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You belong to me
Prompt: ”You’ll have to go through me.”
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Junpei stepped infront of Izumi, spread his arms. He wasn’t sure there was anything he could actually do.
”You’ll have to go through me”, he said.
”Junpei…”
Izumi’s voice was soft behind him. The man infront of them glared at Junpei.
”You can’t keep her for yourself. She belongs to the world. She belongs to me.”
The prettiest girls always got the most insane admirers. Junpei didn’t move. Something in him broke at the words though.
”She’s her own person”, he said. ”She doesn’t belong to anyone.”
He could have so easily gone down that path. His admiration turned into posession. Somewhere, if he hadn’t learned to be more open and honest, he could have easily fallen into the trap of entitlement. If he had listened more to his father instead of his mother.
Still, he held hope that someday he’d be worthy of Izumi’s love. But even if that never happened he’d always treasure her friendship. Izumi took a step closer to him.
”You should leave”, Junpei continued.
The man also took a step closer. His eyes were hard and for a second Junpei almost feared for his own safety. He clenched his hands, put them infront of himself, elbows close to his body and one foot infront of the other.
The man reached to grab Junpei, shove him out of the way so he could get to Izumi. Junpei’s right hand shot out, hit the man square on the cheek. He stumbled backwards.
”Leave her alone”, Junpei said.
”You belong to me”, the man said and looked at Izumi.
He shot forwards again, reached for Izumi. She shrieked, took a step back. Junpei took a step forwards, towards the man, twisted his body to put all the force he could muster into the next punch. His fist landed just below the man’s ribs and he stopped, doubled over and fell to his knees. Junpei took a step back. His breaths were quick. Everything inside him screamed to end the man, make him unable to ever come after Izumi again.
Izumi put a hand on Junpei’s shoulder. He could feel the tension run out of him. He unclenched his hands, took another step back.
”Let’s… let’s get out of here”, he said.
Izumi took his hand, walked next to him. Her hand felt strong in his. His own hands trembled.
”I could have outclimbed him”, Izumi said. ”You didn’t need to put yourself in danger.”
”I… I know”, Junpei said.
They got out on the busier street, continued down it hand in hand.
”But… uh…” Izumi blushed. ”Thank you. I’m pretty sure he’ll stop following me after that. And…”
Junpei squeezed Izumi’s hand. His racing heart was calming down.
”Thanks for not claiming me.”
”Of course I’m not going to claim you. No one can claim ownership over another person.”
Izumi laughed, hand infront of her mouth.
”Takuya does when he acts like my shining knight”, she said, frustration clear in her voice. ”But I wouldn’t mind if you did it”, she added with a softer tone.
She let go of his hand and started running down the street. Junpei stopped. Stared after her. Then he grinned and followed her. The world was a little bit brighter.
#windy writes#febuwhump 2023#digimon frontier#junzumi#junpei shibayama#izumi orimoto#they're older here#Izumi's working as a model#she has a lot of weird admirers#Junpei does boxing :3#it's not the best for selfdefense but it's clearly better than nothing#also Izumi does parkour#that's why she would have been able to outclimb him#she had weird admirers even before she started as a model it's just worse now#anyway have a story where I don't torture Kouji :3
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roglic especifically owes most of his GTs to sepp's support. i find myself way more annoyed at him today than jonas. sepp has saved his sorry ass many, many times.
#like jonas is an alien and hasnt had many bad moments in his TDFs tbh#but roglic.... if i speak....#but i guess sepp kuss doesnt get to have mountain domestiques otherwise 'its a gift'#cycling has suddenly become a individual sport#nah i mad af sepp why dont you claim something for yourself for once#he'll lose the vuelta not bc he doesnt have the legs which he proved today that he does by outclimbing everyone not in his team#he'll lose it bc he doesnt have a backbone#i dont wanna be mean but thats how it is
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@unforgettable-garbage1997 liked for a starter ! - - - - - - - - - - ❝ I’m remembering why I don’t climb trees anymore . ❞ All this for a few measly fruits . Although they’re a delicacy for Castletown , as their meat is used for various pastries and sweetened drinks . Which begs the question of why they couldn’t just shake the brush rather than sift through all those tangled limbs . Not only are her wings getting in the way , but every muscle within her lower body is practically screaming at her to stop . She’s not as spray as before ... certainly not when her thighs bare most of the weight .
#- ; POV: You try to outclimb a NEO#- ; IC#- ; CLOSED STARTER#unforgettable-garbage-1997#- ; Living in a futuristic city
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Is it true that a F-15 has never been shot down? If so, why hasn’t anyone shot it down?
Yes, it is true that the F-15 Eagle has never been shot down in air-to-air combat. This remarkable record is a testament to the aircraft's superior design, advanced technology, and the skill of the pilots who fly it. Since its introduction in the mid-1970s, the F-15 has achieved an impressive air-to-air kill ratio of 104-0, making it one of the most successful fighter jets in history.
Several factors contribute to the F-15's undefeated status. Firstly, the aircraft was designed with air superiority in mind. Its powerful twin engines, advanced avionics, and robust airframe provide exceptional speed, maneuverability, and durability. The F-15 can reach speeds of over Mach 2.5 and has a high thrust-to-weight ratio, allowing it to outmaneuver and outclimb many adversaries.
The F-15's avionics and weapons systems are also top-notch. Equipped with a sophisticated radar system, the F-15 can detect and track enemy aircraft at long ranges, giving it a significant tactical advantage. Its armament includes a mix of air-to-air missiles and a 20mm M61 Vulcan cannon, providing both long-range and close-combat capabilities. The integration of these systems allows F-15 pilots to engage and destroy enemy aircraft before they can pose a serious threat.
Another critical factor is the rigorous training and expertise of the pilots. The U.S. Air Force and other operators of the F-15 invest heavily in pilot training, ensuring that those who fly the Eagle are among the best in the world. This high level of training, combined with the aircraft's capabilities, creates a formidable combination that has proven difficult for adversaries to overcome.
The F-15 has benefited from continuous upgrades and improvements over the years. These enhancements have kept the aircraft at the cutting edge of technology, allowing it to maintain its dominance in the skies. From improved radar and avionics to upgraded engines and weapons systems, the F-15 has evolved to meet the changing demands of modern air combat.
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Comet Donati [Chapter 3: Steal My Girl]
A/N: Hello lovely readers! Thank you so so so much for the love this fic has received. I wanted to give you a heads up that I will be co-leading a field trip to Japan from July 4th-14th and will therefore have much less time to write. HOPEFULLY I won’t have to skip a Sunday update, but I wanted to make you aware just in case. I hope you enjoy Chapter 3!!! 💜
Series Summary: Sex, drugs, boy bands. You are a kinda-therapist recruited (via nepotism) to help Comet Donati through a recent crisis. Things are casual with Aegon, very not-casual with Aemond. Loosely inspired by One Direction.
Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sexual content (18+), drugs, alcohol, smoking, mental health struggles, Aegon-induced chaos, ANGST, Iceland, you cannot escape the Cookie Monster pajama pants.
Selected Chapter Quote: “So what, you don’t like me anymore?”
Word count: 8.3k (wtf I need to chill).
Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.
Taglist: @doingfondue @catalina-howard @randomdragonfires @myspotofcraziness @arcielee @fan-goddess @talesofoldandnew @marvelescvpe @tinykryptonitewerewolf @mariahossain @chainsawsangel @darkenchantress @not-a-glad-gladiator @gemini-mama @trifoliumviridi @herfantasyworldd @babyblue711 @namelesslosers @thelittleswanao3 @daenysx @moonlightfoxx @libroparaiso @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @mizfortuna @florent1s @heimtathurs @bhanclegane @poohxlove @narwhal-swimmingintheocean @heavenly1927 @mariahossain @echos-muses @padfooteyes @minttea07
Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜
Athens, Madrid, Porto, Vienna, Stockholm, and now: descending into Reykjavik through clouds like iron. The North Atlantic is an endless sheen of cold overcast blue, a mirror of the sky. The earth is rocky and anemic. There are no jewel tones here, no sapphires or emeralds or aquamarines or fire opals or topazes. It is impossible to look down at Iceland, this dominion of impassionate jaggedness, and not think of how the Vikings had to reap their treasures from every other corner of Europe, silver and gold and glass and slaves piled into ships to be rowed back to the hostile earth they clung to, perhaps just to prove they could.
Across the aisle of the private jet—more like a penthouse than a plane, posh neutral colors and hand-stitched leather—Luke is showing Aemond his latest lyrics, loops of silver on matte black pages. They’re good, from what you’ve heard. They’re really good. And that tells you what kind of person Aemond truly is as he helps Luke polish rocks into gemstones. Anybody can soften the blow of mediocrity. It takes courage to build ladders for people who might one day outclimb you.
Daeron is playing his Nintendo 64, which is hooked up to a 98-inch flat screen tv; Mario is leaping through paintings into worlds of lava, ice, sentient ticking bombs. Criston is answering emails. Cregan is sprawled across a couch with his sunglasses on, presumably sound asleep. Jace is leering at you, dark hair hanging in his face and slurping a Vesper.
You ask him half-mocking: “What tattoo are you going to get for Reykjavik?”
He yanks off his sequined red blazer—nothing underneath, as usual—and twists around to show you the puffin on his left shoulder blade. Comet, at some point in time that preceded you, has already been to Iceland. “Cute, right? Wanna pet it?”
You roll your eyes. “I’m sorry I asked.”
He grins. “No you’re not.”
Aegon kicks the back of Jace’s chair. He’s scribbling some notes of his own, which is unusual. In place of a spiral notebook with onyx pages, Aegon is writing on crinkled Starbucks receipts with a Sharpie. He’s wearing his favorite aviator sunglasses, khaki cargo pants, an excessively bright cyan tank top, and matching Crocs.
Baela stares blankly out the window for a few seconds—like she’s buffering, a lagging connection—and then she looks to you hopefully. “Shopping when we land?”
“Does Iceland have shops…?”
“Probably more than Kansas,” Aemond says, then smiles mischieviously.
“Missouri,” you fling back. He returns his attention to Luke.
“They totally have shops in Iceland,” Baela assures you.
“Then I am amenable. I need more concert outfits.” You mostly wear your boy band t-shirts from home, which has become a joke: One Direction, Backstreet Boys, New Kids On The Block, NSYNC, the Jonas Brothers, Boyz II Men, 98 Degrees, BTS…but never Comet Donati. Anyone but them. Aegon calls you a traitor. Aemond teases, smirks, tries to hide how much he watches you the same way people contemplate art on museum walls, a little confounded, a little entranced.
“Rhaena?” Baela says. “Hello? Hello? Hola? Bonjour? Rhaena?”
Rhaena startles, peering up from her novel: Jurassic Park. Once upon a time, as you’ve learned, she had planned to study paleontology. She wants to be alone in the middle of a field someplace digging up bones. Well, no great tragedy there; one is never too old to be a paleontologist. She can take off five years, or ten years, or twenty, or thirty to see Luke through his touring days and then pick back up her own ambitions like keys left on a hook. But Baela gave up a ballet scholarship to follow Jace across the globe, puddle to puddle, land to land, and in your albeit limited understanding, ballerinas age in something like dog years. Their career is a brilliant, lightning-brief flash and then long, anonymous decades running out their mortal clock as choreographers, backup dancers, personal trainers, instructors for blue-blooded five-year-olds. Baela won’t be able to reclaim that dream for much longer. It might be too late already. She is out of practice; but she misses ballet. When Jace is being snide or oblivious, you’ve seen her gazing out windows—Escalades, hotels, jets—wondering if it was all worth it. You gut yourself for someone and they don’t even have the courtesy to put up a gravestone. It’s only natural to develop a propensity to haunt.
“What?” Rhaena asks.
“Shopping. This afternoon. Interested?”
Rhaena’s eyes go wide. She fidgets: closing and then opening her book, touching a hand to her earrings, delicate strings of small silver hearts. “Um…I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Oh, not this again,” Baela groans.
“Just go without me. Bring me back something, you know what I like.”
“What’s the problem?” You are investigative but not accusatory. The tone is essential.
“She’s scared of store employees,” Baela says.
“Well you don’t have to make it sound like that—!”
“What’s so scary about store employees?” you ask Rhaena, calm, cool, collected, nonjudgmental. Aemond glances over, as he often does when you’re working, like he can’t get enough of watching that switch flip, when you slink covertly into therapist mode like a water moccasin weaves through swamps, subtle ripples in the muddied water and vigilant eyes.
“I just hate it when people are watching me,” Rhaena says, twirling an earring. “They’re always waiting right by the door—especially at the posh places like the ones Baela goes to—and they want to know what I’m shopping for, and they want to make suggestions, and they follow me to the fitting room and ask what I like and what I don’t. And I can’t get rid of them! Even if I’m like ‘Just looking, thanks!’ they’ll circle back every five minutes to check on me. I can’t stand it. I get so frazzled I can’t decide how I really feel about a skirt or dress or whatever because I’m too busy trying to make conversation with someone I don’t want to talk to anyway. I end up with a headache and a shopping bag full of regrets. I’d rather click a button on my MacBook Air and save myself the suffering.”
You nod sagely. “What is it about talking to the employees that stresses you out so much?”
“I don’t want to say or do the wrong thing. I don’t want to cause problems.”
“But it’s not like you’re going to do anything they haven’t experienced before. They see hundreds, maybe even thousands of customers a month. And even if you did something ridiculously, dementedly embarrassing, like…um…hey, Aegon, what’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done while clothes shopping?”
“I fell asleep in a fitting room. I pissed on the floor. I set something on fire. I vandalized One Direction merchandise.”
“No, there was that other time,” Daeron says. Mario is swimming through rings of underwater coins; they chime gleefully as he collects them.
“What other time?” Aegon says.
Daeron grins. “Come on. You know.”
Aegon remembers. “Oh yeah. Once I bit a girl’s feet until I accidentally ripped off part of a toenail and she bled everywhere. But that wasn’t my fault. She was begging for it. It was consensual.”
Criston, not looking away from his emails, says: “And that’s why Aegon is now banned from all Michael Kors locations for life.”
“Right.” You turn back to Rhaena. “So you would never do anything that deranged. But even if somehow you did, what’s the actual worst-case scenario? What, realistically, could happen as a result?”
Rhaena considers this. “The employees will think I’m weird, I guess.”
“So what you’re so concerned about is that the store employees—who are literally paid to be inconvenienced by you—might think you���re weird? Which they’ll remember for, what, maybe an hour before some other customer gives them a more memorable calamity to focus on? You don’t think they’re more annoyed by purse-dog-toting heiresses screeching at them or cokeheads pissing on their floors?”
“Rude,” Aegon says.
Rhaena smiles guiltily. “I mean, when you put it that way, it does sound stupid.”
“Not stupid,” you insist. “Just out of proportion.”
“Okay,” Rhaena says. She takes a deep breath, steeling herself. “Okay. I guess I’ll go shopping.”
“Yes!” Baela cheers, already scrolling through Reykjavik shops on her iPhone.
“Hey, Stargirl,” Aegon says, and then hurls something at you like a frisbee. It’s an Amex Black Card.
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
You raise an eyebrow at him. “What’s my budget?”
“No budget. As long as it’s slutty.”
“I will buy nothing but cardigans and mom jeans.” You crane your neck to peek at his receipts. The black Sharpie squiggles aren’t words; they’re shapes, pictures. “What are you drawing?”
“New merch designs!” Aegon holds up the receipts so you can see.
“Circles…?”
He is somewhat wounded. “Donuts!”
You don’t even know where to begin. “Why donuts, Aegon?”
“Because that’s his code word for doing lines in the bathroom,” Criston says.
“No!” Aegon objects. “Because Donati sounds like donuts! So we could have all these mini donuts, print them on hats or shirts or whatever, and then in the frosting where the sprinkles would be we can put tiny stars, suns, moons, planets, galaxies…and comets, obviously.”
Jace scoffs. “I think you spend a little too much time thinking about donuts.”
Aegon goes quiet. So does everyone else. Gazes flit nervously around the cabin. The only sounds are the roar of the jet and Mario 64, although Daeron has turned his back on the cheerful Italian protagonist and is looking pensively over his shoulder at Jace. Aegon resumes sketching his cosmic Sharpie donuts, his lips pressed tightly together.
“Hey,” you say to Jace, and then once you have his attention, wicked dark eyes: “Shut the fuck up.”
“What?”
“It’s a great idea. It’s a really adorable idea, actually. Let’s see you come up with something better. Go on, whenever you’re ready. I’m waiting. I’m still waiting. But you’re not much of an ideas guy, are you, Jace? Fortunately, you’ve always had other people around to pull that weight.”
Jace opens his mouth to say something, then snaps it shut as Cregan stands up. He towers over you both, as tall as Aemond but more muscly all over, in the chest and the shoulders and the legs. He lowers his sunglasses to show his eyes: greyish, cold, flinty. He glares at Jace, and then at you, and then at Jace again. Jace holds up both hands, showing his palms. You bow your head in capitulation. Cregan lies back down on the couch and repositions his sunglasses just as the pilot turns on the fasten seatbelts signs. As you click yours into place, you exchange a glance with Aemond across the aisle. He is smiling, foxlike and approving, as if he can’t wait to see what else you have left to show him.
“So!” Baela says. “Guess who found a shop in Reykjavik that sells Gucci!”
The jet glides through mist and fog to make a rather bumpy landing at Keflavik International Airport, fighting against gusts of wind coming in off the North Atlantic Ocean, the same water that swallowed the Titanic, the Faucett Peru Boeing 727, the Free Life hot air balloon, whaling vessels and Viking longships, countless cruisers and destroyers and submarines that blasted holes into each other during the world wars. As the band prepares to disembark, Aemond reaches into the front pocket of his shirt—black, with white circling koi fish—and slides out a pair of sunglasses. He doesn’t like wearing them. They limit his vision even more than it already is. But he never walks into an airport without sunglasses on, you’ve discovered. Just in case paparazzi are there snapping photos.
“You don’t have to do that,” you tell Aemond.
He gestures to his scar and his blind eye, a pale cloudy blue. “I’ve thought about just getting it cut out. But then I’d have to worry about shoving in a fake one.”
“I think it’s kind of beautiful,” you say. “It reminds me of Neptune or something.”
And the look he gives you, the look, like he’s never heard anything like this before, like he didn’t know that words could fit together in that order. You hold out your hand to him. He lays the sunglasses in your palm. You put them on, grinning up at him.
“Now I’m the one who looks like a multi-millionaire popstar.”
“Hey, we match!” Aegon says as he follows you and Aemond out of the jet, massaging your shoulders and clopping noisily in his Crocs.
There are paparazzi at the airport, but only two of them, young men in black hoodies who dart around loosing flashes into the stuffy, aggressively heated air. Jace, Baela, Daeron, and Aegon beam and wave, radiant, magnetic, born celebrities. Rhaena smiles politely but hides behind Luke. Cregan saunters and smolders, knowing exactly what his devotees expect from him. Criston and the security guards are loaded up with suitcases like pack mules. The paparazzi don’t pay much attention to Aemond—a former heartthrob, a cracked relic, a fossil or a ruin—but one of them snaps a few pictures of him. Aemond turns his face so they’ll get his good side, his unmarred side…and then he grabs for your hand. You try not to reveal how ecstatic you are, how wildly, uncoolly, over-the-moon thrilled. Your expression might end up commemorated forever in a tabloid, after all.
Shopping in Reykjavik is mostly wool sweaters, hiking boots, and weather-proof jackets, but Baela leads you and Rhaena to a boutique that carries something more her speed: Gucci, Burberry, Balenciaga, Valentino, Saint Laurent. You and Baela try to distract the employees as much as possible; still, they find time to nettle Rhaena with those bothersome, predictable, unnecessary questions. She gets a little flustered, but she fights the instinct to run and hide, to allow herself to sink into a frenetic puddle of self-inquisition. You can almost see the words scrolling behind her dark gentle eyes like a news ticker: They get paid to help me. They aren’t going to remember any of this in a few hours. I’m not on a stage. I’m not being judged.
In the fitting room, you take two selfies to send to Aemond’s WhatsApp account: one in a flowing neon yellow gown, the other in a short, velvet, sparkly black dress embroidered with silver stars.
You ask: Day or night?
He answers before you’ve changed back into your jeans and pink Harry Styles hoodie. Night, obviously. And then he adds: Which constellation are you? Vulpecula the fox? Cygnus the swan?
“God, he’s such a dork,” you murmur to yourself, smiling. You have to think for a while before you reply. You don’t know many constellations; that makes it difficult to rattle off something witty. Then you are inspired. You type: Definitely not Virgo :)
He responds immediately: :)))))
“What does that mean?” you whisper to yourself in the solitude of the boxlike fitting room. “What the hell does that mean???” He spends nearly all of his time with you, but he rarely touches you. He’s never made a move. He’s never even kissed you. You wouldn’t mind if he did. No, fuck the coyness that women are supposed to cloak themselves in to preserve their worth. You’re waiting for him to kiss you like someone drowning waits for a gasp of air.
Despite Aemond’s vote, you can’t help yourself. You buy both dresses. You don’t look much like an Aegon Targaryen, but the cashier doesn’t seem too troubled by this. Baela and Rhaena are still trying on outfits, so you swing your bag around boredly and wander over to see what Criston is up to. At Aemond’s insistence, he accompanied you on this shopping expedition and left the rest of the security detail back at the Reykjavik EDITION, a luxury hotel overlooking the harbor. Criston is in the jewelry section and holding up a medallion necklace, rotating it to see how the light reflects off the speckling of tiny gemstones, the wise golden face. His own face is distant and melancholy.
“Oh, that’s lovely, Criston!” you say. “All those emeralds. Who’s pictured on it?”
“Saint Jude. Lost causes.”
Interesting. “Are you religious?”
“Not especially. But Alicent is.”
“Who…?”
Criston walks off to the cash register. You watch him go, curious and perplexed.
Back at the hotel, you enter your suite to find a blond Targaryen lounging in your bed…but perhaps not the right one. Aegon still has his Crocs on and is, for some reason, clutching a plushie puffin. He glances over at you, noting your shopping bag.
“Fashion show?” he says. “I hope it’s nothing but miniskirts and bikinis.”
“Don’t you have places to be? Substances to snort?”
“Cregan is currently trying to locate some.”
“That’s really not good for you. Physically or mentally. You might be addicted.”
He barks a laugh, like it’s absurd. “You can’t get addicted to coke, Stargirl.”
“You definitely can.”
He suddenly looks panicked, like he’s never considered this before.
“So.” You hesitate. “Aemond.”
“Yes, I’m familiar with the concept.”
“He’s insecure. Very insecure, though he’s learned how to hide it.”
Aegon throws and catches the puffin, bouncing it off the ceiling. “I wouldn’t disagree.”
“It goes deeper than the accident, I think. The scar, his eye, what happened with the band…that awakened it again. That freed something that he’d had locked away. But where did it start?”
Aegon stares up at the ceiling. He tosses the puffin a few more times, abusing it terribly. “Whoever you are when you’re in high school…that’s sort of who you are forever, you know? If you’re popular and beloved and understood, you carry a certain self-confidence into the rest of your life with you like a suitcase. It’s an assumption that people care about what you have to say. It’s a conviction of your own value. It’s a presupposition the world would have to wrestle away from you. But if you’re a loser in high school, that stays with you too. And it’s one hell of a heavy suitcase to lug around.”
You try to imagine seeing Aemond through eyes that aren’t awed, craving, quietly adoring. It’s simply not possible. “He was alone?” you ask softly, dreading the answer.
“I had friends. He had grudges.” Aegon’s mouth twists as he tries to stop it from trembling. “My father…”
“I know, Aegon.” Your voice is gentle. “You told me in Kansas City, that night at the bar. You don’t have to say it again.”
He is relieved. “Yeah. So people respond to that in different ways, right? I lived in the present. I talked to anybody who would listen to me, and I partied and I got high and I got laid, and I was the antithesis of the kind of son my father would have wanted just to spite him. Aemond escaped into the past. He read books, traced bloodlines, collected old obsolete things. Maybe that gave him hope that a better place was waiting for him out there somewhere, a better time. He got to be cool for three years. That’s it, and that’s all he’ll ever have. He was the one with vision. He said he was going to audition for The X Factor, and I only went with him to meet girls. Then he made it through the first round and I did too. And when they were going to cut us, he found Jace and Luke and Cregan and convinced everyone to start performing together. The show wanted to replace Luke, did you know that? They thought he was too boyish, too innocent. Aemond fought for him. And then Comet finished in second place, and all the sudden we were signed to a label, and we were selling millions of records and we were touring, and we were winning Grammys, and we were buying our parents and siblings houses…and two months after our third album came out, Aemond was maimed at the Budokan and it was time for him to get off the ride.”
You stare at Aegon, tremendously sad, not knowing what to say. Sometimes the right words don’t exist.
Aegon smirks. “He really likes you.”
“Maybe.” And then, with guileless vulnerability: “I hope so.”
“That’s dangerous.”
Your brow knits into fearful grooves. “Why?”
“I know how to enjoy something without owning it. I don’t think Aemond does.”
You don’t want to ask, but you have to. “What was Shelby like?”
Aegon considers this for a long time before he answers. “She was simultaneously too good for him and not good enough.”
Too gorgeous. Too cool. Too Pinterest-board perfect, airy like summer. But not deep. A river, a glimmer, but with no understanding of the abyss. You aren’t sure how you know that this is what Aegon means, but you do. You don’t want to think about Shelby anymore. You pivot. “So Aemond is the past and you’re the present. Who’s the future? Daeron?”
Aegon smiles, lazy and warm. “I think you’re the future.”
“Yeah right. Get your Crocs off my bed.”
He complies, groaning, flopping onto the floor gracelessly.
“Where’d you get the puffin?”
“Some Icelandic kid recognized me in the elevator. He wanted to give me a present. In return, I signed an autograph and got him and his dad front row seats to the show tomorrow. So I’d say it was a very favorable exchange for him.”
“You’re a saint,” you say, and then find yourself thinking randomly of Saint Jude again. Lost causes. Lost causes.
Aegon grins at you as he crawls to his feet and makes for the door. “Patron saint of mayhem.”
~~~~~~~~~~
You’re watching old Comet Donati performances on YouTube when the hotel fire alarm goes off. And it’s strange, because the unscarred, clear-eyed boy on the screen is Aemond but also isn’t him; he smiles more easily, he looks at people without suspicion, he is ebullient and confident and carefree like kids blowing bubbles on front porches. When you open your suite door, dressed in your favorite Cookie Monster pajama pants and an oversized New Kids On The Block t-shirt, Aemond is just arriving.
“Oh good,” he says. “You’re still awake.” And then he walks with you to the nearest stairwell.
Outside, the hotel guests are clustered together with their travel companions, shuddering under coats and sweaters and blankets clasped around their shoulders like capes. Even at the start of July, Iceland is cold: fifties during the day as Americans like you measure in Fahrenheit, forties at night, nearly always overcast. It’s 11 p.m., but the sun won’t set until midnight, and even then only for a few short hours; the sky is wearing the colors of dusk, lilac, rose pink, pale blue, fire and gold. You’re shivering, rubbing your bare forearms and feeling the goosebumps that have risen there like braille. Aemond tugs off his black and white Calvin Klein hoodie and offers it to you. As you pull it over your head, you breathe in the pieces of him that have snared in the fabric: smoke and cologne, gin and soap and the brine of the seaside air. Now wearing only his jeans and his koi fish shirt, Aemond lights a cigarette and gazes up at the hotel, postmodern angles and semi-transparent glass.
“No one’s going to give me a hoodie?” Aegon says, quaking in his cyan tank top. Criston reluctantly unzips his bomber jacket and hands it over.
“Did you do this?” Criston asks him, meaning the fire alarm.
“What?! No! No way, man! It wasn’t me!”
Criston turns to Cregan for confirmation. Cregan shrugs, ambiguous. “I knew it!” Criston exclaims. He is distraught.
Several fire engines arrive, red lights strobing, and firefighters enter the hotel to investigate. Baela and Jace are standing near each other but not speaking, arms crossed, faces tense. Luke, Rhaena, and Daeron are watching an episode of The Crown on Luke’s iPhone. Cregan lights a cigarette and manages to take two drags before Criston notices and lunges to bat it out of his hand.
“Stop it!” Criston orders. “You’ll ruin your voice!” Nobody tells Aemond not to smoke. His voice doesn’t matter anymore.
Aegon asks you, his hands buried in the pockets of Criston’s jacket: “Would you run into a burning building to save me?”
“Why would you be in a burning building?”
“That’s really not the point.”
“I’d think about it.”
Luke says, the glow of his iPhone dancing across his face: “Wow, Prince Charles is a bitch.”
“You’d think about it?” Aegon says to you. “You’d think about it?!”
“You have no excuse to be in a burning building. You have now experienced an evacuation, you know exactly how to leave a building successfully, if you’re still in it for some reason then that’s your problem.”
“You hear that, Criston?” Aegon says. “This is a good thing. Now everyone knows what to do if there’s a real fire! And we’re in hotels all the time, so this is super helpful!”
“Please shut up,” Criston begs.
“Hey Cregan, share with the class, what did you learn about fire safety from this fortuitous occasion?”
“I already knew what to do.”
Aegon is grinning. “Yeah? What’s that, Cregan?”
“Get in the shower and wait for the fire department to come rescue me.”
Everyone laughs—even Jace and Baela—and Cregan’s lips quirk up in one corner, the only hint that he is joking. A parade of firefighters exit the hotel. One of them is carrying a toaster. Black smoke pours out of the slits in the top.
She says something in Icelandic that you can’t understand, then repeats in English: “Who was trying to cook hotdogs in a toaster?”
The guests chatter incredulously among themselves: Who would do such a thing?
You, Aemond, Luke, Rhaena, Daeron, Cregan, Jace, Baela, and Criston are mindful to look anywhere except at Aegon. You gaze out at the horizon, the kaleidoscopic midnight sun. Aegon peers down at his Crocs, hair tangled and blue eyes wide.
“Very well,” the firefighter with the toaster says, a little smugly. “We will consult with the hotel staff and see which guest was registered to that room.”
“Goddammit!” Criston hisses, and shoves by the band to go meet the firefighters. You can’t hear what’s being said, but his hands move in exaggerated gestures of humiliation, apology, restitution. Fortunately, the Icelandic people seem to be forgiving.
Daeron turns to Aegon. All he says is: “Why?”
“I couldn’t figure out the buttons on the stove!”
Criston comes trudging back to the band. Guests are being admitted into the hotel to return to their drinks, their television shows and mystery novels, their families, their lovers, their beds. “Alright, it’s taken care of. Go to your rooms. All of you, right now, go.”
No one has the heart to argue with him; he looks half-broken already. Everybody disperses. You and Aemond end up alone together as the elevator zooms to the fifth floor. He takes his small, square metal lighter out of his jeans pocket and toys with it, repeatedly flicking the lid open and then shutting it again.
You point to it. “Vintage lighter. Vintage bike. And yet you write with glittery gel pens instead of quills and ink. Poser.”
“I like old things,” he says, smiling. “I think history is important.”
And you hear Aegon’s words like an echo: That’s dangerous. You start pulling off Aemond’s hoodie to give it back to him.
“No,” he says, sounding pleased. “You keep it.” So you do, finding excuses to bring the sleeves close to your face—touching your hair, your lips, your eyelashes—so you can inhale him.
Aemond leaves you at the door of your suite, but you don’t go inside. You wait for another five minutes until Criston steps out of an elevator and into the hallway, alone and agitated. Still, he has concern to spare for you.
“You okay? Locked yourself out?”
“No. I was just hoping to ask you something.”
“Go ahead.” Criston is tired, but his eyes, dark like fertile earth, are attentive.
“When Aemond was hurt…when the label yanked him out of Comet…no one fought for him?”
“Luke did,” Criston says.
And then he continues down the hall, shoulders low, a man troubled by both the past and the future.
~~~~~~~~~~
The Blue Lagoon is like Aemond’s sightless left eye: a milky blue, opaque, something you could drown in. The band spends several hours splashing and wading in water warmer than the blood in your veins. The white silica mud that forms the floor is soft beneath your bare feet, squishing between your toes; people spread it over their skin like a skin shedding its scales in reverse. Criston orders strawberry-banana smoothies from the in-water bar, trying to distract Aegon and Jace from the beer and the wine. Currently, Comet’s most worrisome performers are locked in combat: Daeron is on Aegon’s shoulders, Luke on Jace’s, entangled in a spirited chicken fight. This is much preferable to their first choice, Marco Polo, which led to Jace ‘accidentally’—and repeatedly—bumping into various early-twenties female tourists, whereupon he would inevitably profusely apologize, introduce himself, and pose for selfies, beads of turbid mineral water dripping from his curls. Cregan has drifted to the other side of the lagoon, floating on his back and basking beneath the overcast midday sun.
“I can’t believe they made everyone shower naked before getting in here,” Rhaena says, drinking her smoothie, submerged in rippling blue up to her collarbones. She had nearly refused to go through with it—I’ll wait in the car! I’ll be fine! I’ll just watch The Crown on my phone for three hours!—until you and Baela offered to hold up your towels to shield her from view and insisted that none of the other guests (all female, as the showers are sorted by gender) were paying attention. Nudity is not a big deal in Iceland. It’s quite a far cry from Missouri.
“You gotta honor the local culture, babe.” Baela flashes Rhaena a teasing grin. “Scandinavians are super progressive. No shame about bodies or relationships. Very sex-positive.”
“Well Jace is certainly blending in.”
Now Baela isn’t grinning anymore. She frowns broodingly out over the lagoon. Rhaena, regretting that she said it but knowing it can’t be taken back, noisily slurps at her smoothie even when it’s gone. You and Aemond exchange an uncomfortable glance. Baela has never broached the topic of her relationship with you, but you know it’s coming. You can sometimes see her working up the nerve like a bucket filling with water, drop by drop.
You change the subject. “See, Rhaena? The naked shower thing wasn’t even that bad. It was over in two minutes, and absolutely nobody was judging you. And if you hadn’t done it, you would have missed out on this amazing experience!”
“You weren’t nervous?” she asks you. “Not at all?”
“I little bit, yeah. Of course. I’m an American.” Everyone chuckles. “But logically, I knew no one would really be watching me. I’m not that interesting. And also…I wasn’t truly naked.”
“Huh…?”
You wiggle your eyebrows and, smiling radiantly, spin around and point to the black-ink tattoo between your shoulder blades, underscored by the straps of your swimsuit that cross just below it: a comet with a streaming tail, lyrics that Aemond dreamed up in a kinder world. Rhaena laughs.
“Oh, right, of course.”
“You are obsessed with that thing!” Baela says, but she sounds relatively happy again.
“It’s true. I am. I admit it.” Sometimes you find yourself staring at it in hotel bathroom mirrors still foggy with steam, wiping away condensation to marvel at the irrevocable ways in which Aemond has marked you, ways you are thankful cannot be erased. When you wear anything that reveals your upper back like a spilled secret, you often catch Aemond gazing at it too. Now he reaches over and skims a fingerprint along the circle that his lyrics form around the comet:
I’ll come back for you if it kills me
Comets clip by again after eons and so can I
There’s a jolt down your spine like lightning, but more eager than jarring. All other thoughts vanish from you. You look over at Aemond, and he looks back, his lips slightly parted, his right eye beckoning to you. And you know it will be good with him, if it happens, when it happens. It will be more than good. It will be laced with an intensity, with a dire breed of necessity that you’ve never tasted before. All at once, you and Aemond realize what you’ve done and drift away from each other again, weakening gravity, elliptical orbits.
“No shame, guys,” Baela quips, raising her smoothie glass in a toast. “Sex-positive, remember?”
After the 45-minute drive back to Reykjavik, and after the concert, the band coalesces in Jace’s suite. There aren’t many hangers-on for this stop of the tour; Reykjavik is isolated and peaceful and not particularly desirable for friends of convenience who are more interested in clubbing and drugs than camaraderie. You wouldn’t trade nights like this for anything in the world.
Aemond is reading off his latest notes, white ink on black paper, stars on the backdrop of the universe. A Benson & Hedges cigarette smolders between two fingers on his left hand. Smoke curls up around his face. “Aegon, you were three steps behind the choreography for basically the entire show.”
“Yeah, that was on purpose.”
“It wasn’t,” Aemond counters, but he can’t help but smile.
“Women love a tragic disaster of a man who is screaming to be fixed.”
“Daeron,” Aemond continues. “I really like that hair flip you’ve started doing…”
Aegon is knocking back dark glass bottles of Gædingur Stout and slurring, very drunk and sinking deeper by the minute. In the absence of coke, he has resorted to other crutches. You are squeezed between Aemond and Baela on one of the couches. And Aemond isn’t really touching you, but he also is: the delicious subtle pressure of his thigh against yours, occasional nudges of his elbow, ostensibly unintentional grazes of knuckles and palms. He’s drinking his usual, a Bramble, and so are you, swirls of slow-moving pink like drops of blood in open water. And you think in a hazy bliss like listening to ground-level conversations from the bottom of a swimming pool: Tonight, tonight, tonight, he’s going to come back to my room with me tonight.
“Oh great,” you mumble as you check your Facebook messages on your iPhone.
“What’s wrong?” Rhaena asks. She’s nestled against Luke on the opposite couch, twirling locks of his hair around her benign, delicate fingers. Jace is sitting beside Luke, drinking a Vesper and trying not to make eye contact with Baela. Daeron is in the fuzzy white sheepskin lounge chair, Cregan perched on a bar stool, Criston standing watchfully with a vivid green bottle of Perrier in one hand. When he briefly steps out onto the balcony to take a call from the label, you can hear only the most dim, indistinct murmurings through the thick tinted glass, sounds but not words. Aegon is sitting—and occasionally crawling around—on the floor. The Backstreet Boys’ I Want It That Way is playing.
“I’m subletting my apartment in Kansas City and there is a strict no pet policy. But my neighbors snitched on the new tenant and apparently she’s got a Flemish Giant rabbit living there with her.”
“Not even a normal rabbit,” Baela muses. “A giant rabbit.”
You sigh. “All the rugs are going to be chewed up by the time I get back.” And Aemond glances over anxiously, like he doesn’t want any reminders that you won’t always be around.
“What’s your apartment like?” he says.
“Old. Vintage. Most of it hasn’t been updated since the 1950s. You’d appreciate it, actually. It would match your aesthetic.”
“Maybe I’ll have to see it sometime.”
You smirk at him, flirtatious, baiting, the silver stars on your dress reflecting golden lamplight. “Maybe. If I invite you.”
He leans in to whisper so only you can hear: “You will.”
“I think I’d be a landlord if I wasn’t famous,” Jace says, nursing his Vesper meditatively like an aspiring philosopher. “I’d just sit back and collect the checks as they rolled in. And you get to raise the rent every year.”
“Yeah, that sounds like you,” Aegon says, grinning up at him saccharinely.
“What would you be, Stargirl?” Jace asks; and you realize you hate the sound of him using Aegon’s name for you.
“I mean, a therapist.” And everyone laughs, even Criston.
Jace flushes, brushing his curls back from his face with one hand. “Oh yeah. Clearly.”
You look to Aemond. “You’d be a historian or an archivist or something.”
“Or a writer,” Luke says.
“Maybe,” Aemond agrees, a tad uncomfortable with the attention. “Or an animal activist, maybe. I’d like to do some sort of good in the world.”
Aegon shouts, far more loudly than necessary: “What would you be, Criston?”
“Thousands of miles away from you.” More laughter, riotous; but Criston is smiling a little.
“What about you, Cregan?” Jace asks. “What would you want to be if Comet didn’t exist?”
Cregan downs a shot of Absolut Vodka. “A plastic surgeon.”
“What? Why?”
Cregan shrugs. “You get to see tits all the time.”
There are scandalized squeals and guffaws. Baela says: “I would not let you anywhere near my tits.”
“And not just tits!” Daeron adds brightly. “Don’t they do, what’s it called, vaginal rejuvenation?”
Cregan points at him with his empty shot glass. “Exactly.”
“Oh God, that sounds painful.” Rhaena hides her face behind a flute of champagne.
“Yeah,” you say. “I don’t think I’m interested.”
Aegon snorts, drips of Gaedingur Stout flying from his nose. “Like you’d ever need it. You’ve got a pornstar pussy, fucking gorgeous.”
A hush sweeps through the room like a dust storm. Baffled glances dart around wildly. Immediately, Aegon realizes his mistake. He gazes up at you from the floor with large, glazed, drunken blue eyes that glisten with apology. You gape back, half-furious and half-petrified.
“Wait, what?” Aemond says. Ashes build on his cigarette, forgotten.
“Oh, wow.” Jace gestures from you to Aegon. “You guys…you guys have…?”
“It was once, a long time ago,” you say quickly. “Like, a really long time ago. Over a year ago.”
Aegon is trying to help. “Ages ago. Ancient history.”
“Where? In Kansas City?!” Baela gasps, stunned.
Aegon tells her: “You remember that bar we all went to after the show, right? The one on the roof?”
Baela is blinking at you, not comprehending. “You hooked up with him? In a bar?! Aegon?!”
“Um, yeah.”
Jace brays out a laugh, shaking his head. “Damn, Stargirl. I thought you had better taste than that.”
You feel like you’re fighting for your life. You feel like you can’t breathe. “It really wasn’t serious…” Not the sex part, anyway.
“No, no, it totally wasn’t,” Aegon agrees gamely. “It was like, what? How long were we in that bathroom? Maybe ten minutes total?”
Daeron is giggling. “Bruh, stop roasting yourself!”
As the chatter flies, you hide your face in your hands; beneath your palms, your cheeks are hot. You can feel Aemond pulling away from you, spaces opening up between your thighs and shoulders and arms like the ever-expanding void of the universe. When you steal a glimpse of him through the cracks in your fingers, he is staring down at the floor. He is silent, but you can see the thoughts—the images—riddling him like bullets. You can see him filling up with them like a punctured ship fills with seawater. He smokes until his cigarette is gone, and then immediately lights another.
Luke is the one to mercifully intercede. “Hey, Criston, where are we going next?”
“Uh,” Criston says, trying not to gawk at you or Aegon. “Let me think. Uh. Oh, right. Paris.”
Jace cackles. “The city of love! How appropriate!”
Criston ignores him. “You have some press interviews and then you’re doing two shows at the Accor Arena on July 7th and 8th…”
Aemond gulps down the rest of his Bramble and then walks out onto the balcony, closing the sliding glass door behind him.
“Fuck,” Aegon sighs miserably, then guzzles his Gaedingur Stout.
You bolt off the couch and go after Aemond. The heavy sliding glass door growls as you roll it open and then shut it again. Outside, Reykjavik is cold and windswept. The midnight sun is aflame. It’s still too bright to see the Northern Lights; even if they were there, you would have no way of knowing. Aemond is smoking with his back to you. He’s looking out over the boats bobbing in the harbor, sunbeams glinting on the crests of waves. Flapping gulls swoop and scream.
You say cuttingly, like a surgeon slicing away malignancies: “So what, you don’t like me anymore?”
Aemond flicks ashes over the balcony railing. “I just think I understand you better.”
“What does that mean?”
He whirls to you and says pointedly: “Why are you here?”
A disorienting question. Too easy. “I followed you out onto the balcony.”
“No, here with the band, here in Reykjavik, why are you here?”
You know how the truth sounds, but you can’t rewrite it. “Because Aegon asked me to be.”
“Because he asked you to come fix me, right?” Aemond demands. “To crack open my skull and stir things around until I’m okay with the fact that my life ended seven months ago.”
“No!” you shout into the wind. “I mean, yes, he thought I’d be able to help you, to help Comet, but that’s not what this is about for me anymore—”
“Why would I believe you? You’re a liar, you’re a confirmed liar, why would I believe a single goddamn word of what you have to say?!”
“I didn’t lie to you!”
“Friends!” Aemond roars. He doesn’t touch you, but his rage is horrifying, ageless and deep like lava bubbling beneath tectonic plates. “You said you and Aegon were friends!”
“We are friends—”
“No, you’re not. You met him, you fucked him, and then when he invited you to join the tour you dropped everything to do it, why, because you still want him? And I’m the charity case? Or I was just next in line? Maybe you were planning to work your way through the whole band. Who’s next, Jace? I don’t think he’d object.”
“No—!”
“You and Aegon. And you didn’t even have the guts to tell me.”
“Because I didn’t want to have this conversation, the one where you eviscerate me for something that happened before I even met you!”
“You chose him,” Aemond says, venomous. “At the bar in Kansas City, you chose him.”
“What?! Aemond, I don’t even remember seeing you, I don’t think you were there at all—”
“I was there.” He glares at you, thunderstorms, tornadoes, the earth splitting in two. “Last June. Rooftop bar. String lights. View of the river. I remember it, I was there.”
“Well then you didn’t notice me either and you probably spent the whole night with Pilates princess, Malibu Barbie Shelby, so what’s the fucking point?!”
He glowers at the horizon. Iceland DOES have jewel tones, you think erratically. But they only come out at night, like owls or bats. “It’s different.”
“It’s not different! You’re so convinced people don’t like you that you do insane, irrational things that make people not like you! It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy! It’s a fucking circle, you idiot!”
“I’ve had enough psychoanalysis, thanks.”
“No, you could use some more of it, you could use a lot more, you have so many demons it’s like Paranormal Activity in your brain, they’re in there all day tearing things off the walls and kicking over chairs and sabotaging anything you dare to care about and you let them!”
He turns away from you. “Just go the fuck back to Kansas.”
“I’m from Missouri!”
Aemond pitches the end of his cigarette over the balcony. His good eye flicks to the sliding glass door. The curtains rustle as the faces that hovered there just seconds ago disappear back into the suite. Very muffled through the thick glass, you can hear Criston chastising people.
You ask Aemond, embers in your throat: “This is really something you consider unforgiveable?”
He shakes his head, mournful, violently disappointed. “You’re just a groupie. You’re just a slut.”
Slut. It’s not the word, it’s the way he said it, with dismissiveness, with condemnation, the same way men love to use it as a blade to carve off every other piece of you—kindness, coldness, ferocity, loyalty, wit, passion, talent, triumphs, failures, ghosts—until that one little word is all that’s left. You’re dismantled into a clutter of loose bolts and bent nails. You’re a beef cow that was led into the maze of a gnashing, metal-and-blood processing plant and came out the other side a brainless, raw-pink patty just the right size to fit in a Big Mac box, something to be consumed but not remembered. “What did you say to me?”
He’s staring out into the twilight sky, both hands on the balcony railing. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe I…”
“Are you kidding me?! I can’t believe I got your lyrics tattooed on my fucking back, what am I supposed to do about that now, rip my own skin off?!”
“So get it covered up. I’m sure Aegon would be thrilled to help you choose a new design, or Jace, or Cregan, or Daeron, or whoever.”
“You know what I think?” you say, caustic like acid.
“Don’t say it,” he threatens, low and dark.
“I think you haven’t fucked anyone since the accident, and you’re terrified to. But you shouldn’t be, Aemond. Because there’s nothing wrong with you. There has never been anything wrong with you.”
But he doesn’t hear that part. He only hears the first thing, what you never should have said at all. It’s true, but that doesn’t mean you should have said it. “I hate you,” he says softly, and you can’t think of a reply. The space between you fills up with wind, cold, dying sunlight. Aemond looks at the sliding glass door. “I don’t want to go back in there.”
“Well, we’re five stories off the ground, so you’ll probably have to.”
He studies the series of balconies that run along this side of the hotel, each separated by perhaps three feet of open air. Then he starts climbing over the metal railing.
“Aemond, don’t!”
But it’s too late. Fortunately, he has long limbs. He scrambles onto the next balcony, and then the one after that, and then one more, until he reaches the balcony for his own suite. He tries the sliding glass door—locked—and then sits down to wait for someone to open it. You go back inside Jace’s suite, where everyone pretends to have been talking about something other than you.
“Where’s Aemond?” Criston says, alarmed.
“He’s on the balcony of his suite. You should go let him in.”
“What?!” Criston yells, and then sprints out into the hallway.
You flee too. Both Baela and Aegon try to stop you, try to talk to you. They’re asking what Aemond said. They’re asking if you’re okay. You tell them you’re fine and that you want to be left alone. They argue. You insist. You walk back to your own room and start packing.
Your suitcase fills up with crumpled clothes and souvenirs: a Colosseum pencil sharpener from Rome, a tiny alabaster Apollo from Athens, a Spanish fighting bull refrigerator magnet from Madrid, handmade soap from Porto, a bar of chocolate from Vienna, a moose snow globe from Stockholm, a silica mud mask from the Blue Lagoon, a tiny stuffed comet that Rhaena crocheted for you. You reach back to touch your fingertips to the comet tattooed over your spine, tears biting in your eyes. If I had told him from the start, would that have made a difference? If I had met him first, would we have had a chance? You are gathering up your makeup when you hear a knock on the doorframe.
Cregan lurks there. When he speaks, he sounds startled; he sounds afraid. “You can’t leave.”
“I’ve literally never had a conversation with you, so thanks for the input but I’m still going.”
“No,” he says, persistent. “You can’t leave.”
“Aemond doesn’t want me here.” Your voice is fragile, shattering. “I can’t help him anymore.”
“It’s not just about Aemond. It’s about everyone. They’re all fucked up. They all need you.”
You stare at Cregan, not understanding. “I really don’t think I’m equipped for this.”
He fixes his cool greyish eyes on you. He is harsh but somehow not unkind. “You would never be able to comprehend where I came from. I’m not going back to that. The band has given me everything. I’m not going to let anyone take that away from me. You have to stay. You have to fix Comet. You can’t leave.”
He watches you, and you watch him, and you aren’t sure who has the upper hand here, who is the predator and who is the prey. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe everyone is a patchwork of strengths and deficits, fields of gold strewn with landmines.
At last, you relent. And Cregan doesn’t vanish until you’ve begun taking your souvenirs out of your suitcase and placing each of them—carefully, reverently—back on your nightstand where they were before.
#aemond targaryen x reader#aemond one eye#aemond targaryen#aemond x y/n#aemond x you#aegon x reader#aegon ii#aegon targaryen ii#Aegon II Targaryen#Aegon Targaryen#aegon x y/n#aegon x you#aemond x reader
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Way to reblog that shit totally misrepresenting the “man vs bear” argument.
If you think I'm wrong and you want me to reconsider my stance, you need to present some sort of argument instead of being passive aggressive. Explain why you think it was misrepresented and offer an alternative viewpoint.
If you don't care if I change my mind and just want me to feel bad for having an opinion you don't like, that can't be accomplished by internet randos yelling at me. Look at my blog. You think this is the blog of a person who cares if they get yelled at by internet strangers? But you might want to reconsider how you spend your time if you think lashing out at strangers for fairly minor disagreements is a good use of it.
Anyway I do think I could do better at being more nuanced. Women obviously face harassment and assault from men, including in the woods. I meet men in the woods every time I go hiking and I'm not going to pretend I've never had the fleeting thought of what I'd do if one attacked me. But that's the thing - I meet men in the woods every time I go hiking. It's really weird to have it presented as some sort of hypothetical thought experiment instead of the mundane reality of a very popular hobby.
The biggest problem I'm having is the number of people using it as an excuse to play the "I am in perpetual danger from every man I meet and I have to perform a series of performative safety rituals to ward off serial killers and That's What Being A Woman Is About" game. I've had, over the past couple years, a few people tell me that if I'm not perpetually afraid of every man I see then I must not actually be a woman, or I must be lying, or I'm some naive young waif who doesn't understand the Evils Of The World yet. It's really fucking annoying! Womanhood is not defined by fear and paranoia!
The other problem that I can't believe I'm having is the number of people arguing that bears are basically just big cuddly uwu babies who are more scared of you than you are of them!!! and you just have to shoo them off the path like waving a bird away from a berry patch!!!
Bears are dangerous as hell - even black bears - and you should NEVER assume they're safe or friendly. And sure, maybe 99% of black bears are fairly non-confrontational and don't want to fight you - but the same is true of men! But unlike men you can't outrun, outfight, or outclimb a bear. You're pretty much just fucked if one does decide you look tasty. So again - it just feels very performative to me to make a big deal about how dangerous men are while downplaying the danger of a literal apex predator.
#gritting my teeth about a certain popular tumblr user rn#anyway this isn't even getting into how the 'all men are dangerous' thing plays into racism and xenophobia#or how the 'womanhood is defined by fear and paranoia' thing plays into terf arguments#god there's so much wrong with the 'being a woman means perpetually being in fear' thing. i could write a dissertation on this
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Some Assassin's Creed x Genshin Brainrot I've been having:
1. A reader whose like Barbara. I have her and I would absolutely kill for her. Like, the reader is the daughter of a doctor who isn't necessarily an assassin but married one so they help when one of the assassin's get hurt and the reader sings as she works to help them and the assassin's can't help but smile. AND I MEAN THIS IN A PLATONIC WAY, LIKE, YOU ARE THE SAME AGE AS BARBARA but I just think it'd be a cute idea because you're a very good medic and doctor and the assassin's enjoy seeing you. Like if you're in Connor's time period, he will be silent as you sing but he does have the smallest smile on his face and if you ask him: "Are you feeling better, Mr. Ratonhnhaké:ton?" he's internally adopted you already- JACOB ABSOLUTELY ADORES YOU, the only child in London who HASN'T tried to rob him, and Evie definetly has a soft spot for you two. When you tell Evie that you really look up to her and that you want to be just as smart as her someday, she gets kinda shy and Jacob gets jealous BECAUSE WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO BE LIKE HER, HE'S SUPER COOL TOO- I can see some of the more crude assassin's trying to watch their language around you. EDWARD STRUGGLES SO HARD but he doesn't want to make you feel uncomfortable so he TRIES HIS BEST. Arno is very gentlemanly so if he's ranting to someone while you're fixing him up, he'll politely tell you to cover your ears. And so on and so forth-
2. Childe x Ratonhnhaké:ton! Reader. Like in the sense that the reader has his personality and beliefs. This dynamic would be interesting to me in the sense that Childe fights because the Abyss gave him that need but the reader would fight because it is their duty. Also because of the dynamic that'd they'd both be unhinged in their own way. Childe is more obviously unhinged but let's not forget that Ratonhnhaké:ton ran through a city that was being BOMBED just to get to the man who he was after. So let's say the reader's target is Childe and they just run through an entire army. Normal people would be terrified by that kind of persistence, especially if that person wants them dead, but Childe just having the biggest grin on his face because he might be in love- However, Childe also loving the kind and compassionate side of the reader and how that kindness and compassion never falters. Not to mention that he'd definetly admire how honest the reader is and like how the reader does have some sympathy for Childe and his childhood but how they can't let that sympathy distract them from doing what's right.
- OKAY SO YOU KNOW THOSE SAGAU GENSHIN STORIES? Maybe something like that where the reader is an ISU hybrid so they have the golden blood and skin markings that light up but because of how the ISU act in the Assassin's Creed verse, THEY ARE HELLA DISTRUSTING OF THE ARCHONS AND THE ARCHONS ARE SO HURT BC WHAT DID THEY DO-
- Just an Assassin's Creed reader in general somehow getting into the Genshin universe PURELY BECAUSE I think it would be funny how they would absolutely outclimb everyone. Like, I have a hard time with climbing in Genshin because I always forget the stamina bat but in AC, most of the game play is just climbing really tall things so the reader just escaping everyone by climbing taller than them. Or like, they're constantly found brooding on some sort of high ground. Also because imagine they get a vision and one of the characters is all: "Okay, now we'll teach you how to use Elemental Vision-" and the reader is all: "Oh, is it like Eagle vision?" and they're all: "Wtf is eagle vision-"
- THE ASSASSIN CREED READER HAVING AN EAGLE SIDEKICK, IDK, I JUST THINK THAT'D BE COOL.
- Diluc would actually be a good member of the Brotherhood, like, I don't have the creativity to write it but someone give that man a hidden blade.
#Genshin Impact#Assassin's Creed#Childe x reader#diluc ragnvindr#Crossover idea#genshin impact crossover#Assassin's Creed Crossover#Yeah ik this is cringe but this is how I treat myself after finals.#barbara genshin impact#ratonhnhaké:ton x reader#jacob frye x reader#evie frye x reader#Arno Dorian x reader#Diluc x reader#Zhongli x reader#raiden shogun x reader#venti x reader#Nahida x reader
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Genshin and Climbing part 1
We all know that every character in Genshin can climb just the same. But I suddenly had the thought… how well would they actually be able to climb up, something like a rock or cliff or even a tree.
So I decided to rate them. Keep in mind, great combat skills does not equal great climbing skills.
I’ll just rate their climbing skills as: LOW, MID, or HIGH skill.
Here for part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5
Here go the Genshin men and boys, Mondstadt version:
Albedo: He’s a member of the knights of Favonius and his Lab is located on dragonspine. So he certainly has some skills going up and down the mountain. Not to mention in his quest he somehow outclimbs you. (?) Which is why I’d say he’s MID-HIGH
Bennett: He’s an adventurer and was raised by a bunch of adventurers. So of course he knows how to climb things, as most adventures require going to places. And keep in in he isn’t clumsy or unskilled, he is just unlucky. So he would have no problem climbing up somewhere, as long as his luck lets him. HIGH
Diluc: Now, our Darkknight Hero may have no trouble fighting enemies, as we have seen. But if it comes to actual climbing ability… I’d say no. He grew up as a young master and was trained as a knight, none of these would include climbing training. So LOW
Kaeya: He is similar to Diluc. While he would have zero problem talking your clothes off, he is not someone who would need to climb up rocks. Maybe he climbed some trees as a child but as an adult he no longer has to do so and therefore does not have the skills. LOW
Mika: (I almost forgot that boy existed) He is a cartographer. That usually means going to places other people don’t usually go. In his trailer he was mapping out dragonspine, so he should have some climbing skills. MID
Razor: He was raised by wolves and grew up with them. Which means he has always been in the wild until a certain someone got him introduced to civilisation. Still, he remains at home with his Lupical. Therefor he should have decent climbing skills, but I highly doubt the wolves taught him how to climb, and there wasn’t really a need to climb when he goes out to hunt. MID
Traveler: You bet he knows how to climb. Maybe he struggled for a short time when he lost his wings, but going through numerous worlds and the many adventures he has/had in Teyvat certainly honed his climbing skills. HIGH
Venit: No. Our tone-deaf bard may be an archon but that doesn’t mean he has great climbing skills. On the off chance that he has to get up somewhere he would just conjure up a gust of wind to get him there. No climbing, no skills. LOW
#genshin impact#genshin men#albedo#bennett#diluc ragnvindr#kaeya alberich#Mika#razor#genshin traveler#genshin venti#headcanon#genshin headcanons#don't ask me why or how#i just suddenly had that though pop up in my head
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How hard would it be to beat Strandy in a fight or a rock climbing competition. I bet I could outclimb him so fucking easily but idk he kills/kidnaps people so maybe not beating him in a fight
no hed fucking die rock climbing jhfhgfkjhf dont. fight him one on one. fight dirty. catch him by surprise
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-source: Batman (1940) #10-
Weapon of Choice: Outclimbing a kitty cat. And animal abuse, thanks Golden Age...
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Prowlbee.
Do you think Prowl could convince Bee to go on another camping trip? Maybe during spring or summer.
If he does, hopefully it will go better than the first one. Bee will definitely remind him of it.
I always thought that the first camping trip left them traumatized enough to be immediately against it the second someone mentions going camping.
But I guess after a good while Prowl would wanna try again. He'd try and beg Bee to give it a chance for weeks before Bee finally gives in. Under one condition: they will go somewhere known and relatively nearby to the city. So they look for marked camping grounds and pack up for a day or two.
The itself trip was nothing but anxiety for Bee; they were getting further and further away from the civilization and the only area dubbed "safe" in Bee's mind. Prowl was somewhat relaxed cuz he liked nature very much and seeing wild animals was very neat.
They set up their little station on the edge of the camping field away from few other tents and went off to have some fun. There was a river nearby so they had some fun slpashin in the water and drying on the sunny shore, they went and ran around the long grass field and looked at clouds.
Bee's anxiety slowly faded and finally they could relax... but it came back as soon as the sun started to set and the darkness arrived. They both had some fear and flashbacks from the first time but sitting in their little nook together made them ease up. Prowl persuaded Bee to turn off the nightlight he brought and they watched the beautiful night sky full of stars. They fell asleep cuddled up together.
The next morning they ate their fuel and set out on a hiking trip around hte nearby mountains, Bee admitted it was fun climbing- especially since he made it his goal to outclimb Prowl to the peak. Bee, being the scout, was very good at climbing and getting into usually inaccessible places. It was a tough fight but Bee won- altho unknown to him Prowl let him win just so he can enjoy seeing his sparkmate happy. They played games, collected some cool rocks and stuff and they were off to sleep another night before going back home.
It was definitely the pleasant aspect of it that Sari was talking about last time, Bee had to admit camping was fun after all. I would guess they organize a trip to camp out once or twice in the warm seasons after that.
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"Hellcats Control The Skies" is an original commissioned 16x20 painting of a WW2 F6F Hellcat vs Japanese Zero dogfight over the Pacific. Hellcats were responsible for 75% of US victories and could outdive and outclimb the zero. This one is not availabl but commissions are open! Dm me to get started!
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Saft & Almann Motorbau 99 - "An Engineer's Fighter"
Role: Scout Served With: Mercenary Companies First Flight: 1597 Strengths: Supreme Energy Fighter Weaknesses: Caution- Do Not Turn Inspiration: SPAD S.XIII (1917)
Description:
SAM was an engine manufacturer in Eisenfluss, a Free City in Daimler, building the popular Kurier V8 series for other nations. They also produced custom aircraft for export, militia forces, and eventually the Alliance of Free Cities.
The SAM 99 represented the ultimate evolution of their scouts. It has many clever innovations, including a high speed propeller, internal bomb bay, and razor-thin multibay wings. The weight of the aircraft and staid, careful aerodynamics rendered it a poor turning fighter, but the geared engine allowed it to outclimb, outdive or outrun nearly anything else in the air.
If is often said that a disciplined SAM 99 pilot is almost invincible, but a reckless SAM 99 pilot will ruin a beautiful aircraft as they die.
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Matt: Sorry! I support women.
*aggressive feminism noises*
#when youre so tired of hetrosexuality /j#Ash was delightful in this episode#I adored all their observations about Taylor Swift#matthew patrick#matpat#ash gtlive#my gtlive theory is that matt is letting ash sign off more often to prep her to take over after this summer
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i can't with people pretending that roglic would have been the favorite for la vuelta if jonas was not going. i love primoz to bits, but I've never seen anything to suggest he can outclimb peak remco over 3 weeks.
#volta catalunya DOES NOT COUNT#what counts its what we've seen in lsst years vuelta and this years giro#in which remco was never truly threatened by primoz
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So I've never written out my thoughts like this as I'm reading a fic but this was so over the top amazing that I HAD to...I debated just reblogging with these things but spoilers...and also I wanted to be sure you saw it...I hope this was okay ❤️
"It takes courage to build ladders for people who might one day outclimb you."
This sentence stopped me in my tracks. I reread it a bunch if times. This is so profound and beautiful. I wrote it down in my journal..i hope you don't mind.
"when you slink covertly into therapist mode like a water moccasin weaves through swamps, subtle ripples in the muddied water and vigilant eyes."
Gorgeous writing. Beautiful imagery.
“ No, fuck the coyness that women are supposed to cloak themselves in to preserve their worth. You’re waiting for him to kiss you like someone drowning waits for a gasp of air."
Can I just fangirl over these two sentences. The first sentence...YES. ALL THE YES. The second sentence. SAME girl SAME.
“So.” You hesitate. “Aemond.”
“Yes, I’m familiar with the concept.”
Hilarious response from Aegon. Hilarious. This is why I want him to be my bestie.
“He’s insecure. Very insecure, though he’s learned how to hide it.”
This is giving me One Direction "what makes you Beautiful" and I love it.
I loved the entire interaction between our girl and Aegon in her room. Just seeing that friendship and how he does care about her. Beautiful.
Aemond coming to get her when the fire alarms are going off? Gahh what a gentleman! And then giving her the hoodie and telling her to keep it?!
The entire fire bit with Aegon was pure comedic gold. And LUKE fighting FOR Aemond. So therapeutic!
“No, you could use some more of it, you could use a lot more, you have so many demons it’s like Paranormal Activity in your brain, they’re in there all day tearing things off the walls and kicking over chairs and sabotaging anything you dare to care about and you let them!”
This entire scene broke my heart, but holy crap the imagery. GENIUS. so freaking genius. Amazing writing, love.
I so hope that Aegon talks some sense into Aemond soon. I don't want these two souls apart for long. I don't know what Stargirl's past really is, but I feel like she needs him as much as he needs her. So excited to see what you have planned for them all!
OH! AND I adored how she called out Jace on the plane. He is the WORST in this and I'm enjoying hating him...
MISS KATE!!! 😭 I cannot even express to you how happy this made me! I was smiling MASSIVELY the whole time I was reading it. 🥰 This is the stuff writers live for, so thank you so much for taking the time to share it.
Sometimes lines of dialogue/description will pop into my head randomly and I'll think "...Is this good or is this too weird? Will people get it?" and to see someone pick out the exact same snippets and connect with them...it's just priceless. 💜
I absolutely cannot wait to show you what's next for Stargirl, Aemond, Aegon, (evil!) Jace, and the rest of the Comet fam! ☄️
"I don't know what Stargirl's past really is, but I feel like she needs him as much as he needs her." 👀👀👀
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