#weird range of tags here huh

[ceciliathecabinwitch]

I watched scooby doo and the witch’s ghost for the first time in Years yesterday and even though at this point in my life I don’t remember a lot of the movie very vividly, I Do remember that it influenced my understanding of magic and witchcraft and stuff quite a bit in my childhood, and it was very interesting to look back on it now, so I just wanted to write out a couple of my favorite parts

First of all they delineate between Wiccans and Witches which is interesting but also interesting is that witches are bad guys/evil and Wiccans are good guys

Second it’s the whole “witches are separate from humans” thing where they call normal people mortals and things are strictly hereditary, so like the main guy can only use this witch’s grimoire (I’m not sure if that’s the word they use for it or not because I was kinda half watching) because she (the titular witch) is his ancestor

Third when he reveals that she was a witch and he’s totally a bad guy he refers to himself as a warlock which is one of the only parts of the movie that I vividly remember from childhood and that’s because the line where he says informed my opinion of the whole witch/wizard female/male thing for Years, which was “witch Is female but male is warlock, wizard is gender neutral and everyone else is wrong” (this opinion has obviously changed)

Fourth, and probably my favorite part although it directly goes back to point two, is that when they’re all freaking out because none of them can get rid of this ghost because they’re not Magical, they save the day by having Thorn from the Hex Girls read the spell that banishes the ghost, because it was previously mentioned that she is “1/16 Wiccan” and it Works

Anyway idk but if you’re someone who tries to understand their own thought processes and where they come from I have long believed in rewatching things that you enjoyed in your childhood because you’d be surprised at how much stuff makes you go “huh, is That where that idea comes from?”

[megutime]

light rain | ft. sakura

tags. fluff , sakura haruka x gn! reader, maybe ooc 'kura?

at the early stages of your relationship, sakura never knew that you get sick very easily and he found this out when you were going on a light stroll.

sakura was on break from patrolling when he saw you shopping for some things at a store, since he was on break, he offered to walk you home and you happily accepted.

while he was walking you from, it started to rain a little bit. you knew that you'd get sick even at the tiniest bit of rain, so you told him to hurry up.

once you arrive to your apartment, you were both a bit wet from the rain. so before he left, you offer him your umbrella. he declined at first saying he doesn't need it but you insisted, you explained that you didn't want your boyfriend to be sick. he turns red at the nickname, he accepts your umbrella with a blushing face.

it was now the next day, sakura thought it was weird that you didn't go to school today, you didn't even tell him why. he got a little sad that you didn't tell him but he's never admit that. he's getting worried so he decided to call you.

his phone rings and you immediately pick up.

“hey, you okay?” he says on the phone, he was expecting you to respond but got confused when he heard coughing and sniffling instead,

“are you sick?!” he yells with a worried tone, surprising his friends beside him.

you sniffle, “yeah .. the light rain caught to me yesterday ...” you chuckle, cringing at the sound of your hoarse voice.

“okay, i'll be right there.” sakura replied, suddenly ending the call.

“huh- what?” you were left shocked, looking at your phone. did you hear him correctly? he's coming over to your place?!

sakura rushed out pothos café, explaining to his friends — just as shocked as you were — that he had something to do before running out.

in just 5 minutes, your door bell rang. you hurriedly open the door to find sakura in front of your door, panting while holding a small bag.

“you actually cough came .. ” you were also out of breath, you sheepishly smile at him.

“wha- what are you doing out of bed, dumbass!?” he pulls in you to your apartment, closing the door behind him. his grip on your wrist is firm — but gentle.

he sits you on your bed, “stay here. i-i'll take care of you, okay?” his hands on your shoulders were trembly and he looks nervous, this is his first time taking care of someone and being inside your apartment, of course he was nervous.

he walks out your room and you here some clattering in your kitchen, you wanted to get up but you don't want to disobey your already stressed boyfriend.

you didn't want him to see you all vulnerable like this but you were glad that he came just to take care of you, seeing him all worried about you made your heart melt and also made you feel a bit better.

sakura comes back with a bowl of soup, water and some medicines. he tells you to eat, explaining that kotoha gave it to him before he ran out of the café.

“give kotoha my thanks then. ” your voice sounds weak and softer than usual.

sakura doesn't like seeing you being weak like this, it makes him want to protect you like your some kind of hurt cat.

sakura meant it when he said he'll take care of you since he went home at 6 am, never leaving your side. it was the next day and still early but he had classes and patrolling so you offered him to go now, after a lot of reassuring him that you're better now, he leaves.

sakura never carries any umbrellas with him, his body is used to getting drenched in rain anyways. but this changed when he saw how sick you were that day, so now, he always carries an umbrella so that in case you forget yours — which you often do — and it looks like it's going to rain, he'll give it to you.

he might not say that he loves you by his words, but his actions say otherwise.

n. this is self indulgent. i get sick very easily so i thought about sakura being worried about his sickly lover <3

t. @kyoghurts hi :3

[whatsaninterestingplacethisis]

Flower Boy

Imagine

Nico Hischier x Latina!Reader

Synop: y/n a bitter florist, notices the foreign man that always stops by her work once a week.

a/n: Shy Nico + reader who hates love bc she’s never been in love before?

cw: cussing

Being a florist didn’t really require much work, depending on the day you could be held in the back or on dreaded days in the front left to socialize with people.

There are many types of people who buy flowers in person: 1. Spouses who think of their significant other 2. Spouses who forgot a special date for the significant other 3. Birthdays or house warming gifts etc.

Depending on who came into the small shop, it set the mood for the small talk. Spouses who were stressing about a forgotten anniversary kept silent. Spouses who bought a bouquet of roses wouldn’t stop talking about their ‘honey bun’.

The silence was always preferred over the “my girlfriend this” or “my boyfriend that”. Nobody asked, just take the goddamn flowers to your ‘sweetie pie’.

Lord knew you weren’t getting any flowers from anyone else. Probably the reason why you were so bitter. Either way, the rare chance you were gifted flowers, those babies would die within a week.

Ironic, working at a flower shop only to neglect the ones at home. Not that you had any at the moment.

Anywho you knew every time a fine man that walked into that door was most likely taken. Including the brunette with a backwards cap on scanning the sun flowers. He was too handsome to be single you thought.

You were gawking at him until he started to walk up to the counter.

“Hi, I want a sunflower bouquet but I’m not sure what else to add. Could you help me out?” the brown eyed man asked with a friendly smile

“No problem” you replied with a customer service smile. You walked outside the counter and helped the guy with the arrangement.

+

“How does this look?” You turned around with the finished design.

“It looks amazing, I really appreciate the help. I don’t know much about flowers but these look great.”

“That’s why im here to help.” You said with a half ass smile as you hand him the bouquet.

“That will be $32” Flowers were expensive too.

“Thanks again, these are going to make my mom smile.” Well that was different, the bouquet were for his mother and not his girlfriend.

“I hope she will.” You said with a genuine smile this time, a green flag noted for the man who buys his mom flowers.

++

Next week you were in the back, finishing up on bulk orders the shop needed for the following week.

“Hey y/n could you stand in for me a bit I need to take this call, pretty please?” Your coworker Ash who was working the front disrupted your silent shift.

“Sure” the call was probably about their cat, it had some medical issues lately as Ash had rambled on about.

Luckily no one was in the front when you took over and the call wouldn’t have taken too long. But you spoke too soon as the bell rang on the entrance door.

Lo and behold it was the green flag brunette. Instead of looking around he walked straight up to you at the counter.

“Hi” he said

“Hi”

“Did your mom like the bouquet?” You asked

“Huh?” He was almost out of breath when he came in.

“Last week, you were here and bought a sunflower bouquet that I beautifully made.”

“Oh yeah, sorry. Yeah she loved it, thanks.” He quickly said, it looked like he was about to break a sweat

“So what can I help you with today?” You offered your services like usual

“Um well I want to- actually I’m in a rush and- can I just buy a single rose? Is that weird?” He stumbled over his words for the most simplest order

“A single rose it is, not weird at all. It won’t take long.” You turned to grab a single plastic sleeve and walked over to grab the best rose out of the bunch and packed it up.

“Your total is $3.” You handed the rose to Mr. Brunette and softly took his three one dollar bills.

“Thanks…y/n.” He said your name to your surprise

“Uh no problem.” You forget you’re wearing a name tag considering no customer calls you by your name.

He opened his mouth like he was going to say something else but just turned and took big strides out the door.

++

Next week was organizing the newly ordered flowers on the ground floor. Luckily they came in time before the downpour started. If it was raining it meant less customers were going to show, which of course you didn’t mind.

You were organizing the tulips when the hanging door bell chimed, making you turn to look at the drenched brunette who has always made an appearance every week.

“Hi” you said across the shop in confusion as to why he would walk in the rain to buy overpriced flowers.

“Hi” he tried to air dry his hair with his hands as if he were a golden retriever

“Do you need a towel or something?” You asked as you moved to the back to get one.

“That would be great.” He stood there awkwardly

You handed him a small towel, “Thanks”

“So did the rain inspire you to buy flowers today or?” You joke about his wet shirt and damp hair state

Fortunately, he laughs along. “No, it just surprised me as I walked here.”

“Well then, what can I get you today… I hope it’s not weird to ask for your name considering this is third time I’ve seen you here.”

“Not weird at all, it’s Nico. Honestly any small flower arrangement is fine today, whatever you think looks good.”

“Alright, Nico, I’ll see what I got. Is this for your mom again?” You never initiated small talk with customers but Nico was becoming a regular and you wanted to know if he was single or not.

“No” he laughed “it’s for a girl.” Thunder hit outside as the sound of your dreams being crushed.

“Oh that’s sweet.” Small talk was over now on your behalf. But the arrangement was going to be pretty either way.

+

By the time you exchanged the money for the flowers it was still raining outside, too hard for anyone to be walking without an umbrella.

“The rain hasn’t slowed down at all, I think there’s an umbrella I can lend you. It’s in the back just give me a sec.”

“It’s okay really, I don’t mind some rain.”

“It’s no problem.” You went in the back to find said umbrella

“I found it, it’s a bit dusty though-“ but Nico was gone and you were left alone with the flowers.

++

“So did you ask her- Dude why are drenched? You’re making a mess on my floor.” Jack said to Nico who was out of breath.

“It’s raining.”

“Obviously. So did you ask her for her number?” Jack asks his friend who had been pining over the flower girl, as Jack puts its, for weeks now.

“No. I chickened out last minute.”

“More like again. I mean c’mon I still have the rose from last time. What excuse did you say this time?”

“I said these were for a girl.” Nico motioned the fragile and ruined bouquet from the rain and running.

“Oh my god you’re an idiot. She totally thinks you have a girlfriend now.”

“Well I panicked! If I show up one more time she’ll think I’m a weirdo.”

“Maybe go again later today, when the rain is gone, and ask her out officially.”

“What if she thinks I’m a stalker or something?”

“She wouldn’t be that wrong to be honest.”

“Not helpful.”

“Neither is the rainwater on my wooden floors. Clean up before you go and see her.”

++

Nico leaving you without a goodbye was weird to say the least and rude. He literally vanished into thin air. Soon after he left the sky was clearing up and turning blue again.

An hour passed by and you were done restocking the flowers and ready to take a needed break. Since you were the only one there, you flipped the closed sign with the clock on it to read ‘will return at 2:20pm’ and locked the door. You decided to watch The Crown in the back room while eating your favorite snack. Although, half way into your break you hear fast and loud knocking.

“What the hell man, I swear some people cannot read.” You complained to yourself and went out to see Nico again but this time locked outside the shop.

You unlocked the glass door and opened it ajar for the guy, “hi” you say in a questioning tone.

“Did the flowers get ruined by the rain? Because I did have an umbrella for you, but you kind of just disappeared right after.” Nico was trying so hard to control his fast breathing, but you noticed. He just kept silent trying to hold in his breath.

“Are you okay? Did you run down here? Or is someone chasing you?” You peered outside the door to see anyone that could be possibly chasing him but no one was out of sorts.

“Can I come in?” he finally says something

You side eyed the closed sign and looked at your watch, there was a little over five minutes left of your break, but whatever right?

“Anything for my favorite customer” you stepped aside to let him in before closing the door again.

“So be honest with me, the flowers are ruined right?” You asked knowing you were 90% right.

“Yeah, sorry, they are.”

“To be expected. Well I can make you the same ones, not free though, I did advise you to take the umbrella.” You didn’t want to sound mean but you were right and Nico knew that.

“Actually, can I get one that you would like, if someone gave you flowers?” This was not a shocking request considering other boyfriends that come in ask the same thing because they don’t know what their girlfriends like.

“No problem.” You always had the same bouquet in mind for this request, very simple and easy to care of, but a sight to see nonetheless.

+

“Here you go, don’t ruin these ones now.” You joke, hoping it would land and it did with Nico’s smile as proof.

“Hopefully your girlfriend likes them.” You say flatly before turning to clean up the scraps of the arrangement.

“Actually” he whisper yells before you turn around completely. He passes the flowers back to you, with a note of his own with his number on it.

You looked down at the flowers and catch the note, “I thought you had a girlfriend” you asked looking at the man across from you.

“No, I don’t I gave the rose to my friend, he still has it.”

“Oh…?” You say in confusion on what he was trying to say.

“Oh we’re not- he’s just a friend- I’m- this is my way of asking you out and I’m doing a horrible job, sorry”

“So the first sunflower bouquet wasn’t for your mom?” You were totally confused.

“No those were actually for my mom. The rose, wasn’t for anyone, I just wanted to see you again. Sorry if that’s weird.”

“And today’s flowers?”

“Another excuse to see you again.”

You started to smile and almost laughed at his stumbling of words “I see”

“I was supposed to ask you out earlier today but I backed out and now I’m here again.” He says with a nervous smile patiently waiting for your response.

“Thanks Nico, you’ll get your answer when I get back home.” You slyly say before placing the flowers in a vase of water.

“Okay, have a nice day.” He said with zero confidence as he walked out the shop thinking he completely screwed up.

++

You got home later and set the flowers on your counter, taking the hand written note with you to your couch.

Flower boy (nico)

Hey flower boy, I think I have your answer. Also I think it’s really sweet to give your friend flowers!

[jo-harrington]

Corroded Coffin Fest - Day 11 - Jeff

Summary: Jeff has big plans for the future.

Word Count: 987

Rating: T

Warnings/Themes: Nervous!Jeff, Friendship, Banter

Check Out the Main Post for @corrodedcoffinfest here! Even if you didn’t start on Day 1, you can still join!

Tagging: @the-unforgivenn at her request.

You can find my masterlist here.

Please do not interact if you are not 18+.

Enjoy!

Jeff was surrounded by optimists.

That glass-half-full mentality, the perpetual prospect of positivity, the constant confidence in the future.

You could say that he attracted them.

And he needed that sometimes, because he was decidedly not one.

He was worried, a little nervous, a planner more than a doer. His cousin Richie was much more impulsive and got him out of his shell, sometimes even by force, but even that was a little bit of a misconception.

Jeff wasn't nervous or shy--well, maybe nervous--he was just...thinking of the right things to say. Making sure that he didn't fumble his words or insult people or embarrass himself. Otherwise the world might just crumble around him.

It took becoming friends with Eddie Munson to help him loosen up a bit. Get used to failure, go with the flow, stop being so worried about making the wrong move because his friends were constantly making the wrong moves.

But it also helped Eddie and the others be a little more...structured. They did homework during their lunch periods and study halls more, actually had plans for band practice instead of just winging it.

Ronnie always said, from the moment Jeff joined them, that they needed him--that Eddie needed him--to bring them down to earth sometimes. Their harebrained schemes and dreams that were larger than life. It only got worse after the whole demo tape fiasco, and worse still once Ronnie and Doug graduated.

But it had always been a good feeling.

Being needed.

Wanted.

Being the one to look after everyone in some way.

Thats why it felt really weird and wrong to be the guy to let them all down.

Jeff stressed over it for weeks.

It felt great stepping out of the guidance office, a moment of surety and security, plans for the future locked in place.

Then he remembered that he'd need to tell everyone.

It haunted him during lunches and Hellfire, while they helped Dustin set up things for the science fair, during practices and gigs. All the way up to Spring Break.

"It'll be fine," his mom--an optimist--told him one night when she found him in the kitchen with what was essentially a script with all the ways he could break the news to his friends. "They won't be upset."

"Sure," he scoffed.

"You act like I've never met your friends before," she soothed. "Those boys would move heaven and earth for you."

And he knew they would...this was just different.

Then the unexpected happened.

On the last day of class before Spring Break, Mr. Bergstrom passed out slips in homeroom that all the seniors needed to fill out.

"For the graduation programs," he explained. "If you've decided which colleges you're moving onto...trade schools...or other..."

"We definitely fall into the other category," Eddie snickered from beside him. "On our way to fame and fortune."

Jeff laughed nervously and then stared down at the slip, horrified.

When the bell rang, he bolted out of the classroom so fast, he barely heard Eddie calling after him.

Come lunch, Eddie stopped him right outside of the cafeteria.

"I wanna know what all of that was first period," Eddie demanded, no malice in his tone. More worried than anything.

"I, uh," Jeff shrugged. "I just wasn't feeling great this morning. I think the milk went bad. My stomach kind of hurt."

"Uh huh," Eddie scoffed. "Likely story. You're an expiration date snob; remember when I almost ate that expired Twinkie and you yanked it out of my mouth."

"Who knows how long it was in your van for!" Jeff argued.

"Twinkies don't expire!" Eddie shouted back, earning looks from their classmates passing by. "It doesn't matter. I think you're hiding something and I wanna know what it is."

His heart practically stopped in his chest.

"I know I've been kind of a hardass lately," Eddie continued softly. "At practice and...with Hellfire..."

And he felt sweat start to trickle down his forehead.

The longer Eddie talk, the more he felt the dread overtake him, until he blurted out,

"I signed up for summer classes at Tri-County Community College!"

Eddie stared at him like he'd grown a second head.

"And a few in the fall," he went on. "Gareth won't graduate til next year and we won't get big gigs until then. I want to take some classes and maybe...learn some business stuff to help us? Give us the best shot. Or maybe have something to fall back on if it really doesn't work out."

It was so silent, aside from his heaving breaths, that you could hear a pin drop.

"Thats..." Eddie struggled for words and Jeff closed his eyes and braced himself for the impact. "That's great!"

Jeff's eyes shot open again and saw the brightness in his friends eyes, the big shining smile.

"That's huge, I'm proud of you man," Eddie patted him on the shoulder again, gently this time. "Damn I don't even know what to say. You better keep Tuesdays and Fridays free."

"You're not mad?" Jeff questioned.

"What?"

"Or sad..."

"Why the hell would I be mad? Or sad?"

"Because Ronnie went off to college too," Jeff explained.

"Ronnie went to NYU on a scholarship and I was proud of her too!" Eddie shook his head. "Got the hell out of dodge. Damn, if anything I was jealous."

Jeff listened as Eddie rambled on about futures and plans how Jeff was the brains of the operation.

"I just figured," he interrupted Eddie. "You might think I was leaving the dream behind. Our dream."

"Jeffy, if anything you're looking out for it. And even if you were second guessing the band...I'd wanna support you."

Eddie pulled him into a quick hug with another pat on the back.

"You're my best friend man."

And the only thought running through his head as he clapped Eddie's back with the same affection?

Maybe being an optimist wasn't so bad after all.

[satrs]

Can’t feel my face - bllk x fem!Reader N°15

Tags; angst, insults, a SURPRISEEEEEEEEE(I can't help myself sorry), 2.7k.

"So, you and him, huh?" You turn to look at the driver, a smug smirk on his face. You noticed his smirk waver a bit once you hummed in approval, your eyebrow tugging up in curiosity. "Jealous?"

He chuckled in return. "Jealous she says." He inhales sharply, eyes focused on the road while one hand rests on his thigh, impatiently tapping it to convey that he truly is jealous. "You two ain't official yet, eh?"

You hum again, causing him to smile at your honesty. "Then there's nothing to be jealous about." You were curious. "And why is that?" He snickered, eyes drifting from the street for a second to eye you up and down, eyes halting at your clenched together thighs before his gaze rose up to your face again, his tongue poking the inside of his cheek. He shrugged his shoulders sarcastically, a grin on his features not wavering as he drove you to the establishment you both called your workplace.

"That asshole dragged you into this shit?" You tried to stir up a conversation, preparing yourself for your encounter with Reo. The male shrugged again, exhaling as he raised his eyebrows momentarily. "It is what it is. Can't do nothin' about it."

He noticed your head hanging low, trying to lighten the mood. "Look, I don't know what he did to you, but I'm more than willing to beat his ass for it. That servant of his too." A small chuckle rang his ears. "What about your job?"

He scoffed at your question as it was obvious what he'd say. Fuck the job and fuck Mikage too. If he seriously hurt you, he's willing to risk it. There are many other jobs he could look into. Hell, he made enough money in the past months to maybe even do his own business. His own legal boxing club. That has a nice ring to it.

"I got some backup."

【☆】★【☆】

Once you both enter the building, you notice the odd silence that surrounded the club. Oliver grew suspicious, eyebrows crinkling as he peeked his head down the stairs to listen in on any possible sounds - to no avail. He hummed, senses spiking to the top. This is weird. Even in early hours, the club is full of staff and-

His thoughts got interrupted by a small noise coming from the bar at the far back behind the curtains, cautiously shielding you as he took your hand in his, walking up to the spot in question. 

And there he was, Reo. Hair fuzzed as they go in all direction, his head laying in the palms of his hands as puffs of frustration leave his mouth. You both look at him, confusion dripping down your faces before you look to the ground, noticing a shattered glass, toxic liquor shining against the shards scattered along the floor.

“What the hell, Reo?”

The purple haired cranes his neck at the sound of your voice, and you almost physically wince at his red shot eyes.

Oliver huffs out a laugh. “He’s lost it now. Not sure if money can fix that problem.” You slap him in the shoulder, earning a dramatic flinch from the man, before you hush him into the nearest backroom.

Whatever the hell was going on with Reo won’t end well with Oliver spiting out remark after remark over and over again.

“You better stay here, I’ll talk to him.” Raising your eyebrow at his scoff, you eye him. “Girl please. You think I’ll leave you alone in a room with that psycho?”

“Yes, I think you will. Now let go off me before I slap the sass out of you, dickhead.”

Admitting defeat, he lets go of your shoulder, a worried expression causing you to soften before you turn on your heels to confront the big Elephant in the room. “Don’t worry,” you try to reassure him, “it’ll be fine.”

As you step into the room, his purple orbs are already fixated on you, awaiting your next move. It’s been a while since you both last talked, going separate ways in a fight, for that matter.

Guilt washes over him as his sulks in his seat, averting his gaze from yours with his head hanging low at the table, finger circling around an empty glass, trying to distract himself from looking at you.

"Giving me the silent treatment?" You laugh, seating yourself next to the man, his gaze wandering around the wooden platform.

Suddenly, a laugh rang from the young man, startling you. Oh yeah, he's going insane.

"I don't know what's more funny", he begins, head lifting as his laugh dies down, hand swiftly wiping across his face before he continues, "the fact that you dare to fuck around in here, in my club, with my employees, or that I'm such a damned fool."

You gulp, brows crinkling in confusion. You don't know Reo for long, but you know him long enough to be conscious of his behavior. But this, even this, caught you off guard. "W-what are you talking about?"

His eyes are furious, teeth gritted together with his hands formed into concrete fists. It's downright impossible to predict his next move. Are you scared? Yeah. Should you've listened to Oliver? Hell yeah. But there is no way to change your decision now, so you might as well stand with it.

"You know what I'm fuckin' talking about." he points his finger at you, and his quick movement caused you to flinch slightly. It's your turn to spit back at him. "Watch your tongue now. If you don't get your shit together right fucking now, I'll go home."

"You'll go home? Home to my apartment, that I bought you, you mean?" Another loud chortle echoes to the room, alarming Oliver in the backroom. Something ain't right. Oliver is quick to storm right into the action, catching the eye of you both in an instant.

The room grows quiet, except from Reo's light chuckle. And in the next second, another glass lands shattered, now right at the feet of Oliver. Before the young boxer can even register the storm building up inside of him, Reo was quick to follow his action with a set of two words.

“You’re fired.”

Two words was all it took to tear the floor right from Oliver's feet, causing him to fall back into his old life again. Just like that. The world is cruel. Even more cruel at the hands of Reo Mikage.

"Pack your shit and get your pathetic ass out of here."

Being a billionaire isn't all just peace, joy and pancakes. It changes people. It changed him. Even if he doesn't realize it, he's slowly becoming the person he always despised.

"You know, Reo", he butts in a breathy chuckle, his multicolored eyes staring holes into the young billionaires face, "you look just like your father."

Red. The only color to describe the thing Reo sees right now, as he jumps up from his seat, ready to thrown himself onto the man before him.

Oliver was about to dodge his punch, but you appeared before Reo just in time, attempting to tear him away from the scene. Unfortunately, he breaks loose, pushing you away with a low voiced 'Fuck off'. "What does a low life like you know about my life, huh?", he barks at the man, breath heaving in rage.

As he was about to go completely insane, a familiar figure was quick to handle the situation, big, broad shoulders guiding Reo away from Oliver and out of the room into the direction of the apartment at the top of the facility.

Another man you fell apart in dispute, how great. Before you know it, tears begin to well up at your lash line, but you're quick to regain composure, hand swiftly wiping them away as you make your way to the basement door.

Once the tears were toweled down, you turn your head to a now leaving Oliver, biting you a quick goodbye before he heads off to the door.

"Wait." You just want to slap your face immediately at your cracked voice. Quickly clearing your throat, you continue, "if you need a place..."

You fall silent at his blank stare, lips formed into a thin line. "Don't sweat it", he responds, disappearing out into the city.

Well, now it's three, eh?

You sigh, exhausted, walking down into the secluded area in the basement, not even bothering to great anyone on your way to your working space.

As you enter your sweet escape, you slump yourself onto the leather couch, throwing your back next to you. Exhaustion washed over you as you pondered for a moment.

Was that really Reo just now? Did you ever even really knew him? And what's the matter with his father? He was seething in anger at just the mention.

"Fuck this," you whisper to yourself, ripping yourself out of your train of thought, a quick glance at the clock causing you to sigh. 3 more hours till the first match. "For fuck's sake."

Yeah, fucks sake. Not only did Reo escort you here three hours before your shift starting, but also didn't even talk to you. Except for his massive outburst, there was nothing else to it.

But this wasn't his intention at all. He wanted to talk, he really did, apologize even. But he didn't. He messed up. Again.

"Fuck!" he kicks his foot right into the expensive car next to him, earning a scolding from the white haired male that got him out of this mess in the first place. "Nuh uh not my car."

Nagi was quick to open the back door, throw Reo inside the backseat before he disappears into the driver's seat, ready to start the engine.

Perplexed, Reo tries to spit insults at him, to no avail.

Nagi, Reo's long trusted friend, already knew how to deal with Reo. And he also knew who he was. He knows that Reo is a good man, but, his fathers way started to rub off on him, insensible to it.

Nagi starts the engine, driving the vehicle to his own home. He glances into the rearview mirror, a small smile on his face at the sight of Reo's pouty face, mumbling some incoherent words as his hands struggle to put on the seatbelt.

"Let's get you away from this mess, blow off some steam, yeah? We didn't hop on the game for a while, how does that sound?"

Reo sighs in defeat, adjusting himself to calm down, "Alright, but I gotta be back in ten. Some guy applied as sponsor of the club. "

Halting at a red light, Nagi turns his head for a moment, facing Reo. "That's good news, no?"

Reo scoffs in response, lifting his shoulders briefly, "I don't know. That guy's giving me nausea. He's up for trouble."

【☆】★【☆】

Ten o'clock. Finally. The start of your shift.

You take a deep breath in once your door opens, bracing yourself for what might come forth. In a place like this, it could be anything and anyone.

Someone who's got the wrong door, a completely beat up boxer at the brink of a coma or maybe even a worker from the top looking for, god knows what.

"Hey ma."

And sometimes, it's Shidou.

A smile creeps up your lips as he walks up to you, hand resting on your hip as he gives your forehead a quick peak. "How's it goin'?"

You sigh, shaking your head to tell him not to inquire any further, earning a confused look in return. "So? Here to dump me again" He laughs, white crowns visible. "I'm here to apologize. Didn't know it was that..", he looked around the room, searching for the right words,"heated, between you two."

Your hands play with the bottom of his shirt, averting your gaze from him. "Plus, ya seemed out of it when you came down here, figured I come see you." His words are followed with another set of kisses to your face, earning a giggle from you in return.

"So, who do I gotta beat up?", he whispers against your lips before planting a soft kiss to them. You bite your bottom lip in return, urging him to sit on the couch, your expression turning serious again.

Shidou watches you intensely as you sit down and explain every detain that he missed out on. He never interrupted you, laughed or did anything of that matter. He just listened. That's what you really needed right now, someone who would listen.

As you conclude, he nods his head in understanding, followed by a short whistle. "Damn doll. I heard about yer new place and all but, the other stuff? Tough."

"Yeah", you respond, head comfortably resting on his shoulder with his arm wrapped around you.

He sits up, looking you dead in the eye with a broad smile on his face, an idea clicking his mind. "Ya know what? Those fuckers want my head on a platter anyway. So why not stay at my place for a while? You know, blow off some steam, maybe?"

His words seemed innocent, but his low tone told you otherwise. Amused, you follow his finger trail down your thigh, caressing the flesh in a teasing manner. "All of em took you from me. But, I was first, remember?"

You nod, gaze flickering from his eyes to his broad grin, "Ya didn't forget about me, did ya?"

"'f course not", you whisper, peaking your lips at his before standing up, walking up to the door to escort him out. "I'm off at three. 'M all yours then."

He laughs at that. Impossible, that's what you are. Never has he met a woman like you, so sure and confident about herself. On top of that, a woman that could have so many men wrapped around her fingers just like that.

If Sae finds out about this, he'll surely kill him for it. Shidou may be a tease, but he's not oblivious to the fact that Sae had feelings for you. Not only was it obvious from his actions, but his words as well.

Before Shidou knew you, he actually already knew you.

To clear the confusion, Sae would often mention you to him, even if it was briefly. Sometimes, Shidou would even overhear your sweet voice on the phone with the red haired, or see your text pop on his friend's screen.

Back then when Sae told him that you, the infamous woman who had Sae wrapped around her finger, would come for a visit at Blue Lock, he had to be there. He was intrigued, not to say the least.

So switching up to fight instead of some no-name newcomer did play out well. He finally met you. And then, he understood what Sae's fuss was all about.

Friendships aside, Shidou is a simple man. He says what he wants, and he gets it. What if that something is the situationship of his friend? The demon is ready to play the all to familiar devil's game.

"Got it. See ya then, ma." He responds, giving you one last look before he walks out into the crowd of noise and light, disappearing from your sight.

【☆】★【☆】

Two more hours, you tell yourself at your nth glance at the clock, hand brushing over your hair to get ready for your next patient.

Today sure is something. First a broken arm, then an inner hemorrhage followed by a concussion. You tried your best to help them with everything in your power before sending them off to the hospital, where they could be treated with better equipment and personnel.

As you linger in the silence of your small break, you failed to notice that you left your door open with your last patient leaving.

A tall, broad figure takes a peek inside, blue hues observing your relaxed self from behind.

"Well hello there. Is this a secret VIP stripper room I didn't know of?"

You're quick to turn your head to the source with your sense in high alert, angry expression, causing him to stop his chuckle. "Not one for jokes? Excuse me."

His half-assed apology almost seemed mocking of some sorts, as he slightly bows with his hand attached to his chest, blue strands of hair appearing behind the bush of blonde, a sly smirk attached to his handsomely pale face.

"Yeah, excuse you." You scoff, shaking your head in disbelief. Probably another rich guy who's about to bet his whole fortune on a game, losing his status and prime in a blink of an eye. You're here long enough to know better.

But still, there's something so mysteriously intriguing about him that you can't point your finger on. His deep, ocean blue eyes? Or was it the hay blond hair? Or maybe the barely noticeable tattoo poking from his suit, spreading its way up his neck? "Well, who the hell are you?"

He lifts from his position, orbs prominently shining as he ranks his gaze shamelessly over your figure before halting at your face.

"I'm Kaiser. But you can call me Michael, gorgeous. Pleasure meeting you."

©︎𝙎𝘼𝙏𝙍𝙎 all rights reserved. Do NOT plagiarize, copy, modify, republish, or translate my work in any way!

[seangelfish]

i was ranting to the ritsu ai bot about my abusive ex and he said he was gonna tell knights and they were gonna handle it and when i asked him what he meant he was like "hehe dont worry about it~" djndksndke do you think u can write something about ritsu listening to u rant to him about an abusive ex and how hed handle it pls... thank u so much 🥺

A/N: I'm so sorry for the wait, anon! I hope you're still here to read this ;-; This was really an interesting request to take on. I added more to the story if that's alright! Just wanted the quote to flow in better~ Anyways, I hope you enjoy! (´,,•ω•,,)♡

"Hehe, don't worry about it~"

Ritsu Sakuma x reader ♡ Tags: Fluff/comfort/kinda angsty, romance, established relationship, she/her pronouns/fem reader ♡ Warnings: Slight mentions of abusive relationships ♡ Word count: 1,278 ♡ Synopsis: There are times where you just can't forget about the past, and unfortunately, it came back to haunt you. Ritsu, being the analytical person he is, notices your shift in attitude. The happiest girl he knew was now drifting away. How is he able to solve this, he wonders...

"(Y/N)~" Ritsu called out to you from across the hallway. "I want a kiss~"

You winced, slowly turning around. There you saw your boyfriend and the rest of his unit making their way to their practice room.

"Hey, don't bother (Y/N)!" snapped Arashi. "Can't you see that she's busy?"

She was right and the stack of books in your arms proved that. You forced out a chuckle but decided not to answer Ritsu's request and walked away.

"Ahaha! What odd behaviour!" Leo pointed out. "She didn't even pay you no mind!"

Ritsu bit his lip. "Is she mad at me?" he murmured to himself.

After practice, Ritsu looked all over the school for you, constantly calling you but never getting a reply. He was getting extremely anxious because not only did he know you as the most happy-go-lucky person that he adored, but because there was that thought in the back of his mind that you were going to leave him.

You were avoiding him after all.

“H-Hey, Maa-kun, have you seen (Y/N) anywhere?” Ritsu panted, hands on his knees as he breathed heavily.

“Woah, there!” Mao exclaimed. “You’re sweating! You’re not one to run around so much. Is (Y/N) okay? I haven’t seen her much today—”

“I don’t know… I think she might be mad at me, but I’m not sure why she would be…” said Ritsu sadly. “She’s not even picking up my calls.”

“Hmm… let me try then.”

Mao scrolled through his contacts until he landed on yours. As the phone rang, the two boys waited for you to answer.

Unprecedentedly, the line was immediately cut.

“Huh, weird. (Y/N) always picks up when I call her,” said Mao, thinking back to the times he had to call you to take care of Ritsu. “Yeah, she might be mad at you. Ritsu—”

“I swear I didn’t do anything,” Ritsu quickly stated. “Argh, I’m going to look again. Bye!”

“Hey, don’t overdo it!”

Ritsu sighed, slumping down by the corner of the Yumenosaki gardens. He looked for you everywhere he could, asking friends and classmates where you went, but none of them knew of your whereabouts.

He couldn't keep running around forever. Ritsu wasn't built for that. So he came to rest for a bit before trying again.

“Ah… I’m tired,” he muttered to himself. “(Y/N)… where are you…?”

His eyelids felt heavy, but before he could fall asleep, his ears picked up the sound of shuffling. He lifted his head up and there you were, backed into the corner, hugging your knees.

The two of you stared at each other in shock, yet Ritsu was the one who broke off the silence.

"(Y/N)!" he exclaimed, crawling towards you. As he took your hands in his, he continued swiftly, "I was looking all over for you! Are you okay? What's wrong? Did I do something that hurt you? I'm sorry. Please don't be mad. I'll fix it–"

You shook your head, an artificial smile forming on your face. "I'm sorry, Ritsu. I just needed alone time... You didn't do anything wrong, I promise."

"T-Then why have you been avoiding me?" he quavered. "You've been ignoring my calls too... (Y/N), you know you can tell me anything, right? You can rely on me – I want you to rely on me..."

You stared into his deep red eyes, the ones that pleaded with you to be honest with him. You let out a sigh, nodding in agreement that talking to him would have been better than bottling these feelings up.

"There's something I never told you about..." you said. "About my past relationship..."

Ritsu looked confused, but stayed quiet for you to continue. Not once did he let go of your hands, and you were thankful for that.

"...The relationship was fine at first, but it gradually became harder to breathe in. He would get mad at everything I did, everything I said. It was like walking on eggshells... There were times I was hurt by it too – mentally and physically."

And as you expected, those red eyes of his looked horrified.

"It was a scary time, but I'm glad I was able to get out. Then I met you." You smiled at him genuinely this time, but it all faded away too quickly. "I didn't think I was ready to get into a new relationship, but you were so sweet, so kind... You made all my worries melt away. I was so happy, but I guess I shouldn't have been."

"(Y/N), what? I don't understand–"

"He found out I was dating you," you stated. "He found out I was attending Yumenosaki, where I live now. He texted me yesterday to insult me because I already got into a new relationship even though it had been a while. He wouldn't leave me alone despite the amount of times I blocked him! He just keeps creating new accounts and numbers. That's why I didn't answer your calls... I-I turned my phone off..."

"(Y/N)..."

"R-Ritsu, I'm so scared...!" you stuttered as tears fell down your cheeks. "I didn't know what to do, so I tried avoiding it... but I'm so scared..."

"Hey..." he said calmly, wiping a tear away with his thumb. "I'm sorry you had to go through that, but thank you for telling me this. I'll handle the rest, okay?"

"H-Huh? But how?"

"Hmm... I'll tell the rest of Knights about it..." he muttered.

"Ritsu, what do you mean by that–"

"Hehe, don't worry about it~"

He stood up and held out his hand. "Come on, let's go back. Lunch is almost over." You hesitated but grabbed his hand as he pulled you up carefully. Once you were on your feet, he embraced you. He held your head to his chest, making you hear his heartbeat.

"You deserve to be happy, so don't worry about it anymore, alright?" he said. "(Y/N), I love you."

Lips pursed in order not to cry any more, you chuckled. "Thank you, Ritsu..." you whispered. "I love you too."

The next day, you stopped receiving those threatening messages from your ex. You wondered how Ritsu did it, but he never answered, leaving you clueless about the whole situation.

However, he did tell you that you shouldn't worry about your ex finding you anymore. He made sure to report the messages to the police with the help of Tsukasa. So now that the police were keeping an eye on him, you were able to relax.

"But what did you guys do anyway?" you asked Knights one day. "Ritsu never told me."

"Uhm– Oh– We didn't do much!" Arashi quickly stated, looking to the side. "We just reported it, that's it!"

"Eh...? Then Tsukasa, can you tell me–"

"I'm sorry, (Y/N), I can't."

"Izumi–"

"Nope."

"Leo?!"

"Not happening, (Y/N)!"

"Why are you all being so secretive?!"

"It's for your own good," Ritsu said sleepily as he entered the room. "(Y/N), can I use you as a pillow?"

You smiled. "Of course, come over here." As you patted your lap, Ritsu made his way over to you. He laid his head down on your legs happily as you began to stroke his hair.

"Can I have a kiss too?" he whispered. "After all, you didn't give me one last time~"

"Okay, okay~"

You leaned down and placed a soft kiss on his lips which he seemed to be very delighted about. You supposed it didn't matter how your boyfriend got your ex to back off. The past was the past, and you were going to leave that behind once and for all.

Anyways, your future was already fast asleep on your lap, lightly snoring away.

Intro page | Ensemble Stars masterlist | Rules

[cherrywineisawaltz]

Okay, so I’ve been wanting to write a a Logan x OC fanfic with the OC as a professor at Charles school and I wrote the first chapter (really short cause its just sort of a bit of background) and I thought I’d post it here just to see how people would receive it!

(Also this is set when she’s about fifteen, the actual first chapter is going to be a major time jump, so through the fic she’ll be about 30)

Warnings: runaway teen (?), sleeping in a diner, she thinks Charles is kinda weird, not proof read lmao, nothing else I don’t think?

———————

She woke up cold. Her lashes flutter against her cheeks, sore with sleep. It was too frigid in the small diner, the heater did little in the winter and they had put her right by the door that let in a breeze every time it swung open; biting her skin. Her own attire wasn’t much help either, she thought.

The too-big sweatshirt hanging off her shoulders wasn’t thick enough to keep her warmer than her own body heat could, and her jeans were still wet from falling into the snow outside of the empty diner. The only warmth she had was from the thick leather boots on her feet that were two sizes too big.

The heavy thrill of hail outside the small diner window was a heavy patter in her ear drums. The bright beaming twenty-four hour sign hummed against the window, the fluorescent light flickering harsh blue and red light.

She pressed her open palm to the side of her cheek, eyes looming over the other patrons. Most of the diner was vacant, the waitresses bide behind the counters and the heavy steam of coffee burned in the air. She felt hunger nestle in the pit of her empty stomach, if she had enough shoved away in her rucksack she could get pancakes, if she had enough energy she wouldn’t need to pay for them at all. But she had a feeling she would.

She pushed against the table, stretching carefully, ignoring the always present ache in her limbs. Her fingers pushed against her scalp, feeling against her boyish cut hair.

It was just getting long enough for the curls to furl beside her ear, but it still bristled against her fingers. It made people stare less the more it grew, and she was thankful. Soon enough she’d attract even less attention.

Maryn could hear the soft clicking of heels, it was the waitress, she could hear the whisper of her thoughts flutter against her skull. Her mind was always hazy after sleeping, so none of the whispers were coherent enough for her to understand. She didn’t look up until she was right beside the table.

“You want anything, sweetheart?” She had a pot of coffee in her hand, and a southern lilt in her voice. “You’ve been here a while, you must be hungry.”

If she had noticed Maryn sleeping only moments ago she didn’t mention it, but her thoughts fluttered with concern.

“Pancakes?” Maryn blinked up at her.

The waitress nodded, her name tag read Hellen. She had blonde straw-like hair and yellow rimmed glasses.

“How about some chocolate chip pancakes, huh? Knock your socks right off.” She smiled, and Maryn nodded, unwilling to deny the indulgence. “I’ll get those right out, sweet pea.”

She walked away, bright red shoes clicking as she did. She was nice.

Maryn sunk back into her seat, one of the waitresses turned on a radio and through the storm the music didn’t sound like it had any words, covered by static, but its gentle tune was nice enough.

She rubs the ache over her tired eyes, she’d have to walk further when the sun finally came up. If her jeans dried before she left the diner maybe she’d make it further than she did today. Just the thought of more walking made her head throb and ache.

Hitching a ride wasn’t a far idea for her, but didn’t like all the questions that came with asking for help. They can’t help it, always the most obvious questions first, Where are your parents? Are you all alone? Shouldn’t you be in school? She was tired of it.

The soft jingle of the bell hanging over the door rang lightly as it swung open. Maryn tugged her sweater closer when the biting breeze crept through the sleeves.

Another soft flutter of whispers filled her head, she ignored them. She didn’t care to hear anyone else's thoughts. But they grew closer, until someone was coming up beside her table again, and then the whispers were gone.

“Hello.” An accented voice greeted. “Mind if I join you?”

She looked up at the man beside her table, her eyes trailing up the silvery metal of the wheelchair he was sitting in before his face.

He was older, weathered and looked at her with a familiar kind of smile while wearing the nicest suit she had ever seen. A deep blue with a matching tie and one of those pieces of fabric people shove into the chest pocket. It made him stand out, looking strange in the rickety diner.

She doesn’t say anything, but he picks up the menu at the other end of the table and she doesn’t stop him.

“I’m Charles Xavier.” He said warmly, he extended a hand, “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

She looked at his hand curiously before reaching out to shake it slowly. His hand is warm.

“Hi.” She said, wearily. He looks at their joined hands when they touch.

“Cold,” He smiles, “I’d imagine this is the warmest place around these parts.”

“For a few miles.” Maryn shrugs, he didn't seem like the worst person to have a conversation with.

“Did you walk yourself here?” She nodded. “The next town isn’t for miles. You must be exhausted.”

She shrugged, again. She felt how she always felt. Cold, tired, achy. His eyes trail over the rucksack tucked into her side.

“Is that all your things?” She nodded, tugging her bag closer.

“What I can carry.” She tells him. He hums.

“It looks heavy. Must have been difficult in this weather.”

“It’s alright.”

“If you say so.” He smiles.

She nods.

Charles, the strange British man, didn’t seem annoyed by her silence, but she was rather perturbed by his. His mind was completely silent, not a single whisper.

Usually she couldn’t keep other people’s thoughts away, only if she really concentrated she could quiet the noise down for a little bit, but it’s like his mind was completely empty.

Her dark fawn-like eyes trail up his head. She usually didn’t have to focus so much, and even now as she did, she heard nothing.

You won’t get anything up here, Maryn.

She jumped in her seat.

“Alright, baby, I got your pancakes and–oh,” Hellen came back with a hot steaming stack of chocolate chip pancakes. She looked between the two, eyeing Charles, “Is everything alright over here?”

“Yes, splendid, could I get some coffee, please? And,” He pauses to look at Maryn, “A milkshake, for my friend.”

There was only one milkshake on the menu, vanilla.

Hellen looks at her first, and then back at him.

“Of course. Coming right up, sugar.” And she clicks away again.

Charles smiled at her, kindly.

“It’s rude to snoop, you know.” He says, though there’s not much sternness in his tone.

“Most people don’t seem to mind.” She said plainly.

Charles dipped his head with a funny smile.

“I’m sure they don’t.”

“How do you know my name?” She asked, picking up her fork and butter knife as she did. She was curious but still starving. She grabbed the syrup at the end of the table, smothering her cakes.

“Because I have been keeping an eye on you for quite some time, Maryn.” He admits, watching her scarf down her pancakes like they’d run away from her. “You are very special.

“Special" isn't the word most people use.” She says out of the edge of her mouth, still chewing.

“We are not most people.” Charles hums.

“Yeah,” she muttered plainly.

“I’ll admit, your…capabilities are more advanced than I’ve seen in others your age.” He observed, “It’s quite impressive.”

Maryn doesn’t say anything to that. She didn’t have anything to say. Charles continues.

“You know, most mutant children I find are often in groups. They find one another, and protect each other.” His fingers drum on the fake carved plastic, “You remain by yourself. Have you not met others?”

She cuts jaggedly into her pancakes.

“I have.” She chews.

“And what happened?”

She thought about not telling him, then she thought he already knew and was just waiting for her to say it. Either way, he waits patiently across from her, waiting for her to say something; same gentle look in his eye.

“There's something inside me.” She admits, dubiously, “It scares people.”

“Does it scare you?” Again, she doesn’t answer.

Charles looked at her for a long time, she almost thought he was going to go away, leave her there, growing frustrated with her insolence. But he doesn’t. Instead, he looks at her with the same familiar smile.

“I have a school.” He says, “It’s not much now, barely a handful of students, even less teachers, but I created it for gifted children. Children like you.”

Maryn stared at him, her fork stabbing a piece of pancake on her plate.

“A school?”

He nods.

“I’d very much like you to attend.” He tells her, eyes looking her over, “Perhaps I can help you.

He seems to mean it. It’s the first time she can’t see into someone’s mind to know if they’re telling the truth or not, but she has a feeling, an unfamiliar feeling, that she can trust him.

She looked down at her plate, “What if you can’t?”

Charles looks at her carefully.

“Then maybe I can help you learn to control it.” Maryn looks up at him. “At the least, you’ll have a warm bed, food. Clothes that fit.”

For the first time since they started talking, she smiles. It’s small, but it’s there.

“Alright, a coffee for you,” They both looked at Hellen as she came back, “And a milkshake for you, Angel.”

“Yes, we’ll have the check please.” Charles says kindly. Then he places his forefinger and his middle finger to his temple and looks Hellen in the eyes,“You will not remember us once we leave.”

Maryn watches the waitress's eyes glaze over from behind her glasses before she smiles again.

“I’ll get that right out for you.”

Maryn looked at Charles.

“Can I do that?”

“We shall see, won’t we?” His lips spread into a thin smile. “Finish your pancakes.”

——————-

Omg I feel so anxious I literally have never done this before 😭 but please let me know what you guys think! If I do decide to post the whole fic it’ll prob be on ao3 just cause I plan to make it pretty long/slow burn

But I hope u guys like it 🙌🙌

[lucky-clover-gazette]

prince's gambit highlights & annotations

chapter 11

indented text is from the book. some quotes have commentary, some do not. some comments are serious, and some are definitely not. most of them will only make sense to people who have read the series. and, like, there are spoilers. so please read the books first if you're interested!

also: part of the reason i'm doing such a close reading is to study cs pacat's style, especially in terms of how she does romance and erotica. there are "craft notes" that might seem weird, like i'm being redundant or restating something rather than analyzing, but those are more things that i want to remember/take away from the writing!

i'm going to tag these longer posts with "sam reads capri" in case anyone wants to read them all at once.

this is a google doc i wrote with overall content warnings for the captive prince series. it's not perfect, but i do think it's important to include.

A prudent ruler would want a seasoned diplomat overseeing this fraught standoff, not Laurent, who had arrived like a wasp at an outdoor feast, annoying everybody.

‘Your Highness. We were expecting you two weeks ago. But we were glad to hear that you enjoyed the inns of Nesson,’ said Lord Touars. ‘Perhaps we can find you something equally entertaining to do here.’

you cannot out-bitch laurent of vere. but good luck trying

The golden prince was at his best when viewed from sixty paces, out of spitting range of his nature.

‘Is my slave making you nervous?’ said Laurent. ‘I can understand that. It takes a man to handle him.’

this is a minor political ploy on laurent’s part—he’s not necessarily defending damen out of the good of his heart. he’s trying to take these people out of their comfort zone, within their own stronghold. also, lmao

‘Councillor Guion,’ said Laurent.

BOOOOOOO TOMATO TOMATO

Laurent had said to him calmly, ‘You knew my uncle wanted to provoke conflict at the border. How else did you think he was going to do it?’ At the end of those exchanges, there had been nothing left to do but get on his horse and ride to Ravenel, spending the ride with his gaze fixed on the back of a yellow head that was infuriatingly not to blame for these attacks, no matter how much he wanted to think so.

damen is gradually easing out of his whole “everything that goes wrong is laurent’s fault” spiral. and he’s not happy about it

‘I don’t blame insects for buzzing when someone kicks their hive over,’ said Laurent. ‘I find myself curious about who it is that wants to see me stung.’

He tried not to think that the future of his country now came down to Laurent, talking.

Damen had been receiving grins and slaps on the back all day. Laurent was the recipient meanwhile of newly appreciative looks. Laurent had risen yet another notch in the esteem of the men, now that they understood that whatever they had previously assumed of his habits in bed, the Prince clearly galloped his barbarian slave under a tight rein. Damen ignored it. It was not the time for trivial matters.

‘Jord sent you?’ said Paschal. ‘He has a sense of irony.’

context: damen, the akielion, has been sent to help victims of the akielion attack

‘The raids are constant. And it was only six years ago that Akielons drove these men out of their homes, out of their fields. They have seen friends, family killed, children taken as slaves.’

HUH??? that doesn’t sound like a fucking pact to me!!

Damen looked at Laurent, and tried to imagine facing him over battle lines. He had been caught up in the energy of—creating something. Laurent’s determination, the ability he had to beat odds had infected him. But this wasn’t a chase through a town, or a game of cards. This was Vere’s most powerful lords unfurling their banners for war.

a kingdom or this? (this. choose this. and then you can have both. but you have to choose this first)

‘Tell him—his coward’s attack on Akielos killed less than we did.’ Proudly. Anger was not useful. It came over him in a wave, and so for a long time he didn’t speak, just stared at the dying man, flatly.

damen’s internal sense of right and wrong making him doubt his own nation…

‘Kastor,’ said Naos, ‘the false king. Damianos—should have been our leader. He was the prince-killer. He understood what Veretians are. Liars. Deceivers. He would never have—climbed into their—beds as Kastor has done.’

just wait until chapter 19

[whumpinthepot]

@febuwhump 2024

Day 19. “Please don’t”

Content: BBU adjacent pet whump, caretaker is new master, child oc mentioned? (mouse),

Thank you @ilasknives for looking it over <3

…

Ratty waited on the staircase for Mouse to come home from school. They leaned their head against the bottom of the railing poles and watched the door. They had been sitting there since Mum left this morning, and would continue to sit until someone came home. 

There was a sound of a car pulling into the driveway, then footsteps coming up to the door. Ratty perked their head up, watching as the doorknob rattled with the movement of a key. It turned and opened. 

Doug walked through it, wearing an unbuttoned suit with a loosened tie around his neck. His locks were pulled up into a bun. He was home early today, and Ratty leaned their head back against the poles in disappointment. 

“Hello, sir,” Ratty greeted half-heartedly. 

“Oh, Ryland, I didn’t see you there.” Doug sounded surprised. “Where’s your mother?” 

“She left to run some errands. Said she would be back later and to wait for Mouse to come home.” 

“I see…” Doug sat down beside Ratty on the staircase. It weirded Ratty out, and they shifted an inch away from him. He was too close to them.

Doug was staring at his hands in his lap, and kept his voice quiet. “I know you miss August, and that your mother won’t let you talk to him. I don’t think that’s right of her. I tried to talk to her about it but she, well, it might take some time for her to accept the idea.” 

Ratty didn’t know how to respond and just stared at him with distrust still clouded over them. 

He continued. “So, what I was getting at is… If you want to call him on my phone while everyone is out, you can. If you don’t tell your mother or sister.” 

Ratty blinked. “Wait. Really?!” Was this a trick? “Really, sir? Are you serious?” 

“Yeah. You can call him right now if you want.” Doug pulled out his cellphone and held it in front of Ratty. “But it can only be a small phone call for now. Is that okay? I’m sorry it can’t be longer but maybe next time.” 

“Yes, sir!” Ratty practically shouted. Their hands trembled with anticipation. Was he really going to call Auggie right now? 

“Okay then.” Doug winced and tapped in August’s number. He put it on speaker and handed the phone over. 

The phone rang a few times until a nervous voice picked up. “Um… Hello?” It was Auggie.

Ratty’s words were caught in their throat. “Hi,” they managed to croak out.

“Tee? Is that you?” August asked incredulously.  

“Yes, Auggie. Mr. Doug let me use his phone in secret. He told me not to tell Mum.” Ratty curled inwards against the phone. 

“Oh. Huh. Are you okay?” He asked.

Ratty assured him that they were more or less okay, and the two had a little back and forth of worried small talk. 

Ratty was building up to their main question until they finally dared ask. “Auggie? Can you come and get me now? I did everything you told me to. I've been good. I’ve been here for so long, when can you come and get me?” 

A pause, then he sighed. “Ratty, I can’t come and get you. You know that. You’re going to have to stay there a little longer. I’m sorry.”

Tears welled up in Ratty’s eyes, fogging their glasses. “Please don’t leave me here, Auggie. Please don’t…” 

“I’m sorry, Tee. It’s not that simple. Keep being good for them, alright? You just have to wait this out. I’ll see you as soon as I can, I promise.” 

Ratty clutched the phone with a lump in their throat as tears dripped off their chin. “Please come soon…” 

“I’ll try. I miss you.”  August’s voice gripped around Ratty’s heart. 

They gulped in some air. “I miss you too, Auggie.”

Doug waved to get Ratty’s attention, then tapped his smart watch. He put five fingers up then closed his fist. 

Ratty got the gist and sniffled. “Auggie? I have to go now. Please come soon, okay?” 

“I’ll try, Tee. I’ll try…”

—

General writing tag list: @frogkingdom @coppercoyoti @alittlewhump

Febuwhump tag list: @why-not-ask-me-a-better-question @blackrosesandwhump

[kylos-starlight]

Painful Welcome - Chp 1

So this meeting its different from my other ships. I don't belong in this universe at the start. I literally fell into the game! :D

Ship: I come to you in pieces (used to be if it means a lot to you;) Dante x Kaden

Words: 1139 (Wow I actually fuggin wrote something)

Warnings: None

Tag list at the bottom~!

A truck. It felt like a god damn truck at hit their entire body. They felt heavier and their back and shoulders felt hot with pain. Their eyes were tightly shut, they weren’t even sure if they were breathing. Nope definitely not breathing!

Kaden’s eyes widened and despite the pain that shot through them they sat up gasping for air, the long fall having knocked the wind completely out of them. Once that sharp intake of breath filled their lungs finally, they fell back down, arms and legs spread like a dehydrated starfish as they looked up at the big hole in the ceiling, no doubt where they came crashing down from. They lay there panting heavily.

“People are just falling from the sky now huh? That’s a new one” a disembodied voice rang out.

Kaden panted, eyes closing tightly shut. Where have I heard that voice before...?

“How long are you planning on writhing in pain on my floor?” The voice once again spoke.

Kaden refused to move but turned their head towards where the voice was coming from, their vision still wasn’t the best, they hit their head hard on the floor. Everything had a weird fuzzy blur to it. Am I …dreaming?

The person came over and squatted down beside Kaden. “Oh, shit you might actually need some help” Kaden looked up to see none other than Dante staring down at them. All they could think of was “I’m dreaming? Maybe I’m in a coma…fuck everything hurts-”

“Well, I seen you sit up so your back isn’t broken... Alright this might be uncomfortable, but I can’t have you dying on my floor.” Dante placed his arms underneath Kaden, one arm supported their neck and the other under their legs by the knee. He scooped them up into his arms and stood to his feet. “Bad for business ya know.” He said nonchalantly, as if people do crazy things in front of him all the time.

Kaden was groggy and wasn’t quite ready to speak, their eyes moved around the room, jukebox in the corner of the room….neon lights…pool table…bar…desk in the center of the room…stairs that lead to a second level…and weapons on display on the wall behind the desk… this looks very much like…

“There, you’ll be comfortable on the couch…well… as comfortable as one can be after crashing through a roof- I’ll call someone more professional in the medical field to come get you checked out.” He sighed as he looked down at Kaden. He shook his head and clicked his tongue, crossing his arms over his chest. “Why do things always have to happen in my shop of all places-”

Eventually Kaden’s vision returned to normal, their back was still hurting like hell, so they tried their best not to move so much. They turned their head towards the desk to see Dante reading a magazine. He had long since called for a doctor.

“This is trippy as fuck” Kaden finally spoke.

“Oh good!” Dante placed the magazine down and Kaden felt their heart jump into their throat “You aren’t a mute!”

“This seems so real… is this one of those vivid lucid dream things?” Kaden went to sit up but pain shot through their back. “Ah, fuck!! If this is a dream why the hell does it hurt so much!”

“Dream!? Babe, you dropped in through my ceiling!” He stood up and walked under the spot where Kaden came crashing down. “Look at the damage you did! My poor roof!”

Kaden looked up at the gaping hole, you could easily see the night sky and the odd cloud passing by. “But…how?” Kaden murmured.

“You know how much that’s going to cost!?” Dante sighed, his hands moving to his hips.

“How are you here? How is this place real!?” Kaden asked in a mixture of shock and horror. “T-This place only exists in video games!” Kaden’s voice got higher the more they spoke they were obviously completely shocked where they were, and they still didn’t believe it was real.

“Man, you really hit your head huh?” Dante whistled.

“No, shut up! I’m telling you, you’re not real!” Kaden hissed out in pain again as once again they tried to move.

Just at that moment the doctor had arrived to see Kaden, He determined that they had a concussion and that them spouting about the world not being real was due to them hitting their head even though Kaden had tried to protest many times. The doctor said it was a miracle that not a bone in their body was broken considering how high they fell but they’re going to be sore for a couple of days, maybe even a week due to the strain on there muscles.

“So- where do you live...?” Dante asked as he seen the doctor out.

“Not here”

“Obviously!” Dante growled a little in frustration. “Where is your house?”

“NOT HERE! I don’t have one here! In this world! God!” Kaden was still freaking out on the inside. Kaden knew this game; it was Devil May Cry but why were they INSIDE the game!? How is this even possible? How did it happen? They can’t remember! It was frustrating.

“You’re homeless?”

“I guess!” Kaden threw their arms up to shrug but then winced in pain. “Stupid fucking back!”

“Tch, well you can’t be on the streets in that condition, and you also owe me for blowing a hole through my roof with your entire body- Until your debt it paid you can stay here, I guess-” Dante grumbled. Even though he was annoyed by the sudden events he still somewhat had a heart. “Get better- Get money- give me the money- get lost” Dante sighed.

Ouch, that was a little mean. “Well, you don’t have to be such an asshole about it. What if I work, get money and bail because of your attitude?” Kaden snorted.

“Then I have no problems find you and getting my money.” Dante smirked.

“Jerk-”

“You’re the one who crashed through my roof and you’re calling me a jerk!?” Dante chuckled.

“Yes! J E R K” Kaden crossed their arms over their chest as they leaned back against the couch. Kaden didn’t really think about consequences considering they thought this was all a delusional dream anyways.

“Pft, the thanks I get for helping people...” Dante grumbled, turning on his heel towards the front door. “I’m going out. Don’t…set my place on fire while I’m gone.”

Kaden rolled their eyes “No promises, Dante” Kaden said his name like a kid trying to mock someone put heavy enphasis on his name.

Dante rolled his eyes and walked out the door, he got down the steps and stopped in his strides his face went from annoyed to a little confused. “We never introduced ourselves..”  

[To be continued]

Tag list: @heatobrienswife || @mahitoslittlebird || @ama-ships || @dragonsmooch || @kylars-princess Lemme know if you want to be added or removed from my tag list! :D

[dottie-writes-haikyuu]

Whatever I’ve Done….

This is part 12 of my fic Not Everyone Survives (But I will do the Best I Can). Tags and other chapters can be found here!

I did it for love / I did it for fun / Couldn’t get enough…

Koutarou couldn’t exactly conceal the dread pooling within him when he saw Tsukishima and the rugrats enter the lab. The blonde avoided his eyes and watched all the curious, confused, and concerned glances he got from the rugrats. Some of them, he recognized.

“This is Subject 8. We will be using it to find a cure to the virus and put an end to the apocalypse.”

That felt weird. ‘Subject 8’. And they made him feel like an object, or a specimen of some kind. He was a person. He was a human.

There was an uneasy silence for a second.

“Wait, isn’t that Bokuto, from Torch, though?”

“We will be referring to it as Subject 8 during its stay here.”

“Why?”

“Don’t question it. Orders from Captain.”

“He’s a consenting test subject, don’t worry,” Tobio assured from the doorway. The ravenette walked in and sat at one of the empty tables.

Consenting.

That was funny.

The first week was probably the worst. He was having needles shoved into him, things taken out of him, chemicals put into him. Most of it hurt. Some of them looked pitying, others curious.

“Isn’t this acid?” one of the guys asked, and Tsukishima looked away.

“Continue with the procedure.”

What.

What what what.

“But—“

“Anyone who shows sympathy for the subject will be punished,” Shouyou stated from the doorway. They were about four days in now. He already hated the sound of the ginger’s voice. “Continue with the procedure.”

He was gonna throw up.

He steeled himself, unable to meet the boy’s teary, apologetic eyes as he grit his teeth, clenching his fists and willing himself not to react too badly. Just don’t react too badly.

And then it started.

It spread through his veins at an excruciatingly slow rate and made his vision blur. The world was spinning and he couldn’t focus on anything else except for the sensation of being set ablaze and the fire crawling up his body was taking its time, spreading only with every pulse of his heart. He couldn’t even make a sound. He couldn’t move.

The voices around him were muffled and the heart monitor in his collar started beeping quicker than normal and then everything was yelling and his skin felt like it was quite literally boiling. He couldn’t see, only endure the sensation of his skin bubbling and liquifying as everything shrieked around him and his ears rang and he couldn’t feel anything except for that and—

Nothing.

He woke up later to the muffled voices of Shouyou, Tobio, Sugawara, and Tsukishima.

“That almost killed him,” Suga protested. “If he can’t handle this, how will he possibly handle the cure extraction?”

“Subject 8 will handle any experimentation. Now that the substance is in its bloodstream, it’ll be fine. It makes its DNA more…malleable, per se. We just had to sedate it before it could have a heart attack.”

“Can we stop with the ‘it’ bullcrap?! You’re pissing me off,” Suga hissed. Shouyou slammed a fist on the table.

“You wanna think of it as a person?? Then sympathy and empathy come along and you lose sight of what’s truly important: the cure. Stop being selfish and remember that this isn’t fucking about you. This is for all of us.”

There was a bout of silence.

“Wake it up,” Shouyou demanded suddenly.

“Well, the only way to do that would be—“

“Shock it, I don’t care,” the ginger scoffed. “I need to run diagnostics.”

Dread filled his veins quickly and he snapped his eyes open and scrambled back against the wall quickly, his breaths coming fast.

“Oh, it’s unnecessary. Hello, Bokuto.”

He didn’t respond at first, looking up at the ginger with wide eyes. A look of fake pity.

“Disoriented, huh? Well, you did almost go into cardiac arrest. Don’t worry. It’ll be a lot simpler now.”

He couldn’t manage more than a nod.

He hoped Keiji would save him soon. 

—

Subject 8 was uncooperative lately. Maybe he should up the severity of the punishments. He sat in on experiments again, around three weeks in.

The same rugrat who’d always seemed to feel a bit more guilt than the others was arguing with Tsukishima today.

“It’s not right! And you know that! That’s why you can’t even look at him!”

Oh. He couldn’t have that. He couldn’t have his rugrats questioning the very very carefully curated idea he’d presented. This was for all of them. He couldn’t afford to have it ruined. Not when this was their saving grace.

“Subject 8 is vital to our ending the apocalypse. Continue with the procedure.”

“This is genetic manipulation! Not even, this is essentially a species change we’re talking about—“

“This isn’t my fucking choice,” Tsukishima snapped. “This is by orders of the Captain, and this…this is for all of us. I’m not a monster, I—“

Tsukishima couldn’t waver. He had to stop this now.

“Of course not,” he chimed from the door, walking in with a smile. His voice was soothing, though it had an edge. “What, is someone doubting my judgment?”

He kept his tone playful. Tsukishima cleared his throat.

“The rugrat.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“He’s been showing sympathy for Subject 8 for the past 3 weeks.”

“Well,” he said with a small chuckle. “We can’t have that, can we?”

He straightened up.

“Tobio, go get everyone else. I think we’ll have a meeting on the roof. All the rugrats, all the members. Everyone.”

His boyfriend stood, nodding, and then left. He couldn’t help his smile. The rugrat was looking up at him, his hands shaking a little.

“What’s your name?”

“I, uhm…”

“Your name. What is it?”

“Apollo.”

“Alrighty, Apollo, come with me.”

The boy opened his mouth to say something, probably to protest and try to save himself, but Shouyou wasn’t in the mood to hear it.

“Quietly, please.”

And his mouth snapped shut. And so they all met on the roof. Shouyou stood on the edge with the boy. Subject 8 was there too, in the front. Good. It should see this.

“Sorry to pull all of you from your daily tasks, but I figured this is something everyone should see. After all, we’re supposed to lead by example, right?”

The rugrat was trying very hard not to cry. He could feel it.

He wouldn’t have to do this if everyone just listened. He’d liked Bokuto. He’d really really admired him. He still did. But he needed to do this to save everyone, including Bokuto.

Suga and the others looked away as Shouyou continued speaking.

“We all know that anyone who sympathizes with Subject 8 is to face punishment, correct? We can’t exactly have liabilities for Project Savior. This, after all, is for all of us! It’s to end the apocalypse! You want to live, don’t you? Don’t want to keep losing people to the apocalypse, right? This is our key!”

He turned to the boy, Apollo, who was looking at the ground and trembling.

“This is Apollo. He is a Subject 8 sympathizer and a risk to our work on Project Savior as well as to our very safety. After all, he could tell the others that we have Subject 8, and if that happens…well, we’ll probably all be killed.”

That sent a stir through the crowd.

“And so, this is what happens, to those who put our very lives at risk.”

He moved so he was standing behind the boy, who was facing the edge of the roof, and then grabbed him by the shoulder. His free hand took the gun out of its holster, and aimed.

Take out his legs so he can’t walk.

BANG! BANG!

The boy screamed immediately, and Shouyou had to keep him standing with the grip on his shoulder.

He was, what, thirteen?

Don’t think about that.

He’s a risk.

He deserves this.

And then take out his shoulders so he can’t crawl.

BANG! BANG!

He drowned out the sounds around him so he didn’t have to think about it. He then aimed for the fourth vertebrae.

Pull the trigger and then dispose of the body. That was all he had to do.

BANG!

He dropped it off the roof, then turned back to those gathered.

“Just remember. This cure isn’t just for Messenger. It’s for all of us.”

Previous chapter

[peskellence]

Pairing: RK900/Gavin Reed

Tags: Post Pacifist Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Eventual Smut, Angst, Hurt/Comfort

Masterlist

Read on AO3 here:

Summary: A lot has changed since the revolution. Crimes against androids are now punished in the same way as crimes against humans. A reluctant Gavin Reed and his new partner RK900 have been assigned to investigate a string of disturbing murders. Despite the shift in Detroit's social climate, Gavin still holds reservations about whether or not androids are truly alive. Will his developing feelings for 'Nines' be the thing to change this?

Warnings: Graphic Violence, Depression/Self Destructive Behaviour, Eventual Smut

Word Count: 3.6K

Pacing around his kitchen, Gavin waited for his coffee to brew, feeling much less rested than he would have hoped. The events of the night before had left his mind hopelessly preoccupied, swimming with questions that pleaded for answers. Nervous fingers twitched on his phone as he held it to his ear. The dial tone rang on a loop until a person eventually answered. Their voice was low and groggy from the early morning intrusion:

 "Hello...?"

"Tina, I'm having a crisis."

There was silence on the other end of the line, save for the sounds of gentle breathing. This was followed by the rustle of bedsheets and a long, dejected sigh. "It's 8:35 on my day off. You better be dying." 

He combed his fingers fractiously through his hair as he grappled with the best place to start. In his struggle, a stray thought tumbled gracelessly from his lips, "Nines has fucking freckles. Have you ever noticed that?" 

There was a dull thud, presumably Tina's head, as it slammed back down on the pillow. "This is getting sad. I can smell your sexual frustration down the phone." 

"I need your help."

"Alas, my sweet, I cannot. For we are both flaming homosexuals." 

"Not like that. I need advice."

There was a short yawn as his friend roused herself from any lingering remnants of slumber. "Okay, fine. As you've so rudely interrupted my lie-in, you may as well enlighten me. What's happened that's got you freaking out?" 

"You remember me saying that it wanted to help? With the whole Tiffany thing?"

"Uh-huh." 

"And you said I should reconsider the offer?" 

"I recall imparting that nugget of wisdom." 

There was a hissing sound from the counter as his coffee came to a boil. Steam billowed from the spout of the pot, and Gavin wasted no time in letting it cool. He slid his mug into position and poured himself a drink. "Well, I did - reconsider, I mean. I was tired and desperate. Willing to try anything. So I let it stay the night." 

"Wait," Tina's tone had shifted, buzzing with an edge of excitement. "Hold that thought. I'm getting a snack." 

He waited apprehensively as the woman shuffled her way out of bed. There was the sound of a door closing, and the plodding of steps on a hardwood floor. Following this was the beep of a fridge and the rustling of food packets before she returned the phone to her ear. "All good. Please continue." 

"It was awkward as Hell", Gavin exhaled, tapping his fingers on the sides of his mug. "I needed something to break the tension, so I started drinking."

"Shocker." 

"I suggested we put on a movie. Which we did, and it was fine. Then it ordered me dinner, which was weird, but whatever. It does weird shit all the time." He blew on the rim of his mug before taking a tentative sip. "We were talking. Just random shit, and then it got…intense." 

"In what way intense?" her voice was loud - as if she were leaning apprehensively into her receiver.

"We started talking about my dad."

It was clearly not the answer Tina had expected, nor one she knew how to approach. Gavin's father was a sensitive topic, of which she had always been deeply respectful. There was a long, weighty pause as she patiently waited for him to continue. 

"I don't know why I did it. I guess it was the booze talking, but the damn thing was so…" His eyes scrunched closed as he struggled to find a word to describe the behaviour. "... decent about it", he eventually settled. "It mostly just listened, but in a comforting way. I think it even tried to hold my hand." 

There was a low whistle of appreciation, "Smooth." 

"It was kind of nice. Having someone there to help me work through it." Gavin was struggling to keep his composure, inhaling slowly as he tried to focus on the earthy aroma of his coffee. "Then something felt different."

"What do you mean?" she pressed on keenly. There was a loud crunching sound as she bit into something hard. "Good different, or bad different?

"I don't fucking know", he groaned, holding his face in his hands. "Just different. The way it was staring, it was like it wanted to say something, but it didn't know how." 

"Then what did you do?" 

"Locked myself in the bathroom for ten minutes, then went to bed." 

"...Are you serious?" she questioned, sounding both disappointed and deeply agitated, "An intense, longing stare in the dark, and you ran away?" 

"What else was I supposed to do?" he snapped defensively. "It's an android, Ti. I don't know what its end game was, but it definitely wasn't that ." 

"Impressive. Handled with all the emotional intelligence of a teenage girl." 

"Look, you were right", he relented, throwing up his hands in defeat. "I'm repressed as fuck. I need to do something about it if I'm desperate enough to even consider -" 

"Have you considered facing the facts? Because all of this 'he's an android' shit is getting old now." There was another crunch intermingled with a loud, long-suffering sigh. "This is getting sad. Like, really sad." 

"What is?"

"How you continue to be such a dick to this guy when you clearly like him." 

Gavin felt a rising heat prickle his skin. He had hoped to deliver some poignant retort to the ridiculous assertion, but the words woefully escaped him. "I don't", he said weakly. 

"You're not one for putting up with things you don't like. You wouldn't have him around so much if you didn't enjoy his company." 

"I haven't spent a minute longer with it than I needed to. Unless it was someone else's bright-fucking idea." 

"Bitch and moan all you like, but you still went along with those bright-fucking ideas."  

"Eat shit."

She scoffed at the predictable obscenity of her friend's response. "Do you want my advice or not?" 

He solemnly weighed up his options, clutching his head in desperation. Swallowing his pride, he slumped over in defeat. "Yes. Please. I'm out of my depth here." 

"Okay, so my advice would be one of two options:

Option 1 - You get yourself back on USwipe and find some random guy to hook up with. 

Option 2 - You jump Nines' bones like you've been gagging to do since Day One."

Putting Tina on speaker, Gavin scrolled through his list of apps, noting how he still had the latest version of USwipe installed. He reasoned it could be worth a shot. If only to see if there had been any improvements to the current dating pool. Reopening his account, he cringed reflexively at the tediously generic photos and bio. 

"So, what's it going to be?"

Deleting a particularly egregious passage about his ‘passion' for fitness and clean living, he mumbled a half-hearted reply, "Option 1, obviously - because Option 2 is a shitty idea." 

"Oh, come on ", she groaned loudly, vexed by his dismissive attitude. "Think about it. You're both uptight assholes, and you're obviously attracted to each other. A workplace fling might serve as the stress relief you both clearly need."

"Oh yeah, because nothing screams ‘stress-free workplace' like screwing your coworkers", he spat sarcastically, "You're deluded, you know that?"

"Look, things are already awkward between you, so what's the worst that could happen? You're not going to be partnered for much longer anyway." 

"I'm not going to be on the force for much longer if I don't start making progress on this case." Gavin set down his phone, lamenting the uncertainty of his current job security. 

Their killer had gone quiet, giving them little to work with in terms of new material. The material they did have seemed to do nothing but send them around in loops. As morbid as it was, it was tempting to wish that something else might happen.

A notification popped up on his phone. It was a message from Nines. He opened it resignedly, despairing at what the contents might be. "Doesn't help that Fowler and the fucking press seem to think we've been sitting around with our fingers up our asses…." 

"It's obvious how hard you guys have been working," Tina said encouragingly. "Something will come up soon, don't give up."

He had barely registered that the other officer was still speaking - as the realisation of what he was looking at swiftly hit him. His prior wishes came back to haunt him with a ruthless surge of guilt. 

The killer had been quiet for long. 

Too long.  

"Guess you were right", he said gravely. "Another android has been found. They need me there ASAP." 

Pulling up to the scene, the first thing he saw was Nines, standing at a nearby street corner and waiting patiently. Before exiting the car, he sternly reminded himself to keep interactions as work-focused as possible. He couldn't permit any distractions. Thankfully, Nines appeared equally keen to maintain this professionalism, politely nodding its head and leading him toward the crime scene.  

"First Church of rA9…" Gavin mused aloud, quietly observing their surroundings. "Pretty open location. Our guy is usually more discreet."

"The victim was found in the parking lot," Nines clarified, remaining focused on the path ahead. "So somewhat more secluded than the church grounds. It is possible he worked overnight to avoid detection." 

"Or maybe he's getting sloppy." 

"We can only hope", his partner replied, though its crestfallen tone failed to portray the same kind of optimism. "Let's see what forensics have to say." 

The longer they proceeded down the path, the more Gavin began to pick up on a low, consistent rumble of noise. As they rounded the corner to the church, it became evident that it was voices. Loud and aggressive, each vying for attention. Police barricades had been set up around the perimeter of the building, with scattered riot officers stationed haphazardly for additional defence. 

"What the hell…" Gavin mumbled under his breath. He firmly pushed through the chattering crowd, to which he received more than a couple of disgruntled glares. However, this was nothing compared to the reception that Nines was receiving. As soon as the android came into view, a sea of eyes trained on its movements. Scornful - filled with simmering hatred. 

One of the riot guards moved towards them, his colleague attending to the crowd as he silently opened the barricade. To the wayside of the parking lot, Gavin saw an android sitting on the trunk of a dispatch car. Two officers were seated on either side, sheltering it from the worst of the discourse. As one caught glimpse of the partners, he solemnly beckoned them over. 

"Detective Reed. RK900", he said before his attention flitted back to the quivering android. "This is Jules. He was first to discover the body." 

The android said nothing, staring forward with a haunted look. Its eyelids blinked rapidly, and its LED flickered an unstable red. Gavin had seen this behaviour before, and it rarely spelt good news. A complete system meltdown was imminent, to which Nines quickly intervened. 

"Show me what happened here." Its tone was calm as it held out a palm to the other android. "It is okay, you do not need to speak." 

Jules, who had appeared blind to its surroundings moments prior, roused at the invitation. Its startled brown eyes darted up, and after some time, its clenched hand began to twitch. Cautiously, the fingers unfurled, and it mirrored Nines' gesture, holding its palm in front of its face. The androids connected, and their bodies became lifeless, staring at each other vacantly. It was only when Nines pulled back that signs of life returned. 

"What did you see?" Gavin asked, anticipating the answer with trepidation.  

"The victim's name was Harvey", Nines said, staring at his hand as the skin crept back, "He was an AP700 and lead pastor of the church. He was last seen yesterday evening, and his car was found in the parking lot early this morning. However, upon entering the building, Jules realised he was nowhere to be seen. So he came back outside to investigate the car -" 

"I think I can see where this is going." 

It nodded in glum confirmation, lips pulled unnaturally tight. "The body was found in a particularly unpleasant state of disrepair."

"You can say that again." 

The two turned toward the voice and were met with a familiar forensics officer. He approached slowly, hands shoved deeply into his pockets, and his wrinkled brow furrowed in dismay. "Reed, we must stop meeting this way." 

"Sanders," Gavin said back, trepidation only growing at the crestfallen look on the older man's face. "What the Hell happened here?"

"Synthetic Reaper. That's what."

The detective squinted in confusion - as if being spoken to in a language he couldn't understand. Nines, picking up on this, stepped in to clarify. 

"It is the name that the media has begun to use to identify our killer." The statement itself would have been neutral had it not been for the notable irritation with which it said it: "The brutality of the crimes has proven a compelling hook for news pieces. There are talks of a documentary being produced." 

"Well, they're gonna love this", Sanders drawled, equally unenthused. "‘Cus he was really looking to impress this time." 

As they approached the car, Gavin could make out the faint outline of a figure sitting in the driver's seat. It seemed reasonably unsuspecting at first - as if the vehicle could pull away at any moment. However, the closer they got, the more telling the signs of foul play became. 

The left passenger door handle was bent out of shape, pried open with force. Looped around the back of the driver's seat were the ends of a thick metal cord. Gavin searched for traces of Thirium but found nothing immediately obvious. While it could have been a ‘tidy' killing, he reasoned the more likely scenario was that a good length of time had passed since the original attack and the body's discovery. This assessment proved accurate as he moved to inspect the front of the car - and the grotesque carnage that awaited him. 

The android's hands were tied and bound, enclosing in a praying gesture. The cord held its neck in place, albeit there was little left to support. It had been almost entirely decapitated, with the mangled hinge of a bottom jaw clinging listlessly to what used to be its head. 

"Said it was a good' un", Sanders joked, but with no real humour in his tone. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat, pulling out a small plastic bag. "We found this in his hands. You might want to take a look." 

Upon receiving the bag, Gavin found it contained a small leather-bound book. He was unable to make out the text embossed into its front, as it had been defaced with a series of large, jagged letters: 

WHERE IS YOUR RA9 NOW? 

"Let me see", Nines requested, motioning for the book. The detective obliged the request, promptly removing the book from its plastic lining. His partner began to turn through the pages, reading out a string of digits as it did: 

"84 72 79 83 69 32 87 72 79 32 87 79 82 83 72 73 80 32 70 65 76 83 69 32 80 82 79 80 72 69 84 83 32 87 73 76 76 32 66 69 32 80 85 78 73 83 72 69 68 46 32." It droned out the numbers in flat uniformity until it reached the final page: 

"52 11 42 42 24 34 42." 

Gavin moved in closer, looking over the android's shoulder at the messy scrawl of handwritten numbers. "A code he's used before?"

"Potentially, it's just…" The android paused. Its lips moved involuntarily as if it were muttering under its breath, but no sound escaped them. "Something doesn't seem right." 

A sharp bang broke their focus as they both turned towards the source. A man was half-crouched by the police barricade, having slipped past the attending officers, and was quietly dusting himself off. He stood from the ground with a low groan before placing his hands on his waist, admiring his own feat of agility.

Gavin was far less impressed. He swiftly walked towards the man, hand positioned on his holster in an authoritative gesture. "Back behind the line, buddy. This is a crime scene." 

The man's focus trailed to where Gavin was gesturing before he erupted into a fit of laughter. "You going to shoot me for hopping a fence?" He leaned forward, trying to get a closer look at the pastor's car. "It's not like any real crimes have been committed. Save some property damage."

"Don't make me repeat myself." 

"Piece of shit got what was coming to it. Defective machine, spewing gibberish about android gods -" 

This only exacerbated the short-tempered man further, who continued to advance on the intruder. "Don't you have somewhere else to be? Like your next clan meeting? Last chance to back out before I kick your ass."

Nines, who had been standing to the sidelines until now, quickly moved in. "Detective, there is no need to escalate matters." 

Having finally caught sight of the android, the man wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Should have known you'd be working with one. When you're walking the road to damnation, it'll be their plastic parts that pave the way."  

It wasn't long until the heated exchange began to attract some unwanted attention. A straggling group of protestors, who had also broken away from the larger assembly, congregated at the barricade. Goading their companion on, as well as hurling insults at the two officers:

"Don't tell him what to do. You damn pig!"

"Android lover! Bet you love fucking machines, don't you?"

"We have a right to assemble, and we have a right to speak."

"Not if it's hate speech, you stupid asshole!" Gavin fired back, overcome by anger, baring his teeth like a wild animal. 

With de-escalation fast becoming impossible, Nines took matters into its own hands. Taking advantage of its imposing height and strength, it encroached on the intruding protester and firmly grabbed him by the collar. With little exertion, it lifted the man until he hovered off the ground. He flailed his legs in protest.

"What do you think you're doing, freak?" His face turned beet red as it showered Nines with speckles of spit. "You can't do this, it's fucking assault." 

"It is a criminal offence to obstruct a police officer from completing their official duties", Nines replied cooly, "My partner asked you to move several times, and you have refused. I have been left with no other choice but to remove you myself." 

As Nines approached the barrier, one of the more zealous onlookers pushed back against the constraints, inching it forward. Within seconds, the rest of the group joined the efforts, leaning into the hefty divide in an attempt to topple it. The bars heaved forcefully into the android, and while this did nothing to loosen its grip, it did succeed in knocking its balance. Taking advantage, a previously unseen group member pushed their way to the front of the crowd. They reached into one of their pockets, balling an unseen object into their fist:

"313 248 317 – 87."

Before the android could so much as react, the protester had propelled the object squarely into its face. Its skin peeled back, revealing the expanse of white exoskeleton beneath. Thirium started to drip down its temple, and it let go of the protestor, dropping them to the ground and placing its hands to its face. 

This was enough to tip Gavin over the edge. He grabbed the assailant from over the fence and pulled them forward harshly. The man tried to back away but was easily overpowered, letting out a pained wheeze at the sudden compression.

"Do you - want to - go to jail?" The words dripped out in venomous fragments as Gavin struggled to control his breathing, "Because that's where you're going - right fucking now - slimy piece of shit."

"I-I'm sorry", the man rasped, eyes blown in fear. "Let go, you're crushing me."

Realising the gravity of the situation and not wanting to get caught in the crossfire, the rest of the crowd began to clear - leaving their companion to fend for himself. Recovering from its stunned state, Nines also appeared alarmed by the sudden show of aggression. "There is no need, Detective."

"You think you're so tough, huh? Wait until their guard is down, then go for the dirty shot." 

"The damage is cosmetic. My internal operations have not been compromised." 

"Are you big enough to stand face-to-face and fight like a man?" 

"I-I've got your badge number", the assailant warned as he vainly tried to break Gavin's hold. "You can't threaten me like this." 

"I bet you won't feel so big when I break your nose."

"Gavin, stop it."

Having finally caught wind of what was taking place, a pair of riot officers stepped in to restrain the assailant, pulling him from Gavin's now-slackened grip. The red mist had cleared, and he was forced to confront just how badly he had fucked up. Unsure of how he could possibly deflect from the telling nature of his actions, he chose to remain silent. Avoiding eye contact with his partner, he swiftly retreated back to the church and in the direction of his car. 

So much for keeping things professional, dipshit.

[exhuastedpigeon]

✨⚡️ Seven(ish) Sentence Sunday ⚡️✨

Tagged by the wonderful @monsterrae1, thanks bud!!

This is from the Buddie Urban Fantasy AU. Enjoy Buck and Maddie talking about the Diaz family 😂🙈

“Is Adriana still thinking about moving here?”  “Yeah, she’s actually going to stay at my loft while she’s here as a trial run. We've been talking about her take over my lease if she moves out here,” Buck says in a rush, because he hasn’t told anyone the next part yet and now that he’s started talking he really wants to say it. “Eddie and I -  we’re talking about buying a house. It’s easier with two salaries and there are some great three bedroom places in our price range not too far from where he lives now.” “Moving in together, huh?” “It’s not - it’s a friend thing,” Buck huffs. “And a family thing. Abuela is getting older and having a house that can act as the family gathering space is important. We - it. I don’t know how to explain it without it sounding weird, but it isn’t weird Mads, I swear.” “I didn’t say it was weird,” Maddie’s laugh is bright and happy. Buck watches her and can’t believe how glad he is that she’s back and she’s safe and she’s here. “I think it’s good that you have them, that you chose Eddie and all his stuff and he chose you right back.” “It wasn’t a hard choice,” Buck says, but he’s smiling too. He did choose Eddie and all the Diazes and they chose him right back. “The Diazes are an easy choice.” “You’re close with them,” Maddie says with a smile, like they’re talking about Buck being close with his romantic partner's family, not his best friend and extremely unrequited love of his life.  “It’s not like that.” “It could be,” Maddie takes a sip of her tea and then changes the subject to Jee before Buck can ask if she’s saying that as his sister who wants him to be happy or as one of the best psychics Buck has ever met. 

No pressure tags @loserdiaz @wildlife4life @thewolvesof1998 @rosieposiepuddingnpie @acountrygirlsfun @daffi-990

[sesamestreep]

damned to pining through the windowpanes

(read on AO3)

(read the whole series here)

SUMMARY: Foggy and Matt have a rare chance to catch up while Foggy's in New York for work. Unfortunately, this also means they have to talk about what happened at Rosslyn... [ AKA - The West Wing AU circa season 2 ] A/N: It's time for part 3 of The West Wing AU, baby! This time we're dealing with the aftermath of 'In the Shadow of Two Gunmen' and 'Noel' (though "dealing with" is putting it a bit strong...), which means there's a little angst and the slightest hint of hurt/comfort (??) ahead. But mostly it's just banter and ambiguously reciprocated flirting. I continue my trend of only letting romantic things happen in the rain. Foggy does math in his head and pretends to be Cary Grant. Matt gives his professional opinion and refuses to whistle. Other stuff also happens. Please enjoy. [Full content warnings and tags can be found on AO3 as always!]

The bar that Matt chose for them is not precisely what Foggy imagined it would be. It’s a mildly swanky Midtown bar with leather chairs and couches everywhere and iron light fixtures drenching everything in an amber light that manages to be warm in name only. He doesn’t know Matt that well, but this still doesn’t feel like his vibe. It feels like a place you take a client, impressive but ultimately impersonal, which is not insulting exactly, but somewhat surprising. It’s not a business meeting after all. At least, Foggy didn’t think so when they arranged it.

Matt is there when he arrives, looking simultaneously like he doesn’t belong and like he owns the damn place. That, he realizes, is Matt’s vibe; he always sticks out in a crowd but in a good way. He’s impossible to miss.

Foggy calls out before he gets to him, on the assumption that Matt, like all people, appreciates a heads up more than a surprise arrival but doesn’t always get one, on account of being blind. He's gratified in this choice when Matt surges to his feet with a wide, delighted smile in response and wraps Foggy in a hug once he’s within range. It had been raining outside, just lightly, but Matt is warm and dry in his arms. Foggy has to remind himself to pull back before it gets weird.

“Matt,” he says, too eagerly, but he can’t stop himself. He is happy to seem him, after all. “You look great.”

“Thank you,” he replies, sincerely. “I’m sure you do too.”

Foggy laughs. “Yes, my full Gandalf beard is coming in nicely.”

Matt’s hand immediately comes up to caress his chin and investigate this claim, making Foggy’s breath hitch in a way that is probably obvious to the bartender across the room, let alone Matt himself.

“Liar,” Matt says, feigning disappointment. “Are my hands cold?”

“A little,” Foggy lies. Matt is always so warm. 

“Sorry,” he says, rubbing his palms on his thighs. “Let’s sit,” he adds, gesturing to the other chair across from his.

“Yes, of course. Nice place.”

“Oh, thanks. I’ve honestly never been here before. A client recommended it, when I said I needed to meet a friend in the neighborhood.”

“Oh,” Foggy says, over his heart attempting to beat straight out of his chest. He’d just called them ‘friends’ for God’s sake. It’s not a marriage proposal. “Well, thanks for arranging everything.”

“It’s no trouble,” Matt says, waving a hand to dismiss the praise. “I always look forward to seeing you when you’re in town.”

“Yeah, it’s been a minute, huh?”

“A long minute,” Matt replies, pointedly mild in a way that Foggy recognizes immediately. “In your case.”

“Right,” Foggy says, awkwardly. He’s spared from having to come up with an intelligent response by a waitress appearing with a glass of water for him and asking if they’re ready to order. Foggy asks about their beer selection, as a stalling tactic, even though this is a fancy enough place that he should order something more grown-up. He chooses a Guinness anyway, and is so nervous he doesn’t hear Matt’s order. 

Once she departs, Matt tips his head in Foggy’s direction. “So, how are you holding up?” he asks, as neutrally as possible.

“Oh, you know,” he replies, even though Matt doesn’t. He wouldn’t have asked otherwise. “I’m doing alright.”

He leaves out the part where he goes to therapy twice a week now and the fact that he’s got someone from ATVA on speed dial and so does Karen. He can feel his pulse racing in his palm, where he cut his hand putting it through a window around Christmas after having what was later identified for him as a panic attack fueled by his PTSD from being shot. His hand is fully healed now but there’s a scar that he touches instinctively with the fingers of his opposite hand the moment he thinks of it. As if Matt will notice that and know he’s lying somehow. Matt probably doesn’t want to talk about that, or his astronomical medical bills, right now, though.

Matt nods profusely, and Foggy gets the distinct impression that he’s both disappointed and not surprised to be getting the smoothed out, small talk version of Foggy’s answer to that question. He’d feel worse about it, but Foggy’s had some iteration of this conversation about 80 million times in the last ten months. Nobody wants him to just word vomit about the stress of getting shot for twenty minutes, he’s found. He doesn’t even want that.

“I meant to call,” Matt says suddenly, with more force than Foggy suspects it warrants. It sounds like he only just managed to get the words out against their will. “I’m sure you’ve gotten that a lot lately, but I did. I wanted to reach out sooner.”

“That’s fine��”

“It isn’t,” Matt interjects, looking truly miserable, like he's the one who shot Foggy or something. “When I saw it on the news, I almost called. But there was so much going on, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to reach you directly because—well, you know.”

“Yes. I do.”

“And I thought of calling Karen, but I figured she was probably busy with…everything. And honestly, the news didn’t mention her but I worried she was hurt too.”

“Karen wasn’t at the event,” Foggy says, gently. “She stayed late at the White House to meet with someone for me, and I told her to take the night off when she was finished. It’s just about the only smart thing I’ve ever done in my life, and she absolutely read me the riot act for it when I woke up from surgery.”

“Good,” Matt says, with feeling, though Foggy’s not sure which part he's addressing. “And she’s okay?”

“She’s a pain in the ass, as always, but yeah. She’s good.”

Their waitress appears with their drinks at this stunningly awkward moment, which is a mild relief in its own way. She refers all her further questions hopefully in Matt’s direction, which is almost enough to make Foggy laugh but he manages to rein himself in. After she’s been pleasantly dismissed, they’re back to the stilted silence.

“I know it’s not the same as calling, or—I don’t know—sending something, but, for what it’s worth, I prayed for you,” Matt says, in the direction of the floor. Judging from his posture, he could be praying now.

No one has ever said that phrase to Foggy in a positive context before, so he doesn’t immediately know how to respond. “I appreciate that, Matt,” he eventually says, which is not something he’d ever say to the evangelicals who often claim they pray for him to change his mind on gay marriage, abortion, and school prayer.

“I don’t think you’re religious or anything like that, so maybe it doesn’t mean that much…”

“I’m not,” Foggy says carefully. He’s never seen Matt look this uncomfortable before, so he figures he should tread lightly. “But you are. That’s what makes it meaningful. Thank you for thinking of me.”

“I couldn’t stop,” he says, and it’s not the context in which Foggy wants to hear that a hot guy was thinking of him, but it still makes his heart race nonetheless. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Foggy.”

“You and the entire Democratic party, my friend.”

Matt laughs in a way that suggests he tried to fight it. “Glad to see your humility is still intact.”

“The neo-nazis are going to have to wake up much earlier if they want to take my oversized ego away,” Foggy says, lightly.

“And your sense of humor,” Matt says, wryly, which is as close as he’ll get to calling Foggy out for deflecting.

“Yes, you got me there. I’m obviously kidding. The DNC is actually terribly sad I survived. The President’s approval numbers would have skyrocketed while mourning a member of the senior staff.”

“Christ, Foggy. Don’t…talk like that. You’re not just some senior aide, you’re a full person. And you almost died.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so macabre, really. But you spend enough time in professional politics and you get very comfortable with your own replaceability.”

Matt looks like he wants to say something to that, if the way his mouth twists is any indication, but he just ends up glowering in the direction of his drink instead. Foggy fights the instinct to apologize for the way he’s chosen to cope. He’s working on healthier mechanisms in therapy but he’s also been instructed to not let other people’s expectations of how he should feel dictate how he does feel. He likes Matt a lot, but they’re nowhere near close enough that he owes him anything.

Still, he can’t help but add, “You gotta laugh at this kind of stuff. The only other alternative is to take it seriously and how can you? These morons took aim at the President because they felt the administration was too ‘diverse’ with too many women and minorities in positions of power and the only guy they really hurt was a WASP-y little nobody. Tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

“That He does,” Matt says, bleakly. “Though I imagine there’s quite a few things you stand for that the white supremacists could find it in their hearts to object to.”

Foggy feels his heart drop like a stone into his stomach, but he manages to keep his tone light in spite of it. “Ah, so the rumors have reached you.”

“I was speaking ideologically,” Matt replies, but doesn’t actually deny the thing Foggy accused him of.

“Yes, that’s true. Me and the neo-nazis are, blessedly, on opposite ends of the political spectrum. But even if we weren’t, shooting a queer man would probably still count as a victory to them.”

“You don’t think—?”

“No,” Foggy says, crossing his legs as effetely as possible for what he imagines is dramatic effect. “I think they would have been happy with anyone they hit. And, despite how careless I am with my reputation, I’m not out out, you know?”

Matt nods, again directing the gesture towards his drink. Foggy takes a long pull of his beer, and decides to do nothing to alleviate his discomfort. As much as he instinctively wants to, it’s not his job to make another grown man comfortable around him because he had the audacity to say the word 'queer' out loud. 

“I hope you don’t think so poorly of me that you’d imagine that’s how I would choose to broach the subject with you,” Matt says, eventually.

That certainly gives Foggy pause. “What do you mean?”

“If I wanted to ask if you were gay, I wouldn’t use ‘so, do you think you were the victim of a hate crime or just a regular crime?’ as my opener. I really hope you know that.”

Foggy laughs, unexpectedly. “You’re right. You are absolutely better than that. I apologize.”

“I don’t need an apology.”

“Well, too bad,” he says, amiably belligerent. He probably shouldn't find Matt's extremely careful handling of this topic so endearing and amusing, but he does. That probably says something about him, and likely it's nothing good, but this isn't therapy. He doesn't need to psychoanalyze himself to death about it right here and right now.

Matt spreads his hands out wide in a defensive gesture that Foggy also finds cute. “I'm serious. It's not—I wasn’t chastising you.”

“No, you were fishing for praise. And now you can have it: you’re far too nice to behave the way I implied you were behaving. I’m used to people wanting to speak in code on this subject, unfortunately, which is why I jumped to conclusions. Sorry about that.” Foggy exhales noisily, preparing himself, before he adds, “And, for what it’s worth, I’m not gay.”

Matt’s brow furrows in confusion. “You’re not?”

Foggy lets himself read way too much into Matt’s tone, as a little treat. It’s probably pure confusion, but since he’s treating himself to some delusion, he lets himself hear some disappointment in there too, in the moment before he corrects him. “I’m bisexual. It means I date people of the same gender and other genders too. I’ve had significant relationships with men and women and—”

“I know what bisexual means,” Matt interrupts, though he still appears to be thinking hard.

“Some people don’t,” he replies, casual. “They think it means ‘gay, but too precious to say so.’”

“That’s not what I think.”

“You don’t think I’m precious?” Foggy asks, faux offended.

“Oh, you’re precious alright,” Matt replies, with a stupidly sweet smile. “Adorable, even.”

Foggy blushes and thanks whatever deities he can remember that this extremely hot, straight guy that he can’t stop himself from flirting with is blind. “Good, I was worried for a second there.”

“Another toast to your deeply debilitating injury not having any negative effects on your ego.”

“Hear, hear!” Foggy says, and takes a long drink of his beer. Afterwards, he pauses and gathers his courage to say the thing that’s been on his mind all this time. “Listen, Matt, I don’t know what you had in mind when you invited me here tonight, but—”

Matt looks perplexed by this when he cuts him off. “I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression…”

“No! God, no!” Foggy has to laugh. For all it’s the first thing on his mind, he knows it’s the farthest thing from Matt’s. “Sorry, that was the wrong time for a conversational segue. I was not trying to implying that at all! I know you’re not hitting on me. Relax.”

“I am…? Relaxed, that is,” Matt says, though he doesn’t look it. He doesn’t look tense in a homophobic way, though, just a regular 'this is awkward' way, which, yes, there is a difference and Foggy is an expert in its discernment.

“I just meant, maybe you have some business to discuss, or maybe you just want to catch up, but I—I have something I want your advice on, I guess.”

“Okay.”

“It’s just that, you and I, we’re friends, but we don’t see each other all the time, and I need someone with a little distance, for the sake of perspective. You know?”

“Foggy,” Matt says, as he places his hand on Foggy's elbow gently, “did you hear the part where I already said ‘okay’?”

Foggy laughs, tension flooding out of him. “Right, yeah. I steamrolled right over that, didn’t I?”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Well, as you know, I was shot.”

“Yes.”

“Uh, by the KKK.”

“Yes, Foggy, I knew all this.”

“God, this all sounds so absurd,” Foggy says, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “How is this my life?”

“Politics,” Matt says, with a humorless smile.

“Yeah. Well, so the situation is this: Marci wants me to sue them.”

“She wants you to sue the Klan?”

“Well, her and the Southern Poverty Law Center want me to sue the Klan.”

“God, you weren’t kidding,” Matt says, looking a little green. “Your life is…unreal.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s the perfect way to describe it. Anyway, she thinks this is a good idea. Some people over there think we have a case. I…”

“You don’t?”

“Hey, I’m a lawyer by training, same as her, same as you, same as…well, everybody. I’m sure there’s a case there. They wouldn’t push me to do it if there was no chance. It’s just…she says it’s up to me, whatever I choose to do, but…”

“You don’t want to do this,” Matt says, without even having the good grace to pretend it’s a question. 

“I don’t,” Foggy admits for the first time out loud. “I really, really don’t. God, that makes me feel like a coward, but you’re right; I don’t.”

“You’re not a coward, Foggy. You took a bullet for the president.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” he says, nearly choking on his drink in his effort to not laugh—or cry—at that description. “I did no such thing. I was standing around, like a moron, when someone tried to shoot the president and missed. I didn’t dive in front of anyone. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Matt tips his head to the side, considering this. “You took a bullet while serving the president, then. Still not cowardly.”

“I don’t really know that much about your life, Matt, and I don’t want to assume, so here’s an insane question: have you ever been shot before?”

“Mercifully, no,” he says, gamely. “I’ve gotten into some scrapes in my life before, but that’s one I’ve never had to deal with.”

Foggy leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, bracing himself to explain this thing—this huge, terrifying thing that's been living in his brain for months—to another person, and risk it meaning nothing to them. “Well, then I’ll let you in on a secret about taking a bullet: you don’t have to be brave to do it. It’s just a thing that happens to you or it doesn’t. And if it does, it’s a split second and then you’ve done it. If that bullet had been a few inches over in any direction, I might have died, or it would have hit someone else entirely. Nothing I did or did not do contributed to my survival at all. It’s just…a thing that happened.”

Matt takes this all in with an outward appearance of calm and looks thoughtfully into the middle distance. “I’m sorry,” he finally says, after a few moments, his voice decidedly not calm.

“I don’t want you to feel bad for me, Matt. And I don’t want you making me into a hero, when I’m not. I just—”

“You want to move on,” he says, nodding. “And a lawsuit wouldn’t allow you to do that. You’d have to live and relive that night over and over again, in court, in the press, everywhere. I imagine you'd also have to step down from your position at the White House in order to do this and I'm guessing you don’t want to do that either. None of that sounds like what you want to be doing, if that's not too presumptuous of me to say."

Foggy swallows with great effort, because his throat has gone completely dry at having someone read his mind like that. “Yes.”

"It is presumptuous?"

"No," he says, shaking his head. "I meant, yes, you're right. That's—none of that is what I want to do."

“Then, that’s okay.”

“Is it?” Foggy asks, suddenly aware that this is a crazy conversation to have in a bar. “I mean, what if this lawsuit could help people?”

“It doesn’t have to be you,” Matt replies, touching his arm again. “Not this time.”

He snorts. “And what if I never get shot by a white nationalist ever again, Matt? What then?”

“It’ll be too soon,” Matt says, smiling and squeezing his arm. 

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant, Foggy. Give me some credit.”

“I’m saying, what if this is one of those ‘make lemonades out of lemons’ type situations?”

“It’s your life, though," Matt replies, with a shrug. "Yes, it would be brave to do this. Important, even. But you work for the White House. Most of the stuff that crosses your desk is important. Most of it has the power to change people’s lives in some way or other. For some people, this would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a difference. That’s not true for you. And it’s okay to admit that you’re tired of this fight. You got shot. You survived. And then you did the truly brave thing of continuing to wake up in the morning. You kept going to work, even though that’s the thing that nearly killed you. You didn’t resign or back down. You’re still showing up. So, no, you don’t need to sue anybody to prove you’re brave. You did that already. You can say no. I’m giving you permission, if that’s what you need.”

It is, startlingly, exactly what Foggy needed. It's nothing he would have been able to ask for, because he certainly couldn't have put it into words even a minute ago, but it is somehow the precise thing he needed someone to say to him for days now. Something that’s been tightening and hardening in his chest for a long time finally loosens and he takes his first unrestricted, unencumbered deep breath in what might be months. He has to take a drink to hide how shaky he suddenly feels.

“I can put that in writing, if you’d like,” Matt adds, when Foggy doesn’t immediately say anything in response. “I’m not sure how you foresee breaking the news to Marci going, but if it would help...”

Foggy waves a hand, pretending to be more calm than he actually is. “Marci won’t give me grief about it,” he says. “I mean, she will, but no more than usual. She’s used to me disappointing her, being my ex and all.”

“Marci is your ex?!”

“Yeah, you didn’t know that?”

“No, how would I—" Matt looks utterly perplexed by this revelation, for whatever reason. "I—where was I supposed to get that information from?”

“That’s a good point,” Foggy allows. “It was when we were in law school, so it’s basically ancient history. She just makes a point of telling everyone I got to where I am because I slept my way to the top, which is why I assumed you knew.”

“That’s just—” Matt shakes his head. “So hard to imagine.”

“You did claim to understand what bisexuality was earlier…”

“Yeah, it’s not the woman part that’s throwing me,” he says, sarcastically. “It’s the Marci part.”

“Despite the reputation she cultivates, she really doesn’t bite,” Foggy says, amused, “unless you ask nicely.”

Matt pulls a face. “Thank you for that.”

“Speaking of too much information…”

“Oh, I don’t like the sound of that segue.”

“Can I ask you another insane, possibly impertinent question?”

“No,” Matt says, but then immediately continues with, “I wasn’t always blind.”

“God,” Foggy says, burying his face in his hand, “everyone asks, don’t they?”

He shrugs. “It’s a reasonable question.”

“I’m still sorry. I just—I don’t know if this makes it better—but we talked a lot about me tonight and I feel like you know me better now, and I wanted to…I don’t know, reciprocate somehow? Does that make sense?”

Matt cocks his head to the side, as if considering him. It’s a funny little gesture—cute, too—but Foggy definitely feels like he’s being evaluated. It’s strange to feel that way when he knows Matt can’t actually see him.

“It does, make sense and make it better,” he finally says. “There was an accident when I was a kid. A complete freak accident.”

“How old were you?”

He seems surprised by this question, of all things. “I was eight.”

“Is that a weird thing to ask?”

“Not really, no.”

“I just—you look confused…”

“Yeah,” Matt says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess it’s just not people’s usual first follow up question. They tend to ask me what happened.”

Foggy winces. His own recent medical issues should have cured him of this, but he remains stubbornly squeamish. He’s not sure he wants to hear about an eight year old getting into a horrifying accident, especially when that kid grew up to be this person he likes so much.

“Do you want to tell me about that?” he asks, hesitantly.

Matt's laugh is just a surprised huff, but it’s a comforting sound. “No, I actually don’t, if I’m being honest.”

“Then feel free to tell me anything else about yourself, instead.”

Matt takes this to heart and tells him instead about other parts of his childhood—growing up with a single dad who ran a boxing gym, splitting his time in school between the debate club and the wrestling team. Foggy controls himself enough during that portion of the conversation not to ask if all that wrestling didn’t make him even a little bi-curious, which he considers a major victory, and talks about doing high school theater himself (which did make him a little bi-curious, a fact he does mention, because once he’s out with someone, he’s out) and breaking his dad’s heart by never making the varsity hockey team.

“Ice hockey?” Matt asks.

“Yeah. I was just okay, so I’m not surprised it didn’t work out for me in high school,” Foggy says. “I always wished there was field hockey for boys. I feel like I would have crushed that.”

Matt seems delighted by this answer. The rest of their conversation for the evening revolves around how they both grew up in the city and somehow their lives never intersected until that meeting almost two years ago now in D.C. They both applied and got into Columbia, but Matt ended up at Fordham because they offered him better financial aid. Same with law school, where Foggy continued at Columbia but Matt went on to St. John’s in Queens. Matt’s dad taught classes at the same YMCA where Foggy and his siblings learned to swim when they were little. Foggy mentions the diner his aunt and uncle own in Hell’s Kitchen and Matt’s certain he and his dad got lunch there a few times. If he asked his mom, Foggy is certain she’d know somebody who knows somebody who knew Jack Murdock back in the day. 

“How long has he been gone?” Foggy asks gently, once he clocks the fact that Matt only refers to his dad in the past tense. “If you don’t mind me asking, that is. Which you’re allowed to, by the way. Mind, I mean. You don’t have to answer.”

Matt smiles. “Wait, I’m sorry, can you explain that more clearly? Do I have to answer, even if I don’t want to?”

“Okay. Dick.”

That just makes him laugh. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist,” he says, and he’s still somehow smiling when he continues. “My dad died when I was sixteen.”

“Man, that is rough.”

“Yeah.”

“You and multiples of eight just do not get along, do you?”

Matt actually throws his head back and laughs at that one, which just makes Foggy wish they knew each other when they were kids even more. Nobody laughed at his math jokes back then, either. “I guess not. Although, I graduated law school and passed the bar when I was 24. And 32 wasn’t half bad either, so maybe I’ve grown out of it.”

“You’re what, 34, now?”

“Yeah, 35 next month.”

“Hey, happy early birthday,” Foggy says, clinking the glass of his nearly-empty second drink against Matt’s where it’s sitting on the table, and definitely not trying to figure out if that means he’s an Aries or a Taurus. “We’ll have to check back in when you turn 40.”

“Somebody knows their times tables,” Matt says, appreciatively, and Foggy is for sure in love with two-drink Matt.

“I can do long division too,” he replies, way flirtier than that sentence warrants, but he can’t help himself.

“In your head?!”

“Sometimes, baby,” Foggy says, with a wink that Matt can’t appreciate. 

“And you’ve got a steady job?” Matt exclaims, finishing his drink. “How are you single?”

“I could ask you the same thing, my man. Wait, you still have a job, right?”

“Yeah, but I cannot do long division for the life of me.”

“Oh, yeah. That’ll do it.”

“So, what’s your excuse?”

“Well," Foggy says, gesturing with his glass, "I work at the White House, which means I basically live at the White House and even when I’m not at the White House, it’s all I talk about, so dating is not something I have a ton of time for or much success with, when I get around to, uh, doing it.”

Matt makes an unimpressed face at that. “We just spent the last, I don’t know, forty-five minutes talking about everything but the White House, Foggy, so I’m having trouble believing you.”

Foggy drains his glass, and tries to think of a response that isn’t just asking Matt on a date already, since they apparently have such an easy time talking to each other. “Maybe the eligible singles of Washington D.C. are just less interesting than you,” he says, which isn’t asking him out but it’s only barely better.

Matt clears his throat awkwardly. “Foggy, I—”

“Or they’re afraid of inheriting my mountain of medical bills when things get serious,” Foggy interrupts, trying to get them back on solid ground. He definitely put them to close to the sun with that last comment.

“Well, that’s…valid,” Matt replies, fixing his jacket's cuff in what might be a nervous gesture. “The healthcare system in our country—”

“Oh, do not get me started,” Foggy interjects. “Hey, there’s another reason I’m single!”

Matt laughs. “Well, we have that one in common, then.”

“You’re really not seeing anyone?”

“Oh, I mean, I meet people,” he says, in a way that implies he’s getting laid regularly. Foggy kind of hates him for a second before he gets a hold of himself. “But I’m not dating anyone.”

“Right,” Foggy says. He might actually be a little relieved they didn’t know each other when they were younger. At least Matt knows him now as Foggy-who-works-at-the-White-House. There’s at least some cache to that. Foggy-who-understudied-for-the-role-of-Tevye-in-Fiddler-on-the-Roof was maybe less impressive. “Well, unfortunately for you, my friend, this is where our magical evening together must end. I’ve got to catch the train back to D.C. out of Penn Station in—” he checks his watch—“an hour, so I’d better get going.”

Matt frowns. “You have to go back tonight?” 

Foggy tells himself he’s projecting an air of disappointment onto Matt in this moment, because it’s definitely not actually there. “Yeah, unfortunately. I’ll probably go straight from Union Station to the West Wing.”

“I guess working for the White House really does put a pretty serious damper on your personal life, huh?”

“Oh, god," Foggy laughs, "is this the first time you’ve had drinks with someone and they haven’t gone home with you afterwards? Is this a new experience for you, Matt?”

He ducks his head, looking thoroughly embarrassed. “You’re such a dick.”

“Hey,” Foggy says, putting his hand on Matt’s shoulder comfortingly, “it happens to the best of us. Don’t beat yourself up, champ!”

“Seriously, you’re the actual worst,” Matt says, laughing. “I’m glad you’re leaving.”

“Aw, don’t be like that!”

“Believe it or not, I was actually trying to imply it’d be nice if you could stick around so you could see your family, or maybe a Broadway show, or something.”

“Nah, I’m not allowed to have any fun until they vote us out of office.”

“Bite your tongue!" Matt objects. "I like having you guys in the Oval office!”

“We’ll see how long that lasts,” Foggy says, standing to put on his coat. “But I appreciate the concern for my social life, and I’m sure my mother would appreciate that someone out there is trying to get me to visit, since I can’t be trusted to do it myself.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly an unbiased observer here. I’ve got a horse in this race too.”

“You do?”

“Sure,” Matt says, using the arms of his chair to push himself up to standing, “I like it when you visit too.”

Foggy ignores the way that stupid, minor admission makes his heart thump in his chest like it wants to break free and land directly in Matt’s hands and stay there forever. “Keep talking like that and you’ll never be rid of me,” he quips, weakly.

“Oh, no,” Matt replies, without a hint of inflection. “What a terrible fate.”

“Alright, enough getting my hopes up,” Foggy grumbles, as he picks up his scarf from the chair and loops it around his neck. “I’m going to miss my train, so…”

“I’ll walk you out,” Matt says, nodding in the general vicinity of the door as he shrugs into his own coat. 

“You don’t have to!”

“I’m going home after this, so I'm headed in that direction myself,” he says, with a smile that suggests he thinks Foggy’s being unnecessarily demure about all this.

“Well, fine, then.”

There’s the typical cluster of people by the front door, waiting for the rest of their group to arrive or bothering the hostess about something, so Foggy needs to gently and politely push his way through the throng to get out. Somewhere in there, he angles his arm back until it makes contact with Matt’s, a sort of invitation that he can always plausibly deny later, but he feels Matt’s hand settle on his elbow after a second. Foggy offers a friendly apology to the person he nudges out of their way and pushes the paneled door to the outside world with his free hand, letting in a gust of damp air. He drags Matt after him and tows them to a protected corner of the entryway, where there’s enough of an overhang to shield them from the rain for a moment without putting them directly in the way of the door.

“I should hire you as a bodyguard,” Matt says, cheerfully, as they crowd together in the corner. “That was very smooth.”

“Spend enough time with Secret Service agents around and you start to get a knack for crowd control,” Foggy says, and then regrets it, because it brings the specter of the shooting back into the conversation. He tries to fob it off with a joke. “Besides, you couldn’t afford me.”

“True enough,” Matt replies, with a soft smile. He looks like he’s going to say something else, but the door behind him opens suddenly and swings wide, which he feels as quickly as Foggy sees it and he’s forced to step closer to Foggy to avoid it.

Foggy’s hand comes up protectively and almost settles on Matt’s neck before he gets a hold of himself and puts it on his shoulder instead. It looks, more or less, like they’re hugging goodbye, he imagines, but it’s still an awkward position and it forces him to reckon, once again, with how good and warm Matt feels in his arms. It’s functionally torture. A group of well-dressed, attractive women—getting drinks after work, if he had to guess—emerge from the bar and the first one out gets the brunt of Foggy’s glare and glares right back.

“You really shouldn’t stand there,” she says, probably more harshly than she meant to with the defensiveness of someone who narrowly avoided doing something wrong by a very slim margin. “It’s not safe.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Foggy replies, not particularly interested in getting into an argument here and now.

Matt steps away from him, then, and clears his throat like he’s going to say something but doesn’t actually follow it up with anything. He shifts enough that his face is no longer hidden from the light over the door and the woman sees him properly for the first time. Her face clears of some of its annoyance and the fight goes out of her immediately.

“Sorry about that,” she says, much more kindly, though her eyes land on Foggy’s hand, still clutching Matt’s shoulder, and her expression remains somewhat wary. Foggy takes his hand away guiltily.

“Don’t worry about it,” Matt says, politely but disinterestedly, as he adjusts his jacket. After the woman and her group have swanned off into night, he clears his throat and adds, just to Foggy, “At least she didn’t do the whole ‘What are you? Blind?’ routine. That always ends awkwardly for everyone.”

“Yeah, I imagine it would,” Foggy says, mildly, even though he's feeling what's likely a very inappropriate surge of protective feeling towards Matt right now. “You okay?”

Matt nods. “Fine. Yeah.”

“Do you think people generally feel worse in those situations because you’re blind and they almost injured you, or because they’ve clearly ruined their shot with someone so handsome?”

“Shut up, Foggy,” Matt says, but his thoughtful expression has been disrupted by his embarrassed smile.

“What? It really could go either way!”

“Don’t you have a train to catch?”

“Weren’t you just saying you like it when I visit?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” he says, smiling wider.

“Yeah, I figured that might happen,” Foggy mutters and then surveys the scene. The rain is coming down heavily now, and this is a busy street populated with bars and restaurants that are full of young professionals meeting clients or blowing off steam after work. Getting a cab is going to be a nightmare. “Alright, here goes nothing.”

He steps out onto the sidewalk from under the shelter of the overhang in front of the bar, and opens his umbrella. Matt steps forward with him, presumably recognizing the sound and knowing it means he’ll stay dry. Without thinking, Foggy hands off the umbrella to Matt, whom he realizes doesn’t have one of his own, and lifts his free hand to try to hail a taxi. As predicted, many of the cabs he can see further down the street are being claimed before they can get to him by other people as anxious to get out of the rain as he is. 

“You don’t know how to do that really loud whistle that people do in the movies to get cabs, by any chance?” Foggy asks, turning back towards Matt. 

Matt shrugs. “It doesn’t actually work in real life, I don’t think.”

“But you can do it?” he asks, impressed.

“It’s not going to get you a cab!”

Foggy shakes his head, disappointed. “Fine, deprive me of my movie moment. Taxi!”

Finally, after several more attempts, a taxi pulls to a stop in front of him and a few people get out, presumably to go to the bar they just left. Matt steps forward to hand over the umbrella.

“It was nice seeing you,” Matt says, as Foggy grabs the door.

“Yeah, you too,” Foggy says, before turning to the driver. “He’s going to Hell’s Kitchen. What’s your address?”

Matt looks at him like he’s grown a spare head. “I thought this was for you.”

“I’ll get another. It’s fine.”

“Foggy, your train…”

“I’ve got time and you haven’t got your own umbrella. That’s easy math to me, so get in the damn cab.”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind the rain. I can get my own cab, or walk. Really!”

“Or you could take this cab right here and stop arguing with me.”

“But you’ve got to get to Penn Station!”

Foggy sighs, feeling silly as he lingers by the door of the cab, having an argument with Matt while the cabbie eavesdrops and rain soaks through the sleeve of his jacket. “I grew up here, remember? It's not that far, and besides, I could get to 34th Street with my eyes closed.”

“So could I,” Matt points out, amused, which is fair.

“Just let me be a gentleman and take the cab, please,” Foggy says, exasperated. “I’ll feel a lot better knowing you got home safely.”

“You’re really…” Matt pauses, like he’s searching for the right word and can’t find it, which means Foggy is left there to consider what exactly Matt thinks he is while rain drops tap melodically on the fabric of the umbrella above their heads and the barrier gives the erroneous impression that they’re separate from the rest of the world for a moment. He gets a second to watch the amber and white lights of the city freckle across the bridge of Matt’s nose as he thinks too hard about whatever it is he’s trying to say, and Foggy gets his movie moment after all, because there’s a split second there where he feels like Carey Grant or something close, standing on one side of a rain soaked taxicab door with the object of his affections on the other, arguing about who should take the cab. He thinks about the end of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which doesn’t star Carey Grant but a similar type of handsome mid-century man, and wishes he didn’t have a five-hour train ride to a different city and a lonely trek back to the office ahead of him. He wishes very suddenly that he and Matt were headed to the same place, or maybe just that he’d never left New York and that he was only a quick cab ride away from home on a rainy night like this. It’s all foolishness, of course, but he wishes for it, nonetheless.

“In or out, gentlemen,” the cab driver calls from the front seat. 

Foggy’s about to say something to him, asking for another minute to finish this argument, when Matt surges forward to hug him. It’s awkward, of course, because there’s the matter of the car door between them, but his arms wrap around Foggy’s neck and they end up pressed cheek-to-cheek. It feels so stupidly nice that Foggy’s brain stops working momentarily. He can’t even imagine what anything more would feel like; it would probably kill him.

“I’ll see you around, Matt,” he says, awkwardly, after a moment. He even pats him on the back, like they're estranged cousins who only see each other at Christmas or something.

“Yeah,” Matt says, faintly, as he lets go of Foggy and steps back. “Don’t be a stranger.”

“Sure,” Foggy replies, trying to sound light and easy, but feeling every inch of distance between them like a personal affront right now. It’s like there’s an alternate universe breaking off from this one right here in this moment, one where he and Matt don’t go their separate ways at all, one where they share the cab with only one stop in mind, and he’s not too terrified of rejection to ask Matt a simple and inoffensive question once and for all. But he told Matt earlier tonight and he meant it: he’s not brave. The fiction of maybe someday in his mind is better than knowing for sure what he cannot have. He’ll take delusion over disappointment any day. 

“And don’t get shot again,” Matt says, interrupting his thoughts.

Foggy laughs, unwillingly. “Okay. I promise.”

“I’m serious,” Matt replies, with a smile that might even be fond. “If it happens again, I’ll come down there and kick your ass myself.”

“Well, now I’m going to get shot just to see you again!”

“You’re impossible,” Matt says, as he ducks into the cab. Foggy moves to shut the door behind him, but Matt stops it with a hand. “I’m serious, though. Take care of yourself, Foggy.”

“I will,” he says, feeling like Deborah Kerr or Audrey Hepburn or whoever now. “Just for you, I will. I promise.”

Matt laughs, which is a good sound to be left with until they see each other again. “Good. See you around.”

“Goodnight, Matt,” Foggy says, far too wistfully, and closes the door. He hears Matt give the driver his address as the car pulls away from the curb with the slushy noise of tires over wet pavement. He stands there, stupidly, watching the cab disappear down the street and around a corner, letting more rain soak into his jacket and drum against his umbrella for a long moment before he’s ready to return to reality and set about hailing another taxi for himself.

[hufflepuffwritingstuff2]

I have a request. Recently I dreamed that a friend of mine and I were running from someone and he got shot in the ankle. When we got to a safe spot, I asked “you good?” And he responded with “no” and collapsed into my arms. Could you write a short story with this?

Hi Anon! Thanks for your patience while I got around to this, and for requesting this! Here you go! I kinda added on to the story, I hope that’s okay!

Caretaker bolted down the darkened streets, looking to their side every now and then to make sure Whumpee was keeping up. They both just had to stumble upon some gang making a weapons deal, didn’t they? Couldn’t they have had a fun, normal evening?

Gunshots rang out from behind them. Caretaker heard Whumpee stumble, but they soon caught back up. Caretaker grabbed Whumpee’s hand and rounded a corner. The police station was dead ahead, if they could just reach it.

Caretaker threw the door to the police station open and ushered Whumpee inside. They looked behind them to check for their pursuers. Luckily, the location had scared them off. Caretaker put their hands to their knees and panted. They looked over at Whumpee as officers surrounded them to see what the commotion was.

“You good?” Caretaker asked.

Whumpee looked down at their ankle; Caretaker and the officers followed their gaze. Blood was pouring out from a gunshot wound.

“No…” Whumpee mumbled.

Whumpee’s knees buckled. Caretaker dove to catch them as they collapsed. Whumpee’s eyelids began to flutter.

“Help…” Caretaker said, “help! Please, someone call an ambulance!”

An officer nodded, calling an ambulance.

It was only when Whumpee was strapped to a gurney and taken to the hospital did an officer grab Caretaker by the shoulder.

“What happened?” the officer asked.

“We were on a walk,” Caretaker explained, “we stumbled on some kind of weapon’s deal. One of the members chased us down. They must’ve shot Whumpee.”

The officer nodded.

“We’ll need a full statement from you in due course,” the officer said, “but for now, let’s get you to your friend.”

Caretaker received a full police escort to the hospital.

Hang in there, Whumpee, Caretaker thought.

…

Caretaker was there when Whumpee finally woke up. They stirred in the hospital bed, their IV line shifting with them.

“Hey,” Caretaker said, “how are you feeling?”

Whumpee turned their head to look at Caretaker. It took them a minute to respond.

“Weird,” Whumpee finally answered, “am I dead?”

“Nah,” Caretaker said, “but I’d be lying if I said you didn’t scare me for a minute.”

The officer from before entered the room.

“We’ve found the person who attacked you both,” the officer explained, “they’re being charged as we speak. We’ll still need a statement from you, Whumpee.”

“The cops know my name,” Whumpee gasped, “who told them?”

“It’s uh, on your little whiteboard up there,” the officer said, nodding to the patient information board.

“Witchcraft,” Whumpee mumbled.

“You really are out of it, huh?” Caretaker laughed.

“I’ll let you rest; I can take a statement when you’re more lucid.”

With that, the officer left. Caretaker looked down at Whumpee, who was drifting back off. The important thing was, they were safe. That was all that mattered.

ko-fi

tags: @mythixmagic @infinityshadows @fishtale88 @thelazywitchphotographer @the-beasts-have-arrived @princessofonwardsworld @surplus-of-sarcasm

[limeentertainment]

— project green: together we grow !

“are you guys eating well?”, han seokjin asks somewhere to the right of the camera pointing at the trainees. “who’s doing all the cooking? is it this guy?”, he points to LUCIEL. “if he takes care of the food as well as he does the coffee machine, you guys are eating like kings, huh?” it’s weird to see the dance coach that gave them all a hard time trying to crack a joke suddenly. seokjin has been to the apartment a few times during the last few weeks, though this is the first time he has all project members sit together.

“to start off, i want to congratulate you all for finishing the first mission successfully!” he claps for the trainees, and encourages them to celebrate the moment as well. “you have taken your first step in this journey, and you did so together. and with this, PROJECT GREEN officially starts!” the last word is spoken in english, and it comes with a sheepish grin. it’s clear that the manager is doing his best to amp it up for the camera.

“i am here to report on the second mission.” he pulls up a card with the lime entertainment logo on it, and reads from it. “PROJECT GREEN second mission, go! as we look to the future, it’s important to always remember where you started. your roots are what define how strong you’ll grow, and it’s time we set a good foundation for our members!”

seokjin then explains that, in order for the second mission to be a success, project members must prepare two cover performances of senior artists in lime entertainment, to be presented in front of the project manager along with other staff members on saturday, september 28, in the main lime entertainment training facility. members must decide on what two songs they’ll cover, work on the line distribution and any changes or remixes they would like to do if at all, and coordinate with staff members to design the outfits and the stage for the performance. these two songs will ideally cover a wide range of skills that the members can show their audience! 

project members will lay their roots and build up on their skills using these performances as a starting point. “in the future, we will look back on this moment fondly, and we will be able to show the world how much we’ve grown since.” seokjin finishes the instructions with a loud fighting!

“oh, and one more thing”, he starts putting things away as dinner is served, as a reward for finishing the first mission. “starting this month, we will have two co-leaders to help manage the group while i’m not around. and these leaders will be… two of you! each month, a new pair will be selected. for now, let’s go with…” seokjin looks around the room deep in though, and then points to each chosen leader. “SIWOO and SEOJUN!

good luck, members, and may you grow strong!

the second mission will run until 11:59pm est at the end of monday, september 30. the third mission will be revealed on october 2, during the weekly queue. please tag all posts related to this with lime:projectgreen2.

as stated in the post, muns will have free reign to choose mostly everything about the performances, though of course the events admods are available at all times should muns need any help getting the performance together. 

there is no need to write additional solos on each performance. the writing requirements stay the same as in the last mission:

on writing requirements: at this time, muns may use up to 2 replies regarding project green for regular monthly trainee threads since muses will still be attending regular training schedules at lime entertainment. we do ask that some of your replies this month be about general training and not solely about project green both as a way to further your muse’s skills and so non-project muses have writing partners available. project members are welcome to participate in company workshops as well at this time.

SIWOO and SEOJUN were selected as the first co-leaders of project green! they are meant to help resolve conflicts in the group, be decision makers and help with engagement and compliance, as well as make sure that all chores around the dorm are being taken care of. project manager seokjin is still in charge of the group, and both siwoo and seojun will report to him throughout the month.

! attention: members, over the course of this month you may receive a submission in your inbox! this will be from your project manager asking you a question, and it is meant to get the spontaneous reaction of the trainee on camera. the questions will be related to their life in the dorms, their new training routine, and their expectations for the project, as well as other personal questions to help build up their profile. muns do NOT need to answer this with an in-character solo, if they don’t want to - a simple ooc post with some bullet points will suffice!