#so happy that vick got herself a way out

[smokingchagga]

Well. I just finished The Wisdom of Crowds.

I somehow end up reading new books from Joe incredibly fast. This one took me three days. Well, I guess you could say four. It's 3am as I'm writing this.

Goddamn. I love how Joe ended up convincing me it would turn out nice and happy during the last 100 or so pages. Then he did the uno reverse card. Well, not a complete reverse. This was somehow still a more happy ending than I expected.

I kinda wanted to rave about how cool the book was, but my head is honestly pretty empty right now.

Anyway, how's the leg?

[wynnyfryd]

Trailer Park Steve AU part 3

part 1 | part 2

(tw: guns, accidental death)

Robin’s already in full panic mode by the time Steve pulls up to her place, flinging the passenger door open and throwing herself into the car with so much force that the car bounces on its wheels a little. “Drive!!”

“Jesus Christ, good morning to you, too.”

“Steve!”

Steve starts to drive.

Beside him, Robin flips the visor down to look at her reflection; groans and scrubs her hands down her face in misery at whatever she sees. Steve doesn’t really get it. He thinks she looks beautiful, with her hair gently moving in the breeze from the open window, with her freckles lit up by the early morning sun.

“Ugh,” she says, turning to look at him, “I can’t believe I look like a zombie and you’re gonna make me late to the first day of school.”

“Wow.” Fuckin’ ingrate. And when he was just being so nice to her in his head. “How about a thank you, huh? ‘Thanks for picking me up, Steve. Thanks for bringing my backpack, Steve. Sorry you almost got shanked by your neighbor, Steve.’”

“You what???”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Um, yes it very much does matter, what the—”

“—I’m just saying, a little gratitude? Wouldn’t hurt you.”

He licks at the corner of his mouth, spritzes wiper fluid to clear the bugs off the windshield. Robin’s eyes are bulging out of her head, but he really doesn’t want to talk about how he still feels the ghost press of steel against his throat, so: “You’re not even right, by the way; I don’t know why you’re complaining.”

“Huh?”

“School started yesterday. I’m making you late for the second day of school.”

“Yesss,” she draws the word out like he’s stupid, rolling her wrist in a hurry up and get it motion, “but everyone knows that syllabus day doesn’t count. The first pep rally is the real first day of school.”

Ah, there it is.

Steve steals another peek at his best friend while they’re on a straightaway, notes the nervous twitch of her hands as she goes back to fussing at her reflection; the way she’s clumping her lashes together with seven coats too many of some drugstore brand mascara. She’s wearing lipstick. “This is about Vick—”

“—Don’t talk about—”

“—It’s about Vickie, isn’t it?”

“Ughhhhh.” Robin folds forward and thunks her head against the dash. “Fine, okay? Fine! Yes! This may have something to do with a distressingly cute fellow marching band member. Are you happy now?”

“Ecstatic.”

“Oooh, big word for you, Steven.” She swats him on the shoulder, face all twisted up in offense. “Stop laughing!”

“Stop hitting me,” he laughs. “I’ll dump your ass out on this highway.”

She gasps and narrows her eyes at him. “You wouldn’t.”

Steve eases his foot onto the brake.

“Okay, okay! Mercy! I’m being an asshole, alright? I’m sorry. I’m just— I’m stressed! Being gay is very stressful.”

The knife incident pops back into his mind. “Yeah,” he mutters, “I imagine it is.”

—

He catches himself slouching down into his seat a bit when they pull up to the school. Has to force himself to sit upright, hears his mother’s tutting in his ear about bad posture and the message it projects to the world.

It’s not that he’s embarrassed to be here; really, he isn’t. He’s just hoping to avoid being spotted by the nuggets now that they go here, too, lest he be accosted for evading his chauffeur duties.

God.

Dustin’s nerd shit is infecting his brain.

Robin grabs her bag out of the back seat, plants a parting peck on Steve’s cheek as she gets out of the car. “See you later?”

“Yeah, I’ll pick you up for work.”

“Love you, dingus.”

And then he’s alone again.

With Robin gone, Steve finds himself driving. Wandering and aimless, like a ghost who doesn’t know he’s gone. It’s not like he has nothing to do — he’s supposed to be out finding a second job, finding a way to support himself and his mom, because he’s the man of the house now. Because his life has turned into one of those shitty, overcomplicated word problems from math class.

If a recently widowed mother works no hours and her minimum-wage son works as many as Family Video will allow, how much mold-riddled dogshit housing can they afford?

Not much.

Inevitably, he finds himself circling the scorched bones of Starcourt, driving tired loops around the barbed wire perimeter. His ghost likes to guide him here; can’t shake the place where he shook off the mortal coil.

He didn’t know it at the time, but Steve Harrington died the day the mall burned down. Embarrassing, to not hear the death knell as his family name went up in smoke.

It was hard to hear much at all that night, between the concussion and the fireworks and the shrieking of a monster being torn apart, but the memory caresses his mind now in cruel whispers: the headrush of victory; the blood and the sweat; the relief that they’d won, they’d done it, it’s over, they won.

Steve tugs at his bad ear ‘til the ringing subsides.

Some fucking grand prize.

The thing is, you can’t go around exploding an eldritch horror without alerting the US government, and the US government can’t go around letting major investors in a hostile commie invasion keep their assets once they find out about their treasonous schemes. It happened fast: the arrest, the bail, the impending trial and the seizure of property. Richard Harrington was once a small town god on an invisible throne, making deals with devils in shadowy boardrooms, and suddenly he was looking at life in a cell.

Maybe it was a blessing he died before his reckoning was due. Maybe it was no accident at all.

The second, and perhaps more important, thing is: stray bullets don’t care about your looming court date.

Dad had a habit of cleaning his guns while he was drunk, nursing a whiskey in one hand while he polished the gleaming barrels with the other. Pointless, really, because the guns were always pristine to begin with. Dick Harrington didn’t hunt. Didn’t shoot. Claimed the pistol was for home defense, that he kept it loaded in case anyone ever tried to hurt his family, but Steve knew the truth.

His dad just liked to flirt with death. Liked to handle pretty, deadly things, stroke his fingers over ruthless metal and feel the rush of power when he walked away unscathed.

He didn’t walk away that night.

Didn’t even face death standing.

Sliced through his femoral artery and rolled right out of his chair.

They found him lying on the ground in a dark, sticky puddle, gasping like a fish as blood spurted from his thigh. Crazy how fast it happened. Steve had been in his room when the shot rang out, and he barely managed to reach the bottom of the stairs before the gurgling noises stopped. Just boom! whizz! bang! and Dick Harrington was gone.

Maybe it’s a good thing, too, that they lost the house.

The image of his mother in the hallway that night — shellshocked in the doorway, one pale hand shaking in front of her open mouth, features wide and wet with waking horror as she stared into the room — was enough to make him never want to step foot in the place again.

So now they live in a rundown piece of shit on the wrong side of town, with hideous burnt orange carpet and wood paneled walls, with cracks in the ceiling and cigarette burns in the walls, some parting gifts from whatever feral hick lived there before them, and it feels like another cruel, cosmic joke. Like the universe is delighting in the Harringtons’ comeuppance; like the blackened beams and brick rubble of Starcourt are all twisting to form one great, mocking mouth; the better to smile and laugh at their misfortune.

You bought your bed, now you have to lie in it.

He didn’t even know that the Harringtons owned Forest Hills until it was the only asset left to their name.

He’s pretty sure his dad bought it more as a joke than a genuine investment. Meant to teach Steve a lesson, like how he used to bring home Waffle House applications whenever Steve got a C on a report card. This is your future if you don’t straighten up, son.

Kill yourself, dad.

Oh, wait.

You already did.

—

part 4

[philtstone]

24. Showing up injured at their friend/mentor’s house: for shawn? :)

[emerges from writing this fic bloody and beaten and on the verge of collapse] ill explore karen vicks character in an overly complicated post-episode missing scene fic or die trying! set immediately post "right turn or left for dead". i genuinely dont know if im happy with this but i also cant figure out how to fix it. actually, it would have probably been easier to write if i was willing to rewatch the episodes its based on. which i am not, because i am a sensitive little soul. so i winged it. i think there are like 10 different ideas that crop up and theyre all equally fascinating as character threads but i have no idea if i tied them together in an even remotely coherent way. also, WOULD she say that??? i had to call my brother twice to ask. this is what yall get for sending me actually interesting prompts, huh

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Henry’s voice said on the phone. “I’ll send Shawn over with them on his way out. He's going in your direction, anyway.”

In her short tenure as the junior detective to Henry Spencer’s lieutenant, Karen Vick observed two things:

First, that he was a far more clever strategist than most people gave him credit for. Despite the ongoing wreckage of his impending divorce and a kid who was slipping through his fingers as everyone looked on, Karen didn’t agree with the other junior detectives’ impression of him as a smash-the-door-down old school hard ass with thinning hair and a worst attitude. The man played four dimensional chess right out of a bonafide Star Trek episode. When he really wanted something done, Henry Spencer could bullshit and bluff and battle plan with the pros, and half the time you’d get too caught up in the blustering misdirect to realize his game was intricately thought out three steps in advance.

It was how they caught the Shorttown Killer, and also how they got that idiot Trembley at the mayor’s office to finally replace their coffee maker. Karen went home to her then-boyfriend, now-husband, and, right before bed, pulled out an old school workbook and took notes.

The second thing was that Henry Spencer loved his son. 

Not a lot has changed since then, Karen thinks, staring down the weirdness that she now faces through her open front door.

“… Oh — Mr. Spencer,” Karen says, because it’s rude not to greet your employees when they show up at your home outside of work hours, and are also your old friend-slash-colleague’s kid. “Hello. Thanks for — bringing these over.”

“Dad said it was urgent,” Shawn says.

Urgent isn’t quite how Karen would describe it, but hearing through the grapevine that your department might be facing an audit sometime in the next quarter does light a fire under the proverbial ass. Karen would rather bend a few rules and make sure the last year’s i’s and t’s are dotted and crossed right than leave her detectives vulnerable to the whims of a mayoral stooge. 

In general, Karen prides herself on caring about the people under her command just enough that it inspires genuine friendship and loyalty. The just is important. Care needs tempering – it’s important to pull back, press pause, keep certain lines uncrossed. It’s especially important if you want to be successful as a woman in an authority position where lives are often on the line. 

What she’s saying is that she tries to make it none of her business what her employees get up to in their spare time. She really genuinely does. She’s shut O’Hara down gently midway through the twelfth sweetly-frazzled attempt to overshare about her dating life (or her efforts to befriend her next-door neighbor, or the endearing personality quirks of her last cat – rest in peace, Triscuit, you will be missed –) enough times to be well-versed in the art of I Won’t Ask, You Won’t Tell, But You’ll Probably Know I Care Anyway.

An invaluable rapport to maintain. In any situation, Karen thinks, but especially when you’re a person who regularly hires and works alongside Shawn Spencer.

She’s not sure whether what she’s looking at right now makes her want to second guess or double down on her usual policy. 

“Special delivery,” Shawn adds, like everything is super normal.

Karen narrows her eyes. She glances behind them into the quiet residential street.

“Shawn,” she says.

“Yes, Chief?”

“You didn’t drive here, did you?”

“Ha,” he says, half rolling his eyes to accompany a weird aborted grin. “No. Even I don’t think riding a motorcycle with a concussion is a good idea. What if someone who wasn’t me got hurt? That’s — that would be no good, then you’d have to arrest me. Wouldn’t that be a huge bummer for the whole team, Chief? Gus would cry. And my dad wouldn’t let me take his truck.”

Karen stares at him. Shawn stares at the ground.

“I got a cab,” he says.

“And you are … taking another cab – home?”

Shawn looks quite suddenly like he’s going to be sick.

“Sure,” he says. 

Shawn looks terrible. Bruised face, bags under his eyes, and a weird frenetic energy twitching in his limbs that doesn’t pair well with his general air of exhaustion. He’s holding his shoulders stiffly and can barely meet her eye. His t-shirt and sweatpants are rumpled, like he slept in them, even though it’s too early in the evening for Henry to have woken him up to send him here, and when he thrusts the promised files out into the air toward her, abrupt and, admittedly, Shawn-like, he only just hides the awkward wince that immediately overtakes his left side.

The last couple days have been a bit of a whirlwind, so Karen can’t say she necessarily blames herself for not looking more closely. 

Even so.

Slowly, Karen reaches forward and divests him of the case files. They slip a little bit, because Karen can’t seem to stop peering shrewdly at Shawn’s face while she does it, and on instinct he reaches forward to stop the stack from toppling. 

It does help, but the autopilot he moves on makes it harder to mask what is to Karen’s eyes a very obvious flinch. 

“Alright,” is all he says. “Well, good to see you. Time to head back to the old hay stack.”

Like a needle in a haystack and time to hit the hay, Karen supplies needlessly in her own head. Aloud, she says, in many ways against her better judgment, 

“Mr. Spencer, are you okay?”

Shawn sways on the spot for a second, one fist clenched, mouth half open. For a strange moment, Karen gets the impression that he’s trying really hard not to say the wrong thing.

“... As rain,” he finally manages, then nods to himself like he achieved some great feat. “Okay. Well –”

“Did something happen to your shoulder?” 

“What? No!” Shawn’s eyes flutter closed and he shakes his head, “I’m – fine, Chief. It’s not – I mean, I’m – normal, fine. Fine in a normal way.”

“That’s not something an individual who’s fine in a normal way would say,” Karen says. 

“Uh, is it not! It is. I would know, because I am that individual. It’s – I was – there’s just mild – pfft … stab wound – or something, who would even …”

Is Shawn broken? is the unhelpful thought that pops into Karen’s head. She’s never heard an attempt to bullshit collapse so quickly into pathetic nothingness before – certainly not from Shawn.

Perhaps even more than his father, the kid’s a pro.

And then the rest of the sentence catches up with her.

“A mild stab wound?”

Oh boy. She watches Shawn’s eyes widen with the panic that proceeds an unquestionable blunder.

“Chief –” 

“In.”

“Chief, I really, really don’t think –”

“Inside my house. Now.”

He’s certainly uncoordinated enough that he doesn’t put up much of a fight. Karen herds him  through the door as firmly as possible and leads them in a beeline past Richard’s office toward the bathroom, ignoring the reedy stream of consciousness that spills out of Shawn’s mouth as they go.

“Oh, hey, woah, it’s been like forever since I was in here. Did you redecorate? I swear that lamp wasn’t there the last time we visited. It could be the tacos I had earlier, but I’m sensing a distinct neo-modern Chinese aesthetic going on here, Chief, which calls to mind the merits of cultural appreciation in suburban home decor – hey, is that your husband’s office? Can I meet him? Is he home? That man is a true enigma to us, Chief, and it’s leading me to believe that he must possess all the facial and personality qualities of the pop superstar Mr. Pitbull Worldwide –”

Richard is home, actually, and Karen needs to alert him to the fact that they have an unexpected house guest, so, ignoring Shawn completely, she calls out,

“Honey? Shawn Spencer’s here for a couple minutes about a work thing! I’ll go up to put Iris to bed in a second!” in the finely-honed There Are Many Layers Of Complicated To This secret married tone that Richard should probably be able to catch through the closed office door. 

“Alright,” floats out her husband’s pleasant voice. “Tell him hi from me.”

Perfect. There’s about a ninety-three percent chance he understood.

They make it to the bathroom, only stumbling slightly. Shawn says,

“-- or The Rock. Does your husband look like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson? I really think that would make so many things about the Chief Vick family make sense –”

Karen closes the bathroom door with a snap and crosses her arms.

“Sit,” she says, in a voice that even he knows brooks no argument.

Shawn does. He looks – well, beyond uncomfortable, and more than a little bit miserable, and probably closer to completely dissociating than either of them are prepared for. Karen wonders belatedly if he's gotten any sleep at all in the last forty-eight hours.

“I’m assuming you have not been to the hospital.”

He gives her a baleful look, like he really expected better of her. She only just stops herself from rolling her eyes in response. And there’s that huge goose egg on his forehead, too. What, exactly, he got up to in between Carlton’s wedding reception and oh-eight-hundred hours this morning Karen has no idea, but he looks like someone’s run him through the world’s most aggressive industrial tumble dry cycle and spat him mercilessly back out. 

Or maybe over with a truck.

Sending a silent prayer to the universe that Iris never hit puberty and remains a sweet-tempered six-year-old forever, Karen gets to business.

“Well, I had to at least ask. Shawn. Does it need stitches?” He mumbles the answer the first time, and then looks beyond startled when she grabs him under the chin so he’ll look her in the eye. “Listen. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But you’re going to tell me the truth. Got it?”

Shawn grimaces so hard at her words it’s almost a flinch. 

“No,” he says finally, clearly enough that she hears him. Karen raises an eyebrow. “No, I don’t think it needs stitches,” he articulates, but doesn’t meet her eye.

“Hm. Alright. I have gauze and tape in the medicine cabinet. Can I … is it alright if I pull up the sleeve of your t-shirt?”

Released from her hold, he groans and presses his face into one palm. “Chief –”

“I don’t really know what you expected, coming here! It’s not like I’m any less of a hardass than your father.”

“Yeah, but I can bitch back at my dad,” Shawn says, sounding like he’s finally realizing the magnitude of his mistake. Karen smiles grimly.

“Tough. Now pull your shirt up while I get the first aid kit.”

While Shawn proceeds to wrestle awkwardly with his t-shirt in a muted shuffle against the toilet seat, Karen rummages efficiently through the cabinet and eyes him through the bathroom mirror. He seems oddly reluctant to expose himself. In fact, in a stark contrast to his usual insistence on making his presence and contributions as obtrusively obvious as possible, Shawn seems intent on shrinking into the aforementioned Asian-flavored floral wallpaper (which does need an update, unfortunately) with all the equanimity of an anxious chameleon. Karen feels her eyebrows crease. Taking the first aid kit in hand, she brings it over and deposits it into his arms, ignoring his small startle.

“How about you hold that,” Karen says. Shawn does, against his chest, like a pillow. She walks around him and surveys the damage, antiseptic gauze in hand.

He wasn’t lying about the severity, at least. It’s a shallow thing, already mostly congealed, and has only stained his shirt in a small smattering spot of crusty brown blood.

Karen swabs at it with the alcohol using light careful fingers.

“Ow, ow ow ah –”

“Don’t be such a baby. It’s hardly a life-threatening injury.”

“Super insightful, Chief,” Shawn snaps, as genuinely sarcastic as he’s probably ever been with her, “never thought of that myself. Totally the reason why I just had to go to the hospital.”

He doesn’t pull away, but she can feel the tension radiating through his back. She blinks, one eyebrow crawling up her forehead. 

Alright then. So that’s how it’s going to be. 

“I’m assuming your father doesn’t know about this,” she says.

Shawn grunts, noncommittal. Huh. Maybe he does know, then, and has just been disallowed from doing anything about it right now.

She tosses the first used antiseptic wipe into the trash.

Goddamn four dimensional chess.

She supposes she’s never been bad at the game. She may as well work her way backwards through the moves: Guster, the most obvious node in Shawn’s turn-to-in-a-crisis-system, would never voluntarily abandon his friend in a time of need, so Karen assumes that whatever this is has either already included his support or not been made known to Gus at all yet. Henry’s likely exhausted his own usefulness in the situation, and Detective O’Hara is …

Karen has to work very hard for her hands not to pause in a way that gives away her hard-earned mental sleuthing. A bad feeling wholly unrelated to her ill-advised hangover of the day before begins to bloom at the back of her gut.

“You have really small hands, Chief.”

Shawn’s voice is notably more subdued than before.

“Do I?” 

“They’re like … little kangaroo hands. Like the mom kangaroo from Whinnie the Pooh.”

“Didn’t you know?” Karen says, not unkindly. “They’re given out at the hospital when all first-time moms leave with their baby.”

He lets out a tired little laugh, more boyish than he probably means it to be, and in spite of herself Karen feels her heart clench. She isn’t blind. In all her last seven years as the leader of their chaotic little precinct, she has never seen Juliet O’Hara look as ill as she did yesterday morning. The usually sweet-faced young woman had all the pallor of a Victorian ghost, and stood so far away from Shawn in any given room that to an unassuming observer he might have had the plague.

There are only a handful of things, Karen thinks, that could have invited that particular evolution in their dynamic. She rips the surgical tape from its canister a little bit more harshly than is strictly necessary and fights the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose between her fingers.

“So,” she says conversationally, laying the tape down in neat, gentle little strips, trying not to pinch the wound too tightly. “Any fun plans for the evening?”

Shawn sniffs. She can see him gripping his hands together over his knee from where she stands above him.

“Um, yeah, uh –” he clears his throat, “you know me, Chief. We’re working our way through a Robert Guillame marathon, which means some good old fashioned Benson, running commentary on the quality of that child acting, naturally.”

“Naturally.” 

“Then Gus and I were gonna hit up the new, the new chili cheese joint up by Hermosa, you know – they’re doing sliders –”

“Chili cheese sliders?” Karen hums, contemplative.

“Buy ‘em by the pound,” Shawn agrees. “Then I was thinking of getting a tattoo, maybe a belly button piercing, I’ve been really – really needing a change – would you let Iris get one, if she asked?”

“A tattoo?” Karen clarifies, cutting off the next piece of tape. The skin around the cut is warm to her touch but Shawn’s arms have goosepimpled. The hair at the back of his head sticks up unstyled, like he slept weirdly and couldn’t be bothered to fix it come morning.

“Of a marmoset. That’s what I’m thinking. With distinctly effeminate vibes.”

“Well, Dick hates marmosets. So I’d probably encourage her toward something else. Perhaps a sea lion.”

“Like Shabby.” The nervous note has bled into his legs again, and his earlier subdued tone has gone back to sounding strained. “Yeah, that’ll – that could be it.”

“All in one night, huh?” Karen says.

“I –” Shawn doesn’t even hiss when she presses down with a cotton gauze to cover the last of the thickened blood. His legs are properly jittering again. “I was – yeah, y-you know me, Chief, total night owl.”

“Shawn?”

“Yeah?”

“What about going home?”

Silence. Shawn doesn’t answer for a moment long and pregnant enough that Karen wonders if her question will be ignored entirely. 

Then,

“Chief,” he says finally, in an awful, tiny little voice, “I really, really fucked up.”

Finally, her hands do falter in their ministrations; as emotionally exuberant as Shawn often is, she doesn’t think she’s ever actually heard him close to tears. For a horrible moment she wonders if Shawn Spencer will suddenly start crying atop her toilet seat for reasons neither of them are capable of discussing honestly. Then she wonders if her horror makes her a terrible boss.

Boss – mother – person.

Oh, dear.

She sets down the surgical tape and lays a ginger palm over the newly-bandaged gouge in his shoulder. It’ll probably scar, but not at all badly. She doesn’t like to think about the far more obvious one just below, puckering in a violent yet unassuming divot. Another narrow miss for Henry’s boy. 

At this point there are so many of them to count, Karen has to question the statistical likelihood of the whole thing. Becoming a mathematical anomaly is, Karen can attest with confidence, not exactly the future the Lieutenant Spencer she knew dreamed of for his increasingly unmanageable teenager. 

Doing what he loved, on the other hand – absolutely. Being with a person he loved, even more so. Karen grits her teeth at the irritating web she’s spent the last six years constructing around herself and wonders if this evening right here is some kind of cosmic karma for leaving Iris in the care of nannies for the first three years of her life.

That sounds like the kind of thing those horrible parenting magazines and Karen’s mother-in-law would claim, anyway.

“Shawn,” she says slowly, because she has to at least knock this possibility off the list before risking her career in an attempt to mediate her detectives’ love lives, “did you … you weren’t – unfaithful, were you?”

“What?!” 

Shawn yanks his shoulder away and whirls around to face her with such a look of horrified betrayal on his face that it’s almost comical. 

“No!” 

Thank fucking God, Karen thinks. Aloud, she says,

“Well, I’m sorry, I had to at least ask!”

“No! No! What the hell, Chief!”

“Oh would you be quiet! I’m gathering my evidence here!”

“How could I – I would never – you’d even think that I could –”

“I know! Shawn, for God’s sake –” He’s scrambled to his feet in the cramped bathroom space, glaring, and has probably messed up all that surgical tape in the process. The half open first aid kit and his crumpled shirt press lopsided against his front and her garbage can is now full of oxidizing bits of cotton. Karen officially gives in to the urge to press her palms against her forehead. “I had to ask!” she repeats finally. “You and I both know you’re not gonna give me much else to work with, and you sounded so – so sad!” 

Shawn barks out a hysterical little laugh. Karen almost growls in frustration. 

“I am not going to risk all the very hard-earned rules I have in place without knowing for sure that my instincts aren’t wrong. Is that so hard to appreciate?”

Does it count as sound police work when the framework for your investigation is an unacknowledged lie? Karen doesn’t really know. Probably there’s another math metaphor to be made in there (you screwed your proof from the very beginning, maybe, Richard the professor would definitely have thoughts), or just a straight up joke. How to solve a case that’s cold before it ever has the chance to go live; a cover-up if she ever saw one. Unlikely that O’Hara will peep a word, and things will be a true mess for a few weeks, if she can’t make an educated guess about it. And no one will be explaining anything to Carlton, either …

Right before their goddamn audit, Karen thinks, aggrieved. She wonders if Henry considered this in his calculus. Send Shawn over, have her deal with him. Offer a huge unspoken you’re gonna be walking into a shitstorm tomorrow canary for her perennially chaotic mess of a coal mine. 

She can’t help but feel begrudgingly grateful, but that doesn’t mean she and he won’t be having words about this later.   

“Jesus, Karen,” Shawn mutters, pressing his face back into his free hand. Karen shakes her head and squares her shoulders.

“Well then! Back to the issue. You fucked up.”

“You know what? I can’t talk about this with you.”

“Oh, Mr. Spencer, I assure you I am more than well aware.”

Shawn blinks at her between his fingers, looking genuinely confused for the first time since he showed up at her door. 

Karen does not bother to clear up his confusion; it’s better this way, anyhow.

“Will you be sleeping at Gus’s place or your father’s?” she asks, crossing her arms.

“I’m – I don’t –” Shawn doesn’t meet her eye. The earlier thread of anxiety is back. “I wasn’t …”

So, neither. 

“Put your shirt back on,” she says. “We’re relocating to the living room.”

“Chief –”

“That was an order, Mr. Spencer.”

The living room is as quiet and mundane as it was an hour ago. It’s past Iris’s bedtime – she’ll have to go up, and soon at that. Karen seats her guest, retrieves a mug and a bag of chamomile from the kitchen, and removes the fluffy throw blanket from the basket behind the couch on her way back in. He’s deflated completely by the time the tea and blanket are set in front of him. Small and exhausted. Caught. It’s a horrible way to think about it. But she can’t avoid the hundred yard stare – Karen has seen it one too many times in people only just realizing they’re about to go away for life.

“Shawn,” she says, firm as she can make it. “Drink the tea. You’re dehydrated.”

“I’m … what?”

“Your lips are dry. You shouldn’t be dehydrated with a concussion.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and Karen suddenly wonders if he’s going to get up and leave. She has experience with these things – she knows a runner when she sees one.

“I might as well have,” Shawn finally whispers.

She doesn’t catch it the first time. “What?”

“I – I might as well ha – Chief, I …” Deep shuddering breaths. He’s finally shutting down, she realizes. She can’t send him back out like this; Henry would give her the stink eye for a month.

Goddamn Spencers and their goddamn irritating overcomplicated lives.

Karen pushes the tea directly into his hands and tilts her chin so she can meet Shawn’s eye. He’s still lucid enough that she doesn’t think he’ll start hyperventilating, but now that the outrage and adrenaline has worn off, the symptoms of shock are pretty hard to miss. “Shawn,” she says again, and wills for him to understand.

“What if she – what if I never –” He can’t get the full sentence out. He looks at her, eyes wide and terrified.

Life sentence, Karen thinks again. The messy stack of files Shawn brought over sits almost unimportantly on the coffee table between them and a memory comes to her, unbidden, of words penned carefully in the corner of a modified police report that she pulled the minute the door closed on the McCallum case seven years ago. 

Date: May 4th, 1995. Reporting Officer, Spencer, Lt. H. Perpetrator a caucasian male, brown hair, five foot nine, insists on wearing those stupid earrings just to spite me. What the hell do you want me to write here, Chief? Spent two hours in the fucking principal’s office convincing them not to expel him one month off from graduation. All that effort, and I still booked the kid. It’s gonna follow him for life, and it’s gonna be me that did it to him. For life. You think he’ll ever forgive me? He’s the greatest thing in my pathetic little world and he keeps breaking my heart, and I can’t even properly accept that it’s my fault. 

How’s that for a fucking crime.

She needs to go put her daughter to bed. It’s the thought that keeps running through her head, oddly enough, like a strange antidote to the impotent anger and heartbreak and frustration she’s feeling for the people under her care.

With all the notes she took in that little workbook, she still let herself become complicit in the painstaking, convoluted resolution of Henry’s mistakes without accounting for all the variables.  

Richard’s footsteps sound muffled in the next room; he’s made his way upstairs in Karen’s absence. She needs to go. She wants to hear the soft and sleepy love you Mama that with her unpredictable hours and regular long nights isn’t nearly routine enough.

“Shawn,” she says evenly. “Do you love her?”

It’s hard to reconcile the smarmy kid who tried to barter with her for twelve hundred a day with the devastated young man sitting on the couch in front of her.

“Chief …” he starts, barely above a whisper.

“Good. Then she’ll see that. Detective O’Hara is a smart and observant woman. What she chooses to do next is her decision, but … you might be – well, comforted by the fact that she’ll know that – truth.”

Shawn stares at her. The tea steams in front of him, cooling in increments. She takes a deep breath and gets to her feet, patting his uninjured shoulder brusquely. 

“I have to go check on Iris. When I come back down, I can drive you to the Psych office.”

Iris is fast asleep when she gets there. A library book lays open face down over her stomach, and her soft brown hair fans out against the pillow, silhouetted by the soft glow of the unicorn nightlight in the wall above her. Karen turns off the bedside lamp, tucks her daughter in, and kisses her forehead. Just before she leaves, she hears it: murmured, half-awake.

“Love you, Mama.”

“I love you too, baby.”

Karen goes back to her living room, car keys in hand. She’s planned her next move in the driver’s seat enough times throughout her career that it shouldn’t be too hard. 

[incaensio]

[Caesar] Oh Katniss! You scoundrel! I love it! [Laughs] I can see you've gotten more comfortable with a camera in your time here. I love that you can joke around with me now. But on a serious note, I know a lot of mentors have to adjust to just being eyes. It's so different from the glory of the sacrifice! It must be an exciting time too though. I understand Hazelle is your aunt? She's in good hands with you. What went through your mind when her name got called?

his response is so effusive it cues her in to accompany him in laughter, in the way that she's been told almost makes her look charming, but katniss still thinks she sounds fake (she never laughs that much, and if she does, it's not as pretty and rehearsed as she sounds now). "it's like you said, caesar. we're friends, right?" not truly. he's just another hungry capitolite, but at least he can be kind about it sometimes, and he never touches her unsolicited, and that seems to be as positively as she can view someone she will unwillingly spend her life sharing things with.

still, glory? what the fuck is this man going on about? there's nothing romantic about almost dying several times for other people's amusement. "yes, she's my father's sister." not truly. sometimes hazelle speaks as if she did know katniss' father, and lilian has said they had known each other from when she had first moved in to the seam, but it'd be plain for anyone back home that they're not truly related — even hazelle's maiden name is a different one. but that's easily tweaked around, it seems. "well, going to the games is not something i want anyone i care about doing. i volunteered so this wouldn't happen." it has more bite than she probably should show, but it's so difficult to control how angry she is. how is hazelle in good hands? she has very little chance to make it past the cornucopia, and katniss hates to think of that because hazelle has to make it out alive. she has to.

"i couldn't volunteer for her, of course, so i was in some despair." some of it made it into the video of the reapings; katniss crying, clinging to peeta. her prep team says it makes her seem such a good girl, that it's unfortunate for the everdeens. if katniss could get past anger, she'd have been embarrassed, though. "but mostly, i thought of my cousins, hazelle's children. they've already lost their father, my uncle baron, when they were even younger. baby posy didn't even get to meet her dad." it's the tactic they have to play, for sympathy. there haven't been many parents in the games, so it's always a tear jerker — katniss doesn't want to cry herself, but she feels her heart twisting as she thinks of the hawthornes truly orphans, gale taking on the role of their father and only parent entirely now. "and there's rory and vick. they're still of reaping age, so we were so happy they got one year away from all of this." katniss chokes a little, and brings a hand, as dainty as she can, to nudge at her nose, as if she was concealing she's sniffing. "and gale." he would hate this. would hate to be known, to be picked by name and broadcasted, used as a part of the media circus he is so disgusted by. she hates it too. "needless to say, we need her to go back to all of us."

[cintasfics]

The People You Meet at Happy Hour

pairing: carlton lassiter x oc

wc: 2.3k

summary: during a night out with some friends from work, marley runs into lassiter, who is at the same bar under similar circumstances. growing tired and her social battery draining, she excuses herself from her group to hang back with the detective at his table.

warnings: none

a/n: this is set during season 1 where marley and lassie are becoming friends (and marley is starting to look at him in a certain way). this was one of the first ideas for a fic I had and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out so I hope you like it!

Marley missed her bed. Her soft, warm, cozy bed. What she wouldn’t give to be there right now instead of at this bar. It wasn’t too bad, and she had enjoyed herself so far, but she’d reached her social outing quota for the day and longed for home.

One of her co-workers had recently broken up with her boyfriend and the others had decided that a night out to celebrate her newfound freedom was in order. Marley was currently standing by the bar, using her empty glass as an excuse to move away from the dance floor by the live band that her group was currently crowding. But a presence at her side made her wonder if she had made the right choice, the last thing she wanted right now was someone trying to chat her up.

‘Please tell me that you’re here on your own, and that the other two aren’t going to be there when I turn around.’

Finding the voice to be one she knew, she turned to face the owner to see Lassiter leaning on the bar next to her, and immediately knew who he was talking about.

‘No, just me tonight. So don’t worry, you’re safe,’ one of her favourite things about joining the boys on a case was watching them wind up the surly detective with their just their mere presence, but it was clear he needed some respite.

‘Good, because I just got off work and the last thing I need is Spencer giving me a headache.’

‘I know it’s hard to believe, but I do have a life outside of the agency. I don’t go everywhere with them.’

‘Yeah? Is that why you’re over here hiding from your friends?’

‘I’m not hiding, I’m just,’ she paused, trying to come up with a believable excuse, ‘taking a breather.’

‘I see,’ came his simple response, though it was clear that he wasn’t buying it.

‘What about you, huh? Isn’t that a few of the guys from the station over there?’

‘Hmm, over where?’ he pretended that he didn’t know what she was talking about, but at her unconvinced expression, he sighed and came clean, ‘Chief Vick thinks I’m too ‘distant’ from the uniforms, and strongly suggested that I joined them for a few drinks. Some nonsense about raising morale.’

‘Ah, mandated socialisation. How fun.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘Marley!’ one of her co-workers called out to her, ‘get over here, this guy just bought us a round of shots!’

‘Breaks over,’ she let out a weary sigh, ‘I’ll catch you later, Lassie. Try not to have too much fun.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

She returned to the group, trying to make the most of the rest of the night out, but her gaze kept returning to the detective. He was back at the table with the other cops now, joining in with their conversation but not really engaging with it. There was something about the detective that she couldn’t put her finger on, something about him just kept drawing her attention whenever they crossed paths.

‘This is Marley, she recently moved here and she’s a bit shy, but she’s super sweet!’

Her attention was pulled away from Lassiter by one of her co-workers who was accompanied by a man she hadn’t met before.

‘Marley, this is Aiden,’ Caitlyn, one of the nurses she worked with in emergency, continued the introduction, ‘he works over at the bank near the courthouse.’

‘Hi, Aiden Langly,’ he held out his hand with a smile she assumed was meant to be charming, but fell short in her opinion.

‘Hi,’ she tried to be polite, but her greeting lacked enthusiasm. Her social battery had depleted to the point that she wasn’t really in the mood to meet new people, especially one that was clearly just looking to get into her pants.

‘Now Marley, I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before, your friend here was telling me that you’re all nurses, but I’m sure I’d remember you giving me a sponge bath,’ he said with an attempt at a flirty laugh. The key word here being ‘attempt’.

‘You’ve probably seen her in the news, when she’s not working at the hospital she’s solving crimes as a psychic detective.’

‘No shit?’

‘Well, I’m not the psychic, my friend is. I just kind of help make sense of it all and run interference.’

‘So you work with the police and all that?’

‘Most of the time, yeah. Speaking of which,’ he had unknowingly given her a way out of the conversation with his question and she decided to jump on it while she could, ‘I ran into one of the detectives I work with by the bar and I just remembered I have to run something by him. But Cait, why don’t you tell Aiden about your trip to Vegas last year. It’s a hell of a story, you’ll love it.’

She excused herself and quickly made her way across the room to where Lassiter was still seated with his own colleagues.

‘Hey guys, mind if I join you?’

‘Marley!’ Buzz was the first to greet her, pleasantly surprised to see the woman, ‘of course not, take a seat!’

The other offices gave her a friendly nod in greeting, familiar with the woman but not as close with her as Buzz and Lassiter were.

‘How’s married life treating you, Buzz?’ she asked as she took the empty seat next to Lassiter.

‘Really great! I mean, things haven’t really changed much, all things considered, but Francine and I just feel a lot closer, and it’s like we’re back in the honeymoon phase,’ his face lit up at the mention of his beloved wife, never one to pass up the opportunity to talk about her.

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she responded with a smile. It was clear the man was absolutely smitten with his wife, and it warmed her heart to listen to him gush about her.

‘What brings you over here, Williams?’ Lassiter cut in, ever the wet blanket.

‘Well, to be completely honest, I missed you, Lassie,’ she battered her eyelashes at the detective, laying the false charm on thick, unable to resist teasing him – someone had to pick up the slack with the boys absent.

‘Oh really?’ came his dry response, only slightly amused by her attempt at flattery, though he’d never admit it.

‘Yeah, we were having such a nice chat over at the bar, and we don’t get to see each other much outside of work, so I thought I’d come and hang out for a bit.’

‘Right. Nothing to do with the new addition to the group, I’m sure.’

She was surprised he had noticed, had he kept looking back to check on her like she had with him? ‘He might have played a small part.’

‘Want me to scare him off?’ he offered, ‘a quick flash of my badge and I’m sure he’ll split.’

‘While that’s a very kind and somewhat tempting offer, it’s fine. Caitlyn, one of my co-workers, seems fond of him for reasons that escape me. And I’m just about ready to call it a night anyway.’

‘What? No!’ Buzz spoke up, not liking that idea, ‘it’s still early, and we were just talking about this guy Mike booked today – it’s a wild story!’

‘I don’t want to intrude, I already kind of forced my way over here.’

‘It’s fine, and trust me, you’ll want to hear it!’

‘Alright alright, I’ll stay for another drink or two.’

~}i{~

She ended up staying back later than she planned, falling into comfortable conversation with the small group of officers she was slowly getting to know - inviting themselves to their crime scenes and hijacking their cases didn’t leave a lot of room for socialisation between the psychics and the officers.

After a couple more drinks, one of the officers received a call from his wife and took that as his cue to leave, and his friend being his ride left with him. Shortly after that Buzz headed off, leaving Marley and Lassiter alone to get to know one another better.

‘So, what made you move to Santa Barbara of all places?’

‘Honestly? I threw a dart at a map and this is where it landed.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Well, it landed a bit further south, but I wasn’t sure if it was possible to live out on the Channel Islands, so I decided here was close enough.’

‘That’s all? You moved here because a dart told you to?’

‘Yeah, I needed a change and had no idea where to go, so I decided to take a chance.’

‘And if it didn’t work out?’

‘Then at least I’d know I tried,’ seeing that he still wasn’t convinced she decided to explain herself further, ‘the thing is, I feel like I’ve been paralysed by indecision and fear my whole life. My best memories coming from the few times I’d taken a chance and done something impulsive, so I figured I’d give it another shot. Worst case scenario, it doesn’t work out and I go back home with a good story to tell.’

‘Huh,’ he found her words interesting, having always been someone who planned out his next move 5 steps in advance with clear goals for what he wanted. He had to admit, he found her bravery admirable.

‘What about you? Have you always lived here?’

‘Yeah, born and raised. My family is here and I’ve never really felt the need to move.’

‘You’re lucky, there’s nothing where I’m from and it’s a 15-hour drive to the next big city and you’re still in the middle of nowhere.’

‘That explains a lot.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Nothing, nevermind.’

‘Hmm,’ she wasn’t convinced, but not in the mood to hear any of his snide comments or insults she continued on, ‘you mentioned your family, any siblings?’

‘One, a younger sister.’

‘Nice, I’ve got an older one myself.’

~}i{~

They spoke a bit more about how they came to be where they are, their families and childhoods. It was nice to get a chance to actually talk to each other, their relationship up to this point being that of simple colleagues.

‘I think your friends have all left,’ his observation came after performing a quick scan of the room, finding it odd that no one had come to collect her.

She turned to search the room, realising he was right when she couldn’t spot any of her co-workers on the dance floor or by the bar.

‘Damnit! This is why I hate depending on people for rides, now I’ve gotta find another way home. Not to mention I’m sure to get an earful on Monday for ditching them.’

‘Well, I can’t help with the lecture, but I can give you a ride home.’

‘Are you sure? I live a few blocks from the hospital so if it’s out of your way don’t worry about it.’

‘Not at all, besides, I’d rather go out of my way and make sure you got home safe than leave you to find your own way back.’

‘Thanks Lassie, I really appreciate it,’ she was pleasantly surprised by his kindness, any other time he was happy to leave her and the guys out to dry, seemingly enjoying their suffering.

‘Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll find a way for you to pay me back.’

‘Oh goodie,’ there it was. She knew there had to be a catch somewhere.

‘And what do you mean you hate depending on people for rides? I thought Guster was your personal driver at this point.’

‘That’s because Gus hates my driving. Thinks it’s ‘unsafe’ or whatever.’

‘Unsafe?’

‘Don’t worry about it, he’s just a wus.’

~}i{~

The following Monday at work, she received some playful reprimands for disappearing on her co-workers, but the tone of the conversation quickly changed when the subject of who she ditched them for came up.

‘Who was the cute guy you were sitting with?’

‘Yeah, if I knew you were taken I wouldn’t have introduced you to Aiden.’

‘Huh? You mean Lassiter? No no, he’s just a friend. If that even. More of an acquaintance. Colleague? That works too, I guess.’

‘Well whoever he is, he seemed pretty taken with you.’

Marley couldn’t help the bark of laughter that left her, ‘nah, no way. Me and the guys are just a thorn in his side, he was just being nice because the others were there with us.’

‘If you say so, but when we left for the next bar, it was just the two of you and he still seemed interested. That’s why we just let you be.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you act like that around a guy either.’

‘True! Whenever a guy came near her last night she clammed up, but with this Lassiter it was like she couldn’t get enough.’

‘You guys are crazy. I just find the guy fun to talk to, he’s a real type-A kind of person, fun to stir up. That’s all.’

‘Hmm, sure.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Hey, if you’re not interested, feel free to send him my way. I thought he was pretty handsome.’

‘He was! And you said he was a detective, right? That’s kind of hot, and I love a guy in uniform!’

Not getting the reaction out of her that they were hoping for, they soon changed the subject. Though their teasing words kept playing on her mind. Why did the idea of Lassiter liking her make her feel kind of giddy? Why did their comments on his appearance make her realise that he was in fact an attractive man? And why did their joking about going after him themselves make a funny feeling form in her stomach?

He was just a friend, right?

[hasnightingaledoneanythingwrong]

I posted 2,633 times in 2021

154 posts created (6%)

2479 posts reblogged (94%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 16.1 posts.

I added 653 tags in 2021

#fate grand order - 152 posts

#fate/grand order - 143 posts

#fgo - 138 posts

#florence nightingale - 114 posts

#mastersona - 59 posts

#eve - 20 posts

#julius - 10 posts

#dagger - 8 posts

#mash kyrielight - 5 posts

#convo - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#want to write something with eve interacting with them but not sure if you want to just keep them in their own universe so just reblogging

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Day 24

A conversation heard in the hallway

Jack: here you go mommy, happy mothers day!

Julius:awww thank you Jack.

Jack: you're welcome mommy, by the way have you gotten anything for miss Nightingale?

Julius: no why?

Jack: well I heard uncle Rex call her your "dommy mommy" so I was wondering if you got her anything for mother's day.

Nightingale: ... well Julius did you get me anything?

Julius:... I need to have some words with Rex

53 notes • Posted 2021-05-10 01:02:12 GMT

#4

Nightingale's no no box

While many poisons and poison type substances are locked away in cabinets inside the medical wing of chaldea there are a few substances the head nurse keeps in a locked box physically on her person, any any attempts to retrieve said items usually ends with her attacking the individual. Hi my name is Julius and in this series of logs I will inform you all of a couple of these items for safety reasons

It should be noted that these substances were created either by hoenheim, jekyll, asclepius, and various others around chaldea.

Item 1. vick'xxx: a small tub of vick's vapo rub that unknown to most had been combined with various aphrodisiacs, after application it starts off doing what the label says with it helping congestion and the like, after that however the individual with then gain a lust and libido as if several gods and goddesses of love including aphrodite herself had given them their blessing.

Item 2. Goodfuckingnyquil: a bottle of medicine that will help an individual with their sickness, but as an adverse side effect the individual will be in a comatose state for ten hours in which no outside stimulation will rouse them from their slumber.

Item 3. The unholy: five small vials of what appear to be pure liquid gold, it's true nature is actually the highly concentrated juices of one thousand golden apples, it's effects are unknown because as soon as it was finished hoenheim gave all five vials to Nightingale and asked her to seal them away, when she asked him why he replied "I'm not sure, but something tells me I've gone to far with my science this time, " some rumors such as "it could make whoever drinks it implode, " have started about it others think that it could be a fast track ticket to the root.

Important notes

After drinking goodfuckingnyquil you will have 5 to 10 seconds of consciousness before passing out

If you are able to give a quick believable/ convincing reason she will be willing to temporarily lend you either the vick'xxx or the goodfuckingnyquil

Any attempts to get unholy results in her immediate hostility

@hasereshdoneanythingwrong @hasabbydoneanythingwrong @hasquetzdoneanythingwrong @hasmashdoneanythingwrong

64 notes • Posted 2021-04-15 20:17:13 GMT

#3

Day 98

The face she gives you before beating you senseless for not taking care of yourself.

119 notes • Posted 2021-11-25 02:56:24 GMT

#2

All the various mastersonas and guda rolling into lb6 pt2 with the og kotr to kick the shit out of beryl gut for what he did to mash

122 notes • Posted 2021-06-14 17:11:22 GMT

#1

What would y'all think if they added an alarm clock feature to fgo, similar to the favorite servant one but it's them trying to wake you up.

136 notes • Posted 2021-11-13 17:04:56 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[set-phasers-to-whump]

normally

prompt: sick

whumpee: shawn spencer

fandom: psych

hi! welcome to my third psych fic! i am going to be honest i am super happy with the way this turned out! i feel like i’m really starting to Get the characters and i hope that it shows in this fic! (set mid-s4, before shules get together and after woody is introduced).

Shawn feels horrible. Normally, this would be cause for loudly complaining about his misery to anyone that will listen and pretending like he’s actively dying so that people will do things for him because he’s soooo sick. Normally. But unfortunately, he really has to work today. 

It’s his fault, kind of. Really, though, it’s the window company’s fault - anyone who makes glass fragile enough to be shattered by one single blast from a t-shirt cannon has to be held to some degree of responsibility. But it had been him who’d fired the cannon and caused him and Gus to use up nearly all of Psych’s current funds to repair it. So. He needs to work today. 

And it’s not like this case is lame and boring - it’s interesting! He wants to work it, really, honestly. It’s just, he’d rather not work it today. But he figures there aren’t really a lot of other options, so he gets on his bike and rides to the police station, somehow arriving unhurt despite the fact that he’d barely been able to focus on the road. 

He feels kind of like his helmet is trying to kill him the whole way there, and when he finally arrives and parks and pulls it off, his hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat. Great. 

In the parking lot, Shawn brushes his fingers halfheartedly through his damp hair, trying to fix it up without a mirror. It probably still looks awful, and he can’t stand the thought, but he’s so tired and it’s hard work moving his hands so much, so there’s not much he can do. He just hopes no one notices. 

“Nice hair, Spencer.”

He’s too tired to give Lassie a witty reply. He settles for a glare that feels lukewarm at best and trudges to the Chief’s office without bothering to look around or say good morning to Jules or anything. 

“Shawn, wait up!”

Shawn stops, and Gus hurries up to walk next to him. “Morning, Gus,” Shawn says, and ouch, that hurts. Just wonderful. He’s hot and sweaty and weak and he can’t talk without feeling like he’s swallowed glass. 

“You alright? You’re acting weird.”

Leave it to Gus to cut right to the chase. “I’m fine, Gus,” he says, speaking quietly (which pains him a little, in his heart (and in his throat)). 

“You know that’s a lie.”

“Tell you later,” he decides, and opens the Chief’s door. 

“Mr. Spencer, Mr. Guster. Good morning,” she says, looking up from her computer. 

“We heard there was another body,” Gus announces, and the Chief nods. 

“Unfortunately, yes. She was found early this morning by some hikers, in the same area where we found our other victim. Similar wounds, similar appearance. We may be dealing with a serial killer.”

Ordinarily, this would be a statement that is met with some kind of reaction, but Shawn finds he doesn’t particularly have it in him to react at all.  

“Really?” Gus asks for the both of them, equal parts concerned and interested. 

“We can’t be sure yet, but it is a possibility. I’d like you two to head down to the morgue and see if you can get a reading on the body.”

“We’re on it,” says Gus, and Shawn nods, which is a bad idea. His head spins, and then the room spins, and when everything stops spinning, he’s left with a horrible pounding in his head. 

“Mr. Spencer?”

Shawn looks around and realizes that Gus is gone. The Chief is looking at him funny, almost…worried, and he can’t have that right now, so he gives her a little salute and hurries out the door. 

Shawn makes his way to the morgue, but is stopped when he passes the men’s bathroom. 

“Psst! Shawn,” comes Gus’ voice, and the door cracks open. Shawn pushes his way in, and is immediately cornered by Gus. 

“Tell me what’s going on right now,” he demands, and Shawn can tell he’s trying to sound threatening. It’s not working, but he tells Gus anyway. 

“I’m just a little sick,” he explains quietly. 

“And you’re here? Spreading your germs around?” Gus asks, backing away from him and raising an arm to cover his mouth and nose. 

“I’m not contagious, Gus.”

“Do you actually know that, or are you just trying to make me feel better about being possibly infected?”

Shawn shrugs, and Gus sighs, lowering his arm. “Why are you here, Shawn?”

“Come on, man, you know we need the money.”

Gus can’t argue with that. “Fine,” he relents. “But you better have some medicine later and get some sleep and plenty of fluids and -”

“I will,” says Shawn, and he knows he doesn’t sound very convincing. Gus raises his eyebrows at him. 

“Sure you will. At least splash some water on your face, then. You look horrible, and you’re about to be in a room with two detectives.”

Oh. Right. Shawn turns on the faucet and splashes some cold water onto his face. It actually feels kind of nice, and he feels, briefly, a little bit better as he dries himself off with a scratchy brown paper towel. 

“Let’s go see a body,” he says, throwing the towel in the trash. 

The fairly short walk to the morgue might as well take hours. That’s what it feels like to Shawn, anyway. Every step feels like a monumental task and he’s so tired and he would really just like to sleep but he’s currently walking, so that’s not an option. Maybe he shouldn’t have come today. Maybe he should have asked Gus to do this without him. Maybe he should have told the Chief. But maybe she wouldn’t have believed him, or cared. No. No, he needs to be here. He’s just…

Here. Finally, they’ve arrived at the morgue. If Gus is exhausted by their months-long trek, he doesn’t show it. In fact, he’s holding the door open for Shawn and saying something to whoever is on the other side, and Shawn gets the feeling that Gus has been waiting for him. 

He hurries along as quickly as he can (which is painfully slow) and steps into the wonderfully cool air of the morgue. 

“Shawn! Gus! Great to see you,” Woody calls, from where he’s standing beside the body of a young woman lying on his table. Jules and Lassie stand on either side of him, and they both look up as Shawn and Gus walk in. 

“Hi, guys,” Jules greets, and Lassie manages a small nod. 

“Hey, Jules. Lassie,” replies Gus, and Shawn gives them a smile that hopefully doesn’t look as fake and as pained as it feels. 

“Come closer, come closer,” Woody says, and he seems extremely excited, so Shawn and Gus both step in, but before Woody can tell them what it is that’s got him so excited, Shawn, well... 

Shawn’s used to bodies. He’s not squeamish about being around them. He’s not Gus. But as he steps a bit closer to the dead girl on the table and breathes in the smell of death, he’s suddenly trying to stop himself from gagging, but he must not be doing a very good job of it because he hears Lassie say, “I thought Guster was the squeamish one,” and ohh, he feels really bad, and had it always been so hot in here? 

“Are you okay, Shawn?” asks Jules. 

“Uhh -” Shawn starts, then cuts himself off, shutting his mouth firmly. He feels so sick and hot and spinny and bad and he would really like to sit down. 

So he does. Hard. The floor is cool beneath him, and he lies down and imagines sinking right through it. Right through it and ending up somewhere soft and comfortable where nothing is the matter…

There are hands on his face and they are way too warm. He reaches up to push them off and catches a snippet of conversation. 

“He’s burning up.”

“He told me…”

“…didn’t say anything…”

“Of course. Why…”

“Call someone?”

“…necessary?”

“Uh, guys?” Shawn asks, in a moment of complete clarity. He opens his eyes and looks up at the faces of Lassie, Gus, Jules, and Woody. “I’m on the floor.”

“You were the one that just laid right down on it,” says Lassie. 

“Oh. Why?”

“Because you’re sick, Shawn. And you didn’t tell us?”

“I told Gus?”

“Who kept that little revelation to himself.”

“He said he was fine! ‘Just a little sick,’ were the exact words he used.”

“Maybe…I bent the truth,” Shawn admits, letting his eyes slip closed again. He’s so hot…everything feels bad. He wants to fall asleep for about a thousand years. Yeah. A thousand years should be enough for him to wake up feeling somewhat okay again. 

“Don’t you go falling asleep on us, Shawn,” comes Gus’ voice, and then there is a sharp tap on his face. He opens his eyes and scowls. It must not be very effective, though, because Jules giggles, then cuts herself off. 

“Come on, let's get you up,” says Lassie, long-suffering. He grabs one of Shawn’s hands, and Woody takes the other, and suddenly Shawn’s on his feet and more dizzy than he has ever been in his life. 

“Don’t you dare throw up on me, Spencer,” Lassie says, and he sounds so threatening that Shawn has no choice but to comply. 

The group is at least nice enough to give him a few minutes to adjust to being on his feet before they make him move. When they finally do, his arms get draped around Gus and Lassie’s shoulders, and their combined body heat is the most uncomfortable thing in the world, but he knows without a doubt that if they weren’t there he’d collapse, so he doesn’t try to pull away, despite the fact that he’s pretty sure he’s melting. 

The walk out of the morgue feels even longer than the walk to it had felt. Eventually, though, they make it to the Chief’s office. 

She looks up from her work in mild surprise, which quickly turns to concern when her eyes land on Shawn. He tries for an upbeat smile and a “hey, Chief,” that comes out as more of a groan. 

“Spencer’s sick,” explains Lassie. 

“I can see that. Why is he here?”

Shawn twists to his right to look at Gus, who he knows will explain for him. 

“We really need this case,” Gus explains. “Shawn spent all our money fixing the Psych window. Again.”

“Not my fault,” Shawn mutters. 

“You know it was.”

“Gentlemen,” Chief Vick interrupts, “Shawn. You are allowed to take a sick day, you know. This case can go without you for one day.”

“It can?”

“Yes,” Lassie sounds exasperated. “Surprisingly, this department did manage to solve cases before you arrived.”

“Go home, Shawn,” Jules translates. “You can’t work like this, anyway.”

She has a point. Shawn can’t even recall what had happened in the morgue, what they’d talked about, what the body had looked like, which is horribly weird and downright disconcerting because he’d normally never forget those things. But everything is so foggy right now, and he’s so tired, and he wants to sit down and he wants to sleep and -

He’s lost the plot of the conversation again. 

“…can take him home. He better not…”

“…company car, we know.”

“…not contagious…”

“We don’t know that!”

“…not helping, Guster…”

“Shawn?”

“Hmm?” He opens his eyes (he doesn’t remember closing them, which, again. Weird). 

“I’m taking you to your dad’s.”

“Gussss,” Shawn whines, as Gus begins leading him out of the Chief’s office. He doesn’t want to go to his dad’s. 

“You’re going, and that’s that,” Gus says, definitively, and they’re in the car now? Shawn definitely doesn’t remember getting here. “You need someone to watch you, and I have another job to get to, remember?”

Shawn senses that he’s not going to get anywhere arguing right now. “Fine,” he agrees. There are worse things than going to his dad’s place, anyway, if he’s being honest. “I’ll go.”

“You know that’s right.”

aaaaaa thanks so much for reading this!!!!! i hope you liked it, love you all <3

[someonefantastic]

I'm Gonna Give You All My Heart Can Give

Welcome one and all to the first day of psychmas! Find the prompts here. I had fun writing this one, I always love doing narratives and especially ones on Juliet. Hope y'all enjoy! Summary: Juliet O'Hara has spent four Christmases with Shawn and Gus since moving to San Fransisco. Each one is memorable for different reasons. Prompt: Gifts also on ao3 ___

The first Christmas since moving to San Francisco is quiet and calm. It’s just her, Shawn, and Gus. All three of them had traveled to Santa Barbara a few days before to have a Christmas party with the Lassiter’s and Henry and as much fun as that was, she’s thankful to be spending Christmas alone with her fiancé and his best friend.

She’s the last one to get her gift. Gus had gone first, receiving noise-canceling headphones from her and pretending not to see Shawn’s smug face or hear his comments about needing them later. Shawn had given him a detailed map of all the best food places in San Francisco along with the promise that he’d drop anything and go with him whenever he asked.

Shawn had absolutely loved the shiny wrapping paper that she used, spending more time playing with that than actually opening up the present but she didn’t mind. The look on his face as he unwrapped a black hoodie with the words “psychphrancisco” written in red was more than enough to make up for it. And he nearly cried at Gus’ gift, a signed certificate from both Chief Vick and Chief Lassiter thanking them for their consulting services over the past eight years.

Finally, it’s her turn. Gus hands her a small red wrapped box and she bursts into a huge grin upon opening it. It’s a small framed photo of the three of them, plus Carlton, taken during one of their first post case celebratory hangouts. Their faces are younger, less worn by time and stress but the signs of friendship and that underlying bond is very prevalent.

And then Shawn silently slides her another box. The wrapping screams “Gus”. It’s blue with white snowflakes, a gold ribbon down the middle, tied into a bow. The edges are neat and straight and she can barely see the small bits of tape holding the package together. But the gift inside is clearly from Shawn.

It’s two pictures, side by side on one sheet of paper, she and Shawn drawn out in beautiful detail and adorned with watercolor. In one they’re standing in front of their old house in Santa Barbara and the other in front of their loft’s entrance in San Francisco. Her hair is longer in the second picture, a sign of time past but their smiles are all the same, just happy to be together. Below in beautiful letters, swooping and scrawling- a skill that she knows he picked up from his dad- is written: “Home is Wherever You Are”.

Her breath catches in her throat, tears pricking in the corner of her eyes and they threaten to spill over when she notices the glinting ring on her left hand in the second picture. It’s a little artist’s touch- after all the real ring had been stolen- but it makes her heart swell with emotion.

Shawn places his hand on her knee, squeezing slightly and she beams at him. He gives her a lopsided grin and she notes just how cute he is. She’s so glad to be engaged to him.

The second Christmas in San Francisco is a little larger and a little crazier. The Lassiters, Vicks, and Henry all cram into their loft, Christmas music playing and conversation ringing throughout. She loves having a big Christmas, after all, it’s what she grew up with, but a small part of her mourns the loss of it being just the three of them. She also wishes she was actually married this Christmas but that’s something she’ll never tell anyone.

The gift exchange is hectic, with multiple people scrambling and opening their boxes. There’s a lot that she can’t quite recall but she will never forget the look on Iris’ face as she unwraps Juliet’s gift. A soccer ball. It’s white with pink and black stripes and nearly takes out a lamp or two but Iris makes her pinky swear that she’ll take her to go play a match sometime.

This time, Shawn’s gift to her is wrinkled, the wrapping paper sticking out on the edges and massive pieces of tape holding the whole thing together. He clearly wrapped it and the image of him wrestling with paper and tape is enough to make her smile. It’s a small heater for her office as she’d been complaining about the cold atmosphere for weeks now. She’s touched that he would think of something to make her life a little better but that’s just who Shawn is, always listening and meeting her needs. (She’s a little disappointed, however, that it’s not an engagement ring.)

Juliet would never consider herself a resentful person but by the time the third Christmas rolls around, she’s a bit peeved. Her and Shawn are no closer to being married. In fact, he seems to actually be going backwards in their relationship. She’s caught him a few times slipping and calling her his “girlfriend” instead of “fiancée” and she’s spent way too much time wondering if he’ll ever actually be ready to be married. She loves him regardless and thinks that if he ever decides that he doesn’t want to get married, she’ll stay but it’s exhausting having no clue what he’s thinking.

They go to Santa Barbara for this Christmas, spending it in the Lassiter’s house along with Henry and Gus. (The Vick’s decided to spend Christmas in Detroit with Karen’s family.) Shawn makes a joke about sneaking off into his old bedroom and she has to gently remind him that that’s now Lily’s room and there will be no sneaking off tonight.

He pouts for a minute and then Carlton announces that they’re opening up gifts and his attention is elsewhere. She loves it when his eyes light up like that.

He bagged his gift this year. It’s a plain red bag with way too much tissue paper but he’s smiling so big that she’s very distracted from the packaging anyways.

Inside is a hair dryer. The exact make and model as the one on her Christmas list. It’s sweet and practical and exactly what she wanted. And yet… there’s a small part of her that is a little sad. She’d grown so accustomed to his thoughtful gifts that were slightly out of the box in his own quirky way. But she later reprimands herself for thinking that way. At least she got a gift from him. At least he was so kind as to get her something she wanted. At least she has him. It’s not too bad, and sure it’s no engagement ring or mindful gift but having him should be enough. So why does she feel like she’s nearing her breaking point?

Their fourth Christmas together is much, much different. It’s just the three of them again but this time… this time there’s a silver band on her left hand, the diamond glinting every time it catches a stream of light.

She had worried for weeks leading up to December that this Christmas was going to be just like the last ones, another year of engagement with no ring, no sign of commitment from Shawn. But he had surprised her, like he always did, with the best gift of all. They had done it, actually gotten married, standing on that pier. She was bruised and battered, they hadn’t slept in hours and their officiant was a criminal. It was unconventional all right but she wouldn’t change it for the world.

This Christmas she was spending it with her husband. The word still made her giddy and she didn’t know if she’d ever grow tired of referring to Shawn as that. She certainly hoped she wouldn’t.

They’re huddled around the Christmas tree, all three of them decked out in matching red flannel pajamas- Shawn’s idea. Gus comments for the third time that day (and probably the twentieth time since they got married) that he’s going to move out soon, give the newlyweds some space but she just shakes her head, placing a hand on his knee and telling him that he can stay as long as he needs. He is family after all.

Shawn nearly chucks his gift at Gus who in turn shoots him a dirty look. The expression quickly falls, however, when he unwraps it. It’s a beautiful portrait of the three of them sitting on the couch and laughing at a movie. Shawn grins, nudging Gus’ arm, and tells him how even when he moves out, he’ll always be family and more than welcome. She wholeheartedly agrees.

He grabs her gift next, it’s small and flat but a grin bursts across his face as he opens it. A Wonder Woman comic sits in his hands- the first comic they ever bought together- its cover signed by Gal Godot herself. She doesn’t tell him that she waited three hours in line to get that signed or went to 18 different comic book shops to find that specific issue. Inside is a note card from Juliet telling him how much she appreciates his friendship and Shawn has to gingerly take the comic book away from him before he bursts into tears.

And when he hugs them both, she doesn’t mind his sobbing or the slight awkwardness of the embrace. Instead, she thinks that part of her is going to miss living with her husband’s best friend- no- her brother-in-law.

Gus’s gift to her is equally as sweet. It’s a coin, carved with the words Detective Juliet O’Hara-Spencer, and she wonders when he had time to add that last bit or if he had known all along. Regardless, she’s just thankful to share something so special with him.

Shawn slides her his gift after she finishes thanking Gus, a small dopey smile on his face. The wrapping is neater this year but it still points out at the occasional odd angle and too much tape was involved. She gasps as she unwraps it, revealing a green snuggie- the perfect excuse for warm cuddles. It’s soft against her skin and she immediately slips her arms into it, allowing the fabric to encase her small frame. It’s a bit large and he waggles his eyebrows as he tells her it’s made for two. Even if it wasn’t, they’d surely find a way to share it.

Hours later, when they’re all piled onto the couch watching Gremlins, the snuggie wrapped around her and Shawn, she thinks this is the best Christmas in San Francisco yet.

[rachelkaser]

Stay Golden Sunday: Flu Attack

Dorothy, Rose, and Blanche are brought down by the flu and fight like cats in a sack. Sophia observes.

Picture It...

Sophia is hemming one of Dorothy’s dresses in the kitchen as Blanche comes in with one of her own. They’re preparing for a big charity dinner on the weekend, and Sophia’s a little irritable that she hasn’t found a date yet. Rose comes in, feeling a little under the weather, which puts Dorothy’s back up. Rose promises she’s not sick and won’t get anyone else sick. Blanche sets herself up for one of the best zingers in the show’s history.

BLANCHE: Oh you don’t have to worry about me, honey. I never get sick. I take very good care of myself. I treat my body like a temple. SOPHIA: Yeah, open to everyone, day or night.

Cut to, presumably, a few days later, and Blanche, Rose and Dorothy are all camped out on the couch, sick as dogs. Rose feels guilty for bringing the creeping crud into the house, while even illness can’t stop Blanche from primping. Sophia comes in, upset because she still can’t get a date for the banquet, and begrudgingly answers the doorbell. Dr. Richmond, a woman in a snazzy blue blazer, arrives to tend to them. She does a very brief physical exam, palpating their throats and looking into their eyes for some reason -- Blanche is a little nonplussed about being examined by a woman, natch.

From this short appointment, Dr. Richmond determines they all have the flu (Sophia: “I told them that two days ago. Tell them something new for $50″). She encourages them to rest for at least a week, meaning they’ll miss the banquet, and leaves. They’re disappointed at this failure of medicine, and discuss home remedies. Sophia tells a story about Sicily’s Widow Caravelli, who would treat ear infections with a green salve that Salvador, the village idiot, later marketed as pesto sauce.

DOROTHY: Ma, you’re making this up. SOPHIA: So what? I’m old. I’m supposed to be colorful.

Three days later, Blanche and Dorothy squabble over the heating pad -- Sophia rightly calls them out for being so cranky. Rose comes in with a folk medicine book, and is inexplicably cheerful. When Dorothy questions it, it turns out Rose’s Hot Toddy recipe might be a little strong. Dorothy and Blanche continue to fight over who gets the TV, and even Rose’s Hot Toddies can’t keep her from getting snappish. They storm off to their bedrooms just as Sophia comes in an announces she has a date for the banquet.

In the kitchen, the Girls continue to bicker, over the orange juice, the Vicks VapoRub, and the Nyquil cup. When Rose bursts into tears, they start apologizing to each other, the stress of being cooped up and sick making them crazy. They hug it out, promising to get through it together. Sophia enters and tells them that, when she called to cancel their reservations to the banquet, the organizer’s disappointment led her to suspect either Rose, Blanche, or Dorothy won the Best Friend of the Friends of Good Health Award.

BLANCHE: Why, what’d she say? SOPHIA: It wasn’t what she said. It was what she didn’t say. ROSE: What didn’t she say? SOPHIA: How they hell do I know? She didn’t say it!

Immediately intrigued, the Girls start reciting what each of them has done to possibly deserve the award. Rose participated in a walkathon, bikeathon, telethon, and marathon. Blanche volunteered with senior citizens, at a daycare center, and as a volunteer dummy for a CPR class. Dorothy sold peanut brittle to raise funds for a new bloodmobile. Naturally, the competition causes them to turn nasty again, and they all decide to go to the banquet, flu or no flu.

At the banquet, Rose and Dorothy are at the table with their dates -- Dorothy’s doesn’t seem especially happy to be there. Blanche arrives alone and says her date will arrive shortly, and they continue to argue over who’s going to win the award. Sophia arrives with a much-younger man named Raoul, a flower vendor Sophia met at the dog track who can only say, “It’s a pleasure to be here” in English. Blanche arrives with a man named Tommy and tries to pass him off as her date, but he’s quickly revealed to be a waiter -- Blanche’s date didn’t want to be seen with her in her sickly state.

The event’s emcee takes the stage, and tells everyone that Don Johnson, the celebrity guest, isn’t coming, but they have the clothes he was planning to wear. Sure enough, a presenter arrives on stage with a white blazer. The Girls get one last dig at each other as they wait for the award to be given -- Rose even preemptively removes her napkin from her lap. The presenter opens the envelope and announces the name of the winner: It’s Sophia!

Everyone bursts into applause, including the three Girls, as Sophia goes to accept the award (after getting two victory smooches from Raoul). In her acceptance speech, she says very pointedly that she’s lucky to have love and support in her home and wanted to pass it on -- the Girls exchange meaningful looks -- and flexes on everyone by showing off her handsome, young date. The other three Girls apologize to each other again and toast to friendship, sealing it with one final, explosive sneeze.

“The minute I found out you were contagious, I should have thrown you out on the street.”

Confession time: While I think some other episodes from Season 1 are structurally better, or are more touching in some ways, this episode is my favorite. Remember when I said in “The Custody Battle” that the episode was so lean on good singular lines of dialogue that I had trouble picking one for my mid-post header quote? I had the opposite problem here: So many lines of dialogue are great that I had to flip a coin to pick one.

DOROTHY: Blanche Deveraux can’t find a date? BLANCHE: Oh don’t be ridiculous. My only problem is trying to decide which of my many suitors to flatter with an invitation. After all, it’s the social event of the season. DOROTHY: I guess you’ll just have to break a few hundred hearts, Blanche. BLANCHE: I know. I haven’t had to disappoint so many men since Daddy tore down the tree house.

While this episode has no moral, no character growth, and no drama, it’s still the best if only because it has such a relatable story. Who hasn’t been extremely sick and cranky and miserable at least once in their lives? In any other circumstances, the Girls’ nastiness to each other would be shocking and disturbing. But under the circumstances, I can’t say I wouldn’t be behaving the same way.

The Girls spend most of the episode at each other’s throats, and yet in spite of that -- or perhaps because of it -- their friendship feels especially strong. It’s not like they want to be so horrible to each other -- they’re just radiating horribleness and get caught in each other’s crossfire, is how I look at it. And they’re still able to apologize to each other and get past it, twice. I think it’s a great example of how friendship can take a test like this.

BLANCHE: You really think selling candy is going to qualify you for that prestigious award? DOROTHY: Oh, excuse me. I didn’t realize that slipping my tongue to half the firemen in the county was the more lofty social achievement.

Still, message aside, almost every joke in this episode is a winner and lands perfectly, and for that reason alone I will keep this in a playlist of my favorite Golden Girls episodes forever.

There’s really no B-plot to this episode -- instead, there’s more like an A1 plot and an A2 plot. The A1 plot is Blanche, Rose, and Dorothy suffering from their flu while Sophia attends them. The A2 plot is all four Girls wanting to attend the charity banquet and being up for the same award. Since these plots are effectively twined together throughout the episode, it means that all of the Girls get equal screentime and lines throughout the episode.

Sophia does sort of hover in the background, and at first it seems like the episode is going to relegate her to funny lines rather than an important role, as has happened before. However, this pays off in a big way when she wins the awards over the other three Girls, and gives an acceptance speech that shows she was paying full attention to them throughout the week and knows what to say to remind them of what’s important.

I almost wish we knew what Sophia had done to win the award, given the other Girls got to brag about their accomplishments. But I think the fact that Sophia’s the person in the episode who behaves charitably, taking care of the other Girls when they get sick and never really complaining about how awful they’re being and not even mentioning all the things she’s done. It’s still cool to see that the Girls are so community-minded -- and it’s good to remind us of their good traits even as they’re all crabbing at each other.

SOPHIA: *about the Widow Caravelli* She was best known for this green salve she used to make to treat ear infections. One day she gave a batch to Salvador, the village idiot. He misunderstood the directions and put it on his linguine instead of in his ear. DOROTHY: I guess if you’re an idiot with a hearing problem, you do things like that.

Another reason I like this background story about charitable work and the betterment of the community is that it contributes to the feeling that these onscreen characters are people with lives that happen off-camera. I know that’s not really the case, but it’s these details that make them feel so three-dimensional. Everything they do is in keeping with their characters as we know them so far -- it doesn’t surprise me one bit that Blanche came up with a firemen’s CPR class and volunteered herself as the practice dummy.

I don’t think I have any complaints to make about this episode. Every moment is just great joke after great joke, and all four actresses are at their peak. I don’t think there are two consecutive minutes in this episode that don’t give me a giggle. Reportedly, playing sick was tricky for the Girls, as they couldn’t play it too over the top, and the whole crew began to feel ill after the week’s filming just from having watched them play sick.

BLANCHE: You know, this is the first time a female doctor’s ever examined me. Feels kinda strange. DR. RICHMOND: I hear that a lot. You know the truth is, despite the progress that women have made, medicine is still a man’s world. *sticks a tongue depressor in Blanche’s mouth* So, if it’ll make you feel any better, I used to be a man. BLANCHE: *flinches and pulls the depressor out of her mouth* What?! DR. RICHMOND: Just a little female doctor humor.

Part of me does wonder why all three Girls are spending their recuperation on the couch in the living room, as opposed to their own separate bedrooms, but I think at this point in the series they only have one TV in the house. One very minor nitpick is that Sophia seemed convinced, by what the organizer said, that one of her three roommates won the award, when she was the actual winner. I’m not sure what we’re meant to take from that: Did Sophia mishear Harriet McConnell, or was Harriet upset that Sophia’s daughter and friends wouldn’t be there to support her? But that’s a minor quibble at best.

Also, bit of trivia for you: Bea Arthur didn’t usually break out in laughter on set, and the times she did were notable. In Golden Girls Forever, she says she had a great laugh in this episode during the banquet scene when the presenters show off a hanger with Don Johnson’s clothes on it: “I’ve never seen anything funnier in my life.” She added that they eventually had to cut away from her because she couldn’t stop laughing, which tells me that we originally got a Dorothy Reaction Shot at that point in the episode, and I’m frankly sorry we didn’t get to see it.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out this episode’s sudden relevance given the world situation. While the Girls being sick and fighting will always be relatable, them specifically fighting because they’re sick and cooped up together feels even more so given the pandemic and all the not-going-out we’ve all been doing for the last year. Not to sound sappy, but Sophia’s message to her daughter and two surrogate daughters in the final scene that they value the people they have around them, even in the not-so-great times, puts a smile on my face.

Episode rating: 🍰🍰🍰🍰🍰 (five cheesecake slices out of five)

Favorite Part of the Episode:

It’s really tough to pick out just one, but I have to pick the joke I didn’t get until I was an adult.

[fromthewifecage]

Kombatants nursing you/Kombatants tending to your wounds/illness

So this time it’s the Kombatant wearing a Nurses hat and a Drs white coat. (With or without anything underneath the coat.) Featuring Erron Black, Johnny Cage (both Younger and Older), Raiden, Fujin, Bi-Han, Mileena, Ermac and Kano (he’s last so if you don’t like him you don’t have to keep reading).

Erron Black: Erron’s been around a long time, and the man has seen most illnesses and has picked up enough tricks and tips to keep both him and a partner alive. He’s seen smallpox up close, so if you have a cold then don;t expect much sympathy, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. For a tall man, Erron is extremely agile, and even when hurling himself forward, feet first, he pulls off a graceful landing without breaking his limbs. You however are not quite as graceful. You’re following him up the hill (“more like a fucking mountain” you grumble) to get to “this quaint ol’ spot I know where we can get a fire going, toss a couple a blankets on the dirt and get naked”. The hill is steep and covered in wayward branches and stones, and with Erron’s long gait, you can’t quite keep up and end up taking a tumble when your foot gets caught in some gnarled tree roots. You cry out and roll into a ditch filled with leaves and probably a billion bugs, your ankle throbbing like a bastard. Erron’s after you in a flash, plucking you from the ditch and cradling you in his arms. A quick kiss to the forehead and then he’s carrying you all the way back to the car where he gently unlaces your boot and gives you an even gentler once over. When he’s sure your foot isn’t going to fall off, he tosses you a water canteen and a bottle of pain killers, then drives you back to your place where you spend a long weekend being looked after by Dr Black. Once he knows the pain is manageable he’s going to tease you something rotten (but with genuine affection). He’ll leave the remote just out of reach, he’ll pretend you’ve run out of beer then walk past opening a new bottle. At the first sign of you getting sulky he’ll kiss your pouty lips and tell you he’s going to make it up to you before grinning and tugging down your pyjama bottoms.                            *************** More under the cut!******************

Johnny Cage: He’s played Doctors and Nurses before and not just on screen. He even has a pair of blue scrubs he wears if you’re hankering for some Dr Cage action. Younger!Johnny may have been a selfish git at times, but he wasn’t stupid and knew that looking after a sick S/O was always going to get him brownie points, and if it was serious he had enough money to get you any Dr from anywhere to get you well again. Older!Johnny got a crash course in paediatrics when baby Cassie had a bad case of colic. He would stay up with her, singing lullabies, rubbing Vick's on her chest and dressing teddy in a teddy sized nurses outfit when not frantically phoning Drs for their advice. Little Cassie was always getting into scrapes, coming in from the garden with bruises and scabby knees, and at first it would terrify him, but he mellowed when he saw how he was scaring by panicking. So he’d work on his tan in the garden or practice his martial arts, and little Cassie would climb trees or play on the climbing frames and obstacle course Johnny had installed. You’re at home, cleaning the bathroom, reaching up to get that cobweb in the top corner when you slip on the bath frame and land awkwardly, bruising your ribs and elbow. Johnny’s just coming in through the front door when he hears your yelp and it’s Nurse Cage to the rescue! He’s gentle and calm, asking if you remember where you hit, was it your head? Can you move? When he is sure you’re not badly hurt he scoops you up and carries you to the settee, gives you one of his most charming smiles, and fetches the ice pack and medicine box. Chuckling to himself as he wraps your elbow in 4 bandages (to make you laugh), he then gets you to lie back and keep the icepack on your ribs. He’s more than happy to look after you, more than happy to be your willing slave. When you’re feeling less bruised he makes you promise not to clean dangerously again. The Postman arrives with one of those cleaning brushes on an extendable pole. Nurse Cage has saved the day again. Raiden (and Fujin): Raiden might be the worst patient in all the realms, but he makes a pretty decent nurse. If you really need healing then he’s whisking you away to the Jin-sei, he’s not chancing it. If you’ve got a cold then Fujin is taking over, Raiden is not going through that again. Poor bemused Fujin stands at your bedside, wide eyed and fake smiling, pretending not to panic. After a very late night partying with Bo’ Rai Cho, Raiden turns up at your home only to find you still in bed. He checks the time again, then coughs loudly until you groan and pull the duvet over your head. Raiden is readying to teleport you both to the Jin-Sei Chamber when you blearily assure him you might feel like you’re dying, but it’s only a hangover. Disapproving Dad Raiden sighs, kisses your forehead then tucks you back into bed. He disappears in a muted flash (he’s careful not to be too bright knowing it’ll be painful), returning a moment later after a quick Consult (yup, he went there, Shinnok just laughed) with a basket full of juice and breakfast goodies. He slides into bed with you (he’s changed into some snazzy pyjamas) and helps you finish the breakfast, then pulls you to him and strokes your forehead. When you’re feeling a bit better he’ll draw you a hot bath, joining you if you’re happy for him to, and then have an afternoon nap together. He’d lecture you about the effects of alcohol on your frail human body, but he decides it’s your choice to make. Caring Daddy Raiden is the best. Bi-Han: He feels a bit awkward dealing with a hurt S/O. It brings back lots of unwanted and sad memories from childhood, also memories of looking after Kuai, kissing scraped knees when none of the Masters were looking, telling Kuai he was being “a good boy but not to cry loudly” when Bi-Han found Kuai tearily limping back to the dormitory. At the beginning of your relationship with Bi-Han, he disappears if you’re ill or hurt. He doesn’t mean it as a slight, but it brings bad memories he’d repressed or rather he could repress. He’ll send a bunch of last minute flowers as way of an apology, but it’s only when he truly feels comfortable with you that he’d feel able to stick around. He goes over the top. He almost kidnaps a Dr even though you protest it’s just a cold. A migraine and he won’t let you out of bed unless you plead you need the bathroom. The flu really does have him bringing medical staff in, and although he says he didn’t force them, they look scared enough that you’re anxious that the Police will kick down your door. It takes a while, but eventually his emotions calm enough that he won’t panic unless you’re gravely ill. He trusts you know if you really need his help, but it doesn’t stop him googling your symptoms. He still will sleep on the floor next to your bed, even if it’s just a sniffle. Mileena (featuring Ermac, yay!): Because she shrugs off most of her injuries and illnesses, at first she expects you to do the same. Edenians don’t get ill that often, neither do Tarkartans, and Shang Tsung made her to be the best of both so she doesn’t get a cold or feel crappy for no reason. At the beginning of a relationship with her she’ll think you’re being lazy or simply trying to avoid spending time with her, and she’ll get upset. Even though you’ve finally dragged yourself to your front door, dressing gown flapping, sweat rolling off your )not normally) green face, she thinks you don’t want to spend the day with her and angrily slams the door in your face. When you haven’t replied to her sulky texts or commented on her Instagram of her dancing lewdly with Tanya (Ermac rolling their eyes in the background), she tries to ignore the tickle of worry in her stomach. When its 3 days later and you still haven’t replied and she goes back to your door and lets herself in with the key she ‘borrowed’ (you’d have given her one but you knew she’d taken the spare one. Luckily Ermac had followed her because you’re half delirious with fever and Mileena doesn’t know what to do apart from cry. Several of their 10,000 souls were healers so they have Mileena go grab medicines and supplies and they nurse you back together. When you’re recovered you buy Mileena a little Nurses hat and have her wear it. It very quickly turns X rated. Kano: This man spits in the face of illness, and if it’s a casual thing, then he’ll leave you to the Lemsip and Vicks Vaporub. He’ll send a bunch of flowers if it’s more serious and if he trusts you and has known you for a while, he’ll pay any bills. If it’s serious and he can actually admit that his cold black heart of stone feels bigger when he’s around you, then his ‘baby’ gets the gold treatment. No Dr is too pricey or too far away and no treatment is out of reach. And if you get hurt on his watch - an enemy hurts you or someone targets him and you get caught in the crossfire, then he’ll scorch the earth to get you well again and to make that bastard pay, You were at the supermarket choosing something nice for tea when a faulty fridge explodes because a manager cut corners (again) and had an extra long lunch-break before reporting a sparking socket. You wake up in hospital, covered in bandages and slightly delirious due to Kano demanding you needed more pain relief (and who was going to say no? He’s fucking terrifying!). Kano is immediately holding your hand, giving you his biggest grin and taking the piss about you looking like a Mummy. You don’t mention his eyes look a little red and his voice wavers, but you’ll never forget it. The TV on the wall is on the news channels where all the reports are all about a Supermarket manager found skinless with their penis stapled to their forehead. Hmmm.

[fanficshiddles]

Alluring whispers, Chapter 3

‘No. Absolutely not. We are not handing Hope over to that monster.’ Natasha said firmly.

‘I don’t even know why we are discussing this? Because there is nothing to discuss.’ Said Tony, glaring at Wanda and Steve for even considering it.

The rest of the team were dead set against it.

‘Alright, alright. But maybe if we just let them speak to each other? Or meet properly? He might open up to her?’ Steve suggested.

‘No. Not happening. We need to keep her safe. And that’s final.’ Tony said and the team all nodded in agreement.

-

‘I know you’re there, pet... Watching me.’ Loki grinned and turned to look up at the security camera outside his cell.

He could sense Hope watching him. And he wasn’t wrong.

While the suppressants were helping her, she still felt a weird sensation inside of her. So she thought there wouldn’t be any harm just taking a look at the security footage, to watch him that way.

She nearly fell off the chair in surprise when he addressed her. How on earth did he know?

‘I’m sure your mind is racing with so many questions, my dear. Why don’t you come down here, so we can talk properly? Hmm? Those friends of yours think they can keep us apart. But it’s simple biology, we are made to be together.’ Loki continued, staring directly into the camera.

Hope felt like he was staring into her very soul.

She pushed away from the screen and mentally slapped herself. This was Loki, the villain, who had killed hundreds of people. He was bad news, she had to stay away from him.

Hope managed to tear herself away from the security room. But even as she went about her day, he was still very much there in the back of her mind. His voice, his incredible good looks… His smell.

‘Hope!’ Natasha called, snapping Hope from her thoughts as she walked down the corridor.

‘Oh, hey Nat!’ She smiled.

‘Are you ok?’ Natasha asked, putting her arm around her.

‘Yeah, thanks. Loki is just messing with my mind it seems.’ She sighed.

‘Hopefully he will back down soon when he realises he’s not getting to you.’ Natasha assured her.

‘But that’s the thing, Nat… he already IS getting to me. I can’t stop thinking about him.’ Hope sighed.

To try and keep her occupied, Natasha took her to the lab to see what Bruce and Tony were doing. Hope enjoyed herself for a while, laughing at Tony and Bruce bickering when they didn’t agree on something.

But then she smelled him. And she could feel him. It was a weird sensation inside of her…

She looked up and saw Loki walking down the corridor alongside the lab. Thor, Clint and Vision were leading him elsewhere. He was chained, to stop him from using his Seidr.

Hope gasped slightly when he locked eyes on her, his smile grew even larger when he saw her. He kept his eyes on her as he walked the length of the corridor. And Hope was transfixed on him, her eyes glazing over slightly.

Natasha noticed and nodded at Tony. Who pressed a button and had the shutters come slamming down over the windows, breaking their connection.

Hope shook her head and blinked a few times. She looked to the others, seeing worry on their faces. She wiped her brow, surprised to find she was sweating rather profusely all of a sudden.

‘S… sorry.’

‘It’s ok, Hope. It’s not your doing.’ Bruce gave her a smile.

Hope felt trembly, she noticed that her hands were shaking. She curled them up in her lap and tried to push Loki out of her mind. But it wasn’t easy knowing he was so close to her.

‘Where are they taking him?’ Natasha asked Tony.

‘For some interrogation.’ Tony mumbled quietly.

Hope’s eyes snapped up. ‘What?’

‘It’s procedure.’ Tony shrugged.

‘Yeah and I normally heal them afterwards. I can’t do that with him!’ She screeched, panicking.

If she got close to him and touched him, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to control herself. It was bad enough with glass between them.

‘You won’t need to heal him, don’t worry.’

‘So you’re going to let him be in agony till his body heals itself?’ She stood up, appalled at the thought. She would’ve been the same no matter who it was. She didn’t believe in violence or harming others.

Tony looked at Natasha and Bruce. Bruce wasn’t happy with it either, but he kept quiet and continued working.

‘You can’t do this!’ Hope rushed to the door, but Natasha managed to catch up with her and grabbed her arm.

‘It’s the only way. We need to find out where the tesseract is before it’s too late. We don’t know what he has planned or is planning.’ She said softly.

Hope looked devastated at the thought of not being able to help and heal a being in need.

‘At least only do injuries that can be healed by my potions and cream. Please, Nat.’ She begged.

Natasha looked round at Tony, who rolled his head and then nodded in agreement.

‘Alright. I’ll go tell them. You go get the things from your room and meet me back here.’ Natasha said and Hope agreed.

Though she still wasn’t happy at all with their interrogation ways. It went against everything she stood for. But she knew she couldn’t do anything about it.

Hope rushed to her room and gathered some tubes of cream and a few bottles of her potion. She then met Natasha back outside the lab. But her stomach dropped when she saw Wanda there too.

‘How could you let this happen?’ Natasha shouted.

‘We don’t know. We were just doing some basic interrogation strategies, then he wound Thor up so much that Thor beat him to a bulp. His ribs are broken and he can barely talk or breathe… Thor says because his magic is being contained in the chains, he can’t heal as quickly as his body normally would.’

Hope was stood behind them, mortified at what she was hearing.

‘I need to heal him.’ She said firmly.

‘You can’t, Hope.’ Natasha said, both turning around to face her.

‘It’s my job. Now you better let me in there to heal him.’ She snapped, not wanting to take no for an answer.

And Natasha knew how stubborn she could be. She wouldn’t let this go until Loki was healed.

Natasha ran her hand down her face.

‘Fine. But it’s going to be controlled. Have you got your suppressants with you?’ She asked.

‘Yes. I can take three more without over dosing.’ Hope nodded and reached into her pocket, taking more of the pills to try and help dampen down her instincts.

‘I’ve got another idea.’ Hope rushed into the lab and eyed up Bruce. ‘Do you still carry vicks around with you?’

He gave her a weird look, but nodded and handed it to her.

Tony, Natasha, Wanda and Bruce all looked at her with confusion when she rubbed some at the entrance to her nostrils.

‘His scent is what gets me the most. This should hopefully help to some extent.’ She said to them as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

‘You are not going near him!’ Tony stormed over, glaring at Natasha.

‘There’s been a bit of a problem. She needs to heal him, Tony.’ Natasha said quietly.

Tony grumbled in annoyance. He wasn’t happy about this, neither of them were. But they had no other choice.

‘Can’t we just put him back in his cell and take the chains off?’ Tony asked.

‘The cell controls his magic too. He can’t use it in there either.’ Said Bruce.

‘Shit.’ Tony hissed, knowing there was no other option. Unless they wanted to release Loki and risk him escaping. ‘Alright. But this has to be tightly controlled.’

‘You have my permission to drag me out of there if things go south.’ Hope said, but she was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.

But her mind went haywire around him. It was like she didn’t have control over herself anymore. So she wasn’t really sure what to expect.

With a sigh, the team took her into the room where Loki was.

Thor looked very embarrassed, having let Loki get to him so much that he broke his ribs. But his little brother always got under his skin.

Loki could smell Hope as soon as she entered. Even though he was lying on the ground in agony, barely able to breathe without searing pain, he managed a smirk as he turned his head to look at her.

His plan to rile Thor up so much to injure him had worked. Now here she was, just as he wanted. He’d had a feeling she was a healer, and now that was confirmed for him.

‘Well, if it isn’t my little omega.’ He purred, his voice making Hope tremble.

Her eyes were starting to glaze over slightly, but she managed to keep her head clear. She had a job to do, and that was to heal him. Alpha or no Alpha.

She said nothing as she crouched down next to him, looking over his armour.

‘I’m not going to be able to do it properly over all this.’ She motioned over Loki’s armour and looked up at Thor, who crouched down at the other side of him to help undo various buckles until his chest was on show for her.

Hope took a deep breath and reached out, slowly. When she placed her hand upon his skin, the two of them gasped. The first contact felt electrifying. Hope pulled her hand back quickly, but she bit her tongue. She had to help him.

Concentrating as best she could, she put both hands over his ribs. Ignoring the pulsing feeling in her hands from touching him, she closed her eyes and focused all her healing powers through her palms and into his body.

Loki groaned as he felt his ribs moving, moulding together and healing over. Then there was instant relief, the pain was gone.

He let out a deep breath as Hope removed her hands from his chest. But his hand shot out like a cobra and he grabbed her wrist, sitting up slightly.

The team all jumped and moved in, but Thor put his hands out to them all, halting them. He didn’t believe his brother would actually harm the omega. And being without his Seidr, there wouldn’t be much he could do otherwise.

Loki’s eyes locked onto Hope’s, she felt her heartbeat racing like crazy at the hold he had on her. So strong, yet oddly comforting. Which was something she didn’t really want to feel from him. And it unsettled her.

Loki took her hand up to his lips and he softly kissed the back of her hand, over her knuckles. The lingering touch of his lips made her gasp, her skin tingling.

‘Thank you, my dearest Hope.’ He purred against her skin.

‘Alright, that’s enough.’ Clint said firmly.

Natasha moved in and took Hope’s arm, helping her up. Loki reluctantly released her hand, but he didn’t take his eyes off of her until she was led out of the room. One last glance over her shoulder revealed him winking at her.

‘Until we meet again, little omega.’ He called to her just as she exited the room.

[imagine-loki]

Alluring whispers, Chapter 3

TITLE: Alluring whispers CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 3 AUTHOR: fanficshiddles ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Loki has the tesseract again and is captured by The Avengers. Where he discovers they have an omega who has healing powers living with them. He’s an Alpha and he wants her,badly. She is the epitome of all things good, and trying her best to avoid his seductive advances. But it’s not easy due to their instincts and biology. The Avengers do their best to keep the omega safe, but Loki is on the hunt and is hungry for her. RATING: M

‘No. Absolutely not. We are not handing Hope over to that monster.’ Natasha said firmly.

‘I don’t even know why we are discussing this? Because there is nothing to discuss.’ Said Tony, glaring at Wanda and Steve for even considering it.

The rest of the team were dead set against it.

‘Alright, alright. But maybe if we just let them speak to each other? Or meet properly? He might open up to her?’ Steve suggested.

‘No. Not happening. We need to keep her safe. And that’s final.’ Tony said and the team all nodded in agreement.

-

‘I know you’re there, pet… Watching me.’ Loki grinned and turned to look up at the security camera outside his cell.

He could sense Hope watching him. And he wasn’t wrong.

While the suppressants were helping her, she still felt a weird sensation inside of her. So she thought there wouldn’t be any harm just taking a look at the security footage, to watch him that way.

She nearly fell off the chair in surprise when he addressed her. How on earth did he know?

‘I’m sure your mind is racing with so many questions, my dear. Why don’t you come down here, so we can talk properly? Hmm? Those friends of yours think they can keep us apart. But it’s simple biology, we are made to be together.’ Loki continued, staring directly into the camera.

Hope felt like he was staring into her very soul.

She pushed away from the screen and mentally slapped herself. This was Loki, the villain, who had killed hundreds of people. He was bad news, she had to stay away from him.

Hope managed to tear herself away from the security room. But even as she went about her day, he was still very much there in the back of her mind. His voice, his incredible good looks… His smell.

‘Hope!’ Natasha called, snapping Hope from her thoughts as she walked down the corridor.

‘Oh, hey Nat!’ She smiled.

‘Are you ok?’ Natasha asked, putting her arm around her.

‘Yeah, thanks. Loki is just messing with my mind it seems.’ She sighed.

‘Hopefully he will back down soon when he realises he’s not getting to you.’ Natasha assured her.

‘But that’s the thing, Nat… he already IS getting to me. I can’t stop thinking about him.’ Hope sighed.

To try and keep her occupied, Natasha took her to the lab to see what Bruce and Tony were doing. Hope enjoyed herself for a while, laughing at Tony and Bruce bickering when they didn’t agree on something.

But then she smelled him. And she could feel him. It was a weird sensation inside of her…

She looked up and saw Loki walking down the corridor alongside the lab. Thor, Clint and Vision were leading him elsewhere. He was chained, to stop him from using his Seidr.

Hope gasped slightly when he locked eyes on her, his smile grew even larger when he saw her. He kept his eyes on her as he walked the length of the corridor. And Hope was transfixed on him, her eyes glazing over slightly.

Natasha noticed and nodded at Tony. Who pressed a button and had the shutters come slamming down over the windows, breaking their connection.

Hope shook her head and blinked a few times. She looked to the others, seeing worry on their faces. She wiped her brow, surprised to find she was sweating rather profusely all of a sudden.

‘S… sorry.’

‘It’s ok, Hope. It’s not your doing.’ Bruce gave her a smile.

Hope felt trembly, she noticed that her hands were shaking. She curled them up in her lap and tried to push Loki out of her mind. But it wasn’t easy knowing he was so close to her.

‘Where are they taking him?’ Natasha asked Tony.

‘For some interrogation.’ Tony mumbled quietly.

Hope’s eyes snapped up. ‘What?’

‘It’s procedure.’ Tony shrugged.

‘Yeah and I normally heal them afterwards. I can’t do that with him!’ She screeched, panicking.

If she got close to him and touched him, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to control herself. It was bad enough with glass between them.

‘You won’t need to heal him, don’t worry.’

‘So you’re going to let him be in agony till his body heals itself?’ She stood up, appalled at the thought. She would’ve been the same no matter who it was. She didn’t believe in violence or harming others.

Tony looked at Natasha and Bruce. Bruce wasn’t happy with it either, but he kept quiet and continued working.

‘You can’t do this!’ Hope rushed to the door, but Natasha managed to catch up with her and grabbed her arm.

‘It’s the only way. We need to find out where the tesseract is before it’s too late. We don’t know what he has planned or is planning.’ She said softly.

Hope looked devastated at the thought of not being able to help and heal a being in need.

‘At least only do injuries that can be healed by my potions and cream. Please, Nat.’ She begged.

Natasha looked round at Tony, who rolled his head and then nodded in agreement.

‘Alright. I’ll go tell them. You go get the things from your room and meet me back here.’ Natasha said and Hope agreed.

Though she still wasn’t happy at all with their interrogation ways. It went against everything she stood for. But she knew she couldn’t do anything about it.

Hope rushed to her room and gathered some tubes of cream and a few bottles of her potion. She then met Natasha back outside the lab. But her stomach dropped when she saw Wanda there too.

‘How could you let this happen?’ Natasha shouted.

‘We don’t know. We were just doing some basic interrogation strategies, then he wound Thor up so much that Thor beat him to a bulp. His ribs are broken and he can barely talk or breathe… Thor says because his magic is being contained in the chains, he can’t heal as quickly as his body normally would.’

Hope was stood behind them, mortified at what she was hearing.

‘I need to heal him.’ She said firmly.

‘You can’t, Hope.’ Natasha said, both turning around to face her.

‘It’s my job. Now you better let me in there to heal him.’ She snapped, not wanting to take no for an answer.

And Natasha knew how stubborn she could be. She wouldn’t let this go until Loki was healed.

Natasha ran her hand down her face.

‘Fine. But it’s going to be controlled. Have you got your suppressants with you?’ She asked.

‘Yes. I can take three more without over dosing.’ Hope nodded and reached into her pocket, taking more of the pills to try and help dampen down her instincts.

‘I’ve got another idea.’ Hope rushed into the lab and eyed up Bruce. ‘Do you still carry vicks around with you?’

He gave her a weird look, but nodded and handed it to her.

Tony, Natasha, Wanda and Bruce all looked at her with confusion when she rubbed some at the entrance to her nostrils.

‘His scent is what gets me the most. This should hopefully help to some extent.’ She said to them as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

‘You are not going near him!’ Tony stormed over, glaring at Natasha.

‘There’s been a bit of a problem. She needs to heal him, Tony.’ Natasha said quietly.

Tony grumbled in annoyance. He wasn’t happy about this, neither of them were. But they had no other choice.

‘Can’t we just put him back in his cell and take the chains off?’ Tony asked.

‘The cell controls his magic too. He can’t use it in there either.’ Said Bruce.

‘Shit.’ Tony hissed, knowing there was no other option. Unless they wanted to release Loki and risk him escaping. ‘Alright. But this has to be tightly controlled.’

‘You have my permission to drag me out of there if things go south.’ Hope said, but she was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.

But her mind went haywire around him. It was like she didn’t have control over herself anymore. So she wasn’t really sure what to expect.

With a sigh, the team took her into the room where Loki was.

Thor looked very embarrassed, having let Loki get to him so much that he broke his ribs. But his little brother always got under his skin.

Loki could smell Hope as soon as she entered. Even though he was lying on the ground in agony, barely able to breathe without searing pain, he managed a smirk as he turned his head to look at her.

His plan to rile Thor up so much to injure him had worked. Now here she was, just as he wanted. He’d had a feeling she was a healer, and now that was confirmed for him.

‘Well, if it isn’t my little omega.’ He purred, his voice making Hope tremble.

Her eyes were starting to glaze over slightly, but she managed to keep her head clear. She had a job to do, and that was to heal him. Alpha or no Alpha.

She said nothing as she crouched down next to him, looking over his armour.

‘I’m not going to be able to do it properly over all this.’ She motioned over Loki’s armour and looked up at Thor, who crouched down at the other side of him to help undo various buckles until his chest was on show for her.

Hope took a deep breath and reached out, slowly. When she placed her hand upon his skin, the two of them gasped. The first contact felt electrifying. Hope pulled her hand back quickly, but she bit her tongue. She had to help him.

Concentrating as best she could, she put both hands over his ribs. Ignoring the pulsing feeling in her hands from touching him, she closed her eyes and focused all her healing powers through her palms and into his body.

Loki groaned as he felt his ribs moving, moulding together and healing over. Then there was instant relief, the pain was gone.

He let out a deep breath as Hope removed her hands from his chest. But his hand shot out like a cobra and he grabbed her wrist, sitting up slightly.

The team all jumped and moved in, but Thor put his hands out to them all, halting them. He didn’t believe his brother would actually harm the omega. And being without his Seidr, there wouldn’t be much he could do otherwise.

Loki’s eyes locked onto Hope’s, she felt her heartbeat racing like crazy at the hold he had on her. So strong, yet oddly comforting. Which was something she didn’t really want to feel from him. And it unsettled her.

Loki took her hand up to his lips and he softly kissed the back of her hand, over her knuckles. The lingering touch of his lips made her gasp, her skin tingling.

‘Thank you, my dearest Hope.’ He purred against her skin.

‘Alright, that’s enough.’ Clint said firmly.

Natasha moved in and took Hope’s arm, helping her up. Loki reluctantly released her hand, but he didn’t take his eyes off of her until she was led out of the room. One last glance over her shoulder revealed him winking at her.

‘Until we meet again, little omega.’ He called to her just as she exited the room.

[jeonjagia]

To Save a Life- Chapter 6

Luna:

I mindlessly trace the scratches in the wood, 'I hope Yoongi is ok,' I think to myself. This explains all the times he came home clothes all blood stained. What was I thinking joining the Mafia?! I ask myself over and over. This life isn't for you! More thoughts of what I would have to do in order to stay in. shuddering I shake my head to clear my thoughts. Suddenly, the door bursts open to show Jimin and Jungkook carrying an unconscious, pale and limp Suga in their arms. "Clear the table!" Jugnkook grunts as he lifts Suga up. I stare down in shock as I see he is bleeding from a stab wound. "Yoongi," I whisper holding the side of his face. "Move," Jungkook says pushing me aside as he lifts Suga's shirt exposing the wound. "Get me some supplies," he orders. Jimin hurries to complete his command. Returning with a first aid kit, he hands it to Jungkook who starts to work on Suga's stab wound.          I soon find myself waking up on a bed in a small room. I must have fallen asleep, I think to myself. Then, I remember before, Suga. I get up out of bed and find the meeting room. I stand in the shadows watching as the men pace around, waiting for Yoongi to wake up.

RM:

I stand leaning against the wall, arms crossed watching the ground. Waiting is a horrible game to play. Jungkook toiled over Suga's wound almost all night. Now both of them are resting. Suga still hasn't woken up yet. I can see that his wife, Luna, is worried that he won't.          I come off the wall and walk over to her. She looks up at me. "You have training to do," I say looking her in the eyes. She nods and slowly stands up from the box. "Where do we train?" she asks quietly. "Right here," I reply watching her expression.

"The first thing to know is observe your surroundings, this can teach you much," I state. She looks around at the walls and boxes scattered around the room. Taking advantage of her distracted state, I trip her, holding her so she doesn't fall. She looks confused. "Second lesson, never take your eyes off of the enemy," I says lowering my voice. "If you do this, it could cost you your life." I help her up and we continue fighting. She's a fast learner.          Taking breaks we get water and some snacks, and then continue working, making much of the time at hand. I can tell she wants to do well and prove herself.

Suga:

I wake up slowly, noticing the pain that is throbbing in my side. Opening my eyes I see RM fighting with Luna. He's training her for the job. I sit up, grimacing as my side is on fire. The leader, Jungkook, walks over, noticing I am awake. "How do you feel?" he asks looking me over. "Like crap," I reply gently touching my side. Then I remember her. "She's back Jungkook, she stabbed me," I say watching Jungkook's reaction. "She must know that you married Luna," Jungkook mutters looking at the table. I watch Luna as she ducks under RM's punch and jabs him in the ribs. They then circle each other, looking for an attack. "She looks like she's learning well," I mutter as we watch them. "Surprisingly, she's catching on very quickly," Jungkook replies. Luna looks in Jungkook's direction and sees that I'm awake. Her eyes widen. RM, seeing this advantage attacks: tripping her. She yelps and grunts as he sits on her, holding a knife to her throat. "Dead," he says. Getting off, he helps her up, and she walks over to us. "You're awake," she whispers hugging me gently. I can hear the relief in her voice. "Hello Jagi," I reply smiling at her. "What happened?" she asks looking from Jungkook to me and back again. "Suga's target was armed and had skills we didn't know of," Jungkook states before I can speak. He looks at me knowing I can't tell her the truth, not yet. How many times do I have to lie to her?

Andromeda:

I look into Suga's eyes as I stab him: they're full of pain. Physical pain. Mental pain. Pain is good. I want him to feel pain, my pain of being left for dead. Anger swells up inside as I remember that night. And worst of all is he married my sister. I should be the one in her place! He loved me!          Standing up, I walk away from Suga's limp body, as he did to me three years ago. Half of me wants him dead, the other half wants him to feel my pain. My pain of falling from a building for goodness sake! I have healed so much since then. I'm not so pathetic and deformed as I once was. I'm strong now.          Walking back to my apartment, I open the door and see "my friend" is still here. He is sitting on the couch watching a movie...again. "Angel, really?" I ask closing the door "is this what you do all day while I'm out?" I question him. He looks over at me confused. "You eat my food, use my home, and don't clean up after yourself!" I yell kicking his clothes and litter towards the couch he sits on. He looks hurt. "I'm sorry," I reply, those words tasting bitter on my tongue, "I'm...irritated," I finish. He turns the TV off and walks over to me. Holding my shoulders he says, "don't worry Andromeda, we will find this person you are looking for." I look at him as he smiles widely. God, I hate it. He's smiling, always smiling. So happy, so sick. Well, I already found him...and killed him. I think to myself. I can't let Angel know what I really am doing.

Luna:

Over the next few weeks things change. The organization Suga works for and now me, is not the "mafia". They're more like incognito vigilantes. Fixing wrongs to others and not leaving a trace. They focus more on robberies of higher up people, hushed up murders, and drug deals. On the other hand, I have been training, mostly with RM, then sometimes with Jungkook and Jimin. I have learned how to fight, and fight well. Today, I will shadow someone on my first mission. I am excited, and terrified at the same time. Tonight, I will shadow Jimin. As the others have code names, Jungkook said that tonight I will have my own code name. I have now become one of them, as my clothing has changed and I have become more used to the life style here. I have my own weapons now: throwing knives. Many hours were spent practicing with them so I can now throw precisely where I need them to go. Gathering them together, the night has come and I'm nervous. Hopefully I won't need them. I place them in a pack that I got from Jungkook, "if you're good at them, and might as well have a place to hold them." he said as he handed it to me. I have become used to this kind of life. Not having a comfortable bed, always something to do day to day, could be killed on a mission. However, I don't miss the work in a "normal" life, or school, or having to talk to people and get along with them. I have been taught many things that "normal" life doesn't teach: how to sew wounds, use plants to heal, shoot multiple guns and use other forms of weapons. These skills are useful in my job now. Drifting back to reality, I prepare my eight knives and wait for Jimin's order to leave. Because I have been training with Jimin for four months now, I know how he fights, when he backs off, and when he is planning an attack. I watch as Jungkook hand Jimin a paper with the target description and reasons why they are going after him. jimin stares at it for a while, then hands it to me. taking the paper, I look at the picture of the target. 32 year old Peter Calahue- targeted for reasons of could be ally. "so we arnt taking this guy out?" I ask abruptly, cutting into their conversation. "No," Jungkook says staring down at me, "he could be a very good ally to have if we are going after Andromeda." Nodding I hand the paper back to Jungkook and stand up. "Ready?" Jimin asks. I nod heading toward the door.          We exit our headquarters and peruse the address that was printed on the paper of where he could be. "You nervous?" Jimin asks eyeing a passing car down the street. "Not really," I respond watching him as he is alert at everything. "It's okay to be a tiny bit nervous, Luna," he continues turning into an alley suddenly. "Down this way," he states. Sighing, I follow, trying to catch up with him. Once we find the building, we enter through one of the back entrances, the front obviously to open. Anyone can see, and run if need be to inform authorities. Entering a large empty room, I see a man already standing there, back toward us. Jimin motions for me to circle the other way around as he goes the opposite direction. He motions for me to stay, observance only. "Peter Calahue, do you know why I am here?" Jimin says to the man, his sudden voice causing the man, peter, flinch. "Y-yes," he stutters in response. He puts his hands up as in a peace motion. "I-I didn't do anything wrong, m-my boss made me," He says . "Information for your life if you keep quiet," Jimin says harshly. "O-ok," peter stutters. "My bosses name, is A-," he doesn't finish his sentence as a knife plunges into his throat, and he falls to the ground dead. A figure drops from the ceiling beams, landing in a crouch. As it stands up, it says, "peter never had a life, his life was mine." The voice sounds like a girl, also judging from the body and height. The face is shadowed though. "I've had many slaves who work for me," it says pulling down the hood. I gape when I see her. She Vick's her head staring at Jimin. She doesn't know I'm here. Jimin hands rest on his knives, ready to throw at a moments notice. Suddenly, Jimin throws one at her, causing her to dodge out of the way. Using her distracted state, Jimin lunges toward her attempting to slice her with another knife. She jumps back to safety. "Tsk, tsk, Jimin. I though Kookie taught you better," she coos. "That's Jungkook to you," Jimin growls standing straighter. He lounges again, this time slicing her. Screaming in anger, she dodges another attack and cuts Jimins arm with her knife. He growls and attacks again, trying to trip her. She nimbly dodges his attempts and throws a knife at jimins head, which he thankfully dodges. "Ooh Jimin, your skills have deteriorated since we last met," she says mockingly. Jimin flares at her as they circle each other. "What have you done to yourself?" He asks genuinely shocked. "I survived," she hisses back at him. "None of you tried to look for me, or see if I was still alive," "I'm sorry andromeda, but we thought-," "Thought? That's the first mistake you made. You didn't plan it through, you rushed in regardless if the situation. You killed me Jimin," she snarls. Suddenly, they both lunge blocking and stabbing. Jimin then trips and andromeda takes advantage, holding a knife to his throat. "You deserve to die," she says looking down at him. Deciding its time to take action, I enter the room behind Andromeda and throw one of my knives at her. "You deserve to die, you traitor," I whisper loud enough for her to hear. The knife hits her in the thigh and she falls. "Your lust for revenge is too great Andromeda," Jimin says pinching a nerve in her neck causing her to fall unconscious. Jimin slowly turns toward me, "nice shot," he says examining his arm. We exit the building and head back to HQ. "Jimin?" "Yeah?" "Your arm, it's still bleeding," I point out. "I know," he says opening the door to our building. We enter and see rap mon is there, the others, on missions I assume. "So, how did it go?" Rap mon asks not looking up from sharpening the knives. "As well as can be expected," Jimin says not mentioning andromeda. He heads over to the small table and cleans himself up. I on the other hand, sit and watch him, wondering why he didn't mention Andromeda, or if I should. Why is her lust for revenge so great? Did she really love yoongi that much? I question myself. Soon, Suga is the next to return, then Jungkook. "Ok everyone, gather," Jungkook says motioning for us to come. "Ok," he starts, "We all have a new mission that has been in the making for a while now. A few months ago, we had an encounter with a group called the Shadows. This group wa responsible for killing Andromeda, and we have been trying to deal with them. But now, they seem to be a greater threat than before and we will have to eliminate them. We have found out from yoongies mission, that andromeda is alive," murmurs spread around the room. "Did anybody see anything new today?" Jungkook asks looking around at the faces. "We encountered her today," Jimin says looking up. "She killed Calahue," he adds. Jungkook sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "He could have been an important ally," he whispers. "Sir, I think she's with the Shadows," Jimin states. "Yeah, that's what I thought too," Jungkook sighs looking at the map in front of us. He stares a few minutes before looking up and saying, "well need more people, we need Jin," He looks at Suga when he says this. Suga sighs deeply while rubbing his face. "Okay, Jagia, with me," he says heading for the door. I follow wondering how this will end.

[everlarkficexchange]

To be Her O.A.O. (one-and-only) - Chapter 2

written by: @noneyabidnes

Rating: Mature

Prompt 73: Katniss marries Gale before he’s sent to fight WWII. Gale sends home his buddy Peeta to break the news to his wife and family that he’s fallen in love with someone else in Europe and is staying there after the war… Peeta is under the impression Katniss is a cold woman that only married his friend out of obligation but finds out the other side of the story soon enough. [submitted by @alliswell21]

Tags: era-appropriate derogatory terms for Axis powers, angst

–//–//–//–//–//–//–//–

Chapter 2

The shadows are stretching long by the time we hear hooves coming up the road.  Prim jumps out of her seat saying she needs to check on the sheep as Katniss continues dinner preparations in the small kitchen.  I try to stand up to help just to have her shush me back down again.  I’ve offered more than once, but somewhere in the last couple hours, as we’ve talked about nothing in particular, she’s come to decide I’m an acceptable guest, and I’ve barely been able to take my eyes off her.  As she turns her back to me, I snag the rumpled photo back off the table and slip it in my pocket

It’s become my personal challenge to get her to smile as much as I can, telling stories about every Good-time Charley and cracked egg I met in the service.  I even managed a blush out of her, and Prim for that matter, delicately explaining why most guys referred to letters from their girls back home as sugar reports.  It prompted her to ask me about my own special someone, of which I had to admit I had none.  Delly Cartwright and I used to pal around a bit, but last I’d heard she’d gone and hitched up with Thom Quinn after he’d come back from France.  I wasn’t surprised to hear she’d fallen for the flyboy, nor was I hurt.  She and I weren’t cut out for one-and-only.

I’m still watching Katniss push onions around a pan when she starts to sing quietly to herself.  It’s a song from before the war, one I haven’t heard since before I shipped out to Parris Island, but what catches me isn’t sentimentality toward the song, but the rich tone of her voice.  Gale never mentioned she could sing.  He spoke endlessly about her hunting acumen, how sensible she was, if a bit distant and frigid in her demeanor.  He made it seem like getting any affection from her was hard-fought.  That even after they had married, he still didn’t think she really felt much love for him.  To hear the emotion in her voice as she sings, I know how wrong he was.  Not that she was in love—it does seem clear that wasn’t the case—but that she wears her heart where it can get trampled.  That this ‘cold woman with a hard stare’ as he often put it, is in fact a woman full of warmth.  Each smile I’ve earned from her has felt like a victory and now, to hear her singing as though she’s perfectly comfortable with me in her kitchen, I can’t imagine ever being able to tear myself away from this shack on this rock outcrop of a mountain.  From her.

And I immediately fill with shame for feeling it.  I shouldn’t be a goner for my best friend’s not-an-ex-wife.  We’ve only just met.  We know nothing about one another beyond the pleasantries we’ve exchanged these past couple hours.  There’s no way I could ever convince her that I’m an upstanding man if I were to tell her the thoughts running through my mind.  I’d only confirm her initial misgivings of having me here in the first place.

Prim stomps back through the door with a tall young man on her heels who is the spitting image of his older brother.  This must be Rory, the one Gale always speaks about with equal parts pride and frustration.  I carefully stand on one leg to shake his hand as he towers over me and Katniss gasps.

“We never went to your mother’s house! Oh no, we got so caught up talking about…what were we even talking about?”  She looks to me to fill in the gap and I return Rory’s solid handshake.

“Matters of deep importance, if I do recall.  Rory, I presume.  Your brother didn’t lie about how strong you are, but I doubt he realizes how tall you’ve gotten.  He was always proud of having a coupla inches on you.  I daresay you’re taller’an him now.  You must have been stealin’ rations.”

A grin breaks out on Rory’s face before he pulls me in for a quick, surprising hug, knocking me slightly off balance.  “It’s all the squirrel Katniss keeps feedin’ us.  Where is he?  Prim wouldn’t tell me anything.”  He hasn’t let go of my hand, but he’s looking around the shack, as though the Lance Corporal will appear any moment.

“We should go talk to you mother.” Katniss jumps in.  She turns back to the stove and shuffles pans away from the heat.  “Come on.  Let’s head over there.  Rory, can you help Peeta walk?”

“Peter?” He glances back at me and his eyes trail down to my prosthetic propped against the wall by my chair.

“Peeta,” she corrects before I can, and I have to fight the smile that threatens to take over my face at how natural my name sounds on her lips.  Lips I’m not supposed to be staring at.  The guilt flares again.  I have got to get a handle on myself.

“Peeta Mellark,” I fill in.  “Your brother and I served together for over two years.  Not many guys I can say that about, unfortunately.”

“But he’s okay, right?”

“Yes.  Likely already back in Japan with the occupying forces.  I would be there too, if it weren’t for my leg.”

His eyes widen, taking in the full extent of the situation.  Prim steps up.  “I told you, he walked all the way up here.  He can’t put weight on it for a coupla days.”

“Can you mount a horse?”

“Sorry, city boy here.  I’ve never been within twenty feet of a horse.”

“Huh.  Hard to imagine life without one ‘round here.  Okay, let’s see here.”

As Rory’s scratching his head, Katniss turns back to the stove and shuffles things around again.

“Rory, just go run and get your mother and bring the crew back here.  You can all eat here tonight.  I was just tossin’ together some stew anyway.” 

He nods at the order as though Katniss were his CO and Gale’s words about her strength pop back into my head.  He’s out the door before I can say anything else. 

“You run a tight ship ‘round here.”

“Hardly, but I’m his big sister, whether we share blood or not.  I carried that boy on my hip as much as any other woman on this mountain, and his little brother even more so.  They know better’an to give me lip.”

“Yes ma’am.” I salute her quickly before I return to my seat, surprised by how much standing for the short period on one leg has exhausted me.  I feel so far from the strong boot I was so few months ago.

She graces me with another small smile and I find myself berating Gale in my mind.  How dare you call this woman cold?  With the exception of her pointing an arrow at me when I first appeared on the mountain, she’s been nothing if not understanding and warm.  And she sings!  How could anyone walk away from her? Just as quickly the scolding turns back on myself.  She’s married, you cracked egg!  To your best friend!  Let it go!

In no time, Rory is back through the door with an even younger version of Gale in tow as well as a young girl who must be Posy.  I can see immediately why he is so protective of her.  Delicate features that are slightly gaunt, pointing to a rough life.  So beautiful and sweet in her countenance.  Her large grey eyes take me in and immediately turn back to her big brother. 

“He’s Gale’s friend?  Where’s Gale?”  Rory puts his index finger up to his lips and she falls silent.  I reach out a hand toward her.

“Hi Posy.  Yes, I’m Gale’s friend Peeta.  He sent me here to make sure you were all doin’ well.  He misses you so much, li’l sweetheart.  He told me lots about you, including how beautiful you are.  I’m sorry he’s not here himself.”

Katniss cuts in before I can say anything more. “Where’s your Ma?”

“She put herself to bed early and Vick couldn’t get her to crack an eye when he went in to wake her.”

Silence fills the small room.  What would they have done for dinner if Katniss hadn’t invited them over?  Looking at the boys, I’m sure they can fend for themselves, but it still reinforces the reason Gale wanted to marry Katniss before he left.  She’s the one who makes sure these kids are taken care of.

“Well, I guess there’s no reason to keep it hush-hush,” Katniss starts.  “Gale’s doing fine.  He got injured back on Okinawa, but he’s back with his battalion over in Japan now.  Thing is, he’s not gonna be comin’ home after he’s done over there.  He found a lady on an island that loves him and they’re havin’ a baby.  He’s gonna stay and live with her after he’s done his tour.”

Posy’s innocence cuts to the heart of it. “But I thought he was gonna have babies with you?”

Katniss shakes her head.  “No, Pose, me and Gale never was gonna have kids.  We’ve got you guys.  You’re all the family we ever wanted.  Don’t need no babies underfoot when I’m huntin’ or milkin’ the goats.”

“But you guys love each other.”

Katniss reaches out and pulls Posy into her lap like she’s done it a thousand times.  My heart breaks to see the comfort between them.  This is Gale’s family.  He should be here.  How did he walk away from this?

“Ya’ know Posy, you’re right.  Gale and I do love each other, but not the way your Ma and Pa loved each other.  Not the way Prim and Rory love each other.  Gale and I, we know, knew each other inside and out, but we were never big into kissing and hugging.  And this lady he met, he loves her much bigger than he loves me.  And that’s alright.  I’m happy for him Posy, ya’ hear?  Happy he gets to have someone who loves him like he’s the most important guy on this here Earth.  Someone who can give him babies and make him smile, because he deserves that, don’t he, Pose?”

The little one rests her head on Katniss’s shoulder and snuggles in tighter.  “Will you still give me hugs and kisses?”

“Oh, sugar, you and I? We’re together ‘til you can’t stand me, ya’ hear?  We’re family.  That had nothin’ to do with Gale and everythin’ to do with bein’ there for your first steps and first words, and holdin’ your hand on the way to school.  Gale can go have his big adventure.  We’ll keep being family here, no matter.”

“So he’s not takin’ you away?” The sweet girl points at me and Katniss’s eyes widen briefly before a soft smile graces her face.

“No, he’s not takin’ me anywhere.  Gale sent him here to make sure I was okay, to make sure we all are.  He doesn’t want us to be angry with him for stayin’ there.  And we’re not, are we?”

Posy shakes her head slowly against Katniss’s shoulder, her hand absently playing with the end of Katniss’s braid.

“Ma’s gonna be angry,” Vick speaks up and all eyes turn to him.

“Well, she’ll jus’ have to take that up with me,” Katniss states, leaving no room for argument.  “Now, if you wanna know how your brother’s doin’, this nice gentleman here, Mr. Peeta, can answer all your questions.  I recommend you ask ‘em one on top of ‘nother so that he can hardly keep up.”

She slides Posy off her lap and turns back toward the pots on the stove, but not before I catch the glint of mischief in her eyes.  Posy doesn’t disappoint, asking everything from what color Gale’s clothes are these days to what the baby’s name will be.  She keeps going all the way through dinner and up to the moment Rory picks her up to carry her tired frame back across the field to their home.

Prim follows them out the door, her hand resting on the small of Rory’s back.  I’ll have to write to Gale to let him know that Rory’s found his O.A.O., his one-and-only.  I wonder how he’ll react to it being Prim.  And I’ll have to fill him in on Posy’s interrogation. 

Behind me I can hear Katniss shuffling around by the small couch that Prim called her bed.  Just moments before Vick was sitting on it with Katniss and as I turn to watch I notice the threadbare sheets that are creating a home for me tonight.

“I know Prim didn’t really give you much choice, but if you’re more comfortable, I can sleep outside or in the barn.  I’m usta sleepin’ sittin’ up at this point.  I don’t need to be in your space.”

“Don’t you know better than to turn down mountain hospitality?  No, I don’t mind you being here.  It may not make much sense, but I kinda like havin’ you here.  The house feels a little safer, a little fuller.  I don’t know, maybe it’s just all those stories you told about Gale and the rest of the guys, but I feel like I already know you.  Like you’re just a long-lost friend that Gale managed to wrangle back to the mountain.”

She’ll never know how much those words mean to me, or how she’s brought hope to a man that has felt his worth in the world dwindling by the day, but I try to express at least a little of it.  “Thank you.  Gale told me you were fiercely protective of your brood up here.  I can see why, but yeah, from all his stories I kinda feel like I know all of you as well, although you’re a bit of a surprise.”

She turns to catch my eyes, a question on her lips so I plunge ahead. 

“I didn’t know how you would handle the news.  Most gals don’t take kindly to word their man’s shacked up with another girl.  Since I’ve told you, I’ve seen you smile and sing.  I dare say you’re genuinely happy for him.”

Bringing herself up straight and rigid, she rolls her shoulders back, incidentally drawing my attention to areas I’m better off not noticing.  “Ya’know Corporal, I am happy.  When we got married, I felt like I’d been trapped.  I knew it was the right thing to do.  I understood why he’d suggested it, but he, well, he had these feelings that I just didn’t have.  Only time we ever kissed was after the preacher finished our vows.  Shouldn’t a wife want to kiss her husband?  We didn’t even sleep in the same house that night!  He tried to…well, I shoun’t be tellin’ you all this.”

“You weren’t in love with him and he wanted you to be.”

She nods solemnly.  “We needed each other to survive for those many years after our Pa’s died, and he knew I’d take care o’ his family while he was gone.  I wasn’t lyin’ to Posy.  They’re my family, no matter what.  I didn’t need to marry him for that to be so.  But he wanted ta make sure his pay came here and that his mother didn’t drink it.”

“If you don’t mind my askin’, has there been a guy you did want?”

Her eyebrow raises, almost like a challenge.  “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Just wantin’ to make sure no one’s showing up with a shotgun while I’m sleepin’ in your house.  I’ve already been shot at enough in this life.”

She drops to the edge of the bed and levels me with her stare.  “You grew up in a city, so I’ll excuse you not knowin’ anything about small towns, but let me just tell ya, I’ve known ev’ry boy in this town since the days when they still ran around in nappies.  You’re the first new man I’ve met since before the war—ain’t no young fellas been around.  They all took off to fight the Jerries and the Japs, and those that stayed behind were chickens and ‘shiners.  No, Corporal Mellark, there’s no one poundin’ down our door in the middle of the night who’ll batt an eye at you on our cot, and if they did, I’d point my arrow right back at’em.”

“Hell, you’re like Artemis herself.  How could any man resist that?” I retort.

Happy with herself, the grin that splits her cheeks makes up for every bad thing I’ve seen in the last three years.  The heavy silence that sits between us stretches on until I wonder if I’m not the only one feeling awake and alive in a new way. 

When Prim pushes through the door several minutes later, she finds us still smiling silently at one another.  Shaking her head, she walks past us and into the back of the house to where I presume Katniss’s bedroom must be.  The spell is broken, but the smiles remain.

“I should be gettin’ to bed, Miss Everdeen.  My nurse says I have to rest up and I want to make sure I can help out while I’m here.  You got the fixin’s for pancakes in the morning?”  I don’t think my use of her maiden name goes unnoticed as she leans in so slightly toward me.

“You just have to sweet talk the chickens into givin’ you a coupla eggs, but I doubt that’ll be a problem for you, Corporal.”  Something about the way she says my rank sounds oh so good and my thoughts take a decidedly un-Christian turn, particularly with her sitting just across from me on what sure as hell looks like a bed.  Luckily, she takes that moment to stand. 

“Goodnight Corporal Peeta Mellark.” It rolls off her tongue, leaving me wondering if the innuendo is all in my head.  It has to be, right?  No way this beautiful woman could be flirting with someone as damaged as me.

My “Goodnight Katniss” as her skirt swishes past my knees comes out just shy of a whisper, but I swear she pauses to smile again. 

I’ve slept sitting up in the pouring rain as machine-gun fire bounced around me.  How in the world am I going to sleep tonight?

[artificialqueens]

Bring It On: Fight to the Finish pt 5 (Branjie) - Ashley

A/N: so this is my longest chapter yet and has been my fave to write so far ft some heavy fanservice, cute branjie moments and a hint at potential scyvie. There are only 5 bring it on films (#worldwide cheermack DOES NOT count) so I only ever planned for there to be 5 chapters titlewise, meaning I’m just gonna have to get creative with sports idioms from here. Should be one or two more after this then maybe some one shots, who knows..hope you like, thanks for all the love so far. P.s: I have a sideblog now if anyone wants to chat bring it on/branjie in general - xoxo Ashley

“Hey, you’re actually really good at that!” Brooke found herself surprised as she watched Silky play around with the batons left over from the marching bands session in the gym as they waited for Vanessa to turn up.

“Girl, we’ve all got hidden talents,” Silky laughed in response as she continued to twirl the batons with great precision, throwing and catching them to the beat of the song that played.

Not shortly after, a crowd had formed around the girls and the squad all began to dance together in their own silly ways, throwing aside the rigidity and cheer-nature of their usual routines. Feeling herself start to let loose to the music and really connect with the squad - Brooke watched some of the other cheerleader’s personalities shine and allowed herself to see a more of a unique side to her teammates.

Although she thrived on the nature of competition and routine, a part of her relished the time they were spending simply having fun. Seeing Jaren do a double pirouette from the corner of her eye, Brooke shook her head at the boy and wagged a finger in his direction, before throwing herself into pirouettes and fouettes till they were having their own little dance-off in front of the squad - Brooke leaping across the hall in a way she just felt so accustomed to. Despite the fact that she had dove headfirst into cheer and carried on swimming strong for the past few weeks, Brooke knew her love for the classic beauty of ballet would always hold a special place in her heart - messing about like this giving her the sensation of an old friend coming to visit, the warmth of nostalgia arising like she was sipping a cup of tea.

Suddenly interrupted by a single stream of claps from across the hall, Brooke stopped and turned to see Vanessa making her way over, the usual twinkle in her eyes shining bright as she watched her squad embrace themselves. Ever since her reconciliation with Jovan and performance at the pep rally, Brooke had noticed the vulnerable and kind side of Vanessa that she usually kept closeted start to spread around the school. Whilst she still had her moments of ferocity, Brooke had noticed the dilapidation of Vanessa’s guns-a-blazing approach, the girl’s highly protective defence barriers starting to lower, exposing more of her real self to the squad. Vanessa had learned that in order to succeed, she didn’t need to rule with an iron fist, instead lending that hand to the others around her and helping to push them to new heights. Pushing Brooke to new heights.

“Okay, so when we’re ya’ll gonna show me this shit?” She exclaimed towards the group with a sense of dumbfoundedness. “You know, I was just about ready to come and scream at yous that we need to step our pussies up after seeing this hoe on the cover of American Cheerleader,” Vanessa help up a magazine that Brooke was unfamiliar with, “but I think we might be able to use some of this.”

Watching the cogs turning in her friend’s brain, Brooke couldn’t help but mentally swoon at the way Vanessa scrunched her face up when she concentrated - almost as if Brooke could visibly see all the pictures she painted inside her mind.

“Is that Vick?” Akeria snatched the magazine from Vanessa’s hand in order to get a closer look at it, Brooke joining her in tandem.

Vicky Taylor, Brooke recognised the girl on the cover from her “Cheer 101” with Vanessa when she had first joined the squad. The ruthless leader of the Vixens, Brooke knew the girl had a reputation of ferociousness and a willingness to fight. The sly fox of the Cheer world, it was a well know fact that Vicky did not shy from addressing the lingering elephant in the room at any circumstance. Not only were the squad an intense rival for the Amazons but the feud between Vanessa and the other captain seemed to be deep-rooted into the woods of the competition.

“She’s not that bad,” Jaren rolled his eyes as the members of the squad gaped at the cover, “she can be a real sweetheart.”

“Just cause you taught her how to rap like 2 nationals ago,” Monet nudged her friend in the ribs, resulting in a squeal from Jaren’s behalf.

“Irregardless, that should be me on that cover,” a wave of determination crashed over the captain, “Ever since she made me drop the spirit stick at camp, we have always come in second place to that girl. We’ve been looking at this all wrong. I spent so long trying to be like the Vixens, trying to do what they do - but we need to be different, we need to take what we got and make ourselves unique.”

Jay nodded adamantly in the background; “For the first time ever, I think you’re speaking utter sense, Vanjie.”

“Don’t get me wrong, we’re here to cheer first and foremost - but if we use the talents that we all got and learn how to apply them to the competition, I think we could hit the jackpot. Those judges sit and watch repetitive moves all day - if we throw in a couple of Brooke’s ballet moves, a few of Silk’s batons and a death drop here and there then we got the recipe for success.”

“Maybe it’ll undo that curse!” Silky boomed, garnering laughs from the entire squad.

A pang of longingness hit Brooke - although she was now more a member of the squad that she ever had been - she felt a hint of jealousy at the thought of the years they had all spent growing up together in the smaller neighbourhood. She was suddenly struck by the fear of all the memories she had missed, feeling envy at the thought that some of these girls had spent their whole lives knowing Vanessa. Even though she was usually having fun herself, Brooke was a long time sufferer of the fear of missing out, and coupled with the intense crush she had developed on the cheer captain, she knew she’d have given anything at that moment to have spent those nights at cheer camp, sneaking out of dorms and telling legends with Vanessa and the squad.

“Get warmed up then we’ll see what we can do,” Vanessa set the squad away at stretches and laps of the gym before pulling Brooke to one side.

Despite being exposed to her increasingly more, Brooke still felt that rush of blood go to her head every time Vanessa spoke to her, every time she felt her smooth skin so much as brush against her own, every time she heard her distinctive laugh or voice fill up the room.

“You okay?” Vanessa asked her, clearly noticing the slight dip in Brooke’s disposition.

“It’s fine, you know how I overthink things,” Brooke brushed off her anxieties, longing so much to open up to the girl right then and there. To give her everything and more. Every inch of her thoughts, feelings, body, mind. It was all hers.

“You’re a star, Brooke Lynn,” Vanessa looked dead into Brooke’s eyes with a confidence that could shatter glass, “Don’t ever stop thinking it. Now hurry up so you can teach me all this ballerina shit!”

Enlightened by the other girl’s simple yet meaningful words encouragement, Brooke’s smile beamed from cheek to cheek: “And then the student became the master.”

***

“Do I look okay?” Brooke asked her best friend as she examined herself in her full-length mirror, her need for perfection driving her to change her outfit 5 times before he arrived and grab her hairbrush to fix any strays every time he ushered her to leave. Finally deciding on a denim off-the-shoulder dress that exposed the majority of her back, she raked around her room looking for a bag to match.

Beep. The horn sounded outside.

So maybe it wasn’t just her own battle for perfection driving her to look her best.

“For the last time, yes!” Jovan grabbed her arm and ushered her out of the house and into the car, where his sister waited impatiently for the pair.

“You get lost in there or something?” Vanessa barked at her brother whilst shaking her eyes at Brooke.

“It’s not my fault,” he raised his eyebrows at his sister - Brooke happy to see that the siblings held a much closer relationship than they had when she first moved to Tampa. Even though they annoyed each other from time to time, the love between the two was evident and Brooke enjoyed nothing more than being able to spend time with both of them.

“We’re picking Brad up on the way,” Vanessa informed the pair - a part of Brooke sinking at the thought of having to sit in the back of the car with Vanessa’s douchebag boyfriend.

Despite knowing her crush on the girl was never something she’d indulge in and that Vanessa didn’t feel the same way, Brooke still knew Vanessa was better than Brad. Seeing and hearing the way he treated her and dabbled with other girls when Vanessa wasn’t around, Brooke found herself continually baffled at how one of the strongest and most determined women she knew - in fact, the strongest and most determined woman she knew - allowed herself to be walked all over by a high school has been waiting to happen.

“Don’t roll your eyes,” Vanessa blurted as she started to pull out of the street, her eyes focused on the road ahead of her.

“How could even you see that I’m rolling my eyes?” Brooke responded. Reason number eighty-nine why she believed Vanessa was some form of superhuman.

“Cause I know you,” Vanessa retorted - remembering the way Brooke consoled her after she confided in her about Brad’s cheating.

“She’s right,” Jovan piped in, “I don’t know why you give that boy the time of day.”

“You don’t understand,” Vanessa responded abruptly, an awkward silence lingering until they pulled up to the front of Brad’s house and he entered the car.

Sitting next to Brooke was reason number one - in fact, the only reason - why she believed Vanessa was the stupidest person on the planet.

“Hey babe,” he greeted Vanessa, before turning to Brooke and smiling.

“Brooke, you ready to get pissed?” he pulled a can of cider from his backpack and tossed it to her.

“I’m good - practice and everything,” Brooke responded through gritted teeth, taking her every ounce of self-control not to slap the bones out of him.

Okay, maybe it did have a little bit to do with her crush on Vanessa.

“I’m sure Vanj will let you have a night off, won’t you babe?” he grinned at Brooke.

Boy was she wishing she’d spent longer getting ready.

***

Not only had half of their year gathered to celebrate Akeria’s birthday but there was also a wide range of people Brooke had never met from neighbouring schools and the world of cheer combined. A bittersweet taste lingered in her mouth - here she was with all of her friends, her best friend and the girl she admired so much yet she felt as though she wasn’t fully there, never fully present. Lucky to have Jovan by her side to keep her grounded, a familiar newcomer to the life parties and high school socialising, Brooke was starting to wish she’d taken the cider from Brad nonetheless, longing to rinse away her anxieties in the short term at least.

“That boy has his eye on you,” she pointed out to her friend, taking note of the glances that kept getting thrown in their direction from across the room.

“Him?” Jovan nodded his head in the direction of the long-haired brunette, clearly panicked at the thought of interaction with him.

“Yes, but don’t stare like that you’ll freak him out!” Brooke laughed at her friend who was now taking suspicious looking glances at the boy in red.

“Oh my god,” Brooke gave him a light slap on the face, “Just go say hi!”

“Easy for you to say,” Jovan’s huffy side started to come out, Brooke finding pleasure in watching him get all nervous and flustered in the presence of a good looking boy. “Look at him. He’s like a fucking pristine Prince I don’t know why he’s looking at my shabby ass,”

“Maybe he’s into a bit of grit,” Brooke responded before realising that the boy had started to make his way over to them. “Just be cool.”

“Hi, do I know you?” he asked Jovan, his eyes scanning Brooke���s friend’s body up and down.

“I don’t think so,” Jovan looked down to the floor. Brooke swore she could see his cheeks turn a deep scarlet. She would never let him live this down, she thought to herself as she began to make an exit, ignoring her usual brazen friend’s sudden pleading eyes as they screamed at her for help. Giving him an assuring nod (you’ve got this), she set off to find Vanessa, desperate to tell her all about the cute boy her brother was talking to.

“Hey, you seen Vanessa?” she asked Monet after searching the kitchen, garden and living room for the dark-haired girl.

“I think I saw her and Brad upstairs,” she responded with a smile, pointing Brooke in the right direction.

Although she knew she may end up third wheeling the couple, Brooke fruitfully believed she was doing Vanessa a favour by dragging her away from Brad - having not seen the couple at all since they arrived at the party.

Going to walk into the first door she came across, Brooke stopped dead in her tracks as she opened it, seeing Brad - topless, kissing someone, someone who wasn’t Vanessa.

“Shit,” the girl muttered before grabbing her clothes and running past Brooke, leaving a purple balconette bra on the floor.

Frozen in place, Brooke didn’t know how to react.

Yes, she already knew that Brad had been unfaithful to Vanesa, but something about seeing him with the girl when Vanessa was in the same house, when she’d driven him here, something about seeing it with her own eyes, something about the bottle of lube on the table, the tacky violet bra on the floor made her want to give him a piece of her mind. And that she did.

“You want a piece, Brooke?” he laughed as she strode over to him, a kilogram of fury in every step.

“She deserves so much better than you,” Brooke jabbed at his chest, a sudden urge to protect Vanessa coming over her, the way the girl repeatedly brushed off his cheating, the way she told Brooke not to phone him when she was upset, playing on her mind.

“Oh, you want to get handsy?” he grinned at Brooke, placing his own hand on her arm.

A ball of slime fell straight from his mouth and Brooke was revolted.

And then Brooke’s world came crashing down.

“Hey, Monet said you we’re-” she started. But didn’t finish.

Turning around, Brooke saw the pain in her eyes, instantly realising the mistake - the image that lay before Vanessa. The shirtless boyfriend. The blonde best friend. The removed bra. The lube. The fucking lube. She watched the heartbreak play across the theatre screen. She wanted to pause. To rewind. But she couldn’t. Before she could even think the credits were rolling and Vanessa was fleeing the screen, desperate not to get stuck in the aisles giving way to slow paced families and chattering gaggles of teens. She had upped and left.

“No, Vanessa,” she chased her out of the room and down the stairs, repeating it till she turned. Praying she would turn. Not a care in the world who heard or whether she was making a scene because all she needed was for Vanessa to turn.

She didn’t.

“I didn’t do it!” She shouted after the girl. They were outside now, Vanessa running to her car and jumping into the front seat.

“Please.” Before she knew it she was stood in front of the bonnet. Headlights bright in her eyes but she could still see Vanessa’s face. The haunting look of someone who had been crushed into a million pieces and tried to stick themselves back together with fluff-covered sellotape.

Vanessa revved her engine.

Brooke stayed still.

“Move!” she shouted.

Brooke stayed still.

“Fuck sake,” she could make out the movement of Vanessa’s lips as she got out of the car, a sense of hope filling in Brooke’s mind, only for Vanessa to stride straight ahead of her.

“Guess I’m walking home,” she laughed to herself as she built pace on Brooke.

God, she was fast. Reason number 90 why Vanessa is superhuman.

“Vanessa!” Brooke shouted after her friend, “Can you just stop so I can explain what happened you’ve got it all wrong.”

She kept walking.

“Vanessa,” she called again, the girl gaining pace, Brooke wanted to try and tell her about the other girl but knew she was too far away to hear.

She stopped.

“Fuck you,” Vanessa responded.

The words stung. Although Brooke had understood what it looked like from Vanessa’s point of view, she found herself getting frustrated at the girl, did she really not trust her? She knew he cheated, she already knew.

“Was that your way of showing me I’m too good for him? Cause it fucking worked Brooke, ” she said to the girl, her voice rising mid-sentence.

About the ask the girl how she could assume the worst of her so quickly, Vanessa started to let loose at Brooke.

“It wasn’t me Vanessa,” she shouted - her usual polite manners and calm reasoning were thrown out the window. She knew from an objective standpoint that she should just sit down and tell Vanessa what happened but in the heat of the moment when Vanessa was shouting and Brooke started to feel hurt at the accusations, everything was jumbled and a logical approach wasn’t even in the distant horizon.

“You knew anyway!” she found herself getting mad at the girl, mad at the girl she cared for so much letting her boyfriend stomp all over her tiny frame, “You fucking knew!”

“But it’s you,” Vanessa responded, clearly coming from that same place of hurt Brooke had witnessed the night she fought with Jovan, “You don’t understand shit Brooke, so stop acting like you know everything.”

“I understand plenty. You let your boyfriend cheat on you again and again with no consequences but then take it out on me with not an ounce of blame on precious Brad. I get that you feel betrayed but it wasn’t even fucking me, Vanessa.”

“God,” Vanessa was delirious, her eyes looking up to the sky, a laugh escaping her hoarse throat. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

Her stomach full of butterflies, Brooke wanted everything to go back to the way it was. She wanted that magic remote to alter time. She wanted to pause and stay with Vanessa, calm her down, make sure she was okay. She wanted to kiss her, to kiss her till she couldn’t yell anymore, till she believed Brooke, till she understood that all Brooke ever wanted to do was look out for her.

She imagined it, her lips on Vanessa’s the way they had been in the night club - but for real.

The butterflies escaped; punching holes in her skin.

She imagined holding her, hands in her hair. Not the way Brad had been with the redhead - she’d hold her tenderly like a China doll, so brittle that it could break in her hands. She’d run her hands through her dark hair and kiss her with passion, with promise, with whatever it took.

Brooke knew there was nothing more she wanted at that moment than to kiss Vanessa Mateo.

And then Vanessa kissed her.

For real.

She wanted to pinch herself but her hands were glued to Vanessa, magnets unable to resist the gravitational pull.

It was everything she’d imagined and nothing like it at the same time.

Because it was real.

She tasted like artificial cherries. Sweet. She was so sweet.

If Vanessa really was a China doll then Brooke would have broken her by now. The pressure they exerted on each other getting larger and larger, they both gripped tightly as if their lives depended on it. As if they’d been waiting for it, starving for it.

Brooke had, she thought to herself. Had Vanessa?

She didn’t want to question it. All she knew is that it was happening and she wouldn’t stop our of fear that it wouldn’t happen again.

Vanessa’s hands spitting flames everywhere.

She was submerged in the heat, plunged deep into the fiery pit.

Vanessa’s hands on her. All over her.

She was in heaven. Or was it hell. It didn’t matter, because Vanessa was there riding that same train. Until it stopped and left them deserted in a neutral limbo. They heard shouting, their names. Footsteps. They broke apart.

Brooke was confused at where they had arrived and lost in this new world, a familiar voice snapping her back to reality.

Jovan.

Everything flooded back to her. Jovan. Brad. The Redhead. The Amazons.

Vanessa.

“Are yous okay?” he ran over to them, putting an instinctive arm around his sister.

“Brad cheated on me again,” she whispered, barely making eye contact with her brother as he shepherded her away to the car, Brooke in tow.

“Brooke saw him, with another girl.”

Dramatic irony loomed over Brooke, casting a shadow behind her. Vanessa didn’t care about Brad. She cared about Brooke.

The silence was abundant as they sat in the car, Jovan about to turn the engine on before he stopped and turned to the girls: “I’ll be two seconds.”

And he was gone. And they were alone.

“It wasn’t me,” Brooke whispered even though no one was there.

“I know. I just thought it was and it made me-” she stopped mid-sentence. Brooke could almost sense that painful look from the backseat.

“You need to break up with Brad,”

“I can’t,” Vanessa whispered - her fears a can of worms starting to spill out of her. “Brooke, if you tell anyone, if anyone knew,-” she stopped herself again. Brooke could hear her trying to fight the tears, the build up in her throat, she could make out her hands on her eyelashes, willing herself not to cry.

“You need to break up with Brad,” she repeated.

“I think that’s fucked now anyway,” Vanessa responded, “What am I gonna do? Brooke, you can’t tell anyone about that, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

But Brooke’s mind was out of answers, out of solutions, out of reasoning. The only fact her brain could discern was that kissing Vanessa was a lot better than not kissing Vanessa. Now that she’d had a taste of the forbidden cherry she needed another bite. And she’d take one even if it killed her cause god did it taste sweet.

And then Jovan returned. Brooke couldn’t focus on the grin on his face, the happiness he was radiating because her mind couldn’t focus on anything but Vanessa and before she knew it she was outside of her own house, time playing its part as the cruel mistress.

She didn’t sleep that night.

Often she dreamed of the head cheerleader and couldn’t wait to fall asleep so she could nourish in all of her feelings without the guilt. Tonight, the dream was real life and she couldn’t stop replaying it in her head - right until the “what was I thinking”. The painstaking cruel “what was I thinking” that kept it from being a dream after all. But Brooke knew that no matter how much that part hurt, it was worth what came before. She didn’t care about getting burned when she got to dance in the embers - for her, that was enough.

***

Brooke waited and waited the following Monday. She wouldn’t show, she figured. Because she hadn’t texted, she hadn’t called. She’d left Brooke a glass slipper then disappeared once the clock struck midnight.

“Look, we’ll just do some more practice of our routine, it doesn’t look like she’s gonna show and there’s no point in learning something new,” Akeria announced to the group as time started ticking even more and there was no sign of their captain.

“Maybe she’s just late?” Brooke asked with a sense of hopefulness - her mind was at a loss over the weekend, circles of confusion running around her.

She didn’t want to see Vanessa because she had such strong feelings for her, she needed to see her because Vanessa, too, understood what was going on and there was no one else Brooke could talk to about how fucked up her head was since Friday. Everything that had built up since she moved to Tampa had all released at once and she was left feeling empty. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” Brooke wanted to know more than anything - did she feel the same, had she felt the same all along. Unanswered questions made list after list in her head till she found herself starting to walk to Vanessa’s house, always too scared to enter, always too scared to knock, always turning back and taking the smoothest course home instead of the dark, winding, forbidden path to the girl who had kissed her, always too scared of tripping on the branch of an uprooted tree and falling to her demise.

And then all of a sudden she was in front of her. But the spirit that once filled her till she might burst, the pep she carried on her back to practice wasn’t. The things that made Vanessa herself were nowhere to be found - just the shadow of a girl who wanted to be different, who wanted to stand out and be a team, who wanted to kiss Brooke.

“Get in position for a 360 helicopter,” she shouted towards the group - no welcome, no team talk, no look in Brooke’s direction.

“Girl, you know that’s illegal,” Monet looked shocked at the captain.

“Yeah,” Silky chimed in, “I know you’ve been through a breakup but you’re not really thinking straight Vanjie,”

She had broken up with Brad, Brooke realised - her heart began to warm. But then she remembered that she hadn’t texted, hadn’t called. She remembered the “I don’t know what I was thinking.” It didn’t matter that Vanessa had broken up with Brad because she didn’t seem to want Brooke either way.

“This is nothing to do with my breakup. Sure, it’s all fun and games being team spirit and doing grand-jetes but is that really gonna make us beat the Vixens? I’ve been rethinking and we need extreme,”

The squad looked at her with a gulp of astonishment and surprise. There was that sneer of cold command - gone the kind diplomat who the group had began to know.

“We’ve spent weeks learning that stuff, Vanjie,” Jaren gave her a pointed look, clearly fed up with her hot and cold antics. “You can’t change it again, this close to nationals.”

“Why aren’t you in formation for a 360 helicopter?” she responded, ignoring the squads clear discern with her sudden change of pace and heart.

“Brooke, are you gonna get into base position or just stand there letting your ass form it’s own Instagram?”

If she thought Vanessa’s last words to her stung. Then these ones ripped through her skin like she was being stabbed. Quickly and sharply, Vanessa left her to bleed out.

Vanessa was a ball of sporadic blaze and Brooke didn’t know how much longer she could take the changes in her mood. One minute she was beaming with all the heat of a thousand suns. The next she was an icy queen readying to crack anyone that got in her way.

So Brooke did one of the most difficult things she had done in her life - she walked away from Vanessa, straight out of practice, straight out of school, as far away as she could get from the girl who could make her so elated one minute and so beneath her the next. She felt like walking all the way to Toronto and back to her old life, where she had never felt the sinking of heartbreak like this, her naive mind a place of utopia.

***

Her time giving up on Vanessa didn’t last long. 3 days to be precise. After trying and failing miserably to avoid practice, avoid her in the corridors and even avoid Jovan - Brooke had tipped over her boiling point. She knew it wasn’t the right thing to do, she knew she was supposed to be resisting her temptation, but before long she was back walking on that gloomy path, her ability to control her desires out of the window. She had walked away from Vanessa that Monday afternoon but knew she wouldn’t be able to do it again - the need for answers and the lack of knowledge about her own life driving her insane, she needed to know why Vanessa had kissed her, why she acted that way at practice.

Without out even processing where she was going, she made her way to Vanessa’s house, almost like muscle memory had taken her there. Except, this time she didn’t turn around and take the steady course - she dove into the unknown.

She made her way to the girl’s window and tapped, and only then did she realise what she was doing, but it was too late to go back. She’d already taken the gamble and all that was left to do was to wait in nervousness for the result.

Before her was the face of the girl she’d tried every precaution to avoid. As she opened the window, leaving only the density of air between them, Brooke couldn’t tell if she’d won or lost her bet either way.

Bags under her eyes and hairs falling stray from her ponytail, Vanessa looked like she hadn’t slept in a week but Brooke still found herself mesmerised nonetheless.

“I have a front door, yanno,” she broke the silence first.

“Didn’t think my ass would fit through,” Brooke raised her eyebrows at the girl. She may have spent the past few days living and breathing Vanessa but her feelings of passion and desire to kiss the girl again did not fully overshadow the harsh words Vanessa had uttered to her. She wouldn’t let her off the hook that easily.

“Touche,” Vanessa opened the window wider before looking down at Brooke’s asset in question, “Think it might just fit through here.”

“Why would I wanna come in your room, Vanessa?”

“The same reason why you’re outside my window at 2AM,” she responded bluntly.

“Touche,” Brooke rolled her eyes, unable to help herself from falling back into that natural lull of playfulness with Vanessa as she climbed through the frame and into the room, holding onto the other girl’s hand for balance.

That spark never did go away.

“I have a lot of questions for you,” Brooke stated, unsure how to approach the situation, unsure of how to be so close to the other girl without pinning her arms against the wall and kissing her until her jaw ached.

“Shoot,” Vanessa responded, sitting cross-legged on the bed, her hands playing with the cuffs of her oversized jumper. What Brooke had realised to be her own jumper from the night Vanessa had slept at her house. It probably smelt of cherries now, she started to get herself chased away by her thoughts before remembering why she was there.

“Why did you kiss me?” Brooke asked, joining Vanessa on the bed and pressing on the bottom of her chin with her finger so that they’d be making eye contact. She needed Vanessa to look into her eyes and tell her she meant it, tell her she really didn’t know what she was thinking in order to stay that least bit sane. In order to get out of the horrible limbo that she had been floating around in.

“Why do you think?” Vanessa gave Brooke a pointed look.

“I want you to tell me,” Brooke responded, placing a reassuring hand over Vanessa’s, the way she had when she’d watched the girl open up previously.

“I thought you’d got with Brad and I think it just made me see how real it all was,” her voice started to break.

“All what?”

“All this. You, Brooke. From that first time I saw you in the cafeteria, you stood out to me from everyone who watched us, something about you just caught my eye and then you were here in my kitchen and I just about died. I had it all under control, I had a boyfriend who no one questioned, I was captain of the Amazons, I could focus on that. And then I saw you and I just thought ‘god, this girl’s gonna fuck it all up’”

“You didn’t like me,” Brooke said, her mind not fully adjusting to what was happening. She thought she was coming for closure but was now opening Pandora’s Box for all the baggage to spill out. “You didn’t want me on the squad,”

“You really are a dumb, blonde cheerleader, aren’t you?” Vanessa shook her head and laughed to herself like she had when Brooke had asked her about Brad, about why this was any different to what she already knew. “Fucking hell, do I have to spell this out for you?”

“I’d like that,” Brooke laughed, “In a cheer.”

“You just did something to me Brooke, and it scared me. It really fucking scared me and it still is. I tried to push you away but felt guilty so I tried to be your friend, tried to fight it. I let go at the club, but the thought of you with Brad just sent me insane and I couldn’t anymore,”

“It doesn’t matter Vanessa,” Brooke gave Vanessa a reassuring squeeze on the hand. “I’m just glad I wasn’t making all of this up. No one cares. Everyone knows you’re a boss ass bitch and you’d stomp on anyone who got in your way, I don’t think they’d say anything to you. And your parents wouldn’t mind, look at Jovan. You don’t need to keep putting up these defences and trying to push me away every time you show your feelings, there’s nothing wrong with it,“

“I don’t care what people would say about me Brooke, I care about what they’d think. I wanna be known for my talent not who I like. I know it’s 2019 and all this bullshit but I just don’t want that Brooke, I’m ashamed of it. And my parents are different, they love Jovan.”

“They love you,” Brooke pleaded with the girl.

“I don’t want to talk about them,” Vanessa responded and Brooke knew that she had reached her breaking point, with nothing more to do than to pull the other girl into a hug.

And then they were kissing.

If she thought that she’d felt the most passion she was ever capable of feeling on Saturday, then she was wrong. Vanessa was extremely dehydrated and all she had left was the tall glass of Brooke, right there on her bed - and Brooke just couldn’t help but just give herself away.

She kissed with intensity and passion. If an earthquake came and the walls around them started to fall then Brooke wouldn’t have noticed - she was fully engrossed In Vanessa. Vanessa’s mouth pressing against hers. Vanessa’s tongue sliding its way into her mouth with careful precision and warmth. Vanessa’s teeth pressing softly onto Brooke’s bottom lip.

“God, I’ve wanted you to do that for a while,” Brooke whispered to the girl, holding her face between her palms, looking deep into her dark eyes, just stopping to make sure it was all real.

“What about this?” Vanessa asked, a sultry look melting over her face as she ripped the bobble out of her hair and pushed Brooke onto her back, legs either side of her. Slowly she made her way on top of the girl, taking the time to note every detail about her - the look on her face, the way her blonde tendrils spread across the pillow so haphazardly and neatly at the same time.

Although fully aware that she was staring at the other girl, Brooke couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes as Vanessa pressed her body against hers and kissed her again. She watched as Vanessa’s dainty hands made to the edge of her shirt. The fireworks were bigger, better, hotter and all over Brooke’s body. She was fully submerged in the inferno, riding the train down to hell, knowing yet not caring about the consequences.

Nodding her head in consent, the unspoken bond between the two was clear as Vanessa moved her hands up Brooke’s pale chest, caressing her the way no boy had ever done before. So careful and graceful yet so hot and lustful in synchronisation.

The reasons why Vanessa was a super-human built and built till the number reached infinity and the mental list combusted into a million fragments of the beautiful Latina.

Brooke’s back arched with the need to be with Vanessa, to give her everything and more, to release all of the emotions she’d had since that first day and show her how she really felt in a way that transcended the English language.

Her hands made her way through the girl’s dark hair, down to her lower back, exploring Vanessa’s body in a frantic exciting way - unable to stop and stay anywhere at the thought of what lay beyond.

They were two athletes, two perfectionists, pushing themselves to further and further limits till the race was over and they didn’t even know who had came in first place, who had crossed that barrier before the other, but it didn’t matter, because as they lay there holding one another in the beautiful catastrophe of Vanessa’s bed, the only thing that mattered was that they had done it together.

[hatsukoi-butterfly]

Nothing Left to Cling To Review

Spoiler alert!!

First at all, I want to start with Jolex storyline since it's the only one I care about what I waited for the most. The first scene of the episode where they're taking everything that can be dangerous for Jo hurts me so much, especially when they took her ring. Honestly, almost every scene of Jolex made me so sad - how she tells Alex that he has a way out, or how she tells him he doesn't deserve someone who breaks like glass. I hate seeing her so sad, I hate that she thinks of herself as crazy only because she has mental illness. Yes, it's a big part of who she is now, but she's also a brilliant surgeon, super smart person and has such a good personality. She has depression, but it doesn't mean she doesn't deserve love. I was a bit annoyed with the fact Alex didn't tell her all of that after she repeatedly talked about her "craziness" and how he deserves better, but I'll let it go since he clearly had a rough time too. I love that Richard made him realise that he needs to give Jo a reason to stay, but I have to admit the second proposal was a bit awkward. I loved their conversation, but they're already married (I don't care they didn't send the marriage license!!!) So proposing again was weird. However, I really love how he admitted that he thought of leaving but then realised she makes him a better person and he wants to grow old with her and he loves her in sickness and health. It was beautiful. And she jiggles before he kissed her!! I always noticed how she jiggles every time she is going to kiss him or he's going to kiss her and I told myself that the moment she does that, the moment we know she got a little bit better.

Now, Teddy and Owen. I have to admit Teddy is my least favorite Grey's character, or one of my least favorites at least. I really dislike her. I also think he storyline is Owen is stupid and the whole Owen Tom Teddy Amelia thing is annoying as fuck. If I were Tom I would get so mad about what she did to him, but he didn't because he still loves her. I feel sorry for him. He deserves love and be happy and she clearly not the person for him. However, I liked how they showed that she has trouble being a mom. I said couple of times that I can't really "think" of her as a mother, and I'm glad they showed that it's indeed not easy for her. She's a work person, she doesn't really know how to handle it. Also OWEN OFFERING TO MILK HER?? I laughed my ass off oh my god. It was so freaking funny. It's such Owen thing to do. I really disliked how she told him they need a new house tho. Really? Giving away your perfect house only because "this is not how we supposed to start our relationship"? Ridiculous, in my opinion. I hope they'll have less problems from now on, I am sick of the whole love triangle or whatever that thing is. I hope they can focus more on her struggle of being a mom and still be the good surgeon she is.

Amelia and Link! I really like them together, I ship them. I found the way Amelia wanted to take things slow so nice - Grey's always jump into things, people sleeping with people instead of going to actual dates and such so I loved that they actually dates. The whole... Sex with more than one person was a bit weird, but it's such and Amelia thing to do lmao. I loved how Link just went with it, they really fit each other. He's more open minded than Owen and it makes them work. And he's so sweet! I didn't like him at first but now I really do. I also LIVE for his relationship with Alex. Let Jo's boys be friends!! Anyway, now I want to talk about Amelia's pregnancy. It's... First of all, a lot of people in the fandom guessed it's going to happen and I don't know how?? I didn't see it coming, really. And I don't like this storyline, to be honest. Amelia just started to have some "normality" in her life after the whole Owen Teddy Leo Betty whatever thing. She dates and she's happy and now all of the sudden she's pregnant? They didn't really had to do that, I hope she's not REALLY pregnant even though it might breaks her. Also, I'm 100% she's pregnant with Owen's baby because they want thr drama. Urgh.

Jackson and Maggie. I shipped them at the beginning then noticed they're very toxic to each other so I'm glad this is over, but I didn't like how it went. Maggie got SO mad which partly makes sense because he did leave her alone, but I didn't think that's what she'll be so mad about. To be honest, I would like more if they made Jackson seriously hurt - not because I hate him, I LOVE him! - but because it feels like they have nothing to do with him now so they're just giving him random storylines and not very interesting ones. Maybe this could make his story a bit more interesting to watch. I feel bad for Maggie tho, she's really hurt and she's so sensitive I feel sorry for her. I don't know much about Vick from station 19, I only saw one episode of that, but they seemed cute together. I saw a lot of people are against that so I don't know what to think. We'll see where it goes. I just want both Maggie and Jackson to be happy. Not necessarily means they'll have a romantic relationship with someone - Japril was an endgame for me, so for now I think he can be happy without a girlfriend just like Meredith was fine until now. But if he goes with Vick, that's nice too. As for Maggie... She needs someone ad nerd as her lol. I hope she finds someone. I liked her with Deluca, how about making them getting back together? I don't know.

Meredith and Deluca. I REALLY dislike their relationship, I can't stand it, it makes not sense. However, they were barely together this episode so it wasn't a torture to watch lol. Meredith collecting garbage makes me laugh SO much everytime I see it, I live for this. This is just great. And when Bailey asked if he can wear Meredith jacket for school? I laughed so much. And when Zola asked how to spell criminal. It's so sad it's just extremely funny lol. We all know she'll get her medical licence back, she's Meredith Grey and everything and you can't have a medical drama without the main character lol. For now I'm fine with her collecting garbage because it's so funny.

Some other tiny things - I can clearly see why Richard is so mad and while I don't understand why he doesn't retire I don't really get why Catherine got so mad about him getting a new job. What did you want him to do? Sit at home all day? It's your fault you didn't try to help even though you know Meredith is the only one who deserves the punishment she got. I missed Carina! So happy to see her back, she's always a nice addition. Levi and Nico were sweet this episode, I hope it means they'll be better this season because their relationship so far was toxic as fuck.

That's it I think! See you next week