#ok had to get this out of my system im locking in for outside work now AHGJFDHGJSDHFGJ

[vacueye]

demo sketching

[thetriggeredhappy]

in the dadspy au, what if jeremy was just going to be an assistant/cook/janitor at the base while his dad was being the mercenary (since spy didnt want him to follow the "career" but didnt want to be separated from him), but then jeremy turned out to be even better than the hired scout so they promote him to that position and spy is not happy with this at all

ok i was gonna put this in the queue to post but im impatient because im happy with this one. only thing i didnt have was spy being upset by this development

(warnings for canon-typical violence, discussion of mercenary-type things, paranoia, alcohol, and exactly one proper fight scene. consider this pg-13)

-

“Would you prefer the good news first, or the bad news?” Dad asked.

Jeremy looked up at him from where he’d snatched up the sunday comics from his dad’s newspaper and was doodling little hats on the characters while they waited for their food to arrive. “Uh,” he said, “good news first.”

“Alright. The good news is, do you remember that line I’ve been tailing? The one in New Mexico?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jeremy said, then nodded a little more confidently. “Immunity, safehouse, somethin’ like that, right?”

“...Something like that,” Dad agreed carefully, and that made him raise an eyebrow. “It went well, and I think there’s the very real possibility that I’ve all but closed the deal, all they want now is an interview.”

“...Interview, singular,” Jeremy said slowly.

“That’s where the bad news begins. Unfortunately... merde, how to phrase this?” He drew a hand down his face. “They’re fully willing to hire me on, but this is a more... corporate affair than I’m used to. They have rules, stipulations. Long story short, they will not hire you as a mercenary on the basis of your age.”

Jeremy tensed. “What?” he demanded. “That’s stupid, I’m old enough to drive and buy guns and whatever the hell else.”

“But not rent a car, at least in many places in the United States.”

“But—“ he started, and remembered they were in public, and lowered his voice to a hiss, leaning in. “We’re hired killers, thieves, criminals. Do they really think we’re above having fakes? False documentation?”

“Actually, that is one of their requirements,” Dad said dryly, taking a paper from his jacket and consulting it. “I’m not happy about it either, mon lapin, but those are their rules. Already they have slightly bent them for one individual, and already I am on thin ice. But I may have a way to manage this.”

“Yeah?” Jeremy asked, nervous now.

“I know the woman responsible for new hires and managing the team I’ve applied for. She owes me a favor—a fairly hefty one. When I go in for the interview, one of my demands will include you being hired on, not as a mercenary, but for... for custodial purposes, something like that. Cook, janitor, security guard, secretary—whatever job there is that needs doing there, and I am sure that there will be one. Something to allow you to live there. Pay will likely be her stipulation, and the play I hope to make is that really, you’re overqualified for the position and she’s lucky to have someone so competent available, and in the worst case scenario, the pay is still good enough even for just one of us that we will not cut too deeply into the savings.”

The savings. That made Scout blink, because they only ever brought up the savings when—

“You think this could be it?” he asked quietly. “Like, it it?”

A hard exhale, and he leaned his cheek on his hand. “Potentially,” he finally said. “I don’t want to get your hopes up, but the job promises a variety of things. Medical attention available, extremely low levels of danger, and most of all, confidentiality. The only people who will know any name we give them would be the woman in charge of hiring us and their singular medical professional. There is no mode of communication to or from the compound outside of emergency lines to the organization and a single secure payphone located two miles away, there is no civilization within a twenty-five minute drive minimum, and this operation has been going long enough that the local authorities have long since grown used to being paid off, and likely don’t even remember what for anymore. I cash in a few valuable favors and ask this employer to turn a blind eye, we’d have somewhere remote and secure to spend our time after our deaths are faked and once the contract is over, we can start over. No ties to the past.”

“Freedom,” Jeremy marveled.

Silence for a few seconds, broken only by the quiet chatter of the rest of the diner. “I want to warn you, this work may not be glamorous. It may not even be particularly easy. I’m giving you the option of saying no,” Dad said.

“What?! Yes, hell yes, are you joking? To get us to living like normal people? Steady work? Livin’ in one place? Count me in!” he laughed.

“What if the job is something you won’t enjoy? Long hours, boring work?” Dad asked, entirely serious.

“I’m still on board.”

“What if the other people working there are rude to you? Disrespectful?”

“Well most of the people I meet through our job now try to kill us, so really it’s an upgrade.”

“What if there’s no diner nearby?” he asked, and there was a glint of humor in his eye.

“Damn, sorry, that’s the dealbreaker,” he joked right back, and that made him snort, shake his head, greet the waitress as she came back with their coffee and soda and then informed them that their food would be out shortly.

“I’ll ask,” was what Dad said once she was gone again, and that was that, and they started driving to New Mexico two nights later.

-

“—A warm welcome to our two newest recruits. This is the Spy, and this is the Guard.”

“Guard?” asked one of the men at the table, his accent thick and distinctly Russian. It made Jeremy tense slightly, but he didn’t let it show.

“Night Guard,” Jeremy answered, voice clipped.

“He’s not technically hired on as a mercenary like you all, he won’t be joining you on missions,” the short woman apparently named Miss Pauling (Jeremy was fairly sure it was a fake name) said, hands folded in front of her neatly. “He’s here to work security. Keep an eye out during the night, filter through the camera footage, handle the archiving, things like that.”

“We’re hiring on a civvie now?” asked another man, thick Scottish accent a little harder to digest than the eyepatch and the grenade he was in the process of fiddling with the internal mechanisms of.

“He’s combat ready, and will still be armed. His job is to essentially make sure you’re all safe enough to sleep through the night,” Miss Pauling said.

“I’m not some chump,” Jeremy agreed. “I know my stuff.”

“How old is he?” another man asked, this one in a hardhat with a heavy drawl, looking concerned.

“Twenty, for your information,” Jeremy said, a little sharply, eyes narrowed.

“If you have any other questions, there’ll be time later on. For now, I do need to show our two newest recruits where they’ll be staying,” Miss Pauling cut in.

There was an audible scoff from one of the men at the table, a dramatic rolling of eyes. Jeremy glared at him. He unfolded and refolded his extremely tattoo’d tree-trunk-like arms, tugging the visor of his hat between. “Sorry,” he said, accent thick and distinctly Californian. “I just don’t have the most trust for some scrawny kid in slacks and creep in a ski mask.”

“Scout, don’t start,” Miss Pauling warned.

“Just saying,” this man, apparently called Scout, muttered under his breath regardless.

“Don’t,” she said again, more firmly, and ignored the second eye roll she got for the trouble. “If you two would follow me.”

And they were shown around the base, and Jeremy in particular was shown into a room stuck behind three locked doors, where he found camera feeds and recording equipment. She gave him a basic overview and a thick packet of instructions and policies labelled ‘highly classified’ and a phone number to call if he had any further questions, and a set of hours that were apparently meant to become the new standard for him (with the quiet addendum that if he finished early that was alright, and that technically he could turn in early if two or more members of the team were already awake for the day and he was caught up on the archiving of old tapes).

Then he was left to “get used to the equipment”, which he assumed meant his dad was getting a similar rundown of his job, and it took a pretty quick glance through the packet to understand that clearly this place ran on an extremely secretive and closely monitored series of systems. In the packet, between the sections on camera maintenance and operation hours, were a few sheets detailing what were apparently the movement patterns of the various members of the team, including frequented locations and previously recorded large-scale infractions (mostly on the part of the Soldier, the Medic, the Scout, and one from the Demoman).

He wasn’t the one with the title Spy, but fuck, it seemed like he might as well have it. His entire job wasn’t even necessarily to keep the team safe overnight—he was just meant to watch all of them to make sure nobody was anywhere or doing anything out of the ordinary.

The next time he saw his dad, waiting outside the infirmary to get some sort of physical evaluation, his face was arranged carefully enough that he could tell he’d figured out something was up, too.

“Got your job assignments?” he asked quietly in French, glancing towards the door into the infirmary.

A nod, a glance. “I’m intrigued by the methods used in employee evaluation,” he deadpanned. “Especially the fact that apparently, they’re willing to assign employees for the explicit task of doing them.”

“How often?”

“Weekly.”

“Thorough,” Jeremy deadpanned, and glanced towards the hall at the distant sound of laughter, echoing from somewhere else on the base. “That’s basically mine too.”

There was a long silence, and when Jeremy looked back over, his dad was giving him an almost expectant look, waiting. All he had to offer him was a shrug, which was returned after a moment with a vague shake of the head. “I don’t believe it will be a problem,” his dad said simply. “Not for us, at the very least.”

Jeremy nodded. “Yeah. Uh, anyways, good luck with the… physical, or whatever,” he said, and received a pat on the shoulder before he walked back off down the hall, hoping to figure out what exactly he was supposed to do with an entire room all to himself. He’d almost never had one before.

-

He was used to time changes and jet lag, to needing to switch his sleep schedule on the regular, but the switch to a straight up night shift was a rough one.

His nine-to-five was actually a ten-to-six, as in 10 PM through 6 AM. This meant that, assuming he managed to get his schedule in order, he’d be able to join in on the team dinners if he woke up early and could eat breakfast with them before he went to bed.

Very quickly he realized that going to dinner and breakfast with the team was going to become a staple part of his routine, because it didn’t take long before he began to feel extremely lonely all of the time. In a dark little room, everyone else asleep, scrubbing through tapes from during the day while half keeping an eye on the live feed from around the base that never showed much of anything, it was brutal. It was suffocating.

It was easy, at least. It didn’t take long before he got efficient at it and could start zoning out, and it wasn’t like he was under much pressure. His was the only room without any cameras in it. Security risk, apparently. 
And to be honest, what small amount he and Dad interacted with mercenaries and other criminal types, Jeremy didn’t really tend to like them much. A lot of them were loud and rude and had the potential to turn around and try and kill them whenever they felt like it. He didn’t expect that he’d like the team as much as he did. He especially didn’t expect to like them so much without ever really talking to them.

But watching the camera feeds from throughout the day, seeing what they were up to, they were just... nice people. Soldier out by the dumpsters practicing rocket jumps and wrangling raccoons and apparently trying to learn how to spin a rifle, Pyro’s regular minor explosions in the kitchen while cooking and the surprised and frantic way they cleaned it up every time, the Demoman’s tendency to whistle wherever he went, watching through the feed as they all played cards and argued and jostled each other. They all seemed really nice. Really cool. Really dorky, too, but mostly just really nice and really cool.

And there were a few of them he was less sure about—he couldn’t get eyes on the Medic most of the time, what with the one camera in the Medbay being tilted down at an angle that made it hard to see much of anything but the occasional bird (probably by those same birds). The Heavy tended to just sit and read, and was pretty much silent most of the time otherwise. The Scout tended to leave the base pretty often. And the Sniper didn’t even live on base, he had a van outside that he could only occasionally see movement in when he squinted at the far edge of the camera leading outside. But even then, Heavy and Sniper mostly just seemed quiet, and Medic just seemed busy, and the Scout just seemed like a little bit of a dickhead.

But then one day when Jeremy was at breakfast the Heavy caught him leaning to try to get a look at the cover of the book he was reading, and he blurted that he was just wondering what book was so great that he’d stay up until like four in the morning reading, and then the entire team was gawking at him and asking questions and insisting that it was insane that there was someone actually watching all those cameras, and he shrugged and said there was always supposed to be someone watching the tapes back it was just usually some office worker type a hundred miles away. And they seemed almost... upset with him. And maybe that was fair, it wasn’t like he ever talked to any of them much, mostly he just spent breakfast and dinner half-asleep and listening to their chatter. And Demoman admitted that he’d honestly assumed that Jeremy slept his entire shift, he just always looked so tired at breakfast. There was almost this discomfort. This distrust.

And so, now that the jig was up, he made it a point to say some things to certain members of the team. To tell the Medic that his camera was tilted down so that he couldn’t see most of the room, and to very pointedly say that it was weird how that happened and that he didn’t know why they set it up like that in the first place, but it was really none of his business. Made it a point to warn the Engineer in the morning that the previous night, Soldier had been doing something in the fridge for a while, and to maybe check the labels before he made breakfast. Made it a point to tell the Demoman that the camera in his workshop was right in plain sight, and that if he moved one of his blackboards an inch or two to the left, it would obscure the room a pretty hefty amount. Made it a point to tell the Sniper that the camera on the rooftop seemed to be glitching out, and it’d just sort of lost the tapes of the previous two nights, and that it was really unfortunate since for all he knew there might have been someone ignoring the signs about there being no personnel allowed up there.

In return, he found that Pyro would sometimes make little sparkly notes with smiley faces on them and stick them to the door to the security room. That Sniper started tipping his hat at the camera above the door into the base from the garage. That on occasional drinking nights, the team would suddenly turn and start waving at the camera, laughing the whole way. On one night in particular he could hear through the low-quality and tinny speakers that they were trying to cajole him into leaving the security room for a while to join them for cards, and god, but he wanted to.

And he noticed more things. Soldier walking with a slight limp some days when rocket jumps had rough landings. Being able to count the doves in the infirmary and even tell them apart to some extent through blurry close-ups. The Engineer making it a point to sweep really regularly regardless of what project he was working on.

And then he noticed a weird thing.

It took him a long time to get used to the patterns of hallways, the cameras not really lined up linearly after a while, too many branching paths. He learned to follow progress, to flick from one camera to the next as someone walked around corners. And for a while he thought maybe he wasn’t very good at it.

Until he realized two things. First of all, that in a hallway where he knew there were five doors, he could only see four—apparently the door to Pyro’s room was just barely out of sight of the camera. He only figured it out because one day it swung open wide enough to almost bang against the wall.

And then, when he realized there was somehow that massive blindspot, that there was a corner with a blindspot too. One where that Scout kept disappearing.

He watched a few more times to make sure, and yep. He’d see the Engineer walking around the corner, flick to the next screen, and there he was, continuing down the hallway. And then later that same day, the Scout, walking, and flick to the next camera, and he wasn’t there.

One of the worse parts of the job was that he never got to see Dad anymore, never got to just sort of hang out the way they did all the time when he was growing up, and he knew he would miss it but he didn’t know how much. And he found it was even worse when he had something important to say, doubly so when he had something important to say but no idea if it was actually important.

He tried to bring it up casually, in the like ten minutes of time he ever got alone to talk to Dad. Dad was fighting the kettle trying to make some tea and he was trying to stay awake long enough to figure out how he was going to say this.

“Uh,” he said, and Dad looked at him. “So, uh, what’s the read you’re getting on that Scout guy?”

“Lazy,” Dad shrugged, looked back at the kettle. “Arrogant. He seems to care very little about doing his job correctly and has horrible communication on the field.”

“Right, right,” he nodded, fought a yawn down. “Uh. So like, kind of a dickhead.”

“Indeed,” Dad said, nodding vaguely.

“So uhhh... not the best.”

“Where are you going with this?” Dad asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

“I, I dunno, the guy just likes hanging out in this one blindspot in the cameras, and it’s kinda freaking me out,” Jeremy said, scratching at the back of his neck.

Dad frowned. “Strange. I wasn’t aware that there were any blindspots in the cameras.”

“There’s only a few, and only for pretty small spaces I think? But apparently he just likes hanging out in one of them.” Jeremy scuffed his shoe on the ground, glancing over as voices started echoing down the hall towards them. “Just thought it was weird.”

“I’ll look into it,” Dad muttered, voice quiet, and then raised it again slightly. “I refuse to keep up with sports.”

“C’mon,” Jeremy said, knowing this game well, changing subjects into something more normal as people entered earshot. “I’m not even asking you to keep up with sports, I’m just saying, I’d kill to go to a baseball game right about now.”

“The American Pasttime!” Soldier called from the room over.

“Exactly,” Jeremy agreed, nodding at Soldier as he also entered the kitchen, a half-asleep Demoman in tow.

“Any ghosties or ghoulies on the cameras last night, lad?” Demo had enough energy to ask, blinking blearily at the contents of the fridge.

“Oh, a billion,” Jeremy said.

“Guard!” Soldier barked, the most awake person in the room. “Should these ghost-ghouls appear again, don’t be afraid to point me in their direction! I have significant experience with them already and do not fear the likes of them!”

“Yeah sure,” Jeremy shrugged.

“You’re a champion, Guard,” Demo said with what was either a really disoriented blink or a wink, slugging him on the shoulder and wandering back out into the common room with the entire carton of milk in his other hand. Jeremy gave him a mock-salute that Soldier copied with absolute conviction. He and Dad shared a glance after the two of them left, and Jeremy was the first one to break, snickering under his breath.

“I’ll look into it,” Dad said, and also left the kitchen, and Jeremy nodded and started trying to remember what else he’d been planning on doing before bed.

-

“So,” Dad said a few days later, materializing next to Jeremy when he was in the middle of his jog and making him almost jump out of his skin, skidding to a stop.

“You’re enjoying that new watch way too much,” Jeremy panted, out of breath and still very much startled.

“Maybe,” Dad said, and he was smiling. “But as I was saying.”

“All you said was ‘so’,” Jeremy pointed out, giving him a look.

“There’s a juvenile joke here about how I’m your father and so of course I say ‘so’, but if you wouldn’t mind it, I did have something important to say, mon lapin,” Dad replied, and Jeremy rolled his eyes hard at the horrible joke and cheesy name, fighting back a smile of his own.

“Go for it,” he said, and took the opportunity to bend and tighten his shoelaces.

“So. Regarding that Scout and his habits. You mentioned he spends time in blind spots of the cameras, oui?” Dad asked.

“Yeah. Keeps, uh, I guess he keeps getting infractions for going off base too much, too. I’ve logged him leaving like three times this week already,” Jeremy nodded.

“Indeed. Well, considering how new we are to the team, I did not want to jump to conclusions, and so contacted Miss Pauling and asked on your behalf for any older records, and I found out something very... intriguing.”

Jeremy looked up at him, blinking. ‘Intriguing’, historically, had always been a very, very bad thing.

“Apparently, it has been two years since they last had a Guard situated on base. The previous one was a much older gentleman, retired from being a full member of the team due to health complications but not entirely ready to part with the company. The previous guard was somewhat strict, and the Scout—the same as we have now—very much disliked the man. He continued acquiring near-constant infractions under the man’s watch for leaving when he was not meant to, so much so that the previous Guard proposed enstating trackers on the team when they went off-base. And before this policy could take hold, the previous Guard left the base one day and did not return, and finally was found dead a state over, one month later.”

Jeremy blinked once, twice. “Holy shit,” he said, and took note of the wary look on his face. “Okay. So we’re thinkin’ the same thing, right?”

“I would assume so. And…” Dad hesitated, moved to fidget with his cufflinks. “And I would not be particularly concerned about this, as I’m confident that you wouldn’t have gotten his attention from what you’ve been up to lately, and therefore wouldn’t be in danger yet should history attempt to repeat itself, but… he’s already taken a disliking to you.”

“What?” he asked, eyebrows shooting up.

“I believe it’s something as simple as some sort of shallow jealousy. Another American on the team, also relatively young, filling the position of someone he disliked previously. He regularly complains about the fact that you don’t need to go do the same job as the rest of us.” Dad shrugged, glanced over at him. “That, combined with the fact that you have somewhat conflicting duties, well, he tends to rather tetchy. He claims that considering he’s meant to be the first line of defense, they shouldn’t also need a guard at night.”

Jeremy had a number of opinions about that, but he stuck to the most relevant ones. “I really don’t like this guy,” he said. “Might be, uh. Worth keeping an eye on.”

“Agreed.” Dad glanced back over his shoulder towards the base, then at his watch. “Enjoy the rest of your run. Don’t forget to eat.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, hit the bricks already, old man,” Jeremy scoffed, waving him off, and Dad rolled his eyes, disappearing again in a cloud of smoke. “You’re gonna be using that thing all the damn time now, aren’t you?”

“Oui,” came a voice from nowhere, and Jeremy huffed a laugh, meandering his way back into the rest of his jog.

-

Jeremy hummed along to the radio, flicking between cameras on autopilot and wondering when exactly to take his lunch break.

He didn’t face the clock or anything, so he wasn’t sure, but he thought he had a pretty solid rhythm at that point. Click, click, click, between the camera to the road, the camera to the main entrance, and the camera in the hall towards the middle of the building, for about one second each. At just about any time after 11 or 11:30, those were the only three in real time that he needed to keep an eye on, mostly for people coming back late from bar hopping or if Miss Pauling was rolling in on a delivery. All the other cameras he could see out of the corner of his eye, and any movement he’d pick up on pretty quick, even if it was usually just the doves fluttering on the camera to the Medbay. After he cycled through those (and there was almost never anything there) he’d cycle back through to the tape he had in, put it on high speed, and watch it for about two or three minutes, get through a chunk of that time. Mostly he’d just be making sure nobody had been in the base while the team was away ni o(which indeed there never was), so there wasn’t much of a reason to take it off high speed, and the second part of the night would be watching the tapes for the time the team was back on base.

Movement on a camera made him click the pause, and he glanced off to the side. One of the doves had shuffled to face the other direction. He rolled his eyes, looking back at the bigger monitor again and pressing play.

The second half of the night was a little more interesting. He just had to look at the tapes for the time the team was there, check for discrepancies that might point to Dad messing with the disguise technology off-the-clock or the enemy Spy having infiltrated. For the most part things were straightforward, but he at least got to see his teammates up to funny things sometimes. Pyro’s antics were usually entertaining. Soldier he only caught some of, on the basis of him often walking off out of range of the cameras when he went on his excursions. Demo was funny sometimes. Honestly, just seeing the Sniper anywhere but as a fuzzy distant shape was interesting.

Movement on a camera. Same dove. He ignored it. Click, click, click, all three cameras clear, back to the fast-forward of the same empty hallway as before.

He really needed to figure something out, for the Scout. Maybe he and Dad were just being paranoid. It would be insane for him to try to outright kill anyone who inconvenienced him, not to mention reckless, and stupid to boot. Acting like that in their line of work would make him a lot of enemies extremely quickly. It would make more sense for the old Guard disappearing to be unrelated, to be honest.

Yeah. Hell, he barely knew the guy, and here he was assuming he’d straight up whacked a guy for getting a little too on his case about something. Maybe they were wrong.

Movement on a camera. He glanced over and froze outright.

It took him five seconds to come to his senses enough to pause the playback on his screen.

Figures. Shapes. Not at the front entrance, in the hallway, there next to the back way, by the garage. At least three, moving carefully, hard to make out in the darkness.

Okay. Okay, don’t panic, focus.

Jeremy ran through a few things in his head. He’d already done a headcount, the only people he wasn’t sure about were the Sniper and the Medic, but he hadn’t seen the Medic in any of the hallways out of the infirmary. Three figures were two too many to be any of the team, and besides that, they didn’t look like the Medic. Too short to be the Sniper, moving differently. Different clothes.

Three people. He hopped up, rushed over to the wall, yanked open the panel he had there. Three buttons, which he needed to hit in order. The first would send an alert to Miss Pauling, the second to whoever was assigned to be on alert that night, the third would set off the alarm.

He hit the first, hit the second, and hesitated on the third.

Okay. Technically if he didn’t hit that third button, he’d be breaking protocol, which was, according to the manual, ‘grounds for termination’. He was pretty sure that meant a long swim with some concrete shoes. And it was apparently recorded every time he hit these buttons, so they could deduct from his pay on false alerts. So they’d know if he didn’t hit this third button. He needed to think fast.

This was a different button than the alert button. The alert was more subtle, set for just one person. The alarm was throughout the entire base, over every loudspeaker. Louder than a fire alarm. If he hit this one, these intruders would hear that there was an alarm going off. Anyone smart would book it, high tail it the hell out of there. But he still didn’t know where they came from.

There hadn’t been movement on any of the screens, and he looked at the camera feed facing the road already, a few times even. He should’ve seen them. And if they found their way in once, they could do it again.

If he didn’t hit the button, on the other hand, whoever was on alert would wake up and wonder why they’d gotten an alert but the alarm wasn’t going off. If they were clever, which they probably were if they’d lasted this long, they’d come to the security room to see what was up and they could work from there.

He closed the panel again and moved to wait.

A minute later, still no movement from the hallway where most of the rooms were. That was fine, they’d just woken up, and probably needed to get dressed and grab their guns.

Another minute later, no movement, which was fair, they just needed a second to get their bearings. The intruders, meanwhile, were just lurking, slowly making their way down the hall.

Another minute later, no movement, and he opened the panel to press the button again before he continued waiting. Maybe they didn’t hear him the first time.

Another minute later and he took to standing next to the panel, mashing the button rapidly, eyes on the screen where the intruders were passing the kitchen, starting to get pretty far into the building.

Another minute later and he stomped his way into his sneakers, grabbing his flashlight and gun and guard cap from where they were hung on the wall. “Fine, I’ll fucking do it myself,” he grumbled, and carefully shouldered open the door, taking one last glance at the camera before he shut the door behind himself.

He kept his footsteps quiet, squinting into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to finish adjusting as he crept towards where he’d last seen the figures. It was near-silent in the base at night except for the distant, quiet hum of generators and occasional shift of plumbing. It was getting more and more familiar, and he found himself able to tune it out somewhat, instead listening intently for footsteps besides his own, making sure to click the safety off his gun while he was still alone and not when he was close to whoever had decided to break in.

Okay. Dad did this all the time. He could handle this.

He slowed as he approached the corner near the kitchen, peering around as carefully as he could, tugging down the brim of his cap to try and hide any potential shine from his eyes. He caught sight of a vague shape standing near the doorway, hesitating before it crept inside, into the common area.

Not ideal, on the basis of that being their goddamn kitchen, but at least there would be cover.

By the time he managed to sneak up to the doorway, he could make out the sound of vague whispering. It was far enough that it gave him the boldness to peer into the room, and just slightly lit by the glow of the clock on the oven he could see two shapes there in the kitchen, the third lingering nearer to him, there by the table.

Jeremy was only just starting to make a plan, relieved to have the jump on them, when there was the distant sound of a generator humming to life, and all the figures stopped, paused for a moment.

“Fucking spooky here,” one whispered, barely audible.

“Calm down,” another whispered. “What, scared of ghosts?”

Jeremy inhaled, exhaled, shifted onto the balls of his feet and started creeping a little further into the room. If he could just get all three of them to one side, so he wouldn’t need to pivot so much…

“You don’t know, maybe there’s ghosts here,” the first protested, and swore quietly at what sounded like their winging their elbow against the corner of the tale, and Jeremy tried to stick near the wall, managed to creep half-behind one of the chairs, trying to keep his silhouette indistinct. “These guys kill people.”

“So do we,” the third mumbled, moving out of sight in the kitchen, and Jeremy bit down on a swear, starting to inch behind the couch. “Don’t be a coward. And stop making so much noise.”

“You can’t shoot a ghost,” the first pointed out, moving a bit closer to the kitchen, giving the table a wide berth now. “Or punch it.”

“I can try,” the second said, and stopped at the sound of a rustle.

Jeremy held his breath, weight half-balanced against where he’d tried to step, newspaper trapped beneath his foot.

“That one wasn’t me,” the first whispered. There was another, more significant rustle throughout the room, and Jeremy could see a glint as the intruders drew their weapons.

Jeremy inhaled, exhaled, and just barely managed not to swear out loud.

The first one was the closest by, lingering beside the arm of the couch Jeremy was crouched in the shadow of. “Do they have a cat here?” they asked, voice quiet.

The second was approaching into the main room more carefully. From the sound of the footsteps, trying to keep a shoulder closer to the wall, clearly paying more attention to the door. “Are you stupid or something?” was the reply, voice also quiet.

The third didn’t speak, but huffed out a laugh, which was enough to tell Jeremy that he was out of the kitchen.

Jeremy inhaled shakily, exhaled shakily, shifted his grip on his handgun and flashlight, and took a split second to think. Inhaled one more time.

He leapt to his feet, swinging his flashlight like a billy club and clobbering the first figure across the side of the head, sending them tumbling to the ground. From the sound of the impact, a dislocated jaw at the very least. One down.

A shout from the other side of the room, arms moving to try to aim, clearly struggling to see him, but that third figure was in the doorway, silhouetted against the faint light from the oven’s clock, and that was enough to figure out where the head and chest were. He aimed, fired, got what he was pretty sure was the neck considering the brief spray of blood that splattered against the oven, darkening the room completely.

A swear from the second figure, and Jeremy wanted to swear too, because he’d hoped that second figure would be stupid and try and charge him, but now he was ten steps away and didn’t have time to fiddle with and cock the gun again, other hand full with a flashlight and no way to—

Oh, duh.

“Stay where you are,” the second figure ordered, but Jeremy’s eyes were a little better adjusted and besides that, he wasn’t the one talking. He lifted his flashlight and clicked it on.

The second figure cried out, recoiling at the sudden blindingly bright light in what had been near-darkness, and Jeremy had time to finagle his thumb up to cock his gun again, now able to aim with absolute accuracy, this shot connecting with the figure’s head.

He exhaled.

It took Jeremy two minutes to remember to fire a bullet into the chest of the unconscious guy, and another minute for the other mercenaries to start showing up, half-dressed and armed. Dad, presumably to prove a point, showed up pretty close to the middle of the pack almost fully dressed. Jeremy wasn’t entirely sure how long it took before Miss Pauling showed up, but he wasn’t even halfway through their questions by that time.

“Guard, headcount?” she asked before she even bothered saying hello, still wearing her motorcycle helmet and looking more than a little bit miffed.

“Uh,” he said, eyes drawn away from where Medic was assessing the bodies on the kitchen table, “seven present and accounted for. Sniper’s probably out at his van, don’t know about the Scout.”

“Alright. Pyro,” she said, and Pyro stood at attention, bunny slippers squeaking at the movement. “go wake up Sniper and get him in here.”

Pyro nodded, handing their weird unicorn plushie thing to Jeremy as they passed by, giving him a solemn nod before hurrying away.

“Okay. Guard, hit me with a rundown, then,” she said, and shot a glance around the room. “No peanut gallery needed. And Medic, please don’t take them apart too much. I gotta get rid of those later.”

“Uh. Spotted these guys on the cameras, hit the first and second alerts,” Jeremy said.

“And not the third?” she asked pointedly.

“They were, like, right next to the door, and—here’s the thing, Miss P, is I dunno how the hell they got in here,” he said, and there was a general balk from the room. “No, seriously. They didn’t come in on the main road, they were in one of the back hallways by the garage. There’s gotta be a hole in the cameras or something, because I seriously don’t know where they came from. And if they booked it, they’d take whatever vehicle they used to get here, too, and we might not figure it out. Thought I’d just wait for whoever the hell was supposed to be on alert so we could… I dunno, at least see which way they went.”

“Guard,” she admonished, and he shrank a little bit. “That was incredibly reckless. What if nobody had shown up to help you?”

“Uh,” he said, blinked, “but… nobody did show up.”

A pause. She blinked. “What? You’re the one who did that?” she asked, entirely shocked, pointing towards the three bodies on the table.

“Uh, yeah? Isn’t that my job?” he asked carefully, shifting the stuffed animal under his arm.

“No, you’re—you’re just supposed to be the Guard, you’re supposed to watch cameras, not—“ She paused, taking a second to push up her glasses and rub at the bridge of her nose, inhaling, exhaling. “Okay. Points for… going above and beyond, here, but Guard, don’t do that again.”

“Sure thing, Miss P,” he mumbled, tugging on the brim of his guard cap, and sighed to himself as Miss Pauling moved away to try and stop Medic from attempting to covertly steal a few organs from the corpses. Dad clapped him on the shoulder supportively, and that did make him feel a little better. He wasn’t expecting a clap to the other shoulder, and looked up, surprised to see Heavy there, looking just slightly less grim than usual.

“Little Guard man is credit to team,” he said simply, solemnly.

Jeremy straightened up slightly. “Oh. Hey, thanks,” he said. Heavy nodded at him.

“It’s true,” Demo called, and he looked over, got another approving nod. “Really saved the lot of us, lad.”

“I, I mean, hey, it’s… what I’m here for. Or, uh. I thought that was it, anyways,” he shrugged, glancing away. “I mean, yeah, I’m pretty cool, though.”

Dad bumped his arm for the last part, and he snickered. “My question,” Dad continued, doing his best to ignore him, “is primarily regarding who, precisely, was supposed to be present to help Guard with this. Who is meant to be on alert?”

“It’s meant to be Scout, ain’t it?” the Engineer asked from nearby, frowning. A general murmur of agreement. “Could he have slept through it?”

“Heavy doubts this,” Heavy grumbled, looking troubled.

“Why’re we awake?” asked Sniper from the doorway, and various teammates called out a greeting. Sniper seemed half-gone, and completely grumpy, but not as grumpy as Pyro, and not nearly as gone as the man leaning heavily against Pyro’s shoulder.

“Hey,” the Scout managed, grinning, speech garbled, visibly sloppy and unbalanced. “What’s up, guys?”

Groans from parts of the room. “Drinkin’ again, Scout?” the Engineer drawled, visibly irritated.

“That’s my trademark, lad, go on,” Demo laughed, but the enthusiasm wasn’t entirely there.

“Scout,” Miss Pauling said, voice firm in a way that made Jeremy almost flinch in sympathy. “Are you aware that we’ve had a situation here while you’ve been sleeping?”

“Weren’t sleeping,” Sniper murmured, and eyes turned to him. He scratched at the back of his neck. “Came stumbling in ‘round when I was heading in. He was out for the night. Bar, looks like.”

“What?” Jeremy demanded. “Why the fuck didn’t I see him leave on the cameras?”

“Alright,” Miss Pauling said, and Jeremy looked at her. Her expression was hard to read. “It’s possible he went through the back tunnel.”

“Back tunnel?” Jeremy asked, and glanced around. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t heard of it.

“For emergencies only. Scout’s the only one who I’ve given a key card to. I have one too. It’s supposed to be used for transporting especially sensitive information, most of the team isn’t supposed to even know it exists. If there’s a gap in the cameras around the back of the building, he might have been using it to… sneak out to go to town, even though he knows he’s already in hot water for leaving the base so much,” Miss Pauling said, glaring at Scout, who was looking increasingly annoyed.

“Whatever, it’s not a big deal,” he protested, scoffing.

“That tunnel is for emergencies only,” Miss Pauling stressed. “I trusted you with the privilege of knowing about it account of having worked here for so long, and you’re using that privilege and key card to mess around?”

“He was coming back from around the front of the building, at least,” Sniper chimed in, and Pyro nodded. “Not that I’d understand the point of sneaking out if he’s going to just walk back in the front door.”

“Key card?” Medic repeated from near the table, eyebrows furrowed.

“Yeah, it’s, it’s a magnetized card, that can be read by a card reader, used like a key,” Miss Pauling explained, deflating a little bit.

His eyebrows furrowed further. “Would it happen to look anything like this?” he asked, picking up a lanyard from the table and holding it up, showing the room the card clipped onto the end of it.

Two beats of silence. “Spy, would you mind?” Miss Pauling asked politely, nodding towards the Scout, who had gone pale.

“Not at all,” Dad said just as politely, and walked over towards the Scout and Pyro, then circled around behind them, and sank a blade into the Scout’s spine. He promptly crumbled to the floor, dead.

“Well. At least that’s that mystery solved,” Miss Pauling sighed, and rubbed at the bridge of her nose again. “Now I’ve gotta block off time tomorrow to get rid of three bodies, and then hopefully that’s the last we’re gonna hear of this or else the Administrator is gonna kill me.”

“What about the Scout?” Heavy rumbled.

“…Scratch that. Four bodies,” she mumbled, face dropping into her hands. “And then I need to find his replacement. Ugh.”

“Can’t imagine you’d need to go far,” Demo said, and Jeremy looked up, and Demo was very obviously tilting a thumb in his direction.

“He’s proven himself to be better at this job,” Dad agreed, shrugging. “And I would say on a bad day he’s still a better runner than the previous Scout on a good one.”

“He can clearly handle a firearm well,” the Engineer noted, looking over one of the bodies.

“And a blunt object,” Medic chimed, just a bit too pleased. “This jaw is almost completely shattered!”

“Okay, okay, fine, sure,” Miss Pauling waved off, one hand still pressed to her face, clearly overwhelmed and tired. “We’ll get his paperwork in tomorrow. Congratulations, you’re the new Scout, any questions? Can the questions wait until morning? Great, thank you. Good night, everyone. Medic, have the bodies in bags for me at least, okay?”

A distracted thumbs up from Medic, and Miss Pauling was groaning, wandering back out of the room, and most of the team followed, yawning amongst themselves. Sniper half-attempted to ask again why the hell any of them were awake, but gave up halfway through. Pyro, for one, made sure to at least retrieve the plushie from Scout’s arms before wandering off, giving him an appreciative pat on the shoulder.

“So,” Dad said, and when he looked over, he was smiling. “A promotion, mon lapin. Congratulations, new Scout.”

“Do I gotta wear that stupid outfit he always wears?” Jeremy asked, entirely serious. His reply was a laugh and a pat on the shoulder before he disappeared in a puff of smoke. “Pops, I’m serious. Do I? Dad!?”

-

“—So that’s why I figured, y’know, might as well tell you guys,” Jeremy finished rambling, hands in his pockets, continuing down the hallway. “Because… I dunno. I could tell Miss P, but it’s nice having secret stuff, y’know?”

“You think this is how they actually got in?” Demo asked, looking dubious. “Little blind spot in the cameras?”

“Only a couple feet wide, you said?” Sniper grumbled.

“Sounds possible,” Heavy said hesitantly.

“I dunno. Maybe. But if I tell Miss P about it, they’re gonna fix it,” Jeremy shrugged, turning the corner and stopping. “There. I knew it.”

They stopped with him, following his line of sight. “You’re takin’ the piss, mate,” Sniper deadpanned. “You want to tell me he’d been climbing out a window like a teenager?”

Jeremy shrugged, moving to open the window in question. It swung open easily, just large enough to push through with only a little bit of a problem, barely needing to turn his shoulders. “He’s not much bigger than me, and what the hell else would he be doing here?” he pointed out.

“Heavy cannot fit through that window,” Heavy deadpanned.

“Yeah. Sorry, big guy,” Jeremy apologized, leaning back inside and closing it again. “But hey, mystery solved, right?”

“Well, if I ever need windows to climb out of, now I know just the lad for the job,” Demo said, nudging him. “Thanks, Guard. Or, er, Scout. Och, now that’s going to take getting used to, aye? Might just stick to calling you ‘laddie’, laddie.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he laughed, nudging him right back. And as much as they ribbed him for it, he did see a kind of appreciation there. Just like he’d figured, they seemed to take note of him taking their side and not just Miss Pauling’s.

Now he just needed to switch back over to the day shift.

[tarantulas4davey]

HELLO BESTIE I am currently having Ralbert Brainrot and you're the best person go come to for this, obviously,, so PLEASE share! I would like to hear about ufc albert or youtuber race, or dancing partners!! I love them smm

HI YES HELLO USING THIS AS AN EXCUSE TO WRITE UFC FIGHTER AL PART 2 THANKS BABES

i just witnessed a literal crime and i’m Feeling The Rage (boxing judges at mma events can catch these hands) so here is. my brain on anger.

also the first half of this is pretty fight-talk heavy but the second half is more al/ralbert central so message me/send me an ask if i don’t explain something well enough <3

here is the ask i sent to @we-are-inevitable (thanks jac i’m in love with you mwah) and here is part 1 for this au if you haven’t read that one yet !!

also,,,,, this is fairly obvious. but trigger warning for violence/physical fighting, as well as blood. (it’s a rough gig y’all fjdhdb) oh and swearing but that’s pretty much just me LMAO

here i am, bein mad and writing ralbert. therapy time with chandler ig

OK SO

this is after his debut. duh. continuation

i think he’s probably 5 fights in with 5 wins. he’s been running people through, especially with four full camps after a short notice start, and he’s never even seen a decision in the ufc

let’s just say the hype train is moving FAST and it’s moving LOUD

everyone has to have those people that watch their fights just to see them lose, on top of the majority male fan base that have to have a little bit of toxic masculinity and homophobia in there

so there’s A LOT of people that are waiting for him and his hype train to get derailed. but there’s also a fair amount of fans, so you win some you lose some (the way i would die to see this be a real fighter pls)

now albert’s not always the most confident guy, and he’s never been cocky, but none of this shit gets to him. he’s got his coaches, he’s got his friends and he’s got race behind him. he knows he’s got the skills, and he’s got his support system, so who gives a shit what a bunch of cowards on the internet have to say?

and then they put him against someone known for his grappling and stamina. and the “it’s a wrap for dasilva!” bandwagon starts. it happens every time a rising striker and early knockout artist fights a well known grappler with any semblance of later round power (even if al has a background in wrestling and has gone 5 rounds and won outside of the ufc. it’s a bandwagon for a reason)

and it’s not Upsetting, it’s not really getting into his head in any way that’ll make him do worse, but it’s kinda pissing him off. which is bad for his opponent

the last person on earth you want to be fighting is an annoyed albert dasilva who thinks he has something to prove

he works his ass off in camp, and the press tour is a self-assured albert vs. a loudmouth who thinks he’s hot shit cause a few people on twitter think he’ll sweep

and, to be completely honest? it’s starting to look that way 2 rounds in.

it’s a 5 round fight, co-main event on a big card, and so far all al’s opponent has done is pinned him to the cage and kept him there. a few strikes worth anything - at least enough make al’s cheek bleed, no takedowns, which would at least give him some activity, and so submission attempts, so he can’t even gain any ground that way. he’s just- Stuck. and if THIS is how he loses, he’s gonna be pissed

the bell for the second round sounds, and you can actually see al’s chest heaving on camera as he walks to his corner - not because he’s tired or out of breath, but because he’s MAD, and fuck if he’s not going to do something about it

not only that, but he can not only see race and jack standing up by the cage - plus race’s expression, which is slightly annoyed and super anxious, which hurts his chest to think about - but he can hear them too

jack is yelling profanities, as per usual. he doesn’t that regardless of how the fight is going, but it’s less encouraging when you’re the one losing.

race though,,,, race isn’t really yelling, he’s more talking to himself than anything, but he’s close enough to cage and al knows him well enough to figure out what he’s saying. and if the muttered almost-prayers while he paces back and forth weren’t enough, the shiny gold engagement ring on race’s hand definitely is

round 3,,,, let’s just say it goes a little differently than the first 2 had gone.

he opens with a spinning back kick, of all fucking things, and that truly sets the pace

he’s the taller guy by a few inches, like usual, which makes his arms longer. the only reason crushing his against the cage worked is cause the guy he’s fighting cuts weight like a wrestler, so he’s easily got 20 pounds on albert come fight night

but once he finds his rhythm and starts throwing, he starts connecting too. he manages to stay out of range of his opponent and stay his comfortable distance to start t-ing off

this isn’t a one punch power ending. this isn’t a beautiful head kick, or a giant knee, or even just a clean right hook.

this is albert, who’s arms are starting to feel the 3rd round a little bit, hitting this guy with everything he has cause he refuses to lose this fight.

i mean- everyone watched him get up at the start of the round with a set jaw and a scary determined glint in his eye. he’s not a person you fuck with, and he’s definitely not a person you publicly ridicule before being locked in a cage to fight with

the guy he’s fighting is absolutely battered, but he manages to survive until round 4. the first of the championship rounds, something al’s never seen in a ufc fight before, and it feels like the arena is holding its breath

so when al comes out and does the same thing as round 3 to better results - fight ending results - everyone’s a little shocked, honestly

the commentary team’s in disbelief, cause albert is NOT a slow starter, regardless of what this fight would tell you, and the fact he managed a win at all, let alone such a phenomenal one, is fucking astounding

he gets his hand raised, obviously, but the really interesting part is the post fight interview

“albert, man, what changed between round 2 and 3? what second gear did you find?”

“bro, i just— it was pissing me off, honestly. i don’t come in here to get pinned down for 25 minutes. and, y’know, my team gave me good advice. i had all the pieces, straight from the jump, someone just had to force me to put them in place…”

and then he looks over at race, who gives al one of those half grin, half smirks and winks at him, and al just chuckles to himself and finishes answering the question

“the thing that really forced my hand is race. i won’t get cheesy on you, but watching someone who loves and supports you through everything panic cause he’s scared for you - it’s a big motivator. everyone would figure out a lot more of my motivations if they went and watched race’s expressions back instead of whatever the hell i’m doing in here. he’s always been the brains, i’m just the brawn.”

and that’s a better answer than anyone was expecting, plus he’s just had the fight of a lifetime that’s probably earned him a title shot, so he’s done soon after that and gets to have his little in-cage celebration

he hugs his team and jack, who razzes him a little bit as per usual, and makes some dumb quip about going over tapes later like he’s a coach. and then comes race

he hugs him, all tender and cute and also very sweaty cause That’s How It Works, and the camera’s focused on him, so they can tell they’re whispering back and forth. but there’s no mics on them, so what’s said is missed entirely on the audience, but it’s their usual cheesy, in love mess

“congrats, baby. i’m proud of you.”

“oh please. it was 90% you anyway. i meant what i said, it wasn’t just for the cameras.”

“i know that. i’m gonna have to get you back somehow for telling everyone to go back and watch my awful anxious expression. i’ll think of something.”

“i’m sure you will, sweetheart.”

and then al does that awful, adorable lil nose bump thing, and then kisses race. and then jack covers his eyes and whines until they stop like the actual 12 year old boy he is inside

and then they leave the octagon, race and al holding hands, and al throws his arm over jack’s shoulder and shoves his head down and pushes him, cause even though he was just in a literal cage match he’s still a roughhousing teenager at heart

and he’s got interviews and press shit that separates him from his people, and he’s gotta slide that bulletproof mask back down over all the happy and in love shit he’s feeling so he can not smile like an idiot on camera constantly

but every once in awhile he’ll catch jack giving him the finger and laugh before returning it below view of the camera

or he’ll catch race’s eye from where he’s standing behind all the studio lights and do a little wave under the camera and return the wink from earlier, and the unbothered fighter facade will crack a little bit

but he’s not completely convinced that’s such a bad thing

GOD THIS POST IS SO MUCH LONGER THEN I MEANT IT TO BE IM SORRY

but Yeah. Them.

i love this au a helleva lot more than i should but that’s Fine cause i’ve got thoughts for days on it

[4dtk]

stuck with you

pairing: enemy!journalist!haechan x journalist!reader

genre: angst, fluff, humour, enemies to lovers (hope i did the trope justice tbh TT)

warnings: cursing, f words lmao, i mention stranger things a lot in this??? mainly bc i just finished watching it w a friend. i also only use ‘haechan’ when narrating the story so i don’t get confused! the timeline for this is Very Weird as well bc like i didn’t consider how long a pandemic would last…… so Uhm. pls just excuse the weird ass time sequence. also referenced yangyang’s bastard child behaviour from dream plan where he packs his things messily and kun had to mf intervene and yangyang had the audacity to go like “see, this is how u get ppl to pack for you, now i don’t have to do anything” 💀

word count: 8k (a headache to proofread...)

A/N: first time trying an e2l trope and im not sure if it was done ok??? i didn't want it to feel too rushed so i tried to spread out the days as much as i could!! i also included small snippets of their life w the other so it won’t seem like the fic is just focusing on the e2l concept! was inspired tons by the lyrics of stuck with u by ariana grande and jb, so that song is definitely something you can listen to if you read this! hope you enjoy ^^

[day 1]

"you're insufferable," you groan, reluctantly handing over the remote control for the hotel's television after some unsuccessful scrolling.

hotels never exactly had much range anyway. 

you were very much already dreading the time ahead with the male, sadly having been stuck in quarantine not even half a day with haechan. 

offering to go to a neighbouring country to report on the rising covid-19 situation, you didn't expect your rival to tag along, no doubt seeking to craft up a better story than you would.

and so, you were now nudging the remote control into his waiting palm with a roll of your eyes. you hoped it emphasised your annoyance with him even a little, standing up to prepare a cup of tea before bed. 

"are you going to keep watching television while i sleep?" you ask a genuine question, peeking at him through the mirror of the vanity that sat outside the bathroom.

he just shrugs with a tired sigh, turning his attention back to the cartoon playing in front of him. 

"okay, well, keep to your side of the bed and i'll stay in mine. we need to be social distancing, anyway."

there's a hint of "okay, loser" mumbled under his breath, but you pay it no thought as you finish your tea and brush your teeth before you skillfully set up a fortress made out of pillows.

"ow! what the hell?" 

"your leg was in the way, jeez! move it, and i'll stop annoying you," you said, putting up the last of your requested pillows beside where haechan currently sat. 

taking one last glance at haechan, you wondered when the lockdown in your country would last before they start letting people fly in. for now, you were trapped with the nightmare himself in a sad hotel room, with only a bed to share.

"goodnight," he tells you, but the sardonic way he says it irks you to the point where you settle for silence instead. the only thing that drones on are the voices of the cartoon, soon fading as you feel into a dreamless sleep.

[day 4]

"this virus thing is probably driving me insane by day, and you, lee haechan, are adding on to it!"

"no headlines, no idea what style to write in, minimal pictures-" the doorbell to the hotel room interrupts your current rant, prompting you to storm off to answer the call with an annoyed look. 

"what now?" taken aback by your quick response, the housekeeping girl retracts with downturned eyebrows and a voice hesitant to speak. your roommate comes to the rescue almost immediately when he's heard the commotion.

you watch as he sends her a smile and a wink, deflating when he's let her in to clean up the room. you're not sure why you can't keep your eyes off the both of them as they converse, blaming it mostly on your hatred for the male.

with the last of her duties fulfilled, you offer to help her with the cleaning supplies as an apology, but she cuts you off almost immediately. there's a linger in her step, however, as she walks the short hallway to the door, evident in wanting haechan to send her off as he received her.

turning back to call him, he holds up a hand as he types down his opening lines to an article, prompting you to shoot the housekeeper girl another apologetic look.

"sorry again," you mumble, letting out a sigh at how this was all playing out. day four and you were already making enemies with the hotel crew.

"maybe day forty-one is where i fall in love with lee haechan," you scoffed, perhaps listing down all the unfortunate things that could happen while you were in quarantine.

one of them was catching feelings for your rival.

rolling your eyes, you settled on the bed to catch a few Zs as he continued to work on his article, though you weren't exactly sure about the weight your words held.

[day 9]

"haechan, what is this?" you ask with an eyebrow raised, his dirty boxers barely hanging off your finger. 

haechan only groans at that, knowing you were relentless in the laundry. even in a pandemic, he was sure you'd prioritise your clothes first.

"jesus! don't go picking up my underwear just like that!" he snatches it from you, folding it neatly and placing it next to where his luggage sat. unfortunately, yours was right beside his. 

"you think just because you're doing the laundry you're able to look through a man's prized possessions-!"

your jaw drops, "it was near the sink, haechan! i don't want to look at the checkered pattern on your boxers when i brush my teeth. i don't want it near my face either." 

haechan groans yet again, running a hand through his hair in frustration before turning back to the computer, a blank document opened up in front of him.

despite gathering findings, interviewing healthcare workers and serving the public alongside frontline staff, he had deleted every attempt at writing.

there's a rumble from the bathroom, perhaps from your upset stomach or the choked pipe, but sometimes they sounded too similar he couldn't tell it apart. haechan stifles a laugh when there's a "fuck!" echoing behind the door, though unsure if he should help you or not.

when haechan hears another crash, he comes running without hesitation with a face morphed into furrowed eyebrows and a tilt of the head.

"don't just stand there, you moron!" 

haechan snaps out of his daze to assist you off the floor, swiftly helping you even more off the floor as he carries you to the bed with a stiff one arm. you notice his other hand hanging awkwardly, probably not knowing what to do with it before you feel the soft sheets under your butt.

he gets to work within a minute, fishing for an ointment and some bandages his mother forced him to bring. he remembers it as he always has: a caring mother looking out for her son, maybe a little too much sometimes. 

haechan is thankful for his mother, now, for the stray bandages laying around in his pouch.

you watch in silence as he cleans the cut with alcohol, wincing when his hand hadn't even touched your skin.

"my hand isn't even on your skin yet! jeez, calm down." 

you shake your head, holding onto his bicep to halt his arm, "just use water, please."

exhaling in exasperation, you wonder if you've pissed him off tenfold when he leaves for the bathroom with a side-eyed glance, though not hostile.

"problematic," haechan whispers, dabbing a wet cloth over the wound carefully before applying the ointment and securing the bandages. 

"your words contradict your actions so much, haechan. i never know what you're thinking." sighing, you pull your leg away from his hold after he's done with the bandages, making your way to the bathroom and leaving him in his thoughts.

"why do you want to know?"

haechan gets silence; the lock of the bathroom audibly turns to signal another wall put up between the two of you. with another frustrated groan, the boy plops down on the chair to work on his article with the right words forming in his mind.

even if he was the one who asked, he wasn't sure if he was ready to tell you.

[day 13]

"stranger things is freaking me the fuck out, man!" haechan whispered, ignoring your pleads and groans to continue writing. 

"haechan! give me the damn laptop! i don't even know why you brought an HDMI cable when it doesn't work with the television system here!"

"well, we got one that matches it, didn't we?" he said, eyes peeled to the screen that showed the young boy, will, in the upside-down.

"you mean you did!" you shoved him, ready to disconnect the devices before haechan held you back, clearly entranced by the next sequence of eleven being able to see will in a pool of salt. 

"ugh, god, i don't even know why people watch the show!" you spill with sourness, knowing the show was praised for its excellent acting and writing.

haechan raises an eyebrow, turning to you with a strangely slow speed. 

"stranger things have received multiple awards, and you didn't give any other reason. are you scared?"

when you struggle to find words, haechan laughs at his revelation, hiding his pearly whites behind his hand as he continues to make fun of you.

"yeah yeah, i'm scared! so what?" 

"'oh haechan! oh no~ i'm terrified, would you care to provide some comfort?' jeez, don't worry, man, i'll protect you." there's a cheeky glimmer in his eyes and a cocky smirk on his face which you very much want to wipe off with the disinfectant in the toilet.

"it's not all that bad, c'mon! give it a-" turning back to the tv, the sudden attack of the demogorgon lashing out at the camera has the male screaming, hiding behind your body in fear.

"you were saying, mr superman?" you deadpan, unlatching his arms around your waist as you sink deeper into the sheets with your phone in hand.

[day 17]

haechan thrashes in his sleep, almost knocking the wine glass you had in your hands when he crosses over the pillow barrier you made. 

"what in the hell-" you winced, keeping an eye on the male should he have any more outbursts that would ruin both wine night and the stuff you were working on for the article. 

with tipsy hands, your keyboard keys unconsciously write out a letter of disdain and confusion regarding haechan, the boy sleeping next to you with a cute drooling face and curly hair.

with beautiful tan skin like that, you wondered why he didn't model instead. with a voice as impressive as his, you wondered why he didn't sign a contract. with natural hosting capabilities, you wondered why didn't fucking get the place of a talk show host. 

because man, he can get pretty bothersome sometimes.

[day 20]

the next few days pass by with a breeze.

despite not knowing how the current pandemic will turn out, you find haechan more bearable, his habits being dumped in the past with a wave of a hand.

petty arguments occur, of course, until one of you brushes off the matter like nothing.

today was one of the days you won't back down.

there's worry evident on your face, eyes scanning through every last document on the stupid laptop. fingers travel fast over the keyboard as the realisation slowly dawns on you. 

with slumped shoulders, you take a deep breath before turning to the male.

"what do you mean you accidentally deleted my article? i know we're sharing the damn laptop, but we established that you stay on your files and i stay on mine."

the other waved his hand, "i did not touch any of your files, (y/n), i'm not sure what happened."

"how could you not know? what the hell? i had good content on it, but now i have to spend more hours reorganising the news and interview answers and everything else in my notes. thanks, lee haechan."

"maybe if you weren't so caught up in me trying to sabotage your place in the publication team, then you would've believed me." he shrugged, taking a seat on the one bed like nothing.

you scoffed, arms crossing across your body. "funny how you mention sabotage because a villain never reveals their motive. that's why you came with me, didn't you?"

haechan stuck his tongue out to the side of his mouth, eyes blinking and rolling like an 8-ball that it sickened you to the core.

"villain? i'm the villain?"

"was i not clear?" you hiss, stepping closer to the male.

"no, make it more precise, please. i wanna hear it word for word. spit it out, coward."

with every word, you plunged your finger into his chest, looking deep into his eyes. "you're set out to take my place for department editor, where you know i'm best at."

"and that department would be...?" he crossed his arms, looking down at you with scorn you wished you could slap off his face.

"the..." you gulp with his face all up in yours, eyes boring as he awaits your answer, no doubt losing confidence at your realisation.

"the world depart...ment? you love to travel, right?" you trail off, biting your lip in anxiety when you remember how he was on the plane. you don't exactly remember whether he was more excited or scared.

"wrong! try again."

"politics?" you propose.

haechan's face contorts into disbelief, with his mouth twisted with perplex and eyebrows furrowed. "me? politics?"

your mouth runs dry at the roadblock you've faced, and as that annoying, stupid smirk grows, your hatred for him increases by the charts.

"naming departments i'd rather die than join, running your mouth, accusing me of deleting your files..." haechan shakes his head dramatically, rolling his eyes and letting out a fat sigh.

"you think i wanna be stuck here with your infuriating ass? god, you're so entitled, aren't you? aren't you?!"

"talking like you own the place, talking like you're the only one in this world, talking like- mhfh-"

within three angry steps, you were across the room.

within three booming steps, your hands were on his face.

within three significant steps, you were kissing lee haechan.

"you never learn to shu..." with horror, you're brought back from the trance with widened eyes.

"oh, god, sorry. what. what the hell. what the fuck?" you whisper, pushing the boy away with both hands in a panic, trying to highlight your scorn for him by wiping your lips on your sleeve.

had you liked it?

the other scurried to the balcony in a frenzy while you collected yourself in the bathroom, although no amount of water could calm your nerves. 

with shaky words in bed, you both agreed to never talk about it again.

[day 25]

"hey, i can see your damn annotations on my article, (y/n). will you stop it?" haechan whines, making you second guess if he was joking or not.

for the nth time that day, you roll your eyes and proceed to sip from your cup of gin tonic that haechan desperately wanted you to try. it was... a refreshing taste, but hell, you wouldn't drink this even if it was the last beverage on earth.

"i'm just giving my feedback, be thankful i didn't bring up that stupid kiss five days ago. bleugh." 

haechan falls quiet at that, fingers lingering over the keyboard as he typed out some note with the speed of a sloth's. 

"hey, call me donghyuck. that's my actual name," he mumbles, glancing at you through his bangs while he awaits your reply.

"donghyuck? is haechan an alias?"

the boy shrugs, "i don't know, maybe. my friends gave it to me when i was younger, and i just stuck with it."

"full sun? your friend gave it to you, sure." you grin with a gesture of your hand, almost spilling the gin in the clear glass before breaking into small laughter with the other.

[day 28]

"hey! hey, what the hell?" you whisper, feeling the boy huddle up to you in lightning speed. 

"what is wrong with you?" you whisper-shout, nudging him off your body as his phone screen remains as the only thing illuminating his face.

"sorry, i- i was watching stranger things while i was shitting and after i cleaned up... i heard something and bolted out of there."

"so now you're butt naked? hyuck, ew!" you groan, thankful for the sheets that were covering your body and his junk. his reluctance to get off you didn't seem to bother you as much as earlier, but you still wished he wasn't literally naked against you.

"go put on your underwear, you big baby. i'll be here when you come out. no demogorgon is going to come out, for real."

"no no, i was watching season two and it was that big shadow thingy that freaked me out. can't you feel this poor boy shivering?" haechan sighed, eyes never leaving the corridor that led to the bathroom.

"i can, and i also can feel your dick. please get dressed, or you're sleeping on the floor," you mumble, pulling the sheets to cover your freezing body.

[day 31] 

your face hits something soft, cuddling into it even further because of its warmth before you realise there was only one other thing that would be warm in the room.

haechan.

your breath shakes, and your eyes widen as you pull yourself away from his embrace. your subtle movement leaves him thrashing around, though, and his arms tighten around your figure slowly and endearingly.

gulping, you will your hands to stay in their place, opting to freeze to death although there are hints of heat crawling onto your face.

when you wake up, you find that his hand's in yours and maybe you were searching for one wrong thing. an anomaly, an exception. it fit in yours perfectly, however, his tanned skin glowing lightly under the rays of sun filtering through the curtains.

you hoped he didn't realise the small shift of your fingers as they enclosed around his hand.

[day 32]

"what are you doing out here?" haechan asked quietly, peeking around the sliding door before joining you on the chilly balcony. it wasn't much, but it was still different and refreshing from the old, stagnant aircon air that was blowing in the hotel room.

"can't sleep," you whisper. you had your arms around your figure cautiously, as if it could protect you from all the bad, evil and terror in the world. at this point, you weren't sure what was it that you were feeling, but it sure didn't involve entertaining haechan's teasing. 

luckily, he bit his tongue from making the usual snarky remarks.

"it's two in the morning, what's up?" 

you shake your head in reply, watching the empty streets as the last light in the apartment across you switches off. sure, at two in the morning, pavements were dusty clean, and the birds were sleeping, but there would always be younger boys smoking along the road, or a drunken group of friends laughing about a past memory. 

now that the pandemic forced everyone into their homes, everything was pretty much dead. there wasn't that excitement you felt when you saw a late-night kiss shared between two lovers or the snug hug of a child to his father who was working overtime that day.

"nothing's up, hyuck, it's fine. you can get back to sleep if you want."

maybe today you two were the one causing the ruckus this time, though. haechan may have let his words slipped, and at that moment, you knew you regretted that bloom in your chest when his lips met yours.

"you're so hard to read, (y/n). i want you to be able to trust me, tell me what's going on."

"why do you wanna know anyway? so you can expose me of my bad habits and weak points?" you whisper, eyes trained on the flickering lamppost a few yards away.

"there you go again! again with the sabotage?" haechan scoffed, exiting the small space and stepping back into the room of mixed emotions.

"is this just about your feelings for me?" 

haechan laughed, "my feelings? might i remind you that you were the one who kissed me full on the lips twelve days ago? what was that all about? i wanna talk about it, even though we said we wouldn't! i wanna talk about why you hate me so much. i wanna talk about why your emotions are so contradictive!" 

your mouth hangs open as you sputter out a heated reply, but instead gets interrupted with a knock on the door. 

"keep quiet, you damn teenagers! i don't need your petty fights at two in the morning!" with padded feet, the guest returns to his room and slams the door to emphasise his complaint. swallowing, your mind goes blank as it focuses only on one question.

"why do you want to know so much lee haechan? what are you gaining out of this? if it's not sabotaging, then what is it?!" you whisper, standing your ground as with the first argument. 

your throat is clenched up, and your fists are balled up tightly with nails digging into your palm. your heartbeat races like a fast car and your breathing's laboured in the cold room. there's no movement for a second, though they feel like minutes on end as haechan struggles to answer your question.

"what is it, lee donghyuck?" you cry out again, the sparkle in your eyes shining brightly from the tears of your never-ending dispute. he wished it was from the moonlight, instead. he wished the two of you were laughing over the rim of wine glasses and sharing the mischievous glimmer of the moon in your eyes.

"it's nothing. don't mind it." the other turns to catch up on sleep, leaving you to bite your lip.

"now you're doing it, now you're the one doing it. just tell me, you dumbass!" you mumble, pulling on his pyjama sleeve and tugging you to him.

"i like you, okay! it's out there now, i like you a lot, but you make it feel like a crime to do it," haechan whispers, "whatever. fuck this."

"no- what- no, we'll talk this out." you propose, adjusting your grip on his wrist with the curl of your fingers.

the male shakes his head and snatches his arm back, "no, forget it, and i'd prefer if you left me alone, (y/n)."

even with the warmth of his body next to yours, your body felt frozen and stiff. even with the thick duvet cover over you, you felt out of place in the stale hotel room, with colour becoming black and white, they merge into grey as the moonlight shone without a care for your problems.

there's action on the balcony when your eyes flutter open in the morning, noticing the quiet way haechan observes those rushing to work as well as social distancing officers making their rounds.

his eyes look hopeful and youthful, different from the tired ones the night before, or rather, this morning. you hadn't forgotten the angry neighbour banging on the door, and you definitely hadn't forgotten about how much you've wounded haechan this morning.

with a soft knock, you let him know of your presence and you just miss the way his eyes soften at your bed hair and messy appearance. his gaze turns hard in a second as he turns back to the apartment across yours, the balcony door showing your reflection of how hesitant you were.

haechan wished he could take your hands in his and accept your apology in a heartbeat, but he stayed seated and waited for whatever you wanted to say.

"don't run off, please." there's a shameful hand on his shoulders, and he's dying to get up when he sees your downcast eyes in the reflection across the street.

"i was too caught up in getting department head that i... didn't consider other possibilities. even the possibility of you uhm... liking me. it's still a weird concept to me, especially with how much we bicker."

"i'm sorry i didn't stay to hear out your feelings and rather, i just talked over you instead. i'm not sure if you want to accept this or not, but i want to open up—about this, about your feelings and... i don't know how much i've masked my emotions, i just know that we need to communicate."

the doorbell interrupts your apology, but you internally thank the housekeeping for bringing breakfast for the two of you.

with silence over breakfast, you weren't sure how the other felt as he scoffed down the croissant and almost burned his tongue with the coffee he ordered.

[day 33] 

the boy barely watches the television and instead, reads over the article you were working on. seeing as it was already there when he logged on, he skimmed through it out of curiosity, finding that you were rephrasing the messy typos and sentences frantically on your notes.

haechan never forgot the way you were typing away on the laptop, eyes reading and rereading the sentences to make sure they made sense, to make sure they were clear to the reader. 

the argument had taken a toll on you, too. he sees it in the way your eyes sink when your words turn out choppy and lacking, he sees it in the way you lug your body to the bathroom after a late night, he sees it in the way you struggle to hold your smile while attending an interview. 

'haechan. you confuse me. i'm not...' the note below it trails off, piquing his curiosity at what it had in store.

'haechan.' big and bold letters it wrote, with a few dozen question marks below it. your writing skills shine through even in an informal note about your self-proclaimed rival, each line prompting the other to read more.

'you confuse me. i'm not sure what you're at but, it doesn't seem natural for you to tag along with someone you hate, right? that's what i was thinking too.'

'jeez, i remember hating when suyeon told me you were coming along. i didn't believe her one bit until she showed me your plane ticket and the hotel rooms next to each other. god, and when i came here, it was a day of interviewing before the damn government decided to close flights and force us into a room together.'

'i heard that other people had to be separated. i didn't know why we were the unlucky two that had to be put in a room together. i wished we didn't, almost. of course, you annoyed me when we first moved in. hogging the tv to no end, leaving your dirty underwear everywhere, running your mouth just like at our workplace.'

'i couldn't take it, maybe. sure, my brother has similar antics, but there was just something about you that just set me off, you know? i wouldn't have thought it was the opposite, or at least, i think so.'

'i'm counting the days. day 17 and i'm not sure why i feel this bubbling feeling inside me. of course, there's anger—i'm sure it's there, but there's also this other thing i get whenever i look at you.'

'my heart clenches up, and my hands become clammy, but it couldn't be a crush, right? i would've wasted my breath shouting, and my strength whacking your shoulder.' that makes haechan chuckle and look over at you where the soft light dances over your face.

'and then i started imagining. how would your arms wrap around me? how would your infuriating laughter, which somehow turned out to be so contagious, feel in the crook of my neck? yikes, that was cheesy.'

'what would it feel like if we fell in love for one night? where would you bring me and what would we eat? would we make out in your car like unruly teenagers?' 

'what would it be like to love you? it's dumb, isn't it? i don't know. i've liked this bickering thing we had going on, and it's amusing to see you one-up me. i'm not sure if i want that to change and i'm not sure if you want us to, either.'

'maybe i'm wrong, and i'm the only one in this thing. this is so stupid, writing while he's sitting next to me. i'll regret this, maybe. goodnight.'

haechan sighs, closing the device in thought, confused at the words he wasn't exactly supposed to read. had you done this on purpose? he was sharing the laptop with you...

the boy brushed it off, placing the laptop on the vanity before adjusting your side of the duvet, hoping he could find the right words. with hesitant steps, he keeps to his side of the bed, thinking, thinking, thinking. 

when he couldn't no more, haechan fell into the spell of slumber in the comfortable hotel room.

[day 34]

"tea?" he asks from the bathroom as the door clicks behind you, returning from the short hotel walk with a new keychain hanging from your sling bag.

"yeah sure, thanks." 

the water runs as he fills up the kettle as the constant whir of the aircon and the conversation on the television keeps you company in the vast quietness of the room. 

you weren't sure if you should say anything, but when you saw the dishevelled appearance of your roommate, you knew you had to bring up the argument and apology.

"haechan, about our... feelings. do you want to talk about them?" you whispered, a reply reaching your ears in the form of his spoon against the porcelain mug.

haechan hands you the drink wordlessly, sitting on the chair at the vanity before sipping cautiously at the tea. there are unexchanged glances between the two of you before he sighs at your expectant hand tapping the sheets.

"i think it's about time we did," he mumbled, dragging the laptop off the wooden table with anxiety. the other opened it without saying anything, catching you by surprise when the mouse hovers over your note.

"hae- donghyuck! no! what the hell?"

he holds up a hand and clicks on it anyway, making your heart drop to your stomach as he turned the device towards you.

"read the bottom." haechan whispers as you pull the laptop closer to you, settling it on your lap as he observed your expressions carefully.

'i read it, i'm sorry.' you look at him and lift up a hand to prepare to whack him, a defeated sigh escaping you before you carried on.

'was it wrong to read it? of course, and i cannot apologise more for doing shit like that when we still have unsolved tension between us in this small ass room. it was incorrect, but.'

'do you feel the same as me? is bickering all we have to do? why can't we work anything out? they're the questions i keep asking myself after i read your letter.'

'i guess i was too caught up in the fight and not wanting to be the loser that i... can't deny that i've never thought about wanting to get to know you, even if you were that sought out to be my destined enemy.'

'when we fought earlier, you kissed me. i know we said not to mention it, but, uhm, it was good. i liked it. i'm not sure if the reason why you did it was because of the reason you mentioned in the note, but at the time, i assumed it was to shut me up. i thought something would happen after, though you pushed me away and apologised right away.'

'it was a far off dream that i had, but i think it was after i bandaged your foot. you said that you didn't know what was going on in my mind, and i told you.'

'it was like, i was granted an insight into an alternate world, another universe where you didn't feel the strain, where you legitimately assumed i was going for your position.'

'you scoffed when i confessed, right then and there, on day 9. i was counting, too, and it was a scary, confusing dream. i think that's why i held it off as long as i could until your words puzzled and angered me further because you just didn't get it.'

'you scoffed and told me to get lost, pushing on my shoulders where we fought on the balcony for everyone to see. you never spoke to me, you never mentioned my article nor the interviews. we never joked over wine, and we always kept to our side of the bed.'

'i was convinced that heaven wanted me to stay away from you and your heart. maybe it was broken too many times, and you had someone up there looking out for you.'

'i feel like i'm copying off the textbook of some greek mythology starter pack, but i'm for real! no kidding.' you smiled, looking at him with nervous eyes at the small joke he put in.

'i guess whoever put that dream in my sleep really wanted us not to be together because i think i would've told you i liked you on the spot itself. i let my conscious get the best of me.'

'i know this is a lazy way of conveying my feelings, and i wished i could do it with words, but i feel like you wouldn't believe me otherwise. i rushed it this morning when you went on your morning walk around the hotel and when you let me know of your stroll in a soft voice, i wanted nothing more than to get you in my arms as we wake up to the housekeeping service.'

'i didn't want any more tension between us, and i didn't want to be interrupted by your alarm while we avoid each other more. it hurts seeing you escape the room in haste. you said it was weird for me to tag along with someone i hate, too, and that someone was you. i guess you found out why.'

looking up, you found him right in front of you, mouth dry from his reply to your letter. with a gulp, you leaned forward to meet his lips halfway.

"i'm sorry to whoever's up there," he whispers, prompting a grin and a laugh out of you.

the laptop is forgotten on the bed as haechan situates himself over you, clutching your shoulder gently while his lips move quickly, fast to make up for lost time. 

"wait wait, wait, you're not playing me, are you?" you mumble in return, reluctantly pulling away while witnessing the way his eyes soften at your guard still up. haechan shakes his head forlornly, tongue pressing up against the side of his mouth nervously.

"no, i'm not, (y/n)," he says quietly with as much sincerity he can muster, removing his hand from your shoulder with a forced smile. 

"okay." there's a shakiness to your voice, but when you bring his lips back to yours, it gives you a rush of confidence. your skin is burning up, and your hands can't stop wandering as his lips capture yours, repeatedly moving against yours like a trance.

you grant haechan access to your mouth with a whimper, melting into his embrace as his arms wrap tighter around your figure. his eagerness lingers when he pushes forward, straddling your lap as his leg nudges the laptop.

"wait, hyuck, wait, the laptop!" you joke, placing the device on the floor before getting back into the kiss with just as much fervour. within a minute or so, the other breaks away to say the words you so hated to hear:

"we... we need to talk. we can't just kiss the fight off, although i very much like to," haechan murmurs the last part, making you stifle a smile. 

you nod quickly, repeating the word "okay" like a robot. your hands naturally travel from his arms down to his fingers, and you clutch them like your life depended on it.

"we have... established, that i like you, correct?" haechan whispers, scooting closer as his tea-ridden breath surrounds you. from here, you could even smell the buttered croissant he ate this morning.

it made you smile, something simple as that.

"why- why are you laughing (y/n)?" he asks anxiously, eyes darting to find the reason why you found this so funny.

"no. no no no, i'm thinking of... the croissant you ate just now, and," you sigh, resting your head on his broad shoulder. 

"i'm thinking of the way your eyes light up when you show me the articles you idolise so much, and i'm thinking of the way you cuddle up to me whenever we watch stranger things." 

"i'm thinking of the way you thought i wouldn't give you a chance, even though i've been pondering on the same thing as you. i'm thinking of the things that make up lee haechan, lee donghyuck. yes, you like me, and yes i like you, but i guess i haven't told you the reason."

"i hated you, i really did. i found every reason to convince my mind to hate you. gaining trust, signing up for events you didn't know shit about, sucking up to the seniors, stealing my friends when they didn't know your personality. the personality i didn't even want to know because i was too busy in my little bubble."

"assuming you'd want to get department head was the cherry on top, because why else would you want to tag along? that was the factor that convinced me and confirmed my suspicions from day one."

you grunt in opposition, clearly not liking the truth that was spilling from your lips. haechan deserved to know, however. you kept your eyes trained on his lap where his hands were holding yours in support, crumbling from the blindness that caused your hatred. 

"so from then, the plane ride, immigration, the cab to the interview place, the cab back, the hotel room, my hatred for you boiled over." you listed, voice breaking as you looked haechan in the eye. 

"it was stupid of me to assume, to assume the worst of you when i didn't even know you. i wasn't even sure why i felt so bitter looking at you, but the way you acted, the way you whined, worked me up so much that i figured that was how you were."

"now when i'm sitting here with the curtains drawn, i can see why you're so attractable and easy to talk to and easy-going and bright that my friends keep talking to you."

"i can see why the seniors turn to you because you're reliable and hardworking without uttering a single word."

"i can see why you wanted to hop on this flight with me because you're always curious about the world and how you can expand your skill set."

and as you said word after word, haechan observes you with a soothing hand against your forearms. his eyes shine for a different reason, for the lost time he could've had if the two of you didn't have this massive barrier. a massive barrier that's been up for the longest time. 

brick by brick, the wall is being torn down. as you hold haechan's face in the stillness of the room, you feel closer to him than you've ever felt and his tears match your frustrated ones. 

choking on sobs, delayed apologies were all you could whisper.

"i'm sorry, i'm sorry, really. we fought so bad that day, and i was so goddamn insensitive..." you sigh, swallowing a lump when his hand reached up to wipe the tears. with a blocked nose, you breathe shakily as housekeeping interrupts the moment. 

you nod towards the door as he stood up slowly to reveal the same housekeeping girl. she cleaned up the bathroom and wardrobe quietly as the two of you stood awkwardly in the small space. she had left the sheets since everyone was practically stuck in, anyway.

haechan nudges you toward the door with a shove, shooting the same housekeeping girl a small smile and a bow as an apology to the previous run-in.

"he confessed his feelings?" she inquired softly, noticing the tear marks on your face.

you bit your lip, "yeah."

"that's good, he's finally not a coward." she laughs, folding the used towels and placing them with her.

you leaned against the door, asking for an explanation with your puzzled look.

"he was someone i liked, before. we had classes back in high school. it was just a dumb crush, honestly." the housekeeping girl shrugs, resting her head on her fist in thought.

"i think he liked me, and i did too, but we didn't do much except for exchange looks and flirt because both of us were just too scared." she shakes her head and adjusts the disinfectant spray bottle, fidgeting with the nozzle.

"i'm glad he had enough courage to admit his feelings." 

nodding along to her statement, she bids you farewell as her figure fades with each step, leaving you with a sense of calmness to the end of this situation.

[day 38]

"is... is this okay?" haechan asks, arm hovering over your body while waiting for your confirmation. you smile and nod, sinking into his side as you venture in the third season of stranger things together. 

"don't you think we should be working on our articles?" you whisper, looking up at him from where you were with raised eyebrows.

the boy opens and closes his mouth in thought, gesturing to the television with an exaggerated expression. 

"stranger things, ma'am."

you click your tongue and sigh with a smile, turning back to the show as you try to relax for an online interview in a few hours.

[day 39]

"what do you say about my set-up?" haechan nudges you, proud of the hangout area he prepared on the balcony. although small, he had no trouble making it look comfortable. 

with a smile, you pop open the wine to celebrate the last scheduled interview for the trip, clinking glasses with haechan in the setting sun.

the country you were supposed to return to was slowly opening up flights for those stranded overseas and as refreshing as a different environment was, you missed home and the warmness of it.

you missed the office and your desk. hell, you even missed the mediocre coffee from the pantry.

with the last of the wine finishing, haechan pours half into your glass and the other into his, clinking one last time before you one-shot the beverage.

the high of the alcohol is gradually brought down by the mellow atmosphere and colours of twilight. as pink and orange cross over on the horizon, haechan mumbles a low "c'mere" to you in the darkness.

you hum in response and get up from your seat, bringing a pillow with you as haechan shifts to make space. sinking naturally into his arms, you sigh while you try to contain a smile full of content.

"this is nice," you admit, the corners of your lips disobeying your command, prompting you to shoot him a smile. haechan nods against your hair, a comfortable arm around your waist while you trace the tan skin of his arm.

the other taps your waist repeatedly, turning in response as he whispers out a question that makes your heart melt.

"can i kiss you?" you grin, slipping a hand around his neck and pulling him in right away. haechan's caught by surprise, laughing into your lips and striving to savour the moment as much as he could. 

a shout from across the hotel distracts you from the kiss. looking up, you realise it was the apartment resident opposite you shooting you a 'rock on' gesture.

"you guys are not fighting anymore! congrats!" you both stifle a snort as you wave back to the resident, sighing in relief when their balcony door slides shut.

"should we go inside, m'lady?" haechan giggles, replying in the form of a nod, cleaning up the area while you head in.

[day 41]

"i didn't think they'd be letting flights in so early," you mumble, folding your clothes neatly as your vision shifts to haechan... shoving his fair share of apparel into his luggage.

"donghyuck... what the hell?" you roll your eyes, shoving the boy softly as you took over the task at hand. switching personalities almost immediately, haechan fakes an interview segment with exaggerated tones.

"see, everyone, this is how you convince someone to do the work for you," the boy lays on the bed with a satisfied expression, "now i don't have to do anyth- ow!"

"if we ever live together, maybe i should punish you by doing the laundry and then folding it," you grunt, working at the speed faster than you expected while you fold shirt after shirt.

"are you proposing we move in together?" haechan peeks through an open eye, curiosity dripping from his tone. he tried to feign nonchalance but awaiting your answer felt like a weight on his heart.

your next words lifted that weight, a seemingly invisible force bringing his upper body off the bed as he stares at you in shock.

"maybe, not now but... in the future, maybe," you mumble the last part, focusing on the clothes to prevent the male from seeing the fluster on your face.

"for real?" haechan sits up, biting his lip to contain his excitement as your confirmation. 

"we'll be all stupidly domestic and shit, and i'll say i love you five years from now before you go off for work if you want that and stuff," your voice goes lower and quieter, especially towards the end, biting off way more than you could chew.

"aw! i love you too!" haechan gushes, bringing you into an embrace as your hands go limp, scrambling to explain your emphasis on the 'future'.

"d-donghyuck, i meant the future, not now..." you manage to spit out, hoping you need not answer his queries any more. your mind blanks out at the current situation, wishing you hadn't said those dumb things.

he grins into your neck, "i know, i'm just answering for future me."

you groan and escape the hug with a roll of your eyes, "yuck, too cheesy!" the boy just lets out a laugh, watching the way you fold his clothes despite your initial annoyance.

[day 42]

suyeon switches between the two of you in disbelief, finger crooked at the ambiguity of "we like each other".

"wha-" suyeon doesn't get the chance to finish the sentence before you shoot her a thumbs up, grabbing haechan by the arm and your stuff with the other.

you were happy to leave the office after a quick debrief since you two had reported to the office right after arriving at the airport, relieved when you heard he'd spare a few more days for your articles to be cleaned up.

"so, (y/n), what would you like to do now?" haechan looks at you through the reflective material of the elevator, observing the nervous wringing of your fingers.

you're glad for the material protecting your face because there's a smile that you struggle to keep as his soft, gentle voice carries through the quiet space.

the anxiety ends when the lift sounds, prompting your eyes to trail down his arm. your hand moves on its own accord, grabbing his last finger with yours as you proceed into the lift sheepishly, not missing the way haechan's eyes show his bright smile behind the mask.

"maybe i'll get to know you more, lee donghyuck."

haechan lets out a gasp, "have you not learned about me enough? scandalous." 

you feign a punch in his direction, the luggage beside you tripping over its wheels due to your swift movement. the only response you get is a giggle from the other as he tightens his pinky around yours, pressing a soft kiss to your cheek right above your face mask just as the elevator doors open.

"man, i really do want to punch you now," you mutter as you let haechan lead you, wanting nothing more than to rest in the arms of your enemy-turned-friend? enemy-turned-someoneyoulike?

you weren’t exactly sure.

he doesn't answer during the walk to the main road, nor the ride back to your home, the only constant thing being the way he admires your profile in the taxi, shrugging when you counter with a playful "what?". 

"nothing," haechan grins.

[there are more days to come]

sure, day forty-one may not have been the day you fell in love with haechan, nor the day where he outwardly claims you as his lover.

but, taking it slow never hurt anyone, either.

you know it in the way he tells you he can't go in unless he's invited and you see it in the way he asks if he can switch the television on while you prepare some drinks.

like the hotel, you know it in the way he asks if he can kiss you and the way he deepens his kisses with caution.

you appreciate it in the way he quickly apologises for a personal question, while visibly relaxing as you brush it off with a smile.

with hours pass, day forty-two becomes day forty-three, and haechan remains as chivalrous as always.

days pass, and you submit your articles. weeks pass, and you get to know the boy more and more. months pass, and you feel his love in the way he plays with your fingers in the dark and pulls you close under the sheets.

even if you hadn't acknowledged the love between the two of you, that note you wrote half-drunk matched the way you felt now—with how your heart clenches up and with how your grin never leaves your face with haechan around.

there are more days to come with lee haechan, lee donghyuck, even if it meant getting stuck together in a hotel room with unsaid words.

[vinatintasupernovita]

“You’ve got everything, dear?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Your jackets? Your good chitons?”

“Mom, you know they don’t wear things like that on the isle. Or anywhere else anymore.”

“They could wear party hats and capes for all I care, you’re a respectable god. And as such, you’ll dress like one, hear me?”

Persephone sighed as her mother Demeter started another lecture. Every fall it was the same. She wouldn’t even see her for the next six months, why did it matter to her how ‘respectable’ Persephone acted, especially on a place like the isle?

“And another thing, don’t bring home anymore knives or other sharp objects. I’m tired of having to throw those out.” Demeter said as she straightened out her own outfit in the mirror, wiping a stray bit of lipstick from her mouth before deciding everything looked just fine.

“Well I can’t leave them at dad’s.” Persephone said, leaning on the tall handle of her suitcase. “Hadie will mix it up with his and by the time I’m back I’ll need a new one anyway.”

“Here’s an idea- don’t get one to begin with.” She said. “You shouldn’t need one in the first place.”

“Not a good idea.” Persephone swayed back and forth on her heels. She hated how long her mom always took. She knew it was just stalling to keep her home for even an hour longer. “You could just let me-“

“Absolutely not.” Demeter cut her off quickly. “I will not have that type of thing in my house. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes..” Persephone groaned, only to brighten up as Demeter opened the front door.

She all but raced out the door to the royal limo that was waiting outside to pick them up. One quick stop at the castle and Persephone was off. Back to her father and her brother and her- well, she didn’t have a word for what Pain and Panic were to her, but they were family nonetheless. Demeter followed behind, slowly locking up their house and flipping the sign to the flower shop that occupied their bottom floor to ‘away’, taking forever to get in the limo. Persephone had already shoved her bag into the back of the limo and gotten comfortable before her mom could even open the door to sit.

The limo drove across the city to the palace, where King Adam and Queen Belle awaited them. Beside them was their only son, Prince Ben, waiting to say goodbye to his best friend for the winter months. They hadn’t much time to say their goodbyes everytime- fall had to come sooner rather than later- but they had been doing it for as long as they had known each other.

Ben watched out the window for any signs of the limo, tapping his fingers against the window sill as he waited. Belle and Adam looked between each other, and smiled. He was always like this when Persephone was leaving or coming- and though they had always been wary of the gods and everything that came with working with them- they were at least glad Ben had a friend as close to him as Persephone. Maybe once he was king and she took her spot as Goddess of Spring, there’d be less complicated custody requirements to go through before a new season could be rung in.

“They’re here!” He said as the limo pulled in, smiling brightly.

The three of them went down to the front together to greet them- Adam and Belle had learned the hard way that gods preferred the royal treatment even in the presence of actual royals.

Persephone got out of the limo first, running to hug Ben. She towered over him, but it didn’t matter much as they embraced.

“Hi Benny boy.” Persephone smiled as they pulled apart.

“Hi Seph.” Ben smiled back at her. “You’re ready to go?”

“The seasons don’t wait for anyone.” Persephone shrugged, but nodded all the same. That’s when she noticed his parents, and waved. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Florian, your highnesses.”

“Hello, Persephone. Lady Demeter, always a pleasure.” Belle said as she and her husband nodded graciously to the older goddess who walked up behind Persephone. Demeter nodded back to them.

“Your graces.” Demeter greeted. “Good to see you again.”

“Mother, Father, Lady Demeter, do you mind if Persephone and I step away for a moment?” Ben asked. “I just- have something to talk to her about before she goes.”

“Yes, Ben, you can go.” His parents said.

“Of course, young man.” Demeter said. “Behave, Persephone.”

“Yes, Mom.” Persephone said, but didn’t really listen to her as Ben led her off.

“Ok, Ok,” Persephone said. “What is it you’ve got to show me?”

“I’ve finally got it, Seph.” He said with a huge smile. “The perfect first decree.”

The two of them went quickly to Ben’s private study. He had been hauled up in there for forever- which, was Persephone’s way of saying more than three days- drafting plans for his first official decree as king. He had a little over half a year until the day came, but he wanted to make sure it was perfect. Classic Ben.

He held up a paper draft that had been scribbled down as fast as Ben could write. He handed it to Persephone and she read through it.

“I, King Ben, decree that we enac-“ Persephone stopped as she saw the next lines. “enact a system to bring children from the isle over to Auradon.. as a second chance for them..” Her voice broke as she looked up at him. “Ben.”

“Surprise.” He said. “What do you think?”

“What do I- Ben!” Persephone smiled brightly as she hugged him. “That’s amazing! You have no idea the amount of good that’ll do- there’s so many kids on that isle that need this.”

“I know. That’s why I wanted you to be the first to hear it.” Ben said. Persephone blinked.

“Wait,” She said as she pulled away. “Your parents don’t know yet?”

“Im waiting for the right time to tell them.”

“Wow, Benny boy’s acting all rebellious and secretive.” She chuckled. “Im proud of you. This is really good, Ben.”

“I’ve still got a few kinks to work out of it, but, it’ll be ready by coronation day.” He said. “You’ll be here for coronation day, right?”

“Unless you want a jump from winter to summer, ‘course I will be.” She said. “Any ideas on who you’ll bring first?”

“Not yet.” He said. “I wanna make sure I can pick kids who will have an impact.”

“Well, if you want my advice, which, eh.” She wiggled her hand back and forth. “You’re gonna need big name villains’ kids. I can give you some names if you want.”

“That’d be great! Any off the top of your head?” He said as he went for a pen and paper. Persephone sat on his desk and tapped her finger against her chin in thought.

“Let’s see..” She said. “First off, Hadie. Second, Hadie.”

“Seph-“

“Ooh! Third! Hadie.”

“‘Sephone.”

“Fourth.. no, probably Hadie.”

“Seph!”

Persephone huffed as she looked at Ben, who gave her that tired smile that everyone gave their best friend when they were trying to be clever and failing.

“Sorry, Ben, but my brother’s the most important person to me- besides you, ‘course.” She said. “Hell, he’s just a kid. He deserves to grow up somewhere safe.” In reality, Hadie was 16, but to be honest it didn’t matter how old he was because he’d always be her kid brother. A 10,000 year age gap did that.

“He’s one of the first to come, I promise.” He said. “But, I need more than one kid.”

“Oh.. alright.” She said. “I’ll get you a real list by the time I’m back.”

“Thank you.” Ben said. “And don’t worry- if he still wants to go see your dad like you do, he can- it’s all a matter of getting them and Auradon’s people used to eachother first, before there’s any possible talks of free travel.”

“Right.” Persephone nodded. “Speaking of, I probably need to get going. They’re waiting for me.”

“Be safe.” He said as she hopped down from the desk.

“I would be if my mom let me keep my knives.” She said as the two headed back down. “It’s so rude, she always takes them. She even took the one Heidi found me!”

“No- that one was your favorite!”

“I know!”

———

[akechicrimes]

Prompt 37? Futaba and Akechi platonic/Futago siblings?

37. “Follow me. It’s okay, just hold my hand.”

after akira leaves tokyo, futaba does just fine without her key item, except for when she doesnt.

(one of them AUs were goro survives the engine room and rejoins the phantom thieves. no i will not explain. persona 5 canon AND persona 5 royal do not interact. for reference in this universe futaba and akechi are half siblings but only akechi knows that)

*

“Next time you see me, I’ll be a whole new person,” Futaba tells Akira excitedly on his second-to-last day in Tokyo. “I’m going back to school, I’m out and about by myself—oh! Oh! Did I tell you I said yes to Kosei? I told Kosei I wanted to go to Shujin and they offered me scholarship! And I went to the subway station by myself yesterday!”

They’re crammed into Akira’s Leblanc attic, sitting around a cake that literally none of them were capable of baking themselves, so they’d bought the thing from a bakery and decorated it with little black and red hearts. Ryuji is passing around his gross soda, while Ann is recounting some story that doesn’t matter with incredible enthusiasm. Makoto looks like she’s determined to enjoy herself and will hear no argument.

The whole thing is incredibly morbid, if you ask Futaba. It feels less like they’re waiting for Akira to leave Tokyo and more like they’re attending Akira’s funeral. Akechi in particular looks like he’s regretting attending, which honestly tickles Futaba more than it should, that the most dishonest Phantom Thief seems to be the only one looking as honestly put-off by the entire affair as everyone else is determined not to be.

That’s everyone else’s problem. Futaba might not be happy Akira has to leave, but she’s proud. She’s sad that Akira has to leave, but also she promised Akira that by the time that he had to leave, she’d be able to get around on her own, without clinging to him for support. And she is able. She kept her promise.

Tomorrow might be the day that Akira has to go, but today is the day that Futaba is Officially Recovered.

Akira does that annoying thing he does where he puts his hand on her head and messes up all her hair, like he’s a human cat showing affection by pissing everyone off. Futaba yelps. “Look at you. You don’t need me at all.”

“I told you that I’d be ready to say goodbye by the time you had to go back to your hometown,” says Futaba. “I haven’t broken my promises yet, have I?”

There’s a burst of laughter from Haru over something Yusuke said, who looks rather surprised to discover that he said anything funny. Both Makoto and Akechi snicker at him, and then stop immediately to glare at each other the second they realize they’ve accidentally wound up sharing an opinion.

Akira ignores them. “Well, you can still text me if you need me. Or call.”

“I’m trying to tell you I’m getting better and I don’t need you,” Futaba grumbles. “Also, what kind of psychopath do you think I am to call someone on the phone?”

“That’s what phones are for.”

“Calling people is scary.”

“I thought you were getting better?” Akira teases.

“I am!” she says, pointing a finger at him. “I am! Just you watch, Akira. I’m getting better every day.”

*

Six months after joining Kosei, Futaba locks herself in her room and does not reemerge for seven days straight.

*

She tells Sojiro that she’s sick. Sojiro tells the school that Futaba told him that she’s sick. She definitely fakes a hell of a good cough, and the school lets Yusuke send her her all the homework that she was supposed to be doing in the first place, but Futaba already knows it’s only a matter of time before Sojiro rats on her, and she won’t even blame him because it’ll be for her own good.

In the meantime, she has stashes of crackers and peanut butter from back when she was a full-time hermit. She hates the taste of peanut butter within three days. Her bed is a relief, soft like a home she never left, up until it isn’t anymore. It’s too soft. No matter how she lies on it, no matter how soft it is, a mattress just isn’t comfortable when you’ve been lying on it for seventy-four hours. It’s hot. Smothering. She feels like she’s going to drown in the blankets and they’ll have to fish her moldy, sweaty corpse out of the bottomless quicksand pit of her too-soft mattress.

The thing about being a shut-in is that you don’t actually like your room very much. It’s not a relief, or an oasis, or even a place you enjoy. You’re just terrified of everywhere else more.

She plays a lot of video games that she doesn’t even like. She watches a lot of Twitch streamers she doesn’t even like. She doesn’t do her homework. She ignores Sojiro. She pretends she’s alright to everyone who texts. She wakes up and goes to sleep and thinks about going outside and goes to sleep and wakes up and wonders if the whole last year and her cautious baby steps back into the world outside was all just a hazy dream.

*

There aren’t a lot of Thieves left in Tokyo, weirdly. Haru and Makoto both graduated, off doing business and law junk that honestly makes Futaba’s brains want to crawl out her ears, but all the numbers check out and Haru’s not in the red yet, and Futaba’s looked at enough people’s dirty laundry to appreciate Haru’s clean ledger. Akira’s back in his dinky hicktown, where there’s barely anything electronic connected to Wifi worth breaking into for surveillance, which is really boring.

Ann’s been doing so many modeling gigs that she might as well not be attending Shujin anymore. She’s practically surrounded by electronics, and all of them are connected to the internet. On any given day, Futaba can snoop through the internet trail of electronic file cabinets full of images of her face, emails about her face, paychecks for her face. Futaba sends Ann more than one email about creepy old dudes making gross comments about her, along with a bunch of other illegal shit they’ve done, plus their offshore accounts full of cash if Ann wants Futaba to sic a lawyer on them.

Ann looks like she’s having fun. Ann looks different on the other side of the computer screen, like she’s less real. Like she’s not someone Futaba really knows. Like Ann’s not someone Futaba’s literally cried on at one point in her life.

Ryuji is definitely attending Shujin, but between physical therapy, catching up on a whole year of track, athletic scholarship hunting, and studying for college admissions tests, Ryuji seems to have been swallowed whole by Shujin, really. Out of boredom, one day, Futaba went down that rabbit hole of researching what it takes to get recruited for track in college, and holy shit–apparently Ryuji’s coach was supposed to be helping him with that whole process, but of course Ryuji barely has a proper coach ever since Kamoshida left Shujin’s track program in pieces. The amount of networking he’s doing is insane, especially for one teenaged boy who barely remembers his homework every night.

Sometimes, when Ryuji’s forgotten to check his email in a while and there’s a message from a coach sitting in his inbox, Futaba will send him a text to make him check it. And then it’s all, What were you doing looking at my emails, Futaba and Which of my other passwords do you know, Futaba, as if Ryuji doesn’t just use the same password over and over and has literally nobody but himself to blame.

So it’s really just Futaba, Yusuke, and–weirdly–Akechi, who’s off doing his gap year and said he was going to go abroad, but then he never did. Not to be a huge snoop, but Futaba went digging through his junk for about five seconds and then she never did it again, because she felt really weird about finding out that the guy that killed her mom is looking into social work, volunteerism, and reforming the justice system.

Like. The man who killed the Thieves’ leader is now literally out there saving orphans. It’s wild.

She might’ve been the one to tell Akechi that he can start over again and do better, but she reserves the right to at least feel weird about it.

She does not call Akira. She talks to Yusuke at school, but she refuses to ask him to accompany her on the subway. She should be recovered by now, shouldn’t she? She was supposed to have gotten over all that when Akira left Tokyo. She’s doing fine. She’s just looking out for her friends. Her, living vicariously through her friends, who’re growing up and growing away, flourishing into young adults? Never.

*

Everything is the same.

*

Didn’t she help kill a god last year?

Didn’t she work so hard to get out of her room, to make friends, to reconnect with Kana-chan?

Didn’t she work so hard to change herself?

Didn’t she help change the world?

*

Everything is the same.

*

Tuesday, 1:43 PM

YUSUKE: Futaba?

FUTABA: yo inari

FUTABA: u got more homework for me or what

YUSUKE: Ah, no.

YUSUKE: I think your teacher finds it suspicious that I’m sending you homework when I’m not in your grade, as it is.

FUTABA: oh no

FUTABA: what a shame that we didn’t have an entire year of experience with getting away with wildly illegal magic brain crimes without raising any suspicion

FUTABA: truly emailing me like four pieces of paper a day is far too difficult

YUSUKE: Well, I can’t get your homework from your teacher, but I can give you more homework if you’d like.

FUTABA: ok bucko that wasn’t a challenge

YUSUKE: There’s a math problem set that’s been incredibly dull to get through when I have more important pieces I could be working on…

FUTABA: inari im sorry to say but

FUTABA: me literally doing your homework for you is about a thousand times more illegal than you giving me my homework when ur not in my grade

YUSUKE: Oh, is it?

FUTABA: wh

FUTABA: are y

FUTABA: what do you mean OH IS IT

FUTABA: did you not KNOW ur not allowed to have other ppl do ur hw????

FUTABA: inari have u been making other people do ur hw for u so u can have more time to do art?????????

FUTABA: no shut up i dont want to know

FUTABA: i will not be ur accomplice

FUTABA: i see ur little speech bubble thingamajig yusuke i said stop typing forever and ever

YUSUKE: I can’t invite you to the art gallery tomorrow if I can’t type.

YUSUKE: It also seems impractical for you to outlaw me from texting forever.

FUTABA: i literally did not say that

YUSUKE: You said, and I quote,

YUSUKE: “Yusuke, I said stop typing forever and ever.”

FUTABA: ok i know it looks like i said that but please im begging u it’s literally just an exaggeration

YUSUKE: As Makoto would say, it’s hardly an enforceable law.

FUTABA: u literally texted my sick and crusty ass just to give me a hard time

YUSUKE: Are you about recovered from your cold?

FUTABA: and now u have the nerve to ask me to go to ur art show thing

YUSUKE: I didn’t say that.

FUTABA: oh really

FUTABA: what were u gonna ask me about then

YUSUKE: The art show, naturally.

YUSUKE: But you could have done me the courtesy of letting me ask.

FUTABA: all that on the day of my daughter’s wedding and now u want me to do u a solid

FUTABA: well i have news for u

FUTABA: the answer

FUTABA: is yeah

FUTABA: sure why not

YUSUKE: Oh, excellent.

YUSUKE: I thought that you might decline on account of your illness.

FUTABA: i’m not a punk bitch

FUTABA: i’m going

FUTABA: u were only working all those paintings for like two months i wanna see their oily faces in person

YUSUKE: Just because they were made with oil paints does not mean that they are oily.

FUTABA: cant wait to see my oily boys

YUSUKE: Unfortunately, I have to set up the event beforehand, so I will not be able to accompany you on the way here.

YUSUKE: Will you be alright by yourself?

FUTABA: uh

FUTABA: hmm

FUTABA: how oily are these boys in case i need to call a rain check

YUSUKE: Hmm.

YUSUKE: Perhaps someone else can go with you.

YUSUKE: Let me see if I can find someone.

FUTABA: what like one of ur art friends

FUTABA: i’m not going with anyone i dont know sry

YUSUKE: I’ll keep it in mind.

Tuesday, 1:59 PM

YUSUKE: Unfortunately, Ann and Ryuji were not available. Both of them will be coming late to the art show.

YUSUKE: Fortunately, Goro is.

FUTABA: whomst

YUSUKE: Goro Akechi?

YUSUKE: Crow, in case you know multiple Goro Akechis.

FUTABA: no like why u callin him goro

YUSUKE: I asked him if I could and he said yes.

YUSUKE: There’s not many people left in Tokyo who were part of the Thieves.

YUSUKE: I’m not exactly popular at school myself, so I thought it prudent to hold onto the connections I already had.

FUTABA: hhhhhhhhhhhhh

FUTABA: but why him……………………………………….

YUSUKE: Has he done something wrong?

YUSUKE: Well.

YUSUKE: Besides the obvious.

YUSUKE: Last I heard, you were quite vocally supportive of Goro making a change for the better,but have you prehaps reconsidered?

FUTABA: i mean he’s always been nice to me

FUTABA: like even before he was on the team as crow

FUTABA: and then later after he like lost his shit and tried to kill us

FUTABA: he was also like weirdly nice

FUTABA: even if he was dressed as a tokusatsu villain

FUTABA: but

FUTABA: i

FUTABA: ok this is gonna sound really weird but like

FUTABA: you know how i said that the person to take me to the art show has to be someone that i know

YUSUKE: Yes.

FUTABA: even though akechi was one of the thieves at the end

FUTABA: i feel like i dont really know him

FUTABA: he like had that whole breakdown where he spilled all his kylo ren sadstuck junk and then he peeled his dumb ass up off the floor and then we beat up his dad in a dark alley

FUTABA: and then i guess akira likes him a bunch and hangs out with him and i guess probably talked to him about all that stuff that happened

FUTABA: and also i think ann talks to him

FUTABA: and also haru i think for some reason……………………..

FUTABA: but like i feel like. we as a group. never really uhhhhhhh

FUTABA: got to know him very well i guess

FUTABA: because he spent like the whole year being a fake ass bitch

FUTABA: and then by the time he wasnt, the thieves were busy literally fighting god, and it was all business business business

FUTABA: ughghfhg i guess this is just a really long way of saying that like yeah ok i guess i do know him but i dont think i really do

FUTABA: even when he was off the shits in the engine room it was like

FUTABA: somehow that was not……………………………….. really him

FUTABA: idk maybe this is just my Thoughts but like

FUTABA: idk some people are like “your true self is who you are at your worst” and

FUTABA: yeah maybe you are some PART of urself when youre at your worst but like

FUTABA: also not???

FUTABA: that can’t be it

FUTABA: that’s not ALL of you

FUTABA: so all i ever saw was him when he was being a fake ass barbie prince and then when he was like actively losing his shit

FUTABA: and both of those were like. two types of fake ass barbie prince

FUTABA: except obviously the one where he started screamin about murder and trying to kill joker was like, fake ass serial killer barbie prince

FUTABA: anyway i dont buy it for a second that seeing akechi at his worst means that i know the first thing about his “”“”“”“”“true self”“”“”“”“”“”“

FUTABA: like i know that i technically met him but also at the same time i dont think ive ever really actually met this dude

FUTABA: uh tldr what’s the truth crowboy

FUTABA: second tldr do you got anyone else i can go to the art show with because im not unpackin all that junk in the trunk while also trying to fend off a panic attack in the subway

YUSUKE: Well, to speak to "what’s the truth, crowboy,” I’d say he’s actually really funny.

FUTABA: WHAT

YUSUKE: Yes, actually.

FUTABA: YOU TRYNA TELL ME YOU SHARE A SENSE OF HUMOR W AKECHI

YUSUKE: As everyone knows, I don’t have a sense of humor.

YUSUKE: But if I did, that might not be inaccurate to say.

YUSUKE: Either way, we could ask Boss if he’ll take you to school.

FUTABA: no

FUTABA: im not makin him shut down leblanc for the day just cause i cant get my shit together

FUTABA: and i go to school by myself all the time now i dont need to be walked there by my dad like a four yr old

FUTABA: r u sure u dont have anyone else who can take me

YUSUKE: You said it had to be someone you know.

YUSUKE: I can take you.

YUSUKE: But I’ll be getting to Kosei early to prepare.

FUTABA: how early is early

YUSUKE: Four in the morning.

FUTABA: PLEASE INARI

YUSUKE: The people you know is a quite limited pool, Futaba.

FUTABA: shut the hell ur face i dont need u tellin me to make kosei friends too

FUTABA: i get my butt to school every day i’m already a hero

FUTABA: ok alright

FUTABA: crow-san it is

FUTABA: hhh

FUTABA: no shut up stop typing i’m fine

FUTABA: i already saw his dumb ass get inflicted with Horny from Yaldy God Himself i ain’t afraid of no crows

FUTABA: actually now that i remember that that was pretty funny mwehehehehehehe

FUTABA: OKAY send me the who what when where why

YUSUKE: There’s a PDF flier. I’ll send it to you.

YUSUKE: But I will have to type the email to send it to you.

FUTABA: oh my GOD inari

FUTABA: i swear to god ur not actually this dense and youre just pretending u dont know what an exaggeration is just to drive me up the wall

YUSUKE: Oh, that is a possibility, isn’t it?

FUTABA: WH

YUSUKE: Ah, last period is starting. I’ll have to talk to you later.

FUTABA: WHAT

FUTABA: NO WAIT

FUTABA: HELLO????

FUTABA: YUSUKE NO COME BACK

Tuesday, 2:53 PM

FUTABA: YUSUKE HAVE YOU BEEN MAKING AKECHI DO UR HW FOR U SO YOU CAN DO MORE ART??

FUTABA: IS THAT WHY UR ON A FIRST NAME BASIS W HIM

FUTABA: ANSWER ME STRINGBEAN

*

In Futaba’s opinion, there’s an infinite amount of more embarrassing reasons to pull yourself out of your depression pit than “I needed to yell at my friend for being a snotty bastard,“ and there’s worse escorts to have than the weird guy who went from being a professional murderer to their weird awkward friend. Firstly, if there’s anything that can motivate Futaba Sakura, it’s the primal urge to dunk on her friends for spite and memes. Secondly, there’s no chance in hell Futaba’s going to have a breakdown in front of Akechi.

She can do this. She got herself out of this grave once; she can do it again. Even if Akira isn’t here. She’s getting better. She promised him.

On the eighth day of her almost-return to hermithood, Akechi texts her:

AKECHI: I’m here.

AKECHI: Are you ready to go?

Futaba is wearing only an old shirt, no bra, sweats, and vaguely greasy hair from all the showers she’s skipped.

FUTABA: i’m SO ready

FUTABA: the readiest

FUTABA: ultra mega super ready

FUTABA: featherman ranger code name Ready

AKECHI: Oh.

AKECHI: Alright.

Hell yes alright. Time for Futaba to save her own life from her gravesite of a room.

With… Goro Akechi. Wow, life is weird, huh?

She drags on her Kosei uniform like a skin discarded long ago. It feels stiff. Maybe because it feels wrong to wear school clothes like a functioning human; maybe because she just hasn’t washed it in a week. The very idea of explaining herself to Sojiro stresses her out, so she doesn’t do it. The idea of not explaining herself to Sojiro, when he deserves an explanation and also would probably have a heart attack if he realized that she’d disappeared from her room without his knowing, also stresses her out, so she still doesn’t explain herself to Sojiro.

I told Akira I’m better now. I can do this. I did this for more than six months. I was out of my room in the real world, I went to the school festival, I changed my own heart…

She creeps down the stairs like a thief in her own house and pokes her head out the door. Goro Akechi is fiddling with his phone in the sun outside her house, looking like he, too, has only just managed to pull on his Human Suit and look like a guy who didn’t make shadows beg for mercy for fun, so it looks like this whole expedition is going to be a lot of fun.

"Futaba-chan?” says Akechi, only just noticing her lurking in her own doorway. “It’s been a while since we last saw each other. How are you?”

Futaba opens her mouth. No noise comes out.

Akechi’s eyebrows slowly begin to knit together.

“I’m good,” she says squeakily. Clears her throat. Holy shit, she’s not afraid of Akechi after all that junk they went through in the Metaverse. She saw him as a rat. She saw him visibly want to break his father’s face when Shido tried to apologize to him on live TV. Once, Makoto and Akechi got into an unironic, passionate, hour-long argument about whether or not it’s beneficial to color code your notes.

“I’m alright!” Futaba announces louder, maybe a little loudly, considering the way he looks only more concerned. “L-Let’s hurry up and get this sidequest over with!”

She pulls her hoodie over her head and jams her hands into the pockets and makes herself as small as possible and inches out of the doorway. “If you… say so,” says Akechi, and eventually matches her incredibly slow pace as she shuffles her way towards the main street.

When the noise of Yongen-Jaya’s street hits her, her heart rate (already high as hell) spikes even higher like the first day she’d come out of her room, but the old coping mechanisms come back like second nature: Breathe slower, avoid eye contact, remember her mission, stick to the sides of the streets. Breathe slower. She’s still got it. It’s still hard, but she’s got a whole arsenal of ways to deal. She can do this. She will kick Yusuke’s ass for being a dick, if only out of sheer spite.

If Akira were here, I could hide behind him and…

No, shut up, shut up. All she has is her hoodie and Goro Akechi. Akira’s not here. She can do this by herself.

Akechi makes precisely two attempts at small talk (“How has Kosei been?” “Have you seen the pieces Yusuke submitted to the art show before?”) before he realizes that Futaba isn’t going to respond by virtue of barely holding onto her shit by her fingernails. He shuts up and sticks close by. Futaba makes her way down the streets towards the subway like walking on a tightrope. The subway station isn’t busy, but she puts every step in front of her like she’s going to fall. Getting on the subway might as well be a highwire. Futaba and Akechi wait for the train in mutual silence to the sound of other commuters murmuring amongst themselves, like a toothless echo of Mementos’s depths.

When they get on the train, people around her are quiet, thank god, but all of a sudden she’s convinced that she smells because she hasn’t taken a shower in literal days, and she tries to pack herself into her seat as tightly as possible. The guy in front of her is scrolling through something at a ferocious pace and his thumbnail keeps hitting the screen with this incessant clack, clack, clack noise. The subway voice announces their next station as the doors begin to close, and a girl suddenly sits bolt upright, having realized that this is her station after all, and bangs Futaba’s knees hard as she passes. Futaba wants to curl her legs to her chest, but she’s wearing Kosei’s uniform skirt and it’d just make everyone stare at her if she did that on the subway. She curls her fingers into the skirt hem. She stares down at her knees and lets her hair drape around her like a curtain. She can do this. She can do this. Breathe slower. Even slower. I did this for more than six months, I told Akira I’m better now, I changed my own heart…

Akechi pulls out his phone. Futaba’s phone buzzes.

AKECHI: Are you alright?

FUTABA: i said i was ready dude

Akechi types and retypes an answer, which technically Futaba could just look over his arm and read, but instead Futaba flips through apps on her phone and pulls up a shitty mobile dungeon crawler. She dies four times before Akechi puts his phone away without sending anything.

They pass multiple stations like that. Futaba sure as hell hopes that Akechi’s watching which station they’re on, because she isn’t. After the millionth time she dies, Futaba just closes the app altogether. Concentration’s shot. Can’t focus on anything. Heartbeat’s too loud. Breathing’s too loud. The guy next to her is breathing too loud. Everything is too loud.

New text:

AKECHI: Yusuke said you’d recovered from your cold, but you still look a little unwell.

Futaba doesn’t respond to that. She doesn’t need Negative Nancy over here telling her she’s gonna crack. Because she isn’t gonna. The subway starts to slow, and the voice announces the station for Yusuke’s school. She’s literally almost there, she’s right there, she might die in three seconds because her heart is going to pound of her chest but at least she’s going to make it, she promised Akira that she was alright—

The subway doors open. Passengers stand to get off. Akechi stands up. Futaba drops like a rock.

“I can’t,” Futaba’s voice says. She sounds like she’s crying. “I can’t, I can’t do it, I—”

“Futaba—”

“I’m can’t do it, I—”

She buries her face in her knees on the dirty subway floor. Oh, she really is crying. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I’m so sorry, I couldn’t…”

Around her, people’s feet stop moving. They’re staring at her. She’s crying on the subway and everyone is staring at her. “Shh,” says Akechi, like Futaba doesn’t know she’s being a loud and irritating pest, but then he takes off his winter coat and covers her with it. Suddenly everything goes dark. It’s a huge coat, too; it wraps around her whole torso with enough room to spare to cover her entire head. Inside, it’s like she’s back in her room, only listening to the sounds of real life somewhere on the other side of a computer monitor, where it can’t hurt her. It’s so surprising she hiccups to a stop. Two hands pull her up by the shoulders and guide her to stand. “Up. Let’s go.”

“Is she okay?” says a voice.

Futaba’s entire body seizes with fear. She ducks into her own knees, trying to disappear.

“Hey, little girl, are you alright?”

“She’ll be fine,” says Akechi’s friendly, super fake ass barbie prince voice. “My sister just had a hard day. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

“A hard day?” Now the stranger’s voice is accusatory.

“For your information, our dog was recently brutally run over in front of her eyes.”

“Young man, are you serious right now?”

“Oh, yes. There was blood everywhere. Its intestines squelched horribly under the tires less than six feet away from her,” Akechi goes on. Futaba chokes, and then hiccups in what she realizes is almost a laugh. “Please excuse her. Thank you.” And before the literal complete stranger can follow up on that awful statement, Akechi takes her hand and pulls her up.

Futaba stumbles to her feet. If she has to take the coat off right now, she will actually die.

“It’s okay. Just hold my hand and follow me.”

Blindly, she lets him lead her out of the subway, weaving through people with only minimal contact with other people’s shoulders. There’s a whole awkward period where Akechi has to walk her up the stairs out of the subway station while she can’t see anything, but eventually the noise and bustle of other people around her seems to die away, and the air grows cooler in the way it does in the shadows between city buildings. Then they stop walking altogether. When Akechi lets go of her hand, she almost tries to grab it back before she catches herself.

“Okay. There’s nobody else around, now. It’s safe.”

Futaba doesn’t come out of the jacket. In the dark, her eyes dart back and forth, trying to see even as she blinds herself.

“Sorry for grabbing you so suddenly like that,” Akechi’s voice goes on after it becomes obvious she’s not going to come out.

Futaba wipes snottily at her own face. Oh, this is so gross, she’s got snot and tears on top of five days worth of grime and body juice because she hadn’t taken a shower. She’s disgusting. She really actually wants to die right now. She can’t show her face like this.

“Er,” says Akechi. “Do you want…. water, or…?”

Futaba folds up right there on the city pavement, probably dragging Akechi’s nice coat all over a dirty alleyway. She tucks her face into her knees, where she feels safest, and pulls the coat flaps even tighter. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“I’m sorry for not being okay,” she mumbles.

There’s a short silence. “You really don’t have to be.”

“I do,” Futaba says. She feels like she’s nine years old again, a petulant kid who needs to hold people’s hands and be escorted around Tokyo. “This is—it’s stupid, and I can’t believe I-I’m still doing this, a-and even a-after everything that h-happened last year, I’m still just a… I’m still…”

“It’s fine,” says Akechi. Even he sounds overwhelmed, and at the first sound of weakness, she pulls the coat off her head and glares at him furiously, red-faced and covered in tears and snot and gross depression juice crust and all.

“I’m not supposed to be this way anymore!” she says miserably. “I’m supposed to be better! Moved on! Doing literally a-anything else but crying over t-taking a subway! It’s stupid and nobody else is like this and I just want to be over this already and I just want to be better already and—!“

She covers her face with her hands again. God, even when she says that, it sounds pathetic.

After a moment or two, she hears Akechi moving again. She peeks at him. He’s crouching in almost the exact same pose as her, looking like he’s resigning himself to neither getting his coat back, nor moving from this spot any time soon, nor getting to Yusuke’s art show on time, but also looking archly and entirely unperturbed about it. Actually, it looks like he’s writing a work email on his phone.

Futaba was right about being in an alleyway, but it’s so cold because they’re shielded by a trio of vending machines selling canned coffee and wrapped sandwiches. "Our dog was recently run over?” she says.

“People can mind their own damn business,” says Akechi in his Pleasant Boy Voice, without looking up from his email.

“He was just trying to help.”

“Oh, yes, let’s help the crying girl by crowding her and suffocating her in a crush of public transit.”

Futaba snorts. “That was really mean of you.”

“Oh, absolutely,” says Akechi.

Futaba sucks a truly disgusting gob of snot into her nose. “Ugh. I wish I could’ve seen the guy’s face when you told him that.”

“It was like I’d spat on his shoes. I should’ve kept going. Or had a camera.”

“Futaba giggles wetly into her forearms. "Like one of those—those prank videos online… Get Yusuke to film it.”

“Yusuke, as the cameraman? I’m not trying to make a documentary.” Akechi flips to a different screen on his phone. “I already texted Yusuke about our poor dead dog, by the way, so don’t worry about it.”

Suddenly Futaba feels like literal garbage again. “Why are you always so nice to me?” she mumbles.

Akechi makes a weird face, like he’s trying to do his old Pleasant Boy shtick while having swallowed a lemon whole. “You say that like me being nice is somehow unusual.”

“Uh, yeah. Because it is. You literally were just being a huge asshole to a guy you’d never met over a fictional dog.”

Akechi has this increasingly disgruntled look on his face like he kind of wants to punt Futaba down some stairs, which, frankly, is the best sort of reward, in Futaba’s opinion. “I’m working on it,” he says grumpily.

“How’s that been?” says Futaba.

“Which part?”

Futaba has one whole moment of self reflection on this idea as maybe not a good course of action before she barrels on anyway: “The part where you’re turning your life around. Starting over. Trying again.”

“It sucks dick,” says Akechi.

“Oh, right on,” says Futaba, and then before she can stop herself: “Wait, I thought you liked dick?”

Akechi makes a noise like a strangled cat.

Futaba cackles. “Dude, incognito mode when you’re browsing for porn does not save you from people like me.”

“Have you been spying on me?”

“Uh, yes? Obviously?”

“You know you could get arrested for that sort of breach in privacy.”

“Oh, boo hoo, so sorry I know all about your weird orphan-saving night job and your smutty Featherman doujinshi collection. You’re not gonna narc on me.” Futaba stops. “Are you?”

“Stop looking at my internet history.”

“No. You better not narc on me.”

“Then stop looking at my internet history.”

“You had to google how to change a SIM card last week, crow-boy; you couldn’t stop me if you tried.”

“I will narc on you.”

“No you won’t. You’re the one trying to not be an asshole.”

Akechi makes a face like a cat being slowly submerged in cold water. Futaba laughs in his face.

“If you’re quite done,” says Akechi grouchily.

“No, never. You’re made for being made fun of,” says Futaba. “I’m gonna be making fun of you for years and years, crow-boy; you’re never going to get rid of me.”

“Great.”

“Gonna be creeping on your weird orphan-saving night job until the day you die.”

“Wonderful,” says Akechi without inflection whatsoever.

“Mwehehehehehehehehehe.”

“If you’re quite done.”

“I will take a well-deserved break from my endless duty to troll you both on and offline,” says Futaba. “Because I really really really wanna go to the art show.”

Akechi has the nerve to look relieved that he no longer has to squat in a dirty alleyway listening to a high school freshman bully him. “Then let’s go.”

Futaba hugs her knees tight. “But I wanna keep your coat.”

“Aren’t you wearing your own coat?” says Akechi, trying to look like he isn’t shivering. “Aren’t you getting hot?”

“I’m keeping it.”

“It’s my coat.”

“I’m keeping it.”

“Fine, then. Keep it. It’s dry clean only.”

“Oh, ew. No, take it back, gross, gross,” and Futaba peels the snotty, tear-stained, dirty winter coat off and dumps it back in Akechi’s arms, who looks at it with the expression of someone long-suffering and without hope of escape.

“And,” says Futaba, “I wanna see it if you tell anyone else that our dog got run over.”

Akechi smirks. “You’ll have to film it, then.”

“Oh my god, like I wouldn’t.”

Futaba scrubs her face one last time. She still feels like she’s covered in a grimy layer of slime, but maybe she can wash her face at Kosei. When she gets there. Because she’s gonna get there.

“Uh, one more thing,” says Futaba.

“Not like you’ve bullied me into doing literally everything else you’ve wanted,” says Akechi.

“You can’t laugh at me.”

“Good thing I don’t have a sense of humor,” says Akechi, which horrifyingly confirms to Futaba that Akechi and Yusuke, of all people, really do share a sense of humor.

Futaba hesitates. “Please, um… please don’t tell Akira about this.”

“Why would I tell Akira?“

"Nice. Good answer.” She smooths her hair down, trying to make herself presentable, or just have something to do with her hands. “I… told him I was gonna be okay without him and all that, so… I don’t wanna let him down, you know?”

Slowly, almost shyly, Akechi smiles. “Oh, yes. I know.”

“Our secret. Secret-keepers.”

“Secret-keepers. Are you ready?”

Futaba takes another deep breath. Pushes herself up, brushes herself off, and sighs. “Absolutely not. This is gonna suck so much dick,” says Futaba. “Let’s go anyway.”

[albino-whumpee]

Robowhump 5

Continuing that March of robots- whump edition story with @whumptopia ‘s robot whump prompt list. Today was “forced reboot” so here!

TW// self harm, manipulation, non con body modifications, abuse, torture, emotional abuse, burning and cuts mention

(I think it’s time to say, my writing is explicit and so, proceed with caution)

The first time Exia opened its eyes, it saw Ian´s father. A man with gentle black eyes and gray hairs. A programmer like his son and wife. Not as talented as either and certainly not as famous as his wife. He was humble and cared for Exia. It didn´t remember anymore, but it had been him who had given it its name.

“I´m trusting Ian to you, Exia” the man said as it sat Exia on the back of the car. Crossing the car’s seatbelt on its chest, because he didn´t want to put him (because he refered to Exia as him) on a box again. “He´s really good. I´m sure he will make some wonderful upgrades to you” he smiled at the android. There had been hope in his naivety and oblivion to his son´s nature.

Exia had recorded the man´s voice for Ian. “To encourage” him as the man put it.

But after Ian smiled and thanked his father for the gift, waved his hand as goodbye and closed the door. Ian had made Exia lay on a table and erased all previous commands.

Except its name.

Mainly because it would be troublesome to remember any other name.

And so, that was the first reboot Exia had.

The next time happened after Ian tried adding a few lines and had forgotten to put a simple comma. Causing Exia to bump into walls and keep walking as if it was on a videogame.

The third time was when Ian wanted to test Exia´s receptors and blew its hearing.

The fourth time had been purely accidental. Ian hadn´t slept in three days and put his homework code into Exia´s by mistaking the keyboards. The conflicts made Exia´s core to overheat and made it move erratically.

The eigth time Ian´s professor wanted them to test simple commands on androids. Making them lift eggs and the like was too old fashioned, so the challenge was making them handle jelly. Exia made a great demonstration but slipped out Ian had helped the other’s for money. It had been the first time Exia had seen Ian angry at him.

The nineth time, Ian had met Creek and was living with him now. Creek showed him the download sites for the pain emulators. When Ian tied Exia to a chair, the android had done it with a smile. But after the download, it had to be rebooted after many repairments were made. Out of panic mode conflicts that triggered self destruction tendencies and damaged a liquid deposit on Exia´s head. Causing leaks sometimes.

The tenth time, Exia had begged Creek to stop. That it hurt when it installed new body parts when it was fully responsive and the pain emulators were active. Creek had limited to laugh and continue assembling the new parts into Exia. It screamed quite loud, but Creek just turned their headphones volume higher. Tightened Exia´s restraints if it moved too much and ordered it to stop leaking from its eyes without much success. Of course, the leaking wasn´t something he could control now.

By the twelfth time, Ian had developed a back up. So, when they were testing Exia’s skin durability and had it trembling, tied to the working table with a face half burnt, Exia came back with the memories of it being burnt. Just new skin.

It would know what pain was even after rebooting now.

And Exia wasn’t allowed to say anything to Ian’s father. It would smile and say “Im doing my best performance to satisfy Mister Ian. I thank you for your concern” whenever a new patch of cheap skin was glued to a spot Creek had burnt, marked, teared apart or simply removed. “Exia has a lot to learn however” it would say while blinking three times rapidly and then stop for a bit before continuing.

“Im happy to see he’s well!” Ian’s father said to him as he chomped down his food “I like that yellow bang too” he said referring to the strand of hair, both boys had stolen from a broken down robot “Fits you”

“Thank you, sir” Exia replied keeping its blinking rythm.

“´It´, dad.” the boy stressed  “It’s a robot, not a person” Ian said slurping on his noodles. The ramen ya they were on was pretty popular at that time. Just before the last few trains went on their way.

“Oh yeah right” the man awkwardly replied. Silence ensued as Exia simply stared at them eat. Wondering…

“What are you..?” The man lifted his eyes as Exia swallowed their beer. “Exia, no!” He stood up quicker than Ian and grabbed the android by the shoulders but it was too late. The liquid leaked to its core and circuits in a second.

The seventeenth time, Exia opened its eyes on a dark place. The closet, it recognized. Battery was running low and its limbs had been taken away.

Oh. It muttered to itself.

Im going to be abandoned.

It leaned its head on the wall. And noticed it had its Clothes taken off as well. Of course, a useless machine like Exia didn’t need to cover itself. Even when Creek had added a member simply to test the receptors and emulators.

Drip…

Blue liquid ran from its eyes. Possibly after-damage of some of their experiments. Or…

Whatever they were they didn’t stop. However they came, fat tears rolled down its cheek.

“E-Exia?” An unfamiliar voice called from outside.

It had been Liam who had taken it outside the closet. Covered it with its own clothes and told it to turn around to plug it to a charging dock.

Exia refused to let Liam touch it.

It was an unwanted machine! It was supposed to run out of batteries and grow forgotten locked away on the closet.

Not…saved.

But it was.

It wasn’t immediately that Exia expected Liam’s visits. Waiting for it to come and tell it about outside and about Ian and Creek. As there was no windows there. Exia learnt Liam was a prototype for their final project. A social service android. Designed to treat mentally unstable people. Exia had laughed.

Liam wasn’t surprised to see the android wiggling like a worm on the floor as it laughed histerically at the irony. Aware it was collateral damage to Exia’s system that allowed it to laugh.

Liam was aware of the pain emulators and one time, when Exia was staring blankly at a wall running a dyagnostic, Liam dropped a furry blanket over it. And hugged it.

“Hugging helps humans feel comfort and not alone after a traumatic event” Liam whispered as Exia stiffened and scuffed.

“Are you implying I should be treated like a human after trauma?” Liam took a moment to reply “I don’t know if that helps to lower your leaking, but I searched in my treatment files that panic modes can be smoothened-“

“Ok, ok I get it” Exia interrupted it. It allowed itself to focus on the warmness of the blanket. Its system would catalogue the cumulus of electric signals it felt at that moment as “comforted”.

Exia did feel like wanting more of that “comfort” thing.

And Liam was designed to do so.

Ian stared at the records of Liam’s trips to the warehouse where Exia was kept, everyday. To monitor improvements and adjust Liam’s protocols.

The young boy didn’t like wasting things and would use them to their last breath. Abandoning Exia? Oh no. He had simply planted the situation for Liam’s development.

Ian allowed Liam to put the androids limbs back on their place one day. Liam attached them despite the colors being not quite right and helped Exia up.

Ian had intricately written Liam’s physical therapy commands and tested them with Exia.

But as Liam proofed to be perfect on treating Exia, Exia was recovering too quickly.

So it was time for a final test.

TW// self harm, manipulation, non con body modifications, abuse, torture, emotional abuse, burning and cuts mention

[m00nlitknight]

librarian helper

fandom: IT (2017) pairing:  henry bowers / goody-two-shoes reader word count:  1,635 warnings:  none to really point out? henry being henry?? summary:   Oh, how one tires of stagnant days. extra:   my favorite part of this is when richie said 'mullet-boy bowers' im iconic. i also finished this at like 3am pls b gentle i hope i wrote henry ok! feedback is highly appreciated, thank you for reading!

archive of our own link.

Monday mornings in Derry weren’t ideal, regardless of the context. Teens awoken far too early for their own good, forced to come to grips with the reality that it was the first day back from the weekend. Trudging through the crowded student body and longing for the day to be over just as soon as it was to begin. A variety of feelings made the air heavy and thick with a concoction so truthful to the high school experience; frustration, exhaustion, and the underlying scent of yearning.

Few an individual found themselves bragging of the weekend’s extracurricular activities, cackling with an unusual vigor and energy unlike the rest of their near-ghoulish peers. Others were sitting on the ground, rushing through their assignments with adrenaline only just granted to them; oh yes, the heart-stopping experience of forgetting that there was homework.

Fortunately, you’d hadn’t found yourself in that predicament this morning, having thoroughly done your homework on Friday night. Best to do it then push it off and forget it; your own philosophy. Not to say you hadn’t found yourself in the same situation in times past, nor were you above those whose memory’s had failed them.

Quietly you step up to your locker, opening it and glancing down to your left, where Richie Tozier was currently scribbling nonsense down on what you assumed to be Government. You hummed, putting your things away quickly and retrieving what looked to be the same assignment - some stupid worksheet the teacher assigned, no doubt some kind of busywork. Your class truly had no grasp on the concept of being ‘quiet,’ which annoyed you to no end.

You squatted down to his level, with his pencil not even ceasing as you set the paper in his peripheral. No teachers were at their morning posts yet, either that or the ones who were supposed to be there simply didn’t care to be there.

“Oh - uh, shit, how much?” His eyes shifted from you to the paper quickly as he fumbled to reach for something - likely his wallet.

“Nothing,” Your voice leaves you laced with amusement as you push the paper into his grasp. “Just don’t get caught with it, please.”

“Aw, c’mon! You can’t just hand it the fuck over for free, man, that’ll mean I owe you a solid.”

“Just consider it on the house, Tozier. It’ll be fine, you don’t owe me.”

“Okay, okay, but don’t come hollerin’ when you suddenly need a favor from ol’ Richie, alright?”

You hum in affirmation, turning back to your locker and beginning to sort through the things that would be needed for the day to come. Around you, energy began to rise, individuals of the student body reanimating through social interaction. The morning sun may not have been enough to revitalize them, but it appeared that the promise of teenage-to-teenage interaction was.

Richie finished his work with your worksheet quickly, shoving it back in your direction with a toothy grin. “Thanks, dude, you’re a fuckin’ lifesaver, I swear.”

“Like I said, it’s nothing! Do you need help with anything else? You know I have a basically free second period in the library.”

“Nah, thanks for the offer,” He seemed to finalize, standing up to go through his own locker. “I’ll make sure to send my dumbfuck friends your way if they happen to need any tutoring, though.”

You release a laugh through your nose, head shaking as you did so. Richie looked to you with a momentary smile, only to have it fall when he looked passed to the people around you.

“Alright, don’t panic,” naturally, you felt a little alarmed as a grimace crept onto his features. “ but I think you have a momentary peepin’ Tom right now.”

“Uh ... what ... do you mean?” You couldn’t help the faint caution and apprehension crawling into your voice.

“Mullet-boy Bowers is staring at you like ... really intensely,” he turned to you once again, putting an not-so-reassuring hand on your shoulder. “If I were you, I’d get the fuck outta dodge right now.”

With that, he stepped around you, maneuvering through the hallway - likely to class - and leaving you by your lonesome and, unfortunately, vulnerable. Quickly after his departure, the bell rang shrill overhead, signaling the beginning of class as students begrudgingly made their way to their first hour classes. You made yourself among their ranks, gathering your things to hopefully outrun ( or walk in this case ) any physical advancements the fellow student could’ve had on you.

The classroom’s door frame never felt more welcoming as you stepped foot into it, releasing a breath of comfort. Most of the class had yet to filter in, meaning there was more reign to choosing whatever seat you wanted. With a hum of appreciation, you step further in, choosing a seat not-too-close and not-too-far back for your liking, sitting down and preparing for class.

You keep your attention focused on your notebook for the beginning as classmates make their way in, sitting in various spots around the room and leaving you by yourself. Booted footfalls make their dreaded way over to you, finding themselves seated to your right. Sudden fear prickles your skin, suddenly making the room too warm and too cold at once while your shoulders tense. For the love of god, be anyone, anyone other than who you thought it was.

The seat creaks, likely with the weight of its occupant leaning into your vicinity. “Did’ja get the homework done, girlie?” You can almost hear the smirk in his whisper, as though he’s a wolf bearing his maw to a sheep. You tense further, shaking your head as you unconsciously lean further into the empty space you have right.

“S’funny...swear I saw you givin’ it to Trashmouth ‘fore class started,” The seats to your front and back were occupied by others, quite possibly remaining individuals who found an alliance with Henry. “Always thought’ch’re a good girl...be a shame if someone fucked that up for y’huh?”

Blackmail? That didn’t really seem like his style, then again it didn’t quite seem like you were being offered a choice of any kind - especially if he had the man power of his goons with him.

“So what’s it gonna be, huh? We ain’t got much time,” his voice transcribed his annoyance as your mulling was cut short, sliding the paper into his vision as he diligently scribbled the answers down. Across the room you caught the eye of Richie, quickly looking away in shame. You nearly miss the amused “s’what I thought,” murmured from Henry as he finishes the work quickly, shoving your desk with a bark of laughter.

The class continues on with its usually snail-like pace, much to your dismay as you keep your eyes locked on either the clock or your notebook. In front of you sat Belch Huggins, likely to his own humor since you were no longer able to see the board, and to your back sat Victor Criss who was able to sneak in an early nap. Through the paperballs being spat at or thrown at you from your right, you couldn’t help but feel that this was in some way better than having Patrick sit nearest to you - even if he was still creepily staring into your shoulder from behind Henry with what you could only guess was that irking grin. God forbid it was his expressionless face, that churned nervousness in your gut.

The bell rang once again overhead, signaling your freedom to the library as you scrambled to gather your things and rush passed before you had the chance to get cornered. Dumping what you had in your hands in your locker - you figured it would be for later you to organize - you did your best to scamper to the library unseen.

It seemed to have worked for the most part, aside from the bemused glances you garnered from teachers. Only momentary, they shrugged it off as you being a good kid in a hurry. As you entered the vicinity, you released another sigh of relief. If there was one thing you knew, it was that Henry Bowers wouldn’t be caught dead in a library. You didn’t really worry about his friends either, they were probably busy giving some unfortunate soul a swirlie, or whatever.

“Always on time, aren’t you?” The librarian, Ms. Andrews, rhetorical question was met with a beaming smile from you. “I’ve written things down for you to do, I’ll be in and out today helping the bookkeeper in the office.”

With a timid nod, you walked over to what she’d assigned you to do, looking through the short list with a thought of reaffirmation. Checking books back in, sorting back through them, and putting labels on new ones. You didn’t think you’d get through it all in the allotted time, though you were sure she’d been aware. Despite the world’s slow pace of going digital, Derry managed to lag behind - leaving you and your school with the unfortunate continuation of the paper system instead of being able to have the use of a computer.

“I’ll be back soon, dear, you know where where everything is,” she rounded the counter top before stepping out of the room, heels clicking loudly on the linoleum outside the carpeted room. A few moments later, the sound of boots made themselves apparent on the floor outside, going unnoticed by you as you began working on what had been assigned to you.

Looking up, your eyes met the smug gaze of Bowers himself - to which you tensed up once again. It stayed like what for an uncomfortable amount of time, the stuffy silence broken by the likes of you.

“Didn’t think you’d be a fan of the library,” you murmured, closing the book and setting it on the cart to be replaced.

“Wasn’t really, ‘till a lil’ birdy told me where my favorite bunny hangs out fer her second hour,” A sly smirk crawled onto his features as he watched you grimace over the use of the pet name.

He stepped forward, watching a physical flinch from you occur whilst he leaned his elbows onto the counter. It was stupid of him to get worked up over watching you squirm like that, but he had to admit there was definitely a feeling that came along with it. Leaning onto the counter, he gazed into your face. “What’ya say to us peelin’ outta here, goin’ and havin’ some actual fun?”

You fell silent at the question, blush darkening your features all the way to the ear. Unable to keep eye contact, you glanced to the pile of books that suddenly seemed way more interesting. “I’d say,” your voice came out so much more fragile then you’d meant it to as you looked back into his eyes. “Take me to dinner first.”

At your rebuttal, he found himself at a momentary loss for words, his own cheeks dusting with a faint pink. His smirk faltered, before returning at full force. “Can’t a man get a taste first, then?”

“ Uh, ” your mouth went dry, eyes suddenly widening. How could he be so forward?

“What’ll it be, doe-eyes?”

With a glance around the vacant library, you looked to him again. “Follow me.”

His smirk turned wolfish as you led him to the vague-privacy of the bookshelves. Once the doorway was out of sight, and the two of you were tucked away into a corner, you looked to him. “We’ll have to be quick...and quiet.”

He stepped to you, only partially caging you in with one hand. “I can do quick, but I can’t promise quiet, bunny.”

“W-we can’t do much,” you stammer, face flushing as he lowered himself to your neck. “I’m n-not that easy!” You squeak when you feel his lips press against your jugular, putting an embarrassed hand to your mouth.

“Thought we had to be quiet,” he chuckled.

You put your hands onto his face, dragging him backward to press a chaste kiss to his lips. Quickly, he swatted your hands away, coming to rest his own on your waist as you replaced your hands onto his shoulders. The kiss escalated to eyes being closed, lip nipping, and heads turning for a better angle.

You gently pulled away, in turn his hands beginning to roam your mid-section with curiosity as you caught your breath. When he brushed a certain spot, you couldn’t suppress a giggle, much to his amusement as he began to brush it intentionally.

“Henry!” You giggle, putting your hands on his chest to push him away.

“Y’know, I like the sound of my name on your lips, doe-eyes,” He pressed a kiss to your lips once again before pulling away completely. “Maybe you’ll be sayin’ it with more gusto tonight, huh?”

Your face flushes, eyes widening again. “Oh - oh! Uh, maybe..?”

“Meet me durin’ lunch, we’ll talk then,” and with a wink, he set out of the library.

[prettylittlehargrove]

December 10th - Snowed In 🎄

Summary : Your little study session with Billy doesn’t go exactly as planned, but maybe it’s for the better...

Warning : None

Word Count : ???

Authors Notes : Sorry these have been very delayed oops, but I’m working on requests now darlings so look out for yours!! I’ve got around 5-6 to finish and upload 🥰

You threw your books onto your bed, a loud huff emitted from your lips as you lugged yourself over to your desk chair, sitting awkwardly on the suppose to be ‘soft’ seating.

To say that school was going well would be the biggest lie you’d ever imagined in your life. School was hell. From the constant testing and homework every week, to the constant rumours which spread like a virus through your classmates. All to do with you and the new hot shot at school.

Billy Hargrove was far from a good christian boys you’d been set up with before. He was a sun kissed little devil who could drop panties with just so much as a flash of his pearly whites and a cheeky wink. Your mother would’ve murdered you if she even found out that a boy like that was attending your school, let alone the fact that you were unfortunately head over heels for him.

The rumours wouldn’t even be a thing if it wasn’t for Tina’s Christmas party last night. Steve was being a bit of a drunk asshole and he mumbled some nasty shit about you under his breath, which caused you to burst into tears and landed Steve a punch square in the face from the one and only Californian god. All you could remember was how your face went as red as Billy’s shirt at the fact that not only had he of all people stuck up for you, but he’d punched Steve Harrington. Hawkins resident asshole. You knew all about how he’d smashed Jon’s camera last week.

Well as the week went on, Billy only became more protective of you, and followed you around like a little lost puppy.

And now, here you are inspecting the calander on your desk. The snowy December weather sending a shiver down your spine, causing you to force yourself out of your chair and go to close your window. A camaro seemed to be parked right outside your house...

‘Is that Billy’s car?’ You thought, a glance at the calander again made you notice the red marker which mentioned how you had a tutor session with the little devil.

“Crap” you whispered. Shoving yourself into a more presentable outfit, way better than your usual school look and untying your hair.

A shrill cry of your doorbell caused your body to bolt down the stairs. Meeting face to face with his ocean eyes as you opened the door.

“Heya Princess, nice place” he smirked, leaning against the doorframe, dark smirk playing his features.

“Umm, thank you... uhh, come in” you cursed yourself for completely losing ever ounce of confidence you’d built up between open ring the door and meeting his dreamy eyes.

He looked around the place, looking around at the dull decor your mother had become so in love with.

“You want something to drink or eat? You didn’t eat lunch again... I Uhh noticed...” this was true, Billy never ate lunch unless he was sharing half a sandwich with you or Tommy. In fact you never really saw him eat at school.

“If you don’t mind doll” his words were like fucking silk, it made your knees weak with nerves. He follows you into the kitchen and leaned against the island. You set up a cup of cocoa and reached into the cookie jar to grab him some gingerbread. “How was basketball practice? Steve didn’t give you any trouble again?” You mumbled, setting the cup down with the plate of sweet treats in front of him.

“It was good, Harrington’s backed down since last week, but I mean he got what he deserved, shouldn’t say shit like that to my princess” he dipped his cookie into the cocoa and lifted it to his lips, taking a large bite and sighing with happiness. “Such a good cook angel”

Your mind raced at the words ‘my princess’ you definitely weren’t dating. Billy was was out of your league... he was the bad boy who hung out with the bad kids and smoked cigarettes whilst he was supposed to the be in maths, which he was failing, majorly. “There was no need for violence, but I think... I- Uhh I think it was sweet, so umm thank you... it had good intentions” you took a sip from your own cup of cocoa and giggled a little as billy gobbled down the cookies.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Ok?...”

“Why’re you always so nervous around me?” His eyebrow was raised, fingers tapping against the wooden surface of the island counter.

“I’m - im... umm- I don’t know... I think it’s just... oh look! Crap, that snow looks heavy...” your eyes had darted across the room to the window which showed the blizzard that had erupted outside. The phone interrupted your thought process and caused you to excuse yourself.

“Hello?”

“We aren’t going to make it back home tonight, theres been a snowstorm and we’ve been snowed in for the night, are you ok?”

“Yeah... Umm- it’s looking really bad outside, is it not ok to drive at all?”

“No, walking is even dangerous to be honest, sorry darling, I’ve phoned the neighbours and they’re around if you need them but from the sounds of it you’ve got a friend over hmm?”

“Yes... yes, ok I’ll just have to get some extra blankets and pillows etc... love you” you muttered, watching Billy snoop around your kitchen.

“Love you too, and no funny business-“ you quickly hung up, not prepared for an hour long lecture about being safe when home alone.

“I can walk home and pick the car up tomorrow?” Billy piped up, having sort of eavesdropped on bits of your conversation.

“No, it’s ok, you’ll catch your death in that weather, I’ll get some blankets and we can sleep in my room, the heating doesn’t work downstairs during winter” your hands searched the cabinet for a few extra throws and blankets, piling them onto Billy’s arms, whilst grabbing some pillow and candles.

You both trudged up the stairs, Billy smirked as he entered the room. The cute wallpaper and fluffy white carpet made the place look cute and comfy.

“We can set up some sort of blanket defence system against the cold air, but in the mean time, did you bring your revision stuff?” Billy opened his mouth to speak, but his eyes immediately darted across the room.

“Uhh, yeah I kinda forgot this was a study session” he chuckled awkwardly, a light pink tint warming his cheeks.

“Oh... that’s fine, we don’t have to study, I guess we might as well just hang out... yeah...” he nodded, grabbing a blanket and placing it against the bottom of your door to stop cold air from enetering the room.

An awkward silence fell upon you both as you made the room cosy.

He shifted himself closer to you. “Ya know you didn’t finish off your answer to my question?” He whispered, hand dangerously close to your leg.

“I guess - maybe I kinda think that... Umm” your face was bright red, cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“Don’t worry angel, I think your cute too” he chuckled lowly, hand resting on your thigh.

“You do-“ every word you said was shaky. Billy tilted his head, a smile on his face before he nodded.

“I think that you’re adorable and I was kinda hoping that this wasn’t gonna be just some study session” you shivered, the cool breeze getting past the blankets and sending shivers down your spine.

Billy didn’t even think twice before he grabbed a quilt and wrapped you up in it. Your faces were so close, his eyes locked onto yours.

“C-can I kiss you” you stuttered. He nodded and lifted his hand up to your cheek, pulling you into him. The kiss was magical and passionate. Billy had never kissed someone and felt butterflies in his stomach before. For once he was nervous and he felt goosebumps.

Slowly you both pulled away. “Was that ok angel?” A small nod and a smile told him everything. He pulled you onto his lap, cuddling your shivering body close.

“When we get out of this snowstorm I’ll take you on a real nice date” he mumbled, stroking your hair as the snow fell outside your window.

[chuffyfan87]

Hiding. Part 45c (NSFW)

"Yes."

“What would you like me to do?”

"You keep dodging the question so now I really want to know what idea you've got in mind but won't tell me!"

“I’m not dodging the question.” He laughed. “I want you to boss me about, demand what you want!”

"Well... What could I possibly make you do..?" She pondered with a mischievous grin.

“Anything.” He nipped her neck and her shoulder.

"No marks above the neck! I've got to look presentable at the school tomorrow!"

“So does that mean I get to leave love bites in places only I can see?”

"Only if you're a good boy..." She grinned. "I could play naughty nurse for you if you promise not to make a mess."

“Go on then. Play naughty nurse for me, though I’m not sure I won’t make a mess.”

She slid from the bed and reached into the bag she'd been checking earlier. "Well I need this to be clean by tomorrow morning so you can wash it if you make a mess."

“I’ll be nice and do that.” He watched her.

"Aha!" She found what she was looking for and held it up. "This is practically vintage now so you need to treat it with care."

He bit his lower lip. “I’ll be careful. Least I’ll try...”

"No peeking!" She warned as she disappeared into the bathroom.

“I’ll keep my eyes shut.”

"Good!" A couple of minutes later after several muttered curses the door reopened followed by the sound of plastic rustling and metal clinking. "You can open your eyes now."

He opened his eyes as she entered the bedroom.

"Well, what do you think? I gave up on the belt but not bad considering it's ten years since I last wore it."

“You look... Wow!” He was speechless.

"Feel free to take it off me as quick as you like because I can barely breath right now!"

“Come here?” He moved out of the bed and sat on the edge. He pulled her towards him, “You are incredible.”

"I was expecting it to be tight round the waist but not the chest."

“Well your breasts have grown a bit.” He ran his finger over her breasts.

"So it seems." Her breath caught as he moved his fingers, causing the buttons of the dress to strain further.

“You’re going to pop out of that if you’re not careful.” He undid a button, that caused her breasts to spill out.

She let out the breath she'd been holding.

“I remember the first time I fucked you in this, do you?”

"Of course I do. I couldn't work out what the hell I'd done wrong when you summoned me to your office. I was all ready for a fight..."

xxx

“Duffy, my office, now!!” He bellowed to Duffy in cubicles. He was in a fool mood for some reason, snapping at everyone.

Duffy shared a look with the nurse she'd been assisting and rolled her eyes. Turning she followed Charlie's fast disappearing figure in the direction of his office. She had been wondering all shift what had been eating him and now it seemed she was about to find out. "So I'm the chosen one then?" She asked sarcastically as she entered the office.

“Can anyone do anything right around here?” He grumbled as he looked up from sitting on the edge of his desk and told her to shut the door.

"They're all trying their best but that doesn't seem enough for you today so go on, get it out your system." She folded her arms across her chest. "Shout at me if it'll make you feel better and stop you snapping at the staff for the slightest thing."

“I didn’t invite you in here to shout at you!”

"Really? You could have fooled me. You summoned me like a naughty schoolgirl about to get the cane from the headmaster!" She moved her hands to her hips, a defiant look in her eyes. "That's not my job but speaking as your friend you need let out whatever has been stuck up your butt all day!"

Her folding her arms across her chest simply drew his attention to just how full her breasts were. Watching the way she put a hand on her hip, Charlie bit his lower lip hard. “What if you were to be punished like a naughty schoolgirl?” He got up and walked towards her.

"You want me to bend over and take one for the team coz you're in a mood?"

“You know you want to.” He met her gaze and held it.

"I don't know what you mean." She replied as she reached behind her and flicked the door lock. The click echoed through the thick atmosphere in the room.

He closed the gap between them and looked down at her lips. Then back up to her eyes.

She bit her lip as she watched his gaze roam over her.

“You’ve been distracting me all day.” He said quietly as he edged his lips closer to hers.

"I haven't done anything." She whispered.

“Believe me, just looking at you is enough to distract me. Never mind being in the same room.” His lips connected with hers.

She wrapped her arms around his neck pulling him closer.

His hands began to roam her body. Touching her hips, her bum and her breasts.

She tangled her fingers in his hair, parted her lips and her tongue sought out his.

His tongue sort dominance over hers.

Her hands moved around to the front of his shirt and loosened his tie. She then began to unbutton his shirt as she felt his hands go to her belt.

He unfastened her belt and threw it, the belt landing on the floor by his desk.

She couldn't quite believe what was happening as he began to unbutton her dress. Yes they'd had sex before but that had been a drunken hook up in a carpark nearly two years ago now. This time they were sober and at work. It was so very wrong but at the same time felt so right.

He pulled her towards the desk, his hands tearing roughly at her dress.

She pulled his shirt from his trousers as he pushed her back onto the desk.

He grabbed her breasts hard, his tongue sucking hers.

She pushed his shirt and white coat from his shoulders and unbuckled his belt, her hands cupping the large bulge evident through his trousers.

He groaned loudly at the feel of her hand against his bulge. He was hard, painfully so.

She wriggled slightly on the desk so that he could achieve his aim of yanking her knickers down as she freed his cock from his trousers, running her hand along his hardened length as soon as she had.

He yanked down her knickers, his fingertips tiptoeing up and down her inner thighs. Feeling her hand begin to move up and down his length, Charlie groaned.

"What if someone hears us?" She whispered urgently, her breathing growing faster as his hands roamed higher.

“Then I suggest we both be quiet.” He whispered as he licked her earlobe. His hands grabbed her breasts.

She moaned as she wrapped her legs around his waist.

Charlie guided himself into her and groaned as he filled her.

"You feel so good!" She whispered lustfully.

“So do you.” He replied.

She ran her fingers through his hair as she kissed him passionately.

He deepened the kiss as he began to move.

"Harder! Faster!" She moaned into his mouth.

Encouraged by her moans and words, Charlie moved harder and faster. His hands against her hips.

As her passions grew her mind couldn't help but once more flash back to the previous time they'd been together.

It had been a great night but they’d had far too much to drink. Shots, whiskey, wine.

It had all conspired to lead them to being alone together outside in the carpark. This time they had no such excuse.

“I much prefer this.” He whispered in her ear, “Fucking you whilst sober.”

"You'll remember it all this time." She nipped her teeth on his earlobe.

“Uh huh.” He attempted to keep his moans quiet but couldn’t.

"Oh shit!" She moaned loudly.

“Ssh.” He replied. He bit her neck and sucked her collarbone. “Oh shit!! Duffy!”

She moaned again, louder still as his lips found a particularly sensitive spot at the base of her neck.

He sucked against her neck, against the sensitive spot. His hand moved down her front, groped her breasts, down her stomach and to her clit. His fingers began to play with her other sensitive spot, wanting to tip her over the edge.

"Shit! Fuck!" She moaned as her orgasm began to rush upon her.

“Shit, shit babe!” He got faster for a moment, pounding her hard before he began to climax himself.

"Charlie!" She couldn't help but shout as she came hard.

It was in that moment, he blurted out. “I love you.”

Her eyes had been closed but they shot open wide as she heard his words.

His head was resting in the crook of her neck, his breathing heavy.

She looked up at the ceiling, convincing herself that she must have misheard him.

“I don’t have any right to say that to you.” He whispered, “But I do.”

"I..." She didn't know what to say, she was so confused by what had happened between them.

He didn’t want to move from his current position but it wasn’t the time or the place.

As soon as he moved she began to silently gather her clothes and redress.

“Can we... Talk about this tonight?”

"OK." She smiled shyly as she readjusted her stockings.

“Thank you.” He watched her whilst getting himself dressed at the same time.

xxx

In the present day, Charlie’s hands began to undo all the buttons on Duffy’s dress. “The first time I ever told you I loved you was then. Do you remember?”

She nodded. "It totally threw me. I didn't know how to react..."

“I wasn’t just fucking you because I needed a release.” He ran his fingertips against her swollen stomach

"Well it certainly improved your mood that day! I, on the other hand, didn't know what the hell to do with myself!" She sighed, her gaze focused on his hand.

“Because you felt used?” He looked up to meet her gaze.

She bit her lip. "A bit." She admitted sadly.

“I’m sorry.” He sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me that’s how you felt?”

"You weren't the first or the last to treat me like that during those years." She shrugged.

“But I wasn’t... I wasn’t the same as them.” He kissed her stomach.

"I know that now. But back then I thought that's what I deserved."

“Im so sorry.”

"Don't apologise, its in the past now." She told him as she sat down on his lap.

He placed his hands against her hips.

She kissed him softly.

“I love you. So much.”

"I love you too." She smiled. "This has stayed on longer than I thought it was going to!" She giggled, gesturing to her uniform that hung open.

“Sorry.” He smiled and pulled it off.

"Well now you're overdressed!" Though she now sat in just her knickers he was still wearing boxers and a tshirt.

“Undress me then.”

"Stand up."

“I would but you’re sitting on my lap.”

She swung her legs around and slowly slid from his lap.

“I enjoyed you in that position.” He replied as he stood up.

"I thought you preferred me on my knees..." She giggled as she pulled his tshirt from his boxers.

“Now that’s my favourite ever position. You on your knees.”

"I'm amazed I don't have permanent carpet burns on my knees!" She pulled his tshirt over his head.

“You’ve knelt on the bed a lot. Especially recently.”

"Comfort is important!" She ran her fingers under the waistband of his boxers.

“It is with you, yes.”

"Especially given my 'delicate' condition." She mocked, rolling her eyes.

“You are very delicate at the minute.”

[starlight-starwings]

The Adventure Zone Season 2 quotes.

Unfortunately the quotes I saved between seasons 1 and 2 were lost because I got a new phone, so this is starting with episode 6 of Amnesty. If anyone has good quotes from the first arc, experimental arcs, ans the live shows during the experimental arcs, feel free to add or send them.

• - listen... ok, we could... agdgsbjsbuhah. how they eat and breathe... its just a show, just relax

- technically the .. waste water systems and the regular water systems of a city or not connected, and so like theres a lot of.. a lot of ways to figure it out. But yea, maybe you get the idea that this thing doesn't.. it can.. it.. is weird man...

• hey there adventure zone lovers. I dont know if that means you love adventure zone, or you... heh heh heh, ya know.

• - can you feel it?

- the idea of feeling is kinda weird-

- close your eyes and tell me if Im doing it

- well you already did- ok.

- close your eyes. Did I do it?

- you did it

- aaahh, I didnt

- ok. This is not a fun game for me

• - its our first day here!

- yeaa. Like... Let me ask you about the fucking... cast of Friends

- youre talking about Matt Leblanc and Matthew-

- Ah fuck.

- ah shit

- damn

- son of a b- he's good, he's real good

• - Don't I have to roll?

- we have not played dungeons and dragons in so fucking long!

- Here

- what are you rolling to do?!

• - tell me, is patience one of your more valued v-

- yes!

• Hey. No ideas bad. It just wasn't good.

• - I got eleven? You got any cash on you?

- uhh yea I happen to have nine bucks right here. Griffin cant prove otherwise.

• listen Pidgeon, here's the thing: I... love... to... practice fishing. But... the running water... frightens me. Its called hydrophobia. And I would love to practice my cast in a real water environment, where I can get in a large body of water, where I can guarantee that running water wont be a factor. And I would just love to practice my casting in a guaranteed still body. But here's the other thing! Sometimes if you do it in a lake, thats what youre thinking, a fish will bite it. And normally thats ideal but Im just trying to practice casting. If like.. when you dont want to catch em. Thats when they're biting. Ya know what I mean? I need a still body of water, that I can guarentee won't move, to practice my fishing casting.

• - Noooo

- are you sure?

- yeaaaaa

- Beause its our podcast!

- noooo

- we're actually doing our own podcast

• - Make uhhh.... check. You're gonna need to make a check for this one

- I got the gum. But I have the gum

- It's good gum; you'll have advantage on it.

• Cause I mean a 4 legged octopus is a horse.

• - What does control water do?

- Merle can- well gee wiz. It makes spaghetti! What do you think control water does?

- whats the fucking card say?

• Good you know my sister Jane was doing missionary work in Honduras and normally I would spend the uh, holidays with her. But uhh I had some friends come in from uhh out of town. And uhh... I wanted to communicare this to anybody who might be listening somehow, and I thought this might be a more organic way of uh, doing it.

• um... nah so ok right... so... the pizza hut sign... started to fall, cause of the weather. And he ran up there on a... fire escape, and tried to... push it? With a bat? Dammit. Nah. He just pushed it. And it fell. But then he fell. Cause he got shocked. I bet. Mmmm. I didn't see. I was in- Ah shit. Alright. Hey folk- hey guys. Rewind. I- hey guys rewind a second. Aahh fuck. I was inside I didn't see. Anything. I don't know. This man. I do know this man. His name- fuck. Alright. I'm met.. high net... here... Mmmm, alright. So, This man's is name is Ned. And he's uh.. friend of mine. And I dont know what the hell happened to him. But you know this guy. He's always getting into something. I don't know. I was in the building. I almost got killed by a pizza hut sign. I might be in shock.

• Write the fucking story with me! We are New York Times bestselling authors!

• - Ok. Go ahead. Uhh where are your wings? Obviously you can't see them right now because I'm wearing my disguise. Would you like to see my wings?

- Yes.

- I don't know you very well, so no, not- not quite yet.

• Aw Juno this is so embarrassing. Um last week, uhh, my truck got beat up, and I... I had to take it over to Whistle's. And he wa- while he was fixing it up I had to borrow yours to run out uh... to- to do a check on... a body of water. In... the... tree... zone... forest. Fuck. It was a body of water in the tree zone. And I had to check on it in your car. And when I- I drove your car, without asking, and... I think I left my... pants? No. Wallet? Money. I left my wallet in your truck and I was wondering if you could go look for it real quick.

• - a goat..

-well. No its.. i mean you look at the legs you can kinda see... yea...

- its pan!

- no were not crossing over

- there no crossover here sir. No.

• - oh thats easy. All you have to do is press that red button right there.

- and what will that do?

- itll give you the key sphere

- well hold on....

- merle casts zone of truth!

- so what happens when I press that button?

- the red button? Itll give you the key sphere

- what will the blue button do?

- it'll kill ya

- what would the other frankenstein tell us?

- well my companion over there always lies. He'll tell ya to hit the blue button.

- oh okay. Its kinda one of those- ya know what Im gonna check his flavor real quick

- ok.

- I flip the lever

- No that'll kill me!

- the other Frankenstein sits up and says oh hey! Im Frankenstein. A lot of people say Im Frankenstein's monster but-

- yea yea yea. Ok we get it. Uh is this Frankenstein in the zone as well?

- uh yea.

- These buttons over here what will the red one do?

- oh the red one? Its the key sphere one. I would've told you its the blue one.

- ok I slam-

- No listen. Listen. No listen. Listen listen listen. Hey. Stop wait! Im the liar Frankenstein.

- I hit the red button.

• - Merle casts shield of faith

- ok. On whom?

-um.. it surrounds a creature of my choice

- yeap. So..

- time to make that choice

- that is kinda the question I asked

• - are you a grief counselor?

- yea you a grief counselor?

- I do have some counseling experience, um, but right now think of me more as your friend.

- I could really use a grief counselor I think more than a friend at the moment. I got-

- ok then Im a grief counselor, yes.

• - and Im gonna roll 2 d6... god almighty... hatchy matchy...

- howd you do, Justin?

- Well I got a 4 on that one, Trav. Which is, what we call in the biz, we call that bad. That is less than ideal.

• A charisma check. Okay. Hahahaha! That's a threeee.

• I know how you young people talk: It was rad.

• hey! Hey man fucking bigfoots behind you dude, drive! Jesus Christ! Hey Ive been skitching this whole time brother, Im really sorry but you gotta fucking drive right now dude, come on! Im vulnerable as hell! Come on! Dont make me fight bigfoot, I want thinking through this shit, go! Im not gonna fucking fight bigfoot.

• No, you know what- I'm gon- ya know what? It's fine. Ya know what? Its fine. Its fine. Im gonna- it- thisll be fine. Thisll actually be fine. Uhhh Im gonna cast lightning bolt on the tank. I thought about it, thisll be fine.

• - dont worry, the rest of us will take care of this. I think the best plan is if the three of you go up the spire to face the final confrontation alone

- why is that the best plan??

- cause theres exactly enough people outside- robots outside, that we'll need all of the army...

- but then why dont we wait and help you kill all of the robots?

- we'll kill them and then we'll all go up together

- theres no time!

- what are you talking about were just fighting a bat- theres plenty of time

- we got a whole other act!

- huurrryy

- okay we'll hurry, yes fine, yes.

- good luck

- well now dont say that! You said to go on ahead!

- I'll remember you

- this passive aggressive stuff...

- youre sending mixed signals. Should we stay and-

- the doors that ive just invented shut behind you.

• Okay uh, Hollis. Let me ask you something: Okay, on the other side of this portal- im gonna lay it out for you. Alright. Are you ready? One hundred percent honesty. On the other side of this portal is another world. Just like, the same scope and size of ours, with a population of people, and... just like us. People just like us. Right? And... think about this. In... lets say West Virginia alone, not even the whole world, the whole earth, west Virginia alone, right. How many people do you think there is, a per capita ratio, thats murderers to just regular people? Right? So what if somebody said "there are murderers in west Virginia, so we're gonna march into west Virginia and kill everyone there, cause they might be murderers." Right so what if the only thing you knew about west Virginia is that some murderers came from here? And you said "so let's just go in and wipe everone out"? You would come in and wipe out the whole state, and murder innocent people, just in case they might be murderers. What does that make you, Hollis?

• - Aubrey what... what are you?

- Oh I'm bisexual.

- Do all of bisexuals have this power?

- Yes.

• - uh lets jump right in

- im in. Already. I actually got in before you did. Just to make sure the water was okay.

- oh how is it? Hows the scene doing?

- the scene is good. Im already in it, but because the narrator has not joined us we are locked in... stasis. We are characters in search of an author as it were, in the pernella play.

- so theyve been there for 2 weeks? Or whats up?

- theyve been there for 2 weeks. Locked in perfect stasis, until time itself should turn its gaze upon us and let us resume our merry roles in this play called existence.

• - did you get the part where we're gonna find the quail and just crush its heart or whatever?

- its uh- its- it- its quell

- yea thats what I said, quail

- you said quail like a big ol bird

- wait what are you saying?

- yea quail

- no quell

- quell?

- quell

- quail?

- quell

- kwäil?

- listen- listen kwaiell

- quail!

- you said quail. Its quell

- the mothman uh, grabs your wrist duck and looks at the watch on it and says 'boy howdy I sure hope that those arent several minutes that we will need to uh prevent the apocalypse. Because they are gone now.

• - Ju- Ju- wait a minute. Juno? Juno Devine?

- yes shes-

- Juno Devine is- shes in the forest service? (Switches to character voice) Ahh-ha! Well that makes a lot of sense! She- she loved the forest. That- ahh...

- that is... did you just do a player to character cross-fade?

- that was so fucking wild Ive never seen anything like that on this podcast

- that melted my brain

- it was like Clint started the sentence, and then Thacker ended the sentence

• I can roleplay a gay elf with magical powers. I dont think I could roleplay someone who likes beef jerky

• We've all been trying to help people right? And sometimes you fuck up. Sometimes people get hurt, sometimes you can't- sometimes you act and you do things, and you're wrong. And if you let the fact that you fucked up stop you from trying to help again, thats... thats the real mistake. Ive fucked up so many times. You cant be afraid to help. Because yea, you might hurt. But you also might help. You just have to keep helping. Dont be afraid. Im not.

• - query: are the extraterrestrial invaders engaging in deception? 89.84% affirm

- now listen. You all don't know Duck like I do. Believe me, he can not engage in deception to save his life.

- he's also an employee of the federal government!

- it skyrockets up to 98.64%

• It makes sense right? Great power; great responsibility. But you know what people forget? Is that the green goblin dosen't swing up to your door everyday and blow your whole life away and in one moment you have to figure out what to do, ya know? The responsibility is every day. Its every moment, and it's- every time I pick one of those saplings up and I put it in the ground, and pat the ground around it, and I pour water on it, and I think about our childrens childrens childrens children will breathe the air that this thing makes, and Minerva, thats power. Thats my responsibility. I dont have to fight no more. I did it. And now Im gonna grow.

[journaloftomfooleryandjapery]

All the TOP 10 OF THE DECADE posts made me want to make one of my own, so here’s my 10 fave games this decade:

Yakuza 0  Shovel Knight  Nier Automata  Metal Gear Rising  Gunvolt Chronicles Luminous Avenger IX Final Fantasy XV   Scott pilgrim vs the world the game Undertale Persona 5  Doom

Danganronpa 2, New Vegas, Touhou Luna Nights, Katana Zero and Mario Odyssey all only barely missed out, and it was a tough decision not to include them. I loved the shit out of those games but thinking it through I decided they were just slightly less loved by me than the above.

Below the cut are some extended thoughts (of varying length) on the games included:

Just CTRL F if you wanna find a specific one

Yakuza 0

Every Yakuza game is delightful and this is definitely the best one, in my opinion. The Yakuza games appeal to me for a lot of reasons: the combat, the story, the variety of activities, the look of it all and the music. I feel like its a very unique game experience with its blend of weird in-depth side activities, serious crime drama, manly man masculine combat friendship melodrama, metal gear-esque convoluted conspiracies and a surprisingly compassionate view of the world it takes place in. 

The combat is what drew me in initially because it just feels good, the feedback of stomping on a dudes face in yakuza is delivered perfectly, and the attacks are brutal, hard and flashy. Its a very solid and satisfying combat system and in 0 its the best it has ever been. The ability to switch between 3 different and equally fun fighting styles on the fly really lets you mix things up and adapt your approach, every style feels fun and useful. If i had to pick a favorite it would be slugger, but its a tough choice, and they are all very viable and FUN.

Yakuza 0 also gets big points for having the best story in the series. The protagonists feel much more interesting in this era, the fights feel more earned in this game than others, the relationships are incredibly touching (I’m almost mad majima didnt stay with makoto) and the substories (and some parts of the main story) are the funniest they’ve ever been. Stuff like the quasi-stealth mission where you have to make sure women don’t see you buying a porn magazine for a child, and the extended scene of kiryu trying to guess the right business manners for a meeting had me laughing so much i was i was almost in physical pain.

The extensive business and host club substories get you tons of extra game content and are good enough to almost be there own game. The other games in the series have extended side activites of varying quality, but i think 0 had a rare case of all of these being, basically, perfect. The team obviously agrees since host club management came back repeatedly, but never as good as it was here.

Being set in the 80s elevates almost everything in the game because of the outfits, money flying out of every enemy you attack, the classic sega games you can play at the arcade (Outrun is so much fun and I’d have never have given it a proper go otherwise) and the disco minigame everyones made a meme out of (that music is so catchy).

As a final note this game has the best boss fights and music in the series, which is a very high standard to surpass when you look at the rest of the series. The dual final boss fights, the recurring boss for kiryu and almost every majima fight are highlights of the entire series for me. 

0 is going to end up being one of the few games I’ll never sell my copy of because i want it available for me to play forever, its a complete delight.

Shovel Knight

This game has been analysed to hell and back, so i wont have much original to say i suppose. Admittedly i did enjoy the first campaign but it didnt completely win me over, plague knights campaign and beyond was what really made this an all time greats for me. It’s one of very few games that gets the NES+SNES platforming appeal 100% right and essentially surpasses most games of the day, with almost perfect pacing, challenge and level design. IT helps that the whole world and story and look is charming as all hell. It’s an easy game to love and the more you play it the more that feels justified. Being PACKED with great content is also a plus. If you liked the first campaign you can just keep going through a set of campaigns about as good that only really rehash some level assets. I would say its one of the best 2D platformers ever for me, if not quite my true number 1.

ALSO JAKE KAUFMAN KNOCKS IT OUT THE PARK WITH THIS SOUNDTRACK

Since i have little else to add to the shovel knight discussion, here’s my ranking/thoughts on each campaign

Plague of shadows. BEST storyline, great levels with a really cool gameplay gimmick, the characters are all cute and the ending really makes me feel for him. both sorry for him at first and then a very real AAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW for LOVE

King of cards. king knight is just fun as hell to play as, he doesnt have that many tools but his movement is just crazy fun and i love the flair in all his animations. also has that rad final boss. joustus is ok i guess.

Shovel of hope. uuuuuuh what can i even say about this. its good, and the melancholy dream bits add a lot to the mood of the story. we’ve already analysed this campaign within an inch of its life i dont think i can say anything new. wish we could fight the battletoads on pc.

Specter of torment. still fun and i appreciate the tone change, but i didnt care as much for the characters and the mega man-esque level select doesnt suit shovel knight imo. specter knight has a lot of fun movement options though. mainly i just love GRINDING and the diagonal slash. i dont give a fuck about reize

Nier Automata

I feel a tiny bit ashamed i have so little to say about this considering it is one of the most emotional experiences i have ever had with a story. If i lsten to the final version of weight of the world i still cry just from remembering this game and how it made me feel. i think its one of the greatest narratives of the century but i can barely get across the appeal to anyone who hasnt already played it. its a story about hope, despair and the nature of the human race that never feels like its preachy or pretensious or taking on more than it can handle. it made me feel all kinds of emotions deeply and intensely, it genuinely made me burst into tears about 10 times, maybe more. even putting aside the ggrand narrative, theres so many cool character moments and bits of world building and visual eements and tragic little side stories that you would need a whole book to talk about them all while doing any real justice to them. i loved it so much that im paying £70 to see an orchestra do the soundtrack live. I want to hug and kiss 2b and 9s better. i just love it deeply and i find it hard to explain why it makes me feel that way, but its a dark beautiful and hopeful story where every moment feels earned. the despair of the story giving way to genuine hope with the rest of the world helping you fight for it is such an intensely emotional moment that you could never replicate outside of this kind of story and medium. how the fuck do i explain that to anyone that doesnt already get it. I’m glad this game exists

Metal Gear Rising 

Well, complete tone shift here. Platinum made a lot of great action games in the last decade that all dig into that same itch for DODGE SLOW MOTION BANG BANG BANG alongside great soundtracks, visuals and awesome set piece moments. Just intense, flashy, awesome combat. Picking a favorite of the decade was the hard part, because a platinum game had to be one of my faves of the decade. The closest was transformers, but mgr has a couple of things about it that put it above the rest of the platinum catalog for me.

The story actually works very well at still being metal gear while in the platinum formula, its about the cycle of violence and FINDING YOUR OWN PURPOSE and it works weirdly well. The strangest part is that it feels like a legitimate sequel to metal gear 4 tonally while still being the crazy action game it is

Raiden is just super fun to play as, while I’ll always miss the DODGE SLOWMO in a platinum game parry and zandatsu give a great flow to fights and there’s real exhilaration to parrying a hard chain of attacks and tearing out a bunch of enemies spines at once every time

raiden is also just  a fun protag, it truly allows me to embrace that kind of stereotypical edgy cool anime swordsman he embodies

BEST PLATINUM SOUNDTRACK DO NOT @ ME

Bosses just rule

one of the best final bosses ever, in my opinion? maybe that’s controversial, but armstrong gets an insane amount of characterization and pure PRESENCE out of such a small amount of screen time and the fact he feels like such a perfect rival to raiden so quickly is kind of nuts to me. within about half an hour you are ready for the ultimate final showdown with everything at stake, and then the gameplay 100% delivers on that with a fight that is challenging as hell and just feels climatic and intimidating. its a little thing, but having this dude just smack you around with his hands and almost no fighting skill after a game filled with crazy flippy cyborg ninjas makes him feel TOUGH and the way you finish him off? it just rocks, plain and simple. I don’t think i need to justify slices a massive dudes chest open and ripping out his giant still beating robot heart as the music climaxes and our cool edgy protag literally says WE’RE DONE HERE. truly, it has to be this way.

Gunvolt Chronicles Luminous Avenger IX 

For fast twitchy 2d platformers this barely beat out Katana Zero and Touhou Luna Nights, but i think its just a little better. The skill ceiling on this game is high as hell and once you really get to grips with it, its an experience you cant find anywhere else. its just satisfying as hell to be able to get through the point where you can ZOOM  through these levels by making use of copen’s dash and lock-on and weapons well enough. once you get good enough to get through a hole level without touching the ground, you just cant go back. I liked this enough to get an S rank on almost every level. this game just rules, man.

story, art and music are all great as well. but they pale in importance next to zippy jetpack zoom zoom fun time.

also great for having a cool twist that i genuinely did not see coming at all

Final Fantasy XV   

For context, my experience of FFXV was not the base game so i cannot personally address the concerns of the version at launch, which i hear from others was a total mess! The game has been updated and changed so much that it is probably almost unrecognizable aside from the absolute base aspects of it. The version i am talking about is, as far as we know, the “final” version released right before Episode Ardyn. There was of course an update after this, but it only added DLC compatibility and a few items, so it means very little in the grand scheme. I also played all of the dlc and watched all the periphery material to get the full, messy disjointed experience. it is also worth noting that the only other FF game i have played is the classic title Mario Hoops 3 on 3 Basketball. I feel it important to tell you this before getting into things so that you can have a full idea of the perspective i come at the game from.

This was chosen over Mario Odyssey and someone will probably kill me for that. I just think its a great emotional story that does a fantastic job of making you care for all the characters, and the world feels massive and full of cool stuff to see. It’s my favorite open world game and i love The Boys.  its not the kind of thing i usually play but i think it genuinely had a great story and its a very fun game to just explore and spend time in. ffxv truly understands the emotional bond between The Lads and it is fun to kill big monsters with your party

(they kinda ruin the last cutscene in english, in japanese he says I LOVE YOU GUYS and it makes me cry but in english he goes U GUYS ARE THE BEST which just isnt the same. a small nitpick though. a lot of this game made me cry regardless, its just great at creating an emotional bond)

I admire the insane level of ambition in the visuals and scope, and i bought every dlc for it because it was just that good. the ifrit boss fight and all the giant monsters are just amazingly epic in scale. the “found a cool rock” post is what i truly admire about this game summed up. 

all the ancillary material for the game is great and worth getting into, with the exception of the Comrades multiplayer expansion. Everything else adds depth to the story and the world without being entirely necessary for you to get through the story. the anime and the dlc all really feel worth getting into without being something you have to see to get The Full Experience

the giant monsters are cool

Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game

Being from 2010 this game only just makes it in, but it was my favorite beat em up this decade and a source of great nostalgia for me. It had a pretty big impact on music and art tastes in regards to games, and in retrospect this games existence was very much a dream team scenario. Paul Robertson is a great sprite artist who does a lot of good work, Anamanaguchi have gone on to become one of my favorite bands (another winter is still one of their best tracks imo) and at the time this came out i was obsessed with scott pilgrim. That plus the beat em up gameplay makes this kind of a perfect blending of a lot of my specific tastes. Playing this brings me back to the time in my school life that i played it very distinctly, a more comfortable time in my life for sure, and i think the game still stands up excellently. I hope that someday it will get a rerelease so others can enjoy it. I give this another play through every year or so, but i wish id gotten the dlc while it was still available

Doom

ITS VIOLENT ITS FAST ITS FUN ITS METAL

i like this game because of the intense adrenaline rush and violent catharsis it gives me, essentially a constant dopamine rush

fun game good

Undertale

I’m glad i got to this before the massive wave of spoilers and popularity came about. It’s a great story with some fun gameplay, and i think SANS UNDERTALE was one of the best boss fights this decade. Its a shame that for so many new players this experience is going to be ruined by spoilers

Persona 5 

Danganronpa 2 and fallout new vegas were close contenders for this last spot. I actually made a post about my thoughts on this game before https://journaloftomfooleryandjapery.tumblr.com/post/184341270554/nue-is-great-love-his-goofy-design-when-life-will but essentially 

Essentially, its got a great cast of characters, a cool slick look, great monster designs, a fun gameplay loop of collecting monsters and grinding stats while waiting for the next big event, and a surprisingly good story

No idea if royal is any good, but its on a pretty small list of games that i might actually take the time to replay

[michaelreaderreblog]

My truemate pt13

AN: The long wait is now over. I dont remember if I even edited this but if I didnt. I am so sorry. I was getting another thing going and “editing” at the same time. Anyways, My truemate is finally up and will continue going. Sorry for the long silence, dreadful cage. Sorry wont go into a personal rant. Enjoy my loves!! Tag list is there. If you’d like to be added to the tags please send a message. I hope I got everyone for the tags, I know last time I didnt. Ok enjoy my sweeet darlings. Yes my inner Freddie Mercury is appearing.

**********************

Catch up here:

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE 

******************************************************************************

Word Count: 2,319

After a few minutes have gone by is when the both of you hear the garage door open and he gets straight to work with the deliveries he will be doing.

His phone rings and he is all business for the rest of the day.

“Well that was rather interesting” you say to break the silence after taking a sip from your cup of coffee.

“I suppose it rather is” Castiel says with a smile still spread across his face

You could feel that he is feeling rather content about Dean serving him breakfast when he almost forgot that he is suppose to be working.

“After we are done here, we can start working and one question though?” you say getting up to put your plate away into the sink, you really needed to get on the dishes.

“Geez, I'll get this later, I have a few things to do before I do the dishes” you mutter to yourself.

“My car got delivered to the house before getting here and thats how I got myself here” Castiel says from the table while he sill eating the food Dean has served him.

“Damn, thats right. Is it alright if we used your car to delivery the party favours?” you ask from the kitchen.

“Yeah, I dont see that as a problem. You finished them already?” he asks as he gets up from the table to bring over his dirty dishes to place into the sink to as well.

“Yeah I got them done last night when I couldnt sleep” you tell him while getting the water ready.

You decided to wash the dishes and setting them on the rack for them to dry.

“Anything troubling you, why you couldnt sleep?” he asks standing beside you as you begin to rinse out the suds from the plates.

“Uh, yeah” you answer him quietly.

“Do you want to talk to me about it?” he asks in sympathy.

“When we first moved here and sort of got settled into the house. We decided to head out for supper and when we got to the diner there was this douchey pervert that grabbed me. He was just so aggressive and the things that he said just made me feel so like Im only useful for one thing. The things that he wanted to do to me just scared me so much that something could happen at any given time and I feel that this will not be the first.” You tell Castiel as you try not to break down in front of him but he can sense that you fear there is going to be more trouble a head.

“Hey, hey, hey, dont worry about a thing ok. You have two caring, loving, protective brothers who are willing to do anything for you. I for one will not let anything happen to you and we need to tell my father about this and soon. At the same time you can go to the police about this. They take Omega rights very seriously, trust me when I say that” he says as he takes you into his arms and embraces you into a tight hug.

You accept the embrace right away and feel yourself calming down by the gesture.

“You know, we have known each other for a day and I feel like I have known you my entire life” you say as a smile creeps at the corners of your face.

“Well I think its because we are family in ways, I mean Im your brothers mate and you’re my brothers mate” as he says that you pull away slowly to look at him in the eyes.

“He told you that?” you ask in a hushed tone.

“Yeah he told me yesterday and he also mentioned that he is feeling rather conflicted because he has Anna. She has told him before that she would let him go if his true mate ever came along. I advised him to talk to her right away and well end things because I would rather have him truly happy then not knowing what its like to be with someone as his equal” he says as he places his hand on your shoulder.

“You know I was feeling rather jealous about her the day before when I met her. She is so sincere, kind and beautiful. I was telling Dean that she is so lucky to be waking up beside him, going home to him every night while I sit here thinking that should be me because he is my true mate” you tell him as you rewash the plate over and over again.

He stops you from rewashing the plate for millionth time and places it in the rinse water and on the dish rack.

“I had a feeling you would say something like that and you would be feeling this way. Y/n believe me when I say this, Michael will do the right thing here and talk to Anna about all of this. He has always believed in true mates from when we were growing up and he would always tell my brother well my late brother and I how he would be so happy when he found his equal. How he would have the perfect family to call his own and to protect whats his if anyone threatened his family. I always wanted them to be truly happy and find the mates that they belonged to and I still want that for Michael. There is no need to be feeling jealous alright? Anna should be the one to be jealous since I am very certain she knows about the true mate thing already” Castiel says as he looks into your eyes and the one thing you held onto the most was him referring to his late brother and as you saw him mention him you could see the pain spread across his face while he mentions him.

“Late brother? What happened? Sorry its just your expression completely changed at the mentions of him. Again sorry if you dont want to talk about it than I understand” you say as you continued washing every single dirty dish, utensils, pots, and pans until the dish rack is filled with the mornings servings and last night.

“No its fine, I would have to talk about this sooner or later. Im also guessing you have been wondering why I asked if your brothers were Alpha's” he says as he goes back to the table to have himself seated.

You follow right behind him and do the same thing at the table across from him.

“A few years after I presented Omega and after one of my heats my brother Lucifer, is his name by the way. After one of my heats he told me to stay home just until my scent had gone away completely. I told him that it would be fine and how much I really wanted to get out of the house to see my friends whom I havent seen in a week. While he has told me countless times to stay home I didnt listen to him and I went out anyways. As I was walking through the square to meet up with my friends, I was followed little ways and then a van pulls up beside me. The man who followed me was Alpha, he came running behind me told me how ripe my scent was and told me how amazing I would be for one of his bosses brothels and make millions off of me. He drugged me, another man pulled me into the van and took me to an old warehouse outside of town. I woke up in this empty room, looked around to get up from the chair only to see Im tied to it. I managed to get my phone from my pocket to send an emergency text to my brother, he responded and found me on the GPS system that was turned on from my phone. I heard someone walking down the hall and I was still out of it from the drugs and pretended to be out again. Lucifer came into the room and I felt someone trying to cut through the rope and I was trying to resist the person until I heard his voice telling me who he was and he was going to get me out of there. Suddenly that turned for the worst when the three men who abducted me came back to the room to transfer me some where else is what Im guessing. They saw my brother, attacked him, he fought back and one of them came at me but I managed to kick him in his groin and he fell to the floor while my brother yelled at me to make a run for it. I didnt want to leave him behind but he pushed me towards the door and I ran. I ran so fast like my life depended on it, I got to his car and drove little ways away from the warehouse to call the police for help. Within minutes they all came, they managed to capture one of them while the other two fled. The paramedics came out with a body and one of the officers told me to identify the body which I did. As they lifted the sheet from his face, thats when I went completely numb and couldnt believe that was my brother. I was frozen until they moved him away from me and thats when I went frantic told them he was only sleeping and that I should take him home. The officer told me my brother was gone and he risked his life to save mine. For so many years I have blamed my biology for his death, blamed it on me when I knew I should have stayed home when he told me to, and I blamed myself for everything that has gone wrong that day. After we had the funeral I stayed home, locked myself in my room or at times I would lock myself in my brothers room and I would go through his things and I would wear his clothes. My parents and Michael saw how I was and I knew they didnt like how I was dealing with everything. Until Michael thought it would be a good idea for me to move with him to Portland where he went to school, he told my parents but they didnt like that idea so much and my dad finally said ok maybe it would be a good idea to get away for while. I did move to Portland with Michael, he went to school, I enrolled in school to take this graphic design program for the two years I was there. Michael graduated, we came home, he found himself a place to live and I moved back in with my parents because my mother didnt like the idea of me living by myself. I graduated the program online not to long ago and here I am sitting with you, telling you about my story on how I lost my brother. Well how my parents lost a son, and how Michael lost a brother as well” Castiel tells his story as tears streamed down his face as you sit there surprised he hasnt broken into a sob while telling you what happened all those years ago.

You place your hand over his that are placed over the table

“Now I understand why you asked if my brothers were Alpha's. I am so sorry about your brother. You know what your brother did was a courageous thing for you to be here. If that was you than you would have never met your true mate who happens to be Dean. I think he would have never found his true mate if the tables were turned. Like you want for Michael I would love for Dean to have. Castiel you are living proof you are meant for something so beautiful that no one could ever have because of the circumstances that has taken a twist in life. Living proof that you are meant to live a long happy life even if that doesnt include your brother. You are an amazing person and you are worth it, even if you cant see it but I do. Dean sees it to along with Sam even though we have only known you for a day but still I can feel that from you” you tell him as you wipe away the tears from his face and kiss his forehead.

While you did that he still has his head down looking to the table top and closes his eyes when your lips meet his fore head.

“You really are a lovely person you know that, I know it takes a while to get back to my normal self. By being with you I feel like I can grasp something of myself from years ago and now I am getting the feeling I can fully appreciate the little things in life again. Now I am really happy I have taken this job opportunity with you and I thank you for all of this” he says as he lifts his head to get a good look at you and tell you while he gazes into your eyes.

You were cut off by the door bell ringing and you get up from the chair to answer it.

“No let me” he says as he gets up from the table to answer the door and its a customer for the plush toys they have ordered.

You run down the stairs to get the order from your office and run back up the stairs to hand it to Castiel. They say their thank yous and went on their merry way home to surprise the children with such amazing toys to cherish forever.

********************************************

Taglist: 

@animegirlgeeky 

@strangerthingshargove 

@freerebelmentality 

@enthusedbycuriosity 

@sia-del

[batmagines]

Control

Request: Can I request Jason and reader. Where the reader has been controlled for the longest time to do bad/evils things for ppl. She escaped and is terrified that she is going to be triggered to her old ways. Jason maybe protecting her from her previous captives when they come for her? If that makes since 🤣 You are so good thank you for this!!

Relationship: Jason Todd X Reader

Warnings: angst, a lot of trigger, anxiety, paranoia, capture, violence, minor character death. I think that’s it, if you think there is something else please A/N: this is basically the winter soldier and civil war plot line i’m sorry but im a slut for bucky barnes what can i say. Also, used my study hall to write fanfic but what’s new.

y/v/n is your villains name

---

Your mission was failed, so you ran. You were ordered to kill the Batman but how could you kill him? He’s Batman for christ’s sake, he couldn’t be killed. So you ran and didn’t look back. You didn’t know who you were or where you came from, you figured that those would be details that you’d figure out later.

For years, your mind didn’t belong to yourself. You were by no means fit to be in society. Right now, you couldn’t focus on that. Currently you were walking through crowds, hopefully no one recognized you. You couldn’t actually run, that would only bring more attention to yourself. So you put your head down, stole a hoodie off of a clothes rack and avoid drawing attention. This was working perfectly until you ran into a hard chest.

“Hey, watch where-” The man with dark hair and a white streak down the middle stopped what he was saying noticing the fear in your eyes. “Are you okay?” You shook your head.

“You’re running from something” He concluded and you nodded.”follow me.”

You knew how to read people, and this man had no intentions of harming you so you followed him to an apartment, tucked away in the narrows of Gotham city,

“Thank you.” You whispered your voice hoarse from rarely speaking in years.

“Now who are you?” The man asked.

“I don’t-” You shook your head. “I don’t know.”

“Two days ago, you tried to kill one of my friends.” He said gruffly.

‘Oh no’ you thought looking for the nearest escape route.

“I don’t care about that, trust me- I’ve tried to kill him too.” He said dismissing your worry. “My point is,  there was a look in your eyes that has now been replaced with fear. My guess is, whoever is looking for you won’t stop until they find you. I wanna know why.”

“I’m not sure I know either.” You said. “I can’t remember much, just that I was an assassin for, god I don’t even know how long.”

“You’re safe here.”

“Thank you.”

---

Thus began the relationship that quickly sparked between you and the man you now knew as Jason Todd. It had been two years and whatever was in your mind from your captors was still there. Countless nightmares, late nights, and tears were not enough for Jason to desert you. The both of you were each other’s biggest support system and you wouldn’t change it for the world.

At first you tried to turn him away, insisting that you were too dangerous to be around, saying that your captors would find you at any moment. Instead of leaving he should you his nightlife, that he was the red hood and that your captors coming at any moment was ‘all the more reason to stay’ he had told you.

Overtime, you grew accustomed to life. You made a couple friends throughout the apartment complex but it was decided that the less people who knew about you, the better. Typically, you stayed inside scared of even leaving the apartment due to fear of your captors but here you were, a baseball cap fitted low on your head to cover your eyes, and a jacket as you grabbed Jason’s hand to go to the store.

“What are we feeling for dinner dear?” He asks you as you look around hesitantly squeezing his hand to reassure yourself. “Hey, hey, I’m not going to let anything happen to you okay?” “Ok.” You whispered at him placing a kiss on his lips and the two of you finished getting your groceries before heading back to your apartment hand in hand.

When you arrived you realized something was off. The brick outside your door had been kicked somewhat recently. To anyone else it would’ve been a coincidence, to you something was happening.

Placing a hand on Jason’s chest before he put the key in the lock you pointed towards the brick and he nodded. Maybe you were being paranoid, but both of you knew better than to brush something off as paranoia.

Ditching the groceries outside of your door Jason unlocked the door slowly and had taken his pistol out of the waistband of his pants. Pushing the door open slightly, Jason went in first with you closely behind, grabbing a fire poker from beside the door as you listened for any signs of intrusion. Then, you were surrounded.

“Put the gun down Jason.” A voice called out and you instantly recognized it as one of  the voices of your captors. “We have trained men outside your father’s house and we won’t hesitate to put a bullet in each of your family members brain.”

The members living in the Wayne household wouldn’t be there right now, you knew this for a fact as you had seen the Batmobile followed by a blur of motorcycles less than 5 minutes ago, but you couldn’t let them know that so Jason slowly complied.

“Good.” Your captor said. “Now, just hand over Y/V/N and we’ll be on our way.”

“You know I can’t do that.” Jason grunted stepping closer to you.

“Very well, guess we’re doing this the hard way.” He spoke and then came the dreaded words.

“schön” Your captor spoke.

“Blut”

“Weld”

“No!” you screamed clutching your head and falling to your knees.

“Gruselig” by now you stopped fighting your mind, the gears in your brain switching and your assassin persona beginning to take over.

“Tot”

“Blume” Before he could say the last word, Jason shot the man square in the forehead. Kneeling down next to your screaming form he wrapped his arms around you picking you up off the ground. “Come on baby, we gotta go” He whispered into your hair before practically dragging you down the stairs and into the car. “We’ll go somewhere safe.” “Jaybird, nowhere is safe with me.” You sobbed violently.

“I know a place.”

---

You arrived at the manor shortly after. Jason made sure no one followed you and he led you to what you know as the batcave. You’d never met his family, you knew of them but they didn’t know you. You figured it was too dangerous as the more people who knew about you, the easier it would be to find you.

Bruce Wayne was sitting unmasked watching his eldest son be patched up by Alfred Pennyworth before he noticed Jason.

“Jason, who the hell is this?” He asked harshly standing up noticing your presence slightly behind Jason clutching onto his shoulder still trying to regain your composure.

“This is my significant other.” Jason said. “And before you yell, we’ve dated for two years you can trust them. They’re in trouble.” “What kind of trouble?”

“I can’t trust my own mind.” You whispered at the brooding man. “There are still people out there trying to get me to do their dirty work.” “Then don’t do it.” Damian Wayne spoke up coming into the light.

“It’s not as simple as that, there are words- they make me do things, make me do one’s bidding and I have no say. I need- I need help Bruce.” You stutter.

“Please Bruce, we need somewhere safe.” Jason pleads. Something you’d never seen him do before.

“You’ll be safe here.” Bruce responds with a nod.

“Thank you.”

[bonbonswirl-blog]

Locked up

ALL THE CHARACTERS BELONG TO @brueklynn I OWN NOTHING. U think the title is deep but it isnt, btw Friendship is hard with these two so u wont enjoy XD

It was a typical morning, it was a growing patches of blue, the sort of hue that is soft and bright at the same time. Though beneath the sheet of cloud is a grey that deepens to steel, the leading edge is a brilliant white, as if it is the pages of a new book ready for any curious eye. Blondie, henry and samuel were the first visitor for the studio, each going to his own office and start his work, samuel went to the empty recording room. He felt something was out place, something is missing, he didnt catch what is it, he looked around trying to recall and count the musical instruments, now he figured it out, his piano is missing!! Where is it?! At the same moment he heard a voice of something rubbing againist the floor, he turned around and saw someone pushing his lost piano inside the room, only to reveal mike, that made samuel angry. "Would you like to explain why was that piano with you?" "What do you think the reason?!" "I dont know!! You trying to pull some sort of a joke!!" "What?! No! I didnt pull a prank! Even if I did I dont pull it out like this!!" "You know just- lets get back to work queitly without breaking another banjo please." "Jeez samuel, I wont! Why are you so negative about everyone?!" "Did you see me be negative around someone who doesnt break an instrument every two days?! Eventually your whole month payment will be wasted!!" "Oh really!!" The echo of the forcefully slammed door pervading through the place, it was the time for the two musicians daily argument, they never argued with their fists but their words packed a powerful punches. After a few minutes the shouting match was over, both still filled irritation, mike wanted to end this and go to another room. But when he turned down handle, the door didnt open...he tried again and again, no use. He tried closing all his fingers around the handle to twist it with his bare hands using all his arms muscles, it was all in vain. The door stood stubbornly in its place. They both knew what did that mean.

They are both trapped alone in this room together.

Samuel mind didnt process the idea, out of all the people who could be locked up with him, its mike?!? His enemy! Seriously?! And the same thing could have been said for the banjoist. "What have you done!!" "Me? The doorknob was already broken!!" "Whats going on there?!" They both stopped another fight when they heard a voice talking from the outside, finally someone is their to end the proplem. "Murphy! We are locked in here! Please bring something and open this door QUICKLY!!!" "The door wont open?! Mmmmm, I think I can fix this proplem but...it may take a little time to find the tool I need." "What?! Murph please bring it now and hurry up!" "Ok Ok, its just a broken door, that wont disturb you from your jobs, you can just go back to working while I search ok?" "No please murphy!! dont leave me here!!-" Too late because murphy had already left them, they knew from the sound of the running footsteps. Both the mad men looked at each other, with a look that could be described by one word, disgust.

Another few minutes had passed and murphy still didnt come back, for some reason, each one of the two was sitting on a corner, knees to chest, arms crossed and backs facing each other, refusing to take any glimpse at the other face, anger may be turned inside to themselves as the attraction dissonance increases, hate spreading throughout their entire system, shutting down all other feelings, becoming central to the situation, they hoped this nightmare would end soon at any second. "I hate you!" "I dont care mike! Dont even speak to me!" "Then dont even look at me!" "Then why are you looking at me!" "I am not! And thats mean you are still looking at md! I said dont even take a peek at me birdie!" "Stop calling me that name!" "Well stop yelling at me!!" "You dont even make any sense!!" "Can any sense be seen by those glasses!" "These glasses are WAY better than your messy hair summerson!" " Oh please! How can ANYONE dislike this flowing gleaming hair~" "Stop acting like some Ľoréal paris commercials and Shut up!!" "And what if I dont shut up?" "OH Y-" They both stopped fighting when a sound of some tiny broken metallic chunks fell from under the piano, hitting the ground in a very low voice. "Oopsie...." mike whispered under his breath, that wasnt supposed to happen....."I KNEW It!! I Knew That You Were Up To Something When You Toke The Piano With You!!" "Sam wait!! I wil-" "What And How Much Damage Did You Cause Michael?! And WHY Did You Do That To My Piano?! You Want Me To Suffer More Through This Glum Job?! What Else You Have Inside That Head?!" "You Got It All Wrong! Why Dont You Try That Piano First Before Talking!" "Oh Really!! WHY? You Want To Try And Prove My 'Bad Skills' At Pressing Those Keys And Tell Me I Dont Have Much proficiency In Music And Songs?!" "No! You Have Such A Versatility in The piano!!" "OH YA-..............Wait What??!?" "I Said-......." Both mike and samuel had a full minute of silence, staring at each other in disbelief, their minds trying to process what did mike just say, is that really true? Did mike just said his first nice words? If that was true...a shudder will run through samuel, it was like mike came to know the depths of his humanity. "Did You Just say I have versatility in the piano?!" "No!!" No matter how much mike will try to deny it, samuel had already heard the sentence. "Of..Ofcourse I will have much versatility on the piano!!" "You dont!" "But you just admitted it!!" "That...That slipped out accidently!" "Well it was something that was floating in your mind then."

They both stood still when they heard some noises from outside the room, the door was shaking slightly until finally, someone opened it, it was murphy who found his tool and unlocked the door, finding an exit for both, everything was over. "Im glad you didnt kill each other while I was gone." Mike gave samuel an unsure look and walked past him, leaving him alone in the recording room to do his work.

Samuel still remembers when mike told him to give the piano a try. Azure blue eyes scaning it, he did notice it feels a little more different thean before, its shiny, pitch black, row of pure ivory keys, They shimmer in the recording room light as if they are the moon on a starry night, Everything was still there but more cleaner. He sat down to check preparing to check if it will work properly, swift fingers shifting from here and there, the sound the keys created was great, the music he sang went with the beat, stirs wonders in his soul. No harm was caused by mike, It was same piano he always function on. After he finished, he sensed the inner peace. Yesterday night was being reminded, oh how he had a hard with the notes because the piano wasnt working right, didnt give him the desired results needed. He took another glance at the piano, he noticed that on the side curling golden letters spell "Samuel" such a beautiful and elegant name. because its his. When he toke a break he left the recording room walking in the halls, he saw someone from away sitting and fixing something, it was mike focusing on reading the instructions paper of how to fix a banjo strings, next to it another one related to the piano.

Maybe that lock up wasnt the worst thing he experienced.

[readfelice-blog]

moominland chronicles Sechszehn: bloody tale of woe continued

Sunday, Monday, Happy Days,

Tuesday, Wednesday, Happy Days,

Thursday, Friday, Happy Days,

The weekend comes, my cycle hums

Ready to race to you

These days are ours

Happy and free. (Oh Happy Days)

These days are ours

Share them with me.(Oh baby)

Goodbye grey sky, hello blue,

there's nothing can hold me when I hold you.

feels so right you can't be wrong,

rockin' and rollin' all week long.

Saturday, what a day

Groovin' all week with you

It’s Wednesday // now its Sunday (I couldn’t finish this on Wednesday, it was still to close).

First off I’m asking for money, I will go into more depth next week because I’m facing the crisis of what the value of my work really is, for now this is my Crowdfunding campaign:

https://igg.me/at/bocemachtocho/x/19564227

Please support if you can.

Music….

Just listen to these, they’re both little slices of genius that deserve your time:

LYDIA LUNCH Queen of Siam

https://www.discogs.com/Lydia-Lunch-Queen-Of-Siam/release/392276

NICOLAS JAAR Hardcore Ambient Mix

https://soundcloud.com/otherpeoplerecords/nicolas-jaar-harcore-ambient …

Here’s the recap and then what happened next on my fine romp through the German Health service…

MONDAY 1/10/18

bleeding

First clot plops out, come into contact with rude receptionists, no one will give me an appointment

TUESDAY 2/10/18

bleeding

Horrible morning cleaning, go to TK and sort my insurance, go to emergency doctor who tells me to go to a gynaecologist

WEDNESDAY 3/10/18

bleeding

Home all day making work, have a little singsong at night. (national holiday - no doctors open)

THURSDAY 4/10/18

Bleeding

Go to job, go to gynaecologist who's not there / will be going on holiday, ring more rude receptionists, fall into the office of a gynaecologists pleading for help, take my pants off, get ultrasound spy dildo inserted up me, bleed all over the doctor. Am told I am pregnant, am told I am not pregnant, am told to go to hospital and go to my insurance. Go to my insurance, get my letter, wander round seemingly abandoned hospital, go home broken.

Oh, ask for help- email my boss / mentor and tell her what’s going on. Email all my clients and cancel all my jobs for the next week.

FRIDAY 5/10/18

Bleeding

Wake up and get a taxi to hospital.

Beg to be seen by someone.

Female gynaecologist sees me this time - take my pants off, get ultrasound spy dildo inserted up me and am roughly routed around in with alarming metal objects and no warning that it will hurt or being asked whether I am in pain. Am told it’s not a baby its a polyp, am scheduled for surgery, spend 2 hours filling in forms, waiting, am given appointment for 9.30am Monday morning and turfed out. Leave, realise I can’t get the note from my doctor (they’re all closed) I need before the weekend, go back, cry at admin assistant, have minor breakdown, am settled and sent away.

Sit shakily on bench in small square by U Bahn on the grounds of the hospital, talk to Moon, go home, tuck myself in and bleed.

My mentor says she’ll come to see me at the hospital, what do I like to eat (I have to stay overnight).

SATURDAY 6/10/18

Bleeding

Move very little, bleed very much, buy some food.

SUNDAY 7/10/18

Bleeding

Much like Saturday but I write and publish my blog.

My mentor asks me what time to come see me.

First wave of friends that read blog get in contact,

“Felice ….. now im sneakily reading your bloody ( literally bloody this time) blog to find out whats actually happening with you. I hope you´re okay!, and if you ever do ask for help I will do my best to help you.”

MONDAY 8/10/18

Bleeding

Get up 6AM, have shower very slowly, am in a lot of pain (its worst in the morning), sit outside my house and wait for Taxi, get taxi, tell the driver I miss free healthcare, he tells me he misses his family in Istanbul. Am deposited outside doctors (to ask for note), wait for 20 mins to get slip of paper and give the receptionist a hug.

Get another uber to Hospital, he leaves me at the gates and I walk to the Frauen Klinik, not sure of where to go I wait at registration then am directed up to my ward and power off with 45 minutes till my surgery, the admin assistant tells me “alles gut”.

Up at station 35, the nurses are friendly, I go to another registration office, back to wait in overcrowded little patient room, fill in a tome of forms in German using the camera on Google Translate to try make sense of them, hand back the forms and slyly observe the small Russian family to my right, the son talks expansively, the mother is softly spread from middle age and fairly tethered to the father, she beckons him to join her but he’s brittle and stands by the window instead, I don’t know what's wrong with her.

30 minutes after my scheduled surgery, 10am, then 45, I am called in to a nurses office where she tell’s me, as if I should know, I’ve been rescheduled for 12:50, she's nice and she tries to speak English, she asks what becomes some kind of pass code,

“Have you eaten on drunk anything today? Do you have any allergies?”

The nurse will take you to your room now, but go back and wait first.

I encounter a gorgeous young elfin nurse and ask if I can go a cigarette on my way to the patient room, where more people are piled in now, she says yes 5 minutes, I promise thats what I’ll do.

Inhale cigarette run back upstairs.

She’s there again, she didn’t know I was scheduled for surgery! Tell them when they take you to your room, just in case.

I stand in the corridor for 20 mins, there is nowhere to sit in the patient room.

A nurse comes and deposits me in my room, it's like places I’ve stayed in generic expansive hotels, a Holiday Inn perhaps, charge my phone, hug my pig because of course I brought him. A nurse enters roughly 30 mins later and tells me to change, its the young elfin nurse, I bundle my things in the cupboard and lock the door, give her the key. Then I change and wait.

In comes another nurse, high cheekbones and a wide smile, I climb into bed but manage to get her to listen to me when I say I’ve had a cigarette, a gasp, she calls down to surgery, a moment where I’m not sure if they’ll operate, but its ok and off we go. I am wheeled to the lift, she touches my shoulder often, she's forgotten all her notes and runs back to the room leaving me lying by the lift, she comes back, still no notes, they’re under my pillow. We continue.

It's like a hospital drama from first person perspective, I’m scared, I’ve never been wheeled around in a bed before, the viewpoint is totally new and robs you of all your independence, I am just a body, unable to move, looking up at the people that flash in and out on my journey down to surgery.

“Have you eaten anything today? Do you have any allergies?” Repeated over and over again, I tell my surgeon I’m not sure sure how much I love Berlin after the last week, I tell the man that doesn’t introduce himself to me and has a strange smile on his face that makes me feel uncomfortable, that I’ve lived here for 6 months, I repeat “No I’ve not eaten anything, No I don’t have any allergies, I’m wheeled next to the operating table, my clothes are removed, a drip is stuck inside me and I’m given a mask, I precariously climb onto the table and then nothing….

I wake up blearily, to be told there was no polyp, its low estrogen, blinking, moments of consciousness, they explain what’s wrong me, or not in this case because they don’t know, there was a lot of blood, I feel like it’s my fault. I ask for the blood clots they’re removed, because I want to see them, but they’re never brought to me.

My nurse takes me back to my room, there’s another woman there now, I’m so frustrated that after an hour or so of sleep I stubbornly dress and go for a smoke, despite the head nurse on the ward saying “if you pass out, I’m not coming down to collect you.”

Then back up, more sleep, my rose quartz angel (mentor, but this is her true form) comes to visit, she brings lilies and salted chocolate, I tell her they didn’t find anything, I am still bleeding, now in my hospital pants rather than my own knickers. She leaves when the nurses bring in dinner, 2 slices of stale bread, 2 slices of plastic cheese, 4 patties of butter, cheese, to be honest I’m not sure. I eat them but am glad I have the chocolate to.

I’m still high on the drugs they’ve given me, I buzz up and down for cigarettes and feel strangely lucid, I text and read the books the rose quartz angel brought me, I try and pretend to myself that it’s all ok now.

My roommate is Russian, she speaks in German or Russian on her phone constantly, but she does not understand English, so we don’t talk. At 21:30 the head nurse administers pain killers and offers to freshen my back “no thanks” then my roommate turns off her light, so I do the same.

But I can’t sleep, so I just toss and turn, 2 hours or so later I wake and patter off to the kitchen to look for food, I’m starving, I find a container of muesli and some milk, I sneakily pour it in a cup alongside a cup of soup, then I craftily return to my room feeling like I’ve subverted the system somehow. The water isn’t hot enough for the cup of soup to melt so there’s fatty globs of it still in the cup, I eat everything anyway, in the dark, then I try to sleep. Another few hours and I manage some shut eye, my body is craving touch from another though, it’s desperately shouting at me.

Good Omens is funny isn’t it?

Eartheater has played and is now probably at some hedonistic afterparty.

TUESDAY 8/10/18

Bleeding

My roommate wakes before me, but I’m half awake, people come in and out (nurses to attend to her requests), she talks on the phone, at 9:00 they wheel in breakfast, 2 slices of stale bread, a piece of plastic cheese and more patties of butter, plus some questionable conserves.

This bread is tough.

A doctor comes in whilst breakfast is still at my side table,

“So you can go whenever you want, we told you what's wrong with you right?”

“When I was high on the drugs you’d given me yes.”

“It’s a hormonal imbalance, you need to go see your gynaecologist so they can give you the IUD.”

“Ok.”

There was no polyp, or alien baby, but I wasn’t conscious so how do I know.

I pack up and exit like a rockstar, but maybe the kind of rockstar your dad becomes at a disco after a few beers rather than Iggy Pop. Before I exit the hospital completely I go see the admin team about my insurance one last time, to ask if I have to call my insurance, because apparently this little hospital holiday will likely cost up to 30k, the woman tells me its ok and I give her a big hug, lilies still in hand, then I dance down to the street, I must still be high on drugs.

i sidestep to the office of the woman I cried at on Friday, because it wasn't her fault so I drew her my lilies to say sorry, she doesn’t have her flowery crocs on today but she's still oddly special and her eyes are crystalline as I run off.

But I’m still bleeding.

I go home on the U Bahn, via the gynaecologists I’ve now crashed into 3 times this week, but my welcome isn’t so warm this time. I need to see the doctor, maybe not today but this week, I hand them my referral note and my operation notes, she goes to talk to him. I get the impression I’m becoming an annoyance now, as if this is all my fault.

“He can see you in 10 days”

“I haven’t stopped bleeding, I need it to be sooner than that.”

She is still kind faced as she ponders this, “ok Thursday morning 8:30?”

“Thats my birthday but yes.”

I finally get home after making some heady announcements via email and facebook that all is right with the world again (drugs still? Who knows).

My rose quartz angel brings me a ton of leafy greens, soups, nuts, tea, yoghurt, chocolate, the care package from heaven and she sits in my little yellow kitchen briefly not drinking her tea.

“So did they take hormonal tests if they think its hormones?

Are you not scared?

I don’t think you should go back to this doctor, I think you need a second opinion and I think he’s a tool, get some more contacts and I’ll do a call round for you tomorrow, see what I can find.”

She had botched surgery before she moved to Berlin, there’s a hole in her mouth now, she called and emailed surgeons all over the world to consult with. She sat opposite a friend of the surgeons, another surgeon, who told her that her investigation could ruin his friends reputation, he didn’t give his opinion.

Doctors are humans to.

After she leaves I’m thrown back in to a land of exasperated worry, I trawl the internet to find more English speaking gynaecologists, I phone the doctor that discharged me, who is not happy to hear from me and through gritted teeth tells me there are no hormone tests, any medical professional would just know that it was an imbalance.

I go to bed worried, the bleeding is getting heavier again.

WEDNESDAY 10/10/18

Bleeding

After a very goog nights rest I receive a call from my rose quartz angel, shes got me an appointment way out at templehof in 2 hours. I dress and get ready slowly, all the connections are seamless, I feel like my angel is with me, I get to the doctors in good time.

Walking through the leafy grounds of the hospital with crisp autumn sun shimmering through the leaves that are a spectrum of warm colours. Not in a panic because my rose quartz angel has sent me a map as well. I walk in exactly on time, have a little tussle with the receptionist about my insurance card, am seated, wait on a white wicker chair reading Alan Watts. The waiting room is airy and feminine, the staff wear pink t-shirts and German pop echoes out from the speaker just to my right above me, I pour myself water and have a little cup of tea.

When my doctor comes out I look at her for 5 minutes before registering she's asking for my name.

Then I repeat my bloody tale of woe to her.

She doesn’t want to just bung me up with an IUD, it will cost me 300euros to do so (or there around) and it won’t solve the problem. She wants to have a look in my uterus as well, so I climb on to her chair and have the spy dildo inserted up me for the 3rd time in the last 7 days, but shes gentle, she tells me it might hurt and to let her know if I’m in pain.

“Well they did a good job of cleaning you out at least because there’s nothing in there now.”

Clothes back on, my ovaries look fine, she’s going to check with her senior doctor to see what he thinks.

I’m back in the waiting room, then in her office.

“So, pills to clot the blood and stop you bleeding. You don’t have to go on the pill, what do you think?”

“I think I want to cover all my bases.”

“Great, me to. Once the bleeding has stopped call us, then we can do a smear test and try to find out whats going on.”

I walk out to a really beautiful autumn day, the kind that framed your first weeks back at school or college, when everything was so fresh and exciting. Whilst I wait for my pills I have coffee and cake at a small cafe that serves the passion cake my mum makes, its the only place I’ve ever found that does so and I’ll be back there again next week.

THURSDAY 11/10/18

Bleeding (getting less)

It’s my birthday.

The bear messages me that the doctor agree’s he's showing symptoms of chlamydia, he's been given antibiotics and I should go ASAP (but no test results as of yet).

“I’ll talk to my gyno next week, its my birthday today and I’m sick of clinics and hospitals this week.”

STI tests are not covered on my insurance.

Ok, no more days need to be charted now, the bleeding is nearly stopped I’ll be back to leafy Templehof at the earliest convenient time next week.

If it is an STI after all this let me just quickly cite what would of happened had I been in the UK with the NHS:

I would of gone to the sex health centre at Homerton Hospital, the same time I went to the emergency doctors on my first visit, around 3 months ago. But I would have had the whole spectrum of tests, rather than just doing 3, because I couldn’t afford the chlamydia test and it would cost 300euro if it came back positive anyway.

A week later I would of received an automated message telling me if I had chlamydia, I would of gone to collect my antibiotics and nothing more would of come of this.

It would of cost the NHS at least a 10th of what its costing my health insurance provider in Germany, because it would of been solved, no carousel of ultrasound spy dildos. No being wheeled down to surgery.

I’m not saying it is Chlamydia, it could be hormones, it could be cancer (but lets brush that one aside), but if it is Chlamydia then this glaring discrepancy of costs and stress is almost mind boggling, all because I would of had access to free testing and treatment.

Anyway I’m done for now, though will update again next week, hopefully in less detail as I’m hoping now I have a diligent and thoughtful doctor I’ll be able to start getting better, and as I say the bleeding has nearly stopped.

My birthday was fantastic, I got to lie on the floor of Saal 1 at Funkhaus and let sound wash over me, bless the folk at Monom, I’m off to Treptower now to see friends I haven’t seen in a while then to a dance studio I’m renting, to sing my heart out in peace. It’s another beautiful day and I’m really looking forward to seeing these friends, I’ve missed them.

But just before I round out this tale of madness for now, I want to say that during the course of the week so many people have been in touch from Berlin and from home to offer support and anything else they can do, it’s really a beautiful thing, there are so many fantastic people in this world and I’m so grateful, thank you. I put all my dirty laundry on display, I don’t really know why, but I get so much from doing it and I don’t think I’ll be stopping anytime soon.

Happy Sunday all.