#took dialogue lines from the old version

[pemokiandkenacia]

Leures Redesigns!!

[229zmi]

DO YOU THINK WE’RE LOVERS IN EVERY UNIVERSE?

Kuroo Tetsurō/Reader | 2.5k words, lots of description and run-on sentences and like 3 lines of dialogue, brief mention of kuroo’s parents separating

It’s simple. At only seven years old, Kuroo decides that love is always going to be a hair out of his reach.

Perhaps it’s foolish of him to make such a finite conclusion at a young age and to already determine so early on in his life that yes, love is a finish line he is never going to make it to — that love may be something he can only observe in his surroundings but never truly hold as his own. But this has been his observation for years, so he can’t help himself from thinking of it in this forever-unattainable sort of way, that is: if love is something like a narrow world — one where he can see where it starts and ends, what it encompasses, and what it lacks all at once — then Kuroo Tetsurō is stuck idling along the edge, perpetually on the outside looking in.

And you know, most people don’t remember the first few years of their life. Yet somehow, he remembers the first time he looked in and caught a glimpse of the parents who lifted their kids up, twirled them around, held their hands, kissed the crown of their heads, asked them about their day. He saw the sunlight pool onto their smiling faces, heard their laughter bleed into the afternoon, and felt the breeze of their light-hearted chatter brush over his head, so close that he swore he could almost touch it himself.

Then, he blinked and time inched forward, slowly unveiling a version of love that was much quieter than the one he witnessed in the vicinity of an elementary school, so subtle yet ardent — so incredibly mundane yet human all the same.

On the train he took to his grandparents’ place, he admired the shy looks exchanged among two young lovers sitting across from him. He yearned for the experience shared between an elderly couple a few empty seats away, shoulders connected and timeworn fingers intertwined as if the two were one; listened in carefully on a phone call from the woman beside him, who seemed to be speaking to her mother with the amount of delicate I miss yous and promises of visiting home soon; and found a warm feeling bubbling his chest at the sight of a person waving at their friend through the window until their fingers turned red and numb from the wind and the train began to depart from the station.

(By then, the friend had already turned back around, yet Kuroo still watched the other person grow smaller in the distance, wiping away at their cheeks and sort of curling into themselves as if the loneliness was suddenly too cold to bear.)

Even in the love-laced tunes that spilled out through the overhead speakers at the grocery store, love was there. Certainly, it was there and alive and flooding his mind with convoluted melodies and sentimental lyrics. It lived, too, in the old-timey romance show his grandfather loved to watch on full volume at seven-thirty every evening and in the memory box his grandmother said she had kept under her bed for decades.

It was a matter as indisputable as the moon orbiting the earth: love was… everywhere. Suspended in the frosty air after a long day at school, dancing through the crowd on the train to Ibaraki Station, and lingering above him as he wandered through the cereal aisle. Even if it wasn’t quite his — wasn’t really for him — love was all around him, ever-prevalent in the nooks of his life and taking the form of bits and pieces that seemed to make up a larger mosaic.

So, when such intricacies were rare in his childhood for him to keep, Tetsurō, who loved love for what it was the moment he could echo the word in his mind, made sure to hold on to each memory as tight as his hands would allow, lodging every fragment in between the crevices of his palms as if it was the ink of an invisible tattoo embedded permanently into his skin.

The two lovers on the train lived in the uppermost line across his right palm. The elderly couple resided in the one below it, among other connections he witnessed along the way. Romantic ballads he overheard at stores and on the radio took up most of his left hand; and in the finer lines, between rough callouses and bruises too tender to touch, there were his grandfather’s show and his grandmother’s old shoebox of memories.

It was so simple before. Kuroo used to like it that way.

But then summertime hits, and suddenly he’s eight-turning-nine with sunkissed cheeks and scuffed knees, when terse conversations throughout the day and wrathful voices at night aren’t supposed to be thing in his life anymore, apparently, because home isn’t with his mother and father and sister in a small apartment in the prefecture of Nagano anymore.

Instead, home is in Nerima City now, and it stands right before his eyes in the form of an old, visibly timeworn door. With the sky as barren as a pond completely frozen over and his mind muddled with a wide range of emotions, there’s an ache in his chest as the door opens, revealing two elderly faces who, as unfamiliar as they appear to Tetsurō, welcome him and his dad with wide open arms.

(Later, he learns that they are his grandparents, his father’s parents. Even later, he discovers that neither of them like watching television very much and that the space beneath their bed is less a place to keep tangible items of nostalgia than it is a haven for cobwebs and dust.)

Still, he doesn’t let go of the past. There’s a craving in his heart that is as fiery as the sun against his back on a hot summer’s day, and back at his old home and in the old routine of things, he had found a way to live with it through filling the empty spaces in his palms. Now, it’s telling him to keep going — to keep on collecting the mosaic tiles that other people had left behind on the ground and add new to the old, fuel to the flame.

So, he does.

Kuroo blinks again. It’s still summer, just nearing the end of it, except he’s fifteen-going-on-sixteen this time around, no longer navigating the daunting hallways of Nekoma Grade School but instead partway through his first year of high school.

(Where did time go?)

Perhaps it is because he’s bigger than he was at five and seven and almost-nine, evident in the way his hands have already grown too large for last year’s pair of winter gloves, but he sees more of the world than he has ever before — sees more, holds more, loves more with a newfound ease that most likely would’ve put younger him into shock.

With that being said, some of the new people he meets — they don’t stay forever, despite his tendency to hold on and never let go.

Actually, none of them do because forever is, well… way beyond his lifetime. However, the point is, people come and go. There are those whom he was never meant to see again after the first time, colliding once and then heading in opposite directions like two perpendicular lines. Others pull out of his orbit after a couple of months, a few years, or however long it takes for them to drift apart because their interests had grown less aligned with time or because something else had happened and there was no saving the relationship from it.

(He thinks of it like this: a scene of ambivalence, in which he is not a bystander on the train to Ibaraki. Rather, he is the one standing out at Nagano Station, waving at familiar faces through the window until his wrists hurt and the smoke begins to billow out above him, twisting and turning like the rotten feeling in his gut. He’s the one watching them leave, but no one will be there to see him if he cries.)

Nonetheless, there are still the people who stay a while longer, weaving themselves back into his life time and time again. It’s never going to be forever — he knows that, and maybe it would hurt less if he didn’t — but they’re with them in the present and that’s what matters.

And, maybe, if he squints closely enough, he’ll see that an unshakeable mosaic of his own has started to form, of the memories he’s created over the past several years instead of strangers’ fleeting moments he picked up from the threshold.

Somewhere along the line, the strangers from the train had moved to smaller crevices in favour of the family who lived next-door to the Kuroos’ house. Further in time, all the lyrics he used to keep locked away in the many lines of his left palm for so many years had begun to fade away as inside jokes, pick-up lines, sincere compliments, and the like occupied the spaces.

Then, in the creases along his fingers: the way a volleyball feels against his hand right before a victory, how the air smells the morning right after a rainstorm, the resolution of a book he managed to read in one sitting, the late night conversations that took place on the phone between him and Kenma whenever he couldn’t sleep, and finally the playful banter he exchanged with his lab partner during class, who didn’t seem to mind whenever he said something corny about the two of you having chemistry together, even if — from the deepest depths of his heart, where lay the secrets he was too afraid to admit — he wasn’t really meaning it as a joke.

It’s still summer, by the way, although it’s been seven years since he moved— just nearing the end of it with shorter days on the horizon and auburn leaves turning brittle beneath his feet. And all of a sudden, he finds that his world seems to have grown a little wider and love feels heavier in his hands these days.

So yes, perhaps it was foolish of him to make such a finite conclusion at seven years old, to think of love as something so unattainable and out of reach. Because twenty years later, at twenty-seven, Kuroo Tetsurō has it right in the centre of his palms, no longer the outsider looking in on a scene he thought he wasn’t meant to be a part of.

It must be sometime after midnight when his name falls upon his ears in the form of a tentative whisper, sweet like the peppermint melting on his tongue as his fingers hover over the keyboard, frozen at the sound of your voice. Coming from his lab partner turned friend, then lover— it’s a stark contrast to the way you used to say his name back in high school, during the painfully long two years of pining before the day he finally insisted, with sweaty palms and his heart pounding in his chest, that you use his given name instead. Tetsurō, instead of Kuroo, or Rooster Head and Annoying Bastard and Shithead, which you used interchangeably with his surname until a teacher overheard and assigned you cleaning duty in the restrooms for a week.

(Of course, that didn’t stop you from calling him those epithets still, even today. If he provokes you just enough and presses all the right buttons, he’s sure to hear the same string of offensive names from you again, although there’ll certainly be less venom behind it now compared to when you were teenagers, thinking the other was the most irritating person in the whole wide world.

…Where did time go? he wonders again.)

You should’ve fallen asleep long ago. Not only had he thought the sound of his typing would’ve at least lulled you to sleep, there isn’t anything particularly riveting about watching someone type up a report on their laptop. Nevertheless, you insisted on staying up anyway, fighting through the drowsiness that threatened to wrap around your neck and yank you into dreamland.

His eyes sweep over the planes of your face, down the slant of your nose, and along the curvature of your Cupid’s bow before flitting back up to meet your gaze at last as he shuts his laptop, stands up, and pads over to the side of the bed in one quick stride, where you currently lay with one side of your face smushed against the pillow, blinking up at him tiredly.

Tenderly, as if you’re a fragile illusion that could shatter beneath the slightest touch, a hand — his hand — settles against the side of your face, pulling the fat of your cheek between his forefinger and thumb in a playful manner. The action rouses you awake somewhat, and you suddenly remember the reason why you called his name.

“Tetsu,” you say again, barely louder than the clock that ticks on the wall. “Do you think we’re lovers in every universe?”

Despite your lethargy, a sly grin strews across your face like you’re trying to play it off as some inane joke, a frivolous thing rotting away in your brain until you can find the answer. And Tetsurō can only chuckle, shaking his head at your question, yet he indulges anyway, letting the matter soak in his mind for a moment longer as he pretends to think.

Truth is, the answer is simple. He doesn’t have to spend much time mulling over it because even if love didn’t come easy to him in the first decade of his life, loving you comes easy to him enough; he’d do it over and over again in every universe and in every lifetime if it were possible to make up for the lost time he’d spent in this one before he crossed paths with you.

So, Tetsurō answers the only way he knows how— teasingly. Leaning down to land a kiss upon your forehead, he murmurs against your skin, “God, I hope not.”

(You know he’s lying. He’s never been too good at it, with his telltale signs appearing in the form of reddened ears and him avoiding eye contact as much as possible. However, you know it especially this time from the softness in his voice. It’s a tone that you know he’s only ever reserved for you.)

He feels your eyebrows furrow together, and your response comes quick: “Shithead. I hate you.”

(He knows you’re lying, too, when you turn your head to press your lips against the palm of his hand, against the creases that now hold thousands of snapshots of you and many more to come.

The way that you laugh and the way that you smile. How you twist the shiny ring around your left ring finger whenever you’re deep in thought. The times you keep insisting you don’t snore in your sleep despite the multiple years’ worth of evidence on his phone that speaks otherwise.

And most importantly, he thinks, the way that you love him.)

notes: in my kuroo phase tbh…. something abt him Man 😍…. idk if any of this makes sense but the first part of this has been marinating. in my drafts since july so i wanted 2 finish this as quickly as possible 〠 Kisses n hugs 2 whoever reads this

[deadboyfriendd]

Stains in the Granite

Summary: Throughout the years, Steve has undergone multiple head traumas. You knew this much when you were together. The migraines, the forgetfulness, moderate hearing loss in one ear, vertigo. The list was expansive. When you were together. It’s been over a year since you had last spoken to him, but an unexpected call from Hawkins Regional sends you reeling back to him. A forgotten emergency contact, he probably just never bothered to update it. You would let Robin know and be back to your regularly scheduled activities, sans Steve. A dead line turns the spigot, worry plugs the drain, and your inability to let him go drowns you in the tub. When he wakes up, he falls in love with you again. And again the next day. And again the day after that. They say he’ll regain his long-term memory storage eventually. They say the amnesia will wear off soon, but, for now, this is who he would have to be. He may only have to live through losing you once, but you’re not sure if you could handle losing him again every day until he regains his memory. You wouldn’t have the heart to tell him.

Content Warning: My content is 18+, Minors DNI, head trauma, mentions of hospitals and the things that go in them, smut, fluff, angst, exes to lovers, hurt/comfort, alcohol

Word Count: 14.2k

Author’s Note: This is dedicated completely to @dr-aculaaa I have had this piece in the works for months before getting it to the version that you are getting. Drac has tirelessly loomed over my docs like God beta reading, helping out with dialogue, and brainstorming these characters with me. This is as much her baby as it is mine, and I love her very very much.

Drac, I love you.

Find the Playlist Here!

Granite, noun, gran·​ite ˈgra-nət 

: a very hard natural igneous rock formation of visibly crystalline texture formed essentially of quartz and orthoclase or microcline and used especially for building and for monuments

: unyielding firmness or endurance

the cold granite of Puritan formalism.

the cold granite of your heart.

You were sullen, eyes unable to focus on any one speckle of the countertop in front of you. You ran your hands over it in a grounding motion, forcing tired eyes upon skin instead of stone. You blinked and it settled. The warmth of your palm could feel the slight unevenness of the surface, where the natural stone had been polished down just slightly too much. You watched it catch the light, glitter beneath your fingers snuffed out by the shadows of your touch. You watched the way the light cast a glowing square onto the ground in its early-morning iridescence. You had not slept, only watched the sunrise before you went to sleep. 

You missed the nonchalance of high school, when being sad was not an inconvenience, in the same way you missed the grandeur of college, where being sad was an art. Now, though you took comfort in the blanket of sadness, it was more obnoxious than anything. Your sighs held a certain bitchiness to them now, less sad than they were unimpressed. 

But you couldn’t help the way the hogs-hair bristles from your years-old, overused brushes stuck in the too-thick paint. You couldn't help the frustration that bubbled through when the linseed oil seeped through too thick and thinned the pigment of your paint so thin the underpainting shone through. It was hard enough to paint your heartbreak, without the added interruption of frustration and all of its woes. You wanted to pick at the scabs of old wounds, reopen them and let the blood drip down onto self-stretched canvases with ragged edges. You wanted your art to feel as raw as your heart did. 

Sometimes you wish you could go back, study something practical like education, be something stupid like an art teacher and talk about fulfillment with dead eyes, but you were too ceremoniously tortured for that. You thought about easy, but you didn’t want it. You craved goddamned difficult. You were goddamned difficult. 

But people bought it. Commissioned it to hang in their ugly suburban sprawls. Ugly art in ugly homes. Maybe people liked the subjectivity, felt like they could see their own heartbreak in it. You weren't so pretentious that you felt like the only person in the world to experience it. You certainly weren’t. Maybe there were people that were introspective, that wanted to feel the heartbreak when they dissociated into the white walls of their cookie-cutter homes. Maybe heartbreak was the only emotion they could force themselves to feel. 

Maybe they took comfort in it, too. 

You didn’t exactly know who you were anymore. Yes, at whatever bullshit ice breaker you could define yourself as an artist. An even more bullshit mediocre descriptor that served as a face to the sacrifice of self you went through for the sake of it all. That was usual, it just came with the territory. It was your only redeeming personality trait. You traded your sense of self for an established style that put cans in your cupboard and secondhand clothes on your back. 

Everything was covered in a wax sheen, the desensitization taking over your personage and casting a vignette across everything you saw. Not even sex was good anymore. It hadn’t been for a while. It had reduced itself to nothing more than another school of art— another subject of  heartbreak. Another thought process and another complication. Your entire sense of self came from academic validation. You were a bachelor of fine art, consistently praised by professors and featured in student exhibitions, graduated magna cum laude from your university. But now? You were lost in a vapid attempt to redefine yourself outside of the college community. This was the real world now, and sucked even worse than college had. 

Your studio apartment overlooked the heart of the historic downtown district of Hawkins, Indiana. It was gray this time of year, rain a near-constant promise over the thick smattering of clouds overhead. You paid entirely too much to live in eight-hundred square feet, but you could justify the cost with the stone hearth and floor-to-ceiling windows, even if that meant sleeping in a twin-sized mattress sprawled on the floor in the corner of the room. Your clothes hung messily on mismatched hangers over a laundry rack beside it. Your few enamel dishes cast drip-drying across the countertops in their own choreography. The rest of the place was barren, save for paint splatters over tarps, stacked canvases, and easels. Maybe it was too indulgent to live in-studio, but poverty would argue and win nearly every time. 

The tortured artist persona was trendy while you were in college, but you were just plain insufferable now. You didn’t even want to associate with yourself. You guessed that’s why you had Robin. She was just as insufferable as you were. 

She was the embodiment of everything you hated, a humbling experience in a flesh box wrapped with a short bob and a beret and adorned with a nose ring. You had met her in an Art: History of the French Renaissance class. She was a linguistics major with all of the subtlety of a clapped-out Honda Civic. She heavily romanticized the greater works of Van Gogh and made her brief year in a study-abroad program in Paris a personality trait. Though, you supposed, her redeemable feature was that she was loyal to a fault, albeit mean. Like a small, white dog that haunted your home instead of offering companionship and happiness. 

Though you, for the most part, kept it to yourself, you had made it known in the past that the Italian Renaissance was far superior to the French. You didn’t understand how she could so  heavily romanticize the ritzy portraits of those aristocratic jerk-offs when she had the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait directly in front of her. Maybe you just didn’t think Van Gogh was all that great. Maybe you hated him altogether. Maybe you hated yourself and you were just projecting– or you were jealous that he could be a tortured artist and people left and right seemed to romanticize his work but when you did it, you were just annoying. You knew, for a fact, that you hated yellow. And she sure liked to wear a lot of it.

The weathered oak was hard and uneven against the curvature of your spine, but you refused to move, the numbness in your fingers happening were the beginnings of the best high you had gotten in ages. There was a resonant patriarchal tenor shrill in your ears as you attempted to focus on the beams and exposed plumbing on the ceiling above you. She spoke it again, louder this time, 

“What are you gonna do with an art degree? Be a tortured artist forever?” You could hear her arm slap coldly against the ground next to yours and echo throughout the emptiness of your apartment. 

You groaned, though it was only proving her point, “I don't know, what are you gonna do with a linguistics degree? Be super fucking annoying?”

“At least I have a job.” 

And she did. She was a translator who rotated on call-circuit to Indianapolis for international business meetings, sometimes they even paid her fare to other countries, in essence getting to vacation on some company’s dime between meetings. The grandeur of it all was sickening. 

The ring from your land-line was shrill and echoing, shattering the silence of your own discontent like tempered glass, fragmenting and exploding into millions of little pieces. No one called here ever, and the suddenness of the tone made both Robin and yourself jump. You gave her a shove to the shoulder, a wordless gesture meaning, go get that. 

Her Hello was tepid, in the same meek demeanor she twirled the line around her finger. Her face registered from confusion to concern, a quick contortion that took place over the course of seconds, “Is he okay? What do you mean you can’t disclose that?” 

You sat up, propping your arms underneath you like the kickstands on a bike, brows knit together in question. She looks to you, holding the receiver out towards you, 

“For you.” She says, then silently and exaggeratingly mouths, About Steve.

What? You mouthed back.

Just– Pick. It. Up. She insisted in silent accuse, shaking the receiver towards you once again, 

You took the plastic receiver from her, fingers drawing the skin of your temples back and rubbing your eyes, “Hello?”

You don’t recognize the voice on the phone. A woman you know is older than yourself by the way she sounds, officiating and knowledgeable, but carrying a certain morosity with her. She held the kind of tone you know brought bad news. 

It feels like a fog, hearing his name again. Hearing that he is a person who is alive and living a life separate from you. It wasn’t right, and that unease turned itself in your stomach as you repeated back her medical jargon to yourself in layman’s terms. Steve fell off a ladder and hit his head. Again. He was unconscious but stable. The neighbor found him and brought him in and gave them your name and phone number 

“And why are you calling me?” You finally asked, followed by a long pause. You cursed yourself mentally, realizing the harshness of the statement after you had said it.  

The nurse sounded displeased, “You’re his wife, aren’t you? You were listed as the primary emergency contact.”

You hadn’t spoken to Steve in over a year, not since you broke it off with him. You trailed your thumb over the webbing between your middle and ring finger, still feeling the phantom sensation of the ring that sat there just a year prior. The dissidence churned in your stomach, and you couldn’t help the worry that filled you. 

Steve was the embodiment of everything you loved. He was smooth like linseed and fell into all of your texture. He didn’t understand it, but he agreed on the superiority of the Italian renaissance. If you hated the romanticization of Van Gogh, then so did he. Steve was agreeable. Steve was easy in all of the places you weren’t. 

Steve cared about people in the way that you didn’t. 

When you broke it off, your families, both found and biological, were shocked. Robin especially. You’d felt bad for her, caught in the crossfire between two of her best friends. You and Steve had both agreed not to make her choose. She was the sentient being of pure neutrality. It was as if she was a separate entity on two different timelines. If she was present in your reality, Steve did not exist. You assumed the same of her relationship with Steve. Though, a part of you still hoped he’d ask sometimes. 

Your brain is a flurry of Steve. His migraine medication, his medical history, his eyewear prescription, fuck his shoe size. You card through the rolodex of head traumas he had undergone through the years, recounting them between relationship markers. You don’t allow yourself the time to think, slamming the phone back down on the stand with a quick, I’ll be there. 

The drive to the hospital is sombering, though, you selfishly are less worried about him being okay than you are about what he would think of you showing up after they thought you were his wife. 

The smell of the hospital is pungent. Horrendously human and unnaturally sterile wrapped up into one fragrant demise. There are people buzzing, both physically and metaphorically, yet despite the controlled chaos the women at the front desk seem unnaturally calm. Uninterested, even. You tell them your name and who you are here to see, and yet, despite the fact that they had just reached out to you over the phone, they still attempt to validate your marriage. 

You knew it was nasty when, “If you don’t think I’m his wife, then why did you call asking if I was his wife?” rolled off your tongue, but you knew Robin would smooth the turmoil with an apology on your behalf. Frankly, you didn’t care. They buzzed you in without another word. 

There was an older man in a white coat standing in front of the room, flipping through a chart with Harrington across the top. The embroidery on it read neurology. You figured he would have to undergo a few whirring uncomfortable scans with any head trauma, but his face remained stoic. You couldn’t read him, and, personally, it was terrifying. 

“Mrs. Harrington?” He asked, holding a hand out. 

You took it as an appeasement, tried to let his old man charm seep into your bones and put you at ease. If he was old, that means he’s done this before. “Yes.” You knew it was a lie, but who else was going to claim him? Not his parents. There was no one else remaining in Hawkins but you and Robin, and she wasn’t family. Technically, you weren’t either, but you weren’t cruel.  

“I wanted to formally speak to you before you saw him. There’s a few things we need to discuss.” This sent a panicked chill through your bones. You expected to step into the room and they would ask you for permission to pull the plug or something. 

“Is he..?” Your face must have registered as panicked, because the neurologist quickly backpedaled with a grounding hand on your shoulder. 

“Oh, no. He’s fine ma’am, we weren’t seeing any bleeds or swelling that he can't recover from.”

That he can’t recover from. Meaning that there is, in fact, something wrong with his brain. You figured that much, with maybe six concussions within the last ten years, but you wouldn’t dwell on that fact too much for now, “But?”

“There is a small amount of swelling in the temporal lobe, which is responsible for short-term memory storage. Your husband is suffering from a form of fixation amnesia that is pretty uncommon…”

You zone out listening to him talk, trying to piece everything together. Steve is okay. He lost his short-term memory for a while. Words like retrograde and anterograde and Transient Global are thrown around and bouncing back with a resounding tenor in your phonetic loop. Steve has forgotten the last year, he cannot store new memories for the time being. He forgot your breakup. He still believes you are together. He needs around the clock care. 

Steve was awake when they opened the door and pulled back the curtain to the room he had already been admitted to. At least someone in this administration was competent enough to get him into a room instead of keeping him in the ER. 

“Baby.” A large, flat palm reaches itself towards you. You stood in the corner in silence, waiting for someone that wasn’t you to speak. But, it just so happened that you were the only person in the room. You don’t realize he’s talking to you, so he says it again, a little more firmly, and you walk up and sit at the chair next to his bed, avoiding the hand outstretched towards you. 

Though, in all of his firmness, where the weight of your elbow finds a dip in the bed, his hands finds your arm. It searches for your hands and finds them with a firm grip. They’re warm like you remember. Steve was always warm. 

“Hi, Steve.” You keep your voice quiet, remembering the days of migraine management. Barely-there decibels creating resounding, echoing pain around his skull. 

“What happened?” He asks you, “ –-head hurts.” He manages, burying his face into the polyfilament of the pillow below him. 

You tried to make your explanation concise, only giving him the cause and not the prognosis. You’d deal with that at a later time. “You fell off a ladder, hit your head pretty hard. Cullen brought you in.” You explained. 

“The dentist? With the labs?” He asked you, and it made you laugh. Steve always remembered people by their cars or their dogs. 

You agreed with him nodding your head despite his closed eyes, “Yes, the dentist with the labs.”

“He’s a really nice guy.”

“He sure is.” 

+

The discharge process was long and rigorous the next morning, swarms of insurance and neurologists and shrinks and case managers. All faces to a crowd that apparently had never communicated with the other department a day in their sad, corporate lives. 

Steve had no car, no means of getting home, and, quite frankly, no recollection of the year leading up to the accident. So, you loaded him into your car, pulling out as slowly as possible and driving at least ten under the speed limit the entire way. He seemed chipper as his hand found yours resting over the shifter, hands meeting your movements as your gears moved up and down with the rhythm of traffic– almost as if he was driving the car himself. You silently thanked him for the movement, already distracted by the constant fear of rattling his already tenderized brain any more than it had been. 

The street looked like it had frozen in time as you slipped past its residents unscathed. The dentist, surrounded by the flurry of yellow labs, waved as you drove by. The house sat in a caul de sac, the one you used to call yours, the third one in from the end between a vacation home and a stalled fixer-upper. It was a smaller Victorian built at the turn of the century. Your selling point was the turret at the front end of the house, sporting floor-to-ceiling windows and housed by oak buttresses. 

You pictured Steve carrying you through the threshold of your home the night of your wedding as you half-dragged him from the driveway to the bedroom. Some of your spring daylilies were coming out of dormancy, the pertinent blooms bulbous and waiting to open. You remembered picking the pink ones, to match the pink peonies and coneflowers that you had planted alongside it. 

This house was a dream. Actually, this house was his dream. Encased in dark oak and copper plumbing. You just wanted a place to paint – and, for this, he had spared no expense either. 

You remembered the day he’d surprised you with the keys:

You had felt soggy, the stale coffee and milk drying into the stomach of your apron and hardening into a sugary breast plate. You knew you’d never be able to get the smell out, instead understanding that was just a part of life when you were a barista. Along with the burns and odds-and-ends scrapes and bruises. 

Steve had been waiting for you on a barstool in front of the door, looking like he had something to say. You knew he had most likely been pacing back and forth from the couch to the barstool as he had waited for you to get home. You weren’t a stranger to his mannerisms. Living with him had been a front-row ticket to The Steve Harrington Show. Sometimes you joked that David Attenborough should join you for dinner, narrating Steve in his natural habitat. 

He had greeted you with a kiss, saccharine sweet like everyone before it, grip on your waist like a vice and a smile that he couldn’t help on his lips. 

“I picked something up today,” He mumbled against your lips, “for the house.” 

The incomplete set sat freshly unwrapped in its paper casings. The Blue Willow china was beautiful nonetheless. Steve had taken a liking to it almost more than you had. You didn’t mean to get annoyed, you had just had a long day. Though Steve knew it, your defensiveness caught him off-guard. 

He would never admit it, but he took after his mother in his eyes and in his shopping addiction. You knew you were moving, house-hunting on weekends and late evenings. You didn’t want to begin your life together in this apartment, which had been filling quickly with heirlooms and antique pieces collected from both shops and family members, “for the house” and, “as an engagement gift”. 

“Steve, what happened to saving money?” You had asked him, reaching behind you to untie your apron to throw into the basket that needed  to be dragged downstairs to the wash. “We’ll never get a house if you keep spending the money as soon as we get it.” 

“Actually,” He said to you, pretty lips turning into a smile as he dug around in his pockets, “We already have a house.” 

He watched the cogs turn in your head, your face exchanging confusion for shock as your eyes widened and you brought your hands up to cover your mouth. You couldn’t help the small years that spill from your eyes and you jump on Steve, laughing along with him as he spun you in a circle. 

You remembered buzzing the entire way there, only remembering to pull your apron off once you tried to buckle your seatbelt. It was dark out, and the streetlights in the historic neighborhood were sparse, if present at all. 

The house was a great cathedral in front of you, rickety and crumbling in nature. 

“The bones are good.” He reminded you, “We can take care of the rest.” 

“I love it!” You squealed to him, throwing your arms around his neck. It caught him off guard, your enthusiasm. 

That night, he refused to carry you through the threshold of the house. He said he wanted to save it for the wedding night. Only do it once so it stays special.  

You sat alone at the dining table, cigarette in hand. You rarely smoked anymore, but you figured this ordeal permissed one. He kept the binders of your wedding planning, all of the stuff you bought, the cause of your cold feet. They were tucked away next to the dining table in the built-in for easy access. They looked like they had been untouched save for a finger print along the spine of the binder that remained bare of any dust or particles– like he had gone to take them out, but hesitated. You looked up and around at the main living space. 

He was going to build you a new life and it didn’t look like he had touched it for a year. 

+

The first day is just playing the game. You were aware he would have temporary, moderate-to-severe memory loss. You attempted to recall the words that swirled around your phonetic loop. Words from neurologists and trauma doctors and nurses alike. 

Steve knows he was in the hospital and knows desperately how horrible this migraine was. He spent it in the dark, on his regular dose of sumatriptan, supplemented wonderfully in a vicodin-induced haze. You did not expect him to remember today, nor did you expect him to care. You know he is alive from barely-spoken words between exchanges of water and his prescription, which, thank God, hadn’t changed in the last year. 

You sleep on the couch. 

The second day, you are up before him, sifting through the pots and pans you’d let him keep to try and feed both him and yourself. You are surprised when he gets out of bed before 9:00, and even more surprised when he asks, 

“So, what are you going to paint today?” Through squinted eyes, lean arm braced against the counter to support the weight of his body. He sips idly from the orange juice glass he used to take the sumatriptan, but not the vicodin. 

It’s not like it was a question that strayed away from the mundane, however, it had been almost a year since you’d heard it last. You’d tried not to let the surprise register on your face as you’d continued to stir the eggs around in the pan. You let the corner of the wooden spoon scrape some of the dried remnants of soft egg from the sides of the pan where the butter hadn’t reached. You shrugged with a soft, I don’t know, unsure of how to answer. 

As Steve retreats back to the master bedroom, you hear the kick of the plumbing and the steady stream of water rattling through the house. You thanked him silently for buying an old place, the plumbing was loud enough to drown out your own thoughts. 

The knock on the window sends you reeling back like the crack of a gun. Your ménage-a-trois with a nose ring and encased the ugliest yellow beret like some gay French Alp paratrooper stood guard outside the bay seating of your kitchen window. You hated yellow, but, for today, you would keep it to yourself. She came bearing gifts. The only suitcase you owned was filled with the only clothes you owned, and as many art supplies as she could carry with the promise of more. Today, she bore her yellow beret as a barrel full of brandy around her neck– a drooly Saint Bernard to your avalanche. You propped the window open on its stakes, cinnamon color mixed with dirt crumbling from its unused hinges. 

She looked around in secrecy, “How is he?” 

“Better today. He just got in the shower.” You shrugged, looking back over your shoulder. 

“How’s the…” She circled her splayed hands over her head, signaling amnesia. You wish she would just say it instead of tiptoeing around the subject. 

You shrugged again, running a hand over your head, “I’m not sure yet. He knows who I am, but, ugh, I don’t know.” You sighed, sitting down at the bench and burying your face in your hands.

Robin leaned against the windowsill, reaching a hand through to push your hair back out of your face, “What’s wrong? Why is that bad?” 

“He still thinks we’re together. Like– doesn’t remember that we’re not together.” You said through your palms, knowing that her linguistics degree also covered your dramatics and mumbling. 

“Oh God,” She gasped to you, not quite able to contain herself, “What are you gonna do?” 

“I’m just gonna have to roll with it, I guess.” You slurred past your arms, willing back the onslaught of stress-tears beginning to pool against your tightline. You couldn't abandon him now, not when he was like this. 

Your former studio, nestled at the base of the turret within the house, surrounded by windows encased in stained-glass embellishments and flying buttresses, remained the only room in the house that was finished. You sat on your spinning stool, ignoring the creak from the way you pushed yourself back and forth on the balls of your feet. Your eyes fixated on the piece in front of you. It had been sitting on this easel for a year– the only one too heavy for you to move on your own, however, you were past asking for Steve’s help. So here it sat, holding your work once again, arms open in waiting. 

“Woah, you work fast.” Steve’s voice startled you, the stool squeaked again as you jumped. 

He walked up behind you, hands smoothing over your shoulders in apology– his skin still shower-warm and tacky from the water, “What are you talking about?” 

Your voice was much softer than you initially intended it to come out as. It resonated under the guise of a smile rather than the initial annoyance you turned to as a defense mechanism. 

“Didn’t you start that painting last week?” He asked, smoothing a broad hand down the exposed expanse of your upper arm, turning his face to look at the painting, “It’s done now.”

You tried not to let the confusion register on your face. You had finished the painting well over a year ago. The oil had long-since cured. You thanked the universe softly for Steve’s untrained eye. 

“I guess I just got really into it.” You shrugged, feigning your own insufferability for his well being– just this once. 

You had forgotten what it was like to be held by Steve. He lingered around your proximity in a near-shroud of constance. You had forgotten the soft feeling of nimble fingers as they grazed across any exposed skin you had. You had forgotten about warm hands cupping your cheek or twirling the ends of your hair. You had forgotten what the warmth of his felt like, in the same way that you moved away from the slow-creeping sun square that beamed from the windowsills. You didn’t realize how long you had been fighting any warmth after him. 

That night, his broad hands lured you to bed with the promise of warmth. You try to remember the way it felt a year ago, if it resounded in the same way. His hands were still a comfort as they encased you in a tight embrace. His breath still felt the same coming from his nose and traveling across your shoulder, dotted intermittently by haste staccato kisses. 

You tried to hold on to that feeling after he had long been asleep, and held on to it again as you peeled his hands from your waist. You let it slip from your fingers as you slid from the bed and let your feet pad across the hardwood flooring. You laid it to rest next to you on the couch, let it fold into itself and hibernate once more. 

By the next morning, Steve’s brain had pistoned back into his regular routine, which consisted of a god-awful early morning jog. It was almost obnoxious how perfect he was for this neighborhood, golden skin glowing against the rays of morning, efflorescence in nature and ugly, heinous perfection. By the time he gets back, it’s still ungodly early. The sun only casts a blue haze into the atmosphere in its feigning presence. 

You could guess by the way he tried to control his heavy breaths as he walked through the door that he was dewy, shirt tucked into his jogging shorts and hair raked back with sweaty fingers. You would not force your eyes open to look at him, leaving any feelings of adverse adoration back in the white quilt you had abandoned over a year ago. He walked up to you, feat unabashedly heavy against the hollowness of the floor despite the carpet muffling them. His hand was warm and heavy against the exposed expanse of your hip, riding your shirt up further.

“What are you doing out here? You know this couch kills your bac-” He started, pausing abruptly in surprise,  “Where did that come from?” 

“What?” You mumbled through closed eyes, still only barely awake. 

He traces the tattoo on your back, rough fingers tracing over the thickened lines of ink, “This.”

You didn’t bother to crack an eye open, instead folding your arms in further on yourself and readjusting against the couch cushions, “Gee, Steve, you must've hit your head really hard.”

“What?” 

“What?” You asked him, finally waking up enough. You pushed your arms underneath you, squinting at him as best you could through the haze of the morning light. 

“I hit my head?” He asked, confusion– then terror– registering on his face. 

You sat up fully, realizing then that, in your daze, you had effectively put your foot in your mouth. The look on your face, supplemented by the look on his face tells you that there is no way that you could backtrack now. 

“... Yeah-” 

“When?”

“Three days ago.” You started, and he let out a deep exhale, almost in relief that it hadn’t been longer. 

He turned to look at you, and you reached out to grab his hand. He took it, gripping yours like a vice, but never enough to hurt, “What did I do?”

“You were up on a ladder, doing something with the electrical. You fell and hit your head pretty good. Cullen brought you in.” You shrugged, trying to play it off. 

“Where were you?” He asked, it wasn’t accusing. He just tried to piece everything together. Still, you couldn’t help the pang of guilt that pooled in your chest after he said it. 

You weren’t going to break his heart, not now. Not while he was already fragile like this. You hated lying, but anything was better than a category five meltdown. He shook now, acting too tough to hide it. Steve was strong for everyone, too strong for too long. 

“Am I okay?” 

“Yeah, Steve. You’re okay.” You reassured him, no matter what. 

+

That night, you put a band-aid over your neck, despite the itching, burning sensation from the adhesive, it would live there for now. You said it was to save yourself the trouble. You didn’t know why you’d thought to care so much. You also don’t know why you felt so guilty. Maybe it’s because you weren’t there. Maybe it’s because you were here now and you shouldn’t have been. All you know is that you can’t break Steve’s fragile psyche now, not again. 

Steve’s routine was stone-set and rigorous, you’d remembered that much. He was the kind of person that thrived off of routine and egg-whites alone. You’d envied him for his discipline. 

He started out of bed every morning at the heinous, ungodly hour of five. Every morning, without fail, he rose silently, rubbed his hands over his face, fought the urge to disturb you and lost every time. He would smooth a tender hand over your hair and slip out the door with a soft, waking kiss, and proceed with a jog. Every morning, he would run his 3.1 miles, 5,000 kilometers, and every morning, he would slip back through the front door. 

Every morning, you woke to the smell of a better-than-cheap cup of coffee with a sweet kiss, and he would whisper to you that he achieved the run in thirty minutes– a personal best, and you wondered if one day it would slip below that number. Without missing a beat, he would place the coffee on a coaster placed there for that specific purpose on your antique bedside table, and your body would roll into the dip in the mattress where his body sat, his warm hand circling waking patterns across your bare back while you sifted through the prevalent swarm of too-little sleep. 

Because, every afternoon, Steve would take his Saturday (which was actually a Tuesday) and  paint that heinous yellow wall in the guest bedroom over with an earthy green tone– one that, without fail, would remind him of you enough to where he would seek you out to tell you. 

And every night, without fail, you would slip from the bed in silence, pull the heinous yellow paint bucket delivered thankfully by Robin out of the bushes from the window that was set just slightly too high to be comfortable reaching over, and paint that lovely green wall back to that awful, ugly yellow. 

There were no discrepancies to his routine. He was an unfortunate creature of habit, and it was so dreadfully painful that you indulged him in this routine. Because, every day, he would pull those old wedding binders out– no longer covered in dust and forgotten memories– and pick the same three options for wedding china that you never saw the point of anyways. Every day, he would try to cheekily pull you in for a shower, and you would make up the same excuse over the same dishes from the same meal that you had eaten to the point where you were just choking it down. 

And you would do it all over again. 

Because, if that same meal and awful yellow paint and ungodly six o’clock wake time would be enough to stop him from feeling like that again, you would keep doing it. 

Your nightly decompression was your saving grace. The only way you felt like a human again. Because every night, Steve would sit and read the same chapter out of the same book, and you would get in some still-life practice. 

Steve was pretty always, even in his blissful unawareness. Even in his ignorance. Even in the fact that he was no longer yours. Steve was pretty by fact. Pretty by nature. You had gotten good at drawing him, you knew where to block the square of his head and the triangle of his nose. You knew where his glasses rested against his face and exactly where to place every mole. You knew where the bone beneath would ebb and flow and where the warm light from that stained glass bowl-lamp would accentuate and valley against them like rivers. Steve was a topographical map and you had explored every inch in these moments of blissful dissonance. You did not need to waste your time getting the likeness correct by now, only getting in the fine details. 

Every night, your wonderful moment away from the catatonic nature of this ordeal would end when Steve would finish his chapter. You would act like you didn’t notice, like you weren’t staring at him. He would act like he didn’t know you were. He would press a tender kiss to your shoulder, smile at the work in your hands, tell you how talented you were, and finalize the ritual with a kiss to your cheek– an invite to bed. 

You know there will come a time when there will be a deviation from this routine, and you try to prepare yourself for this by running every possibility through your head. Calming tactics in the event that he has a category four meltdown, the words you would say and the explanations you would give him, but nothing prepared you for this deviation. Not in the slightest. 

You are unsuspecting as you wipe down the kitchen counters, melancholy with your towel in hand. Your hair is still wet and dripping uncomfortably down your back. You breathe deeply, enjoying the smell of kitchen lemon multi-surface cleaner. Steve approaches you. You feel his presence before you see him or feel his arms around your waist. You indulge in his warmth before he even touches you, before he reaches for your hand. You bask in his radiance before you feel the cold smoothness of gold scrape across your ring finger. 

“You forgot this after your shower.” He whispers through a kiss against the tender skin beneath your ear. He does not understand the devastation his words have caused you, not in his innocence. 

You reconstructed the scene in fragments of memories:

They were lawn seats, and you had no idea how he scored them. This concert had been sold out for weeks. The Tragic Kingdom tour was potentially the greatest album to ever grace this earth, and Steve agreed– potentially more than you did. 

When your eyes turned to get a good look at his face, it was hard to tell where that light sheen of sweat ended and the glitter that wafted in the air began. He was so fucking beautiful. You could look at him forever, put him in a jar on a shelf to admire for a lifetime. He was more blonde than brunette at this time of year, gold-skinned and eager. The July rays had set minutes ago, yet seemed to settle their clinging remnants in his eyes. 

His eyes that shone when they met yours, the eyes that gripped on to your hands, met your mouth, and settled within your gaze. 

You came in with the breeze, on Sunday morning…

You almost missed his words over the ambient concert sounds around you, louder now as Gwen started the beginnings of the song. Had you not been staring at him, you figured with your mouth open like a trout, you would have missed the two quiet words he mustered. 

“Marry me?”

You didn’t say anything back, you didn't need to. You remember the feeling of your knees sinking into the grass beneath you, wet against your skin. You remember how his body was too-warm in the staleness of the July air and the hardness of his body pressed tight against yours. Any qualms he had about saying more than those words disappeared in an instant, your hand willingly accepting the modest diamond encased in a gold band the only answer he ever needed. 

You thought back on that time, on the I love you’s and the please hold me’s. 

You remembered the I can’t do this anymore.

The problem was never committing to Steve. He had you. He had all of you. He could take you whole or in pieces in any slice or interval or fracture that he could have ever dreamed up. Though, that was the problem. You had committed yourself to him fully, never to the idea of committing yourself to anyone else, never thought of having to share him or change what you had. You lived in comfort, willful bliss. You’d never wanted anything more. 

But you saw that hopeful glimmer in his pretty eyes. The ones that looked like chunky baby legs and bubbly giggles. The distant memories that sounded like mimed laughs and raspberries against new skin. You were not maternal, not by nature nor by instinct. You felt broken, not wanting that. 

And knowing how well Steve was made for it. 

How he mapped rooms in the house with oak cribs and baby-pastel paint colors. How he pointed out names he liked and stared for just a little too long at happy families in passing. 

That night, long after Steve had fallen asleep, those dusty old wedding binders called out to you, screamed your name in birdsongs and infant wails. You clung to them, still covered in that awful yellow paint on the floor of that awful yellow room, and you cried awful tears that stained the pages of the awful thing that could have been. 

Except that could have started to feel less awful. It felt more like a should have now. 

You kept the wedding band on, convincing yourself it was more for him than yourself. 

+

“Hello?”

The shrillness of the landline still rings in your ears despite picking up the sound of a voice on the other end. Instinctively, you twirl your fingers into the cord. 

“Hey.” Her voice is scratchy on the other line. You know who it is, yet you still ask. 

“Who is this?” 

“Bill fucking Clinton.” You can hear the way her eyes roll in her voice. You almost find it endearing. 

You roll your eyes back, knowing that she can’t see it. You hope the sentiment is the same. “Hi, Robin.”

Silence on the line. You know what she will ask. She asks almost every other day or in the in-betweens where you can catch each other and she doesn’t have to fake a conversation on the phone with Steve. 

“How is he?” 

You feel like she knows the answer by now, she knows every part of his routine and exactly where you fit into it, “He’s fine. He just got into the shower.” 

There was a silence again, this time slightly more deafening. It felt like she was thinking, pondering the exact thing she was going to say and how exactly she planned on saying it. 

“How are you?” You hated it, despised it. It almost made your blood run cold. You didn’t do feelings, you were just a pawn in this big, fucked up game. It was your obligation to live in this lie. You had already hurt Steve once, the least you could do was keep him safe now. 

“Fine, Robin. I’m good.” You willed, regurgitated it like a curse. 

She sighed, hoping she wouldn’t have to pry but knowing she was going to, “Ha-ha. But really?”

“Really what?”

“How are you?”

You fell silent, the static basso of the line between you buzzing like a flatline as the tears welled up and over your lash line. The first sob you choke out is louder than you expect, and draw your knees up to your chest in the bay as you cry over the phone, unable to find words and unable to speak if you had then anyways. 

For once robin shuts the fuck up. For once she doesn’t have anything to say. Somehow you wish she would. Instead, she lets you cry for a few minutes in silence. She lets you let it out. 

“Do you need me to come over?” She asks, voice a welcome comfort not that you can breathe through the snot and tears running down your face. 

“No.” You sniffle, wiping the stream of facial fluids across your sleeve like you didn’t disgust yourself when you did it. 

“Do you need a professional?”

“No.”

There was a sigh, followed by another moment of silence. She didn’t know how to help you, though, she didn’t really think you needed help. 

“Hey, Robin?” You finally spoke up, eyes finally dry and your throat finally clear enough to be coherent. 

“Yeah?”

“Tell Monica Lewinsky I said hi.” 

+

You have a headache, simply put. That you could supplement. The ache and the pressure behind your eyes could be solved with acetaminophen and a glass of water and a bath. The ache in your chest was less tangible, and would have to wait until the ache in your head was fixed to even be evaluated. 

You’d managed to slip past Steve getting dressed in the convex opening of your walk-in closet, light spilling yellow against the dark floors in the dim lighting of the master bedroom. The one thing you’d greatly missed about this house that your apartment did not have the luxury of was the cast-iron tub, in its claw-footed, wing-backed glory. The water spilled steam from the mouth of the faucet as it spilled down the white porcelain glaze, hot enough to turn your skin red and draw the overage of blood from between your temples. You dimmed the lights, shoulders lax as you slumped your arms sideways over the edge of the tub, water tinged green from both the reflection of the seafoam walls and the capful of eucalyptus epsom salts dissolving in the water around you. 

You close your eyes, focusing more on the crisp smell of the water instead of the pounding of your head. You rest one arm beneath your head as a barrier between your temple and the porcelain, allowing the other to hang off the side. 

You don’t miss the way Steve slips in, nearly silently. The change of air pressure that came with his presence was what gave him away– that and the soft click of the chair legs against the hexagonal tile as he rotated it to face you. 

His touch is so gentle. His touch feels like the only inherent good in the world around you. His touch is soft enough to bring you to tears. And it does. 

You cannot help but let two roll down your face, not upset enough for it to scrunch up in the ugly sobs that you heaved on the kitchen floor to Robin. They splat quietly on the tile beneath you, and you sigh like an exasperated hound. One deep, shuddering breath beneath Steve’s hand. 

You cannot confide in him, even if he asks. You wonder if that fact hurts worse than understanding that he is going to wake up eventually. 

Steve does not pry. He’s really good at that. Instead, he rakes his fingers across the grain of your hair, thrown upwards with reckless abandon– fingers both a consolation and a devastation. He wishes desperately to know. Wishes desperately that he could fix it, but he knows this sadness. Knows the pain of forcing you to talk. The only thing that hurts worse than not knowing is the pain of seeing you cry. 

But he’s so tender, and he’s so endearing. You can’t help but want him. 

“Can I get you anything?” He says to you, just above a whisper. He even dips his head down closer to yours so you can hear, but you’re already clawing at the collar of his shirt. 

“Wanna be close.” You mutter, words muffled against your arm. He understands it anyway. 

His skin is hot. Hot enough to still be felt under your hands despite the temperature of the water. You missed the texture of it, smooth, interrupted by soft constellations of moles and bone. Quickly, and with grace, he stands– pulling your hands from his body for a mere few, painful seconds. He strips his clothes quickly, and you watch the muscles of his shoulders ripple as he maneuvers to pull his shirt over them. 

Silken skin glides across your back, the hot water squelching between your bodies as he slides into the tub behind you, arms encircling your waist in an iron-clad grip. Caring and grounding all at once. 

His lips are soft as they press a hot path against your neck and you sigh, tilting your head further away to allow him the affection you so desperately need. 

“That’s it, honey. Let me give you what you need.” It’s a low growl, not quite a whisper. His voice keeps that resonant patriarchal basso that vibrates against your neck and settles in your coccyx. His kisses turn to soft nips, as he takes the suppleness of your flesh between his teeth– never enough to hurt. 

His hands reach up to cup your breasts, squeezing tenderly as he runs a thumb over a pert nipple. He leaves one hand on your chest, gently pinching and rolling the flesh between his thumb and forefinger, another hand sliding over the hills and valleys of your body to find a home between your legs. 

Despite the water surrounding you, there is a much more distinct slickness that has gathered there in decadent anticipation of him. When his thick fingers finally breach the threshold of you, it is both a devastation and a need. Slowly, he finds the bud of your clit, circling it slowly. 

You suck in a breath, accompanied by a soft whine. When you arch your back, you feel him press against your back, hard and heavy against your flesh. 

“Come on, honey,” He urges, a heeding groan fans across your shoulder disguised as a breath, “I’m gonna get you there. Just gotta let me do it.” 

His middle and ring finger circle your core, easing their way in. You relinquish the new, subtle stretch. His other hand leaves its place on your breast, coming down to hold the soft flesh of your lower belly, creating a soft pressure that soothed the ache in your core as he held you there, relentlessly pumping in and out of you with his fingers. The other hand crept lower, the other two fingers continuing the rhythmic circling of your throbbing clit. 

You cried out, the coil in your core hitting that vapid crescendo and tumbling over the edge with shaky legs and breaths. Steve continued working his fingers within you, easing you through the climax of your orgasm and slowing when you whined. His arms remained around you like a vice, holding you in your place against him. 

He nibbled at your ear softly as you came down from that wonderful, floaty place, and whispered softly, “You did so good.” against your neck. His hands rubbed the insides of your thighs in slow, soothing circles. You felt the water from the tub rush over his arms and create whirlpools over the valleys of your skin. 

It was then that you turned, your arms locking around his neck and your lips crashing into his. Your body fell against his with enough force to push a wave across the edge of the tub, but the wet floor was an issue for another time. Your own carnal desire to have him seated within you was far worse than your desire to maintain the grout in the bathroom floors. This much you knew. 

The stretch was welcome and familiar, albeit foreign to you, now. You cried out, as you slid down to the hilt and seated yourself firmly atop his thighs, either one of your thighs bracketing around his. You felt the scrape of hair from his thighs scratch against your skin, broad hands planted firmly on the plush of your waist, and deep, guttural groan fan out across the crevice of your neck where he buried his head. 

Your hand clutched the nape of his neck for purchase, fingers burying themselves in the damp locks there and tugging softly. It draws a gasp from pretty pouted lips as his head tilts back in reverie. He looks at you through dreamy, half-closed lids, reminding himself to draw himself back and forth again, now that you have adjusted to the sensation of him filling you. 

“Oh, baby. Honey.” He cried, pistoning his hips upward, more rhythmically now. It was more of a cry now than it was a plea, and a rosy blush crept its way across the bridge of his nose, spread over his cheeks, and kissed the tips of his ears. He was ethereal as it spread across his chest and he heaved whines into your mouth like he needed to feel himself inside you to survive. You caught the way his dark lashes kissed the apples of his cheeks, and the way the space between his brows scrunched as he huffed breaths towards your face. 

There is a realization in the impending vapid crescendo where Steve attempts to push you over the edge a second time. Your body is on fire as he rubs fast, sloppy circles around your already sensitive clit. He falls from the edge first.

“O-oh, fuck.” He cried out in pleasure as a tear rolled from beautifully crinkled eyelids. Though, he desperately urges you to continue bouncing with fingers buried into the plush that accumulates where your hips fold. His thumb is still relentless over your sensitive bud until he pushes your already teetering form over the edge as well. 

He holds you close, strong arms around your shaking frame and wet hands smoothing back your flyaway hairs. He presses a kiss to your forehead, guiding your head between his palms and trailing them down your nose. He lands his final kiss, longer this time, against your lips and fans his palms across the expanse of your cheeks and neck. 

You whine when he pulls himself from you, suddenly empty. Steve soothes you with a, “Shh. It’s okay honey, ‘ve got you.” as he pushes water up from the tub and over your cold, drying shoulders. 

You cannot tell if you feel better or worse, having him in this way again. You think of the way he slid the ring back over your finger, and relived all of the gilded moments of your past. You’d always felt like a ghost in this house, haunting the remnants of what the life that should have been. But this did not feel like the life that you walked out on. This felt like the life that you chose. 

Steve felt like your husband when he kissed the skin of your shoulder in the early mornings after his runs. He felt like your husband when he sprinkled the feta into your spinach omelet in the morning, and when he sat behind you to watch you paint like you couldn’t sense him behind you, and when he gave you that goofy smile and wave when you caught you peering at him from the bay curtains while he tended to the lawn, 

And he certainly felt like your husband when he helped you from the tub on shaky legs, while he dried your legs with fresh towels and planted sweet kisses against your ankles and knees as he did so. He felt like your husband as he held your hand and guided you with soft hands to bed. He felt like your husband when he pulled your head to his chest beneath the sheets, sneaking a not-so-secret sniff to the crown of your head and smiling a not-entirely-concealed smile. 

Steve may not have been yours anymore, but he was yours for tonight. 

+

The morning light is dappled when you wake, and the way it sparkles hurts your eyes. You half expect to see Steve, feel his lips against your shoulder and relinquish the warmth that radiates from his skin like the sun as he invades your waking space. Instead, you find him sleeping, golden and beautiful under the dappled light, white linens draped over the oiled ellipses of his hips and legs tangled in the sheets. You bury your nose into the valley of his spine and he jolts awake. You can’t help but to giggle. 

“Jesus, what the fuck?” He starts, pushing himself up on his elbows, stomach pressed to the bed. 

“Oh, good morning, Steve.” His brow furrows as he looks at you. Steve does not look happy to see you. Steve looks confused. 

“What are you even doing here?” He asked, more towards the sheets than you. He buried his face in his hands, groan echoing in his palms before he asked, “Oh, God, how drunk did I get?”

Your heart sinks. He is awake. There is no retrograde and anterograde and Transient Global to worry about anymore. It is just you, and him, and your new sense of impending doom. Though, how impending could the doom really be if it was staring you in the face this very moment? Impending should have been reserved for when you decided to move back into the house you tried to build. Impending was reserved for the phone call from the hospital. No, this was doomed from the start, and now, it was blowing up in your face. 

You can tell he doesn’t know what happened, and that he has a throbbing headache. 

“Here– let me–” You start, turning over to grab his prescription from the drawer in your– Steve’s bedside table. He stood, suddenly. 

“No– ugh,” He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to apply some pressure there, “I think you need to go.” 

“No, Steve, let me explain–”

“Just, go. Please.” He pleaded. 

You would not argue. You especially would not cry in front of him, not now. Instead, you scrambled the bathroom floor for your clothes that were shed before your bath, pulling them on, scrambling for your purse and car keys on the counter, and promptly leaving with those items to your name. It was foolish for you to build another home there, to leave remnants of yourself and reminders to him of just how fucked you were around his house. You don’t remember breathing on the drive back to your apartment. The air in this place is stale and, if you owned more things, you figured they’d be shrouded in a fine layer of dust from your negligence. 

When Robin answers the phone, you are incoherent. At first, she figures it is the shoddy signal from her company-issued brick phone, though she eventually realizes that it is not the faulty technology. You are in fact, choking on words and hot tears. Robin has a nagging feeling that she knows what happened, and your few words, “Steve” and, “fucked up” both confirm her suspicions and are reminiscent of a time where she was caught in the crossfire over a year ago. 

Robin’s car zig-zags in and out of the morning traffic, shaving both minutes off of her commute time to your apartment and her life. Her entrance to your apartment is dramatic, tired screeching and door hitting the wall so hard you can almost feel the security deposit solidifying in you landlord’s bank account. She greets you with a hug that you don’t ask for– you don’t need to. She doesn’t ask what’s wrong. 

Instead, she stands there, in the nearly empty room where your studio once stood, and she holds you. And you cry. And you want to scream and want to throw things and want to curse the universe and ask why me? But you know why you stand here. You know that you are shitty. So instead, you sit here, and feel sorry for yourself, and let Robin hold you. Because, no matter how shitty you are, she won’t say anything about it. 

This ugly nostalgia rears its even uglier head when the phone rings shrill, deafening against the brick walls that encase you in this place worse than they had when there were paintings occupying this space. She slides across the concrete on the floor just slightly so she can grab her phone.

“Hey– you busy?” Steve asks, and she can tell he’s been crying. 

You look at her, eyes red and confused. 

“No,” Robin lied to him, it was small and white, “What’s going on?” 

Who is it? You mouth. 

Robin is inherently a bad liar. She could say it was her boss, or her mom, or a telemarketer. Instead, she stares back, contemplating the lie and the inevitable conversation she would have to make up on the spot. She decides it is not worth the effort, and mouths back, 

Steve. 

You sit up, looking at her with wide eyes. You will not ask to eavesdrop, though, there’s a small, shitty part of you that wants to. 

“Something happened.” He started, and she knows exactly what happened, “but I don’t exactly know what.” 

What’s he saying? You mouth back at her, though, she holds a pointed finger up at you in waiting. 

“Are you in trouble?” She asks, “Do you need help?” 

“Look, I don’t know. Can you just come over? I’ll explain everything.” He asks, voice small. He sounds like he is on the precipice of a breakdown. She hangs up the phone, knowing you know what she is going to ask next. 

“Hey, are you gonna be okay? I’ve gotta–”

“Yeah, I’m fine. You can go.” You tell her, pointedly, though, she doesn’t fully believe it. However, your nosiness outweighs your ability to be this hurt for this long, “Look, can you just give this back to him? It doesn’t feel right.” and it's not right, it never was right. 

You slide the ring from your finger, closing Robin’s palm around it. She opens her palm once again, twirling the diamond between her fingers. She slides it over her middle finger, diamond side in to protect it. 

“Yeah, I can.”

“Thanks, Rob.” 

“Call me.” She says to you, and It is both a threat and a consolation. 

“Okay.” 

+

There is an aura that has overtaken the house since this morning. It was threatening. Robin had sensed the shift from her car, clear up the avenue. There was something frighteningly wrong here. 

Her knock on the door was poignant, scared almost, and she held her breath as Steve turned the knob. He looked tired. He looked spent. He looked like he wanted to cry, and yell, and throw things, and curse the universe, but was too morose to perform any action but stare blankly at Robin. 

“What happened?” She asked, taking the invited, but welcome, step through the threshold of the front door. She knew what had happened already, there were remnants of you strung about this place like shrapnel. Steve avoided them like landmines, even though the explosion had already happened. 

“She– she,” She meaning you, he started, but didn’t know where to begin. He sat on the couch, bouncing back with the weight and force of his body thrown against the cushions. 

“You don’t remember anything, do you?” Robin finally asked.

Steve looked up at her, red eyes slick with freshly fallen tears, “What?” 

“Steve, you hit your head. You fell off a ladder and knocked something loose.” Robin explained to him, voice soft as she said it, “You couldn’t remember anything that happened in the last year.” 

Robin wished you were here to help her explain. She wished she could remember the big words you remembered to describe what was wrong with him– maybe it would help him understand better. Maybe you should have come. She could have been able to act as a buffer between the anger– 

“You fucking knew about this?” Steve interrupted her thoughts, he had stared for a few seconds while he figured out his thoughts. 

Robin went quiet, more quiet than she already had been, “Yeah. I did.” It was a statement riddled with shame, though she didn’t quite know for what. 

“Steve, you were sick fo–”

He stood, rage apparent in his eyes as he poked his finger into Robin’s shoulder, “No, Rob, I wouldn’t put it past her to lie to me like that but you?” Robin didn’t say anything to him. Instead she just looked up at him, “Whose side are you even on?”

“Steve, you know goddamned well I’m not picking a side.” She was angry, standing now to match his posture, “You brooded for months fucking haunting this house like a ghost, Steve. You. Were. Miserable– and you were making me miserable too! All you did was talk about how you were gonna get her back, and now that you had her, you decide you don’t want her?” Robin started. It was Steve’s turn to stare, now.

“I get that you’re mad, and I get that you’re confused, and I’m sorry that this happened to you, but this isn’t my fault.” She continued. She was a republic of voices tonight, and unfortunately, that republic was Italy. 

“Oh, and here’s your stupid ring back. It’s ugly, anyways.” She finishes, shoving the ring back into his chest. He holds it in his hands, stunned. 

There is an immediate regret that fills him up and drowns him in it. Robin was right, it was not her fault. “Ugh, Robin. I’m–”

She turns at the beginning of his apology, scooping her back from the doorway, “Don’t. I’m not the one you should even be apologizing to.”

“Rob–”

“Bye, Steve.”

He is alone now. The house is quiet and stale, the walls sing in silence, speak their truths, tell him how awful he was. He was so quick to anger, wore his father’s anger like a hand-me-down coat. It hung loose in the wrong places, did not cling to him like his father and looked silly while he was wearing it. He twirls the ring in his hands, watching the light refract white off the brilliant-cut diamond. 

He should call Robin, should. He knows that, even after this, that she will forgive him. You, however, would not be so easy, though, he can’t exactly fathom how badly he wants your forgiveness when he has not quite forgiven you himself. 

He twirls it in his hands as he gets into his car, runs his thumb over the cluster of diamonds in his pocket as he drives down the road, in search of your apartment. It burns a hole in his pocket as he parks, burning hotter and hotter until he swears it scorches his skin the closer he gets to your door. 

When you answer, door swinging open in reprieve and eyes holding the morosity of several generations, he feels a pang of guilt begin to choke him, though it is not big enough to not be swallowed. Something else burns there, still hot and still angry and still confused. It takes over the forefront of his mind. He should not have come here. It was not right to come here. 

“Seriously? This? You still had it?” It is an ugly statement, it's the first thing that he can think of. The angry coat was still tied tight around his waist, the anger was still bubbling in the forefront of his temporal lobe. He holds the ring up in your face, the sparkle hurts your eyes. 

You furrowed your brows, confused by both the fact that we was standing at your apartment door and also that you opened your door to him yelling at you, “You gave it back to me Steve–”

“No, the version of me that forgot what you did gave it back to you. And you took advantage of that. You–”

“Steve, I couldn’t–”

“Couldn’t what?” He wouldn’t give you a chance to explain yourself, he took a step forward and crowded your space. It wasn’t entirely fair, but you hadn’t been entirely fair either. There was no winning this battle. 

You stared back at him in silence, willing fresh tears from breaking over the edges of your lash line. His eyes seethed with anger. You had never seen Steve this angry before. 

“Couldn’t what?” He asked again, taking another step closer. He stood over you now, towering and angry. 

You were shaking now, seeping with your own anger and frustration, “Anterograde Amnesia!”

“What?” He stops sudden;y, realizing his closeness to your figure, taking a step back. 

“That’s what you had. Every morning you woke up and it was the same day. Every morning you woke up and you– you–” You were crying now, hot tears running down your face at an embarrassing, unrelenting pace. You could not tell if they were of anger or sadness. Probably both, “You woke up and did the same thing, and then every night you went back to sleep and we started all over again.”

“Why didn’t you just walk away?” He asked, turning and bracing himself on your counter, hand on his hip as he stared you down. 

“I-I I just couldn’t, okay?”

“Why not?” He had a way of backing you into a corner, making you feel small in this confrontation. Steve was rarely angry with you, and never like this. 

“Because the one day you did find out, before all this shit,” Before he felt like yours again, “–you begged me to tell you that you were okay. You fucking begged me to.” Your arms were flailing now, it was your turn to back him into a corner. You hadn’t meant to be this defensive, hadn’t meant for this to end in a screaming match, but no one ever intended that, you supposed, “How the fuck was I supposed to leave after that, huh? Let them institutionalize you? Saddle Robin with you? How the fuck was that supposed to be the better option?” 

His hands were up now too, defenses in a war against yourselves, “Oh so you just did this so you could be a hero? So you could prove to yourself that you aren’t shitty? Prove to yourself that you weren’t gonna fucking leave again?” 

You found silence, suddenly, more hurt and more angry than before. You stare at each other. He knows he’s crossed a line. Several lines actually. You aren’t as forgiving as Robin. 

“Just go, Steve.”

“I–”

“Just fucking go.”

+

This felt like the remnants of a hurricane. You could hear the wind ringing heavy and violent in your ears like screams. You could feel the rain hot and heavy as it rolled across your cheeks still. Yet the air was still, entirely too still. The shrapnel of your reality built back up and torn back down again, and now you were here. Alone. In silence. 

Robin’s pointed knuckle is quiet against your door, yet it crashes and booms a resonant patriarchal tenor across the echoing walls of your solitude. You groan at her, something akin to its open. You hadn’t managed to lock it again after she left this morning. 

“Are you still being insufferable?” She asks you, as if it isn’t clear by the way you seem to enter a state of active decay, melting into the corner piece of your sectional. 

Though you are insufferable, you are not so insufferable that you cannot bite back, “Are you still being annoying?”

She does not answer, instead, the clinking of glass on glass and heavier glass against granite serves as an answer for her.

“Do you want a glass?”

The ruffling of a paper bag wills your head up, and she exhumes the bottle from it. You see that it is red, but don’t say anything about it. You recognize the bottle as Beaujolais Nouveau, from the same region in France in which it is aptly named– the same region in which Robin did her semester abroad. You could have said something about how it is not winter, or how there are better italian wines or better whites or literally anything else from Trader Joe’s, but alcohol seems nice, and you are never one to complain about free alcohol. 

“Yeah.” you say instead. 

“Okay.” 

She serves you a too-full glass on the couch. She had half a mind to bring some snacks over, but did not feel like putting forth the effort into making a snack board. Instead, she pulls a bag of salt and vinegar chips and a candy bar open with her teeth, pointing the mouth of the bag towards you in a peace offering. You oblige, stuffing a handful of them into your mouth as a chaser for this awful, dry red. 

“What a jerk.” She says, and you know who she is speaking about. 

“What an ass.” You say back to her, and she knows who you are speaking about, 

Your body rolls into the dip where hers sits on the couch, and you let the natural flow bring your head to her shoulder. You do not wrestle with the qualms of physical affection, and, if she is surprised by your sudden affectionate nature, she doesn’t say anything. 

“I spilled some wine on your counter.” She said to you, but you’ll clean it up later. 

You have half a mind to let it stain. 

+

You beg Robin to get your stuff from his house. Your heartbreak is scabbed over enough for you to pick at, and you have a desperate urge to smear some goo all over a canvas in an Oliver De Sagazan-esque pity party, but alas, your studio resides in the place of your demise– Steve’s house. 

Robin is more forgiving than you are, and also more willing to brave the walls of Fort Steve for your stuff. Robin is also a saint, and you have let her know ten times over. 

“She wants her shit back. Have it ready on the porch when I get there.” She says to him on the phone, the line aptly going dead seconds later. 

His hands on your things feel foreign when they touch them, like they might blow up. He had been avoiding them like landmines as he haunted the remnants of this home. Nothing had been touched since that morning. The house would not change. 

There is a fine layer of dust that has accumulated over the confines of your studio, and it makes his eyes water as he agitates it enough to send particles swirling through the air. He stacks your canvases in piles according to their sizes and fills your water cups with brushes. He takes extra care to separate the current painting you abandoned midway through, the one where the linseed-to-oil ratio wasn’t quite right and, in turn, the layers of paint would not cure properly. 

When he moves to the last stack, one of a modest collection of books and sketchpads, he loses his bearings, and the top sketchpad slides out with loose pages all over the floor. He sighs in exasperation, and bends down to scoop them into a pile. He recognizes the figure drawn on one page, and then another, and then another. A mirror image of himself, ruched hair at the end of the day, glasses perched on the end of his nose, elbow on the arm chair. In some he can see the tops of his folded knee. In some he is smiling and looking directly back at him. 

Every one of them is dated one a day for eighty-six days in chronological order, yet every paper he is holding has the same headline. 

The final page in the stack is a doodle page, he almost misses it. A series of boxes and riddles. Number two down, number three across. You were creating crossword puzzles, a new one every day, and yet none of the answers vaguely familiar to him. His blood runs cold. He was the ass. 

In a panic, he scoops the drawings up, sliding them as quickly as possible into the sleeve from which they fell and clutching them to his chest like previous gems. To him, this was a lifeline, and he did not have time to wait for Robin, though she is sitting outside waiting for him when he runs out the front door, leaving it open in a panic. 

She is colder when she greets him, colder than he’s ever seen. It's an odd juxtaposition, seeing her be so cold. She adorns black jeans with a black turtleneck. She does not look like herself, she looks like you. 

“And where are you going?” She asks him, watching hum fumble with his car keys and with the drawings in his hands. 

He puts his hands on her shoulders, wraps her in a hug, and gives her a kiss on the forehead. 

“Robin, I love you, and I know you came here for her stuff, but I’m going to talk to her.” 

She is stunned, staring at him with wide eyes at both the kiss and the sudden change in demeanor. She does not have time to ask him what drugs he possibly could have been on or make a back-handed remark about how hard he hit his head. Because, instead, she is standing in his driveway while his car takes off down the road. 

Your ground floor apartment has floor-to-ceiling windows. It was charming, really. It was one of the reasons you chose this place despite its ridiculous cost. Well, that, and the fact that it was the least suburban place you could think of. You are sitting on the kitchen island, scrubbing now at that wine stain on the counter with a rag and granite polish at the forefront of this battle when the first thud sounds off clear against your winder. You thought it had been an unsuspecting bird, but the shadow of a man behind your sheer white curtains startles you. You unfold yourself quickly, going over to pull them back and investigate. 

Steve stands with his feet in shrubs, hands with papers pressed flat against the glass. He pulls more from his chest, switching them out every so often, and then ends the spectacle with a crossword puzzle placed flat to the glass. He looks ridiculous like this, hands splayed across glass, hair disheveled and out of breath from running. He left his glasses on in the shuffle, and they slid down his nose in the commotion. Your confusion registers clear across your face, and he says something adjacent to, “Can I come in?” against the glass. 

You nod, and he shuffles the drawings back into a cohesive, carryable pile. You meet him at the front door, letting him run in and dump them on the counter you were currently cleaning. He spreads them out in front of you, breathless and disheveled. They are in order, chronologically. All of your drawings of him. You are both mortified and embarrassed. 

“That one.” He points to it, moving to stand next to you on the counter to look at it. 

“The first one.” You say, looking at the date. 

“Was that the first day?” He asked, “Of being home from the hospital?” he specified, staring down at you with intent eyes. 

You nod, looking back up to meet him, “Yes, that was the first day. I knew you had amnesia, I knew you thought we were still engaged. Though, I didn’t know the extent of your condition yet.” 

You go through all eighty-six drawings, the things he said to you, the things you did. A lot of them are repetitive, some of them caught you off guard and you are able to  laugh about it now. You talk about the day he gives you the ring back, and the day you realized he was in the same infinite time loop, you talk about the dastardly yellow paint and the vellum crossword puzzles so he wouldn’t get bored even though you knew he wouldn’t remember, and the binders. You talked a lot about Robin and her place in it all. You talked about the dentist up the street, and how Steve, even in his delirium, still knew him as the guy with the labs. 

There is one day where the drawing is missing. 

“Is this the day,” He asks, “The day that I–”

“Yeah, it is.” You answer. 

“What exactly happened then? On that day?” 

You struggle to recall every detail, so you start by giving him the gist, “Well… you saw the tattoo on my back,” You reach up to touch it, running your fingers over the raised lines of ink beneath your fingers. Steve tilts his head back to get a glimpse of it as well, his own fingers calloused as they chase yours across it. 

“Looks nice.” He says, without thinking. 

“Thank you.” You reply back, “And then you got really confused. I was still sleeping on the couch then. We were still figuring it out, and I was still clumsy. I asked you how hard you hit your head, and you didn’t even remember doing it. You panicked so quickly, I– I had a hard time calming you down.” 

The guilt still ate you alive, the guilt at your own clumsiness for letting it slip, and the guilt that you lived in the lie for that long. The guilt mostly for leaving in the first place. 

“You asked me where I was, and I couldn’t answer. I wasn’t there because I was trying so hard to live my life separately from you. We hadn’t been together in a year, but I couldn’t tell you that.” You said, words becoming frantic as you fought off tears. 

His hand is both a consolation as it is a devastation as it rests across your shoulder, broad and warm and grounding. 

“What did you say to me, then?” He asked. 

“You asked me if you were okay. You were so confused.” 

“And?”

“I told you that you were.” Hot tears broke the threshold of your lash line, and spilled in streams down your face. It cut through the dryness there, and you choked on a sob. “I didn’t even know if you were or how to take care of you or what I was doing and, and I’m sorry.” You cried ugly tears now, wet into your own hands. 

He grips your shoulders, pulling you into a familiar hug as your words grow frantic and your breaths become shallow and stuttered. He holds you close to his warm chest, encased in soft arms. He cradles the back of your head like you are encased in glass, and he plants a kiss to the top of your head. 

“I’m sorry.” He whispers into your hair, now rocking your back and forth as you calm down. A wet drop falls on your shoulder, and you cannot tell if it belongs to yourself or him. You would forgive Steve in every life. 

He pulls back from you, hands still planted firmly on your shoulders as he stares at you, amber eyes both piercing and comforting. 

“Listen, you don’t have to take this, not yet. But it would make me so fucking happy if you would.” He pulls the ring, sparkling and brilliant from his pocket, and presents it to you. You oblige happily, sliding it back on to your hands before tackling him into an embrace. His kiss is as soft as it had always been. 

You would do this again, and again, and again if it meant you could have him, because the same day with Steve was better than any of the days you had ever spent without him. 

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Every writer seems to have their own words to go seek out and destroy during line edits. A lot of them are pretty common: "just", "was", present progressive tense, "now", "suddenly", etc.

One of mine is "there was/there were/there is/there are"

You almost never need it. Virtually the only times I keep it are in dialogue, because that's when it sounds most reasonable. But mostly? It's dead weight of words that aren't doing anything and could be doing....well, anything.

Example from today:

Same amount of words, in this case, but instead of the records simply...existing...someone was keeping them. Pretty small, simple change. And yet slightly more info. Slightly better read.

A bigger change! This change focuses more attention on "the he" and his experience. It actually describes the situation, instead of the situation simply. Happening.

This cut more than just "there were" this time, but the overall effect is more concise, more to the point, more urgency. Less meandering. Good.

Hey, look at that. I took out the tunnel simply existing and added why the tunnel existing was even relevant.

More specific, more relevant.

Shorter, more concise.

You can see in these last couple examples that a lot of what "there were" is doing in sentences is not quite passive--technically, the "there" is doing the acting of. Um. Existing. And yet it's just as meaningless and just as weaselly and just as worthless to keep most of the time.

I look at the original piece of the dialogue compared to what I changed it to and want to punch the first version in the face for taking forever to say something.

"No other place" is just much more evocative to me than "there wasn't another." Because. Fuck the phrase "there were."

"There was a time" oh shut the fuck up, Character, why are you speaking like a pretentious asshole from an old movie.

Fuck off, Marr, why did you even write that first sentence like that.

Anyway, perhaps you, like I, got fed up with the way these sentences read the more of them you were forced to see.

Perhaps you, like I, will consider consigning this phrase to hell.

[aphro]

𓅻 | I finally found you...

| A remake version of the old one bc I got new ideas ✺. ✺. ✺. ⋆˙⊹ Summary: 'Kratos found his past lover..' ⋆˙⊹ Warnings: NSFW, MARRIAGE, ANGST, MEMORIES LOSE, BLOOD, REVENGE, SEX, SFW, COMFORT. ✺. ✺. ✺. [Ignore any misspelling please English is not my first language] -Aphro.

-CHAPTER 1: Who are you..?

• A gloomy sky and a wintry atmosphere. Footprints of large, small and medium-sized cover the snowy ground in a straight line. Kratos and his companions Freya, his son Atreus, and his wise friend Mimir, the head hanging behind Kratos, lead their way to the broken prison in Niflheim, Advancing towards Raven Tree. Kratos saw the prison covered in snow.

✢|KRATOS: 'there it is..' He said under his breath and his son answered tiredly.

✢|ATREUS: 'Finally, my feet hurt a lot, father.' Freya smiled a little at Atreus comment and put her hand on top of Atreus' head, caressing him. Mimir didn't say anything.

After this light conversation ended, the team continued on its way towards the prison, and after a few minutes they arrived at the prison gate. It was really broken.Kratos entered and his team followed behind him. No one commented on the place. They were silent and cautious, their weapons in their fists, ready to fight.

Eager steps spread throughout the place, and Kratos' sharp gaze wandered around the prison, searching for any trace of Tyr. Mimir's head fell silent, and after a while he said:

✢|MIMIR: 'I think he's in that room on the right, brother.' He said calmly and wisely in his words. Kratos nodded his head and a light 'Hm' left his lips as he turned to the door. Freya and Atreus followed his steps.

Kratos opened the door and found Tyr Sitting on the ground, there is a rope around his neck connected to the ceiling of the cell. But what caught Atreus's attention was the unconscious completely naked body of a woman, with her reproductive system covered by a white piece of cloth as a towel. He looked at Freya and he poke her arm and whisper:

✢|ATREUS: 'look over there, That woman..'. Freya looked at her and then looked at Atreus.

✢|FREYA: 'She's just a prisoner, nothing special'. She said And then she look at Kratos, who freed Tyr by cutting the rope from his neck. The woman woke up from those sounds and opened her eyes. No one paid attention to her, but after a while she spoke. Her voice was calm and soft.

✢|WOMAN: 'who are you?'. She said, curiosity overwhelming her tone, and she looked up at that huge man with white skin and red marks on half his body. He seemed strong and angry. He reminded her of someone she knew, but her memories were blurry.

Tyr looked at her. His cell mate, She was a peaceful and quiet woman who did not speak much like a doll, and glorious for sure, Tyr looked at her and then answered.

✢|TYR: 'don't worry, Y\N. Those people are good'. Atreus nodded his head in confirmation of Tyr's statement, then Freya say:

✢|FREYA: 'whor are you?'. Freya asked her, giving her a sharp look. Y/N looked at her, her eyes full of innocence. She answered in a low voice.

✢|Y/N: 'i'm Y/N..' Freya nodded her head, but something caught Kratos' attention when he saw that naked woman. His gaze fell on her neck, a necklace dangllin down between her cleavage. "Is this the immortality necklace?... No.., this does not make sense. I gave it to the love of my life. But She is dead!. How did it fall into this woman's hands?" This dialogue took place inside Kratos. No one knows about this story Not Even, his deceased wife, Faye, Not Even, his son, Atreus. He tried to recall his memories when he was still a young man, full of anger in order to take revenge on Zeus, but also full of romance to a certain woman. Kratos did not feel himself until these words came out of his mouth like poison from the venom of a snake.

✢|KRATOS: 'Who gave this to you?!' He said in an angry voice, and his eyes became more intense, his son Atreus and Mimir and Frey never seen Kratos that mad. Kratos Snatch the necklace from her delicate neck that it leaves a small red hickey from the aggressive way he snatch it from her.

A small cry left her lips and looks up at him scared. Her body start to tremble slightly and her fingers ashes for having her most dearest necklace back to her.

✢|Y/N: 'no, please give it back..' she plead and Tyr looks at both of them before he speak.

✢|TYR: 'I suggest you god killer to give it back to her.' Tyr said calmly, trying to calm the situation. Kratos did not answer him, then he put it in his pocket.

Y/N looked at him with tears streaming from her eyes. She did not understand how hard this man’s heart was. She spoke, her voice trembling.

✢|Y/N: 'You have no right to take what I own!'. She said while crying. Atreus and Tyr were sad about her situation. Mimir was listening to what was happening and wanted to ask Kratos what was wrong and why he behaved like this towards this harmless woman. But Freya did the thing.

✢|FREYA: 'are you okay?' She asked with concern in her voice as she was about to put her hand on his back. Kratos pushed her away from him, then sighed and returned to his normal state. The fire of questions was still burning in his heart and the hearts of everyone inside the cell.

-CHAPTER 2: REMEMBER..

A week passed in Freya's camp. The camp was beautiful, like a forest full of good things. Kratos, the god of war, sitting on a log with his own axe in his hand, sharpening it with a stone. The fire was on even it was morning and quite sunny. His son Atreus and Mimir were away with the blue dwarf brok, it was quiet between Kratos and Y/N. Of course he took some glances at her from time to time but he didn't talk, the necklace was still in his pocket and her neck was healed.

✢|Y/N: 'butterflies..' Y/N whisper as she looked up at the butterflies flying over her head. A blue one landed on her nose, as Kratos watch this a same scene Plays in his memories it was the same thing, the woman he loves with a butterfly up on her nose. He gets a feeling of nostalgia inside his chest and he speak.

✢|KRATOS: 'the butterflies suits you..' he say in a low, deep voice. It was the same phrase he said to his past lover, "the butterflies suits you". Y/N looked at him with wonder and curiosity and then said with a little anger in her voice.

✢|Y/N: 'i'm still angry at you, cruel man.' she said with a slight pout that curved on her soft, plump lips, her eyebrows frowns softly and Kratos couldn't help but faintly smile.

✢|KRATOS: 'i'm Kratos. Not cruel man, lady'. He said simply and looks back at his axe, Y/N didn't reply and looks up at the butterflies before Kratos asks her again.

✢|KRATOS: 'how did you end up being in prison?'. He asked with curiosity as he looks at the beautiful woman next to him, he can't help but feel drawn to her but he's ego is more important.

✢|Y/N: ' I don't remember..' that's all what she said and that leaves some questioning marks up his head. "She doesn't remembe, what does she mean?" Kratos thought to himself.

✢|KRATOS: 'you don't remember?, How come?'

✢|Y/N: 'I've lost my memories'. She said simply and lostness fills her tone.

Before Kratos could say another word, Freya, walks over them and say in a slight sacrastic tone and a slight smirk.

✢|FREYA: 'what are you two talking about?' she say as she sit between Y/N and Kratos. Y/N went quiet again and look down at the flowers while Kratos looked down at his axe. Freya didn't like it when someone ignores her, she looked at Kratos and whisper to him.

✢|FREYA: 'did she say something?' Kratos shake his head in reponce and then Freya nod and looks back at the fire. The trio was staring at different things.

After a few hours, the sky began to darken and the wind became cold but calm. Y/N was inside a tent that Brok and Sindri had set up for her to sleep in. The camp was silent. She heard the sound of butterflies and birds fluttering in the sky. It was the only sound present.

Y/N's eyes could not sleep as she looked at the moonlight through the tent, the confused memories and life passing before her eyes, that strange man again, that angry man who fell in love with her like Romeo fell in love with Juliet. She could feel his eyes penetrating her, looking into her soul. Y/N tossed and turned in her bed. She couldn't describe her feeling. Was it longing and sadness, or was it just lust or... love?.

Y/N closed her eyes, trying to sleep, but she couldn't. Her mind said, "They can't sleep and forget." She wanted to remember her life, her relatives, who she loved, her family, but she couldn't. She sighed sadly, and the questions were running through her mind till she falls asleep.

-CHAPTER 3: GOLDEN AGE.

A sunny day in Olympus. The peasants took the fruits from their fields and put them in baskets to sell and serve to the gods. Y/N was a young version of herself, full of life, living inside a simple house with her aunt and her two daughters. Anthea and Phoebe. Their characteristics include jealousy and envy, like their mother, Lone. They treat Y/N ​​as if she were a servant and not her deceased mother's guardian, Cassia.

✢|ANTHEA: 'clean that spot, maid'. She said while laughing at Y/N who was mopping the floor after Phoebe spilled coffee on the floor. Y/N was wiping, tears gathering in her eyes, and she looked at Anthea sadly. She couldn't stop Anthea from humiliating her. If she did that, her aunt would kick her out of the house. She didn't want to be homeless in the cold, with men harassing her. She's beautiful. Beauty that rivals the gods. This is the reason for Anthea and Pheobe's jealousy and envy.

A few days ago, Y/N was away from home and the fields a little. She was sitting on her knees next to the river washing the clothes, A strange man was watching her from behind the Bushes, Sharp, dark eyes were watching her as if she were prey. Y/N did not notice it, but after a few seconds, a voice spoke behind her. It was a sharp and angry voice.

✢|YOUNG KRATOS: 'you, what are you doing?'. He asked while looking at her. Y/N turned to him and was shocked by this strange man. He was tall and carried weapons. His muscles were sharp and strong.

Y/N looked at him calmly and spoke

✢| YOUNG Y/N: 'doing laundry..'She answered simply, looking at him. Her hands were full of soap. For a few seconds, they were silent, looking after them. They were the opposite of each other. One is rageful, dominate and strong. The other is quiet, calm and submesive.

✢|Y/N: ' are you a god?' She said curiously, looking at him. The idea of ​​speaking face to face with a god was too much for her young mind to understand. Kratos didn't say anything, but nodded, his angry expression not leaving his face.

✢|YOUNG Y/N: ' oh, what a honour!' She said in astonishment and smiled at him. He looked at her smile, it seemed innocent and bright, not like the women he met, full of hatred and vanity, those fake goddesses.

✢|YOUNG KRATOS: ' the honour is mine' he pause and looks at the lake 'it's quiet cold for a woman like you'

She raised her eyebrows, surprised by his cold comment. Cold on me? Why would this God care about me of all people? She had these questions in one second, but remained silent.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

To be continued..

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Star Trek SNW finally settles decades-old canon issues (spoiler commentary for S02E03)

(Image credit: Startrek.com)

I say spoiler right in the headline, and I mean it. Read no further if you have yet to see Star Trek: Strange New World’s latest episode, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. (The image above is a publicity image and is also in the trailer, so it’s not really a spoiler.)

The TL;DR is: one single line of dialogue fixed nearly 30 years of canon issues. I am not exaggerating. More under the break. And this will be a long one:

To “cross the streams” a moment, it is undeniable canon (not shipping wishful thinking) that not only did the Eleventh Doctor in Doctor Who have feelings for Clara Oswald, he even considered her not his companion, but his girlfriend. That was made undeniable canon in a couple lines in “Deep Breath” when the Twelfth Doctor said “Clara, I’m not your boyfriend,” Clara replied, “I never thought you were.” and Twelve said “I never said it was your mistake.” That was in stark fact. One line of canon dialogue confirmed what many speculated and the show hinted at. This is separate from what came after, any retcons later writers did, and all that. 

Well, one line of dialogue from a guest character in last night’s episode of Strange New Worlds put into canon something I and many others have felt not only about SNW, but the current breed of Trek shows and indeed there were signs of this going back to both Star Trek DS9 and Star Trek Voyager in the 1990s.

The Romulan time agent, Sera, played by Adelaide Kane who some may remember from playing Mary Queen of Scots in Reign, states that the Eugenics war involving Khan was supposed to happen in 1992, but was delayed 30 years due to temporal wars and other interference from the future. (To be precise she’s likely referring to Khan’s birth since he was in his 30s or 40s by the 1990s, the time TOS established the Eugenics Wars took place; here he’s a kid - possibly even a Canadian kid!  The war itself is still some years away.)

That explains a lot. Why since DS9 the Eugenics Wars were redated to the mid-21st century. Why SNW’s pilot episode last year confirmed the Eugenics Wars were part of WW3, not a separate conflict.  Why the Voyager episode where they go back to Earth on 1996 featured no mention of the Eugenics Wars. Why Kirk and everyone else already knows the name Noonien-Singh (even if La’an hadn’t introduced herself by name to “Prime” Kirk at the end, he would have seen her testimony about being Khan’s descendant at Una’s trial. There is no way in this timeline that Kirk, Spock or anyone else would not recognize Khan’s name instantly when the events of Space Seed happen. Heck, even the fact the SNW Enterprise doesn’t match up with the 1960s designs that were also featured in TNG, DS9 and Star Trek: Enterprise. Or even stuff like people like Uhura knowing who T’Pring was years before they were supposedly first introduced to her in “Amok Time”. It even gives wiggle room for the fact this time-travel episode actually breaks canon with the time-travel-based episodes of Picard Season 2! (Laris would have known about Sera and stopped her, right? Sean at TrekCulture had a gripe about this in his Youtube review)

Sera basically admitted that because of people farting around with time and the temporal wars (recall that it was strongly implied in Enterprise that the Romulans were involved if not responsible for that) that the timeline has been changed. 

It can’t be denied anymore and it’s such a liberating thing. Now, SNW is free to truly tell reimagined stories (like the retelling of Balance of Terror last season, albeit that was another alternate timeline), to make T’Pring a vital character and build her, to accelerate the Spock-Chapel romance that was only hinted at in TOS. To truly let Paul Wesley develop his own version of Kirk, not to mention Ethan Peck’s Spock and whoever next plays McCoy (you know they will bring him in eventually and if SNW avoids the fate of Prodigy and lasts a few years, they’re going to have to start getting lined up for a new TOS-era series). Hell, the door is now open for Kirk and La’an to establish a “prime-era” romance - imagine a retelling of Space Seed with La’an in the picture (or at least Kirk remembering her).

This will be a hot take for some. But my rebuttal comes from Doctor Who: “Time can be rewritten.” Finally, nearly 30 years after what was thought to be an erroneous dating of the Eugenics Wars in a throwaway line in an episode of DS9 (I believe the producers even said it was a goof back then), and 22 years of people griping about how the prequel series were not lining up with what came before, either esthetically or storyline-wise (Enterprise, Discovery, SNW, and Picard S2 to a degree), we have a firm, canonical explanation. People will still gripe about politics, general quality, casting, whatever, of shows - that’s a separate argument - but at least in terms of canon, this has changed everything. In a good way.

I only wish they hadn’t killed off Sera. I got very strong Sela vibes from her (Sela/Sera? Coincidence?) and I would have liked to see her become a recurring nemesis. Then again, as I just said, time can be rewritten. 

[tavyliasin]

The Tyranny of Memory - Gortash x Durge Short

Durge meets Gortash at night in secret, and the finds the Tyrant has other ways to coax out old memories... D/s Switch for both, Gortash is AFAB and Durge is AFAB nonbinary in this 996 word request piece from some deliciously devious sinners~

A warmup short run a little long~ Click Here for AO3 Version Pairing: Gortash x Durge SPICE Rating: 4/5  Content Warnings and Tags: Power play, mild blood/wound, mild neck grab (no choking), rough sex,

Spoilers Mild act 3 Dark Urge reference (1-2 dialogue lines taken out of the original context), mild Dark Urge spoilers. Canon Compliance Barely any really other than the vague mention in the spoilers. This is just smut for smut's sake~ Other Notes As mentioned at the top, Gortash is an AFAB trans man and the Durge is nonbinary with they/them pronouns and AFAB anatomy.

Song Pairing Warfare by Katie Garfield (Youtube Link Click Here) "We won't stop 'Til you fall Cut you down Take it all One by one Say goodbye You can run but you can't hide

This is warfare"

SMUT BELOW THE CUT! --- ---

“A divine oath, sworn upon spirit and flesh. I do no harm to you, nor you to me.” Simple words that had been spoken with hope, Enver Gortash smiled as he had said them.

“First you will rule, then you will ruin.”  The words of the urge echoed in their head too, there was a pact, but every agreement had its weakness. Durge knew that the moment they agreed to meet him again, alone, under cover of darkness. The way to rule over a tyrant was first to make him believe he had control, soothe his over-inflated ego, to make the ruin all the more satisfying. 

That was how they were on his desk, golden claws raking down their spine staining white scales red, and lifting their tail to claim them. They allowed it, first his fingers - too greedy to tease, too impatient to give them what they wanted - and then one of several straps he kept in his drawer. 

They remembered those, or rather some part of them did. Durge wasn’t sure how, why, which ones had perhaps been used in the past, but their body soon did. They bit down into the leatherbound cover of a book that had been carelessly pushed to one side to make way for their reunion. Gortash’s voice was deep, dark, a growl that sent a shiver through their mind as he spoke. “There, my dear assassin, back where you belong.” 

Their body was responding, feeling Gortash…Enver… Their mind rebelled, even as their muscles tightened in the bliss of being so thoroughly filled, even the heat of his breath on the back of their neck drawing forth a low moan from their throat. “Fool, FOOL! Wait for his weakness, then take it all back.”

“Stay still, my dear, we do not wish to break anything. Least of all your delightful body.” He dug his claws into the base of their tail with a savage grip, the pain awakening a bloodlust they had struggled to suppress in every waking hour. 

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Gortash.” Durge muttered through gritted teeth, even as his cold metal gauntlet dug deeper. Even with their pact, *’harm’* did not account for pain that they enjoyed and welcomed

“So you want me to stop?” He slowed, but did not cease. His thrusts instead became languid yet purposeful, ensuring they felt every moment, encouraging them to seek their own pleasure by pressing towards him. But the heat of blood seeping onto their scales was tipping the balance, and winning the wager Bane’s chosen had set the moment he took control. 

“I warned you, Enver. Reap the rewards of your tyranny, and remember exactly the pride that brought your fall.” Durge’s tail wrapped around his waist, pulling him from their body as they grabbed a spare strap and turned, shoving him backwards, grinning wickedly as he stumbled towards the wall.

“There you are, my dear.” The light of fear in his eyes was coloured by arousal, as infuriating as it was deeply erotic to the dragonborn already leaping towards him.

Durge slammed Enver’s back against the wall, as they breathed in the scent of the breath that left his lungs, savouring it, drinking in the view of him half naked and quivering. “You thought it wise to take from me...to push me…to *awaken*-” 

“I did. That look in your eye, you’ve missed this just as much as I have. Perhaps a part of you still dreamed while your memories slept.” His golden claws traced a path over old scars, scratching over healed scales as if to reopen the wounds and drag their former self back out by visceral force.

“Little Tyrant…you speak of dreams when you’re awakening a nightmare.” Enver’s sturdy arms felt weak in their grasp as they turned him around, shifting their grip up to his hair, forcing his cheek against the cold stone of the wall. “I’d forgotten what your voice sounded like when you whimper and beg, Enver. You’ll be kind enough to remind me now, won’t you?” 

He nodded, as much as one can with their face held so close, his arms wretched easily behind him as their tail wrapped around his wrists to bind them still.

“Good boy.” They purred into his ear. “Do not move.” The command allowed them to hold him only with their tail as they swiftly secured the strap. Grabbed from the drawer in haste, it was longer and thicker than the one that the tyrant still wore, dripping with the remnants of their own arousal. It might be pleasing to take their pleasure from him more directly, to throw him to the floor and command his wicked tongue to spill his secrets directly to their core, but power… Real power held far more allure. 

They hadn’t been concerned about preparing him, and they quickly remembered why. The oil glistened in a thin trickle down the back of his thigh betraying how he was always ready, waiting, hoping. 

The tyrant groaned as they entered, teasing just the tip at first. Durge took hold of the back of his neck, keeping him flush against the wall, but their other hand snaked down to his waist and around, gripping the strap he still wore and working it slowly as if the false appendage had feeling. “Should I thank you, Tyrant, for being so well prepared for me? Should I thank your hungry little hole for swallowing all of this with ease?” Enver whined. Perhaps he might’ve preferred the more direct pleasure that penetration of another kind could offer, but this… They knew it was the degradation he wanted most. To know they could take his body and own it. 

Durge increased their pace slowly, savouring how he shuddered, moaned, and grew weak as their hips slammed against him. They grew drunk on the power, intoxicated by how they brought him to his knees in a pool of his own arousal, and they did not relent until dawn. --- --- ENDING NOTES --- ---

So maybe I'll do more with Gortash. I still haven't played a Dark Urge run, but I have very much enjoyed indulging in all manner of Durgetash content~

[descendantofthesparrow]

Brutally honest thoughts on each character?

...*Each* character???? bruh thats so many, okay ill keep this short cuz im waiting for a haircut rn

well start with the vks cuz thats easy

Mal-started off strong and then just became...THE WORST, love hate relationship for her. shes my art block fix but also i hate her

Jay-i dont have strong opinions on him, he actually never stuck out to me other than 'obligatory jock dude of the friend group.' i wish i liked him more but im more attached to his fandom self over canon Jay

Evie-got boring after D1, i wish they let her keep her chemistry stuff, love her vibe but shes kinda boring to me. SHOULD'VE BEEN THE MC OVER MAL!!

Carlos- lots of lost potential with his tech stuff from the first book and movie. easily could've been an engineer or inventor but they just made him an animal lover and i got bored of that real quick.

Uma-my queen, my idol, can do no wrong i love her so much i WILL kill for her.

Harry-i love his dumbass so much YALL DONY EVEN KNOW I WANNA BITE HIM SO BAD

Gil-one of the few characters i felt actually...grew up? idk but hes one of the few characters were it actually feels like time passed for.

Dizzy-oooooooh honey, honey honey, sunshine baby, please, put the glue gun down.

Celia- they should've gone with her trailer persona. Her outfits are so bad and i wish she got better writing and designs, so much lost potential, also she should've been Jays pick.

Smee twins- why the fuck are they even here they had one line and no significance. also they should've had a Harry scene.

Aks

Ben-puppy boy, deserved to have doberman energy. got turned into a doormat by the writers and is unfairly hated.

Audrey-bitch queen, shes not a nice person and thats okay~ girlboss.

Chad- should've been the D3 villan they had that all set up in D2 with his weird ass attitude over Ben getting kidnapped on the isle.

Doug -....honestly gives me the ick, especially in D3, i HATE the long hair his actor had/has. gold is NOT his color and neither is pastel purple or green. he looked good in D1 but ICK for 2 and 3.

Jane- bby gurl, blue bird sweetheart. yeah she did some fucked up shit in D1 but she was an insecure 14 year old girl who got manipulated by Mal and other aks!!!

Lonnie- deserved so much better, shes Chinese why is she getting Japanese style stuff?!?! her plot in D2 didnt even do anything it just happened and no one cared and Jay just shoved his problems of girls playing roar onto her.

Beast- *inhale* i wanna kick his ass, and i could, lemme at him. how dare he force an entire kingdom on Ben at 16 when he didnt become king when he was 28(when he married Belle)

Belle- they took away her backbone, shes not Disney princess book worm and independent Belle. she just, lost the spark

FG- they turned her into a preschool teacher, GIVE ME MY OL COOKY FAIRY LADY BACK

Leah- *seething rage*

vk parents

Maleficent- fuckin love her, shes such a manipulative bitch and feels like a gone crazy version of a Maleficent made for kids. def not the mistress of all Evil but i love her nonetheless

EQ- shouldve been the head villain, SHE WAS THE FIRST DISNEY VILLAIN CMON! def not the same character from the animated movie but shes dramatic and sassy and i adore her.

Jafar- haha funny characature~ i wish he was more menacing like he had been. Jafar is not one of my fav villains so descendants jafar didnt exactly translate for me well.

Cruella- yeah they nailed her, no complaints about her. good design, good dialogue, good acting.

Hades- LEMME KICK HIS DEAD BEAT ASS, fucking 'daddy issues made you stronger' my butt. i hate his hair and honestly he doesnt fit the washed up punk design, he didnt deserve the speech at the end and didnt deserve to be forgiven by Mal.

Ursula- we only saw her tentacle and one line but she seemed spot on so yeah

Lady Tremaine- why the fuck was she nice in D3??? bitch is the EVIL stepmother.

Smee- spot on, i have words for his sons designs becuaee hes old not naturally white haired but hes chill, makes sense hed be a good parent, he never felt evil to me, just compliant

Facilier- such a vibe, his actor got him spot on, would've changed up his suit design but hes chill and i can see him being a family man(ignoring wicked world).

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

Even When the Words Went Wrong

First posted: May 27, 2019

Focuses on: Jason Todd and Bruce Wayne

Favorite bookmark: "In which, Bruce doesn't fuck it up."

Second favorite bookmark: "I got actual tears in my tears like this fic beat up my heart in a dark alley and then stole its wallet"

Tier: Pretty middle, but at least in the top half of all metrics

This is my “behind the scenes” series where I indulge myself horribly by annotating my fics. Link to the fic itself above. Thoughts below the cut.

Apparently this only took me a couple days to write, which is cool, and also makes sense. Alternate POV fics are, in many ways, so much easier because I already know what happened. I just have to express how a different person perceived it and felt about it.

Part one's title came from the David Cook song, and this one is a continuation of the same lyric, just slightly changed because my version is more poetic and appropriate.

Original: You've always been the sweetest song / Even when the world went wrong

Incorrect, Mr. Cook, do better.

Bruce Wayne had killed Jason in a thousand different ways. And Jason had killed Bruce in a thousand and one.

Some nights, it was all Jason could see when he closed his eyes.

I knew when I finished the first part that I would need to do more. I couldn't push the fic any further than it had gone from Bruce's POV, but I didn't want to end it where I did, so time to jump heads.

“You don’t have what it takes to give this city what it needs,” Jason spat, fully in the swing of his narrative. The Pit hummed like a swarm of locust in the back of his skull. “You’re weak. You’ve always been weak. You—“

I'd done POV swaps before, so I was already aware that one way that alternate POVs are not easier is finding a way to cover the same ground without just copy-pasting dialogue again. It gets so boring. Luckily here Bruce and Jason are both so distracted at different points that they can each zone in and out of the narration.

Batman’s composure was flaking off him in chunks. It was a sight to see. He was angrier than Jason had ever seen, jaw on the verge of cracking with the strain. Jason felt a sickly sort of pleasure that he was at least able to elicit that after all this time.

I personally find it funny that Jason thinks Bruce is mad, that that's the only emotion he can stick a label to, because he's never fully seen Bruce panicking like this before.

Somehow he had never considered that in the lost years Bruce might have changed, too. It wasn’t that Bruce was unrecognizable. He wasn’t. The Bruce of him was still there, grim and unyielding. The grey in his hair was new, clustered around the temples, not bright enough to be Alfred’s silver but close. There were lines, too, that had been there before, but only as the finest pencil strokes. Now they were cuts, deep and furrowed. They made Bruce look harder than ever, a man carved from stone, but stone that was beginning to crumble. He called Bruce old man, first as a joke and now as a taunt, but this was the first time it almost felt real.

I did Bruce a little dirty here, since by the timeline I use he's still in his 30s here. Oh well. The changes, both from the passage of time and the weight of grief, would be shocking to Jason regardless. Like. That's his dad. He knows what his dad's face is supposed to look like.

His finger stuttered against the trigger. He could pull it. Be done right here, right now. This close, there was no way to miss. It was why he had come to Gotham. It was all Jason could see when he closed his eyes. He didn’t want this.

That's the truth of Jason, the one I think all my fics about his anger and bitterness and resentment have to come to in the end. He wouldn't hate Bruce as much as he thinks he does if he didn't love him with the same intensity. He can lie to himself all he wants, but it's a truth he has to face in the end.

Bruce had him trapped, but Bruce wasn’t fighting. He was… he… was… Crying? Bruce had his face buried in Jason’s hair, and Jason could feel the tears on his scalp and the shuddering breaths rippling through Bruce’s chest. “B?” he whispered.

Is there anything more alarming than seeing your parent cry.

He was lost. He was falling. He was thirteen and wide-eyed, awed beneath his wariness. He was fourteen and reckless, eager to please and devoted to the end. He was fifteen and cocky, unsure of his path but sure of who would walk it with him. He was fifteen and dying, alone and crying for his dad.

I'm pretty sure I've accidentally written this same paragraph like five different times across different fics with different characters. Oops.

Bruce ignored his own tear-streaked face to rub a thumb across Jason’s cheekbone, a gesture of habit formed over a fraction of a lifetime, but the only fraction that had really mattered.

I love that paragraph specifically because I can feel it. Is there a name for that? Like written ASMR?

The end of this fic is so schmoopy in a way I don't normally like to be, but I do wonder how much that speaks to a culturally rooted aversion for male emotions that aren't anger, you know?

Also the end note is a Bible quotation but specifically the version I heard in my head is the Barlow Girls song. And some of you just got hit with 00s memories upside the back of the head, you're welcome.

And lastly, this one fic garnered multiple comments of very nice people saying DC needed to hire me I AM STILL WAITING DETECTIVE COMICS

[xerith-42]

I decided to watch Void Paradox

I'm about five minutes into the first episode and I'm still not entirely sure if this is a good idea or not, but Laurance has already spoken like three lines of dialogue and I felt my heart wrench at just one of them, so clearly I'm in too deep now.

This post serves as my live tweeting/mental break down that I am currently having as we speak. It is very incomprehensible because it is literally just my thoughts as they happen, and given how much I have to say, I'll probably make proper posts out of a lot of these points once I finish the series.

This mess is just giving you a taste of the madness I truly posses.

I am only three minutes in before I have to pause and feel the urge to scream about how bad the dialogue in Aphmau series can be. Like this series is fairly okay, especially based on the standard set by her other shows but man... something is just not working here. The whole thing feels very clunky and while I can get the gist of what Jess is going for, the execution of said gist is leaving a lot to be desired.

[Laurance shows up]

nevermind Laurance is on screen and fully voice acted everything is better

Literally nobody talk to me I need to scream about Laurance Zvahl because he is EVERYTHING in this series. The way he very softly says Aph's name when he sees her, the immediate instinct to hug her because he's so relieved to see her, the fact that you can hear the smile in his voice the minute he registers that she's there and alive!! AUGH I LOVE HIM SO MUCH!!

And I literally screamed when he revealed that he was transported to this AU right at the end of season 1. Oh my Irene, I screamed. I collapsed. I was truly defeated by a single line of dialogue. I don't know where this series is going to go but I am here for it. And the fact that he knows Garroth did it and hid it from her???

I can't overstate how genuinely healing it is to hear Laurance fully voice acted. I know Sebastian Todd is retired from voice acting, but when he retired, he took down all his posts, including what I considered to be a comfort video. That video of him reading iconic Laurance lines from before he was in mcd/lines he just didn't act? That video was my everything when I was trying to hold onto this version of the character I knew I loved who was different to what Jess made him. When that video got taken down it was a major cowabummer bc there's so little properly voice acted Laurance content that isn't mcd Season 3 or My Street stuff (and I can't stand My Street like 80% of the time)

Hearing his voice, hearing him get to be properly expressive, it's just doing things to me man. I missed this character a lot. I've mostly been enjoying him through fan content or my own work. It's nice to say I enjoy a piece of canon content involving him, at least so far.

Still not sure how I feel about literally anything else. The whole relationship between Aph and Tommy feels very... weird. She describes herself as "basically his mother" after she's left with him, and treats him like it in the opening scene. But then when he's mocking her for being attracted to Laurance (so relatable), it seems really weird for a [checks wiki] 14 year old kid to be calling out his mom for finding someone hot. Feels a lot more like sibling dialogue to me? Which I guess they could be seen as siblings, but the series explicitly stated that she views it like motherhood??? But I don't think Jess is even thinking that deeply about it, I just over analyze her work for fun at this point.

Okay what the actual fuck is going on with the inside of this house???

Why is the color scheme purple and yellow? And not in any kind of flattering way which is possible with opposite colors, it just has both of them. The wallpaper changes when you get into the living room except not entirely on the windows, and in an earlier scene it looked like it wasn't even put onto all of the walls. And the wood that she used as supports just does not compliment either of these colors as they are. Just make it all purple, you know you want to Jess.

Also is the texture on the table and the glass the same??? I don't know a damn thing about modding or making texture/data packs for minecraft but that just seems. odd.

Laurance: mentions the nether Me: [screams just a little]

Tommy: shows up and gives a random ass lore dump Aph: Kay thanks go back to your room

"I don't know what I can do to help."

"Just be there for me. I just need someone to ground me right now."

I literally want to shake Laurance around like a rag doll and give him a stupid kiss on his stupid fucking face UGH why can't I be normal about this block man and his stupid feelings?!?! The way his voice breaks as despair sets in?? The fact that he's no doubt pieced together that Garroth probably stole the amulet and plans to use it to hurt Aph and he can't do anything about it?? I'm literally losing it.

How did I not watch this series before.

Literally about to cry over him just calling Aph "M'lady" out of pure instinct. He didn't consciously do that. He just misses her that much.

oh no spooky evil alternate Laurance or whatever--

MAN I'm so happy I decided to watch this series. This was probably a mistake though :)

[jayteacups]

OC in 8: Zheng Nüwa

Rules: Share 15 or fewer lines of dialogue from an OC, ideally lines that capture the character/personality/vibe of the OC. Bonus points for just using dialogue without other details about the scene, but you're free to include those as well!

Thank you so much for tagging me @l3visthighs @humanitys-strongest-bamf and @the-traveling-poet !! I really enjoyed reading all of your versions of this game :3

I have a bunch of AOT OCs for my canonverse fic but my main girlie is Zheng Nüwa (aka Vesper Zheng to everyone outside her immediate friendship circle). This fic isn't published, it's a long-term project of mine, but I do have some snippets (not quite 15 though, but hopefully these quotes give you an idea of who she is). One is from an old one-shot I posted a while back, and the rest I've not yet revealed. The quotes are in no particular order and they are all from various points in the story. They aren't very polished but I am proud of what I have so far and am excited to keep writing and developing Nüwa's characterisation 🥹

1 - "It’s a unique type of grief knowing you’re the last of your kind, isn’t it?"

2 - "This world breeds two kinds: monsters, and those who fall prey to them. I refuse to be the latter."

3 - Her lips quirked with amusement. "Don't delude yourself, Erwin. I'd be a terrible Scout and you know it. I've come to enjoy your presence, but the idea of me willingly putting my life in your hands and trusting in your harebrained schemes is laughable at best. Come on now."

4 - "Levi," she whispered hoarsely, the pads of her fingers lingering at his temple, before reverently moving across his face, tracing his features, committing the sight of him to memory with her hands. "Why couldn’t we be more selfish?"

5 - Nüwa blinked, the image of [REDACTED]'s corpse branded irreversibly into her mind. Her head spun - with grief, with fear, with rage. Bitter, carnal rage that threatened to devour her from within. "Mel," she said, voice sounding distant to her own ringing ears, "would you like to hunt a man with me?"

6 - Gently, she took Levi's trembling hands into hers. "You were never given the chance to be anything other than what everyone else needed you to be. If the world won't give you that chance, then I will."

7 - "I am always walking the line between justice and vengeance. I try to champion the former but ultimately, I crave the latter. It is tiring to carry this anger, but I do not know who I am without it."

8 - "Secrets don't stay secrets for long, especially amongst the nobility." Nüwa smiled, then, but it didn't reach her eyes. She laughed sardonically, and Levi could feel his heart clench. "I've found myself deep in a den of vipers. It's a good thing I fit right in, isn’t it?"

No pressure tags - @ruthvelyan @missnobodymadness @levi-ackermvn @postwarlevi @starstruckkittensweets @dotitanseatmochi @sixpennydame + anyone else who has OCs (or Reader-Inserts if they would prefer) that they would like to share/talk about!

[the-endless-storm]

I’ve finished playing Baten Kaitos HD and I have thoughts. So here's a spoiler free review for Eternal Wings (I haven’t played Origins yet)

Pros

The game has been optimised and looks great on a big screen. The static art backgrounds still look great.

The 3D models have all been sharpened up and re rendered. The battle scenes are massively improved with lightning and textures now, while the character and enemy models are all crisp and look more like the artwork.

The UI looks way better, it's been given a more professional look, with more space in widescreen for things on the screen it doesn’t look as cramped as it used to, so you can see more of the battle.

There are a number of quality of life improvements that were never in the original, that not only make it easier for players, but make things like grinding for EXP extremely easy.

When you beat the game, you can make a New Game +, where you keep all the collected items of the file you just beat, or a New Game -, where you keep everything but remain at the lowest level throughout.

Cons

While the 3D models have been greatly improved, this means the faces of the models and some textures are jarring. The faces are very flat and emotionless, and when shown next to the portrait art (that accompanies any main character speech box) you can see all the effort was put into the costume design.

The in battle effects have not been improved. Most of them look pretty good, but the high level water spells look bad and a number of the finisher attacks don’t line up or land properly.

The game has been censored to remove any kind of reference to alcohol. Despite there being obvious bars and in a few towns, any item that was previously “wine” or “beer” has been renamed to something kid friendly like “juice” or “wheat tea” (but the image is still a pint of beer). This is annoying if you are using a guide for the original GC version as the items will be listed with their original names.

The menu system is a bit more confusing. It took me a while to remember how to do equip an item because it is not made very clear how to do so.

The biggest gripe a lot of people had with the original game was the appalling voice acting. It was bad. But instead of improving the acting it has just been removed and only the Japanese is available. You can mute the voice effects, but I found it left the game lacking anything. The characters all speak during battle, not just grunts but full lines of taunts and polite conversation with their allies. This would be ok IF there were subtitles, but aside from for one specific type of in battle dialogue, there is nothing.

Overall

There's a lot more cons listed than pros, but most of them are where something could have been improved but wasn’t. The game is 20 years old and no matter how much you remaster it, it shows. There's only one cinematic, and that's the opening one before the game, so all major scenes all use the character models. There's limited movement in them, so they'll all stand around looking awkward as things happen (don’t get me started on the jumping animation for kids).

All this aside, the game is a great early 00s JRPG. It has a unique combat mechanic that's easy to get used to and lets you master it at your own speed over the course of the game. There is still SO MUCH to find. 100%ing the game in one game file is EXTREMELY difficult, but the New Game + makes this significant easier for completionists. The story is great, with (despite their obvious flaws) interesting characters. And then there's the music, which is without a doubt some of the best I’ve heard.

[historia-vitae-magistras]

do you have any thoughts on prussia and Canada non romantically? I think they could have an interesting dynamic that’s way overshadowed by all the shipping in the fandom, like they were enemies at one point and i think Prussia would fear Canada bc Canadians had a reputation of being really strong on the battlefield in both world wars. I think they’re def chill w/ each other modern day though.

I understand if this just isn’t ur thing, just those two are making me think thoughts and I cannot find any non romantic content of them

this was all sparked by your fic where Matt and jack are captured by Gilbert and Ludwig btw, I really liked how you wrote the dialogue there. Also you mentioned they had interacted before, care to elaborate? 👀

Oh, man yeah. Idk what precisely about prucan makes me want to jump in a lake, but in my universe, Matt literally took or nearly took Gilbert's head off with an axe in 1918 to slow the German spring offensive so lol yeah. That was his little side quest during the whole 'Alfred was mad Jack and Zee moved back behind the lines without Matt' fic from a while back. A solid quarter of Matt's war crimes were directly against Gilbert and Ludwig personally.

With the whole invisible meme and how practically every man, woman and child in Quebec participated in extremely severe brutality against the Americans and British in the 17th and 18th centuries and then threw our war crimes record on top, it's just too perfect not to write him as a trench wraith. Other nations have limits. Europe may stay their hands personally often because they never know when they might need that ally later. But Matt's never held back in his life. He couldn't afford to when he was small, and crawling on his belly through no man's land was easy for him. Ghosting his way behind enemy lines, spitting skulls and slitting throats is nothing new for him. He did that as a child, the wee freak.

And Gilbert did, too. Knight, crusader, zealot whose hand was certainly not stayed. Mutual recognition of being so fucked up they can't spend much time with the other without being reminded of some USDA Grade-A beef. I fully adhere to the headcanons that Matt's a walking flashback for Gilbert in some circumstances. But they get along fine. It's incredibly funny to picture a 1,200-year-old war machine chatting with Alfred or Arthur and then absolutely jumping out of his skin because Matt appears out of nowhere wanting affection or is just interested in the conversation. The whole anglophone world has swallowed Alfred's or even Arthur's perspective about Matt being the milder, sweeter version of Alfred, but Gilbert's specific situational PTSD just sweating bullets gives me life. It's a kind of cruel, but Matt takes utterly too much pleasure in it.

As for before that point, the long 19th century of Anglo-German fuckery as Anglo-Saxonism and a largely German monarchy drew Britain into closer cultural ties among the elite of Germany and Prussia; Gilbert often found himself in Arthur's company. They fucked a lot, mutually griping about their children. Gilbert and Matthew met and saw each other, and I want to rewrite that ficlet where Gilbert isn't exactly clocking him when he really should be in my current timeline lol. The part from canon about how everyone sees Matt in his early life as being a menacing figure at Arthur's shoulder greatly appeals to me. The guard dog with the loyalty and obedience of the best of Arthur's hounds.

Like at least once in a group drinking setting, Francois' arse has caught and kept Arthur's attention and Matt and Gilbert find themselves at a table having a conversation and swapping stories that would have them both before the Hague if they were more recent. And they just vibe. Both men depend utterly on the goodwill of often testy and impatient brothers. There is a loneliness of having one neighbour that matches fairly well with having mostly neighbours who probably hate Gil's guts on some level and loving women who could kill them. This absolute canyon of difference in how Gilbert is relegated to the museum display case, and Matt is an active, dynamic part of the world political system that keeps them apart.

[wromwood]

So, the production of The Importance of Being Earnest that I was in is now over. Honestly, it was kind of a mixed bag of an experience. It definitely wasn't the most positive experience I've had as an actor in a show. I won't get into all of my frustrations here (and if anyone from that show happens to see this post, I had no issues with my fellow actors! They were all awesome and I'm glad I got the chance to work with them), but I want to vent about something that I was reminded of today.

Our production put a modern spin on the show. While we didn't change any of the dialogue, the director chose to frame the play as a reality TV show. The manservants of the show (Lane, whom I played, and Merriman) were turned into directors and sound guys for the production. We added in a few silent roles as well: a cameraman, an assistant, and a makeup artist. It was a cool idea, and I like how it worked with the old material.

Sadly, this meant that Lane, Merriman, and the silent roles were overlooked at times. In some ways, this makes sense. Lane and Merriman only have a dozen or so lines each, with Lane originally absent in acts 2 and 3 and Merriman absent in act 1. The silent roles are, of course, silent and were invented specifically for our production. They couldn't be highlights in the original show either.

But our version of the show actually increased the workloads of myself and the actor who played Merriman. We sort of switch roles throughout the show. In Act 1, Lane is more of a director while Merriman is a boom operator. In Act 2, Merriman is more of a director while Lane is the boom operator. In Act 3, Lane and Merriman are constantly present on the sidelines, watching everything in a slightly offstage spot while one of the silent roles is the boom op. This means that for at least one act, someone is almost CONSTANTLY onstage as the boom op, walking around with arms raised and calculating where to stand so that they don't get seen by the camera guy.

Speaking of which: the cameraman. Our camera guy might have been a silent role, but his work was honestly one of the biggest parts of the show. He was constantly on stage throughout ALL three acts, his footage was streamed live on three different monitors, and the director made him do so much kneeling that his knees literally started to hurt. He may not have had lines and was invented especially for our show, but I see him as at least as important as Lane or anyone else in the cast.

... which makes it even more frustrating how overlooked our roles were. The actors for Lane (that's me), Merriman, the cameraman, and the other silent roles weren't shown on our flyers. The entire "cast" is present, but only the cast of the reality show (i.e. named roles who aren't "crew"). They aren't even really in costume! But because they're the stars of our show, they're the ones who get to be featured in our advertising. The crew don't even get a small reference of any kind. This was especially frustrating because we ALL did a picture day shoot. I dressed in black for that just like everyone else! We all took an actual group photo together (which was only used for a few seconds at the end of our shows), and then took individual photographs before a blank backdrop. Those individual photos were then edited together to make the group flyer photo, so it was a surprise to all of us that not everyone was included.

Well, it could've been worse, I hear you saying. After all, at least they can make up for it by featuring our photos next to our names in the program, right?

THINK AGAIN! Not only did they not put photographs next to our program bios, but they didn't even print our BIOS either. Instead, they provided a QR code in the program that you had to scan to get to the bios in the first place. Yes, technically, this means that the bios were accessible, but only if you had a phone on you and could be bothered to take the extra steps. We were also not informed about this and were unpleasantly surprised when we saw the programs finally printed out. One of my fellow actors even remarked that they printed everyone's bios in a previous show that this establishment put on, and that was a director's showcase.

Finally, something happened today that I couldn't help but think made this situation feel all the more heartless. (I am dramatically paraphrasing the show here, but my point still stands) Today, we were sent a surprise: the footage that the cameraman took during one of our shows was actually saved, and now it's being shared with all of us. We can actually see the footage that was broadcast to the three monitors we had set up. There was no true "pro-shot" scheduled for our show, nothing that saved the show in its entirety. This is, aside from anything the audience recorded on their own devices, the only saved footage we have of our acting.

... and I already know that it excludes nearly all of the crew and silent roles.

Like all reality shows, the cameras aren't on all of the time. There are moments in the show where the camera gets put down or covered. While I've only skimmed through some of the footage so far, I already know which moments involve the cameras going dark. Guess which moments those are.

Yup, they're the crews' moments! Without going through all this footage myself yet, I know that there's MAYBE one moment where crew members are certainly visible: one part in act 3 where some of the crew is running in and out of a doorway. When it comes to visible acting, nothing else - when we're setting up, working, or speaking - is truly documented. There's only muffled audio from a covered camera. This may be better than nothing, but compared to all of the camera time that the reality show "cast" got, it really stings.

I don't want to sound petty. I know why the "crew" doesn't show up in the video, and the production did provide us all with ONE decent memento: someone came in during a dress rehearsal to photograph us doing a run, so I and the other "crew" have some good shots of us doing our stuff.

But I think the rest of our treatment, of us being overlooked, stings so much because, well... this isn't the first time I've been a "background" or "chorus" role. I've been a sailor in HMS Pinafore. I've been Franz in Sunday in the Park with George. I've been a small contributor before. But in those productions, I still felt valued. If we could film our entire show, we did our best to do so. When we printed our programs, everyone's bios were listed. When we made flyers or pamphlets, we either just used a logo, or put a cast picture (with EVERYONE) on the other side. I was a small piece, but I was a piece nonetheless. I was a star in a constellation. I was tiny, but I was seen.

In The Importance of Being Earnest, I felt like I did a job. I got onstage when I needed to, did my best to make an impression, and then left it to the people that the audience came to see. When we told you "Come see our show!", we only showed the big faces. Yes, I promise I'm also in the show. Yes, I promise I matter to the story. I'm Lane! You know, Lane?

... I know, I'm ranting. The experience wasn't all bad. I do think people liked my performance. Hell, this probably isn't the first time an actor played Lane and was therefore promptly excluded from advertising and hype. But I do think that a well-run theater group can make everyone feel celebrated and important, no matter how small their role is. I think it's telling that I didn't feel like that in this group.

[iridiss]

Eide is a challenge to write for, since we only have about 3 lines of spoken dialogue from him in Night in the Woods, and even though he’s a very prominent and important character, everything else he does is so heavily shrouded in mystery that there are a thousand different versions of him you could extrapolate from the mist that is his original character.

All we have of him are the lines:

“There they are! They’re right there! I’m gonna kill them!”

(after he’s told to shut up) ”He…shot…me!”

Then it’s not confirmed, but the position of the text bubble also implies he says “Ones ‘e takes a shining to. It rubs off on ya. You can do things.” When explaining Ed Skudder’s “glimmer” gift, which would line up with Eide’s own gifts, if he was one of the people the Black Goat “took a shining to.” But again, it’s not confirmed that it’s even him speaking

He’s depicted as the most aggressive, trigger-happy and violent member of the cult, contrasted by the calm, apologetic, or wisened members next to him. He shouts to kill the main crew immediately, while the member next to him apologizes to the crew for a separate incident, showing a strong contrast between him and the rest of the miner cult. He has a dynamic with the leader that’s effectively “annoying brat keeps having to get told to shut the hell up and stay in line,” he’s rebellious against said authority and acts out against his orders by chasing after Mae, and on the more spiritual side, he has some kind of psychic connection to Mae and The Black Goat, to the point where he’s special enough to be blessed with special powers by The Black Goat. He’s also the only character we see going out and doing the cult’s dirty work, and though I’m sure plenty of the other members do their part as well, it’s narratively important enough for Eide to be the only one spotlighted for his work, which is a natural reflection on Eide as a character.

And that’s all we have of him that’s set in stone, and even that's a tad extrapolated. Anything else beyond that is speculation, including his identity, his motives, why he chases after Mae, why he follows her, why he appears in her dreams, everything. He is a creature of pure folklore. He’s very likely to be an older man, anywhere between his late 50s-60s at the youngest to possibly "older than we can even comprehend" at the oldest. He may be older than the town itself. We don’t know. We know he’s a cat, like Mae, further solidifying their connection. He has curly fur, and he has two nicks in both ears, which similarly ties back into Mae’s own nicked ear. We know he’s freely a murderer and serial killer, likely without regret or shame.

Using what we have, I’ve decided that this AU version of Eide is a larger, older male cat, whose personality is brash, aged, aggressive, violent, trigger-happy, grouchy, brazen, vulgar, egotistical, and very lacking in the “empathy and kindness” department. There are a lot of different roles he could have played for the AU, he could have fit Aym/Baal’s replacement, he could’ve been the weapons-seller, but due to his special, psychic connection with The Black Goat and Mae (and his importance in NITW), I figured the best position for him would be the previous Red Crown holder. (red crown holder also fits with him aesthetically due to the cult’s strong red association in both games)

So with all of that addressed, let me introduce you to: Eide, “The Ghost of Death”

Eide’s name is a legacy written in blood across the lands of the Old Faith. To civilians, grunts of the four main cults, and smaller “monster” enemies, Eide was a nightmare. A monster you told stories about past midnight and around the fire to terrify your little siblings over. He had been the blessed bloodhound of The One Who Waits for generations. Beatrice Santello is the only witness that remembers him, that was alive during the time of his legacy, though she’s grateful she never met him. He went after the armies of the Old Faith, culling them down to weaker and weaker numbers, he took down the previous witnesses of Leshy, Heket, and Shamura, freeing up the positions for Angus, Gregg and Lori to fill later. He wanted to be the one to kill the Old Gods, he wanted to be the legendary crown-holder at the top of the world, known throughout history as The Godkiller. But Narinder only hired him to set the stage for the true, Lamb savior to arrive, and he had to remind him of that countless times. He was not the chosen savior, he was not The Lamb. He may have been the best there ever was (and will be, as Eide insistingly grumbled), but that was not his place. He needed to stay in line, Narinder told him.

But that wasn’t what he wanted. He was better than that. He deserved that damned throne, and he would get it, no matter what anyone said. It would be his.

Leshy, the weakest, was his first target. His army had been massacred, his Witness was nowhere to protect him, and he was still trying to recover and rebuild from Eide’s last attack. Eide tracked him down, found him in his lair, and went for the kill. That glory, that power, that would be his, all his.

But it wasn’t.

Maybe he was blinded by his emotions, maybe it was the slightest mistake, maybe it was a lucky roll of the dice for Leshy that day, maybe he jumped wrong, maybe one of those damned grunt archers got a once-in-a-lifetime shot, who knows. But one moment he was leaping to slice Leshy in half, and the next moment, Leshy’s jaws came down on him, the whole world went black, and he woke up revived in Narinder’s realm with a chunk of his side missing and his dominant arm gone.

Leshy had killed him, and TOWW had to bring him back at the expense of his own power. He had failed, for the first time in his life. Narinder screamed at him, furious that he disobeyed his orders and jeopardized their mission and Narinder’s own success due to his ego, his disobedient, insolent pride. Eide yelled back, but that only worsened his position.

That day ended with his status and power as the Crown Bearer being revoked. And in an instant, he had nothing.

To the rest of the world, it was as if the Ghost of Death disappeared one day. Rumors and stories were told of seeing his shadow in the woods at night, beasts preying on villagers in the night would be blamed on him, and a fear of his return or a surprise attack from the infamous monster Reaper would remain for the following decades, before his memory faded away into an urban legend and the next generations forgot him. The “Ghost of Death” had once referred to a very real Reaper that waited around every corner to take your soul down into the pit of Hell, but soon enough, a ghost is all that he became. A whisper on the wind, an urban legend, a ghost story, an imaginary shadow in the woods at night.

Eide now lives in a small, isolated cabin in the deep, dark forest. His warrior days are over, and now all he can do is burn his time and keep an eye on the events going on. He watched as the lamb prophecy was revealed to the other gods, he watched with intrigue as the lamb species was culled, and he waited with hope and anticipation for Narinder’s call after they went extinct. There were no more sheep in the entire land, so surely he was all he had left and he would be able to live his glory days again soon.

One day, he was called back by Narinder, his moment had come—only for his dreams to be shattered by the sight of a 4-foot tall weak-ass black-furred kitten.

TOWW explained to him that as the previous holder, Eide’s job would be to mentor the new holder and teach her everything she needs to know to kill the Gods and truly be His savior.

Eide froze.

He looked at Mae.

Mae waved at him.

He took a deep breath.

He would fucking kill her.

…but unfortunately, he can’t. His job is to mentor his replacement. The “true” savior. This little brat.

He’s going to lose his mind out here.

[aemiron-main]

Vanishing of Will Byers Posts 

Clockblocked: There Was A Grandfather Clock Behind Will on the Night He Vanished (x)

Original Eightfifteengate Post/Where Eightfifteengate Started (x)

What The Hell Is Going On The Night Will Vanished? Newspaper Weirdness, Terry and Joyce Being Conflated, and Timeline Weirdness (x)

Eddie’s Poster vs Will’s Poster, Will’s Changing Newspapers, and Timeline Weirdness (x)

The Demogorgon, It Got Me: The “Demogorgon” That Will Saw Was Vecna and Vecna Looks Like An Actual DND Demogorgon (x)

That’s Not The Same Kid At The Same Time: Initial Warm Will vs Cool Will Post (x)

Brief Warm Will vs Cool Will Post (x)

Benjamin Buck and The Articles About Terry and About Will’s Vanishing (x)

That Weird Scene Of Mike Jumping Up Twice On The Night will Vanished (x)

Initial Post About That Weird Still Image Of Will Standing Outside The Glowing Shed (This Shot Doesn’t Exist In The Show) (x) That Weird Still Image Of Will Standing Outside The Glowing Shed Is The Picture Netflix Chose For S1EP1 (x)

Another Post About That Still Image Outside The Shed (x)

Initial Post About The Demogorgon Standing Far Away When The UD Castle Byers Was Destroyed- Which Means Something Else Took Will/Was Walking Beside Castle Byers (x)

“What’s Wrong With His Clothes” ft Will’s Sleeves Magically Rolling Up And Down The Night He Vanished and Warm Will vs Cool Will (x)

That’s The One: Will and 001 and Edward Creel (x)

“Not a Dog”: Chester is Not a Dog Initial Post (x) 

Hopper Referring to Chester As A Guy (x)

Chester Running Past The Rose (x)

Mike S1 EP1 Garage Scene vs 001 Parallels Part 1 (x)

Mike S1 EP1 Garage Scene vs 001 Parallels Part 2 (x)

Mike S1 EP1 Garage Scene vs 001 Parallels Part 3 (x)

Mike S1 EP1 Garage Scene vs 001 Parallels Part 4 (x)

It’s Weird That Mike Didn’t Respond During The Garage Scene (x) Again, Weird That Mike Didn’t Respond During The Garage Scene (x)

The Skis With Eyes Behind Mike In The Wheeler Garage (x)

The Byers’ Dining Room Light Fixture Is An Upside Down Version Of The Creel Foyer Light Fixture (x)

Why Wasn’t Will Damp When Joyce Saw Her Vision Of Him And Why Isn’t El Damp In The Void- Was Will Projecting Himself Like El Does? (x)

Why Are There Multiple Versions Of Will’s Fireball Drawing? (x)

What The Hell Is That White Light In The Byers’ Dining Room Window During Will’s Vanishing? (x)

The Will That El Visits In The Void An  The Castle Byers That She Visits In The Void Looks Different In Many Ways From The Will That We See Singing To Himself And His Castle Byers And Theyre All Shown In The Same Episode (x)

Another Post About Will/Castle Byers Being Different In The El Void Scene vs The Singing Scene (x)

What About The Other Time? Old Post About Joyce’s Dialogue And Multiple Timelines (x)

The Byers’ Warm Toned vs Cool Toned Porch Lights (x)

Benjamin Buck Writing The Article About Terry (x)

Remember How Entering The Coordinates For The Nina Project Takes You To Area 51 On A Map? Look At The Phone The Night Will Disappeared- “Area Code 501″ and The Vanishing Line of Text on the Byers’ Phone (x) Another Post About Area 51 vs Area 501 (x)

The Byers’ Dining Room Light Fixture Is An Upside Down Version Of The Creels’ Foyer Light Fixture (x)

The White Light During Will’s Rescue And During Vecna Visions (x) We Hear The Phone Beeping After Will Drops It- So Why Didn’t Joyce Or Jonathan Notice It? (x)

If The S1 UD Is Frozen On The Day Will Vanished, Then Why Is The Byers’ UD Fridge Magnets/Kitchen Different From The Night Will Vanished? (x)

Why Didn’t The Hivemind React When Jopper Stepped On The Vines In S1? (x)

The Red and Blue Xmas Lights Turning On When Jopper Walks In The UD (x)

Joyce and The Other Time/The One vs Will Being Taken By 001 (x)

The Lights Are Different Colours In The S1 UD vs Later UD Scenes (x)

Why Are The Snow Ball Lights There In The UD? If The UD Is Frozen On The Day Will Vanished, They Shouldn’t Be There At All (x)

The Sound Clip From When Nancy Sees The Girl That Resembles Barb & Barb’s Glasses Being Cracked On Her Left Eye & The Weird Orange Stuff On Her Face & The Blood Coming Out Of Her Nose (x)

El Being Called Sick vs The S1 UD Being Sick (x)

Initial Post About The Demogorgon Coming Up Out Of Nowhere Behind Jonathan In S1 (x)

How Did A Demogorgon Come Out Of The Byers’ Ceiling With Jancy Without Opening A Typical Portal? (x)

The Upside Down vs Rightside Up Light Fixtures In The Byers’ Hallway (x)

Initial Post About The Ticking Sound Effect When El Pokes The Demogorgon In The Void (x)

Who Flicked The Shed Light Off After Will Vanished? (x)

Creel Attic Lightbulb vs Will’s Shed Lightbulb (x)

The Hawkins Power And Light Billboard Advertisement (x)

Talking More About Multiple Upside Downs & The Fact That If The UD Is Frozen On The Night Will Vanished Then Billy’s Car Should Not Be There In S3 (x)

Initial Post About Will and El and Visions and Dampness (x)

Will’s Moving Bike On The Night He Vanished (x)

It’s Weird That The Lab Replicated Will’s Body From The Night He Vanished Right Down To His Sleeves Being Rolled Up (x)

Maybe The Missing Hunters Were Gay (x)

The Light Outside The Byers’ Dining Room vs Vecna Vision Light (x)

Will’s Vanishing and Joyce’s Car Outside Melvald’s (x)

Staircase Shot Parallel Between Mike, Barb, and Billy (x)

Will Had Blood In His Nose When He Was Rescued (x)

Tricked You? No, I Saved You. S1 Brenner-001 Parallel (x)

Will’s Vanishing vs NINA Parallel/Hopper vs 001 Parallel (x)

The Byers’ Changing Laundry (x)

How Did Will Call Joyce From The UD? (x)

What The Hell Is Going On With Will’s Rescue and Barb’s Body? (x)

Initial Post About Vecna’s Regenerative Abilities And Some Vecna-Demogorgon Parallels (x) 

Will’s Unbuttoned Flannel (x) 

Demogorgons Generally Don’t Emit Light: What’s Up With That White Light When The UD Castle Byers Is Destroyed (x)

Will and Saruman and Radagast (x)

Pearl Buttons: An Analysis Of Barb Possibly Having Powers (x)

Will Recognized Brenner- But Which Brenner Did He Recognize? (x)

True Sight, Doppelgangers, Shapeshifter and Will’s Powers (And Why is Brenner Basically Every DND Monster in ST?) (x)