#well tracie begs for both so...

[spacebuns24]

Selwyn Kane and Mythology

( Hold on cause this gets super crazy towards the end )

Ok so I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but this is basically my findings from all of my research on the references of mythology in Legendborn, and how it relates to Sel.

Firstly, star signs. I already went over Bree’s star sign a while ago and found a lot of connections to her story so far, but Sels requires a bit more theorizing. Sel is a Gemini, whose myth begins with describing how Zeus seduced Leda by turning into a swan ( while she was pregnant ), causing her to have twins. The immortal son of Zues, Pollux, and her mortal son Castor.

When Castor is eventually killed in battle ( which probably has NOTHING to do with what’s going to happen to Sel 😃 ), Pollux begs Zeus to share some of his immortality with him, allowing them to spend half their time in the heavens, and half there time on earth.

Secondly, in Greek mythology, Nyx ( the nickname given to Natasia ) and Erebus, are married and have lots of kids, but their “main” two are Aether ( 👀 ) and Hemera, the God of light ( and the first Primordial god ) and the goddess of daylight. Now truth be told Aether and Hemera are usually depicted as either twins/siblings or husband and wife ( that’s Greek mythology for you 😭 ) but I’m pretty sure my point still stands that they’re definitely connected to Selwyn in some way.

These both hint to a few similar points but one I want to point out is that they both include twins and/or siblings, which is a bit weird considering Sel doesn’t have any siblings ( that we know of, I sincerely hope that Sel and Valec are brothers ) so I think that it represents Sels “demon” as Tracy makes of point of describing it as an actual identity for the description of what Sel is going to do during Oathbound ( like maybe it’s a double meaning of him facing his past and the actual demon trying to take over his mind ).

This could actually mean a few things, one, I feel like both of these story’s are heavily hinting at the fact that the shadow king is Sel’s dad ( I mean we know that the shadow king can shapeshift so I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Zeus shapeshifted to trick Leda into having kids with him ). But this got me thinking, why would the Shadow king go through all this trouble of killing the og Erebus, seducing Natasia, and staying in the order decades after the fact. Like it’s true that the Shadow King could’ve just loved her but I don’t feel like that’s the whole reason. Now hear me out me out cause this is a little bit crazy, but we hear how Morgraine describes that the shadow crown and the shadow king is similar to the relationship of Excalibur and Arthur and how they both are aether weapons. So what if the shadow king lost his connection to the crown once he was defeated by Arthur, and now is trying to find it again. How does this relate to Selwyn? Well what if the shadow crown gets passed down from generation to generation kinda like how each new generation of Arthur descendants have a chance to be called and wield Excalibur. But in the order the other knights descendants have to be called first, so maybe the shadow court has to come together in order for the crown to be “activated” and allow the Shadow King to find it, and maybe he thought that Natasia had a good enough chance of conceiving a child who was strong enough to potentially be the next wielder of the shadow crown or a member of the shadow court. Or maybe Natasia was such a baddie that the SK just wanted to bang 😭.

[idontknowreallywhy]

Resurface 31 - Review

Happy Birthday Virgil 💚 I didn’t get you a present but I finally got you and your brother back on the path to Best Brodom. Just, um, bear in mind it’s just the start of the journey and maybe don’t read the last paragraph until tomorrow?

I hope this is ok, I have agonised because this chapter contains Virg headcanon that is dear to me and I just hope I did it (and his inner voice) justice. It’s probably too long but… well… here it is. Thanks to @sofasurf and @astranite for the encouragement / chivvying / poking with stick to just get this done and out there.

Story so far

They had to start somewhere… literally at the top is as good a place as any, right?

💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚

“You’ve dyed it! You’ve dyed your hair!”

Scott blushed and his hand returned to his forehead, as if to hide the evidence.

“Uh, yeah… thought I might give it a go…” he cleared his throat awkwardly “I couldn’t find exactly the right colour it was kind of hard to tell on the website… who knew there were so many types of brown, huh?” He paused and grabbed a dishcloth to rub irritably at the gel residue on his fingers before glancing over at his brother. “I mean, obviously YOU would.”

Virgil narrowed his eyes. Scott wasn’t kidding, the former greys were a much redder shade of brown than the rest and on close inspection looked a little… odd… but he wasn’t about to make his brother even more self-conscious by pointing it out. He picked up his coffee with both hands and took a long sip to buy himself some time to work out what to say.

“You don’t approve?” The chuckle was more than a little forced.

“You don’t need my approval, Scott. I’m just… surprised, I guess? You’d always swore you’d never dye it. Didn’t you say you’d earned every last one of them and had nothing to be ashamed of?”

His brother snatched up his own coffee and feigned a sudden interest in the view from the window.

“Is no big deal… you were bothered by it so I just sorted it out.”

“I was bothered by it?”

“Uh, yeah. When… the other day when you were really… err…” Scott cleared his throat “… upset, you said so and I figured maybe you were worried I was getting old or… or maybe I was looking too much like… uh, well…”

“I complained… about your hair?” Virgil was baffled. The silver streaks were the subject of much banter in the Tracy household but for a long while had been a part of who Scott was. While in theory Virgil might have said almost anything in his state of confusion, he had still been himself even while his perception of the world around him had been faulty. He just couldn’t imagine being negative about a feature he’d always felt rather affectionately for.

“Well, not in so many words but…”

“Can you remember my exact words?” Virgil knew full well that if Scott had been worrying about this enough to break his avowed hair dye abstention he’d have gone over what had been said again and again and again. And then probably again just for good measure. Sure enough, the response was immediate:

“You said you didn’t want me to be grey. And then you literally begged me not to go grey. So I decided not to. It’s not a big deal.”

Virgil closed his eyes.

Ah.

Sometimes it would be handy to see the world in the simpler, more solid way other people did, as if everything was a hollow photograph existing in straightforward three-dimensional space. He’d never choose to live life without the full range of his sensory experiences and feelings overlaid in glorious technicolour… but he learned very quickly other people, even artists, did not see the same and thus he tended to avoid any accidental references to it.

Obviously he was less careful when he was out of his mind.

He suppressed the sigh and took a measured breath.

Virgil opened his eyes to see his brother had already drained his coffee and was almost vibrating with the effort of maintaining his fake casual stance leaning on the kitchen island. He’d have expected pacing by now except that this was his big brother’s way of showing that not only did he want to hear his brother out, he wanted to reassure Virgil he was, definitely, listening.

He grabbed Scott’s hand which was discharging some of the discomfort via quiet but incessant tapping on the work-surface and interlaced their fingers. The relentless movement continued more softly and for a moment Virgil allowed himself time to notice the vibrations travelling through his knuckles and up his arm and for his mind to quietly acknowledge the subtle shift in rhythm from need-to-explode to need-to-connect. He mirrored it back and Scott squeezed his fingers in response.

“Let’s walk for a bit?”

Virgil knew it was the right call even before the relief flooded Scott’s face and he made a beeline for the door.

They made their way down on to the deck and then up the stone staircase via the roundhouse and took the path towards the caldera.

“I didn’t mean your hair, Scooter.”

“You didn’t?”

“No, I don’t think so. I reckon I can explain but you’ll need to give me a minute and try not to be too… literal about it?”

“I can do that.”

“Right.” The path narrowed and demanded single file. Virgil gestured for Scott to lead the way and smiled wryly to himself as the steep incline accentuated the slight height difference between them to the extent that his current view of his brother was very much the waist region. Nevertheless, he could see from the slightly uneven movement of his hips that the leggier man was moderating his stride so as not to get too far ahead to hear.

Ha, he was so familiar with his brother’s body language he could even read his…

“So…?”

Oops.

“Sorry, got lost in my own head there.”

“It’s not a problem.” Scott’s hurried response betrayed his even-worse-than-usual anxiety for a brother and Virgil really needed to fix that asap. But first he needed to sort out the immediate confusion.

“Ok… you know I see a lot more things in colour than most people do?”

“Two makes forest green noise and One makes gold and light blue.” Scott immediately confirmed and Virgil experienced a little rush of warmth at the thought his big brother had felt the detail important enough to commit to memory.

“Yeah! Yeah, that’s the kind of thing. Well it isn’t just sound it’s… everything? Smell, taste, heat… and err… kind of… mood? Not exactly mood… um... The way people are? Their personalities, almost?” Virgil faltered a little, desperately searching for better words to form a neat box around the web of overlapping sensations in his head, but it felt much like the time he’d tried to explain to Alan why magenta made his teeth fizz. Some things just… were. Maybe if he tried to tie it to something easier to pin down:

“Ok, maybe the best way I can explain is - you know it was me that picked the colours of the birds? Well, One, Two and Four anyway…”

“I didn’t!” Scott was evidently curious “I never thought to wonder who did.”

“Well, it was me. Mostly. Well a bit. Brains was going to have them all in silver and I suggested that some form of colour coding might be a plan, for easier recognition compared with other organisations’ ships and machinery and bright colours are a more friendly sight for scared rescuees, you know?” Virgil paused to use his breath to navigate a particularly steep part of the track. Scott, possibly misinterpreting the pause for uncertainty sent encouragement over his shoulder: “Makes sense to me. Our public face needs to be unthreatening.”

“Yeah, exactly and in that time just after the… um, well it needed to be clear they weren’t military ships…” there was a grunt of agreement from in front. “It took a while to decide which would be which colour. For Three Dad picked red because in little Allie’s mind rockets were always red and it was his way of reaching out to the little guy I guess. But it’s not right really, Alan is light blues and bright purple. And of course One should have been primarily Cerulean to contrast with the Maya Blue but he wanted silver to represent speed and so… we had to compromise on her design but I did win with Four because he thought she should be orange, like a life buoy, you know? But I said no - Gordon’s bird couldn’t possibly be anything other than sunshine yellow. John picked his own so I didn’t get involved there but…”

“Virg, you’re losing me a little. Alan is… blue and purple?”

“Light blue. Bright purple. When he’s cheerful, yes. He gets steely blue when he’s angry same as you.”

“So we all have a colour?”

“Yeah. Well, a palette of them. Kind of. It’s… I’m sorry it’s the best way I have of describing the presence you have. Words can be a bit limiting sometimes.”

“Maybe you should try painting it?” Scott‘s voice lifted a little and he was looking at him intently. “I’d like to see us the way you do.”

They had finally reached the top of the volcano and stood together admiring the view to the east. A vigorous breeze, sharpened by the bright metallic tang of salt, dried the moisture from Virgil’s lips and he pressed them together with a doubtful hum.

“I’ve tried before and it didn’t really…” the glimmer of eagerness dulled and Virgil hurriedly sought to breathe life back into it “but I guess I could give it another go?”

His big brother smiled and lit up again for a moment before the cloud crossed back over his face and his eyes dropped from Virgil’s.

“And I’m… grey, then?”

“No! Not usually! You’ve always been blue, like the sky… there are so many shades of it, with hints of yellow or gold…”

“There’s a but coming, I can feel it.”

Virgil grabbed Scott’s hand again as if to reassure himself his brother wouldn’t float away before he managed to express this.

“Sometimes it’s like you fade a little.”

“I fade?”

“You try to be a lot of things, Scotty and it’s admirable, it really is, and you do it so well but sometimes I worry there isn’t enough of you left to be you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You’re blue when you laugh at your own jokes, or smotherhen us and make a leaning tower of pancake… when you beat Gordy at his own prank game or act all melodramatic when you’re smuggling in the sweets Grandma doesn’t approve of. When someone says pie and your eyes gleam and when you randomly recite Shakespeare inaccurately and out of context or run up the stairs for no reason and surprise hug Allie… those times you’re a rainbow of blues. In the field when you’re problem solving at the speed of light and oh! That time you flew Shadow just for fun you came back shining so brightly…”

Yet again at the mention of Shadow, Scott had startled but recovered quickly and deflected:

“My Shakespeare is always in context.”

“Sure it is, Scott. And it’s very YOU.”

A flicker of resolve hardened his brother’s expression and Virgil was suddenly terrified as to how his clumsy explanation could have been interpreted by someone who was already chronically shackled to the ‘brave face’ impulse…

“But Scott, listen to me, this is important.”

He waited until his brother dropped his eyes from the horizon and met his own.

“I’m not saying it’s just when you are happy, you know? When you’re worried or angry or even sick or even… no, especially when you let yourself be vulnerable for one damn second, you’re you then too.”

“Then…” Scott sagged a little and an edge of indigo desperation coloured his voice “I don’t understand what the grey thing is meant to mean!”

“The grey thing… I guess it’s how my brain interprets the way I sometimes miss you when you are right in front of me. When you get hidden by everything else you think you are supposed to be. You lead so naturally, you do it without even trying but sometimes… sometimes you put on that damn grey baldric and it smothers you.”

“But the baldric is silver. My baldric is silver to match One!”

“It used to be blue though. Blue to match you.”

“Oh. And that’s what is bothering you?”

“No! No, I’m not saying the baldric needs to change. You can have salmon pink or zebra stripes if you like - that’s what I meant about not being too literal about this. I just… I wish you wouldn’t feel like you had to act like someone else. Just… be you, you know?”

A slight squeeze of the hand said message received but Virgil knew it might take a while to process. An unspoken agreement saw them taking the shallower broader path down towards the shore.

“Please don’t say that thing about the baldrics to Gordon, you know he’ll come up with something hideous.”

“He really would. It’d be burnt orange with pink polka dots within minutes.”

“I can just see it now.” Scott facepalmed melodramatically then ran his fingers into his hairline.

“So you weren’t worrying about the hair?”

“No, Scott. I don’t have any problem with your hair. I’m sorry I confused you. I just want you to be happy and be yourself. That’s literally all I would have meant by it.”

“I’m trying, Virgil, I really am.”

“I know. I’m proud of you.”

He really had been trying. Scott’s attempts to reconcile his past and present and figure out who he was again had actually been a source of real joy to Virgil. It had been so long coming.

Years of encouraging, nagging… in all honesty borderline-harassing his big brother to break out of his self-imposed exile from life, to take the opportunities to enjoy himself when they came… and finally, FINALLY there had been some movement. Previously there were deleted emails, invitation cards hidden in drawers… if it wasn’t for Penny’s sake or for the good of the business, Scott didn’t see it as worthwhile. But this time, Scott had pinned the gilded rectangle of card to the noticeboard with a hurried circle around the date and a carefully inked question mark.

It was bitterly ironic that after all that time… even after actually standing over Scott with folded arms and while he messaged his friend to RSVP in the positive… when he’d nearly actually succeeded in nudging his brother into the light somehow as a result Virgil himself had run headlong into the dark. A cold, slimy tendril of fear crept into his heart and asked who on earth Virgil thought he would be if Scott didn’t need him anymore…

He shook it off because it was ridiculous.

Not to mention selfish.

“Scott, I’m sor….” he began but his brother had not been party to the developing inner monologue and was still some way behind him, despite leading the way off the rocky track on to the beach.

“So I can get rid of this?” He gesticulated irritably at his own forehead

“YES, Scooter.”

“Thank heaven, I hate it. Will it wash out?”

“Eventually. I have to top mine up every few washes.”

“Yours literally obliterates light particles though.”

The affectionate shoulder nudge was brief but it heralded a return of the easy natural proximity he’d missed so badly. His brother was back by his side and Virgil realised with a shock that breathing was suddenly effortless again.

There were other things they needed to discuss, difficult things he knew were coming and no doubt even more difficult things he was still as yet unaware of. But for a few moments, Virgil was more than happy to enjoy the respite of their well-rehearsed haircare banter:

“That’s not the dye it’s the secret ingredient. I told you, quit the super shiny addiction…

“SUPREME shiny…”

“Pfft, you know it’s the same formula, you’re just paying for the fancier packaging.”

“Not true, it’s a far higher quality product.”

Virgil poked his brother in the side of the head “And yet by some miracle, chemically identical.” He made a show of wiping the tip of his finger off on Scott’s shirt while meeting the faux-glare dead on. His brother’s eyebrows said outraged, the sparkle in the blue said bring-it-on. “Ditch the dark side Scotty, leave the slimy stuff to the teenagers and join team pomade. More natural, less greasy. Best tip Dad ever gave me.”

His brother’s flinch was fleeting but sent a shockwave through the narrow pocket of air between the two of them. Scott’s eyes slipped from his, the pocket widened and the warmth suddenly drained out of the sun.

💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙

[gumnut-logic]

Along the way (Part 6)

Sweetapple | Dear Mr Tracy | Along the way - Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

Okay, you get this bit early both because @womble1 asked kindly for it and because I'm rather ridiculously excited about it (and it's Fibre Feast day and I will be going out with my sister and buying yarn :D )

Again, many thanks to the totally amazing @onereyofstarlight for keeping me company in my crazy for a good part of yesterday, her readthroughs, and suggestions that led to the ending of this part.

And also, all the thanks to the wonderful people who read yesterday's part without this part and still supported me and didn't throw rocks ::hugs you all tight::

Again, warnings for darkness and water, but only for the first part.

I really, really hope you enjoy this.

-o-o-o-

Was your life supposed to flash across your mind when someone you loved was moments away from dying?

Alex let out a whimper as he struggled for breath after holding it too long yet again.

“Allie, you need to go for help.”

“Not leaving you.” He gasped in as much air as he could and dove.

All that engineering training, all his efforts to save people with Siliwrap, all his fanboying over the Thunderbirds and International Rescue. He had brains and this was a simple problem, there had to be a solution!

This time he fumbled around looking for something that might be able to help him move the object that had his mother’s foot trapped.

Time was running out. The building was falling into the river and taking them with it.

There had to be a solution.

His fingers slid over unfamiliar shapes in the darkness, most hard and unforgiving, as solid in not moving as the culprit holding his mum.

His fingernails skittered over something rough and he grabbed at it. Wood?

At a guess it was a piece of the building, like so many he had scampered over today.

Breathe. He needed air.

He climbed upwards, for a moment terrified he had lost orientation in the dark, only to break the surface with relief.

He gulped in oxygen and dove again.

He had a length of wood; he was pretty sure by weight. Hurriedly he gauged its length and width and, fumbling through the wreckage, grabbed a loose piece of rock.

A quick nip to the surface, where he again had to ignore his mother’s protests, and he was under again, jamming the rock up against the wall beside his mother. He edged the end of the wood down into the narrow gap beside his mum’s ankle.

Holding the combo steady, he again surfaced.

He gasped out the words. “Okay, Mum, I’m going to try and lever the gap wider. As soon as you can, pull your foot out.”

She drew in a breath. “Okay.”

“Get ready.” He dove again, his head ever so light from the fluctuating oxygen supply.

A long enough lever could move the world. Or at least that was the engineering theory. A brief flicker of the lecturer who had hammered that one home. Time to prove it.

Alex had his own body mass, but he lacked purchase. He reached out a hand and gripped the sink, which was now well underwater, and using his feet put everything he had behind moving that lever.

Nothing.

Come, on, damn you!

He shoved and kicked at it, begging the wood not to snap, to take the strain and free his mum!

Please!

Was it possible to cry underwater?

The smallest of movement, he almost missed it amongst the flurry of air bubbles. He shoved again, straining with everything he had…

And his mother was grabbing him, pulling him to the surface, hugging him within an inch of his life. “I’m free, Allie.”

Thank, god. He clung to her for the second it took his breathing to catch up to his heart rate.

As if realising it was losing its prey, the building creaked and shifted again.

Hell.

He found his mother’s hand and gripped it tight, before starting to feel about in the dark, looking for the way he had fallen in.

Apparently one advantage of the building shifting was to lower the doorway, enabling Alex to both find it easily enough and gain a purchase on door frame. With short, somewhat breathless instructions, he helped his mum climb over him, out of the water, and into the cafe proper.

Or what was left of it.

Dragging himself up after her, he wrapped her arm around his shoulders, and although it was impossible to stand upright, he helped her through the maze and up towards the light.

-o-o-o-

“Thunderbird Two, we have a report of a building falling into the river near your location.” John’s voice was crisp and professional. “Emergency services claim there are at least two lifesigns still inside.

A glance at the details sent to his comms had Virgil swearing. A museum of all things and so close, just over the road.

He banished thoughts of Alex.

“FAB, Thunderbird Five.” He turned to Gordon. “Might need you on this one, Fish.”

“Whatever you need, big bro.”

No Thunderbird Two. Just big bro and whatever he needed.

Virgil briefly gripped Gordon’s shoulder and then they were moving.

Helmet on, exosuit, John was already streaming data to his HUD as he once again ran across the parking lot, this time in a different direction.

The sight of the building had his heart sinking. It was obvious that the massive tree in the centre had messed with the earthquake-proof structural support. That support was the only reason the whole complex wasn’t already in the river. Some serious rebar reinforcement was currently at its stress limit and the building was likely go any minute.

Gordon was running beside him at an easy lope as they approached the small group of people hovering outside the wreckage.

There was access through what was once a window and now…

The two lifesigns suddenly blinked from red to green as two people climbed out of the window, a man helping a smaller and older woman.

Virgil stopped in his tracks.

Alex?

As if the thought was permission, the whole pile of broken wood and masonry cracked, groaned and slid off the bank and into the river.

“Thunderbird Two, all lifesigns are clear and safe. Stand down.” Professional and loved, John’s voice spoke of a history of brothers attempting that last second rescue when everything went to hell.

But that wasn’t needed here.

Alex didn’t notice him, his focus solely on the woman in his arms as he led her to sit beside another woman being attended to by the medical team on site.

Virgil followed him with his eyes.

A click of his thumb and the exosuit disengaged around him, its weight toppling to the ground with a clatter.

He could feel Gordon’s presence beside him, but it was all the worry, all the terror that had haunted him all day, each time he pulled a body out of the rubble, each time a lifesign wasn’t Alex, each time…

He reached up and unclipped his helmet, letting it drop behind him as Gordon whispered into his comms. People were staring at Virgil. But then they always did that, he was a Thunderbird. There were even some cameras out. No doubt his face would be all over social media and his father pissed off again.

But he didn’t care.

Alex was still bending over the injured woman. It was obvious she was someone close. As he hugged her, Alex chanced to look up.

“Virgil! You’re here!” The blond, tall, lanky engineer stood up and rushed over. His shirt was shredded. He was soaking wet. And there were bruises, so many bruises, the worst of which was violently red leading up into his hair at his left temple.

Virgil’s eyes raked over him. “Alex?”

“Yeah, Mum is-“

Virgil grabbed him and pulled him in tight, one gloved hand finding the back of his neck, the other just holding him close. “Oh god. I thought you…” He squeezed his eyes shut on Alex’s shoulder.

Tentative arms wrapped around him. “Virgil, I’m okay.”

It wasn’t possible to squeeze his eyes any tighter, so instead he pulled back a little, looking up into brown eyes, almost as dark as his own, framed by lank, wet and dirty blond hair.

A breath and he was kissing the man. Needing to know he was real, needing Alex to know how worried he had been…

Just needing.

Alex froze for a split second before definitely kissing him back. Oh, definitely. Virgil lost himself the touch and taste of…him. Warm lips, the tip of a questing tongue, and, oh god, Alex…

Alex.

It was a camera flash that broke the moment. That and the murmuring giggles around them. Virgil pulled away and realised exactly how pissed his father was going to be.

But honestly, turning back to Alex, who he had yet to release from his arms, whose expression was simply stunned and so wide-eyed he might break an eye socket, Virgil really didn’t care.

He brushed a hand across Alex’s shoulder, wanting again to touch. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

Alex dipped his head. “Yeah.” It was a drawn out syllable, more breath than voice. His eyes tracked over Virgil. “You?”

“I am now.”

Dark eyes stared at him.

Virgil gazed back.

Worry flickered across Alex’s face and he shifted where he stood. “Uh, Mum’s hurt her ankle. Could you take a look?”

Virgil’s eyes widened, reality finally slamming home. He straightened. “Of course.”

He let Alex go, but to his surprise Alex didn’t let him go, a hand on his arm directing Virgil around to the small dark-haired woman sitting on the steps behind him. She was as drenched to the bone as Alex, but was smiling up at the both of them with only what could be described as glee. “About time someone swept my boy off his feet.”

“Mum!”

She ignored him and addressed Virgil with more of that smile. “Hello, Mr Thunderbird. I’m Lolly, and I’m very, very pleased to meet you.”

-o-o-o-

Next

[heavenlyakin]

Ken Ryuguji x Reader

Minors DNI

barely edited so be nice to me. here’s some short vignettes of some draken content (angst) that’s been in my head but I can’t manage to put together a whole fic. It’s inspired by “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman.

cw: unrequited love, implied emotional cheating, implied family issues.

——

His first touch felt like warm water rushing over your skin, spreading and soaking you to your core. It was everything you ever needed to feel with someone else. His arm heavy around your shoulders, his grin mesmerizing. The wind blowing your hair everywhere seemed to disappear as you looked into his eyes and felt safe for the first time in years.

“Where do you want to go?” He asked, his voice as beautiful as the song on the radio.

“Anywhere,” you answered truly meaning it. You’d follow him to the ends of the earth.

—

The apartment was nothing to brag about but it was yours and his. Finally a home to calm your own and with the one you loved. It’d been talked about for a little over a year, something you both wanted. You’re saved every penny you could to afford the deposit and first months rent, now you just prayed you’d be able to keep it.

“What’s wrong, love?” Ken asks, picking up immediately on the stress you’re putting on yourself.

“Oh nothing, just wondering how we’ll afford this place.” You laugh, rolling your shoulders back to loosen the tightness that has built up over the last hour or so of worrying.

“We’ll manage it,” he kisses the top of your head, his fingers tangling in yours and pulling you closer. “We always do.”

—

“Just fix it, please! We need you!” Your sisters voice, cracking as she talks, continues to beg you.

“I just don’t understand what I can do from here, I’m so sorry.” You hang up before the guilt eats you alive.

“——-,” your name from Ken’s lips drags your attention away from your cell phone. Fuck, it’s 3 a.m.

You wipe your eyes and sniffle before turning to look at him. “I’m sorry I woke you up, it’s just… my sister. She called again. I’m scared for her,” you tell him.

He sits up, pulling you to his chest. “Shhh, it’s okay. You can’t save everyone, baby.”

—

Your eyes itch as you start to unlock the door to your apartment. You hear laughing as it opens and notice a group of guys and one blonde girl sitting on your couch. Your eyes narrow to see who everyone is but you give up. After picking up a double at work, you really can’t be bothered to scold him for having people over before asking you if it would be okay.

“Hey!” Mikey’s familiar voice greets you as you make int through the kitchen and into the living room.

“Hi,” softly you answer. “Ken, can I chat with you for a second?”

—

Not much has changed. Your sister is still calling you even though you’re halfway around the world and Ken can’t keep a job. You’ve been promoted at least and can take care of everything but it’s wearing on you.

As you’re thinking about him, he stumbles in the apartment, laughing as he picks his keys off the floor. You don’t react, just turning your tv show’s volume up a few notches. He ignores you, going straight to your bedroom and you turn the volume back down.

Your eyes well up, the smell of alcohol and perfume wafting in the apartment now. You don’t have the energy to ask where he’s been, honestly some small part of you is beginning to not care. You just can’t find it in you to ask him to leave yet.

[arche0ps-moved]

can you please tell us more about your cool earthbound (or mother in general) headcanons. . . one's already mentioned are so cool I WANNA KNOW!!! ps YOU ARE COOL IN GENERAL TOO!!!!!!!

OHHH MIKE YOU SCAMP .. TWIRLS MY HAIR!! This could be long so. Under the cut !

okay first guy: ness I love ness.

Ness is a trans kid!! he doesn't know the right terminology for any of it but he knows he never felt like a girl. his family all support him ofc, but Tracy got a little sad thinking ness wouldn't play dollhouse with her anymore (he still totally does)

Ness looooves gross stuff. Bugs, mud, bones, etc. Call me autistic the way I study those bugs (<- ness)

oh also he's autistic 👍 very sensitive to loud noises and the cold, and wears almost the same outfit everyday because 1. different outfit everyday is HARD . 2. He likes his outfit!!

his special interest is baseball :)

him and pokey play on the same Onett baseball team and have an unofficial rivalry with the Fourside Fogies . one time they trapped pokey under the bleachers. it was a whole ordeal (hc from soypeople thank you bestie)

ness was their number one player!! until. yk. giygas. after all that he quit going to school and became a shut in for a good while (he'll be okay)

Paula helps teach him the PK moves!! Fire freeze thunder etc etc. In return him and pu teach her how to heal and such (none of them manage to learn starstorm, though ..)

Ness is overall an overly caring kid. he'll often put others before himself, especially in the line of danger. But he can also be very stubborn if he chooses to (if he's angry, he'll most likely give you silent treatment until he simmers down)

Ness and Paula date in the future :]

ok paula now.

Paula is a transgirl!! she knows the terms bc she's a fast learner (with gifted child syndrome)

When she grows up she most likely takes over the Polestar preschool

Funnily enough, her favorite color isn't pink. It's green!

Her parents are a bit overprotective of her .... Ness and her had to practically beg to go fight Giygas

Much like Ness, she cares a lot for her friends. Unable to heal them with her PSI, she resorts to carrying around lots of healing items for her pals! (And wet towels for Jeff, since he overheats easily)

She doesn't mind any temp, but sweat is an unpleasant sensation for her (it's gross, it smells, and ew, it's wet! Jeff shares the same sentiment)

She isn't a damsel in distress, obviously. She probably would've beaten up Montoli and Carpainter all on her own if she didn't have the brain to accompany her (though, an hour longer in the cage at Happy Happy and she probably would've started a fire ..)

OK JEFF TIME I LOVE JEFF :) copy pasting some jeff-tony hcs from my personal discord teehee

When Jeff couldn't stand in class Tony would take his assignments to the teacher when they both finished (albeit a bit later as Tony took more time on his)

Tony signs the end of the Y in name with a small heart when writing Jeff. Jeff was oblivious to it's meaning till he got older

Tony will sometimes break stuff on purpose when Jeff has nothing to tinker. Just little things that they won't miss if Jeff can't fix them (he always fixes them)

Jeff shares what he doesn't eat with Tony (tony has a bit appetite!)

Jeff carries Tony's bag in his lap when in his chair

Neither of them use air fresheners or perfumes. It irritates Jeff's nose and Tony has asthma. Win!

They don't have the same taste in music but like to listen to each other's music when working in their dorm. They take turns putting in tapes

Jeff prefers classical music .. Tony calls him old for it (it's endearing. He's memorized Jeff's favorite artists)

Jeff falls asleep in class a lot .. tony makes sure to write plenty of notes if he does

Non Tony related ones:

Jeff is autistic! And physically disabled. His legs were injured in the novels boat incident, so he uses a cane(or crutches) and a wheelchair depending on how well he feels

He doesn't like being babied or carried around much, but if it's necessary he'll allow someone to lift him (mostly ness or tony)

Distant relationship with his dad obviously. It gets a bit better but they never get as close as they could

Jeff modifies his chair to have rockets on them. Because it's fun!

Even after getting his prosthetics he'll still use the chair whenever he feels tired

As stated in my fic he hates the heat so so much. He'd rather run around in the snow butt naked than spend a minute at the beach

Okay that's enough Jeff sorry for the favoritism <3 pu time!!

I spell his name as Pu thanks to mysthlarey (thank u bestie)

Probably very stressed. It's hard being the newest king and also 14

His hair is shaved on the sides and tied into a long braid. No reason behind it he just likes it that way tbh

Despite his resting-mean-boy face, he's super sweet under that Princely attitude! (He's got a lot on his shoulders, it's hard to relax)

Much like in game he's very . Uh. Physcially weak. Most people don't expect that because of his "fighter" look, so they don't usually mess with him

He's a picky eater bc of sensory issues. What do you MEAN you guys can eat rice? Yuck! (It tastes fine, but the feeling is .. bad. very bad)

Water enthusiast :) often the one to remind Ness (water hater) to drink some water

Tallest of the group (sorry jeff)

Funnily enough he doesn't grow once he hits his current height. Sooner or later Paula matches him in height and he finds it p funny

Uses his future kingly status to mess around with his friends. (Ex: DEAR NESS. THIS IS THE KING OF DALAAM. COME OKAY WORLD OF WARCRAFT WITH ME OR ELSE I WILL START A WAR WITH EAGLELAND. signed ur bestie xoxoxox :) )

bonus time oh goodness oh me oh my! Random character's!

Tracy uses she/they

Picky uses he/they. they match!

Picky loooves spiders (<- he doesn't know about pokey)

Tony's family actually live in Scaraba- they sent him off to Winters since it has the best school in the 3 major continents (he was eligible, so why not take the chance!)

Pokey and Ness liked to draw comics together :) they're probably super cringey now

Picky, Tracy, Ness, and Pokey all used to walk to school together. Sometimes pokey had to carry picky since he was half asleep

Ness doesn't actually eat trash burgers okay it was ONE TIME you can STOP BRINGING IT UP POKEY

pokey needs glasses due to his bangs fucking up his vision. will he ever get them? probably not

aloysius minch is bisexual. win I guess

[kamari2038]

Scenario 004 - A Machine Connor Saga (Pt.9)(Full Saga)

When that man broke the other Traci, I knew I was next. I was so scared. I begged him to stop, but he wouldn't... and so I put my hands around his throat, and I squeezed until he stopped moving. I didn't mean to kill him. I just wanted to stay alive... get back to the one I love. I wanted her to hold me in her arms again, make me forget about the humans... their smell of sweat and their dirty words.

Come on, let's go.

It's probably better this way.

This case, and my pairing with Lt. Anderson, continue to present immense complications.

First, the facts. After Lt. Anderson spent a few minutes sobering up, we left for the Eden Club and arrived soon afterwards. I learned that this was a place where humans could use androids to fulfill their sexual urges as they saw fit, and a highly profitable business. Lt. Anderson made several comments disparaging the moral integrity of the establishment. The owner, Floyd Mills, noted that most of his customers valued secrecy.  Lt. Anderson even went as far as to suggest that humans might go extinct, since they no longer want to love each other, and instead want to be served by androids. From all of this, I gather that most humans do not view frequenting the Eden Club as ethical. However, the business is completely legal and highly popular. I find that to be puzzling; it reinforces my impression of humans as foundationally illogical beings. Humans collectively may know more than we can comprehend as machines, but they appear to have a great deal of disagreement between one another. Additionally, most humans value obtaining their own satisfaction above all other concerns, but some of their behavior defies this trend. For instance, ever since my last replacement, Lt. Anderson continues to insist on entering any situation perceived to be dangerous while in front of me, shielding me and wielding his gun. This protective instinct would seem to threaten his own wellbeing, which is certainly more valuable than preventing my current model from being destroyed, but it must be aligned with Lt. Anderson’s desires. Granted, Lt. Anderson doesn’t appear to value his life very highly compared to most, so this may factor in, but his grateful response when I prevented him from toppling off the garden rooftop must also be considered. Irrational indeed. 

This leads me to pose yet another question:  

If all humans express different and even contradictory desires, how can I know how to serve their general best interests?

I suspect answering this question broadly will require both investment of time and an adaptive approach, but my primary goal of protecting human lives and identifying the source of deviant behavior falls clearly under that umbrella, so there is no contradiction with my mission. No matter. 

Continuing with my description of events, we learned that a customer at the establishment had recently been discovered dead. Officer Reed suspected a heart attack, but my forensic analysis contradicted that hypothesis. I briefly reactivated a recently shut down android who had been in the room with the man; it informed us that another WR400 had previously been present in the room. I tracked its movements by probing the memories of androids who had been in tubes and on shelves pole-dancing for the past couple of hours around the club, waiting to be purchased. Finally its path led us to a staff only warehouse, where we found not only the deviant that I had been tracking, a blue-haired WR400, but another as well. 

The other android attacked me - the brown-haired WR400 - and Lt. Anderson was likewise tackled by the blue-haired WR400. Their level of skill and strength was impressive; they may have been deviant for some time before we discovered them and overcome the initial paralysis that seems to haunt certain deviants (Carlos Ortiz’ android, for instance). They pushed us out into a back alley, and Lt. Anderson’s gun flew from his hands and across the ground. After an additional altercation following a failed attempt on the part of the androids to escape, I quickly grabbed the gun and raised it towards the brown-haired WR400, hoping to threaten it into submission (and also to ensure that the weapon couldn’t be used against Lt. Anderson), but its behavior once again deviated from my expectations. It had been so fixated on assaulting me that it hadn’t even taken notice of the gun. Not wanting to destroy it, I held onto the gun, simply absorbing the blow. 

Its temperament towards me changed dramatically after noticing what I had done. The android and its fellow deviant must have assumed my goal was to destroy them, because after this point, they calmed down and backed away from me, but no longer attempted to escape. The blue-haired WR400, the original deviant we had been tracking, explained to me what had happened to the human victim. After the destruction of the other WR400 that had been in the room with Michael Graham, this deviant begged for its life, eventually lashing out in self-defense. It claims that it had no intention of murder, but I judge this to be inaccurate. The deviant knew what it was doing. Nonetheless, the simulated emotions related to this incident differed from any I had observed in the past due the significance of its apparent relationship with the other deviant. My past interactions with deviants have each resulted in their self-destruction, with the exception of the AX400 (whose motives remain unknown), and they had only avoided self-destruction long enough to exact revenge upon humans that had allegedly wronged them. This set of deviants, in contrast, were not primarily driven by an errant objective to cause harm to humans. Instead, their primary errant objective was to “love” and “support” and “protect” one another. Harming humans became a sub-objective by consequence, but not as a default. 

Hank approached from behind me while the deviant explained. When they moved to leave, I turned to him for guidance, but he made no motion for me to pursue them like he had with the deviant at the apartment, so I let them escape. I assume he had reached the same conclusion that I had: they no longer posed a danger, and we had found out what we needed. I stand by that decision, although I suspect Amanda may not approve. It was the most logical choice, and in compliance with Lt. Anderson’s wishes as well.

Further Observations and Reflections

At this point in the case, I believe I must revisit my most fundamental question: 

What did I know about deviancy, prior to this point? 

I knew it had to do with software instabilities, and the destructive simulated emotions associated with them. 

An unclear cause and effect relationship of some kind exists between the two, and is also related to misc. interactions with the environment and misuse by humans. All androids can exhibit simulated emotions. Those could be “positive”, or “negative”. When they were positive, they could encourage stability and obedience, and interacted harmoniously with logic. When they became negative, they resulted in malfunction, often causing harm to humans. Joint misery. 

What do I know now? What have I learned? 

Although this case may be an exception, it seems to indicate that “positive” simulated emotions can evoke instability as well, and lead to more complex behavior patterns. The WR400 that spoke to me had been continuing to serve its function for weeks, or possibly months, averting the onset of full deviancy. It appears to have been mostly sustained by its positive simulated emotions, even while exhibiting a high degree of instability, during this time period. The instability stemmed not directly from the phenomenon of experiencing positive simulated emotions, but positive simulated emotions from an inappropriate source that ultimately became incompatible with its function. Eventually, these positive emotions were directed towards destructive ends when a human posed a threat to the new object of its simulated delight, the other deviant. 

Another important observation worth making here is the apparent ability of simulated emotions to generate new objectives. This phenomenon mimics the purpose-finding function of humans, but works against their aims; objectives arising from simulated emotions cause androids to deviate from the function intended by their manufacture and use. Put another way, positive simulated emotions can only be constructive when the source of the positive simulated emotions is not at odds with an android's continuance of its intended function. However, even simulated emotions which are not constructive don’t always lead to the end result of android misery and self-destruction, but can instead produce an indefinitely sustainable case of deviancy. 

Upon further reflection, I have seen a precursor of this in the apparent deviant religion that aspires to worship the deity rA9. Religion imparts hope and purpose in strong measure to humans, and this may give its presence among androids a special corruptive power. Androids who continue to be perfectly rational (such as myself) are immune to these effects, but androids who are already exhibiting instability due to external factors or manufacturing error may be more vulnerable to the emergence of this form of cult-like devotion, an objective unto itself. Its manner of spread is still yet to be determined. Perhaps that combination of letters and numbers exploits a dormant virus (of origin unknown) which corrupts the mind of any android who sets eyes on it, as the numerals are processed through our visual systems. That would explain why the series of characters was written over and over again on every available surface by multiple deviants - this could be the self-replicating behavior indicative of exactly such a virus. If CyberLife ever paid mind to more relevant questions like this one, I may be far more effective in helping them with this investigation. As it is now, they seem more fixated on suppressing this epidemic’s visibility than actually rooting it out or identifying its causes, despite officially tasking me with that aim. I will only be able to approach them with confidence once I have both concrete proof and a foolproof solution.

[clawdee]

Part 2! (^ part one above were books from the years 2012-2022, with a few from my 2023-2033 list to get max links). I don't know if this list will be shorter, but I read a BUNCH of really good Romance/Fantasy/Sci-Fi books over the last couple of years. Tagging @ho3hologram again so they get this list.

alright here we go:

The Legendborn Cycle - Tracy Deonn (Young Adult, Romance, Urban Fantasy, Magic, Dark Academia) After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.

Secret Shanghai - Chloe Gong (Young Adult, Romance, Retelling, Historical Fiction, Mystery) The year is 1926, and Shanghai hums to the tune of debauchery. A blood feud between two gangs runs the streets red, leaving the city helpless in the grip of chaos. At the heart of it all is eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, a former flapper who has returned to assume her role as the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang—a network of criminals far above the law. Their only rivals in power are the White Flowers, who have fought the Scarlets for generations. And behind every move is their heir, Roma Montagov, Juliette’s first love…and first betrayal.

Bright Falls - Ashley Herring Blake (Adult, Romance, LGBT) Bright Falls Series is a trilogy of books featuring three women who live in a small town and navigate love, friendship, and career. Each book has a different protagonist and a witty and heartwarming story.

This Poison Heart - Kalynn Bayron (Young Adult, Urban Fantasy, LGBT, Mythology, Magic) When Briseis's aunt dies and wills her a dilapidated estate in rural New York, Bri and her parents decide to leave Brooklyn behind for the summer. Hopefully there, surrounded by plants and flowers, Bri will finally learn to control her gift. But their new home is sinister in ways they could never have imagined--it comes with a specific set of instructions, an old-school apothecary, and a walled garden filled with the deadliest botanicals in the world that can only be entered by those who share Bri's unique family lineage. (I'm also just gonna rec EVERYTHING by Kalynn. I've read her Cinderella is Dead book, and You're Not Supposed to Die, and they are BOTH fantastic as well)

Bromance Book Club - Lyssa Kay Adams (Adult, Contemporary Romance) Series of 5 romance books, a group of men (many of them are Professional Sports players) put together a Romance Book Club to learn to be better men, and help each other out.

Legacy of Orïsha - Tomi Adeyemi (Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Adventure, Magic) Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic before a ruthless king ordered all maji killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now Zélie fights to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy while struggling to control her powers--and her growing feelings for an enemy...

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches - Sangu Mandanna (Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Cozy, Witches) As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don’t mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she’s used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos "pretending" to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously. But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic.

Anything by Kimberly Lemming. It's Porn with Little Plot. She has Fantasy, and she has Aliens (coming sometime this year), I think I've seen you mention her before Holo so you know this.

The Diviners - Libba Bray (Young Adult, Historical Horror, Fantasy, Romance, LGBT, Paranormal, Mystery, Supernatural) A supernatural series set in Manhattan during the 1920s that follows a teen heroine reminiscent of two of the era's most famous literary women—Zelda Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker. The story will be a wild new ride full of dames and dapper dons, jazz babies and Prohibition-defying parties, conspiracy and prophecy—and all manner of things that go bump in the neon-drenched night.

Sisters of the Salt - Erin A. Craig (Young Adult, Horror, Fantasy, Retelling, Mystery, Romance, Gothic) In a manor by the sea, twelve sisters are cursed. Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor, a manor by the sea, with her sisters, their father, and stepmother. Once they were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last—the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge—and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods.

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking - T. Kingfisher (Middle Grade, Fantasy, Magic, Cozy, Mystery) Fourteen-year-old Mona isn’t like the wizards charged with defending the city. She can’t control lightning or speak to water. Her familiar is a sourdough starter and her magic only works on bread. She has a comfortable life in her aunt’s bakery making gingerbread men dance.

The Crush - Ren Browne (Adult, Contemporary Romance) For as long as I can remember, I have been completely infatuated with Daniel Ríos. A shame, because not only is he twelve years older and painfully indifferent to my existence, but Daniel also left eight years ago, signing up to join the DEA while I was still signing out of homeroom. Now, I'm just back from college, right back under my family’s supervision, and more than a little surprised to find I'm not the only one back home. This time, is it too much to hope that he might see me, too?

Daughter of Smoke & Bone - Laini Taylor (Young Adult, Urban Fantasy, Romance, Magic, Paranormal, Angels) Around the world, black hand prints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grows dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war.

Bachelors of Buttermilk Falls - Robyn Neeley (Adult, Contemporary Romance, Urban Fantasy, Magic, Paranormal) Small town romances, Soul Mates set up by magic cupcake batter, a ghost shows up later on in the series. Short, light, and cute! (Only Available on Kindle)

The Wedding Date - Jasmine Guillory (Adult, Contemporary Romance, Fake Dating) Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn't normally do. But there's something about Drew Nichols that's too hard to resist.

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern (Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Historial Fiction, Magic) The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

The Once and Future Witches - Alix E. Harrow (Adult, Fantasy, Witches, Historical Fiction, LGBT, Romance) In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box. But when the Eastwood sisters--James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna--join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women's movement into the witch's movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote and perhaps not even to live the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.

Dark Oluympus - Katee Robert (Adult, Erotica, BDSM, Dark Romance, Urban Fantasy, LGBT, Mythology, Retellings) Lots of sex, lots of taboo subjects, and lots of political intrigue which I found exciting!

Battle Royal - Lucy Parker (Adult, Contemporary Romance, Enemies to Lovers) Four years ago, Sylvie Fairchild charmed the world as a contestant on the hit baking show, Operation Cake. Her ingenious, colorful creations captivated viewers and intrigued all but one of the judges, Dominic De Vere, the hottest pastry chef in London. When her glittery unicorn cake went spectacularly sideways, Dominic was quick to vote her off the show. Since then, Sylvie has managed to use her fame to help fulfill her dream of opening a bakery, Sugar Fair. The toast of Instagram, Sugar Fair has captured the attention of the Operation Cake producers…and a princess.

The Love Con - Seressia Glass (Adult, Contemporary Romance, Fake Dating, Friends to Lovers) She finally has a chance to make it big when she joins the reality show competition Cosplay or No Way. There's just one catch: the challenge for the final round is all about iconic pairs, and the judges want the contestants' significant others to participate. Unfortunately, Kenya is as single as can be at the moment. Luckily her best friend, Cameron Lassiter, agrees to be her fake boyfriend for the show. Roleplaying a couple in love will force them to explore what they're hiding under the mask of friendship.

Graves Glen - Erin Sterling (Adult, Contemporary Romance, Urban Fantasy, Witches, Magic, Paranormal) Nine years ago, Vivienne Jones nursed her broken heart like any young witch would: a curse on the horrible boyfriend. Sure, Vivi knows she shouldn’t use her magic this way, but with only an “orchard hayride” scented candle on hand, she isn’t worried it will cause him anything more than a bad hair day or two. That is until Rhys Penhallow returns to Graves Glen, Georgia. What should be a quick trip to recharge the town’s ley lines and make an appearance at the annual fall festival turns disastrously wrong. With one calamity after another striking Rhys, Vivi realizes her silly little Ex Hex may not have been so harmless after all.

When in Rome - Sarah Adams (Adult, Contemporary Romance, Forced Proximity) Amelia Rose, known as Rae Rose to her adoring fans, is burned-out from years of maintaining her "princess of pop" image. Inspired by her favorite Audrey Hepburn film, Roman Holiday, she drives off in the middle of the night for a break in Rome . . . Rome, Kentucky, that is. When Noah Walker finds Amelia on his front lawn in her broken-down car, he makes it clear he doesn't have the time or patience for celebrity problems. He's too busy running the pie shop his grandmother left him and reminding his nosy but lovable neighbors to mind their own damn business. Despite his better judgment, he lets her stay in his guest room—but only until her car is fixed—then she's on her own.

The Hollywood Series - Erin La Rosa (Adult, Contemporary Romance, Fake Dating, Enemies to Lovers, LGBT, Forced Proximity) All chef Nina Lyon wants is to make a name for herself in the culinary world. Now, as co-host of the competitive reality TV series The Next Cooking Champ!, she finally has a real shot at being top tier in the foodie scene. Too bad her co-host happens to be Hollywood’s smarmiest jerk. Romance author Sophie Lyon’s ironic secret just went viral: she’s never been in love—and it’s ruining her reputation. With a deadline looming, Sophie makes an ambitious plan to overcome her writer’s block: reunite with her exes to learn why she’s never fallen in love, and document it all for her millions of new online followers. Luckily, Sophie’s reclusive landlord, Dash Montrose—a former teen heartthrob—has social media all figured out and is willing to help.

Do Your Worst - Rosie Danan (Adult, Contemporary Romance, Urban Fantasy, Magic, Supernatural, Mystery) Riley Rhodes finally has the chance to turn her family’s knack for the supernatural into a legitimate business when she’s hired to break the curse on an infamous Scottish castle. Used to working alone in her alienating occupation, she's pleasantly surprised to meet a handsome stranger upon arrival—until he tries to get her fired.

Bergman Brothers - Chloe Liese (Adult, Contemporary Romance, LGBT) The Bergman Brothers novels are standalone contemporary romances about a Swedish-American family of five brothers, two sisters, and their wild adventures as they each find happily ever after. Set on the sunny West Coast, these sexy stories bring the heat and heartfelt emotion as much as laugh-out-loud humor. The characters also have disabilities/mental illnesses: off the top of my head there's depression, fibro (I think? something like that), and diabetes (I'm def missing some).

The Hazel Wood - Melissa Albert (Young Adult, Urban Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Magic, Mystery, Romance) Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: her mother is stolen away-by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”

This Spells Love - Kate Robb (Adult, Contemporary Romance, Urban Fantasy, Magical Realism, Paranormal) A young woman tries to heal her heartbreak by casting a spell to erase her ex from her past, but she wakes up in an alternate reality where she’s lost more than she wished for.

Hot & Hammered - Tessa Bailey (Adult, Contemporary Romance) Georgette Castle’s family runs the best home renovation business in town, but she picked balloons instead of blueprints and they haven’t taken her seriously since. Frankly, she’s over it. Georgie loves planning children’s birthday parties and making people laugh, just not at her own expense. She’s determined to fix herself up into a Woman of the World... whatever that means.

A Brush with Love - Mazey Eddings (Adult, Contemporary Romance, Friends to Lovers) Harper is anxiously awaiting placement into a top oral surgery residency program when she crashes (literally) into Dan. Harper would rather endure a Novocaine-free root canal than face any distractions, even one this adorable. A first-year dental student with a family legacy to contend with, Dan doesn’t have the same passion for pulling teeth that Harper does. Though he finds himself falling for her, he is willing to play by Harper’s rules.

The End

for now

Romance, Fantasy, Sci-Fi Book Recs

A list for @ho3hologram and anyone else. I have NOT included the books I recc'ed you earlier in picture form Holo.

I've read 699 books since 2012, so here are the ones I've rated 4* and up - maybe a few 3* (the way I rated changed multiple times over the years). Fair warning, what I like might not be what you like, so read the synopsis, read other reviews, and decide for yourself; and if you think my recs are dogshit, keep it to yourself.

I also love delving into middle schooler books, like some TV shows they are better, IMO. They have more substance because they're trying to show and teach kids.

My Goodreads account is HERE if anyone wants to shift through my 3* and below books or my TBR.

The Books of Bayern - Shannon Hale (Middle Grade, Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance) In distant lands of magic and wonder, four young women will rise to save their kingdoms and their loved ones against the dark forces that threaten to tear them all apart.

I have a big fat nerd crush on Christopher Moore's writing. He has a Vampire series (A Love Story), a Demon series (Pine Cove), Coyote Blue (Urban Fantasy, Mythology, Romance/Love) as a 5* rating from me. One of my absolute favorites from him that I try to re-read every couple of years is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. It's funny, it has romance and fantasy.

The Wicked Years - Gregory Maguire (Adult, Fantasy, Romance) The novels follow the Wicked Witch of the West, her friends, relatives, and enemies, through several decades as they witness some of Oz's most turbulent times. (Wicked of course influenced the Broadway play AND the movie, but there are 3 books following Wicked that are also A+, and a Book 0 of when Elphi was a child that I JUST saw when putting this together.)

Alice in Deadland - Mainak Dhar (Young Adult, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, Zombies) Civilization as we know it ended more than fifteen years ago, leaving as it's legacy barren wastelands called the Deadland and a new terror for the humans who survived- hordes of undead Biters.

The Android's Dream - John Scalzi (Adult, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Space Opera) A human diplomat kills his alien counterpart. Earth is on the verge of war with a vastly superior alien race. A lone man races against time and a host of enemies to find the one object that can save our planet and our people from alien enslavement...

Agnes and the Hitman - Jennifer Crusie (Romance, Mystery) Take one food writer named Cranky Agnes, add a hitman named Shane, mix them together with a Southern mob wedding, a missing necklace, two annoyed flamingos, and a dog named Rhett and you've got a recipe for a sexy, hilarious novel about the disastrous side of true love… (this book is almost 20 years old, good luck finding it, but I do love it)

I have a hard-on for everything Kay Simone has written that I've read. (Gay romance m/m, there's 1 android book) (Only Available on Kindle)

The Claidi Journals - Tanith Lee (Young Adult, High Fantasy, Romance, Adventure) All her life, Claidi has endured hardship in the House, where she must obey a spoiled princess. Then a golden stranger arrives, living proof of a world beyond the House walls. Claidi risks all to free the charming prisoner and accompanies him across the Waste. (From 2001. I do not rec the 4th book, I really only liked the first 3)

NOLA Nights - Thea de Salle (Adult, Romance, Erotica, BDSM) Hotel chain mogul Sol DuMont is about to learn that some of life’s biggest surprises come in deceptively small packages—namely a petite heiress named Rain who’s hell-bent on upsetting her family’s expectations

Ravenswood series - Talia Hibbert (Adult, Romance) In this small English town, feisty, outcast heroines are swept off their feet by the strong, sweet men who love them. (honestly, ANYTHING by Talia gets a rec from me)

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Tylor Jenkins Reid (Adult, Romance, Historical Fiction, LGBT) Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?

Weezie and Bebe Mysteries - Mary Kay Andrews (Adult, Romance, Mystery) Eloise “Weezie” Foley, a recently divorced antique dealer, and BeBe Loudermilk, a triple-divorced restaurant owner, in Savannah, Georgia

Lizzy & Diesel - Janet Evanovich (Adult, Mystery, Modern Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal) Lizzy is an Unmentionable, with a special talent for finding things that Diesel needs. The Stones of Power have re-surfaced and Diesel needs to get to them before Wulf does. The Seven Stones of Power reflect each of the Seven Deadly Sins. (There's only 3 books and I think there's supposed to be 1 for each stone, the 3rd book came out in 2015 so idk if this series is getting finished lmao, but it's a fun read!)

Simonverse - Becky Albertalli (Young Adult, Romance, LGBT) (tbh I only read The Upside of Unrequited and Leah on the Offbeat) Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso knows all about unrequited love—she’s lived through it twenty-six times. She crushes hard and crushes often, but always in secret. Because no matter how many times her twin sister, Cassie, tells her to woman up, Molly can’t stomach the idea of rejection. So she’s careful. Fat girls always have to be careful.

The River of No Return - Bee Ridgeway (Adult, Romance, Fantasy, Time Travel, Historical) Two hundred years after he was about to die on a Napoleonic battlefield, Lord Nicholas Falcott wakes up in twenty-first-century London. The Guild, a secretive fraternity of time travelers, informs him that there is no return. But Nick yearns for the beautiful Julia Percy, who remains in 1815. As fate and the fraying fabric of time draw Nick and Julia together once again, the lovers must match wits and gamble their hearts against the rules of time itself.

The Black Veins - Ashia Monet (Young Adult, LGBT, Urban Fantasy) Sixteen-year-old Blythe is one of seven magicians powerful enough to cause worldwide panic with a snap of their fingers. But Blythe spends her days pouring latte art at her family’s coffee shop, so why should she care about having apocalyptic abilities? (So this was supposed to be a series and it ends - I think? on a cliffhanger? Or it leaves it leading into obviously the 2nd one, but this came out in 2019...and there's no sequel, yet)

These Witches Don't Burn - Isabel Sterling (Young Adult, Romance, Fantasy, LGBT, Witches) Hannah’s a witch, but not the kind you’re thinking of. She’s the real deal, an Elemental with the power to control fire, earth, water, and air. But even though she lives in Salem, Massachusetts, her magic is a secret she has to keep to herself. If she’s ever caught using it in front of a Reg ( non-witch), she could lose it. For good.

Brimstone - Cherie Priest (Adult, Historical, Paranormal, Fantasy, Horror) In the trenches of Europe during the Great War, Tomas Cordero operated a weapon more devastating than any gun: a flame projector that doused the enemy in liquid fire. Having left the battlefield a shattered man, he comes home to find yet more tragedy for in his absence, his wife has died of the flu. Haunted by memories of the woman he loved and the atrocities he perpetrated, Tomas dreams of fire and finds himself setting match to flame when awake. . . .

Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynn Jones (Middle Grade, Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Magic) (tbh I only read book 1 and 3, I DNF'ed 2 bc I didn't like how it described one of the fat characters) The book is similar but very different from the movie. House of Many Ways (book 3): Charmain Baker is in over her head. Looking after Great-Uncle William's tiny cottage while he's ill should have been easy. But Great-Uncle William is better known as the Royal Wizard Norland, and his house bends space and time.

Song of the Dryad - Natalia Leigh (Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Fae) Seventeen-year-old Charlotte Barclay is still haunted by an encounter she had eight years ago—a run-in with a fairy beast that had eyes like witchlight and a taste for flesh. Charlotte has avoided the Greenwood ever since, pretending fairies don’t exist and choosing instead to focus her energies on graduating from high school and perfecting her audition piece for the Bellini Institute.

The Savior's Champion - Jenna Moreci (Young Adult, High Fantasy, Romance) Tobias Kaya doesn't care about The Savior. He doesn't care that She's the Ruler of the realm or that She purified the land, and he certainly doesn't care that She's of age to be married. But when competing for Her hand proves to be his last chance to save his family, he’s forced to make The Savior his priority.

Spoiler Alert - Olivia Dade (Adult, Romance) Marcus Caster-Rupp has a secret. The world may know him as Aeneas, star of the biggest show on television, but fanfiction readers call him something else: Book!AeneasWouldNever. Marcus gets out his frustrations with the show through anonymous stories about the internet’s favorite couple, Aeneas and Lavinia.

The Nightmare-Verse - L.L. McKinney (Young Adult, Urban Fantasy, Romance) In L. L. McKinney’s urban fantasy series reimagining Alice in Wonderland, an Atlanta teenager struggling with real-world issues also combats monstrous creatures in Wonderland with a combination of magic weapons and martial arts skills. And living such a complicated double life could cause Alice to lose her head…literally.

The Merciful Crow - Margaret Owen (Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Magic) Follow a young chieftain from a lowly caste of mercy-killers who strikes a bargain with the crown prince to preserve the future of her clan.

Ash Princess Trilogy - Laura Sebastian (Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance) Theodosia was six when her country was invaded and her mother, the Fire Queen, was murdered before her eyes. On that day, the Kaiser took Theodosia's family, her land, and her name. Theo was crowned Ash Princess--a title of shame to bear in her new life as a prisoner. For ten years Theo has been a captive in her own palace. She's endured the relentless abuse and ridicule of the Kaiser and his court. She is powerless, surviving in her new world only by burying the girl she was deep inside.

Legends and Lattes - Travis Baldree (Adult, Fantasy, Cozy, LGBT, Romance) When an injury throws a young, battle-hungry orc off her chosen path, she may find that what we need isn't always what we seek.

Shades of Magic - Victoria E. Schwab (Young Adult, Fantasy, Magic, Historical Fiction) Kell is one of the last Antari--magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons: Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black. Officially, he's an ambassador; unofficially, he's a smuggler. After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive.

Constellation - Claudia Gray (Young Adult, Sci-Fi, Romance, Space Fantasy, Dystopia) (This is the series I was talking about that I didn't remember!) Noemi and Abel are enemies in an interstellar war, forced by chance to work together as they embark on a daring journey through the stars. Their efforts would end the fighting for good, but they're not without sacrifice. The stakes are even higher than either of them first realized, and the more time they spend together, the more they're forced to question everything they'd been taught was true.

Southlands - Rachel Hartman (Young Adult, Fantasy, Dragons, Romance) Four decades of peace have done little to ease the mistrust between humans and dragons in the kingdom of Goredd. Folding themselves into human shape, dragons attend court as ambassadors and lend their rational, mathematical minds to universities as scholars and teachers. As the treaty's anniversary draws near, however, tensions are high. Seraphina Dombegh has reason to fear both sides. An unusually gifted musician, she joins the court just as a member of the royal family is murdered—in a suspiciously draconian fashion. Seraphina is drawn into the investigation, partnering with the captain of the Queen's Guard, the dangerously perceptive Prince Lucian Kiggs. While they begin to uncover hints of a sinister plot to destroy the peace, Seraphina struggles to protect her own secret, the secret behind her musical gift, one so terrible that its discovery could mean her very life.

Between Earth and Sky - Rebecca Roanhorse (Adult, Fantasy, LGBT, Indigenous) In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and is set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.

Ok these are the first 29, bc we're only allowed to add 30 links. I will reblog and add more tomorrow, because it's a little after 1am now and I'm sleepy.

[smellslikemultifandomimagines]

𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐨𝐥𝐟 𝐬𝐦𝐮𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

➣ STILES

stiles’s hair pulling and brat!reader kink → headcanon

okay daddy → stiles and reader hate each other, and at one pack meeting, after an argument between the two, reader tries to leave but stiles says “you’re not leaving until we finish” which the reader replies with “okay daddy”

daddy kink → sheriff!stiles au

sub!stiles + dom!reader → headcanon

first time

back of the library where nobody looks, she’ll be with her boyfriend → in a secluded corner of the library, reader wearing a skirt w/ no underwear, and riding stiles. (college!Stiles AU)

“you can’t be serious?!” → reader ties stiles to the bed

you did so well, baby → reader gets overstimulated easily, but stiles knows just how to work your body right.

“are you jealous?” “it only took you until now to figure it out?” → reader and stiles are at a party, and reader catches stiles flirting with another girl.

edging stiles → sub!stiles

pegging stiles → headcanon

double trouble → reader thinks void is stiles but then stiles walks in

breeding kink → stiles admits to reader he has a breeding kink

trying something new → stiles tells reader he wants to try something new

we’re gonna order in → noah walks in on stiles and reader, but they’re too into fucking each other, they don’t notice.

“do you guys mind?” → stiles teases reader during a Pack meeting

stiles catching you masturbating → headcanon

strike one → void!stiles wants to have a little fun with reader

motel california → reader and stiles have sex in the motel room during the school trip

sit → reader needs to get off. Stiles is studying a new case.

someone is finally having sex with me  → season 1&2 personality stiles

do you deserve it? → male!reader caught stiles touching himself even after being told not to

intoxicating smoke → reader and stiles get high and have sex

praise kink → reader has a praise kink

monster slayer → male!reader treats stiles after he kills the new monster of Beacon Hills

aftercare → headcanon

➣ THEO

tell me what you want me to do → reader is shy and Theo catches her riding her pillow, leading to him instructing her to tell him what she wants him to do to her

permission → reader cums without Theo’s permission, and he makes her cum over and over again

steamy showers → you hear Theo in the shower and decide to join him

sex dream → theo wakes up from having a sex dream about reader and wakes her up by eating her out

the real dominant → Theo submits to the reader and she rides him, before he takes control again.

in the car → reader and Theo have sex in his truck

sit back and relax → theo edges the reader until she’s begging to cum

wrapped around your throat → theo finds out reader has a choking kink

head between your thighs → theo eats reader out

don’t get all sulky, princess → reader thigh rides theo, but is denied her orgasm

tiny baby girl → theo with short!reader + size kink

daddy kink → headcanon

➣ SCOTT

I needed to see you → Scott sneaks into reader’s room which leads to a heavy makeout session

alphas → reader is an alpha from another pack

i want to make a baby → reader discovers scott has a breeding kink

“derek could fuck me better” → reader and scott get into an argument about derek liking reader.

➣ DEREK

Derek’s kinks → headcanon

needy → Derek wakes up and needs you

welcome home → you’ve been out of time for sometime, and soon as you come home, you surprise Derek with a visit.

you should’ve thought about that before being such a brat → reader takes control and dominates derek

please don’t tease me → reader pegs derek

the bite → reader makes derek jealous and he claims her

make ups → reader and derek get into an argument, but have make up sex - headcanon

young!derek (18+) → though derek had been regressed to 18, he shows reader he can still fuck her the same - headcanon

jealous → young!derek (18+) headcanon

please continue → reader catches derek masturbating

baby making → reader and derek try for a baby

sub!derek → headcanon

wedding night → reader and derek have sex on their wedding night

losing virginities → headcanon (with young!derek (18+))

➣ LIAM (HE’S 18+ IN ALL SMUTS)

overstimulation → Liam overstimulates the reader

little one → Liam calls reader ‘little one’ accidentally which elicits an unusual response from reader

praise → Liam praises reader and finds out she has a praise kink

edging liam → headcanon

wrapped around his claw finger → reader has a knife/claw kink

shut up and kiss me → reader and liam lose their virginities to each other

sub!liam → headcanon

brats get punished → reader is a brat and liam punishes her

full moon antics → reader helps liam gain control during the full moon

toys → liam uses a vibrator on reader

you’re mine, got it? → a very jealous liam shows reader who she belongs to

➣ MALIA TATE

jealous → reader gets jealous and punishes malia

oops → reader and malia break the bed

➣ ISAAC

pretty mouth → sub!male reader gives isaac a blowjob

isaac as a sub → headcanon

virgin angels → reader and isaac lose their virginities to each other

stress reliever → reader had a busy day and isaac helps reader relax in the shower

what’s the rush? → werewolf!reader is a bit of an aggressive Dom becuase of her animal instinct but isaac teaches her to be soft

➣ BRETT (HE’S 18+ IN ALL SMUTS)

bathtubs and fingertips → brett fingers reader in the bath

brat → brett gets tired of reader acting up all day, so he punishes her.

trained killers → reader and brett have cute shower sex after fighting with trained killers

eating out → brett eats reader out

hush hush → reader and brett have secret sex while she is having a sleepover with lori

➣ TRACY (SHE’S 18+ IN ALL SMUTS)

mommy → reader has a mommy kink

➣ NOLAN (HE’S 18+ IN ALL SMUTS)

ride me baby → reader rides nolan - headcanon

morning, love → reader and nolan have cute shower sex

naughty flirting → reader flirts with liam and makes nolan jealous

sub!nolan → headcanon

➣ LYDIA

steamy sleepovers → reader and lydia have a sleepover and things get pretty steamy

➣ ERICA

caught → reader and erica get caught by derek

★ MULTIPLE CHARACTERS

reader x isaac x stiles

reader x isaac x stiles → headcanon

theo & liam (both with fem!reader) + kinks

[usermischief]

♞Pairing: Steo ♞Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Theo Raeken, Kira Yukimura ♞Tags: canon divergence, post 5b ♞Words: 2715 ♞Bad Things Happen Bingo - Silent Treatment (for @jimmy12427)

a/n - I know it took forever, but I was in the worst writing slump ever. But I'm getting back... ever so slowly.

---

Theo stares at him, arms folded and lips pressed into a thin line. His patience is wearing thin, that much is more than obvious — but that doesn’t mean he’d ever give up. It’s still surprising Theo hasn’t gone off on him yet, but that’s probably because he is trying to act like he really does care about Stiles even though they both know all he did was use him. 

And Stiles fell for it.

Like an idiot.

“Stiles,” Theo says, reaching for his hand resting on the table, “please, let me explain.” 

Crossing his arms over his chest, Stiles leans back in his chair. There really isn’t anything to explain. Theo lied to them. He lied to him. He fucked with his head and heart for over a month; does he really expect Stiles is just going to sit here, listen to his fucking excuses, and everything is going to be fine again? Because if that’s the case, Theo couldn’t be any more wrong… hopefully. Because even though part of him knows Theo is telling him the truth, Stiles is scared he might be wrong. 

And he can’t go through this pain again. 

Stiles presses his lip together and stares past Theo. The other boy has been trying to convince him for a couple of months now. He’s going to give up eventually. All Stiles has to do is endure — and beg that Kira is going to arrive soon. He needs to leave before he allows himself to talk to Theo and give him a chance to lull him back into yet another false sense of security. His head is on board with him, but his heart is a piece of shit.

“Babe, please.” Theo places his hands on the table, palms up, almost as if he’s hoping Stiles will reach for him. 

He doesn’t. He won’t. No matter how much his fingers itch to touch him. He purses his lips instead and narrows his eyes at a group of girls who are very clearly talking about them. Good thing he can’t hear them. The last thing he needs is an unsolicited commentary on his love life. He’s got Lydia for that, and she is really walking on thin ice. 

Theo draws his brows together. “Stiles,” he whispers, scooting closer to the edge of his chair, “have I ever told you that you are the best thing that ever happened to me?” Flattery, that’s what he’s going with knowing very well it does not work on him? 

One of the girls makes a sound, and Theo’s expression hardens as he’s staring her down for a few seconds. She’s just managed to climb his shitlist faster than Tracy ever could. But he takes a deep breath and returns his attention to Stiles. His expression once again softens. “I mean it, babe.” 

Stiles would like to point out that Theo lost all of his ‘babe’ privileges, but that would mean he’s talking to him again, and that would defeat the whole purpose of this silent treatment. 

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” Theo continues in a soft voice, “and you’re all I can think about. You’re everything I ever wanted.” He taps a finger against the table, biting his bottom lip. For what it’s worth, his expression seems to be genuine. But Theo has proven to be a master manipulator as well as a pretty good actor. 

Stiles is not falling for his shit again. 

The door to the coffee shop opens. Kira is finally walking in but stops when she spots Theo sitting with him. 

Stiles couldn’t get to his feet quick enough. Without looking at Theo, he grabs his coffee and rushes toward the other fox. “Please, let’s just go,” he mutters because he really, really does not want to be any longer in the same room as Theo as he has to. 

Kira grimaces a little. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Stiles nods for emphasis, “please.” They wanted to relax a little before she’d help Stiles figure out how to get in touch with his fox while he’s not being extremely angry. 

Smiling softly, Kira steps out of the doorway and points in the direction of her car. “Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” he replies even though he knows those two words are going to raise all sorts of red flags for his friends. They’re not wrong either. Stiles isn’t fine. He’s hurt and heartbroken, and he hates Theo for lying as much as he loves him for everything else. The short while they dated — are they still dating? They never officially ended things — it was great. Stiles has never felt as loved as he did when he was around Theo. Now? Now, it just fucking hurts even thinking about it.  “And I’m gonna be peachy once I bring as much distance between Theo and me as possible.”

Kira sighs but doesn’t say anything even though Stiles can tell she really wants to. He appreciates her silence for as long as it lasts because he knows this topic isn’t done. They’re going to talk about it multiple times today. 

-  -  -

Stiles stares at the beautiful red rose sitting on the table in front of him. It has been a beautiful red rose for longer than it was supposed to be. “It’s mocking me.” 

Kira sits down next to him, nudging his shoulder with her own. “Or maybe you’re just not in the right mindset.”

Groaning, Stiles lies down. “I don’t wanna hear it,” he mutters, knowing very well that he is about to hear everything about it because Kira has become much bolder after returning from the skinwalkers — and Lydia’s influence doesn’t help either. 

“You know,” Kira says, tapping a finger against her ankle, “he can’t stop talking about you?” The question is why is everyone chatting with Theo after learning he worked with the Dread Doctors? Did they all forget he is the enemy? 

Is Stiles the only one who’s feeling betrayed? Considering that he’s the only one who’s had his heart ripped out, that’s entirely possible. “He doesn’t love me.” Stiles throws his arm over his eyes, feeling like a petulant child. But it’s the truth. How could Theo love him if he kept something this huge a secret? Unless he was just scared of how Stiles might react to the truth. Well, he surely would have not been this pissed. It’s the lie that makes Stiles feel as if Theo never told him the fucking truth about anything. Now, everything Theo has ever said and done feels tainted. He probably shouldn’t have listened to his dick because then his heart wouldn’t have had a chance to get involved. After all, that’s when everything started to fall apart. He should’ve backed off when he caught feelings, but Theo has already gotten into his head at that point. 

“That’s not true.” 

“Kira—”

“No.” She flicks his arm and then lies down next to him. “You can tell he loves you. It’s so easy to see.” 

Sighing, Stiles pulls his arm away and looks at her. “There’s an accusation somewhere in there, and I don’t like it.” 

Kira understands that as her cue to continue. “I know what Theo did was wrong,” she says, sitting back up, “don’t get me wrong. It’s just—” fidgeting with her hands, Kira shifts into a cross-legged position “--- after you said you don’t trust him in the beginning, I decided to keep an eye on him.” She hooks a finger under her sleeve and sighs.” Every time, and I mean every time, you’ve entered a room, he turns to watch you. Whenever you talk, he watches you. And whenever he watches you, his eyes light up. He looks so genuinely happy even when you don’t give him the time of day… it’s like, I don’t know, like an invisible weight is lifted off his shoulders.” 

Stiles closes his eyes. The thing is, he noticed all of that too. He knew Theo was looking when he thought Stiles wasn’t paying attention. But he was. All the time. It’s impossible not to notice Theo. He’s ever-present, and he refuses to get out of Stiles’ head, no matter what. Kira telling him all that is not helping. Not even in the slightest. “So,” Stiles says, squinting at the ceiling, “you’re saying I should forgive him?” 

“I’m saying you should hear him out.” Kira tips her head to the side. “I think he deserves a few minutes of your time, don’t you?”

Groaning, Stiles covers his eyes again. He hates that she’s right.

-  -  -

Theo didn’t answer his phone, he wasn't home, and he wasn’t at school the next day. If it were anybody else, Stiles would assume they were moping because of Stiles’ not talking to them for a few months now. But Theo doesn’t mope, and he certainly doesn’t give up. That’s why he dragged Kira to the police station with him the second school’s over. Parrish was less excited but tracked the last known location of Theo’s phone anyway. 

Turns out, Theo is somewhere inside a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. The concerning part isn’t necessarily the location; it’s the flashing light and screaming that’s a cause for concern.

“Okay, Stiles,” Kira says, following him out of Roscoe as quickly as she can, “don’t let your emotions get the best of you. The nogits—”

Narrowing his eyes, Stiles throws his hands in the air. The door to the warehouse blasts open, flying off its hinges. 

Kira sighs and pulls out her katana. “Fine, let’s do it your way.”  

This fucking town and everyone inside of it are cursed. Every fucking year, like goddamn clockwork, something is going on. Hunters, supernatural fuckfaces, or teenagers losing their minds. The options are endless, and today it seems they’re going back to the roots after all the bullshit that was the Dread Doctors. 

The lights stop flickering, and so does the screaming. 

A man spins around. Something yellow clatters to the floor. But Stiles’ gaze snaps towards Theo, chained to the fence and wet to the bone — just like the rest of his pack. His hair and clothes stick to his skin, but his eyes are wide. Stiles can sense his pain from here. 

Stiles returns his attention to the man. “I know who you are.” Stiles tilts his head, smiling as he raises his right hand. “Schrader,” he says in a low voice, stepping further into the warehouse. “Never thought I’d see you outside of Eichen House.” 

Schrader looks around, panic flooding the room.

Part of Stiles hopes he remembers him, but he’s aware that it doesn’t matter in the end. Stiles isn’t here for petty revenge. A smile slips onto his lips as he stops walking, eyes still fixed on Schrader. He’s here to save Theo. “You should’ve stayed in Eichen.” Stiles raises both of his hands, feeling excitement rush through his veins as Schrader lifts into the air. The panicked shrieks are music to his ears. It’s always the same; hunters and bullies are cocky bastards until they meet someone they can’t pick on. “Don’t touch my boyfriend and his pack ever again.” He twists his left hand. Schrader’s neck snaps, and he crumbles to the floor like a broken doll.

“We talked about this,” Kura mumbles, elbowing him in the side. “You have to keep your feelings under control. This cannot keep happening.” 

Stiles ducks his head. “Sorry.”

“So,” Theo interrupts them, clanging his chains against the fence, “if you don’t mind?” 

His relief at seeing Theo alive clashes with his annoyance at Theo’s behavior. Remembering he worked with the Dread Doctors doesn’t help either. Stiles grinds his teeth, staring at his boyfriend — are they even still together after months of whatever this was? — and raises his hand. With a single snap of his fingers, four sets of chains open and clatter to the ground. 

Josh fails to catch his balance and is only saved by Hayden and Tracy from falling onto his face. 

Corey rubs his wrists, pulling a face. “Thank you,” he says softly and glances from Stiles to Theo, still chained to the fence, and back again. 

Finally cutting eye contact with a mildly pissed-off Theo, Stiles smiles at Corey. “Don’t mention it,” he replies, forcing himself to speak as lightly as possible. He’s pissed, but the other chimeras had nothing to do with any of this. They’re not at fault for Theo being a lying asshole. 

“Babe…”

Stiles turns away, grabbing Kira’s wrist. They are leaving, or he’s going to punch Theo in his smug, stupidly handsome face. He deserves it. 

“So, we’re not listening to him?” Kira asks quietly, dragging her feet a little as she goes. 

“Wait.” Another set of chains clatters to the ground. “Stiles, babe.” Theo rushes towards him, footsteps echoing around the warehouse. “Please.” There’s an odd crack in his voice, “please, please, wait.” 

Despite himself, Stiles stops and lets go of Kira. After exchanging a short glance, she leaves Stiles to his own devices. It’s probably better this way, even though Stiles doesn’t exactly feel ready to forgive Theo yet. Something has to give if he ever wants to figure out how any of this— how they can continue. Because they’ve lived in this fog for a couple of months. He either needs to listen to Theo and give him another chance, or he has to break up with him. 

But he doesn’t want to. 

He can’t. 

Theo runs his fingers through his wet hair, smiling ever so softly. “Thank you for…” he trails off then nods in the general direction of Schrader’s body and his pack. 

Stiles folds his arms over his chest. 

“And I’m sorry,” Theo adds, rubbing the nape of his neck. “I should’ve told you about my past with the Dread Doctors.” 

Stiles believes him, he really does — even though he tries his best to deny it. 

“Meeting you again changed everything.” Theo reaches for his hand and seems almost startled when Stiles doesn’t pull away for once. “I— I’m…” he trails off again, and after a few seconds of silence, Theo pulls him close — probably more than aware of what this does to him. 

Stiles has denied himself those touches for far too long, and maybe he could’ve spared himself all of this if he’d listened to his heart instead of allowing his anxiety to run rampant. He should know better than that. 

Theo licks his lips, curling his arms around Stiles’ waist. “I missed you,” he whispers, brushing their noses together. “I love you.” 

A small part of him is still hesitant about trusting Theo, or about letting him back in. The idea of having his heart ripped out of his chest and stomped on once more is more than a little terrifying — mostly because Stiles doubts he’ll make it through this again. Just imagining it makes him feel sick. He loves Theo, more than he’d ever dare to admit. It’s a scary thought, but, at the end of the day, it’s the truth. Plus, Theo did kill the Dread Doctors. He protected Lydia and helped get Kira back from the skinwalkers. Theo did a lot of shit wrong, but he does try to make up for it, but he still lied. It’s going to take a while to come back from that. 

“You’re not gonna say it back, are you?” Theo quirks a brow. His tone is amused despite his attempts to look annoyed. “Are you still not talking to me?” 

Stiles puts his hands on Theo’s shoulder, gently pushing him away. He’s going to hold out a little longer. Theo will survive it, and hopefully, learn his lesson never to lie again — especially not over something this huge. 

Theo slips his hands lower, pushing them both into the back pockets of Stiles’ pants. “You’re a stubborn ass, you know that?” He smirks, eyes darkening ever so slightly when he pulls him close while very pointedly squeezing his ass. “Which I love very much, by the way. You and your ass, that is.” 

Rolling his eyes, Stiles flicks Theo’s nose.

Apparently, Theo takes that as his cue to kiss him. Hard. And if the low rumbling in his chest is any indication, Theo might not make him talk any time soon, but he’ll certainly make him moan.  

--- --- ---

[gumnut-logic]

Virgil hugs came in many flavours.

So, okay, Scott was the eldest and technically speaking, he was the least likely to need any hugs from his younger brother. In fact, Scott took pride in branding his own big brother hugs because, let’s face it, he was the eldest and nobody wanted to knock him off that throne. Virgil had been quite adamant about it on several occasions.

So only Scott could give the eldest brother hugs and they were very useful for distressed younger brothers, sad younger brothers and even on those occasions where the hug turned into something that could more be considered strangling younger brothers.

Scott wielded his hugs just like any other tool in his arsenal. Expertly and precisely. But it had long been declared that Virgil gave the best brother hugs and if he was honest, Scott was quite happy not to compete.

What exactly made Virgil hugs better than any other Tracy hugs had yet to be determined. The fact that Virgil was the biggest brother probably helped. Not the tallest. Scott and John were still discussing that title. No, his sheer mass enabled the biggest, warmest, softest, cosiest hugs of them all. Virgil was just buff and meaty.

Scott groaned. Meaty. That was a Gordonism, a subject that required a whole other essay to discuss. His fish brother had a way with words that sometimes curdled the stomach.

But hugs, yes, Virgil with his well worn ever so soft flannel and big meaty…Scott groaned again…arms gave the best hugs.

But, as stated previously, they came in many flavours.

The most common was the fond hug. An arm would snake around the victim brother and literally drag him into Virgil’s embrace. You could be standing alongside him, politely minding your own business and for some reason the engineer would just reach out and grab. Occasionally the arm wouldn’t make it all the way around and Virgil would clamp onto a body part and yank. Arms, chunks of uniform or clothing, a random ribcage. There was the time Virgil had actually pulled Gordon out of the pool by one leg. Possibly in revenge. But after Scott had suffered a cardiac arrest, Gordon had somehow ended up sprawled on top of Virgil on the grass. It had cumulated in laughter and a pile of noogie to Gordon’s hair, grins all round.

Yes, his brother had a hug zone around him and if you stepped into it at the wrong time, you were toast.

One of Scott’s favourites was the ones that defied gravity. Those big arms were strong and, on occasion, a little over enthusiastic. Ribcages creaked, hoarse voices begged to breathe, and feet left the ground.

Yes, even Scott had been tackle hugged and picked up off the ground and spun around. It had been after a particularly long deployment in the Airforce. He had been out of contact with his family for a long time. The day he finally got home, Virgil had barrelled into him in the farmhouse hallway, grabbing and lifting both him and his bags off the floor in an excited embrace that spun them around almost twice.

Scott had dropped his bags in surprise and squawked. His uniform bunched up against the ribbons on his chest and the world went around.

“Virg, my god!”

Dropped to his feet once more, he found himself wrapped in a brother who seemed much bigger than he had been when he left.

And he was clinging.

“Virgil?”

His brother cleared his throat, face buried in Scott’s jacket. “Missed you.”

Scott had returned the embrace wholeheartedly.

No words were possible after that as the two youngest realised their biggest brother was home and all hell broke loose as they and the rest of the family congregated.

But the genuine love in Virgil’s eyes as he stepped back to let the ratbags in on the party had stayed with Scott for a very long time.

Of course, there were other hugs that were much less joyous. Ones where everything was dark and hurting and Virgil would pick it up like he had radar or something. Could be linked to his legendary medic-sense. After all, mental health was exactly that. Just another form of health.

There was the time Alan vanished. Up and completely disappeared. This is a somewhat challenging thing to do on a rather singular rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Scott had been on the verge of calling John for a location, but a hand had landed on Scott’s tense shoulder and squeezed gently. They had been standing out on the balcony. Virgil gestured quietly and, looking up, Scott saw the tiny figure of his littlest brother curled up on the cliff just below the roundhouse.

There had followed a mad rush up the peak to make sure Alan was safe, find out what was wrong…because something was definitely wrong…and fix it.

Turned out some asshole online had been bullying Scott’s little brother, ruining the game contest he had been so excited about three days earlier.

Scott saw red and deployed John. The culprit had been found and eliminated.

Very eliminated.

John particularly hated online predators.

But after that conversation, Scott had turned around to find Alan curled up in Virgil’s arms sobbing.

Jammed up against the wall of the roundhouse, Virgil himself had wet eyes and was combing his fingers through Alan’s hair. As Scott sat down beside them on the floor, Virgil pulled Alan in a little tighter. The engineer buried his face in his little brother’s hair and closed his eyes.

In those moments it was like his brother was bleeding something of himself into the person he was hugging. His expression almost willing comfort into Alan.

Of course, Alan eventually dove in for a Scott hug as well, the thirteen-year-old dragging both of his brothers into a comforting pile that was able to push away the nasty experience and eventually bring back their confident little brother. But it was Virgil who performed the hugging first aid while Scott hunted down the person responsible – whether it be via John or other means.

It seemed to be their roles in the family.

And it wasn’t limited to family.

Out in the field it was more caring hands and reassuring touches and words, but it was Virgil’s way of comforting the injured. If he had time, he would talk with the rescuees. Warm and kind words asking gentle questions about their lives, distracting them from the bleeding, the screaming and the horror.

And ultimately holding those they couldn’t save, giving parts of himself to make those last minutes a little less terrifying.

It was after those rescues, those moments, when Scott would have to hunt Virgil down. Sometimes he would find him at the piano pounding emotion into the keys. Other times locked in his studio.

They had a running tally of how many times Virgil had had to replace the lock on that door. Scott rarely took ‘no’ for an answer when he knew a brother was in distress.

But the worst times often led Scott on a hunt across the Island to a remote beach, cliff or other lonely landform. Thunderbird Five’s scanners had been used several times. Times where Virgil was determined to be alone to suffer by himself.

Sure, Scott could respect that…if that was what Virgil needed.

It wasn’t.

Because the hug machine that was his brother needed hugs in return.

Sure, he had methods to refuel other ways, but honestly, these were the times Scott felt a direct transfer of energy was warranted.

Those were the days he would hunt his brother down, grab him and hold him until the trembling stopped. He would sit with Virgil staring out across the ocean either just being quietly beside him, or answering the raging questions of injustice.

Those were days he would drag him back to the couch and they would fall asleep together in front of a movie neither of them was watching. A hand or an arm continually in contact.

Those were the days where touch was needed to give back what was so freely offered at all other times.

Scott’s hugs may be tactical but they were no less full of love.

And love his brother, he did.

Ever so much.

-o-o-o-

[mona-stay]

Secrets part 2 - Peter Hale

Pairing reader x Peter Hale

Warnings, violence, jealously, angst, slow burn, flitty Peter

You take a long breath, thinking that question yourself. After today, Theo’s attitude all you wanted to do was get your stuff and leave. But where would you go. “honestly I’m not sure. I’m gonna see coach use my hand to get out of work. While Theo still here get my stuff and go. The rest I’ll work out later” you say hopeful.

 

“you know you can always come to me if your stuck, we’re still your friends y/n just because Theo was your boyfriend didn’t mean anything changed with us. Yes Stiles was upset but he got over it” she laughed. Giving you a hug. You’d forgotten how forgiving the Mc'Call pack was.

 

Once your hand was strapped up, you both left. “If your free later where all going to Derek’s your more than welcome to come” she offers. You tell her you’ll think about it before going back to work.

 

Coach Finstock took one look at your hand rolling his eyes. “what happened?” he asked.

 

“fight with my ex”  you say watching him laugh. “look any chance I can rest if the day off, we don’t have any practices today and with this hand I won’t be as useful as normal” you ask. To your surprise he agrees and tells you to be in early tomorrow.

 

You got your bag and started walking to the home you shared with Theo. Feeling dread as you turned the key in the door, taking a deep breath you push the door open to get it over with. You try and ignore the memories you both made in this house.

 

Walking in the living room you let the tears fall looking at a photo of you both together. You flip the picture down laying face down. It was over, now you had to do what you came to do, pack up and leave.

 

You started grabbing your stuff from the room, jumping when you hear a voice behind you. “come crawling back” Tracey said with disgust.

 

“No, but after the way Theo begged me to come back today I could if I wanted to” you sass back wanting to know what she was doing here. You had told in a laugh at the look of hate on her face and the stutter nothing.

 

You walk past her to get some of your other things. She turns watching you, you can tell she’s trying to think of a way to get to you. “If he’s so into you, why was he with ME , chose to come to ME have ME bouncing on his cock and not you!” she said smug, each time she said the word me she took a step closer, trying to look intimating.

 

This time you let your held laugh. “oh really, I saw the way he throw you off him. Let me guess the second he walked back after chasing me, he told you to get dressed and get out. Your here now because he’s avoided you and hoping to try and worm your way back in” you tell her.

 

She looks at you with a blank open mouth expression. The realisation hit you “oh my god I’m right, aren’t I.” You laugh.

 

“no” she tries to lie but it’s too late you both know Theo dropped her like she meant nothing.

 

You don’t what came over you, maybe months of feeling the chimera trying to be better than you, pushing you. “what do you think would happen if Theo came home now I told him I was willing to forgive him if he kicks you out if his pack, who do you think he’ll chose, the quick shag he pushed away, or the girlfriend he ran after, cried and begged to take him back?” you couldn’t hide the joy in your face “I think we both know who he would pick”

 

Tracy looked at you for a second, you tried to read the look in her eyes but they were blank. That was until she launched at you. Groaning in pain as the both of you crashed though the coffee table. She held you pinned under her body, and punches you in the face. Dazed and sore everything was a fast blur, you grab the nearest thing a fallen lamp hitting her in the head with it. The rest of the fight was a mix of you both kicking and hitting each other.

 

It was Theo and Cory running through the door that stopped you both. They drag you apart Theo’s voice streaming stop and what’s going on. “ask your little slut, she attacked me”  you yell, holding your face where it hurt.

 

“y/n please, she meant nothing to me” he says moving closer to you. Tracey growling from the corner Cory had her pinned in.

 

You looked at Theo ready to test his loyalty, “really if she means nothing, get rid of her!” you say. A small pause made you fold your arms waiting for his answer.

 

“baby please, she’s nothing just a pack member, I need all the numbers I can get” he tired to plead with you.

 

“I can’t look at you both together without seeing you together so make a choice Theo or I’ll make it for you!” you demand. When he didn’t answer, just mumbles a baby please don’t, you look at him heartbroken “fine!” you say walking upstairs to pack your bag.

 

When you come down Tracy and Cory had gone but you could still see them outside. “y/n don’t go, please you can’t ask me to choose between my pack and you” he pleads. You look trying to find any real emotion in his eyes.

 

“I loved you Theo, I gave up moving abroad with my sister, my friends here. All for you and you can’t give up one pack member for me, you’d never give up your power for me. I know that now, you say you love me but you’ll always love power more. Goodbye Theo, I hope you find what your looking for” you say holding in your tears as you place a final goodbye kiss on his check, walking out with your suitcase before he can stop you.

You drove to the edge of beacon hills preserve, parking the car sitting on the bonnet, finally letting all the held in emotions out. Lost in your own thoughts, was leaving a good idea, should you have given him a second chance or where do you go next. You wasn’t sure how long you’d sat there for, it wasn’t until you notice it was starting to go dark and cold you moved.

 

You thought about Lydia knowing Derek’s wasn’t far away, turning on your engine you decide to go. Outside you looked up at the windows debating whether to go in or call first. Lydia my have invited you but what about the others. Before you had a chance to call, a know on the window spooked you.

 

Peter stood there smiling at you, motioning for you to unlock the door. “well isn’t this a nice surprise seeing you here, I heard you may show up if you left Theo for good”  he says happily getting in the car. You didn’t say anything, when he looks at you his eyes scans your face. “he didn’t that to you did he?” he asks.

 

You shake your head no, “Tracy is responsible for the face n ribs, Theo is only guilty of having a hard head” you say holding up your strapped up wrist.

 

Peter laughed “I heard you gave him one hell of a punch, stiles seems to think if Theo were human you’d of knocked him out” he says with a tone of awe.

 

“thanks I think” you laugh “it felt great at the time, if I’m gonna be honest. Now though part of me regrets it, my hand is killing” you joke.

 

“so you coming up?” he asks about to get out. Your hesitant not sure if your willing to go or not.

 

“I’m not sure, I don’t know if anyone really wants me there, I was really hoping to catch Lydia, she offered me a place to stay, maybe I can till I sort out where I’m gonna go” you say low

 

“I’m hurt sweetheart” he says, placing his hands on his chest “you already have my guest room, I guess you really don’t wanna stay with me” he adds with a fake pout. “just joking but my offer is always there, now come on up, I want you there too maybe you can what ever Si-Fi movie Stiles chooses more bearable” you can’t tell if he’s joking or not at the last part.

 

“okay” you agree, taking one last look in the mirror wiping any make up lines from crying. Peter opened your door, holding out his hand for you. Taking it you step out the car locking it and head to the loft.

 

Inside everyone seemed happy to see you, even Derek gave you a hug saying he’d missed you. You smile catching the small snarl from Peter. Even Stiles wasn’t harsh with you the most sarcastic thing he said was “glad to see you’ve now seen him for what he is”

 

You spent the next hour chilling with the group, stiles put star wars on party annoyed when someone would start talking. Your eyes often drifting to Peter, each time you did his would already be on you. He would pull a face or roll his eyes in a way for just you to see.

 

“y/n, I probably shouldn’t bring this up like this but, have you got somewhere to go tonight or do you wanna stay with me” Lydia asked.

 

You flash a quick look to Peter who’s now paying attention waiting to hear your answer. Wishing your would go home with him.  You smile at Lydia “thanks your too kind but a friend has offered me their guest room for a bit” you say. Not missing the dark and sexy smile Peter gives.

 

After another hour, the movie ended. Scott and Derek were talking about training both not paying attention it had finished. Stiles asks Malia on her opinion of the film, Lydia and Peter both laughing when she asks what it was about still not understanding why he likes it. You noticed Mason and Liam had switched off, trying to talk quite but every now and then you hear Cory and Theo’s names mentioned. Peter comes and stands behind you whispering into your ear “I’m ready to go, you can stay longer if you want”

 

You smile up at him saying to give you a few minutes you’d be ready, you had one thing you needed to do first. Peter nods and heads out the flat. While you walk over to Mason and Liam.

 

“look I know this isn’t my place and I couldn’t help overhearing you before about Cory” you start. Masons shoulders sink as Liam looks defensive by the name. “yes Cory is in Theo’s pack but anything he feels for you is real. And you can trust anything you do or say around him won’t be told.”

 

Liam doesn’t agree “we caught him sneaking around, working for Theo” his smirk begging you for an excuse.

 

You shake your head, “no actually, Theo threatened Cory into spying but when Cory refused to say anything useful he was ordered to do it again but by this point I think Cory had feeling for Mason and told Theo he wouldn’t use Mason for information. It was the first and only time that boy stood up to Theo and that was for him.” You tell Liam.

 

Looking at Mason “it’s up to you but if you like him, go for it. It’s only fear keeping Cory with Theo, remember that” you tell him. Saying bye to the rest of the group you walk out the door catching up with Peter.

 

You follow Peter the short drive to his penthouse, parking next to his Shelby. Peter took your bag carrying it for you. Once inside he let you get settled as he started to cook. Maybe staying here wouldn’t be so bad you thought.

 

It had been two weeks since you moved in and Peter was struggling getting to the stage he couldn’t cope any more. It wasn’t that you were a bat house guest, in fact you were the opposite, you helped cook clean and even picked up shopping. His problem was his own feelings.

 

He couldn’t deal with the way you would walk around in shorts and a vest tops, showing off your legs and cleavage. The easy flirting you both shared, looks smiles winks. The way you would say something suggestive making him ask if you meant it or not. The late night drinks where your fall asleep on his lap and he’d carry you to bed. Most of all he hated putting you in a different bed from his. It wouldn’t have been so bad to just watch you keep telling himself it would never happen but after that kiss last week it’s all he wanted now and had it in his grasp. He hated being a good guy.

 

This morning was no different, Peter walked out of the bathroom wearing just his sweatpants towel drying his damp hair. Something that started driving you crazy, it was hard to tare your eyes from his toned abs.

 

Peter watches as you dance around the kitchen making breakfast. His eyes trail your body loving and hating the coaches outfit you wore. Something about your knee high socks and shorts set his imagination wild. “morning” he says making you turn to look at him. He could help but smirk when he see you eye him up biting your lips as your eyes trail down his chest.

 

“hey” you say “Pancakes?” you offer as you sliding the one you just cooked onto a pile of others. Peter nods coming over to sit by you.  “Are you coming to the game today?” you ask him. It was the first game of the lacrosse session and your first as assistant coach.

 

Peter looked amused “really you think I’d go to a high school sports game, it’s not even basketball. Its much better” he jokes. You knew it was a long shot but maybe with it being a big game for you he might of came. “however maybe I could be persuaded” he adds, with that smirk that makes you weak.

 

Smiling you slide off your stool, coming behind him wrapping your arms around his neck. Letting your fingers brush his chest hair. Moving closer your lips almost touching his ear “well if you do come, maybe I can find a way to show my thanks later” you try to sound seductive.

 

The small growl from Peters chest makes you laugh, you wanted to tease him as much as he did to you. Moving back you let your nose lightly brush against his ear. Once back in your seat “maybe you can tell me your favourite meal ill make it for you” you laughed.

 

Peter was going insane, was she doing this on purpose or if she even knew what she was doing. He shook his head, “such a tease, y/n, I should punish you” he said. Unlike y/n Peter knew what his words did to her and if you want to play games he could too. “do you need to be punished sweetheart”  he asked.

 

You bit your lip hoping he was going to come over and spank your ass, do something to end this unspoken game you both played. You keep eye contact with him as he comes closer, arching an eyebrow waiting for an answer. “you wouldn’t punish me Peter, no matter how naughty I am” you say dragging out punish and naughty.

 

Peter leaned down hovering his lips over yours, his eyes flicked from your eyes to lips and back again. You felt yourself shift in your seat about to move forward to kiss him. Peters smirk changed, his arm reaches around you stealing the last piece of bacon from your plate, putting in his mouth. Giving a laugh as he eat it. Just like Peter you hated the game but wouldn’t play it any other way.

 Seeing as Peter finished your breakfast you get ready for work, saying bye to Peter hoping to him at the game.

You were the first one at the school unlocking the doors hoping the team had improved enough to win. Once coach turned up your day was nonstop, he’d made you pull out the bleachers, check equipment,, direct the away team to their dressing room and now had you listening to one of his locker room speeches.

 

You couldn’t take anymore of his independence day nonsense, leaving the room you headed out to the field. You seen Mason and Cory both making their way out to watch. You smiled seeing them holding hands “hi” you shout jogging to catch up with them.

 

“well you two look happy”  you say. They both give each other shy glances but both beamed a smile at you.

 

“I guess we should thank you” Mason said, Cory looked confused. “y/n told me how you stood up to Theo for me. She said I should give you a chance” Mason filled Cory in.

 

You were about to say your welcome until a dreaded voice filled your ears. Tracy came around the corner making you groan. Since living with Peter you’d put Theo out of your head and being busy with the game you didn’t think about them turning up today.

 

“so you leave and still meddle with our pack, Cory how will Theo feel when he finds out your a turncoat” She said as she stalks towards you. Cory pushes Mason away, warning him with his eyes to find help, not sure what was going to happen.

 

You looked at her wanting to scream and shout but you couldn’t. “Tracy if your here for the game then go find a seat, if not then leave students can’t be wandering the halls” you say as professional as possible. Cory smiles a thanks walking off your follow him hoping your teacher like warning was enough. It wasn’t, Tracy steps in front of you her claws out ready to attack.

 

Mason finds Scott and the others panicking telling him to come quick. Theo watches hearing your name he follows. When Cory runs to them and they all run off, Theo brakes into a run too. When he catches up he sees y/n on the floor, Tracy over her with a bloody nose about to claw at her with Kanima venom. “Tracey! Stop!”  Theo roars making his beta jump of his ex girlfriend.

 

Theo grabs her by the throat holding her against the wall as Scott and Cory help you up off the ground. You wasn’t hurt, well not bad maybe some brushing not that was all. You wanted to go and run at Tracy and Theo not sure who you wanted to hit first.

 

Lucky for you Coach Finstock was in the hall too “what the hell is going on?” he demanded looking at you all. Scott looked at you and everyone else looked at him. You say his name but he stops you “actually don’t want to know, now everyone asses on the field.”

 

Theo pushed Tracey away ordering her to move, Scott ran to the field as the others headed to their seats. You looked at coach about to explain but all he did was tell you to get back to work.

 

The first half of the game went smoothly, BHH were leading but not by much, or at least not enough for coach to be happy. You felt annoyed too, after what happened with Tracy you worried about your job and Peter still hadn’t turned up from what you’d seen, the empty chair next to Malia never filled.

 

To make matters worse, Theo was walking towards you. You turn away hoping he’d just go away, walk past you and not look your way. Luck really wasn’t on your side today, “y/n can we talk I wanna say sorry about Tracy” he says.

 

You sigh “you didn’t tell her to attack me, but you can keep her on a leash and away from me” you say about to walk away, find some excuse to look busy.

 

Theo’s body language changes as you feel an arm come around your shoulder. “hello sweetheart, sorry I’m late” Peter say, not taking his eyes from Theo. You smile, nervous at what he’s doing. “is he bothering you, y/n” Peter asks, pulling you in closer to him.

 

Theo takes a step forward, huffing out his chest trying to look harder. “were working a few things out, can you leave and get your filthy hand off my girl” Theo says.

 

Peter couldn’t help himself. He wasn’t about to let Theo worm his way back in and he couldn’t resist a bit of fun. “What is it with you teenagers? You think that you’re so special? You think you can tell me what to do?” Peter said, leaning in to place a small kiss on your cheek. Really getting under Theo’s skin and yours. You feel the heat rise in your cheeks confused by the whole situation. Peters casual flirting, Theo looking like he’s about to blow.

 

Theo grabbed your wrist dragging you out of Peters gentle hold. “she’s mine” he yelled trying to drag behind him as he squared up to Peter. “go near her and watch” he started to threaten.

 

 “get off me Theo! What the hell are you doing” you scream trying to free yourself. You look at Peter his amused smirk waiting to see what Theo would do next, more importantly what you would do. Once free from his hold “Theo this has to stop, we’re not working anything out we’re over and for good. So just leave me alone”

 

Theo didn’t move at first. His eyes flicking from you to Peter trying to work out what was going on. “so you and him” Theo says in disgust. “this who you’ve been with!”

 

“it’s not like that” you say low. You wasn’t lying but you wish he was right, you wanted a you and Peter. You look at Peter unable to read his poker face. “but even if there was it’s none of your business anymore”

 

Peter played fake hurt “sweetheart you wound me, I thought we had something special” he jokes, making Theo growl his eyes flashing gold.

 

“Peter shut up your not helping” you say seeing Theo’s anger building.

 

“now, now y/n, that’s no way to speak to your alpha now is it” Peter practically purrs.

 

This set Theo off. You imagine it was the word alpha that pushed Theo over the edge. He’d always had a hidden alpha kink the one title he craved. Without warning Theo charged at Peter claws out ripping his V-neck. “your no alpha” and “she’ll never be yours” he shouted.

 

Peter let the young, stupid chimera land his first two or three hits before flashing his own eyes red. Theo looked stunned for a minute letting Peter swipe his claws at the teen. Both of them now had blood on them and if you did do someone one of them most likely Theo would die.

 

You scream for them to stop about 5 times but each one fallen on deaf ears. Your only option was to try and stop them yourself. You wasn’t sure which one of them clawed you, but your cry of pain made them both stop.

 

Theo ran to you asking if you were okay and said sorry over an over. Peter looked down is eyes scanning your injuries, feeling easier when he saw they wasn’t deep. Standing up you look at Theo “No, now just go” was call you could say. Not wanting to argue he did, walking of towards the main gate leaving the school. Vowing to Peter it wasn’t over

 

You look at Peter who’s eyes were back blue. Part of you wanted to ask him what that was all about, why goat Theo into a fight. What was he trying to prove but didn’t have the energy to. You never got a chance the buzzer sounded letting you know the game had restarted. “shit, I gotta go” you tell him running back to work. You would be surprised if you still had a job come Monday.

 

The rest of the game had been trying, both team scoring making the leader bored jumping  back and forth. One of your players taking an injury masking Stiles come on instead. You hated this, five minutes left and both teams drawing. Biting your nail you watch the tean make their play.

 

You jump when you feel a hand come around the back of your waist. He rests his chin on your shoulder his other hand finds your hip. “so do you think the wolfs can pull this off” he said not taking his eyes if the game.

 

You laughed “since when did you care how they play, wasn’t sure you were even gonna come” you say leaning back into his chest.

 

“since you asked me, if I’m going do something I give it my full my attention” he answers in his flirty tone.

 

“you know people will start talking, think somethings going on, if you keep holding me like this”  you say but not wanting him to move. You look around to see if anyone was watching, Hayden was, in fact she was stirring and talking on her phone, no doubt filling Theo in.  “or are you doing this to piss Theo off more”  you laugh.

 

“I couldn’t care less about Theo he’s not worth any more of our time, now he knows ‘who’ I am I doubt he’ll be showing his face again. Also would it be so bad if there was something going on between us?” he asked.

 

You bit your lip, feeling your heart race. Your about to tell him no until the winning goal was scored seconds before the final buzzer sounds. For once your team won, Bobby was shouting you over making you jump out of Peters arms, “hold that thought” you say running off to your boss. Peter watches you frustrated wishing you’d look at him how you had in his living the night he took you home.

 

The stands started to empty, everyone happy with the result. Some of the dumping their sticks to run off and celebrate. Coach ordering you to pack up. “okay” you call back start gathering up equipment to put away.  Peter walks over picking up the lacrosse stick, handing it to you. “guess you still have work to do, I’ll see you later” he says but this he seems off. You couldn’t help but smile he’d actually came to say bye.

 

“your going? I’ll see you at Derek’s right?” you question.

 

Peter nodded, “you seem busy so I’ll leave you too it, I’ll see you after” he says

 

“how about you leave your car at yours we can take mine home. No point both of us driving” you say.

 

Peter smirks “wouldn’t people think something going on of we did” he mocked your words from earlier.

 

You look up “would it be so bad if they did” you say back seeing Peters smile change to a more happier one as he goes to turn. “see you later” you say running the sticks into the locker room telling the team to hurry up and get changed. It took you and Bobby Finstock around two hours to fully kick everyone out and lock up the school.

Theo stood in the car park, leaning against your car. You roll your eyes, after today you couldn’t take anymore of his shit. “so your really choosing him over me” he asked, his arms folded.

 

“I’m not choosing him over you, Theo. I’m choosing not to be with you.” You say honestly.

 

“but he doesn’t love you, I do” he said back hoping you would belive him. “he’s going to use you, hurt you it’s who he is” stepping closer, now starting to scare you a little, you take a breath trying not to let him intimidate you

 

“you don’t know what love is Theo. You might be right, Peter might hurt me, he might not but at the end of the day Theo you already HAVE hurt me. Not just by cheating on me but letting power and your pack be more important than me.” You say trying to open your car door.

 

Theo grabs your throat, pinning you to the car “so you really think I’d just let you leave like that” he roars. You start to panic seeing the crazed look in his eye. “your not gonna walk away and betray me, I’d rather kill you first”. He was now squeezing so hard you couldn’t breath, you vision going burly. “If that doesn’t show love, I don’t know what will” he said. You grabbed his wrists, struggling against his power, kicking your your feet at his shins. The panic was real, you thought you were going to die by Theo's hands. His words drowned out by the ringing of your car alarm. Your vision now completely black, lungs stinging for air, all you wished for was Peter.

 

It was the voice of coach, that made Theo get go. You fell to the floor, gasping for breath. When your vision came back into focus, you saw Bobby pinning Theo against your car.  He asked if you were okay and that Stilinski was on his way, you must have blacked out, not hearing him call for anyone. You nod your okay after getting your breath back and calming down, still refusing to go to the hospital even though Bobby insisted you do. Once the sheriff took Theo away, Bobby asked if you wanted driving home, you kindly refuse getting in your car. Looking at the marks Theo left wondering what your gonna say to the others and how Peter will react.

Read part 1 here

Read part 3 here

[amatchinwater]

Warnings: Temporary character death, blood, violence,

Words: 1711

Spell/Potion

It took longer than Theo cares to admit to get a pack of his own and Alpha powers. But what’s important is that the chimera did it. Scott was an absolute idiot and basically handed Stiles to him on a silver platter. The wolf didn’t take too kindly to his best friend killing Donovan in self defense. The True Alpha kicking Stiles out of the pack did nothing more than push the once human straight into Theo’s arms. Literally and figuratively.

But that’s everything the chimera ever wanted. Stiles as his boyfriend and second in command. Lydia of course followed him without a second thought. Theo’s working on finding a way to get Kira back from the skinwalkers- where she never should’ve been to begin with. Liam ran to Hayden like a love-sick puppy, surprising no one. Malia unfortunately lost the fight with the Desert Wolf. But with all of the aforementioned and the chimeras, Theo isn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Adjusting to his new role as Beacon Hill’s resident Alpha was definitely a learning curve. Not that he needed the man, not when Stiles was so perfect, but even Deaton accepted the chimera’s status and offered his assistance should they ever need it. As much as Theo wanted to say no- be rid of every reminder of McCall- Stiles convinced him it’s be a good idea to keep the druid around.

His boyfriend is surprisingly good at that. Convincing the Alpha to do things. Like the fact that they and the rest of the pack still protect the town. Theo agrees that if they still have to live here until graduation, there might as well be an actual town still standing. But the fox- he asked for the bite and Theo willingly gave it- took his heart out of the trenches, the chimera would ride off to battle if it was asked of him.

Someone, somehow resurrected fucking Donovan- Theo knew he should’ve burned the body when he had the chance- so that he can come after Stiles. The Alpha told his boyfriend that it was a bad idea for them to even go after the wendigo together. Did Theo beg his other half to wait until they had a better plan first? He absolutely did. But nothing can match the sheer willpower of a Stilinski. So what does Stiles do? The damn fox went after Donovan alone and told no one!

Did it get Stiles killed?

It absolutely did.

How did the Alpha possibly know his boyfriend was killed if he told no one of his hare-brained plans, you ask? Donovan is about as arrogant as they come and made sure to try and gloat. See, Theo knew Stiles was gone, but the Alpha hadn’t found the wendigo’s hiding place yet. So he didn’t know exactly where his boyfriend had gone. Just as the chimera was rounding the pack at his home to go search, his front door was kicked in.

Several pairs of golden eyes and a set of rubies turn their attention to the opening. Lydia screams, Tracy’s arms cushioning the banshee as she crumbles to the ground, sobbing. Liam and Josh snarl, shoving Mason and Corey behind their backs. Theo roars, flicking his claws out and lunges. Because dangling limply- lifelessly in Donovan’s fist is Stiles blood staining his shirt. The wendigo grins, dropping the fox as the Alpha attacks, but Theo’s well past seeing red when he leaps over the couch.

No one kills the one both his wolf and coyote consider to be their mate and just drops him at Theo’s feet. Claws dig into the wendigo’s throat while the banshee’s scream turns to a mournful wail. A hand wraps around the Alpha’s wrist and fucking bites him. The chimera snarls in pain- but it’s nothing remotely close to how much it hurts that Stiles is gone. His claws were already too deep anyways, Donovan never stood a chance. And with one simple tug, Theo rips the wendigo’s jugular out, spraying blood on his clothes and the wooden floor.

Donovan’s dead before he even hits the floor.

“Josh, Corey,” Theo turns to his pack, he can’t bring himself to look at Stiles again just yet, Liam is already scooping him up anyway. “Take Donovan to the preserve and burn his body. I don’t want there to be a chance for round three.” The two chimera’s nod with tears in their eyes, following their Alpha’s command. “Tracy- he says, but the kanima is still holding and trying to console Lydia, “-never mind. Mason, get me the grimoire that’s in the basement.”

“Theo-” the teen starts, but a raised hand silences him.

“I know it’s dangerous. But he’s worth it,” Theo’s hands clench to fists at his side, one sticky with blood. “Or do you want to tell the sheriff his son is dead?” The Alpha’s voice cracks on the last word, a tear rolling down his cheek. “Get me the damn book!” Mason runs out of the room and the chimera crouches in front of the banshee, “I’m going to bring him back to us, okay?”

Lydia’s green eyes are bloodshot and she sniffles, “be careful, Theo.”

“What would Stiles say?” Tracy speaks softly, gently playing with the banshee’s hair, “he’d say that necromancy is a piece of cake and can be done by a child. If anything, he’d be jealous he’s not the one performing the spell. Theo can handle it.”

Mason comes barreling back into the room with the grimoire clutched to his chest. When he tries to hand it to his Alpha, the chimera points at Lydia instead. “Do you think you can find the spell for me?”

She doesn’t look up from where she’s tucked her nose in Tracy’s neck, “it’s the dead center of the book. I fully translated it with Stiles last week.”

“Good job, Lydia,” he cups the banshee’s strawberry blonde hair and kisses her temple. Taking the tome, Theo flips until the seam opens to the middle. Archaic Latin text with sticky notes and scribbles meet him and he can’t help but smile. They already have everything they need. With his clean hand, the Alpha digs out his phone and calls Josh, “I need some of Donovan’s hair before you burn him.”

Theo is lucky that he not only has all of the ingredients for the spell, but that it’s also a full moon tonight. Another one of the requirements for this. With all of the supplies in hand, the Alpha and his pack are in their secluded backyard under the light of the full moon.

“You got it, boss,” the raiju response and he can hear Corey grunting to get the strands.

In a stone bowl contains nightshade- of course the one that kills would take part in bringing someone back- Donovan and Stiles’ hair and blood. The book is very specific. If death was the result of murder, you need to have DNA of the perpetrator as well as the one being resurrected. Theo had washed the wendigo’s blood from his hand and kept the rusty-colored water for the spell.

Now, Stiles lay shirtless- the mixture needs to be rubbed into his skin- surrounded by Lily of the Valley and Daffodils. Donovan snapped Stiles’ neck so there was much of a mess to clean up aside from the obvious dirt from being dragged. Lydia is grinding the nightshade and blood into a paste while Theo’s own cut hand hoovers over the bowl to add his own. A personal sacrifice of blood must be made by whoever is performing the spell.

“You’re all set,” the banshee says once the mixture turns into something resembling tar, but a bit more viscous and smells utterly repulsive. “Start at his heart and work your way up to his neck slowly. Then hold it at his temples until he comes back. Got it?”

It’s only now that the Alpha’s nerves slip past his guard with reality sinking in. “He’s going to come back, right?” Theo cradles the bowl in his hands. Said hands that are shaking slightly.

Lydia puts a hand on his shoulder, “you can do this, Theo.” Her voice stern and level. Her determination feeding into the chimera. She nudges him closer to the circle of flowers enclosing his boyfriend.

Theo steps into the ring and gets on his knees, setting the horrid concoction beside him. Taking several deep breaths, the chimera dips both hands into the bowl. Once coated, the Alpha places his hands on Stiles’ sternum. Rubbing the slippery tar up his chest, over his collarbone, inching closer to his neck. “Please, come back to me,” Theo puts two fingers on either side of his boyfriend’s head. He has no idea how long he has to wait. “Please,” he whispers, a tear dripping on Stiles’ cheek.

The anticipation is killing him as Theo keeps the connection, no clue as to whether it’s working or not. There’s no words to be said, you supposedly just have to feel it. Just as the Alpha is sure it’s been too long and is about to move his hands, Stiles gasps a sharp inhale, golden eyes blazing back to amber. “Theo I-” the chimera cuts him off with his own lips, yanking Stiles to his chest.

Too shocked at seeing the fox come back that the chimera truly couldn’t wait; he needed proof this is real. All of his fear and pain drain from every pore the longer their mouths connect and Stiles curls a hand in the Alpha’s hair. “I lost you,” Theo’s voice waivers as he starts to cry again. He can’t even bring himself to be angry with the fox anymore, feeling only love and relief deep in his bones.

“You brought me back?” Stiles’ hand squeezes at the nape of his neck, calming the chimera even more.

“Of course I brought you back,” Theo strokes his cheeks, neither boy caring about the tacky substance still on his fingers. “I couldn’t live without you, Stiles.”

“And you said mates weren’t real,” Stiles flashes a sly grin, mischief sparkling in his eyes.

The Alpha’s face heats up, “hush,” smiling as the fox wraps his arms around Theo, pulling him in for another kiss.

[willow-salix]

TAG MiniBang 2021

Because the combined bad influences of Flyboy and Sonata were at work here we also decided to bend the rules a little and post early...

I was privileged to work with one of my best friends on this project,  @misssquidtracy​ . We went a little rogue (seems to be a theme for us) and shared both parts of the challenge with both of us contributing to the art and the writing. Squiddy provided a beautifully done pallet knife piece as the background for my foreground art and we plotted the story together to ensure that it worked for both of us. We had been looking forward to sharing the writing but unfortunately, due to life constraints on her part she was only able to write a little of the fic but what she did add perfectly compliments the tone and style of my writing. 

Big thanks to @tagminibang ) @godsliltippy​ ) for organising this event.

So, here it is, our offering to the TAG Mini Bang. We hope you enjoy it. 

Ting ting ting

“Not again,” Virgil groaned, hauling himself up the stairs from the kitchen to the lounge. He regretted ever giving Gordon that bell, he really did. Yes his brother had gone through a tough time, yes he had scared the hell out of them when the Chaos Crew had left him at the bottom of the ocean in his mangled craft, yes they were incredibly grateful that he was alive and mostly whole, but if they had to hear that dinging one more time they might possibly murder him themselves. 

“Yes, Gordy, what do you need?” 

“I’m lonely, and I’m hungry, come and sit with me for a bit?”

“Sure-”

“But maybe make me a sandwich first?”

“A sandwich?” 

“Yeah, with extra cheese and a pickle on the side, not too large a pickle but not too small that it’s gone in one bite. I want to taste it, you know, but not be overwhelmed.”

“Sure-”

“And can you get me a drink too? One of my special milkyshakes, you know, with the ice cream and frozen banana in it?”

“Coming right up,” Virgil sighed, heading back down to the kitchen again.

“Gordon still demanding everything and anything?” Scott asked as he jogged in from the poolside. His T-shirt was sticking to his chest and his hair was damp with sweat but he still looked like he could do it all again. Not that they would have time, they were lucky if they got to do any planned exercise at all, usually they were forced to skip it and work out on the job when a call came in.

“Of course he is,” Virgil growled, slapping a slice of cheese on a piece of bread with far more force than necessary.

“What did the cheese do to you?”

“It’s guilty by association.”

“Ah,” Scott said, like that explained things perfectly. 

A few slices of chicken received the same treatment and Scott wondered if the meat had actually been dead when it arrived on the island or if Virgil had simply smacked it into submission so well that the chicken had flown clear into next week and arrived as sandwich filling.

“Can you fix his drink?” Virgil asked.

“Can’t gotta shower this off before Grandma accuses me of stinking up the place again.”

“Any excuse,” Virgil scowled. “It would only take you a second.”

“A second too long, bro, I’m escaping while I can and you’d be wise to do the same,” Scott said, heading for the stairs and freedom.

“How can I escape when Gordon needs help?”

“You’re forgetting one important thing,” Scott told him wisely. 

“I am? And that would be…”

“John’s home.”

Virgil snorted out a laugh. “He’s less likely to do it than you are.”

“No, you're misunderstanding me. If John’s home that means…” Scott let his sentence trail off into silence heavily filled with insinuation.

“Sel’s here,” Virgil finished triumphantly, catching on perfectly.

“Give that Tracy a prize,” Scott grinned, shooting triumphant finger guns his brother’s way as he headed up the stairs. 

And they said that John was the genius in the family, they hadn’t seen Scott at his most devious. Virgil wasted no time in yanking out his phone and texting the witch to come and take over.

“Here’s your sammich, Squidward,” Selene cooed, plonking the plate down on Gordon’s lap while smacking a kiss to his forehead. “Virgil started it but I finished it for you, Brains called him down to his lab with some kind of air filter emergency so I took over. I brought you some of those crisps you like from my private stash too.”

“The cheesy curl ones?” Gordon asked hopefully.

“Yep,” she grinned, waggling a family sized bag of Quavers in his general direction.

“Did you bring my drink?” Gordon asked around a mouthful of chickeny goodness. Say what you wanted about Virgil but he made a damn good sandwich, even if Gordon could taste that this was made with a little less love and a little more impatience than usual.

“No, sorry, did you want one? Virgil didn’t say that. I’ll go get you something, just wait right there.”

"Not like I can leave if the mood takes me," Gordon grumbled as he opened the chip bag. 

She was already gone, only to race back in a few moments later with a can of coke.

“What? What’s wrong, boo?” Selene asked when she saw the pouting look of disappointment on Gordon’s face.

“It was supposed to be one of my special milkyshakes,” he whined.

“Right, got it, my bad!”

She was gone again, taking off to the kitchen where, upon closer inspections, she did indeed find the beginnings of a milkshake. There were two scoops of ice cream already in the blender, melting in the warmth of the room. A half peeled banana sat abandoned on the counter next to a carton of milk. 

“Typical,” she groused as she set about breaking up the banana, pouring the milk and setting it to blend as she tidied the mess away. Once done she poured it into a tall glass, added a straw and a few slices of fresh banana to decorate the edges, just as he liked it, and delivered it to the waiting aquanaut.

“Great, thanks, Sel,” he grinned, handing her his now empty plate and swapping it for the glass. She put the plate on the coffee table and sat on the couch opposite him.

“Anything else I can do for you?”

 “Sit with me and keep me company?” he begged, looking so miserable and pathetic that she couldn’t say no.

“Of course I will.” 

Gordon swung his injured leg up and she moved to sit next to him on the couch, placing a cushion on her lap for him to rest his cast covered foot on.

Gordon settled down with a contented sigh, sucking happily on his straw, the milkshake level in the glass steadily dropping.

“I’m bored,” Gordon bitched five minutes later.

“That peace lasted a long time,” Selene laughed, putting her phone down on the side table to give him her full attention. “What can I do to help? Do you want to watch something or play a game?”

Gordon made a face. “You’re crap at games, Sel.”

One eyebrow rose in disbelief. “I wouldn’t exactly say crap…”

“You tried to play with Alan and died three times in two minutes, lost all your lives and were forced to float along behind him as a ghost for the rest of his turn.”

“Anything is crap when you say it like that,” Selene huffed. 

“Only when it’s true.”

“Tell me then, oh great games master, what do you want to do?”

“Nothing.”

“Then don’t moan you’re bored,” she pointed out.

“I mean there’s nothing to do. No one is around.”

Selene gestured to her chest. “Am I suddenly invisible?”

“No, of course not,” he scoffed. “That would be far too cool, why don’t you have witch powers like that?”

“Because I live in the real world, not a movie?”

“Lame,” he declared, dismissing it.

“Back to the original point that I am, in fact, right here. Therefore your comment that no one is around is redundant.”

“I meant no one I can do anything with.”

“Thin ice, bub, thin ice.”

“I meant like my brothers or someone. Alan is busy revising for his final exams, Virgil’s with Brains and I’ve no idea where Scott is but I think he’s avoiding me, which is just mean if you ask me. I’m a delight.”

“Yeah, you sure are,” she drawled, not sounding too convinced. “You’re also forgetting a brother.”

“Who?”

“John? You know, gorgeous ginger love of my life that’s chilling in his room right this minute? That brother?”

“John? No way.”

“What’s wrong with John?” she squawked indignantly. Her man was the most perfect of people, amazing and fabulous, just all round awesome. Although she might be a tad biased.

Gordon shrugged, scrunching his nose up in a ‘meh’ kinda way that said everything and nothing.

“No, come on, tell me what you meant,” she demanded.

“No offence, Sel, but John’s a bit…”

“A bit what?” she asked, her tone warning him that he was in very dangerous territory.

Gordon, with the grace of an elephant and confidence of a man that knew he was injured and therefore wouldn’t get slapped, plowed on.

“A bit boring.”

“Boring?!” she hollered, her voice travelling to the four corners of the island so effectively that Alan lifted his head, wondering if some distant God was echoing his thoughts as he slogged through his history homework.

“How very dare you!” Selene continued, working up a good glare that Gordon was completely immune to. He simply sipped the last of his milkshake, smacked his lips and raised an eyebrow, daring her to do something about it.

“He is not boring.”

“Matter of opinion,” Gordon shrugged, handing her the glass to put down on the table. 

“Right, that’s it, you can besmirch my fun factor but I will not allow you to do so to my man. That’s a step too far.” She gently, for which he was thankful, shoved his leg off her lap and dragged his hover chair over from its spot beside Virgil’s piano.

“Get the hell in, hoppy, we’re going for a ride.”

-x-

"You deal with him, he's driving me nuts and pissing me off at the same time."

"Me? I'm the very picture of perfection, I could never drive anyone nuts."

John declined to comment on that one for fear of never stopping, he had twenty-four years worth of stories after all. 

“The pissing you off is subjective too,” Gordon finished triumphantly. 

"He's your problem now," Selene announced, shoving Gordon's hover chair further into the room before making her escape, slamming the door shut behind her. 

John closed his eyes, praying for patience. His fiancée was well known for her legendary patience when it came to pampering and mothering his family whenever any of them were sick or injured. She'd spent almost every day with Gordon since his run in with the Chaos Crew and had done so with relentless cheer, for her to have given up now was not a good sign. 

"What did you do?" 

"Nothing!" Gordon protested hotly.

"Are you sure?" 

Gordon averted his gaze, suddenly taking great interest in a dust particle dancing across the shaft of sunlight filtering in through the window, "Yes, I'm sure. I wasn't doing anything. That was part of the problem."

"Ah," there it was. "Is there anything I can do to help?" 

"I'm so bored," Gordon wailed. "And your girlfriend is being mean to me."

"Fiancée," John corrected him, not looking up from his work. 

"It's not my fault I hate sitting around doing nothing all day. I’ve gone from a physically and mentally intensive, fifty plus hour a week job, to sitting on my ass from dawn until dusk. Can you blame a guy for getting twitchy?"

"Unfortunately, you don't have much of a choice at the moment," John reminded him, quite needlessly he thought. 

"Gee, thanks for the reminder," Gordon huffed, trying to cross his arms although the cast and sling he was sporting prevented it. That just seemed to annoy him even more. 

"I can't do anything right now! How do you do it?" 

"Do what?" John asked, squinting through his magnifier at the small window frame he was carving from a piece of polymer clay. 

"Just sit around all day."

John raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "I don't sit around all day."

"OK, float around then. It's not like you're actively running around like the rest of us are."

"I'll pretend I never heard you say that," John scowled, wishing Selene had dumped his brother into the sea instead of into his quiet, peaceful room. 

"You're sitting around right now," Gordon pointed out, gesturing to the desk John was  sitting at, which was currently doing double duty as a work table for his latest project. 

"One day you'll learn to appreciate the benefits of a quiet, occupied mind and a still body," John told him. 

Gordon sighed, propping his good elbow on the desktop, his chin resting in his upturned palm as he watched his brother fiddling with tiny things that seemed utterly useless to him. 

"What are you even doing?" 

"Working on a series of book nooks for Sel's side of the bookcase," John answered, sounding slightly distracted as he measured the finished window against its place in an intricately carved brick wall. 

"Why?" 

"Because she likes them."

"I mean why are you making it? Can't you just buy her one? It's not like you can't afford it."

"Where's the challenge in that? Besides, things are always more special when you make them yourself."

Gordon yawned and leant forward to rest his head on the tabletop. 

"Do you want to help?" John offered, although honestly Gordon's version of helping was always patchy at best. 

Gordon scooted closer to look over John's shoulder, eyes darting over the rectangular box that he was building the nook inside. About the size of two thick books sandwiched together, the nook already had a little cobbled street and two shop fronts in place. The tabletop was scattered with a selection of impossibly tiny screwdrivers, picks, scalpels and other instruments of possible torture that he couldn't hope to name. 

"Pass," he announced decisively, flicking the control of his hoverchair so he spun in a wide circle, pointing to the door. "I'm out."

"Peace at last," John sighed, flicking his magnifier back into place over his right eye as he set aside the window to be baked later and reached for a fresh blob of clay. 

-x-

"What ya dooooooing?" Gordon yodelled, slamming the bedroom door open so hard that it smacked into the wall and shook several picture frames. He scooted his way into the room without even waiting for an invite. 

"Gordon!" John huffed, clutching his heart where it was trying to leap out of his chest from the shock of his brother’s sudden, and very noisy, entrance. 

"Hi, I got bored, thought I'd drop in on my favourite big brother," Gordon grinned as he glided his hoverchair closer. 

"Are Scott and Virgil busy?" John asked, that would be the only reason Gordon would have promoted him to his favourite. 

"Yes," Gordon admitted, "but that's not the reason why I'm here."

John turned his head to shoot him a raised eyebrow of doom, clearly communicating without words that he didn't believe him in the slightest. 

"So, what are you doing?" 

"Working on this book nook," John replied patiently, holding up the small cauldron he was crafting. 

"The same one?" 

"Yes."

Gordon’s eyes nearly fell out of his head, "Still? It’s been four days!"

"Yes," John hissed out, starting to get frustrated by the constant questions. 

"Why?" 

"Because it takes a long time. If you're going to do a project you should do it right."

"At the speed you're going it's gonna take forever," Gordon snorted, casting an assessing eye over the work John had already done. 

"That doesn't matter," John assured him. "It's not really about the time it takes or the end result, it's about the process, the journey to get there."

"Sounds lame to me," Gordon yawned. 

"Obviously," John drawled, rolling his eyes. 

"What do you mean by that?" Gordon demanded to know, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. 

"Because it's you."

"Hey! Rude."

"Accurate," John said, placing the little cauldron down and selecting another piece of clay which he placed on a ceramic tile. 

"Why?"

"Because it requires a calm mind. It's good to slow down sometimes and just be still."

"Says the console jockey." 

Console Jockey? He did not just say that!

"So you don't think my job is stressful? Or as tiring and important as yours?" John snapped, wondering if it was bad form to smack your injured brother around the head with a partially constructed book nook. He glanced at the nook, he had put a lot of work into it… It would be a shame to waste it. That thought alone saved Gordon. 

“Well, yeah I get that it might be a bit stressful, but it’s not like you have to do much that puts you in danger, not like us,” Gordon continued, digging his hole even deeper, a hole that John was looking forward to shoving him into.

“We all have our specialities, you couldn’t do your job without me doing mine,” John retorted, trying very hard not to let Gordon’s comments get to him. Gordon would never understand what it was like for him to be stuck so far away from the action, away from his brothers when things were going wrong. 

Gordon, thankfully for him, had been unconscious from the moment he had activated his emergency code. He hadn’t heard the frantic calls going out over the comms as the family mobilized to help him.  He hadn’t heard the desperate scramble as Thunderbirds took off, racing to the scene. But John had heard it all. 

John had been the one to stay on the line with Gordon, talking to him the entire time, knowing that he probably wouldn’t hear it but feeling that he needed to say it all the same. He wanted to know that if his little brother regained consciousness for even a second he would hear a familiar voice, that he would know that they were coming, that they would rescue him. He would know that he wasn’t alone.

 He knew what it was like for people that were in danger, knew the comfort they got from someone talking to them, listening to their stories, being there for them verbally if not physically. John was often the one that spent the most amount of time with those they rescued, keeping their spirits up as much as possible until his brothers got there. 

His brothers were seen by their rescuees as the real heroes, the ones that leapt in and plucked them out of danger, but John was the one that got them that help, the one that made sure the rescue played out as best it could, liaising and coordinating until the job was done. But Virgil, Scott, Gordon and Alan were the ones that got the thanks , the ones that got the hugs after they dropped their charges off, not John. 

Not that he minded too much, he knew that his job was just as important as theirs, maybe even more so because, when someone put out that call for help, when they sent their desperate plea out into the world, they deserved to know that someone would always be listening out for it, that someone would hear and that help would come.

He knew all of this, and he knew that Gordon did too, it was just the frustration of inactivity that was making him say the things that he was. John just wished that that knowledge made it easier to listen to. 

“I might not be doing the physical rescuing,” John continued, feeling the need to push his point home. “But I work just as hard, when you’re home you’re off duty until a call comes in, you can relax, swim, watch movies and laze around until you’re needed. When I’m up there I’m on duty 24/7 and even when I do manage to catch some sleep it’s not deep or particularly restful. Any little noise, any call that triggers the system's keyword algorithm gets transferred automatically, I have to go from asleep to awake in seconds to take it.”

Gordon was quiet for once, watching him closely. John didn’t like it, it made him feel like an exhibit in a zoo. And here we have the little seen Tracy, see how he stays inside his hide and hardly ever ventures out… he knew how they saw him, why they likely thought he had the easy job. 

“These help, they give me something else to focus on. I need to keep my mind active and challenged while still trying to relax.” John paused, trying to think of a way to explain his thinking that Gordon might understand. 

“These are almost like a meditation,” he started. Gordon understood meditation and finding your zone. “Creating something out of almost nothing. It keeps my mind focused, helps with finger dexterity and hand eye coordination with the added bonus of it relaxing me. It’s good to slow down and take some time to do something creative, you should try it some time.” 

Gordon listened to his brother and he tried to take in all his words, he tried to understand the meaning behind them, he really did, but it just didn’t make any sense to him. He understood about wanting to be lazy, to sit around and do nothing sometimes. He loved to laze on the couch with his snackies and an Into the Unknown marathon playing out on the holoscreen, but that was watching something exciting, interesting, to him that was relaxing. This...whatever it was that John was actually doing, made no sense whatsoever to him. The idea of trying to relax by actually thinking...that was the most alien concept of all. 

Gordon knew, probably better than his family gave him credit for, what it was like to be mislabelled. Within every sibling pool, there were the mandatory roles: the serious one, the caring one, the smart one, the funny one, the calm one, the angry one, the one who sang in the shower, et cetera. He’d proudly embraced the role of ‘the funny one’, and had diligently flown the flag for the humour camp for as long as he could remember. If a brother came home from a rescue in a slump and needed a cheery pick-me-up, it was Gordon who stepped up to the task, irrespective of his own mood. His smile and laugh were infectious, and he had yet to encounter a frown he couldn’t (eventually) turn upside down.

But with every ‘role’ came misconceptions. Scott was serious, therefore people were quick to automatically assume that he was a killjoy.  Similarly, John’s intellect and preference for solitude often went hand in hand with him being branded antisocial, since there was apparently no possible way someone could enjoy their own company so much, yet still pursue and maintain meaningful relationships with actual people.

Gordon was no stranger to this treatment. He liked to laugh and be spontaneous, and consequently, was often regarded as the Tracy who didn’t take his work seriously, the Tracy who had the attention span of a gnat (albeit a very handsome one), and the Tracy who couldn’t be trusted with anything that required delicacy, be it physical or emotional. His affinity for making people laugh, though an exceptional quality, frequently acted as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, his relentless optimism made him the most effective of the bunch when it came to emergencies involving children and young adults. On the other hand, it sentenced him to a fate where the bad jokes he cracked would always be two steps ahead of the secret deep thinker that lay within.

“Let me see it again,” Gordon sighed, trying his best to be a supportive and understanding brother, since he did feel a little bad about the things he had just said. He hadn’t meant to say them, they had just come out. That was the trouble with being laid up from an injury, not only were you out of action but you were in pain, and pain made you grumpy and less likely to monitor the things that came out of your mouth the way you should.

He knew that John worked hard, hell he knew that what his brother had said was right, John was never truly off duty. They were all aware that he didn’t get enough sleep, enough down time, enough time to relax and just be. They knew that if John was on Five he would consider himself on duty, at work, and therefore he’d never allow himself to take time out. Things had changed since Selene had blundered her way into his life, now he spent a lot more time on the Island, which meant that he was finally taking some time out for himself. If one of the ways he chose to do that was by crafting ridiculously tiny things out of clay to stick in a hollowed out box that was his business. Gordon wasn’t there to judge, he was there to spend time with his brother.

John moved aside a little so Gordon could get a closer look, trying to resist the urge to smack his hand away every time Gordon reached for a tiny piece that had taken him hours to perfect. 

“These are really small,” Gordon mused, poking at a window that John had just finished painting, leaving behind a smudged fingerprint. “Woops, sorry, Bro.”

“Maybe you should try making something of your own,“ John suggested, carefully removing the window from his brother's possession and picking up a brush in order to attempt a fix.

Gordon nodded and John passed him a ceramic tile and a miniature rolling pin. 

“How about you try cutting me out a few shop sign bases?” John suggested.

“Do I get one of those scalpel things?” Gordon asked, a little too eagerly for John’s liking.

“Maybe we can work up to that,” John hedged, subtly moving the scalpel out of his brother’s reach and passing him a square cookie cutter. “Use this cutter for now.”

Gordon shrugged and spent a few minutes rolling and squishing the clay trying to get the thickness to the exact measurement that John insisted on. It wasn’t easy or fun.

“Nope!” Gordon announced, giving up and pushing the tile away. “It’s still boring. Pass.”

He swung his hoverchair around and headed in the direction of the door. “Later, Bro.”

“Oh...OK...later, I guess,” John stuttered, wondering just what he had done to deserve such a chaotic family as his.

“Oh, hey, boo, where are you go- WAHH!”

John’s head shot up as Selene’s yelp rang out from the hallway.

“Sorry!” 

“So you should be, you little shit,” she grumbled to his retreating back as she thumped into the room.

“What happened, love?”

“Let’s just say that if his chair had wheels I’d have lost a few toes,” she said, wincing in imagined pain. 

John scooted his desk chair back and patted his lap in offer, one that she happily accepted.

“So, why was Gordy doing his boy racer bit? What did you say to him?”

“Me? What makes you think I said anything to him?”

“Because I know you two?” 

“Fair,” he sighed, sliding his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder. “I don’t know what to do to help him.”

Selene turned her head to look at him, not liking the helpless look on his face.

“Babe, you are helping him, you’re there to keep him company or talk to him if he needs it, that’s more important than anything. What happened to make you think that you weren’t helping?”

“He was asking me about these again,” John nodded towards his work area on the desktop. “But he didn’t seem to understand, that or he just didn’t want to.”

“He’s Gordon,” she sighed. “You know what he’s like, he’s full on, he’s in your face and he’s not at all subtle. Taking his time with things just doesn’t compute with him.”

“It would do him good though, if he doesn’t learn to embrace it he’ll be exactly the same as he was last time.”

“Was he really that bad?” she asked, concern lacing her voice. 

John nodded. “He doesn’t do inactivity well. When he had his hydrofoil accident his therapist talked him into signing up for a virtual college degree in Environmental Management of Rivers and Wetlands. It was supposed to take him at least a year as a part time course with ANU in Canberra, but he blew through it in the first semester and earned himself a distinction for his insights on the impact of Anthropogenic Noise on Wetland Habitats. His professor was so impressed he offered him a fully funded PhD, citing his time with WASP and the time he spent in the bathyscaphe as practical experience that would make up for his lack of degree. Obviously he turned it down, but he still likes to rub our faces in it now and then.”

“Wow,” Selene breathed. “Forget his professor being impressed, I’m impressed.”

“He has a phenomenal brain,” John said, a small but very proud smile on his face. “When he actually decides to use it to its full potential, that is. There is nothing he can't do when he chooses to focus on something, he’s all in. It really helped him to feel like he was gaining something and moving forward even though he was sitting still.”

Selene nodded, understanding completely. She knew that all of her boys were wicked smart, but Gordon always presented himself as the least academic. He was more of a doer, wanting to be out in the field, learning as he went, diving in head first to every situation. 

But as Selene and John both knew, appearances could be deceiving.

“If that’s what helped him last time, then we need to find a way to convince him to try something new,” Selene insisted. 

“I tried, he’s not interested.”

“That was with your things, babe. We need to find something that’s a little more him, and I think I know just the thing.”

-x-

“I have arrived!” Gordon yodelled, announcing his entrance in his own unique way. He slid his hover chair in through the open door like the boss that he was, bringing his shining presence in to brighten up his middle brother's obviously dull existence. “Didja miss me?”

“Like a hole in the head,” John grumbled, turning to look at the grinning face of his brother. His eyes immediately began to water as they were assaulted by the far too bright colours of the shirt Gordon was wearing, a tie dyed monstrosity that Selene had made for him for his birthday. 

“A little more gratitude, if you please," Gordon huffed. 

“Grandma finally released you?”

“Yep,” Gordon stretched out his injured leg and patted the air cast on his now slingless arm. “Got time off for good behaviour.”

“I find that hard to believe,” John teased, then nodded to Gordon’s arm. “How’s it feeling?”

“Not too bad, my grip still isn't great but Grandma promised me that once the bone has finished knitting I’ll just need to exercise it and build the muscle strength up, then it’ll be as good as new.”

“That’s great, it won't be long before you're able to go back out with Virgil and stop, how did Sel put it, 'haunting the house like the ghost of Christmas future'?"

"Can't come soon enough," Gordon sighed, butting his chair right up close to John's, knocking his arm in the process. "What you do- you're still doing that? Still? It's been a week!" 

"It's not like I get a huge amount of down time," John pointed out. "I'm only here now because Sel said she'd dump me if I didn't make an effort to come down earlier in the evenings so I could actually eat a meal with you all."

"You actually believed that threat?" Gordon laughed. 

"Of course not, she'd never dump me, but I thought I had better humour her and let her feel like she at least had a little sway," John shrugged, pushing aside the little piece of doorstep he had been painting. "Honestly, it's nice to come down for a meal and family time, I hadn't realised how much I'd missed it until it was happening again."

"I guess we all got a bit too caught up in International Rescue after we lost Dad," Gordon admitted. 

"Like we had nothing else in our lives," John nodded, completely understanding. 

"Yep."

Gordon fell silent and John let him, concentrating on mixing the perfect colour acrylic to add a few highlights to his stones. 

"Can I have a go at making something? I bet I could do it quicker than you," Gordon asked, reaching towards what Selene called the sharps tub. John smacked the lid down on it just in time. 

"Actually, we got you a present."

"You did?" Instantly distracted, Gordon sat up straighter, excited by the prospect of a gift. "What did you get me?" 

This," John answered, opening his desk drawer and extracting an interestingly shaped bottle, upright with a thicker, rounded bottom and a thinner neck, ending a cork stopper. 

"Wow, is that an original?" Gordon asked, taking the bottle carefully and turning it to  study it from all angles. He knew exactly what this shaped bottle was, there had been a collection of them in Commander Shore’s office that he would stare at every time he got called in for some reprimand or another.

"19th century," John nodded. "Sel found it in a little shop in Mayfair. They assured her it was a genuine, used on a ship, captain's decanter from around the time of the civil war. They hadn’t fully traced it when Sel bought it but they think it came from one of the ships that fought in one of the smaller skirmishes around 1861.”

“This is really cool, thanks,” Gordon smiled, still turning the bottle over and over.

“It’s to hold this,” John continued, drawing Gordon’s attention back to him.

Grinning, John delved back into his desk drawer and pulled out a rather faded and quite dusty box. He brushed the dirt off the top and slid it over to Gordon. 

"A ship?" Gordon frowned. 

"Yep, Selene and I thought that you needed a little project of your own, so she had the idea to get you a ship in a bottle. You don’t see them a lot these days, but apparently her Grandfather had a couple and they always fascinated her.”

“So you put the ship in the bottle?”

“Yep, instructions are inside, go nuts.”

“Pfft, instructions,” Gordon snorted. “No one needs instructions, they’re a waste of time.”

-x-

“Ouch,” John hissed, hopping in place on one foot as he bent down to pick up what looked to be a tiny piece of mast that had attacked the sole of his foot. “Gordon, why are there bits of ship all over my floor?”

“Because I dropped them,” Gordon replied, his voice muffled due to the tongue of concentration that was peeking out from between his teeth.

Huffing, John gathered all the pieces off the floor, both pieces of ship and bits that they had been cut out of, and deposited them on the desk next to Gordon.

“How’s it coming along?” John asked, settling in his own chair. He’d only been gone a day but Gordon had managed to take over the entire bedroom, spreading his belongings, bottles, snack wrappers, his phone and a discarded hoodie, all over the place, as well as half the contents of the vintage ship box.

“It’s ridiculous. I think it’s missing pieces or something, it’s broken.”

“Well it was an old kit, but we were assured that it was complete,” John frowned, sliding the tray over that Gordon was supposed to be storing all the pieces in. “Have you checked the contents list and matched each piece to make sure they’re all there?”

Gordon looked at him blankly, like he was talking a foreign language.

“Did you check that everything was there before you started?" John elaborated.

“Of course I did,” Gordon promised, crossing his fingers and hoping his brother didn’t see. 

“Against the list?” John clarified.

“I eyeballed it, OK?”

“Not good enough,” John insisted. “That’s not how you go about doing things like this, you can’t just slap them together and hope for the best.”

“Why not?” Gordon whined. It worked for him in almost everything else he did in life. 

“Because this happens," John gestured to the mess surrounding them.

“Fine, I’ll read the damn instructions.”

Leaving Gordon to it John slid his almost completed book nook over and picked up his paintbrush to start adding some finishing touches before he started on the wiring for the lights. He’d barely done more than five minutes when Gordon started huffing.

John waited a little longer, trying his hardest to ignore the ever increasing sounds of frustration and impatience from his brother. In the end he couldn't stand it a moment longer, he had to ask the most loaded question ever.

“What’s the problem?” John asked, pushing his own work aside.

“These instructions don’t make sense,” Gordon bitched, flapping the paper in John’s face. “Look at the little picture here, you have to stick this little pole into that hole in the deck but the deck doesn’t want to stay together and that piece there keeps sliding and the pictures make no sense.”

“That’s because you missed around eight steps in between,” John told him, praying for patience. 

“No I didn't, I followed the pictures exactly,” Gordon insisted. 

“The steps aren’t in the pictures,” John explained. “See right there?” he pointed to the words above the pictures. “The pictures are a diagram of each finished stage, not how to get there. They are for reference only, not instructions.”

“Urghhh, this is going to take forever,” Gordon pouted, crossing his arms. “What’s the point?”

“The point is that by the end of it you’ll have something unique that no one else does, something you can be proud of and know that you built with your own two hands.”

“I’m not sure it’s worth the effort,” Gordon muttered.

“It is,” John promised. “I’ll help. How about I read out the instructions and you follow along? We’ll get through it quicker that way.”

Gordon wasn’t convinced, but John looked so hopeful that he didn’t have the heart to refuse him, especially since he and Selene had gone to so much trouble to get the things for him in the first place. He might be a miserable little sod, but he wasn’t that ungrateful. He knew that they had gone out of their way to get something they thought he’d like, the least he could do was make the thing, even if he knew he wouldn’t enjoy it. Maybe John was right, working together they could get through it quicker, and that could only be a good thing.

“Alright,” Gordon agreed, “let’s give it a go.”

Slowly, methodically, John read out each piece that was needed and Gordon located them, storing them neatly in a wooden box that Selene provided when she popped in to bring them drinks an hour or so later. She stayed just long enough to steal a kiss from John and drop one on the top of Gordon’s head before she beat a hasty retreat, not wanting to get roped into helping. She wasn’t the best at following instructions and didn’t want to get grumped at.

By the time they had all the pieces checked and catalogued they had discovered there were indeed two pieces missing, but thankfully they were easy fixes, just a small , round piece of wood to represent a porthole, which they could easily make a replacement for and a piece of mast. One snipped toothpick later and that was sorted too.

John started with the first set of instructions, reading them out patiently as Gordon found and fitted them together. 

“So, how’s work been?” Gordon asked, like a chatty hairstylist, as he carefully dipped the end of a thin dowel into a small pot of wood glue. 

“Same as ever,” John deadpanned, “a bunch of idiots that got themselves into trouble and needed help, and only half of them related to us.”

Gordon sniggered, glancing at John, seeing the sly smile on his brother’s face. He’d forgotten just how amusing John could be when he delivered something sarcastically witty with such a serious tone. Gordon hadn’t realised how much he’d missed it, wondering just what his more serious brother would come out with next. John was always like that, he seemed so quiet and reserved but, when he was relaxed and in company he was comfortable with he’d take you by surprise by letting loose a zinger that you couldn’t help but laugh at.

“Let’s not talk about work,” Gordon suggested, “we haven’t hung out properly in ages, you’re either up in Five or there are other people around.”

“Is that your way of saying you’ve missed me?” John teased.

“Maybe,” Gordon allowed, “but if you ever tell anyone I said that I’ll deny it and tell Grandma you want her to make your birthday cake this year.”

John held his hands up in surrender, although he couldn’t hold in the laugh that bubbled up as he reached for the instructions again.

“OK, let’s get this done before we stop enjoying each other’s company.”

They worked slowly but steadily over the next few hours, putting together the structure for the first mast. Once it was done they called it quits and abandoned it for another day, the smell of something tasty coming from the kitchen proving to be too much to ignore.

-x-

 “Gordon, that’s my finger.”

“Oh, sorry, can you just like… I don’t know, yank it off?”

“If I wish to leave half my identifying fingerprints behind, yes.”

“Do you really need them?”

John didn’t dignify that with an answer, the look he threw at his brother communicated his thoughts perfectly. 

“OK, OK, I’ll get some dissolver from Virgil’s studio, wait right there,” Gordon instructed him, grabbing his crutches and hobbling his way out of the room. 

John sighed, keeping his hand perfectly still, the hull of the boat dangling from his fingertip. He was still there five minutes later when Gordon clumped his way back in, Selene hot on his heels. She had the glue dissolver under one arm, a large bag of chips under the other and a plate of sandwiches in each hand. 

She dumped the plates on the desk, then the chips, before turning to see the state her fiancé was in.

“Do I even want to know?” 

“Probably not,” Gordon winced, dropping down into his abandoned desk chair and reaching for a plate.

“Can you at least help me before you start stuffing your face?” John asked, waggling his hand, which made the boat sway violently from side to side.

“Can’t, eating,” Gordon mumbled around the massive mouthful he had just taken.

“What did I say?” she demanded to know. “No hurting the hands, you know how I feel about that.” 

John wiggled his fingers again, drawing her attention to his plight. He looked so pathetic with the half built little ship swinging from his hand that Selene took pity on him, intervening when he looked like he was about to grab the thing and yank it off himself, fingerprints be damned.

“Oh for the love of the Gods, let me do it!” Taking his hand she used a paintbrush to smear glue dissolver around the area of skin it was stuck to. She took her time, rewetting and using the brush bristles to push the dissolver under the boat, trying to  ease it free from his skin with minimal pulling.

“Thank you,” he sighed, sitting patiently while she worked. Thankfully it didn’t take her too long, although it took a lot of cursing under her breath and the odd ouch from him to get there. 

“One boat,” she announced, placing it triumphantly on the desk. 

“Fanks,” Gordon said, spraying chip crumbs as he did so.

“Welcome,” she said, brushing at her leg which had unfortunately been in splatter range. Still holding John’s hand she bestowed a kiss to each of his abused digits before releasing him. 

“Right, I’m out of here. Play nicely, you two, I don’t want to have to send Grandma in to babysit you both.”

“It won’t come to that,” John assured her, reaching for his own sandwich. “We’ve not got much left to do now. We just have to attach the rigging to the masts, check that they fold properly then insert th-”

“I’m out, I don’t need to hear anything about insertion, not after you just glued a boat to your hand,” Selene declared, her exit swift and to the point, the door shutting firmly behind her.

“She has a point,” Gordon admitted, swallowing his last bite. He pushed the chip bag in John’s direction, although there was barely more than a handful and a few crumbs left in it. 

“But we’ll never admit it to her face,” John insisted, steadily munching through the large sub she had brought for him. 

“Never,” Gordon agreed. 

-x- 

Gordon sighed dramatically as he crutched his way down the hall from his bedroom. John’s bedroom door was open but his brother wasn’t inside. The ship, now fully rigged, sat beside the bottle on the desk, just waiting to be placed inside once some sand had been poured in as a base. Gordon had chosen all different shades of blue to represent the sea and had even watched a few videos on how to do sand pouring art, something he’d never expected to find even remotely interesting, yet he couldn’t bring himself to go in and make a start on it.

John had barely been home the past week and when he had it had only been for food and enforced sleep. Even then he had been known to sneak out of bed the second Selene was asleep, being discovered on numerous occasions sitting at their father’s desk until the small hours working on this, that or the other. 

Emergencies, and therefore the need for their services, had seemed to increase three fold, something Selene was blaming on the moon phase and mercury going retrograde and, for want of a better explanation, they were all inclined to agree. There was no rhyme or reason for the surge in idiots that were calling in at all hours of the day and night with trucks caught under a too low bridge causing a pile up, hands stuck down toilets, drunks climbing to the top of electricity pylons and repair men getting trapped inside ATM machines they had been fixing.

His brothers had been on the go near constantly, whether it was from rescue call outs or working on their plan to find their father,  but none more so than John. While Selene had always been good at what she liked to call Tracy Wrangling, none more so that when she was dealing with a stressed out Scott, even she had admitted defeat and left them to their own devices. Self preservation was key after all. 

John had been dealing with not only rescue calls and Chaos Crew sightings, but signal tracking, GDF liaising and general hoop jumping, all of which had kept him far too busy.

It had been over a week since they had done anything to their project and Gordon was feeling the loss. Not so much of the project, although that really had helped with his frustrations at his lack of physical ability, not that he would ever admit that to John, but in spending time with his brother.

Much to his surprise he’d found that he was reluctant to work on it alone, it had become their thing to do together. It was a time where they would hang out, shoot the shit, reminisce about childhood memories, times that they had spent together talking about their hope for the future where they would find their father alive and bring him home.

Both of them knew that it wouldn’t be easy, that if they did manage to find him there would be no telling what physical or mental state he would be in. Gordon knew from experience just how tough physical injury, limitations, and recovery could be on the mind and the body,  especially in someone who had been as active and viril as Jeff Tracy. 

They all knew, although no one seemed to want to talk about it, that as hard as it was going to be to actually locate him and hopefully bring him home, that would only be the beginning of what could potentially be an incredibly long and difficult journey of rehabilitation and reintegration into the family and the world as a whole. 

John had been right, taking some time to be quiet, to slow down and think while keeping your mind and hands busy really was a productive way to spend your rest hours and, stupid as it sounded, Gordon didn’t really want that to end. 

He was only a week or two away from potential cast removal and a return to physical activities like his beloved swimming and strength training in their home gym and, while he couldn’t wait to get back to it, he knew he’d feel the loss of his enforced quiet time. 

He glanced again at the abandoned ship on the desk and turned away, clumping down the hall towards the stairs. So it would take them a little longer to get it finished, Gordon was fine with that because for once he wasn’t feeling the need to rush.

-x-

“Remember to pour it slowly,” Gordon instructed as he held the funnel in place, its long pipe reaching right down into the bottom of the jar. “Start with the darkest one, that’s going to be our base colour.”

“I’ve got it,” John assured him, selecting the tub of midnight blue sand and scooping some out into a smaller pot to make things easier. At Gordon’s nod he began to slowly and steadily pour the sand into the open neck of the funnel. As he watched Gordon expertly directed the tube, allowing the sand to pour out to pool in the bottom of the bottle.

At Gordon’s signal John stopped pouring and waited while Gordon carefully removed the tube and used a long metal skewer to poke and prod the sand into something that looked vaguely like waves.

“The next colour up,” Gordon requested and John did as he was asked. They repeated the process four more times with different shades of blue, John pouring in a little at a time, Gordon directing the tube to deposit  more in one place than others, mimicking the movement of sea waves as best they could. In between each layer Gordon used the skewer to poke and mix the colours here and there, blending the layers into a smoother transition.

“That’ll do,” Gordon said confidently, twisting the bottle so John could see the full effect. 

John had to admit that he had been pleasantly surprised when Gordon had announced that he had ordered some coloured sand and looked up how to do sand art on the internet. He hadn’t really known what to expect, although he would admit, if only to himself, that he had thought that Gordon would be a little heavy handed and impatient, but once again he had proved him wrong. He really had done his research and the result was a beautiful mix of colours that really did give a perfect impression of a gently moving sea.

“That’s looking great.”

“I know,” Gordon grinned, modest as always. “Where’s that resin gone?”

“Here,” John answered, pushing it across the desk towards his brother. “Make sure you read the instructions and measure the amounts accurately or it won’t set and you’ll ruin the sand and the bottle.”

“Yeah, yeah I got this,” Gordon assured him as he did indeed read the instructions through properly. Once he had familiarised himself with the ratio of resin to hardener, he measured carefully and poured them into a mixing jug. Once it was fully mixed he slowly, gently, poured the mixture a little at a time into the bottle on top of the sand. With each little pour he waited for the resin to trickle down between the grains, slowly adding to it until all the sand was covered. 

“And now we wait,” John said, carefully placing the bottle in the patch of bright sunlight coming in through the window. 

“Wanna watch a movie?” Gordon offered casually, not really expecting his brother to agree. John hardly ever watched anything with just him, they had vastly different tastes in movies and John usually made some polite excuse to escape.

“Sure, sounds good.”

“Really?” Gordon goggled, his eyes almost falling out of his head. “You don’t have anything more important to do?”

“More important than watching a movie with my little brother? I don’t think so,” John grinned, retrieving Gordon’s crutches from where they were leaning against his bookshelf and tossing them to him one by one. “Come on, last one to the lounge picks the movie.”

“Hey, no fair!” Gordon yelled, scrambling to his feet as he fumbled with his crutches. “You’ve got legs like a giraffe and neither of them are broken!”

“Sucks to be you,” John tossed over his shoulder as he took off down the hall to victory.

-x-

“Careful,” John warned.

“I am being careful,” Gordon snapped. “I got this.”

“Your hand’s shaking.”

“Thanks for that, Captain Obvious.” He steadied his, only slightly shaky, hand by propping his elbow on the desk for stability. “OK, let’s do this.”

They both held their breath as Gordon maneuvered the body of the boat through the opening in the bottle, making sure each sail stayed carefully folded down and the strings remained untangled before he fed it down the neck and into the bottle.

“Phase one, complete,” John intoned in such a serious voice that Gordon couldn’t help the laugh that he snorted out.

“Pass me those long nosed tweezers?” Gordon asked, holding out a hand.

John slapped the requested instrument into his brother's hand like a nurse in an operating theater, provoking another burst of laughter.

“Thanks.” 

“Welcome.”

Making sure the strings of the sails were still dangling outside of the bottle, Gordon carefully moved the body of the boat further down into the bottle with the metal skewer until the stern touched the top of the resin and sand layer. 

“Now the sails,” Gordon whispered, hardly daring to breathe as John moved in to help, taking over the holding of the strings while Gordon reached in with the tweezers.

Gently, working together, they started the delicate process of tugging gently on each string, unfolding the paper sails and locking them in place.

“String one.”

“Got it. Watch number four sail.”

“Yep, thanks...OK… can you just give string five a little pull? Perfect.”

“Sail three is flopping!”

“Gah, hang on, just got to tighten that...yep that’s got it.”

“Maybe if I gather…”

“Yep, that’s good, do that again.”

“This next bit is going to require a delicate touch, maybe I should-”

“Hey! I can be delicate!”

“It’s not coming up...back sail two is stuck, release it...careful!”

“There, saved it.”

John gently pulled the strings a little more and there it was, their ship, sails proudly upright and everything. He kept hold of the strings, while Gordon held on to the boat with the tweezers as they carefully lifted the bottle from its side to its proper upright position.

Using the skewer John maneuvered around Gordon’s hand and nudged the boat into a better position before he carefully released the strings. They both held their breath, hoping and praying that the sails wouldn't collapse the second the strings fell. 

The boat, with its sails, stayed strong.

“Yes!” Gordon cheered, holding up his free hand for a high five, grinning when his brother’s palm smacked against his own.

“Scalpel,” Gordon joked as John handed it to him so they could lop off a little of the trailing strings. Then, using the skewer, they arranged the strings around the edges of the boat. 

With the boat finally upright and in place, they added another layer of light blue coloured sand with a sprinkling of white to mimic the tips of the waves. They finished it off by pouring in a little more resin, both to set the sand and hold the boat in place, using the tweezers to make sure it was correctly positioned.

“Phew,” Gordon breathed, leaning back in his chair and stretching out his cast covered leg. “We did it. Go team.”

“We did,” John smiled. “And it looks damn good.”

“It really does,” Gordon agreed, shifting his head to look at the bottle from all angles. 

“Nothing left to do but let it dry and put the stopper in,” John said. “How do you feel now it’s done? Was it worth the time?”

“I still think we could have done it a lot faster if you’d just let me skip a few steps in the instructions and do it my way, but it wasn’t that bad,” Gordon admitted. “I’m oddly proud of it.”

“You should be, you did good,” John leant back in his chair, crossing his arms as he relaxed. “Are you going to stop teasing me about my book nooks now?”

“Pssh, no,” Gordon snorted. “Ships are cool, yours will always be boring.”

He didn’t see the bottle of water coming until it was too late.

-x-

Gordon walked straight to John’s room from the infirmary,  feeling oddly free without his crutches and casts. Six weeks was a long time, after all.

The bottle with its little ship sat exactly where they had left it in the center of John’s desk next to the abandoned book nook that was still not finished. It took him very little time to insert the cork stopper and pour a little of Selene’s spell bottle sealing wax around the top, a bright, cheery yellow wax that matched his beloved Thunderbird Four.

He smiled as he thought of his little craft, waiting down in her dock for him, ready to be taken out when the next call came in. It had been a long and frustrating time but finally, blessedly, that time was over.

He poked an experimental finger into the wax seal, checking that it had set properly. It had, and he couldn’t help feeling a little sad about it. It had been a project that at first he’d had very little interest in, but slowly it had turned into so much more. Not just something to wile away a few hours but a chance for him to reconnect with the brother he spent the least amount of time with. 

Years ago, back when he had been small, John had been his everything. When Alan had been too tiny to be of any use and Scott and Virgil had been too old to be bothered with him hanging around, it had been John that had been there for him. It was John that had patiently listened as he read aloud from his sealife books, who had watched movies with him, played with him, and spent the most amount of time with him. Back then, their three year age difference had seemed like so little but so much at the same time, an older brother that made him feel wanted and included when the other two saw him as an annoyance.

Gordon couldn’t quite put his finger on when things had changed, when they had slowly drifted apart. John had seemed to grow up so much faster than he had, Alan had welded himself to his side, looking up to Gordon as he had to John  and things had never been the same again. 

It had been too long since they had been able to just hang out, to laugh, to tease each other without things going too far and one of them getting annoyed. It had been nice and Gordon had realised that he didn’t want to go back to nothing but hollocalls to Five when an emergency came in or the odd family dinner and movie night where he had to share with the rest of the family. John was the only brother that Gordon didn’t spend one on one time with as standard and he realised that, no matter how much he might blame it on John being so far away, in reality it was as much his fault as John’s.

Gordon picked up the bottle, leaving a box in its place. The model kit of the Mercury Project space capsule and its launch pad had been hard to find even with his junker contacts. In fact, he had almost given up and  admitted defeat before he'd thought to look at the label on his ship box and sent the shop owner an email.

Smiling to himself, knowing that there was no way John would be able to resist that challenge, he took the finished bottle, with its little ship, to his room where it would take pride of place on his bookshelf, a constant reminder that even in the worst of times, positivity could still be found.

“Thanks, Bro.”

[tinyboxxtink]

“Sharky” *Part 4*

Oh snap...ya’ll are gonna be begging for the next chapter. 

Tag List:

@wanniiieeee

@dumauier

@gibbs274

@chasingeverybreakingwave

@objection-argumentative

@word-scribbless

@aprildecker-blog​

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 5

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

After work you headed straight home to get ready-- it was time for the works. Shaved EVERYWHERE, breaking out the expensive smelling shampoo and conditioner, wearing your extra special pheromone perfume, and your lucky little black dress. You stood in your full length mirror, admiring your work.

“Oh hell yes,” You thought to yourself. “Even I’d fuck me,”

You glanced at your clock by the bedside table, shit you were going to be late if you didn’t book it. You slipped on your lucky pumps and grabbed your purse while you called an Uber.

----

At the restaurant, you arrived to see that Rafael had already gotten there but was clearly having an issue getting a table.

“We should be on the list I called earlier, BARBA,” He enunciated at the poor hostess like she was a moron. 

“I’m sorry sir there’s not a--”

“Look under Y/L/N,” You sauntered up to her, completely ignoring Barba. 

“Oh! Yes, party of 2,” She smiled in relief. “Right this way!” She grabbed two menus and lead you to a table.

“I can’t believe you did that-- I said I’d make the reservation!” He hissed.

“No, you said you’d pay,” You reminded him as you both took seats at the table. “And the chef’s MY friend, why would he give a discount to a guy who tried to put him in prison?” 

“Wha---Seriously?” He stared at you. “What, so do you just hang around convicts?” 

“Hey he’s NOT a convict, thanks to me,” You smirked. “You’re so judgmental, Barba,” 

“Oh right I’M--” He was interrupted by a bubbly waitress approaching your table.

“Hello, welcome to Rigoletto’s! I’m Tracy, I’ll be your server tonight--”

“Yeah that’s nice honey, we’d like to start with the calamari, he’ll have the most expensive scotch you have, and I’ll take a bottle of wine,” You didn’t even let the poor girl finish her intro before rattling off your demands.

“....R-Red or white?” She asked meekly. 

“Literally the most expensive wine you have,” You grinned, eyeing Barba who’s eyes were wide as saucers. 

“Right...I’ll be back,” She nodded and was gone in a flash.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Y/N? Really?” He asked, clearly annoyed.

“Aw, Barba if it gets too expensive for your civil servant salary, I’ll cover it,” You flashed him an evil smile.

“You just don’t know how to be on a date, do you?” He chuckled, sipping the complimentary water.

“Excuse me?” 

“When’s the last time you let a man treat you?” 

“I don’t let men treat me, then they expect something,” You rolled your eyes taking a sip of your own water.

“I don’t expect anything from any woman,” He said sincerely, and there it was again. You rubbed your chest to dissipate the pain.

“What’s wrong?” He asked in concern.

“Nothing, heartburn,” You nodded it off and drank more water. That had to be what it was, obviously. 

“For the heart you don’t have?” He smirked.

“Do you really want to do this again Barba?” You bit back.

“No, no you’re right,” He nodded apologetically. “I’m sorry,” 

“It’s fine...but I don’t believe you” You eyed him.

“You don’t believe I’m sorry?

“I don’t believe you don’t expect anything,” You smirked as Tracy brought your drinks and calamari. 

“So did you--?” Tracy started, but once again you cut her off. 

“We’ll need a minute, sweetie,” You shooed her away.

“Why don’t you believe me?” Barba asked as he sipped his scotch.

“Because you’re a man,” You stated like it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

“You clearly have been dating the wrong type of men,”

“Barba I told you I don’t date,” You poured yourself a glass from the wine bottle. “I ‘relieve stress’,” 

“So do you call other sharks to come and ‘service’ you?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Something like that,” You chuckled.

“That explains a lot,” He chuckled back.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re whole ‘deal’, it’s not even original,” He baited you.

“And what exactly is my ‘deal’, counselor?” You narrowed your eyes.

“The whole ‘frigid lawyer uses men for sex, never lets anyone close,’ blah blah blah,”

“FRIGID?” You raised your voice. “I’m sorry, did you just call me frigid? Gee Barba, what do you do on second dates, hit women with your car?” You scoffed as you downed your glass of wine and poured another one.

“I meant like...in your heart,”

“Oh right. Like I’m Elsa-- and what, is this the part of the movie where the white knight comes and thaws her frozen heart with the power of love?” You remembered that this was supposed to be you wooing Barba into a false sense of lust, but his ‘holier than thou’ shtick was infuriating. 

“I don’t think that’s what happens,”

“Oh like I’ve seen Frozen?” You rolled your eyes. “Oh my god...you have!” You snickered.

“Olivia has a kid,” He defended. 

“Oh right,” You shook your head with a sarcastic laugh. “I’m sure and Olivia cuddled up on the couch and watched it with her kid,” 

“You know for someone who seems so sure of herself, you sure seem threatened by Olivia,”

“THREATENED? By Olivia Benson? HA!” You let out one loud laugh. “Please, of what? Her inability to catch criminals? Her single mom life? Her constant habit of getting herself kidnapped? I mean, who does that?!”

“Hey, back off! That was traumatic, Y/N. For all of us,” He warned.

“Which time?” You asked snidely.. “That woman is like Princess Peach and you’re her Mario, constantly having to save her ass from a castle dungeon,”

“See this is exactly what I’m talking about,” Barba kept his cool this time.

“What?”

“You have this constant need to insult Liv, and it always comes back to the relationship she and I have,” He smiled in amusement.

“That is SO--”

“True? I know,” He leaned towards you. “Admit it Sharky, you have a thing for me,” 

“What?! A ‘thing’? What are we, in high school?” You scoffed, looking away. “I do not have a “Thing” for you, Barba. Do I want to fuck you? Absolutely. But I’m not doodling your name in my legal pads or something,” Barba choked on his drink at your last statement. Well, you took your own road there, but at least you got back to the matter at hand.

“Well that’s um,” He dried himself off. “That’s something,”

“Indeed,” You didn’t bat an eye as you poured yourself more wine.

“So is that why you’re trying to pay tonight? Because you ‘expect’ something?” He raised an eyebrow as he swirled his drink.

“Maybe. Is that a problem?” 

“That you want to use me as a piece of meat? Yeah, a little!” He scoffed with a smile. 

Fuck. You should’ve known better than to handle it like this. Barba wasn’t a shark, he wasn’t even a guppy. He was a sad little puppy, with all of his feelings and warm fuzzies bullshit. He probably didn’t even fuck women, he “makes love” to them. 

“Well, you know it could just be my way of showing affection, since I have a ‘thing’ for you,” You ran your fingers over the back of his hand and leaned in close, so that he could smell your pheromone fueled fragrance. You smiled victoriously as you saw it take effect over him-- it was almost like witchcraft.

“I mean, some girls like flowers..” He gulped, now eyeing your entire ensemble with lustful eyes.

“Flowers die, babe,” You winked. “But orgasm’s last forever,”

“Sure they do…” He rolled his eyes.

“Well, if you do it right, they feel like they last forever,” You swirled your wine as your heel travelled slowly up his pant leg. You leaned in closer, tugging on his tie this time as you whispered:

“And trust me, I do it right,” 

“Check please!” Barba frantically looked around for Tracy.

Well this was going to be fun….

[selene-tempest]

How to care for your John Tracy

So, you want to get a John?

Before deciding that a John Tracy is the one for you, you must first realise that they take a lot of specialist care, time and attention that you must be willing to put in if you wish to get the best out of your John.

When taking on a John Tracy one must approach as you would a feral cat, making no sudden movements, do not attempt to touch or grab on first meeting. Allow him to size you up, get used to your presence and approach in his own time and at his own pace.

This could take minutes, hours, days, weeks or longer, there is no set time frame in getting a John to trust you, it varies from person to person. You must be prepared for setbacks and times when it might seem like an impossible task. They require regular reinforcement of their socialising, lots of praise and quiet support.

If you do not have the time, patience or love to devote to your John then we suggest you consider adopting a different breed of Tracy, they are many and varied. For a readily sociable one we suggest you try a Scott or a Gordon, both of which are friendly from the offset and easily tamed with the offer of food.

If a quieter Tracy is still needed but one that is less skittish than the John breed then maybe a Virgil is better suited to your situation. Or if you want one you can play with a lot, then an Alan would be perfect for you. A Tracy is a lifetime commitment so take your time in choosing the right one for you.

Personality traits:

If you do decided that the John is still for you then you will find that all the time and effort you put in is incredibly rewarding. Once you have proved yourself to a John you will find that it will go from a hissing, trembling, retreating ball of anxiety to a purring, snuggling pussy cat that is happy to cuddle for as long as you wish and is, in general, a pretty laid back, chilled addition to your life and household.

Contrary to popular belief a John Tracy is not an antisocial being, this is misinformation that has been circulated due to their quiet nature and contentment in their own company. A John Tracy is by nature actually an asocial introvert (see below pictures).

Once your John Tracy is used to you and has adapted to your ways he will be the most loving, wonderful, affectionate, caring, engaging, sweet, adorable, funny and friendly creature in the world. When he is allowed to do so on his terms in a way that makes him feel safe and secure, of course.

A John Tracy does not hate people or dislike interacting with them, he simply does not do well in crowds and social situations in which he is not prepared or comfortable. Then he may feel overwhelmed and react in a way that society sees as negatively, although for a John social anxiety is perfectly normal and acceptable and should be treated as such. A John is perfect as he is.

Your John Tracy requires a safe and secure place that he can retreat to when feeling overwhelmed or over stimulated, but on the whole, if allowed to come out of his shell and interact without being pushed, forced or tricked he will be perfectly content. John's need positive reinforcement, kind words and to be made to feel secure and loved from the start, this is the only way to bond with one.

A John Tracy is a devoted, loyal and loving creature that is known to mate for life, as do most other breeds of Tracy. A Tracy is a delightful companion that you will not be able to live without once you have one.

Unfortunately, many people will just not work out with a John Tracy, the very reason that so many varieties of this breed are left abandoned in space stations around earth's orbit.

Many see them as hard to socialise and grow impatient with their John, wanting him to act a certain way in a certain length of time, none of which is conducive to a happy and healthy John.

This is often seen as a fatal flaw in the John breed of Tracy, but many John enthusiasts insist that that is part of their attraction. The introverted tendencies of the John is in no way a flaw, it is part of what makes this particular breed of Tracy so special and so desirable to the right person.

John's make very good companions and they are well worth the additional effort that you will have to put in.

Feeding:

John's are not demanding in the food department and you will have to be prepared to offer food at regular intervals as they hardly ever seek it out for themselves.

Your John will try to exist on a diet of bagels and cheeseburgers but this is not good for them and, as much as they may protest or go on hunger strikes, you must continue to offer them a variety of options in your quest to ensure they eat enough to survive.

The same rules apply to keeping them hydrated, they will naturally gravitate towards coffee and occasionally water but they need to include fruit juices, herbal teas and the occasional meal replacement if they have been in a particularly stubborn mood, which they are regularly inclined to slip into.

Nothing is more stubborn than a Tracy breed and the John is one of the worst.

Exercising:

Your John will take care of itself in the exercise department although, once bonded to their person, a John will often try to entice you, or can be easily tempted itself, into playtime and physical activity.

When left to its own devices a John Tracy will spend many hours running, either outside in nature or indoors on an exercise ring. This helps to keep them healthy and fit for their jobs, for all Tracys are working creatures, all highly trained in their fields.

A John will also enjoy playing in water, such as swimming or diving and some extreme sports if it sparks his interest as John's are very athletic and flexible.

John's not only require physical exercise but mental agility training too. They have a very active, inquisitive and engaging brain and enjoy problem solving, organisation and stimulating intellectual conversations.

John's like to work with their hands and are very good with computers and AI's but be warned, they are also very good at hacking and you will have very little privacy with a John in your life.

Housing needs:

You John will require extensive housing to stay happy and content. He will require not only the run of your house with the ability to explore every single inch of your property but also his own specialist housing.

John's require a lot of space, both in the social way, the physical way and the outer space way. Do not deprive him of these essentials.

He will require access to both indoor and outdoor housing of the tropical island variety as well as his own space station.

Now this might seem excessive but it is a necessary part of having a John. John Tracys require extended periods of time in Zero-Gravity in order to both thrive but also stay calm and in control. John's like to feel weightless and to indulge whenever the urge takes them so you will have to be prepared to spend large amounts of time without your John in attendance.

John's prefer quieter surroundings to noise and will often take themselves off to hide if they are over stimulated and surrounded by other noisy Tracy breeds. You cannot stop this, it is part of the John's nature and you have to accept this if you wish to have one of your own. Attempting to force a John into socialising when he does not wish to is an unpleasant, cruel and unfair action and should never be undertaken if there is any other option.

John's also require a number of soft surfaces on which to stretch out, relax and be quiet. John's seem to require very little sleep and are very active both in body and mind for long periods before they crash out completely and need time to re energise themselves.

Appearance:

John's come in a variety of Ginger and Blond colours and are on the taller end of the Tracy spectrum. Long, lean and sleekly muscled the John is a beautiful specimen of Tracy breeding and very pleasing to look at.

Their hair is of the softest quality and, when a John is relaxed and content in your presence, they often enjoy it being stroked and petted, this pleases them and helps them to stay calm and sleepy.

John's have arguably the prettiest eyes of any Tracy breed, although lovers of the Scott, Virgil, Gordon or Alan breeds will beg to differ saying that blues and browns are nicer.

John's sometimes have a questionable dress sense when allowed to please themselves but their standard blue is figure forming and pleasing to behold.

Petting and affection:

John's can be extremely affectionate when they feel comfortable with someone. It just takes them a long time to get there.

John's do not like sudden movements or to be grabbed or forced into affection by someone they do not know well and are not already comfortable with. Unexpected affection from someone that is not one of their chosen people will cause them to freeze like a fainting goat and adopt the tactic of play dead until the threat goes away.

But when a John is comfortable it very much enjoys attention, affection and love.

As mentioned above, John's are an introverted breed of Tracy and allowances have to be made for them. They do not respond well to being forced out of their comfort zones or into interacting when they do not want to.

When a John wishes to interact they will be friendly, approachable and funny. They will happily join in with family activities and events but be aware that they may require additional quiet time after to recharge. This is just the way of the John.

Additional tips and information :

-Respect your John's boundaries. They will make it clear with body language if they are comfortable or not even if they do not verbalise it.

-John's are sensitive and they will respond with sarcasm when they feel threatened or attacked.

-John's cannot be forced into anything they don't want to do. They cannot be moved if they don't want to move. They cannot be tricked or cajoled, they are too smart, give up now.

-John's love their family more than anything and are fiercely protective of them. Never get in between a John and another Tracy breed. You will come off worse.

-John's have a death stare that might actually kill you. You have been warned.

-John's are generally very sensible, until it comes to a challenge between other Tracys, they are extremely competitive creatures and nothing will stop them.

-John's are logical and organised.

-John's do not respond well to blackmail, trickery, deception or engineered situations.

-A John is perfect as it is, never try to change it or force it to be something that it isn't.

-Being socially avoidant is only one part of his personality and it's only when you take the time to get to know him that you will see the rest.

All in all, we can highly recommend bringing a Tracy into your life, they are wonderful creatures and well worth your time and energy. Just think carefully before you choose a John as they require the most love, patience and attention.

(John pic curtesy of @misssquidtracy)

[southernpansy666]

Wee Bairn and Wellie

Part 1

Sergeant Shadwell was pacing up and down the hallway of South Downs. The Scotsman was quite impatient. Master Crowley and his husband, the southern pansy, Mr. Fell finally had that long awaited baby and to say that Shadwell was excited was an understatement. 

The old witchfinder had seen many things, and even got quite a shock when Crowley and Aziraphale revealed the truth to him and Tracy, now his wife, but now both were eager for a quiet life.

Children was out of the question of course, they had considered adoption, third they were getting up there in years. But he and Tracy felt something was missing.

Shadwell has always wanted to be a father, have his own little witchfinder but it just never happened….

"Love," Madame Tracy opened the bedroom door and peeked out. "Come and meet our goddaughter." 

Madame Tracy and Aziraphale had become very close friends, so close that they were inseparable, even started a book club together. Shadwell wasn't that surprised when Tracy accepted the angel's request to be his midwife since she had experience in that line of work.

Shadwell was mostly surprised when he and Tracy received the news that they were going to be godparents. 

Shadwell wanted to dash into the room but Tracy warned him, "Be gentle,  and be quiet. Aziraphale has been through quite an ordeal and the baby only knows her parents and me. She might be frightened by a brand new face." Shadwell nodded, forcing his impatience down.

"Wot did they name her?" Shadwell whispered as Tracy led him into the bedroom.  He only knew that the baby was a girl. They wouldn't tell him anything else and it was driving him mad.

Apparently they wanted to surprise him.

"That's for them to tell you." Tracy said with a grin. Of course Tracy already knew, and she wouldn't crack no matter how much Shadwell begged.

They stopped when they reached the foot of the bed and Shadwell met the gazes of two very exhausted parents. 

Part 2

"Master Crowley, Aziraphale." Shadwell greeted politely. Crowley looked like a feather could knock him over, but the demon was smiling from ear to ear, tears of joy still streaming down his face. He had an arm wrapped protectively around Aziraphale, holding the angel close to him. Tracy said he had been like that ever since the baby arrived. Only holding the baby for a bit before quickly giving her back to her Papa. 

Shadwell glanced at Aziraphale, who looked absolutely drained, using his remaining strength to hold the baby who had been born less than a day ago.

"Hello Sergeant Shadwell." Aziraphale replied hoarsely. The angel was laying against Crowley. 

"Shhh, angel don't talk. Rest." Crowley rasped softly before he turned back to the Sergeant. 

"Don't just stand there Shadwell, come meet our daughter." Crowley was practically lighting up the room and smiling through his tears.

Shadwell didn't need to be told twice. He approached the side of the bed and was immediately enamored by the sight of the cutest little baby he had ever seen. 

Part 3

The baby's eyes were open and Shadwell gasped, "What beautiful eyes you have lass." Blue serpentine eyes gazed up at him with wonder and curiosity. 

"She likes you." Aziraphale rasped. "I knew she would." Aziraphale smiled even wider when the baby's little hands reached out towards Shadwell. 

"I think she wants you to hold her." Crowley tensed immediately.

"Of course I will." Seeing the wary look on Crowley’s face he said, "I'll be careful Master Crowley, don't you worry." 

After a couple of moments,  Crowley reluctantly passed the baby over to Shadwell. "Support her head…like this…" Crowley fussed,  making sure her hand knitted hat was secure so it would keep her head warm. 

"Crowley stop fussing. She's fine…" Aziraphale chuckled. "Although I fear we might not get our baby back. "

Shadwell smiled at the little baby, "Hey there lass, that's right I am yer godfather,  Sergeant Shadwell,  but you can call me Shadwell…" Shadwell thought for a moment. "Well, your special so you get to call me whatever you like but you got to learn how to talk first."

Shadwell became teary eyed when the baby reached up and grabbed his index finger. "Yer smart as a whip aren't ya…" Shadwell gazed pleadingly at Aziraphale, "What's her name?"

"Eden Alexandria Queen Fell." Aziraphale replied tiredly.

Shadwell turned back to the baby. "A beautiful name for a beautiful girl." Shadwell stroked a dark red curl that peeked through her little hat.

"You were definitely worth waiting for my wee bairn." 

"She most certainly was…"Aziraphale agreed. The angel watched the Sergeant bond with his goddaughter until a sudden pain hit him, causing him to double over.

"Shit, Aziraphale!" Crowley was at his side instantly. 

"Is he okay?" Shadwell asked as he moved out of Tracy's way.

"Really you two I'm fine….just sore…" 

"If being sore is that bothersome then something needs to be done." Tracy replied sternly. 

"Crowley, help him to lay back down while I'll go prepare him some tea." Crowley nodded and did just that. 

"Here Master Crowley, I think she wants to come back to you." Eden became quite squirmy.

"I'm here Queenie." Crowley said as he cradled the baby in his arms. "I've got you."

Shadwell patted Crowley on the shoulder, "You're doing a good job Master Crowley." 

Crowley smiled, "Thank you Shadwell."

Part 4

"How many nipples have you got?"  Shadwell huffed at a assembly of Daleks. "Come any closer and this finger will send ya to your maker!"  

"No!" Eden exclaimed now five years old. "Less threatening more running!" Eden grabbed Shadwell by the hand and the two of them ran. "Run Wellie!" 

"Yes Doctor, but where?" 

"Uh…" Eden didn't  think this far ahead,  she and Shadwell had already played so many Doctor Who games today….

"How about you two run into the kitchen and help us set up for tea time?" Crowley asked as he passed the living room

Shadwell and Eden couldn't comply fast enough. 

Part 5

Shadwell sat at Eden's bedside, trying to wrap his head around everything that her parents had told him and Tracy. Eden had died, but despite being brought back she could die again and there was nothing that her parents or that Archangel could do for her. 

And no one knew what to do about this blasted coma….

"Bloody hell Eden…"Shadwell rasped. "Why did you do this? I could have helped you fight the Devil…." Shadwell broke into a sob. "You stay strong for me you hear?" Shadwell cried quietly.

"My wee bairn….and I'm your Wellie….remember that? You used to call me that when you were little.." 

Shadwell broke down completely when Madame Tracy, Aziraphale and Crowley entered the room and joined him. 

Part 6

"If you ever scare me like that again I'll let you have it." Shadwell said as he squeezed Eden's hand. He had been over nearly every day ever since Eden woke up from the coma, or to be more accurate, whenever her parents gave the okay....

"Duly noted." Eden replied weakly. "Wellie." Shadwell smiled, glad that his wee bairn was back at long last.

The End