#sorry I think this is far more incomprehensible than my usual posts

[trash-can-sam]

Post-duvos Grace and Qi are so funny bcuz they’re both so smart but Ik they’ll get invested in the dumbest shit to prove they’re better than the other one. I just feel like they get in the stupidest arguments they wouldn’t get in with anyone else.

Qi, who normally would not give two shits about his alma matter, would definitely pull out “Hm. It seems my university is superior in many respects including our football team” (he has no idea how good the football team is) and Grace, who also couldn’t care less, pulls out a “YEAH? WELL OUR BASKETBALL TEAM WIPED THE FLOOR WITH YOURS.” (She also has no idea how good any of the sports teams were.)

Another silly idea I have floating around in my head is Qi going to the blue moon saloon to get a tea and grace is just like “Smh ofc it’s a Friday night and you’re drinking tea” and Qi, who normally would respond with a “yes and what’s wrong with that?” Takes the bait and responds with a “and what would you rather I drink?” And they get into a drinking competition bcuz Grace is under the impression Qi can’t hold his liquor (he cannot but she barely can either.) (Qi wakes up with the stupidest hangover pissed off that he fell for her trick and Grace wakes up with a bit less of a hangover but equally as stupid and upset that she had a genuinely intellectually stimulating conversation with Qi about Gungham)

I also think it would be silly if they did a cooking competition where both of them lose because neither of them can cook a good omelette. Grace thinks hers have improved enough to at least beat Qi who doesn’t cook. They both almost burn down the kitchen.

I just think they egg eachother on in such a specific way where they just can’t resist. They bring the most spiteful parts out of eachother. They get eachother in such a personal way that they know all the buttons to push. And despite it always going badly it’s so fun for them, especially Grace.

I feel like they frequently have battles of wits that neither of them have had for a while and it’s so nice to have someone who you feel you can go back and forth with who you’re more or less equals with.

I also have the funniest idea of Trudy trying to make them get along better post-duvos by assigning Grace as Qis assistant for like a week and they both know this is an AWFUL decision. And it is bcuz they both need too much control. So naturally, they fight over every conclusion reached until a great solution to the problem arises and it’s just a moment where both of them try to disprove eachother but realize neither of them can and every statement that ends in them all agreeing causes more and more excitement until they both decide they’ve finally figured it out. it’s the most excited they’ve both felt in a while over something that really is not a big discovery and is really just them solving a minor problem.

[willryist]

☆ "You Murderous Bastard!" ☆

Pairing: William Afton/Henry Emily

Warnings: Violence (not entirely graphic), toxic relationships but also what's helliam without toxicity

AO3 Post

3,486 Words

divider creds

A/N — Sorry if this is absolute booty butt dogwater I haven't written a fic in more than a year. Don't judge too harshly please and thank you. I'm just a poor little victorian boy. Also editing the fic to fit Tumblr was so annoying this shit took me half an hour

The metallic scent of blood lingered in the air. Streetlights illuminate dark sky, their buzzing acting as white noise.

They'd been fighting for so long that neither could remember who took the first swing. Shoes scuffed on the asphalt beneath their feet, the pair thrashing violently within the nigh empty parking lot as if it were a most amorous dance. With such skin-to-skin contact, these romantics were closer than anticipated.

“You're a sick son of a bitch!” Henry bellowed with a swift punch to William's gut. It took considerable concentration to actually land it, his glasses gone long before this moment. Though he hadn't known where they landed, Henry was sure he'd be buying a new pair. Crimson stained his fists and philtrum like paint.

“Come on Henry! Don't you think this has been going on for far too long?” William wheezed. A poor attempt at composure evident, his chest heaving to retrieve lost air to his lungs. The ab muscles tensed and ached, promising a bruise for the future. “We can talk about this!” Brown hair stuck to the round and sweaty forehead of Afton in a similar fashion to how his clothes clung to his body.

William's attire represented nothing of his behavior now. Adorning a white dress shirt, purple vest with a star pattern, black dress pants, a bright yellow bow tie, and a goofy smile that while usually present, is missing in the moment. It was as if the charisma he emitted at every waking hour drained out of him. Or that it was a shell, hiding true intentions. Henry was beginning to believe the latter.

“You killed my daughter, Bill! We’re past talking, you murderous bastard! I should've known it was you.” Henry's strikes to the plump man were rapid—and sloppy. Energy withheld from the adrenaline rush fading, his arms shook as they lost strength. William found Henry’s faltering a perfect opportunity to dominate—in combat, of course. Afton rushes Henry, nails digging into skin as he grips his shoulders and slams him to the ground. Sat on Henry’s waist to keep him firm beneath him, Henry’s head thrashes onto the hard surface, causing his already aching head to throb with much more intensity.

William’s hand balls into a fist. His knuckles pummel into Henry’s face, skin stretching in reaction. “Don’t leave your child outside of the restaurant with the door locked, Henry! If it hadn’t been me, it would’ve been someone else.” His words were almost incomprehensible, a consistent ringing sound in Henry’s ears acting as a buffer. Even so, Henry could hear the taunting tone. “Are you to say it’s my fault for your own incompetence as a father? Your negligence?” His relentless beating slowed. He seemed to be expecting a response.

“I.. I didn’t notice she was locked out. Some- Some kids were playing a cruel joke...” There was no point in defending himself. Henry knew it had been his fault. Too occupied with his work for the safety of his own daughter. His nights were now spent wide awake, thinking of Charlotte. Of how things were before her death. He pushed himself deep into his work, hoping it would help him forget the tragedy his life had become. All it brought to him were memories. He longed for the days Charlotte and Sammy spent with him in his workshop, joyful sounds filling the room as he worked. He’d never get that back, and he would never get Charlotte back. All that was left was his creations. Fredbear’s.. and the man who stood before him. His business partner. co-founder, and perceived best friend. The man with his daughter’s blood on his hands.

There was no denying Henry’s fluttering feelings for William. Their closeness in private proved so. Flirtatious jokes whispered into one another’s ear too frequently to be only jokes. Sending his family home when the diner closed to “get some extra work done after-hours” with William. Now, Henry wanted nothing but an end to this man, if he could even call him that. He felt disgusted and ashamed in himself for letting someone so vile get so intimate with him, and getting anywhere near his precious daughter. His life.

When Charlotte’s body was found Henry had a strong gut feeling. The name flashed in his mind as he stared into his daughter’s lifeless eyes. William. He pleaded to whatever God was out there that this intuition was wrong, but it persisted in the back of his mind. Asking William if he had any knowledge of Charlotte’s death, he was met with “I would never do anything like that, Henry! You know I cared too much for the little bugger to lay a hand on her! I was her Uncle Will!” and other such phrases during Henry’s doubting moments. He found it suspicious that William’s first response was to defend his own innocence, but he decided to look past it. Bill couldn’t murder his own best friend’s child, right? That was where Henry had been wrong.

Earlier that night, as Henry locked the front doors to the diner, his eyes drifted to what had been on his mind all day. The alleyway. Charlotte’s place of death. Her limp body next to piles of garbage bags as if she were trash. The dull, soulless eyes that once brought so much light into Henry’s life. He was reliving the moment all over again.

Everything he’d bottled up inside for months gushed out of him. He was a jar with a never ending spill of emotions. Henry let out all of his unsaid frustrations and violent thoughts he’s held on himself and the wretched thing that dared to lay a hand on his daughter. He went on and on about the things he’d do to the killer. William stood with him, a hand on his shoulder.

The two were there for longer than either of them wanted. When Henry finally cried himself out, he looked up to William to thank him. Through his tears he saw the smile. It was the kind of mischievous smile you’d find on a kid who knew they had done something wrong. A smile of joyous guilt. This told Henry everything. Anger swelled him like a balloon, ready to pop. Pushing William’s hand off of him, he began to accuse and throw insults. The only thing to keep him from wailing was the red hot fury that engulfed him.

And now, he was here. Taking punches from a murderer. Was he to let William kill him, just as he let him kill his daughter? No. He wasn’t.

Henry puts his hands firm on William’s chest, effectively pushing him back enough to pull away. Taken aback from the sudden action, William is too slow to respond, giving Henry a chance to grab him by the neck. His fingers clenched with an unfound strength. Seeing William gasp and cough for air as he clawed at Henry’s hands fueled him to keep going, to keep squeezing harder and harder. The bluish hue in Afton’s face gave Henry the exact satisfaction he was looking for. A deserving death for a wicked man.

That was until Henry felt a harsh aching pain in his lower chest, and he was shoved backwards. The wind was knocked out of him, and as he tried to catch his breath, his blurry vision focused on William. Though he struggled to process what had happened, William’s raised foot and the dirty shoe-shaped print on Henry’s orange flannel told him what he needed to know.

As much as he wanted to charge at the other man, resume his strangling without any interruptions, and watch him fight in the same way he made his daughter, he couldn’t. His body was close to giving out. William seemed to be in the same state. The two men were laid on the asphalt, propping themselves up with shaky arms and staring at each other with nothing but malice for one another. A stalemate—for now. Henry was determined to see the life choked out of Afton.

William was first to move. Henry was satisfied with the red hand marks left on the other’s neck. He had been so close, and it was time to finish the job. As William approached, Henry’s target was the jugular. Unfortunately, William had suspected as such. He grabbed Henry’s wrists in their ascend to his throat and pinned them down.

Henry never intended on letting William get the upper hand so easily. His arm was able to wriggle its way from the other man's grasp and claw at his purple fuzzy vest, ripping a hole in the fabric. It'd be a comforting texture, if not for the situation. William, infuriated at the damage to his clothing, tried to pull Henry's hand away from the vest, letting go of his other wrist in the process. Henry sat up, effectively pushing the irritated Afton off of him, and readied to swing. William showed similar aggravated energy, fighting back almost immediately. Scratches, bruises, scuffs, and blood covered the two men, their bodies open canvases for the other to paint. Both strive for victory, no matter the consequence, or the casualty.

A battle for power commenced, their bodies tangled like the overgrown vines of a long abandoned castle. The two tumbled about on the ground, tugging and pulling and punching and kicking. Somewhere in between the rough beating, a pinky grazed a bulge, a touch was registered by the other as more tender than it actually was, and lips touched. Unceremonious, unexpected, and sweaty.

Henry fell into the kiss easily. It took him a minute to even process the state in which he was in. Wide eyes stare into William’s closed ones an inch away. His mind yelled at him to pull away from this . . . monster, but his body kept him close. As vile as Afton is, this kind of intimacy feeds the previously dwindling part of his brain that longs for him. For Henry, William is like an addiction. He thinks he can go without him until that rough hand gently rubs his thigh when nobody’s looking, or those loafers ride up Henry’s leg under a table. Once he’s given a taste, a burning in his heart craves more.

Right now he’s cursing that scorching desire. His disgust goes from not just William, but to himself. William Afton, responsible for the disappearance and death of his daughter, for his divorce that caused him to lose his other child, Sammy. William has ruined everything in his life, yet Henry still gives in. But who else did he have? Who was there? His work could not replace human connection, no matter how much he tried to distract himself with it, and even if that connection was coming from someone who Henry couldn’t exactly call human. The only person significant in his life left was the man who destroyed it.

Well, was he really sure Will was the one to do it? It was William’s day off, he wasn’t at the diner during Charlotte’s disappearance. He wouldn’t just drive to Fredbear’s to do that, would he? That smile earlier tonight could’ve meant nothing. Bill has always acted a bit strange, and he’s been one for theatrics ever since Henry knew him. That’s what it was. Nothing. Henry jumped to conclusions out of hurt and a need for justice. That’s all. . .

. . .Who was he kidding? His gut never led him astray, and it sure as hell hasn't this time. William had done it, no doubt about it, and Henry was just as repulsive as William for giving into selfish pining over his own daughter. If anything, he might be more sick in the head. I’m sorry Charlotte, I’m sorry Charlotte, I’m sorry Charlotte. I’m so, so sorry sweet cakes. I’m a terrible father. Please forgive me. . .

A tug of his hair brought Henry back to the scene. William’s hand rested on the back of Henry’s head. Henry’s legs were spread slightly, William’s fitting in between them. Please forgive me, he pleaded once more. His hands reached the other’s back, pulling him closer. Fingers gripped the tattered purple vest.

Gave into him so easily. . .I’m pathetic. A pathetic, horrible man. Charlotte would be horrified and- and. . .revolted. She’d hate me if she were to see me like this. I’m a failure of a father. William’s tongue snaked its way through Henry’s lips. Though an awful intrusion, lust overpowered reason. Barbed wire laced with aphrodisiac, Henry thought of it as.

William’s icy, pale hand drifted over the expanse of Henry’s torso to his shirt collar. Reaching the sweaty tanned skin, he caressed it and twirled Henry’s curly chest hair with his index finger. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, rang in Henry’s mind, and he swallowed with a face flushed red. You’re horrible. Sick. Disgusting.

Nausea deep within his stomach accompanied his carnality, the contrasting mix perplexing him beyond belief. He was unable to comprehend his need for William’s hands all over him and his need to see him dead, and how they were both able to co-exist.

A tug at his flannel’s second button told Henry this wasn’t the time for pondering.

Reopening his eyes, Henry sees just how bad of a number William did on him. Holes and scuffs on his attire were plentiful. The first thought that touched him at the sight was of his wife patching up his damaged clothes. Every patch hand-sewn onto his shirts and pants, each with different patterns. She always refused to use the same fabric on one piece of clothing. Her care for relatively trivial things was endearing to Henry. Her dedication to the craft—even for things as small as Henry’s work clothes—never failed to put a smile on his face. It wasn’t like he’d ever see that again, though. It was now just a memory. Another thing taken from him. He’d frown if it weren’t for the tongue down his throat.

William began plucking at the rest of the buttons. Henry’s lips quivered and fought laughter whenever William’s evident eagerness caused him to make a complete mess of his fingers as he attempted to undo the shirt. William had to break away from the kiss to concentrate. “Havin’ some trouble, Bill?” Henry sneered. “Need some help?”

William shot a glare at Henry before returning to the painstaking task at hand. As far as William was concerned, Henry needed another beating for such a sarcastic tone. Whatever. They were far past that now. Henry’s staring at William’s fumbling hands just worsened his horrible mood. With as level of a voice as William could manage, he said, “Must you stare?”

Henry hastily focused on the vast black of night behind William, and exhaled at the poorly hidden aggravation. Around others, William holds a constantly happy-go-lucky attitude. Nothing ever seems to bother him. However, when it’s just him and Henry, his temper is off the walls. Highly prone to anger, almost anything Henry does that doesn’t fit exactly what he wants when he wants it throws him into a rage. Henry recalled a few times where he disconcertingly watched as William lashed out on his children while visiting his house. Hell, William has lashed out on Henry more times than he could even remember.

William wasn’t always this way, at least from what Henry has seen in the years he’s known him. Before, Henry admired William’s ability to keep composure in any given situation. It was like William was born with the charisma of a talk-show host. With their shared love of robotics and long history together, Fredbear’s Family Diner seemed like the perfect business for the two to start. Beyond perfect, even.

However, the closer the two got, and the longer they spent together, William’s odd behavior became increasingly noticeable to Henry. Henry excused it as the stress that came with running a business, as he’d taken on quite a bit of it himself.

Come to think of it, Henry excused a lot of William’s strange behaviors. Well- everyone has flaws, right? Lord knows Henry has them.

Palms run down Henry’s arms. He shudders involuntarily. Cold.

Blinking his way back into the present, Henry eyes his shirt that was now on the ground and William so close his head might as well be resting on his chest. He got it off already? Huh.

Henry often found himself in and out of the depths of his own mind no matter what occupied him. This situation was no different. Others—especially his wife—were frustrated with how oblivious he was with the world around him because of it. It wasn’t as if he could help it, of course. Whenever he was in that state it was like a personal appointment with his brain. Maybe a therapy session? However he wanted to think of it at the time. Right now he was sure it felt like a long, long therapy session with himself.

However it felt like, he was doing it again. Bringing himself out of such a state while actively in it felt like trudging through quicksand.

The first thing that came to mind to retrieve him from sinking was how freezing he was. It was only sixty degrees, but being shirtless in this kind of weather made it feel thirty degrees lower. “I don’t think I wanna be naked in a parking lot, Bill.”

William grunted indignantly, as if what Henry said was an absurd and unheard of request. ”Don’t you just love being difficult?”

“I’m not asking anything insane. It’s cold, and anybody could drive by. I’m sure at least five cars have come through. I don’t want the whole world to know of us.”

“You sure did all those times in the safe room, or in my office, or any of the unconventional public spaces we’ve been in. I’m surprised your wife didn’t divorce you sooner. I’m sure she’s found out by now.”

Henry could feel his skin sizzle. “You’re one to talk about divorcing wives. Your wife left you years ago.”

“I wouldn’t have given her the chance to catch me cheating on her with another man.”

“You got a hundred-and-ten other things that make you a shitty husband, I’m sure.”

William’s lips scrunched together in vexation. Henry was left satisfied by the silence, assuming it to mean he’s won their little “argument.” Henry wished for much more than winning a trivial dispute, but it’d have to wait. Plans for killing this asshole can be put on hold until they’ve finished their current business.

“Since you’re so insistent, fine.” William stood, albeit a bit wobbly. “Your truck has been lacking in action, I’m sure.” He smiled, amused at himself for simply being. “Is that satisfactory enough for you, Your Whininess?”

William was lucky Henry didn’t punch him square in the jaw. “Sure.” Smart-ass.

Henry grabbed his shirt as he got to his feet and brushed his jeans off with his free hand—as if that would do anything about the blood splattered and stained all over the denim. Wiping his forehead with the shirt, he realized just how much he’d been sweating. Henry’s forehead was completely slick, and so was the rest of his upper body. Turns out fighting your child-murdering best friend whom you have a homoerotic relationship with, then making out with said best friend in the middle of fighting, takes a toll on you. Who would’ve thought.

William closed the gap between the two men almost as soon as Henry stood. With his hands rested on Henry’s waist, his mouth intertwined with Henry’s. William began inching toward the truck, pushing Henry with him.

The two stumbled like drunken fools in their venture to the Chevrolet, stepping on each other’s feet and almost tripping over each other more than once. You wouldn’t want these two in a dance competition.

Henry slung his shirt on his shoulder and gripped William’s top vest button. Trying to balance kissing, undressing, and walking backwards might as well have been a circus clown’s juggling act, because it sure as hell felt like it to Henry. He accidentally broke a few buttons in the process. Oh well. If he can kill his best friend’s daughter, he can spare a button here and there.

Henry had just reached the second to last button on that God forsaken vest when he felt himself get slammed against something cold and hard. It felt like his truck. A pained wince escaped him, but it was easily drowned out by the plethora of other noises he and William were making.

With Henry’s sticky back pinned to the driver side door of his rusted 1978 Chevrolet C10, William’s fingers snuck to the carabiner attached to Henry’s belt loop, taking the pickup truck’s key and turning it in the key hole.

“You’re sick.” Henry snarled, though he didn’t fight the invasive hands that pushed him onto the truck’s bench seat.

[wanderingthroughsands]

Wandering through sands

Author's note: I wrote this fic two years ago in my native language. Due to differences in our "fanfiction cultures," in mine I use a first-person narrative, and also, my protagonist actually have a name because I wholeheartedly believe (and I think so does Neil Gaiman) that names do have meaning. If any of you feel discouraged by this, I'm sorry. But I hope you will come along on the ride with me anyway. And of course, I apologize for any language mistakes.

This is my spare blog btw. I'm too embarassed to post this fic on my main account.

Premise: My mom always says I was "a child of her dreams". I rarely cried, even more rarely got scared, and never, ever—something she still loves to emphasize—woke up screaming at night. And indeed, even today, I cannot recall ever having a nightmare in my life. But this does not mean that nightmares never happen to me, for in truth, I see nightmares quite often, maybe even more often than a regular person. It’s just that—these are not my nightmares.

Pairing: Dream of the Endless x original fem!character

Timeline: Netflix series-verse with hints of comics, post-season one

Content Warning: swearing, angst, tension, threat, basically Dream being Dream, mentions of sexual abuse later in the story, not proofread :(

* * *

Prologue

And meet me there Bundles of flowers We'll wade through the hours of cold Winter shall howl at the walls Tearing down doors of time – "Promise" by Ben Howard

Ever since I remember, I’ve always had this feeling that there was something wrong with me. But not in the typical sense of "wrong", with all the usual trappings of being different from the rest of the world and nurturing a sense of uniqueness that, understandably, no one ever openly admits to. It was rather something that had always existed within me, something indefinable, that, despite my biggesr efforts, has thus far prevented me from being happy.

Over the span of my twenty-three years, I must have heard my mother’s incomprehensible pride at least a million times, as she recounted to all our friends and acquaintances that I truly was a child of her dreams. I rarely cried, even more rarely got scared, and never, ever—something my mother still likes to emphasize—woke up screaming at night. And indeed, even today, I cannot recall ever having a nightmare in my life. But this does not mean that nightmares never happen to me, for in truth, I see nightmares quite often, maybe even more often than a regular person.

It’s just that... These are not my nightmares.

It all began with the accident that confined me to a hospital bed for several weeks, just before the end of high school. It's amazing how vividly I remember that day, though it was not unlike the others, filled with discussions about college choices and tentative steps towards packing my bags. On the day of the accident, I slept longer than usual, so when I finally entered the kitchen, my mother was just closing the apartment door behind her. I remember what I ate, what I wore, what I listened to as I left the stairwell, which bus I took, and at what time I headed to the library. I remember the face of the elderly man sitting next to me and the woman with a child pressed so tightly to her chest that it might as well have been an extension of her own body.

I also remember the moment I got off near the park, where, as usual, it was bustling with people. A group of young boys were tossing a ball, couples strolled along the gravel paths, and children dashed among the trees. I paused on the sidewalk, adjusted the bag on my shoulder, and some impulse, an inner compulsion, made me look toward a distant bench, as if I expected to meet someone there, although I was supposed to go in the opposite direction. It was a unique feeling, something between fear and anticipation, like when you hear the sound of rustling bushes during a walk through a dark, silent forest. In that split second, before I took a step in that direction and was brutally struck by a man speeding on his hoverboard, I saw two people: a beautiful, dark-skinned woman and a man with black hair and skin white as snow. And then...

My mother told me, sobbing, that I had been unconscious for two days, though I could swear that in my mind, decades, if not centuries, had passed before I came back to life.

At first, I was surrounded by boundless fields of green, which I traversed with an incredible calmness I had never felt before. I could literally feel the softness of the grass under my feet, the gentle breezes stroking my hair, the pleasant warmth of the sun's rays on my skin. I’m almost certain I didn’t wonder if I had die at that time —however ridiculous it might sound, in that beautiful place full of greenery, I felt more alive and present than ever. It was as if something had awakened within me, filling me with a fresh, invigorating energy I had sought in vain for years.

Absorbing this newly discovered tranquility, I wandered forward for countless hours until I finally came upon a door hidden among the trees. When I passed through it, the soothing greenery disappeared—replaced by a picture of a young woman, visibly terrified, hiding from something or someone in an old, dilapidated residential building.

I was sure I had never seen her before, yet I immediately felt her fear, her vigilance, though not quite as if they were my own—rather, as if my heart somehow knew their source, their origin, and their meaning. I looked around and, seeing no threat she was anticipating, decided to approach her. The woman acted strangely, casting glances everywhere, breathing heavily and whispering something to herself. When I drew near, at first she screamed, then threw herself at my knees and, gripping my hands tightly, she sobbed:

"Please, you have to help me escape, I can't go through this again! You must help me, please, please, get me out of here!"

"Where are we?" I asked confused, kneeling in front of her. "What is this place?"

"You have to help me, I won't survive this again, he'll be here any minute now!"

"Who? Who will be here? And how can I help you?"

The woman burst into tears and pushed away my hands, curling up in the corner of the corridor and burying her head in her arms. I heard her whispering again, but I couldn't make out a word.

"Please, tell me what’s happening here?" I approached her slowly, and when I came close enough for my face to almost touch her hair, I finally managed to hear her say:

"I just want to wake up... I just want to wake up... I just want to wake up..."

"So this is a dream?" I stood up and looked around again, only to realize I had never been in a place like this before, and certainly had never dreamt of anything like it in my life. Was I now dreaming the nightmare of a stranger, then? Why? And was that a reason I felt no fear myself but could actually know hers with every fiber of my body?

The woman kept whispering to herself, sobbing between words, and completely involuntarily I began to ponder if, and how I could help her wake up.

"You know you're just dreaming, right?" I said to her in the gentlest voice I could muster. "And you actually can wake up if you choose to?"

When she didn't respond, I touched her arm and continued, "When there's something I don't like in my dream, I try to change it. Like when I run too slow, I imagine I have roller skates on my feet, and they appear instantly. Once you realize that you’re dreaming, it is actually quite easy to wake up, at least most of the time. Would you try that for me?"

"He'll be here soon, he'll be here soon," she whimpered, as if she hadn't heard a single word I just said, and when she abruptly turned her face to me, I saw true anguish on her face. "Help me escape from here, please, I’m begging you, just help me get out!"

"Alright, alright, it’s okay! Please, at least try to calm down," I said and closed my eyes tightly as I strained to find a solution to her trouble.

The woman was too terrified to rationally analyze her situation and pave her way to awakening. But I wasn't. Despite all the bizarre happenings in my dream, I felt nothing but compassion for her and her overwhelming fear. And since apparently it was my dream, not hers, no matter how twisted it might be, I could try to do the same thing I always did when a dream turned unpleasant—change it.

"Give me your hand," I requested, and she reached out her trembling hand, allowing me to help her up. "I'll try to take you home."

Staring at the stone wall, gripping her fingers, I thought about the door, behind which she could wake up. On the other side it could be her room, her bed, her home—didn’t really matter to me how they might look, because it all was just one of my dreams and the girl probably didn't even exist at all... But if I could somehow do anything to actually bring her peace, I would try to take her wherever she wanted.

As predicted, and utterly against all logic, the doors appeared almost instantly, seamlessly integrated into the dilapidated building as if they hadn’t appear there at my unspoken request.

"You'll walk through these doors now," I said, taking a step towards them with her. "And when I close them behind you, you'll wake up, and this nightmare won't haunt you anymore."

"I want to wake up..." She kept repeating. "I want to wake up..."

"This way you can escape from here. Go. And I hope your next dreams will be much less frightening."

The girl disappeared in an instant, but she immediately got replaced by a frightened boy at a school board. Then there was a monk, who saw devil faces in the image of Jesus. Then a man standing with bloodied hands over a child's body. Then a couple engaged in a fierce argument. Nightmare after nightmare, I participated in hundreds of scenarios, witnessing pain, death, illnesses, wounds, rejection, loneliness... and each time, helping dreamers to awaken, because they just couldn't end their nightmares on their own. It was the longest, most astonishing dream I had ever experienced.

And when I finally woke up myself, I immediately felt that something was wrong with the place I had re-entered. And with me as well—except this time, I clearly felt as though I had transitioned from a safe haven in the dream world into my personal nightmare of reality.

I had suffered a serious head injury and a broken leg. My mother watched over me almost constantly, first in the hospital and then at home. Friends dropped by occasionally to bring me school updates or simply to check on me. After a few painful weeks, the cast was removed, and I began rehabilitation. I recovered relatively quickly... at least from a medical standpoint.

Because my bizzare dreams never ceased. They returned regularly, offering me a kind of respite from everyday life, despite the terrifying images and intense emotions of the people I encountered. Awakening people became my own personal mission — meanwhile, I started college, then finished it, and applied for an internship at a small publishing house.

The accident rooted yet another thing within me. Fear. And anticipation. Several times I returned to that park, waiting for the mysterious couple to appear again — the beautiful, young woman and the man as dark as the universe. However, years passed, and they never came.

Until that one night came, the night full of awakenings like many other nights before. And then suddenly, amidst all the nightmares, I finally encountered Dream.

[that-one-weird-kid-from-school]

Hey.

I want to talk to you all about yesterday and the night before that.

For the sake of pointedness, I'm just not gonna count the night before yesterday because it was just the last few hours; if I say the past two days, it might sound like my state was two full days long, which was not true.

I was not in the best mental state yesterday.

My perception of reality was really bad; in comparison to my normal perception of reality, it was not so different, but the problem was that my brain was boiling the whole time.

You guys don't know how bad it is, if I close my eyes for, like, 10 seconds, I will forget that I am in the real world: I will forget which room I'm in, I will forget how far my limbs are from my body, I will forget the feeling of air on my skin; it's really bad, if you have ever thought that I might have even an ounce of sanity, then you're dead wrong.

That is usually not that big of a deal; when a goof-up of perception happens, it immediately gets corrected by green, aka the logical side of me, or just my sight and memory, but this time it was different somehow.

I don't know what happened, but the disagreement between pink, what I think, and green, what I know, was longer than usual, and then red decided to exaggerate everything because it was entertaining.

That was basically it, a bit of loudness inside my head for a day, except that was not that easy.

I told you before how I can't perceive reality all that well; well, a part of that is that I am not good with time.

I'm awful at taking time; it's impossible for me to understand how long something will take; 2 or 3 hours ago feels like yesterday sometimes, and I just can't comprehend more than 3 days, and that's not even all of it; things are really bad.

Thankfully, I have started drawing in my diary every day and posting on Tumblr at least once a day, which helps me remember what was yesterday. Daily posts might be draining at times, but at least it keeps me a smidge more sane. Fun fact: ever since I started posting on April 1st, I have started consistently keeping track of the days, not what days of the month or week there are or anything, just acknowledging that the days are passing.

So yeah, I'm not good at guessing how long days are, but yesterday was extra bad; yesterday felt like five days; in my mind, yesterday was an incomprehensible amount of time; I was so fucking insane that it broke the space-time continuum.

Don't worry guys, yesterday was not too bad for me, I was not under too much stress, the concept of a week breaks me down way more, the feeling was more like my mind was being boiled and that boiling caused my scull to have a lot of pressure, you kinda just have to wait it out.

Well, I was lucky because I had Chirry by my side; she helped me so much with this; I think that it was by her help that I was able to wake up okay.

I don't pay as much attention to her as I do to Jevil, but that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate her. Chirry is the sane one of the Neo Trio, she has the best grasp of reality, whenever I feel stressed and want to keep the small amount of sanity that I have left, I can't go to Jevil, he's crazy too, he can't fix that, but Chirry, Chirry can, and I and I appreciate her for that.

Thank you, Chirry...I'm sorry that I don't say your name that often.

[army-of-bee-assassins]

back with more questions regarding image descriptions!!

let's say there is an artwork for a fandom that is specific to one country mostly. (Czechia in this example) since the thing the fandom is based on is in Czech. should I write the image description in English or in Czech?

also I've heard somewhere that proper writing should be used in them, is that true? like if the original text is caps lock I should put it to regular. or when no punctuation is used, I should add it.

i hope these aren't stupid, questions. I'm thinking of adding descriptions to all pictures on my art sideblog and I want to do it right :)!!

hi there! sorry for the late response on this one!

so for your first question, i would write the image description in czech in that case! generally speaking, i would write in the language that most of the post's audience will be using. or perhaps whatever language the op was using. you can also do the image description in more than one language (like english and czech for example) if you want. but one language will generally be sufficient.

in terms of proper grammar in image descriptions, i am not sure that it is vital (tho people are welcome to correct me on this), but i believe that it is preferred by some people. i usually use proper capitalization and punctuation in my ids. but again, any id is better than none.

as for correcting punctuation and capitalization when transcribing text, usually the rule of thumb is to transcribe the text as-is, without editing anything. the main exception would be for an honest-to-god typo (like fully a mistake, not a misspelling that was added for comedic effect) that may affect the post's legibility. in that case, you can usually correct the spelling. but otherwise i wouldn't edit the capitalization, spelling, or punctuation. if something would be truly incomprehensible for a screen reader (like something with a lot of words intentionally misspelled), then you might transcribe it as-is, followed by a "translation"/plain text of what it's meant to say.

when it comes to things that are in all caps - there are some mixed thoughts on this. i think these days most screen readers will read all caps just normally, but certain words may instead be read as an acronym. for example, "it" in all caps might be read as "I-T", like the acronym for "information technology." another thing to note is that no screen reader (as far as i'm aware) will make any note of something being in all caps. this means that when all caps are used for emphasis, a screen reader user has no way of knowing that the emphasis was there. lastly - and maybe this is just a personal preference and doesn't extend to other people - i find it kind of difficult to read a long stretch of text (like, more than a few sentences) that is in all caps. for all of these reasons listed, i often like to transcribe all caps with normal capitalization, just with a note that indicates that it was in all caps. for example: "The sign reads: [in all caps] 'do not enter'". these sorts of notes can also be added when all caps are used for emphasis. however - i'm honestly not sure if there's an agreed best practice on the transcription of all caps text. or if there is, i still need to learn about it.

just as a general note for alt text and image descriptions - a great way to learn a bit more about how screen readers work is to try out the screen reader on your phone! pretty much all modern phones have a screen reader in the accessibility settings, and you can set up a quick shortcut to turn it on and off with ease. for my phone, i just hold down both volume keys for a few seconds to turn it on. once the screen reader is on, swipe left or right to change what is highlighted and being read, and double tap to select what is highlighted. there are more settings than that, but that's what you need for just basic navigation. once you've figured out how to use your screen reader, try it out on different tumblr posts to see what it's like, and try it out on alt text or image descriptions that you write to see if they read well.

thanks for the thoughtful questions again!

[glassautomaton]

incomprehensible lightlament tagger here so I feel obligated to defend my honor.

I think for me it comes down to 1) a lot of the (especially earlier) senior staff writing kind of sucking objective ass but then having these brief flashes of the most intriguing shit you’ve ever seen in there. mediocre stories with a great deal of potential are like crack to me (at least when it comes to actually making fanwork) bc they get my braingears turning as to how to expand on them (+ of course the handful of fucking brilliant senior stuff tales hidden in the clutter that will fuck you up forever that work precisely bc of the notoriety of the characters theyre about and that, I suspect, were created by people who felt very similarly to me) and 2) I just. rlly like the foundation as a setting and like pretty much every goi-associated character the senior staff all ultimately offer some unique perspective on foundation doctrine; clef is interesting bc of his shitty self-loathing deflection complex motivated by his past on in the goc & the fact he doesnt even work here of his own accord (see: the vanguard side of the no return canon for some pretty cool recent writing on this), light is interesting bc of her determination to hold on to a veneer of morality despite the general fuckedness of everything which, given the prominence of her being in some way entangled with the o5s, can turn her downright hubristic in some tales (see: the new faces splintercanon on the resurrection hub for this). which isnt to say original characters cant be that but having these established fairly iconic characters can be a useful shortcut and with the sheer context of everything that already exists on these guys you can usually end up somewhere very interesting a lot quicker than if you were to build your own characters from the ground up.

I will say though I immensely respect the notion of just straight up not caring about any of the big name characters, I kind of envy you if I’m honest. I think like stroytelling enjoyer motivations aside part of the senior staff’s appeal does also stem from people especially in fandom being more willing to engage with stories that have characters they’re already emotionally attached to in them which, y’know, isn’t a sin, people like what they like, but I do think people miss out on some real bangers hidden on the wiki because of it. I recognize I am part of the problem here, but, yknow, I dont control what the brain attaches itself to.

anyway, cheers! sorry again about the lightlament, i will say that isnt normal youve just accidentally stumbled into a mutuals circle of people who are categorically not normal about dr light. spiders georg etc

I think I get what you’re trying to say here, and again, it’s largely similar to why I wanted to write Resurrection-family articles in the first place. There is a bit of a difference though: I read Resurrection when I was a lot younger, when it first came out. Back then I hadn’t really been as discerning or critical of what I read on the wiki, so I either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the flaws in the story, and I liked it pretty uncritically. Even back then I wanted to write for it, and years later, when I decided to write for the Wiki, I still did. At that point, I noticed a lot more issues with Resurrection on re-read, but I was already attached to the canon. It was really influential to how I viewed the wiki, so in spite of its flaws it’s important to me as an SCP writer. These days, though, I’m probably far too critical to get attached to things in the same way, hence my general apathy towards staff stories (though it might be worth noting that even back then, I found senior staff stories annoying as I outlined in a previous post).

I also understand your second point about the staff representing interesting aspects of the setting. As a writer, though, in a lot of cases I just kind of figure “why bother with all that baggage when I can just write my own character that I’ll enjoy writing more and is better tailored to my needs?” And, again, these characters just seem too ill-defined to get a good bead on. That sort of falls back to the whole “why bother with wrangling all that when I can make my own character.” I wrote Iris because I find her whole deal as an established SCP to be interesting at a basic level, even if I find the original SCP-105 article itself to be bland and uninteresting. I am aware that by trying to write one solid interpretation of her I am only adding fuel to the fire of her having too many interpretations but one day I’ll have the majority of 105 tales under my name. Then who’ll be laughing.

And I definitely get just wanting to use characters that people already know. From a more cynical standpoint, it would help with interest in your content - as I’ve said before, my tales featuring more original characters haven’t done well - but just on an “I have an interest in this thing and I want people to talk to about it” level I get it. Lord knows how many times I’ve latched into a character from something only to see a grand total of two dudes and an ambitious octopus who also like them on the internet.

[redbayly]

Hey, guys. I normally try to live free of drama, but drama sometimes just catches up to me. In the last 24 hours, someone started leaving some really rude reviews on one of my most popular fanfics on Fanfiction.net. Now, this is not something new. Despite how well-liked this particular fic is and how many wonderful, kind, and thoughtful reviews I’ve gotten, the nasty ones stand out.

These latest reviews were, by no means, the worst I’ve ever gotten. I once had someone spam me with some of the vilest, most disgusting insults and threats I have ever seen. What set these reviews apart is that they wrote them under their own account. Normally, these guys like to post their nastiness under the anon/guest heading, so it’s fairly simple to just delete them. Not so when posted under an account.

The messages, as I said, were initially just rude. Insulting my OCs (who were basically just background extras) and just generally not contributing any critique of substance on this roughly ten-year-old fanfic. They then left one neutral comment and then one actually kind of nice comment, but then completely shifted into saying I was making “stupid decisions” and that I was “going to destroy everyone’s character” before saying they were dropping the fic. 

They then wrapped it up by telling me to kill myself.

This is the first time I have ever had to report abuse. Again, I normally just delete anything hateful or rude because it’s usually anonymous, but I couldn’t do that here.

What’s more, no one ever, EVER, has any business telling someone to kill themselves. Not only is it incomprehensibly cruel, it is actually illegal to do online. I told my father (a retired lawyer) about what had happened and he said, “Yeah, no, they can’t do that, it’s a federal crime. If Fanfiction doesn’t do anything about it, that is a liability to them.” So I’m fairly confident that there will be some consequences for this person’s atrocious behavior.

Thing is, though, I’m not even angry about it. I’m just really disappointed that someone feels that it is acceptable to say such things to a stranger online. I had sent a couple PMs to them before I reported them, but got no response. I really do wonder what is so messed up in their life that they didn’t see what they were doing as wrong. The gentler, more nurturing side of me really wants to sit down with this person and ask if they are okay. 

I recently applied for a teaching job (English) and one of the things I’d like to do, if I get it, is teach my students about how to give good critique. I’ve seen too much toxic stuff online and I feel the best way to combat it is by teaching young people how to express their opinions on other people’s work in ways that are constructive and healthy. Part of the problem with reviewers like the one I dealt with, I think, is that they weren’t taught that disliking something doesn’t give you the right to be abusive. And that is something that needs to be learned as soon as possible.

All in all, though, despite how that person treated me, I just feel sorry for them. It doesn’t matter to me that they hated my fic. If I’m totally honest, I’ve fallen out of love with that fic, myself. But the amount of anger that has to exist inside of someone for them to tell another human being to kill themselves (over a crappy, old crackfic at that) speaks volumes about what kind of a place they are at in their life. I only hope they find better outlets for that anger than leaving comments like those. I have had some problems with mental health and suicidal thoughts in the past, so telling me to kill myself really strikes at a sore spot. However, I was able to take it in stride and, while it will definitely linger for a while, I will be able to move on.

What worries me most is that they might say something like that to someone who can’t move on. And that could have far more serious consequences.

[castlevader]

get rid of any doubts

A/N: BEFORE YOU READ, i’m hoping to learn more about DID and even tho if this is super simple and short i hope everything is okay ( lmao if that makes sense ). i forced myself to write and this is what came out, so i’m sorry if this sucks, i hope to do better the next time so pls be kind 😭 thank you for reading my stuff

PAIRING: steven grant ( moon knight ) x gn!reader

( i initially wrote this with a fem!reader but then changed it, if there’s something that i forgot to change lemme know pls !! )

WARNINGS: nothing, written in lowercase and no proofread bc lmao

if you wanna send a request check my pinned post and the guidelines post first <3

go ahead.

“what?? y-you’re crazy,” steven replied, getting a concerned look from a couple that was walking not so far away. he was nervously playing with his nails, his eyes focused on your face, barely visible through the book store’s window.

just ask them out and get rid of any doubts.

“shut up, that’s the worst idea you ever had,” he sighed, but slowly started walking towards the store. he pushed the door open and your voice immediately filled his ears, calming him down a bit. steven sent you a look and noticed you were chatting with one of the clients, so he quickly reached a section and tried to not give the impression he was there just to talk with you.

grab a book.

“what?” he slightly jumped, too focused looking at you.

grab a book and buy it, then ask them out again.

steven thought about it for a moment, then grabbed a random book, hoping it wasn’t too expensive. he walked towards you and tried to calm down— you already went out on a date a while ago, he knew you were kind, and gentle, and you would— “hello?,” your voice startled him, steven got lost in his thoughts for a moment and the person you were talking with was long gone.

“oh, hello,” his cheeks started heating up, but he tried to ignore it. “hi,” he nodded and stared at you for a moment. “are you gonna buy it or …?” you pointed at the book in his hands and steven looked at his hands and then nodded again, handing the book to you. you couldn’t help but smile at his embarrassment.

“i guess you enjoyed paella so much you wanted to try cooking it yourself?” you joked, checking the book price and then looking for a bag under the counter. “excuse me, what?” steven confused expression surprised you a bit, he seemed more distracted than usual. “the cookbook, it’s about spanish dishes,” you showed him the book and then put it in the bag.

“oh, right! yeah, spanish food. yes, i-i was curious about…” his mumbling became a set of incomprehensible words, but you didn’t interrupted him because he was already looking for his wallet in the meanwhile. “thirteen,” you said and steven nodded.

“so, um… i was wondering, y’know, if you would m-maybe go out with m-me, again,” he said while you were putting the money in the register. you glanced at him and you noticed that his eyes were focused on your hands, he was probably too embarrassed to look right into your face.

“oh, okay. it would be fun, i enjoyed spending some time with you,” you smiled and hoped he would meet your eyes. so he did. “amazing!” he exclaimed, but then apologised. it made you chuckle and you glanced around the store for a moment. “it’s okay if we go eat lunch together? i’m almost finished with my shift, so…” you shrugged and silently hoped he would say yes.

“that’s-that’s amazing, i recently got fired so i don’t have anything to do for today,” he told you without second thinking, but then cringed at his words. “i mean, i’m free today so it’s amazing, i mean it’s amazing that you accepted and that we’re gonna have lunch together,” he started talking rapidly before you could add something and you nodded slowly, handing him the bag with his book.

“i’m sorry, it’s-it’s just that i think i like you, like you very much, and i’m terrified,” he murmured, but cringed right after telling you, it probably wasn’t the way he wanted to tell you all of that. he was concerned by your silence and quickly met your eyes.

ah, shit.

“i-um… m-maybe we can talk about it later?” your cheeks were burning and your heart was beating so fast you feared he could actually hear it too. “yeah, of course! yes, see you later… i’ll wait outside.”

you watched steven exiting the store quickly, almost stumbling into his own feet and you smiled at his clumsiness, trying to recover from his recent words.

you kind of felt the same way about him, but you never thought he actually liked you as more than a friend, so it truly surprised you.

🏷 list: @xbeauxny @weinersolider @iwannabekilledtwice @baby-shy @sunwardsss @marlboromatt @powerpuffluuvv @transias @luvxginger @atlas-nex @evilcr0ne

( if you wanna get tagged under my moon knight fics, lemme know so i add your nick@ to its taglist <3 )

[belphies-wife]

Sick Belphie Part 1

Belphie’s the youngest/the baby brother so when he’s sick everyone suddenly starts coddling him and taking care of him. I will die on this hill.

Also, again, no beta. We’re still dying like Lilith.

Oh, and I apologize for posting this late, I was quite busy of Wednesday and Thursday and couldn’t complete this on time. Sorry if it’s short.

If your requested something from me, please the bottom for a some information on how I’m dealing with requests.

Part 2 will (hopefully) be out sometime next week.

»»————-　♔　————-««

No one had noticed that Belphegor had fallen ill at first. He seemed normal, albeit maybe he had been sleeping more than usual, but nothing too out of the ordinary. The symptoms weren't concerning either. Even Belphegor hardly noticed it.

No, the realization came that night, when everyone had retired to their rooms and gone to sleep, and the night terrors had plagued their minds. Their darkest fears were pulled from their thoughts' deepest crevices and made into something so seemingly real.

You had been the first to wake up that night, face streaked with tears and a scream at the tip of your tongue. That was no normal nightmare. It seemed so real. Too real.

A cry echoed from down the hall, prompting you to leap out of bed and momentarily forget about your dream and rush towards the sound. Perhaps most people living under your circumstances would have learned never to rush headfirst into potentially dangerous situations. Still, you lacked any sense of self-preservation and never seemed to learn anything from your past experiences.

The noise had come from Mammon's room, and you didn't hesitate to slam open the door, bursting in.

"Mammon!? Are you alright!?" You asked, fearing for the worst.

Tears trickled down the Avatar of Greed's face. "Ain't nothin' serious." He muttered, wiping them off and turning away from you. "Just a bad dream."

"That's weird. I had a nightmare too. What did you dream about?"

Mammon shook his head. "I don't wanna say."

"It's alright. You don't have to if you don't want to." You said. "Don't you think it's strange that we both had a nightmare at the same time?"

Mammon sniffed, thinking for a moment. "If the others also had nightmares, then maybe..."

"Maybe what?"

"Maybe Belphie's sick."

You frowned. "You should go back to sleep. I'll investigate." You were out the door to find Beel already awake. He seemed surprised to see you.

"Did you have any bad dreams?" You asked.

Beel blinked at you, confused. "How'd you know?"

"Mammon and I did too."

Beel frowned before the realization dawned in him. "Belphie..." He said, furrowing his brow in concern.

You made your way over to Belphie's bed, inspecting the sleeping demon for any signs of illness. First, you had to move the pile of blankets stacked on top of him so that you could get a good look at him.

The poor Avatar of Sloth's face was flushed with fever and despite the three blankets he had wrapped around his body, he was shivering.

"Oh, you poor thing." You cooed, pressing your palm against his clammy forehead. He subconsciously leaned into your touch, the coolness of your head providing temporary relief. 

“I’m sorry. I should have realized sooner.” Beel apologized.

“It’s not your fault.”

“You should get Lucifer. He’s probably awake already. Belphie... when he gets sick he causes everyone asleep at the same time as him to have nightmares. Well, everyone around him, at least. He can’t help it.”

You nodded your head and headed of to Lucifer’s room, sparing Belphegor one last glance. You made sure to knock, just in case Beel had been wrong. He wasn’t.

“Belphie’s sick.” You told Lucifer once he opened the door. “He has a really high fever. Can you check on him? I’m worried.” You asked.

Lucifer was already making his was to Beel and Belphie’s room, his pace significantly faster than usual. You were almost jogging to keep up with him.

Beel was by Belphie’s bed, fretting over his sick twin. He moved aside when he saw Lucifer come in.

The Avatar of Pride checked his youngest brother’s temperature like you had done before, concern flashing across his features.

“Is it bad?” Beel asked, the worry he had for his twin evident in his voice.

“He’ll recover, if that is what you are asking. We will, however, have to help in nursing him back to health.”

Belphegor stirred in his sleep, but didn’t open his eyes.

“Go ask Satan if he can make some sort of medicine.” Lucifer instructed you. “And Beel, go get a bowl of water and a clean washcloth. Let’s see if we can do something about that fever.”

Satan, after learning of her brother’s ailment, was quick to start concocting a medicine that he claiming would help make Belphie’s fever more bearable and clear his sinuses. You weren’t sure if his eagerness stemmed from concern or from the fact that he probably wouldn’t be getting a good night’s sleep until Belphie started recovering, but it was the thought that counted.

You returned to the twin’s room to inform Lucifer that Satan was working on the medicine. There, you found that Belphie had woken up, though his eyes were barely open.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were sick?” You asked him, but he only muttered something incomprehensible in response. You didn’t push him to repeat himself.

“Go back to sleep. You need your rest.” Lucifer told Belphegor with a softness you’ve never heard in his voice before. “We were all supposed to be awake in an hour, anyways.”

Belphie closed his eyes again. It didn’t take long for him to drift off.

“Would you be alright with staying with him for the day? We have a student council meeting to attend to.” Lucifer said.

“Of course.”

»»————-　♔　————-««

Hi! Thank you so much for everyone who requested something from me! All of the requests have been quite long so far, so, as stated in my bio, I’ll be posting them on Sundays. I have three so far, so I’ll be doing the first this Sunday, and the second on the next one, and so on and so forth. If you’d like to make a request but have it posted sooner, try to limit your request to it being for a maximum of four characters, or request a full fic instead of a listfic/headcanon for one character.

You guys have been so sweet with my first few posts and it makes me unbelievably happy that there are so many of you enjoying my content. I thank you all from the very bottom of my heart <3

Thank you so much for reading!

Request a Fic/Headcanon || Obey Me Masterlist

[give-grian-rights]

CHAPTER TWO HOUR. CHAPTER TWO HOUR. I AM SO TIRED. IT IS 6AM. TELL ME IF HTERE’S TYPOS AND THAT NORMAL STUFF

Bets Against The Void, Chapter 2

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Whitelist au from @petrichormeraki

Crossposted on AO3

Tubbo quietly chuckled, smiling fondly as their friend squawked indignantly. “Tubbo! I’m serious, explain some shit, fuckin’ nerd!” Tommy scoffed, prodding at their side with his elbow. Tubbo hushed him, their smirk still lingering.

  “Hermitcraft is a super crazy popular server. If you’ve ever searched for examples of builds on your tablet, chances are, they’re from one of the Hermits. Or if you looked up something about redstone! Anything! You’ll find one of their instructions. They’re geniuses- just, complete geniuses. Grian’s one of them-”

  “Grian’s one of them!?” Tommy exclaimed, his eyes shooting open. Tubbo’s grin widened, nodding vigorously. “Yes! He’s the newest Hermit, last I heard.. Most of the guys he’s teammates with every MCC, they’re usually other Hermits!” They’d continue explaining to the best of their ability.

  “Should’ve fuckin’ started with the fact that Grian’s here! That fuckin’ dude! He killed Dream three times! Three times, Tubbo!” The blond continued with his excited shouting. Well, that certainly fixed the situation, Tubbo mused.

  The brunett nodded along, chuckling. “Yeah! He, and most of the others, really- post all that much right now. The new World Client, with the axolotls and caves ‘n stuff? They’ve started posting and sharing discoveries about that.  I know Grian did, at least. But considering they call themselves the ‘Hermits’ it makes sense to be a bit inactive, yeah?” Tubbo shrugged, tapping the chilly cool sandstone beneath them.

  Tommy nodded dumbly, glancing around the room for a moment. Tubbo, meanwhile, had pulled their tablet up. The holographic comm system was displayed infront of them, everything on the screen they touched being read aloud to them.

  Launching an accessibility app, the tablet began describing aloud the block palette, dimensions, and colors. As the tablet’s robotic voice played in his com system, reading aloud the details of his surrounding, Tubbo nodded along to an incoherent rant from Tommy.

Tubbo wasn’t too sure what Tommy was ranting about- likely MCC, and Grian. Grian got a kill on Tommy, last MCC, if they remember correctly.  The brunnett wouldn’t be surprised if that was the target of the blond’s current tangent. Tommy hadn’t even been able to get a word out, when Grian began shouting vigorous apologises between matches.

  The descriptions from the tablet were long, and boring. The robotic voice drawing on and on, as it attempted to describe the intricate room. Shutting down the program, Tubbo tuned back into Tommy. 

  “Fuckin’ am..So fucking tired. Of course we ended up here. It’d be to easy if we’d just be let back into Dream SMP, huh? Think Dream even knew we were out? I bet not. Even if he does, probably didn’t even care, fuckin’ dick. Bet that green asshole’s just sitting over his code and shit, simping over Gogy-” The blond ranted heatedly. The blind teen could hear the shifting and chustling of fabric, before the boy’s voice became muffled.

  With his head pressed against his knees, legs drawn to his chest, Tommy sat there practically panting. His chest heaved, the rage draining from him. “Why is all- all of this, always so complicated, Tubbo?” Blue eyes turned to meet the scarred, burnt front of the other.

  Tubbo picked at faded and torn tennis shoes, tentatively listening. The rymnatic pattern of the boy’s breathing, and the crashing overhead, offered some vague comfort. “All of what?” They’d tilt their head.

  The younger of the two quietly sighed, his mouth pressed in a thin line. His hand clutched the bottom of his torn, tan cargo pants, fidgetting with the frayed ends. “Us. Shit with us, it always gets so fuckin’ complicated. Big Man, you’re president. You’re- you’re the fucking president, now, Tubbo.”

  The bunnett’s brows furrowed together, as they inched closer to their friend. “Yeah. But it’s- it’s still us, y’know? If- if life was easy, then we’d be missing out on a lot of things. What if we had just never met-”

“We’d always meet eachother, Tubbo. There’s no fuckin’ getting rid of me, even in your fantasy world.” The blond nudged the teen’s shoulder, a wolfish grin evident in his tone.

  That made the other crack a smile, shaking their head. “I hope so, Tommy.” They’d chuckle, shaking their head. The weight of the day came crashing down all again. Before the rushing thoughts could boggle down their mind, Tubbo slumped against Tommy’s side sigh an exhausted sigh.

  “This is just, livin’ the fucking life, huh?” Tommy remarked, looking over his friend. The tall boy already shifted himself, his long legs sprawled out on the floor with his back leaned against sandstone walls.

  His head leaned against that of his compaignian, half-lidded blue eyes giving one last surveillance of the room. “We’ll figure this shit out tomorrow..” Tommy mumbled, glancing down at the brunette.

  Tubbo was already asleep, their expression finally one of peace. Tommy wasn’t given a moment more to appreciate the serenity of the quiet room, before he’d be pulled into slumber as well.

  Both of the teens were stirred awake by the whirring noises of an active portal- the Netherportal beside them, with particles flying, gaveway to two players. Tommy kicked himself up to his feet, defensively. Tubbo stumbled along with him, pulling back away from the strangers.

Though two stepped out, only one immediately caught Tommy’s eyes.

  “W- Holy shit!  You’re Grian!” Tommy squawked indignantly.

  Tubbo’s head immediately shot up, excitably breaking into a grin. Any exhaustion the two held was wiped away- neither was sure how long their unrestful sleep had been, but it was far more than other nights. 

  The target of the excitement, Grian, sheepishly stood there, nodding. “Uh, yeah! You guys are Tommy and Tubbo, yeah?  I’ve seen you at most of the MCC’s I’ve been to. You both did really good last time, by the way! I’m really looking forward to the next one!” 

This was easily the closest they probably ever were to the dirty blond. He also looked far more at ease, on this server. The iconic figure, ever-present in the community, had his wild mop of a fringe frazzled and framing his face.

  Poking under the bangs, Tommy could now see faint, ragged lines from a scar, along with other various healed-over wounds. Another contrary to how either of them had seen Grian, at MCC, was the large circular glasses loosely sat on his face.

Seeing one of his heroes like this (The only one that hadn’t betrayed, killed him, turned against him, despised him-) in such a..Domestic state, was bizarre. Tommy was scrambling for words, starting and giving up on getting his tongue around what to say.

  “This is so cool! Hi! I used to watch and- and listen, to a lot of your old build tutorials! A lot of people on our server would always say how we learned building from you!” Tubbo would blurt out, practically bouncing on their heel. Grian turned to the teen, slightly shocked but amused. 

  “Oh! I- well thank you! I’m glad I could be any help at all- my builds are nothing compared to some of what the other Hermits have going on..Speaking of others- this is Stress!” He’d take the opportunity to escape the small spotlight, glancing towards the brunette woman next to him sheepishly.

  The woman- Stress, apparently, quietly chuckled. A fond smile grazed her face, as she looked over towards the two teenagers. “Ello there, Loves! Sorry to interrupt your fan meetup,” She teased, side-eyeing the dirty blond beside her.  “We just wanted to come and check in, is all! X told us two to come visit, yeah?”

  Tommy quietly hummed skeptically,  surveying her. Short brown hair hung barely as low as her shoulder, a neat, white, blue, and pink flower-crown sat upon her head. The colors must’ve been very purposeful, considering they matched with her colorful outfit of the same color.

  “Fine, sure..Well, we’re still fuckin’ breathing, and we’re here. So you don’t really need to be here any longer, yeah?” Tommy scoffed, slumping back against the wall. Tubbo was already standing, nudging at his side. 

  “Thank you, for checking in. I- I’m sure this is a bit of a strange situation. That- Yeah, that’s my bad.” They chuckled sheepishly, rubbing the back of their neck. This caught Stress’ attention, turning towards the tene.

  “Oh, no! This isn’t a problem at all. Dear, this happens all the time. Grian just- just appeared, one day, in our previous server. We walk out the portal for the first time- and boom! There that weirdo is!” Stress chuckled, her grin unwavering as she gave a playful nudge to the dirty blond beside her.

  Grian scoffed, a smirk edging at his lips as he rolled his eyes. “Okay, but I’m not the only example of that happening- you didn’t have to pick me out specifically!”

  “Sure I do, Love! You’re the first new Hermit to join, after me and Zed! I get to bully you, lovingly!” She cheered. Stress’ energy was absolutely efficacious, Tubbo couldn’t help but smile and cackle at her and Grian’s banter.

“Uh huh,” Grian scoffed, dramatically crossing his arms. “Last I checked, that was Iskall’s job to bully newcomers- oh, Gord, when you all walked out of the portal and they just decked me ? I mean, it didn’t really hurt all that bad, but it’s a matter of the principle!”

  Stress seemed like she was almost gonna break down with laughter, clutching her stomach. “I forgot they did that with you, too! Iskall certainly is one that needs work with their introduction, that absolute weirdo!” She chostled, shaking her head fondly.

  She then turned towards the two teens, reassuringly smiling. “They won’t give you any hard time, they’re just like that sometimes, especially in the beginning of a new season..They’re usually just incomprehensible in the beginning, I learnt!” She giggled, covering her mouth.

  Tubbo awkwardly laughed, nodding. “Yeah- they, they sound like something.” It was..A strange environment, to be sure.

  Sure, they knew of the Hermits, their reputation impossible to avoid- but most outsiders didn’t know much about the actual Hermits. They went by that title for a reason.

  Tommy was having similar thoughts, he felt as if he was completely imposing on, everything. But he couldn’t find it in himself to care- it frankly was..Warming, almost, to see this. He missed being able to have that, on Dream’s server. 

  The blond in particular seemed to have tuned out, because by the time he snapped out of those thoughts, Grian was speaking again.

  “We’re glad to see you’re both alright, but, I don’t think we’ve been exactly great hosts. You both have gotta be hungry- I know the last thing you two seem to want is help, but..We’d be happy to help you however we can.  We can go get you fresh, real food. Or- you both come with us, and we take you to our central area, the Cowmercial district.”

  Tommy stared blankly at Grian for a moment, brows knitted together in bewilderment. “The… Cow..merical district?” He’d repeat, squinting.

  Grian snickered, nodding. “Yeah! The name just stuck. It’s our shopping district. We have a bakery- it’s never, ever too early for cake. There’s Doc’s shop, but that’s all villager-bought, if it’s the rare occasion that it’s stocked at all- so the Bakery may be the only option, for today.” He glanced back at Stress, who nodded in agreement.

  “Only if you’d want to,” Stress would interject. “Either of us could come bring you food here- but, we figured you might want to just..Get out. You’re allowed to leave here whenever you want- but, navigating our server by yourself, for the first time? Not the easiest.”

  The two teens glanced towards eachother. Tubbo looked like they were practically buzzing in place, at the idea of exploring the Hermits’ world. Tommy watched them for a moment, before quietly scoffing.

  “..Yeah, okay, sure- how the hell do we even get out of here though, for starters?” Tommy crossed his arms, inching closer towards Tubbo. He, for one, was really not a fan of having to fly out.

  Stress cheered excitably, pulling open her inventory. The woman promptly dropped a stack each to the two teens. “I came prepared, just in-case!” She grinned. With a swipe of her arm, the digital screen dissipated.

  “If you know how to use elytras, X already said he’s more than happy to lend out two from the back-up system. I have some to spare, as well.  But- you two never seemed the most comfortable in the air, during flight-based games.” Grian would add awkwardly, adjusting his own wings behind him. 

  Tommy didn’t pay much attention to the words- instead, he promptly threw open his inventory, gawking at the full stack of pearls. “What! I don’t think i’ve ever had this many pearls! Holy shit!” He pulled out the stack of sixteen.

  One pearl manifested in his hand, while a holographic icon hovered beside him. The pixel-image of an enderpearl, with a large 15x in the corner in white font was projected for only his vision. The blond couldn’t remember a time he had so many enderpearls.

  “Thank you! Wow- yeah, pearls aren’t really common in our server!  This- this is really nice!” They felt giddy, as they pulled their’s out as well, the action muscle-memory.

  “Well, I’m glad you two can put them to good-use, then!” She chuckled. The idle question of how can a server lack pearls skimming through her head for a moment.

  Within seconds of her saying that, Tommy had already blindly tossed one of his pearls- promptly falling down from the ceiling, and landing on the floor with a short shriek. Tubbo straightened up from the sidelines, tilting their head.

  “Tommy! What did you do?” Tubbo called out accusatorily, as they quickly popped their surrounding descriptor back on.

  “Nothing!” Tommy quickly yelled back, lunging to their feet with a stumble as they dusted themselves off.

  At the sidelines, Stress and Grian cackled, watching in lighthearted amusement. Tommy could feel his face flushed red with brief embarrassment, quickly attempting to play it off.

  “Truer answer; I was being awesome. That was what, Tubbo. Are we eating or what? I want to throw pearls and go places. And eat, that too.” He quickly turned towards the two Hermits expectantly, narrowing his eyes at them.

  Grian grinned, nodding. “Yes, yes we are! I have boats. Go ahead and pop up with your pearls, and we’ll fly out to you.” He explained briefly, pulling the boats from his inventory. The thin, digitized object manifesting in his hand. 

  Tommy turned expectantly to Tubbo. “You got this, Toob?” He tilted his head, watching his friend. Tubbo had immediately nodded vigoriously, running over towards the center of the room, the ceiling above open to the water. 

  “Yeah! I’ve got this, Big Man! No sweat!” They gave a toothy grin, shifting the enderpearl in their hand. Arching their arm back, the teen cautiously stepped back.

  Their communicator had continued reading off the details of the room into their thin earpiece,  primarily the dimensions. All they had to do was hit the wall leading up to the surface to get out. They could do that, surely.

  With a huff of effort, they chucked the pearl. They heard it  break through the under-surface of the water, and then they were submerged. Breaching the surface, they gasped for a moment. The ocean rippled, clothes heavy and soaked. They were certainly glad they had been in their casual clothes, rather than their presidential outfit.

  Within a moment, Tommy was up beside them, quietly gasping as well. The blond pushed his hair back, lightly nudging Tubbo away from the gaping hole in the water beneath them- and then Grian and Stress flew out.

  The sound from the rockets were deafened from beneath the ocean, thankfully. Only a thin trail of smoke followed them, the sight certainly unfamiliar to the fireworks the two teens had been accustomed to.

  Both Hermits had dived straight into the shallow water with a splash, before the dirty-blond dropped down two boats.

“I want to drive! Tommy, i’m driving us!” Tubbo cried out, at the sound of the wood hitting the water. Beside them, Tommy scoffed.

“Tubbo! I’m not gettin’ motion sickness! We just woke up, no way. Your idea of ‘driving’ is no one elses, my friend.” He rolled his eyes, crossing his arms as he pulled himself into the boat. Beside him, Tubbo whined.

  “C’mon, man! Nothing like a bit of motion-sickness to get the day started!” They playfully remarked. Despite that, they had already accepted their defeat, pulling up into the boat.

  Stress and Grian watched the teens carefully, with Stress laughing lightheartedly at the banter between them as she pulled herself into the boat, behind Grian.

  Grian, on the otherhand, was mostly quiet. A thin wisp of a smile was present, conveying one of bemusement. Tommy didn’t get a good look, but, he couldn’t quite pinpoint the look from Grian. He didn’t like it.

  “Alright,” The older Brit at hand started. “We’re real close. No one should be at Looky Looky At My Cookie- and it should be early enough that there aren’t any real occupants at the Cowmerical District.” He explained, turning the boat as he got a small start ahead of the teens.

  “Sure, then! That sounds g- wait, what’s that name?”

“C’mon, then!” Grian wouldn't answer Tubbo’s valid question, before boating off. Tommy quickly following behind, shouting indignantly after them.

  It certainly was odd. It felt..Comforting, here. Certainly not relaxing. The opposite of cf relaxing- Tubbo had nothing but the craving to do something. But it was..Welcoming. It was strange. They hadn’t felt so- so unbothered, since..Ever, really. They liked it.

  Tubbo wondered if it could stay this way.

  Tommy wondered what the hell they were about to get themselves into.

[roxyandelsewhere]

i wrote a whole essay in the tags of this post and the new post editor ate half of it and distorted the rest so here's what i could salvage and an approximation of the rest (in a new post so the other one doesn't get too long, this is already long enough):

i don't have fixed headcanons on this, i can see different things making sense and what i myself think about it changes from day to day depending on how literal i feel like being. but! i tend to think of angels as eldritch horrors in a true lovecraftian sense which in turn makes me think of the ideas about how humans comprehend incomprehensible things in stephen king's IT. that's usually my baseline bc i made those associations once and it stuck so while i do love the idea of angels controlling their vessels like handpuppets and cas touching dean at all times in invisible ways, i also think that re: an angel's trueform physical space in our puny dimensions doesn't really....exist, really. it's like i said in the explanation for the drawing of the fall of the angels (i'm gonna be referencing these a bit bc i feel like i'm more eloquent in drawings than in words skdjfg) trueforms are too dettached from our physical world to be able to be big or small close or far. those concepts aren't much to them bc they aren't bound by physicality as we perceive it. this isn't really supported by canon bc there's the chrysler building line but i have thoughts about that too.

the post mentions the wings not being wings but instead the idea of wings and i am 100% on board with that. i've said before that the wings and the hellhounds being such vague projections worked bc they were nothing where comprehension should be, and the writers fucked up when they treated it as nothing where a budget should have been. bc yeah angels don't have actual bird wings with the same feather anatomy and all that, ofc they don't. insects birds and squirrels had convergent evolution to arrive to such different wing morphologies and angels have bird wings? makes no sense. what i do think happens is that the parts of angels that allow them to do things like fly (which may not be appendages at all, they can just zoom like the post said) get 'translated' into physical things when they're on earth. not necessarily by the eye of the human beholder, just by being on earth like that. a reasoning i've applied in my drawings is that when they get into a vessel the parts of them that are involved in their earthly life get converted into earthly things. deer and bird heads and octopus tentacles popping out of jimmy novak like glitches mid act of translation. jimmy's status as just man being adam censored by the vine leaf (the censoring being intrinsic to adam is also a whole other concept but this isnt about chuck). sorry to bring marvel into this but it's like in wandavision when modern things get translated or rather converted into things from the sitcom's decade. it couldn't exist in this world so instead of disappearing it gets converted into something that can. and i started this tangent bc of the chrysler building thing. that's another translation. bc the chrysler building is a human's definition of gigantic. kinda small for what angels supposedly are. it's something that's said to explain trueforms so it's kinda like an actual literal translation.

another thing the post touches on is the fallen angels still having a trueform. just graceless. and i agree!! it's exactly how i drew fallen cas and anna. graceless and different bc they've changed. but they still have a trueform bc being an eldritch horror isn't just inside-out it's also outside-in if that makes sense. they comprehend the universe differently and fitting that into a human brain hurts but it doesn't disappear. magically speaking all languages most likely does (did angel grace get a patch after the babel tower?) but having 'seen' the universe as an angel stays. which is why i talked about trueform endverse!cas like i did the other day when i said his trueform would be some sort of eldritch version of michelangelo's flayed skin. i basically said that he's a cas that has fallen from grace and then fallen from humanity. fallen twice. the way he sees the world gets changed once again and the things he can do change once again and when that happens to humans that's just it, those things happening. but when it happens to an angel it gets translated as a fall. and re: what the post said about those fics while those things seem too literal they can be seen as a translation/conversion of that fall back into things humans can comprehend.

there's also the matter of samandriel. angels being tortured has implications in terms of how they connect to their vessels. pain can be inflicted on the trueform through causing pain on the human body which means they are connected somehow. and i think part of the pain doesn't come just from what is inflicted on the trueform but also from the forced connection to the vessel. bc if you don't have a heart or lungs or legs and then suddenly you do, it hurts. if you didn't have lungs and in a split second you started having them, you'd choke. feeling human hurts like a defibrillator, an instant connection to life. like chidi seeing the time knife, but too alien instead of simply too big. though some angels might call it too big and others too small. so yeah i don't think they are connected to their vessels and part of torturing them is making that happen.

then there's the whole thing of heaven being made of angels, which i love, and angels being wires/generators and the implications of souls as a power source. i'm still figuring out what i think of that but surprise to those who don't know: i'm currently drawing trueform cas full of leviathans. and i painted the leviathans as partially gold, the color i've associated with grace, bc they gave cas that power so they must have something akin to grace. just yesterday i posted about how grace might be blood+Light as in the light of god but that's bc i was feeling literal, you can see it as similar to souls. this could be a whole theological debate but what i'm getting at is souls have Something that grace does too, and from souls you get demons which can be seen as having lost that something but another thing is monsters have souls too. this show never handled the question of the Other properly but monsters have souls. they do. and leviathans' souls are different but they're there and dare i say there's as much difference between a human's soul and a vampire's as there is between two random humans. whatever leviathans have was enough to make cas god. a bastardized god, yes, but for better or worse the children of eve have something holy.

i also really love the idea of angels as the principle of uncertainty. that's really it, for angels everything is atoms, all of it. and they might behave like atoms or electrons but they're not so the two things clash. and this ties up well with zoe exitwound's notion of angels as gravity.

all in all i agree with the post and i think it's all fascinating but i wanted to make these additions

i'm pretty sure i wrote other things but i can't remember them and this is already long enough so i'm gonna shut up now

[tundrainafrica]

Title: Lovebug (6/10)

Summary:  

“It might be a bug.”

“A bug?”

“Sometimes the developers of this application make mistakes. This is our first time meeting I’m sure so…Isn’t it a bit weird that we just met for the first time and it rings like this? And for two strangers to coincidentally ring each other’s alarms?“

Levi is the developer of the Love Alarm App and Hange is married to Zeke.

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Other Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5

Notes: Feedback is very much appreciated :D

“As an employee you’re entitled to sick leaves.”

Entitled. It didn’t necessarily mean he needed it. Levi allowed himself a sequence of motions, some reassurance that his body was still functioning as expected

He raised his shoulders up then rolled it back, stretching his neck, bending it to one side then the other. It did wonders to help send a rush of energy through his still exhausted body. It  served as a reminder, he was strong, he was functional. “I don’t need a day off. I’m fine, ” Levi said. 

Erwin raised one eyebrow, giving him a once over. If he had narrowed his eyes anymore or wrinkled his nose, Levi could have given in. Other parts of his body were still reeling from the ordeal from the beach and he was sure he could fall asleep if someone just laid him out on a sofa.

Erwin though was a man of the office, a staunch professional. When it came to work and productivity, he leaned on the side of ‘being productive.’ He took Levi’s word for it.  “If you are feeling anything, just anything out of the ordinary, take the day off. Feel free to just leave me a note, and I can have Petra or Eld handle the rest of the testing.” 

The word ‘testing’ didn’t do much to convince Levi to rest though and maybe Erwin knew that. Levi slammed the door behind him hard enough to have him preparing for a lecture from Erwin about door slamming manners.

He waited in front of the door, gripping the doorknob from behind him for a good few more seconds. 

“We could start working next week?” Hange appeared right next to him. More specifically, she had accompanied him to Erwin’s office that morning, settling for just loitering outside the door, providing a perfectly valid reason for the internal question ‘ did she hear his conversation with Erwin?’

“It’s a Tuesday and it’s not a holiday,” Levi answered matter-of-factly. 

“Well, don’t companies have sick leaves?” 

“They do.” 

“And you were in the hospital just yesterday.” 

“I was in the hospital under observation,” Levi clarified. 

“After almost drowning,” Hange added.

“Just because the doctor prescribes a few more days of bed rest, doesn’t make it an almighty rule.” It was evidence that maybe a day off or two would have definitely made the difference. That slightly caustic exchange had Levi’s head spinning. He found himself having to squint just to even feign eye contact. “Besides, why are you here anyway?” 

“To work on the love alarm. Don’t you think it’s better if we work closely with each other?” 

“Not this early into the whole process. We could have talked through email.” Levi attempted to walk ahead. His office wasn’t too far from Erwin’s  a good few flights of stairs below. With his head slightly spinning and his legs feeling like jelly, Levi went for the elevators.

It was as if Hange was on a mission to flaunt her ability to speed up her pace. She walked next to him then a few feet ahead, turning back at him. And she had been that way since that morning. 

Levi gave in. “Okay, so what parts of the planning process merit a meeting today?” 

“Well, I’m worried for one.” 

“There are many meetings that could have been an email and I think you lecturing me about not taking a sick leave is one of them.” 

“Yeah, and there’s more...” Hange trailed off, giving him a good look from head to toe. Levi liked to believe she just couldn’t find the right answer to whatever implicit question he introduced at that moment. “I’m sorry about yesterday, and the day before.” 

“That could have been an email.” 

“I know Zeke gave you shit about being carried by me and having to be saved by me...” 

Levi stifled a cringe. A bridal carry to be specific. “That could have also been an email.” 

Hange huffed. “Fine. I get if you want to be so pissy about this but let me be selfish. I didn’t join Zeke on his business trip and it’s because I felt guilty. About you almost drowning, about you being forced to play golf and almost losing all your money over a few games. It was shitty okay. And for my own peace of mind, please let me join you at work, and maybe just help you make some progress with the alarm, even just a bit?” 

There was nothing much else his muddled brain could come up with in that moment of silence. “Okay,” Levi said, with a tone that could have easily been seen through. It was in fact, not okay. 

“Why? Is there anything else you’re busy with?” 

Levi sighed. “Making sure that damn love alarm gets tested for the next release.”

***

Anticipation had the tendency of piling stress much higher than the stress was actually worth. For many people, they only realize how much of a simple task something can be when they’re actually doing it. 

When work would pile up, stress would pile up. When Levi’s brain was working at half capacity, while trying to balance responsibilities and a guilty Hange in tow, he was barely thinking about work yet still attempting to the best of his meagre abilities.  

When the work was finally in front of him, the workflow tracker out, the whole ordeal of anticipating a workload had turned out to be anticlimactic. Maybe he had just gotten used to days leading up to releases being particularly stressful. After all, it usually involved early morning sanity checks, junk food and a stressed out team. 

Usually. They had some good releases and the one that day seemed like a good release. Of course it would be a less stressful release. It was under testing for months and it had been pushed back a week already. The QA work was almost over. To be just a little more certain, Levi filtered his workflow tracker to staged tickets and to tickets tagged ‘ready for release.’ 

“So, how does this pre-release testing work?” Hange asked, leaning forward. She had taken the liberty to pull one of the chairs to the corner towards and sat beside him. 

“I’m working,” Levi said coldly.

“Oh, but you said you needed to test the love alarm.” 

“Yes, the team is testing it. I’m making sure everything gets tested.” 

“So how do you make sure everything gets tested?” 

“Well… There’s this tracker here, I assign tickets for testing and when people say it’s tested they click QA passed and I see it here. Then if anything urgent needs testing or anything doesn’t seem to work, I help out and try to fix it,” Levi said, he opened his drawer dropping one of his test devices on the table. 

“So you could have gotten a day off,” Hange asked, seemingly knowingly. 

Levi glanced at the dashboard to seeall tickets were tagged as ‘Ready to Release.’  the others having been done a week back. He was too lazy to check the event history and there was no need to. The necessary work had been finished. 

Maybe he could have taken the day off. He wasn’t admitting that though. “So tell me, what are your plans? We’re getting the money soon according to Erwin but you’re the mastermind behind this.” Levi swiveled his chair behind him, grabbed his whiteboard eraser and cleaned out some of the useless notes from the next release. 

Half way through cleaning it up though, he stopped. There might be something you’ll need there. He cursed himself for even erasing some of it to the point of incomprehensible. 

“You wanna just use the workflow tracker? Like the one on your computer?” Hange suggested. 

“No, this is fine…” Levi racked his brain for those numbers and he settled for just writing the notes just much smaller below the release notes to the side with the larger font. 

It looked messy. It looked ugly. And his dominant meticulous side would not stand for it. In one swift motion borne out of frustration, Levi swiped his white board eraser over the whiteboard five times, more than enough to wipe it clean. 

“Was there anything important there?” Hange asked.

“Just a cleaner version of what we have in the tracker,” Levi said with a slight huff. He would rather Hange wasn’t reminded of whatever could have been there.

“Well, you wanna brainstorm on the whiteboard?” 

“It’s blank now.” Levi gestured for Hange to go ahead. 

“There’s actually not much to brainstorm on my end,” Hange said. Still, she walked a little nearer, grabbing the marker from Levi. She drew a heart. “You used biological markers to determine love right? That’s how you made the application. If you could assume love based on biological markers… maybe you can break it down and do it similarly for feelings right? I work with psychotherapy and I thought your application might have the potential to be tweaked in the context of assessing emotion Just to give therapists an idea of how their patients feel….” Hange trailed off. She drew a small diagram under the heart, a sad face, a happy face then a blank face. “I mean we have the technology for it already right? Most phones now are capable of more complex biometrics, that’s what the love alarm is taking advantage of.” 

Levi hummed. The diagram made it look just a little too easy. “And how do you think we can break down the application?” He knew the answer. Testing Hange though had been a tempting option.

Hange looked back at him, a confident grin on her face.“Yeah, you have the data already? And you created models or algorithms. Maybe you can extract part of those data sets and we can cut it down… to ‘happy,’ to ‘sad’ etcetera. And you can use what you have to make other types of alarms, like a happy alarm, a sad alarm. Right?

“We have the technology and the hardware to pull that off I guess. It’ll just be a matter of making a model, logging data, and coding. Doable with the right resources.” 

“But it should be easier since you already have some of the work done with the love alarm.” 

“But it won’t be as accurate at first. It took us five years to get the love alarm to this level of accuracy. I can’t even guarantee it’s completely accurate,” Levi said. 

“What about it takes time?” 

“We use an AI algorithm.”

“Artificial Intelligence,” Hange said. 

Levi nodded. “It’s a machine learning model. We give the model data as an input and data as an output and the more data you put into it, the more experience the machine has and the better the machine gets at figuring out what the correct answer is . We give it the biological data, the input and we give it the output, the anonymous test results and some formulas, and overtime, the machine starts to figure out for itself what love is.” 

“So you can’t actually break down the application to do it for you?” 

“We can but it will be a pain. Might as well just create a new model.” 

“Will it take as long as the love alarm?

Levi shook his head. “We have the necessary APIs, the hardware. We can buy more server space but we will have to create a new model.” 

Hange raised one eyebrow. “Okay, that’s a good start.” 

“I’ll just have to make a plan, see how much more resources we need and send them off to Erwin.” Levi opened an a blank document and pushed Hange’s seat closer to his. . 

“Wait, I’m curious though…” Hange started. She tapped one finger on her chin. “How does data processing work?”

***

Levi never considered the server room to be anything interesting. It was after all just a conglomeration of headless computers, wires and lights. 

A very important conglomeration. After all, a fire or a faulty pipe would be enough to destroy millions of dollars worth of data. 

He only allowed her one peek, just opening the door wide enough for one eye to see through for just a few seconds long enough for Hange to let out a hushed breath. “Our company handles a lot of applications and some of the servers supporting these applications are housed here,” he explained. 

“And the data?” 

“They’re housed here. Sometimes we use cloud servers too. Sometimes caching servers and everything is processed here then sent to the application." Levi kept his words simple. 

"Billions of points worth of data…" Hange's voice deadened to a whisper.

"It takes time for the data to come, the machines to learn. We started off with manual loading the data, then testing. It took a lot of work to get this much data, enough for the application to work as expected."

"And you continue to get the data I'm guessing."

Levi shrugged. "During quality testing, during actual app usage. As long as someone is using the application and complying to their biometrics being gathered by the application, we get data. That's how all applications work."

Hange hummed. Her mouth curled up into a smile. "So let's say… when I turn on the application, you can collect my data right?"

"The servers are always on, they're always collecting data. It needs the data after all to ring the alarm right?"

"Then how do we check the data?" Hange asked. 

Levi leaned on the door, shutting it with a click. "When we need it, I'll extract your data on my end, then maybe I'll extract mine. To be honest, I don't think they'd give many answers though."

"Serotonin, Oxytocin, Dopamine, Body heat. There's a lot to see from those numbers.” Hange pointed a thumb to her chest. “This is my specialty.” 

"Then I guess we're going to have to make sense of it together."

Hange nodded. "So what are we waiting for? Let’s work on it over lunch.."

"Don't get too hasty. We're gonna have to make a research plan."

***

Hange already had a research plan on hand and she had been working on it for a while. A twenty page document with just a section filled with bullet points and comments. 

There were points Levi had to fill out himself. Still, it wasn't too much work. "You came prepared," he said. 

"What can I say, it's my pet project," Hange scrolled down towards the end of the word document.

"Zeke seemed excited about it, I thought it would have been his at first."

"If this works out, his hospitals will be the first ones in the country or even the world with this type of technology. If it's sure money, it'll be easy to convince him. Besides, I have my ways." Hange gave Levi a sly smile, soon concealed by the cup between her lips. 

She was in a better mood. They were out for lunch in a more seemingly relaxed position and Levi saw opportunity. 

It's better now than never. "How does he feel… about the developer of the application spending a little too much time with you?"

"It's part of the research process and I need to talk to a developer, not an investor.  Besides, he has other investments," Hange said nonchalantly, too nonchalantly that it was almost unsettling.

"With what happened at the beach." Just the quick recall was enough to send blood rushing to his face. He wondered if outwardly he did look a little red. He bit his lip and looked away. From his peripherals, he could see Hange though was just a little too focused on his laptop screen. 

Hange could have spit out her tea. "Are you still thinking about the bridal carry? I didn’t think it was too big of a deal. I could have sworn you were unconscious." 

At first, Levi could have sworn he was unconscious too. Zeke had mentioned it just a little too many times though that Levi was starting to generate his own phantom memories of the incident. 

"Sorry about the CPR though. I probably bruised a few ribs.”

He remembered the CPR just a little too quickly. Or maybe it had been the bruises reminding him. Levi ran his hands over his chest, feeling a slight twinge of pain in response. "Hey, you did it to save my life."

Hange shook her head. "Or maybe I was panicking. It didn’t look like you were breathing but everything was moving too fast and---” She was digressing. 

“What does Zeke think about it?” Levi pressed. 

“Why do you care so much about what Zeke thinks about it?” Hange asked. She had raised her tone, maybe only slightly. It was firm, almost abrasive that Levi regretted it. 

“Zeke is an investor, one of the richest men in the world. I’m spending too much time with his partner. Then back in the beach---”

“Zeke is always busy and honestly, I’m grateful for any other relationships I can make outside this,” Hange argued. “You know, life, building relationships, these things don’t end after marriage. Sure, Zeke and I committed to a relationship but I think I should still be able to find joy in connecting with other people. Marriage isn’t supposed to tie anyone down, stop them from experiencing life. People in relationships are supposed to grow freely together.” 

Maybe Levi had been thinking too hard about it. Or maybe Hange was just a little too laid back. “What do you think about the love alarm ringing?” 

“It happens. Besides, I’m not too worried. Love is a choice,” Hange said. “Commitment is a choice. I think I remember sending you a book about that.”

“So you don’t believe in our product,” Levi challenged. 

“I never said that.” Hange started to stir at her cup, just a little faster. “You can choose to love someone, to commit to them, to be patient with them and to ride out every single problem with them but there is the feeling aspect right? That’s what the love alarm measures, or that’s what I’m suspecting.” 

Levi nodded. 

“So the fact that it rings with strangers or just randomly, shows that it measures attraction right?” 

“Hormones, movements, pace…” Levi listed them out as just another appendix in their dialogue. 

“I wanna understand… where do feelings fit in all this.” Hange put her hands up in defense.. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Zeke, I married him. He’s a good man. And I wanna make whatever it is between us work for a good long time but as someone who works with human psychology, emotions, as someone who’s seen relationships succeed, relationships fail and some that are just so-so. I wanna know, how much of it is emotions, how much of it is volitional commitment. And this type of research, with the love alarm… I think it can teach us things. Emotions are fleeting but there are emotions that stay for a long time and maybe they make being loving and being patient easier---” She slammed her hands back on the table. “Am I making sense here?” 

Levi only realized then he had been biting his straw and had barely gotten anything out. “I’m trying to understand and I think I’m kinda succeeding? GIve me a few more seconds.” He looked away, silently grateful for the good view of the shopping streets from the second floor of the cafe. The cafe was a good balance of loud and soft, filled with whispers and conversations yet still calming and relaxing if he focused on that part in particular. 

“Have you really, never been in a relationship?” Hange asked, seconds or even minutes later. 

“No.” 

“And you told me, you’ve never made the alarm ring for anyone.” 

“In my five years of testing, no,” Levi said. 

“What made it ring with me?” Hange asked. “ Have you ever theorized that?” 

“It could be a bu---” 

“Let’s assume the application is working properly.” Hange pressed. “Do you feel anything different? When you’re with me?” 

Maybe he did. Levi was tempted to look back the moment Hange had ended that question with her tone of voice higher than a second ago. Her eyebrows furrowed, her gaze fixed on his. Levi had to admit, he didn’t want to look away again. 

So he looked away. “I should be asking you that question. Your alarm rang too. Do you feel anything with me that you don’t feel with him?” 

***

They carried the conversation elsewhere, somewhere where the walls didn’t echo, somewhere where there wasn’t anyone within a good ten meters away. Somewhere they could have sworn nobody would be listening. 

It was a silent agreement, consisting of nodding and pulling of hands and it ended with them in the park, a little past noon on a Tuesday. 

“Do you feel any different when you’re with me?” The question was exchanged once again, in a park bench towards the center, after seconds of checking surroundings. It came in variations of it, in stutters, between clearing throats. 

When it came to recovering eloquence, Hange won without a fight. “If I tell you, will you promise to at least try to tell me?”

“Try.” Levi was economical with his words. He made certain though to consolidate all the discomforts of such a pressing topic to that one word. 

Hange took a deep breath. “It’s funny because we just met right? But sometimes, I randomly think of you. When I come home to find the cleaner cleaning out the room, I think ‘Levi would probably like a clean room.’ When I was drinking coffee this morning, I thought of how you didn’t get your tea time and today, I was excited to see you. But I’m excited to see Zeke too… So maybe I’m just lonely because he left so suddenly for a business trip. Were you excited to see me?” 

“Not this morning,” Levi said. That had been easy enough to let slip out. It wasn’t a lie after all. 

“Oh. Then maybe my theory is wrong.” Hange said it  too quickly, her voice much softer. 

That had Levi feeling a tad guilty, at the same time more motivated to find some way to cheer her up. “But I was excited to go to the country club with you and when I saw you with Zeke by the pool, I felt weird.” 

“Weird?” 

“I kept looking, but I wanted to look away…” 

Then there was silence. He was watching Hange and she wasn’t opening her mouth to speak. In the silence, he found reason for a segue. It could have been too sudden or it could have been a natural progression. Levi was easily imagining the scene by the pool as he stared at the empty streets, he thought it natural, and at least appropriate. “You and Zeke really get along huh?”

“Now yes.” 

One syllable, one slip of the tongue had Levi alert.“Now?” 

Hange shook her head. “Now. As in, we get along but at first, we didn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “ Zeke and I have known each other since college and he confessed to me in our senior year before graduation. We dated for a few years after that.”

“You chose to date him, even when you didn’t like him.” 

“Sure he doesn’t give the best first impression, he’s a little extra, if you know what I mean, his head gets a little too big sometimes. My parents and friends said it would be a good idea to just try it out. He was the heir to one of the biggest companies in the country and he isn’t a bad person per se so I opted to try it out and over time, I got to know him, we got closer and he proposed to me a few years ago, I said yes… and here I am, married.”

“Married.” Levi looked pointedly at her. Hange had leaned back and hung her head back, staring at the sky above.  She had said that last part with a little too much breath, and too little voice. 

Hange gave him a wry smile. “Well, I honestly thought it was too early to settle down. I would have wanted to finish my PhD first, maybe travel a little more, meet more people before we get married but we’ve been dating for years, Zeke was insistent and....It seemed like a good choice. What was there to lose? He’s a good man. We were familiar with each other and besides, just because we’re married, doesn’t mean life stops right?” 

“You tell me. I’ve never been married. Some people are asking me when I plan on settling down.” 

“I guess we’re on two ends of the spectrum. You might end up marrying late. I married too early.”

“Do you think this has anything to do with why the love alarm didn’t ring?” 

Hange shrugged. “Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. The thing is, I don’t want love to be a feeling because just bending over backward to however I’m feeling means that I’m not really free right? I want love to be a choice. I chose to marry Zeke, I chose to commit to him and regardless of what a computer says about love, I wanna be able to decide for myself how I feel, who I love and how I love.” 

***

A few clacks of the keyboard. The click of the mouse. Then the computer whirred to life again, a few swishes among them. 

“So, all I have to do is type out a query here on the server management studio and I’ll be able to extract whatever data we need,” Levi said. “So what email do you use for your love alarm?” 

“Wings of freedom…” Hange didn’t finish. Instead she slipped her phone next to Levi, the screen open to the settings page.  

wingsoffreedom95@jmail.com

Levi stifled a smile. “Don’t you have a more professional sounding email?” 

“I like using pseudo emails for making accounts for weird things.” 

“Nice to know our product counts as a weird account to you,” Levi said.  

“Well, I was testing the product out before I even pitched it to Zeke. I wouldn’t want anyone to have gotten information on me.” 

“Then I guess, that was a good choice.” Levi slammed the enter button and the screen froze for a second before the export box appeared. 

“Yeah, I’d expect a company like yours will collect data.” 

“I’m sure we have a tiny box saying ‘you comply to having your data gathered when you use the product.’”

“You did,” Hange admitted. 

“Then you can’t complain about me having access to the location, the hormone levels, the heart rate and all other pertinent information of wingsoffreedom95@jmail.com.” 

“What email do you use?” 

“I extracted that too,” Levi said. He opened his own application and slipped his phone to Hange. 

“So you are using a pseudonym too.” 

“Of course. I test the product. I need multiple emails,” Levi said. 

“Sure, humanitysstronges1225@jmail.com. You really had to go for something tacky like that?” 

“Well, no one got the username yet,” Levi said. He was quick to digress. “I extracted our biodata from the day we met and when we tested the application. It’s gonna be exported as a data file and just open it using excel or something and do what you need to do.”

“You’re a gem, Levi,” Hange said.  

“Just don’t touch anything else. I’m gonna take a break first,” Levi leaned further back on his chair, grateful for Erwin’s suggestion that he got a reclining chair then. “Maybe I should have gotten a day off. Eld told me, support is quiet today and the release has been ready for a while. Nothing much else to do.” He went for his ebook reader next to his desk and held it above him. 

It flashed open to the latest page. 

The room was silent save for the clack of the keyboard and the whirring of the monitor. It was an odd position to be in but Levi found it was much easier to focus on words when all he had behind the reader was the white ceiling. If he tried a little harder, he could also pretend the clacking of the keyboard wasn’t at all, Hange. 

He was tired. He was exhausted and the ordeal from a few days ago still bubbled at the back of his mouth. Surprisingly, the words had shifted so easily into sceneries, emotions, investment and Levi was thinking too hard about one Mr. Collins and his engagement to the protagonist. 

“Levi!” 

Levi was pulled out of that very comfortable stupor by one rash voice and as he looked up to see Hange smiling, he realized, maybe it had been his own emotional investment at that damn book that got him a little cranky at the wake up call. “What? How long was I reading?” 

“Fifteen minutes at least,” Hange said. “I found something interesting with the data. Did you know, that when the love alarm rang, our hormones were low, our body heat was low, our heart rate wasn’t high. Would you know why it still rang?” 

“I told you, after a certain point we don’t know. It becomes an algorithm. The computer figures it out for itself.” 

“But we’re going to need that data when working with other emotions right?” Hange pressed. “I’m gonna take note of this.” 

“Do you think the love alarm still works as expected?” 

“It could. You told me yourself, billions worth of data points. How could they be wrong right? But this is nice to know, you know. Just looking at the data here, is somehow reassuring.” 

“Reassuring how?” 

Hange shrugged. “Well I’ll do a little of my own testing and will contact you when I come up with anything.” She looked at the clock on her phone. “Then we could schedule a visit to one of Zeke’s hospitals and have a talk with the staff, maybe they could give some feedback on the working plan.” 

“You’re gonna leave?” Levi sat up, putting his ebook reader down on the desk next to him. Hange had started to rifle through her bag and that got him alert.

“Why? You want me to stay a little longer?” 

“I never said that.” 

“You said you were busy with work this morning and now you want me to stay?” Hange challenged. 

“Well it turned out there isn’t much work to do anyway. We get the changes live by the end of this week and we work towards the next release.” Now that Levi did think about it, the job was pretty repetitive and Hange’s pet project had somehow added color to the whole experience. “But you can leave if you want to,” Levi added a second later. Just in case, she did get some sort of hint that he wanted her to stay.

That last sentence did the exact opposite. Exactly how? Levi didn’t have much time to ponder it. By the time, he had even attempted to read through the protagonist’s response to her suitor, Hange had already pulled her chair right next to his, close enough for him to be feeling slightly warmer. Then, warm enough for him to pull away. “What the hell?” 

“I was just wondering what you were reading.” 

“You could have asked. Were you looking?” 

“No.I wasn’t raised to look over people’s shoulders when they read.” Hange said matter-of-factly. “Actually, I was about to ask what you were reading when you pulled away so fast.” 

Levi sighed. “It’s one of the books you sent over in that drive folder.” 

“Ooh, which one? Scott Peck?” 

“I read though that already until I realized the author cheated on his wife.” 

“That doesn’t make his words any more invalid. Love is a choice,” she sang. The amount of times he had heard that since he even read the book maybe even the most melodious tone grating. “So what book is it?”

“The novel, Pride and Prejudice.” 

“Oooh, which part are you in?” 

Maybe Levi had let his guard down just a little. He probably tilted his reader a little bit towards her. Those minute details might have been enough though to have Hange pulling closer towards him, looking over at whatever he had been reading. 

“I’m a slow reader,” Levi explained. 

“Well, it’s a classic. Hange said. This time she was looking at him again. “I swear, I think it shaped my own idea of love. think there’s a lot to learn about love and marriage the way that Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy fall in love---” 

“Wait. Stop.” Emotional investment in the book had Levi vulnerable. He only realized it then when he felt his mouth twitch, his eyebrows raise just a little higher. He found himself dropping the reader on the desk in front of him again, a retaliation at that ringing in his ears and the uncomfortable drop of his stomach. Spoilers were surprisingly painful things. “Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth… They end up together?” He managed to let out. 

Hange nodded hesitantly. “Yes, it’s in the title. Mr. Darcy is pride and Elizabeth is prejudice.” 

“You’re talking about the asshole Darcy right? Ten thousand pounds a year asshole Darcy?” 

***

To hell if Hange looked just a little uncomfortable. Maybe more than a little. “I swear I thought everyone knew. Pride and Prejudice is a classic and it’s so talked about that---” 

“I thought she was gonna end up with Mr. Wickham,” Levi admitted. It was difficult to wipe that grimace off his face, to the point that he had worn it almost as a medal while escorting Hange down to the lobby.   

“Hey, I’m sorry…” Hange said. Her attempt to make amends though was grating. 

Levi sighed. “It’s fine. This is a sign anyway, I need to do something more productive with my last few hours of work. I have a few more hours in the office, I’ll probably check on the team first. Is someone picking you up?” 

“I messaged already,” Hange said glumly. “You know, I thought we could hang out a bit first.” 

“Just focus first on getting an appointment with the hospital. To be honest, I really think I do have some work to check on.” 

“Hey, I’ll make up to spoiling you okay?” Hange said. She had tried to curl her lips up to a smile, to widen the grin on her face. It had come out as something wry. 

He found some solace at least in realizing he wasn’t the only one a little too bothered by those spoilers. He could have sworn it had never affected him that way before. But it’s just spoilers. He reminded himself. “I’ll get over it. Just focus on your work.” Still, it was difficult to enunciate words, it was difficult to even look at her. “Who’s picking you up?” 

“Probably a chauffeur,” Hange said. She opened her phone again. The white glare of the screen reflected on Hange’s eyes and Levi was seeing stars in them again. Stars that somehow breathed life into her dead half smile of a while ago. “I can go from here.”

“Wait what?” 

“Zeke’s picking me up at the gate. He said he wanted to try one of the restaurants at the nearby shopping street,” Hange explained.

Levi’s mind was an aggregate of unintelligible emotions. Do you want me to escort you out? Of course you don’t, I practically kicked you out. When there were things he couldn’t understand, maybe the right thing to do was be professional about it. “I’ll wait for your reply on the hospital visit. I’ll do what I can with the working plan and hopefully we could come up with something by Friday.” 

“That would be cool. I’ll make sure to message you.” Hange wasn’t looking at him anymore and Levi had been perceptive enough to notice that her voice slowed just a little, the volume much softer than a second ago. Her mind was elsewhere. 

Then suddenly, she was talking again, her voice a stark contrast from a second ago. “Zeke! I’m so glad to hear from you. Levi and I were just working on the application just now… And we have some great ideas…” 

He never heard what Hange said after that. If he closed his eyes, and focused just a bit, maybe he could have but the ache in his chest was overpowering and he found it most convenient to blame the spoilers at first. 

Hange walking away. Hange mentioning Zeke. Those were moments of clarity. 

Darcy had reminded him a little too much of Zeke. Elizabeth, a little too much of Hange. When he walked back up to the room, back scrolled back to the scene at the ball, the scene with Mr. Wickham, he let out a laugh. 

Fiction was supposed to be comforting and somehow with his own emotional investment in the story, he had hoped for an ending where money didn’t win. And he was scrambling for it long after Hange turned the corner way past the entrance. 

Back in the office, alone with the reader on hand, he thought about it a little more. 

I swear, I think it shaped my own idea of love. think there’s a lot to learn about love and marriage…

“A lot to learn huh?” Love and marriage which ended with a rich abrasive asshole? 

There was definitely a lot to learn. Marriage could be for money. Love could be learned. 

To commit, to love was a choice. 

And Levi didn't need to read the whole book to be reminded of what he had already figured out. 

Levi checked the table of contents, then the tracker at the bottom, he was barely thirty percent into the book, a very long book. Or maybe he was just a slow reader

After a few more minutes of staring, he managed to stumble upon the stone cold conclusion that it was a waste of time. 

He quickly deleted the book, muttering to himself for a second longer that it was a good decision. Then he walked to his team's office, laptop tightly on hand. When he was looking left and right, when he was looking through his workflow tracker again on his phone, he found an out. 

After all, he shouldn't have the time to ponder Hange's own ideas of love when he had an application to maintain and investors to please. 

***

Levi ended up leaving work earlier than expected. It was a total lie to think there was any work needed to be done. Exhaustion clambered up quickly, a special kind of exhaustion at slogging through a day of work less than forty eight hours after being discharged from the hospital. An exhaustion that came with having spent a good hour lying to himself and to his subordinates that they had anything else to do before the release. 

"Any support queries?" Levi asked. It felt more like a formality. 

His subordinates had already started to pack their bags for the day. 

"Nothing too urgent," Petra answered. “Nothing that can be finished in ten minutes either..” 

“Leave it for tomorrow,” Levi said. As much as possible, he preferred to be the only one having to do over time. 

“Sir, do you have any idea when we would start working on that new request by Mr. Jaeger?”

Levi’s answer was calm and straightforward. “We’re currently working on a plan, me and Hange and as soon as we get it approved, we can have a meeting about it.” And exhaustion made acceptance all the more natural. “You’ve all been working hard the past weeks leading up to the release. Stay low or take leaves if you need to, I’ll handle making sure everything goes live on time.” 

Greetings were exchanged after that. Thank yous, sighs of relief and Levi wondered how hard the past few weeks have been, only for the release to have been delayed over Zeke’s request. Somehow, Levi felt some responsibility and guilt over such a ‘bug.’ Whether it was actually a bug or it was his own shortcomings as a human which caused the test to end that way,  whatever musins he had about them, did nothing to placate the guilt as he watched their relieved faces, their much calmer faces.

The next day he woke up to emails, requests for leaves that week which he immediately approved. One week of calm, one week long enough to have it go live that weekend. Then Monday would be the post release sanity check. 

He’d use the week to plan, to coordinate a little more with Hange. He opened his phone to see her number just on top, just like it had usually been recently. He had decided not to open her message until he got to the office. 

Business is business. He thought to himself. The banner had given hints to the message but there weren't many hints to the context of a date time. 

5/15 3:23AM. Check my body heat, serotonin levels, dopamine levels….

Less than a minute later, Levi was on the phone rattling numbers. 

“So they’re high,” Hange said. “High numbers are a sign of love.” 

Levi could have sworn he had heard the smile in her voice. “Why? Did something happen last night?”  

“Zeke and I had a late night. It was the most fun we had in a while.” 

Before Levi even noticed it himself, his mind was racing, asking questions. If Zeke had the love alarm on, would it have rang? And soon, it was clamoring for answers he knew he could never give.

Zeke’s own love alarm wouldn’t be on and even if it wasn’t on, it didn’t send data the same way Hange’s did. All he could do then was settle for speculation. “Maybe there is a bug then Hange. Or maybe there’s something wrong with the data. We’ll turn on your love alarm again when we visit, let’s try it again.” 

The call ended amiably and Levi was a little more sluggish soon after. He lay his phone back on his desk and turned on the love alarm. 

As expected, no hearts appeared. One hand on the keyboard next to him, he typed out a query and pulled his own data. His own hormone levels were much lower than 3am Hange’s. He opened the data Hange had analyzed just yesterday. The hormone levels were still low. 

He clicked on the settings on his application, back at the dashboard then pressed the home button and sighed. “Some developer I am, can’t even figure out how my app works anymore.”

Then he thought something he hadn’t thought in a while. Maybe going for something as complex as love from the start wasn’t such a good idea. 

[cassandraclare]

The Anniversary Party

Someone asked me about the flash fiction this month, and I realized I’d sent it out in my newsletter, but forgotten to post it! So here’s the whole Jan/Feb story, in which we get a bit of background on Cordelia and her family. Art by Cassandra Jean, of course! This is the last of the flash fiction stories, and it’s been a pleasure to share them with you!

THE ANNIVERSARY PARTY

FRANCE, 1899....

Cordelia did not like Menton very much. She should have, in theory. Menton was a pretty seaside town, a jumble of pink and yellow buildings along a small harbor, mostly slips for sailboats and some fishing boats. The air was warm and Mediterranean, the fish was exceptionally fresh, she could see Italy from her bedroom window across the far side of the harbor. What was there not to like?

They had come for her father’s health—why else did they go anywhere, after all—and Cordelia could understand why Menton had a reputation as a healing destination for the sick and the elderly. Indeed, her father’s health had rebounded since their arrival a few weeks earlier and he was in a period of good spirits, willing to dance with her in the parlor and even managing to drag a smile out of Alastair on occasion. Alastair had entered a turbulent adolescence, as Cordelia overheard her mother say to her father. Cordelia hoped that when she was Alastair’s age she would maintain her composure a little better than he was managing.

But Menton’s charms quickly faded for her. Its popularity with the sick and the elderly meant that the town’s population had a large proportion of both, and while Cordelia wished them all well, they did not offer her much in the way of companions or even adults interested in conversation with a girl for whom French was her third language, and not very strong. The beach turned out to be made not of sand but of large round pebbles—Cordelia had never heard of such a thing, a beach made of rocks, very uncomfortable on bare feet, not pleasant to lie on, and offering no opportunity for building castles or digging trenches.

Worst of all, her parents continued to be as antisocial as ever, making no efforts to reach out to the local Shadowhunter community (the closest Institute being in Marseilles). And so Cordelia was alone. Sometimes she was alone with Alastair, but he mostly ignored her, and even so they were both duly sick of each other’s sole company after a week.

The only source of relief was the knowledge that this, too, would pass—the Carstairs family moved constantly, obsessively, for the sake of her father’s health. Cordelia could never understand the logic of it, except that she agreed that it was worth doing anything if it meant her father’s wellbeing. In this case, it was a bit of a relief. She knew they would not stay in Menton more than a few months.

This was, she felt, why she was so alone. Her family never stayed anywhere long enough for her to meet anyone her age, much less make friends. Her only real friends in the world were Lucie and James Herondale, and only because, Cordelia knew, Will and Tessa Herondale had always worked very hard to make sure that their children saw the younger Carstairs. It was still a rare treat to see them, as the Herondales ran the London Institute, and thus were usually in London, and occasionally in Idris, while Cordelia and her family were all over the map.

And here again, the Herondales came to her rescue, this time in the form of a letter her father read aloud at the breakfast table.

“’Good morning, Elias and Sona,’ – I say, how would he know what time of day we’d read it, the man is mad as a hatter—”

“We are reading it in the morning, though,” Cordelia said. Her father gave her an indulgent smile and went on.

“’It is a capital day here in London, and I hope it will be a capital day in Paris six weeks hence, when Tessa and I will celebrate our nineteenth wedding anniversary. As it is not the custom of any known culture to make a to-do out of the nineteenth wedding anniversary, we have decided to throw an enormous party.’”

“A ball!” cried Cordelia, but a worry poked at her. Would her parents attend such a thing? Her father was frowning at the letter, but possibly he was simply trying to make the words out better without his glasses.

“It’s not a ball,” said Alastair, who had stopped halfway down the stairway to listen.

“’A ball, if you will,’” her father read on. “Well done, Cordelia.”

Cordelia stuck out her tongue at Alastair.

“’We would love if you and your darling children would join us…if you would do us the pleasure of responding…,’ et cetera, et cetera…” Her father scanned the letter. “And then it has the date and the address and all that.”

“It started out strong, but it ended in something of an anticlimax,” Alastair said.

“Can we go?” Cordelia said eagerly. “Can we please? I would so like to see Lucie and James. And maybe  I’d meet some of the people Lucie talks about in her letters!”

“I would like to see anyone at all other than you lot,” said Alastair mildly. “No offense intended.”

“Alastair!” Sona scolded, but Cordelia was not about to let Alastair distract from the main point. She redoubled her efforts in the direction of her father.

“Papa, can we go, please? You’ve recovered so well, surely a trip of only a few days would be possible. Don’t you want Shadowhunter society to see how well you are?”

“Hm,” her father said. He looked at her mother, who looked back. They exchanged a series of incomprehensible looks with one another.

“If you think it would be a good idea,” Sona said to Elias. Cordelia’s father gave Cordelia a long look. Cordelia tried to catch Alastair’s eye, but he’d turned away and was looking with disgust into the middle distance, a typical expression for him these days.

“I think we could manage a train trip and a few days in Paris,” her father allowed. “I do adore Paris.”

Cordelia threw her arms around him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

#

Cordelia spent the next weeks in a state of constant dread. She didn’t dare remind her parents of the upcoming trip, lest they remember that they had intended to cancel and not attend after all. It had happened before, but never before for an event in which Cordelia had a strong investment.

But when the event was a few days away, her father brought up the timetable of the Calais-Méditerrannée Express train at breakfast. Tickets were bought, bags packed, and still Cordelia could barely believe it when she found herself the evening before the party, pulling into the Gare du Nord in an elegant blue train car, clutching her hands in her lap in anticipation: Paris, at last she was in Paris! She would see her future parabatai, and her brother, and the cream of Shadowhunter society, and she would do so in Paris.

The next day found her gazing into the full-length mirror in their rooms at the Hôtel Continental on the Rue de Rivoli and wondering that she was even the same girl who had been miserably pining away a few days before. Her mother had helped her select her dress, a frothy lemon confection of lace and silk. She wasn’t entirely sure it suited her, but it was very elegant.

Even Alastair regarded her with something in the neighborhood of admiration when he came in to fetch his gloves. “You look surprisingly mature,” he told her. Cordelia thought that was probably equivalent to a full swoon, for Alastair. For his part, he was clearly aiming at “mature” as well, having put on a brown sack coat with only one of its buttons buttoned, and having dared to apply a dab of pomade to his black hair, which, Cordelia had to admit, did make it shine compellingly.

“You look like you’ll be trying to impress someone at the party,” Cordelia teased him. “Anyone in particular?”

“Everyone,” Alastair sniffed. “Everyone that is anyone.”

Cordelia rolled her eyes.

Her father was in high spirits as they entered the carriage a short time later, joking and laughing. Her mother was quiet, watching her husband with a smile and a considering expression, and that is how they were for the entire ride to the Paris Institute.

#

She had been practicing her French, and when the imposing figure of Madame Bellefleur greeted them at the Institute door with a paragraph of rapid-fire enthusiasm and questions, she understood them: welcome, how was their journey, isn’t it frightfully chilly tonight. She began to think of a reply, and found that her entire speaking ability in the French language had departed her brain in exactly that moment.

Her father’s French was fluid and expert, and Cordelia felt a little rush of pride as he said, “Madame Bellefleur, dear! You are looking as lovely as ever, Odile. But what has become of you, that you’ve fallen so far to be working the door?”

Madame Bellefleur laughed, a hearty chuckle that made Cordelia like her immediately. “I sent the maid off to enjoy herself. I like answering the door, Elias — it may be the Herondales’ party, but it’s my Institute.”

Inside, Cordelia slipped away from her parents as soon as it was feasible and went to look for her friends. It took her all of five minutes to become hopelessly lost. Unlike any Institute she had been in before, this one was laid out as a labyrinthine series of interconnected salons. Each looked much like the last, and was crowded with adults, none of whom Cordelia knew, and most of whom were speaking in rapid French. She had not spotted a single Herondale, and the clatter and chatter of the party guests was beginning to make her feel less like a young sophisticate at the ball and more like a little girl who had lost her mother at the market.

Out of nowhere came a whirlwind of petticoats, which turned out happily to be Lucie Herondale, throwing herself into Cordelia’s arms with great force and a squeal of delight. “Cordelia, Cordelia, you must come, Christopher is going to teach us how to eat fire!”

“I’m sorry?” Cordelia said politely, but Lucie was already pulling her toward the door to the next salon. “Who is Christopher?”

“Christopher Lightwood, of course. My cousin. He saw a man eating fire in Covent Garden and he said he’d worked out how to do it. He’s very scientific, Christopher.” Lucie’s progress was stopped short, and Cordelia looked up to see a tall, slender older girl, with dark hair braided atop her head and a striking look. She was wearing a lacy blue dress without much enthusiasm. She raised her eyebrows and stared Lucie down. “And this is his sister Anna,” Lucie said, as though she’d planned the encounter.

“Christopher will not be eating any fire,” said Anna, “or indeed anything other than the canapes tonight.”

Lucie said, “Anna, this is Cordelia Carstairs; she’s going to be my parabatai.” Cordelia felt a rush of affection for her friend—she felt so alone so much of the time, but she wasn’t, not really. She was going to have a parabatai; neither she nor Lucie would ever fully be alone again. Or that’s how she had come to understand it would feel.

Anna, however, merely arched an eyebrow. “Not if Christopher burns the Institute down, she won’t.” She turned her piercing gaze onto Cordelia. “Carstairs?” she said curiously. “What Carstairs?”

Cordelia knew what that was about. She gave Anna a smile. “Jem Carstairs is my second cousin. I only know him a very little bit, unfortunately.” Jem, who had been Lucie’s father’s parabatai, had a long and tragic story that ended with his having become a Silent Brother. He was Brother Zachariah now.

Would he be here? It was strange to imagine among the sparkling, laughing conversation, the clinking of glasses, a parchment-robed silent figure drifting about. But why wouldn’t he be? Lucie spoke of him all the time. Cordelia felt a little frisson of nerve at the thought of meeting him again—eagerness but also worry.

“Any Carstairs is welcome,” Anna smiled back airily. “And obviously any parabatai of Lucie’s is essentially a member of the family. Speaking of which.” She turned back to Lucie. “Don’t encourage Christopher, Lucie. You know how he is.”

“It wasn’t my idea!” Lucie protested. “It’s Matthew who set him on it. You know how he is.”

“I don’t,” said Cordelia mildly.

Lucie gave her a look of wide-eyed horror. “Oh, dear, what kind of host am I? Here is my best friend in the world, and I haven’t even introduced you to everyone! Anna, we must go.” She reached for Cordelia’s hand again.

“It was lovely to meet you,” Cordelia said to Anna.

Anna tipped her glass in Cordelia’s direction with a small smile. “Likewise.”

“All right,” Lucie narrated as she pulled Cordelia into yet another salon. “Matthew is Matthew Fairchild, he’s the consul’s son but don’t worry, he’s all right and not a bit stuck-up about it, and anyway Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Henry ran the London Institute when my Papa was young—he lived there, you know—and they’re over there, actually, hullo Aunt Charlotte!” Lucie waved a hand madly.

Cordelia looked over and quickly spotted Charlotte Fairchild—even someone as socially deprived as she was recognized the Consul—who was in the middle of saying something very serious to a group of equally serious-looking people, and didn’t notice Lucie’s wave. It was funny; Charlotte was tiny, bird-like, and towered over by the men around her, but she had a presence that dominated the room regardless. It was an admirable way to be, Cordelia thought.

Next to Charlotte was a red-headed man in a Bath chair, who did see Lucie wave, and waved back madly himself with a grin. Henry Fairchild. He was too far away for them to speak, but Lucie pointed at Cordelia and raised her eyebrows. Henry raised his hands and exclaimed in pleasure, and Cordelia waved too, a little less madly than the others.

“Is that Matthew with them?” Cordelia said. “The tallish one with his father’s hair?”

Lucie snorted. “Oh no! Matthew would be so offended. That’s his older brother Charles. He’s, well….”

“What?” said Cordelia.

“He’s a little dull.” Lucie had the good manners to look ashamed at her admission. “He’s very interested in politics and Shadowhunter business and all that, and he treats us all like children.”

“We are children.”

“Yes, so is he!” Lucie said impatiently. “But you wouldn’t know it from the way he acts.” She sighed. “He’s an all right sort, though. Next salon!”

With rapid speed Lucie took her through the remainder of the people Lucie considered it important for Cordelia to know. Her Aunt Cecily and her Uncle Gabriel—Gabriel also turned out to be among the group surrounding Charlotte—who were Anna and Christopher’s parents. Her Aunt Sophie, who had worked at the Institute as a mundane and then Ascended and married Gabriel’s brother Gideon.

Gideon, Lucie explained, was not here, because Thomas—oh, it was a shame that Cordelia was not going to meet Thomas, and also Thomas would never have allowed Christopher to get within a mile of fire to eat it, if he had anything to say about it, but anyway Thomas had broken his leg and Gideon had stayed home with him.

“Also there are the older girls,” Lucie said darkly. “Barbara and Eugenia. But they’re not much like us. They’re not even here; they had something else tonight. Can you believe it?”

Cordelia wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to believe it or not believe it, having never met either girl, so she only shook her head understandingly.

“Lucie!” A woman with heaps of curly scarlet hair was advancing on them at speed. “I need someone to help me put out the silver. Congratulations, girl, you’re hired.”

“Bridget,” Lucie protested. “Bridget was my nursemaid, when I was young enough to have a nursemaid,” she explained to Cordelia.

“And now your repayment of my kindness to you continues,” Bridget said sharply, “with the putting out of the silver. Come along.”

“I can help,” offered Cordelia.

Bridget looked offended. “I’ll not have a guest doing work at a party. This one here is hosting the thing.” She dragged off Lucie, who gave Cordelia a beseeching look of apology as she vanished into the crowd.

This left Cordelia back to meandering a bit aimlessly. Perhaps, she thought, she would go back and speak more with Anna, who had been so kind. Perhaps she would seek out her own family and see how they were making out.

Where were her family, though? After a few minutes’ wandering she spotted her mother, who seemed to be unusually in her element, animatedly telling some story to a captivated audience. But she couldn’t find her father, or Alastair, anywhere. It was a large party, surely, but she would have expected her father to be with her mother, or if not, captivating his own audience. Cordelia had been able to tell that he was the second-most excited to go to the party after herself. So where was he?

Perhaps, she thought, he had slipped away to the library. She wanted to get a look at the Institute’s library herself, anyway. She managed enough French to ask directions from one of the waitstaff.  It was down an iron spiral staircase, and Cordelia allowed herself to feel like a princess descending a tower.

The library had a tremendously high ceiling, which gave it an airy feel, but on the ground it was crowded with ancient, heavy oaken bookshelves, all of which were piled so densely with books that they were bent over by the weight, and it was astonishing that they had not already collapsed. Cordelia loved the place immediately. It was crumbling, in the most beautiful way possible. The light was warm and orange, and dust motes floated in it. It smelled pleasantly of must and old paper, and here and there were chairs of cracked, heavily aged and stained red leather.

Down at the other end of the room there was indeed a figure seated on the windowsill, curled up with a book, but it was obviously not her father. As she got closer, the dark-haired figure raised its head to peer at her, and she realized: it was James Herondale.

Part 2

“Hello,” said James Herondale. He peered up at Cordelia owlishly, as though he’d just come out of a reverie and wasn’t quite returned to the fully waking world.

“By the Angel, I’m awfully sorry.” Cordelia couldn’t help feeling she had interrupted something. She had met James before, of course—Will Herondale had been nothing if not diligent about making sure that his children and the Carstairs children knew one another—but she would not have described him as a friend, necessarily. He was a bit unknowable, in his odd way.

“No need to apologize,” James said mildly, “it’s me who’s skiving off this party to read.” He sat up rather suddenly, as if he’d only just realized he had been splayed casually across the windowsill and he should seek some kind of propriety.

“Most people don’t skive off parties,” Cordelia said, amused. “It’s usually lessons and chores, that sort of thing. Do you not like parties?”

“I like parties just fine,” James said, a bit defensively.

Cordelia crossed her arms and said sternly, “Well, I am in the library because I wanted to see the Paris Institute library, but also because almost the whole party are strangers to me. But they’re your friends, aren’t they? Wouldn’t you want to be with your friends? Matthew, and Thomas and the rest?”

James gave Cordelia a long look. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “They are my friends, I suppose, but really they’re more like relatives. I’ve always felt out of place among them.”

The thought of James being out of place anywhere struck Cordelia as funny. Compared to herself, he was self-assured, charismatic, effortlessly interesting. Compared to her awkward discomfort inside her own body, he was graceful and strikingly handsome—

Good Lord, Cordelia thought, where had that come from?

It was true, though. Among the pillars and medieval arches of the library he looked as at home as a marble statue, an oil painting of a classical youth at study. How could someone who matched his environment so perfectly be uncomfortable?

“I always feel out of place too,” she offered. “But I thought it was just because my family is always traveling so much. I’ve never stayed in one place long enough to make friends.” She looked down at the ground. “Maybe it’s more complicated than that.”

James said, “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Cordelia gave a little laugh. “Well, yes. We are. But how often do we see each other? Once a year, maybe twice, if we’re lucky?”

He shrugged. “I don’t see most of the people at this party more than that, anyway. We’re always in London and they’re usually in Idris. Although we’re meant to go to Idris this summer, so perhaps I’ll see them a bit more. And of course, we’ll all be at the Academy this fall.” He sighed. “Maybe I’ll start to think of them as real friends at some point. I just feel so different than them. Like…like everyone else is looking out at the world, at other people, but I am always looking inward, instead.”

Since to Cordelia James appeared to glow from within slightly, this struck her as an odd facet of his personality, but she supposed that the shy and retiring came in all shapes and sizes. “‘All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone,’” she quoted. “My father always says that.”

“Your father sounds very wise,” said James.

“Actually,” said Cordelia, “I think Blaise Pascal said that, and my father was only quoting him. You’d get along with my father,” she went on, surprised to find herself saying it out loud. But it was true; both her father and James had the same sense of the world being a bit too much for them, of preferring solitude, of seeking refuge in books. “I should go find him,” she said. “Again, I’m so sorry for interrupting your reading.”

James put the book down on the side table next to the window. “Again, please don’t apologize, I’m always happy for the opportunity to talk with you.” Cordelia found herself blushing, a bit, but James didn’t appear to notice. He stood up and said, smiling, “I shall escort you in your endeavor.”

On the way out of the library they fell silent, and Cordelia began to feel a bit awkward. It was usually so easy to speak with James, and yet she was unaccountably tongue-tied. Finally, desperate for a conversational gambit, she blurted, “Did you know that the original Paris Institute library burned down in 1574 when someone opened a Pyxis containing a Dragonidae demon?”

James raised his eyebrows. “I did not know that, Miss Carstairs,” he said, and Cordelia burst into giggles.

The smile was wiped quickly off her face, however, by the arrival of Alastair, who looked grim. “There you are,” he said, but he sounded more relieved than angry. He had a tired look in his eyes. “Father’s not well,” he said. “He’s asking for you.”

“Oh!” said Cordelia. She felt a brief, uncharitable flash of annoyance — her father’s sickness had spoiled so many parties, even Cordelia’s first rune-day. She turned to James. “I should go to him.”

“Of course,” said James. “I’m so sorry to hear he’s not well.”

“There’s an old monk’s chamber down that hall,” Alastair said, gesturing. “Father said he wanted to be someplace cool and dark.” He shook his head, agitated. “Sorry, Cordelia.”

Cordelia wasn’t sure what he meant—perhaps that it was usually her that Elias asked for when he wasn’t well, and not Alastair? She hoped it didn’t hurt Alastair’s feelings. She assumed it was because Elias believed girls made better nurses than boys, though she wasn’t sure that was true.

She left James and her brother there, looking askance at one another, and went down the hall until she found a short little heavy wooden door set in the wall. It swung open at her tentative push, and inside she found only a bit of dim light and a sparsely furnished room, with a small platform bed in the corner on which her father sat, his arm over his eyes.

“Papa,” she said, “I’m here.”

He groaned. “Cordelia, my love. It came on so suddenly.”

Cordelia felt a wash of guilt at having resented her father. “I know. I’m here, Papa.”

She went over to the bed and sat down next to him. The room was suffused with the strong smell, herbaceous and strongly bitter, that she associated with his episodes—the medicine that the Silent Brothers gave him to keep his health under control, she assumed.

“I’m sorry to ruin your party, Cordelia,” her father said after a moment. His voice was throaty, his words slow, as though it pained him to speak.

“No,” said Cordelia gently. “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well. I know you had looked forward to the party as well.”

He looked up from his arm and gazed at her fondly. “I already feel better now that you’re here.” He reached out and took her small hand in his larger one. “You’ve always been my best charm for getting well.”

Cordelia rubbed his hand anxiously. “What can I do, Papa? Is there anything you need?” She glanced around the room, looking for anything that might be helpful. Her eye fell on one of the room’s few decorations, a small shelf with a selection of cloth and leather-bound books arranged haphazardly across it. “I could read to you,” she said. That was what she would want if she were feeling ill, after all. To be read to would be the greatest act of love she could receive, so it only made sense to offer it here.

“Yes, that would be very nice.” Her father closed his eyes and smiled, as if in anticipation.

Cordelia went to examine the shelf. Doubtfully she said, “Well, in English we have either the 1817 classic How to Avoid Werewolves—”

“You mean, socially?”

“I’m not sure,” said Cordelia. “Your other option is the classic travelogue of the Shadowhunter Hezekiah Featherstone, Demons With Whom I Have Had Relationships.”

“Should you really be reading that second one?” her father rumbled.

“Papa!” said Cordelia, scandalized. “I don’t think they are romantic relationships.”

“Well then,” said Elias, settling back on the bed, and Cordelia thought he did already sound like he was feeling a bit better, “surprise me.”

#

James thought, it wasn’t Cordelia’s fault that he had been left alone with her older brother. It was only an unfortunate side-effect of the situation.

Though only a couple of years apart in age, James had always thought of Alastair as impossibly older than him, and Alastair, for his part, had treated James as impossibly younger. James supposed this was a natural result of being an older sibling. Certainly he could not imagine taking anyone fully seriously who was only his little sister’s age. In this circumstance, however, it left him unsure what to say to Alastair, or whether to wait for Alastair to speak, or whether to simply bolt from the room at top speed and assume Alastair was too slow to catch him.

Alastair ended the mystery by saying, in an odd tone, “My apologies for all this. My father is often unwell.”

“It’s all right,” James said, feeling strange to be reassuring an older boy. Tentatively he said, “Your father is a hero, after all.”

“What?” said Alastair, thrown off guard.

“Your father,” James said. “He killed the demon Yanluo.”

“Not by himself,” said Alastair.

“No,” said James, “but still. My father says an experience like that can leave scars. It’s a kind of sacrifice that heroes make, taking those scars so others don’t have to.”

He had meant it kindly, but was dismayed by the way Alastair’s face shut down. He became a blank, and when he looked at James, it was clear that he had ceased to regard James as being present in the room, or indeed, existing at all. “Quite,” he said. Without further comment he headed down the hallway toward the library..

“I’ll see you at the Academy,” James offered, one final try. “This fall. I’ll be starting.”

Alastair turned back, and in the same oddly neutral tone, he said, “That’s right. I suppose you will.”

After Alastair departed, James stayed where he was for a while, alone in the narrow, whitewashed corridor of the Institute. There was a party shaking the very rafters of the building, and yet here there was only silence. James thought of Cordelia, comforting her ill father, of Alastair stomping off for the sake of stomping off, obviously with no destination in mind.

His father had always made such an effort to get the two families together, the Herondales and the Carstairs. He had told so many stories about them, and was always encouraging their spending time together. And James had always been fond of the Carstairs, especially Cordelia. But now he thought, it’s odd, really, how little I know them as people.

He thought of the cousins, the parents’ friends, the Enclave members celebrating above. Other than his own family, he knew so little about any of them as people. And while he felt safe here, in the quiet, in the dark, he could tell that the world would not let him remain there for much longer. He would be out in the world, and he would need friends, and family, to help get him through.

Perhaps at the Academy, this fall.

[lovelyamneris]

George + Jerry, “The art of not being an idiot is extremely challenging for me.”

I've been hoarding this ask in my inbox for God knows how long I'm so sorry anon. Then I wrote like three quarters of it and posted about that and was immediately hit with writer's block. Here's my attempt at trying to write more seinfeld content for you <3

[Ao3 Link] [Full Series]

It’s early on a Saturday and Monk’s diner bustles with its usual crowd of regulars. George and Jerry are sitting across from each other in a booth by the window; George with a strawberry pastry and hot coffee and Jerry working on his third consecutive double espresso.

Sun pours in and blankets their table with warm early morning light. It’s intimate; in the way that drinking coffee every day with your oldest friend is intimate once it's a routine.

“So do you think that’s funny?” Jerry is asking, doting over a notebook of incomprehensible scribbles, “Are people allowed to laugh at that sort of thing these days or would it be considered a mood killer?”

Jerry is pretty sure that the audience wouldn’t throw tomatoes at him like he’s in a bad Shakespearian play, but stranger things have happened.

George half shrugs, “I don’t know. How would I know?”

“Well, I assumed as a fellow human being you’d have an opinion.”

“Comedy is subjective.” George says waving him off, “Just improvise or something.”

“Surprisingly harder than you think.”

The last time Jerry tried to improvise on stage the only person in the audience laughing was Elaine. And technically she was laughing more at his expense than she was at the joke. Cue the metaphorical tomato throwing. Jerry stares at his notepad and pouts. Why is it so difficult to figure out if his joke is funny or not? Kramer laughed, but perhaps that’s a bad sign.

A moment passes and when he looks back up from his notepad George is about five shades paler. Jerry recognizes the look immediately. It’s the ghostly expression of a man doomed to come face to face with the consequences of his own actions. Never a good sign for George.

“What’s wrong?” Jerry asks. Despite the courtesy of asking the question, he doesn’t seem too concerned by George’s sudden change in demeanor. He’s used to George’s sudden waves of panic. It’s like his default.

“Does that look like Lindsay to you?” George’s voice cracks.

“Psycho sadist Lindsay?” Jerry looks around the diner theatrically, “The one who thinks you got wacked by the mob? Where?”

“In our booth by the door.”

From where they’re sitting, Jerry can only see the side of her head, but it’s definitely Lindsay. She seems a lot happier than he remembers. Back when she was with George, she always had the face of someone who’s just accidently bitten into a lemon. Kramer even called her lemon face once, which was an awful moment for everyone involved.

“That’s her alright.” Jerry confirms, “What do you think she’s doing here?”

“I have absolutely no idea!” George shrinks down in the booth to hide from her, “She knows I get the diner in the breakup. It’s part of our pre-breakup agreement!”

“Ah, the pre-breakup agreement. The prenup of the dating world.” Jerry nods understandingly, “While I’d usually agree with you on that, I think faking your own death gives her a loophole.”

“I died while we were together!” George counters, whisper yelling. He looks awfully frazzled and generally insane, “She’s basically my widow. How does she think you feel having to see my widow at your favorite diner? It’s outrageous!”

Jerry considers this. Ever since the infamous incident with the fancy plates, he’s instinctively crossed to the other side of the street when he’s seen her in public. He’s not sure he’d be able to hold it together if she asked him about his best friend and said best friend’s terrible fate at the hands of the mob. Cracking a grin would probably not be an acceptable response.

And George is technically right. If he was actually dead, Jerry wouldn’t want to see Lindsay at the diner. It would undoubtedly cause a chain of events starting with him thinking about George and moping around about it (Jerry’s not sure he’s capable of moping, but he’s too afraid to find out) and ending with him being all sad and ruining his comedy routine. How are you supposed to be funny when you’re busy thinking about your dead friend?

Jerry relents, “Well, I can’t argue with that logic.”

“What do I do?” George panics, shrinking further down in the booth, “She’s going to kill me, Jerry!”

“I think you’re overreacting. So what if psycho Lindsay sees you? It’s the nineties. Is a dead man not allowed to have a strawberry pastry without persecution?”

George deflates, “You’re not taking this seriously. Lindsay is going to kill me and you’re making your little jokes about it. Great. Thanks a lot.”

“Hey, it’s not like you didn’t bring this on yourself. Even Elaine said she knew this would come back to haunt you eventually. It’s about time you face the music.”

George doesn’t think that sounds appealing at all. He’s gone his whole life avoiding the music. Why should he face it now! In fact, only people who have given up in life subject themselves to the music. If you’re still alive and breathing then it’s your God given right to avoid the music.

“How does Elaine know about the fancy plates?”

“Kramer told her.”

“How did Kramer know?!”

“I told Kramer.”

And of course. Of course, everyone in filled in and up to date on George’s suffering. He shoots Jerry a scathing look and Jerry returns it with a lopsided teasing grin.

Jerry glances down at his empty cup of espresso and frowns. The whole lemon faced Lindsay debacle has distracted him from what’s most important. Caffeine. He’s sure that the waitress is avoiding him because George is causing a scene. Or maybe Jerry is being cut off like he’s a drunk at a bar. Are they allowed to cut you off from caffeine? Is there an unspoken caffeine limit that only waitresses and baristas know about? He decides to investigate further.

Just as he's about to signal for the waitress, Jerry makes eye contact with Lindsay. Her face drops and suddenly she has that lemon faced expression about her again. Uh oh. Lindsay says something to her friend and gets up from her seat, making her way across the diner and towards them.

Jerry gives an enthusiastic wave, the type of wave that you’d give an old friend you’re seeing for the first time in a while. After all, Lindsay was always friendly to him. And she was one of George's most humor-inclined girlfriends! Maybe she'd be able to tell him if the joke was funny or not.

George stares at him in horror, “What? What’s happening?”

“Buck up, buddy, looks like she’s coming over.”

George makes a face like he’s been hit by a bus, but he defeatedly slides back up in his seat. Suddenly Lindsay is beside their booth, arms crossed.

“So, I’m guessing this is a Weekend at Bernie’s situation?” She asks. Jerry appreciates her humor. She seems pretty chill for someone who just found out that her boyfriend has risen from the dead.

“Good guess.” Jerry says conversationally, “Actually, George was getting too cramped in his coffin. He doesn’t do well in small spaces and decided to call the whole death thing off. Good idea if you ask me, the whole funeral thing is always a bit too theatric in my opinion. Like we get it. You're dead. Move on."

“Real classy.” Lindsay shoots back, but Jerry can tell that she liked the joke, “By the way George, I knew it wasn’t real when I called your parents to offer my condolences and your dad laughed at me. Anything to say about that?”

George shrugs, the gig is up as they say, “Admittedly, the art of not being an idiot is extremely challenging for me.”

Lindsay rolls her eyes, "You know what, I don't care." She heads back over to her friend and doesn't look back.

“Huh. She took that pretty well.” Jerry says when Lindsay is out of ear shot, “The way you talk about her I assumed her reaction would’ve been far more deranged.”

“Trust me,” George says seriously, “If you weren’t here she would’ve unhinged her jaw and swallowed me whole like a snake.”

“Too bad. I would’ve liked to see that.”

Finally, the waitress comes back over and Jerry orders another espresso. He considers his joke again.

“Should I ask Lindsay if she thinks the joke’s funny?” Jerry asks seriously. Lindsay is still sitting across the diner with her friend, “I need a woman’s perspective.”

George shrugs, “Jerry, I’m telling you right now, just improvise. Or do the lifeguard bit again. It’s your best.”

[ombreblossom]

Whatever you do don’t open your eyes” for the prompt!

So, I’m not entirely sure what one says before posting fanfiction on Tumblr, but here we go! This is decidedly not horror at all, but uh. Maybe more fitting for something posted on the eve of Act 3, which will inevitably destroy us all.

I’ve never posted fanfiction before, and this is the single longest creative work I’ve ever written, fanfiction or not. Not to mention I haven’t written anything creative, really, in almost a decade. All this said, I hope you enjoy!

The Ins and Outs of Surprises

Content warnings for panic attacks, dissociation, and tooth-rotting fluff.

Summary: In which Jon has a little bit of a rough time with knocking and then goes on to have an unquestionably fluffy evening. Featuring: kitties, the author projecting mightily onto Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist (as is tradition), good-natured teasing of everyone involved, and loads (and I mean loads) of affection.

(An AO3 link will be added to a reblog.)

Jon whipped his head up from his laptop screen at the loud knocking on their front door. This was a situation in which The Beholding would have unhelpfully supplied information about acute tachycardia and panic attack onset signs—if he and Martin hadn’t averted the apocalypse and banished the fears, at any rate. They could scarcely believe their luck some days, could scarcely believe that they’d both managed to live to see an after, to see time march on once more unperturbed by cosmic terrors.

These days, Jon had to recognize the symptoms of an imminent panic attack and allay them himself. Well, Martin helped, kind and loving soul that he was. That Martin had stuck around after they’d ceased being two of a handful of fully conscious people left in the entire world was another thing Jon couldn’t believe sometimes, but he couldn’t be happier that he did.

The knocking continued to barge in on his thoughts every several seconds as he sat stock still at his desk, flanked on both sides by bookshelves filled to the brim of his and Martin’s books and various knick-knacks: Polaroids of the two of them with their friends leaned up against the spines of their books, souvenirs purchased from museums around London, and a collection of small ceramic cats of different breeds and colors. A brief vision of everything on those shelves coming tumbling down in what is solidifying as an inevitable scuffle ratcheted up Jon’s anxiety even more. 

He was tempted to get up and look about their flat for anything that could serve as a weapon, but there wasn’t much other than perhaps a chef’s knife, dull with constant, loving use, that Jon was likely to find, and he was just as likely to harm himself with it as the intruder. Jon’s hands found their clumsy way to his upper arms, gripping them tightly enough that surely there’d be half-moon divots left where his nails bit into his skin. His chest was starting to feel tight, as if someone were sitting on it in spite of Jon’s verticality.

On one hand, he wished desperately that Martin were here because surely they’d be much more capable of taking on an impending intruder together now that Jon was “powered down,” so to speak. On another hand, he was so grateful that Martin wasn’t here to possibly get murdered. Better him than Martin, who’d been through so much (and largely on Jon’s account).

All this, and someone was still loudly rapping on the front door. The regularity with which the knocks came didn’t suggest an urgency or an immediate threat, so why hadn’t the knocker announced themselves? Maybe this mystery person was just trying to get his attention? But who could possibly know The (former) Archivist lived here? Was this even related to his status as Doom-Bringer? Jon remained in his seat where he’d been sending correspondence to the copyright holders of the next drama he was arranging for his theatre club to perform, paralyzed by indecision and a million swirling questions.

The person demanding his attention pounded their door once more, but this time a voice rang out, clear as a bell in crisp winter morning air.

“—you please open the door? I had to leave my keys in the car!”

His heart stammered and shuttered in his chest—much like Jon himself when he was excited, talking in stops and starts about the latest subject that he’d found interesting, but there was everything wrong with this kind of excitement. Martin had always found it endearing, or so he claimed, but he was sure he wouldn’t find this endearing, seeing Jon wavering on the precipice of panic. Jon, mouth gone bone-dry, croaked a response: “M-Martin?”

A little louder, Martin shouted, “Are you there, Jon? I don’t remember you saying you were going out today.” He audibly jerked the door handle, clearly checking to see if the door was locked. Even knowing who was on the other side of the door didn’t stop Jon from panicking. All sorts of gruesome scenarios danced through his mind. What if someone was using Martin to get at Jon, making it seem safe to leave their home only to ambush him once he was exposed?

Suddenly, all noise outside stopped, and this sent Jon spiraling further. He hadn’t really been taking note of his breathing this whole time, but he felt the encroaching fuzziness that he knew came with dropping oxygen levels. 

“Mar...tin?” Nothing still. Martin hadn’t returned yet. Gripping his cheap particle wood desk that carried none of the same gravitas his elaborate oak desk had at the institute, Jon stood up. It was a precarious thing, his legs shaking and threatening to send him to the floor if he moved too quickly, but he needed to know what happened to Martin.

Just as he had been about to take his first wobbly step toward the door, Jon heard the faint sound of a key sliding into a locking mechanism. In no time at all, his dear heart was in front of him, saying something Jon couldn’t parse.

“—okay to touch—Jon?” He sounded worried for some reason, his voice pitching up just that little extra bit, something Jon knew happened when Martin felt powerless in the face of someone in danger.

Where was the danger? Who was in danger?

Something light brushed against his shoulders and stayed there. In the back of his mind, he was sure Martin had meant it as a comfort to focus on instead of the menacing fuzziness. “Why don’t you sit down, Jon. Everything will be all right. Hey—hey. It’s okay. Just sit down, love, and breathe.” So Jon did.

For a while, he drifted, sightless and senseless save for the tightness in his chest.

When he came back to awareness, Martin was there; he’d pulled another chair up close to Jon and pulled him into a loose embrace, loose enough that Jon could escape with very little effort if he needed to. Soft shushing noises filled the room.

Jon lifted his head from its position buried in Martin’s chest and immediately lost himself again in Martin’s eyes. Dark and speckled as soil and just as full of life. Jon had read enough comparisons to celestial bodies in his lifetime (and made similar comparisons himself once upon a time when their relationship was new and Jon had no idea how to close the distance between them, so up on a pedestal Martin went) to think them useful now. Martin’s beauty didn’t come from being a lonely, unreachable, incomprehensible light in the night sky. Martin was beautiful for far more mundane reasons. He celebrated life and the ups and downs of it all. He sowed seeds of happiness whenever he could and hardly anyone left his presence the poorer. Certainly, Jon recognized, he was somewhat biased, and, no, Martin wasn’t a perfect human being and had his bad days when being around people was too much to bear, when he’d snap and sneer and hide, but those bad days were fewer and further between as time went on.

Martin was talking to him, as it turned out. Maybe he should pay attention to that? Push through the words upon words criss-crossing and overlapping in every direction and orientation. Like microcurrents in the ocean just off the coast of Bournemouth. He’d been warned off from swimming too far from the coast by his grandmother when he was younger. Not that he would have regardless (too many tourists, too many people looking to see only what they wanted to see of his shore-side city), but Jon’s wanderings only made her more fearful of what lurked beyond their small bubble.

Focus, Jon. Focus.

“Are you with me? I’m starting to get more worried here.” Ah, there’s the helpless sarcasm. 

Not able to speak just yet, he leaned back, loosening Martin’s hold on him. Without really comprehending the in-between, Jon’s arms wrapped around Martin’s middle. There was a rather inviting spot on his chest that perfectly pillowed Jon’s head when the opportunity arose, but now wasn’t the time. He’d be lost for hours in the comfort of it all. Instead, Jon looked at him.

“I’m with you,” he said, the gravel that rumbled around in his throat more pronounced than usual.

A full sigh blew out of Martin as he glanced away from Jon. “I’m so sorry, Jon. I totally forgot about the knocking….” This was when the guilt set in. A momentary indulgence, Martin told him once when the world was still Wrong. Time to put a stop to that.

One of Jon’s hands pulled Martin’s face back into view and stayed flush against his cold cheek. “Martin, it’s all right. Most days it wouldn’t bother me, but today…. Something about today has me a little on edge. It feels like something’s about to happen, but I don’t know what.”

Martin still looked worried. “Something is happening today, but it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.” Mirroring his gesture, Martin raised his own hand up, thumb following the path of Jon’s cheekbones, gently passing over the scars left by Jane Prentiss’ worms.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. I promise it’s a good thing, though. No traps, no ulterior motives, no earthy manifestations of eldritch fear entities. It’s completely terror-free!”

“You promise, huh?” Jon said with a teasing lilt.

“I mean, as long as you discount the constant low-grade terror of living in a city with several million people and where anything can happen to you at any time.”

“I must say, Martin, you’re exceptionally reassuring today.”

“Thanks! I try.”

Jon just hmmed. 

With a hand still stroking Jon’s cheek and the worried look on his face softening by degrees, Martin said, “How are you feeling?”

Jon took a moment to honestly assess himself. He’d been trying to do that more often since distancing himself from the institute and everything it had represented to him. No more unreasonably late nights of work when he could just as easily spread his work out over the next day or several, and even when he couldn’t, Martin helped him make sure he stopped working no later than seven o’clock each evening. And while his pushing aside his bodily needs was a complicated matter with multiple causes, he’d been working on communicating when he needed to rest, when he was on the verge of pushing past his limits. (He’d been slowly coaxing Martin to do the same, though he’d just as often brush it off when Jon brought it up to him.)

After some examination, Jon replied, “I’m a bit tired, I suppose, but I’ll be all right once I get moving again.” He half-smiled at Martin, hoping to convey a sense of earnestness. Martin trusted him, he knew, and would take Jon’s words at face-value, but it didn’t hurt to lay it on thick sometimes.

The hand on his face was so soft. So pleasant a feeling it was, Jon nuzzled his face into that hand, eliciting a light-hearted giggle from Martin.

“Well, then,” he started, “Up we get! I’ve got something to show you. It’s a little chilly outside, so let’s grab your coat.”

Jon looked puzzled. “Outside? What’s outside?”

Martin gasped loudly. “It’s a surprise, Jon! How could you possibly ask me to spoil a surprise? The sheer audacity—I can’t believe it,” he exclaimed, clutching his chest and a look of profound offense on his face, completing the ensemble of mock outrage.

A warmth settled in Jon’s chest. This silly man was the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, no matter how long that ended up being. He let himself be overcome with affection and took the hand Martin had been using to stroke his cheek and brought it to his lips, placing a sweet kiss onto his palm.

“Oh, Mr. Blackwood, whatever can I do to repay you for this betrayal?” Jon crooned, that sloppy half-smile morphing into something a bit more mischievous. He would take any opportunity he could get to coax Martin’s infamous blush into existence, a handsome spreading of color across warm tawny skin, reaching as far as the tips of his ears.

With the expected flush rising on his features, Martin eyed Jon with a mixture of equal parts amusement, affection, and disdain. He gently removed his hand from Jon’s hold and walked over to their coat closet. “What you can do for me, Jon, is come over here and let me help you into your coat!” There was no heat in his words—no, Jon would tease that there was none left to imbue Martin’s words because it was stuck preciously under his skin—and Jon chuckled as he rose from his chair and followed Martin over walked over to where Martin was waving Jon’s pea coat in front of him expectantly.

“All right, all right,” he said, turning around to face the direction he came from, back to Martin, allowing him to guide one woolen sleeve then another over Jon’s arms. (Their bookshelves were intact, if disorganized, to his mild surprise.) Martin tugged on the collar, a signal for Jon to face him.

Though he managed to retain most function in his right hand, despite Jude Perry’s desolate flame ravaging it, it was sometimes painful to flex his fingers. Thus, it became customary for Martin to help him into his outer layers. Buttons were especially difficult some days, but Martin would grab Jon’s lapels and bring him in close enough that only several centimeters separated them and he’d fasten Jon’s buttons for him. Today was no different, though today it was more about the casual intimacy that underlaid the gesture than it was about the practicality of it.

Almost ready to face the damp cold outside, Jon asked, “What’s the rush about, Martin?”

A royal purple scarf suddenly in hand, Martin said, “Well, it’s getting late, and Georgie is still waiting outside with—well, waiting outside, and she and Melanie have a date soon, so we can’t keep her waiting.” Martin curled the scarf around Jon’s neck just so. “Not to mention how miserable it is outside. And I had to turn the car off to take the keys when you wouldn’t answer the door, so it’s probably cold by now, and….” He trailed off, looking at the ceiling with a far-away expression as if contemplating what else to tell Jon in this moment. “In any case, we are in a bit of a hurry, so get your boots on and let’s go!”

Aforementioned boots on and otherwise bundled up, Jon cocked his head to the side. “But, why is Georgie—” He stopped. He didn’t need to know right then. He knew Martin would answer his questions when he felt he could. This was knowledge that could wait. “Lead the way, then, dear.”

They turned toward the door hand-in-hand. Before opening the door, Martin looked back at Jon and said, “I meant it when I said this was a surprise, Jon. I want you to close your eyes and not open them until I say to, okay?”

The proposition of keeping his eyes closed for an indeterminate amount of time didn’t exactly appeal to him, but he trusted Martin. Before he could provide his assent, however, Martin pressed on.

“I know you don’t feel safe when you can’t see anything, but it’s only for a short walk to the car, and I’ll be there every step of the way to make sure nothing happens to you,” he assured. 

Jon could let himself be caught in Martin’s gaze forever, sunny and bright as it was. Now wasn’t the time, he realized. Later on, Jon would lead him to their overstuffed couch by hand and drape himself over Martin and press kisses underneath the line of his jaw and down the line of his throat, as he knew Martin loved.

“I trust you, Martin.” Jon closed his eyes and used his unoccupied hand to gesture to them with a flourish. “Lead on.”

A blast of cold, saturated air assaulted them as Martin opened the door. Taking their first steps outside, Jon tried to place the temperature, figuring it was no warmer than five or six degrees. It was still kind of novel, not having the exact knowledge he was looking for beamed into his head without his consent.

“Hold on, Jon. Stay right here for a moment. I have to close the door. Don’t want our heating bill to go through the roof.” Jon did as he was told, resisting the urge to open his eyes in spite of Martin’s insistence and already missing the solid presence of his hand. As if he were the one with omniscience, Martin yelled back, “Whatever you do, don’t open your eyes!”

Thoroughly thwarted, Jon waited for Martin to take his hand again before moving.

They parted the slow-moving air around them as they walked. Not forceful enough to be considered wind in his book but enough to siphon some of the scant amount of warmth his body produced away from him. People breezed by them, heeled shoes clacking against the sidewalk and snatches of conversations not meant for them drifting in and out of focus. “You said Georgie was here, right? Where is she? I don’t hear her at all.” 

“Georgie has been sworn to silence. Come on; we’re almost there.”

Martin pulled him forward, careful indeed to guide Jon around deposits of snow, soon to be gone, and depressions in the uneven sidewalk filled with slush. London and the surrounding area often got like this in the dead of winter; it didn’t snow overmuch, but when it did, rain soon followed, the temperature never remaining cool enough to sustain large amounts of snow for very long.

“Okay, Jon. We’re here. Keep your eyes closed for a little while longer.” Jon heard the tell-tale sound of a car door opening. The anticipation was roiling in him now; it was hardly bearable. He alternated between centering his weight on the balls of feet and then his heels—and back and forth—trying to dissipate some of the unease.

Just as Jon’s anxieties were building in intensity to a roaring crescendo, Martin spoke again: “You can open your eyes now, love.”

In front of Jon was a cat carrier—no mistaking it. He knew their shape intimately from all the hurried trips to the vet after The Admiral had gotten into food he shouldn’t have. The time The Admiral had eaten a sizable chunk of cold margherita pizza Georgie and he had left out on the table came to mind easily. Several frenzied Internet searches later, words like pancreatitis and anemia rolling around in their minds, they rushed The Admiral to an emergency vet. (It turned out that he hadn’t really eaten enough of the pizza to really worry about it, and the vet had a laugh at their expense, but the experience stuck with both of them.)

Someone had thrown a blanket over the carrier, making it difficult to make out what (who?) was inside, so Jon crouched down to get a better look. He could only imagine the look on his face right then.

A Maine Coon cat stared back at him, its amber eyes searching his and its head displaying a rich coat of golden yellows and deep browns. Jon was nigh speechless. “Who is this, Martin?” he whispered reverently.

Martin crouched down with him. “Well, as far as I know, she doesn’t have a name, not an official one anyway. I started feeding her a while ago on my way back from Tesco, and eventually she started following me back home. I wasn’t sure if she was actually someone’s cat or if she was a stray, so I always shooed her away before we got close to home.”

“That doesn’t answer why she’s here.” He wanted desperately to open the door of the carrier and run his hand through her fur, but Jon settled for poking his finger through the grate. The yet-to-be-named cat sniffed his finger from a couple angles and proceeded to rub her nose and face all over it. Jon nearly wept. 

“I can answer that one,” Georgie interjected, having been nearly forgotten by the other two. She came over and kneeled down with them, eyeing them both with mild concern. “Remember those couple times Melanie, Martin, and I all took off while you were working? Well, this guy was waffling on what to do with Goldie here”—Jon mouthed “Goldie? Really?” at Martin, who could only shrug helplessly—“and came to Melanie and me, your resident cat parents, for advice.

“We discovered pretty quickly that Goldie was a stray, or at least not microchipped. That made the decision that much easier. I walked him through all the different tests he’d want to get done to to make sure she was healthy and spayed and all that. The vet figured she’d been a house cat at some point, seeing as she was fairly clean and decently-well fed, even taking Martin feeding her into account. But no microchip, no tags, and no other indicator of who she belonged to, and the several weeks this guy had been asking around the area to try to find her owners with nothing to show for it?” 

Martin shot her a look. Georgie laughed, saying, “Oh, there was no way I wasn’t going to mention that. You talk a good game of resisting her charms, but you knew you were going to try to bring her home. You exhausted all your options trying to find her owners before we even showed up! The point is, we figured Goldie would find herself in good company with you two. Plus, I know how much you’ve missed The Admiral, Jon.”

This was too much to take in. He hadn’t been aware of any of this happening. In one sense, it was relieving: another piece of evidence to add the mounting pile that The Beholding had truly lost its grip on him. But how could Jon have missed all of this? Surely he joined Martin often enough in his London travels to have noticed him asking around about this cat.

“Hey.” Martin bumped their shoulders together. “I know what you’re thinking. I tried very hard to keep this from you in case it didn’t work out. I didn’t want to tell you about Goldie and get your hopes up only to find out that she had a loving family looking for her. And you’ve been so preoccupied with your theatre club’s new show; I wanted this to be a pleasant surprise.” Jon remembered the playbills scattered around his desk, a cursor left blinking, hovering over a supplicating email.

“You doing all right there, Jon?” Georgie leaned in closer to him, eyebrows furrowed. “We should get Goldie inside soon. It’s awfully cold.”

He’d heard enough. Standing up without warning, Jon waited for the other two to follow suit.

There was a moment when nobody moved. 

In a (in hindsight) hilarious attempt to force both Georgie and Martin up to their feet, Jon grabbed a hold of their collars and pulled, not too hard as to choke but enough to make his intentions known.

Jon advanced on Georgie first and threw his arms around her shoulders in a tight hug. This was familiar; this was safe. It took them a long time to return to a place where they would love each other like this after everything. He’d thought once that it would be impossible, too many misunderstandings and too much unintentional harm a seemingly unending flood under the bridge of their relationship, but here they were.

Pulling away slightly, Jon pressed a brief kiss to Georgie’s dry cheek, a pleasant contrast to their overwhelmingly wet surroundings. He stared deep into her eyes and said, "Thank you for your part in this, Georgie. For helping bring—heh—Goldie to us."

Eyebrows shockingly close to the edge of her hairline and eyes wide, she stuttered out, "Oh! Yeah, sure."

He turned on Martin next, who stood stock still close by, watching the scene with rapt attention. 

“Martin.”

Jon didn’t give Martin a chance to respond, stealing his words with a kiss. Several kisses, really, all short and soft and sweet, with little regard for location. Nowhere was safe: Martin’s nose, cheek, temple, jaw, hair. All had kisses laid upon them in pretty short order. 

As if just realizing he had an armful (and lipful) of Jon, Martin pulled him in closer. “What was that for?”

Jon let his smile take over his face. “For all the kindnesses you do me—big and small, extravagant and simple, whether you believe them to be or not.” And he pressed one more kiss on Martin’s forehead. “Thank you.”

“Oh,” he said. Wobbly, he continued, “Of course, Jon.”

Passersby walked around them. How Jon managed to forget this was a London street where people other than him, Martin, and Georgie existed was beyond him. He only noticed them at all because the chill of the languid London wind was starting to make a home in his bones. Better to work on getting everyone inside before the cold became too much.

“Where’s Melanie? I know she’d hate it, but I want to thank her as well.”

“Oh, Melanie would have loved to be here, if only to laugh at the hilarious conclusion of this rom-com movie plot we’ve all found ourselves in. But a meeting with one of the families she’s been working with ran late.” Melanie couldn’t talk too much about her work for fear of violating the confidentiality of the people she worked with, but from what Jon understood, she had essentially created a career adjacent to social work, in which she helped people living with the aftereffects of the fears’ full emergence reintegrate into society at large. She reasoned she was in a good position to help others shed the influence of the fears, given that she’d spent the last almost year before the Change doing the same. 

Georgie clasped Jon’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, though! I’m going to be telling her a~all about this.”

“Are you trying to give me a coronary? Melanie can’t know I have feelings.”

Georgie threw her head back and laughed. “Consider it our payment for the invaluable advice we provided throughout this harrowing process that Melanie will get to tease you about how disgustingly cute you two are later.”

The two bickered for a little bit like this as the sun sank further further beneath the horizon, Martin occasionally chiming in with support for whomever would create the most chaos. He may have been the love of Jon’s life, but Martin could still be a little shit when the mood took him.

Georgie was right earlier. It was cold and starting to get colder, and, frankly, all Jon wanted to do right now was pet this cat that he was legally obligated to rename to something more dignified. Something like The Duchess or Empress Dowager Cat or something else of equal stature would do. He’ considered having Martin help him decide, but if “Goldie'' was anything to go by, then perhaps it’d be better to leave him out of the proceedings.

Starting to move the blanket away from Goldie’s carrier, Jon said, “It’s about time we brought her inside, don’t you think, Martin? I’d like to get her settled in before dinner.”

Georgie stayed a couple extra minutes to help get Goldie, some food she and Martin had picked up for her on the way back, and a few toys into the flat. Jon offered to walk her to the tube station, and Martin offered to drive her back to the flat she shared with Melanie, but Georgie refused both and sent the two of them on their way to go bond with their new furchild.

As Georgie rounded the corner of their block and left their sight, waving to them all the while, Jon and Martin returned to the warmth of their flat. And there she was, lying against the grate of the carrier, not a care in the world. He and Goldie would become fast friends, Jon was sure.

-------------

Outerwear hung up to dry and boots neatly sequestered on their drying mat, it was finally safe to allow Goldie to explore their flat, which she accomplished in approximately 5 seconds, zooming around from room to room in a series of excited dashes. She stopped in the middle of the living room floor and made several pointed sniffs into the air.

Martin looked over to where Jon stood; he looked positively gleeful with a loose fist poorly hiding a still obvious smile. Frizzy fly-away hairs haloed around his head with some plastered to his face and the rest of his black, silver mottled hair in a hastily-done up-do. It was well known that Jon's hair expanded a good thirty percent in moist air, and today was no exception. It was so charming, seeing this man so unguarded, so unmade compared to his historically meticulous appearance. 

Choosing this moment of loving staring to make herself known once again, Goldie wound herself in around their legs in figure eights, rubbing her scent onto their closes and purring loudly. Jon couldn’t stop the high keening noise that escaped from his mouth.

"Are you all right over there, love?" Martin snickered.

"Quiet, you."

Jon turned to face him. It didn't happen too often, but every once in a while, Jon would gain an extra depth of color in a delicate line across his nose and cheekbones, a warmer brown than what otherwise lived there. Martin was wholly pleased to see the color now, and that it arose from something he helped make happen made his heart soar. 

"This is your fault, you know," Jon said mildly.

"What's my fault?"

He huffed. "These entirely embarrassing reactions I'm having."

"Oh, is that all? Sorry that I can't find it myself to feel guilty, then. I happen to love all these embarrassing reactions you're having." Placing a kiss on Jon's temple, he continued, "You're adorable when you're like this, you know."

"I know you think that, you incorrigible man."

“You are!” 

Jon laughed fondly at this. “There’s no sense in arguing with you about this, is there?”

“Not really!”

Seemingly sensing the end of their dispute, Goldie plopped herself down on Jon’s foot. It didn’t seem possible that she could purr any louder than she was a couple minutes ago, but Martin’s life had always taken one look at his expectations and summarily ignored them.

“Are you seeing this, Martin?” Jon whispered, the awe in his voice unmistakable. “Her Most Esteemed Empress Dowager Cat has deemed me worthy of her attention. I am honored to be in her presence.”

It took everything Martin had in him to not bark a laugh at that. “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t quite hear you. What are we calling our cat?”

Their cat. Their cat that they’d be taking care of and cuddling together. Somehow the thought hadn’t occurred to him before, and it threatened to make him speechless now.

Jon muttered indignantly, “Like your name was any better.”

Martin gathered Jon into his arms easily, despite Jon’s defensive posture.

“Why don’t we come up with a proper name for her tomorrow. We’ll call her Goldie for now”—Jon started to protest, but Martin pushed on—“because that’s what she’s been answering to, but let’s just make dinner and enjoy her company tonight, hmm?”

A short moment later, Jon replied, “Yes, that sounds wonderful.”

They debated the relative merits of whipping up a quick curry versus spending a bit more time on a soup with a homemade broth and eventually decided on the former. The sounds of chopping potatoes and the clinking of glass jars containing garam masala, turmeric, red chili powder, cloves, star anise, and everything else necessary for aloo kurma spread throughout the flat. And if Goldie leapt onto the kitchen counter once or twice, knocking over bowls of ingredients and leaving inordinate amounts of fur in her wake, well. That was just fine with them.

[10moonymhrivertam]

Buffy/Witcher fic fragment

“Julian, duck!” The voice is a little shrill and definitely frantic. Jaskier’s still reeling from the portal, but something about the words has his hand shooting out to drag Geralt down with him. Something flies over their heads, and he looks up to see a headless body crumbling into dust. Which he hasn’t seen anything do in a very, very long time. He tenses at running footsteps, and he has a dagger in hand based sheerly on how frayed his nerves are. The girl standing over them is in jeans and a t-shirt, and he hasn’t seen the combination in decades.

“It is you! Everyone’s going to flip. It’s been years, I’m pretty sure they thought you were dead, especially since nobody really did magic yet when you went missing.” The girl has a hand out, and Jaskier stares at it, his brain buffering. Eventually, he realizes why. He’d gotten a spell to help him learn the most common language on the Continent when he’d arrived there, and now his brain is scrambling to parse English for the first time in twenty years.

“Who the hell are you?” He asks, the words wrapping strangely around his tongue. The girl frowns, her face scrunching into an expression that rings a bell deep in his memory. He’d had a friend that made a face like that...

“Right. The spell. You were gone.” Her hand still hangs in the air between them. “I’m Dawn Summers. I can take you to Giles, if you want.”

Jaskier eyes her for another moment before accepting the hand and then turning to help Geralt up. He doesn’t refuse the help, but there’s something tight in his face that says he doesn’t trust conversations he didn’t understand being had over his head.

“She knows someone that might know something,” he says to Geralt. Geralt grunts, his eyes darting from grave to grave. Jaskier suppresses a sigh and turns back to Dawn.

“Lead the way, Miss Summers.” Her face does something strange, but without a word, she turns on her heel and heads for the gate of the cemetery with unerring accuracy. Geralt’s stony silence felt significant, but every time Jaskier thought of something to say, all he could think was how Geralt was going to tear him apart for this pile of shit later when Jaskier wasn’t the only translator around. Another voice speaking English stopped his anxiety from ratcheting higher.

“Dawn, all I want to know is how I didn’t see you go.”

“I literally just waited until you stopped asking me questions while you were reading. But look, I survived!” Her voice is as bright as the sun. “Also, I found something!”

“You found something?” It wouldn’t have been easy to miss the skepticism in his voice even if Jaskier didn’t already know him. Dawn looks back, drawing Giles’s eye. Jaskier waves awkwardly, suddenly aware of just how much distance time has put between them.

“Julian?”

“Giles. It’s been...a while, for me.”

“It hardly looks like it.” Jaskier recognizes the look from seeing one like it on Geralt’s face more than he remembers it on Giles’s.

“I think that first portal did something to the way I age. Do you want to not-invite us back somewhere?” Which clears up a little bit of the look on Giles’s face, at least.

“I suppose there is an anniversary pizza party which can use a few more guests.”

“Oh, yeah!” Dawn grinned. “You haven’t met Tara yet! Oh, and, um - who are you? Sorry.” Jaskier looked back at Geralt - for a split second, he was waiting for Geralt to answer, then remembered.

“Geralt, this is Dawn and Giles. Giles, Dawn; Geralt. Language barrier.” Geralt had figured that much out already, so he didn’t feel the need to repeat himself.

“Sounded Polish.” Giles said a string of something which almost sounded like a greeting, but made Jaskier make a face. The easiest explanation was just that his accent was incomprehensible, but - then he remembered that they’d hopped from the thirteenth century to the twentieth.

“I’ll look into it,” Jaskier said in very firm English. Giles winced, and Jaskier felt bad for a moment. They quickly got on their way, and silence reigned. Jaskier hated the thick tension in the air, so with a mental fuck-it, he started speaking.

“Say something,” he pleaded with Geralt. “Anything. Three words or less?” The prompt usually worked when all else failed, but then - that had been before that awful dragon hunt half a year ago.

“Apologies are difficult.” The words came slowly, and Geralt looked pained. Jaskier didn’t bother hiding his surprise. Geralt eyed him for a moment before dropping his eyes to the sidewalk. “Harder now that I’m confused. And you’re the only one that knows what’s going on.”

Jaskier bit his lip, processing that. Geralt wanted to apologize, before they were portalled into Sunnydale. That was...a lot.

“This is...” Jaskier trailed off. “It’s where I’m from.” He looked away from Geralt. “A few years before we met, a portal took me from here and dropped me on the Continent. There was a mage that was so frustrated with my charades that she just slapped a translation spell on me. I’m just lucky the mechanics of it mean I can be a great bard. I can still tell the languages are separate, they still feel different, but I just - understand them.” He tapped his temple.

“This is where you’re from?” Geralt repeated. Jaskier looked over to see his eyes roaming from the sidewalk to the road to the power lines.

“It’s got monsters, too, but no witchers. Got something else, though. Oh, and it’s the twentieth century. Twenty-first, maybe, depending how long I was gone. It was the 90’s.”

“You know them?”

“The man. The girl said something about a spell, but...I don’t know what she means. Hold on. Miss Summers, what was that you said before about a spell?”

“Oh, yes, you were gone.” Hearing Giles say the same thing was a point in her favor. “It’s...rather complicated. There was memory alteration involved.”

“So I forgot you?” Jaskier couldn’t help but be a little upset by the idea.

“Wrong way around,” Dawn said, looking a bit uncomfortable. “We probably should wait until we get back, and then everyone else can tell you the way they remember things. It might be kind of neat to see how you tell things.”

“Alright, then.” Jaskier flashed them a disarming smile before turning his attention back to Geralt and shrugging. Geralt hummed and fell quiet again. Jaskier did the same despite himself, at least until the girl drifted back towards them.

[disappearance somewhere mid-s3; this is set in an ambiguous post-s5 everyone-is-happy-fuck-you]

“Is that a guitar?”

“A lute. Learning it was a little different. The tuning’s a bitch.” Giles shot him a look over his shoulder, and Jaskier rolled his eyes. “This is a special one. I got it from the king of the elves.”

Dawn’s eyebrows rose. “Okay, Bilbo.”

“Hey, no, they’re real on the Continent!” Jasker protested. He outlined what history he’d learned at Oxenfurt for her, and by the time he was coming to the end of his impromptu lecture, they were outside a house he recognized, just barely. Giles was first through the door, tossing out a greeting to get a chorus of voices in return. Dawn followed. Jaskier hesitated just one moment. His high school friends seemed to be in there. He hadn’t seen them in going on thirty years. Nonetheless, if he didn’t go, Giles wouldn’t trust him, and he didn’t have any chance of either settling in here or finding his way home. So he forged ahead, hanging onto Geralt’s sleeve. He crossed the threshold without a lick of trouble, and Geralt shadowed him silently.

“Who’s that?” That was Joyce’s voice, he thought.

“We found them in the cemetery!” Dawn said, far too cheerfully. “But we didn’t invite them in,” she added quickly. “You heard!”

“We heard.” That was another familiar one. A few moments later, one of his old friends was in the doorway. “...Julian?”

There was a chorus of ‘what’s, and suddenly it seemed like the entirety of whatever party they were having was in the doorway. Before he’d quite processed it all, Xander had drawn him into a hell of a hug.

“Lute!” He protested, squirming out of the hug. He took off his case and floundered for a place to set it. Geralt gently removed it from his hands and nodded back to the others. Jaskier flashed him a quick, warm smile, then turned his attention back to distributing hugs.

“It’s been a while,” he offered when they’d had their fill.

“How are you not dead?” Xander asked, earning an elbow in the side from Willow. He winced and pouted at her. 

“There was a portal. Which did do something strange to my aging, I’ll admit.”

“You barely look older than me,” Dawn observed, which didn’t help Jaskier as much as it ought to.

“Well, that’s flattering.”

“Why, how old are you?” Buffy asked.

“Coming up on forty-three.” Geralt tensed at the various ‘bullshit’s that rose up. Jaskier flashed him a smile to reassure him. “I’d offer to prove it, but all I have is Geralt’s word, and he never even argued with Yennefer about those crow’s feet jokes, so I don’t know if he noticed.”

“Oh, what are we all standing around the hall for?” Joyce tittered. “Come on, come sit. There’s pizza; soda; some wine.”

“Ooh, they’ve got wine, Geralt!” Geralt hummed. Still holding Jaskier’s lute with something like reverence, he followed Jaskier. At least until Jaskier stopped dead in the door, his eyes narrowing at the man with bleach-blond hair in the middle of what sounded like a pop culture argument with a woman who hadn’t come to greet him. 

“You have more to catch me up on, right now,” he said lowly. Spike looked over and his eyebrows shot up. 

“Pretty boy. Thought you were dead. Nice going on the still being here.” Spike made a vague gesture of congratulations and then turned back to his partner, but she was squinting at Jaskier like she knew him.

“There was a thing,” Dawn answered, dropping onto the couch. “An organizationy thing. Now he basically has a taser in his brain so he can’t eat people. He doesn’t have a soul but he’s still okay.”

“Watch yourself, little bit.” Spike waved a threatening finger at her, and Jaskier nearly leapt forward with his dagger, clear invitation be damned. A hand landed on his shoulder. He tensed and nearly whipped around. 

“Jaskier,” Geralt rumbled in his ear. “What’s going on?”

“When I left, that bastard was out to kill us.”

“And now?”

Jaskier huffed angrily through his nose. “He’s been invited to the party.”

“Treat him like he’s Valdo Marx, then.”

“Not fucking well helpful, Geralt, someday I’ll murder that little shit, I really will.”

“You’re Jaskier and Geralt of Rivia!” The accusation was sudden, giddy, and in the language Jaskier was used to hearing. He and Geralt turned as one to look at Spike’s conversation partner. Jaskier distantly noticed he was staring at her, too, though in a more ‘what the fuck’ way.

“And who would you be, madam?” The flirty, pleased smile touched easily on Jaskier’s face. Xander’s eyes narrowed. 

“Oh, when I went there, I usually went as Anyanka.”

“Anyanka...that’s familiar.”

“It had better be. I had at least three separate summons that stopped me and Hallie having days out because of you.”

“Summons?” Most of Jaskier’s excitement had dropped away.

“I was a demon zemsty.”

“Shit.” Jaskier could feel himself go pale. He could feel Geralt at his back, but couldn’t tell if he was angry or smug or indifferent. 

“But I’m not stupid. Witchers are almost as infamous as Slayers, and you’re the White Wolf’s bard.”

“Slayers?” Geralt asked. 

“It’s what I told you we have instead of Witchers. Except there’s only one, and she’s always a girl.”

“Seems like a lot of responsibility for one person,” he remarked. 

“Which is why Buffy has everyone.” Jaskier made a gesture encompassing the room. “And hasn’t died yet. No, wait, Kendra was Called. Well, she’s never died properly.”