited a small cup with water beside her. Her whole body jolted for it, and she shot him a quick, awkward, grateful smile before getting back to work. And then she glanced back at him, most deliberately, to watch as he swallowed each mouthful of his own cup of water. Oh, the bob of his neck's triangle with each swallow… that was a true spectacle. He was impossibly attractive, and she wasn't sure how to stop admiring him…

He lowered his head and she whipped hers around quickly, her face fully flushed as she returned to work. Sokka blinked blankly at her sudden movement, but he placed his now empty cup on the desk while leaning over Azula's hunched form…

"You're in my light," she said, though her voice wasn't too antagonistic. Sokka bit his lip.

"Oops. Give me a sec," he said, stepping away… and Azula's heart sank for it. Which it shouldn't have. Curses, she had to FOCUS.

She continued to work quietly: she had already deciphered the first part, but then he returned to the room… with a set of lanterns that he distributed across the room, lighting them one by one.

"It'll be dusk soon anyway, so…"

"Good call," Azula said, working on the next set of ideograms… and then he set down the last lantern right on the desk.

"And now I'm not in your light," Sokka smiled, leaning again. Despite herself, Azula grinned too.

"So clever," she whispered.

"How's it looking?" he asked.

"I think I've nearly got it. It's not a long message," Azula said, jotting down a few more possibilities on the paper she was using to unravel the cyphered missive…

Within another two minutes, two phrases had formed across the paper:

I'll arrive in the afternoon. Keep the room empty until the job is done.

"The job…" Sokka said. Azula snarled.

"Yes, it sounds bad, but not bad enough," she said, turning to look at him. "That guy, the one we saw… he's the murderer. He's the one Yao hired for his scheme."

"And if we take him out now…" Sokka said. "It'll cause trouble anyway. Worse yet if you do it personally: he's an ally and associate of a guy Kuei seems to like plenty. If a firebender is found attacking, or killing him…"

"The story will be spun into making me the enemy, yes," Azula said, gritting her teeth.

"They haven't acted yet," Sokka sighed. "I'm not sure we can make our move until they make theirs. There's so many potential risks…"

"The thing is… we do have the upper hand," Azula said, turning towards him. "Because they don't know I'm here. They don't know which team you're working for. You've said what they wanted to hear, but you're the Avatar's friend. They can't outright assume you mean them any harm… just as they can't assume you don't."

"Exactly," Sokka said, breathing sharply. "And they're completely unaware of your presence. So… we'll use those things to our advantage."

"You'll stick to Kuei. Follow him around, tail him, especially on the day of the birth," Azula said. "I'll wait on the queen, offer my services during the birth…"

"Sounds fun," Sokka said, with an awkward smile. Azula scoffed.

"A little blood won't faze me," she declared, boldly.

"I think it's more than just a little… but I think the worst part is the ridiculously loud baby crying," Sokka smiled. Azula grimaced.

"Fair… but I'll endure it," she said. "If the baby is a girl, I'll stick to guarding her and the queen. If it's a boy, you'll stand guard with Kuei and I'll try to reach you before the enemy does."

"Might be I'll make quick work of him before you do," Sokka smiled. "Though… we're not supposed to let anyone know what's going on, right? We're supposed… to keep our operation secret, quiet, without Kuei or the plotter's awareness. Should I try to take down that guy in front of Kuei? For real?"

"Hmm…" Azula bit her lip, tapping her chin with a fingertip. "I'd think it's the safest way to proceed… but maybe it isn't, you're right. If anything… we should figure out the layout of the birthing location, and where Kuei will be kept in wait. Then it's just a matter of figuring out where this guy is likeliest to break into either room… and then stop him before he does."

"We can… research that tomorrow?" Sokka asked, innocently. Azula blinked blankly. "You with the servants… I with Kuei himself?"

"Tomorrow?" she repeated. Sokka bit his lip. "Well, that's…"

She wasn't so stupid as to not understand his implication: he wasn't disregarding his work, not at all, and neither was she, that was stupid to even think about…

But they had started something in that damn closet.

And one climax was certainly not enough to consider it finished.

"If you agree…" Sokka said, closing his eyes raising his hands defensively. "If you'd rather we go right back out to track down someone who can get us all the information on royal birthing protocols, that's fine too, I just thought today had been a tiresome enough day to…"

He had been betting on it. He had been waiting for it. And he damn smiled when he felt that hand clawing at his blue shirt with enough strength to rip into the fabric.

And then he was swimming in the bliss of their joined lips for one more moment, as he nearly knocked her chair over upon kissing her back too enthusiastically. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and this time he didn't hesitate for an instant before swooping her into them, carrying her towards the fancy, elegant bed Kuei had granted him for this visit. He was quite fortunate for having gotten along with the king, and encouraged him to find his true calling by traveling the world, back when Azula herself had taken his kingdom. Otherwise he might have received a lesser suite… and this obnoxious opulence seemed to him the perfect environment in which to devote himself to Azula.

He dropped her on the mattress, and she nearly bounced with recoil as he pulled the sash and his clothes came undone yet again. Azula smiled as she watched them fall off his body… his glorious body that seemed to shine pure gold under the brightness of those lanterns. Sokka only had to shrug off his shirt, and toss off his boots to be fully naked… and Azula devoured him with her eyes, taking in that impossibly attractive body as she began undoing the fastenings of her own clothes.

"I thought… it had been a tiresome day?" Azula teased him. Sokka smirked.

"Yeah. Because I just wanted it to be nighttime already," he said. His insinuation made her laugh as he finally did away with all his clothes and climbed atop her, stealing a quick kiss from her lips that left her aching for more.

"You're clearly desperate to get some sleep, right…?" Azula said, smiling as he pulled her tunic over her head slowly. She never thought being undressed by a man could be this exciting, but her skin felt delectably feverish wherever his hands grazed her.

"With you? Hell, yeah," he blurted out, tossing the tunic aside before diving for another kiss.

Azula moaned, raising her legs awkwardly so she could remove her own shoes. She tossed them carelessly away, just as Sokka undid her own sash and pulled her clothes open… just as he had wanted to, from the first moment he had seen her wearing that damn revealing white sleeping gown… unlike him, Azula had underwear, but he didn't wait to remove it before covering her breasts with kisses, even over the bindings of her chest. Azula moaned, arching her body against him, struggling to shove off her own trousers… and, upon being unable to push them lower than mid-thigh, since his body pressed into hers, she took to caressing his strong back instead. She moaned delectably into his lips, appreciating his powerful build notoriously… and then he broke off the kiss to attack her neck next. Azula threw her head back, moaning far more carelessly now: she knew he wanted to hear her, to feel each vibration of her vocal cords, and she'd give him exactly that… was she being too generous? Too easy? Somehow, any such concerns were so superfluous that night she couldn't bother pondering them more than once. This felt right… it felt good. Better than good. He knew what he wanted, and he was chasing for it, and what he wanted was nothing other than her. Who could say no to a marvelous man who was giving himself so willingly…?

He sat up again, doing away with her lower body's clothes… and he smirked mischievously as he unabashedly gazed at her exposed nether region. Azula kicked at him playfully, smiling as she made to close her spread legs, but Sokka grunted in a sensual manner, clasping her knees to keep them apart.

"If you think I'm a sick pervert for wanting to look at every bit of you… then yes, I'm a sick pervert" Sokka smirked. Azula laughed and shook her head.

"I have no right to complain, do I…?" she said, gazing lustfully at his groin.

"True… you've been checking me out for a while, haven't you?" he teased her, urging her to sit up too. Azula snorted, her cheeks flushing as she closed her eyes: she raised her arms, allowing Sokka to undo her chest bindings slowly… revealing her to his greedy gaze with each loop he undid.

"How's someone not supposed to check out their partner in crime… if he shows up soaking wet, wearing just a towel, at the door?" Azula smiled. Sokka snickered.

"Liked what you saw…?"

"You like that I liked it…"

"Damn right I do," he whispered, stealing one more kiss from her lips as the last of her bindings came off…

And her full, plump breasts were revealed to his gaze at last. He groaned, leaning in to press his face to the mounds. They had been held down tightly, he thought… maybe they hurt a little, right? And now, free from those restraints, they'd need some massaging for the sake of relieving Azula from any potential pain… that made sense, right?

He didn't even know why he was making up excuses to fondle her chest, let alone once Azula began moaning heartily. Her nipples hardened against his palm, and Sokka groaned teasingly at the delectable sensation. Whether she needed a massage or not, clearly her chest was sensitive… and very receptive to his touch. And as far as he was concerned, he could continue touching it for hours if she allowed it. Oh, he really hoped she'd allow it… he was fine with her branding him a depraved fool if she wanted to do so, he simply needed to have her, all of her, and unless she stopped him, he intended to do as much right away.

She didn't stop him… but she did tighten her legs around his waist and swapped them on the mattress, all be it to find her own chance to devour his neck at leisure, to caress his chest just as he had hers. Whenever she rose, the glow of the lanterns would fall upon her body, and every curve wound be highlighted in such an exciting manner Sokka's mouth watered for it. He took Azula by surprise when, upon rising once after nibbling on his neck, Sokka's lips landed on her collarbone, moving lower slowly… she knew what he was up to, and as embarrassing as it was to moan in such a careless manner, she couldn't stop doing as much. She threw her head back and cried out, letting him lavish her breasts in turns, his mouth toying with her nipples in particular as he cast quick, teasing glances at her. His blue eyes appeared black with desire tonight… and that was how Azula wanted them to be. She wasn't often the recipient of anyone's lust… fear, yes. Envy, all the time. Spite, everywhere she went. But lust…? Let alone this much of it, so unabashed and unrestrained…?

She knew her sounds were more than a little embarrassing, but so what? Yet again, this was convenient. If the entire damn palace discovered Sokka was sleeping with an apparently common maid, he'd merely look like a lecherous idiot who picked up a girl at random… and she'd look like a fool who got swept up by the charming war hero. And no one, especially not that damn lord Yao and his associate, would ever suspect they were onto them.

That thought brought her to smile as she gave herself to her pleasure wholeheartedly. Let them hear… let everyone hear. She didn't care, for there was no reason to hold back. It felt amazing, and it would protect them too, should any danger befall them. Who'd have thought sex could be the perfect answer, and the ideal cover, in the middle of a job…? She'd have to drag Sokka into more of her missions, it'd be an amazing side activity to keep herself as inconspicuous as possible in the eyes of the people she had to investigate…

Sokka tugged down her clothes again, wrapping an arm around her to hoist Azula onto her side: he dragged the clothes off her legs, taking advantage of the situation to touch her thighs as boldly as he dared. And all the while, his mouth toyed with her breats, providing Azula with more surging pleasure than she knew what to do with.

"Y-you… really seem to like that…" Azula managed to say between moans.

"Here I thought you were the one who liked it…" Sokka said, with a toothy smirk before nibbling on her nipple. Azula cried out, half-laughing, half-moaning as she allowed him to pin her down again as he had his way with her. Oh, let it be. He wanted her, and she rather enjoyed the consequences of being the object of his desires right now.

Her body thrusted upwards towards him, urging him to take care of another part of her body, and Sokka complied, slipping a hand south once again. A hand he intended to replace with his mouth shortly, but he just needed a little longer of those soft mounds, just a little longer…

"Y-you're… y-you're going to be the death of me… if you keep this up…" Azula moaned desperately. Sokka snickered before delivering one more long, defiant suck to her nipple, eliciting yet another cry of pleasure from her.

"You sound amazing now that you're not trying to stifle everything in a closet," Sokka smirked.

"Like making me moan, do you…?" she asked. "There's… other ways to achieve that pretty easily, if you must know."

"Oh, my… I wonder what you mean…?" he said, teasingly, as he crept down her body, pressing slow, open mouthed kisses across her toned abs.

Azula smiled, closing her eyes: he sucked every bit of her skin his mouth fell upon, as though branding her his own… why did that thought stir so much excitement in her heart? Was it because her every partner before Sokka had been lackluster, quick encounters that went nowhere? Or was it knowing he wanted her, to the point of behaving almost possessively, had driven her mad with joyful pleasure…?

Sokka's brain was nothing but a cloud of bliss: her body was impossibly alluring to the eye, even more delightful to touch and taste directly. And while her perfume's fragrance certainly did a number on him back in the closet, there was yet another scent catching his attention now… a scent that demanded he buried his face in her sopping wet core, something he did without holding back at all.

"Y-you…! Oh shit, you glutton…!" Azula gasped, nearly kicking out when his mouth fell upon her folds. He was devouring her as though he were famished… which he possibly was, in quite a literal sense too, considering he'd skipped dinner. Was that why his mouth took her in so hungrily? If so, she'd make sure he wouldn't eat much right before the next time they…

… Next time? Would there be a next time?

Well. She'd certainly do her best to make sure there was one.

She only spread her legs further, giving Sokka all the room and opportunity to take her in as he pleased. Shivers rushed across her body, concentrating at her core, as though all her energy was focusing, ready to explode. She didn't quite need another release to be ready for his magnificent manhood… but if he would be selfless enough to gift her one, she wasn't about to refuse it.

More moans poured from her lips, and she thrusted at his face lightly, begging him to keep going. Sokka grunted right back in his masculine, sensual manner, and Azula felt as though she were about to catch fire for it. Who could've ever imagined that boy she'd fought against in a war, so long ago, would prove to be the best lover she had ever had…? It defied reason, she thought, and yet it was such a welcome discovery…

She kept her eyes closed as she navigated her excitement with him: she gasped when she felt his hands traveling over her abdomen again, right over her ribcage, and then he was squeezing her breasts yet again… Oh, he was a menace. He wanted to take every part of her body for himself, Azula guessed… and she wanted to give them to him, impulsively so. Why not? Why hold back? She bit her lip in a failed attempt to stifle another moan, and then he sucked on her clit with such devious power, while rubbing the tip of his tongue insistently on the rawest spot, that she climaxed chaotically once again, her whole body an erupting volcano, lava rushing through her veins at alarming speed with each pump of her heart. Sokka lapped at her folds eagerly, taking in every juice that appeared to escape her entrance, and he chuckled at each jolt of her body, every involuntary shudder upon the surging pleasure.

"Y-you… you're just… oh, to hell with you…" Azula moaned, clasping his hands in her own… but not to remove them from their spots at her breasts, rather, to encourage him to touch her further. Sokka chuckled.

"Much better than dinner, I'd say," he smirked, rising slowly. "Looks to me like I've conquered Ba Sing Se's conqueror, huh…?"

"You what?" she said, opening her eyes to level him with an outraged glare… one he fielded with a still proud smirk, as he pulled his right hand back, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

"You heard me," he said, defiantly. Azula scoffed, shaking her head.

"Proud of yourself, are you?" she asked, as his smile widened. "Why… I'm afraid I won't acknowledge that title you've bestowed upon yourself."

"You won't?" Sokka asked, amused.

"No… at least, not yet," Azula said, and a smile spread over her face. Sokka raised his eyebrows, intrigued… more so when Azula spread her legs even more shamelessly, exposing herself completely to him. "Surely you realize… you have one stage left still?"

"Ah… I breached the outer wall with the first kiss?" Sokka asked, teasingly, leaning towards her. "Then maybe the lower ring with the first orgasm… middle ring with the second. Now it's time for the third?"

"Give me four and you'll be sitting pretty on the throne, too," Azula smiled, wrapping her arms around his neck. Sokka couldn't hold back a laugh as he pressed his brow to hers.

"You're… you're hot. Extremely hot," he decided. Azula scoffed.

"Tell me something I don't know… I am, after all, a firebender," she declared, proudly. Sokka laughed and dared kiss her lips quickly, unsure if she'd be comfortable upon tasting herself on his mouth.

"That's not quite what I meant, but you're funny anyway," he smiled. "Never expected you to be so playful…"

"Never expected…?" Azula asked, smirking. "That suggests you've thought about this before. About pinning me to your bed, and not just to a wall…?"

"Hmm… the thought did occur to me, once in a while," he said, pressing soft, slow kisses over her cheek. Azula's smirk widened.

"When?" she asked. Sokka snorted.

"Why do you want to know?" he asked, deliberately angling his body so his hardened shaft would rub against her sensitive clit: Azula jolted and cried out, only for Sokka to smirk deviously. Curse him, he had a dark, mischievous streak, on top of everything else… he was a tease, in the best of ways. To hell with this, if they kept this up, she'd wind up asking him to marry her before the night was out… "I might as well ask you the same question, Princess… did you think about me this way before? When?"

"Nuh-uh… you'll tell me first," she decided, reaching down between their bodies to clasp his shaft in her hand again. Sokka gasped as she smirked knowingly. "Look at that… fully charged and ready to shoot your lightning bolt, are you?"

"Something like that," Sokka conceded, laughing softly. "Ugh, you know what? You like games. I like games. Whoever comes first… answers first. 'Kay?"

"That… is not a bad idea, actually," Azula smiled. Sokka snickered.

"Good. Because I know I have leverage," he said, lowering himself again: her hand released his sturdy cock, and he dragged its head across her folds teasingly. Azula moaned heartily, rolling her eyes back over the sheer pleasure. "You're as sensitive as can be, after all…"

"And you're fully erect… and looking glorious," she said, smirking as she ventured a devious glance at his shaft. Sokka actually laughed at the shameless remark. "I don't think it'll be quite as easy for you to win as you hope, Sokka…"

"I'll conquer the conqueror… if it takes every last bit of my willpower," he decided, speaking with feigned seriousness. Azula could only laugh, even though he overtook her lips with teasing kisses moments later.

And slowly but surely, his cock's head began breaching her entrance: Azula moaned even more sensually than before, embracing Sokka urgently… most intentionally, hoping he'd go deeper once she pulled him closer. Sokka caved in, letting their hips loom closer until they were in full contact once he was deep inside her… and her moans were amazing by then. With her neck fully exposed, he couldn't help himself but kiss her skin, nibbling on it teasingly as he rolled back slowly, withdrawing himself to the tip… and them ramming back through her, faster than she expected. She yelped, clawing at his back, and Sokka groaned – the pleasure made him lightheaded too, no matter how strategic he was trying to be. She was so warm and wet… how would he ever resist until she finished again? It felt heavenly, being inside her…

He breathed out slowly before latching onto her neck next, biting lightly, but sucking harder. Her fingers clutched at his back, lightly when the pleasure was bearable… and clawing at him when it was overwhelming, as it was with each of his violent thrusts. And yet the smile on her face every time he stopped once he was buried to the hilt… she liked this. She loved this. It was as intense and savage as she needed it to be, apparently. Only…

"Y-you tease…" she said, between moans: he had done it again, drawing far back again: her breath hitched with anticipation and she cried out again once he rammed inside her potently. "Ah, just…! Go all the way, damn you…!"

"I… thought I was…?" Sokka smiled, reeling back again. Azula's chest heaved delightfully against his… and he smirked mischievously. "You sure you want me to stop the teasing?"

"Yes… yes," she said, letting her hands move up to his face: she pulled him in for a clumsy, sloppy kiss he couldn't seem to get enough of. "Fuck me like you mean it…"

"If you say so…" he smirked, stealing one more kiss…

Before drilling into her raw and powerfully, rolling his hips back only to thrust anew instants later. Azula's loud moans surged further, her nails catching his back once again as he thrusted and thrusted, faster yet, like a train-tank doing away with every line of defense…

And it was incredibly pleasant, both for the man who thrusted powerfully, rhythmically, even if his heart seemed to be about to fail him with how fast it was beating, and the woman underneath him, who thrusted right back into him, yielding her control of the situation only enough to let him understand that he only fucked her as he did because she allowed it… because she wanted him to. And her conditions and terms were perfectly agreeable for him, just as well.

Anyone else might have faltered at such a rhythm, Azula suspected, but her partner had the stamina and strength needed to power through while continuing to adorn her neck with the most delightful hickeys, to match with the scratches she couldn't help but trace across his back whenever he overwhelmed her. Sokka hardly seemed affected by the scratches, just as Azula was only stimulated by everything his mouth did to her neck… for both their conscious minds were focused on the joining of their bodies above anything else. The pleasure was rising, threatening to burst with the violence of a geyser, and neither one wanted to stop. Their challenge and bet forgotten, they couldn't seem to slow down their pace, and neither one wanted to do so anyway. Sokka only pulled away from her neck to gaze at her excited face for a moment… to take in the sweaty pearls trailing down her face before stealing a powerful kiss from her lips. She returned it tenfold, licking and sucking his lips as she moaned seemingly endlessly: his thrusts were powerful, hands clutching her thighs to further control the spread of her legs… and to Azula's surprise, he actually closed them rather than pushing them further apart. He wanted to tighten things, did he…? Well, if that's how he wanted it, she'd gladly relent.

Sokka yelped when her walls suddenly squeezed him. Azula moaned softly, but the knowing smirk on her face spoke lengths about how sure of herself she still was. Sokka gasped against her lips when she squeezed again: he kept thrusting even though her latest course of action was threatening to throw him off completely… oh, but it felt too good. He gritted his teeth, only for Azula to cover his lips with kisses, compelling him to steal another wild, deep one from her mouth.

Another squeeze, and his brain seemed shot with a tranquilizer: he couldn't think anymore, he was all impulse and instinct, and that meant he was thrusting recklessly, kissing her lustfully, touching her boldly… and she squeezed again, and again, and again, encouraging him further, begging for more mindless thrusting until those deliberate squeezes weren't quite so intentional anymore.

"I… I'm close…" Azula announced. Sokka grunted back as he kissed her powerfully, encouraging her to reach for that peak as she wished…

Violent shaking overtook her, and she gasped and shuddered violently as her hands clawed harder at his back: her piercing cry probably was heard all the way to where the damn hitman was sleeping in the seventh floor, as loud and careless as it was. And even then, when her walls now squeezed him in a whole involuntary manner, Sokka thrusted savagely inside her until, in his mindlessness, his release loomed so close he could do nothing to slow it down, let alone when those shuddering walls were driving him mad with pleasure…

He finished inside her, carelessly, recklessly, disregarding all risks, forgetting to ask if she had taken any form of birth control, which she likely hadn't… oh, nothing seemed to matter right now. All he wanted was to deplete himself fully, and as he thrusted further, he achieved exactly that, gifting himself to Azula while he groaned and moaned with each sway of his hips.

He collapsed atop her when he was all done, and their heavy breaths matched as their bodies regulated again… that is, if they ever would. Somehow, it felt like they would spend the rest of their days with an unquenchable sexual drive, a primal urge to merge with each other without restraint… just as they had now. Sokka breathed out and pushed himself up with some difficulty, supporting his weight with his elbows.

"Didn't mean to crush you… sorry 'bout that…" he said. Azula snorted. "Though… if you don't mind, that's fine too."

"I like it, rather," Azula declared. Sokka chuckled, stroking her hair gently. "What's so funny?"

"You're… smiling. More than I think you ever have since I've known you," he chuckled. Azula snorted and laughed heartily now. "I guess it's fitting, eh? You just needed to have sex with me to feel better about life. Perfect remedy, eh?"

"Joke all you like, that was… that was something," Azula laughed, still unable to stop smiling. "And I… I finished first. Damn. You won, after all. Though… you're still missing one climax, you know? You're in the upper ring now, but…"

"Not in the palace yet?" Sokka chuckled. "Well, then, I guess I know what I'll be doing next, greedy Princess…"

"You're the one who wanted to conquer me. I'm just establishing the rules," Azula smirked. Sokka laughed, pressing quick, soft kisses to her lips.

"Still… you did come first. Tell me… when did you start wondering how good we'd be together?" he asked, prodding her nose with his own. Azula sighed.

"It's all your fault… yours and yours alone," she whispered. "If you'd just quit pinning me to walls that often, I wouldn't think about you sexually…"

"Huh… I've got to do that more often, then," Sokka teased her. Azula laughed and shook her head.

"You're a piece of work, aren't you?" she smiled. He grinned cheekily right back at her. "You?"

"Probably the same time, actually," he chuckled. "I liked talking up close to you in that corridor a bit more than I should've… and then you pointed out we were too close and I pulled away because I thought you were uncomfortable, but not because I didn't want to be this close…"

"Hmmm… good to know," Azula grinned, wrapping her arms around his neck and reeling him in for one more heartfelt kiss…

One that turned dangerous as his hand slipped between their bodies and took to prodding her clit. Azula gasped.

"H-hey, you don't have to try already…" she said. Sokka snickered.

"Might be I want to… I like your moans. They're sexy," he said, and his pronunciation of the word made her shiver against his strong body. She wanted more, forget all caution and sense, she was going to lose her mind if he didn't make her come again…

A knock on the bedroom door.

Azula damn near cursed out loud upon the sound… upon Sokka's abrupt pause, and wary glance at the door. He swallowed hard and offered Azula an apologetic grimace before uncoupling their bodies – his cock wasn't ready for another round yet, but with Azula's sounds, it was certainly starting to rear its head yet again… only to be disappointed by the interruption.

"Here," Sokka said, yanking the sheet off the bed quickly and covering Azula's body with it. The Princess groaned as Sokka collected his pants and pulled them up again – still no underwear. And now she found that a most agreeable choice. "It's probably nothing…"

"Nothing?" Azula repeated. No, her senses said otherwise…

It was late. It was very late at night, as far as she could tell. Most people wouldn't be awake by now… nor would they be eager to knock on the southerner's door unless they had a good reason for it. And Azula only reached a sudden conclusion about what the interruption might be mere instants before Sokka opened the door.

"Oh, e-excuse me, sir…" said the nervous young man at the other side of the door: he failed to recognize the woman in the bed, and he didn't stop to pay much attention to the clothes scattered in the room. That being said… he was flustered. Yes, he'd heard Azula. At this point, the whole damn city might have heard her. "But King Kuei… he asked me to inform you, since you were so keen on being beside him once the baby was about to come to this world…"

"W-wait, what?!" Sokka exclaimed. The nervous man grimaced. "How can that be?!"

"Well, seeing what you were up to, I doubt you don't know how it came to this…"

"What the…?! That's not what I meant!" Sokka squealed, his cheeks flushing. "Ugh, I'll be there! Just… take a walk! I'll be right out!"

Sokka slammed the door shut, and Azula wasted no time climbing off the bed: finding each clothing garment, regardless of the lanterns Sokka had lit, wasn't all that easy, but Azula managed to patch up her servant persona as best she could by the time Sokka managed to fasten his sash around his waist.

"I can help you with your hair," he offered. Azula grimaced, having been halfway through composing a clumsy knot, but Sokka took over for her as she sighed in defeat.

"Curse that damn baby for deciding this was the best timing to arrive…" Azula growled. Sokka chuckled, finishing her hairdo and hugging her gently afterwards.

"It should take a while before it's born. If it looks too slow, we can go find a dark corner and get right back to this…"

"I'd love that, but we do need to keep an eye on the damn assassin. If it's just one assassin," Azula said, glancing at Sokka warily. Sokka grimaced but nodded. "We don't know how widespread Yao's plan may be. He could have more than just one hitman…"

"He should have more than one," said Sokka, frowning. "Kuei shouldn't be in the same place as his child, right? So one hitman for him… another for the baby."

They exchanged a quick glance: each of them had a job, then, as they'd agreed upon before. And they'd do best to fulfill them, as fast as possible.

Sokka fisted Azula's hair before pulling her close for one more kiss. She relented most willingly, venturing to taste him with her tongue, to feel every ridge in his mouth, to memorize his every detail… their duty was dangerous, after all. What they'd do next… it might not end well if they weren't careful. A good luck kiss wouldn't hurt at all either, would it?

"We'll get back to it… as soon as this is over, if not sooner," Sokka promised. Azula smiled and nodded.

"I should hope so. I look forward to your final campaign, conqueror Sokka," she smirked, stepping towards the door. He chuckled and followed suit.

The palace wasn't as quiet as it ever was at these hours: maybe with all the ruckus over the baby's birth, their obnoxious coupling had been slightly less obvious than they had suspected. They rushed together to the birthing area, and Azula glanced at Sokka once more to confirm their plan. He nodded, smiled, and squeezed her hand gently before rushing away, towards the living room where Kuei was waiting.

The queen was crying when Azula entered the room, and her heart sank for it… until she realized it was just about the pain. She breathed out in relief for it, assessing her surroundings quickly… assessing the rest of the servants warily: nearly all of them looked exhausted, obviously displeased to be woken in case the queen needed anything… except for one young girl. She appeared completely alert, watching the queen intently… so intently she didn't seem to realize Azula was watching her.

Sokka barged into Kuei's living room… and Yao was there, of course, an arm wrapped around the nervous king who kept pacing nervously inside the large hall. Sokka approached, offering his support too… Kuei threw himself at Sokka, and Bosco sniffed Sokka's body, as though picking up an unexpected odor on him. The water tribesman grimaced, eyeing the surroundings with uncertainty: while he had been alerted because Kuei had thought he'd feel safer this way, there was obviously no reason why Yao should be here too. And it seemed Yao knew as much as well: he justified his presence by claiming he had been with Kuei when the news had been broken, and he had merely been worried about leaving the king to his own devices at such late hours.

Kuei's behavior was odd, Sokka found, though… and he only realized why when he unintentionally caught the scent of the king's breath: alcohol. He had been drinking, perhaps with Yao… it'd make it all the easier to target him.

Sokka eyed his surroundings anxiously: the living room had a few windows, could Yao's hitman be somewhere behind them, out of reach? If so…

"You know what you need, pal?" Sokka decided, grinning as he clapped Kuei's back. "A new environment!"

"A… what?" Kuei said, blinking blankly. Sokka grinned mischievously.

"Let's take a walk! Find the best room in the palace to spend your time in while we wait for the baby to be born. It'll be a while anyway."

Random as the idea sounded, Sokka didn't miss the disapproving scowl on Yao's face as he guided the Earth King out of the room. There were so many rooms, countless of them… and if he could pick up a retinue of soldiers in the process, better yet.

Meanwhile, as the queen cried further, complaining about every contraction, Azula managed to reach the one-track-mind servant, tapping her shoulder gently: the young woman nearly jumped out of her skin, as Azula bit her lip and asked if she could speak with her in private about something very important.

The fear in the woman's face was obvious: she thought she'd been had. She refused at first, but the others encouraged her to go, and promised they wouldn't fall asleep while the queen was struggling to bring the baby to the world. Azula breathed out and led the young woman through the hallways, biting her lip as she clung to her arm as any shy, nervous maid might…

"What's the problem? Did you… find out something surprising?" the maid asked. Azula bit her lip.

"Y-yeah. I definitely did," she said. "I'm a little worried. I… I don't think it'll sit well with the Earth King, or the Earth Queen, so I thought I'd get your advice. Everyone else looked like they were about to fall asleep, so…"

"Yeah, well, that's precisely why I should be there," the maid argued. "I'm the only one who had a proper rest over the evening, you see…"

"Ah, no wonder," said Azula, smiling awkwardly. "Why, though…?"

"Because I always take the night shifts," the servant declared, stubbornly. "Anyway, if you have nothing to say…"

"I do have something to say," Azula whispered, stopping at the end of a corridor that led nowhere but to a maintenance room. "The truth is, I…"

"What?!" the maid said, exasperated over the pause. Azula gritted her teeth, covering her face with her hands.

"I-I was seduced by a guest!"

The maid blinked blankly for a moment, as Azula turned an innocent gaze upon her. Ah, she didn't expect that, did she?

"I'll be in trouble, won't I?" she said. "Oh, but he's… he's irresistible. He just hit on me and the next thing I knew… ah, do you think the hickeys show too much? I'm going to be in so much trouble if anyone knows…"

"I… no!" said the maid, laughing carelessly now: good. Her guard was down, as Azula showed her the undeniable marks on her neck. "Oh, please, it's hardly the first time anything like this happens… you don't have to worry, truly. Come on, let's go back, the king and queen have bigger things to worry about than whoever their servants sleep with, okay?"

"You're sure…?" Azula asked. The young woman nodded. Azula sighed as the maid started to turn around…

And that was when Azula struck her hard, delivering a powerful blow to the carotid artery, knocking the woman unconscious immediately.

Azula caught the woman in midair, using her servants' keys to open the maintenance closet: she tossed the maid there, took the woman's own assorted keys, and locked her within. She'd come back for her later, once everything was safe. She couldn't know for sure if this woman was an ally of Yao's yet – despite she reeked of it –, but if she wasn't, the enemy would still be within the vicinity. She returned at haste to the queen's room, but instead of marching inside alone, which would garner a lot of suspicions, she only lingered by the door, listening… listening carefully. There was a lot of activity inside right now, and Azula flinched at each desperate cry of the queen's – oh, but she was a fool, wasn't she? She'd allowed Sokka to finish inside, with no countermeasures… and she damn refused to bear his child and wind up screaming for not-quite-fun reasons in the near future, just as the queen did right now. She'd find some contraceptive measures as soon as possible…

Ten minutes later, a piercing, shrill voice broke across the already noisy palace.

Azula grimaced and pushed the door open lightly, ready to act if need be…

"A baby girl! Oh, she is delightful!"

Azula's eyes widened. A girl. If it was a girl, then Yao and his people would likely target the child. She snarled and entered the room quickly, watching as the rest of the servants clapped excitedly as the baby was taken care of, wiped and cleansed for her mother to hold. No one had done anything suspicious so far… so had she chosen correctly? Had she found the culprit, or one of them, anyway?

"The king must be informed!"

Oh, hell. That could be trouble.

Azula grimaced and stepped closer to the queen and the baby – in her not so humble opinion, it was frankly a rather ugly child… – taking up a resting defensive position near them. She played it off as mere curiosity about the baby… while constantly casting glances at the door, wary about what would happen next.

Kuei nearly lost his cool when the servants arrived with a message. Sokka frowned, glancing about himself: he'd successfully gathered around five soldiers, but would they be enough in case the king needed help…?

"A girl…? My child is born! It's a girl, Sokka!"

Sokka froze. Oh, hell: they'd go for the baby.

Kuei only hugged him quickly before sprinting off at haste, followed by his soldiers… and not by Yao.

"Where are you going?" Sokka asked, smiling dryly. Yao froze. "Mind if I tag along?"

"W-why would you…?" he said, grimacing. "You wanted to be with the king…"

"To help calm him down. He's fine now, see? The baby is born. A nice, healthy little girl," Sokka grinned. "Are you so tired you want to go take a nap in your room? The… seventh floor, was it?"

Yao grimaced, and Sokka raised an eyebrow.

"Y-you… are you accusing me of something?" Yao asked. Sokka blinked blankly.

"Is there anything to accuse you of?" he grinned, dryly.

"No!"

"Then why so nervous?" Sokka chuckled. "Just let me accompany you to your room. I'm sure Kuei's fine on his own now that he knows his baby is alive and safe."

Yao snarled but complied. Sokka followed him, just as well. Back to the scene of the crime… to where he had started this wild, strange dalliance with Azula. And boy, he sure regretted nothing about it… but he needed to focus on more than thoughts of his new lover's delectable body and clever wit for now. He'd have more of those later, if she let him.

Yao opened the door, allowing Sokka to see inside the dark room… and yet Sokka stood outside, arms crossed, waiting for Yao to do whatever he intended to. Yao, of course, realized as much… and he entered the room slowly.

Only for Sokka to kick it shut and jam the lock by sabotaging it with his knife, violently.

"H-hey! HEY! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!"

He'd track down the damn killer. He wasn't in the room, Sokka had noticed… the man was in position somewhere, no idea where, but surely within range of the room… oh, Azula. She was there too, she might be able to stop him, he hoped, and if she was…

He ran as fast as his legs could carry him, feeling almost as though he were an airbender as he raced to the birthing wing once again. Yet he wasn't the only one reaching it right then and there…

"STOP!" Sokka shouted.

The shaggy-haired man, with the thick beard, froze in place for only a brief instant before attacking: he cast a smoke bomb at Sokka, but the warrior braced himself regardless, covering his mouth with one hand and withdrawing his boomerang from its scabbard. He launched it at haste, trusting his prediction of the killer's trajectory…

The man had only just opened the door when the weapon struck him on the lower back.

The happy room suddenly became a loud, messy pandemonium… but where everyone seemed to run away from the door, one servant ran straight towards it instead: a kick of blue fire slammed the already weakened enemy across the corridor and into the wall at its far end, and his head struck violently against it.

"Sokka!" she called for him, rushing towards the cloud of smoke.

It was so dense she could barely see him, but eventually a silhouette could be distinguished: Sokka crept out slowly, coughing as the unpleasant smoke bit into his system.

"Are you okay? Sokka…" Azula asked, pulling him closer. Sokka coughed again but smiled.

"I'm… alright. Better now that I'm seeing you again," he said. "Is he…?"

"Dead? Maybe," Azula admitted, casting a glance at the unmoving, bleeding tall man that had fallen in a heap on the floor. "But I've captured a suspect…"

"And I locked up Yao," Sokka said. Azula blinked blankly, surprised by how similar their strategies had turned out to be, as they heard footsteps behind them: the servants, the soldiers, and in all likelihood, Kuei, were on their way. "Which is why I think… we might just be able to spin this to our favor."

"Y-you… you saved us?! And our baby?!" Kuei asked, staring at Sokka and his companion in disbelief… a companion he had identified by her unique flames, naturally. "You… you're Princess Azula?!"

She turned around very slowly, with a rather guilty grin on her face. Kuei appeared to be on the verge of a breakdown, whether of joy, outrage, relief or confusion… and confirming that his dreaded enemy had entered his palace, disguised herself as a servant and lived amongst his people for over a week and a half, certainly wouldn't help his frequent nerves and constant anxiety.

"You sure about that?" Azula asked Sokka, uneasy. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pressing a quick kiss to the top of her head.

"Just… trust me," he smiled, before stepping towards Kuei.

Iroh's teashop was yet another strange location Azula had never thought she'd set foot on, but apparently it was the only place in Ba Sing Se that would allow her safe haven, for the time being. She sat on a far-end table, sipping a drink, ignoring her uncle's confused, pointed stares… and of course, reliving the latest events in her mind.

She could have been thinking of the aftermath, with Kuei fluctuating between panic and gratefulness at the drop of a hat, especially once both Yao and his female accomplice were brought before him, and the accomplice blatantly confessed the truth of their schemes – she had been working for Kuei for over a decade, but it seemed Yao had blackmailed her into working for him by threatening her family in the western Earth Kingdom, and she was more than happy to sell him out for it now. Azula could have also been reliving the action, the rush to take down the murder operation as fast as possible, splitting up with her partner so they both could keep every threat in check…

But no. She was, of course, reliving the sensation of a certain someone's lips and caresses upon her skin, of his manly shaft tearing through her with those slow withdrawals and sudden thrusts that made her mind swim in blissful pleasure. Oh, whatever happened next, she needed more of that, so much more of that… surely being spymaster for Zuko for about five years was enough community service for her misdeeds after the war, right? She could take a break, steal that handsome man away, spend about a month or two, or a year, even a lifetime, locked up in a private room with him, as they had their way with each other… she wanted to dominate him the next time around, yes she did, and pin him to the wall, for a change, and…

The door of the teashop opened, despite it was already closing time, and most customers were long gone: Azula's eyes lit up immediately when she identified the apparent new customer, who scanned the area quickly until he spotted her. That he smiled immediately was a blissful relief.

"Well… looks like you could stand being here, after all," Sokka grinned, sinking into a seat across hers. Azula bit her lip, wishing he'd sat beside her instead… kissing him would've been much easier that way. "Kuei's calmed down."

"Hard to believe," Azula smiled. Sokka laughed and shrugged.

"He isn't completely sure he can trust you yet, which is as predictable as can be from the guy," Sokka said. "But he says he'll credit you for helping save his family all the same. That being said… you're still not allowed to visit Ba Sing Se freely."

"Heh. Well, I'll just find something else to disguise myself as the next time," Azula smirked. "I was a servant this time, I pretended to be your ex the last time… who should I be next?"

"Maybe you don't have to pretend to be my ex… and you can just be my actual girlfriend," Sokka suggested. Azula snorted, staring at him in disbelief as he grinned cheekily. "Yep, I'm asking. Bluntly. Boldly. Why not?"

"… Would that get me access to Ba Sing Se's palace?" Azula asked. Sokka snorted.

"You really need access to it that badly?" he asked.

"A spymaster needs eyes everywhere," Azula smiled. "And access to all the places that might need her attention. If the palace is within my reach, I can better understand what's happening inside it… and then advice my dumb brother on how to proceed with his own ventures."

"Right," Sokka said, sighing. "Well, Kuei says that if you come with me every time you want to be in the palace, he'll relent and allow you to stay. But not if you're on your own."

"Really? And how about if we break up dramatically over something stupid?" Azula asked, teasing him. "Will I still be forced to travel to Ba Sing Se with you even if we're on terrible terms?"

"Eh, if we ever do have a bad argument, I can always pin you to a wall and we can resolve it the old-fashioned way… works like a charm, huh?" Sokka said, shrugging cockily. Azula laughed and shook her head.

"I have no idea what we're doing, Sokka… but I do know I like it," she said, smiling at him. "You're sure about this? About me? About asking me to be your… girlfriend? It's a rather juvenile term, in my opinion…"

"Want another one?" Sokka smiled. "Partner in crime suits you better?"

"Partner could be good," Azula said. "We did make a deal when this whole ordeal began, didn't it? And while you're splendid in bed, we worked together beyond that, too… it's not quite as simple as being your girlfriend, right?"

"No. But I'll still introduce you to everyone we bump into as my girlfriend from this day forward," Sokka grinned. Azula scoffed. "And myself as your boyfriend, of course."

"How's that going to work? 'Hello there, she is my girlfriend, I am her boyfriend'? Sounds like you won't be saying anything about yourself or me by doing that…"

"Isn't that how you'd rather keep things, spymaster?" Sokka grinned. "Juvenile as it may be… no one will suspect what your true job is, head of Fire Nation intelligence, if they think you and your boyfriend are just a pair of idiot twenty-somethings who can't seem to stop having sex wherever they go…"

"Ah… a rather useful cover story," Azula grinned. "Funny how so many chaotic problems get resolved whenever those two idiot twenty-somethings who can't seem to stop having sex show up at places…"

"It's a true mystery, isn't it?" Sokka said. Azula laughed and shook her head. "So… if I may do the honors this time as well: do we have a deal, Azula?"

He extended his hand towards her, and she smiled. With a quick movement, she rose to her feet and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him heartily while clasping his hand in hers. A cup broke near the counter – of course, Iroh had no suspicions she was doing Sokka, no one outside the palace would've known it yet – and decided that yes, it was a good cover story. A perfect relationship to both bask in for what it was… and to wield as a shield, allowing them both to remain perfectly disguised while playing the fools and resolving the many problems their respective friends and associations expected them to fix for them. And as Azula kissed Sokka long, deep and sensually, she could see absolutely nothing harmful in the new terms he had offered. Her lips were still pressed to his, her fingers intertwined with his, when she finally said:

"Deal."

[recurring-polynya]

It is time, once again, friends, for me to watch a Bleach Filler Arc and tell you about it. It is time for the Zanpakutou Rebellion.

I wasn’t really sure I wanted to do this one for a number of reasons, but we watched the second episode last night, and it featured Rukia and Renji fighting back-to-back, and sorry fam, we’re doing this, you’re getting the full force of my zanpakutou spirit headcanons whether you want them or not.

Chrome updated and stopped letting me take screenshots a while ago and I am too lazy to figure out another way, so I figured it would be easier to just illustrate these myself. Let’s see how this goes.

Okay, one thing up front. My attitude towards Bleach filler has always been that it’s just for fun, and it’s up to you, the reader/viewer, whether you want to take any of it as canon or not. I, personally, do not accept this story arc as canon, but I honestly don’t care if you do. My main problem is that I don’t think zanpakutou spirits should be humanoid as a rule, although I do headcanon that most zanpakutou can choose how to manifest themselves, and so they may have a humanoid representation, but that’s not necessarily how they usually appear, which also explains why a lot of the shinigami has trouble recognizing their zanpakutou. I also think Muramasa made Hozukimaru put on that skirt, Hozukimaru has the demeanor of a being who does not believe in pants of any variety.

Anyway, as usual, I am ahead of myself. We starts in a cave that looks exactly like the cave from the Bount arc, with some ominous stuff, but I don’t care, I want to talk about Byakuya! Fighting! Renji!  

I think every filler arc has an OP with Byakuya fighting Renji that never actually happens, but right here! First episode! Byakuya fighting Renji while Squad 6 stands around and jeers! Kyouraku and Ukitake are here, too, for some reason! It’s super lit! Byakuya stops paying attention halfway through, but he wins anyway and negs Renji a little, and Renji thanks him for the fight very earnestly and Kyouraku and Ukitake tell Renji he did a good job. This is honestly all I want out of Bleach filler. This is my happy place. Thank you, Zanpakutou Arc for these beautiful Squad 6 hijinks.

As if I weren’t on a big enough high, now we cut to Squad 10, where Matsumoto is lounging on the Crash Couch. Hinamori and Isane come in to hand-deliver an invtation to a vice-captains meeting (Aren’t they just… like… on Wednesdays?) and to complain about their zanpakutou (boy, I wish we got to see Isane’s zanpakutou in this arc!! But no!!) Matsumoto, once again, claims to be training for bankai, mostly by complaining a lot. Hitsugaya grumps around, grumpily.

All of this is so, so perfect, I just need a trip with Iba to the shinigami pub, but instead, everyone gets a mysterious invitation from the Captain Commander to come to Soukyoku Hill at midnight. Really? I would not go.

Regardless, everyone goes. This scene is great because there are too many characters standing around and this is filler meaning the animators phoned it in, so whenever one character is talking, there are at least three people in the background not moving and making a facial expression that does not go with whatever else is going on. For example, Sasakibe shows up and falls over, and his body is just… there. In the middle of everything. Also, it’s mostly captains and vice-captains, but also Ikkaku and Yumichika and Rukia are there. Someone’s like, “Hey, Ikkaku and Yumichika, why are you here?” and they’re like, “Uh, Zaraki and Yachiru are on a business trip” and then someone else is like “Hey, Rukia, why are you here?” and she just does Big Shrug Arms. This is perfect Big Filler Energy. They are here because we want to see their embodied zanpakutou spirits obviously, why must you demand explanations?

Anyway, Muramasa shows up in hall his Hot Topic glory and waves his scary fingernails and cries blood and announces that all the zanpakutou have rebelled. Then follows a hilarious scene where everyone tries to do their releases and it doesn’t work.

Episode ends/next episode begins.

Ichigo is bouncing around Karakura, like he does, when Rukia falls out of a senkaimon in the sky. (They can make them next to the ground, I don’t know why they never do) Sode no Shirayuki then shows up and it takes Ichigo a phenomenally long amount of time to figure out who she is. To be honest, I would love if this arc went in the direction that Shirayuki has it out for Ichigo for taking Rukia’s powers (Zanpakutou Headcanon #2: Zanpakutou spirits have zero perspective outside of their shinigami being the most important thing in the world to them, and Shirayuki, especially brainwashed Shirayuki, would love to take a piece out of Ichigo. Obvs, they would become best friends after Ichigo defeats her, as is his way).

After being suitable ominous, Shirayuki ollies out, and Ichigo takes Rukia back to the Shoten for Orihime-heals and flashbacks.

Rukia recaps back to Soukyoku Hill, except this time, Renji’s the only one trying fruitlessly to do his release. One reading of this, is that it’s just a recap, we don’t need to see all this again, except that then they cut to Byakuya making the Mariah Carey “I don’t know her face” for like, 10 whole seconds, and it’s sublime.

Anyway, everyone starts fighting, and Ikkaku tries to attack Komamura’s zanpakutou, which is such a colossally bad idea. I am always hoping that they will kill off characters during filler arcs and then have them be inexplicably alive later, like they used to do on Teen Titans GO! and I absolutely would have offed Ikkaku at this point if I were in charge. The zanpakutou spirits start absolutely trashing the Seireitei, mostly setting things on fire and causing ice avalanches, and just generally going bananas. I really wish there had been a montage of someone cutting heads off parking meters and spray painting “Fuck the Central 46” on the side of Squad 1, but no.

We then see Rukia and Renji running around, fighting together, and I ascended. This is all I ever want. Bless this arc. They get attacked by Sasakibe’s Gonryuu (I wish there was a running gag of no one knowing who he is, and maybe there is, later, I don’t remember) and Hisagi’s Kazeshini, who is the best zanpakutou in this whole arc, he is an unhinged Nightcrawler with sick abs and I love him. I don’t remember what happened next, because I was so distracted by my OTP doing Battle Couple, but Byakuya shows up, standing on a tower (dude likes standing on a tall thing almost as much as Rukia does), so of course, we have to do “Nii-sama!” “Taichou!” B L E S S.

Then Senbonzakura shows up, also standing on a tall rooftop, dunh dunh DUNH! It’s too bad that the Fullbringer arc sort of ruins this because the whole time, I was like “just nail him in the safety zone,” and honestly, Byakuya having a “safety zone” is… well, it’s kinda lame when you say it out loud. Anyway, Rukia flips out, and Renji’s like, “no, no, I’m sure he’s fine,” and then they get avalanched by Sode no Shirayuki and that’s all Rukia remembers.

As usual, no one is the least bit concerned for Renji, but honestly, if anyone can survive being repeatedly Senbonzakured and Hakurened, it’s that guy.

There’s a part where Rukia is telling this story and Ichigo puts his hand on his chest, and you can see the little wheels in his head turning, like, “where do I keep my zanpakutou? Is it here? What is the ‘heart’?”

Yoruichi shows up to provide more exposition, as is her Filler Arc duty, and they establish that the rebellion seems to have only gone as far as Soul Society.

Ichigo goes home to sleep in his clothes, but the Mod Souls show up to tell him that Rukia went back to Soul Society in the middle of the night. Man, the Mod Souls are in this arc, W H Y ? ? ?

Urahara agrees to send Ichigo to Soul Society why WHY W H Y would you send the guy with the awesomest and most DNGAF zanpakutou to the place where the zanpakutou are rebelling??? At this point, if I hadn’t seen this before, I would definitely assume that Urahara was behind all of this.

Some other points: Why would you not take Chad and Ishida and Orihime (and Yoruichi, for that matter), people with powers who don’t have zanpakutou? Truly, I tell you, Chad does not mind being woken up for this, and Ishida would love the chance to smugly show up and lecture a bunch of powerless shinigami. Also, if I were in Bleach, you better bet my first reaction to everything would be to ask Orihime to try to reject it, no matter how dumb it sounded. It’s worth a try! I would not go anywhere without Orihime. Orihime is the GOAT. Did we all forget the part in the Bount Arc where she killed some friggin’ ninja? I sure didn’t.

Anyway, that’s it for this time, keep tuning for next episode, where Ichigo will surely have regrets.

[injusticeff]

Chapter Twenty-Two

Tiarra

I woke up in pure darkness and no matter how hard my eyes attempted to adjust to the pitch black environment, I just couldn’t see anything. It was as if I had gone completely blind.

My mouth was dry like I'd been stuffing it with cotton and my lips were so chapped that they had started to crack and peel. There was a painful throbbing coming from the back of my head. The first thought I had was to move, immediately feeling the restraints around my wrists and ankles. I didn't know where I was, but whoever did this clearly wasn't trying to play any games with me.

I groaned at the same time that my stomach growled, the chilly atmosphere forming goosebumps all over my exposed half naked body. "Help..." My voice came out hoarse causing me to clear my throat. "HELP ME!" I was able to call a bit louder but the only response I got was the sound of my own voice echoing throughout the cold dark room.

My body was too weak and I was trying to save up as much energy as I could, in case I would need it later on. The pain coming from my head only grew more intense as I whimpered repetitively for someone to come and help me.

I couldn't remember how or when I got here, but I knew that a Tylenol was definitely needed right about now. I've never had a headache so bad in my life.

The sound of the legs of my chair scratching against the hard floor made me realize that I wasn't actually bolted down in one place. Immediately scooting further, I began moving around the black room and noted how large it was. I couldn't have been in someone's house. Maybe a basement? Or a warehouse? There was no source of light anywhere, not even a small window that a basement would normally have.

I almost fell over once the back of my chair hit something solid and was unable to move any further. Slowly turning so that my legs were now facing the object, I began kicking at it to find out if I had reached a wall or not, ultimately realizing how low it actually was. "What the fuck...?" I whispered to myself and decided to just feel around with my feet.

Being that I was half naked, shoes and socks were not included on my body so I started patting around that same area that I'd been previously kicking. The object was solid, but not exactly hard and it was low, but also long at the same time. It was covered in some type of cloth and I had to maneuver just to reach the top, using my toes in attempts to identify it the way my hands would.

A cold liquid instantly coated my foot causing me to quickly snatch it away from the unknown stationary object with a loud yelp. I immediately began to frantically scoot away and before I knew it, my chair had toppled over and fell to the ground causing me to hit the back of my head in the same area that had been aching. Groaning lowly, it took me a little while to come back to reality and regulate my breathing after getting the wind knocked out of me.

***Flashback***

I stared back at my reflection in the bathroom mirror of the hotel I'd been staying in for the week, fluffing my hair to my desired volume. Out of all the hotels I've stayed in so far, I would have to say that this one was definitely my favorite. Everything was lined with gold and room service came quicker than a fast food drive thru.

Having money was such an exuberant feeling and if this room was what a little two hundred dollars got me for the night, then I'd be living the life until I finally offed the bitch that decided to get a hit out on my head.

The hotel room was nice but it gets tiring having to bounce around from place to place all the time and constantly looking over your shoulder. Having to hide your face in shades and makeup every time you stepped foot outside. It was just way more than I expected it to be and now I see that living a life on edge is anything but fun.

I sighed, eyeing over my reflection one last time before shutting off the light and heading back into the bedroom. Raising my leg to climb into bed, I suddenly paused when I heard loud knocking on my room door causing me to instantly furrow my eyebrows, growing worried.

I cautiously stepped over to the door, standing on my tippy toes to glance into the peep hole and noticing a Hispanic man staring back at me; almost as if he knew that I was looking at him at that very moment. "Who is it?" I called out as my eyes remained trained on the stranger.

"Room service."

Breathing out a small sigh of relief, my heartbeat seemed to slow back down to its normal rate once I realized that I was just being paranoid as always. I had almost forgot that I ordered myself a steak dinner from the gourmet kitchen downstairs.

My hands immediately wrapped around the doorknob and I swung the door open, revealing the man I had just been watching through the peephole who now wore a smile on his face as he pushed the cart with the covered platter on it inside. "Your food ma'am." He spoke once he got to the main living area. "Where would you like me to put it?"

"My bedroom, thanks." I flashed him a quick smile in attempts to be polite as he did as I requested and took my food into my room. Once he was finished, he grabbed the cart he was rolling around and walked out of my hotel room, bidding me a professional goodnight.

I locked my room door once he was gone and made my way back to the room, continuing what I was doing by climbing onto the bed before reaching for the remote to turn the TV on. Unlike the cheaper hotels, there were actually fairly decent channels programmed on this TV. I decided to settle for watching Chopped and grabbed the platter my food was on before lifting the top off and immediately digging in.

The steak was so tender and the mashed potatoes were so creamy; my mouth watered before each bite I took. Everything was still hot, but not too hot to where it burned my mouth. I finished in what had to be five to ten minutes. I had only eaten a waffle and some yogurt from the continental breakfast this morning so hungry didn't even begin to describe how my stomach was feeling.

Once I was satisfyingly full, I laid back and continued to watch the show, laughing when people would fuck up and have to throw something together real quick so they would have something to present to the judges.

I had only gotten one episode in before my eyes began to get exceedingly heavy as I attempted to keep them open. I hadn't been tired before I ate but since I had gotten full, I figured that I got the itis like any normal black person would and succumbed to the sleep that had suddenly washed over my body.

*** One of my eyes slowly opened up as I felt myself being moved around and the cold outside air sent chills to my body. It was dark outside and my vision was blurry so I couldn't really see anything at first, but I knew there were two large figures that were carrying my still sleep-paralyzed body.

"She's awake." I heard a deep voice inform the other.

Then someone smacked their lips. "Then put her ass back to sleep." Shuffling was all that could be heard afterward before a sharp pain shot through my skull and suddenly, I was out cold again.

***Flashback ends***

The memories all came flooding back to me causing my eyes to instantly widen. She had did it. She finally caught me and judging by the looks of things, she definitely wasn't about to let me go.

Hearing the ominous squeak of a heavy metal door opening, my body tensed as I heard footsteps start to make their way closer and closer towards where I was. Suddenly, a light switch was flipped on and a blinding bright light immediately made me throw my head down like I was a vampire who had just been exposed to sunlight.

"Tiarra." I heard a male voice call out to me from right in front of me. When I opened my eyes, I could see the person's shoes as they stood right between my legs. Feeling a hand grip my chin, I snatched away causing an unbothered chuckle to escape the man's lips as he suddenly gripped my face and turned it roughly so that I'd be forced to look at him. My eyes widened, but that only made his smirk grow more. "Tiarra, Tiarra, Tiarra..."

A buff man came from what seemed like the shadows and sat a chair down right in front of me, behind Arion, and backed away as Arion comfortably sat on the chair and stared at me with amusement in his eyes. "Did you honestly think I wouldn't catch on to fifteen thousand dollars going missing from my house? I must have stupid written across my forehead."

I wanted to say 'well you allowed my inexperienced ass to rob you blind so,' but I held my tongue as my eyes began to water. "Please. Don't do this, I'm sorry. I'll return what's left of it and I can work to get the rest back or something?" By now, I was full blown sobbing as the same buff stranger from before returned to hand Arion a gun.

"I'll make you a deal. How about that?" I quickly nodded in response, prepared to do anything to get myself out of this situation in one piece. "I like you, you were great with your mouth." He spoke, dragging the tip of the gun along the perimeter of my plump lips.

If sucking dick was all I had to do to get myself out of this, I was about to gobble that shit down! Balls and all.

My voice came out fragile as I looked at him. "W-What do you want me to do?"

"I've made a few enemies because of you and your sticky hands. So now, I either have to make amends or go to war. And going to war isn't an option." His eyes grew cold as a smirk marked its territory on his face. "Here's where you come in. The person that I got into it with is a man... and men love women."

My eyebrows furrowed as I put two and two together. "So... you want me to be his personal sex slave or something? In exchange, y'all would be straight?"

He only gave me a nonchalant shrug in response. "That's only if you're willing to do it. So I gotta ask you, would you rather be a slave? Or dead?"

My heartbeat immediately began to quicken once I realized how slim my options were on making it out of here a free woman. Not belonging to any man nor dead. I dropped my head low as tears began cascading down until they splattered against my bare thigh. I knew what I had to do, but I had to take a second to come to term with it. Arion suddenly tapped me, letting me know that he doesn't have all day and that I needed to make the decision before he did.

"I'll do it!" I blurted out as I cried harder. "I'll do it. Just please don't hurt me."

Arion stood up, seeming pleased with my answer as he nodded at one of his guards to come over and they automatically began untying my legs then my arms as my hands rubbed over the areas that were now dark and irritated. "Thank you." I sighed in relief, a small weight being lifted off my chest.

He looked down at me as if he was just now noticing I was still sitting there and smiled, cupping my chin with his hand as he lifted my head up towards him. "Damn, you got some pretty ass lips too. Makes me kinda feel bad for what I'm about to do." My eyebrows furrowed in confusion at his words.

"What do you me—"

POW! POW!

Antonio

I keep asking myself why I keep falling for this girl’s bullshit. Every time she comes around with that cute ass pouty face of hers, I get weak.

But it just doesn't feel right hurting Xae in the process when he's done nothing but show me how real of a person he was. I honestly couldn't even imagine what him and Bree would have possibly been arguing and going through a rough patch about when I had first met her. He just seemed so laid back all the time.

Things had suddenly gotten so complicated as soon as I saw Bree step through his front door that day we were all hanging out and initially, I was going to keep quiet because they seemed happy together. But after what happened the other day, the guilt has been eating at me.

I had been ignoring all of Xae's invitations to link up and his attempts to reach out. It was easier for me to keep the whole situation in when Bree wasn't talking to me, but now that I know she's pregnant with my child and she had no problem allowing me inside of her again, I just couldn't do it. There was no reason they should be engaged if my seed was growing in her stomach and she was still trying to mess with me. She might as well just be with me.

I'm not going to lie though, I'm not even sure if I'd be able to take her serious now that I see firsthand how easy it is for her to open up and be intimate with someone else while she was already taken. And she continued to play house with him as if she had no remorse for what we've been doing behind Xae's back.

I, on the other hand, was being consumed with the guilt of how easily I caved into her. The first time I saw her walk into my restaurant, I just knew she was going to be trouble but it seems like my hardheaded ass threw all intuition out the window and trouble surely found me.

If it was me on the other side of things, I'd want my friend to tell me what was going on even if he was worried about ruining the friendship, as I am with Xae. Even if my friend didn't want to come between my relationship, as I did with Xae. I wouldn't want to walk around looking stupid, thinking my girl is loyal when she's not and I didn't want him to look dumb and played in the end either.

I had to tell him.

I had been pacing the hardwood floor in my living room for what seemed like hours, thinking things over and attempting to work up the courage to tell my friend that I'd basically been fucking and entertaining his fiancé. Can't forget the part about unintentionally knocking her up either. Yea, this shit was definitely going to end in me getting a justified ass whooping. He was about to open up an entire barrel of whoop ass on me. Which was another thing I had been working up the courage for.

"Can you stop with the weird walking back and forth and just do something already? Either you're going to tell him or you're not but waiting around isn't gonna do anything but prolong the inevitable." Ajanae broke the silence in the room as she sat comfortably on my couch with her legs propped up.

I had to ask someone for advice and lord knows I couldn't go to the rest of my family with this kind of information. They'd be so disappointed in me. They hold me up on such a high pedestal and I don't think I'd be able to bare the disgusted looks on their faces if I actually did inform them of my dilemma. "I know... I just—I don't even know how to word that kinda information without him getting upset."

"How about 'hey, I fucked your ungrateful hoe ass fiancé and wanted to tell you because I know she's not going to tell you herself'." I cut my eyes at my cousin causing her to hold her hands up in defense. "I'm just saying, he's going to get upset either way it goes. You had sex with someone he asked to marry him."

I ran my hands over my face in frustration. "Can you stop saying it like that?!"

"Well it's true. I'm not gonna sugar coat things just because you're shook and about to get your ass beat for messing with someone's girl. You should have thought about that before you tried to be 'friends' with her." She used to fingers to throw up air quotes as she spoke the last sentence. "What's done in the dark is eventually gonna come to the light Ant. Would you rather him find out by you or some other way that's gonna make him resent you for smiling in his face?"

I let out an exhausted sigh, knowing she was right. For her to be younger than me, she was giving me some solid and mature advice. It'd be wrong to keep this from him. "Alright, I'm gonna tell him."

Nae smiled and clapped her hands in excitement. "Yay, make sure you record the fight!"

"How would I be able to record—you know what, I'm not even about to play with you today." I shook my head before grabbing my car keys off of the coffee table and making my way to the front door as Nae called out for me to get some food before I come back. Her hungry ass was always asking for something, I can't wait until she's not crippled anymore.

Once I got into my car, I sat there for a couple minutes and allowed my breathing to get under control since it felt like I was about to have a panic attack. I kept telling myself that even though he's definitely going to be mad, he'd appreciate my honesty.

The ride to the house was silent because I refused to play any music so that I'd be able to think about what exactly I wanted to say and how I was going to word it. I honestly wished I had never even approached her that day at my restaurant. Of course I was going to man up and take care of my responsibilities, but at the same time, I don't think I'm ready for a whole kid.

Owning a business and a child both were far from cheap; I felt like I would either have to give up one or the other and I'm not sure if I'd be ready to give up everything I've worked so hard to build up since I was eighteen. Seven years later and my business is finally doing well, but then here comes another obstacle. Maybe I just wasn't meant to own this restaurant like I wanted. If it wasn't one thing, it was another.

My nerves got the best of me as Xavier's house came into view and I continued to drive until I was parked right out front, staring at the door as if he was going to burst out with a shotgun at any given moment. Blowing out a breath, I hopped out of my car and made my way up towards the front door, knocking on it a couple of times before stepping back.

I heard some rustling coming from the inside as the door soon swung open, revealing the beautiful caramel woman I had learned whose name was Simone. She sported some black biker shorts that came right above her knee and an oversized plain grey t-shirt with her straightened natural hair hanging down. "Hey, uh, is Xae home?"

She nodded and stepped back to allow me inside before closing the door after me, walking ahead as she gestured for me to follow her. "You look beautiful, by the way. I like your hair straight, it's always in a ponytail when I see you." I complimented causing her to look back and give me a friendly smile before thanking me.

We stopped in front of one of the doors in a hallway and she knocked on it lightly. "Xae, Antonio is here to see you." She called out, walking back down the hall and leaving me standing awkwardly in front of what I assumed was his bedroom door.

The door swung open and he came out, reaching his hand over to me to dap me up as I followed suit and slapped hands with him. He nodded towards the living room where we usually hung out and we began making our way back to the front. "Damn, I was beginning to think you died or some shit. Your phone off?"

"Nah, I just been busy with handling these health inspectors and shit lately." I replied, partially telling the truth.

Once we got back to the living room, we both sat on opposite ends of the couch. "I gotta tell you something." We both blurted out simultaneously causing us to chuckle and I told him he could go first since he's probably not going to want to talk to me after I told him what I had to say.

His smile grew as he looked at me and rubbed his hands together. "I'm not gonna lie, I don't have a lot of friends and we've become hella close since we met. You're like me, only Mexican." He joked causing me to let out a low laugh and flick him off. "Nah, for real though. Me and Bree decided to move up the wedding to next month and I want you to be my best man."

I nearly choked on my spit at the fact that this girl was just at my house, taking my dick and had the nerve to want to move up their wedding. "Y-You want me to?"

"Yea, you've become like my best friend." He replied sincerely, clapping a hand on my shoulder and shaking me a bit. "Don't look so surprised. I wanted to marry her before she had the baby and—"

"Wait, she told you she was pregnant?! I thought she couldn't have kids?" I quickly saved myself with the second question since the first one seemed too suspicious.

His smile grew even more as he shrugged and all I could feel was my blood boiling. She fucking lied to me. This girl was such a good actress, she came to my house all crying and sad talking about she's pregnant with my kid only for her to turn around and tell Xae that it was his. Conniving ass bitch, I swear.

The excitement that he thought he was having a baby was written all over his face and it hurt me that all that happiness might just be for nothing. "What did you wanna tell me?" He asked, perking up like he was a female who was about to be told some sizzling hot tea.

"I, um," I stuttered, not really knowing if I'd be able to bare ripping that excitement away from him in this moment. I was already nervous to begin with but now with the news he just told me, my mind was reeling. I wish I would have just told him what I wanted to first because now, I just couldn't be that guy. "I was going to tell you that I'm kinda feeling Simone and like the way she carries herself. She's bad as hell too... think you'd be able to set us up?"

He shifted uneasily in the chair at my words causing me to furrow my eyebrows in confusion and look at him expectantly as he let out a dry chuckle. "Ha, I don't know about all that."

"What? You tryna get at her or something?" I raised an eyebrow as a sly smirk formed on my face. I could always tell there was some type of chemistry between the two of them.

His face immediately straightened out and he shook his head. "Nah, I couldn't do that to Bree. She's dealt with all my bullshit and allowed Simone to stay here even though I know she didn't want to. I can't disrespect her like that."

"Well, how do you know if she's being faithful to you?" I asked, subtly dropping a hint that his oblivious ass, of course, didn't catch.

He shrugged. "Just a chance you gotta take when you're in a relationship."

Simone

Bree and Xae had been acting more lovey dovey than usual lately and I can’t believe I’m saying this... but it kind of hurt seeing them like that. He’d always been polite about making sure I wasn’t uncomfortable but I guess something happened that changed his mind.

Ugh, what am I saying? I shouldn’t even be uncomfortable. They’re about to be married soon, it’s not like this is something new for them.

What I needed to be worried about is this baby and how I was going to at least try to get back on Dominick's good side so I'd be able to see my son again. I knew firsthand how petty he was and as long as things stayed like this, I would never get to see Junior's face again.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, I began massaging the stress out of my temples from just thinking about having to be in Dom's presence again. I didn't want anything to do with him at this point. He had made my life a living hell, had me living in constant fear, and killed the only person who actually loved me besides Junior. There was nothing else for me at this point. I know Xae says he cares, but he's got other things to worry about now that he's expecting and preparing to get married.

It's funny because he was only three years older than I was, yet his life seemed so much more well put together. He had his own house, a car... a wife. I had nothing.

Since he told me the news, I had been avoiding him and after a few days, he caught the hint and stayed away out of respect for me not wanting to be around him. I just couldn't keep allowing myself to get so close to him to where I depended on him. I've depended on a man before and I wasn't trying to go through all that again. What scared me even more was that when he told me she was pregnant, I actually got sad. I shouldn't be feeling sad when I'm expecting too.

These impossible feelings that I had developed for him were clouding my mind. It was almost laughable. As if we could actually be together. Both of our lives were way too complicated at this point to even consider one another. Which was why I had decided that I needed to move out.

I haven't told him yet but I had been packing all my things away for the past day or two. The guest room I had been staying in for the past month looked uncomfortably empty and I was heartbroken because I really didn't want to leave.

It might have been awkward being around another female who hated me 24/7 but just seeing Xae's smile and hearing his laugh never failed to brighten my day for some reason. My depression was worsening because reality hit me that I just lost my son and the father of the baby growing inside me was laying six feet under all because of me. I had nothing to my name except what was left over from Saint’s savings after paying the fees for my lawyer and that wasn't even enough to rent out a place. I didn't want to be alone at a time like this but at the same time, I didn't want to bring Xae down with me.

Whenever he's trying to comfort me, I could just tell that he feels my pain. He empathizes with my feelings and I hate it because before me, his life was perfect. All of the arguments in his relationship are over me and all the drama that happens is my drama. Not his. And he shouldn't be the one going through it when he didn't even have a hand in creating these problems. He just had a big heart and I didn't want that to be his downfall with me.

Everyone I love ends up either getting hurt or betraying me and I knew Xae would never do the latter. So, that just left him to get hurt. I'd rather get away from him and deal with things on my own than to see him hurting or worse because of me.

I swiftly wiped the tears that had been unwillingly flowing from my eyes and stood up from my bed, scooping the last of my things into one of my suitcases sitting in front of me and zipping it up. It felt surreal that I was leaving because Xae had always made me feel like this was my home too, which was why it was so easy to get comfortable here when I wasn't supposed to.

When I turned back around, I noticed a large pool of thick dark red liquid stain the spot that I had previously been sitting at on the bed and in that very moment, a piercing pain shot through my stomach causing me to hunch over and fall to the ground. It felt like someone was trying to carve the intestines out of my stomach as I let out a loud blood curdling scream and held the area like that was going to make things feel better.

I laid in the fetal position as I heard the door burst open and someone quickly rushed to my side. I knew it was Xae just by the smell of his body wash that I had grown accustomed to this month. "Simone?! What's wrong? You ok?"

I only shook my head in response, not even being able to say any words at the moment as my face scrunched up before another gut wrenching feeling pierced through my stomach. "Som—Something's wrong." My voice sounded hoarse as I gripped his arm tight with one of my hands and continued to hold my stomach with the other.

"I'm taking you to the hospital." I heard him say as he picked me up bridal style and began carrying me out of the room. But I didn't even make it out of the house before my body went limp and everything faded to black.

***

My eyes slowly fluttered open and a bright light hanging from above me immediately came into view. I could hear the sound of a heart monitor steadily beeping beside me, matching the pace of my heartbeat.

I groaned, feeling a little sore as I attempted to sit up but someone from beside me quickly got up and gently laid me back down. "The doctor said you should be laying down so you don't put too much stress on your body right now. I'll go get him." Xae said with concern shining through his eyes before he made his way out of the hospital room.

I looked around at the plain white walls and the white with blue polka-dotted gown that I was now wearing. My only concern was what happened and if my son or daughter was alright. Anything other than that didn't matter to me. I had been trying to put off this whole baby situation and act like I didn't care but just the thought of losing him or her too caused my heart to sink.

Minutes later, the door opened up again and in walked Xae with a short Caucasian man in a lab coat strolling in behind him. The doctor gave me a small smile as he walked up to my bed and held out his hand for me to shake. "Good evening Ms. Wyatt, my name is Dr. Bronkowski."

I ignored his hand and carefully sat up a bit more in my bed. "Is my baby okay?" I asked getting straight to the point, noticing the surprised wide eyed look that Xae gave me but my eyes stayed trained on the doctor, watching his body language.

He let out a small sigh and pulled out a stool from the corner of the room, sitting down as he opened up the manila folder that was in his hand and read over it for a minute. I noticed him frown as he closed the folder and my heart immediately dropped along with whatever hope I had left.

"Ms. Wyatt, were you aware that you have chlamydia?" He asked as if someone in their right mind would know they had an STD and not get treated for it on purpose.

"What?" Xae and I both let out simultaneously.

I grew heated as I realized exactly who could have gave me chlamydia. It wasn't even a question. Which meant that I had to have given it to Saint when we had sex. I should have known that I was going to catch something while fucking around with dirty dick Dom. I should have gotten tested as soon as I left him but that had been the last thing on my mind at that point.

Dr. Bronkowski let out another sigh and gave me a sympathetic look once he noticed that I had no idea what he was talking about. "It can cause infertility in women if left untreated for a long period of time and that may also have been the cause of your miscarriage."

Hot tears stung my eyes as I stared at him in disbelief. "...Miscarriage? So my baby is gone?"

He sadly nodded his head in response and I immediately turned away from him, not wanting him to see the tears that instantly cascaded down my face. "I've already prescribed you the medication that you need to take and you should be back to normal in no time."

"Thanks doc, but I don't think anything is going to be normal for me ever again." I mumbled lowly as I continued to stare at the wall beside me, avoiding eye contact with him and Xae. The doctor dejectedly apologized for my loss and exited the room, leaving us in pure silence.

Tears steadily rolled down my face as I slowly laid back down and pulled the covers that had been around my body up and over my head in attempts to block everything else out.

"Simone..." I heard Xae cautiously call out to me but I didn't even have the energy to respond at this point. I felt empty. I never knew how devastating losing a child that hadn't even been born yet really was until now. "I'm so sorry Simone." I sniffled and closed my eyes, feeling even worse for dragging Xae into something that had nothing to do with him again. He got quiet once he realized that I wasn't going to reply. I just needed to process this by myself right now. After a minute or two, he sighed. "Why didn't you tell me that you were pregnant baby girl?"

I shook my head as if he could see me from under the thin white blanket that engulfed my entire body. "What does it matter anyway? My baby is gone... Both of my babies." The last part was barely audible, but I knew he heard it by the way I heard him shuffling before I felt the small bed dip beside me.

He pulled the covers off of me and I stared at him for a couple of seconds before breaking down all over again. His arms immediately wrapped themselves around me and pulled me close so that my head now laid on his chest as my tears began to drench his shirt. "I'm a bad mother." I cried as he held me tightly and gently combed through my hair with his fingers to try and comfort me.

"You're not a bad mother baby. You didn't have any control over this. You can't possibly blame yourself." He attempted to reassure me but hearing that only cut me deeper.

I shook my head. "You keep saying that but who else is there to blame? I should have been more serious about my baby. I should have made sure that I was in good health and now..." I got too choked up to even finish the sentence as I buried my head deeper into his chest.

My hand reluctantly trailed down to my belly, lightly rubbing over it as I thought about what he or she would have looked like. Would they have Saint's eyes? My lips? Saint's fat ass forehead? I guess now there's no point in wondering because that was something I'll never know.

The only thing that I had left of Saint's memory was now gone and I could never get it back.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

here’s me talking about the month since i was last online

firstly it was/is depressing not to be able to talk with ppl or hear from them. or just to be able to talk somewhere i know people CAN hear. i also mentioned being completely detached from the news. i like to be current about the news. anyways i was like “well not like this is anything new” as its technically unusual for me to NOT be cut off both irl and from the internet. but, shockingly, that doesnt make it not depressing. and having something for even a bit makes it more frustrating to lose it even if its “normal” for you not to have it. also by depressing i mean i was going like hmm i sure am even more tired than usual and i am less interested in my few lingering faint interests. whats up with that! and then i was like oh yeah thats called Even More Depression

it is funny because im someone who has never really had that many friends and when i do we often end up separated one way or another. Very Close friends &/or Very Longtime friends are a foreign concept. basically the heights of my “what i wish it was like” for life involve having a group of friends with whom you can have fun in an empty parking lot in the middle of the night just talking and hanging out and messing around. friends that you feel comfortable being yourself around and like they appreciate you as much as you do them. i do not think this is ever going to happen, but oh well because in reality i can be very picky about people because i am weird, to put it that way for now. my social landscape and language is not always considered normal or even tolerable. and i have a lot of standards for who i want to have around me in terms of traits and personality. theres a lot of things im not interested in. anyways. i also just, in the way things actually are, often prefer to be alone, so that i can be myself and do things i feel like. i dont have to worry about being strange or feeling like i need to please people. anyways. unfortunately i dont ONLY like being alone. i actually really like to be with people and talk with them but i rarely can, and i figure this is bad for me. isolation isnt good for anyone obviously. not being able to be around friends in person depresses me. not being able to talk online either depresses me further.

i think sometimes about how much i dont say. its a funny place to say it, in an overly long text post. but one of the reasons they can be so long is because irl i dont really talk much to people. so it builds up and can come out through writing. sometimes it comes out in talking. i think that in conversations, when i do talk, i talk too much because of this. so one of the reasons i dont talk much is to prevent this, which obviously is like “well that would just cancel out” but there are other reasons i dont talk. but i have loads of thoughts and things to say. i end up keeping so much of it to myself and wonder sometimes if i’ll ever get to say some of it. sometimes i’ll have something to say and bite it back. i’ve been “quiet” all these past twenty some years of talking and i know the reasons i dont talk. i was thinking about the feeling of biting something back in an individual occasion feeling like the cumulation of all the years worth of keeping my own voice running in my head alone. it kind of feels like what you want to say is in your chest and throat and the roof of your mouth.

speaking of the roof of your mouth, theres a weird sensation i can feel sometimes, seemingly at random but mostly in strange times like trying to fall asleep. it is so transient and unlike any actual externally caused sensations that its been difficult to try to get a grasp of how to describe it, but i think i have it thanks to ongoing effort and an unusually long period of it a few days ago during which i was especially alert about it. it’s like having a pressure radiating out from inside your mouth. like an orb pushing outwards against the teeth and roof of the mouth. which i’m fairly sure isn’t anything that would ever happen, so i am assuming its some little neurological hiccup that happens to align every now and then, but maybe a previous life cycle has put something weird in their mouth. or shot into it, because i would be like, well not much has changed.

anyways. words sitting like a pressure in your mouth. i was seeing a thread about how grief is ongoing and reoccurring which also mentioned that people who specialize in knowing how grieving and living with it works often consider it to be a form of grief when someone’s life is affected by something like trauma. they have to grieve themselves because of the possibilities taken away from them. i feel that, sometimes. thinking about how i wish i had a life where i felt free to speak and where my identity mattered and i got to feel like i could be myself and it was important and it was important what i thought and wanted and who i really was. and where i got to have friends and do things and realize what it was to actually feel happy, not try to understand an unhappy existence as what must be okay. its not just what couldve been in the past, but also how that couldve affected the present and future. im not sure who i’d be if my life didnt have to be about survival and escape. i say i never had dreams, which is true, but in retrospect i DO think that when i was fifteen and really bearing down in trying to figure out what i wanted to do, i was already seeing activism as the answer, which made sense why it wouldnt register as a dream or ambition and why it was also impossible to pursue. i still dont think of anything like personal fulfillment through a career/job or anything. but i also dont think of what i want to do as very relevant to anything at all anymore.

anyways. i’m “used” to things, but they still depress and hurt me. i actually have a lot of sadness and anger about some of these things, like never getting to have the friends i wanted or never being able to speak and it not mattering who i really was, and how long it took me to realize this really wasn’t okay and it wasn’t because of some personal deficiency which made me deserve it somehow. also the abuse. i remember i had this how-to book about weaving friendship bracelets which i got sometime in elementary school, and it even supplied some twine and stuff. i had always wanted to have occasion to use it, and i never did, which is just symbolic. the twine/potential friendship bracelets can also be things like positive social connections that feel real and open, or my ability to feel secure in expressing affection because it seems mutual. but anyways. i also just go along.

i was thinking about the Being Gone For A Month thing and the not-talking and holding all my words back even though i think so much about all sorts of junk and thus have too much to say, and about a week ago i just spent like six hours writing about myself. i was debating doing so in the first place because i figured i wouldnt post it. i did write it, but i won’t post it. its just good to talk to myself in the form of writing. getting thoughts into that form requires an extra level of analysis and coherent flow that can help put even things you already knew more in order. so here’s this stuff instead.

there’s not much to say about this past month. the worst of it was that discovering my weird tooth is all janky and broken has made me on edge about teeth. i mean, i’ve already all but stopped worrying about the broke tooth, because i kind of do that sometimes when i can. just worry hard and then stop, because what can you do? might as well try to avoid stressing even worse. and in this case i dont have money and doubt i will ever have a job w dental coverage, so i cant do anything about it. but im always worried about my teeth because, fittingly, my parents dental genes seem to combine into that of a tasmanian devil. i think im in some Dental Report b/c i had this weird situation that needed basically a root canal but it wasnt the normal kind of root canal situation and the dentist said he hadn’t seen it or heard of it even. special. i was horrified about needing the root canal, because of the clichés. but it ended up being fine and i really just sat there for an hour thinking about whatever. dental procedures are truly not what theyre hyped up to be. on account of local anesthetics. anyways. when i left my parents house i was specifically worried about leaving my access to a dentist, but obviously it wouldve been far from worth it. but that doesn’t mean i dont worry about my teeth. so i had these few days where i just had a spontaneously sensitive gum spot and another one which im guessing i caused by jamming corn shards down in there by eating corn on the cob. that happened sort of last year, i got really worried about an angry-looking spot on my gums and finally realized something was just up in there that needed to be flossed out. anyhow. the point is i got overly worried about everything that always worries me even though it used to worry me even before going to the dentist and they’d say the stuff was fine actually. but still. i got

very worried for a minute there and i realized very easily that if i start getting any really serious tooth problems i am out of here. i have no motivation at all to live through it. i don’t want to have to deal with that. it’s way too much. i dont even have motivation to be alive now. but when i was worrying i was thinking about not using my handful of cash to change locations, but instead to get some fancy Dying Equipment. there are still some methods by which im not sure i could try offing myself. but if things got a lot worse, like teeth problems, i could probably lower those standards. i COULD obtain some items for one method, or by necessity do it for free. im less worried about the tooth stuff now. it was just an unfortunate convergence of a couple tiny things. but ive still got a sensitive spot or two, and im always a bit worried. if something bad happens i cant do anything about it except get tf out of this life cycle, right.

there was something else unfortunate i was going to talk about. maybe just the depression.

there were nice, small things. i always knew how to enjoy those kinds of stuff. i like the sky, and i appreciate that its summer. theres a lot of fireflies sometimes and i saw kittens chasing them one day. one of those kittens mightve gotten killed by something since. i got to hear rain on the roof a few times. i like corn on the cob even if it betrayed me. i was wanting some last summer. i also got to make sweet tea and lemonade for the first time in forever. i’d been wanting that for a long time too.

the nicest surprise was that i had been writing extra hard since the start of june. i sort of really pushed at it and got to the dividing point between the section and the next, and i was sure it was shorter than previous sections. but actually it was just over 1000 words short of being 140k, and i’d written it all in about five weeks, and it was abt 22.5% longer than the next longest section i’d written. i’ve since gotten to a point i’ve been writing towards since this whole time, and im right on the verge of another long awaited one right now. it’s nice, but writing has been fun, and i hope i dont get depressed if i hopefully do finish it. i can just write some more, but doing so on my phone isnt the most efficient. it doesnt seem sustainable.

anyways thats it for now before i can think of anything else to say am i right

[mthevlamister]

Prom!

Hey again for @stonermurphy and @le-gay-le

I managed to change someone from boyf riends to this and I’m happy.

Next up I change my girlfriend’s ship.

I do take requests for RichxMichael, ChristinexJeremy, EvanxConnor (ohhh DEH is here), JaredxEvan, JDxMichael (the slushie ship), and more. Just send me a message with a prompt!

TW: suicidal thoughts, panic attacks.

Prom started out great.

Rich and Michael were in the back of the PT Cruiser; Bob Marley was playing in the background. Michael was making marks all over his boyfriend, and Rich? Well Rich would forever deny how loud he was.

It was wonderful, until Jake and Jeremy opened the door to the car. Rich pushed Michael away, his face flushed red. “Mi-Michael, come on.”

“Really Jeremy? Come on.” Michael whined, getting out of the car. He took Rich’s hand, leading him out to the car. “I could’ve gotten further.”

“Oh please, you’d say ‘Michael is making an entrance’ if you got that far.” Jeremy said. “Christine is waiting for me and Chloe is waiting for Jake. I can’t believe the minute Jake and I left the car you pushed Rich to the back and jumped him.”

“Okay I would totally say that, it would be worth it. Also, he looks good in a tux, right princess?” Michael turned to Rich, smirking.

“Don’t call me printheth.” Rich mumbled. “You look better in a thuit.”

“Please change his username to princess.” Jake said, wheezing at this point. 

“Change your own utherame to printheth if you want that name tho bad!” Rich hit Michael’s arm lightly. “Don’t change it.”

“I wouldn’t change it babydoll.” Michael whispered in Rich’s ear, wrapping his arm around him.

That damn name made Rich turn red. He hated that Michael had this power.

“Rich? What’d he say? Why are you red?” Brooke walked over, she was followed by Chloe, Jenna, and Christine. They must’ve been either bored or worried. “Are you okay?”

“I have my secrets to get my boyfriend to be quiet. I will never share them, they are mine.” Michael said. “I also know how to sneak pot into prom.”

“My name’s Michael, let’s get stoned in my basement and prom!” Jeremy mocked. “Ten bucks you brought some weird drink.”

“I tried. Richard wouldn’t let me.”

“You bet your athth I wouldn’t!” Rich said, grabbing his boyfriend’s arm. “He needth to try other drinkth.”

“. . . Richard almost finished all my Mountain Dew Red.” 

“THUT UP!”

“Hey! Hey, c’mon. Let’s go inside okay? I want to dance.” Christine smiled, taking Jeremy’s hand. “Of course, with the guy I am totally into.”

Everyone groaned.

~ ~ ~

Rich forgot why he tried to be cool for Michael.

The nerd was doing the robot.

THE ROBOT!

“Michael I thwear to everything I know you’re the biggetht geek I know.” Rich said, laughing his ass off. “You’re tho cute.”

“Try it Richard, I want to see a cool guy do a geeky dance.” Michael took Rich’s hands, grinning like a madman.

“You think I’m cool?” Rich flushed again. 

“Yes? Why wouldn’t I?” Michael frowned. “Richard.”

“Yeth?”

“You’re the coolest guy in the world.”

“Am I cooler than a vintage cathette?” Rich teased, remembering what Jeremy told him about Michael during the SQUIP. He thought it was hot.

He got shocked for that.

“You’re cooler than Red Mountain Dew and Crystal Pepsi on a hot day. Dare I say you are cooler than Apocalypse of the Damned!” Michael said, grabbing Rich’s shoulders.

“No way, you’re thitting me!” Rich got to play the game with Michael a few times before prom, he was actually amazing. He didn’t have the heart to tell Michael he played it and beat it awhile ago.

“I’m not thitting you.” Michael teased him, kissing his cheek.

Rich was about to come up with a response until he heard the song change and Michael pulled him to the dance floor.

It was Whitney. God why was Michael so excited?

“Michael, thith thong thucks--I uthed too many wordth with an eth, haven’t I?” Rich covered his mouth.

“Nah babe you’re good, and this song totally sucks. I want to dance with you though. This is the only music worth dancing to!”

“I beg to differ.” Rich said, twirling his boyfriend.

“Hey Rich, can I talk you to you?” Jake placed a hand of Rich’s shoulder, smiling. “Sorry Michael, can I steal him?”

“Go for it.” Michael replied as cool as he could. He waited until Jake took Rich to the punch table to begin to freak out.

He hated parties. 

He didn’t know he hated them until Jake’s Halloween party. That was his undoing. 

And here he was.

Alone.

Again.

He stopped looking up, the faces passing him were making him dizzy. He couldn’t breath. The dread was settling in his stomach. He felt his eyes burn, his legs were numb and he ran. He ran to the bathroom, at least that would give him comfort. He needed to be there.

He should have told Rich, but he didn’t. 

He was scared Rich wouldn’t care.

~ ~ ~ 

Rich became nervous.

It had been ten minutes since Jake finished telling him about how Chloe was telling Brooke how she was going home with him. Rich of course was glad his friend got this chance but he noticed Michael was missing.

He waited, maybe he just went to get food.

Now he was scared.

He ran outside, praying to everything he knew and loved Michael was getting high out back.

He wasn’t.

He didn’t know what made Michael leave, he didn’t care. Somehow it was anyone but Michael’s fault and he’d fight anyone who hurt his boyfriend. 

“Jeremy! Michael ith mithing and I’m worried!” Rich grabbed the tall boy’s arm, not caring Christine was holding that very arm. “He’th been gone for fifteen minuteth now!”

“Let me think, oh god prom was a bad idea why did I--bathroom! Shit! Grab Jake and follow me. Christine I’ll be back okay?” Jeremy turned to his girlfriend.

“Okay, that’s fine! Make sure he’s okay for me, alright? I’d go in with you but--”

“No, you have to come Chrithtine! Get Jenna, Brooke, and Chloe!” Rich cried, looking desperate, “He may need all of uth!”

“I’m on it, okay?” Christine smiled. “I’ll bring the bathroom keys, in case he locked himself in there. I’ll get the gang!”

“Me too.” Jeremy ran off with Christine, getting the rest of SQUIP squad.

~ ~ ~

“I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t--” Michael repeated over and over again in the bathroom. He did, in fact, lock the door. He wanted to disappear all over again. He felt alone.

He didn’t notice the door open with seven other teens searching for him.

“--SUCH A GODDAMN LOSER! I CAN’T DO THIS!” Michael was punching the wall, hoping he could break the world.

He was almost breaking his hand.

He broke down in sobs, collapsing to the floor. “Can’t do it. I can’t do it again, don’t want to be alone again. I hate being alone! I’m always fucking alone!”

“M-Michael? Hey, what’th wrong?” Rich moved closer, slowly easing to a crouch next to the crying boy. “Babe look at me.”

“R-Richard? Oh god, y-you weren’t supposed to see me like this. Why are you here? Aren’t you talking to. . . I. . .” Michael turned, stopping when he saw the rest of the group there.

It wasn’t the best idea to bring them all there.

“Hey, player one. Calm down, okay? We’re all here. We’re still your friends!” Jeremy sat down with Rich, smiling at Michael.

“Michael why would we leave you alone? We love you!” Christine sat down with them.

“Can I rub your back? If you need space it’s okay.” Jenna said; seeing Michael nod she sat down and ran her hand up and down his back. “What? Personal space is important!” she said to the group.

“Want to ditch and get Pinkberry?” Brooke asked, hearing Michael snort she sat down with them. 

“We’ll go after if you want, okay?” Chloe sat down, leaving Jake the last one standing.

Jake stepped closer. “Shit Michael you’re going to make me cry, come on man. Take deep breathes. Look me in the eyes, okay?” Michael complied. “Alright, deep breathe in,” Michael did so. “I want you to hold it, good! Now let it out.” Jake patted Michael’s head as he did so.

“. . . I wanted to die.” Michael whispered. “That night, during Jake’s party. I wished I stayed at home, offing myself or-or that I was never born. I tried that night when I got home. I-I should’ve stayed in the damn house, I should’ve stayed in the fire! I think about that every night! I-I don’t know why I’m saying all this shit, god I shouldn’t be saying this.” 

Rich stared in horror, this wasn’t the happy-go-lucky Michael he knew. This was a tired, sad, depressed Michael. A real Michael.

“Would it have been better if I stayed in the bathroom?” Michael looked up at the group, smiling.

“NO!” Rich screeched. He grabbed Michael’s hands. “NO NONO!”

“Rich don’t shout.” Jeremy said, his eyes were wide and he looked like he was going to cry. He wanted to shout too, scream how wonderful Michael was.

“Michael you’re totally important, you saved the whole school--no! You saved the world from the stupid supercomputer! We’d be mindless robots without you!” Chloe said, crawling closer. “That would suck!”

“I-I bet someone would figure it out. Richard was screaming for the stupid drink, Jeremy you figured it out during the play right? You would’ve been able to get it and save yourself.” Michael looked even more tired at that point, letting his head fall.

“Let’th go home, okay? Let’th go to your houthe. I got him guyth, I’ll drive uth to hith houthe.” Rich helped Michael up, sending the group a sad smile. He walked to the PT Cruiser. He got in the drivers seat and helped Michael buckle in. “Michael? Are you going to therapy?”

“My parents don’t believe in therapy, I usually get high when I feel like this. It helps me suppress my emotions.” Michael said, leaning on Rich’s shoulder.

“Not healthy, let’s get you home. I’m gonna thtart you with my therapitht, okay? Good, I’m glad you agree.” Rich said, rubbing his boyfriend’s arm.

They both jumped when Rich’s phone made a noise.

Brooking it to class: We’ll meet you two at pinkberry, everyone loves frozen yogurt when they’re upset.

Richard: Got it, bringing the rest?

Brooking it to class: Yup!

Rich smiled, turning the car on. “We’re making a thtop babe.”

~ ~ ~

“Strawberry frozen yogurt? You’ve got good taste Michael!” Chloe complimented the boy, she was getting her own. “Now for toppings what do you want?”

“I have no idea, I’ve never had this stuff before. What’s good?” Michael stared at the toppings area. “. . . I want actual strawberries on it! Is that cookie dough?! Why did nobody take me here before?!”

Rich watched his boyfriend place toppings on his yogurt, he felt himself relax. Michael wasn’t going to hurt himself. Rich was going to stay over at Michael’s house that night. Michael was going to start therapy the next day.

“He never told me about this, I swear.” Jeremy was still in a state of shock, unforgiving to himself. “I can’t believe I never notice, he always acted so. . . perfect!”

“Hey, it’s okay we’re getting him help.” Jenna said, smiling. “I want chocolate froyo, be back.”

“I’m getting some too, Rich you want something?” Brooke stood up, smiling. 

“Nah, I’ll eat thome of Michael’th.” Rich said, keeping his eyes on his boyfriend.

“I want some!” Jake stood up and went to the machines, just in time for Michael to sit down.

“Hey babydoll, want some?” Michael held out a spoon. Rich nodded, scooting closer. “I’m sorry for dumping all that crap on you earlier, I really wish I was normal--”

“Don’t. I’m glad you told me, thith way we can help you. I’m glad I’m here for you, now give me a kith!” Rich put his hand on Michael’s shoulder. Michael grinned and kissed Rich.

It would get better.

Thanks for reading, be sure to send your own ships and prompts!

[apathetic-revenant]

by the skin of your teeth (part 3)

in this gripping installment, Stan walks to the bathroom, thinks about comic books, and walks back. 

“...unfh...what…?”

  So this was it.

Stan sat down in one of the kitchen chairs, feeling…empty. Somewhere very far away, some part of his brain was still working, buzzing with urgent thoughts- what was that, what just happened, is Ford okay, am I okay, there's blood all over me, he's not moving, get up, see if he's alright, do something- but it was all distant, disconnected, like someone else's thoughts entirely, nothing to do with him.

He couldn't seem to think anything. His head was filled with white noise.

“...Stan?...oh...oh, God!”

Ford hated him.

Ford​ had tried to kill him.

“Oh God, oh God, Stan, I'm so sorry-”

A fight would have been one thing. He'd come prepared for a fight. A shouting match, hurled insults, even a full-on brawl- he could have dealt with that. He could have understood that. He'd wanted things to be better, he'd hoped...but it had been ten years, and there was a lot of anger between them. He knew that.

He hadn't known there was this between them.

“Stan, your face...I...oh, God, I didn't even realize he'd gotten a knife…”

He'd always clung to the hope that maybe, somehow, he could make everything up. He could make things better. If he just worked hard enough, tried hard enough, if the latest plan worked, if he made enough money... he'd buried it, hidden it under I don't need him anyway and I'm doing just fine on my own. But it had always been there, somewhere, keeping him going.

But now-

“Stan? Stan, can you hear me?”

What was the point now?

He couldn't fix this. He couldn't fix this, and he knew he should be feeling something else-anger, fear, he had just nearly died, he should care about that- but all he could think was there's nothing left, there's nothing left, there's nothing left-

“Stan? Stan!”

Click.

Light hit him like a punch to the face, blinding after so long in the dark. There was a moment of even greater confusion than before as he squinted, trying to make sense of the blur of color before him. The small grimy kitchen suddenly felt almost painfully real, as if the world were making up for its temporary absence by pressing closer than ever.

Ford was standing on the other side of the kitchen by the light switch, holding himself up with one hand against the old stove. He had fumbled his glasses on, leaving smears of blood on his face and smudged across the lenses. He was shaking hard and looked like he was about to cry or throw up or maybe both at once, but somehow he also looked so much more like Ford that for a moment Stan felt a tiny bloom of hope in his chest.

He instantly hated himself for it. How stupid did a man have to be, to believe there could still be hope of reconciliation with someone who only moments before had gleefully taken a knife to his face?

“Stan,” Ford said, his voice sounding thick and strangled, “I-I know you don't have any reason to-to trust me right now, but I...I just need...I need to know you're, you're still here. Please? Can you hear me, Stan? Can you say something?”

Stan couldn't process any of this.

“Why?” he said, his own voice sounding strange to him.

Ford stared back at him. “W...why?”

“You were trying to kill me a minute ago,” Stan said, slowly since Ford seemed to be having trouble keeping up. “Now you're concerned for me?” To his own surprise he started to laugh, because really-what else was he supposed to do? “Pick one, Ford.”

Ford’s face crumpled, and for a moment Stan thought he actually had started crying. Then he realized, with a distant jolt, that the fluid leaking from Ford's eye was a lot darker than tears.

“What- what did he do?” Ford whispered.

None of this was making any sense. “What do you mean, he? You were the only one here, Ford.”

For a moment Ford looked blank, as though Stan were the one talking weird nonsense. Then his eyes widened even further in some kind of remembrance and he swallowed hard several times. “I... I...Stan, I-I know you, you don't have much reason to trust me right now but-but I don't remember the last few minutes. I...I need you to tell me what happened. Please.”

Stan stared at him.

He should have been angry. He should have been. Not too long ago he had been furious beyond belief over dashed hopes and flippant remarks. What was that, what was anything he had ever been angry at Ford for, compared to this?

But it was...too much. Too big. He couldn't be angry, he couldn't​ be anything, blood was dripping down his face and he couldn't feel anything about it because it was all too much to fit into his head.

“You came in here acting all...funny,” he said slowly. “Talking funny. You...wanted me to make a deal with you.”

He wouldn't have thought Ford could get any paler, but somehow he managed it. He was almost starting to look blue around the edges.  “A deal?” his brother croaked. “Wh- what kind of deal? Oh God, you didn't agree, did you?”

“No, I didn't agree. It was weird. You...just said you wanted me to help you with a project. Be your muscle. And that if I did, you would...forgive me.”

Ford really looked like he was about to be sick. “Forgive you?”

Stan looked down. “Yeah. That...that everything would be alright between us.”

He watched distantly as a drop of blood hit the tiled floor, leaving a tiny crimson dot.

“Oh. Stan…” Ford whispered.

“And you were right, you know.” Drip. Drip. It almost looked pretty, like one of those modern art paintings. Red on white. “That is what I want. Wanted. I dunno.”

“But you didn't agree?”

“No. I know that's not how it works. I'm not that stupid.”

There was silence for a moment. Then Ford said, “You're not stupid at all. You're smarter than I was.”

For a moment, the words didn’t even make sense. Stan, smarter than Ford? No one had ever said that. No one would ever say that. It was ridiculous to suggest even in a situation as surreal as this.

“What happened when you...refused?” Ford asked before Stan could figure that one out.

“You...you said if I wouldn't​ agree you'd just have to get rid of me. That I was a loose end. And you took the knife out and…” He made a vague, uncertain gesture.

And then, because he had to say it, because it was stuck in his throat, because he could feel it hot and painful and bitter like rising bile and if he didn’t say it he was going to choke, “You said you hated me. And that you...you thought it would have been better if I’d...if I’d offed myself before I could ruin things for everyone.”

Ford drew in a sharp breath. “No. No, Stan, I-I didn’t. I don’t. I would never-”

“Hate to break it to you, bro, but you did,” Stan said. “You were very definite about it while you were swinging a knife in my face.” He drew in a breath of his own, shaky, trying to get some air past whatever seemed to be blocking his throat. “And...and I’m not saying that, you know, that you don’t...that I haven’t...that you might not have, have a point there, but-”

“NO!”

The exclamation was so unexpectedly loud and clear in the midst of the fog that seemed to still be circling around Stan that he jerked his head up in surprise. Ford was staring at him, fingers shaking on the wall he was holding, and that was definitely blood trickling down his nose from the corner of one eye. Had Stan hit him that hard? Had he topped off a long list of sins by half-blinding his brother?

“Stan, listen to me,” Ford said urgently, heedless of the blood that was now starting to drip off his chin. “I-I don’t hate you. I do not...think...those things. That wasn’t me.”

“Uh, yeah it was,” Stan said in abject confusion. “What, are you saying that it was some guy who happened to look exactly like you? That can’t be it, cause I can account for his whereabouts.”

Ford didn’t seem to find that funny. “No. I...listen, I know this is going to sound unbelievable-”

“That’s the third time you’ve said something like that,” Stan said.

“The...situation remains...improbable.” Ford swayed a little bit and steadied himself against the wall. “It...it was a demon.”

Stan stared at him.

Ford stared back. “Stan-”

“Your eye is bleeding.”

Ford swiped at the blood irritably. “It’s not important. Stan-”

“A demon, Ford? Really? That’s the best you can come up with? I mean I’ve spun some pretty damn tall tales, but I’ve never gone that far.”

“I know-”

“Don’t say you know it’s unbelievable, that’s not helping. It doesn’t make it any more believable.”

Ford opened his mouth, shut it, and finally just stared at him helplessly.

Stan sighed and wiped a hand across his face, annoyed at the oozing blood. The gash was finally starting to hurt, but it felt like the thoughts buzzing in the background of his head: distant, like something that wasn’t really a part of him.

He supposed he should do something about it.

The image arose, unbidden, of a sink and mirror smeared with bloody fingerprints. He had the sudden feeling that he should have pushed that issue a lot earlier.

“Okay,” he said, slowly. “So...what? You’re saying a demon...impersonated you?”

Ford made a strange little choking sound, almost a sob.

“N-no,” he said. “Or...that is...yes, but…”

“Any time you want to make sense, that would be great,” Stan said.

“He can take control of me,” Ford said. “When I'm asleep, he can possess me. That's why I can't, I have to stay awake. I have to...but it's getting harder and harder... that's why you have to leave, Stan, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but he could hurt you again, and it could be worse…I have to get the journal away from here, you see, before he can finish what he's planning-”

“This have to do with the doomsday device in your basement?”

“It's not a-” Ford began defensively, then stopped and slumped. “Yes. It does.”

“And the fact that your bathroom's covered in blood?”

Ford slumped a little further. “You noticed that, did you?”

“Kinda hard to miss.”

Ford rubbed a hand along along his arm defensively, but didn’t say anything.

Stan sighed heavily and stood up. Everything swayed around him for a moment, but it settled back down quickly enough.

“Where-where are you going?” Ford said as Stan stomped past him.

For a moment Stan was really, honestly tempted to say, “Well, you told me to leave,” just to see the look on Ford’s face; but now was probably not the time. Heh. Never let it be said that Stan Pines didn’t have any tact.

“Gonna clean up,” he muttered instead, and hurried away before Ford could say anything else. Probably he shouldn’t have just left Ford there, ashen and still oozing blood from his eye and looking ready to collapse any second, but he had to, he had to get away, just for a second, just to think, and anyway he figured that being slashed across the face by somebody earned you the right to a bit of distance from them.

Not that the actual slashing, specifically, was really why he wanted to get away from his brother at the moment.

I’ll just have to get rid of you…

Why so surprised? It wouldn’t be the first time he threw you aside because you weren’t useful to him.

Shut up, Stan told the voice, even though that never worked. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

He wasn’t exactly eager to patch himself up in Ford’s horror-show bathroom, which currently looked like an image from a PSA about Where Not To Perform First Aid, but it was where the bandages and disinfectant were and he needed a mirror and really it wasn’t that bad compared to that one time in New Orleans, so.

He flicked on the light and almost did a double take at the sight of himself in the dirty glass. The blood had run down all over the lower half of his face and dripped onto his neck and the collar of his t-shirt. It made him look downright gruesome.

“I look like a Batman villain,” he muttered to his reflection.

The casual words brought up a strange surge of memories: a childhood bedroom full of comic books bought or pilfered from the nearby newstand; sitting in Fort Stan on a rainy day, surrounded by cheaply colored paper and companionable silence; a shared case of the chickenpox spent in bed scratching at spots and arguing about which characters would win in a fight.

Ford had always preferred Marvel. He loved the science: the radiation that did this or that, the strange chemicals and lab equipment used to save the day, the adventures through space or different dimensions to encounter strange new worlds and lifeforms. He gushed over Reed Richards and Bruce Banner and Tony Stark, scientists who used their smarts to save the day. But most of all he adored the X-Men. The mutants, the outcasts, taunted and rejected by society for nothing more than being born different, but heroes all the same. Stan liked to tease Ford about his ‘nerdy science heroes’, but he never made fun of the X-Men, not when he saw the way his brother turned to them when the bullying got too much to bear.

Stan himself had favored DC. He liked the silliness of the stories, the over-the-top covers promising ridiculous exploits within, the glorious fist-fights in the name of truth, justice, and the American way. But most of all he liked Batman. Bruce Wayne was an ordinary person-relatively speaking-in a world full of extraordinary people. He didn’t have superpowers or gadgets bestowed by aliens or gods; he was smart, but in a cool, cunning way, not in that powerful, untouchable way like Ford’s heroes. Not like, well, Ford. But Batman didn’t let not being special stop him. He was still a hero, still won the day, still triumphed over the villains, was still respected and looked up to and important.

Stan had always liked that.

There had been, of course, no comic books in the duffel bag thrown at him one early summer night. What was once a collection shared between Stan and Ford became, in an instant, only Ford’s. Just like everything else.

He wondered sometimes what Ford had done with Stan’s comics. Thrown them out, he assumed. Maybe burned them in anger, or gleefully ripped them to shreds in joy of finally being rid of his brother.

Stan caught his own eye in the mirror and grimaced. “You’re a grown man and you’ve got a knife wound to treat and you’re standing here thinking about comic books,” he told himself. “Get it together, Stan.”

He washed away the gore and finally got a good look at the damage-as good a look as he could in the flickering light of the bathroom. It wasn’t as gruesome as it had first seemed, actually. The knife must have been pretty sharp; it had cut a neat, clean line, and the gash was long but shallow. It ran diagonally from temple to cheek, slicing across his nose on the way, and seeing how close it had come to his eye made his stomach twist a little. Still, he'd had worse. New Orleans came to mind again.

He cleaned it out with the peroxide as best he could, wincing as it stung terribly but also, in a strange way, feeling relieved that he could feel the pain, that the fog finally seemed to be lifting somewhat.

The angle made bandaging it difficult, but he managed by tying the strip behind his head, resulting in something that looked like an off-kilter eyepatch. He doused the bandage in peroxide first; he didn’t trust anything that had been sitting on that sink. And to think Ford had always accused him of being the gross one.

He looked ridiculous, but then, he thought as he scrubbed down his hands with as much soap as was left, what else was new?

Finally he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and stepped back out into the hallway. In the blur of the confrontation and its aftermath he’d forgotten just how creepy Ford’s house was. It was even worse now that full dark had fallen, and he had the memory of those footsteps coming down the hall toward him rattling around in his head…

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all. Stan had been angry at his twin more times than he could count; he’d been resentful of him for ten years; on a few occasions he had even been a bit intimidated. But the idea of being scared of Ford didn’t fit in his head at all. Before tonight he wouldn’t have said it was possible.

Then again, to hear Ford tell it, it wasn’t really him that had Stan scared.

The stupid thing was, in a way it made sense. Some twisted story of demonic possession fit perfectly into everything he’d seen so far: Ford’s paranoid rambling, the eerie and disordered house, the bloodied bathroom. It did all feel like he had walked right into the middle of a horror movie. Which probably meant he was going to be killed off pretty soon, he thought glumly. The dumb brother called in for reinforcement who didn’t know what was going on and wouldn’t leave when he was told? Stan wouldn’t put any bets on that character surviving the movie if he was watching it.

What was worse, though, was that he wanted to believe it.

He wanted to believe it hadn’t been Ford who had casually tried to get rid of him like a broken appliance.

He wanted to believe it hadn’t been Ford who had looked him in the eye and gleefully told him he should have died long ago.

But. Demons.

You’re so desperate you’re willing to believe a ridiculous ghost story rather than accept what happened right in front of your eyes. How much plainer could he possibly be? He told you clear as day he hates you. He tried to kill you. If this doesn’t make you accept the truth, what possibly could?

Something about that made Stan slow to a stop in the dark hallway.

Because...because...because that wasn’t right.

Because Ford saying he had always hated Stan, Ford saying he was going to get rid of Stan...that wasn’t Ford. That was the version of Ford from his nightmares, the idea that haunted him on long lonely nights when he wondered if he would ever see his family again, the fear that pushed him to give up every time he had tried to contact his brother. It was Ford as the ever-present voice in his head wanted Stan to see him. But as terrible and persistent as that phantom was, it wasn’t real. It belonged in Stan’s beat-up broken head, not standing over him holding a knife.

I’m giving you the chance to do the first worthwhile thing in your life was Ford. Why would I want to do anything with the person who sabotaged my entire future? was Ford. Ford pushing him away, Ford turning his back, Ford shoving him to ground was real. And it hurt, oh God it hurt, but it was real. He knew what that pain felt like. And he knew what it didn’t feel like.

Ford might hate him, Ford might never want to see him again-that might be real. He didn’t really know. But Ford cheerfully trying to kill him wasn’t.

Of course, demons also weren’t real.

So the question now was, did he believe in demons more or less than he believed in this nightmare version of Ford suddenly and inexplicably existing in real life?

A strange sound from the kitchen blew his train of thought off the rails. For a moment all he could think of was something in the dark, coming toward him, something with a taunting singsong voice and eyes that were somehow wrong. He froze, hardly daring to breathe, not sure whether to run or fight or hide or-

Then the sound happened again, and this time he realized what it was.

He crept into the kitchen and saw Ford kneeling in front of the kitchen trashcan, looking absolutely miserable as he retched a third time. A quick, reluctant glance at the trashcan showed that nothing much had really come up but bile.

He abruptly found himself wondering when the last time Ford had actually eaten was. His twin had proven himself more than capable of completely forgetting about basic human needs over something as minor as studying for an algebra exam; given a situation like this-whatever this was-it was almost surprising Ford had managed to keep himself alive at all.

Stan instantly regretted that thought.

He cleared his throat. Ford glanced at him. “Oh. Stan. Your...your timing is impeccable.”

Stan rolled his eyes. “You’re the only person I ever met who could use words like that while you’re puking your guts out.”

Usually Stan would have expected Ford to respond to his crassness with irritation, but he only folded in on himself more and glanced ruefully at the trashcan. “I don’t think there’s much of my guts left,” he muttered.

For a moment they both hung there in the awkward silence, not sure what to do next.

I don’t know, Stan thought. I don’t know what I believe in. Maybe it’s because Ford’s sick, or maybe he finally snapped after spending who-knew-how-long out here alone, or maybe I really am just too stupid to see what’s right in front of my eyes.

Or maybe it is a demon.

It had to be stupid to stick around here. If he was watching this movie he would have yelled at the dumb brother for not getting out while he had the chance.

But there was one thing he did know, one certainty that was creeping up behind him: this was his last chance. For better or worse, if he left now, he knew he wasn’t going to see Ford again.

Maybe that would be the right thing, the smart thing. Maybe that was better than whatever fate was waiting for him here.

But he would never know.

Anyway, where else was he going to go? What else was he going to do? What was really the point of escaping death here if all it meant was extending a life of misery and solitude, of scrounging to survive, of one failed con after another?

No.

He crossed the kitchen and put a hand on his brother’s shaking shoulder. “You all done for now?”

Ford swallowed and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I...I think so.”

“Okay. Let’s get you back to bed, yeah?”

Ford looked up at him in shock. “Stan-I can’t just-”

“You’re sick, Ford. You need to-”

“I am not crazy!”

Well. That had touched a nerve.

Ford glared up at him, desperate and defiant. “I know this...this all seems insane, I know you don’t believe me but I am not delusional, Stan! Think what you will, but-”

“Whoa, Ford. Time out.” Stan put his hands up placatingly. “I’m not talking about that. I mean, literally, you are sick. You just threw up in your kitchen trash. So you need to rest, okay, because whatever’s going on here, I’m willing to bet that you running yourself to the brink of death ain’t going to make it any better.”

“Stan, I can’t sleep,” Ford said. “You saw what happened-”

“I didn’t say you had to sleep. Just...look, just come back where it’s warm and lay down and...and...you can tell me what’s going on, okay? I won’t let you fall asleep, I promise. But sitting here on the cold floor isn’t helping anything.”

Ford looked at him for a long moment. Stan knew that look. It was the look Ford got when he knew he needed to rest but was too tired to actually make the decision to do so, only now it was mixed with a lot more fear and hopelessness than Stan remembered.

He was about ready to just drag Ford back to bed anyway-he didn’t think Ford could stop him at this point-but, to his surprise, Ford finally nodded. “Okay,” he said weakly. “Okay. But you have to promise-”

“I promise. C’mon.”

He gave Ford a hand up.

“Stan?” Ford said as they trekked down the hallway. Stan was idly wondering how often he was going to have to help Ford hobble back to bed before all this was over.

“Hmm?”

“I...I really am...I’m so sorry. That you got hurt. I mean, that I-”

“Hey. It’s okay.” The cut was really starting to hurt now, but that was alright. It was better than that distance, better than not being able to feel anything when he knew he should. “It’ll heal. Things can do that, y’know.”

[fallen029]

Accidents and Incidents.7: Inhibitions

Previous Chapter

"There is a storm coming in," Mirajane said as she came into the apartment, arms filled with overflowing brown sacks. "So I stocked up."

Laxus had been over at his card table, enjoying a game of solitaire, but wheeled over to her upon her entrance. "Let me help."

"Here you go," she giggled, setting a bag in his lap. "Got it?"

When he nodded, she only grinned at him and, though he didn't return it, she couldn't help saying, "You seem to be in a good mood. Something-"

But he wasn't. And, because of that, he said simply, "Your lacrima went off."

"Huh?"

"Apparently," he grumbled as he wheeled into the kitchen, "Gramps is worried about us."

"Oh, jeez. I mean, I knew he'd get suspicious eventually, but-"

"I told him that we're just finishing a few things up," he said. "That I had a slight problem out on a job and had to visit a hospital. He demanded to know what it was, but I only said it was too complicated to explain. He told me that the second you arrived to have you contact him or else he'd send someone else down there."

"What? Does he think I'm-"

"Hell if I know," he grumbled as he sat the sack on the counter. "I mean, what? He think I effed you or something?"

"W-What?"

He bit his tongue. In his anger, he'd misspoken. "Offed. Offed you. You know, killed you?"

"Yeah, no, I get it." Blushing, she came to set her bag down as well. "What should I tell him? When I contact him? I mean, we have to have matching stories or…"

"Or?"

"Or…I dunno, Lax, I just…" Sighing, she watched as he wheeled right back out of the kitchen, headed back over to his table. "Maybe you could try telling your grandfather the truth? I mean-"

"Shut up."

"Dragon-"

"I said to shut up. You don't get it. Got it? Now shut the hell up."

"I just don't get what you think is going to happen. We can't stay here forever."

"We're not. And no one's making you stay at all! You're welcome to leave at any-"

"Can we not do this today? Please? You know that I'm not going anywhere and that arguing these points with one another will get us nowhere. I'll contact Master after I put everything up and tell him again that it'll just be a bit longer and we can go from there. Alright?"

He just got back to his cards and ignored her for awhile. With a sigh, Mirajane finished up with the groceries before heading into the bedroom to contact Master Makarov. While she was gone, Laxus rolled over to one of the windows in the living room and moved to pop it open.

Mirajane was right about one thing. A storm was brewing. The clouds he could see overhead was dark and clearly electric.

Perfect.

That was how Mirajane found him, leaning as far as he could out his chair, head out the window and, well, for half a second, she thought that he was trying to throw himself out of it.

"Laxus!" She was already rather frazzled from speaking with the Master who, needless to say, was not the least bit pleased, and to stumble upon such a sight right after was just horrible. Rushing over to his side, she jerked his wheelchair back, away from the window, making the man bang his head as it was forced back into the building.

"Mira," he growled. "What the-"

"Don't do it! You have so much to live for. Please, don't-"

"Do what?" came his grumbled question. "I was sucking up lightning from the sky, woman."

"You…what?"

"What did you think I was doin'?" he asked as he rubbed the back of his head, checking to be sure he hadn't popped his head open. "Huh?"

"W-Well…I thought you were trying to… You've just been so depressed and…"

"And you thought I was…what?" He frowned over at her. "Killing myself?"

"Yeah," she admitted softly. "I just-"

"You moron," he grumbled. "We're on the first floor!"

Mirajane blinked. "Huh. That never occurred to me."

Finding that there was no wound to the back of his head, Laxus just glared some before moving to wheel himself back over to the window and get back to gaining energy.

"What did Gramps say?" he asked before he moved to lean over again, head stuck out the window with his mouth open wide, breathing deeply.

"Well," she sighed, still flushed from, first the conversation with Master, then finding Laxus in what she perceived as precarious situation, and, finally, being horribly embarrassed to learn that she was perhaps a tad overly apprehensive. It was all too much for her fair skin, leaving it such a dark shade of red that there was a good chance that it would be a while before it went back to its usual pale tone. "Just that he was worried and that if I didn't give him some answers real soon, that he was going to come down here himself to sort it out. He kept pressuring me to know what kind of accident you were in, but I wouldn't give it up."

Laxus, with his head still out the window, finally got all the electricity he wanted and gently pulled his head back into the apartment before moving to close the window once more. In the reflection of it, he saw his scarred, scowling face and, behind him, Mira's concerned one.

He'd upset and scared her, he knew, but how was that his fault? She was the dummy that thought that he was…that he…

Sigh.

"Hey," he grumbled as he rolled away from the window, turning around to face her. "I'm fine, alright. I'd never do that."

"I know," she assured him with a nod of his head. "I just…thought that you… You'd been so depressed about things and if you did that then I'd just feel horrible and responsible and-"

"Why," he grumbled with a frown, "would you ever feel responsible for something like that?"

"I don't know. I'm the one here with you," she pointed out. "And if you did…harm yourself, I would feel like I didn't… But it doesn't matter, right? Laxus? Because you don't feel that way? And I was just being stupid. Right?"

"You're not stupid," he grumbled. "But yes, you're right. I'm not…depressed. I'm not hopeless. And I'm way too great to ever be taken out like that. So don't worry about me, alright?"

It was only when she nodded that he rolled back over to his table, taking all of the cards into his hand and abandoning his game of solitaire.

To Mirajane, he said, "Come play a game with me."

She was still clearly high-strung still over the whole ordeal she'd worked up, but nodded before going to get the only other chair they had in the house (she'd eventually had to pick one up, for such occasions).

Cards wasn't too good at getting her mind off things though. It was like a slow burn. Since she and Laxus had moved into the tiny apartment a few weeks ago, things had been culminating. They were coming up on a month at that point and she was going to have to go down to the manager and extend the lease for another one. Unless she got Laxus out of there in the next few days, but just taking in how he'd acted about the whole thing from the beginning, requesting that he just admit defeat and head home only got her yelled at and her commitment questioned.

Seeing Laxus in what she thought was the pits of despair, ready to hurl himself out a window to end his misery, had her completely out of whack.

Sure, he said that he was fine, but she could tell that he was depressed. Was he actually in that dark a place? She couldn't imagine what it would be like to be told that you were wheelchair bound. Especially such a man as Laxus. She thought that she had been doing a good job of keeping him in high spirits, but apparently not.

Maybe…maybe she wasn't the one that he needed. Perhaps it was time to find him someone that could actually deal with such a situation.

But she couldn't leave him. How could she? Though he wouldn't admit it, it was clear that he was not only accustom to her, but also enjoying her. Becoming dependant on her. Which wasn't good, wasn't right, and couldn't last, but maybe…she kinda wanted it too.

Huh.

Mirajane liked caring for Laxus. A lot. Sure, he was abrasive and rude and clearly had some emotional problems that needed to be worked out, but at the same time, he was rather funny. And charming when he wanted to be, which he rarely did. Plus, she knew that he was rather lenient towards her at times, giving into her desire to play board games or watch certain movies. Even when he clearly didn't want to and was doing it begrudgingly, it was still rather sweet that he was giving into her.

She liked Laxus. A lot. And she wanted to be there for him. For whatever reason, he wanted her there too. Perhaps it was just a comfort thing, or just that he'd gotten used to her, but it was still something.

"Hey, Laxus?" she asked as he shuffled the cards during their third game of gin.

Grunt.

"I… If you did feel that way," she began before swallowing. "If you thought about doing something like that…you'd tell me, right?"

"Mirajane, I'm not…suicidal or something. I-"

"I know," she assured him. "But you said the other day that we're friends, right? And I just…I know that you feel lost or hurt or-"

"Shut up."

"Laxus-"

"I'm not ever going to feel that way, Mirajane." And he looked her in the eyes then. "Yeah, this situation's shit. And I hate it. I fucking hate that one mistake lead me to all this. But no, I'm not going to just go and toss myself off a cliff over it. Hell, I'm Laxus fucking Dreyar. The universe wants to take me out, it better try harder than this. Kill myself. What do I look like?"

A scared man who could see his whole identity, being a mage, burning to a crisp in front of him as he literally sat there, helpless and alone, crippled first by a tragic mistake and later his own self-consciousness.

Instead of saying any of that, Mirajane only sighed and said, "You shouldn't curse so much, dragon."

Then she got a wry smirk. "Yeah, demon. I know."

It stormed all day and into the night. The evening hours were the worst. And, when they got into bed finally, Mirajane could still see the lightning striking outside the window and hear the rumble of thunder.

"Brrr." She snuggled up under the covers as Laxus only laid there, on his back, head turned her way, but eyes trained on the window. "It's chilly."

Grunt.

Glancing over at him, she asked, "Does it charge you up, dragon?"

"Does what?"

"Just all the electricity in the air," she explained. "During a thunderstorm."

Grunt.

"Stop making noises at me. If you don't want to answer, just don't."

She apparently didn't like when he said nothing there as she only huffed and gave him her back.

They were able to sleep that way for the majority of the night until Laxus had to get up to go to the bathroom and required her assistance. And even though she was yawning and slightly dazed, Mirajane only got to work helping him in every way possible.

"We've got this down, haven't we?" she giggled through a yawn after he'd finished up in the bathroom and took to wheeling back to their bedroom. "Didn't even break a sweat."

He was still rather uncomfortable about certain aspects, but for her sake, he said, "Guess so."

"We're quite the pair."

"Hn."

"I've never really thought about it before."

"What?"

"Being a nurse."

Oh boy.

"I mean," Mirajane went on as he only rolled his eyes, coming to a stop at the bed when he got there and waiting for her to help him back into it. "What if I'm wasting my time as a barmaid?"

"You are," he said as he waited.

"Huh?"

"You are wasting your time," he insisted as, per their agreement, she didn't transform into her brother, but rather Satan Soul. Since finding out that she was able to lift him when she was transformed that way, he refused to let her lift him in any other way.

"How?"

"Look at you," he grumbled as she took him from his chair, her tail flicking around behind her. That was the one part of her demon form that he did not enjoy. At all. "You can become a fearsome demon, but you waste your time being the sweet, innocent woman that just serves beer to a bunch of drunks that couldn't handle half the jobs she could? That's a waste."

He got dropped onto the bed then, making a little oof noise while Satan Soul only glared down at him before purple tiles appeared over the demon, only dissipating when Mirajane Strauss was standing there.

"Dragon," she scolded as he only rolled his eyes and tried to shift around as well as he could, given his situation. "You know that that is not all I do. I help Master."

"That nasty old man. Gawkin' at you from behind and stuff. Disgusting."

"Oh? And you'd like it better if he did it like you? Out in the open?"

He stopped shifting as, for a moment, he just gapped at her.

"I don't know what you're-"

"You make me sleep in bed with you," she pointed out. "And I know that the other day, when we woke up, that your hand didn't just magically end up on-"

"It did! I told you sorry and you blushed and… Why are we talking about that?" Crossing his arms, he looked off, back over at the window. "If anything, you're the one gawkin' at me."

"What?"

He nodded. "I can tell. You take more than enough peeks when helping me out in the bathroom."

"You're gross."

"Oh, right, it's gross if you do it, but if I was the one doing it, it would have been normal. Way to be sexiest, Mira."

She blinked. "Sexist, you mean? And don't try to turn this around on me. It's just as gross when you do it."

Laxus still wouldn't look at her. "I said sexist."

"You said sexiest."

Growl. "Shut up, Mira. And get back in bed. This is why I don't have conversations with the help."

"Oh, I'm the help now?"

"You've always been the help."

"Then maybe I should go sleep on the couch, huh? Since I'm the-"

"Shut up! Stop turning everything I say into an argument," he huffed. "Just get in bed. I want you to get in bed. And then help me get settled. Please. I want to go back to bed."

He could still feel the way that she was staring at him, but refused to look back at her. And, slowly, Mira went to get the light once more before crawling back into bed with him.

"Here," she whispered softly finally, reaching over to help settled him. "Good?"

"My pillow doesn't feel fluffy."

"It's not fluffy. It's cheap. I just bought it at a-"

"I would like it fluffed."

"Oh, Laxus."

"Who's the help here?"

"You're annoying."

"You should offer to give me your pillow," he said. "I want to sleep sitting up a bit more."

"What would I use?"

"I dunno. Just the bed. It would only be the right thing to-"

"Be quiet."

"Don't tell me what to do, woman."

"Then don't tell me what to do."

It was silent for a minute or so as Mira just sat up, staring at him, and Laxus refused to glance at her. Then, shocking him, she was moving to shove him up.

"What are you-"

"I'm putting my pillow behind you, dummy."

"Well, don't! I was joking. Jeez. Do you really think that I'm some sorta horrible guy?"

He only got a look. That made him growl.

"Well, I'm not," he grumbled. "I was just playing with you."

"Playing with me? Is that what we do now? Play with one another?"

"Well, what else are we supposed to do all day? Huh?"

"Considering it's the middle of the night right now, I'd go with sleep."

"Stop trying to settle your pillow behind me! I wasn't serious!"

"There," she said once she had it and his settled nightly behind him. "Now lay back."

"No."

"Laxus-"

"I didn't want-"

"There. Are you happy now?" After handing off her pillow, Mirajane only moved to rest next to him, looking horribly uncomfortable with only mattress beneath her. Grumbling, he stared up at the ceiling.

"You can sleep on my chest," he offered with a slight grumble. "If you think that that would be more comfortable than-"

"Right. A hard, stiff chest or a soft, cushy mattress. Hmmm."

"My chest is not hard. Or stiff."

"Sure."

"It's not!"

"Wouldn't that be what you wanted?" Mirajane had her eyes closed then, but he just kept glaring down at her. "For it to be hard and stiff? That means that it's muscular."

"Yeah, well… Stop arguing with me. If you don't want to-"

"Fine," Mira groaned, lifting her head then and shifting around, only to move closer and rest her head atop his chest. "If you really want me to-"

"I don't! So stop acting like I do."

"Just keep your hands off my-"

"I told you it was an accident!"

With her facing down and him glaring up, neither could see one another and, more than likely, assumed that the other was as annoyed as they sounded, both hiding the fact that beneath the feigned annoyance there was a very clear smile playing at their lips.

The next morning, Laxus awoke to find that Mirajane had managed to slip out of bed at some point. Calling out for her, he was annoyed when he got no response, though upon listening closer, he could hear the shower running and knew that it had to be her.

Hn. Though that was rather annoying, it did give him a chance to try something.

He'd thought a few times about his Lightning Body magic, where he metabolized into electricity and flowed from one place to another. The only problem was that he usually landed on his feet which, for obvious reasons, were rather defunct at the moment. And even if he landed somewhere, the only two places he could comfortably go were his wheelchair or the couch and, if he did land on his feet on either of those only to fall when they wouldn't support him, he'd be in a heap of trouble.

Too fearful to try such a thing, he waited for Mirajane to get out of the shower before making a request of her.

"I dunno, Lax," she said slowly. "Are you sure that alcohol-"

"I want beer. Feel like I'm havin' withdrawals or something without it."

"Okay," she sang as she made his breakfast. "Is there anything else that you want to send me back out into the rain for?"

"It's not still raining."

"It's gonna start again."

"Then stop flapping your gums and get out there to get my stuff before that happens."

"Laxus."

Shifting in his chair, he just glared at her as he said, "And I need more pillows."

"You know, Lax, I'm about to have to renew the lease for another month," she said slowly, glancing over at him. "So that's gonna take a big amount of jewels from you. All this spending with neither of us bringing any money in-"

"I got jewels, woman," he grumbled. "You got my bank card. Go pull more out."

"You have to run out eventually."

"That ain't none of your business."

Sighing, Mirajane only went back to his breakfast. "Sure, Lax. I'll get you some more pillows and alcohol. Alright?" When he nodded, she added, "And I gotta do laundry again today. So if you fall asleep and I'm not around, I'm doing one of those two things."

Snort. "Like what? Huh? You think that I care if you're not around? That it would bother me? Dream on, woman."

It took some doing, but Mirajane managed not to roll her eyes at that. It was hard.

"Of course," she got out dryly. "Lax."

She refused to bring him beers so early in the morning and got the laundry taken care of first. Laxus wasn't happy with her about that and stuck around the apartment, blowing off steam by lifting his weights. He was finished with that though, by the time she left for the store and, though she offered him a chance to come, he turned her down.

"Just get what I wanted," he grumbled as he went to work on the same jigsaw he'd had out for the past three days. It was of a winter scene, snow laced trees housing beautiful red birds. Mirajane couldn't wait to see it finished. "And be fast about it. You know my brand, right?"

"Right," she agreed as she got ready to leave. "I'll be back then."

"Pick you up something of whatever you like too," he added as she was almost out the door. "Demon."

"Huh?"

"You know," he said with a shrug. "Whatever type of beer you like. Pick it up."

"I don't."

"Don't what?"

"Like beer."

That made him glance over at her. She'd turned to face him as well, back to the door as she stared over at his card table.

"You," he repeated, "the barmaid extraordinaire-"

"I've never called myself-"

"-don't like beer."

"Right."

He only stared. "You, uh, sure about that? I mean, you have to drink something, deal with all the stuff you do."

"I didn't say that I didn't drink."

"What's this then? My innocent little demon is into what now? Heavy liquor? Tequila? Hmmm?"

"Neither," she said, giving him a look. "And I'm not too innocent either."

"What do you drink then, woman?"

"Wine."

"Wine," he repeated. "You only drink wine."

"Not only, no, but if I'm just going to sit around and have something to relax me, yes. I enjoy wine."

"Then go get you a nice bottle of wine." He went back to his puzzle. "There. Was that so hard?"

"I have zero desire to drink with you today, Laxus."

"I can't drink alone, can I?"

"You're going to be."

"Fine. Then I want a bottle of wine, huh? To wash down my beer."

"Laxus-"

"Just get a damn bottle of wine. Hell, Mira, get two! Now go." He was angrily trying to press a piece into another then, but they didn't seem to go together. "I need beer. Stat."

"You need everything stat."

"Heck yeah, I do. What? Do I look like my time isn't worth gold? Because it is."

An eye roll made it's way passed then. "Right. Sure, Lax."

It felt like she was away forever. Laxus got bored of waiting for her after awhile and took to listening to his music. Even through his headphones though he could hear the sound of the rain as it came down.

Damn. Now she was gonna get caught in the storm. Could she just transform into a raincoat? Or with an umbrella in her hand? Her magic thoroughly stumped him at times.

When she came home soaking wet, but with a brown paper bag full of liquor, he had one question.

"Where," he asked as she cradled the bag in her arms, fearful that it might tear from being wet, "are my pillows?"

"I'm going back out, dragon," she sighed as she rushed to drop the liquor on the card table. "Just let me-"

"Woman, I'm kidding. Jeez." He rolled over to the table, pulling his headphones off as he went. "You're drenched. Go change. Then get ready to spend the day drinking away with the Thunder God, huh?"

"Try no?"

"Just go get out of those wet- And you're transforming. You could warn a guy before you- Why are you Freed?"

"Because we are friends, Laxus. And I wish to worship you as you drink. You wanted a drinking buddy, did you not? Now you have one." The mimic of Freed bowed his head then. "Tell me then, Laxus. What would you like me to do? Drink beer with you? What do I usually do when we…drink together?"

"I want you," he told her with a frown.

"…I didn't realize that our relationship was so-"

Growling, he glared over at the imitation of his follower. "Not like that! I want you, Mirajane. To hang out with you. So transform back into yourself and something dry or go get something to put on and come back. We got drinking to do."

That, for some reason, meant even more than when he told her that he wanted it to be her that cared for him, not one of her transformations. Sure, she reasoned, it was probably just that he thought it was creepy or something, but maybe… Maybe he actually just truly wanted her.

Which shouldn't be so shocking to her, she knew. He had said that they were friends. And they were practically the only two people they'd seen in nearly four months. That had a lot to do with it too. They were comfortable with one another. She liked that. A lot.

But she wasn't going to drink with him. She recapitulated this to him as he took to popping the tab on a beer and she took a seat with him at the table.

"Sure," he remarked. "You're not drinking."

"I'm not."

"Then why did you not only buy wine, but a wine opener?"

"For you," she said, giving him a look. "You told me that you wanted-"

"You know I wasn't serious," he grumbled. "That I meant that I wanted you to get some for you."

"Well, here we are."

"Here we are," Laxus agreed before taking his first sip of his drink. And man if he hadn't missed that. All the stress in his life recently, he was shocked that he hadn't gotten her to go out and buy him some a lot sooner. "Mmmm. Woman, I'm a higher class of man, yeah?"

"If you say so."

"When I treat a woman to something as fine as what you bought-"

"I already said that I'm not drinking tonight-"

"-I tend to dine them too."

She blinked. "Oh."

"Uh-huh. So get to making yourself and me whatever you want tonight." He went back to his puzzles. "I'll be listening to music, drinking, and partaking in getting this dang puzzle together. Have fun with your bit, huh? I hear people like to drink wine and cook. It's fun or something. Go figure."

Mira only stared at him from across the table. "You really think you're funny, don't you?"

"I don't fancy myself a comedian, no, but I think I do alright."

"I might have a glass," Mira gave in. "Maybe. Later. It's too early to drink. Or worry about dinner, really."

"I always worry about dinner."

"Of course."

"When you make it, at least."

"You have gotten rather spoiled with that, huh?"

"Rather." He sat his beer can down then before leaning across the table to reach into the soaked brown paper bag, the paper discolored by that point from being wet. Reaching back in, he went ahead and removed all it's contents, from the wine to the two packs of beer. "This'll last us the night."

"The night?" Mirajane frowned. "You can't be serious."

"I can. And I am." He picked his drink back up, waving it around at her. "I got a whole bunch of drinkin' to make up for here, yeah?"

"I've never known you to be a heavy drinker."

"Yeah, well, you've never known me to kill myself either, but you sure were-"

"Don't joke about that."

"I'm not trying to."

"Seriously, don't." She wouldn't look at him then, instead taking in his puzzle. "You got a lot done."

"Yeah, well," he grumbled, annoyed that she'd just gotten away with telling him what (not) to do. "I really like puzzles."

"I know, grandpa."

"Excuse me?"

"That's what you sound like sometimes," she told him with a grin. "A grandfather."

Snort. "You must have had a really cool, awesome, attractive, and young grandfather, woman."

"I wouldn't know," she told him with a slight giggle. "I never knew my grandparents. Any of them."

He stared at her for a moment before down at his puzzle. "Yeah, well, you know mine well enough. And I ain't anything like him."

"You don't think so?" She hummed after her question.

"What?" He only growled. "You tryin' to say that I am?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. Then, thinking, she nodded. "Well, yeah. A little."

"I am not," he grumbled, "anything like that man."

"You are. And it's a compliment," she assured him. "Master is a very good man. And you've become one."

Grunt. Then, "Are you really not gonna drink one beer with me? Just one?"

"No," she said though he only watched as she moved to grab the wine bottle. "But I might just have some of this."

There were only a few cups in the house. Mirajane had bought a set of cheap ones, with four in them, but at the moment, one was full of soda, another was lost under the couch and the two would never find it, a third had some sort of substance floating in it and sat in the kitchen sink (Laxus claimed it wasn't him who put whatever it was in there, but considering Mira was the only other one in the apartment and she knew she didn't, he was the only person who could have), while the final one had some curdling milk in it that Laxus left in the bedroom and Mirajane just didn't feel like cleaning it or the other three that day.

So she drank straight from the bottle. After some coaxing from Laxus, of course.

That was probably the first mistake. It left her with very little ways to monitor how much she was consuming, leading, of course, to doing so overly. Rather quickly too. It didn't help that Laxus kept goading her. He was tossing back beers like crazy and, well, jigsaws were serious business. Especially when you were smashed.

"Laxus," she complained at one point as he took to yelling at the puzzle. "I always knew you'd be an angry drunk."

"I ain't drunk!" he growled as he tried to jam pieces together all willy-nilly. "You're drunk!"

"Am not." She was leaning over the table then, languidly reaching out to grab his hands and make him put those dang pieces down before he messed them up. "Dragon. It won't fit."

"Yes," he growled, trying to shake her off. "It will."

"No. Stop it. You're gonna-"

"I'mma puzzle master! Don't tell me about-"

"You're gonna mess up the-"

"I hate puzzles!" Throwing the pieces and her hands away, he only huffed before looking up and over at her. Mira was just staring in shock. "Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Are you gonna take me to the couch or wha'?" He glared at her. "Well?"

Mira wasn't in the best mindset then, as the hour of halfing a bottle of wine was catching up to her, but nodded as she got to her feet. She could do it. She could get him to the couch.

Luckily, she did. It wasn't as graceful as usual, but if there was anything Mirajane prided herself on, it was that she could hold her liquor.

Sorta.

And she was totally going to be drinking until she couldn't.

"More?" Laxus laughed at the sight of Mirajane rushing to go get her bottle of wine and him another beer before going to claim the seat next to him on the couch. He'd been so aggravated before, with her and the jigsaw, but just like that, he was shifting into a whole other mindset. "You're drinking more? The woman who didn't even-"

"Just," she began after taking a long sip, "so you don't have to drink alone."

He only grinned down at her though, teetering on getting pissed off again or continuing to feel as blissful as he had for the last exchange. Choosing to try and stick with the latter, he only leaned down, close to her, and whispered, "I am drunk."

"Just a little," she teased, holding her bottle of wine out to him.

"Just a little," he agreed, taking it and a swig, all in the same motion. That wasn't any good though, as it made the room spin a bit and Mirajane only giggled because she seemed to just be her usual self when she was drunk, if not more annoyingly giddy, "Mmm. Demon."

"Lisanna doesn't like wine," she sighed as she settled back against the couch when he passed over the wine bottle to her. "Neither does Elf. So I don't buy it at home. Me and Cana though, sometimes, can drink a glass together. But then she drinks too much and I have to get back to work-"

"Then don't," he got out as he went back to his beer, far preferring it, "drink at work."

"Huh?"

"You get days off," he grumbled. "You can go finish a barrel with Cana then."

"Barrel?" She giggled. "I couldn't do that. I'd be in a coma."

"I have faith in you."

"In drinking a whole barrel? What kinda faith is that?"

One completely lacking sobriety.

"Demon, listen to me. Listen to dragon."

"All ears."

Reaching over, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders for, oh, the first time ever and, had she not been just as buzzed (if not more) the whole time, she might have pulled away. Instead, she only stared up at him with her big blues as he snarled a bit, but maybe it was supposed to be a smirk or a smile, she couldn't be too sure with the way that her own vision was a bit out of whack about then.

"I have so much faith in you." He whispered it too, leaning down close to her as he did so. "Demon."

"I'm still stuck up on the barrel thing."

"Dragon's talking here, woman."

"Sorry," came a giggle, Mira's cheeks flushed for more than one reason. "Continue."

"I just believe in you. And what I said last night." His mind was what was swirling then and for some reason, that conversation came back to him. "'bout how you're wasting away in the guild. Don't waste away in the guild. You could be anything. You could be…be…uh…"

"Thanks, Lax."

"No. Shush. I'm talkin'."

If he was allowed to shift moods, so was she. And, that time, him silencing her wasn't cute. It was annoying.

Trying to shove his arm off, she complained, "Stop telling me to be quiet. I-"

"Hush. I-"

"Stop it."

He only held her closer. "Damn it, Mira, I-"

"No! Leave me-"

"I'm tryin' to say that I believe in you and you're-"

"You told me to be quiet!"

"Because the dragon is talking!"

"And the demon was listening before you went and insulted her!"

He still had an arm over her shoulders as he glared down at her, the look being returned with her deep blues and…and…and…

It was the alcohol, he knew, but when Mirajane leaned towards him, no doubt to yell some more, he just…kissed her.

Everything felt rushed and she pulled away at the same time he was dropping his arm and opening his eyes (when did they even have a chance to close?). Then they were just staring at one another and he wanted to explain or try to get up and leave, but neither of those things were happening.

Mirajane leaning back into him was though. And it was…nice. He could taste the wine on her lips and he wanted to do so many things, but he couldn't. He could sit there and keep on kissing her though.

She was just as into it as he was it seemed, one of her hands reaching up to grab his face, gripping it tightly in her hands. Eventually he had to move to push them off because he didn't like that. Her being the one to touch all over him. It was supposed to be the other way around.

But man, she must have had way too much to drink because when he gently pried her hands off, one of them went to the one place that they really shouldn't.

It was him that broke their kiss finally, for real. Not just for a breather or a quick second to readjust, but literally to pull back and shake his head at her.

"I can't," he whispered as her hand, which had moved to fondle him in a way he usually would appreciate, stilled. "I'm…I don't…"

"O-Oh," she stuttered, quick removing her hand with a blush. "No, I can't either. We're-"

"No, it's not that." He reached a hand up then to rub over his mouth, eyes still tracing hers though she didn't seem to want to look at him any longer. "It's not that we're…us.. Because, I would, Mira, but-"

"I get it, alright?" She tried to get up. "Let me-"

"No." He grabbed her arms. "Seriously. I want to. Damn, I do. But…I really can't."

Mira looked back at him then before whispering, "The alcohol?"

"What?"

Nodding down, she said softly, "I didn't know you were that drunk, but-"

"Oh." He sat back then. She thought that he was too inebriated to get turned on. Which wasn't it at all. He was the perfect amount of drunk for that.

It was more…the accident. And that the doctor's prognosis that he'd proclaimed so wrong before was absolutely right. He had a hard time…with…

And he couldn't tell Mirajane about that. No way. So yes then, to the alcohol. Or, if that fell through, he'd go for the whole she was drunk and it was wrong garb. Whatever.

Just not the truth.

"Yeah," he whispered. "I…I just didn't want you to think that if I didn't get…that it meant that I wasn't into this. Because I'm into this. And I know it's just the alcohol talking and that it's just, like, the loss of inhabitations-"

"Inhabitat… Inhibitions," she corrected before, slowly, smiling at him again. "Dragon."

"Yeah, that." He swallowed some. He was losing her, he knew, and he didn't want to, because if he did then that was it. The end of their whole little hideaway together. And though he hadn't wanted it in the beginning (or the middle or twenty minutes ago), he wanted it then. He wanted to keep it then. It had been his one comfort zone since the accident and if it was ripped out from under him, well…

What would he do? Huh? Without Mirajane?

"Laxus, I don't think that that has anything to do with being attracted to someone."

"You don't?"

"Mmm-mmm." She even shook her head, leaning over the couch once more to grab his hand in her, their eyes meeting once more. "That's just lust. This?" She paused to kiss him, but it was just a peck. A quick one at that. "This is attractive to me. Very. Or when we're laughing or talking or when we're lying in bed and you pretend to not like the way I lay on your chest-"

"Wait, are you saying that you've always been…attracted to me?"

That made her pull away. "Are you saying that you haven't been?"

That hadn't occurred to Mira. Since the first kiss, she'd assumed that it was some sort of accumulation from all the built up energy that they had, all those nights in bed, all those fights, and especially the ribbing. The constant ribbing.

Were they completely separate? Had it really just been the alcohol?

"I don't…" Laxus reached up to scratch at his head. "Mira-"

"I…I should go-"

"No. Don't. Stay. Please. Just let me…I… My accident messed it up, okay?"

She blinked. Then she blinked again.

"What?"

"You were right." He wouldn't look at her, his own cheeks reddening then which was odd for him. Extremely. "Or your damn book was, at least. I can't… And it pisses me off that I have to fucking even talk about it. So you know what? No. Go. This was a waste. Everything's a waste and I hate-"

His mood shift that time threw her and, not knowing what else to do, Mirajane only reached out to grab his hands when he slammed a fist down into his thigh.

"Stop it."

"No. You're right. I wouldn't have been able to sleep with a nurse," he growled. "Or anyone. At all. I'm stuck in this damn chair and this damn apartment and the only thing I have going for me is that you're nice to me and now I've fucked that up too! Way to fucking go, Laxus. Good for you."

"Laxus, you haven't…screwed this up." She let go of his hands once more to grab his face, forcing him to look at her. "Look at me. We're friends, right?" When he nodded, she said, "And I…I liked kissing you. And I might have liked whatever else we could have done, but if that's out then…if you liked it as much as I liked it, then why can't we just keep doing what we were doing?"

"Because," he said, voice sounding different as she practically gripped his cheeks. "Friends don't…makeout. I don't just going around with all the women in the guild, kissing on them at every turn."

"If you don't want this, Laxus-"

"I just," he was quick to add, "don't want this to change. Any of it. I want to stay here, Mirajane. With you." That time when their eyes met, neither dared look away. "Please. I can't go home. And I know that I drank way too much and that I shouldn't have kissed you and that we screwed that part up, but just don't freak and ditch me, okay? Okay?"

But Mirajane wasn't mad at him for kissing her. She was more concerned with the aftermath as far as what was expect from then one. With sex off the table (or at least not in that moment), that took a lot of pressure off, but it also left them in a rather precarious situation. If they'd just parlayed their makeout session into sex, it would have saved them the awkwardness of actually having to try and reason through their actions. Then it would have been mindless and frenzied and later, they could blame the drinking and try to get passed it. Now though, Mirajane was considering her feelings for him in an honest way and Laxus had just told her about his…situation and it was just all too much.

And still just the middle of the day.

"I'm not going anywhere," she whispered finally, stretching a hand out to run it through his blonde locks gently. "Laxus."

Bowing his head, he rested it against hers. Then, softly, he whispered, "I'm not too drunk."

"I know."

"I still know what I'm doing."

"Mmmhmm."

"You're fucking sexy."

That one didn't get a response. Laxus was undeterred.

"Always. You always are. And I've…thought about it before." His words were rushed and he felt hot. "Us. And when we lay in bed together sometimes, well, I just… It's nice. To lay next to someone. Not just someone, but a woman. I don't…have steady relationships too often, so having you to…rest with me, I… You're so warm. And I'm not. But you make me feel good. Real good. And happy, sometimes. And pissed, others, but still so happy. I… Please say something so I can stop. I'm out of words."

She closed her eyes then and whispered, "We shouldn't drink anymore. Together."

Swallowing, he turned his head away from her and looked forwards again. "Yeah. I guess we shouldn't."

Yet she still moved closer, resting her head on his shoulder. She didn't know what to feel about Laxus right then. Had he not kissed her, she wouldn't feel anything out of the ordinary. Not openly anyways. What was she supposed to do then? It wasn't like they would be dating or anything. It was more like they'd been cooped up together too long. That was all. Yes.

But…

If he had been able to, she'd have let him fuck her brains out without a second thought.

Against his shoulder, Mirajane whispered, "I'm not leaving, but this does change things. I mean, how are we ever supposed to-"

"Just be quiet, Mirajane." And then, because that started the whole thing, just to be safe he added, "Please."

For some reason, that time, she did.

Next Chapter

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[gender-euphowrya]

personal gigantic text ahead hu-god damn-rray if you’re interested in giving some life advice to a complete loser feel free to do just that

so here’s my life right now i’m a high-functioning aspie with low-functioning depression & anxiety what it means is things are already hard from the start but i’ve been managing until about 2 years ago when absolutely Nothing changed and yet i just stopped being able to do the things i usually did i can’t go to school anymore. it’s just not happening. i stopped school those same 2 years ago, and just a few months earlier this year i tried signing up for a new BA because maybe that was the problem, maybe the field i was studying just didn’t interest me anymore but that’s not it, i’m still getting the same problems, i’m completely unable to focus, doing my homework properly has become impossible, i can’t focus on it long enough or bring myself to care enough about the subject to actually put effort into what i’m doing, i can’t even attend school because A) it’s fuck far away from where I live so that means at least 1h30 of 3 different types of public transportation making me wake up as early as 5AM meaning i’m exhausted before i even left home B) it makes me sick. literally. i can’t get up in the morning because my stomach feels wrong. i try to get myself ready to go anyway thinking it’ll go away but it doesn’t. it feels so bad i can’t even eat so that means i go hungry the whole day especially because i’m a picky eater and the food at uni sucks. C) if i miss one day ? i am fucked. i won’t go again. it’s not happening. it just feels like “what’s the point ?”, “i’m going to get yelled at or questioned”, “i missed the lesson about ____ so i’ll be lost now”, it’s fucked because my anxiety makes it that i am fucking terrified of failure & being seen in a negative manner in any way shape or form by any fucking body, meaning if i give a teacher a reason to think i’m not doing good or i’m one of those students that doesn’t care, they won’t ever see my face again because i just can’t take it anyway yeah things are absolutely fucking horrible because as you’re all aware we live in a capitalist society and if i don’t go to school i don’t get a diploma, if i don’t get a diploma i can’t find a job, if i can’t find a job i won’t have money, and if i don’t have money i literally die of starvation and/or of being in the cold all day because i won’t have a home i don’t know what went wrong and why things changed so much, especially the transition from Literally One Of The Best In My Class to Fucking Slob That Does Nothing And Can’t Open A Book Without Crying i also would have killed myself already if it weren’t for the few things that do make me genuinely happy, but that UNFORTUNATELY society deems to be absolutely worthless and a waste of time, A.K.A i can’t make money from it i would have killed myself if it wasn’t for music, i always have earphones on, i hate just being somewhere not listening to anything, every opportunity i have to listen to the songs i like, i do it. i probably spend about 6 whole hours a day listening to music. but you don’t make money by listening to music. i would have killed myself if it wasn’t for video games. i got my first console when i was around 7 and i loved it. games aren’t real and at the end of the day it’s just a fun little past-time that humans created to entertain themselves and their kids but it takes you on adventures. that shit’s exciting and i won’t apologize for enjoying it as much as i do. i play them too much and i’m fucking aware of that but playing them is the only thing that makes me genuinely enjoy life. to some it’s going outside, to some it’s seeing beautiful scenery, to some it’s writing or reading a book, to me it’s being able to go on entire journeys and meet exciting people and explore worlds that aren’t bound by our world’s laws of physics or time or logic even, all that from my chair or bed.  and yeah neither the people nor the worlds are real, but that doesn’t exactly matter. because you don’t make money by playing video games either way. unless you’re a youtuber. and i’m nowhere near charismatic or bold enough or able to afford recording equipment to be one that’s successful enough to make a proper living so there goes that. oddly enough i think i would have killed myself if i hadn’t started smoking weed. now again, i know it’s bad & illegal yadda yadda but fuck off. it’s a fucking plant. it makes me sleepy and makes me forget about everything that’s otherwise making me miserable. where’s the crime ? so you can argue with me about how it’s actually counter-productive because something something it makes you lazy or w/e bullshit y’all come up with, and i hear that, but it’s also productive in a way because i SURE AS HELL would not have been able to withstand all this entire bullshit without getting absolutely hammered once in a while. i’d have gone crazy and offed myself already. but again, you don’t make money by getting high. i can’t draw. i can’t sing. i can’t cook. i can’t sew. i can’t repair things. i can’t make new ones. i can’t do sports. i can’t talk to people. i can’t even drive. and now i can’t even go to school anymore. i have absolutely 0.5 things to contribute to this society. i might as well be dead but there are still things out there that i want to enjoy before i go. oh and also there are like... 3 people that wouldn’t want me dead and i don’t want to disappoint (again, fear of failure & all that jazz) i’m also 0% motivated to actually try to push myself to the limits and force myself to struggle to get a diploma anyway, because look at the fine damn mess. you want me to be motivated to work in a society where : to work i need to sacrifice my free time, youth, mental health, and money to attend school and succeed. but then that’s still not enough, 1 diploma ? you get no job with 1 diploma. now your mom, yeah she used to be able to get a job even with No Diploma At All, but that was ~back in the days uwu~ and now it’s not like that anymore. so already it’s fair. (oh and what else is fair ? that you’re working your ass off to maybe possibly attempt to obtain even 1 millionth of what “This Guy Who Has Never Worked And Will Never Have To Work Because Parents Are Rich” has, which he got by being born and that was it. and you’ll never have the same thing no matter how hard you work). so anyway you still need a Higher Education because the employers want that apparently, and they want more. they keep demanding more. you have your high school diploma ? good, still need more because (it’s actually worthless). oh what’s that, 2 years of uni diploma ? neat, neat, with that you can be a cashier maybe ? or clean filthy toilets all day. because that’s exactly what you studied english for 2 years to do, right ? SO ANYWAY let’s say you magically struggle through the entire education process that fucking drained you of all possible energy & enjoyment you had, bitch welcome to the Job World. you won’t find one. the one you’ll find will suck. you’ll get a pitiful wage for it. now obviously all of that is already major bullshit, but listen up. that pitiful wage ? you don’t even get it. you think you’re making something like 1000 bucks a month ? wrong. at least half of this thousand will go towards paying bills & taxes, insurance, food, rent... A.K.A things you don’t have a choice but to pay for. so already half of the wage isn’t even really yours because you don’t get to choose how you spend it. so what do you have left that is ~truly your own~ ? almost nothing. so you worked your ass off your entire youth in school and your entire career in your job for Fucking. Nothing. and a fucking nothing that doesn’t even belong to you. oh but it gets better ! remember the taxes ? now taxes are important because they can fuel things like free healthcare, which i benefit from, free education, which i benefit from, and all types of government help that do benefit me. but then there’s the part where your taxes are actually BARELY USED for those things and are instead used on things like mmmmmm the fucking useless military ! so that we can go to war even though it’s fucking pointless but we greedy uwu, or upholding racist and all types of other -ists institutions like The Police :), or just filling some corrupt politician’s pockets if he happens to find fraudulent access to it. So this is what I’m supposed to be looking forward to do and excitedly working towards. This. Exhausting myself working your typical week yet still being broke and never really earning anything, “my” money not really ever being mine, it being completely gone in the blink of an eye, and to be used in ways that i won’t approve of, to make the corrupt and greedy government prosper from my work while I don’t. Faaaaaaantastic.

so my question is simple : what the fuck am i supposed to do